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American Book and Gun Review by Professor Brian Anse Patrick University of Toledo   Negroes and the Gun: The Black Tradition of Arms. Nicholas Johnson, Amherst, New York: Prometheus Books, 379 pages, 2014. In response to a nonviolent civil rights worker who was surprised to see a firearm in the house of a well known black southern civil rights activist, the activist explained, “That’s a non-violent gun.”  This is one of scores of telling incidents and historical events documented by Professor Nicholas Johnson as he traces the American black tradition of gun ownership from its painful beginnings in slave days,...

I started this narrative bibliography for "The Case for Reparations" back in June, but, regrettably, I didn't finish the final section before I left for the summer. Some time has passed but I think it is very important that, as much as possible, I complete this public acknowledgement of all the previous work that contributed to my own. As I've written, the process began with the understanding that racism was a "done thing" and not an irrepressible clash between people of different hues. Another way of putting this is to say white supremacy is not an invention of white people;...

Ceylan Ozalp, 19, was reportedly surrounded by ISIS fighters near the Syrian Kurdish city of Kobane also known as Ain al-Arab. After she run out of ammunition Ozalp said “goodbye” over the radio and spent her last bullet on killing herself. She knew. She knew what these devout Muslims do to non-Muslim girls. This woman is a heroine. True courage. Another freedom loving people Obama abandoned in support of the jihad movement. ... Those whom their “right hands own” (Quran 4:3, 4:24, 33:50) are slaves, and inextricable from the concept of Islamic slavery as a whole is the concept of...

The story of the Democrats (available in its entirety free see details below) continues by exposing the Franklin Pierce Administration. The Kansas-Nebraska Act During Pierce’s administration the question of slavery again roiled the nation. The issue always flared up at times when the admission of new states was being considered. Both pro and anti-slavery factions worked hard to win their point. Probably the most important piece of legislation dealing with the question was the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854. At its core this bill was an attempt to mollify the pro slavery Democrats who wanted as many new slave states as...

David Quammen, an author of multiple books on science and diseases, including “Ebola,” and "Spillover," argued against a ban on flights to Liberia by stating the US has a “responsibility” to the nation “given the fact that this is a country that was founded in the 1820s, 1830s because of American slavery” on Thursday’s “AC360” on CNN. Quammen first argued that such a ban would not be feasible because “it’s impossible to track them [people flying from Liberia],” and “you can't isolate neighborhoods, you can’t isolate nations. It doesn't work.” He then said, “people talk about ‘well, we should not...

James Knox Polk 1845 to 1849 Polk wanted to wrest California and New Mexico from Mexico. He forced the Mexicans into war by duplicitous negotiations and was surprised at the stiff resistance they offered. His prosecution of the Mexican War cost thousands of lives and permanently soured our relations with Mexico. There is some evidence that Polk lied to Congress in his request for a declaration of war against Mexico similar to the way Lyndon Johnson, another Democrat would “exaggerate” the Tonkin Gulf incident to expand the Viet Nam War 120 years later. [13] In fairness it must be said...

As a top official tasked with guarding Russia's supreme law, the head of the country's Constitutional Court has some surprising things to say about serfdom. In a long article on the history of legal reforms published in the government daily "Rossiiskaya gazeta," longtime Constitutional Court head Valery Zorkin describes serfdom as the "staple" that held Russian society together. Its abolition by Tsar Alexander II in 1861 "destroyed the already greatly weakened connection between the two basic social classes of the nation -- the nobility and the peasantry," Zorkin wrote recently. "Despite all the liabilities of serfdom, it was precisely what...

Editor’s note: For those who are wondering about the retro title of this black-history series, please take a moment to learn about historian Joel A. Rogers, author of the 1934 book 100 Amazing Facts About the Negro With Complete Proof, to whom these “amazing facts” are an homage. Amazing Fact About the Negro No. 92: When President Abraham Lincoln met with free black leaders in 1862, what did he propose? Today marks the anniversary of President Abraham Lincoln’s “shot heard ’round the world.” I’m referring, of course, to the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation he fired off from the White House on...

I wish Pew had provided older numbers to use as a yardstick here. Can’t tell if this has been fairly constant for a few years now or if opinion is starting to move towards gays on public accommodations as well. The fact that more people support compulsion in the name of antidiscrimination than the right of the business owner to refuse for reasons of conscience is newsy, though. Say, wasn’t there another splashy poll by a famous pollster on this subject last year? Yep, sure was — Rasmussen asked a similar question in June 2013 and found, no typo, that...

Looking back, perhaps it really is no surprise that Ferguson, Missouri became the latest site in this long war against black lives, given the state of Missouri’s peculiar relationship to slavery in US history.During the hot summer days of August, all eyes were on Ferguson. Hour after hour, journalists on the scene described the murder of 18-year-old Michael Brown, who was getting ready to start college in just a few days, and the unrest that exploded as “shocking,” but for so many black Americans, the scene in Ferguson was all-too-familiar. The ghost of Ferguson appeared earlier in Sanford, Florida on...

John Kerry was speaking about ISIS. And he’s wrong. As usual. 1. Mohammed practiced slavery 2. The Islamic campaigns were carried out for loot. Including the human kind. Many of Mohammed’s first Muslims were out for slaves. Including female slaves. 3. Mohammed enslaved and raped women These are all facts that are not seriously in dispute. ... Mohammed’s armies looted and killed the men and enslaved the women. It’s elementary Islamic history. The only thing Kerry got right is that there’s nothing in the Koran about shooting the men. Guns didn’t exist then. That’s why they chopped off their heads...

Sold to an ISIS leader and held captive for a month, Amsha Alyas tells the story of her escape. DUHOK, Iraq — When the young woman who had been taken as war treasure by an Islamic State leader returned to her family after a harrowing escape, it was as if she had risen from the dead. ... “We knew thousands of women had been sold.” His daughter, Amsha Ali Alyas, a 19-year-old with a voice as soft as her features, wasn't actually sold but rather hand-picked by an ISIS leader who was so enamored with her that he was willing...

Startling details have surfaced of British female jihadists forcing captured Iraqi women into sexual slavery at brothels run by militants of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), British media reported Thursday.The Brothels, operated by the female “police force” called the al-Khanssaa Brigade, have been set up for the use of ISIS militants, according to the Daily Mirror. Thousands of Iraqi women have already been forced into sex slavery at the brothels , with as many as 3,000 women and girls been taken captive from the Yazidi tribe in Iraq over the course of the militants’ offensive across the...

A Palestinian Authority (PA) official newspaper actively publishes racist comments against US President Barack Obama, a watchdog group revealed Thursday - despite the millions of dollars in US aid it receives. Official publication Al-Hayat Al-Jadida printed an editorial from Ibrahim Abd Al-Majid claiming Obama, as a "black president," has committed "crimes [that] have surpassed those of all the white presidents." Palestinian Media Watch translated excerpts, below, into English: Israel has found an opportunity to start [its] ethnic cleansing [in Gaza],because the Arabs are [currently] busy with what is going on in their countries - as in Iraq IS (Islamic State)...

…I'm tired of bein' poor and even worse I'm black. My stomach hurts, so I'm lookin' for a purse to snatch. Cops give a damn about a negro? Pull the trigger, kill a nigga, he's a hero. Give the crack to the kids who the hell cares? One less hungry mouth on the welfare… Changes – 2Pac It's been almost 20 years since 2Pac, arguably the greatest rapper in history along with Notorious BIG, sang about the difficulties of being born black in America, and at the same time about the racism of American society. Twenty years in which nothing...

So I was reading an online review of the book "“The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism” that was critical of the assertions made in said book that slavery was significant in the growth of the US economy. The next day I came to look at it again and found out it had been removed. The reason because apparently quite a number of people had found it racist and offensive. This is the review itself in its entirety before it was removed: “FOR sale: a coloured girl, of very superior qualifications…a bright mulatto, fine...

For 20 years, Tamazrat Ousame had to clean, cook and even bear children for her masters. One day she managed to escape, but hundreds of others are still enslaved in Niger.Maradi, southern Niger. Soldiers supposed to protect foreign journalists are dozing on plastic chairs in the shade in front of the hotel. Besides the hotel entrance, an old man on a woobly wooden table is arranging his souvenirs for sale: Colorful pearl necklaces, bronze giraffes and knitted handbags. An old rusty metal necklace is lying nearby. It was used as a necklace to hold slaves, the old man says with...

Conscripts doing military service in the Tula oblast are reported to have been forced to sign contracts allowing them to be sent to Ukraine. Mothers of soldiers from military unit 33842 told TV Dozhd that 8 soldiers had signed themselves, while the heads of the unit had signed for the others on Aug 19. [....] His family explains that he phoned them a few days ago and said that the soldiers in his unit were being forced to sign contracts. His parents told him not to sign under any circumstances, especially since his military service was due to end on...

Self-styled Catholic critics of the free market and “Americanism” have adopted the term “social Magisterium” to suggest that there is a coherent and morally binding body of papal teaching on politics and economics, from which we can derive specific policy initiatives and firmly condemn alternatives as “un-Catholic” or even (that dreaded word) “dissenting.” Hence defenders of market economics, or opponents of mass immigration, can be tarred with the same brush as those who favor women’s ordination or homosexuality. Indeed, if we accept the premise of a “social magisterium,” we are led to believe that we can actually build up a...