STEPPING STONES 04/23/17 By THE VILLAGE OF ASHAKI MATSIMELA Senior Adult Community "Imagine heaven on Earth..."
Volume 3, Issue 17, April 23, 2017
In this issue...
Public Service Announcements
Quote Of The Week: Shirley Anita St. Hill Chisholm
Book Of The Month: “The Musician’s Business and Legal Guide”
Edited and compiled by Mark Halloran, Esq.
It’s YOUR Health: Parapsychology
Historical Fact Of The Week: History Of Barbados
Editorial Commentary: Coming!
Public Service Announcements
- The rechartering for The Head Cornerstone Corporation in the State Of Delaware as well as all updated business licenses and associated issues are forth coming pending litigation. Thank you.
- Visit WWW.Ready.gov at your earliest convenience so that you may be informed of basic protective measures before, during, and after disasters/emergencies, learn disaster prepared activities, training, plans, and what shelters are in or near your community, develop an emergency plan for yourself and your family in the event of an actual disaster/emergency, build an disaster/emergency supply kit including a basic emergency medical/trauma bag in case of an event, and GET INVOLVED!
- Get your CPR (Cardio-Pulomonary Resuscitation) and Basic First Aid/First Responder/Basic Life Support including child birth and Emergency Pediatric Care training today. Check with the American Heart Association at WWW.Heart.org for locations. It may just save a life.
- It’s a lot of fun and excitement, it’s healthy, it’s a great family activity, and it’s very practical. Find a course in self-defense for you and your loved ones and learn to protect yourselves. You just never know.
- We have the constitutional right to BEAR ARMS and many states have the CCW (Conceal Carry Weapon) License for when you and your loved ones are outside of your home environment. Search the web for free information concerning the Conceal Carry Laws as well as other valuable information. Get the CCW License today (where applicable) for you and your family members of age and LEARN HOW TO SHOOT. You’ll feel better that you did.
- WATER; it’s very essential for normal body functions and not only carries nutrients to your cells, but flushes out the toxins in are bodies that lead to diseases such as cancers, diabetes, and heart diseases. According to the Mayo Clinic and the Institute of Health, water consumption varies for each person depending on many factors associated with life styles, such as current health, activities, and where you live. Be informed about what your daily intake should be and “drink up”. It will make YOUR world a better place.
Public Service Announcements
are brought to you by
COMMUNITY INTERNATIONAL
Within our African American communities, there is a DISEASE; drug gangs as well as other organized criminal organizations. Before and after any conversation and until we remove the disease…
“…we will continue to SUFFER from exceptionally HIGH crime rates (burglaries, extortion, racketeering, money laundering, prostitution/teen prostitution, illegal weapons, auto thefts, etc.), INCREASED violent crimes (murders, assaults, rapes, kidnappings, robberies, gang rapes, child molestations, child endangerment/abuse, etc.), DECREASED land values, decreased BUSINESS INVESTMENTS AND DEVELOPMENT, DECREASED employment opportunities in affected areas, and a “WAR ZONE” environment in which our CHILDREN and elders are FORCED to survive in. A RECLASSIFICATION of these crimes and ALL involved in their OFFENSES to include all persons assisting in any CAPACITY as terrorists will, also, REMOVE many, but NOT all, of the OBSTRUCTIONS for our children as they LEARN, play, and grow during their crucial DEVELOPMENTAL YEARS by significantly REDUCING the VIOLENT CRIMES, eliminating FORCED gang membership, SIGNIFICANTLY reducing teen pregnancy, TEEN drug use, teen dropout rates, SCHOOL ABSENTEISM, illiteracy rates, TEEN SUICIDE RATES, as well as the eradicating of the PSYCHOLOGICAL TRAUMA as well as mental anguish that is PRODUCED by the “war zone” environment. The BY-PRODUCTS of this campaign include, but are not limited to significant REDUCTION in Medical budget expenditures CAUSED by drug related medical and traumatic CONDITIONS (DRUG OVERDOSES, HOMICIDES, SUICIDES, DRUG INFLUENCED/RELATED AUTO ACCIDENTS, DRUG INDUCED PSYCHOLOGICAL PATIENTS, BABIES BORN WITH DRUG ADDICTIONS, THE SPREAD OF SEXUALLY TRANSMITTED DISEASES, BABIES BORN WITH SEXUALLY TRANSMITTED DISEASES, TRAUMA RELATED TO DRUGS/GANGS AND VIOLENT CRIME, ETC.).”
(Excerpt from Quote Of The Week 01/01/12)
And our babies will continue to be oppressed until death and all day before they can live. This is not LOVE. This is HATE. Please, STOP!
Brought to you
By
The “From the dirt…” Community Redevelopment Project
A program of
COMMUNITY INTERNATIONAL
Tending The Garden; Plucking Poverty By The Roots
By Akil A. Bomani
The most severe form of poverty is ignorance; lack of knowledge or factual, true, and always objective information (as opposed to misinformation or ill knowledge). Only when we breathe, speak, and teach true knowledge to ourselves, each other, and especially to our youth will we begin the work of eradicating the overwhelming abundance of poverty from our minds, our bodies, and most importantly, our spirits; and thus, the world. This alone will heal all plagues, address every societal need, and end suffering the world over and forever. And what is knowledge without wisdom? Just look around you at our world today. Lack of wisdom is the second most severe form of poverty afflicting “Man”. Without wisdom, knowledge is just a loaded gun or an explosive device in the wrong hands. It is the obvious cure for the disease. And then, what will we do with ourselves?
Pedophiliac: The Grip Of Reality Reveals The One And Only Solution
By Akil A. Bomani
Pedophiliac, Child molester, Child predator, Child sex slaver/trafficker, … In summarizing this…“issue”, what a complete contradiction of nature and even evolution; an abomination. And what an example to the youth of the world we have set in not only not putting an end to such atrocity everywhere it exists, but have allowed it to now be an accepted part of popular culture in some of our societies, continue in others as “tradition”, or incidents and perpetrators have become so common place that one can see them “coming out of the closet”. The damage they inflict on their victims, their victims’ family, friends, school mates, care providers, emergency response personnel, etc. go far beyond bad dreams. Our current problem is this; the DISEASE is spiritual and mental which leads to the actual physical act and crime and THERE IS NO CURE. And so, there is but ONE solution. No matter where you are, no matter your socio-politico, cultural, and/or economic back ground, only those with no reasoning will disagree. And so, no matter where you are…no matter what country, city, township, or village, ethnic group, cultural orientation, or other group, support the enacting and, most importantly, enforcement of internationally standardized laws that reflect and directly address this most serious matter. Until there is a cure, our children are not safe. Seek to initiate the passing of laws that PERMANENTLY remove offenders from society by penalties of either LIFE OF IMPRISONMENT/MENTAL INSTITUTION with NO CHANCE OF PAROLE or RELEASE until a cure is discovered or DEATH BY SOME LETHAL MECHANISM for all perpetrators of this most heinous assault on our youth. We must, also, in a formal setting, teach our youth from the early developmental stages “sex education”, the very best parenting practices among other essential “life skills”, and the need, how, and why to report offenders to assist with their protection and bringing perpetrators to justice. And we must, in a formal setting, teach current parents, educators, as well as all other care providers how to recognize a problem when they encounter it. Please, join this War on Pedophiliacs as we seek all progressive methods to “end this right now”. Why? Pedophiliacs CAN’T help themselves and the next child could be yours. Or how else will our children ever respect us again?
Brought to you by
THE BOMANI GROUP
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
“You don't make progress by standing on the sidelines, whimpering and complaining. You make progress by implementing ideas.”
Shirley Anita St. Hill Chisholm
November 30, 1924 – January 1, 2005
An African American politician, educator, and author. In 1968, she became the first African American woman elected to the United States Congress, and she represented New York's 12th Congressional District for seven terms from 1969 to 1983. In 1972, she became the first African American candidate for a major party's nomination for President of the United States, and the first woman to run for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination.
In 2015, Chisholm was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Early life and education
Shirley Anita St. Hill was born on November 30, 1924, in Brooklyn, New York, to immigrant parents from the Caribbean region. She had three younger sisters, two born within three years after Shirley, one later. Their father, Charles Christopher St. Hill, was born in British Guiana, lived in Barbados for a while, and then arrived in the United States via Antilla, Cuba, on April 10, 1923, aboard the S.S. Munamar in New York City. Their mother, Ruby Seale, was born in Christ Church, Barbados, and arrived in New York City aboard the S.S. Pocone on March 8, 1921.
Her father was an unskilled laborer who sometimes worked in a factory that made burlap bags, but when he could not find factory employment instead worked as a baker's helper, while her mother was a skilled seamstress and domestic worker who had trouble working and raising the children at the same time. As a consequence, in November 1929 as Shirley turned five, she and her two sisters were sent to Barbados on the S.S. Vulcana to live with their maternal grandmother, Emaline Seale. There they lived on the grandmother's farm in the Vauxhall village in Christ Church, where she attended a one-room schoolhouse that took education seriously. She did not return to the United States until May 19, 1934, aboard the SS Nerissa in New York. As a result, Shirley spoke with a recognizable West Indian accent throughout her life. In her 1970 autobiography Unbought and Unbossed, she wrote:
"Years later I would know what an important gift my parents had given me by seeing to it that I had my early education in the strict, traditional, British-style schools of Barbados. If I speak and write easily now, that early education is the main reason."
As a result of her time on the island, and regardless of her U.S. birth, Shirley would always consider herself a Barbadian American. Regarding the role of her grandmother, she later said, "Granny gave me strength, dignity, and love. I learned from an early age that I was somebody. I didn't need the black revolution to tell me that."
Beginning in 1939, Shirley St. Hill attended Girls' High School in the Bedford–Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn, a highly regarded, integrated school that attracted girls from throughout Brooklyn. St. Hill earned her Bachelor of Arts from Brooklyn College in 1946, where she won prizes for her debating skills. She was a member of Delta Sigma Theta sorority.
St. Hill met Conrad O. Chisholm in the late 1940s. He had come to the U.S. from Jamaica in 1946 and would later become a private investigator who specialized in negligence-based lawsuits. They married in 1949 in a large West Indian-style wedding.
Shirley Chisholm taught in a nursery school while furthering her education, earning her MA in elementary education from Teachers College at Columbia University in 1952.
Career as educator
From 1953 to 1959, she was director of the Friends Day Nursery in Brownsville, Brooklyn, and of the Hamilton-Madison Child Care Center in lower Manhattan. From 1959 to 1964, she was an educational consultant for the Division of Day Care. She became known as an authority on issues involving early education and child welfare.
Running a day care center got her interested in politics, and during this time she formed the basis of her political career, working as a volunteer for white-dominated political clubs in Brooklyn, and with the Bedford-Stuyvesant Political League and the League of Women Voters.
State legislator
Chisholm was a Democratic member of the New York State Assembly from 1965 to 1968, sitting in the 175th, 176th and 177th New York State Legislatures. Her successes in the legislature included getting unemployment benefits extended to domestic workers. She also sponsored the introduction of a SEEK program (Search for Education, Elevation and Knowledge) to the state, which provided disadvantaged students the chance to enter college while receiving intensive remedial education.
In August 1968, she was elected as the Democratic National Committeewoman from New York State.
Member of Congress
Initial election
In 1968 she ran for the U.S. House of Representatives from New York's 12th congressional district, which as part of a court-mandated reapportionment plan had been significantly redrawn to focus on Bedford-Stuyvesant and was thus expected to result in Brooklyn's first African American member of Congress. (Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. had, in 1945, become the first black member of Congress from New York City as a whole.) As a result of the redrawing, the white incumbent in the former 12th, Representative Edna F. Kelly, sought re-election in a different district. Chisholm announced her candidacy around January 1968 and established some early organizational support. Her campaign slogan was "Unbought and unbossed". In the June 18, 1968, Democratic primary, Chisholm defeated two other black opponents, State Senator William S. Thompson and labor official Dollie Robertson. In the general election, she staged an upset victory over James L. Farmer, Jr., the former director of the Congress of Racial Equality who was running as a Liberal Party candidate with Republican support, winning by an approximately two-to-one margin. Chisholm thereby became the first African American woman elected to Congress.
Early terms
Chisholm was assigned to the House Agricultural Committee. Given her urban district, she felt the placement was irrelevant to her constituents. When Chisholm confided to Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson that she was upset and insulted by her assignment, Schneerson suggested that she use the surplus food to help the poor and hungry. Chisholm subsequently met Robert Dole, and worked to expand the food stamp program. She later played a critical role in the creation of the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC) program. Chisholm would credit Schneerson for the fact that so many "poor babies [now] have milk and poor children have food." Chisholm was then also placed on the Veterans' Affairs Committee. Soon after, she voted for Hale Boggs as House Majority Leader over John Conyers. As a reward for her support, Boggs assigned her to the much-prized Education and Labor Committee, which was her preferred committee. She was the third highest-ranking member of this committee when she retired from Congress.
All those Chisholm hired for her office were women; half of these were African American. Chisholm said that she had faced much more discrimination during her New York legislative career because she was a woman than because of her race.
Chisholm joined the Congressional Black Caucus in 1971 as one of its founding members. In the same year, she was also a founding member of the National Women's Political Caucus.
In May 1971 she, along with fellow New York Congresswoman Bella Abzug, introduced a bill to provide $10 billion in federal funds for child care services by 1975. A less expensive version introduced by Senator Walter Mondale eventually passed the House and Senate as the Comprehensive Child Development Bill, but was vetoed by President Richard Nixon in December 1971, who said it was too expensive and would undermine the institution of the family.
1972 presidential campaign
Chisholm began exploring her candidacy in July 1971, and formally announced her presidential bid on January 25, 1972, in a Baptist church in her district in Brooklyn. There she called for a "bloodless revolution" at the forthcoming Democratic nomination convention. Chisholm became the first black major-party candidate to run for President of the United States, in the 1972 U.S. presidential election, making her also the first woman ever to run for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination (U.S. Senator Margaret Chase Smith had previously run for the Republican presidential nomination in 1964).
Her campaign was poorly organized and underfunded from the start, only spending $300,000 in total. She also struggled to be regarded as a serious candidate instead of as a symbolic political figure; she was ignored by much of the Democratic political establishment and received little support from her African American male colleagues. She later reiterated,
"When I ran for the Congress, when I ran for president, I met more discrimination as a woman than for being black. Men are men."
In particular, she expressed frustration about the "black matriarch thing", saying,
"They think I am trying to take power from them. The black man must step forward, but that doesn't mean the black woman must step back."
Her husband, however, was fully supportive of her candidacy and said,
"I have no hangups about a woman running for president."
Security was also a concern, as during the campaign three confirmed threats were made against her life; Conrad Chisholm served as her bodyguard until U.S. Secret Service protection was given to her in May 1972.
Chisholm skipped the initial March 7 New Hampshire contest, instead focusing on the March 14 Florida primary, which she thought would be receptive due to its "blacks, youth and a strong women's movement". But due to organizational difficulties and Congressional responsibilities, she only made two campaign swings there and ended with 3.5 percent of the vote for a seventh-place finish. Chisholm had difficulties gaining ballot access, but campaigned or received votes in primaries in fourteen states. Her largest number of votes came in the June 6 California primary, where she received 157,435 votes for 4.4 percent and a fourth-place finish, while her best percentage in a competitive primary came in the May 6 North Carolina one, where she got 7.5 percent for a third-place finish. Overall, she won 28 delegates during the primaries process itself. Chisholm's base of support was ethnically diverse and included the National Organization for Women. Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem attempted to run as Chisholm delegates in New York. Altogether during the primary season, she received 430,703 votes, which was 2.7 percent of the total of nearly 16 million cast and represented seventh place among the Democratic contenders.
At the 1972 Democratic National Convention in Miami Beach, Florida, there were still efforts taking place by the campaign of former Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey to stop the nomination of Senator George McGovern. After that failed and McGovern's nomination was assured, as a symbolic gesture, Humphrey released his African American delegates to Chisholm. This, combined with defections from disenchanted delegates from other candidates, as well as the delegates she had won in the primaries, gave her a total of 152 first-ballot votes for the nomination during the July 12 roll call. (Her precise total was 151.95.) Her largest support overall came from Ohio, with 23 delegates (slightly more than half of them Caucasian Americans), even though she had not been on the ballot in the May 2 primary there. Her total gave her fourth place in the roll call tally, behind McGovern's winning total of 1,728 delegates. Chisholm said she ran for the office "in spite of hopeless odds ... to demonstrate the sheer will and refusal to accept the status quo." Among the volunteers who were inspired by her campaign was Barbara Lee, who continued to be politically active and was elected as a congresswoman 25 years later.
It is sometimes stated that Chisholm won a primary during 1972, or won three states overall, with New Jersey, Louisiana, and Mississippi being so identified. None of these fit the usual definition of winning a plurality of the contested popular vote or delegate allocations at the time of a state primary or caucus or state convention. In the June 6 New Jersey primary, there was a complex ballot that featured both a delegate selection vote and a non-binding, non-delegate-producing "beauty contest" presidential preference vote. In the delegate selection vote, Democratic front-runner Senator George McGovern defeated his main rival at that point, Senator Hubert H. Humphrey, and won the large share of available delegates. Most of the Democratic candidates were not on the preference ballot, including McGovern and Humphrey; of the two that were, Chisholm and former governor of North Carolina Terry Sanford, Sanford had withdrawn from the contest three weeks earlier. In the actual preference ballot voting, which the Associated Press described as "meaningless", Chisholm received the majority of votes: 51,433, which was 66.9 percent. During the actual balloting at the national convention, Chisholm received votes from only 4 of New Jersey's 109 delegates, with 89 going to McGovern. In the May 13 Louisiana caucuses, there was a battle between forces of McGovern and Governor George Wallace; nearly all of the delegates chosen were those who identified as uncommitted, many of them black. Leading up to the convention, McGovern was thought to control 20 of Louisiana's 44 delegates, with most of the rest uncommitted. During the actual roll call at the national convention, Louisiana passed at first, then cast 18? of its 44 votes for Chisholm, with the next best finishers being McGovern and Senator Henry M. Jackson with 10? each. As one delegate explained, "Our strategy was to give Shirley our votes for sentimental reasons on the first ballot. However, if our votes would have made the difference, we would have gone with McGovern." In Mississippi, there were two rival party factions that each selected delegates at their own state conventions and caucuses: "regulars" representing the mostly white state Democratic Party and "loyalists" representing many blacks and white liberals. Each slate professed to be largely uncommitted, but the regulars were thought to favor Wallace and the loyalists McGovern. By the time of the national convention, the loyalists were seated following a credentials challenge, and their delegates were characterized as mostly supporting McGovern, with some support for Humphrey. During the convention, some McGovern delegates became angry about what they saw as statements from McGovern that backed away from his commitment to end U.S. involvement in Southeast Asia, and cast protest votes for Chisholm as a result. During the actual balloting, Mississippi went in the first half of the roll call, and cast 12 of its 25 votes for Chisholm, with McGovern coming next with 10 votes.
During the campaign the German filmmaker Peter Lilienthal shot the documentary film Shirley Chisholm for President for German Television channel ZDF.
Later terms
Chisholm created controversy when she visited rival and ideological opposite George Wallace in the hospital soon after his shooting in May 1972, during the 1972 presidential primary campaign. Several years later, when Chisholm worked on a bill to give domestic workers the right to a minimum wage, Wallace helped gain votes of enough Southern congressmen to push the legislation through the House.
From 1977 to 1981, during the 95th Congress and 96th Congress, Chisholm was elected to a position in the House Democratic leadership, as Secretary of the House Democratic Caucus.
Throughout her tenure in Congress, Chisholm worked to improve opportunities for inner-city residents. She was a vocal opponent of the draft and supported spending increases for education, health care and other social services, and reductions in military spending.
In the area of national security and foreign policy, Chisholm worked for the revocation of Internal Security Act of 1950. She opposed the American involvement in the Vietnam War and the expansion of weapon developments. During the Jimmy Carter administration, she called for better treatment of Haitian refugees.
Chisholm's first marriage ended in divorce in February 1977. Later that year she married Arthur Hardwick, Jr., a former New York State Assemblyman whom Chisholm had known when they both served in that body and who was now a Buffalo liquor store owner. Chisholm had no children.
Hardwick was subsequently injured in an automobile accident; desiring to take care of him, and also dissatisfied with the course of liberal politics in the wake of the Reagan Revolution, she announced her retirement from Congress in 1982. Hardwick died in 1986.
Subsequent years and death
Shirley Chisholm (center) with Congressman Edolphus Towns (left) and his wife, Gwen Towns (right)
External video
Shirley Chisholm Memorial Service, Congressional Black Caucus, February 15, 2005, C-SPAN
After leaving Congress, Chisholm made her home in suburban Williamsville, New York. She resumed her career in education, being named to the Purington Chair at the all-women Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts. As such she was not a member of any particular department, but would be able to teach classes in a variety of areas; those previously holding the position included W. H. Auden, Bertrand Russell, and Arna Bontemps.
At Mount Holyoke, she taught politics and sociology from 1983 to 1987. She focused on undergraduate courses that covered politics as it involved women and race. Dean of faculty Joseph Ellis later said that Chisholm "contributed to the vitality of the College and gave the College a presence." In 1985 she was a visiting scholar at Spelman College.
During those years, she continued to give speeches at colleges, by her own count visiting over 150 campuses since becoming nationally known. She told students to avoid polarization and intolerance:
"If you don't accept others who are different, it means nothing that you've learned calculus."
Continuing to be involved politically, she traveled to visit different minority groups and urging them to become a strong force at the local level. In 1984 and 1988, she campaigned for Jesse Jackson for the presidential elections. In 1990, Chisholm, along with 15 other African American women and men, formed the African-American Women for Reproductive Freedom.
Chisholm retired to Florida in 1991. In 1993, President Bill Clinton nominated her to be United States Ambassador to Jamaica, but she could not serve due to poor health and the nomination was withdrawn. In the same year she was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame.
Chisholm died on January 1, 2005, in Ormond Beach near Daytona Beach, after suffering several strokes. She was buried in the Oakwood Mausoleum at Forest Lawn Cemetery in Buffalo, where the legend inscribed on her vault reads: "Unbought and Unbossed".
Legacy
In February 2005, Shirley Chisholm '72: Unbought and Unbossed, a documentary film, aired on U.S public television. It chronicled Chisholm's 1972 bid for the Democratic presidential nomination. It was directed and produced by independent African American filmmaker Shola Lynch. The film was featured at the Sundance Film Festival in 2004. On April 9, 2006, the film was announced as a winner of a Peabody Award.
Chisholm's legacy came into renewed prominence during the 2008 Democratic presidential primaries, when Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton staged their historic 'firsts' battle – where the victor would either be the first major party African American nominee, or the first woman nominee – with at least one observer crediting Chisholm's 1972 campaign as having paved the way for both of them.
The Shirley Chisholm Center for Research on Women exists at Brooklyn College to promote research projects and programs on women and to preserve the legacy of Chisholm. The college's library also houses an archive called the Shirley Chisholm Project on Brooklyn Women's Activism. She was a member of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc.
In 2014, the first adult biography of Chisholm was published, Shirley Chisholm: Catalyst for Change, by Brooklyn College history professor Barbara Winslow. Until then, only several juvenile biographies had appeared.
Chisholm's speech "For the Equal Rights Amendment", given in 1970, is listed as #91 in American Rhetoric's Top 100 Speeches of the 20th Century (listed by rank).
Awards and honors
Chisholm was the keynote speaker at Hunter College's graduation in 1971.
In 1974, Chisholm was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Laws degree by Aquinas College and was their commencement speaker.
In 1975, Chisholm was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Laws degree by Smith College.
In 1991, Chisholm was the commencement speaker at East Stroudsburg University in East Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania, where she received an the first ever conferred honorary doctorate from the university. An annual ESU student award was created in her honor.
In 1993, she was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame.
In 1996, she was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Laws Degree by Stetson University, in Deland, FL.
In 2002, scholar Molefi Kete Asante listed Shirley Chisholm on his list of 100 Greatest African Americans.
On January 31, 2014, the Shirley Chisholm Forever Stamp was issued. It is the 37th stamp in the Black Heritage series of U.S. stamps.
In November 2015, Chisholm was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama at a ceremony in the White House.
Writings
Chisholm wrote two autobiographical books.
Chisholm, Shirley (1970). Unbought and Unbossed. Houghton Mifflin. ISBN 978-0-395-10932-8. Chisholm, Shirley (2010). Scott Simpson, ed. Unbought and Unbossed: Expanded 40th Anniversary Edition. Take Root Media. ISBN 978-0-9800590-2-1. Also available via the editor Scott Simpson's site.
Chisholm, Shirley (1973). The Good Fight. Harper Collins. ISBN 978-0-06-010764-2.
See also
List of African-American United States Representatives
Women in the United States House of Representatives
Born and raised on the Southside of the music city of Memphis, Tenn., the artist simply called, “George", is Stone Records' smooth jazz male vocalist, songwriter, and producer. This new comer with the rich voice texture and soulful crooning will soon earn his place among male balladeers within the music industry with his soothing and melodic vocal interpretations. A multitalented and very versatile vocalist, songwriter, and producer, but very humble spirit, "George", is destined to become a contributor to the long musical legacy of Memphis with his brand of music.
Though influenced by a wide variety of world class vocalists, songwriters, and producers, George is all original in his presentations of what music is; smooth, soulful, sultry, sexy crooning, and melodically interpretive balladry…
"Volume I George", will be an invitation for the listener into a relaxing mood, regardless of your day, with a jazz so smooth, it’s therapeutic. Just listen…There is not a song without a message as "George" enters the industry with "…music for the soul" as his purpose. This is poetry. The look, the voice, his music, the vibe…feel it.
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"Strictly business for serious business minds…".
BOOK Of THE MONTH
“The Musician’s Business and Legal Guide”
Edited and compiled by Mark Halloran, Esq.
ISBN-13: 978-0132281270
ISBN-10: 0132281279
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Parapsychology
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Parapsychology is a field of study concerned with the investigation of paranormal and psychic phenomena which include telepathy, precognition, clairvoyance, psychokinesis, near-death experiences, reincarnation, apparitional experiences, and other paranormal claims. It is often identified as pseudoscience.
Parapsychology research is largely conducted by private institutions in several countries and funded through private donations, and the subject rarely appears in mainstream science journals. Most papers about parapsychology are published in a small number of niche journals. Parapsychology has been criticized for continuing investigation despite being unable to provide convincing evidence for the existence of any psychic phenomena after more than a century of research.
It has been noted that most academics do not take the claims of parapsychology seriously.
(Continued)
Terminology
Para is from Greek, and means "beside, closely related to, beyond..." The term parapsychology was coined in or around 1889 by philosopher Max Dessoir. It was adopted by J. B. Rhine in the 1930s as a replacement for the term psychical research in order to indicate a significant shift toward experimental methodology and academic discipline. The term originates from the Greek: παρ? para meaning "alongside", and psychology.
In parapsychology, psi is the unknown factor in extrasensory perception and psychokinesis experiences that is not explained by known physical or biological mechanisms. The term is derived from the Greek ψ psi, 23rd letter of the Greek alphabet and the initial letter of the Greek ψυχ? psyche, "mind, soul". The term was coined by biologist Berthold P. Wiesner, and first used by psychologist Robert Thouless in a 1942 article published in the British Journal of Psychology.
The Parapsychological Association divides psi into two main categories: psi-gamma for extrasensory perception and psi-kappa for psychokinesis. In popular culture, "psi" has become more and more synonymous with special psychic, mental, and "psionic" abilities and powers.
History
Early psychical research
Henry Slade with Z?llner.
In 1853, the chemist Robert Hare conducted experiments with mediums and reported positive results. Other researchers such as Frank Podmore highlighted flaws in his experiments, such as lack of controls to prevent trickery. Agenor de Gasparin conducted early experiments into table-tipping. Over a period of five months in 1853 he declared the experiments a success being the result of an "ectenic force". Critics noted that the conditions were insufficient to prevent trickery. For example the knees of the sitters may have been employed to move the table and no experimenter was watching above and below the table simultaneously.
The German astrophysicist Johann Karl Friedrich Z?llner tested the medium Henry Slade in 1877. According to Z?llner some of the experiments were a success. However, flaws in the experiments were discovered and critics have suggested that Slade was a fraud who performed trickery in the experiments.
The Society for Psychical Research (SPR) was founded in London in 1882. Its formation was the first systematic effort to organize scientists and scholars to investigate paranormal phenomena. Early membership included philosophers, scholars, scientists, educators and politicians, such as Henry Sidgwick, Arthur Balfour, William Crookes, Rufus Osgood Mason and Nobel Laureate Charles Richet. Presidents of the Society included, in addition to Richet, Eleanor Sidgwick and William James, and subsequently Nobel Laureates Henri Bergson and Lord Rayleigh, and philosopher C. D. Broad.
Areas of study included telepathy, hypnotism, Reichenbach's phenomena, apparitions, hauntings, and the physical aspects of Spiritualism such as table-tilting, materialization and apportation. In the 1880s the Society investigated apparitional experiences and hallucinations in the sane. Among the first important works was the two-volume publication in 1886, Phantasms of the Living which was largely criticized by scholars. In 1894, the Census of Hallucinations was published which sampled 17, 000 people. Out of these, 1,684 persons admitted to having experienced a hallucination of an apparition. The SPR became the model for similar societies in other European countries and the United States during the late 19th century.
Early clairvoyance experiments were reported in 1884 by Charles Richet. Playing cards were enclosed in envelopes and a subject put under hypnosis attempted to identify them. The subject was reported to have been successful in a series of 133 trials but the results dropped to chance level when performed before a group of scientists in Cambridge. J. M. Peirce and E. C. Pickering reported a similar experiment in which they tested 36 subjects over 23,384 trials which did not obtain above chance scores.
In 1881, Eleanor Sidgwick revealed the fraudulent methods that spirit photographers such as édouard Isidore Buguet, Frederic Hudson and William H. Mumler had utilized. During the late nineteenth century many fraudulent mediums were exposed by SPR investigators.
Largely due to the support of psychologist William James, the American Society for Psychical Research (ASPR) opened its doors in Boston in 1885, moving to New York City in 1905 under the leadership of James H. Hyslop. Notable cases investigated by Walter Franklin Prince of the ASPR in the early 20th century included Pierre L. O. A. Keeler, the Great Amherst Mystery and Patience Worth.
Rhine era
In 1911, Stanford University became the first academic institution in the United States to study extrasensory perception (ESP) and psychokinesis (PK) in a laboratory setting. The effort was headed by psychologist John Edgar Coover, and was supported by funds donated by Thomas Welton Stanford, brother of the university's founder. After conducting approximately 10, 000 experiments, Coover concluded "statistical treatments of the data fail to reveal any cause beyond chance."
In 1930, Duke University became the second major U.S. academic institution to engage in the critical study of ESP and psychokinesis in the laboratory. Under the guidance of psychologist William McDougall, and with the help of others in the department—including psychologists Karl Zener, Joseph B. Rhine, and Louisa E. Rhine—laboratory ESP experiments using volunteer subjects from the undergraduate student body began. As opposed to the approaches of psychical research, which generally sought qualitative evidence for paranormal phenomena, the experiments at Duke University proffered a quantitative, statistical approach using cards and dice. As a consequence of the ESP experiments at Duke, standard laboratory procedures for the testing of ESP developed and came to be adopted by interested researchers throughout the world.
George Estabrooks conducted an ESP experiment using cards in 1927. Harvard students were used as the subjects. Estabrooks acted as the sender with the guesser in an adjoining room. In total 2,300 trials were conducted. When the subjects were sent to a distant room with insulation the scores dropped to chance level. Attempts to repeat the experiment also failed.
The publication of J. B. Rhine's book, New Frontiers of the Mind (1937) brought the laboratory's findings to the general public. In his book, Rhine popularized the word "parapsychology", which psychologist Max Dessoir had coined over 40 years earlier, to describe the research conducted at Duke. Rhine also founded an autonomous Parapsychology Laboratory within Duke and started the Journal of Parapsychology, which he co-edited with McDougall.
Early parapsychological research employed the use of Zener cards in experiments designed to test for the existence of telepathic communication, or clairvoyant or precognitive perception.
Rhine, along with associate Karl Zener, had developed a statistical system of testing for ESP that involved subjects guessing what symbol, out of five possible symbols, would appear when going through a special deck of cards designed for this purpose. A percentage of correct guesses (or hits) significantly above 20% was perceived as higher than chance and indicative of psychic ability. Rhine stated in his first book, Extrasensory Perception (1934), that after 90,000 trials, he felt ESP is "an actual and demonstrable occurrence".
Irish medium and parapsychologist, Eileen J. Garrett, was tested by Rhine at Duke University in 1933 with Zener cards. Certain symbols that were placed on the cards and sealed in an envelope, and she was asked to guess their contents. She performed poorly and later criticized the tests by claiming the cards lacked a psychic energy called "energy stimulus" and that she could not perform clairvoyance to order. The parapsychologist Samuel Soal and his colleagues tested Garrett in May, 1937. Most of the experiments were carried out in the Psychological Laboratory at the University College London. A total of over 12,000 guesses were recorded but Garrett failed to produce above chance level. In his report Soal wrote "In the case of Mrs. Eileen Garrett we fail to find the slightest confirmation of Dr. J. B. Rhine's remarkable claims relating to her alleged powers of extra-sensory perception. Not only did she fail when I took charge of the experiments, but she failed equally when four other carefully trained experimenters took my place."
The parapsychology experiments at Duke evoked much criticism from academics and others who challenged the concepts and evidence of ESP. A number of psychological departments attempted to repeat Rhine's experiments with failure. W. S. Cox (1936) from Princeton University with 132 subjects produced 25,064 trials in a playing card ESP experiment. Cox concluded "There is no evidence of extrasensory perception either in the 'average man' or of the group investigated or in any particular individual of that group. The discrepancy between these results and those obtained by Rhine is due either to uncontrollable factors in experimental procedure or to the difference in the subjects." Four other psychological departments failed to replicate Rhine's results. After thousands of card runs, James Charles Crumbaugh failed to duplicate the results of Rhine.
Hubert Pearce with J. B. Rhine.
In 1938, the psychologist Joseph Jastrow wrote that much of the evidence for extrasensory perception collected by Rhine and other parapsychologists was anecdotal, biased, dubious and the result of "faulty observation and familiar human frailties". Rhine's experiments were discredited due to the discovery that sensory leakage or cheating could account for all his results such as the subject being able to read the symbols from the back of the cards and being able to see and hear the experimenter to note subtle clues.
Illusionist Milbourne Christopher wrote years later that he felt "there are at least a dozen ways a subject who wished to cheat under the conditions Rhine described could deceive the investigator". When Rhine took precautions in response to criticisms of his methods, he was unable to find any high-scoring subjects. Another criticism, made by chemist Irving Langmuir, among others, was one of selective reporting. Langmuir stated that Rhine did not report scores of subjects that he suspected were intentionally guessing wrong, and that this, he felt, biased the statistical results higher than they should have been.
Rhine and his colleagues attempted to address these criticisms through new experiments described in the book Extrasensory Perception After Sixty Years (1940). Rhine described three experiments the Pearce-Pratt experiment, the Pratt-Woodruff experiment and the Ownbey-Zirkle series which he believed demonstrated ESP. However, C. E. M. Hansel wrote "it is now known that each experiment contained serious flaws that escaped notice in the examination made by the authors of Extra-Sensory Perception After Sixty Years". Joseph Gaither Pratt was the co-experimenter in the Pearce-Pratt and Pratt-Woodruff experiments at the Duke campus. Hansel visited the campus where the experiments took place and discovered the results could have originated through the use of a trick so could not regarded as supplying evidence for ESP.
In 1957, Rhine and Joseph Gaither Pratt wrote Parapsychology: Frontier Science of the Mind. Because of the methodological problems, parapsychologists no longer utilize card-guessing studies. Rhine's experiments into psychokinesis (PK) were also criticized. John Sladek wrote:
His research used dice, with subjects 'willing' them to fall a certain way. Not only can dice be drilled, shaved, falsely numbered and manipulated, but even straight dice often show bias in the long run. Casinos for this reason retire dice often, but at Duke, subjects continued to try for the same effect on the same dice over long experimental runs. Not surprisingly, PK appeared at Duke and nowhere else.
Mr. Zirkle and Miss Ownbey.
The Ownbey-Zirkle ESP experiment at Duke was criticized by parapsychologists and skeptics. Ownbey would attempt to send ESP symbols to Zirkle who would guess what they were. The pair were placed in adjacent rooms unable to see each other and an electric fan was used to prevent the pair communicating by sensory cues. Ownbey tapped a telegraph key to Zirkle to inform him when she was trying to send him a symbol. The door separating the two rooms was open during the experiment, and after each guess Zirkle would call out his guess to Ownbey who recorded his choice. Critics pointed out the experiment was flawed as Ownbey acted as both the sender and the experimenter, nobody was controlling the experiment so Ownbey could have cheated by communicating with Zirkle or made recording mistakes.
The Turner-Ownbey long distance telepathy experiment was discovered to contain flaws. May Frances Turner positioned herself in the Duke Parapsychology Laboratory whilst Sara Ownbey claimed to receive transmissions 250 miles away. For the experiment Turner would think of a symbol and write it down whilst Ownbey would write her guesses. The scores were highly successful and both records were supposed to be sent to J. B. Rhine, however, Ownbey sent them to Turner. Critics pointed out this invalidated the results as she could have simply written her own record to agree with the other. When the experiment was repeated and the records were sent to Rhine the scores dropped to average.
A famous ESP experiment at the Duke University was performed by Lucien Warner and Mildred Raible. The subject was locked in a room with a switch controlling a signal light elsewhere, which she could signal to guess the card. Ten runs with ESP packs of cards were used and she achieved 93 hits (43 more than chance). Weaknesses with the experiment were later discovered. The duration of the light signal could be varied so that the subject could call for specific symbols and certain symbols in the experiment came up far more often than others which indicated either poor shuffling or card manipulation. The experiment was not repeated.
The administration of Duke grew less sympathetic to parapsychology, and after Rhine's retirement in 1965 parapsychological links with the university were broken. Rhine later established the Foundation for Research on the Nature of Man (FRNM) and the Institute for Parapsychology as a successor to the Duke laboratory. In 1995, the centenary of Rhine's birth, the FRNM was renamed the Rhine Research Center. Today, the Rhine Research Center is a parapsychology research unit, stating that it "aims to improve the human condition by creating a scientific understanding of those abilities and sensitivities that appear to transcend the ordinary limits of space and time".
Establishment of the Parapsychological Association
The Parapsychological Association (PA) was created in Durham, North Carolina, on June 19, 1957. Its formation was proposed by J. B. Rhine at a workshop on parapsychology which was held at the Parapsychology Laboratory of Duke University. Rhine proposed that the group form itself into the nucleus of an international professional society in parapsychology. The aim of the organization, as stated in its Constitution, became "to advance parapsychology as a science, to disseminate knowledge of the field, and to integrate the findings with those of other branches of science".
In 1969, under the direction of anthropologist Margaret Mead, the Parapsychological Association became affiliated with the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the largest general scientific society in the world. In 1979, physicist John A. Wheeler said that parapsychology is pseudoscientific, and that the affiliation of the PA to the AAAS needed to be reconsidered.
His challenge to parapsychology's AAAS affiliation was unsuccessful. Today, the PA consists of about three hundred full, associate, and affiliated members worldwide.
The Stargate Project
Beginning in the early 1950s, the CIA started extensive research into behavioral engineering. Various experiments were undertaken in the process of this research, including some using various hallucinogenic substances. The findings from these experiments led to the formation of the Stargate Project, which handled ESP research for the U.S. federal government.
The Stargate Project was terminated in 1995 with the conclusion that it was never useful in any intelligence operation. The information was vague and included a lot of irrelevant and erroneous data. There was also reason to suspect that the research managers had adjusted their project reports to fit the known background cues.
The 1970s and 1980s
The affiliation of the Parapsychological Association (PA) with the American Association for the Advancement of Science, along with a general openness to psychic and occult phenomena in the 1970s, led to a decade of increased parapsychological research. During this period, other related organizations were also formed, including the Academy of Parapsychology and Medicine (1970), the Institute of Parascience (1971), the Academy of Religion and Psychical Research, the Institute of Noetic Sciences (1973), the International Kirlian Research Association (1975), and the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research Laboratory (1979). Parapsychological work was also conducted at the Stanford Research Institute (SRI) during this time.
The scope of parapsychology expanded during these years. Psychiatrist Ian Stevenson conducted much of his research into reincarnation during the 1970s, and the second edition of his Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation was published in 1974. Psychologist Thelma Moss devoted time to the study of Kirlian photography at UCLA's parapsychology laboratory. The influx of spiritual teachers from Asia, and their claims of abilities produced by meditation, led to research on altered states of consciousness. American Society for Psychical Research Director of Research, Karlis Osis, conducted experiments in out of body experiences. Physicist Russell Targ coined the term remote viewing for use in some of his work at SRI in 1974.
The surge in paranormal research continued into the 1980s: the Parapsychological Association reported members working in more than 30 countries. For example, research was carried out and regular conferences held in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union although the word parapsychology was discarded in favour of the term psychotronics. The main promoter of psychotronics was Czech scientist Zdeněk Rejdák, who described it as a physical science, organizing conferences and presiding over the International Association for Psychotronic Research.
In 1985 a Chair of Parapsychology was established within the Department of Psychology at the University of Edinburgh and was given to Robert Morris, an experimental parapsychologist from the United States. Morris and his research associates and PhD students pursued research on topics related to parapsychology. Since Professor Morris' death in 2004 the Chair of Parapsychology has remained vacant.
Modern era
Bernard Carr (astronomer) one-time president of the Society for Psychical Research
Since the 1980s, contemporary parapsychological research has waned considerably in the United States. Early research was considered inconclusive, and parapsychologists were faced with strong opposition from their academic colleagues. Some effects thought to be paranormal, for example the effects of Kirlian photography (thought by some to represent a human aura), disappeared under more stringent controls, leaving those avenues of research at dead-ends. Many university laboratories in the United States have closed, citing a lack of acceptance by mainstream science as the reason; the bulk of parapsychology research in the US is now confined to private institutions funded by private sources. After 28 years of research, Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research Laboratory (PEAR), which studied psychokinesis, closed in 2007.
Two universities in the United States currently have academic parapsychology laboratories. The Division of Perceptual Studies, a unit at the University of Virginia's Department of Psychiatric Medicine, studies the possibility of survival of consciousness after bodily death, near-death experiences, and out-of-body experiences. The University of Arizona's Veritas Laboratory conducts laboratory investigations of mediums. Several private institutions, including the Institute of Noetic Sciences, conduct and promote parapsychological research.
Over the last two decades some new sources of funding for parapsychology in Europe have seen a "substantial increase in European parapsychological research so that the center of gravity for the field has swung from the United States to Europe". Of all nations the United Kingdom has the largest number of active parapsychologists. In the UK, researchers work in conventional psychology departments, and also do studies in mainstream psychology to "boost their credibility and show that their methods are sound". It is thought that this approach could account for the relative strength of parapsychology in Britain.
As of 2007, parapsychology research is represented in some 30 different countries and a number of universities worldwide continue academic parapsychology programs. Among these are the Koestler Parapsychology Unit at the University of Edinburgh; the Parapsychology Research Group at Liverpool Hope University (this closed in April 2011); the SOPHIA Project at the University of Arizona; the Consciousness and Transpersonal Psychology Research Unit of Liverpool John Moores University; the Center for the Study of Anomalous Psychological Processes at the University of Northampton; and the Anomalistic Psychology Research Unit at Goldsmiths, University of London.
Research and professional organizations include the Parapsychological Association; the Society for Psychical Research, publisher of the Journal of Society for Psychical Research; the American Society for Psychical Research, publisher of the Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research (last published in 2004); the Rhine Research Center and Institute for Parapsychology, publisher of the Journal of Parapsychology; the Parapsychology Foundation, which published the International Journal of Parapsychology (between 1959 and 1968 and 2000–2001) and the Australian Institute of Parapsychological Research, publisher of the Australian Journal of Parapsychology. The European Journal of Parapsychology ceased publishing in 2010.
Parapsychological research has also included other sub-disciplines of psychology. These related fields include transpersonal psychology, which studies transcendent or spiritual aspects of the human mind, and anomalistic psychology, which examines paranormal beliefs and subjective anomalous experiences in traditional psychological terms.
(Continued)
HISTORICAL FACT OF THE WEEK
HISTORY OF BARBADOS
“Of The People Of The Many Descendants Of Afrika”
Barbados ( i/bɑr?be?d?s/ or /bɑr?be?do?s/) is a sovereign island country in the Lesser Antilles. It is 34 kilometres (21 mi) in length and up to 23 kilometres (14 mi) in width, covering an area of 431 square kilometres (166 sq mi). It is situated in the western area of the North Atlantic and 100 kilometres (62 mi) east of the Windward Islands and the Caribbean Sea; therein, it is about 168 kilometres (104 mi) east of the islands of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, and 400 kilometres (250 mi) north-east of Trinidad and Tobago. Barbados is outside of the principal Atlantic hurricane belt.
Barbados was initially visited by the Spanish around the late 1400s to early 1500s and first appears on a Spanish map from 1511. The Spanish explorers most likely plundered the island of whatever native peoples resided therein to become slaves. The Portuguese visited in 1536, but they too left it unclaimed, with their only remnants being an introduction of wild hogs for a good supply of meat whenever the island was visited. The first English ship, the Olive Blossom, arrived in Barbados in 1624. They took possession of it in the name of the British king James I. Two years later in 1627 the first permanent settlers arrived from England and it became an English and later British colony.
Barbados has an estimated population of 284,000 people, with around 80,000 living in or around Bridgetown, the largest city and the country's capital. In 1966, Barbados became an independent state and Commonwealth realm, retaining Queen Elizabeth II as Head of State. Barbados is one of the Caribbean's leading tourist destinations and is one of the most developed islands in the region, with an HDI number of 0.788. In 2011 Barbados ranked 2nd in The Americas (16th globally) on Transparency International's Corruption Perception Index.
According to accounts by descendants of the indigenous Arawakan-speaking tribes in other regional areas, the original name for Barbados was Ichirouganaim, with possible translations including "Red Land with White Teeth", "Redstone island with teeth outside (reefs)", or simply "Teeth". The reason for the later name Barbados is controversial. According to some sources the Portuguese, en route to Brazil, were the first Europeans to come upon the island, while others say it was the Spanish which gave the Spanish name "Los Barbudos". The word Barbados means "bearded ones", but it is a matter of conjecture whether "bearded" refers to the long, hanging roots of the bearded fig-tree (Ficus citrifolia), indigenous to the island; to allegedly bearded Caribs once inhabiting the island; or, more fancifully, to the foam spraying over the outlying reefs giving the impression of a beard. In 1519, a map produced by the Genoese mapmaker Visconte Maggiolo showed and named Barbados in its correct position. Furthermore, an island in the Leewards which is very close in name to Barbados is Barbuda and was once named Las Barbuadas by the Spanish.
Other names or nicknames associated with Barbados include "Bim" and "Bimshire". The origin is uncertain but several theories exist. The National Cultural Foundation of Barbados says that "Bim" was a word commonly used by slaves and that it derives from the phrase "bi mu" or either ("bem", "Ndi bem", "Nwanyi ibem" or "Nwoke ibem") from an Igbo phrase meaning "my people". In colloquial or literary contexts, "Bim" can also take a more deific tone, referring to the "goddess" Barbados.
The word Bim and Bimshire are recorded in the Oxford English Dictionary and Chambers Twentieth Century Dictionaries. Another possible source for "Bim" is reported to be in the Agricultural Reporter of 25 April 1868, The Rev. N. Greenidge (father of one of the island's most famous scholars, Abel Hendy Jones Greenidge) suggested the listing of Bimshire as a county of England. Expressly named were "Wiltshire, Hampshire, Berkshire and Bimshire". Lastly in the Daily Argosy (of Demerara, i.e. Guyana) of 1652 it referred to Bim as a possible corruption of the word "Byam", who was a Royalist leader against the Parliamentarians. That source suggested the followers of Byam became known as Bims and became a word for all Barbadians.
Amerindian settlement of Barbados dates to about the 4th to 7th century AD, by a group known as the Saladoid-Barrancoid. In the 13th century, the Kalinago arrived from South America. The Spanish and Portuguese briefly claimed Barbados from the late 16th to the 17th centuries, and may have seized the Arawaks on Barbados and used them as slave labor. Other Arawaks are believed to have fled to neighboring islands. Apart from possibly displacing the Caribs, the Spanish and Portuguese left little impact and left the island uninhabited. Some Arawaks migrated from Guyana in the 1800s and continue to live in Barbados.
From the arrival of the first English settlers in 1627–1628 until independence in 1966, Barbados was under uninterrupted British governance (and was the only Caribbean island that did not change hands during the colonial period). In the very early years, the majority of the population was European and male, with not only Amerindian, and African, but also European slaves providing the workforce. Cultivation of tobacco, cotton, ginger and indigo was handled primarily by European indentured labor or slaves until the start of the sugar cane industry in the 1640s. As Barbados' economy grew, Barbados developed a large measure of local autonomy through its founding as a proprietary colony. Its House of Assembly began meeting in 1639. Among the initial important figures was Anglo-Dutchman Sir William Courten.
Between 300AD and 1200AD Barbados' inhabitants were the Arawak Indians. They were driven off the island by invading Carib Indians from Venezuela, who then left Barbados around the time the first Europeans sailed into the region. By the early 1500s all signs of Amerindian life had vanished.
In 1536 Portuguese explorer Pedro a Campos stopped over in Barbados en route to Brazil and named the island 'Los Barbados' - the bearded ones, presumably after the island's fig trees, with there long hanging aerial roots. (A beard-like resemblance)
Although known to the Portuguese and Spanish, the British were the first settlers in 1625. Captain John Powell landed on Barbados with his crew and claimed the uninhabited island for England. Two years later, his brother Captain Henry Powell landed with a party of 80 settlers and 10 African slaves. The group established the island's first European settlement, Jamestown, on the western coast at what is now Holetown. They were welcomed only by a herd of Portuguese Hogs thought to be left there by Campos whose intention was to use them as food on return voyages.
The Slave History of Barbados started after Captain Powell brought the 10 slaves in 1627. The slave population in 1629 was still diminutive with not more than 50 Amerindian and African slaves working the land, in construction and in homes. This low slave population was due to few persons being able to buy slaves at that time.
Slaves brought into Barbados came from various tribes out of the forest region of West Africa, during village raids. Some of the African tribes were Eboes, Paw-paws and Igbo. They came via slave trade forts on the African west coast, set up by Europeans. Such forts were the Axim and El Mina. After being traded for trinkets, the slaves were sent to the Caribbean and sold to Plantation owners.
In 1636, officials passed a law declaring all slaves brought into Barbados, whether African or Amerindian were to be enslaved for life. It was later extended to include their off springs. At this time there were only 22 free colored persons on the island.
During the 1700s, the main source of labor for cotton and tobacco was indentured servants from Europe, while Amerindians from the Guianas were imported to teach agriculture. As the cotton and tobacco industry started to fail because of the lack of labor, due to terrible conditions for indentured servants, the sugar industry emerged. Sugar in Barbados at that time was used only for feedstock, as fuel and in the production of rum.
Irish immigration to Barbados dates back to the seventeenth century, when Irish people began arriving on the island as slaves and indentured servants of the British planters. Many Irish rebels, Catholics and "stubborn" landowners and tenants were sold as slaves in the English colonies in the Caribbean, Bermuda, and North America. The number of Irish slaves in Barbados is unknown but the figure is estimated at between 12,000 and 60,000 people. Today there are only about 400 Red Legs, descendants of the Irish slaves (along, in lesser measure, with descendants of other European slaves), in Barbados while many African and other European Barbadians have some Red Leg ancestry.
The Irish, many of whom were prisoners of war or civilians, deported from Ireland following the Cromwellian invasion, arrived in Barbados alongside African slaves. The English overlords had used forced emigration as a way of pacifying Ireland since the start of the century, but the Cromwellian invasion greatly increased this. Between 1652 and 1659, another 50,000 Irish men, women and children were sent to the West Indies, Virginia and Bermuda. So many were sent to Barbados that being subjected to this forced emigration was described as being "Barbadosed".
The first 12,000 Irish prisoners sent to Barbados arrived in 1662. Although often described as indentured servants, the Irish were exiled and sold against their will. They could be physically punished, and might be mortgaged or resold, or given away in payment of debts.
In 1649, due to the harshness of the slavery to which they had been subjected, the Irish joined with the Africans in rebellion against the English colonists. In response to the rebellion, many were hanged, drawn-and-quartered and their heads deposited on pikes on high ground where the entire population of Bridgetown would see them as a warning against future rebellions. Despite this, attacks by Spanish and French pirates, as well as the loss of crops due to climatic shocks, led to further African and Irish slave revolts against the English. Rebellions increased the fear felt by European slave owners of the Africans and Irish, whom they conveniently perceived as savages.
In the 1660s, some 52,000 Irish slaves, mostly women and sturdy boys and girls, were delivered to Barbados and Virginia alone.
However, although African slavery in Barbados remained until 1834, Irish slavery seems to have disappeared over time. The 1880 census identified no Barbadian as Irish.
Currently, descendants of the Irish slaves (along, in lesser measure, with descendants of other European slaves) are called Red Legs. This community has been endogamous, and now numbers only about four hundred people. Most live in poverty and are prey to infections and diseases. So, they do not have teeth or they have lack teeth or teeth in bad condition due to poor diet and lack of dental care. Furthermore, hemophilia caused diseases (causing the fall of limbs) and premature deaths in the community, and excess sugar foods consumed by the community has aroused a high rate of diabetes in it, which has extended blindness among many them. Moreover, school absenteeism, poor health, the mixture between members of the same family (which causes severe disease in their descendants) and the poverty of the community, reinforced by the possession of small land, shortage of employment opportunities and maintenance large families (and therefore greater food shortages for each of its members), have adversely affected their presence on the island. So today, red legs are characterized by anomalies and difficulties to survive on the island are.
Only since the latter half of the twentieth century has the community begun to integrate and assimilate with the African descendants of Barbados, the majority of the island.
Due to the demand for a strong labor force after the Sugar Revolution took place, Africa became the obvious choice for slaves, because they were strong and Africa was closer than Europe to the Caribbean. Slave ships also travelled faster because they were assisted by the Trade winds blowing towards the west.
This included the slave trade and was the link between Europe, West Africa and the Americas. The ships left Western Europe filled with guns and manufactured goods towards West Africa to be exchanged for slaves who were taken to Barbados and other Caribbean islands to be sold for sugar (called the Middle Passage), which was shipped to Europe.
In 1642, Barbados planters found a new source of revenue when the Dutch introduced them to sugar cane farming. By mid 1600's sugar cane plantations were producing and exporting sugar, attracting wealthy landowners with political affiliations. Enhancing the islands plantocracy, this new emergence of elite planters excluded poor Europeans non-Europeans from Barbados' political infrastructure. The island soon gained the largest European population of any of the English colonies in the Americas, becoming the springboard for English colonization in the Americas.
As the cost of European labor rose in England, more slaves were imported from West Africa, especially the Gold Coast and by extension more African slaves were brought to Barbados. The main groups of slaves imported were from Ibibio, Yoruba, Igbo and Efik, as well as Asante, Fante, Ga and Fon. By mid 1600's there were over 5,600 African slaves in Barbados and by early 1800,s over 385,000. The constant importation of slaves was caused by the high mortality rate, due to bad conditions and overwork. By the 1700's, Barbados was one of the leaders in the slave trade from the European colonies.
During the 1800's, the elite were building elaborate estates like Drax Hall and St. Nicholas Abbey, which still exist, while controlling the House of Assembly and the Legislative Council. They encouraged slave reproduction to avoid more importations of slaves, becoming the only island in the British Caribbean no longer dependent on slave imports.
During the 1700's to 1800's, Barbados shifted from a majority European population to majority African. This caused tension on the island as European indentured servants became unsure of their place, and plantation owners were afraid of slave rebellion, eventually causing most of them to leave. By the beginning of the 1800's the majority of Africans in Barbados were born locally, with a high percentage of Creole born African descendants, as opposed to Africans from the African continent. This enabled the African population to reproduce itself, rather than rely on new imports from Africa to maintain population levels.
Due to the unrest, the laws regulating the slaves were strongly enforced. By the 1800's, there were laws prohibiting slaves from leaving their plantations without permission and stopping them from beating drums or any other instruments used by slaves to communicate with each other. There were also laws requiring the return of runaway slaves and leniency for those killing slaves.
During the 1600's, there were three (3) unsuccessful rebellions in Barbados; 1649, 1675 and 1692.
The First Slave Rebellion (1649) included two plantations, and the trigger was insufficient food. It was quickly subdued with not much damage.
The Second Slave Rebellion (1675) was island-wide and took over three years to plan but was uncovered when one of the slaves named Fortuna leaked the information out. Over 100 slaves were arrested and tortured, while over 40 were executed after being found guilty of rebellion. Some committed suicide before being executed, while others were beheaded or burnt alive.
The Third Slave Rebellion (1692) was also island-wide with over 200 slaves arrested and over 90 executed after being found guilty of rebellion.
Rebellions simmered in Barbados until 1816 due to an increase in free Africans and slaves born on the island (called Creole Slaves), there were also more frequent visits to the island by British Military Ships for supplies and a colonial militia which was becoming more powerful during the 1800's.
Creole Slaves were believed to be more submissive than African born slaves and therefore were placed over the Africans.
During the Bussa Rebellion (The Easter Rebellion - Sun 14th April 1816), more than 800 slaves were killed while fighting and over 100 executed. This was the first rebellion of this size and the largest in Barbadian history and the Caribbean, and took part for (3) days on the southern part of the island. This rebellion caused reform to ease the hardships of slavery. Several hundred slaves rose in rebellion under the leadership of the African-born slave Bussa; they were defeated by British forces. Bussa's Rebellion was the first of three large-scale slave rebellions in the British West Indies that shook public faith in slavery in the years leading up to emancipation. It was followed by the large-scale rebellion in Demerara in 1823 and by an even larger rebellion in Jamaica in 1831–32. Collectively these are often referred to as the "late slave rebellions".
Bussa (/?b?s?/) was born a free man in West Africa of possible Igbo descent and was captured by African slave merchants, sold to the British, and transported to Barbados in the late 18th century as a slave. Not much is known about him and there are no records of him prior to this date. Since slave owners almost never bothered to keep detailed records about the lives of their slaves (who were considered property), virtually no biographical information about Bussa is available. Records show a slave named "Bussa" worked as a ranger on 'Bayley's Plantation' in the parish of St. Philip around the time of the rebellion. This privileged position would have given Bussa more freedom of movement than the average slave and would have made it easier for him to plan and coordinate the rebellion.
The revolts arose at a time when the British Parliament was working on schemes to ameliorate the conditions of slaves in the Caribbean. Preparation for this rebellion began soon after the House of Assembly discussed and rejected the Imperial Registry Bill in November 1815, which would have registered colonial slaves. Historians believe that slaves interpreted some of the parliamentary proposals as preparatory to emancipation, and took action when freedom did not take place.
Among Bussa's collaborators were Washington Franklin, John and Nanny Grigg, a senior domestic slave, and Jackey on Simmons' Plantation, as well as other slaves, drivers and artisans. Jackey was a Creole driver who was an important figure. The planning was undertaken at a number of sugar estates, including Bailey's plantation, where it began. By February 1816, Bussa was an African driver, one of the few in his position. He and his collaborators decided to start the revolt on 14 April, Easter Sunday.
Bussa, King Wiltshire, Dick Bailey, and Johnny led the slaves into battle at Bailey's Plantation on Tuesday, 16 April. He commanded some 400 freedom fighters, both men and women, most of whom were believed to be Creole, born in the islands. He was killed in battle. His forces continued the fight until they were defeated by superior firepower of the colonial militia. The rebellion failed but its influence was significant to the future of Barbados.
In 1985, 169 years after his rebellion, the Emancipation Statue, created by Karl Broodhagen, was unveiled in Haggatt Hall, in the parish of St Michael.
1998, the Parliament named Bussa as one of the ten National Heroes of Barbados.
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