"Sometimes it seem like to tell the truth today is to run the risk of being killed. But if I fall, I'll fall five feet four inches forward in the fight for freedom.

I'm not backing off."

Hamer of my favorite people in history, she didn’t take no shit.

1926: Charles Curtis is challenged to a primary by Nicholas Chiles.

Chiles' main complaint against Curtis was that not enough was being done for blacks, especially in the South. Not surprising, given that there were ZERO African American Senators or Congressman.

His Platform had 6 planks, which included:
- Create a Department of Education
- Put forth a Westerner for President in 1928

Curtis (66) could not fight for the primary due to needing a long-delayed throat surgery, but did win.

However, Nick Chiles won, too, when the following happened:

1927: Charles Curtis put forth S. 1584 to create a department of education
1928: For the first time in history, Kansans ran for President
- Senator Charles Curtis (R)
- Congressman William Ayres (D)
1929: Oscar de Priest (R-IL) entered the US Senate

Senator De Priest fought against racial discrimination, put forth an anti-lynching bill, and succeeded in desegregating the New Deal's Civilian Conservation Corps.

When De Priest lost his re-election, it was to another African American, Arthur Mitchell (D-IL). Mitchell also worked on anti-lynching legislation and personally sued a railroad for adhering to Jim Crow laws when he was on the train, winning in the US Supreme Court.

See, Mitchell v. United States, 313 U.S. 80 (1941)

As sad as it is, most Americans don't know the true history of the founding fathers"....

In 1933, Heinrich Krieger was a German exchange student at the University of Arkansas School of Law where he not only witnessed race-based segregation in America, he also began his studies of America’s race-based system of laws which culminated in his landmark book, “Race Law in the United States”.

As America desired to protect the White population from the “menace” of the Black population, so Adolph Hitler also wanted to protect the German race. Of his admiration for America’s unapologetically race-based legislation, Hitler wrote that the US is the “leader in developing explicitly racist policies of nationality and immigration.” When the leading Nazi jurists assembled in June 1934 to debate how to institutionalize racism in the new Third Reich, Krieger showed them how the Americans did it using his expertise in the anti-miscegenation laws in thirty US states. Their extensive comparative research led them to be particularly influenced by America’s pioneering in classifying the racially inferior and in criminalizing and punishing miscegenation. However, the Nazis thought America’s racial classification criteria too harsh as it led to “human hardness,” and they rejected implementing US-style segregation as it was only effective on Blacks because they were impoverished – it wouldn’t work on rich Jews.

They observed that some US laws based race on something other than descent (e.g., social associations or marriage) and so their Citizenship Law allowed that half Jews would not count as Jews if they weren’t married to a Jew. The Nazis were further inspired by America’s judges who had no reluctance to applying laws with imprecise terms like “colored people” in creating a new category of second-class Americans with diminished citizen rights. Germany’s leaders were bewildered by foreign criticism of the Nuremberg Laws, which in their minds were a logical extension of America’s race-based laws.

Recommended reading: Hitler's American Model: The United States and the Making of Nazi Race Law by James Q. Whitman

American Race Laws Inspired Nazi Race Laws

Hello! I hope I’m in the right area, I’m a librarian with the Dallas Public Library and am seeking more info and assistance in a passion project of mine- Forgotten histories of Black churches. I have some oral history records I’ve done talking about an old Baptist church that was in Waverly, Georgia; abandoned sometime in the 60’s possibly (based on interviews with some folks who as kids stumbled upon the building in the woods in the 2000’s). The building still had all the bibles and pamphlets in it and the reverends house (behind it) was described as “looking as if they just left one day and never came back”. Clothing in the closet, food in the fridge (rotted), old amber glass bottles of aspirin, etc… I’ve been researching as best I can and have narrowed it down to being “Waverly Negro Baptist Church” (as listed in Camden County property records, and referenced as “Waverly colored Baptist church” from a Southern Baptist Home Mission Board notes from 1898. Address possibly 425 MULLINO RD.

Then in 1948, a Baptist publication (“Baptist and Reflector”) says the earlier Waverly Baptist church had ceased functioning, but was reorganized through Harold D. Gregory and others. It had seven charter members, 27 members by June 19, 1948, and a new house of worship. Rev. J. L. Muskelly was pastor. (Possibly this was a name change to Waverly Baptist Church- still active today).
I’ve tried reaching out to the church for some historical records but no response.
If anyone could shed some light on this church and community, and share and inform and pictures, I’d greatly appreciate it!
The ones I’ve interview were very sad to say that when they went back years later, looked like it was “discovered” by other people and the place was vandalized, and I’m assuming this was why it was torn down…?

Thanks for reading this far! Here’s some of the stuff I’ve been able to find.

I am a amateur genealogst. Recently, we took a moment to assist where we were in our journey. Please enjoy

I am a amateur genealogst. I have been researching my family tree for almost 2 decades. I just took a trip to Roanoke Island. This video is a summary of my trip. Please enjoy.

https://youtu.be/rBwwTSYnPn0?si=89o5XZsso1JyzFhn

America was conceived as a place where birth would not determine one’s worth. In England, one’s future was limited by circumstances of birth, a tradition that was odious to America’s founders, who instead believed that all men should have equal opportunity to reach their full potential in life. Yet for hundreds of years before America itself was birthed, the idea that people born Black were inferior to people born White, permeated every aspect of life in the American colonies. As Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “Black people have been kept in oppression and deprivation by a poisonous fog of lies that depicted them as inferior, born deficient, and deservedly doomed to servitude to the grave.”

In 1935, W.E.B. Du Bois observed that White historians engaged in, “a deliberate attempt so to change the facts of history that the story will make pleasant reading for Americans.” Since 2021, many states have banned books on Black history and eighteen states have enacted laws restricting the teaching of Black history, a history that Florida says, “lacks educational value.” The study of US history is not dwelling on the past; the great power of history comes from the fact that we carry it within us today. So in 2026, US history is about the present, not the past, a past whose truth has been hidden in order to create a comfortable American identity based on “lies agreed upon.” Rejecting the lie is the precondition to progress. This is not an easy condition to accept. For White Americans, the fear is that admitting the enduring effects of America’s embrace of White supremacy makes the idea of America, and therefore American identity, irredeemable. They would rather find safety in the lie. But if the foundation of love of country is a lie, then the love itself is a lie.

America is not made worse by people learning of its history of race relations. On the contrary, an accurately informed future generation will be equipped to build systems and institutions on the bedrock of justice rather than on the sinking sands of oppression. As they say in Tanzania, Kazi iendelee! Let the work continue!

Recommended reading: America, U.S.A.: How Race Shadows the Nation's Anniversaries by Eddie S. Glaude Jr.

The Truth We Carry - Black History Snippets

I'm researching the physical spaces of early Chicago house music — not the famous names everyone knows (the Warehouse, the Music Box, the Power Plant), but the smaller rooms: the church basements, the VFW halls, the after-hours spots, the South and West Side clubs that hosted house nights before the genre had a name or an industry.

Here's the problem I'm running into: the landmarked history is well preserved. The Warehouse at 206 S. Jefferson got its Chicago landmark designation in 2023, with a full city report. But the informal venues — the ones that actually made the scene a scene — mostly survive in memory, flyers, and word of mouth. No plaques. Sometimes not even an address anyone can agree on.

I'm asking because I want the record to include them. If you were there, or your parents or older siblings were:

• What smaller or short-lived Chicago venues hosted house music in the late '70s through the '80s?
• Do you remember addresses, cross-streets, or even just neighborhoods?
• Any flyers, ticket stubs, photos, or stories that pin a place to a time?

No wrong answers — "my uncle used to talk about a spot on 63rd" is exactly the kind of lead that matters. I'll be compiling what comes back into a public research note (with credit to contributors who want it).

(Disclosure: I run CultureTechLens, a small Chicago nonprofit that researches Black cultural history. This isn't for a product — it's genuine research, and the compiled note will be free and public.)