In 1828, T.D. “Big Daddy” Rice, a struggling white actor, made his New York stage debut. With a single dialectical song performed in blackface, his routine radically transformed the cultural landscape of North America. In 1855, a theater columnist for the New York Tribune would recall that cataclysmic performance as an unparalleled moment in American entertainment as “never was there such an excitement in the musical or dramatic world; nothing was talked of, nothing written of, nothing dreamed of, but ‘Jim Crow.’” Although his name is not known today, T.D. Rice was a major star in Antebellum America. He is considered one of the primary artistic architects of what was called the “minstrel show” or “blackface minstrelsy.”

SOURCE: https://ushistoryscene.com

In the African-American community, New Year’s Day used to be widely known as “Hiring Day” — or “Heartbreak Day,” as the African-American abolitionist journalist William Cooper Nell described it — because enslaved people spent New Year’s Eve waiting, wondering if their owners were going to rent them out to someone else, thus potentially splitting up their families. The renting out of slave labor was a relatively common practice in the antebellum South, and a profitable practice for white slave owners and hirers.

SOURCE: https://time.com

Although Pennsylvania would be heralded throughout history for its bold stand, freedom here didn’t arrive categorically. The Act for the Gradual Abolition of Slavery allowed the institution to survive, in various guises, for decades.

Enslaved people born even the day before passage could still be kept in bondage for life. The last enslaved Pennsylvanians wouldn’t be freed until 1847.

SOURCE: https://www.inquirer.com

The Battle of Nashville was important because the ultimate US victory marked the end of significant fighting in the Western Theatre of the Civil War by crushing the Confederate Army of Tennessee. This left the region in US hands for the remainder of the war. But it was also significant because it is one of the few major battles in which whole regiments of black men were used as a fighting force. Previously, they had primarily been used in ancillary or support capacities during the War and only had generally seen action when attacked in pursuit of those duties. At the Battle of Nashville, many of these men were sent to fight offensively for the first time – and they performed admirably. The men of the 13th USCI, in particular, were placed in a very difficult position and they suffered very heavy casualties despite heroic efforts on the battlefield.

SOURCE: https://usctwillcotn.blogspot.com

Perhaps most disturbing, Hoover wanted the Bureau to convince African American citizens (presumably with pay or through extortion) to spy on these stores by posing as sympathetic customers or activists. “Investigations should be instituted on new stores when opened and you should recognize the excellent target these stores represent for penetration by racial sources,” he ordered. Hoover, in short, expected agents to adopt the ruthless tactics of espionage and falsification they deployed against civil-rights and Black Power activists, and now use them against black-owned bookstores.

SOURCE: https://www.theatlantic.com

Walter Plecker was a member of the Eugenics movement, and Plecker had an agenda targeted at “Indians”, mixed-race individuals and Blacks in the State of Virginia. Plecker intentionally attempted to eliminate any evidence of any “Indians” in the State of Virginia, in order to purify the “white race”.

Walter Plecker modified birth records in the State of Virginia, I learned that in some cases Plecker actually ordered any documentation record on any individual that indicated “Indian” destroyed, as well, Plecker threatened midwives that indicated “Indian” as the race on the birth certificate.

SOURCE: https://iloveancestry.com