IN 1961….Grace Bumbry walked onto Germany’s most sacred opera stage…..and was booed for being Black…..and she had not sung a note yet….then she opened her mouth and history changed….the boos stopped…..the theater wept…..the ovation lasted thirty minutes….talent did what hatred could not…..Grace Bumbry did not ask to belong….she proved she did.
MONOWI, NEBRASKA….has a population of exactly…..one…..Elise Eiler is the mayor, clerk, treasurer, librarian and bartender….she signs her own liquor license every year….and does all the town’s taxes and paperwork by herself….to keep the village officially incorporated.
BETYE SAAR (7-30-1926 – 7-26-2026)….was a pioneering artist who maintained a lifelong creative relationship with Black-dolls……Ms. Saar was best known for her assemblage sculptures, collages and printmaking that challenged racist stereotypes….and explored African-American identity and mysticism…..she used her Black-dolls to subvert racist caricatures, to explore childhood rituals and preserve Black history….the Black Arts Movement began amassing her collection of over 100 dolls in Los Angeles during the late 1960’s….her interest was deeply personal….driven by growing up during the 1920’s and 30’s…..without owing a Black doll because commercial manufacturers rarely made positive, non-stereotype representation at the time…..before her transition on July 26th, 2026, Ms. Saar promised her entire collection of more than 100 dolls as a permanent gift to The New York Historical…..in celebration of her 100th birthday….the museum is hosting the exhibition “Betye Saar’s Black Dolls”…..which will run through October 4th 2026….the show will display 26 physical dolls alongside 14 of her recent celestial watercolor paintings and signature mixed-media assemblages.
SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY COSMETICAN…..Giulia Tofana secretly sold Aqua Tofana….a tasteless mixture of arsenic, lead and belladonna…..to women trapped in marriages with abusive husbands…..they added a few drops to their food over several days….the victims weakened slowly, allowing doctors to mistake murder for illness…..the poison was disguised as makeup or holy oil…..after her arrest, Tofana reportedly confessed….her product had killed 600 men….she and several assistants were executed in Rome.
WHEN VINCENT van GOEGH DIED IN 1890…..he was largely unknown and had sold almost none of his paintings……just six months later, his brother Theo also passed away….leaving his 28-year-old widow….Jo van Gogh Bonger with a young son, little money, and hundreds of Vincent’s artworks….rather than giving up….Jo spent the next 35-years preserving his letters, organizing exhibitions and introducing his paintings to the world….much of van Gogh’s worldwide fame exists today….because she refused to let his legacy disappear.
HISTORY 101…..
150 BLACK MEN…..were shot dead with their hands up on Easter Sunday in Louisiana in 1873…..a mob of 300 fired a cannon at a courthouse and burned it down….because Black man had won a local election….they couldn’t accept losing to Black voters so they massacred them instead…..97 men were charged with the crime….the Supreme Court threw out every conviction.
LYNCHINGS OF BLACK PEOPLE (Recorded 1882-1968-Tuskegee University Archives)
Missouri – 69
Kentucky – 142
West Virginia – 28
Oklahoma – 40
Arkansas – 226
Tennessee – 204
Virginia – 83
Texas – 352
Mississippi – 539
Alabama – 299
Georgia – 492
South Carolina – 156
North Carolina – 86
Florida – 257
Louisiana – 335
THE BLACK HOLOCAUST….246 years of slavery (1619-1865)…..99 years of Jim Crow Laws (1865-1964)……86 years of lynching (1882-1986)……14 years of Civil Rights fights (1954-1968)….Police Brutality – (To Date)
IN 1971…..Soviet geologist accidentally opened a methane-filled cavern while drilling in Turkmenistan’s Karakum Desert…..to stop the gas from spreading they set it on fire…..expecting it to burn out in a few weeks….more than 50-years later….the crater is still burning and is now know as the “Door to Hell.”
IN THE 1820’s….A Scottish soldier named Gregor Mac Gregor pulled off the most devastating real estate scam in history…..he returned to London claiming to be the “Cazique” (Prince) of Poyais….a beautiful, advanced Central-American country with opera houses and gold-lined rivers….the catch?….Poyais completely did not exist….MacGregor printed flawless fake maps, currency and government bonds…..selling millions of dollars of non-existent land to eager investors….hundreds of families packed their entire lives onto ships and sailed to their new tropical utopia…..only to arrive at an empty, deadly mosquito-infested swamp.
SOPHIA TOLSTAYA…..was told to copy her husband Leo’s messy draft at night….in 1863, she started the seven complete rewrites of War and Peace by candlelight….she deciphered thousands of pages of illegible handwriting….she turned a private chaos into the 1,225-pages novel that changed literature.
THE AZTECS…..showered twice a day and cleaned their streets every morning….thousands of workers collected human waste for fertilizer…..they made soap from native plants, deodorants from fragrant resins and oils…..chewing gum from chicle to freshen their breath…..so when the conquistadors arrived….the Aztecs thought they stank so bad….they greeted them with incense.
RAFAEL CEPEDA ATILES (a.k.a.)….. “The Patriarch of the Bomba and Plena” was the patriarch of the Cepeda family….known internationally as the exponents of Afro-Puerto Rican folk music……Cepeda was born into a family who have passed the traditional dances of the Bomba and Plena from generation to generation…..The Bomba is a music, rhythm and dance that was brought to Puerto Rico by the West African slaves…..The Plena is another form of folkloric music of Puerto Rico of African origin…..according to Cepeda…..he was born while his mother Leonor was in the middle of a Bomba dance.