The Blackest Great Grandfather On The Planet 1919

IllMath said ...
I felt real stupid asking that question, but I have this theory based on ... nevermind. Anyway I apologize to all for asking such a douchey question..

Mahndisa S. Rigmaiden said...
I am curious about your family tree DV. They look beautiful and hearty. Where was this picture taken and when?


Denmark Vesey said ...
Hey Ill. Nah man. I understand. 75 years of Plantation memes has conditioned too many of us to view black history as one of perpetual powerlessness. The grand irony is that black families and black people were more powerful and effective 50 years ago, before all of this socially engineered integration, assimilation and hyper secularization, than they are today. Yes, believe it or not, there was a time black people did not need white people to feed them.

Family tree? Well Mahndisa, Poppa Harris and his wife Elizabeth raised 10 children on land in Georgia, acquired by his grandfather before the civil war. According to entries in the family bible, his grandfather also purchased and later emancipated a number of slaves. According to my grandmother, Poppa Harris' said his people were never "in bondage", but were descendants of black people native to America. I assume he meant the Moors. Uncle George, who is the oldest son, standing in the back row enlisted in the US Army at the beginning of WWI. He sailed to France with the all black 370th Infantry battalion. The Germans gassed his unit at the battle of the Argone Forest. Uncle George survived but spent nearly 7 years in a Connecticut hospital while his lungs healed. Poppa Harris was very active politically. He was a charter member of the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League. He was a financial supporter and corresponded frequently with Marcus Garvey. Uncle Jackson who stands behind my grandmother moved to Harlem in 1930 after earning a law degree from Straight College in New Orleans. Apparently he had difficulty passing the New York bar and got into real estate where he made a fortune. He sponsored his younger siblings who joined him in New York. My grandmother met a young man named Conrad who came to Harlem from Conyers Georgia alone at the age of 14. Homeless for a while, he later lived at the YMCA and shined shoes to support himself. He put himself through school and earned a law degree by the late 30's. They married and had my mother after WWII. The New York and GA factions of the family stayed in close contact and the children traveled back in forth to Atlanta where Uncle Victor had gotten into the construction business by the 1950's. Rumor has it that while still a teenager Uncle Bob, (front row second from left) killed a white man who had hit his sister for ignoring him, and got away with it. The family was conservative, Christian, funny, Plantation free, and black with a vengeance.