FEBRUARY STILL AIN’T HERE AND I’M SENDING OUT FACTS LIKE WHY DON’T YOU JUST SAVE THESE FOR BLACK HISTORY MONTH, DAMN.

Well, guys:
1. You signed up for this. And?
2. I do what I want.

Also. I felt like we could probably use some time to NOT think about the current state of events and go back to a simpler time.
A time when people were loud and proud and racist as opposed to quiet and fake and racist America was great.

ANYWAYS.

I could lead in with a story about how my kids have gone to all kinds of schools (military and civilian) and the only time there was a (military) police presence was after 9/11 but honestly when you live on a military installation seeing guys with weapons isn’t as scary as it would be in other situations especially when you know that they’re there for your protection and safety from OUTSIDE (as in, out of the country) harm. I could also comment how in 2001 Spanky was 5 years old. And even as it happened I couldn’t believe that I was sending my baby girl off to kindergarten that had armed guards. Though, tbh, I had no doubt that my babies were safe as they could possibly be smack dab in the middle of a Marine Corps base. (something something, “When death smiles at Marines, Marines smile back.” Hey did you know they just had a birthday? Number 241. Yes. You get all kinds of random information in my facts of the day. Once a Marine wife, ALWAYS a Marine wife. You’re welcome)

BUT. I’m not gonna do that. Because I can’t think of one single way to link these two stories of fear together.

I’m just going to say that TODAY in 1960, six year old Ruby Bridges was escorted by federal marshals escorted her into William Frantz Elementary School in New Orleans. And that she needed federal marshals to protect her from protesters who were none too pleased with racial integration [of schools] and that immigrants Muslims black children would be learning alongside white children.

So that’s today’s random story of the day. No lead in. No smart ass comments about how this is post racial america and thank God we don’t need US Marshals to escort students to school because we had a black president for 8 damn years and if we can do that we can all just breathe a sigh of relief because what racism?

Or, nah?

I was a VERY busy lady. VERY.
Sorry you ain’t get a fact on Friday, but not really sorry because it was the start of my vacation!
And lemme tell y’all. Sometimes I need vacations from my vacations.
Because I be doing a lot. I WAS NOT ALONE IN MY EXTRANESS.

I was in Oakland for the weekend!
I went up because The Boy had a show Saturday, and I am nothing if not a supportive mother fucker who loves to go to concerts
I went with my sissie and my cousin. Because they’ve never been up to see him play a show.
I’m biased, of course, but I still say he’s pretty damn good.

BUT.

Here’s the thing about traveling to the Bay:
I have a lot of friends there.
And when I can, I try to cram seeing everybody into one trip.
So! Meet some for Dinner. Sommore for Lunch.
OH. You say you have a thingy that’s sorta local? Sign me up.
[Do I know the way to San Jose? I do. Now]

Anyways.

It was interesting. Because I got to see one of my BFFs doing her workshit*
And I’ll be honest, she’s kinda amazing at her workshit [don’t forget about the work filters! I never do]
And so for a couple hours, I listened to her and some people talk about smoking, and e-cigarettes.
I’m sure you’re not surprised at all to hear that I have opinions about things that affect black people.
Especially how for tobacco companies SPECIFICALLY targeted black folks in its advertisements and promotional efforts for menthol cigarettes, which are more addictive than other types of cigarettes.

But I’m not here to talk about that. I’m here to talk about don’t challenge ME to find an obscure fact during black history month because I will most certainly find one
Dr Louis Wade Sullivan, first black intern at New York Hospital, and founding dean and director of the Medical Education Program at Morehouse College in 1975.
Who in 1981, became Dean and President when, the school became independent from Morehouse College and was renamed Morehouse School of Medicine (MSM), making it the first minority medical school founded in the United States in the twentieth century.
AND THEN. In 1989 Sullivan was appointed by U.S. president George H. W. Bush to lead the nation’s policy efforts and champion the health and welfare of the country as Secretary of Health and Human Services.
Among his efforts to improve the health and health behavior of Americans were the public education program focused on the health dangers from tobacco use (including the successful efforts to prevent the introduction of “Uptown,” a non-filtered, mentholated cigarette),

Dr Sullivan returned to Morehouse School of Medicine in 1993, serving as president until his retirement on July 1, 2002, and remains a member of the school’s board of trustees. In 2003 he was elected as a trustee of the National Health Museum, and serves on the boards of Medical Education for South African Blacks, Africare, Southern Center for International Studies, and Association for Academic Health Centers, and on the editorial board of Minority Health Today. He has also served on the boards of several national corporations.

In 2014 Sullivan published his autobiography, Breaking Bad Ground: My Life in Medicine, with the University of Georgia Press. In the book’s foreword, his friend Andrew Young notes that “Sullivan remains one of the medical world’s wisest and most inspirational public voices.”
And with that, here ends the month (plus extra Leap day!) of Black People doing cool shit that you didn’t know about probably because you have no idea how deep I had to dig for that fact.
See you next year kids! Or yannow, whenever I decide to write a “fancy” fact for y’all. Or myself.
Until then, anytime you’re looking for an interesting fact about shit Black folks have done that you didn’t know Black folks do, DO YOUR GOOGLES. The internet is FREEEEE!

*hey! Do you live in California? Check out Em’s workshit. And then maybe think about voting for it. Maybe. If you’re into that kinda thing.

Have you guys seen this making the rounds?

Of course you have. Because that tiny lady in blue is 106 years old.
And for Black History Month, Virginia McLaurin was invited to the White House to meet our first
(and probably only in my lifetime at least) Black President and his equally Black First Lady.
Whew. So much progress in one picture.

I mean… Ms. Virginia was born in 1909
As a child growing up in the South, she said she didn’t imagine that there could ever be a world where white and black people were integrated.
“This was white and this was black. There were so many things we weren’t allowed to do, we were raised up like that,” she said.
“I felt like it would always be that way.”

Hmm. If I were the kind of person who provided commentary, I would comment that there are people who are fighting like hell RIGHT NOW to return to the “Bad Old Days”
But. I’m not. I’m just here to provide Black History Facts.

Which. That wasn’t. The actual BHFOTD is about Booker Taliaferro Washington.
Taliaferro, huh? I had no idea.

Booker T. was the first African American to be invited to the White House for dinner.
In the autumn of 1901, Booker T. Washington was on a speaking tour.
In Mississippi, he received a telegram from President Theodore Roosevelt.

The telegram asked Washington to come to the capitol for a conference.
When Washington arrived, he received an invitation to dine with the President.
According to Roosevelt biographer, Edmund Morris (author of The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt),
the dinner proceeded “behind closed doors, under the disapproving gaze of a negro butler”.
[Whatever, Uncle Ruckus]

Y’all. White people LOST THEIR COLLECTIVE SHIT.
The next day, the Memphis-Scimitar reported: The most damnable outrage which has ever been perpetrated by a citizen of the United States was committed by the President,
when he invited a nigger to dine with him at the White House…

AND THEN. A U.S. Senator from South Carolina proposed a retaliatory measure:
“The action of President Roosevelt in entertaining that nigger will necessitate our killing a thousand niggers in the South before they will reach their place again.”

[Thinks about prison pipeline, and cops unnecessarily killing black people at a higher rate than any other race]
[Still makes no comment]
[Not even that it seems like some people are still pretty intent on putting black folks “in their place”]

For the remainder of his term as U.S. President (1901-1908), Theodore Roosevelt was never again to invite a black person to dinner at the White House.
However, Roosevelt later stated on the issue of race something that would later be echoed, albeit in his own words, by Martin Luther King Jr. Roosevelt stated:

“…the only wise and honorable and Christian thing to do is to treat each black man and each white man strictly on his merits as a man, giving him no more and no less than he shows himself worthy to have.”

And it turns out when you do that, we end up here.
And you end up with Republicans racists AGAIN losing their collective shit because you put a Black man in the White House twice
And since (in theory) you can’t just go ‘round killing up black folks until they “reach their place”, they’re just gonna try to vote in the most racist person since Hitler into Office.
[But I’m not makin’ no comments though]

So this weekend was Oscar Movie Madness you guys.
Even though I feel some kind of way about the fact that the Oscars would like to pretend that there were no viable black candidates for Oscar nominations,
Oscar Movie Madness (OMM for short) is tradition. And includes booze, food things, card games, and me in pajamas on Lex’s couch all weekend.
AND! Because my friends love me they added movies that SHOULDA been best picture noms, but weren’t: Creed and Straight Outta Compton.
10/10 Recommend them both.

BUT! Both movies DID receive other Oscar nominations:
Creed (Best Supporting Actor): The (white) co-star.
Straight Outta Compton(Best Original Screenplay): The (white) writers.
With an extra FUCK YOU to the CAST who were NOT invited to the Award Show.
I mean, I could talk about how hard you gotta reach to find a non-black person to nominate in some of the blackest movies ever.
But I won’t. Because my boss is not here today, so I’m super busy and don’t have time to go on a 17-point Kanye-style rant.

Anyways.
We were supposed to play Cards Against Humanity afterwards. Because we were supposed to finish early-ish.
But we didn’t. Things happen.
Have you guys every played that game? It’s like apples to apples. Only, imagine that nothing is sacred.
For INSTANCE – I played the winning card for this fill in the blank:

But before I kill you, Mr. Bond, I must show you ________.

And with that, let’s get to the BHFOTD about the owner of said vagina:
Toni Morrison. Novelist, editor, and Professor Emeritus at Princeton University
First African American to win the Nobel Prize for Literature

Ta-daaaaa! I’ll see myself out. And I’ll see y’all tomorrow.

So this one time a favorite patient gave me tickets to see the Foo Fighters when they were doing their acoustic tour at the Pantages.
[I bet some of you were wondering was I gonna manage to sneak my favorite band into a BHFOTD. Don’t I always?]
It was amazing. As usual. And fun.
Afterwards, I somehow got separated from my concert buddy and I was looking for her and somehow I wandered back to the “industry party”
And as I was looking around trying to figure out why I’m standing next to rock stars and other people who looked appropriately rock and roll,
I realized that I was NOT supposed to be there.
Strangely enough though, nobody ever said anything at all to the random person just walking around not looking very rock star at all.
[I’ve found that if you are ever “the only” of a person, people just assume you belong there because why ELSE would you be there, sore thumb?]
[Except that one time that me and a friend crashed a BET pre-party for the Grammys. We definitely got kicked out of there]
[Which is kinda weird because I was DEFINITELY not the only black person. But I guess I was the only one who had a lunch bag. And a work badge]
Which is COMPLETELY unlike the one time Nesto wandered into a place he didn’t belong.
The story as I heard it:
“This club had two rooms: one that played top 40 (which was the best this little club could do) and the country western music room.
I went over to the other room because I wanted to see what kind of music they played in there.
When I walked in, it was like a record scratch:
A bunch of dudes, complete with cowboys hats all turned around in unison to look at me.
I could actually HEAR the nooses fall to the floor.”
This was before yelp, obviously.
I mean, how do you rate that?
“Mixed crowd on one side; Klan rally on the other. 3 out of 5 stars.
Extra star because it was the only civilian bar you could go that played something besides country”

I should also mention this was 1990-something.
Not 1960.
Because THEN he could’ve bought The Negro Motorist Green Book
What’s that, you ask?

WELL. The Green Book, as it was called, was an annual guidebook for African-American road trippers.
It was originated and published by New York City mailman Victor H. Green during the Jim Crow era, when open and often legally prescribed discrimination against non-whites was widespread.

Although pervasive racial discrimination and black poverty limited ownership of cars among African Americans, the emerging black middle class became car owners.
Many black folks took to driving, in part to avoid segregation on public transportation. As the writer George Schuyler put it in 1930,
“all Negroes who can do so purchase an automobile as soon as possible in order to be free of discomfort, discrimination, segregation and insult.”

AND.

Until long after the Civil Rights era (1955–1968), black travelers in the United States faced major problems to which most whites were oblivious. [quelle surprise!] White supremacists had long sought to restrict black mobility. As a result, simply going for a drive was potentially a dangerous undertaking for black people.
They were subjected to racial profiling by police departments (“Driving While Black”), faced being punished for being seen as “uppity” or “too prosperous” if they were driving a car (an act that many whites regarded as a white prerogative), and risked harassment or worse on and off the highway.
Black Americans employed as athletes, entertainers, and salesmen also traveled frequently for work purposes and faced a variety of dangers and inconveniences, such as:
• white-owned businesses refusing to serve them or repair their vehicles
• being refused accommodation or food by white-owned hotels,
• threats of physical violence and forcible expulsion from whites-only “sundown towns”

Green founded and published The Negro Motorist Green Book to tackle such problems, compiling resources “to give the Negro traveler information that will keep him from running into difficulties, embarrassments and to make his trip more enjoyable.” While the Green Book was intended to make life easier for those living under Jim Crow, its publisher looked forward to a time when such guidebooks would no longer be necessary. As Green wrote, “there will be a day sometime in the near future when this guide will not have to be published. That is when we as a race will have equal opportunities and privileges in the United States. It will be a great day for us to suspend this publication for then we can go as we please, and without embarrassment.

*taps foot and looks at watch*
*stares off into the distance and continues to wait*

Anyways.

The 1966 edition was the last to be published after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 made the guide effectively obsolete, by outlawing racial discrimination in public accommodations.

And since racial discrimination was outlawed, we were all free to move about the country.
I’m not even gonna crack a joke about racial profiling.

I’m just gonna say WOO! Post racial America! Fuck you Yeah!

“Black History Month, or National African American History Month, is an annual celebration of achievements by black Americans and a time for recognizing the central role of African Americans in U.S. history.”
[Aside from that whole building THIS ENTIRE COUNTRY from the ground up, BY FORCE]
[That last part wasn’t in the “official blurb” of the website I looked it up from. But. I mean…]

If you haven’t already figured out how I roll during Black History month,
I am not likely to mention:
Slavery
Martin Luther (the) King Jr, aside from his own special day that is NOT in February
Harriet Tubman
George Washington Carver, and not just because I HATE PEANUTS
Blah blah blah…slaves…blah blah blah Harriet Tubman..yakety smakety MLK Jr (and MAYBE Malcolm X if your teacher was edgy), and Peanuts*!
I won’t mention them because there is SO MANY MORE Black people to mention.
People are STILL making Black History because Black people have been purposely kept out and we are just NOW kicking the doors in to places that were closed whether they want us there or not.

ALSO.
If I’m gonna be honest, which I pretty much always am (and serious, but not for long so don’t get used to it) America (and other countries, but I’m American, so I’m only CURRENTLY talmbout where I live) has treated  its Black people horribly unless laws get passed to make them stop in which case they try to figure out a way to go around and has a terrible habit of pretending slavery couldn’t possibly be as bad as the stories passed down from actual Black people through generations have described it to be.
But it was. Ain’t no way to church that up to make it more pleasant. It is a thing that happened. And America did it.
And while I prefer to keep my e-mails lighthearted, don’t ever think I have no idea where I come from.
Anyways. The moral of this story is… slavery was awful, and not at all funny.
So if I go to an Exhibit (still open folks! and still free!) that contains history about The Middle Passage
And they show how slaves were stacked in ships.
AND they show how much space each slave was allotted
(a man was given a space of 6 feet by 1 foot 4 inches; a woman 5 feet by 1 foot 4 inches and girls 4 feet 6 inches by 1 foot)

[In case you were interested, and even if you weren’t, I’m 5’4. YES I AM, GUYS]

AND THEN I ask my friend to take a picture because I knew at some point I was going to use this for a BHFOTD
[Is now a good time to mention that this part of History makes me super angry and I HATE HAVING EMOTIONS?]
[Because WOW America you guys do have done some really shitty things]

DO NOT EVER IN YOUR LIFE TELL ME TO SMILE IN MY MOTHERFUCKING PICTURE.
[The face of a person who is trying not to squirrel jump some asshole who is trying to tell me what to do]
[I would like to take this time to thank God for reminding me that I don’t have time to go to jail because I have plans and thangs, none of which include fighting somebody for cornbread]

And that’s it for today’s Black History [because we did not do this to ourselves] Fact of the Day.
** I don’t want you to go away all sad and mopey because Black History is not always amusing, So I’ll tell you a completely ridiculous story about Peanuts!
I ran into my brother and his family at the Ren Faire (2 more months, you guys!) and they have a 17+ section. Where they were singing bawdy songs because of COURSE THEY WERE!
And because my brother wasn’t paying attention, so he took his daughters (all under the age of 10) over to listen to the songs.
And then he came back TOUT DE SUITE.
Me: That was fast.
Him: IT WASN’T KID FRIENDLY.
When he realized it, he brought them back but not before the oldest could ask, “What did they just say?”
Him: PEANUTS. LET’S GO.

Long looooong ago, when I was in high school, Nesto taught me how to drive a stick shift.
[Yes. I’ve known my husband so long that he taught me how to drive]
[SOOOO many things I could say here, but I won’t because both of my parents get these facts]
[Hi Mommy! Hi Daddy!]
[Hi kids!]
MOVING ALONG.

He taught me in his sister’s car.
Until she found out that he had his lil’ girlfriend driving all over the city in her car.
She put a stop to that quick fast and in a hurry.
I’m not even mad. How was she to know that he’d end up marrying me?

Fast forward to me going to Hawaii to visit (and elope with) Nesto.
We were staying with friends of his because he lived in the barracks.
And staying with friends was free.99.
They even lent him a car to drive so he could show me the island!

But one day Nesto got a ride in, and his friend tells me that I need to go pick him up at work.
He drew me a map. A map!
[Turn left at the gas station, make another left at the projects, on to the Highway, you can get to the base from there, yeah?]
Oh yeah, my wife’s car is a stick. You know how to drive a stick?
Me: Um. Yes?
Okay then! See y’all later.

GUYS. OAHU IS HILLY.
And I was pretty sure I was gonna roll back and smash up somebody’s car.
I also stalled several times because I’M DRIVING BY MYSELF AND I DON’T KNOW WHERE I’M GOING AND….
It was terrifying.

ANYWAYS. I finally made it to the base.
NOW I had to find the location drawn on my fancy map to find my boyfriend so I could stop driving and curl into a ball in the passenger seat and stare silently out of the window until I could stop screaming on the inside

BUT WHERE WAS HE?
I had no idea. So I stopped a military policeman and asked for directions.
And because I’m me and all of the weird things happen to me, he tells me to follow him.
And then he takes off at rocket speed.
SO NOW, I’m doing 70 in a 30 chasing an MP.
I’m guessing Nesto’s friend called him and said “Hey, I sent your girlfriend to pick you up be on the lookout” because when I got there, the MP pointed in the general direction to let me know I made it and took off at warp speed.
And Nesto is standing outside trying to figure out WHAT IN THE ACTUAL FUCK JUST HAPPENED.
And why I was not just speeding, but apparently getting a police escort.

Him: Well, hello Wendell Scott*
Me: Here he comes, here comes speed racer…..

(yes boys and girls, like me, today’s fact is short and sweet)
(and also pretty fucking awesome)

*no, he didn’t actually call me Wendell Scott because he didn’t know about the first black NASCAR driver. But I bet he will now