# THE WRIGHT KNOWLEDGE
HASHTAG CAMPAIGN / EVERGREEN CONTENT
“Dearly beloved, we have gathered here today, to get through this thing called life, electric word life it means forever, and that’s a mighty long time.
But, I’m here to tell you there’s something else….the Afterworld”
Two years ago today, Prince left this world for the afterlife. It is still hard to swallow the tragic loss of this legendary music icon; time can disappear in an instant. So, today, in honor of Prince, we want to stop to remember, if only for a moment, to go a little crazy… and celebrate this electric word: life. May he rest in that afterworld of never ending happiness, and may he always see the sun, day or night.
#TheWrightKnowledge #OTD#Prince #LeniSinclair #Detroit
Recognize this building? Beyond the poetic words of Warsan Shire, beyond the intoxicating spell of Beyoncé’s entire existence, and beyond the cool, choreographed story portrayed in the “Lemonade” visual album is a house: The Madewood Plantation. A former sugarcane plantation on Bayou Lafourche near Napoleonville, Louisiana was a significant setting for the album and leaves viewers to wonder if the entire idea for Queen Bee’s album had deeper historical roots than just her grandmother’s recipe for a thirst-quenching beverage. Black women were the healers, the nurturers, the backbone of strength and survival on Southern plantations. This album forces us to see black women in a new light, after the grieving and the revenge. It forces us to see the ties to the legacy that comes from survival. It forces us to unite through the black women who created lives when the efforts of racism and sexism insisted they weren’t worthy of living. It forces us to listen, visualize, and remember. If we pay close enough attention to the recipe’s instructions we, too, can turn the sour lemons of nothing in to a sweet nectar of something.
#TheWrightKnowledge #Beyonce #MadewoodPlantation #BlackLivesMatter #BlackHistory #Detroit
Yep, you are seeing that correctly. The King of Pop was once just casually at the Charles H. Wright Museum in 1998 for a meeting with Don Barden (also photographed with Tommy Hearns). His memory lives on every day all across the world through his music and legacy. But, it is a powerful thing to be in a place and know that Michael Jackson was once here, too….and that makes us even more proud to walk these museum halls.
#TheWrightKnowledge #TBT #KingofPop #MJ #MichaelJackson #Detroit @MichaelJackson
Charles Wright moved to Detroit in 1946 and chose to establish residency because he respected the strength of the Detroit's economy and its peerless union history. Detroit had an infectious confidence about it and a reputation as the "lunch box town", a working man's city. Even though Detroit was a racially diverse city at the time of his arrival, the discrimination, tight housing and pathological ghettos were still very prevalent. The Museum, known by the acronym I AM, opened on January 30, 1966. Later that same year, due to the popularity of the row house museum building, a traveling "I AM" museum also opened & was located in a converted mobile home. The traveling museum toured the entire state & spread information about the contributions to society & the world made by African Americans.
#TheWrightKnowledge #TBT #BlackLivesMatter #BlackHistory #Detroit
Before the abolition of slavery, rituals for health and spiritual strength were often passed through generations of slaves, usually taught in secret late at night by the fireside. These beliefs included spells that gave symbolic meaning to objects like brass pins, buttons, beads, crystals, broken pieces of dishware and glass, and even the arms and legs of a small doll. These treasured objects were capable of producing fortune or misfortune, healing the innocent or cursing the guilty. Charmed and charged, these objects were often bundled in what was called a “nkisi,” then buried beneath the floorboards of the enslaved living quarters, hidden behind cabinet doors in the master’s kitchens, tucked beneath an exhausted child’s head in attempt to heal the throbbing lashes from an afternoon’s beating.
Originally adapted from Haiti and West Africa, “hoodoo” (now more commonly known as “black magic”), is a set of magical beliefs and was commonly practiced within slave communities. This magic contributed greatly to what makes African Americans so strong today. This magic gave them the ability to heal, to hope, to dream. This magic gave them a power, not only to survive the worst conditions, but a power to believe they could and would survive the worst conditions.
#TheWrightKnowledge #BlackLivesMatter #BlackHistory #Detroit
Where did the name “Jim Crow” come from? A notorious confederate leader? A member of the white-democratic legislature? The deranged person who originally thought segregation was necessary? The answer is none of the above. The name came from the caricature “Daddy Jim Crow” who was performed by a white actor named Thomas D. Rice in a minstrel show. These shows, developed in the early 19th century and very common before radio and other forms of entertainment became more widespread, consisted of comic skits, variety acts, dancing, and musical performances that wrongfully mocked people, specifically of African descent. Rice, who originally popularized the derogatory term “blackface”, introduced the song “Jump Jim Crow,” accompanied by a dance in his stage act. “Daddy Jim Crow” continued to travel and perform even after 1832 when the New York Times had attached his name to the laws that left African-Americans feeling only “separate” but by no means “equal”.
#TheWrightKnowledge #BlackLivesMatter #BlackHistory #Detroit
Rosa Parks may have started the Montgomery Bus Boycott but, she was not the first African American woman to say no to segregation on buses. On March 2, 1955, just nine months before Rosa Parks took her stand, a fifteen year old girl named Claudette Colvin refused to move to the back of the bus. Inspired by what she was learning in her segregated school, she later explained her thought process when the bus driver asked her to move: “It felt like Sojourner Truth was on one side pushing me down, and Harriet Tubman was on the other side of me pushing me down. I couldn’t get up.” Claudette went on to become one of the four women who fought the segregation law in court, getting herself arrested in protest and thrown in jail several times. Although Claudette was a strong activist, and represented a majority of the people fighting to end segregation, she never became a face of the movement. The NAACP and other black organizations felt Rosa Parks was a better icon for the movement because she was an adult and a secretary for the NAACP and, therefore, a closer representation of the middle class.
#TheWrightKnowledge #BlackLivesMatter #BlackHistory #Detroit