collective-history:

USA. 1963. Black man being forced aside by police.

Leonard Freed 

(via collectivehistory)

In perhaps the most horrific example of the brutality of the war in the west, in 1782, more than 150 Pennsylvania militiamen were on the hunt for enemy warriors. Instead, they came across nearly 100 Delaware Indians who had converted to Christianity and were noncombatants. The Indians were starving and were in an unexpected location searching for food. Uncertain of the veracity of the Delaware Indians’ story, the militiamen held a council and voted to massacre the whole lot, leading to the execution (they were scalped) of 28 men, 29 women, and 39 children. Two boys escaped the vicious execution, telling the story of what has come to be called the Gnadenhutten Massacre, named after the Pennsylvania town in which it occurred. Several militiamen refused to participate in the slaughter, but the violence and uncertainty that surround it suggest the frightful and violent nature of the war in the west.

Furthermore, all black Americans are born into a society which is determined—repeat, determined—that they shall never learn the truth about themselves or their society, which is determined that black men shall use as their only frame of reference what white Americans convey to them of their own potentialities, and of the shape, size, dimensions, and possibilities of the world. And I do not hesitate for an instant to condemn this as a crime. To persuade black boys and girls, as we have for so many generations, that their lives are worth less than other lives, and that they can live only on terms dictated to them by other people, by people who despise them, is worse than a crime.

collective-history:

USA. Washington, D.C. August 28, 1963. The March on Washington.

Leonard Freed

(via collectivehistory)