Story Archives of 'African-Americans'

We just heard about Mardi Gras in Mobile, but New Orleans is the American city where Fat Tuesday really jumps off. Tourists line New Orleans' wide avenues to watch the grand floats on parade.

The celebration tourists rarely see takes place on the streets and stoops of the Treme, Black Pearl and the Ninth Ward, some of the neighborhoods hardest hit and still empty after Hurricane Katrina. These are the parade grounds of New Orleans black or Mardi Gras Indians. The Wild Magnolias and Wild Tchopitoulas, the Fi Yi Yi... altogether about 40 tribes march in elaborate costumes inspired by the noble Native Americans, who remained free in the age of slavery. Some say the tradition reflects West African masking and dance customs. While their numbers have diminished since Katrina, a number of tribes still parade with traditional rituals and songs. I’ve recorded a number of these rites, and pulled out some of the available recordings by the black Indians of New Orleans to tell their story.

Thanks to indie producer David Kunian for his help with this segment.

(Photo courtesy dsb nola via Flickr/Creative Commons)

In the second part of our series on Slavery in New England, we talk with author Stephen Clarkson. His new book, Patriot's Reward, carefully draws from his own ancestors' history as New Hampshire slave owners. The slave's real and fictional name is Will, and in his book, Clarkson successfully recreates a world that weaves together colonial New Hampshire with African-American history and the Revolutionary War.

Throughout New Hampshire's history, we've taken pride in our staunch abolitionist history. Men and women bringing our belief of "Live Free or Die" into the issue of slavery. But Harriet Wilson’s autobiographic novel "Our Nig: or, Sketches from the Life of a Free Black" exposes a completely different side. Considered to be the first novel published by an African American woman, Wilson's book retells her story living as an indentured servant in pre-Civil War Milford, New Hampshire. During that time she endured harsh physical punishments, long hours of unrelenting chores, mean treatments and very little education. We’ll look at both sides of our abolitionist past through Harriet Wilson’s Our Nig on the next Granite State Stories. Laura's guests are JerriAnne Boggis, Project Director for the Harriet Wilson Project and Barbara White, Professor Emeritus of Women's Studies at the University of New Hampshire and Historian and Research Director for the Harriet Wilson Project. Wilson's article "'Our Nig' and the She-Devil" was about the real life Heyward Family of Milford, New Hampshire from whom Wilson's fictional family was based on.

This weekend, the University of New Hampshire is holding the first conference on the Black Experience in Northern New England. We'll talk with some of the participants about this region's history with race issues and slavery, and how that history affects African American culture here today.

There were relatively few slaves in this part of the country before ownership was outlawed. However, there were people who made good livings working the slave trade. We'll look at the legacy of New Hampshire's role in that, and we'll explore other ways the past meets the present in the lives of New England's African Americans.

Our guests are:

James Horton, Professor of American Studies and History at George Washington University. You can read more about Professor Horton here.

Reverend Arthur Hilson, pastor of the New Hope Baptist Church in Portsmouth.

In 1835, a mob of angry white men used ropes, chains and oxen to drag a racially integrated school off of its foundations and into a lake. And this happened right here in New Hampshire. We'll talk with Dartmouth historian Craig Wilder about the short and influential life of the Noyes Academy.

We'll also talk with University of New Hampshire's Don Quigley about the school's axe-throwing competition this weekend. Don is Professor Emeritus of Forestry at UNH, and he’s been throwing axes for over 30 years.