The Gist of Freedom Preserving American History through Black Literature . . .

Join the Gist of Freedom podcast live at the Premiere of the PBS documentary Electoral Dysfunction with guest host Antonia Badon! Join us NYC @ WWW.MALCOLMxFilm.com Today, a candidate must receive 270 of the 538 votes to win the election, Under this system, each state is assigned a specific number of votes that is proportional to its population, so that each state's power is representative of its population. So, while winning the popular vote may not ensure a candidate's victory, a candidate must gain popular support of a particular state to win the votes in that state.

Norma Jean Darden~ Spoon Bread Restaurants Harlem! Join The Gist of Freedom host Shellie Gaines, as she welcomes  Norma Jean Darden. Tonya Thames Taylor " I LOVE your programming particularly the Spoon Model, her father an Alabama doctor ran out by the KKK. Join us NYC @  WWW.MALCOLMxFilmFestival MISS MAUDE’S SPOONBREAD TOO 547 Malcolm X Blvd., at W. 136th St., Harlem; (212) 690-3100, SpoonbreadInc.com Owner Norma Jean Darden puts her heart into every peach cobbler she bakes.  A former Wilhelmina model with a sparkling smile and a slight North Carolina accent, has been making her peach cobbler at Miss Maude’s since 2011 and at sister restaurant Miss Mamie’s since 1999. The recipe comes from Darden’s Southern family, whose portraits line her Harlem comfort food mecca. At $4.95 apiece, with $1 extra for ice cream, it’s no wonder New Yorkers gobble up the best peach cobbler in the five boroughs.

Join W.E.B DuBois' Grandson as The Gist of Freedom prepares to cover the Presidential Debates. Tonight we'll  discuss the Democratic National Conventions Highlights from a historical viewpoint with W.E.B DuBois' Grandson, Arthur McFarlane and  host Preston Washington. Audio clips include, President Obama, First Lady M. Obama, Jennifer Granholm, Freedom Rider ~John Lewis, Sen. Gabby Giffords,  Former President Clinton and more. Fannie Lou Hamer's testimony regarding horrendous attacks at the Voting Polls before the DNC's credential Committe, 1964 Atlantic City NJ Republican National Convention recap- RNC's Attendees  (dlegates?) Pelt Peanuts and direct Racial slurs at  an African American CNN Camera-Woman.   CNN's Report Peanut Assault     

Join The Gist of Freedom live at the Democratic Convention with host Shellie Gaines and Constitutional Law Professor Gloria Browne-Marshall! Recap speeches, President Obama, Debbie Wasserman.   2004 DEMOCRATIC CONVENTION - U.S. Senate candidate Barack Obama, a state senator from Illinois "Yet even as we speak, there are those who are preparing to divide us, the spin masters and negative ad peddlers who embrace the politics of anything goes. Well, I say to them tonight, there's not a liberal America and a conservative America -- there's the United States of America. There's not a black A merica and white America and Latino America and Asian America; there's the United States of America. The pundits like to slice-and-dice our country into Red States and Blue States; Red States for Republicans, Blue States for Democrats. But I've got news for them, too. We worship an awesome God!..." Tonight listen to live coverage of The DNC on The Gist of Freedom with Constitutional Law Professor Gloria Browne-Marshall and host Shellie Gaines!

Reporting Live from the RNC.... RNC Racists Attendees (Delegates?) Pelt Peanuts at Black Camerawoman... Click Now to view Gloria Browne-Marshall's video, as she reports and investigates this despicable incident, Live from The RNC on The Gist of Freedom RNC Racist Attendees Pelt Black Camera-woman, Patricia Carroll with Peanuts.  "I was just about to put on my headset when someone started throwing peanuts at me,"  She recovered enough to ask one man, "Are you out of your damned mind?" Who are these "Attendees" are they delegates? Constitutional Law Professor Gloria Browne-Marshall believes we have have the Right to Know.. contact CNN and let them know we think the identity of these assailants, "Attendees", "Delegates?" is newsworthy.    Contact CNN at http://twitter.com/teamcnn Text CNN (space) and your news tip to 772937    Multiple witnesses observed the exchange and RNC security and police immediately removed the two people by the Tampa Bay Times Forum.   The convention released a statement.   CNN also acknowledged the incident, saying, "CNN can confirm there was an incident directed at an employee inside the Tampa Bay Times Forum earlier this afternoon. CNN worked with convention officials to address this matter and will have no further comment.” 

FANNIE LOU HAMER testified AT THE DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL convention TO THE Credentials Committee about violence and discrimination faced by black voters trying to register to vote, and her testimony was televised nationally! Get Ready to experience the Democratic National Convention from the African American Historical Perspective, with Attorney Activist, Constitutional Law Professor Gloria Browne-Marshall! Listen to The Gist of Freedom starting Monday August 27,  live from the DNC and RNC!  FANNIE FORMED THE Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP), with Fannie Lou Hamer "I'm Sickin' Tired of Being Sickin' Tired!" as a founding member and vice president. The MFDP sent an alternate delegation to the 1964 Democratic National Convention, with 64 black and 4 white delegates. Fannie Lou Hamer testified to the convention's Credentials Committee about violence and discrimination faced by black voters trying to register to vote, and her testimony was televised nationally.  Newsletter    

Tonight Click and listen to The Gist of Freedom podcast WWW.LesleyPodcast.com  with guest,historian, author Professor Haroon Kharem and host, Preston Washington. Get your pencil and pad ready as Dr.Kharem lectures on James McCune, MD~ Dr. McCune the first african American to earn a Medical License used his pharmacy in New York as an Underground Railroad safe house. Youtube.com/LesleyNuTube Youtube.com/TheGISTofFREEDOM.com

The Gist of Freedom live on location ~ Martha's Vineyard African American Film Festival! The Contradictions of Fair Hope” Narrated by Whoopi Goldberg and featuring the music of jazz musician Christian McBride,  chronicles the little-known story of the Fair Hope Benevolent Society in Alabama, one of the nation’s last surviving benevolent societies. They were groups formed after emancipation by newly freed slaves throughout the South to build schools, care for the sick, feed the hungry, and bury the dead. Merkerson co-produced and co-directed the film with Rockell Metcalf, who came to the story through a conversation with his 99-year-old grandmother, the oldest surviving member of the Fair Hope Benevolent Society. This organization was created by six uneducated men 124 years ago,” said Merkerson in a telephone interview. “The film gives a full picture of how Fair Hope evolved and the complexities involved in its continued existence.”

Join The Gist of Freedom Live on Location with host, Shellie Gaines at the 143rd Still family reuinon~historical Lawnside, NJ.The Stills, Underground Railroad's First Family! By the early 1800s, the Still family was firmly established in southern New Jersey, particularly in the area that became Lawnside, a hamlet neighboring Haddonfield.  Lawnside was incorporated in 1926; it is believed to be the first self-governing, overwhelmingly African-American town in the North. It remains 94 percent African-American and full of Stills—perhaps as many as 100 members of the extended family. Every August, Clarence hosts the Still family reunion at his place, This summer marked the 143rd Still reunion—a daylong barbecue, church service, and gospel-fest for several hundred Stills from as far away as Arizona.  William Still the youngest of Charity and Levin Still's eighteen children was the Black abolitionist from Philadelphia who was described by the New York Times as "William Still - known as the Father of the Underground Railroad" -  He literally wrote the book, The Underground Railroad. His drive to see the vindication of the human spirit continued past the end of the Civil War and into the antebellum period when he fought Jim Crow. Still’s story makes a full circle journey through poverty to prosperity, ending at philanthropy (just one of Justice’s tools).   

The Gist of Freedom Presents Slavery By Another Name, screening with Filmmaker Sam Pollard and Constitutional Law Professor Gloria Browne-Marshall. Sponsored by New Jersey Amistad Commission, Director Stephanie Wilson hosted by Montclair University.  "AS AMERICANS WE are taught that slavery was abolished after the Civil War. A close reading of the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution reveals, however, that this was not exactly the case. Although this amendment did outlaw slavery for the majority of American citizens, anyone convicted of a crime could still, quite legally, be kept in a state of bondage without claims on civil liberties and without remuneration for their forced labor.Following the passage of the 13th Amendment and the attendant anxiety of former slave-owners in the Deep South, laws were designed to entrap and convict newly freed blacks and return them to servitude.  Slavery By Another Name reveals a dirty secret that has long been known in the historical community. Much of the South was built on forced Black labor after slavery was declared unconstitutional in 1863 and the South surrendered to end the Civil War in 1865. Blacks who were convicted of crimes, no matter how insignificant — vagrancy or the theft of a pig worth more than $1 – were often given long sentences and made available to mines, farms and factories. Letters from Blacks in servitude to their families are poignant. There are thousands of those letters in the National Archives in Washington D.C. that tell of horrors endured by men and women found guilty of insignificant offenses."

Descendants of abolitionist, Gerrit Smith's Emancipated African Americans, celebrate Emancipation Day in "Smith Land", Peterbo, NY ! Listen to Preston Washington the host of The Gist of Freedom and Alden Max Smith a descendant of a Smith Freedmen.  The Timbuktu/Timbuctoo) project was a direct response to the state requirement that "only" those (Black and White) with $250 worth of land could vote. This extraordinary contribution has been buried for more than a century, but today its significance is being told and retold.In 1846, abolitionist and wealthy philanthropist Gerrit Smith resolved to give away 120,000 acres of his land in the Adirondacks. The donation of such a large parcel of land was notable. But what was far more impressive was that the recipients were 3,000 African American men from nearly every county in the state. His "Smith Land" project was a direct response to the state requirement that only those with $250 worth of land could vote. This extraordinary contribution has been buried for more than a century, but today its significance is being told and retold.   Wiley, a philosophy prof., expressed his surprise that a white man had come up with the concept or idea, like that of Gerrit Smith, to help black people get to vote.  

  Sunday July 29th at 8pm ET meet W.E.B. DuBois' grandson Arthur McFarlane!  Join The Gist of Freedom's host Shellie Gaines as she and Arthur discuss the history behind these wonderful photos. July 11, 1905 – The Niagara Movement, the forerunner of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, is organized in Niagara Falls, NY. Among the organizers were W.E.B. DuBois, William Monroe Trotter, and Ida B. Wells Barnett. In February 1905, W.E.B. Dubois, John Hope, Monroe Trotter, Frederick McGhee, C. E. Bentley and 27 others met secretly in the home of Mary B. Talbert, a prominant member of Buffalo's Michigan Street Baptist Church. For more on the Michigan Street Church also see 1836, 1845, and 1892) to adopt the resolutions which lead to the founding of the Niagara Movement. The Niagara Movement renounced Booker T. Washington's accommodation policies set forth in his famed "Atlanta Compromise" speech ten years earlier. The Niagara Movement's manifesto is, in the words of Du Bois, "We want full manhood suffrage and we want it now.... We are men! We want to be treated as men. And we shall win." They invited 59 well know African American businessmen to a meeting that summer in western New York. On July 11 thru 14, 1905 on the Canadian side of Niagara Falls, twenty-nine men met and formed a group they called the Niagara Movement. The name came because of the location and the "mighty current" of protest they wished to unleash  

Join The Gist of Freedom as we listen to the lecture of Historian, curator, Wyatt Houston Day.  Wyatt explains the history behind Marcus Garvey's artifacts and documents which were on display at Swann Galleries auction house.    Marcus Garvey Black Red Cross Nurses Marcus Garvey Stock, Black Star Line Marcus Garvey Ship, Phillis Wheatley   www.TheGISTofFREEDOM.com

July 11, 1905 – The Niagara Movement, the forerunner of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, is organized in Niagara Falls, NY. Among the organizers were W.E.B. DuBois, William Monroe Trotter, and Ida B. Wells Barnett.   Join The Gist of Freedom host, Preston Washington as he welcomes author,  Professor Playthell Benjamin,  "Reconsidering The Souls Of Black Folks." Dr. Benjamin will discuss the formation and history of the NAACP and The Niagara Movement. In February 1905, W.E.B. Dubois, John Hope, Monroe Trotter, Frederick McGhee, C. E. Bentley and 27 others met secretly in the home of Mary B. Talbert, a prominant member of Buffalo's Michigan Street Baptist Church. For more on the Michigan Street Church also see 1836, 1845, and 1892) to adopt the resolutions which lead to the founding of the Niagara Movement. The Niagara Movement renounced Booker T. Washington's accommodation policies set forth in his famed "Atlanta Compromise" speech ten years earlier. The Niagara Movement's manifesto is, in the words of Du Bois, "We want full manhood suffrage and we want it now.... We are men! We want to be treated as men. And we shall win." They invited 59 well know African American businessmen to a meeting that summer in western New York. On July 11 thru 14, 1905 on the Canadian side of Niagara Falls, twenty-nine men met and formed a group they called the Niagara Movement. The name came because of the location and the "mighty current" of protest they wished to unleash  

Congratulations Jacob Morris!, Jacob the head of the Harlem Historical Society, has a vision for Lower Manhattan: He wants to establish a trail linking sites associated with the Underground Railroad, the 19th-century network of safe houses and routes used by slaves escaping to freedom.  Please view and share the Wall Street Journal  video, its excellent! Please Read and share  the Wall Street Journal  Article... WWW.theGISTofFREEDOM.com