Still in Twitter jail. Diaspora Hypertext: The Blog (dh.jmjafrx.com) is still down because of malware and likely won’t return. jmjohnso.com also was attacked.
The time has come, the walrus said, for a reshaping.
jmjohnso.com (my main professional site) is now jessicamariejohnson.com. Find all of my credentials there.
And I’ll now be writing, scrapbooking, posting my own things, for the most part, here on substack, in this renamed space: Kitchen Table History.
#landofwomen posts will continue at their same periodic intervals, still be numbered. They will be ramping up now as the writing begins to speed up. But I’ll also be posting research hauls here now too as well as whatever moves me. The new book project is developing along with a few side projects and I’m eager to share them with you. <3
I’ll be back on Twitter at some point. It is a great space for thinking quickly about topics and for keeping up with the most current Black curations.
But I admit this is a nice time to take a little break, to turn inward, and to return to longer writing. Writing that has time to ask questions and breathe without the rapid fire reactions of Twitter space. Even IG is a slower animal, smooths out the rough edges, and the images are pretty. So here we are slowing down. There are projects in development I want to commit to and I need to be off Twitter to do that.
This slow down is also just in time for Black August. Free all political prisoners. Honor the dead. Fight for the living. Recenter for the struggle ahead. Black Girl’s Guide to Menopause (@blackgirlsguidetomenopause) is celebrating Black August on IG with regular haikus and now my feed is full of dark soil haikus which is lovely. And I’m reading.
In that spirit: Lolita Lebron.
“On the blustery, rainy day of the shooting 56 years ago, Ms. Lebrón was a stylishly dressed 34-year-old woman with the looks of the beauty queen she had been as a youth. She wore bright lipstick….
“Firecrackers suddenly seemed to be exploding in the House chamber at 2:32 p.m., interrupting a debate about Mexican farm workers among the 243 representatives present. Congressmen dived and fell, though none were killed.
“Piercing the confusion was the voice of Ms. Lebrón: “Viva Puerto Rico!” She emptied the chambers of a big Luger pistol, holding it in two hands and waving it wildly. She then threw down the pistol and whipped out a Puerto Rican flag, which she waved but never managed to unfurl fully. As she shouted, her companions trained their weapons on the House floor.
“After she was arrested, the police found a note in her purse. “My life I give for the freedom of my country,” it read.
“Ms. Lebrón was convicted of five counts of assault with a dangerous weapon and sentenced to serve from 16 years and 8 months to 50 years in prison. Her colleagues, Rafael Cancel Miranda, Andres Figueroa Cordero and Irving Flores Rodriguez, were convicted on more serious counts and each sentenced to 25 to 75 years in prison…”
“Somos victimas de su violencia y su terror.” [Listen to Lebron in 1954 here]
From the George Yanker poster collection at the Library of Congress:
Text reads:
“Lolita Lebron and four other Puerto Rican freedom fighters are locked up in federal prisons. A 1950 armed attack on Blair House, the temporary residence of President Truman, resulted in the death of Gresilio [Griselio] Torresola and the Imprisonment of Oscar Collazo. The four other Nationalist prisoners, Lolita Lebron, Rafael Cancel Miranda, Andres Figueroa Cordero and Irving Flores Rodrigues were arrested after an armed attack on the United States Congress. March 1, 1954.” via LOC
On the Yanker Poster Collection:
“In 1975, Gary Yanker, a collector of political and social propaganda posters, began presenting his collection to the Library of Congress. The Yanker Collection numbers over 3000 posters. Most are from the United States, but over fifty other countries are also represented.
“A majority of the posters were published in the 1960's and 1970's, a time of great upheaval in world politics and society. Many of the views expressed on these posters were considered radical at the time. The posters address a wide range of subjects, as suggested below.” via LOC
I also never forget that enslaved African and Indigenous people were the first political prisoners. Those enslaved on the African coast were often, literally, prisoners of war, which is a different animal from political prisoner. But there were also many swept into the slave trade as part of political tensions and struggles within their households, communities, and kingdoms. Here, however, I’m thinking with this month being the 190th anniversary of the Southampton Slave Revolt (also known as Nat Turner’s revolt)
Video below: #slaveryarchive book club with Vanessa Holden, author of Surviving Southampton: African American Women and Resistance in Nat Turner's Community (U of I, 2021):
and next year being the 211th anniversary of the 1811 Slave Revolt (often described as Deslondes Slave Revolt or the German Coast Revolt) which is actually the largest slave revolt on what is now U.S. soil. Not Nat Turner’s revolt:
…and with the ways enslaved who resisted bondage were killed, imprisoned, deported, and punished for their fight for freedom. Bayamón, Puerto Rico, had revolts in 1821 and then 1826 the bomberas were outlawed because the bombas became spaces to organize revolt and resistance:
always learning,
jmj
I'm so sorry you are in Twitter Jail and that your websites are down. Your voice is missed but I am so happy to be able to follow you here. Keep educating us. Peace and all good things to you!