Black History

COMMENTARY: It Is Time to Redraw the Revolution, Again

MILWAUKEE COMMUNITY JOURNAL — As America approaches its 250th anniversary, there is a call for an honest look at the nation’s revolutionary past. While figures like Paul Revere are celebrated, his iconic engraving of the Boston Massacre omitted the true diversity of those involved, including Crispus Attucks, a man of African and Native ancestry who was the first to die. This selective portrayal contributed to a historical narr

Published

4 months ago

July 2, 2026

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America turns 250 this week. We should be proud. We should also be honest.

Every year, we remember Paul Revere’s ride. As we should.

We should also reckon with Paul Revere’s picture.

His engraving of the Boston Massacre helped light the fire for revolution. It showed British soldiers firing into a crowd. Men fell dead in the street.

Yet the first man killed that night is hidden in plain sight.

His name was Crispus Attucks. He was a sailor of African and Native ancestry. John Adams later described the crowd as sailors, Irishmen, “negroes and mulattoes.” But Revere’s image did not show Attucks as who he was. It turned a multiracial, working-class crowd into a whiter and better-dressed one.

That was bad art. It was a lie with a long life.

It taught generations to picture the Revolution as a fight led and suffered by wealthy white men with portraits, property, and papers.

That was never the truth.

Prince Estabrook was enslaved in Lexington. On April 19, 1775, he stood with his neighbors as British troops arrived. He was shot before Congress declared independence. Before Jefferson wrote that all men are created equal.

Salem Poor bought his freedom and fought at Bunker Hill. Fourteen officers petitioned to honor his courage. Peter Salem fought there too. James Armistead, enslaved in Virginia, spied for Lafayette. His work helped trap Cornwallis at Yorktown.

The First Rhode Island Regiment, filled with Black, Native, and formerly enslaved men, held the line near Newport.

Women were there, too. Elizabeth Freeman, known as Mum Bett, heard the Revolution’s words and used them in court. She sued for her freedom and won. Deborah Sampson was poor and indentured as a child. She dressed as a man and served in the Continental Army. Margaret Corbin took over a cannon after her husband was killed.

That story is personal in my family. My adopted grandmother, Dr. Margaret Barnes, was an osteopath with Revolutionary roots. As a girl in the 1910s and 1920s, her father dressed her as a soldier to march in New England Fourth of July parades.

When people objected, he told them not to worry. In 1776, some fathers knew their daughters had gone off to fight dressed the same way.

He was right. History made room for daughters in uniform. Memory pushed them back out.

I still have the bow she used to teach me archery. In our family, women did not just remember courage. They passed it down.

Poor white men carried the war, too. Joseph Plumb Martin was a teenage soldier. He froze, starved, marched, and later wrote the Revolution from below. Ebenezer Mackintosh was a Boston shoemaker and street organizer. Before gentlemen took seats in Congress, men like him made resistance impossible to ignore.

The Revolution was not made by one class. It was sailors, servants, farmers, shoemakers, soldiers, spies, mothers, fugitives, and the enslaved.

On my father’s side, nine of my ancestors fought the British in Massachusetts. One was a sixteen-year-old fifer at Lexington. They knew Black patriots were there from the first morning.

On my mother’s side, we descend from Richard Bland, Jefferson’s cousin and mentor. Jefferson wrote that all men are created equal. But the same racist hand that scrubbed Attucks from the picture shrank “all men” to white men.

Frederick Douglass scraped that veneer away. In 1852, he asked what the Fourth meant to the slave. In 1869, he called for a “composite nation” — one people made of all peoples. Douglass was not inventing a new America. He was restoring the Revolution to itself.

Who we picture fighting for freedom shapes who we believe deserves it.

Paint Black patriots, women patriots, and poor white patriots out of 1776, and you shrink the nation’s image of itself.

Today’s whitewashing should alarm us.

In 2025, under Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, the Pentagon’s anti-DEI purge swept through military websites. Pages on Jackie Robinson, the Tuskegee Airmen, and Native code talkers were removed, then some were restored after public outcry. The system even flagged the Enola Gay bomber because it contained the word “gay.”

That was not strength. It was cowardice with a search function.

My grandfather’s first cousin, Howard Lee Baugh, was a Tuskegee Airman. He flew more than 130 combat missions against the Nazis. There is a word for men like him: hero.

This Fourth of July, let’s remember Revere’s ride. But let’s redraw Revere’s picture.

Put Attucks back in the center. Put Estabrook on Lexington Green. Put Salem Poor at Bunker Hill. Put Mum Bett in the courthouse. Put Joseph Plumb Martin barefoot in the snow. Put my adopted grandmother in the parade, dressed as the soldier memory tried to deny.

Then look again. That is America.

Ben Jealous is a professor of practice at the University of Pennsylvania and former president and CEO of the NAACP.

Based on reporting by Milwaukee Community Journal.

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Practitioners of African Traditional Spirituality Offer Ancestral Reverence Ritual Oct. 31

The Council for Global Ancestral Reverence will host “Ancestral Souls Rising” from Oct. 31 to Nov. 2, featuring a three-day gathering of prayer and discussion. Led by elders and priests across the African diaspora, the seventh annual ritual honors those lost without traditional rites while addressing current social challenges. This year’s event connects ancestral wisdom with contemporary issues, including a two-day conversation inspired by Afro-Beat music focused on Black community solidarity and the sacred importance of voting. Read more for details on the ritual schedule and participants.

Published

4 days ago

October 19, 2026

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Oakland native Nedra Williams writes sacred symbols on the ground in San Leandro. Courtesy photo.

By Special to The Post

The Council for Global Ancestral Reverence (C4GAR), a group of elders who practice African traditional spirituality, will lead a three-day gathering of prayer and discussion from Oct. 31-Nov. 2.

Called ‘Ancestral Souls Rising,’ the council members and 21 priests will lead the prayers from many parts of the African diaspora: Africa, Portugal, and across the U.S. from Maryland to the Bay Area.

Now in its seventh year, the annual ritual began during the 2020 pandemic when hundreds of thousands of people died alone and were buried in mass graves without rites and rituals according to loved ones’ traditions.

This prayer event was and is intended to give peace to the departed and comfort for the living who still mourn. Each year, we gather names of new ancestors from living elders to elevate them into the “Great Hall of the Titans.”

In ensuing years, C4GAR added themes to the prayer gathering that referenced current events. In 2024, before the consequential presidential election, C4GAR called on people to vote, invoking the memory of Civil Rights Movement heroes and heroines like John Lewis, who urged “Good Trouble,” and Fannie Lou Hamer, who famously declared that she was “sick and tired of being sick and tired.”

The day of global Prayer on Oct. 31 will be followed by a two-day conversation inspired by “The Blueprint,” an Afro-Beat song by UyiosaEl, to write our new blueprint that supports solidarity and action in the Black community.

“Our elders have, for many generations, known the power of prayer, ritual and breath,” the council said in a statement.

It was and is their intention, then, to use the cultural wisdom, the gift of prayer “and the most sacred thing we have, our breath, to send energy into the world that invokes and honors our ancestors,” the council statement continued.

“Doing this creates a vibration that protects us and employs their ancient wisdom for the well-being of our communities,” the elders said.

The councilmembers, all over the age of 60, recognize that what is now history for so many was once their lived experience. And that history, those joys and sorrows, are now in their bodies.

To them, the uttered prayer and the sacred breath are oaths to an unfolding future that people can still shape.

The council members are Dr. Iyabeji Cathy Royal, Iyalocha Jennifer Dillard, Manbo Charlene Desir (Florida), Nana Sula Spirit (Louisiana), Baba Obafemi Feyemi, Ohen Nedra T. Williams, and Iyalocha Wanda Ravernell-Stewart Emeritus (Oakland).

This year, they also encourage everyone within their reach to VOTE because it is not only a secular and political act, but a sacred one. Remember, the ancestors were denied that right and died for it.

For tickets, go to:

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/council-for-global-ancestral-reverence-presents-ancestral-souls-rising-26-tickets-2003127345814?aff=oddtdtcreator

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Oakland Post: Week of October 14 – 20, 2026

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4 days ago

October 19, 2026

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Black History

OP-ED: The Black Church Writes AI’s Next Chapter

BLACKPRESSUSA NEWSWIRE — I implore my fellow faith leaders to use these tools. Start now and use them with wisdom. We count on each and every one of you to make sure our communities help write the next chapter of this story. This rapid change is not as unfamiliar as it may sound. My first understanding of AI came from using a calculator for the first time in grade school. We did not call it AI, but it was a tool that helped me work through mathematical equations hours more efficiently.

Published

4 days ago

October 18, 2026

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For generations, the Black church has stood strong in our communities through every historical change this country has experienced. During the civil rights movement and in recent times, faith leaders have helped uplift Black sanctuaries to register voters, keep food pantries open for people in need, and sit with families in hospital rooms in their most desperate moments. When our people faced new trials, they could always look to our faith leaders and the church to lean in to help us be included in these transformative changes.

Artificial intelligence is the latest revolutionary change to impact our society, and much like other transformations before us, underserved communities often get left behind.

I was recently featured in a report entitled “Faith, Community & AI” and it found that people send ChatGPT more than 70 million messages a week about religion. Nearly 22 million involve studying sacred texts, and 16 million ask about religious practices and holy days. Our members make up part of those numbers. They bring questions of faith to these tools every day.

Pastors have noticed, and according to a September 2025 Lifeway Research survey of 1,003 Protestant pastors, 42 percent said they use or experiment with AI in ministry. I count myself among them.

I write my sermons by hand, through prayer and study. When I finish a draft, I ask ChatGPT this question: “Where might this sermon become unclear or difficult to follow for someone early in their walk of faith?” It shows me gaps in my preparation, like where I incorrectly assumed everyone would know the context of who the Pharisees were. Then, change comes from my own pen, not the robot. The tool helps me reach the person in the back pew while the message still comes from me.

If I could have my wish, our whole community would take a similar posture. We must use these tools, understand them, and most importantly be present to help shape them if we want to be included in the coming change.

I implore my fellow faith leaders to use these tools. Start now and use them with wisdom. We count on each and every one of you to make sure our communities help write the next chapter of this story. This rapid change is not as unfamiliar as it may sound. My first understanding of AI came from using a calculator for the first time in grade school. We did not call it AI, but it was a tool that helped me work through mathematical equations hours more efficiently.

It starts with training; there is no involvement without understanding. Free AI trainings have begun in our churches and community centers across the nation. Every faith leader should sign up and, when possible, encourage members of your congregations to join you. By learning how to use AI, we can better understand what it can do, make up our own minds about its impact, and have a say in how it shapes our communities.”

Next, we must be at the tables where the builders of these tools make decisions. Presence is the first step toward understanding, and that gap is only bridged through a coordinated effort. How can any tool serve a community well if that community is not part of the conversation? Our traditions, needs, and concerns must be accounted for, and Black faith leaders are already making that happen. OpenAI’s recent Faith report states plainly that AI should never become an arbiter of religious truth. I fully intend to hold the company to its word, and the most effective way I can do that is from inside.

I will close with this––we must diligently protect what only the church can give. A believer in Seoul, Korea quoted in the report warned, “if you pour every struggle into a private chat, your pastor and your friends may never learn you need help.” A chatbot will not sit with a grieving family or pray with you at two in the morning. As we adopt this technology, it is up to us to ensure it keeps people connected to each other and to their church.

Rev. Dr. Adolphus Lacey is senior pastor of Bethany Baptist Church in Brooklyn, New York.