Tag: historical

Why Many Black History Accounts on Social Media Are Wrong

We are living in an era where Black history is being erased every day, so I understand the excitement over discovering all the amazing things our people have done.

However, while I love me a good fun fact, I cannot help but notice that many of the Black history memes floating around social media are often grossly inaccurate or lacking context.

And some are flat-out wrong altogether.

And I am not talking about small pages either. Many of your favorite Black history accounts with millions of followers put out false information every day in the name of Black history.

Yes, this includes those on Substack… not really sure why ya’ll think this isn’t also a social media platform.

With a culture so rich and expansive as ours, we really do not need to embellish what we’ve done. The work is already powerful on its own.

Here are just a few things I wish we would explain more deeply. I am starting with this one because someone told me to “Shut up” on Instagram for pointing it out.

Mary Beatrice Kenner invented the maxi pad.

Context:

What Kenner invented was called the sanitary belt and moisture-resistant pocket, which is not exactly the same as our modern disposable menstrual pad.

Kenner’s patent eventually expired, leading people to take credit for her invention. A company also expressed interest but pulled back after learning she was Black.1

If Kenner had not been rejected, it is highly likely that she would have also invented the disposable pad, likely based on her original idea. However, what she invented was not the same as today’s adhesive pad, as many of these posts insinuate without proper context.

Here is a timeline from a website on A short history of modern menstrual products:

  • 1880s–1890s: Early disposable pads were made of cotton and gauze, often marketed to women traveling by land or sea.
  • 1896: Johnson & Johnson marketed “Lister’s Towels: Sanitary Towels for Ladies,” which were a notable early commercial attempt but failed due to social stigma.
  • 1918–1921: Nurses in WWI used high-absorbency wood-pulp bandages, leading to the creation of Kotex, the first successfully marketed disposable pad.
  • 1926: Johnson & Johnson introduced Modess Sanitary Napkins.
  • 1956/1957: Mary Kenner patented an improved adjustable sanitary belt with a moisture-resistant pocket.

What I would change on this timeline, though, is that Kenner’s invention was in the 1920s, but because of racism, the sanitary belt did not come out until the late 1950s.

This is what I mean by adding context or looking deeper into what we read.

Let’s look at another one.

Claudette Colvin was the first to give up her seat before Rosa Parks.

Context:

She was not the first, but one of many. Irene Morgan did it in 19442, and Ida B. Wells did it in 1884.3

There was also Aurelia S. Browder, who did it in April 1955, almost eight months before Rosa Parks’s arrest and a month after Claudette Colvin’s.

History is not the linear event we think it is. There is so much that happened, and so many people it happened to, we might never know about.

What Claudette Colvin and Rosa Parks represent is the culmination of many years of work and sacrifice by many different Black women.

And one more.

Lewis Howard Latimer invented the light bulb.

Context:

What Lewis Howard Latimer invented was an improved process for manufacturing carbon filaments for electric light bulbs.

In simpler terms, his invention made using light bulbs in homes and businesses more practical. His filaments could be heated to high temperatures without breaking, resulting in longer-lasting, more efficient, and affordable light bulbs.

These are a few easy ones I thought of because I see them a lot, but there are many more.

Before you sit in the Amen corner of anybody’s Black history post (including mine), make sure the information they are sharing is correct. Google (and Google Scholar) is right there.

  1. Sluby, Patricia C. “BLACK WOMEN AND INVENTIONS.” Women’s History Network News, no. 37, 1993, pp. 4.. ↩︎
  2. Lang, Martin. “Irene Morgan and her Impact on Freedom Riders.” ↩︎
  3. Orr, Nicole. Famous Women in History: Ida B. Wells: Crusader for Justice. Curious Fox Books, 2025. ↩︎

In Joseph’s Shadow Part Two

People knew his father and what he had contributed to the movement. They still spoke Joseph’s name with a kind of reverence, as though saying it might conjure the courage of another time. His photograph—creased at the corners, and yellowed with time, hung in barbershops and church foyers, beside posters for fish fries and gospel concerts.

Every February, Joseph’s face reappeared on classroom walls, a reminder of marches and megaphones, of a generation that refused to bow. For the community, Joseph was history come to life.

For Michael, he was just Dad.

Michael and his friends walked past the bulletin board in the school hallway. There it was again: his father’s face, eyes sharp, mouth set like a promise. Michael paused, thinking about his first days at Lindbloom.

“Ey, Mike! Mike!” a classmate had called. “Yo man, so how is it being famous? What was it like?”

Today, he would tell the person to go to hell, but back then, he just shook his head, a small, polite refusal that spoke louder than words.

Michael kept walking, shoulders tight, mind elsewhere, like the chess match he had lost last night. If he had not been hungover, his opponent would not have stood a chance. He didn’t particularly enjoy the taste of liquor, but it got his mind off thinking about walking in a legend’s shadow.

Tanya carried the legacy easily, quoting speeches and smiling at cameras as if born for the stage. But Michael kept to the edges. He wanted to be noticed for his own quiet triumphs—for the way his mind worked over a chessboard, or how the basketball arced perfectly from his fingertips.

Instead, people only ever asked about “The Movement,” their eyes expectant, as if he held some sacred story he refused to tell.

His father’s name was everywhere, in every conversation, every display, every “remember when” retold by people who seemed to think history lived only in him. Not in Michael. Not in the quiet hours he spent imagining, planning, thinking. They acted like he was Martin Luther King’s son.

So what, his father took part in the Freedom Rides? What did that have to do with him? Michael didn’t care about no Barack Obama either. He wasn’t his Savior. He was just another politician. He swallowed hard, tasting the bitterness of being overlooked for the wrong reasons.

History had chosen him without asking, which is why he couldn’t admit to his friends or himself that he had a crush on a white girl.

In Joseph’s Shadow: Part One

Tanya McNair, dressed in her favorite navy-blue blouse, which bore a faint trace of glitter from the campaign rally a month ago, moved from group to group of the crowded apartment. Her living room was alive with chatter, laughter, and the occasional burst of applause from friends and neighbors whenever a commentator announced another state leaning toward Obama. Tanya looked fondly at the old TV set sitting on the floor beneath the big, flat-screen they were all watching.

The floor model television belonged to her grandmother, Sidney McNair—Mama Sidney to everyone who knew her. Uncle Eddy had bought it after great-grandma Judith passed, back when he and his sisters decided to remain in Chicago a while longer. That was also around the time her father, Joseph, disappeared into what he later called a revolution of self-discovery, also known as abandoning the family until he found himself.

The television had been there through it all.

It was the same set where great-grandma Judith—daughter of the great Solomon, son of the first Stella—watched the Black Panthers march down the street in their berets and rifles, demanding the freedom of Huey Newton.

The same screen that flickered quietly in the corner the day Aunt Karen’s boyfriend, Noah, stormed into their lives. Years later, she would name their first and only son after him.

For Tanya, it wasn’t just a piece of furniture but a sacred repository for memories, a portal to her family’s history.

Tanya frowned at the stacks of books on top of it, wondering if she was disrespecting her grandmother by using her TV as a table.

A cheer erupted from the room as the phone rang. Tanya’s heart raced as she ran to answer it without taking her eyes off the flatscreen. So far, Obama was winning.

“Sisss,” sang her little brother.

Tanya raised her eyebrows, “Are you drunk already, Mike?”

“Nah. I’m good. What’s the word?”

Tanya sighed, “Michael, you are not good. I can smell the Hennessy through the phone.”

Mike burst into laughter, and Tanya pulled the phone from her ear. That boy was gonna make her go deaf. “Where are you anyway?”

“I’m handling some business. Why, what’s good?”

“The business you were supposed to be handling is here. What happened to you helping me with the party?”

“The election party? You know I don’t get into alla that,” he said, slurring his words.

“Well, you need to get into it. History is being made. Have you talked with Dad?”

“History? Yea okay. Nah. I ain’t spoke to him today.”

“He was supposed to be coming over.”

“Coming over where?”

“Over here, to the apartment.”

“Not today, he ain’t. He told me he was working on the Malibu.”

“That beat-up old thing?” Tanya sighed. “And I thought you ain’t talk to him?”

“Look, pops don’t wanna hurt yo feelings, but you know the old man don’t vote.”

It didn’t make sense to her. Joseph McNair was born in 1945 and grew up in the ’60s at the height of the Civil Rights Movement. He had heard Dr. King speak, fought segregation with his friends through protest, and was even beaten for trying to integrate at a bus station during the Freedom Rides.

Finding out he really was a mixed Black man and not the white boy he grew up believing himself to be is a history lesson all its own.

And now, as the country waited with bated breath to see if the United States really would elect its first Black President, her father, the revolutionary of the family, didn’t participate in politics?

Joseph McNair was politics!

“Yo T, you there?”

Michael’s voice startled Tanya back to the present, her heart beating a million miles per minute as her guests sat on their hands, quietly waiting on the biggest announcement of their time, the walls echoing with hope.

“Okay, well. I’ll call you back.”

Yep. It’s another Stella book in the works!

Black History Month UK

September walked out of here like she had somewhere to be, and October is strolling in with hella causes, from Breast Cancer Awareness Month to World Mental Health Day (10/10), to PAIL: Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Month. (We gotta come back to this one!)

Additionally, October is Black History Month in the UK, and since I haven’t seen many people in the US discuss it, let’s do so.

If you didn’t already know, October marks Black History Month in the United Kingdom and was first celebrated in October 1987 to coincide with the 150th anniversary of the abolition of slavery in the Caribbean. (1838-1988)

The observation of October as Black History Month had its beginnings in programs and priorities of the Ethnic Minorities Unit (EMU) of the Greater London Council (GLC), and by the Principal Race Relations Adviser and Head of the Unit, Ansel Wong.

But it was Akyaaba Addai-Sebo who took it to new heights. Addai-Sebo came to the UK from Ghana to seek refuge from political persecution in 1984. Like the founder of Black History Month in America (Dr. Carter G. Woodson), Addai-Sebo wanted to challenge racism and celebrate the history and achievements of his people.

But that’s not all.

Akyaaba’s chief inspiration was young people. He says one of the reasons the celebration is in October is to appeal to children returning to school from summer break. According to one story, Akyaaba encountered a distraught mother who complained that her son (whom she had named after Marcus Garvey) asked her why he couldn’t be white.

“The inspiration for Black History Month came from an incident that happened at the GLC where I worked as the Co-ordinator of Special Projects. A colleague of mine, a woman, came to work one morning, looking very downcast and not herself. I asked her what the matter was, and she confided to me that the previous night, when she was putting her son Marcus to bed, he asked her, ‘Mum, why can’t I be white?’

A young Akyaaba Addai-Sebo

He goes on to say:

“So when this incident with Marcus took place in London, it dawned on me that something had to happen here in Britain. I was very familiar with black history month in America, and thought that something like that had to be done here in the UK, because if this was the fountainhead of colonialism, imperialism and racism, and despite all the institutions of higher learning and research and also the cluster of African embassies, you could still find a six year old boy being confused about his identity even though his mother had tried to correct it at birth.”

– Akyaaba Addai-Sebo, www.crer.org.uk

Why It Matters

Although the overwhelming majority of enslaved Blacks were transported to the Caribbean and South America, not just North America, many Americans are still not familiar with our history in other parts of the world.

For example, the English ship that brought the first recorded enslaved Blacks to the American colonies was called The White Lion and arrived in Jamestown, Virginia, on August 20, 1619. However, we were also already being enslaved by other nations, such as being brought to Puerto Rico by Spanish conquerors as early as 1509.

“People from African and Caribbean backgrounds have been a fundamental part of British history for centuries. However, campaigners believe their value and contribution to society are often overlooked, ignored, and distorted.” (trisha@whatson.uk.com)

A Historical Moment: Meeting Michelle

Michelle Petties

I am no longer surprised to find purpose in the people I meet. I am being guided to certain people for a reason. When I complimented Michelle on her Afro at the She Wins Conference last year, I had no idea she had such a rich backstory. When I did a video about the real Great Debaters, I didn’t know Michelle had also attended Wiley College!

Here are some fun facts I learned from her essay: “GROWING UP ON THE ‘COLORED’ SIDE OF THE BORDER:

  • Meet Michelle Petties, whose grandmother and aunt attended Wiley College, a historically Black college depicted in the 2007 film The Great Debaters, starring Denzel Washington. If you follow me on TikTok, I made a video about the real debaters that you can find under my Must Watch playlist. Michelle also attended Wiley in 1974.
Photo Credit: Michelle Petties | The author’s childhood home at 1208 E. Travis St., formerly known as Border Street.
  • Michelle was born and raised in Marshall, Texas, on Border Street (now Travis St), which served as a literal line of separation between the Black community situated south of the street and the white one on the north.
Photo Credit: Michelle Petties | The author (third from right, second row) at Sam Houston Elementary School in 1965.
  • In the fall of 1965, Michelle became one of the first Black students to integrate Sam Houston Elementary School.
  • A library worker denied her entrance because she was not a “mammal.” “If that sounds strange to you,” said Michelle, “imagine how it sounded to a young Black girl growing up at a time when segregation was still very much a part of the culture.”
Photo Credit: Michelle Petties | George Foreman, perhaps Marshall, Texas’s most famous son, meets President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1968. LBJ’s wife, Lady Bird Johnson, was born on a former plantation in Karnack, Texas, which is considered the Greater Marshall area.
  • She used to play with George Foreman as a child.

You Can Read Michelle’s Full Essay Here!

The Stella Series: Meet the Family

As mentioned, I am reviving the Stella series with a fourth book! For those who have not read the first three books, I’ll share excerpts, nuggets, and tidbits as we prepare for the fourth installment. Today, we are refamiliarizing ourselves with some of the family. Enjoy!

Stella May

Born in 1845, Stella is the daughter of a Black woman named Deborah on Paul Saddler’s Plantation in Shreveport, Louisiana. From a young age, she can remember running through cotton fields and being loved by her family. To young Stella, life is simple and fun. She eats sweet cakes, plays with her friend Carla, and helps the grownups by carrying buckets of water to the field. Stella discovers she is a slave for the first time after Deborah’s unexplained death. Now, she learns the hard way the difference between slavery and freedom.

Solomon Curtis May

Solomon has no speaking roles, but his existence is essential for the family timeline. Solomon Curtis May is Stella’s only son, born in the fall of 1870 after she was sexually assaulted by the husband of her mistress. Solomon falls in love with a white woman and marries her after inheriting land outside Chicago. They have four girls: Deborah, named for his grandmother, Judith, Rebecca, and Sara.

Judith May

Solomon’s daughter Judith married a Black man and gave birth to a baby girl she named Stella after her grandmother. However, after enduring much teasing and discrimination for her mixed features, Judith’s daughter copes with this trauma by denying part of her ancestry. She changes her name from Stella to Sidney McNair and passes for white. After marrying a white man and having his children, Sidney lives her life on the other side of the color line.

Sidney McNair

Her aunt Sara influenced Sidney to pass for white and learn to enjoy her privileges. Sidney marries a wealthy white man named Clarence McNair, and they have four children: Edward, Karen, Joseph, and Glenda, whom they raise as white.

However, when she finally reveals the truth to her adult children in 1979, the shock of their real identity is a betrayal that stretches across generations.

Karen and Noah

Sidney’s daughter Karen McNair falls in love with a young Black man named Noah Daniels. He is a leading member of the Black Panther Party and thinks he’s dating a white girl. At this time, Karen also does not know that she is mixed race, although she has many more African American features than her siblings. The couple endures many trials because of their perceived interracial union. Together, they have a son, Noah Jr, who has a much more significant role as an adult in book four.

Edward McNair

Of all Sidney’s children, her sons are the most conflicted by their mother’s betrayal. Carrying many characteristics of his father, Clarence, Edward has not only lived his life as a white man but has also enjoyed the privileges of doing so and cannot come to grips with his new reality. In brief, Edward does not want to be Black, and his daughter, Cynthia, does not yet know about her true identity because of her father’s secrets.

However, although he appears to reject his heritage, something in Edward’s subconscious won’t allow him to completely forget it. We see this when he names his youngest son after his great-grandfather, Solomon.

Joseph McNair

Joseph is also conflicted about his mother’s decisions, but goes in another direction. Still under the illusion that he is just a white boy, he nevertheless feels sympathy for the plight of Blacks and fights for their freedom with his friends during the 1960s.

Unlike Edward, Joseph wishes he were Black. He grew up to marry a Black woman named Fae, and together, they have two children, a boy named Michael and a girl named Tanya.

Introducing Tanya and Michael…

Born in the early 90s, Tanya and Michael are the children of Joseph and Fae and are young adults in the early 2000s. They face the challenge of defining themselves in a society shaped by their father’s choices and haunted by the truths Stella once fought to conceal.

In book three, they are small children, but in book four, they are young adults. In his part, we weave together the struggles of a new generation to find their voice, identity, and place in a world still wrestling with its past. The echoes of Stella’s decisions resound, reminding us that even as times change, the threads of heritage and truth remain unbroken.

Get Started on The Stella Trilogy!

Book Four: Joseph’s Children

(Working Title)

(WIP/Coming Soon)

Stay tuned for a sneak peek at chapter one of book four!

The Stella Series Continues

I published the first book in the Stella Trilogy in 2015 and revised it in 2020. I have been working on a part four recently, and I am excited to continue this family’s story.

If you have not read the series, I highly recommend it in preparation for the next part. (If you read these books from 2015 to 2016, you are advised to read the revised editions with the alternate ending!)

Like the others, it will be a historical fiction novella or short novel.

When Cynthia McNair’s grandmother overhears her and her boyfriend joking about Blacks in a derogatory way, she has a story. Born in 1845, Stella Mae was an enslaved woman on the Saddler Plantation in Shreveport, Louisiana. Forced to stay on the plantation after Emancipation, she endures much abuse and revelation. She eventually gives birth to an only son, whom she names Solomon Curtis Mae. Stella’s story takes place in book one, Between Slavery and Freedom.

Solomon was given land by the same enslaver who freed him and Stella. As a man, Solomon married a white woman, and they had four girls: Deborah, Rebecca, Judith, and Sara.

Solomon’s daughter Judith gave birth to a baby girl named after her grandmother because they looked so much alike. However, this Stella did not take pride in who she was and lived her life as a white woman and raised her children as white. We watch her struggle from delusion to acceptance during the Jim Crow era as she navigates being married to a racist white man who doesn’t even know his wife is Black. Stella has even changed her name to Sidney McNair. Her story takes place in the second book, Beyond the Colored Line.

Sidney McNair, formerly Stella, gave birth to four children: Edward, Karen, Jospeh, and Glenda. Edward is Cynthia’s father.

Because she raised them as white, Sidney’s children did not know about their African ancestry until 1979. The person most conflicted about this was Joseph, who felt sympathy for the plight of Blacks and fought for their freedom with his friends during the 1960s. His story takes place in the third book, The Road to Freedom. In book three, we learn that Joseph married a Black woman named Fae, and they had two children, Tanya and Micheal.

Joseph’s Children: Book Four in the Stella Series (WIP)

Book Four unfolds in 2008. Tanya is now eighteen, her confidence growing as she steps into adulthood with fire in her heart and ambition in her eyes. Her sixteen-year-old younger brother Michael wrestles with the same questions of identity and purpose that once drove their father to leave home in search of answers nearly half a century earlier.

Against the backdrop of Barack Obama’s historic presidency, the heartbreak of Trayvon Martin’s murder, and the rise of Black Lives Matter, Joseph’s children navigate a new era. They face the challenge of defining themselves in a society shaped by their father’s choices and haunted by the truths Stella once fought to conceal.

The story weaves together the struggles of a new generation to find their voice, identity, and place in a world still wrestling with its past. The echoes of Stella’s decisions resound, reminding us that even as times change, the threads of heritage and truth remain unbroken, binding the present to the past.

Stay tuned for a sneak peek at chapter one!