Yecheilyah’s Book Reviews Special Edition: Introducing William Spivey’s Strong Beginnings

Title: Strong Beginnings

Author: William Spivey

Publisher: TBA

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/StrongBeginningsaNovel/

Blog: https://enigmainblack.wordpress.com/

E-mail: wspiv001@aol.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/william.spivey1

Twitter: @wspiv001

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This is the last book review of the year, and what a way to go out. Today’s review is a special one.

I’d like to welcome William Spivey, who frequently writes about politics and popular culture for the Inner-City News. Also, he writes under the name “Enigma in Black” about various socially significant topics, including politics, religion, and poetry. He is the creator of the Facebook sites Enigma in Black and Ordinary Citizen Forum. While attending Fisk University, William won the “The Importance of a Liberal Arts Education” Essay Contest, open to all students. He lives in Orlando, Florida, and graduated from Fisk with a B.A. in economics.

His goal now is to make his voice heard and make a difference, and he has given me the honor of advanced reading his soon-to-be-released Political Fiction/Romance novel Strong Beginnings.

When Frederick Douglass Strong witnessed the murder of four African Americans on the Moore’s Ford Bridge in Covington Georgia in 1966, he set into motion a string of events that would influence his family’s actions for years to come. After all, Frederick wasn’t the only one to witness what would be known as The Moore’s Ford Bridge Four but so did Chris Lee Thomas, the teenage friend of his son Roosevelt and the son of one of the white men who just murdered the four.

Gripped with anxiety, Frederick goes home and is unable to sleep. With a thorough understanding of the time, he is drenched in fear of what could happen next. Neglecting to reveal the details to his pregnant wife, he suffers silently until a knock is heard on the door. It’s Chris Lee Thomas and he wants Frederick to step outside. Frederick does and is faced with a lynch mob. Meanwhile, his son Roosevelt is peeking through his bedroom window, watching as the men chase his father.

However, Chris also sees Roosevelt just as his father, and the family is panicked with a decision of a lifetime. After Frederick’s death, it is clear, they must leave Covington if Roosevelt is to survive.

The story follows the life of Roosevelt and his family fifty years after The Moore’s Ford Bridge Four in Orlando Florida. His daughter, Voncelle Strong is one of the foremost voices of the novel. She is a passionate teacher and blogger. We watch as she positively influences her students, battles the unfair school system, juggles relationships, and comes face to face with relatives she didn’t know she had.

As for the incident, can the Strong family outrun their beginnings? What will happen when they come face to face with their past?

I recommend Strong Beginnings to anyone passionate about the plight of African Americans, those concerned about education politics, and those with a love affair for strong families.

Ratings:

Plot Movement / Strength: 4/5

Entertainment Factor: 5/5

Characterization: 4/5

Authenticity / Believable: 5/5

Thought Provoking: 5/5

Overall Rating: 4.5 / 5

Strong Beginnings is not yet available. Stay tuned.

Don’t forget to Follow this Author online!

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/StrongBeginningsaNovel/

Blog: https://enigmainblack.wordpress.com/

E-mail: wspiv001@aol.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/william.spivey1

Twitter: @wspiv001

I have many more authors to come so be sure to return to The PBS Blog after the new year.

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Yecheilyah’s Book Reviews Special Edition: Introducing William Spivey’s “Strong Beginnings”

Title: Strong Beginnings

Author: William Spivey

Publisher: TBA

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/StrongBeginningsaNovel/

Blog: https://enigmainblack.wordpress.com/

E-mail: wspiv001@aol.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/william.spivey1

Twitter: @wspiv001

*I received a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review*

kimg0063

This is the last book review of the year and what a way to go out. Today’s review is a special one.

I am honored to introduce to you William Spivey, a regular contributor to the Inner-City News where he writes about politics and popular culture. He also blogs as “Enigma in Black” where he explores poetry, religion, politics and all manner of things socially relevant. He is the founder of the Facebook pages Average Citizen Forum, and Enigma in Black. William is also the winner of a University-wide Essay Contest while at Fisk University titled, “The Value of a Liberal Arts Education”. He holds a B.A. in Economics from Fisk and resides in Orlando, FL.

His goal now is to make his voice heard and make a difference, and he has given me the honor of advanced reading his soon to be released Political Fiction/Romance novel “Strong Beginnings”.

When Frederick Douglass Strong witnesses the murder of four African Americans on the Moore’s Ford Bridge in Covington Georgia in 1966, he set into motion a string of events that would influence the actions of his family for years to come. After all, Frederick wasn’t the only one to witness what would be known as The Moore’s Ford Bridge Four but so did Chris Lee Thomas, the teenage friend of his son Roosevelt and the son of one of the white men who just murdered the four.

Gripped with anxiety, Frederick goes home and is unable to sleep. With a thorough understanding of the time, he is drenched in the fear of what could happen next. Neglecting to reveal the details to his pregnant wife, he suffers silently until a knock is heard on the door. It’s Chris Lee Thomas and he wants Frederick to step outside. Frederick does and is faced with a lynch mob. Meanwhile, his son Roosevelt is peeking through his bedroom window, watching as the men chase his father.

However, Roosevelt is also seen by Chris just as his father was and the family is panicked with a decision of a lifetime. After Frederick’s death, it is clear, they must leave Covington if Roosevelt is to survive.

The story goes on to follow the life of Roosevelt and his family fifty years after The Moore’s Ford Bridge Four in Orlando Florida. His daughter, Voncelle Strong is one of the foremost voices of the novel. She is a passionate teacher and blogger and we watch as she positively influences her students, battles the unfair school system, juggle relationships and come face to face with relatives she didn’t know she had. As a former teacher, I enjoyed Voncelle’s fight for the student’s well-being.

As for the incident, can the Strong family outrun their beginnings? What will happen when they come face to face with their past?

There were many things to love about this book, such as the History, the family bonds, and education. Most of all, I loved how the title to this book is appropriately titled. Not only in its relation to the Strong family and the symbolism of new beginnings, but the beginning of this novel also starts out strong. I was nervous for Roosevelt as the family was deciding what should be done before making the decision to leave Covington. I also enjoyed the relationships, how they were tied into the story in a realistic way. For instance, when Voncelle travels to Europe she meets two young men who have more in common with her than she thinks and when a family member contacts Roosevelt all those years later for a family reunion, it sets in motion a string of revelations that would impact the family for a lifetime I am sure.

I recommend Strong Beginnings to anyone with a passion for the plight of African Americans, for those concerned about the politics of education and those who have a love affair for strong families.

Ratings:

Plot Movement / Strength: 4/5

Entertainment Factor: 5/5

Characterization: 4/5

Authenticity / Believable: 5/5

Thought Provoking: 5/5

Overall Rating: 4.5 / 5

Strong Beginnings is not yet available. Stay tuned.

Don’t forget to Follow this Author online!

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/StrongBeginningsaNovel/

Blog: https://enigmainblack.wordpress.com/

E-mail: wspiv001@aol.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/william.spivey1

Twitter: @wspiv001

I hope you enjoyed our final review of the year! It’s been amazing and I am truly honored to be in the company of such a talented group of individuals. Don’t forget that you can contact all of the authors on the new Indie Author Page HERE. It’s a new page so there isn’t much going on right now but over my break (which started about…5 seconds ago) I intend to update it so it looks more “authorly” (whatever that means lol).

I have many more authors to come so be sure to return to The PBS Blog after the new year. If you’re an author in need of more reviews, be sure to register your book HERE for consideration. Also, do not forget to update me on any special occasions or anything exciting you have going on! I love supporting the authors I review so let’s stay in touch. Each one, reach one.

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Beyond Imagination

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We live in a world where some aspects of truth are not allowed to exist. They live instead behind the pages of books and underneath the skin of imagination. Writing fiction is fun to me because we have the opportunity to play with these elements, mixing and matching reality and daydreams until anything becomes possible within reach of imagination.

Monsters pop in from outer space, people fly, and houses speak to us. But the truth is stranger than fiction and stretches beyond imagination. Nothing we can make up compares to the unusual reality of the kinds of things that actually take place in the real world. You think you’re watching a movie written by a writer who stuttered embellishments in the darkness of his bedroom, fingers tapping against the keyboard while memory plays hide and seek with his thoughts.

But what if his characters really do exist? What if armies of giants live underground with thousand eye locusts like horses ready for battle?

You think Shrek was the genius of a profound imagination until you realize there were talking Donkeys in the history of man. You think The Matrix is just a movie until you begin to understand a parallel universe.

“Truth is Stranger Than Fiction” isn’t just a fancy tagline put together by a writer of fiction. Not something I dug up between the inspirations of Mark Twain. What it seeks to communicate is the notion that nothing we can create can be as unusual as what we are bound to find in real life and speaks metaphorically of the unsettling realness of truth. The “strangeness” of reality. You think something is weird until you find out just how deep the rabbit hole goes.

Perhaps maybe your characters are not just stick men, but what if they actually do exist?

Black History Fun Fact Friday – Free Frank

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This is a man who was free in more ways than one. Welcome back to Black History Fun Fact Friday. Meet, Free Frank.

The first African American to found his own town in the United States, Free Frank was born Frank McWorter on September 7, 1777 as a slave in South Carolina to a West African woman named Juda. Having been abducted and then enslaved it is commonly assumed that his father was the Scots-Irish master George McWhorter. In any event, Frank was leased by McWhorter to neighbors as a laborer. This experience (despite the situation) lead to him gaining entrepreneurial skills and businesses skills being around those he was leased to.

free-frank

He later married an African American woman from another plantation named Lucy. Together they had four children. The extra money Frank was making gave him the opportunity not only to free himself but also his wife ($800) and oldest son. Earlier in life he’d founded a saltpeter plant which he sold later in exchange for the freedom of Frank Jr. who was a fugitive in Canada. Lucy and Frank also had three more freeborn children.

Free Frank did more than free individuals from slavery but he was also an entrepreneur. Frank and his family moved to Pike County, Illinois in 1830 and in 1836 founded what is now Philadelphia Illinois. Frank built the community on 80 acres of land, but it didn’t stop here. Limited by state statutes, McWorter petitioned the Illinois General Assembly using a legislative loophole, and by 1836 he and his sons owned 600 acres in Hadley Township without restriction. Frank leased plots to both white and black residents.

Although the railroad sliced through Pike County in 1869, there were some parts of the community that remained active until the 1920s and is considered one of the most famous antebellum towns.

The town size grew to approximately 160 people, 29 households, and several craftspeople and merchants by 1865. Frank witnessed that growth until his death in 1854 at the age of 77 years, while Lucy lived to 99 years of age, raising their family until her death in 1870.

Black History Fun Fact Friday – Jan Matzeliger

Growing up, my brother was a collector of the latest Nikes. He was the Air Force One version of the Air Jordan lover. He’ll collect all kinds of pairs of “Air Ones” and stack them in his room or in the basement. It was truly a work of art and since he actually is an artist, sometimes he even drew on them! In any event, it’s no secret, black people love shoes! I don’t say that in a discriminatory way, for African Americans are known to set the trend. There’s nothing wrong with our love for fashion which is often mimicked all over the world. It makes sense then, why it was an African American man who helped to revolutionize the shoe making industry. Meet Jan Matzeliger.

Jan Matzeliger was born in Surinam, formerly known as Dutch Guiana, in South America. Of mixed ancestry, Jan’s father was a Dutch engineer and his mother of African ancestry. Naturally, since his dad was an engineer, Jan would accompany his father to work and developed a skill for repairing complicated equipment.

At nineteen, Jan left home to explore the rest of the world, and began work aboard an Indian ship. He found his way to America and settled in Pennsylvania where he became interested in shoe making and worked at a shoe making factory.

Jan Matzeliger Machine — The Lasting Machine

Though Jan was interested in improving how shoes were made, two obstacles were in his way: He could barely speak English and at that time shoes in the U.S. all came from the small town of Lynn, Massachusetts where “Hand Lasters” (people who could attach the different parts of the shoe together by hand), could only produce 50 pairs of shoes per ten-hour day. Though paid well, Jan had the discernment to see that what Hand Lasters were doing was not as good as everyone thought. There had to be a better way.

Specifically, there was no machine that could attach the upper part of a shoe to the sole and this is basically what the “Hand Lasters” were doing and they were the experts. According to them, “No matter if the sewing machine is a wonderful machine. No man can build a machine that will last shoes and take away the job of the Laster, unless he can make a machine that has fingers like a Laster – and that is impossible.” Jan Matzeliger thought they were wrong and set out to build a machine that would do just that.

Jan's Finished Lasting Machine — Jan’s Finished Lasting Machine

Jan is a great inspiration for setting out to achieve something that no one thought would work. He worked hard on this machine using whatever he could find – cigar boxes, nails, paper, scrap wire—and after six months had a workable model. Jan however, did not have much money. He also kept his project secret. Still, the “expert” Hand Lasters found out and made fun of him for his project. Someone offered him $50.00 for the machine but Jan wasn’t having it. They tried to play him, but he was smarter than that. He turned down more and more offers and continued perfecting his machine until a better offer came from which he could acquire the tools to perfect the machine even more.

In March of 1883, the United States Patent Office issued a patent for Jan’s machine, which could produce 700 pairs of shoes a day, to the Hand Lasters 50 pair and the rest is history. Jan had officially revolutionized the shoe making industry.

Some of my brother’s art, “The Shoe King”

How does Jan’s invention help us today?

Today, shoe making involves four departments: Clicking or Cutting, Closing or Machining, Lasting & Making, Finishing Department and the Shoe Room. The Lasting and Making part is where Jan’s invention would come in. “In the early days of shoe making, shoes were made mainly by hand. For proper fit, the customer’s feet had to be duplicated in size and form by creating a stone or wooden mold called a “last” from which the shoes were sized and shaped. Since the greatest difficulty in shoe making was the actual assembly of the soles to the upper shoe, it required great skill to tack and sew the two components together. It was thought that such intricate work could only be done by skilled human hands.” (Wikipedia)

That is until Jan’s machine. Today, soles, which were once laboriously hand-stitched on, are now more often machine stitched or simply glued on by shoe making manufacturing.

In Case You Missed It:

Black History Fun Fact Friday: Sarah Rector

Sources.

Jan Ernst Matzeliger

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Ernst_Matzeliger

Now Everyone Can Afford Decent Shoes.”5 Dec 2012. https://web.archive.org/web/20120821203314/http://www.users.fast.net/~blc/xlhome9.htm Archived from the original on August 21, 2012.

“Jan Matzeliger”. The Black Inventor Online Museum.

Jan H. Liedhard. “No. 522: Jan Matzeliger (transcript of radio show Engines of Our Ingenuity episode)”. University of Houston.

“Jan Ernst Matzeliger ‘Lasting Machine'”. Lemelson-MIT. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Retrieved 29 February 2016.

Reference: Hayden, Robt. C., Eight Black American Inventors. Addison-Wesley, 1972

Black History Fun Fact Friday – Sarah Rector

Welcome Back to Black History Fun Fact Friday!

I introduce to you Sarah Rector who was just eleven when she received international attention for being a millionaire.

In 1913, The Kansas City Star publicized the headline, “Millions to a Negro Girl.”

Sarah Rector was born on March 3, 1902, in Twine, Oklahoma, on Muscogee Creek, Native American land where her family had been enslaved.

The Dawes Act of 1887 was created by the United States to “bridge the gap” concerning their acquisition of Indian Land. Authorized to survey American Indian tribal land and divide it into allotments for individual Indians and their families, Native Americans were offered U.S. Citizenship in return.

This included land for the people they formerly had enslaved.

In 1907, The Dawes Allotment Act divided the land among the Creeks and their former slaves, and thus, Sarah and her family all received land.

“Long before the births of Sarah and her three siblings, the Creek Nation agreed with the federal government to emancipate their 16,000 slaves, giving them citizenship in their nation and entitling them to equal interest in soil and national funds. They became known as Freedmen.”

-Steve Gerkin, The Unlikely Baroness

One fact this story brings to light is the ownership of blacks as enslaved people by the Five Civilized Native American Tribes. The Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek, and Seminole Nations all had Blacks as slaves. In fact, Sarah and her family had a rich history as enslaved by the Creeks.

“Sarah’s father Joe Rector was the son of John Rector, a Creek Freedman. John Rector’s father Benjamin McQueen, was a slave of Reilly Grayson a Creek Indian. John Rector’s mother Mollie McQueen was a slave of Creek leader, Opothole Yahola. Their history is a rich one. The son Joe was enrolled with them on the same card.”

-Angela Y. Walton-Raji Educator, Genealogist, Author & Researcher

Per the Act, the head of a family would receive a grant of 160 acres, and this is what Sarah and her family received. “The Creek Nation was sliced up into 160-acre squares, “more or less,” and doled out to the Natives and former slaves; each received 120 acres for agriculture and 40 acres for homesteading.” (Gerkin)

This is when the story gets interesting concerning Sarah’s portion.

To help with taxes on the land, Sarah’s father leased her portion to the Devonian Oil Company of Pittsburgh, and in 1913, everything changed when it struck gold. The oil was booming, bringing in 2500 barrels a day, bringing Sarah $300 a day. Multiple new wells were productive, and Rector’s portion became part of the Cushing-Drumright Field in Oklahoma, “The most prolific early oil field in Oklahoma discovered in Creek County about twelve miles east of Cushing and one mile north of present Drumright.” (Oklahoma Historical Society)

As word of Sarah and her wealth circulated, many people sought to ask for her hand in marriage and acquire loans, and perhaps the most bizarre is her change in identity. Sarah went from a young black girl to a white one.

Being that this was the early 1900s, after all, many whites could not accept that someone like Sarah could have so much money. Thus, many began to seek to change her from black to white. Even more, Sarah’s guardianship, like our story last week, also changed, switching from her parents to a white man named T.J. Porter.

An article published in 1914 by The Chicago Defender claimed that Sarah was being ill-cared for by her “ignorant” parents, that she was uneducated, dressed in rags, and lived in unsanitary conditions.

On the contrary, Sarah and her siblings attended an all-black school in an all-black town (Taft, a town in Muskogee County, Oklahoma) in a five-room house. Rector would also go on to attend Children’s House, a boarding school for teens at Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, now Tuskegee University. This could have something to do with her acquaintance with men like Booker T. Washington, and W.E.B. Dubois.

Sarah left Tuskegee when she turned eighteen and moved to Kansas City, Missouri, with her family. By now, she was a full-fledged millionaire owning a Busy Bee Café, boarding house, and bakery, stocks, and bonds. As Sarah’s money increased, so did her male suitors. At twenty, she married Kenneth Campbell, and together, they had three sons. The couple divorced, and she married again, this time to William Crawford.

Sarah Rector died on July 22, 1967, at 65. Though there is much speculation on the remainder of her life, I believe that because she is not as known as some, Sarah shielded herself and her family from the spotlight as much as possible. After the false claims and accusations concerning her identity, her life seemed to fade away in the background. She went on to college and afterward moved to a different state where she and the family lived in what is known as The Rector Mansion today.

Sources: Special to The Chicago Defender

The Chicago; Nov 15, 1913; ProQuest Historical Newspapers The Chicago Defender (1910 – 1975)

Remembering Sarah Rector, Creek Freedwoman

http://african-nativeamerican.blogspot.com/2010/04/remembering-sarah-rector-creek.htmlThe Unlikely Baroness by Steve Gerkin http://thislandpress.com/2015/03/24/the-unlikely-baroness/

CUSHING-DRUMRIGHT FIELD.

http://www.okhistory.org/index.php?full

Find more Articles at Black History Fun Fact Friday

Black History Fun Fact Friday – The Fultz Sisters

As a twin, I could not help but be attracted to this story, and as I studied their life in preparation for writing this article, it wouldn’t take long for me to see the red flags. From the media perspective, you’d think the quads and their families were wealthy, with a house on 150-acres of land and the live-in nurse.

This couldn’t be further from the truth.

Mary Louise, Mary Ann, Mary Alice, and Mary Catherine were born on May 23, 1946, at Annie Penn Hospital in North Carolina. Known as “The Fultz Quadruplets,” they were the first recorded identical black quadruplets globally and the first set of quads to survive in the South.

If the fact they are all named marry isn’t weird enough for you, their white doctor, Dr. Fred Klenner, delivered and named the girls after women in his family. His wife, Mary Ann, his aunt Mary Alice, his daughter Mary Louise and his great aunt Mary Catherine.

The girls were born at the segregated hospital wing, which was really just the basement. Mr. Fultz (whose name was James, not Pete as he was called) was a Sharecropper, and Mrs. Fultz being both deaf and mute, couldn’t read and write according to “And Then There was One” by Lorraine Ahearn, (August 2002). Besides this, the Fultz’s had six other children without a car, electricity, phone, and running water.

Thus, they didn’t debate when Klenner negotiated a deal with a Pet Milk Company that paid all medical expenses, food, land, a house, and a live-in nurse to care for the girls. All of this was in exchange for using the girls for promotional purposes. Klenner even created a schedule where people could come and visit the quads, who were put on display behind a glass screen.

Pet Milk sales skyrocketed as the girls helped to brand the product, becoming the face of Pet Milk. Pet Milk?

“And so it was that the Fultz Quadruplets left Annie Penn Hospital: under contract, named after their white doctor’s relatives, headed home to a glass-enclosed nursery and driven there in a pair of McLaurin Funeral Home ambulances.”

– Lorraine Ahearn

Blogger Ladyrayne on Talking Stuff, who wrote a post on the Quads after listening to The Tom Joyner Morning Show last year wrote, “According to Edna Saylor, the nurse who worked at the Annie Penn Hospital and who would eventually become the quads legal guardian, the farm that was given to the Fultz family really didn’t amount to much and PET could have done a better job when it came to helping the Fultz family. Ms. Saylor stated that PET took advantage of the Fultz family because they were considered backwoods type of people.”

The Quads were adopted by Charles and Elma Saylor, who moved them to Yanceyville, and their travels became more frequent. They flew to Chicago at the invitation of Ebony publisher Johnnie Johnson. He featured them on his cover four times, appeared in Chicago’s star-studded Bud Billiken Parade, went on TV with Roy Rogers and Texas Pete, and would go on to appear in many more ads and make TV appearances. At thirteen (1959), the sisters performed as a string quartet in the annual Orange Blossom Festival in Miami, Florida, and at sixteen (‘ 62), they were featured in a Pet Milk ad for an autographed picture. Many remember them most from their visit to meet Presidents Harry S. Truman and John F. Kennedy.

Pet Milk became the first to offer nonfat dry milk, an advance over the powdered milk developed in the 1920s. Sales soared when Pet Milk took advantage of the post-war baby boom and promoted The Fultz Sisters, a national sensation due to their rarity, making 1950 the all-time-high sales year for Pet Evaporated Milk.

“For no matter what the public thought, the highly publicized Pet Milk advertising contracts had brought in just enough money—$350 a month— to keep the Fultz Quads off North Carolina’s welfare rolls.” (Chares L. Sanders, Ebony Magazine, November 1968)

Sadly, all the Fultz sisters developed breast cancer later in life, with only one sister who survived it (Mary Catherine).

SOURCES:
EBONY, “The Fultz Quads” by Charles L. Sanders, Nov. 1968.

Ebony’s Spread on the Sisters can be found on Google Books HERE (Page 212) (Its cool going through the Ads from 1968 too!)

News & Record

http://wc.rootsweb.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?op=GET&db=caswellcounty&id=I37423

“And then there was one” by Staff Writer Lorraine Ahearn, Aug. 2002.

http://www.roccomanzi.it/IMP-VITAMINERALI/SCIENZIATI/scienziati-docu/klenner/FultzQuadswasone_file/FultzQuadswasone.htm

Talking Stuff Blog

https://talkinstuff.wordpress.com/2015/06/10/the-fultz-quadruplets/

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