The first organized immigration of freed enslaved people to Africa from the United States departs New York harbor on a journey to Freetown, Sierra Leone, in West Africa. The immigration was largely the work of the American Colonization Society, a U.S. organization founded in 1816 by Robert Finley to return formerly enslaved African people to Africa.

However, the expedition was also partially funded by the U.S. Congress, which in 1819 had appropriated $100,000 to be used in returning displaced Africans, illegally brought to the United States after the abolishment of the slave trade in 1808, to Africa.

Source: history.com for the complete article

On February 5, 1777, Georgia formally adopts a new state constitution and becomes the first U.S. state to abolish the inheritance practices of primogeniture and entail.

Primogeniture ensured that the eldest son in a family inherited the largest portion of his father’s property upon the father’s death. The practice of entail, guaranteeing that a landed estate remain in the hands of only one male heir, was frequently practiced in conjunction with primogeniture. (Virginia abolished entail in 1776, but permitted primogeniture to persist until 1785.)

Georgians restructured inheritance laws in Article LI of the state’s constitution by abolishing entail in all forms and proclaiming that any person who died without a will would have his or her estate divided equally among their children; the widow shall have a child’s share, or her dower at her option.

Source: history.com for the complete article

This happened in 2015

Jeff Sessions and the FBI are making up Black extremist groups to justify surveillance of our protest movements. We’re suing Jeff Sessions’ FBI. Fund the fight against anti-Black surveillance. CHIP-IN $5 MONTHLY

Dear Friends,

Jeff Sessions and the FBI are working to undermine Black organizers. Which is why we have been suing the FBI and Homeland Security to release documents demonstrating their years of surveillance and criminalization of our movements.

We can win this case, but we need your help. Lawsuits like this can take months or even years. They’re hoping that we’ll back down before we can win. They’re hoping we run out of resources and money. We can’t let that happen. Will you join the legal fund to fight against anti-Black surveillance and become a sustaining donor?

On Tuesday, Jeff Sessions was intensely grilled by Rep. Karen Bass (D-CA) about the FBI’s fallacious “Black Identity Extremist” classification – a nonsense term the FBI uses to intentionally conflate Black activists and organizers with dangerous domestic terrorist organizations, like the KKK and violent neo-Nazi groups.¹

When asked whether he believes there is an organization of Black people that identify themselves as “Black Identity Extremists” and whether they have committed violence against police officers Sessions invented an unnamed Black group he claims killed four police officers in the last year.² When asked whether he’s using the “Black Identity Extremist” classification to illegally surveil the movement for Black lives – Sessions refused to comment.

Even though Sessions refuses to come clean about the extent of the government’s anti-Black surveillance, we have the power to force the FBI to answer us through our lawsuit.

Help us win our lawsuit against the FBI and DHS to expose their anti-Black surveillance by becoming a monthly donor. 

Government surveillance of Black organizes serves not only to keep tabs on our people, but also to intimidate from fighting for justice. Surveillance is a tool of fear. It is a tactic to reinforce white supremacy. Again and again, we’ve seen these agencies target activists of color for simply demanding an end to police violence:³

• In 2015, DHS revealed they had been tracking protesters and attendees of the Funk Music Parade, in Washington, DC and a walk to end breast cancer in a historically Black neighborhood.^4 5
• Before the Republican National Convention last year, the FBI and DHS agents went door-to-door to the homes of Black Lives Matter activists and community organizers in Cleveland, Ohio, to interrogate them about their protest plans.⁶
• In 2014, a FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force surveilled a December 2014 BLM protest at the Mall of America.⁷

The new “Black Identity Extremist” classification will make this surveillance even easier. This surveillance violates the First Amendment, chilling protesters from speaking out, and is eerily reminiscent of the surveillance of the Black Panther Party under FBI’s notorious and illegal COINTELPRO program.

Because of these revelations, in 2016, we decided to file a lawsuit in partnership with the Center for Constitutional Rights after the FBI and DHS refused to disclose documents about their surveillance of people protesting police brutality and racial injustice. Winning this lawsuit will uncover documents that show a long-standing agency culture that criminalizes Black dissent and paints Black protest as a domestic terror or extremist threat.

The “Black Identity Extremist” classification seeks to make being Black and against police violence a crime. But being Black and exercising our right to protest are not crimes, let alone activities that justify being monitored or repressed by counterterrorism units. We have the right to know how and why the federal government is surveilling our constitutionally protected protests of police violence and we will not stop until we get answers and end these illegal tactics.

Help us win our lawsuit against the FBI and DHS to expose their anti-Black surveillance by becoming a monthly donor. 

— Brandi, Rashad, Arisha, Johnny, Evan, Jade, Corina, Chad, Saréya and the rest of the Color Of Change team.

References

1. “‘Jeff Sessions Knows There Are Definitely Black Terror Groups but Can’t Seem to Remember Any White Ones,” Splinter News, 14 November 2017. https://act.colorofchange.org/go/10647?t=18&akid=8179%2E1174326%2EYkw5Dv

2. “Rep. Karen Bass blasts Jeff Sessions over Justice Department report on ‘black identity extremists’,” RawStory, 14 November 2017. https://act.colorofchange.org/go/10648?t=20&akid=8179%2E1174326%2EYkw5Dv

3. “EXCLUSIVE: FEDS REGULARLY MONITORED BLACK LIVES MATTER SINCE FERGUSON,” The Intercept, 24 July 2015. https://act.colorofchange.org/go/5394?t=22&akid=8179%2E1174326%2EYkw5Dv

4. “Homeland Security Is Tracking Black Lives Matter. Is That Legal?,” Mother Jones, 30 July 2015. http://act.colorofchange.org/go/10649?t=24&akid=8179%2E1174326%2EYkw5Dv

5. “EXCLUSIVE: FEDS REGULARLY MONITORED BLACK LIVES MATTER SINCE FERGUSON,” The Intercept, 24 July 2015. https://act.colorofchange.org/go/5394?t=26&akid=8179%2E1174326%2EYkw5Dv

6. “FBI AND POLICE ARE KNOCKING ON ACTIVISTS’ DOORS AHEAD OF REPUBLICAN NATIONAL CONVENTION,” The Intercept, 23 July 2016. https://act.colorofchange.org/go/10650?t=28&akid=8179%2E1174326%2EYkw5Dv

7. “WHY WAS AN FBI JOINT TERRORISM TASK FORCE TRACKING A BLACK LIVES MATTER PROTEST?,” The Intercept, 12 March 2015. https://act.colorofchange.org/go/10651?t=30&akid=8179%2E1174326%2EYkw5Dv

by AmericaNation Team

The Immigration Act of 1917 drastically reduced US immigration by expanding the prohibitions of the Chinese exclusion laws of the late 1800s. The law created an “Asiatic barred zone” provision prohibiting immigration from British India, most of Southeast Asia, the Pacific Islands, and the Middle East. In addition, the law required a basic literacy test for all immigrants and barred homosexuals, “idiots,” the “insane,” alcoholics, “anarchists,” and several other categories from immigrating.
DETAILS AND EFFECTS OF THE IMMIGRATION ACT OF 1917
From the late 1800s to the early 1900s, no nation welcomed more immigrants into its borders than the United States. In 1907 alone, a record 1.3 million immigrants entered the U.S. through New York’s Ellis Island. However, the Immigration Act of 1917, a product of the pre-World War I isolationism movement, would drastically change that.
Also known as the Asiatic Barred Zone Act, the Immigration Act of 1917, barred immigrants from a large part of the world loosely defined as “Any country not owned by the U.S. adjacent to the continent of Asia.” In practice the barred zone provision excluded immigrants from Afghanistan, the Arabian Peninsula, Asiatic Russia, India, Malaysia, Myanmar, and the Polynesian Islands. However, both Japan and the Philippines were excluded from the barred zone. The law also allowed exceptions for students, certain professionals, such as teachers and doctors, and their wives and children.
Other provisions of the law increase the “head tax” immigrants were required to pay on entry to $8.00 per person and eliminated a provision in an earlier law that had excused Mexican farm and railroad workers from paying the head tax.
The law also barred all immigrants over the age of 16 who were illiterate or deemed to be “mentally defective” or physically handicapped.
The term “mentally defective” was interpreted to effectively exclude homosexual immigrants who admitted their sexual orientation. U.S. immigration laws continued to ban homosexuals until passage of the Immigration Act of 1990, sponsored by Democratic Senator Edward M. Kennedy.
The law defined literacy as being able to read a simple 30 to 40 word passage written in the immigrant’s native language. Persons who claimed they were entering the U.S. to avoid religious persecution in their country of origin were not required to take the literacy test.

americanaion.one/us- Immigration- Act- of -1917/