Black History Month may be over, but, we can celebrate the stories that make up our history throughout the year.
We are making history every day thanks to the men and women who serve our communities all over the country, fighting for justice and equality.
The NAACP’s commitment to those who move black history forward has been unbroken for more than a century. Let’s continue that commitment together. Become a member of the NAACP. Support our work and join us in making new stories—American stories.
Every time a new voter is registered, or we march in unison to a state capitol, lifting our voices for those who can’t, or fight to end a “Stand Your Ground” law, we are creating black history—American history. Not every hero is as well known as W. E. B. DuBois, Harriet Tubman, or Rosa Parks, but this in no way diminishes the measure of these accomplishments and contributions.
NAACP members stand behind these champions by fighting for the things that matter to all of us. When we work to ensure every person has the right to vote, when we demand an end to racial profiling, when we help to ensure folks have access to health insurance, when we fight for better education and an end to economic inequality, it amplifies the work being done by our unsung heroes every day. We all know that black history is more than one month of note—we stand tall throughout the year. Stand with us. Join us in making history. Become an NAACP member today:
Goodwill in Tacoma is beginning to sell African artifacts valued at more than $11,000.
The 55 artifacts, from the mid-19th to mid-20th century, were used in tribal life and for tribal ceremonies. An anonymous donor left the 55 artifacts at the Port Townsend Goodwill store last month.
The items will be sold online at Shopgoodwill.com, a site used to produce the highest prices for items. The site uses competitive bidding to sell high-end fashion, jewelry, art and other items.
Go to the search portion of the site, pick Tacoma in the drop-down menu of sellers, then search for the items.
Goodwill wants the public to know about the online sales. Officials figure if people know valuable goods can fetch a good price, they might be more willing to donate.
“Many people hesitate to donate their high-end furniture, jewelry, clothing, art and collectibles because they assume their treasures will end up for $4 in our thrift stores,” said Dylan Lipert, manager of online sales, in a news release. “My job is to make sure that doesn’t happen.”
(The gallery above shows some of the artifacts, as well as other items that have or will be sold online.)
More than 140 Goodwill agencies provide items for sale online. In the past six years, Tacoma online operations have more than doubled in size and sales from $2.1 million in FY 2008 to $4.5 million in FY 2013.
SEATTLE — Someone recently donated an old vest to Goodwill, and while that could happen everyday, this one was unusual.
By old, we mean a century old. It’s a beaded Native American vest that’s so valuable, Goodwill couldn’t bear to sell it.
Instead, the non-profit decided to make its own donation. Now, curators from the Burke Museum are analyzing the vest.
It’s an exquisitely detailed piece from the early 1900s. Everything from the color of the beads to the geometric designs to the velvet lining is a clue pointing to the vest’s history.
“Whoever gave it to Goodwill probably knew more about it. They probably knew their grandfather got it while on a train ride through Glacier. That’s the kind of information we’d love to have,” said Robin Wright, Curator of Native American Art.
The vest was inside a trunk, donated to Goodwill in 2006. Someone recognized its value, and instead of going up for sale, the vest went into storage.
Katherine Boury of Goodwill explained, “We have to make the decision, what’s the best use of the donation. In this case because it’s of cultural significance, it seems it would be best to be accessible to everyone.”
Assessors pinpointed it as Native American work from the northern plains.
“There’s been some discussion with various experts about which particular tribe and we’re not able to say precisely which tribe it might be,” said Wright.
It might have been regalia for a pow wow, but at some point, it seems it was sold to a tourist.
Written on the lining – a price tag of $18 – for a vest that probably took several months to make. There is no price on the vest now, and while there are still questions about where it came from, there’s no question where it’s going.
The museum will keep the vest in its collection for the public to see and treasure.
Do you think you have an artifact in your home? Take up to three objects to the annual Artifact ID Day at the Burke on Feb. 9.
The Hopi tribe of northeastern Arizona and supporters including the U.S. ambassador to France and actor Robert Redford had urged the Paris auction house to suspend the sale due to the masks’ cultural
The gavel came down on 70 sacred Hopi Indian masks at the Drouot auction house in Paris on Friday, generating $1.2 million for the owners and auctioneers – and anger and emotional cries from
wonder if there are updates on any of these stories and hopefully progress on stopping this from happening… return them to their place of origin
In another tragic case of white on white violent crime, on sunday afternoon May 17, 2015 several white supremacist motorcycle gangs got into a shot out. There were at least five gang factions involved and 9 people were murdered while 18 were injured as a result of the guns, chains, clubs and knives used in the Waco, Texas motorcycle gang melee.
When police arrived they set up a command center to interview , arrest and process the biker thugs involved in the mini massacre. Fortunately for the murderous gang members, unlike the Baltimore and Ferguson protestors, who killed no one, the national guard was not called and Waco was not occupied like Iraq, even though there were over a 100 weapons recovered .
“Nobody will ever deprive the American people of the right to vote except the American people themselves and the only way they could do this is by not voting.”
WASHINGTON – Days from now, a stately black schooner will sail through a narrow channel into Havana’s protected harbor, its two masts bearing the rarest of sights — the U.S. Stars and Stripes, with the Cuban flag fluttering nearby.
The ship is the Amistad, a U.S.-flagged vessel headed for largely forbidden Cuban waters as a symbol of both a dark 19th century past and modern public diplomacy.
The Amistad is the 10-year-old official tall ship of the state of Connecticut and a replica of the Cuban coastal trader that sailed from Havana in 1839 with a cargo of African captives, only to become an emblem of the abolitionist movement.
Its 10-day, two-city tour of Cuba provides a counterpoint to new and lingering tensions between Washington and Havana and stands out as a high-profile exception to the 47-year-old U.S. embargo of the Caribbean island.
For the Amistad, it also represents a final link as it retraces the old Atlantic slave trade triangle, making port calls that are not only reminders of the stain of slavery but also celebrations of the shared cultural legacies of an otherwise sorry past.
When it drops anchor in Havana’s harbor on March 25, the Amistad will not only observe its 10th anniversary, it will commemorate the day in 1807 when the British Parliament first outlawed the slave trade.
The powerful image of a vessel displaying home and host flags docking in Cuba is not lost on Gregory Belanger, the CEO and president of Amistad America Inc., the nonprofit organization that owns and operates the ship.
“We’re completely aware of all of the issues currently surrounding the U.S. and Cuba,” he said. “But we approach this from the point of view that we have this unique history that both societies are connected by. It gives us an opportunity to transcend contemporary issues.”
It’s not lost on Rep. William Delahunt, either. The Massachusetts Democrat has long worked to ease U.S.-Cuba relations and he reached out to the State Department to make officials aware of the Amistad’s proposal.
U.S.-flagged ships have docked in Havana before, but none as prominently as the Amistad. The Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control has periodically approved Cuba stops for semester-at-sea educational programs for American students, and the Commerce Department has authorized U.S. shiploads of exports under agriculture and medical exemptions provided in the Trade Sanctions Reform Act of 2000.
“Obviously we have serious differences, disagreements,” Delahunt said. “But in this particular case the two governments, while not working together, clearly were aware of the profound significance of this particular commemoration.”
The original Amistad’s story, the subject of a 1997 Steven Spielberg movie, began after it set sail from Havana in 1839. Its African captives rebelled, taking over the ship and sending it on a zigzag course up the U.S. coast until it was finally seized off the coast of Long Island. The captured Africans became an international cause for abolitionists; their fate was finally decided in 1841 when John Quincy Adams argued their case before the Supreme Court, which granted them their freedom.
Miguel Barnet, a leading Cuban ethnographer and writer who has studied the African diaspora, said it is only appropriate that the new Amistad would call on the place of the original ship’s birth. Indeed, he said in an interview from Cuba on Wednesday, it is the horror of the slave trade that left behind a rich common bond — not just between the United States and Cuba, but with the rest of the Caribbean — that is rooted in Africa.
“That’s why this is an homage to these men and women who left something precious for our culture,” he said.
The new Amistad has crossed the Atlantic and wended its way through the Caribbean since 2007. It has worked with the United Nations and UNESCO’s Slave Route Project. Using high technology hidden in its wooden frame and rigging, the ship’s crew of sailors and students has simulcasted to schools and even to the U.N. General Assembly.
It will do so again — with Cuban students — from Havana.
Every time a new voter is registered, or we march in unison to a state capitol, lifting our voices for those who can’t, or fight to end a “Stand Your Ground” law, we are creating black history—American history. Not every hero is as well known as W. E. B. DuBois, Harriet Tubman, or Rosa Parks, but this in no way diminishes the measure of these accomplishments and contributions.
Franklin D. Roosevelt once said
Be a Seed for Change 
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