Left Coast Cowboys

Nobody is ever going to mistake me for African-American, but I’m an unrepentant history buff and a trivia queen. So when a month is announced that celebrates history — especially history that hasn’t always traditionally been in the curriculum (trivia by another name?), you know I’m going to be all over it like a cheap suit. Besides: Black History, White History, Green History, Purple History. If it happened in this country, it’s all American History. Therefore I’m claiming it.

The Two Terriers Twist? I’m seeking out what I think are the lesser known figures in the hopes that I’ll amaze you with little-known facts. Or maybe I won’t. Maybe the figures I highlight here are all well known and it’s been too many years since I was in High School. But maybe I’ll introduce you to some unsung heroes of American history.

Our first contestant:

Henry Ossian Flipper, First Black Graduate of West Point, Civil Engineer, Author

Born into slavery, Henry Ossian Flipper was appointed to the West Point Class of 1877 by his Atlanta Congressman. He endured four years of  ”silent treatment” where his fellow cadets refused to speak to him, look at him or acknowledge his existence. He graduated with distinction and served with honor until racism and a trumped up court martial stripped him of military status. Afterwards, he distinguished himself as a civil engineer, in the Spanish-American War and as assistant and advisor to the US Secretary of the Interior in 1921. He never stopped fighting to clear his name. In 1976, his descendants petitioned successfully to have his dismissal reversed and an honorable discharge dated retroactively to 1882. West Point now awards the annual Henry O. Flipper Award to graduating cadets at the Academy who “exhibit leadership, self-discipline, and perseverance in the face of unusual difficulties.” Read more about him through his autobiographies: The Colored Cadet at West Point and  Negro Frontiersman: The Western Memoirs of Henry O. Flipper.

Benjamin O. Davis, Jr., Tuskegee Airman, First African-American General in the US Air Force.

You get a two-fer with our next contestant. Son of the first African-American general in the United States Army, Benjamin O. Davis Jr. began his air career as a barnstorming teen pilot, eventually as a member of the famed Tuskegee Airmen and finally as the first African-American General of the Air Force. A member of the West Point Class of 1936, Davis suffered the same silent treatment as Ossian Flipper. During a distinguished and decorated military career through two wars, he was tapped by President Harry Truman to draft and help implement the full integration of the Armed Services in the Fifties. See him played by Andre Braugher in the movie The Tuskegee Airmen.

Now for some of the ladies:

Madam CJ Walker. Businesswoman, entrepreneur, philanthropist.

The Guinness Book of Records cites Walker as the first female who became a millionaire by her own achievements. Not the first African-American female. The first female. The first of her family to be born into freedom, she eventually developed her own line of cosmetics and haircare products formulated for African-American skin and hair. More than for amassing a fortune, Madam Walker should be remembered for the economic opportunities she created for thousands. Her agents, mostly black women, could earn from $5 to $15 per day in an era when unskilled white laborers were making about $11 per week — a fact in which she took great pride. She retired to an Italianate Villa in New York, designed by architect Vertner Tandy, the first registered black architect in the state. There she, and later her daughter, supported artists, musicians and playwrights including many members of the Harlem Renaissance. Her biography has been written by her great-great granddaughter. I’m nominating Oprah to play her in the movie version.

Mary Ellen Pleasant. Entrepreneur, Abolitionist. "The Mother of Civil Rights in California."

Our next contestant: hero, villain, groundbreaker or voodoo priestess? Her life is a mystery — partially of her own making. At various points, she claimed to be the daughter of a Voodoo priestess and the youngest son of a Governor of Virginia as well as  a relative of  and practitioner under famed New Orleans Voodoo Queen Marie Laveau. What is known is that she showed up in San Francisco during the Gold Rush and quickly amassed a fortune from boarding houses, catering companies and wise investments with insider trading tips from wealthy clients. Although she, at first passed for White, she didn’t conceal her race from fellow African-Americans and was adept at finding many of them jobs and political appointments. She was also active in the Abolitionist Movement, was a great friend of John Brown and was thought to have financed his attack on Harper’s Ferry. After the Civil War, she officially changed her legal status to Negro, took her rights battles to the courts, including integrating cable and street cars. Her Civil Rights work was unmatched until the 1960s and one of her victories was cited and upheld as late as the 1980s. A series of lawsuits with various relatives of her partners in the late 1800s unleashed a storm of smears and scandals making her the most talked about woman in the San Francisco tabloids. Newly dubbed “Mammy” Pleasant, she was variously accused of being a baby stealer, a baby eater, a multiple murderess, a madam, an embezzler and a thief. She’s buried in a Napa cemetery, but not under an epitaph she was said to have preferred: “A Friend to John Brown.” There is precious little information about her, but this filmaker seems determined to set the record straight.

And could we close without mentioning cowboys?

Nat Love AKA Deadwood Dick, one of the most famous Black Cowboys

How about the fact that some historians estimate that at least one quarter of all working cowboys were Black? Although racial discrimination certainly existed, there was a rough sort of frontier equality in parts of the West. There were relatively few people, much danger, lots of work  to be done and not a lot of social structures. Apparently cowboy crews were a pretty mixed lot of Whites, Blacks, Mexicans and sometimes Native Americans forced by necessity to rub shoulders. (Sort of makes you wonder about the John Wayne/Roy Rogers image of cowboy life many of us grew up with.) African-American cowboys, sometimes brought as slaves or sometimes escaped from slavery, became ranch hands, cowboys, even gunslingers, rustlers, dance hall girls and Gold Rush miners. There are lots of sources but check out The Oakland Black Cowboy Association for a start.

Bill Pickett, Rodeo Champion, Star of Wild West Shows, First Black Cowboy Movie Star

Addendum: One of my readers, Maybelline in Bakersfield, suggested I add Bill Pickett to the list. Pickett was a famous rodeo star who appeared with Buffalo Bill, Will Rogers, Tom Mix and others in rodeos and Wild West shows. He often traded on his Native American blood (Cherokee) to get himself admitted to rodeos that barred African Americans (he billed himself as Commanche.) You think cowboys are tough? Bill Pickett took that to the tenth power. He invented a form of steer wrestling called “Bulldogging.” Pickett’s method included biting a cow on the lip and then falling backwards. This technique eventually fell out of favor for more traditional steer wrestling and riding — and no doubt because PETA would have had something to say about tough ol’ Bill Pickett. But you might want to catch the Bill Pickett Invitational Rodeo, the nation’s only all Black touring rodeo. They’re touring this summer, including Oakland, Los Angeles, Bakersfield, Phoenix, Washington DC and Atlanta.

So that’s the contribution from Two Terrier Vineyards. Did we introduce you to anyone new? Got someone else to nominate? We’d like to hear from you. But remember our motto over here:

It doesn't matter if you're Black or White. Doesn't matter if you're Black AND White. It's all History and it's all good.

One of my measures for a great writer, speaker and human is how well their words stand up to rereading over years and decades. Do you find something new every time you revisit them? Do they stand up in meaning as times change? By this measure, Martin Luther King Jr. keeps becoming greater and greater as the decades pass.

My first encounter with his words was in 1968 in my Southern segregated-in-all-but-name elementary school. And I don’t mean the Deep South. This school was in the leafy suburbs outside Washington, D.C. populated by Pentagon officials, diplomats and professionals. There were no “Colored Only” signs on the restrooms and drinking fountains, but you never saw two races using the same facilities. We had Blacks in our school — five of them — they had a separate classroom, a separate teacher and they ate at a separate table in the lunchroom. I don’t remember seeing them on the playground. They must have had a separate recess. Years later, I realized the School Board had figured out a way to meet the letter of the law of desegregation without giving an inch to the spirit of that law.

Collage portrait of MLK Jr. by 4-year-old Anna, niece of a Flickr friend, Leigh Graves Wolf (who took this picture). For the story on how this remarkable portrait was made, read on.

In this atmosphere, I had a teacher — not my regular teacher, but what they used to call the “Special Projects Teacher” who went from classroom to classroom presenting current events with the one precious AV set-up available in the school. He was a glamorous figure to us because he came to the education system straight from a stint in the Peace Corps. As Special Projects Teacher, he regularly combined all three third-grade classrooms and screened news footage, documentaries and other subject matter not in our regular curriculum. In between the documentaries on Papua New Guinea and the Space program, he liberally sprinkled his programs with footage of Dr. King’s full length speeches and CBS news programs on the Civil Rights Movement. It was a bold move in a school where the majority of kids came to school wearing Wallace for President buttons and stuck Wallace bumper stickers to their book bags. He probably only got away with this because the regular teachers found his sessions a great excuse to take a long smoking break in the Teacher’s Lounge. They had no idea what he was up to.

I’m not sure what my teacher hoped to do by screening those speeches (and, to be fair, he also screened Kennedy’s speeches and one film of an actor reading Abraham Lincoln’s speeches). I’m sure neither I or any of my third grade classmates understood a bit of what we heard. I do remember being impressed by the music of Dr. King’s cadences. It wasn’t until years later that I really listened to the words. I’ve been listening to them ever since and, every time I hear them, I find a new level of meaning.

Even today, I’m finding out more about Dr. King. I’d always thought his beautiful rhetoric came from the music of Gospels and the cadences of traditional Black Baptist Church preaching. Now, I find out from NPR this morning that King received a Doctorate in Philosophy from Boston University and was deeply informed on the words and thoughts of great thinkers such as Plato, Aristotle, Rousseau, Hobbes, Bentham, Mill, and Locke. His Letter from the Birmingham Jail, NPR pointed out, is impressive, not just for the way it weaves so many references from poetry, philosophy and the Bible, but because King, at the time, had no library and was quoting from a prodigious memory.

While news outlets are playing and replaying King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, I’m going to refer you to to his acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize. The former speech is a wonderful call to Civil Rights, but his acceptance speech is even more all encompassing. It lays out a roadmap of hope for humanity and an affirmation that we all can shape a better destiny for the world. (It’s also notable how many times he uses the word “audacity”. The President is not quoting Reverend Wright when he co-opts the word, he’s referring back to Dr. King.)

Are King’s words still resonating? Look no further than the collage of him made by the niece of a Flickr Friend. Her aunt explains how the picture came about:

“It is a wonderful story — after Christmas, Anna asked me what the next holiday was. I told her MLK Jr. day, She asked who MLK Jr was and we researched his life and legacy.  She fell in love with him and was not prompted/coached to create the portrait. She did it all on her own. Her mom just helped her cut/paste the bio at the bottom.”

Like me back in 1968, she’s probably just responding to the music of his words. But once she’s older, she’ll have years and years to discover new meaning and new hope in Dr. King’s life, actions and speeches.

Because you probably can’t hear it too many times, here’s the I Have a Dream speech:

I’m not someone who can lie around a beach for too long. After a few days, I need to get out and explore the country. I’m a veteran of a few Belizean jungle trips. They are never exactly easy or comfortable, but you can’t leave the country without doing it. So I signed myself up with Searious Adventures for a day trip to the Mayan ruins at Lamanai, notable as the only Mayan city state that was still in operation when the Spanish showed up, probably due to its strategic location on a navigable freshwater river. Of course, the Spanish immediately built a church here, which the Maya burned, then forcing the padres to watch a mock Eucharist using corn tortillas, after which they roughed them up and sent them packing. Disease later devastated even these Maya, the British chased out the remaining groups in order to clear for sugar cane and Lamanai was taken over by jungle. That’s largely how you’ll see it now. Unlike Tikal, which has been extensively cleared and gives you a good idea how a Maya city originally looked, Lamanai is mostly overgrown. You travel from excavated building to building through narrow jungle paths. Suddenly, you come out to a clearing and a temple. Since this is not the well traveled site that Tikal is, we were the only visitors save for a group of archeologists working on some of the giant stone heads. It was a dreamy, somewhat eery Indiana Jones sort of experience. We even had a surprise appearance by the elusive and endangered Gibnut, a terrier sized guinea pig.

At overgrown Lamanai, you travel through narrow jungle passages between temples. We didn't even know it was pouring until we came out from under the canopy.

Braver souls than me climbed all the way to the top. A heavy camera bag and slick wet steps made me stop at halfway.

Stylized jaguar head on the Jaguar Temple.

But getting there is half the adventure and takes you through the full spectrum of Belize topography and society — at least if you start from one of the Cayes. It helps to have a great tour operation. And we did. We started with two cute and personable Creoles, Andre and Wayne. The boat trip over to the mainland, Andre assured us, would be “Sixty Belize Minutes”, which I guess meant those sixty minutes would be stretched to however long we wanted it to be. We made it in about that time, even though Andre made sure to take us by every site of interest including Caye Caulker, which served as a boat yard from pirate times, but now is largely a reserve, to a privately-owned caye that boasts an airstrip and a full golf course. Their commentary included not just historical information, but often colorful descriptions of Belizean life (perhaps making this not a tour for young children.)

Wayne and Andre kept up a running and hilarious commentary for the whole trip. Loved their matching do-rags.

We entered the Belize River which is just north of the country’s biggest population center, Belize City. You’d never know it. Less than a half mile up the river, we were cruising through jungle and mangrove swamps, without a building, person or floating styrofoam container in sight. (In fact, unlike most of the Caribbean, Belize is remarkably clean and litter free. The Belizeans take great pride, and derive a lot of income from Eco-tourism, so they actively protect their environment.)

We traveled up the sugar cane highway Belizean style.

The next stage of the journey was a switch to a bus for a ride up the New Highway, which largely serves as a conduit for the sugar cane traffic. The part of the group that was going cave tubing and zip lining got into air conditioned minivans. Those of us heading for our Mayan adventure took more traditional transportation.

Far upcountry in sugar cane country, we switched to a small river skiff at The New River which is actually the ancient waterway the Maya used. Eddie, our pilot, is a part Maya mestizo who knew all the birds of Belize and could seemingly spot them from a hundred yards. We pulled up close to dozens of birds, iguanas, and even a troop of playful monkeys.

The boldest of a troop of monkeys we saw swinging from the trees.

It's iguana mating season when the males, like this one, turn bright red. The smaller green females are considered good eating and are called "bamboo chicken".

As a veteran of several of these kinds of jungle trips, I have to warn that they aren’t always comfortable. But perhaps that’s half the charm of them. We had a few bucketing rain storms that lasted for a few minutes, then cleared. This became even more of a Belizean experience when the Bimini top on the boat snapped in the wind. This could have been a nightmare with a whiny group. But in the face of Wayne and Eddie’s enthusiasm, everyone got into the spirit of the thing. Besides, we really got a sense of what it was like to be a Maya paddling up the jungle river to Lamanai.

Every Belizean will remind you that the Maya never left. About 11% of Belizeans are full blooded Maya, many living traditionally.

A Mayan fisherman shows us his catch which he got using just a string and a piece of bait.

The long journey back could have been boring, but was another kind of experience with Wayne mixing excellent (and very strong) rum punches on the boat and the bus. All while teaching us Criol phrases and keeping up a running commentary on Belize, local customs, politics and his love life — every sentence punctuated with “ya Mon”. Back at the Belize River, we joined the other group and Andre took the wheel, setting what must have been a new record for the Belize City to Ambergris run.

So all in all, a jungle and ruins trip is highly recommended, even if you are on a beach vacation. It’s probably not for the kids. You might want to take them to Altun Ha which is a closer shorter tour. But to really get a Mayan experience, you couldn’t do better than the excellent Searious Adventures. Did I mention the food? A Belizean breakfast and lunch are included and were some of the best meals I’ve had this vacation. But then again, Wayne was pouring those rum punches. Ya Mon!

More pictures of the trip here. However, they aren’t my best. Between bouncing around in boats and buses and shielding my camera from intermittent showers, I only took quick snaps.

Andy Palacio and the Garifuna Collective deserve to be the next breakout stars along the lines of the Buena Vista Social Club. But maybe they already are. His highly acclaimed Wátina CD went to Number One on the world charts and resulted in Palacio being named a UNESCO Artist for Peace, for his efforts to preserve and promote the unique Garifuna culture. Maybe everyone knows about Andy Palacio. Certainly everyone in Belize does. His music is on the sound system in every shop and is piped into the streets near every restaurant and bar. So I could be late to the party.

The Garifuna, also sometimes called the Black Caribs, are the descendants of escaped African slaves and the Carib and Arawak Indians who welcomed them into their tribes starting in the late 1600s. When the British began consolidating power in the Caribbean, they rounded up the Garifuna from their traditional stronghold in St. Vincent and shipped them to a small island off the coast of Belize. In a scenario reminiscent of the Cherokee’s Trail of Tears, more than half the population died in the removal. But roughly 3000 survived and began settlements in Belize, Guatemala and Nicaragua where they preserved their unique blend of West African and Caribbean music, language and traditions. In recent decades, their culture has become assimilated so that only isolated pockets of the Garifuna survived intact.

Belize is the home of the strongest, most intact Garifuna culture. Even moreso now, thanks to Andy Palacio.

Enter musician Andy Palacio. Born into the thriving Garifuna community of Barranco, Belize, Garifuna was his first language and the main influence on his music as he developed a career in more mainstream Caribbean dance music. While traveling in Nicaragua, Palacio met an old Garifuna man who started weeping when Palacio addressed him in their native language. The man had never met a young Garifuna speaker and thought that his language would die with him. At that point, Palacio determined to preserve and promote Garifuna culture through his music.

The apex of this mission was the Wátina CD, where Palacio gathered the best Garifuna musicians in a collaborative album. Although the songs are contemporary, most written by Palacio, they speak to the Garifuna experience and showcase traditional Garifuna instruments and musical forms.

Sadly, Palacio died of a major stroke in 2008 at the young age of 47, at the peak of his international fame. But apparently, he sparked a major revival and recognition of Garifuna music which has been picked up by a number of other Garifuna groups.

Give a listen. I think you’ll enjoy. (Both Amazon and iTunes have the CD.) For more upbeat and dance-oriented versions of Garifuna music, look up Punta Rock.

Here’s a wonderful mini-feature on Garifuna culture and the making of the Watina CD.

Did I forget to mention I was going on vacation? Well, I almost forgot it, too. See while I was wrangling grapes and manhandling the crush for three months, my husband was working 12 hour days trying to navigate his company through these difficult times. The good news: with the Christmas season upon us, and toward the end of their traditionally strongest quarter, things are looking brighter. But boy, does Andy need a vacation. And when this son of Albion really needs a vacation, nothing will do but to head for some outpost at the far extreme of the former British Empire. There is probably no outpost more extreme than Belize, formerly known as British Honduras. A once pirate and mosquito infested strip on the coast of nowhere. Actually, it’s that historic obscurity that makes Belize such a wonderful place to visit now.

Let’s count down somethings you probably didn’t know about Belize:

1. It boasts the largest intact coral reef in the world, next to the Great Barrier Reef. Luckily, the forward-thinking Belize government has protected much of it as an underwater marine sanctuary.

2. Speaking of which, The Blue Hole, a collapsed and submerged volcano topped Jacque Cousteau’s list of incredible dive spots.

3. The cayes and mangrove bays off the coast of Belize were favorite haunts of pirates, especially Edward Teach, better known as Blackbeard.

4. While Belize, like much of the Caribbean has slavery in its past, Belize had a “kinder, gentler” form of slavery. Slaves worked 5 days a week. If you needed workers on Saturday, you had to pay wages. And slaves could, and did, purchase their freedom. Maybe a factor in today’s easy racial harmony in Belize.

5. Belize is rich with Mayan ruins, jaguar and monkey habitat and tropical birds.

6. Belize was once a haven for Confederate soldiers and well-borne Southern families looking to recreate the glories of plantation life once the Civil War had been lost. That dream quickly died due to rougher terrain and the more independent mindset of local slaves. (Again, who demanded payment for overtime.)

Now that you know a bit more about Belize, I’ll confess, we aren’t here for the history. We did that trip a few years ago when I dragged Andy into an Eco-lodge, through the highlands on photo safaris for howler monkeys, up and over crumbling Mayan temples and into an amazing series of underwater Mayan caves (a trip we were too adrenalinized to realize was probably life-threatening on several different levels.) No, this trip is all about sitting on verandas and sipping gin and tonics while contemplating the receding British Empire (which, at last count has receded to about the border of Scotland). We’ll also get in some diving and snorkeling, some of it with sharks and manta rays. And we’ve got the underwater camera, so watch this space.

Well, maybe.

The only place I seem to be able to get Internet is the Admiral Nelson Beach Bar. Where the connection is about as fast as two tin cans connected with a piece of string. And they specialize in rum drinks with names like Panty Ripper and Island Stumbler.