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"A racial social-political satire about a handful of African American kids transplanted to the all-white suburbs; and they have to deal with their surroundings and deal with each other. It plays out as an exploration of the American racial dynamic both interracial and intraracial. You have these different age groups; different political philosophies are the characters and different perspectives all bump heads and clashes into each other"

“Riley was really constructed to be a satire on contemporary black popular culture, contemporary black Hip-Hop music and the glorification of crime. And people take it on a surface level that I'm implying that all black people are criminals. The whole point of that character is that he's very young, maybe seven or eight, he's going out of his way to be a

thug and look menacing and all of this, and he's not. That is where the humour lies, only people are looking at it at a surface level.”

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Aaron McGruder interview on The Boondocks (1999)

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* ''THE HISTORIC MILLION MAN MARCH '95'' *

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photograph by Kathleen Odenthal

What Is Hip-Hop, and Why Is It Important?

Hip-hop is more than a music genre; it is a culture that has shaped America since the 1980s. Its influence has spread across the United States, impacting politics and media culture. This article explores hip-hop's social impact on the United States.

Topics This Article Covers

How hip-hop music influenced America

Hip-hop in the 20th century

Critics of hip-hop

How hip-hop promotes social awareness

The evolution of hip-hop's MCs

How hip-hop redefined cultural norms

Genres and artists that influenced hip-hop

Effects of the "Hip-Hop Nation"

This article also includes an FAQ section at the bottom. This section goes into more detail on hip-hop's inception and provides fun facts and trivia for those who are true fans of the genre.

How Hip-Hop Music Influenced America

Hip-hop has had an overwhelming influence on the Black community in America (as well as American society as a whole). Hip-hop is more than music; it's a full and vibrant culture. Since the 1980s, hip-hop has influenced and uplifted America, speaking up for generations and providing a voice to marginalized populations.

Opponents of hip-hop culture argue that the music is aggressive in nature and promotes social rebellion. That said, provocative lyrics do not negate the fact that hip-hop is a vocal outlet for many people in America. For decades, hip-hop has provided a platform for MCs and rappers to express their opinions about society, the government, and the treatment of African Americans in America. This outlet is especially crucial to the Black community, but if people opposed to hip-hop tried to embrace the culture rather than attack the culture, it would benefit society as a whole.

Hip-Hop in the 20th Century

The final decade of the twentieth century, often simply referred to as "the nineties," marked extensive social changes in American history and social culture. One example of influential new trends that took place in the nineties centers on the evolution of hip-hop culture.

The history of hip-hop stems from Black community consciousness within the United States. Additionally, hip-hop culture can be viewed as a direct response to the socio-economic issues that spawned from that history. Through musical expression, the Black community, as well as other traditionally marginalized groups, turned their discontent from the injustices they faced into productive protest, helping to restructure social attitudes and opportunities.

The late eighties saw the inception of this musical movement, but the force and substantiation associated with hip-hop music largely developed throughout the span of the nineties. Following this line of thought, the nineties saw large changes in music and culture. So much so that the U.S. experienced the establishment of a veritable "Hip-Hop Nation." And, despite controversy over the legitimacy of the music (in terms of its occasionally vulgar lyrics), hip-hop marks a national movement with the power to uplift an entire sector of the national community.

photograph by Kathleen Odenthal

Hip-Hop Timeline

Critics of Hip-Hop

Despite the national prevalence of hip-hop in the United States, there remains a strong and vocal fraction of the community who believe that hip-hop represents social subversion, chauvinism, aggression, vulgarity, profanity, and little else.

One such argument likens the hip-hop community to a mere vehicle for antagonistic social insurrection rather than a credible method of productive social reform. Some believe that "Members of the hip-hop nation form an 'imagined community' that is based less on its realization through state formation than on a collective challenge to the consensus logic of U.S. nationalism" (Decker, 54). This argument attempts to undermine the intentionality of hip-hop and its effects; thus, promoting the notion that any positive socio-cultural change was a mere offshoot of rebellion.

Hip-hop has always been controversial, and for good reason. When you watch a children's show and they've got a muppet rapping about the alphabet, it's cool, but it's not really hip-hop. The music is meant to be provocative-which doesn't mean it's necessarily obnoxious, but it is (mostly) confrontational, and more than that, it's dense with multiple meanings. Great rap should have all kinds of unresolved layers that you don't necessarily figure out the first time you listen to it.

- Jay-Z

While the basis of hip-hop's opponents' arguments is founded and reasonable, they do not in any way mitigate the overall influence of the "Hip-Hop Nation" as a notable medium for social mobility, particularly for Black and other marginalized communities. "More than simply entertainment, hip-hop is a major part of contemporary identity circuits-networks of philosophies and aesthetics based on blackness, poverty, violence, power, resistance, and capitalist accumulation." (Pardue, 674)

Music has been a powerful technique for engendering social awareness throughout American history. Music simultaneously reflects trends, ideals, conditions in society and inspires attitudinal progression and social change. To this end, hip-hop in the United States can be perceived as "a blend of reality and fiction" insomuch that "rap music is a contemporary response to conditions of joblessness, poverty, and disempowerment... it is a rebellion against white America's economic and psychological terrorism against Black people." (Smitherman, 5)

The increasing popularity of hip-hop culture throughout the nineties can be likened to an actual social revolution of significant proportions. Traditionally, oppressed groups are able to use the music to convey their plight and circumstances. And, in that way, they rebel both overtly and covertly against oppressive conventionalities within that society.

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How Hip-Hop Music Has Influenced American Culture and Society

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Hip-hop is more than a music genre; it is a culture that has shaped America since the 1980s. Read more to find out how hip-hop has influenced society in the United States.

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The media plays an influential role in shaping how we think about and enact race and ethnicity in our everyday lives. Representation of minorities in the media isn't always positive; representation of African Americans in particular, propagates somewhat controversial and misconstrued images of what African American represent. "Research on the portrayal of African Americans in prime-time television from 1955 to 1986 found that only 6% of the characters were African-Americans, while 89% of the TV population was white. Among these African-American characters, 49% lacked a high school diploma and 47% were low in economic status." In the United States and many other Western contexts, White people have historically been associated with privilege and superiority; people of color have historically been associated with inferiority and labelled as the "Other" in society. This inequality and injustice remain, and the media is a key site where these ideas persist.

Dear White People is mainly centered on students of color who each get a turn to tell their stories about being the minority and trying to navigate the daily slippery politics of life at an Ivy League college that's not nearly as "post-racial" as it thinks. A theory which can be used to analyze Dear White People is that of Manuel Alvarado. Alvarado analyzed media institutions and how the media represents several different groups based on class, age, gender, race, etc.
Alvarado Theory (1987) Four Themes in Racial Representation:

The Exotic; Ethnic Groups are seen as exotic or represented as being the "other person" and unusual or strange.

The Dangerous; Minority groups can be represented as a threat to society. They can be called criminals, rapists, drug dealers, or people who take advantage of society's benefits.

The Pitied; The representation of ethnic groups may be seen as deprived victims or groups that experience natural disasters or sometimes even conflicts.

The Humorous; In the 1970's race was a major vehicle for comedy. Programs removed the threat of different races by making them the butt of the jokes.

In Chapter V, members of the Black Student Union attend a party which leads to conflict to arise between the White host (Addison) and Reggie. In this episode, they call to attention the Four Themes of Representation, particularly The Dangerous. In Chapter V, a White frat member tried to appropriate the N word and got defensive about not being racist; this is reflection of our own society as White individuals will argue "I'm not racist, my friend is black" or "if you can say it, why can't I?"

During this, a comment is made by a fellow frat boy, "Reggie getting in a fight about racism. I'm shocked. Hey Addison, do yourself a favor and hide anything you don't want to get destroyed in a riot." This suggests that the perception of the young African-American is that they are problematic and confrontational. The implication that Reggie is going to start a riot can be seen as a reference to the Black Lives Matter movement; this suggests that fighting and encouraging social change such as racial equality is problematic and benefits no one as it only cause unnecessary chaos. This fortifies the perception that ethnic minorities are dangerous.

When Campus Security shows up at the party to break up the conflict, they assume that the Black man is the one that is the one to start the fight and is the threat. They don't question it as they aim their guns at Reggie, ready to take further actions if needed be; further proving that minorities are perceived as dangerous even in the eyes of the law. As we follow Reggie through his day, we learn all kinds of things about him (he is smart, he has a good relationship with his friends) but in this situation, Campus Security only sees his blackness and reads it as danger. Reggie is not necessarily being represented as dangerous but he is being perceived as dangerous which can be a reflection of real life events concerning Police Brutality. This is a great representation of the situation which ethnic minorities come across in real life and it sets the stage for the character to be pitied but not in the traditional sense of "Water Aid advert for African children" pitied.

Coco is represented as "boujee" which refers to middle-class or upwardly mobile black people which juxtaposes the stereotypical representation of Black women as "ghetto" or "ratchet". What sets Coco apart from her Black peers is that she presents herself in a way that someone might say she is "acting white". This is a pejorative term, usually applied to Black people, which refers to a person's perceived betrayal of their culture by assuming the social expectations of White society. Success in education in particular can be seen as a form of "selling out" by being disloyal to one's culture. This is a true representation of what can also happen in real life.

Coco's narrative can result in her being pitied; she derives from a lower working class family and has worked hard to make her mark on Winchester (the University which the show is set). She is different from her counterpart Troy Fairbanks who has had a middle/upper class upbringing. A narrative which hasn't been widely represented in the media. Coco strives to hide her background and past because of shame and Troy secretly smokes weed because of the pressure that is put upon him by his father. This shows character depth and this is a positive representation of race and ethnicity because it shows them as three dimensional characters which are often overlooked in other media texts. reasons why the narratives have been well developed can be accredited to the fact that the story is not viewed completely through the white gaze but rather explores the bigger picture by mostly using directors and writers of color.

Tokenism is the practice of cherry-picking a handful of societal underrepresented individuals, as a performance effort to appear diverse and representative of the larger society. But in reality, the minor, usually stereotypical roles will be given to ethnic minority. Meanwhile White actors are given greater freedom to act outside of their racial identity; as seen with Scarlett Johansson in Ghost in a Shell, Tilda Swinton as The Ancient One in Doctor Strange, Fin Jones as Iron Fist, even going back to the Breakfast in Tiffany's days where Mickey Rooney plays Mr. Yunioshi and going back even further we can see evidence of blackface. Dear White People is filled completely with ethnic minorities and with some White characters not exactly carrying the series but helping to move the story along and demonstrate real life experiences.

So far in Dear White People, creators of the show have done well to not represent ethnic minorities as exotic; this would normally be the case when a group is seen as not of immediate society. For example there is a stereotype of Latin American women to be a sex symbol. This is because they are presented this way; the way they dress is not typical of White American society and their accents tend to be present and used to set them apart and separate them from White people.

Queue Rashid Bakr, a misrepresented African exchange student who is a walking stereotype with no apparent personality beyond being African; this reinforces Alvarado's theory that ethnic minorities are presented as exotic. It seems as if the creators of the show haven't a clue of what being African is beyond a list of overused stereotypes; generalizing the African accent rather than exploring his uniqueness from other Black people. Bakr's accent is more Zamunda than Kenyan which is where he is depicted to be from; this can shatter the allusion of the character the writers have tried to create, but most of the audience will probably be unaware of this, it will proceed further creating the allusion that there is no real differentiation within the continent further creating ignorance.

Rashid spends most of his screen time trailing behind his friends in unfailing disorientation; he doesn't get American popular culture; "does every American show revolve around fellatio-related cliff-hangers?" and provides an "outsider's" perspective on his friends conversations. In one scene he asks why they're always complaining about issues of race on campus. Rashid is apparently accepted within his group of friends, but his African-ness is used as a way to patronize him and crudely mark him as an "other" from "normal" Black (African-American) culture. When he says his favorite movie growing up was Pinocchio, one character asks him if he pronounces it with tongue clicks and proceeds to mock him by making clicking noises; this again reflects the theory that ethnic minorities are represented as exotic and representing them as the "other-person" as although they are all collectively ethnic minorities they are still presenting a person from somewhere different as an outside who is characterized by his foreign accent and inability to fully comprehend the situation. This can also lead the audience or other characters to pity him.

Generally, ethnic minorities are often presented as the butt of the jokes but as this is a "pro-black" show, Dear White People uses a quick sense of humor to dig especially deep into the messy realities of racism. Times when roles are reversed are when a character points out that Sam's "White bae" looks like the "White dude in the picture that comes in the frame," in ways it does uphold the theory that race is a vehicle for comedy but not in the way that was intended to originally; in the 1970's race was a major vehicle for comedy and programs removed the threat of different races by making them the butt of the jokes. Dear White People encompass comedy but doesn't do it at the expense of the "others". This is evidence of a more recent positive change within representing certain people in the right way.

Major networks and filmmakers need to look at the way audiences attach themselves instantly to smaller shows or films that give them representation and turn them into hits that people weren't expecting. For example, how quickly people have supported Eyewitness, how much support Shadow Hunters has, the excitement surrounding Moonlight, how much people got behind The Fosters- people want to see themselves in the content they consume, and up until recently, they have been ignoring such large portions of their audience. Because of the pressure and backlash they receive, I think that Filmmakers and networks are more adamant on being more inclusive and they have only just started telling stories which everyone, especially Black people can relate to. This is evident in the TV shows and Films that are now widely available such as Moonlight, Black Panther, The Get Down, Shes Gotta Have It, Blackish, etc.

What is great about the show is the fact that the writers play around with the themes of racial representation and instead of rejecting them, they work with it and make it their own.

Overall I think that the representation of ethnicity and race in Dear White People is mostly accurate and it explores different narratives and characters within ethnic minorities, just as white characters in TV and Film have different personalities and narratives. I think that Dear White People has done well in diminishing the tropes of ethnic stereotypes: loud, confrontational, dangerous, etc. Writers of the show haven't portrayed the characters as saints because then the show would be boring and unrealistic. Instead they present them as real people. They explore and develop the characters featured which is often overlooked; this has been a mutual theme in the media industry recently and hopefully we can see more positively representative mediums in all areas of identity.

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The media plays an influential role in shaping how we think about and enact race and ethnicity in our everyday lives. Representation of minorities in the media isn't always positive; representation of African Americans in particular, propagates somewhat controversial and misconstrued images of what African American represent.

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Alvarado’s Racial Stereotypes Theory (1987)

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Four key themes in racial representations: Exotic Dangerous Humorous Pitied Exotic Certain ethnic groups can be represented as being...

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Media Studies - Alvarado’s Theory Of Ethnicity & Racial Stereotypes - A Simple Guide

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https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/parties/spusa/1903/1000-thompson-whatrevsoc.pdf

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Yesterday, we ran through a brief history of the characters that inhabited The Boondocks comic strips that I loved. That roll call was all prelude to why I don't love the animated "adaptation" on Adult Swim.

When I first heard of a 'Docks cartoon, I was elated. If I could never have a Calvin and Hobbes cartoon, I was owed a 'Docks one, right? Like damn near all my friends, I was glued to the television. The first episode, " The Garden Party," started off promising with a Huey Freeman voice over: "I'm not a prophet. But sometimes I have prophetic dreams; like then one when I was at a garden party." Huey walks out on stage at this lily-white garden party, and drops the following jewels, "Jesus was black. Ronald Regan was the devil. And the government is lying about 9/11." A riot ensues. The white folks can't handle the truth. Despite my finding the anime/manga style stilted, this scene was rendered well. What a way to launch your first episode.

This wasn't as audacious as Chappelle's Show first episode - I mean... Clayton Bigsby? Who opens with a black white supremacist?

Huey wakes from his dream because his grandfather slaps him and berates him for telling white people the truth. There was something about that slap that bothered me - especially when Grandpa encourages Huey to lie to white folks, implying they cannot handle the truth. Why punish Huey for doing what we should be doing? Then Asheru's "Judo Flip" - Boondocks theme - hits which is so out of tone from what we've just witnessed.

After the theme, we see Grandpa doing naked Tae-Bo. And then we are tortured by a John Witherspoon gag about there being no more orange juice. Shades of Friday and just as annoying. But it was at 9:33pm on November 6, 2005 that I lost faith in the series.

Remember, this is still only the first episode, but at the three-minute mark of the episode, we meet Uncle Ruckus.

In the strip, he worked. Most black folks know someone with Ruckus tendencies. But he was effective in the comic strip as a window into a self-hating world-view.

But as we've experienced throughout the entire television series' run, Ruckus ceases to be racism personified but becomes a racist with no other function other than to insult and demean. He's also become one of the show's biggest stars. Between Ruckus and Stinkmeaner - you would have heard fewer "niggers" (or any mutations of the word) at a Klan rally. And it is the mean spirit of the show that I take the most issue with.

I wanted to love the show. I really did. But the increasing number of "niggers" being hurled, the lightweight misogyny, the homophobia - all things absent in the strip - just became too much. The strip pointed out the racial and cultural flaws of our shared world in a way that was humorous and relatable.

On the flip, the cartoon is inherently conservative. In its mocking of "ratchet" and "gangsta" black cultural performance, it is actually delivering a Cosby-influenced haymaker on behalf of respectability politics. I could care less about airing cultural dirty laundry. As a writer, I believe that nothing is off-limits. You write and comment on what you want. End of story. This isn't my issue with the Boondocks cartoon. My issue is that a once great unifying artistic platform has devolved into a shitty rap album.

We've moved into the "laughing at" and not "laughing with" Chappelle territory. White folks loved them some Uncle Ruckus. Where the strip was all about discovery, the cartoon is world-weary and spiteful. Yes, there were some absolutely brilliant episodes and brilliant bits within episodes. One standout? These thirteen seconds of pure genius comparing American and Chinese capitalism. Also - and despite my distaste for the word - the " Nigga Moment " was hilarious despite it not tracing the true origins of what allowed those moments to come to fruition.

I did not come here to praise The Boondocks; I have come here to mourn it and to hasten its demise.

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Revisiting The Boondocks Part Two: The Show

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Yesterday, we ran through a brief history of the characters that inhabited The Boondocks comic strips that I loved. That roll call was all prelude to why I don't love the animated "adaptation" on Adult Swim. When I first heard of a 'Docks cartoon, I was elated.

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The Boondocks by Aaron McGruder for May 04, 1999 | GoComics.com

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Thomas: So, young brother, what's your name? Huey: Huey Freeman. Thomas: Huey! That's a great name! Did you know there was once a pretty famous person named Huey? Huey: Perhaps you're referring to Huey P. Newton, co-founder of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense and icon of the black power movement of the late sixties and early seventies.

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Black Skin, White Masks by Frantz Fanon, Richard Philcox (z-lib.org)

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Stuart Hall developed reception theory, popularly known as Audience Theory or reader’s reception theory, in 1973. His essay ‘Encoding and Decoding Television Discourse’ focuses on the encoding and decoding of the content given to the audience no matter the form of media such as magazines/papers, television/radios, games. Today theorists who do the analysis of media through reception theory often derive results from the experience of an audience created by watching a cinema, game or books.

©[Photographee.eu]/Adobe Stock

The reception theory concept points out that, a movie, book, or game events though it has none/some inherent meaning, the audience who watch them or experience it make a meaning. The audience comes into an understanding of the happenings of the text or screen.

Understanding of Reception Theory

“It is unnecessary that the audience will decode the message encoded by the author just the same”. – Stuart Hall

The audience receives the creative work done and perceives to its content in either similar or different. The meaning of the message can change in the way they see it fit according to their social context.

Encoding – The encoded messages usually contains shared rules and symbols common with other people. So the (encoder) sender has to think how the receiver will perceive the message.

Decoding – Decoding would be a successful deliver only if the message sent by the encoder is understood completely to its content as it was intended.

The messages sent with verbal/non-verbal cues and gestures don’t bring the same result always as intended by the sender, bringing an altogether different meaning an insight to the concept sent. Thus, the distortion occurs when the audience cannot understand the concept of having a different take on the conclusion itself. Such distortion can be because of the age, gender, religion, race, political views, ethnicity, class, culture and the mood in which the audience receive the message etc.,

It is difficult to gather the information necessary to analyze every single audience’s experience belongs to a mass. So the media houses and other social handles come in a useful tool to reach the bigger mass as to get to know their experience and understanding.

Press releases, other forms of publicity such as advertisements, the fan letters, celebrity words, fan message boards, reviews, serve as useful materials for the analysts to see how the reception has been.

Here the perceiving of the work can scope in three categories:

Dominant Reader

Negotiated Reader

Oppositional Reader

Dominant Reader

They are the audience who take in the work as given by the director which no extra notes attached. Example, Teacher asking the student to submit their assignments or parent implying on the child to clean their room is a direct message. The child understands the messages properly and it is followed by the child. In the Harry Potter Series, Lord Voldemort is a bad guy, and how have the media producers have conveyed it with a bald head, black cloak, sunken eyes, cold and cruel voice, and threatening presence to his surroundings.

Negotiated Reader

The negotiated reading here is the audiences who thought they know and are aware of the acts made in the film are bad and not right but get on to accept that it is fine because there is a reason behind it. Thus accepting the author’s message even though it goes against the audiences’ personal convictions. For example, many video games/comics has contents are against our personal views but we still read, enjoy and accept the content given the situation depicted on it for example fictions like zombie hunting, etc.

Oppositional Reader

The audience has none acceptance for the author’s takes on the concept of the film or the subject it handled. It can be morally wrong, emotionally disturbing, unnecessary adult contents of violence and blood gore, religious belief, political outlooks etc., which will make the audience, reject the idea. For example, in 1970-1980 was an era in Indian Films they showed smoking as a sign of prestige, image, wealth, power and flourishing happiness whereas, the reality states otherwise, for it causes cancer. And the pleasant sense of smoking is nothing more than juxtaposed where in reality is an unpleasant smell and is perceived as a very unhealthy habit.

Conclusion

Reception theory is far more complex in understanding as each mind perceives in its own way. A single person can have a mixed reaction of being a dominant, oppositional, and negotiated reader when they are going through the process of receiving the message. The content producer cannot take/judge for every single individual perspective. The conclusion taken by the audience which was/is/will be right for and their perspectives will change as when the time goes by and will feel just right for the conclusion derived at that moment.

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Stuart Hall developed reception theory, popularly known as Audience Theory or reader’s reception theory, in 1973. His essay ‘Encoding and Decoding Television Discourse’ focuses on the encoding and decoding of the content given to the audience no matter the form of media such as magazines/papers, tel…

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Media Studies - Stuart Hall's Reception Theory - Simple Guide For Students & Teachers

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uncle-tom noun - Definition, pictures, pronunciation and usage notes | Oxford Advanced American Dictionary at OxfordLearnersDictionaries.com

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Definition of uncle-tom noun in Oxford Advanced American Dictionary. Meaning, pronunciation, picture, example sentences, grammar, usage notes, synonyms and more.

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Western England. The Freeman surname was evident at an early time in the English counties bordering Wales. It has been conjectured that this was due to the large number of Welsh captives that had been reduced to serfdom or slavery there. A number of them probably did become freemen.

Freemans at Beckford near Tewkesbury in Gloucestershire date from 1469 when John Freeman was recorded as a householder there. Samuel Freeman kept an inn there in 1637; and the manor house was held by the Freemans from about 1700 to 1926.

In another Gloucestershire village were the Freemans of Batsford, going back to about 1500. Thomas Freeman, well-known for his epigrams in the early 1600's, was of this family. Freemans were also recorded in the village of Ebrighton.

Eastern England.. However, larger Freemen numbers were to be found in eastern England, in Northamptonshire and then in London and the southeast.

Ralph Freeman, born in Northampton, was one of the leading English merchants in Calais and was Mayor of Northampton in 1550. He died in 1558, the year that Calais was lost to the French.

Several families by the name of Freeman, all ultimately bearing the same arms, migrated from Northamptonshire to London in Elizabethan times.

Martin Freemen, a member of the London Fishmongers' Company, and his son Ralph, who received a gentleman's education and became a protégé of the Duke of Buckingham, were among the most enterprising of these Freemans. Ralph's home at Betchworth in Kent stayed with his descendants until 1817. Meanwhile another Ralph Freeman, of the Clothworkers' guild, became Lord Mayor of London in 1633.

By the mid-19th century the largest numbers of Freemans were to be found in London and Surrey.

Ireland. The Freemans of Castle Cor in Cork were probably English in origin. John Freeman built the house around 1650 on the ruins of an old castle there. These Freemans became the Deane-Freemans through inheritance in the late 1700's.

Freeman can also have Irish roots, being in some cases an anglicized version of the Gaelic Mac an tSaoir sept.

America. The early Freemans went to New England.

There were three notable Freeman arrivals here, two of whom came to Cape Cod: New England.

Samuel Freeman from London arrived with Winthrop's party in 1630 and settled in Watertown. Three Samuel Freemans followed him, all resident at Eastham on Cape Cod. They were followed by a Barnabas and then another Samuel living on the family estate there.

Edmund Freeman, possibly related, came on the broughtAbigail in 1635, being first at Lynn (where he was said to have
twenty pieces of plate armor as defense against the Indian arrows) and then at Sandwich on Cape Cod. Dr. Nathaniel Freeman of this family was a Brigadier General during the Revolutionary War.

while Ralph Freeman, also from London, first appeared at Dedham, Massachusetts in 1651 and later moved to Attleboro. His grandson Ralph migrated north to New Hampshire in the 1740's.

Freeman history in New England has been covered in two books:

Frederick Freeman's 1875 book Freeman Genealogy in Three Parts

and Robert Freeman's 2005 book Freeman Families of New England.

Elsewhere. Colonel Bridges Freeman from Oxfordshire came to the Virginia colony in 1625 and had extensive land holdings along the Chickahominy river. When he died in 1655 he may have left children. But as he left no will this has been questioned.

Freemans in Henrico county, Virginia date from the early 1700's and possibly earlier. Holman Freemen, born there in 1714, took his family across the Savannah river to Wilkes county, Georgia in 1773. He died there ten years later. His son Colonel Holman Freeman had a distinguished Revolutionary War record; his granddaughter Mary Freeman married the future Governor William Bibb.

Another Freeman line in Wilkes county, Georgia - probably unrelated - began with the marriage of Gabriel and Lucy Freeman there in 1794.

William Greene from North Carolina served as a scout for General Washington during the Revolutionary War. His descendants settled in Greene county, Missouri.

African American. Freeman is a special surname for African Americans following Emancipation in 1863. It is perhaps surprising that it is not more commonplace than the Washington and Jackson names used by freed slaves. But the preponderance of the Freeman name today in the Old South does testify to the importance of African Americans for the Freeman name in America.

The earliest black Freemans were in the North, with its earlier history of freed slaves.

Pearson Freeman was a former slave from Massachusetts who earned his freedom fighting for the Green Mountain Continental Rangers during the Revolutionary War. He settled in Rutland, Vermont. His grandson was Martin Freeman, college-educated, who departed for Liberia during the Civil War.

Other black Freemans of these times were:

Mum Bet who was the first enslaved African American to file and to win in 1781 a freedom suit in Massachusetts. After the victory she took the name of Elizabeth Freeman.

Chatham Freeman from Wallingford, Connecticut who secured his freedom after fighting as a substitute during the Revolutionary War.

and Quash Freeman from Derby, Connecticut, freed in 1800, who was recorded as the "black Governor of Connecticut" in 1815. Two sisters from Derby - Mary and Eliza Freeman - purchased adjoining properties in Bridgeport, Connecticut in 1848. These homes have been preserved.

In the South, Abraham Freeman who received a land grant in Bladen county, North Carolina in 1765 was said to have been mulatto. In fact his family has always proudly claimed a family lineage that also included significant Native American heredity. In the 1840's Alexander Freeman migrated south to Myrtle Beach in South Carolina where he and his descendants were fishermen. Later Freemans developed Freeman's Beach as a resort there in the 1920's.

William and Ellen Freeman were slaves in Craven county, North Carolina. During the Civil War they were able to gain their freedom by escaping to Brushton, North Carolina. It was there that they received help from Union soldiers until they eventually found land whereon they could settle. Thomas Freeman secured his emancipation from slavery in Georgia at this time. He was one of the founders of the black community of Freemantown in Rome, Georgia in the years following the Civil War.

Hubert Freeman was born in North Carolina sometime in the 1870's. He later moved to Mississippi. He was the grandfather of the actor Morgan Freeman.

Jewish. Freeman in America could also be Jewish.

Louis Freedman was a Russian immigrant who came to Worcester, Massachusetts in the 1880's. His grandson Carl Freeman, based in Maryland, was a prominent real estate developer in the Washington area. He died in a road traffic accident in 1988.

Isaac and Stella Freeman left Russia in 1904 with their family following a pogrom against the Jews in the Poltava district of Ukraine where he lived. They made their home in Brooklyn. Their son Joe became a notable writer and magazine editor. He is best remembered as the editor of The New Masses, a literary magazine associated with the US Communist Party, and as the founding editor of the Partisan Review.

Canada. William Freeman had come to Nova Scotia from Yorkshire as a young man in 1759. His son Joshua moved with his family in 1816 to Burlington, Ontario and a village that became known as Freeman. The Freeman home on Brant Street, built in 1885, stayed with the family until 1988.

The farmhouse of John Freeman - a descendant of immigrant Edmund Freeman - was burnt down by American patriots in 1777 following the Battle of Saratoga. John fled to Canada but died after a smallpox epidemic. Family survivors later settled in Yarker, Ontario. The Freeman farmhouse there stayed with the family until 1964.

The Rev. Daniel Freeman, a Loyalist, left New Jersey for the wilds of Norfolk county, Ontario in 1800. His son Daniel was a farmer there. His grandson Daniel returned to America in 1873 - moving to the warm weather of Los Angeles for the sake of his wife's health. Although she died a year later, he became a major ranch-holder in the area and was instrumental in the founding of the town of Inglewood.

Zoltan Freeman was a Holocaust survivor from Hungary who came to Canada after the war and married and settled down in Hamilton, Ontario. There he became involved in the confectionary business and was known locally as "the candy man."

West Africa. The Freeman name appeared in West Africa after the migration of freed slaves to Liberia in the mid-19th century. George Freeman set sail from New Orleans in 1852 but died on the voyage across. Martin Freeman arrived in 1864 and became the President of Liberia College. Benjamin Green Freeman was a prominent rubber planter in the early 1900's and later a Liberian politician.

The Freeman name has since spread to nearby countries such as Sierra Leone, Ghana and Nigeria.

Tobias Friedman departed Russia for Britain in the 1880's, settling first in Liverpool and then in Dublin (where his family was briefly mentioned in James Joyce's South Africa. Ulysses). His son Isaac-Jacob emigrated to South Africa in 1892 and his grandson Maurice Freeman became Mayor of Johannesburg in 1934.

Australia. James Freeman from Cambridgeshire was convicted of robbery and transported to Sydney in 1817. He eventually settled in the Australian outback, at Wyee Creek in NSW.

"In 1871 James Freeman was injured when a tree fell on him and he received head injuries from which he never recovered. A newspaper cutting recounted how he, having gone walkabout, became lost on the Brokenback range in the Wattagan mountains. He was eventually found by his son a few days later - nearly naked, dehydrated and suffering cuts and abrasions. He died soon afterwards."

His son James was married to Soreina Smith at Wyee Creek in 1859. Granny Freeman, as she became known, lived a further seventy years, dying there in 1929.

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Morgan Freeman's Family Ancestry

The actor Morgan Freeman, born in 1937, grew up in Mississippi with roots on both his father's and mother's side going back to the time of slavery.

Just click below if you want to read more about this history:

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Freeman Surname Miscellany

Freeman Surname Origins. In the early days of feudalism two neighbors bearing a common Christian name might be distinguished by epithets denoting their respective conditions, such as John le Freeman and John le Bonde. These epithets would often become family names. English serfs in the 14th and 15th centuries who had won the right to own a patch of land and sell its produce frequently took the Freeman surname.

The status brought with it certain other privileges, the most important of which was probably the right to pass along the property to heirs. The status did not confer the right to vote in those ancient days. But it did confer the social benefit of a certain cachet that separated the holder from those still in peonage or serfdom.

The Freemans at Beckford in Gloucestershire. The freehold estate in Beckford was held by the Freeman family from the Middle Ages until the First World War.

In 1469 John Freeman held a house and two yardlands, by knight service of the Prior of Beckford. In the late 17th century William and Edward Freeman were armigerous. Richard Freeman, the owner in 1698, was succeeded by William and William by his son William who died in 1764. The heir to the estate, another William, was a minor at that time.

On the death of William Freeman in 1827 the estate passed to his nephew John. The last of the family to hold the estate, Captain William Freeman, was in possession by 1879. In 1889 this ancestral house was known as the Manor House. Captain William sold the estate in 1926.

The Freemans at the Battle of Saratoga and After. During the early years of the Revolutionary War, a crucial battle took place in September 1777 between the British and American forces at Saratoga in upstate New York.

The log house on John Freeman's farm there was used by British General Burgoyne as his headquarters. Tory John Freeman fought on the British side. However, the British suffered heavy casualties and John Freeman's log house was burned down to the ground.

The Freemans abandoned their farm and migrated north to Canada, receiving a land grant for 200 acres near what became Chaffeys Locks on the Rideau Canal.

Conditions were tough there for pioneers like the Freemans. It took time to clear the land to produce crops. Too long for John Freeman and much of his family who died after just one year following a smallpox epidemic. However, other members of the family survived and later moved onto Yarker, Ontario.

Mary Freeman and William Bibb. According to the family story, there was once a very pretty little girl of eight years, full of life and spirit, who by some childish mischief had incurred the penalty of the switch - the only means of correction in country schools in the good old days.

The little maid was the favorite of a lad of twelve, who sat looking on while the teacher was discussing the situation with the child.

"Well, Mary, I must punish you."

At this the boy laid down his book and stepping quickly up to the teacher said, respectfully: "Don't strike her: whip me. I'll take it for her." As he said this he arrested with his hand the uplifted switch. Every eye in that little log schoolhouse brightened with approbation, and in a moment after, filled with tears, as the teacher laid down he rod and said: "William you are a noble boy, and for your sake I will excuse Mary."

This happened in a country school in Georgia in 1793. Ten years later, Mary was the wife - the happy loving wife - of William. And William, 20 years later, was a member of Congress, United States Senator from Georgia, and later Governor of Alabama.

He was William Wyatt Bibb. His wife was Mary Freeman, the belle and beauty of Broad River, and the daughter of Colonel Holman Freeman of Virginia and Georgia.

The Marriage of James Freeman and Soreina Smith. Soreina Smith was born in O'Connell Street, Sydney in 1840 and was reared by her grandmother, Mrs. Fennell, whose refined upbringing was reflected in the grandchild.

In those days James Freeman was a timber contractor at Wyee and his meeting with Miss Smith occurred on one of his business trips to Sydney. A betrothal followed and Miss Smith, at the age of 19, traveled on the ship Black Swan to Gosford (there being no railway at that time) and then rode twenty one miles to Wyee. There she was married by special license on November 29th, 1859.

There was only one other white women, her mother-in-law, at Wyee. The country was inhabited by aboriginals and there were packs of dingoes and many other animals common to the Australian bush.

Martin Freeman, Black at the Time of the Civil War. Martin Freeman, a free black, was born in 1826 in Rutland, Vermont. After receiving private tutelage from a local pastor, he attended Middlebury College in Vermont, one of the first blacks to do so.

His classmates viewed him as very friendly, yet very serious, very strict, and a bit aloof. He often arrived first to class and left last, and he was much interested in the library. He in fact graduated at the top of his class and, thus delivered the salutatory address in Latin. However, lest the town's citizens assume mistakenly that Freeman did not speak English well, Freeman gave an additional oration in English.

Upon graduation, Freeman's white classmates received offers to study law and medicine, or to enter the ministry, or to teach. Freeman received no such offers. Disheartened, he accepted a teaching position in 1850 at Avery College near Pittsburgh, a new state-chartered college to educate free blacks. He was named president of the college in 1856.

During the Civil War, Freeman became active in the African emigration movement and moved to Liberia in September 1864. He continued his work as a professor at Liberia College, being named as president of that college shortly before his death in 1889.

Following his death, his wife and two sons returned to Pittsburgh. Little is known of their lives, except that his sons embodied Freeman's greatest fear for black men in America. One worked as a janitor, the other as a porter.

Joe Freeman and a Pogrom in Ukraine. In his memoirs Joe Freeman recalled a traumatic boyhood incident which had followed shortly after a pogrom of the Jewish population of a neighboring town in Ukraine.

"Less than a week later a bearded peasant came into my mother's store drunk. He asked for tobacco in a voice that frightened me, and my mother handed him a package.

'I'm not going to pay you,' he said. 'You filthy Jews get too much money.''

'Then you can't have the tobacco.'

The peasant took a clasp knife from his pocket. He opened the long blade and brandished it at my mother. 'I'll kill you,' he growled. Then he walked over to me and brandished the knife over my head. 'We'll have a nice little pogrom. We'll kill all the goddam Jews in this goddam town.'

I was terrified and clung to my mother's skirt. She held me tightly to her and I saw the tears run down her cheeks.

The door creaked. I saw it open. Our clerk came in. He seized the drunk by the collar and threw him into the street. The man rolled head down into the sewer-ditch. A policeman came running, dragged the peasant to his feet and lugged him into a carriage. I felt sorry for the peasant and felt guilty because I felt sorry."

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Freeman Names

Martin Freeman was the first black president of an American college. During the Civil War he became active in the African emigration movement and departed for Liberia in 1864.

Joe Freeman who fled Russia with his Jewish parents for New York in 1904 was an American writer and magazine editor, founder of the Partisan Review.

Bud Freeman was a tenor saxophonist who pioneered the Chicago style of jazz in the 1930's.

was a Labour MP in the 1950's and a British TV presenter in the 1960's, best known for his John Freeman Face to Face interviews.

Morgan Freeman is an acclaimed African American actor and producer.

Cathy Freeman , from Aborigine roots, i s the Australian sprinter who won the women's 400 meters in the 2000 Olympics.

Freeman Numbers Today

36,000 in the UK (most numerous in London)

59,000 in America (most numerous in North Carolina)

29,000 elsewhere (most numerous in Canada)

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Freeman Surname Meaning, History & Origin | Select Surnames

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Western England. The Freeman surname was evident at an early time in the English counties bordering Wales. It has been conjectured that this was due to the large number of Welsh captives that had been reduced to serfdom or slavery there. A number of them probably did become freemen.

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Encoding/decoding | Stuart Hall | Taylor & Francis Group

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Traditionally, mass-communications research has conceptualized the process of communication in terms of a circulation circuit or loop. This model has

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The latest front in the culture wars over how U.S. students should learn history and civics is the concept of critical race theory, an intellectual tool set for examining systemic racism. With roots in academia, the framework has become a flash point as Republican officials across the country seek to prevent it from being taught in schools.

In reality, there is no consensus on whether or how much critical race theory informs schools' heightened focus on race. Most teachers do not use the term "critical race theory" with students, and they generally do not ask them to read the work of legal scholars who use that framework.

Some lessons and anti-racism efforts, however, reflect foundational themes of critical race theory, particularly that racism in the United States is systemic. The New York Times's landmark 1619 Project, which addresses slavery's role in shaping the nation, also has an associated school curriculum.

At least five Republican-led state legislatures have passed bans on critical race theory or related topics in recent months, and conservatives in roughly nine other states are pressing for similar measures. Some teachers have said they worry that the legislation will have a chilling effect on robust conversations, or could even put their jobs at risk, at a time when the nation is embroiled in a reckoning on race relations.

What to know

What is critical race theory?

What are the criticisms of critical race theory?

What do conservatives mean when they use the term 'critical race theory'?

What does critical race theory have to do with schools?

What is the status of efforts to ban critical race theory?

America's Racial Reckoning: What you need to know
Full coverage: Demographic changes: Newsletter: Subscribe to About US to read the latest on race and identity Resources: Understanding racism and inequality in America How the racial makeup of where you live has changed since 1990 Race & Reckoning
George Floyd's America: Examining systemic racism through the lens of his life

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What is critical race theory, and why do Republicans want to ban it in schools?

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The academic framework has become a flashpoint as conservative politicians use the term as a catch-all phrase for nearly any examination of systemic racism in the present.

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The late Professor Derrick Bell is renowned as the intellectual architect who drafted the blueprints that guided the initial development of critical race theory (CRT). Prior to the advent of CRT, Professor Bell wrote extensively on initiatives designed to improve the lives of African Americans. Among his most influential scholarship, 'Serving Two Masters' from the 1976 Yale Law Review emerged as a seminal foundational piece for CRT. We found that Bell's post- Brown litigation and frustrations were captured in several powerful law review journals from 1970-1976. During this time, he wrote extensively on minority admissions programs, school litigation strategies, racial remediation, equal employment, and of course the Brown decision and its aftermath. These early works attended to the details of how legal remediation for racism in various forms could be considered and approached, but more often were ignored and denied. These same works showed the contradictions built into legal strategies. By working through the details of specific racial remediation strategies, Derrick Bell realized the ubiquity of the negative influences of post- Brown integration goals in all aspects of African American life, including the law. His seminal 1976 Yale Law Review piece emerged not from theory, per se, but from very specific engagements with reasoning about post- Brown policies and practices that failed to serve the interests of most African American families. For Bell, hope seemed to wax and wane as clarity emerged. This article analyses Bell's law review articles that were published between 1970 and 1976, when he began full-fledged writing that ultimately provided a blueprint for the CRT movement in the academy.

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Derrick Bell's post-Brown moves toward critical race theory

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The late Professor Derrick Bell is renowned as the intellectual architect who drafted the blueprints that guided the initial development of critical race theory (CRT). Prior to the advent of CRT, Professor Bell wrote extensively on initiatives designed to improve the lives of African Americans.

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Protest signs often provide the best insights into the creative, political imaginations of marginalised people. They can indicate the kind of world we want to build and they can loudly name ideologies we want to reject.

But signs held by white "allies" at the Black Lives Matter protests in June included the following: "I love black dick, so you will hear me speak", "Stop shooting black men. I want mixed babies" and "BBC [big black cock] matters".

All went viral on social media. And, incredibly, many white people couldn't comprehend what seemed obvious: that orienting the value of black lives around their sexual desires is not only degrading but also dangerous.

The slogans on these protest signs fall under what we call the "fetishisation of black masculinity". This is how white people objectify black men as more masculine and sexually potent than our white counterparts. It claims that there is an inherent "biology" to our blackness that makes us more muscular, more dominant, more athletic. The size of our penises are obsessed over and apparently betray our monstrosity.

In 2017, Fox News invited OJ Simpson's former prison officer to detail how OJ's massive junk made him feel inadequate, the suggestion being that there is a relationship between OJ's big dick and his violent actions.

In 2017, the Chocolate City UK Tour, which offered a night of lap dances, stripping and other erotic entertainment from "hot black male Adonis dancers", came under fire from black feminists who rightly denounced the performances as grossly cashing in on a speciality market for consuming black men's bodies, a "niche" market made possible by the fact the country is only three per cent black.

And once created, where does this market appeal for black men lead? In bizarre, desperate acts from white women wanting to access us. In 2017, for instance, it was reported that a white female prison officer in Lancashire was caught with a syringe containing the semen of a black inmate because she "wanted a chocolate baby".

But the problem of fetishising black masculinity goes beyond being treated as a walking black dildo by overzealous white people. Perhaps if white "allies" knew their history, they would reconsider their signs.

The over-sexualisation of black masculinity has, historically, led to intense surveillance and intervention over our bodies. Going back to the 19th century, the English Victorian eugenicist Francis Galton would make pseudo-scientific claims that there were "savages", with "anatomical differences" between black and white men, such as penis and pelvis size. So white men were morally superior to black men because they were more sexually controlled.

'Control' of black men's sexuality was used as a solution to white settlers' fear of 'black peril'

Black men in Britain were therefore seen as major threats to public health, with castration even being recommended as a method of preventative treatment to protect the safety and sexual dignity of white citizens.

What does this pseudo-scientific view of black men's bodies and sexual capacities have to do with anti-black police violence today? Because this need to "control" the sexuality of black men through physical violence has been a long-term solution to what is termed "black peril" - the colonial-era fear white settlers had that black and native men would have sexual relations with white women.

In the colonised British New Guinea, "black peril" led to the "White Women's Protection Ordinance" of 1926, which introduced the death penalty for the rape or attempted rape of a European female by a native person. This criminalised interracial sex between black men and white women. Interracial sex was viewed as a violation independent of the concept of consent. Naturally, this standard didn't apply to white male colonisers, who were free to rape black and native women as their right.

In late 20th-century Britain, white feminist movements often complied with racist ideas that black men present a more significant sexual threat to them than white men. As Valerie Amos and Pratibha Parmar claim in Challenging Imperial Feminism, "Reclaim The Night" marches - which demanded that women be able to move through public spaces at night - would predominantly march through black inner-city areas. This "played into the hands of the racist media and the fascist organisations" such as the National Front, "some of whom immediately formed vigilante groups patrolling the streets 'protecting' innocent white women by beating up black men".

And the fetishisation of black masculinity has also positioned white men as our sexual rivals, which has ultimately culminated in the kind of anti-black violence we have faced from police officers and so-called vigilantes. Liam Neeson 's confession in 2019 that he sought to kill a black man after his friend was raped drew parallels with the white men who murdered 14-year-old Emmett Till just 65 years ago. Again, presenting black men as aggressive sexual rivals encourages white men to seek sexual revenge.

How much you enjoy sex with black men isn't a call to action. In fact, white "allies" should interrogate how their sensationalising of our apparent sexual prowess has been historically used to justify state and vigilante violence against us. The history of racism is also a history of sexuality.

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Protest signs often provide the best insights into the creative, political imaginations of marginalised people. They can indicate the kind of world we want to build and they can loudly name ideologies we want to reject.

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Black Comics Politics of Race and Representation by Sheena C. Howard, Ronald L. Jackson II (z-lib.org)

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Message to the Blackman in America (1965) by - Elijah Muhammad. THE NATION OF ISLAM

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The Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon (Author), Constance Farrington (trans.), Jean-Paul Satre (Preface) (z-lib.org)

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Alvarado’s Racial Stereotypes Theory (1987)

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Four key themes in racial representations: Exotic Dangerous Humorous Pitied Exotic Certain ethnic groups can be represented as being...