The big G.W. is on a six-day African tour, during which he'll visit a number of countries, including Benin, Liberia, and Ghana. Edward Ball from The Root writes that now is as good of a time as any for Bush to speak about slavery, particularly given his personal history with America's "peculiar institution." Plus, you know, Black History Month and all.

A new book by Jacob Weisberg, The Bush Tragedy, mentions in passing that at one time some of the president's family owned slaves. Weisberg doesn't dwell on the links between the White House and the antebellum past except to say the Bush clan's story is a long-held "family secret…"

The skeletal facts surfaced in April 2007, when an amateur historian named Robert Hughes published his research in the IllinoisTimes, a small paper out of Springfield. Hughes found census records showing that during the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries, in Cecil County, Maryland, five households of the Walker family, the president's ancestors via his father's mother, Dorothy Walker Bush, had been slaveholding farmers. The evidence is simple but persuasive: genealogies of the Bush family match up with census data that counted farmers who used enslaved workers. With this, the president joins perhaps fifteen million living white Americans who trace their roots to the long-gone master class.

Bush has to talk about slavery now? I feel like it already took so much for him to mention that it's not nice to hang nooses.

A daily Black History Month fact that has nothing to do with George Washington Carver, MLK, Jr., or Harriet Tubman. Promise!

William Wells Brown was born a slave in Kentucky in 1815. According to legend, he's the grandson of Daniel Boone. As a boy working on a steamboat in the Mississippi River, Brown escaped to Canada, where he made a living as a steward on a ship that sailed the Great Lakes. During this time, he taught himself to read and write, married a free black woman, and became active in th Underground Railroad.

Through his work as an abolitionist, he became a renowned public speaker and a writer. He published several works — including an autobiography called The Narrative of William W. Brown, a Fugitive Slave and Three Years in Europe, a travel memoir. With his 1853 novel, Clotel (or President's Daughter), which was based on the love affair of Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson and published in England, he became and became the first African American to publish a novel. He was also the first African American to publish a play. He died in Massachusetts in 1884.

This concludes your daily dose of BHM.

A daily Black History Month fact that has nothing to do with George Washington Carver, MLK, Jr., or Harriet Tubman. Promise!

On this day 215 years ago, Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Law of 1793, which made it illegal for anyone to assist a runaway slave and set up a system by which runaway slaves could be seized, even in states that did not allow slavery, and returned to their masters. Although slaves already had no constitutional rights, the law stripped freed slaves of their rights, too, and they were often forbidden from showing proof of their freedom in court. By passing the law, congress made runaway slaves and their children fugitives for life. The Fugitive Slave Law prompted the development of the Underground Railroad.

This concludes your daily dose of BHM.

A daily Black History Month fact that has nothing to do with George Washington Carver, MLK, Jr., or Harriet Tubman. Promise!
Here's one South Carolinian who would no doubt be thrilled that in 2008, the people in his state have yet to relinquish the Confederate flag. Robert Smalls was born a slave in 1839, and as an adult, who worked on a Confederate steamer based out of the Charleston Harbor called the Planter. Once the war started, Smalls hatched a plan to take over the Steamer with a group of 12 other slaves. On the morning of May 13, 1862, Smalls smuggled his wife and children aboard the ship and took command with the rest of his crew. They waved the Confederate Flag until they reached the Union waters, where they turned the ship over as contraband. Smalls and his crew were honored by Lincoln. The former slave became became a captain in the U.S. Navy, and officially commanded the Planter throughout the Civil War.

During Reconstruction, Smalls returned to South Carolina and served in the state senate from 1868-1870. In 1875 he was election to the U.S. House of Representatives, where he served for five terms and fought for equal travel accommodations for blacks and for the rights of children of mixed race.

He died in 1916.

This concludes your daily does of BHM.

*Feel free to send me your black history month suggestions at lauren AT stereohyped.com. Thanks!

• I was really expecting Janet to come harder than this. [DM]

• America's Next Top Model Even Though She Was Already A Model Before The Show covers Seventeen. [NB]

• New Jersey officially says sorry to the slaves. Unfortunately, the slaves aren't really in a position to accept the apology. [CNN]

• Yes, Eminem still exists. We know this because he was rushed to the hospital with pneumonia. He's recovering and apparently weighs over 200 lbs. [MTV]

• New Hampshire's running out of ballots … on the Democrat side. Go figure. [UB]

• All that fur wearing rarely goes unnoticed these days. [Bossip]

• Tyra Banks fed her employees McDonald's cheeseburgers at the staff Christmas party. True story. In other news, she wants to adopt a kid. [CB]

• Oh, Vivica. Say it ain't so. [SR]

• Next time you're thinking of talking shit about Solange Knowles, just think of that middle finger. [Bossip]

• You know what, New Jersey? Apology not accepted! [HC]

• Janet Jackson likes to hear about when, in the course of having sex to one of her songs, a couple conceives a baby. [People]

• People conveniently forget how exactly the vast majority of black people in this country came to be here. [PBC]

• Forget that a high school is putting on a play, it's shocking that Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None (Ten Little Indians) was originally titled Ten Little Niggers. [AP]

• The FBI will not reopen the 1968 "Orangeburg Massacre" case due to double jeopardy concerns, since state troopers accused in the case had already been acquitted. The NAACP is unhappy, of course. [WLTX]

• The Toronto city council's slowness in making any decisions about a proposed black-focused school in the city has parents pissed. [CTV]

• Foxy Brown developed "character" in solitary confinement. It was much-needed. [SS]

An Open Letter To Primary School Teachers,

You have a hard job. I know a couple of current and former elementary school educators, and the stories you guys have! It takes a lot of energy, plus it's a pretty big responsibility, trying to shape young minds even if the information you are paid to give them runs directly counter to whatever they're being taught at home.

I'm not a teacher myself, so I hope you don't think I'm out of line if I offer you a few words of advice. See, I've learned some things in this past week. And although I am not sure I am equipped to tell you what you should do with your class, I do have a few ideas about what you shouldn't.

CONTINUED »

The "What the Hell Is Wrong With America's Schools" week continues with this brilliant tidbit from New Jersey. See it to believe it.

[Racialicious]

• Bob Johnson recent experiences with racism come from white people not understanding how insanely, unimaginably rich he is. [WP]

• Despite Mychal Bell's conviction getting overthrown, protesters will still rally Thursday for the Jena 5. [BAW]

• I can't really be mad. The cash is really all 50 Cent has left. [ITN]

• Oh, the conundrum of American history — celebrating the beginning of our country means celebrating something else a lot more sinister. [DP]

• The NAACP continues to rally for a North Carolina black man they say is wrongly accused of raping and murdering a young woman. [WRAL]

Nat Turner was 31. He was a slave under the authority of a particularly brutal overseer in Southampton, Va. He was a preacher. Some historians have painted him as crazy, but many people believe he was simply mad as hell and didn't want to take it anymore.

On the morning of August 21, 1831, Nat Turner and six other slaves entered the house of his master and killed him and his entire family. Picking up about 50 to 60 slave supporters as they went, the group from house to house, killing about 55 whites before being stopped by the militia.

Turner was eventually sent to prison, where he famously dictated his "confessions." On Nov. 11 of the same year, he was hanged and skinned.

CONTINUED »

Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, a document that supposedly gave slaves their freedom, on January 1, 1863. Since these were pre-Internet, pre-television, pre-black-people-being-allowed-to-read times, interested parties (read: slaves) in Texas didn't hear about this until Union soldiers strolled into Galveston on June 19, 1865, bearing really good news.

June 19, eventually shortened to Juneteenth, became an annual emancipation celebration in Texas, and slowly trickled into other states until it became a national (although unofficial, in most places) holiday. Today, it's celebrated across the country with marches, festivals, and barbecues. Happy Juneteenth!

Isaiah Washington's "mad as hell, and he's not going to take it anymore!" Why? Because ABC officially fired him. [E!]

There are "questions" as to whether a slave passageway (used so that guests did not have to see them entering and exiting the main house) found under George Washington's presidential home in Philadelphia should be included in a new exhibit. [MSNBC]

The French Africa is soon to be Chinese Africa. I guess just plain Africa is too much to ask for. [IHT]

James G. Clark, the former Alabama sheriff responsible for Selma's infamous Bloody Sunday in 1965, died Monday at 84. Unlike many Southern whites alive at that time, he retained his racist beliefs until he died. [UPI]

Some members of the CBC are looking to gingerly extricate themselves from Congressman Jefferson's corner. [Politico]

John Amos should have no problem recruiting a group of young, black men to participate in a "terribly exciting" documentary project he's working on. He wants to shackle some Bloods and Crips inside the slave ship Amistad and sail the Middle Passage. And film it!

Actually, it may be a tougher sell than I originally thought.

"Amistad America is launching its vessel this month (June 21) to sail from Halifax, Nova Scotia to England in conjunction with Great Britain's 200-year commemoration of the abolition of slavery," Amos tells the columnists. "Once it reaches England, Captain Pinkney — the first African-American to solo circumnavigate the globe in a sailboat — will take command and sail the boat to slave ports on the West Coast of Africa, Barbados and various other ports.

"Can you imagine the impact it would have on, say, four young men from conflicting gangs, like two Bloods and two Crips, who have been involved in a negative lifestyle, to take them on the Amistad to let them realize the history they're involved with and the historical opportunity that's been given to them? Let them get exposed to what their ancestors went through so they can have a better appreciation and realize the obligation they have to try and live a good life and fulfill their potential as human beings. Amistad America is totally receptive to it, and I've already spoken to a couple of other organizations. It's a terribly exciting project."

I don't care how many crimes a guy has committed, I don't think I wish the Middle Passage on anyone. But if it gets of the ground, Amos can promote it as Scared Straight, 17th century-style.

[EUR]