Night Doctors

“De only Ku Klux I ever bumped into was a passel o’ young Baltimore Doctors tryin’ to ketch me one night an’ take me to de medicine college to ’periment on me. I seed dem a laying’ fer me an’ I run back into de house. Dey had a plaster all ready for to slap on my mouf. Yessuh.”

—Cornelius Garner (ex-slave, Virginia), interview by Emmy Wilson and Claude W. Anderson, May 18, 1937 (Weevils in the Wheat, 1976:102)

Image: Actor, Rapper, Artist Yasiin Bey (formerly Mos Def) featured on a cover for his 2004 album, The New Danger–one of many visual inspirations for the enigmatic Dr. Antoine Bissett. A fellow boogie man.

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August 1st and Emancipation in the Steampunk Atlantic

On the anniversary of British Emancipation on August 1, 1834, revisiting an old post on freedom and abolitionism in the steampunk Atlantic–or lack thereof.

Image: Broadside advertising abolitionist August First commemoration in Worcester, MA, 1849. Boston Public Library.

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On Slavery, Magic, and the Negro Teeth of George Washington

the-secret-lives-of-the-nine-negro-teeth-of-george-washington

My short fantasy story “The Secret Lives of the Nine Negro Teeth of George Washington” appeared this month in Fireside Fiction magazine. A bit below on the history, and speculation, that inspired it.

The illustration for the story (above) is by the artist Odera Igbokwe

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