Michelle Coles

Photo dump!

Last week was a whirlwind!

Last Friday, I was the keynote speaker at the Maryland Communication Association conference at Bowie State with the theme “Voices Through Time: Communicating Across Generations.”

On Saturday, I was on a panel at the AWP conference in Baltimore with amazing author Kim Johnson and bookstgrammer Kayla Rayford discussing Black YA historical fiction.

On Monday, I was a guest lecturer at UMD Law for brilliant professor Matiangai Sirleaf discussing how to bring the truth and reconciliation mission home.

On Wednesday, I was on a panel called Deferred No More in Baltimore about why the time for reparations is now.

On Thursday, I gave a briefing to the Maryland Legislative Black Caucus and then testified before the Maryland State Senate in support of a joint resolution that would apologize for Maryland’s role in racial terror lynchings.

And finally today, I testified before the Maryland House of Delegates on the same bill.

I’m grateful for all the opportunities to lift up truth, equity and justice. And now I need some rest. 😅

Happy ! 🖤💚❤️💛 To celebrate, I’m sharing facts about the Reconstruction Era, which is the period right after the Civil War when 4.4 million Black people were emancipated from slavery and became citizens.

27. Did you know that Congress created an Electoral Commission to resolve the contested 1876 Presidential election, and the losing candidate won on the condition that he remove federal troops from the South?

The 1876 Presidential election between Republican Rutherford B. Hayes and Democratic Samuel Tilden was one of the most violent fraud-filled elections our country has ever seen. At this time in our nation’s history, the Republicans, as the party of Lincoln, were much more in favor of Black people having equal rights than the Democrats who, as the party of the Confederacy, were hostile to the notion of Black people being treated as their equal.

In the first count Democrat Tilden won 184 electoral votes to Republican Hayes’s 165, with the 20 votes from Florida, Louisiana, South Carolina, and Oregon disputed. To win a candidate needed 185 electoral votes thus Tilden only needed 1 vote while Hayes needed all remaining 20.

More than a month after the election, the victor was still undecided so Congress set up an Electoral Commission to determine the outcome and a compromise was struck. The Electoral Commission decided to award all 20 votes and thus the presidency to Hayes on the condition that he withdraw all federal troops from the South.

These federal troops had been safeguarding the rights of Black people, who were frequently subjected to racial terrorism and violence. As President, Hayes reassigned many of those Southern troops out West to assist with the wars being waged against Native Americans. Ironically, the Electoral Commission held their meetings at the Black-owned Wormley hotel and thus the Compromise of 1877, which helped put an end to the Reconstruction Era, is also called the Wormley Agreement.

Read Black Was the Ink to learn more about the fascinating and remember .