Censoring Blog Content Q & A

Q: Have you ever decided not to pursue research on a niche topic?
A. Yes. I had planned to write about the entrepreneurial film
Sunshine Cleaners but  realized quickly during the preliminary
fact gathering, that I did not want to learn the gritty details about
businesses that specialize in crime scene cleanup….

And I had decided not to update a previous post on The Black Russian,but have decided to reverse the decision by answering here.

Last week, C-Span featured Professor Koritha Mitchell’s lecture “Living with Lynching: African American Lynching Plays, Performance, and Citizenship, 1890-1930″and I remembered a puzzling issue I had encountered last year after learning about the life of the little-known 19th century African American millionaire profiled in
The Black Russian.

There had to be underlying circumstances that would explain what happened
in the end to the internationally known entrepreneur. Details supplied
by the author via email confirmed my suspicion.

But last week, I understood fully after Professor Mitchell’s lecture,
And I went back and read portions of the The Black Russian…

I will stop here and let you draw your own conclusions

1. Watch…or listen to Dr. Mitchell’s lecture.
2. Read my post about the Black Russian
3, Scan the book bio for the Black Russian and check the
description of the socioeconomic status of his parents.
4 A related underlying point can also be found in my post
titled Nathaniel Hawthorne  http://wp.me/p3Kr4S-3V

Conclusion
In addition to clarity about The Black Russian another major lesson I came away with after Professor Mitchell’s lecture is this: Apparently, even in light of horrific circumstances many human beings use their innate ability to create a way to keep living as those playwrights and dramatists did not so long ago…

Sources
Booktv.org
http://tinyurl.com/mqzwvde

Ohio State University
http://english.osu.edu/people/mitchell

The Black Russian
Amazon.com
http://tinyurl.com/oh2a48r




The Black Russian by Vladimir Alexandrov

Princeton Professor Uncovers Lost History

An unexpected sentence in a Russian memoir startled Princeton professor Vladimir Alexandrov. He decided to investigate the mention of a famous African American man living in Moscow. Intrigued, the professor of languages and literature had studied the history and culture of the era, but had never heard or read previously of anyone prior to 1917, of that ethnicity, from any part of the world living in Russia.

Professor Alexandrov spent a year traveling around the U.S. and to exotic locales around the world to gather research on the life and times of a man not mentioned in history books.

Fredrick Bruce Thomas, born on a Mississippi farm to remarkable parents who’d been enslaved. His father was brutally murdered in the states, long ago.

Thomas later worked in the most advanced hotel in the United States as a valet before moving to Europe where he eventually became a multi-millionaire entrepreneur. Thomas’s life would play out, set against the political and historical upheaval of World War I and the Bolshevik Revolution.

Professor Alexandrov recounts the history of Frederick Bruce Thomas’s life in a compelling one-hour lecture. The author’s blog is a rich source of background material. The biography of Fredrick Bruce Thomas illustrates many lessons not just entrepreneurial.

Another lesson: Professor Alexandrov found a hidden, long-forgotten topic, within his field of interest, investigated further, and discovered an amazing story.

What topic or subject interests you most? What little-known information might you uncover in your field? Or what early products, processes, or methods might possibly be revived, adapted as a superior offering in the 21st century?

References
C-Span: https://www.c-span.org/video/?312325-1/the-black-russian

Amazon title: http://tinyurl.com/crs8dw7

Author’s Blog: http://www.valexandrov.com