Gene Cooperman's General Information

Think of these pages as my current set of bookmarks, except that I've made them public, in case somebody else finds them useful.

My Virtual Reference Desk

Countries of World, and United Nations and regions
Ancient History Encyclopedia
- Hyperhistory (excellent)
- The History of Rome (award-winning podcasts)
- The History Net
- General History of Africa (UNESCO)
- Colonial germ warfare
- Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936 to 1938
- Slave Narratives: Autobiographies (part of "Documenting The American South"; e.g., a moving autobiography of Lewis Garrard Clarke from 1845, or this with picture of Uncle Tom's Cabin)
  - Stono Rebellion (1739, South Carolina)
  - Slave Law in Colonial Virginia: A Timeline
    - 1669 (and confirmed in 1682, article XXXIV): Killing one's own slave is legal:
      If any slave resists his master or another who is correcting him and if the slave should chance to die, then his death shall not be accounted a felony by the master or the other person, since it cannot be presumed that aforethought malice (which makes murder a felony) would induce any man to destroy his own estate. ("if any slave resist his master (or othe by his masters order correcting him) and by the extremity of the correction should chance to die, that his death shall not be accompted ffelony, but the master (or that other person appointed by the master to punish him) be acquit from molestation, since it cannot be presumed that prepensed malice (which alone makes murther ffelony) should induce any man to destroy his owne estate.")
  - Slaves and Free Persons of Color. An Act Concerning Slaves and Free Persons of Color (North Carolina, from Documenting the American South, UNC (exp. concerned with runaways: also, 1826: No emancipated slave alllowed to remain in state, and no "free negro" allowed to migrate into the state)
    - Slaves are Prohibited to Read and Write by Law (after Nat Turner Rebellion of 1831)
  - South Carolina Negro Act of 1740 (see page 5) (owners permitted to kill rebelious slave; saves cannot raise food, earn money, or learn to write English)
    - The negro law of Souch Carolina (1848, 68 pages) (Library of Congress, or alt)
      (p. 19, Sect. 57: Act of 1835: "unlawful for free negros ... to migrate into this State")
  - Using Primary Sources in the Classroom: Slavery Unit (with link to Document 1: John G. Akin, A Digest of the Laws of the State of Alabama - 1833, Alabama Department of Archives and History, Montgomery, Alabama)
    - Alabama Legislature Bans Free Black People from Living in the State (Jan. 17, 1834; aftermath of Nat Turner rebellion)
    - Selections from Alabama's Laws Governing Slaves (from CUNY university, NY; but the original Alabama documents on the web have been moved)
    - Alabama Slave Code of 1833 (S31) ("Any person who shall attempt to teach any free person of color, or slave, to spell, read or write, shall upon conviction thereof by indictment, be fined in a sum of not less than two hundred fifty dollars, nor more than five hundred dollars."; After Nat Turner Rebellion of 1931, all slave states except Maryland, Kentucky and Tennessee passed laws against teaching slaves to read and write)
  - Florida Memory: An Act Concerning Slaves, Free Negroes and Mulattoes, Approved January 19, 1828
  - Southern slavery and the law, 1619-1860
  - Slavery & the law
  - PoliceCommission121620-DanteKingPresentation.pdf
  - The Underground Railroad (by William Still (African-American Philadelphia "stationmaster" of Underground Railroad), published 1872; from Project Gutenberg)
  - 10 Facts about Washington & Slavery
  - Princeton & Slavery (history of slavery at Princeton University)
    "... domestic slavery .... I am a northern man by birth and a southern man by adoption. In regard to this fearful subject I speak to you the words of truth, and I hope they may sink into your hearts. Slavery is not a spot on the sun of our union, or if one it was planted there by permission of an all just and overruling Providence, and does not obscure its dazzling brilliancy. Who does not see in the transplanting of the African to America, the means of restoring to the degraded descendants of Ham the benefits of civilization and christianity? ... Liberia .... whatever atrocities may have subsequently characterized the African slave trade, ..., it originated with La Casas, a Dominican monk, and a missionary among the Indians of San Domingo, who, struck with pity at the sufferings inflicted by the whites upon the Indians, formed the idea of transplanting to that island of Africans, whose adaptation to that tropical climate, and a greater power of endurance, rendered them capable of toil which the feeble Indians could not sustain. ... in no country upon the earth is the African as happy, as useful to himself or to the country he inhabits, as the southern slave. ... It confers unnumbered blessings upon the black man as well as the white. Look at Africa! Its miserable inhabitants ... Look at the free negroes in your own northern states and compare their condition with that of the southern slaves. The latter protected by law and an enlightened public sentiment, well fed, and not overworked (for that they cannot be) eminently contribute to their own happiness and the country's prosperity. ... They know that they, and their offspring however numerous will be abundantly provided for. ... watch closely to condemn the movements of those, who would convert the jocund laugh, and merry song of the industrious slave into the demoniac yells of infuriated savages!" — Address delivered at the time of the Princeton commencement for the class of 1850 by the Hon. David S. Kaufman, Congressman from Texas, June 25, 1850, Princeton University ( David S. Kaufman was of German Mennonite ancestry.)
- The Black Jacobins (history of Haitian slave revolt, by C.L.R. James)
- South Carolina Declaration of Secession, 1860 (South Carolina was the first state to secede from the union.)
- President Woodrow Wilson as racist (After the Civil War, federal government was desegrated; but 50 years later Wilson resegregated it, and fired 15 of the 17 black supervisors in the federal government and replaced with white supervisors.)
- The Silent South: The Freedman's Case in Equity and the Convict Lease System by George W. Cable, 1907 (first edition: 1889)
  "... while those who were under sentences of ten years And over numbered 538, although ten years, as the rolls show, Is the utmost length of time that a convict can be expected to Remain alive in a Georgia penitentiary. ... In Georgia outside her prisons there are eight whites to every Seven blacks. Inside, there are eight whites to every eighty Blacks."
- Orangeburg Massacre, Feb. 8, 1968 (mostly black protesters against a segregated bowling alley; 3 killed, 32 injured by South Carolina Highway Patrol at South Carolina State University; a jury spent two hours to decide that the killings were justified because the police were in fear of danger from the unarmed protesters)
- American Prison Writing Archive (alt)
  - "The Zo", a video about prison life (by Molly Crabapple, narrated by Michael K. Williams)
- Short history of Angola prison: A slave plantation converted into a prison
- Equal Justice Initiative
  - Legacy of Lynching | Equal Justice Initiative
    - Lynching in America -- supplement by county
    - The Memorial to Peace and Justice (memorial to victims of lynching)
    - lynching marker project
  - Uncomfortable Conversations with a Black Man (videos by former NFL linebacker, Emmanuel Acho)
- The Murder of Emmet Till (Approved Killing in Mississippi) (full story by Look magazine, based in part on interview with the murderers; the modern-day memorial sign for Till is repeatedly shot with bullet holes)
- Hitler's Beer Hall Putsch in 1923 (The History Place) (eery parallels with the modern march on the U.S. Capitol building: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.")
- The Rise of Adolf Hitler (The History Place)
  - Hitler's first radio address to the German people (from Chapter 5 of Facing History: The National Socialist Revolution)
  - It Started With Words
- Nazis: The Road to Power Excellent! (16 podcasts with excellent acting, showing the steps to power and the thought processes of the Nazi politicians/activists; some parts are reminiscent of some anti-democratic movements in today's world)
- Memory of the Camps (Frontline: "one of the most definitive records ... of Nazi death camps")
- I Have a Message For You (extraordinary story of one of the people on the train from France to Auschwitz)
- Japanese Wartime Atrocities (biological warfare)
- Internet Modern History Sourcebook
- American Rhetoric: The Power of Oratory in the United States (audio and transcripts)
  - Martin Luther King, Jr.: Beyond Vietnam -- A Time to Break Silence (April 4, 1967, Riverside Church, New York City)
    - The Casualties of the War in Vietnam (and transcript or alt; Feb. 25, 1967, Los Angeles)
    - Conspiracy Trial (The Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change)
- The secret deportations: how Britain betrayed the Chinese men who served the country in the war
- Behind the Bastards (bad people in history)
  - Worst Year Ever (loss of Rojava/Kurdish freedom)
- Study of Robert Pape/CPOST on domestic terrorism (Study of Capitol insurrection from Apr. l6, 2021)
  - Understanding American Domestic Terrorism (slides)
  - What an analysis of 377 Americans arrested or charged in the Capitol insurrection tells us (Washington Post opinion piece)
  - Origins of Insurrectionists (youtube)
Harlem Children's Zone (inspiring "conveyor belt" education model, led by Geoffrey Canada)
Sold a Story: How Teaching Kids to Read Went So Wrong
Maps
Other Languages
- Voynich Manuscript (medieval manuscript in an unknown language, code, or babble)
- yourDictionary.com (excellent)
- Dictionary - online translation (bab.la) (many languages: English, Spanish, French, German, Russian, Chinese, etc.)
- Free Translation (among English, German, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese)
- Translating dictionaries
- Babylon dictionary and translator
  - Babylon on-line translator lookup
- AllWords.com (including crossword solver)
- Chinese radicals (Kangxi) with English meanings
- International characters using "compose" key (or right windows key???)
- Foreign Language Learning Online
- FSI Language Courses (Foreign Service Institute, developed by US government, in public domain; alt from yojik.eu; alt from antibozo.net)
- SERVAS international (visiting in different countries)
- Chinese
- French
- German
  - Franz Xaver von Schönwerth: Märchen aus der Oberpfalz - Kapitel 1
- Greek
- Spanish
- Russian
- Yiddish
- Nostratic family
- Online Etymology Dictionary
- World Wide Words (etymologies)
  - Book: From Latin To Romance Sound Charts, 1954
  - Indo-European and the Indo-Europeans
    - Why French sounds so unlike other Romance languages (YouTube)
    - Evolution of Words from Latin to French (YouTube)
    - The history of Spanish - FULL (YouTube)
    - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N1oZf-OxxEY (YouTube)
    - Evolution of English (YouTube)
    - Evolution of French (YouTube)
    - Evolution of German (YouTube)
    - Evolution of Spanish (YouTube, with citations)
Joule Solar Fuel (converts CO2 source into Ethanol, etc., without need for biomass)
Konarka Technologies (polymer solar cells that one can roll up and carry around)
History
Entertainment
- Books
- Art
- Music (also cf. radio)
- Movies
- Television
- Radio
- Comics
- News (also cf. International broadcast networks, French news, German news)
- Sports (good general site?)
- Local Info
- Travel (also cf. international travel)
- Business
- Health
- Reference
Other fun stuff