Maroon And Black Quotes

Black Stache had no love for the Queen, no love for women of any sort, except for his ma. He had a real soft spot for his ma, and was truly sorry for the time he’d marooned her.

When striving through a pitch-black night, if you find yourself marooned and blue, lift your head high and take a sight, of the billion stars all rooting for you.

Her friends' lips were red, their teeth white, and their tongues and gums were pink. Pink, too, were the tips of their breasts. Their eyes were aquamarine blue, cherry-black, hazel and maroon.

Sovereignty soldiers, Black refugees, self-abolitionists, fighting through America’s history, marooned in a land they made their own, acre after acre, plot after plot, war after war, life after life.

Crayola crayons, in the familiar yellow-and-green box, labeled LIBRARY PACK. Inside were the colors of Dinsy’s world: Reference Maroon, Brown Leather, Peplum Beige, Reader’s Guide Green, World Book Red, Card Catalog Cream, Date Stamp Purple, and Palatino Black.

Upset? Upset was realizing your best black dress was now several shades of maroon because you had entrusted the laundry to your husband, who had confirmed your long-standing suspicion that high standardized test scores had an inverse relationship to practical intelligence.

Spring had come early that year, with warm quick rains and sudden frothing of pink peach blossoms and dogwood dappling with white stars the dark river swamp and far-off hills. Already the plowing was nearly finished, and the bloody glory of the sunset colored the fresh-cut furrows of red Georgia clay to even redder hues. The moist hungry earth, waiting upturned for the cotton seeds, showed pinkish on the sandy tops of furrows, vermilion and scarlet and maroon where shadows lay along the sides of the trenches. The whitewashed brick plantation house seemed an island set in a wild red sea, a sea of spiraling, curving, crescent billows petrified suddenly at the moment when the pink-tipped waves were breaking into surf. For here were no long, straight furrows, such as could be seen in the yellow clay fields of the flat middle Georgia country or in the lush black earth of the coastal plantations. The rolling foothill country of north Georgia was plowed in a million curves to keep the rich earth from washing down into the river bottoms. It was a savagely red land, blood-colored after rains, brick dust in droughts, the best cotton land in the world. It was a pleasant land of white houses, peaceful plowed fields and sluggish yellow rivers, but a land of contrasts, of brightest sun glare and densest shade. The plantation clearings and miles of cotton fields smiled up to a warm sun, placid, complacent. At their edges rose the virgin forests, dark and cool even in the hottest noons, mysterious, a little sinister, the soughing pines seeming to wait with an age-old patience, to threaten with soft sighs: "Be careful! Be careful! We had you once. We can take you back again.

Black Stache had no love for the Queen, no love for women of any sort, except for his ma. He had a real soft spot for his ma, and was truly sorry for the time he’d marooned her.

until they faced Detroit like gods, or Canadians, seeing the city spiral up and away from them, from the river.

As we strolled into the hospital, I couldn’t help thinking about Maroon 5’s “Harder to Breathe” because I was having a difficult time staying calm. I had been kidnapped and beaten senseless by an agent of Lucifer, and yet the white coats the doctors wore scared me just as badly. The men who had taken me from my mother wore those same damned lab coats. Every time I saw one, it awakened a dormant fear inside me—fear that I’d be dragged away from someone I loved again, fear that I’d be placed into the waiting hands of another horrible person. It would never truly go away. Michael’s shoulder bumped mine, which shook me out of my thoughts. I glanced at him. “What?” “You’re frowning.” “Am I supposed to be smiling right now?” He faced forward, looking at our reflection in the elevator doors. “No, but you look like you’re about to bolt at any second.” I watched the digital numbers change one by one as we rose up to the right floor, fiddling with the rosary in the pocket of my leather jacket. Somehow, the beads had a calming effect on me. “I’m fine.” “Hard ass.” A tiny smirk touched my lips. “Stop thinking about my butt. You’re an archangel.” He grinned, but didn’t reply.

Henry: How does it feel? How does it feel? Sometimes it feels as though your attention has wandered for just an instant. Then, with a start, you realize that the book you were holding, the red plaid cotton shirt with white buttons, the favorite black jeans and the maroon socks with an almost-hole in one heel, the living room, the about-to-whistle tea kettle in the kitchen: all of these have vanished. You are standing, naked as a jaybird, up to your ankles in ice water in a ditch along an unidentified rural route. You wait a minute to see if maybe you will just snap right back to your book, your apartment, et cetera. After about five minutes of swearing and shivering and hoping to hell you can just disappear, you start walking in any direction, which will eventually yield a farmhouse, where you have the option of stealing or explaining. Stealing will sometimes land you in jail, but explaining is more tedious and time consuming and involves lying anyway, and also sometimes results in being hauled off to jail, so what the hell.

Upset was realizing your best black dress was now several shades of maroon because you had entrusted the laundry to your husband, who had confirmed your long-standing suspicion that high standardized test scores had an inverse relationship to practical intelligence.

and the green lawn, the gaudy tulips, were hushed and expectant beneath the overcast sky. Somewhere a shutter creaked. Above my head, in the wicked black claws of an elm, a marooned kite rattled convulsively, then was still. This is Kansas, I thought. This is Kansas before the cyclone hits.

I pushed myself up onto my hands and knees, ignoring the bite of the frosty air on my bare skin. I launched myself in the direction of the door, fumbling around until I found it. I tried shaking the handle, jiggling it, still thinking, hoping, praying that this was some big birthday surprise, and that by the time I got back inside, there would be a plate of pancakes at the table and Dad would bring in the presents, and we could—we could—we could pretend like the night before had never happened, even with the evidence in the next room over. The door was locked. “I’m sorry!” I was screaming. Pounding my fists against it. “Mommy, I’m sorry! Please!” Dad appeared a moment later, his stocky shape outlined by the light from inside of the house. I saw Mom’s bright-red face over his shoulder; he turned to wave her off and then reached over to flip on the overhead lights. “Dad!” I said, throwing my arms around his waist. He let me keep them there, but all I got in return was a light pat on the back. “You’re safe,” he told me, in his usual soft, rumbling voice. “Dad—there’s something wrong with her,” I was babbling. The tears were burning my cheeks. “I didn’t mean to be bad! You have to fix her, okay? She’s…she’s…” “I know, I believe you.” At that, he carefully peeled my arms off his uniform and guided me down, so we were sitting on the step, facing Mom’s maroon sedan. He was fumbling in his pockets for something, listening to me as I told him everything that had happened since I walked into the kitchen. He pulled out a small pad of paper from his pocket. “Daddy,” I tried again, but he cut me off, putting down an arm between us. I understood—no touching. I had seen him do something like this before, on Take Your Child to Work Day at the station. The way he spoke, the way he wouldn’t let me touch him—I had watched him treat another kid this way, only that one had a black eye and a broken nose. That kid had been a stranger. Any hope I had felt bubbling up inside me burst into a thousand tiny pieces. “Did your parents tell you that you’d been bad?” he asked when he could get a word in. “Did you leave your house because you were afraid they would hurt you?” I pushed myself up off the ground. This is my house! I wanted to scream. You are my parents! My throat felt like it had closed up on itself. “You can talk to me,” he said, very gently. “I won’t let anyone hurt you. I just need your name, and then we can go down to the station and make some calls—” I don’t know what part of what he was saying finally broke me, but before I could stop myself I had launched my fists against him, hitting him over and over, like that would drive some sense back into him. “I am your kid!” I screamed. “I’m Ruby!” “You’ve got to calm down, Ruby,” he told me, catching my wrists. “It’ll be okay. I’ll call ahead to the station, and then we’ll go.” “No!” I shrieked. “No!” He pulled me off him again and stood, making his way to the door. My nails caught the back of his hand, and I heard him grunt in pain. He didn’t turn back around as he shut the door. I stood alone in the garage, less than ten feet away from my blue bike. From the tent that we had used to camp in dozens of times, from the sled I’d almost broken my arm on. All around the garage and house were pieces of me, but Mom and Dad—they couldn’t put them together. They didn’t see the completed puzzle standing in front of them. But eventually they must have seen the pictures of me in the living room, or gone up to my mess of the room. “—that’s not my child!” I could hear my mom yelling through the walls. She was talking to Grams, she had to be. Grams would set her straight. “I have no child! She’s not mine—I already called them, don’t—stop it! I’m not crazy!

She wore jeans, red boots, a black leather jacket and a hefty splash of sweet gardenia perfume. Her hair looked like that crayon called maroon, the one that’s not purple and not red, but something in between and for some reason, I couldn’t take my eyes off her lipstick. It was the exact same color as her hair and went up and down in a perfect rounded “M” on her top lip.

Isaiah opens my car door and his warm silver eyes smile at me. “Hey.” I sweep my bangs from my eyes. “Hi.” He offers his hand and I accept. His fingers wrap around mine and heat surges up my arm, flushes my neck and settles into a blush on my face. He tugs gently and I slip out. I’m not sure if my body vibrates from the rumbling of the garage door closing or from the blood pounding in my veins. Our fingers lace together, and his other hand smoothly cups my hip. I suck in a breath, surprised that someone touches me so easily and with such care. “You look nice,” he says. “I’m in my school uniform.” White button-down blouse, maroon-and-black plaid skirt, and a pair of white Keds. Nothing spectacular. “I know.” The seductive slide in his voice causes the back of my neck to tickle.

The house was inherited. Death had furnished it for her. She trod in the dining-room on the Turkey carpet of her fathers; she regulated her day by the excellent black clock on the mantelpiece which she remembered from childhood; her walls were entirely covered by the photographs her illustrious deceased friends had either given herself or her father, with their own handwriting across the lower parts of their bodies, and the windows, shrouded by the maroon curtains of all her life, were decorated besides with the selfsame aquariums to which she owed her first lessons in sealore, and in which still swam slowly the goldfishes of her youth.

But what’s worse than that is the slaves who identified with their masters, as if the slaves’ value as human beings depended on what the masters were like. What they were like was evil! They were called “masters” because they owned human beings! And we slaves were ready to fight each other over which of the lowdown filthy dogs who owned us was the best! But it wasn’t the slaves’ fault. Like Douglass wrote, slaves are like other people. When you think about it, it’s a wonder more black folks didn’t fight with one another instead of fighting against the white man the way Denmark Vesey, Nat Turner, David Walker, and a whole lot of others did. While you’re busy shaking your head thinking they were stupid, ask yourself this: are we any better today? Black people put on the uniform of the U.S. military, our masters, and go to Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, and anywhere else Uncle Sam tells us to go, and fight and kill yellow-skinned folks and brown-skinned folks on behalf of the United States, our masters—just like slaves fighting other slaves. Meanwhile, back home, one out of every half-dozen blacks is locked up for committing the same drug crimes as white dudes who walk around free. What’s wrong with that picture? Then you’ve got blacks in police uniforms out there arresting other innocent blacks. Blacks in America really need to study the Jews in Germany. Those Jews never thought they were part of Hitler’s system, most of them never sided with the people oppressing them. We do. We go to war. What kind of abomination is that? How many blacks go to war because we can’t find a job, and are willing to kill or be killed just so we can feed ourselves and our families? But remember, our already-free Maroon ancestors risked all of that just to free others. Getting back to Frederick Douglass, it’s like he said: Slaves are like other people. Too many of us have that slave mentality. It can take a lot to get past that, but a lot of us have, and Frederick Douglass was one.

Man overboard!” Then everyone was busy. Some of the sailors hurried aloft to take in the sail; others hurried below to get to the oars; and Rhince, who was on duty on the poop, began to put the helm hard over so as to come round and back to the man who had gone overboard. But by now everyone knew that it wasn’t strictly a man. It was Reepicheep. “Drat that mouse!” said Drinian. “It’s more trouble than all the rest of the ship’s company put together. If there is any scrape to be got into, in it will get! It ought to be put in irons--keelhauled--marooned--have its whiskers cut off. Can anyone see the little blighter?” All this didn’t mean that Drinian really disliked Reepicheep. On the contrary he liked him very much and was therefore frightened about him, and being frightened put him in a bad temper--just as your mother is much angrier with you for running out into the road in front of a car than a stranger would be. No one, of course, was afraid of Reepicheep’s drowning, for he was an excellent swimmer; but the three who knew what was going on below the water were afraid of those long, cruel spears in the hands of the Sea People. In a few minutes the Dawn Treader had come round and everyone could see the black blob in the water which was Reepicheep. He was chattering with the greatest excitement but as his mouth kept on getting filled with water nobody could understand what he was saying. “He’ll blurt the whole thing out if we don’t shut him up,” cried Drinian. To prevent this he rushed to the side and lowered a rope himself, shouting to the sailors, “All right, all right. Back to your places. I hope I can heave a mouse up without help.

If I had to hold up the most heavily guarded bank in Europe and I could choose my partners in crime, I’d take a gang of five poets, no question about it. Five real poets, Apollonian or Dionysian, but always real, ready to live and die like poets. No one in the world is as brave as a poet. No one in the world faces disaster with more dignity and understanding. They may seem weak, these readers of Guido Cavalcanti and Arnaut Daniel, these readers of the deserter Archilochus who picked his way across a field of bones. And they work in the void of the word, like astronauts marooned on dead-end planets, in deserts where there are no readers or publishers, just grammatical constructions or stupid songs sung not by men but by ghosts. In the guild of writers they’re the greatest and least sought-after jewel. When some deluded kid decides at sixteen or seventeen to be a poet, it’s a guaranteed family tragedy. Gay Jew, half black, half Bolshevik: the Siberia of the poet’s exile tends to bring shame on his family too. Readers of Baudelaire don’t have it easy in high school, or with their schoolmates, much less with their teachers. But their fragility is deceptive. So is their humor and the fickleness of their declarations of love. Behind these shadowy fronts are probably the toughest people in the world, and definitely the bravest. Not for nothing are they descended from Orpheus, who set the stroke for the Argonauts and who descended into hell and came up again, less alive than before his feat, but still alive. If I had to hold up the most heavily fortified bank in America, I’d take a gang of poets. The attempt would probably end in disaster, but it would be beautiful.

Things can get out of hand quickly, especially with Sid around. I also decide never to wear heels again when I'm out with him. I go to Holt's in Camden Town and buy a pair of black Dr Martens. (You can get them in black, brown or maroon, the skinhead boys at school used to buy the brown ones and polish them with Kiwi Oxblood shoe polish — this gives them a deep reddish brown colour, much subtler than the flat red of the originals. They also keep them pristinely clean and polished at all times.) I wear my new boots with everything — dresses, tutus — it’s a great feeling to be able to run again. No other girl wears DMs with dresses, so I get a lot of funny looks. (Skinhead girls only wear DMs with Sta-Prest trousers. With their boring grey skirts, they west plain white or holey ecru tights and black patent brogues.) Bit I wear them all the time to clubs and pubs, it eventually catches on with other girls and I don’t look so odd.

how he would get to Tronjheim’s base—where the Urgals were breaking in. There was no time to climb down. He looked at the narrow trough to the right of the stairs, then grabbed one of the leather pads and threw himself down on it. The stone slide was smooth as lacquered wood. With the leather underneath him, he accelerated almost instantly to a frightening speed, the walls blurring and the curve of the slide pressing him high against the wall. Eragon lay completely flat so he would go faster. The air rushed past his helm, making it vibrate like a weather vane in a gale. The trough was too confined for him, and he was perilously close to flying out, but as long as he kept his arms and legs still, he was safe. It was a swift descent, but it still took him nearly ten minutes to reach the bottom. The slide leveled out at the end and sent him skidding halfway across the huge carnelian floor. When he finally came to a stop, he was too dizzy to walk. His first attempt to stand made him nauseated, so he curled up, head in his hands, and waited for things to stop spinning. When he felt better, he stood and warily looked around. The great chamber was completely deserted, the silence unsettling. Rosy light filtered down from Isidar Mithrim. He faltered—Where was he supposed to go?—and cast out his mind for the Twins. Nothing. He froze as loud knocking echoed through Tronjheim. An explosion split the air. A long slab of the chamber floor buckled and blew thirty feet up. Needles of rocks flew outward as it crashed down. Eragon stumbled back, stunned, groping for Zar’roc. The twisted shapes of Urgals clambered out of the hole in the floor. Eragon hesitated. Should he flee? Or should he stay and try to close the tunnel? Even if he managed to seal it before the Urgals attacked him, what if Tronjheim was already breached elsewhere? He could not find all the places in time to prevent the city-mountain from being captured. But if I run to one of Tronjheim’s gates and blast it open, the Varden could retake Tronjheim without having to siege it. Before he could decide, a tall man garbed entirely in black armor emerged from the tunnel and looked directly at him. It was Durza. The Shade carried his pale blade marked with the scratch from Ajihad. A black roundshield with a crimson ensign rested on his arm. His dark helmet was richly decorated, like a general’s, and a long snakeskin cloak billowed around him. Madness burned in his maroon eyes, the madness of one who enjoys power and finds himself in the position to use it.

He leaned down to whisper in her ear. “Your eyes turn an even darker shade of blue when you are angry.” She refused to engage, staring straight ahead. He kept pressing, determined to crack through her shell. “I’ve heard that when black widow spiders are angry, they bite the heads off their mates. You look like you’d enjoy doing that now.” Even that didn’t cause a flicker in her stony expression. The clopping of hooves signaled the arrival of the horse-drawn streetcar. Mollie waited for the shoppers and the newsboy to board, then she stepped up to the driver. “The gentleman wearing the maroon vest is pestering me. Will you see to it he does not board the car?” The driver tugged on a lever and shut the door in Zack’s face.

Her feet moved into the vast space, but all she could see was Cyrus. He strode through the room the way a captain commands his ship. Was it possible his maroon bruise made him more dashing? He was a fine sight in a black broadcloth coat. Her salacious gaze dropped to a brass button lower on his waistcoat. The metal glimmered, winking at her with flirtatious intent very near the tuft of hair she remembered so well at his navel. The corner of Cyrus’s mouth crooked. If she looked ready to devour him, he read the message on her face, no words required. “Claire.” He said her name like a treasured sound. Then, her landlord bent low over her hand, kissing her knuckles and keeping her fingers in a tender hold. Her flesh sung a merry tune recalling how she’d gripped those broad shoulders of his in a fit of passion. Was that only two nights ago? Her cheeks turned hot at the memory. Cyrus rose to his full height, holding her hand. He planted a kiss on her forehead. “Mmmm…” he hummed approvingly. “You smell of almonds.” His lips lingered on her hairline, giving her another soft kiss. “And vanilla, I think. Something you cooked?” He breathed in her scent, standing close yet not intimidating in the least. His own smell was clean and starched with a hint of coffee. She reached high, touching his face like a woman with every right to partake of the feast he offered. “It’s face powder.” One finger stroked the smooth square of his jaw, her voice curving with amusement. “Today I join the ranks of ladies who meet for luncheon, and I can’t be sure if I’ve been lured here or goaded by one very challenging man put on earth to harass my senses.” She caressed his jaw, the grain of his skin smooth to the touch. He must’ve shaved in the last hour. His mouth quirked sideways, pressing the maroon bruise higher up his cheek. “Something tells me you’re the perfect woman to soothe such a man or put him in his place.” His pewter stare flicked over her exposed skin, settling on her cleavage. “As to your senses, I shall treat them with the utmost care.

His wiry black hair and his stubble could, together, have been used as makeshift velcro, if you were marooned on a desert island with him and desperately needed to construct an easy-open fastener.

There have been three major slave revolts in human history. The first, led by the Thracian gladiator Spartacus against the Romans, occurred in 73 BC. The third was in the 1790s when the great black revolutionary Touissant L'Ouverture and his slave army wrested control of Santo Domingo from the French, only to be defeated by Napoleon in 1802. But the second fell halfway between these two, in the middle of the 9th century AD, and is less documented than either. We do know that the insurgents were black; that the Muslim 'Abbasid caliphs of Iraq had brought them from East Africa to work, in the thousands, in the salt marshes of the delta of the Tigris. These black rebels beat back the Arabs for nearly ten years. Like the escaped maroons in Brazil centuries later, they set up their own strongholds in the marshland. They seemed unconquerable and they were not, in fact, crushed by the Muslims until 883. They were known as the Zanj, and they bequeathed their name to the island of Zanzibar in the East Africa - which, by no coincidence, would become and remain the market center for slaves in the Arab world until the last quarter of the 19th century. The revolt of the Zanj eleven hundred years ago should remind us of the utter falsity of the now fashionable line of argument which tries to suggest that the enslavement of African blacks was the invention of European whites. It is true that slavery had been written into the basis of the classical world; Periclean Athens was a slave state, and so was Augustan Rome. Most of their slaves were Caucasian whites, and "In antiquity, bondage had nothing to do with physiognomy or skin color". The word "slave" meant a person of Slavic origin. By the 13th century it spread to other Caucasian peoples subjugated by armies from central Asia: Russians, Georgians, Circassians, Albanians, Armenians, all of whom found ready buyers from Venice to Sicily to Barcelona, and throughout the Muslim world. But the African slave trade as such, the black traffic, was a Muslim invention, developed by Arab traders with the enthusiastic collaboration of black African ones, institutionalized with the most unrelenting brutality centuries before the white man appeared on the African continent, and continuing long after the slave market in North America was finally crushed. Historically, this traffic between the Mediterranean and sub-Saharan Africa begins with the very civilization that Afrocentrists are so anxious to claim as black - ancient Egypt. African slavery was well in force long before that: but by the first millennium BC Pharaoh Rameses II boasts of providing the temples with more than 100,000 slaves, and indeed it is inconceivable that the monumental culture of Egypt could have been raised outside a slave economy. For the next two thousand years the basic economies of sub-Saharan Africa would be tied into the catching, use and sale of slaves. The sculptures of medieval life show slaves bound and gagged for sacrifice, and the first Portuguese explorers of Africa around 1480 found a large slave trade set up from the Congo to Benin. There were large slave plantations in the Mali empire in the 13th-14th centuries and every abuse and cruelty visited on slaves in the antebellum South, including the practice of breeding children for sale like cattle, was practised by the black rulers of those towns which the Afrocentrists now hold up as sanitized examples of high civilization, such as Timbuktu and Songhay.

shack first appeared well in the distance, a listing structure marooned by time. It was a mere ghost of what it once had been, and what it once had been was nothing much. She stopped the car, checked her odometer, looked at the building. A single black line ran from the electric wires to the

She was wearing her black bikini. Her body was thick and lush. It would never make the cover of Sports Illustrated, but it made her happy. Obviously, he felt that way too, because his maroon board shorts stirred with his response.

What you are about to read is the story of the first war on terror. No ... wait. This is actually the origin story of second-wave white supremacy known as "Jim Crow laws." This is a war narrative. This is a horror story, but it's also a suspense thriller that ends in triumph. It also ends in tragedy. It's a true story about a fantastic myth. This is a narrative, nonfiction account of the all-American fairy tale of liberty and justice for all. Behold, the untold story of the Great American Race War. Before we begin, we shall introduce our hero. The hero of this drama is Black people. All Black people. The free Blacks; the uncloaked maroons; the Black elite; the preachers and reverends; the doormen and doctors; the sharecroppers and soldiers—they are all protagonists in our epic adventure. Spoiler alert: the hero of this story does not die. Ever. This hero is long-suffering but unkillable. Bloody and unbowed. In this story—and in all the subsequent sequels, now and forever—this hero almost never wins. But we still get to be the heroes of all true American stories simply because we are indestructible. Try as they might, we will never be extinguished. Ever.

Much to the slaveholders' delight, the degradation of slave life increased the social distance between plantation slaves and urban free people of color. Nothing seemed to be further from the cosmopolitan world of New Orleans and the other Gulf ports than the narrow alternatives of the plantation, with its isolation, machine-like regimentation, and harsh discipline. As free people of color strove to establish themselves in the urban marketplace and master the etiquette of a multilingual society, they drew back from the horrors of plantation life and from the men and women forced to live that nightmare. The repulsion may have been mutual. Plantation slaves, many of them newly arrived Africans, little appreciated the intricacies of urban life and had neither the desire nor the ability to meet its complex conventions. Rather than embrace European-American standards, planation slaves sought to escape them. Their cultural practices pointed toward Africa - as did their filed teeth and tribal markings. While free people of color embraced Christianity and identified with the Catholic Church, the trappings of the white man's religions were not to be found in the quarter. Planters, ever eager to divide the black majority, labored to enlarge differences between city-bound free people of color and plantation slaves. Rewarding with freedom those men and women who displayed the physical and cultural attributes of European Americans fit their purpose exactly, as did employing free colored militiamen against maroons or feting white gentlemen and colored ladies at quadroon balls. It was no accident that the privileges afforded to free people of color expanded when the danger of slave rebellion was greatest. Nor was it mysterious that the free colored population grew physically lighter as the slave population - much of it just arrived from Africa - grew darker. But somatic coding was just one means of dividing slave and free blacks. Every time black militiamen took to the field against the maroons or a young white gentlemen took a colored mistress, the distance between slaves and free people of color widened.

The upsurge of revolutionary egalitarianism that obliterated differences of status and color in the name of human equality restored connections between these two peoples of African descent. The successful establishment of a revolutionary republic under a proclamation that 'all men are created equal,' and the bloody enactment of those principles, provided an ideological umbrella under which slaves, free people of color, Indians, and even disaffected white men and women could band together. The confluence of the plantation revolution of sugar and cotton and the democratic striving of the Age of Revolution made for new, explosive possibilities in the lower Mississippi Valley. Revolutionary republicanism spread rapidly during the last decade of the eighteenth century, and planters soon found themselves surrounded by insurrection and intrigue. Challenging the new harsh regime in the countryside, plantation slaves schemed to break the masters' grasp. Runaways grew in number, and maroon colonies reappeared in the backcountry. Thus, even as slaveholders sealed off their plantations from outside influences and instituted the discipline necessary to create a plantation regime, the plantation regime shook. Revolutionary activities took place at many venues. The primitive, frontier plantations, where newly arrived Africans reformulated their common African heritage, were the sites of many intrigues. Others took shape in the streets and back alleys of the port cities, where disenchanted black and white workers drank and gamed together. Yet other plots were hatched in the barracks, where white and black militiamen - mobilized against the very threat of revolution - had been joined together. Almost all the insurrectionists talked the language of the revolutionary age. But while some linked their cause directly to the revolutions in the United States, France, and Saint Domingue, others drew on their memory of Africa.

That we cannot get caught in the past events—even the immediate past. It isn’t possible to heal if we just keep processing and reprocessing, or declaring a singular history.

With the end of the American Revolution, ambitious European and American planters and woud-be planters flowed into the lower Mississippi Valley. They soon demanded an end to the complaisant regime that characterized slavery in the long half century following the Natchez rebellion, and Spanish officials were pleased to comply. The Cabildo - the governing body of New Orleans - issued its own regulations combining French and Spanish black codes, along with additional proscriptions on black life. In succeeding years, the state - Spanish (until 1800), French (between 1800 and 1803), and finally American (beginning in 1803) - enacted other regulations, controlling the slaves' mobility and denying their right to inherit property, contract independently, and testify in court. Explicit prohibitions against slave assemblage, gun ownership, and travel by horse were added, along with restrictions on manumission and self-purchase. The French, who again took control of Louisiana in 1800, proved even more compliant, reimposing the Code Noir during their brief ascendancy. The hasty resurrection of the old code pleased slaveholders, and, although it lost its effect with the American accession in 1803, planters - in control of the territorial legislature - incorporate many of its provisions in the territorial slave code. Perhaps even more significant than the plethora of new restrictions was a will to enforce the law. Slave miscreants faced an increasingly vigilant constabulary, whose members took it upon themselves to punish offenders. Officials turned with particular force on the maroon settlements that had proliferated amid the warfare of the Age of Revolution. They dismantled some fugitive colonies, scattering their members and driving many of them more deeply into the swamps. Maroons unfortunate enough to be captured were re-enslaved, deported, or executed.

For me, the challenge is trying to figure out how to <>conjure change as an "inside outsider" or "outside insider" depending on how I am viewed within the academy or in BIPOC settings; how to mess with seemingly intractable structures that dehumanize and demean; how to fix systemic problems that are inimical to Black thriving and lead inexorably to social death; and how to create -- doctor up, as it were -- pockets of resistance, maroon communities -- within and outside of primarily white universities where Black scholars and allies can thrive.

In former times, for those who were willing to take serious risks, it was often possible to escape the bonds of the family, of the village, or of the feudal structures. In Medieval Western Europe, serfs ran away to become peddlers, robbers, or town-dwellers. Later, Russian peasants ran away to become Cossacks, black slaves ran away to live in the wilderness as ‘Maroons,’ and indentured servants in the West Indies ran away to become buccaneers. But in the modern world there is nowhere left to run. Wherever you go, you can be traced by your credit card, your social-security number, [and] your fingerprints. You, Mr. N., live in California. Can you get a hotel or motel room without showing your picture I.D.? You can’t survive unless you fit into a slot in the system, otherwise known as a ‘job.’ And it is becoming increasingly difficult to find a job without making your whole past history accessible to prospective employers.

And they sat there, laughing amongst the dead, feeling unbearably alive.

The lobby was a large chamber carpeted in ancient maroon pile, its darkness only slightly relieved by a few small candles. Stairs rose off into black heights, and the mouths of corridors yawned on either side.

You won’t be needing that,” a low voice said just as she was about to put it around my neck. “What?” I turned to see Victor standing there, dressed in a pair of dark slacks and a maroon shirt with a black tie. The outfit looked oddly formal on him—probably because I’d never seen him in anything but jeans before. “I said you won’t be needing that.” He stepped into the room and motioned to the necklace that Addison was still holding. “Hello, Victor,” she said, nodding at him but standing her ground by my side. “Is wearing jewelry against were customs or something?” “No. I just have something else I want… I need Taylor to wear.” He held out one large hand and I saw a single strand of elegant pearls lying across his palm. “They’re beautiful,” I breathed, looking up at him. “Where did you get them?” “They were my mother’s,” he said roughly. “She… gave them to me when I was banished from my home pack.” He cleared his throat. “They’re supposed to be for my wife to wear on formal occasions. I understand if you don’t want to—” “Of course I’ll wear them,” I said quietly. I went to stand in front of him. “Would you put them on me?” He fastened them around my neck, and I shivered at the feel of his big, warm hands brushing my nape.

By the 1780s, Florida was home to Spanish-speaking Africans, fugitive slaves from the colonies, and indigenous and migrated Indian tribes, including the Seminoles. Fugitive slaves established maroon settlements in Spanish Florida with names like “Disturb Me If You Dare” and “Try Me If You Be Men.

Maroon communities of composition teachers, mentorless graduate students, adjunct Marxist historians, out or queer management professors, state college ethnic studies departments, closed-down film programs, visa-expired Yemeni student newspaper editors, historically black college sociologists, and feminist engineers. And what will the university say of them? It will say they are unprofessional. This is not an arbitrary charge.

The earth star chakra is located beneath your feet. The colors associated with the earth star chakra are silver, black and maroon.

She was checking the ingredients—an interesting potpourri of words she’d need to look up—when she felt, actually felt, someone’s eyes on her. Still holding the box at eye level, she slowly shifted her gaze. Down the corridor, near the bologna and salami display, a man stood and openly stared at her. There was no one else in the aisle. He was average height, maybe five-ten or so. A razor hadn’t glided across his face in at least two days. He wore blue jeans, a maroon T-shirt, and a shiny black Members Only windbreaker. His baseball cap had a Nike swoosh on it. Grace had never seen the man before. He stared at her for another moment before he spoke. His voice was barely a whisper. “Mrs. Lamb,” the man said to her. “Room 17.” For

Late on March 17, 1959, the Fourteenth Dalai Lama changed out of his customary maroon robes into khaki pants and a long black coat. Knowing he could carry little, he hastily rolled up a favorite thangka of the Second Dalai Lama and slid it into a small bag. With this in hand, he slipped out the main gates of the Norbulinka Palace under the cover of darkness. Several trusted officials whisked him through the crowds, which had gathered there in an attempt to protect their revered leader, and down to the banks of the Kyichu River where several small coracles awaited to row him and his small group across the river. Early the next morning, having reached the 16,000-foot Che-la Pass overlooking the Lhasa valley, he paused, turned, and cast a long last glance over the Tibetan capital. Implored to hurry by his small guard unit, he quickly began the descent and his march south to the Indian border.1 It would be the last time he would see his city.

Hoffman looked down at the body bag. The order had come directly from the Führer’s senior field officer, Reichsmarschall Haas to Hoffman’s commanding officer. Der Führer had asked to inspect this curious body for himself… and to ask the men who’d seen what happened to explain directly to him what they’d witnessed. The clattering from above had grown much louder. He looked up, carefully shading his eyes, to see the yawning loading bay was now only twenty or thirty feet above them. The freight platform finally jerked to a halt inside the bay where Hoffman saw a couple of SS Leibstandarte guards standing to attention, dressed crisply in ceremonial black. For an unhappy moment he thought they were going to take possession of the body bag and send Hoffman and his two men back down. But, with a perfunctory nod from one of them, they beckoned Hoffman and the others to follow. A stairwell guarded by two more men took them to the upper deck. The battleship-grey walls that Hoffman and his men had grown used to on the way over – living like battery chickens on the lower decks as Das Mutterschiff sailed gracefully south from the conquered area around New York – now gave way to dark oak panels. The floor no longer metal grilles but a soft maroon carpet that whispered beneath his muddied combat boots. Ahead of them, double doors guarded by two more SS Leibstandarte standing to attention. ‘Oberleutnant Hoffman, to see the Führer,’ announced one of the guards who’d escorted them up from the bay. One of the two standing guard announced their arrival into an intercom. A moment later a young smartly dressed adjutant appeared

Merchant Bashir got up and plodded to a pile of rugs. He grabbed a kilim and unrolled it across the floor. A mosaic of black, yellow, and maroon geometries glimmered. “He taught me rug weaving. It’s a nomadic art, he said. Pattern making carries the past into the future.” Bashir pointed to a recurrent cross motif that ran down the kilim’s center. “The four corners of the cross are the four corners of the universe. The scorpion here”—he toed a many-legged symmetric creature woven in yellow—“represents freedom. Sharif taught me this and more. He was a natural at symbols. I asked him why he went to Turkey. He looked at me and said, ‘To learn to weave the best kilim in the world.