👑 Rockwell's Dessalines Priestess

She passed the union test. Then they sabotaged her camera. Then they blacklisted her. Then she sued every major network in America—and won.
Jessie Maple wasn't supposed to be a filmmaker.
She was supposed to be a bacteriologist. A lab technician. Safe. Invisible. Quiet.
Born February 14, 1937, in McComb, Mississippi, Maple was the second of twelve children. Her father farmed the land. Her mother taught school and worked as a dietician. When Maple was thirteen, her father died, and her mother made a decision that would change everything: she sent Jessie and many of her siblings north, to Philadelphia, where opportunities might exist that Mississippi would never offer a Black girl.
Maple graduated from the all-Black Benjamin Franklin High School in 1955. She studied medical technology. She got a job running a bacteriology and serology laboratory in Philadelphia, then New York. She was good at it—so good that she helped identify a new strain of bacteria.
But the hospital wouldn't make her permanent. She didn't have a doctorate.
On her lunch breaks, she joined other workers trying to organize. She realized something: the people with power weren't the ones following the rules. They were the ones writing them.
In the 1960s and 1970s, Maple left the lab and started writing for the New York Courier. No training. Just conviction. "I thought, well, I'm going to be a writer," she later said.
But writing wasn't enough. She wanted to tell stories with images.
In 1972, Maple enrolled in Ossie Davis's Third World Cinema Corporation—a program designed to get African Americans into behind-the-scenes film jobs so they could join the union. She was the first female trainee. She graduated in 1973.
The program was shut down after one year. As Maple noted: "It was so successful that after one year they shut it down."
She also trained at WNET's National Education Television Training School. She apprenticed as an editor on "Shaft's Big Score!" and "The Super Cops." She joined the Film Editor's Union.
But she wanted more. She wanted to be behind the camera.
There was a problem: the New York camera operators union had only three women. No Black women. Ever.
Maple studied for six months. She trained with her husband, filmmaker Leroy Patton. She rented equipment and practiced five days a week, mastering every camera she could get her hands on.
In 1973, she took the union qualification test.
She failed.
But her husband had been watching. He noticed something: someone had tampered with the test camera. Sabotage.
When he pointed it out, Maple was allowed to retake the test.
She passed.
Jessie Maple became the first African American woman admitted to the New York camera operators union.
Then the union told the studios not to hire her.
Blacklisted.
She could have given up. She could have gone back to the lab, back to safety, back to being invisible.
Instead, she did something they didn't expect: she sued them all. At once.
ABC. CBS. NBC. Every major network.
"I knew when you get ready to do something and you're going to fight for it, you have to know what you're doing," Maple said. "I knew it. I know how to do it and I knew all the cameras and so that's why I took on the union."
In 1977, she won her lawsuit against WCBS. It earned her a trial period at the station, which blossomed into a freelance career at WCBS, ABC, and NBC.
She worked her way up from being considered incompetent to becoming the number one camera operator in local news.
She wrote about the entire ordeal in her 1977 book, "How to Become a Union Camerawoman," a manual for anyone who would follow in her footsteps.
But Maple wasn't just working. She was thinking.
As a news camerawoman, she realized something powerful: she could "edit the story in the camera." She could prevent editors from taking a positive story and making it negative, especially when Black people were involved.
"I would shoot the story in a way they couldn't cut the Black person out of it," she explained. "They had to see both sides of what happened and what they had to say."
In 1974, Maple and Patton co-founded LJ Film Productions. They wanted to tell the stories that mainstream cinema ignored.
In 1981, they released "Will."
It was a gritty drama about a basketball coach in Harlem, a former All-American player struggling with heroin addiction, who takes in a twelve-year-old boy to prevent him from developing the same habit. The film starred Loretta Devine in her film debut.
"Will" was cited as the first independent feature-length film directed by an African American woman in the post-civil rights era.
But there was a problem: no one would screen it.
So in 1982, Maple and Patton opened a theater in the basement of their Harlem brownstone on 120th Street. They called it "20 West, Home of Black Cinema."
It became a long-running venue for independent Black filmmakers. A place where stories like theirs could be told without permission from gatekeepers who didn't understand them.
In 1989, Maple released "Twice as Nice," a film about twin sisters—both college basketball standouts—preparing for a professional draft. The film starred Pamela and Paula McGee, real-life twins who had won back-to-back NCAA basketball championships at USC.
The film was released nine years before the WNBA was created.
Maple kept making films. Documentaries. Features. Stories rooted in community, not just challenges, but solutions.
And she kept mentoring. Filmmaker Yvonne Welbon, who made the documentary "Sisters in Cinema," was one of many who cited Maple as an inspiration. "Her advocacy, mentorship, and care has touched generations of Black filmmakers," wrote Black Film Archive curator Maya Cade after Maple's death.
Jessie Maple died May 30, 2023, in Atlanta, Georgia. She was 86 years old.
In 2025, "Will" was restored in 4K by Janus Films, in collaboration with Indiana University's Black Film Center & Archive, the Smithsonian, and the Center for African American Media Arts. The restoration was endorsed by Spike Lee and Julie Dash.
The film was re-released theatrically on June 20, 2025—forty-four years after Maple made it in a Harlem brownstone with a vision no one else believed in.
Bloomington, Indiana, declared February 1 as "Mrs. Jessie Maple Patton Day."
Her papers and films are preserved at Indiana University's Black Film Center & Archive.
Jessie Maple wasn't supposed to be a filmmaker. But she became one anyway—and then she made sure others could follow.
She didn't just break barriers. She documented how she did it, sued the people who tried to stop her, won, and then built her own theater so no one would ever have to ask permission again.
That's not just breaking barriers. That's obliterating them—and leaving a manual so others can do the same.
Say her name ✊🏽 Jessie maple 🙏🏽
pass it on 🥳.

13 hours ago | [YT] | 56

👑 Rockwell's Dessalines Priestess

This is what they did to our ancestors in case y'all get too comfortable to forget. 💔💔

13 hours ago | [YT] | 111

👑 Rockwell's Dessalines Priestess

This is the day the American government bombed a Black neighborhood — and too many people still don’t know it happened.

May 13, 1985 is not ancient history.
It is not folklore.
It is not an exaggeration.

It is a documented moment when the Philadelphia Police Department dropped an explosive from a helicopter onto a residential home in a Black community — and then allowed the fire to burn.

The house belonged to MOVE, a Black liberation organization founded in 1972 by John Africa, a West Philadelphia native and Korean War veteran. MOVE’s philosophy blended Black liberation, radical environmentalism, animal rights, and a rejection of what they saw as a violent, exploitative modern society. Their beliefs were unconventional. Their methods were confrontational. And they were relentlessly surveilled, harassed, and criminalized.

By the mid-1980s, the city of Philadelphia had labeled MOVE a terrorist organization.

On the morning of May 13, nearly 500 police officers surrounded a rowhouse on Osage Avenue where 13 MOVE members lived — including children. The city had obtained arrest warrants for four occupants on charges including parole violations and weapons possession. Neighbors were evacuated. The street was sealed off.

What followed was not restraint.
It was escalation.

Police fired tear gas into the home. MOVE members fired back. A gun battle lasted over 90 minutes, during which police expended more than 10,000 rounds of ammunition into a residential block.

Then came the decision that changed everything.

Philadelphia Police Commissioner Gregore Sambor ordered the use of explosives.

From a police helicopter, officers dropped two one-pound bombs made of Tovex, a powerful explosive supplied by the FBI, onto the roof of the MOVE house. The blast ignited a fire.

And then — the fire was allowed to burn.

Firefighters were instructed to stand down.

The flames spread from house to house, consuming 61 homes across two city blocks. An entire Black neighborhood was reduced to ash.

Inside the MOVE home, 11 people died — six adults and five children, ages 7 to 13. Among them was John Africa. Only two people survived.

Let that sit.

A U.S. city dropped a bomb on its own citizens.
Children were inside.
And no one went to prison.

In the aftermath, officials described the bombing as a “tactical decision.” Investigations acknowledged poor judgment — but no criminal charges were filed against police or city leadership. The families were left with loss. The neighborhood was left with scars. The country moved on.

But Black communities did not forget.

The MOVE bombing exposed something many already knew: that state violence against Black people did not end with slavery, Jim Crow, or the Civil Rights era. It simply changed uniforms. Changed language. Changed tactics.

This was not about one group’s beliefs.
It was about power deciding who is disposable.

May 13, 1985 forces us to confront a hard truth: when Black resistance is labeled “dangerous,” the response is often overwhelming force — even at the cost of Black children’s lives.

This is why memory matters.
This is why history must be told wholeheartedly.
This is why silence is not neutral.

Because Osage Avenue wasn’t just burned.

Trust was burned.
Justice was burned.
And a warning was sent — loud and clear.

But so was a lesson.

We are still here.
We still remember.
And we still demand that this country face what it has done — not to shame the past, but to protect the future.

18 hours ago | [YT] | 28

👑 Rockwell's Dessalines Priestess

Congratulations Khaby Lame 👏🏽 🎉 🎉.

youtube.com/shorts/5AThYgfrzZ...

1 day ago | [YT] | 53

👑 Rockwell's Dessalines Priestess

youtube.com/shorts/MES8YvBOAD...

1 day ago | [YT] | 2

👑 Rockwell's Dessalines Priestess

Shirley Chisholm was a politician, educator, and author. In 1968, she became the 1st Black woman elected to the United States Congress, representing New York's 12th congressional district for 7 terms from 1969 to 1983.
In the 1972 United States presidential election, she became the 1st African-American candidate for a major party's nomination for President of the United States, and the 1st woman to run for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination.
CAREER:
Chisholm was born in Brooklyn, she studied and worked in early childhood education, becoming involved in local Democratic party politics in the 1950s.
In 1964, overcoming some resistance because she was a woman, she was elected to the New York State Assembly.
Four years later she was elected to Congress, where she led expansion of food and nutrition programs for the poor and rose to party leadership.
She retired from Congress in 1983 and taught at Mt Holyoke College, while continuing her political organizing.
Although nominated for an ambassadorship in 1993, health issues caused her to withdraw.
In 2015, Chisholm was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
LEGACY:
✊🏿In 1984, The National Black Women's Political Caucus was established during the vice presidential campaign of Geraldine Ferraro. African American women from various political organizations convened to set forth a political agenda emphasizing the needs of women of African descent. Chisholm was chosen as its first chair.
✊🏿In February 2005, Shirley Chisholm '72: Unbought and Unbossed, a documentary film, aired on U.S public television. It chronicled Chisholm's 1972 bid for the Democratic presidential nomination. It was directed and produced by independent African-American filmmaker Shola Lynch. The film was featured at the Sundance Film Festival in 2004. On April 9, 2006, the film was announced as a winner of a Peabody Award.
✊🏿In 2014, the first adult biography of Chisholm was published, Shirley Chisholm: Catalyst for Change, by Brooklyn College history professor Barbara Winslow, who was also the founder and first director of the Shirley Chisholm Project. Until then, only several juvenile biographies had appeared.
✊🏿Chisholm's speech "For the Equal Rights Amendment", given in 1970, is listed as No. 91 in American Rhetoric's Top 100 Speeches of the 20th Century

Say her name remember it and pass it on 💯🙏🏽💖
Respect to the ancestors 💯🫡👑.

1 day ago | [YT] | 131

👑 Rockwell's Dessalines Priestess

Dr. Ashley Roxanne Peterson made history in 2020 as the youngest Black woman to graduate as an Osteopathic Physician in America.

Inspired by her ancestors'' resilience including their tragic connection to the Tuskegee Study, she pursued osteopathic medicine, a holistic approach emphasizing prevention and whole-body wellness.

Beginning her studies at just 19, she graduated at 26, joining the mere 5% of U.S. physicians who are Black.

Driven by her family’s legacy and the groundbreaking inclusivity of osteopathy’s founder, Dr. Peterson now stands as a beacon of inspiration, urging future generations to shatter barriers and redefine what’s possible.

Teach the children help them build our future,
treat them well and watch them lead the way 💃🏽
show them all the beauty they possessed inside 🥳, give them a sense of pride and watch them lead the way 💯💯❤️🙏🏽.
Spread the word and support our doctors GOD knows we need them 🙏🏽.

1 day ago | [YT] | 406

👑 Rockwell's Dessalines Priestess

Learn something teach something, as ‪@afrothinktank42‬ ‪@afroTTfuturism‬ always say 💯👏🏽, today I learned something so I'll teach something by sharing what I've learn FBAs please watch for your health and sanity

Enjoy your Sunday everyone 😊❤️🙏🏽.

2 days ago | [YT] | 1