Michelle Coles

Sorors, Family, and Friends,

I’m so excited to be participating in the Southwest Region’s Delta Author on Tour event taking place on April 25 from noon-2 pm in Southern University’s Cade Library in my hometown of BATON ROUGE! ❤️🤍🐘💙💛🐆

I have so many fond memories of Southern as a child from learning to swim there (thanks Uncle Louis and Nanny Donna) to watching the Human Jukebox and the Dancing Dolls perform. My grandparents are alums and my grandfather helped launch the Bayou Classic as an administrator so we always had prime box seats for the game. 🥰 So many blessings in my life flowed from Southern so it is truly an honor to return home to that campus and share my story.

As a special bonus, my favorite character in my novel Black Was the Ink is P.B.S. Pinchback, Louisiana’s (and America’s) first Black governor who also happens to be a founder of SOUTHERN University (along with one of my distant relatives T.T. Allain)! Talk about full circle. God is good. 🙏🏽

This amazing event is free and open to the public. I hope you’ll join me and tell all your friends!

RSVP here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/southwest-region-delta-authors-on-tour-2026-tickets-1984849771096?aff=oddtdtcreator

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. 😅

Join us at the Association of Writers & Writing Programs (AWP) Conference this Saturday, March 7 at the Baltimore Convention Center. Kayla Rayford from The Reading Black Girls will moderate a conversation with award-winning authors Kim Johnson and Michelle Coles about the importance of exploring Black history in young adult fiction.

Kim Johnson’s novels:
This is My America
Invisible Son
The Color of a Lie

Michelle Coles’s novel:
Black Was the Ink

I ran up to NYC for a quick day trip last week to do a Black History Month presentation at a law firm but not before stopping by the Dominicans. 🥰

Happy ! 🖤💚❤️💛 To celebrate, I shared 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 U.S. citizens for the first time.

We made it to the last day of BHM. How many of these 28 facts did you know?

0-9 Gotta start somewhere 📚
10-20 Respect! ✊🏽
21-27 Are you an African American history professor? 🤓
28 You must’ve read Black Was the Ink! 😜

If you learned something new, help spread the word. Knowledge is power. 💪🏽

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 .

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.

26. Did you know that in 1872, Congress issued a general amnesty of Confederates, which allowed them to hold office once again after previously being barred for acts of treason?

Many of the leaders of the Confederate States of America previously served as U.S. Congressmen and Senators before resigning their seats and declaring war on their country. Jefferson Davis, the President of the Confederacy, for instance, had served as a U.S. Senator from Mississippi from 1847-1861.

In an effort to exclude people who had betrayed the USA from holding a position of public trust again, Congress included in the 14th Amendment Section 3, which prohibited the election or appointment to any federal or state office of any person who had previously held federal offices and then engaged in insurrection, rebellion, or treason. But the section also provided that Congress could override this limitation with a two-thirds vote by the House and Senate. In 1872, Congress did just that and passed the Amnesty Act, which paved the way for former Confederate leaders to gain office where they predictably used the levers of power to ensure the continued oppression of Black people.

The Amnesty Act forgave 150,000 former Confederate troops who had taken part in the American Civil War. In keeping with the spirit of the Amnesty Act, President Ulysses S. Grant also ordered that pending charges be dismissed against the insurrectionists and pardoned all but 500 former top Confederate leaders.

After the January 6 insurrection, which incidentally was the 1st time the Confederate flag flew in the U.S. Capitol, courts debated whether the Amnesty Act also removed disabilities that the 14th Amendment would otherwise impose for subsequent insurrections or if those political consequences still applied.

Read to learn more about the fascinating and remember .

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.

25. Did you know that Congress passed the D.C. Compensated Emancipation Act which abolished slavery in D.C. on April 16, 1862 and compensated slaveholders but not the enslaved?

While the United States aka the Union was fighting a war in which the core area of dispute was the status of slavery, i.e. whether it should be allowed in new territories as the country expanded westward, phased out gradually or abolished altogether, the capital city, Washington D.C., was home to thousands of enslaved people.

The Compromise of 1850 outlawed the sale of enslaved people in D.C., but it didn’t prohibit their ownership. Following the departure of most southern legislators who resigned their Congressional seats to form the Confederacy, Congress took action to abolish slavery in D.C. outright.

On April 16, 1862 (“D.C.’s Emancipation Day”), nine months before the Emancipation Proclamation, President Lincoln signed “An Act for the Release of certain Persons held to Service or Labor in the District of Columbia,” which freed 3,185 people. This Act also set forth a process to compensate slaveholders who were loyal to the Union for the loss of their “property,” but made no attempt to compensate the people who had spent their entire lives in bo***ge toiling without end against their will for no pay. It did, however, offer to pay the formerly enslaved $100 if they chose to leave the United States for places such as Haiti or Liberia.

While this was the only compensated emancipation plan enacted in the United States, Britain enacted a similar scheme that was still paying the family of enslavers until a few years ago.

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

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

24. Did you know that the first case to desegregate schools was brought in 1847 in Boston and used many of the same arguments as Brown v Board of Education?

Little Sarah Roberts, a five-year-old living in Boston, wanted to be able to attend her neighborhood school. Her parents enrolled her but she was expelled because she was Black and forced to go a school for Black children that was much further away and in far worse condition.

Future Senator Charles Sumner and Robert Morris, one of the first Black Attorneys, decided to represent Sarah and filed the first case to desegregate a public school in 1847, Roberts v City of Boston. Their arguments focused on the psychological harm that school segregation caused both Black and white children, arguments that were successfully replicated over a century later in Brown v. Board (1954). Although they lost their case, they won the sympathies of the people of Boston who decided to pass an ordinance to desegregate their schools, becoming the first city in the country to do so.

Senator Sumner was consistently on the right side of history and always willing to fiercely advocate for the universal application of American ideals like freedom and equality. He is a great example of the type of allies the Black community needs.

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

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 became U.S. citizens for the 1st time.

23. Did you know that numerous Hollywood films have upheld false narratives about the Reconstruction Era but none have portrayed the truth?

Following the collapse of the Reconstruction Era, a concerted effort was undertaken by Confederate sympathizers to rehabilitate the reputation of the South by reframing the cause of the Civil War in a way that minimized the importance of slavery. This “Lost Cause” narrative also wanted to make it seem as though slavery was a benevolent institution that mutually benefited enslaved people, as well as whites, by teaching them skills for their upliftment. They talked about slavery as if it were a voluntary internship and not a violent dehumanizing exploitative hellscape that ripped babies out of the arms of their mothers.

Hollywood fully cooperated with spreading this false propaganda in early hit films like Birth of a Nation, a racist film from 1915 that celebrated domestic terrorist organizations like the K*K and justified the lynchings of Black men. At the behest of Pres Woodrow Wilson, a man who resegregated employment in the federal government, this was the first movie ever screened at the White House and helped resurrected the Klan, which had been dead for a generation. Gone With the Wind, another extremely popular film, romanticized the institution of slavery and made Black servants appear to be fully invested in the lives of the people who enslaved them as opposed to being real people with families of their own who they would prefer to look after. These harmful images have brainwashed millions of Americans into somehow thinking white supremacy is heroic and slavery wasn’t all that bad. It is past time to rethink and reject those pernicious narratives.

Hollywood has never made a film that showcased all of the unfulfilled promise that the Reconstruction Era offered as the 1st time in history that we got close to having a representative democracy. Maybe can be its first.

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

22. Did you know that on Easter Sunday 1873 around 100 Black men were murdered in Colfax, LA while surrendering to a mob of former Confederate soldiers and Klansmen over an election dispute?

In reaction to African Americans finally gaining the right to vote during the Reconstruction Era, a wave of domestic terrorists motivated by an ideology of white supremacy swept the South and attempted to undermine the 1872 election results through violence and intimidation. One of the deadliest scenes of that terrorism was in Colfax, Louisiana (just north of Alexandria) on Easter Sunday, April 13, 1873. As many as 150 Black militia men who were protecting the Grant Parish courthouse on the orders of Louisiana’s Governor were killed while surrendering to a white mob that included former Confederate soldiers and Klansmen. Following their surrender, the mob swarmed the nearby town killing more innocent civilians, taunting children with the flesh of victims.

Empowered by the newly passed K*K Act, DOJ struck back and indicted 97 white men for their role in the massacre and obtained convictions for three of them. This is the same law that people use today to sue police officers for violating their civil rights, 42 U.S.C. 1983.

The three men appealed their convictions to the all-white U.S. Supreme Court, which overturned them in U.S. v. Cruikshank (1876), an opinion that undermined the federal government’s ability to fully enforce the 14th Amendment’s promise of equal protection under the law for all.

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

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

21. Did you know that in 1874 Robert Elliott, a Black Congressman from S.C. eviscerated the former VP of the Confederacy in a debate on the House floor about proposed civil rights legislation

Referencing Congressman Alexander Stephens’ (GA) speech in which he admitted that the Confederacy’s “foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery—subordination to the superior race—is his natural and normal condition,” Congressman Elliott countered: “Sir, it is scarcely twelve years since that gentleman shocked the civilized word by announcing the birth of a government which rested on human slavery as its cornerstone. The progress of events has swept away that pseudo-government which rested on greed, pride, and tyranny; and the race who he then ruthlessly spurned and tramped on are here to meet him in debate, and to demand that the rights which are enjoyed by their former oppressors  - who vainly sought to overthrow a Government for which they could not pr******te to the base uses of slavery – shall be accorded to those who even in the darkness of slavery kept their allegiance to freedom and the Union. Sir, the gentleman from Georgia has learned much since 1861; but he is still a laggard.”

After several mins of verbal annihilation, Elliott concluded, “The rights contended for in this bill are among the sacred rights of mankind, which are not to be rummaged for among old parchments or musty records, because they are written as with a sunbeam in the whole volume of human nature, by the hand of the Divinity itself, and can never be erased or obscured by mortal power.”

The Civil Rights Act Elliott supported passed in 1875 but the Supreme Court struck it down in 1883. The rights Elliott insisted upon weren’t enforced in the U.S. until nearly a century later.

Chap 42 of Black Was the Ink covers this powerful speech in full!