About the Book
About the Book
Courageous, Cultured, & Resilience:
Foundational Black Americans
Courageous, Cultured, & Resilience: Foundational Black Americans by Ollie Marshall-Rico is a powerful testimonial work that demands recognition and reparations for Foundational Black Americans—descendants of U.S. chattel slavery. Through raw poetic prose, the author delineates the FBA lineage from Black immigrants WHO have never confronted ancestral rape, lynching spectacles, erased matriarchs, and stolen labor. The book celebrates FBA-created culture—jazz, blues, gospel, gumbo, and resilience—while rejecting colonizer attitudes. Marshall-Rico insists only FBAs can speak their truth. Flawed yet fiercely necessary, this work is a moral weapon demanding unpaid wages built into America’s soil.
Book
What's Inside the Book
Discover the untold journey of Foundational Black Americans. Explore raw truths of ancestral resilience, cultural triumphs, and unyielding courage. Witness poetry born from pain, strength forged in struggle, and a legacy that built America. Experience the music, the food, the blood, and the soil. Understand the call for recognition, respect, and reparations. Walk through generations of survival, love, and unbroken spirit.
The Lineage And Suffering Of FBAs
Inside are firsthand poetic testimonies of Foundational Black Americans descending from American chattel slavery. The book confronts ancestral rape by enslavers, untraceable matriarchs, babies sold as punishment, and lynching victims whose body parts were placed in souvenir jars. It documents the Middle Passage, unpaid labor that built America, and the destruction of self-sufficient Black communities like Tulsa and Rosewood.
Delineation, Reparations, And Cultural Resilience
The book draws a clear line between FBAs and Black immigrants who came by choice, rejecting colonizer attitudes and the degrading term "Akata" (wild cat). It demands financial reparations as unpaid wages, not charity. It celebrates Black-created American culture—jazz, blues, gospel, rock, hip-hop, and gumbo—while warning against white erasure of FBA history and the rewriting of narratives.
