Laurence Fishburne reads epic letter from former slave to the ‘master’ who wanted him back

October 07, 2024   |   Read Online

Laurence Fishburne reads epic letter from former slave to the ‘master’ who wanted him back It’s a powerful—and surprisingly funny—takedown of the colonel who’d enslaved him. Imagine being enslaved for over 30 years and then gaining your freedom, only to have the man who enslaved you ask you to come back and work for him a year later. Unthinkable, right? A letter written in 1865 by Jordan (sometimes spelled “Jordon”) Anderson, a formerly enslaved man in Ohio, to his former “master” Colonel P.H. Anderson in Tennessee demonstrates the ridiculousness of such a request—and offers a cathartic takedown the colonel most definitely deserved. After being freed by the Union Army in 1864, Jordan and his wife moved to Ohio to live and work. In the meantime, Colonel Anderson found that his plantation had fallen into total disrepair without the benefit of enslaved labor, so he desperately wrote to Jordan to ask him to come back and help save the property. He promised to pay Jordan and treat him as a free man if he came to work for him. The audacity, though. Phew. Jordan didn’t owe the colonel a response at all. He could have just ignored the letter and moved on with his life, but instead, he chose to dictate his response through his employer, Valentine Winters, and have it published in the Cincinnati Commercial under the title, “Letter from a Freedman to His Old Master.” It was a hit. In 2023, actor Laurence Fishburne read the letter on “Letters Live” in his signature sonorous voice, and his delivery showcased the brilliance and humor in Jordan’s response. Read the story Moms go out for a night and forget their breast pumps. A hilarious look at motherhood ensues. Just a dose of wholesome chaos. Nights out with girlfriends become precious after becoming a mom. But certain aspects of motherhood—like lactation—don’t always get the “off-duty” memo. Just ask this group of friends, who just so happen to be labor and delivery nurses, what happened when they tried to hit the town and realized two moms in their group forgot their breast pumps. Besides a doctor-prescribed pain medication, the only way to really deal with the painful, throbbing sensation of breast engorgement is to express, or release the milk. Though that milk ideally goes into a baby’s mouth or breast pump…sometimes you gotta improvise. And that’s exactly what we see in a viral video posted in March by @Labor_Junkie_RN, which is basically an educational video and hilarious glimpse of motherhood all rolled into one. Read the story SNL’s latest ‘Washington’s Dream’ sketch hilariously skewers the quirks in American English When she read her vows, he fell in love all over again. In 2023, “Saturday Night Live” struck gold with a historical sketch where, in 1776, then-General George Washington laid out his dream for the future of America after the Revolutionary War. The twist is that his dream is to promote a series of nonsensical American cultural quirks, such as the refusal to adopt the metric system and the arbitrary ways American English differs from the UK’s. The sketch was a great send-up of the cultural differences that separate Americans from their cousins across the pond and stand-up comedian Nate Bargatze, as Washington, delivered them in a pitch-perfect deadpan. The sketch was the second most popular from SNL season 49 and introduced the low-key stand-up comedian to a much wider audience. On October 5, 2024, Bargatze returned to host SNL and once again donned the powdered wig as Washington. This time, America’s first president addressed his troops, played again by Mikey Day, Kenan Thompson and Bowen Yang, about his dream for America from a boat crossing the Delaware. In the second “Washington’s Dream” sketch, the general tells his soldiers that he hopes the new country will “do our own thing with the English language.” Read the story Homeless man catapults onto music industry’s radar with viral performance of original song His unique voice and his song, “Ghost of You,” has people raving. Andrew “Donut” Larsen has taken social media by storm after a video of him recorded some time ago by a stranger went viral recently on TikTok. Larsen was sitting outside of a gas station with his guitar when he asked someone to buy him a beer in exchange for him playing an original song. The song blew the passerby away, but with the song’s recent virility, Larsen’s life is quickly changing. The song “Ghost of You,” the original song by Larsen, started charting as soon as he released it. In a short time, he went from being homeless and singing for change on street corners in southern states to being flown out to Los Angeles and Nashville to meet with record executives. While it remains unclear if Larsen has signed a record deal, he recorded the single that grabbed everyone’s attention in a professional recording studio. Read the story

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Categories: History and Historiography, Lifestyle