Jill Scott confidentially dropped some inaccurate knowledge on the Twitterverse Wednesday (Nov. 25), and the side effect was glorious. The hashtag #HotepHistory lit up the ‘Net with ridiculous “historical” notions, like the one Scott tweeted without doing so much as a Google search first.
By the way, “Black Friday” refers to retailers getting in on the holiday shopping season in hopes of recouping money lost throughout the year (i.e. moving from the “red,” which represents profit loss, to the “black,” which represents profit gain). Furthermore, during slavery, black people were more commonly referred to as “n*ggers,” “negroes” or “colored,” so Scott’s notion doesn’t add up. Sadly enough, the term “n*gger Friday” would actually make more sense.
There’s also another definition of “Black Friday,” but it doesn’t date back to slavery.
Also, Thanksgiving wasn’t made a federal holiday, (celebrated on the last Thursday of November) until 1863, courtesy of President Abraham Lincoln. This was two years before slavery was officially abolished.
During the Great Depression in 1939, there were five Thursdays in the month of November. President Franklin D. Roosevelt moved Thanksgiving to the fourth Thursday of the month extending the holiday shopping season, and giving merchants more time to sell items leading up to Christmas. The legislation passed in 1941.
Peep the #HotepHistory tweets below.
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Photo: WENN
