Slave Ship Mentor

Advertising the arrival of 152 "prime healthy young negroes" from the Gambia River on the ship Mentor, merchants Robert Hazlehurst & Co. appealed to a well-established preference in the South Carolina slave market: "The negroes from this part of the coast of Africa, are well acquianted with the cultivation of rice, and are naturally industrious." The Columbia Herald (Charleston), 30 May 1785.

What sugar was to the Caribbean, rice was to coastal South Carolina and Georgia.

For more on the preferences and sources of the South Carolina slave market, consult Daniel C. Littlefield, Rice and Slaves: Ethnicity and the Slave Trade in Colonial South Carolina (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1991 [1981]) and Philip D. Curtin, The Atlantic Slave Trade: A Census (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1969).

Pearl Harbor Day

To honor the 70th anniversary of the bombing of Pearl Harbor (Dec. 7, 1941) Ancestry.com is making available their records of World War II, free through the remainder of the day: http://www.ancestry.com/pearlharbor.

Greg O'Brien and Scholarship on the Choctaw

In the book Choctaws in a Revolutionary Age, 1750-1830, historian Greg O'Brien describes the importance of traditional religion for the Choctaw Nation, speakers of a Muskhogean language related to Chickasaw and Creek.

In the book Empire and Others, check for O'Brien's assessment of Choctaw effort to maintain trade with the British.

Please consult Greg O'Brien, "Protecting Trade Through War: Choctaw Elites and British Occupation of the Floridas," in Martin Daunton and Rick Halpern, eds., Empire and Others: British Encounters with Indigenous Peoples, 1600-1850 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999), pages 149-166.

First Black Mayor of Jacksonville, Florida

On May 14, 2011, the voters of Duval County, Florida elected Alvin Brown Mayor of Jacksonville.

Mayor Elect Brown will be the first African-American to serve as mayor of Jacksonville.

In the 1880s, Jacksonville had a Jewish-American mayor, Morris A. Dzialynski, pronounced "Dah-linsky."

In the 1980s, Jacksonville voters elected an Arab-American mayor, Tommy Hazouri.

Better Business Bureau: BBB Wise Giving Alliance

On March 14, 2011, the Wilson County News (Floresville, Texas) published a news release for the Better Business Bureau on choosing a relief-based charity helping Japan.

Those considering donation to charities organization can find a BBB rating for the charity.

Writing for MSNBC in 2006, Elizabeth Schwinn offered ten recommendations for charitable giving.