Of black history, avatars and the naming of splinter groups...

[Greg Truby]

Erik formally started his DRAFT movement back in March of '06. By June of '06 Erik's movement was gaining momentum and more and more MrExcel.com board members decided to use avatars that let us know what they looked like. On post #154 of the DRAFT thread, I observed that we had no black members of DRAFT. AFAIK this is true even to this day. So I decided to use Frederick Douglass and Condoleeza Rice for avatars for a while before returning to the DRAFT.

Prompted by Black History Month (February) last year, I decided to surf the web a bit and read a bit more on black history. I used picture of a couple of chaps I came across as avatars during that time: Norbert Rillieux & W.E.B. duBois.

It's not any sort of a political statement. It's just a little something that might get a few curious folks to look into a part of our history that they might otherwise not. That's all. Not tryin' to right any wrongs; redress any grievances or anything of the sort. Just pointin' out that history is a really, really comprehensive thing and it's kind of fun to meander through seldom trod nooks and crannies of it from time to time.

All of this has thus far been discussed on Erik's DRAFT thread. And, to his credit, he has been very tolerant of my little (and sometimes not-so-little) detours of his thread. But I [whose thread rustling proclivities are grossly overstated, btw] do not wish to beleaguer Erik's forbearance further. I have therefore decided to move discussion of this particular bit of avatar business off to a new thread.

When February rolled around again, hatman decided to fly a new black-history-based avatar as well. He asked about a possible name for our now two-strong splinter group of DRAFTees. Thus far we've come up with:

• BAM = Black Avatar Month
• AHAA = Avatars of Historical African Americans.
• DAAM = Displaying African Avatars Movement
• HAAAM = Historical African American Avatar Month
• SPAAM = Someone Posing as an African American Month
• BAMBAM = Building Awareness by Means of Black Avatars Month

So, if you have any suggestions for us, we'd be happy to hear them. Of course we'd be jollier yet if any of this prompts anyone else to explore some new bit of US (or world) history that he might otherwise not have ever gotten around to learning.

 

[hatman]

For the record:

• Grege Truby = Buck O'Neil
• Hatman = Crispus Attucks

A few more acronym ideas:

• Highlighting African American Paragons Yearly (HAPY)
• Some People Like Interesting Negores To Emulate Regularly (SPLINTER) (I just couldn't resist the temptation to play with the word Splinter, when I saw your post above)

And we should probably provide a link to Erik's Draft, just in case someone stumbles up this table in the Lounge, and has no idea what this Draft Movement is all about.