May 20, 2007

It's True Black Owner Partial Preakness Winner Curlin Named For Black Slave
By Basn Blackbox

YES it really happened an African American OWNER of a Triple Crown Race WINNER Preakness winner Curlin partially owned by Shirley Cunningham, Kentucky attorney

Please we know it is ABSURD we have to get excited that FINALLY for the first time in Modern  History an African American is the even partial owner of a horse that has  won one of the Major Horse Races of the Year. On Saturday at the Preakness.  By a nose Curlin upset highly favored Street Sense.

So our Story is not about the Preakness  or even Curlin. This one is for you Lexington, Kentucky attorney Shirley  Cunningham. Of course the question is Who The Heck Is Shirley Cunningham.  That is what we will do for him and you. Tell you who he is so you will  know.

You can be sure the rest of the  media won't. They will be gushing over the Upset, and Curlin and the Jockey  and the Trainer and the WHITE owners. Lucky if Cunningham even gets  his named mentioned at all in the White Media.

Hear that SPIKE Lee. Forget  about getting a few future fellow Morehouse alumni jobs at ESPN. They still  won't be able to do a story about Shirley Cunningham. That will take BLACK media. That is where you should be putting your Big Bucks Spike not kissing  up to White Sports Media. Begging for a few jobs.

Sorry Mr. Shirley Cunningham this box is about you but we needed to send Spike a MESSAGE

Back to you. First of all Congratulations.  Allow us rather than inventing the "wheel" especially as we are on deadline  to profile you by quoting a thoughtful article about you ( one of very  few ) that identified you because of your ownership involvement with Preakness  Champ Curlin. done way back on May 1st.

AND GET THIS

The Preakness winner is not only  named for a legendary Kentucky African American "slave" Charlie Curlin,  Shirley Cunningham is his DIRECT descendant. Cunningham is Charlie  Curlin's own great grandson !!

HERE ARE EXCERPTS FROM THE ARTICLE

( written prior to the Kentucky  Derby ) from the Lexington Herald - Leader by reporter Maryjean Wall  worth reading carefully "  Charlie Curlin of Trigg  County was a slave whose name will live forever if the horse called Curlin  wins the Kentucky Derby on Saturday. Curlin the horse actually might wind  up the post-time favorite: no surprise, given Curlin is undefeated going  into a wide open race."

" But the story behind this intriguing  Derby hopeful is much larger than one colt's perfect record going into  America's greatest horse race. The story goes back to the decade before  the inaugural 1875 Kentucky Derby. The story takes us down the road southwest  from Louisville to the border of Tennessee and into rural, secessionist  Trigg County."

"What we know of Charlie Curlin's  story begins in 1864 when the slave signed on with the Union Army in the  United States Colored Troops. Like many soldiers in Kentucky companies  of the U.S. Colored Troops, Curlin found himself assigned to Camp Nelson  in Central Kentucky. "

"Charlie Curlin was truly confused  about who he was fighting for. That's very clear from stories he told when  he got back home," said lawyer Shirley Cunningham Jr. of Georgetown, the  man who named Curlin, the horse."

" Cunningham is part-owner of Curlin,  the horse. He is also the great-grandson of Charlie Curlin of Trigg County.  He has heard the Curlin family stories all his life.
 If Curlin wins the Derby,  Cunningham will become the first African American to own a percentage of  a Derby winner since Dudley Allen of Lexington was lead partner in the  Jacobin Stable that raced 1891 Derby winner, Kingman."

" It's also interesting "to have  a horse owned by a great-grandson of a slave that possibly wins the Derby,"  said one of Cunningham's partners in Curlin, lawyer William Gallion, formerly  of Kentucky and now a resident of Captiva, Fla."

" But just as compelling will be  the story told about Curlin the man as it unfolds, should Curlin win the  Derby. For, although Charlie Curlin's confusion over his wartime identity  might seem strange to us, it could have been more the norm in the context  of his time and place."

"If only we had an explanation from  Charlie Curlin himself, we might understand how it was for a veteran of  the federal army's U.S. Colored Troops who returned home to live in a county  that had wanted to secede from the United States."

" Kentucky's Civil War history is  confusing enough when viewed from the whites-only perspective. Imagine  how it must have been for African Americans who could not read and probably  did not often hear the truth."

" The "truth" for anyone, black  or white, depended on the Kentucky county where you heard it. Some counties  were predominantly Unionist, others largely Confederate. Kentucky did officially  side with the Union, after a few months of neutrality, but never was unified  in its Northern or Southern sympathies, either during the war or afterward."

" All this confusion had to affect  the slaves just as it did white people, although whites generally did not  consider the slaves' perspective when writing early versions of Kentucky  history. Slaves throughout Kentucky might have understood the war on varying  terms, depending on where they lived. For most, the war presented an opportunity  to run away. And they did leave, in the thousands, expressing their urgent  desire to be free."

" Many chose to enlist in the U.S.  Colored Troops as a way to gain freedom for themselves and their families.  Many also came into the Colored Troops involuntarily, impressed by the  federal army. A total of 23,703 Kentuckians went into the U.S. Colored  Troops. Soldiers in the Colored Troops found status among themselves and  self-esteem, outfitted with rifles when, as slaves, they had been forbidden  to carry arms. They admired themselves in their army uniforms."

" Whites throughout Kentucky regarded  the Colored Troops with hatred. The very idea of people seen as slaves  carrying arms was frightening and repulsive. The U.S. Colored Cavalry endured  taunts and assaults from whites as the soldiers marched out from Camp Nelson  to leave for battle in Virginia. Whites knocked off the soldiers' hats.  They stole some of their horses, too."

" Charlie Curlin's descendants do  not know precisely how his enlistment came about. But his enlistment and  other papers, located at the National Archives in Washington, D.C., show  he joined the Colored Troops at Bowling Green in October 1864. Curlin the  horse prompted Cunningham, Curlin's great-grandson, to hire a researcher  to learn more about the man's story."

"After the horse started doing well,  I said, 'I need to try to authenticate what happened,'" Cunningham said.  He contacted Alicestyne Adams, director of Georgetown College's Underground  Railroad Research Institute. We research a lot of African Americans in  the Civil War," said Adams, who also owns Yesteryear Research Unlimited  Inc., in Georgetown."

" Adams happened to be in Washington  when Cunningham telephoned her. She went right away to the National Archives  and began to research Curlin's military history. The records produced some  curiosities: among them the spelling of Curlin's name. His enlistment papers  show it as "Curling."

" Later, the "g" is dropped. The  muster roll shows that Curlin "owed services to James Curling," a landowner  at Golden Pond, Trigg County. The records describe Curlin, or Curling,  as 5-foot-4, weighing 145 pounds, and born approximately in 1841 or 1842.  He was thought to be age 21 or 22 when he joined the Colored Troops."

" His unit was the Thirteenth Heavy  Artillery and his job, as Cunningham described, "was like an ammunition  mule. He was loaded down with ammunition. He said he was injured from having  to walk long distances with heavy ammunition on his back."

" The disabilities -- an injured  back and a hernia -- explained Curlin's mustering-out of the army in 1865  before his three-year term had ended. But when he applied for a disability  pension, Curlin faced a maze of bureaucratic stonewalling. He did not begin  collecting his initial $25 monthly pension until sometime between 1893  and 1900. There is no record of back pay."

" Adams, excited about the information  that has turned up on Curlin, described his military records as "a great  case study, what he had to go through" to receive his pension. "He had  to go through a lot to get it," she said."

" Charlie Curlin died in 1925.  Cunningham, 52, remembers the family passing on stories about him  and that family lore concerning Curlin was always a focal point at reunions.  Now the torch passes to Curlin, the horse, to secure the Curlin family  name in Kentucky Derby lore. "

END OF ARTICLE

WHAT A STORY !

Now Shirley Cunningham and all of us can Celebrate Curlin's Preakness Victory in a way White America doesn't even know about nor care about at all ( get it Spike ?? )