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Dr. T. Flo

@tnflorvil.bsky.social

14K followers 2.2K following 3.5K posts

Associate Prof. of History @UNM/Author of Black Germany (2023 @ChLinksVerlag)/ traveler/foodie/griever/working on several projects, including a bio of Black German activist and poet May Ayim/ https://www.tiffanynflorvil.com/

www.tiffanynflorvil.com

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Dr. T. Flo @tnflorvil.bsky.social · May 3

Happy Heavenly Birthday to May Ayim! She would have turned 65 years old today. Although we are not kin, I feel kinship with her. Next August 2026 will mark 30 years since her passing.

After all these years of studying her, I still do not consider myself an expert on her.

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Dr. T. Flo @tnflorvil.bsky.social · 7h

🧡

Dr. T. Flo @tnflorvil.bsky.social · 7h

Thank you for sharing this. THIS!!

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tru @thetrudz.photo · 8h

There’s an idea that when someone dies before retirement age from a health issue, they must’ve neglected their health, so “everyone get checked.” I want to gently push back on the idea of it being all self-neglect & remind 1) some illnesses are incurable 2) bigoted healthcare system is shit 3) cost.

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tru @thetrudz.photo · 13h

What D’Angelo said Black Messiah means. It came out at the end of 2014 and it was so needed.

Article (Nolan Feeney; TIME) excerpt reads: “Black Messiah is a hell of a name for an album. It can be misunderstood. Many will think it's about religion. Some will jump to the conclusion that I'm calling myself a Black Messiah. For me, the title is about all of us. It's about the world. It's about an idea we can all aspire to. We should all aspire to be a Black Messiah.

It's about people rising up in Ferguson and in Egypt and in Occupy Wall Street and in every place where a community has had enough and decides to make change happen, D'Angelo writes in a statement about the album It's not about praising one charismatic leader but celebrating thousands of them. Not every song on this album is politically charged (though many are), but calling this album Black Messiah creates a landscape there these songs can live to the fullest. Black Messiah is not one man. It's a feeling that, collectively, we are all that leader.”

“D’Angelo’s First Album in 14 Years Is Finally Here, and It’s Surprisingly Timely” via TIME.

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Dr. T. Flo @tnflorvil.bsky.social · 8h

🫠😬

Dr. T. Flo @tnflorvil.bsky.social · 8h

Cancer stays sucking

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tru @thetrudz.photo · 11h

‼️ I never liked his incredible music being reduced solely to the “Untitled (How Does It Feel)” video. The Voodoo tour caused him a lot of pain.

Article (Amy Wallace; GQ) excerpt reads: “D'Angelo felt tortured, Questlove says, by the pressure to give the audience what it wanted. Worried that he didn't look as cut as he did in the video, he'd delay shows to do stomach crunches. He'd often give in, peeling off his shirt, but he resented being reduced to that. Wasn't he an artist? Couldn't the audience hear the power of his music and value him for that? He would explode, Questlove recalls, and throw things. Sometimes he'd have to be coad not to cancel shows altogether.

When I ask D about this, he downplays his suffering. Watching him pull hard on another Newport, I realize that he finds it far easier to confess his addictions than his insecurities about his corporeal self. Self-destructing with a coke spoon—while ill-advised—has a badass edge. Fretting over what Questlove has called "some Kate Moss shit" seems anything but manly. If given the chance, he tells me, he would absolutely shoot the video again. But he does admit to feeling angry during the Voodoo tour.”

“Amen! (D'Angelo's Back)” via GQ

Article (Amy Wallace; GQ) excerpt reads: "’One time I got mad when a female threw money at me onstage, and that made me feel fucked-up, and I threw the money back at her,’ he says. ‘I was like, 'I'm not a stripper.' He was beginning to sense a darkness beckoning. He recalls a particular moment onstage at the North Sea Jazz festival in 2000. The band was in the middle of ‘Devil's Pie,’ his song about the spell fame casts upon the weak—Who am I to justify / All the evil in our eye / When I myself feel the high / From all that I despise—when he felt an ominous presence in the crowd. ‘That night I felt something that was like, whoa,’ he tells me. E-vil.

On the last day of the eight-month tour, Questlove says D'Angelo told him, ‘Yo, man, I cannot wait until this fucking tour is over. I'm going to go in the woods, drink some hooch, grow a beard, and get fat.’ Questlove thought he was joking. I was like, ‘You're a funny guy.’ And then it started to happen. That's how much he wanted to distance himself."

While the tour was a success, both critically and commercially, it left D broken. ‘When I got back home, yeah, it wasn't that easy to just be,’ he says. ‘I think that's the thing that got me in a lot of trouble: me trying to just be Michael, the regular old me from back in the day, and me fighting that whole sex-symbol thing. You know: 'Hey, I ain't D'Angelo today. I'm just plain old Mike, and I just want to hang out with my boys and do what we used to do.' But, damn, those days are fucking gone."

“Amen! (D'Angelo's Back)” via GQ

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Phil Lewis @phillewis.bsky.social · 15h

D'Angelo has died after a battle with pancreatic cancer, his former manager says. He was 51

D'Angelo Dead at 51

Grammy-winning R&B soul singer D'Angelo is dead from pancreatic cancer ... TMZ has learned.

www.tmz.com

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The Tennessee Holler @thetnholler.bsky.social · 18h

It’s amazing how all the reporting is just memory-holing this part

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Anna Gifty @itsafronomics.bsky.social · 8h

lol currently debating writing an op-ed about what my experience as a first time Black woman author during this political moment has taught me about how too many non-Black allies continuously fail to uplift Black women meaningfully and what that phenomenon REALLY speaks to.

#blacksky

a woman in a white and black dress is sitting in a living room talking .

Alt: a woman in a white and black dress is sitting in a living room talking .

media.tenor.com

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Joyce White Vance @joycewhitevance.bsky.social · 12h

If men with guns and masks tried to pull me out of my car, I'd fight back. Courts should reject any claims by the government that this is aggression by the person being detained, resisting arrest, or that they're a flight risk.

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paris martineau @paris.nyc · 14h

my latest investigation for @consumerreports.org is based on months of reporting and 60+ lab tests of leading protein supplements

we found that most protein powders and shakes have more lead in one serving than our experts say is safe to have in a day (🧵)

www.consumerreports.org/lead/protein...

Protein Powders and Shakes Contain High Levels of Lead - Consumer Reports

CR tests of 23 popular protein powders and shakes found that most contain high levels of lead.

www.consumerreports.org

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Dr. T. Flo @tnflorvil.bsky.social · 9h

Congrats!!

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Brad Simpson @bradleyrsimpson.bsky.social · 9h

My book is officially here! Today (well tomorrow, actually) is the release date for The First Right: Self-Determination and the Transformation of International Order, 1941-2000. If you like the art check out Shakti Kroopkin, whose painting Journey Into Freedom graces the cover. shaktikroopkin.com

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Public Books @publicbooks.bsky.social · 4d

“Taken together, our roundtable contributors present a suite of ideas that, if enacted, just might make higher education more livable for us all.”
The full series “Higher Ed Under Trump” is live at Public Books. Read all the contributions here:

Toward the Next American University: A Roundtable Discussion on the Future of Higher Ed - Public Books

The path higher education was on before Trump’s reelection was neither certain nor stable. There is not much to go back to now.

www.publicbooks.org

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Dr. T. Flo @tnflorvil.bsky.social · 13h

We have literal Nazis in the White House. Are people still uncertain about fascism?

Chanda Prescod-Weinstein 🌌 @chanda.blacksky.app · 13h

'“Can we fix the showers? Gas chambers don’t fit the Hitler aesthetic,” Joe Maligno...wrote'

'Many of the chat members already work inside government or party politics, and one serves as a state senator.'

‘I love Hitler’: Leaked messages expose Young Republicans’ racist chat

Thousands of private messages reveal young GOP leaders joking about gas chambers, slavery and rape.

www.politico.com

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Dr. T. Flo @tnflorvil.bsky.social · 13h

Not D'Angelo too. RIP. Their poor child.

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Ms. Otoo @sharondoduaotoo.bsky.social · 16h

"Der #Kolonialismus beruhte auf Unterdrückung, Gewalt & Ausbeutung. Es ist unsere Verantwortung, dieses Unrecht klar zu benennen & aufzuarbeiten – auch im Umgang mit Kulturgütern & menschlichen Überresten ..."
~ Wolfram #Weimer, Staatsminister für Kultur und Medien #BKM

Gesamte Pressemitteilung ⬇️

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Decolonial Memories @colonial-memories.bsky.social · 16h

Wo er Recht hat, hat er Recht - Weimer @bundeskultur.bsky.social.

@he-mel.bsky.social @tnflorvil.bsky.social @michmo.bsky.social @kilderbenhauser.bsky.social @mehler.bsky.social @hdilger.bsky.social @rjmauk.bsky.social

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Decolonial Memories @colonial-memories.bsky.social · 22h

cc: @tnflorvil.bsky.social @michmo.bsky.social @profdanhicks.bsky.social @rjmauk.bsky.social @adamblackler.bsky.social @he-mel.bsky.social @sylvienjobati.bsky.social @djaten.bsky.social @mariamgichan.bsky.social

Decolonial Memories @colonial-memories.bsky.social · 23h

„Würdiger Gedenkort Kolonialismus“: Was sagen Herr Weimer @bundeskultur.bsky.social & @aussenminister.diplo.de zum zivilgesell. Erinnerungskozept mit Forderung nach zentralem Lern-und Erinnerungsort in Berlin? 👇

@geronafrica.bsky.social @laenderkultur.bsky.social @joachimbaur.bsky.social

Decolonial Memories @colonial-memories.bsky.social · 23h

Dekolonial Erinnern in Berlin: was sagen @regberlin.bsky.social & Fraktionen im Abgeordnetenhaus zum zivilgesellschaftlichen Erinnerungskonzept?
@spdde.bsky.social @gruene.berlin @die-linke.de @dpwes.bsky.social

@sharondoduaotoo.bsky.social

www.monopol-magazin.de/wo-koennte-e...

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Chanda Prescod-Weinstein 🌌 @chanda.blacksky.app · 20h

“Cease” fire

www.aljazeera.com/news/liveblo...

Five Palestinians killed by Israeli forces in Gaza despite ceasefire

Israeli army confirmed it opened fire, saying a group had approached its soldiers before being targeted.

www.aljazeera.com

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Dr. T. Flo @tnflorvil.bsky.social · 18h

It is not about the Black American West, but you can give them Hartman's "Venus in Two Acts," which talks about spare and fragmented sources and the violences of the archive. My PhD student is working on the Black American West, and I have suggested Hartman and Fuentes's Dispossessed Lives.

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Arrianna Marie Planey, PhD MA @arrianna-planey.bsky.social · 1d

Couple of thoughts:
(1) I miss Cora Harrington's presence, because she would have a thing or three to say about that header image
(2) Some of those historical illustrations of women with tiny corseted waists are actually fetish images

Veena Dubal @veenadubal.bsky.social · 1d

Oh dear, no thank you.

www.nytimes.com/2025/10/12/s...

Plastic Surgery Comes for the Waist

www.nytimes.com

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Dr. T. Flo @tnflorvil.bsky.social · 1d

yes!!

Ian Carrillo @iansociologo.bsky.social · 1d

Du Bois basically did a version of this in his bibliography in Black Reconstruction

BIB L I OGRAPH Y
STAN DARD - A N TI-NEGRO
(These authors believe the Negro to be sub-human and congenitally un-
fitted for citizenship and the suffrage.)
Burgess, John W., Reconstruction and the Constitution, 1 866-1 876.
Coulter, E. Merton, Civil War and Reconstruction in Kentucky.
Davis, William W ., The Civil War and Reconstruction in Florida.
Dunning, William A., Reconstruction, Political and Economic .
Eckenrode, F. Hamilton, Political History of Virginia During Reconstruc·
tion.
Fertig, James Walter, The Secession and Reconstruction of Tennessee.
Ficklen, John R., History of Reconstruction in Louisiana.
Fleming, Walter F., Civil War and Reconstruction in Alabama.
--, Documentary History of Reconstruction, 1 906, 1907.
Hamilton, Joseph G. de R., Reconstruction in North Carolina.
Hollis, John Porter, The Early Period of Reconstruction in South Carolina.
Lonn, Ella, Reconstruction in Louisiana after 1 868 .
Ramsdell, Charles W., Reconstruction in Texas .
Rhodes, James F., History of United States from the Compromise of 1 850.
Scott, Eben G., Reconstruction During the Civil War.
Staples, Thomas S ., Reconstruction in Arkansas .
Studies in Southern History and Politics . Inscribed to William Archibald
Dunning.
Carpet-Baggers in the United States Senate. By C. Mildred Thompson.
The Literary Movement for Secession. By Ulrich B. Phillips.
Negro Suffrage in the South. By W. Roy Smith.
Some Phases of Educational History in the South Since 1 865. By Wil-
liam K. Boyd.
Southern Legislation in Respect to Freedmen, 1 865- 1 866. By J. G. de
Roulhac Hamilton.
The Federal Enforcement Acts . By William Watson Davis.
The New South, Economic and Social . By Holland Thompson.
Grant's Southern Policy. By Edwin C. Woolley.
Taylor, Richard, Destruction and Reconstruction.
Thompson, Clara M., Reconstruction in Georgia, Economic, Social, Po-
litical, l 805-1 872.
Wooley, Edwin C., The Reconstruction of Georgia.

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Maya Schenwar @mayaschenwar.bsky.social · 1d

Rest in Power, Miss Major.💔

On solidarity: “We can’t go it alone… I mean, you can try, and get knocked down and get up and try again, and get knocked down and get up and try again. But that’s how it’ll be, until somebody helps you up and says, let me stand with you.”
truthout.org/articles/a-m...

A Mother’s Day Chat With Revolutionary Trans Activist Miss Major Griffin-Gracy

Janet Mock has called Miss Major, who has nurtured generations of queer and trans youth, “the mother we all deserve.”…

truthout.org

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