Shannon Squire

We have been blessed by Beyonce’s newest album, Cowboy Carter, not only for the amazing music, but for all we have learned about country music and its roots in the African American diaspora. There has been lots of grumbling about a Black woman singing country, and we are here to confront those grumbles and dispel the incorrect beliefs that country music is somehow a white person thing. Country music, cowboys, and the banjo are all direct descendants of the music and knowledge that Africans brought with them when they were forcibly kidnapped from Africa and enslaved in America. 

Linda Martell, born in 1941 and raised in North Carolina, was the first Black woman artist to play at the Grand Ole Opry. She was the first Black woman to be commercially successful as a country music artist, with her sole album, Color Me Country, reaching number 40 on the Billboard Top Country Albums Chart. She was the first Black woman to perform on Hee Haw. Due to all of the usual suspects (racism, misogyny, and more racism), her career didn’t advance the way her talent indicated it should, and her legacy became mostly known, honored, and recognized by other Black women in country music. Until, that is, Cowboy Carter.

Martell started her singing career in R&B, in a group with her sister and cousins that never achieved much commercial success. After their group disbanded, she was “discovered” while singing at an air force base, and encouraged to break into country music with a record label called (yikes): Plantation Records (and yes, the name bothered the heck out of her, but she didn’t feel she could pass up this opportunity). She recorded her album with this label, and three of the singles hit the country charts, but support for a Black female country music artist in 1970 was neither strong nor wide-ranging. When the combination of the label lessening its support and promotion for her music in favor of a white female performer and the constant heckling and racism she experienced while on the road got to be too much, and finding a new record label just plain didn’t happen, Martell stepped away from the country music lifestyle. She had an expansive and musical life: running a record store in Brooklyn, performing non-country music on cruise ships, and even driving a school bus back in North Carolina. But, for a long time, it seemed her short-lived success was a flash in the pan and, this ground-breaking artist had been all but forgotten due to that hallmark of America, white supremacy. 

More and more in the past several years, Martell has been remembered, discussed, interviewed, and honored for the impact she made on country music. Her granddaughter is currently producing (and crowd-funding) a a documentary about her called Bad Case of the Country Blues: the Linda Martell Story; the trailer is up and available to watch (link here: https://youtu.be/uI-s7jK61UQ?si=UKUj8n00VOqQuMTO). Her influence is felt by every Black female country artist making music today, and many pay homage to her legacy. Rissi Palmer named her podcast Color Me Country, after Martell’s groundbreaking album of the same name. Maren Morris thanked Martell for her influence in her 2020 acceptance speech for winning Female Vocalist of the Year at a country music awards show. And, as we all know, Beyonce not only invited Martell to provide voice-over support on Cowboy Carter, but also named one of the tracks The Linda Martell Show.

Our April color is inspired by the Snapdragon, because they are ‘known to grow in rocky areas. The snapdragons tenacity and ability to bloom in poor conditions has led it being seen as a symbol of strength in trying circumstances, and we think Linda Martell has done just that!

This month, we are honoring a true pioneer, who settled and broke barriers here in Oregon: Letitia Carson. In the mid-1800s, Carson was one of many hundreds of people journeying along the Oregon Trail to find a better life. She traveled with David Carson (a white man), with whom she eventually had 2 children (little is known about their relationship, and there is speculation that she may have been enslaved by Carson at some point in their relationship. They also did not seem to be married). Only about 3% of people heading west during westward pioneering days in 1800s were Black, and Letitia was among that 3%. 

They settled in Benton County, Oregon, and built a homestead on a land claim in Soap Creek Valley. Oregon was not what one would call friendly to Black people: among the state’s first acts of governance, a law was passed barring Black people from residing within its borders or claiming land (the exclusion law stated that any Black person who attempted to settle in Oregon would be publicly lashed 39 times every six months). When David died suddenly, leaving no will, an estate executor ruled that Letitia shouldn’t inherit the homestead, so she took the case to court. The gist of her complaint was that if she wasn’t recognized as David Carson’s legal heir, then she was due back wages, damages, and compensation for the unlawful sale of her cattle. She won the case, although her homestead had already been portioned off and sold. Sidenote: even the family’s bedding and cooking supplies were sold at auction, and Letitia had to spend $104.87 to buy back these basic possessions in order to survive.

She and her children moved to Douglas County, Oregon, with scant possessions and a few cows. She  lived and worked on the land of another family, and served as the community midwife. By this point in time, Oregon had passed the second of its three Black-exclusion laws, and the third was written into the Oregon Constitution in 1857, where it remained until 1926. 

When the Homestead Act passed in Congress, granting virtually free land to settlers (up to 160 acres) and not excluding Black folks from applying, Letitia filed a claim. It was certified in 1869 (hers was among the first 71 claims to be certified), and she became the only Black woman in the entire state of Oregon to get land through the Act. She built a ranch that included a two-story house, barn, smokehouse, cattle, pigs, and an orchard of over 100 fruit trees. She lived the remainder of her life on the ranch, prospering in a place that still had laws specifically designed to disenfranchise Black people.

Letitia’s daughter married an Indigenous man, who was Walla Walla and Metis, and they made their home on the Umatilla Indian Reservation. Their descendants have rediscovered their family history, and their Black matriarch, and have worked at honoring Letitia’s legacy, through education and advocacy.

We chose the Camus flower to represent Letitia Carson due to its ubiquitousness in the place she first settled in Oregon: the Willamette Valley. Her Soap Creek Valley claim is now a part of Oregon State University’s holdings and an important piece of the Letitia Carson Legacy Project the university is sponsoring. This project pays homage to Black farmers in Oregon, and the project hopes for it to become both a historical center for the history of Black farming in Oregon and a resource for Black farmers of today. If you’d like to see more from the Legacy Project, here is a link to their digital home: https://letitiacarson.omeka.net/.

We’re heading to the high seas this month, as we honor Zheng Yi Sao, the Chinese Pirate Queen!

Zheng Yi Sao was one of the most successful pirates in history (and for sure the most successful female pirate), active in the South China Sea in the early 1800s. She went by many names (Shi Xianggu, Shek Yeung, Ching Shih, Cheng I Sao, Ching Yih Saou and Mrs. Cheng being some of them), and her backstory is a bit of a mystery. What we do know about her is that she was a ruthless and respected leader, and her organization skills and stringent rules of conduct for the pirates in her employ helped to make her the success that she was, and kept her confederation of pirate ships strong and connected until she ended things on her terms.

At age 26, she married a pirate named Zheng Yi, and accompanied him on his journeys. After his death in 1807, she took control of his operations, the Guangdong Pirate Confederation, with a fleet composed of 400 ships and between 40,000 and 60,000 pirates. They entered into conflict with several major powers, such as the East India Company, the Portuguese Empire, and the Great Qing.

They were both feared and respected, and, even though the whole pirate thing has a fun quality to modern sensibilities, the havoc they wreaked was pretty awful. Not only did they steal, they murdered and enslaved and tortured their captives. The punishments for infractions against the federation were severe, particularly for violence against female captives. Entire villages were laid to waste, casualties of wars the Confederation waged against the Chinese government and various trading companies. 

Zheng Yi Sao and her Guangong Pirate Confederation ruled the South China Sea for nearly a decade, and some say she was a victim of her own success. Piracy was so widespread, and had such a hold on the sea, that trade became almost non-existent, causing financial stress throughout China. The Chinese government, despite having been bested by Zheng Yi’s pirates on multiple occasions, came to a crossroads where they had no choice but to figure out how to end the hold piracy had on the country. 

In 1810, Zheng Yi Sao negotiated the most stylish surrender ever to the Qing authorities: she sailed into Canton harbor with her entire 260-boat fleet, flags flying, and demanded a very favorably-termed pardon. She and her pirates were able to keep their plunder, but had to give us most of their ships and weapons. Many of the pirates were actually then hired into the Chinese Navy, and in turn were in charge of persecuting pirates. Zheng Yi had a prosperous and peaceful life, after having been the most bad-ass of Pirate Queens.

To honor Zheng Yi Sao, we created the Chrysanthemum colorway. The chrysanthemum is a very important flower in the Chinese culture, having been honored and cultivated since hundreds of years BCE. In fact, there are over 20,000 cultivars in China! It’s also one of The Four Gentlemen (四君子 junzi), four plants that represent noble character: plum (梅 mei), orchid (兰 lan), bamboo (竹 zhu), and chrysanthemum (菊 ju).