By the way, who is the actual person in the photo?
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A Photo of Cassius Madison, the man who killed Jake Featherston and a lead speaker for the NAAACP, photographed in the 1970's for Life Magazine.
After the end of the War and the hubbub surrounding his shooting of the ex-president of the now-defunct CSA had died down, Cassius Madison took some time to sort out his future. His award of both $100,000 in cash (tax free) and citizenship of the USA ensured, alongside his fame, that he would not be destitute for some time, and the acquaintance of many prominent US politicians such as Flora Blackford and the new President Thomas Dewey would be useful assets in whatever path he chose.
Madison, perhaps out of a sense of optimism, first attempted to track down where his family had ended up after they'd been seized in a Freedom Party round up in Augusta, but once he learned via captured records, courtesy of assistance from retired General Abner Dowling in accessing them, that they had been shipped to Camp Determination, he accepted that his parents and sister were gone, and there really wasn't a point to looking backwards.
So instead, he decided to go forwards. Courtesy of his father, secretly Anne Colleton's former butler and a well-educated man (even by the standards of whites in the south, never mind blacks) Cassius was able to both read and write, and put himself to work getting an education. At the same time, he began reaching out via his connections to Congresswoman Blackford, to find other prominent blacks in the USA as well as gathering the accounts of Population Reduction survivors, ostensibly to help "keep the story straight" as he put it, to ensure Freedomite romanticizers would not be able to downplay or deny what had been done in their name.
More Importantly, to him at least, he also wanted to begin building the kind of organization that would allow Blacks to "Make a bigger stink" about the crimes not just of Featherston and the CSA, but the general anti-black attitudes as a whole, as he was under no illusions that few people in the USA had really cared about the plight of the blacks in the CSA until after they'd seen the photos from the captured Camp Determination and, even now, he knew, most whites in the occupied CSA, if they cared at all, were if anything PROUD of what had been done.
He sought to change that.
"I'm a big name because I killed Jake Featherston. Can't rightly think of no better way to piss on his grave than use that fame to raise black folks up."
-Cassius Madison, 1951 interview on the formation of the NAAACP
Madison's intellect, which he attributed to his late father, allowed him to excel in academic studies, earning him a scholarship to Yale University by 1948. Between his award for Featherston's killing and speaking fees he'd accrued giving speeches across the USA, he had a nice nest egg to sustain himself and more than enough money to pay off his schooling and put his other project to work. He also saw to it that the black Guerillas, such as his leader Gracchus, were able to obtain US citizenship with little to no hassle, several of whom ended up serving as bodyguards for him: more than a few Freedom Party die-hards wanted Cassiuns' head for killing Featherston.
Upon his graduation from his first 4-year education at Yale, Madison announced that, with the support of Government officials such as Flora Blackford and prominent black leaders in the USA, he was forming an organization: the North American Association for the Advancement of Colored People, or NAAACP. The Goals and Ambitions of this group would be as such: the elimination of racial discrimination in American society, the end of racial segregation in all professional and social fields, the uplifting and provision of education and advancement opportunities for all people of color, ad the insurance that no organization like the Freedom Party ever take root in the United States or her territories. He made clear he wasn't just thinking of Blacks: Native Americans, Latinos and Asians had also gotten a "raw deal" in the USA, and deserved as much of a chance to succeed.
"The founders of this nation said "All Men are Created Equal, and are endowed with inalienable rights." Well, I say it's about time the country started living up to that Promise. Are we gonna see George Washington as the founder of our country and its ideals? or are we gonna see him as just another rich Virginia slave owner?"
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