Y’know, I always used to think that the wild debauchery of the ‘Roaring Twenties’ was an exaggeration by conservatives threatened by women’s sexual liberation, but after reading about dance marathons, I’ve started having serious doubts:
Dance Marathons (also called Walkathons), an American phenomenon of the 1920s and 1930s, were human endurance contests in which couples danced almost non-stop for hundreds of hours (as long as a month or two), competing for prize money. […] Contestants, who danced in pairs, were required to remain in motion (picking up one foot, then the other) 45 minutes each hour, around the clock. Dancing was often loosely interpreted to include shuffling along while shaving with a special mirror hung around the female partner’s neck, writing letters on a special folding desk hung around one’s own neck, reading the newspaper, knitting, or even sleeping as one’s partner supported one’s weight. The “carrier” in such a couple often tied the “lugging” partner’s wrists together with a handkerchief and hooked them around the carrier’s neck for additional security. […]
In extreme cases, partners were fastened together with dog chains to prevent them from drifting apart.
[…]
Fifteen minutes each hour were allotted for rest. When the air horn signaling a rest period sounded, the contestants exited the dance floor for curtained-off rest areas filled with cots. These rest areas were segregated by sex. Contestants trained themselves to drop instantly into deep sleep as soon as their bodies touched the cots. After 11 minutes the air horn sounded again and the contestants filed back onto the dance floor to begin another hour. Female contestants who didn’t wake at the end of 11 minutes were revived with smelling salts (and slaps), and male contestants were often dunked in a tub of ice water. […]
Most marathon promoters fed contestants 12 times a day – oatmeal, eggs, toast, oranges, milk, etc. Couples had to continue the shuffling dance motion while they ate the humble but filling meals. These meals were served at a chest-high table since the contestants ate standing up. Twelve meals a day during the Great Depression was a powerful inducement to many who joined endurance marathons. […] Intense fatigue sometimes led contestants to “go squirrelly,” especially during the wee hours of the morning. “Fatigue brought them to a state resembling a coma, a state which seemed to offer relief from the soreness of the day’s travail. During these episodes, contestants hallucinated, became hysterical, had delusions of persecution … acted out daily rituals: they talked to an imaginary companion, grinned vacantly, and snatched objects from the air” (Calabria, p.77). For the audience, watching contestants go squirrelly offered a queasy thrill. When attendance dropped, promoters began the final push of elimination events. “‘Grinds” were continuous dancing with no rest periods. A grind continued until one or more couple fell and was disqualified, literally ground down in exhaustion. During grinds, even the usual tricks dance partners used to keep each other on their feet (pin pricks, slaps, shaking, pinching, even conversation) were forbidden.
don’t buy from white dealers and don’t sell to white people.
don’t underage drink with white people.
don’t do anything that could be viewed as illegal by cops with white people and this isn’t me trying to be anti-white this is me telling you to protect yourself from anti-black cops. they won’t hesitate to pin the entire crime on you even if your white friend did 90% of the crime.
most (if not all) white people don’t understand the same crimes they commit (getting into a bar with a fake ID, stealing cigars, playing with toy guns in walmart) we are given a lengthy imprisonment or executed on the spot for.
so don’t put yourself in a situation that could get you killed and a white person a slap on the wrist.
Sorry if this isn’t the right place but I felt like its important to add, this is the most real shit I have seen on my dash in a while. After I got my license I drove everywhere, constantly picked up my friends and really just drove like a maniac making dumb decisions left and right. Now one of my best friends is a WoC and I helped her get her license and I always told her ‘9mph over the speed limit and the ticket gets thrown out in court’ because that is what I’d been taught. One day she was driving and I mentioned that to her and she kept insisting that it was 5mph. It took me YEARS to realize PoC can’t afford that extra 4mph!!!!!!!!! White teenagers are the dumbest group on the planet, please don’t let them talk you into their dumb shit!
Conversely: White people, don’t get your black friends into trouble. What is just dicking around to you is a potential death sentence to them. If you are any kind of friend, you won’t put them in that kinds of harm’s way.
It’s funny how some people don’t realize like. When I was in elementary school every year we had “intruder” drills. They were always kinda spooky but I never thought anything of it when I was a kid. The teacher would turn the light off and lock the room doors and we’d all have to quietly hide under desks until the intercom announced it was over. Sometimes there’d be someone walking around and trying the doors to the classrooms to make sure they were locked. Never seemed strange to me as a kid, but talking with my canadian spouse they look mortified
It’s wild how much of life in the US revolves around the unending threat of murder and violence. And by wild I mean a nightmare.
androidboy 