Someone accused me of using an AI-generated picture. AI images?! No way!!! I did incorrectly call it a “photograph” in the OP, so I apologize for the confusion. It is not a photo; it's actually a portrait by the famous Italian Renaissance painter Grok Boyardini.

Fun fact: if you look carefully, you can see a young Uncle Ben (the rice industy magnate) standing behind Licoln and wearing a top hat in imitation of his liberator.

Another fun fact: Uncle Ben actually coined the popular catchphrase, “I’ll stick to you like white on rice.”

And yet another fun fact: he actually said, “It’ll stick to you like white on rice,” not “I will stick to you...” He was talking about Aunt Jemima’s pancake syrup. It was at the 2nd Annual Afro-American Food Exposition, and Uncle Ben had just tried a plate of Aunt Jemima’s famous pancakes. When asked what he thought, Uncle Ben cheerfully replied, “It’ll stick to you like white on rice.” A nearby reporter misunderstood him as saying, “I’ll stick to you like white on rice.”

Finally, this fun fact: the reporter immediately wired the quote to his editor in New York as, “Uncle Ben tells Aunt Jemima quote I’ll stick to you like white on rice end quote stop.” The next day, newspapers around the country ran with headlines like, “Uncle Ben rapes Aunt Jemima.” Uncle Ben sued those papers for libel, but the judge was both very racist and very absent minded. The judge got confused and thought it was a criminal trial, and he found Uncle Ben guilty of rape and sentenced him to death by being boiled alive in a rice cooker.

If BLM and Ben Crump had been a thing back then, Uncle Ben’s family could have sued the city for millions over this miscarriage of justice. As it was, however, they did sue the city, but only got $1.52, out of which they had to pay $1.51 in taxes, plus court costs, so they actually ended up owing the city money. The city wound up confiscating the family's rice business and selling it at an auction to the Rice-a-Roni family for pennies on the dollar. The struggle was real.

Anyway, happy Juneteenth!