We listened to a choir of cicadas and crickets, stared out at the black Gulf, and slapped away the occasional mosquito.

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Three years later, a white mob burned and leveled the town of Rosewood, a black settlement by the Gulf of Mexico, 140 miles west of Sanford, after a white woman said a "colored" man had attacked her.

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Our eyes are riveted to watching the black trail of oil soiling Gulf waters and coastlines.

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And like the rest of the US population, black Americans are experiencing a widening gulf between a well-off minority and the poor bulk.

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And, Ms Buckley adds, of the 266 American soldiers killed in the Gulf, 15% were black.

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Right down to the security guard, they are all female and dressed in the traditional black abaya and sheila worn by most Gulf women.

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Ladies have to don the traditional abaya - the loose black robe that is worn by women in the Gulf - and cover their hair.

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This month, Black Elk began work on a 23-well drilling program in the Gulf of Mexico.

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And today, as we look to the Gulf, we see an entire way of life being threatened by a menacing cloud of black crude.

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Before the Gulf war, only religious Shia Muslim women wore the abaya, the traditional head-to-toe black cloak.

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