Black History Month Daily Thread

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Martin Luther King, Jr. (January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968) was an American clergyman, activist and prominent leader in the African-American civil rights movement. His main legacy was to secure progress on civil rights in the United States and he is frequently referenced as a human rights icon today.

A Baptist minister,[1] King became a civil rights activist early in his career. He led the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott and helped found the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in 1957, serving as its first president.

King's efforts led to the 1963 March on Washington, where King delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech. There, he raised public consciousness of the civil rights movement and established himself as one of the greatest orators in U.S. history.

In 1964, King became the youngest person to receive the Nobel Peace Prize for his work to end racial segregation and racial discrimination through civil disobedience and other non-violent means. By the time of his death in 1968, he had refocused his efforts on ending poverty and opposing the Vietnam War, both from a religious perspective.

King was assassinated on April 4, 1968, in Memphis, Tennessee. He was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1977 and Congressional Gold Medal in 2004; Martin Luther King, Jr. Day was established as a U.S. national holiday in 1986.

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Black History Month Daily Thread

Marcus Garvey

Marcus Mosiah Garvey, Jr., National Hero of Jamaica (17 August 1887 – 10 June 1940), was a publisher, journalist, entrepreneur, Black nationalist, Pan-Africanist, and orator. Marcus Garvey was founder of the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League (UNIA-ACL).

Prior to the twentieth century, leaders such as Prince Hall, Martin Delany, Edward Wilmot Blyden, and Henry Highland Garnet advocated the involvement of the African diaspora in African affairs. Garvey was unique in advancing a Pan-African philosophy to inspire a global mass movement focusing on Africa known as Garveyism. Promoted by the UNIA as a movement of African Redemption, Garveyism would eventually inspire others, ranging from the Nation of Islam, to the Rastafari movement (which proclaims Garvey as a prophet). The intention of the movement was for those of African ancestry to "redeem" Africa and for the European colonial powers to leave it. The idea that African Americans should return to Africa was known as the Colonist Movement. His essential ideas about Africa were stated in an editorial in the Negro World entitled “African Fundamentalism” where he wrote:

“ Our union must know no clime, boundary, or nationality… let us hold together under all climes and in every country."

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Black History Month Daily Thread

Three women who sacrificed their families for ' The Movement' : Coretta Scott King, Betty Shabazz, Myrlie Evers Williams

Only picture of the three -hat tip, JJP reader





Coretta Scott King

Coretta Scott King (April 27, 1927 – January 30, 2006) was an American author and activist, and widow of Martin Luther King, Jr. Alongside her husband, Coretta Scott King helped lead the African-American Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s. Scott King's most prominent role may have been in the years after her husband's 1968 assassination; following Dr. King's death, Mrs. King was responsible for finding a new leader of the civil rights movement.

The King Center:Coretta Scott King

Betty Shabazz

Dr. Betty Shabazz (born Betty Jean Saunders) (May 28, 1936 – June 23, 1997), also known as Betty X, was the wife of Malcolm X.

After high school, Shabazz left the comfortable home of her foster parents in Detroit to study at the Tuskegee Institute (now Tuskegee University), a well-known historically black college in Alabama. It was in Alabama that she encountered her first racial hostilities. She did not understand the causes for the racial issues, and her parents refused to acknowledge these issues. She mentioned this in an autobiographical essay she wrote in 1992, published in Essence Magazine: "They thought [the problems] were my fault."'

Shabazz moved to New York City to escape Southern racism, and enrolled as a nursing student at the Brooklyn State Hospital School of Nursing. While in New York, Shabazz's friend invited her to hear Elijah Muhammad and Malcolm X from the Nation of Islam speak at an Islamic temple (Temple No. 7 in Harlem). According to the Essence essay, Shabazz's friend offered to introduce her to Malcolm X after his speech. Betty's initial reaction was "big deal". She continues: "But then, I looked over and saw this man on the extreme right aisle sort of galloping to the podium. He was tall, he was thin, and the way he was galloping it looked as though he was going someplace much more important than the podium... Well, he got to the podium and I sat up straight. I was impressed with him." They discussed the racism she encountered in Alabama, and she began to understand its causes, pervasiveness, and effects. Soon, Betty was attending all of Malcolm's lectures. By the time she graduated from nursing school in 1958, she was a member of the Nation of Islam. Muhammad bestowed of his followers the last name "X", representing the African family name they would never know. She changed her name to "Betty X" a result of her Nation of Islam influence.

When Malcolm X was assassinated in 1965, the couple had four daughters. Shabazz was pregnant with twins at the time of his assassination. She was a registered nurse, having earned a Bachelor of Science degree from the Brooklyn State Hospital School of Nursing in 1958. She continued her education by enrolling in Jersey City State College. Shabazz was determined to provide for her family and serve as a role model for her children. She received a Bachelor of Arts in public health education from Jersey City State College. She returned to pursue her Master of Arts in public health education from Jersey City State College in 1970. In 1975, she received her Ph.D. in education administration at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.

Betty Shabazz raised her six daughters, Attallah, Qubilah, Ilyasah, Gamilah, and twins Malikah and Malaak, in the Islamic faith.

Myrlie Evers Williams

Myrlie Evers-Williams (born March 17, 1933, nee Myrlie Beasley in Vicksburg, Mississippi) is an American activist. She was the first full-time chairman of the NAACP and is the former widow of murdered civil rights leader Medgar Evers. She met him when they were students at Alcorn A&M College in 1950. They married on December 24, 1951 and she left school before finishing her degree.

They moved to Mound Bayou where her husband sold insurance for Dr. T.R.M. Howard, a civil rights activist. She worked for Howard as a typist until the couple moved to Jackson in 1954.

She and Evers had three children before his murder. In 2001, their oldest son, Darrell Kenyatta Evers, died of colon cancer.[1] Their two surviving children are Reena Denise and James Van.

Evers-Williams went back to school after Evers' death and graduated from Pomona College, in 1968, with a degree in sociology. She served as director of consumer affairs for Atlantic Richfield Company (ARCO), where she developed the concept for the first corporate booklet on women in non-traditional jobs. This booklet, Women at ARCO, was in great demand throughout many printings and revisions.

She twice ran for congress from California's 24th district. Both times (in a June 1970 special election and the general election later that November) she lost to Republican John Rousselot. In 1971 she helped found the National Women's Political Caucus.

In 1975, Evers-Williams married her second husband, Walter Williams. He died in 1995 of prostate cancer.

In 1987, Evers-Williams was the first African-American woman appointed to serve as commissioner on the Los Angeles Board of Public Works. Evers-Williams was chairman of the NAACP from 1995 to 1998. She is credited with spearheading the operations that restored the association to its original status as the premier civil rights organization in America. She is the author of For Us, the Living (1967) and Watch Me Fly: What I Learned On the Way to Becoming the Woman I Was Meant to Be (1999). In the best seller, I Dream A World: Black Women Who Changed America, Evers-Williams states that she "greets today and the future with open arms."





Media:

Coretta Scott by Ntozake Shange (Author), Kadir Nelson (Illustrator)

Coretta: The Story of Coretta Scott King by Octavia Vivian

Dare to Dream: Coretta Scott King and the Civil Rights Movement by Angela Shelf Medearis (Author), Anna Rich (Illustrator)

Coretta Scott King: First Lady of Civil Rights (Childhood of Famous Americans) by George E. Stanley and Meryl Henderson

Coretta Scott King (Journey to Freedom) by Cynthia Fitterer Klingel

King (1978)-DVD
Starring: Paul Winfield, Cicely Tyson

Boycott (2001)-DVD

Betty Shabazz, Surviving Malcolm X by Russell Rickford

Growing Up X by Ilyasah Shabazz

Betty Shabazz: Sharing the Vision of Malcolm X by Laura S. Jeffrey

Betty Shabazz: A Sisterfriends Tribute in Words and Pictures by Jamie Foster Brown

Malcolm X (Two-Disc Special Edition) (1992) - DVD

For Us, the Living by Myrlie Evers (Author), William Peters (Author), Willie Morris (Introduction)

Charlie Rose with Rob Reiner; Myrlie Evers- Williams & Bobby DeLaughter - DVD

Ghosts of Mississippi (1996) - DVD

Black History Month Daily Thread

Vivien Theodore Thomas (August 29, 1910 – November 26, 1985) was an African-American surgical technician and operative surgeon who helped develop the procedures used to treat blue baby syndrome in the 1940s. He was an assistant to Alfred Blalock at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee and later at the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. Without any education past high school, Thomas rose above poverty and racism to become a cardiac surgery pioneer and a teacher to many of the country's most prominent surgeons.

From the very beginning Thomas showed an extraordinary aptitude for surgery and precise experimentation, and Blalock granted him wider and wider latitude in the execution of the protocols. Tutored in anatomy and physiology by Blalock and his young research fellow, Dr. Joseph Beard, Thomas rapidly mastered complex surgical techniques and research methodology. He and Blalock developed great respect for one another, forging such a close working relationship that they came to operate almost as a single mind. Outside the lab environment, however, they maintained the social distance dictated by the mores of the times. In an era when institutional racism was the norm, Thomas was classified, and paid, as a janitor, despite the fact that by the mid 1930s he was doing the work of a postdoctoral researcher in Blalock's lab.

Together he and Blalock did groundbreaking research into the causes of hemorrhagic and traumatic shock. This work later evolved into research on Crush syndrome and saved the lives of thousands of soldiers on the battlefields of World War II. In hundreds of flawlessly executed experiments, the two disproved traditional theories which held that shock was caused by toxins in the blood. Blalock, a highly original scientific thinker and something of an iconoclast, had theorized that shock resulted from fluid loss outside the vascular bed and that the condition could be effectively treated by fluid replacement. Assisted by Thomas, he was able to provide incontrovertible proof of this theory, and in so doing, he gained wide recognition in the medical community by the mid 1930s. At this same time, Blalock and Thomas began experimental work in vascular and cardiac surgery, defying medical taboos against operating upon the heart. It was this work that laid the foundation for the revolutionary lifesaving surgery they were to perform at Johns Hopkins a decade later.

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Black History Month Daily Thread

Mary McLeod Bethune

Mary Jane McLeod Bethune (July 10, 1875--May 18, 1955) was an American educator and civil rights leader best known for starting a school for black students in Daytona Beach, Florida that eventually became Bethune-Cookman University and for being an adviser to President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Born in South Carolina to parents who had been slaves, she took an early interest in her own education. With the help of benefactors, Bethune attended college hoping to become a missionary in Africa. When that did not materialize, she started a school for black girls in Daytona Beach. From six students it grew and merged with an institute for black boys and eventually became the Bethune-Cookman School. Its quality far surpassed the standards of education for black students, and rivaled those of white schools. Bethune worked tirelessly to ensure funding for the school, and used it as a showcase for tourists and donors, to exhibit what educated black people could do. She was president of the college from 1923 to 1942 and 1946 to 1947, one of the few women in the world who served as a college president at that time.

Bethune was also active in women's clubs, and her leadership in them allowed her to become nationally prominent. She worked for the election of Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1932, and became a member of Roosevelt's Black Cabinet, sharing the concerns of black people with the Roosevelt administration while spreading Roosevelt's message to blacks, who had been traditionally Republican voters. Upon her death, columnist Louis E. Martin said, "She gave out faith and hope as if they were pills and she some sort of doctor." Her home in Daytona Beach is a National Historic Landmark, her house in Washington, D.C. in Logan Circle is preserved by the National Park Service as a National Historic Site.

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Black History Month Daily Thread

Four Little Girls
Denise McNair, Carole Robertson, Addie Mae Collins, and Cynthia Wesley

The 16th Street Baptist Church bombing was a racially motivated terrorist attack on September 15, 1963, by members of a Ku Klux Klan group in Birmingham, Alabama in the United States. The bombing of the African-American church resulted in the deaths of four girls. Although city leaders had reached a settlement in May with demonstrators and started to integrate public places, not everyone agreed with ending segregation. Other acts of violence followed the settlement. The bombing increased support for people working for civil rights. It marked a turning point in the U.S. civil-rights movement of the mid-twentieth century and contributed to support for passage of civil rights legislation in 1964.

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Black History Month Daily Thread

Benjamin E. Mays

Dr. Benjamin Elijah Mays (August 1, 1895 - March 28, 1984) was an American minister, educator, scholar, social activist and the president of Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia. He was also a significant mentor to civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. and was among the most articulate and outspoken critics of segregation before the rise of the modern civil rights movement in the United States.

While working on his doctorate, Mays and Joseph Nicholson published a study entitled The Negro's Church, the first sociological study of African-American religion and clerical practices. Four years later in 1938, he published The Negro's God as Reflected in His Literature.

In 1926, he was appointed executive secretary of the Tampa, Florida Urban League. After two years at this post he became National Student Secretary of the YMCA.

Mays accepted the position of Dean of the School of Religion at Howard University in Washington, D.C. in 1934. At present, Mays Hall of Howard University is the home of the Howard University School of Divinity. During his six years there Mays traveled to India, where, at the urging of Howard Thurman, a fellow professor at Howard, he spoke at some length with Mahatma Gandhi.

In 1940, Mays became the president of Morehouse College. His most famous student there was Martin Luther King Jr. The two developed a close relationship that continued until King's death in 1968; As his lifelong mentor, Mays delivered the eulogy for King.

Mays emphasized two themes throughout his life: the dignity of all human beings and the gap between American democratic ideals and American social practices. Those became key elements of the message of King and the American civil rights movement. Mays explored these themes at length in his book Seeking to Be a Christian in Race Relations, published in 1957.

After his retirement in 1967 from Morehouse, Mays was elected president of the Atlanta Public Schools Board of Education, where he supervised the peaceful desegregation of Atlanta's public schools.

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Black History Month Daily Thread

Medgar Evers

Medgar Wiley Evers (July 2, 1925 – June 12, 1963) was an African American civil rights activist from Mississippi who was murdered by Byron De La Beckwith, a member of the Ku Klux Klan.

Evers was also the president of the Regional Council of Negro Leadership (RCNL), a civil rights and pro self-help organization. Involvement in the RCNL gave Evers crucial training in activism. He helped to organize the RCNL's boycott of service stations that denied blacks use of their restrooms. The boycotters distributed bumper stickers with the slogan "Don't Buy Gas Where You Can't Use the Restroom." Along with his brother, Charles Evers, he also attended the RCNL's annual conferences in Mound Bayou between 1952 and 1954 which drew crowds of ten thousand or more.

Evers applied to the then-segregated University of Mississippi Law School in February 1954. When his application was rejected, Evers became the focus of a NAACP campaign to desegregate the school, a case aided by the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board of Education 347 U.S. 483 that segregation was unconstitutional.

NAACP Field Secretary
He was involved in a boycott campaign against white merchants and was instrumental in eventually desegregating the University of Mississippi when that institution was finally forced to enroll James Meredith in 1962.

In the weeks leading up to his death, Evers found himself the target of a number of threats. His public investigations into the murder of Emmett Till and his vocal support of Clyde Kennard made him a prominent black leader and therefore vulnerable to attack. On May 28, 1963, a molotov cocktail was thrown into the carport of his home. Five days before his death, Evers was nearly run down by a car after he emerged from the Jackson NAACP office. Civil rights demonstrations accelerated in Jackson during the first week of June 1963. A local television station granted Evers time for a short speech, his first in Mississippi, where he outlined the goals of the Jackson movement. Following the speech, threats on Evers' life increased.

Assassination
On June 12, 1963, Evers pulled into his driveway after just returning from a meeting with NAACP lawyers. Emerging from his car and carrying NAACP T-shirts that read "Jim Crow Must Go," Evers was struck in the back with a bullet fired from an Enfield 1917.303 rifle that ricocheted into his home. He staggered 30 feet before collapsing. He died at a local hospital 50 minutes later. Evers was murdered just hours after President John F. Kennedy's speech on national television in support of civil rights.

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Black History Month Daily Thread

Malcolm X

Malcolm X (born Malcolm Little; May 19, 1925 – February 21, 1965), also known as El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, was an African American Muslim minister, public speaker, and human rights activist. To his admirers, he was a courageous advocate for the rights of African Americans, a man who indicted white America in the harshest terms for its crimes against black Americans. His detractors accused him of preaching racism and violence. He has been described as one of the greatest and most influential African Americans in history.

Malcolm X was born in Omaha, Nebraska. By the time he was 13, his father had died and his mother had been committed to a mental hospital. After living in a series of foster homes, Malcolm X became involved in the criminal underworld in Boston and New York. In 1945, Malcolm X was sentenced to eight to ten years in prison.

While in prison, Malcolm X became a member of the Nation of Islam. After his parole in 1952, he became one of the Nation's leaders and chief spokesmen. For nearly a dozen years, he was the public face of the Nation of Islam. Tension between Malcolm X and Elijah Muhammad, head of the Nation of Islam, led to his departure from the organization in March 1964.

After leaving the Nation of Islam, Malcolm X made the pilgrimage, the Hajj, to Mecca and became a Sunni Muslim. He traveled extensively throughout Africa and the Middle East. He founded Muslim Mosque, Inc., a religious organization, and the secular, black nationalist Organization of Afro-American Unity. Less than a year after he left the Nation of Islam, Malcolm X was assassinated while giving a speech in New York.

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Black History Month Daily Thread

Today, JJP presents 3 organizing foot soldiers in the Civil Rights Movement: E.D. Nixon, Vernon Johns, Daisy Bates. Three who definitely paved the way.

E.D. Nixon

Edgar Daniel Nixon (July 12, 1899 – February 25, 1987) was an American civil rights leader and union organizer who played a crucial role in organizing the famous Montgomery Bus Boycott in Montgomery, Alabama. Nixon also led the Montgomery branch of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters union, known as the Pullman Porters Union. Nixon also served as president of the local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the Montgomery Welfare League, and the Montgomery Voters League.

In the early 1950s, Nixon and Jo Ann Robinson, president of the Women's Political Council decided to mount a court challenge to the discriminatory seating practices on Montgomery's municipal buses along with a boycott of the bus company. A Montgomery ordinance reserved the front seats on these buses for white passengers only, forcing African-American riders to sit in the back. Before the activists could mount the court challenge, they needed someone to voluntarily break this bus seating law and be arrested for it. Nixon carefully searched for a suitable plaintiff. He rejected one candidate because he didn't believe she had the fortitude to see the case through. Nixon rejected a second candidate because she was an unwed mother and a third candidate because her father was an alcoholic.

The final choice was Rosa Parks, the elected secretary of the Montgomery NAACP. On December 1, 1955, Parks entered a Montgomery bus, refused to give up her seat for a white passenger, and was then arrested. After being called about Parks' arrest, Nixon went to bail her out of jail. He arranged for Parks' friend Clifford Durr, a sympathetic white lawyer, to represent her. After years working with Parks, Nixon was certain that she was the ideal candidate to challenge the discriminatory seating policy. Even so, Nixon had to persuade Parks to lead the fight. After consulting with her mother and husband, Parks accepted the challenge.

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Black History Month Daily Thread

An Economic Freedom Fighter - Curt Flood

Curtis Charles Flood (January 18, 1938–January 20, 1997) was a Major League Baseball player who spent most of his career as a center fielder for the St. Louis Cardinals. A defensive standout, he led the National League in putouts four times and in fielding percentage twice, winning Gold Glove Awards in his last seven full seasons from 1963–1969. He also batted over .300 six times, and led the NL in hits (211) in 1964. He retired with the third most games in center field (1683) in NL history, trailing only Willie Mays and Richie Ashburn.

Flood became one of the pivotal figures in the sport's labor history when he refused to accept a trade following the 1969 season, ultimately appealing his case to the U.S. Supreme Court. Although his legal challenge was unsuccessful, it brought about additional solidarity among players as they fought against baseball's reserve clause and sought free agency.

Despite his outstanding playing career, Flood's principal legacy developed off the field. He believed that Major League Baseball's decades-old reserve clause was unfair in that it kept players beholden for life to the team with whom they originally signed, even when they had satisfied the terms and conditions of those contracts.

On October 7, 1969, the Cardinals traded Flood, catcher Tim McCarver, outfielder Byron Browne, and left-handed pitcher Joe Hoerner to the Philadelphia Phillies for first baseman Dick Allen, second baseman Cookie Rojas, and right-handed pitcher Jerry Johnson. However, Flood refused to report to the moribund Phillies, citing the team's poor record and the fact that they played in dilapidated Connie Mack Stadium before belligerent – and, Flood believed, racist – fans. Some reports say he was also irritated that he had learned of the trade from a reporter,but Flood's autobiography says he learned of the trade from mid-level Cardinal's management and he was angry that the call did not come from the general manager. He forfeited a relatively lucrative $100,000 contract by his refusal to be traded, and consulted with players' union head Marvin Miller.He also met with Phillies general manager John Quinn, who left the meeting with the belief that he had convinced Flood to report to the team. After being advised that the union was prepared to pay the costs of the lawsuit, he chose to proceed.

In a letter to Baseball Commissioner Bowie Kuhn, Flood demanded that the commissioner declare him a free agent:

December 24, 1969
After twelve years in the major leagues, I do not feel I am a piece of property to be bought and sold irrespective of my wishes. I believe that any system which produces that result violates my basic rights as a citizen and is inconsistent with the laws of the United States and of the several States.

It is my desire to play baseball in 1970, and I am capable of playing. I have received a contract offer from the Philadelphia club, but I believe I have the right to consider offers from other clubs before making any decision. I, therefore, request that you make known to all Major League clubs my feelings in this matter, and advise them of my availability for the 1970 season.

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Black History Month Daily Thread

Paul Williams

Paul Revere Williams (February 18, 1894 – January 23, 1980) was an American architect. He based his practice largely in Los Angeles, and the Southern California area. Orphaned at the age of four, he was the only African American student in his elementary school. He studied at the Los Angeles School of Art and Design and at the Los Angeles branch of the New York Beaux-Arts Institute of Design Atelier, subsequently working as a landscape architect. He went on to attend the University of Southern California, School of Engineering designing several residential buildings while still a student there. Williams became a certified architect in 1921, and the first certified African American architect west of the Mississippi.

On June 27, 1917 he married Della Mae Givens at the First AME Church in Los Angeles. They had three children, Paul Revere Williams, Jr. (born and died June 30, 1925, buried in Evergreen Cemetery, Los Angeles); Marilyn Frances Williams (born December 25, 1926); and Norma Lucille Williams (born September 18, 1928).

Williams won an architectural competition at age 25 and three years later opened his own office. Known as an outstanding draftsman, he perfected the skill of rendering drawings "upside down." This skill was developed so that his clients (who may have been uncomfortable sitting next to a "Black" architect) would see the drawings rendered right side up across the table from him. Fighting to gain attention, he served on the first Los Angeles City Planning Commission in 1920. Williams was the first African American member of the American Institute of Architects (AIA). In 1939, he won the AIA Award of Merit for his design of the MCA Building in Los Angeles (now headquarters of the Paradigm Talent Agency).

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Black History Month Daily Thread

Charles Hamilton Houston



Always, throughout history, there are those that go before. Those that prepare the way. Some are even deliberate architects of 'the path'. Charles Hamilton Houston is one such architect.

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Black History Month Daily Thread

Oscar Micheaux

Oscar Devereaux Micheaux (2 January 1884 – 25 March 1951) was an American author and film director. Although predated by the short lived Lincoln Motion Picture Company that put out smaller films, he is regarded as the first African-American feature filmmaker, and the most prominent producer of race films.[1]

The advent of the motion picture industry intrigued him as a vehicle to tell his stories. He formed his own movie production company and in 1919 became the first African American to make a film. He wrote, directed and produced the silent motion picture The Homesteader, starring pioneering African-American actress Evelyn Preer, based on his novel of the same name. He again used autobiographical elements in The Exile, his first feature film with sound, in which the central character leaves Chicago to buy and operate a ranch in South Dakota. In 1924 he introduced the moviegoing world to Paul Robeson in his film, Body and Soul.

Given the times, his accomplishments in publishing and film are extraordinary, including being the first African American to produce a film to be shown in "white" movie theaters. In his motion pictures, he moved away from the "Negro stereotypes" being portrayed in film at the time. In his film Within Our Gates, Micheaux attacked the racism depicted in the D.W. Griffith film, The Birth of a Nation.

The Producers Guild of America called him "The most prolific black - if not most prolific independent - filmmaker in American cinema." Over his illustrious career, Oscar Micheaux wrote, produced and directed forty-four feature-length films between 1919 and 1948 and wrote seven novels, one of which was a national bestseller.

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Black History Month Daily Thread

The NAACP celebrates its 100th Anniversary.

No matter how we may believe that the NAACP is outdated. How it has failed to change with the times, the truth is that the NAACP has had a positive effect on all of our lives.

From the Niagara Movement, to its formation 100 years ago, the NAACP casts a long shadow on this country's history. Fighting for this country to live up to its creed. The list of those involved with the NAACP is like a Who's Who of Freedom Fighters.

From Wikipedia:

History
In 1905, a group of 32 prominent, outspoken African Americans met to discuss the challenges facing "people of color" - a term that was used to describe people who were not white) - and possible strategies and solutions. Among the issues they were concerned about was the disfranchisement of blacks in the South starting in 1890 to 1908, when Southern legislatures ratified new constitutions creating barriers to voter registration and more complex election rules. Voter registration and turnout dropped markedly in the South as a result. Men who had been voting for 30 years were told they did not "qualify" to register.

Because hotels in the U.S. were segregated, the men convened under the leadership of Harvard scholar W. E. B. Du Bois at a hotel situated on the Canadian side of Niagara Falls. As a result, the group came to be known as the Niagara Movement. A year later, three whites joined the group: journalist William E. Walling, social worker Mary White Ovington, and Jewish social worker Henry Moskowitz, then Associate Leader of the New York Society for Ethical Culture.

The fledgling group struggled for a time with limited resources and decided to broaden its membership to increase its scope and effectiveness. Solicitations for support went out to more than 60 prominent Americans, and a meeting date was set for February 12, 1909. This was intended to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the birth of President Abraham Lincoln, who emancipated enslaved African Americans. While the meeting did not take place until three months later, this date is often cited as the founding date of the organization.

The Race Riot of 1908 in Lincoln's hometown of Springfield, Illinois, the previous summer had highlighted the urgent need for an effective civil rights organization in the U.S. This event is often cited as the catalyst for the formation of the NAACP.

The NAACP was founded on February 12, 1909, by a diverse group composed of W. E. B. Du Bois, Ida B. Wells, Archibald Grimké, Henry Moskowitz, Mary White Ovington, Oswald Garrison Villard, and William English Walling (the last the son of a former slaveholding family).[6][7]

On May 30, 1909, the Niagara Movement conference took place at New York City's Henry Street Settlement House, from which an organization of more than 40 individuals emerged, calling itself the National Negro Committee. Du Bois played a key role in organizing the event and presided over the proceedings. Also in attendance was African-American journalist and anti-lynching crusader Ida B. Wells-Barnett. At its second conference on May 30, 1910, members chose as the organization's name the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and elected its first officers, who were [8]:

National President, Moorfield Storey, Boston
Chairman of the Executive Committee, William English Walling
Treasurer, John E. Milholland (a Lincoln Republican and Presbyterian from New York City and Lewis, NY)
Disbursing Treasurer, Oswald Garrison Villard
Executive Secretary, Frances Blascoer
Director of Publicity and Research, Dr. W.E.B. DuBois.

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Black History Month Daily Thread

Jackie Robinson

Jack Roosevelt "Jackie" Robinson (January 31, 1919 – October 24, 1972) was the first African-American Major League Baseball player of the modern era.[2] Although not the first African-American professional baseball player in United States history, Robinson's 1947 Major League debut with the Brooklyn Dodgers ended approximately 60 years of baseball segregation, breaking the baseball color line, or color barrier.[3] At that time in the United States, many white people believed that blacks and whites should be kept apart in many aspects of life, including sports.[4] Despite this obstacle, Robinson went on to have an exceptional baseball career.

Robinson played on six World Series teams and was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1962. He earned six consecutive All-Star Game nominations and won several awards during his career. In 1947, Jackie won The Sporting News Rookie of the Year Award and the first MLB Rookie of the Year Award. Two years later, he won the National League MVP Award—the first black player to do so.[5] On April 15, 1997, the 50-year anniversary of his debut, Major League Baseball retired Robinson's jersey number 42 across all MLB teams in recognition of his accomplishments in a ceremony at Shea Stadium.[6]

He also had success away from the baseball field. Robinson was the first African-American Major League Baseball analyst and the first black vice president of a major American corporation.[7] In the 1960s, he helped to establish the Freedom National Bank, an African-American owned and controlled entity based in Harlem, New York.[8] Due to his achievements, Robinson was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Gold Medal.[7][9] In 1950, he played himself in the biographical film The Jackie Robinson Story.[10] In 1946, Robinson married Rachel Annetta Isum,[11] and after Robinson died of a heart attack in 1972, she founded the Jackie Robinson Foundation.[12][13]

It should be noted that Robinson was NOT the best player of the Negro League. But, he had the CHARACTER to withstand the two years of racial torment that went with the position of being ' The First Black'. Robinson was the first player at UCLA to letter in FOUR SPORTS in one year. He was also an OFFICER in the Army, and was once arrested by military police for refusing to move to the back of a bus on account of his race. Jackie Robinson was, in every way, a ' Race Man'.

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Black History Month Daily Thread

KEEP THE FAITH, BABY!

Rev. Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. (November 29, 1908 – April 4, 1972) was an American politician and pastor who represented Harlem, New York in the United States House of Representatives between 1945 and 1971. He was the first African-American elected to Congress from New York. He became chairman of the Education and Labor Committee in 1961. As committee chairman, he supported the passage of important social legislation.

During the Depression years, Powell, a handsome and charismatic figure, became a prominent civil rights leader in Harlem, New York, where he succeeded his father in 1937 as pastor of Abyssinian Baptist Church. He developed a formidable public following in the Harlem community through his crusades for jobs and housing. As chairman of the Coordinating Committee for Employment, he organized mass meetings, rent strikes and public campaigns, forcing companies and utilities, and Harlem Hospital to hire black workers. Powell organized a picket line during the 1939 New York World's Fair at the Fair's executive offices in the Empire State Building; as a result, the number of black employees was increased from about 200 to 732 [2]. A bus boycott in 1941 led to the hiring of 200 black workers by the transit authority. When Negro pharmacists were failing to get hired, Powell led a fight in 1941 to have drugstores in Harlem hire them all.[3]

In 1937 he succeeded his father as pastor of Abyssinian Baptist Church. In 1941 he was elected to the New York City Council as the city's first Black council representative with the aid of New York City's use of the Single Transferable Vote.[1] He received 65,736 votes, the third best total among the six successful council candidates [4]

"Mass action is the most powerful force on earth," Mr. Powell once said, adding, "As long as it is within the law, it's not wrong; if the law is wrong, change the law." He was elected to Congress in 1944.

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Black History Month Daily Thread

Alain LeRoy Locke (September 13, 1885[1] – June 9, 1954) was an American writer, philosopher, educator, and patron of the arts. He is best known for his writings on and about the Harlem Renaissance. He is unofficially called the "Father of the Harlem Renaissance." His philosophy served as a strong motivating force in keeping the energy and passion of the Movement at the forefront.[2]

Alain Locke was born in Pennsylvania on September 13, 1886 to Pliny Ishmael Locke (1850-1892) and Mary Hawkins Locke (1853 - 1922).[1] In 1902, he graduated from Central High School in Philadelphia, second in his class. He also attended Philadelphia School of Pedagogy.[3] In 1907, Locke graduated from Harvard University with degrees in English and philosophy. He was the first African American Rhodes Scholar. He formed part of the Phi Beta Kappa society. Locke was denied admission to several Oxford colleges because of his skin color before finally being admitted to Hertford College, where he studied literature, philosophy, Greek, and Latin, from 1907-1910. In 1910, he attended the University of Berlin, where he studied philosophy. Locke attended the College de France in Paris in 1911.

Locke received an assistant professorship in English at Howard University, in Washington, D.C. There he interacted with W.E.B. Du Bois and Carter Woodson, who helped develop his philosophy.

Locke returned to Harvard in 1916 to work on his doctoral dissertation, The Problem of Classification in the Theory of Value. In his thesis, he discusses the causes of opinions and social biases, and that these are not objectively true or false, and therefore not universal. Locke received his Ph.D. in philosophy in 1918. Locke returned to Howard University as the chair of the department of philosophy, a position he held until his retirement in 1953. At Howard, he became a distinguished member of Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity, Inc.

Locke promoted African American artists, writers, and musicians, encouraging them to look to Africa as an inspiration for their works. He encouraged them to depict African and African American subjects, and to draw on their history for subject material. Locke edited the March 1925 issue of the periodical Survey Graphic, a special on Harlem and the Harlem Renaissance, which helped educate white readers about the flourishing culture there. Later that year, he expanded the issue into The New Negro, a collection of writings by African Americans, which would become one of his best known works. His philosophy of the New Negro was grounded in the concept of race-building. Its most important component is overall awareness of the potential black equality; No longer would blacks allow themselves to adjust themselves or comply with unreasonable white requests. This idea was based on self-confidence and political awareness. Although in the past the laws regarding equality had been ignored without consequence, Locke's philosophical idea of The New Negro allowed for real fair treatment. Because this was just an idea and not an actual bylaw, its power was held in the people. If they wanted this idea to flourish, they were the ones who would need to "enforce" it through their actions and overall points of view. Locke has been said to have greatly influenced and encouraged Zora Neale Hurston.

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Black History Month Daily Thread

Frederick Douglass

Frederick Douglass (born Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey, February 14, 1818 – February 20, 1895) was an American abolitionist, women's suffragist, editor, orator, author, statesman and reformer. Called "The Sage of Anacostia" and "The Lion of Anacostia", Douglass is one of the most prominent figures in African-American history and United States history. In 1872, Douglass became the very first African-American nominated as a Vice Presidential candidate in the U.S., running on the Equal Rights Party ticket with Victoria Woodhull, the first woman to run for President of the United States.

He was a firm believer in the equality of all people, whether black, female, Native American, or recent immigrant. He was fond of saying, "I would unite with anybody to do right and with nobody to do wrong."

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Black History Month Daily Thread

Absalom Jones


Richard Allen



Richard Allen (1760-1831)

Richard Allen, the founder and first Bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, was born a slave on February 14, 1760 on the estate of Benjamin Chew, Chief Justice of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania from 1774-1777.

Richard Allen, his parents and three other children were sold to a Mr. Stokeley in Delaware, near Dover. Allen recorded that Stokeley was a very tender and humane man who was more like a father to his slaves than a master.

As Richard and his brother grew older, they were permitted to attend meetings of the Methodist Society. Allen was converted at the age of 17. He began preaching in 1780. Through thrift and industry, he and his brother worked at night to pay for their freedom.

He commenced traveling in 1783 and later returned to Philadelphia and joined the white congregation at St. Georges's Methodist Episcopal Church. He was licensed to preach in 1784 and was permitted to hold services in the morning about 5 a.m.

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In 1786 the membership of St. George's Methodist Episcopal Church in Philadelphia included both blacks and whites. However, the white members met that year and decided that thereafter black members should sit only in the balcony.

Two black Sunday worshipers, Absalom Jones (1746-1818) and Richard Allen (1760-1831), whose enthusiasm for the Methodist Church had brought many blacks into the congregation, learned of the decision only when, on the following Sunday, ushers tapped them on the shoulder during the opening prayers, and demanded that they move to the balcony without waiting for the end of the prayer. They walked out, followed by the other black members.

Absalom Jones conferred with William White, Episcopal Bishop of Philadelphia, who agreed to accept the group as an Episcopal parish. Jones would serve as lay reader, and, after a period of study, would be ordained and serve as rector.

Allen wanted the group to remain Methodist, and in 1793 he left to form a Methodist congregation. In 1816 he left the Methodists to form a new denomination, the African Methodist Episcopal Church (Ame).

Jones (ordained deacon and priest in 1795 and 1802) and Allen (ordained deacon and elder in 1799 and 1816) were the first two black Americans to receive formal ordination in any denomination.

The African Methodist Episcopal Church Zion (Ame Zion) formed in New York in about 1796 for similar reasons. The two groups were well organized before they heard of each other.

The Christian Methodist Episcopal Church, also historically black, was an offshoot in 1870 of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. (The Methodists split into North and South before the War of 1861-1865, and have since re-united.)

Books:

Freedom's Prophet: Bishop Richard Allen, the AME Church, and the Black Founding Fathers by Richard Newman

A narrative of the proceedings of the black people, during the late awfulcalamity in Philadelphia in the year 1793 and a refutation of somecensures, thrown upon them in some late publications. by Absalom and Richard Allen Jones

The story of the first of the Blacks, the pathfinder Absalom Jones, 1746-1818 by George F Bragg

Who was the Reverend Absalom Jones?: 1746-1818 A.D by Civet Chakwal Kristof