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< Back Alma S. Adams Photo Credit: Congresswoman Alma S. Adams. Taken at the 1991 opening of The African American Atelier, INC Art Gallery in Greensboro, NC The African American Atelier, Inc. celebrates 30 years today. I was co-founder with my mentor, the late Eva Hamlin Miller. We continue to promote the work of African American Art and Artists and work in harmony with other Ethnic groups." -Congresswoman Alma S. Adams Photo Credit: Congresswoman Alma S. Adams. Taken at the 1991 opening of The African American Atelier, INC Art Gallery in Greensboro, NC --From Their Web Site: Movement, Expression, Beauty, and Awareness Arts, Culture, & Education around the African American Experience, is who we are! The formation of an art gallery focusing on African American art and artists in Greensboro evolved from a long standing dream of Greensboro resident and nationally acclaimed artist-educator the late Eva Hamlin Miller. In 1982, Miller opened and operated the Z Gallery in Greensboro for five years in the dental office of her late husband, Dr. WLT Miller. In 1990, Eva Hamlin Miller and her former student Alma Adams conceived the idea of establishing a non-profit, professional art gallery (African American Atelier, Inc.) in the Greensboro Cultural Center. “Atelier”, French for “artist studio” seeks to: promote an awareness, appreciation and sensitivity to the arts and culture of African Americans; educate and train in the visual arts; and work in harmony with other ethnic groups. Joined by local artists and patrons: James C. McMillan, Floyd Newkirk, Vandorn Hinnant, John Rogers, Henry Sumpter, Candace Ray and Paula Young, the African American Atelier, Inc. was officially chartered and incorporated by the state of North Carolina on September 28, 1990. James McMillan served as the first president of the organization and Eva Hamlin Miller served as the first curator. The gallery opened its doors to the public in the Greensboro Cultural Center (in an 800 square foot space) on January 13, 1991 approximately four months after the Greensboro Cultural Center officially opened. The gallery’s grand opening featured works by Atelier founding member artists to establish the First Annual “Founding Members Exhibition”. Generous financial support by local residents and businesses including: Gerald and Althea Truesdale; Joseph and Georgia Williams, Joe and Eunice Dudley; Koury Corporation and Mechanics and Farmers Bank provided up fitting of the facility. Local supporters, friends and corporate leaders sustained the operation of the gallery during its first year because Atelier received no state or federal funds. ​ The African American Atelier has evolved into a creative venue for Guilford County and North Carolina showcasing artistic works, sponsoring forums, gallery talks, educational seminars and highlighting contributions and culture of African Americans and other ethnic groups. Annually, the Atelier’s programs serve thousands of youth, adults and seniors of all socio-economic backgrounds. The organization has exhibited an extensive number of local, regional and national emerging and professional master African American artists and other artists through a series of year round, annual rotational, group and solo exhibitions. John Biggers, Varnette P. Honeywood, Gilbert Young, Samella Lewis, Margaret Burroughs, Synthia Saint James, Kadir Nelson, Olivia Gatewood, Juan Logan and Eric McRay were among some of the exhibiting artists. Since 2002, Atelier has sponsored the annual county-wide African American Arts Festival, formerly produced by the United Arts Council of Greensboro. The organization became a member of the United Arts Council in 1995. In the spring of 1992, former Atelier Board Member and chair of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority Inc. Arts and Letters Committee, the late Alberta Cuthbertson, organized and curated the first Minority Student Exhibition at the Atelier. This collaborative effort continues today between the two organizations. Many student artist participants have pursued professional and academic careers in the visual arts. “Atelier Around the World” youth program was established in the summer of 1992 to enhance self-esteem and to promote cultural awareness through the visual arts for children ages 5-16 years from low wealth communities. This year round program culminates with an annual student exhibition and continues today as one of the oldest year round visual arts programs in the state serving more than a thousand children each month through Art! After School, Saturday Enrichment Workshops and Murals, Minds & Communities Summer Art Camp programs. In 2004 Atelier relocated to its current site in the Greensboro Cultural center, acquiring space three times larger than its original site which allowed for program expansion and outreach and a satellite gallery space for Bennett College. Financial support to help up fit the new space was generously provided by Maryland artist Joseph Holston and his wife Sharon and Bennett College. After two decades of service to citizens of Greensboro and North Carolina the African American Atelier is recognized nationally as a unique catalyst and venue for professional and emerging artists. It partners with over 30 community organizations, universities and businesses to culturally enrich community residents, participating artists, students and other visitors who come to the facility. The acquisition of funding from local and state agencies as well as foundations, corporate sponsors and individuals within and beyond the state reflect the strength and success of the gallery’s performance to meet the needs of the community and its mission. The African American Atelier continues today as a viable organization and an exciting community experience providing an environment for visual and cultural exposure, educational exchange and a showcase for African American art and artists. Source Link And Web Site: https://www.africanamericanatelier.org/about-1 Previous Next

< Back Elizabeth City State (NC) Panhellenic Council 1964. Elizabeth City State (NC) Panhellenic Council 1964. Elizabeth City State (NC) Panhellenic Council 1964. Sourced from: ECSU Archives/ncdigital Previous Next

< Back New Bern's African American Heritage Trail Dennard, who will make remarks at the June 19 dedication during the Juneteenth celebration, said that the signs convey some stories previously untold that add to the narrative of blacks in New Bern's overall history. Dennard has consulted on the N.C Highway Historical Marker Program, sometimes called "history on a stick." More than 1,600 markers dot the state map, usually limited to a snippet of information on people, places and events. He said New Bern's project goes to a new level in presentation and information. It is a legacy trail with 16 panels at 10 sites – single, double and three-sided 3-by-4-foot reader-friendly displays of meticulously-researched information, photographs and graphics. Maps at each site assist in an easy self-guided tour. "What we are recognizing now is that history is not conveyed by simply one method and we have an audience now, a generation that is more visual than previous generations," Dennard said. "They need to see a picture, to see the story, not just hear the story. Previously we thought we could tell individuals the story and they would create a mental picture. Now we know we need to prompt them with some other developments and that's where we use artifacts (such as images)." The signs are installed within the greater Craven Terrace/Dryborough neighborhoods and explain and interpret significant historic events, people and places that pertain to African American heritage. The 10 a.m. dedication is at The Great Fire signage at the intersection of Broad and Roundtree streets at Craven Terrace. The Great Fire of 1922 burned 40 city blocks and left 3,000 people homeless, mostly African Americans. The panel topics and events trace to before the Civil War, with titles such as Dryborough, Citizens of the Republic, West Street, Saving Grace, Five Points, Grand Army of the Republic, Fighting for Freedom, Queen Street, Public Housing for America, At Home in Craven Terrace, The Great Fire, Education for the Future, A New Beginning and Winds of Change. Heritage Trail Fruit of Five-Year Project The development of the signs has been a five-year project guided by a committee chaired by local historian Bernard George and sponsored by the Historic Dryborough Neighborhood Association, the New Bern Historical Society, the City of New Bern and the North Carolina State Historic Preservation Office. Professor John Hope Franklin, a noted scholar of African American history at Duke University through the second half of the 20th century once remarked that New Bern and Craven and Carteret Counties have, perhaps, the most interesting African American stories in the nation. Yet these stories were systematically suppressed by the revisionist historians of the Jim Crow and segregation eras. In recent years, renewed interest has resulted in research, lectures, books and reenactments that have brought these stories back to life. These signs will continue that interest. "He (Franklin) said something that has stuck with me," Dennard said. "He said that each generation is expected to write its own history and has an obligation. That means we must deal with history as an unfinished mosaic." He dismisses the idea that all history is written in stone, meaning it is always changing for accuracy and updated information. "It is being revised, it is being rewritten as we uncover new evidence," he said. "We are trying to get a more complete story." This can lead to hard choices in the face of long-held and long-retold versions of history. "In some cases, old stories must be abandoned, because they are no longer accurate when we get more evidence on the topic," he said. "That's where history changes and each generation has to assume responsibility for presenting history and making the necessary changes." Dennard said the signs are a continuation of New Bern's longtime leadership among Eastern North Carolina cities in sharing and updating black and white history as an overall story. "You all are heads above everyone that I know about in Eastern North Carolina," he said. "I think is just the history of New Bern, explaining it." He pointed to the late Kay Williams, executive director of Tryon Palace, under whose leadership the North Carolina History Center was built; an African American Lecture Series, Jonkonnu celebration dancers and black re-enactors all became part of its programming for several hundred thousand annual visitors. "She came up with the observation that we have many stories, but one history," Dennard recalled. It is the underlying premise of why projects such as the Heritage Trail should be of interest to all segments of society. Sign committee Chairman Bernard George said that getting the stories and the facts right was the major time-consuming work over the past five years by the signs' committee. ”It was a very painstaking process because much of the information was very sparse and scattered over a variety of documents, first-hand knowledge and oral histories,” George said. He added that these signs are a solid start in the creation of additional signs telling remarkable stories. The Heritage Trail project came about in 2015 because of the destruction of physical black history when Craven Terrace public housing – built in 1942 and 1953 - was leased under private management to a Florida company. Evergreen Partners Housing collaborated with TCG Development and the New Bern Housing Authority to redevelop and revitalize Craven Terrace. A $27.1 million renovation project began in April 2016 and was completed in 2018. As part of the mitigation for seven structures that were demolished, Craven Terrace LP provided $35,000 for the sign project. The signs describe how communities like Dryborough and Five Points were formed and developed, how housing was at first a joy and then destroyed by Jim Crow, and the subsequent struggle to regain what was. Along with George, the committee includes Vice-Chairman Carol Becton, Secretary Susan Cook, Lynne Harakal, McDaniel, Jon Miller, Mary Peterkin, Ethel Staten, Morgan Potts, Jeffrey Ruggier, Tharesa Lee and John Wood. Description of Photo Collage: Top Left-Map of Heritage Sign Location. Bottom Left-Rue Chapel AME Church, where the Saving Grace Heritage Sign points out Black Churches Information. Credit: Charlie Hall / Sun Journal Right Image: Announcement Public Is Invited to the June 19th New Bern Heritage Trail Dedication . Source: https://www.newbernsj.com/.../five-years.../7664965002/... Previous Next

< Back Alma Boykin, a beloved volunteer at Hunter Elementary ​ Meet 94-year-old Alma Boykin, a beloved volunteer at Hunter Elementary for 13 years By Amber Rupinta Tuesday April 17, 2018 WTVD "Each day for the last 13 years, 94-year-old Alma Boykin has walked across the street from her Raleigh home to volunteer at Hunter Gifted & Talented/AIG Basics Magnet Elementary. "I just like working with kids," Boykin said. "They make me feel young. Better than to be sitting around the house looking at the tv, and I feel better working with kids. I love kids. They say they like me." Boykin volunteers mostly in the kindergarten classrooms. The students love her. They all affectionately simply call her 'Granny'. "All the time pulling on me all the time, 'Granny, Granny, Granny, I love you. I love you,'" Boykin said. The teachers say Boykin is a special part of the Hunter family. "Just how excited the kids get when she walks in, they're like 'Granny is here!'" said kindergarten teacher Alicia Tanceusz. "She's a huge help," said kindergarten teacher Cullen Eller. "She does everything and she's here every single day so no matter what's asked shes up for trying something new," Eller said. Boykin began her volunteering through the city of Raleigh's Foster Grandparent Program. The program pairs seniors 55 and up with schools to serve as a role model for children. Foster Grandparents serve a minimum of 20 hours per week and receive benefits such as an hourly stipend, transportation reimbursement, ongoing training and supplemental insurance according to the city of Raleigh's website. For Boykin, the program is exactly what she needed after retiring from a cosmetics company. "I like working with kids," Boykin said. "I just like kids period. I just love 'em because I couldn't have any of my own." Click the Link to view the video. Source: http://abc11.com/.../meet-94-year-old-alma.../3338586/ Previous Next

< Back Elizabeth City State University-ECSU's Century-Old Rosenwald School ​ ECSU's Century-Old Rosenwald School to Take on New Role By Melissa Stuckey, an Assistant Professor of History at Elizabeth City State University and member of the board of the Friends of the Museum of the Albemarle. Nestled within the modern campus of Elizabeth City State University is a 100-year-old Rosenwald school building. This modest schoolhouse, formerly located on Parkview Drive, was once bursting with activity. Within its walls, student-teachers, neighborhood children, and expert professors of education fulfilled the university’s original mission of preparing normal school students for teaching careers in North Carolina’s segregated public school system. Established in 1891 as Elizabeth City State Colored Normal School, ECSU has had some form of practice teaching on campus from its first years of existence in rented buildings in the historic Shepard Street-Road Street neighborhood through today. After the university moved to its permanent location in 1912, practice teaching, like all other academic and administrative activity took place in Lane Hall, the first permanent campus building. In 1921, desperately needing more academic space, the university began constructing buildings like Moore Hall, a spacious academic and administrative building, the principal’s home, and the Rosenwald School, a space dedicated solely to student teaching. In announcing the new building program, the Elizabeth City Independent wrote that the practice school would “be in every way a model two-teacher country school, the building and grounds designed to be an example for rural school districts generally to follow.” It opened its doors on Monday, September 11, 1922. ECSU’s Rosenwald school was built according to standard plans developed by the Rosenwald fund. This fund, established by philanthropist Julius Rosenwald in consultation with famed educator Booker T. Washington, was established to improve school facilities for African American children in the South. Two hundred thirty-five such schools were built in northeastern North Carolina. Among the thousands of children educated at ECSU’s Rosenwald School were children of alumni, faculty, and other neighborhood children whose parents could afford to pay the small tuition fees collected to help pay the expense of operating the school. The small wooden schoolhouse served its purpose admirably from 1922 until about 1939, when it was supplanted by a newer and larger, brick practice school building, also constructed with the aid of the Rosenwald Fund in 1933. In later decades, the old Rosenwald school building was used for many other purposes. First, it was headquarters for the campus YWCA. It was then moved to its current campus location in 1957. From this spot, where it is now flanked by residence halls, it housed a cosmetology program, served as a laundry facility, operated as an observation laboratory kindergarten, and finally, served as headquarters for ECSU’s ROTC program for about thirty-three years. Although currently vacant and showing its years of service through wear, tear, and some disrepair, this century year old monument to ECSU’s normal school past is poised to take on new life. A $50,000 grant from the Institute for Museum and Library Services has allowed the university to work with Raleigh-based Vines Architecture to complete a comprehensive interpretive and design plan. With this plan now completed, we will begin drawing blueprints and, if all goes well, commence construction in early 2023. Within a few years, the rehabilitated Rosenwald school building, along with the equally historic Principal’s home, will become the Northeastern North Carolina African American Research and Cultural Heritage Institute. Here, the university and region’s stories about African American life and educational pursuits will have a permanent home. Photos: left - Girls playing in front Lane Hall in 1916, courtesy of the Jackson Davis Collection, University of Virginia. Right: ECSU’s Rosenwald School building, courtesy of the Elizabeth City State University Archives. Source: Museum of the Albemarle Previous Next

< Back Mrs. Hattie Maynard is pictured standing with her husband and grandson in front of her house. Top photograph: Mrs. Hattie Maynard, Reidsville, Rockingham County, N.C., 1939. Mrs. Hattie Maynard is pictured standing with her husband and grandson in front of her house. Bottom photograph: Mrs. Hattie Maynard is pictured seated inside her home with her grandson and two other people. The two women are stringing tobacco bags. Mrs. Hattie Maynard has 1 grandchild living with her, whose mother and father are dead. She is 66 years old and her husband is 79. Reside at Reidsville, N.C. INCOME: They have no income except what they make by stringing tobacco bags. Food costs them about $2.50 a week. Rent is $1 a month. HOME CONDITIONS: The house is just a cabin and has 4 rooms. They only have enough land for a small garden. They own a cow and a few chickens. They have a sewing machine and an old piano. Although the house is small it is very well kept. She has been stringing bags about 35 years and makes $17.00 or $18.00 a month. This is their only income and they couldn't live without this work. Since she is so old, this work bothers her eyes a little. . Photographers: Stutz, Carleton, Maxfield, Peter A. Source: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Library. North Carolina Collection. Digital Collection Tobacco Bag Stringing. Previous Next

< Back Maceo Parker On February 14, 1943, saxophonist Maceo Parker was born in Kinston, NC, and is best known for his work with James Brown, Parker brought his funk style to the soul music of the James Brown Band. For nearly 20 years, Brown’s call “Maceo, I want you to Blow!” summoned his unique sound. He also collaborated with a host of artists including George Clinton, Prince, Ray Charles, James Taylor, the Dave Matthews Band and the Red Hot Chili Peppers On February 14, 1943, saxophonist Maceo Parker was born in Kinston, NC, and is best known for his work with James Brown, Parker brought his funk style to the soul music of the James Brown Band. For nearly 20 years, Brown’s call “Maceo, I want you to Blow!” summoned his unique sound. He also collaborated with a host of artists including George Clinton, Prince, Ray Charles, James Taylor, the Dave Matthews Band and the Red Hot Chili Peppers Parker was exposed to music early in his life. His father played at least two instruments, and both of his parents sang for their church. His brother was also musical, and the pair joined James Brown’s band together in 1964. . Among Parker’s many accolades and awards are the 2003 Rhythm and Blues Foundation Pioneer Award, the 2012 Les Victories du Jazz in Paris Lifetime Achievement Award and the Icon Award at the North Sea Jazz Festival in Rotterdam. Parker continues to tour internationally and is featured in the book "African American Music Trails of Eastern North Carolina", published by the North Carolina Arts Council. Photograph: :Maceo Parker at the Liri Blues Festival, Italy, in 2009 Read More About This One Of A Kind Musician Here: http://maceoparker.com/biography.html Previous Next

< Back Addison Scurlock Addison Scurlock was an African American photographer. Addison Scurlock photographed Black and White notables in D.C. Addison Scurlock was born on Tuesday, 06.19.1883. He was an African American photographer. He was born in Fayetteville, N.C., where he graduated from high school. In 1900, he moved with his family to Washington, D.C. His father, George Clay Scurlock, had run unsuccessfully for the North Carolina Senate. He also worked as a messenger for the U.S. Treasury Department, while studying law and he later opened a law office on the 1100 block of U Street. Young Scurlock began his career as a photographer as an apprentice to Moses P. Rice, who had studios on Pennsylvania Avenue. By 1904, he learned the basics of photographic portraiture and the entire range of laboratory work. That same year, he started his own business at his parents’ home on Florida Avenue. He photographed students at Howard University, M Street, Armstrong high schools, Black universities, and high schools throughout the South. In 1907, he won a gold medal for photography at the Jamestown Exposition. He opened the Scurlock Studio in the African-American community’s theater district in 1911, and concentrated on portraiture and general photography. His clients included brides, successful people, politicians and presidents, convention guests, and socialites. A 1976 Washington Post article by Jacqueline Trescott read, "For years one of the marks of arriving socially in black Washington was to have your portrait hanging in Scurlock’s window." In addition to studio portraits, he mastered the use of the panoramic camera and shot conventions, banquets, and graduations. By the 1920s, he had earned a national reputation. He was the official photographer of Howard University until his death in 1964, and he recorded all aspects of university life. Scurlock also produced a series of portraits of African-American leaders that historian Carter G. Woodson distributed to African-American schools nationwide. One of his most significant photographs was that of Marion Anderson singing in front of the Lincoln Memorial in 1939. A famous story told about him is that while shooting President Coolidge with the Dunbar Cadet Corp on the White House Lawn, he walked up to the president and moved him to another position for the sake of a better picture, much to the dismay of the Secret Service. Scurlock and his wife, Mamie Estelle, lived just a few blocks from the studio with their four sons — Addison, Robert, George, and Walter. Mamie served as the studio’s business manager. From 1948 until 1952, Robert and George managed the Capital School of Photography. Among their students were future Washington Post photographers and a young Jacqueline Bouvier who became the wife of John Kennedy. As founder of the Scurlock Photographic Studio, he took portraits of such notables as educators Booker T. Washington and Mary McLeod Bethune, composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, engineer Archie Alexander, political leader W.E.B. DuBois, former first lady Mamie Eisenhower, singer Billy Eckstine, physician Charles R. Drew, opera singer Madame Lillian Evanti, and poet Sterling Brown while documenting key moments in Washington, D.C. history. In 1964, Robert bought the Scurlock studio from his father and purchased a studio on Connecticut Avenue. The Connecticut Avenue studio closed in the early 1970s and the 9th Street studio was demolished in 1983 for the Metro system. Addison Scurlock died on December 16, 1964 at the age of 81. Reference: The African American Atlas Black History & Culture an Illustrated Reference by Molefi K. Asanta and Mark T. Mattson Macmillam USA, Simon & Schuster, New York ISBN 0-02-864984-2 Previous Next

< Back John Biggers John Biggers was a muralist who came to prominence after the Harlem Renaissance and toward the end of World War II. John Thomas Biggers (April 13, 1924 – January 25, 2001) John Biggers was a muralist who came to prominence after the Harlem Renaissance and toward the end of World War II. Biggers has worked on creating art that is critical of racial and economic injustice. He served as the founding chairman of the art department at Houston's Texas State University for Negroes (now Texas Southern University)." "Biggers was born in a shotgun house built by his father in Gastonia, North Carolina. His father Paul was a Baptist preacher, farmer, shoemaker, schoolteacher, and principal of a three-room school. His mother Cora was a housekeeper for white families. The youngest of seven, Biggers was reared in a close family that valued creativity and education. When Cora's husband died in 1937, she took a job in an orphanage for Black children, and John and his brother Joe were sent to Lincoln Academy, an American Missionary Association school in Kings Mountain, North Carolina" Biggers was born in a shotgun house built by his father in Gastonia, North Carolina. His father Paul was a Baptist preacher, farmer, shoemaker, schoolteacher, and principal of a three-room school. His mother Cora was a housekeeper for white families. The youngest of seven, Biggers was reared in a close family that valued creativity and education. When Cora's husband died in 1937, she took a job in an orphanage for Black children. She sent John and his brother Joe to Lincoln Academy, an American Missionary Association school for African American children in Kings Mountain, North Carolina. After graduating from Lincoln, Biggers attended Hampton Institute (now Hampton University), (HBCU) an Historically Black College - University. Biggers planned to become a plumber (his Hampton application included boiler room drawings). His life took a dramatic change of course when he took an art class with Viktor Lowenfeld, a Jewish refugee who in 1939 had fled from Nazi persecution in Austria before World War II. Lowenfield introduced his students to works by African Americans and helped them understand the religious and social context of African art, of which the Hampton Museum had a significant collection. Afterward, Biggers began to study art. At Hampton, Biggers also studied under African American painter Charles White and sculptor Elizabeth Catlett. He also began to learn the work of Mexican muralists Jose Clemente Orozco, David Alfaro Siqueiros, and Diego Rivera; and American regionalists Grant Wood, Reginald Marsh, Thomas Hart Benton, and Harry Sternberg. He was exposed to and influenced by Harlem Renaissance artists William Artis and Hale Woodruf, and writers W. E. B. Du Bois and Alain Locke. In 1943, Biggers was drafted and joined the U.S. Navy, which was segregated, like the other armed services. He remained stationed at the Hampton Institute and made models of military equipment for training purposes. In that same year, his talents were recognized when his work was included in a landmark exhibit Young Negro Art at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Biggers was discharged in 1945. When Viktor Lowenfeld left Hampton to teach art education at Pennsylvania State University, he persuaded Biggers to follow. In 1946, Biggers enrolled at Pennsylvania State where he earned bachelor's and master's degrees in art education in 1948. In that same year, he married Hazel Hales. He earned a doctorate from Pennsylvania State in 1954. He was awarded an honorary doctor of letters degree from Hampton University in 1990. His works can be found at Hampton University in Hampton, Virginia, primarily in the campus library. The University Museum at Houston's Texas Southern University houses a collection of Biggers's works. Biggers was hired to be founding chairman of the art department in 1949 at Houston's Texas State University for Negroes (now Texas Southern University). "Over the next thirty-four years Biggers trained the next generation of African American artists and teachers that form a vital part of Biggers's legacy." Mr. Biggers retired from Texas Southern University in 1983. He lived at 3527 Ruth Street while he taught at TSU. In 1950, Biggers won first prize for his painting The Cradle at the annual exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston. "Segregationist policies, however, allowed black visitors into the museum only on Thursdays, so he could not attend the show's opening." From 1950 to 1956 Biggers painted four murals in African American communities in Texas, the beginning of his work in murals. He painted many public murals in Houston and elsewhere, including two in 1991 for Winston-Salem State University in North Carolina. Most are still in place. Biggers received a mural commission by the Young Women's Christian Association of Houston in 1952, for the Blue Triangle branch. Thinking of the YWCA as a place for African American girls and women to be empowered, Biggers was inspired to draw from his mural for his doctoral thesis. His mural was titled The Contribution of the Negro Woman to American Life and Education. Biggers wanted the mural to represent the world of the girls and women who would see it. It honors the sacrifices and endeavors of African American women on behalf of their families and communities, and human rights for women of all races. The mural was revolutionary, symbolizing the sociological, historical, and educational influences of heroic women Biggers received a fellowship in 1957 from UNESCO, the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization. With it, he was one of the first African American artists to visit Africa. Under the auspices of UNESCO, he and his wife Hazel traveled to Ghana, Benin, Nigeria and Togo to study West African cultural traditions first-hand. Biggers described his trip to Ghana and Nigeria as a "positive shock" and as "the most significant of my life's experiences." He adopted African design motifs and scenes of life from his travels as important elements of his subsequent work. Biggers returned to Africa again in 1969, 1984 and 1987 In a 1975 Houston Oral History Project interview, Biggers spoke of his experiences. "We spent most of our time in the country. People call it "bush," you know, that's a name sort of like the hunter. I don't care for that name for the country people because country people have a great traditional culture. And these cultures are all over the country. They are beautiful. They have endured." Biggers credits Lowenfeld with influencing his artistic development, giving him a larger perspective on the anguish that people have suffered because of race or religious beliefs. He died at age 76 in Houston When Biggers studied African myths and legends, he was particularly drawn to the creation stories of a matriarchal deistic system, contrasting with the patriarchal images of the European world. As his ideas and images of Africa melded with memories of his rural Southern life, his work became more geometric, stylized and symbolic. He used quilt-like geometric patterning as a unifying element of his work and made his colors richer and lighter. In later years, Biggers shifted from creating works that were overtly critical of racial and economic injustice (Victim of the City Streets #2, 1946) to more allegorical works (Birth from the Sea, 1964 and Shotguns: Third Ward, 1987). Robert Farris Thompson notes how Biggers gives iconic treatment to household items associated with everyday domestic life. For instance, he portrays the shotgun house as a symbol of collective dignity and cultural identity. The recurring symbol of the simple shotgun with a woman standing on the porch can be interpreted not only as the simplest type of housing but also as a reference to women, through whom all creation comes. He uses a repeated triangular roof shape similar to pieces of a quilt, a reference to making a beautiful whole cloth from many irregular pieces, as another symbol of the creative force. In 1994, Biggers illustrated Maya Angelou's poem "Our Grandmothers". In 1995, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston hosted a retrospective exhibition of Biggers's work titled The Art of John Biggers: View from the Upper Room. The show also traveled to Boston, Hartford, Connecticut, and Raleigh, North Carolina. "He is someone who has retained, over 50 years, an emphasis on African-American culture," said Alvia J. Wardlaw, curator of the exhibition, a recognized author on African American Art, and professor and curator of Texas Southern University's Museum. The catalogue Wardlaw created for the retrospective, The Art of John Biggers: View from the Upper Room (published by Harry N. Abrams in 1995), includes a broad selection of Biggers's paintings, drawings, prints, and sculptures. In 1996 Biggers was invited to create the original design for the Celebration of Life mural in North Minneapolis, a predominantly African American community. The mural was completed by a number of local Minnesota artists, including a few of considerable reputation such as Seitu Jones and Ta-coumba Aiken. Due to the creation of a new housing development, the mural was taken down in 2001. In 2016, The Mint Museum in Charlotte, N.C., opened a multi-year exhibit John Biggers: Wheels in Wheels, which includes 12 important paintings, drawings and prints, as well as a rare example of the artist's sculpture. "Through the use of a rich symbolic language and beautiful craftsmanship, Biggers found connections between personal, familial, and regional histories, traditions, symbols, which he wove together to articulate broader cultural and historical concerns," the exhibit promotion stated. Themes that repeat throughout his career - the importance of women, family and triumph over adversity - are evident in the works on display. Auction Records On October 8, 2009, Swann Galleries set an auction record for any work by Biggers when they sold the painting Shotguns (1987), acrylic and oil on canvas, for $216,000 in a sale of African American fine art. A stellar representation of the shotgun-style houses found in Southern black communities, the painting had been widely exhibited and was considered a culmination of Biggers's work. It had remained in a private collection since being acquired directly from the artist in 1987. Biggers's papers, including correspondence, photographs, printed materials, professional materials, subject files, writings, and audiovisual materials documenting his work as an artist and educator are located at Emory University's Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library in Atlanta, Georgia. His works are in such collections as noted below. Selected Collections Minneapolis Institute of Art, Minneapolis, MN Williams College Museum of Art, WCMA, Williamstown, MA Hampton University, Hampton, VA The University Museum at Texas Southern University, Houston, TX Art Museum of Southeast Texas, Beaumont, TX National Museum of African American History and Culture, Washington, D.C Source: https://www.tshaonline.org/.../entries/biggers-john-thomas Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_T._Biggers Source: https://thejohnsoncollection.org/john-biggers/ Source: https://aaregistry.org/.../john-biggers-brought-african.../ Previous Next

< Back Racial Bias in Flexner Report Permeates Medical Education Today — Landmark study forced all but two Black U.S. medical schools to close by Elizabeth Hlavinka, Staff Writer, MedPage Today June 18, 2020 Note from #Irememberourhistory: Leonard Medical School at Shaw University in Raleigh, NC was the first 4 year medical school (White or Black) in the country. The Flexner Report caused it to close for good. End Note. The early 20th century report that laid the framework for the modern North American medical school is also partially responsible for the disproportionately low number of Black physicians in the workforce today, historians and education specialists say. In the early 1900s, the Carnegie Foundation and the American Medical Association tasked Abraham Flexner, an education specialist, with traveling to all 155 medical schools in the U.S. and Canada to assess the state of medical education. His findings, published in 1910 in what is now known as the Flexner Report, provided criteria to standardize and improve medical schools, forcing closed many institutions that didn't have the resources to implement more rigorous instruction. By 1923, only 66 medical schools remained, and five of seven existing Black medical schools were closed. In 1910, African Americans comprised 2.5% of U.S. physicians, which would actually decrease to 2.2% in 2008 before rising to about 5% of the workforce today; African Americans account for about 13% of the general U.S. population. "The Flexner Report was a catalyst," said Wayne A.I. Frederick, MD, president of Howard University in Washington, D.C., one Black medical school that remained along with Meharry Medical College in Nashville. "It started us down a road that is hard to undo." The Flexner Report centralized the scientific method, increased the number of academic institutions, and reduced the number of for-profit, proprietary schools. Johns Hopkins Medical School, where the medical school curriculum consisted of 2 years of basic science followed by 2 years of clinical science, was held up as a reference standard. In his report, Flexner wrote that African-American physicians should be trained in "hygiene rather than surgery" and should primarily serve as "sanitarians," whose purpose was "protecting whites" from common diseases like tuberculosis. The schools that closed, including Flint in New Orleans, Leonard in Raleigh, and Knoxville in Memphis, were "wasting small sums annually and sending out undisciplined men, whose lack of real training is covered up by the imposing MD degree," Flexner wrote. Although some standardization of medical education was necessary, Flexner's report gravely diminished the number of African Americans who could have become physicians, said Earl H. Harley, MD, of Georgetown University, who has written about the forgotten history of defunct Black medical schools. "The opportunity to train to be a physician is still not where it should be," Harley told MedPage Today. "More than 100 years later, we are still trying to make up for the deficit." HBCUs Help Close Gaps Most Black medical schools in the early 20th century educated students from rural, low-income communities, and they did not have the resources or philanthropic backing necessary to implement the rigorous standards Flexner called for in his report, said Marybeth Gasman, PhD, of the Rutgers University Center for Minority Serving Institutions, whose research focuses on historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs). "A lot of these places that were shut down were producing doctors for Black communities and rural white communities, and were doing so on a shoestring budget, so they were not going to be prioritized," Gasman told MedPage Today. "We don't prioritize these things now." HBCUs and Black medical schools help close gaps in the workforce by increasing the number of Black undergraduates with science degrees, as well as Black medical students. Four of the top 10 colleges sending African Americans to medical school are HBCUs, and Howard University has graduated more African-American physicians than any other institution, Frederick said. "The role that HBCUs play both as a pipeline and as a training opportunity for physicians in this country is absolutely critical," Frederick told MedPage Today. "Unfortunately, we have an outsized impact today despite the fact we don't have the resources of predominantly white institutions and the students we train are coming from circumstances where they have less financial fortitude." African Americans are overrepresented in low-income communities and have reduced access to educational opportunities compared to white Americans. With physicians graduating medical school hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt, low-income students are also underrepresented in medical schools, said Louis W. Sullivan, MD, president emeritus of the Morehouse College of Medicine and former secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. "We've set up a system whereby the cost of becoming a doctor is so great that the percentage of students from low-income families going to medical school has decreased over the past two to three decades," Sullivan told MedPage Today. The free tuition program at the New York University School of Medicine is one example of a way to circumvent these financial barriers, Sullivan said. "The program at NYU got a lot of attention and I'm hoping we see much more responses like that so that students who come from low-income backgrounds can see it's not unrealistic for them to want to become a doctor," Sullivan said. Racial Bias and Health Outcomes Black medical schools train a higher proportion of primary care physicians who care for underserved populations, not only increasing representation in the field, but also providing culturally sensitive care to African-American patients. Racial bias in medicine contributes to disparate health outcomes faced by African Americans, with half of white medical students believing Black patients have a higher pain tolerance than white patients, for example. Racial bias can also permeate things like Crisis of Care Standards guidelines or algorithms commonly used to guide care decisions, including which patients will receive transplants. In the COVID-19 pandemic, all of these disparities in health have been exposed -- mortality in majority-Black counties is six-fold higher compared to predominantly white counties. Increasing the number of Black doctors in the workforce could help reduce disparate health outcomes affecting Black patients, including disproportionately high infant and maternal mortality rates. An effective health encounter involves sharing sensitive, private information, but if a patient is going to share that information with a healthcare professional, they have to believe that a healthcare professional has their own interest at heart," Sullivan said. "That is why having diversity in the healthcare profession helps because in our current society, the individual from that same group has a greater understanding of the historical and cultural set of beliefs that the patient has." Flexner acknowledged Black students' rights to education, but thought Black patients could only be seen by Black doctors. However, he also stated that there would not be enough Black physicians to care for all of the Black Americans at the time. From 1910 to 1930, there was one Black doctor for every 3,000 African Americans, but this varied widely among states. In Mississippi, for example, a state in which far more of the population was Black than in northern states, there was one doctor for every 14,000 Black people, Gasman said. Howard University and Meharry University, the two schools that survived the post-Flexner reforms, were then left to produce enough doctors to serve around 10 million African Americans living in the country at the time. The ripple effect of this disparity is evident today, Gasman said. "I'm not saying the Black medical schools that closed were doing everything right because they didn't have good resources, but they were doing the best they could," Gasman said. "It would have been interesting if the Carnegie Foundation and other foundations had invested money in them instead of closing them, and really grown them to serve African-American populations." Dismantling Racism in Medicine Today, predominantly white medical schools also have a role to play in increasing representation overall and in leadership. The systems that have developed in the past century since Flexner's report cannot be ignored, said Katharine Lawrence, MD, an internal medicine resident at the NYU School of Medicine. "In the 100 years since the Flexner Report, there were all sorts of stakeholders in place to suppress the reinvigoration of Black medical education," Lawrence told MedPage Today. "We have to do an evaluation of what the medical community has been doing in the past 100 years that allowed that to happen." In 2012, the Beyond Flexner Alliance was created to address some of the disparities established in 1910 that still exist today. As part of George Washington University, it collaborates with other professional organizations and hosts annual conferences at which physicians can develop tools for dismantling racism or other structural issues in health systems. "At the core of Beyond Flexner is that as healthcare professionals and physicians, we have made a commitment to the health of patients and the public," said Candice Chen, MD, MPH, chair of the Beyond Flexner Alliance. "We have a responsibility to do this." Harley sees the current coronavirus pandemic as an inflection point. "With COVID-19, things have turned completely upside down, and this is the chance for us to look at the whole system of medical education and make changes and correct some of the things that were affected by Flexner," Harley said. "We can make great strides right now." Link To Read The Flexner Report: http://archive.carnegiefoundation.org/.../Carnegie... Link To Read Earl H. Harley, MD, of Georgetown University, the forgotten history of defunct Black medical schools. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/.../pdf/jnma00196-0027.pdf Article Source: https://www.medpagetoday.com/publi.../medicaleducation/87171 Previous Next

< Back Fred "Curly" Neal Fred "Curly" Neal (born May 19, 1942) is an American former basketball player best known for his career with the Harlem Globetrotters, instantly recognizable with his shaved head. Fred "Curly" Neal (born May 19, 1942) is an American former basketball player best known for his career with the Harlem Globetrotters, instantly recognizable with his shaved head. Following in the footsteps of Marques Haynes, Neal became the Trotters' featured ballhandler, a key role in the team's exhibition act. Born in Greensboro, North Carolina, Neal attended Greensboro-Dudley High School. He went to Johnson C. Smith University in Charlotte, North Carolina. At Smith, he averaged 23.1 points a game and was named All-CIAA guard. Neal played for 22 seasons (1963–85) with the Globetrotters, appearing in more than 6,000 games in 97 countries. His shaved head earned him his nickname, a reference to the Three Stooges' Curly Howard, and made him one of the most recognizable Globetrotters. In the 1970s, an animated version of Neal starred with various other Globetrotters in the Hanna-Barbera animated cartoon Harlem Globetrotters as well as its spinoff, The Super Globetrotters. The animated Globetrotters also made three appearances in The New Scooby-Doo Movies. Neal himself appeared with Meadowlark Lemon, Marques Haynes, and his other fellow Globetrotters in a live-action Saturday morning TV show, The Harlem Globetrotters Popcorn Machine, in 1974–75, which also featured Rodney Allen Rippy and Avery Schreiber. On January 11, 2008, the Globetrotters announced that Neal's number 22 would be retired on February 15 in a special ceremony at Madison Square Garden as part of "Curly Neal Weekend." Neal was just the fifth Globetrotter in the team's 82-year history to have his number retired, joining Wilt Chamberlain (13), Meadowlark Lemon (36), Marques Haynes (20) and Goose Tatum (50). On January 31, 2008, it was announced that Neal would be inducted into the North Carolina Sports Hall of Fame.[4] A mural commemorating Neal's achievements both as a Globetrotter and during his time at Dudley High School is painted in the basketball gym of the Hayes-Taylor Memorial YMCA at 1101 East Market Street in Greensboro, North Carolina. His wife Rose is deceased. His fiancé is Linda Ware, and the couple resides in Houston, Texas. He has two daughters, Rocurl and Laverne Neal, and five grandchildren David, Dante, Jayden, Brandon, Deja. Source:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curly_Neal Source: http://premierespeakers.com/curly_neal/bio Previous Next

< Back Lois Mailou Jones ​ Left image: During her two-year residency, 1928 to 1930, artist and art educator Lois Mailou Jones established the art department at the Palmer Memorial Institute, a historically Black prep school located in Sedalia, North Carolina. Photograph of artist and educator Lois Mailou Jones, ca 1936/1937. Possibly in her early years at Howard University. Collection National Archives at College Park. Right image: "Negro Youth", 1929, charcoal on paper. This portrait by Loïs Mailou Jones is of a Palmer student. Collection Smithsonian American Art Museum, Bequest of the artist, 2006.24.11] . . LOIS MAILOU JONES 1905 - 1998 On the occasion of her ninetieth birthday, Loïs Mailou Jones reflected upon her artistic longevity and the obstacles she had confronted. “It wasn’t easy,” she said. “There was the double handicap: being a woman and being a woman of color. I kept going on, with determination. As I look back, I wonder how I’ve done it.” Jones had indeed faced daunting gender and racial discrimination, yet her stalwart resolve empowered her to persevere and succeed. The Boston-born artist displayed creative promise at an early age and, with her parents’ encouragement, began her training at the High School of Practical Arts in 1919, advancing on to the School of the Museum of Fine Arts from 1923 to 1927. While the curriculum at the Museum School covered life, freehand, and perspective drawing courses, she gravitated towards design as a major. She enrolled in graduate studies at Boston’s Design Art School, eventually becoming a freelance textile designer. Jones realized, however, that textile design had its limitations: “As I wanted my name to go down in history, I realized that I would have to be a painter. And so it was that I turned immediately to painting.” Armed with new resolve, Jones applied to her alma mater, the School at the Museum of the Fine Arts, for a teaching position. Her request was denied, the rejection tendered with the director’s suggestion that she “go South to help your people.” Initially, Jones balked at the notion, but after attending a lecture delivered by pioneering educator Charlotte Hawkins Brown at a local community center, she began to reconsider. Jones convinced Brown of the necessity of art instruction at Palmer Memorial Institute, a preparatory school for African American youth in Sedalia, North Carolina. Jones’s two-year residency, 1928 to 1930, in the rural community was her first encounter with the segregation and racism particular to the American South. She established a thriving art department at Palmer, which soon attracted the attention of another artist-educator, James Herring, who in 1930 recruited her to Howard University. Jones would remain at Howard for forty-seven years, teaching exceptional students such as Alma Thomas, Elizabeth Catlett, and David Driskell. One of her familiar admonitions to students bespoke her own “indefatigable” rigor: “Talent is the basis for your career as an artist—but hard work determines your success.” In addition to her responsibilities at Howard, Jones freelanced as an illustrator. Her primary client was the black-owned-and-operated Associated Publishers, a subsidiary of the larger Association for the Study of Negro Life and History. She provided illustrations for the company's children and adult books between 1936 and 1965. Heritage is one such illustration. The image, a “mural-like panoramic depiction of African American achievement,” was executed in 1936 as a headline banner for a poster-sized broadside titled Important Events and Dates in Negro History. In 1968, an article in Ebony magazine remarked on Jones’s creative curiosity, reporting that “she has devoted her life to a quiet exploration—a quest for new meanings in color, texture and design.” That innovative spirit is borne out in Africa, dating to 1935. Executed in vibrant jewel-like hues, the work depicts three sharply defined figures with chiseled features. This trio’s symmetrical, elongated features and expressionless eyes recall similar visages found in African masks, a recurrent aesthetic component in Jones’s oeuvre. Jones’s colleague at Howard, Alain Locke, had urged African American artists to create images that would contradict pervasive racial stereotypes of the period. He also exhorted African Americans to connect with their “ancestral legacy.” Ultimately, Jones hoped that race and gender would no longer circumscribe her art or achievements, vowing, “I’m an American painter who happens to be black.” Source Link: https://thejohnsoncollection.org/lois-mailou-jones/ Previous Next

< Back The White Wall: How Big Finance Bankrupts Black America The Takeaway Dr. Melissa Harris-Perry interviews Emily Flitter. October 31, 2022 New York Times finance reporter Emily Flitter joins us to talk about her new book, The White Wall: How Big Finance Bankrupts Black America, which includes a deeply reported look into systemic racism within the American financial industry and the practices keeping the racial wealth gap in place. "She also gives a voice to victims, from single mothers to professional athletes to employees themselves: people who were scammed, lied to, and defrauded by the systems they trusted with their money, and silenced when they attempted to speak out and seek reform." Link to listen: https://www.wnycstudios.org/.../how-white-wall ... TRANSCRIPT MELISSA HARRIS-PERRY: This is The Takeaway. I'm Melissa Harris-Perry. According to the Federal Reserve, the typical white household holds more than 10 times the wealth of a typical Black and Latino household. In recent decades, this racial wealth gap has worsened rather than improved. Historic racial and economic injustices are important in understanding this inequality, but so too are some ongoing practices in the American financial sector. EMILY FLITTER: Hi, I am Emily Flitter, author of The White Wall: How Big Finance Bankrupts Black America and a Finance Reporter for the New York Times. Melissa Harris-Perry: The White Wall tells the story of how the financial industry fosters the racial wealth gap and it does so with clear and compelling evidence. Emily Flitter: It was almost the white-collar version of somebody filming police brutality. That was what really allowed me. That was a big breakthrough. It allowed me to write a story and say what happened without this doubt that accompanies so many of these cases. MELISSA HARRIS-PERRY: Flitter tells the story of Ricardo Peters, a former JP Morgan Chase employee who recorded what was happening to him at the bank. EMILY FLITTER: In Ricardo's case, he is a Black financial advisor who was working for JP Morgan Chase and he was in Arizona and he wanted to advance in his career and his boss kept putting him off. He started recording his boss and then he ended up recording a conversation where he came to his boss with a client who had recently received a large settlement check. Her son had died and there was some issue that the municipality that she was living in or where her son died, settled with her and they gave her a check for almost $400,000. Ricardo came to his boss and said, ''I can prove to you that I deserve a promotion. Look at the client I just brought in.'' His boss said basically this person doesn't deserve our services because she didn't earn the money. He also said she's from Section 8 which is a pretty clear reference to a racial, it's a representation of a racial slur. The woman was Black. Ricardo recorded all this and he also complained about being discriminated against. Instead of investigating his complaint, JP Morgan really gaslit him and said that he had done something wrong and eventually pushed him out and fired him. That's the story that I wrote and that is the tiniest hint at what really goes on in institutions of all size in the financial industry where Black people are still treated just totally differently and way worse as employees, as customers. When they try to raise an alarm about it, this kind of thing happens to them. MELISSA HARRIS-PERRY: This is about the multiple touchpoints between banks and communities, so both Black folks experience as customers, Black folks experience as employees and then Black communities experience as, or experiences as either potential sites for investment or being ignored for the possibility of investment. EMILY FLITTER: Absolutely. The reason that the book is called The White Wall is because these components that you mentioned add up to a solid barrier. My attempt in examining this was to take the barrier apart and look at the individual bricks. Each chapter in the book is a brick in the wall. You have bank customers who walk into a bank and are immediately at risk of being racially profiled. You have employees who not only can't get justice when they complain but actually often get pushed out. You have the insurance industry where Black customers can't, sometimes can't get the same insurance because as you mentioned, Black communities are often seen as devalued. Properties are lower, property values and the opportunities for investment aren't there in the eyes of the traditional financial industry. If you're an insurer, you're not going to commit a lot of money to the-- Even if it's your business, you're not going to pledge a lot of money to restore something that goes wrong in these communities. Then I also found that Black insurance customers have a really hard time getting claims that they try to make paid out. That's a huge component of building and preserving wealth is insurance. If you pay regularly for an insurance policy and then when something goes wrong, you can't get that money back, that's a huge loss. Then there's businesses who can't get loans and there's also the perpetuation of this inequality through data and AI which is seen as this clean and neutral force but is actually just computer programs made up of all of these other injustices that I mentioned. MELISSA HARRIS-PERRY: All right, say a little bit more about the AI point because I do think there are many who think that going to more automated systems that use a more presumably meritorious or even scale for assessing anything from a community for investment to a customer would take care of these biases that we so often see in human interactions. EMILY FLITTER: It's a thought that makes sense in the abstract. The problem is-- There are many problems, what is the source of your data that you're feeding into these machines and teaching them how to make decisions. If it's the real world, the real world has so much bias in it that the machines are going to learn to behave the way the real world is. In addition to that, the banks and other big financial companies that use AI aren't transparent in what they're doing in the specific programs, how they work, what the data is. No one can really test or check what is happening when they rely on these programs. That means that people might be getting discriminated against and not even realize it. The other issue is that culturally, the designers of these programs don't always prioritize solving this problem. That's a huge change that we as human beings can make. So far though, the voices that have been trying to raise awareness about this have been put down. MELISSA HARRIS-PERRY Back in a moment with more. As we continue our conversation with Emily Flitter, author of The White Wall. MELISSA HARRIS-PERRY: We're back and we're still talking about how continuing practices of the financial industry are implicated in the continuing racial wealth gap. Now, when looking for solutions to the racial wealth gap, it's typical to find advice to individuals about improving their personal financial literacy. Emily Flitter's new book, The White Wall, explains why this itemized approach will not address continuing practices and structures embedded in the American financial sector. What are we getting wrong when we talk about the solutions by talking about financial literacy for the end user? EMILY FLITTER: I want to answer that question first by telling you a story. This story isn't in my book. When I started to report on racism in the financial industry, a woman who runs her personal-- I think it's a non-profit actually, that helps promote Black fashion designers reached out to me and she said, "I'd really like to include you on a panel of financial experts who are going to talk to my members about how they can basically do better in being small business owners in the fashion industry." I was on a panel and she and the other two people on the panel were experts in community development and studying the racial wealth gap. I actually had the least amount of expertise on the panel and was really deferring to the other two members. The woman asked us all a question. She said, ''Whenever I apply for a job and I get rejected, I always go to the hiring manager and say, what did I do wrong and what could I do better next time I interview?'' Not for you, but just in general. I really like getting that feedback. I find it to be very important. Do you think that the problem is that we just aren't asking banks what we did wrong when we got rejected from a loan? Should we just be treating this like a job application and just getting banks to tell us what we can do better next time? There was complete silence from the three of us. I wanted the other two panelists to answer first, and it seemed like all of us were just frozen. Finally, we all basically said the same thing, we were like, it's not you, it's the banks. To answer your question about why this always ends up as a discussion of financial literacy, this is basically gaslighting. I'm not saying that it doesn't help for people to learn about how to manage their money but the people who aren't faced with these barriers also don't really know how to manage their money very well. They pay financial advisors to do it for them, or they have wealthy relatives who give them a break or something. This isn't about knowledge, this is about being treated equally. These solutions that are based on just learning the tricks of the trade aren't going to work because they're based on a false sense that the people who are being offered these solutions are actually going to get them and be allowed to take advantage of them. MELISSA HARRIS-PERRY: If financial literacy for Black entrepreneurs, Black customers, even the financially highly literate Black folk working in these banks, that isn't where the solution lies, where are the systemic solutions? EMILY FLITTER: I think that on a product level, there are things that big banks can do that they don't do, for instance, JP Morgan, made a $30 billion pledge to address the racial wealth gap and part of that pledge involved making mortgage loans. JP Morgan doesn't do the loans that are best suited for Black borrowers. They're just not in that business anymore. Banks could declare that whatever the extra costs, they're going to go in and start offering products that really are designed to suit borrowers who currently can't get the loans that they offer. That would be how individual institutions can really change their missions. The solution that I talk about in the book, though, is bigger and broader. I believe, after doing a lot of reporting and talking to people who are way smarter than me, that the financial institutions, the financial industry really needs to embrace the concept of reparations. By doing that, they would be having to explain to their literally millions of employees what went wrong and what it would really take to fix our society. I think that the cultural change that could be brought about by that embrace would be very important. MELISSA HARRIS-PERRY: Emily Flitter is author of the White Wall: How Big Finance Bankrupts Black America. Emily, thank you so much for joining us today. Emily Flitter: Thank you for having me, it's been a pleasure. Previous Next

< Back Kellis Earl Parker ​ Kellis Earl Parker 13 Jan 1942 - 10 Oct 2000 Kinston, Lenoir County, NC native Kellis Earl Parker, an accomplished lawyer, activist, scholar, and musician, was born January 13, 1942 in Kinston, North Carolina. In addition to his distinguished career, Parker was also well known for several firsts: he was one of the first black students to enroll at UNC-Chapel Hill, the first black student to run for a campus-wide office at Carolina, and the first black professor of law at Columbia University. Kellis Parker’s parents, Maceo Sr. and Novella, were business owners in Kinston and operated the only black dry cleaning facility in the city. Kinston had a thriving music scene and the entire Parker family played music: Kellis and his younger brothers Maceo Jr. and Melvin had a band together, having been taught the basics by their mother and father. Kellis’ chosen instrument was the trombone, which he would continue to play throughout his life and career, using jazz music as a tool to illuminate to his students the legal challenges facing black Americans. One of his classes at Columbia was called “Jazz Roots Revisited: The Law the Slaves Made.” Maceo, whose chosen instrument was the saxophone, and Melvin, drummer, would go on to be career musicians and collaborate with James Brown. From his own recollection, Parker’s work as a civil rights activist began as a teenager. As the head of the band at the segregated high school he attended, Parker successfully petitioned the Kinston Chamber of Commerce to change the rule requiring black schools to march at the back of a town parade. Parker matriculated at UNC-Chapel Hill in 1960, one of only four black students to enter as freshmen that year. He was deeply involved with the YMCA, working on numerous committees and holding multiple official positions, as well as with the student chapter of the NAACP. He was a leader in civil rights activism while at UNC with an eye on the community outside of campus; for example, coordinating the boycott of a Durham movie theater (the Rialto) that refused to integrate. In 1962, a fundraising campaign spearheaded by fellow Kinstonians raised money to help Parker travel to Greece as the first black undergraduate delegate to the United Nations International Students Conference. Parker became the first black student at UNC elected to a campus-wide position when he was chosen by the student body to attend the National Student Congress in 1963. He was also a member of the Order of the Grail, the highest undergraduate men’s honorary organization, and the Order of the Old Well. Parker’s accomplishments continued after leaving Carolina in 1964. He went on to attend Howard University Law School, where he graduated at the top of his class, and then taught at the University of California at Davis. In 1972, he became the first black law professor at Columbia University, receiving tenure in 1975. Parker’s civil rights work remained central: he was director of the NAACP's Legal Defense and Educational Fund and produced numerous publications considering legal remedies for race issues in the United States. Kellis Earl Parker died of acute respiratory distress syndrome on October 10, 2000 in New York City. Previous Next

< Back Young Negro Farm Laborer May 1940. “Young Negro farm laborer. Stem, North Carolina.” 35mm nitrate negative by Jack Delano for the Farm Security Administration. Previous Next

< Back Loften Mitchell, A Theatrical Icon African American playwright, historian, and writer. Loften Mitchell, A Theatrical Icon Image:Bubbling BrownSugar (poster) Loften Mitchell was born on Tuesday, 04.15.1919, he was an African American playwright, historian, and writer. From Columbus, North Carolina, his parents were Ulysses Sanford Mitchell and Willia Spaulding Mitchell. In addition to having three brothers, he had one sister, Gladys. The family moved to Harlem before young Mitchell was a month old. His first stage productions were the shows that he and brothers Louis, Melvin, and Clayton performed in the backyard of their home in Harlem. Mitchell's further interest in the theater began at the vaudeville theaters of Harlem. He learned first-hand the promise of Black theater as he observed at work such pioneering Black artists as Dick Campbell, Ralph Cooper, Ethel Waters, Fredi Washington, and Canada Lee. He also witnessed the negative stereotypes of African Americans in the American theater and later worked to remove such images in order to project real-life, positive images. Mitchell enrolled in New York Textile High but transferred to DeWitt Clinton High, where he graduated with honors in 1937. He found work as an elevator operator and delivery boy to support himself while he studied playwriting during the evening at City College of New York and performed with the Rose McClendon Players in Harlem. A professor from Talladega College in Alabama helped him win a scholarship to study there, and Mitchell received his B.A. degree with honors in 1943. Mitchell married Helen Marsh that same year and they had two sons, Thomas and Melvin. They were divorced in 1956. While at Talladega, he won an award for the best play that included the stories he had heard at the vaudeville houses while he was growing up in Harlem. It also became the basis for his critical work later published in 1967, Black Drama: The Story of the American Negro in the Theater. After two years in the U.S. Navy during World War II, Mitchell enrolled as a graduate student at Columbia University in New York. In 1948 he accepted a job with the Department of Welfare as a social investigator, but continued to study during evenings. At this time he wrote Blood in the Night 1946, which was followed by The Bancroft Dynasty1948, and The Cellar 1952. In 1957 he wrote A Land Beyond the River, a drama based on South Carolina pastor and schoolteacher Joseph DeLaine's historic court case, which ended segregation in public schools. The following year Mitchell won a Guggenheim award, which enabled him to return to Columbia and write for a year. Mitchell worked as a writer and actor for New York radio station WNYC's weekly program The Later Years (1950--1962). He also wrote a daily program titled Friendly Advisor for radio station WWRL in New York (1954). A series of plays followed: The Photographer 1962, Ballad of Bimshire 1963, Ballad for the Winter Soldiers 1964, Tell Pharaoh, which was televised in 1963 and produced on-stage in 1967and Star of the Morning 1965. Mitchell's most successful musical was Bubbling Brown Sugar 1975, written with Rosetta LeNoire. It opened on Broadway, traveled to London, was nominated for a Tony Award for best musical, and was awarded the Best Musical Award in 1977. He also wrote Cartoons for a Lunch Hour 1978, A Gypsy Girl 1982, and Miss Ethel Waters 1983. Mitchell never lost sight of the need for a written history of Blacks in the theater. He wrote Black Drama in 1967. In this collection of 12 essays, Mitchell discussed Charles Gilpin's work in Eugene O'Neill's Emperor Jones at the Provincetown Theatre in 1920. Mitchell was a professor at State University of New York at Binghamton's theater department and the Department of African American Studies (1971--85), and professor emeritus from 1985 to the present. In addition, he wrote a novel, The Stubborn Old Lady Who Resisted Change (1973), and edited Voices of the Black Theater (1976). He won a playwriting award from the Research Foundation, State University of New York (1974), and the Outstanding Theatrical Pioneer Award from the Audience Development Committee in 1979. He married Gloria Anderson in 1991. An important figure who has made important contributions to the African American theater, Loften Mitchell's work as playwright and essayist preserves the work of Black artists who preceded him as well as those whose genius, talents, and pioneering efforts were realized during his lifetime. He has documented an important part of Black America's cultural development, in addition to contributing to that development through the body of his own written work. Reference: Contemporary Black Biography, various volumes Edited by Shirelle Phelps Copyright 1999 by Gale Research, Detroit, London ISBN 0-7876-1275-8 Previous Next

< Back The Green Heffa Farms Meet the woman who is truly breaking down barriers Farmer Cee’s family medicinal farm in Liberty, NC not only nurtures souls through hemp tea, but also helps to level the field for Black women farmers “To be able to bring your full and authentic self—that’s something I won’t compromise on.” - farmer Cee @farmerceeGHF. Green Heffa Farms is an organic medicinal herb farm committed to increasing equity, environmental stewardship, economic empowerment, and community education WHO IS FARMER CEE Clarenda "Cee" Stanley is currently the CEO/President of Green Heffa Farms. From an agrarian family in Alabama's Black Belt, Cee did not see herself as a farmer. But in 2018, she co-founded Green Heffa Farms and was selected to be the 2019 Featured Farmer for Hemp History Week. However, in 2019, Cee also found herself being solely responsible for Green Heffa Farms and from there, she began to reimagine the legacy she wanted to leave for her children and grandchildren. It was from this experience that she developed the farm's commitment to the 4Es: Economic empowerment, Equity, Education, and Environment. Raised largely by maternal grandparents who taught her to always grow organically, conscientiously, consciously - Cee was taught to honor and respect the land, that land was true wealth because it produced. She is a student of heritage farming and indigenous traditional knowledge and incorporates honor and reverence to the ancestors throughout the farm's processes, products, and presentations. The packaging's patterns are inspired by the rich tapestry's of the Gee's Bends Quilters, who hail from her home county of Wilcox County, Alabama along with the fabrics of her African ancestry. The plants used in Green Heffa Farm's teas are those with strong cultural connectivity that Cee has studied voraciously. Click the links below and learn more about her journey from growing botanical & medicinal herbs, to incorporating them in @greenheffafarm teas that help heal the mind, body & soul. Web Site: https://www.greenheffafarms.com/our-mission Previous Next

< Back Negro tenant farmer topping tobacco. Person County, North Carolina Negro tenant farmer topping tobacco. Person County, North Carolina Photograph: Negro tenant farmer topping tobacco. Person County, North Carolina July 1939 Contributor Names Dorothea Lange, photographer Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Black-And-White Negatives (170,902) American Memory (502,740) Prints and Photographs Division (847,558) Library of Congress Online Catalog (977,675) Previous Next

< Back Charles S. L. Baker ​ Note: Charles S. L. Baker did not invent the steam radiator, he modified the ones being sold at the time in order to find a less expensive way to heat homes and businesses. The radiators that were in use, was created by Franz San Galli, a Prussian born inventor. -End Note- . Photograph shows inventor Charles S.L. Baker and another man, possibly Baker's brother Peter, standing behind heating (radiator) system. One man is holding a knob that is attached to two wires. This photograph is in the section Entitled: The Start of super heating union / Bode, 5th and Felix Sts., St. Joseph, Mo. Creator(s): Photographer Bode, Martin W., 1871-1947 Date Created/Published: c1906. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/pp.print. ----- Charles S. Lewis Baker was born on August 3rd, 1859, in Savannah, Missouri. His mother, Betsy Mackay, died when he was three months old, leaving him to be brought up by the wife of his "owner", Sallie Mackay, and his father, Abraham Baker. He was the youngest of five children, Susie, Peter, Annie, and Ellen, all of whom were freed after the Civil War. Baker later received an education at Franklin College. His father was employed as an express agent, and once Baker turned fifteen, he became his assistant.[ Baker worked with wagons and linchpins, which sparked an interest in mechanical sciences. Baker worked over the span of decades on his product, attempting several different forms of friction, including rubbing two bricks together mechanically, as well as using various types of metals. After twenty-three years, the invention was perfected in the form of two metal cylinders, one inside of the other, with a spinning core in the center made of wood, that produced the friction. Baker started a business with several other men to manufacture the heater. The Friction Heat & Boiler Company was established in 1904, with Baker on the board of directors. The company worked up to 136,000 dollars in capital, equal to nearly 4 million dollars in 2018. Mr. Baker claims that the particular motive power used in creating the friction is not essential. It may be wind, water, gasoline, or any other source of energy. The most difficult part of the inventor's assertions to credit is that his system will light of heat a house at about half the cost of methods now in use. At 21, Baker married the 19-year old Carrie Carriger on the 12th of December, 1880, in Adams County, Iowa. They had one child, born on the 3rd of January, 1882, named Lulu Belle Baker. Little else is known about his life. Here is a death notice that we found. Baker, Charles S. L. (1860-1926) Charles S. L. Baker, widely known St. Joseph negro inventor, died Wednesday at the home of his daughter, 1712 Messanie street. He is survived by the daughter, Mrs. Belle Hardy, he is survived by two sisters, Mrs. Ellen Sherrell and Mrs. Samuel Todd, St. Joseph. The funeral service will be conducted Saturday at 2:30 o'clock p.m., and burial will be at Savannah . . . Death notice source: https://cousin-collector.com/.../3947-baker-charles-s-l... Source: Wikipedia Source:http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2011660047/ Source for details concerning his patent claim: https://www.rawthoughts.net/?p=2199 Previous Next

< Back The Moore's Family Farm Kelton is a third generation farmer, and his farm has been in service since the early 1900s. His family -- his wife Vera and his three sons -- have been selling vegetables since 1989. In 2014, Kelton founded Down East Fresh Cooperative, a collective of 12 Black farmers that span three different counties to share equipment, ideas, and be in community with one another. The cooperative privileges the transfer of generational knowledge from older farmers to young, new farmers. On the #JusticeforBlackFarmers Act, Kelton recognizes that this piece of legislation is a step in the right direction for getting farmers of color and historically marginalized groups access to equitable funding. Shared From Source: The Black Church Food Security Network Previous Next

< Back North Carolina College 1941 CIAA Basketball Champions ​ North Carolina College 1941 CIAA Basketball Champions "A photograph of the North Carolina College 1941 CIAA Champion Basketball Team. The team was coached by John B. McLendon. This was his first year as a head coach and he referred to his players as his “Thousand Dollar Team” because he had declined a coaching offer of $1,000 more from another college. The team repaid Coach John B. McLendon for his dedication by becoming North Carolina College first CIAA Basketball Champions. The team's conference record was 14 wins and 0 losses. The team’s overall record was 25 wins and 4 losses. "Source: https://hbcudigitallibrary.auctr.edu/.../coll.../nccu/id/54/ Previous Next

< Back Hester Ford Photograph description with article: Charlotte's Hester Ford, the oldest person in the United States, celebrated her birthday with a drive-through parade due to the coronavirus pandemic. (She is sitting in an opened door, wearing a pink crown with happy birthday on it, and wearing a pink sash. On a tray in front of her is a birthday cake. ) - Photograph credit: Jessica Koscielniak By Theoden Janes / News & Observer April 18, 2021 08:16 AM, Updated 8 Minutes Ago Photograph description with article: Charlotte's Hester Ford, the oldest person in the United States, celebrated her birthday with a drive-through parade due to the coronavirus pandemic. (She is sitting in an opened door, wearing a pink crown with happy birthday on it, and wearing a pink sash. On a tray in front of her is a birthday cake. ) - Photograph credit: Jessica Koscielniak Hester McCardell Ford, believed to be the oldest living person in the United States and among the oldest human beings on the planet, died peacefully at her home in Charlotte on Saturday, according to her family. She was at least 115, but possibly as old as 116. She lived more than twice as long as her late husband — John Ford, who died at age 57 in 1963 — and was the matriarch of an enormous family: 68 grandchildren, 125 great-grandchildren, and at least 120 great-great-grandchildren. “She was a pillar and stalwart to our family and provided much needed love, support and understanding to us all,” said her great-granddaughter, Tanisha Patterson-Powe, in a statement emailed to the Observer on Saturday. “She was the seed that sprouted leaves and branches which is now our family. God saw fit to make her the matriarch of your family and blessed us to be her caretakers and recipients of her legacy.” Ford was born on a farm in Lancaster County, S.C., where she grew up plowing and picking cotton. She was married at 14 to John Ford, and gave birth to the first of the couple’s 12 children at age 15. Hester took care of the house, farm and the children while John worked at a local steel mill. The couple eventually sold the farm and moved to Charlotte, building a house near the intersection of Interstates 77 and 85 around 1960. After her husband died three years later, for the next half-century — until she was 108 — Ford continued to live in that same house in the Dalebrook neighborhood on her own (that’s right, without live-in assistance). It was only after she fell in the bathtub and bruised her ribs that family members insisted someone move in with her. In a testament to her durability, that was the first time in her life Ford had ever needed to be hospitalized for any reason. For the past several years, she had family members living in the home with her and helping to care for her. In recent years, Ford’s birthday had been known to draw a crowd. In 2019, for example, QCity Metro reported that it was celebrated during an event hosted by Cooking Matters in Your Community, a nonprofit that educates families about healthy eating. She received a proclamation from Charlotte Mayor Vi Lyles recognizing Aug. 15 as Hester McCardell Ford Day. “Her light shined beyond her local area and she lived beyond a century with memories containing real life experience of over 100 years,” Patterson-Powe said in her statement. “She not only represented the advancement of our family but of the Black African American race and culture in our country. She was a reminder of how far we have come as people on this earth.” Last Aug. 15, the Charlotte great-great-grandmother celebrated her birthday during a global pandemic — the second of her lifetime. She also lived through the influenza pandemic in 1918, when she was either 13 ... or 14. According to her family, U.S. Census Bureau documents indicate she was born in 1905, but then another set of Census Bureau documents say she was born in 1904. Either way — whether Ford was 115 or 116 — before her death she was the oldest person on record living in the United States, based on data compiled by the Gerontology Research Group. Depending on whose information was the most accurate, she was either the sixth-oldest or the third-oldest person in the world. Ford became the oldest living American last November, when North Carolina native Alelia Murphy died in New York at 114 years and 140 days old. (The oldest living human is Kane Tanaka of Japan. He turned 118 on Jan. 2.) When asked during a phone interview with the Observer last summer what the secret to her longevity was, Ford replied quickly and confidently: “I just live right, all I know.” Also on that call, her granddaughter Mary Hill outlined a typical day in the life of Hester Ford as a 115- (or possibly 116-) year-old woman: “After we get ourselves together personally and get up and sing, we come into the kitchen and she has breakfast. “Granny loves grits, and she loves pancakes. But sometimes she has waffles, pancakes or grits or oatmeal, and then she has sausage or bacon, with either a scrambled or boiled egg and a piece of toast. And then half a banana. She’s been eating bananas all my life, and I’m 62. “After breakfast, we take her outside for (fresh air) — weather permitting. Then she has certain little games she likes, like the Go Fish game, where she has to catch the fish and pull it out. She has an Etch-a-Sketch where she writes her name. And we sing, we do puzzles together, we look at the family album. And the best thing she loves to do is get in her recliner and watch her family on (home videos) and watch and listen to gospel singing. “We also try to keep her pretty active. We do little exercises in her chair, and she gets up and she can walk a little bit from her chair to the hallway. When she gets tired, she’ll say, ‘Mary, I’m tired now.’ So we have the wheelchair right behind her. And she’ll sit in the wheelchair and we’ll take her on to wherever she wants to go. “I’m just so grateful. Just so grateful.” Patterson-Powe said planning of funeral arrangements for her great-grandmother is underway and will be announced at a later date. Source: https://www.newsobserver.com/.../article250764259.html... Previous Next

< Back Reverend Grover Cleveland Hawley 1907-1990 ​ There are some lives that disappoint us, some impressions of character which we have to revise in later years, but the impression that was formed of Grover Cleveland Hawley when you first met him remained unchanged to the end of his life REVEREND GROVER CLEVELAND HAWLEY was born November 16, 1907, to the parentage of Willie Hawley and Hallie Cheatham Hawley, in Oxford, Granville County, North Carolina. He had four sisters and three brothers. He received his early education in Granville County Schools, graduating from Mary Potter Academy which was established to educate the Black students in Oxford. It was a boarding school with a tuition. Students from all over NC came to attend seeking to be educated.. In 1931 he received a bachelor's degree and a degree of sacred theology from Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, in 1944 he received a master's degree from North Carolina Central University , and in 1954 he received an advanced principal's certificate from the University of Pittsburgh. He did further study at East Carolina University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He was the former principal of The Creedmoor Negro Elementary School, which would later bear his name, G.C. Hawley High School, which after integration was Hawley Elementary and is now Hawley Middle school. He completed his career as an educator of 371/2 years as principal of Carver High School in Mt. Olive, North Carolina. Rev. Hawley's life stands as a guiding star; his deeds are like brightly gleaming diamonds. He was a member of Antioch Baptist Church, where he served as Assistant Pastor. He was a member and past master of Blooming Star Masonic Lodge No. 53; chairman of the Board of Trustees of Granville County Community Center; a former member of the Board of Trustees of Granville Medical Center; co-founder and past president of the Oxford Business and Professional Chain; past chairman of the Human Relations Commission of Mount Olive; former secretary of the Planning Commission of the town of Mount Olive; co-founder and treasurer of the Oxford United Investors, Inc.; and founder and director of the Granville County Transportation Program for the elderly, the NHSC Dental Assisted Program in Granville County, and the Aging Council of Granville County. He was the leader in establishing a Senior Center in Oxford, by stopping destruction of Orange Street School, which was a Black school in Oxford built during segregation. Grants were found to fund the Senor Center and provide services to the elderly of Oxford. Rev Hawley also worked closely with The Indian Affairs Of NC to provide support, education and services for the Native Americans of Granville Co. His father was a Native American, but at the time of white supremacy and segregation, Native Americans were not allowed by law to purchase land. His father had to make a choice of whether to be a Black man or a Native American man, he chose to be listed as a Black man so that he could purchase land for his family to live on and farm. Rev. Hawley's mother was born enslaved, and also was a relative of Henry P. Cheatham, (December 27, 1857 – November 29, 1935), who was an educator, farmer and politician, elected as a Republican member of the United States House of Representatives from 1889 to 1893 from North Carolina. He was one of only five African Americans elected to Congress from the South in the Jim Crow era of the last decade of the nineteenth century, as disfranchisement reduced black voting. After that, no African Americans would be elected from the South until 1972 and none from North Carolina until 1992. Rev. Hawley was also a member of the American Association of Retired Persons, the Retired Teachers Association of Granville County, the Oxford Exchange Club, Eta Sigma Chapter of Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity, the Oxford-Granville County Ministerial Conference, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and the Kerr-Tar Regional Council of Government. He has received many awards and has been chosen "Man of the Year" by numerous organizations, including the Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity. In 1988, he was named "Citizen of the Year" by the Granville County Chamber of Commerce, the second oldest recipient ever to be so honored. These are but a few of his accomplishments that attest to his dedication to hard work and his unending devotion to serve mankind. These glowing attestations tell us so much about him. But only those who experienced the soundness of his judgment, the wisdom of his counsel, the mildness of his temper, the firmness of his purpose, the affectionate tone of his manners, the tenderness of his heart, the dignity of his virtues-only those who really knew him can truly estimate his worth. Because of his sincerity, dignity and humility, throughout his lifetime hundreds of people were helped and lifted up and made to feel worthy, by the difference this one man made in their lives. Rev. G. C. Hawley, lived his life to better the lives of others. Serving God as he followed the teachings of Jesus. Previous Next

< Back The beginning of the Northern Neck Chantey Singers in 1991 is celebrated on this date. On Monday, 12.16.1991 The Northern Neck Chantey Singers organized and began preserving African American work songs. On Monday, 12.16.1991 The Northern Neck Chantey Singers organized and began preserving African American work songs. The beginning of the Northern Neck Chantey Singers in 1991 is celebrated on this date. Chanties are songs that the fishermen would sing while working on the fishing boats. The song’s function was to make work go better. In the case of the menhaden fishermen, the songs rhythmically coordinated the efforts of hauling in the nets to bring fish to the surface. Chanties were uncommon in American commercial fisheries, and menhaden Chanties are for the most part unrelated to traditional and better known, "sea chanties" that flourished among the crews of 19th century American and British transatlantic sailing ships. On the Northern Neck region of Virginia, a peninsula lying between the Rappahannock and Potomac Rivers, this group of men, former fishermen in their 70s and 80s, has been keeping alive this uncommon legacy of African-American work songs. As young men, they worked aboard fishing boats where they pulled up hand nets teeming with menhaden from the waters of the Chesapeake and Atlantic. From long rowboats, as many as 40 men hauled in a "purse seine," a net filled with thousands of pounds of fish. To accomplish this backbreaking feat, they sang what were called "chanties" to coordinate their movements. Machinery has now replaced this onerous job. These fishermen's work songs could have been heard on boats out of Virginia and North Carolina, wherever they pursued the great migrating schools of menhaden along the Atlantic coast from New Jersey to the Gulf of Mexico. William Hudnall organized the Northern Neck Chantey Singers at the request of the Greater Reedville Association and the Association's Museum Committee. The association found some singers in Virginia for the 1991 Fourth of July program. Since that Independence Day debut, interest in the group has been so great that it is still performing to this day. All of these men worked on the water during the time when chanties were sung. Chanties and work songs in general, occupy a special place in African-American culture. The harmony brings everybody together on the same chord at the same time, making the work easier. Reference: Reference Library of Black America, Volumes 1 through 5 Edited by Mpho Mabunda Copyright 1998, Gale Research, Detroit, MI Previous Next

< Back Wake Forest Normal and Industrial School students i Photograph of students at the Wake Forest Normal and Industrial School in Wake Forest, NC, circa the 1920s-1930s. Photograph from the collections of the State Archives of North Carolina. Presented on the Wake Forest Historical Museum online. Photograph of students at the Wake Forest Normal and Industrial School in Wake Forest, NC, circa the 1920s-1930s. Photograph from the collections of the State Archives of North Carolina. Presented on the Wake Forest Historical Museum online. This was once considered the most important school for African American students in Wake County. Educator Allen Young began building the campus in northeast Wake Forest in 1905, and it remained a vital part of the community until 1957. Meeting at the new museum annex, the Wake Forest Historical Society sponsored a forum on the history of the school with a focus on the last remaining building linked to its campus, the Ailey Young House. Historian Ruth Little researched the house, and the town has successfully mothballed it for stability. Constructed shortly after the Civil War to house freed slaves, it is considered the likely birthplace of Allen Young and is the only known remaining “Freedom House” in Wake County. Photographs of the Normal and Industrial School come from the North Carolina State Archives. Efforts to fully preserve and reconstruct the Ailey Young House continue. ----- Allen Lawrence Young, (5 Sept. 1875–17 Feb. 1957), community leader, educator, and founder of the Wake Forest Normal and Industrial School for Negroes (1905–57), was born in northern Wake County, the eldest of ten children of Henry and Ailey Fowler Young. Seven of his own children were teachers, five of them employed at one time or another in their father's school before moving on to other careers. Arthur Allen (1897–1955) was a teacher, musician, and composer. Maude Elizabeth (b. 1901) was a librarian in Raleigh's Richard B. Harrison Public Library 1941 to 1968. Ailey Mae (b. 1903), after retiring from public school teaching, became in 1971 the first African American to be elected to the Wake Forest City Council and received that town's 1976 Citizenship Award during her second term. James Terrence (1906–45) taught biology and music at his father's school until his early death. George Henry (b. 1913) was elected in 1977 to the Lumberton school board on retiring after forty-two years as teacher and principal of Lumberton Junior High School. Robert Trice (b. 1915) taught in the Raleigh public school system and was its last attendance counselor before merger with the Wake County system. Kathryn Lucille (b. 1917), who married the Raleigh realtor James A. Shepard, was professor of childhood education at Shaw University in Raleigh. Lewis Albert (1898–1917) died while a college student. Benjamin Lloyd (b. 1919) and Thomas Leon (b. 1920) went into government service after college. Although all of his children who survived childhood attended institutions of higher education, Allen Young himself had little formal schooling. As a child attending Wake County public schools, he also had to help support his farming family. He found employment with the families of Wake Forest townspeople, including those of faculty members at Wake Forest College, several of whom gave him private instruction, including Professors W. R. Cullom, Gorell, J. H. Gulley, J. L. Lake, G. W. Paschal, W. L. Poteat, and B. F. Sledd. This preparation enabled him to enter Henderson Institute, then Kittrell College in Vance County, and eventually Shaw University. After obtaining his teaching certificate he taught in a county public school in the northern Wake County community of Wyatt. To augment his income, he and Mrs. Young established a dry cleaning business in their home in Wake Forest, catering especially to the faculty and students of the college. In 1905 Young and Nathaniel Mitchell of Wake Forest were among the five charter members and elders of the Spring Street Presbyterian Church, founded that year in Wake Forest. In the same year the two men, together with other African American leaders in the community, met in Young's home and organized the Presbyterian Mission School for Colored Boys and Girls. Classes opened on 6 November 1905 in a corner of a bed springs factory on nearby White Street. Young was named principal and the school's only teacher for the first year. Thirty pupils enrolled in classes designed "to prepare colored boys and girls for practical duties of life," according to the first catalogue, and to equip those planning to enter college with basic English, Latin, and other courses. Boarding facilities were provided in neighborhood homes, including that of the principal. Young's first wife was instructor in general housekeeping until her death in 1910. The second Mrs. Young taught piano and primary grades. Financial assistance came from the growing membership of the church, into whose meetinghouse the school moved; from sympathetic white friends in and around Wake Forest; from philanthropists in other states; and from the Freedman's Board of the Presbyterian church, which commissioned him a missionary teacher "to the Freedmen at and about Wake Forest." A catalogue for the second scholastic year beginning 8 October 1906 listed tuition charges of 25 to 50 cents per month for courses in the literary department, and of $1.00 to $1.50 in the musical department. Room and board was $5 per month; the students furnished their own bedclothes, books, and lamp oil and were "required to do at least two hours' work each day." Boys received practical farming instruction and experience and eventually manual training. Girls learned housekeeping, sewing, and cooking and assisted in providing the meals for the boarding students. Students also raised and canned vegetables to be sold in a nearby store established by Young about 1914. For a bakery added later, they baked rolls and bread for sale. Night classes were conducted for adults in many of the school's departments. The school's church-appointed board of trustees secured funds to erect permanent buildings for classrooms and dormitories for the growing student body. The school reached its zenith in the 1920s and 1930s, when more than three hundred students were instructed by about a dozen faculty members. The high school department was the first for African Americans in Wake Forest and one of the first in Wake County. Its private vehicle was the first school bus operated in Wake County for black students. Young's sons Arthur and James organized a music department and directed a choral group, a band, and a touring musical drama troupe, all of which performed in numerous localities in North Carolina and in states as far away as Connecticut. Close ties were maintained with Wake Forest College, whose faculty and student body often conducted chapel services and assisted in athletic programs at Young's school. Enrollment began to drop after the state began improving public education for blacks. The high school was discontinued first, after a free public high school opened nearby. The earlier grades were gradually phased out, and in the school's final year (1956–57) only the kindergarten department was operating. In 1978 only one of the school's five buildings survived, relocating a few yards west of its original site. Young's daughters living nearby preserved a single sewing table and classroom chair. Always a community leader, Young took an active role in annual Emancipation Day observances in the area. The facilities of his school were frequently used for meetings such as sessions of the Rural Progressive Uplift organization, for which the school's music department performed, and Principal Young spoke or chaired discussion groups. He was as early as the 1930s engaged in successful efforts to correct local abuses in voter registration requirements for African Americans and continued to spearhead drives for increased African American registration and voting. In 1920 he was a delegate-at-large to the Republican National Convention in Chicago, which nominated successful presidential candidate Warren G. Harding. He later changed his party affiliation to Democrat. He led local efforts for community betterment, including especially street improvements in the black communities of Wake Forest, as well as increased recreational opportunities. He was himself an avid tennis player. He was also an Odd Fellow. A lifelong member and elder in the Spring Street Presbyterian Church, he served as clerk of its sessions and was commissioned elder to the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church of the United States. Young's first wife was the former Louzania Jones of Franklin County. Of their five sons and three daughters, a son and a daughter died in infancy and another son died as a young man. After her death on 10 December 1910, Young married Geneva Trice, of Chapel Hill, a Shaw University alumna who assisted in the family school. They had four sons and a daughter. Predeceasing her husband, she died on 6 November 1934. The final year of his school was Young's last year of life. After gradually failing health, he died at home at age eighty-one. Funeral services were conducted from the Spring Street Presbyterian Church, with burial in the community cemetery at Taylor and Walnut streets, Wake Forest. Portraits of Young and of the buildings and student activities of his school are in the photographic collection of the North Carolina State Archives, Raleigh . By Elizabeth Reid Murray, 1996 Source: https://www.ncpedia.org/biography/young-allen-lawrence Previous Next

< Back The Origins of Black History Month ASALH - Association for the Study of the African American Life and History Est.1915 The Origins Of Black History Month The story of Black History Month begins in Chicago during the summer of 1915. An alumnus of the University of Chicago with many friends in the city, Carter G. Woodson traveled from Washington, D.C. to participate in a national celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of emancipation sponsored by the state of Illinois. Thousands of African Americans travelled from across the country to see exhibits highlighting the progress their people had made since the destruction of slavery. Awarded a doctorate in Harvard three years earlier, Woodson joined the other exhibitors with a black history display. Despite being held at the Coliseum, the site of the 1912 Republican convention, an overflow crowd of six to twelve thousand waited outside for their turn to view the exhibits. Inspired by the three-week celebration, Woodson decided to form an organization to promote the scientific study of black life and history before leaving town. On September 9th, Woodson met at the Wabash YMCA with A. L. Jackson and three others and formed the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History (ASNLH). He hoped that others would popularize the findings that he and other black intellectuals would publish in The Journal of Negro History, which he established in 1916. As early as 1920, Woodson urged black civic organizations to promote the achievements that researchers were uncovering. A graduate member of Omega Psi Phi, he urged his fraternity brothers to take up the work. In 1924, they responded with the creation of Negro History and Literature Week, which they renamed Negro Achievement Week. Their outreach was significant, but Woodson desired greater impact. As he told an audience of Hampton Institute students, “We are going back to that beautiful history and it is going to inspire us to greater achievements.” In 1925, he decided that the Association had to shoulder the responsibility. Going forward it would both create and popularize knowledge about the black past. He sent out a press release announcing Negro History Week in February, 1926. Woodson chose February for reasons of tradition and reform. It is commonly said that Woodson selected February to encompass the birthdays of two great Americans who played a prominent role in shaping black history, namely Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass, whose birthdays are the 12th and the 14th, respectively. More importantly, he chose them for reasons of tradition. Since Lincoln’s assassination in 1865, the black community, along with other Republicans, had been celebrating the fallen President’s birthday. And since the late 1890s, black communities across the country had been celebrating Douglass’. Well aware of the pre-existing celebrations, Woodson built Negro History Week around traditional days of commemorating the black past. He was asking the public to extend their study of black history, not to create a new tradition. In doing so, he increased his chances for success. Yet Woodson was up to something more than building on tradition. Without saying so, he aimed to reform it from the study of two great men to a great race. Though he admired both men, Woodson had never been fond of the celebrations held in their honor. He railed against the “ignorant spellbinders” who addressed large, convivial gatherings and displayed their lack of knowledge about the men and their contributions to history. More importantly, Woodson believed that history was made by the people, not simply or primarily by great men. He envisioned the study and celebration of the Negro as a race, not simply as the producers of a great man. And Lincoln, however great, had not freed the slaves—the Union Army, including hundreds of thousands of black soldiers and sailors, had done that. Rather than focusing on two men, the black community, he believed, should focus on the countless black men and women who had contributed to the advance of human civilization. From the beginning, Woodson was overwhelmed by the response to his call. Negro History Week appeared across the country in schools and before the public. The 1920s was the decade of the New Negro, a name given to the Post-War I generation because of its rising racial pride and consciousness. Urbanization and industrialization had brought over a million African Americans from the rural South into big cities of the nation. The expanding black middle class became participants in and consumers of black literature and culture. Black history clubs sprang up, teachers demanded materials to instruct their pupils, and progressive whites stepped and endorsed the efforts. Woodson and the Association scrambled to meet the demand. They set a theme for the annual celebration, and provided study materials—pictures, lessons for teachers, plays for historical performances, and posters of important dates and people. Provisioned with a steady flow of knowledge, high schools in progressive communities formed Negro History Clubs. To serve the desire of history buffs to participate in the re-education of black folks and the nation, ASNLH formed branches that stretched from coast to coast. In 1937, at the urging of Mary McLeod Bethune, Woodson established the Negro History Bulletin, which focused on the annual theme. As black populations grew, mayors issued Negro History Week proclamations, and in cities like Syracuse progressive whites joined Negro History Week with National Brotherhood Week. Like most ideas that resonate with the spirit of the times, Negro History Week proved to be more dynamic than Woodson or the Association could control. By the 1930s, Woodson complained about the intellectual charlatans, black and white, popping up everywhere seeking to take advantage of the public interest in black history. He warned teachers not to invite speakers who had less knowledge than the students themselves. Increasingly publishing houses that had previously ignored black topics and authors rushed to put books on the market and in the schools. Instant experts appeared everywhere, and non-scholarly works appeared from “mushroom presses.” In America, nothing popular escapes either commercialization or eventual trivialization, and so Woodson, the constant reformer, had his hands full in promoting celebrations worthy of the people who had made the history. Well before his death in 1950, Woodson believed that the weekly celebrations—not the study or celebration of black history–would eventually come to an end. In fact, Woodson never viewed black history as a one-week affair. He pressed for schools to use Negro History Week to demonstrate what students learned all year. In the same vein, he established a black studies extension program to reach adults throughout the year. It was in this sense that blacks would learn of their past on a daily basis that he looked forward to the time when an annual celebration would no longer be necessary. Generations before Morgan Freeman and other advocates of all-year commemorations, Woodson believed that black history was too important to America and the world to be crammed into a limited time frame. He spoke of a shift from Negro History Week to Negro History Year. In the 1940s, efforts began slowly within the black community to expand the study of black history in the schools and black history celebrations before the public. In the South, black teachers often taught Negro History as a supplement to United States history. One early beneficiary of the movement reported that his teacher would hide Woodson’s textbook beneath his desk to avoid drawing the wrath of the principal. During the Civil Rights Movement in the South, the Freedom Schools incorporated black history into the curriculum to advance social change. The Negro History movement was an intellectual insurgency that was part of every larger effort to transform race relations. The 1960s had a dramatic effect on the study and celebration of black history. Before the decade was over, Negro History Week would be well on its way to becoming Black History Month. The shift to a month-long celebration began even before Dr. Woodson death. As early as 1940s, blacks in West Virginia, a state where Woodson often spoke, began to celebrate February as Negro History Month. In Chicago, a now forgotten cultural activist, Fredrick H. Hammaurabi, started celebrating Negro History Month in the mid-1960s. Having taken an African name in the 1930s, Hammaurabi used his cultural center, the House of Knowledge, to fuse African consciousness with the study of the black past. By the late 1960s, as young blacks on college campuses became increasingly conscious of links with Africa, Black History Month replaced Negro History Week at a quickening pace. Within the Association, younger intellectuals, part of the awakening, prodded Woodson’s organization to change with the times. They succeeded. In 1976, fifty years after the first celebration, the Association used its influence to institutionalize the shifts from a week to a month and from Negro history to black history. Since the mid-1970s, every American president, Democrat and Republican, has issued proclamations endorsing the Association’s annual theme. What Carter G. Woodson would say about the continued celebrations is unknown, but he would smile on all honest efforts to make black history a field of serious study and provide the public with thoughtful celebrations. Daryl Michael Scott dms@darylmichaelscott.com Professor of History Howard University Vice President of Program, ASALH Source:https://asalh.org/about-us/origins-of-black-history-month/ Previous Next

< Back Howard University-Students attending a football game ​ Photograph: Students attending a football game at Howard University’s Griffith stadium, circa 1925. Photograph taken by Addison Scurlock. Source: Addison Scurlock Foundation Archives. Previous Next

< Back Meadowlark Lemon Lemon was a slick ballhandler and a virtuoso passer, and he specialized in the long-distance hook, a trick shot he made with remarkable regularity. But it was his charisma and comic bravado that made him perhaps the most famous Globetrotter. Meadowlark Lemon Dies at 83; Harlem Globetrotters’ Dazzling Court Jester By Bruce Weber / NYT Obituary Dec. 28, 2015 Meadow Lemon (April 25, 1932 – December 27, 2015) Lemon was born in Wilmington, North Carolina and attended Williston Industrial School, graduating in 1952. He then matriculated at Florida A&M University, but was soon drafted into the United States Army and served for two years in Austria and West Germany. Meadowlark Lemon, whose halfcourt hook shots, no-look behind-the-back passes and vivid clowning were marquee features of the feel-good traveling basketball show known as the Harlem Globetrotters for nearly a quarter-century A gifted athlete with an entertainer’s hunger for the spotlight, dreamed of joining the Globetrotters as a boy in North Carolina, joined the team in 1954, not long after leaving the Army. By then, Lemon, who was 6 feet 3 inches tall and slender, was the team’s leading light, such a star that he played center while Chamberlain played guard. Within a few years, he had assumed the central role of showman, taking over from the Trotters’ long-reigning clown prince Reece Tatum, whom everyone called Goose. Tatum, who had left the team around the time Lemon joined it, was a superb ballplayer whose on-court gags — or reams, as the players called them — had established the team’s reputation for laugh-inducing wizardry at a championship level. This was a time when the Trotters were known for more than their comedy routines and basketball legerdemain; they were also recognized as a formidable competitive team. Their victory over the Minneapolis Lakers in 1948 was instrumental in integrating the National Basketball Association, and a decade later their owner, Abe Saperstein, signed a 7-footer out of the University of Kansas to a one-year contract before he was eligible for the N.B.A.: Wilt Chamberlain. By then, Lemon, who was 6 feet 3 inches tall and slender, was the team’s leading light, such a star that he played center while Chamberlain played guard. Lemon was a slick ballhandler and a virtuoso passer, and he specialized in the long-distance hook, a trick shot he made with remarkable regularity. But it was his charisma and comic bravado that made him perhaps the most famous Globetrotter. For 22 years, until he left the team in 1978, Lemon was the Trotters’ ringmaster, directing their basketball circus from the pivot. He imitated Tatum’s reams, including spying on the opposition’s huddle, and added his own. He threatened referees or fans with a bucket that like as not was filled with confetti instead of water. He dribbled above his head and walked with exaggerated steps. He mimicked a hitter in the batter’s box and, with teammates, pantomimed a baseball game. And both to torment the opposing team — as time went on, it was often a hired squad of foils — and to amuse the appreciative spectators, he smiled and laughed and teased and chattered; like Tatum, he talked most of the time he was on the court. The Trotters played in mammoth arenas and on dirt courts in African villages. They played in Rome before the pope; they played in Moscow during the Cold War before the Soviet leader Nikita S. Khrushchev. In the United States, they played in small towns and big cities, in Madison Square Garden, in high school gyms, in cleared-out auditoriums — even on the floor of a drained swimming pool. They performed their most entertaining ballhandling tricks, accompanied by their signature tune, “Sweet Georgia Brown,” on “The Ed Sullivan Show.” Through it all, Lemon became “an American institution like the Washington Monument or the Statue of Liberty” whose “uniform will one day hang in the Smithsonian right next to Lindbergh’s airplane,” as the Los Angeles Times columnist Jim Murray once described him. Significantly, Lemon’s time with the Globetrotters paralleled the rise of the N.B.A. When he joined the team, the Globetrotters were still better known than the Knicks and the Boston Celtics and played for bigger crowds than they did. When he left, Larry Bird and Magic Johnson were about to enter the N.B.A. and propel it to worldwide popularity. In between, the league became thoroughly accommodating to black players, competing with the Globetrotters for their services and eventually usurping the Trotters as the most viable employer of top black basketball talent. Partly as a result, the Globetrotters became less of a competitive basketball team and more of an entertainment troupe through the 1960s and ’70s. They became television stars, hosting variety specials and playing themselves on shows like “The White Shadow” and a made-for-TV “Gilligan’s Island” movie; they inspired a Saturday morning cartoon show. In Lemon’s early years with the team, as the Globetrotters took on local teams and challenged college all-star squads, they played to win, generally using straight basketball skills until the outcome was assured. But as time went on, for the fans who came to see them, the outcome was no longer the point. On Jan. 5, 1971, the Globetrotters were beaten in Martin, Tenn., by an ordinarily more obliging team, the New Jersey Reds. It was the first time they had lost in almost nine years, the end of a 2,495-game winning streak. But perhaps more remarkable than the streak itself was the fact that it ended at all, given that the Trotters’ opponents by then were generally forbidden to interfere with passes to Lemon in the middle or to interrupt the familiar reams. Lemon, as the stellar attraction, thrived in this environment, but he also became a lightning rod for troubles within the Globetrotter organization. As the civil rights movement gained momentum, the players’ antics on the court drew criticism from outside for reinforcing what many considered to be demeaning black stereotypes, and Lemon drew criticism from inside. Not only was he the leading figure in what some thought to be a discomforting resurrection of the minstrel show, he was also, by far, the highest-paid Globetrotter, and his teammates associated him more with management than with themselves. When the players went on strike for higher pay in 1971, Lemon, who negotiated his own salary, did not join them. After Saperstein died in 1965, the team changed hands several times, and in 1978, according to “Spinning the Globe: The Rise, Fall and Return to Greatness of the Harlem Globetrotters” (2005), by Ben Green, Lemon was dismissed after a salary dispute. He subsequently formed his own traveling teams — Meadowlark Lemon’s Bucketeers, the Shooting Stars and Meadowlark Lemon’s Harlem All-Stars — and continued performing into his 70s. He played in about 300 games a year for 50 years — and in 100 countries. Lemon was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Mass., in 2003. There he joined another Globetrotter, Marques Haynes, who was inducted in 1998 and whom some called the world’s greatest dribbler. Haynes died in May at 89. Whatever ill feelings arose during Lemon’s Globetrotter days, they were drowned out by his celebrity and the affection with which he was received all over the world. “Meadowlark was the most sensational, awesome, incredible basketball player I’ve ever seen,” Chamberlain said in a television interview not long before he died in 1999. “People would say it would be Dr. J or even Jordan,” Chamberlain went on, referring to Julius Erving and Michael Jordan. “For me, it would be Meadowlark Lemon.” The facts of Lemon’s early life are hazy, and evidently he wanted it that way. His birth date, birthplace and birth name have all been variously reported. The date most frequently cited — and the likeliest — is April 25, 1932. Many sources say he was born in Wilmington, N.C., but The Wilmington Star-News reported in 1996 that he was born in Lexington County, S.C., and moved to Wilmington in 1938. His website says he was born Meadow Lemon, though many other sources say his name at birth was George Meadow Lemon or Meadow George Lemon. The Star-News said it was George Meadow Lemon III. He became known as Meadowlark after he joined the Globetrotters. As a boy in Wilmington, he learned basketball at a local boys’ club; he told The Hartford Courant in 1999 that he was so poor that he practiced by using a coat hanger for a basket, an onion sack for a net and a Carnation milk can for a ball. After high school, he briefly attended Florida A&M University before spending two years in the Army. Stationed in Austria, he played a few games with the Trotters, who were then touring Europe, and he performed well enough to earn a tryout after he mustered out. He was assigned to a Globetrotters developmental team, the Kansas City Stars, before joining the Trotters in 1954. Asked about never having played in the N.B.A., Lemon told Sports Illustrated in 2010, “I don’t worry that I never played against some of those guys.” He added: “I’ll put it this way. When you go to the Ice Capades, you see all these beautiful skaters, and then you see the clown come out on the ice, stumbling and pretending like he can hardly stay up on his skates, just to make you laugh. A lot of times, that clown is the best skater of the bunch.” Lemon lived in Scottsdale. His first marriage, to the former Willye Maultsby, ended in divorce. (In 1978, she was arrested after stabbing him on a Manhattan street.) He had 10 children. In 1986, Lemon became an ordained Christian minister; he and his wife founded a nonprofit evangelistic organization, Meadowlark Lemon Ministries, in 1994. “Man, I’ve had a good run,” he said at his Hall of Fame induction ceremony, recalling the first time he saw the Globetrotters play, in a newsreel in a movie theater in Wilmington when he was 11. “When they got to the basketball court, they seemed to make that ball talk,” he said. “I said, ‘That’s mine; this is for me.’ I was receiving a vision. I was receiving a dream in my heart.” Source: https://www.nytimes.com/.../meadowlark-lemon-harlem... Previous Next

< Back The Land Was Ours: How Black Beaches Became White Wealth in the Coastal South Paperback – Illustrated, August 1, 2016 The coasts of today's American South feature luxury condominiums, resorts, and gated communities, yet just a century ago, a surprising amount of beachfront property in the Chesapeake, along the Carolina shores, and around the Gulf of Mexico was owned and populated by African Americans. Blending social and environmental history, Andrew W. Kahrl tells the story of African American–owned beaches in the twentieth century. By reconstructing African American life along the coast, Kahrl demonstrates just how important these properties were for African American communities and leisure, as well as for economic empowerment, especially during the era of the Jim Crow South. However, in the wake of the civil rights movement and amid the growing prosperity of the Sunbelt, many African Americans fell victim to effective campaigns to dispossess black landowners of their properties and beaches. Kahrl makes a signal contribution to our understanding of African American landowners and real-estate developers, as well as the development of coastal capitalism along the southern seaboard, tying the creation of overdeveloped, unsustainable coastlines to the unmaking of black communities and cultures along the shore. The result is a skillful appraisal of the ambiguous legacy of racial progress in the Sunbelt. Previous Next

< Back Howard University 1925 Yearbook. Cover and three pages. ​ Image: Howard University 1925 Yearbook. Cover and three pages. The entire 1925 yearbook has been scanned and is online. Here is the link: https://hustorage.wrlc.org/.../dhu.hua.ybk_1925/mobile/ Previous Next

< Back Black Inventors List ​ Garrett Morgan was an inventor and businessman from Cleveland who is best known for inventing a device called the Morgan safety hood which is now called a gas mask. He also invented the 3 light traffic signal which is still used today. After receiving a patent in 1923, the rights to the invention were eventually purchased by General Electric. Previous Next

< Back African Americans Defend Washington, N.C. During the siege of Washington in April 1863, Union troops armed African Americans to participate in the defense of the town. The incident is an early example in North Carolina of the shift in U.S. policy towards recruiting African Americans for military service in the Civil War. African Americans Defend Washington, N.C., 1863 By Michael W. Coffey, Research Branch, NC Office of Archives and History, 2016 Prior to formation of 1st N.C. Colored Volunteers about 100 black men were armed to aid Union forces during the siege of Washington in 1863. During the siege of Washington in April 1863, Union troops armed African Americans to participate in the defense of the town. The incident is an early example in North Carolina of the shift in U.S. policy towards recruiting African Americans for military service in the Civil War. At the beginning of the war, the United States did not recruit African Americans for military service. Although President Abraham Lincoln had long detested slavery, he felt not only bound by slavery’s Constitutional protections but also wished to keep the slaveholding states of Kentucky, Missouri, and Maryland within the Union. Lincoln’s initial war plans were thus based on restoring the Union, not emancipation. This policy gradually succumbed to the realities of war. The escape of slaves into Union lines led some military commanders to forbid their return to their owners in order to hamper the Confederate war effort. Some Union commanders put escaped slaves to various types of military labor, while others utilized slaves and free blacks as spies and scouts. In the meantime, black and white abolitionists strenuously advocated the recruitment of African Americans as soldiers to provide an opportunity to show the government and the Northern public that emancipation was worthy of support, and to allow African Americans an opportunity to strike a direct blow against slavery by defeating the Confederacy. These developments led to a shift in Lincoln’s policy. In September 1862, he issued his preliminary Emancipation Proclamation. The idea of recruiting African American as soldiers now took on a new life. By early 1863, the first African American regiments were beginning to organize. Following the arrival of Federal forces in eastern North Carolina in early 1862, thousands of escaped slaves made their way to the coastal zone controlled by Union troops. Efforts to organize African Americans in the area were initially scattered, and reflected the uncertainties of early Union policy. Immediate manpower necessities were often the cause. Federal troops occupying Elizabeth City armed African Americans to act as pickets as early as October 1862. The siege of Washington provided another practical opportunity to implement the new policy, as the need to provide additional strength for the garrison led to the arming of African Americans. A postwar history of the 44th Regiment Massachusetts Infantry credited Col. Francis L. Lee of that regiment with arming the African Americans at Washington, sometime after his unit arrived on March 16. A postwar history of the 27th Regiment Massachusetts Infantry implied that the men were armed on or about March 30, the first day of the siege. Department of North Carolina commander Maj. Gen. John G. Foster arrived at Washington early in the morning of the same day to take charge of the defense, so there is room for doubt as to whether Lee took the initiative or acted under Foster’s orders. Although Foster made no mention of arming African Americans at Washington in his April 30 campaign report, he did so in a May 4 letter to U.S. secretary of war Edwin M. Stanton. However, he credited the initial idea to the African Americans themselves: “During the late attack on Washington, the negroes applied to me for arms, and to strengthen my lines I armed about 120, all that I had arms for.” The April 13, 1863 entry of a wartime diary by a member of the 44th Massachusetts indicated that 100 African Americans were among the town’s defenders by that date. This figure, and Foster’s slightly larger estimate of “about 120,” should be considered approximate. It is known that at least two African American boatmen were killed during the siege while conveying Union troops down the Pamlico River on the night of March 30-31, 1863, as a Federal expedition by a company of the 1st Regiment N.C. Volunteers (Union) to Rodman’s Point was forced to withdraw under heavy fire. One of the boatmen was mortally wounded when his boat was stuck in the sand. In an effort to save the soldiers and his fellow boatmen, he got out of the boat and pushed it into the water, but was hit multiple times and died after subsequent unsuccessful surgery back in Washington. The boatman’s story was reported in the Cleveland Morning Leader, quoting Assistant Surgeon Theodore W. Fisher of the 44th Regiment Massachusetts Infantry. Fisher did not witness the event as his regiment was not involved. He probably obtained his information from Surgeon Robert Ware of his regiment, who operated on the wounded man and likely had an opportunity to talk to the men who had brought him in. The story soon became the subject of a poem celebrating the slain man’s act of heroism. After the war, African American activist and writer William Wells Brown wrote a longer account of the incident. According to Brown, the man was an escaped slave known as “Big Bob,” who had recently arrived in Washington. The other boatman killed in the Rodman’s Point incident fell into the river, according to an account in a New York newspaper. His body was subsequently recovered by the Confederates and left for the Federals when Rodman’s Point was evacuated on April 15 along with various damaged artillery pieces. Following the siege of Washington, a systematic effort to recruit African American soldiers in North Carolina began. The roots of this project predated the siege. On April 1, Massachusetts governor John A. Andrew had suggested to Stanton that a large African American force could be raised in North Carolina. Col. Edward A. Wild was selected to oversee the task and promoted to brigadier general. Wild arrived in New Bern later in May, and began to recruit African Americans for what became the 1st North Carolina Colored Volunteers (later redesignated the 35th Regiment United States Colored Troops). Two more infantry regiments and an artillery regiment would eventually follow. Although the siege of Washington does not mark the first attempt in North Carolina to arm African Americans to fight against the Confederacy, it is nevertheless one of several important early steps towards the formal organization of African Americans for military service in the state, and deserves to be remembered on those grounds. References: "AFRICAN AMERICANS DEFEND WASHINGTON." N.C. Highway Historical Marker B-74, N.C. Office of Archives & History. https://www.ncdcr.gov/.../division-historical.../nc-hig... (accessed March 23, 2017). Samuel Storrow Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston, Massachusetts “Deserters-The Rebels Falling Back- . . . – A Spicy Document- . . .,” New York Herald, April 25, 1863 “A Hero,” Cleveland Morning Leader, May 5, 1863 W. P. Derby, Bearing Arms in the Twenty-Seventh Massachusetts Regiment of Volunteer Infantry During the Civil War, 1861-1865 (1883) Paul S. Yendell, “Washington,” in James B. Gardner et al., Record of the Service of the Forty-Fourth Massachusetts Volunteer Militia in North Carolina, August 1862 to May 1863 (1887) United States War Department, The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies (1881-1902), series I, volume 18, and series III, volume 3 E. W. Brown, “The Slave-Martyr,” The Anglo-African, June 13, 1863 William Wells Brown, The Negro in the American Rebellion: His Heroism and His Fidelity (1867) Judkin Browning, Shifting Loyalties: The Union Occupation of Eastern North Carolina (2011) David S. Ceceslki, The Fire of Freedom: Abraham Galloway and the Slaves’ Civil War (2012) Alex Christopher Meekins, Elizabeth City, North Carolina, and the Civil War: A History of Battle and Occupation (2007) Richard M. Reid, Freedom For Themselves: North Carolina’s Black Soldiers in the Civil War Era (2008) Image: Partial Map Of North Carolina Previous Next

< Back Al Smith Original artwork "Wade In The Water" Wade In The Water Original artwork created for the series by Al Smith. Wade in the Water is a 26-part series, originally released in 1994, that celebrates African American sacred music and traditions.. Listen to the episodes on NPR.org and NPR One. In 1994, when Wade in the Water first aired on NPR member stations, the world was different. Many of the voices featured in the series were alive, and were generous with their support. Today, some of those voices have been stilled. But this series, documenting African American sacred music traditions spanning more than 200 years, remains vital because of them. Wade was an experiment in recording music and musical events, amassing scholarship and conducting interviews in order to make all of those elements accessible to a wider audience. As a first-time partnership between NPR and the Smithsonian Institution, it featured a wide range of styles and subcultures and documented the cultural impact of music on real lives and diverse communities. Over a five-year production period, Wade was guided by the steady hand, artistic integrity and groundbreaking scholarship of Dr. Bernice Johnson Reagon — historian, musician, MacArthur "genius" and the series' creator and narrator. And Wade's production team members brought our personal and professional best to the series, trekking throughout the country to gather relevant material. We traveled to small towns in Georgia and Alabama and big cities like Chicago and Los Angeles to record baptismal and congregational services, and to hear touching individual stories about the power of faith and communal singing. We walked through the hallowed halls of Fisk University, birthplace of the concert spiritual, to learn more about the enduring legacy that the Fisk Jubilee Singers left the world. And we interviewed gospel music royalty: Walter and Edwin Hawkins, Pop and Mavis Staples, Marvin and CeCe Winans shared insights about what inspired them to write, perform and even confront some criticisms of their popular contemporary sacred songs. All the while, we dove into archives and personal music collections nationwide to find original recordings and needed firsthand documentation. To say that we all were transformed in the process is an understatement. Some things we learned along the way: How to negotiate sacred rituals in worship spaces, rehearsal and concert halls, private homes, studios and elsewhere How to respect individuals so that their experiences could be validated and celebrated How to successfully navigate production demands, institutional constraints, cultural norms and audience expectations In turn, here's what we've tried to provide to you: A fundamental understanding of the depth and breadth of African American sacred music, history and culture A recognition of and platform for people long silent and stories untold An appreciation for racial and cultural differences to combat hatred and intolerance We submit that every Wade program is unique, offering its own set of life-expanding worldviews, and that anyone who truly listens or (re-listens) to Wade will be changed. Please enjoy this life-affirming and joyous music series during its 25th anniversary year. Credits Bernice Johnson Reagon, Series Conceptual Producer/Narrator Peter Pennekamp, Former NPR VP of Cultural Programming Sandra Rattley, Executive Producer Renee Pringle, Technical Director Judi Moore Latta, Senior Producer Sonja Williams, Associate Producer Beverly Oliver, Research Associate Joseph Gill, Production Assistant TaJuan Mercer, Production Assistant Dackeyia Simmons Sterling, Production Assistant NOTE:To Listen To the songs, Please click the source link Source:https://www.npr.org/series/726103231/wade-in-the-water Previous Next

< Back ANNIE DAUGHERTY “[Annie Daugherty] was the midwife of the entire town. She delivered most of all the children in [Black Mountain] for the people who couldn’t afford to go to the hospital or have a doctor no matter if they were black or white. That was my grandmother,” Katherine Daugherty Debrow told a local filmmaker in 2001. An African American woman working and raising her own children in the early 1900s, Annie Daugherty provided vital services to mothers in the Swannanoa Valley who otherwise may have had to go through childbirth alone. “I remember stories about her being gotten up in the middle of the night in snowstorms and riding mules and everything else to go to a house to deliver babies,” Katherine continued. Since being brought to America as slaves, African American women have historically provided midwifery services to both black and white women. According to a study at Kenyon College, “Before and after Emancipation, African American women relied upon one another for medical care…. In caring for themselves and their families, these women developed relationships with strong church, neighborhood, and family ties.” Born in the High Top Colony community of Black Mountain on April 3, 1888 to parents Robert Morehead and Hannah Carson, Annie Morehead became part of the Daugherty family around 1900 when she married an older man from her neighborhood, Benjamin Daugherty. The Daughertys have been a presence in the Swannanoa Valley since its beginnings, and the Daugherty name shows up in the valley as early as the 1850 census, but also on early land grants and in the 1858 upper Swannanoa tax scroll. The first African American Daughertys most likely came to the valley as slaves in the late 1700s or early 1800s, but records dating back to that period, especially records of African Americans during the 18th and early to mid-19th centuries, are difficult to track. Ben’s mother, however, according to oral tradition, was a slave of a Caucasian Dougherty family in the valley at the time of his birth. In 1920, Ben was 70 years old, and he and Annie, who was less than half his age, had seven children—the oldest, Lillie, was 19 and the youngest, Charles, was 5. Annie was well known in the Black Mountain community not only as a midwife, but also as a Sunday School teacher. The neighborhood children would meet at her house on Sunday mornings to walk with her the two miles from High Top Colony to the church. Annie’s dedication to the community’s children and mothers made her highly respected within the town. “I can remember going into Black Mountain when I was a little girl,” Katherine Debrow began. “And people that she had delivered babies for, they would always give me money: pennies, dimes, nickels, quarters. I would come home and I’d have two pockets full of money.” Katherine continued, “And they called her Aunt Ann, black and white,” explaining that calling someone who was not a relative “Aunt” or “Uncle” was a sign of respect. The hospitals that admitted African Americans were located over 15 miles away in Asheville, and thus were used little by black women in Black Mountain. Though there were a multitude of white doctors in the valley at the time, and Annie was delivering babies during the Jim Crow era, she also attended to white women. Inez Smith Daugherty (1912-2007), Annie’s niece, explained that she only remembered two midwives in Black Mountain—Annie and another woman, Mary Hayden. Both Annie and Mary were black, so for folks—black or white—that couldn’t afford a doctor or didn’t have the time to make it to one, Annie or Mary made house calls regardless of the time of day, weather, or race of the mother. Historically, midwives were not only called upon for deliveries, but also sent for during times of illness. Inez Daugherty, who was delivered by a midwife in Burke County, recalled in 2001, “If they got sick, the whites sent and got Aunt Annie. And not always just for delivering a baby. They would call her for a lot of other things.” In a 2003 interview, Inez remembered, “My first cousin, she had a baby. And it had jaundice. And Aunt Mary Hayden went down to see, and she told my cousin what to get and what to do, and it cured the baby.” But in the 1920s, state governments began to require midwives, who had traditionally been trained in the craft by one of their female relatives, to get permission slips from doctors to practice, have their homes inspected for cleanliness, and have their moral character assessed. Around this time, the government also began to ban the use of herbs and poultices traditionally used by midwives, severely handicapping what relief midwives had been able to offer their patients. These new regulations disproportionately affected African American and low-income families. But Annie continued her practice. She began frequenting the town pharmacy for a tincture of opium called paregoric that eased the pain of childbirth. Sadly, on March 28, 1959, as restrictions on lay midwives continued to debilitate the traditional practice, Annie Daugherty passed away in a tragic house fire that also took the life of her son, Benjamine. By 1970 lay midwifery had been outlawed completely, thereby severing many of the strong bonds that had been built between the town’s two African American midwives and the women—black and white—in the community. Now women were forced to pay the steeper prices for doctors and midwives had to attend modern licensing courses or give up the traditions they had been practicing for generations. Source:http://www.history.swannanoavalleymuseum.org/.../daugherty/ Previous Next

< Back Ed Wilson Ed Wilson was an African American sculptor, and was known for figurative works that are typically created in metal. Artist Ed Wilson specialized in metal sculpture Photograph: "Ralph Ellison", by Ed Wilson Ed Wilson was born on Saturday, 03.28.1925. He was an African American sculptor, and was known for figurative works that are typically created in metal. Born in Baltimore, Maryland, Wilson became interested in art as a child while recovering from rheumatic fever. After serving in the United States Army from 1943 to 1946, he studied painting at the University of Iowa but eventually switched his focus to sculpture. After earning his M.A. degree from the University of Iowa in 1953, Wilson taught at North Carolina College (now North Carolina Central College) in Durham. There he met American sculptor William Zorach who became a lifelong friend and artistic influence. While in Durham, Wilson was deeply involved in the civil rights movement. The influence of the movement is apparent in his subsequent works, including Minority Man (1957, State University of New York, Binghamton), carved in red hickory wood, which depicts the elongated torso of a male figure, head turned upward, and hands clasped at his chest. It is intended to satirize a begging attitude, which, Wilson felt, many people associate with minority groups. In 1964, Wilson accepted an invitation to develop a studio art program at Harpur College of the State University of New York at Binghamton. He was soon made chairman of the college’s department of art and art history. An exhibition of Wilson’s work at Harpur College helped win him a commission to design a park in downtown Binghamton honoring President John F. Kennedy. At the center of the triangular JFK Memorial Park, which was completed in 1969, a three-sided column rises. Bronze relief panels on the sides of the column, entitled The Seven Seals of Silence, depict the ways in which people refuse to participate or take an active interest in solving the problems of our time. A panel called The Conformists, for example, portrays those who unquestioningly accept prevailing attitudes. The JFK Memorial Park won critical praise for its moving departure from traditional memorial sculpture. Wilson’s Second Genesis (1969-1971) is displayed at Lake Clifton High School, Baltimore, Maryland. It is a work in multiple pieces, featuring eight large aluminum blocks that display impressions of full-sized, robot-like human figures. This work offers a commentary on the consequences of an increasingly mechanized society. Wilson’s stainless steel and bronze Portrait of Ralph Ellison (1974-1975, Ralph Ellison Library, Oklahoma) commemorates the author of The Invisible Man (1952), who inspired Wilson during the civil rights movement. Ed Wilson died in 1996. Reference: The St. James Guide to Black Artist Edited by Thomas Riggs Copyright 1997, St. James Press, Detroit, MI ISBN 1-55862-220-9 Previous Next

< Back Emma Dupree, a renowned herbal healer Legends & Lore marker. ​ Shared from: North Carolina Folklife Institute Photo Credit: Friends of Town of Fountain, NC "On April 16, the community of Fountain, North Carolina, dedicated a Legends & Lore marker to commemorate the life and work of Emma Dupree, a renowned herbal healer. Shown here, Ms. Dupree's family members unveil the marker! Thanks so much to the William G. Pomeroy Foundation, Alex Albright and the R.A. Fountain General Store, the Town of Fountain, the Fountain Presbyterian Church, and the Fountain community, for making possible this celebration of an important North Carolinian. If your community has traditional lore that you'd like to celebrate, we'd love to help you apply for a Legends & Lore marker grant." Previous Next

< Back Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander ​ Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander was a pioneer among Black women in United States law and education, and a committed civil rights activist. She was born in Philadelphia into an accomplished family. She was educated in Philadelphia and Washington D.C. Alexander graduated from M Street High School (now Dunbar high school) in Washington, and entered the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Education in 1915. Graduating in 1918, she helped found the gamma Chapter of the Delta Theta Sorority. She earned an M.A. and Ph.D. in economics by 1921, and was one of the first African-Americans to receive a doctorate in economics. She became an actuary for the North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Co. in Durham, NC and she married Raymond Pace Alexander. Together they worked tirelessly in numerous Philadelphia-area civil rights cases. In 1943, she became the first woman to be elected secretary (or hold any office) in the National Bar Association, a position she held for four years. President Harry Truman appointed her to his Commission on Civil Rights in 1946. In 1948, Alexander helped prepare the report “To Secure These Rights,” a document that was influential in the foundation of the civil rights policy in the years that followed. She joined the law firm of Atkinson, Myers, Archie & Wallace as counsel in 1976. Sadie Alexander died in her hometown in 1989. Source: Reference Library of Black America, Volumes 1 through 5 Edited by Mpho Mabunda Copyright 1998, Gale Research, Detroit, MI Previous Next

< Back The Grimkes: The Legacy of Slavery in an American Family NYT Book Review article By Michael P. Jeffries - Oct. 29, 2022 Slavery’s Indelible Stain on a White Abolitionist Legend “The Grimkes,” by the historian Kerri Greenidge, provides a nuanced, revisionist account of an American family best known for a pair of white abolitionist sisters. THE GRIMKES: The Legacy of Slavery in an American Family, by Kerri K. Greenidge Born at the turn of the 19th century, the Grimke sisters, Angelina and Sarah, left their slaveholding family in Charleston, S.C., as young adults and made new lives for themselves as abolitionists in the North. In 1838, Angelina became the first woman to speak before a legislative body in the United States when she addressed the Massachusetts Legislature and called for an immediate end to slavery. In the same speech, she made a passionate case for women’s rights, insisting that women belonged at the center of major political debates. “Are we aliens because we are women?” she asked. “Are we bereft of citizenship because we are the mothers, wives and daughters of a mighty people?” The Grimke sisters became celebrities, publishing essays that shaped abolitionist thinking and reluctantly stepping into a male-dominated public sphere where they were never completely welcome. Their fame derived from both their words and their deeds. They rejected their white inheritance by coming north and joining the movement, gaining moral credibility that few of their peers could match. But in her new book, “The Grimkes: The Legacy of Slavery in an American Family,” the historian Kerri Greenidge challenges this narrative, showing that the sisters’ contributions to abolition and women’s rights were undergirded by the privileges they reaped from slavery. The lives they built, and their relationships with Black relatives, were poisoned by the profits, violence and shame of white supremacy. “The Grimkes” is a family biography. In addition to the stories of Sarah Grimke and Angelina Grimke Weld, it recounts the lives of their Black nephews, Archibald (Archie), Frank and John; Frank’s wife, Lottie Forten Grimke; and Archie’s daughter, the Harlem Renaissance writer Angelina Weld Grimke. It’s an ambitious book, not only because of its large cast of characters, but because it offers so many insights about racial strife in the United States. Greenidge guides readers through life in Charleston, Philadelphia, Boston and Washington, D.C., with episodes that begin in the 1790s and end in the early 20th century. She explores the contradictions of American ideas about freedom, highlighting that among white people, racial progress almost never implies Black self-determination or true equality. And she paints an unsparing portrait of the Black elite as an anxious and aloof vanguard whose well-intended brand of racial activism never truly addressed the problems of the Black masses. While all these facets are compelling, the book’s most affecting contribution is Greenidge’s treatment of intergenerational racial trauma. What exactly does “the legacy of slavery” mean? Two indisputable features of this legacy are enforced poverty and subjection to state violence, which have clear effects on Black people’s wealth, health and happiness. But there is also a more amorphous sense of the psychological trauma of slavery and racism that is not so easily described. Society has changed and more recent generations of Black Americans have not faced the brutality and dehumanization of bondage. So how does the trauma of that era ripple across time and space? Greenidge provides a consummate cartography of racial trauma, demonstrating, through an adept use of the family’s letters, diaries and other archival materials, how the physical and emotional abuses of slavery traveled through generations long after abolition. Within the Grimke family, the agony did not spread evenly across divisions of race, gender, sexuality and generation, but it mutated and endured. So many Grimkes stubbornly tried to minimize the violence of the past in the pursuit of achievement and respect. Time and again, the pressure to attain social standing coincided with intense shame of Blackness, womanhood and Black womanhood. Sarah Grimke was born in 1792, her sister Angelina in 1805. The Grimkes’ home and the city of Charleston were colored by a fear of Black savagery that was a projection of white men’s proclivity for raping Black women and destroying Black families. Sarah apprehended the sickness of slavery at an early age, though she initially understood slavery as a sin that she had to atone for rather than a problem that could be solved only by empowering Black people. When Sarah moved to Philadelphia in 1821 and joined a Quaker community, she grasped that personal repentance was insufficient, and, following Angelina’s lead, began to make a case for abolition that was too radical even for the Quakers who influenced her thinking. Sarah had been a mother figure to Angelina, who joined her older sister in Philadelphia in 1829. Angelina developed a different approach to abolition, with a more acute focus on white supremacy as an arbitrary and reprehensible political system, rather than a personal moral affliction. Both sisters were affected by the community of Black abolitionists who were already hard at work when they arrived in Philadelphia. But alliances between Black and white women at the center of abolitionist activism were short-lived. As Greenidge writes, “White reformers’ dedication to Black people as a moral obligation to be fulfilled did not always translate into a belief that Black people were intellectually and politically capable.” Back in Charleston, Sarah and Angelina’s brother Henry stayed true to Grimke family tradition. He became a lawyer and slaveholder, and had six children: three with his white wife, Selina, and three with an enslaved woman named Nancy Weston. Nancy was light-skinned compared with many of her kin, and she raised her three sons — Archie, Frank and John — with a sense of distinction rooted in their separation from their darker and more degraded Black brethren. But Archie, Frank and John were still enslaved, and they were subject to heinous abuse at the hands of their white half brother Montague, who viciously beat them, among other punishments, until, with the Confederacy’s defeat in Charleston in 1864, he was forced to flee the city. After the Union victory, Archie and Frank went north and received assistance from the Freedmen’s Union Commission. John followed, but fell out of contact with his brothers, eventually becoming estranged from the rest of the family. Sarah and Angelina decided to sponsor their Black nephews’ education and integration into polite society. They laid a path for Archie and Frank to join the Black elite, W.E.B. Du Bois’s “talented tenth,” charged with uplifting the masses and embodying respectability. This financial and social sponsorship, like the Grimke sisters’ political activities, was made possible by their family’s wealth. Despite their public calls for abolition, they never demanded that Henry release the people he enslaved or compensate them for their labor. While Greenidge cannot confirm that Henry raped Nancy, she argues that at the very least Nancy was coerced and unable to resist assault. Instead of attending to Nancy, Sarah and Angelina urged their Black nephews to forget about the past and focus on the future the sisters envisioned for them. Archie became a lawyer and diplomat in Boston, and, later, a national vice president of the N.A.A.C.P.; Frank became a pastor and leader of the Black church in Washington, D.C. Archie and Frank repressed their suffering and worked their way up the social hierarchy. But neither fully healed from the wounds of their enslavement and the denigration of their mother. The respectability they aspired to was saturated with sexist Victorian morality, colorism and white ideals of intellect and propriety. This legacy of trauma is painstakingly illustrated in Greenidge’s final two chapters, dedicated to Archie’s daughter, Angelina “Nana” Weld Grimke, who was born in 1880 and died in 1958. Nana, a queer Black woman who showed immense talent as a poet from an early age, chafed against her family’s wishes for her. She was a gifted writer but a poor student, who openly carried on romantic affairs with girls and women through adolescence and early adulthood. Her rebelliousness did not lead to happiness. She could never live up to Archie’s expectations, and she never recovered from being abandoned by her white mother, who had left Archie and moved to Michigan, when Nana was just 7 years old. Through a close reading of Nana’s letters, poems and one of her plays, Greenidge reveals an artist cursed and driven by longing: for familial and romantic love without shame, and for release from the shackles of patriarchy and racism. There is plenty of little-known American history in “The Grimkes,” but no blow-by-blow accounts of the Civil War, Reconstruction and the other major national events that shaped the family’s evolution. Similarly, while Greenidge provides context for the Grimke sisters’ contributions to abolition and the nascent women’s rights movement, she does not make forceful arguments about how the sisters influenced the trajectory of those movements, or what would have been different without them. Instead, she offers an intimate and provocative account of a family’s intergenerational struggle to remake itself. She takes the Grimke sisters off their pedestal so that we understand them as pieces of a tapestry that could only be sewn in America. Pain, guilt and yearning lie at the seams, holding the family together and tearing it apart. Previous Next

< Back 1920 -four Black women picking cotton near New Bern, N. C. 1920 -four Black women picking cotton near New Bern, N. C. ca. 1920 -four Black women picking cotton near New Bern, N. C. Source: LOC - Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C Photographer: not listed Previous Next

< Back Allen Home School Photograph: Allen Home School students,1921 courtesy UNC-A Special Collections & The Heritage of Black Highlanders Collection from N.C. Digital Heritage Center. Photograph: Allen Home School students,1921 courtesy UNC-A Special Collections & The Heritage of Black Highlanders Collection from N.C. Digital Heritage Center. The Allen School was a private school in Asheville, North Carolina for African-American students. Originally known as the Allen Industrial Training School, it opened in 1887 and closed in 1974. Built on land donated by Mr. and Mrs. L. M. Pease and later named for Marriage Allen, who donated money for the construction of a dormitory building, the school was directed by the Woman’s Home Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church. Serving children during the day and adults at night, the Allen School devoted its mission to teaching African American students to read and write. Within one month of opening, the Asheville Citizen Times reports that more than one hundred students had enrolled, and by the end of the first school year, over two hundred students had started to attend classes. Just one year after being founded, in 1888, a high school curriculum was added. By 1892 the Allen School became a boarding school primarily for Black female students, although boys continued to attend until 1941. Known for its high academic standards, the school became an accredited high school in 1924, and in 1940 was admitted as a member of the Southern Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools, a distinction received by only two high schools for Black students in the 17 counties making up western North Carolina. By this time, the focus of the Allen School had shifted to college preparatory work and the grade school had been dropped. Thereafter, the school was known as an all-girls boarding high school, with about two-thirds of students coming from Western North Carolina and the rest from other states in the country, as well as outside the United States The Allen School, which employed mostly white female teachers who were missionaries, emphasized “Christian ideals.” According to Jamie Butcher, the “Religious centering of the school ebbed and flowed according to church policy and the religious climate of the time.” But the school retained a focus on “Christian ideals” and was connected to Berry Temple Methodist Church, also located in the Asheville, North Carolina. In addition to its dedication to Christian ideals, the Allen School had a threefold mission centered on the “industrial, mental, and physical.” Industrial refers to vocational training provided to students, which revolved around the training of teachers, but also included classes related to domestic tasks, such as cooking and sewing. While the value of an industrial education for Black students was certainly debated, notably between Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. DuBois, the Allen School Allen School did function as a normal school. But it also offered a variety of classes, including ones related to religion, business, music, the sciences, and foreign languages. As a result of its high academic standards and focus on college preparation, by the 1950s, approximately 50% of Allen School graduates attended college, including Wellesley and Vassar. And by 1972, two years before the school closed, more than 75% of the graduates went on to attend four-year colleges. The Allen School closed on June 3, 1974. By the fall of 1965, high schools in Western North Carolina were desegregating. As a result, the Allen School had difficulty surviving financially. According to then principal, Ruth Walter, “We just couldn’t charge the tuition we needed to keep the school running.” The year it closed, the Allen School graduated 10 girls, which brought the total number of graduates from the school to 1,177 ---- Read about some of the Allen School Alumni Gathering : "The Women of Allen High School: A Reunion Celebrating ‘Excellence, Enthusiasm, Empowerment’--Alumni from local neighborhoods and from across the country, graduates in classes from 1949 to 1972, gathered recently in Asheville to celebrate the academic excellence and cultural heritage of Allen High School. " https://theurbannews.com/.../the-women-of-allen-high.../ ------- Source:https://westernregionalarchives.wordpress.com/.../the.../ Source:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allen_School Previous Next

< Back Our Founder and Culture Keeper From The G.C. and France Hawley's founder, a short article for Black History Month 2019. Black History Month to many African Americans is a time to remember and honor the lives of our enslaved ancestors who lived and died in bondage, to celebrate our freedom from chattel slavery, to uplift our advancements in spite of America's White supremacist foundations, and to encourage our youth to continue to strive to be the best they can be. It is also a time in which we invite all people regardless of skin color to join us, celebrate and learn how America would not be the country that it is without the free labor work, the inventions, the ways of resistance to slavery, and the creativity that enslaved and freed African Americans put into building this country. Black History Week which was transformed into Black History Month was created because, in the midst of our freedom we were still subjected to the evils of oppression, hatred and the voices of colonized versions of who we are and what we've done. Our presence was not integrated into the American history books and the whole truth of our contributions to the making of America was not taught to school children. Most Black children were not integrated into the public school systems when Black History Week was created. In the years since Reconstruction and the first wave of the Civil Rights Movement, African Americans look forward to celebrating our history, heritage and culture all year long as well as during Black History Month. I would like to speak about the American Black women who were "chosen" and stepped forward to be the necessary change agents of their times. Many times the men are highlighted and honored and the women are left behind. Often neglected and ignored these little known and unknown Black women who would work through sickness because they had no money to see a doctor even if there was one available to Black people, who worked through many lacks caused by segregation and oppressive social structures, these Black mothers who held together their families, maintaining their spiritual lives all while doing what ever kind of work that was necessary to provide money for their homes; where the foundation of the Black American success stories. The Black women who nurtured and raised White children, cleaned White people's houses and cooked their meals. The Black women who worked the farms, taught/educated the Black children and sold baked goods to help the elderly Black people who could no longer work. The Black women who were midwives in their small communities "catching" hundreds of babies of all colors in their lifetime. Black women fought in the Union army to bring down the Confederate army. Black women built businesses that helped to foster Black communities during the Reconstruction era, before White supremacists got mad that Free and emancipated Black people were flourishing and massacred Black people in these communities - communities found in several cities and states across America. I am lifting up the Black women who spoke for themselves in the Women's Rights Movement because, White women did not plan to include Black women in their fight for equality and equity. Black women worked side by side with Black men during the first wave of the Civil Rights Movement, helping to push forward America's promise to "cash a check" that the American government wrote to Black people. These known and unknown Black women raised their children in love, truth and power so that many of them would became some of the Black Women Leaders of their time. Although their names are lost or buried in forgotten narratives these Black women helped raise and send forth future generations of accomplished Black women such as: Anna Julia Cooper, Pauli Murray, Lois Mailou Jones, Selma Burke, Fannie Lou Hamer, Ella Baker, Lucy Craft Laney, Mary McLeod Bethune, Charlotte Hawkins Brown, and Willa B. Player, to name a few. I am adding a link to the ASALH web site so that you can read how Carter G. Woodson created and developed Black History Week, which was transformed into Black History Month. For us, Black History Is American History and we celebrate it 365 days a year. Lynda D. Edwards Arts Education & Culture Consultant-Lecturer-Community Leader-Advocate for marginalized people. Founder & CEO of The G.C. and Frances Hawley Museum® - I Remember Our History®. A subsidiary of BEHIND THE SCENES (In Action) ©2019 All rights Reserved Photograph By Charles Harris, for an article in OUR STATE Magazine December 2018 issue/Upcoming Toy Exhibit at The NC Museum of History. LINK To The ASALH web site https://asalh.org/about-us/origins-of-black-history-month/ Previous Next

< Back Bonnie Dayle Logan Bonnie was inducted into the Black Tennis Hall of Fame in 2009. Seven time ATA Women's Singles champion. First African-American woman to play in the Virginia Slims Tournament. Won 1968 Eastern Carolina Closed Championship in singles and doubles. Won 1970 North Carolina State Closed Championship in singles and doubles. Photograph: Bonnie Logan, on the left, winner of the 1967 ATA Women's Singles title is congratulated by finalist Sylvia Hooks and tournament administrators. Bonnie Logan was the first African American women to play in the Virginia Slims Women's Tennis Circuit. Bonnie Dayle Logan was born June 26, 1949, in Durham, N.C., one of three children to Alice and George Logan, Jr. She attended Hillside High School in Durham where she was undefeated in singles competition for three years as National Interscholastic Girls Champion. While attending Morgan State, Bonnie won the No. 2 C.I.A.A. Men's Singles Championship as a freshman, the first woman ever to win a C.I.A.A. Men's title. She was ranked No. 1 singles and doubles player, 1967-71. Bonnie also was a varsity athlete in volleyball, basketball, softball and field hockey. Other professional accomplishments include the Sports Illustrated Award of Merit, 1962; North Carolina State Closed Women's Championship, 1967 and 1969; selected Outstanding Young Women of America Award in 1969; American Tennis Association Women's Black National Champion, 1964-70; participated in South African Open Tennis Championships, Johannesburg, South Africa, March 1972, first Black woman to ever play; first Black member of the Virginia Slims Tennis Tour 1972-73 Bonnie was inducted into the Black Tennis Hall of Fame in 2009. Seven time ATA Women's Singles champion First African-American woman to play in the Virginia Slims Tournament Won 1968 Eastern Carolina Closed Championship in singles and doubles Won 1970 North Carolina State Closed Championship in singles and doubles Previous Next

< Back Reverend Grover Cleveland Hawley Reverend Grover Cleveland Hawley 1907-1990 His loving and devoted wife of 55 years, Frances Johnson Hawley died in May 2005. Reverend Grover Cleveland Hawley 1907-1990 His loving and devoted wife of 55 years, Frances Johnson Hawley died in May 2005. BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH There are some lives that disappoint us, some impressions of character which we have to revise in later years, but the impression that was formed of Grover Cleveland Hawley when you first met him remained unchanged to the end of his life REVEREND GROVER CLEVELAND HAWLEY was born November 16, 1907, to the parentage of Willie Hawley and Hallie Cheatham Hawley, in Oxford, Granville County, North Carolina. He had four sisters and three brothers. He received his early education in Granville County Schools, graduating from Mary Potter Academy which was established to educate the Black students in Oxford. It was a boarding school with a tuition. Students from all over NC came to attend seeking to be educated.. In 1931 he received a bachelor's degree and a degree of sacred theology from Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, in 1944 he received a master's degree from North Carolina Central University , and in 1954 he received an advanced principal's certificate from the University of Pittsburgh. He did further study at East Carolina University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He was the former principal of The Creedmoor Negro Elementary School, which would later bear his name, G.C. Hawley High School, which after integration was Hawley Elementary and is now Hawley Middle school. He completed his career as an educator of 371/2 years as principal of Carver High School in Mt. Olive, North Carolina. Rev. Hawley's life stands as a guiding star; his deeds are like brightly gleaming diamonds. He was a member of Antioch Baptist Church, where he served as Assistant Pastor. He was a member and past master of Blooming Star Masonic Lodge No. 53; chairman of the Board of Trustees of Granville County Community Center; a former member of the Board of Trustees of Granville Medical Center; co-founder and past president of the Oxford Business and Professional Chain; past chairman of the Human Relations Commission of Mount Olive; former secretary of the Planning Commission of the town of Mount Olive; co-founder and treasurer of the Oxford United Investors, Inc.; and founder and director of the Granville County Transportation Program for the elderly, the NHSC Dental Assisted Program in Granville County, and the Aging Council of Granville County. He was the leader in establishing a Senior Center in Oxford, by stopping destruction of Orange Street School, which was a Black school in Oxford built during segregation. Grants were found to fund the Senor Center and provide services to the elderly of Oxford. Rev Hawley also worked closely with The Indian Affairs Of NC to provide support, education and services for the Native Americans of Granville Co. His father was a Native American, but at the time of white supremacy and segregation, Native Americans were not allowed by law to purchase land. His father had to make a choice of whether to be a Black man or a Native American man, he chose to be listed as a Black man so that he could purchase land for his family to live on and farm. Rev. Hawley's mother was born enslaved, and also was a relative of Henry P. Cheatham, (December 27, 1857 – November 29, 1935), who was an educator, farmer and politician, elected as a Republican member of the United States House of Representatives from 1889 to 1893 from North Carolina. He was one of only five African Americans elected to Congress from the South in the Jim Crow era of the last decade of the nineteenth century, as disfranchisement reduced black voting. After that, no African Americans would be elected from the South until 1972 and none from North Carolina until 1992. Rev. Hawley was also a member of the American Association of Retired Persons, the Retired Teachers Association of Granville County, the Oxford Exchange Club, Eta Sigma Chapter of Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity, the Oxford-Granville County Ministerial Conference, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and the Kerr-Tar Regional Council of Government. He has received many awards and has been chosen "Man of the Year" by numerous organizations, including the Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity. In 1988, he was named "Citizen of the Year" by the Granville County Chamber of Commerce, the second oldest recipient ever to be so honored. These are but a few of his accomplishments that attest to his dedication to hard work and his unending devotion to serve mankind. These glowing attestations tell us so much about him. But only those who experienced the soundness of his judgment, the wisdom of his counsel, the mildness of his temper, the firmness of his purpose, the affectionate tone of his manners, the tenderness of his heart, the dignity of his virtues-only those who really knew him can truly estimate his worth. Because of his sincerity, dignity and humility, throughout his lifetime hundreds of people were helped and lifted up and made to feel worthy, by the difference this one man made in their lives. Rev. G. C. Hawley, lived his life to better the lives of others. Serving God as he followed the teachings of Jesus. Previous Next

< Back Derrick and Paige Jackson Grass Grazed Farm The Jacksons started Grass Grazed farm in 2019 to introduce others to the benefits of regenerative agriculture. “Penny gets sassy, but I love her,” Paige Jackson, in her mud-splashed overalls and pearl earrings, says as she gestures toward an unfazed Jersey cow. She leads a small tour group through Grass Grazed farm on North Roxboro Street, occasionally pausing in the soft dusk light to apologize for getting lost in tangents about the benefits of regenerative agriculture – the farming practice of raising livestock without antibiotics, genetically modified organisms or chemicals. Each animal at Grass Grazed is adapted to the Piedmont environment and contributes to the health of the soil as livestock are rotated from pasture to pasture, allowing vegetation to recover and be fertilized. Paige proudly points out tractor tire marks in the pasture – proof that their animals are moved multiple times daily to feed on fresh grass throughout the farm. When the livestock is ready to be processed, it’s done at USDA-approved facilities that meet North Carolina Department of Agriculture & Consumer Services standards. “We support people who are conscious of what they’re eating and how it benefits their body,” Paige says, noting for instance that, since her family started living off their own farm products, they very rarely get sick. Grass Grazed farm is owned and operated by Paige and her husband, Derrick Jackson. They founded the farm in 2019 following Derrick’s retirement after serving in the U.S. military for 14 years, eight of which were spent at Fort Bragg. Farming helped Derrick, originally from Mississippi, transition back into civilian life and has evolved into a full-time family business along with their five children: Madlynn, 1, Mikah, 4, Makartney, 5, Mayer, 8, and Maxwell, 10. In addition to their 7-acre homestead in Bahama, Derrick and Paige manage two parcels of farmland – a total of 170 acres – in Rougemont. Friends and family were surprised when Derrick ordered chicks by mail. “Chickens are the gateway drug into farming,” Paige laughs. But that was just the beginning. The first-generation farmers now shepherd more than 700 animals, including seven Jersey cows, 70 Berkshire-Duroc and Kunekune-Tamworth pigs, 500-600 Cornish cross hens per month (raised for their meat) and 75-plus Rhode Island Reds and Red Rangers (egg-laying chickens). Derrick and Paige started Grass Grazed only a few months before the onset of the pandemic. Farmers market cancellations forced the entrepreneurs to fast forward ahead of their original business plan. They quickly established an e-commerce platform in order to continue selling meat and dairy products. Luckily, Paige is no stranger to digital sales and marketing. Her past experience as a social media director helped grow Grass Grazed’s digital audience and connect them with like-minded consumers and farmers. Life on the farm has been a welcome change of pace for Paige, who operated as a single parent while Derrick was in the military. Now Derrick can spend more time with the family and also apply some of the survival and problem-solving skills he acquired in the military. “You learn a lot of random stuff in the military, then when you leave, you’re like, ‘How do I put this on a resume without spooking somebody?’” Derrick says. Today, the husband-and-wife duo function as farmers, business partners, digital storytellers, parents and now, teachers, after making the decision to home-school their children during the pandemic. Daily chores are a core piece of their educational curriculum. Paige believes collecting eggs and feeding animals along with other farm responsibilities have given the five siblings a stronger work ethic and a tighter bond. “There’s always going to be broken eggs or spilled milk, but you can’t cry over those things, because I feel like it’s a part of parenting,” Paige says. Grass Grazed shares the benefits of their approach to agriculture by inviting the public to farm tours and The Farmers Table – a four-course dinner featuring Grass Grazed products and other produce and goods harvested from nearby farms that are shared among farmers and the community on site at Grass Grazed’s farm. Visitors snap pics of piglets and plates of sauteed vegetables while Derrick and Paige talk about their farming practices. Raleigh-based chef/owner of 58 Deli and Catering Travise Lott prepared the feast for The Farmers Table in late July, which was served family-style at one long farm table – Paige built two sections of the table with a fellow farmer, finishing the project the same day as the dinner. Dishes included Paige’s cayenne-spiced pork cracklings, Southern collards and a saute of veggies, honey cornbread and smoked Grass Grazed chicken finished in Travise’s housemade Carolina sauce. The kids scrambled over one another for dessert plates of whipped peaches and cream compote. This was the fourth ticketed outdoor dinner at the farm – the first took place in October 2020 and was backed by the Black Farmers Market, a membership farmers market and trade union that supports more than 30 Black farmers and entrepreneurs. There’s power in eating a meal produced by farmers beside farmers, Paige says. “This was always what I wanted,” she says. “A long table, where we’re sharing a meal with people from the community [and are] able to have precision about food and talk about the things that we love and what inspires us. I feel like we have so much in common that we really don’t know. But you don’t know that until you share a meal together.” Paige and Derrick share stories about the food on the table while the children at this particular dinner run around beneath the pine tree limbs and the warm glow of market lights. “We’ve uncovered a new face [of ] agriculture for our families,” says Derrick, whose relatives used to farm by necessity. “They grew up on farms, and it was one of the things where it was like, ‘We do this because we have to do it.’ Many families lived on farms and relied on crops for supplemental income in order to cover property taxes or in exchange for rent. You work and maintain the land; your family is allowed to live on the land.” Recent media coverage of Grass Grazed by Heifer USA – a branch of the global organization Heifer International, which strives to end hunger and poverty in a sustainable way by supporting and investing in local farmers and their communities – has introduced the Jackson family’s story and regenerative agriculture to an even wider audience via a 20-minute documentary, “How to Start a Regenerative Farm From Scratch.” Paige and Derrick plan to expand Grass Grazed’s educational platform by establishing an organization that equips people with the necessary tools and knowledge to begin their own farm. But if you care about the environment and want to cultivate a community that values local, responsible agriculture, you don’t have to start your own farm – you can simply choose to support your farmers. “Spend your dollars and try to get as close as you can to sustaining your family off of a local farm,” Derrick says. “That’s a challenge. It requires work. But that’s a super important way you can get involved.” Previous Next

< Back Tying Tobacco Leaves, Rocky Mount, North Carolina, 1943. Tying Tobacco Leaves, Rocky Mount, North Carolina, 1943. Tying Tobacco Leaves, Rocky Mount, North Carolina, 1943. (no other information was with this photograph.) Photographer: Rosalie Gwathmey Source: Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Mary and Dan Solomon in honor of Sandra and Marvin Solomon, 1999.99.4 . . Born in Charlotte, NC, Rosalie Gwathmey studied painting at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts before taking up photography in the late 1930s. After she and her husband, painter Robert Gwathmey, moved to New York in 1942, she became a member of the Photo League, studying under Paul Strand and Sid Grossman. For many years, she served on the executive committee of the Photo League and edited its newsletter, Photo Notes. Gwathmey and her husband were politically active on the left, and she used her camera to point attention to the discrimination faced by working-class African Americans in the South. When the Photo League disbanded in 1951, Gwathmey gave up photography and started working in a textile design. She destroyed all of her negatives and donated the majority of her photographs to the New York Public Library. Previous Next

< Back Ivan James McRae, Jr. We decided to add this interview between 2n​d​ ​Lieutenant Ivan James McRae, Jr who was with the Tuskegee Airmen, and his granddaughter Briana R. McRae to this gallery. From the director of #TheGCFHawleyMuseum®: we decided to add this interview between 2n​d​ ​Lieutenant Ivan James McRae, Jr who was with the Tuskegee Airmen, and his granddaughter Briana R. McRae to this gallery. Even though he is not from North Carolina, he did marry a woman who was from North Carolina, Mrs. Marjorie (Cox) McRae, who was born & raised in Dunn, NC. We also feel his life story concerning his time in the military adds value and understanding to our learning about our history. This information and the photographs were given to us by their son, Brian McRae, who is also the father of Briana R. McRae. -end- . December 9, 2020 - posted on the website of CAF RISE ABOVE® Inspiring young people to RISE ABOVE adversity using the lessons and stories of the Tuskegee Airmen and the WASP. Ivan James McRae, Jr. 617th Bombardment Squadron of the 477th Medium Bombardment Group August 19, 1923 – November 29, 2016 Thank you to Brian McRae, the son of Tuskegee Airman Ivan J. McRae, for sharing this information with us! Here is my daughter’s middle school history report from 2010 where she interviewed my dad. She titled it “A Moment in History: World War II – An Interview with a Tuskegee Airman”. A Moment in History: World War II An Interview with a Tuskegee Airman Briana R. McRae My name is Briana McRae and I interviewed my grandfather, Ivan James McRae, Jr. for my project. He was a 2n​d​ ​Lieutenant with the Tuskegee Airmen during World War II. Q1: Where were you during the bombing of Pearl Harbor? ​A1: I was working in Harmon, NY at the New York Central Railroad Station where I had a part-time job as a baggage porter while attending Columbia University. I was down on the platform — where the trains were — when I could hear a lot of yelling and screaming up in the waiting room. I ran upstairs and they were talking about the attack on Pearl Harbor. Q2: How did you get involved in World War II? A2: I listened to President Roosevelt talk about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. I was a freshman at Columbia University and we were told if we enlisted in the Army Air Corps and passed the Aviation Cadet tests, we would be allowed to finish college, graduate, but then would have to serve several years in the Army Air Corps on active duty. I took the tests and passed them all . There were three tests: Intelligence, Physical, and Psychological. Afterwards I was sworn in as an Aviation Cadet and put on reserve duty in the Army Air Corps and continued my school. But when I was a sophomore, the war in Europe was going so poorly that they called up all the reservists – the aviation cadet reserves — into active duty. This was in 1943. Q3: What was your role in the war? A3: When I was called into active duty, I had a choice: I could either be called up as an enlisted man or go to a school in Illinois to learn to be a flight instructor. The reason I couldn’t simply go into the service to become a pilot was because I was over 6’1” and all Tuskegee Airmen at that time could not be taller than 5’11” in order to fly the P-39 Airacobra. I wouldn’t fit in the cockpit of the P-39 because it had a 20 millimeter cannon that was under the seat and went through the hub of the propeller. There were no larger or twin-engine planes available for people of color at Tuskegee so I went to Chicago. In Chicago I joined the War Training Service to become a flight instructor. After completing primary training and starting secondary flight training, we were called into active duty and finally wound up at Tuskegee Institute for training as pilots. I received my pilot’s wings for twin engine and single-engine aircraft. I was then assigned to the 617t​ h Squadron at Godman Field, Kentucky. I was assigned as the co-pilot on a B-25 Medium Bomber. We were learning to fly medium-level bombardment when V-E Day (Victory-in-Europe) came and we were then reassigned to fly low-level bombing in the Pacific. Q4: What effect did the war have on your life? A4: It allowed me to fulfill a dream: learning how to fly a plane. It also paid for my college tuition through the G.I. Bill of Rights, and it helped me to get my first job in the government military support group after college graduation. Q5: What events stand out in your mind? A5: When I was assigned at Freeman Field, Indiana, we officers were told that we would have to use the “Non-Commissioned Officers Club” and the white instructors, and others on the field, would use the “Officers Club”. Many of the pilots were captains (officers) who had flown in Europe as fighter pilots and had come back to the states and became bomber pilots and they were refused the use of the Officers Club because of their color. So we all decided we would go to the Officers Club, we would be confronted by the military police, and put under house-arrest until a protest was reviewed and adjudicated [​definition: to study and settle a dispute or conflict]​ . We were flown back to Godman Field where we simply sat for weeks and did nothing until it was resolved and we were told “Ok, you can come back and use the Officers Club”. We went back and resumed our flight training until V-J Day (Victory-in-Japan) in 1945. Q6: How did you feel about V-J Day? A6: We were elated about the outcome of the war in Japan and we were relieved that we would not have to actually fly over the Pacific. At that point I decided I wanted to go back to school as soon as I could, and I was in the first group to be put on reserve duty and came home and went back to school at Columbia University. [I returned to] Columbia University under the G.I. Bill of Rights which was a magnificent program that the government had for veterans. It helped pay for my tuition and had a small subsistence payment for expenses. Q7: Do you have any interesting facts to add? A7: Yes. I met my wife, your grandmother, while we were stationed with the Army Air Corps in Greensboro, North Carolina. She was a student at Bennett College and we were able to go there on weekends and I met her and was immediately stricken because she was beautiful, and a magnificent basketball player, and a good student. We married four years later, after I completed my Mechanical Engineering degree at Columbia University in 1948. -end of interview- Interview source link: https://cafriseabove.org/ivan-james-mcrae/... Previous Next

< Back A resurgence of tennis at Hillside High School Irwin R. Holmes (center) with left to right: Craig Page, Rep. Larry Hall, Ulis Malloy, Dennis Corbitt, Bonnie Logan, Joe Austin, Mike Spears, Ivan Harrell and coach Ike Barnes. Photograph: Irwin R. Holmes (center) with left to right: Craig Page, Rep. Larry Hall, Ulis Malloy, Dennis Corbitt, Bonnie Logan, Joe Austin, Mike Spears, Ivan Harrell and coach Ike Barnes.-COURTESY OF IRWIN HOLME A resurgence of tennis at Hillside High School N&O BY BONITTA BEST-JUNE 20, 2016 Hillside High boys’ tennis coach Ike Barnes stopped by the office last week to discuss the future of the program. But before you know where you’re going, you have to know where you’ve been, as the saying goes. Barnes brought home that fact with some fascinating tidbits of Hillside’s tennis legacy. Tennis legends Arthur Ashe and Althea Gibson played in Durham tournaments, and the first North Carolina Black High School State tennis championship was won by Hillside in 1953. Student Joe Alston won the singles’ title that year. “Those who love tennis and appreciate its rich history in Durham recognize that Durham was always at the forefront for attracting tennis legends such as Althea Gibson and Arthur Ashe to the area for tournaments,” he said. Under the leadership of tennis coach Carl Easterling, Hillside was the Serena Williams of tennis in those days. Other Hillside champions over the years includes Richard Malloy, Charlie Brown, Irwin Holmes, Joe Williams, Mike Ruffin, Bonnie Logan and John Lucas Jr. Holmes was the first African-American to attend North Carolina State University. He earned a spot on the Wolfpack tennis team and was even team captain. Hillside and North Carolina Central alumnus Joe Williams was the 1963 NCAA singles tennis champion. Girls had game, too. Logan was undefeated in singles for three years as the National Interscholastic Girls champion. As a Morgan State University freshman, she was ranked No. 1 in singles and doubles from 1967-71, and was the first woman in conference history to win a CIAA men’s tennis title! Logan had a phenomenal career: ▪ North Carolina State Closed Tennis women’s champion (1967, ’69), ▪ American Tennis Association women’s black national champion (1964-70), and ▪ the first black woman to play on the Virginia Slims Tennis Tour (1972-73). Integration brought another tennis phenom named John Lucas Jr.. Lucas went undefeated in three seasons at Hillside en route to winning three straight North Carolina High School Athletic Association state singles championships from 1970 through 72. He went on to become a star tennis and basketball player at the University of Maryland, where he was a two-time ACC tennis champion and basketball All-American. The era produced other such notable Hillside tennis alumni such as attorney Curtis Brown, a former F-16 pilot; Dr. Benjamin Page; U.S. Navy Commander Alfred Brown; professional tennis player Dennis Corbitt; District Court Judge Drew Marsh; and many more. Barnes said he’s looking to add more names to the Hornets’ tennis legacy. “The success of past Hillside tennis players and the program serves as inspiration for the future,” he said. “The future generation looks very good. Equally impressive is the GPA for all the current crop of tennis athletes playing at Hillside. “The spirit of coach Easterling and the Hillside legends of tennis would love to see the resurgence of the high-caliber program, as well as witness the principals and traditions recaptured that became legendary.” Source:https://www.newsobserver.com/.../dn.../article84886787.html Previous Next

< Back Black Country Music Credit: Photo courtesy of F. Royster Francesca Royster, a professor of English and Critical Ethnic Studies at University of California, Berkeley and author of the new book, “Black Country Music,” has written an important examination on the erasure of Black voices and music expression in the world of American country music. Royster embeds her own experiences along with a well researched lineage of understanding of the importance and relevance of Black artists who have contributed and explored the sounds of country music. She spoke with the Amsterdam News last month about the book and her unique experience completing this new and engaging work. AmNews: “Black Country Music.” You talk a little bit about why you decided to write about this genre through a Black lens. Tell [us] the origins of your story and how you were inspired to write this book. Francesca Royster: Part of the origin story is my own. Growing up my parents moved south [from north of Chicago] after a couple generations. My dad moved to Nashville to teach at Fisk. He was also a session musician, did some recordings with Jimmy Buffet and Diane Davidson. I had been interviewing [my dad] for another project and he started talking about those years. I was 3, 4 or 5 years old when he was doing [the sessions]. It made me realize country music has been a part of my life. I felt like I didn’t know how to listen in a way that was appreciative. I felt like there was a lot of distraction or discomfort, talking to other Black people about country music. I really wanted to pursue that, understand it and also think about it in terms of my own experience being in Nashville. That set me on the course, researching, interviewing friends, getting a sense of different everyday people sharing the same mixture of interest but also [the] discomfort [of] talking about it. I thought, there’s a story here. As I started really writing about it—and I became aware of these different artists—I think the industry itself is also shifting. The question based on the Black Lives Matter movement just asks for greater historical accountability [concerning] country music and more visibility for Black country artists. Both movements were also happening as I was writing and immersing myself in the history of those things. I’ve always been interested in topics where I feel there’s some rule about identity, about authenticity, that I feel is holding me back from something. I’m always looking out for those things. I just have a hunch that these are histories that we don’t really know. Or that aren’t talked about in the mainstream, that connect country music, blues, R&B. There’s been a purposeful erasure of those connections and I want to pursue that more. AmNews: In your book you talk about when your parents divorced and your mother moved you back to Chicago, you as a child still dreamed about Tennessee. Were you aware [of] those racial lines as a child? When in your life did you realize that country music had these barriers, these racialized issues? Royster: Being in Nashville as a kid we would have visits to the Grand Ole Opry. I would just feel like there was sort of an amusement around Black kids in that space. And then, at the same time, kind of a defensiveness among other people. I knew that country’s place in Nashville is coded as being white people’s territory. AmNews: Your dad’s been playing music with a lot of artists, and here you are ready to dive in. You walk into this white space. Tell me about your experience finding these Black country artists and the journey [it was] finding it yourself. Royster: Some of the features I write about are of major figures: Tina Turner, Darius Rucker, Beyonce. With Tina Turner I’m a big fan. I remember reading about her interest in country music and her identity as a country girl herself. And so, I had in my mind, “Oh, this is a story that I want to get back to.” And then I found a copy of “Tina Turns the Country On” (1974). And once I started listening to it, I really was drawn into the narrative. She’s covering these different country artists—Kris Kristofferson, Dolly Parton and others—doing her own Tina-style. And you can really hear she’s making the most of what country music is. Which is talking about suffering, bringing that into the story, giving elements of emotion in the storytelling. She does it using background singers in a way that credits them like collaborators. I really heard her doing this work on [“Tina Turns”] that, if it were really looked at head-on, would really change some of the assumptions about what country music is. And what soul and R&B’s relationship to country is. She is very skilled, very natural, drawing from her own roots in that album. And she’s making it her own. It’s not like she’s borrowing a style; she’s occupying a style and changing it, demanding that we think about Black artists in a different way, in terms of their status in country, not on the sideline. AmNews: Now that you’ve finished the book would you recommend or speak highly of country music if a Black person came to you and said I would like to immerse myself in the sound. After all you’ve learned, do you feel safe to recommend that a Black person learn more about country music and get involved? Royster: Yeah. I think that some of the dangers are still there. Especially in terms of the ways that historical amnesia is still in operation in country music. I feel some of my own fear navigating the spaces is more psychological. And there are other circumstances in my life where I navigate them as a Black woman in white-only spaces. I think writing the book has made me realize that some of the fear and discomfort is really about the history of violence. And about being told, “You don’t belong here.” I think that a person who might not have that baggage might not feel they’re treading on ground they don’t belong on. I also feel like this is a moment where different people, like [Black Opry founder] Holly G. are trying to make new spaces for Black artists. Or the work of Marcus Dowling as a journalist for the Tennessean, who’s writing in “other” spaces as a Black man, sometimes through a lens of race, sometimes not. Or Rissi Palmer’s “Color Me Country.” The work these artists and organizers are doing is helping create a space where if someone were interested, they would have people to collaborate with that maybe wasn’t there 10 years ago. AmNews: Tell me a little bit about your conclusion in the book, titled “The Black Country Music Afro-Futurisms.” Royster: Some of that interest in the future, in Afro-futurism, is shaped by my work on the banjo with Sule Greg Wilson, one of the founding members of the Carolina Chocolate Drops. I took some time to learn the banjo, think about the depths of its history and to meet people, hear about the work [they’re] doing through the Banjo Reclamation Project to address the ways that music is used hand-in-hand with racism. Sule is also involved in it. He’s been in the workshops to help kids learn how to make banjos, Black and brown kids. Over the pandemic I really got involved in learning the banjo and its history and really thinking about this really subversive issue that’s connected to the songs itself. As well as to the musicians, not [just] in the past but also right now. Engaging in the past with banjo is what people are doing right now; that’s partly how I got into this Afro-futurist idea. And then talking to Lylo [Gold], who is an amazing artist out of London right now, originally from New York. Meeting her and sharing her music right now…to me she’s very much keeping with Afro-futurist writers like Octavia Butler or Alexis Pauline Gumbs or Adrienne Marie Brown, people who are really trying to use the imagination and creativity to open up the futures for different kinds of bodies, but also really doing important historical work at the same time. And now Jake Brown’s work…his use of bluegrass and country to think about the future of the Earth; to think about Black resistance, keeping with that stream of thought. AmNews: In all that you’ve gone through in your deconstruction, are you optimistic about the future of country music? Royster: I feel like I’ve found a community of people working to create new sounds. I think that feeling of displacement that I felt as a kid…I know now that there’s something more interesting there than even the Grand Ole Opry. I learned that country is part of urban history. Being a Northern person from Chicago I can claim country as part of my own roots. I’m optimistic in that I feel like some of the underground and work on the edge is going to change what’s happening in the industry, generally. Resistance from the edges and margins can push the conversation with each generation. In the book, I also focus on my daughter. My implicit reason for including her in the book is I want her to feel like she can be part of any musical tradition, and that nothing is closed to her. That doesn’t mean erasing the history of tensions and violence, but if she wants to create or be a fan of the music that she can find people to be with and play together. That’s my vision and I think that’s happening right now; I feel positive about that. Previous Next

< Back James Weldon Johnson and John Rosamond Johnson Even though the Johnson brothers were not from NC, we felt their song (The Black National Anthem) deserved to be added to our NC Music gallery. It was a Gift to all American Black people when the brothers wrote and arranged it. Note: Even though the Johnson brothers were not from NC, we felt their song (The Black National Anthem) deserved to be added to our NC Music gallery. It was a Gift to all American Black people when the brothers wrote and arranged it. When our founder was in elementary school in the 1960's early 70's, middle school, high school and even at the college (Hampton Institute-HBCU) that she matriculated from. She remembers singing it all the time, at her home, and any other events. She was taught it by her parents and grandparents. "It was a staple in our community! Sadly many families stopped teaching it to their children and several generations do not know the history, the words, nor sing it anymore." She said. -End Note. --- Read more about the life of James Weldon Johnson below. These brothers lives were full. So we we will make a separate post about John Rosamond Johnson ------ Lift Every Voice and Sing Many people are surprised to learn that "Lift Every Voice and Sing" was first written as a poem. Created by James Weldon Johnson- 1871-1938- it was performed for the first time by 500 school children in celebration of President Lincoln's Birthday on February 12, 1900 in Jacksonville, FL. The poem was set to music by Johnson's brother, John Rosamond Johnson-1873–1954- and soon adopted by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) as its official song. Today “Lift Every Voice and Sing” is one of the most cherished songs of the African American Civil Rights Movement and is often referred to as the Black National Anthem. #Irememberourhistory ----- Johnson was born in 1871 in Jacksonville, Florida, the son of Helen Louise Dillet, a native of Nassau, Bahamas, and James Johnson. His maternal great-grandmother, Hester Argo, had escaped from Saint-Domingue (today Haiti) during the revolutionary upheaval in 1802, along with her three young children, including James's grandfather Stephen Dillet (1797–1880). Although originally headed to Cuba, their boat was intercepted by privateers and they were taken to Nassau, where they permanently settled. In 1833, Stephen Dillet became the first man of color to win election to the Bahamian legislature. James's brother John Rosamond Johnson became a composer. The boys were first educated by their mother, a musician and a public-school teacher, before attending Edwin M. Stanton School. Their mother imparted to them her great love and knowledge of English literature and the European tradition in music. At the age of 16, Johnson enrolled at Atlanta University, a historically black college, from which he graduated in 1894. In addition to his studies for the bachelor's degree, he also completed some graduate coursework. The achievement of his father, a preacher, and the headwaiter at the St. James Hotel, a luxury establishment built when Jacksonville was one of Florida's first winter resort destinations, inspired young James to pursue a professional career. Molded by the classical education for which Atlanta University was known, Johnson regarded his academic training as a trust. He knew he was expected to devote himself to helping black people advance. Johnson was a prominent member of Phi Beta Sigma fraternity. Johnson and his brother Rosamond moved to New York City as young men, joining the Great Migration out of the South in the first half of the 20th century. They collaborated on songwriting and achieved some success on Broadway in the early 1900s. Over the next 40 years, Johnson served in several public capacities, working in education, the diplomatic corps, and civil rights activism. In 1904, he participated in Theodore Roosevelt's successful presidential campaign. After becoming president, Roosevelt appointed Johnson as United States consul at Puerto Cabello, Venezuela, where he served from 1906 to 1908, and then to Nicaragua, where he served from 1909 to 1913. In 1910, Johnson married Grace Nail, whom he had met in New York City several years earlier while he was working as a songwriter. A cultured and well-educated New Yorker, Grace Nail Johnson later collaborated with her husband on a screenwriting project. After their return to New York from Nicaragua, Johnson became increasingly involved in the Harlem Renaissance, a great flourishing of art and writing. He wrote his own poetry and supported work by others, also compiling and publishing anthologies of spirituals and poetry. Owing to his influence and his innovative poetry, Johnson became a leading voice in the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s He became involved in civil rights activism, especially the campaign to pass the federal Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill, as Southern states did not prosecute perpetrators. He was a speaker at the 1919 National Conference on Lynching. Starting as a field secretary for the NAACP in 1917, Johnson rose to become one of the most successful officials in the organization. He traveled to Memphis, Tennessee, for example, to investigate a brutal lynching that was witnessed by thousands. His report on the carnival-like atmosphere surrounding the burning-to-death of Ell Persons was published nationally as a supplement to the July 1917 issue of the NAACP's Crisis magazine and during his visit there he chartered the Memphis chapter of the NAACP. His 1920 report about "the economic corruption, forced labor, press censorship, racial segregation, and wanton violence introduced to Haiti by the U.S. occupation encouraged numerous African Americans to flood the State Department and the offices of Republican Party officials with letters" calling for an end to the abuses and to remove troops. The United States finally ended its occupation of Haiti in 1934, long after the threat of Germany in the area had been ended by its defeat in the First World War. Appointed in 1920 as the first executive secretary of the NAACP, Johnson helped increase membership and extended the movement's reach by organizing numerous new chapters in the South. During this period, the NAACP was mounting frequent legal challenges to the Southern states' disenfranchisement of African Americans, which had been established at the turn of the century by such legal devices as poll taxes, literacy tests, and white primaries. While attending Atlanta University, Johnson became known as an influential campus speaker. In 1892, he won the Quiz Club Contest in English Composition and Oratory. He founded and edited the Daily American newspaper in 1895. At a time when Southern legislatures were passing laws and constitutions that disenfranchised blacks and Jim Crow laws to impose racial segregation, the newspaper covered both political and racial topics. It was terminated a year later due to financial difficulty. These early endeavors were the start of Johnson's long period of activism. In 1904, he accepted a position as the treasurer of the Colored Republican Club, started by Charles W. Anderson. A year later he was elected as president of the club. He organized political rallies. During 1914, Johnson became editor of the editorial page of the New York Age, an influential African-American weekly newspaper based in New York City. In the early 20th century, it had supported Booker T. Washington's position for racial advancement by industrious work within the racial community, against the arguments of W. E. B. Du Bois for development of a "talented tenth" and political activism to challenge white supremacy. Johnson's writing for the Age displayed the political gift that soon made him famous. In 1916, Johnson started working as a field secretary and organizer for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), which had been founded in 1910. In this role, he built and revived local chapters. Opposing race riots in Northern cities and the lynchings frequent in the South during and immediately after the end of World War I, Johnson engaged the NAACP in mass demonstrations. He organized a silent protest parade of more than 10,000 African Americans down New York City's Fifth Avenue on July 28, 1917 to protest the still frequent lynchings of blacks in the South. Social tensions erupted after veterans returned from the First World War, and tried to find work. In 1919, Johnson coined the term "Red Summer" and organized peaceful protests against the white racial violence against blacks that broke out that year in numerous industrial cities of the North and Midwest. There was fierce competition for housing and jobs. Johnson traveled to Haiti to investigate conditions on the island, which had been occupied by U.S. Marines since 1915, ostensibly because of political unrest. As a result of this trip, Johnson published a series of articles in The Nation in 1920 in which he described the American occupation as brutal. He offered suggestions for the economic and social development of Haiti. These articles were later collected and reprinted as a book under the title Self-Determining Haiti. In 1920, Johnson was chosen as the first black executive secretary of the NAACP, effectively the operating officer position. He served in this role through 1930. He lobbied for the Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill of 1921, which was passed easily by the House, but repeatedly defeated by the white Southern bloc in the Senate. #Irememberourhistory Throughout the 1920s, Johnson supported and promoted the Harlem Renaissance, trying to help young black authors to get published. Shortly before his death in 1938, Johnson supported efforts by Ignatz Waghalter, a Polish-Jewish composer who had escaped the Nazis of Germany, to establish a classical orchestra of African-American musicians. Education and Law Careers In the summer of 1891, following his freshman year at Atlanta University, Johnson went to a rural district in Georgia to teach the descendants of former slaves. "In all of my experience there has been no period so brief that has meant so much in my education for life as the three months I spent in the backwoods of Georgia," Johnson wrote. "I was thrown for the first time on my own resources and abilities."[1] Johnson graduated from Atlanta University in 1894. After graduation, he returned to Jacksonville, where he taught at Stanton, a school for African-American students (the public schools were segregated) that was the largest of all the schools in the city. In 1906, at the young age of 35, he was promoted to principal. In the segregated system, Johnson was paid less than half of what white colleagues earned. He improved black education by adding the ninth and tenth grades to the school, to extend the years of schooling. He later resigned from this job to pursue other goals. While working as a teacher, Johnson also read the law to prepare for the bar. In 1897, he was the first African American admitted to the Florida Bar Exam since the Reconstruction era ended. He was also the first black in Duval County to seek admission to the state bar. In order to be accepted, Johnson had a two-hour oral examination before three attorneys and a judge. He later recalled that one of the examiners, not wanting to see a black man admitted, left the room. Johnson drew on his law background especially during his years as a civil rights activist and leading the NAACP. In 1930, at the age of 59, Johnson returned to education after his many years leading the NAACP. He accepted the Spence Chair of Creative Literature at Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee. The university created the position for him in recognition of his achievements as a poet, editor and critic during the Harlem Renaissance. In addition to discussing literature, he lectured on a wide range of issues related to the lives and civil rights of black Americans. He held this position until his death. In 1934, he also was appointed as the first African-American professor at New York University, where he taught several classes in literature and culture. As noted above, in 1901 Johnson had moved to New York City with his brother J. Rosamond Johnson to work in musical theater. They collaborated on such hits as "Tell Me, Dusky Maiden", "Nobody's Looking but the Owl and the Moon," and the spiritual Dem Bones, for which Johnson wrote the lyrics and his brother the music. Johnson composed a poem which was later set to music to become "Lift Ev'ry Voice and Sing" to honor renowned educator Booker T. Washington who was visiting Stanton School, when the poem was recited by 500 school children as a tribute to Abraham Lincoln's birthday. This song became widely popular and has become known as the "Negro National Anthem," a title that the NAACP adopted and promoted. The song included the following lines: Diplomacy In 1906, Johnson was appointed by the Roosevelt Administration as consul of Puerto Cabello, Venezuela. In 1909, he transferred to Corinto, Nicaragua. During his stay at Corinto, a rebellion erupted against President Adolfo Diaz. Johnson proved an effective diplomat in such times of strain. His positions also provided time and stimulation to pursue his literary career. He wrote substantial portions of his novel, The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man, and his poetry collection, Fifty Years, during this period.[20] His poetry was published in major journals such as The Century Magazine and in The Independent.[ Literary writing Johnson's first success as a writer was the poem "Lift Ev'ry Voice and Sing" (1899), which his brother Rosamond later set to music; the song became unofficially known as the "Negro National Anthem." During his time in the diplomatic service, Johnson completed what became his most well-known book, The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man, which he published anonymously in 1912. #irememberourhsitory He chose anonymity to avoid any controversy that might endanger his diplomatic career. It was not until 1927 that Johnson acknowledged writing the novel, stressing that it was not a work of autobiography but mostly fictional. In this period, he also published his first poetry collection, Fifty Years and Other Poems (1917). It showed his increasing politicization and adoption of the black vernacular influences that characterize his later work. Johnson returned to New York, where he was involved in the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s. He had a broad appreciation for black artists, musicians and writers, and worked to heighten awareness in the wider society of their creativity. In 1922, he published a landmark anthology The Book of American Negro Poetry, with a "Preface" that celebrated the power of black expressive culture. He compiled and edited the anthology The Book of American Negro Spirituals, which was published in 1925. He continued to publish his own poetry as well. Johnson's collection God's Trombones: Seven Negro Sermons in Verse (1927) is considered most important. He demonstrated that black folk life could be the material of serious poetry. He also comments on the violence of racism in poems such as "Fragment," which portrays slavery as against both God's love and God's law. Following the flourishing of the Harlem Renaissance in the 1920s, Johnson reissued his anthology of poetry by black writers, The Book of American Negro Poetry, in 1931, including many new poets. This established the African-American poetic tradition for a much wider audience and also inspired younger poets. In 1930, he published a sociological study, Black Manhattan (1930). His Negro Americans, What Now? (1934) was a book-length address advocating fuller civil rights for African Americans. By this time, tens of thousands of African Americans had left the South for Northern and Midwestern cities in the Great Migration, but the majority still lived in the South. There they were politically disenfranchised and subject to Jim Crow laws and white supremacy. Outside the South, many faced discrimination but had more political rights and chances for education and work. #Irememberourhistory Film At least one of Mr. Johnson's works was credited as leading to a movie. “Go Down, Death!” was a Harlemwood Studios production, directed by Spencer Williams. In the film credits, it states, “Alfred N. Sack Reverently Presents....” (the film), with hymns playing in the background. The film opens: “Forward: This Story of Love and Simple Faith and Triumph of Good Over Evil was inspired by the Poem “GO DOWN, DEATH!” from the Pen of the Celebrated Negro Author James Weldon Johnson, Now of Sainted Memory.” The film featured an all African-American cast, including Myra D. Hemings, Samuel H. James, Eddie L. Houston, Spencer Williams and Amos Droughan, among others. It also included a dancing and band sequence, depicting a fun-looking, middle-class oriented club with drinks and gambling, as its opening backdrop. Books Poetry Fifty Years and Other Poems (1917) God's Trombones: Seven Negro Sermons in Verse (1927) Saint Peter Relates an Incident: Selected Poems (1935) Anthologies The Book of American Negro Poetry (1922, editor), anthology (Link via HathiTrust) The Book of Negro Spirituals (1925, editor), anthology The Second Book of Negro Spirituals (1926, editor) Other works The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man (1912/1927, novel) Black Manhattan (1930, study) Negro Americans, What Now? (1934, essay) Johnson, James Weldon (1968) [1933]. Along This Way: The Autobiography of James Weldon Johnson (Viking Compass ed.). New York: Viking Press Death: Johnson died in 1938 while vacationing in Wiscasset, Maine, when the car his wife was driving was hit by a train. His funeral in Harlem was attended by more than 2,000 people.[7] Johnson's ashes are interred at Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, New York. Source: https://www.pbs.org/.../black.../lift-every-voice-and-sing/ Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lift_Every_Voice_and_Sing Previous Next

< Back Sam Jones On June 24, 1933, legendary Boston Celtics player Sam Jones was born in Wilmington, North Carolina and raised in Laurnburg, NC, he was a high school graduate of the historic Laurinburg (N.C.) Institute, On June 24, 1933, legendary Boston Celtics player Sam Jones was born in Wilmington, North Carolina and raised in Laurnburg, NC, he was a high school graduate of the historic Laurinburg (N.C.) Institute, During his 12 seasons with the Celtics, Jones and his team won 10 championships. Breaking through the gates of white supremacy segregation laws. Basketball was always a part of Jones’s life. He played the game in high school, and at North Carolina Central University. During his college career, he caught the eye of Red Auerbach, the coach of the Boston Celtics. At N.C. Central, Jones studied and prepared to teach high school, and by the time he graduated, he had a job offer. But teaching was not Jones’s destiny. He was the first draft pick for the Celtics, and was the eighth overall pick in the 1957 NBA draft. Jones began to gain national recognition during the 1961-1962 season, earning the nickname “Mr. Clutch.” As a guard for the Celtics, he was known for his great dedication, amazing accuracy in shooting and speed and agility on the court. He was shooting guard, and was known for his quickness and game-winning shots, especially during the NBA Playoffs. He has the second most NBA championships of any player (10), behind his teammate Bill Russell (11). He was also one of only 3 Boston Celtics (along with teammates Bill Russell and K.C. Jones) to be part of the Celtics's 8 consecutive championships from 1959 to 1966. He is a member of the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame. Jones retired in 1969, and shortly thereafter the Celtics officially retired his jersey number, 24. He went on to coach at Federal City College and N.C. Central and worked as an assistant coach with the New Orleans Jazz. He was inducted into the NBA Hall of Fame in 1983 and now lives in Florida. Source:https://www.ncdcr.gov/.../celtic-sam-jones-of-wilmington... Previous Next