February is Black History Month, a time to celebrate the history of African-Americans, explore the history of achievements by Africans Americans in every area of effort throughout our history."
Carter G. Woodson
OCCUPATION: Historian
BIRTH DATE: December 19, 1875
DEATH DATE: April 03, 1950
EDUCATION: Harvard University
Historian, educator, author, and publisher. Born in 1875 in New Canton, Virginia. The son of freed slaves, Woodson worked as a sharecropper and a miner to help his family. He began high school in his late teens and proved to be an excellent student. Woodson went on to college and earned several degrees. He received a doctorate from Harvard University in 1912—becoming one of the first African Americans to earn a Ph.D. at the prestigious institution. After finishing his education, he dedicated himself to the field of African American history, working to make sure that this subject was taught in schools and was studied by scholars. For his efforts, Woodson is often known as the "Father of Black History."
In 1915, Woodson helped found the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History (which later became the Association for the Study of Afro-American Life and History). The next year he established the Journal of Negro History, a scholarly publication. Woodson also formed the African-American-owned Associated Publishers Press in 1921, which produced several of his own works, including The Negro in Our History (1922) and Mis-Education of the Negro (1933).
Woodson lobbied schools and organizations to participate in a special program to encourage the study of African American history, which began in February 1926 with Negro History Week and was later expanded and renamed Black History Month. To help teachers with African American studies, he created the Negro History Bulletin in 1937. While Woodson died on April 3, 1950, his work continues on. Every February, students around the United States spend time learning about the subject closest to his heart—African American history.
Born November 9, 1922, in Cleveland, Ohio, Dorothy Dandridge sang at Harlem's Cotton Club and Apollo Theatre and became the first African American woman to be nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress. Many years passed before the entertainment industry acknowledged Dandridge's legacy. In 1999, Halle Berry played Dandridge in "Introducing Dorothy Dandridge," for which she won an Emmy Award.
Early Career
Singer, actress. Born November 9, 1922, in Cleveland, Ohio, Dorothy Dandridge sang at Harlem's famed Cotton Club and Apollo Theatre and became the first African American woman to be nominated for an Academy Award for best actress.
Dandridge’s mother, the actress Ruby Dandridge, urged her two young daughters into show business in the 1930s, when they performed as a song-and-dance team billed as "The Wonder Children. Dandridge left high school in the late 1930s and formed the Dandridge Sisters trio with her sister Vivian and Etta Jones. They performed with the Jimmy Lunceford Orchestra and at the famous Cotton Club in Harlem, where Dandridge—who had a mixed racial heritage, early on confronted the segregation and racism of the entertainment industry.
As a teenager, Dandridge began to appear in small roles in a number of films, including the Marx Brothers film A Day at the Races (1937) and Drums of the Congo (1942). In 1945, she married Harold Nicholas of the dancing Nicholas Brothers (with whom she performed in the 1941 Sonja Henie musical Sun Valley Serenade); during their turbulent six-year marriage, Dandridge virtually retired from performing. A daughter, Harolyn, was born with severe brain damage in 1943; as Dandridge was unable to raise her herself, she placed the girl in foster care.
International Stardom
After her divorce in 1951, Dandridge returned to the nightclub circuit, this time as a successful solo singer. After a stint at the Mocambo club in Hollywood with Desi Arnaz's band and a sell-out 14-week engagement at La Vie en Rose, she became an international star, performing at glamorous venues in London, Rio de Janeiro, San Francisco, and New York. She won her first starring film role in 1953’s Bright Road, playing an earnest and dedicated young schoolteacher opposite Harry Belafonte.
Her next role, as the eponymous lead in Carmen Jones (1954),a film adaptation of Bizet's opera Carmen that also costarred Belafonte, catapulted her to the heights of stardom. With her sultry looks and flirtatious style, Dandridge became the first African-American to earn an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress. Though many believed she deserved to win, Dandridge eventually lost the award to Grace Kelly (The Country Girl). Still, after the phenomenal success of Carmen Jones, Dandridge seemed well on her way to becoming the first non-white actress to achieve the kind of superstardom that had accrued to contemporaries like Marilyn Monroe and Ava Gardner. In 1955, she was featured on the cover of Life magazine, and was treated like visiting royalty at that year’s Cannes Film Festival.
In the years that followed her success with Carmen Jones, however, Dandridge had trouble finding film roles that suited her talents. Her only other great film was 1959's Porgy and Bess, in which she played Bess opposite Sidney Poitier. She turned down the supporting role of Tuptim in The King and I because she refused to play a slave. It was rumored that she would play Billie Holliday in a film version of Lady Sings the Blues directed by Orson Welles, but it never panned out. In the racially disharmonious 1950s, Hollywood filmmakers could not seem to create a suitable role for the light-skinned Dandridge,and they soon reverted to subtly prejudiced visions of interracial romance. She appeared in several poorly received racially and sexually charged dramas, including Island in the Sun (1957), co-starring Belafonte and Joan Fontaine, Tamango (1959),in which she played the mistress of the captain of a slave ship,and Malaga (1960).
Personal Struggles
While making Carmen Jones, Dandridge became involved in a heated, secretive affair with the film's director, Otto Preminger, who also directed Porgy and Bess. Their interracial romance, as well as Dandridge's relationships with other white lovers, was frowned upon, not in the least by other African-American members of the Hollywood filmmaking community. She married her second husband, Jack Denison, in 1959, and lost the majority of her savings when his restaurant failed in 1962. He left her soon after.
As her film career and marriage failed, Dandridge began drinking heavily and taking antidepressants. The threat of bankruptcy and nagging problems with the IRS forced her to resume her nightclub career, but she found only a fraction of her former success. Relegated to second-rate lounges and stage productions, Dandridge's financial situation grew worse and worse. By 1963, she could no longer afford to pay for her daughter's 24-hour medical care, and Harolyn was placed in a state institution. Dandridge soon suffered a nervous breakdown. On September 8, 1965, she was found dead in her Hollywood home, an apparent suicide from a drug overdose.
Her unique and tragic story became the subject of renewed interest in the late 1990s, beginning in 1997 with the release of a biography, Dorothy Dandridge, by Donald Bogle, and a two-week retrospective at New York City's Film Forum. In 1999, the actress Halle Berry won a Golden Globe for her portrayal of Dandridge in an acclaimed HBO movie, Introducing Dorothy Dandridge.
Daisy Bates was born on November 11, 1914, in Huttig, Arkansas. She married journalist Christopher Bates and they operated a weekly African-American newspaper, the Arkansas State Press. Bates became president of the Arkansas chapter of the NAACP and played a crucial role in the fight against segregation, which she documented in her book The Long Shadow of Little Rock. She died in 1999.
NAACP Presidency
Civil rights activist, writer, publisher. Born Daisy Lee Gatson on November 11, 1914, in Huttig, Arkansas. Bates’s childhood was marked by tragedy. Her mother was sexually assaulted and murdered by three white men and her father left her. She was raised by friends of the family.
As a teenager, Bates met Lucious Christopher “L.C.” Bates, an insurance agent and an experienced journalist. The couple married in the early 1940s and moved to Little Rock, Arkansas. Together they operated the Arkansas State Press, a weekly African-American newspaper. The paper championed civil rights, and Bates joined in the civil rights movement. She became the president of Arkansas chapter of the National Association for Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1952.
As the head of the NAACP’s Arkansas branch, Bates played a crucial role in the fight against segregation. In 1954, the United States Supreme Court declared that school segregation was unconstitutional in the landmark case known as Brown v. Board of Education. Even after that ruling, African American students who tried to enroll in white schools were turned away in Arkansas. Bates and her husband chronicled this battle in their newspaper.
Little Rock Nine
In 1957, she helped nine African American students to become the first to attend the all-white Central High School in Little Rock, who became known as the Little Rock Nine. The group first tried to go to the school on September 4. A group of angry whites jeered at them as they arrived. The governor, Orval Faubus, opposed school integration and sent members of the Arkansas National Guard to prevent the students from entering the school. Despite the enormous amount of animosity they faced from white residents of the city, the students were undeterred from their mission to attend the school.
Bates’ home became the headquarters for the battle to integrate Central High School and she served as a personal advocate and supporter to the students. President Dwight D. Eisenhower became involved in the conflict and ordered federal troops to go to Little Rock to uphold the law and protect the Little Rock Nine. With U.S. soldiers providing security, the Little Rock Nine left from Bates’ home for their first day of school on September 25, 1957. Bates remained close with the Little Rock Nine, offering her continuing support as they faced harassment and intimidation from people against desegregation.
Later Activism
Bates also received numerous threats, but this would not stop her from her work. The newspaper she and her husband worked on was closed in 1959 because of low adverting revenue. Three years later, her account of the school integration battle was published as The Long Shadow of Little Rock. For a few years, she moved to Washington, D.C., to work for the Democratic National Committee and on antipoverty projects for the Lyndon B. Johnson’s administration.
Bates returned to Little Rock in the mid-1960s and spent much of her time on community programs. After the death of her husband in 1980, she also resuscitated their newspaper for several years, from 1984 to 1988. Bates died on November 4, 1999, Little Rock, Arkansas.
For her career in social activism, Bates received numerous awards, including an honorary degree from the University of Arkansas. She is best remembered as a guiding force behind one of the biggest battles for school integration in the nation’s history.
NAME: Don Cornelius
OCCUPATION: Television Personality, Television Producer
BIRTH DATE: September 27, 1936
DEATH DATE: February 01, 2012
PLACE OF BIRTH: Chicago, Illinois
Born on September 27, 1936, in Chicago, Illinois, Don Cornelius is an American television icon, having created Soul Train, a music show made for African-Americans by African-Americans, which spent more than 30 years on the air. A natural salesman, Cornelius started out in the insurance business in the 1950s. He went to broadcasting school in 1966, looking to break into the field. To realize his dream, he worked as a substitute DJ, filling in for other on-air personalities, and in the news department of WVON radio in Chicago.
Switching to television, Cornelius became a sports anchor and the host of A Black’s View of the News on WCIU in 1968. He got to know the station owners, and pitched them his idea for a music television program. Using $400 of his own money, Cornelius created a pilot for Soul Train, which was named after a promotional event he put together in 1969. Inspired by American Bandstand, the show featured teenagers dancing to the latest soul and R&B music as well as a performance by a musical guest. “Almost all of what I learned about mounting and hosting a dance show I learned from Dick Clark,” Cornelius later told Advertising Age.
Soul Train
Premiering on August 17, 1970, Soul Train quickly became popular. It aired on Saturday mornings, attracting a lot of children and teenagers off from school. An early supporter, businessman George Johnson of the Johnson Products Company, helped Cornelius make Soul Train a national television program. It was syndicated in 1971, but it was initially difficult getting stations sign up for the show. In addition to Chicago, stations in Atlanta, Cleveland, Detroit, Houston, Los Angeles, Philadelphia and San Francisco were among the first to air Soul Train.
With his deep voice and distinguished good looks, Cornelius was the ideal host. Over the years, he presented many famous performers to his television audience, including Gladys Knight, Smokey Robinson, Lou Rawls and Aretha Franklin, among others. The show was not always wedded to its soul and R&B focus. Rock acts, such as David Bowie, Robert Palmer, and Duran Duran, also made appearances on the show from time to time as did jazz and reggae stars.
In 1987, Cornelius started the Soul Train Music Awards. Dione Warwick and Luther Vandross served as hosts of the first ceremony, which honored Stevie Wonder with the Heritage Award for outstanding career achievements. Whitney Houston, LL Cool J, and Run DMC were among the night’s performers. Over the years, other music stars appeared on the show, including Michael Jackson, Patti LaBelle, Usher and Ciara, and more awards were added.
Changing the Show
When American Bandstand went off the air in 1989, Soul Train was still going strong. But Cornelius continuously looked for ways to freshen up the show. In 1993, he gave up his duties as host and brought in guest hosts. “I had come to believe . . . that the era of the well-spoken, well-dressed Dick Clark, Don Cornelius-type in a suit and a tie was over ... I am just convinced that people want to see people on TV who are more like themselves,” he explained to The New York Times.
In 1995, Cornelius launched the Lady of Soul Awards. The first honorees were Debbie Allen, who received the Lena Horne Award for outstanding career achievements in the field of entertainment, and Salt-N-Pepa, who received the Aretha Franklin Award. Queen Latifah, Mary J. Blige, and Brandy performed during that first ceremony. Later on, both Brandy and Queen Latifah won the Aretha Franklin Award.
The Fate of Soul Train
Getting performers for the show, however, was sometimes a challenge for Cornelius. In 2001, he complained about MTV’s booking practices for its own award shows, which call for acts not to appear on competing programs within 30 days of the event. “It’s anti-competitive behavior that needs to be addressed at the Federal Trade Commission level,” he told the Los Angeles Times. He thought the tactic was especially egregious because of the cable music channel’s early history of not showing videos by African-American artists.
By 2005, Soul Train was being seen in 105 cities, reaching an estimated 85 percent of black households, according to the show’s website. Unfortunately, recent events have put the show’s future in question. In December 2007, the program lost its distributor when Tribune Entertainment closed that division in its company.
Cornelius' Final Years
After the end of Sould Train, Cornelius told the Los Angeles Times that he was in discussions to create a movie based on the famous franchise. "It wouldn't be the Soul Train dance show, it would be more of a biographical look at the project," he said. "It's going to be about some of the things that really happened on the show."
But life took a dark turn for Cornelius in 2008, when he was arrested and charged with spousal battery, dissuading a witness from making a police report, and assault with a deadly weapon.He pled no contest to misdemeanor domestic violence, and was sentenced to three years probation. The incident led to a bitter divorce battle between Cornelius and wife, Viktoria, in 2009. During their feuding, which lasted for over a year, Cornelius was also suffering from multiple health issues, including a stroke and several undisclosed ailments that required brain surgery.
The legal proceedings took an emotional toll on Cornelius, who made the statement within his divorce documentation that, "I am 72 years old. I have significant health issues. I want to finalize this divorce before I die." In 2010, Cornelius was granted his divorce. But the savvy businessman never quite recovered from the turmoil. On February 1, 2012, at approximately 4 AM, police officials discovered Cornelius' body at his California home. He had suffered a gunshot wound to the head that officials later stated was self-inflicted. He was taken to the hospital, where he was pronounced dead later that morning.
Cornelius is survived by two sons, Anthony and Raymond.
NAME: Elizabeth Catlett
OCCUPATION: Sculptor
BIRTH DATE: April 15, 1919 (Age: 92)
EDUCATION: Harvard University, University of Iowa
PLACE OF BIRTH: Washington, D.C.
The granddaughter of slaves, Elizabeth Catlett was born into a middle-class Washington family in 1919. She attended Harvard University and was the first to earn an MFA in sculpture from the University of Iowa. Her sculptures and prints celebrate not only famous African Americans like Harriet Tubman and Malcolm X, but also anonymous workers, as in "Negro Woman," "Sharecropper" and "Survivor." (born April 15, 1915, Washington, D.C., U.S.) expatriate American sculptor and printmaker renowned for her intensely political art.
Catlett, a granddaughter of slaves, was born into a middle-class Washington family; her father was a professor of mathematics at Tuskegee Institute. After being disallowed entrance into the Carnegie Institute of Technology because she was black, Catlett enrolled at Howard University (B.A., 1936), where she studied design, printmaking, and drawing and was influenced by the art theories of Alain Locke and James A. Porter. While working as a muralist for two months during the mid-1930s with the Federal Art Project of the Works Progress Administration, she became influenced by the social activism of Mexican muralist Diego Rivera.
In 1940 Catlett became the first student to earn a Master of Fine Arts degree in sculpture at the University of Iowa. The Regionalist painter Grant Wood, a professor at the university at the time, encouraged her to present images drawn from black culture and experience and influenced her decision to concentrate on sculpture. After holding several teaching positions and continuing to expand her range of media, Catlett went to Mexico City in 1946 to work at the Taller de Gráfica Popular, an artists' collective. There, along with her then husband, the artist Charles White, she created prints depicting Mexican life. As a left-wing activist, she endured investigation by the House Un-American Activities Committee during the 1950s. About 1962 she took Mexican citizenship.
Catlett is known largely for her sculpture, especially for works such as Homage to My Young Black Sisters (1968) and various mother-child pairings, the latter of which became one of her central themes. She was also an accomplished printmaker who valued prints for their affordability and hence their accessibility to many people. Catlett alternately chose to illustrate famous subjects, such as Harriet Tubman and Malcolm X, and anonymous workers—notably, strong, solitary black women—as depicted in the terra-cotta sculpture Negro Woman ( 1960) and the prints Sharecropper (1968) and Survivor ( 1978). She remained a working artist into her 90s.
NAME: Alain LeRoy Locke
OCCUPATION: Educator, Philosopher, Scholar, Journalist
BIRTH DATE: September 13, 1886
DEATH DATE: June 09, 1954
EDUCATION: Harvard University, Oxford, University of Berlin
Alain LeRoy Locke was born Sept. 13, 1886, Philadelphia. For almost 40 years he taught at Howard University. Locke promoted the recognition and respect of blacks by the total American community. He familiarized American readers with the Harlem Renaissance by editing a special Harlem issue for Survey Graphic, Contents which he expanded into The New Negro (1925).
(born Sept. 13, 1886, Philadelphia—died June 9, 1954, New York City) American educator, writer, and philosopher, best remembered as the leader and chief interpreter of the Harlem Renaissance (q.v.).
Graduated in philosophy from Harvard University (1907), Locke was the first black Rhodes scholar, studying at Oxford (1907–10) and the University of Berlin (1910–11). He received his Ph.D. in philosophy from Harvard (1918). For almost 40 years, until retirement in 1953 as head of the department of philosophy, Locke taught at Howard University, Washington, D.C.
Locke stimulated and guided artistic activities and promoted the recognition and respect of blacks by the total American community. Having studied African culture and traced its influences upon Western civilization, he urged black painters, sculptors, and musicians to look to African sources for identity and to discover materials and techniques for their work. He encouraged black authors to seek subjects in black life and to set high artistic standards for themselves. He familiarized American readers with the Harlem Renaissance by editing a special Harlem issue for Survey Graphic (March 1925), which he expanded into The New Negro (1925), an anthology of fiction, poetry, drama, and essays.
Locke edited the Bronze Booklet studies of cultural achievements by blacks. For almost two decades he annually reviewed literature by and about blacks in Opportunity and Phylon, and from 1940 until his death he regularly wrote about blacks for the Britannica Book of the Year. His many works include Four Negro Poets (1927), Frederick Douglass, a Biography of Anti-Slavery (1935), Negro Art—Past and Present (1936), and The Negro and His Music (1936). He left unfinished materials for a definitive study of the contributions of blacks to American culture. His materials formed the basis for M.J. Butcher's The Negro in American Culture (1956).
A humanist who was intensely concerned with aesthetics, Locke termed his philosophy “cultural pluralism” and emphasized the necessity of determining values to guide human conduct and interrelationships. Chief among these values was respect for the uniqueness of each personality, which can develop fully and remain unique only within a democratic ethos.
OCCUPATION: Civil Rights Activist
BIRTH DATE: February 04, 1913
DEATH DATE: October 24, 2005
EDUCATION: Industrial School for Girls, Alabama State Teachers College for Negroes
Quotes
"I have learned over the years that when one's mind is made up, this diminishes fear; knowing what must be done does away with fear."
– Rosa Parks
"People always say that I didn’t give up my seat because I was tired.…the only tired I was, was tired of giving in."
– Rosa Parks
"Each person must live their life as a model for others."
– Rosa Parks
"I would like to be remembered as a person who wanted to be free... so other people would be also free."
– Rosa Parks
"I have learned over the years that when one's mind is made up, this diminishes fear; knowing what must be done does away with fear."
– Rosa Parks
Civil Rights Pioneer
Civil-rights activist. Born Rosa Louise McCauley on February 4, 1913, in Tuskegee, Alabama. Her refusal to surrender her seat to a white passenger on a Montgomery, Alabama, bus spurred on a city-wide boycott and helped launch nation-wide efforts to end segregation of public facilities.
Early Life and Education
Rosa Parks' childhood brought her early experiences with racial discrimination and activism for racial equality. After her parents separated, Rosa's mother moved the family to Pine Level, Alabama to live with her parents, Rose and Sylvester Edwards, on their farm. Both her grandparents were former slaves and strong advocates for racial equality. In one experience, Rosa's grandfather stood in front of their house with a shotgun while Ku Klux Klan members marched down the street. The city of Pine Level, Alabama had a new school building and bus transportation for white students while African-American students walked to the one-room schoolhouse, often lacking desks and adequate school supplies.
Through the rest of Rosa's education, she attended segregated schools in Montgomery. In 1929, while a junior in the eleventh grade, she left school to attend to her sick grandmother in Pine Level. She never returned, but instead got a job at a shirt factory in Montgomery. In 1932, Rosa married a barber named Raymond Parks who was an active member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). With Raymond's support, Rosa Parks finished her high school degree in 1933. She soon became actively involved in civil rights issues my joining the Montgomery chapter of the NAACP in 1943, serving as the secretary to the president, E.D. Nixon until 1957.
Ordered to the Back of the Bus
The Montgomery, Alabama city code required that all public transportation be segregated and that bus drivers had the "powers of a police officer of the city while in actual charge of any bus for the purposes of carrying out the provisions" of the code. While operating a bus, drivers were required to provide separate but equal accommodations for white and black passengers by assigning seats. This was accomplished with a line roughly in the middle of the bus separating white passengers in the front of the bus and African-American passengers in the back. When an African-American passenger boarded the bus, they had to get on at the front to pay their fare and then get off and re-board the bus at the back door. When the seats in the front of the bus filled up and more white passengers got on, the bus driver would move back the sign separating black and white passengers and, if necessary, ask black passengers give up their seat.
On December 1, 1955, after a long day at work at the Montgomery Fair department store, Rosa Parks boarded the Cleveland Avenue bus for home. She took a seat in the first of several rows designated for "colored" passengers. Though the city's bus ordinance did give drivers the authority to assign seats, it didn't specifically give them the authority to demand a passenger to give up a seat to anyone (regardless of color). However, Montgomery bus drivers had adopted the custom of requiring black passengers to give up their seats to white passengers, when no other seats were available. If the black passenger protested, the busdriver had the authority to refuse service and could call the police to have them removed.
As the bus Rosa was riding continued on its route, it began to fill with white passengers. Eventually, the bus was full and the driver noticed that several white passengers were standing in the aisle. He stopped the bus and moved the sign separating the two sections back one row and asked four black passengers to give up their seats. Three complied, but Rosa refused and remained seated. The driver demanded,"Why don't you stand up?" to which Rosa replied, "I don't think I should have to stand up." The driver called the police and had her arrested. Later, she recalled that her refusal wasn't because she was physically tired, but that she was tired of giving in.
The police arrested Rosa at the scene and charged her with violation of Chapter 6, section 11 of the Montgomery City code. She was taken to police headquarters where later that night she was released on bail. On December 8, Rosa faced trial and in a 30 minute hearing was found guilty of violating a local ordinance. She was fined $10, plus a $4 court fee.
Montgomery Bus Boycott
On the evening Rosa Parks was arrested, E.D. Nixon, head of the local chapter of the NAACP, began plans to organize a boycott of Montgomery's city buses. Ads were placed in local papers and handbills were printed and distributed in black neighborhoods. Members of the African-American community were asked to stay off the buses Monday, December 5 th in protest of Rosa's arrest. People were encouraged to stay home from work or school, take a cab or walk to work. With most of the African-American community not riding the bus, organizers believed a longer boycott might be successful.
On Monday, December 5, 1955, a group of African-American community leaders gathered at Mt. Zion Church to discuss strategies. They determined that the effort required a new organization and strong leadership. They formed the "Montgomery Improvement Association" (MIA) and elected Montgomery newcomer Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the minister of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church. The MIA believed that Rosa Parks' case provided an excellent opportunity to take further action to create real change.
With the success of Monday's refusal to ride the buses, the boycott continued. Some people carpooled. Others rode in African-American-operated cabs. Most of the estimated 40,000 African-American commuters walked, some as far as 20 miles to get to work. Dozens of the Montgomery public buses sat idle for months, severely crippling the transit company's finances. But the boycott faced strong resistance, with some segregationists retaliating with violence. Black churches were burned and both Martin Luther King, Jr. and E.D. Nixon's homes were attacked. Other attempts were made to end the boycott as well. The taxi system used by the African-American community to help people get around had its insurance canceled. Other blacks were arrested for violating an old law prohibiting boycotts.
But the African-American community also took legal action. Armed with the Brown v. Board of Education decision that said separate but equal policies had no place in public education, a black legal team took the issue of segregation on public transit systems to federal court. In June of 1956, the court declared Alabama's racial segregation laws for public transit unconstitutional. The city appealed and on November 13, 1956,the Supreme Court upheld the lower court's ruling. With the transit company and downtown businesses suffering financial loss and the legal system ruling against them, the city of Montgomery had no choice but to lift the law requiring segregation on public buses. The combination of legal action, backed by the unrelenting determination of the African-American community made the 382-day Montgomery Bus Boycott one of the largest and most successful mass movements against racial segregation in history.
Discrimination
Although she had become a symbol of the Civil Rights Movement, Rosa Parks suffered hardship as a result. She lost her job at the department store and her husband lost his after his boss forbade him to discuss his wife or their legal case. They were unable to find work and eventually left Montgomery. Rosa Parks moved her family—husband and mother—to Detroit, Michigan. There she made a new life for herself, working as a secretary and receptionists in U.S. Representative John Conyer's congressional office in Detroit. She also served on the board of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America. In 1987, along with Elaine Eason Steele, a long-time friend, she founded the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self-Development. The institute runs the "Pathways to Freedom" bus tours, introducing young people to important civil rights and Underground Railroad sites throughout the country. In 1992, she published Rosa Parks: My Story, an autobiography recounting her life in the segregated South. In 1995, she published her memoirs entitled Quiet Strength which focuses on the role religious faith played in her life.
Legacy
Rosa Parks received many accolades during her lifetime including the Spingarn Medal, the NAACP's highest award. She also received the Martin Luther King, Jr. Award. On September 9, 1996 President Bill Clinton awarded Rosa Parks the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest honor given by the U.S. executive branch. The next year, she was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal, the highest award given by the U.S. legislative branch. In 1999, Time magazine named Rosa Parks one of the 20 most influential people of the 20th century.
On October 24, 2005, at the age of 92, Rosa Parks quietly died in her apartment. She had been diagnosed the previous year with progressive dementia. Her death was marked by several memorial services, among them lying in state at the Capitol Rotunda in Washington D.C. where an estimated 50,000 people viewed her casket. Rosa was interred between her husband and mother at Detroit's Woodlawn Cemetery in the chapel's mausoleum. Shortly after her death the chapel was renamed the Rosa L. Parks Freedom Chapel.
Quick Facts
NAME: Hattie McDaniel
OCCUPATION: Film Actress
BIRTH DATE: June 10, 1895
DEATH DATE: October 26, 1952
PLACE OF BIRTH: Wichita, Kansas
PLACE OF DEATH: Los Angeles, California
"Quotes"
I sincerely hope I shall always be a credit to my race and to the motion picture industry."
– Hattie McDaniel
Radio star and actress Hattie McDaniel became the first African-American woman to win an Academy Award in 1939 for her portrayal of 'Mammy' in Gone with the Wind (1939). Though the honor was significant, McDaniel often faced criticism from the liberal black community for acting in roles considered to further stereotypes about African-Americans.
(born June 10, 1895, Wichita, Kan., U.S.—died Oct. 26, 1952, Hollywood, Calif.) American actress and singer who became the first African American to be honoured with an Academy Award.
McDaniel was raised in Denver, Colorado, where she early exhibited her musical and dramatic talent. She left school in 1910 to become a performer in several traveling minstrel groups and later became one of the first black women to be broadcast over American radio. With the onset of the Great Depression, however, little work was to be found for minstrel or vaudeville players, and to support herself McDaniel went to work as a bathroom attendant at Sam Pick's club in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Although the club as a rule hired only white performers, some of its patrons became aware of McDaniel's vocal talents and encouraged the owner to make an exception. McDaniel performed at the club for more than a year until she left for Los Angeles, where her brother found her a small role on a local radio show, The Optimistic Do-Nuts; known as Hi-Hat Hattie, she became the show's main attraction before long.
Two years after McDaniel's film debut in 1932, she landed her first major part in John Ford's Judge Priest (1934), in which she had an opportunity to sing a duet with humorist Will Rogers. Her role as a happy Southern servant in The Little Colonel (1935) made her a controversial figure in the liberal black community, which sought to end Hollywood's stereotyping. When criticized for taking such roles, McDaniel responded that she would rather play a maid in the movies than be one in real life; and during the 1930s she played the role of maid or cook in nearly 40 films, including Alice Adams (1935), in which her comic characterization of a grumbling, far-from-submissive maid made the dinner party scene one of the best remembered from the film. She is probably most often associated with the supporting role of Mammy in the 1939 film Gone with the Wind, a role for which she became the first African American to win an Academy Award.
At the end of World War II, during which McDaniel organized entertainment for black troops, the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) and other liberal black groups lobbied Hollywood for an end to the stereotyped roles in which McDaniel had become typecast, and consequently her Hollywood opportunities declined. Radio, however, was slower to respond, and in 1947 she became the first African American to star in a weekly radio program aimed at a general audience when she agreed to play the role of a maid on The Beulah Show. In 1951, while filming the first six segments of a television version of the popular show, she had a heart attack. She recovered sufficiently to tape a number of radio shows in 1952 but died soon thereafter of breast cancer.
Fact:
Gone with the Wind premiered at the Loew's Grand theater in Atlanta in December 1939, and politicians and celebrities joined the cast for one of the year's biggest events. Actresses Hattie McDaniel and Butterfly McQueen were both noticeably absent, not welcome at the whites-only theater. McDaniel won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for the role of Mammy, making her the first African American to win an Oscar.
NAME: Josephine Baker
OCCUPATION: Civil Rights Activist, Dancer, Singer
BIRTH DATE: June 03, 1906
DEATH DATE: April 12, 1975
PLACE OF BIRTH: St. Louis, Missouri
Born Freda Josephine McDonald on June 3, 1906, Baker began her career as part of a dance group in St. Louis before moving to New York to perform at Harlem's Cotton Club. In 1925, she moved to Paris and was a huge success in the Folies Bergere.
Dancer and entertainer. Born Freda Josephine McDonald on June 3, 1906, in St. Louis, Missouri. Josephine Baker was an African American performer who found great success in France beginning in the 1920s. She started out as a dancer, performing with a dance group. Baker moved to New York in the 1920s and appeared in the musical Shuffle Along and performed at the famed Harlem hotspot, the Cotton Club.
Josephine Baker traveled to Paris in 1925 to appear in La Revue Nègre. She made quite an impression with this show on French audiences. But it was performing in the Folies Bergère the following year that really made her career. She appeared wearing a skirt made of bananas and wowed the crowds with her style of dancing. She later added singing to her act and remained popular in France for many years to come.
Josephine Baker returned the affection of French people, becoming a French citizen in 1937. In France, she did not feel the same level of racial prejudice that was prevalent in the United States at the time. In the 1950s, Baker took up the cause of racial equality in America, and was among those who addressed the crowds before the Lincoln Memorial at the end of the 1963 March on Washington.
Near the end of her life, Josephine Baker hoped to create a "world village" at her estate in France, but these plans collapsed under financial debts. To raise funds, she returned to the stage. This comeback included a short, but triumphant run on Broadway in the 1970s. In 1975, she opened in Paris in a retrospective show. She died on April 12 of a brain hemorrhage, a week after the show opened.
Faced with racism in the 1920's United States, performer Josephine Baker took her act to France. She found fame, success, and less prejudice there, and became a French citizen in 1937. During World War II, Baker spied for the French resistance, passing on useful gossip she heard at parties. She smuggled secrets by writing with invisible ink on her sheet music.
NAME: Langston Hughes
OCCUPATION: Poet
BIRTH DATE: February 01, 1902
DEATH DATE: May 22, 1967
EDUCATION: Columbia University, Lincoln University
Langston Hughes was born February 1, 1902, in Joplin, Missouri. He published his first poem in 1921. He left Columbia University after one year, traveling and supporting himself with odd jobs. His poetry was later promoted by Vachel Lindsay, and Hughes published his first book in 1926. He wrote poetry, stories, and plays, as well as a popular column for the Chicago Defender. He died May 22, 1967.
Quotes
Humor is laughing at what you haven't got when you ought to have it.
– Langston Hughes
Poet, writer, playwright. Born February 1, 1902 in Joplin, Missouri. After publishing his first poem, "The Negro Speaks of Rivers" (1921), he attended Columbia University (1921), but left after one year to work on a freighter, traveling to Africa, living in Paris and Rome, and supporting himself with odd jobs. After his poetry was promoted by Vachel Linday, he attended Lincoln University (1925–9), and while there his first book of poems, The Weary Blues (1926), launched his career as a writer.
As one of the founders of the cultural movement known as the Harlem Renaissance, which he practically defined in his essay, "The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain" (1926), he was innovative in his use of jazz rhythms and dialect to depict the life of urban blacks in his poetry, stories, and plays. Having provided the lyrics for the musical Street Scene (1947) and the play that inspired the opera Troubled Island (1949), in the 1960s he returned to the stage with works that drew on black gospel music, such as Black Nativity (1961).
A prolific writer for four decades, he abandoned the Marxism of his youth, but never gave up protesting the injustices committed against his fellow African Americans. Among his most popular creations was Jesse B Semple, better known as "Simple," a black Everyman featured in the syndicated column he began in 1942 for the Chicago Defender.
In his later years, Hughes completed a two-volume autobiography and edited anthologies and pictorial volumes. Because he often employed humor and seldom portrayed or endorsed violent confrontations, he was for some years disregarded as a model by black writers, but by the 1980s he was being reappraised and was newly appreciated as a significant voice of African-Americans.
NAME: Lena Horne
OCCUPATION: Civil Rights Activist, Film Actress, Theater Actress, Pin-up, Singer
BIRTH DATE: June 30, 1917
DEATH DATE: May 09, 2010
PLACE OF BIRTH: Brooklyn, New York
ctress and singer Lena Horne was born June 30, 1917, in Brooklyn, NY. She left school at age 16 to help support her ailing mother and became a dancer at the Cotton Club in Harlem. She later sang at Carnegie Hall and then appeared in such films as The Wiz and Stormy Weather. She was also known for her work with civil rights groups, and refused to play roles that stereotyped African American women.
(born June 30, 1917, Brooklyn, N.Y., U.S.—died May 9, 2010, New York City) American singer and actress who first came to fame in the 1940s.
Horne left school at age 16 to help support her ailing mother and became a dancer at the Cotton Club in Harlem, New York City. In two years at the Cotton Club she appeared with such entertainers as Cab Calloway and eventually starred in her own shows. In 1935 she joined the Noble Sissle orchestra under the name Helena Horne. Horne was married from 1937 to 1944 to Louis J. Jones. In the early 1940s she was hired to sing for Charlie Barnet's orchestra. She was discovered by producer John Hammond, and soon after she performed in a solo show at Carnegie Hall in New York City.
In 1942 Horne moved to Los Angeles, after which she appeared in such movies as Cabin in the Sky (1943), Meet Me in Las Vegas (1956), and The Wiz (1978). Her role in the film Stormy Weather (1943) included her rendition of the title song, which became her trademark. A remarkably charismatic entertainer, Horne was one of the most popular singers of her time. One of her albums, Lena Horne at the Waldorf-Astoria (1957), was a longtime best seller, and her first featured performance on Broadway—in the musical Jamaica (1957)—won her a New York Drama Critics' Poll Award in 1958.
Though primarily known as an entertainer, Horne also was noted for her work with civil rights and political organizations; as an actress, she refused to play roles that stereotyped African American women. She was married to Lennie Hayton from 1947 until his death in 1971. Her one-woman show, Lena Horne: The Lady and Her Music (1981), garnered many awards, including a Drama Critics' Circle Award and a special achievement Tony Award. In 1984 Horne received a Kennedy Center honour for lifetime contribution to the arts, and in 1989 she was given a Grammy Award for lifetime achievement.
Quick Facts
NAME: Paul Robeson
OCCUPATION: Civil Rights Activist, Actor, Football Player, Lawyer, Singer
BIRTH DATE: April 09, 1898
DEATH DATE: January 23, 1976
EDUCATION: Rutgers University, Columbia University
(born April 9, 1898, Princeton, N.J., U.S.—died Jan. 23, 1976, Philadelphia, Pa.) celebrated American singer, actor, and black activist.
The son of a former slave turned preacher, Robeson attended Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N.J., where he was an All-America football player. Upon graduating from Rutgers at the head of his class, he rejected a career as a professional athlete and instead entered Columbia University. He obtained a law degree in 1923, but, because of the lack of opportunity for blacks in the legal profession, he drifted to the stage, making a London debut in 1922. He joined the Provincetown Players, a New York theatre group that included playwright Eugene O'Neill, and appeared in O'Neill's play All God's Chillun Got Wings in 1924. His subsequent appearance in the title role of O'Neill's The Emperor Jones caused a sensation in New York City (1924) and London (1925). He also starred in the film version of the play (1933). In addition to his other talents, Robeson had a superb bass-baritone singing voice. In 1925 he gave his first vocal recital of African American spirituals in Greenwich Village, New York City, and he became world famous as Joe in the musical play Show Boat with his version of “Ol' Man River.” His characterization of the title role in Othello in London (1930) won high praise, as did the Broadway production (1943), which set an all-time record run for a Shakespearean play on Broadway.
Increasing political awareness impelled Robeson to visit the Soviet Union in 1934, and from that year he became increasingly identified with strong left-wing commitments, while continuing his success in concerts, recordings, and theatre. In 1950 the U.S. State Department withdrew his passport because he refused to sign an affidavit disclaiming membership in the Communist Party. In the following years he was virtually ostracized for his political views, although in 1958 the Supreme Court overturned the affidavit ruling. Robeson then left the United States to live in Europe and travel in countries of the Soviet bloc, but he returned to the United States in 1963 because of ill health.
Robeson appeared in a number of films, including Sanders of the River (1935), Show Boat (1936), Song of Freedom (1936), and The Proud Valley (1940). His autobiography, Here I Stand, was published in 1958.
In 1948 Henry A. Wallace, who had been vice president under Franklin Roosevelt, was running for president for the Progressive Party. He ran an anti-lynching, pro-civil rights campaign, and Robeson was an important organizer for Wallace. Robeson refused, though, to be on the ticket.
In the summer of 1865, a former slave by the name of Jourdan Anderson sent a letter to his former master. And 147 years later, the document reads as richly as it must have back then.
The roughly 800-word letter, which has resurfaced via various blogs, websites, Twitter and Facebook, is a response to a missive from Colonel P.H. Anderson, Jourdan's former master back in Big Spring, Tennessee. Apparently, Col. Anderson had written Jourdan asking him to come on back to the big house to work.
In a tone that could be described either as "impressively measured" or "the deadest of deadpan comedy," the former slave, in the most genteel manner, basically tells the old slave master to kiss his rear end. He laments his being shot at by Col. Anderson when he fled slavery, the mistreatment of his children and that there "was never pay-day for the Negroes any more than for the horses and cows."
Below is Jourdan’s letter in full, as it appears on lettersofnote.com. To take a look at what appears to be a scan of the original letter, which appeared in an August 22, 1865 edition of the New York Daily Tribune, click here. As Letters Of Note points out, the newspaper account makes clear that the letter was dictated.
Dayton, Ohio,
August 7, 1865
To My Old Master, Colonel P.H. Anderson, Big Spring, Tennessee
Sir: I got your letter, and was glad to find that you had not forgotten Jourdon, and that you wanted me to come back and live with you again, promising to do better for me than anybody else can. I have often felt uneasy about you. I thought the Yankees would have hung you long before this, for harboring Rebs they found at your house. I suppose they never heard about your going to Colonel Martin's to kill the Union soldier that was left by his company in their stable. Although you shot at me twice before I left you, I did not want to hear of your being hurt, and am glad you are still living. It would do me good to go back to the dear old home again, and see Miss Mary and Miss Martha and Allen, Esther, Green, and Lee. Give my love to them all, and tell them I hope we will meet in the better world, if not in this. I would have gone back to see you all when I was working in the Nashville Hospital, but one of the neighbors told me that Henry intended to shoot me if he ever got a chance.
I want to know particularly what the good chance is you propose to give me. I am doing tolerably well here. I get twenty-five dollars a month, with victuals and clothing; have a comfortable home for Mandy,—the folks call her Mrs. Anderson,—and the children—Milly, Jane, and Grundy—go to school and are learning well. The teacher says Grundy has a head for a preacher. They go to Sunday school, and Mandy and me attend church regularly. We are kindly treated. Sometimes we overhear others saying, "Them colored people were slaves" down in Tennessee. The children feel hurt when they hear such remarks; but I tell them it was no disgrace in Tennessee to belong to Colonel Anderson. Many darkeys would have been proud, as I used to be, to call you master. Now if you will write and say what wages you will give me, I will be better able to decide whether it would be to my advantage to move back again.
As to my freedom, which you say I can have, there is nothing to be gained on that score, as I got my free papers in 1864 from the Provost-Marshal-General of the Department of Nashville. Mandy says she would be afraid to go back without some proof that you were disposed to treat us justly and kindly; and we have concluded to test your sincerity by asking you to send us our wages for the time we served you. This will make us forget and forgive old scores, and rely on your justice and friendship in the future. I served you faithfully for thirty-two years, and Mandy twenty years. At twenty-five dollars a month for me, and two dollars a week for Mandy, our earnings would amount to eleven thousand six hundred and eighty dollars. Add to this the interest for the time our wages have been kept back, and deduct what you paid for our clothing, and three doctor's visits to me, and pulling a tooth for Mandy, and the balance will show what we are in justice entitled to. Please send the money by Adams's Express, in care of V. Winters, Esq., Dayton, Ohio. If you fail to pay us for faithful labors in the past, we can have little faith in your promises in the future. We trust the good Maker has opened your eyes to the wrongs which you and your fathers have done to me and my fathers, in making us toil for you for generations without recompense. Here I draw my wages every Saturday night; but in Tennessee there was never any pay-day for the negroes any more than for the horses and cows. Surely there will be a day of reckoning for those who defraud the laborer of his hire.
In answering this letter, please state if there would be any safety for my Milly and Jane, who are now grown up, and both good-looking girls. You know how it was with poor Matilda and Catherine. I would rather stay here and starve—and die, if it come to that—than have my girls brought to shame by the violence and wickedness of their young masters. You will also please state if there has been any schools opened for the colored children in your neighborhood. The great desire of my life now is to give my children an education, and have them form virtuous habits.
Say howdy to George Carter, and thank him for taking the pistol from you when you were shooting at me.
Quick Facts
NAME: Bessie Smith
OCCUPATION: Singer
BIRTH DATE: c. April 15, 1894
DEATH DATE: September 26, 1937
PLACE OF BIRTH: Chattanooga, Tennessee
Bessie Smith (b. April 15, 1894) was an American blues singer. Sometimes referred to as The Empress of the Blues, Smith was the most popular female blues singer of the 1920s and 1930s. She is often regarded as one of the greatest singers of her era. "Downhearted Blues" is one of her biggest hits. Her tragic death at age 43 is portrayed in the 1953 one-act play The Death of Bessie Smith.
Singer. Born on April 15, 1894, in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Widely known as the “Empress of the Blues,” Bessie Smith was a popular singer during the 1920s. Raised in poverty in the South, she ran away as a teenager to join a traveling show as a dancer. In 1912, Smith began performing in the same show as blues vocalist Ma Rainey. She continued to perform at various theaters and on the vaudeville circuit. Her career really took off once she started recording.
Signed to Columbia Records, Bessie Smith made her first recording in 1923—the song “Down Hearted Blues” was a big success. With her rich, powerful, and clear voice, she became a successful recording artist and toured extensively for the rest of her life. Smith had a great rapport with their audiences, who turned out in droves to see her.
During her recording career, Bessie Smith worked with many important jazz performers, such as saxophonist Sidney Bechet and pianists Fletcher Henderson and James P. Johnson. With Johnson, she recorded one of her most famous songs, “Back Water Blues.” Smith also collaborated with the legendary jazz artist Louis Armstrong on several tunes, including “Cold in Hand Blues” and “I Ain’t Gonna Play No Second Fiddle.” By the late 1920s, Bessie Smith’s career began to flounder. She stopped working with Columbia in 1931 and made her final recordings in 1933 with John Hammond. A dedicated performer, Smith still continued to tour.
As a blues artist, Bessie Smith could deliver her songs with such emotion. She knew firsthand about struggle and heartbreak. Her first husband, Earl Love, died. Her second marriage to Jack Gee in 1923 was an unhappy union. The couple adopted a son named Jack Gee, Jr. and after they separated in 1929, they feuded over the child. Smith also battled a problem with alcohol.
While working on a comeback, Bessie Smith died on September 26, 1937, as the result of an automobile accident. Since her death, her music continues to win over new fans and collections of her songs have sold well over the years. Smith has been immortalized in numerous works, including Edward Albee’s 1961 play The Death of Bessie Smith.
Quick Facts
NAME: Madam C.J. Walker
OCCUPATION: Entrepreneur
BIRTH DATE: December 23, 1867
DEATH DATE: May 25, 1919
PLACE OF BIRTH: Delta, Louisiana
Best Known For
Madam C. J. Walker was one of the first female African-American entrepreneurs. Her business was worth more than one million dollars at the time of her death.
Madam C. J. Walker was born Sarah Breedlove on December 23, 1867, in Delta, Louisiana. In 1905 she invented a method for straightening African-Americans' "kinky" hair. She promoted her method and products by traveling about the country giving lecture-demonstrations and eventually established Madame C. J. Walker Laboratories to manufacture cosmetics and train her sales beauticians.
Driven by her own struggles with hair loss during 1890s, Madam C. J. Walker began experimenting with different hair care treatments and products. In 1905 she invented a method for straightening African-Americans' “kinky” hair: her method involved her own formula for a pomade, much brushing, and the use of heated combs. Encouraged by her success, she moved to Denver, Colorado, where she married Charles J. Walker. She promoted her method and products by traveling about the country giving lecture-demonstrations. Her business became so successful that she opened an office in Pittsburgh in 1908, which she left in the charge of her daughter.
In 1910 Madam C. J. Walker settled in Indianapolis. It was there that she established the headquarters of Madame C. J. Walker Laboratories to manufacture cosmetics and train her sales beauticians. These “Walker Agents” became well known throughout the black communities of the United States and the Caribbean. They in turn promoted Madame Walker's philosophy of “cleanliness and loveliness” as aids to advancing the status of African-Americans. An innovator, she organized clubs and conventions for her representatives which recognized not only successful sales, but also philanthropic and educational efforts among African-Americans.
Madam C. J. Walker died on May 25, 1919, at her home in Irvington-on-Hudson, New York. At the time of her death, Madam C. J. Walker was sole owner of her business, which was valued at more than $1 million. Her personal fortune was around $600,000 to $700,000. She left one-third of her estate went to her daughter—who herself became well known as a supporter of the Harlem Renaissance—the remainder to various philanthropies. Her business strategies and philosophies inspired countless others.
