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Aaron, Henry Ali, Muhammad Allen, Richard Anderson, Charles E. Armstrong, Louis Ashe, Arthur Bethune, Mary McLeod Byrd, Willis Bluford, Guion S. Jr. Bradley, Tom Carmichael, Stokely Carver, Dr. George W. Chamberlain, Wilt Chappelle, Emmett W. Chisholm, Shirley Church, Robert Reed, Jr. Cole, Dr. Rebecca J. Conyers, John F., Jr. Coppin, Fanny Jackson Cosby, Bill Davis, Miles |
Dinkins, David |
Lewis, John Malcolm X Marsalis, Wynton McBay, Henry Norton, Eleanor Holmes Owens,Jesse Paige, Leroy "Satchel" Parks, Rosa Payton, Walter Powell, Adam Clayton Robinson, Jackie Rudolph, Wilma Stokes, Carl B. Sullivan, Leon H. Tanner, Henry Walker, Sarah Washington, Booker T. Waters, Maxine Moore Williams, Dr. Daniel H. Winfrey, Oprah Young, Andrew |
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Professional baseball may never see another slugger as great as Hank Aaron. Aaron's career record of 755 home runs in 23 years is by far the best in the history of the game. He also holds top honors for runs-batted-in and total bases and has been a member of the Baseball Hall of Fame since 1982. Aaron was a highly regarded but relatively unknown star of the Atlanta Braves (prior to 1966, the Milwaukee Braves) for well over a decade before he became an American hero in 1973 and 1974. It was during those seasons that he chased, and finally surpassed, Babe Ruth's famed career home run record. When Aaron hit his 715th home run on April 8, 1974, amidst a near-melee in the Braves' home ballpark, he achieved a "superhuman accomplishment, as mysterious and remote as Stonehenge, and certain to stand forever," to quote Tom Buckley in the New York Times Magazine. Remarkably, that milestone came not at the end, but rather in the middle of an extraordinary baseball career. Stardom never rested easily on Aaron's shoulders. By nature a reserved individual, he chafed under the public accolade that accompanied his record-breaking performance. In fact, Aaron spent the last years of his playing career in a constant state of uneasiness. Breaking the home run record brought him legions of new fans, but it also exposed an ugly vein of racism in society. As he edged past Ruth in the record books, Aaron faced death threats and other forms of hate from some angry whites who saw his performance as a challenge to their cherished ideas of supremacy. "What does it say of America that a man fulfills the purest of American dreams, struggling up from Jim Crow poverty to dethrone the greatest of Yankee kings ... yet feels not like a hero but like someone hunted?" asked Mike Capuzzo in Sports Illustrated. "The Home Run King is a grandfather now, and by tradition he should be lionized, a legend in the autumn of his life. But Henry Aaron takes no comfort in baseball immortality, in lore and remembrance." Mark Kram Contemporary Black Biography Volume 5
Three-time world heavyweight boxing champion Muhammad Ali, known for his lyrical charm and boasts as much as for his powerful fists, has moved far beyond the boxing ring in both influence and purpose. Ali won an Olympic gold medal and later tossed it into a river because he was disgusted by racism in America. As a young man he was recruited by Malcolm X to join the Nation of Islam. He refused to serve in Vietnam - a professional fighter willing to serve time in jail for his pacifist ideals. He has contributed to countless, diverse charities and causes. And his later years have found him interested in world politics as he has battled to keep Parkinson's disease at bay. Muhammad Ali was born Cassius Marcellus Clay, Jr., on January 17, 1942, and was raised in a clapboard house at 3302 Grand Avenue in middle-class Louisville, Kentucky. He began boxing at the age of 12. A white Louisville patrolman named Joe Martin, who had an early television show called "Tomorrow's Champions," started Ali working out in Louisville's Columbia Gym, but it was a black trainer named Fred Stoner who taught Ali the science of boxing. Stoner taught him to move with the grace of a dancer, and impressed upon him the subtle skills necessary to move beyond good and into the realm of great. After winning an Olympic gold medal at 18, Ali signed the most lucrative contract - a 50-50 split - negotiated by a beginning professional in the history of boxing, with a 12-member group of millionaires called the Louisville Sponsoring Group. Later, he worked his way into contention for the coveted heavyweight title shot by boasting and creating media interest at a time when, by his own admission, he was only ranked number nine on the list of contenders. Even from the beginning, it was clear that Ali was his own man - quick, strong-willed, original, and witty. In 1961 he told Sports Illustrated's Gilbert Rogin, "Boxing is dying because everybody's so quiet.... What boxing needs is more ... Clays." Ali knew that his rhymes and press-grabbing claims would infuse more interest and more money into the sport of boxing, and he was his own best public relations man. In February of 1964 he told readers of Sports Illustrated, "If I were like a lot of ... heavyweight boxers ... you wouldn't be reading this story right now. If you wonder what the difference between them and me is, I'll break the news: you never heard of them. I'm not saying they're not good boxers. Most of them ... can fight almost as good as I can. I'm just saying you never heard of them. And the reason for that is because they cannot throw the jive. Cassius Clay is a boxer who can throw the jive better than anybody." The following month Ali - then still Cassius Clay - fought Sonny Liston in a match of classic contenders for the heavyweight championship of the world. The Miami fight almost single-handedly restored intelligence and balance to boxing. Cassius Clay had been chanting the war cry "Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee" for weeks; he beat Liston in a display of beautiful, controlled boxing. Liston could hit with deadly power, but Ali utilized his skills and courage with forethought and aplomb. He won the fight to become heavyweight champion of the world. At the tender age of 22 Ali knew that he was something above and beyond a great boxer: He had marketing sense, political finesse, and a feeling of noble purpose. Throughout his career and life, Ali has always professed to want to help other black Americans - and he has, time and time again. When he returned from Italy, having just won an Olympic gold medal, he was so proud of his trophy that he wore it day and night and showed it to everyone, whether they wanted to see it or not. In the Philadelphia Inquirer, Ali's first wife remembered him saying, "I was young, black Cassius Marcellus Clay, who had won a gold medal for his country. I went to downtown Louisville to a five-and-dime store that had a soda fountain. I sat down at the counter to order a burger and soda pop. The waitress looked at me.... 'Sorry, we don't serve coloreds,' she said. I was furious. I went all the way to Italy to represent my country, won a gold medal, and now I come back to America and can't even get served at a five-and-dime store. I went to a bridge, tore the medal off my neck and threw it into the river. That gold medal didn't mean a thing to me if my black brothers and sisters were treated wrong in a country I was supposed to represent." While in Miami, at the age of 21, Ali was inspired by human rights activist Malcolm X to become a member of the Muslim faith. The following year Malcolm X said of Ali, as was quoted by Houston Horn in Sports Illustrated, "[He] will mean more to his people than any athlete before him. He is more than [first black major-league baseball player] Jackie Robinson was, because Robinson is the white man's hero. But Cassius is the black man's hero. Do you know why? Because the white press wanted him to lose [his heavyweight championship bout] ... because he is a Muslim. You notice nobody cares about the religion of other athletes. But their prejudice against Clay blinded them to his ability." Twelve years later, on Face The Nation, Ali said "We don't have Black Muslims, that's a press word. We have white brothers, we have brown, red, and yellow, all colors can be Muslims.... I'm looking for peace one day with all people." Cassius Clay, Jr., was given the name Muhammad Ali by Muslim patriarch Elijah Muhammad; it was not just a name, but a title meaning "beloved of Allah," deity of the Muslim faith. Ali retained his world heavyweight champion title in June of 1965 by again knocking out Sonny Liston, this time with a stunning right-hand punch to the side of the head. The knock-out blow was thrown with the astounding speed that separated Ali from other heavyweights; it had sufficient force to lift Liston's left foot - upon which most of his weight was resting - clear off the canvas. As a Muslim and thus, a conscientious objector, Muhammad Ali refused to even consider going to Vietnam in 1966; a tremendous public outcry erupted against him. According to Jack Olsen in Sports Illustrated, "The governor of Illinois found Clay 'disgusting,' and the governor of Maine said Clay 'should be held in utter contempt by every patriotic American.' An American Legion post in Miami asked people to 'join in condemnation of this unpatriotic, loudmouthed, bombastic individual.' The Chicago Tribune waged a choleric campaign against holding the next Clay fight in Chicago.... The noise became a din, the drumbeats of a holy war. TV and radio commentators, little old ladies ... bookmakers, and parish priests, armchair strategists at the Pentagon and politicians all over the place joined in a crescendo of get-Cassius clamor." Although Ali had not been charged or arrested for violating the Selective Service Act - much less convicted - the New York State Athletic Commission and World Boxing Association suspended his boxing license and stripped him of his heavyweight title in May of 1967, minutes after he officially announced that he would not submit to induction. Ali said to Sports Illustrated contributor Edwin Shrake, "I'm giving up my title, my wealth, maybe my future. Many great men have been tested for their religious beliefs. If I pass this test, I'll come out stronger than ever." Eventually Ali was sentenced to five years in prison, released on appeal, and his conviction overturned three years later. In November of 1970 Ali fought Jerry Quarry in Atlanta. His victory was a symbol of release and freedom to the 5,000 people watching the fight; Ali had personally survived his vilification by much of the American public, but more, he had reclaimed his professional reputation and prominence. Four months later Ali had the world as his audience when he went up against Joe Frazier in Manila. There he fell from invincibility; suddenly Frazier reigned as heavyweight champ. "Man, I hit him with punches that'd bring down the walls of a city," Frazier said to Mark Kram in Sports Illustrated. Ali responded, "It was like death. Closest thing to dyin' that I know of." On September 10, 1973, Frazier won a rematch with Ken Norton and continued to reign as heavyweight champion. Returning with a vengeance, however, Ali fought Frazier again in 1974, won the match, and replaced his competitor as the world heavweight champion. Ali fought Frazier once again in October of 1975, won that match, and secured his title. Taking time to reflect on the tumult of his fifteen-year boxing career, Ali co-wrote his autobiography - characteristically titled The Greatest - My Own Story - in 1975. In 1982 Dr. Dennis Cope, director of the Medical Ambulatory Care Center at the University of California, Los Angeles, began treating Ali for Parkinson's syndrome; Cope and colleague Dr. Stanley Fahn later theorized in the Chicago Tribune that Ali was suffering, more precisely, from Pugilistic Parkinsonism, brought on by repetitive trauma to the head - and that only an autopsy could confirm their suspicions. After losing a 1980 title bout to Larry Holmes, Ali had exhibited sluggishness and was misdiagnosed as having a thyroid condition; he was given a thyroid hormone. When Dr. Cope made the connection between Ali's decreasing motor skills and Parkinson's disease, he prescribed Sinemet (L-dopa). Ali was shortly restored to his previous level of energy and awareness; as long as he took his medication regularly, he was able to keep the disease in check. In 1988 Ali told New York Times Magazine contributor Peter Tauber: "I've got Parkinson's syndrome. I'm in no pain.... If I was in perfect health - if I had won my last two fights - if I had no problem, people would be afraid of me. Now they feel sorry for me. They thought I was Superman. Now they can say 'He's human, like us. He has problems."' In 1984 another of Ali's medical confidantes, Dr. Martin D. Ecker, ventured in the Boston Globe that Ali should have quit boxing long before he finally did - for the second and final time - in 1981 after losing to Trevor Berbick. His bout with Berbick was his 61st and final fight. By then Ali had been showing signs of neurological damage for over a year. Ali's former doctor, Dr. Ferdie Pacheco, told the fighter to quit in 1977 when he first saw signs of Ali's reflexes slowing down. Seven years later, Pacheco, a consultant and boxing commentator for NBC-TV, explained to Betsy Lehman in the Boston Globe why he feels Ali didn't quit boxing in 1977: "The most virulent infection in the human race is the standing ovation. Once you've seen that, you can't get off the stage. Once you feel that recognition ... the roar of 50,000 people, you just don't want to give it up." When Ali initially surrendered his title in 1979, he was paid $250,000 to quit, but he eventually returned to his sport, perhaps as Pacheco suggested, because the recognition had become habit-forming. Toward the end of Ali's boxing career, and afterward, his ambitions took a decided turn toward statesmanship. In 1980 he cast his lot with the Democratic Party, supporting then-Presidential candidate Jimmy Carter. In August of that year, while in intense training for the Holmes fight, he found time to work the floor of the Democratic National Convention in New York City. He also functioned as something of a diplomat in February of 1985 when he attempted to secure the release of four kidnapped Americans in Lebanon; unfortunately, he and his three advisers were not successful. During his career in the ring Ali made more than $50 million, two-thirds of which went to managerial expenses and taxes. He said to New York Times Magazine contributor Tauber in 1988, "I never talk about boxing. It just served its purpose. I was only about 11 or 12 years old when I said 'I'm gonna get famous so I can help my people.'" Indicating his continuing desire to help people, in 1990 Ali visited Our Children's Foundation, Inc., on Manhattan's 125th Street. According to Bill Gallo in the New York Daily News, he addressed the children there, saying, "The sun has a purpose. The moon has a purpose. The snow has a purpose. Cows have a purpose. You were born for a purpose. You have to find your purpose. Go to school. Learn to read and write.... What is your purpose, your occupation? Find your purpose.... What do you have to find?" "Purpose!," they shouted gleefully in unison. True to form, one of Ali's favored inscriptions when signing autographs is "Love is the net where hearts are caught like fish." Although Parkinson's syndrome has slowed Ali down, he still remains active - raising money for the Muhammad Ali Foundation and frequently appearing at sports tributes and fund-raisers. Muhammad's wife Lonnie believes "Muhammad knows he has this illness for a reason. It's not by chance. Parkinson's disease has made him a more spiritual person. Muhammad believes God gave it to him to bring him to another level, to create another destiny," she stated in People. During the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta, 3.5 billion people watched on television as three-time heavyweight champion Muhammad Ali slowly ascended the stadium steps with trembling hands to ignite the Olympic Flame. Everyone was deeply touched; however, no one was more moved than Ali himself. "He kept turning it [the torch] in his hands and looking at it. He knows now that people won't slight his message because of his impairment," said his wife Lonnie in People. Muhammad has been blessed to meet with important dignitaries, including with President Clinton, Queen Elizabeth II, Nelson Mandela, and Pope John Paul II. His travels are his main source of income - charging as much as $200,000 for appearances. He usually travels 275 days out of the year. Although he enjoys his missionary work and public appearances, Ali's greatest pleasure is when he is at home in Berrien Springs, Michigan with his family - wife Yolanda and their adopted son Asaad Amin. In Berrien Springs, he lives a modest life in a house at the end of the road on an old farm. He has a pool and a pond and a security gate with an intercom. According to Kim Forburger, Ali's assistant, "He's the only man I know where the kids come to the gate and say 'Can Muhammad come out and play?'" When asked if he has any regrets, Ali responds, "My children, I never got to raise them because I was always boxing and because of divorce," he said in People. When asked, Is he sorry he ever got into the ring?, he responded, "If I wasn't a boxer, I wouldn't be famous. If I wasn't famous, I wouldn't be able to do what I'm doing now." B. Kimberly Taylor Contemporary Black Biography, Volume 16.
Allen was born a slave in Philadelphia, and grew up on a plantation in Delaware. He later bought his freedom, and moved to Philadelphia in 1786. Allen helped form the Free African Society, a service group for blacks, in 1787. He soon came to believe that blacks should have their own churches, and founded the Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church in 1794. He was ordained a minister in 1799. In 1816, Bethel ended its link with the Methodist Church. That year, Allen helped establish the African Methodist Episcopal Church, uniting Bethel with other A.M.E. churches. He became bishop of the new church.
Charles Edward Anderson was born on a farm in University City, near St. Louis, Missouri on August 13, 1919. He graduated as valedictorian from Sumner High School in 1937. He received a Bachelor of Science from Lincoln University, Jefferson City, Missouri in 1941. He was Certified in Meteorology (master's degree) from the University of Chicago in 1943. Charles Anderson also earned a Master of Science in Chemistry in 1948 from the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn, New York. In 1960, Mr. Anderson earned a Ph.D. in Meteorology from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Boston, Massachusetts. Charles Edward Anderson was the first African American to earn a Ph.D. in Meteorology. Dr. Anderson worked at the Chief Cloud Physics Branch at the Air Force Cambridge Research Center, Massachusetts from 1948 to 1961. He served as a captain in the Army Air Forces in World War II and was the weather officer for the Tuskegee Airmen regiment, Tuskegee, Alabama. From 1961-65, Dr. Anderson worked at the Atmospheric Science Branch of Douglas Aircraft Company, California. He served as Director of the Office of Federal Coordination in Meteorology in the Environmental Science Service Administration of the U.S. Department of Commerce, from 1965 to 1966. From 1967 to 1969, Charles Anderson was appointed as Professor of Space Science and Engineering. From 1966 - 1987, Professor Anderson served as the Professor of Meteorology and Chairman of Contemporary Trends Course at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin. In 1970, Professor Anderson was appointed Professor of Afro-American Studies and Chairman of the Meteorology Department. In 1978 Professor Anderson was elevated to Associate Dean at University of Wisconsin, Madison. Dr. Anderson was a professor in the Department of Marine, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, N.C., from 1987 until he retired in 1990. He was a major contributor to a program at the university that has received national recognition for its forecasting of severe storms. Charles Anderson's research focuses on Cloud and Aerosol Physics and Meteorology of other Planets. Dr. Anderson died October 21, 1994.
Trumpeter/singer Louis Armstrong was the seminal artist of jazz history -- the first to combine trumpet virtuosity and an original musical vision with an entertainer's sense of presence and persona. The result would make him the most influential instrumentalist of his generation, and bring him the respect and adulation of musicians of all eras to come, as well as a vast audience beyond jazz that has never stopped growing. Case in point: The Guinness Book Of World Records lists Armstrong as the oldest performer ever to chart a No. 1 hit record, an accomplishment achieved in 1964 when his record of Hello Dolly unexpectedly displaced the Beatles from the top position. And 17 years after his death, Armstrong's record of "It's a Wonderful World" generated a new young audience when it was featured in the 1987 film Good Morning, Vietnam. Most recent research gives Armstrong's birth as Aug. 4, 1901. He grew up in New Orleans and received his first music instruction in 1913 at a children's home. By 1915 he was sitting in with local bands. He came north to Chicago to join King Oliver in 1922 and made his first records with Oliver the following April ("Chimes Blues"). Though Chicago would be his base for the next 12 years, he went to New York for the first time in September 1924 to join Fletcher Henderson's band and record extensively with various blues singers, including Bessie Smith, as well as with Clarence Williams and Sidney Bechet. In November 1925 he was back in Chicago, where he began recording under his own name and building the core work upon which his reputation as a major innovator (as opposed to a popular entertainer) would forever rest. These included the legendary Hot Five and Hot Seven sessions and the early years of big band records from 1929 to 1934. During this period his trumpet style exploded from powerful New Orleans ensemble lead into a solo voice whose majesty seemed to soar with a voracious and ravenous splendor. In 1929 Armstrong began recording popular songs, with various dance orchestras providing appropriate introductions and backgrounds to his vocals and trumpet solos. Unlike the work of the later swing bands, these orchestras constantly kept Armstrong at the center of every performance. In masterpieces such as "Stardust," "Sweethearts On Parade," "Lazy River" and many others, he helped lay the basis for the joining of jazz and popular music in the '30s, and set the parameters in which such players as Red Allen, Harry James, Roy Eldridge, Taft Jordan, Bunny Berigan, Dizzy Gillespie and others would work for the next 10 to 15 years. By the mid-1930s, as the swing era began and Armstrong took to performing a more settled repertoire, the period of innovation in his career came to an end. His key solos took on a relatively unchanging form, and a long recording association with Decca Records began. There would be updated arrangements of early pieces, many of them outstanding, but no new musical breakthroughs. The personality elements of Armstrong's performance now came forward in radio, recordings with other Decca artists, and cameo film roles in Pennies From Heaven, Dr. Rhythm, Going Places, Cabin In The Sky, and many more. In 1947 Armstrong officially dropped the big band and resumed performing traditional jazz with an all-star group that included Earl Hines, Sid Catlett, Jack Teagarden and Barney Bigard. Armstrong's playing loosened up somewhat, though he never strayed far from established routines. He toured and recorded with various versions of the All-Stars for the rest of his career. In 1955 he made his first concert tour of Europe since the early '30s. Another tour followed taking him to Africa, which was filmed by the CBS "See It Now" unit and became both a television profile and feature film documentary (Satchmo The Great). The international tours in the political context of the Cold War earned him the title "Ambassador Satch." In the mid-1950s he recorded his last unmitigated jazz masterpiece work, Armstrong Plays W.C. Handy, for Columbia. There were also some astonishing reworkings of his early classics in A Musical Autobiography for Decca, and several session with Ella Fitzgerald for Verve that became major sellers. He continued a full touring schedule until 1968, when his health finally yielded to a weakened heart. Armstrong died in July 1970, a wealthy and much beloved man, though his music was considered by some to be old-fashioned, and his performing style dated and politically incorrect. In 1953, Armstrong became the first musician elected by Readers to the new Down Beat Hall of Fame. Source: http://downbeatjazz.tunes.com
Arthur Ashe,once said that if he were remembered only as a tennis player, he would consider himself a failure. Ironically, had Ashe's life consisted only of his tennis career; he still would have transcended the white lines in the manner that became his barometer for success. As the first African-American Davis Cup participant and the first black male to win the U.S. Open and Wimbledon, Ashe was a stark and stoic symbol of the penetration of a lily-white sport. Ashe left his mark on the game viscerally, through his pioneering success, but also financially and philosophically, through his actions as a leader in the formation of the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP). Had he done nothing more, he would own a spot among the 100 most important people in American sports history, but as it turned out, his accomplishments on the court paled beside his efforts to defeat social, political and medical injustice. His sporting legacy is as broad in scope as his convictions were deep. He was a racial symbol, inspiring a generation of blacks to take up a previously uninviting sport. He was a publicist of sorts, joining with the likes of Billie Jean King, Chris Evert and Jimmy Connors to fuel the tennis boom of the 1970s. He was an author; his history of the black athlete, A Hard Road to Glory, and his fifteen years of opinions in The Washington Post exhibiting a brilliant intellect. He was a practical and productive activist. He was a so-called crossover sports hero. Perhaps most important, Ashe was a reminder of priorities. From what we get, we can make a living; what we give, however, makes a life," he wrote in his memoirs, Days of Grace. With sports serving as a background, Ashe gave us the gift of reflection. He made us think-and think hard-about racism, about health, about education, about charity. When he announced, in 1992, that he was infected with the AIDS virus, he made us think more-about life and death and privacy. His life was cut tragically short, yet perhaps no athlete has ever fashioned a more useful existence. Other athletes have left the playing fields for greater accomplishment, leaving their outstanding athletic careers as distant memories.
Mary McLeod was born July 10, 1875, near Mayesville, South Carolina. In 1885, she enrolled at Trinity Presbyterian Mission School and with the aid of her mentor, Emma Jane Wilson, moved on to Scotia Seminary in 1888, a missionary school in Concord, North Carolina. There she was given a "head-heart-hand" education, which emphasized not only academic, but religious and vocational training as well. Because McLeod's dream was to become a missionary to Africa, she entered the missionary training school now known as Moody Bible Institute. After a year of study, she applied for service, but was rejected because Presbyterian policy did not permit African Americans to serve in Africa. Following this rejection, McLeod began teaching, first at Haines Institute in Augusta, Georgia in 1896, and a year later at the Presbyterians' Kendall Institute in Sumter, North Carolina. In 1900, Bethune moved to Palatka, Florida where she established two schools. In 1904, she relocated to Daytona, Florida and opened the Daytona Educational and Industrial Institute. The Daytona Institute initially consisted of five African American girls in a rented house, but eventually the school expanded to include a farm, a high school, and a nursing school. After merging with Cookman Institute, the school became the coeducational Bethune-Cookman College in 1929, and reached the status of fully accredited college in 1943. Bethune's achievement as the school's founder and president won her the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People's (NAACP) prestigious Spingarn Medal in 1935. Through the Daytona Institute, Bethune proved her abilities not only as an educator, but also as an organizer, fundraiser, and as one adept at negotiating between black and white communities. She also employed these skills as president and founder of several black women's organizations, which culminated in her establishment of the National Council of Negro Women (NCNW) in 1935. By the end of her presidency in 1949, the NCNW had coordinated the activities of many black women's organizations, presenting a unified voice to the federal government to secure greater equity for African Americans in social welfare programs. Bethune had significant influence in Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal government. From 1936 to 1945, Bethune held the informal position of the federal administration's "race leader at large;" and she was one of the influential black leaders who organized the Federal Council on Negro Affairs, known as the "Black Cabinet." Bethune also became the Director of Negro Affairs for the National Youth Administration, a title she held from 1939 to 1943. This made her the highest ranking black woman in government at that time. As director, she fought for racial equality in the distribution of funds to young people and she secured state and local government positions for African Americans. In her work, Bethune emphasized an internationalism that advocated the unity of humanity. In the early 1940s, the U.S. House Committee on Un-American Activities labeled her a Communist, which damaged her reputation. Still, Bethune's support for civil rights was unfaltering: she participated in the New Negro Alliance's picket line in 1939 and she joined A. Philip Randolph's March on Washington Movement in 1941. Bethune was honored with awards for her work as a civil and women's rights leader throughout her life; she suffered a heart attack and died May 18, 1955.
Bluford received a Bachelor of science in aerospace engineering from Pennsylvania State University; master of science and doctorate of philosophy in aerospace engineering from Air Force Institute of Technology; master in business administration, University of Houston, Clear Lake. He has flown on STS-8, STS 61-A, STS-39, and STS-53. Currently he is Vice President and General Manager, Engineering Services Division, NYMA Inc., Brook Park, Ohio.
The first black mayor of Los Angeles, California, Tom Bradley served for 20 years, longer than any previous mayor of that city. Bradley's quiet, self-effacing manner attracted less national attention than other African American big-city mayors such as New York's David Dinkins or Washington's Marion Barry, but his national reputation was so strong that in 1988 he was on Democratic presidential nominee Walter Mondale's shortlist for vice-presidential candidates. The late Ron Brown, then chairman of the Democratic National Committee, praised Bradley for his ability "to hold a very complex and diverse city together." One of seven children born to his sharecropper parents on a cotton plantation in Texas, Bradley moved with his family to Los Angeles when he was seven. In high school he excelled both academically and athletically, winning a track scholarship to the University of California at Los Angeles, which he entered in 1937. In 1940, after completing his junior year of college, Bradley left UCLA for a job with the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD). While on the force, Bradley studied law at night, earning a law degree from Southwestern University in 1956. When he retired in 1961, after twenty years with the LAPD, he had risen to lieutenant, at that time the highest rank achieved by an African American in Los Angeles. Bradley entered politics almost immediately after leaving the police department and in 1963 became the first African American elected to the Los Angeles city council. He first ran for mayor in 1969, opposite conservative incumbent Sam Yorty, who labeled the moderate Bradley a front for "black militants and left-wing radicals." Yorty won, but Bradley challenged him again in 1973, this time beating Yorty with the support of a solid black vote and nearly half the white electorate. At that time Los Angeles was still recovering from the 1965 Watts Riots. As mayor, Bradley focused on improving economic growth and reducing racial tensions. Bradley was instrumental in bringing the 1984 Summer Olympic Games to Los Angeles, resulting in new jobs and increased tourism. He received the NAACP's Spingarn Medal in 1985. Bradley's attention to the downtown business community, however, often drew criticism from African Americans and others who felt he ignored working-class and poor neighborhoods. In addition, though the city charter gave Bradley little control over the police department, many believed he failed to address growing concerns about the LAPD's reputation for racist brutality. When in 1992 an all-white jury acquitted four white LAPD officers who had been videotaped beating African American driver Rodney King, the streets of Los Angeles again exploded in violence. The subsequent Los Angeles Riot left 58 people dead and caused billions of dollars in property damage. One year after the riot, which Bradley called "the most painful experience of my life," he announced he would not seek reelection to a sixth term. Contributed By: Kate Tuttle
A native of Trinidad, Carmichael moved with his family to a mostly white neighborhood in the Bronx, New York, when he was 11. He graduated from Bronx High School of Science in 1960 and, four years later, from Howard University in Washington, D.C., with a bachelor's degree in philosophy. In addition to studying philosophy, Carmichael became involved in civil rights protests during his years at Howard. He participated in demonstrations staged by the Congress of Racial Equality, the Nonviolent Action Committee, and SNCC. He was arrested as a Freedom Rider in 1961 and served seven weeks in Parchman Penitentiary for violating Mississippi's segregation laws. Carmichael returned to the South after college and devoted himself to the organization of SNCC's black voter registration project in Lowndes County, Alabama. There, he also founded an independent political party called the Lowndes County Freedom Organization that used the black panther as its symbol. Carmichael became the chairman of SNCC in 1966. He catapulted into the national spotlight that August, when he ended a speech with a call for "Black Power." Black Power became a rallying cry for black protests during the 1960s and 1970s, and it also created a wedge between SNCC and more moderate civil rights groups. Carmichael and political scientist Charles Hamilton wrote a book, Black Power (1967). A 1967 world tour to publicize the black struggle in the United States brought Carmichael more controversy in Washington, D.C. His passport was revoked for visiting Cuba and, when he returned to the United States, Carmichael faced indictment for sedition. He was never prosecuted. The following year, Carmichael became prime minister of the Black Panther Party. In 1969 Carmichael began to focus his political activity on Africa. After the Black Panthers, he went to work for the All-African People's Revolutionary Party in Ghana. That same year, he and his wife, South African singer Miriam Makeba, went to live in the African nation of Guinea. In 1978 Carmichael took the first and last names of his mentors, Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, and Ahmed Sékou Touré of Guinea. Now known as Kwame Touré, he continues to travel and lecture about U.S. imperialism, Pan-Africanism, and socialism. His second book, a collection of speeches and essays entitled Stokely Speaks, appeared in 1971.
Born the slave of Moses Carver, Diamond, Missouri, in 1861, the youngster could hardly have dreamed what an impression he was to make upon the world. A band of pro-slavery men carried off both mother and son to Arkansas, but Carver hired a "bushwhacker" who found and returned George, more dead than alive. Carver was a frail and sickly child. He yearned for an education, but there were no schools for blacks in that area. When his curiosity about plants and his zeal for an education became untenable, Carver started out on his own. His life reads like an odyssey. Picking up an elementary education wherever he could, Carver finally, by working as a domestic for a Kansas family, secured a high school education. After many disappointments, Carver enrolled in Simpson College in Iowa, having been refused entry elsewhere because of his color. Although interested in art he finally attended Ames College, now Iowa State University of Science and Technology, Ames, Iowa, where he earned a bachelor of science degree in biology in 1891. Here he met young Henry Wallace later the Secretary of Agriculture under Franklin D. Roosevelt, with whom he became a life-long friend. After Carver earned his master's degree in science in 1898, Booker T. Washington invited him to come to Tuskegee Institute. Loath as he was to leave Ames he accepted. There in a cramped "laboratory", lacking the essential tools for research he made his phenomenal discoveries which were to revolutionize Southern agriculture and to prove of lasting benefit to the world. Washington appointed him Head of the Agricultural Department as well as Director and Consultant Chemist of the experimental station. Carver's contributions were many. He developed new and more resistant strains of cotton, thus increasing the South's cotton yield. Rags, paper and other trash he converted into fertilizer. To revitalize worn out soil he persuaded farmers to raise peas, soybeans and cow peas. Healso developed hundreds of products from sweet potatoes and peanuts. Carver became world famous but so humble was he that he rejected the offers which came to him to leave Tuskegee. Not only Henry A. Wallace, but Presidents Theodore and Franklin D. Roosevelt, scientists like Thomas Edison, and inventors like Henry Ford became his admirers and friends. In 1931, Joseph Stalin invited him to Russia to overlook the cotton plantations of the Soviet Union. Carver sent some of his ablest students, but he felt obligated to fulfill his commitment to Washington, though the latter was long since deceased. Too frugal to spend his meager earnings, at his death in 1943, he left his savings of $33,000 to the Carver Laboratory at Tuskegee. In honor of his many contributions the United States, in 1952 built a monument near Diamond, the Old Carver home and made it a national memorial. There are Carver schools all over the country. George Washington Carver, however, is the only black American to whom a national monument has ever been erected. Along with President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Carver was elected to the Hall of Fame of Great Americans at New York University in 1973.
Few athletes have ever reached the level of domination that Wilt Chamberlain achieved throughout his basketball career. An offensive force second to none, "Wilt the Stilt" is one of only two players who have scored more than 30,000 points in a NBA career. A high school legend at famed Overbrook High School in the heart of Philadelphia, Chamberlain was the most coveted schoolboy recruit in the country. He opted for the storied basketball program at the University of Kansas, where he led the Jayhawks into the 1950 NCAA finals, losing in triple overtime to top-ranked North Carolina. Because Chamberlain's skills were so much more advanced than those of his competitors, several rule changes were enacted to harness his awesome ability. These rules changed included: widening the lane, instituting offensive goaltending, and revising rules governing inbounding the ball and shooting free throws. At Kansas, Chamberlain found himself guarded by as many as three players at one time. And, when opponents weren't "gang-guarding" him, they held the ball for long stretches. Frustrated by these tactics, the Big Dipper left school and briefly toured with the Harlem Globetrotters. The 7-1 tower of power joined the NBA's Philadelphia Warriors in the 1959-60 season and was an immediate attention grabber and dominating force. Chamberlain became the first player in NBA history named MVP and Rookie of the Year in the same season, and along the way set eight NBA season records. He averaged 37.6 points and 27 rebounds per game his first season, and was named to the All-Star team. Through 14 spectacular NBA seasons with the Philadelphia Warriors (1959-62), Golden State Warriors (1962-65), Philadelphia 76ers (1965-68), and the Los Angeles Lakers (1968-73), Chamberlain was named league MVP four times (1959-60,1965-66, 1966-67, 1967-68) and was an All-NBA First Team selection seven times. Named to 13 NBA All-Star games, Chamberlain set All-Star Game career records for most rebounds (197), most points in a single game (42), and in 1960 earned MVP honors. The multi-talented Chamberlain led the NBA in scoring seven consecutive years (1959-65), rebounding 11 times, and in 1968 led the league in assists. In 1961-62, Wilt enjoyed a Hall of Fame season. He established remarkable records for points (4,029, 50.4 ppg), and against the New York Knicks on March 2, 1962, he scored 100 points, a mark that has withstood the test of time. When Chamberlain left the NBA in 1973, he had captured two championships -- in 1967 with the Philadelphia 76ers, and in 1972 with Los Angeles. Upon retirement, Wilt held numerous records: He scored 50 or more points 118 times, 60 or more points 32 times, and is the NBA's all-time rebounding leader with 23,924. Although his feats were often credited to his tremendous size, Chamberlain was a true natural who possessed exceptional speed, agility, stamina, and strength. His legendary battles with Bill Russell will forever remain etched into the NBA's glorious history. Source: Naismith Hall of Fame
Emmett W. Chappelle received a Bachelor of Science in 1950 from the University of California, In 1954 Chappelle received a Master of Science from the University of Washington. From 1950-1953 Mr. Chappelle was appointed an Instructor in Biochemistry at the Meharry Medical College. Between 1955 and 1958 Chappelle served as a Research Associate at Stanford University; later, Emmett Chappelle was appointed Scientist and Biochemist for the Research Institute of Advanced Studies at Stanford University, from 1958-1963. Between 1963 and 1966 he worked as a Biochemist for Hazelton Laboratories, then as Exobiologist (1966-1970) and Astrochemist (1970-1973). Chappelle served as a Biochemist for the division of Research Center for Space Exploration. Beginning in 1977, Edward Chappelle began working with Goddard Space Flight Center as a Remote Sensing Scientist.
Shirley Chisholm is widely considered one of the foremost female orators in the United States. With a character that she has described as "unbought and unbossed," Chisholm became known as a politician who refused to allow fellow politicians, including the male-dominated Congressional Black Caucus, to deter her from her goals. In 1969 her first statement as a congressperson before the U.S. House of Representatives reflected her commitment to prioritizing the needs of the disadvantaged, especially children: she proclaimed her intent to "vote No on every money bill that comes to the floor of this House that provides any funds for the Department of Defense." While Chisholm advocated for black civil rights, she regularly took up issues that concerned other people of color such as Native Americans and Spanish-speaking migrants. She also delivered important speeches on the economic and political rights of women and fearlessly criticized the Nixon Administration during the Vietnam War. Shirley Anita St. Hill Chisholm was the oldest of four girls born to parents who had immigrated from the West Indies, and who barely subsisted on their wages from factory work and housecleaning. When Chisholm was three, her parents, desiring a better life for their daughters, sent Shirley and her sisters to Barbados to be reared by their maternal grandmother. For Chisholm island life seemed like a paradise, and she received an excellent education in Barbados's British school system. At the age of ten Chisholm returned to Brooklyn, where she was an outstanding student. Later, at Brooklyn College, she majored in sociology and joined the debating society, an experience that would influence her cut-and-thrust oratory style. She also served as a volunteer in the Brooklyn chapter of the National Urban League and in the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), where she debated minority rights. In 1949, after graduating from college, Chisholm attended evening classes at Columbia University, earning a master's degree in child education. Meanwhile, she taught at a Harlem nursery school, and later acted as supervisor of the largest nursery school network in New York. It was through administering to hundreds of children, the majority of them African American and Puerto Rican, that Chisholm learned the executive skills that served her so well in the political arena. In 1953, as a key member of the Seventeenth Assembly District Democratic Club, she waged a successful political campaign to elect an eminent black lawyer to the municipal court. Chisholm's political career took off in 1964, when she won by a landslide her campaign for the New York State Assembly. As an assemblyperson (1965-1968), she authored legislation that instituted SEEK (Search for Education, Elevation, and Knowledge), a program that provided college funding to disadvantaged youths, and successfully introduced a bill that secured unemployment insurance for domestics and day-care providers. In 1968 Chisholm won a seat in the House of Representatives, where she served on a number of committees, including Education and Labor, and campaigned for a higher minimum wage and federal funding for day-care facilities. She also secured federal grants for a number of Brooklyn-based enterprises that benefited disadvantaged communities. In 1972 she became the first African American woman to campaign for the presidency, running as "a candidate of the people." In doing so she paved the way for others like herself who, as she said in her autobiography The Good Fight, "will feel themselves as capable of running for high political office as any wealthy, good-looking white male." Since retiring from Congress in 1982, Chisholm has remained active as a political figure, an educator, and a spokesperson for women's rights. She has held several university teaching positions and during the 1980s was a critical asset to Jesse Jackson's campaigns for the presidency. She also created and currently chairs the increasingly powerful National Political Congress of Black Women, and has served on the Advisory Council of the National Organization for Women. Contributed By: Roanne Edwards
Church was born to Robert Church, Sr. and Anna Wright Church in Memphis, Tennessee on October 26, 1885. He was the youngest son of the wealthy businessman, and after graduating from Oberlin College in 1904, took a job with a Wall Street bank in New York City. Three years later, he returned to Memphis to work as a cashier for his father's Solvent Savings Bank and Trust, where he was named president in 1909. After his father's death in 1912, Church resigned as president, choosing instead to monitor his father's extensive property holdings throughout Memphis. Turning to politics, Church founded the Lincoln League in 1916. He became a major contributor and director of the Tennessee Republican Party. He was a delegate to eight Republican National Conventions, an official on the National Advisory Committee for Negroes, a leader in voter registration, and civil rights activist. Church was among the most influential African Americans in Southern politics during the 1920s. When the Republican Party lost power during the 1930s, Church also lost a powerful platform. He continued to champion fiscal conservatism, opposing President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal. While many African Americans were beginning to join the Democratic Party, Church remained a loyal Republican. Church was involved in a long-standing feud with his rival, a white Memphis politician named "Boss" Edwin Crump. Crump systematically attacked the Church fortune, forcing Church to move to Chicago where he unsuccessfully attempted to control Memphis Republican politics. Church died on April 17, 1952 while campaigning for Dwight D. Eisenhower. Contributed By: Alonford James Robinson, Jr.
Rebecca J. Cole was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on March 16, 1846. She was the second United States African American woman physician and was the first Black woman to graduate from the Woman's Medical College in Pennsylvania. Rebecca Cole received her secondary education from the Institute for Colored Youth (ICY -- now Cheyney University). She graduated from ICY in 1863. Rebecca Cole received her medical degree from Woman's Medical College in 1867. She was appointed as a resident physician at the New York Infirmary for Women and Children, which was a hospital owned and operated by women physicians, from 1972-1881. Dr. Rebecca Cole worked with Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell, the first white American woman physician to receive a medical degree. Dr. Blackwell assigned Dr. Cole to the post of sanitary visitor, a position in which a traveling physician would visit families in their homes in slum neighborhoods and instruct them in family hygiene, prenatal and infant care.
John Conyers Jr. earned a bachelor's degree in 1957 and a law degree in 1958 from Wayne State University. He was a member of the Michigan National Guard from 1948 to 1952. In 1952 he joined the United States Army and fought in the Korean War. He was an assistant to U.S. Representative John Dingell from 1958 to 1961, and from 1961 to 1963 he worked for the Michigan Workmen's Compensation Department. In the 1964 Democratic primary for the newly created, black-majority 14th Congressional District in Michigan, Conyers won by only 108 votes on a platform of "Equality, Jobs and Peace." When Conyers went to Congress, he was one of only six black representatives. He ran for mayor of Detroit in 1989 and 1993, but lost decisively both times. The 14th District lies north of downtown Detroit. More than 500,000 district residents live in the city. The district takes in an economically depressed area with a high crime rate. Once a thriving community built around the auto industry, the district lost thousands of auto manufacturing jobs, and many residents who could afford to move left for the suburbs. Conyers was the first black to chair the House Judiciary Committee, which is responsible for all crime and civil rights legislation. When the Republicans gained control of the House in the 104th Congress (1995-1997), he became the ranking Democrat on the committee, a position he has retained during the 105th Congress, which began in 1997.
Born a slave, Fanny Jackson was bought into freedom by an aunt while still a small girl. She determined to get an education and, while employed as a domestic servant, studied to enter the Rhode Island State Normal School. In 1860 she entered Oberlin College. Upon graduating in 1865, Jackson began teaching Latin, Greek, and mathematics at the Institute for Colored Youth, where she also served as principal of the girls' high school department. In 1869 she became head principal of the Institute; she was the first African-American woman in the country to hold such a position, and she quickly began to direct the course of the school. In 1871 Jackson introduced a normal-school department, and within a few years, enrollment in teacher training had far exceeded the enrollment in the classics course. To the ordinary work of teacher training, Jackson added a practice-teaching system in 1878. In 1881 she married the Reverend Levi J. Coppin, who in 1900 became a bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. In 1889, after a 10-year campaign, Fanny Coppin realized her hope to introduce an industrial-training department that offered instruction in 10 trades. To her, vocational training was as important a tool as academic education in the struggle to end racial discrimination. Fanny Coppin resigned her post with the Institute in 1902. (The school was moved to Cheyney, Pa., in 1904 and eventually became Cheyney State College [1951].) That same year the Coppins sailed for Cape Town, S.Af., and over the next decade she worked tirelessly among the native black women, organizing mission societies and promoting temperance, as well as founding the Bethel Institute in Cape Town. She then returned to Philadelphia, where she spent the remainder of her life. In 1926 the High and Training School of Baltimore was renamed the Fanny Jackson Coppin Normal School (now Coppin State College).
Born in a poor section of Philadelphia, Bill Cosby left home for a stint in the U.S. Navy that lasted from 1956 to 1960. He studied at Temple University but dropped out to devote his time to stand-up comedy. After establishing his name on the night-club circuit in 1963, Cosby auditioned successfully to fill a guest spot on Johnny Carson's Tonight Show. An instant success, Cosby became the first African American to host the program regularly. In 1965 he became the first black person to have a starring role on a predominantly white television drama, appearing alongside Robert Culp on the program I Spy. Because of Cosby's Emmy Award-winning success on I Spy, many fans considered him "The Jackie Robinson of Television." As a rising television celebrity, Cosby starred in his own program, The Bill Cosby Show (1969-1971). In the mid-1970s Cosby returned to school, earning a doctorate in education at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. Meanwhile he continued his television career with The New Bill Cosby Show (1972-1973), a comedy and variety program, and Cos (1976). An animated Saturday morning feature, Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids (1972-1977), delivered messages of rectitude and personal responsibility. In the 1980s, Cosby combined his paternal interests with the sophisticated humor of his prime-time career on the hit program The Cosby Show (1984-1992). The Cosby Show ranked third in Nielsen ratings its first season and held the number-one slot for three years. It created a glowing embodiment of the American middle-class dream and drew the attention of 38 million people. He hired black writers and directors and invited black celebrities, such as Dizzy Gillespie and Judith Jamison, to make guest appearances; he contracted Professor Alvin Poussaint, the African American professor of psychiatry from Harvard University, as an adviser; and he hung the artwork of black artist Varnette Honeywood on the walls of the set. In addition to his numerous television ventures, Cosby has continued to perform live and has released more than two dozen comedy albums, many of which have won him Grammy Awards. He also has written a number of books, including the best-selling Fatherhood (1986) and Love and Marriage (1989), and several children's books in the Little Bill series for early readers. Cosby's commitment to education has been persistent. In the 1980s he and his wife made frequent donations to African American colleges. In 1989 they gave their biggest gift, of $20 million, to Spelman College. Cosby's philanthropy has benefited many other African American organizations, including the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the United Negro College Fund, the National Sickle-Cell Foundation, and the National Council of Negro Women. Contributed By: Eric Bennett
Trumpeter Miles Davis made a career out of shifting gears and rousing his fans to not get too comfortable in their listening habits. Heeding the artist's call to stay fresh creatively, Davis reinvented himself several times over the course of his career. First, he broke out of Charlie Parker's sphere in 1949 to usher in the "cool jazz" movement with Gil Evans, and during his twilight years he noddled in the rap-jazz zone. In between those extremes, Davis helmed two legendary quintets, plugged in with the first splashes of fusion and even pioneered in the early '70s a sampled/collage sound that set the course for '90s-styled hip-hop grooves. Born in Alton, Ill., on May 26, 1926, Davis grew up in East St. Louis in an upper middle class family. After receiving his first trumpet in his preteen years, he played in his high school band as well as took private lessons and gigged in R&B bands. After meeting bebop maestros Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker, Davis had jazz on his mind in 1944 when his father sent him to New York to attend Juilliard. Instead of taking classes he hooked up with Bird, playing in his quintet from 1946-'48. After that Davis set off to form his own groups, including his first great quintet comprising John Coltrane, Red Garland, Paul Chambers and Philly Joe Jones in 1955; and his second primo quintet Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, Ron Carter and Tony Williams in 1963-'68. In the first two decades of his solo career, Davis recorded several masterpieces, including Birth Of The Cool, Miles Ahead, Porgy And Bess, Sketches Of Spain, Milestones and Kind Of Blue. In the '60s, Miles and his quintet recorded brilliant music, much of which was released in 1998 on the 6-CD The Complete Columbia Studio Recordings, 1965-'68. What's noteworthy about this box set is how it opens a window onto one of Davis' most fertile periods, a time when he and his bandmates were engaged in the fine art and magical alchemy of jazz improvisation. His music was evolving from the acoustic sphere into a free-form jazz fusion approach. Davis' most radical veer from jazz tradition came in the late '60s and early '70s when, under the intoxicating influence of such artists as Jimi Hendrix and Sly Stone, Davis ushered in the age of fusion with a steamy electric concoction of bubbling funk, explosive rock and abrasive jazz. The music ruffled the feathers of jazz purists who were unwilling to accept Davis' vision for the ever-evolving genre. However, rock fans were blown away. The trumpeter's 1970 fusion masterwork, Bitches Brew, sold over 400,000 copies in a year, making it the biggest selling jazz album in history. Even though Davis died Sept. 28, 1991, the trumpeting jazz titan continues to impact the contemporary music world. In 1962, Davis was elected by the Readers into the Down Beat Hall of Fame. Source: http://downbeatjazz.tunes.com
In his inaugural address on January 1, 1990, New York Mayor David Dinkins invoked the theme of racial progress on which he had successfully campaigned. "I stand before you today," he said, "as the elected leader of the greatest city of a great nation, to which my ancestors were brought, chained and whipped in the hold of a slave ship. We have not finished the journey toward liberty and justice, but surely we have come a long way." When he defeated three-time mayor Edward Koch, Dinkins, a Democrat, became the city's first black mayor. A contrast to the outspoken and pugnacious Koch, Dinkins's dignified civility seemed likely to soothe a racially tense city. Born in Trenton, New Jersey, as a child Dinkins moved with his mother, who worked as a maid, to Harlem. After serving in the U.S. marines during World War II, Dinkins entered Howard University, from which he was graduated in 1950. He earned a law degree from Brooklyn Law School in 1956. After launching his legal career - Dinkins did not give up his private law practice until 1975 - he embarked on a political career characterized by alternating defeat and victory. Under the tutelage of career politician J. Raymond Jones, known as "the Harlem fox," Dinkins won a seat on the New York State Assembly in 1965, which he lost in 1966 due to reapportionment. Dinkins's career suffered another blow in 1973, when his nomination to be the city's first black deputy mayor was withdrawn following the revelation that he had failed to file income tax returns for the previous four years. A new job as city clerk, which he held from 1975 to 1985, helped Dinkins rebound, and after three tries he was elected Manhattan's Borough President in 1985. In 1989 he topped popular incumbent Mayor Edward Koch in the Democratic primary, and went on in the general election to defeat Republican Rudolph Giuliani by the narrowest victory margin since 1905. As mayor, Dinkins led a diverse city with a population of more than seven million. In trying to "be Mayor of all the people," as Dinkins had pledged, he attracted criticism for indecision, passivity, and an inept management style. Qualities of deliberation and civility that had served him well in previous jobs seemed to infuriate both blacks and whites. When African Americans and Orthodox Jews rioted in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, in 1991, many felt Dinkins was ineffective in his efforts to calm the violence. After serving one term, in which he balanced the city's budget and presided over a dramatic decrease in the city's crime rate, Dinkins lost the 1993 election to former prosecutor Rudolph Giuliani. Despite this defeat, however, his tenure as mayor proved historic. As he told journalist Todd Purdum, "The value of being an African American mayor is not limited to things a mayor can do." Speaking before black schoolchildren, Dinkins always counseled that they could achieve anything, never failing to add, "you know that you can be mayor." Contributed By: Kate Tuttle
Douglass was probably born in February 1818. The son of a slave named Harriet Bailey and an unknown father rumored to be his master, Douglass was first known as Frederick Bailey. He was raised by his grandparents, Betsy and Isaac Bailey, and at first had little direct contact with the institution of slavery. Isaac Bailey was a free black; Betsy was owned by Aaron Anthony, a slaveholder who also managed the plantation and slaves of the wealthier Colonel Edward Lloyd. Frederick had his first real encounter with the institution of slavery at age six, when he was taken from his grandmother and moved to the home of Aaron Anthony. When Frederick was eight years old, Anthony's daughter Lucretia Anthony Auld and her husband Thomas arranged for him to go to Baltimore, Maryland, to live with Thomas's brother Hugh Auld and his wife Sophia. Sophia Auld took the initiative in his education, reading to him from the Bible and teaching him biblical passages. But when her husband learned of the lessons, he ordered her to stop, declaring that Frederick "should know nothing but the will of his master and learn to obey it." His outburst confirmed the young slave's belief that education mattered, and he continued painstakingly teaching himself until at last he was able to read. At age 12, Frederick mustered the courage to purchase his first book, a risky thing for a supposedly illiterate slave to do. Hugh and Sophia Auld soon concluded that life in Baltimore was making Frederick too independent-minded, and they sent him back to Thomas Auld. Auld hired Frederick out to Edward Covey, a man with a reputation as a "nigger-breaker." With several of Covey's slaves, Frederick tried to escape, but the group was betrayed and jailed. As the leader, Frederick faced sale to the Deep South. But Thomas Auld intervened, promising that if Frederick behaved himself he would be freed when he turned 25. Auld also allowed him to return to Baltimore, where he was apprenticed in the shipbuilding industry. But Frederick could not bear to defer his freedom until he was 25. After returning to Baltimore, he had met and fallen in love with a free black woman named Anna Murray, and the two decided to leave the South. Posing as an unemployed seaman, Douglass made his way to freedom in 1838 via that informal network of free blacks, Quakers, and antislavery activists known as the Underground Railroad. Upon reaching New York City, he abandoned his slave name of Bailey and became Frederick Johnson to avoid recognition and capture. As soon as Anna Murray was able to join him, the two were married. They made their way to New England and lived for several years in New Bedford and Lynn, Massachusetts. In New Bedford, Frederick chose Douglas, spelling it "Douglass," as prominent black families in Baltimore and Philadelphia did. His first child, Rosetta, was born June 24, 1839; she was joined during the next decade by Lewis Henry, Frederick Jr., Charles Redmond, and Annie. Douglass also began participating in local antislavery activities, and his reputation spread quickly. In 1839 he heard a speech by the renowned abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, who inspired Douglass to become an orator. In 1841 William C. Coffin, a New Bedford Quaker, invited the young speaker to an antislavery gathering on Nantucket. At the close of the meeting, the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society offered to employ him as an antislavery speaker. But his activism was not confined to African American issues. At the 1848 women's rights convention in Seneca Falls, New York, Douglass was the only male supporter of women's suffrage, and he remained active in the cause throughout his life. In 1847 he moved to Rochester, New York, and began a career as a reform journalist, which would include editing North Star (1847-1851), Frederick Douglass' Paper (1851-1860), Douglass' Monthly (1859-1863), and the New National Era (1870-1874). He remained in Rochester until moving to Washington, D.C., in 1872. During 1859 Douglass met in secret with white abolitionist John Brown to hear about his planned raid on the federal armory in Harpers Ferry, Virginia. He warned Brown that he would be "going into a perfect steel trap, and that once in he would not get out alive." After Brown's raid, Douglass faced arrest for his involvement in the plot and was forced to flee the country for several months. During the Reconstruction era that followed the Civil War, Douglass watched in frustration as the Republican Party, once a stronghold of reform, embraced the interests of American business and the status quo. Douglass remained a loyal Republican as he continued fighting for the causes he believed in, particularly the Fifteenth Amendment, ratified in 1870, which granted black males the vote. In 1882 Douglass's wife died, and 17 months later he married his white secretary Helen Pitts. The union aroused hostility from whites and blacks alike, which Douglass genuinely could not comprehend. During his later years, Douglass also held several low-level but symbolically important posts, including United States marshal for the District of Columbia (1877-1881), recorder of deeds for the District of Columbia (1881-1886), and chargé d'affaires for Santo Domingo, capital of the Dominican Republic, and minister to Haiti (1889-1891). Rather than retire, however, Douglass joined the battle one last time. Douglass joined in the emerging antilynching movement. In the 1890s, as the lynching of blacks reached an all-time high, Wells and Douglass struggled to rouse the nation from its complacency. Douglass's "Lynch Law in the South" appeared in the North American Review in 1892 and blamed lynching less on lynch mobs themselves than on the underlying "sentiment created by wealth and respectability." Douglass also remained active on other fronts, and on the day of his death attended a meeting of the National Council of Women.
He received a Bachelor of Arts from Amherst University in 1926. He received a Medical Doctorate (M.D.) and Master of Surgery (C.M.) from McGill University, Montreal, Quebec in 1933. In 1940 Dr. Drew received a Doctor of Science in Medicine from Columbia University in 1940. Dr. Drew served as an Instructor in Pathology at Howard University in 1936 and as an Assistant in Surgery (1936). Charles Drew was made Professor of Surgery and Chief Surgeon for Freedmen's Hospital. Dr. Drew is responsible for organizing the concept of the Blood Bank. Dr. Drew researched in blood plasma for transfusion due to longer life of the blood with cells removed (plasma) while at Presbyterian Hospital in New York, NY. He organized a blood bank in London during World War II. Memberships:
Citation for the Twenty-Ninth Spingarn Medal :
Born in a small western Massachusetts town, Du Bois and his mother - his father had left the family when he was young - were among the few African American residents. After an integrated grammar-school education, Du Bois attended the historically black Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee, and then Harvard University, from which he received a bachelor's degree in 1890. In 1895, he received a Ph.D. from Harvard. His dissertation, "The Suppression of the African Slave-Trade to the United States of America, 1638-1870" was published in 1896 as the first volume in the Harvard Historical Studies series. In 1903 Du Bois published his first collection of essays, The Souls of Black Folk, which many have called the most important book ever written by an African American. In 1905, Du Bois joined with William Monroe Trotter, militant editor of the black newspaper the Boston Guardian, in forming the Niagara Movement, a short-lived effort to secure full civil and political rights for African Americans. In its wake, Du Bois helped found the most influential civil rights organization of the twentieth century: the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). In 1910 Du Bois left Atlanta for the NAACP's New York City headquarters where he founded The Crisis, the association's magazine. From 1910 until his resignation as editor in 1934, Du Bois's editorials reveal the continuing evolution of his political thought. Increasingly, Du Bois looked beyond American race relations to international economics and politics. In 1915 he wrote The Negro, a sociological examination of the African diaspora. In 1919 he helped organize the second Pan-African Congress. Visiting Africa in the 1920s, Du Bois wrote that his chief question was whether "Negroes are to lead in the rise of Africa or whether they must always and everywhere follow the guidance of white folk." Meanwhile, starting with a new essay collection, Darkwater: Voices From Within the Veil (1920), Du Bois's writing became more militant and controversial, and conflicts with NAACP secretary Walter F. White led to Du Bois's resignation as editor of The Crisis in 1934. Returning to Atlanta University, Du Bois continued to write weekly opinion columns in black newspapers, as well as books such as Black Reconstruction in America (1934); Black Folk: Then and Now (1939); and Dusk of Dawn: An Autobiography of a Concept of Race (1940). In 1939 Du Bois founded Phylon, a journal devoted to race and cultural issues, whose radical nature may have contributed to his forced resignation from Atlanta University in 1944. Then in his mid-seventies, Du Bois did not retire but instead rejoined the NAACP staff. He published Color and Democracy: Colonies and Peace, and in 1947 produced The World and Africa. Du Bois's outspoken criticism of American foreign policy and his involvement with the 1948 presidential campaign of Progressive Party candidate Henry Wallace led to his dismissal from the NAACP in the fall of 1948. During the 1950s, Du Bois's continuing work with the international peace movement and open expressions of sympathy for the Soviet Union drew the censure of the United States government, and further isolated Du Bois from the civil rights mainstream. In 1951, at the height of the cold war, he was indicted under the Foreign Agents Registration Act of 1938. While he was acquitted of that charge, the Department of State refused to issue Du Bois a passport in 1952, barring him from foreign travel until 1958. Once the passport ban was lifted, Du Bois and his wife, the writer Shirley Graham Du Bois, traveled extensively, visiting England, France, Belgium and Holland, as well as China and the Soviet Union, and much of the eastern bloc. On May 1, 1959, he was awarded the Lenin Peace Prize in Moscow. In 1960 Du Bois attended his friend Kwame Nkrumah's inauguration as the first president of Ghana.
Ellington was born April 29, 1899, and grew up in a middle-class environment in Washington, D.C. He began playing at seven and gravitated to the ragtime and stride styles. He came to New York with Elmer Snowden's Washingtonians, and soon assumed leadership when Snowden departed. This left Ellington with a charter group of players who would remain with him for years and follow him to the top: Sonny Greer, Otto Hardwick, Arthur Whetsol and Fred Guy. Before the end of the '20s, Harry Carney, Johnny Hodges and Cootie Williams had joined, each of whom would still be with Ellington in the 1960s. Ellington's formative years cover 1924 to about 1935, when the various plunger devices were integrated into an ensemble structure of varied combinations and blends. The rhythm section that began as a choppy, chugging time-keeping tool smoothed out as bass and guitar replaced tuba and banjo. Lawrence Brown brought a unique trombone sound to the band. The period also yielded a combination of Ellington staples ("Rockin' In Rhythm," "Black And Tan Fantasy," "Creole Love Call") that would remain the repertoire until the end. The mature period begins in the mid-'30s and works up to what many regard as the band's peak years from 1940-'45, during which time bassist Jimmy Blanton and tenor saxophonist Ben Webster became confirmed Ellingtonians. Essentials of the period include "Ko Ko," "Concerto For Cootie," "Jack The Bear," "Cotton Tail," "Harlem Airshaft" and "Take The A Train," all recorded for Victor. This period of intense creativity extends into Ellington's most ambitious foray into extended composition, the epic "Black, Brown And Beige," introduced in 1943. After the war the '40s sound survived, but the compositional intensity petered out until, by the end of the decade, Ellington lost much of his distinctive voices. The modern period, or the Newport Era, if your prefer, begins around 1951 when Sonny Greer was replaced on drums by Louis Bellson and the band suddenly sprang to life with an astonishing new rhythmic alertness and vitality. Bellson stayed for about three years, ultimately to be replaced by Sam Woodyard. But the rhythmic buoyancy of the band was forever set on a modern track and inspired subtle improvements in the band's overall precision and musicianship. By the time Johnny Hodges returned after a five-year absence, Ellington was reinvigorated and ready to charge forward. The historic performance of "Diminuendo And Crescendo In Blue" at the Newport Jazz Festival in 1956 opened a whole new era of prosperity for Ellington, who responded a revived commitment to composition and produced a succession of stimulating works, from "Such Sweet Thunder" (1957) to "The Far East Suite" (1966). During the final years of the band from the late '60s to 1974, mortality whittled away at what had seemed for long to be immutable. Duke Ellington died of cancer on May 24, 1974, although the band continued irregularly under the direction of Duke's son, Mercer. In 1956, Ellington was elected by the Readers to the Down Beat Hall of Fame, partly on the wave of accolades that followed his performance at Newport that year. Source: http://downbeatjazz.tunes.com
Raised in a small central Mississippi town, Evers absorbed his parents' work ethic and strong religious values early. Friends, including his brother, Charles, remember him as a serious child with an air of maturity about him. At 17, he left school to serve in the army during World War II, where, according to writer Adam Nossiter, his experience fighting the supremely racist Nazis made a lasting impression on him. After the war, Evers got his high school diploma and immediately entered Alcorn A & M College, where he played football, ran track, edited the campus newspaper, and sang in the choir. Upon graduation Evers took a job with Magnolia Mutual Insurance, one of Mississippi's few black-owned businesses. Through his employer, Evers became involved with the NAACP, selling memberships at the same time he was selling insurance policies. Despite its moderate, systematic approach, the NAACP was still considered a radical organization by many in Mississippi. In 1954, when the national organization decided to hire field secretaries in the Deep South, Evers moved to Jackson, the state capital, and went to work full-time for the NAACP. He had two main roles - to recruit and enroll new members, and to investigate and publicize the racist terrorism experienced by African Americans. It was a dangerous job. Evers was followed, mocked, threatened, and beaten while he traveled throughout Mississippi. In May 1963, a month before Evers was murdered, someone threw a bomb into his garage. Not only did Evers continue the NAACP's longstanding research on lynching, he also worked on the legal front, filing petitions and organizing protests against the Jim Crow segregation that still made it impossible for African Americans to go to movie theaters, to eat in restaurants, or to make use of public libraries, parks, and pools. Throughout the spring of 1963, Evers was the leader of a series of boycotts, meetings, and public appearances that were designed to bring Mississippi out of its racist past. Just before midnight on June 11, 1963, when Evers was arriving home, Bryon de la Beckwith shot him in the back; Evers died a few minutes later. In two separate trials in 1963 and 1964, all-white juries could not decide Beckwith's fate. Free for more than 30 years after committing murder, Beckwith was finally convicted and jailed for the crime in 1994.
Gamble and Huff built upon their experience as musicians And arrangers to join forces as record producers. Their first national hit, the Soul Survivors' Expressway to your Heart made the top ten. Subsequent sessions with Jerry Butler, Joe Simon, Wilson Pickett and Archie Bell kept the duo in hits. But it wasn't until 1971, when Gamble and Huff formed Philadelphia International Records, that the pair hit full creative stride. The free-wheeling grooves of The O'Jays, Billy Paul, MFSB and Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes made "The Sound of Philadelphia" the streamlined, soulful successor to the stark 2/4 sounds of 60's Motown. Along with Philadelphia producer Thom Bell, Kenny Gamble and Leon huff became to the Seventies what Hozier-Dozier-Holland and Smokey Robinson were to the Sixties; the preeminent soul producers of their decade.
Marcus Garvey was born in St. Ann's Bay, Jamaica, to Marcus and Sarah Garvey. His father was a stonemason and the family did some subsistence farming. After leaving school at 14, he served as a printer's apprentice in his godfather's business. When he was 16 he moved to Kingston, where his political interests were sparked in the Jamaican anticolonial and nationalist movement. He then moved to Costa Rica in search of work, and traveled through Central America and Europe until he settled in England in 1913. There he worked for Dusé Mohammed Ali on the successful Pan-African journal Africa Times and Orient Review. In 1914 Garvey returned to Jamaica. On July 20 he began the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) in Kingston. Admittedly influenced by Booker T. Washington and his autobiographical Up From Slavery, Garvey wanted to create an industrial training school, much like Tuskegee. Garvey envisioned an organization dedicated to racial uplift, one that would "embrace the purpose of all black humanity." Disappointed with his limited success, Garvey went to New York on March 23, 1916, planning to raise funds and lecture throughout the country. After delivering speeches around Canada and the United States, he returned to Harlem in 1917, where he became known for his street speeches. Garvey's ideas particularly resonated with African Americans during the postwar period. At the core of Garvey's program was an emphasis on black economic self-reliance, black people's rights to political self-determination, and the founding of a black nation on the continent of Africa. Garvey's charismatic style, and the magnificent UNIA parades of uniformed corps of UNIA Black Cross nurses, legions, and other divisions, celebrated blackness and racial pride. Garvey urged black people to take control of their destiny: "There shall be no solution to this race problem until you yourselves strike the blow for liberty." The UNIA movement won broad support in New York's black community, and Garvey quickly gained national and international prominence. Within a year, UNIA chapters were created throughout the United States, and in Central and South America, the West Indies, West Africa, England, and Canada. The UNIA created the Negro Factories Corporation in 1918, which supported the development of black-owned businesses, including a black doll factory, which employed more than a thousand African Americans. The UNIA also began publishing the Negro World weekly, which became the most widely distributed African diasporic publication. Perhaps the largest endeavor of the UNIA was the Black Star Steamship Line, an enterprise intended to provide a means for African Americans to return to Africa while also enabling black people around the Atlantic to exchange goods and services. The company's three ships were owned and operated by black people and made travel and trade possible between their United States, Caribbean, Central American, and African stops. The economically independent Black Star Line was a symbol of pride for blacks and seemed to attract more members to the UNIA. In August 1920 25,000 people attended the first UNIA convention in New York's Madison Square Garden. There, Garvey was elected president-general of the organization, and the Declaration of Rights of the Negro Peoples of the World was written. Members of the convention outlined the formal organization and leadership, calling for a commissioner of each chapter area. The document demanded that black schoolchildren should be taught African history. The convention produced an anthem - the Universal Ethiopian Anthem - and red, black, and green became the colors of African peoples. As a result of large financial obligations and managerial errors, the Black Star Line failed in 1921 and ended operations. Constant criticism from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and U.S. government opposition took its toll on the UNIA. Early in 1922 Garvey was indicted on mail fraud charges regarding the Black Star Line's stock sale. He was convicted and given a maximum prison sentences of five years by Judge Julian Mack, also an NAACP member. Garvey appealed and was defeated; he entered the Atlanta federal penitentiary. Garvey's second wife, Amy Jacques Garvey, led a national campaign for Garvey's release. During this time, she also edited and published two volumes of his speeches and writings titled Philosophy and Opinions of Marcus Garvey (1923 and 1925). The petition drive succeeded in winning Garvey's release after he had served nearly three years of his sentence. He was immediately deported to Jamaica and barred from entering the United States again. In Jamaica, Garvey started two publications: Black Man, a monthly magazine, and the New Jamaican. But controlling and leading the different international branches from Jamaica proved difficult. A core group in the United States, continued to support Garvey; they published the Negro World into the 1930s. Garvey moved to London in 1935. For the next few years he held annual conventions in Canada and continued to publish Black Man. After suffering a second stroke on June 10, 1940, Garvey died, having fathered two sons with Amy Jacques Garvey, Marcus Jr., and Julius. Since his death his leadership and significance continued to be influential and was recognized around the world.
William H. Gray III was the son of William H. Gray Jr., a Baptist minister and president of two Florida colleges, and Hazel Yates Gray, a high school teacher. In 1949 his father became the pastor of the large and powerful Bright Hope Baptist Church in Philadelphia and moved his family north. In 1963 Gray graduated from Pennsylvania's Franklin and Marshall College and became an assistant pastor in Montclair, New Jersey. He earned a master of divinity degree from Drew Theological School in 1966, became senior minister at his church the same year, and earned a degree in theology from Princeton in 1970. In 1972, after his father died, Gray returned to Philadelphia and became pastor of Bright Hope. He continued to advocate for better housing and in 1976 made his first run for Congress, losing narrowly to Robert Nix, a black Democratic congressman for whom Gray had interned in college. Gray, also a Democrat, accused Nix of doing little as unemployment and poor housing ran rampant through his district. In 1978 Gray ran again and won. Gray served on the House Foreign Affairs and Budget committees, but after Republican Ronald Reagan became president in 1981 he resigned from the Budget Committee. In 1983 he returned to the committee, where he earned a reputation for integrity and compromise, and in 1985 became the committee's chair. Gray played a key role in ushering through Congress many of the large budget bills of the 1980s. Gray was also active in foreign policy, especially U.S. - African policy. He was largely responsible for winning U.S. sanctions against South Africa's Apartheid regime over several Reagan vetoes. In 1989 Gray, by then vice-chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, became the majority whip for the Democratic Party, the third-highest rank in the House leadership. In 1991 Gray surprised many observers by announcing his retirement from Congress to become president of the United Negro College Fund (UNCF). At UNCF, he raised large sums of money and began projects to improve the curricula of historically black colleges and universities.
Billie Holiday stands as one of jazz's great vocalists. The inspiration for many aspiring singers today, Holiday had a singular voice steeped in aching emotion and fueled by an uncanny sense of swing. She not only stamped her distinctive signature on such standards as "Night And Day," but she also contributed remarkable originals to the jazz canon, including "Strange Fruit" and "God Bless The Child." Influenced by Bessie Smith and Louis Armstrong, Holiday not only sang with passion and conviction, but she also improvised with a trumpeter's sensibility. Holiday was born April 7, 1915, in Baltimore. Even though her father, Clarence Holiday, was a guitar/banjo player in Fletcher Henderson's band, she didn't break into the music world until she was in her late teens. After being signed by Columbia Records' John Hammond in 1933 for her debut record (accompanied by members of Benny Goodman's studio band), Holiday went on to work with Teddy Wilson, Buck Clayton and Lester Young, who crowned her with the nickname Lady Day. She also toured with the Count Basie Orchestra in 1937 and Artie Shaw in 1938. Holiday became a star on the New York club scene during the early '40s and her post-war work for the Decca label gave her popular acclaim, especially when she recorded "Lover Man," which became a hit. However, the Holiday story is a tragic one. As a result of her impoverished upbringing and her constant bouts with drug abuse (especially heroin), her career was marked by a series of exaggerated peaks and valleys. By the time she was recording for Verve in the '50s, the golden days of her jazz vocalizing were long gone. In July 1959 she collapsed, and on July 17, 1959, died in a hospital several days later of a kidney ailment. Holiday's
music continues to be incredibly popular, and the best window into
her life is her autobiography, Lady Sings The Blues. Source: http://downbeatjazz.tunes.com
One of America's best-known and respected black leaders, Jesse Jackson appeared on the national scene following the 1968 assassination of his mentor, Martin Luther King Jr. In the years since, Jackson has continued to work for racial and economic justice, international peace, and empowerment of society's outsiders. With projects like Operation Breadbasket, Operation PUSH, and the Rainbow Coalition, as well as political action - particularly his candidacy for the Democratic nomination for president in 1984 and 1988 - Jackson has attracted fame, admiration, and criticism. For his work on behalf of racial and social justice, Jackson has been awarded at least 40 honorary degrees, and for ten years he has been listed among the top ten men most admired by Americans. Despite all of Jackson's achievements, however, some commentators and biographers admit to a sense of disappointment because of what he has not accomplished. Born to Helen Burns, an unwed teenaged mother - who was herself the child of an unwed teenaged mother - Jackson's childhood was marked by feelings of isolation and difference, according to his biographers. His biological father, Noah Robinson, was one of Greenville's most prosperous black citizens, while Jackson, along with his mother and grandmother, lived in relative poverty. Robinson's initial refusal to acknowledge Jackson (who took the name of his stepfather, Charles H. Jackson, upon being adopted by him in 1957) changed as Jesse grew into a promising athlete and scholar. Despite the material and emotional deprivations of Jackson's early life, one of his friends told biographer Marshall Frady, "Not only does Jesse believe in God, but Jesse believes God believes in him." This self-assurance and sense of destiny was first tested at college. A football scholarship to the University of Illinois brought Jackson north in 1959, but after being denied the coveted quarterback position he returned south, to the historically black North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State College. There he fulfilled his athletic and leadership potential, serving as the student body president as well as quarterback of the football team. It was also while he was at college that Jackson became involved in the Civil Rights Movement, first by protesting the whites-only local library system, then later by leading demonstrations against segregated restaurants, theaters, and hotels. By the time Jackson graduated in 1964, he had decided to become a minister. Accepting a scholarship from the Chicago Theological Seminary, Jackson returned to Illinois, this time with a family - he had married Jacqueline Brown the same year. In Chicago, Jackson worked hard at his studies, and at first kept his distance from the local civil rights organizations, many of which were trying to recruit him as a potential leader. All that changed, according to Frady, when Jackson went to Selma, Alabama, in March, 1965, to take part in a historic civil rights march led by Martin Luther King Jr., president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). Leading a group of fellow divinity students, Jackson arrived in Selma, met King, and made himself noticed - as much for his obvious ambition as for his leadership skills. Before long, Jackson was working for SCLC. By 1966 he had left seminary to head the Chicago branch of Operation Breadbasket, an organization dedicated to improving the financial position of the black community; in 1967 he became its national chairman. Blessed with charm, energy, and a fiery oratorical style, Jackson soon found success and local fame as the man who pressured several large Chicago organizations into hiring more African Americans. Relations between Jackson and the SCLC leadership, which had been stormy at times due to competition among strong personalities, deteriorated further after King's assassination in April 1968. Accused by some of exaggerating his closeness to the slain civil rights hero, Jackson nevertheless quickly became a national figure, assumed by some to be King's natural heir. After the SCLC board selected Ralph David Abernathy as its next president, Jackson continued with the organization, even serving as mayor of the ill-fated antipoverty demonstration, Resurrection City. In 1971 he left in order to begin a new project called Operation PUSH. PUSH, which stands for People United to Serve Humanity, grew out of Operation Breadbasket and continued many of its themes, especially that of economic empowerment. Embellishing a line from one of King's speeches, Jackson provided PUSH with a catchy and compelling motto: "I Am Somebody." Jackson began attracting large and enthusiastic crowds to his weekly PUSH prayer meetings. As his influence and celebrity grew, so did his family, which soon included five children. With the addition of PUSH-Excel, a branch devoted to educational issues, and with a new emphasis on voter registration drives, Jackson became a powerful voice for minorities and the poor, appearing often in the national media and speaking on behalf of political candidates. In 1983 Jackson declared himself a candidate for the presidential nomination of the Democratic Party. Emphasizing his compassion and fervor on behalf of the poor, the marginalized, and the downtrodden, he pledged to build a "rainbow coalition." Jackson had already been criticized for his support of the Palestinian Liberation Organization during a trip to North Africa and the Middle East in 1979. During the race for the 1984 election he faced renewed charges of anti-Semitism - for his association with the controversial Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, and for his reference to New York City as "Hymietown." Jackson apologized repeatedly for this remark, and has since emphasized his distaste for all forms of bigotry, but the stigma remains. Caught between the high expectations of the black community and the fear and indifference of the white mainstream, Jackson did not win the nomination in 1984. But he did amass far more delegates than anyone had predicted. In his speech before the Democratic convention, Jackson's dramatic call to "Keep Hope Alive" electrified the crowd, and some commentators later called it the best political speech of the century. In 1986 Jackson founded the National Rainbow Coalition. Two years later he again sought the presidency and failed to be nominated, although this time he won several major primaries and, for a while, was the front-runner. Although nominee Michael Dukakis did not ask him to be his running mate, despite that suggestion from several polls and advisers, Jackson worked hard to support the Democratic ticket, which eventually lost to George Bush and Dan Quayle. Beyond their simple success or failure, Jackson's presidential runs were significant: through them, he galvanized black voters, millions of whom he had helped to register prior to the election; he raised important social and racial issues on the national level; and, for the first time, he introduced the possibility that an African American could win the nation's highest office. In the decade following the 1988 election, Jackson continued in leadership roles, although he has passed the political torch to his son, Jesse Jr., who is a Congressman from Illinois. Despite the urging of supporters, Jackson chose not to run for mayor of Washington, D.C., where he and his family had moved in 1989. He left PUSH the same year. In 1990 Jackson began serving as "statehood senator," a position created to lobby for statehood for the District of Columbia. Jackson also resumed the unaligned diplomacy he had begun in 1979, and that he had continued in 1983 when he had won the release of a black prisoner of war who was being detained in Syria. In 1991, Jackson's intervention was responsible for the release of hundreds of hostages being held by Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. In 1996, he returned to Chicago to resume leadership of PUSH.
By the time he was sworn in as Atlanta's mayor in 1974, Maynard H. Jackson Jr. had already captured the youthful energy of the capital of the "New South," a city known for its relatively harmonious racial politics and pro-business attitude. At thirty-four, Jackson, a Democrat, was not only Atlanta's first black mayor, he was also its youngest. But he was already a political veteran, having worked at Emory University's Community Legal Services Center on grassroots issues such as housing litigation and legal services for the poor, and he came from a family long prominent in Atlanta's history. After serving the maximum of two consecutive terms allowed by Atlanta's city charter, Jackson stepped aside in 1982 for new mayor Andrew Young, the former ambassador to the United Nations, whom Jackson had recruited to succeed him. In 1990 Jackson was elected for a third term, during which he worked to bring the Olympic Games to Atlanta. Capitalizing on the city's upbeat image, strong corporate community, and international appeal - financial magazines consistently rate it among the best cities for business - Jackson won approval from the International Olympic Committee to host the Games in 1996. In addition, the city hosted the 1992 Democratic National Convention, attracting attention as a vibrant, successful, predominantly black city. In part because of health problems (he underwent cardiac bypass surgery in 1992) Jackson did not run for another term as mayor, stepping down in 1994. Contributed By: Kate Tuttle
Mae C. Jemison was the youngest of three children of Charlie and Dorothy Jemison, a maintenance worker and schoolteacher. Born in Decatur, Alabama, she was raised in Chicago, Illinois. Mae graduated from Morgan Park High School in 1973. She earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Chemical Engineering from Stanford University in 1977, while also fulfilling the requirements for a Bachelor of Arts in African-American Studies. She attended medical school and received a Doctor of Medicine degree from Cornell University in 1981. While in medical school she traveled to Cuba, Kenya and Thailand, providing primary medical care to people living there. Following medical school Dr. Jemison served in the Peace Corps, from January 1983 to June 19885. She was stationed in Sierra Leone and Liberia, West Africa as the area Peace Corps medical officer. There she supervised the pharmacy, laboratory, medical staff. She provided medical care, wrote self-care manuals, developed and implemented guidelines for health and safety issues. She also had contact with and worked in conjunction with the Center for Disease Control (CDC) on research for various vaccines. In 1985, after returning from the Peace Corps, Dr. Jemison secured a position with the CIGNA Health Plans of California as a general practitioner in Los Angeles, California. There she began attending graduate classes in engineering and applied to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) for admission to the astronaut program. Her first application was not accepted. It was her second application in 1987 that was accepted as an astronaut candidate; Mae Jemison became one of the fifteen candidate accepted from some 2,000 applicants. Dr. Jemison successfully completed her astronaut training program in August 1988, becoming the fifth black astronaut and the first black female astronaut in NASA history. In August 1992, SPACELAB J was a successful joint U.S. and Japanese science mission, making Mae Jemison the first black woman in space. The cooperative mission conducted experiments in materials processing and life sciences. Mae Jemison is outspoken about the impact of technical advances in the black population, and encourages African Americans to pursue careers in science and engineering. Dr. Jemison is based at NASA's Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. Memberships:
In 1954, the 27-year-old George E. Johnson, then a laboratory worker in a cosmetics factory, perfected a mild lye and petroleum-based hair relaxer, or straightener, for African Americans. Until then, relaxers were solely lye-based, which burned the scalp and actually damaged hair. Johnson borrowed $250 as a "vacation" loan, with which he and his wife, Joan, founded Johnson Products. They began by manufacturing and selling Ultra Wave Hair Culture for men. George Johnson traveled throughout the U.S. to sell Ultra Wave to professional salons and hairdressers. Joan Johnson was responsible for finances and bookkeeping. Encouraged by Ultra Wave's success, Johnson Products introduced Ultra Sheen Hair products for women and sold it to haircare professionals. By 1960, the Johnsons were confident enough to sell their products in the retail market and within five years the company was grossing $2 million in sales annually, despite competition from less expensive brands. After the company introduced Ultra Sheen no-base cream relaxer in 1965, sales increased again, and in 1969 Johnson sold its first stock offering, of $10.2 million. In 1971 it became the first black-owned firm listed on the American Stock Exchange. Johnson Products grossed $37.2 million in sales annually by 1975 and the company controlled 85 percent of the professional haircare market by 1975. It promoted black businesses by using black models and minority-owned advertising agencies, advertising in such publications as Essence, and sponsoring the nationally syndicated television show Soul Train. The success did not last, however because Johnson's market share began to decline once a host of white-owned businesses entered the lucrative African American haircare market. By the mid-1980s, Johnson Products was losing money. After Joan and George Johnson were divorced in 1988, their son, Eric, turned the company around financially. Joan Johnson, who controlled the company after the divorce, fired Eric and promoted two white men, Thomas P. Polke and Corey Meyer, to be president and director of operations. The move caused resentment among many family members and employees. In 1993, the white-owned, Ivax Corporation, based in Miami, purchased Johnson Products for $67 million and promised to maintain Johnson's commitment to the African American community. Johnson, John H./Johnson Publishing Company, the second largest black-owned company in the United States and the world's largest black-owned publisher. The Johnson Publishing Company of Chicago, a family-owned conglomerate of media outlets and beauty products, was founded in 1945 by John H. Johnson (b. January 19, 1918, Arkansas City, Mississippi). Johnson, while working for Supreme Liberty Life Insurance Company in the early 1940s, Johnson collected and prepared a digest of news affecting the African American community for distribution among the company's upper managers. Realizing that this news digest could be marketed to African Americans, who were largely ignored by the mainstream press, he used his mother's furniture as collateral to borrow $500, with which he published the first issue of what would be called Negro Digest. Similar in form to Reader's Digest, Negro Digest initially reprinted articles from other periodicals. Soon, however, the magazine began publishing original articles and essays, notably in October 1943, a piece written by the First Lady, Eleanor Roosevelt that was composed especially for Negro Digest in October 1943. That issue doubled the magazine's usual circulation of 50,000. By the end of 1943, Johnson had an income that enabled him to pay for his mother's retirement. The success of Negro Digest led Johnson to launch Ebony in 1945. It was modeled on the glossy picture magazine Life and sold well, growing steadily in circulation. Lack of advertising revenue and the production and distribution costs, however, nearly bankrupted the publishing company until Johnson obtained advertising from white-controlled businesses. Ebony went on to become the keystone of the Johnson Publishing Company and a familiar sight on coffee tables in African American homes nationwide; its circulation reached 2 million by 1996. Negro Digest remained popular, but its circulation stalled, hovering around 60,000. Its popularity lagged far behind that of Ebony. Johnson discontinued it in 1951 (although the company revived it in 1965, renamed it Black World in 1970, and discontinued it in 1976). In its place, Johnson launched Jet, a pocket-size (5 1/4" x 4") weekly that offered society, entertainment, political, and sports reporting oriented to African American readers. Its editors aimed it at readers who had neither the time nor the inclination to read deep analyses of current events, but who wanted to remain well informed. Jet was an immediate success. After six issues, its circulation topped 300,000, and by 1997 Jet's market covered over 40 countries, and its weekly circulation climbed to over a million. Although some have criticized Johnson's omission of critical pieces about African Americans, none can deny the company's success. By the early 1990s, it employed more than 2,300 people. The total circulation of its publications was 3.25 million, and earnings were $325.7 million in 1996. Johnson's holdings include Ebony, Jet, EM: Ebony Man, and Ebony South Africa, Supreme Beauty Products, Ebony Fashion Fair, and Johnson Publishing Company Book Division. The company continues to be a family-run business, with John H. Johnson the publisher and chief executive officer, his wife, Eunice W. Johnson, the secretary-treasurer and producer-director of EBONY Fashion Fair, and his daughter, Linda Johnson Rice, the president and chief operating officer.
Jones was born a slave in Sussex County, Delaware. In 1762, he moved with his master to Philadelphia, where he worked in his master's grocery store. Jones bought his freedom in 1784 with money he had saved. He became a lay preacher at St. George's Methodist Episcopal Church in Philadelphia. In 1787, Jones and Richard Allen, another lay preacher at St. George's, established the Free African Society, a service organization for blacks. Later in 1787, he and Allen led black members of the church in a walkout protesting a new church policy that required blacks to sit at the back of the balcony. In 1794, the Free African Society split into two groups. One group, led by Jones, formed the St. Thomas African Episcopal Church. Allen and the other group formed the Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church. Jones was ordained a priest in 1804.
Scott Joplin was born on November 24, 1868, in Texarkana, Texas. Coming from a musical family, Scott Joplin received much encouragement to study music. His father bought him a piano, and Joplin studied classical piano with a local German music teacher. When he left home, however, he could only find musical work in bars, brothels, and the like. In 1894, he settled in Sedalia, Missouri to teach piano and study theory and composition at George R. Smith College for Negroes. In 1899 he published "The Maple Leaf Rag" which was enormously successful; his piano rags appealed greatly to the public, and within a few years he had achieved great financial success with his ragtime compositions. Joplin also composed larger works in the same style. He completed a ballet in 1899, his first opera in 1908 (the score of which is now lost), and his second opera, Treemonisha. He was determined to produce this opera and see it performed, but had no luck. He personally financed the publication of the vocal score and produced a non-staged version of the opera for critics, but New York audiences were not ready for an opera about blacks by a black composer, and no one would back a full production. After the "Ragtime Renaissance" of the early 1970s, Joplin's opera was given a world premiere in Atlanta, Georgia, and has been performed elsewhere many times including a masterful performance, video, and audio recording by the Houston Grand Opera Company. Source: The African American Almanac, 7th ed., Gale, 1997.
Jordan graduated magna cum laude in 1956 from Texas Southern University (Houston). She earned a law degree at Boston University in 1959 and later that year was admitted to the bar in both Texas and Massachusetts. Returning to Texas, she worked as an administrative assistant to a judge. In 1966 she won a seat in the state Senate, where she served until 1972, when she was elected to represent Texas' 18th District in the U.S. House of Representatives. Although she acquired a reputation as an effective legislator, Jordan did not become a national figure until 1974, when her participation in the hearings held by the House Judiciary Committee on the impeachment of President Richard M. Nixon was televised nationwide. Her keynote address at the 1976 Democratic National Convention confirmed her reputation as one of the most commanding and articulate public speakers of her era. In 1977 Jordan unexpectedly announced that she would not run for a fourth term. Instead, she accepted a position at the University of Texas, Austin, where she taught at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs until her death.
Is there a child anywhere in the world, boy or girl, who has shot a basketball into a hoop and not imagined themselves to be Michael Jordan? Is there a high-schooler, a college player, even NBA players find themselves in awe of Jordan on the basketball floor. Jordan has become the most recognizable sports figure in the world and certainly the most successful. His financial empire -- endorsements, investments, movie and video royalties and of course, NBA salary -- reportedly earns him nearly $60 million a year. But it is Jordan's remarkable basketball talent that is at the root of all the successes. And it is that talent that has made every child dream. "I like to think that I've broken down some barriers, made some people think that anything is possible, whether you're white or black," Jordan said. "I'm a basketball player. I can't call myself a legend or anything like that. I just like to play the game and give people some entertainment." He has been entertaining like no other for more than 15 years. From his days a flashy high schooler in North Carolina, to the moment he first etched himself in history with the game-winning shot in the 1982 NCAA championship game for the Tar Heels, Jordan has wowed audiences. He entered the NBA in 1984 after twice being named an All-American and leading the '84 U.S. Olympic team to a gold medal. As a rookie for the Chicago Bulls, he averaged 28 points per game. He went on to seven consecutive scoring titles, slam-dunk championships, MVP performances and finally three consecutive world championships and a starring spot on the 1992 Olympic Dream Team. Even a nearly two-year retirement from basketball to pursue a professional baseball dream did not derail Jordan's popularity. He became the sports world's most successful businessman, signing remarkable deals with such corporate giants as Nike and McDonald's. After Jordan returned to the NBA, the Bulls won it all again last season. This year, the Bulls still are favored to win the championship, and Jordan certainly will win his ninth scoring championship. Jordan also starred in his first full-length movie feature, Space Jam. It was, not surprisingly, a huge commercial success. "I've been so fortunate," Jordan said. "I've been able to play basketball and do a lot of things with it. I never in my wildest dreams thought anything like all this would happen in my life." But because there is a Michael Jordan, millions of children can continue to dream.
She was born Jacqueline Joyner in East St. Louis, Illinois, and educated at the University of California, Los Angeles. She won her first of four consecutive National Pentathlon Championships at the age of 14. After graduating from high school she accepted a basketball scholarship to the University of California, where her coach and future husband, Bob Kersee, encouraged her to train for multiple-event contests. In 1983 she and her brother, Al Joyner, represented the United States at the world championships in Helsinki, Finland. They also competed in the 1984 Summer Olympic Games in Los Angeles, where she won the silver medal in the heptathlon-a two-day event in which athletes compete in the 100-meter hurdles, high jump, shot put, and 200-meter race on the first day and in the long jump, javelin, and 800-meter race on the second day. (Al Joyner won the gold medal in the triple jump.) She married Kersee in 1986, and that same year she gave up basketball for the heptathlon, setting two world records within one month. Joyner-Kersee continued her success in 1987 at the indoor and outdoor track and field championships in the United States, at the Pan-American Games in Indianapolis, Indiana, and at the world championships in Rome, where she won gold medals in the long jump and heptathlon. In 1988 she broke her own record, scoring 7291 points in the heptathlon at the Olympics in Seoul, South Korea, to win the gold medal and set the world, Olympic, and American records in the event. Joyner-Kersee also won the gold medal and set the Olympic record in the long jump at Seoul, with a leap of 24 ft 3½ in (7.3 m). At the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona, Spain, she again won the heptathlon and came in third in the long jump. Joyner-Kersee overcame illness to capture the 1993 heptathlon gold medal at the world championships in Stuttgart, Germany. The recipient of numerous athletic honors and awards in the late 1980s, including the Jesse Owens Award (1986, 1987) and the Sullivan Award (1986), Joyner-Kersee earned a reputation as the world's best all-around female athlete and the greatest heptathlete of all time. "Joyner-Kersee,
Jackie" Microsoft(R) Encarta.
Martin Luther King Jr. was born in Atlanta, Georgia, the eldest son of Martin Luther King, Sr., a Baptist minister, and Alberta Williams King. His father served as pastor of a large Atlanta church, Ebenezer Baptist, which had been founded by Martin Luther King Jr.'s maternal grandfather. King Jr. was ordained as a Baptist minister at age 18. King attended local segregated public schools, where he excelled. He entered nearby Morehouse College at age 15 and graduated with a bachelor's degree in sociology in 1948. After graduating with honors from Crozer Theological Seminary in Pennsylvania in 1951, he went to Boston University where he earned a doctoral degree in systematic theology in 1955. King's public-speaking abilities - which would become renowned as his stature grew in the Civil Rights Movement - developed slowly during his collegiate years. He won a second-place prize in a speech contest while an undergraduate at Morehouse, but received Cs in two public-speaking courses in his first year at Crozer. By the end of his third year at Crozer, however, professors were praising King for the powerful impression he made in public speeches and discussions. At Morehouse, Crozer, and Boston University, he studied the teachings on nonviolent protest of Indian leader Mohandas Gandhi. While in Boston, King met Coretta Scott, a music student and native of Alabama. They were married in 1953 and would have four children. In 1954 King accepted his first pastorate at the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama, a church with an well-educated congregation. In 1957 King helped found the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), an organization of black churches and ministers that aimed to challenge racial segregation. As SCLC's president, King became the organization's dominant personality and its primary intellectual influence. In 1959 King visited India and worked out more clearly his understanding of Satyagraha, Gandhi's principle of nonviolent persuasion, which King had determined to use as his main instrument of social protest. The next year he gave up his pastorate in Montgomery to become co-pastor (with his father) of the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta. In the early 1960s King led SCLC in a series of protest campaigns that gained national attention. The first was in 1961 in Albany, Georgia, where SCLC joined local demonstrations against segregated restaurants, hotels, transit, and housing. During months of protests, Albany's police chief jailed hundreds of demonstrators without visible police violence. Eventually the protesters' energy, and the money to bail out protesters, ran out. In May 1963 King and his SCLC staff escalated antisegregation marches in Birmingham by encouraging teenagers and school children to join. Hundreds of singing children filled the streets of downtown Birmingham, angering Eugene "Bull" Connor the Birmingham police commissioner, who sent police officers with attack dogs and firefighters with high-pressure water hoses against the marchers. Scenes of young protesters being attacked by dogs and pinned against buildings by torrents of water from fire hoses were shown in newspapers and on televisions around the world. During the demonstrations, King was arrested and sent to jail. He wrote a letter from his jail cell to local clergymen who had criticized him for creating disorder in the city. His "Letter from Birmingham City Jail," which argued that individuals had the moral right and responsibility to disobey unjust laws, was widely read at the time and added to King's standing as a moral leader. This emphasis on economic rights took King to Memphis, Tennessee, to support striking black garbage workers in the spring of 1968. He was assassinated in Memphis by a sniper on April 4. News of the assassination resulted in an outpouring of shock and anger throughout the nation and the world, prompting riots in more than 100 United States cities in the days following King's death. In 1969 James Earl Ray, an escaped white convict, pleaded guilty to the murder of King and was sentenced to 99 years in prison. Although over the years many investigators have suspected that Ray did not act alone, no accomplices have ever been identified. After his death, King came to represent black courage and achievement, high moral leadership, and the ability of Americans to address and overcome racial divisions. Recollections of his criticisms of U.S. foreign policy and poverty faded, and his soaring rhetoric calling for racial justice and an integrated society became almost as familiar to subsequent generations of Americans as the Declaration of Independence. King's historical importance was memorialized at the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Social Justice, a research institute in Atlanta. Also in Atlanta is the Martin Luther King Jr. National Historic Site, which includes his birthplace, the Ebenezer Church, and the King Center, where his tomb is located. Perhaps the most important memorial is the national holiday in King's honor, designated by the Congress of the United States in 1983 and observed on the third Monday in January, a day that falls on or near King's birthday of January 15.
John Lewis was one of ten children born to sharecroppers in Pike County, Alabama. Lewis graduated from high school and entered the American Baptist Theological Seminary in Nashville in 1957. After graduating in 1961, he enrolled at Fisk University where he earned a bachelor of arts degree in 1967. While a seminary student, Lewis participated in nonviolence workshops taught by civil rights activist James Lawson. Lawson was a member of the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR), an organization committed to pacifism, and he made Lewis a field secretary. Working with Septima Clark, director of the interracial adult education center Highlander Folk School, Lewis became a leader in the Nashville Student Movement. He participated in sit-ins at segregated lunch counters, became a founding member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in 1960, and helped organize the Mississippi Freedom Summer in 1964.(See also Civil Rights Movement) During his tenure as national chairman of SNCC, Lewis delivered a powerful speech at the 1963 Civil Rights March on Washington, criticizing the federal government for its failure to protect the rights of African Americans. Two years later, Lewis marched with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, in an effort to secure voting rights for African Americans. During the march a confrontation with police occurred, and Lewis was one of many beaten in what became known as Bloody Sunday. Lewis's commitment to nonviolence strained his relationship with SNCC when the organization grew more militant under the leadership of Stokely Carmichael. Lewis resigned from SNCC in 1966 to become director of the Atlanta-based Voter Education Project (VEP). Under Lewis's leadership the organization led voter registration drives and helped elect black politicians throughout the South. In 1976, President Jimmy Carter appointed Lewis to the staff of ACTION, a government agency responsible for coordinating volunteer activities. After Carter's defeat in 1980, Lewis returned to Atlanta and won a seat on the Atlanta City Council. He served in this capacity until 1986 when he defeated his friend and fellow civil rights activist Julian Bond in the Democratic primary for Georgia's Fifth Congressional District seat, a position Lewis assumed when he defeated his Republican opponent later that year. In Congress, Lewis has served on the Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs, the Committee on Public Works and Transportation, and the House Ways and Means Committee. Contributed By: Alonford James Robinson, Jr.
The son of Louisa and Earl Little, who was a Baptist preacher active in Marcus Garvey's Universal Negro Improvement Association, Malcolm and his siblings experienced dramatic confrontations with racism from childhood. Hooded Klansmen burned their home in Lansing, Michigan; Earl Little was killed under mysterious circumstances; welfare agencies split up the children and eventually committed Louisa Little to a state mental institution; and Malcolm was forced to live in a detention home run by a racist white couple. By the eighth grade he left school, moved to Boston, Massachusetts to live with his half-sister Ella, and discovered the underground world of African American hipsters. Malcolm's entry into the masculine culture of the zoot suit, the "conked" (straightened) hair, and the lindy hop coincided with the outbreak of World War II, rising black militancy. Malcolm and his partners did not seem very "political" at the time, but they dodged the draft so as not to lose their lives over a "white man's war," and they avoided wage work whenever possible. His search for leisure and pleasure took him to Harlem, New York, where his primary source of income derived from petty hustling, drug dealing, pimping, gambling, and viciously exploiting women. In 1946 his luck ran out; he was arrested for burglary and sentenced to ten years in prison. Malcolm's downward descent took a U-turn in prison when he began studying the teachings of the Lost-Found Nation of Islam (NOI), the black Muslim group founded by Wallace D. Fard and led by Elijah Muhammad (Elijah Poole). Submitting to the discipline and guidance of the NOI, he became a voracious reader of the Koran and the Bible. Upon his release in 1952 he renamed himself Malcolm X, symbolically repudiating the "white man's name." As a devoted follower of Elijah Muhammad, Malcolm X rose quickly within the NOI ranks, serving as minister of Harlem's Temple No. 7 in 1954, and later ministering to temples in Detroit and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Through national speaking engagements, television appearances, and by establishing Muhammad Speaks - the NOI's first nationally distributed newspaper - Malcolm X put the Nation of Islam on the map. His sharp criticisms of civil rights leaders for advocating integration into white society instead of building black institutions and defending themselves from racist violence generated opposition from both conservatives and liberals. His opponents called him "violent," "fascist," and "racist.". Malcolm showed signs of independence from the NOI line. During the mid-1950s, for example, he privately scoffed at Muhammad's interpretation of the genesis of the "white race" and seemed uncomfortable with the idea that all white people were literally devils. He was always careful to preface his remarks with "The honorable Elijah Muhammad teaches. . . ." More significantly, Malcolm clearly disagreed with the NOI's policy of not participating in politics. He not only believed that political mobilization was indispensable but occasionally defied the rule by supporting boycotts and other forms of protest. In 1962, before he split with the NOI, Malcolm shared the podium with black, white, and Puerto Rican labor organizers in the left wing, multiracial hospital workers' union in New York. He also began developing an independent Pan-Africanist and, in some respects, "Third World" political perspective during the 1950s, when anticolonial wars and decolonization were pressing public issues. As early as 1954 Malcolm gave a speech comparing the situation in Vietnam with that of the Mau Mau rebellion in colonial Kenya, framing both of these movements as uprisings of the "darker races" creating a "tidal wave" against U.S. and European imperialism. Indeed, Africa remained his primary political interest outside of black America. He toured Egypt, Sudan, Nigeria, and Ghana in 1959, well before his famous trip to Africa and the Middle East in 1964. On March 8, 1964 he announced his resignation and formed the Muslim Mosque, Inc., an Islamic movement devoted to working in the political sphere and cooperating with civil rights leaders. That same year he made his first pilgrimage to Mecca and took a second tour of several African and Arab nations. The trip was apparently transformative. Upon his return he renamed himself El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, adopted from Sunni Islam, and announced that he had found the "true brotherhood" of man. He publicly acknowledged that whites were no longer devils, though he still remained a Black Nationalist and staunch believer in black self-determination and self-organization. During the summer of 1964 he formed the Organization of Afro-American Unity (OAAU). Inspired by the Organization of African Unity (OAU) made up of independent African states, the OAAU's program combined advocacy for independent black institutions (e.g., schools and cultural centers) with support for black participation in mainstream politics, including electoral campaigns. Malcolm planned in 1965 to submit to the United Nations a petition that documented human rights violations and acts of genocide against African Americans. His assassination at the Audubon Ballroom in New York - carried out by gunmen affiliated with the NOI - intervened, and the OAAU died soon after Malcolm was laid to rest. Although Malcolm left no real institutional legacy, he did exert a notable impact on the Civil Rights Movement in the last year of his life. Black activists in the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) who had heard him speak to organizers in Selma, Alabama, in February 1965, began to support some of his ideas, especially on armed self-defense, racial pride, and the creation of black-run institutions. Ironically, Malcolm X made a bigger impact on black politics and culture dead than alive. The Watts Rebellion occurred and the Black Power Movement emerged just months after his death, and his ideas about community control, African liberation, and self-pride became widespread and influential. His autobiography, written with Alex Haley, became a movement standard. Malcolm's life story proved to the Black Panther Party, founded in 1966, that ex-criminals and hustlers could be turned into revolutionaries. And arguments in favor of armed self-defense - certainly not a new idea in African American communities - were renewed by Malcolm's narrative and the publication of his speeches.
Born on October 18, 1961, into a musical family in New Orleans - his father, Ellis Marsalis, is a prominent pianist and teacher and brothers Branford and Delfeayo are both musicians in their own right - Wynton Marsalis was well-schooled in both the jazz and classical traditions. At 17, he won an award at the prestigious Berkshire Music Center for his classical prowess; one year later, he left the Juilliard School of Music to join Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers. After touring and recording in Japan and the United States with Herbie Hancock, he made his first LP in 1981, formed his own group and toured extensively on his own. Soon he made a classical album, and, in 1984, became the first instrumentalist to win simultaneous Grammy awards as best jazz and classical soloist, with many other awards, including more Grammys, to follow. He also received a great deal of media coverage-more than any other serious young musician in recent memory, helping to bring jazz back to prominence. He has composed music for films and ballet and cofounded the Lincoln Center Jazz Ensemble. A brilliant virtuoso of the trumpet with total command of any musical situation he chooses to place himself in, Marsalis has also made himself a potent spokesman for the highest musical standards in jazz, to which he is firmly and proudly committed. He has urged young musicians to acquaint themselves with the rich tradition of jazz and to avoid the pitfalls of "crossing over" to pop, fusion, and rock. His own adherence to these principles and his stature as a player has made his words effective. In 1994, the same year his septet disbanded, Marsalis published Sweet Swing Blues on the Road, a collection of essays about the jazz life. Not content with simply playing, Marsalis also teaches. He has instructed through the educational outreach program Project Discovery and at such places as the New England Conservatory of Music. Source: The African American Almanac, 7th ed., Gale, 1997.
He received a Bachelor of Science from Wiley College in 1934 and a Master of Science from Atlanta University in 1936. Henry McBay earned a Doctor of Philosophy from the University of Chicago in 1945. McBay served as an Instructor of Chemistry at Wiley College and also served as an Instructor at Western University, Kansas City. In 1944 and 1945, he won the Elizabeth Norton prize at the University of Chicago for outstanding research in chemistry. Four years later he was awarded a $5,000 grant from the Research Corp. of New York for research on chemical compounds. He served as a technical expert on a United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization mission to Liberia in 1951. He was the first recipient of research funding from George Washington Carver's donation to Tuskegee Institute, for research on extraction of fibers from okra. From 1945 to 1981 Henry McBay was appointed as a teaching faculty at Morehouse College, beginning as an Instructor and advancing to full Professor and served as Chairman of the Department of Chemistry from 1960 to 1981. He was appointed Fuller E. Callaway Professor of Chemistry at Atlanta University in 1982 and became professor emeritus of chemistry at Clark Atlanta University in 1986. He died on June 23, 1995.
Eleanor Holmes Norton has devoted much of her professional life defending human rights and combating racial and gender discrimination. A graduate of Yale University law school, in the 1960s Norton became active in the Civil Rights Movement joining the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. From 1965 to 1970 she was a highly visible lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union in New York City, where she specialized in controversial free speech cases. She represented Vietnam War protesters, Ku Klux Klan members, and politicians, most notably Alabama's segregationist Governor George Wallace, then a presidential candidate who had been denied a permit to hold a rally. Norton's activist credentials led to her appointment as chair of the New York City's Human Rights Commission (HRC) in 1970, an agency charged with ending discriminatory practices in the workplace and schools. Her seven-year HRC record, which ranged from reforming workmen's compensation laws to helping women sportswriters gain access to the press box at hockey games, prompted then-President Jimmy Carter to appoint her chair of the EEOC in 1977, a post she held until 1981. Norton emphasized bureaucratic reform during her tenure at EEOC, cutting a 130,000-case backlog in half. Despite the negative publicity surrounding her failure to file tax returns from 1982 to 1988, Norton was elected D.C. Delegate to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1990, where she has waged an uphill battle to maintain the autonomy of the D.C. government. Contributed By: Robert Fay
The Brooklyn-born rapper the Notorious B.I.G. (born Chris Wallace) first gained attention for his work on Mary J. Blige's "What's the 411?" When he delivered his debut album, Ready to Die, in 1994, it became one of the most popular hip-hop releases of the year. In June of 1995, his single "One More Chance" debuted at number five in the pop singles chart, tying Michael Jackson's "Scream / Childhood" as the highest-debuting single of all time. Ready to Die continued to gain popularity throughout 1995, eventually selling two million copies. With its success, the Notorious B.I.G. became the most visable figue in East Coast hip-hop, and he became a target in the heated feud between the two coasts; especially, he and Tupac Shakur, a former ally, became vicious rivals. As the Notorious
B.I.G. was preparing his second album, Shakur was shot and killed
in Las Vegas. Many in the media speculated that Biggie's camp was
responsible for the shooting, accusations that he and his producer,
Sean "Puffy" Combs, vehemently denied. However, the wheels
had been set in motion for another tragedy. Early on the morning
of March 9, the Notorious B.I.G. was returning to his hotel in Los
Angeles after a Soul Train Award party when another car pulled up
aside his car and opened fire, killing him instantly. Shakur had
been killed just six months earlier. Source: http://sonicnet.com/
Jesse Owens, one of eight children, was born on an Alabama farm, to share-cropper parents. The family migrated to Cleveland in the industrial trek of the war years. In time, he reached Fairmount Junior High School.Where he met Charles Riley; a one-time athlete and volunteer coach of schoolboy runners. Building a boy's track team, Riley timed Jesse in a sprint down East 167th Street, and was startled at Jesse's abilities. Riley became friend with the boy and took special delight in Jesse's interests other than running. He walked with him in the parks and talked to him about the things far more important than racing; about life. Jesse steadily climbed the ladder of fame until he broke the world's record in Berlin, Germany. He received the official Nazi Swastika from Reichfuekrer Adolf Hitler. After receiving this honor, Owens went to the radio beneath the stands where he made a brief talk and extended greetings to his folks back home in America.
There is no record of a human being running faster. He hit the home stretch well in lead of the parade. Calmly, Owens glided along; no strain, no sign of exertion, but an automation moving along to fulfil his destiny. He had a two yard lead at the half-way mark, then he really began to go. In great big letters, America wrote across the Olympic horizon in August 1936, the name Jesse Owens along with a few others in a mighty challenge for international supremacy in track and field. And Owens did not have to exert himself to capture the coveted honor. He leaped 25' 10 1/4" inches, and then sat down to wait for someone to beat his mark. Nobody did, and Owens called it a day. His world's mark is almost 11 inches better than that, which he has registered. By winning the 200-meter dash, Jesse Owens became the fourth American to capture three or more championships in one Olympic-meet. The Chicago defender carried an article which came from Berlin which reads: "Jesse Owens is the god of the sports fans here. He has effectively demonstrated his superiority in winning the finals in the 100 meter event in which he equaled the world's record and blasted the Olympic mark of Eddie Tollan, another race star, set back in 1932, over the 200-meter route". -Rhussus L. Perry © 1998 Estate of Jesse Owens c/o CMG Worldwide
Paige,
Leroy Robert "Satchel" Satchel Paige, whom many consider to be the greatest pitcher ever, played most of his career in the Negro leagues before the major leagues were integrated. He played for many teams, including the Birmingham Black Barons and Kansas City Monarchs. Paige also took part in barnstorming tours, often playing against top major-league stars. A consummate showman and control specialist, Paige often pitched two games a day in two different cities in the Negro Leagues. After the color line was broken, Paige, at the age of 42, became the first black pitcher in the American League when he was signed (1948) to the Cleveland Indians by Bill Veeck, an owner with a reputation for attendance-building publicity stunts. He became a national phenomenon. Paige played until 1953, when he retired; he made a special appearance in 1965, pitching 3 innings for the Kansas City Athletics. Although he had only 28 major league wins, by some accounts Paige had pitched a total of 2,500 games during his career. He was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1971. Satchel Paige was the nearest thing to a legend that ever came out of the Negro Leagues. The tall, lanky right hander parlayed a pea-sized fastball, nimble wit, and a colorful personality into a household name that is recognized by people who know little about baseball itself, and even less about the players who performed in the Jim Crow era of organized baseball. His name has become synonymous with the barnstorming exhibitions played between traveling black teams and their white counterparts. Source: www.negro-league.columbus.oh.us/paige.htm
Rosa Parks was the granddaughter of former slaves and the daughter of James McCauley, a carpenter, and Leona McCauley, a rural schoolteacher. The future civil rights leader grew up in Montgomery, Alabama, where she attended the all-black Alabama State College. In 1932 Parks married Raymond Parks, a barber, with whom she became active in Montgomery's chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Raymond Parks' s volunteer efforts went toward helping to free the defendants in the famous Scottsboro case, and Rosa Parks worked as the chapter's youth adviser. In 1943, when Rosa Parks actually joined the NAAC, her involvement with the organization became even greater as she worked with the organization's state president E. D. Nixon to mobilize a voter registration drive in Montgomery. That same year Parks also was elected secretary of the Montgomery branch. In the early 1950s Parks found work as a tailor's assistant at the Montgomery Fair Department Store. She had a part-time job working as a seamstress for Virginia and Clifford Durr, a white liberal couple who encouraged Parks in her civil rights work. On December 1, 1955, Parks took her seat in the front of the "colored section" of a Montgomery bus. When the driver asked Parks and three other black riders to relinquish their seats to whites, Parks refused (the others complied). The driver called the police, and Parks was arrested. Later that night she was released, after Nixon and the Durrs posted a $100 bond. Although three black women had been arrested earlier that year for similar acts of defiance, and Parks herself had been thrown off a bus by the same driver 12 years before, this time the opponents of segregation were prepared to mount a counterattack. The Montgomery chapter of the NAACP had been looking for a test case to challenge the legality of segregated bus seating, and to woo public opinion with a series of protests. The morning after her arrest, Parks agreed to let the NAACP take on her case. Another organization, the Women's Political Council (WPC), led by JoAnn Robinson, initiated the idea of a one-day bus boycott. Within 24 hours of Parks's defiance, the WPC had distributed more than 52,000 fliers announcing the bus boycott which was to take place the day of Parks's trial. On December 5, as buses went through their routes virtually empty, Parks was convicted by the local court. She refused to pay the fine of $14, and with the help of her lawyer, Ed D. Gray, appealed to the circuit court. On the evening of December 5, several thousand protesters crowded into the Holt Street Baptist Church to create the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA) and to rally behind its new president, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., who had just moved to Montgomery as the new pastor at the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church. What was planned as a day-long bus boycott swelled to 381 days, during which time 42,000 protesters walked, carpooled, or took taxis, rather than ride the segregated city buses of Montgomery. In a move designed to reverse the segregation laws on public transportation, King and the MIA filed a separate case in United States District Court. The District Court ruled for the plaintiffs, declaring segregated seating on buses unconstitutional, and a decision later upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court. Parks was widely known as "the Mother of the Civil Rights Movement." Parks and her husband relocated to Detroit, Michigan in 1957, where they struggled financially for the next eight years. Parks's fortunes improved somewhat in 1965, when Congressman John Conyers hired her as an administrative assistant, a position she held until 1987. Parks has remained a committed activist. In the 1980s she worked in support of the South African antiapartheid movement, and in 1987 she founded the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self-Development in Detroit, a career counseling center for black youth. A friend once described Parks as someone who, as a rule, did not defy authority, but once determined on a course of action, refused to back down: " She might ignore you, go around you, but never retreat."
The name Walter Payton is one that needs no introduction. Walter's Chicago Bear records from 1975 through 1987 are long and impressive. While primarily a running back, Walter could also surprise defenses by throwing the ball as well. He was the NFL Player of the year and Most Valuable Player in both 1977 and 1985. His list of accomplishments includes catching 495 pass receptions for 4,538 yards and 15 touchdowns, and passing 34 times for 331 yards and 8 touchdowns. Walter's historical career as a running back helped to establish him as the All-Time leader in running and combined net yards. Walter contributed 16,726 rushing yards with 100 touchdowns during his tenure with the bears. He was a first round draft choice from Jackson State, played in nine Pro Bowls, held the single game rushing record of 275 yards against central division rivals -- the Minnesota Vikings, and ran for over 100 yards in 77 games. While always being the number one target of defensive opponents, Walter missed only one game in his career -- a game in his rookie season due to a bruised thigh, and he went on to play 186 consecutive games. In 1998 Walter continued his many philanthropic works through his Walter Payton Foundation and The Alliance for the Children. Through his personal involvement and devotion to children's causes he eased the suffering of many of our nation's neediest children. The drive and determination Walter exhibited in his on-field performances with the Chicago Bears continued to serve him well in his business career, including his Payton Power Equipment Company, the premier provider of heavy equipment to industrial and construction businesses in the Chicagoland area and nationally. In 1998 Walter began turning his attention to the Entertainment and Television Industry. In addition to being a highly sought-after motivational speaker, Walter was able to leverage his personal charisma and his insight into the world of sports into becoming a nationally beloved personality. He continued to lend his on-screen dynamism to a variety of projects:
In 1999 Walter's primary focus was to regain his health to continue his philanthropic work as well as to develop new projects.
Adam Clayton Powell Jr. grew up in Harlem, where his father was the minister of Abyssinian Baptist Church, one of the largest congregations in the nation. After a poor academic performance at City College of New York, Powell attended Colgate University in Hamilton, New York. Light-skinned enough to pass as white, he did so. When fellow students learned he was black, both the whites among whom he had tried to live and the blacks whose ethnicity he had rejected were angered. On graduation, Powell helped in his father's church and went to Union Theological Seminary for studies, which he soon terminated. He instead working towards a master's degree in religious education from Columbia University, assisting his father until 1937, when Adam Sr. retired and Adam Jr. became pastor of Abyssinian. Asked by the New York Post to comment on the Harlem Riot of 1935, he obliged with a scathing attack on discrimination and on police brutality. These articles led to a regular "Soap Box" column in the New York Amsterdam News and later the People's Voice, which Powell cofounded and published from 1942 to 1946. He also used the pulpit to spur political action. Through marches to city hall and Harlem Hospital, he protested discrimination in hiring and services. He also led the "Don't Buy Where You Can't Work" campaign against New York's stores, which succeeded in breaking hiring barriers. His pressure on utility companies and a highly successful strike against New York City buses resulted in quotas for the hiring of blacks. In 1941 Powell won a city council seat as an independent. He continued to challenge discrimination, particularly in New York's public schools, occasionally irritating even reformist mayor Fiorello LaGuardia. In 1943 a new congressional district was established in Harlem that would almost certainly produce the state's first black congressperson. Powell undertook an ambitious campaign for the seat, winning the support of Democrats (on whose ticket he ran), Republicans, and Communists. In 1945 he became the second of two black members then serving in the Congress. In his first year Powell denounced First Lady Bess Truman for her affiliation with the Daughters of the American Revolution, which then had racially discriminatory policies. President Harry S. Truman was outraged and Powell fell out of favor with the White House. In the 1956 presidential election, Powell infuriated his party by supporting Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower, whom he saw as mildly progressive on civil rights. However, in 1960 Powell campaigned ardently for Democrat John F. Kennedy and brought with him many of the black votes that had gone to Eisenhower in 1956. Kennedy's narrow victory coincided with Powell's rise to chairman of the House Committee on Education and Labor, the first time an African American chaired such a powerful committee. Powell was highly instrumental in passing much of the progressive legislation enacted in the 1960s, including increases to the minimum wage; creation of Medicare, Medicaid, and Head Start; and protection of civil rights. A version of the Powell Amendment was finally codified in the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964. At the same time that Powell's power was growing, his support was being drained by accusations and scandals. The most serious of these emerged in the early 1950s when several of his aides were convicted of income tax evasion and rumors circulated that they had also given kickbacks from their salary to Powell. Powell was also indicted for tax evasion in 1958, but his trial resulted in a hung jury and the Department of Justice declined to retry him. In 1960 Powell was embroiled again when he accused a constituent of being a "bag woman" - someone who transported payoffs to police from illegal gambling rackets. The woman sued for libel and won a large judgment against Powell, who refused to honor the court's decision and its warrants. The case dragged on for years before Powell agreed to settle. Powell also received negative publicity for his many absences from Congress and for his personal extravagances. In 1966 a House committee found that Powell had improperly placed his wife on his committee's payroll and traveled at committee expense on vacations to Europe and the Bahamas. Powell maintained he was doing neither more nor less than his colleagues and was being held to a racist double-standard. After the November 1966 elections, the House voted to deny to seat Powell. He challenged the vote, and in 1969 the U.S. Supreme Court held that although Congress could expel a member, it could not deny to seat someone duly elected. Powell was finally seated, after an absence of two years, but without his seniority and with his pay docked to pay for financial abuses. In 1970 Charles Rangel emerged from a field of several Democratic challengers to defeat him.
The first African American superstar of country music, Charley Pride is a three-time Grammy Award winner whose supple baritone voice has won him international fame. He was the first black to perform at the Grand Ole Opry. A prolific artist, Pride has recorded more than 30 albums. Born on March 18, 1939, in Slege, Mississippi, Charley Pride grew up listening to late night radio broadcasts of the Grand Ole Opry, country music's most famous showcase. Although he taught himself guitar at age 14, Pride soon turned his attention to a professional baseball career. At age 16, he left the cotton fields of Slege for a stint in the Negro American baseball league. During his baseball career, Pride sang on public address systems and in taverns. In 1963, country singer Red Sovine heard Pride and arranged for him to attend an audition in Nashville one year later. This led to a recording contract with the RCA label and produced the 1964 hit "Snakes Crawl at Night." Throughout the 1960s, Pride toured incessantly, appearing at concert dates and state fairs, as well as on radio and television. In 1967, Pride debuted at the Grand Ole Opry and within the same year hit the charts with singles "Does My Ring Hurt Your Finger?" and "I Know One." With the release of 1969's The Sensational Charley Pride and the subsequent year's Just Plain Charley, Pride found himself entering the decade of his greatest recognition. By the time he received the Country Music Award for Entertainer of the Year in 1970, Pride had already achieved tremendous success as a major figure in the popular cultural scene of the United States. Other honors included Billboard's Trendsetter Award and the Music Operators of America's Entertainer of the Year Award. In the 1980s, Pride not only continued to find success as a music star, he became a successful entrepreneur. Making his home on a 240-acre estate in North Dallas, Texas, Pride emerged as a majority stockholder in the First Texas Bank and part owner of Cecca Productions. Pride made more history in the 1993, when he became the first black to join the cast of the Grand Ole Opry since DeFord Bailey's presence nearly 52 years earlier. The following year, Pride published his autobiography entitled Pride: The Charley Pride Story. Source: The African American Almanac.
In 1945, Robinson signed his first professional baseball contract with the Kansas City Monarchs of the Negro American League. The educated Robinson, a nondrinker and nonsmoker, spent an unhappy season with the Monarchs. He never grew accustomed to the frantic lifestyle that existed in Negro League baseball. Despite the free-lancing structure of black baseball, he hit an unofficial .345 in his only abbreviated season, earning a trip to the league's East-West All-Star Game. On Aug. 28, 1945, Major League Baseball broke its apartheid agreement, when Branch Rickey, owner of the Brooklyn Dodgers, signed Robinson. Arguably not the best talent in the Negro Leagues, he was chosen for many reasons. He had an integrated background, a college education and was an established sports star accustomed to fame and playing before large audiences. Many white players doubted his ability to integrate Major League baseball. One was Cleveland Indians pitcher Bob Feller, "He's tied up in the shoulders and can't hit an inside pitch to save his neck. If he were a white man, I doubt they would even consider him big league material." In 1946, Robinson joined the Dodger's farm club, the Montreal Royals. In his debut year, he beat out teammate Al Campanis for the AAA International League batting title with a .349 average, leading the Royals to the Little World Series championship. After the season, he formed his own team of all-stars and played a 14-game series against all comers. Following the baseball tour, he joined the highly regarded professional Los Angeles Red Devils basketball team for the winter season. On April 11, 1947, Jackie Robinson signed for $5,000 with a bonus of $3,500 to wear Dodger blue. Robinson played first base in his rookie season, batting .297 and led the National League in stolen bases (29). He won The Sporting News' Rookie of the Year (renamed in his honor in 1987) and thrust the Dodgers to a National League pennant. Considered a novelty by some baseball critics, Robinson's Major League baptismal on the field was not. Fans released black cats onto the field, white teammates rubbed his head for good luck, others spit tobacco juice in his face and opponents attempted to spike him. Off the field, he faced death threats, dear nigger letters and subjected daily to segregated public accommodations. These racial barriers only served to inspire Robinson to higher standards. In 1949, now playing second base, he captured the batting title with a .342 average, leading the league with 37 stolen bases, and earned the league's highest honor, the Most Valuable Player award. He ranked in the top five of every major offensive category except for home runs and walks. He also had a fielding percentage of .992 and led NL second basemen in double plays made for four straight years, 1949-1952. Robinson was named to six All-Star teams and stole home plate 19 times in his 10-year career. From 1947 to 1956, Robinson compiled a lifetime average of .311 and helped the Dodgers win six National League pennants and their only world championship in 1955. Former Dodger manager Leo Durocher once claimed, "He didn't just come to play, he came to beat you." Former home run king Ralph Kiner added, "Robinson was the only player I ever saw who could completely turn a game around by himself." Source: http://www.majorleaguebaseball.com
Wilma Rudolph is the only American woman runner ever to win three gold medals in the Olympic games. Her performance was all the more remarkable in light of the fact that she had double pneumonia and scarlet fever as a young child and count not walk without braces until age 11. Rudolph was born on June 23, 1940, in St. Bethlehem, Tennessee, the 17th of 19 children, and soon moved with her family to Clarksville. At an early age, she survived polio and scarlet fever, only to be left with the use of one leg. Through daily leg massages administered in turn by different members of her family, she progressed to the point where she was able walk only with the aid of a special shoe. Three years later, however, she discarded the shoe, and began joining her brother in backyard basketball games. At Burt High School in Clarksville, while a sophomore, Rudolph broke the state basketball record for girls. As a sprinter, she was undefeated in all of her high school track meets. In 1957, Rudolph enrolled at Tennessee State University and began setting her sights for the Olympic games in Rome. In the interim, she gained national recognition in collegiate meets, setting the world record for 2000 meters in July of 1960. In the Olympics, she earned the title of the "World's Fastest Woman" by winning gold medals for the 100-meter dash, the 200-meter dash (Olympic record), and for anchoring the 400-meter relay (world record). She was named by the Associated Press as the U.S. Female Athlete of the Year for 1960, and also won United Press Athlete of the Year honors. Rudolph served as a track coach, an athletic consultant, and assistant director of athletics for the Mayor's Youth Foundation in Chicago. She was also the founder of the Wilma Rudolph Foundation. Rudolph, a noted goodwill ambassador, was also a talk show hostess and active on the lecture circuit. On November 12, 1994, Wilma Rudolph died at her home in Brentwood, Tennessee of a malignant brain tumor. Source: The African American Almanac, 7th ed., Gale, 1997.
Initially successful at negotiating between conservative white interests and urban black concerns, Stokes faced a decline in popularity after an armed conflict between black nationalists and Cleveland police officers sparked rioting in an African American neighborhood. Stokes served two terms as mayor of Cleveland, until 1971, but decided not to run for a third term when this conflict overshadowed the improvements his administration had made in city streets, welfare, and water purification. He later worked as a reporter, a labor lawyer, and a municipal court judge.
Raised by his grandmother who encouraged him to help the disadvantaged, Leon Sullivan pursued this goal by entering the ministry. He was pastor of Philadelphia's Zion Baptist Church from 1950 to 1988. In 1964 he founded the Opportunities Industrialization Centers of America (OIC), which provided educational and vocational training for unskilled African American workers. For this work Sullivan was awarded the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People's prestigious Spingarn Medal in 1971. By 1980, the OIC had grown into a national force, and, by 1993, despite funding cuts, the OIC's programs had been instituted in several sub-Saharan African countries. In 1977, Sullivan enumerated six principles which were guidelines for American corporations doing business in South Africa. Known as the Sullivan Principles, these guidelines were designed to use American corporate power to promote fair treatment for black workers. Sullivan himself declared the principles a failure in 1987 because apartheid continued. In 1991, Sullivan received two honors for his work with the American and African poor: the Presidential Medal of Freedom in the United States, and the Distinguished Service Award, the highest honor awarded in the Côte d'Ivoire.
One of the first African-American artists to achieve a reputation in both America and Europe, Henry Ossawa Tanner worked in the Naturalist and genre traditions of American art. Though his work grew increasingly mainstream and allegorical, his early depictions of humble black folk about their daily lives are regarded as classic statements of African-American pride and dignity. The son of an African Methodist Episcopal minister, Benjamin Tucker Tanner, and his wife Sarah, who had escaped on the Underground Railroad as a child, Tanner was raised primarily in Philadelphia and began to paint when he was thirteen. From 1879-1885 he studied with the dean of the American Naturalist school, Thomas Eakins, at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts before setting up his own Philadelphia studio. With the patronage of Bishop and Mrs. Hartzell, Tanner traveled to Europe in 1891, settling in Paris, which would become his primary residence for the remainder of his life. Not only did Tanner enjoy the relative freedom from prejudice he experienced in Paris, but he also found it refreshing to be judged solely on his artistic merits without any of the baggage associated with race and color. Before long his work was accepted by the principal French salons and galleries, where he continued to exhibit for the rest of his career. In 1899 Booker T. Washington visited Tanner in Paris and published an article which helped to establish Tanner's artistic reputation in America. By 1925 THE CRISIS, the historic African-American journal, featured Tanner on its cover along with W.E.B. Du Bois, Frederick Douglass, Samuel Taylor-Coleridge as models of African-American creative geniuses. The most famous of paintings THE BANJO LESSON (inspired by Paul Laurence Dunbar's poem, A BANJO SONG) and THE THANKFUL POOR stand alongside William Sidney Mount's paintings in the 19th century for the nobility and simplicity of portraiture of African-Americans. In them Tanner was able to encase deeply personal and poignant themes in the visual language of the great masters. In his later work Tanner, influenced by his travels to Tangiers and the Holy Land, focused on Biblical subjects using a subtle palette and lyrical luminism to portray psychologically modern interpretations of archtepypal themes.
Born to indigent former slaves Owen and Minerva Breedlove, Sarah Walker grew up in poverty on the Burney plantation in Delta, Louisiana, working in the cotton fields from sunrise to sunset. Uneducated in her youth, she learned as an adult to read and write. At 14, she married Moses McWilliams who was reportedly killed by a white lynch mob two years after their daughter A'Lelia's birth in 1885. Walker worked as a domestic until she took several risks as an entrepreneur in black woman's hair care products. To meet the needs of women who did not have running water, supplies or equipment, Walker created a hot comb with specially spaced teeth to soften or straighten black hair, as well as her Wonderful Hair Grower for women who had experienced hair loss through improper care. Business differences ended her marriage to C. J. Walker, a newspaperman whose advertising and mail order knowledge contributed to the business. Walker was the first woman to sell products via mail order, to organize a nationwide membership of door-to-door agents, The Madame C. J. Walker Hair Culturists Union of America, as well as to open her own beauty school, the Walker College of Hair Culture. She and her daughter A'lelia established a chain of beauty parlors throughout the U.S., the Caribbean, and South America. By 1914, company earnings grossed over a million dollars. In addition to her substantial contributions to black women's education, Walker owned a house in Harlem, dubbed the "Dark Tower," and Villa Lewaro, a neo-Palladian-style, 34-room mansion designed by Vetner Woodson Tandy, the first registered black architect. Walker's homes were frequented by Harlem Renaissance notables after her death in 1919 when her daughter took over the helm. Walker's empire, in keeping with her wishes, has since been exclusively managed only by her female descendants. In 1976, Villa Lewaro was listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Washington was born Booker Taliaferro, a slave, in rural Virginia. His mother, Jane, was the plantation's cook; his father was a white man whose identity he never knew. Washington worked as a servant in the plantation house until he was liberated by Union troops near the end of the Civil War. After the war, his family moved to Malden, West Virginia, where they joined Washington Ferguson, also a former slave, whom Jane had married during the war. To help support the family, Washington worked first in a salt furnace, then in a coal mine, and later as a houseboy in the home of General Lewis Ruffner, who owned the mines. During this time, and despite opposition from his stepfather, Booker attended a school for blacks while continuing to work. At school, he gave himself the last name Washington for reasons still debated by historians. In 1872 Washington left Malden, traveling on foot to Virginia's Hampton Institute, which had opened only a few years earlier as a school for blacks. Its white principal, General Samuel Chapman Armstrong, was the son of missionaries to Hawaii and a commander of black Union troops during the war. Washington secured a white benefactor to pay his tuition. Graduating with honors in 1875, Washington returned to West Virginia to teach. In 1878 he attended Wayland Seminary in Washington, D.C., a school with a decidedly coventional training in the liberal arts. After a year at Wayland, Washington returned to Hampton, this time as a member of the faculty. In 1881, when Armstrong was asked by the state of Alabama to name a white principal to head a new school for blacks, he instead suggested Washington.
Maxine Moore Waters gained national recognition during the 1992 Los Angeles riots, when she emerged as one of the black community's principal voices in Congress. She assailed the long-term neglect of America's inner cities, an issue that had propelled her political career from its beginning. The fifth of thirteen children born to Remus and Velma Lee Carr Moore, Waters grew up in a housing project in St. Louis, Missouri. Inspired by a fifth-grade math teacher who took a special interest in her, Waters set high expectations for herself and assumed leadership roles in school. In the late 1960s, she became a spokesperson for the Los Angeles-based Head Start program, where she taught after working as a factory worker and telephone operator. Meanwhile, Waters attended California State University, majoring in sociology, and brought up her two children with her husband Edward Waters, a factory worker. In 1973 Waters was appointed chief deputy to city council member David Cunningham, and later campaigned for U.S. Senator Alan Cranston and Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley. She launched her own political career in 1976, when she was elected to the California State Assembly. During her 14 year tenure as an assemblyperson, her legislative successes were numerous and diverse, ranging from a law that curbed California's business investment in South Africa, to a training program for child abuse prevention. She prioritized women's rights and helped to found the National Political Congress of Black Women in 1984. In 1990 Waters was elected to the U.S. Congress, where she advocated for minorities and urban renewal. In 1993 she introduced and won passage of a bill that provided 50 million dollars for an innovative training program for disadvantaged youth nationwide. In 1997 she became the third woman to chair the Congressional Black Caucus. Contributed By: Roanne Edwards
Daniel Williams was born in Hollidaysburg, Pennsylvania. Attended formal schooling in Hare's Classical Academy in 1877 and received his M.D. from Chicago Medical College, Northwestern Medical School, in 1883. He helped to found the Provident Hospital and Training School for Nurses. In 1893 Dr. Daniel Hall Williams performed the first open heart surgery by removing a knife from the heart of a stabbing victim. He sutured a wound to the pericardium (the fluid sac surrounding the myocardium), from which the patient recovered and lived for several years afterward. He established a training school for nurses. He was the first Surgeon in Chief to divide the Freemen's Hospital in Washington, D.C. into separate departments to treat specific conditions: Medical, Surgical, Gynecological, Obstetrical, Dermatological, Obstetrical, Dermatological, Genito-Urinary, and Throat and Chest. In 1891 he founded the Provident Hospital and Medical Center in Chicago, the oldest free-standing black owned hospital in the United States. Dr. Williams was the only African-American in a group of 100 charter members of the American College of Surgeons in 1913. He founded and became the first vice-president of the national Medical Association. Dr. Williams was awarded by a bill in the United States Congress in 1970 that issued a commemorative stamp in his honor.
Oprah Winfrey was born on a Mississippi farm and raised by her paternal grandmother until she was six, when she moved to Milwaukee to live with her mother, Vernita Lee. Though Winfrey did well in school, she was allegedly sexually abused by male relatives and became increasingly troubled as a teenager. Her mother, a maid who was busy raising two other children, eventually sent Winfrey to live with her disciplinarian father, a barber and businessman in Nashville, Tennessee. Oprah flowered under Vernon Winfrey's strict supervision, excelling academically and as a public speaker. At age 16, she won a partial scholarship to the Tennessee State University in a public speaking contest sponsored by the Elks Club. As a freshman at Tennessee State University, Oprah worked briefly as a radio newscaster before victories in two local beauty pageants helped land her a news anchor position at WTVF-TV, in Nashville. In 1976, only a few months short of earning her bachelor's degree at Tennessee State University, Winfrey landed a job as a reporter and evening news co-anchor at WJZ-TV in Baltimore. Although she did not succeed in that position, the station management realized that Winfrey, who had no formal journalistic training, was better suited to co-hosting WJZ's morning talk show, People Are Talking. Winfrey helped turn the show into a ratings success with her personable interviewing style and charismatic presence. After eight years as the co-host of People Are Talking, Winfrey was offered a job as the host of A.M. Chicago, a Chicago talk show that aired opposite Phil Donahue's popular morning show and lagged behind it in the ratings. In one month, Winfrey's ratings equaled Donahue's, and in three, surpassed them. Donahue acknowledged Winfrey's ratings supremacy by moving his show to New York in 1985. In 1985 A.M. Chicago was renamed The Oprah Winfrey Show, and it was syndicated in 1986. It eventually became the highest-rated talk show in television history. By 1997, 15 to 20 million viewers watched it daily in the U.S., and it was seen in over 132 countries. The show has received 25 Emmy Awards, six of them for best host. In 1996, Time magazine named Winfrey one of the 25 most influential people in the world. Also a talented actress, in 1985 Winfrey earned Golden Globe and Academy Award nominations for her portrayal of Sofia in the film The Color Purple, based on Alice Walker's book of the same name. In 1986 she founded HARPO Productions, becoming only the third woman to own her own television and film studios. Based in Chicago, HARPO (Oprah spelled backwards) owns and produces The Oprah Winfrey Show as well as such dramatic miniseries as The Women of Brewster Place (1988), based upon the book by Gloria Naylor, and The Wedding (1998), based upon the book by Dorothy West. In addition to supporting African American literature through her television films, Winfrey's on-air book club has brought new readers to such writers as Toni Morrison. A political activist as well as an entertainer, Winfrey testified before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, describing the sexual abuse she suffered as a child, and worked for the passage of the National Child Protection Act in 1991, which provides for the establishment of a nationwide database of convicted child abusers. In December 1993 President Bill Clinton signed "Oprah's Bill" into law. Her many philanthropic ventures include donations of time and money to child protection efforts and the establishment of educational scholarships. Contributed By: Robert Fay
Raised in an affluent African American family in New Orleans, Andrew Young as a child had opportunities available to few blacks in the American south. Among these was an exceptional education: he attended Howard University and Hartford Theological Seminary. He was ordained a Congregational minister in 1955 and soon after accepted a position in a diocese in rural Georgia and Alabama. This experience made him keenly aware of the poverty African Americans suffered in the rural South and inspired his work as a civil rights activist. In 1959 Young moved to New York City to be the assistant director of the National Council of Churches and to raise financial support for civil rights activities in the South. He returned to Georgia two years later and joined the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). His energetic work as funding coordinator and administrator of the SCLC's Citizenship Education Programs soon won him the admiration of Martin Luther King Jr. They became close associates, and Young helped King organize SCLC marches in the south. Young became executive director of the SCLC in 1964 and executive vice president in 1967. After King's death, Young helped to guide the SCLC toward activities on social and economic improvements for African Americans. He retired from these positions in 1970, but remained on the board of directors until 1972. In 1972 Young became the first African American to be elected to the United States House of Representatives from Georgia since Reconstruction. While a representative, Young played an instrumental role in winning for the presidential candidate Jimmy Carter the vital backing of those members of the African American community who questioned Carter's commitment to civil rights. Young resigned from the House of Representatives in 1977 when Carter appointed him United States ambassador to the United Nations. As ambassador, Young improved communications between the United States and African nations. He was instrumental in focusing American foreign policy on sub-Saharan Africa and bringing American attention to the conditions of apartheid in South Africa. Young resigned from the position in 1979 after he was criticized for his contacts with the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). In 1982 Young was elected mayor of Atlanta, an office which he held until 1989. In 1990 he made an unsuccessful bid in the Georgia gubernatorial race and retired from politics. In 1994 he published his memoir, A Way Out of No Way and returned to public life to cochair the Atlanta Committee for the 1996 Summer Olympic Games. Contributed By: Elizabeth Heath |
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