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Archive through February 05, 2005

The TVClubHouse: General Discussions ARCHIVES: 2005 Mar. ~ 2005 May: Black History (ARCHIVES): Archive through February 05, 2005 users admin

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Ladytex
Member

09-27-2001

Monday, January 17, 2005 - 5:32 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
The Text of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s
"I Have a Dream" Speech
Aug. 28, 1963



I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation.

Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon of hope to millions of Negro slaves, who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity. But one hundred years later, the Negro is still not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacle of segregation and the chains of discrimination.

One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languishing in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land So we have come here today to dramatize a shameful condition.

In a sense we have come to our Nation's Capital to cash a check. When the architects of our great republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir.

This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed to the inalienable rights of life liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check that has come back marked "insufficient funds."

But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. So we have come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and security of justice.

We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of Now. This is not time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism.

Now is the time to make real the promise of democracy.

Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice.

Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood.

Now is the time to make justice a reality to all of God's children.

It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment and to underestimate the determination of it's colored citizens. This sweltering summer of the Negro's legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality. Nineteen sixty-three is not an end but a beginning. Those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual.

There will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted his citizenship rights. The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges.

But there is something that I must say to my people who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice. In the process of gaining our rightful place we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds.

Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. We must ever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force.

The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to a distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny. They have come to realize that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom. We cannot walk alone.

And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead. We cannot turn back. There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, "When will you be satisfied?" We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality.

We can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities.

We cannot be satisfied as long as the Negro's basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one.

We can never be satisfied as long as our children are stripped of their selfhood and robbed of their dignity by signs stating "for white only."

We cannot be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote.

No, no we are not satisfied and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.

I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of your trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from narrow jail cells. Some of you have come from areas where your quest for freedom left you battered by storms of persecutions and staggered by the winds of police brutality.

You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive.

Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to South Carolina go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our modern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed.

Let us not wallow in the valley of despair. I say to you today, my friends, that even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow. I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed. We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal.

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification; that one day right down in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.

I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and every mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plains and the crooked places will be made straight and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together.

This is our hope. This is the faith that I will go back to the South with. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope.

With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood.

With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to climb up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.

This will be the day when all of God's children will be able to sing with new meaning "My country 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the Pilgrim's pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring!"

And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true. So let freedom ring from the hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York.

Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania.

Let freedom ring from the snow-capped Rockies of Colorado.

Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California.

But not only that, let freedom, ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia.

Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi and every mountainside.

And when this happens, when we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every tenement and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old spiritual, "Free at last, free at last. Thank God Almighty, we are free at last."

Schoolmarm
Member

02-18-2001

Monday, January 17, 2005 - 6:11 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
Thank you for posting the "I have a dream" speech! I used to teach at MLK school in Des Moines and have actually written a couple of musicals for 1st, 2nd, and 4th graders.

One of my favorite parts was having the 4th graders circle the auditorium and do the "I have a dream" part as a choral reading. ALL of the kids would say "I have a dream" and "Let freedom ring" and individuals would have the other lines. We would sing "America" when it is quoted in the middle. (One year I arranged it for three violas and a French Horn because those were the only kids who could play well enough after just a semester of lesson.) We would also end with hands joined and arms raised as we sang "Free at last".

I learned how to play gospel piano at that school. I am thankful for my experiences there. We were living the dream daily. I hope that, 10 years later, my students are still living the dream. I know that I am!

Wasn't MLKs birth name Michael? I think that Daddy King changed it to Martin when MLK Jr. was maybe 2. They both changed their names in honor of the protestant reformer Martin Luther. It was fitting...both were great men whole changed society for the better.

Ladytex
Member

09-27-2001

Monday, January 17, 2005 - 6:18 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
That sounds like a great program, Marm. Wish I could have seen it.

Herckleperckle
Member

11-20-2003

Monday, January 17, 2005 - 6:52 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
I remember the topic of my 11th grade term paper was LBJ's Great Society. There was a special cooperation between LBJ and MLK that finally began to ensure and enforce civil liberties.

Tishala
Member

08-01-2000

Tuesday, January 18, 2005 - 12:56 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
I don't know whether anyone watched "Unforgivable Blackness" last night on PBS, but part two is on tonight and I wanna tell you it is an EXCELLENT documentary. Johnson was a fascinating character who was smart, sexy, incredibly handsome [he looked like former Denver Broncos BR Terrell Davis] and astonishingly complex. He ran with prostitutes and openly dated/married white women in a period when lynchings were at their height. He did not suffer fools gladly and he emasculated his white opponents by literally holding them up so he could deliver more punishment to them and ask them whether they learned to punch from their mothers. He talked to his girlfriends in the audience at his fights, asking what round they wanted him to knock out his opponent, etc. He was freakishly gifted as an athlete and he had an amazing mind, too. He happily criticized Booker T. Washington and said he didn't believe that he should know his "place"--Johnson believed it was HIS place to decide where and what he should be, not Booker T's or anyone else's.

They also have great commentators for the show, too, including Sam Jackson doing voiceovers as Johnson. Lots of boxing folks who know about the history of the sport and African American cultural critics like Stanley Crouch [yuck] and others.

And last night Tavis Smiley interviewed the elegant, wonderful Coretta Scott King on his PBS show. She's simply divine.

Hippyt
Member

06-15-2001

Tuesday, January 18, 2005 - 1:02 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
I wanted to tape that! Dangit,he is from Galveston down here and they finally named a street after him.
Isn't it incredible the way he lived for that time?

Tishala
Member

08-01-2000

Tuesday, January 18, 2005 - 2:04 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
Part two is on tonight Hippy. They talked a lot about Galveston and they had lots of amazing archival footage from way back when--including in 1908 when he became the heavyweight champ and they cut the cameras--I kid you not--so the world wouldn't see a black man knock out a white man.

Oh they also said that the mayor had arranged a big parade for him in Galveston after he won the championship but when he became aware that Johnson was travelling [and sleeping] with a white woman, he cancelled the parade.

Hippyt
Member

06-15-2001

Tuesday, January 18, 2005 - 2:42 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
Here's Leonard Pitt's column about it from yesterday's paper. Thanks for bringing it up,I'll be sure and catch the rest of it tonight.

LEONARD PITTS JR./COMMENTARY


Black boxer did nothing wrong by living freely


Jack Johnson was a black man who often spent his days beating up white men and his nights making love to white women. This, in the first years of the last century.

So you can understand why he was a polarizing figure, why newspapers inveighed against him and the government conspired to bring him down.

Of course, chances are good that you've never heard of John Arthur Johnson. As filmmaker Ken Burns pointed out to me in a telephone interview, we are a nation of great historical illiteracy. Ask most people what they know about even so towering a figure as George Washington and you're likely to hear only myths about cherry trees and wooden teeth.

''If George Washington can get lost,'' Burns said, ``then Jack Johnson can get lost.''

Tonight on PBS, Burns sets out to find him. The result is a two-part biography, Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson, that offers a compelling exploration of a singular life.

Johnson was a fighter. He became the first black heavyweight champion in 1908 with an easy knockout of Tommy Burns. The win was all the more impressive because Burns' manager was the referee, a stipulation Johnson had been forced to accept in order for the fight to proceed.

This was at a time when the physical superiority of white men over black ones was widely regarded as self-evident truth, so Johnson's victory was an electric shock to the American psyche. And he kept winning, each victory another poke in the eye for the lie of white supremacy. Former champion Jim Jeffries -- five years retired and overweight -- was called upon as the ''great white hope'' who would put Johnson back in his place. Johnson toyed with him for 15 rounds, then decked him.

RIOTS ACROSS U.S.

No black man with any sense dared to look too pleased. As it was, angry whites rioted across the country. Eight people died.

What made matters worse is that Johnson was, as Burns puts it, ''the original gangsta,'' living a bling-bling lifestyle 90 years before that term was coined. In an era that required black men to be circumspect, he was a brash fellow who didn't mind flaunting his wealth. He lived high and drove fast. And if he was attracted to a white woman and she to him, he saw no reason they should not be together. Indeed, he had a habit of marrying them.

It all came to a head in 1913, when Johnson was convicted of violating the Mann Act, which made it a federal crime to transport a woman across state lines for illegal purposes. Johnson's ''illegal purpose'' was to have sex with a white woman.

Not that the government bothered to hide the racism of its motive. As the prosecutor said after the verdict, ``This Negro, in the eyes of many, has been persecuted. Perhaps as an individual he was. But it was his misfortune to be the foremost example of the evil in permitting the intermarriage of whites and blacks.''

POSTHUMOUS PARDON

Burns, aided by Senators John McCain and Edward Kennedy, is petitioning the president for a posthumous pardon on Johnson's behalf. Consider this column my way of adding my name to the list.

Still, I have issues with that word, ''pardon,'' which suggests Johnson requires forgiveness for doing something wrong. His only mistake, if you want to call it that, was in believing that he was a man free like other men, to define himself as he saw fit, live his life on his own terms.

You hear echoes of his story in the stories of O.J. Simpson, Terrell Owens and in a hundred stories that have nothing to do with white women and sex and everything to do with the simple freedom to be.

''Jack Johnson decided to live his life nothing short of a free man,'' Burns said. ``And this is a story of how this country went after him for doing what the Constitution said he had the right to do.''

That's why I think we need to be straight about this. It would be good to see Johnson's name cleared. But it's America that should be asking for a pardon.


Hippyt
Member

06-15-2001

Tuesday, January 18, 2005 - 8:52 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
What an excellent show! I can't believe how much footage they had of the fights. A 40 round fight? Holy cow!
He sure was a strong person,doing what he wanted to do,amazing.
I wish I had seen the first part. Who was he buried next to in Chicago,his Mother?

Abby7
Member

07-17-2002

Tuesday, January 18, 2005 - 9:31 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
Hippy, not his mother. I think her name was Etta something...Duryea? I forget. I'm sure it will be repeated. I hope so, I missed most of it.

Ladytex
Member

09-27-2001

Thursday, January 27, 2005 - 9:52 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
Coming to PBS on Feb. 9th and 16th from 9PM to 11PM is the four-part series Slavery and the Making of America, produced by Dante James, and narrated by Morgan Freeman. Dante is an incredible filmmaker who has produced many award wining films - among them biographies on Marian Anderson and A. Philip Randolph. He worked with the late great filmmaker Henry Hampton at Blackside and was the executive producer of Hampton's last series This Far By Faith: African American Spiritual Journeys.

Slavery and the Making of America tells the story of slavery from the point of view of the enslaved. The series recognizes the strength, humanity and dignity of the enslaved and redefines them as pro-active freedom fighters, not passive victims.

There is also a web site for the series at www.pbs.org/slavery.

Slavery and the Making of America:
Feb 9th and 16th from 9PM-11PM on PBS

Hippyt
Member

06-15-2001

Monday, January 31, 2005 - 1:28 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
The idea that brought slavery to its knees in 1787
Revolution was kindled in a London print shop
By ADAM HOCHSCHILD
Copyright 2005 Houston Chronicle News Services

Every Briton knows that the Magna Carta, which placed some of the first limits on the absolute power of kings, was signed in 1215 by a reluctant King John and his barons in a meadow at Runnymede, beside the Thames. Every American knows that the Declaration of Independence was adopted in Philadelphia in 1776, in the building later known as Independence Hall. But another such milestone, equally worth celebrating, too few people remember.

ADVERTISEMENT

The document involved is merely the minutes of a meeting. And if you go today to the spot where the meeting took place, 2 George Yard, a small courtyard in London's financial district, you will find no monument, no plaque, no troops of schoolchildren ? only the service entrance to an office building.

Yet the reverberations from what happened on this spot, on the late afternoon of May 22, 1787, eventually caught the attention of millions of people around the world, including the first and greatest student of what today we call civil society. The result of the series of events begun that afternoon in London, wrote Alexis de Tocqueville decades later, was "absolutely without precedent. ... If you pore over the histories of all peoples, I doubt that you will find anything more extraordinary." The building that once stood at 2 George Yard was a bookstore and printing shop. The proprietor was James Phillips, publisher and printer for Britain's small community of Quakers. On that May afternoon, after the pressmen and typesetters had gone home for the day, 12 men filed through his doors. They formed themselves into a committee with what seemed to their fellow Londoners a hopelessly idealistic and impractical aim: ending first the slave trade and then slavery itself in the most powerful empire on Earth.

The interests they were taking on were entrenched and influential. Britain dominated the Atlantic slave trade. Roughly half the slaves taken across the ocean to its lucrative West Indian sugar islands, to the United States and to other European colonies were transported in British ships. Starting an anti-slavery movement in Britain in 1787 was like starting a renewable energy movement in Saudi Arabia today.

The minutes of that historic meeting, preserved in a leather-bound volume at the British Library, are only a single page long, in the clear, flowing handwriting of the committee's firebrand organizer, Thomas Clarkson.

They begin simply: "At a Meeting held for the Purpose of taking the Slave Trade into consideration, it was resolved that the said Trade was both impolitick and unjust." Throughout history, of course, slaves and other oppressed people have periodically staged uprisings. Given the conditions under which they lived, that was only to be expected. But what made the movement that grew out of the George Yard meeting so unprecedented was this: It was the first time that a large number of people in one country became outraged ? and stayed outraged for many years ? over the plight of other people, of another color, in other parts of the world.

The movement took off immediately, in a way that earlier scattered abolitionist efforts, in both Britain and North America, never had. Petitions flooded parliament, which the following year took the timid first step of regulating conditions on the slave ships. Slavery became the prime topic of the London debating societies. Anti-slavery books and posters flooded the country. In a seven-year period, Clarkson rode 35,000 miles by horseback through England, Scotland and Wales, setting up local anti-slavery committees.

No one was more astonished than the powerful slave owners' lobby, which previously had only concerned itself with sugar tariffs and the like. "The Press teems with pamphlets upon this subject, and my table is covered with them," Stephen Fuller, London agent for the Jamaican planters, reported in despair to his employers. "The stream of popularity runs against us."

The outpouring, moreover, defied economic self-interest. From Sheffield, famous for making knives, scissors, razors and the like, 769 metalworkers petitioned parliament against the slave trade, saying that even though their wares had routinely been purchased by slave-ship captains and then traded to buy slaves in Africa, they nonetheless "consider the case of the nations of Africa as their own." Fuller was amazed that the petitions pouring into parliament were "stating no grievance or injury of any kind or sort, affecting the Petitioners themselves."

It took the movement more than 50 years from that first meeting to end slavery in the British empire. That goal was finally reached in 1838, a full quarter of a century before slavery died in the United States. No more chained slaves cross the Atlantic today, but the spirit that crystallized at George Yard is with us in a different way. In the idea that those who suffer "no grievance or injury" have the obligation to speak up for those who have suffered them lies the birth of the vision that human rights are universal.

In this very unequal world of ours, where decisions made in our own country ? on subjects including military intervention, the sanctioning of torture and the complex economics of globalization ? connect us morally to the farthest corners of the Earth, this is an idea that seems more relevant than ever. In that sense, the process born on that long-ago afternoon in 1787 is not only incomplete, it has barely begun.

Hochschild's latest book is "Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free an Empire's Slaves."






Ladytex
Member

09-27-2001

Tuesday, February 01, 2005 - 11:08 am   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
Saluting Black History Month
Cable and PBS play up movies, specials during the month of February

LINK

BY JOHN CROOK
ZAP2IT

February 1, 2005

While the commercial networks look predominantly to what appear to be safe ratings winners during February, PBS and several cable channels have a diverse list of movies and specials lined up to acknowledge Black History Month.

Showtime launches things officially tonight at 10 with Black Filmmaker Showcase, an anthology of these short films: "Gift for the Living," directed by Tamika Miller and starring Irma P. Hall; "Get Home Safe," directed by Lyndon McCray, about three black teens in New York trying to persuade a cabdriver to take them home to Brooklyn; "Out of Body Experience," directed by Van Elder, in which a man (Chris Spencer) dreams he is eight months pregnant.

Also: "Hope's Choice" by filmmaker Garrett Thompson, in which a young man is torn between gang life and the desire to create a stable home with his pregnant girlfriend; "Red Eye," Kevin Gordon's meditation on racial stereotyping; and "Shook," in which a wife (Robinne Lee) discovers her husband is having a homosexual affair on the "down low."

On Saturday at 7 p.m., The History Channel unveils the first of its black history specials with "Go Tell It on the Mountain: The History of Black Preachers," a documentary study of religious leaders who have united and inspired their community during times of hardship and adversity.

The film features interviews with such prominent black ministers as Jesse Jackson, Eddie Long and Calvin Butts, as well as re-enactments of famous sermons.

Showtime next Tuesday presents an encore telecast of "Deacons for Defense," an original civil-rights drama starring Forest Whitaker, Jonathan Silverman and Ossie Davis.

A PBS highlight

On Feb. 9, PBS premieres one of the month's crowning highlights, "Slavery and the Making of America." Morgan Freeman narrates this chronicle of American slavery, starting with the arrival of English settlers in Virginia in the early 1600s and running through Reconstruction and the adoption of the 13th Amendment to the Constitution. The four-part presentation concludes Feb. 16.

HBO joins the lineup of special programming with the premiere of "Lackawanna Blues" on Feb. 12. Originally a one-man, Off-Broadway theatrical tour de force starring Ruben Santiago-Hudson, this TV movie adaptation employs a sprawling ensemble cast that includes, besides the original star, S. Epatha Merkerson, Mos Def, Louis Gossett Jr., Ernie Hudson, Delroy Lindo, Macy Gray, Jimmy Smits, Liev Schreiber and Patricia Wettig as characters living in 1960s Lackawanna, N.Y.

That same night brings the History Channel premiere of "Voices of Civil Rights," an episode of "Save Our History" that recounts the civil rights struggle through those who lived through it.

Visionary figure

Also on History, the Feb. 15 episode of "Modern Marvels" is devoted to a profile of George Washington Carver, the visionary whose creative ideas led in time to peanut butter (of course), as well as such contemporary applications as soy plastics and biodiesel fuel. That same night, Showtime presents an encore presentation of "Crown Heights," with Mario Van Peebles and Howie Mandel playing characters caught up in that community's race riots.

One of the month's brightest highlights arrives Sunday, Feb. 20, as Bravo presents "The Sarah Jones Show," a one-hour showcase of the chameleonlike actress who recently took New York by storm in her one-woman show, "Bridge & Tunnel." An electrifying actress and storyteller in the tradition of Lily Tomlin, Whoopi Goldberg and Anna Deavere Smith, Jones brings a colorful array of characters to life, crossing boundaries of age, class and ethnicity. She's definitely a talent to watch.

Goldberg and Danny Glover star in an encore Showtime telecast of the dramatic "Good Fences" on Feb. 22. Directed by Ernest Dickerson, the TV movie presents a searing portrait of an upwardly mobile black family for whom the American dream becomes a nightmare.

While these titles are the highlights of the month, it bears mentioning that other noteworthy programming is on the horizon after Black History Month ends, including Oscar winner Halle Berry starring in an Oprah Winfrey-produced adaptation of Zora Neale Hurston's "Their Eyes Were Watching God," March 6 on ABC.

Ladytex
Member

09-27-2001

Tuesday, February 01, 2005 - 11:11 am   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
February is Black History Month
http://www.dal.ca/~acswww/grfibhm.html

From "Ghana Review" Vol 1. No. 6
Friday 27 January 1995
Supplement
Black History Month

N.B. Posted with permission of GHANA REVIEW.

A full appreciation of the celebration of Black History Month requires a review and a reassessment of the social and academic climate that prevailed in the Western world, and especially in North America before 1926 when Black History Month was established.

It is important to recall that between 1619 and 1926, African Americans and other peoples of African descent were classified as a race that had not made any contribution to human civilization. Within the public and private sector, African Americans and other peoples of African descent were continually dehumanized and relegated to the position of non-citizens and often defined as fractions of humans. It is estimated that between 1890 and 1925, an African American was lynched every two and a half days.

The academic and intellectual community was no different from the bulk of mainstream America. Peoples of African descent were visibly absent in any scholarship or intellectual discourse that dealt with human civilization.

African Americans were so dehumanized and their history so distorted in academia that "slavery, peonage, segretation and lynching" were considered justifiable conditions. In fact, Professor John Burgess, the founder of Columbia University graduate school of Political Science and an important figure in American scholarship defined the African race as "a race of men which has never created any civilization of any kind..."

It was this kind of climate and the sensational, racist scholarship that inspired the talented and brilliant African American scholar, Dr. Carter Godwin Woodson to lead the struggle and search for the truth and institutionalize what was then referred to as "Negro History Week". A Harvard trained Ph.D., Dr. Woodson dropped out of mainstream academia to devote his life to the scientific study of the African experience in America, Africa and throughout the world.

Under Woodson's direction and contributions from other African American and white scholars, the "Negro History Week" was launched on a serious platform in 1926 to neutralize the apparent ignorance and deliberate distortion of Black History. Meetings, exhibitions, lectures and symposia were organized to climax the scientific study of the African experience throughout the year in order to give a more objective and scholarly balance in American and World history.

Today, this national and international observance has been expanded to encompass the entire month of February. The expansion, of course, has increased the number of days for celebration, but its strength and importance lie in the new meaning that has emerged. As Ralph L. Crowder points out in an article in the December 1977 issue of the Western Journal of Black Studies, "it is no longer sufficient to devote the entire month to the celebration of great Negro contributions to the American mainstream."

I believe, like Dr. Crowder, that it is necessary to use the occasion to examine the collective ingenuity, creativity, cultural and political experience of the masses of Africans and peoples of African descent. In North America, a variety of programs - including lectures, exhibitions, banquets and a host of cultural activities are presented throughout the month of February to commemorate the occasion. It is not uncommon, during these weeks in February, for African students in the U.S. to receive a number of invitations to speak at gatherings, schools and in community churches.

In Ghana, it is the W.E.B. DuBois Center for Pan African Culture that has been in the forefront of programs developed to mark the observance. The intention of the founders was not and is still not to initiate a week's or a month's study of the universal African experience. Instead, the observance portrays the climax of a scientific study of the African experience throughout the year.

The month of February is significant and recognized in African American history for the birthdays of great African American pioneers and institutions. These include the birthdays of Frederick Douglass, W.E.B. DuBois, Langston Hughes, Eubie Blake, NAACP and the first Pan African Congress.

Historians may also recall that the first African American Senator, Hiram Revels took the oath of office in February 1870. Black History Month takes on a paramount significance as we approach the 21st century. Civil rights laws and celebrations such as Black History Month have exposed the legal consequences of overt discriminatory practices and racial harassment. The struggles for, and achievement of independence by African countries in the 20th century have shown the strength, the humanity, the ingenuity and the contributions of the African to the human civilization.

However, these revelations have not neutralized the prevalence of prejudicial attitudes which generate discriminatory acts both on a national and in the international arena. Behaviour may be controlled by laws, national and international, but attitudes can only change through education and the elimination of ignorance. I believe strongly that Black History Month should be the reaffirmation of struggle and determination to change attitudes and heighten the understanding of the African experience. In the words of Ralph Crowder, "the observance must be a testimony to those African pioneers who struggled to affirm the humanity of African peoples and a challenge to the present generation to protect and preserve...the humanity of all peoples of African descent."

Happy Black History Month

Yaw Boateng
Professor of Education
Eastern Washington University

Ladytex
Member

09-27-2001

Tuesday, February 01, 2005 - 11:20 am   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
Dr. Carter Godwin Woodson

1875-1950

Nationality: American
Occupation: Historian, Scholar
NARRATIVE ESSAY:

Called the "Father of Negro History," Carter Godwin Woodson (1875-1950) was instrumental in the founding of the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History in 1915. During his lifetime he was probably the most significant scholar promoting the history and achievements of African Americans.

Carter Woodson was born in New Canton, Virginia, in 1875--ten years after the 13th Amendment, abolishing slavery, was written into law. His grandparents and his father, James, a tenant farmer, and mother, Anne, had been slaves. Consequently, when freedom was a reality, they were poor like thousands of newly freed families of African descent in the United States. Because of the close ties to his family and a strong sense of responsibility to them, Woodson worked throughout his early school years to help support his parents and siblings. By the time he was able to attend school, he was well past his teens.

Creative and imaginative as well as independent at an early age, Woodson taught himself by reading avidly in his spare time. As a result of his innate intelligence, personal accomplishments, and dedication to learning, he was able to complete high school. In 1903 he graduated with honors from Berea College, a unique college in the slave state of Kentucky. Founded in 1855, Berea introduced integrated education in the 19th century and thus permitted the enrollment of African Americans. Yet Kentucky had profited from the slave market and the psychology of its people could not accept racially-integrated classrooms. One year after Woodson's graduation the "Day Law" was passed, which prevented white and African American students from being in the same classroom or school community together. Integrated schooling became illegal. The pernicious "Day Law" was actually enforced for nearly half a century, a fact that was not lost on Woodson in his writings about the social customs and laws that served as obstacles to the progress of "the Negro race." He recorded these events as he pursued his interests in the study of African American history.

In 1907 and 1908, respectively, Woodson earned an undergraduate degree and his M.A. from the University of Chicago. Just four years after completing graduate training at the University of Chicago, he was awarded the doctorate from Harvard. This educational background in the country's leading universities challenged Woodson's creative imagination. He became increasingly interested in documenting for the permanent historical record the talents and accomplishments of the sons, daughters, grandsons, and granddaughters of slaves.
PROMOTING AFRICAN-AMERICAN HISTORY

In 1916, during the height of World War I, the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History, which Woodson had founded, issued the Journal of Negro History. This would become one of his most significant scholarly contributions for recording the backgrounds, experiences, and writings of Americans of African ancestry. He served as the sponsor and editor of the Journal of Negro History for many years. This important medium became a significant milestone in promoting the history and contributions of African Americans to the culture. African Americans themselves became aware of their own influence in the intellectual sphere and in the whole society.

In addition to establishing and publishing the Journal of Negro History, while Woodson was dean of West Virginia Collegiate Institute he served as president of Associated Publishers. The primary purpose of this innovative outlet was to publish and distribute writings by and about African Americans. When Woodson left West Virginia to continue his research, he involved himself more deeply in the work of the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History. It remains today as a monument to his dedication and foresight.

The broad spectrum of the life of Africans in America was of central interest to Woodson. He studied all facets of their experiences and rich cultural contributions. These included myths, patterns of migration, roles as wage earners, entrance into medicine, work in rural America, inventions and writings, and their unique history. In 1926, during the zenith of the Harlem Renaissance, he launched a movement to observe "Negro History Week." Woodson felt that an annual celebration of the achievements of the African American should occur during the month of February, since both the gifted abolitionist and orator Frederick Douglass and President Abraham Lincoln were born in that month. In the 1960s what was once only a week of recognizing the outstanding achievements of Americans of African heritage to science, literature, and the arts became transformed into "Black History Month."
THE WRITINGS OF WOODSON

Carter G. Woodson was one of the country's prominent historians and a prolific writer. From the moment he received the doctorate from Harvard, he initiated a career in publishing. In 1915 he wrote The Education of the Negro Prior to 1861, in which he concentrated on both the obstacles and the progress characterizing the schooling of the descendants of slaves. Three years later he published A Century of Negro Migration. This was introduced in 1918, as World War I was coming to a close. The examination of patterns of migration was followed by The Negro in Our History, published in 1922. This work has been defined as "the first textbook of its kind."

Among Woodson's basic writings are those that describe patterns of migration and family composition. For example, under the auspices of the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History he prepared two important documents--one on slave holding and the other on heads of families: Free Negro Owners of Slaves in the United States in 1830, together with Absentee Ownership of Slaves in the United States in 1830 (1924) and Free Negro Heads of Families in the United States in 1830 together with A Brief Treatment of The Free Negro (1925).

African Americans who had entered the professions of medicine and law during the eras of Reconstruction and post-Reconstruction were of particular interest to Woodson. In 1934 Negro Universities Press published his documentation of The Negro professional man and the community, with special emphasis on the physician and the lawyer. Perhaps his most important work, and the one for which he is widely known in the late 20th century, is The Mis-Education of the Negro (1933, reprinted 1990). Woodson is remembered as a leading historian who promoted the rich intellectual and creative legacy of the African American.
SOURCES:

* Probably the two best books about Carter Woodson are Jacqueline Goggin, Carter G. Woodson: A Life in Black History (1993) and Pat McKissack, Carter G. Woodson: The Father of Black History (1991). Woodson's writings, in addition to those listed in the text, include The African background outlined or Handbook for the study of the Negro (1936), Freedom and slavery in Appalachian America (1973), Negro makers of history (1958), Negro orators and their orations (1925), The rural Negro (1969), The history of the Negro church (2nd ed., 1922), and Historical genealogy of the Woodsons and their connections (1915). See also Doris Y. Wilkinson, "Forgotten Pioneers," Think, the newsletter of the Kentucky Humanities Council (October 1988), and Encyclopedia of Black America (3rd ed., 1988).

http://www.africanpubs.com/Apps/bios/0944WoodsonCarter.asp?pic=none

Ladytex
Member

09-27-2001

Wednesday, February 02, 2005 - 10:10 am   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
Black History Month TV Schedule on Biography Channel

February 2
9pm ET/PT: Biography: Colin Powell
11pm ET/PT: Famous: Denzel Washington

Black Facts that happened on February the 2nd:

1839 Inventor Edmond Berger patented the spark plug.

1862 District of Columbia abolishes slavery

1897 Alfred L. Cralle invented the ice cream scooper, patent #576,395

1912 Herbert Mills, of the original Mills Brothers Quartet, was born in Piqua, Ohio. The highly successful quartet was known for its smooth harmony.

1914 William Ellisworth Artist is born in Washington,N.C. Educated at Syracuse University and a student of Augusta Savage. His works will be exhibited at Atlanta University, the Whitney Museum, the Two Centuries of Black American Art exhibit and collected by Fisk University, Hampton University, the North Carolina Museum of Art, and private collectors.

1915 Biologist Ernest E. Just receives the Spingarn medal for his pioneering in cell division and fertilization.

1948 President Truman sent Congress a special message urging adoption of a civil rights program, including a fair employment practices commission and anti-lynching and anti-poll tax measures.

1962 Seven whites and four Blacks arrested after all-night sit-in at Englewood, N.J., city hall. Four Black mothers arrested after sit-in at Chicago elementary school. Mothers later received suspended $50 fines. Protests, picketing and demonstrations continued for several weeks against de facto segregation, double shifts and mobile classrooms.

1989 In Tampa,Florida, a rebellion followed the suspicious death of Edgar Allen Price, a police suspect who died during an arrest. Police contended that Price "hit his head on the ground several times."

www.blackfacts.com


Ladytex
Member

09-27-2001

Wednesday, February 02, 2005 - 10:15 am   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
James Langston Hughes

hughes
(February 1, 1902 - May 22, 1967)

Born in Joplin, Missouri, James Langston Hughes was a member of an abolitionist family. He was the great-great-grandson of Charles Henry Langston, brother of John Mercer Langston, who was the first Black American to be elected to public office, in 1855. Hughes attended Central High School in Cleveland, Ohio, but began writing poetry in the eighth grade, and was selected as Class Poet. His father didn't think he would be able to make a living at writing, and encouraged him to pursue a more practical career. He paid his son's tuition to Columbia University on the grounds he study engineering. After a short time, Langston dropped out of the program with a B+ average; all the while he continued writing poetry. His first published poem was also one of his most famous, "The Negro Speaks of Rivers", and it appeared in Brownie's Book. Later, his poems, short plays, essays and short stories appeared in the NAACP publication Crisis Magazine and in Opportunity Magazine and other publications.

One of Hughes' finest essays appeared in the Nation in 1926, entitled "The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain". It spoke of Black writers and poets, "who would surrender racial pride in the name of a false integration," where a talented Black writer would prefer to be considered a poet, not a Black poet, which to Hughes meant he subconsciously wanted to write like a white poet. Hughes argued, "no great poet has ever been afraid of being himself." He wrote in this essay, "We younger Negro artists now intend to express our individual dark-skinned selves without fear or shame. If white people are pleased we are glad. If they aren't, it doesn't matter. We know we are beautiful. And ugly too... If colored people are pleased we are glad. If they are not, their displeasure doesn't matter either. We build our temples for tomorrow, as strong as we know how and we stand on the top of the mountain, free within ourselves."

In 1923, Hughes traveled abroad on a freighter to the Senegal, Nigeria, the Cameroons, Belgium Congo, Angola, and Guinea in Africa, and later to Italy and France, Russia and Spain. One of his favorite pastimes whether abroad or in Washington, D.C. or Harlem, New York was sitting in the clubs listening to blues, jazz and writing poetry. Through these experiences a new rhythm emerged in his writing, and a series of poems such as "The Weary Blues" were penned. He returned to Harlem, in 1924, the period known as the Harlem Renaissance. During this period, his work was frequently published and his writing flourished. In 1925 he moved to Washington, D.C., still spending more time in blues and jazz clubs. He said, "I tried to write poems like the songs they sang on Seventh Street...(these songs) had the pulse beat of the people who keep on going." At this same time, Hughes accepted a job with Dr. Carter G. Woodson, editor of the Journal of Negro Life and History and founder of Black History Week in 1926. He returned to his beloved Harlem later that year.

Langston Hughes received a scholarship to Lincoln University, in Pennsylvania, where he received his B.A. degree in 1929. In 1943, he was awarded an honorary Lit.D by his alma mater; a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1935 and a Rosenwald Fellowship in 1940. Based on a conversation with a man he knew in a Harlem bar, he created a character know as My Simple Minded Friend in a series of essays in the form of a dialogue. In 1950, he named this lovable character Jess B. Simple, and authored a series of books on him.

Langston Hughes was a prolific writer. In the forty-odd years between his first book in 1926 and his death in 1967, he devoted his life to writing and lecturing. He wrote sixteen books of poems, two novels, three collections of short stories, four volumes of "editorial" and "documentary" fiction, twenty plays, children's poetry, musicals and operas, three autobiographies, a dozen radio and television scripts and dozens of magazine articles. In addition, he edited seven anthologies. The long and distinguished list of Hughes' works includes: Not Without Laughter (1930); The Big Sea (1940); I Wonder As I Wander" (1956), his autobiographies. His collections of poetry include: The Weary Blues (1926); The Negro Mother and other Dramatic Recitations (1931); The Dream Keeper (1932); Shakespeare In Harlem (1942); Fields of Wonder (1947); One Way Ticket (1947); The First Book of Jazz (1955); Tambourines To Glory (1958); and Selected Poems (1959); The Best of Simple (1961). He edited several anthologies in an attempt to popularize black authors and their works. Some of these are: An African Treasury (1960); Poems from Black Africa (1963); New Negro Poets: USA (1964) and The Best Short Stories by Negro Writers (1967).

Published posthumously were: Five Plays By Langston Hughes (1968); The Panther and The Lash: Poems of Our Times (1969) and Good Morning Revolution: Uncollected Writings of Social Protest (1973); The Sweet Flypaper of Life with Roy DeCarava (1984).

Langston Hughes died of cancer on May 22, 1967. His residence at 20 East 127th Street in Harlem, New York has been given landmark status by the New York City Preservation Commission. His block of East 127th Street was renamed "Langston Hughes Place" .

By: Andrew P. Jackson (Sekou Molefi Baako)
http://www.redhotjazz.com/hughes.html

Ladytex
Member

09-27-2001

Thursday, February 03, 2005 - 5:32 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
Black Facts that happened on February the 3rd:

1810 Antonio Ruiz (El Negro Falucho), national hero of Buenos Aires, Argentina, dies for his country.

1874 Blanche Kelso Bruce elected to a full six-year term in the U.S. Senate by the Mississippi legislature.

1903 Jack Jackson became the first Negro Heavyweight Champion

1920 The Negro Baseball League founded.

1948 Rosa Ingram and her fourteen-and sixteen -year-old sons condemned to death for the alleged murder of a white Georgian. Mrs. Ingram said she acted in self-defense.

1948 Laura Wheeler Waring, portrait painter and illustrator dies.

1956 Autherine J. Lucy becomes the first black student to attend the University of Alabama. She was expelled three days later "for her own safety" in response to threats from a mob. In 1992 Autherine Lucy Foster graduated from the University with a master’s degree in education. The same day, her daughter, Grazia Foster, graduated with a bachelor’s degree in corporate finance.

1964 School officials reported that 464,000 Black and Puerto Rican students boycotted New York City public schools. More than 267,000 were absent during second boycott, March 16.

1965 Geraldine McCullough, sculptor, wins the Widener Gold Medal award.

1981 The Air Force Academy drops its ban on applicants with sickle cell trait.

1988 In Montgomery, Alabama, Thomas Reed, president of the Alabama chapter of the NAACP, was arrested after he and 11 others attempted to strike a Confederate flag flying atop the state capitol building.

1989 Six time All-Star Bill White was named president of National League.

1989 Tennis professional Lori McNeil defeated Chris Evert in the Pan Pacific Open in Tokyo.

1989 Former Saint Louis Cardinals first baseman Bill White is named president of the National League. He is the first African American to head a major sports league.

1997 Award-winning jazz drummer Tony Williams dies in Daly City, California

1999 On Wednesday, February 3rd, for the first time in history, America's urban students will have a Web site specifically designed to address their educational needs and interests. The site -- called the Cyber-Youth Network -- provides a model for online education by offering students and teachers culturally relevant material that is both educational and entertaining.

With help from organizations like founding sponsor DaimlerChrysler Corp., the launch of the program will showcase students from Washington, DC's Eastern and Ballou Senior High Schools who, using the Cyber-Youth Network, will trace their
ancestors through the African-American Civil War Memorial online database, access sites about Black History Month and participate in a live video conference with African-American role models. The project is conducted in partnership with the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) with plans to expand the program to other urban school systems within HUD's existing nine Enterprise Zone Communities over the next year.

The launch of the Cyber-Youth Network will coincide with the first week of Black
History Month. WHAT: The Cyber-Youth Network will launch the nation's first fully interactive Internet Web site specifically designed for urban students, teachers and parents in recognition of Black History Month. More than 15 students will demonstrate the Network's capabilities.

CONTACT: Ann Liston or Carmelita Chavez, 202-338-8700 or 1-800-SKY-PAGE, pin
#801-9901, both for Cyber-Youth Network.  SOURCE Cyber-Youth Network

www.blackfacts.com

Ladytex
Member

09-27-2001

Thursday, February 03, 2005 - 5:54 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
********** Today in Black History – February 3 ***********

1855 - The Wisconsin Supreme Court declares that the United States Fugitive Slave Law is unconstitutional.

1879 - Charles Follis is born. He will become the first African American professional football player in the United States. He will play for a professional team known as the Shelby Blues, in Shelby, Ohio.

1935 - Johnny "Guitar" Watson is born in Houston. Texas. He will become a guitarist and singer known for his wild style of guitar playing and the sound which merged Blues Music with touches of Rhythm & Blues and Funk.

1938 - Emile Griffith is born in St. Thomas, Virgin Islands. He will move to New York City as a young man and discover boxing. He will win the Golden Gloves title and turn professional in 1958. In his career, he will meet 10 world champions and box 339 title-fight rounds, more than any other fighter in history. He will be elected to the International Boxing Hall of Fame with the distinction of being the third fighter in history to hold both the welterweight and middleweight titles.

1938 - Elijah Pitts is born. He will become a professional football player with the Green Bay Packers. A major contributor as a running back, he will help his team win Super Bowl I. He will return to the Super Bowl thirty years later as a running back coach with the Buffalo Bills.

1939 - The Baltimore Museum of Art exhibit, "Contemporary Negro Art", opens. The exhibit, which will run for 16 days, will feature works by Richmond Barthe, Aaron Douglas, Archibald Motley, Jr.,and Jacob Lawrence's Toussaint L'Ouverture series.

1947 - Percival Prattis of "Our World" in New York City, becomes the first African American news correspondent admitted to the House and Senate press galleries in Washington, DC.

http://www.informationman.com/today.htm

Ladytex
Member

09-27-2001

Thursday, February 03, 2005 - 6:02 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
Blanche Kelso Bruce

The first black person to serve a full term in the United States Senate, Blanche K. Bruce was born in slavery near Farmville, Virginia , on March 1, 1841. He was tutored by his master's son and worked as a field hand and printer's apprentice as his master moved him from Virginia to Mississippi and Missouri. Bruce escaped slavery at the opening of the Civil War and attempted to enlist in the Union Army. After the military refused his application, he taught school, briefly attended Oberlin College, and worked as a steamboat porter on the Mississippi River. In 1864 he settled in Hannibal Missouri, and organized the state's first school for blacks. Five years later he moved to Mississippi where he entered local politics and established himself as a prosperous landowner. In quick succession he was appointed registrar of voters in Tallahatchie County, tax assessor of Bolivar County, and elected sheriff and tax collector of Bolivar where he also served as supervisor of education. On a trip to the state capital of Jackson in 1870, Bruce gained the attention of powerful white Republicans who dominated Mississippi's Reconstruction government. These men secured more appointments for Bruce and made him the most recognized black political leader in the state. In February 1874, the Mississippi legislature elected Bruce to the United States Senate.

Bruce formally entered the Senate on March 5, 1875, and was elected to three committees: Pensions; Manufactures; and Education and Labor. During the Forty-fifth Congress (1877-79) he served on the Select Committee on the Levee System of the Mississippi River. Although slighted by his Mississippi colleague, James L. Alcorn, Bruce won the friendship and support of Republican senators such as Roscoe Conkling (for whom Bruce would name his only child), and enjoyed a more amicable relationship with Alcorn's Democratic successor, Lucius Q. C. Lamar. Bruce made repeated though futile attempts to convince his fellow senators to seat Louisiana's former governor, P.B.S. Pinchback. He encouraged the government to be more generous in issuing western land grants to black emigrants and favored distribution of duty-free clothing from England to needy blacks who had emigrated to Kansas from the South. Bruce also appealed for the desegregation of United States Army unites and fora Senate inquiry into the violent Mississippi elections of 1875. As a member and temporary chairman of the Committee on River Improvements, he advocated the development of a channel and levee system and construction of the Mississippi Valley and Ship Island Railroad.

On February 14, 1879, during debate on a Chinese exclusion bill that he opposed, Bruce became the first black senator to preside over a Senate session. In April he was appointed chairman of the Select Committee to Investigate the Freedman's Savings and Trust Company. Bruce's six-member committee issued a report naming bank officials who were guilty of fraud and incompetence. Eventually about 61,000 depositors victimized by the bank's 1874 failure received a portion of their money. In January 1880 the Mississippi legislature, now controlled by Democrats, chose James Z. George to succeed Bruce. Before his term ended the following March, Bruce continued to be an activist senator, calling for a more equitable and humane Indian policy and demanding a War Department investigation of the brutal harassment of a Black West Point cadet. AT the 1880 Republican convention in Chicago, Bruce served briefly as presiding officer and received eight votes for vice president.

Following the close of his Senate service on March 3, 1881, Bruce rejected an offer of the ministry to Brazil because slavery was still practiced there. All but one member of the Mississippi congressional delegation endorsed Bruce for a seat in President Garfield' cabinet, but he instead received appointment as registrar of the treasury and served until the Democrat's regained power in 1885. Bruce became a lecturer, an author of magazine articles, and was superintendent of the exhibit on black achievement at the World's Cotton Exposition in New Orleans during 1884-1885. In 1888 Bruce received eleven votes for vice president at the convention that nominated Benjamin Harrison. Harrison, as president, appointed Bruce recorder of deeds for the District of Columbia in 1889. After leaving this office in 1893 Bruce was a trustee of public schools in Washington, D.C., and again registrar of the treasury from 1897 until his death in Washington on March 17, 1898.

http://www.csusm.edu/Black_Excellence/documents/pg-b-bruce.html

Herckleperckle
Member

11-20-2003

Thursday, February 03, 2005 - 7:02 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
Langston Hughes' Poetry


Dream Deferred

What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
Like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore--
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over--
like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?



Suicide's Note

The calm,
Cool face of the river
Asked me for a kiss.



Me and the Mule

My old mule,
He's gota grin on his face.
He's been a mule so long
He's forgotten about his race.

I'm like that old mule --
Black -- and don't give a damn!
You got to take me
Like I am.



The Negro Speaks of Rivers

I've known rivers:
I've known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood in human veins.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.
I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.
I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.
I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln went down to New Orleans, and I've seen its muddy bosom turn all golden in the sunset.

I've known rivers:
Ancient, dusky rivers.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.



The Weary Blues

Droning a drowsy syncopated tune,
Rocking back and forth to a mellow croon,
.............I heard a Negro play.
Down on Lenox Avenue the other night
By the pale dull pallor of an old gas light
.............He did a lazy sway...
.............He did a lazy sway...
To the tune o' those Weary Blues.
With his ebony hands on each ivory key
He made that poor piano moan with melody.
.............O Blues!
Swaying to and fro on his rickety stool
He plays that sad raggy tune like a musical fool.
.............Sweet Blues!
Coming from a black man's soul.
.............O Blues!

In a deep song voice with a melancholy tone
I heard that Negro sing, that old piano moan--
............."Ain't got nobody in all this world,
.............Ain't got nobody but ma self.
.............I's gwine to quit ma frownin'
.............And put ma troubles on the shelf."
Thump, thump, thump, went his foot on the floor.
He played a few chords then he sang some more--
............."I got the Weary Blues
.............And I can't be satisfied.
.............Got the Weary Blues
.............And can't be satisfied--
.............I ain't happy no mo'
.............And I wish that I had died."

And far into the night he crooned that tune.
The stars went out and so did the moon.
The singer stopped playing and went to bed
While the Weary Blues echoed through his head.
He slept like a rock or a man that's dead.

Heyltslori
Member

09-15-2001

Friday, February 04, 2005 - 9:43 am   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
Thank you so much Ladytex! I really appreciate all of your posts here. I read them all and I am always learning something new and interesting!

Tishala
Member

08-01-2000

Friday, February 04, 2005 - 12:06 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
The Forten women
1805 - 1883

The Fortens were one of the most prominent black families in Philadelphia. Wealthy sailmaker James Forten and his wife Charlotte Vandine Forten headed the family; their daughters were Margaretta (c. 1815-1875), Harriet (1810-1875), and Sarah (1814-1883). The Fortens were active abolitionists who took part in founding and financing at least six abolitionist organizations, and their home was always open to visiting abolitionists.

In December 1833, Charlotte and her daughters helped establish the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society, the country's first biracial organization of women's abolitionists, which drew all of its black members from the city's elite. Margaretta was one of 14 women who drafted the Society's constitution and was an officer throughout the organization's history. Sarah served on the organization's governing board for two years. Harriet frequently co-chaired the Society's antislavery fairs. The Fortens also represented the Society as delegates to state and national conventions.

Margaretta was a teacher for at least thirty years. During the 1840's she taught at a school run by Sarah Mapps Douglass; in 1850 she opened her own school. She supported the women's rights movement, working to obtain signatures for a Women's National League petition, Margaretta never married, and lived in her parents' home as an adult, as did her two younger brothers, Thomas and William.

Sarah Forten Purvis was a writer. Starting at age 17, she composed numerous poems and articles for the Liberator, under the names "Magawisca" and "Ada." At least one of her poems, "The Grave of the Slave," was set to music by black band leader Frank Johnson.

Sarah and Harriet both married into another family of prominent black Philadelphian abolitionists, the Purvises. Harriet married Robert Purvis in 1832; Sarah married Joseph Purvis in 1838. Both couples moved to an area about 15 miles from Philadelphia. In 1857 Joseph Purvis died, and Sarah moved with her children to the Forten family home.

The household of Robert and Harriet Forten Purvis became a major haven for abolitionists and fugitive slaves alike. In addition to raising her own five children, Harriet also raised her niece, Charlotte Forten (Grimké) following the death of Charlotte's mother. She also pursued her public career as an abolitionist, with her husband's wholehearted support. In her later years, Harriet lectured against segregation and for black suffrage. link

Ladytex
Member

09-27-2001

Friday, February 04, 2005 - 10:41 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
Sorry this is late tonight

Black Facts that happened on February the 4th:

1794 France abolishes slavery. The nation will have a lukewarm commitment to abolition and will, under Napoleon, reestablish slavery in 1802 along with the reinstitution of the "Code noir", prohibiting blacks, mulattoes and other people of color from entering French colonial territory or intermarrying with whites.

1822 The American Colonization Society founds the African colony for free African Americans that will become the country of Liberia, West Africa.

1898 Harry Haywood is born in South Omaha, Nebraska. After relocating to Minneapolis, Minnesota with his family, he will join the U.S. Army. He will serve with the 370th Infantry in France during World War I. Returning to Chicago, Illinois after the war, he will be active as a Black Nationalist, becoming a member of the African Blood Brotherhood and the Communist Party of the USA. He will be a leading proponent of Black Nationalism, self-determination, and the idea that American Blacks are a colonized people who should organize themselves into a nation. From 1926 to 1930, he will study in the Soviet Union, where he will meet several anti-colonial revolutionaries, including Vietnam's Ho Chi Minh. On his return to the U.S. in 1931, he will be chosen to lead the Communist Party's Negro Department, and in 1934 will be was elected a member of its politburo. The Spanish Civil War will take him to Spain in 1937, where he will fight in a volunteer Communist brigade against General Francisco Franco's fascist regime. During World War II, his belief in black self-determination and territorial autonomy will put him at odds with Communist Party policy, which had gravitated away from support for a Black nation in the American south. His agitation on "The Negro Question" led to his expulsion from the Party in 1959. He will remain in Chicago, supporting Black Nationalist movements such as the Nation of Islam. He will join the ancestors in 1985.

1913 Rosa Parks is born in Tuskegee, Alabama. When the seamstress and NAACP member refuses to yield her seat to a white man on a Montgomery, Alabama bus in 1955, her actions will spark a 382-day boycott of the buses in Montgomery, halting business and services in the city and become the initial act of non-violent disobedience of the American Civil Rights movement. She will be honored with the NAACP's Spingarn Medal for her heroism and later work with Detroit youth(1979) and be called the "Mother of the Civil Rights Movement."

1926 John Hearne is born in Montreal, Quebec, Canada to Jamaican parents. He will move with his parents back to Jamaica at the age of two. He will join the Royal Air Force during World War II, primarily to leave the island and will serve as a gunner. After the war, he will attend Edinburgh University in Scotland and graduate with a Masters' degree in history in 1950. He will become a novelist and playwright, publishing five novels between 1955 and 1961. He will publish several plays during the 1960's and 1970's. He will teach at the University of the West Indies in Kingston, Jamaica from 1962 to 1992 and will publish his sixth novel in 1981.

1947 Sanford Bishop is born in Mobile, Alabama. He will graduate from Morehouse College and Emory University Law School. He will specialize in civil rights law and will become a member of the Georgia Legislature from 1977 to 1993 (House and Senate). In 1993, he will be elected a member of the United States House of Representatives from Georgia.

1952 Jackie Robinson is named Director of Communication for WNBC in New York City, becoming the first African American executive of a major radio-TV network.

1965 Joseph Danquah joins the ancestors in Nsawam Prison in Ghana at the age of 69. He had been a Ghanaian scholar, lawyer and nationalist. He had led the opposition against Kwame Nkrumah who had him imprisoned.

1969 MPLA begins armed struggle against Portugal in Angola.

1971 National Guard mobilized to quell rioting in Wilmington, North Carolina. Two persons killed. Until the 9th.

1971 Major League Baseball announces a special Hall of Fame wing for special displays about the Negro Leagues. These exhibits will provide information on these most deserving but rarely recognized contributors to Baseball.

1986 A stamp of Sojourner Truth is issued by the U.S. Postal Service

1996 J.C. Watts becomes the first Black selected to respond to a state of the union address.

2003 Charlie Biddle, a leader of Montreal's jazz scene in the 1950s and '60s who played bass with Thelonious Monk and Charlie Parker, joins the ancestors after a battle with cancer at the age of 76. Biddle was a native of Philadelphia who moved to Canada in 1948. Over the next five decades, the World War II veteran and former car salesman became synonymous with jazz in Montreal. Biddle opened his own club, Uncle Charlie's Jazz Joint, in suburban Ste-Therese in 1958. He later performed in such legendary Montreal nightspots as The Black Bottom and the Penthouse, where he worked with the likes of Oscar Peterson, Art Tatum, Charlie Parker and Lionel Hampton. When there were no jobs in Montreal, he played smaller Quebec cities with a group called Three Jacks and a Jill. Until the time of his passing, he played four nights a week at Biddle's Jazz and Ribs, a Montreal landmark for nearly 25 years. In 1979, he organized the three-day festival that some say paved the way for the renowned Montreal International Jazz Festival.

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Ladytex
Member

09-27-2001

Saturday, February 05, 2005 - 9:02 am   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
Black Facts that happened on February the 5th:

1866 Congressman Thaddeus Stevens offered an amendment to Freedmen's Bureau bill authorizing the distribution of public land and confiscated land to freedmen and loyal refugees in forty acre lots. The measure was defeated in the House by a vote of 126 to 37. A Black delegation, led by Frederick Douglas called on President Johnson and urged ballots for former slaves. Meeting ended in disagreement and controversy after Johnson reiterated his opposition to Black suffrage.

1900 U.S. Rep. Jefferson Long, elected from the state of Georgia, died in Washington D.C. Long was the only candidate interested in running for the 60-day term and he was duly elected.

1934 Henry "Home Run King" Aaron, baseball superstar was born.

1950 Singer Natalie Cole, daughter of legendary singer Nat Cole, born in Los Angeles, California. Singing professionally at age 11, by 1976 Cole had won Grammys for New Artist of the Year and Best R&B Female Vocalist.

1958 Clifton R. Wharton Sr. confirmed as minister to Rumania. Career diplomat was the first Black to head a U.S. embassy in Europe.

1962 Suit seeking to bar Englewood, N.J., from maintaining "racial segregated" elementary schools filed in U.S. District Court.

1990 Columbia University graduate and Harvard University law student Barack Obabma became the first African American named president of the Harvard Law Review.

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