Black History
-
John Miles Lewis Remembered
Congressman and civil rights leader, John Lewis, was remembered today, Thursday, July 30, 2020, at his longtime place of worship, Ebenezer Baptist church. Congressman Lewis, the son of sharecroppers, was born on February 21, 1940 in Pike County, Alabama. Before his service in the House of Representatives, 5th Congressional District of Georgia (1987-2020), he was a civil rights icon. In 1961 Lewis became one of the original Freedom Riders; 13 activists who protested the segregation of interstate transportation facilities, including bus stations, as being unconstitutional. Three former presidents attended Representative Lewis’s funeral; Clinton, Bush and Obama, while President Carter, 95, and his wife, Rosalynn, were unable to attend. The Carter’s…
-
Emancipation Proclamation
Juneteenth Emancipation Order June 19, 1865 commemorates the day General Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston, Texas leading the union occupation force and bringing with them the news of the Emancipation Proclamation. Read more about the holiday of Juneteenth: “Emancipation wasn’t a gift bestowed on the slaves; it was something they took for themselves, …” New York Times Opinion Piece Washington Post Article on George Floyd Protest
-
The Story of Cudjo Lewis
Cudjo Lewis, (ca. 1841-1935), (birth name of Oluale Kossola (Kazoola)), along with 120 others, was sold into slavery at the age of 19. The slave ship Clotilda travelled from the West African country of Benin ( Cudjo Lewis’s birth place) to Alabama in 1860 just one year prior to the Civil War (the bloodiest war in the history of the United States) that erupted on April 12, 1861. To learn about the life of Oluale Kossola you can read Zora Neale Hurston’s book Barracoon: The Story of the Last “Black Cargo”. Zora first attempted publication in 1931, but it took fifty-eight years after her death (January 7, 1891 – January 28, 1960) to…
-
Black History Month
It was Dec. 1, 1955 on a city bus in Montgomery, Alabama when Rosa Parks, a NAACP member, bravely refused to allow a white man to have her seat. She refused to be sent to the back of the bus. We find it hard to imagine that one individual in a moment of choice and action can make a difference. We have grown cynical. We have given up before even trying, believing that without wealth, power, and a Super PAC on our team, it is an impossibility that an ordinary person can help facilitate change. And it is true that we are up against an advantaged few that often win…
-
Ole Miss Riot
On Oct. 1, 1962 Mississippi University admitted James Meredith; their first black student. This Federally ordered act of integration resulted in a violent mob riot on the campus. Two people were killed and hundreds injured. Mississippi had segregationist laws that Governor Ross Barnett tried to uphold despite President Kennedy’s order to obey the federal law against segregation. The fight to preserve James Meredith’s civil right to attend the University of Mississippi is sometimes referred to as “the last battle of the Civil War”. Learn more about the facts and people involved.
-
Remembering Rosa Parks
It was 58 years ago today Dec. 1, 1955 on a city bus in Montgomery, Alabama that Rosa Parks, an NAACP member, bravely refused to move to the back of the bus. She refused to allow a white man to have her seat on the bus. We often imagine that one individual citizen of the United States, cannot make a difference. We give up before even trying believing that without large sums of money and powerful political backing it is an impossibility for our simple effort to succeed. Thankfully we have the remarkable example of Rosa Parks. She reminds us of the power one person has to make a stand against social injustice. Her single act of…
-
First African-American Grand Master Of Chess
There are only about a thousand grand masters of chess in the world and only one of them is African-American: Maurice Ashley. He wasn’t even good enough to make his high school chess team. But he studied hard and became a master when he was 20, then, 14 years later– a grand master– a ranking just short of world champion. He’s 45 now and Maurice Ashley has made chess his life. He travels the world bringing chess to kids who might not otherwise be aware of it, often playing…and winning! against an entire room of young hopefuls lined up before him at their chessboards. Some of the upstarts he may…
-
Arthur Ashe
Arthur Ashe biography Synopsis Born on July 10,1943, in Richmond, Virginia, Arthur Ashe became the first, and still only, black player to win the men’s singles at Wimbledon, the U.S. Open, or the Australian Open. Always an activist, when Ashe learned that he had contracted AIDS via a blood transfusion, he turned his efforts to raising awareness of the disease, before finally succumbing to it in 1993. Early Life Tennis player. Born Arthur Robert Ashe, Jr. on July 10,1943, in Richmond, Virginia. The oldest of Arthur Ashe, Sr. and Mattie Cunningham’s two sons, Arthur Ashe, Jr. blended finesse and power to forge a groundbreaking tennis game. He became the first,…
-
Macon Bolling Allen
Allen was born in Indiana in 1816. After beginning his career as a school teacher, he moved to Portland, Maine to study law. He was admitted to the Maine bar in 1844, becoming the first licensed African-American lawyer in the United States. He became a justice of the peace in Massachusetts in 1848, and was again the first African-American to do so. He practiced law in Boston before moving to South Carolina in 1868. He was admitted to the South Carolina Bar in November 1869 and joined in partnership with William Whipper and Robert Brown Elliott. Their law firm in Charleston was likely the first African American law firm in…
-
African-American Achievements
Fact #1 Soccer phenom Freddy Adu was the youngest athlete to play in a professional American sports league. Fact #2 The Shakespeare Memorial Theatre at Stratford-upon-Avon honored Ira Aldridge with a bronze plaque. He is the only African-American actor to receive this tribute. Fact #3 BET was the first African-American controlled company to sell shares on the New York Stock Exchange. Fact #4 Macon Bolling Allen was the first African-American to pass the bar and practice law in the United States in 1845. Fact #5 Lawyer Macon Bolling Allen was the first black American Justice of the Peace and the first African-American licensed to practice law in the U.S. Fact…
