Transcript SOMETHING YOU SHOULD SEE

SOMETHING YOU SHOULD
SEE
Fort
Robinson,
Nebraska
(1874-1916)
Tenth Cavalry
Football
Team,
Fort
Robinson,
Nebraska, ca.
1905
Cape Verde Immigrants Arrive at New Bedford, Massachusetts, Oct. 5, 1914.
Davis, Ernie (1940-1963)
Ernie Davis with the Heisman Trophy, 1961 Ernie Davis
is best known for being one of the greatest football
players in college football history and the first black
person to win the Heisman trophy. In the process, Davis
became an icon for an integrated America and for
African Americans achieving the American Dream in a
manner similar to Jackie Robinson desegregating
baseball.
Langston, Charles Henry (1817-1892)
Charles Henry Langston, the grandfather of poet Langston Hughes, was born a
free man on a Virginia plantation in 1817 to Captain Ralph Quarles and Lucy Jane
Langston, Quarles’ mulatto slave. He had two brothers, John Mercer (who would
become a Virginia Congressman in 1888) and Gideon. After the death of his father
in 1834, Charles inherited a large part of his father’s estate, and he went on to be
educated at Oberlin College in 1842 and 1843.
Narrative on next slide
Gordon Parks (2 previous slides)
A versatile and prolific artist, Gordon Parks, Sr. warrants his status as a cultural icon. The poet, novelist, film director, and
preeminent documentary and fashion photographer was born on November 30, 1912, in Fort Scott, Kansas, the youngest of
fifteen children. Parks saw no reason to stay in Kansas after the death of his mother and moved to St. Paul, Minnesota, at age
sixteen to live with his sister. After a disagreement with his brother-in-law, Parks soon found himself homeless, supporting
himself by playing piano and basketball and working as a busboy.
While working on a train as a waiter, Parks noticed a magazine with photographs from the Farm Security Administration
(FSA). The photos by such documentary photographers as Dorothea Lange, Russell Lee and Arthur Rothstein led him to
Richard Wright's 12 Million Black Voices, other photo essays about poverty and racism, and the social and artistic voice he
had been seeking. Parks bought a used camera in 1938, deciding on a career in photography. In 1941, Parks received a
fellowship from the Julius Rosenwald Foundation to work with Roy Stryker at the photography section of the FSA. In
Washington, D.C., he trained as a photo journalist. He would work with Stryker for the next few years, producing work and
honing the modernist and individualistic style he became known for by photographing small towns and industrial centers
throughout America.
By the end of the 1940s, Parks was working with Life and Vogue and in that capacity did some of his most famous work.
Traveling the globe and covering issues as varied as the fashion industry, poverty in Brazil, the Nation of Islam and gang
violence, and eventually celebrity portraitures, Parks continued to develop and create new ways to convey meaning through
his work.
Branching out from his photography in 1963, Parks directed his first film, The Learning Tree, based on his autobiographical
novel of the same name. His filmmaking career launched, Parks went on to direct many films, including Shaft in 1971. In
addition to film, Parks has composed music and written several books including: A Choice of Weapons (1966), To Smile in
Autumn (1979), Voices in the Mirror (1990), Arias of Silence (1994), and a retrospective of his life and work titled Half Past
Autumn (1997), which was recently made into an HBO special.
Parks passed away on March 7, 2006 at the age of 93.
Buffalo Soldiers in Montana (1888-1898)
Buffalo Soliders
The Rucker park Harlem
Bell, James "Cool Papa" (1903-1991)
Leroy Robert "Satchel" Paige (7 July 1906 - 8 June
1982) was one of the greatest baseball pitchers of
all time.
Josh Gibson
nickname Black Babe Ruth
(1911 - 1947)
(born December 21, 1911, Buena Vista, Georgia, U.S.—died
January 20, 1947, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania) American
professional baseball player called the black Babe Ruth, one of
the greatest players kept from the major leagues by the
unwritten rule (enforced until the year of his death) against
hiring black ballplayers.
Gibson played as a catcher for the Pittsburgh Crawfords
(1927–29 and 1932–36) and the Homestead Grays of
Pennsylvania (1930–31 and 1937–46). Although precise
records do not exist, he is believed to have led the Negro
National League in home runs for 10 consecutive seasons and
to have had a career batting average of .347. He hit 75 home
runs for Homestead in 1931. His catching ability was praised
by Walter Johnson and other major league stars against whom
he played in exhibition games. Gibson was elected to the
Baseball Hall of fame in 1972.
Freedom Rides (1961)
Great Migration, The (1915-1960)
Black Family Arrives in Chicago
from the South, ca. 1919 The Great
Migration was the mass movement
of about five million southern
blacks to the north and west
between 1915 and 1960. During
the initial wave the majority of
migrants moved to major northern
cities such as Chicago, Detroit,
Pittsburgh, and New York. By World
War II the migrants continued to
move North but many of them
headed west to Los Angeles,
Oakland, San Francisco, Portland
and Seattle.
Hampton Institute
Student Teaching Freed
people to Read, ca.
1880.
O’Ree, Willie (1935- )
Willie O’Ree, the National
Hockey League’s (NHL) first
black player with Boston Bruins
on January 18, 1958 against the
Montreal Canadiens
William Hooper Councill (1848–1909) was a former slave and
the first president of Huntsville Normal School, which is today
Alabama Agricultural and Mechanical University in Huntsville,
Alabama.
Anderson, Caroline Still Wiley (1848-1919)
Caroline Still Wiley Anderson, physician and educator, was born in
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to William and Letitia Still. Supporting
his family through coal mining investments and a stove store,
William Still, a prominent antebellum abolitionist, helped escaped
slaves on the Underground Railroad. He wrote about these fugitive
slaves in his book The Underground Railroad.
Narrative on next slide
MARY FIELDS (known as "STAGECOACH MARY") (previous slide)
Mary Fields was born as a slave in Hickman County, Tennessee in year of 1832. Mary's life started to unfold after her
family died and during her days of freedom right after the Civil War (1861-1865). When she grew into adulthood, Mary
Fields was described as a big woman of six feet tall. She was noted as being tough. Mary knew how to ride a horse and
shoot a rifle and six-shooter. In her late twenties, Mary Fields worked for Mother Amadeus of the Catholic Ursuline
Convent in Toledo, Ohio.
By 1881, Mother Amadeus went to the far northwest state of Montana to set up a school for women and girls of the
Blackfeet Indian Tribe in the town of Cascade, Montana. In 1884, Mary Field joined her friend, Mother Amadeus, at the
school in Casade. Mary Fields' fearless temperament landed her the job of delivering freight for the school's nuns.
One day, while on the job, Mary was involved in an insulting dispute with one of the handymen at the school. This
situation escalated into a shootout, and Mary Fields was fired from her job. Mary went on to open a restaurant in
Cascade, but this was a failure. Again, Mother Amadeus helped Mary to land work as a mail route courier with a route
between the Mission School and the town of Cascade. For eight years, Mary drove her stagecoach on the mail route
dressed in a man's hat and coat. She also smoked a big cigar and everyone knew her as "Stagecoach Mary."
At age 71, in 1903, Mary Fields decided to open up her own laundry business. It is said no one took advantage of Mary
Fields. One male customer received his laundry but insulted Mary by not paying his bill. Mary later recognized that
customer in the local saloon she frequently patronized (Note: women did not drink in all-male saloons, but Mary Fields
was granted permission by the Mayor of Cascade). Mary went over to this man and knocked him flat out with one
fisted punch. She announced to everyone "that his laundry bill was now paid." The people of Cascade loved Mary
Fields. When she died in 1914 at age 82, she became a memorable icon for her life as a true westerner of the American
frontier.
Jane Bolin becomes the first African
American woman to receive a law
degree from Yale.
Queen Mother Audley E. Moore
In Honor Of A Warrior Woman
On December 6 and 7, 1991, the Department of Pan-African Studies
at Kent State University dedicated the entire third floor of the Center
of Pan-African Culture to Queen Mother Audley E. Moore, a "Warrior
Woman," born on July 27, 1898, who devoted her life to active
struggle on behalf of all people of African descent. She was honored
for having organized on many fronts, from the great influenza
epidemic of 1918 in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, where she worked as a
volunteer nurse, to the United Nations, where she presented
petitions in the 1950s charging genocide and demanding reparations
to descendants of former slaves.
Bose Ikard was born a slave, but after he gained his
freedom, he rode for many years with the Texas cattle
barons, Charles Goodnight and Oliver Loving. Their
adventures served as the basis for Larry McMurty's
novel, Lonesome Dove, which became a television
miniseries in 1989. Ikard was the real-life model for
McMurtry's character, Joshua Deets, who was played by
Danny Glover. Goodnight and Loving provided the
inspiration for Woodrow F. Call and Augustus McCrae
who were played by Tommy Lee Jones and Robert
Duvall.
John Brown and the Harpers Ferry Raid
On October 16, 1859, abolitionist John Brown and several
followers seized the United States Armory and Arsenal at
Harpers Ferry. The actions of Brown's men brought national
attention to the emotional divisions concerning slavery.
Narrative on next slide
PAGE, INMAN EDWARD (1853-1935) (previous slide)
The first president of the Colored Agricultural and Normal University (CANU), later Langston University, and an influential
Oklahoma educator, Inman Page was born into slavery on December 29, 1853, in Warrenton, Virginia. During the Civil War his
family fled Virginia and later moved to Washington, D.C. Page attended Howard University for two years and then enrolled at
Brown University. He was among the first African Americans to be admitted to the prestigious Providence, Rhode Island, college.
In 1877 Page and George Washington Milford became the first blacks to graduate from Brown, with Page selected as class orator
for the commencement. He took a teaching position at Natchez Seminary in Mississippi. In 1878 he married Zelia R. Ball, and the
couple had two children, Zelia N. and Mary. After one year he left Natchez for Lincoln Institute in Jefferson City, Missouri, where
he became president in 1888.
In 1898 the Colored Agricultural and Normal University at the All-Black town of Langston chose Page to be its first president. In
his seventeen-year tenure at CANU he increased the school's enrollment from an initial forty to well over six hundred, and its
faculty from four to thirty-five. He traveled the state recruiting students, expanded the agricultural and industrial courses,
established the college department, and supervised the construction of numerous university buildings. Within a few years
partisan politics emerged. By 1915 controversy swirled around the direction of the college's mission from industrial and
agricultural education to liberal arts. After scandalous allegations were reported in the Oklahoma Tribune, an Oklahoma City
African American newspaper, Page resigned his position and sued. A Logan County jury found the Tribune editor, Melvin Chisum,
guilty of libel and one of his employees guilty of extortion against Page. Although the educator was vindicated, the change in
administration sent the university into chaos. Enrollment dropped from 639 to 184 for the summer semester and to 322 in the
regular term.
Page left the state for a time. He moved back to Missouri as the president of Western College and Industrial Institute at Macon
and by 1918 was president of Roger Williams University in Nashville, Tennessee. In 1920 he returned to Oklahoma due to ill
health. When recuperated, in 1922 he accepted a position as principal at Oklahoma City's Douglass High School. He soon became
the supervising principal of the city's separate school system. Inman Page died on December 21, 1935, at the home of his
daughter, Zelia Breaux, in Oklahoma City.
Narrative on next slide
Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander (previous slide), who accomplished many "firsts" during her lifetime, was born on January 2,
1898 in Philadelphia. Alexander was born in the house of her distinguished uncle, Henry Osawa Tanner, award-winning
painter of religious subjects. She was the granddaughter of Benjamin Tucker Tanner, bishop in the African Methodist
Episcopal (AME) church, editor of the Christian Recorder from 1868 to1884 and founding editor of the African Methodist
Episcopal Church Review, from 1884 to 1888.
Alexander attended high school at the M Street High School (later Dunbar High School) in Washington, D.C., where she was
encouraged to continue her education by the historian, Carter G. Woodson. After high school, Alexander was persuaded by
her mother to attend the University of Pennsylvania, where he family had strong ties. Her father, Aaron Albert Mossell, was a
graduate of Lincoln University and the first African American to graduate from the University of Pennsylvania Law School in
1888. Her uncle was Louis Baxter Moore, the first African American to receive a Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania.
In 1918, Alexander received a B. S. in Education with senior honors, and in 1919, a M.A. in Economics, both from the
University of Pennsylvania. In 1921, she received a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School,
becoming one of the first black women to receive a doctorate and the first African American to receive a Ph.D. in economics.
The title of her dissertation was, "The Standard of Living among One Hundred Negro Migrant Families in Philadelphia."
Alexander was proud of her graduation, "I can well remember marching down Broad Street from Mercantile Hall to the
Academy of Music where there were photographers from all over the world taking my picture." While at the University of
Pennsylvania, Alexander was active in the Gamma Chapter of the Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, which was the first AfricanAmerican sorority at the University. In 1921, she became the first president of the Grand Chapter, the national organization
of Delta Sigma Theta, serving for five years.
Members at 1921 Delta Sigma Theta’s national Convention, hosted
by Gamma Chapter at the University of Pennsylvania. Shown left to
right: front, Virginia Margaret Alexander, Julia Mae Polk, Sadie
Tanner Mossell; row 2, Anna R. Johnson, Nellie Rathbone Bright,
Pauline Alice Young.
Lola Falana (born Loletha Elaine Falana on September 11,
1942 in Camden, New Jersey) is an American dancer and
actress of Cuban and African American descent. Falana's
father left Cuba to become a welder in the United States,
where he met his wife. Falana spent most of her childhood in
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Hiram Revels
Senator from Mississippi; first African American senator
Born: September 27, 1827
Birthplace: Fayetteville, N.C.
Born a free black, Revels worked as a barber and as a minister in
the African Methodist Episcopal Church. During the Civil War he
helped recruit two regiments of African American troops in
Maryland and served as the chaplain of a black regiment. After
the war he moved to Natchez, Miss., where he was elected an
alderman (1868) and a state senator (1870). In 1870 Revels was
elected as the first African American member of the United
States Senate. A few senators objected, arguing that Revels had
not been a U.S. citizen for the nine years, a requirement for
serving in the Senate--African Americans had only technically
become citizens four years earlier, after the passage of the 1866
Civil Rights Act. But this ploy to keep him out of the Senate
failed--the Senate voted 48 to 8 in favor of Revels. Revels served
as senator from Feb. 25, 1870, to March 4, 1871. (His term was
an abbreviated one because he was elected to complete the
term vacated ten years earlier by Jefferson Davis, who left the
Senate to become the president of the Confederacy.) After the
Senate, Revels served as the president of a black college and
returned to the ministry.
Died: Jan. 16, 1901
Narrative on next slide
(Previous Slide)
[Bob Cole] detail from "Pliney come out in the moonlight" (New York : J.H. Remick and Co., c1910. ). African-American Sheet
Music, 1850-1920, American Memory, Library of Congress.
Robert Allen Cole was born on July 1, 1868, in Athens, Georgia, the son of former slaves. Like Will Marion Cook and James
Reese Europe, he became one of the most important composers of his generation, creating a model for other African-American
musicians and composers. By 1891 Cole was a member of Jack's Creoles, a black minstrel company based in Chicago. Within
two or three years, however, Cole began to hammer out his own vision of black theater.
After publishing his first songs in 1893, Cole formed his own company of performers, The All-Star Stock Company, in 1894. This
company included luminaries such as the Farrell Brothers, Billy Johnson, Stella Wiley (by then Cole's wife), Will Marion Cook,
and Gussie Davis. In 1896 Cole joined forces with the Black Patti Troubadours. He and Billy Johnson left the Troubadours,
however, and formed a new company which produced the landmark musical, A Trip to Coontown (1898)--the first New York
musical written, produced, and performed by black entertainers. This show's run was successful; it also toured off and on until
1901.
After the initial production of Trip, Cole broke with Billy Johnson. He soon began a partnership with J. Rosamond Johnson, and
occasionally with Johnson's brother, James Weldon Johnson--a collaboration that lasted until Cole's death. In 1900 J. Rosamond
Johnson and Cole formed a vaudeville act which was noted for its elegance and broad range of material, including many songs
that they had written.
Cole and J. Rosamond Johnson continued their musical collaboration. They joined the Klaw and Erlanger production staff and
began writing songs for white shows. In 1901 their success was rewarded with an exclusive contract with Jos. W. Stern and Sons
for the publication of their music. The song "Under the Bamboo Tree," from the musical Sally in our Alley (1904), was one of
their biggest hits in both black and white musical circles. Some people claim that around 1905 Cole and Johnson were the most
popular songwriting team in America.
Narrative on next slide
(Picture previous slide)
How much difference can one person make? Dr. Milton Douglas Quigless defied the odds and the conventions of his time to
make medical care available to African Americans in Edgecombe County.In 1936, just out of medical school, he arrived in the
small town of Tarboro with $7 in his pocket and a desire to care for people. The need was certainly there. Tarboro’s only hospital
was restricted to whites. Local white doctors did not usually treat African Americans, and the town’s only black physician had
died years earlier.
Denied privileges at the hospital, Dr. Quigless set up an office in an abandoned fish market. He struggled to provide adequate
care and perform surgery, not only in his meager office but also in patients’ homes. Many were tenant farmers with no electricity
and poor sanitary conditions that bred typhoid, dysentery and tuberculosis. To give the best care possible, Quigless consulted
with specialists around the state. And, as most country doctors did in the days before penicillin, he improvised and occasionally
used folk medical treatments he’d learned.But local prejudices and segregation laws continued to frustrate Quigless.
In 1947, with his life savings and a $37,000 loan, he purchased and converted his office building into a 25-bed clinic. “All the
patients I’d been seeing out in the country, a lot of them died, you know, before I built the place here,” he recalled. “From the day
I started, it was filled up.”The Quigless Hospital developed an excellent reputation. During the 1950s, white patients began to
come for treatment, too. Breaking tradition with most Southern hospitals of that time, Quigless provided one door and one
waiting room for all patients, white and black.
In 1974, the hospital closed when Dr. Quigless joined the staff of the new Edgecombe County General Hospital and moved his
patients there. But he maintained an office in the old hospital until shortly before his death in 1997. Today his son, Dr. Milton
Quigless, Jr., is a well-known surgeon in Raleigh, keeping the Quigless name very much a part of North Carolina health care.
Narrative on next slide
Joel Augustus Rogers 1883-1966 (previous slide)
Although Joel Augustus Rogers was largely self-trained, some of the most distinguished scholars of the twentieth century have
acknowledged our debt to him. Dr. William E. B. DuBois (1868-1963), perhaps the greatest scholar in American history, wrote
that, "No man living has revealed so many important facts about the Negro race as has Rogers." The eminent anthropologist and
sociologistJ.G. St. Clair Drake wrote that:
"No discussion of comparative race relations would be complete without consideration of the work of the highly motivated, selftrained historian Joel A. Rogers. Endowed with unusual talent, Rogers rose to become one of the best-informed individuals in the
world on Black history, writing and publishing his own books without any kind of organizational or foundation support."
In April 1987, in a personal interview with me, Professor John G. Jackson (1907-1993) said that:
"Rogers came from Jamaica in the West Indies. He settled in Chicago. He eventually took a job as a Pullman porter so he could
visit different cities and libraries and do research. I got an interesting story about that. The story was that in a lot of large cities a
lot of libraries were for whites only. Black people weren't permitted to go into them. So Rogers had to pay the Pullman conductor
to go to the libraries and take out books from them. The conductor said, "Rogers, I believe you're a damn fool. But if you want to
throw away your money that way, I'm willing to cooperate."
Rogers was a field anthropologist. He traveled to sixty different nations and did a lot of research and observing. He had been told
when he was a child in Sunday School that God had cursed the Black man and made him inferior. Rogers wanted to prove that
the Black man was not inferior."
After a short illness, Joel Augustus Rogers died in New York City in March 1966 at the beginning of the Black Studies movement.
His widow, Helga M. Rogers, reported that "he suffered a stroke while visiting friends and continuing to do research in
Washington." His labors, however, were not in vain. He impact was enormous, his legacy colossal, his place in history secure. Joel
Augustus Rogers was a man without peer in gathering up and binding the missing pages of African history. Indeed, Rogers, in the
words of Dr. John Henrik Clarke, "looked at the history of people of African origin, and showed how their history is an inseparable
part of the history of mankind."
Abbott, Cleveland Leigh (1892–1955)
Cleveland Leigh Abbott was born December 9, 1892 in Yankton, South Dakota. He is most
remembered for his coaching career at Tuskegee Institute (now University) in Alabama.
Abbott was the son of Elbert and Mollie Brown Abbott who moved to South Dakota from
Alabama in 1890. He graduated from Watertown High School, Watertown, South Dakota, in
1912 and then fromthe South Dakota State University at Brookings in 1916. Abbott earned 14
varsity athletic awards during his collegiate career.
Abbott served as a First Lieutenant in the 366th Infantry, 92nd Division in World War I. He saw
action at the Meuse-Argonne Offensive in 1918. Abbott was later a commissioned officer in
the Army Reserve. (The US Army Reserve Center at Tuskegee is now named the Cleveland
Leigh Abbott Center.)
In 1923 Cleveland Abbott was hired as an agricultural chemist and athletic director at
Tuskegee Institute, a job that had been personally offered to him by Booker T. Washington in
1913 on the condition that he successfully earn his B.A. degree. As athletic director Abbott
was expected to coach the Institute's football team. During Abbott’s 32-year career, the
Tuskegee team had a 202–95–27 record including six undefeated seasons.
Abbott also started the women’s track and field program at Tuskegee in 1937. The team was
undefeated from 1937 to 1942. Six of his athletes competed on U.S. Olympic track teams,
including gold medalists Alice Coachman and Mildred McDaniel. He also coached tennis stars
Margaret “Pete” Peters and Roumania “Repeat” Peters during their college years at Tuskegee.
Frantz Fanon (1925-1961) is a leading thinker of postcolonialism. Malcolm X,
Che Guevara and Steve Biko read him. Fanon is best known for two of his
books, “Black Skin, White Masks” (1952), about internalized racism, and “The
Wretched of the Earth” (1961), about casting off colonialism.
Fanon, like Che Guevara and Malcolm X, was born in the 1920s and died
young in the 1960s. And like them he fought and wrote against white power,
which has ruled much of the world, at first directly through colonial empires
in the 1800s and early 1900s, and then through its control of world banking,
trade, television, education and so on.
For Fanon, gaining physical independence - kicking the white rulers out of
your country - was only the first step. Because whites did more than simply
rule – they also spread their language and thought and way of life. So even if
you kick the white man out of your country, he is still in your head telling you
that you are not as good as he is, that you are not whole, that there is
something wrong with you, that you must become more like him. The
colonized mind.
Fanon was born on the Caribbean island of Martinique, then a colony of the
French empire. He grew up in a well-to-do family and received a French
education. At 17, during the middle of the Second World War, he ran away
from home and sailed across the sea to fight against Hitler with the French
Resistance.
Narrative on the next slide
Story Behind the Photo (previous slide):
On the morning of October 16, 1968, U.S. athlete Tommie Smith won the 200 meter race in a then-world-record time of 19.83
seconds, with Australia's Peter Norman second with a time of 20.07 seconds, and the U.S.'s John Carlos in third place with a time
of 20.10 seconds. After the race was completed, the three went to collect their medals at the podium. The two U.S athletes
received their medals shoeless, but wearing black socks, to represent black poverty. Smith wore a black scarf around his neck to
represent black pride, Carlos had his tracksuit top unzipped to show solidarity with all blue collar workers in the U.S. and wore a
necklace of beads which he described "were for those individuals that were lynched, or killed and that no-one said a prayer for,
that were hung and tarred. It was for those thrown off the side of the boats in the middle passage." All three athletes wore
Olympic Project for Human Rights (OPHR) badges, after Norman expressed sympathy with their ideals. Sociologist Harry Edwards,
the founder of the OPHR, had urged black athletes to boycott the games; reportedly, the actions of Smith and Carlos on October
16, 1968 were inspired by Edwards' arguments.
Both U.S. athletes intended on bringing black gloves to the event, but Carlos forgot his, leaving them in the Olympic Village. It
was the Australian, Peter Norman, who suggested Carlos wear Smith's left-handed glove, this being the reason behind him
raising his left hand, as opposed to his right, differing from the traditional Black Power salute. When "The Star-Spangled Banner"
played, Smith and Carlos delivered the salute with heads bowed, a gesture which became front page news around the world. As
they left the podium they were booed by the crowd. Smith later said "If I win, I am American, not a black American. But if I did
something bad, then they would say I am a Negro. We are black and we are proud of being black. Black America will understand
what we did tonight."
Bert Williams, 1874-1922
Egbert Austin Williams, 1874-1922 by Samuel Lumiere (between 1921 and 1922). Egbert
"Bert" Austin Williams was one of the greatest entertainers in America's history. Born in
the Bahamas on November 12, 1874, he came to the United States permanently in 1885.
Williams met George Walker in San Francisco in 1893 and the two formed what became
the most successful comedy team of their time. After appearing on Broadway in Victor
Herbert's The Gold Bug (1896), Williams and Walker created pioneering vaudeville shows
and full musical theater productions, including Senegambian Carnival (1897), The Policy
Players (1899), The Sons of Ham (1900), their biggest hit, In Dahomey (1902)--which also
played in London the following year, Abyssinia (1906), and Bandana Land (1907).
Williams was also one of the most prolific black performers on recordings, making around
80 recordings from 1901-22. Indeed, his first recording sessions with George Walker for
the Victor Company in 1901 are considered the first recordings by black performers for a
major recording company. Williams signed with Columbia in 1906 and the majority of his
recordings were with that company, including what became his signature number,
"Nobody," with words written by Alex Rogers.
John Mercer Langston
John Mercer Langston (1829–1897) was Virginia's first African American congressman,
serving one term from 1879 to 1881. Born a free man in Louisa County, Langston received
an education at Oberlin College in Ohio before he became president of Virginia Normal and
Collegiate Institute (1885), which is today known as Virginia State University.
Narrative on the next slide
James-Winkfield-riding-Alan-A-Dale (previous slide)
The youngest of seventeen children in a family of sharecroppers. He first worked at the racetrack shining shoes
and made his way to stable hand, then exercise rider, and finally jockey. At the age of sixteen he was riding in
races.
Nicknamed “Wink,” he secured a place in racing history by age twenty-two for winning the Kentucky Derby backto-back: in 1901 on His Eminence and in 1902 on Alan-A-Dale. During his career he won an amazing twenty-six
hundred races
Narrative on the next slide
Maggie Lena Walker (1867-1934) (previous slide)
Maggie Lena Walker, the first woman in the United States to become a president of a local bank, was born July 15, 1867 in
Richmond, Virginia, U.S.A. She was a daughter of former slaves, Elizabeth Draper Mitchell and William Mitchell, who
worked in the mansion of the abolitionist Elizabeth Van Lew.
After a few years of living at the mansion, her father got a job as the head waiter at the Saint Charles Hotel and the family
moved to a small house in town. Her father was murdered, presumably a victim of robbery and her mother supported
herself and her two children with her laundry business while Maggie helped with the chores. In addition, Maggie attended
the Lancaster School and then the Armstrong Normal School. After graduation in 1883, she taught at the Lancaster School
until her marriage to Armstead Walker, Jr., a building contractor, in September 1886. They subsequently had three sons,
though one died in infancy.
In 1902, she started publishing a newsletter, the St. Luke Herald to increase awareness of the activities of the organization
and to help in the educational work of the order. The following year, she opened the St. Luke Penny Savings Bank and
became its president. The bank's goal was to facilitate loans to the community. By 1920, the bank helped purchase about
600 homes. By 1924, the Independent Order of St. Luke had 50,000 members, 1500 local chapters, a staff of 50 working in
its Richmond headquarters and assets of almost $400,000. The Penny Savings Bank absorbed all other black-owned banks
in Richmond in 1929 and became the Consolidated Bank and Trust Companany with Walker as its chairman of the board.
Steve Biko was one of South Africa's most significant political activists
and a leading founder of South Africa's Black Consciousness
Movement. His death in police detention in 1977 led to his being
hailed as a martyr of the anti-Apartheid struggle.
Date of birth: 18 December 1946, King William's Town, Eastern Cape,
South Africa
Date of death: 12 September 1977, Pretoria prison cell, South Africa
Hallie Q. Brown (c. 1845-1949) made the most of her roughly one hundred years on
earth, lifting as she climbed. This dynamo was born, along with her five siblings, in
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to former slaves Frances Jane Scroggins and Thomas Brown.
Hallie's father was reportedly the first black express agent in the nation and had been a
worker on the Underground Railroad.
In 1864, the Brown family moved to Chatham, in Ontario, Canada. A few years later, they
returned to the United States, settling in Wilberforce, Ohio, where Hallie enrolled in
Wilberforce University, which was then under the leadership of a Brown family friend:
renowned A.M.E. bishop Daniel Alexander Payne who was to become one of Hallie's
major mentors.
After graduating from Wilberforce in 1873, Hallie Quinn Brown embarked on what was
to be an illustrious career in education. For about a dozen years, she taught at several
schools in the South. From 1885 to 1887 she served as dean of Allen University in
Columbia, South Carolina. From 1887 to 1892 she taught in the public schools of Dayton,
Ohio, where she opened a night school for migrants from the South. During her days in
Dayton, Brown assiduously studied oratory, and launched into another career: public
speaking.
From 1892 to 1893, Brown served as Lady Principal at Tuskegee Institute in Tuskegee,
Alabama.
(Left to right) Sophia B. Packard and Harriet E. Giles, schoolteachers and
Baptist missionaries from New England, founded the Atlanta Baptist Female
Seminary (later Spelman College) in the basement of Atlanta's Friendship
Baptist Church on April 11, 1881. Packard served as president from 1881 to
1891; Giles was Spelman's second president from 1891 to 1909
Alvin Ailey Biography
(1931–1989)
Dancer and choreographer. Born January 5, 1931 in Rogers, Texas. In
1943, Alvin Ailey and his mother moved to Los Angeles, where he
nurtured his interest in dance. He became a member of Lester
Horton's company in 1950, and when his mentor died in 1953, Ailey
was chosen to take over as director and choreographer.
After training in New York City with Martha Grahamand others, he
founded the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater in 1958, which was
a hugely popular, multi-racial modern dance ensemble. The company
popularized modern dance around the world thanks to tours
sponsored by the U.S. State Department. His most famous dance,
Revelations, is based on Ailey's own experience of growing up African
American in the rural South and is a celebratory study of religious
spirit. He retired from the stage in 1965 to devote himself to the
company.
Ailey received the Kennedy Center Honors in 1988 and died a year
later of AIDS.
Alvin Ailey dancers
Alvin Ailey dancers
Alvin Ailey dancers
Margaret "Mag" Palm
A conductor on the Underground Railroad
Margaret Palm was a colorful character in Gettysburg's African-American
community during the mid-nineteenth century. Before the Civil War she
served as a “conductor” along the local branch of the Underground
Railroad, earning the nickname Maggie Bluecoat for the blue circa-1812
military uniform coat she wore while conducting fugitive slaves north
from the area. Palm’s reputation almost cost her dearly. One evening,
she was accosted by two strangers who bound her hands and tried to
kidnap her into Maryland and slavery. Her screams attracted help and
she escaped her assailants.
John Baxter Taylor (1882 - 1908), V.M.D. 1908
First African-American to Win an Olympic Gold Medal
John Baxter Taylor, Jr., was born November 3, 1882, in Washington, D.C., the
son of Sarah Thomas and John Baxter Taylor. After his family moved to
Philadelphia, Taylor attended Central High School, where he was captain of the
track team. After high school, while at Brown Preparatory School, young Taylor
was a member of a team celebrated for not losing a race and for capturing the
one-mile intercollegiate relay championship of the Penn relay games.
Taylor's association with Penn began when he entered the Wharton School in
September 1903. He withdrew from Wharton at the end of his second year
and shortly thereafter, in October 1905, enrolled in the School of Veterinary
Medicine, graduating from this three-year program in 1908.
During his student years at Penn, Taylor contributed significantly to Penn's
athletic standing. As a member of Penn's 1903, 1904, 1905, 1907 and 1908
track teams, Taylor (along with Nathaniel J. Cartmell and Guy Hastings) made
Penn once again the champions on the track and field. Taylor's stride
measured 8 feet 6 inches, the longest of any runner yet known at that time. He
was indisputedly the best quarter-miler in the college world, establishing the
world's interscholastic record of 49.1 seconds for 440 yards in 1903 and setting
a new record of 48.6 seconds for this event four years later. In 1907 he was
also the indoor champion for 600 yards.