Black History Appreciation!!!

[Deadpool1986]

Little Known Black History Fact: Convict Leasing

Feb 19, 2014

By Erica L. Taylor, The Tom Joyner Morning Show

After the Civil War ended, the prison system in the former Confederate states was under pressure to figure out how to house convicts. Most of their prisons had been destroyed in the war. As an answer to the problem, Southern states invented the convict lease system. In this new system, convicts would be leased out on private contracts as cheap labor and for a large state tax.

Nine-tenths of the prisoners were black and plantation owners held many of the private contracts. There were no rules in place for treatment of the prisoners and ultimately, the convict lease system gave birth to the chain gang. In Frederick Douglass’ 1893 publication, The Reason Why the Colored American is not in the World’s Columbian Exposition, he writes:

“The Negro criminals are mostly ignorant, poor and friendless. Possessing neither money to employ lawyers nor influential friends, they are sentenced in large numbers to long terms of imprisonment for petty crimes….It is an astounding fact that 90 percent of the state’s [Georgia] convicts are colored; 194 white males and 2 white females; 1,710 colored males and 44 colored females.

Douglass said that even when Black men and boys from 12-18 were convicted of petty crimes like assault and battery, they were sentenced to the hard labor of the convict lease system.

“The details of vice, cruelty and death thus fostered by the states whose treasuries are enriched thereby, equals anything from Siberia. Men, women and children are herded together like cattle in the filthiest quarters and chained together while at work. (The Reason, 1893).

The private owners and contractors who leased convicts were not only given a cheap form of labor, they were held responsible for the feeding, clothing, and housing the prisoners. Often, prisoners were worked to death and replaced by others. While slaveholders had some incentive to take care of their property, those leasing convicts did not. Convict leasing remained in place from immediately after the Civil War until 1928, when Alabama, the final state utilizing convict leasing, discontinued the practice.

 

[Deadpool1986]

February 25 - Muhammad Ali defeated Sonny Liston for world heavyweight boxing championship in 1964. Boxer Mike Tyson becomes the undisputed Heavyweight Champion of the World by defeating challenger Frank Bruno of England in 1989.

 

[Deadpool1986]

Fact #106
Muddy Waters, known for his infusion of the electric guitar into the Delta country genre, is considered the "Father of Chicago Blues." Waters influenced some of the most popular rock acts, including the Bluesbreakers and the Rolling Stones, who named themselves after his popular 1950 song, "Rollin' Stone."

Fact #107

Rapper Kanye West's father, Ray West—a former Black Panther—was one of the first black photojournalists at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, receiving accolades for his work.

Fact #108
The mother of rapper and producer Kanye West was an English professor before switching careers to serve as her son's manager.

Fact #109

Phillis Wheatley became the first published African-American poet in 1774 with her collection Poems on Various Subjects, a work of distinction that looked to many literary classical traditions.

Fact #110

• 

Before Forest Whitaker was a film star, he was accepted into the music conservatory at the University of Southern California to study opera as a tenor.

 

[Deadpool1986]

Little Known Black History Fact: Melvin Morris
Comments: 1 | Leave A Comment
Feb 25, 2014

By Erica L. Taylor, The Tom Joyner Morning Show

This year, President Obama has chosen to honor a soldier who went unrecognized in American history – because he was black. Staff Sergeant Melvin Morris will receive the Medal of Honor for his heroic war rescue. While Morris was stationed in South Vietnam, his unit was attacked, which killed the commanding officer. It was like a scene from a war film.

Morris, who had been shot three times, obtained the officer’s body, and retrieved a strategic war map before the enemy soldiers could get ahold of it. During a personal call from President Obama who said that he should’ve received the medal decades prior, Retired Sergeant Morris “fell to his knees.”

n March 18th, the Vietnam War hero, along with 23 other soldiers of African-American, Hispanic and Jewish heritage will be belatedly given the nation’s highest military honor. Twelve years ago, realizing that there were soldiers left out of commendations and medals solely because of their race or background, Congress ordered the Department of Defense to take a new look at soldiers of WWII and both the Korean and Vietnam wars.
Out of over 3,400 recipients, only 88 African-American soldiers have received the Medal of Honor.

 

[Deadpool1986]

Fort Mose Historic State Park

Fort Mose Historic State Park (originally known as Gracia Real de Santa Teresa de Mosé) is a U.S. National Historic Landmark (designated as such on October 12, 1994),[2] located two miles north of St. Augustine, Florida, on the eastern edge of a marsh. The original site of the fort was uncovered in a 1986 archeological dig. The 24-acre (9.7 ha) site is now a Florida State Park, administered through the Anastasia State Recreation Area. Fort Mose was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1994 and is the "premier site on the Florida Black Heritage Trail."[3] The fort has also been known as Fort Moosa or Fort Mossa.

Fort Mose (pronounced "Moh-say") was the first free black settlement legally sanctioned in what would become the United States.[4] The community began when Florida was a Spanish territory.

Historical background
As early as 1687, the Spanish government had begun to offer asylum to slaves from British colonies. In 1693, the Spanish Crown officially proclaimed that runaways would find freedom in Florida, in return for Catholic conversion and a term of four years of service to the Crown.[5] In effect, Spain created a maroon colony as a front-line defense against English attacks from the north. Spain also intended to destabilize the plantation economy of the British colonies by creating a free black community that would serve as a destination for slaves seeking escape and refuge.[6]

Fort Mose
Incoming freedom seekers were recognized as free, taken into the Spanish militia, and placed into service at the Gracia Real de Santa Teresa de Mosé military fort north of St. Augustine, which was established in 1738 by the Colonial Governor, Manuel de Montiano. The military leader at the fort was a Creole man of African origin, who was baptized as Francisco Menendez by the Spanish[7] Fort Mose was the first free black settlement legally sanctioned in what would become the United States.[4] Word of the settlement reached the South Carolina and Georgia to the north, attracting escaping slaves. It helped to set off the Stono Rebellion in September 1739, led by slaves "fresh from Africa" in South Carolina, who were more likely to revolt.[5] During the Stono revolt, several dozen blacks tried unsuccessfully to reach Spanish Florida.

In 1740, British forces, led by James Oglethorpe of Georgia, attacked and destroyed the fort in the Siege of Fort Mose. During the siege, a force consisting of Spanish troops, Indian auxiliaries, and free black militiamen counterattacked Oglethorpe's troops, forcing them back to Savannah. Because the fort was destroyed, its inhabitants relocated to St. Augustine, where they stayed until Fort Mose was rebuilt in 1752.

After East Florida was ceded to the British in the Peace of Paris of 1763 most of the inhabitants, including many black militia troops, migrated to Cuba with the evacuating Spanish.[8]

A haven for escaped slaves from the British colonies to the north, Fort Mose is considered the "premier site on the Florida Black Heritage Trail."[9] It is also a precursor site of the Underground Railroad.[4] This was the network in the antebellum years by which slaves escaped to freedom, most often to the North and Canada, but also to the Bahamas and Mexico.

 

[Danie84]

Great thread, but am I the only who would appreciate Black History Month being longer than 28 days

 

[Deadpool1986]

Four Star General Benjamin Davis Jr.

Benjamin Oliver Davis Jr. was an American born United States Air Force general and commander of the World War II Tuskegee Airmen.

Davis was the second African-American General in the United States Air Force. Davis was later advanced to four-star general on December 9, 1998, by President Clinton. During World War II, Davis was commander of the 332nd Fighter Group, which escorted bombers on air combat missions over Europe. Davis himself flew sixty missions in P-39, Curtiss P-40, P-47 and P-51 Mustang fighters.

Benjamin O. Davis Jr. was born in Washington, D.C., in 1912. His father was a U.S. Army officer, and at the time was stationed in Wyoming serving as a lieutenant with an all-white cavalry unit. Benjamin O. Davis, Sr. served 42 years before he was promoted to brigadier general.

At the age of 13, in the summer of 1926, the younger Davis went for a flight with a barnstorming pilot at Bolling Field in Washington, D.C. The experience led to his determination to become a pilot himself. He was the first officer to get his wings from the Tuskegee Army Air Field on March 7, 1942.

Benjamin Davis Jr. graduated from Central High School in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1929, attended Western Reserve University at Cleveland and later the University of Chicago. He entered the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in New York in July of 1932.

Davis was sponsored by Representative Oscar De Priest of Chicago, at the time, the only black member of Congress. During the entire four years of his Academy term, Davis was shunned by his classmates, few of whom spoke to him outside the line of duty. He never had a roommate. He ate by himself. His classmates hoped that this would drive him out of the Academy. The "silent treatment" had the opposite effect. It made Davis more determined to graduate. He graduated in 1936, 35th in a class of 278. He was the academy's fourth black graduate. When he was commissioned as a second lieutenant, the Army had a grand total of two black line officers, Benjamin O. Davis, Sr. and Benjamin O. Davis, Jr.

In June 1937 after a year as commander of an infantry company at Fort Benning, Georgia, Davis entered the Infantry School there and a year later graduated and assumed duties as professor of military science at Tuskegee Institute, Tuskegee, Alabama. In May 1941 Benjamin Davis entered Advanced Flying School at nearby Tuskegee Army Air Base and received his pilot wings in March 1942.

Early in 1941, the Roosevelt administration, in response to public pressure for greater black participation in the military as war approached, ordered the War Department to create a black flying unit. Captain Davis was assigned to the first training class at Tuskegee Army Air Field, and in March 1942 won his wings as one of five black officers to complete the course. He was the first black officer to solo an Army Air Corps aircraft. In July that year, having been promoted to lieutenant colonel, he was named commander of the first all-black air unit, the 99th Pursuit Squadron.

The squadron, equipped with Curtiss P-40 fighters, was sent to Tunisia in North Africa in the spring of 1943. On June 2, they saw combat for the first time in a dive-bombing mission against the German-held island of Pantelleria. The squadron later supported the Allied invasion of Sicily.

In September 1943, Davis was called back to the United States to take command of the 332nd Fighter Group, a larger all-black unit preparing to go overseas. In Italy, General Davis had the opportunity to change missions from ground attack to bomber escort. Successfully exploding the falsehood of racial inferiority by demonstrating the skill of the Tuskegee Airmen against the vaunted Luftwaffe. Their record under General Davis is unique. In 200 escort missions to heavily defended targets, the Tuskegee Airmen never lost a bomber to an enemy fighter. No other fighter unit flying half the missions could claim such success. This triumph stands as a tribute to the dedication, skill, courage, and discipline of these men and to the tactical acumen and leadership of General Davis.

In July 1948, President Harry S. Truman signed an executive order ordering the racial integration of the armed forces. Colonel Davis helped draft the Air Force plan for implementing this order. The United States Air Force became the first service to do away with the practice of segregation by announcing its intention to integrate in April 1948; it began the process in May 1949 and finished it two years later.

In 1949 General Davis went to the Air War College, at the Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama, and after graduation, he was assigned to the Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations, Headquarters in Washington, D.C. He served in various capacities with the headquarters until July 1953, when he went to the advanced jet fighter gunnery school at Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada.

An important, but often-overlooked period of general Benjamin Davis, Jr.'s career was as commander of the Air Task Force 13, Provisional, based in the nationalist Chinese capital of Taipei, Taiwan. This critical Cold War posting required sophisticated diplomatic skills in addition to military expertise and leadership ability.

General Davis’ service career spanned WW II, Korea, and Vietnam. He commanded the 51st Fighter-Interceptor squadron in Korea and flew the F-86 in the Korean War. During the Viet Nam War, he commanded the 13th Air Force from 1967 to 1968.

After retiring as lieutenant general in 1970, Benjamin Davis Jr. was named director of civil aviation security in the U.S. Department of Transportation from 1971 through 1975. In 1998 Davis was awarded his fourth general's star, attaining the highest order in the U.S. military. General Davis died on 4 July 2002 of pneumonia at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, DC. He is interred at Arlington National Cemetery.

 

[Deadpool1986]

Major General Leo V. Williams, III

General Leo V. Williams, III retired from the Marine Corps Reserve on January 1, 2004 following 33 ½ years of service. Prior to his retirement, he served as the Deputy Commanding General, Marine Corps Combat Development Command, Quantico, Virginia.

General Williams has commanded at all levels of Marine Corps command, from Battery Commander of a 120-Marine 105 mm artillery battery in Okinawa, Japan to command of a Logistics Group of 10,000 Marines located over 52 sites in the United States and Puerto Rico. His military experience includes tours in the infantry, artillery, aviation, logistics, personnel management, joint service experimentation, and combat development.

Residing in Baltimore, Maryland. Major General Williams presently serves as Vice Chairman of the Board, Marine Toys for Tots Foundation. He is a member of the Board of Directors, U.S. Naval Academy Foundation, Maryland Chapter of the American Diabetes Association and Naval Academy Alumni Association Board of Trustees. General Williams serves as a Trustee for the University of the District of Columbia and is a member of the Board of Directors, Direct Selling Association and Navy Mutual Aid Association. General Williams was appointed as a Policy Board Member to the Marine Corps Reserve Policy Board from 1993 through 1996. He also served as the President, Bates Chapter, Marine Corps Reserve Officers' Association from 1993 through 1995.



Major General Williams received a Bachelor of Science degree from the U. S. Naval Academy in 1970 and later earned a Master of Business Administration degree from Southern Illinois University in 1978. General Williams was selected for promotion to Major General on December 22, 1998.

General Williams served on active duty from June 1970 until September 1978. His assignments included: Staff Platoon Commander, The Basic School; Executive Officer, Battery I, 3d Battalion, 11th Marines, 1st Marine Division; Headquarters Commandant, 1st Battalion, 11th Marines; Commanding Officer, Battery F, 2d Battalion, 3d Marine Division; Assistant Operations Officer, 2d Battalion, 12th Marines, 3d Marine Division; and Officer Assignments Officer, Manpower Personnel Branch, Headquarters Marine Corps.

General Williams transferred to the Marine Corps Reserve in October 1978. His assignments included: Headquarters Commandant, 1st Battalion, 24th Regiment, 4th Marine Division; Assistant Operations Officer, Amphibious Brigade Support Staff; Detachment Commanding Officer, Wing Headquarters Squadron, 4th Marine Aircraft Wing; and Site Executive Officer, Wing Support Squadron 472, Det. B, 4th Marine Aircraft Wing.



Major General Leo V. Williams III is the recipient of the Distinguished Service Medal, Joint Distinguished Service Medal, Navy and Marine Corps Commendation Medal, and Distinguished Volunteer Medal.

Currently retired from Ford Motor Company following a 25-year career in marketing and advance vehicle development, General Williams is Executive Vice President of Medifast, Inc. and Chairman of the Board of its Take Shape For Life direct selling subsidiary. Medifast, Inc. is a manufacturer, marketer and distributor of consumable, portion-controlled weight control and health food products.

 

[Deadpool1986]

Diahann Carroll

Diahann Carroll is one of America's major performing talents appearing in nightclubs, the Broadway stage, a Las Vegas headliner, in motion pictures and television. Diahann Carroll is a Tony Award winner, an Emmy and Grammy nominee, a Golden Globe winner and a Best Actress Oscar nominee. She is an award-winning actress, a successful entrepreneur, a devoted humanitarian, indeed Diahann Carroll is a legend.

Having appeared in some of the earliest major studio films to feature black casts such as Carmen Jones and Porgy and Bess, she starred in 1968's Julia, one of the first series on American television to star a black woman in a non-stereotypical role. Later she created the role of Dominique Deveraux on the popular prime time soap opera, Dynasty.

Diahann Carroll was born Carol Diahann Johnson in The Bronx, New York, to John Johnson and Mabel Faulk. Her family moved to the Harlem neighborhood of New York City when she was an infant. The Bronx-born beauty started out at age ten when she received a scholarship from the Metropolitan Opera to enroll in New York's prestigious High School of Music and Art, along with schoolmate Billy Dee Williams.

While Carroll was a sociology major at New York University, she began modeling and then singing in nightclubs. This led to television performances, which in turn led her to Broadway in 1954, when she debuted in "House of Flowers". That year she also made her film debut in Carmen Jones. In 1962, Carroll earned a Tony award for starring in the Broadway production of No Strings.
Diahann Carroll made her mark on television in 1968 when she was cast in the title role of the pioneering sitcom Julia, the first television series to star an African-American actress. The show was also innovative for portraying the travails of an intelligent, capable single mother (Julia's husband died in Vietnam) who juggles her career, home life, and romance. When it was first broadcast, the show's interracial themes generated some controversy, but largely due to the charming Carroll, the show became popular and ran until 1971. She was nominated for an Emmy Award for Julia in 1969 and won the Golden Globe Award in 1968.

In 1974, Carroll received an Oscar nomination for Claudine. In 1989 she was nominated for an Emmy Award for the successful NBC-TV series, "A Different World", as outstanding actress in a comedy series. In 1984 Diahann Carroll become the first black actress to star in the award-winning night-time series "Dynasty", which is still in syndication around the world.

Carroll has had four marriages, the first of which, with the record producer Monte Kay, produced a daughter, Suzanne Kay Bamford (born 1960), who became a freelance media journalist. In 1973, Carroll surprised the press by marrying Las Vegas boutique owner Fred Glusman. She and British television host and producer David Frost had been dating at the time, and were actually engaged. Several weeks later, she filed for divorce, charging Glusman with physical abuse. In 1975, she married Robert DeLeon, a managing editor of Jet magazine. She was widowed two years later when DeLeon was killed in a car crash. Carroll's fourth and last marriage was to singer Vic Damone in 1987. The union, which Carroll admitted was turbulent, saw a legal separation in 1991, a reconciliation, and finally divorce in 1996.

In April 2006, Diahann Carroll debuted her new cabaret show at Feinstein's, New York's prime venue, to sell-out audiences receiving overwhelming reviews. Stephen Holden of The New York Times wrote, "Diahann Carroll is historic. Experience it while you can. Her opening number, "Come Rain or Come Shine" erupts out of her like an emotional volcano. From here on, the lava never stops flowing. The forceful dramatic immediacy of her performance of "As if We Never Said Goodbye", is second to none. Throughout the show Ms. Carroll demonstrates her A-to-Z range as a singing actress. A rip-roaring version of the Sophie Tucker showstopper "Some of These Days" is matched in commitment by its quiet opposite, the break-up song "Where Do I Start?". The New York Post said "Looking impossibly beautiful for her 70 years, and dressed and coiffed in a manner that would make Norma Desmond (whom she played "Sunset Boulevard") proud, she delivers in a strong voice remarkably unaffected by age, a well-chosen mixture of standards, pop ballads and songs associated with her stage career".
In December 2008, Carroll was cast in USA Newtork’s series White Collar as June, the savvy widow who rents out her guest room to Neal Caffrey. Most recently, Carroll has made recurring guest appearances on the hit dramedy Grey’s Anatomy.

 

[Deadpool1986]

Dorothy Dandridge

Singer and actress Dorothy Dandridge sang at Harlem's famed Cotton Club and Apollo Theatre and became the first African American woman to be nominated for an Academy Award for best actress. She was a beautiful actress and singer whose star shone too briefly. Dorothy Dandridge, a fragile boned beauty with skin often described as "cafe au lait", was sadly a victim of her own circumstances.


Dorothy Jean Dandridge was born in Cleveland Ohio's City Hospital on November 9, 1922. Her mother was an aspiring actress named Ruby Dandridge. Ruby had walked out on Dorothy's father, Cyrus, five months previous to Dorothy's birth taking her first child, Vivian, with her. Cyrus still lived with his mother and Ruby had come to the conclusion that he would never amount to anything and she resented the fact that they did not have their own home.

A friend of Ruby's named Geneva Williams soon moved in with them and Geneva became instrumental in teaching the girls singing, dancing and piano. As the talents of Dorothy and Vivian improved, Ruby and Geneva began to plan a future for themselves that they hoped would bring them fame and security. The girls would now be called The Wonder Children and they would be their ticket. They moved to Nashville and The Wonder Children were signed with the National Baptist Convention to tour churches throughout the southern states.

Their act became a family affair with Geneva at the piano while Dorothy and Vivian performed a variety of skits that included singing, dancing, acrobatics, impressions and the ever popular poetry recitations. Mama Ruby became the business manager and she handled all the business affairs and sometimes even joined in the act herself.

The Great Depression put a halt toThe Wonder Children tour and Ruby planned what they would do next. She had wisely studied films and intuitively felt that their future would be in Hollywood. They settled into a house on Fortura Street and Dorothy and Vivian were enrolled in Hooper Street School and a dancing school for afternoon classes. In the meantime, Ruby was using her vivacious personality to gain a foothold in the Hollywood community.

As a teenager, Dandridge began to appear in small roles in a number of films, including the Marx Brothers film A Day at the Races (1937) and Drums of the Congo (1942). In 1945, she married Harold Nicholas of the dancing Nicholas Brothers (with whom she performed in the 1941 Sonja Henie musical Sun Valley Serenade); during their turbulent six-year marriage, Dandridge virtually retired from performing. A daughter, Harolyn, was born with severe brain damage in 1943; as Dandridge was unable to raise her herself, she placed the girl in foster care.

After her divorce in 1951, Dandridge returned to the nightclub circuit, this time as a successful solo singer. After a stint at the Mocambo club in Hollywood with Desi Arnaz's band and a sell-out 14-week engagement at La Vie en Rose, she became an international star, performing at glamorous venues in London, Rio de Janeiro, San Francisco, and New York. She won her first starring film role in 1953’s Bright Road, playing an earnest and dedicated young schoolteacher opposite Harry Belafonte.

In 1954, Dorothy played the much coveted role of Carmen Jones, again starring opposite of Harry Belafonte This movie brought her fame and recognition. She received an Academy Award nomination for her role in the film. She was the first black woman in history to receive the honor of being nominated in the category of Best Actress. Dandridge eventually lost the award to Grace Kelly (The Country Girl). Still, after the phenomenal success of Carmen Jones, Dandridge seemed well on her way to becoming the first non-white actress to achieve the kind of superstardom that had accrued to contemporaries like Marilyn Monroe and Ava Gardner. In 1955, she was featured on the cover of Life magazine, and was treated like visiting royalty at that year’s Cannes Film Festival.

In the years that followed her success with Carmen Jones, however, Dandridge had trouble finding film roles that suited her talents. Her only other great film was 1959's Porgy and Bess, in which she played Bess. Sidney Poitier and Sammy Davis, Jr. were her co-stars in the film. Porgy and Bess was not as successful as Carmen Jones and the reviews were mediocre. Dorothy managed to rise above it all, however and won a Golden Globe Award for her performance.

While making Carmen Jones, Dandridge became involved in a heated, secretive affair with the film's director, Otto Preminger, who also directed Porgy and Bess. Their interracial romance, as well as Dandridge's relationships with other white lovers, was frowned upon, not in the least by other African-American members of the Hollywood filmmaking community. She married her second husband, Jack Denison, in 1959, and lost the majority of her savings when his restaurant failed in 1962. He left her soon after.

Dorothy turned down the supporting role of Tuptim in The King and I because she refused to play a slave. She later felt that her refusal to play Tuptim was the beginning of her downfall in Hollywood. The role was given to Rita Moreno and the film was a huge success. It was rumored that she would play Billie Holliday in a film version of Lady Sings the Blues directed by Orson Welles, but it never panned out.

As her film career and marriage failed, Dandridge began drinking heavily and taking antidepressants. The threat of bankruptcy and nagging problems with the IRS forced her to resume her nightclub career, but she found only a fraction of her former success. Relegated to second-rate lounges and stage productions, Dandridge's financial situation grew worse and worse. By 1963, she could no longer afford to pay for her daughter's 24-hour medical care, and Harolyn was placed in a state institution. Dandridge soon suffered a nervous breakdown. On September 8, 1965, she was found dead in her Hollywood home, an apparent suicide from a drug overdose.
Actors & Directors

 

[Deadpool1986]

February 26 - Theodore "Georgia Deacon" Flowers wins middleweight boxing title in 1926. On this day in 1964., the Kentucky boxer known to all as Cassius Clay, changed his name to Cassius X as he accepted Islam and rejected Christianity. "I believe in the religion of Islam. I believe in Allah and in peace...I'm not a Christian anymore." According to two biographies, Muhammad Ali by Anthony O. Edmonds and My View from the Corner by Angelo Dundee, Cassius Clay changed his name to Cassius X on the 26th. Elijah Muhammed, a black Muslim leader, announced Cassius X's name was being changed to Muhammed Ali.

 

[Deadpool1986]

Fact #111
Jesse Ernest Wilkins Jr., a physicist, mathematician and engineer, earned a Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of Chicago in 1942, at age 19.

Fact #112
The "Dee" in actor Billy Dee Williams's name is short for his middle name, "December."

Fact #113
Cathay Williams was the first and only known female Buffalo Soldier. Williams was born into slavery and worked for the Union army during the Civil War. She posed as a man and enlisted as William Cathay in the 38th infantry in 1866, and was given a medical discharge in 1868.

Fact #114
NFL player John Williams won the Super Bowl as part of the Baltimore Colts before he eventually quit the league to become a dentist.

Fact #115
Renowned African-American architect Paul R. Williams mastered the art of rendering drawings upside-down so that his clients would see the drawings right side up. Williams's style became associated with California glamour, beauty and naturalism, and he joined the American Institute of Architects in 1923.

 

[Deadpool1986]

Charlotta A. Bass

Charlotta Bass was an educator, newspaper publisher-editor, and civil rights activist. Bass was probably the first African American woman to own and operate her own newspaper in the United States; she published the California Eagle from 1912 until 1951. In 1952 Bass became the first African American woman nominated for Vice President, as a candidate of the Progressive Party.

Born Charlotta Amanda Spears in Sumter, South Carolina, in 1879 or 1880, Bass was the sixth of eleven children. At the turn of the century, Bass moved to Rhode Island. In 1910, she migrated to Los Angeles to improve her health.

John James Neimore had established The California Owl newspaper in 1879 in Los Angeles as a way to ease black settlers' transition to the West. The paper provided them with housing and job information, and other information essential to surviving in a new environment. When arriving in California Charlotta was first employed by The California Owl selling subscriptions, but soon she was wearing multiple hats, writing, editing, and doing anything else Neimore needed her to do.

Fulfilling the deathbed request of Neimore, Bass became the Owl's editor and publisher in March 1912, a career lasting over forty years until she sold the newspaper in 1951. In 1914, Charlotta hired and subsequently married Joseph Blackburn Bass, a Kansas newspaperman, who edited the paper until his death in 1934. They eventually changed the name of the paper to the California Eagle. The couple had no children, but Charlotta Bass was very close to her nephew John Kinloch, who also worked at the paper. The California Eagle evolved into one of the leading papers of the day while under the control of Charlotta A. Bass and her husband, John Bass.

The California Eagle had a tradition of fighting for racial equality and against discrimination and Bass continued this tradition under her leadership. During the early 1900s California had attracted many African-American settlers who were heading west in search of better economic opportunities than were available in the South. The black community in Los Angeles was growing rapidly and African Americans experienced high home ownership rates in this booming city. However, Bass and other African-American intellectuals such as W.E.B. Du Bois were not shy to point out that while California offered many opportunities for blacks, there was still a considerable amount of discrimination.

In 1914 articles and editorials were published in opposition to the making of D. W. Griffith's film "Birth of A Nation" with its derogatory portrayals of African Americans and celebratory depiction of Klu Klux Klan violence. This campaign was joined by other African American newspapers across the nation, and led to the banning of "Birth of A Nation" in some communities.

As editor and publisher of the California Eagle, Charlotta Bass fought against restrictive covenants in housing and segregated schools in Los Angeles. She had also taken part in successful campaigns to end job discriminations at the Los Angeles General Hospital, the Los Angeles Rapid Transit Company, the Southern Telephone Company, and the Boulder Dam Project.

Charlotta Bass was co-president of the Los Angeles division of Marcus Garvey's Universal Negro Improvement Association during the early 1920s, and was a West Coast promoter of the "Don't Buy Where You Can't Work" campaigns of the mid to late 1930s.

Bass paid a price for her outspokenness. Her life was threatened on numerous occasions. The FBI placed her under surveillance on the charge that her newspaper was seditious and continued to monitor her until her death. Accused of being a Communist, in 1950, she was called before the California Legislature's Joint Fact-Finding Committee on un-American Activities. The accusations began to take a toll on her effectiveness in the community and her ability to sell her newspaper.

Charlotta Bass wrote her last column for the California Eagle on April 26, 1951, and sold the paper soon after. Charlotta wrote: "It has been a good life that I have had, through a very hard one, but I know the future will be even better, And as I think back I know that is the only kind of life: In serving one's fellow man one serves himself best ." When The California Eagle shut down its presses in 1964, it was one of the oldest black-owned and operated papers in the United States.

Bass devoted her remaining years to politics. In 1952 Charlotta Bass served as the National Chairman of the Sojourners for Truth and Justice, an organization of black women set up to protest racial violence in the South. After years as a registered Republican, she left the party in 1948. In the Progressive Party presidential campaign of 1952, Charlotta Bass was the running mate of lawyer Vincent Hallinan.

Charlotta Bass ran for several elected offices, including the Los Angeles City Council, Congress, and the U.S. Vice Presidency. She was also a founding member of California's Independent Progressive Party, part of the national Progressive Party, a third party movement. Moreover, she founded, led, and participated in numerous civil rights organizations.

In the early 1960's Charlotta Bass retired and moved to Lake Elsinore, California, where she continued her civil rights activism. She turned her garage into a community reading room and a voter registration site for African Americans, and joined protests against South African apartheid and on behalf of prisoners' rights.

 

[Deadpool1986]

Julian Bond

As an activist who has faced jail for his convictions, a veteran of more than 20 years service in the Georgia General Assembly, a university professor and a writer, Julian Bond has been on the cutting edge of social change since 1960.

Horace Julian Bond was born in Nashville, Tennessee on January 14, 1940. Bond and his family moved when he was five to Pennsylvania, when his father, Dr. Horace Mann Bond, was selected as the first African-American president of Lincoln University, his alma mater. Bond first studied at George School, a private Quaker preparatory boarding school near Newtown, Pennsylvania.

Julian Bond attended Morehouse College in Atlanta, where he co-founded the Committee on Appeal for Human Rights and the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). As a member of SNCC, Bond also took part in voter registration drives in Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Arkansas.

Active at Morehouse, Julian Bond was a member of the varsity swimming team, and one of the founding members of a literary magazine called The Pegasus. While in college he also interned at Time magazine. Bond left Morehouse in 1961 and returned to complete his BA in English in 1971 at age 31. With Morris Dees, Bond helped found the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), a public-interest law firm based in Montgomery, Alabama.

In 1961 Bond joined the staff of the Atlanta Inquirer and was elected to the Georgia State Assembly four years later. But the Assembly refused to seat Bond, citing his endorsement of a SNCC directive that urged young black men to illegally avoid the military draft. A second election, and then a third, yielded the same result, and in 1967 the U.S. Supreme Court, for the first time in American history, overruled a state legislature’s right to establish and maintain its own qualifications for seating members.

During the 1968 Presidential election, Julian Bond led a challenge delegation from Georgia to the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. Here, unexpectedly and contrary to his intention, he became the first African American to be proposed as a major-party candidate for Vice President of the United States. While expressing gratitude for the honor, the 28-year-old Bond quickly declined, citing the constitutional requirement that one must be at least 35 years of age to serve in that office.

In 1980 Bond began hosting America’s Black Forum, the oldest black owned show in television syndication; he remains a commentator on the program to this day. He also has narrated a number of documentaries, including Eyes on the Prize, PBS’s award-winning production about the civil rights movement, and he has lectured at the Institute for Policy Studies.

Julian Bond resigned from the Georgia Senate in 1987 to run for the United States House of Representatives from Georgia's 5th congressional district. He lost the Democratic nomination in a runoff to rival civil rights leader John Lewis in a bitter contest, in which Bond was accused of using cocaine and other drugs. As the 5th district had a huge Democratic majority, the nomination delivered the seat to Lewis who still serves as congressman.

In 1998, Bond was selected to chair the NAACP, which had recently been rocked by scandals involving former Executive Director Benjamin Chavis, Jr. and Board member Hazel Dukes. He continues to write and lecture about the history of the civil rights movement and the condition of African Americans and the poor. He is President Emeritus of the Southern Poverty Law Center.

 

[Deadpool1986]

February 27 - Figure skater Debi Thomas becomes the first African American to win a medal (bronze) at the winter Olympic Games in 1988.