Black History Appreciation!!!

[Deadpool1986]

Little Known Black History Fact: Murder in Athens, Georgia

On June 11, 1964, only eight days after the Civil Rights Act had passed, three black men, soldiers and teachers at the U.S. Army Reserves, headed home from training at Fort Benning, near Columbus, GA. Lt. Colonel Lemuel Penn, Major Charles Brown and Lt. Colonel John Howard were driving down a lonely road in Athens, GA in a 1959 Chevy when Ku Klux Klan members in a tan station wagon saw their D.C. license plates and began following them.

Since the passing of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, Southern racists vowed to seek some kind of retaliation. For no reason other than hate, the KKK nightriders opened fire on the Chevy, killing Lt. Colonel Lemuel Penn. The soldiers tried to steer the car to safety but after a high-speed chase, the Chevy landed in a ditch. Just days later, the Federal Bureau of Investigation came to Athens to arrest and charge the Klan members with murder.

James Lackey (the driver), Cecil Myers and Joseph Sims were arrested. Myers and Sims were charged with murder after Lackey’s confession. But by the time he got to the courtroom, Lackey’s story was deemed unbelievable and an all-white male jury acquitted the three men.

But Myers and Sims, were then charged with violating the civil rights of the black soldiers and they both served six years in prison. Lt. Colonel Lemuel Penn was buried in Arlington National Cemetery. A year after his death, Penn’s wife, Georgia, died from complications related to lupus. The couple had three children.
http://blackamericaweb.com/2014/02/17/little-known-black-history-fact-murder-in-athens-georgia/

 

[Deadpool1986]

February 19 - Vonetta Flowers became the first black gold medalist in the history of the Winter Olympic Games. She and partner Jull Brakken won the inagural women's two-person bobsled event in 2002 at Salt Lake City, Utah.

 

[Deadpool1986]

Vonetta Flowers (born Vonetta Jeffery on October 29, 1973 in Birmingham, Alabama) is an American bobsledder and athlete.
Flowers was a star sprinter and long jumper at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, and originally aspired to make the U.S. Summer Olympic Team. After several failed attempts, Flowers turned to bobsledding, and found success as a brakewoman almost immediately. At the 2002 Winter Olympics, she, along with driver Jill Bakken, won the gold medal in the two-woman event, becoming the first black person to win a gold medal in the Winter Olympics. After the Salt Lake City Games, Flowers gave birth to twins and took some time off from the sport. In 2003, she returned to competition with new driver Jean Prahm. Flowers and Prahm competed in the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin, finishing sixth.

Flowers also won the two-woman event at the 2004 FIBT World Championships in Königssee. She retired from competition after the 2006 Winter Olympics.

In December 2010, she was elected to the Alabama Sports Hall of Fame. She was to be inducted as a member of the Class of 2011 in May.

 

[Deadpool1986]

Fact #81

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Since 1997, actor and director Sidney Poitier has served as non-resident Bahamian ambassador to Japan.

Fact #82

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In addition to her career in Washington, D.C., Condoleezza Rice is an accomplished pianist who has accompanied cellist Yo-Yo Ma, played with soul singer Aretha Franklin and performed for Queen Elizabeth II.

Fact #83
A serious student, Condoleezza Rice entered the University of Denver at the age of 15 and earned her Ph.D. by age 26.

Fact #84

At the very peak of his fame, rock 'n' roll pioneer Little Richard concluded that his music was the Devil's work and subsequently became a traveling preacher, focusing on gospel tunes. When the Beatles revived several of his songs in 1964, Little Richard returned to the rock stage.

Fact #85
Actor, singer and civil rights activist Paul Robeson was once considered for a U.S. vice presidential spot on Henry A. Wallace's 1948 Progressive Party ticket.

 

[Deadpool1986]

Anne Moody

Anne Moody didn't just write about the civil rights, she lived it. Anne Moody is a well known contemporary black native Mississippi author and civil rights leader. Her biographical work depicts life in Mississippi and the struggles of black people in the South during the Jim Crow Era. Through her vivid writing, we can get a glimpse of the violent racism African Americans faced in their daily lives in Mississippi, and the courage they had to fight for their basic rights. Although Anne Moody is a gifted writer, we have listed her in the Civil Rights section because that is how she saw herself.

Anne Moody's Coming of Age in Mississippi is an autobiographical book about life in Mississippi, the struggle of African Americans in the state and in the South, the life of a black child and woman in the South, and the role of race and racism in America. The book helps us to understand life in the South both before and during the Civil Rights Movement and shows the struggles and triumphs and also the enduring problems that came out of the Movement. It also shows racism from the perspective of a child.

Civil rights activist Anne Moody was born in rural Wilkinson County, Mississippi on September 15, 1940. Born Essie Mae Moody, she was the eldest of nine children. After her parents split up, she grew up with her mother, Toosweet, in Centreville, Mississippi, while her father lived in nearby Woodville, Mississippi. At a young age she began working for white families in the area, cleaning their houses and helping their children with homework for only a few dollars a week. After graduating with honors from a segregated, all-black high school, Anne Moody received a basketball scholarship and attended the all black Natchez Junior College in 1961.

From there Anne Moody went on to Tougaloo College on an academic scholarship and received her bachelor of science degree in 1964. While at Tougaloo, Anne Moody became heavily involved with the civil rights movement. A top priority for Anne she volunteered with the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. After graduating, Anne Moody became a full-time worker in the Civil Rights Movement, dedicated almost every waking minute to the cause. She met and worked professionally with top civil rights activists like Martin Luther King, Ralph Abernathy, and John Lewis.

Participating in the Woolworth's lunch counter sit-in and protests in Jackson, Mississippi Anne Moody put her life on the line for her beliefs. During Freedom Summer she worked for CORE in the volatile town of Canton, Mississippi, and participated in the March on Washington, hearing Dr. King give his famous "I've Got a Dream" speech. After her graduation in 1964 Anne Moody carried her civil rights activities north to Cornell University where she served as a civil rights project coordinator from 1964 to 1965.

In 1968 Anne Moody wrote her autobiography Coming of Age in Mississippi, an articulate and moving account of the often frustrating struggle of growing up black in the south. Anne Moody didn’t plan on being a writer. She says that she was “first and foremost an activist in the civil rights movement in Mississippi.”

When I could no longer see that anything was being accomplished by our work there, I left and went North. I came back to see through my writing that no matter how hard we in the movement worked, nothing seemed to change; that we made a few visible little gains; yet at the root, things always remained the same; and that the movement was not in control of its destiny, nor did we have any means of gaining control of it. We were like an angry dog on a leash that had turned on its master. It could bark and howl and snap, and sometimes even bite, but the master was always in control. I realized that the universal fight for human rights, dignity, justice, equality, and freedom is not and should not be just the fight of the American Negro or the Indians or the Chicanos. It's the fight of every ethnic and racial minority, every suppressed and exploited person, everyone of the millions who daily suffer one or another of the indignities of the powerless and voiceless masses.

Anne Moody had originally began her fight for civil rights as a direct result of Emmett Till, a 14-year-old African-American boy who was brutally murdered in 1955. Born near Chicago, Emmett Till was the only child of Louis and Mamie Till. In August, 1955, 14 year old Emmett was sent to Mississippi to stay with relatives. During the evening of August 24th, Emmett, a cousin, Curtis Jones, and a group of his friends, went to Bryant's Grocery Store in Money, Mississippi. Carolyn Bryant later claimed that Emmett had grabbed her at the waist and asked her for a date. When pulled away by his cousin, Emmett allegedly said, "Bye, baby" and "wolf whistled". Bryant told her husband about the incident and he decided to punish the boy for his actions. The following Saturday, Roy Bryant and his half-brother, J. W. Milam, took Emmett from the house where he was staying and drove him to the Tallahatchie River and shot him in the head. After Emmett's body was found Bryant and Milam were charged with murder.

On September 19th, 1955, the trial began in a segregated courthouse in Sumner, Mississippi. In court Mose Wright identified Bryant and Milam as the two men who took away his nephew on the 24th of August. Other African Americans also gave evidence against Bryant and Milam but after four days of testimony, the all white jury acquitted the men.

Anne Moody wrote several other books, including a collection of short stories called "Mr. Death." She was married to Austin Stratus but divorced him in March of 1967. They have one child named Sascha.

Anne Moody currently lives in New York where she continues to write and serve her community as a Counselor for New York City's poverty program. Today she remains a more private citizen and rarely does interviews. Moody's works have interested people throughout the world. University students, as well as high school students, have read Coming of Age in Mississippi as a historical reference because Moody's writing allows the reader to visualize the civil rights events that occurred in the 1950's and 1960's.

 

[Deadpool1986]

Huey Newton

Bobby Seale and Huey Newton founded the Black Panther Party for Self Defense at a community center in Oakland, California, in October 1966 acknowledging it was a living testament to the Work of Malcolm X. The Panthers practiced militant self-defense of minority communities against the U.S. government, and fought to establish revolutionary socialism through mass organizing and community based programs. The party was one of the first organizations in U.S. history to militantly struggle for ethnic minority and working class emancipation. The Black Panther agenda was the revolutionary establishment of real economic, social, and political equality across gender and color lines. The FBI labeled Newton and his colleagues in the Black Panthers as ‘Public Enemy Number One.

Huey Newton was born on February 17, 1942, in Monroe, Louisiana. In 1945, the family moved to Oakland, California. Hoping to prosper from jobs that had opened up in Oakland from World War II, the Newton family struggled financially and often relocated throughout the San Francisco Bay Area throughout Newton's childhood. Despite this, he contended that his family was close-knit and that he never went without food and shelter.

Growing up in Oakland, Newton claimed that he "was made to feel ashamed of being black." In his autobiography Revolutionary Suicide, he wrote, "During those long years in Oakland public schools, I did not have one teacher who taught me anything relevant to my own life or experience. Not one instructor ever awoke in me a desire to learn more or to question or to explore the worlds of literature, science, and history. All they did was try to rob me of the sense of my own uniqueness and worth, and in the process nearly killed my urge to inquire." Barely literate when he graduated from high school, Newton taught himself to read by studying poetry.

As a teenager, Huey Newton had been arrested several times for offenses, ranging from gun possession to vandalism. While attending Merritt College in Oakland Newton supported himself by burglarizing homes in the Oakland and Berkeley Hills areas, and committing other petty crimes. Newton also studied law at Oakland City College and at the San Francisco Law School, once claiming he studied law to become a better criminal.

While a student at Merritt College in Oakland, Newton became involved in politics in the Bay Area. He joined the Afro-American Association, became a prominent member of Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity, and played a role in getting the first African-American history course adopted as part of the college's curriculum. Huey Newton read the works of political activists like Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin, Malcolm X, and Che Guevara.

It was during his time at Merritt College that Newton and Bobby Seale organized the Black Panther Party for Self Defense in October 1966. Based on a coin toss, Seale became Chairman and Newton became Minister of Defense.

The Black Panther Party was an African-American left-wing organization working for the right of self-defense for African-Americans in the United States. Distrustful of the police since childhood, Huey Newton and Bobby Seale decided the police must be stopped from harassing Oakland's African-Americans. It became their goal to "defend the community against the aggression of the power structure, including the military and the armed might of the police." Huey Newton was familiar with the California penal code and the state's law regarding weapons and was thus able to convince a number of African-Americans of their right to bear arms.

Members of the Black Panther Party for Self Defense began patrolling the Oakland police. Guns were the essential ingredient on these patrols. Huey Newton and other Black Panther members observed police procedure, ensured that African-American citizens were not abused, advised African-Americans of their rights, and posted bail for those arrested. In addition to patrolling the police, Newton and Seale were responsible for writing the Black Panther Party Platform and Program, which called for freedom, full employment, decent housing, education, and military exemption for African-Americans. But there was a darker side to the group, described in Former Panther Earl Anthony's book, Spitting in the Winds a party created with the goal to organize America for armed revolution.



The Black Panthers had chapters in several major cities and had a membership of over 2,000. Harassed by the police, members became involved in several shoot-outs. This included an exchange of fire between Panthers and the police at Oakland on October 28, 1967. Huey Newton was injured in the shoot out and while in the hospital recovering, he was charged with killing Oakland police officer John Frey. The following year he was found guilty of voluntary manslaughter.



Charged with murdering Frey, Newton was convicted in September 1968 of voluntary manslaughter and was sentenced to 2–15 years in prison. In May 1970, the California Appellate Court reversed the conviction and ordered a new trial. After two subsequent mistrials, the California Supreme Court dropped the case.

After being released from prison Huey Newton renounced political violence. Over a six year period 24 Black Panthers had been killed in gun fights with the police. Another member, George Jackson, was killed while in San Quentin prison in August, 1971.

Newton targeted community issues within the black community that he felt needed addressing. The movement provided free breakfasts for children, provided free shoes and sponsored a school.

Trouble followed Huey Newton and in 1974, he was accused of murdering a 17-year old prostitute, Kathleen Smith. He failed to turn up in court and jumped bail. For three years he lived in Cuba but returned to America in 1977 to face a murder charge. Newton believed that the climate had changed in America and that he was more likely to get a fair trial. After two trials, he was acquitted Smith’s murder.

In 1977, Huey Newton enrolled in the University of California, Santa Cruz, where he completed his doctoral dissertation, "War Against the Panthers: A Study of Repression in America". But controversy was never far away.

In 1985, Newton was arrested for stealing federal and state money that had been paid into the Black Panther’s community education and nutrition fund. In 1989, he faced the same charge of embezzlement from the funds of a school set-up by the Black Panthers. It was rumored the funds were used for Newton's alcohol and drug addictions. On August 22nd, 1989, Huey Newton, aged 47, was shot deadwhile walking down the street in Oakland California.

 

[Deadpool1986]

February 20 - Death of Frederick Douglass (78), Douglass was the leading Black spokesman for almost fifty years. He was a major abolitionist and a lecturer and editor. Charles Wade Barkley, basketball player, born Leeds, AL, February 20, 1963.

 

[Deadpool1986]

Fact #86
An heirloom tomato variety originating in Russia is named after actor, athlete and civil rights activist Paul Robeson, who enjoyed and spoke highly of Russian culture.

Fact #87
Performer Paul Robeson was conversant in many different languages.

Fact #88

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African-American baseball legend Jackie Robinson had an older brother, Matthew, who won a silver medal in the 200-meter dash at the 1936 Olympics. He came in second to Jesse Owens.

Fact #89
Before Branch Rickey offered future Hall-of-Famer Jackie Robinson the contract that integrated professional baseball, he personally tested Robinson's reactions to the racial slurs and insults he knew the player would endure.

Fact #90

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After retiring from baseball, Hall-of-Famer Jackie Robinson helped establish the African American-owned and -controlled Freedom Bank.

 

[Deadpool1986]

Mary Seacole Biography
"I have witnessed her devotion and her courage ... and I trust that England will never forget one who has nursed her sick, who sought out her wounded to aid and succour them and who performed the last offices for some of her illustrious dead."

William Howard Russell - Preface to Autobiography of Mary Seacole

Mary Seacole was a Jamaican nurse who became well known in the Victorian period for her nursing efforts during the Crimean War. Though she was much respected by officers whom she treated during the war, after her death, her fame quickly diminished.

Short Bio of Mary Seacole
Seacole was born in Kingston, Jamaica in 1805. She was of mixed race birth. Her father was a Scottish officer in the British army and her mother a free Jamaican creole.

As a child, the young Mary, was fascinated with medicine, and from her mother she began learning many traditional Caribbean and African medicines. Mary gained a wide knowledge in treating endemic illnesses such as yellow fever.

With the help of a 'kind patroness' (local elderly, rich lady) Mary achieved a good education and trained as a nurse.

In 1821, she visited London for a year and was exposed to some of the racial prejudices of the time. In the Caribbean, slavery was still legal until it was partly abolished in 1834 and fully abolished in 1838. The Victorians had a diverse range of attitudes to racial issues. Some, like those campaigning to abolish slavery, believed in the equality of races, others sought to prove the negro race were scientifically inferior. Mary undoubtedly experienced a range of different attitudes, especially when seeking employment as an official nurse in the Crimean War. However, Mary did notice that because her skin colour was lighter brown (being of mixed race stock) she was subject to less racism.

In one experience, in 1852, Mary was travelling between Panama and the United States when she spent time in the company of American traders. After leaving a dinner she records hearing an American say of her "God bless the best yaller woman he ever made" However, Mary was incensed as he later went on to say that "if we could bleach her by any means we would [...] and thus make her acceptable in any company as she deserves to be"

Mary responded in her autobiography by saying:

"I must say that I don't appreciate your friend's kind wishes with respect to my complexion. If it had been as dark as a ******'s, I should have been just as happy and useful, and as much respected by those whose respect I value: and as to his offer of bleaching me, I should, even if it were practicable, decline it without any thanks."

It was a reflection of the racist attitudes of the time, but, Mary was always proud of her mixed race origin.

Seacole married Edwin Horatio Hamilton Seacole in November 1936. Unfortunately, the marriage lasted only eight years, as her husband died in October, 1844. Her mother died shortly later, plunging her into a period of grief. It was a difficult period for Mary as the year previous her boarding house had burnt down. However, through her resilience and hard work as a nurse, she became widely known and respected amongst the European military visitors to Jamaica. She was active in dealing with an outbreak of cholera in 1850, at a time when there were few treatments for cholera.

In 1854, Mary heard about an appeal in the Times newspaper for nurses to aid wounded soldiers in the Crimean War. Mary felt a call to go to London and apply to be of service. However, despite letters of recommendation from doctors in the Caribbean, she was turned down by the War Office and the medical department headed by Florence Nightingale. Mary was bitterly disappointed by the rejection, saying:

"Doubts and suspicions rose in my heart for the first and last time, thank Heaven. Was it possible that American prejudices against colour had some root here? Did these ladies shrink from accepting my aid because my blood flowed beneath a somewhat duskier skin than theirs?"

However, undeterred by the seeming racial and class prejudices of those in charge, Mary determined to travel to the Crimea using her own funds.

On reaching the Crimea she visited the Nightingale's hospital in Scutari, but her offer of help was again refused. Mary then went to a British bridgehead at Balaclava. Here, lacking proper building materials, she managed to build a British hotel on the main British supply road on the way to the siege of Sevastopol.

Seacole began running a thriving hotel selling food, drink and clothes to British officers and meeting medical problems. Mary also travelled to visit injured troops on the front lines. She recounted some of her experiences of war in her autobiography:

"..This was my first experience of actual battle and I felt that strange excitement which I do not remember on future occasions, coupled with an earnest longing to see more of warfare, and to share in its hazards. It was not long before my wish was gratified..."

"...few nights passed without some fighting in the trenches; and very often the news of the morning would be that one or other of those I knew had fallen.
These tidings often saddened me, and when I awoke in the night and heard the thunder of the guns fiercer than usual, I have quite dreaded the dawn which might usher in bad news..."

She became known as "Mother Seacole" and her presence was greatly welcomed by injured troops. Reports suggested she was able to address many injuries and illness' with all manner of cures. On one occasion she dislocated her right shoulder when visiting troops under fire.

She describers her own motivation in treating the injured soldiers.

"….and the grateful words and smile which rewarded me for binding up a wound or giving a cooling drink was a pleasure worth risking life for at any time."

According to Lady Alicia Blackwood, Seacole had "... personally spared no pains and no exertion to visit the field of woe, and minister with her own hands such things as could comfort or alleviate the suffering of those around her; freely giving to such as could not pay ..."

On 30 March 1856, a peace treaty was signed between the allies and Russia. Mary had gained a great reputation, but her activities had left her poor. However, on hearing about Mary's financial plight, back in London a fund was set up to collect money. Many prominent people contributed to the Mary Seacole fund including Major General Lord Rokeby and later Prince Edward and the Duke of Wellington.

In 1857, she published an autobiography, focusing mainly on her period in the Crimea. She then returned to Jamaica where she continued to work as a nurse

In 1870, Seacole returned to London, she even became a personal masseuse to the Princess of Wales. She died in 1881 in Paddington, London.

Mary Seacole and Florence Nightingale
Both were women who overcame obstacles to help serve injured soldiers and improve the standards of medical care and nursing.

The biographer Mark Bostridge, has published evidence in his book Florence Nightingale. The Woman and Her Legend that Florence Nightingale did appreciate the work of Mary Seacole and was an anonymous contributor to the Mary Seacole Fund.

But, it is also claimed, Florence Nightingale passed aspersions about the nature of Mary's hotel. In a letter to Sir Henry Verney she said she was a "woman of bad character" who kept "a bad house" (meaning a brothel)​

 

[Deadpool1986]

Daisy Bates

Dates: November 11, 1914 - November 4, 1999

Occupation: journalist, newspaper publisher, civil rights activist, social reformer

Known for: Role in 1957 integration of Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. The students who integrated Central High School are known as the Little Rock Nine.

Also known as: Daisy Lee Bates, Daisy Lee Gatson, Daisy Lee Gatson Bates, Daisy Gatson Bates

About Daisy Bates:
Daisy Bates was raised in Huttig, Arkansas, by adoptive parents. In 1941, she married L. C. Bates, a friend of her father. L. C. was a journalist, though he worked selling insurance during the 1930s

L. C. and Daisy Bates invested in a newspaper, the Arkansas State Press. In 1942, the paper reported on a local case where a black soldier, on leave from Camp Robinson, was shot by a local policeman. An advertising boycott nearly broke the paper, but a statewide circulation campaign increased the readership, and restored its financial viability.

School Desegregation in Little Rock:
In 1952, Daisy Bates became the Arkansas branch president of the NAACP. In 1954, when the Supreme Court ruled racial segregation of schools was unconstitutional, Daisy Bates and others worked to figure out how to integrate the Little Rock Schools. Expecting more cooperation from the administration in integrating the schools than they found, the NAACP and Daisy Bates began working on various plans, and finally, in 1957, had settled on a basic tactic.

Seventy-five African American students registered at Little Rock's Central High School. Of these, nine were chosen to actually be the first to integrate the school; they became known as the Little Rock Nine. Daisy Bates was instrumental in supporting these nine students in their action.

In September of 1952, Arkansas' governor Faubus arranged for the Arkansas National Guard to prevent the African American students from entering Central High School. In response to the action, and to protests of the action, President Eisenhower federalized the guard and sent in federal troops. On September 25, 1952, the nine students entered Central High amid angry protests.

The next month, Daisy Bates and others were arrested for not turning over NAACP records. Though Daisy Bates was no longer an officer of the NAACP, she was fined; her conviction was eventually overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court.
After the Little Rock Nine:
Daisy Bates and her husband continued to support the students who had integrated the high school, and endured personal harassment for their actions. By 1959, advertising boycotts led to closing their newspaper. Daisy Bates published her autobiography and account of the Little Rock Nine in 1962; former first lady Eleanor Roosevelt wrote the introduction. L.C. Bates worked for the NAACP from 1960-1971, and Daisy worked for the Democratic National Committee until she was forced to stop by a stroke in 1965. Daisy then worked on projects in Mitchellville, Arkansas, from 1966-1974.

L. C. died in 1980, and Daisy Bates started the State Press newspaper again in 1984, as a part owner with two partners. In 1984, the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville awarded Daisy Bates an honorary Doctor of Laws degree. Her autobiography was reissued in 1984, and she retired in 1987. In 1996, she carried the Olympic torch in the Atlanta Olympics. Daisy Bates died in 1999.

Background, Family:

• Adoptive parents: Orlee and Susie Smith
• Husband: L. C. (Lucius Christopher) Bates: insurance agent and journalist

Education:

• Huttig, Arkansas, public schools (segregated system)
• Shorter College, Little Rock
• Philander Smith College, Little Rock

Autobiography: The Long Shadow of Little Rock

Organizations: NAACP, Arkansas State Press

Religion: African Methodist Episcopal

 

[Deadpool1986]

Some local Black History, from my city!!!
OLD STANTON HIGH SCHOOL - The Trustees of Florida Institue established Stanton High School in 1868 as the first public black school in Jacksonville. Completed in 1917, was the only black high school in the country at that time. James Weldon Johnson, the first African American to pass the Florida bar exam, and the lyricist of Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing, “the black national anthem” was a student at Stanton High and served as principal from 1894 to 1902.

 

[Deadpool1986]

CLARA WHITE MISSION- The mission is a memorial to Clara English White. Eartha M.M. White continued the humanitarian work of her mother, with a life of public service in Jacksonville that included the Clara White Mission, the Milnor Street Nursery, and a tuberculosis sanitarium for Jacksonville’s African American community. The Clara White mission moved in 1932 to its current location where it serves as both a museum and a homeless center.

 

[Deadpool1986]

RITZ THEATER - Located in a traditionally black commercial district in the La Villa neighborhood, this 1929 Art Deco style building housed a cinema, shops and offices. The Ritz and surrounding commercial properties grew into a thriving arts, entertainment and shopping area for this black community. Though the original structure was demolished, the decorative corner and sign were incorporated into the new Ritz Theater and La Villa Museum. The museum exhibit of African American history tells the story of everyday life in northeast Florida, while the theater presents African American shows and educational performances.

 

[Deadpool1986]

• EDWARD WATERS COLLEGE-
  Edward Waters College, the oldest private institution of higher education in the state of Florida, was founded in 1866 specifically to educate newly freed slaves.
  
  Celebrating 144 years of service, Edward Waters College was initially named “Brown Theological Institute” by Rev. William G. Steward, the first AME pastor in the state. The school experienced some financial difficulties and was forced to close for nearly a decade. In 1883, the school reopened under the name of “East Florida Conference High School” and later, “East Florida Scientific and Divinity High School”. Within a decade, the educational program was extended and the school’s name was changed to Edward Waters College in honor of the third bishop of the AME church. Through the years, the College has withstood the test. After being destroyed by fire in 1901, the College acquired the current site in 1904 and began to rebuild. The school was first accredited as a junior college in 1955 under President William B. Stewart, and by 1960 the College had restored its four-year curriculum. In 1979, the Commission on Colleges of the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS) accredited the College as a four-year institution and the College remains accredited by SACS.
  
  
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[Deadpool1986]

February 21 - Today in 1987, African Americans in Tampa, Florida rebelled after an African American man was killed by a white police officer while in custody.