Essential The Official African American Thread#2

[Black Lightning]

Noted historian Charles Harris Wesley was born in Louisville, Kentucky on December 2, 1891, and attended local schools as a boy. He graduated from Fisk University in 1911 and, in 1913, earned a Master’s degree from Yale University. In 1925, Wesley became the third African American to receive a doctorate degree from Harvard University. He served as the 14th General President and National Historian for seven decades of the African American fraternity, Alpha Phi Alpha, and wrote The History of Alpha Phi Alpha which was first published in 1929. Wesley was also a member of Sigma Pi Phi Fraternity, the oldest African American Greek Letter Fraternity.

Wesley, who in 1930 became one of the first African Americans to receive a Guggenheim Fellowship, wrote twenty four books between 1927 and 1984 describing an array of subjects including African American labor, blacks in the Civil War, the Prince Hall Masons, the Fifteenth Amendment, and black college life. Wesley's works were meticulously researched and buttressed by extensive documentation. His first book, Negro Labor in the United States 1850-1925 (1927), for example, was written to challenge an array of false charges by earlier scholars that black workers had limited abilities and aspirations. Wesley's scholarship in this monograph and the others he wrote drew upon the best existing methods of survey research and historical documentation.

Charles H. Wesley was also a successful college administrator. He served Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and the Graduate School at Howard University from 1940 to 1942 and as President of Wilberforce University in Ohio, between 1942 and 1946. In 1947 he became the first President of newly formed Central State College, Ohio, in 1947. He remained in that position until his retirement in 1965.

Wesley later collaborated with Carter G. Woodson, the second African American to receive a Ph.D. from Harvard. Woodson was the founder of the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History (ASNLH), the largest organization of historians of African America and the first editor of its Journal of Negro History. Wesley became Woodson’s assistant in the 1940s and co-edited the JNH during this period. He also was listed as co-author of updated editions of Woodson's earlier works such as Negro Makers of History, The Story of the Negro Retold, and The Negro In Our History. These and other volumes carried the names of Woodson and Wesley as joint authors. After Woodson's death in 1950, Wesley assumed the leadership of the Association and became the editor of its journal, positions he held until 1965.

Wesley became a Professor of History at Howard University in 1965 and served as Director of the Afro-American Historical & Cultural Museum in Philadelphia in 1976. Despite his busy professional life he was also an ordained minister in the African Methodist Episcopal Church. Charles H. Wesley died on August 16, 1987, in Washington, D.C.

 

[Black Lightning]

WGPR-TV (Where God’s Presence Radiates) was the first television station in the United States owned and operated by African Americans. The station, located in Detroit, Michigan, was founded by William Venoid Banks. WGPR-TV marketed toward the urban audience in Detroit, Michigan, which in that market meant programming for the African American community.

WGPR-TV first aired on September 29, 1975 on channel 62 in Detroit, Michigan. Station founder William Venoid Banks was a Detroit attorney, minister and prominent member of the International Free and Accepted Modern Masons, an organization he founded in 1950. The Masons owned the majority of stock in WGPR-TV. The station initially broadcast religious shows, R&B music shows, off-network dramas, syndicated shows and older cartoons.

It was Banks’ vision that WGPR-TV provide African Americans with crucial training and experience in the television industry, allowing many local blacks the opportunity to work "behind the camera" in producing, directing and other roles which placed content on air. The station aired some locally-produced programming including Big City News, The Scene, and Arab Voice of Detroit.

Big City News was a Monday through Friday newscast that aimed to focus on community activities from the African American perspective, showcasing positive “success stories.” It was discontinued in 1992. The Scene, a nightly dance show that offered young Detroiters an opportunity to display their musical and dance talents, ran from 1975 to 1987. It still enjoys a cult following of viewers and former dancers. Arab Voice of Detroit was a public affairs show directed toward the significant Arab American population in Detroit and its suburbs.

Whatever its popularity among blacks in the television industry, WGPR-TV failed to attract a large audience outside the African American community. Even within that community, it competed with larger stations that after 1975 offered more programs directed toward African Americans. After 1980, the station faced its most powerful competition in the Black Entertainment Television (BET). Moreover with its 800,000 watt signal compared with 2 million watts for major Detroit TV stations, WGPR-TV never reached an audience beyond the city of Detroit. By the 1990s WGPR aired primarily reruns and infomercials.

On July 25, 1995, WGPR-TV was sold to CBS amid controversy from the black community, which felt that the station should remain under African American management. The Masons in particular were criticized for selling the station to a mainstream network. Two months later, CBS changed the television station name to WWJ-TV and targeted its programming for a general audience.

 

[Black Lightning]

Born in 1870 to formerly enslaved parents, Abbott attended Hampton Institute in Virginia and then went on to graduate from Kent Law School (now Chicago-Kent College of Law in Illinois) in 1899. In May 1905 he started publishing the Chicago Defender. In the early years he personally sold subscriptions to the paper and advertising by going door to door.
The paper attacked racial injustice, particularly lynching in the south. The Defender did not use the words "Negro" or "black" in its pages. Instead, African Americans were referred to as "the Race" and black men and women as "Race men and Race women." Many places in the south effectively banned the paper, especially when, during World War I, Abbott actively tried to convince southern blacks to migrate to the north. Abbott managed to get railroad porters to carry his papers south and he ran articles, editorials, cartoons — even train schedules and job listings — to convince the Defender’s southern readers to come north. The “Great Northern Migration,” as it was called in the Defender, resulted in more than one million blacks migrating north, about 100,000 of them coming to Chicago. The Defender was passed from person to person, and read aloud in barbershops and churches. It is estimated that at its height each paper sold was read by four to five African Americans, putting its readership at over 500,000 people each week.

In the burgeoning economic times of the 1920s, with hundreds of new products and the growth of advertising, the Defender became an economic success and Abbott became one of the first African American millionaires. He died in Chicago in 1940, with the Defender still a success.

 

[Black Lightning]

Founded in 1920, The Northwest Enterprise served an important role in supporting and maintaining an emerging African American community in Seattle, Washington and throughout the Northwest. The newspaper served its community in five specific ways: visibility, success, support of black institutions, community leadership, and resistance. The Northwest Enterprise quite literally made African Americans visible, running stories and photographs of famous blacks (e.g. Joe Louis) as well as everyday people, such as a local barber or druggist. The paper presented a stark contrast to the Seattle daily newspapers, which either ignored or stereotyped African Americans.

The Northwest Enterprise also emphasized African American successes. The paper featured not only the achievements of the famous (e.g. black athletes in the 1936 Olympics such as Jesse Owens or Ralph Metcalfe) but also “ordinary” people who graduated from high school or college or worked in their churches. The newspaper also publicized local institutions, such as churches, lodges, and civil rights groups, signaling their importance. In turn, such organizations used The Northwest Enterprise as a vehicle for relaying their plans and soliciting new members.

Leading the community’s fight against racism and oppression became a major role of The Northwest Enterprise. The paper called on its community of readers to fight injustice, and featured stories on the fight against Jim Crow, lynching and disenfranchisement. The newspaper never forgot its mission: “The Northwest Enterprise wishes at this time to declare that it is first, last and always a Negro newspaper, ever ready to fight the battles of the race... Vigilance must be our watchword!”

 

[Black Lightning]

The first radio station in the United States programmed by and for African Americans, WDIA was one of only six stations broadcasting in Memphis, Tennessee when it hit the airwaves in 1947. Its owners, John Pepper and dikk Ferguson, established the station and located it at 2074 Union Avenue. Initially programmed to appeal to the white demographic with classical, country-western, and various other musical genres, WDIA failed to distinguish itself, and in a last attempt to stave off failure, began to play Blues records. It featured shows by Beale Street legends such as Nat D. Williams, Rufus Thomas, B.B. King, and Bobby “Blue” Bland. King would later attribute his success as a musician to the recognition he received from his early career airtime on WDIA. In 1949 the station was #two in Memphis in terms of audience. It then switched permanently to all-black programming, and quickly moved into first place.
Broadcasting Blues, Gospel, and various talk programs, WDIA became known as a “direct appeal” to advertisers who wished to reach the African American demographic. Acquiring the right to broadcast at a higher wattage, the station moved to 1070 kHz and boosted their signal from 250 watts to 50,000 watts and was now capable of reaching as far north as Missouri and as far south as the Gulf Coast. That range included about 10% of the black population of the United States which in turn garnered substantial advertising revenues. Influencing every black radio station to follow, WDIA assigned itself the moniker “the Mother Station of Negroes.” It earned the nickname “the Goodwill Station” as well because it broadcast public service bulletins announcing employment opportunities, missing children, social service agency information, and the like at the behest of its listening audience.

Though the on-air talent was black, as were the artists whose music they played, ownership remained white. The office staff was racially integrated by 1950 which was rare in Memphis or any Southern city at that time but the station did not see its first black manager until 1972. Ownership of the station first changed hands in 1957. After a series of local owners it was bought by media giant Clear Channel Communication in 1997. Throughout this period, it continued (and continues) to offer content for African Americans by African Americans.

WDIA moved its home to Radio Center, the former home of WMPS, in 1985, then to a suburban office park in 2004. Nat D. Williams’ show ended in 1972 following a stroke. Rufus Thomas maintained his program until his passing in 2001. Today, WDIA’s major playlist offers very little in the way of the Beale Street Blues and Gospel that established the station, but spans the 1960s music to the present day, with significant air time devoted to the classic Soul sounds of the 1970s, and an occasional offering from its early on-air contributors B.B. King and Bobby “Blue” Bland.

 

[Black Lightning]

Watts Rebellion (August 1965)

Following World War II, over 500,000 African Americans migrated to West Coast cities in hopes of escaping racism and discrimination. However they found both in the west. For many black Los Angeles, California residents who lived in Watts, their isolation in that community was evidence that racial equality remained a distant goal as they experienced housing, education, employment, and political discrimination. These racial injustices caused Watts’ African American population to explode on August 11, 1965 in what would become the Watts Rebellion.

The rebellion began on August 11th when the Los Angeles Highway Patrol stopped black Watts resident Marquette Frye and his brother, alleging that they were speeding. Back-up was called from the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) as a crowd of African Americans gathered to watch the scene. Since the incident was close to Frye’s home, his mother emerged to find her son resisting arrest. Fearful that his arrest may ignite a riot, one LAPD officer drew his firearm. Catching a glimpse of the gun, Mrs. Frye jumped onto the officer’s back, causing the crowd to begin cheering. Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) officers arrested all three of the Fryes. Enraged by the family’s arrests, Watts’ residents protested as the police cars drove away. Less than an hour later, black Angelenos took to the streets.

The five day revolt which involved some 30,000 people served as stark testimony to the inequality and poverty that dominated the lives of thousands of Watts’s residents. Many of those engaged in the uprising looted items from local groceries and clothing stores, acquiring what they wanted and needed but often could not afford. Others battled the LAPD which they held immediately responsible for their poverty and alienation.

By August 15 the riot ended when 14,000 National Guard troops arrived and patrolled the streets. The following day most African Americans retired to their homes. In the end, the Watts Rebellion took 34 lives. There were 1,032 injuries, nearly 4,000 arrests and $40 million dollars in property damage. In spite of the protest, the Watts Rebellion did not significantly improve the lives of the community’s black population. While the revolt inspired the federal government to implement programs to address unemployment, education, healthcare, and housing under Lyndon B. Johnson’s “War on Poverty,” much of the money allocated for these programs was eventually absorbed by the Vietnam War. Today most of the population of Watts is Latino with many residents from the Central American countries of El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras. Although the population has changed, many of the issues of poverty, alienation and discrimination still plague the community today.

 

[IllmaticDelta]

Elizabeth Catlett

Elizabeth Catlett (April 15, 1915[2] – April 2, 2012)[3] was an African-American graphic artist and sculptor best known for her depictions of the African-American experience in the 20th century, which often had the female experience as their focus. She was born and raised in Washington, D.C. to parents working in education, and was the grandchild of freed slaves. It was difficult for a black woman in this time to pursue a career as a working artist. Catlett devoted much of her career to teaching. However, a fellowship, awarded to her in 1946, allowed her to travel to Mexico City, where she would work with the Taller de Gráfica Popular for twenty years and become the head of the sculpture department for the Escuela Nacional de Artes Plásticas. In the 1950s, her main means of artistic expression shifted from print to sculpture, though she would never give up the former.

Although she had an individual exhibition of her work in 1948 in Washington, DC,[3] her work did not begin to be shown regularly until the 1960s and 1970s, almost entirely in the United States,[3][14] where it drew interest because of social movements such as the Black Arts Movement and feminism.[2][12] While many of these exhibitions were collective, Catlett had over fifty individual exhibitions of her work during her lifetime.[2][4] Other important individual exhibitions include Escuela Nacional de Arte Pláticas of UNAM in 1962, Museo de Arte Moderno in 1970, Los Angeles in 1971, the Studio Museum in Harlem in New York in 1971, Washington, DC in 1972, Howard University in 1972, Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 1976, Miller Gallery at Carnegie Mellon University in 2008,[1][16] and the 2011 individual show at the Bronx Museum. From 1993 to 2009, her work was regularly on display at the June Kelly Gallery.[1]

Catlett's work can be found in major collections such as those of the Museum of Modern Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art,[17] Library of Congress,[17] Minneapolis Institute of Arts,[18] National Museum in Prague, the Toledo Museum of Art, the Clark Atlanta University Art Galleries, the Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico, the Instituto Politécnico Nacional,[1][2][3] Carnegie Mellon University,[16] the University of Iowa,[9] the June Kelly Gallery and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in New York.[5]

During Catlett's lifetime she received numerous awards and recognitions.[8] These include First Prize at the 1940 American Negro Exposition in Chicago,[17] induction into the Salón de la Plástica Mexicana in 1956,[3] the Distinguished Alumni Award from the University of Iowa in 1996,[9] a 1998 50-year traveling retrospective of her work sponsored by the Newberger Museum of Art at Purchase College,[1][3] a NAACP Image Award in 2009,[14] and a joint tribute after her death held by the Salón de la Plástica Mexicana and the Instituto Politécnico Nacional in 2013.[3] Others include an award from the Women's Caucus for Art, the Art Institute of Chicago Legends and Legacy Award, Elizabeth Catlett Week in Berkeley, Elizabeth Catlett Day in Cleveland, honorary citizenship of New Orleans, honorary doctorates from Pace University and Carnegie Mellon, and the International Sculpture Center's Lifetime Achievement Award in contemporary sculpture. The Taller de Gráfica Popular won an international peace prize in part because of her achievements .[6][8][11][16] She received a Candace Award from the National Coalition of 100 Black Women in 1991.[19]

Art historian Melanie Herzog has called Catlett "the foremost African American woman artist of her generation."[11] By the end of her career, her works, especially her sculptures, sold for tens of thousands of dollars.[5]

Artistry
Catlett is recognized primarily for sculpting and print work.[3] Her sculptures are known for being provocative but her prints are more widely recognized, mostly because of her work with the Taller de Gráfica Popular.[3][5] Although she never left printmaking, starting in the 1950s, she shifted primarily to sculpture.[12] Her printwork was mostly woodcuts and linocuts with sculptures made of a variety of materials such as clay, cedar, mahogany, eucalyptus, marble, limestone, onyx, bronze, and Mexican stone (cantera).[2][8] She often recreated the same piece in several different media.[13] Sculptures range in size and scope from small wood figures inches high to others several feet tall to monumental works for public squares and gardens. This latter category includes a 10.5-foot sculpture of Louis Armstrong in New Orleans and a 7.5-foot work depicting Sojourner Truth in Sacramento.[5]

Much of her work is realistic and highly stylized two- or three-dimensional figures,[4] applying the Modernist principles (such as organic abstraction to create a simplified iconography to display human emotions) of Henry Moore, Constantin Brancusi and Ossip Zadkine to popular and easily recognized imagery.

Her subjects range from sensitive maternal images to confrontational symbols of Black Power, and portraits of Martin Luther King, Jr., Harriet Tubman and writer Phyllis Wheatley,[4][13] as she believed that art can play a role the construction of transnational and ethnic identity.[11] Her best-known works depict black women as strong and maternal.[2][14] The women are voluptuous, with broad hips and shoulders, in positions of power and confidence, often with torsos thrust forward to show attitude. Faces tend to be mask-like, generally upturned.[5] Mother and Child (1939) shows a young woman with very short hair and features similar to that of a Gabon mask. A late work Bather (2009) has a similar subject flexing her triceps.[2] Her linocut series The Black Woman Speaks, is among the first graphic series in Western art to depict the image of the American black woman as a heroic and complex human being.[20]:46 Her work was influenced by the Harlem Renaissance movement[3] and the Chicago Black Renaissance in the 1940s and reinforced in the 1960s and 1970s with the influence of the Black Power, Black Arts Movement and feminism.[11][12] With artists like Lois Jones, she helped to create what critic Freida High Tesfagiorgis called an "Afrofemcentrist" analytic.[17]

 

[Black Lightning]

Automobile racer Rajo Jack DeSoto was born Dewey Gatson on July 28, 1905 in Tyler, Texas. (Previously published biographies have incorrectly listed his racing name as Rojo Jack.) Rajo Jack was barred from racing in many organized venues because of his African American heritage, but he had several notable wins and a number of historic crashes. He was inducted into the West Coast Stock Car Hall of Fame in 2003.

Dewey Gatson’s parents were Noah, a railroad employee, and Frances (Gee). He had three sisters and two brothers. Sometime in his teens, Gatson and his family moved from Texas to California. In 1921 Gatson got a job with a travelling entertainment show, acquiring skills as a mechanic. He later worked as a mechanic for racing teams and began racing on his own in 1923 in a souped-up Model T Ford. Later that year he was hired by Rajo Motor Manufacturing to sell its after-market racing kits. Gatson's sales skills earned him the nickname of “Rajo.” In 1936 he had a big victory at the Los Angeles Speedway in a stock Ford two-seater. He won by over two laps.

Gatson continued to race on the West Coast but was barred from racing in sanctioned American Automobile Association events, including the Indianapolis 500. His pseudonym of DeSoto presumably came about because he sometimes said he was Portuguese in order to gain eligibility. Mostly, however, he raced on the American Racing Association “outlaw circuit.”

After World War II Gatson competed the Western Racing Association sprint car races and in 1954 was finally able to participate in AAA-sanctioned races sponsored by the Honolulu Chamber of Commerce. By that time he was driving with partial vision, having lost his eye in a motorcycle stunt in 1938. Still, he captured two victories. While not racing he owned several businesses, including an automotive garage and a cleaning service.

Rajo Jack was married and then divorced, but the details are unknown. Rajo Jack died in California on February 27, 1956 from heart failure suffered while on Highway 395 near Inyokern. In 2003 he became the first black driver inducted into the West Coast Stock Car Hall of Fame.

 

[Black Lightning]

Charlie Wiggins, known as “the Negro Speed King,” was an African American motor racing pioneer who competed in the segregated Midwest in the early decades of the 20th Century. In addition, he was a highly skilled mechanic, often sought after by white racing drivers competing in the annual Indianapolis 500 Motor Race. Throughout his career Wiggins fought for the rights of black mechanics and drivers.

Born in 1897 in Evansville, Indiana, Charlie Wiggins grew up in a poor home; his father was a coalminer. After the death of his mother, Wiggins worked at a shoe shine stand outside a car repair shop where he was eventually hired as an apprentice in 1917. His opportunity came when many of the white garage mechanics left to join the Army. Wiggins was the first black mechanic in Evansville and quickly rose to become chief mechanic.

Wiggins and his wife, Roberta Sullenger, whom he married in 1917, left the area in 1922 for Indianapolis. Two years later the couple opened their own garage and Wiggins quickly became that city's top mechanic. In his spare time Wiggins assembled parts from auto junkyards to develop his own car, known as “the Wiggins Special.”

Wiggins tried to enter his car in auto racing’s greatest prize, the Indianapolis 500, only to be blocked by the American Automobile Association because of his race. Unperturbed, Wiggins and other African American drivers formed their own racing league, holding races across the Midwest. Wiggins was outstanding in these races, earning himself the nickname “the Negro Speed King.” Wiggins's success garnered the attention of wealthy black Indianapolis resident William Rucker who established the Gold and Glory Sweepstakes, an annual 100-mile race for black drivers on a one-mile dirt track at the Indiana State Fairgrounds.

Charlie Wiggins did not compete in the first race in 1924, which with a crowd of 12,000 was the largest sporting event held for African Americans up to that point. He did race in subsequent competitions and over the next decade won three Gold and Glory Sweepstake championships.

Wiggins's success in racing lay in both his skill as a driver and his engineering knowledge, which allowed him to build his own cars. This skill brought him friendship with white Indy 500 competitors such as Harry MacQuinn, who asked Wiggins if he could drive one of the mechanic’s famed “Wiggins Specials.” Wiggins agreed but insisted on driving his own car during testing, a move which made a powerful statement against segregation in auto racing. Wiggins's prominence and criticism of racial discrimination made him a target of the Indiana Ku Klux Klan which attacked him and vandalized his house on a number of occasions.

Charlie Wiggins' racing career ended in 1936. In the fourth lap of the Gold and Glory Sweepstakes race, he was seriously injured in a 13-car wreck, losing a leg. He was never able to race again. Without its biggest draw, the Gold and Glory Sweepstakes folded at the end of the year. Following the crash, Charlie Wiggins made himself a wooden leg and for the next 40 years built and repaired cars while training and advising drivers and mechanics. He continued to fight for African American participation in motor racing until his death in Indianapolis in 1979 at the age of 82.

 

[Black Lightning]

William “Willy” Theodore Ribbs, Jr. is the first African American to test-drive a Formula One car, the first African American to compete in the Indianapolis 500 in Indiana, and one of only a few African American NASCAR racers.

Born January 3, 1955, in San Jose, California, he is the one of five children of William (Bunny) Theodore Ribbs Sr., a plumber and amateur road racer, and Geraldine (Henderson) Ribbs. William Ribbs’s love of cars and racing began at the age of four. After graduating from San Jose City College in 1975, Ribbs headed to Europe to compete in the Formula Ford series. He outperformed most of that country’s promising young drivers, placing first in six of eleven races, winning the championship and earning the titles “Star of Tomorrow,” and “ International Driver of the Year” in a series sponsored by Dunlop Tire in 1977. In 1978 Ribbs returned to the United States and made his American debut at the Long Beach Grand Prix where he finished tenth.

Ribbs won the pole in the Long Beach (California) Formula Atlantic Race in 1982, outpacing veteran drivers before his engine failed. He won five races in the Kansas-based Sports Car Club of America (SCCA) Trans-Am in 1983 and was honored as Pro Rookie of the Year. After competing in two NASCAR Winston Cup races in 1986, financial difficulties, including the lack of corporate sponsorship, kept his team from finishing the season.

Bill and Camille Cosby stepped in during the 1989 season and funded the Raynor-Cosby Motorsports team with Ribbs as the star driver. Ribbs won two top-ten events in his 1990 Championship Auto Racing Team (CART) Indianapolis debut. In 1991 he became the first African American to qualify for the Indianapolis 500, driving his Buick-powered 1990 Lola ten miles around the two-and-one-half-mile oval at an average speed of 217.358 mph, making him the fastest qualifier of the day and earning the Walker Motorsports team a much needed $20,000.

Ribbs qualified again in 1993. However, by 1994 it was clear that corporate sponsors were not yet willing to back an African American motorsports athlete, despite Cosby’s offer of free television commercials in return for sponsorship. Ribbs was released from his Indianapolis 500 contract and spent the year competing in the CART series, finishing in the top ten at the Michigan and Denver (Colorado) Grand Prix races.

In 1999 Ribbs raced in the Las Vegas (Nevada) Indy Racing League (IRL), and in 2000 he signed with Victoria Motorsports SCCA Trans-Am team; finished second at Long Beach, third at Detroit, and fourth at Las Vegas where he was awarded the Johnson Triple Crown. In 2001 Ribbs joined the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series with the support of the Dodge Corporation, which initiated a motorsports diversity program to provide opportunities for minorities to race. This made Ribbs the first African American in the modern era to compete full time in a major NASCAR division.

Although Ribbs retired from professional racing in 2000, he reemerged in 2001 as a NASCAR World Truck Series driver. In 2011 he formed the Willie T. Ribbs Racing Company, featuring African American driver Chase Austin.

 

[Black Lightning]

Founded on Aug. 9, 1917 in Spokane, Washington, the Washington State Federation of Colored Women (WSFCW) confederated several social and civic clubs organized by African American women during the early 1900s. The African American women’s club movement in Washington State began in 1908 with the founding of the Clover Leaf Art Club in Tacoma by Nettie J. Asberry. The WSFCW brought together city federations and individual clubs from Spokane, Tacoma, and Seattle as well as some in Idaho and Vancouver, B.C. At its height, the WSFCW comprised over 120 individual clubs with 500 members.

The WSFCW affiliated with the National Association of Colored Women, which was founded in 1896 in Washington, D.C. The WSFCW used a theory of self-help activism or “racial uplift,” as advocated by Booker T. Washington, to better the social, economic, and political condition of African Americans, both locally and nationally. The organization’s motto, “Today is Ours for United Service,” reflected the organization’s agenda. The WSFCW activities included sponsoring arts and crafts competitions, academic lectures, conducting etiquette classes, providing housing and employment training for homeless women and college scholarships to African American women. The WSFCW also acted as an advocate in political issues, especially education and juvenile delinquency.

The WSFCW declined in the 1970s as many African American women were allowed to join newly integrated organizations. However, several African American women’s clubs still exist in Tacoma and Seattle.

 

[Black Lightning]

Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment (1932-1972)

Acting on the presumption that rural southern blacks were generally more promiscuous and syphilitic than whites, and without sufficient funding to establish an effective treatment program for them, doctors working with the Public Health Service (PHS) commenced a multi-year experiment in 1932. Their actions deprived 400 largely uneducated and poor African Americans in Tuskegee, Alabama of proper and reasonable treatment for syphilis, a disease whose symptoms could easily have been relieved with the application of penicillin which became available in the 1940s. Patients were not told they had syphilis nor were they provided sufficient medication to cure them. More than 100 men died due to lack of treatment while others suffered insanity, blindness and chronic maladies related to the disease.


The original experiment took on a life of its own as physicians, intrigued by the prospect of gathering scientific data, ignored human rights and ethical considerations and managed to extend it until 1972 when a PHS researcher Peter Buxtun revealed its history to the press. Public exposure embarrassed the scientific community and the government and the experiment was quickly shut down. Attorney Fred Gray initiated a lawsuit on behalf of the patients. In an out-of-court settlement each surviving patient received medical treatment and $40,000 in compensation. In the wake of the scandal Congress passed the National Research Act of 1974 which required more stringent oversight of studies employing human subjects. In 1997, on behalf of the federal government, President Bill Clinton issued a formal apology to the victims of the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment.

 

[Black Lightning]

The Stolen Girls

In July 1963, approximately two hundred African American youth met in downtown Americus, Georgia, to peacefully protest local segregation. After sanctioning violent attacks by a white mob, police moved in to arrest the young protestors. While some protestors were shortly released, thirty-three young African American girls found themselves held in an abandoned Civil War-era prison for almost two months. Known as the “Stolen Girls,” this incident represented both traditions of youth social justice activism and the heavy hand of white authorities in shaping civil rights politics throughout the Deep South.

Black teens, part of a generation frustrated with the tokenism of change in the early 1960s, played a particularly critical role in challenging racism and inequality in Americus, the county seat of this agricultural region of Southwest Georgia. Their activism emerged as part of the Sumter County Movement of 1963–65, political organizing linking diverse but vibrant networks of local African Americans and members of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC).


In late July 1963, African American youth began to demonstrate daily against segregation at the Martin Theater and the Trailways bus station. Peaceful protests grew raucous as white counter protestors met young activists with taunts and violence. Ultimately, local police borrowed a strategy developed by Albany Police Chief Laurie Pritchett in response to the earlier Albany Movement of 1961–62. To limit press coverage and break down the ongoing protests, Americus officers arrested protestors and held them indefinitely in jails spread out across the region.


Following the Martin Theater protests, thirty-three young women—the youngest ten-years-old and the oldest sixteen—were arrested and, without notice to their parents, transferred to the “Leesburg Stockade,” a small and dank Civil War-era prison located roughly twenty miles outside of Americus in neighboring Leesburg. Not fed for the first two days of imprisonment, they survived the following days on rations of undercooked hamburgers and egg sandwiches provided by jailers. Sleeping on dirty mattresses and without a working toilet, the girls shared their space with mosquitoes, gnats, and, on one occasion, a snake thrown into the room by the guards. SNCC photographer Danny Lyon finally located them after weeks of searching throughout the region and alerted community members. In perhaps the ultimate indignity, many parents later received a bill with a charge of two dollars for every day of their child’s imprisonment. Lyon’s photos, however, were published in the Chicago Defender and helped document for the entire nation the brutality of Jim Crow in rural Georgia.


Many of the Stolen Girls continued to be active in the Sumter County Movement after escaping the Leesburg Stockade but received little recognition of their struggles. Some such as Sandra Mansfield, Lulu Westbrooks-Griffin, and Annie Lou Ragans have passed, but others are currently speaking up about their experiences, including Carolyn DeLoatch, Carol Barner-Seay, Dianne Dorsey Bowens, Emmarene Kaigler-Streeter, and current Americus City Councilmember Shirley Green-Reese. The history of the Stolen Girls represents the commitment of youth, and specifically African American girls, to the larger freedom struggle of the 1960s.

 

[Black Lightning]

The Texas Western Miners (1966)

The 1966 championship game for the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) basketball tournament came down to a test between a small southwestern institution, El Paso’s Texas Western College Miners, and an accomplished four-time NCAA tournament winner, the University of Kentucky Wildcats. This game, however, proved more than just a challenge by the Miners, a rarity for the time multi-racial team who had joined the NCAA just three years earlier, and an all-white opponent, the Wildcats, widely considered the strongest basketball team in the nation. The surprise winning of this game demonstrated to the rest of the country that African Americans had the skill, could strategize and control the ball as well as a white team, and in this championship game, ultimately were better than the best white team. This game, according to many sports observers, forever changed major college basketball.

In 1966 the Miners consisted of seven African Americans: Bobby Joe Hill, Orsten Artis, Willie Worsley, Willie Cager, Nevil Shed, Harry Flournoy, and David Lattin; four Anglo Americans: Jerry Armstrong, Louis Baudoin, dikk Meyers, and Togo Railey; and one Mexican American, Dave Palacio. The opposing team contained all Anglo Americans, which was not surprising since many African Americans gained access to Southern colleges only in the 1960s. While some southern white campuses desegregated and blacks could attend classes, they were still usually excluded from team sports. No major white institution in the South or Southwest recruited them for their basketball talents.


In contrast to other Texas colleges and universities as well as most universities throughout the South, Texas Western experienced integration more than a decade earlier, and, at that time, the Miners’ coach, Don Haskins, recruited his best players, regardless of their hue. Adolph Rupp, on the other hand, the legendary coach and strategist of the Kentucky Wildcats, admitted he did not seek black players for his team.


The Miners arrived in Kentucky for the championship game on March 19, 1966. The sports announcers and writers expected an overwhelming win for the Wildcats. However, Haskins understood the pressure his team faced and sent in his best players, all African Americans. At first, Kentucky gained the advantage, but soon the Miners captured the lead during the first half and ended the final quarter with a Miner 72-65 win. This victory, according to sports writers and historian, Charles Martin, “was a watershed event” because it encouraged other schools to recruit African American players.


In 2006, the movie Glory Road, depicting the significance of this game, was released. The following year, the team was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame. On February 6, 2016, the now University of Texas El Paso Miners held a reunion for the 1966 players at the Don Haskins Center. The opening ceremony heard an address from President Barack Obama, which included these words: “…by becoming the first team to win an NCAA title with five black starters, the Miners weren’t just champs on the court: They helped change the rules of the game. They didn’t know it at the time, but their contribution to civil rights was as important as any other…” “…Go Miners!”

 

[Black Lightning]

The African American Academy (1991–2009)

In the late 1970s after two decades of school desegregation efforts in Seattle, Washington, school administrators and parents of black children began to notice that average academic test scores for African American students began to lag behind those of white and Asian pupils in almost every grade level and despite varied socioeconomic backgrounds. As a consequence, reformers both inside and outside the Seattle Unified School District began to focus on cultural differences in teaching and learning styles for black children as well as the absence of African American teachers and in particular African American male teachers.


By the early 1980s, activists including James Kelley, president of the Seattle Urban League; Tony Orange of the Central Area Motivation Program (CAMP), a local anti-poverty agency; and Michael Preston, member of the Seattle School Board and an administrator at the Central Area Youth Association (CAYA) among others organized the Black Community Coalition. They and others such as the Black Child Development Institute of Seattle argued that all African American students and especially young black males would thrive in an educational environment where their teachers, the support staff, and the students themselves would be African American. They called for the creation of an African American Academy to meet the special needs of young black male students. They originally envisioned an all-male academy but eventually decided that the academy should be coed to ensure that young black women would be exposed to the enrichment programs that would be offered. These activists created the Friends of the African American Academy and lobbied the Seattle School Board to designated one of the city’s ten alternative schools as an all-black institution.

The plan was controversial both within and outside the African American community as many older activists pointed to the three-decades-long campaign to racially integrate Seattle schools. The academy instead would feature an African-centered curriculum, small class sizes, and student uniforms. Although the school’s enrollment would be all-black, the academy would be publicly funded.


The Seattle School Board finally approved the African American Academy in 1990, and in September 1991 the institution opened serving kindergarten through fifth grade at Coleman School in the Central District. The following year, it moved to the Rainier Valley. In 1993 the academy was relocated again, this time to the Magnolia neighborhood where it remained until 2000 when it finally moved to its permanent home, a new three-story building on the south end of Beacon Hill designed for sin hundred and fifty students. Its permanent site was designed by African American architect Mel Streeter. Among the academy’s principals were former Seattle Assistant Superintendent Collin Williams and former Seattle Public Schools principals Rickie Malone and Chris Carter. The students were exposed to an interdisciplinary curriculum of African history, culture, and heritage. Through much of the academy’s history, the student-teacher ratio was 16:1.


District analyses of test scores showed growth in the elementary grades, but by the seventh grade, less than 4 percent of the academy’s students passed reading, writing, and math on the Washington Assessment of Student Learning (WASAL). Fourth graders, however, at the academy did better than other African American students district wide. Nevertheless, declining enrollment and modest academic progress on the WASAL continued.


In 2009 Superintendent Maria Goodloe Johnson decided that the African American Academy and four other schools would be closed because of a $24 million deficit.


Despite some community protests, the African American Academy ended operations permanently in 2010.