Essential The Official African American Thread#2

[Black Lightning]

From the moment Ed Welburn walked onto General Motors’ Detroit campus his peers expected him to be “dynamite.” It happened, just not in the way they might have anticipated. “This was the [early] 1970s, and the only African-American many people were exposed to was Jimmie Walker [from the sitcom Good Times]. There were those who thought I would act just like him. That was kind of a rude awakening for me,” says the GM vice president of Global Design, who will be departing July 1. “Then I realized that they were judging a whole group of people based on my performance.” With that in mind, he showed out each day.

Growing up in the Philadelphia suburb of Berwyn, the Howard University alum had two passions: math and cars. “The whole automotive culture was a big part of the American fabric, and I loved cars. They were an emotional statement,” he says. His affinity for the industry made him a neighborhood star. While his father toiled in their family-owned car repair shop, Welburn built Soap Box Derby cars, rebuilt and painted bikes and fixed his mother’s vehicle. “It was a good but dirty business, and he thought there might be something even better,” he says about his father’s hopes for him.

It took some time, however, to break into a more glamorous alternative. Despite being a math whiz and a talented artist, Welburn, who’d read car magazines all of his life and even wrote to GM for advice as a tyke, was rejected by every design school he applied to, except one. “Going to Howard University’s School of Fine Arts was one of the best things that happened to me,” he shares. “I was in school with Roberta Flack, Donny Hathaway, Debbie Allen and Phylicia Rashad. It was like being in Fame. And my professors knew what my mission was and tailored my courses to help me achieve those goals.” By his junior year, he’d earned an internship at GM and made it his home for the next 45 years.

He was the first African American hired to work in the company’s design team and soon rose within the ranks, receiving his current title in 2005. During his tenure with the automotive giant, his 2,500-member team garnered accolades for revitalizing the brand once on the brink of collapse. Other highlights include helping diversify the corporate culture, working with fellow designers to unveil the all-new Camaro at the Detroit Auto Show in 2005 and mentoring new designers. For Welburn, however, GM has been more than a job where he’s tracked tremendous milestones; it’s his love.

“From the first time I drove through the gates of this campus it was just unbelievable,” he says. Although he’s left a massive footprint in the industry, his tips for young Black professionals remain simple: “You don’t have to blend in. You can’t. There is a saying, ‘If you dream it, it will happen.’ No, not without work. You need to study. Work hard. Ask questions. Take advice.”

 

[Black Lightning]

Samuel Ringgold Ward (1817-1864), was one of the most prominent of the anti-slavery speakers in the nation by the 1850s. Born into slavery in Maryland, he escaped with his mother to New Jersey. In 1834 when he was 17 Ward was attacked by a pro-slavery mob in New York and was temporarily jailed. From that point he dedicated himself to the anti-slavery cause. By the 1840s, Ward helped found the Liberty and Free Soil Parties. Ward work variously as a school teacher, newspaper editor and minister. He led two predominately white congregations, a Presbyterian Church in South Butler, New York and a Congregationalist church in Cortland, New York. However after passage of the Fugitive Slave Act in 1850 he moved to Canada. Ward remained outside the United States for the rest of his life, lecturing in Canada and Europe against slavery. In 1855 he wrote The Autobiography of a Fugitive Negro. Ward retired to Jamaica and died there in 1864.

George McJunkin was an African American cowboy known for discovering bison bones in Folsom, New Mexico which eventually made archeological history. McJunkin was born in the slavery era in Texas. His father was a blacksmith. McJunkin grew up on a ranch and mastered the skills of a ranch hand. Growing up, McJunkin only received four years of education; he learned to read and write by watching other workers and became literate. McJunkin worked at various jobs such as buffalo hunting and skinning. For about fifty years he was also a bronco-buster along the Texas-New Mexico border and at one point was a ranch foreman.

In 1908, McJunkin and a friend, Bill Gordon, found bones sticking out of the ground at the bank of the Dry Cimarron River near Folsom. The bones where bigger with horns that were different from any McJunkin had ever seen. McJunkin knew the bones were neither from cattle or buffalo and believe they needed to be studied. McJunkin attempted to publicize his discovery and feared that it would be ignored or the site would be raided for souvenirs. Eventually scientists took an interest in his discovery and in 1925 announced that the bones McJunkin had found seventeen years earlier were from extinct bison estimated to be over ten thousand years old. McJunkins discovery led to the subsequent finding of human spearheads that where stuck among some of the bison bones showing that humans were living in the American Southwest far earlier than previously believed. The archeological site that McJunkin discovered eventually yielded human remains that became known as “Folsom Man”.

George McJunkin never married nor had children. He did not live long enough to learn of the scientific recognition of the significance of his discovery. McJunkin died in January 1922 at the Folsom Hotel in Folsom, New Mexico.

 

[Black Lightning]

If you've seen Sleeping Beauty, The Jungle Book or the Toy Story movies, you've seen the work of animator Floyd Norman; for decades, he has helped bring Disney and Pixar classics to life.

Now 81, Norman still works for Disney, where he has plied his trade, on and off, since he became the studio's first African-American animator in the 1950s.

Norman's love of art began long before his Disney job, as he reveals in a new documentary, An Animated Life. "Any empty surface was a blank canvas for me," he says. His mother was constantly scrubbing scribbles off the walls. "I was drawing on everything," he recalls.

Norman grew up in Santa Barbara, Calif., a place that, he says, sheltered him from much of the racial tension and segregation of the time. He tells NPR's David Greene he experienced no racism — "none whatsoever."


"We lived in a Pacific paradise," he says. "I didn't know it at the time, but my experience as a child was probably a good deal different from many, many people. We had access to everything — good schools, concert, theater."

Thanks to that upbringing, it never occurred to Norman that he couldn't apply for a job as a Disney animator.

"I think the thought just never occurred to a lot of young black talent to apply for a job in the film industry," he says. "And it wasn't just Walt Disney. I'm sure the same thing happened at other film studios as well. There was a perception that opportunities were not available for people of color."


So he applied, and in the mid-1950s he became Disney's first black animator. Many saw that as a big deal — but not Norman.

"There were about half dozen of us came to work at Disney that same week," he says. "We came from different parts of the country. We were all from different backgrounds. ... We were Asian, we were Latino, we were black, we were white. Nobody thought about that because that was not the issue at hand. Nobody thought of themselves as being a trailblazer for their race or their group. We were just a bunch of young kids looking for a job."

Still, many have accused Walt Disney and his studio of making racist films, often lampooning minority groups, including African-Americans. Norman downplays that view.

"There just wasn't the same sensitivity there as we have today," he says. "A lot of this happened, it's unfortunate, but that was just the times in which we lived. I don't think we should go back and try to erase the past. This was part of our history, this is part of what happened, and so we should be able to deal with that."

Norman also worked on the animated series Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids, which aired in the 1970s and '80s. It was based around Bill Cosby's memories of growing up in Philadelphia and featured a cast of African-American characters.

"Keep in mind that Bill Cosby, who created Fat Albert, was simply reflecting on his childhood ..." Norman says. "It was just making fun of ourselves and there's nothing wrong with that ... I think when others do it, it might be viewed as insensitive, but I see nothing wrong with poking fun at yourself, and as a cartoonist that's what I do every day.

When Norman turned 65, he says Disney tried to force him to retire, but he wouldn't have it. "I wanted to continue to work," he says. "You see, creative people don't hang it up. We don't walk away, we don't want to sit in a lawn chair, we don't want to go out and play golf, we don't want to travel the world. We want to continue to work."

And so he did — given the opportunity to contribute as a freelancer, Norman found his way back into the studio. Most freelancers work at home and only come into the office once the job is complete, but not Norman.

"I decided I didn't want to work at home," he says. "I missed the camaraderie of the big studio. I missed talking to people. I miss being around the action. And so ... I found an empty office and I moved in. I was probably in violation of some rule or law or whatever, but there I was."

He continued to work in the office, and his colleagues affectionately coined the term "Floydering" — it rhymes with loitering — in his honor.

Norman — who has met and worked with Tom Hanks — has been compared to Hanks' famous character, Forrest Gump. Norman says it's not so far off:

"Forrest was the guy who just sort of showed up everywhere," he says. "So a lot of people have looked at me when it came to the animation business where I was the guy ... just popping up all over the place. That's because I love this business, and I never wanted to be apart from it."

 

[Black Lightning]

Matt Baker is often considered the first known successful African-American artist in the comic-book industry.


Clarence Matthew Baker was born on December 10, 1921 in Forsyth County, North Carolina. The son of Clarence and Ethel baker, Matt and his brothers Robert and John, moved with their parents to Pittsburgh, PA. Somewhere around 1940 he graduated from high school and moved to Washington, DC where he found a job working for the government. While many of his contemporaries were being drafted into the military over next year, Baker was not eligible for military service as he was found to be suffering from a heart ailment, the result of a childhood bout with rheumatic fever. He moved to to New York City to study art at the Cooper Union School of Engineering, Art, and Design, a privately funded college located in the East Village. He had been an avid drawer and found inspiration from many of his artistic heroes such as magazine illustrator Andrew Loomis, and comic book artists Will Eisner, Reed Crandall, Alex Blum and Lou Fine.

He began his art career in 1944 joining the S.M. Igor Studio as a background artist. The Igor Studio was a comics packager which produced ready-to-print feature material for comic book publishers. Igor recalled Baker coming in for a job interview. “[Baker] came to my studio in the early ’40s; handsome and nattily dressed, ‘looking for a job’, as he put it. His only sample was a color sketch of—naturally—a beautiful gal! On the strength of that and a nod from my associate editor Ruth Roche, he was hired as a background artist. … When given his first script, he showed originality and faithfully executed its story line. His drawing was superb. His women were gorgeous!”

His first assignment was to work as a penciller and the inker on the 12 page Sheena, Queen of the Jungle story in Fiction House’s Jumbo Comics #69. In the comic book industry, a penciller provides a rough draft of the visual view of the storyline, providing a layout of the scenes. These scenes were drawn in pencil because they would go through several drafts after being presented to the editor. As defined by Wikipedia, an inker Inker - Wikipedia “outlines, interprets, finalizes, retraces this drawing by using a pen or a brush.” During this period of time which historians refer to as the “Golden Age of Comic Books,” Baker did work through Iger’s studio for Fox Comics, Fiction House, Quality Comics and St. John Publications. In his earliest days he pencilled the backgrounds as well as the female form for other artists. Thus, much of his work was inked over by other artists who got credit for the artistic work. He developed a reputation early on as one of the best “Good Girl” artists in the business, a master at drawing the female form. He paid attention to the smaller details that allowed his comic book heroine to come alive as a more robust character.


Good Girl Art, as defined by American science fiction and mystery author Richard Lupoff is “a cover illustration depicting an attractive young woman, usually in skimpy or form-fitting clothing, and designed for erotic stimulation. The term does not apply to the morality of the “good girl”, who is often a gun moll, tough cookie or wicked temptress.

In 1944 Baker took over as the principle artist on “Sky Girl”, a regular feature in Fiction House’s Jumbo Comics. Sky Girl told the story of an Irish Redhead named Ginger McGuire who worked as a ferry pilot in the Pacific theater of World War II, helping to fight against the Japanese. He drew for this series until its last issue in August 1948. In December 1946 Matt illustrated the popular character Lorna Dorne for Classic Comics. At about the same time, he was assigned to a Fiction House Fight Comics feature called “Tiger Girl.” Tiger Girl was a blonde bombshell with a magic amulet and a Shakespearean vocabulary. Baker worked on her comic for three years.


His most well known character was Phantom Lady. Phantom Lady was much like any other female character in those days. She was a Washington socialite who wanted to fight crime, designed a super-heroine outfit and use a “Blackout Ray” invented by a friend of her father. When Victor Fox of Fox Features Syndicate asked the Iger Studios to furnish him with a sexy female costumed hero, Iger sent him Phantom Lady and assigned Baker to the artistry. Baker immediately made changes to the character and her costume. He put her in blue short-shorts with slits up the sides and a matching halter top. He gave her a her belt in front and a dramatically plunging neckline along with a scarlet cape. This look became her most popular version and premiered in Fox’s Phantom Lady #13 in August 1947. He pencilled and inked the character through 1949.

Baker’s personal life was somewhat of a mystery, with some describing him as a serious ladies man and others suggesting that he was a homosexual, the proverbial confirmed bachelor. What is known is that he lived in a five story building in Manhattan, in which he worked all hours of the night. He often worked for days on end before collapsing into several days of sleep. He was described by everyone as a very handsome man, standing 5’ 10” and as one of the coolest, hippest dressers in all of New York City, jetting around town in a canary yellow convertible Oldsmobile. He thoroughly enjoyed his life in the Big Apple, burning the candle at both ends, enjoying jazz music and working hard as one of the most prolific artists in the comic book industry. Unfortunately, he still had the weakened heart, which ailed him whenever he had to take the stairs to his apartment or make a brisk walk on the street, leaving him breathing heavily and exhausted.

Matt did not talk openly about his position as a Black man in an almost all white field, but instead let his talent talk for him. As fellow artist Al Feldstein said “he was a rare phenomenon in an industry almost totally dominated by white males. However, he was extremely talented, and it was his talent that overcame any resistance to his presence based on racial bias. But I feel that Matt, personally, was acutely aware of the perceived chasm that separated him from the rest of us. And it may be that because of that perceived problem there is little known about Matt Baker, aside from his stunning artwork that speaks for himself.”


He began working for St. John Publications in 1948 and became the company’s lead artist. He pencilled the groundbreaking picture novel “It Rhyme With Lust,” in 1950, which many consider the earliest form of the modern graphic novel. He also produced “Flamingo” from 1952 to 1954 as a syndicated comic strip for Phoenix Features.


Baker went on to work on other characters which he popularized over the next decade. One of his first endeavors for St. John Publications was “Canteen Kate”. Baker drew all 22 installments of the series focused on the kooky Korean Wartime cutie and her morale-boosting screwball antics. He then began a long string of work on romance titles such as Teen-Age Romances, Diary Secrets, Teen-Age Temptations, Pictorial Romance and Wartime Romances. Over the years, because of his expertise in the female form, these would become some of the most popular and sought after titles that he provided artwork for.

While his depiction of sexy women would be viewed as groundbreaking in modern times, the risque drawings drew the ire of conservative organizations back in the 1950s. Dr. Fredric Wertham, the anti-comic book propagandist, featured Baker’s artwork from the cover of Phantom Lady #17 in his book “Seduction of the Innocent” in 1954, a book that created alarm among parents and prompted them to push the comic book industry to establish the the Comics Code Authority in order to voluntarily self-censor their titles.


Later in the decade, Baker worked as a freelancer for Atlas Comics, a company that would eventually evolve into Marvel Comics. His first assignment in December 1955 was working on a five-page anthological story titled “Showdown at Sunup” in Gunsmoke Western #32, which he pencilled and inked alongside a script presumed to have been authored by comic book legend Stan Lee. He would continue drawing westerns during this period, drawing for Atlas’ Western Outlaws, Quick Trigger Action, Frontier Western, and Wild Western. He even extended his work to the realm of science fiction anthologies such as Strange Tales, World of Fantasy, and Tales to Astonish (“I Fell to the Center of the Earth!” in issue #2, March 1959). Baker’s last confirmed work was on a six-page story titled “I Gave Up the Man I Love!” in the Atlas/Marvel’s My Own Romance #73, published in January 1960.

In the end, Baker’s weakened heart would betray him. After suffering a stroke in 1957 which affected his artistic abilities, Matt Baker died on August 11, 1959 in New York City, the victim of a heart attack. As one of, if not the first, Black artists in the world of comic books, much of Baker’s career and life was lived under the radar and thus like many men of mystery, his legend has grown over the years. His ability to move from drawing super-heroines, to war themed stories to romance stories to the exploits of cowboys demonstrated his wide artistic range and willingness to take on challenges. He is now very well regarded as an artist and many wonder what levels of success he would have enjoyed had he been a white artist and not been betrayed by a bad heart.

Baker was inducted into the Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame in 2009, leaving behind a legacy that should prove to be a model for young Black artists following in his path.

 

[Black Lightning]

The real “Lone Ranger,” it turns out, was an African American man named Bass Reeves, who the legend was based upon. Perhaps not surprisingly, many aspects of his life were written out of the story, including his ethnicity. The basics remained the same: a lawman hunting bad guys, accompanied by a Native American, riding on a white horse, and with a silver trademark.


Historians of the American West have also, until recently, ignored the fact that this man was African American, a free black man who headed West to find himself less subject to the racist structure of the established Eastern and Southern states.

While historians have largely overlooked Reeves, there have been a few notable works on him. Vaunda Michaux Nelson’s book, Bad News for Outlaws: The Remarkable Life of Bass Reeves, Deputy U.S. Marshal, won the 2010 Coretta Scott King Award for best author. Arthur Burton released an overview of the man’s life a few years ago. Black Gun, Silver Star: The Life and Legend of Frontier Marshal Bass Reeves recounts that Reeves was born into a life of slavery in 1838. His slave-keeper brought him along as another personal servant when he went off to fight with the Confederate Army, during the Civil War.


Reeves took the chaos that ensued during the war to escape for freedom, after beating his “master” within an inch of his life, or according to some sources, to death. Perhaps the most intruiging thing about this escape was that Reeves only beat his enslaver after the latter lost sorely at a game of cards with Reeves and attacked him.


After successfully defending himself from this attack, he knew that there was no way he would be allowed to live if he stuck around.

Reeves fled to the then Indian Territory of today’s Oklahoma and lived harmoniously among the Seminole and Creek Nations of Native American Indians.

After the Civil War finally concluded, he married and eventually fathered ten children, making his living as a Deputy U.S. Marshall in Arkansas and the Indian Territory. If this surprises you, it should, as Reeves was the first African American to ever hold such a position.

Burton explains that it was at this point that the Lone Ranger story comes in to play. Reeves was described as a “master of disguises”. He used these disguises to track down wanted criminals, even adopting similar ways of dressing and mannerisms to meet and fit in with the fugitives, in order to identify them.

Reeves kept and gave out silver coins as a personal trademark of sorts, just like the Lone Ranger’s silver bullets. Of course, the recent Disney adaptation of the Lone Ranger devised a clever and meaningful explanation for the silver bullets in the classic tales. For the new Lone Ranger, the purposes was to not wantonly expend ammunition and in so doing devalue human life. But in the original series, there was never an explanation given, as this was simply something originally adapted from Reeves’ personal life and trademarking of himself. For Reeves, it had a very different meaning, he would give out the valuable coins to ingratiate himself to the people wherever he found himself working, collecting bounties. In this way, a visit from the real “Lone Ranger” meant only good fortune for the town: a criminal off the street and perhaps a lucky silver coin.

Like the Lone Ranger, Reeves was also expert crack shot with a gun. According to legend, shooting competitions had an informal ban on allowing him to enter. Like the Lone Ranger, Reeves rode a white horse throughout almost all of his career, at one point riding a light grey one as well.

Like the famed Lone Ranger legend Reeves had his own close friend like Tonto. Reeves’ companion was a Native American posse man and tracker who he often rode with, when he was out capturing bad guys. In all, there were close to 3000 of such criminals they apprehended, making them a legendary duo in many regions.

The final proof that this legend of Bass Reeves directly inspired into the story of the Lone Ranger can be found in the fact that a large number of those criminals were sent to federal prison in Detroit. The Lone Ranger radio show originated and was broadcast to the public in 1933 on WXYZ in Detroit where the legend of Reeves was famous only two years earlier.

Of course, WXYZ and the later TV and movie adaptions weren’t about to make the Lone Ranger an African American who began his career by beating a slave-keeper to death. But now you know. Spread the word and let people know the real legend of the Lone Ranger.

 

[IllmaticDelta]

Disclaimer- some of the terms in this article are straight up Ducktales and TaleSpins. I decided to post it anyway because it is one of the articles I found that has white folk admitting albeit begrudgingly, that WE AFRICAN AMERICANS came up with the barbershop harmony genre/art form. Yep they trying to lowkey discredit us yall. I've come across quite a few articles where they are trying to play stupid.


The Origins of Barbershop Harmony
Was barbershop harmony actually sung in barbershops? Certainly‹and on street corners (it was sometimes called "curbstone" harmony) and at social functions and in parlors. Its roots are not just the white, Middle-America of Norman Rockwell's famous painting. Rather, barbershop is a "melting pot" product of African-Americans

Immigrants to the new world brought with them a musical repertoire that included hymns, psalms, and folk songs. These simple songs were often sung in four parts with the melody set in the second-lowest voice. Minstrel shows of the mid-1800s often consisted of white singers in blackface (later black singers themselves) performing songs and sketches based on a romanticized vision of plantation life. As the minstrel show was supplanted by the equally popular vaudeville, the tradition of close-harmony quartets remained, often as a "four act" combining music with ethnic comedy that would be scandalous by modern standards.

The "barbershop" style of music is first associated with black southern quartets of the 1870s, such as The American Four and The Hamtown Students. The African influence is particularly notable in the improvisational nature of the harmonization, and the flexing of melody to produce harmonies in "swipes" and "snakes." Black quartets "cracking a chord" were commonplace at places like Joe Sarpy's Cut Rate Shaving Parlor in St. Louis, or in Jacksonville, Florida, where, black historian James Weldon Johnson writes, "every barbershop seemed to have its own quartet." The first written use of the word "barbershop" when referring to harmonizing came in 1910, with the publication of the song, "Play That Barbershop Chord"‹evidence that the term was in common parlance by that time.

Tin Pan Alley era:

Edison's talking machine spreads harmony nationwide Today, we are accustomed to receiving all forms of music in every home by way of CD, cassette, radio and video. In the early 1900s, though, pop music success depended on sales of sheet music to the general public. The song writers of Tin Pan Alley made their living by appealing to the needs and tastes of the recreational musician. To become a sheet-music hit, songs had to be easily singable by average singers, with average vocal ranges and average control. This called for songs with simple, straightforward melodies, and heartfelt, commonplace themes and images. Music published in that era often included an instrumental arrangement for piano or ukelele, and also a vocal arrangement for male quartet. The phonograph made it possible to actually hear the new songs coming from Tin Pan Alley. Professional quartets recorded hundreds of songs for the Victor, Edison, and Columbia labels, which spurred sheet music sales. For example, "You're The Flower Of My Heart, Sweet Adeline" captured the hearts of harmony lovers, not simply because it easily adapted to harmony, but also because it was heavily promoted by the popular Quaker City Four and other quartets.

Jazz era:

The coming of radio prompted a shift in American popular music. Song writers turned out more sophisticated melodies for the professional singers of radio and phonograph. These songs did not adapt as well to impromptu harmonization, because they placed a greater emphasis on jazz rhythms and melodies that were better suited to dancing than to casual crooning. Radio quartets kept close harmony singing popular with many amateur singers, though‹and these singers were ready for the revival of barbershop harmony that took place in April, 1938, in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Birth of SPEBSQSA: the dream of O.C. Cash and Rupert Hall:

While travelling to Kansas City on business, Tulsa tax attorney O. C. Cash happened to meet fellow Tulsan Rupert Hall in the lobby of the Muehlebach Hotel. The men fell to talking and discovered they shared a mutual love of vocal harmony. Together they bemoaned the decline of that all-American institution, the barbershop quartet, and decided to stem that decline.

Signing their names as "Rupert Hall, Royal Keeper of the Minor Keys, and O. C. Cash, Third Temporary Assistant Vice Chairman," of the "Society for the Preservation and Propagation of Barber Shop Quartet Singing in the United States" [sic], the two invited their friends to songfest on the roof garden of the Tulsa Club, on April 11, 1938. Twenty-six men attended that first meeting, and returned the following week with more friends. About 150 men attended the third meeting, and the grand sounds of harmony they raised on the rooftop created quite a stir. A traffic jam formed outside the hotel. While police tried to straighten out the problem, a reporter of the local newspaper heard the singing, sensed a great story, and joined the meeting. O. C. Cash bluffed his way through the interview, saying his organization was national in scope, with branches in St. Louis, Kansas City and elsewhere. He simply neglected to mention was that these "branches" were just a few scattered friends who enjoyed harmonizing, but knew nothing of Cash's new club.

Cash's flair for publicity, combined with the unusual name (the ridiculous initials poked fun at the alphabet soup of New Deal programs), made an irresistable story for the news wire services, which spread it coast-to-coast. Cash's "branches" started receiving puzzling calls from men interested in joining the barbershop society. Soon, groups were meeting throughout North America to sing barbershop harmony.

SPEBSQSA was born.

History of Barbershop

Barbershop music

Barbershop vocal harmony, as codified during the barbershop revival era (1930s–present), is a style of a cappella, or unaccompanied vocal music, characterized by consonant four-part chords for every melody note in a predominantly homophonic texture. Each of the four parts has its own role: generally, the lead sings the melody, the tenor harmonizes above the melody, the bass sings the lowest harmonizing notes, and the baritone completes the chord, usually below the lead. The melody is not usually sung by the tenor or baritone, except for an infrequent note or two to avoid awkward voice leading, in tags or codas, or when some appropriate embellishment can be created. Occasional passages may be sung by fewer than four voice parts.

Historical origins

In the last half of the 19th century, U.S. barbershops often served as community centers, where most men would gather. Barbershop quartets originated with African American men socializing in barbershops; they would harmonize while waiting their turn, vocalizing in spirituals, folk songs and popular songs. This generated a new style, consisting of unaccompanied, four-part, close-harmony singing. Later, white minstrel singers adopted the style, and in the early days of the recording industry their performances were recorded and sold. Early standards included songs such as "Shine On, Harvest Moon", "Hello, Ma Baby", and "Sweet Adeline". Barbershop music was very popular between 1900 and 1919 but gradually faded into obscurity in the 1920s. Barbershop harmonies remain in evidence in the a cappella music of the black church.[4][5][6] The iconic barbershop quartets are typically dressed in bright colors, boaters and vertical stripe vests, though costuming and attire can vary.[7]

Barbershop Quartets, Present at the Creation

^click on it

March 18, 2002 -- Think of barbershop quartets and this image easily comes to mind: four handlebar-mustached white men in straw hats and striped vests singing "Sweet Adeline" in four-part harmony.

But the roots of barbershop actually date back to singing by African Americans in the late 19th century, Jim Wildman reports for Morning Edition as part of the Present at the Creation series on American icons.

"Barbering was a kind of low-status job and it was held in some areas by gypsies and European immigrants, in other areas, by African Americans," says Gage Averill, chairman of the music department at New York University and author of the upcoming book Four Parts, No Waiting: A Social History of American Barbershop Harmony. Barbershops often served as black community centers, "the place where guys hung out," he says. "A lot of harmony was created in these barbershops."

Thomas Johnson Jr., 89, grew up singing early barbershop tunes with friends in barbershops and on street corners in Richmond, Va., in the early 1900s. "During that time, it was just anyway you sing it was alright. Hand it down, throw it down, any way you get it down. Whatever came to the ear -- that's barbershop."

But barbershop quartets soon became associated with white performers when the recorded version of the music became widely distributed, Averill says. Thomas Edison's early phonograms spread to parlors around the country, "but they needed content," Averill says. "So they actively sought out groups to record. You couldn't bring an orchestra... or a chorus into the early studios. They were cramped and you had to sing right into the horn (microphone). So it favored small groups and these quartets were just perfect."

By the end of the 19th century, phonogram companies presented competing quartets, Averill says. "And those quartets -- the ones that they were really promoting -- were by and large white quartets. And it was the promotion of these groups and their dissemination everywhere in North America and beyond that really fixed the identity of barbershop in a white context."

In addition, scholars incorrectly traced barbershop's origin to England. Library of Congress musicologist Wayne Shirley says the misperception started in the 1930s, when an influential historian, Percy Skoals, was misled by an entry in the Oxford English Dictionary.

Shirley explains: "There was an Elizabethan phrase about 'barber's music,' music that was made in barbershops, and so (Skoals) decided that the barbershop quartet came basically from England. And unfortunately it's just not true. Barber's music, which simply meant the kind of stuff you hear when there are a couple of lutes around and people are getting haircuts and passing the time by singing rather badly, is not barbershop."

Singer Thomas Johnson Jr. says he doesn't know of any black quartets singing barbershop these days. He says that white singers "polished it up some, just like silver and gold... Barbershop music is very beautiful music. But it was a black tradition."

http://sandbox.npr.org/programs/morning/features/patc/barbershop/index.html

 

[Gold]

I'm only on the first page and alot of knowledge is being dropped

 

[DrunkenNovice]

My family on my maternal grandmothers side did and presented at a family reunion a couple years back. That's how I found out about my slave ancestors.

Salute to them breh. Once you get back to slavery it gets tough

 

[Michael9100]

 

[Michael9100]

 

[IllmaticDelta]

What do yall know about the whole Black American Cowboy/Rodeo subculture?

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[Black Lightning]

History in color

 

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Ernest Green, the first African-American to graduate from Little Rock Central High, standing by himself on graduation day - Little Rock, AR (1958)

 

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Moses dikkson was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, on April 5, 1824. At 16, he began a three year tour of the South which persuaded him to work for the abolition of slavery. On August 12, 1846, dikkson and twelve other men gathered in St. Louis to devise a plan to end slavery in the United States. They formed a secret organization known as the Knights of Liberty which planned to initiate a national insurrection against slavery.

dikkson married widow Mary Elisabeth Butcher Peters at Galena, Illinois on October 5, 1848. They had one daughter, Mamie Augusta, and a year later the family located permanently in St. Louis.

By 1856, according to dikkson and his followers, 47,240 members of the Knights of Liberty throughout the nation stood ready to fight for freedom. In August of that year dikkson created a smaller secret organization, the Order of Twelve, in Galena, Illinois. During the war, the Knights disbanded and many of their members joined the Union Army.

After 1865 dikkson turned his attention to education and economic development among the freedpeople. He joined the A.M.E. church in 1866 and became an ordained minister. In 1871 dikkson became Grand Master of the Prince Hall Masons for the state of Missouri. An early supporter of the "Lincoln Institute" (later Lincoln University) in Jefferson City, Missouri, dikkson also organized the Knights and Daughters of Tabor, an African American self-help organization. The new organization touted African American advancement through “Christian demeanor,” the "getting of homes and acquiring of wealth" and "man's responsibility to the Supreme Being."

In 1879-1880 when approximately 16,000 Louisiana and Mississippi African Americans migrated to Kansas in what was called the Exodus Movement, Rev. dikkson served as President of the Refugee Relief Board which provided them aid and support. The Revered Moses dikkson died a decade later on November 28, 1901 and was buried at St. Louis, Missouri.

 

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In 1921, Bessie Coleman became the first black woman to gain an international permit to fly. After learning French, she attended the famous flight school Ecole d’Aviation des Frères Caudron in Northern France. No schools in America would train a black person. She was inspired to fly by the stories of Frenchwomen flyers told by her brother John, who had served in France during World War I. Coleman performed acrobatics in air shows around the country and gave lectures inspiring audiences that included many children. She believed that there was freedom in the skies and would not perform in an air show with a segregated audience. On April 30, 1926, she was killed in an airplane piloted by William Wills, her mechanic and publicity agent, as he flew her over the field of the next day’s air show in Jacksonville, Florida where she was slated as the star. Coleman who was 34 at the time of her death, had just purchased a Curtiss JN-4 (Jenny) airplane in Dallas, which Willis flew to Jacksonville in preparation for the show.

Elizabeth "Bessie" Coleman was born in Atlanta, Texas, on January 26, 1892 as the tenth of thirteen children to parents George and Susan Coleman. The family settled in Waxahachie, Texas, and worked as sharecroppers. Her mother encouraged Bessie’s schooling when she showed an aptitude for math. At the age of 18 Coleman enrolled in the Oklahoma Colored Agricultural and Normal University (now called Langston University) in Langston, Oklahoma. She remained their one term. In 1916 aty the age of 23 she moved to Chicago, Illinois where she lived with her brother Walter, a Pullman porter. Coleman became a manicurist and worked in the Chicago White Sox barbershop.

Hearing stories from pilots returning home from World War I encouraged Coleman to think about flying but when she attempted to enroll in flight schools she was turned down because she was black and a woman. When no black U.S. aviator would train her, Coleman received encouragement and financial support from Robert Abbott, the editor of the Chicago Defender and black Chicago banker Jesse Binga. Abbott encouraged her to study abroad.

Coleman took a French language course in Chicago and then traveled to Paris on November 20, 1920 to seek training to ger her pilot's license. She completed her training and received her license on June 15, 1921. Coleman continued her training in France and in September 1921 she returned to the U.S. where she became a media sensation.


When she returned from Paris Coleman worked as a restaurant manager to save money to purchase an airplane. She was helped in this endeavor by friends who included Edwin Beeman from the chewing gum family and Robert S. Abbott, editor and publisher of the Chicago Defender newspaper. Coleman moved to Orlando, Florida and opened a beauty shop to help finance the purchase of her own plane. Finally, realizing that she could make more money by becoming a barnstorming stunt flyer, Coleman returned to Europe in 1922. She took course in France and then traveled to the Netherlands where she met Anthony Fokker, one of the world's leading aircraft designers. She eventually traveled to Germany where she visited the Fokker Corporation and received training from one of the company's chief pilots. She returned to the U.S. as "Queen Bess" and launched her new career, making her first appearance in an American airshow on September 3, 1922 at an event honoring veterans of the all-black 369th Infantry Regiment of World War I fame.

Her dream to open a flying school was never realized, but several years after her death, black aviators formed a network of Bessie Coleman Aero Clubs. The largest of these was organized by pilot William J. Powell in Los Angeles. In 1990, a road near Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport was renamed for her and five years later the U.S. Postal Department issued the Bessie Coleman Stamp. She was inducted into the Texas Aviation Hall of Fame in 2000 and the National Aviation Hall of Fame in 2006.