The Random stories of Black History thread!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Sonic Boom of the South]

Rosa Lee Ingram and Teenage Sons Sentenced to Death by Electric Chair (1947)

ROSA LEE INGRAM AND TEENAGE SONS SENTENCED TO DEATH BY ELECTRIC CHAIR (1947)

2 POSTED BY JAE JONES - SEPTEMBER 29, 2015 - CIVIL RIGHTS, INJUSTICES, LATEST POSTS



#Rosa Lee Ingram was working on land she sharecropped near the small town of Ellaville, Georgia, on November 4, 1947. A white neighbor, John Stratford confronted her angrily about some livestock that had roamed onto his property. It was told that Strafford attempted to sexually assault his neighbor Rosa Lee Ingram. As Rosa Lee Ingram fought Stratford off her teenaged sons rushed to aid her, 17-year old Wallace Ingram and 14-year old Sammie Lee Ingram came to her defense after hearing her screams. The teens arrived with farm tools to fight Stratford off their mother.

John Stratford had been armed with a shotgun and a pocket knife when he confronted Ingram. Stratford was killed due to several blows to the head, and local authorities then charged the Ingram family with murder. Rosa Lee and her sons were sentenced to death by electric chair, while another son, Charles was acquitted in a separate trial due to lack of evidence.
The case of the Ingram family received national press coverage during the post-World War II era, when the southern justice system and Jim Crow were under scrutiny. “Members of the Atlanta chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) rushed down to appeal the verdict, providing support to local white lawyer appointed to the case, S. Hawkins Dykes. The Civil Rights Congress (CRC), a left-based organization, also became involved in raising funds for the Ingrams and publicizing their cause but also generating tensions with the NAACP which harkened back to the political splits seen in the Scottsboro cases of the 1930s. When the Ingrams appealed in 1948, Georgia courts reduced the death sentences to life imprisonment but refused to take further action.” (Blackpast.org)

Wallace Ingram (from left) stands with Rosa Lee Ingram, Samuel Ingram and Clayton R. Yates following the Ingrams’ release from prison.​

There were many female activists that emerged and kept the fight for Rosa Lee Ingram and her children going. Due to their fight for the family, the family were released on parole in 1959 for being “model prisoners.”

source:
http://newsone.com/2862078/rosa-lee-ingram/
Ingram, Rosa Lee (b? -1980) | The Black Past: Remembered and Reclaimed

 

[Sonic Boom of the South]

Ellie Dahmer and Bettie Dahmer


Ellie Dahmer and Bettie Dahmer


During the mid-1960s, Vernon Dahmer was a successful black farmer and businessman in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. He was also a civil rights leader and had served as the head of his local NAACP chapter. This work often made his family a target of threats by the Ku Klux Klan. Despite the danger, Vernon worked to help register black voters in the community.

Although the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act gave racial minorities equal access to the right to vote, the state of Mississippi still required residents to pay a poll tax when registering, impeding many potential black voters. And so on January 9, 1966, Vernon publicly offered to pay the poll tax for blacks who wanted to register but could not afford it.

That night, the KKK firebombed his home while he was inside with his wife, Ellie Dahmer, and three of their children—Bettie, Dennis, and Harold. Vernon exchanged gunfire with the attackers and held them off so he and his family could escape. He later died from injuries he sustained in the fire.

Ellie went on to serve as an election commissioner in Hattiesburg for more than a decade, continuing the work that she and her husband had started. It took more than 30 years for Samuel Bowers, the Klan leader who ordered the attack, to be convicted of Vernon’s murder.

At StoryCorps, Ellie and Bettie, who was 10 years old at the time, remembered the night Vernon was killed.




Transcript
Ellie Dahmer (ED) and Bettie Dahmer (BD)

ED: We didn’t think anybody would bother the children, but we were wrong. They intended to get all of us January the 10th, 1966. That night, when I waked up, the house was on fire, and it was so bright and so hot. You was screaming to the top of your voice, “Lord have mercy. We’re going to get burned up in this house alive.” I raised the windows up, and then your father was handing you out the window to me.

BD: We escaped to the barn to hide, and I can remember us sitting on the bales of hay. I had burns over a good portion of my body, and I was screaming and crying because I was in pain. Daddy was burned so much worse than I was. When he held up his arm the skin just hung down. But Daddy never did complain. He was just concerned about me. I remember us going to the hospital.

ED: You was in the room with your father. I was sitting between the two beds. And he yelled my name real loud, and then he was gone. He knew that he might get killed, and he was willing to take the risk, but it was not worth it to me. I miss him so much.

BD: Daddy wasn’t a man that wore a suit, he wore overalls. In Daddy’s world everybody had a job to do. Black people couldn’t vote, so I do understand why he did what he did. It meant a lot to him.

ED: Some of the last words he said was, “If you don’t vote, you don’t count.” That’s on his tombstone.

We made a tremendous sacrifice, Bettie. I try to go on and live my life without thinking about it, but it’s a night I can never forget. It’s been over 50 years, and seems like it was yesterday.

 

[Sonic Boom of the South]

The man who built on of the most famous bikes in the world, Ben Hardy … Ben Hardy, born Benjamin F. Hardy, was an African-American motorcycle engineer and chopper builder, who is best known for creating the customized choppers for the characters ‘Captain America’ and ‘Billy’ which featured in the 1969 Peter Fonda road movie Easy Rider, a movie which influenced more people to take an interest in motorcycles and choppers than any other.

The Captain America bike, made from a then 20-year-old, heavily customized Harley-Davidson panhead is considered one of the most iconic motorcycles ever built, one which captured the zeitgeist of a generation and became an anti-establishment symbol.[2][3]

Working with another Black motorcycle builder, coordinator Cliff Vaughs, Hardy built two 'Billy' bikes and three 'Captain Americas', one of which was destroyed in the making of the movie, the rest of which were stolen. The 'Billy' bike was typical of the custom motorcycles Black bikers were riding at the time.

Hardy and Vaughs remained largely unknown and uncredited for 25 years as they were not accepted as being equal due to their color and, as African-Americans, were not welcomed into the mainstream white motorcycle world in the USA.[4]

Known locally as "Benny" and "King of Bikes" Ben Hardy's Motorcycle Service was located at 1168 E. Florence in Los Angeles. He was a mentor to many of the local motorcyclists in South Central, Los Angeles.

His work was featured in the “Black Chrome” exhibition at the California African American Museum.[1]

 

[Sonic Boom of the South]

Janet Waterford Bragg was a pioneer female African American pilot whose leadership in black pilot organziations in the 1930s created opportunities for others...


After graduating from high school in 1927, she enrolled in Spellman College in Atlanta and earned a degree in nursing from MacBicar Hospital on Spellman's campus. Eventually she moved to Chicago and began her nursing career. In 1933, she enrolled in the Curtiss Wright Aeronautical School where she was the only female in an aircraft mechanics class of 24 black males. Although her race and gender provided constant challenges, she continued to pursue her passion for flying. While doing postgraduate work at Loyola University and the University of Chicago, she worked as a registered nurse at several hospitals and saved enough money to buy her first of three planes. For $500 she purchased a plane, which she shared with other flying enthusiasts. This group, inspired by Bessie Coleman, formed the Challenger Air Pilots Association, which later evolved into the Coffey School of Aeronautics. The Association built its first airstrip in the township of Robbins, Illinois, in 1933. Bragg encountered discrimination against women at the Tuskegee black pilot training school when she passed the flight test for her commercial license and was denied the license. She received her commercial license in 1943 at the Pal-Waukee Airport near Chicago. During World War II Bragg tried to join the WASPs but was turned down because of her skin color. In 1946, she purchased a Super Cruiser, in which she logged many hours of cross-country flying. Bragg continued to fly for pleasure into the 1970s. Her autobiography, Soaring Above Setbacks, with Marjorie Kriz, was published in 1996.

 

[Groanman]

Nice, Bro.


Could Benjamin F. Hardy be Benny from GTA 5?

 

[Sonic Boom of the South]

Nice, Bro.


Could Benjamin F. Hardy be Benny from GTA 5?

 

[Sonic Boom of the South]

 

[Sonic Boom of the South]

Little Gregory Hines, His Brother Maurice Hines and Dizzy Gillespie - Jet Magazine October 7, 1954

 

[Sonic Boom of the South]

 

[Sonic Boom of the South]

John Morton-Finney, (June 25, 1889 – January 28, 1998) was a civil rights activist, lawyer and educator. He was born in Kentucky. He served in World War I as a Buffalo Soldier[1] (an elite group of black soldiers). He earned his law degree in 1911 and practiced law until he was 106, a period of nearly 85 years. Finney was believed to be the longest practicing attorney in the United States, taking the record from Rush Limbaugh I (1891-1996) who practiced law for 75 years.

Finney was so highly regarded that he was given a dinner held in his honor by President George H. W. Bush. Finney studied throughout his lifetime, completing his final degree course at the age of 75. In all he obtained 11 degrees, including five in law and others in mathematics, history and sociology.

 

[Sonic Boom of the South]

 

[Sonic Boom of the South]

Fifty years ago this month, Charles Avery left his high school in Jefferson County, Alabama, to lead about 800 of his fellow students on a 10-mile walk to Birmingham City. They were stopped by the sheriff’s department, arrested, and jailed. “I was put in the paddy wagon with dikk Gregory and his writer,” says Avery, who was 18 at the time and president of his senior class. “I would never forget that day.”

In 1963 Birmingham was known as one of the most racist cities in the South. Martin Luther King Jr. had described it as a “symbol of hard-core resistance to integration.” Activists had nicknamed it Bombingham, because of the frequency of violent attacks against those fighting the system of segregation.

It was the Rev. James Bevel, a leader of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and adviser to King, who came up with the idea of a protest group made up of children. In May 1963 they launched the Children’s Crusade and began a march on Birmingham. By the time Avery made it to the city May 7, more than 3,000 black young people were marching on the city.

It was King’s words that inspired 16-year-old Raymond Goolsby to participate in the march. “Rev. Martin Luther King stood right beside me,” remembers Goolsby, 66. “He said, ‘I think it’s a mighty fine thing for children, what you’re doing because when you march, you’re really standing up; because a man can’t ride your back unless it is bent.’ And, boy, I mean he talked so eloquent and fast, after he finished his motivational speech, I was ready.”

 

[Sonic Boom of the South]

On May 2, 1963, Goolsby joined thousands of students who left their classrooms and gathered at the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham. It was there where they spilled out in groups of 50 to march downtown. “My group was the first of 50 to march,” says Goolsby. “Our job was to decoy the police. We got arrested about a block and a half from 16th Street.”

The next day, the police, led by infamous commissioner of public safety Bull Connor, brought out fire hoses and attack dogs and turned them on the children. It was a scene that caused headlines across the nation and around the world.

“Pictures of the bravery and determination of the Birmingham children as they faced the brutal fire hoses and vicious police dogs were splashed on the front pages of newspapers all across America and helped turn the tide of public opinion in support of the civil-rights movement’s fight for justice,” says Marian Wright Edelman, founder and president of the Children’s Defense Fund.

Jessie Shepherd, then 16, was soaked when she was loaded up in a paddy wagon. “I was told not to participate,” says Shepherd, now a retired clinical diet technician. “But I was tired of the injustice.”

 

[Sonic Boom of the South]

“I couldn’t understand why there had to be a colored fountain and a white fountain,” says Shepherd. “Why couldn’t I drink out the fountain that other little kids drank out of? As I got older, I understood that’s just the way it was, because my skin was black, and we were treated differently because of that.”

So she marched.

Soon the city’s jails were so overcrowded that students were sent to the local fair ground. They slept on cots and sang freedom songs while waiting for movement leaders to raise money for their bail. “I didn’t anticipate the outcome being so drastic,” says Shepherd.

 

[xoxodede]

Watch that Sam Cooke doc on Netflix.