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

[Sonic Boom of the South]

Gwen Gamble had just been released from jail and didn’t want to go back. Shortly before the crusade, the teenager had been arrested for participating in a lunch-counter sit-in and jailed for five days. “We were put in with people who had actually broken the law. It was scary. They weren’t nice,” says Gamble, who was 15.

She and her two sisters were trained by the movement to be recruiters for the Children’s Crusade. On the first day of the march, they went to several schools and gave students the cue to leave. They then made their way to 16th Street Baptist.

“We left the church with our picket signs and our walking shoes,” says Gamble. “Some of us even had on our rain coats because we knew that we were going to be hosed down by the water hoses.”

“The Birmingham campaign was a crucial campaign,” says Clayborne Carson, director of the Martin Luther King Jr. Research and Education Institute at Stanford University. “He had never led a massive campaign of civil disobedience before, and there were not enough adults prepared to be arrested. So the Children’s Crusade turned the tide of the movement.”

 

[Sonic Boom of the South]

Carson also notes that had King failed in Birmingham, his legacy wouldn’t be what it is. “If he hadn’t won, there probably wouldn’t have been an ‘I Have a Dream‘ speech or a Man of the Year award or a Nobel Peace Prize in 1964,” says Carson.

In honor of the 50th anniversary of the march, there will be a reenactment of the Children’s Crusade and the opening of an exhibit on the children’s march at the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute.

Today Birmingham has an African-American mayor, a majority-black City Council, and a black superintendent of schools.


“Had it not been for those children going out in the streets of Birmingham making a difference, going to jail, protesting, I really don’t believe what we have to day would be possible,” says Gamble. “I definitely say there would not be a Barack Obama."

 

[Sonic Boom of the South]

Lemme get this thread going

Leonard C. Bailey (1825 - September 1, 1918) was an African-American entrepreneur, inventor, and banker. He founded one of the first African-American banks in the United States.

Bailey was born in 1825 to a free black family.[1] Growing up in poverty, Bailey worked as a barber and built up a chain of barbershops in Washington D.C.[2]

Bailey invented and received patents for a series of devices, many designed for military or government use. These included a folding bed,[3] a rapid mail-stamping machine, a device to shunt trains to different tracks, and a hernia truss adopted into wide use by the U.S. military. Bailey had to escape from a military camp after there was an attempt to capture him as a slave while he was dropping off his inventions.[4][5][2] These inventions provided him with a sizable income.

Bailey helped establish the Capital Savings Bank of Washington D.C., one of the first African-American owned banks in the U.S. During the Panic of 1893, the bank maintained its solvency by obtaining a personal loan from a national bank.[2]

Bailey was a member of the first mixed-race jury in Washington D.C., which found Millie Gaines not guilty of murder by reason of insanity.[5]He served as a member of the board of directors of the Manassas Industrial School for Colored Youth where a residence hall was named after him.[6]

Bailey died on September 1, 1918 of a sudden illness. He was buried in what is now known as the National Harmony Memorial Park in Largo, Maryland

 

[Stir Fry]

Lots of history is in this autobiography. It's a great read (PDF in link)

 

[Sonic Boom of the South]

 

[Sonic Boom of the South]

 

[skylove4]

The rise of MAGA and QANON are giving some of these horrible stories the possibility to become a reality again. The GOP and conservative policies are itching to recreate the environment for these things. Black people vote Like our life depends on it. Vote Dem and push progressive candidates

 

[Ol’Otis]

Joe Pullen - Wikipedia

 

[Sonic Boom of the South]

 

[Sonic Boom of the South]

Borne the Battle Podcast: Army, Air Force, WWII, 100 Year Old Veteran Fannie Griffin McClendon

Listen to her story on Spotify
Borne the Battle
Fannie served with the only overseas All-Black Women’s Army BN unit known as the Six Triple Eight. Listen as Fannie shares how the unit persevered through hardships while
unclogging the mail system in England so frontline troops were delivered letters from their loved ones back home, which was integral in the Allied Victory. She also discusses how the battalion will soon be honored with a congressional gold medal.

Borne the Battle #258: Army and Air Force Veteran Fannie Griffin McClendon, Centenarian, 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion - VAntage Point
Published On: October 4th, 2021
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497 words
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1.8 min read
Calvin Wong is an intern with VA’s Digital Media Engagement team. He studies History as an undergraduate at the University of California, Davis.

In 1945, warehouses in Birmingham, England, were brimming with unsent postal mail intended for U.S. soldiers at the frontlines. At the same time, African American organizations pressed the War Department to create more opportunities for African American Women’s Army Corps members to serve. Tackling two issues at once, the War Department started recruiting African American women and formed the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion. The job was expected to take six months. The “Six Triple Eight” did it in three.

Retired Air Force Major Fannie Griffin McClendon was one of these women to take up the monumental task of ensuring soldiers on the frontlines received mail sent to them by their loved ones, regardless of rain, sleet, “buzz bombs,” racism, and sexism. Indeed, throughout her time in the 6888th Battalion and later as a commander with Strategic Air Command, she faced and overcame many instances of racism and sexism thrown at her. This ranged from men who refused to serve under her because she was a woman. Focusing on her vital duties to the country, McClendon knocked down barriers and shattered glass ceilings at every corner of her military career.

Even as a centenarian, McClendon remembered stories from her days in the military like the back of her hand. Stories she discussed in this episode of Borne the Battle include:

What life was like for her while serving abroad in Europe during WWII
The casualties the 6888th suffered while in France
Becoming a commander in the Air Force
Surrounded by the stench and sight of death, soldiers on the frontlines depended on members of the 6888th, like McClendon, to deliver them letters written by their loved ones back home. Despite the importance of their role, the 6888th, like many other segregated units from WWII, received little recognition after the war.

The 6888th only recently started gaining popular recognition, with a documentary on it released in 2019.

Play
In 2021, the Senate passed the “Six Triple Eight” Congressional Gold Medal Act of 2021, an act awarding congressional gold medals to members of the 6888th for their “pioneering military service, devotion to duty, and contributions to the morale of personnel stationed in the European theater.”

While formal recognition for her service was long overdue, McClendon seemed not to mind too much. Rather, she focused on the many opportunities the military gave her and the spectacular life it allowed her to live.

 

[Sonic Boom of the South]

 

[Ol’Otis]

Joe Pullen - Wikipedia

 

[Ol’Otis]

The day(s)the negroes won
Washington race riot of 1919 - Wikipedia

 

[Sonic Boom of the South]

 

[Sonic Boom of the South]