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Monday, December 4, 2017

‘Insulting African American Gold Star widows has a history’


 


For 11 years, Bessie Strawther longed for a chance to visit her son’s grave. Pvt. Henry Strawther, a black American soldier in a segregated infantry unit, had died fighting the German army on Oct. 6, 1918, nearly five weeks before World War I ended in armistice. Veterans in his home town of Urbana, Ohio, had named an American Legion post after him, but his body remained  interred  somewhere in France — an ocean away from his mother.
Then came an extraordinary proposal from the U.S. government. The War Department in 1929 created a program to send bereaved mothers and widows like Strawther on two-week, all-expense-paid trips to Europe to visit the final resting places of their sons and husbands. The journeys became known as the Gold Star mother and widow pilgrimages, named after the newly minted organization for women who had lost family members in the war.
In summer 1930, Strawther took a train from Urbana to New York City, where the War Department had arranged for her to board a commercial steamer bound for France.
But shortly after she arrived in the city, she started having second thoughts. Government officials were requiring Strawther and the other black women to travel on a different ship and stay in different quarters from white women making the same journey.
The idea of being segregated sickened Strawther. Her son had given his life, but her government still treated her as a second-class citizen. Days before the ship set sail, she backed out. “I am not going to France,” she wrote to a prominent NAACP member at the time. She had accepted the invitation “not knowing what I do now,” she wrote. “I do not want to be a disgrace to my son and the race.”
Strawther was one of a few hundred black women who signed up to make the government-funded pilgrimage to Europe in the early 1930s, only to be told by the War Department that they couldn’t travel or share hotels with their white counterparts.
Her story was highlighted in a Journal of American History article from September 2015 that detailed the little-known story of the federal government’s well-intended but discriminatory program that brought Gold Star mothers and widows to the battlefields and cemeteries of the First World War.

American Journal of History cover
The article received renewed attention this week after President Trump was accused of insulting a black Gold Star widow whose husband, U.S. Army Sgt. La David Johnson, was recently killed in an ambush in Niger. On Monday, as Trump clashed openly with the widow over allegations that he was insensitive during his condolence call to her, the Journal of American History announced it was posting the article free online for the next month. “Insulting African American gold star widows has a history,” the journal wrote in a tweet.
The article was written by Rebecca Jo Plant, an associate professor of history at the University of California at San Diego, and Frances M. Clarke, a senior lecturer in history at the University of Sydney. Their research, along with a 1999 essay in the National Archives’ Prologue magazine, represents some of the only publicly available scholarship on the segregation of black women who took part in the pilgrimage program.
The article received renewed attention this week after President Trump was accused of insulting a black Gold Star widow whose husband, U.S. Army Sgt. La David Johnson, was recently killed in an ambush in Niger. On Monday, as Trump clashed openly with the widow over allegations that he was insensitive during his condolence call to her, the Journal of American History announced it was posting the article free online for the next month. “Insulting African American gold star widows has a history,” the journal wrote in a tweet.
The article was written by Rebecca Jo Plant, an associate professor of history at the University of California at San Diego, and Frances M. Clarke, a senior lecturer in history at the University of Sydney. Their research, along with a 1999 essay in the National Archives’ Prologue magazine, represents some of the only publicly available scholarship on the segregation of black women who took part in the pilgrimage program“I’m incredibly happy that people are reading it now,” Plant told The Washington Post on Tuesday, “but I’m also sad that this is what it has come to, that it’s getting all this attention because it’s so resonant in the current moment.”
The call for government-sponsored pilgrimages to Europe began in the 1920s. Two national organizations, the American War Mothers and the American Gold Star Mothers, lobbied successfully for the all-expenses-paid journeys after learning that many women couldn’t afford to travel overseas to see where their loved ones were buried.
After the program was authorized by Congress, the War Department decided to segregate the women. Integrated trips were “impracticable,” the department said. Plus, the mothers and widows “would prefer to seek solace in their grief from companions of their own race.”
The move set off a sustained protest against the pilgrimages, led primarily by black male leaders from the NAACP and black newspapers, according to Plant and Clarke’s research. The Chicago Defender urged a boycott, calling the program the “crowning insult” in a long list of abuses by the administration of President Herbert Hoover. Some Democratic politicians spread rumors that the women would be sent over in cattle boats.
The women were presented with a wrenching choice: Join the protest and take a stand against segregation, or make what would probably be a once-in-a-lifetime voyage to see where their sons and husbands were buried.
Ultimately, most would choose the latter. Plant and Clarke found that 279 black women made the pilgrimage, traveling in all-black groups between 1930 to 1933.
It was an easy decision for some. “Ever since I lost my son in 1918 I have been wanting to come,” one mother said. “I would have come over on a cattle-boat. I would have swam if possible. I love my race as strongly as any other but when I heard that the United States was going to send us over I could not refuse.”
But others agonized for years.
Bessie Strawther
Strawther, the mother from Ohio, was hesitant. She canceled her trip in 1930 but sailed to France with the last all-black party in 1933, according to Plant and Clarke.
Carrie Brown of Eatonton, Ga., had twice booked the trip to see her son’s grave, only to cancel her reservations. It was “enough to go there to see the last of my son with a weeping heart,” she wrote to a protest organizer in 1930, according to the article. Combined with the segregation, the experience seemed “dreadful,” she added. “As Mr. Patrick Henry said, ‘Give me Liberty or give me death.’” But eventually, she, too, went on the journey, shipping out with the last party, according to Plant and Clarke.
About two-dozen women canceled their reservations and never looked back. For them, the ignominy of a segregated voyage outweighed the desire to visit the gravesites.
 One Philadelphia widow told the War Department she would “not be a party to this

 conspiracy against the dead,” according to the article. Another wrote: “I am a 

Massachusetts born woman and my parents before me and I strongly resent any such 

stand as the United States government has taken. feel they have grossly insulted our 

race and that they can never make amends.”


In total, about 6,700 women of all races made the pilgrimage, as archivist Constance Potter has written in the National Archives‘ Prologue magazine.
Backlash against the program embarrassed President Herbert Hoover, who was facing a tough reelection fight that he would ultimately lose. So his administration tried to mend things by making sure the women were cared for in every other way possible, according to Plant and Clarke.
Col. Benjamin O. Davis Sr., the Army’s highest-ranking black officer, was tapped to oversee the effort. A staff of black civil servants and other workers handled day-to-day operations on every leg of the journey. Black officials from the Quartermaster Corps, the Army’s logistics branch, bought suitcases for women who showed up without luggage. They repaired eyeglasses and shoes, and coordinated health care for those with medical needs, Plant and Clarke wrote.
When they got to Paris, crowds of cheering Parisians and American expatriates greeted them (“France Seeks to Make Up for U.S. Jim Crow,” read one headline in the Baltimore Afro-American). The American jazz bandleader Noble Sissle and other black performers played for them. The women were treated to meals at top-notch restaurants and visits to the Louvre, Versailles and Napoleon’s tomb. Then they took the more solemn trips to the battlefields and cemeteries where the fallen soldiers were buried.
A tea reception for black Gold Star mothers and widows at the Restaurant Laurent in Paris in 1931. (Courtesy National Archives, Journal of American History)

Plant and Clarke noted that there were some disparities in the accommodations. White women sailed on ocean liners, while black women traveled on modified freight ships. In New York, white women stayed in expensive hotels while black women stayed in Harlem’s YWCA. In Paris, white women stayed near the center of the city while black women were housed closer to the edge of town.
Still, many of the women returned home with glowing words about the journey and high praise for the federal government, according to Plant and Clarke’s research. “Uncle Sam is doing his best for us,” one woman told a Jamaican American newspaper reporter. “Nothing more could be done for us unless they presented us with a sack of gold.”
In an interview last week with the history blog Process, Plant and Clarke said the black Gold Star women had essentially fought their own two-front war over the pilgrimage — against black male activists on one side and government officials on the other.
“The pilgrims declined to assume the role of the self-sacrificing race mother who upheld the memory of her son by foregoing the government-funded trip, regardless of her heart’s desire,” they said. “Nor did they stick to the role the federal government had scripted for them: that of the grieving and grateful supplicant who gained peace of mind through the benevolent actions of the state.”
_______________________________________________________________________________________
My apologies for the length of this piece, I decided to post it in its entirety because it was so interesting and I didn't want to make the  readers go to another page if they wanted the whole story. This article was written back when #hesnotmypresident caused such a stir by reneging on his promise to a Gold Star widow. You can read it here: Trump Offered the Father of a Fallen Soldier $25,0...   Please leave a comment, tell me how you feel about it.

DISCLAIMER: The opinions expressed in this blog are strictly those of the blog author, and in no way express the views of the Washington Post, the American Journal of History, Blogger, Google or any other entity (i.e. news services) whose content and/or services may have been accessed for use in this blog. 


Saturday, November 11, 2017

The Unknown Story of “The Black Cyclone,” the Cycling Champion Who Broke the Color Barrier


This is definitely a 'little known black history fact'; I don't recall ever being taught this in school, and even now in this time of supposed 'equality', no one I spoke with could recall being taught about this  young athlete. His achievement in history is a big one, and one that should be recognized by all, especially by young black men. It might help, with a few of them, to foster a sense of accomplishment, a sense of pride in their race, and in hearing the complete story they might better understand what blacks went through in their ongoing quest for equality.
The full article is rather long, but VERY interesting....

Marshall "Major" Taylor (1878–1932)

Major Taylor had to brave more than the competition to become one of the most acclaimed cyclists of the world

At the dawn of the 20th century, cycling was the most popular sport in both America and Europe, with tens of thousands of spectators drawn to arenas and velodromes to see highly dangerous and even deadly affairs that bore little semblance to bicycle racing today. In brutal six-day races of endurance, well-paid competitors often turned to cocaine, strychnine and nitroglycerine for stimulation and suffered from sleep deprivation, delusions and hallucinations along with falls from their bicycles. In motor-paced racing, cyclists would draft behind motorcycles, reaching speeds of 60 miles per hour on cement-banked tracks, where blown bicycle tires routinely led to spectacular crashes and deaths.
Yet one of the first sports superstars emerged from this curious and sordid world. Marshall W. Taylor was just a teenager when he turned professional and began winning races on the world stage, and President Theodore Roosevelt became one of his greatest admirers. But it was not Taylor’s youth that cycling fans first noticed when he edged his wheels to the starting line. Nicknamed “the Black Cyclone,” he would burst to fame as the world champion of his sport almost a decade before the African-American heavyweight Jack Johnson won his world title. And as with Johnson, Taylor’s crossing of the color line was not without complication, especially in the United States, where he often had no choice but to ride ahead of his white competitors to avoid being pulled or jostled from his bicycle at high speeds.
Taylor was born into poverty in Indianapolis in 1878, one of eight children in his family. His father, Gilbert, the son of a Kentucky slave, fought for the Union in the Civil War and then worked as a coachman for the Southards, a well-to-do family in Indiana. Young Marshall often accompanied his father to work to help exercise some of the horses, and he became close friends with Dan Southard, the son of his father’s employer. By the time Marshall was 8, the Southards had for all intents and purposes adopted him into their home, where he was educated by private tutors and virtually lived the same life of privilege as his friend Dan.
When Marshall was about 13, the Southards moved to Chicago. Marshall’s mother “could not bear the idea of parting with me,” he would write in his autobiography. Instead, “I was dropped from the happy life of a ‘millionaire kid’ to that of a common errand boy, all within a few weeks.”
Aside from the education, the Southards also gave Taylor a bicycle, and the young man was soon earning money as a paperboy, delivering newspapers and riding barefoot for miles a day. In his spare time, he practiced tricks and caught the attention of someone at the Hay and Willits bicycle shop, which paid Marshall to hang around the front of the store, dressed in a military uniform, doing trick mounts and stunts to attract business. A new bicycle and a raise enabled Marshall to quit delivering newspapers and work for the shop full-time. His uniform won him the nickname “Major,” which stuck.
Major Taylor racing in Paris in 1908. Photo: Wikipedia
To further promote the store, one of the shop’s owners, Tom Hay, entered Taylor in a ten-mile bicycle race—something the cyclist had never seen before. “I know you can’t go the full distance,” Hay whispered to the terrified entrant, “but just ride up the road a little way, it will please the crowd, and you can come back as soon as you get tired.”
The crack of a starter’s pistol signaled the beginning of an unprecedented career in bicycle racing. Major Taylor pushed his legs beyond anything he’d imagined himself capable of and finished six seconds ahead of anyone else. There he “collapsed and fell in a heap in the roadway,” he wrote, but he soon had a gold medal pinned to his chest. He began competing in races across the Midwest; while he was still 13, his cycling prowess earned him a notice in the New York Times, which made no mention of his youth.
By the 1890s, America was experiencing a bicycle boom, and Taylor continued to work for Hay and Willits, mostly giving riding lessons.  While white promoters allowed him to compete in trick riding competitions and races, Taylor was kept from joining any of the local riding clubs, and many white cyclists were less than welcoming to the black phenom. In August 1896, Taylor’s friend and new mentor, Louis D. “Berdi” Munger, who owned the Worcester Cycle Manufacturing Company in Massachusetts, signed him up for an event and smuggled him into the whites-only races at the Capital City Cycling Club in Indianapolis. He couldn’t officially compete against the professionals, but his time could certainly be measured.
Some of the other riders were friendly with Taylor and had no problems pacing him on tandem bicycles for a time trial. In his first heat, he knocked more than eight seconds off the mile track record, with the crowd roaring when they learned of his time. After a rest, he came back on to the track to see what he could do in the one-fifth-mile race. The crowd tensed as Taylor reached the starting line.  Stopwatches were pulled from pockets. He exploded around the track and, at age 17, knocked two-fifths of a second off the world record held by professional racer Ray MacDonald. Taylor’s time could not be turned in for official recognition, but everyone in attendance knew what they had seen. Major Taylor was a force on two wheels.
To Read the Full Story, click here.
SMITHSONIAN.COM 09/12/2012 
Sources:
Books: Andrew Richie, Major Taylor: The Extraordinary Career of a Champion Bicycle Racer, The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996. Marshall W. Taylor, Fastest Bicycle Rider in the World: The Story of a Colored Boy’s Indomitable Courage and Success Against Great Odds, Ayer Co. Pub, 1928. Andrew M. Homan, Life in the Slipstream: The Legend of Bobby Walthour Sr., Potomac Books Inc., 2011. Marlene Targ Brill, Marshall “Major” Taylor: World Champion Bicyclist , 1899-1901, Twenty-First Century Books, 2008.
Articles: “Major Taylor—The World’s Fastest Bicycle Racer,” by Michael Kranish, Boston Globe Sunday Magazine, September 16, 2001. “‘Worcester Whirlwind’ Overcame Bias,” by Lynne Tolman, Telegram & Gazette, July 23, 1995. http://www.majortaylorassociation.org/whirlwind.htm “Draw the Color Line,” Chicago Tribune, April 10, 1898. “Trouble on Taunton’s Track,” New York Times, September 24, 1897. “Taylor Shows the Way,” Chicago Tribune, August 28, 1898.

DISCLAIMER: The opinions expressed in this blog are strictly those of the blog author, and in no way express the views of Smithsonian Magazine, Blogger, Google or any other entity (i.e. news services) whose content and/or services may have been accessed for use in this blog. 


Monday, October 2, 2017

Another Atrocity That the History Books Won't Tell You About


This type of story makes me angry first, and then it makes me cry... Anger that any society could wholeheartedly endorse such behavior (as white society did) even after other cases like this were exposed for the shameful lie that they were.

Then I cry for the loss of innocence, the loss of hope, and the loss of life, life that didn't need to be lost, life that was never allowed to grow into it's full potential....

That's not all that I feel when I hear a story such as this one. There's a mix of horror and hurt when I think that so many whites to this day will deny such things as this (or Rosewood) ever happened,  or that blacks were ever anything more than common laborers and drunks, that they never did and never could amount to anything . When blacks did rise to the status of whites, without any help from them, everything the blacks  had was destroyed and/or taken away, like The Black Wall Street in the neighborhood of Greenwood, in Tulsa, Oklahoma. There's so much that black folks had that the government and white society made sure they didn't keep; it was as if (IMO) whites were intimidated by the intellect of the blacks, who they were  told in the beginning were no better than animals. Why do you think it was such a crime initially to teach a black person to read? It was because (IMO) they knew that blacks were people who were just as intelligent as they were, and would rise to the station (and above) of white society. After all, no one objected if you tried to  teach a dog to read, did they?

Here's a video of another atrocity that I came across today.  Pay particular attention to  the age  of one of the accused, and where they said he was that night. How was he accused, let alone  convicted? Because the whites wanted some black person to be guilty, despite what they knew to be the truth.
                               
  Groveland, Florida in 1949



Video posted on YouTube by Truth and Edutainment on April 23, 2017.  For more of their videos, click on the name.
To read about Rosewood, Florida or the Black Wall Street, simply click on the names in the post.

DISCLAIMER: The opinions expressed in this blog are strictly those of the blog author, and in no way express the views of YouTube, Blogger, Google or any other entity (i.e. news services) whose content and/or services may have been accessed for use in this blog. 


Wednesday, September 27, 2017

Did Infamous Tuskegee Study Cause Lasting Mistrust of Doctors Among Blacks?



Sorry, but this is going to be a long article. I felt I should post the whole thing for those who are interested enough to read it all. (as I was)

Question: Did the Tuskegee Study have a lasting effect on blacks trusting doctors and the medical system as a whole?

Answer:  (In my opinion) If I were a middle-aged to elderly black man around the year 1975, and I'd just learned about the "Infamous Tuskegee Study" (on Syphilis) my response would be a loud and resounding 'Hell yeah!'
 How much clearer does it need to be for the author  of this article to get it?

Did Infamous Tuskegee Study Cause Lasting Mistrust of Doctors Among Blacks?


There is no question that the Tuskegee study is one of the most horrific examples of unethical research in recent history. For 40 years,  ending in 1972,  members of the United Public Health Service followed African-American  men infected with syphilis and didn't treat them, (although they told some men they did) so that they could see the disease take its course.

There's also no question that this experiment shook the foundations of trust between Americans, especially black Americans, and the medical establishment. A new paper argues that this wound was so severe that it led older African-American men to avoid care, leading to a decrease in life expectancy of 1.4 years, accounting for about a third of the discrepancy in life expectancy between black and white men by 1980.

While few question that there are racial disparities in life expectancy or health care, and no one questions the utter lapse in ethics of the Tuskegee experiment, we should still be wary in connecting the two without a clear causal link. To do so compounds mistrust in the health care system.

The recent study, published by the National Bureau of Economic Research as a working paper (meaning it has not yet undergone full peer review), combined data on mistrust of doctors from the General Social Survey, health care utilization from the National Health Interview Survey and mortality data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. They then used sophisticated statistical techniques to test for how these three variables might be related.

The researchers found that after 1972, when much of the truth behind Tuskegee was revealed, mistrust among African-Americans toward the medical profession spiked. They found that use of the health care system fell, and that mortality increased years later. They hypothesized that each factor led to the next: The news caused African-Americans to doubt the health care profession was interested in their well-being, they stopped going to the doctor, and this led to earlier deaths. They even showed that the closer you lived to Macon County, Ala., where the study took place, the greater the effect.

This is an impressive paper. Although establishing causality in a study like this is nearly impossible, the authors anticipated many potential critiques. They did tests to account for migration. They looked at other measures of mortality. They even performed the geographic analysis from all 50 states to show that centering it on Macon County yielded different results than in most other places.

Still, I think there are limitations that argue against making a causal leap. The biggest is that this effect was seen in black men, but not in black women. The authors posit that this might be because women are forced to engage in the health care system (during childbirth) in ways that men are not, and that this led to a greater level of trust. But this dynamic isn’t assured. You can have a baby and still mistrust the health care system enough to avoid screening later in life. I find it hard to believe that black men and women didn’t share their fears and mistrust of the system with each other.

A second concern involves geography. The analysis looked at the distance from Macon County to show that those closer had fewer doctor and hospital visits and greater mortality than those outside the circle. If you look at the map they provide, a circle around that point almost perfectly encapsulates the Deep South. Disparities in care might have arisen in that region for any number of reasons, and blame can’t be assigned entirely t0 the Tuskegee study.

A third concern involves the arrow of causality. The authors argue that their evidence supports a theory explaining that mistrust causes less use of doctors, which causes higher mortality. Given what we know of disparities in care in the United States, it still seems possible that the medical system itself could have been throwing up barriers. It’s easy to believe that black men had a harder time getting care than white men, or they might have been subtly turned away or dismissed, which also would lead to less use and perhaps higher mortality.

Let me be clear about a few things. There is no reason to believe that the differences in use or outcomes aren’t real. They’re both terrible, and they both need fixing. I also don’t believe the statistics are flawed, or that the researchers made any mistakes in their methods. My concerns are in the interpretations of their findings.

This matters, because it implies that the faults of trustworthiness in our health care system can be linked in large part to a certain event, one that occurred decades ago. In response to this concern, the authors wrote to me: “There is nothing in our current study that suggests we are assigning full blame to a single event. In our abstract, we highlight that our estimates imply the disclosure can explain about 35 percent of the 1980 life expectancy gap between older black and white men.”

Still, some think this leap remains a stretch. I spoke to Susan M. Reverby, a professor of women’s and gender studies at Wellesley College, and one of the foremost experts on the Tuskegee study. “I think that this study makes it look like the reason for mistrust happened a long time ago,” she said. “But in cases like this, the use of the term ‘Tuskegee’ is often raised as a metaphor for structural racism. That is what is at issue, not the Tuskegee study itself.”

Alice Dreger, a historian of medicine and science, said in an email to me: “African-Americans who distrust the health care system see plenty of reasons all around them to do so. They don’t have to look back 40 years.”

Mistrust in the health care system has multiple factors. It can come from huge lapses in ethics, like the Tuskegee study, but it can also come from the daily ways in which the system treats some people differently than others. It can even come from small missteps in the interpretation of results. The causes of the disparities we see are systemic, and would probably exist even without Tuskegee.

We should be careful about assigning blame to a single incident in the past, ignoring the many other issues that existed then, and still exist today.


Published in The Upshot by Aaron E. Carroll,  a professor of pediatrics , on June 17, 2016
Due to Blogger issues, this article was not published on schedule.



DISCLAIMER: The opinions expressed in this blog are strictly those of the blog author, and in no way express the views of The Upshot, Blogger, Google or any other entity (i.e. news services) whose content and/or services may have been accessed for use in this blog. 


Saturday, February 18, 2017

Little Known Black History Fact

Behind Every Ground-Breaker, There's Someone Who Carried the Pickax and Chose the Right Spot

“I knew then and I know now that, when it comes to justice, there is no easy way to get it. You can't sugarcoat it. You have to take a stand and say, 'This is not right.'” 
     The woman who made that statement was one of the many women who contributed to the desegregation of the transit system in Montgomery, Alabama. 
     I know, your mind is boggled, and you're sitting there sputtering "B-but, but it was Rosa P-p-parks who refused to give up her seat!" And you are right. Rosa Parks did refuse to give up her seat on the bus, and it was Rosa Parks who the nation rallied around when she was arrested for it. What a lot of people do not know is that Rosa Parks was not the first woman to perform that same act; as a matter of fact, Rosa Parks barely made the Top 10 (recorded) women to have done so!!
     The first recorded time a woman of color from Montgomery refused to give up her seat on the bus, it actually wasn't a woman at all, it was a 15 year old school girl named Claudette Colvin. She refused to give up her seat and was taken to jail 9 months before Rosa Parks. (Biography)
    Claudette Colvin was born in Montgomery, Alabama on September 5, 1939 to poor parents. She was a good student, earning mostly A's in her classes, and dreaming of making something of herself, like becoming president.
     "On March 2, 1955, Colvin was riding home on a city bus after school when a bus driver told her to give up her seat to a white passenger. She refused, saying, "It's my constitutional right to sit here as much as that lady. I paid my fare, it's my constitutional right." Colvin felt compelled to stand her ground. "I felt like Sojourner Truth was pushing down on one shoulder and Harriet Tubman was pushing down on the other—saying, 'Sit down girl!' I was glued to my seat," she later told Newsweek. " (Biography.com Editors, 2017)
     Colvin was arrested and jailed for violating segregation laws. She was out in a few hours though, her family's minister came and bailed her out. 
     So, the question is of course why Colvin was not the one that became the face of desegregation and civil rights. Leaders of the NAACP felt that she was too young for people to 'get behind', coupled with the fact that while waiting to go to court she'd become pregnant. They felt that was too negative an image to bring to the public, so they didn't publicize her case the way they did with Rosa Parks.
     When Colvin went to court she pled not guilty to the charges, but the court convicted her and put her on probation. This did not stop Fred Gray and Charles D. Langford from making her one of the plaintiffs (Aurelia S. Browder, Susie McDonald and Mary Louise Smith Jeanatta Reese were the others) in the Browder vs. Gayle (Gayle was the city's mayor) case, which was a suit filed on behalf of the African American women who had been penalized for not giving up their seats to a white person. 
     Claudette Colvin moved to New York shortly after the case was settled and Montgomery's segregation of public transit was ruled unconstitutional. 
     "While her role in the fight to end segregation in Montgomery may not be widely recognized, Colvin helped advance civil rights efforts in the city." (Biography) A lot of people who knew about her case felt encouraged by it; it gave them such a sense of accomplishment and pride that by the time Rosa Parks came along they were more than ready to take up the charge. 


REFERENCES
Biography.com Editors (February 10, 2017). Claudette Colvin Biography. The Biography.com Website. Retrieved from http://www.biography.com/people/claudette-colvin-11378

DISCLAIMER: The opinions expressed in this blog are strictly those of the blog author, and in no way express the views of Biography.com, Blogger, Google or any other entity (i.e. news services) whose content and/or services may have been accessed for use in this blog. 

Thursday, February 16, 2017

Why the Month of February?

Is February Black History Month Because It's the Shortest Month?


     I've often wondered that, if February was chosen because it held the least amount of days that society would have to bear all the Black History 'hoopla'... Of course that was when I was much younger and much more 'revolutionary' than I am now!! LOL

     Not only have I grown up though, I also learned that Black History Month was started by a person of color, so there was no question of February being chosen for a negative reason. I knew there had to be something else, and finally I've learned what it is.

     As I posted previously, Black History Month began as Negro History Week, and was begun by Carter G. Woodson.
 (You can read about it at On This Date in 1926.... 

     Starting with Gerald Ford in 1976, every president has declared February as Black History Month. It has never been a law or something the government said had to be, it's just something all the presidents designated.

     When it was just a week, it was the second week in February, so when it was expanded February was the obvious month, but the reason it was chosen for it in the first place was because two important birthdays both occur in that month—that of Abraham Lincoln,  the author of the Emancipation Proclamation (February 12), and that of Frederick Douglass, an early African American abolitionist (he never knew the exact date, but he chose February 14 to celebrate.)

Knowing this I've begun to wonder, will there be a Black History Month?
   
   


from 101 Little Known Black History Facts  http://pickettsmill.typepad.com/files/black20history20101_facts-1.pdf

Sunday, February 12, 2017

I Bet You've Never Heard This One Before!!

Black History Fact: She Hid the Bed; and Got a Patent For It!! 

     I heard a 'Black History Fact' on the car radio the other day that was one I'd never heard of before; one that was surprising, and one that made me more aware than ever of how little we are being taught about the history of black people in this country. It seems to me that we are taught more about the history of how the slaves were brought here, their lives as slaves on the Massa's plantation picking cotton, and how hard they worked to try to escape being slaves than we are about any achievements made in more modern times. In my younger days I suppose there weren't as many to be taught about, but of what there was, it was only what was already 'old news'  (George Washington Carver, Harriett Tubman, Frederick Douglass) that students were taught. Now there is so much more that students could be learning about their culture, their ancestors, and themselves, but they are learning even less than they did then, not only because they are taught less, but also because they are not being instilled with the pride of their heritage that we were. 

That's one of my reasons for starting this blog, in the hope that I might be able to spread some of the 'Black History' that we were never taught in school, and show how much of an impact we actually have made (and continue to make) on modern American civilization. Barack Obama is not our only lasting legacy!

Sarah E. Goode & a diagram of her Cabinet Bed
This fact is about a woman who was born in 1850 into slavery. She was very aware of the challenges most of her friends and neighbors underwent in their day-to-day lives living in small, cramped spaces where there usually wasn't enough room for the people, let alone furniture and a bed. By the time she was 35 Sarah Elisabeth Goode had invented the Cabinet Bed; something like the Murphy Bed, but her bed did not roll up into the wall. Hers was designed to do dual duty as a bed at night and a rolltop writing desk during the day. Her invention had cubbyholes designed to hold stationary and writing supplies, and had a flat surface on which to write. 

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A larger diagram of the Cabinet Bed.

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A photo of what her invention may have looked like. 
     

Sarah Goode received her freedom at the end of the Civil War. She moved to Chicago, and there met her husband, Archibald Goode who was a carpenter. Together they ran their own furniture business, where they met a lot of people facing the issue of living in small spaces. These were just the kind of people for whom her Cabinet Bed was made.
             
Patent received by Sarah E. Goode, 1885


       Not much is known of Sarah E. Goode after she received the US patent in 1885, other than that she died in 1905.

 

Note:
A tailor in New York City, Thomas L. Jennings is credited with being the first African American to hold a U.S. patent. The patent, which was issued in 1821, was for a dry-cleaning process. 

Wednesday, February 8, 2017

On This Date in 1926....



"Those who have no record of what their forebears have accomplished lose the inspiration which comes from the teaching of biography and history."

This is a quote from the man who is responsible for much of the history of blacks being recorded and preserved; he also dedicated a period of time to the education of blacks about that history. 

The man was Carter G. Woodson, who was responsible for the creation of *Negro History Week. 

Carter Godwin Woodson was born in Buckingham County, VA in December of 1875. The family was poor, so Woodson had to work in the coal mines during his teenage years. He was finally able to attend high school at the age of 20, and graduated in less than 2 years. He then taught high school and studied at home and abroad, until he received his Ph.D. from Harvard in 1912. In 1919 he became the dean of the School of Liberal Arts at Howard University, and in 1920 he became the dean of the School of Liberal Arts at what is now West Virginia State College.

Woodson's aim in life was to give the 'Negro' a reason to be proud of himself and who he came from; it was also to inform others of the place that 'Negros' held in the history of this country. (America) He wanted "the world to see the Negro as a participant rather than as a lay figure in history". In order to accomplish this, he organized the first annual Negro History Week, which of course is now Black History Month. He also established the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History; founded and edited the Journal of Negro History; and in 1937 founded the Negro History Bulletin periodical, which is still in print as the Black History Bulletin       

Carter Woodson was also responsible for the publication of many books. Among them are "The Mis-Education of the Negro Prior to 1861", "History of the Negro Church", and "The Rural Negro".





Carter G. Woodson passed away after a heart attack in his home on April 3, 1950. He was 74.









* This post has been corrected to reflect the actual name Woodson chose.


Much of the material for this post is from the African American Registry, a non-profit education organization. Some also came from Google Search, and from the websites of ASNLH and The Black History Bulletin.