1960-2010 African American History

Black Panthers

The Black Panther Party (BPP) was founded in October I966 by Bobby Seale and Huey P. Newton, both student activists at Merritt Junior College in Oakland CA. Influenced by the teachings of Malcolm X and the Black Power Movement, the BPP, originally called the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, called for the restructuring of American society to achieve social, political, and economic equality, based on principles of socialism. The party platform consisted often points ("We want..."):

1. Freedom and Self-determination
2. Full employment for all Black people
3 Restitution for slave labor and mass murder of Black people
4. Decent housing
5. Education to give Black people knowledge of self and expose the true history of American society
6. Exemption from military service for all Black men who should not be forced to defend a racist government
7. An immediate end to police brutality
8. Release from prison for all Black people because they have not received a fair and impartial trial
9. All Black people who are brought to trial to be tried by a jury of their peers from the Black community
l0. Land, bread, housing, education, clothing, justice and peace. As a major political objective, a United Nations supervised plebiscite for Black Americans to determine their will as to their national destiny.
<Haynes, Larry. "Black Panthers." Telephone interview. 17 Jan. 2012.>

Vanessa Williams

Vanessa Lynn Williams was born on March 18, 1963, and raised in suburban New York City. She attended Syracuse University, where she majored in musical theater. After winning the Miss New York title, Vanessa went to Atlantic City, NJ, to participate in the Miss America pageant. On September 17, 1983, 20-year-old Vanessa made history by becoming the first African-American woman in the pageant’s 63-year history to capture the Miss America title. For the competition’s first 30 years, blacks weren’t even allowed to become contestants. Less than a year later Scandal erupted. On July 23, 1984, Vanessa gave up her crown to Suzette Charles, Miss New Jersey, after nude photos of her surfaced. This made Suzette the second African American Miss America. The nude photos that surfaced had reportedly been shot when she worked for a photographer before her pageant days. She was forced to resign her Miss America title in July 1984. The photos later appeared without Vanessa’s consent in ‘Penthouse’ magazine. Despite the scandal, Vanessa later became a very successful woman, taking her singing and acting career to an ultimate high.

<Lewis, Jone J. "African American History and Women - Timeline." Women's History - Comprehensive Women's History Research Guide. 2012. Web. 18 Jan. 2012. http://womenshistory.about.com/od/aframwomentimeline/a/aaw1980_time.htm.>

Doctor Mae Jemison

Mae Jemison was born in Decatur, Alabama on October 17, 1956. She was the youngest of three. The Jemison family moved to Chicago when Mae was only three. It was in Chicago that an uncle introduced her to the world of science. At a very early age, Mae developed interests in anthropology, archaeology, and astronomy that she pursued throughout her childhood. Mae Jemison enrolled at Stanford University at the age of 16 and in 1977 graduated with degrees in both chemical engineering and Afro-American studies. She received a Doctor of Medicine degree from Cornell University in 1981. Dr. Jemison has practiced medicine as a volunteer in a Cambodian refugee camp and as a medical officer with the Peace Corps in West Africa. She was working as a general practitioner in Los Angeles, California when NASA selected her and 14 others for astronaut training. Dr. Jemison completed her training as a mission specialist with NASA in 1988. In September of 1992, as a mission specialist aboard the Shuttle Endeavour, Mae Jemison became the first African-American woman to enter space. In 1993, Dr. Jemison resigned from NASA and founded the Jemison Group, Inc. Among her current projects are several that focus on improving healthcare in Africa and advancing technology in developing countries.

<Jemison, Mae. "Biography." DrMae-Daring Makes a Differance. 2012. Web. 18 Jan. 2012. http://www.drmae.com/biography-3-563.>

1940-1959 African American History

Rosa Parks

On December 1, 1955 after a hard day at work, Rosa was riding the bus home when the driver asked her and three black men to move to make more room in the white section. The three men moved, but Rosa refused. A police officer came, arrested her and took her to jail. She was bailed out that evening. She didn't plan the incident, but when it happened, she decided to stand up for her rights. She was tired of being humiliated and treated unfairly. She was not the first black person to refuse to move on a bus, but when the event happened to her, civil rights leaders knew they had found someone to champion their cause. A group was formed and 35,000 handbills were distributed calling for a boycott of the buses. This meant the blacks would refuse to ride the buses unless they were desegregated and they could sit anywhere in the bus. For more than a year, 381 days, they boycotted the buses. They carpooled, rode in cabs, and walked to work. On November 13, 1956 the United States Supreme Court ruled that segregation was unlawful, and the city of Montgomery, AL had no right to impose it on people riding their buses. The next month the signs on the bus seats designating white and colored sections were removed. The boycott was officially over.

<"Rosa Parks Biography -- Academy of Achievement." Academy of Achievement Main Menu. American Academy of Achievement, 23 Sept. 2011. Web. 12 Dec. 2011. http://www.achievement.org/autodoc/page/par0bio-1.>

1920-1939 African American history

http://krdance478.blogspot.com/2011/04/1920s-jazz-age.html

The Jazz Age

It was F. Scott Fitzgerald who called the 1920's the "Jazz Age." However, it was African Americans who gave the age its jazz. Jazz is a musical form based in improvisation. Jazz recombines different forms of music, including African American blues and ragtime, and European-based music. Jazz emerged particularly New Orleans, where different cultures and traditions came together and influenced each other. From the South, it spread north with the Great Migration of Blacks. Trumpet player Louis Armstrong became the unofficial ambassador of jazz. After Armstrong, all jazz bands featured soloists. Many also began to feature vocal soloists, such as Bessie Smith, the "Empress of the Blues."  Jazz wasn't just a musical style, it was also a symbol of the Roaring Twenties. Part of the Prohibition era, jazz was played in speakeasies and nightspots in Ney York, Chicago, St. Louis, and Los Angeles. Phonograph records and radio spread jazz across the country and beyond. By the end of the decade, jazz had spread to Europe as well. Jazz was a demonstration of the depth and richness of blacks. Jazz announced that the U.S. was a land of shared cultures and traditions, a place where people came together and created something greater than their parts. In 1924 the jazz sound became influenced by some white songwriters and composers.

< Lapsansky-Werner, Emma J. "The Jazz Age." Prentice Hall United States History: Modern America. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson/Prentice Hall, 2010. 243-44. Web. >





Louis "Satchmo" Armstrong

Louis Armstrong was the greatest of all Jazz musicians. Armstrong defined what it was to play Jazz. His amazing technical abilities, the joy and spontaneity, and amazingly quick, inventive musical mind still dominate Jazz to this day. Only Charlie Parker comes close to having as much influence on the history of Jazz as Louis Armstrong did. Like almost all early Jazz musicians, Louis was from New Orleans. He was from a very poor family and was sent to reform school when he was twelve after firing a gun in the air on New Year's Eve. At the school he learned to play cornet. After being released at age fourteen, he worked selling papers, unloading boats, and selling coal from a cart. He didn't own an instrument at this time, but continued to listen to bands at clubs like the Funky Butt Hall. By 1917 he played in an Oliver inspired group at dive bars in New Orleans' Storyville section. In 1919 he left New Orleans for the first time to join Fate Marable's band in St. Louis. In 1921, he returned to New Orleans and played in Zutty Singleton's. He also played in parades with the Allen Brass Band. In 1922 Louis was asked to proform at Lincoln Gardens in Chicago. The New Orleans style of music took the town by storm and soon many other bands from down south made their way north to Chicago. Soon enough Armstrong found the love of his life Daisy Parker. They then wed and adopted a 3-year old mentally disabled boy named Clarence Armstrong in 1918. This marriage was short lived and in 1920 ended in divorce causing him to marry Lillian Hardinand on February 4, 1922. Unfortinately they divorced in 1938. There shortly after, Armstrong married his long time girlfriend Alpha. In 1942 Armstrong married his fourth wife, Lucille Wilson, a singer at the Cotton Club. In 1943 Armstrong and Lucille moved into the house in Queens that has become the Armstrong Archives. Armstrong was a very successful man and in 1968 he recorded his last hit, "What a Wonderful World". Armstrong then passed away on July 6, 1971 in New York.
<Bergreen, Laurence. Louis Armstrong: an Extravagant Life. New York: Broadway, 1997. Print.>



1930's Racial Burriers in Education

Black School in 1932

American education was racially segregated in the 1930s precisely because of the white presumption that blacks were inherently incapable of learning at an advanced level. Segregating white schoolchildren from black schoolchildren meant that white pupils presumably would not be "held back" in the classroom by less-capable black pupils. Black schools, especially in the South, were underfunded. There were a mere handful of black high schools throughout the South. Two hundred thirty southern counties did not have a single high school for black students in 1932—even though every one of these counties possessed a high school for whites. In sixteen states there was not a single state-supported black institution that offered graduate or professional programs. Black communities throughout the country built schools for themselves and hired instructors for the most difficult subjects. Black academics such as W.E.B. Du Bois, Horace Mann Bond, and E. Franklin Frazier attacked intelligence testing and educational discrimination that validated the status quo. They were combating years of neglect and racism. In 1930, 15% of rural adult African Americans had no formal schooling, and 48% had never gone beyond the fifth grade. White school boards paid white teachers an average annual salary of $833; black teachers, who had larger teaching loads, were paid only $510. Ironically, the Depression improved the situation of black education in many ways. In northern schools, school boards began to abolish segregated education as a way of saving money; in the South educators fearful of the possible consequences of unschooled, unemployed youths succeeded in getting school districts to build high schools for blacks—if for no other reason than to keep them off the streets. Thanks to such programs and to literacy campaigns mounted by New Deal agencies such as the National Youth Administration (NYA), by 1940 five hundred thousand illiterate blacks had been taught to read and write. The number of African Americans attending high school doubled; the number of high-school graduates tripled; and the percentage of blacks attending school became equal to that of whites.

White School in 1930

 <"American Cultural History - 1930-1939." LSC-Kingwood Library. June 2008. Web. 9 Nov. 2011. http://kclibrary.lonestar.edu/decade30.html.>

1900-1919 African American history

Niagara movement and the NAACP  The Boston Literary and Historian Society that William Monroe Trotter, Booker T. Washington and other black elites organized in March of 1901 provided a forum for them to discuss race matters. While Trotter and Washington were from very different backgrounds-Trotter born free while Washington born a slave; Trotter a militant while Washington an accommodationist-they both agreed that education was essential for blacks. Trotter's camp, who called themselves "radicals," were talented, elitist, and generally better educated than Washington's followers, who were called "Bookerites." The Washington camp enjoyed the success of two organizations that supported is power, both the Afro-American Council and the National Negro Business League. Trotter knew his camp needed a radical mobilization. To fulfill this need he and his followers organized the National Negro Suffrage League in 1904 and elected James H. Hayes as president. In 1905 Du Bois invited twenty-nine anti-Bookerites blacks from all over the country to a small hotel in Fort Erie for a conference in support of freedom and growth of the black race. This group of people then formed the Niagara Movement with Du Bois as the general secretary and Trotter head of the Press and Public Opinion Committee. The movement faced many problems so in 1909 they merged with the National Association for the Advancement of Color People (NAACP). In the meantime, Trotter was a founder of the National Equal Rights League (NERL) in 1908 and worked through the organization for a number of years to agitate for blacks rights. People who were denied the right to join the NAACP had the NERL as an alternative. By 1912 Trotter and Du Bois supported Woodrow Wilson for president but found him less supportive of blacks than they envisioned. Wilson rejected black advisors, and kept blacks out of key civil service positions. D. W. Griffith's viciously racist film, The Birth of a Nation, was shown at the White House in February 1915 by arrangement of Thomas Dixon, who wrote the book on which the film was based. Although President Wilson praised the film, Trotter protested it, causing him and ten others to be jailed. This group of men attempted to ban the Boston showing, which Trotter called a rebel play. The film was banned in Chicago, St. Louis, all of Ohio, and areas in Massachusetts, the film still ran in various threaters in Boston for six and a months. When attemps were made to return the film to Boston in spring of 1921, Trotter gathered his forces plus the NAACP and the Knights of Columbus. This time he was successful in banning the film.

Booker T. Washington's success lives on:

http://vimeo.com/26549793

<Giovanni, Nikki, and Jessie C. Smith. "William Monroe Trotter." Black Heros. Canton: Visible Ink, 1997. 614+. Web.>







1910-1919 Group Action, Business, and Military
1914 Group Action: Marcus [Mozian Manaseth] Garvey, black nationalist and organizer, formed the first  black mass movement organization called the United Negro Improvement Association (UNIA). The organization aimed to united blacks under the motto "One God! One Aim! One Destiny!" Garvey was born in Jamaica. After moving to England then back to Jamica he finally came to America, and one year later established a branch of UNIA, also the headquaters of Garvey's international movement, in Harlem. In 1918, Garvey founded 'Negro World'. A weekly newspaper the spread his word. To create economic opportunities for blacks, Garvey launched the Black Star Shipping Line in mid-1919. Garvey and his stock holders later expanded the business to form a cross-continent steamship trade.

Video:
http://vimeo.com/20067556



<Franklin and Meir, Black Leaders of the Twentieth Century, pp. 104-38; Contemporary Black Biography, vol. 1 , pp. 75-78; Logan and Winston, Dictionary of American Negro Biography, pp.254-56; Katz, Eyewitness: The Negro in American History, pp.399-400; Smith, Notable Black American Men, pp. 441-45.>

1915 Automobile Industry: Frederick Douglass Patterson was the first black to manufacture cars. Between 1915 and 1919 Patterson built some thirty Greenfield-Patterson cars in Greenfield, Ohio. He was born into a family that was very successful. When Frederick was born his father had bought out his white partner and owned C. R. Patterson and Sons Carriage Company in Greenfield and made the most popular carriages of the day. Frederick's father died shortly after Frederick returned from teaching in Kentucky leaving him and relatives to operate the business. While traveling he saw some "funny-looking horseless" carriages. When he returned, his company's boards built these horseless carriages, or cars, and his bold plan resulted in the automobile known as the Patterson-Greenfield. Patterson's first car rolled off the line on September 23, 1915. The car had a forty horsepower Continental fourcylinder engine and reached a top speed of 50mph. The company's two models both sold for $850. Slow car sales led to the car company's demise. Patterson went on to produce school bus bodies that were in great demand. The bus business closed in 1939.

<"Forgotten Faces: Black Automaker among Early Trailblazers," African Americans on Wheels 2 (Winter 1996), pp.10-11;Reasons, They Had a Dream, vol. 3,p. 48.>

1917 World War I: Eugene Bullard became the first black combat pilot and was the only black pilot to fly during WWI. When the US entered war in April of 1917 Bullard, who had been a member of the French Foreign Legion and the French Army, presented himself to the army, but his applcation was not accepted. He flew for the French air service. Pressure from the American forces led to his being grounded.  For his daring flights Bullard was nicknamed the "Black Swallow of Death." He also became a highly decorated combat pilot, including receipt of the Croix de Guerre. While growing up Bullard witnessed racial atrocities, including the murder of his brother by a gang of whites. At age eight, he ran away from his home in Columbus, GA and eventually made his way to France. He fought briefly with the French at the beginning of WWII. His last job was as an elevator operator in the Empire State Building. The today show featured a segment on him in 1954. He was residing in Harlem when he died in 1961.

<Smith, Jessie Carney. "Military: World War I." 2003. Black Firsts: 4,000 Ground-breaking and Pioneering Historical Events. Detroit: Visible Ink, 2003. 460. Print.>

http://vimeo.com/20067556

http://vimeo.com/20067556