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Create beautiful designs with your team. Use Canva's drag-and-drop feature and layouts to design, share and print business cards, logos, presentations and more.

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Emma Ruiz

Anonymous
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Emma Ruiz
Garret Morgan
he was a great inventor.
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Samari Flemming

Anonymous
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Samari Flemming 
Tiger Woods he was one of the greatest golfers ever
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Caleb

Anonymous
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Caleb 
Doris Miller was in the army during world war ll and his bravery helped save the one of the most famous army bases when the 
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Jonathan Nguyen

Anonymous
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Jonathan Nguyen
Marie Marynard Daly
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Diegoz

Anonymous
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Diegoz
Ralph Johnson Bunche August 7, 1904 – December 9, 1971) was an American political scientist, academic, and diplomat who received the 1950 Nobel Peace Prize for his late 1940s mediation in Israel. He was the first African American to be so honored in the history of the prize.
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Myla C

Anonymous
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Myla C
Lester Lyles is a former United States Air Force general.
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mayah bonner

Anonymous
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mayah bonner
Mae Jemison was born October 17,1956 and was the first african american women to travel into space for NASA!! https://www.biography.com/people/mae-c-jemison-9542378
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amireya

Anonymous
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amireya
barbara jordan was a african american lawyer
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emmanuel b.

Anonymous
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emmanuel b.
he is famous for being an engineer and being the reason for today's technology
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📎 Marva Collins, Educator Who Aimed High for Poor, Black Students, Dies at 78

Anonymous
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Javan

Anonymous
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Javan
Frederick Douglass was an African-American social reformer, abolitionist, orator, writer, and statesman. ... Northerners at the time found it hard to believe that such a great orator had once been a slave.
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Jaden Keys

Anonymous
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Jaden Keys
Charles Drew was a American physician, surgeon, and medical researcher
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Horace

Anonymous
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Horace 
Edward Bouchet was the first black person to earn a ph.d in the united states
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Isaiah swan

Anonymous
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Isaiah swan
James Baldwin was an African-American writer 
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Patrick P

Anonymous
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Patrick P
james l farmer was a civil rights activist and a leader in the civil rights move
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Dre Dreeee

Anonymous
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Dre Dreeee
Bessie coleman was one of the first African-American woman pilots. She was a very famous woman and now has a school here in texas named after her.
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Amber M

Anonymous
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Amber M
Marva Collins was the first black woman to open up a school.
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kaydenj

Anonymous
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kaydenj
Robert smalls  he was a sailer
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alaina guia

Anonymous
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alaina guia
Harriet Tubman  was a american ambolitionist and an armed spy for the united states
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Makayla

Anonymous
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Makayla
Tiger Woods is one of the most successful golfers of all time 
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📎 Celebrating Rebecca Lee Crumpler, first African-American woman physician

Anonymous
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📎 Farmer, James, Sr. (1886-1961) | The Black Past: Remembered and Reclaimed

Anonymous
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Leslie

Anonymous
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Leslie
Frank Greene
Considered one of the first black technologist, Frank Greene stands among the ranks of other Silicon Valley giants as one of 63 inductees into the Silicon Valley Engineering Hall of Fame.
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Archie Alexander.........was the first male engineer. He also built a bridge.

Anonymous
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Archie Alexander.........was the first male engineer.  He also built a bridge.

-Hannah Kibble

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rosita

Anonymous
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rosita 
jim brown-he is a famous and professional football player and actor people also say he is the most greatest player of all time. 
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SerenityS

Anonymous
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SerenityS
Clarence Thomas- Lawyer and American judge
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Ace Rivera

Anonymous
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Ace Rivera
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Kourtney

Anonymous
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Kourtney 
Lewis Latimer-  he was a partner of Edison and patent the light bulb. https://www.biography.com/people/lewis-howard-latimer-9374422
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Sarah Grey

Anonymous
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Sarah Grey
Jim Brown -- famous US football player who won MVP three times, and is known as the greatest football player of all time.
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Asa Philip Randolph

Anonymous
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Asa Philip Randolph
(Leslie Bonilla) He was a civil rights leader.
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Edward Bouchet

Angie Del Bosque
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Edward Bouchet
He was an african-american physicist and educator and was the first african american to earn a Ph.D 


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Aryana Keathley

Anonymous
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Aryana Keathley 
Mae Jemison- An astronaut, actress, dancer, and inspiring women 

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Alexia M

Anonymous
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Alexia M
Rebecca Crumpler was the first black female physician

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Myriah Elam

Anonymous
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Myriah Elam
Ella Baker, she was a important part in the civil war. 
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Molly DeWees

Anonymous
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Molly DeWees
Frederick Douglass, an abolitionist of highest degree. 
https://www.biography.com/people/frederick-douglass-9278324
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Azha Askew

Anonymous
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Azha Askew
Harold Amos- 1st black man to be the chair of department at Harvard Law School.
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Courtney

Anonymous
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Courtney
Ralph Bunche won a nobel prize in 1950.
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Amehr Pipkins

Anonymous
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Amehr Pipkins
Marie Maynard Daly... Biochemist..
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1
Adelle Grace

Anonymous
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Adelle Grace
Doris Miller was a cook in the U.S Navy.
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Jordyn J.

Anonymous
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Jordyn J.
Opened up her own school to educate black children that were deemed unteachable or hard to work with
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Mariah Hollie

Anonymous
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Mariah Hollie
Charles Drew- an American physician, surgeon, and medical researcher. 
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Cassidy Miller

Anonymous
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Cassidy Miller
James Baldwin was an insightful writer and his controversial topics were what made him memorable.
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Desmond Simpson

Anonymous
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Desmond Simpson
Morgan Freeman famous actor and  narrator.
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Kennedy Burns

Anonymous
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Kennedy Burns
Bessie Coleman was the first African American woman to get her international pilot license
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Caroline Munoz

Anonymous
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Caroline Munoz 
Ben Carson was the first doctor to separate twins joined at the head. 
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Marisa

Anonymous
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Marisa
He stole a Confederate ship full of weapons and escaped to freedom along with 8 other men, then delivered the ship to the Union.
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Drake Heads

Anonymous
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Drake Heads
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1
Naomi

Anonymous
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Naomi 
lena horne
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Alejandro Sanchez (Remember me Life Oak Cliff?!)

Anonymous
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Alejandro Sanchez (Remember me Life Oak Cliff?!)
Nelson Mandela
Anti-Apartheid activist located in South Africa
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Kelly Garcia

Anonymous
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Kelly Garcia
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Madison Mohair

Madison Mohair
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Madison Mohair
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Ruby LaLonde

Anonymous
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Ruby LaLonde
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Travis Henson

Anonymous
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Travis Henson
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Nianne Minor

Anonymous
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Nianne Minor
Dorothy Height....She was an activist 
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Tehya parker

Tehya Parker
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Tehya parker
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Chloe Stokes

Anonymous
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Chloe Stokes
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Jewel Williams

Anonymous
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Jewel Williams
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Nicole Iwuala

Anonymous
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Nicole Iwuala
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nolan delossantos

Anonymous
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nolan delossantos
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Raeleigh Fritz

Anonymous
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Raeleigh Fritz
https://www.biography.com/people/sojourner-truth-9511284
Learn more about abolitionist and women's rights activist Sojourner Truth, including her famous speech, on Biography.com.
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Amber Scott

Anonymous
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Amber Scott
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enoch king

Anonymous
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enoch king
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Noah Johnson

Anonymous
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Noah Johnson
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bailey m

Anonymous
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bailey m 
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Renee

Anonymous
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Renee
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Bre'Anna Lacy

Anonymous
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Bre'Anna Lacy
Louis Armstrong
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Kyrie Audet

Anonymous
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Kyrie Audet
Michelle Obama
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Angelo

Anonymous
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Angelo
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Rylee Ambrose #12

Anonymous
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Rylee Ambrose #12
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Jordan Barajas

Anonymous
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Jordan Barajas
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mikayla

Anonymous
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mikayla
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2
Jacob Moreno

Anonymous
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Jacob Moreno
Hi
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Trevyin

Anonymous
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Trevyin
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jocelyn Idk

Anonymous
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jocelyn Idk
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alejandro

Anonymous
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alejandro
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kevin

Anonymous
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kevin
ttps://www.biographyonline.net/politicians/american/martin-luther-king.html

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jhett

Anonymous
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jhett
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alandra

Anonymous
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alandra 
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Simon Rodriguez

Anonymous
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Simon Rodriguez
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1
mattthew

Anonymous
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mattthew
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Bryan

Anonymous
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Bryan
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Izaiah Riojas

Patrick Riojas
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Izaiah Riojas
Bass Reeves
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1
Eduardo Saenz

Anonymous
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Eduardo Saenz
Carter G. Woodson
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Jd Jurica

Anonymous
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Jd Jurica
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1
Deja W

Anonymous
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Deja W
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Jordan Davis

Anonymous
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Jordan Davis
Wendell Scott was a pioneer in nascar racing

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📎 Maritza Correia

Lexi Schroeder
1d
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Andrew Woodard

Anonymous
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Andrew Woodard
St. Elmo Brady
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📎 Index

Anonymous
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📎 Miller, Doris

Anonymous
1d
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Stephen

Anonymous
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Stephen
She was the first black female to go into space.
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1 comment

Anonymous 1d
Wow thats a such a huge step for women rights
Jayhda Joiner

Jayhda Joiner
1d
Jayhda Joiner
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Kaden V

Anonymous
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Kaden V
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Katrina Hawkins

Anonymous
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Katrina Hawkins
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Evelyn R.

Anonymous
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Evelyn R.
My person is Wendell Smith
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1 comment

Anonymous 1d
wow your person is very interesting his life and all good person
Anoushka R.

Anonymous
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Anoushka R.
My person is Matthew Henson:  He was the first African American explorer and he went to Harvard.  He was known as the best discoverer of the North Pole along with Robert Peary in 1909.
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1 comment

Anonymous 1d
i didnt know that
📎 Bob Marley

elijah
1d
favorite
1
3 comments

Anonymous 1d
googd music my favorite song is jammin

Anonymous 1d
yah man

Anonymous 1d
yeah i listen to him on the daily
Aaron Hall

Anonymous
1d
Aaron Hall 
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5 comments

Anonymous 1d
best rapper of all time

Anonymous 1d
changed music forever

Anonymous 1d
goat

Anonymous 1d
wasn't there a one pac?

Anonymous 1d
maybe a 3 pac
tiffany.w

Anonymous
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tiffany.w
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1 comment

Anonymous 1d
that was good
Stephen

Anonymous
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Stephen
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william collins

Anonymous
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william collins
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3 comments

Anonymous 1d
Wow. I didn't know that Marcus Garvey was a leader in the black nationalists movement.

Anonymous 1d
I never knew that.

Anonymous 1d
That's so cool that he was a great leader
jackson sibley-maxwell

Anonymous
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jackson sibley-maxwell
my person is Willie O'Ree
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1
1 comment

Anonymous 1d
WOAH
Preston Hoggard

Anonymous
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Preston Hoggard
My person is Jim Brown
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1 comment

Anonymous 1d
your guy is interesting, i saw some of his highlights on youtube and I think he is good.
Dazea H

Anonymous
1d
Dazea H
Bessie Coleman
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1 comment

Anonymous 1d
That's pretty cool she was a pilot. I also like that she wasn't slowed by racism. She sounds like a cool subject.
William Roberts

Anonymous
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William Roberts
Rebecca Lee Crumpler
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Larry Housewright

Anonymous
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Larry Housewright
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matt_Baker_(artist)

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1 comment

Anonymous 1d
I like comic books.
Iman S.

Anonymous
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Iman S.
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Ka'Charo Cook

Anonymous
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Ka'Charo Cook
William Henry Hastie
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kolton saltzman

Anonymous
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kolton saltzman
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Garret Morgan
he was a great inventor.

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Garrett Morgan blazed a trail for African-American inventors with his patents, including those for a hair-straightening product, a breathing device, a revamped sewing machine and an improved traffic signal.

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Tiger Woods he was one of the greatest golfers ever

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Synopsis

Pro golfer Tiger Woods was born in Cypress, California, in 1975. He won the U.S. Masters at Augusta in 1997 with a record score at age 21, making him the youngest man and the first African American to earn the title. Woods won another 13 majors and was named the PGA Player of the Year 10 times over the next 12 years, but he struggled to regain his top form after personal problems surfaced in 2009.

Golf Prodigy

Athlete Eldrick Tont Woods, better known as Tiger Woods, was born on December 30, 1975, in Cypress, California, the only child of an African-American Army officer father and a Thai mother. When Woods was a child, his father began calling him "Tiger" in honor of a fellow soldier and friend who had the same moniker. Around this same time, Woods learned to play golf. His father, Earl, served as his teacher and mentor. Around the age of 8, Woods had become extremely proficient at the game, even showing off his skills on television shows such as Good Morning America.

Woods studied at Stanford University, and won a number of amateur U.S. golf titles before turning professional in 1996. He shot to fame after winning the U.S. Masters at Augusta in 1997-with a record score of 270-at the age of 21. Woods was the youngest man to earn the title, and the first African-American to accomplish this feat.

In his first appearance at the British Open later that year, Woods tied the course record of 64. The next few years brought even more successes, including four U.S. PGA titles, three U.S. Open wins, three Open Championship wins, and three U.S. Masters wins.

In 2003, among Woods's five wins were the Buick Invitational and the Western Open. The next year, Woods won only one official PGA Tour championship. While he may have had some challenges on the course, his personal life was running smoothly. Woods married his longtime girlfriend Elin Nordegren, a Swedish model, in October of 2004.

Returning to dominate the sport, he won six championships in 2005 and was voted the PGA Tour Player of Year for the seventh time in nine years.

Personal Life

Woods experienced a great personal loss in 2006. His father died in May after battling prostate cancer. Woods remarked on his website at the time, "My dad was my best friend and greatest role model, and I will miss him deeply." Despite his grief, Woods returned to golf and won several events, including the PGA Championship and the British Open.

The next season was marked by many wins personally and professionally. His wife gave birth to the couple's first child, Sam Alexis Woods, on June 18, 2007. After taking some time off to welcome his daughter, he won the World Golf Championship and the PGA Championship in August 2007.

The next month, Woods's winning ways continued, as he garnered the top spot at the BMW Championship and the Tour Championship. He was named Player of the Year by the other participants in the PGA Tour and won his eighth Arnold Palmer Award for being the lead money earner.

Woods won the U.S. Open on June 16, 2008, in a 19-hole playoff, overcoming sporadic pain in his left knee from arthroscopic surgery performed on April 15. Woods shot a par 4 on the first and only hole of sudden death while American Rocco Mediate, 45, settled for a bogey.

The sudden death duel at Torrey Pines in San Diego followed an 18-hole playoff, which saw the two finish at par. In that playoff, Woods led Mediate by three shots after the first 10 holes. Mediate then birdied three of the next five holes and took the lead. But on the final hole, Woods birdied while Mediate shot par, forcing the sudden death playoff. "I think this is probably the best ever," Woods said. "All things considered, I don't know how I ended up in this position, to be honest with you." The victory gave Woods his third U.S. Open championship and 14th major title, just four behind the all-time record held by Jack Nicklaus.

Inury and Comeback

Two days later, Woods announced he would miss the rest of the season because his left knee required more reconstructive surgery. He also revealed he had suffered a double stress fracture in his left tibia two weeks before the U.S. Open tournament, ignoring doctors' advice to take six weeks off to let it heal.

Woods and his wife announced September 2, 2008, that they were expecting their second child in late winter. "Elin is feeling great and we are both thrilled," Woods said on his website. "While my injury has been disappointing and frustrating, it has allowed me to spend a lot of time watching Sam grow. I can't begin to tell you how rewarding it is being a dad and spending time with her and Elin." The couple welcomed baby boy Charlie Axel Woods on February 8, 2009.

On February 25, 2009, Woods returned to the green in the Accenture Match Play Championship in Tucson, Arizona. Woods played against South African golfer Tim Clark, losing 4 to 2 in his first tournament since his injury. In June of 2009, Woods competed again in the U.S. Open. After putting a four-over-par in the first round, Woods quickly fell out of contention for the win.

Although Woods's comeback had not been as auspicious as he'd hoped, he remained No. 1 in the world golf rankings, and continued to be the leader in Top 10 finishes overall. But after losing the PGA title to Yang Yong-eun, Woods finished the year without a single major win-the first time he had done so since 2004.

Marriage Under the Spotlight

While his life on the green seemed lackluster, his personal life was in an even more serious tailspin. In late November, reports surfaced about a tryst between Woods and nightclub manager Rachel Uchitel. Both parties denied a relationship, despite photographic evidence that seemed to indicate otherwise.

On November 27, as the story gained traction, media outlets announced that Woods had collided into a fire hydrant outside his home at 2:30 in the morning. Reports said that Woods's wife had broken the back window of the golfer's SUV with a golf club in order to get him out of the locked car. The golfer's injuries were not serious, and he was quickly released.

The accident aroused suspicions with fans and the media, who instantly pushed for a statement from Woods. But the golfer remained silent on the matter, and mysteriously dropped out of his charity golf tournament, the Chevron World Challenge. He then announced that he would not be attending any other tournaments in 2009.

As the silence grew, so did reports of other Woods mistresses. On December 2, 2009, Woods offered an apology to his fans and family, expressing regret for unnamed "transgressions." But as the mistress count rose to more than a dozen women, with phone evidence to back many claims, Woods was unable to suppress media inquiries into his life. Woods was said to have offered his wife a renegotiation of their prenuptial agreement in order to compel her to stick by him, but reports soon surfaced that Nordgren had purchased a home in Sweden with her sister. Photographers then spotted the former model without her wedding ring.

Comeback

On December 11, 2009, Woods apologized again to fans-this time, admitting to infidelity. He then announced that he would be taking a hiatus from golf in order to tend to his family. Several days later, he lost his endorsement deal with the management company Accenture, and was suspended from his Gillette endorsement. Other companies, including Nike, Tag Heuer and EA Sports, continued to stand by Woods.

Woods made a return to golf in April of 2010, but the golfer was not quite at the top of his game. His first competition at the 2010 Masters Tournament in Augusta, Georgia, resulted in a fourth place finish. On May 9, after missing the cut for the Quail Hollow Championship, Woods withdrew from the Players Championship during the fourth round due to a neck injury. Woods made his return to golf four weeks later at the Memorial Tournament, but delivered his worst performance in the tournament since 2002. At the 2010 U.S. Open, Woods finished in a tie for fourth place.

Woods's personal life also seemed to be taking a turn for the worse, as news of a possible divorce settlement hit media outlets. The rumored $750 million settlement allegedly included properties in Sweden, and the family home in California for Nordegren, in exchange for his wife's permanent silence on Woods's philandering. Reports also said Nordegren retained full physical custody of their 3-year-old daughter and 1-year-old son, and Woods agreed not to introduce his children to a new woman unless he married her.

After years of turmoil, Woods finally got his golf game clicking again in 2012. He won the Arnold Palmer Invitational in March for his first PGA Tour victory since 2009. That summer, he topped the field at the AT&T National to surpass Nicklaus with career victory No. 74, leaving him eight behind the record of 82 held by Sam Snead.

In March 2013, the 37-year-old Woods confirmed to media outlets that he was dating 28-year-old Lindsey Vonn, a professional alpine ski racer from Minnesota and four-time World Cup winner. Vonn was previously married to Thomas Vonn, a former ski racer; the couple separated in 2011, after four years of marriage, and officially divorced in January 2012.

The 2013 season was a triumphant one for Woods. He won five tournaments, including the Arnold Palmer Invitational, the Farmers Insurance Open and the Players Championship, and was named the PGA Tour Player of the Year for the 11th time.

However, just as Woods appeared primed to resume his march toward Nicklaus's record of 18 major championships, injuries flared up to derail his performance. The golfer underwent back surgery in March 2014, and struggled after returning to competitive play.

The following year, he appeared in two early tournaments before taking a break to let a sore back heal and work on his game. Woods returned in time to tee off at the Masters in April, finishing a solid 5-under par to claim a tie for 17th place. A few weeks later, he announced the end of his relationship with Vonn, noting that their "hectic" schedules kept them from spending time together.

The golfing legend continued to experience ups and downs in his professional and personal life. He suffered from back injuries in the ensuing years and underwent his fourth back surgery in April 2017. A month later, police found Woods sleeping in his car, which was running and had its brake lights and blinkers on, at the side of the road near his Florida home. He was arrested for suspicion of driving under the influence, however, a breath alcohol test showed no signs of alcohol in his system. In a statement, Woods said that he had "an unexpected reaction to prescribed medications." He also thanked the police for their professionalism and issued an apology.

"I would like to apologize with all my heart to my family, friends and the fans," he said in the statement. "I expect more from myself too."

In June 2017, it was reported that Woods had checked into a clinic to receive professional help to manage medication he takes for pain and a sleep disorder.

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Pro golfer Tiger Woods was born in Cypress, California, in 1975. He won the U.S. Masters at Augusta in 1997 with a record score at age 21, making him the youngest man and the first African American to earn the title.

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Doris Miller was in the army during world war ll and his bravery helped save the one of the most famous army bases when the

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Marie Marynard Daly

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Visit Biography.com to learn more about Marie M. Daly, the first African-American woman to receive a Ph.D. in chemistry in the United States.

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Ralph Johnson Bunche August 7, 1904 – December 9, 1971) was an American political scientist, academic, and diplomat who received the 1950 Nobel Peace Prize for his late 1940s mediation in Israel. He was the first African American to be so honored in the history of the prize.

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Lester Lyles is a former United States Air Force general.

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General Lyles is the former Commander of the Air Force Materiel Command, headquartered at Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio.

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Mae Jemison was born October 17,1956 and was the first african american women to travel into space for NASA!! https://www.biography.com/people/mae-c-jemison-9542378

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barbara jordan was a african american lawyer

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he is famous for being an engineer and being the reason for today's technology

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All month long we have been celebrating the greatness and legacies of some of our most important figures in Black History. February marks a month-long celebration of honor folks in the African-American community who have made a difference and a significant impact on the world, not only the community. Today we take a moment to shine a spotlight on Frank Greene, one of the first black technologists, breaking the color barrier in local industry. Mr. Green passed away in 2009, but he is quite an important figure in Black History as one of 63 inductees into the Silicon Valley Engineering Hall of Fame, conferred by the Silicon Valley Engineering Council.

Frank Greene grew up in highly segregated St. Louis of the 1950s where he was quoted as saying "making it through life was a civil-rights activity in itself." Green was in the second class of black students at Washington University and was involved in sit-ins and much more. He stated "We went to sit-ins to see if we could integrate some places around the school. We would sit there until the cops closed the place." He spoke about a time he and his friends visited a pizza joint where the owners would serve them. He stated: "The problem was that between us we didn't have enough money for one order, so from that day, I've always said, 'You have to be prepared for opportunity when it arrives. ... You've got to be prepared for success.' We weren't expecting to succeed, so we didn't take any money." His technology career started by being in the right place at the right time and after being the first black cadet to make it through the four-year U.S. Air Force ROTC program in 1961, he would become an Air Force Captain.

His career in technology grew and then in the 1960's he developed high-speed semiconductor computer-memory systems at Fairchild Semiconductor R&D Labs before starting two companies and a venture firm with a special focus on minority- and female-headed firms known as NewVista Capital. He also launched the GO-Positive Foundation which provides leadership programs with "core positive values" for high school and college students. His patent for the integrated circuit made Fairchild a semiconductor leader in the late 1960s while he eventually went on to earn his doctorate in electrical engineering from Santa Clara University. He then went on to teach electrical engineering and computer science at five universities including Howard University, Santa Clara, Stanford University, Northwestern University and Washington University at St. Louis. If that was not enough for one lifetime, he also sat on the boards of many technology start-ups, was the past chairman of the board of the American Musical Theatre of San Jose and a board member of the National Conference of Community and Justice. His ideas about leadership in his "VRE Leadership" workbooks are incredible, and he teaches lessons for both life and business.

Frank Greene blazed a path for in the world of technology and science in the African-American community and held a number of unrivaled accolades. He once stated in an interview with author Tom Marcoux that "All successful leaders meet their challenges by starting with a clear vision that creates value for others" adding "They get everyone working together through positive relationships, and they execute at a very high level by making smart decisions." This is a lesson we can all learn from, in life and work. Celebrate the greatness that is Frank Greene!

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Celebrate Black History Greatness | Breaking Barriers In Technology Thanks To Frank Greene

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All month long we have been celebrating the greatness and legacies of some of our most important figures in Black History. February marks a month-long celebration of honor folks in the African-American community who have made a difference and a significant impact on the world, not only the community.

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At Westside Prep, she said in 2004 when she was awarded the National Humanities Medal, "there are no dropouts, no substitute teachers, and when teachers are absent, the students teach themselves."

"We're an anomaly in a world of negatives," she added. "Our children are self-motivated, self-generating, self-propelled."

An article about the school in 1977 in The Chicago Sun-Times attracted national attention. She was later the subject of a "60 Minutes" segment and of "The Marva Collins Story," a 1981 television movie on CBS with Cicely Tyson playing Ms. Collins and Morgan Freeman as her husband. She even appeared briefly in a video for Prince's song "The Most Beautiful Girl in the World."

As her stature as an educator grew, she began to train other teachers from around the country and published several books, including " 'Ordinary' Children, Extraordinary Teachers" and "Marva Collins' Way," written with Civia Tamarkin. Speaking engagements followed.

In 1980, President-elect Ronald Reagan was said to be leaning toward choosing Ms. Collins for secretary of education, but she said she would reject the job if it were offered. By that time she had already turned down offers to run the public school systems in Chicago and Los Angeles.

Marva Delores Knight was born in Monroeville, Ala., on Aug. 31, 1936. Her father, Henry, was a merchant, cattleman and undertaker. Her mother was the former Bessie Nettles.

Raised in Atmore, near Mobile, in the segregated South, she graduated from Clark College in Atlanta, now Clark Atlanta University, and taught in Alabama schools before moving to Chicago. There she worked as a medical secretary before becoming a substitute public-school teacher.

She married Clarence Collins, who died in 1995. They had three children, two of whom, Eric and Patrick, survive her, as does her mother, Bessie Mae Johnson; a sister, Cynthia Sutton; and her second husband, George R. Franklin.

In 1982, Ms. Collins was stung by accusations that she was not certified as a teacher and that she had overstated her record of success, but parents of the children in her school rallied to her defense. Her supporters said that as a substitute teacher she had not needed formal certification; others said their children had shown great progress after enrolling in the school.

"I've never said I'm a superteacher, a miracle worker, all those names they gave me," she told The New York Times that year. "It's unfair to expect me to live up to it. I'm just a teacher."

Ms. Collins later turned over the operation of Westside Prep to her daughter, Cynthia. It closed in 2008, with annual tuition at $5,500 and enrollment dwindling.

Ms. Collins moved to Hilton Head, S.C., where she organized programs to train teachers and administrators.

She insisted that she never craved awards or publicity. All she wanted, she told The Island Packet, the local newspaper, in 2007, was "to be able to say I got an A-plus on the assignment God gave me."

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Marva Collins, Educator Who Aimed High for Poor, Black Students, Dies at 78

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At Westside Prep, she said in 2004 when she was awarded the National Humanities Medal, "there are no dropouts, no substitute teachers, and when teachers are absent, the students teach themselves." "We're an anomaly in a world of negatives," she added. "Our children are self-motivated, self-generating, self-propelled."

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Frederick Douglass was an African-American social reformer, abolitionist, orator, writer, and statesman. ... Northerners at the time found it hard to believe that such a great orator had once been a slave.

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Charles Drew was a American physician, surgeon, and medical researcher

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Edward Bouchet was the first black person to earn a ph.d in the united states

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In 1876, Edward Alexander Bouchet became the first African American to earn a doctorate degree in the United States. Learn more about his life and career at Biography.com.

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James Baldwin was an African-American writer

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Who Was James Baldwin?

Born in 1924 in New York City, James Baldwin published the 1953 novel Go Tell It on the Mountain, going on to garner acclaim for his insights on race, spirituality and humanity.

Other novels included Giovanni's Room, Another Country and Just Above My Head as well as essay works like Notes of a Native Son and The Fire Next Time. Having lived in France, he died on December 1, 1987 in Saint-Paul de Vence.

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Early Life

Writer and playwright James Baldwin was born August 2, 1924, in Harlem, New York. One of the 20th century's greatest writers, Baldwin broke new literary ground with the exploration of racial and social issues in his many works. He was especially known for his essays on the black experience in America.

Baldwin was born to a young single mother, Emma Jones, at Harlem Hospital. She reportedly never told him the name of his biological father. Jones married a Baptist minister named David Baldwin when James was about three years old.

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Thanks for watching! Visit Website

Despite their strained relationship, Baldwin followed in his stepfather's footsteps-who he always referred to as his father-during his early teen years. He served as a youth minister in a Harlem Pentecostal church from the ages of 14 to 16.

Baldwin developed a passion for reading at an early age, and demonstrated a gift for writing during his school years. He attended DeWitt Clinton High School in the Bronx, where he worked on the school's magazine with future famous photographer Richard Avedon.

James Baldwin Poems

Baldwin published numerous poems, short stories and plays in the magazine, and his early work showed an understanding for sophisticated literary devices in a writer of such a young age.

After graduating high school in 1942, he had to put his plans for college on hold to help support his family, which included seven younger children. He took whatever work he could find, including laying railroad tracks for the U.S. Army in New Jersey.

During this time, Baldwin frequently encountered discrimination, being turned away from restaurants, bars and other establishments because he was African American. After being fired from the New Jersey job, Baldwin sought other work and struggled to make ends meet.

Aspiring Writer

On July 29, 1943, Baldwin lost his father-and gained his eighth sibling the same day. He soon moved to Greenwich Village, a New York City neighborhood popular with artists and writers.

Devoting himself to writing a novel, Baldwin took odd jobs to support himself. He befriended writer Richard Wright, and through Wright he was able to land a fellowship in 1945 to cover his expenses. Baldwin started getting essays and short stories published in such national periodicals as The Nation, Partisan Review and Commentary.

Three years later, Baldwin made a dramatic change in his life, and moved to Paris on another fellowship. The shift in location freed Baldwin to write more about his personal and racial background.

"Once I found myself on the other side of the ocean, I see where I came from very clearly...I am the grandson of a slave, and I am a writer. I must deal with both," Baldwin once told The New York Times. The move marked the beginning of his life as a "transatlantic commuter," dividing his time between France and the United States.

Go Tell It on the Mountain

Baldwin had his first novel, Go Tell It on the Mountain, published in 1953. The loosely autobiographical tale focused on the life of a young man growing up in Harlem grappling with father issues and his religion.

" Mountain is the book I had to write if I was ever going to write anything else. I had to deal with what hurt me most. I had to deal, above all, with my father," he later said.

Gay Literature

In 1954, Baldwin received a Guggenheim Fellowship. He published his next novel, Giovanni's Room, the following year. The work told the story of an American living in Paris, and broke new ground for its complex depiction of homosexuality, a then-taboo subject.

Love between men was also explored in a later Baldwin novel Just Above My Head (1978). The author would also use his work to explore interracial relationships, another controversial topic for the times, as seen in the 1962 novel Another Country.

Baldwin was open about his homosexuality and relationships with both men and women. Yet he believed that the focus on rigid categories was just a way of limiting freedom, and that human sexuality is more fluid and less binary than often expressed in the U.S.

"If you fall in love with a boy, you fall in love with a boy," the writer said in a 1969 interview when asked if being gay was an aberration, asserting that such views were an indication of narrowness and stagnation.

Nobody Knows My Name

Baldwin explored writing for the stage a well. He wrote The Amen Corner, which looked at the phenomenon of storefront Pentecostal religion. The play was produced at Howard University in 1955, and later on Broadway in the mid-1960s.

It was his essays, however, that helped establish Baldwin as one of the top writers of the times. Delving into his own life, he provided an unflinching look at the black experience in America through such works as Notes of a Native Son (1955) and Nobody Knows My Name: More Notes of a Native Son (1961).

Nobody Knows My Name hit the bestsellers list, selling more than a million copies. While not a marching or sit-in style activist, Baldwin emerged as one of the leading voices in the Civil Rights Movement for his compelling work on race.

The Fire Next Time

In 1963, there was a noted change in Baldwin's work with The Fire Next Time. This collection of essays was meant to educate white Americans on what it meant to be black. It also offered white readers a view of themselves through the eyes of the African-American community.

In the work, Baldwin offered a brutally realistic picture of race relations, but he remained hopeful about possible improvements. "If we...do not falter in our duty now, we may be able...to end the racial nightmare." His words struck a chord with the American people, and The Fire Next Time sold more than a million copies.

That same year, Baldwin was featured on the cover of Time magazine. "There is not another writer-white or black-who expresses with such poignancy and abrasiveness the dark realities of the racial ferment in North and South," Time said in the feature.

Baldwin wrote another play, Blues for Mister Charlie, which debuted on Broadway in 1964. The drama was loosely based on the 1955 racially motivated murder of a young African-American boy named Emmett Till.

This same year, his book with friend Richard Avedon entitled Nothing Personal, hit bookstore shelves. The work was a tribute to slain civil rights movement leader Medgar Evers. Baldwin also published a collection of short stories, Going to Meet the Man, around this time.

In his 1968 novel Tell Me How Long the Train's Been Gone, Baldwin returned to popular themes-sexuality, family and the black experience. Some critics panned the novel, calling it a polemic rather than a novel. He was also criticized for using the first-person singular, the "I," for the book's narration.

Later Works and Legacy

By the early 1970s, Baldwin seemed to despair over the racial situation. He had witnessed so much violence in the previous decade-especially the assassinations of Evers, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. -caused by racial hatred.

This disillusionment became apparent in his work, which employed a more strident tone than in earlier works. Many critics point to No Name in the Street, a 1972 collection of essays, as the beginning of the change in Baldwin's work. He also worked on a screenplay around this time, trying to adapt The Autobiography of Malcolm X by Alex Haley for the big screen.

While his literary fame faded somewhat in his later years, Baldwin continued to produce new works in a variety of forms. He published a collection of poems, Jimmy's Blues: Selected Poems, in 1983 as well as the 1987 novel Harlem Quartet.

Baldwin also remained an astute observer of race and American culture. In 1985, he wrote The Evidence of Things Not Seen about the Atlanta child murders. Baldwin also spent years sharing his experiences and views as a college professor. In the years before his death, he taught at University of Massachusetts at Amherst and Hampshire College.

Baldwin died on December 1, 1987, at his home in St. Paul de Vence, France. Never wanting to be a spokesperson or a leader, Baldwin saw his personal mission as bearing "witness to the truth." He accomplished this mission through his extensive, rapturous literary legacy.

I Am Not Your Negro

I Am Not Your Negro is a critically acclaimed 2016 film based on an unfinished manuscript of Baldwin's, Remember This House.

The documentary film, directed by Raoul Peck and narrated by Samuel L. Jackson, was nominated for an Academy Award in 2017.

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Born in 1924 in New York City, James Baldwin published the 1953 novel Go Tell It on the Mountain, going on to garner acclaim for his insights on race, spirituality and humanity. Other novels included Giovanni's Room, Another Country and Just Above My Head as well as essay works like Notes of a Native Son and The Fire Next Time.

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james l farmer was a civil rights activist and a leader in the civil rights move

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Bessie coleman was one of the first African-American woman pilots. She was a very famous woman and now has a school here in texas named after her.

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Marva Collins was the first black woman to open up a school.

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At Westside Prep, she said in 2004 when she was awarded the National Humanities Medal, "there are no dropouts, no substitute teachers, and when teachers are absent, the students teach themselves."

"We're an anomaly in a world of negatives," she added. "Our children are self-motivated, self-generating, self-propelled."

An article about the school in 1977 in The Chicago Sun-Times attracted national attention. She was later the subject of a "60 Minutes" segment and of "The Marva Collins Story," a 1981 television movie on CBS with Cicely Tyson playing Ms. Collins and Morgan Freeman as her husband. She even appeared briefly in a video for Prince's song "The Most Beautiful Girl in the World."

As her stature as an educator grew, she began to train other teachers from around the country and published several books, including " 'Ordinary' Children, Extraordinary Teachers" and "Marva Collins' Way," written with Civia Tamarkin. Speaking engagements followed.

In 1980, President-elect Ronald Reagan was said to be leaning toward choosing Ms. Collins for secretary of education, but she said she would reject the job if it were offered. By that time she had already turned down offers to run the public school systems in Chicago and Los Angeles.

Marva Delores Knight was born in Monroeville, Ala., on Aug. 31, 1936. Her father, Henry, was a merchant, cattleman and undertaker. Her mother was the former Bessie Nettles.

Raised in Atmore, near Mobile, in the segregated South, she graduated from Clark College in Atlanta, now Clark Atlanta University, and taught in Alabama schools before moving to Chicago. There she worked as a medical secretary before becoming a substitute public-school teacher.

She married Clarence Collins, who died in 1995. They had three children, two of whom, Eric and Patrick, survive her, as does her mother, Bessie Mae Johnson; a sister, Cynthia Sutton; and her second husband, George R. Franklin.

In 1982, Ms. Collins was stung by accusations that she was not certified as a teacher and that she had overstated her record of success, but parents of the children in her school rallied to her defense. Her supporters said that as a substitute teacher she had not needed formal certification; others said their children had shown great progress after enrolling in the school.

"I've never said I'm a superteacher, a miracle worker, all those names they gave me," she told The New York Times that year. "It's unfair to expect me to live up to it. I'm just a teacher."

Ms. Collins later turned over the operation of Westside Prep to her daughter, Cynthia. It closed in 2008, with annual tuition at $5,500 and enrollment dwindling.

Ms. Collins moved to Hilton Head, S.C., where she organized programs to train teachers and administrators.

She insisted that she never craved awards or publicity. All she wanted, she told The Island Packet, the local newspaper, in 2007, was "to be able to say I got an A-plus on the assignment God gave me."

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Marva Collins, Educator Who Aimed High for Poor, Black Students, Dies at 78

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At Westside Prep, she said in 2004 when she was awarded the National Humanities Medal, "there are no dropouts, no substitute teachers, and when teachers are absent, the students teach themselves." "We're an anomaly in a world of negatives," she added. "Our children are self-motivated, self-generating, self-propelled."

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Robert smalls he was a sailer

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Robert Smalls was an enslaved African American who became a politician, serving in both the South Carolina legislature and the U.S. House of Representatives.

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Harriet Tubman was a american ambolitionist and an armed spy for the united states

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Tiger Woods is one of the most successful golfers of all time

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Tiger Woods is an American golfer who is considered as one of the most successful golfers of all time. There had been many great golfing legends in the history, but contributions of Tiger Woods to this sport is remarkable. Let us find out some interesting facts about Tiger Woods:

Image: hdwallpaperbackgrounds.net

1. A soldier behind his name!

Initially, his father started calling him "Tiger" in honor of a fellow soldier and friend who had the same moniker. But later, the whole world denoted him this name.
Source: biography.com

2. No compromise with the education!

3. See! What he did at the age of 3!

4. The youngest winner ever!

In 1997, he won his first major, the Masters, and became the youngest ever winner, 2 months later, he set the record for the fastest ever to be No. 1 in the Official World Golf Rankings.
Source: Wikipedia

5. Guess! Who is his best friend!

6. If it's red, then it must be final!

In 1996, he and his father started The Tiger Woods Foundation, to promote golf among inner-city children. In 2010, he donated $3 million to Haitian earthquake relief.
Source: Wikipedia, image: golfwomenmeanbusiness.com

8. The pinnacle of the richest sportsperson!

Woods also loves to write, as he wrote a column for Golf Digest magazine from 1997 to 2011. In 2001, he wrote a book called "How I Play Golf," which proved to be the best-selling golf instruction book with around 1.5 million copies sold.
Source: Wikipedia, image: 1.bp.blogspot.com

10. Must know his caddies!

11. The Buddha connection!

Tiger was raised as a Buddhist by this Thai mother, and he actively practiced it.
Source: buzzle.com, image: azquotes.com

12. It's all about the eyesight!

His eyesight was 11, before having a laser eye surgery in 1999, which gave him 20/15 vision. After which, he won seven of his next 10 events.
Source: buzzle.com

14. Entertainment is everybody's cup of tea!

His favorite movies are Caddyshack, 48 Hours, and all James Bond films. His favorite musicians are U2, Boyz II Men, and Janet Jackson.
Source: buzzle.com

15. The curious case of his marriage!

17. Fame and controversies are the twin sisters!

In 2009, he received a ticket for careless driving, after getting injured in a car accident. Later, in another incident, it was also found that he had affairs with several women, which eventually resulted in his divorce.
Source: buzzle.com

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17 Interesting Facts About Tiger Woods - OhFact!

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Tiger Woods is an American golfer who is considered as one of the most successful golfers of all time. There had been many great golfing legends in the history, but contributions of Tiger Woods to this sport is remarkable. Let us find out some interesting facts about Tiger Woods: Image: hdwallpaperbackgrounds.net 1.

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Health

Today we celebrate the life of Rebecca Lee Crumpler (1831-1895). She is best remembered as the first African-American woman physician in the United States.

Born Rebecca Davis in Delaware on February 8, 1831, she grew up in Pennsylvania, where her aunt provided care for the ill.

A bright girl, Rebecca attended a prestigious private school, the West-Newton English and Classical School in Massachusetts, as a "special student." In 1852, she moved to Charlestown, Massachusetts, and worked as a nurse. In 1860, she took the bold step of applying to medical school and was accepted into the New England Female Medical College.

The New England Female Medical College was based in Boston and attached to the New England Hospital for Women and Children. It was founded by Drs. Israel Tisdale Talbot and Samuel Gregory in 1848 and accepted its first class, of 12 women, in 1850. From its inception, many male physicians derided the institution, complaining that women lacked the physical strength to practice medicine; others insisted that not only were women incapable of mastering a medical curriculum and that many of the topics taught were inappropriate for their "sensitive and delicate nature."

Fortunately, Drs. Talbot and Gregory ignored such false claims and organized a school that required "a good English education," a "thesis on some medical subject," and a set of courses on the theory and practice of medicine, materia medica, chemistry and therapeutics, anatomy, medical jurisprudence, obstetrics and diseases of women and children, and physiology and hygiene. The coursework was 17 weeks in length (30 or more hours per week) during the first year of instruction. Following this was a two-year preceptorship, or apprenticeship, under an established physician's supervision.

In 1864, Rebecca became the New England Female Medical College's only African-American graduate (the school closed its doors in 1873.) A few statistics help put her remarkable achievement in perspective. In 1860, there were only 300 women out of 54,543 physicians in the United States and none of them were African-American. Some historians have wondered if Rebecca even knew of her status as "the first" given that for many decades in the 20th century that credit was awarded to Dr. Rebecca Cole, an African-American woman who received her medical degree from the Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania in 1867. The first "historically black" medical school in the U.S., the Howard University College of Medicine, would not open until 1868. As late as 1920, there were only 65 African-American women doctors in the United States.

Around the time of her graduation, Rebecca married for the second time. (Her first marriage to Wyatt Lee, from 1852 to 1863, ended with his death in 1863.) In 1864, she married Arthur Crumpler. Rebecca began a medical practice in Boston.

After the end of the Civil War in 1865, the Crumplers moved to Richmond, Virginia, where, to use her own words, she found "the proper field for real missionary work, and one that would present ample opportunities to become acquainted with the diseases of women and children." Rebecca worked under the aegis of General Orlando Brown, the Assistant Commissioner of the Freedman's Bureau for the State of Virginia. The Freedman's Bureau was the federal agency charged with helping more than 4,000,000 slaves make the stunning transition from bondage to freedom. In Richmond, Rebecca valiantly ignored daily episodes of racism, rude behavior, and sexism from her colleagues, pharmacists, and many others, in order to treat, as she later wrote, "a very large number of the indigent, and others of different classes, in a population of over 30,000 colored."

In 1869, the Crumplers returned to Boston and they settled in a predominantly African-American neighborhood on Beacon Hill. She practiced medicine there, as well. In 1880, she and her husband moved, once again, this time to Hyde Park, New York. Although there exists little evidence that she practiced much medicine after this point, she did write a fine book, "A Book of Medical Discourses in Two Parts," which was published by Cashman, Keating and Co., of Boston, in 1883.

The book is divided, as the title implies, into two sections. The first part focuses on "treating the cause, prevention, and cure of infantile bowel complaints, from birth to the close of the teething period, or after the fifth year." The second section contains "miscellaneous information concerning the life and growth of beings; the beginning of womanhood; also, the cause, prevention, and cure of many of the most distressing complaints of women, and youth of both sexes." The volume, which may well be the first medical text by an African-American author, is dedicated "to mothers, nurses, and all who may desire to mitigate the afflictions of the human race."

Rebecca Davis Lee Crumpler died on March 9, 1895, in Hyde Park.

On this anniversary of her death, let us applaud her courage, perseverance and pioneering achievements. She is an inspiration to all who face adversity, seek diversity, and forge the path forward. Her passion "to mitigate the afflictions of the human race" was Rebecca's gift and historic legacy.
Editor's note: The headline has been updated to reflect that Crumpler was the first African-American woman physician, not African-American physician. It has also been updated to correct Arthur Crumpler's occupation; he was not a physician.

Today we celebrate the life of Rebecca Lee Crumpler (1831-1895). She is best remembered as the first African-American woman physician in the United States.

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Celebrating Rebecca Lee Crumpler, first African-American woman physician

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Today we celebrate the life of Rebecca Lee Crumpler, the first African-American woman physician in the United States. On this anniversary of her death, let us applaud her courage, perseverance and pioneering achievements. Her passion "to mitigate the afflictions of the human race" was Rebecca's gift and historic legacy.

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Farmer, James, Sr. (1886-1961) | The Black Past: Remembered and Reclaimed

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While working various jobs in the Boston area including as a valet and a carriage boy, he eventually gained admission to Boston University and received a degree seven years later in 1916 in Sacred Theology. He earned his doctorate at the same university in the same field one year later.

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Frank Greene
Considered one of the first black technologist, Frank Greene stands among the ranks of other Silicon Valley giants as one of 63 inductees into the Silicon Valley Engineering Hall of Fame.

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Pioneering light

Considered one of the first black technologist, Frank Greene stands among the ranks of other Silicon Valley giants as one of 63 inductees into the Silicon Valley Engineering Hall of Fame. He first made his mark in the 1960s, developing the pioneering high-speed semiconductor computer-memory systems at Fairchild Semiconductor Research and Development Labs, and held the patent for the integrated circuit that made the company a leader.

By 1971, Greene branched out on his own, founding CEO of Technology Development (TDC). By 1985, TDC was traded publicly, had more than 300 employees, and was recognized by Black Enterprise as one of the top 100 businesses. After an equity interest in TDC was sold, Greene launched ZeroOne Systems, Inc, developing large-scale scientific computer systems for the government. In two years, ZeroOne reached $15 million in annual revenue.

Greene also became an advocate for diversity in the field, becoming a co-founder of NewVista Capital, a firm which funded over 26 start-up information technology companies founded and headed by people of color and women. He was also president of the GO-Positive educational foundation, which offers leadership programs with "core positive values" for high school and college students. He is the author of "Leadership in the NOW: Power and Endurance" and "Leadership in the NOW: Success Guide."

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Black History Month Spotlight: Frank Greene - Caribbean News

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Pioneering light Considered one of the first black technologist, Frank Greene stands among the ranks of other Silicon Valley giants as one of 63 inductees into the Silicon Valley Engineering Hall of Fame. He first made his mark in the 1960s, developing the pioneering high-speed semiconductor computer-memory systems at Fairchild Semiconductor Research and Development Labs, ...

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Archie Alexander.........was the first male engineer.  He also built a bridge.

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Archie Alexander.........was the first male engineer.  He also built a bridge.

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-Hannah Kibble

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Alexander, Archie Alphonso (1888-1958) | The Black Past: Remembered and Reclaimed

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Sources: "Archie Alphonso Alexander," in American National Biography, Vol. 1 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999); "Archie Alphonso Alexander," New York Times, April 18, 1954; C. E.

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jim brown-he is a famous and professional football player and actor people also say he is the most greatest player of all time.

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Jim Brown is a record-holding, former NFL fullback who's been elected to his sport's Hall of Fame and who's also worked as a model and film actor.

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Farmer, James, Sr. (1886-1961) | The Black Past: Remembered and Reclaimed

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While working various jobs in the Boston area including as a valet and a carriage boy, he eventually gained admission to Boston University and received a degree seven years later in 1916 in Sacred Theology. He earned his doctorate at the same university in the same field one year later.

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Lewis Latimer-  he was a partner of Edison and patent the light bulb. https://www.biography.com/people/lewis-howard-latimer-9374422

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Jim Brown -- famous US football player who won MVP three times, and is known as the greatest football player of all time.

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(Leslie Bonilla) He was a civil rights leader.

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A. Philip Randolph Biography - life, family, childhood, parents, story, death, history, mother, young, information, born, college

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Asa Philip Randolph was born in Crescent City, Florida, on April 15, 1889, the second of two sons of James and Elizabeth Randolph. His father was a traveling minister of the African Methodist Episcopal Church and his mother was also devoted to the church.

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He was an african-american physicist and educator and was the first african american to earn a Ph.D

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In 1876, Edward Alexander Bouchet became the first African American to earn a doctorate degree in the United States. Learn more about his life and career at Biography.com.

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Mae Jemison- An astronaut, actress, dancer, and inspiring women

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Who Is Mae C. Jemison?

Mae C. Jemison is an American astronaut and physician who, on June 4, 1987, became the first African American woman to be admitted into NASA's astronaut training program. On September 12, 1992, Jemison finally flew into space with six other astronauts aboard the Endeavour on mission STS47, becoming the first African American woman in space. In recognition of her accomplishments, Jemison has received several awards and honorary doctorates.

Early Life and Education

Jemison was born on October 17, 1956, in Decatur, Alabama. She is the youngest child of Charlie Jemison, a roofer and carpenter, and Dorothy (Green) Jemison, an elementary school teacher. Her sister, Ada Jemison Bullock, became a child psychiatrist, and her brother, Charles Jemison, is a real estate broker.

The Jemison family moved to Chicago, Illinois, when Jemison was three years old to take advantage of better educational opportunities, and it is that city that she calls her hometown.

Throughout her early school years, Jemison's parents were supportive and encouraging of her talents and abilities, and she spent a considerable amount of time in her school library reading about all aspects of science, especially astronomy.

During her time at Morgan Park High School, she became convinced she wanted to pursue a career in biomedical engineering. When she graduated in 1973 as a consistent honor student, she entered Stanford University on a National Achievement Scholarship.

As she had been in high school, Jemison was very involved in extracurricular activities at Stanford, including dance and theater productions, and served as head of the Black Student Union. She received a Bachelor of Science degree in chemical engineering from the university in 1977. Upon graduation, she entered Cornell University Medical College and, during her years there, found time to expand her horizons by studying in Cuba and Kenya and working at a Cambodian refugee camp in Thailand.

Career as a Medical Doctor

After Jemison obtained her M.D. in 1981, she interned at Los Angeles County/University of Southern California Medical Center and later worked as a general practitioner. For the next two and a half years, she was the area Peace Corps medical officer for Sierra Leone and Liberia where she also taught and did medical research.

Following her return to the United States in 1985, Jemison made a career change and decided to follow a dream she had nurtured for a long time: In October, she applied for admission to NASA's astronaut training program. The Challenger disaster of January 1986 delayed the selection process, but when she reapplied a year later, Jemison was one of the 15 candidates chosen from a field of about 2,000.

Photo: Courtesy NASA, [Public Domain] via Wikimedia Commons

First African American Woman Astronaut

On June 4, 1987, Jemison became the first African American woman to be admitted into the NASA astronaut training program. After more than a year of training, she became the first African American woman astronaut, earning the title of science mission specialist - a job that would make her responsible for conducting crew-related scientific experiments on the space shuttle.

When Jemison finally flew into space on September 12, 1992, with six other astronauts aboard the Endeavour on mission STS47, she became the first African American woman in space.

During her eight days in space, Jemison conducted experiments on weightlessness and motion sickness on the crew and herself. In all, she spent more than 190 hours in space before returning to Earth on September 20, 1992. Following her historic flight, Jemison noted that society should recognize how much both women and members of other minority groups can contribute if given the opportunity.

Honors

In recognition of her accomplishments, Jemison received a number of accolades, including several honorary doctorates, the 1988 Essence Science and Technology Award, the Ebony Black Achievement Award in 1992 and a Montgomery Fellowship from Dartmouth College in 1993. She was also named Gamma Sigma Gamma Woman of the Year in 1990. In 1992, the Mae C. Jemison Academy, an alternative public school in Detroit, Michigan, was named after her.

Jemison has been a member of several prominent organizations, including the American Medical Association, the American Chemical Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and she served on the board of directors of the World Sickle Cell Foundation from 1990 to 1992. She has also served as an advisory committee member of the American Express Geography Competition and an honorary board member of the Center for the Prevention of Childhood Malnutrition.

Career After NASA

After leaving the astronaut corps in March 1993, Jemison accepted a teaching fellowship at Dartmouth. She also established the Jemison Group, a company that seeks to research, develop and market advanced technologies.

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Mae C. Jemison is an American astronaut and physician who, on June 4, 1987, became the first African American woman to be admitted into NASA's astronaut training program. On September 12, 1992, Jemison finally flew into space with six other astronauts aboard the Endeavour on mission STS47, becoming the first African American woman in space.

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Rebecca Crumpler was the first black female physician

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Health

Today we celebrate the life of Rebecca Lee Crumpler (1831-1895). She is best remembered as the first African-American woman physician in the United States.

Born Rebecca Davis in Delaware on February 8, 1831, she grew up in Pennsylvania, where her aunt provided care for the ill.

A bright girl, Rebecca attended a prestigious private school, the West-Newton English and Classical School in Massachusetts, as a "special student." In 1852, she moved to Charlestown, Massachusetts, and worked as a nurse. In 1860, she took the bold step of applying to medical school and was accepted into the New England Female Medical College.

The New England Female Medical College was based in Boston and attached to the New England Hospital for Women and Children. It was founded by Drs. Israel Tisdale Talbot and Samuel Gregory in 1848 and accepted its first class, of 12 women, in 1850. From its inception, many male physicians derided the institution, complaining that women lacked the physical strength to practice medicine; others insisted that not only were women incapable of mastering a medical curriculum and that many of the topics taught were inappropriate for their "sensitive and delicate nature."

Fortunately, Drs. Talbot and Gregory ignored such false claims and organized a school that required "a good English education," a "thesis on some medical subject," and a set of courses on the theory and practice of medicine, materia medica, chemistry and therapeutics, anatomy, medical jurisprudence, obstetrics and diseases of women and children, and physiology and hygiene. The coursework was 17 weeks in length (30 or more hours per week) during the first year of instruction. Following this was a two-year preceptorship, or apprenticeship, under an established physician's supervision.

In 1864, Rebecca became the New England Female Medical College's only African-American graduate (the school closed its doors in 1873.) A few statistics help put her remarkable achievement in perspective. In 1860, there were only 300 women out of 54,543 physicians in the United States and none of them were African-American. Some historians have wondered if Rebecca even knew of her status as "the first" given that for many decades in the 20th century that credit was awarded to Dr. Rebecca Cole, an African-American woman who received her medical degree from the Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania in 1867. The first "historically black" medical school in the U.S., the Howard University College of Medicine, would not open until 1868. As late as 1920, there were only 65 African-American women doctors in the United States.

Around the time of her graduation, Rebecca married for the second time. (Her first marriage to Wyatt Lee, from 1852 to 1863, ended with his death in 1863.) In 1864, she married Arthur Crumpler. Rebecca began a medical practice in Boston.

After the end of the Civil War in 1865, the Crumplers moved to Richmond, Virginia, where, to use her own words, she found "the proper field for real missionary work, and one that would present ample opportunities to become acquainted with the diseases of women and children." Rebecca worked under the aegis of General Orlando Brown, the Assistant Commissioner of the Freedman's Bureau for the State of Virginia. The Freedman's Bureau was the federal agency charged with helping more than 4,000,000 slaves make the stunning transition from bondage to freedom. In Richmond, Rebecca valiantly ignored daily episodes of racism, rude behavior, and sexism from her colleagues, pharmacists, and many others, in order to treat, as she later wrote, "a very large number of the indigent, and others of different classes, in a population of over 30,000 colored."

In 1869, the Crumplers returned to Boston and they settled in a predominantly African-American neighborhood on Beacon Hill. She practiced medicine there, as well. In 1880, she and her husband moved, once again, this time to Hyde Park, New York. Although there exists little evidence that she practiced much medicine after this point, she did write a fine book, "A Book of Medical Discourses in Two Parts," which was published by Cashman, Keating and Co., of Boston, in 1883.

The book is divided, as the title implies, into two sections. The first part focuses on "treating the cause, prevention, and cure of infantile bowel complaints, from birth to the close of the teething period, or after the fifth year." The second section contains "miscellaneous information concerning the life and growth of beings; the beginning of womanhood; also, the cause, prevention, and cure of many of the most distressing complaints of women, and youth of both sexes." The volume, which may well be the first medical text by an African-American author, is dedicated "to mothers, nurses, and all who may desire to mitigate the afflictions of the human race."

Rebecca Davis Lee Crumpler died on March 9, 1895, in Hyde Park.

On this anniversary of her death, let us applaud her courage, perseverance and pioneering achievements. She is an inspiration to all who face adversity, seek diversity, and forge the path forward. Her passion "to mitigate the afflictions of the human race" was Rebecca's gift and historic legacy.
Editor's note: The headline has been updated to reflect that Crumpler was the first African-American woman physician, not African-American physician. It has also been updated to correct Arthur Crumpler's occupation; he was not a physician.

Today we celebrate the life of Rebecca Lee Crumpler (1831-1895). She is best remembered as the first African-American woman physician in the United States.

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Celebrating Rebecca Lee Crumpler, first African-American woman physician

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Today we celebrate the life of Rebecca Lee Crumpler, the first African-American woman physician in the United States. On this anniversary of her death, let us applaud her courage, perseverance and pioneering achievements. Her passion "to mitigate the afflictions of the human race" was Rebecca's gift and historic legacy.

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Ella Baker, she was a important part in the civil war.

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Learn more about civil rights pioneer Ella Baker, who co-founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and organized activism on college campuses, at Biography.com.

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Frederick Douglass, an abolitionist of highest degree.
https://www.biography.com/people/frederick-douglass-9278324

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Frederick Douglass was a leader in the abolitionist movement, an early champion of women’s rights and author of ‘Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass.’

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Harold Amos- 1st black man to be the chair of department at Harvard Law School.

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Ralph Bunche won a nobel prize in 1950.

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Ralph Bunche Biography - life, family, childhood, children, parents, name, school, young

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Ralph Johnson Bunche was born in Detroit, Michigan, on August 7, 1904. (His given last name was Bunch, but as a teenager he added the "e" because he thought it looked better.) Bunche's father was a barber, and his parents were very poor.

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Marie Maynard Daly... Biochemist..

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Doris Miller was a cook in the U.S Navy.

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Miller, Doris ["Dorie"] (1919-1943) | The Black Past: Remembered and Reclaimed

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World War II war hero Doris "Dorie" Miller was born in Waco, Texas on October 12, 1919 to Conery and Henrietta Miller who were farmers just outside the city. Miller grew to 6 feet 3 inches, weighed over 200 pounds, and played football at Waco's A.J. Moore Academy.

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Opened up her own school to educate black children that were deemed unteachable or hard to work with

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At Westside Prep, she said in 2004 when she was awarded the National Humanities Medal, "there are no dropouts, no substitute teachers, and when teachers are absent, the students teach themselves."

"We're an anomaly in a world of negatives," she added. "Our children are self-motivated, self-generating, self-propelled."

An article about the school in 1977 in The Chicago Sun-Times attracted national attention. She was later the subject of a "60 Minutes" segment and of "The Marva Collins Story," a 1981 television movie on CBS with Cicely Tyson playing Ms. Collins and Morgan Freeman as her husband. She even appeared briefly in a video for Prince's song "The Most Beautiful Girl in the World."

As her stature as an educator grew, she began to train other teachers from around the country and published several books, including " 'Ordinary' Children, Extraordinary Teachers" and "Marva Collins' Way," written with Civia Tamarkin. Speaking engagements followed.

In 1980, President-elect Ronald Reagan was said to be leaning toward choosing Ms. Collins for secretary of education, but she said she would reject the job if it were offered. By that time she had already turned down offers to run the public school systems in Chicago and Los Angeles.

Marva Delores Knight was born in Monroeville, Ala., on Aug. 31, 1936. Her father, Henry, was a merchant, cattleman and undertaker. Her mother was the former Bessie Nettles.

Raised in Atmore, near Mobile, in the segregated South, she graduated from Clark College in Atlanta, now Clark Atlanta University, and taught in Alabama schools before moving to Chicago. There she worked as a medical secretary before becoming a substitute public-school teacher.

She married Clarence Collins, who died in 1995. They had three children, two of whom, Eric and Patrick, survive her, as does her mother, Bessie Mae Johnson; a sister, Cynthia Sutton; and her second husband, George R. Franklin.

In 1982, Ms. Collins was stung by accusations that she was not certified as a teacher and that she had overstated her record of success, but parents of the children in her school rallied to her defense. Her supporters said that as a substitute teacher she had not needed formal certification; others said their children had shown great progress after enrolling in the school.

"I've never said I'm a superteacher, a miracle worker, all those names they gave me," she told The New York Times that year. "It's unfair to expect me to live up to it. I'm just a teacher."

Ms. Collins later turned over the operation of Westside Prep to her daughter, Cynthia. It closed in 2008, with annual tuition at $5,500 and enrollment dwindling.

Ms. Collins moved to Hilton Head, S.C., where she organized programs to train teachers and administrators.

She insisted that she never craved awards or publicity. All she wanted, she told The Island Packet, the local newspaper, in 2007, was "to be able to say I got an A-plus on the assignment God gave me."

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Marva Collins, Educator Who Aimed High for Poor, Black Students, Dies at 78

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At Westside Prep, she said in 2004 when she was awarded the National Humanities Medal, "there are no dropouts, no substitute teachers, and when teachers are absent, the students teach themselves." "We're an anomaly in a world of negatives," she added. "Our children are self-motivated, self-generating, self-propelled."

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Charles Drew- an American physician, surgeon, and medical researcher.

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Charles Drew was an African-American surgeon who pioneered methods of storing blood plasma for transfusion and organized the first large-scale blood bank in the U.S.

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James Baldwin was an insightful writer and his controversial topics were what made him memorable.

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Who Was James Baldwin?

Born in 1924 in New York City, James Baldwin published the 1953 novel Go Tell It on the Mountain, going on to garner acclaim for his insights on race, spirituality and humanity.

Other novels included Giovanni's Room, Another Country and Just Above My Head as well as essay works like Notes of a Native Son and The Fire Next Time. Having lived in France, he died on December 1, 1987 in Saint-Paul de Vence.

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Early Life

Writer and playwright James Baldwin was born August 2, 1924, in Harlem, New York. One of the 20th century's greatest writers, Baldwin broke new literary ground with the exploration of racial and social issues in his many works. He was especially known for his essays on the black experience in America.

Baldwin was born to a young single mother, Emma Jones, at Harlem Hospital. She reportedly never told him the name of his biological father. Jones married a Baptist minister named David Baldwin when James was about three years old.

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Despite their strained relationship, Baldwin followed in his stepfather's footsteps-who he always referred to as his father-during his early teen years. He served as a youth minister in a Harlem Pentecostal church from the ages of 14 to 16.

Baldwin developed a passion for reading at an early age, and demonstrated a gift for writing during his school years. He attended DeWitt Clinton High School in the Bronx, where he worked on the school's magazine with future famous photographer Richard Avedon.

James Baldwin Poems

Baldwin published numerous poems, short stories and plays in the magazine, and his early work showed an understanding for sophisticated literary devices in a writer of such a young age.

After graduating high school in 1942, he had to put his plans for college on hold to help support his family, which included seven younger children. He took whatever work he could find, including laying railroad tracks for the U.S. Army in New Jersey.

During this time, Baldwin frequently encountered discrimination, being turned away from restaurants, bars and other establishments because he was African American. After being fired from the New Jersey job, Baldwin sought other work and struggled to make ends meet.

Aspiring Writer

On July 29, 1943, Baldwin lost his father-and gained his eighth sibling the same day. He soon moved to Greenwich Village, a New York City neighborhood popular with artists and writers.

Devoting himself to writing a novel, Baldwin took odd jobs to support himself. He befriended writer Richard Wright, and through Wright he was able to land a fellowship in 1945 to cover his expenses. Baldwin started getting essays and short stories published in such national periodicals as The Nation, Partisan Review and Commentary.

Three years later, Baldwin made a dramatic change in his life, and moved to Paris on another fellowship. The shift in location freed Baldwin to write more about his personal and racial background.

"Once I found myself on the other side of the ocean, I see where I came from very clearly...I am the grandson of a slave, and I am a writer. I must deal with both," Baldwin once told The New York Times. The move marked the beginning of his life as a "transatlantic commuter," dividing his time between France and the United States.

Go Tell It on the Mountain

Baldwin had his first novel, Go Tell It on the Mountain, published in 1953. The loosely autobiographical tale focused on the life of a young man growing up in Harlem grappling with father issues and his religion.

" Mountain is the book I had to write if I was ever going to write anything else. I had to deal with what hurt me most. I had to deal, above all, with my father," he later said.

Gay Literature

In 1954, Baldwin received a Guggenheim Fellowship. He published his next novel, Giovanni's Room, the following year. The work told the story of an American living in Paris, and broke new ground for its complex depiction of homosexuality, a then-taboo subject.

Love between men was also explored in a later Baldwin novel Just Above My Head (1978). The author would also use his work to explore interracial relationships, another controversial topic for the times, as seen in the 1962 novel Another Country.

Baldwin was open about his homosexuality and relationships with both men and women. Yet he believed that the focus on rigid categories was just a way of limiting freedom, and that human sexuality is more fluid and less binary than often expressed in the U.S.

"If you fall in love with a boy, you fall in love with a boy," the writer said in a 1969 interview when asked if being gay was an aberration, asserting that such views were an indication of narrowness and stagnation.

Nobody Knows My Name

Baldwin explored writing for the stage a well. He wrote The Amen Corner, which looked at the phenomenon of storefront Pentecostal religion. The play was produced at Howard University in 1955, and later on Broadway in the mid-1960s.

It was his essays, however, that helped establish Baldwin as one of the top writers of the times. Delving into his own life, he provided an unflinching look at the black experience in America through such works as Notes of a Native Son (1955) and Nobody Knows My Name: More Notes of a Native Son (1961).

Nobody Knows My Name hit the bestsellers list, selling more than a million copies. While not a marching or sit-in style activist, Baldwin emerged as one of the leading voices in the Civil Rights Movement for his compelling work on race.

The Fire Next Time

In 1963, there was a noted change in Baldwin's work with The Fire Next Time. This collection of essays was meant to educate white Americans on what it meant to be black. It also offered white readers a view of themselves through the eyes of the African-American community.

In the work, Baldwin offered a brutally realistic picture of race relations, but he remained hopeful about possible improvements. "If we...do not falter in our duty now, we may be able...to end the racial nightmare." His words struck a chord with the American people, and The Fire Next Time sold more than a million copies.

That same year, Baldwin was featured on the cover of Time magazine. "There is not another writer-white or black-who expresses with such poignancy and abrasiveness the dark realities of the racial ferment in North and South," Time said in the feature.

Baldwin wrote another play, Blues for Mister Charlie, which debuted on Broadway in 1964. The drama was loosely based on the 1955 racially motivated murder of a young African-American boy named Emmett Till.

This same year, his book with friend Richard Avedon entitled Nothing Personal, hit bookstore shelves. The work was a tribute to slain civil rights movement leader Medgar Evers. Baldwin also published a collection of short stories, Going to Meet the Man, around this time.

In his 1968 novel Tell Me How Long the Train's Been Gone, Baldwin returned to popular themes-sexuality, family and the black experience. Some critics panned the novel, calling it a polemic rather than a novel. He was also criticized for using the first-person singular, the "I," for the book's narration.

Later Works and Legacy

By the early 1970s, Baldwin seemed to despair over the racial situation. He had witnessed so much violence in the previous decade-especially the assassinations of Evers, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. -caused by racial hatred.

This disillusionment became apparent in his work, which employed a more strident tone than in earlier works. Many critics point to No Name in the Street, a 1972 collection of essays, as the beginning of the change in Baldwin's work. He also worked on a screenplay around this time, trying to adapt The Autobiography of Malcolm X by Alex Haley for the big screen.

While his literary fame faded somewhat in his later years, Baldwin continued to produce new works in a variety of forms. He published a collection of poems, Jimmy's Blues: Selected Poems, in 1983 as well as the 1987 novel Harlem Quartet.

Baldwin also remained an astute observer of race and American culture. In 1985, he wrote The Evidence of Things Not Seen about the Atlanta child murders. Baldwin also spent years sharing his experiences and views as a college professor. In the years before his death, he taught at University of Massachusetts at Amherst and Hampshire College.

Baldwin died on December 1, 1987, at his home in St. Paul de Vence, France. Never wanting to be a spokesperson or a leader, Baldwin saw his personal mission as bearing "witness to the truth." He accomplished this mission through his extensive, rapturous literary legacy.

I Am Not Your Negro

I Am Not Your Negro is a critically acclaimed 2016 film based on an unfinished manuscript of Baldwin's, Remember This House.

The documentary film, directed by Raoul Peck and narrated by Samuel L. Jackson, was nominated for an Academy Award in 2017.

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Born in 1924 in New York City, James Baldwin published the 1953 novel Go Tell It on the Mountain, going on to garner acclaim for his insights on race, spirituality and humanity. Other novels included Giovanni's Room, Another Country and Just Above My Head as well as essay works like Notes of a Native Son and The Fire Next Time.

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Morgan Freeman famous actor and narrator.

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Early Passion for Acting

Actor, director and narrator Morgan Freeman was born on June 1, 1937, in Memphis, Tennessee. The youngest of five children born to barber Morgan Porterfield Freeman, Sr. and schoolteacher Mayme Edna, Freeman was raised in Chicago and Mississippi in a low-income home. Not long after he was born, Morgan's parents, like so many other African-Americans struggling under the pressures of the Jim Crow South, relocated to Chicago to find work. While his parents looked for jobs, Freeman remained with his maternal grandmother in Charleston, Mississippi.

At the age of six, Freeman's grandmother died and he moved north to be with his mother, who had already separated from her alcoholic husband. They later moved to Tennessee and eventually back to Mississippi, where Mayme Edna settled her family in Greenwood.

As a kid, Freeman spent a good portion of his time scraping together enough money to see movies, where he formed an early admiration for actors like Gary Cooper, Spencer Tracy and Sidney Poitier. It was by chance that Freeman himself got into acting. He was in junior high school and, as punishment for pulling out a chair from underneath a girl he had a crush on, Freeman was ordered to participate in the school's drama competition. To his surprise, and probably school administrators, the 12-year-old proved to be an immediate natural on the stage, taking top honors in the program.

But while Freeman loved to act, flying-in particular the idea of being a fighter pilot-was in his heart of hearts. And so, upon graduating high school in 1955, Morgan turned down a partial drama scholarship and joined the U.S. Air Force. The military, though, proved to be much different than what he'd expected. Instead of darting around the skies, Freeman was relegated to on-the-ground activity as a mechanic and radar technician. He also realized that he didn't want to be shooting down other people.

"I had this very clear epiphany," he told AARP Magazine. "You are not in love with this; you are in love with the idea of this." In 1959, Freeman left the Air Force and tried his fortunes out West, moving to Hollywood to see if he could make it as an actor. It wasn't an easy life. He took acting classes and struggled to find work. In the early 1960s, he moved again, this time to New York City, where more petty day jobs and nighttime auditions followed.

Big Break

In 1967, the same year he married Jeanette Adair Bradshaw, Freeman's big career break came when he landed a part in an all African-American Broadway production of Hello, Dolly! starring Pearl Bailey. Around that time, Freeman also performed in an off-Broadway production of The Nigger Lovers.

Some national exposure followed in 1971, when he started appearing regularly on The Electric Company, a public television-produced children's TV show that focused on teaching kids how to read. On a show that included such current and future stars as Rita Moreno, Joan Rivers, and Gene Wilder, Freeman had some of the show's more memorable characters, like "Easy Reader," "Mel Mounds" and "Count Dracula."

But television proved to be a grueling and demanding life for Freeman. Despite some stage work, including a Tony-nominated performance in The Mighty Gents in the late 1970s, Freeman couldn't seem to break into movies like he wanted. When The Electric Company was canceled in 1976, Freeman saw himself staring at a career that was far from grounded. His personal life was hurting, too. Long before the show ended, Freeman found that his marriage had started to fall apart, and he began drinking too much. Freeman and Jeanette divorced in 1979.

A year after his divorce, Freeman's career caught a break when he landed a part as a crazed inmate in the Robert Redford film, Brubaker (1980). However, the steady stream of film work he hoped would follow did not materialize, and Freeman was forced to retreat back to television for two hard years on the cast of the soap opera Another World.

For much of the rest of the decade, Freeman took on roles that earned him some acclaim-but not the big, powerful jobs that would garner A-list attention. There was a part in the 1984 Paul Newman film Harry and Son, and he was narrator for the TV mini series, The Atlanta Child Murders among other roles.

Hollywood Star

In 1987, Freeman's fortunes changed when he was cast in the film Street Smart, which placed the actor on the screen as the volatile pimp Fast Black. The role proved to be huge success for Freeman, earning him an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor. Film critic Pauline Kael even went so far as to ask out loud, "Is Morgan Freeman the greatest American actor?" Two years later, Freeman earned more acclaim-a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor and a second Oscar nomination-as the kind-hearted but stubborn chauffeur in 1989's Driving Miss Daisy. That same year he also starred in Edward Zwick's critically acclaimed Glory,a drama about the 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment, which was one of the first recognized African-American units in the Civil War. By the 1990s, Freeman was riding high in his career, starring in such big budget films as 1994's The Shawshank Redemption, Seven (1995) and Deep Impact (1998).

With his booming voice and commanding presence, Freeman was a natural to play God in the 2003 comedy Bruce Almighty and its 2007 sequel Evan Almighty.

In 2005, Freeman won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor in Clint Eastwood's Million Dollar Baby. He later reprised his roles as Lucius Fox from Batman Begins (2005) for the blockbuster sequels The Dark Knight (2008) and The Dark Knight Rises (2012). He also appeared in Rob Reiner's The Bucket List (2007) and the action thriller Red (2010), costarring Bruce Willis.

At the 2012 Golden Globes, Freeman received the Cecil B. DeMille Award for "outstanding contributions to the world of entertainment."

"I like being eclectic," he has said about his film choices. "The more varied the better; the wider the range. I've been sucked into a kind of mold of a good guy and that's actually almost beyond my ability to control. But other than that, a good story and an interesting character is all I am looking for."

Freeman's eloquent, distinctive voice has also made him a natural for narration. His voice can be heard on such memorable films as War of the Worlds and the Academy Award-winning documentary March of the Penguins. In 2010 he also replaced Walter Cronkite's voice to introduce news anchor Katie Couric on the CBS Evening News.

In 2009, Freeman teamed up with Clint Eastwood again, playing the role of South African President Nelson Mandela in Invictus - the role earned him an Oscar nod for Best Actor. A few years later, he appeared in the action thriller Olympus Has Fallen (2013), the sci-fi film Oblivion (2013), the comedy Last Vegas (2013), the sci-fi blockbuster Lucy (2014) and did voice work for the animation The Lego Movie (2014). In 2015, he played the Chief Justice of the United States on the television show Madam Secretary, for which he is also an executive producer.

The following year in September 2016, President Barack Obama presented Freeman with a National Medal of Arts. At the ceremony, President Obama said Freeman was being honored "for his outstanding work as an actor, director, and narrator. His iconic stage and screen performances have brought to life characters from the whole spectrum of the human experience, moving audiences around the world, and influencing countless young artists."

Off Camera

While it may be a late-blooming success, it's nothing he's at all bitter about. "Success comes when it comes," he has said. "I had a career for 30 years; a 30-year career is not bad. I often think I'm probably lucky that I wasn't a wild success early on, coming up through the 1970s. I could have very easily burned out."

In 1997, Freeman co-founded the movie production company Revelations Entertainment, including its online movie distribution company, ClickStar. He has also launched a host of charitable endeavors. The actor, who resides in the Mississippi Delta, raised money for Katrina victims not long after the devastating hurricane ripped through the area. Through Rock River Foundation, an organization he started, Freeman's group has donated millions to educational programs. And in 2004 he helped organize relief funds for hurricane victims in Grenada. After hearing about the decline of honeybees and its devastating impact on the environment, Freeman turned his 124-acre ranch into a beekeeping sanctuary in July 2014.

Freeman's energy extends into other realms, too. In his home state of Mississippi, the actor co-founded a blues club in Clarksdale. In recent years Freeman also earned his pilot's license.

Freeman's personal life has experienced a bit of turbulence in recent years. He and his second wife, Myrna, split in 2007, and he was in a near-fatal car accident in Charleston, Mississippi the following year. But among his setbacks, none was as tragic than in August 2015, when he discovered that his step granddaughter, E'Dena Hines, whom he and Myrna had adopted, was murdered by her boyfriend in New York City.

"The world will never know her artistry and talent, and how much she had to offer," Freeman said in a statement to People. "Her friends and family were fortunate enough to have known what she meant as a person."

Yet, despite such difficult times, the actor has continued to work and shows no signs of slowing down. His choice of roles, as well as his off-the-screen demeanor, have earned him respect from even those not used to pouring out praise for their interview subjects.

"He's a delightful man," said Mike Wallace, who interviewed the actor for a 2006 piece on 60 Minutes. "He's a thoughtful man. He's in no sense a bitter man. He's still exploring his life and times. I have immense respect for Morgan Freeman."

Sexual Harassment Allegations

On May 24, 2018, CNN reported that eight women have accused Freeman of sexual harassment and inappropriate behavior. One of those women, a production assistant on his 2015 movie Going In Style, claims he "kept trying to lift up my skirt and asking if I was wearing underwear." Another of the alleged victims, a senior member of the production staff on 2013's Now You See Me, told CNN, "He did comment on our bodies... We knew that if he was coming by ... not to wear any top that would show our breasts, not to wear anything that would show our bottoms, meaning not wearing clothes that [were] fitted."

Freeman subsequently issued a statement: "Anyone who knows me or has worked with me knows I am not someone who would intentionally offend or knowingly make anyone feel uneasy. I apologize to anyone who felt uncomfortable or disrespected - that was never my intent."

A few days later, Freeman's lawyer sent a letter to CNN president Jeff Zucker, demanding a retraction and apology for the "malicious intent, falsehoods, sleight-of-hand, an absence of editorial control, and journalistic malpractice" that was "used to unjustly attack" his client. CNN promptly fired back with a statement which defended its reporting.

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Actor, director and narrator Morgan Freeman was born on June 1, 1937, in Memphis, Tennessee. The youngest of five children born to barber Morgan Porterfield Freeman, Sr. and schoolteacher Mayme Edna, Freeman was raised in Chicago and Mississippi in a low-income home.

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Bessie Coleman was the first African American woman to get her international pilot license

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In 1922, aviator Bessie Coleman became the first African American woman to stage a public flight in America. Her high-flying skills always wowed her audience.

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Ben Carson was the first doctor to separate twins joined at the head.

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Ben Carson journeyed from humble beginnings to become a gifted neurosurgeon, known for his work separating conjoined twins. He unsuccessfully ran for president and currently is serving as the United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, appointed by President Donald Trump. Learn more at Biography.com.

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He stole a Confederate ship full of weapons and escaped to freedom along with 8 other men, then delivered the ship to the Union.

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Long before he assumed the Oval Office, Barack Obama, advocating for a more equal America in the 21st century, said, "Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we've been waiting for. We are the change that we seek." Change has not come easily for Black Americans. Over the centuries, there have been countless proponents of equality- Frederick Douglass, Rosa Parks, and Martin Luther King, Jr. were so monumental that they're seared into our national tapestry. But, as significant as their efforts were, many more heroes throughout history gave their everything in the fight for racial justice, including, as you'll see, a man who sailed to freedom.

In 1862, the second bloody year of the American Civil War, a 22-year-old slave named Robert Smalls accomplished an unthinkable feat of cunning, deception, and bravery: he stole a ship. But it wasn't just any ship that this crafty young man decided to nab. No, he knew what he needed and had meticulously planned to get it. His vessel of choice was fully stocked with hundreds of rounds of ammunition, Howitzer guns and other weapons, and-most importantly-17 pieces of Confederate property, all of which were warm-blooded human beings enslaved by the prevailing zeitgeist of the American South.

Robert Smalls was born in Beaufort, South Carolina, in 1839. His mother Lydia served in the house of John McKee, her owner who was rumored to be Robert's father. Compared to slaves in the field, Lydia and Robert faced less horrific conditions, and this worried Lydia. She wanted her son to see and understand the savagery and inhumanity of enslavement, so Lydia, with presumably the heaviest of hearts, sent Robert into the fields to experience true slavery, whipping posts and all. This education forever changed Robert, igniting within him a spirit of defiance and rebellion that would later lead to a covert, nail-biting escape to freedom.

At the young age of 12, Robert moved (or, more accurately, was shipped) to Charleston, a harbor town on South Carolina's coast, and his love of the sea drew him toward the docks. His status as a white man's chattel notwithstanding, Robert proved himself as a worthy stevedore and seafarer, slowly gaining the trust of those holding him captive. His plan for freedom began to take shape in 1861, when Robert landed an assignment to steer the Planter, an armed Confederate steamship, and in May of the following year, he undertook a feat audacious and thrilling enough to make Jerry Bruckheimer or Robert Ludlum proud.

Constantly watched by the Planter's three white officers, Robert bided his time, toiling away around the jetties of the Atlantic while secretly scheming routes to freedom. On the fateful night of May 12, 1862, Robert got his chance and pounced on it, moving swiftly under the cover of darkness. The officers, who usually slept aboard the ship, had decided to stay the night ashore, leaving Robert and eight other enslaved crewmen aboard the Planter, which was moored in Charleston's Southern Wharf. In the absence of the officers, Robert quickly revealed his plan to the crewmen, most of whom decided to join him. One or two, depending on the historical source you choose, stayed behind to avoid the certain death that would await them if they were caught.

At around 2 o'clock in the morning, Robert donned the hat of the ship's captain and directed the crewmen to hoist the flags of both South Carolina and the Confederate. They set out and eased through the moonlit water, stopping only to pick up other slaves, including Robert's wife and children, at a nearby wharf. With Robert at the helm, the fugitives sailed through the perilous night, using the flags and signals from the ship's whistle, which Robert had memorized, as decoys to gain clearance from other Confederate ships in the harbor.

Near dawn, after passing the infamous Fort Sumter (the origin of all the bloodshed), Robert and his fellow escapees veered toward a fleet of Union ships blockading the harbor. As night began to fade over the war-torn coast, the Planter approached the trigger-happy ships from the North. The USS Onward first spotted the Confederate steamship. The Yankees nearly fired, but an Onward sailor saw, along with the flag of his enemy, another piece of fabric rippling in the day's first light: a white bed sheet, a symbol of surrender.

Robert Smalls, in one night, risked everything to free his wife and children, his crew, and their families. What's more, even after he was a free man, he continued to fight for justice and equality in the post-war United States as part of the South Carolina State legislature and later as a member of the US House of Representatives. He was a liberator-on water, in government, and in the minds of those who would follow in his footsteps-and his heroics deserve to be sung.

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Black History Unsung Heroes: Robert Smalls

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Long before he assumed the Oval Office, Barack Obama, advocating for a more equal America in the 21st century, said, "Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we've been waiting for. We are the change that we seek."

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Who Was Jackie Robinson?

Robinson became the first Black athlete to play Major League Baseball in the 20th century when he took the field for the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947. Throughout his decade-long career, Robinson distinguished himself as one of the game's most talented and exciting players, recording an impressive .311 career batting average. He was also a vocal civil rights activist.

Early Life

Jack Roosevelt Robinson was born on January 31, 1919, in Cairo, Georgia. The youngest of five children, Robinson was raised in relative poverty by a single mother.

He attended John Muir High School in Pasadena, California, and Pasadena Junior College, where he was an excellent athlete and played four sports: football, basketball, track and baseball. He was named the region's Most Valuable Player in baseball in 1938.

Robinson's older brother, Matthew, inspired Robinson to pursue his talent and love of athletics. Matthew won a silver medal in the 200-meter dash - just behind Jesse Owens - at the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin.

Robinson continued his education at UCLA where he became the university's first student to win varsity letters in four sports. In 1941, despite his athletic success, Robinson was forced to leave UCLA just shy of graduation due to financial hardship.

He moved to Honolulu, Hawaii, where he played football for the semi-professional Honolulu Bears. His season with the Bears was cut short when the United States entered into World War II.

U.S. Army

From 1942 to 1944, Robinson served as a second lieutenant in the United States Army. However, he never saw combat.

During boot camp at Fort Hood, Texas, Robinson was arrested and court-martialed in 1944 for refusing to give up his seat and move to the back of a segregated bus. Robinson's excellent reputation, combined with the efforts of friends, the NAACP and various Black newspapers, shed public light on the injustice.

Ultimately he was acquitted of the charges and received an honorable discharge. His courage and moral objection to racial segregation were precursors to the impact Robinson would have in Major League Baseball.

Wife and Children

In the early 1940s, Robinson met nurse-in-training Rachel Isum when they were both attending UCLA. The couple was married on February 10, 1946.

As Robinson made his career in the major leagues, the couple faced mounting racism, from insults to death threats. Later in life, both Jackie and Rachel became actively involved in the civil rights movement.

Jackie and Rachel had three children together: Jack, Sharon and David. Rachel said that she and Jackie went to great lengths to create a nurturing home that sheltered their kids from racism.

In 1971, the couple's oldest child, Jack Robinson Jr., died at the age of 24 in a car accident. Their middle child, Sharon Robinson, is an author and consultant for Major League Baseball, while their youngest child, David Robinson, is a coffee farmer in Tanzania.

Joining Major League Baseball

After his discharge from the Army in 1944, Robinson began to play baseball professionally. At the time, the sport was segregated, and African Americans and white people played in separate leagues.

Robinson began playing in the Negro Leagues, but he was soon chosen by Branch Rickey, president of the Brooklyn Dodgers, to help integrate Major League Baseball. He joined the all-white Montreal Royals, a farm team for the Brooklyn Dodgers, in 1946. Robinson later moved to Florida to begin spring training with the Royals.

Rickey knew there would be difficult times ahead for the young athlete, and so made Robinson promise to not fight back when confronted with racism. Rickey also personally tested Robinson's reactions to the racial slurs and insults he knew the player would endure.

Brooklyn Dodgers

From the beginning of his career with the Dodgers, Robinson's will was tested. Some of his new teammates objected to having an African American on their team. People in the crowds sometimes jeered Robinson, and he and his family received threats.

Despite the racial abuse, particularly at away games, Robinson had an outstanding start with the Royals, leading the International League with a .349 batting average and .985 fielding percentage. His successful year led to his promotion to join the Dodgers.

Robinson played his first game at Ebbets Field for the Brooklyn Dodgers on April 15, 1947, making history as the first Black athlete to play Major League Baseball in the 20th century.

The harassment continued, however, most notably by the Philadelphia Phillies and their manager, Ben Chapman. During one infamous game, Chapman and his team shouted derogatory terms at Robinson from their dugout.

Many players on opposing teams threatened not to play against the Dodgers. Even his own teammates threatened to sit out.

But Dodgers manager Leo Durocher informed them that he would sooner trade them than Robinson. His loyalty to the player set the tone for the rest of Robinson's career with the team.

Others defended Robinson's right to play in the major leagues, including League President Ford Frick, Baseball Commissioner Happy Chandler, Jewish baseball star Hank Greenberg and Dodgers shortstop and team captain Pee Wee Reese.

In one incident, while fans harassed Robinson from the stands, Reese walked over and put his arm around his teammate, a gesture that has become legendary in baseball history.

DOWNLOAD BIOGRAPHY'S JACKIE ROBINSON FACT CARD

Rookie of the Year

Robinson succeeded in putting the prejudice and racial strife aside and showed everyone what a talented player he was. In his first year, he batted .297 with 12 home runs and helped the Dodgers win the National League pennant.

That year, Robinson led the National League in stolen bases and was selected as Rookie of the Year. He continued to wow fans and critics alike with impressive feats, such as an outstanding .342 batting average during the 1949 season. He led in stolen bases that year and earned the National League's Most Valuable Player Award.

Robinson soon became a hero of the sport, even among former critics, and was the subject of the popular song, "Did You See Jackie Robinson Hit That Ball?" His success in the major leagues opened the door for other African American players, such as Satchel Paige, Willie Mays, and Hank Aaron.

Stats

An exceptional base runner, Robinson stole home 19 times in his career, setting a league record. In 1955, he helped the Dodgers win the World Series. Before he retired, he became the highest-paid athlete in Dodgers' history.

Over the course of his career in Major League Baseball, from 1947 to 1956, Robinson achieved the following stats:

* .311 batting average (AVG)

* 137 home runs (HR)

* 4877 times at bat (AB)

* 1518 hits (H)

* 734 runs batted in (RBI)

* 197 stolen bases (SB)

* .409 on-base percentage (OBP)

* .883 on-base plus slugging (OPS)

World Series

In his decade-long career with the Dodgers, Robinson and his team won the National League pennant several times. Finally, in 1955, he helped them achieve the ultimate victory: winning the World Series.

After failing before in four other series matchups, the Dodgers beat the New York Yankees. He helped the team win one more National League pennant the following season.

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Robinson became the first Black athlete to play Major League Baseball in the 20th century when he took the field for the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947. Throughout his decade-long career, Robinson distinguished himself as one of the game's most talented and exciting players, recording an impressive .311 career batting average.

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lena horne

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Biography: Historical & Celebrity Profiles

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Read exclusive biographies, watch videos & discover fascinating stories about your favorite icons, musicians, authors & historical figures.

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Alejandro Sanchez (Remember me Life Oak Cliff?!)

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Alejandro Sanchez (Remember me Life Oak Cliff?!)

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Nelson Mandela
Anti-Apartheid activist located in South Africa

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Angela Davis, whose work is a rallying cry for wide-ranging social change, is known as a prominent activist and scholar. Learn more at Biography.com.

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Quick Facts
"Music is a gift and a burden I've had since I can remember who I was. I was, born into music. The decision was how to make the best use of it.""How can you be an artist and not reflect the times? That to me is the definition of an artist.""The America I'd dreamed of through the '60s seemed like a bad joke, with Nixon in the White House and the black revolution replaced by disco."

Name

Nina Simone

Occupation

Author, Civil Rights Activist, Singer, Pianist

Birth Date

February 21, 1933

Death Date

April 21, 2003

Education

The Juilliard School

Place of Birth

Tryon, North Carolina

Place of Death

Carry-le-Rouet, France

AKA

Nina Simone

Eunice Waymon

Full Name

Eunice Kathleen Waymon

Who Was Nina Simone?

Born on February 21, 1933, in Tryon, North Carolina, Nina Simone studied classical piano at the Juilliard School in New York City, but left early when she ran out of money. Performing in night clubs, she turned her interest to jazz, blues and folk music and released her first album in 1957, scoring a Top 20 hit with the track "I Loves You Porgy." In the '60s, Simone expanded her repertory in exemplary fashion while becoming identified as a leading voice of the Civil Rights Movement. She later lived abroad and experienced major mental health and financial issues, though she enjoyed a career resurgence in the 1980s. Simone died in France on April 21, 2003.

Background and Early Life

Born Eunice Kathleen Waymon on February 21, 1933, in Tryon, North Carolina, Nina Simone took to music at an early age, learning to play piano at the age of 3 and singing in her church's choir. Simone's musical training over the years emphasized classical repertory along the lines of Beethoven and Brahms, with Simone later expressing the desire to have been recognized as the first major African-American concert pianist. Her music teacher helped establish a special fund to pay for Simone's education and, after finishing high school, the same fund was used to send the pianist to New York City's famed Juilliard School of Music to train.

Simone taught piano and worked as an accompanist for other performers while at Juilliard, but she eventually had to leave school after she ran out of funds. Moving to Philadelphia, Simone lived with her family there in order to save money and go to a more affordable music program. Her career took an unexpected turn, however, when she was rejected from the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia; she later claimed the school denied her admittance because she was African-American.

Turning away from classical music, she started playing American standards, jazz and blues in Atlantic City clubs in the 1950s. Before long, she started singing along with her music at the behest of a bar owner. She took the stage name Nina Simone-"Nina," derived from the Spanish word "niña," came from a nickname used by her then boyfriend, while "Simone" was inspired by French actress Simone Signoret. The performer eventually won over such fans as writers Langston Hughes, Lorraine Hansberry and James Baldwin.

Innovative Fusion of Styles

Simone began recording her music in the late 1950s under the Bethlehem label, releasing her first full album in 1957, which featured "Plain Gold Ring" and the title track, "Little Girl Blue." It also included her lone Top 20 pop hit with her version of "I Loves You Porgy," from the George and Ira Gershwin musical Porgy and Bess.

Under different labels, Simone released a bevy of albums from the late '50s throughout the '60s and early '70s, including records like The Amazing Nina Simone (1959), Nina Simone Sings Ellington! (1962), Wild Is the Wind (1966) and Silk and Soul (1967). She also made cover songs of popular music, eventually putting her own spin on such songs as Bob Dylan's "The Times They Are A-Changin'" and the Beatles' "Here Comes the Sun." And she showed her sensual side with tracks like "Take Care of Business" on 1965's I Put a Spell on You and "I Want a Little Sugar in My Bowl" on 1967's Nina Simone Sings the Blues.

In many ways, Simone's music defied standard definitions. Her classical training showed through, no matter what genre of song she played, and she drew from a well of sources that included gospel, pop and folk. She was often called the "High Priestess of Soul," but she hated that nickname. She didn't like the label of "jazz singer," either. "If I had to be called something, it should have been a folk singer because there was more folk and blues than jazz in my playing," she later wrote in her autobiography.

Prominent Civil Rights Singer

By the mid-1960s, Simone became known as the voice of the Civil Rights Movement. She wrote "Mississippi Goddam" in response to the 1963 assassination of Medgar Evers and the Birmingham church bombing that killed four young African-American girls. She also penned "Four Women," chronicling the complex histories of a quartet of African-American female figures, and "Young, Gifted and Black," borrowing the title of a play by Hansberry, which became a popular anthem. After the assassination of Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968, Simone's bassist Greg Taylor penned "Why (The King of Love Is Dead)," which was performed by the singer and her band at the Westbury Music Festival.

During the '60s, Simone had prominent hits in England as well with "I Put a Spell on You," "Ain't Got No-I Got Life/Do What You Gotta Do" and "To Love Somebody," with the latter penned by Barry and Robin Gibb and originally performed by their group the Bee Gees.

Struggles and Career Renaissance

As the 1960s drew to a close, Simone tired of the American music scene and the country's deeply divided racial politics. Having been neighbors with Malcolm X and Betty Shabazz in Mount Vernon, New York, she later lived in several different countries, including Liberia, Switzerland, England and Barbados before eventually settling down in the South of France. For years, Simone also struggled with severe mental health issues and her finances, and clashed with managers, record labels and the Internal Revenue Service.

Simone, who had taken a break from recording in the mid-70s, returned in 1978 with the album Baltimore, with the title track a cover version of a Randy Newman tune. Critics gave the album a warm reception, but it did not fare well commercially.

Simone went through a career renaissance in the 1980s when her song "My Baby Just Cares For Me" was used in a Chanel No. 5 perfume commercial in the United Kingdom. The song thus became a Top 10 hit in Britain in 1985. She also penned her autobiography, I Put a Spell on You, which was published in 1991. Her next recording, A Single Woman, came out in 1993.

Touring periodically, Simone maintained a strong fan base that filled concert halls whenever she performed. In 1998, she appeared in the New York tri-state area, her first trip there in five years, specifically playing at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center in Newark. The New York Times critic Jon Pareles reviewed the concert, noting that "there is still power in her voice" and that the show featured "a beloved sound, a celebrated personality, and a repertory that magnifies them both." That same year, Simone attended South African leader Nelson Mandela's 80th birthday celebration.

Death and Legacy

In 1999, Simone performed at the Guinness Blues Festival in Dublin, Ireland. She was joined on stage by her daughter Lisa Simone Kelly for a few songs. Lisa, from Simone's second marriage to manager Andrew Stroud, followed in her mother's footsteps. Among an array of performance accomplishments, she has appeared on Broadway in Aida, using the stage name "Simone."

In her final years, reports indicated that Nina Simone was battling breast cancer. She died at the age of 70 on April 21, 2003, at her home in Carry-le-Rouet, France.

While she may be gone, Simone left a lasting impression on the world of music, art and activism. She sang to share her truth, and her work still resonates with great emotion and power. Simone has inspired an array of performers, including Aretha Franklin, Laura Nyro, Joni Mitchell, Lauryn Hill and Meshell Ndegeocello. Her deep, distinctive voice continues to be a popular choice for television and film soundtracks.

Two documentaries on the musician's life were released in 2015: The Amazing Nina Simone, directed by Jeff L. Lieberman, and What Happened, Miss Simone?, from Netflix. The latter project was directed by Liz Garbus and offered commentary from daughter Lisa and ex-husband Stroud, among others. In addition to glorious musicianship, the project detailed troubling aspects of Simone's life, including the abuse she endured from her ex-husband and in turn the abuse daughter Lisa endured from her mother. What Happened, Miss Simone? later received an Oscar nomination for best documentary. In a turn of controversial casting, Simone was also depicted by actress Zoe Saldana in the 2016 biopic Nina.

In 2016, with Simone's childhood home in Tryon on the market, four African-American artists teamed up to purchase the structure, fearing it would be demolished. Two years later, the National Trust for Historic Preservation designated the house a "national treasure," thereby protecting it from demolition, with the organization reportedly intent on finding ways to restore it for use by future artists.

Fact Check

We strive for accuracy and fairness. If you see something that doesn't look right, contact us!

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The National Trust for Historic Preservation named Nina Simone's childhood home a national treasure; it was saved from demolition in 2016. The singer and Civil Rights activist experienced major mental health & financial issues before dying in France in 2003.

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Who Was Rosa Parks?

Rosa Parks was a civil rights leader whose refusal to give up her seat to a white passenger on a segregated bus led to the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Her bravery led to nationwide efforts to end racial segregation. Parks was awarded the Martin Luther King Jr. Award by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Gold Medal.

Early Life and Family

Parks was born Rosa Louise McCauley on February 4, 1913, in Tuskegee, Alabama. Her parents, James and Leona McCauley, separated when Parks was two. Parks' mother moved the family to Pine Level, Alabama, to live with her parents, Rose and Sylvester Edwards. Both of Parks' grandparents were formerly enslaved people and strong advocates for racial equality; the family lived on the Edwards' farm, where Parks would spend her youth.

Parks' childhood brought her early experiences with racial discrimination and activism for racial equality. In one experience, Parks' grandfather stood in front of their house with a shotgun while Ku Klux Klan members marched down the street.
READ MORE: 16 Rosa Parks Quotes About Civil Rights
Education

Throughout Parks' education, she attended segregated schools. Taught to read by her mother at a young age, Parks attended a segregated, one-room school in Pine Level, Alabama, that often lacked adequate school supplies such as desks. African American students were forced to walk to the first through sixth-grade schoolhouse, while the city of Pine Level provided bus transportation as well as a new school building for white students.

Beginning at age 11, Parks attended the city's Industrial School for Girls in Montgomery. In 1929, while in the 11th grade and attending a laboratory school for secondary education led by the Alabama State Teachers College for Negroes, Parks left school to attend to both her sick grandmother and mother back in Pine Level.

Parks didn't return to her studies. Instead, she got a job at a shirt factory in Montgomery. After marrying in 1932, she earned her high school degree in 1933 with her husband's support.

Marriage

In 1932, at age 19, Parks met and married Raymond Parks, a barber and an active member of the NAACP.

After graduating high school with Raymond's support, Parks became actively involved in civil rights issues by joining the Montgomery chapter of the NAACP in 1943, serving as the chapter's youth leader as well as secretary to NAACP President E.D. Nixon - a post she held until 1957. The couple never had children.

Arrest

On December 1, 1955, Parks was arrested for refusing a bus driver's instructions to give up her seat to a white passenger. She later recalled that her refusal wasn't because she was physically tired, but that she was tired of giving in.

After a long day's work at a Montgomery department store, where she worked as a seamstress, Parks boarded the Cleveland Avenue bus for home. She took a seat in the first of several rows designated for "colored" passengers.

The Montgomery City Code required that all public transportation be segregated and that bus drivers had the "powers of a police officer of the city while in actual charge of any bus for the purposes of carrying out the provisions" of the code. While operating a bus, drivers were required to provide separate but equal accommodations for white and Black passengers by assigning seats.

This was accomplished with a line roughly in the middle of the bus separating white passengers in the front of the bus and African American passengers in the back. When an African American passenger boarded the bus, they had to get on at the front to pay their fare and then get off and re-board the bus at the back door.

As the bus Parks was riding continued on its route, it began to fill with white passengers. Eventually, the bus was full and the driver noticed that several white passengers were standing in the aisle. The bus driver stopped the bus and moved the sign separating the two sections back one row, asking four Black passengers to give up their seats.

The city's bus ordinance didn't specifically give drivers the authority to demand a passenger to give up a seat to anyone, regardless of color. However, Montgomery bus drivers had adopted the custom of moving back the sign separating Black and white passengers and, if necessary, asking Black passengers to give up their seats to white passengers. If the Black passenger protested, the bus driver had the authority to refuse service and could call the police to have them removed.

Three of the other Black passengers on the bus complied with the driver, but Parks refused and remained seated. The driver demanded, "Why don't you stand up?" to which Parks replied, "I don't think I should have to stand up." The driver called the police and had her arrested.

The police arrested Parks at the scene and charged her with violation of Chapter 6, Section 11, of the Montgomery City Code. She was taken to police headquarters, where, later that night, she was released on bail.

Montgomery Bus Boycott

Members of the African American community were asked to stay off city buses on Monday, December 5, 1955 - the day of Parks' trial - in protest of her arrest. People were encouraged to stay home from work or school, take a cab or walk to work. With most of the African American community not riding the bus, organizers believed a longer boycott might be successful. The Montgomery Bus Boycott, as it came to be known, was a huge success, lasting for 381 days and ending with a Supreme Court ruling declaring segregation on public transit systems to be unconstitutional.

Nixon began forming plans to organize a boycott of Montgomery's city buses on December 1, the evening that Parks was arrested. Ads were placed in local papers, and handbills were printed and distributed in Black neighborhoods.

On the morning of December 5, a group of leaders from the African American community gathered at the Mt. Zion Church in Montgomery to discuss strategies and determined that their boycott effort required a new organization and strong leadership. They formed the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA), electing Montgomery newcomer King as minister of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church. The MIA believed that Parks' case provided an excellent opportunity to take further action to create real change.

When Parks arrived at the courthouse for trial that morning with her attorney, Fred Gray, she was greeted by a bustling crowd of around 500 local supporters, who rooted her on. Following a 30-minute hearing, Parks was found guilty of violating a local ordinance and was fined $10, as well as a $4 court fee.

Inarguably the biggest event of the day, however, was what Parks' trial had triggered. The city's buses were, by and large, empty. Some people carpooled and others rode in African American-operated cabs, but most of the estimated 40,000 African American commuters living in the city at the time had opted to walk to work that day - some as far as 20 miles.

Due to the size and scope of, and loyalty to, boycott participation, the effort continued for several months. The city of Montgomery had become a victorious eyesore, with dozens of public buses sitting idle, ultimately severely crippling finances for its transit company. With the boycott's progress, however, came strong resistance.

Some segregationists retaliated with violence. Black churches were burned, and both King and E.D. Nixon's homes were destroyed by bombings. Still, further attempts were made to end the boycott. The insurance was canceled for the city taxi system that was used by African Americans. Black citizens were arrested for violating an antiquated law prohibiting boycotts.

In response to the ensuing events, members of the African American community took legal action. Armed with the Brown v. Board of Education decision, which stated that separate but equal policies had no place in public education, a Black legal team took the issue of segregation on public transit systems to the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Alabama, Northern (Montgomery) Division. Parks' attorney, Fred Gray, filed the suit.

In June 1956, the district court declared racial segregation laws (also known as "Jim Crow laws") unconstitutional. The city of Montgomery appealed the court's decision shortly thereafter, but on November 13, 1956, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the lower court's ruling, declaring segregation on public transport to be unconstitutional.

With the transit company and downtown businesses suffering financial loss and the legal system ruling against them, the city of Montgomery had no choice but to lift its enforcement of segregation on public buses, and the boycott officially ended on December 20, 1956. The combination of legal action, backed by the unrelenting determination of the African American community, made the Montgomery Bus Boycott one of the largest and most successful mass movements against racial segregation in history.

DOWNLOAD BIOGRAPHY'S ROSA PARKS FACT CARD

Life After the Bus Boycott

Although she had become a symbol of the Civil Rights Movement, Parks suffered hardship in the months following her arrest in Montgomery and the subsequent boycott. She lost her department store job and her husband was fired after his boss forbade him to talk about his wife or their legal case.

Unable to find work, they eventually left Montgomery and moved to Detroit, Michigan along with Parks' mother. There, Parks made a new life for herself, working as a secretary and receptionist in U.S. Representative John Conyer's congressional office. She also served on the board of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America.

In 1987, with longtime friend Elaine Eason Steele, Parks founded the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self-Development. The organization runs "Pathways to Freedom" bus tours, introducing young people to important civil rights and Underground Railroad sites throughout the country.
READ MORE: Rosa Parks' Life After the Montgomery Bus Boycott
Autobiography and Memoir

In 1992, Parks published Rosa Parks: My Story, an autobiography recounting her life in the segregated South. In 1995, she published Quiet Strength, which includes her memoirs and focuses on the role that religious faith played throughout her life.

Outkast Song

In 1998, the hip-hop group Outkast released a song, "Rosa Parks," which shot up to the top 100 on the Billboard music charts the following year. The song featured the chorus:
"Ah-ha, hush that fuss. Everybody move to the back of the bus."
In 1999, Parks filed a lawsuit against the group and its label alleging defamation and false advertising because Outkast used Parks' name without her permission. Outkast said the song was protected by the First Amendment and did not violate Parks' publicity rights.

In 2003, a judge dismissed the defamation claims. Parks' lawyer soon refiled based on the false advertising claims for using her name without permission, seeking over $5 billion.

On April 14, 2005, the case was settled. Outkast and co-defendants SONY BMG Music Entertainment, Arista Records LLC and LaFace Records admitted no wrongdoing but agreed to work with the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute to develop educational programs that "enlighten today's youth about the significant role Rosa Parks played in making America a better place for all races," according to a statement released at the time.

Death

On October 24, 2005, Parks quietly died in her apartment in Detroit, Michigan at the age of 92. She had been diagnosed the previous year with progressive dementia, which she had been suffering from since at least 2002.

Parks' death was marked by several memorial services, among them, lying in honor at the Capitol Rotunda in Washington, D.C., where an estimated 50,000 people viewed her casket. She was interred between her husband and mother at Detroit's Woodlawn Cemetery, in the chapel's mausoleum. Shortly after her death, the chapel was renamed the Rosa L. Parks Freedom Chapel.

Accomplishments and Awards

Parks received many accolades during her lifetime, including the Spingarn Medal, the NAACP's highest award, and the prestigious Martin Luther King Jr. Award.

On September 15, 1996, President Bill Clinton awarded Parks the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest honor given by the United States' executive branch. The following year, she was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal, the highest award given by the U.S. legislative branch.

TIME magazine named Parks on its 1999 list of "The 20 Most Influential People of the 20th Century."

Remembering Rosa Parks

Museum and Park

In 2000, Troy University created the Rosa Parks Museum, located at the site of her arrest in downtown Montgomery, Alabama. In 2001, the city of Grand Rapids, Michigan, consecrated Rosa Parks Circle, a 3.5-acre park designed by Maya Lin, an artist and architect best known for designing the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington, D.C.

Movie on Rosa Parks' Life

A biographical movie starring Angela Bassett and directed by Julie Dash, The Rosa Parks Story, was released in 2002. The movie won the 2003 NAACP Image Award, Christopher Award and Black Reel Award.

Commemorative Stamp

February 4, 2013 marked what would have been Parks' 100th birthday. In celebration, a commemorative U.S. Postal Service stamp, called the Rosa Parks Forever stamp and featuring a rendition of the famed activist, debuted.

Statue

Also in February 2013, President Barack Obama unveiled a statue designed by Robert Firmin and sculpted by Eugene Daub honoring Parks in the nation's Capitol building. He remembered Parks, according to The New York Times, by saying "In a single moment, with the simplest of gestures, she helped change America and change the world. . . . And today, she takes her rightful place among those who shaped this nation's course."
Watch "Rosa Parks: Mother Of A Movement" on History Vault

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Rosa Parks was a civil rights activist who refused to surrender her seat to a white passenger on a segregated bus in Montgomery, Alabama. Her defiance sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Its success launched nationwide efforts to end racial segregation of public facilities.

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Dorothy Height....She was an activist

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Who Was Martin Luther King Jr?

Martin Luther King Jr. was a Baptist minister and civil-rights activist who had a seismic impact on race relations in the United States, beginning in the mid-1950s.

Among his many efforts, King headed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). Through his activism and inspirational speeches, he played a pivotal role in ending the legal segregation of African American citizens in the United States, as well as the creation of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

King won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964, among several other honors. He continues to be remembered as one of the most influential and inspirational African American leaders in history.

Early Life

Born as Michael King Jr. on January 15, 1929, Martin Luther King Jr. was the middle child of Michael King Sr. and Alberta Williams King.

The King and Williams families had roots in rural Georgia. Martin Jr.'s grandfather, A.D. Williams, was a rural minister for years and then moved to Atlanta in 1893.

He took over the small, struggling Ebenezer Baptist church with around 13 members and made it into a forceful congregation. He married Jennie Celeste Parks and they had one child that survived, Alberta.

Martin Sr. came from a family of sharecroppers in a poor farming community. He married Alberta in 1926 after an eight-year courtship. The newlyweds moved to A.D.'s home in Atlanta.

Martin Sr. stepped in as pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church upon the death of his father-in-law in 1931. He too became a successful minister and adopted the name Martin Luther King Sr. in honor of the German Protestant religious leader Martin Luther. In due time, Michael Jr. would follow his father's lead and adopt the name himself.
READ MORE: Martin Luther King Jr. and Martin Luther: The Parallels Between the Two Leaders
King had an older sister, Willie Christine, and a younger brother, Alfred Daniel Williams King. The King children grew up in a secure and loving environment. Martin Sr. was more the disciplinarian, while his wife's gentleness easily balanced out the father's strict hand.

Though they undoubtedly tried, King's parents couldn't shield him completely from racism. Martin Sr. fought against racial prejudice, not just because his race suffered, but because he considered racism and segregation to be an affront to God's will. He strongly discouraged any sense of class superiority in his children which left a lasting impression on Martin Jr.

Growing up in Atlanta, Georgia, King entered public school at age five. In May 1936 he was baptized, but the event made little impression on him.

In May 1941, King was 12 years old when his grandmother, Jennie, died of a heart attack. The event was traumatic for King, more so because he was out watching a parade against his parents' wishes when she died. Distraught at the news, young King jumped from a second-story window at the family home, allegedly attempting suicide.

King attended Booker T. Washington High School, where he was said to be a precocious student. He skipped both the ninth and eleventh grades, and entered Morehouse College in Atlanta at age 15, in 1944. He was a popular student, especially with his female classmates, but an unmotivated student who floated through his first two years.

Although his family was deeply involved in the church and worship, King questioned religion in general and felt uncomfortable with overly emotional displays of religious worship. This discomfort continued through much of his adolescence, initially leading him to decide against entering the ministry, much to his father's dismay.

But in his junior year, King took a Bible class, renewed his faith and began to envision a career in the ministry. In the fall of his senior year, he told his father of his decision.

Education and Spiritual Growth

In 1948, King earned a sociology degree from Morehouse College and attended the liberal Crozer Theological Seminary in Chester, Pennsylvania. He thrived in all his studies, and was valedictorian of his class in 1951, and elected student body president. He also earned a fellowship for graduate study.

But King also rebelled against his father's more conservative influence by drinking beer and playing pool while at college. He became involved with a white woman and went through a difficult time before he could break off the affair.

During his last year in seminary, King came under the guidance of Morehouse College President Benjamin E. Mays who influenced King's spiritual development. Mays was an outspoken advocate for racial equality and encouraged King to view Christianity as a potential force for social change. After being accepted at several colleges for his doctoral study, King enrolled at Boston University.

During the work on his doctorate, King met Coretta Scott, an aspiring singer and musician at the New England Conservatory school in Boston. They were married in June 1953 and had four children, Yolanda, Martin Luther King III, Dexter Scott and Bernice.

In 1954, while still working on his dissertation, King became pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church of Montgomery, Alabama. He completed his Ph.D. and earned his degree in 1955. King was only 25 years old.

Montgomery Bus Boycott

On March 2, 1955, a 15-year-old girl refused to give up her seat to a white man on a Montgomery city bus in violation of local law. Teenager Claudette Colvin was then arrested and taken to jail.

At first, the local chapter of the NAACP felt they had an excellent test case to challenge Montgomery's segregated bus policy. But then it was revealed that Colvin was pregnant and civil rights leaders feared this would scandalize the deeply religious Black community and make Colvin (and, thus the group's efforts) less credible in the eyes of sympathetic white people.

On December 1, 1955, they got another chance to make their case. That evening, 42-year-old Rosa Parks boarded the Cleveland Avenue bus to go home after an exhausting day at work. She sat in the first row of the "colored" section in the middle of the bus. As the bus traveled its route, all the seats in the white section filled up, then several more white passengers boarded the bus.

The bus driver noted that there were several white men standing and demanded that Parks and several other African Americans give up their seats. Three other African American passengers reluctantly gave up their places, but Parks remained seated.

The driver asked her again to give up her seat and again she refused. Parks was arrested and booked for violating the Montgomery City Code. At her trial a week later, in a 30-minute hearing, Parks was found guilty and fined $10 and assessed $4 court fee.

On the night that Parks was arrested, E.D. Nixon, head of the local NAACP chapter met with King and other local civil rights leaders to plan a Montgomery Bus Boycott. King was elected to lead the boycott because he was young, well-trained with solid family connections and had professional standing. But he was also new to the community and had few enemies, so it was felt he would have strong credibility with the Black community.

In his first speech as the group's president, King declared, "We have no alternative but to protest. For many years we have shown an amazing patience. We have sometimes given our white brothers the feeling that we liked the way we were being treated. But we come here tonight to be saved from that patience that makes us patient with anything less than freedom and justice."

King's skillful rhetoric put new energy into the civil rights struggle in Alabama. The bus boycott involved 382 days of walking to work, harassment, violence, and intimidation for Montgomery's African American community. Both King's and Nixon's homes were attacked.

But the African American community also took legal action against the city ordinance arguing that it was unconstitutional based on the Supreme Court's "separate is never equal" decision in Brown v. Board of Education. After being defeated in several lower court rulings and suffering large financial losses, the city of Montgomery lifted the law mandating segregated public transportation.

Southern Christian Leadership Conference

Flush with victory, African American civil rights leaders recognized the need for a national organization to help coordinate their efforts. In January 1957, King, Ralph Abernathy and 60 ministers and civil rights activists founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference to harness the moral authority and organizing power of Black churches. They would help conduct non-violent protests to promote civil rights reform.

King's participation in the organization gave him a base of operation throughout the South, as well as a national platform. The organization felt the best place to start to give African Americans a voice was to enfranchise them in the voting process. In February 1958, the SCLC sponsored more than 20 mass meetings in key southern cities to register Black voters in the South. King met with religious and civil rights leaders and lectured all over the country on race-related issues.

In 1959, with the help of the American Friends Service Committee, and inspired by Mahatma Gandhi's success with non-violent activism, King visited Gandhi's birthplace in India. The trip affected him in a profound way, increasing his commitment to America's civil rights struggle.

African American civil rights activist Bayard Rustin, who had studied Gandhi's teachings, became one of King's associates and counseled him to dedicate himself to the principles of nonviolence. Rustin served as King's mentor and advisor throughout his early activism and was the main organizer of the 1963 March on Washington.
READ MORE: How Martin Luther King Jr. Took Inspiration From Gandhi Nonviolence
But Rustin was also a controversial figure at the time, being a homosexual with alleged ties to the Communist Party. Though his counsel was invaluable to King, many of his other supporters urged him to distance himself from Rustin.

DOWNLOAD BIOGRAPHY'S MARTIN LUTHER KING JR. FACT CARD

Greensboro Sit-In

In February 1960, a group of African American students in North Carolina began what became known as the Greensboro sit-in movement.

The students would sit at racially segregated lunch counters in the city's stores. When asked to leave or sit in the colored section, they just remained seated, subjecting themselves to verbal and sometimes physical abuse.

The movement quickly gained traction in several other cities. In April 1960, the SCLC held a conference at Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina with local sit-in leaders. King encouraged students to continue to use nonviolent methods during their protests.

Out of this meeting, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee formed and for a time, worked closely with the SCLC. By August of 1960, the sit-ins had been successful in ending segregation at lunch counters in 27 southern cities.

By 1960, King was gaining national exposure. He returned to Atlanta to become co-pastor with his father at Ebenezer Baptist Church but also continued his civil rights efforts.

On October 19, 1960, King and 75 students entered a local department store and requested lunch-counter service but were denied. When they refused to leave the counter area, King and 36 others were arrested.

Realizing the incident would hurt the city's reputation, Atlanta's mayor negotiated a truce and charges were eventually dropped. But soon after, King was imprisoned for violating his probation on a traffic conviction.

The news of his imprisonment entered the 1960 presidential campaign when candidate John F. Kennedy made a phone call to Coretta Scott King. Kennedy expressed his concern for King's harsh treatment for the traffic ticket and political pressure was quickly set in motion. King was soon released.

Letter from Birmingham Jail

In the spring of 1963, King organized a demonstration in downtown Birmingham, Alabama. With entire families in attendance, city police turned dogs and fire hoses on demonstrators.

King was jailed along with large numbers of his supporters, but the event drew nationwide attention. However, King was personally criticized by Black and white clergy alike for taking risks and endangering the children who attended the demonstration.

In his famous Letter from Birmingham Jail, King eloquently spelled out his theory of non-violence: "Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community, which has constantly refused to negotiate, is forced to confront the issue."

'I Have a Dream' Speech

By the end of the Birmingham campaign, King and his supporters were making plans for a massive demonstration on the nation's capital composed of multiple organizations, all asking for peaceful change.

On August 28, 1963, the historic March on Washington drew more than 200,000 people in the shadow of the Lincoln Memorial. It was here that King made his famous "I Have a Dream" speech, emphasizing his belief that someday all men could be brothers

"I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character." - Martin Luther King, Jr. / "I Have A Dream" speech, August 28, 1963

The rising tide of civil rights agitation produced a strong effect on public opinion. Many people in cities not experiencing racial tension began to question the nation's Jim Crow laws and the near-century of second-class treatment of African American citizens.
READ MORE: Martin Luther King Jr.'s Famous Speech Almost Didn't Have the Phrase 'I Have a Dream'
Nobel Peace Prize

This resulted in the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, authorizing the federal government to enforce desegregation of public accommodations and outlawing discrimination in publicly owned facilities. This also led to King receiving the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964.

King's struggle continued throughout the 1960s. Often, it seemed as though the pattern of progress was two steps forward and one step back.

On March 7, 1965, a civil rights march, planned from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama's capital, turned violent as police with nightsticks and tear gas met the demonstrators as they tried to cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge.

King was not in the march, however, the attack was televised showing horrifying images of marchers being bloodied and severely injured. Seventeen demonstrators were hospitalized in a day that would be called " Bloody Sunday."

A second march was canceled due to a restraining order to prevent the march from taking place. A third march was planned and this time King made sure he was part of it. Not wanting to alienate southern judges by violating the restraining order, a different approach was taken.

On March 9, 1965, a procession of 2,500 marchers, both Black and white, set out once again to cross the Pettus Bridge and confronted barricades and state troopers. Instead of forcing a confrontation, King led his followers to kneel in prayer and they then turned back.

Alabama governor George Wallace continued to try to prevent another march until President Lyndon B. Johnson pledged his support and ordered U.S. Army troops and the Alabama National Guard to protect the protestors.

On March 21, approximately 2,000 people began a march from Selma to Montgomery, the state capitol. On March 25, the number of marchers, which had grown to an estimated 25,000, gathered in front of the state capitol where King delivered a televised speech. Five months after the historic peaceful protest, President Johnson signed the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

From late 1965 through 1967, King expanded his civil rights efforts into other larger American cities, including Chicago and Los Angeles. But he met with increasing criticism and public challenges from young Black power leaders.

King's patient, non-violent approach and appeal to white middle-class citizens alienated many Black militants who considered his methods too weak, too late and ineffective.

To address this criticism, King began making a link between discrimination and poverty, and he began to speak out against the Vietnam War. He felt that America's involvement in Vietnam was politically untenable and the government's conduct in the war discriminatory to the poor. He sought to broaden his base by forming a multi-racial coalition to address the economic and unemployment problems of all disadvantaged people.

Who Killed Martin Luther King Jr.?

By 1968, the years of demonstrations and confrontations were beginning to wear on King. He had grown tired of marches, going to jail, and living under the constant threat of death. He was becoming discouraged at the slow progress of civil rights in America and the increasing criticism from other African American leaders.

Plans were in the works for another march on Washington to revive his movement and bring attention to a widening range of issues. In the spring of 1968, a labor strike by Memphis sanitation workers drew King to one last crusade.

On April 3, he gave his final and what proved to be an eerily prophetic speech, "I've Been to the Mountaintop," in which he told supporters at the Mason Temple in Memphis, "I've seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight that we, as a people, will get to the promised land."

The next day, while standing on a balcony outside his room at the Lorraine Motel, Martin Luther King Jr. was killed by a sniper's bullet. The shooter, a malcontent drifter and former convict named James Earl Ray, was eventually apprehended after a two-month, international manhunt.

The assassination sparked riots and demonstrations in more than 100 cities across the country. In 1969, Ray pleaded guilty to assassinating King and was sentenced to 99 years in prison. He died in prison on April 23, 1998.

READ MORE: The Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.
Legacy

King's life had a seismic impact on race relations in the United States. Years after his death, he is the most widely known African American leader of his era.

His life and work have been honored with a national holiday, schools and public buildings named after him, and a memorial on Independence Mall in Washington, D.C.

But his life remains controversial as well. In the 1970s, FBI files, released under the Freedom of Information Act, revealed that he was under government surveillance, and suggested his involvement in adulterous relationships and communist influences.

Over the years, extensive archival studies have led to a more balanced and comprehensive assessment of his life, portraying him as a complex figure: flawed, fallible and limited in his control over the mass movements with which he was associated, yet a visionary leader who was deeply committed to achieving social justice through nonviolent means.

Martin Luther King Jr. Day

In 1983, President Ronald Reagan signed into law a bill creating Martin Luther King Jr. Day, a federal holiday honoring the legacy of the slain civil rights leader.

Martin Luther King Jr. Day was first celebrated in 1986, and in all 50 states in 2000.

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Martin Luther King Jr. was a Baptist minister and civil-rights activist who had a seismic impact on race relations in the United States, beginning in the mid-1950s. Among his many efforts, King headed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC).

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Roy Wilkins was a 20th century journalist and activist who became the leader of the NAACP and was a key figure of the Civil Rights Movement.

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In the 1960s, Gloria Richardson led the Cambridge Movement, a fight for civil rights in Cambridge, Maryland. Learn more about her life and her struggle at Biography.com.

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Toni Morrison, original name Chloe Anthony Wofford, (born February 18, 1931, Lorain, Ohio, U.S.-died August 5, 2019, Bronx, New York), American writer noted for her examination of Black experience (particularly Black female experience) within the Black community. She received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993.

Morrison grew up in the American Midwest in a family that possessed an intense love of and appreciation for Black culture. Storytelling, songs, and folktales were a deeply formative part of her childhood. She attended Howard University (B.A., 1953) and Cornell University (M.A., 1955). After teaching at Texas Southern University for two years, she taught at Howard from 1957 to 1964. In 1965 Morrison became a fiction editor at Random House, where she worked for a number of years. In 1984 she began teaching writing at the State University of New York at Albany, which she left in 1989 to join the faculty of Princeton University; she retired in 2006.
(Read W.E.B. Du Bois' 1926 Britannica essay on African American literature.)
Morrison's first book, The Bluest Eye (1970), is a novel of initiation concerning a victimized adolescent Black girl who is obsessed by white standards of beauty and longs to have blue eyes. In 1973 a second novel, Sula, was published; it examines (among other issues) the dynamics of friendship and the expectations for conformity within the community. Song of Solomon (1977) is told by a male narrator in search of his identity; its publication brought Morrison to national attention. Tar Baby (1981), set on a Caribbean island, explores conflicts of race, class, and sex.

The critically acclaimed Beloved (1987), which won a Pulitzer Prize for fiction, is based on the true story of a runaway slave who, at the point of recapture, kills her infant daughter in order to spare her a life of slavery. A film adaptation of the novel was released in 1998 and starred Oprah Winfrey. In addition, Morrison wrote the libretto for Margaret Garner (2005), an opera about the same story that inspired Beloved.
(Read Henry Louis Gates, Jr.'s Britannica essay on "Monuments of Hope.")
In 1992 Morrison released Jazz, a story of violence and passion set in New York City's Harlem during the 1920s. Subsequent novels were Paradise (1998), a richly detailed portrait of a Black utopian community in Oklahoma, and Love (2003), an intricate family story that reveals the myriad facets of love and its ostensible opposite. A Mercy (2008) deals with slavery in 17th-century America. In the redemptive Home (2012), a traumatized Korean War veteran encounters racism after returning home and later overcomes apathy to rescue his sister. In God Help the Child (2015), Morrison chronicled the ramifications of child abuse and neglect through the tale of Bride, a Black girl with dark skin who is born to light-skinned parents.

A work of criticism, Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination, was published in 1992. Many of Morrison's essays and speeches were collected in What Moves at the Margin: Selected Nonfiction (2008; edited by Carolyn C. Denard) and The Source of Self-Regard: Selected Essays, Speeches, and Meditations (2019). She and her son, Slade Morrison, cowrote a number of children's books, including the Who's Got Game? series, The Book About Mean People (2002), and Please, Louise (2014). She also penned Remember (2004), which chronicles the hardships of Black students during the integration of the American public school system; aimed at children, it uses archival photographs juxtaposed with captions speculating on the thoughts of their subjects. For that work, Morrison won the Coretta Scott King Award in 2005.

The central theme of Morrison's novels is the Black American experience; in an unjust society, her characters struggle to find themselves and their cultural identity. Her use of fantasy, her sinuous poetic style, and her rich interweaving of the mythic gave her stories great strength and texture. In 2010 Morrison was made an officer of the French Legion of Honour. Two years later she was awarded the U.S. Presidential Medal of Freedom. Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am (2019) is a documentary about her life and career.

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Toni Morrison | Biography, Books, Beloved, The Bluest Eye, & Facts

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Toni Morrison, original name Chloe Anthony Wofford, (born February 18, 1931, Lorain, Ohio, U.S.-died August 5, 2019, Bronx, New York), American writer noted for her examination of Black experience (particularly Black female experience) within the Black community. She received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993.

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Who Was Harriet Tubman?

Born into slavery in Maryland, Harriet Tubman escaped to freedom in the North in 1849 to become the most famous "conductor" on the Underground Railroad. Tubman risked her life to lead hundreds of family members and other slaves from the plantation system to freedom on this elaborate secret network of safe houses. A leading abolitionist before the American Civil War, Tubman also helped the Union Army during the war, working as a spy among other roles.

After the Civil War ended, Tubman dedicated her life to helping impoverished former slaves and the elderly. In honor of her life and by popular demand, in 2016, the U.S. Treasury Department announced that Tubman will replace Andrew Jackson on the center of a new $20 bill.

Early Life and Family

Tubman's date of birth is unknown, although it probably occurred between 1820 and 1825. She was one of nine children born between 1808 and 1832 to enslaved parents in Dorchester County, Maryland. Her mother, Harriet "Rit" Green, was owned by Mary Pattison Brodess. Her father, Ben Ross, who was owned by Anthony Thompson (Thompson and Brodess eventually married).

Originally named Araminta Harriet Ross, Tubman was nicknamed "Minty" by her parents. Araminta changed her name to Harriet around the time of her marriage, possibly to honor her mother.

Tubman's early life was full of hardship. Mary Brodess' son Edward sold three of Tubman's sisters to distant plantations, severing the family. When a trader from Georgia approached Brodess about buying Rit's youngest son, Moses, Rit successfully resisted the further fracturing of her family, setting a powerful example for her young daughter.

Physical violence was a part of daily life for Tubman and her family. The violence she suffered early in life caused permanent physical injuries. Tubman later recounted a particular day when she was lashed five times before breakfast. She carried the scars for the rest of her life.

The most severe injury occurred when Tubman was an adolescent. Sent to a dry-goods store for supplies, she encountered a slave who had left the fields without permission. The man's overseer demanded that Tubman help restrain the runaway. When Tubman refused, the overseer threw a two-pound weight that struck her in the head. Tubman endured seizures, severe headaches and narcoleptic episodes for the rest of her life. She also experienced intense dream states, which she classified as religious experiences.

The line between freedom and slavery was hazy for Tubman and her family. Tubman's father, Ben, was freed from slavery at the age of 45, as stipulated in the will of a previous owner. Nonetheless, Ben had few options but to continue working as a timber estimator and foreman for his former owners.

Although similar manumission stipulations applied to Rit and her children, the individuals who owned the family chose not to free them. Despite his free status, Ben had little power to challenge their decision.

Husbands and Children

In 1844, Harriet married a free black man named John Tubman. At the time around half of the African American people on the eastern shore of Maryland were free, and was not unusual for a family to include both free and enslaved people.

Little is known about John or his marriage to Harriet, including whether and how long they lived together. Any children they might have had would have been considered enslaved, since the mother's status dictated that of any offspring. John declined to make the voyage on the Underground Railroad with Harriet, preferring to stay in Maryland with a new wife.

In 1869, Tubman married a Civil War veteran named Nelson Davis. In 1874, the couple adopted a baby girl named Gertie.

The Underground Railroad

Between 1850 and 1860, Tubman made 19 trips from the South to the North following the network known as the Underground Railroad. She guided more than 300 people, including her parents and several siblings, from slavery to freedom, earning the nickname "Moses" for her leadership.

Tubman first encountered the Underground Railroad when she used it to escape slavery herself in 1849. Following a bout of illness and the death of her owner, Tubman decided to escape slavery in Maryland for Philadelphia. She feared that her family would be further severed and was concerned for her own fate as a sickly slave of low economic value.

Two of her brothers, Ben and Harry, accompanied her on September 17, 1849. However, after a notice was published in the Cambridge Democrat offering a $300 reward for the return of Araminta, Harry and Ben had second thoughts and returned to the plantation. Tubman had no plans to remain in bondage. Seeing her brothers safely home, she soon set off alone for Pennsylvania.

Making use of the Underground Railroad, Tubman traveled nearly 90 miles to Philadelphia. She crossed into the free state of Pennsylvania with a feeling of relief and awe, and recalled later: "When I found I had crossed that line, I looked at my hands to see if I was the same person. There was such a glory over everything; the sun came like gold through the trees, and over the fields, and I felt like I was in Heaven."

Rather than remaining in the safety of the North, Tubman made it her mission to rescue her family and others living in slavery via the Underground Railroad. In December 1850, Tubman received a warning that her niece Kessiah was going to be sold, along with her two young children. Kessiah's husband, a free black man named John Bowley, made the winning bid for his wife at an auction in Baltimore. Tubman then helped the entire family make the journey to Philadelphia. This was the first of many trips by Tubman.

The dynamics of escaping slavery changed in 1850, with the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law. This law stated that escaped slaves could be captured in the North and returned to slavery, leading to the abduction of former slaves and free blacks living in Free States. Law enforcement officials in the North were compelled to aid in the capture of slaves, regardless of their personal principles.

In response to the law, Tubman re-routed the Underground Railroad to Canada, which prohibited slavery categorically. In December 1851, Tubman guided a group of 11 fugitives northward. There is evidence to suggest that the party stopped at the home of abolitionist and former slave Frederick Douglass.

In April 1858, Tubman was introduced to the abolitionist John Brown, who advocated the use of violence to disrupt and destroy the institution of slavery. Tubman shared Brown's goals and at least tolerated his methods. Tubman claimed to have had a prophetic vision of Brown before they met.

When Brown began recruiting supporters for an attack on slaveholders at Harper's Ferry, he turned to "General Tubman" for help. After Brown's subsequent execution, Tubman praised him as a martyr.

Tubman remained active during the Civil War. Working for the Union Army as a cook and nurse, Tubman quickly became an armed scout and spy. The first woman to lead an armed expedition in the war, she guided the Combahee River Raid, which liberated more than 700 slaves in South Carolina.
READ MORE: How Harriet Tubman and William Still Helped the Underground Railroad

Photo: Benjamin F. Powelson Collection of the National Museum of African American History and Culture shared with the Library of Congress, 2017.30.4

Later Life

In early 1859, abolitionist Senator William H. Seward sold Tubman a small piece of land on the outskirts of Auburn, New York. The land in Auburn became a haven for Tubman's family and friends. Tubman spent the years following the war on this property, tending to her family and others who had taken up residence there.

Despite Tubman's fame and reputation, she was never financially secure. Tubman's friends and supporters were able to raise some funds to support her. One admirer, Sarah H. Bradford, wrote a biography entitled Scenes in the Life of Harriet Tubman, with the proceeds going to Tubman and her family.

Tubman continued to give freely in spite of her economic woes. In 1903, she donated a parcel of her land to the African Methodist Episcopal Church in Auburn. The Harriet Tubman Home for the Aged opened on this site in 1908.
READ MORE: Inside Harriet Tubman's Life of Service After the Underground Railroad
Death

Tubman died of pneumonia on March 10, 1913, surrounded by friends and family, at around the age of 93. As Tubman aged, the head injuries sustained early in her life became more painful and disruptive. She underwent brain surgery at Boston's Massachusetts General Hospital to alleviate the pains and "buzzing" she experienced regularly. Tubman was eventually admitted into the rest home named in her honor. She was buried with military honors at Fort Hill Cemetery in Auburn.

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Legacy

Widely known and well-respected while she was alive, Tubman became an American icon in the years after she died. A survey at the end of the 20th century named her as one of the most famous civilians in American history before the Civil War, third only to Betsy Ross and Paul Revere. She continues to inspire generations of Americans struggling for civil rights.

When Tubman died, the city of Auburn commemorated her life with a plaque on the courthouse. Tubman was celebrated in many other ways throughout the nation in the 20th century. Dozens of schools were named in her honor, and both the Harriet Tubman Home in Auburn and the Harriet Tubman Museum in Cambridge serve as monuments to her life.

A 1978 movie, A Woman Called Moses, commemorated her life and career, and the 2019 film Harriet chronicled Tubman's service as a conductor for the Underground Railroad.

Tubman on the New $20 Bill

In April 2016, the U.S. Treasury Department announced that Tubman would replace Jackson on the center of a new $20 bill. The announcement came after the Treasury Department received a groundswell of public comments, following Women on 20s' campaign calling for a notable American woman to appear on U.S. currency. The decision was celebrated, as Tubman devoted her life to racial equality and fought for women's rights.

In June 2015, Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew was criticized for saying that it was likely a woman would appear on the $10 bill, which features a portrait of Alexander Hamilton, the influential founding father who found renewed popularity because of the hit Broadway musical Hamilton. The ultimate decision to have Tubman replace Jackson, a slaveholder who played a role in the removal of Native Americans from their land, was widely praised.

The unveiling of the new $20 bill featuring Tubman was planned for 2020 to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the 19th amendment, which gave women the right to vote. However, in May 2019, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin announced that no new designs will be unveiled until 2026 at the earliest due to what he called counterfeiting issues. In June, the Treasury Department's inspector general said that it would look into why the launch had been delayed.

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Born into slavery in Maryland, Harriet Tubman escaped to freedom in the North in 1849 to become the most famous "conductor" on the Underground Railroad. Tubman risked her life to lead hundreds of family members and other slaves from the plantation system to freedom on this elaborate secret network of safe houses.

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https://www.biography.com/people/sojourner-truth-9511284

Learn more about abolitionist and women's rights activist Sojourner Truth, including her famous speech, on Biography.com.

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Barbara C. Jordan - Black History - HISTORY.com

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Find out more about the history of Barbara C. Jordan, including videos, interesting articles, pictures, historical features and more. Get all the facts on HISTORY.com

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Hosea Williams was Martin Luther King Jr.'s trusted officer of the SCLC during the Civil Rights Movement, and later led Georgia's biggest civil rights march.

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Who Was Malcolm X?

Malcolm X was a minister, human rights activist and prominent Black nationalist leader who served as a spokesman for the Nation of Islam during the 1950s and 1960s. Due largely to his efforts, the Nation of Islam grew from a mere 400 members at the time he was released from prison in 1952 to 40,000 members by 1960.

A naturally gifted orator, Malcolm X exhorted Black people to cast off the shackles of racism "by any means necessary," including violence. The fiery civil rights leader broke with the Nation of Islam shortly before his assassination in 1965 at the Audubon Ballroom in Manhattan, where he had been preparing to deliver a speech.

Early Life and Family

Malcolm X was born on May 19, 1925, in Omaha, Nebraska. He was the fourth of eight children born to Louise, a homemaker, and Earl Little, a preacher who was also an active member of the local chapter of the Universal Negro Improvement Association and avid supporter of Black nationalist leader Marcus Garvey.

Due to Earl Little's civil rights activism, the family was subjected to frequent harassment from white supremacist groups including the Ku Klux Klan and one of its splinter factions, the Black Legion. In fact, Malcolm Little had his first encounter with racism before he was even born.

"When my mother was pregnant with me, she told me later, 'a party of hooded Ku Klux Klan riders galloped up to our home,'" Malcolm later remembered. "Brandishing their shotguns and rifles, they shouted for my father to come out."

The harassment continued when Malcolm was four years old, and local Klan members smashed all of the family's windows. To protect his family, Earl Little moved them from Omaha to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in 1926 and then to Lansing, Michigan, in 1928.

However, the racism the family encountered in Lansing proved even greater than in Omaha. Shortly after the Littles moved in, a racist mob set their house on fire in 1929, and the town's all-white emergency responders refused to do anything.

"The white police and firemen came and stood around watching as the house burned to the ground," Malcolm X later remembered. Earl Little moved the family to East Lansing where he built a new home.

Two years later, in 1931, Earl Little's dead body was discovered lying across the municipal streetcar tracks. Although Malcolm X's family believed his father was murdered by white supremacists from whom he had received frequent death threats, the police officially ruled Earl Little's death a streetcar accident, thereby voiding the large life insurance policy he had purchased in order to provide for his family in the event of his death.

Malcolm X's mother never recovered from the shock and grief over her husband's death. In 1937, she was committed to a mental institution where she remained for the next 26 years. Malcolm and his siblings were separated and placed in foster homes.

Education

In 1938, Malcolm was kicked out of school and sent to a juvenile detention home in Mason, Michigan. The white couple who ran the home treated him well, but he wrote in his autobiography that he was treated more like a "pink poodle" or a "pet canary" than a human being.

He attended Mason High School where he was one of only a few Black students. He excelled academically and was well-liked by his classmates, who elected him class president.

A turning point in Malcolm Little's childhood came in 1939 when his English teacher asked him what he wanted to be when he grew up and he answered that he wanted to be a lawyer. His teacher responded, "One of life's first needs is for us to be realistic ... you need to think of something you can be ... why don't you plan on carpentry?"

Having thus been told in no uncertain terms that there was no point in a Black child pursuing education, Malcolm X dropped out of school the following year, at the age of 15.

After quitting school, Malcolm X moved to Boston to live with his older half-sister, Ella, about whom he later recalled, "She was the first really proud Black woman I had ever seen in my life. She was plainly proud of her very dark skin. This was unheard of among Negroes in those days."

Ella landed Malcolm a job shining shoes at the Roseland Ballroom. However, out on his own on the streets of Boston, Malcolm X became acquainted with the city's criminal underground and soon turning to selling drugs.

He got another job as kitchen help on the Yankee Clipper train between New York and Boston and fell further into a life of drugs and crime. Sporting flamboyant pinstriped zoot suits, he frequented nightclubs and dance halls and turned more fully to crime to finance his lavish lifestyle.

Time in Jail

In 1946, Malcolm X was arrested on charges of larceny and sentenced to 10 years in jail. To pass the time during his incarceration, he read constantly, devouring books from the prison library in an attempt make up for the years of education he had missed by dropping out of high school.

Also while in prison, Malcolm was visited by several siblings who had joined the Nation of Islam, a small sect of Black Muslims who embraced the ideology of Black nationalism - the idea that in order to secure freedom, justice and equality, Black Americans needed to establish their own state entirely separate from white Americans.

He changed his name to Malcolm X and converted to the Nation of Islam before his release from prison in 1952.

Nation of Islam

Now a free man, Malcolm X traveled to Detroit, Michigan, where he worked with the leader of the Nation of Islam, Elijah Muhammad, to expand the movement's following among Black Americans nationwide.

Malcolm X became the minister of Temple No. 7 in Harlem and Temple No. 11 in Boston, while also founding new temples in Hartford and Philadelphia. In 1960, he established a national newspaper, Muhammad Speaks, in order to further promote the message of the Nation of Islam.

Articulate, passionate and an inspirational orator, Malcolm X exhorted Black people to cast off the shackles of racism "by any means necessary," including violence. "You don't have a peaceful revolution. You don't have a turn-the-cheek revolution," he said. "There's no such thing as a nonviolent revolution."

His militant proposals - a violent revolution to establish an independent Black nation - won Malcolm X large numbers of followers as well as many fierce critics. Due primarily to the efforts of Malcolm X, the Nation of Islam grew from a mere 400 members at the time he was released from prison in 1952, to 40,000 members by 1960.

DOWNLOAD BIOGRAPHY'S MALCOLM X FACT CARD

Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr.

By the early 1960s, Malcolm X had emerged as a leading voice of a radicalized wing of the civil rights movement, presenting a dramatic alternative to Martin Luther King Jr.'s vision of a racially-integrated society achieved by peaceful means.

Dr. King was highly critical of what he viewed as Malcolm X's destructive demagoguery. "I feel that Malcolm has done himself and our people a great disservice," King once said.

Becoming a Mainstream Sunni Muslim

A rupture with Elijah Muhammad proved much more traumatic. In 1963, Malcolm X became deeply disillusioned when he learned that his hero and mentor had violated many of his own teachings, most flagrantly by carrying on many extramarital affairs; Muhammad had, in fact, fathered several children out of wedlock.

Malcolm's feelings of betrayal, combined with Muhammad's anger over Malcolm's insensitive comments regarding the assassination of John F. Kennedy, led Malcolm X to leave the Nation of Islam in 1964.

That same year, Malcolm X embarked on an extended trip through North Africa and the Middle East. The journey proved to be both a political and spiritual turning point in his life. He learned to place the American civil rights movement within the context of a global anti-colonial struggle, embracing socialism and pan-Africanism.

Malcolm X also made the Hajj, the traditional Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca, Saudi Arabia, during which he converted to traditional Islam and again changed his name, this time to El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz.

After his epiphany at Mecca, Malcolm X returned to the United States less angry and more optimistic about the prospects for a peaceful resolution to America's race problems. "The true brotherhood I had seen had influenced me to recognize that anger can blind human vision," he said. "America is the first country ... that can actually have a bloodless revolution."

Assassination

Just as Malcolm X appeared to be embarking on an ideological transformation with the potential to dramatically alter the course of the civil rights movement, he was assassinated.

On February 21, 1965, Malcolm X took the stage for a speech at the Audubon Ballroom in Manhattan. He had just begun addressing the room when multiple men rushed the stage and began firing guns.

Struck numerous times at close range, Malcolm X was declared dead after arriving at a nearby hospital. Three members of the Nation of Islam were tried and sentenced to life in prison for murdering the activist.
READ MORE: The Assassination of Malcolm X

The Autobiography of Malcolm X

In the early 1960s, Malcolm X began working with acclaimed author Alex Haley on an autobiography. The book details Malcolm X's life experiences and his evolving views on racial pride, Black nationalism and pan-Africanism.

The Autobiography of Malcolm X was published in 1965 after his assassination to near-universal praise. The New York Times called it a "brilliant, painful, important book," and Time magazine listed it as one of the 10 most influential nonfiction books of the 20th century.

Movies

Malcolm X has been the subject of numerous movies, stage plays and other works, and has been portrayed by actors like James Earl Jones, Morgan Freeman and Mario Van Peebles.

In 1992, Spike Lee directed Denzel Washington in the title role of his movie Malcolm X. Both the film and Washington's portrayal of Malcolm X received wide acclaim and were nominated for several awards, including two Academy Awards.

Wife and Children

Malcolm X married Betty Shabazz in 1958. The couple had six daughters.

Legacy

In the immediate aftermath of Malcolm X's death, commentators largely ignored his recent spiritual and political transformation and criticized him as a violent rabble-rouser.

But especially after the publication of The Autobiography of Malcolm X, he will be remembered for underscoring the value of a truly free populace by demonstrating the great lengths to which human beings will go to secure their freedom.

"Power in defense of freedom is greater than power in behalf of tyranny and oppression," he said. "Because power, real power, comes from our conviction which produces action, uncompromising action."

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Malcolm X was a minister, human rights activist and prominent Black nationalist leader who served as a spokesman for the Nation of Islam during the 1950s and 1960s. Due largely to his efforts, the Nation of Islam grew from a mere 400 members at the time he was released from prison in 1952 to 40,000 members by 1960.

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Who Was Muhammad Ali?

Muhammad Ali was a boxer, philanthropist and social activist who is universally regarded as one of the greatest athletes of the 20th century. Ali became an Olympic gold medalist in 1960 and the world heavyweight boxing champion in 1964.

Following his suspension for refusing military service, Ali reclaimed the heavyweight title two more times during the 1970s, winning famed bouts against Joe Frazier and George Foreman along the way. Diagnosed with Parkinson's disease in 1984, Ali devoted much of his time to philanthropy, earning the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2005.

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Early Life

Born Cassius Clay, Muhammad Ali was born on January 17, 1942, in Louisville, Kentucky. His birth name was Cassius Marcellus Clay Jr.

At an early age, young Cassius Clay showed that he wasn't afraid of any bout - inside or outside of the ring. Growing up in the segregated South, he experienced racial prejudice and discrimination firsthand.

At the age of 12, Clay discovered his talent for boxing through an odd twist of fate. After his bike was stolen, Clay told a police officer, Joe Martin, that he wanted to beat up the thief.

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"Well, you better learn how to fight before you start challenging people," Martin reportedly told him at the time. In addition to being a police officer, Martin also trained young boxers at a local gym.

Clay started working with Martin to learn how to spar and soon began his boxing career. In his first amateur bout in 1954, he won the fight by split decision.

Clay went on to win the 1956 Golden Gloves tournament for novices in the light heavyweight class. Three years later, he won the National Golden Gloves Tournament of Champions, as well as the Amateur Athletic Union's national title for the light heavyweight division.

Olympic Gold

In 1960, Clay won a spot on the U.S. Olympic boxing team, and traveled to Rome, Italy, to compete. At six feet, three inches tall, Clay was an imposing figure in the ring, but he also became known for his lightning speed and fancy footwork. After winning his first three bouts, Clay defeated Zbigniew Pietrzkowski of Poland to win the light heavyweight Olympic gold medal.

After his Olympic victory, Clay was heralded as an American hero. He soon turned professional with the backing of the Louisville Sponsoring Group and continued overwhelming all opponents in the ring.

Conversion to Islam

Cassius Clay joined the black Muslim group Nation of Islam in 1964. At first he called himself Cassius X before settling on the name Muhammad Ali. The boxer eventually converted to orthodox Islam during the 1970s.

Vietnam and Supreme Court Case

Ali started a different kind of fight with his outspoken views against the Vietnam War.

Drafted into the military in April 1967, he refused to serve on the grounds that he was a practicing Muslim minister with religious beliefs that prevented him from fighting. He was arrested for committing a felony and almost immediately stripped of his world title and boxing license.

The U.S. Department of Justice pursued a legal case against Ali, denying his claim for conscientious objector status. He was found guilty of violating Selective Service laws and sentenced to five years in prison in June 1967 but remained free while appealing his conviction.

Unable to compete professionally in the meantime, Ali missed more than three prime years of his athletic career. Ali returned to the ring in 1970 with a win over Jerry Quarry, and the U.S. Supreme Court eventually overturned the conviction in June 1971.

Muhammad Ali: Record

Muhammad Ali had a career record of 56 wins, five losses and 37 knockouts before his retirement from boxing in 1981 at the age of 39.

Fights

Often referring to himself as "The Greatest," Ali was not afraid to sing his own praises. He was known for boasting about his skills before a fight and for his colorful descriptions and phrases.

In one of his more famously quoted descriptions, Ali told reporters that he could "float like a butterfly, sting like a bee" in the boxing ring. A few of his more well-known matches include the following:

Sonny Liston

After winning gold at the 1960 Olympics, Ali took out British heavyweight champion Henry Cooper in 1963. He then knocked out Sonny Liston in 1964 to become the heavyweight champion of the world.

Joe Frazier

In 1971, Ali took on Joe Frazier in what has been called the "Fight of the Century." Frazier and Ali went toe-to-toe for 14 rounds before Frazier dropped Ali with a vicious left hook in the 15th. Ali recovered quickly, but the judges awarded the decision to Frazier, handing Ali his first professional loss after 31 wins.

After suffering a loss to Ken Norton, Ali beat Frazier in a 1974 rematch.

In 1975, Ali and Frazier locked horns again for their grudge match in Quezon City, Philippines. Dubbed the "Thrilla in Manila," the bout nearly went the distance, with both men delivering and absorbing tremendous punishment. However, Frazier's trainer threw in the towel after the 14th round, giving the hard-fought victory to Ali.

George Foreman

Another legendary Ali fight took place in 1974 against undefeated heavyweight champion George Foreman. Billed as the "Rumble in the Jungle," the bout was organized by promoter Don King and held in Kinshasa, Zaire.

For once, Ali was seen as the underdog to the younger, massive Foreman, but he silenced his critics with a masterful performance. He baited Foreman into throwing wild punches with his "rope-a-dope" technique, before stunning his opponent with an eighth-round knockout to reclaim the heavyweight title.

Leon Spinks

After losing his title to Leon Spinks in February 1978, Ali defeated him in a September 1978 rematch, becoming the first boxer to win the heavyweight championship three times.

Larry Holmes

Following a brief retirement, Ali returned to the ring to face Larry Holmes in 1980 but was overmatched against the younger champion.

Following one final loss in 1981, to Trevor Berbick, the boxing great retired from the sport at age 39.

Spouse and Children

Ali was married four times and had nine children, including two children he fathered outside of marriage.

Ali married his first wife, Sonji Roi, in 1964; they divorced after one year when she refused to adopt the Nation of Islam dress and customs.

Ali married his second wife, 17-year-old Belinda Boyd, in 1967. Boyd and Ali had four children together: Maryum, born in 1969; Jamillah and Liban, both born in 1970; and Muhammad Ali Jr.; born in 1972. Boyd and Ali divorced in 1976.

At the same time Ali was married to Boyd, he traveled openly with Veronica Porche, who became his third wife in 1977. The pair had two daughters together, including Laila Ali, who followed in Ali's footsteps by becoming a champion boxer. Porche and Ali divorced in 1986.

Ali married his fourth and final wife Yolanda ("Lonnie") in 1986. The pair had known each other since Lonnie was just six and Ali was 21; their mothers were best friends and raised their families on the same street. Ali and Lonnie couple remained married until his death and had one son together, Asaad.

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Parkinson's Diagnosis

In 1984, Ali announced that he had Parkinson's disease, a degenerative neurological condition.

Despite the progression of Parkinson's and the onset of spinal stenosis, he remained active in public life. Ali raised funds for the Muhammad Ali Parkinson Center in Phoenix, Arizona. And he was on hand to celebrate the inauguration of the first African-American president in January 2009, when Barack Obama was sworn into office.

A few years before his death, Ali underwent surgery for spinal stenosis, a condition causing the narrowing of the spine, which limited his mobility and ability to communicate.

Philanthropy

In his retirement, Ali devoted much of his time to philanthropy. Over the years, Ali supported the Special Olympics and the Make-A-Wish Foundation, among other organizations. In 1996, he lit the Olympic cauldron at the Summer Olympic Games in Atlanta, an emotional moment in sports history.

Ali traveled to numerous countries, including Mexico and Morocco, to help out those in need. In 1998, he was chosen to be a United Nations Messenger of Peace because of his work in developing nations.

Awards

In 2005, Ali received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President George W. Bush.

Soon after Obama's 2009 inauguration, Ali received the President's Award from the NAACP for his public service efforts.

Muhammad Ali Center

Ali opened the Muhammad Ali Center in his hometown of Louisville, Kentucky, in 2005.

"I am an ordinary man who worked hard to develop the talent I was given," he said. "Many fans wanted to build a museum to acknowledge my achievements. I wanted more than a building to house my memorabilia. I wanted a place that would inspire people to be the best that they could be at whatever they chose to do, and to encourage them to be respectful of one another."

Movie

Actor Will Smith played Ali in the biopic film Ali, released in 2001.

Photo: Michael Cooper/Getty Images

Death

Ali died on June 3, 2016, in Phoenix, Arizona, after being hospitalized for what was reportedly a respiratory issue. He was 74 years old.

The boxing legend had been suffering from Parkinson's disease and spinal stenosis. In early 2015, the athlete battled pneumonia and was hospitalized for a severe urinary tract infection.

Funeral and Memorial Service

Years before his passing, Ali had planned his own memorial services, saying he wanted to be "inclusive of everyone, where we give as many people an opportunity that want to pay their respects to me," according to a family spokesman.

The three-day event, which took place in Ali's hometown of Louisville, Kentucky, included an "I Am Ali" festival of public arts, entertainment and educational offerings sponsored by the city, an Islamic prayer program and a memorial service.

Prior to the memorial service, a funeral procession traveled 20 miles through Louisville, past Ali's childhood home, his high school, the first boxing gym where he trained and along Ali Boulevard as tens of thousands of fans tossed flowers on his hearse and cheered his name.

The champ's memorial service was held at the KFC Yum Center arena with close to 20,000 people in attendance. Speakers included religious leaders from various faiths, Attallah Shabazz, Malcom X's eldest daughter, broadcaster Bryant Gumbel, former President Bill Clinton, comedian Billy Crystal, Ali's daughters Maryum and Rasheda and his widow Lonnie.

"Muhammad indicated that when the end came for him, he wanted us to use his life and his death as a teaching moment for young people, for his country and for the world," Lonnie said. "In effect, he wanted us to remind people who are suffering that he had seen the face of injustice. That he grew up during segregation, and that during his early life he was not free to be who he wanted to be. But he never became embittered enough to quit or to engage in violence."

Former President Clinton spoke about how Ali found self-empowerment: "I think he decided, before he could possibly have worked it all out, and before fate and time could work their will on him, he decided he would not ever be disempowered. He decided that not his race nor his place, the expectations of others, positive, negative or otherwise would strip from him the power to write his own story. "

Crystal, who was a struggling comedian when he became friends with Ali, said of the boxing legend: "Ultimately, he became a silent messenger for peace, who taught us that life is best when you build bridges between people, not walls."

"You have inspired us and the world to be the best version of ourselves,' Rasheda Ali spoke to her father. 'May you live in paradise free from suffering. You shook up the world in life now you're shaking up the world in death. Now you are free to be with your creator. We love you so much Daddy. Until we meet again, fly butterfly, fly."

Pallbearers included Will Smith and former heavyweight champions Mike Tyson and Lennox Lewis. Ali was buried at the Cave Hill National Cemetery in Louisville.

Ali's stature as a legend continues to grow even after his death. He is celebrated not only for his remarkable athletic skills but for his willingness to speak his mind and his courage to challenge the status quo.

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Muhammad Ali was a boxer, philanthropist and social activist who is universally regarded as one of the greatest athletes of the 20th century. Ali became an Olympic gold medalist in 1960 and the world heavyweight boxing champion in 1964.

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William Edward Burghardt Du Bois (February 23, 1868 - August 27, 1963) was an American civil rights activist, leader, Pan-Africanist, sociologist, educator, historian, writer, editor, poet, and scholar. He was born and raised in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. He had two children with his wife, Nina Gomer. He became a naturalized citizen of Ghana in 1963 at the age of 95 - the year of his death.

As Activist

In 1905, Du Bois was a founder and general secretary of the Niagara Movement, an African American protest group of scholars and professionals. Du Bois founded and edited the Moon (1906) and the Horizon (1907-1910) as organs for the Niagara Movement.

In 1909, Du Bois was among the founders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and from 1910 to 1934 served it as director of publicity and research, a member of the board of directors, and founder and editor of The Crisis, its monthly magazine.

In The Crisis, Du Bois directed a constant stream of agitation-often bitter and sarcastic-at white Americans while serving as a source of information and pride to African Americans. The magazine always published young African American writers. Racial protest during the decade following World War I focused on securing anti-lynching legislation. During this period the NAACP was the leading protest organization and Du Bois its leading figure.

In 1934, Du Bois resigned from the NAACP board and from The Crisis because of his new advocacy of an African American nationalist strategy that ran in opposition to the NAACP's commitment to integration. However, he returned to the NAACP as director of special research from 1944 to 1948. During this period, he was active in placing the grievances of African Americans before the United Nations, serving as a consultant to the UN founding convention (1945) and writing the famous "An Appeal to the World" (1947).

Du Bois identified as a socialist and belonged to the Socialist Party from 1910 to 1912.

As Scholar

Du Bois's life and work were an inseparable mixture of scholarship, protest activity, and polemics. All of his efforts were geared toward gaining equal treatment for black people in a world dominated by whites and toward marshaling and presenting evidence to refute the myths of racial inferiority.

From his earliest years, Du Bois was a prolific, gifted scholar. In 1884, Du Bois graduated from high school as valedictorian. He received his Bachelor of Arts from Fisk University in Nashville, Tenn., in 1888, having spent summers teaching in African American schools in Nashville's rural areas. In 1888 he entered Harvard University as a junior, took a bachelor of arts cum laude in 1890, and was one of six commencement speakers. From 1892 to 1894 he pursued graduate studies in history and economics at the University of Berlin on a Slater Fund fellowship. He served for 2 years as professor of Greek and Latin at Wilberforce University in Ohio.

Du Bois received his Master of Arts from Harvard in 1891, and, in 1895, he became the first African American to receive a doctorate from the university. His dissertation, "The Suppression of the African Slave Trade to the United States of America, 1638-1870," was published as No. 1 in Harvard Historical Series.

In 1896-1897, Du Bois became assistant instructor in sociology at the University of Pennsylvania. There he conducted the pioneering sociological study of an urban community, published as The Philadelphia Negro: A Social Study (1899). These first two works assured Du Bois's place among America's leading scholars.

From 1897 to 1910 Du Bois served as professor of economics and history at Atlanta University, where he organized conferences titled the Atlanta University Studies of the Negro Problem and edited or co-edited 16 of the annual publications, on such topics as The Negro in Business (1899), The Negro Artisan (1902), The Negro Church (1903), Economic Cooperation among Negro Americans (1907), and The Negro American Family (1908). Other significant publications were The Souls of Black Folk: Essays and Sketches (1903), one of the outstanding collections of essays in American letters, and John Brown (1909), a sympathetic portrayal published in the American Crisis Biographies series.

Du Bois also wrote two novels, The Quest of the Silver Fleece (1911) and Dark Princess: A Romance (1928); a book of essays and poetry, Darkwater: Voices from within the Veil (1920); and two histories of black people, The Negro (1915) and The Gift of Black Folk: Negroes in the Making of America (1924).

From 1934 to 1944 Du Bois was chairman of the department of sociology at Atlanta University. In 1940 he founded Phylon, a social science quarterly. Black Reconstruction in America, 1860-1880 (1935), perhaps his most significant historical work, details the role of African Americans in American society, specifically during the Reconstruction period. The book was criticized for its use of Marxist concepts and for its attacks on the racist character of much of American historiography. However, it remains the best single source on its subject.

Black Folk, Then and Now (1939) is an elaboration of the history of black people in Africa and the New World. Color and Democracy: Colonies and Peace (1945) is a brief call for the granting of independence to Africans, and The World and Africa: An Inquiry into the Part Which Africa Has Played in World History (1947; enlarged ed. 1965) is a major work anticipating many later scholarly conclusions regarding the significance and complexity of African history and culture. A trilogy of novels, collectively entitled The Black Flame (1957, 1959, 1961), and a selection of his writings, An ABC of Color (1963), are also worthy.

Du Bois received many honorary degrees, was a fellow and life member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and a member of the National Institute of Arts and Letters. He was the outstanding African American intellectual of his period in America.

As Global Citizen

In 1948, he was cochairman of the Council on African Affairs; in 1949 he attended the New York, Paris, and Moscow peace congresses; in 1950 he served as chairman of the Peace Information Center and ran for the U.S. Senate on the American Labor party ticket in New York. In 1950-1951, Du Bois was tried and acquitted as an agent of a foreign power in one of the most ludicrous actions ever taken by the American government. Du Bois traveled widely throughout Russia and China in 1958-1959 and in 1961 joined the Communist party of the United States. He also took up residence in Ghana, Africa, in 1961.

Du Bois was also active in behalf of Pan-Africanism and concerned with the conditions of people of African descent wherever they lived. In 1900 he attended the First Pan-African Conference held in London, was elected a vice president, and wrote the "Address to the Nations of the World." The Niagara Movement included a "pan-African department." In 1911 Du Bois attended the First Universal Races Congress in London along with black intellectuals from Africa and the West Indies.

Du Bois organized a series of Pan-African congresses around the world, in 1919, 1921, 1923, and 1927. The delegations comprised intellectuals from Africa, the West Indies, and the United States. Though resolutions condemning colonialism and calling for alleviation of the oppression of Africans were passed, little concrete action was taken. The Fifth Congress (1945, Manchester, England) elected Du Bois as chairman, but the power was clearly in the hands of younger activists, such as George Padmore and Kwame Nkrumah, who later became significant in the independence movements of their respective countries. Du Bois's final Pan-African gesture was to take up citizenship in Ghana in 1961 at the request of President Kwame Nkrumah and to begin work as director of the Encyclopedia Africana.

Du Bois died in Ghana on Aug. 27, 1963, on the eve of the civil rights march in Washington, D.C. He was given a state funeral, at which Kwame Nkrumah remarked that he was "a phenomenon."

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William Edward Burghardt Du Bois (February 23, 1868 - August 27, 1963) was an American civil rights activist, leader, Pan-Africanist, sociologist, educator, historian, writer, editor, poet, and scholar. He was born and raised in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. He had two children with his wife, Nina Gomer.

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Louis Armstrong

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Louis Daniel Armstrong (August 4, 1901 - July 6, 1971), nicknamed " Satchmo", " Satch", and " Pops", was an American trumpeter and vocalist. He was among the most influential figures in jazz. His career spanned five decades and different eras in the history of jazz.

Armstrong was born and raised in New Orleans. Coming to prominence in the 1920s as an inventive trumpet and cornet player, Armstrong was a foundational influence in jazz, shifting the focus of the music from collective improvisation to solo performance. Around 1922, he followed his mentor, Joe "King" Oliver, to Chicago to play in the Creole Jazz Band. In Chicago, he spent time with other popular jazz musicians, reconnecting with his friend Bix Beiderbecke and spending time with Hoagy Carmichael and Lil Hardin. He earned a reputation at " cutting contests" and his fame reached band leader Fletcher Henderson. Henderson persuaded Armstrong to come to New York City, where he became a featured and musically influential band soloist and recording artist. Hardin became Armstrong's second wife and they returned to Chicago to play together and then he began to form his own "Hot" jazz bands. After years of touring, he settled in Queens, and by the 1950s, he was a national musical icon, assisted in part, by his appearances on radio and in film and television, in addition to his concerts.

With his instantly recognizable rich, gravelly voice, Armstrong was also an influential singer and skillful improviser, bending the lyrics and melody of a song. He was also skilled at scat singing. Armstrong is renowned for his charismatic stage presence and voice as well as his trumpet playing. By the end of Armstrong's life, his influence had spread to popular music in general. Armstrong was one of the first popular African-American entertainers to "cross over" to wide popularity with white (and international) audiences. He rarely publicly politicized his race, to the dismay of fellow African Americans, but took a well-publicized stand for desegregation in the Little Rock crisis. He was able to access the upper echelons of American society at a time when this was difficult for black men.

Armstrong appeared in films such as High Society (1956) alongside Bing Crosby, Grace Kelly, and Frank Sinatra, and Hello, Dolly! (1969) starring Barbra Streisand. He received many accolades including three Grammy Award nominations and a win for his vocal performance of Hello, Dolly! in 1964. In 2017, he was posthumously inducted into the Rhythm & Blues Hall of Fame.

Armstrong was born in New Orleans on August 4, 1901. His parents were Mary Albert and William Armstrong. Mary Albert was from Boutte, Louisiana, and gave birth at home when she was about sixteen. William Armstrong abandoned the family shortly after. About two years later, they had a daughter, Beatrice "Mama Lucy" Armstrong, who was raised by Albert.

Louis Armstrong was raised by his grandmother until the age of five when he was returned to his mother. He spent his youth in poverty in a rough neighborhood known as The Battlefield, on the southern section of Rampart Street. At six he attended the Fisk School for Boys, a school that accepted black children in the racially segregated system of New Orleans.

At the age of 6, Armstrong lived with his mother and sister and worked for the Karnoffskys, a family of Lithuanian Jews, at their home. He would help their two sons, Morris and Alex, collect "rags and bones" and deliver coal. In 1969, while recovering from heart and kidney problems at Beth Israel Hospital in New York City, Armstrong wrote "Louis Armstrong + the Jewish Family in New Orleans, LA., the year of 1907" a memoir describing his time working for the Karnofsky family. Armstrong writes about singing "Russian Lullaby" with the Karnofsky family when their baby son David was put to bed and credits the family with teaching him to sing "from the heart." Curiously, Armstrong quotes lyrics for it that appear to be the same as the "Russian Lullaby," copyrighted by Irving Berlin in 1927, about twenty years after Armstrong remembered singing it as a child. Gary Zucker, Armstrong's doctor at Beth Israel hospital in 1969, shared Berlin's song lyrics with him, and Armstrong quoted them in the memoir. This inaccuracy may simply be because he wrote the memoir over 60 years after the events described.

Regardless, the Karnoffskys treated Armstrong extremely well. Knowing he lived without a father, they fed and nurtured him. In his memoir Louis Armstrong + the Jewish Family in New Orleans, La., the Year of 1907, he described his discovery that this family was also subject to discrimination by "other white folks" who felt that they were better than Jews: "I was only seven years old but I could easily see the ungodly treatment that the white folks were handing the poor Jewish family whom I worked for." He wrote about what he learned from them: "how to live-real life and determination." His first musical performance may have been at the side of the Karnoffskys' junk wagon. To distinguish them from other hawkers, he tried playing a tin horn to attract customers. Morris Karnoffsky gave Armstrong an advance toward the purchase of a cornet from a pawn shop. Armstrong wore a Star of David until the end of his life in memory of this family who had raised him.

When Armstrong was eleven, he dropped out of school. His mother moved into a one-room house on Perdido Street with Armstrong, Lucy, and her common-law husband, Tom Lee, next door to her brother Ike and his two sons. Armstrong joined a quartet of boys who sang in the streets for money. He also got into trouble. Cornetist Bunk Johnson said he taught the eleven-year-old to play by ear at Dago Tony's honky tonk. (In his later years Armstrong credited King Oliver.) He said about his youth, "Every time I close my eyes blowing that trumpet of mine-I look right in the heart of good old New Orleans ... It has given me something to live for."

Borrowing his stepfather's gun without permission, he fired a blank into the air and was arrested on December 31, 1912. He spent the night at New Orleans Juvenile Court, then was sentenced the next day to detention at the Colored Waif's Home. Life at the home was spartan. Mattresses were absent; meals were often little more than bread and molasses. Captain Joseph Jones ran the home like a military camp and used corporal punishment.

Armstrong developed his cornet skills by playing in the band. Peter Davis, who frequently appeared at the home at the request of Captain Jones, became Armstrong's first teacher and chose him as bandleader. With this band, the thirteen-year-old Armstrong attracted the attention of Kid Ory.

On June 14, 1914, Armstrong was released into the custody of his father and his new stepmother, Gertrude. He lived in this household with two stepbrothers for several months. After Gertrude gave birth to a daughter, Armstrong's father never welcomed him, so he returned to his mother, Mary Albert. In her small home, he had to share a bed with his mother and sister. His mother still lived in The Battlefield, leaving him open to old temptations, but he sought work as a musician. He found a job at a dance hall owned by Henry Ponce, who had connections to organized crime. He met the six-foot tall drummer Black Benny, who became his guide and bodyguard. Around the age of fifteen, he pimped for a prostitute named Nootsy, but that relationship failed after she stabbed Armstrong in the shoulder and his mother choked her nearly to death.

He briefly studied shipping management at the local community college, but was forced to quit after being unable to afford the fees. While selling coal in Storyville, he heard spasm bands, groups that played music out of household objects. He heard the early sounds of jazz from bands that played in brothels and dance halls such as Pete Lala's, where King Oliver performed.

Riverboat education

Early in his career, Armstrong played in brass bands and riverboats in New Orleans, first on an excursion boat in September 1918. He traveled with the band of Fate Marable, which toured on the steamboat Sidney with the Streckfus Steamers line up and down the Mississippi River. Marable was proud of his musical knowledge, and he insisted that Armstrong and other musicians in his band learn sight reading. Armstrong described his time with Marable as "going to the University", since it gave him a wider experience working with written arrangements. In 1919, Armstrong's mentor, King Oliver decided to go north and resigned his position in Kid Ory's band; Armstrong replaced him. He also became second trumpet for the Tuxedo Brass Band.

Throughout his riverboat experience, Armstrong's musicianship began to mature and expand. At twenty, he could read music. He became one of the first jazz musicians to be featured on extended trumpet solos, injecting his own personality and style. He also started singing in his performances.

Chicago and recording for Gennett

In 1922, Armstrong moved to Chicago at the invitation of King Oliver, although Armstrong would return to New Orleans periodically for the rest of his life. Playing second cornet to Oliver in Oliver's Creole Jazz Band in the black-only Lincoln Gardens in Chicago's black neighborhood, he could make enough money to quit his day jobs. Although race relations were poor, Chicago was booming. The city had jobs for blacks making good wages at factories with some left over for entertainment.

His first studio recordings were with Oliver for Gennett Records on April 5-6, 1923. They endured several hours on the train to remote Richmond, Indiana, and the band was paid little. The quality of the performances was affected by lack of rehearsal, crude recording equipment, bad acoustics, and a cramped studio. These early recordings were true acoustic, the band playing directly into a large funnel connected directly to the needle making the groove in the master recording. (Electrical recording was not invented until 1926 and Gennett installed it later.) Because Armstrong's playing was so loud, when he played next to Oliver, Oliver couldn't be heard on the recording. Armstrong had to stand fifteen feet away from Oliver, in a far corner of the room.

Lil Hardin, who Armstrong would marry in 1924, urged Armstrong to seek more prominent billing and develop his style apart from the influence of Oliver. At her suggestion, Armstrong began to play classical music in church concerts to broaden his skills; and he began to dress more in more stylish attire to offset his girth. Her influence eventually undermined Armstrong's relationship with his mentor, especially concerning his salary and additional money that Oliver held back from Armstrong and other band members. Armstrong's mother, May Ann Albert, came to visit him in Chicago during the summer of 1923 after being told that Armstrong was "out of work, out of money, hungry, and sick"; Hardin located and decorated an apartment for her to live in while she stayed.

In the Fletcher Henderson Orchestra

Armstrong and Oliver parted amicably in 1924. Shortly afterward, Armstrong received an invitation to go to New York City to play with the Fletcher Henderson Orchestra, the top African-American band of the time. He switched to the trumpet to blend in better with the other musicians in his section. His influence on Henderson's tenor sax soloist, Coleman Hawkins, can be judged by listening to the records made by the band during this period.

Armstrong adapted to the tightly controlled style of Henderson, playing trumpet and experimenting with the trombone. The other members were affected by Armstrong's emotional style. His act included singing and telling tales of New Orleans characters, especially preachers. The Henderson Orchestra played in prominent venues for white patrons only, including the Roseland Ballroom, with arrangements by Don Redman. Duke Ellington's orchestra went to Roseland to catch Armstrong's performances.

During this time, Armstrong recorded with Clarence Williams (a friend from New Orleans), the Williams Blue Five, Sidney Bechet, and blues singers Alberta Hunter, Ma Rainey, and Bessie Smith.

The Hot Five

In 1925, Armstrong returned to Chicago largely at the insistence of Lil, who wanted to expand his career and his income. In publicity, much to his chagrin, she billed him as "the World's Greatest Trumpet Player". For a time he was a member of the Lil Hardin Armstrong Band and working for his wife. He formed Louis Armstrong and his Hot Five and recorded the hits " Potato Head Blues" and " Muggles". The word "muggles" was a slang term for marijuana, something he used often during his life.

The Hot Five included Kid Ory (trombone), Johnny Dodds (clarinet), Johnny St. Cyr (banjo), Lil Armstrong on piano, and usually no drummer. Over a twelve-month period starting in November 1925, this quintet produced twenty-four records. Armstrong's band leading style was easygoing, as St. Cyr noted, "One felt so relaxed working with him, and he was very broad-minded ... always did his best to feature each individual." Among the most notable of the Hot Five and Seven records were "Cornet Chop Suey", "Struttin' With Some Barbecue", "Hotter Than that" and "Potato Head Blues", all featuring highly creative solos by Armstrong. According to Thomas Brothers, recordings, such as "Struttin' with Some Barbeque", were so superb, "planned with density and variety, bluesyness, and showiness," that the arrangements were probably showcased at the Sunset Café. His recordings soon after with pianist Earl "Fatha" Hines, most famously their 1928 " Weather Bird" duet and Armstrong's trumpet introduction to and solo in "West End Blues", remain some of the most famous and influential improvisations in jazz history. Young trumpet players across the country bought these recordings and memorized his solos.

Armstrong was now free to develop his personal style as he wished, which included a heavy dose of effervescent jive, such as "Whip That Thing, Miss Lil" and "Mr. Johnny Dodds, Aw, Do That Clarinet, Boy!"

After separating from Lil, Armstrong started to play at the Sunset Café for Al Capone's associate Joe Glaser in the Carroll Dickerson Orchestra, with Earl Hines on piano, which was renamed Louis Armstrong and his Stompers, though Hines was the music director and Glaser managed the orchestra. Hines and Armstrong became fast friends and successful collaborators. It was at the Sunset Café that Armstrong accompanied singer Adelaide Hall. It was during Hall's tenure at the venue that she experimented, developed and expanded her use and art of scat singing with Armstrong's guidance and encouragement.

In the first half of 1927, Armstrong assembled his Hot Seven group, which added drummer Al "Baby" Dodds and tuba player, Pete Briggs, while preserving most of his original Hot Five lineup. John Thomas replaced Kid Ory on trombone. Later that year he organized a series of new Hot Five sessions which resulted in nine more records. In the last half of 1928, he started recording with a new group: Zutty Singleton (drums), Earl Hines (piano), Jimmy Strong (clarinet), Fred Robinson (trombone), and Mancy Carr (banjo).

The Harlem Renaissance

Armstrong made a huge impact during the 1920s Harlem Renaissance within the Jazz world. His music touched many, including a well-known writer during that time named Langston Hughes. Hughes admired Armstrong and acknowledged him as one of the most recognized musicians during the era. Hughes created many books that upheld the central idea of jazz and gave recognition to Armstrong as one of the most important persons to be part of the Harlem Renaissance's newfound love of African-American culture. The sound of jazz, along with many other musicians such as Armstrong, helped shape Hughes as a writer. Just like the musicians, Hughes wrote his words with jazz.

Armstrong changed jazz during the Harlem Renaissance. Being known as "The World's Greatest Trumpet Player" during this time, Armstrong continued his legacy and continued a focus on his own vocal career. The popularity he gained brought together many black and white audiences to watch him perform.

Emerging as a vocalist

Armstrong returned to New York in 1929, where he played in the pit orchestra for the musical Hot Chocolates, an all-black revue written by Andy Razaf and pianist Fats Waller. He also made a cameo appearance as a vocalist, regularly stealing the show with his rendition of " Ain't Misbehavin'". His version of the song became his biggest selling record to date.

Armstrong started to work at Connie's Inn in Harlem, chief rival to the Cotton Club, a venue for elaborately staged floor shows, and a front for gangster Dutch Schultz. Armstrong also had considerable success with vocal recordings, including versions of songs composed by his old friend Hoagy Carmichael. His 1930s recordings took full advantage of the new RCA ribbon microphone, introduced in 1931, which imparted a characteristic warmth to vocals and immediately became an intrinsic part of the ' crooning' sound of artists like Bing Crosby. Armstrong's interpretation of Carmichael's " Stardust" became one of the most successful versions of this song ever recorded, showcasing Armstrong's unique vocal sound and style and his innovative approach to singing songs that had already become standards.

Armstrong's radical re-working of Sidney Arodin and Carmichael's " Lazy River" (recorded in 1931) encapsulated many features of his groundbreaking approach to melody and phrasing. The song begins with a brief trumpet solo, then the main melody is introduced by sobbing horns, memorably punctuated by Armstrong's growling interjections at the end of each bar: "Yeah! ..."Uh-huh"..."Sure"..."Way down, way down." In the first verse, he ignores the notated melody entirely and sings as if playing a trumpet solo, pitching most of the first line on a single note and using strongly syncopated phrasing. In the second stanza he breaks into an almost fully improvised melody, which then evolves into a classic passage of Armstrong " scat singing".

As with his trumpet playing, Armstrong's vocal innovations served as a foundation stone for the art of jazz vocal interpretation. The uniquely gravelly coloration of his voice became a musical archetype that was much imitated and endlessly impersonated. His scat singing style was enriched by his matchless experience as a trumpet soloist. His resonant, velvety lower-register tone and bubbling cadences on sides such as "Lazy River" exerted a huge influence on younger white singers such as Bing Crosby.

Working during hard times

Armstrong moved to Los Angeles in 1930 to seek new opportunities. He played at the New Cotton Club in Los Angeles with Lionel Hampton on drums. The band drew the Hollywood crowd, which could still afford a lavish night life, while radio broadcasts from the club connected with younger audiences at home. Bing Crosby and many other celebrities were regulars at the club. In 1931, Armstrong appeared in his first movie, Ex-Flame and was also convicted of marijuana possession but received a suspended sentence. He returned to Chicago in late 1931 and played in bands more in the Guy Lombardo vein and he recorded more standards. When the mob insisted that he get out of town, Armstrong visited New Orleans, had a hero's welcome, and saw old friends. He sponsored a local baseball team known as Armstrong's Secret Nine and had a cigar named after him. But soon he was on the road again. After a tour across the country shadowed by the mob, he fled to Europe.

After returning to the United States, he undertook several exhausting tours. His agent Johnny Collins's erratic behavior and his own spending ways left Armstrong short of cash. Breach of contract violations plagued him. He hired Joe Glaser as his new manager, a tough mob-connected wheeler-dealer, who began to straighten out his legal mess, his mob troubles, and his debts. Armstrong also began to experience problems with his fingers and lips, which were aggravated by his unorthodox playing style. As a result, he branched out, developing his vocal style and making his first theatrical appearances. He appeared in movies again, including Crosby's 1936 hit Pennies from Heaven. In 1937, Armstrong substituted for Rudy Vallee on the CBS radio network and became the first African American to host a sponsored, national broadcast.

Reviving his career with the All Stars

After spending many years on the road, Armstrong settled permanently in Queens, New York in 1943 in contentment with his fourth wife, Lucille. Although subject to the vicissitudes of Tin Pan Alley and the gangster-ridden music business, as well as anti-black prejudice, he continued to develop his playing.

Bookings for big bands tapered off during the 1940s due to changes in public tastes: ballrooms closed, and there was competition from other types of music, especially pop vocals, becoming more popular than big band music. It became impossible under such circumstances to finance a 16-piece touring band.

A widespread revival of interest in the 1940s in the traditional jazz of the 1920s made it possible for Armstrong to consider a return to the small-group musical style of his youth. Armstrong was featured as a guest artist with Lionel Hampton's band at the famed second Cavalcade of Jazz concert held at Wrigley Field in Los Angeles which was produced by Leon Hefflin Sr. on October 12, 1946. He also led a highly successful small-group jazz concert at New York Town Hall on May 17, 1947, featuring Armstrong with trombonist/singer Jack Teagarden. During the concert, Armstrong and Teagarden performed a duet on Hoagy Carmichael's " Rockin' Chair" they then recorded for Okeh Records.

Armstrong's manager, Joe Glaser dissolved the Armstrong big band on August 13, 1947, and established a six-piece traditional jazz group featuring Armstrong with (initially) Teagarden, Earl Hines and other top swing and Dixieland musicians, most of whom were previously leaders of big bands. The new group was announced at the opening of Billy Berg's Supper Club.

This group was called Louis Armstrong and His All Stars and included at various times Earl "Fatha" Hines, Barney Bigard, Edmond Hall, Jack Teagarden, Trummy Young, Arvell Shaw, Billy Kyle, Marty Napoleon, Big Sid "Buddy" Catlett, Cozy Cole, Tyree Glenn, Barrett Deems, Mort Herbert, Joe Darensbourg, Eddie Shu, Joe Muranyi and percussionist Danny Barcelona.

On February 28, 1948, Suzy Delair sang the French song at the Hotel Negresco during the first Nice Jazz Festival. Louis Armstrong was present and loved the song. On June 26, 1950, he recorded the American version of the song (English lyrics by Jerry Seelen) in New York City with Sy Oliver and his Orchestra. When it was released, the disc was a worldwide success and the song was then performed by the greatest international singers.

He was the first jazz musician to appear on the cover of Time magazine, on February 21, 1949. Louis Armstrong and his All Stars were featured at the ninth Cavalcade of Jazz concert also at Wrigley Field in Los Angeles produced by Leon Hefflin Sr. held on June 7, 1953, along with Shorty Rogers, Roy Brown, Don Tosti and His Mexican Jazzmen, Earl Bostic, and Nat "King" Cole.

During the next 30 years, Armstrong played more than 300 performances a year. During this period, Armstrong made many recordings and appeared in over thirty films.

A jazz ambassador

By the 1950s, Armstrong was a widely beloved American icon and cultural ambassador who commanded an international fanbase. However, a growing generation gap became apparent between him and the young jazz musicians who emerged in the postwar era such as Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, and Sonny Rollins. The postwar generation regarded their music as abstract art and considered Armstrong's vaudevillian style, half-musician and half-stage entertainer, outmoded and Uncle Tomism, "... he seemed a link to minstrelsy that we were ashamed of." He called bebop "Chinese music". While touring Australia in 1954, he was asked if he could play bebop. "Bebop?" he husked. "I just play music. Guys who invent terms like that are walking the streets with their instruments under their arms."

After finishing his contract with Decca Records, he became a freelance artist and recorded for other labels. He continued an intense international touring schedule, but in 1959 he suffered a heart attack in Italy and had to rest.

In 1964, after over two years without setting foot in a studio, he recorded his biggest-selling record, " Hello, Dolly!", a song by Jerry Herman, originally sung by Carol Channing. Armstrong's version remained on the Hot 100 for 22 weeks, longer than any other record produced that year, and went to No. 1 making him, at 62 years, 9 months and 5 days, the oldest person ever to accomplish that feat. In the process, he dislodged the Beatles from the No. 1 position they had occupied for 14 consecutive weeks with three different songs.

Armstrong kept touring well into his 60s, even visiting part of the communist bloc in 1965. He also toured Africa, Europe, and Asia under the sponsorship of the US State Department with great success, earning the nickname "Ambassador Satch" and inspiring Dave Brubeck to compose his jazz musical The Real Ambassadors. By 1968, he was approaching 70 and his health began to give out. He suffered heart and kidney ailments that forced him to stop touring. He did not perform publicly at all in 1969 and spent most of the year recuperating at home. Meanwhile, his longtime manager Joe Glaser died. By the summer of 1970, his doctors pronounced him fit enough to resume live performances. He embarked on another world tour, but a heart attack forced him to take a break for two months.

Armstrong made his last recorded trumpet performances on his 1968 album Disney Songs the Satchmo Way.

Personal life

Pronunciation of name

The Louis Armstrong House Museum website states:

Judging from home recorded tapes now in our Museum Collections, Louis pronounced his own name as "Lewis". On his 1964 record "Hello, Dolly", he sings, "This is Lewis, Dolly" but in 1933 he made a record called "Laughin' Louie". Many broadcast announcers, fans, and acquaintances called him "Louie" and in a videotaped interview from 1983 Lucille Armstrong calls her late husband "Louie" as well. Musicians and close friends usually called him "Pops".

In a memoir written for Robert Goffin between 1943 and 1944, Armstrong states, "All white folks call me Louie," perhaps suggesting that he himself did not or, on the other hand, that no whites addressed him by one of his nicknames such as Pops. That said, Armstrong was registered as "Lewie" for the 1920 U.S. Census. On various live records he's called "Louie" on stage, such as on the 1952 "Can Anyone Explain?" from the live album In Scandinavia vol.1. The same applies to his 1952 studio recording of the song "Chloe", where the choir in the background sings "Louie ... Louie", with Armstrong responding "What was that? Somebody called my name?" "Lewie" is the French pronunciation of "Louis" and is commonly used in Louisiana.

Armstrong was performing at the Brick House in Gretna, Louisiana, when he met Daisy Parker, a local prostitute. He started the affair as a client. He returned to Gretna on several occasions to visit her. He found the courage to look for her home to see her away from work. It was on this occasion he found out she had a common-law husband. Not long after this fiasco, Parker traveled to Armstrong's home on Perdido Street. They checked into Kid Green's hotel that evening. On the next day, March 19, 1919, Armstrong and Parker married at City Hall. They adopted a three-year-old boy, Clarence, whose mother, Armstrong's cousin Flora, had died soon after giving birth. Clarence Armstrong was mentally disabled as the result of a head injury at an early age, and Armstrong spent the rest of his life taking care of him. His marriage to Parker ended when they separated in 1923.

On February 4, 1924, he married Lil Hardin Armstrong, King Oliver's pianist. She had divorced her first husband a few years earlier. His second wife helped him develop his career, but they separated in 1931 and divorced in 1938. Armstrong then married Alpha Smith. His relationship with Alpha began while he was playing at the Vendome during the 1920s and continued long after. His marriage to her lasted four years; they divorced in 1942. Louis then married Lucille Wilson, a singer at the Cotton Club in New York, in October 1942; they remained married until his death in 1971.

Armstrong's marriages never produced any offspring. However, in December 2012, 57-year-old Sharon Preston-Folta claimed to be his daughter from a 1950s affair between Armstrong and Lucille "Sweets" Preston, a dancer at the Cotton Club. In a 1955 letter to his manager, Joe Glaser, Armstrong affirmed his belief that Preston's newborn baby was his daughter, and ordered Glaser to pay a monthly allowance of $400 ($5,058 in 2021 dollars) to mother and child.

Personality

Armstrong was noted for his colorful and charismatic personality. His autobiography vexed some biographers and historians, as he had a habit of telling tales, particularly of his early childhood when he was less scrutinized, and his embellishments of his history often lack consistency.

Health problems

During a backstage meeting with trombonist Marshall Brown in 1959, Armstrong received the suggestion that he should go to a doctor and receive proper treatment for his lips instead of relying on home remedies, but he did not get around to arranging it until the final years of his life, by which point his health was failing and doctors considered surgery too risky.

The nicknames "Satchmo" and "Satch" are short for "Satchelmouth". The nickname has many possible origins. The most common tale that biographers tell is the story of Armstrong as a young boy in New Orleans dancing for pennies. He scooped the coins off the street and stuck them into his mouth to prevent bigger children from stealing them. Someone dubbed him "satchel mouth" for his mouth acting as a satchel. Another tale is that because of his large mouth, he was nicknamed "satchel mouth" which was shortened to "Satchmo".

Early on he was also known as "Dipper", short for "Dippermouth", a reference to the piece Dippermouth Blues and something of a riff on his unusual embouchure.

The nickname "Pops" came from Armstrong's own tendency to forget people's names and simply call them "Pops" instead. The nickname was turned on Armstrong himself. It was used as the title of a 2010 biography of Armstrong by Terry Teachout.

Armstrong always celebrated his heritage as an African American man from a poor New Orleans neighborhood, and tried to avoid what he called "putting on airs." Many younger black musicians criticized Armstrong for playing in front of segregated audiences, and for not taking a strong enough stand in the American civil rights movement. When he did speak out, it made national news, including his criticism of President Dwight D. Eisenhower, calling him "two-faced" and "gutless" because of his inaction during the conflict over school desegregation in Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1957. As a protest, Armstrong canceled a planned tour of the Soviet Union on behalf of the State Department saying: "The way they're treating my people in the South, the government can go to hell" and that he could not represent his government abroad when it was in conflict with its own people. The FBI kept a file on Armstrong for his outspokenness about integration.

When asked about his religion, Armstrong answered that he was raised a Baptist, always wore a Star of David, and was friends with the pope. He wore the Star of David in honor of the Karnoffsky family, who took him in as a child and lent him money to buy his first cornet. He was baptized a Catholic in the Sacred Heart of Jesus Church in New Orleans, and he met Pope Pius XII and Pope Paul VI.

Personal habits

Armstrong was concerned with his health. He used laxatives to control his weight, a practice he advocated both to acquaintances and in the diet plans he published under the title Lose Weight the Satchmo Way. Armstrong's laxative of preference in his younger days was Pluto Water, but when he discovered the herbal remedy Swiss Kriss, he became an enthusiastic convert, extolling its virtues to anyone who would listen and passing out packets to everyone he encountered, including members of the British Royal Family. (Armstrong also appeared in humorous, albeit risqué, cards that he had printed to send out to friends; the cards bore a picture of him sitting on a toilet-as viewed through a keyhole-with the slogan "Satch says, 'Leave it all behind ya!'") The cards have sometimes been incorrectly described as ads for Swiss Kriss. In a live recording of " Baby, It's Cold Outside" with Velma Middleton, he changes the lyric from "Put another record on while I pour" to "Take some Swiss Kriss while I pour". His laxative use began as a child when his mother would collect dandelions and peppergrass around the railroad tracks to give to her children for their health.

The concern with his health and weight was balanced by his love of food, reflected in such songs as "Cheesecake", "Cornet Chop Suey", though "Struttin' with Some Barbecue" was written about a fine-looking companion, not about food. He kept a strong connection throughout his life to the cooking of New Orleans, always signing his letters, " Red beans and ricely yours ..."

Social organizations

Louis Armstrong was not, as is often claimed, a Freemason. Although he is usually listed as being a member of Montgomery Lodge No. 18 (Prince Hall) in New York, no such lodge has ever existed. However, Armstrong stated in his autobiography that he was a member of the Knights of Pythias, which although real is not a Masonic group. During the krewe's 1949 Mardi Gras parade, Armstrong presided as King of the Zulu Social Aid & Pleasure Club, for which he was featured on the cover of Time magazine.

Horn playing and early jazz

In his early years, Armstrong was best known for his virtuosity with the cornet and trumpet. Along with his "clarinet-like figurations and high notes in his cornet solos", he was also known for his "intense rhythmic 'swing', a complex conception involving ... accented upbeats, upbeat to downbeat slurring, and complementary relations among rhythmic patterns." The most lauded recordings on which Armstrong plays trumpet include the Hot Five and Hot Seven sessions, as well as those of the Red Onion Jazz Babies. Armstrong's improvisations, while unconventionally sophisticated for that era, were also subtle and highly melodic. The solo that Armstrong plays during the song " Potato Head Blues" has long been considered his best solo of that series.

Prior to Armstrong, most collective ensemble playing in jazz, along with its occasional solos, simply varied the melodies of the songs. Armstrong was virtually the first to create significant variations based on the chord harmonies of the songs instead of merely on the melodies. This opened a rich field for creation and improvisation, and significantly changed the music into a soloist's art form.

Often, Armstrong re-composed pop-tunes he played, simply with variations that made them more compelling to jazz listeners of the era. At the same time, however, his oeuvre includes many original melodies, creative leaps, and relaxed or driving rhythms. Armstrong's playing technique, honed by constant practice, extended the range, tone and capabilities of the trumpet. In his records, Armstrong almost single-handedly created the role of the jazz soloist, taking what had been essentially a collective folk music and turning it into an art form with tremendous possibilities for individual expression.

Armstrong was one of the first artists to use recordings of his performances to improve himself. Armstrong was an avid audiophile. He had a large collection of recordings, including reel-to-reel tapes, which he took on the road with him in a trunk during his later career. He enjoyed listening to his own recordings, and comparing his performances musically. In the den of his home, he had the latest audio equipment and would sometimes rehearse and record along with his older recordings or the radio.

Vocal popularity

Such records were hits and scat singing became a major part of his performances. Long before this, however, Armstrong was playing around with his vocals, shortening and lengthening phrases, interjecting improvisations, using his voice as creatively as his trumpet. Armstrong once told Cab Calloway that his scat style was derived "from the Jews rockin", an Orthodox Jewish style of chanting during prayer.

Armstrong was a gifted composer who wrote more than fifty songs, some of which have become jazz standards (e.g. "Gully Low Blues", "Potato Head Blues" and "Swing That Music").

Colleagues and followers

During his long career he played and sang with some of the most important instrumentalists and vocalists of the time; among them were Bing Crosby, Duke Ellington, Fletcher Henderson, Earl Hines, Jimmie Rodgers, Bessie Smith and perhaps most famously Ella Fitzgerald. His influence upon Crosby is particularly important with regard to the subsequent development of popular music: Crosby admired and copied Armstrong, as is evident on many of his early recordings, notably "Just One More Chance" (1931). The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz describes Crosby's debt to Armstrong in precise detail, although it does not acknowledge Armstrong by name:

Crosby ... was important in introducing into the mainstream of popular singing an Afro-American concept of song as a lyrical extension of speech ... His techniques-easing the weight of the breath on the vocal cords, passing into a head voice at a low register, using forward production to aid distinct enunciation, singing on consonants (a practice of black singers), and making discreet use of appoggiaturas, mordents, and slurs to emphasize the text-were emulated by nearly all later popular singers.

Armstrong recorded two albums with Ella Fitzgerald: Ella and Louis, and Ella and Louis Again for Verve Records, with the sessions featuring the backing musicianship of the Oscar Peterson Trio and drummers Buddy Rich (on the first album), and Louie Bellson (on the second). Norman Granz then had the vision for Ella and Louis to record Porgy and Bess.

His recordings for Columbia Records, Louis Armstrong Plays W.C. Handy (1954) and Satch Plays Fats (all Fats Waller tunes) (1955) were both being considered masterpieces, as well as moderately well selling. In 1961 the All Stars participated in two albums- The Great Summit and The Great Reunion (now together as a single disc) with Duke Ellington. The albums feature many of Ellington's most famous compositions (as well as two exclusive cuts) with Duke sitting in on piano. His participation in Dave Brubeck's high-concept jazz musical The Real Ambassadors (1963) was critically acclaimed, and features "Summer Song", one of Armstrong's most popular vocal efforts.

In the week beginning May 9, 1964, his recording of the song " Hello, Dolly" went to number one. An album of the same title was quickly created around the song, and also shot to number one (knocking The Beatles off the top of the chart). The album sold very well for the rest of the year, quickly going "Gold" (500,000). His performance of "Hello Dolly" won for best male pop vocal performance at the 1964 Grammy Awards.

Hits and later career

Armstrong had nineteen "Top Ten" records including " Stardust", " What a Wonderful World", " When The Saints Go Marching In", " Dream a Little Dream of Me", " Ain't Misbehavin'", " You Rascal You", and " Stompin' at the Savoy". " We Have All the Time in the World" was featured on the soundtrack of the James Bond film On Her Majesty's Secret Service, and enjoyed renewed popularity in the UK in 1994 when it featured on a Guinness advertisement. It reached number 3 in the charts on being re-released.

In 1964, Armstrong knocked The Beatles off the top of the Billboard Hot 100 chart with " Hello, Dolly!", which gave the 63-year-old performer a U.S. record as the oldest artist to have a number one song. His 1964 song "Bout Time" was later featured in the film .

In 1968, Armstrong scored one last popular hit in the United Kingdom with " What a Wonderful World", which topped the British charts for a month. Armstrong appeared on the October 28, 1970, Johnny Cash Show, where he sang Nat King Cole's hit " Ramblin' Rose" and joined Cash to re-create his performance backing Jimmie Rodgers on "Blue Yodel No. 9".

Stylistic range

Armstrong enjoyed many types of music, from blues to the arrangements of Guy Lombardo, to Latin American folksongs, to classical symphonies and opera. He incorporated influences from all these sources into his performances, sometimes to the bewilderment of fans who wanted him to stay in convenient narrow categories. Armstrong was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as an early influence. Some of his solos from the 1950s, such as the hard rocking version of " St. Louis Blues" from the WC Handy album, show that the influence went in both directions.

Film, television, and radio

Armstrong appeared in more than a dozen Hollywood films, usually playing a bandleader or musician. His most familiar role was as the bandleader cum narrator in the 1956 musical High Society starring Bing Crosby, Grace Kelly, Frank Sinatra, and Celeste Holm. He appears throughout the film, also sings the title song as well as performs a duet with Crosby, " Now You Has Jazz". In 1947, he played himself in the movie New Orleans opposite Billie Holiday, which chronicled the demise of the Storyville district and the ensuing exodus of musicians from New Orleans to Chicago. In the 1959 film The Five Pennies he played himself, sang, and played several classic numbers. With Danny Kaye he performed a duet of "When the Saints Go Marching In" during which Kaye impersonated Armstrong. He had a part in the film alongside James Stewart in The Glenn Miller Story.

In 1937, Armstrong was the first African American to host a nationally broadcast radio show. In 1969, he had a cameo role in Gene Kelly's film version of Hello, Dolly! as the bandleader Louis. He sang the title song with actress Barbra Streisand. His solo recording of " Hello, Dolly!" is one of his most recognizable performances. He was heard on such radio programs as The Story of Swing (1937) and This Is Jazz (1947), and he also made television appearances, especially in the 1950s and 1960s, including appearances on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson.

Argentine writer Julio Cortázar, a self-described Armstrong admirer, asserted that a 1952 Louis Armstrong concert at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris played a significant role in inspiring him to create the fictional creatures called Cronopios that are the subject of a number of Cortázar's short stories. Cortázar once called Armstrong himself "Grandísimo Cronopio" (The Great Cronopio).

There is a pivotal scene in Stardust Memories (1980) in which Woody Allen is overwhelmed by a recording of Armstrong's " Stardust" and experiences a nostalgic epiphany.

Against his doctor's advice, Armstrong played a two-week engagement in March 1971 at the Waldorf-Astoria's Empire Room. At the end of it, he was hospitalized for a heart attack. He was released from the hospital in May, and quickly resumed practicing his trumpet playing. Still hoping to get back on the road, Armstrong died of a heart attack in his sleep on July 6, 1971, two days after celebrating his alleged 71st birthday, and a month before his actual 70th birthday. He was residing in Corona, Queens, New York City, at the time of his death. He was interred in Flushing Cemetery, Flushing, in Queens, New York City. His honorary pallbearers included Bing Crosby, Ella Fitzgerald, Dizzy Gillespie, Pearl Bailey, Count Basie, Harry James, Frank Sinatra, Ed Sullivan, Earl Wilson, Alan King, Johnny Carson and David Frost. Peggy Lee sang The Lord's Prayer at the services while Al Hibbler sang " Nobody Knows the Trouble I've Seen" and Fred Robbins, a long-time friend, gave the eulogy.

Awards and honors

Grammy Awards

Grammy Hall of Fame

Recordings of Armstrong were inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame, which is a special Grammy award established in 1973 to honor recordings that are at least 25 years old, and that have "qualitative or historical significance".

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame listed Armstrong's West End Blues on the list of 500 songs that shaped Rock and Roll.

Inductions and honors

In 1995, the U.S. Post Office issued a Louis Armstrong 32-cent commemorative postage stamp.

Film honors

The influence of Armstrong on the development of jazz is virtually immeasurable. His irrepressible personality both as a performer and as a public figure was so strong that to some it sometimes overshadowed his contributions as a musician and singer.

As a virtuoso trumpet player, Armstrong had a unique tone and an extraordinary talent for melodic improvisation. Through his playing, the trumpet emerged as a solo instrument in jazz and is used widely today. Additionally, jazz itself was transformed from a collectively improvised folk music to a soloist's serious art form largely through his influence. He was a masterful accompanist and ensemble player in addition to his extraordinary skills as a soloist. With his innovations, he raised the bar musically for all who came after him.

Though Armstrong is widely recognized as a pioneer of scat singing, Ethel Waters precedes his scatting on record in the 1930s according to Gary Giddins and others. Billie Holiday and Frank Sinatra are just two singers who were greatly indebted to him. Holiday said that she always wanted Bessie Smith's 'big' sound and Armstrong's feeling in her singing. Even special musicians like Duke Ellington have praised Armstrong through strong testimonials. Duke Ellington, DownBeat magazine in 1971, said, "If anybody was a master, it was Louis Armstrong. He was and will continue to be the embodiment of jazz." In 1950, Bing Crosby, the most successful vocalist of the first half of the 20th century, said, "He is the beginning and the end of music in America."

In the summer of 2001, in commemoration of the centennial of Armstrong's birth, New Orleans's main airport was renamed Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport. The entrance to the airport's former terminal building houses a statue depicting Armstrong playing his cornet.

In 2002, the Louis Armstrong's Hot Five and Hot Seven recordings (1925-1928) were preserved in the United States National Recording Registry, a registry of recordings selected yearly by the National Recording Preservation Board for preservation in the National Recording Registry of the Library of Congress.

Congo Square was a common gathering place for African-Americans in New Orleans for dancing and performing music. The park where Congo Square is located was later renamed Louis Armstrong Park. Dedicated in April 1980, the park includes a 12-foot (3.7 m) statue of Armstrong, trumpet in hand.

The house where Armstrong lived for almost 28 years was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1977 and is now a museum. The Louis Armstrong House Museum, at 34-56 107th Street between 34th and 37th avenues in Corona, Queens, presents concerts and educational programs, operates as a historic house museum and makes materials in its archives of writings, books, recordings and memorabilia available to the public for research. The museum is operated by the Queens College, City University of New York, following the dictates of Lucille Armstrong's will. The museum opened to the public on October 15, 2003. A new visitors center is planned.

According to literary critic Harold Bloom, "The two great American contributions to the world's art, in the end, are Walt Whitman and, after him, Armstrong and jazz ... If I had to choose between the two, ultimately, I wouldn't. I would say that the genius of this nation at its best is indeed Walt Whitman and Louis Armstrong."

Discography

References

1. ^ "When Is Louis Armstrong's Birthday?". Archived from the original on January 16, 2013. The Official Site of the Louis Armstrong House & Archives.

2. Giddins (2001), pp. 22-23.

3. ^ Teachout, Terry (2009). Pops. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. p. 30.

4. Bergreen (1997), pp. 27, 57-60.

5. ^

6. ^ Armstrong, Louis (2001). Brothers, Thomas (ed.). Louis Armstrong, in His Own Words: Selected Writings (1st Oxford University Press paperback ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 8. ISBN 978-0-19-514046-0. I had a long time admiration for the Jewish people. Especially with their long time of courage, taking so much abuse for so long. I was only seven years old, but I could easily see the ungodly treatment that the white folks were handing the poor Jewish family whom I worked for. It dawned on me, how drastically. Even "my race", the Negroes, the way that I saw it, they were having a little better break than the Jewish people, with jobs a plenty around. Of course, we can understand all the situations and handicaps that was going on, but to me we were better off than the Jewish people.

7. ^ William Howland Kenney (2005). Jazz on the River. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. p. 64.

8. ^

9. ^ Stamatel, Janet P. (2003). Henderson, Ashyia N (ed.). "Hardin Armstrong, Lil 1898-1971". Contemporary Black Biography. 39: 98 - via Gale Virtual Reference Library.

10. Elliot Hurwitt et al., in Cary D. Wintz and Paul Finkelman, eds., ^ Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance (London: Routledge, 2012), 533 and elsewhere.ISBN 9781135455361 books.google.com/books?id=0L0ULjto_OEC&pg=PT533

11. World Catalogue:^ Underneath A Harlem Moon by Iain Cameron Williams ISBN 0-8264-5893-9

12. ^ "Louis Armstrong: 'The Man and His Music,' Part 1". National Public Radio. August 1, 2007. Archived from the original on August 3, 2020.

13. ^ Andrews, Evan (August 22, 2018). "9 Things You May Not Know About Louis Armstrong". History (American TV network). Archived from the original on November 20, 2020.

14. ^ Collins, Willie (2013). Thomas Riggs (ed.). "Armstrong, Louis (1901-1971)". St. James Encyclopedia of Popular Culture (Second ed.). St. James Press. 1: 133-135.

15. ^ Morgenstern, Dan (1994), "Louis Armstrong and the Development and Diffusion of Jazz", in Miller, Marc H. (ed.), Louis Armstrong: A Cultural Legacy, Queens Museum of Art in association with University of Washington Press, p. 110

16. ^ Starkey, Brando Simeo (2015). In Defense of Uncle Tom: Why Blacks Must Police Racial Loyalty. Cambridge University Press. pp. 147-. ISBN 978-1-316-21408-4.

17. ^ Kelley, Robin D.G. (2012). Africa Speaks, America Answers: Modern Jazz in Revolutionary Times. Harvard University Press. pp. 72-. ISBN 978-0-674-06524-6.

18. ^ Nollen, Scott Allen (2004). Louis Armstrong: The Life, Music, and Screen Career. McFarland. p. 127. ISBN 978-0-7864-1857-2.

19. ^ Armstrong, Louis; Brothers, Thomas (2001). Louis Armstrong, In His Own Words: Selected Writings. New York: Oxford University Press. p. 109. ISBN 978-0-19-514046-0.

20. Bergreen (1997), 134-137.

21. ^ "Louis Armstrong: FAQ". Louis Armstrong House Museum. Archived from the original on January 16, 2013.

22. ^ Goddard, Jacqui (December 15, 2012). "Louis Armstrong's secret daughter revealed, 42 years after his death". The Daily Telegraph. Archived from the original on January 10, 2022.

23. 1634-1699: ^ McCusker, J. J. (1997). How Much Is That in Real Money? A Historical Price Index for Use as a Deflator of Money Values in the Economy of the United States: Addenda et Corrigenda (PDF). American Antiquarian Society. 1700-1799: McCusker, J. J. (1992). How Much Is That in Real Money? A Historical Price Index for Use as a Deflator of Money Values in the Economy of the United States (PDF). American Antiquarian Society. 1800-present:

24. ^ Bergreen (1997), pp. 7-11.

25. "Louis Armstrong: An American Genius", ^ James L. Collier, 231 pp.

26. "Satchmo Rallies, Jokes" ^ The Ottawa Citizen, June 26, 1959, p. 1

27. ^ Margolick, David (September 23, 2007). "The Day Louis Armstrong Made Noise". The New York Times.

28. Gabbard, Krin (2001). Louis and The Good Book (CD booklet). Louis Armstrong. New York City: Verve Records. p. 1.

29. ^ Jive Dictionary, by Cab Calloway: "Barbecue (n.) - the girl friend, a beauty." Retrieved February 10, 2009.

30. ^ Harker, Brian Cameron (1997). The early musical development of Louis Armstrong, 1901-1928 (PhD thesis). Columbia University. ProQuest 304443911.

31. Michael Cogswell, ^ Louis Armstrong: The Offstage Story of Satchmo (Collector's Press, Portland, Oregon, 2003) ISBN 1-888054-81-6 pp. 66-68.

32. ^ Bergreen, Laurence (1998). Louis Armstrong: An Extravagant Life (Reprint ed.). New York: Broadway Books. ISBN 978-0-7679-0156-7.

33. Louis Armstrong: "^ Grassa e bella" Louis Armstrong Discography Archived January 11, 2014, at the Wayback Machine

34. ^ Riccardi, Ricky (May 11, 2020). ""I'm Still Louis Armstrong - Colored": Louis Armstrong and the Civil Rights Era". Louis Armstrong House Museum. Louis Armstrong House. Archived from the original on January 23, 2021.

35. Morgenstern, Dan, and Sheldon Meyer (2004). ^ Living with Jazz. New York: Pantheon Books. ISBN 0-375-42072-X

36. Krebs, Albin. ^ "Louis Armstrong, Jazz Trumpeter and Singer, Dies", The New York Times, July 7, 1971. Accessed October 1, 2009. "Louis Armstrong, the celebrated jazz trumpeter and singer, died in his sleep yesterday morning at his home in the Corona section of Queens."

37. ^ Collier, James Lincoln (1985). Louis Armstrong. Pan. p. 333. ISBN 978-0-330-28607-7.

38. ^ "The Recording Academy" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on June 12, 2009.

39. ^ "AFI's 100 Years ... 100 Stars Nominees" (PDF).

40. ^ "Armstrong Park Dedicated". Daily World. Opelousas, Louisiana. UPI. April 16, 1980. p. 3. Archived from the original on October 30, 2018 - via Newspapers.com.

Works cited

Further reading

Elie, Lolis Eric. A Letter from New Orleans. Originally printed in Gourmet. Reprinted in Best Food Writing 2006, ed. by Holly Hughes, Da Capo Press, 2006. ISBN 1-56924-287-9

Jones, Max and Chilton, John. Louis: The Louis Armstrong Story, 1900-1971. Da Capo Press, 1988. ISBN 978-0-306-80324-6

Williams, Iain Cameron Underneath a Harlem Moon: The Harlem to Paris Years of Adelaide Hall. Bloomsbury Publishers, 2002. ISBN 0-8264-5893-9

External links

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Louis Daniel Armstrong (August 4, 1901 - July 6, 1971), nicknamed " Satchmo", " Satch", and " Pops", was an American trumpeter and vocalist. He was among the most influential figures in jazz. His career spanned five decades and different eras in the history of jazz. Armstrong was born and raised in New Orleans.

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Michelle Obama

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Michelle Obama - Poster (US) by Kyrie Audet

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Michelle Obama She was the First lady to one of the first black president Born on January 17th 1964 "there are still so many causes worth sacrificing for, so much history yet to be made" - Michel...

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(Photo: Courtesy John Lewis)

Quick Facts
"When I was growing up, my mother and father and family members said, 'Don't get in trouble. Don't get in the way.' I got in trouble. I got in the way. It was necessary trouble.""Second-class citizenship is not citizenship at all.""Courage is a reflection of the heart-it is a reflection of something deep within the man or woman or even a child who must resist and must defy an authority that is morally wrong. Courage makes us march on despite fear and doubt on the road toward justice. Courage is not heroic but as necessary as birds need wings to fly. Courage is not rooted in reason but rather Courage comes from a divine purpose to make things right.""People around the world will not be inspired by our missiles and our guns; they will be inspired by our ideas.""I have not accomplished everything I wanted to. I would like to, before I leave this little piece of real estate, do a little more for the cause of peace. To end the violence here at home and violence abroad. We spend so much of our resources killing each other.""We were determined not to let any act of violence keep us from our goal. We knew our lives could be threatened, but we had made up our minds not to turn back.""When Lyndon Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act, he helped free and liberate all of us.""I disagree with the court that the history of discrimination is somehow irrelevant today. The record clearly demonstrates numerous attempts to impede voting rights still exist, and it does not matter that those attempts are not as 'pervasive, widespread or rampant' as they were in 1965. One instance of discrimination is too much in a democracy.""Imagine that. I was beaten near to death at the Rock Hill Greyhound bus terminal during the Freedom Rides in 1961. Now the police chief is black.""We all recognize the fact that if any radical social, political and economic changes are to take place in our society, the people, the masses, must bring them about. In the struggle, we must seek more than civil rights; we must work for the community of love, peace and true brotherhood. Our minds, souls and hearts cannot rest until freedom and justice exist for all people.""I believe in nonviolence as a way of life, as a way of living. I believe that this idea is one of those immutable principles that is nonnegotiable if you're going to create a world community at peace with itself.""I know maybe it won't happen in my lifetime, but I know somehow in some way we're going to create the Beloved Community, that we're going to create a national community, a world community that is at peace.""When we were organizing voter-registration drives, going on the Freedom Rides, sitting in, coming here to Washington for the first time, getting arrested, going to jail, being beaten, I never thought-I never dreamed-of the possibility that an African American would one day be elected president of the United States."

Name

John Lewis

Birth Date

February 21, 1940 (age 80)

Did You Know?

During the civil rights struggle, Lewis was arrested approximately 40 times.

Did You Know?

Lewis was the youngest speaker at the March on Washington in 1963.

Place of Birth

Near Troy, Alabama

Zodiac Sign

Pisces

One of the "Big Six" leaders of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s, John Lewis has continued to fight for people's rights since joining Congress in 1987.

Who Is John Lewis?

John Lewis grew up in an era of racial segregation. Inspired by Martin Luther King Jr., he joined the burgeoning Civil Rights Movement. Lewis was a Freedom Rider, spoke at 1963's March on Washington and led the demonstration that became known as "Bloody Sunday." He was elected to Congress in 1986 and received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2011.

Early Life

John Robert Lewis was born outside of Troy, Alabama, on February 21, 1940. Lewis had a happy childhood - though he needed to work hard to assist his sharecropper parents -but he chafed against the unfairness of segregation. He was particularly disappointed when the Supreme Court ruling in 1954's Brown v. The Board of Education didn't affect his school life. However, hearing Martin Luther King Jr.'s sermons and news of the 1955-56 Montgomery bus boycott inspired Lewis to act for the changes he wanted to see.

Civil Rights Struggle

In 1957, Lewis left Alabama to attend the American Baptist Theological Seminary in Nashville, Tennessee. There, he learned about nonviolent protest and helped to organize sit-ins at segregated lunch counters. He was arrested during these demonstrations, which upset his mother, but Lewis was committed to the Civil Rights Movement and went on to participate in the Freedom Rides of 1961.

Freedom Riders challenged the segregated facilities they encountered at interstate bus terminals in the South, which had been deemed illegal by the Supreme Court. It was dangerous work that resulted in arrests and beatings for many involved, including Lewis.

In 1963, Lewis became chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. That same year, as one of the "Big Six" leaders of the Civil Rights Movement, he helped plan the March on Washington. Lewis-the youngest speaker at the event-had to alter his speech in order to please other organizers, but still delivered a powerful oration that declared, "We all recognize the fact that if any radical social, political and economic changes are to take place in our society, the people, the masses, must bring them about."

After the March on Washington, in 1964, the Civil Rights Act became law. However, this did not make it easier for African Americans to vote in the South. To bring attention to this struggle, Lewis and Hosea Williams led a march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, on March 7, 1965. After crossing the Edmund Pettus Bridge, the marchers were attacked by state troopers. Lewis was severely beaten once more, this time suffering a fractured skull.

The violent attacks were recorded and disseminated throughout the country, and the images proved too powerful to ignore. "Bloody Sunday," as the day was labeled, sped up the passage of 1965's Voting Rights Act.

Rep. John Lewis

Lewis left the SNCC in 1966. Though devastated by the assassinations of King and Robert Kennedy in 1968, Lewis continued his work to enfranchise minorities. In 1970, he became director of the Voter Education Project. During his tenure, the VEP helped to register millions of minority voters.

Lewis ran for office himself in 1981, winning a seat on the Atlanta City Council. In 1986, he was elected to the House of Representatives. Today, representing Georgia's 5th District, he is one of the most respected members of Congress. Since entering office, he has called for healthcare reform, measures to fight poverty and improvements in education. Most importantly, he oversaw multiple renewals of the Voting Rights Act. When the Supreme Court struck down part of the law in 2013's Shelby County v. Holder, Lewis decried the decision as a "dagger into the heart" of voting rights.

In the wake of the mass shooting that took place on June 12, 2016, in Orlando, Florida, Lewis led a sit-in comprised of approximately 40 House Democrats on the floor of the House of Representatives on June 22nd in an attempt to bring attention and force Congress to address gun violence by taking definitive legislative action. "We have been too quiet for too long," Lewis said. "There comes a time when you have to say something. You have to make a little noise. You have to move your feet. This is the time."

The protest came just days after several measures including a bill regarding background checks and adding restrictions on the purchase of guns by people on the federal no-fly list, failed in the Senate. Senator Chris Murphy applauded the protest. Murphy had previously led a filibuster in the Senate which led to the subsequent vote.

Lewis also spoke out against the presidency of Donald Trump, who was elected on November 8, 2016. In an interview with Chuck Todd for NBC News' Meet the Press, which aired on January 15, 2017, Lewis said he didn't believe Trump was a "legitimate president" because of Russian interference in the election. "I think the Russians participated in helping this man get elected and they helped destroy the candidacy of Hillary Clinton," Lewis said in the interview. He also said he would not attend Trump's inauguration.

Trump John Lewis Tweet

Trump responded on Twitter, criticizing Lewis' work as a congressman and tweeting that Lewis was "All talk, talk, talk - no action or results. Sad!" The president-elect's attack on Lewis came just days before the Martin Luther King holiday, and prompted vocal support of the civil rights icon across social media. Several Democratic lawmakers also joined in support of Lewis, and boycotted Trump's inauguration.

Trump continued his war of words, tweeting: "John Lewis said about my inauguration, 'It will be the first one that I've missed.' WRONG (or lie)! He boycotted Bush 43 also because he...thought it would be hypocritical to attend Bush's swearing-in....he doesn't believe Bush is the true elected president. Sound familiar!"

A spokeswoman for Lewis confirmed that he had missed the inauguration of George W. Bush: "His absence at that time was also a form of dissent. He did not believe the outcome of that election, including the controversies around the results in Florida and the unprecedented intervention of the U.S. Supreme Court, reflected a free, fair and open democratic process."

Cancer

In December 2019, Lewis announced that he had been diagnosed with Stage 4 pancreatic cancer.

Although he was "clear-eyed about the prognosis," Lewis said he felt encouraged that medical advancements had made this type of cancer treatable in many cases, adding that he intended to return to work as soon as possible.

Legacy

Though the Supreme Court's decision about the Voting Rights Act was a blow to Lewis, he has been encouraged by the progress that has occurred in his lifetime. After Barack Obama won the presidency in 2008, Lewis stated that "When we were organizing voter-registration drives, going on the Freedom Rides, sitting in, coming here to Washington for the first time, getting arrested, going to jail, being beaten, I never thought-I never dreamed-of the possibility that an African American would one day be elected president of the United States."

In addition to continuing his work in Congress, Lewis has reached out to a younger generation by helping to create a series of graphic novels about his work in the Civil Rights Movement. In 2016, he won the National Book Award for the third installment in the series March: Book Three, which marks the first time a graphic novel has received the honor.

He accepted the award with co-writer Andrew Aydin and illustrator Nate Powell and spoke of its significance in an emotional acceptance speech. "Some of you know I grew up in rural Alabama, very poor, very few books in our home," Lewis said. "I remember in 1956, when I was 16 years old, going to the public library to get library cards, and we were told the library was for whites only and not for coloreds. And to come here and receive this honor, it's too much."

He also spoke about the importance of books in his life. "I had a wonderful teacher in elementary school who told me: 'Read, my child, read', and I tried to read everything," he said. "I love books."

The civil rights icon has also been honored with numerous awards, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the NAACP's Spingarn Medal and the sole John F. Kennedy "Profile in Courage Award" for Lifetime Achievement.

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Citation Information

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"When I was growing up, my mother and father and family members said, 'Don't get in trouble. Don't get in the way.' I got in trouble. I got in the way. It was necessary trouble." "Second-class citizenship is not citizenship at all."

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Sojourner Truth is best known for her extemporaneous speech on racial inequalities, "Ain't I a Woman?" delivered at the Ohio Women's Rights Convention in 1851.

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Contents

1. Rosa Parks' Early Life

2. Rosa Parks: Roots of Activism

3. December 1, 1955: Rosa Parks Is Arrested

4. Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycott

5. Rosa Parks's Life After the Boycott

Rosa Parks (1913-2005) helped initiate the civil rights movement in the United States when she refused to give up her seat to a white man on a Montgomery, Alabama bus in 1955. Her actions inspired the leaders of the local Black community to organize the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Led by a young Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the boycott lasted more than a year-during which Parks not coincidentally lost her job-and ended only when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that bus segregation was unconstitutional. Over the next half-century, Parks became a nationally recognized symbol of dignity and strength in the struggle to end entrenched racial segregation.
WATCH: Rosa Parks: Mother of a Movement on HISTORY Vault
Rosa Parks' Early Life

Rosa Louise McCauley was born in Tuskegee, Alabama, on February 4, 1913. She moved with her parents, James and Leona McCauley, to Pine Level, Alabama, at age 2 to reside with Leona's parents. Her brother, Sylvester, was born in 1915, and shortly after that her parents separated.

Did you know? When Rosa Parks refused to give up her bus seat in 1955, it wasn't the first time she'd clashed with driver James Blake. Parks stepped onto his very crowded bus on a chilly day 12 years earlier, paid her fare at the front, then resisted the rule in place for Black people to disembark and re-enter through the back door. She stood her ground until Blake pulled her coat sleeve, enraged, to demand her cooperation. Parks left the bus rather than give in.

Rosa's mother was a teacher, and the family valued education. Rosa moved to Montgomery, Alabama, at age 11 and eventually attended high school there, a laboratory school at the Alabama State Teachers' College for Negroes. She left at 16, early in 11th grade, because she needed to care for her dying grandmother and, shortly thereafter, her chronically ill mother. In 1932, at 19, she married Raymond Parks, a self-educated man 10 years her senior who worked as a barber and was a long-time member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People ( NAACP). He supported Rosa in her efforts to earn her high-school diploma, which she ultimately did the following year.
READ MORE: Before the Bus, Rosa Parks Was a Sexual Assault Investigator
Rosa Parks: Roots of Activism

Raymond and Rosa, who worked as a seamstress, became respected members of Montgomery's large African American community. Co-existing with white people in a city governed by " Jim Crow " (segregation) laws, however, was fraught with daily frustrations: Black people could attend only certain (inferior) schools, could drink only from specified water fountains and could borrow books only from the "Black" library, among other restrictions.

Although Raymond had previously discouraged her out of fear for her safety, in December 1943, Rosa also joined the Montgomery chapter of the NAACP and became chapter secretary. She worked closely with chapter president Edgar Daniel (E.D.) Nixon. Nixon was a railroad porter known in the city as an advocate for Black people who wanted to register to vote, and also as president of the local branch of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters union.

December 1, 1955: Rosa Parks Is Arrested

On Thursday, December 1, 1955, the 42-year-old Rosa Parks was commuting home from a long day of work at the Montgomery Fair department store by bus. Black residents of Montgomery often avoided municipal buses if possible because they found the Negroes-in-back policy so demeaning. Nonetheless, 70 percent or more riders on a typical day were Black, and on this day Rosa Parks was one of them.

Segregation was written into law; the front of a Montgomery bus was reserved for white citizens, and the seats behind them for Black citizens. However, it was only by custom that bus drivers had the authority to ask a Black person to give up a seat for a white rider. There were contradictory Montgomery laws on the books: One said segregation must be enforced, but another, largely ignored, said no person (white or Black) could be asked to give up a seat even if there were no other seat on the bus available.

Nonetheless, at one point on the route, a white man had no seat because all the seats in the designated "white" section were taken. So the driver told the riders in the four seats of the first row of the "colored" section to stand, in effect adding another row to the "white" section. The three others obeyed. Parks did not.

"People always say that I didn't give up my seat because I was tired," wrote Parks in her autobiography, "but that isn't true. I was not tired physically... No, the only tired I was, was tired of giving in."

Eventually, two police officers approached the stopped bus, assessed the situation and placed Parks in custody.
READ MORE: The MLK Graphic Novel That Inspired Generations of Civil Rights Activists
Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycott

Although Parks used her one phone call to contact her husband, word of her arrest had spread quickly and E.D. Nixon was there when Parks was released on bail later that evening. Nixon had hoped for years to find a courageous Black person of unquestioned honesty and integrity to become the plaintiff in a case that might become the test of the validity of segregation laws. Sitting in Parks' home, Nixon convinced Parks-and her husband and mother-that Parks was that plaintiff. Another idea arose as well: The Black population of Montgomery would boycott the buses on the day of Parks' trial, Monday, December 5. By midnight, 35,000 flyers were being mimeographed to be sent home with Black schoolchildren, informing their parents of the planned boycott.

On December 5, Parks was found guilty of violating segregation laws, given a suspended sentence and fined $10 plus $4 in court costs. Meanwhile, Black participation in the boycott was much larger than even optimists in the community had anticipated. Nixon and some ministers decided to take advantage of the momentum, forming the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA) to manage the boycott, and they elected Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.-new to Montgomery and just 26 years old-as the MIA's president.

As appeals and related lawsuits wended their way through the courts, all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court, the Montgomery Bus Boycott engendered anger in much of Montgomery's white population as well as some violence, and Nixon's and Dr. King's homes were bombed. The violence didn't deter the boycotters or their leaders, however, and the drama in Montgomery continued to gain attention from the national and international press.

On November 13, 1956, the Supreme Court ruled that bus segregation was unconstitutional; the boycott ended December 20, a day after the Court's written order arrived in Montgomery. Parks-who had lost her job and experienced harassment all year-became known as "the mother of the civil rights movement."

Rosa Parks's Life After the Boycott

Facing continued harassment and threats in the wake of the boycott, Parks, along with her husband and mother, eventually decided to move to Detroit, where Parks' brother resided. Parks became an administrative aide in the Detroit office of Congressman John Conyers Jr. in 1965, a post she held until her 1988 retirement. Her husband, brother and mother all died of cancer between 1977 and 1979. In 1987, she co-founded the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self-Development, to serve Detroit's youth.

In the years following her retirement, she traveled to lend her support to civil-rights events and causes and wrote an autobiography, Rosa Parks: My Story. In 1999, Parks was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal, the highest honor the United States bestows on a civilian. (Other recipients have included George Washington, Thomas Edison, Betty Ford and Mother Teresa.) When she died at age 92 on October 24, 2005, she became the first woman in the nation's history to lie in honor at the U.S. Capitol.

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Rosa Parks (1913-2005) helped initiate the civil rights movement in the United States when she refused to give up her seat to a white man on a Montgomery, Alabama bus in 1955. Her actions inspired the leaders of the local Black community to organize the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

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Barbara Charline Jordan (February 21, 1936 - January 17, 1996) was an American lawyer, educator and politician who was a leader of the Civil Rights Movement. A Democrat, she was the first African American elected to the Texas Senate after Reconstruction, the first Southern African-American woman elected to the United States House of Representatives.

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Contents

1. When Was Jackie Robinson Born?

2. Jackie Robinson in the U.S. Army

3. Jackie Robinson's Professional Sports Career

4. Jackie Robinson and the Dodgers

5. Jackie Robinson Quotes

6. Jackie Robinson: Legacy and Death

7. Jackie Robinson Foundation Scholarship

8. Jackie Robinson Movies: 'The Jackie Robinson Story' and '42'

Jackie Robinson was an African American professional baseball player who broke Major Leagues Baseball's infamous " color barrier" when he started at first base for the Brooklyn Dodgers on April 15, 1947. Until that time, professional ballplayers of color suited up for teams only in the Negro Leagues. Today, April 15th is observed as Jackie Robinson Day throughout MLB franchises, with players wearing the former Dodgers' jersey number 42. Robinson's dazzling athletic prowess and grace under pressure effectively led to the integration of the Major Leagues, and his 10-year career with the Dodgers - and his outspoken activism in his later years - helped set the stage for the burgeoning civil rights movement.

When Was Jackie Robinson Born?

Jackie Robinson was born on January 31, 1919, in Cairo, Georgia, to a family of sharecroppers. He was the youngest of five children.

After his father abandoned the family in 1920, they moved to Pasadena, California, where his mother, Mallie, worked a series of odd jobs to support herself and her children. Though Pasadena was a fairly affluent suburb of Los Angeles at the time, the Robinsons were poor, and Jackie and his friends in the city's small black community were often excluded from recreational activities.

That began to change when Jackie enrolled at John Muir High School in 1935. His older brother Mack, a silver medalist in track and field at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, inspired him to pursue his interest in athletics, and the younger Robinson ultimately earned varsity letters in baseball, basketball, football and track while at Muir.

After graduating high school, Jackie attended Pasadena Junior College for two years, where he continued to have success in all four sports. Following the death of another older brother, Frank, in a motorcycle accident, Jackie decided to honor his memory by enrolling at UCLA in 1939.

There, he became the first Bruin to earn varsity letters in four sports - the same four in which he starred in high school - and he won the NCAA long jump championship in 1940. Jackie also met his future wife, Rachel, while at UCLA.

Did you know? In 1997, 50 years after Robinson integrated baseball, his number, 42, was permanently retired by every team in Major League Baseball.

Jackie Robinson in the U.S. Army

Jackie ultimately left college in the spring of his senior year, just a few credits short of his graduation. He accepted a job as an athletic administrator, but his dreams remained focused on the field of play.

He spent two years playing semi-professional football for integrated teams in leagues in Hawaii and California before being drafted into the U.S. Army in the spring of 1942, during World War II, although he never saw combat.

He was accepted into Officer Candidate School and was assigned to segregated Army units, first in Kansas and then in Texas. During this time, however, he remained close to Rachel, with whom he became engaged in 1943.

In 1944, Jackie was nearly court-martialed after he boarded a bus at Fort Hood in Texas and refused the driver's order to sit in the back, as segregationist practices in the United States dictated at the time.

He was acquitted on all the charges at court martial, but it has been said that his experiences during the proceedings likely shaped his response to the racist taunts he received, a few years later, from fans and fellow players at the start of his professional baseball career.

Jackie was honorably discharged from the Army in November 1944, and he took a job coaching basketball at a college in Austin, Texas.

Jackie Robinson's Professional Sports Career

In early 1945, Jackie Robinson was signed by the Negro League team the Kansas City Monarchs, where he starred for one season, hitting .387.

At the time, Brooklyn Dodgers executive Branch Rickey was scouting the Negro Leagues, looking for players who not only had the talent but the demeanor to withstand the pressures associated with integrating Major League Baseball. Robinson was one of several players Rickey interviewed in August 1945 for assignment to the Dodgers' farm team in Montreal, the Royals.

It is said that during the interview, Rickey demanded that Robinson not respond when on the receiving end of racial abuse. Robinson reportedly said, "Are you looking for a Negro who is afraid to fight back?" To which Rickey replied that he was looking for a person "with guts enough not to fight back."

Once Robinson agreed to "turn the other cheek," a Biblical phrase used by the religious baseball executive, he was assigned to the Royals for the 1946 season, where he was embraced by Montreal fans and batted an impressive .349. His performance both on and off the field earned him a call-up to Brooklyn the following season.

Jackie Robinson and the Dodgers

His debut with the Dodgers in 1947 was greeted with a lot of attention - not all of it positive. Although Robinson quickly proved he belonged as a player, the color of his skin was an issue for opposing teams and fans.

Hearing racist taunts from fans and players prior to a game, Dodgers teammate Pee Wee Reese is said to have put his arm around Robinson on the field to indicate that he was accepted by those wearing a Brooklyn uniform. Still, Robinson endured racist obscenities, hate mail and death threats for much of his career.

It was his play in the field that ultimately silenced his critics. In 1947, his first year with the Dodgers, he earned the inaugural "Rookie of the Year" award. Despite having been signed by the Dodgers at the relatively old age of 28, Robinson would go on to hit .311 over a 10-year career. He became the first black player to win the National League Most Valuable Player Award in 1949, when he led the league in hitting with a .342 average, most stolen bases (37) and achieving career-high 124 RBI. Robinson was an All Star every year from 1949-1954. He led Brooklyn to a World Series championship over the rival New York Yankees in 1956.

Robinson retired after that season, and thus didn't follow the Dodgers when the club moved to Los Angeles following the 1957 campaign.

Jackie Robinson Quotes

"I'm not concerned with your liking or disliking me ... all I ask is that you respect me as a human being."

"A life is not important except in the impact it has on other lives."

"Baseball is like a poker game. Nobody wants to quit when he's losing; nobody wants you to quit when you're ahead."

"Life is not a spectator sport. If you're going to spend your whole life in the grandstand just watching what goes on, in my opinion you're wasting your life."

"There's not an American in this country free until every one of us is free."

"As I write these words now I cannot stand and sing the National Anthem. I have learned that I remain a black in a white world."

"Above anything else, I hate to lose."

Jackie Robinson: Legacy and Death

After retiring from the Dodgers, Robinson acted as a sportscaster, worked as a business executive at Chock full o'Nuts and was active in the NAACP and other civil rights groups.

Weakened by heart disease and diabetes, Robinson died in 1972 at the age of 53 from a heart attack suffered at his home in Stamford, Connecticut.

Thousands attended his funeral service, including former teammates and other professional athletes. His eulogy was delivered by the Reverend Jesse Jackson, who declared, "When Jackie took the field, something reminded us of our birthright to be free."

Jackie Robinson Foundation Scholarship

Following his death, his wife Rachel, by then an assistant professor in the Yale School of Nursing, established the Jackie Robinson Foundation. In addition to recognizing other trailblazers in sports, the foundation awards the Jackie Robinson Foundation Scholarship to minority students.

Robinson's jersey number 42 was retired by all big-league teams in 1997, meaning it could no longer be worn by any player. Those players already wearing the number were allowed to keep it.

The gesture was meant to honor Robinson's legacy and the historic impact he had on professional baseball, sports in general and, by extension, American society, and in recognition of the difficulties the athlete faced in breaking Major League Baseball's color barrier.

Jackie Robinson Movies: 'The Jackie Robinson Story' and '42'

In 1950, Robinson played himself in a movie on his life called " The Jackie Robinson Story." And in 2013, a movie about Robinson's life called " 42 " was released to critical acclaim, with his widow involved in the production.

Sources

Baseball Hall of Fame. "Jackie Robinson." BaseballHall.org.
Lamb, C. (2019). "How Jackie Robinson's wife, Rachel, helped him break baseball's color line." TheConversation.com.
Breslin, Jimmy. (2011). Branch Rickey: A Life. Penguin Random House.
Jackie Robinson: 7 memorable quotes. ABC7NY.com.
Jackie Robinson. Baseball Reference.

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When Was Jackie Robinson Born? Jackie Robinson in the U.S. Army Jackie Robinson's Professional Sports Career Jackie Robinson and the Dodgers Jackie Robinson Quotes Jackie Robinson: Legacy and Death Jackie Robinson Foundation Scholarship Jackie Robinson Movies: 'The Jackie Robinson Story' and '42' Jackie Robinson was an African American professional baseball player who broke Major Leagues Baseball's infamous " color barrier" when he started at first base for the Brooklyn Dodgers on April 15, 1947.

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Martin Luther King Jr was one of America’s most influential civil rights activists. His passionate, but non-violent protests, helped to raise awareness of racial inequalities in America, leading to significant political change. Martin Luther King was also an eloquent orator who captured the imagination and hearts of people, both black and white. Early Life of […]

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Actress and singer Lena Horne was one of the most popular performers of her time, known for films such as 'Cabin in the Sky' and 'The Wiz' as well as her trademark song, "Stormy Weather."

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George Washington Carver is known for his work with peanuts (though he did not invent peanut butter, as some may believe). However, there's a lot more to this scientist and inventor than simply being the "Peanut Man." Read on for seven insights into Carver, his life and his accomplishments.

He was known as the young 'plant doctor'

Even as a child, Carver was interested in nature. Spared from demanding work because of his poor health, he had the time to study plants. His talents flourished to the extent that people started to ask him for help with their ailing vegetation.

In a 1922 interview, he recalled, "Often the people of the neighborhood who had plants would say to me, 'George, my fern is sick. See what you can do with it.' I would take their plants off to my garden and there soon have them blooming again ... At this time I had never heard of botany and could scarcely read."

Though Carver would gain new skills over the years, the path he'd follow in life was clear.

Photo: Getty Images

Appearing before Congress made him the 'Peanut Man'

Besides peanuts, Carver's research also involved clays, seeds and sweet potatoes. So why is his name associated with just one legume? It's thanks in large part to an appearance he made before the House Ways and Means Committee.

In 1920, Carver spoke at the United Peanut Association of America's convention. He was such a success that the group decided to have him tell Congress about peanuts and the need for a tariff in January of 1921.

Though his congressional presentation didn't start out well - the representatives weren't predisposed to listen to a Black man - Carver ended up winning over the committee. They were drawn into testimony that covered many of the products Carver had created with peanuts, such as flour, milk, dyes and cheese, and ended up inviting him to take as much time as he needed to talk.

After his appearance, peanuts and Carver were intertwined in the public's mind. The scientist didn't mind the association; however, when asked in 1938 if his work with peanuts was his best, Carver answered, "No, but it has been featured more than my other work."
READ MORE: How George Washington Carver Went From Enslaved to Educational Pioneer
He believed peanuts could fight polio

Polio victims were often left with weakened muscles or paralyzed limbs. Carver felt that peanuts - or rather peanut oil - could help these people regain some lost function.

In the 1930s, Carver began to treat patients with peanut oil massages. He reported positive results, which in turn made more and more people want to undergo the treatment. Even Franklin D. Roosevelt joined in; gifted with the oil by Carver, he told the scientist, "I do use peanut oil from time to time and I am sure that it helps."

Unfortunately, despite the improvements that Carver witnessed and reported, there was never any scientific evidence that peanut oil actually helped polio victims recover. Instead, the patients may have benefited from the massage treatment itself, as well as the attentive care that Carver provided.

He didn't write down details

Though Carver worked on many products, both peanut and non-peanut, he didn't see the need to keep detailed records.

In 1937, Carver was asked for a list of the peanut products that he'd developed. He wrote in reply, "There are more than 300 of them. I do not attempt to keep a list, as a list today would not be the same tomorrow, if I am allowed to work on that particular product. To keep a list would also give the Institute a great deal of trouble, as people would write wanting to know why one list differs from another. For this reason we have stopped sending out lists."

However, Carver did see the point in writing down advice and recipes, which he shared in agricultural bulletins such as "How to Grow the Peanut and 105 Ways of Preparing it For Human Consumption" (1916). So while you can't see all of Carver's formulas, Carver's instructions for peanut soup, peanut bread, peanut cake and more are available!

Photo: Arthur Rothstein (for U.S. Farm Security Administration) (Library of Congress[1]) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons)

He was a well-connected man

Carver was a friend, colleague or associate to a veritable "Who's Who" of the 20th century. This began in 1896 when Booker T. Washington hired him to oversee the agricultural department at the Tuskegee Institute.

Between 1919 and 1926, Carver corresponded with John Harvey Kellogg (of cereal fame), as they shared an interest in food and health. Carver and automaker Henry Ford quickly struck up a friendship after meeting in 1937. Carver would stop by Ford's laboratory in Dearborn, Michigan, and Ford himself visited Tuskegee in Alabama. Ford also gave the funds to install an elevator in Carver's dormitory as the scientist grew weaker in his later years.

Carver's connections also extended outside the United States. Supporters of Mahatma Gandhi asked Carver for advice about how Gandhi could build up strength in between hunger strikes. And the Indian leader wrote Carver to thank him for sending agricultural bulletins.
READ MORE: George Washington Carver's Powerful Circle of Friends
He considered weeds 'nature's vegetables'

Along with peanuts, Carver felt that weeds - or "nature's vegetables" - were a nutritious and undeveloped food source for America. Carver once noted, "There is no need for America to go hungry as long as nature provides weeds and wild vegetables..."

Ford shared this appreciation for wild greens. He'd happily eat sandwiches made by his friend Carver, which contained ingredients such as wild onion, peppergrass, chickweed, wild lettuce and rabbit tobacco.

But before you rush outside to harvest your next salad or sandwich filling, you should know that not everyone was a fan of Carver's weed-based preparations. "They tasted terrible and if we didn't say they were good he got mad," a former student of Carver's complained in 1948.

He cared about people, not money

Throughout his life, Carver's actions demonstrated how little he cared for money. For example, he turned down a six-figure job offer from Thomas Edison. Carver also didn't spend much on clothes (and consequently was always shabbily dressed).

In addition, Carver filed only three patents on the products he'd developed. As he explained, "One reason I never patent my products is that if I did, it would take so much time I would get nothing else done. But mainly I don't want any discoveries to benefit specific favored persons. I think they should be available to all peoples."

In 1917, Carter revealed what motivated him: "Well, some day I will have to leave this world. And when that day comes, I want to feel that my life has been of some service to my fellow man." When he passed away in 1943, it would seem he had lived just such a life.

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George Washington Carver is known for his work with peanuts (though he did not invent peanut butter, as some may believe). However, there's a lot more to this scientist and inventor than simply being the "Peanut Man." Read on for seven insights into Carver, his life and his accomplishments.

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William Edward Burghardt Du Bois ( dew-BOYSS ; February 23, 1868 - August 27, 1963) was an American sociologist, socialist, historian, and Pan-Africanist civil rights activist.

Born in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, Du Bois grew up in a relatively tolerant and integrated community. After completing graduate work at the Friedrich Wilhelm University in Berlin and Harvard University, where he was the first African American to earn a doctorate. Du Bois rose to national prominence as a leader of the Niagara Movement, a group of black civil rights activists who wanted equal rights for blacks. Du Bois and his supporters opposed the Atlanta Compromise. Instead, Du Bois insisted on full civil rights and increased political representation, which he believed would be brought about by the African-American intellectual elite. He referred to this group as the Talented tenth, a concept under the umbrella of racial uplift, and believed that African Americans needed the chances for advanced education to develop its leadership. Du Bois was one of the founders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1909. Du Bois used his position in the NAACP to respond to racist incidents. After the First World War, he attended the Pan-African Congresses, embraced socialism and became a professor at Atlanta University. Once the Second World War had ended, he engaged in peace activism and was targeted by the FBI. He spent the last years of his life in Ghana and died in Accra on August 27, 1963.

Du Bois was a prolific author. Du Bois primarily targeted racism in his polemic, which protested strongly against lynching, Jim Crow laws, and discrimination in education and employment. His cause included people of color everywhere, particularly Africans and Asians in colonies. He was a proponent of Pan-Africanism and helped organize several Pan-African Congresses to fight for the independence of African colonies from European powers. Du Bois made several trips to Europe, Africa and Asia. His collection of essays, The Souls of Black Folk, is a seminal work in African-American literature; and his 1935 magnum opus, Black Reconstruction in America, challenged the prevailing orthodoxy that blacks were responsible for the failures of the Reconstruction era. Borrowing a phrase from Frederick Douglass, he popularized the use of the term color line to represent the injustice of the separate but equal doctrine prevalent in American social and political life. His 1940 autobiography Dusk of Dawn is regarded in part as one of the first scientific treatises in the field of American sociology. In his role as editor of the NAACP's journal , he published many influential pieces. Du Bois believed that capitalism was a primary cause of racism and was sympathetic to socialist causes.

Family and childhood

William Edward Burghardt Du Bois was born on February 23, 1868, in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, to Alfred and Mary Silvina ( Burghardt) Du Bois. Mary Silvina Burghardt's family was part of the very small free black population of Great Barrington and had long owned land in the state. She was descended from Dutch, African, and English ancestors. William Du Bois's maternal great-great-grandfather was Tom Burghardt, a slave (born in West Africa around 1730) who was held by the Dutch colonist Conraed Burghardt. Tom briefly served in the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War, which may have been how he gained his freedom during the late 18th century. His son Jack Burghardt was the father of Othello Burghardt, who in turn was the father of Mary Silvina Burghardt.

William Du Bois claimed Elizabeth Freeman as his relative; he wrote that she had married his great-grandfather Jack Burghardt. But Freeman was 20 years older than Burghardt, and no record of such a marriage has been found. It may have been Freeman's daughter, Betsy Humphrey, who married Burghardt after her first husband, Jonah Humphrey, left the area "around 1811", and after Burghardt's first wife died ( c. 1810). If so, Freeman would have been William Du Bois's step-great-great-grandmother. Anecdotal evidence supports Humphrey's marrying Burghardt; a close relationship of some form is likely.

William Du Bois's paternal great-grandfather was James Du Bois of Poughkeepsie, New York, an ethnic French-American of Huguenot origin who fathered several children with slave women. One of James' mixed-race sons was Alexander, who was born on Long Cay in the Bahamas in 1803; in 1810, he immigrated to the United States with his father. Alexander Du Bois traveled and worked in Haiti, where he fathered a son, Alfred, with a mistress. Alexander returned to Connecticut, leaving Alfred in Haiti with his mother.

Sometime before 1860, Alfred Du Bois immigrated to the United States, settling in Massachusetts. He married Mary Silvina Burghardt on February 5, 1867, in Housatonic, a village in Great Barrington. Alfred left Mary in 1870, two years after their son William was born. Mary Du Bois moved with her son back to her parents' house in Great Barrington, and they lived there until he was five. She worked to support her family (receiving some assistance from her brother and neighbors), until she suffered a stroke in the early 1880s. She died in 1885.

Great Barrington had a majority European American community, who generally treated Du Bois well. He attended the local integrated public school and played with white schoolmates. As an adult, he wrote about racism that he felt as a fatherless child and being a minority in the town. But teachers recognized his ability and encouraged his intellectual pursuits, and his rewarding experience with academic studies led him to believe that he could use his knowledge to empower African Americans. He graduated from the town's Searles High School. When he decided to attend college, the congregation of his childhood church, the First Congregational Church of Great Barrington, raised the money for his tuition.

University education

The title page of Du Bois's Harvard dissertation, Suppression of the African Slave Trade in the United States of America: 1638-1871

Relying on this money donated by neighbors, Du Bois attended Fisk University, a historically black college in Nashville, Tennessee, from 1885 to 1888. Like other Fisk students who relied on summer and intermittent teaching to support their university studies, Du Bois taught school during the summer of 1886 after his sophomore year. His travel to and residency in the South was Du Bois's first experience with Southern racism, which at the time encompassed Jim Crow laws, bigotry, suppression of black voting, and lynchings; the lattermost reached a peak in the next decade.

After receiving a bachelor's degree from Fisk, he attended Harvard College (which did not accept course credits from Fisk) from 1888 to 1890, where he was strongly influenced by professor William James, prominent in American philosophy. Du Bois paid his way through three years at Harvard with money from summer jobs, an inheritance, scholarships, and loans from friends. In 1890, Harvard awarded Du Bois his second bachelor's degree, , in history. In 1891, Du Bois received a scholarship to attend the sociology graduate school at Harvard.

In 1892, Du Bois received a fellowship from the John F. Slater Fund for the Education of Freedmen to attend the Friedrich Wilhelm University for graduate work. While a student in Berlin, he traveled extensively throughout Europe. He came of age intellectually in the German capital while studying with some of that nation's most prominent social scientists, including Gustav von Schmoller, Adolph Wagner, and Heinrich von Treitschke. He also met Max Weber who was highly impressed with Du Bois and would later cite Du Bois as a counter-example to racists alleging the inferiority of Blacks. Weber would again meet Du Bois in 1904 on a visit to the US just ahead of the publication of the seminal The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.

He wrote about his time in Germany: "I found myself on the outside of the American world, looking in. With me were white folk - students, acquaintances, teachers - who viewed the scene with me. They did not always pause to regard me as a curiosity, or something sub-human; I was just a man of the somewhat privileged student rank, with whom they were glad to meet and talk over the world; particularly, the part of the world whence I came." After returning from Europe, Du Bois completed his graduate studies; in 1895, he was the first African American to earn a Ph.D. from Harvard University.

Wilberforce and Philadelphia

Between me and the other world there is ever an unasked question: ... How does it feel to be a problem? ... One ever feels his two-ness, - an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder ... He would not Africanize America, for America has too much to teach the world and Africa. He would not bleach his Negro soul in a flood of white Americanism, for he knows that Negro blood has a message for the world. He simply wishes to make it possible for a man to be both a Negro and an American, without being cursed and spit upon by his fellows, without having the doors of Opportunity closed roughly in his face.

-Du Bois, "Strivings of the Negro People", 1897

In the summer of 1894, Du Bois received several job offers, including from the prestigious Tuskegee Institute; he accepted a teaching job at Wilberforce University in Ohio. At Wilberforce, Du Bois was strongly influenced by Alexander Crummell, who believed that ideas and morals are necessary tools to effect social change. While at Wilberforce, Du Bois married Nina Gomer, one of his students, on May 12, 1896.

After two years at Wilberforce, Du Bois accepted a one-year research job from the University of Pennsylvania as an "assistant in sociology" in the summer of 1896. He performed sociological field research in Philadelphia's African-American neighborhoods, which formed the foundation for his landmark study, The Philadelphia Negro, published in 1899 while he was teaching at Atlanta University. It was the first case study of a black community in the United States. Among his Philadelphia consultants on the project was William Henry Dorsey, an artist who collected documents, paintings and artifact pertaining to Black history. Dorsey compiled hundreds of scrapbooks on the lives of Black people during the 18th century and built a collection that he laid out in his home in Philadelphia. Du Bois used the scrapbooks in his research.

By the 1890s, Philadelphia's black neighborhoods had a negative reputation in terms of crime, poverty, and mortality. Du Bois's book undermined the stereotypes with empirical evidence and shaped his approach to segregation and its negative impact on black lives and reputations. The results led him to realize that racial integration was the key to democratic equality in American cities. The methodology employed in The Philadelphia Negro, namely the description and the mapping of social characteristics onto neighborhood areas was a forerunner to the studies under the Chicago School of Sociology.

While taking part in the American Negro Academy (ANA) in 1897, Du Bois presented a paper in which he rejected Frederick Douglass's plea for black Americans to integrate into white society. He wrote: "we are Negroes, members of a vast historic race that from the very dawn of creation has slept, but half awakening in the dark forests of its African fatherland". In the August 1897 issue of The Atlantic Monthly, Du Bois published "Strivings of the Negro People", his first work aimed at the general public, in which he enlarged upon his thesis that African Americans should embrace their African heritage while contributing to American society.

Atlanta University

In July 1897, Du Bois left Philadelphia and took a professorship in history and economics at the historically black Atlanta University in Georgia. His first major academic work was his book The Philadelphia Negro (1899), a detailed and comprehensive sociological study of the African-American people of Philadelphia, based on his fieldwork in 1896-1897. This breakthrough in scholarship was the first scientific study of African Americans and a major contribution to early scientific sociology in the U.S.

Du Bois's output at Atlanta University was prodigious, in spite of a limited budget: he produced numerous social science papers and annually hosted the Atlanta Conference of Negro Problems. He also received grants from the U.S. government to prepare reports about African-American workforce and culture. His students considered him to be a teacher that was brilliant, but aloof and strict.

First Pan-African Conference

Du Bois attended the First Pan-African Conference, held in London on July 23-25, 1900, shortly ahead of the Paris Exhibition of 1900 ("to allow tourists of African descent to attend both events".) The Conference had been organized by people from the Caribbean: Haitians Anténor Firmin and Benito Sylvain and Trinidadian barrister Henry Sylvester Williams. Du Bois played a leading role in drafting a letter ("Address to the Nations of the World"), asking European leaders to struggle against racism, to grant colonies in Africa and the West Indies the right to self-government and to demand political and other rights for African Americans. By this time, southern states were passing new laws and constitutions to disfranchise most African Americans, an exclusion from the political system that lasted into the 1960s.

At the conclusion of the conference, delegates unanimously adopted the "Address to the Nations of the World", and sent it to various heads of state where people of African descent were living and suffering oppression. The address implored the United States and the imperial European nations to "acknowledge and protect the rights of people of African descent" and to respect the integrity and independence of "the free Negro States of Abyssinia, Liberia, Haiti, etc." It was signed by Bishop Alexander Walters (President of the Pan-African Association), the Canadian Rev. Henry B. Brown (vice-president), Williams (General Secretary) and Du Bois (chairman of the committee on the Address). The address included Du Bois's observation, "The problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the colour-line." He used this again three years later in the "Forethought" of his book The Souls of Black Folk (1903).

1900 Paris Exposition

Du Bois was the primary organizer of The Exhibit of American Negroes at the Exposition Universelle held in Paris between April and November 1900, for which he put together a series of 363 photographs aiming to commemorate the lives of African Americans at the turn of the century and challenge the racist caricatures and stereotypes of the day. Also included were charts, graphs, and maps. He was awarded a gold medal for his role as compiler of the materials, which are now housed at the Library of Congress.

Booker T. Washington and the Atlanta Compromise

In the first decade of the new century, Du Bois emerged as a spokesperson for his race, second only to Booker T. Washington. Washington was the director of the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, and wielded tremendous influence within the African-American and white communities. Washington was the architect of the Atlanta Compromise, an unwritten deal that he had struck in 1895 with Southern white leaders who dominated state governments after Reconstruction. Essentially the agreement provided that Southern blacks, who overwhelmingly lived in rural communities, would submit to the current discrimination, segregation, disenfranchisement, and non-unionized employment; that Southern whites would permit blacks to receive a basic education, some economic opportunities, and justice within the legal system; and that Northern whites would invest in Southern enterprises and fund black educational charities.

Despite initially sending congratulations to Washington for his Atlanta Exposition Speech, Du Bois later came to oppose Washington's plan, along with many other African Americans, including Archibald H. Grimke, Kelly Miller, James Weldon Johnson, and Paul Laurence Dunbar - representatives of the class of educated blacks that Du Bois would later call the " talented tenth". Du Bois felt that African Americans should fight for equal rights and higher opportunities, rather than passively submit to the segregation and discrimination of Washington's Atlanta Compromise.

Du Bois was inspired to greater activism by the lynching of Sam Hose, which occurred near Atlanta in 1899. Hose was tortured, burned, and hanged by a mob of two thousand whites. When walking through Atlanta to discuss the lynching with newspaper editor Joel Chandler Harris, Du Bois encountered Hose's burned knuckles in a storefront display. The episode stunned Du Bois, and he resolved that "one could not be a calm, cool, and detached scientist while Negroes were lynched, murdered, and starved". Du Bois realized that "the cure wasn't simply telling people the truth, it was inducing them to act on the truth".

In 1901, Du Bois wrote a review critical of Washington's autobiography Up from Slavery, which he later expanded and published to a wider audience as the essay "Of Mr. Booker T. Washington and Others" in The Souls of Black Folk. Later in life, Du Bois regretted having been critical of Washington in those essays. One of the contrasts between the two leaders was their approach to education: Washington felt that African-American schools should focus primarily on industrial education topics such as agricultural and mechanical skills, to prepare southern blacks for the opportunities in the rural areas where most lived. Du Bois felt that black schools should focus more on liberal arts and academic curriculum (including the classics, arts, and humanities), because liberal arts were required to develop a leadership elite.

However, as sociologist E. Franklin Frazier and economists Gunnar Myrdal and Thomas Sowell have argued, such disagreement over education was a minor point of difference between Washington and Du Bois; both men acknowledged the importance of the form of education that the other emphasized. Sowell has also argued that, despite genuine disagreements between the two leaders, the supposed animosity between Washington and Du Bois actually formed among their followers, not between Washington and Du Bois themselves. Du Bois also made this observation in an interview published in The Atlantic Monthly in November 1965.

Niagara Movement

In 1905, Du Bois and several other African-American civil rights activists - including Fredrick McGhee, Max Barber and William Monroe Trotter - met in Canada, near Niagara Falls, where they wrote a declaration of principles opposing the Atlanta Compromise, and which were incorporated as the Niagara Movement in 1906. They wanted to publicize their ideals to other African Americans, but most black periodicals were owned by publishers sympathetic to Washington, so Du Bois bought a printing press and started publishing Moon Illustrated Weekly in December 1905. It was the first African-American illustrated weekly, and Du Bois used it to attack Washington's positions, but the magazine lasted only for about eight months. Du Bois soon founded and edited another vehicle for his polemics, The Horizon: A Journal of the Color Line, which debuted in 1907. Freeman H. M. Murray and Lafayette M. Hershaw served as The Horizon' s co-editors.

The Niagarites held a second conference in August 1906, in celebration of the 100th anniversary of abolitionist John Brown's birth, at the West Virginia site of Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry. Reverdy C. Ransom spoke, explaining that Washington's primary goal was to prepare blacks for employment in their current society: "Today, two classes of Negroes, ...are standing at the parting of the ways. The one counsels patient submission to our present humiliations and degradations; ...The other class believe that it should not submit to being humiliated, degraded, and remanded to an inferior place. ...[I]t does not believe in bartering its manhood for the sake of gain."

In an effort to portray the genius and humanity of the black race, Du Bois published The Souls of Black Folk (1903), a collection of 14 essays. James Weldon Johnson said the book's effect on African Americans was comparable to that of Uncle Tom's Cabin. The introduction famously proclaimed that "the problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color line". Each chapter begins with two epigraphs - one from a white poet, and one from a black spiritual - to demonstrate intellectual and cultural parity between black and white cultures.

A major theme of the work was the double consciousness faced by African Americans: being both American and black. This was a unique identity which, according to Du Bois, had been a handicap in the past, but could be a strength in the future: "Henceforth, the destiny of the race could be conceived as leading neither to assimilation nor separatism but to proud, enduring hyphenation."

Jonathon S. Kahn in Divine Discontent: The Religious Imagination of Du Bois shows how Du Bois, in his The Souls of Black Folk, represents an exemplary text of pragmatic religious naturalism. On page 12, Kahn writes: "Du Bois needs to be understood as an African American pragmatic religious naturalist. By this I mean that, like Du Bois the American traditional pragmatic religious naturalism, which runs through William James, George Santayana, and John Dewey, seeks religion without metaphysical foundations." Kahn's interpretation of religious naturalism is very broad but he relates it to specific thinkers. Du Bois's anti-metaphysical viewpoint places him in the sphere of religious naturalism as typified by William James and others.

Racial violence

Two calamities in the autumn of 1906 shocked African Americans, and they contributed to strengthening support for Du Bois's struggle for civil rights to prevail over Booker T. Washington's accommodationism. First, President Theodore Roosevelt dishonorably discharged 167 Buffalo Soldiers because they were accused of crimes as a result of the Brownsville affair. Many of the discharged soldiers had served for 20 years and were near retirement. Second, in September, riots broke out in Atlanta, precipitated by unfounded allegations of black men assaulting white women. This was a catalyst for racial tensions based on a job shortage and employers playing black workers against white workers. Ten thousand whites rampaged through Atlanta, beating every black person they could find, resulting in over 25 deaths. In the aftermath of the 1906 violence, Du Bois urged blacks to withdraw their support from the Republican Party, because Republicans Roosevelt and William Howard Taft did not sufficiently support blacks. Most African Americans had been loyal to the Republican Party since the time of Abraham Lincoln. Du Bois endorsed Taft's rival William Jennings Bryan in the 1908 presidential election despite Bryan's acceptance of segregation.

Du Bois wrote the essay, "A Litany at Atlanta", which asserted that the riot demonstrated that the Atlanta Compromise was a failure. Despite upholding their end of the bargain, blacks had failed to receive legal justice in the South. Historian David Levering Lewis has written that the Compromise no longer held because white patrician planters, who took a paternalistic role, had been replaced by aggressive businessmen who were willing to pit blacks against whites. These two calamities were watershed events for the African American community, marking the ascendancy of Du Bois's vision of equal rights.

Academic work

Once we were told: Be worthy and fit and the ways are open. Today, the avenues of advancement in the army, navy, civil service, and even business and professional life are continually closed to black applicants of proven fitness, simply on the bald excuse of race and color.

-Du Bois, "Address at Fourth Niagara conference", 1908

In addition to writing editorials, Du Bois continued to produce scholarly work at Atlanta University. In 1909, after five years of effort, he published a biography of abolitionist John Brown. It contained many insights, but also contained some factual errors. The work was strongly criticized by , which was owned by Oswald Garrison Villard, who was writing his own, competing biography of John Brown. Possibly as a result, Du Bois's work was largely ignored by white scholars. After publishing a piece in magazine warning of the end of " white supremacy", Du Bois had difficulty getting pieces accepted by major periodicals, although he did continue to publish columns regularly in The Horizon magazine.

Du Bois was the first African American invited by the American Historical Association (AHA) to present a paper at their annual conference. He read his paper, Reconstruction and Its Benefits, to an astounded audience at the AHA's December 1909 conference. The paper went against the mainstream historical view, promoted by the Dunning School of scholars at Columbia University, that Reconstruction was a disaster, caused by the ineptitude and sloth of blacks. To the contrary, Du Bois asserted that the brief period of African-American leadership in the South accomplished three important goals: democracy, free public schools, and new social welfare legislation.

Du Bois asserted that it was the federal government's failure to manage the Freedmen's Bureau, to distribute land, and to establish an educational system, that doomed African-American prospects in the South. When Du Bois submitted the paper for publication a few months later in The American Historical Review, he asked that the word 'Negro' be capitalized. The editor, J. Franklin Jameson, refused, and published the paper without the capitalization. The paper was mostly ignored by white historians. Du Bois later developed his paper as his 1935 book, Black Reconstruction in America, which marshaled extensive references to support his assertions. The AHA did not invite another African-American speaker until 1940.

In May 1909, Du Bois attended the National Negro Conference in New York. The meeting led to the creation of the National Negro Committee, chaired by Oswald Garrison Villard, and dedicated to campaigning for civil rights, equal voting rights, and equal educational opportunities. The following spring, in 1910, at the second National Negro Conference, the attendees created the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). At Du Bois's suggestion, the word "colored", rather than "black", was used to include "dark skinned people everywhere". Dozens of civil rights supporters, black and white, participated in the founding, but most executive officers were white, including Mary White Ovington, Charles Edward Russell, William English Walling, and its first president, Moorfield Storey.

Feeling inspired by this, Indian social reformer and civil rights activist B. R. Ambedkar contacted Du Bois in the 1940s. In a letter to Du Bois in 1946, he introduced himself as a member of the " Untouchables of India" and "a student of the Negro problem" and expressed his interest in the NAACP's petition to the United Nations. He noted that his group was "thinking of following suit"; and requested copies of the proposed statement from Du Bois. In a letter dated July 31, 1946, Du Bois responded by telling Ambedkar he was familiar with his name, and that he had "every sympathy with the Untouchables of India."

Du Bois, c. 1911

NAACP leaders offered Du Bois the position of Director of Publicity and Research. He accepted the job in the summer of 1910, and moved to New York after resigning from Atlanta University. His primary duty was editing the NAACP's monthly magazine, which he named . The first issue appeared in November 1910, and Du Bois wrote that its aim was to set out "those facts and arguments which show the danger of race prejudice, particularly as manifested today toward colored people". The journal was phenomenally successful, and its circulation would reach 100,000 in 1920. Typical articles in the early editions polemics against the dishonesty and parochialism of black churches, and discussions on the Afrocentric origins of Egyptian civilization. Du Bois's African-centered view of ancient Egypt was in direct opposition to many Egyptologists of his day, including Flinders Petrie, whom Du Bois had met a conference.

A 1911 Du Bois editorial helped initiate a nationwide push to induce the Federal government to outlaw lynching. Du Bois, employing the sarcasm he frequently used, commented on a lynching in Pennsylvania: "The point is he was black. Blackness must be punished. Blackness is the crime of crimes ... It is therefore necessary, as every white scoundrel in the nation knows, to let slip no opportunity of punishing this crime of crimes. Of course if possible, the pretext should be great and overwhelming - some awful stunning crime, made even more horrible by the reporters' imagination. Failing this, mere murder, arson, barn burning or impudence may do."

First Issue of The Crisis, November 1910

The Crisis carried Du Bois editorials supporting the ideals of unionized labor but denouncing its leaders' racism; blacks were barred from membership. Du Bois also supported the principles of the Socialist Party of America (he held party membership from 1910 to 1912), but he denounced the racism demonstrated by some socialist leaders. Frustrated by Republican president Taft's failure to address widespread lynching, Du Bois endorsed Democratic candidate Woodrow Wilson in the 1912 presidential race, in exchange for Wilson's promise to support black causes.

Throughout his writings, Du Bois supported women's rights and women's suffrage, but he found it difficult to publicly endorse the women's right-to-vote movement because leaders of the suffragism movement refused to support his fight against racial injustice. A 1913 Crisis editorial broached the taboo subject of interracial marriage: although Du Bois generally expected persons to marry within their race, he viewed the problem as a women's rights issue, because laws prohibited white men from marrying black women. Du Bois wrote "[anti-miscegenation] laws leave the colored girls absolutely helpless for the lust of white men. It reduces colored women in the eyes of the law to the position of dogs. As low as the white girl falls, she can compel her seducer to marry her ... We must kill [anti-miscegenation laws] not because we are anxious to marry the white men's sisters, but because we are determined that white men will leave our sisters alone."

During 1915 − 1916, some leaders of the NAACP - disturbed by financial losses at The Crisis, and worried about the inflammatory rhetoric of some of its essays - attempted to oust Du Bois from his editorial position. Du Bois and his supporters prevailed, and he continued in his role as editor. In a 1919 column titled "The True Brownies", he announced the creation of The Brownies' Book, the first magazine published for African-American children and youth, which he founded with Augustus Granville Dill and Jessie Redmon Fauset.

Historian and author

The 1910s were a productive time for Du Bois. In 1911, he attended the First Universal Races Congress in London and he published his first novel, The Quest of the Silver Fleece. Two years later, Du Bois wrote, produced, and directed a pageant for the stage, The Star of Ethiopia. In 1915, Du Bois published , a general history of black Africans, and the first of its kind in English. The book rebutted claims of African inferiority, and would come to serve as the basis of much Afrocentric historiography in the 20th century. The Negro predicted unity and solidarity for colored people around the world, and it influenced many who supported the Pan-African movement.

In 1915, The Atlantic Monthly carried a Du Bois essay, "The African Roots of the War", which consolidated his ideas on capitalism, imperialism, and race. He argued that the Scramble for Africa was at the root of World War I. He also anticipated later communist doctrine, by suggesting that wealthy capitalists had pacified white workers by giving them just enough wealth to prevent them from revolting, and by threatening them with competition by the lower-cost labor of colored workers.

Combating racism

Du Bois used his influential NAACP position to oppose a variety of racist incidents. When the silent film The Birth of a Nation premiered in 1915, Du Bois and the NAACP led the fight to ban the movie, because of its racist portrayal of blacks as brutish and lustful. The fight was not successful, and possibly contributed to the film's fame, but the publicity drew many new supporters to the NAACP.

The private sector was not the only source of racism: under President Wilson, the plight of African Americans in government jobs suffered. Many federal agencies adopted whites-only employment practices, the Army excluded blacks from officer ranks, and the immigration service prohibited the immigration of persons of African ancestry. Du Bois wrote an editorial in 1914 deploring the dismissal of blacks from federal posts, and he supported William Monroe Trotter when Trotter brusquely confronted Wilson about the President's failure to fulfill his campaign promise of justice for blacks.

The Crisis continued to wage a campaign against lynching. In 1915, it published an article with a year-by-year tabulation of 2,732 lynchings from 1884 to 1914. The April 1916 edition covered the group lynching of six African Americans in Lee County, Georgia. Later in the June 1916 issue, the "Waco Horror" article covered the lynching of Jesse Washington, a mentally impaired 17-year-old African American. Du Bois included photographs of it in the article. The article broke new ground by utilizing undercover reporting to expose the conduct of local whites in Waco, Texas.

The early 20th century was the era of the Great Migration of blacks from the Southern United States to the Northeast, Midwest, and West. Du Bois wrote an editorial supporting the Great Migration, because he felt it would help blacks escape Southern racism, find economic opportunities, and assimilate into American society.

As the United States prepared to enter World War I in 1917, Du Bois's colleague in the NAACP, Joel Spingarn, established a camp to train African Americans to serve as officers in the United States Armed Forces. The camp was controversial, because some whites felt that blacks were not qualified to be officers, and some blacks felt that African Americans should not participate in what they considered a white man's war. Du Bois supported Spingarn's training camp, but was disappointed when the Army forcibly retired one of its few black officers, Charles Young, on a pretense of ill health. The Army agreed to create 1,000 officer positions for blacks, but insisted that 250 come from enlisted men, conditioned to taking orders from whites, rather than from independent-minded blacks who came from the camp. Over 700,000 blacks enlisted on the first day of the draft, but were subject to discriminatory conditions which prompted vocal protests from Du Bois.

After the East St. Louis riots occurred in the summer of 1917, Du Bois traveled to St. Louis to report on the riots. Between 40 and 250 African Americans were massacred by whites, primarily due to resentment caused by St. Louis industry hiring blacks to replace striking white workers. Du Bois's reporting resulted in an article "The Massacre of East St. Louis", published in the September issue of The Crisis, which contained photographs and interviews detailing the violence. Historian David Levering Lewis concluded that Du Bois distorted some of the facts in order to increase the propaganda value of the article. To publicly demonstrate the black community's outrage over the riots, Du Bois organized the Silent Parade, a march of around 9,000 African Americans down New York City's Fifth Avenue, the first parade of its kind in New York, and the second instance of blacks publicly demonstrating for civil rights.

The Houston riot of 1917 disturbed Du Bois and was a major setback to efforts to permit African Americans to become military officers. The riot began after Houston police arrested and beat two black soldiers; in response, over 100 black soldiers took to the streets of Houston and killed 16 whites. A military court martial was held, and 19 of the soldiers were hanged, and 67 others were imprisoned. In spite of the Houston riot, Du Bois and others successfully pressed the Army to accept the officers trained at Spingarn's camp, resulting in over 600 black officers joining the Army in October 1917.

Federal officials, concerned about subversive viewpoints expressed by NAACP leaders, attempted to frighten the NAACP by threatening it with investigations. Du Bois was not intimidated, and in 1918 he predicted that World War I would lead to an overthrow of the European colonial system and to the "liberation" of colored people worldwide - in China, in India, and especially in the Americas. NAACP chairman Joel Spingarn was enthusiastic about the war, and he persuaded Du Bois to consider an officer's commission in the Army, contingent on Du Bois writing an editorial repudiating his anti-war stance. Du Bois accepted this bargain and wrote the pro-war "Close Ranks" editorial in June 1918 and soon thereafter he received a commission in the Army. Many black leaders, who wanted to leverage the war to gain civil rights for African Americans, criticized Du Bois for his sudden reversal. Southern officers in Du Bois's unit objected to his presence, and his commission was withdrawn.

After the war

When the war ended, Du Bois traveled to Europe in 1919 to attend the first Pan-African Congress and to interview African-American soldiers for a planned book on their experiences in World War I. He was trailed by U.S. agents who were searching for evidence of treasonous activities. Du Bois discovered that the vast majority of black American soldiers were relegated to menial labor as stevedores and laborers. Some units were armed, and one in particular, the 92nd Division (the Buffalo soldiers), engaged in combat. Du Bois discovered widespread racism in the Army, and concluded that the Army command discouraged African Americans from joining the Army, discredited the accomplishments of black soldiers, and promoted bigotry.

Many blacks moved to northern cities in search of work, and some northern white workers resented the competition. This labor strife was one of the causes of the Red Summer, a series of race riots across America in 1919, in which over 300 African Americans were killed in over 30 cities. Du Bois documented the atrocities in the pages of The Crisis, culminating in the December publication of a gruesome photograph of a lynching that occurred during a race riot in Omaha, Nebraska.

The most violent episode during the Red Summer was a massacre in Elaine, Arkansas in which nearly 200 blacks were murdered. Reports coming out of the South blamed the blacks, alleging that they were conspiring to take over the government. Infuriated with the distortions, Du Bois published a letter in the New York World, claiming that the only crime the black sharecroppers had committed was daring to challenge their white landlords by hiring an attorney to investigate contractual irregularities.

Over 60 of the surviving blacks were arrested and tried for conspiracy, in the case known as Moore v. Dempsey. Du Bois rallied blacks across America to raise funds for the legal defense, which, six years later, resulted in a Supreme Court victory authored by Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.. Although the victory had little immediate impact on justice for blacks in the South, it marked the first time the Federal government used the 14th amendment guarantee of due process to prevent states from shielding mob violence.

Darkwater: Voices from Within the Veil, first edition cover, 1920

In 1920, Du Bois published Darkwater: Voices from Within the Veil, the first of his three autobiographies. The "veil" was that which covered colored people around the world. In the book, he hoped to lift the veil and show white readers what life was like behind the veil, and how it distorted the viewpoints of those looking through it - in both directions. The book contained Du Bois's feminist essay, "The Damnation of Women", which was a tribute to the dignity and worth of women, particularly black women.

Concerned that textbooks used by African-American children ignored black history and culture, Du Bois created a monthly children's magazine, The Brownies' Book. Initially published in 1920, it was aimed at black children, who Du Bois called "the children of the sun".

Pan-Africanism and Marcus Garvey

Du Bois traveled to Europe in 1921 to attend the second Pan-African Congress. The assembled black leaders from around the world issued the London Resolutions and established a Pan-African Association headquarters in Paris. Under Du Bois's guidance, the resolutions insisted on racial equality, and that Africa be ruled by Africans (not, as in the 1919 congress, with the consent of Africans). Du Bois restated the resolutions of the congress in his Manifesto To the League of Nations, which implored the newly formed League of Nations to address labor issues and to appoint Africans to key posts. The League took little action on the requests.

Jamaican activist Marcus Garvey, promoter of the Back-to-Africa movement and founder of the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), denounced Du Bois's efforts to achieve equality through integration, and instead endorsed racial separatism. Du Bois initially supported the concept of Garvey's Black Star Line, a shipping company that was intended to facilitate commerce within the African diaspora. But Du Bois later became concerned that Garvey was threatening the NAACP's efforts, leading Du Bois to describe him as fraudulent and reckless. Responding to Garvey's slogan "Africa for the Africans", Du Bois said that he supported that concept, but denounced Garvey's intention that Africa be ruled by African Americans.

Du Bois wrote a series of articles in The Crisis between 1922 and 1924 attacking Garvey's movement, calling him the "most dangerous enemy of the Negro race in America and the world." Du Bois and Garvey never made a serious attempt to collaborate, and their dispute was partly rooted in the desire of their respective organizations (NAACP and UNIA) to capture a larger portion of the available philanthropic funding.

Du Bois decried Harvard's decision to ban blacks from its dormitories in 1921 as an instance of a broad effort in the U.S. to renew "the Anglo-Saxon cult; the worship of the Nordic totem, the disfranchisement of Negro, Jew, Irishman, Italian, Hungarian, Asiatic and South Sea Islander - the world rule of Nordic white through brute force." When Du Bois sailed for Europe in 1923 for the third Pan-African Congress, the circulation of The Crisis had declined to 60,000 from its World War I high of 100,000, but it remained the preeminent periodical of the civil rights movement. President Calvin Coolidge designated Du Bois an "Envoy Extraordinary" to Liberia and - after the third congress concluded - Du Bois rode a German freighter from the Canary Islands to Africa, visiting Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Senegal.

Harlem Renaissance

Du Bois's 1924 work The Gift of Black Folk celebrated the unique contributions of African-Americans in building the United States

Du Bois frequently promoted African-American artistic creativity in his writings, and when the Harlem Renaissance emerged in the mid-1920s, his article "A Negro Art Renaissance" celebrated the end of the long hiatus of blacks from creative endeavors. His enthusiasm for the Harlem Renaissance waned as he came to believe that many whites visited Harlem for voyeurism, not for genuine appreciation of black art. Du Bois insisted that artists recognize their moral responsibilities, writing that "a black artist is first of all a black artist." He was also concerned that black artists were not using their art to promote black causes, saying "I do not care a damn for any art that is not used for propaganda." By the end of 1926, he stopped employing The Crisis to support the arts.

Debate with Lothrop Stoddard

In 1929, a debate organised by the Chicago Forum Council billed as "One of the greatest debates ever held" was held between Du Bois and Lothrop Stoddard, a member of the Ku Klux Klan, proponent of eugenics and so-called scientific racism. The debate was held in Chicago and Du Bois was arguing the affirmative to the question "Shall the Negro be encouraged to seek cultural equality? Has the Negro the same intellectual possibilities as other races?"

Du Bois knew that the racists would be unintentionally funny onstage; as he wrote to Moore, Senator J. Thomas Heflin "would be a scream" in a debate. Du Bois let the overconfident and bombastic Stoddard walk into a comic moment, which Stoddard then made even funnier by not getting the joke. This moment was captured in headlines "DuBois Shatters Stoddard's Cultural Theories in Debate; Thousands Jam Hall . . . Cheered As He Proves Race Equality," the Chicago Defender's front-page headline ran. "5,000 Cheer W.E.B. DuBois, Laugh at Lothrop Stoddard." Ian Frazier of the writes that the comic potential of Stoddard's bankrupt ideas was left untapped until Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove.

When Du Bois became editor of The Crisis magazine in 1911, he joined the Socialist Party of America on the advice of NAACP founders Mary White Ovington, William English Walling and Charles Edward Russell. However, he supported the Democrat Woodrow Wilson in the 1912 presidential campaign, a breach of the rules, and was forced to resign from the Socialist Party. In 1913, his support for Wilson was shaken when racial segregation in government hiring was reported. Du Bois remained "convinced that socialism was an excellent way of life, but I thought it might be reached by various methods."

Nine years after the 1917 Russian Revolution, Du Bois extended a trip to Europe to include a visit to the Soviet Union, where he was struck by the poverty and disorganization he encountered in the Soviet Union, yet was impressed by the intense labors of the officials and by the recognition given to workers. Although Du Bois was not yet familiar with the communist theories of Karl Marx or Vladimir Lenin, he concluded that socialism might be a better path towards racial equality than capitalism.

Although Du Bois generally endorsed socialist principles, his politics were strictly pragmatic: in the 1929 New York City mayoral election, he endorsed Democrat Jimmy Walker for mayor of New York, rather than the socialist Norman Thomas, believing that Walker could do more immediate good for blacks, even though Thomas's platform was more consistent with Du Bois's views. Throughout the 1920s, Du Bois and the NAACP shifted support back and forth between the Republican Party and the Democratic Party, induced by promises from the candidates to fight lynchings, improve working conditions, or support voting rights in the South; invariably, the candidates failed to deliver on their promises.

And herein lies the tragedy of the age: not that men are poor - all men know something of poverty; not that men are wicked - who is good? Not that men are ignorant - what is Truth? Nay, but that men know so little of men.

-Du Bois, "Of Alexander Crummell", in The Souls of Black Folk, 1903

A rivalry emerged in 1931 between the NAACP and the Communist Party, when the communists responded quickly and effectively to support the Scottsboro Boys, nine African American youth arrested in 1931 in Alabama for rape. Du Bois and the NAACP felt that the case would not be beneficial to their cause, so they chose to let the Communist Party organize the defense efforts. Du Bois was impressed with the vast amount of publicity and funds which the communists devoted to the partially successful defense effort, and he came to suspect that the communists were attempting to present their party to African Americans as a better solution than the NAACP.

Responding to criticisms of the NAACP from the Communist Party, Du Bois wrote articles condemning the party, claiming that it unfairly attacked the NAACP, and that it failed to fully appreciate racism in the United States. In their turn, the communist leaders accused him of being a "class enemy", and claimed that the NAACP leadership was an isolated elite, disconnected from the working-class blacks they ostensibly fought for.

Return to Atlanta

Du Bois did not have a good working relationship with Walter White, president of the NAACP since 1931. That conflict, combined with the financial stresses of the Great Depression, precipitated a power struggle over The Crisis. Du Bois, concerned that his position as editor would be eliminated, resigned his job at The Crisis and accepted an academic position at Atlanta University in early 1933. The rift with the NAACP grew larger in 1934 when Du Bois reversed his stance on segregation, stating that " separate but equal" was an acceptable goal for African Americans. The NAACP leadership was stunned, and asked Du Bois to retract his statement, but he refused, and the dispute led to Du Bois's resignation from the NAACP.

After arriving at his new professorship in Atlanta, Du Bois wrote a series of articles generally supportive of Marxism. He was not a strong proponent of labor unions or the Communist Party, but he felt that Marx's scientific explanation of society and the economy were useful for explaining the situation of African Americans in the United States. Marx's atheism also struck a chord with Du Bois, who routinely criticized black churches for dulling blacks' sensitivity to racism. In his 1933 writings, Du Bois embraced socialism, but asserted that "[c]olored labor has no common ground with white labor", a controversial position that was rooted in Du Bois's dislike of American labor unions, which had systematically excluded blacks for decades. Du Bois did not support the Communist Party in the U.S. and did not vote for their candidate in the 1932 presidential election, in spite of an African American on their ticket.

Black Reconstruction in America

Black Reconstruction in America, first edition cover, 1935

Back in the world of academia, Du Bois was able to resume his study of Reconstruction, the topic of the 1910 paper that he presented to the American Historical Association. In 1935, he published his magnum opus, Black Reconstruction in America. The book presented the thesis, in the words of the historian David Levering Lewis, that "black people, suddenly admitted to citizenship in an environment of feral hostility, displayed admirable volition and intelligence as well as the indolence and ignorance inherent in three centuries of bondage."

Du Bois documented how black people were central figures in the American Civil War and Reconstruction era, and also showed how they made alliances with white politicians. He provided evidence that the coalition governments established public education in the South, and many needed social service programs. The book also demonstrated the ways in which black emancipation - the crux of Reconstruction - promoted a radical restructuring of United States society, as well as how and why the country failed to continue support for civil rights for blacks in the aftermath of Reconstruction.

The book's thesis ran counter to the orthodox interpretation of Reconstruction maintained by white historians, and the book was virtually ignored by mainstream historians until the 1960s. Thereafter, however, it ignited a "revisionist" trend in the historiography of Reconstruction, which emphasized black people's search for freedom and the era's radical policy changes. By the 21st century, Black Reconstruction was widely perceived as "the foundational text of revisionist African American historiography."

In the final chapter of the book, "XIV. The Propaganda of History", Du Bois evokes his efforts at writing an article for the Encyclopædia Britannica on the "history of the American Negro". After the editors had cut all reference to Reconstruction, he insisted that the following note appear in the entry: "White historians have ascribed the faults and failures of Reconstruction to Negro ignorance and corruption. But the Negro insists that it was Negro loyalty and the Negro vote alone that restored the South to the Union; established the new democracy, both for white and black, and instituted the public schools." The editors refused and, so, Du Bois withdrew his article.

Projected encyclopedia

In 1932, Du Bois was selected by several philanthropies, including the Phelps Stokes Fund, the Carnegie Corporation of New York, and the General Education Board, to be the managing editor for a proposed Encyclopedia of the Negro, a work which Du Bois had been contemplating for 30 years. After several years of planning and organizing, the philanthropies canceled the project in 1938 because some board members believed that Du Bois was too biased to produce an objective encyclopedia.

Trip around the world

Du Bois took a trip around the world in 1936, which included visits to Germany, China, and Japan. While in Germany, Du Bois remarked that he was treated with warmth and respect. After his return to the United States, he expressed his ambivalence about the Nazi regime. He admired how the Nazis had improved the German economy, but he was horrified by their treatment of the Jewish people, which he described as "an attack on civilization, comparable only to such horrors as the Spanish Inquisition and the African slave trade".

Following the 1905 Japanese victory in the Russo-Japanese War, Du Bois became impressed by the growing strength of Imperial Japan. He came to view the ascendant Japanese Empire as an antidote to Western imperialism, arguing for over three decades after the war that its rise represented a chance to break the monopoly that white nations had on international affairs. A representative of Japan's "Negro Propaganda Operations" traveled to the United States during the 1920s and 1930s, meeting with Du Bois and giving him a positive impression of Imperial Japan's racial policies.

In 1936, the Japanese ambassador arranged a trip to Japan for Du Bois and a small group of academics, visiting China, Japan, and Manchukuo (Manchuria). Du Bois viewed Japanese colonialism in Manchuria as benevolent; he wrote that "colonial enterprise by a colored nation need not imply the caste, exploitation and subjection which it has always implied in the case of white Europe." He also believed that it was natural for Chinese and Japanese to quarrel with each other as "relatives" and that the segregated schools in Manchuria were established because the natives spoke Chinese only. While disturbed by the eventual Japanese alliance with Nazi Germany, Du Bois also argued Japan was only compelled to enter the pact because of the hostility of the United States and United Kingdom, and he viewed American apprehensions over Japanese expansion in Asia as racially motivated both before and after the attack on Pearl Harbor. He was similarly disturbed by how Chinese culture might be extinguished under Japanese rule but argued that Western imperialism was a greater existential concern.

World War II

Dusk of Dawn, first edition cover, 1940

Du Bois opposed the US intervention in World War II, particularly in the Pacific War, because he believed that China and Japan were emerging from the clutches of white imperialists. He felt that the European Allies waging war against Japan was an opportunity for whites to reestablish their influence in Asia. He was deeply disappointed by the US government's plan for African Americans in the armed forces: Blacks were limited to 5.8% of the force, and there were to be no African-American combat units - virtually the same restrictions as in World War I. With blacks threatening to shift their support to President Franklin D. Roosevelt's Republican opponent Wendell Willkie in the 1940 election, Roosevelt appointed a few blacks to leadership posts in the military.

Dusk of Dawn, Du Bois's second autobiography, was published in 1940. The title refers to his hope that African Americans were passing out of the darkness of racism into an era of greater equality. The work is part autobiography, part history, and part sociological treatise. Du Bois described the book as "the autobiography of a concept of race ... elucidated and magnified and doubtless distorted in the thoughts and deeds which were mine ... Thus for all time my life is significant for all lives of men."

In 1943, at age 75, Du Bois was abruptly fired from his position at Atlanta University by college president Rufus Early Clement. Many scholars expressed outrage, prompting Atlanta University to provide Du Bois with a lifelong pension and the title of professor emeritus. Arthur Spingarn remarked that Du Bois spent his time in Atlanta "battering his life out against ignorance, bigotry, intolerance and slothfulness, projecting ideas nobody but he understands, and raising hopes for change which may be comprehended in a hundred years."

Turning down job offers from Fisk and Howard, Du Bois re-joined the NAACP as director of the Department of Special Research. Surprising many NAACP leaders, Du Bois jumped into the job with vigor and determination. During his 10−years hiatus, the NAACP's income had increased fourfold, and its membership had soared to 325,000 members.

United Nations

Du Bois was a member of the three-person delegation from the NAACP that attended the 1945 conference in San Francisco at which the United Nations was established. The NAACP delegation wanted the United Nations to endorse racial equality and to bring an end to the colonial era. To push the United Nations in that direction, Du Bois drafted a proposal that pronounced "[t]he colonial system of government ... is undemocratic, socially dangerous and a main cause of wars". The NAACP proposal received support from China, India, and the Soviet Union, but it was virtually ignored by the other major powers, and the NAACP proposals were not included in the final United Nations Charter.

After the United Nations conference, Du Bois published Color and Democracy: Colonies and Peace, a book that attacked colonial empires and, in the words of a most sympathetic reviewer, "contains enough dynamite to blow up the whole vicious system whereby we have comforted our white souls and lined the pockets of generations of free-booting capitalists."

In late 1945, Du Bois attended the fifth, and final, Pan-African Congress, in Manchester, England. The congress was the most productive of the five congresses, and there Du Bois met Kwame Nkrumah, the future first president of Ghana, who would later invite him to Africa.

Du Bois helped to submit petitions to the UN concerning discrimination against African Americans, the most noteworthy of which was the NAACP's "An Appeal to the World: A Statement on the Denial of Human Rights to Minorities in the Case of Citizens of Negro Descent in the United States of America and an Appeal to the United Nations for Redress". This advocacy laid the foundation for the later report and petition called " We Charge Genocide", submitted in 1951 by the Civil Rights Congress. "We Charge Genocide" accuses the U.S. of systematically sanctioning murders and inflicting harm against African Americans and therefore committing genocide.

When the Cold War commenced in the mid-1940s, the NAACP distanced itself from communists, lest its funding or reputation suffer. The NAACP redoubled its efforts in 1947 after magazine published a piece by Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. claiming that the NAACP was heavily influenced by communists. Ignoring the NAACP's desires, Du Bois continued to fraternize with communist sympathizers such as Paul Robeson, Howard Fast and Shirley Graham (his future second wife). Du Bois wrote "I am not a communist ... On the other hand, I ... believe ... that Karl Marx ... put his finger squarely upon our difficulties ...".

In 1946, Du Bois wrote articles giving his assessment of the Soviet Union; he did not embrace communism and he criticized its dictatorship. However, he felt that capitalism was responsible for poverty and racism, and felt that socialism was an alternative that might ameliorate those problems. The Soviets explicitly rejected racial distinctions and class distinctions, leading Du Bois to conclude that the USSR was the "most hopeful country on earth".

Du Bois's association with prominent communists made him a liability for the NAACP, especially since the Federal Bureau of Investigation was starting to aggressively investigate communist sympathizers; so - by mutual agreement - he resigned from the NAACP for the second time in late 1948. After departing the NAACP, Du Bois started writing regularly for the leftist weekly newspaper the National Guardian, a relationship that would endure until 1961.

Peace activism

Du Bois was a lifelong anti-war activist, but his efforts became more pronounced after World War II. In 1949, Du Bois spoke at the Scientific and Cultural Conference for World Peace in New York: "I tell you, people of America, the dark world is on the move! It wants and will have Freedom, Autonomy and Equality. It will not be diverted in these fundamental rights by dialectical splitting of political hairs ... Whites may, if they will, arm themselves for suicide. But the vast majority of the world's peoples will march on over them to freedom!"

In the spring of 1949, he spoke at the World Congress of the Partisans of Peace in Paris, saying to the large crowd: "Leading this new colonial imperialism comes my own native land built by my father's toil and blood, the United States. The United States is a great nation; rich by grace of God and prosperous by the hard work of its humblest citizens ... Drunk with power we are leading the world to hell in a new colonialism with the same old human slavery which once ruined us; and to a third World War which will ruin the world." Du Bois affiliated himself with a leftist organization, the National Council of Arts, Sciences and Professions, and he traveled to Moscow as its representative to speak at the All-Soviet Peace Conference in late 1949.

During this period, Du Bois also visited the remains of the Warsaw Ghetto, an experience he spoke about in a speech titled, "The Negro and the Warsaw Ghetto" delivered in 1949 and later published in 1952 in the magazine Jewish Life. In the address, Du Bois reflects on the destruction caused by the Nazi assault against Jewish peoples and considers the way in which the "race problem" could extend past a "color-line" and become "a matter of cultural patterns, perverted teaching and human hate and prejudice, which reached all sorts of people and caused endless evil to all men". Du Bois' speech champions a broader and more transnational approach to humanitarianism.

The FBI, McCarthyism, and trial

During the 1950s, the U.S. government's anti-communist McCarthyism campaign targeted Du Bois because of his socialist leanings. Socialist historian Manning Marable characterizes the government's treatment of Du Bois as "ruthless repression" and a "political assassination".

The FBI began to compile a file on Du Bois in 1942, investigating him for possible subversive activities. The original investigation appears to have ended in 1943 because the FBI was unable to discover sufficient evidence against Du Bois, but the FBI resumed its investigation in 1949, suspecting he was among a group of "Concealed Communists". The most aggressive government attack against Du Bois occurred in the early 1950s, as a consequence of his opposition to nuclear weapons. In 1950 he became chair of the newly created Peace Information Center (PIC), which worked to publicize the Stockholm Appeal in the United States. The primary purpose of the appeal was to gather signatures on a petition, asking governments around the world to ban all nuclear weapons.

In United States v. Peace Information Center, 97 F. Supp. 255 (D.D.C. 1951), the U.S. Justice Department alleged that the PIC was acting as an agent of a foreign state, and thus required the PIC to register with the federal government under the Foreign Agents Registration Act. Du Bois and other PIC leaders refused, and they were indicted for failure to register. After the indictment, some of Du Bois's associates distanced themselves from him, and the NAACP refused to issue a statement of support; but many labor figures and leftists - including Langston Hughes - supported Du Bois.

He was finally tried in 1951 and was represented by civil rights attorney Vito Marcantonio. The case was dismissed before the jury rendered a verdict as soon as the defense attorney told the judge that "Dr. Albert Einstein has offered to appear as character witness for Dr. Du Bois". Du Bois's memoir of the trial is In Battle for Peace. Even though Du Bois was not convicted, the government confiscated Du Bois's passport and withheld it for eight years.

Du Bois was bitterly disappointed that many of his colleagues - particularly the NAACP - did not support him during his 1951 PIC trial, whereas working class whites and blacks supported him enthusiastically. After the trial, Du Bois lived in Manhattan, writing and speaking, and continuing to associate primarily with leftist acquaintances. His primary concern was world peace, and he railed against military actions such as the Korean War, which he viewed as efforts by imperialist whites to maintain colored people in a submissive state.

In 1950, at the age of 82, Du Bois ran for U.S. Senator from New York on the American Labor Party ticket and received about 200,000 votes, or 4% of the statewide total. He continued to believe that capitalism was the primary culprit responsible for the subjugation of colored people around the world, and although he recognized the faults of the Soviet Union, he continued to uphold communism as a possible solution to racial problems. In the words of biographer David Lewis, Du Bois did not endorse communism for its own sake, but did so because "the enemies of his enemies were his friends". The same ambiguity characterized his opinions of Joseph Stalin: in 1940 he wrote disdainfully of the "Tyrant Stalin", but when Stalin died in 1953, Du Bois wrote a eulogy characterizing Stalin as "simple, calm, and courageous", and lauding him for being the "first [to] set Russia on the road to conquer race prejudice and make one nation out of its 140 groups without destroying their individuality".

The U.S. government prevented Du Bois from attending the 1955 Bandung Conference in Indonesia. The conference was the culmination of 40 years of Du Bois's dreams - a meeting of 29 nations from Africa and Asia, many recently independent, representing most of the world's colored peoples. The conference celebrated those nations' independence as they began to assert their power as non-aligned nations during the Cold War.

In 1958, Du Bois regained his passport and with his second wife, Shirley Graham Du Bois, traveled around the world. They visited the Soviet Union and China, to much celebration. Du Bois later wrote approvingly of the conditions in both countries.

Du Bois became incensed in 1961 when the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the 1950 McCarran Internal Security Act, a key piece of McCarthyism legislation which required communists to register with the government. To demonstrate his outrage, he joined the Communist Party in October 1961, at the age of 93. Around that time, he wrote: "I believe in communism. I mean by communism, a planned way of life in the production of wealth and work designed for building a state whose object is the highest welfare of its people and not merely the profit of a part." He asked Herbert Aptheker, a communist and historian of African American history, to be his literary executor.

Death in Africa

Du Bois (center) at his 95th birthday party in 1963, with President Kwame Nkrumah (right) and First Lady Fathia Nkrumah

Nkrumah invited Du Bois to the Dominion of Ghana to participate in their independence celebration in 1957, but he was unable to attend because the U.S. government had confiscated his passport in 1951. By 1960 - the " Year of Africa" - Du Bois had recovered his passport, and was able to cross the Atlantic and celebrate the creation of the Republic of Ghana. Du Bois returned to Africa in late 1960 to attend the inauguration of Nnamdi Azikiwe as the first African governor of Nigeria.

While visiting Ghana in 1960, Du Bois spoke with its president about the creation of a new encyclopedia of the African diaspora, the Encyclopedia Africana. In early 1961, Ghana notified Du Bois that they had appropriated funds to support the encyclopedia project, and they invited him to travel to Ghana and manage the project there. In October 1961, at the age of 93, Du Bois and his wife traveled to Ghana to take up residence and commence work on the encyclopedia. In early 1963, the United States refused to renew his passport, so he made the symbolic gesture of becoming a citizen of Ghana.

While it is sometimes stated that Du Bois renounced his U.S. citizenship at that time, and he stated his intention to do so, Du Bois never actually did. His health declined during the two years he was in Ghana; he died on August 27, 1963, in the capital, Accra, at the age of 95. The following day, at the March on Washington, speaker Roy Wilkins asked the hundreds of thousands of marchers to honor Du Bois with a moment of silence. The Civil Rights Act of 1964, embodying many of the reforms Du Bois had campaigned for during his entire life, was enacted almost a year after his death.

Du Bois was given a state funeral on August 29-30, 1963, at Nkrumah's request, and was buried near the western wall of Christiansborg Castle (now Osu Castle), then the seat of government in Accra. In 1985, another state ceremony honored Du Bois. With the ashes of his wife Shirley Graham Du Bois, who had died in 1977, his body was re-interred at their former home in Accra, which was dedicated the W. E. B. Du Bois Memorial Centre for Pan African Culture in his memory. Du Bois's first wife Nina, their son Burghardt, and their daughter Yolande, who died in 1961, were buried in the cemetery of Great Barrington, Massachusetts, his hometown.

Personal life

Du Bois was organized and disciplined: his lifelong regimen was to rise at 7:15, work until 5:00, eat dinner and read a newspaper until 7:00, then read or socialize until he was in bed, invariably before 10:00. He was a meticulous planner, and frequently mapped out his schedules and goals on large pieces of graph paper. Many acquaintances found him to be distant and aloof, and he insisted on being addressed as "Dr. Du Bois". Although he was not gregarious, he formed several close friendships with associates such as Charles Young, Paul Laurence Dunbar, John Hope, Mary White Ovington, and Albert Einstein.

His closest friend was Joel Spingarn - a white man - but Du Bois never accepted Spingarn's offer to be on a first-name basis. Du Bois was something of a dandy - he dressed formally, carried a walking stick, and walked with an air of confidence and dignity. He was relatively short, standing at 5 feet 5.5 inches (166 cm), and always maintained a well-groomed mustache and goatee. He enjoyed singing and playing tennis.

Du Bois married Nina Gomer (b. about 1870, m. 1896, d. 1950), with whom he had two children. Their son Burghardt died as an infant before their second child, daughter Yolande, was born. Yolande attended Fisk University and became a high school teacher in Baltimore. Her father encouraged her marriage to Countee Cullen, a nationally known poet of the Harlem Renaissance. They divorced within two years. She married again and had a daughter, Du Bois's only grandchild. That marriage also ended in divorce.

Although Du Bois attended a New England Congregational church as a child, he abandoned organized religion while at Fisk College. As an adult, Du Bois described himself as agnostic or a freethinker, but at least one biographer concluded that Du Bois was virtually an atheist. However, another analyst of Du Bois's writings concluded that he had a religious voice, albeit radically different from other African-American religious voices of his era. Du Bois was credited with inaugurating a 20th-century spirituality to which Ralph Ellison, Zora Neale Hurston, and James Baldwin also belong.

When asked to lead public prayers, Du Bois would refuse. In his autobiography, Du Bois wrote:

When I became head of a department at Atlanta, the engagement was held up because again I balked at leading in prayer ... I flatly refused again to join any church or sign any church creed. ... I think the greatest gift of the Soviet Union to modern civilization was the dethronement of the clergy and the refusal to let religion be taught in the public schools.

Du Bois accused American churches of being the most discriminatory of all institutions. He also provocatively linked African American Christianity to indigenous African religions. He did occasionally acknowledge the beneficial role that religion played in African American life - as the "basic rock" which served as an anchor for African American communities - but in general disparaged African American churches and clergy because he felt they did not support the goals of racial equality and hindered activists' efforts.

Although Du Bois was not personally religious, he infused his writings with religious symbology. Many contemporaries viewed him as a prophet. His 1904 prose poem, "Credo", was written in the style of a religious creed and widely read by the African-American community. Moreover, Du Bois, both in his own fiction and in stories published in The Crisis, often drew analogies between the lynchings of African Americans and the crucifixion of Jesus. Between 1920 and 1940, Du Bois shifted from overt black messiah symbolism to more subtle messianic language.

In 1889, Du Bois became eligible to vote at the age of 21. During his life he followed the philosophy of voting for third parties if the Democratic and Republican parties were unsatisfactory; or voting for the lesser of two evils if a third option was not available.

Du Bois endorsed the Democratic nominee William Jennings Bryan in the 1908 presidential election. In the 1912 presidential election, Du Bois supported Woodrow Wilson, the Democratic nominee, as he believed Wilson was a "liberal Southerner" although he had wanted to support Theodore Roosevelt and the Progressive Party, but the Progressives ignored issues facing black people. He later regretted his decision, as he came to the conclusion that Wilson was opposed to racial equality. During the 1916 presidential election he supported Charles Evans Hughes, the Republican nominee, as he believed that Wilson was the greater evil. During the 1920 presidential election he supported Warren G. Harding, the Republican nominee, as Harding promised to end the United States occupation of Haiti. During the 1924 presidential election he supported Robert M. La Follette, the Progressive nominee, although he believed that La Follette could not win. During the 1928 presidential election he believed that both Herbert Hoover and Al Smith insulted black voters, and instead Du Bois supported Norman Thomas, the Socialist nominee.

From 1932 to 1944, Du Bois supported Franklin D. Roosevelt, the Democratic nominee, as Roosevelt's attitude towards workers was more realistic. During the 1948 presidential election he supported Henry A. Wallace, the Progressive nominee, and supported the Progressives' nominee, Vincent Hallinan, again in 1952.

During the 1956 presidential election Du Bois stated that he would not vote. He criticized the foreign, taxation, and crime policies of the Eisenhower administration and Adlai Stevenson II for promising to maintain those policies. However, he could not vote third party due to the lack of ballot access for the Socialist Party.

Honors and legacy

The NAACP awarded the Spingarn Medal to Du Bois in 1920.

In 1958, Du Bois was inducted into the Fisk University chapter of Phi Beta Kappa when he returned to campus to receive an honorary degree.

In 1959, Du Bois was awarded the International Lenin Peace Prize by the USSR.

In 1969, the W. E. B. Du Bois Institute for African and African-American Research, now part of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research, was established at Harvard University.

The site of the house where Du Bois grew up in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1976.

In 1992, the United States Postal Service honored Du Bois with his portrait on a postage stamp. A second stamp of face value 32¢ was issued on February 3, 1998, as part of the Celebrate the Century stamp sheet series.

In 1994, the main library at the University of Massachusetts Amherst was named for Du Bois. He transferred his papers to the university via his literary executor, historian Herbert Aptheker.

In 2000, Harvard's Hutchins Center for African & African American Research began awarding the W. E. B. Du Bois Medal, which is considered Harvard's highest honor in the field of African and African American studies.

A dormitory was named for Du Bois at the University of Pennsylvania, where he conducted field research for his sociological study The Philadelphia Negro.

A dormitory is named for Du Bois at Hampton University.

Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African-American Experience was inspired by and dedicated to Du Bois by its editors Kwame Anthony Appiah and Henry Louis Gates Jr.

The Humboldt University of Berlin hosts a series of lectures named in his honor.

Scholar Molefi Kete Asante listed Du Bois in his 2002 list of the 100 Greatest African Americans.

In 2005, Du Bois was honored with a medallion in The Extra Mile, Washington DC's memorial to important American volunteers.

The highest career award given by the American Sociological Association, the W.E.B. Du Bois Career of Distinguished Scholarship Award, was renamed for Du Bois in 2006.

Du Bois was appointed Honorary Emeritus Professor at the University of Pennsylvania in 2012.

A bust was commissioned from Ayokunle Odeleye to honor Du Bois, and dedicated on the Clark Atlanta University on the anniversary of his birth, February 23, 2013 (pictured right).

In 2015, the Du Bois Orchestra at Harvard was founded.

In March 2018, Du Bois was awarded Grand Prix de la Mémoire for the Grand Prix of Literary Associations 2017.

Selected works

Non-fiction books

The Study of the Negro Problems (1898)

The Philadelphia Negro (1899)

The Negro in Business (1899)

The Souls of Black Folk (1903)

"The Talented Tenth", second chapter of The Negro Problem, a collection of articles by African Americans (September 1903)

Voice of the Negro II (September 1905)

John Brown (1909)

Efforts for Social Betterment among Negro Americans (1909)

Atlanta University's Studies of the Negro Problem (1897-1910)

The Negro (1915)

The Gift of Black Folk: The Negroes in the Making of America (1924)

Africa, Its Geography, People and Products (1930)

Africa: Its Place in Modern History (1930)

Black Reconstruction in America (1935)

What the Negro Has Done for the United States and Texas (1936)

Black Folk, Then and Now (1939)

Color and Democracy: Colonies and Peace (1945)

The Encyclopedia of the Negro (1946)

The World and Africa (1946)

The World and Africa, an Inquiry into the Part Which Africa Has Played in World History (1947)

Peace Is Dangerous (1951)

I Take My Stand for Peace (1951)

In Battle for Peace (1952)

Africa in Battle Against Colonialism, Racialism, Imperialism (1960)

Autobiographies

Du Bois edited The Crisis from 1910 to 1933, and it contains many of his important polemics.

Recordings

Dissertations

Archival material

The W. E. B. Du Bois Library at the University of Massachusetts Amherst contains Du Bois's archive, consisting of 294 boxes and 89 microfilm reels; 99,625 items have been digitized.

All footnotes referenced as only "Lewis" refer to the 2009 single-volume edition of W. E. B. Du Bois: A Biography

References

Horne, Gerald (2010), W. E. B. Du Bois: A Biography, Greenwood Press, ISBN 978-0-313-34979-9.

Johnson, Brian (2008), W. E. B. Du Bois: Toward Agnosticism, 1868-1934, Rowman & Littlefield, ISBN 978-0-7425-6449-7.

Lewis, David Levering (2009), W. E. B. Du Bois: A Biography, Henry Holt and Co. Single volume edition, updated, of his 1994 and 2001 works. ISBN 978-0-8050-8769-7.

Bois, W. E. Burghardt Du; Wilson, Woodrow (1973). "My Impressions of Woodrow Wilson". The Journal of Negro History. 58 (4): 453-459. doi:10.2307/2716751. JSTOR 2716751. S2CID 224839908.

Lomotey, Kofi (2009), Encyclopedia of African American Education, Volume 1, Sage, ISBN 978-1-4129-4050-4.

Marable, Manning (2005), W. E. B. Du Bois: Black Radical Democrat, Paradigm Publishers, ISBN 978-1-59451-018-2.

Rabaka, Reiland (2009), Du Bois's Dialectics: Black Radical Politics and the Reconstruction of Critical Social Theory, Lexington Books, ISBN 978-0-7391-1958-7.

Further reading

Adams, John Henry (1905). "Rough Sketches. William Edward Burghardt Du Bois". Voice of the Negro. Negro periodicals in the United States: 176-181.

Bulmer, Martin (1991). "W. E. B. Du Bois as a Social Investigator: The Philadelphia Negro, 1899", in Martin Bulmer, Kevin Bales, and Kathryn Kish Sklar, eds. The Social Survey in Historical Perspective, 1880-1940 pp. 170-188.

Crouch, Stanley and Playthell Benjamin (2002), Reconsidering The Souls of Black Folk, Running Press.

Getachew, Adom; Pitts, Jennifer (eds.). 2022. W. E. B. Du Bois: International Thought. Cambridge University Press.

Holt, Thomas C. "Du Bois, W. E. B." in American National Biography Online (2000).

Lewis, David Levering (1994), W. E. B. Du Bois: Biography of a Race, 1868-1919, Owl Books. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, Bancroft Prize, and the Francis Parkman Prize. ISBN 978-0-8050-6813-9.

Lewis, David Levering (2001), W. E. B. Du Bois: The Fight for Equality and the American Century 1919-1963, Owl Books. Winner of the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for Biography. ISBN 978-0-8050-6813-9.

Morris, Aldon D., ed. (2022). The Oxford Handbook of W.E.B. Du Bois. Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190062767.001.0001. ISBN 978-0-19-006279-8.

Wright, William D. (1985), The Socialist Analysis of W. E. B. Du Bois, Ph.D. dissertation, State University of New York at Buffalo.

Zuckerman, Phil (2000), Du Bois on Religion, Rowman & Littlefield. A collection of Du Bois's writings on religion. ISBN 978-0-7425-0421-9.

Documentaries

External links

Online editions

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William Edward Burghardt Du Bois ( dew-BOYSS ; February 23, 1868 - August 27, 1963) was an American sociologist, socialist, historian, and Pan-Africanist civil rights activist. Born in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, Du Bois grew up in a relatively tolerant and integrated community.

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(Photo: Courtesy John Lewis)

Quick Facts
"When I was growing up, my mother and father and family members said, 'Don't get in trouble. Don't get in the way.' I got in trouble. I got in the way. It was necessary trouble.""Second-class citizenship is not citizenship at all.""Courage is a reflection of the heart-it is a reflection of something deep within the man or woman or even a child who must resist and must defy an authority that is morally wrong. Courage makes us march on despite fear and doubt on the road toward justice. Courage is not heroic but as necessary as birds need wings to fly. Courage is not rooted in reason but rather Courage comes from a divine purpose to make things right.""People around the world will not be inspired by our missiles and our guns; they will be inspired by our ideas.""I have not accomplished everything I wanted to. I would like to, before I leave this little piece of real estate, do a little more for the cause of peace. To end the violence here at home and violence abroad. We spend so much of our resources killing each other.""We were determined not to let any act of violence keep us from our goal. We knew our lives could be threatened, but we had made up our minds not to turn back.""When Lyndon Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act, he helped free and liberate all of us.""I disagree with the court that the history of discrimination is somehow irrelevant today. The record clearly demonstrates numerous attempts to impede voting rights still exist, and it does not matter that those attempts are not as 'pervasive, widespread or rampant' as they were in 1965. One instance of discrimination is too much in a democracy.""Imagine that. I was beaten near to death at the Rock Hill Greyhound bus terminal during the Freedom Rides in 1961. Now the police chief is black.""We all recognize the fact that if any radical social, political and economic changes are to take place in our society, the people, the masses, must bring them about. In the struggle, we must seek more than civil rights; we must work for the community of love, peace and true brotherhood. Our minds, souls and hearts cannot rest until freedom and justice exist for all people.""I believe in nonviolence as a way of life, as a way of living. I believe that this idea is one of those immutable principles that is nonnegotiable if you're going to create a world community at peace with itself.""I know maybe it won't happen in my lifetime, but I know somehow in some way we're going to create the Beloved Community, that we're going to create a national community, a world community that is at peace.""When we were organizing voter-registration drives, going on the Freedom Rides, sitting in, coming here to Washington for the first time, getting arrested, going to jail, being beaten, I never thought-I never dreamed-of the possibility that an African American would one day be elected president of the United States."

Name

John Lewis

Birth Date

February 21, 1940 (age 80)

Did You Know?

During the civil rights struggle, Lewis was arrested approximately 40 times.

Did You Know?

Lewis was the youngest speaker at the March on Washington in 1963.

Place of Birth

Near Troy, Alabama

Zodiac Sign

Pisces

One of the "Big Six" leaders of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s, John Lewis has continued to fight for people's rights since joining Congress in 1987.

Who Is John Lewis?

John Lewis grew up in an era of racial segregation. Inspired by Martin Luther King Jr., he joined the burgeoning Civil Rights Movement. Lewis was a Freedom Rider, spoke at 1963's March on Washington and led the demonstration that became known as "Bloody Sunday." He was elected to Congress in 1986 and received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2011.

Early Life

John Robert Lewis was born outside of Troy, Alabama, on February 21, 1940. Lewis had a happy childhood - though he needed to work hard to assist his sharecropper parents -but he chafed against the unfairness of segregation. He was particularly disappointed when the Supreme Court ruling in 1954's Brown v. The Board of Education didn't affect his school life. However, hearing Martin Luther King Jr.'s sermons and news of the 1955-56 Montgomery bus boycott inspired Lewis to act for the changes he wanted to see.

Civil Rights Struggle

In 1957, Lewis left Alabama to attend the American Baptist Theological Seminary in Nashville, Tennessee. There, he learned about nonviolent protest and helped to organize sit-ins at segregated lunch counters. He was arrested during these demonstrations, which upset his mother, but Lewis was committed to the Civil Rights Movement and went on to participate in the Freedom Rides of 1961.

Freedom Riders challenged the segregated facilities they encountered at interstate bus terminals in the South, which had been deemed illegal by the Supreme Court. It was dangerous work that resulted in arrests and beatings for many involved, including Lewis.

In 1963, Lewis became chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. That same year, as one of the "Big Six" leaders of the Civil Rights Movement, he helped plan the March on Washington. Lewis-the youngest speaker at the event-had to alter his speech in order to please other organizers, but still delivered a powerful oration that declared, "We all recognize the fact that if any radical social, political and economic changes are to take place in our society, the people, the masses, must bring them about."

After the March on Washington, in 1964, the Civil Rights Act became law. However, this did not make it easier for African Americans to vote in the South. To bring attention to this struggle, Lewis and Hosea Williams led a march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, on March 7, 1965. After crossing the Edmund Pettus Bridge, the marchers were attacked by state troopers. Lewis was severely beaten once more, this time suffering a fractured skull.

The violent attacks were recorded and disseminated throughout the country, and the images proved too powerful to ignore. "Bloody Sunday," as the day was labeled, sped up the passage of 1965's Voting Rights Act.

Rep. John Lewis

Lewis left the SNCC in 1966. Though devastated by the assassinations of King and Robert Kennedy in 1968, Lewis continued his work to enfranchise minorities. In 1970, he became director of the Voter Education Project. During his tenure, the VEP helped to register millions of minority voters.

Lewis ran for office himself in 1981, winning a seat on the Atlanta City Council. In 1986, he was elected to the House of Representatives. Today, representing Georgia's 5th District, he is one of the most respected members of Congress. Since entering office, he has called for healthcare reform, measures to fight poverty and improvements in education. Most importantly, he oversaw multiple renewals of the Voting Rights Act. When the Supreme Court struck down part of the law in 2013's Shelby County v. Holder, Lewis decried the decision as a "dagger into the heart" of voting rights.

In the wake of the mass shooting that took place on June 12, 2016, in Orlando, Florida, Lewis led a sit-in comprised of approximately 40 House Democrats on the floor of the House of Representatives on June 22nd in an attempt to bring attention and force Congress to address gun violence by taking definitive legislative action. "We have been too quiet for too long," Lewis said. "There comes a time when you have to say something. You have to make a little noise. You have to move your feet. This is the time."

The protest came just days after several measures including a bill regarding background checks and adding restrictions on the purchase of guns by people on the federal no-fly list, failed in the Senate. Senator Chris Murphy applauded the protest. Murphy had previously led a filibuster in the Senate which led to the subsequent vote.

Lewis also spoke out against the presidency of Donald Trump, who was elected on November 8, 2016. In an interview with Chuck Todd for NBC News' Meet the Press, which aired on January 15, 2017, Lewis said he didn't believe Trump was a "legitimate president" because of Russian interference in the election. "I think the Russians participated in helping this man get elected and they helped destroy the candidacy of Hillary Clinton," Lewis said in the interview. He also said he would not attend Trump's inauguration.

Trump John Lewis Tweet

Trump responded on Twitter, criticizing Lewis' work as a congressman and tweeting that Lewis was "All talk, talk, talk - no action or results. Sad!" The president-elect's attack on Lewis came just days before the Martin Luther King holiday, and prompted vocal support of the civil rights icon across social media. Several Democratic lawmakers also joined in support of Lewis, and boycotted Trump's inauguration.

Trump continued his war of words, tweeting: "John Lewis said about my inauguration, 'It will be the first one that I've missed.' WRONG (or lie)! He boycotted Bush 43 also because he...thought it would be hypocritical to attend Bush's swearing-in....he doesn't believe Bush is the true elected president. Sound familiar!"

A spokeswoman for Lewis confirmed that he had missed the inauguration of George W. Bush: "His absence at that time was also a form of dissent. He did not believe the outcome of that election, including the controversies around the results in Florida and the unprecedented intervention of the U.S. Supreme Court, reflected a free, fair and open democratic process."

Cancer

In December 2019, Lewis announced that he had been diagnosed with Stage 4 pancreatic cancer.

Although he was "clear-eyed about the prognosis," Lewis said he felt encouraged that medical advancements had made this type of cancer treatable in many cases, adding that he intended to return to work as soon as possible.

Legacy

Though the Supreme Court's decision about the Voting Rights Act was a blow to Lewis, he has been encouraged by the progress that has occurred in his lifetime. After Barack Obama won the presidency in 2008, Lewis stated that "When we were organizing voter-registration drives, going on the Freedom Rides, sitting in, coming here to Washington for the first time, getting arrested, going to jail, being beaten, I never thought-I never dreamed-of the possibility that an African American would one day be elected president of the United States."

In addition to continuing his work in Congress, Lewis has reached out to a younger generation by helping to create a series of graphic novels about his work in the Civil Rights Movement. In 2016, he won the National Book Award for the third installment in the series March: Book Three, which marks the first time a graphic novel has received the honor.

He accepted the award with co-writer Andrew Aydin and illustrator Nate Powell and spoke of its significance in an emotional acceptance speech. "Some of you know I grew up in rural Alabama, very poor, very few books in our home," Lewis said. "I remember in 1956, when I was 16 years old, going to the public library to get library cards, and we were told the library was for whites only and not for coloreds. And to come here and receive this honor, it's too much."

He also spoke about the importance of books in his life. "I had a wonderful teacher in elementary school who told me: 'Read, my child, read', and I tried to read everything," he said. "I love books."

The civil rights icon has also been honored with numerous awards, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the NAACP's Spingarn Medal and the sole John F. Kennedy "Profile in Courage Award" for Lifetime Achievement.

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"When I was growing up, my mother and father and family members said, 'Don't get in trouble. Don't get in the way.' I got in trouble. I got in the way. It was necessary trouble." "Second-class citizenship is not citizenship at all."

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Carter G. Woodson

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Quick Facts "When you control a man's thinking you do not have to worry about his actions.""Those who have no record of what their forebears have accomplished lose the inspiration which comes from the teaching of biography and history."

Carter G. Woodson was an African American writer and historian known as the 'Father of Black History.' He penned the influential book 'The Mis-Education of the Negro.'

Who Was Carter G. Woodson?

Carter G. Woodson was the second African American to receive a doctorate from Harvard, after W.E.B. Du Bois. Known as the "Father of Black History," Woodson dedicated his career to the field of African American history and lobbied extensively to establish Black History Month as a nationwide institution. He also wrote many historical works, including the 1933 book The Mis-Education of the Negro. He died in Washington, D.C., in 1950.

Early Life

Carter Godwin Woodson was born on December 19, 1875, in New Canton, Virginia, to Anna Eliza Riddle Woodson and James Woodson. The fourth of seven children, young Woodson worked as a sharecropper and a miner to help his family. He began high school in his late teens and proved to be an excellent student, completing a four-year course of study in less than two years.

Higher Education and Harvard History

After attending Berea College in Kentucky, Woodson worked for the U.S. government as an education superintendent in the Philippines. He undertook more travels before returning stateside to continue his studies, earning his bachelor's and master's degrees from the University of Chicago.

Woodson went on to receive a doctorate from Harvard University in 1912, becoming just the second African American to earn a Ph.D. from the prestigious institution, after Du Bois. After finishing his education, Woodson dedicated himself to the field of African American history.

Associations and Publications

In 1915, Woodson helped found the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History (later named the Association for the Study of African American Life and History), which had the goal of placing African American historical contributions front and center.

Woodson established the scholarly publication Journal of Negro History in 1916, and to help teachers with African American studies, he created the Negro History Bulletin in 1937. Woodson also formed the African American-owned Associated Publishers Press in 1921.

Outside of his writing pursuits, Woodson held down several positions in academia. He served as principal of the Armstrong Manual Training School in Washington, D.C., before becoming a dean at Howard University and the West Virginia Collegiate Institute.

'Mis-Education of the Negro' and Other Books

Woodson wrote more than a dozen books over the course of his career, most notably Mis-Education of the Negro (1933). With its focus on the Western indoctrination system and African American self-empowerment, Mis-Education has become required reading at numerous colleges and universities.

Additional books from the author include A Century of Negro Migration (1918), The History of the Negro Church (1921) and The Negro in Our History (1922). Woodson also penned literature for elementary and secondary school students.

Creating Black History Month

Woodson lobbied schools and organizations to participate in a special program to encourage the study of African American history, which began in February 1926 with Negro History Week. The program was later expanded and renamed Black History Month. (Woodson had chosen February for the initial weeklong celebration to honor the birth months of abolitionist Frederick Douglass and President Abraham Lincoln.)

Death and Legacy

Woodson died on April 3, 1950, a respected and honored figure who received accolades for his vision. His legacy continues on, with Black History Month being a national cultural force recognized by a variety of media formats, organizations and educational institutions.

Woodson's accomplishments are also remembered through the University of Virginia's Carter G. Woodson Institute for African American and African Studies, and the Dr. Carter G. Woodson African American Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida.

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Quick Facts "When you control a man's thinking you do not have to worry about his actions." "Those who have no record of what their forebears have accomplished lose the inspiration which comes from the teaching of biography and history." Carter G. Woodson was an African American writer and historian known as the 'Father of Black History.'

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James Cleveland " Jesse" Owens (September 12, 1913 - March 31, 1980) was an American track and field athlete who won four gold medals at the 1936 Olympic Games.

Owens specialized in the sprints and the long jump and was recognized in his lifetime as "perhaps the greatest and most famous athlete in track and field history". He set three world records and tied another, all in less than an hour, at the 1935 Big Ten track meet in Ann Arbor, Michigan -a feat that has never been equaled and has been called "the greatest 45 minutes ever in sport".

He achieved international fame at the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin, Germany, by winning four gold medals: 100 meters, long jump, 200 meters, and 4 × 100-meter relay. He was the most successful athlete at the Games and, as a black American man, was credited with "single-handedly crushing Hitler's myth of Aryan supremacy".

The Jesse Owens Award is USA Track and Field's highest accolade for the year's best track and field athlete. Owens was ranked by ESPN as the sixth greatest North American athlete of the 20th century and the highest-ranked in his sport. In 1999, he was on the six-man short-list for the BBC's Sports Personality of the Century.

Early life and education

Jesse Owens, originally known as J.C., was the youngest of ten children (three girls and seven boys) born to Henry Cleveland Owens (a sharecropper) and Mary Emma Fitzgerald in Oakville, Alabama, on September 12, 1913. He was the grandson of a slave. At the age of nine, he and his family moved to Cleveland, Ohio for better opportunities as part of the Great Migration (1910-40) when 1.6 million African Americans left the segregated and rural South for the urban and industrial North. When his new teacher asked his name to enter in her roll book, he said "J.C.", but because of his strong Southern accent, she thought he said "Jesse". The name stuck, and he was known as Jesse Owens for the rest of his life.

As a youth, Owens took different menial jobs in his spare time: he delivered groceries, loaded freight cars, and worked in a shoe repair shop while his father and older brother worked at a steel mill. During this period, Owens realized that he had a passion for running. Throughout his life, Owens attributed the success of his athletic career to the encouragement of Charles Riley, his junior high school track coach at Fairmount Junior High School. Since Owens worked after school, Riley allowed him to practice before school instead.

Owens and Minnie Ruth Solomon (1915-2001) met at Fairmont Junior High School in Cleveland when he was 15 and she was 13. They dated steadily through high school. Ruth gave birth to their first daughter Gloria in 1932. They married on July 5, 1935, and had two more daughters together: Marlene, born in 1937, and Beverly, born in 1940. They remained married until his death in 1980.

Owens first came to national attention when he was a student of East Technical High School in Cleveland; he equaled the world record of 9.4 seconds in the 100 yards (91 m) dash and long-jumped 24 feet inches (7.56 m) at the 1933 National High School Championship in Chicago.

Ohio State University

Owens attended the Ohio State University after his father found employment, which ensured that the family could be supported. Affectionately known as the "Buckeye Bullet" and under the coaching of Larry Snyder, Owens won a record eight individual NCAA championships, four each in 1935 and 1936. (The record of four gold medals at the NCAA was equaled only by Xavier Carter in 2006, although his many titles also included relay medals). Though Owens enjoyed athletic success, he had to live off campus with other African-American athletes. When he traveled with the team, Owens was restricted to ordering carry-out or eating at "blacks-only" restaurants. Similarly, he had to stay at "blacks-only" hotels. Owens did not receive a scholarship for his efforts, so he continued to work part-time jobs to pay for school.

May 25, 1935 is remembered as the day when Jesse Owens established 4 world records in athletics. On that day, Owens achieved track and field immortality in a span of 45 minutes during the Big Ten meet at Ferry Field in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where he set three world records and tied a fourth. He equaled the world record for the 100-yard dash (9.4 seconds) (not to be confused with the 100-meter dash), and set world records in the long jump (26 feet inches or 8.13 metres, a world record that would last for 25 years); 220 yards (201.2 m) sprint (20.3 seconds); and 220-yard low hurdles (22.6 seconds, becoming the first to break 23 seconds). Both 220 yard records may also have beaten the metric records for 200 meters (flat and hurdles), which would count as two additional world records from the same performances. In 2005, University of Central Florida professor of sports history Richard C. Crepeau chose these wins on one day as the most impressive athletic achievement since 1850.

1936 Berlin Summer Olympics

On December 4, 1935, NAACP Secretary Walter Francis White wrote a letter to Owens but never sent it. He was trying to dissuade Owens from taking part in the 1936 Summer Olympics in Nazi Germany, arguing that an African American should not promote a racist regime after what his race had suffered at the hands of white racists in his own country. In the months prior to the Games, a movement gained momentum in favor of a boycott. Owens was convinced by the NAACP to declare: "If there are minorities in Germany who are being discriminated against, the United States should withdraw from the 1936 Olympics". Yet he and others eventually took part after Avery Brundage, president of the American Olympic Committee branded them "un-American agitators".

In 1936, Owens and his United States teammates sailed on the SS Manhattan and arrived in Germany to compete at the Summer Olympics in Berlin. According to fellow American sprinter James LuValle, who won the bronze in the 400 meters, Owens arrived at the new Olympic stadium to a throng of fans, many of them young girls yelling "Wo ist Jesse? Wo ist Jesse?" ("Where is Jesse? Where is Jesse?"). Just before the competitions, founder of Adidas athletic shoe company Adi Dassler visited Owens in the Olympic village and persuaded Owens to wear Gebrüder Dassler Schuhfabrik shoes; this was the first sponsorship for a male African American athlete.

On August 3, Owens won the 100 m dash with a time of 10.3 seconds, defeating a teammate and a college friend Ralph Metcalfe by a tenth of a second and defeating Tinus Osendarp of the Netherlands by two tenths of a second.

On August 4, he won the long jump with a leap of 8.06 metres (26 ft 5 in) (3¼ inches short of his own world record). He initially credited this achievement to the technical advice that he received from Luz Long, the German competitor whom he defeatedbut later admitted that this was not true, as he and Long didn't meet until after the competition was over.

On August 5, he won the 200 m sprint with a time of 20.7 seconds, defeating teammate Mack Robinson (the older brother of Jackie Robinson).

On August 9, Owens won his fourth gold medal in the 4 × 100 m sprint relay when head coach Lawson Robertson replaced Jewish-American sprinters Marty Glickman and Sam Stoller with Owens and Ralph Metcalfe, who teamed with Frank Wykoff and Foy Draper to set a world record of 39.8 seconds in the event. Owens had initially protested the last-minute switch, but assistant coach Dean Cromwell said to him, "You'll do as you are told." Owens's record-breaking performance of four gold medals was not equaled until Carl Lewis won gold medals in the same events at the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. Owens had set the world record in the long jump with a leap of 8.13 m (26 ft 8 in) in 1935, the year before the Berlin Olympics, and this record stood for 25 years until it was broken in 1960 by countryman Ralph Boston. Coincidentally, Owens was a spectator at the 1960 Summer Olympics in Rome when Boston took the gold medal in the long jump.

The long-jump victory is documented, along with many other 1936 events, in the 1938 film by Leni Riefenstahl. On August 1, 1936, Nazi Germany's leader Adolf Hitler shook hands with the German victors only and then left the stadium. International Olympic Committee president Henri de Baillet-Latour insisted that Hitler greet every medalist or none at all. Hitler opted for the latter and skipped all further medal presentations.

Owens first competed on Day 2 (August 2), running in the first (10:30 a.m.) and second (3:00 p.m.) qualifying rounds for the 100 meters final; he equaled the Olympic and world record in the first race and broke them in the second race, but the new time was not recognized, because it was wind-assisted. Later the same day, Owens's African-American team-mate Cornelius Johnson won gold in the high jump final (which began at 5:00 p.m.) with a new Olympic record of 2.03 meters. Hitler did not publicly congratulate any of the medal winners this time; even so, the communist New York City newspaper the Daily Worker claimed Hitler received all the track winners except Johnson and left the stadium as a "deliberate snub" after watching Johnson's winning jump. Hitler was subsequently accused of failing to acknowledge Owens (who won gold medals on August 3, 4 (two), and 9) or shake his hand. Owens responded to these claims at the time:

Hitler had a certain time to come to the stadium and a certain time to leave. It happened he had to leave before the victory ceremony after the 100 meters [race began at 5:45 p.m.]. But before he left I was on my way to a broadcast and passed near his box. He waved at me and I waved back. I think it was bad taste to criticize the "man of the hour" in another country.

In an article dated August 4, 1936, the African-American newspaper editor Robert L. Vann describes witnessing Hitler "salute" Owens for having won gold in the 100m sprint (August 3):

And then;... wonder of wonders;... I saw Herr Adolph [ sic] Hitler, salute this lad. I looked on with a heart which beat proudly as the lad who was crowned king of the 100 meters event, get an ovation the like of which I have never heard before. I saw Jesse Owens greeted by the Grand Chancellor of this country as a brilliant sun peeped out through the clouds. I saw a vast crowd of some 85,000 or 90,000 people stand up and cheer him to the echo.

In 2014, Eric Brown, British fighter pilot and test pilot, aged 17 in 1936 and later becoming the Fleet Air Arm's most decorated pilot, stated in a BBC documentary: "I actually witnessed Hitler shaking hands with Jesse Owens and congratulating him on what he had achieved". Additionally, an article in The Baltimore Sun in August 1936 reported that Hitler sent Owens a commemorative inscribed cabinet photograph of himself. Later, on October 15, 1936, Owens repeated this allegation when he addressed an audience of African Americans at a Republican rally in Kansas City, remarking: "Hitler didn't snub me - it was our president who snubbed me. The president didn't even send me a telegram."

Owens's success at the games caused consternation for Hitler, who was using them to show the world a resurgent Nazi Germany. He and other government officials had hoped that German athletes would dominate the games. Nazi minister Albert Speer wrote that Hitler "was highly annoyed by the series of triumphs by the marvelous colored American runner, Jesse Owens. People whose antecedents came from the jungle were primitive, Hitler said with a shrug; their physiques were stronger than those of civilized whites and hence should be excluded from future games."

In Germany, Owens had been allowed to travel with and stay in the same hotels as whites, at a time when African Americans in many parts of the United States had to stay in segregated hotels that accommodated only blacks. When Owens returned to the United States, he was greeted in New York City by Mayor Fiorello La Guardia. During a Manhattan ticker-tape parade in his honor along Broadway's Canyon of Heroes, someone handed Owens a paper bag. Owens paid it little mind until the parade concluded. When he opened it up, he found that the bag contained $10,000 in cash. Owens's wife Ruth later said: "And he [Owens] didn't know who was good enough to do a thing like that. And with all the excitement around, he didn't pick it up right away. He didn't pick it up until he got ready to get out of the car".

After the parade, Owens was not permitted to enter through the main doors of the Waldorf Astoria New York and instead forced to travel up to the reception honoring him in a freight elevator. President Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR) never invited Jesse Owens to the White House following his triumphs at the Olympic Games. When the Democrats bid for his support, Owens rejected those overtures: as a staunch Republican, he endorsed Alf Landon, Roosevelt's Republican opponent in the 1936 presidential race.

Owens joined the Republican Party after returning from Europe and was paid to campaign for African American votes for the Republican presidential nominee Alf Landon in the 1936 presidential election.

Life after the Olympics

Owens was quoted saying the secret behind his success was, "I let my feet spend as little time on the ground as possible. From the air, fast down, and from the ground, fast up."

After the games had ended, the entire Olympic team was invited to compete in Sweden. Owens decided to capitalize on his success by returning to the United States to take up some of the more lucrative endorsement offers. United States athletic officials were furious and withdrew his amateur status, which immediately ended his career. Owens was angry and stated that "A fellow desires something for himself." Owens argued that the racial discrimination he had faced throughout his athletic career, such as not being eligible for scholarships in college and therefore being unable to take classes between training and working to pay his way, meant he had to give up on amateur athletics in pursuit of financial gain elsewhere.

Owens returned home from the 1936 Olympics with four gold medals and international fame, yet had difficulty finding work. He took on menial jobs as a gas station attendant, playground janitor, and manager of a dry cleaning firm. He also raced against amateurs and horses for cash.

Owens was prohibited from making appearances at amateur sporting events to bolster his profile, and he found out that the commercial offers had all but disappeared. In 1937, he briefly toured with a twelve-piece jazz band under contract with Consolidated Artists but found it unfulfilling. He also made appearances at baseball games and other events. Finally, Willis Ward-a friend and former competitor from the University of Michigan-brought Owens to Detroit in 1942 to work at Ford Motor Company as Assistant Personnel Director. Owens later became a director, in which capacity he worked until 1946. In the late 1940s, he moved his family to Chicago and opened his own public relations agency. He would remain based in Chicago for most of the rest of his life.

In 1946, Owens joined Abe Saperstein in the formation of the West Coast Negro Baseball League, a new Negro baseball league; Owens was Vice-President and the owner of the Portland (Oregon) Rosebuds franchise. He toured with the Rosebuds, sometimes entertaining the audience in between doubleheader games by competing in races against horses. The WCBA disbanded after only two months.

Owens helped promote the exploitation film in African American neighborhoods. He tried to make a living as a sports promoter, essentially an entertainer. He would give local sprinters a ten- or twenty-yard start and beat them in the 100-yd (91-m) dash. He also challenged and defeated racehorses; as he revealed later, the trick was to race a high-strung Thoroughbred that would be frightened by the starter's shotgun and give him a bad jump. Owens said, "People say that it was degrading for an Olympic champion to run against a horse, but what was I supposed to do? I had four gold medals, but you can't eat four gold medals." On the lack of opportunities, Owens added, "There was no television, no big advertising, no endorsements then. Not for a black man, anyway."

He traveled to Rome for the 1960 Summer Olympics, where he met the 1960 100 meters champion Armin Hary of Germany, who had defeated American Dave Sime in a photo finish.

In 1965, Owens was hired as a running instructor for spring training for the New York Mets.

Owens ran a dry cleaning business and worked as a gas station attendant to earn a living, but he eventually filed for bankruptcy. In 1966, he was successfully prosecuted for tax evasion. At rock bottom, he was aided in beginning his rehabilitation. Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower enlisted Owens as a goodwill ambassador in 1955 and sent the world-renowned track star to India, the Philippines, and Malaya to promote physical exercise as well as tout the cause of American freedom and economic opportunity in the developing world. He would continue his goodwill tours in the 1960s and 1970s. Although he lost his patronage job with the Illinois Youth Commission in 1960, Owens continued his product endorsement work for such corporations as Quaker Oats, Sears and Roebuck, and Johnson & Johnson. Owens traveled the world and spoke to companies such as the Ford Motor Company and stakeholders such as the United States Olympic Committee. In 1972, he and his wife retired to Arizona.

Owens initially refused to support the black power salute by African-American sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos at the 1968 Summer Olympics. He told them:

The black fist is a meaningless symbol. When you open it, you have nothing but fingers-weak, empty fingers. The only time the black fist has significance is when there's money inside. There's where the power lies.

Four years later in his 1972 book I Have Changed, he revised his opinion:

I realized now that militancy in the best sense of the word was the only answer where the black man was concerned, that any black man who wasn't a militant in 1970 was either blind or a coward.

Owens traveled to Munich for the 1972 Summer Olympics as a special guest of the West German government, meeting West German Chancellor Willy Brandt and former boxer Max Schmeling.

A few months before his death, Owens had unsuccessfully tried to convince President Jimmy Carter to withdraw his demand that the United States boycott the 1980 Moscow Olympics in protest of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. He argued that the Olympic ideal was supposed to be observed as a time-out from war and that it was above politics.

Owens was a pack-a-day cigarette smoker for 35 years, starting at age 32. Beginning in December 1979, he was hospitalized on and off with an extremely aggressive and drug-resistant type of lung cancer. He died of the disease at age 66 in Tucson, Arizona, on March 31, 1980, with his wife and other family members at his bedside. He was buried next to the Lake of Memories at Oak Woods Cemetery in Chicago. The grave is inscribed:

Jesse Owens. Olympic Champion. 1936. Athlete and humanitarian. A master of the spirit as well as the mechanics of sports. A winner who knew that winning was not everything. He showed extraordinary love for his family and friends. His achievements have shown us all the promise of America. His faith in America inspired countless others to do their best for themselves and their country. September 12, 1913 - March 31, 1980.

Although Jimmy Carter had ignored Owens's request to cancel the Olympic boycott, the president issued a tribute to Owens after he died: "Perhaps no athlete better symbolized the human struggle against tyranny, poverty and racial bigotry."

The dormitory that Owens occupied during the Berlin Olympics has been fully restored into a living museum, with pictures of his accomplishments at the games, and a letter (intercepted by the Gestapo) from a fan urging him not to shake hands with Hitler.[better source needed ] In 2016, the 1936 Olympic journey of the eighteen Black American athletes, including Owens, was documented in the film Olympic Pride, American Prejudice.

Awards and honors

May this light shine forever
as a symbol to all who run
for the freedom of sport,
for the spirit of humanity,
for the memory of Jesse Owens.

Literature and film

1984: An Emmy Award-winning biographical television film of Owens's life, The Jesse Owens Story, is released, with Dorian Harewood portraying Owens.

2006: The Book Thief by Markus Zusak is released, in which a character named Rudy Steiner idolizes Owens.

2016: A feature film titled about Owens with Stephan James portraying Owens was released.

2017: In the Jordan Peele-directed film , Roman Armitage, the villainous patriarch, lost the qualification round for the 1936 Olympics to Owens, instigating his neurosurgical research and theft of young black men via brain transplant.

2019: In Jojo Rabbit, directed by Taika Waititi, an incarnation of Adolf Hitler humorously refers to the character Elsa as "a little female Jewish Jesse Owens".

References

External links

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James Cleveland " Jesse" Owens (September 12, 1913 - March 31, 1980) was an American track and field athlete who won four gold medals at the 1936 Olympic Games. Owens specialized in the sprints and the long jump and was recognized in his lifetime as "perhaps the greatest and most famous athlete in track and field history".

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Mae Jemison is, quite simply, one of the most impressive people that you will ever encounter.

She is a physician, Peace Corps volunteer, teacher, actress, astronaut, accomplished dancer, and founder of two technology companies. She went to Stanford University when she was just 16 years-old, and she earned her doctorate in medicine from Cornell University when she was just 25.

In less than a quarter of a century, she accomplished more than many people do over the course of their entire lives.

But her list of accomplishments doesn't stop with the aforementioned. She speaks four languages: English, Russian, Japanese, and Swahili, and she has two honorary doctorates.

One of her most notable accomplishments (certainly, the one that places her high on my list of "scientists to remember) came in 1987. At the age of 31, she became one of the fifteen candidates selected out of more than 2,000 people for NASA's astronaut program.

Then, in September of 1992, Jemison served as the science mission specialist on STS-47 Spacelab-J, becoming the first woman of color in space. Ultimately, STS-47 was a cooperative mission that was forged between the United States and Japan. During her eight-day mission in space, Jemison went around the Earth 127 times. At the completion of her first space flight, Jemison logged 190 hours, 30 minutes, and 23 seconds in space.

In her interview, Jemison asserts that she didn't really think about accomplishing any great "firsts" in her life. She just wanted to visit the stars. She asserts, "I didn't even think about whether I'd be the first African-American woman in space... I just wanted to go into space."

That said, Jemison notes that being both a minority and a woman came with its fair share of adversity, noting that majoring in engineering as a black woman wasn't always easy.

In a 2000 piece published by the New York Times, she states, "Some professors would just pretend I wasn't there. I would ask a question and a professor would act as if it was just so dumb, the dumbest question he had ever heard. Then, when a white guy would ask the same question, the professor would say, 'That's a very astute observation.' ...Race is always an issue in the United States. You always run into people who aren't comfortable with you. But we all - the way people look, whether or not they're heavyset, for example, influences us. Anyone who says he isn't influenced by race is lying."

However, at the Annual Biomedical Research Conference for Minority Students in 2009, she summed up how to respond to such experiences rather eloquently: "Never be limited by other people's limited imaginations...If you adopt their attitudes, then the possibility won't exist because you'll have already shut it out ... You can hear other people's wisdom, but you've got to re-evaluate the world for yourself."

Listen to Jemison describe her experiences in the video below:

Jemison left NASA in 1993, but she certainly didn't enter retirement.

In 1993, Jemison became the first actual astronaut to appear on Star Trek. LeVar Burton, who played Geordi La Forge on Star Trek: The Next Generation, learned that Jemison was a Star Trek fan and asked if she would like to be on the show. She ultimately played Lieutenant Palmer in the episode "Second Chances," which was the 150th episode of the series.

In 1994, she founded The Earth We Share (TEWS), an annual international science camp where for students aged 12 to 16. The goal of the program is to create a generation of young people who are invested in science and how it can be applied to make our world a better place. To this day, Jemison continues to work towards increasing scientific literacy and bringing the scientist in all of us to light.

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Mae Jemison: The First African American Woman in Space and First Real Astronaut on Star Trek

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Mae Jemison is, quite simply, one of the most impressive people that you will ever encounter. She is a physician, Peace Corps volunteer, teacher, actress, astronaut, accomplished dancer, and founder of two technology companies. She went to Stanford University when she was just 16 years-old, and she earned her doctorate in medicine from Cornell University when she was just 25.

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Wendell Scott was a pioneer in nascar racing

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Wendell Scott was a pioneer in the sport of auto racing as the first Black full-time driver on the NASCAR circuit. Acting as a driver and his own mechanic he gained the admiration of fans and fellow drivers through his grit and determination to be successful in a sport deeply-entrenched in the Jim Crow south.

Wendell Oliver Scott was born in Danville, Virginia on August 29, 1921. His father, William, worked as a driver and mechanic for two well-to-do white families in town. William was known throughout the community for his fast and daring driving. He moved his wife Martha, Wendell and his three daughters up to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, just ahead of the Great Depression and took a job at the Studebaker plant as a foreman. Unfortunately, William was a compulsive gambler and the stress of his gambling their money away caused Wendell's parents to split up. His mother, a schoolteacher, took the children to Louisville, Kentucky to live with her relatives. The stress of the breakup and the move affected Wendell deeply and he developed a stuttering problem. Martha eventually moved the family back to Danville to look after her ailing mother.

Wendell had a very light complexion and blue eyes and as such many white people did not realize that he was Black. He was not immune to the ill effects of racism, however. He seemed destined to follow in his father's shoes, racing white kids on his bicycle or on roller skates. He was the only Black kid in his town with a bicycle and it helped him to achieve a certain level of status. Because of the depression, even children were looked upon to help to contribute to the family's financial situation. Wendell played his part, working various jobs. He was able to save some money and bought his first car for $15.00.

He dropped out of high school in the eleventh grade and took a job as a bricklayer. He quit that job but did not want to work in the two main industries in Danville, the cotton mills and the tobacco-processing plants. His feeling was that the plants were too much like prison where you were locked behind the gates until your time was done. Instead he wanted to work for himself and began working as a taxi driver.

He ran into his first brush with the law in 1942, arrested with two acquaintances and charged with stealing and selling motor oil. He pled guilty to petty larceny and was sentenced to 60 days on a prison farm. While driving his taxi one day he picked up a fare. She was a pretty girl named Mary Belle Coles and he would work to charm her for years and the two got married on July 10, 1944. He had been drafted into the military the year before after the outbreak of World War II, and was assigned to the 3116th Quartermaster Service Company which travelled with General George Patton's Third Army, serving as a mechanic. After the war, he contemplated moving to California to get away from the racial discrimination he faced in Danville but changed his mind when he was hired by a local funeral home. The owner, James Hughes, enticed him by building a shop for him to work as a automobile mechanic.

Scott had problems with a business partner who ran up debts and then accidentally burned up a customers automobile and much of the garage. In need of money to pay off all of the resulting debts, Wendell began driving shipments of moonshine throughout the county (as did many fellow Nascar drivers-to-be, including Buck Baker, Junior Johnson and the Flock Brothers, Fonty, Bob and Tim). He would buy the moonshine at one price and then drive it to his customers whom he charged twice as much as he paid for it, therefore netting 100% profit. Doing so put him at great risk, not only for being arrested or shot by police trying to catch him, but also being fingered by business rivals or other criminals looking to receive a leaner sentence. He was caught on occasion but was usually able to outrun the police or simply ditch the car and run away from them on foot. He was able to talk his way out of a jail sentence on one occasion but was finally caught and tried for running moonshine in 1949 and was sentenced to three years probation. Despite his sentence, he continued on with his moonshine deliveries knowing that he was still the most artful and fastest driver in the area. He would use much of his proceeds from running liquor to enhance his automobiles, not only to handle the rigors of running back roads at high speeds, but also to accommodate more containers. He would meet the still operators in various locations and during his runs, he was often pursued at high speeds by police officers. On some occasions they would get close enough to him to blow out his tires with a shotgun. He always tended to escape, often jumping out of the car and leaving the liquor behind. Eventually the stress started getting to him and he began developing ulcers, a condition that would plague him the rest of his life.

His belief in his driving skills made him take note when a number of drivers headed to Danville to compete in stock car races. Wendell would attend the races, sitting in the "Colored" section and assessing the talent of the drivers. He felt that he could outrun these drivers but the sport was segregated. The Danville races were part of what was known as the Dixie Circuit. It was one of the smaller circuits that had a NASCAR tie-in. Because Danville's population was too poor to buy a lot of tickets for the races, the Dixie Circuit tried out a gimmick to attract fans - a Black driver to compete in the race. After asking around town about a Black driver who could drive very fast, the sponsors were tipped off by the police about Wendell's driving prowess. Scott recalled that the police told the promoter that he "ought to talk to that darkie they'd been chasing over the back roads hauling liquor." Thus on May 23, 1952, Wendell brought one of his best moonshine-running cars to the track and became one of the first Black stock car racers in the south. His first race was unsuccessful as his car broke down but he immediately knew that he wanted to pursue racing as a profession.

His dreams were dashed, however, as he tried to enter the next two NASCAR races, in Winston-Salem, North Carolina and in High Point, North Carolina. At Winston-Salem he towed a 1939 Cadillac limousine down to race it. Because of his fair skin, the track official thought he was white but as some of his Black friends began to congregate around him, they realized he was Black. He was told by track officials that he couldn't race because he was Black and it left Scott in tears. The same occurred a week later in High Point, with the officials instead offering to let a white driver drive his car (which Wendell declined). Nevertheless, he refused to give up on his passion and continued to race on the Dixie Circuit and other small non-NASCAR circuits. Two weeks later, Wendell won an amateur class short heat race which set in stone his determination to succeed in the sport.

Despite his enthusiasm and skill, racing was not easy for Scott as he faced numerous obstacles. Fans derided him on almost every lap and white drivers often did everything they could to wreck him, knowing that in the era of Jim Crow, he wouldn't dare retaliate. Eventually however, as fans got used to him competing, many of them began admiring his driving skill, as did many of the other drivers. They saw that he was hard-working and wanted to win races rather than make a racial statement and he won many of them over. Articles about him began to appear in local newspapers, especially after he began winning races. Eventually, the others drivers couldn't help but gain respect for Wendell. They would see him after his car broke down down climb out of the car, jack it up himself and climb under it with a flashlight in his mouth, working to fix it and then jump back in the car and re-enter the race. He never complained and just wanted a chance to win. Two drivers in particular supported Scott. Earl Brooks and Buck Drummond befriended Wendell and stood up for him when he faced unfair treatment. After a promoter refused to pay Scott after he won the feature race at the Zion Crossroads, Drummond confronted the promoter saying that he would "die for him right here." The promoter gave in an paid Wendell and he never had a problem at the track again. On other occasions, the racial hostility caused Wendell to fight his way out of a crowd, but Brooks stood by his side, ready to fight for him.

Success in small-time racing was one thing. Racing in the big-time time meant racing in NASCAR. Having been rejected previously in his attempts to race for stock cars biggest organization, Scott quietly towed his car to the old Richmond Speedway and requested a a NASCAR license from Mike Poston, the track steward. Poston was not a decision maker for NASCAR and did not consult with anybody at the organizations headquarters in Daytona Beach, Florida. Instead he just asked Scott if he knew what he was getting into and granted him the license. NASCAR officials were furious, but after the race had been concluded, there was nothing they could do about it.

Scott was not the first Black stock car driver. Black drivers raced in other areas of the country since before the first World War and there were some Black-only races held in the south in the 1940's. Charlie Wiggins, often referred to as "The Negro Speed King," was so highly thought of that a white driver, "Wild Bill" Cummings, asked him to serve in his pit crew for the Indianapolis 500. Because of racially restrictive rules on the track, Wiggins was officially listed as a janitor. Wiggins would eventually win the the 1926 Gold and Glory Sweepstakes race and would become the first Black driver to qualify for the Indianapolis 500. Elias Bowie ran in the Grand National Series race at the Bay Meadows Speedway on July 31, 1955 in San Mateo, CA finishing 28th out of 34 cars. Joseph "Joie" Ray was the first African American licensed by the American Automobile Association and raced throughout the midwest in AAA, USAC, CSRA and other organizations. Rajo Jack drove in the California Auto Racing Association and the American Racing Association in the 1930's and 1940's. Charlie Scott (no relation) raced in the 1956 Daytona Beach road course, finishing in 19th place, earning $75.00. Nevertheless, Wendell Scott was at the doorstep of taking on drivers and fans in the Jim Crow south, an act that could literally cost him his life.

Scott began racing on a regular basis in NASCAR and in 1954 finally met with Bill France, the co-owner of the organization. It was common at that time at NASCAR races for drivers who didn't finish in the money to get "gas money" from the track promoter so as to make it home after the event. Although the promoter at the Lynchburg Speedway in Raleigh, North Carolina had given gas money to most of the other drivers he refused to do the same to Scott. Wendell approached France and France immediately took cash out of his pocket, assuring Wendell that the color of his skin didn't matter and that "You're a NASCAR member, and as of now you will always be treated as a NASCAR member." In another incident, Scott won a race, besting a white driver named Ward McDonald. McDonald was furious to lose to a Black man and smashed his car into Wendell's, eventually pushing him onto the infield. McDonald began climbing out of his car, ready to attack Wendell. In his situation, Scott knew that he couldn't fight a white driver in front of a racially hostile audience. Fortunately, Earl Brooks had been watching the race and ran over to McDonald's car, pulled him out and beat him up, saving Scott from a difficult predicament. Soon thereafter, Bill France warned drivers that he would suspend anyone who intentionally wrecked Scott.

Wendell hoped that France's words would ring true as he continued competing. As he began to finish well in his races, Scott began getting attention from the media and was thrilled to find other drivers praising him. NASCAR Hall of Fame member Joe Weatherly was quoted as saying that Scott was "one of the best drivers he has ever seen." He finished 1954 ranked number 19 in points standing out of the 1,935 drivers competing that year. Two years later he finished sixth in the Sportsman standing in Virginia and 14th nationally.

Wendell was often forced to take a different approach to racing, not only competing against his fellow drivers but also the reality of his situation. Because he had such a small budget, he would often lay back in races, not racing hard for the win but instead racing well enough to finish respectably, in order to earn enough money just to get himself home. For someone with his competitiveness this was difficult, but it allowed him to continue to compete. Despite this, he continued to improve in the overall standings, finishing third in the Virginia standing in 1957.

In 1959 he won the NASCAR Sportsman championship for the state of Virginia and qualified to race in a preliminary race at the new Daytona International Speedway. On the first lap off the race a huge pileup occurred, taking out at least 36 cars including Wendell's which rolled over several times, smashing the front windshield. Scott, though without a spare windshield, was undeterred. After several minutes of scratching his head and thinking, he pushed out the rear windshield and fitted it as best he could in the front windshield. Eventually, he re-entered the race, but his engine blew during the race. For Scott, however, participating in the race was a huge achievement.

His hard work paid off as he won a number of races and was rewarded with a championship as NASCAR gave him the title for the Sportsman class for stock cars in the state of Virginia, finishing sixth national in the points standings. In 1961 he was finally elevated to NASCAR's highest division, the Grand National series. At this level, Scott would race against the best stock car drivers in the world on a weekly basis. Unlike most of the drivers at this level, Wendell did not have a sponsor or a real pit crew, often having to make mechanical adjustments to the car himself. This did not diminish his determinate, however, as he was excited for the opportunity to race among the best.

In his first season on the Grand National circuit, Wendell performed well enough to be considered the best rookie driver in 1961, based on his points and finishes. Instead, Bill France awarded the Rookie of the Year award to Woodie Wilson. Wilson, although driving a better car than Scott, scored only one top ten finish, having only completed in five races. Scott, on the other hand, finished in the top ten five times and qualified in the front row once, finishing nine positions higher in the point standings than Wilson. Being denied the Rookie of the Year award cost Scott more than just a trophy or the $1,500.00 that went with it, but also the sponsorship opportunities that likely would have followed. NASCAR historian Gene Granger declared that "Wendell Scott won it hands-down... If you want to talk about where Wendell really got screwed, he should have been Rookie of the Year. He really got screwed out of that. There's no doubt in my mind there was a conspiracy.... They did not want a Black man to get it."

1962 would see Ford, Chrysler and General Motors spending money as sponsors of several drivers. Wendell knew that if he could get a company to sponsor him, he could be a true contender with a real race car under him. Many contended that the companies never looked to sponsor him because he had not fared well enough on the track. That assertion came to an end on July 20, 1962 at the Savannah Speedway in Georgia when he set not only the fastest qualifying time of the day, but had also set the track record. While Wendell and his sons (Wendell Jr., and Frank would help out in the pits when school was out) thought this would gain him even more respect from the drivers, they were surprised by a general undercurrent of unhappiness over his achievement. Wendell, Jr. would later say that he believed that the drivers tolerated Wendell on the track so long as he knew his place and did not try to really achieve something. He said that they reacted in a way that conveyed the notion that "It's okay if you do fairly well sometimes, but don't do this to us." Jack Smith, one of the better Grand National drivers promised Wendell that he was going to wreck him despite a NASCAR official threatening to disqualify anyone who did so. Scott led several laps but his engine blew, knocking him out of the race. Afterward, all-time great Joe Weatherly walked over to Scott and said "Wendell, I just came over to apologize for the rest of these stupid sons of bitches."

The frustration from these instances caused considerable stress on him, contributing mightily to the ulcers which continued to plague him. Unable to answer back to his white tormentors, he often took his frustration out on his sons. For Scott, whose 1962 season should be remembered for his achievement, was highlighted instead for another incident with Jack Smith who openly displayed his hostility towards Wendell, defiantly wrecking him despite NASCAR's warnings. This harassment continued all season, costing Wendell precious time and money having to repair his car. Finally things reached a breaking point in Valdosta, Georgia. During the pace laps as their cars ran alongside one another, Smith kept pointing his finger at Scott, letting Wendell know that he planned to wreck him. Scott pointed back at Smith, not with his finger, but instead with a pistol. Smith slammed on the brakes and dropped back a few spots. Months later Wendell told Smith to his face that if Smith tried to wreck him again that Wendell would kill him. From then on, Wendell said "I never had no more trouble out of him."

Despite NASCAR's promises that he would be treated fairly, Wendell was routinely denied the opportunity to race at Darlington Raceway. Bob Colvin, the track owner and good friend of Bill France simply stated that the entry forms for the race contained wording proclaiming that he had the right to refuse entry to anyone.

Wendell finished the season with 19 top-ten finishes out of 41 races, including four top-fives and went into 1963 in good shape for the season ahead. He purchased a 1962 Chevrolet from Ned Jarrett, one of the drivers who treated him fairly. It was the best car he had ever driven and he was very upbeat. His improvement and new car did not change the fact that he was a Black man in the racist south. One night in Georgia, Scott's tow truck broke down across the street from a truck stop which displayed a sign that "White Only." Wendell pulled on his cap to conceal his hair and because of his light complexion attempted to pass himself as white to the tough looking white men that approached them menacingly. Addressing his sons with racial slurs, he coaxed the white good old boys to help him to repair the tow truck. In their good favor for knowing how to "handle them niggers," the men helped him to fix the truck and sent him on his way. Such was a demonstration of the lengths he had to go just to survive in the south.

His third year would prove to be a breakthrough for him. He finished in fifteenth place in the points standings for the year, but his most remarkable accomplishment took place on December 1, 1963 in Jacksonville, Florida. Wendell had qualified in the 15th position for the start of the race. During the qualifying run he saw that the track was in poor condition and deteriorating quickly with potholes and ruts everywhere. He realized that these would cause him to bounce and slide around the track so he decided to to take a big risk and make a huge gamble. He removed one of the two shock absorbers from each wheel. This would cause the car to remain grounded instead of bouncing off of the ground. His gamble paid off after the start of the race and eventually he began picking off competitors one by one. His car was able to handle better than anyone else and as some had to drive to the pits for repairs, others just watched as Wendell passed them by. The handling of his car allowed him to negate the advantage others driver had because of the horsepower of their factory-sponsored cars. Ned Jarrett and Richard Petty battled ahead of Scott who was running ahead of Buck Baker. Jarrett suffered damage to a wheel leaving Petty ahead with 25 laps left. Petty, one of the greatest racers in the sport then suffered damage to his steering arm and Wendell took advantage and flew past him into first place. When he glanced at the scoreboard to verify that he was in first place, Wendell only saw that the scoreboard was blank. He continued around the oval until what should have been the last lap. As he raced across the finish line, he saw that the checkered flag had not been waved so he continued around for a second time and this time it was waved - but not for Scott. The NASCAR official waved the flag for Buck Baker, declaring him the victor with Jack Smith finishing second and Scott finishing third.

Behind the scenes, as Wendell was seen racing near or in the lead, everyone, from members of the press to drivers whose cars had been knocked out of the race had asked one another "What if Wendell wins?" It seems that the NASCAR officials had just decided that he wouldn't win, proclaiming Baker the winner, presenting him a trophy along with the traditional kiss from the local beauty queen. Scott protested the decision, arguing that everyone in attendance knew that he had beaten both Baker and Smith (both of whom were two laps down to Scot). After two hours of discussion, NASCAR officials sheepishly declared Wendell the winner, blaming the confusion on a "scoring error." For years afterwards, NASCAR fans, officials and drivers argued over what really happened, but the general conclusion was that track officials were mortified of the possibility of Wendell Scott winning the race and getting the traditional kiss from a young, white beauty queen. NASCAR officials continued to claim that it was honest mistake but others at the track knew better. Even Margaret Baker, Buck Baker's wife and his official scorer said "I knew that Wendell had won it before they even checked the card... Everyone knew that Wendell had won, except Buck." NASCAR historian Mike Bell said that track owner Julian Klein admitted to Bell's father that "I wasn't about to give that man the trophy and let him kiss the trophy queen... I'd probably have had a riot at the race track if I had." In what should have been one of the greatest days of his life, Scott was once again reminded that no matter how successful he was, he was still just a Black man in a white man's sport. Instead of a shiny trophy to signify his monumental victory, Scott instead was presented a cheap hunk of wood the next week, while Buck Baker kept the real one.

Ned Jarrett was among the racers who had been a friend to Wendell and Ned had finished 1963 in fourth place in the standings, securing his spot as one of the true superstars in the sport. He was courted by the Ford Motor Company and while he was speaking with Ford executive Lee Iacocca, Ned made a bold suggestion. Ford, he said, should put Wendell Scott in a Ford sponsored automobile for the 1964 season. Jarrett opined that a successful Wendell Scott would provide greater advertising exposure for Ford among Blacks. Jarrett said that in the right car, Wendell "could run with anybody out there." Ned had planted a seed with Ford but he did not tell Wendell about the conversation in case nothing should come of it. Scott, however, was busy trying to obtain sponsorship on his own. He tirelessly wrote to the major car companies, imploring them to give him a chance. He even contacted well to do Black business owners, trying to get introductions to influential auto executives. In May of 1964 it seemed to have paid off when he received a phone call late at night from a NSACAR official telling him that a Ford stock car was waiting for him at a racing shop in Charlotte, North Carolina. The shop was the Holman-Moody shop which was very influential in NASCAR and critical to the Ford's success within NASCAR. When Scott drove to Charlotte to claim the car, however, his heart dropped. The car was a 1963 Ford that had been left in a field and had many of its part pulled out of it. Ford, it seemed, did want to support him but was leery about it becoming known that the company was sponsoring a Black man during the days of Jim Crow.

For Scott, this would become a way of life for him in NASCAR. He often had to beg other drivers or teams for spare parts and was aided by Richard Petty, Ned Jarrett, the Wood brothers, Holman-Moody and others whom had become his friends over the years. He had almost no budget and had to spend the whole week repairing his car in order to run it on the weekend. He was involved in racing from sun up til sun down everyday of the week and he could only ponder "what if?" What if he had sponsorship and could afford a professional pit crew? What if he could employ professional mechanics to work on the car during the week, leaving him to rest and prepare for the next race? What if he could race anywhere without worrying about death threats or still be denied access to major raceways, such as Darlington? Most importantly, what if he could get one of the car companies to put him in a modern souped up race car allowing him to run with the same equipment as the other great drivers on the tour?

In 1964, Scott finally got his opportunity to race at the Darlington Raceway. The Civil Right Act of 1964 had been passed and it would have been a federal violation to refuse to allow him to enter the race. Knowing that the owner of the track, Bob Colvin, would look for anyway to keep him from racing, Wendell and his friends took the car apart and put it back together so it would look nice and shiny for the officials. The officials, however, had other ideas in mind. They required Scott to disassemble the engine and then moved up the deadline for him to take the required driving test for new drivers at the track. A driver had to show that he could drive the track at 120 mile per hours in order to enter the race. Because they had forced him to take the engine apart, he did not have enough time to put it back together in order to take the test. Instead he had to borrow another competitors shabby car which he got up to 116 mph on the first lap but it blew an engine before he could complete a second lap. He was thus denied entry to the race despite the fact that several other "rookies" failed to exceed 120 mph during their test but were still permitted into the race. That this could happen to a driver who was in ninth place in points at the time would seem to boggle the mind, but for Scott, this was the kind of barrier that he had faced throughout his career. He finished the year in 12th place in the standings (he dropped two places by not running at Darlington). He competed in 56 races with eight top-five finishes, 25 top-tens and one win (although his victory in Jacksonville occurred in December 1963, it counted towards his 1964 season).

The 1965 season saw Wendell gaining in popularity around the circuit. He was often cheered during pre-race ceremonies as loudly as the top drivers. He also found growing support amongst other drivers and teams, particularly the Holman-Moody and Wood Brothers operations. Leonard Wood often invited Wendell to his shop in Stuart, Virginia where Scott could pick through free used parts. Wendell knew, however, that there were often brand new parts mixed in, some engineered to exactly the specifications that Scott needed for his car. The next year was much of the same as he purchased (or was given) a 1965 Galaxy with a 427 engine by Holman-Moody. The car was crumpled up after having been wrecked during a practice lap and Scott took it back to Danville where he hammered it back into shape in time for the 1966 Daytona 500. One way or another Wendell was able to get onto the track and stay competitive, garnering a sixth place finish in points for the season. He scored 17 top-ten finishes, including three top-fives.

The respect from his peers resonated what Wendell had been telling anybody who would listen - he could do great things if only he had a top flight car. NASCAR Hall of Famer Junior Johnson weighed in saying "Wendell's driving ability was as good as anybody's out there. He just never had a good enough car to prove it." Now, after his best season in NASCAR, Scott hoped again that the major motor companies would get behind him with a sponsorship, but he was disappointed once again when Ford declined to back him saying that the company had decided not to sponsor any driver over forty years of age. Nonetheless, the company continued to sponsor 41 year old Darel Dieringer who drove for the Junior Johnson team.

At this point in his career, Wendell knew that backing from one of the car companies would not be coming his way. He would remain an independent owner and as such had to reassess his priorities on the racetrack. To race aggressively would have invited danger and risk to his car and thus he began driving more conservatively in order to finish each race, collect prize money and move on to the next town. He was caught in a Catch-22. Drive for the win and possibly wreck the car and miss the following races or finish back in the pack and have people question his driving skills and worthiness for sponsorship. Thus was the compromise he was forced to make. As Richard Petty said, without a good car "he had to make do with what he had."

Another barrier for Scott was with tires. For years, Goodyear had an unofficial policy of giving free tires to an independent driver who finished in the top ten but they refused to ever give tires to Wendell. Even worse for Wendell was the fact that Goodyear refused to extend him credit for tires when it extended credit to rookie drivers with only a months experience. He would eventually switch to Firestones.

Bill Gazaway served as NASCAR's technical director during the late 1960's. He often cited Wendell's cars as not having a nice appearance. It is true that Wendell's cars were often battered and bruised but Gazaway often forced Wendell to miss practice time on the track in order to making the cars appearance look nicer. Gazaway went to further lengths to irritate Scott, however. Before one race one of Gazaway's subordinates informed Wendell that his sons (Frank and Wendell, Jr. were working as his pit crew that day) would have to shave off their beards or Wendell would not be allowed to race. When Richard Petty heard about this he went with Wendell to speak to Gazaway. Most of his pit crew had beards and Petty declared that none of them were going to shave their beards and that he would be racing that day. Gazaway relented and NASCAR officials later confirmed that no policy exists in reference to beards.

Eventually age, the wear and tear of the racing life and poor performing cars took their toll and Wendell's performances began to decline. By 1971 he was often relegated to consolation races. In Atlanta he ended up in Victory Lane, his first win since Jacksonville in 1963. He finished the year with only four top ten finishes and finished 19th in the points standings.

1972 did not start out any better for him. In his first race at Martinsville he finished 64 laps behind the race winner Richard Petty. Earlier in the day, however, Scott was approached by racing mogul Richard Howard who asked Wendell how he would like to drive a Junior Johnson car in the upcoming World 600 race. Wendell jumped at the opportunity but it was really just a publicity stunt. Instead of a real "Junior Johnson car" (which meant a car that was likely to win), Howard purchased something mediocre and had the Johnson team paint it and spruce it up. The car broke down midway through the race and Scott's day was over. Later, Howard and Johnson would acknowledge that Scott's car wasn't what he had been promised. Junior explained that they wanted to put Wendell in the best car possible but had ultimately run out of time. Banjo Matthews, one of the top car builders working for Johnson said, however, "Typical nigger - you'd give him something, and you'd look again, and it would be all wore out." For Scott, things often had not changed much in the course of 15 years.

In 1973, most figured that the time had come for Wendell Scott to give up and walk away from the sport of racing, but Wendell instead decided to double down. After years of mortgaging his house again and again and again, he borrowed every dollar he could and used the money to buy a Holman-Moody built Mercury. It was by far the best car Wendell had ever had the opportunity to drive. The car would be raced at the Talledega 500 one of the fastest tracks on the NASCAR circuit. Many of the drivers and race officials worried about the size of the field, but Bill France wanted the race to be a spectacle and wanted 60 cars in the race. Tuning problems had caused him to qualify in 58th place but the Wood Brothers and David Pearson helped to retune the car and upon the start of the race Scott exploded past the cars ahead of him, passing 18 cars on the first lap. In lap 10, however, a 21 car pileup would almost cost Scott his life. His Mercury was hit by another car on the infield. The car was totaled and so was Scott's body. He suffered broken ribs, a broken leg as well as a knee injury and injuries to his forearm and kidney. One driver told his son Frank that Wendell was dead and by the looks of his body and chunks of his flesh inside the car, he probably should have been. Wendell spent 13 days in a hospital in Alabama and 19 days in a hospital in Danville. After the race, realizing that he should never have allowed so many cars in the field that day, Bill France handed out checks to compensate those whose cars were wrecked. While some were given upwards of $10,000.00, he sent the Scotts a check for $1,500.00. A local tire company donated a check for $500.00 to the family and local organizers did a fundraiser that brought in a couple of hundreds of dollars. Finally, Richard Petty sent Wendell a check for $500.00, reducing Scott to tears. To his dismay, Wendell said that no one else from the NASCAR family gave him a dime. Incredibly, Wendell drove in three more races in 1973. In his final race he drove his car from a 38th place start to a 12th place finish. He turned the racing over to Wendell, Jr., but despite receiving some accolades the younger man knew that he did not have the talent that his father did.

Wendell Scott died from prostrate cancer on December 23, 1990 at the age of 69. At his funeral, his friend and competitor Ned Jarrett said "I don't know of any man in the sport that worked any harder than he did or accomplished more than he did with what he had... He built a lot of respect... More important, he helped to open many minds and hearts... He was not as fortunate as some of us as to the type of equipment he had to drive. But he went out there and toiled and made it work and won - not only won races but won the hearts of people around the world."

In looking at Wendell's career one must keep in mind the context of the disadvantages that he faced. In a lily white southern sport, he not only had to prepare himself and his car to the best of his ability and to protect himself against other drivers who wanted to wreck him, but he also had to worry about just making it home safely, with the race track and the roads home filled with people who might want to do him or his sons harm. He not only had to drive knowing that he had mortgaged his house several time just to keep on racing but knowing that he might drive hundreds of miles only to be turned away from the track. He not only had to approach car companies with hat in hand begging for sponsorship opportunities, but also had to endure being called nigger by fans, officials and other drivers. He didn't have a team owner or commissioner standing behind him with support as did Jackie Robinson. While Bill France said that he supported him, the fact that Scott was forced to endure the inequities that he did, including being denied entrance to Darlington Raceway, showed that he was a man on his own.

After his passing, Wendell Scott received numerous honors. Greased Lightening, a movie starring Richard Pryor was based loosely on his life. A street in his home town was named after him and he was inducted into the International Motor Sports Hall of Fame in 1999 and well as many other regional Halls of Fame. In what would likely be what he would considered his highest tribute, Wendell Scott was inducted into the NASCAR Hall of Fame on January 30, 2015. Even this honor is shrouded in controversy with many decrying that he simply did not have the credentials in terms of wins to deserve such an honor. Such criticism chooses to ignore the fact that he did not have the same opportunities to compete fairly, and instead did so in spite of the road hazards placed in his way throughout his career. While others enjoyed careers racing at high speeds around racetracks in gleaming, high-horsepower machines, Wendell Scott was forced to endure a career where he was perpetually driving under the caution flag.
Sources:
Hard Driving: The Wendell Scott Story by Brian Donovan

Wendell Scott - Wikipedia page - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wendell_Scott

The Wendell Scott Foundation - http://www.wendellscott.org/

Wendell Scott - NASCAR profile - http://www.nascar.com/en_us/news-media/articles/hall-of-fame/nascar-hall-of-fame-wendell-scott.html

History of African-Americans in NASCAR - http://nascar.about.com/od/drivers/a/africanamerican.htm

Black Race Car Legend Wendell Scott - http://www.aaregistry.org/historic_events/view/black-race-car-legend-wendell-o-scott
http://www.blackenterprise.com/lifestyle/7-african-american-racecar-drivers/

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Wendell Scott was a pioneer in the sport of auto racing as the first Black full-time driver on the NASCAR circuit. Acting as a driver and his own mechanic he gained the admiration of fans and fellow drivers through his grit and determination to be successful in a sport deeply-entrenched in the Jim Crow south.

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In 2002, Maritza Correia made history when she became the first black woman to break an American record. She later became the first black woman to earn a place on the U.S. Olympic swim team.

Synopsis

Born in Puerto Rico in 1981, Maritza Correia is the first black female swimmer to break an American record, setting new records in both the 50- and 100-yard freestyle events at the Women's NCAA Championships in 2002. Two years later, Correia became the first black woman to earn a place on the U.S. Olympic swim team.

Early Life

Born on December 23, 1981, in San Juan, Puerto Rico, Maritza Correia is best known for being the first black woman to make the U.S. Olympic swimming team and the first black female swimmer to break an American record. An inspiration to many in the world of competitive sports, Correia grew up in Florida with her parents and two older brothers. Athletics runs in the family. From Guyana, and of Afro-Latin American descent, her parents were educated in England, where her mother played tennis at the University of London, and her father was on the crew team.

At the suggestion of her doctor, Correia started swimming when she was just 7 years old. She had scoliosis, an abnormal curvature of the spine, and swimming helped mitigate the effects of her disorder. Initially therapeutic, swimming soon became Correia's passion.

Foray Into Competitive Swimming

In 1990, Correia joined the Brandon Blue Wave Swim Club, following in the footsteps of older brother Justin. The siblings were sometimes the only black athletes competing in their events. "Probably about 1 percent of U.S. swimmers are black, so it gives you an incentive to go out there and show them that we can do it, too," Correia later said.

At Tampa Bay Technical High School, Correia continued to compete, becoming one of the state's top swimmers. She won the 100-meter freestyle event at the Florida state championships four times and made the 1997 national junior swim team. In 1999, Correia became the U.S. national champion of 50-meter freestyle event for swimmers aged 18 or younger. She graduated high school that year and moved up to college-level swimming competitions while attending the University of Georgia.

After a failed attempt to make the 2000 U.S. Olympic swim team, Correia slipped into a depression, which lasted several months. "The one thing that got me through it was that I had the collegiate season right after the Olympics ... being around my teammates and having their support along with my coaches helped me pull out of it," she told the St. Petersburg Times in 2008.

Setting Records

Getting back on track, Correia began a training regime consisting of swimming 14,000 meters per day, six days a week. This meant she spent about five hours in the water each day. Her hard work paid off, as she won gold and silver at the 2001 World Championships, in the 800-meter freestyle relay and the 400-meter freestyle relay, respectively. She went on to set two records at the 2002 Women's NCAA Championships in Austin, Texas, in the 50- and 100-yard freestyle events-making her the first black woman to set an American record. The following year, Correia brought home another gold medal in the 400-meter freestyle relay at the World Championships.

Making Olympic History

In 2004, Correia made history as the first black woman to earn a place on the U.S. Olympic swim team. She helped secure the silver medal in the 400-meter freestyle relay at the Summer Olympic Games in Athens, Greece. Correia's winning streak continued: She took four gold medals at the 2005 World University Games, in the 50-meter freestyle, 400-meter freestyle relay, 800-meter freestyle relay and 400-meter medley relay.

Early Retirement

Eventually all of the years of strenuous activities began to take it toll on Correia. Even before her Olympic triumph, she had pain in her shoulders. Correia made an impressive showing at the 2007 Pan American Games despite her physical problems, bringing home the gold medal in the 400-meter freestyle relay and the 400-meter medley relay. In December 2007, she swam in her final event, the USA Nationals, before retiring from the sport. Correia has arthritis in her right shoulder and rotator cuff problems in both shoulders. "I swam for 20 years ... I'm proud of what I accomplished," she told the St. Petersburg Times.

While her records in the 50-yard and 100-yard events have been broken, Correia remains a groundbreaking force in the world of competitive swimming. She continues to promote the sport as a spokesperson for USA Swimming and for the Women's Sports Foundation, which was created by another female sports pioneer, tennis great Billie Jean King. Traveling around the country, Correia often discusses her experiences with inner-city kids and encourages them to give swimming a try. She also continues to work with her sponsor Nike to promote their swimwear line.

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Maritza Correia Biography

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In 2002, Maritza Correia made history when she became the first black woman to break an American record. She later became the first black woman to earn a place on the U.S. Olympic swim team.

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St. Elmo Brady

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Saint Elmo Brady was born on December 22, 1884 in Louisville, Kentucky. Greatly influenced by Thomas W. Talley, a pioneer in the teaching of science, Brady received his bachelor's degree from Fisk University in 1908 at the age of 24, and immediately began teaching at Tuskegee Institute in Alabama.

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Rose and Milton Friedman Senior Fellow The Hoover Institution Stanford University Stanford, California 94305

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Doris Miller, known as "Dorie" to shipmates and friends, was born in Waco, Texas, on 12 October 1919, to Henrietta and Conery Miller. He had three brothers, one of which served in the Army during World War II. While attending Moore High School in Waco, he was a fullback on the football team. He worked on his father's farm before enlisting in the U.S Navy as Mess Attendant, Third Class, at Dallas, Texas, on 16 September 1939, to travel, and earn money for his family. He later was commended by the Secretary of the Navy, was advanced to Mess Attendant, Second Class and First Class, and subsequently was promoted to Cook, Third Class.

Following training at the Naval Training Station, Norfolk, Virginia, Miller was assigned to the ammunition ship USS Pyro (AE-1) where he served as a Mess Attendant, and on 2 January 1940 was transferred to USS West Virginia (BB-48), where he became the ship's heavyweight boxing champion. In July of that year he had temporary duty aboard USS Nevada (BB-36) at Secondary Battery Gunnery School. He returned to West Virginia and on 3 August, and was serving in that battleship when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941. Miller had arisen at 6 a.m., and was collecting laundry when the alarm for general quarters sounded. He headed for his battle station, the antiaircraft battery magazine amidship, only to discover that torpedo damage had wrecked it, so he went on deck. Because of his physical prowess, he was assigned to carry wounded fellow Sailors to places of greater safety. Then an officer ordered him to the bridge to aid the mortally wounded Captain of the ship. He subsequently manned a 50 caliber Browning anti-aircraft machine gun until he ran out of ammunition and was ordered to abandon ship.

Miller described firing the machine gun during the battle, a weapon which he had not been trained to operate: "It wasn't hard. I just pulled the trigger and she worked fine. I had watched the others with these guns. I guess I fired her for about fifteen minutes. I think I got one of those Jap planes. They were diving pretty close to us."

During the attack, Japanese aircraft dropped two armored piercing bombs through the deck of the battleship and launched five 18-inch aircraft torpedoes into her port side. Heavily damaged by the ensuing explosions, and suffering from severe flooding below decks, the crew abandoned ship while West Virginia slowly settled to the harbor bottom. Of the 1,541 men on West Virginia during the attack, 130 were killed and 52 wounded. Subsequently refloated, repaired, and modernized, the battleship served in the Pacific theater through to the end of the war in August 1945.

Miller was commended by the Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox on 1 April 1942, and on 27 May 1942 he received the Navy Cross, which Fleet Admiral (then Admiral) Chester W. Nimitz, the Commander in Chief, Pacific Fleet personally presented to Miller on board aircraft carrier USS Enterprise (CV-6) for his extraordinary courage in battle. Speaking of Miller, Nimitz remarked:

This marks the first time in this conflict that such high tribute has been made in the Pacific Fleet to a member of his race and I'm sure that the future will see others similarly honored for brave acts.

On 13 December 1941, Miller reported to USS Indianapolis (CA-35), and subsequently returned to the west coast of the United States in November 1942. Assigned to the newly constructed USS Liscome Bay (CVE-56) in the spring of 1943, Miller was on board that escort carrier during Operation Galvanic, the seizure of Makin and Tarawa Atolls in the Gilbert Islands. Liscome Bay's aircraft supported operations ashore between 20-23 November 1943. At 5:10 a.m. on 24 November, while cruising near Butaritari Island, a single torpedo from Japanese submarine I-175 struck the escort carrier near the stern. The aircraft bomb magazine detonated a few moments later, sinking the warship within minutes. Listed as missing following the loss of that escort carrier, Miller was officially presumed dead 25 November 1944, a year and a day after the loss of Liscome Bay. Only 272 Sailors survived the sinking of Liscome Bay, while 646 died.

In addition to the Navy Cross, Miller was entitled to the Purple Heart Medal; the American Defense Service Medal, Fleet Clasp; the Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Medal; and the World War II Victory Medal.

Commissioned on 30 June 1973, USS Miller (FF-1091), a Knox-class frigate, was named in honor of Doris Miller.

On 11 October 1991, Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority dedicated a bronze commemorative plaque of Miller at the Miller Family Park located on the U.S. Naval Base, Pearl Harbor.

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Doris Miller, known as "Dorie" to shipmates and friends, was born in Waco, Texas, on 12 October 1919, to Henrietta and Conery Miller. He had three brothers, one of which served in the Army during World War II. While attending Moore High School in Waco, he was a fullback on the football team.

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She was the first black female to go into space.

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Thurgood Marshall - Black History - HISTORY.com

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Find out more about the history of Thurgood Marshall, including videos, interesting articles, pictures, historical features and more. Get all the facts on HISTORY.com

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Photo: Hulton Archive/Getty Images

Quick Facts
"An artist must be free to choose what he does, certainly, but he must also never be afraid to do what he might choose.""I have discovered in life that there are ways of getting almost anywhere you want to go, if you really want to go.""We Negro writers, just by being black, have been on the blacklist all our lives. Censorship for us begins at the color line.""Humor is laughing at what you haven't got when you ought to have it.""Let the rain kiss you. Let the rain beat upon your head with silver liquid drops. Let the rain sing you a lullaby.""The first two or three days, on the way home from school, little white kids, kids my age, 6 and 7 years old, who would throw stones at me. There were other little white kids, 6 and 7 years old, who picked up stones and threw them back at their fellow classmates, and defend me, and saw that I got home safely. So, I learned very early in life that our race problem is not really of black against white, and white against black. It's a problem of people who are not very knowledgeable, or have small minds, or small spirits.""Negroes-sweet and docile, meek, humble and kind: Beware the day-they change their mind.""I swear to the Lord, I can't see why democracy means everybody but me.""Like welcome summer rain, humor may suddenly cleanse and cool the earth, the air and you.""Negro blood is sure powerful, because just one drop of black blood makes a colored man. One drop you are a Negro! ...Black is powerful.""Hold fast to dreams, for if dreams die, life is a broken winged bird that cannot fly.""Life is a system of half-truths and lies, opportunistic, convenient evasion.""No woman can be handsome by the force of features alone, any more that she can be witty by only the help of speech.""Jessie Fauset at 'The Crisis,' Charles Johnson at 'Opportunity' and Alain Locke in Washington were the three people who midwifed the so-called 'New Negro Literature' into being. Kind and critical-but not too critical for the young-they nursed us along until our books were born."

Name

Langston Hughes

Birth Date

February 1, 1902

Death Date

May 22, 1967

Education

Columbia University, Lincoln University

Place of Birth

Joplin, Missouri

Place of Death

New York, New York

Langston Hughes was an African American writer whose poems, columns, novels and plays made him a leading figure in the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s.

Who Was Langston Hughes?

Langston Hughes published his first poem in 1921. He attended Columbia University, but left after one year to travel. A leading light of the Harlem Renaissance, Hughes published his first book in 1926. He went on to write countless works of poetry, prose and plays, as well as a popular column for the Chicago Defender.

Early Life

James Mercer Langston Hughes was born on February 1, 1902, in Joplin, Missouri. His parents, James Hughes and Carrie Langston, separated soon after his birth, and his father moved to Mexico.

While Hughes' mother moved around during his youth, Hughes was raised primarily by his maternal grandmother, Mary, until she died in his early teens. From that point, he went to live with his mother, and they moved to several cities before eventually settling in Cleveland, Ohio.

It was during this time that Hughes first began to write poetry, and one of his teachers introduced him to the poetry of Carl Sandburg and Walt Whitman, both of whom Hughes would later cite as primary influences.

Hughes was also a regular contributor to his school's literary magazine and frequently submitted to other poetry magazines, although they would ultimately reject his work.

Harlem Renaissance

Hughes graduated from high school in 1920 and spent the following year in Mexico with his father. Around this time, Hughes' poem "The Negro Speaks of Rivers" was published in The Crisis magazine and was highly praised.

In 1921 Hughes returned to the United States and enrolled at Columbia University where he studied briefly, and during which time he quickly became a part of Harlem's burgeoning cultural movement, what is commonly known as the Harlem Renaissance.

But Hughes dropped out of Columbia in 1922 and worked various odd jobs around New York for the following year, before signing on as a steward on a freighter that took him to Africa and Spain. He left the ship in 1924 and lived for a brief time in Paris, where he continued to develop and publish his poetry.
READ MORE: Langston Hughes' Impact on the Harlem Renaissance

Poems and Other Works

'The Weary Blues'

In November 1924, Hughes returned to the United States and worked various jobs. In 1925, he was working as a busboy in a Washington, D.C. hotel restaurant when he met American poet Vachel Lindsay. Hughes showed some of his poems to Lindsay, who was impressed enough to use his connections to promote Hughes' poetry and ultimately bring it to a wider audience.

In 1925, Hughes' poem "The Weary Blues" won first prize in the Opportunity magazine literary competition, and Hughes also received a scholarship to attend Lincoln University, in Pennsylvania.

While studying at Lincoln, Hughes poetry came to the attention of novelist and critic Carl Van Vechten, who used his connections to help get Hughes' first book of poetry, The Weary Blues, published by Knopf in 1926. The book had popular appeal and established both his poetic style and his commitment to black themes and heritage.

Hughes was also among the first to use jazz rhythms and dialect to depict the life of urban blacks in his work. He published a second volume of poetry, Fine Clothes to the Jew, in 1927.

'Not Without Laughter'

After his graduation from Lincoln in 1929, Hughes published his first novel, Not Without Laughter. The book was commercially successful enough to convince Hughes that he could make a living as a writer.

During the 1930s, Hughes would frequently travel the United States on lecture tours, and also abroad to the Soviet Union, Japan, and Haiti. He continued to write and publish poetry and prose during this time, and in 1934 he published his first collection of short stories, The Ways of White Folks.

'Let America Be America Again'

In July 1936 he published one of his most celebrated poems, "Let America Be America Again" in Esquire, which examined the unrealized hopes and dreams of the country's lower class and disadvantaged, expressing a sense of hope that the American Dream would one day arrive.

Hughes would later revise and republish "Let America Be America Again" in a small anthology of poems called A New Song.

In 1937, he served as a war correspondent for several American newspapers during the Spanish Civil War.

'Simple' & More

In 1940, Hughes' autobiography up to age 28, The Big Sea, was published.

Also around this time, Hughes began contributing a column to the Chicago Defender, for which he created a comic character named Jesse B. Semple, better known as "Simple," a black Everyman that Hughes used to further explore urban, working-class black themes, and to address racial issues. The columns were highly successful, and "Simple" would later be the focus of several of Hughes' books and plays.

In the late 1940s, Hughes contributed the lyrics for a Broadway musical titled Street Scene, which featured music by Kurt Weill. The success of the musical would earn Hughes enough money that he was finally able to buy a house in Harlem. Around this time, he also taught creative writing at Atlanta University (today Clark Atlanta University) and was a guest lecturer at a university in Chicago for several months.

Over the next two decades, Hughes would continue his prolific output. In 1949 he wrote a play that inspired the opera Troubled Island and published yet another anthology of work, The Poetry of the Negro.

'A Dream Deferred'

In 1951 Hughes published one of his most celebrated poems,"Harlem (What happens to a dream deferred?')," discussing how the American Dream falls short for African Americans:
What happens to a dream deferred? Maybe it just sags
Or does it explode? Like a heavy load.

Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore-
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over-
Like a syrupy sweet?
During the 1950s and 1960s, he published countless other works, including several books in his "Simple" series, English translations of the poetry of Federico García Lorca and Gabriela Mistral, another anthology of his own poetry, and the second installment of his autobiography, I Wonder as I Wander.

DOWNLOAD BIOGRAPHY'S LANGSTON HUGHES FACT CARD

Sexuality

Literary scholars have debated Hughes' sexuality for years, with many claiming the writer was gay and included a number of coded references to male lovers in his poems (as did Walt Whitman, a major influence on Hughes).

Hughes never married, nor was he romantically linked to any of the women in his life. And several of Hughes' friends and traveling companions were known or believed to be gay, including Zell Ingram, Gilbert Price and Ferdinand Smith.

Other biographers have refuted these claims, but because of Hughes' secrecy and the era's homophobia surrounding openly gay men, there is no concrete evidence of Hughes' sexuality.

Death and Legacy

On May 22, 1967, Hughes died from complications of prostate cancer. A tribute to his poetry, his funeral contained little in the way of spoken eulogy, but was filled with jazz and blues music.

Hughes' ashes were interred beneath the entrance of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem. The inscription marking the spot features a line from Hughes' poem "The Negro Speaks of Rivers." It reads: "My soul has grown deep like the rivers."

Hughes' Harlem home, on East 127th Street, received New York City Landmark status in 1981 and was added to the National Register of Places in 1982. Volumes of his work continue to be published and translated throughout the world.

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"An artist must be free to choose what he does, certainly, but he must also never be afraid to do what he might choose." "I have discovered in life that there are ways of getting almost anywhere you want to go, if you really want to go."

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The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross

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Just before dawn on May 13, 1862, Robert Smalls and a crew composed of fellow slaves, in the absence of the white captain and his two mates, slipped a cotton steamer off the dock, picked up family members at a rendezvous point, then slowly navigated their way through the harbor. Smalls, doubling as the captain, even donning the captain's wide-brimmed straw hat to help to hide his face, responded with the proper coded signals at two Confederate checkpoints, including at Fort Sumter itself, and other defense positions. Cleared, Smalls sailed into the open seas. Once outside of Confederate waters, he had his crew raise a white flag and surrendered his ship to the blockading Union fleet.

In fewer than four hours, Robert Smalls had done something unimaginable: In the midst of the Civil War, this black male slave had commandeered a heavily armed Confederate ship and delivered its 17 black passengers (nine men, five women and three children) from slavery to freedom.

Sailing From Slavery to Freedom

Our story begins in the second full year of the war. It is May 12, 1862, and the Union Navy has set up a blockade around much of the Atlantic and Gulf Coasts. Inside it, the Confederates are dug in defending Charleston, S.C., and its coastal waters, dense with island forts, including Sumter, where the first shots of the Civil War were fired exactly one year, one month, before. Attached to Brig. Gen. Roswell Ripley's command is the C.S.S. Planter, a "first-class coastwise steamer" hewn locally for the cotton trade out of "live oak and red cedar," according to testimony given in a U.S. House Naval Affairs Committee report 20 years later.

After two weeks of supplying various island points, the Planter returns to the Charleston docks by nightfall. It is due to go out again the next morning and so is heavily armed, including approximately 200 rounds of ammunition, a 32-pound pivot gun, a 24-pound howitzer and four other guns, among them one that had been dented in the original attack on Sumter. In between drop-offs, the three white officers on board (Capt. C.J. Relyea, pilot Samuel H. Smith and engineer Zerich Pitcher) make the fateful decision to disembark for the night - either for a party or to visit family - leaving the crew's eight slave members behind. If caught, Capt. Relyea could face court-martial - that's how much he trusts them.

At the top of the list is Robert Smalls, a 22-year-old mulatto slave who's been sailing these waters since he was a teenager: intelligent and resourceful, defiant with compassion, an expert navigator with a family yearning to be free. According to the 1883 Naval Committee report, Smalls serves as the ship's "virtual pilot,"but because only whites can rank, he is slotted as "wheelman." Smalls not only acts the part; he looks it, as well. He is often teased about his resemblance to Capt. Relyea: Is it his skin, his frame or both? The true joke, though, is Smalls' to spring, for what none of the officers know is that he has been planning for this moment for weeks and is willing to use every weapon on board to see it through.

Background

Smalls was born on April 5, 1839, behind his owner's city house at 511 Prince Street in Beaufort, S.C. His mother, Lydia, served in the house but grew up in the fields, where, at the age of nine, she was taken from her own family on the Sea Islands. It is not clear who Smalls' father was. Some say it was his owner, John McKee; others, his son Henry; still others, the plantation manager, Patrick Smalls. What is clear is that the McKee family favored Robert Smalls over the other slave children, so much so that his mother worried he would reach manhood without grasping the horrors of the institution into which he was born. To educate him, she arranged for him to be sent into the fields to work and watch slaves at "the whipping post."

"The result of this lesson led Robert to defiance," wrote great-granddaughter Helen Boulware Moore and historian W. Marvin Dulaney, and he "frequently found himself in the Beaufort jail." If anything, Smalls' mother's plan had worked too well, so that "fear[ing] for her son's safety ... she asked McKee to allow Smalls to go to Charleston to be rented out to work." Again her wish was granted. By the time Smalls turned 19, he had tried his hand at a number of city jobs and was allowed to keep one dollar of his wages a week (his owner took the rest). Far more valuable was the education he received on the water; few knew Charleston harbor better than Robert Smalls.

It's where he earned his job on the Planter. It's also where he met his wife, Hannah, a slave of the Kingman family working at a Charleston hotel. With their owners' permission, the two moved into an apartment together and had two children: Elizabeth and Robert Jr. Well aware this was no guarantee of a permanent union, Smalls asked his wife's owner if he could purchase his family outright; they agreed but at a steep price: $800. Smalls only had $100. "How long would it take [him] to save up another $700?" Moore and Dulaney ask. Unwittingly, Smalls' "look-enough-alike," Captain Rylea, gave him his best backup

To white Confederates, the Union ships blocking their harbors were another example of the North's enslavement of the South; to actual slaves like Robert Smalls, these ships signaled the tantalizing promise of freedom. Under orders from Secretary Gideon Welles in Washington, Navy commanders had been accepting runaways as contraband since the previous September. While Smalls couldn't afford to buy his family on shore, he knew he could win their freedom by sea - and so he told his wife to be ready for whenever opportunity dawned.

The Escape on the Planter

That opportunity is at hand on the night of May 12. Once the white officers are on shore, Smalls confides his plan to the other slaves on board. According to the Naval Committee report, two choose to stay behind. "The design was hazardous in the extreme," it states, and Smalls and his men have no intention of being taken alive; either they will escape or use whatever guns and ammunition they have to fight and, if necessary, sink their ship. "Failure and detection would have been certain death," the Navy report makes plain. "Fearful was the venture, but it was made."

At 2:00 a.m. on May 13, Smalls dons Capt. Rylea's straw hat and orders the Planter's skeleton crew to put up the boiler and hoist the South Carolina and Confederate flags as decoys. Easing out of the dock, in view of Gen. Ripley's headquarters, they pause at the West Atlantic Wharf to pick up Smalls' wife and children, along with four other women, three men and another child.

At 3:25 a.m., the Planter accelerates "her perilous adventure," the Navy report continues (it reads more like a Robert Louis Stevenson novel). From the pilot house, Smalls blows the ship's whistle while passing Confederate Forts Johnson and, at 4:15 a.m., Fort Sumter, "as cooly as if General Ripley was on board." Smalls not only knows all the right Navy signals to flash; he even folds his arms like Capt. Rylea, so that in the shadows of dawn, he passes convincingly for white.

"She was supposed to be the guard boat and allowed to pass without interruption," Confederate Aide-de-Campe F.G. Ravenel explains defensively in a letter to his commander hours later. It is only when the Planterpasses out of Rebel gun range that the alarm is sounded - the Planter is heading for the Union blockade. Approaching it, Smalls orders his crew to replace the Palmetto and Rebel flags with a white bed sheet his wife brought on board. Not seeing it, Acting Volunteer Lt. J. Frederick Nickels of the U.S.S. Onward orders his sailors to "open her ports." It is "sunrise," Nickels writes in a letter the same day, an illuminating fact that may have changed the course of history, at least on board the Planter - for now Nickels could see.

In The Negro's Civil War, the dean of Civil War studies James McPherson quotes the following eyewitness account: "Just as No. 3 port gun was being elevated, someone cried out, 'I see something that looks like a white flag'; and true enough there was something flying on the steamer that would have been white by application of soap and water. As she neared us, we looked in vain for the face of a white man. When they discovered that we would not fire on them, there was a rush of contrabands out on her deck, some dancing, some singing, whistling, jumping; and others stood looking towards Fort Sumter, and muttering all sorts of maledictions against it, and 'de heart of de Souf,' generally. As the steamer came near, and under the stern of the Onward, one of the Colored men stepped forward, and taking off his hat, shouted, 'Good morning, sir! I've brought you some of the old United States guns, sir!' " That man is Robert Smalls, and he and his family and the entire slave crew of the Planter are now free.

After "board[ing] her, haul[ing] down the flag of truce, and hoist[ing] the American ensign" (his words), Lt. Nickels transfers the Planter to his commander, Capt. E.G. Parrott of the U.S.S. Augusta. Parrott then forwards it on to Flag Officer Samuel Francis Du Pont (of the "du Pont" Du Ponts), at Port Royal, Hilton Heads Island, with a letter describing Smalls as "very intelligent contraband." Du Pont is similarly impressed, and the next day writes a letter to the Navy secretary in Washington, stating, "Robert, the intelligent slave and pilot of the boat, who performed this bold feet so skillfully, informed me of [the capture of the Sumter gun], presuming it would be a matter of interest." He "is superior to any who have come into our lines - intelligent as many of them have been." While Du Pont sends the families to Beaufort, he takes care of the Planter's crew personally while having its captured flags mailed to Washington via the Adams Express, the same private carrier that had delivered Box Brown to freedom in 1849.

The Reception

Smalls may not have had the $700 he needed to purchase his family's freedom before the war; now, because of his bravery and his inability to purchase his wife, the U.S. Congress on May 30, 1862, passed a private bill authorizing the Navy to appraise the Planter and award Smalls and his crew half the proceeds for "rescuing her from the enemies of the Government." Smalls received $1,500 personally, enough to purchase his former owner's house in Beaufort off the tax rolls following the war, though according to the later Naval Affairs Committee report, his pay should have been substantially higher.

The Confederates seemed to know this already; after Smalls' escape, biographer Andrew Billingsley notes, they put a $4,000 bounty on his head. Still, those on the scene had a hard time explaining how slaves pulled off such a feat; in the aftermath, Aide-de-Campe Ravenel even intimated to his commander that the night before, "it would appear that ... two white men and a white woman went on board of her, and as they were not seen to return it is supposed that they have also gone with her." Suppose all they wanted - there was no record of any white passengers aboard the Planter the morning of May 13 - Smalls and his crew had acted alone. As his contemporary steamer pilot Mark Twain famously wrote: "Facts are stubborn things."

In the North, Smalls was feted as a hero and personally lobbied the Secretary of War Edwin Stanton to begin enlisting black soldiers. After President Lincoln acted a few months later, Smalls was said to have recruited 5,000 soldiers by himself. In October 1862, he returned to the Planter as pilot as part of Admiral Du Pont's South Atlantic Blockading Squadron. According to the 1883 Naval Affairs Committee report, Smalls was engaged in approximately 17 military actions, including the April 7, 1863, assault on Fort Sumter and the attack at Folly Island Creek, S.C., two months later, where he assumed command of the Planter when, under "very hot fire," its white captain became so "demoralized" he hid in the "coal-bunker." For his valiancy, Smalls was promoted to the rank of captain himself, and from December 1863 on, earned $150 a month, making him one of the highest paid black soldiers of the war. Poetically, when the war ended in April 1865, Smalls was on board the Planter in a ceremony in Charleston Harbor.

Robert Smalls' Postwar Record

Following the war, Smalls continued to push the boundaries of freedom as a first-generation black politician, serving in the South Carolina state assembly and senate, and for five nonconsecutive terms in the U.S. House of Representatives (1874-1886) before watching his state roll back Reconstruction in a revised 1895 constitution that stripped blacks of their voting rights. He died in Beaufort on February 22, 1915, in the same house behind which he had been born a slave and is buried behind a bust at the Tabernacle Baptist Church. In the face of the rise of Jim Crow, Smalls stood firm as an unyielding advocate for the political rights of African Americans: "My race needs no special defense for the past history of them and this country. It proves them to be equal of any people anywhere. All they need is an equal chance in the battle of life."

For those interested in learning more about this daring Civil War hero, Helen Boulware Moore and W. Martin Dulaney, with help from the National Endowment for the Humanities, have curated a traveling exhibit, " The Life and Times of Congressman Robert Smalls." You can also find him on YouTube, including in a South Carolina state educational video; a fourth grader's Black History Month presentation; even a realtor's tour of his former home in Beaufort, most recently listed for $1.2 million.

Imagine what the Planter and its guns and ammunition would fetch in current dollars? One thing I know: Robert Smalls and the purchase of his family's freedom? Priceless.
Fifty of the 100 Amazing Facts will be published on The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross website. Read all 100 Facts on The Root.

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Robert Smalls, from Escaped Slave to House of Representatives | African American History Blog | The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross

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Just before dawn on May 13, 1862, Robert Smalls and a crew composed of fellow slaves, in the absence of the white captain and his two mates, slipped a cotton steamer off the dock, picked up family members at a rendezvous point, then slowly navigated their way through the harbor.

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My person is Wendell Smith

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My person is Matthew Henson: He was the first African American explorer and he went to Harvard. He was known as the best discoverer of the North Pole along with Robert Peary in 1909.

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Matthew Henson was an African-American explorer who discovered the North Pole with Robert E. Peary in 1909-or so they claimed. Learn more at Biography.com.

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Jamaican singer, musician and songwriter Bob Marley served as a world ambassador for reggae music and sold more than 20 million records throughout his career.