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Benjamin Banneker was an American astronomer and mathematician who started his own series of almanacs and corresponded with Thomas Jefferson. Learn more at Biography.com.

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Who Is Lonnie G. Johnson?

African American engineer and inventor Lonnie G. Johnson earned his master's degree in nuclear engineering from Tuskegee University and went on to work for the U.S. Air Force and the NASA space program. After tinkering with the invention of a high-powered water gun, Johnson's Super Soaker became a top-selling item by the early 1990s. He has since been developing the Johnson Thermoelectric Energy Converter (JTEC), an engine that converts heat directly into electricity, which Johnson's sees as the path to low-cost solar power.

Early Life, Family and Education

Lonnie George Johnson was born on October 6, 1949, in Mobile, Alabama. His father was a World War II veteran who worked as a civilian driver at nearby Air Force bases, while his mother worked in a laundry and as a nurse's aid. During the summers, both of Johnson's parents also picked cotton on his grandfather's farm.

Out of both interest and economic necessity, Johnson's father was a skilled handyman who taught his six children to build their own toys. When Johnson was still a small boy, he and his dad built a pressurized chinaberry shooter out of bamboo shoots. At the age of 13, Johnson attached a lawnmower engine to a go-kart he built from junkyard scraps and raced it along the highway until the police pulled him over.

Johnson dreamed of becoming a famous inventor and, during his teenage years, began to grow more curious about the way things worked and more ambitious in his experimentation-sometimes to the detriment of his family. "Lonnie tore up his sister's baby doll to see what made the eyes close," his mother later recalled. Another time, he nearly burned the house down when he attempted to cook up rocket fuel in one of his mother's saucepans and the concoction exploded.

Growing up in Mobile in the days of legal segregation, Johnson attended Williamson High School, an all-Black facility, where, despite his precocious intelligence and creativity, he was told not to aspire beyond a career as a technician. Nevertheless, inspired by the story of famed African American inventor George Washington Carver, Johnson persevered in his dream of becoming an inventor.

Nicknamed "The Professor" by his high school buddies, Johnson represented his school at a 1968 science fair sponsored by the Junior Engineering Technical Society (JETS). The fair took place at the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa, where, just five years earlier, Governor George Wallace had tried to prevent two Black students from enrolling at the school by standing in the doorway of the auditorium.

The only Black student in the competition, Johnson debuted a compressed-air-powered robot, called "the Linex," that he had painstakingly built from junkyard scraps over the course of a year. Much to the chagrin of the university officials, Johnson won first prize. "The only thing anybody from the university said to us during the entire competition," Johnson later recalled, "was 'Goodbye' and 'Y'all drive safe, now.'"

After graduating with Williamson's last segregated class, in 1969, Johnson attended Tuskegee University on a scholarship. He earned a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering in 1973, and two years later he received a master's degree in nuclear engineering from the school.

Inventions

The Super Soaker

Johnson went on to join the U.S. Air Force, becoming an important member of the government scientific establishment. He was assigned to the Strategic Air Command, where he helped develop the stealth bomber program. Johnson moved on to NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in 1979, working as a systems engineer for the Galileo mission to Jupiter and the Cassini mission to Saturn, before returning to the Air Force in 1982.

Despite his busy days, Johnson continued to pursue his own inventions in his spare time. One of his longtime pet projects was an environmentally friendly heat pump that used water instead of Freon. Johnson finally completed a prototype one night in 1982 and decided to test it in his bathroom. He aimed the nozzle into his bathtub, pulled the lever and blasted a powerful stream of water straight into the tub. Johnson's instantaneous and instinctive reaction, since shared by millions of kids around the world, was pure delight.

In 1989, after another seven years of tinkering and tireless sales-pitching, during which he left the Air Force to go into business for himself, Johnson finally sold his device to the Larami Corporation. The "Power Drencher" initially failed to make much of a commercial impact, but after additional marketing efforts and a name change, the "Super Soaker" became a massively successful item. It topped $200 million in sales in 1991, and went on to annually rank among the world's Top 20 best-selling toys.

The Johnson Thermoelectric Energy Converter

Propelled by the success of the Super Soaker, Johnson founded Johnson Research & Development and went on to acquire dozens of patents. Some of his inventions, including a ceramic battery and hair rollers that set without heat, achieved commercial success. Others, including a diaper that plays a nursery rhyme when soiled, failed to catch on. Another invention sought to address matters of far greater importance: With the creation of the Johnson Thermoelectric Energy Converter (JTEC), the engineer aimed to develop an advanced heat engine that could convert solar energy into electricity with twice the efficiency of existing methods. He believed a successful version of the JTEC had the potential to make solar power competitive with coal, fulfilling the dream of efficient, renewable solar energy.

His pitches initially spurred, Johnson eventually obtained much-needed funding from the Air Force in order to continue working on his project. In 2008, Johnson received the Breakthrough Award from Popular Mechanics for the invention of the JTEC. More recently, he has been working with the Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) in California for further development. Since leaving the Air Force, Lonnie G. Johnson has been one of a rare breed of scientists: the independent inventor working outside the scientific establishment. Had he retired upon patenting the Super Soaker, Johnson would still go down as one of the most successful inventors and entrepreneurs of his generation.

However, if he manages to perfect the JTEC, Johnson will carve out a much greater place in history as one of the seminal figures of the ongoing green technology revolution. Paul Werbos of the National Science Foundation summed up the immense importance of Johnson's work: "This is a whole new family of technology. ... It's like discovering a new continent. You don't know what's there, but you sure want to explore it to find out. ... It has a darn good chance of being the best thing on Earth."

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African American engineer and inventor Lonnie G. Johnson earned his master's degree in nuclear engineering from Tuskegee University and went on to work for the U.S. Air Force and the NASA space program. After tinkering with the invention of a high-powered water gun, Johnson's Super Soaker became a top-selling item by the early 1990s.

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Jesse Owens, (born September 12, 1913, Oakville, Alabama, U.S.-died March 31, 1980, Phoenix, Arizona), American track-and-field athlete who set a world record in the running broad jump (also called long jump) that stood for 25 years and who won four gold medals at the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin. His four Olympic victories were a blow to Adolf Hitler's intention to use the Games to demonstrate Aryan superiority.

As a student in a Cleveland high school, Owens won three events at the 1933 National Interscholastic Championships in Chicago. In one day, May 25, 1935, while competing for Ohio State University (Columbus) in a Western (later Big Ten) Conference track-and-field meet at the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor), Owens equaled the world record for the 100-yard dash (9.4 sec) and broke the world records for the 220-yard dash (20.3 sec), the 220-yard low hurdles (22.6 sec), and the long jump (8.13 metres [26.67 feet]).

Owens's performance at the 1936 Berlin Olympics has become legend, both for his brilliant gold-medal efforts in the 100-metre run (10.3 sec, an Olympic record), the 200-metre run (20.7 sec, a world record), the long jump (8.06 metres [26.4 feet]), and the 4 × 100-metre relay (39.8 sec) and for events away from the track. One popular tale that arose from Owens's victories was that of the "snub," the notion that Hitler refused to shake hands with Owens because he was an African American. In truth, by the second day of competition, when Owens won the 100-metre final, Hitler had decided to no longer publicly congratulate any of the athletes. The previous day the International Olympic Committee president, angry that Hitler had publicly congratulated only a few German and Finnish winners before leaving the stadium after the German competitors were eliminated from the day's final event, insisted that the German chancellor congratulate all or none of the victors. Unaware of the situation, American papers reported the "snub," and the myth grew over the years.

Despite the politically charged atmosphere of the Berlin Games, Owens was adored by the German public, and it was German long jumper Carl Ludwig ("Luz") Long who aided Owens through a bad start in the long jump competition. Owens was flustered to learn that what he had thought was a practice jump had been counted as his first attempt. Unsettled, he foot-faulted the second attempt. Before Owens's last jump, Long suggested that the American place a towel in front of the take-off board. Leaping from that point, Owens qualified for the finals, eventually beating Long (later his close friend) for the gold.

For a time, Owens held alone or shared the world records for all sprint distances recognized by the International Amateur Athletic Federation (IAAF; later International Association of Athletics Federations). After retiring from competitive track, Owens engaged in boys' guidance activities, made goodwill visits to India and East Asia for the U.S. Department of State, served as secretary of the Illinois State Athletic Commission, and worked in public relations. In 1976 Owens received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and in 1990 he was posthumously awarded the Congressional Gold Medal.

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Jesse Owens | Biography, Olympics, Medals, & Facts

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Jesse Owens, American track-and-field athlete who won four gold medals at the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin. His four Olympic victories were a blow to Adolf Hitler's intention to use the Games to demonstrate Aryan superiority. Learn more about Owens's life and accomplishments in this article.

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Synopsis

Colin Kaepernick was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in 1987. An athletic and mobile quarterback, Kaepernick attended the University of Nevada, Reno, where he set several school and college records. The San Francisco 49ers drafted Kaepernick in 2011, and he led the club to Super Bowl XLVII less than two years later.

Early Life

Colin Rand Kaepernick was born on November 3, 1987, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He was just a few weeks old when he was adopted by Rick and Teresa Kaepernick, who already had two children of their own but had lost two other babies not long after birth because of heart defects.

Kaepernick's biological mother, Heidi Russo, was 19 when he was born. Faced with the prospect of raising her son on her own (Kaepernick's biological father fled as soon as he discovered Russo was pregnant), she had spent much of her pregnancy debating whether she should put her baby up for adoption. After meeting the Kaepernicks, who had been introduced to her through a common friend, she decided to give her young child up.

As white parents of a bi-racial child, the Kaepernicks often received stares or curious comments. At school, classmates told Colin that it was impossible for the Kaepernicks to be his parents.

"We've always been really open about the adoption, and we were always very open about the skin colors," Teresa Kaepernick told The New York Times in 2010. "We pointed it out as a positive, and he saw his difference and was comfortable with it."

Athletic at a young age, Kaepernick, who moved with his family to California when he was 4 years old, began playing youth football at age 8. His strong arm quickly elevated him to the quarterback position. That same arm also made him an elite high school pitcher, one capable of throwing a 94 miles per hour fastball.

But football was Kaepernick's first love. In the fourth grade, he even penned a letter predicting that he would be the starting quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers. "I hope I go to a good college in football then go to the pros and play on the Niners or the Packers, even if they aren't good in seven years," he wrote.

At John H. Pitman High School in Turlock, California, Kaepernick was a first-team All-District, All-Conference and All-Academic selection. But Kaepernick, whose big arm was hampered by what scouts viewed as a poor throwing motion, was largely passed over by the major college football programs. There were also concerns that the razor thin athlete-he matched his 6'4" frame with just 170 pounds-would get hurt.

College Years

It was only after a tryout at a camp put on by the University of Nevada, Reno, that Kaepernick showed enough to warrant a scholarship, and he subsequently enrolled at the school in the fall of 2007. Recruited to play safety, Kaepernick stepped in to play QB in the fifth game of his freshman year, when the team's starter went out with an injury against Fresno State. Throwing for 384 yards and four touchdowns, Kaepernick never relinquished the starting role and finished the year with 19 touchdowns.

Fast and strong, Kaepernick put up gaudy numbers during his four years playing for the Wolf Pack. He set several school records and became the first quarterback in the history of Division I FBS to pass for more than 10,000 yards and rush for more than 4,000 yards.

While concerns about Kaepernick's throwing accuracy still hovered around him, the San Francisco 49ers selected the quarterback in the second round of the 2011 NFL draft.

Rising Star

After serving as a backup throughout his rookie season to the team's longtime starter, Alex Smith, Kaepernick took over as the team's No. 1 quarterback in 2012, after Smith was forced to sit out late in the year as a result of a concussion.

As he had done in college, Kaepernick quickly adapted to the new competition, dazzling 49er fans and coaches with his unmatched athleticism. After the second-year QB led the club to several big wins, 49ers coach Jim Harbaugh named the young player his permanent starting quarterback. Because the team had come within several plays of going to the Super Bowl just a year before, and because Smith had recently garnered one of the league's premier QB ratings, the decision was a controversial one.

But Kaepernick shut out the noise. As the wins mounted, Kaepernick's celebrity grew, even his well-tattooed arms gained notoriety. In his first postseason start, he dominated Aaron Rodgers and the Green Bay Packers, rushing for 181 yards to a set a new NFL single game record for a quarterback. After defeating the Atlanta Falcons in the NFC championship game, Kaepernick and the 49ers fell to Ray Lewis and the Baltimore Ravens at Super Bowl XLVII in New Orleans.

"It's good to get the experience," a somber Kaepernick said after the game. "We should have won that game regardless, though."

Pro Struggles

Kaepernick opened the 2013 season on a strong note, passing for 412 yards and three touchdowns. The 49ers went on to notch a 12-4 record and earn a playoff berth, although this time the season ended with a close loss to the Seattle Seahawks in the NFC championship game.

Despite more standout moments from their franchise QB, the 49ers slipped to an 8-8 mark in 2014. The wheels then completely came off in 2015, with Kaepernick losing his starting job before being sidelined for the final month-plus with a shoulder injury. After the season, his desire to be traded to another team went unfulfilled.

Flag Controversy

Kaepernick became embroiled in a thorny issue when he refused to stand for the National Anthem before a preseason game in late August 2016.

"I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color," he said afterward in an interview. "To me, this is bigger than football and it would be selfish on my part to look the other way." He added that he would continue to sit during the National Anthem until seeing "significant change" for minorities.

Both the team's front office and its head coach, Chip Kelly, publicly supported Kaepernick's right to express himself, though it remained to be seen whether his actions had further damaged his tenuous relationship with the organization.

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Colin Kaepernick was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in 1987. An athletic and mobile quarterback, Kaepernick attended the University of Nevada, Reno, where he set several school and college records. The San Francisco 49ers drafted Kaepernick in 2011, and he led the club to Super Bowl XLVII less than two years later.

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Quick Facts
"I believe all Americans who believe in freedom, tolerance and human rights have a responsibility to oppose bigotry and prejudice based on sexual orientation.""Struggle is a never-ending process. Freedom is never really won, you earn it and win it in every generation.""Women, if the soul of the nation is to be saved, I believe that you must become its soul.""I'm fulfilled in what I do. I never thought that a lot of money or fine clothes-the finer things of life-would make you happy. My concept of happiness is to be filled in a spiritual sense.""Hate is too great a burden to bear. It injures the hater more than it injures the hated."

Name

Coretta Scott King

Birth Date

April 27, 1927

Death Date

January 30, 2006

Did You Know?

In her younger years, Coretta Scott King was as well known for her singing and violin playing as her civil rights activism.

Did You Know?

The young soprano won a fellowship to the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, Massachusetts.

Education

Lincoln High School, New England Conservatory of Music, Antioch College

Place of Birth

Marion, Alabama

Place of Death

Playas de Rosarito, Mexico

Who Was Coretta Scott King?

Coretta Scott met her husband, Martin Luther King Jr., while the two were both students in Boston, Massachusetts. She worked side by side with King as he became a leader of the civil rights movement, establishing her own distinguished career as an activist. Following her husband's assassination in 1968, Coretta founded the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change, and later successfully lobbied for his birthday to recognized as a federal holiday. She died of complications from ovarian cancer in 2006, at age 78.

Early Life

Coretta was born on April 27, 1927, in Marion, Alabama. In the early decades of her life, Coretta was as well known for her singing and violin playing as her civil rights activism. She attended Lincoln High School, graduating as the school's valedictorian in 1945, and then enrolled at Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio, receiving her Bachelor of Arts in music and education in 1951.

Coretta was awarded a fellowship to the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, Massachusetts, where she met soon-to-be famed civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., then a doctoral candidate at Boston University's School of Theology. They married on June 18, 1953, at her family home in Marion.

After earning her degree in voice and violin from NEC in 1954, Coretta moved with her husband to Montgomery, Alabama, where he served as pastor of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church and she, subsequently, oversaw the various tasks of a pastor's wife.

Civil Rights Activist

Working side by side with her husband throughout the 1950s and '60s, Coretta took part in the Montgomery Bus Boycott of 1955, journeyed to Ghana to mark that nation's independence in 1957, traveled to India on a pilgrimage in 1959 and worked to pass the 1964 Civil Rights Act, among other endeavors.

Though best known for working alongside her husband, Coretta established a distinguished career in activism in her own right. Among many roles, she worked as a public mediator and as a liaison to peace and justice organizations.

Death of MLK

On April 4, 1968, while standing on a balcony outside of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, Martin Luther King Jr. was struck and killed by a sniper's bullet. Four days later, Coretta led her husband's planned march through Memphis to support striking sanitation workers.

The shooter, a malcontent drifter and former convict named James Earl Ray, was hunted for two months before being apprehended. King's assassination sparked riots and demonstrations in more than 100 cities across the country.

Continuing the Mission After His Death

In the aftermath of her husband's assassination, Coretta founded the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change, serving as the center's president and the chief executive officer from its inception. After spurring the formation of what became the Martin Luther King Jr. National Historic Site, around his birthplace in Atlanta, she dedicated the new King Center complex on its grounds in 1981.

Coretta remained active through her demonstrations against apartheid in South Africa, and by expressing her views as a syndicated columnist and contributor to CNN. She also saw the 15-year fight for formal recognition of her husband's birthday come to fruition in 1983, when President Ronald Reagan signed a bill that established Martin Luther King Day as a federal holiday.

Coretta passed the reins of the King Center over to her son Dexter in 1995 but remained in the public eye. In 1997, she called for a retrial for her husband's alleged assassin, though Ray died in prison the following year.

Death

Coretta suffered a heart attack and stroke in August 2005. She died less than six months later, on January 30, 2006, while seeking treatment for ovarian cancer at a clinic in Playas de Rosarito, Mexico. She was 78 years old.

Funeral

Coretta's funeral was held on February 7, 2006, at the New Birth Missionary Baptist Church in Georgia, eulogized by daughter Bernice King. The televised service at the megachurch lasted eight hours and had over 14,000 people in attendance, including U.S. Presidents George W. Bush, George H.W. Bush, Jimmy Carter, and Bill Clinton, along with most of their wives. Barack Obama, then a senator, was also present.

Personal Life

The author of My Life with Martin Luther King, Jr. (1969), Coretta had four children with King: Yolanda Denise (1955-2007), Martin Luther III (b. 1957), Dexter Scott (b. 1961) and Bernice Albertine (b. 1963). The surviving children manage the King Center and their father's estate.
Watch Betty & Coretta on Lifetime Movie Club

Fact Check

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

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"I believe all Americans who believe in freedom, tolerance and human rights have a responsibility to oppose bigotry and prejudice based on sexual orientation." "Struggle is a never-ending process. Freedom is never really won, you earn it and win it in every generation."

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Serena Jameka Williams is an American professional tennis player. She was ranked world No. 1 in singles on eight different occasions from 2002 to 2017 by the Women's Tennis Association. Her nickname is ReRe.
See the fact file below for more information on the Serena Williams or alternatively, you can download our 26-page Serena Williams worksheet pack to utilize within the classroom or home environment.
Key Facts & Information

Early Life and Education

Serena Williams was born in Saginaw, Michigan to Richard Williams and Oracene Price.

She moved to Compton, California with her family when she was still young.

Serena Williams was homeschooled by her father.

When Serena Williams was nine years old, they moved to West Palm Beach, Florida. There, she went to the tennis academy of Rick Macci.

Career Beginnings

Serena Williams started playing tennis when she was three years old.

One of Serena Williams' coaches in Compton, California was named Richard Williams, who had the same name as her father.

Her coach was the founder of The Venus and Serena Williams Tennis/Tutorial Academy.

When Serena Williams was ten years old, her father made her focus on school work and stopped her from joining national tennis tournaments.

She and her sister, Venus, experienced racist remarks during these tournaments, which was one reason why they stopped playing in them.

She was ranked number one among the players aged under 10 in Florida.

In 1995, Serena Williams stopped attending Rick Macci's academy and was coached by her father.

In 1995, after turning 14, Serena Williams was set to make her professional debut as a wild card entry in the Bank of the West Classic in Oakland, California. She was denied because she was too young.

Career Achievements

In 1997, Serena Williams won her first main-draw match in November at the Ameritech Cup Chicago.

Serena Williams became the lowest-ranked player in the Open Era to defeat two top 10 opponents in one tournament.

In 1999, Serena Williams won her first professional singles title in the Open Gaz de France in Paris.

In March 1999, at the Evert Cup in California, Serena Williams won her first Tier I title.

At the Miami Masters in 1999, Serena Williams had her 16-match winning period finished by her sister, Venus, in the first all-sister singles final in WTA history.

In the US Open final 1999, Serena Williams was able to beat No. 1, Hingis, and became the second African-American woman, after Althea Gibson in 1958, to bag a Grand Slam singles tournament.

In 2001, Serena Williams and her sister Venus completed a "Career Grand Slam."

Serena Williams went on to win her first clay-court title at the Italian Open 2001.

In the French Open at Roland Garros in 2001, Serena Williams won her first title. As a result of winning the trophy at Court Philippe Chatrier, she rose to No. 2.

At Wimbledon 2002, she won tennis's oldest championship for the first time in her life to win a Grand Slam singles title which made Serena Williams rank No. 1 for the first time, ousting her sister. She became the third African-American woman to hold that rank.

In the final of 2003 Australian Open, Serena Williams became the sixth woman in the Open Era to complete a career Grand Slam, and the fifth woman to win all Grand Slam singles titles all at the same time. This earned her the nickname "Serena Slam."

Serena Williams ended 2013 in No. 1 for the third time, which made her the oldest No. 1 player in WTA history and the 2013 ITF World Champion, which was the fourth time that she has been given the World Champion's crown.

Serena Williams received two prizes at the 2013 ESPY Awards, which were Best Female Athlete and Best Female Tennis Player. She topped off the year by receiving the Associated Press 2013 Female Athlete of the Year award.

In 2014, Serena Williams was appointed WTA Player of the Year and ITF World Champion for a third consecutive year (sixth overall).

Serena Williams started the 2015 season by representing the United States together with John Isner at the Hopman Cup in January.

In 2017, Serena Williams started the season by joining the WTA Auckland Open for the first time in her career. She won her first match played since the US Open.

On January 28, 2017, Williams won the Australian Open for an Open Era record seventh time. This was her 23rd Grand Slam singles title which made her exceed Steffi Graf's Open Era record of 22. It was the first time in the Open Era that two players aged 35 or older played against each other in the final of a Grand Slam tournament which made her return to the No. 1 ranking.

Personal Life

On December 29, 2016, Serena Williams got engaged to Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian and they married in New Orleans last November 16, 2017.

On April 19, 2017, Serena Williams announced her pregnancy and gave birth to their daughter, Alexis Olympia Ohanian Jr., on September 1, 2017.

Serena Williams had a cesarean section delivery because of complications, particularly a blood clot in her lungs which is called a pulmonary embolism.

Press Features and Advocacies

In 2015, she became the first black female athlete to be on the cover of Vogue - which was for the April 2015 issue.

In 2016, Serena Williams supported the Black Lives Matter movement.

In 2008, Serena Williams helped finance the construction of the Serena Williams Secondary School in Matooni, Kenya.

The Serena Williams Foundation gives out university scholarships for indigent students in the United States.

In 2016, the Serena Williams Fund collaborated with Helping Hands Jamaica to construct the Salt Marsh Primary School for Jamaican youths in Trelawny Parish.

Serena Williams was awarded Celebrity Role Model Award from Avon Foundation in 2003 for her work with breast cancer awareness.

Serena Williams also won the "Young Heroes Award" in 2003 and 2004.

In response to the 2010 Haiti earthquake, Serena Williams, together with other ATP and WTA stars, formed a charity event and the proceeds went to the Haiti earthquake victims.

Serena Williams and her sister Venus are supporters and contributors of First Serve Miami, which is a foundation for youths who want to learn tennis but are socially and economically challenged.

Serena Williams has been an International Goodwill Ambassador with UNICEF since 2011.

In 2016, the Williams sisters worked together in the Williams Sisters Fund as philanthropists, working to establish the Yetunde Price Resource Center which helps and supports families affected by community violence.

In 2015, Serena Williams' collaborated with the Equal Justice Initiative, which is a non-profit organization that provides legal representation to those who might have been denied a fair trial.

In 2014, Serena Williams started hosting a yearly charity run named "The Serena Williams Ultimate Fun Run" that supports the Serena Williams Fund.

Serena Williams Worksheets

This is a fantastic bundle that includes everything you need to know about Serena Williams across 26 in-depth pages. These are ready-to-use Serena Williams worksheets that are perfect for teaching students about Serena Jameka Williams who is an American professional tennis player. She was ranked world No. 1 in singles on eight different occasions from 2002 to 2017 by the Women's Tennis Association. Her nickname is ReRe.

Complete List Of Included Worksheets

Serena Williams Facts

All About Serena

Serena the Star Player

Hit or Miss

Serena Word Hunt

Serena's Family

Athlete-Advocate

Serena Says

Award-winning Headliner

Serena's Sister

Beyond Tennis

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Serena Williams Facts, Worksheets, Life, Career & Biography For Kids

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Not ready to purchase a subscription? Click to download the free sample version Download sample Serena Jameka Williams is an American professional tennis player. She was ranked world No. 1 in singles on eight different occasions from 2002 to 2017 by the Women's Tennis Association. Her nickname is ReRe.

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Although she was an enslaved person, Phillis Wheatley Peters was one of the best-known poets in pre-19th century America. Educated and enslaved in the household of prominent Boston commercialist John Wheatley, lionized in New England and England, with presses in both places publishing her poems, and paraded before the new republic's political leadership and the old empire's aristocracy, Wheatley was the abolitionists' illustrative testimony that blacks could be both artistic and intellectual. Her name was a household word among literate colonists and her achievements a catalyst for the fledgling antislavery movement.

Wheatley was seized from Senegal/Gambia, West Africa, when she was about seven years old. She was transported to the Boston docks with a shipment of "refugee" slaves, who because of age or physical frailty were unsuited for rigorous labor in the West Indian and Southern colonies, the first ports of call after the Atlantic crossing. In the month of August 1761, "in want of a domestic," Susanna Wheatley, wife of prominent Boston tailor John Wheatley, purchased "a slender, frail female child ... for a trifle" because the captain of the slave ship believed that the waif was terminally ill, and he wanted to gain at least a small profit before she died. A Wheatley relative later reported that the family surmised the girl-who was "of slender frame and evidently suffering from a change of climate," nearly naked, with "no other covering than a quantity of dirty carpet about her"-to be "about seven years old ... from the circumstances of shedding her front teeth."

After discovering the girl's precociousness, the Wheatleys, including their son Nathaniel and their daughter Mary, did not entirely excuse Wheatley from her domestic duties but taught her to read and write. Soon she was immersed in the Bible, astronomy, geography, history, British literature (particularly John Milton and Alexander Pope), and the Greek and Latin classics of Virgil, Ovid, Terence, and Homer. In "To the University of Cambridge in New England" (probably the first poem she wrote but not published until 1773), Wheatley indicated that despite this exposure, rich and unusual for an American slave, her spirit yearned for the intellectual challenge of a more academic atmosphere.

Although scholars had generally believed that An Elegiac Poem, on the Death of that Celebrated Divine, and Eminent Servant of Jesus Christ, the Reverend and Learned George Whitefield ... (1770) was Wheatley's first published poem, Carl Bridenbaugh revealed in 1969 that 13-year-old Wheatley-after hearing a miraculous saga of survival at sea-wrote "On Messrs. Hussey and Coffin," a poem which was published on 21 December 1767 in the Newport, Rhode Island, Mercury. But it was the Whitefield elegy that brought Wheatley national renown. Published as a broadside and a pamphlet in Boston, Newport, and Philadelphia, the poem was published with Ebenezer Pemberton's funeral sermon for Whitefield in London in 1771, bringing her international acclaim.

By the time she was 18, Wheatley had gathered a collection of 28 poems for which she, with the help of Mrs. Wheatley, ran advertisements for subscribers in Boston newspapers in February 1772. When the colonists were apparently unwilling to support literature by an African, she and the Wheatleys turned in frustration to London for a publisher. Wheatley had forwarded the Whitefield poem to Selina Hastings, Countess of Huntingdon, to whom Whitefield had been chaplain. A wealthy supporter of evangelical and abolitionist causes, the countess instructed bookseller Archibald Bell to begin correspondence with Wheatley in preparation for the book.

Wheatley, suffering from a chronic asthma condition and accompanied by Nathaniel, left for London on May 8, 1771. The now-celebrated poetess was welcomed by several dignitaries: abolitionists' patron the Earl of Dartmouth, poet and activist Baron George Lyttleton, Sir Brook Watson (soon to be the Lord Mayor of London), philanthropist John Thorton, and Benjamin Franklin. While Wheatley was recrossing the Atlantic to reach Mrs. Wheatley, who, at the summer's end, had become seriously ill, Bell was circulating the first edition of Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral (1773), the first volume of poetry by an African American published in modern times.

Poems on Various Subjects revealed that Wheatley's favorite poetic form was the couplet, both iambic pentameter and heroic. More than one-third of her canon is composed of elegies, poems on the deaths of noted persons, friends, or even strangers whose loved ones employed the poet. The poems that best demonstrate her abilities and are most often questioned by detractors are those that employ classical themes as well as techniques. In her epyllion "Niobe in Distress for Her Children Slain by Apollo, from Ovid's Metamorphoses, Book VI, and from a view of the Painting of Mr. Richard Wilson," she not only translates Ovid but adds her own beautiful lines to extend the dramatic imagery. In "To Maecenas" she transforms Horace's ode into a celebration of Christ.

In addition to classical and neoclassical techniques, Wheatley applied biblical symbolism to evangelize and to comment on slavery. For instance, " On Being Brought from Africa to America," the best-known Wheatley poem, chides the Great Awakening audience to remember that Africans must be included in the Christian stream: "Remember, Christians, Negroes, black as Cain, /May be refin'd and join th' angelic train." The remainder of Wheatley's themes can be classified as celebrations of America. She was the first to applaud this nation as glorious "Columbia" and that in a letter to no less than the first president of the United States, George Washington, with whom she had corresponded and whom she was later privileged to meet. Her love of virgin America as well as her religious fervor is further suggested by the names of those colonial leaders who signed the attestation that appeared in some copies of Poems on Various Subjects to authenticate and support her work: Thomas Hutchinson, governor of Massachusetts; John Hancock; Andrew Oliver, lieutenant governor; James Bowdoin; and Reverend Mather Byles. Another fervent Wheatley supporter was Dr. Benjamin Rush, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence.

Wheatley was manumitted some three months before Mrs. Wheatley died on March 3, 1774. Although many British editorials castigated the Wheatleys for keeping Wheatley in slavery while presenting her to London as the African genius, the family had provided an ambiguous haven for the poet. Wheatley was kept in a servant's place-a respectable arm's length from the Wheatleys' genteel circles-but she had experienced neither slavery's treacherous demands nor the harsh economic exclusions pervasive in a free-black existence. With the death of her benefactor, Wheatley slipped toward this tenuous life. Mary Wheatley and her father died in 1778; Nathaniel, who had married and moved to England, died in 1783. Throughout the lean years of the war and the following depression, the assault of these racial realities was more than her sickly body or aesthetic soul could withstand.

On April 1, 1778, despite the skepticism and disapproval of some of her closest friends, Wheatley married John Peters, whom she had known for some five years, and took his name. A free black, Peters evidently aspired to entrepreneurial and professional greatness. He is purported in various historical records to have called himself Dr. Peters, to have practiced law (perhaps as a free-lance advocate for hapless blacks), kept a grocery in Court Street, exchanged trade as a baker and a barber, and applied for a liquor license for a bar. Described by Merle A. Richmond as "a man of very handsome person and manners," who "wore a wig, carried a cane, and quite acted out 'the gentleman,'" Peters was also called "a remarkable specimen of his race, being a fluent writer, a ready speaker." Peters's ambitions cast him as "shiftless," arrogant, and proud in the eyes of some reporters, but as a Black man in an era that valued only his brawn, Peters's business acumen was simply not salable. Like many others who scattered throughout the Northeast to avoid the fighting during the Revolutionary War, the Peterses moved temporarily from Boston to Wilmington, Massachusetts, shortly after their marriage.

Merle A. Richmond points out that economic conditions in the colonies during and after the war were harsh, particularly for free blacks, who were unprepared to compete with whites in a stringent job market. These societal factors, rather than any refusal to work on Peters's part, were perhaps most responsible for the newfound poverty that Wheatley Peters suffered in Wilmington and Boston, after they later returned there. Between 1779 and 1783, the couple may have had children (as many as three, though evidence of children is disputed), and Peters drifted further into penury, often leaving Wheatley Peters to fend for herself by working as a charwoman while he dodged creditors and tried to find employment.

During the first six weeks after their return to Boston, Wheatley Peters stayed with one of her nieces in a bombed-out mansion that was converted to a day school after the war. Peters then moved them into an apartment in a rundown section of Boston, where other Wheatley relatives soon found Wheatley Peters sick and destitute. As Margaretta Matilda Odell recalls, "She was herself suffering for want of attention, for many comforts, and that greatest of all comforts in sickness-cleanliness. She was reduced to a condition too loathsome to describe. ... In a filthy apartment, in an obscure part of the metropolis ... . The woman who had stood honored and respected in the presence of the wise and good ... was numbering the last hours of life in a state of the most abject misery, surrounded by all the emblems of a squalid poverty!"

Yet throughout these lean years, Wheatley Peters continued to write and publish her poems and to maintain, though on a much more limited scale, her international correspondence. She also felt that despite the poor economy, her American audience and certainly her evangelical friends would support a second volume of poetry. Between October and December 1779, with at least the partial motive of raising funds for her family, she ran six advertisements soliciting subscribers for "300 pages in Octavo," a volume "Dedicated to the Right Hon. Benjamin Franklin, Esq.: One of the Ambassadors of the United States at the Court of France," that would include 33 poems and 13 letters. As with Poems on Various Subjects, however, the American populace would not support one of its most noted poets. (The first American edition of this book was not published until two years after her death.) During the year of her death (1784), she was able to publish, under the name Phillis Peters, a masterful 64-line poem in a pamphlet entitled Liberty and Peace, which hailed America as "Columbia" victorious over "Britannia Law." Proud of her nation's intense struggle for freedom that, to her, bespoke an eternal spiritual greatness, Wheatley Peters ended the poem with a triumphant ring:

Britannia owns her Independent Reign,
Hibernia, Scotia, and the Realms of Spain;
And Great Germania's ample Coast admires
The generous Spirit that Columbia fires.
Auspicious Heaven shall fill with fav'ring Gales,
Where e'er Columbia spreads her swelling Sails:
To every Realm shall Peace her Charms display,
And Heavenly Freedom spread her gold Ray.

On January 2 of that same year, she published An Elegy, Sacred to the Memory of that Great Divine, The Reverend and Learned Dr. Samuel Cooper, just a few days after the death of the Brattle Street church's pastor. And, sadly, in September the "Poetical Essays" section of The Boston Magazine carried "To Mr. and Mrs.________, on the Death of their Infant Son," which probably was a lamentation for the death of one of her own children and which certainly foreshadowed her death three months later."

Phillis Wheatley Peters died, uncared for and alone. As Richmond concludes, with ample evidence, when she died on December 5, 1784, John Peters was incarcerated, "forced to relieve himself of debt by an imprisonment in the county jail." Their last surviving child died in time to be buried with his mother, and, as Odell recalled, "A grandniece of Phillis' benefactress, passing up Court Street, met the funeral of an adult and a child: a bystander informed her that they were bearing Phillis Wheatley to that silent mansion."

Recent scholarship shows that Wheatley Peters wrote perhaps 145 poems (most of which would have been published if the encouragers she begged for had come forth to support the second volume), but this artistic heritage is now lost, probably abandoned during Peters's quest for subsistence after her death. Of the numerous letters she wrote to national and international political and religious leaders, some two dozen notes and letters are extant. As an exhibition of African intelligence, exploitable by members of the enlightenment movement, by evangelical Christians, and by other abolitionists, she was perhaps recognized even more in England and Europe than in America. Early 20th-century critics of Black American literature were not very kind to Wheatley Peters because of her supposed lack of concern about slavery. She, however, did have a statement to make about the institution of slavery, and she made it to the most influential segment of 18th-century society-the institutional church. Two of the greatest influences on Phillis Wheatley Peter's thought and poetry were the Bible and 18th-century evangelical Christianity; but until fairly recently her critics did not consider her use of biblical allusion nor its symbolic application as a statement against slavery. She often spoke in explicit biblical language designed to move church members to decisive action. For instance, these bold lines in her poetic eulogy to General David Wooster castigate patriots who confess Christianity yet oppress her people:

But how presumptuous shall we hope to find
Divine acceptance with the Almighty mind
While yet o deed ungenerous they disgrace
And hold in bondage Afric: blameless race
Let virtue reign and then accord our prayers
Be victory ours and generous freedom theirs.

And in an outspoken letter to the Reverend Samson Occom, written after Wheatley Peters was free and published repeatedly in Boston newspapers in 1774, she equates American slaveholding to that of pagan Egypt in ancient times: "Otherwise, perhaps, the Israelites had been less solicitous for their Freedom from Egyptian Slavery: I don't say they would have been contented without it, by no Means, for in every human Breast, God has implanted a Principle, which we call Love of freedom; it is impatient of Oppression, and pants for Deliverance; and by the Leave of our modern Egyptians I will assert that the same Principle lives in us."

In the past decade, Wheatley scholars have uncovered poems, letters, and more facts about her life and her association with 18th-century Black abolitionists. They have also charted her notable use of classicism and have explicated the sociological intent of her biblical allusions. All this research and interpretation has proven Wheatley Peter's disdain for the institution of slavery and her use of art to undermine its practice. Before the end of this century the full aesthetic, political, and religious implications of her art and even more salient facts about her life and works will surely be known and celebrated by all who study the 18th century and by all who revere this woman, a most important poet in the American literary canon. -Original by Sondra A. O'Neale, Emory University

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Although she was an enslaved person, Phillis Wheatley Peters was one of the best-known poets in pre-19th century America. Educated and enslaved in the household of prominent Boston commercialist John Wheatley, lionized in New England and England, with presses in both places publishing her poems,...

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Sojourner Truth

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MLA - Michals, Debra. "Sojourner Truth." National Women's History Museum. National Women's History Museum, 2015. Date accessed.

Chicago - Michals, Debra. "Sojourner Truth." National Women's History Museum. 2015. www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/sojourner-truth.

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A former slave, Sojourner Truth became an outspoken advocate for abolition, temperance, and civil and women's rights in the nineteenth century. Learn more at womenshistory.org.

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Madam C.J. Walker's entrepreneurship and hair-care products led her to become one of the first American women to be a self-made millionaire. Learn more about her life, career and inventions at Biography.com.

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Kids learn about the biography of Thurgood Marshall, the first African-American Supreme Court Justice who argued the landmark case of Brown v. Board of Education for the NAACP.

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born Greenbush (now Rensselaer), NY 1844-died London, England 1907

Also known as

Wildfire

Mary Edmonia Lewis

Born

Greenbush, New York, United States

Active in

Boston, Massachusetts, United States

Oberlin, Ohio, United States

Rome, Italy

Biography

Edmonia Lewis was the first sculptor of African American and Native American (Mississauga) descent to achieve international recognition. Her father was Black, and her mother was Chippewa (Ojibwa) Indian. Orphaned at an early age, Lewis grew up in her mother's tribe where her life revolved around fishing, swimming, and making and selling crafts. In 1859 she attended Oberlin College in Ohio, one of the first schools to accept female and Black students. She developed an interest in the fine arts, but an accusation of poisoning, probably racially motivated, forced Lewis to leave the school before graduating. She traveled to Boston and established herself as a professional artist, studying with a local sculptor and creating portraits of famous antislavery heroes. Moving to Rome in 1865, she became involved with a group of American women sculptors and began to work in marble. Sculptors usually hired local workmen to carve their final pieces, but Lewis did all her own stonework out of fear that if she didn't, her work would not be accepted as original. In addition to creating portrait heads, Lewis sculpted biblical scenes and figural works dealing with her Native American heritage and the oppression of Black people.

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Edmonia Lewis was the first sculptor of African American and Native American (Mississauga) descent to achieve international recognition. Her father was Black, and her mother was Chippewa (Ojibwa) Indian.

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Information about John H. Johnson

Profession

Category:

MediaMakers
BusinessMakers

Occupation(s):

Magazine Publishing Chief Executive
Corporate Chief Executive

Favorites

Favorite Color:

Blue, Red

Favorite Food:

Peas (Black-Eyed)

Favorite Time of Year:

January

Favorite Vacation Spot:

Chicago, Illinois

Favorite Quote:

Failure is a word I don't accept.

Birthplace

Born:

1/19/1918

Birth Location:

Arkansas City, Arkansas

About John H. Johnson

Profession

Category:

MediaMakers
BusinessMakers

Occupation(s):

Magazine Publishing Chief Executive
Corporate Chief Executive

Favorites

Favorite Color:

Blue, Red

Favorite Food:

Peas (Black-Eyed)

Favorite Time of Year:

January

Favorite Vacation Spot:

Chicago, Illinois

Favorite Quote:

Failure is a word I don't accept.

Birthplace

Born:

1/19/1918

Birth Location:

Arkansas City

See how John H. Johnson is related to other HistoryMakers

Biography

John H. Johnson, widely regarded as the most influential African American publisher in American history, was born on January 19, 1918, in Arkansas City, Arkansas, to Leroy and Gertrude Johnson Williams. Growing up in Arkansas City, no high schools existed for black students, so Johnson repeated the eighth grade to continue his education. After moving to Chicago with his family shortly thereafter, Johnson attended DuSable High School, where he graduated with honors.

After graduating from high school, Johnson went to work for the Supreme Life Insurance Company while attending the University of Chicago. While with Supreme, he was given the job of compiling weekly news clippings for his boss, which eventually gave him the idea for his first publication, Negro Digest. In 1942, after graduating from the University of Chicago, he acted on this idea, and with a $500 loan against his mother's furniture and $6,000 raised through charter subscriptions, Johnson launched Negro Digest, which later became Black World. Three years later, he launched Ebony, which has remained the number-one African American magazine in the world every year since its founding. In 1951, Johnson Publishing expanded again, with the creation of Jet, the world's largest African American news weekly magazine.

Johnson also expanded from magazine publishing into book publishing, and owned Fashion Fair Cosmetics, the largest black-owned cosmetics company in the world, Supreme Beauty Products, and produced television specials. Johnson also later became chairman and CEO of Supreme Life Insurance, where he had begun his career.

In addition to his business and publishing acumen, Johnson was highly involved at both community and the national level. In 1957, he accompanied then-Vice President Richard Nixon to nine African nations, and two years later, to Russia and Poland. President John F. Kennedy sent Johnson to the Ivory Coast in 1961 as Special Ambassador to the independence ceremonies taking place there, and President Johnson sent him to Kenya in 1963 for the same purpose. President Nixon later appointed him to the Commission for the Observance of the 25th Anniversary of the United Nations.

Johnson was also the recipient of numerous awards that spanned decades, from the Spingarn Medal to the Most Outstanding Black Publisher in History Award from the National Newspaper Publishers Association. Johnson Publishing has also been named the number one black business by Black Enterprise four times. In 1996, President Bill Clinton awarded Johnson with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor. He also received more than thirty honorary doctoral degrees from institutions across the country, and served as a board member or trustee of numerous businesses and philanthropic and cultural organizations.

Johnson's wife, Eunice, and daughter, Linda Johnson-Rice, continue to retain full control of Johnson Publishing as the only two shareholders in the company.

Johnson passed away on August 8, 2005 at the age of 87.

See how John H. Johnson is related to other HistoryMakers

Selected Video Oral History Segments

Click Here To Explore The Archive Today!

List of Stories in The HistoryMakers Digital Archive

Tape: 1 Story: 1 - Slating of John H. Johnson interview

Tape: 1 Story: 2 - John H. Johnson lists his favorites

Tape: 1 Story: 3 - John H. Johnson talks about his parents

Tape: 1 Story: 4 - John H. Johnson shares his few memories of Arkansas City

Tape: 1 Story: 5 - John H. Johnson recounts leaving Arkansas and arriving in Chicago

Tape: 1 Story: 6 - John H. Johnson recalls his shame at being on welfare

Tape: 1 Story: 7 - John H. Johnson discusses his high school activities

Tape: 1 Story: 8 - John H. Johnson remembers high school classmates Nat King Cole and Redd Foxx

Tape: 1 Story: 9 - John H. Johnson explains why Phillips students were transferred to DuSable High School

Tape: 1 Story: 10 - John H. Johnson recalls the people who influenced him as a teenager

Tape: 1 Story: 11 - John H. Johnson mentions topics covered on his high school newspaper

Tape: 2 Story: 1 - John H. Johnson details the background of black entrepreneur Harry H. Pace

Tape: 2 Story: 2 - John H. Johnson discusses the merger creating Supreme Liberty Life Insurance

Tape: 2 Story: 3 - John H. Johnson recalls his job as Earl Dickerson's driver on his aldermanic campaign

Tape: 2 Story: 4 - John H. Johnson relates lessons learned from Supreme Liberty Life executives

Tape: 2 Story: 5 - John H. Johnson compares Chicago politicians William Dawson and Earl Dickerson

Tape: 2 Story: 6 - John H. Johnson explains why Harry H. Pace started passing for white

Tape: 2 Story: 7 - John H. Johnson recounts how he started 'Negro Digest' magazine

Tape: 3 Story: 1 - John H. Johnson recalls Harry Pace's support for the idea of a 'Negro Digest'

Tape: 3 Story: 2 - John H. Johnson recalls quitting college to run Supreme Life's agent newspaper

Tape: 3 Story: 3 - John H. Johnson details how he got the money to start 'Negro Digest'

Tape: 3 Story: 4 - John H. Johnson considers the reasons for his success

Tape: 3 Story: 5 - John H. Johnson recalls his courtship and marriage to Eunice Walker

Tape: 3 Story: 6 - John H. Johnson explains how he got a wartime paper quota to publish 'Negro Digest'

Tape: 3 Story: 7 - John H. Johnson relates how he created a distribution system for 'Negro Digest'

Tape: 3 Story: 8 - John H. Johnson remembers Eleanor Roosevelt's guest column for "Negro Digest"

Tape: 4 Story: 1 - John H. Johnson describes his relationship with others in the black press

Tape: 4 Story: 2 - John H. Johnson recalls hiring whites to train blacks who would replace them

Tape: 4 Story: 3 - John H. Johnson recalls facing racial discrimination in buying business property

Tape: 4 Story: 4 - John H. Johnson remembers launching Ebony magazine in 1945

Tape: 4 Story: 5 - John H. Johnson relates how he first sold major advertising in 'Ebony'

Tape: 4 Story: 6 - John H. Johnson recounts his success in placing his cosmetics line in major stores

Tape: 5 Story: 1 - John H. Johnson recalls selling his cosmetics line to Neiman Marcus department stores

Tape: 5 Story: 2 - John H. Johnson recounts buying out his competitor, 'Our World'

Tape: 5 Story: 3 - John H. Johnson relates how he attracted and retained a talented staff

Tape: 5 Story: 4 - John H. Johnson remembers starting other magazines as times changed

Tape: 5 Story: 5 - John H. Johnson talks about writers Lerone Bennett and Bob Johnson

Tape: 5 Story: 6 - John H. Johnson discusses recruiting sales people from the Urban League

Tape: 5 Story: 7 - John H. Johnson recalls selling subscriptions through churches

Tape: 5 Story: 8 - John H. Johnson discusses his influence on the Harvard Business School advisory board

Tape: 5 Story: 9 - John H. Johnson recounts his work toward Ebony's advertising and circulation success

Tape: 5 Story: 10 - John H. Johnson remembers Jet's Emmett Till cover

Tape: 5 Story: 11 - John H. Johnson talks about changing 'Ebony''s image and firing Ben Burns

Tape: 6 Story: 1 - John H. Johnson recalls meetings with U.S. presidents Johnson and Nixon

Tape: 6 Story: 2 - John H. Johnson remembers meeting Kwame Nkrumah, first president of Ghana

Tape: 6 Story: 3 - John H. Johnson shares his pride in the Johnson Publishing Company building

Tape: 6 Story: 4 - John H. Johnson discusses his friendship with Earl Graves

Tape: 6 Story: 5 - John H. Johnson expresses his optimism for the future of the black community

Tape: 6 Story: 6 - John H. Johnson considers his legacy

Tape: 7 Story: 1 - John H. Johnson remembers photographer Moneta Sleet and Dr. King's funeral

Tape: 7 Story: 2 - John H. Johnson recalls Robert E. Johnson's work for 'Jet'

Tape: 7 Story: 3 - John H. Johnson discusses Lerone Bennett, Jr.'s books and articles for Johnson Publishing

Tape: 7 Story: 4 - John H. Johnson recounts society editor Gerri Major's contributions to the development of 'Jet'

Tape: 7 Story: 5 - John H. Johnson talks about the book 'Black Society' by Gerri Major and Doris Saunders

Tape: 7 Story: 6 - John H. Johnson describes Doris Saunders' role in developing Johnson Publishing Company's book division

Tape: 8 Story: 1 - John H. Johnson remembers writer Hans J. Massaquoi

Tape: 8 Story: 2 - John H. Johnson recalls Basil Phillips' contributions to JPC and explains the importance of multi-tasking

Tape: 8 Story: 3 - John H. Johnson describes Isaac Sutton's photographic expertise and personality

Tape: 8 Story: 4 - John H. Johnson discusses hiring Herb Temple, JPC art director

Tape: 8 Story: 5 - John H. Johnson recounts attracting sales people Bill Grayson and Leroy Jeffries from other organizations

Tape: 8 Story: 6 - John H. Johnson details how he rented space at the Rockefeller Center in New York

Tape: 8 Story: 7 - John H. Johnson recalls Bill Grayson's advertising expertise

Tape: 8 Story: 8 - John H. Johnson recounts how John F. Kennedy got him Ford advertising

Tape: 9 Story: 1 - John H. Johnson recalls forming an in-house legal department at Johnson Publishing

Tape: 9 Story: 2 - John H. Johnson recalls Simeon Booker, the Washington office, and JPC's political neutrality

Tape: 9 Story: 3 - John H. Johnson recounts opening his Los Angeles office

Tape: 9 Story: 4 - John H. Johnson recalls hiring Lydia Davis Eady as a new Howard graduate

Tape: 9 Story: 5 - John H. Johnson remembers a visit from Jackie Robinson

Tape: 9 Story: 6 - John H. Johnson recounts Joe Louis' personal struggles

Tape: 9 Story: 7 - John H. Johnson shares stories about Sammy Davis Jr.

Tape: 9 Story: 8 - John H. Johnson tells about Diahann Carroll's marriage to Jet's Robert DeLeon

Tape: 9 Story: 9 - John H. Johnson remembers Adam Clayton Powell, Jr.

Tape: 10 Story: 1 - John H. Johnson shares anecdotes about Adam Clayton Powell

Tape: 10 Story: 2 - John H. Johnson talks about his two children's adoptions and his son's death

Tape: 10 Story: 3 - John H. Johnson discusses the Ebony Fashion Show

Tape: 10 Story: 4 - John H. Johnson recalls his expansion into the international market

Tape: 10 Story: 5 - John H. Johnson discusses his magazines' political neutrality

Tape: 10 Story: 6 - John H. Johnson discusses using his broad-ranging business knowledge on corporate boards

Tape: 10 Story: 7 - John H. Johnson recounts his forays into cable television

Tape: 10 Story: 8 - John H. Johnson discusses his relationship to Mayor Richard J. Daley

Tape: 11 Story: 1 - John H. Johnson recalls his mentors Harry Pace and Earl Dickerson

Tape: 11 Story: 2 - John H. Johnson relates his mother's influence on his life

Tape: 11 Story: 3 - John H. Johnson describes the strength of his daughter and granddaughter

Tape: 11 Story: 4 - John H. Johnson discusses passing on Johnson Publishing Company to his daughter

Tape: 11 Story: 5 - John H. Johnson remembers working with Gordon Parks in 1948

Tape: 11 Story: 6 - John H. Johnson shares an anecdote about Muhammad Ali

Tape: 11 Story: 7 - John H. Johnson remembers Ray Charles

Tape: 11 Story: 8 - John H. Johnson shares his opinion of what makes a good publisher, businessman, and member of the black community

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John H. Johnson, widely regarded as the most influential African American publisher in American history, was born on January 19, 1918, in Arkansas City, Arkansas, to Leroy and Gertrude Johnson Williams. Growing up in Arkansas City, no high schools existed for black students, so Johnson repeated the eighth grade to continue his education.

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Dr. Just was born in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1883. After his father's death in 1887, Just's widowed mother supported the family by teaching. At age 17, Ernest Just left home to pursue better educational opportunities in the North.

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Before she helped send the first astronauts to the moon, won the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and became the subject of an award-winning film, Katherine Johnson-who passed away on February 24, 2020 at the age of 101-was an anonymous " female computer " doing thankless but vital work at NASA. Her accomplishments have since been recognized, leading her to be regarded as one of the pioneers of the space age.

Johnson 's gift for numbers allowed her to accelerate through her education. Born Katherine Coleman in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia on August 26, 1918, she enrolled directly into the second grade when she reached school age, and by age 10 she was ready for high school.

As an undergrad at West Virginia State College, she took every math class that was available to her. One of her mentors, famed black mathematician Dr. William W. Schiefflin Claytor, even designed a course on the geometry of space especially for her. At the age of 18, Johnson graduated summa cum laude with degrees in both mathematics and French.

Johnson had plans to continue her education even further. In 1939, the newly-married Johnson-then known as Katherine Goble-enrolled as a graduate student at West Virginia University after being selected as one of the first three black students-and the first black woman-to attend the state's newly-integrated graduate school program. After completing her first session, she discovered that she was pregnant and opted to withdraw from school in order to raise a family with her husband, James Goble. (They eventually had three daughters.)

In the mid-1950s, NASA (then known as the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, or NACA) was looking into sending people to space for the first time-a task that required crunching a lot of numbers. Without the high-powered computers we have at our disposal today, the agency hired a team of women " computers" to do the complex math for low wages. Johnson was interested, but the first time she applied for the job there were no positions left for her. She applied a second time the following year and made it in.

Kevin Winter, Getty Images

Astronaut John Glenn's three orbits around Earth in 1962 marked a pivotal moment in the Space Race between the U.S. and Russia. His may be the face most people remember, but behind the scenes, Johnson played an important part in getting him off the ground. The orbital equations used to choreograph his mission had been uploaded to a computer, but this being the early 1960s, electronic calculators still weren't a totally reliable method for handling sophisticated equations. Before climbing into the cockpit, Glenn requested that Johnson check the computer's work by redoing all the math by hand, saying, "If she says they're good, then I'm ready to go." The flight went off without a hitch.

The same year John Glenn made his historic journey, NASA received orders from President John F. Kennedy to get to work on a more ambitious mission: sending a manned shuttle to the moon. This trip would require even more calculations, and Johnson once again played a significant role. She worked with NASA's team of engineers to pinpoint the time and location of departure that would put astronauts on track for the moon. The Apollo moon landing program was a success, and arguably one of the most famous events in the history of space travel.

NASA deputy administrator Dava Newman wasn't exaggerating when she said that Johnson "literally wrote the textbook on rocket science" in a statement from NASA. She co-authored one of the first textbooks on space while while working in NASA's Flight Dynamics Branch at the Langley Research Center.

Later in her career at NASA, Johnson worked on some of the agency's early plans for a mission to Mars. She retired in 1986, decades before NASA would release a detailed plan for reaching the red planet to the public.

Few people knew her name when the first astronauts landed on the moon in 1969, but in 2015, Johnson received recognition on a national scale. President Barack Obama awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom for her pioneering work in the fields of STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics). The medal is the highest honor a civilian can receive.

More than 75 years after she dropped out of graduate school, Johnson received an honorary doctorate degree from West Virginia University. According to the institution, Johnson earned the honor by "attaining national and international preeminence in the field of astrophysics and providing distinguished leadership and service in her field."

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9 Fascinating Facts About Katherine Johnson

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Before she helped send the first astronauts to the moon, won the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and became the subject of an award-winning film, Katherine Johnson-who passed away on February 24, 2020 at the age of 101-was an anonymous " female computer " doing thankless but vital work at NASA.

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Born: Aug. 26, 1918
Died: Feb. 24, 2020
Hometown: White Sulphur Springs, WV
Education: B.S., Mathematics and French, West Virginia State College, 1937
Hired by NACA: June 1953
Retired from NASA: 1986
Actress Playing Role in Hidden Figures: Taraji P. Henson
Biography by Margot Lee Shetterly
Being handpicked to be one of three black students to integrate West Virginia's graduate schools is something that many people would consider one of their life's most notable moments, but it's just one of several breakthroughs that have marked Katherine Johnson's long and remarkable life. Born in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, in 1918, her intense curiosity and brilliance with numbers vaulted her ahead several grades in school. By 13, she was attending the high school on the campus of historically black West Virginia State College. At 18, she enrolled in the college itself, where she made quick work of the school's math curriculum and found a mentor in math professor W. W. Schieffelin Claytor, the third African American to earn a PhD in mathematics. She graduated with highest honors in 1937 and took a job teaching at a black public school in Virginia.

When West Virginia decided to quietly integrate its graduate schools in 1939, West Virginia State's president, Dr. John W. Davis, selected her and two men to be the first black students offered spots at the state's flagship school, West Virginia University. She left her teaching job and enrolled in the graduate math program. At the end of the first session, however, she decided to leave school to start a family with her first husband, James Goble. She returned to teaching when her three daughters got older, but it wasn't until 1952 that a relative told her about open positions at the all-black West Area Computing section at the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics' (NACA's) Langley laboratory, headed by fellow West Virginian Dorothy Vaughan. Katherine and her husband decided to move the family to Newport News, Virginia, to pursue the opportunity, and Katherine began work at Langley in the summer of 1953. Just two weeks into her tenure in the office, Dorothy Vaughan assigned her to a project in the Maneuver Loads Branch of the Flight Research Division, and Katherine's temporary position soon became permanent. She spent the next four years analyzing data from flight tests and worked on the investigation of a plane crash caused by wake turbulence. As she was wrapping up this work her husband died of cancer in December 1956.

The 1957 launch of the Soviet satellite Sputnik changed history-and Johnson's life. In 1957, she provided some of the math for the 1958 document Notes on Space Technology, a compendium of a series of 1958 lectures given by engineers in the Flight Research Division and the Pilotless Aircraft Research Division (PARD). Engineers from those groups formed the core of the Space Task Group, the NACA's first official foray into space travel. Johnson, who had worked with many of them since coming to Langley, "came along with the program" as the NACA became NASA later that year. She did trajectory analysis for Alan Shepard's May 1961 mission Freedom 7, America's first human spaceflight. In 1960, she and engineer Ted Skopinski coauthored Determination of Azimuth Angle at Burnout for Placing a Satellite Over a Selected Earth Position, a report laying out the equations describing an orbital spaceflight in which the landing position of the spacecraft is specified. It was the first time a woman in the Flight Research Division had received credit as an author of a research report.

In 1962, as NASA prepared for the orbital mission of John Glenn, Johnson was called upon to do the work that she would become most known for. The complexity of the orbital flight had required the construction of a worldwide communications network, linking tracking stations around the world to IBM computers in Washington, Cape Canaveral in Florida, and Bermuda. The computers had been programmed with the orbital equations that would control the trajectory of the capsule in Glenn's Friendship 7 mission from liftoff to splashdown, but the astronauts were wary of putting their lives in the care of the electronic calculating machines, which were prone to hiccups and blackouts. As a part of the preflight checklist, Glenn asked engineers to "get the girl"-Johnson-to run the same numbers through the same equations that had been programmed into the computer, but by hand, on her desktop mechanical calculating machine. "If she says they're good,'" Katherine Johnson remembers the astronaut saying, "then I'm ready to go." Glenn's flight was a success, and marked a turning point in the competition between the United States and the Soviet Union in space.

When asked to name her greatest contribution to space exploration, Johnson would talk about the calculations that helped synch Project Apollo's Lunar Module with the lunar-orbiting Command and Service Module. She also worked on the Space Shuttle and the Earth Resources Technology Satellite (ERTS, later renamed Landsat) and authored or coauthored 26 research reports. She retired in 1986, after 33 years at Langley. "I loved going to work every single day," she said. In 2015, at age 97, Johnson added another extraordinary achievement to her long list: President Barack Obama awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom, America's highest civilian honor.

She died on Feb. 24, 2020. NASA Administrator James Bridenstine said, "Our NASA family is sad to learn the news that Katherine Johnson passed away this morning at 101 years old. She was an American hero and her pioneering legacy will never be forgotten."

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Synopsis

Civil rights activist Medgar Evers was born on July 2, 1925, in Decatur, Mississippi. In 1954, he became the first state field secretary of the NAACP in Mississippi. As such, he organized voter-registration efforts, demonstrations, and economic boycotts of companies that practiced discrimination. He also worked to investigate crimes perpetrated against blacks. On June 12, 1963, Evers was assassinated outside of his home in Jackson, Mississippi.In 2017, President Barack Obama designated his home a national historic landmark.

Early Life

Renowned civil rights activist Medgar Evers was born on July 2, 1925, in Decatur, Mississippi. Growing up in a Mississippi farming family, Evers was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1943. He fought in both France and Germany during World War II, and received an honorable discharge in 1946. In 1948, he entered Alcorn College (now Alcorn State University) in Lorman, Mississippi. During his senior year, Evers married a fellow student, Myrlie Beasley. They later had three children: Darrell, Reena and James.

Upon graduation from college in 1952, Evers began working as an insurance salesman. He became involved in the Regional Council of Negro Leadership. His work with the RCNL was his first experience as a civil rights organizer. He spearheaded the group's boycott against gas stations that refused to let blacks use their restrooms. With his older brother, Charles, Evers also worked on behalf of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, organizing local affiliates.

Fighting Against Discrimination

Evers applied to the University of Mississippi Law School in February 1954. After being rejected, he volunteered to help NAACP try to integrate the university with a lawsuit. Thurgood Marshall served as his attorney for this legal challenge to racial discrimination. While he failed to gain admission to the law school, Evers managed to raise his profile with the NAACP. In May 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its decision in the famous Brown v. Board of Education case. This decision legally ended segregation of schools, but it took many years for it to be fully implemented.

Later in 1954, Evers became the first field secretary for the NAACP in Mississippi. He moved with his family to Jackson, Mississippi. As state field secretary, Evers traveled around Mississippi extensively. He recruited new members for the NAACP and organized voter-registration efforts. Evers also led demonstrations and economic boycotts of white-owned companies that practiced discrimination.

While a virtual unknown elsewhere, Evers was one of Mississippi's most prominent civil rights activists. He fought racial injustices in many forms, including how the state and local legal system handled crimes against African Americans. Evers called for a new investigation to the 1955 lynching of Emmett Till, a 14-year-old African-American boy who had allegedly been killed for talking to a white woman. He also protested the conviction of his fellow Mississippi civil rights activist Clyde Kennard on theft charges in 1960.

Tragic Death and Aftermath

Due to his high-profile position with the NAACP, Evers became a target for those who opposed racial equality and desegregation. He and his family were subjected to numerous threats and violent actions over the years, including a firebombing of their house in May 1963. At 12:40 a.m. on June 12, 1963, Evers was shot in the back in the driveway of his home in Jackson. He died less than a hour later at a nearby hospital.

Evers was buried with full military honors in Arlington National Cemetery, and the NAACP posthumously awarded him their 1963 Spingarn Medal. The national outrage over Evers's murder increased support for legislation that would become the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Immediately after Evers's death, the NAACP appointed his brother, Charles, to his position. Charles Evers went on to become a major political figure in the state; in 1969, he was elected the mayor of Fayette, Mississippi, becoming the first African-American mayor of a racially mixed Southern town since the Reconstruction.

A police and FBI investigation of the murder quickly unearthed a prime suspect: Byron De La Beckwith, a white segregationist and founding member of Mississippi's White Citizens Council. Despite mounting evidence against him-a rifle found near the crime scene was registered to Beckwith and had his fingerprints on the scope, and several witnesses placed him in the area-Beckwith denied shooting Evers. He maintained that the gun had been stolen, and produced several witnesses to testify that he was elsewhere on the night of the murder.

The bitter conflict over segregation surrounded the two trials that followed. Beckwith received the support of some of Mississippi's most prominent citizens, including then-Governor Ross Barnett, who appeared at Beckwith's first trial to shake hands with the defendant in full view of the jury. In 1964, Beckwith was set free after two all-white juries deadlocked.

After Beckwith's second trial, Myrlie Evers moved with her children to California, where she earned a degree from Pomona College and was later named to the Los Angeles Commission of Public Works. Convinced that her husband's killer had not been brought to justice, she continued to search for new evidence in the case.

In 1989, the question of Beckwith's guilt was again raised when a Jackson newspaper published accounts of the files of the now-defunct Mississippi Sovereignty Commission, an organization that existed during the 1950s to help raise popular support for the maintenance of segregation. The accounts showed that the commission had helped lawyers for Beckwith screen potential jurors during the first two trials. A review by the Hinds County District Attorney's office found no evidence of such jury tampering, but it did locate a number of new witnesses, including several individuals who would eventually testify that Beckwith had bragged to them about the murder.

In December 1990, Beckwith was again indicted for the murder of Medgar Evers. After a number of appeals, the Mississippi Supreme Court finally ruled in favor of a third trial in April 1993. Ten months later, testimony began before a racially mixed jury of eight blacks and four whites. In February 1994, nearly 31 years after Evers's death, Beckwith was convicted and sentenced to life in prison. He died in January 2001 at the age of 80.

In 1995, Myrlie Evers-Williams (she remarried) was elected chairwoman of the board of directors of the NAACP. She is currently a member of the board's executive committee.

Since his untimely passing, Medgar Evers's contributions to the civil rights movement have been honored in many ways. His wife created what is now known as the Medgar and Myrlie Evers Institute in Jackson, Mississippi, to continue the couple's commitment to social change. The City University of New York has named one of its campuses after the slain activist. In 2009, the U.S. Navy also bestowed his name on one of their vessels.

In 2017, President Barack Obama designated his home a national historic landmark. "The National Historic Landmark designation is an important step toward recognizing and preserving significant civil rights sites in Mississippi and around the country," Mississippi Senator Thad Cochran said in a statement. "The sacrifices made by Medgar and Myrlie Evers deserve this distinction."

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Civil rights activist Medgar Evers was born on July 2, 1925, in Decatur, Mississippi. In 1954, he became the first state field secretary of the NAACP in Mississippi. As such, he organized voter-registration efforts, demonstrations, and economic boycotts of companies that practiced discrimination. He also worked to investigate crimes perpetrated against blacks.

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Fannie Lou Hamer was an African-American civil rights activist who led voting drives and co-founded the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party.

Who Was Fannie Lou Hamer?

Born into a Mississippi sharecropping family in 1917, Fannie Lou Hamer spent much of her early life in the cotton fields. She became involved with the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee in 1962, through which she led voting drives and relief efforts. In 1964, she co-founded and ran for Congress as a member of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, drawing national attention to their cause at that year's Democratic Convention. Hamer continued her activism through declining health, until her death in 1977.

Sharecropping Roots

A leader of the Civil Rights Movement, Fannie Lou Hamer was born Fannie Lou Townsend on October 6, 1917, in Montgomery County, Mississippi, the youngest of 20 children. Her parents were sharecroppers in the Mississippi Delta area, and Hamer began working in the fields when she was only 6 years old.

Around the age of 12, Hamer dropped out of school in order to work full time and help out her family. She continued to work as a sharecropper after her 1944 marriage to Perry "Pap" Hamer. The couple toiled on a cotton plantation near Ruleville, Mississippi, eventually adopting children. Hamer was unable to have children of her own; while undergoing surgery to remove a tumor, she was given a hysterectomy without her consent.

Registering to Vote

In the summer of 1962, Hamer made a life-changing decision to attend a local meeting held by the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), who encouraged African Americans to register to vote. On August 31, 1962, she traveled with 17 others to the county courthouse in Indianola to accomplish this goal. They encountered opposition from local and state law enforcement along the way; only Hamer and one other person were allowed to fill out an application.

Such bravery came at a high price for Hamer. She was fired from her job and driven from the plantation she had called home for nearly two decades-just for registering to vote. But these actions only solidified Hamer's resolve to help other African Americans get the right to vote. According to The New York Times, she said "They kicked me off the plantation, they set me free. It's the best thing that could happen. Now I can work for my people."

Joining the Civil Rights Movement

Hamer became a community organizer for the SNCC in 1962 and dedicated her life to the fight for civil rights. She spearheaded voter registration drives and relief efforts, but her involvement in the Civil Rights Movement often left her in harm's way; during the course of her activist career, Hamer was threatened, arrested, beaten and shot at. In 1963, after she and other activists were arrested, she was beaten so badly in a Winona, Mississippi, jail that she suffered permanent kidney damage.

Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party

In 1964, Hamer helped found the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP), established in opposition to her state's all-white delegation to that year's Democratic Convention, and announced her bid for Congress. Although she lost the Democratic primary, she brought the civil rights struggle in Mississippi to the attention of the entire nation during a televised session at the convention.

Along with her focus on voter registration, Hamer set up organizations to increase business opportunities for minorities and to provide childcare and other family services. She helped establish the National Women's Political Caucus in 1971.

Death and Legacy

Diagnosed with breast cancer in 1976, Fannie Hamer continued to fight for civil rights. She died on March 14, 1977, in a hospital in Mound Bayou, Mississippi.

Hundreds crowded into a Ruleville church to say goodbye to this tireless champion for racial equality. Andrew Young Jr., then a U.S. delegate to the United Nations, delivered a eulogy in which he declared that the progress of the Civil Rights Movement had been made through "the sweat and blood" of activists like Hamer. "None of us would be where we are today had she not been here then," he said, according to The New York Times.

The activist is buried in the peaceful Fannie Lou Hamer Memorial Garden in Ruleville, beneath a tombstone engraved with one of her most famous quotes: "I am sick and tired of being sick and tired."

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Fannie Lou Hamer was an African-American civil rights activist who led voting drives and co-founded the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. Born into a Mississippi sharecropping family in 1917, Fannie Lou Hamer spent much of her early life in the cotton fields.

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W.E.B. Du Bois' Childhood

Born in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, on February 23, 1868, Du Bois' birth certificate has his name as "William E. Duboise." Two years after his birth his father, Alfred Du Bois, left his mother, Mary Silvina Burghardt.

Du Bois became the first person in his extended family to attend high school, and did so at his mother's insistence. In 1883, Du Bois began to write articles for papers like the New York Globe and the Freeman.

Education of W.E.B. Dubois

Du Bois initially attended Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee, a school for Black students. His tuition was paid by several churches in Great Barrington. Du Bois became an editor for the Herald, the student magazine.

After graduation, Du Bois attended Harvard University, starting in 1888 and eventually receiving advanced degrees in history. In 1892, Du Bois worked towards a Ph.D. at the University of Berlin until his funding ran out.

He returned to the United States without his doctorate but later received one from Harvard while teaching classics at Wilberforce University in Ohio. There, he married Nina Gomer, one of his students, in 1896.

His doctoral thesis, "The Suppression of the African Slave Trade to the United States of America, 1638-1870," became his first book and a standard in American education covering slavery.

The Philadelphia Negro

Du Bois took a position at the University of Pennsylvania in 1896 conducting a study of the city's Seventh Ward, published in 1899 as The Philadelphia Negro. The work took up so much of his time that he missed the birth of his first son in Great Barrington.

The study is considered one of the earliest examples of statistical work being used for sociological purposes, with extensive fieldwork resulting in hundreds of interviews conducted door-to-door by Du Bois.

Mapping out the Seventh Ward and carefully documenting familial and work structures, Du Bois concluded that the Black community's greatest challenges were poverty, crime, lack of education and distrust of those outside the community.

W.E.B. Du Bois' Sociological Studies

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics offered Du Bois a job in 1897, leading to several groundbreaking studies on Black Southern households in Farmville, Virginia, that uncovered how slavery still affected the personal lives of African Americans. Du Bois would do four more studies for the bureau, two in Alabama and two in Georgia.

These studies were considered radical at the time when sociology existed in pure theoretical forms. Du Bois was pivotal in making investigation and data analysis crucial to sociological study.

During the same period, Du Bois wrote "The Strivings of the Negro People" for the Atlantic Monthly, a groundbreaking essay that explained to white readers how it feels to be a victim of racism. It is considered the general public's introduction to Du Bois.

'The Souls of Black Folk'

Du Bois and family moved to Atlanta University, where he taught sociology and worked on his additional Bureau of Labor Statistics studies.

Among the books written during this period was The Souls of Black Folk, a collection of sociological essays examining the Black experience in America. Partially derived from his Atlantic article, it embraced Du Bois' personal history in his arguments.

The book also introduced the idea of "double consciousness," in which African Americans are required to consider not only their view of themselves but also the view that the world, particularly whites, has on them during all parts of life. It also expressly differentiated Du Bois from more conservative Black voices like Booker T. Washington.

In 1899, Du Bois' son Burghardt contracted diphtheria and died after Du Bois spent the night looking for one of three Black doctors in Atlanta, since no white doctor would treat the child. A resulting essay, "The Passing of the First Born," appeared in The Souls of Black Folk.

The Niagara Movement And Booker T. Washington

In 1903, Du Bois taught summer school at Booker T. Washington's Tuskegee University, but friction between the two men led to Du Bois joining Washington's rivals in the Niagara Movement, charged with seeking justice and equality for African Americans.

That group failed, partly due to opposition from Washington, but during its existence Du Bois published The Moon Illustrated Weekly, the first weekly magazine for African Americans, producing a total of 34 issues before folding in 1906. He followed this up briefly with the journal Horizon.
READ MORE: The Niagara Movement
NAACP

In 1910, Du Bois accepted the directorship of the recently-formed NAACP. He moved to New York City and served as the editor of the organization's monthly magazine The Crisis.

The magazine was a huge success and became very influential, covering race relations and black culture with Du Bois' forthright style. The magazine stood out for its continual endorsement and coverage of women's suffrage. Du Bois worked for the NAACP for 24 years, during which time he published his first novel, The Quest of the Silver Fleece.

After a brief second stint at Atlanta University, Du Bois returned to the NAACP as director of special research in 1944 and represented the organization at the first meeting of the United Nations.

Du Bois also became more interested in communism and international issues, and became an open supporter of progressive and left-wing groups, which created problems with NAACP leadership. He left the organization again in 1948.

W.E.B. Du Bois and Communism

Du Bois' radicalism continued in the public sphere, running as the Progressive Party's candidate for Senate in 1950 and losing. He and other members of the Peace Information Center were charged as agents of a foreign principal, inspired by the organization's Soviet leanings, but were acquitted in a trial in 1951.

Following the death of his wife in 1950, Du Bois married Shirley Graham the following year. Graham's interest led Du Bois further into exploring communism, delving into the American Communist community and becoming known for his apologetic view of Joseph Stalin.

In 1961 Du Bois officially joined the American Communist Party before leaving the country to live in Ghana at the invitation of its president and becoming a citizen there.

Encyclopedia Africana

Du Bois first conceived of the Encyclopedia Africana in 1908 as a compendium of history and achievement of people of African descent designed to bring a sense of unity to the African diaspora. Unable to raise the needed funds, Du Bois wasn't able to revisit the project until 1935, but it was disrupted by professional battles.

Du Bois published some entries from the proposed encyclopedia and even editions of research material, but it wasn't until 1962 that a further promise was made to complete the encyclopedia.

After Du Bois was invited to move to Ghana, he pledged to finally publish the work, but it was never realized before his death. Du Bois died on August 27, 1963 in Ghana and was given a state funeral.
READ MORE: Black History Milestones: A Timeline
Sources

W. E. B. Du Bois Research Institute. Harvard University.

DuBoisopedia. University of Massachusetts.

Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience. Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Kwame Anthony Appiah, eds.

W.E.B. Du Bois: Biography of a Race 1868 - 1919. David Levering Lewis.

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W. E. B. Du Bois - Beliefs, Niagara Movement & NAACP | HISTORY

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W.E.B. Du Bois (1868-1963) was a civil rights activist who led the Niagara Movement and later helped form the NAACP.

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Quick Facts
"One ever feels his 'twoness' - 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.""The problem of the 20th century is the problem of the color line.""If there is anybody in this land who thoroughly believes that the meek shall inherit the earth, they have not often let their presence be known.""There is but one coward on earth, and that is the coward that dare not know.""The cost of liberty is less than the price of repression.""To be a poor man is hard, but to be a poor race in a land of dollars is the very bottom of hardships.""To the real question, 'How does it feel to be a problem?' I answer seldom a word.""Honest and earnest criticism from those whose interests are most nearly touched-criticism of writers by readers, of government by those governed, of leaders by those led-this is the soul of democracy and the safeguard of modern society.""The American Negro Academy believes that upon those of the race who have had the advantage of higher education and culture, rests the responsibility of taking concerted steps for the employment of these agencies to uplift the race to higher planes of thought and action. Two great obstacles to this consummation are apparent: (a) The lack of unity, want of harmony, absence of a self-sacrificing spirit, and no well-defined line of policy seeking definite aims; and (b) The persistent, relentless, at times covert opposition employed to thwart the Negro at every step of his upward struggles to establish the justness of his claim to the highest physical, intellectual and moral possibilities.""The world still wants to ask that a woman primarily be pretty and if she is not, the mob pouts and asks querulously, 'What else are women for?'""Ignorance is a cure for nothing.""The history of the American Negro is the history of this strife - this longing to attain self-conscious manhood, to merge his double self into a better and truer self. In this merging, he wishes neither of the older selves to be lost. ...He simply wishes to make it possible for a man to be both a Negro and an American.""Either America will destroy ignorance, or ignorance will destroy the United States."

Name

W.E.B. Du Bois

Birth Date

February 23, 1868

Death Date

August 27, 1963

Did You Know?

W.E.B. Du Bois was the first African American to receive a Ph.D. from Harvard University (1895).

Did You Know?

The first case study of an African American community was conducted by W.E.B. Du Bois, published as The Philadelphia Negro: A Social Study (1899).

Did You Know?

W.E.B. Du Bois co-founded the NAACP in 1909.

Did You Know?

W.E.B. Du Bois died one day before Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech at the March on Washington (August 28, 1963).

Education

University of Berlin, Harvard University, Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität (now Humboldt-Universität), Fisk University

Place of Birth

Great Barrington, Massachusetts

Place of Death

Accra, Ghana

W.E.B. Du Bois was an influential African American rights activist during the early 20th century. He co-founded the NAACP and wrote 'The Souls of Black Folk.'

Who Was W.E.B. Du Bois?

Scholar and activist W.E.B. Du Bois became the first African American to earn a Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1895. He wrote extensively and was the best-known spokesperson for African American rights during the first half of the 20th century. Du Bois co-founded the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People ( NAACP) in 1909.

Early Life and Education

William Edward Burghardt Du Bois, better known as W.E.B. Du Bois, was born on February 23, 1868, in Great Barrington, Massachusetts.

While growing up in a mostly white American town, Du Bois identified himself as mulatto, but freely attended school with whites and was enthusiastically supported in his academic studies by his white teachers.

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In 1885, he moved to Nashville, Tennessee, to attend Fisk University. It was there that he first encountered Jim Crow laws. For the first time, he began analyzing the deep troubles of American racism.

After earning his bachelor's degree at Fisk, Du Bois entered Harvard University. He paid his way with money from summer jobs, scholarships and loans from friends. After completing his master's degree, he was selected for a study-abroad program at the University of Berlin.

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While a pupil in Germany, he studied with some of the most prominent social scientists of his day and was exposed to political perspectives that he touted for the remainder of his life.

Harvard Ph.D.

Du Bois became the first African American to earn a Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1895.

He went on to enroll as a doctoral student at Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität (now Humboldt-Universität). He would be awarded an honorary doctoral degree from Humboldt decades later, in 1958.

Writing and Activism

Du Bois published his landmark study - the first case study of an African American community - The Philadelphia Negro: A Social Study (1899), marking the beginning of his expansive writing career.

In the study, he coined the phrase "the talented tenth," a term that described the likelihood of one in 10 black men becoming leaders of their race.

W.E.B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington

While working as a professor at Atlanta University, Du Bois rose to national prominence when he very publicly opposed Booker T. Washington's "Atlanta Compromise," an agreement that asserted that vocational education for blacks was more valuable to them than social advantages like higher education or political office.

Du Bois criticized Washington for not demanding full equality for African Americans, as granted by the 14th Amendment. Du Bois fought what he believed was an inferior strategy, subsequently becoming a spokesperson for full and equal rights in every realm of a person's life.

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'The Souls of Black Folks'

In 1903, Du Bois published a seminal work, The Souls of Black Folk, a collection of 14 essays. In the years following, he adamantly opposed the idea of biological white superiority and vocally supported women's rights.

In 1909, Du Bois co-founded the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and served as editor of its monthly magazine, The Crisis.

Pan-Africanism

A proponent of Pan-Africanism, Du Bois helped organize several Pan-African Congresses to free African colonies from European powers.

Death

Du Bois died on August 27, 1963 - one day before Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech at the March on Washington - at the age of 95, in Accra, Ghana, while working on an encyclopedia of the African Diaspora.

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"One ever feels his 'twoness' - 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." "The problem of the 20th century is the problem of the color line."

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Pioneering African-American politician Shirley Chisholm (1924-2005) began her professional career as a teacher. She served as director of the Hamilton-Madison Child Care Center until the late 1950s, then as an educational consultant for New York City's Bureau of Child Welfare. In 1968, Chisolm became the first African-American to earn election to Congress, where she worked on the Education and Labor Committee and helped form the Black Caucus. In 1972, she made history again by becoming the first black woman of a major party to run for a presidential nomination. After serving seven terms in the House, Chisholm retired from office to become a teacher and public speaker.

Born Shirley St. Hill on November 30, 1924 in New York City. Chisholm spent part of her childhood in Barbados with her grandmother and graduated from Brooklyn College in 1946. She began her career as a teacher and earned a Master's degree in elementary education from Columbia University. She served as director of the Hamilton-Madison Child Care Center from 1953 to 1959 as an educational consultant to New York City's Bureau of Child Welfare from 1959 to 1964.

In 1969, Chisholm became the first black congresswoman and began the first of seven terms. After initially being assigned to the House Forestry Committee, she shocked many by demanding reassignment. She was placed on the Veterans' Affairs Committee, eventually graduating to the Education and Labor Committee. She became one of the founding members of the Congressional Black Caucus in 1969.

Chisholm became the first African American woman to make a bid to be President of the United States when she ran for the Democratic nomination in 1972. A champion of minority education and employment opportunities throughout her tenure in Congress, Chisholm was also a vocal opponent of the draft. After leaving Congress in 1983, she taught at Mount Holyoke College and was popular on the lecture circuit.

Chisholm was married to Conrad Chisholm from 1949 to 1977. She wed Arthur Hardwick, Jr. in 1986. She is the author of two books, Unbought and Unbossed (1970) and The Good Fight (1973).

Biography courtesy of BIO.com

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Pioneering African-American politician Shirley Chisholm (1924-2005) began her professional career as a teacher. She served as director of the Hamilton-Madison Child Care Center until the late 1950s, then as an educational consultant for New York City's Bureau of Child Welfare.

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MLA - Michals, Debra. "Shirley Chisholm." National Women's History Museum. National Women's History Museum, 2015. Date accessed.

Chicago - Michals, Debra. "Shirley Chisholm." National Women's History Museum. 2015. www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/shirley-chisholm.

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Shirley Anita St. Hill Chisholm was the first African American woman in Congress (1968) and the first woman and African American to seek the nomination for president of the United States from one of the two major political parties (1972).

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Mary Mcleod Bethune Biography - life, family, children, parents, story, death, history, school, son, old, information, born

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Mary McLeod was born in Mayesville, South Carolina. Her parents, Samuel and Patsy McLeod, were former slaves, as were most of her brothers and sisters. (Mary was the fifteenth of seventeen children.) After her parents were freed, they saved up and bought a small farm of their own.

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MLA - Michals, Debra. "Mary McLeod Bethune." National Women's History Museum. National Women's History Museum, 2015. Date accessed.

Chicago - Michals, Debra. " Mary McLeod Bethune." National Women's History Museum. 2015. www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/mary-mcleod-bethune.

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Pioneering educator and college founder Mary McLeod Bethune set educational standards for today's Black colleges and served as an advisor to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Discover more about her on womenshistory.org.

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Maya Angelou - Poet - Maya Angelou was an author, poet, historian, songwriter, playwright, dancer, stage and screen producer, director, performer, singer, and civil rights activist.

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Kids learn about the biography and life of author Maya Angelou including her childhood, early career, work as a civil rights activist, becoming a writer, famous works, poetry, and interesting facts.

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Hank Aaron Biography - life, family, children, name, story, death, history, school, old, information, born, contract

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Henry Louis Aaron was born in Mobile, Alabama, on February 5, 1934, the third of Herbert and Estella Aaron's eight children. His father was a shipyard worker and tavern owner. Aaron took an early interest in sports.

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Boxing legend Muhammad Ali once called Hank Aaron "The only man I idolize more than myself. "

For many, Aaron was everything an athlete - and a human being - should be.

Aaron grew up in humble surroundings in Mobile, Ala. He passed through the sandlots with brief stops in the Negro Leagues and the minor leagues before he settled in with the Braves, where he ultimately became one of baseball's most iconic figures.

He was a consistent producer both at the plate and in the field, reaching the .300 mark in batting 14 times, 30 home runs 15 times, 90 RBI 16 times and captured three Gold Glove Awards en-route to 25 All-Star Game selections.

Nineteen fifty-seven was arguably Aaron's best season. He hit .322 that year with 44 home runs and 132 RBI, captured the National League MVP Award and led the Braves to their first World Series Championship since 1914.

Despite his consistent production, it wasn't until 1973 that Aaron was thrust into the national spotlight as he neared the finish of a successful assault on one of sport's most cherished records: Babe Ruth's mark of 714 home runs. It was on April 8, 1974, that Hammerin' Hank sent a 1-0 pitch from Dodgers hurler Al Downing into the left field bullpen at Atlanta-Fulton Count Stadium, giving Aaron 715 career home runs. He would finish his career with 755.

Aaron remains baseball's all-time leader in RBI (2,297) and total bases (6,856). If each of his 755 home runs were removed from his statistical record, Aaron would still have 3,016 hits.

It was shortly after Hank Aaron's record-breaking home run that Georgia congressman Andrew Young declared: "Through his long career, Hank Aaron has been a model of humility, dignity, and quiet competence. He did not seek the adoration that is accorded to other national athletic heroes, yet he has now earned it."

Aaron was elected to the Hall of Fame in 1982. He passed away on Jan. 22, 2021.

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Boxing legend Muhammad Ali once called Hank Aaron "The only man I idolize more than myself. " For many, Aaron was everything an athlete - and a human being - should be. Aaron grew up in humble surroundings in Mobile, Ala.

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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.