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W.E.B. Du Bois, 1868-1963

Born: February 23, 1868
Died: August 27, 1963

William Edward Burghardt Du Bois was a noted scholar, editor, and African American activist. Du Bois was a founding member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP -- the largest and oldest civil rights organization in America). Throughout his life Du Bois fought discrimination and racism. He made significant contributions to debates about race, politics, and history in the United States in the first half of the 20th century, primarily through his writing and impassioned speaking on race relations. Du Bois also served as editor of The Crisis magazine and published several scholarly works on race and African American history. By the time he died, in 1963, he had written 17 books, edited four journals and played a key role in reshaping black-white relations in America.

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W.E.B. Du Bois, 1868-1963 Born: February 23, 1868 Died: August 27, 1963 William Edward Burghardt Du Bois was a noted scholar, editor, and African American activist. Du Bois was a founding member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP -- the largest and oldest civil rights organization in America).

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Works in English

I Am Prepared to Die. - London : Christian Action Publications Ltd, for the International Defence and Aid Fund, [1970]

How Far We Slaves Have Come!: South Africa and Cuba in Today's World / Nelson Mandela, Fidel Castro. - New York : Pathfinder Press, 1991

Nelson Mandela Speaks : Forging a Democratic, Nonracial South Africa / edited by Steve Clark. - New York : Pathfinder Press, 1993

A Better Life for All : Working Together for Jobs, Peace, and Freedom. - Johannesburg : ANC Department of Information and Publicity, 1994

Address by President Nelson Mandela to the 49th ANC National Conference, 17 December 1994, Bloemfontein. - Johannesburg : Dept. of Information & Publicity, [1995?]

South and Southern Africa into the Next Century. - Singapore : Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 1997

The Essential Nelson Mandela / compiled by Robin Malan, D. Philip Publishers. - Cape Town : D. Philip Publishers, 1997

In the Words of Nelson Mandela / edited by Jennifer Crwys-Williams. - Secaucus, N.J. : Carol Publishing, 1998

Nelson Mandela : Words of Wisdom / selected by Margaret Gee. - Sydney, Australia : Pan Macmillan, 2000

In His Own Words / edited by Kader Asmal, David Chidester, and Wilmot James. - New York : Little, Brown, 2003

Nelson Mandela : From Freedom to the Future : Tributes and Speeches / edited by Kader Asmal, David Chidester, and Wilmot James. - Johannesburg : Jonathan Ball, 2003

Conversations with Myself. - New York : Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2010

In the Words of Nelson Mandela : a Little Pocketbook / compiled and edited by Jennifer Crwys-Williams. - Johannesburg. : Penguin Books, 2010

The Swedish Academy, 2011

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Fifteen laureates were awarded in 2019, for achievements that have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind.

Their work and discoveries range from how cells adapt to changes in levels of oxygen to our ability to fight global poverty.

See them all presented here.

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Works in English I Am Prepared to Die. - London : Christian Action Publications Ltd, for the International Defence and Aid Fund, [1970] How Far We Slaves Have Come!: South Africa and Cuba in Today's World / Nelson Mandela, Fidel Castro.

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Died: July 21, 1967 in Groutville, South Africa

Other Names: Luthuli, A.J.; Lutuli, Albert John; Luthuli, Albert John Mvumbi; Luthuli, Albert

Full Text: COPYRIGHT UXL, a part of Gale, Cengage Learning

"What we have aimed to do in South Africa is to bring the white man to his senses, not slaughter him."

Albert John Luthuli (surname sometimes spelled Lutuli; pronounced loo-TOO-lee), a humble Zulu chief who played a key role in toppling white minority rule in South Africa, was the first African to win a Nobel Peace Prize. He provided a historic bridge between a cautious generation of African National Congress (ANC) leaders and the more militant post-World War II (1939-45) South Africans led by Nelson Mandela (1918-). The ANC, founded in 1912 to promote African rights, is the oldest black-dominated political organization in South Africa.

South Africa's white minority government banned and jailed Luthuli during his 15 years as ANC president and may have even killed him. Still, he never advocated the use of violence to fight apartheid, a ruthless system of racial segregation imposed by the whites and opposed by the ANC. Toward the end of his life, though, perhaps out of frustration with increasingly vicious white violence against the black majority, Luthuli turned a blind eye to a guerrilla (independent fighting unit) war launched inside South Africa by Mandela and other young ANC leaders.

Luthuli always recognized that black South Africans would have to pay the price for freedom in their country. In his 1961 Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech, he expressed "heartfelt appreciation" for the Nobel committee's support but added: "We South Africans, however, equally understand that much as others might do for us, our freedom cannot come to us as a gift from abroad. Our freedom we must make ourselves. All honest freedom-loving people have dedicated themselves to that task. What we need is the courage that rises with danger."

In 1957 Luthuli told the ANC newspaper New Age that the road to freedom was "sanctified with the blood of martyrs-in other words, no cross, no crown." A devout Christian and advocate of passive resistance (nonviolent opposition to injustice), Luthuli sought equal rights-including voting rights-for all South Africans and the return of land that whites had confiscated from blacks. "What we have aimed to do in South Africa is to bring the white man to his senses, not slaughter him," he said in 1952.

According to his own calculations, Luthuli was born around 1898 at Solusi Mission, Rhodesia (in today's southwestern Zimbabwe). His mother, Mtonya Gumede, had spent her early childhood in the royal kraal ("enclosure") of King Cetshwayo (1827-1884). Cetshwayo was the last of the great, independent Zulu kings who reigned over Zululand in today's eastern South Africa, north of the city of Durban. When Luthuli's mother was young, her mother took Mtonya away from Cetshwayo's court to live in Groutville, a mission established in the mid-nineteenth century by the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions near today's town of Stanger north of Durban. Groutville was named for American missionary Aldin Grout. Luthuli's grandfather, Ntaba, was the second chief of Groutville. Luthuli's grandfather and his wife, Titisi, also became the first Christians in the Luthuli family lineage.

At Groutville, Luthuli's mother had converted to Christianity by the time she met his father, John Bunyan Luthuli. He went to Rhodesia to assist the British in putting down the 1896 Matabele rebellion. (The Matabele were Zulus who migrated from Zululand in South Africa to southwestern Zimbabwe in the first half of the nineteenth century.) Afterward, the elder Luthuli stayed on at Solusi Mission. Mtonya then left Groutville to join her husband in Rhodesia. There, their third son, Albert John, was born. Their first son had died before Mtonya left Groutville for Rhodesia.

Luthuli's father died shortly after Albert John's birth. When Luthuli was about 10 years old, his mother moved with her two sons back to South Africa. They lived at a Seventh-Day Adventist mission near Vryheid in today's northern Natal. Luthuli was assigned to tend the mission mules. His mother was concerned that no school existed at the mission, so she sent Luthuli to Groutville to be educated and live in the house of his uncle, Chief Martin Luthuli. As a member of his uncle's household, young Luthuli observed the politics and demands of a chief-lessons that would prove useful 30 years later when he was elected Groutville's chief.

In 1914, after studying at Groutville's Congregationalist mission school, Luthuli went to a Methodist teacher training institution at Edendale, near Pietermaritzburg in eastern South Africa. Three years later he was qualified to take his first job as an elementary school teacher. Luthuli then attended Adams College on scholarship for two years to study for a higher teacher's degree. He taught at Adams for 15 years before being called home to Groutville as chief of an area populated by about 5,000 Zulus.

Luthuli met his wife, a teacher named Nokukhanya Bhengu, at Adams College. As the granddaughter of Zulu chief Khlokolo Bhengu, Luthuli's wife was of royal heritage, while he was considered a commoner. They were married in 1927. They had two sons and five daughters.

Exposure to educated Africans and Europeans at the institutions away from Groutville opened Luthuli's mind to massive technological and economic changes taking place in the world at the beginning of the twentieth century. In his autobiography, published in 1962, Luthuli wrote of his early schooling: "We were thoroughly aware of the meeting of cultures, African and European, and of the disorganization of both-especially the African-as a result. We did not have the desire of the Nationalists [the white-only National party that imposed apartheid from 1948 to 1994] that we should return to the primitive. But we did have an intense wish to preserve what is valuable in our heritage while discarding the inappropriate and outmoded. Our people were ill-equipped to withstand the impact of the twentieth-century industrial society. Our task seemed to consist of relating the past coherently to the present and the future."

Christian missionary tours to India in 1938 and to the United States in 1948 further broadened Luthuli's insights into how different people of the world interacted, prospering together materially and intellectually. This stirred up his anger at those whites in his home country who tried to isolate people by tribes and educate blacks only as laborers and sweepers, reinforcing a master-servant relationship.

Luthuli emphasized the monumental mistake that whites had made in their campaign to bring Christianity, commerce, and civilization to the African continent. "Western civilization is only partly Western," wrote Luthuli. "It embraces the contribution of many lands and many races. It is the outcome of interaction, not apartheid. It is an inheritance, something received to be handed on, not a white preserve." As the industrial era flourished in the West, Africans were eager to incorporate into their culture those aspects of Western life that they found useful. But as Africans rose to take their places beside whites in this emerging African-Western culture, the whites denied blacks the right to grow and learn with the changing times. This provoked the wrath of black Africans, which led to rebellion, then independence. In far too many cases, poorly prepared leadership of new African countries resulted in disaster for both Africans and whites.

Luthuli had joined the ANC in 1944. As Groutville chief, Luthuli became increasingly active in the ANC at a time when South Africa's whites were imposing tighter restrictions on blacks. In 1952, after the end of the Defiance Campaign-a long series of ANC-sponsored strikes throughout the nation-the ANC found itself locked in a leadership crisis between "go slow" conservative (traditional) leaders and revolutionaries (advocates of change) crying for violence. Backed by Mandela and the Johannesburg province, Luthuli was elected ANC president in 1952 as a compromise candidate. He favored firm but passive resistance to apartheid laws. As University of Witwatersrand political historian Tom Lodge put it in Black Politics in South Africa since 1945, Luthuli "was immediately at home in the world of popular politics, combining eloquence with personal warmth. His religious faith and training brought to his politics a principled belief in non-violence and a remarkable optimism about the capacity of whites to undergo a change of heart."

During Luthuli's 15 years as ANC president, the white government deprived him of his chieftainship, charged him with treason, jailed him for a year while awaiting trial at which the charge was dropped, and banned him to his home area much of the time. Nevertheless, the ANC continued to gain white supporters and members.

But the pressure the multiracial ANC was putting on the white government through passive resistance was unsatisfactory to nationalists. (African nationalism is the fight for independence and self-rule for Africans.) They contended that only black South Africans could bring black rule to the country. A group of former ANC members headed by Robert Sobukwe split off to form the Pan-Africanist Congress (PAC) on April 6, 1959. (Pan-Africanism is a movement for unity among Africans and freedom from colonial control.) Sobukwe called for "a government of the Africans by the Africans and for the Africans."

Competition between the PAC and ANC resulted in one of the tragic, defining events of the movement against apartheid. Late in 1959, the ANC decided to launch a campaign against the white laws that required blacks to carry identification passes restricting their access to many areas of the country. The campaign was scheduled for March 31, 1960, but the PAC staged demonstrations against the pass laws on March 21 in Sharpeville, a black township about 35 miles south of Johannesburg. Police panicked and fired on the demonstrators, killing 69 and wounding more than four hundred.

The ANC reacted with a show of strength. Luthuli, Mandela, and others burned their passes in public and called a national strike on March 28. Rioting broke out across South Africa. The government imposed martial law (military law declared in times of emergency). On April 28, 1961, the government outlawed the ANC and the PAC, effectively shutting off any legal black political opposition. In response, Mandela and others began to talk of using violence against the white government. According to Mandela, Luthuli refused to commit the ANC to a guerrilla war, but he did not object to the creation of a military organization separate from the ANC.

Luthuli was arrested during the state of emergency declared after the Sharpville attacks. In giving testimony during his treason trial in 1960, Luthuli made a distinction between the ANC's nonviolence and pacifism: pacifists refused to defend themselves when attacked; people acting nonviolently were not bound by the pacifists' code. Mandela wrote: "He ultimately agreed that a military campaign was inevitable. When someone later insinuated that perhaps the chief was not prepared for such a course, he retorted, `If anyone thinks I am a pacifist, let him try to take my chickens, and he will know how wrong he is.'"

By this time, Luthuli was ill with a heart problem and suffering from high blood pressure. He seemed to have been tired of waiting, perhaps recalling an earlier statement he had made: "Who will deny that thirty years of my life have been spent knocking in vain, patiently, moderately and modestly at a closed and barred door." In December 1961, the South African government agreed to lift Luthuli's banning order to allow him and his wife to travel to Oslo, Norway, for the award of the Nobel Peace Prize.

"I, as a Christian, have always felt that there is one thing above all about `apartheid' or `separate development' that is unforgivable," Luthuli noted in his Nobel acceptance speech. "It seems utterly indifferent to the suffering of individual persons, who lose their land, their homes, their jobs," all because of "the deliberate policy of a government." But this type of government-"supported actively by a large part of the white population, and tolerated passively by an overwhelming white majority"-showed signs of weakening throughout the sixties. "An encouraging white minority have thrown their lot with non-whites who are overwhelmingly opposed to so-called separate development," declared Luthuli. He returned with the prize to South Africa on December 15, 1961.

The next day, Mandela's guerrilla Umkhonto we Sizwe (means "Spear of the Nation") units made their first sabotage attacks against the white minority government, blowing up electric power stations and government buildings, announcing to the world: "The time comes in the life of any nation when there remain only two choices: submit or fight.... We shall not submit." The ANC had a long battle ahead, but Luthuli would not live to see the victory more than three decades later.

By 1967 more and more whites were listening to the reasoning of this strong-minded, charitable black South African: "To the Government Luthuli was a peculiarly dangerous man: he, more than any other African leader in the country's history, had profoundly affected the whites," wrote Mary Benson, one of the leading chroniclers of the ANC, in 1966. "The Government dreaded that whites should come to know and understand Africans as individuals, and therefore should lose their fear of them."

That would have been reason enough for Luthuli's "elimination." His death in 1967 is shrouded with mystery. Some ANC leaders suspect a conspiracy in which white authorities assassinated Luthuli and made his death look like an accident. Police reported Luthuli died when struck by a freight train as he walked along a trestle over the Umvoti River near his home. "The circumstances were curious: he had been hit by a train in an area near his farm where he often walked," wrote Mandela in his autobiography published in 1994. "Luthuli's death left a great vacuum in the organization [the ANC]; the chief was a Nobel Prize winner, a distinguished, internationally known figure, a man who commanded respect from both black and white. For these reasons, he was irreplaceable."

In 1960, seven years prior to his death, Luthuli had sent one of the ANC's strongest leaders and Mandela's law partner-Oliver Tambo (1917-1993)-into exile when it became evident that the white government was going to ban the ANC. Luthuli apparently feared for Tambo's safety and freedom and felt he would be better off conducting ANC business from outside South Africa. Mandela had been isolated in South Africa's Robben Island prison, and so Tambo was elected Luthuli's successor in 1967. From outside the country, Tambo directed the ANC's campaign that eventually led to South Africa's first democratic elections in 1994-the election that made Mandela president.

FURTHER READINGS:

Benson, Mary. African Patriots: The Story of the African National Congress. 1963.

Benson, Mary. Chief Albert Luthuli of South Africa. 1963.

Benson, Mary. South Africa: The Struggle for a Birthright, International Defence, and Aid Fund for Southern Africa. 1966.

Lodge, Tom. Black Politics in South Africa since 1945. Ravan Press, 1990.

Luthuli, Albert. Let My People Go. Collins, 1962.

Mandela, Nelson. Long Walk to Freedom. Boston: Little, Brown, 1994.

Sampson, Anthony. The Treason Cage: The Opposition on Trial in South Africa. 1958.

Sparks, Allister. The Mind of South Africa. North Pomfret, VT: William Heinemann, 1990.

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Kids InfoBits - Document - Albert John Luthuli

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Died: July 21, 1967 in Groutville, South Africa Other Names: Luthuli, A.J.; Lutuli, Albert John; Luthuli, Albert John Mvumbi; Luthuli, Albert Full Text: COPYRIGHT UXL, a part of Gale, Cengage Learning "What we have aimed to do in South Africa is to bring the white man to his senses, not slaughter him."

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Welcome to Britannica Library , a safe, up-to-date, and age-appropriate information resource for Children, Young Adults, and Adults.

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I nternationally known as Africa's "Iron Lady," President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf is a leading promoter of peace, justice and democratic rule. She grew up in Liberian capital of Monrovia, where she married and had four sons.

President Johnson Sirleaf later moved to the United States where she earned an accounting degree from the Madison College of Business and a Masters Degree in Public Administration from Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government.

In her efforts to bring justice to her people in Liberia, she has spent more than a year in jail at the hands of the military dictatorship of General Samuel Doe and had her life threatened by former President Charles Taylor. She campaigned relentlessly for Taylor's removal from office and played an active and supportive role in the Transitional Government of Liberia as the country prepared for elections in October of 2005.

President Johnson Sirleaf was a presidential candidate in the 1997 Liberia general election where she finished second in the field of 13. Before that, she served for five years as Assistant Administrator and Director of the Regional Bureau for Africa of the United Nations Development Program as Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations and was the first woman to lead the United Nations Development Project for Africa.

She served as the Chairperson of the Governance Reform Commission of the National Transitional Government of Liberia until she resigned in March 2004 to accept the nomination of the Unity Party of Liberia as the party's leader.

In November 2005, President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf was elected President of Liberia and became the first woman to lead an African nation. In the elections she defeated popular world-class soccer star George Weah with an impressive 59.4 percent of the vote.

In October 2007, President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the United States' highest civil award, for her personal courage and unwavering commitment to expanding freedom and improving the lives of people in Liberia and across Africa. And in 2010, as the only female and African Head of State, President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf was named by Newsweek Magazine as one of the World Top Ten Leaders.

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I nternationally known as Africa's "Iron Lady," President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf is a leading promoter of peace, justice and democratic rule. She grew up in Liberian capital of Monrovia, where she married and had four sons.

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Born: October 29, 1938 in Monrovia, Liberia

Full Text: The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia COPYRIGHT 2008 Columbia University Press. Licensed from Columbia University Press. All rights reserved.

Sirleaf, Ellen Johnson (sĭrlēfʹ), 1938-, Liberian economist and political leader. Educated in the United States (M.P.A. Harvard, 1971), she worked in the Liberian government (1964-67, 1977-80), at the World Bank (1972-77, 1980-81), and in private banking (1980, 1986-92) before before joining (1992-97) the African bureau at the United Nations Development Program. Also active in Liberian politics, she was jailed in the 1980s by Samuel Doe 's regime, charged with treason by Charles Taylor 's regime, and twice went into exile. She ran for Liberian president in 1997 as the Unity party's candidate but lost to Taylor, whom she had supported when Doe was in power, and returned to the private sector as a financial consultant. Running again in 2005, she defeated former soccer star George Weah after a runoff, becoming the first woman to be elected president of an African nation. She was reelected in 2011 after her runoff opponent, Winston Tubman, boycotted the contest. Her terms as president were marked by an increase in foreign investment and solidification of the rule of law in Liberia, but she was widely criticized for appointing her sons to key government posts. She shared the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize with two other activist women, Leymah Gbowee of Liberia and Tawakul Karman of Yemen. Gbowee, a political ally of Sirleaf, broke with her in 2012, accusing her of nepotism and not doing enough to fight corruption and poverty and bring about national reconciliation. Charged by Unity party leaders of not supporting party candidates and meddling in the 2017 presidential election, which Unity lost, Sirleaf was expelled from the party in 2018.

See her memoir, This Child Will Be Great (2009); biography by H. Cooper (2017).

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Kids InfoBits - Document - Sirleaf, Ellen Johnson

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Born: October 29, 1938 in Monrovia, Liberia Full Text: The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia COPYRIGHT 2008 Columbia University Press. Licensed from Columbia University Press. All rights reserved. Sirleaf, Ellen Johnson (sĭrlēfʹ), 1938-, Liberian economist and political leader. Educated in the United States (M.P.A.

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Welcome to Britannica Library , a safe, up-to-date, and age-appropriate information resource for Children, Young Adults, and Adults.

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Martin Luther King Jr.
The Nobel Peace Prize 1964

Residence at the time of the award: USA

Role: Leader of Southern Christian Leadership Conference

Prize motivation: "for his non-violent struggle for civil rights for the Afro-American population"

Prize share: 1/1

For Civil Rights and Social Justice

Martin Luther King dreamt that all inhabitants of the United States would be judged by their personal qualities and not by the color of their skin. In April 1968 he was murdered by a white racist. Four years earlier, he had received the Peace Prize for his nonviolent campaign against racism.

King adhered to Gandhi's philosophy of nonviolence. In 1955 he began his struggle to persuade the US Government to declare the policy of racial discrimination in the southern states unlawful. The racists responded with violence to the black people's nonviolent initiatives.

In 1963, 250,000 demonstrators marched to the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, where King gave his famous "I have a dream" speech. The following year, President Johnson got a law passed prohibiting all racial discrimination.

But King had powerful opponents. The head of the FBI, John Edgar Hoover, had him placed under surveillance as a communist, and when King opposed the administration's policy in Vietnam, he fell into disfavour with the President. It has still not been ascertained whether King's murderer acted on his own or was part of a conspiracy.

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Eleven laureates were awarded a Nobel Prize in 2023, for achievements that have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind. Their work and discoveries range from effective mRNA vaccines and attosecond physics to fighting against the oppression of women.

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The Nobel Peace Prize 1964 was awarded to Martin Luther King Jr. "for his non-violent struggle for civil rights for the Afro-American population"

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B arack H. Obama is the 44th President of the United States.

His story is the American story - values from the heartland, a middle-class upbringing in a strong family, hard work and education as the means of getting ahead, and the conviction that a life so blessed should be lived in service to others.

With a father from Kenya and a mother from Kansas, President Obama was born in Hawaii on August 4, 1961. He was raised with help from his grandfather, who served in Patton's army, and his grandmother, who worked her way up from the secretarial pool to middle management at a bank.

After working his way through college with the help of scholarships and student loans, President Obama moved to Chicago, where he worked with a group of churches to help rebuild communities devastated by the closure of local steel plants.

He went on to attend law school, where he became the first African-American president of the Harvard Law Review. Upon graduation, he returned to Chicago to help lead a voter registration drive, teach constitutional law at the University of Chicago, and remain active in his community.

President Obama's years of public service are based around his unwavering belief in the ability to unite people around a politics of purpose. In the Illinois State Senate, he passed the first major ethics reform in 25 years, cut taxes for working families, and expanded health care for children and their parents. As a United States Senator, he reached across the aisle to pass groundbreaking lobbying reform, lock up the world's most dangerous weapons, and bring transparency to government by putting federal spending online.

He was elected the 44th President of the United States on November 4, 2008, and sworn in on January 20, 2009. He and his wife, Michelle, are the proud parents of two daughters, Malia, 10, and Sasha, 7.

This autobiography/biography was written at the time of the award and later published in the book series Les Prix Nobel/ Nobel Lectures/The Nobel Prizes. The information is sometimes updated with an addendum submitted by the Laureate.

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B arack H. Obama is the 44th President of the United States. His story is the American story - values from the heartland, a middle-class upbringing in a strong family, hard work and education as the means of getting ahead, and the conviction that a life so blessed should be lived in service to others.

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"Here was a man who had inspired an entire nation with his words and his courage, who had revived the people's hope during the darkest of times ... who selflessly fought the evils of racism during the most terrible days of apartheid."-Nelson Mandela

With most of the anti-government leaders in South Africa in jail or living outside the country in the 1980s, Desmond Mpilo Tutu rose from obscurity to spearhead the global campaign that brought an end to the country's racist policies and police state in 1994. As the representative of Christian churches in South Africa, he openly challenged the country's white supremacist rulers. They were not Christians as they claimed to be, and Tutu lectured them to their faces. Like an Old Testament prophet, he warned the rulers that they were destined to wind up the "flotsam and jetsam [the scum] of history."

Tutu also risked imprisonment and assassination for advocating international economic sanctions against South Africa. A global agreement to cut trade with South Africa, he reasoned, would shatter the wealth of South African whites and pressure them into giving up their hold on the country's power and profits.

Above all, Tutu instilled a sense of worth and pride in South Africa's black majority. He filled black Africans with faith that they were ascending from the lowest depths of injustice-injustice that had condemned them to a status lower than human beings. "We will be free, we will be free!" was his battle cry in the worst, most chaotic of times. Nobel judges awarded Tutu the Peace Prize in 1984 in recognition of his nonviolent crusade to change the white minority government kept in power by its military forces. The Nobel committee also succeeded in bolstering his standing in the international campaign against apartheid.

Nelson Mandela, who came out of prison to be chosen South Africa's first black president in 1994 democratic elections, paid tribute to Tutu, calling him "a man who had inspired an entire nation with his words and his courage, who had revived the people's hope during the darkest of times ... who selflessly fought the evils of racism during the most terrible days of apartheid."

A short, small man, the energetic Tutu brings a number of talents to a task. Blessed with a knack for humor, his sense of timing would have insured him success as a stand-up nightclub comedian had he not answered a loftier calling. Tutu has often employed humor to drive home a large and serious point to his audiences. His abilities include being able "to handle tricky situations in a way that is little short of miraculous." One observer noted that "when uncertain what to do he simply plays the clown, frequently diffusing tense situations by scrapping his prepared text and amusing his audience until they are ready to hear what he has to say."

In addition to his talent for diffusing tense situations, Tutu also uses images and anecdotes to get his point across to his audiences. In one of his sermons he said, "Many religious people think long sulky faces somehow are related to holiness-they often look like they have taken an unexpected dose of castor oil and find it hard to laugh in church, being somewhat sheepish when they do. And yet Jesus was funny when He described the chap who is concerned to remove a speck of dust from his brother's eye while a huge beam was sticking out of his own. Jesus was poking fun at this chap and His audience would roar with laughter.... Our God does not reign over puny guilt-ridden obsequious [fawning or subservient] creatures."

As a preacher of the Christian gospel, Tutu was anything but flippant. "He is a man of God," said Helen Joseph, a white opponent of the apartheid government who was prevented from speaking publicly for years. Tutu could also be temperamental. When the United States and European countries dragged their feet on imposing sanctions against South Africa, he said:"America and the West can go to hell."

Tutu also tells stories in which he stars as a fall guy, but that make a point. In one such story, Tutu talks about when he was Anglican bishop of Johannesburg and he and South African President P. W. Botha-who always wore a hat-met privately in a small boat on Zoo Lake in the northern part of the city. The privacy, however, was short-lived. Members of the press heard about the meeting and gathered around the lake with their binoculars and telephoto lenses. As the two men talked, a gust of wind blew the president's hat off his head, and across the water. The confident bishop told the president to sit tight and not to worry. He then jumped out of the boat, walked on the surface of the water, picked up the hat, and returned it to Botha. The next day, newspaper headlines read: "Tutu can't swim." The point was that Tutu was unable to do anything right in the eyes of his critics.

Elected the first black archbishop of Cape Town in 1986, a delighted Tutu told news reporters: "I'm tongue-tied, and some people hope it's permanent."

Tutu was born on October 7, 1931, in Klerksdorp, a small mining town in an agricultural region west of Johannesburg. He was the middle child of Zachariah and Aletha Tutu. Educated at Christian mission schools, Zachariah was headmaster of the Methodist Primary School in Klerksdorp. He was a tall, proud man who wanted his children to grow up strong, healthy, and well educated. At times, however, he drank too much. During some of those binges, he abused his wife. Tutu's mother, Aletha, had little education and worked as a domestic servant. She was a gentle woman who exerted a profound influence on Tutu.

While Tutu was young, the family lived in black townships near Ventersdorp, Roodepoort, Krugersdorp, and other small towns west of Johannesburg, due to Zachariah's job. Although black South Africans did suffer varying degrees of discrimination back then, racial division was less extreme in the 1930s-when Tutu was growing up-than after 1948. That was the year the white National party imposed its policy of apartheid, a program intended to separate all races and restrict blacks to inferior education.

In the mid-1940s Tutu met British-born bishop Trevor Huddleston, then a parish priest in the mostly black township of Sophiatown. In this lively and historic township on the western edge of Johannesburg, people of all races and classes mixed, carried on business, and socialized together. Huddleston turned out to be Tutu's greatest role model.

When he was fourteen years old, Tutu lived for a time at a hostel supported by the Fathers of the Community of the Resurrection in Sophiatown, near where he attended Madibane High School (named for a famous black headmaster celebrated as an educator and Anglican churchman.) He got to know Father Huddleston before being stricken with tuberculosis and confined for treatment at a state sanatorium for twenty months. Each week, Huddleston visited young Tutu in the hospital, bringing books and encouragement. "He was full of laughter and caring," Tutu recalled, as quoted by Du Boulay. "He made you feel special. He was a wonderful man ... a white man who made you feel you mattered." During his illness, Tutu made the decision to become an Anglican priest.

Gifted with a photographic memory, Tutu excelled as a student despite missing months of school. He recovered from his illness and graduated from Madibane High in 1950, then obtained a teacher's certificate from Pretoria Bantu Normal College in 1953 and a bachelor's degree from the University of South Africa in 1954.

On July 2, 1955, Tutu married Nomalizo Leah Shenxane in Munsieville, the black township in Krugersdorp. She had been a student of Tutu's father, who was headmaster of an Anglican primary school in Munsieville. Leah also was a close friend of Tutu's younger sister, Gloria. When she was attending school in Munsieville, Leah lived with one of her elder brothers in a shack in a rented backyard. Her mother worked as a domestic servant in a town on the other side of Johannesburg. By the time Tutu asked her to marry him, Leah was studying at a teacher training college. The Tutus have one son (Trevor, named for Tutu's mentor, Father Trevor Huddleston) and three daughters (Theresa, Naomi, and Mpho).

From 1955 to 1958, Tutu taught at Munsieville High School. He studied for the priesthood at St. Peter's Theological College in Rosettenville near Johannesburg from 1958 to 1960. After he was ordained as a deacon in 1960, he worked as an assistant at St. Alban's Church in Benoni township, east of Johannesburg. The church's rector set up Tutu, his wife, Leah, and their first two children in horrible housing-a Benoni garage next to a fly-infested stable. In 1961, Tutu was ordained an Anglican priest and assigned to a church in Thokoza, a black township southeast of Johannesburg.

Tutu and his family would never have to sleep in a garage again. In 1962, Tutu was awarded a scholarship for study abroad. Church officials arranged for Tutu to study for a degree in theology at King's College at the University of London. London was "paradise" for the family. Tutu didn't have to carry a pass as he did in South Africa. His family could walk or travel where they wished in England. They could enter front doors or any public entrances or exits they pleased. Porters addressed him as "sir." He preached in the affluent white village of Bletchingley, won acceptance among the people there, and was invited to local Gin and God parties-occasions in lush gardens where guests were given a dry Martini upon arrival and treated to a gourmet meal before getting down to prayer and worship. Tutu's time in London helped him to reject the conditioning imposed by apartheid: "You didn't know that gnawing away at you was this worm which was sowing a horrible kind of self-doubt in you.... The most horrible aspect of apartheid, a blasphemous aspect, is it can make a child of God doubt that they are a child of God, when you ask yourself in the middle of the night, 'God, am I your step-child?'"

Similarly, in his 1986 Martin Luther King Peace Prize address, Tutu described the self-doubt resulting from the state system of racial discrimination: "You are brainwashed into an acquiescence in your oppression and exploitation. You come to believe what others have determined about you, filling you with self-disgust, self-contempt and self-hatred, accepting a negative self-image ... and you need a lot of grace to have that demon of self-hatred exorcised.... You accept that only white races really matter and you allow the white person to set your standards and provide your role models."

Tutu earned his bachelor's degree in theology in 1965 and his master's degree the following year. He then returned to South Africa to study for his doctorate and teach at the Federal Theological Seminary in Alice, a town in southeastern South Africa. At that point, Tutu began to sense serious discontent rising among young black South Africans. Tutu lectured in Lesotho for a couple of years before returning to England in 1972 as associate director for Africa of the Theological Education Fund, an organization founded to help free churches in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. In 1974, however, Tutu was called home to become Johannesburg's first black bishop.

Tutu found himself in the spotlight throughout the next decade. On March 1, 1978, he became general secretary of the South African Council of Churches-a position that catapulted him to the forefront of the fight against apartheid just as black rebellion was reaching fever pitch. Three years later, the white government held hearings to investigate the Council of Churches, drawing worldwide attention to Tutu and the black majority cause. After the hearings, he embarked on a tour of Europe and the United States. Tutu returned to Johannesburg a hero to black South Africans. Peter Storey, Methodist bishop of Johannesburg, was at the airport to welcome Tutu home. According to Du Boulay, Storey "sensed on that return that here was someone who knew-perhaps had always known-that he came back as someone with destiny on his shoulders. A sense of having to be the instrument of his people's liberation, to be their spokesman."

In the introduction to An African Prayer Book (1995), Tutu sums up his outlook on human relationships. He retells the Christian creation story-of Adam's feeling of incompleteness before God created Eve, the first woman: "And so God asked Adam to choose a mate for himself from among the animals which paraded before him in procession. God would ask his human friend, 'What about this one?' Adam would reply, 'Not on your life! No, thank you!' And so God decided to put Adam to sleep and produced from his rib [a woman named] Eve; and when Adam awoke he exclaimed: 'Wow! This is just what the doctor ordered '"

Tutu continued: "This beautiful story tells a fundamental truth about us-that we are made to live in a delicate network of interdependence with one another, with God, and with the rest of God's creation. We say in our African idiom: 'A person is a person through other persons.' A solitary human being is a contradiction in terms. A totally self-sufficient human being is ultimately subhuman.... I have gifts that you do not; and you have gifts that I do not. Voila! So we need each other to become fully human."

Tutu tried to warn South African leaders-Prime Minister John Vorster (prime minister from 1966 to 1978) and later President P. W. Botha (president until 1989)-of the swelling tide of violence among blacks. The heads of state ignored his warnings. Risking a charge of treason (betrayal of one's country), Tutu called for the world to shut off trade with South Africa and for foreign businesses to withdraw investments. No legal action was taken against him, however, because arresting Tutu would have caused worldwide backlash against the white government. He had won the 1984 Nobel Peace Prize and this international acclaim made him virtually arrest-proof.

On February 11, 1990, black activist Nelson Mandela was released after more than twenty-seven years in prison. He and his wife, Winnie, spent his first night of freedom with Archbishop Tutu and Leah at their church residence, Bishopscourt, in a wealthy-and mostly white-Cape Town suburb. Proclaiming he was "over the moon," Tutu said he was turning the political fight against apartheid back to Mandela, and he would return to preaching.

After retiring in 1995 as Anglican archbishop of Cape Town-the church's most influential position in South Africa-Tutu found himself back in the political limelight in 1996 as chairman of South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which investigated the crimes of South Africa's apartheid government. Criticized for heading a commission that granted amnesty (forgiveness without punishment) for apartheid crimes if full confessions were submitted, Tutu retorted: "Victims and survivors who bore the brunt of the apartheid system need healing. Perpetrators [those who carried out the racist policies] are, in their own way, victims of the apartheid system and they, too, need healing."

As commission chairman, Tutu gained the satisfaction of hearing five white South African security police officers plead for forgiveness of their crimes and admit the inherent worth of all "children of God," no matter what their color. In their amnesty petition, the security officers stated: "We were brought up to believe in apartheid. We were made to believe that apartheid was sanctioned by God, through the church. We were made to believe that our participation in the Security Forces was justified to uphold apartheid. We were made to believe that black people were inferior, and the needs, emotions and aspirations of black people differed from ours. We were made to believe that we were superior, and that these differences justified apartheid. We have come to realize that these beliefs were wrong, morally and in reality."

Though he was undergoing treatment for prostate cancer, Tutu continued to guide the commission from 1996 to 1998 through particularly difficult times. "Nobody but Tutu could have headed that commission," said Father Michael Lapsley, a chaplain at the Cape Town Trauma Centre. Lapsley lost both hands and an eye to a letter bomb sent to him in 1990 by agents of the former white government.

Tutu has continued to remain active as a public speaker, giving lectures and accepting visiting professorships at various universities all over the world. He also has worked as a global activist, with a particular emphasis on issues involving human rights, democracy, and freedom. Along with his wife, Tutu established the Desmond Tutu Peace Centre in 1998. The organization's mission is to promote peace, understanding, and justice through reconciliation and restoration rather than retribution. By 2004, the organization had established a leadership academy to train others in Tutu's ideas and philosophies about peace. Tutu also has helped other organizations all over the world, including the 100,000 Miracles campaign of the Christian Blind Mission International. In 2007, Tutu, Nelson Mandela, and Gra¸a Machel formed a group called The Elders. The group includes world leaders who are dedicated to addressing some of the world's most pressing problems. Other members of the group have included Kofi Annan, Jimmy Carter, Ela Bhatt, and several others. As of 2011, Tutu was chairing The Elders, which is funded by several founders including singer/songwriter Peter Gabriel, Sir Richard Branson, the Bridgeway Foundation, the United Nations Foundation, and others. He also is the patron of the Desmond Tutu Diversity Trust, an organization in South Africa that helps implement and facilitate diversity awareness, diversity training, and diversity management. Tutu is credited with first coining the phrase Rainbow Nation as a way of describing the ethnic diversity in post-apartheid South Africa.

Tutu also has continued his interest in South African politics and has been an outspoken critic of the corruption of government officials. He also has criticized the ineffectiveness of the African National Congress (ANC) in dealing with a variety of issues, including poverty and violence in some parts of the country. Tutu has long been considered South Africa's moral conscience. Mandela has said of Tutu: "Sometimes strident, often tender, never afraid and seldom without humour, Desmond Tutu's voice will always be the voice of the voiceless." A well-respected leader all over the world, Tutu also has been called on to assist and participate in a wide variety of efforts. In 2006, he was named a member of the United Nations advisory panel on genocide prevention. Then in 2008, he visited the Gaza Strip as a member of an independent United Nations investigative committee. While there, he condemned the violence against Palestinian refugees and their living conditions.

Over the years, Tutu also has spoken out against policies of the United States and other nations. He criticized former British Prime Minister Tony Blair's decision to support former President George W. Bush and the United States, leading up to the 2003 invasion of that country. Tutu questioned why Iraq was being singled out since other countries also had weapons of mass destruction. More recently, Tutu published an article in April 2011 in the Huffington Post that criticized Arizona Senate Bill 1070. The anti-illegal immigration law requires all aliens older than fourteen years old to register with the U.S. government for stays longer than thirty days and to carry registration documents with them at all times. In the article, Tutu said: "...when you you strip a man or a woman of their basic human rights, you strip them of their dignity in the eyes of their family and their community, and even in their own eyes. An immigrant who is charged with the crime of trespassing for simply being in a community without his papers on him is being told he is committing a crime by simply being. He or she feels degraded and feels they are of less worth than others of a different color skin. These are the seeds of resentment, hostilities and in extreme cases, conflict."

In addition to his political and humanitarian efforts, Tutu also has been a strong advocate of efforts to combat TB and HIV. He is a patron of the Desmond Tutu HIV Foundation, a nonprofit organization founded in 2003 that is involved in providing AIDS care and research at the University of Cape Town and in various community clinics throughout South Africa. That same year, the Desmond Tutu TB Centre was established at Stellenbosch University in Stellenbosch, South Africa. Tutu also serves as the honorary chairman of the Global AIDS Alliance.

For his many contributions to humanitarian causes and human rights, Tutu has received a number of awards and honors over the years. In addition to winning the 1984 Nobel Peace Prize, he also has received the Albert Schweitzer Prize for Humanitarianism (1986), the Pacem in Terris Award (1987), the Gandhi Peace Prize (2005), the J. William Fulbright Prize for International Understanding (2008), and the Presidential Medal of Freedom (2009) from President Barack Obama. An Artists for a New South Africa benefit was held in honor of Tutu in October 2011 in San Francisco to celebrate the release of a biography by Allister Sparks called Tutu: Authorized. The book also includes contributions from President Barack Obama, His Holiness the Dalai Lama, and Nelson Mandela. Others like Jimmy Carter, Kofi Annan, and F.W. De Klerk were interviewed for the book.

In addition, Tutu has published a number of articles and several books over the years, including Crying in the Wilderness (1982), The Words of Desmond Tutu (1989, with Naomi Tutu), The Rainbow People of God: The Making of a Peaceful Revolution (1994), No Future without Forgiveness (1999), An African Prayerbook (2000), and God Has a Dream: A Vision of Hope for Our Time (2004). George Packer, contributor to the Chicago Tribune wrote of The Rainbow People of God: The Making of a Peaceful Revolution,: ". . . one has a powerful sense of Tutu's fundamentally sound moral judgment. He never appears to be acting out an idea of himself, and his reactions to crises almost always proved wise, as if no amount of weariness or confusion or rage could poison the core of his character."

Despite his tireless work with a variety of humanitarian causes and organizations, Tutu announced plans to retire from public life. Taking a phased approach that he began at the age of seventy-nine, Tutu worked one day a week in his office up until the end of February 2011. At a July 2010 forum, Tutu said he wanted to spend more time with his family. "The time has now come to slow down, to sip Rooibos tea with my beloved wife in the afternoons, to watch cricket, to travel to visit my children and grandchildren, rather than to conferences and conventions and university campuses."

Tutu did make more time for himself and his family, but he did not give up monitoring the news and supporting a wide range of social, cultural, and spiritual causes. Through letters, announcements, and petitions, he made his powerful voice heard in many situations across the world. He has written appeals to save whistleblowers, preserve the dignity of the dying, and defuse religious intolerance and conflict. In 2016, Tutu joined fellow spiritual leader the Dalai Lama to co-author The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World.

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"Here was a man who had inspired an entire nation with his words and his courage, who had revived the people's hope during the darkest of times ...

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Desmond Mpilo Tutu
The Nobel Peace Prize 1984

Born: 7 October 1931, Klerksdorp, South Africa

Residence at the time of the award: South Africa

Role: Bishop of Johannesburg, former Secretary General, South African Council of Churches (S.A.C.C.)

Prize share: 1/1

Africa's Peace Bishop

Like his countryman Albert Lutuli, the Anglican bishop Desmond Tutu was honored with the Peace Prize for his opposition to South Africa's brutal apartheid regime. Tutu was saluted by the Nobel Committee for his clear views and his fearless stance, characteristics which had made him a unifying symbol for all African freedom fighters. Attention was once again directed at the nonviolent path to liberation.

Despite bloody violations committed against the black population, as in the Sharpeville massacre of 1961 and the Soweto rising in 1976, Tutu adhered to his nonviolent line. Yet he would not blame Nelson Mandela and his supporters for having made a different choice.

The Peace Prize award made a big difference to Tutu's international standing, and was a helpful contribution to the struggle against apartheid. The broad media coverage made him a living symbol in the struggle for liberation, someone who articulated the suffering and expectations of South Africa's oppressed masses. There are many indications that Tutu's Peace Prize helped to pave the way for a policy of stricter sanctions against South Africa in the 1980s.

Copyright © The Norwegian Nobel Institute

To cite this section
MLA style: Desmond Tutu - Facts. NobelPrize.org. Nobel Media AB 2020. Wed. 26 Feb 2020. <https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/1984/tutu/facts/>

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Fifteen laureates were awarded in 2019, for achievements that have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind.

Their work and discoveries range from how cells adapt to changes in levels of oxygen to our ability to fight global poverty.

See them all presented here.

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Desmond Mpilo Tutu The Nobel Peace Prize 1984 Born: 7 October 1931, Klerksdorp, South Africa Residence at the time of the award: South Africa Role: Bishop of Johannesburg, former Secretary General, South African Council of Churches (S.A.C.C.)

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Welcome to Britannica Library , a safe, up-to-date, and age-appropriate information resource for Children, Young Adults, and Adults.

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Katherine Johnson | NASA Computer | PBS LearningMedia

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Examine the life and career of NASA computer Katherine Johnson, and engage students in a discussion of the qualities Johnson exhibited that helped her break racial and gender barriers.

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Black Inventors & Scientists

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Scientists, engineers, and inventors find the solutions to the world's problems. Learn about the work that these Black scientists and inventors have accomplished that make our lives better.

George Washington Carver was an agricultural chemist who gained acclaim for his discovery of alternative farming methods. Carver is best known for his discovery of uses for the peanut. Among the products Carver developed from peanuts were soap, face powder, mayonnaise, shampoo, metal polish, and adhesives-but he did not invent peanut butter.

Known as a "human computer," Dorothy Johnson Vaughan was part of a team that did mathematical calculations to help launch satellites-and later humans-into space. The group used math to help engineers figure out how wind and gravity affects aircrafts.

When she was first hired to work on the space program, Vaughan's department was segregated, or separated, by race. She and the other African-American women in her unit used separate dining areas and bathrooms. Six years after she was hired, Vaughan became the manager of her division and its first Black supervisor.

A decade later, the agency desegregated and she joined the Analysis and Computation division, where she learned computer programming and worked on the program that launched John Glenn and other astronauts into space for the first time. The accomplishments of Vaughan and other female African-American mathematicians was the focus of the book and movie Hidden Figures.

Mark E. Dean is one of the top engineering minds at the International Business Machines (IBM) Corporation. He made his first mark in the industry in the early 1980s, when he and a colleague developed a system that allowed computers to communicate with printers and other devices. Every time you print something, you can thank Dean.

In all, Dean holds 20 patents, and was honored as one of the "50 Most Important African Americans in Technology" by the California African-American Museum in 2000. Dean wants to help increase awareness of the contributions of Black engineers to both the engineering industry and the African-American community.

Before her 30th birthday, Mae C. Jemison had received two undergraduate degrees and a medical degree, served two years as a Peace Corps medical officer in West Africa, and was selected to join the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's astronaut training program. Her eight-day space flight aboard the space shuttle Endeavour in 1992 established Jemison as the United States' first female African-American space traveler.

Percy L. Julian is known as the "soybean chemist," for his extraordinary success in developing innovative drugs and industrial chemicals from natural soya products. The firefighting solution he devised, known as "bean soup," helped save the lives of thousands of sailors and naval airmen during World War II. His discoveries earned him more than 130 chemical patents and many professional awards.

His spirit lives on in dozens of lifesaving discoveries, as well as in the halls of Percy L. Julian Junior High School in Oak Park, Illinois. Julian was quoted as saying, "I have had one goal in my life, that of playing some role in making life a little easier for the persons who come after me."

Sarah Breedlove Walker was an inventor and businesswoman, and became one of the largest employers of African-American women of her time.

Often know as Madame C.J. Walker, she manufactured beauty products for other African-American women using formulas she developed after working for a pharmacist who taught her chemistry. Her popular hair-softening cream and shampoo helped heal dry skin and other itchy annoyances that were common in the early 1900s because indoor plumbing wasn't widely available.

Walker's company hired and trained thousands of Black women to sell her hair-care products in shops, by mail, and door-to-door. This helped many become more independent during a time when job opportunities for women were limited.

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Black Scientists and Inventors | Black History Month

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Scientists, engineers, and inventors find the solutions to the world's problems. Learn about the work that these Black scientists and inventors have accomplished that make our lives better. George Washington Carver was an agricultural chemist who gained acclaim for his discovery of alternative farming methods.

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Grades 4+

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Symbolism in "The Negro Speaks of Rivers" | A Walk Through Harlem | PBS LearningMedia

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This segment from A Walk Through Harlem presents the poem, "The Negro Speaks of Rivers," written by Langston Hughes in 1922. Hughes traveled to New York City by the 1920s to become a part of an exciting arts and culture movement called the Harlem Renaissance. He later became known as the "poet laureate of Harlem."

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Maya Angelou is an American author and poet. She is best known for her book, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.

Angelou was born Marguerite Annie Johnson on April 4, 1928, in St. Louis, Missouri. She had an older brother. He gave her the nickname of Maya.

In 1931 Angelou's parents separated. They sent Angelou and her brother to live with their grandmother in Stamps, Arkansas. Angelou was three years old.

Angelou later returned to St. Louis to live with her mother. She was seven years old. One year later she was attacked by a man her mother knew.

Angelou then did not speak for almost five years. She read many books. A teacher encouraged her to read aloud. This helped Angelou to speak again.

In 1941 Angelou and her brother moved to San Francisco, California, with their mother. Angelou won a scholarship to study dance and drama at a special high school.

Soon after she graduated from high school, Angelou gave birth to her son, Guy. She worked many jobs to support herself and her son.

In 1949 Angelou married Anastasios Angelopulos, also known as Tosh Angelos. After three years, they divorced.

Angelou then began a career as a singer and dancer. She toured Europe performing in the opera Porgy and Bess. Angelou soon gained fame as an actress and singer.

In 1957 Angelou recorded her first album. It is called Calypso Lady. That same year she also got a role in a play called The Blacks.

In 1960 Angelou moved to Cairo, Egypt. She got a job as the editor of a newspaper. The next year she moved to the country of Ghana. She continued to write and edit.

In 1965 Angelou returned to the United States. She joined the civil rights movement. This was an effort by many people to make sure that African Americans got the same rights as white people. She worked with and supported the civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.

One day, one of Angelou 's friends said she should write the story of her early life. She did. Her book was published in 1970 as I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. It was very popular.

Angelou went on to write more than 30 books. They include poetry, nonfiction, and fiction. Her first poetry book was published in 1971 as Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water 'Fore I Die.

In 1993 she wrote the poem, "On the Pulse of Morning" for President Bill Clinton's inauguration ceremony. She read her poem at the ceremony.

Angelou received many honors and awards. They include the Presidential Medal of Arts in 2000, the Lincoln Medal in 2008, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2011.

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Maya Angelou is an American author and poet. She is best known for her book, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. Angelou was born Marguerite Annie Johnson on April 4, 1928, in St. Louis, Missouri. She had an older brother. He gave her the nickname of Maya.

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Welcome to Britannica Library , a safe, up-to-date, and age-appropriate information resource for Children, Young Adults, and Adults.

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Langston Hughes was an American poet and author. He is best known for writing about black American life from the 1920s through the 1960s.

James Mercer Langston Hughes was born on February 1, 1902, in Joplin, Missouri. As a child, he lived with his grandmother. When he was about 13 years old, she died.

Hughes then went to live with his mother. She had remarried after divorcing his father.

Hughes liked to write poems. In the eighth grade, he was named class poet. While in high school, he wrote for the school literary magazine. A literary magazine contains poems, stories, essays, and other writings.

At this time, Hughes also read poetry written by Carl Sandburg and Walt Whitman for the first time. The work of these American poets later influenced his own poems.

In 1920 Hughes graduated from high school. Then he went to Mexico to see his father. He wanted to go to college to study writing. He asked his father for the money to pay for college. His father, however, wanted Hughes to be an engineer.

While in Mexico, Hughes had his first poem published in a poetry magazine. The poem was called "The Negro Speaks of Rivers." His father was impressed. He agreed to pay for a year of college.

In 1921 Hughes enrolled in Columbia University in New York City. He was now a serious poet. His work focused on black American life. He became part of the Harlem Renaissance, a time when African American culture and arts thrived.

Hughes did not have enough money to stay in school. In 1922 he had to drop out. He then began working ships as part of the crew. He went to Africa, Spain, and France.

After a few years, Hughes settled again in the United States. One of his poems, "The Weary Blues," won first prize in a literary magazine competition.

Hughes then got a scholarship to Lincoln University in Pennsylvania. A scholarship is an award that allows a student to attend school for a reduced or no cost. He resumed his study of writing.

In 1926 Hughes's first book of poetry, called The Weary Blues, was published. It is a collection of jazz poems. They are meant to be performed with music.

Hughes's second book of poetry, Fine Clothes to the Jew, was published in 1927. The poems in the book take a realistic look at the lives of working-class black people.

At the time, some black critics did not like the poems. They worried Hughes's realistic writing made African Americans look bad to white readers.

In 1929 Hughes graduated from Lincoln University. The next year, the book Not Without Laughter was published. It was very popular and won a literature prize. At this point, Hughes finally believed he could earn a living as a writer.

Hughes spent the 1930s writing and giving speeches in the United States, the Soviet Union, Japan, and Haiti. In 1934 a collection of his short stories was published as The Ways of White Folks.

During the late 1930s, Hughes started writing for newspapers. He covered the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) for several United States newspapers. Later he wrote a column for a Chicago, Illinois, newspaper. He created a black comic character named Simple and wrote about racism and other black issues.

In the late 1940s Hughes also helped write a Broadway musical called Street Scene. He wrote lyrics for the music. The show was so successful, Hughes earned enough money to buy a house in Harlem, a black neighborhood in New York City.

Later in his life Hughes got cancer. On May 22, 1967, he died in New York City. Jazz and blues music was played at his funeral. His home in Harlem was later made into a historic site.

1909: The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), an African American civil rights organization, is formed in the United States.

1917: The United States enters World War I.

1929: The Great Depression begins.

1934: German chemists Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann discover how to split an atom.

1941: Japan attacks Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, and the United States enters World War II.

1954: In Brown v. Board of Education the U.S. Supreme Court rules that segregated schools are unconstitutional.

1966: Star Trek, a science-fiction television series starring William Shatner, premiers in the United States.

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Kids InfoBits - Document - Langston Hughes

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Langston Hughes was an American poet and author. He is best known for writing about black American life from the 1920s through the 1960s. James Mercer Langston Hughes was born on February 1, 1902, in Joplin, Missouri. As a child, he lived with his grandmother. When he was about 13 years old, she died.

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Welcome to Britannica Library , a safe, up-to-date, and age-appropriate information resource for Children, Young Adults, and Adults.

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Welcome to Britannica Library , a safe, up-to-date, and age-appropriate information resource for Children, Young Adults, and Adults.

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Biography

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This is a full biography on Revolutionary poet Phillis Wheatley

Phillis Wheatley

Early Life

Phillis Wheatley was born in Gambia on May 8, 1753. When she was 7 or 8, she was sold as a slave to John and Susanna Wheatley of Boston. She was named after the ship that brought her to America, the Phillis. The Poetry Foundation describes her sale below:

In August 1761:

"in want of a domestic," Susanna Wheatley, ... purchased "a slender, frail female child ... for a trifle"... The captain of the slave ship believed that the waif was terminally ill, and he wanted ... at least a small profit before she died. ...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." (https://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/phillis-wheatley)

The 12 Year-old Poet

Phillis was very intelligent. The Wheatley family taught her to read and write, and encouraged her to write poetry. Her first poem "On Messrs. Hussey and Coffin" was published when she was only twelve. In 1770, An Elegiac Poem, on the Death of that Celebrated Divine, and Eminent Servant of Jesus Christ, the Reverend and Learned George Whitefield made her famous. It was published in Boston, Newport, and Philadelphia.

Short-lived Fame

When she was eighteen, Phillis and Mrs. Wheatley tried to sell a collection containing twenty-eight of her poems. Colonists did not want to buy poetry written by an African. Mrs. Wheatley wrote to England to ask Selina Hastings, Countess of Huntingdon, for help. The countess was a wealthy supporter of evangelical and abolitionist (anti-slavery) causes. She had Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral published in England in 1773. This book made Phillis famous in England and the thirteen colonies. In 1775, Phillis wrote a poem for George Washington, who praised her work. They met in 1776. Phillis supported independence for the colonies during the Revolutionary War.She became the first African American and the first slave in the United States to publish a book.

Phillis Wheatley's Work

A Short Life

After her master died, Phillis was emancipated (freed). She married John Peters, a free black man, in 1778. She and her husband lost two children as infants. John would be imprisoned for debt in 1784. Phillis, who suffered from respiratory ailments for most of her life, died in December of 1784, and was buried in an unmarked grave.

Phillis Wheatley Activities (Grades 5-8)

Reading Comprehension Printable - This resource includes a historical passage and ten multiple choice questions.

Reading Comprehension Online - This resource includes a historical passage and ten multiple choice questions. It gives immediate feedback and a score report.

Fact or Fiction - This fun activity requires students to read a Phillis Wheatley passage and then, to sort 11 statements into those that are facts and those that are fiction. It gives immediate feedback.

Fact or Fiction - This fun activity requires students to read a Phillis Wheatley passage and then, to sort 11 statements into those that are facts and those that are fiction.

Main Idea and Supporting Details - This activity requires students to group supporting detail sentences under one of three different main ideas. There are seven total sentences.

Primary Source Analysis: Washington's Letter to Phillis Wheatley - This activity requires students to analyze a letter from Washington to Phillis Wheatley and to complete short answer questions about it.

Primary Source Analysis: Wheatley's Poem to King George III - This activity requires students to analyze the poem: To the King's Most Excellent Majesty 1768 written by Phillis Wheatley to King George III. The poem was meant to praise him for repealing the Stamp Act. Students must complete short answer questions about the poem.

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Phillis Wheatley was born in Gambia on May 8, 1753, and died in Boston on December 5, 1784. When she was 7 or 8, she was sold as a slave to John and Susanna Wheatley of Boston.

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Phillis Wheatley was a slave. A slave is someone who is owned by another person and forced to perform labor. Wheatley became America's first black female poet.

Phillis Wheatley was born around 1753 in Africa. She was kidnapped from Africa and sold as a slave in Boston at the age of eight. John Wheatley bought her as a gift for his wife, Susanna.

Wheatley was treated much better than slaves who worked on plantations. Plantations are large farms that produce one or two crops to sell to businesses. She was well fed and clothed. Though she never attended school, she was taught to read and write. Wheatley was a bright student. By the time she was in her teens, she was better educated than most women in Boston.

Wheatley was encouraged to talk to guests at the Wheatley home. She also was free to visit friends in nearby states. It was very unusual for slaves to be able to do such things.

Wheatley began writing poetry around the age of 12. Her most famous poem was published in 1770 in America and Europe. It caught the attention of a countess. A countess is a member of royalty. This countess arranged and paid for a collection of Wheatley's poems to be published.

Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral. By Phillis Wheatley, Negro Servant to Mr. John Wheatley of Boston, in New England was published in 1773. It was a popular book. Many people were outraged that John Wheatley was keeping the author as a slave. He gave Wheatley her freedom in the fall of 1773.

Even after receiving her freedom, Wheatley continued living with her former master and writing poetry. Publishing was not so easy, though. The American Revolution had just begun in 1774. People were not thinking about poetry in the middle of the war. The American Revolution was the war in which America won its freedom from British rule.

The Wheatley family moved to Rhode Island in 1775 to get away from the war. Phillis Wheatley did not let the war discourage her from writing. She wrote a poem to George Washington. He was commanding the American troops. This poem is one of the earliest to ever praise Washington.

John Wheatley died in 1778. His wife had died four years earlier. The household was split up. Wheatley married John Peters, a free African American. Peters did not work much. Peters eventually left Wheatley. She was now left with children to support and no one to help her. Two of her babies died.

By 1779, she was trying to find someone to publish another poetry collection. She was never successful. However, two of her poems were published in pamphlets. Although people had praised her just 10 years earlier, Wheatley was now left alone. She spent her last days scrubbing floors in a rooming house. She died in Boston at the age of 31.

1755: The first English dictionary is published.

1763: The French and Indian War ends.

1768: Charlotte, North Carolina, is founded.

1773: The Boston Tea Party protests British taxes.

1776: The Declaration of Independence is signed.

1780: Pennsylvania becomes the first state to abolish slavery.

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Kids InfoBits - Document - Phillis Wheatley

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Phillis Wheatley was a slave. A slave is someone who is owned by another person and forced to perform labor. Wheatley became America's first black female poet. Phillis Wheatley was born around 1753 in Africa. She was kidnapped from Africa and sold as a slave in Boston at the age of eight.

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Welcome to Britannica Library , a safe, up-to-date, and age-appropriate information resource for Children, Young Adults, and Adults.

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Biography

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Barack's Parents

Barack Hussein Obama was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, on August 4, 1961. His mother was Stanley Ann Dunham, called Ann. She met Barack Obama's father, Barack Obama Sr., while she was taking a Russian language class at the University of Hawaii. Barack Sr. was of Luo ancestry. He had grown up herding goats in Kenya, but he earned a scholarship to the University of Hawaii. They married in 1961. Interracial marriage was illegal in most states in 1961.

Barack's Mom

Ann dropped out of college to care for Barack Jr. His father was accepted to a PhD program at Harvard University. His father studied economics because he dreamed of helping Kenya's economy. Baracks parents divorced in 1964, and Ann returned to the university. As a single parent, she needed food stamps and help from her family to do it, but she finished her degree in anthropology. She spent the next 20 years completing her PhD in anthropology. Her thesis was about blacksmithing in Indonesia.

Education and Early Job Experience

Barack moved to Indonesia when he was six. His mother had met Lolo Soetoro after she returned to college. He was from Java, an island that is part of Indonesia. He studied geography. Ann and Lolo were married in Hawaii. They moved to Indonesia in 1966 and had a daughter, Maya. Barack went to Indonesian and English-speaking schools there until he was 10. Then, he moved back to Hawaii to live with his grandparents. For grades 5-12, he went to Punahou School and graduated with honors in 1979. He was an excellent basketball player. Obama wrote about growing up in Hawaii: The opportunity that Hawaii offered - to experience a variety of cultures in a climate of mutual respect - became an integral part of my world view, and a basis for the values that I hold most dear. With the help of scholarships and student loans, he went to Occidental College in Los Angeles from 1979-1981, and then Columbia University in New York. He decided to major in political science, specializing in international relations.

After school, Barack moved to Chicago. From 1985-1988, he worked as a community organizer for the Developing Communities Project (DCP). DCP was founded by a group of churches to help people who lost their jobs when local steel plants were closed. Barack helped set up a job training program, a tutoring program for people who wanted to go to college, and a tenants' rights organization. After school, Barack moved to Chicago. From 1985-1988, he worked as a community organizer for the Developing Communities Project (DCP). DCP was founded by a group of churches to help people who lost their jobs when local steel plants were closed. Barack helped set up a job training program, a tutoring program for people who wanted to go to college, and a tenants' rights organization.Barack became interested in law and was accepted to Harvard Law School. He was the first African-American president of the Harvard Law Review. When he finished law school, he went back to Chicago where he was an attorney for victims of housing and employment discrimination. He also worked on voting rights legislation.

Marriage and Children

He taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School and married Michelle Robinson. They had met while he had a summer internship at a law firm. She was an attorney there who was asked to be his adviser. They were married in 1992 and had two daughters: Malia (born 1998) and Sasha (born 2001). Barack published his autobiography, Dreams From My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance, in 1995. It has since been printed in 10 languages. An audiobook version, which he narrated, received a Grammy Award for best spoken-word album.

First Political Roles

In 1996, he was elected to the Illinois State Senate. His district included both the area around the University of Chicago (Hyde Park) and some of the poorest ghettos on the South Side of Chicago. He helped pass ethics reform, cut taxes for working families, expanded health care services, and increased funding for early childhood education programs for the poor.

In 2004, he became known nationally when he gave a speech in support of John Kerry at the 2004 Democratic National Convention. That same year, Obama became the third African-American elected to the US Senate since Reconstruction. He created a website to track federal spending, helped pass lobbying reform, provided funding to lock up and destroy weapons of mass destruction in the former Soviet Union, and pushed for alternative energy development and for improved benefits for veterans.

President

In 2008, he defeated Hillary Clinton to become the Democratic candidate for president and defeated the Republican candidate, John McCain, to become the 44th President of the United States. He was the first African-American president. The next year, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. In 2010, he signed the Affordable Care Act into law, which gave millions of people access to health care who otherwise would not qualify. The Act actually required individuals to enroll in a health care program, or, pay a stiff penalty. The controversial act, which became known as "Obamacare", survived challenges in Congress that it inflated the nation's ballooning debt and violated the Constitution.

In 2011, United States Navy Seals killed Osama Bin Laden in Pakistan. Bin Laden was considered one of the most dangerous terrorists in American history and was thought to be the mastermind behind the 9/11 attacks. Obama also signed legislation to improve diplomatic relations with Cuba and Iran. On November 6, 2012, Barack Obama was elected to a second term as president after defeating the Republican candidate, Mitt Romney.

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President 44 - Barack Obama Biography - Presidents Series

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Barack Hussein Obama was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, on August 4, 1961. His mother was Stanley Ann Dunham, called Ann. She met Barack Obama's father, Barack Obama Sr., while she was taking a Russian language class at the University of Hawaii

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Biography

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This is a full biography on Booker T. Washington

Booker T. Washington

Booker T. Washington was born on April 5, 1856 in Franklin County, Virginia. Because his parents were slaves owned by the Burroughs family, Booker was immediately born into slavery. At the age of nine, Booker, his mother, and siblings were freed and moved to Kanawha County, West Virginia. At an early age, he worked with other recently freed slaves a salt-packer in a coal mine. Because he was hard-working and intelligent, he was hired as a houseboy by the wife of the mine's owner. Booker soon learned to read and write and was even allowed to attend school. At the age of sixteen, Booker enrolled at the Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute in Hampton, Virginia. The purpose of the Normal School was to train freed black men to become teachers. Washington excelled in his studies and soon came back to teach at Hampton. He was then recommended to become principal at Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, a new school organized by former slave Lewis Adams. Although he was only 25 years old, Washington became the first principal of the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute in 1881. The school would soon become known simply as Tuskegee Institute.

Much like the Normal School in Hampton, Tuskegee aimed to train black men to become teachers. It also provided instruction in the practical fields of masonry and carpentry. Washington believed that by teaching Black men such practical skills, they would be accepted by the White majority and eventually be granted full civil rights. Tuskegee thrived under Washington's leadership, and he soon made rich and important friends who generously donated to the school including Andrew Carnegie, Henry Rogers, and William Howard Taft. He even hired the famed scientist and professor George Washington Carver, who taught poor, Black southern farmers techniques to keep their soil fertile to maximize production (crop rotation).

Washington soon gained a reputation as an excellent orator (speaker). In 1895, he delivered a speech known as The Atlanta Compromise in which he urged the White majority to begin hiring Black workers rather than immigrants and that the very future of the American South was tied to the fate of the Black population and their treatment by the Whites. It is generally considered one of the most important civil rights speeches in American history. Many prominent members of the Black community, however, such as W.E.B Dubois, believed Washington's advocacy of the "industrial" education of Black Americans, and his seeming acceptance of segregation were more harmful than helpful. It was Dubois, in fact, who labeled him the "Great Accomodater," a reference to his acceptance of segregation and Jim Crow Laws.

In 1901, Washington authored Up From Slavery, a famous autobiography that detailed the obstacles he encountered to obtain his education and outlined his philosophies of education. In his book he penned the famous quote

"I have learned that success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome while trying to succeed."

Washington remained principal of Tuskegee Institute until his death in 1915. Today, he is remembered as one of the initial pioneers in the quest for Civil Rights.

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This is a full biography on Booker T. Washington Booker T. Washington was born on April 5, 1856 in Franklin County, Virginia. Because his parents were slaves owned by the Burroughs family, Booker was immediately born into slavery. At the age of nine, Booker, his mother, and siblings were freed and moved to Kanawha County, West Virginia.

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Sojourner Truth was an African American who was born into slavery. A slave is a person who is owned like property by another person. After she gained her freedom, she traveled the United States speaking out against slavery. Truth also spoke in favor of women's rights.

Truth was born a slave in New York in 1797. She was named Isabella Baumfree. She changed her name to Sojourner Truth in 1843. Truth came from a large family. When her owner died in 1806, she was sold. John Dumont bought her when she was 13.

In 1817, the state of New York passed a law ending slavery. Slaves would not be free until 1827. Truth waited ten years for her freedom. During this time, she married a slave named Thomas. They had five children. In 1826, Isabella learned that her master was planning to keep her as a slave. Truth took her baby daughter and escaped. She left behind her husband and other children.

Soon after her escape, Truth heard that her son Peter had been sold as a slave to a southern slave owner. Since slavery was no longer legal in New York, Truth knew that Peter could not be sold as a slave. In 1828, Truth sued the slave owner in court. She won the court case and Peter's freedom. Truth was the first African American woman to take a white man to court and win.

In 1843, Truth decided her mission was to travel throughout New England as a preacher. A preacher is a person who teaches about God and the Bible. In Massachusetts she met a group of abolitionists. Abolitionists were people who worked to end slavery. Truth joined the abolitionist cause. She spoke out against slavery wherever she went.

Truth published the story of her life in 1850. She also continued to travel and give speeches. During her travels, Truth met many women abolitionists. Women in those days were not allowed to vote or enter politics. So Truth began speaking for women's rights, too. Her most famous speech, "Ain't I a Woman?," was about women's rights. It was delivered at the 1851 women's rights convention in Ohio.

In 1861, the Civil War began in the United States. The war was between the northern United States and the southern United States. It was fought over slavery and other issues. The northern states wanted slavery to end. The southern states wanted to keep slavery. These states used slaves on its farms and in other businesses.

After the war began, Truth worked for the northern cause. She visited African American troops. She collected supplies for the North. In 1864, she met with U.S. president Abraham Lincoln. She stayed in Washington, D.C., and worked in hospitals and with freed slaves.

The Civil War ended in 1865. The North won the war and slavery ended. Truth continued to work with freed slaves. After the Civil War, African Americans still did not have the same rights as white people. When Truth was pulled off of a streetcar because of her color, she fought for and won the right for African Americans to ride Washington streetcars with whites. During the 1870s, Truth traveled throughout the United States. She gave speeches asking that African Americans and women be given the same rights as white men. She died at home in Battle Creek, Michigan, in 1883.

1797: Slave revolt near Richmond, Virginia, leads to execution of 40 African Americans.

1808: U.S. federal law bans importing African slaves. It is largely ignored.

1827: The Freeman's Journal is published; it is the first African American newspaper.

1849: Harriet Tubman escapes from slavery. She helps lead other slaves to freedom on the Underground Railroad.

1865: Thirteenth amendment ends slavery in the United States.

1883: The legislature of Washington Territory in the United States grants women the right to vote.

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Kids InfoBits - Document - Sojourner Truth

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Sojourner Truth was an African American who was born into slavery. A slave is a person who is owned like property by another person. After she gained her freedom, she traveled the United States speaking out against slavery. Truth also spoke in favor of women's rights.

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Biography

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This is a complete biography on Sojourner Truth.

Sojourner Truth

Sojourner Truth was born into slavery in 1797 in Ulster County, New York. Her given name was Isabella Baumfree, but she changed her name in 1843 when she claimed God had commanded her to spread her hope across the countryside.

In her early years, she was repeatedly sold from one family to another. In 1810, she was sold to the Dumont family where she experienced extreme cruelty. In 1826, one year before the state of New York abolished slavery, Isabella and her infant daughter left the Dumont estate and were taken in by Isaac and Maria Van Wagenen. It was here, where Sojourner experienced a religious awakening and became a devout Christian. On June 1, 1843, she became a Methodist and changed her name to Sojourner Truth. She eventually made her way to Massachusetts where she met influential suffragists and abolitionists such as William Lloyd Garrison and Frederick Douglass. Garrison was moved by her story and published The Narrative of Sojourner Truth: A Northern Slave. That same year, Truth spoke eloquently at the first National Women's Rights Conference in Worcester, Massachusetts, and at the Ohio Women's Rights Convention in 1851. Here, she delivered her most famous speech, now called "Ain't I a Woman" because her presence was so commanding that many of the audience members thought she must be a man. In this speech, she demanded equal rights for both women and blacks although her exact words are the subject of much debate.

As time progressed, Truth gained a reputation as a powerful speaker. She spoke in front of hundreds of audiences concerning slavery and suffrage. During the American Civil War, Truth helped to recruit black soldiers for the Union Army. She eventually moved to Michigan where she fought for the rights of former slaves. Truth died in Battle Creek, Michigan, on November 26, 1883. In 1999, a 12-foot statue of her was unveiled in Battle Creek's Monument Park. It was recently announced that Sojourner Truth along with other prominent suffragists will appear on the back of the United States $10 bill in 2020 - the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment, which gave women the right to vote in America.

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Sojourner Truth was born into slavery in 1797 in Ulster County, New York. Her given name was Isabella Baumfree, but she changed her name in 1843 when she claimed God had commanded her to spread her hope across the countryside.

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Video

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Sojourner Truth | Abolitionist and Women's Rights Activist Video | PBS LearningMedia

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An abolitionist and feminist during the nineteenth century, Sojourner Truth demanded not less discrimination, but no discrimination. Truth escaped enslavement and, despite being unable to read or write, rose to be a leader in the fight for equality and fair treatment for both women and African Americans.

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Welcome to Britannica Library , a safe, up-to-date, and age-appropriate information resource for Children, Young Adults, and Adults.

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Biography

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This is a full biography of Rosa Parks

Rosa Parks

Rosa's Early Years
Rosa Louise McCauley was born February 4, 1913, in Tuskegee, Alabama. Her father was a carpenter, and her mother was a teacher. When she was two, her parents separated. Her family moved to her grandparents' farm in Pine Level, Alabama. Both her grandparents were former slaves. Pine Level supported the idea of separate but equal. White children rode a bus to their newly built school while African-American children had to walk to a one-room schoolhouse that didn't have enough desks or supplies. Rosa quit high school when she was a junior to help take care of her grandmother. Afterwards, she worked as a seamstress in a shirt factory in Montgomery. In 1932, Rosa married Raymond Parks. He was a barber who was actively involved in the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).
Arrested for Refusing to Give up her Seat
On December 1, 1955, a bus driver asked Rosa to give her seat on a bus to a white male passenger. She refused. She was arrested and fined $10 plus court costs ($4) for violating a city ordinance that said the bus driver could assign seats. The Montgomery Women's Political Council printed and circulated a flyer throughout Montgomery's black community which read as follows:
"Another woman has been arrested and thrown in jail because she refused to get up out of her seat on the bus for a white person ... This has to be stopped. Negroes have rights too, for if Negroes did not ride the buses, they could not operate. Three-fourths of the riders are Negro ... We are ... asking every Negro to stay off the buses Monday in protest of the arrest and trial."

Montgomery Bus Boycott
This non-violent protest was successful. Dr. Martin Luther King led the Montgomery Improvement Association. They advertised at black churches and asked people to continue the boycott. Ninety percent of Montgomery's black citizens, estimated to be around 42,000 protesters, walked, carpooled or took cabs. In the beginning, the boycotters were willing to accept a compromise that was consistent with separate but equal rather than asking for complete integration. They asked for courteous treatment by bus operators, first-come, first-served seating on buses, and employment of African American bus drivers.
Unconstitutional!
The boycott lasted 381 days. The bus company lost a lot of money. The United States Supreme Court ruled that the Montgomery segregation law was unconstitutional, and on December 20, 1956, Montgomery officials were ordered to desegregate buses. The bus boycott demonstrated the power of nonviolent mass protest and brought Dr. Martin Luther King to national attention as one of the leaders of the cause. The civil rights movement led to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 - which made it illegal to refuse employment to an individual on the basis of race and made segregation at any public facility against the law.
Later Life
Rosa wrote four books, Rosa Parks: My Story, Quiet Strength, Dear Mrs. Parks: A Dialogue with Today's Youth and I Am Rosa Parks. At the ceremony where President Bill Clinton presented Mrs. Parks with the Medal of Freedom, she was called "the first lady of civil rights" and "the mother of the freedom movement". Time Magazine named her one of the 100 most influential people of the 20th century. She died October 24, 2005.
Rosa Parks Activities

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This is a full biography of Rosa Parks Rosa Louise McCauley was born February 4, 1913, in Tuskegee, Alabama. Her father was a carpenter, and her mother was a teacher. When she was two, her parents separated. Her family moved to her grandparents' farm in Pine Level, Alabama.

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This is a full biography of Thurgood Marshall.

Thurgood Marshall

Thurgood Marshall was born on July 2, 1908 in Baltimore, Maryland. He became interested in the U.S. Constitution at an early age when he was forced to read it after being punished by his second grade teacher. He graduated from Pennsylvania's Lincoln College in 1930, but was denied admission from the University of Maryland Law School because he was Black. Instead, he graduated from Howard University Law School in Washington, D.C. in 1933. Soon after graduation, he set up his own law practice in Baltimore.

In 1934, Marshall won his first major case. He argued for a Black Amherst College graduate who was denied admission to the University of Maryland Law School under its "Separate but Equal" rule. The graduate's name was Donald Gaines Murray. Murray, and all Black applicants, were forced to attend one of three "other" schools affiliated with the university. Marshall argued that the "other" schools did not offer law classes and were certainly not "equal" to the University of Maryland. In a surprise verdict, the judge agreed with Marshall and ruled that the university had no right to interpret the Constitution in a biased manner.

In 1940, Marshall was named Chief Counsel for the NAACP (National Associated for the Advancement of Colored People). He would continue to win major civil rights cases, including the landmark Brown vs The Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas (1954). At the time, Black students could not attend the same schools as White students. Instead, they atteneded schools that were deemed "separate but equal". In this case, Brown argued before the Supreme Court of the United States of America that "separate but equal" education could never truly be equal. Schools attended by Black students were poorly funded, had few resources, and were often in terrible condition. The Supreme Court sided with Marshall, and all American public schools were eventually integrated. From that point on, Black students were entitled to the same education, in the same facilities, as all other students.

In 1967, president Lyndon B. Johnson appointed Thurgood to the United States Supreme Court. He was the first Black person in history to sit on the Supreme Court. Marshall served on the Supreme Court for 24 years and became known as a crusader for civil rights and constitutional protection for all individuals. He was also known as a strong opponent of the death penalty. Thurgood retired from the Supreme Court in 1991. He died two years later in 1993.

Today, schools, highways, and public institutions are named for Thurgood Marshall. The same University of Maryland that denied him admission because of their "separate but equal" policy recently renamed their law library after him. In 2005, Baltimore/Washington International Airport was renamed Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport.

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This is a full biography of Thurgood Marshall. Thurgood Marshall was born on July 2, 1908 in Baltimore, Maryland. He became interested in the U.S. Constitution at an early age when he was forced to read it after being punished by his second grade teacher.

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The reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was one of the most influential and inspirational Civil Rights leaders in American history. Born in 1929, King graduated from Morehouse College in 1948 and then from the Crozer Theological Seminary with a Bachelor's in Divinity in 1951. He received a Ph.D in Systematic theology in 1955 from Boston University.

In 1954, King became pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama where he led the bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama after Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her seat on a public bus. The boycott lasted 381 days and resulted in King being arrested. Despite his arrest, the boycott ultimately resulted in the Supreme Court outlawing discrimination on intrastate buses.

After the boycott, King helped in the founding of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) which advocated the peaceful protest of Black churches concerning Civil Rights (especially in the American south). Primarily inspired by the non-violent protests conducted by Mahatma Gandhi in India, King was instrumental in helping his cause gain national attention through the media. Because of his efforts, civil rights became the top political issue of the early 1960's.

In 1963, King delivered the immortal speech "I have a Dream" in front of the Lincoln Memorial during the March on Washington. Over 250,000 people gathered around the National Mall in support. King's speech electrified the crowd and is considered one of the greatest speeches in American history. King later led protests and gave speeches for the African American right to vote, desegregation, and fair hiring. In 1964, King's hopes were realized when congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and then, the Voting Rights Act of 1965. On October 14, 1964, King was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his leadership in non-violent protest.

King became a prominent political figure and expressed his opposition of American involvement in the Vietnam War. In 1967, King called America "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today." Although King was always hated by southern white segregationists, his speech against America turned many in mainstream media against him. In 1968, while he was organizing a march to protest the working conditions of black sanitation workers in Memphis, Tennessee, he was assassinated by James Earl Ray at the Lorraine Hotel. Because he was under FBI surveillance at the time, many believe the agency was involved in the assassination (although there is no proof). Furthermore, some reports have suggested that the FBI, and its chief officer J. Edgar Hoover, threatened to reveal evidence of extra-marital affairs King engaged in if he refused to curtail his Civil Rights efforts.

300,000 people attended King's funeral. President Lyndon B. Johnson declared a national day of mourning. Today, numerous schools, buildings, and highways are named for Martin Luther King Jr. In 1986, a U.S. national holiday was established in honor of Martin Luther King Jr., which is called Martin Luther King Day. It is observed on the third Monday of January each year, around the time of King's birthday. On January 18, 1993, for the first time, Martin Luther King Day was officially observed in all 50 U.S. states. Below is an excerpt from King's famous I have a Dream speech.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal." I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slaveowners will be able to sit down together at a table of brotherhood. I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, a state sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice. I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor, having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification, one day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers. I have a dream today. I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together. This is our hope. This is the faith that I go back to the South with. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.

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The reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was one of the most influential and inspirational Civil Rights leaders in American history. Born in 1929, King graduated from Morehouse College in 1948 and then from the Crozer Theological Seminary with a Bachelor's in Divinity in 1951.

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Biography

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This is a biography on abolitionist and former slave Frederick Douglass.

Frederick Douglass

Early Years
Frederick Douglass was one of the most famous abolitionists in American history. He was born near Hillsboro, Maryland, in February of 1818. He was born into slavery and was separated from his mother when he was a baby. Douglass never knew his father and was moved to different residences throughout Maryland during his childhood.
Eyes Open
At the age of 12, Frederick began receiving reading lessons from the wife of his "master," even though it was illegal to teach slaves to read. Frederick proved to be a quick study and was soon reading newspapers, magazines, and books. Through his reading of political journals, Frederick realized the horrors of slavery. Indeed, many slaveholders endeavored to keep slaves illiterate so that they would not question their position and desire a better life.
Freedom

Douglass was soon sent away to another slave owner named Mr. Freeman. Mr. Freeman allowed Frederick to teach other slaves to read. Frederick taught over 40 slaves how to read passages from the New Testament. Other slave owners, however, became angry and destroyed the "congregation" in which Frederick taught. Four years later, in 1837, Frederick married a free black woman named Anne Murray. They would have five children. He gained his own freedom by escaping from captivity by dressing as a sailor and boarding a train at Havre de Grace, Maryland, near Baltimore. By the time he reached New York City he was a free man (though not officially a free man). The trip took less than a day.

Douglass Becomes a Prominent Abolitionist Voice
Douglass continued to Massachusetts and soon joined the abolitionist cause. Inspired by the famous abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, Douglass became an anti-slavery speaker and writer. At only 23 years of age, Douglass became a leading speaker for the cause and joined several movements including the American Anti-Slavery Society. He also supported the feminist cause and participated in the Seneca Falls Convention, a women's rights convention in 1848.
Courtesy of the People of Great Britain

In 1845, Douglass authored Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, an autobiography. The book was a critical success and became an instant best seller. The book was translated into three languages, and Douglass was invited to tour Ireland and Great Britain. Douglass spent two years in Europe lecturing on the horrors of slavery. Douglass became a popular figure in Great Britain, where his lectures were "standing room only." The people of Great Britain, roused by Douglass's speeches, raised money on his behalf to pay his "owner," Hugh Auld, for his official freedom. Auld was paid 700 pounds by the people of Great Britain and Douglass was officially a free man in America.

The North Star

When he returned to America, Douglass published The North Star and four other abolitionist newspapers under the motto "Right is of no Sex - Truth is of no Color - God is the Father of us all, and we are all brethren." He advocated equal education for black children, who received virtually no funding for education. As his reputation grew, Douglass became an advisor to Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson. Douglass led a growing movement that caused a split in the Abolitionist movement. Douglass and others believed the US Constitution was an anti-slavery document, while William Lloyd Garrison believed it was a pro-slavery document. In addition, Garrison believed that The North Star was competing for readers with his own newspaper, the National Anti-Slavery Standard.

An 1848 Edition of the North Star

Douglass Honors Lincoln

By the time of the start of the Civil War, Douglass was one of the nation's most prominent black men. Later, The North Star was merged with other newspapers and was called the Frederick Douglass Paper. Douglass believed the primary cause of the Civil War was to liberate the slaves. After Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, Douglass continued in the fight for the rights of the freed slaves. After the assassination of President Lincoln, Douglass gave an impromptu speech at his memorial service. While Douglass's speech mentioned Lincoln's shortcomings in the fight against slavery, he gave Lincoln much credit for the liberation of the slaves, "Can any colored man, or any white man friendly to the freedom of all men, ever forget the night which followed the first day of January 1863, when the world was to see if Abraham Lincoln would prove to be as good as his word?" The speech was followed by a rousing standing ovation. It is said that Mary Lincoln was so moved by the speech that she gave Douglass Lincoln's favorite walking stick.

After the Civil War

After the war, Douglass was made president of the Freedmen's Bureau Savings Bank and several other diplomatic positions. During reconstruction, Douglass frequently gave speaking tours, particularly at colleges and universities in New England. In 1877, he purchased his final home, which he named Cedar Hill, in the Anacostia section of Washington, DC. Today, the estate is known as the Frederick Douglass National Historic Site. Frederick's wife, Anne Murray, died in 1881, but he remarried Helen Pitts, a white abolitionist, in 1884. Despite the controversy that their marriage created (she was white and twenty years younger than he), the pair toured Europe in 1886 and 1887. In 1895, Douglass died of a heart attack at his home in Washington.

Frederick Douglass Activities

Frederick Douglass Printable Reading Comprehension - This resource includes a historical passage and seven multiple choice questions.

Frederick Douglass Online Reading Comprehension - This resource includes a historical passage and seven multiple choice questions. It gives immediate feedback and a score report.

Frederick Douglass Cloze Reading - This online cloze reading exercise requires students to type the words from the word bank into the correct fields in the paragraph. It gives immediate feedback.

Frederick Douglass Online Correct-me Passage - This fun activity requires students to correct a passage about the life of Frederick Douglass that has eight factual errors. Students first must discover the errors, then click on them and select the correct answer from the drop down menu.

Frederick Douglass Online Fact or Fiction - This fun activity requires students to read a Frederick Douglass passage and then, to sort 11 statements into those that are facts and those that are fiction. The program gives immediate feedback.

Frederick Douglass Fact or Fiction - Printable - This fun activity requires students to read a Frederick Douglass passage and then, to sort 11 statements into those that are facts and those that are fiction.

Frederick Douglass Text Elements (Headings) - This printable activity requires students to match the five different headings to their correct paragraphs.

Frederick Douglass Text Elements (Topic Sentence and Supporting Details) - This printable activity requires students to select three sentences which belong under a topic sentence from a group of even sentences. Students then must build the correct paragraph by putting the sentences in the correct order.

Frederick Douglass Text Structure (Conflict and Inferencing) - This printable activity requires students to make inferences to why various conflicts occurred in the life of Frederick Douglass.

Frederick Douglass Text Structure (Problem and Solution) - This printable activity requires students to fill in the problem or the solution in several statements involving Frederick Douglass.

The Abolitionist Hall-of-Fame Pretend you have been chosen to induct Frederick Douglass and Harriet Beecher Stowe into the fictional abolitionist hall-of-fame. Your first job, however, is to design a "flyer" that advertises the inductees and the reasons for their inductions. In the spaces provided continue the narratives that highlight each inductee's accomplishments. Secondly, design an abolitionist hall-of-fame medal each would receive upon their entry. Medals can include icons, symbols, color, and their names.

Frederick Douglass: Virtual History Teacher - Students play the role of a virtual history teacher and must grade responses to three questions about the life of Frederick Douglass. Each response is incomplete, and students must fill in the missing information in the "response" section. It's designed to reinforce the importance of elaboration. Students can use the Frederick Douglass biography for reference.

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This is a biography on abolitionist and former slave Frederick Douglass. Frederick Douglass was one of the most famous abolitionists in American history. He was born near Hillsboro, Maryland, in February of 1818. He was born into slavery and was separated from his mother when he was a baby.

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Biography

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This is a complete biography on Ruby Bridges.

Ruby Bridges

Ruby Bridges became a symbol and pioneer for the American civil rights movement at just six years old. She was born on September 8, 1954, as the oldest of five children. At two years old, her family moved to New Orleans, Louisiana, in search of better work opportunities. Bridges was born during the same year as Brown v. Board of Education, a famous Supreme Court case that made racial segregation in public schools unconstitutional. However, despite this court ruling, many schools continued to separate students based on race, forcing Black students to attend inferior institutions and giving them fewer opportunities for success.

Bridges attended segregated kindergarten in New Orleans. A year later, federal courts ordered New Orleans' schools to desegregate. To circumvent these laws, schools wrote challenging entrance exams that Black students had to pass to prove they were at the same academic level as white students. Ruby Bridges passed the exam along with five other students, gaining admission to the all-white William Franz Elementary School. Bridges, however, was the only one who ended up going to William Franz; two students decided to stay at their old school, and the other three were sent to another all-white school.

Bridges' first day of school was like no other. Ruby and her mother were escorted to school by four federal marshals every day, fighting through crowds of people screaming racial slurs and protesting her admission. Bridges later commented that the only moment that scared her throughout the protests was the sight of a woman holding a Black baby doll in a coffin. Her first day at school was spent solely in the principal's office due to the commotion caused by white parents pulling their children out of the school. She sat in a class of one with Barbara Henry, the only teacher who accepted her into the classroom; she ate lunch alone and played with her teacher at recess. Bridges' family suffered, too; her father lost his job and grocery stores refused to sell to her mother. Despite the oppression the Bridges family faced for nothing more than getting their daughter an education, Ruby Bridges never missed a day of school.

Over time, other Black students enrolled at the school, including Bridges' four nieces. Ruby Bridges helped pave the way for racial integration in schools, dealing with severe racism and continuing to push for her right to learn. She wrote about her experiences in two books and won the Carter G. Woodson Award; she also established the Ruby Bridges Foundation in 1999 to promote tolerance and push for change via education.

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This is a complete biography on Ruby Bridges. Ruby Bridges became a symbol and pioneer for the American civil rights movement at just six years old. She was born on September 8, 1954, as the oldest of five children. At two years old, her family moved to New Orleans, Louisiana, in search of better work opportunities.

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Biography

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Mr. Nussbaum People Jackie Robinson Activities

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Teachers and Parents: Use the coupon code "Valentine" on or before February 14 to receive 25% off your subscription to MrN 365! The code is valid for all subscription types.

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Biography

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Mr. Nussbaum People Harriet Tubman Activities

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This section provides numerous printable and online activities and resources related to Harriet Tubman.

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Biography

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Michelle LaVaughn Robinson and her brother Craig grew up as part of a working class family on the South Side of Chicago. Some of their ancestors were slaves. Her father set an example for hard work. He had multiple sclerosis, but he almost never missed a day of work. Their mother worked hard to take care of the home and family. Both children were raised with an emphasis on education. Their parents taught them to read by the age of 4, and they both skipped second grade. She said, "I was just a typical South Side little black girl. Not a whole lot of money. Going to the circus once a year was a big deal. Getting pizza on Friday was a treat. Summers were long and fun."

Michelle went to public schools in Chicago. By sixth grade, she began going to classes for gifted children. She went to Chicago's first magnet high school even though the commute to school took more than an hour. She took advanced placement classes, was a member of the National Honor Society, and was treasurer of the student council. When Michelle graduated in 1981, she was the salutatorian of her class. This means she had the second highest average.

Michelle went to Princeton University. Her senior thesis was "Princeton-Educated Blacks and the Black Community." She joined the Third World Center, a group that supported minority students. She helped run their day care center and do tutoring. She studied sociology and African-American studies graduating with honors in 1985.

Next, she went to Harvard Law School where she earned her degree in 1988. She helped low-income people with housing problems while she worked for the Harvard Legal Aid Bureau. She is only the third First Lady to earn an advanced college degree.

After graduating from Harvard Law School, she joined a Chicago law firm where she met Barack Obama. The firm asked her to be his adviser when he came there for a summer internship. They were married in 1992. This is how she describes his proposal: "We were at a restaurant having dinner to celebrate the fact that he had finished the bar. Then the waiter came over with the dessert and a tray. And there was the ring. And I was completely shocked."

Michelle left the law firm to work as an assistant to Chicago Mayor Daley, and then as an assistant commissioner of planning and development for Chicago. In 1993, she became executive director of non-profit program that helped young adults develop skills to be future leaders. In 1996, she took a job as associate dean of student services at the University of Chicago. She set up their first community-service program. In 2002, she became executive director of community relations and external affairs for the University of Chicago Hospitals.

Michelle and Barack Obama are raising their daughters, Malia (born 1998) and Natasha, known as Sasha (born 2001), according to the strong family values that Michelle learned as a child. Michelle's mother helps take care of the girls when both parents must campaign or be away for political reasons.

Michelle is an excellent campaign speaker who is known for her sense of fashion, her loving care of her family, and her excellent physical condition. As First Lady, Michelle has helped fight childhood obesity with her Let's Move! program. She and Dr. Jill Biden, the wife of the Vice President, also started Joining Forces to help military service members and their families with employment, education and better health care. Michelle often goes to public schools, to stress the importance of education and volunteer work. With student volunteers, she planted a 1,100-square-foot garden and set up beehives on the South Lawn of the White House. She wrote a book, American Grown: The Story of the White House Kitchen Garden and Gardens Across America, about the garden.

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Michelle LaVaughn Robinson and her brother Craig grew up as part of a working class family on the South Side of Chicago. Some of their ancestors were slaves. Her father set an example for hard work. He had multiple sclerosis, but he almost never missed a day of work.

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Main Ideas

Katherine Johnson worked as a mathematician for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) for many years. NASA works on space travel.

One of Johnson's main jobs was to figure out how to get a person into space and back to Earth safely. Her work helped send the first American into space.

Early Life

Johnson was born Katherine Coleman on August 26, 1918. Her parents were Joshua and Joylette Coleman.

Johnson grew up in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia. She was a very good student. She had a special talent for math. She finished middle school when she was only ten years old.

Schools were segregated back then. This meant black students and white students went to different schools. Johnson's town did not have a high school for African American students. So Johnson took high school classes at West Virginia State College. She graduated high school from this college.

Then she continued to study there. She studied math and French. She earned degrees in both in 1937.

Early Career

Johnson's first job after college was teaching. She taught at a public school for African Americans in Virginia.

In 1939, Johnson entered graduate school for math at West Virginia State. People attend graduate school to earn advanced degrees. Johnson was one of three African Americans chosen to integrate the school. This meant the school would let African Americans attend with white students. But Johnson left the school after a short time to start a family.

Helping with Space Travel

In 1953, Johnson was hired by the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA). This agency came before NASA started. NACA did research into aircraft.

Johnson was hired to work as a research mathematician, or "human computer." Human computers solved very difficult math problems by hand. These math problems helped make space travel possible.

Johnson was soon moved to the Flight Research Division. This part of the agency worked on projects related to space travel. Its goal was to put a person in space.

Most of the people from NACA became part of NASA in 1958. Johnson became part of NASA too.

NASA succeeded in putting a person into space in 1961. This was when astronaut Alan Shepard became the first American in space. Johnson used math to figure out how to get Shepard into space and back to Earth safely.

Later Johnson helped with John Glenn's mission to orbit, or circle, Earth. NASA used electronic computers to plot his path. These computers were very new, though. Glenn did not trust them completely. But he trusted Johnson. He asked her to do the math by hand to make sure the numbers were right.

Johnson worked on other famous missions. She helped with the Apollo 11 mission. Neil Armstrong became the first person to walk on the moon during that mission. The Apollo 13 mission had problems during its flight into space. Johnson's math helped bring those astronauts home safely.

Honored by a President

Johnson worked for NASA for many years. She retired in 1986.

She has received many honors for her work. One important one is the Presidential Medal of Freedom. This is the highest honor a US citizen who is not in the military can receive. President Barack Obama presented the medal to Johnson in 2015.

NASA named a building after Johnson in 2016. It is the Katherine G. Johnson Computational Research Facility in Langley, Virginia. Johnson turned 100 in 2018.

Personal Life

Johnson was not only a NASA mathematician but also a wife and mother. She married James Francis Goble in 1939. They had three daughters together. Goble died in 1956. Johnson remarried in 1959 to James A. Johnson.

Honored in Film

A 2016 movie called Hidden Figures focuses on the lives of three African American human computers. One of these is Katherine Johnson. The other women honored in the film were Mary Jackson and Dorothy Vaughan.

Hidden Figures shows the women's struggles and successes at NASA. Johnson is played by actress Taraji P. Henson. Actress Janelle Monáe plays Jackson. Actress Octavia Spencer plays Vaughan. The movie is based on the book Hidden Figures by Margot Lee Shetterly.

In Johnson's Time

1918: World War I ends.

1927: Charles Lindbergh becomes the first person to fly alone across the Atlantic Ocean.

1941: The United States enters World War II.

1969: Neil Armstrong becomes the first person to set foot on the moon.

1983: Astronaut Sally Ride becomes the first American woman in space.

1997: Scientists in Scotland successfully clone a sheep.

2008: Barack Obama becomes the first African American president of the United States.

2016: Swimmer Michael Phelps wins his 28th Olympic medal, the most of any Olympian in history.

PERSONAL INFORMATION:

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Kids InfoBits - Document - Katherine Johnson

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Katherine Johnson worked as a mathematician for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) for many years. NASA works on space travel. One of Johnson's main jobs was to figure out how to get a person into space and back to Earth safely. Her work helped send the first American into space.

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Welcome to Britannica Library , a safe, up-to-date, and age-appropriate information resource for Children, Young Adults, and Adults.

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Main Ideas

Dorothy Vaughan was an American mathematician. She worked for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). The work she did helped send astronauts into space. Vaughan became the first African American manager at NASA.

Early Life

Vaughan was born Dorothy Johnson on September 20, 1910. Her parents were Leonard and Anne Johnson. The Johnson family moved from Kansas City, Missouri, to Morgantown, West Virginia. Vaughan was seven at the time.

Vaughan graduated from high school in 1925. She then went to college at Wilberforce University in Ohio. She studied math. Vaughan graduated from college in 1929.

Early Career

Vaughan began her career as a high school math teacher. She taught for eleven years. In 1943 the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) in Langley, Virginia, hired Vaughan. Vaughan worked as a research mathematician. Research mathematicians were known as "human computers." They had to solve very difficult math problems by hand.

The state of Virginia still had segregation laws when NACA hired Vaughan. Segregation laws kept whites and African Americans separate. The two groups had to work in different areas. They were not allowed to eat in the same cafeteria or use the same restrooms.

Vaughan worked in the West Area Computing Unit. Most of the people she worked with were African American women. The human computers in her group were very skilled. The math problems they solved helped make space travel possible.

Becoming a Manager

In 1949, Vaughan received a promotion. She became the manager, or leader, of the West Area Computing Unit. She was the first African American at NACA to become a manager. In 1958, NACA was renamed NASA. Segregation ended about the same time. Vaughan and others from the West Area Computing Unit began working alongside their white coworkers.

NASA engineers (people who design and build machines and structures) trusted and respected Vaughan. Sometimes they asked her to personally handle challenging work. Other times they asked her to recommend others for certain jobs.

Vaughan later became an talented programmer. A programmer is a person who creates and tests programs for computers. She worked on a launch vehicle program. Launch vehicles carry spacecraft into space. She also worked on projects that sent astronauts into space. Vaughan retired from NASA in 1971. She had worked for NACA and NASA for 28 years.

Personal Life

Vaughan was not only a NASA mathematician but also a wife and mother. She married Howard Vaughan in 1932. They had four children together. Vaughan passed away on November 10, 2008. She was 98 years old.

Remembered in Film

A 2016 movie called Hidden Figures focuses on the lives of three African American computers, including Dorothy Vaughan. The other women remembered in the film are Mary Jackson and Katherine Johnson.

Hidden Figures shows the women's struggles and successes at NASA. One successful moment is when they help astronaut John Glenn safely return to Earth during a mission.

Vaughan is played by actress Octavia Spencer in the movie. Actress Taraji P. Henson plays Johnson. Actress Janelle Monáe plays Jackson. The movie is based on the book Hidden Figures by Margot Lee Shetterly.

In Vaughan's Time

1912: The passenger ship Titanic sinks in the Atlantic Ocean.

1920: Women earn the right to vote in the United States.

1941: The United States enters World War II.

1969: Neil Armstrong becomes the first person to set foot on the moon.

1980: The wreck of the Titanic is found.

1990: The Hubble Space Telescope is launched.

1997: Scientists in Scotland successfully clone a sheep.

2008: Barack Obama becomes the first African American president of the United States.

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Kids InfoBits - Document - Dorothy Vaughan

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Dorothy Vaughan was an American mathematician. She worked for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). The work she did helped send astronauts into space. Vaughan became the first African American manager at NASA. Vaughan was born Dorothy Johnson on September 20, 1910. Her parents were Leonard and Anne Johnson.

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Main Ideas

Dorothy Vaughan was an American mathematician. She worked for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). The work she did helped send astronauts into space. Vaughan became the first African American manager at NASA.

Early Life

Vaughan was born Dorothy Johnson on September 20, 1910. Her parents were Leonard and Anne Johnson. The Johnson family moved from Kansas City, Missouri, to Morgantown, West Virginia. Vaughan was seven at the time.

Vaughan graduated from high school in 1925. She then went to college at Wilberforce University in Ohio. She studied math. Vaughan graduated from college in 1929.

Early Career

Vaughan began her career as a high school math teacher. She taught for eleven years. In 1943 the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) in Langley, Virginia, hired Vaughan. Vaughan worked as a research mathematician. Research mathematicians were known as "human computers." They had to solve very difficult math problems by hand.

The state of Virginia still had segregation laws when NACA hired Vaughan. Segregation laws kept whites and African Americans separate. The two groups had to work in different areas. They were not allowed to eat in the same cafeteria or use the same restrooms.

Vaughan worked in the West Area Computing Unit. Most of the people she worked with were African American women. The human computers in her group were very skilled. The math problems they solved helped make space travel possible.

Becoming a Manager

In 1949, Vaughan received a promotion. She became the manager, or leader, of the West Area Computing Unit. She was the first African American at NACA to become a manager. In 1958, NACA was renamed NASA. Segregation ended about the same time. Vaughan and others from the West Area Computing Unit began working alongside their white coworkers.

NASA engineers (people who design and build machines and structures) trusted and respected Vaughan. Sometimes they asked her to personally handle challenging work. Other times they asked her to recommend others for certain jobs.

Vaughan later became an talented programmer. A programmer is a person who creates and tests programs for computers. She worked on a launch vehicle program. Launch vehicles carry spacecraft into space. She also worked on projects that sent astronauts into space. Vaughan retired from NASA in 1971. She had worked for NACA and NASA for 28 years.

Personal Life

Vaughan was not only a NASA mathematician but also a wife and mother. She married Howard Vaughan in 1932. They had four children together. Vaughan passed away on November 10, 2008. She was 98 years old.

Remembered in Film

A 2016 movie called Hidden Figures focuses on the lives of three African American computers, including Dorothy Vaughan. The other women remembered in the film are Mary Jackson and Katherine Johnson.

Hidden Figures shows the women's struggles and successes at NASA. One successful moment is when they help astronaut John Glenn safely return to Earth during a mission.

Vaughan is played by actress Octavia Spencer in the movie. Actress Taraji P. Henson plays Johnson. Actress Janelle Monáe plays Jackson. The movie is based on the book Hidden Figures by Margot Lee Shetterly.

In Vaughan's Time

1912: The passenger ship Titanic sinks in the Atlantic Ocean.

1920: Women earn the right to vote in the United States.

1941: The United States enters World War II.

1969: Neil Armstrong becomes the first person to set foot on the moon.

1980: The wreck of the Titanic is found.

1990: The Hubble Space Telescope is launched.

1997: Scientists in Scotland successfully clone a sheep.

2008: Barack Obama becomes the first African American president of the United States.

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Kids InfoBits - Document - Dorothy Vaughan

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Dorothy Vaughan was an American mathematician. She worked for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). The work she did helped send astronauts into space. Vaughan became the first African American manager at NASA. Vaughan was born Dorothy Johnson on September 20, 1910. Her parents were Leonard and Anne Johnson.

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Welcome to Britannica Library , a safe, up-to-date, and age-appropriate information resource for Children, Young Adults, and Adults.

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In 2010, First Lady Michelle Obama created a program called Let's Move! to encourage kids to exercise and eat healthy foods. To show the importance of eating fresh fruits and vegetables, she planted a garden outside the White House.

This fall, the First Lady showed off her garden to a team of Scholastic News Kid Reporters. She talked about life in the White House and her plans for when her family moves out in January.

Kid Reporter Gabriel Ferris: How does your family participate in the Let's Move! campaign?

Michelle Obama: We planted this beautiful White House Kitchen Garden. We try to eat healthy and exercise. So we try to practice what we preach, and hopefully, we're setting an example for the rest of the nation in how we eat and live.

Kid Reporter Stone Shen: What is it like living in the White House?

Michelle Obama: It's just fun living in a home that's a National Historic Park. The South Lawn is your backyard, and there's a swimming pool here. There are tennis courts and basketball courts.

You have to get used to living with a lot of people. We've got a lot of staff that supports us. There are housekeepers. There are chefs. Those people are like our family. It's been an honor to be here.

Kid Reporter Maxwell Surprenant: What's your advice for kids who dream of becoming president?

Michelle Obama: You've got to be focused on your education, because the president has to know a lot. You don't have to be a straight-A student to be president. But you should be curious about the world and have empathy.

Kid Reporter Erik Weibel: What do you plan to do next?

Michelle Obama: I don't know yet. [But] I hope to always be working on issues of health in this nation, particularly with kids. And I hope to be talking about education and encouraging kids to take their education seriously.

And then I want to sleep a little bit more. (Laughter) I want to walk out of my house without having to tell 20 people. Moving freely will be a big goal!

empathy (EHM-puh-thee) noun, the ability to understand or feel what another person is experiencing

Caption: First Lady Michelle Obama helps a boy dig up sweet potatoes in the White House garden.

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Kids InfoBits - Document - A chat with the first lady: Michelle Obama speaks with our Kid Reporters at the White House

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In 2010, First Lady Michelle Obama created a program called Let's Move! to encourage kids to exercise and eat healthy foods. To show the importance of eating fresh fruits and vegetables, she planted a garden outside the White House. This fall, the First Lady showed off her garden to a team of Scholastic News Kid Reporters.

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Welcome to Britannica Library , a safe, up-to-date, and age-appropriate information resource for Children, Young Adults, and Adults.

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Colin Powell served in the U.S. military for thirty-five years. In 2001 he became the first African American U.S. secretary of state.

Early Years

Colin Luther Powell was raised in the South Bronx in New York City. His parents had moved to the United States from Jamaica. Powell attended public schools and enrolled at the City College of New York. There he joined the Reserve Officers' Training Corps (ROTC), a leadership-training program run by the U.S. Army. He achieved the ROTC's top rank of cadet colonel. After graduation he became a second lieutenant in the U.S. Army.

A Life of Service

Powell served in the Vietnam War during the 1960s. The Vietnam War was a war fought between Communist North Vietnam and South Vietnam. The United States supported South Vietnam. Powell was wounded twice. He received his second injury in a helicopter crash. Though he was hurt himself, he rescued two soldiers from the wreck. For his bravery, Powell was awarded several medals.

After the war Powell went back to college. He received his master's degree in business administration. He graduated in 1971 and went to work in the White House Office of Management and Budget. Powell then completed his military education at the National War College in 1976. He served in several command positions for the U.S. Army. He also worked in the Defense Department while Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan were presidents.

Under Reagan Powell became the National Security Council adviser in 1987. His job was to make sure the president received accurate information to make good decisions about foreign policy. He also was responsible for keeping America safe. Powell earned a reputation for being fair.

Promoted to Joint Chiefs of Staff

President George H.W. Bush appointed Powell chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in 1989. This is the highest position in the military. Powell was the youngest man and the first African American to ever hold this position. His responsibilities included managing the military' budget and making sure the military and White House are communicating.

Powell helped the president make many important decisions during the Persian Gulf War in 1991. He helped organize the military's efforts during the war. He proved himself to be a strong leader not only during peacetime, but also in time of war. Powell retired from his position of Joint Chiefs of Staff in 1993.

Secretary of State

Powell already had a successful public speaking career when he published his autobiography, My American Journey, in 1995. He toured the country promoting his book. People encouraged him to run for president, but he decided against it.

In 2000 Powell supported candidate George W. Bush for president. After Bush won he asked Powell to be his secretary of state. The secretary of state helps the president make decisions about how to work with other countries. The secretary of state also meets with leaders of other countries when the president of the United States cannot. Powell was the first African American to hold this office.

Resignation

When Bush decided to invade Iraq in 2003, Powell's chief duty was to get support from other countries for the invasion. He showed the United Nations alleged (supposed) evidence that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. Weapons of mass destruction can include missiles or bombs that can hurt a large number of people. These weapons also can include chemical or biological weapons that can kill in mass numbers or make people very sick.

After the invasion, no weapons of mass destruction were found. Powell has been criticized for giving false information. In reply Powell said U.S. intelligence agencies had given him incorrect information. He has called for a reorganization of these agencies. Powell resigned as secretary of state in 2004. He was replaced by Condoleezza Rice, former national security adviser.

After Washington

Respected for his military and public service and for his personal integrity, Powell is often sought-out for his opinions and advice by the president, Congress, and news companies. Many people asked him to run for president in 2008, but instead he endorsed Barack Obama for president. To endorse someone means to approve of that person and recommend him or her.

Powell did a speaking series with Rudy Giuliani in 2006 called "Get Motivated." He is a board director for Revolution Health, a company that manages an online social network about health issues.

With his wife, Alma, Powell founded America's Promise Alliance, which helps make sure kids graduate from high school. After leaving Washington, Powell has been able to dedicate more time to this work. The biography Soldier: The Life of Colin Powll came out in 2007. A biography is a true story book about a person's life.

In Powell's day:

1941: Japan attacks Pearl Harbor, and the United States enters World War II.

1955: Rosa Parks makes history by refusing to give up her bus seat to a white man in Montgomery, Alabama.

1969: Astronaut Neil Armstrong becomes the first man to walk on the moon.

1975: The Vietnam War ends.

1988: Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation.

1991: Soviet Union breaks up into independent states.

2001: Terrorists attack the United States on September 11.

2008: Barack Obama is elected first African American president of the United States.

2011: Last U.S. troops are withdrawn from Iraq.

PERSONAL INFORMATION:

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Colin Powell served in the U.S. military for thirty-five years. In 2001 he became the first African American U.S. secretary of state. Colin Luther Powell was raised in the South Bronx in New York City. His parents had moved to the United States from Jamaica.

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Born: November 30, 1924 in Brooklyn, New York, United States

Died: 2005 in Ormond Beach, Florida, United States

Other Names: Chisholm, Shirley Anita St. Hill; St. Hill, Shirley Anita

Occupation: Congressional representative (U.S. federal government)

Full Text: COPYRIGHT UXL, a part of Gale, Cengage Learning

"I was the first American citizen to be elected to Congress in spite of the double drawbacks of being female and having skin darkened by melanin. When you put it that way, it sounds like a foolish reason for fame."

The first black woman elected to Congress, the feisty and clear-sighted Shirley Anita St. Hill Chisholm viewed her election not so much as a breakthrough but as a comment on the barriers that still had to be removed. "That I am a national figure," she said, "because I was the first person in 192 years to be at once a congressman, black, and a woman proves, I think, that our society is not yet either just or free."

Shirley Chisholm was born on November 30, 1934, in New York City. Both of her parents were immigrants to the United States. Her father, Charles St. Hill, was from British Guiana; her mother, Ruby (Seale) St. Hill, was from Barbados. Charles was a factory worker, and Ruby worked as a seamstress and domestic to help provide for the family. The young couple had a hard time making ends meet, and in the hopes of saving some of their sparse earnings, they sent their children back to the Caribbean. When Shirley was three, she and her two younger sisters, Muriel and Odessa, went to live with their grandmother in Barbados, where they stayed for seven years.

Education on the island was British-style and extremely thorough. "If I speak and write easily now," Chisholm once said, "that early education is the main reason." When she returned to New York at the age of ten, she found it difficult to adjust. To her annoyance, she was put into a class with children two years her junior, because she knew so little about American history or geography. Chisholm caught up in just over a year, and by the time she graduated from high school she was offered scholarships to Vassar and Oberlin colleges. But she enrolled at Brooklyn College, which was less costly.

At college, as at school, Chisholm was a hard worker. Her parents had brought up their children very strictly, emphasizing obedience and duty and taking the children to church three times each Sunday. But they were also warm and caring parents, providing plenty of encouragement and support. The household may have been short of money, but they were rich in the things that mattered.

Introduced to local politics

At Brooklyn College in the 1940s, Chisholm majored in psychology and planned to become a teacher, since teaching seemed to be the only profession open to black women.

Chisholm graduated with a B.A. with honors in 1946, then taught nursery school while studying for a master's degree in elementary education at Columbia University. During her college years, Chisholm joined the Harriet Tubman Society. "There," she said, "I first heard people other than my father talk about white oppression, black racial consciousness, and black pride." She resolved to help change things for the better. In 1949 she married fellow Columbia student Conrad Chisholm, and in 1952 she graduated with her M.A.

While teaching and working as a New York City education consultant, Chisholm became involved in local politics, successfully campaigning to get black lawyer Lewis S. Flagg elected as a district court judge in New York in 1953. This was the boost Chisholm needed to seriously consider a career for herself in politics. When one of her teachers had suggested such a career years ago at Brooklyn College, Chisholm had pointed out, "I have two handicaps, I am black and I am a woman." A decade later such handicaps no longer seemed insuperable.

Shirley Chisholm went to Washington

In 1960 Chisholm helped form the Unity Democratic Club to get more black people elected to the 17th Assembly District of New York State, and in 1964 Chisholm offered herself as Democratic candidate for the Assembly. Despite some opposition, she was chosen as the candidate. Knowing that it would be a battle to win the election, she went all out, speaking on street corners and in neighborhood halls, talking to Puerto Ricans in Spanish (which she had learned at college), and successfully winning over the voters, especially the women. The result was a landslide victory for Chisholm. She won by a huge margin, gaining 18,151 votes against the Republican candidate's 1,893 votes and the Liberal's 913.

Chisholm served on the New York State Assembly for the next four years, gaining a reputation as a hard-working, no-nonsense legislator. She introduced more than fifty bills and was particularly pleased with two of those that were passed. One of them set up a program called SEEK, which sought out disadvantaged children in the schools in order to help them get to college. The other introduced the state's first unemployment insurance program for domestic workers.

Before the 1968 congressional elections, a new 12th District was created in New York, and since it had a large black population, Chisholm decided to contest the seat. She knew it would not be easy, for the Republican candidate was popular civil rights leader James Farmer, and he had far more campaign funds that she could hope to raise. Undaunted, she campaigned under the slogan "Fighting Shirley Chisholm: Unbought and Unbossed" and was elected to Congress by 34,885 votes to Farmer's 13,777.

Helped the poor and disadvantaged

Chisholm served in the House of Representatives from 1968 to 1983. As the first black congresswoman she made it her business to sponsor bills that helped the poor and disadvantaged and to push for equality for ethnic minorities and for women. Meanwhile, as "fighting Shirley Chisholm," she remained true to her beliefs, risking unpopularity for causes she believed in. In her first speech in the House she spoke out against the Vietnam War.

In 1972 she campaigned for the Democratic presidential nomination. Although it became clear, early on in the campaign, that she stood no chance of winning, she did not consider she had failed. As she said in her 1973 book, The Good Fight, "The mere fact that a black woman dared to run for President, seriously, not expecting to win but sincerely trying to, is what it was all about. 'It can be done.' That was what I was trying to say."

After being twice reelected to Congress, Chisholm retired in 1983, because her second husband, Arthur Hardwick, was seriously ill. She then returned to teaching, serving as Purington Professor at Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts for the next four years. Chisholm has said she does not want to be remembered as the first black congresswoman or even as the first black presidential candidate. She would rather be remembered "as a woman who had the perseverance to fight on behalf of the female population and the black population."

Chisholm died January 1, 2005. She was 80 years old.

FURTHER READINGS:

Brownmiller, Susan, Shirley Chisholm: A Biography, Doubleday, 1970.

Chisholm, Shirley, The Good Fight, Harper and Row, 1973.

Ehrenhalt, Alan, ed., Politics in America: Members of Congress in Washington and At Home, Congressional Quarterly, 1981.

Flynn, James J., Negroes of Achievement in Modern America, Dodd, Mead, 1970.

Marshall-White, Eleanor, Women: Catalysts for Change: Interpretive Biographies of Shirley St. Hill Chisholm, Sandra Day O'Connor, and Nancy Landon Kassebaum, Vantage Press, 1991.

Pollack, Jill S., Shirley Chisholm, Franklin Watts, 1994.

Scheader, Catherine, Shirley Chisholm: Teacher and Congresswoman, Enslow, 1990.

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Kids InfoBits - Document - Shirley Chisholm

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Born: November 30, 1924 in Brooklyn, New York, United States Died: 2005 in Ormond Beach, Florida, United States Other Names: Chisholm, Shirley Anita St. Hill; St. Hill, Shirley Anita Occupation: Congressional representative (U.S.

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Welcome to Britannica Library , a safe, up-to-date, and age-appropriate information resource for Children, Young Adults, and Adults.

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Born: March 11, 1926 in Linden, Alabama, United States

Died: April 17, 1990 in Atlanta, Georgia, United States

Other Names: Abernathy, Ralph D.; Abernathy, Ralph David

Full Text: COPYRIGHT UXL, a part of Gale, Cengage Learning

Ralph Abernathy was known as the "other side" of Martin Luther King, and there is much evidence that King could not have succeeded without him.

Inspired by the success of the Montgomery, Alabama bus boycott protesting segregated public transit, Ralph David Abernathy and Martin Luther King Jr. founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) in 1957 to promote civil rights for black Americans. Following King's assassination in 1968, Abernathy took over the leadership of the SCLC and doggedly carried on the campaign. Though Abernathy retired from the SCLC in 1977 for an unsuccessful run for Congress, he continued the work he and King began until his death in 1990.

Abernathy has sometimes been called the "other side" of his longtime friend and associate King, for Abernathy found it easy to relate to the poor and working-class, while King, at least in the early years, appealed more to educated middle-class people in the cities. Together, the two men were a powerful team, attracting thousands of followers. King would have had far less impact in American society and government without Abernathy at his side.

Born on March 11, 1926, in Linden, Alabama, Abernathy was the tenth of twelve children born to a farmer, William Abernathy, and Louivery (Bell) Abernathy. Originally named David, he was nicknamed Ralph by one of his sisters. Ralph aspired early to be a preacher, but once he graduated from Linden Academy, the local black high school, he was drafted into the U.S. Army to serve in the last months of World War II.

After the war, Abernathy enrolled at Alabama State College in Montgomery, where he was elected president of the student council and led a successful protest to gain better living conditions for the students. He was ordained a Baptist minister in 1948, and graduated with a B.S. in mathematics in 1950. He earned an M.A. in sociology from Atlanta University the following year.

While Abernathy was in Atlanta he first heard King preach. Abernathy was impressed, and after the service he introduced himself to King. "Even then, I could tell he was a man with a special gift from God," Abernathy later wrote of King in his autobiography And the Walls Came Tumbling Down. Within a few years, the two young ministers were to meet again-with fateful results.

In 1951 Abernathy became pastor of First Baptist Church in Montgomery. Three years later King became pastor of another black church in Montgomery, Dexter Avenue Baptist. The two men became fast friends, as did their families. Abernathy married Juanita Jones in 1952, and they had four children during the following years.

Sharing a mutual interest in the fledgling civil rights movement, Abernathy and King discussed how to go about bringing an end to segregation in an orderly, nonviolent manner. "While [King] was talking about strategy ... I was thinking about tactics," Abernathy would later write.

Abernathy and King first worked together to end segregation in 1955 when Rosa Parks, a black seamstress tired after a long day's work, refused to give up her seat to a white passenger on a Montgomery bus. She was arrested and fined, as were many other blacks who had previously refused to do the same, but Parks's arrest touched a nerve in the community, for she was quiet, well-respected in the community, and active in the local NAACP.

The local Women's Political Council called for the black people of Montgomery to protest by refusing to ride the buses. King and Abernathy took up this idea and made it work. They formed the Montgomery Improvement Association, and held meetings to spread the word about the boycott and had ministers explain from the pulpits how the boycott was to be conducted. They arranged for taxis to take people to work at reduced fares and, later, when the city objected to the practice, they organized carpools. The boycott began on December 5, 1955, and despite threats and other intimidation, it lasted for more than one year, until the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that segregation on Montgomery buses was illegal.

Encouraged by the success of the boycott, King and Abernathy were now determined to push for civil rights for blacks in all areas of life. In 1957 they arranged a meeting in Atlanta, Georgia, with other Southern ministers and formed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, an organization of churches and civic groups that would lead nonviolent desegregation protests across the South.

King was elected president of the SCLC and Abernathy secretary-treasurer. All those present at the meeting were aware of the dangers they faced, knowing that their nonviolent protests were likely to be met with violence. Indeed, while Abernathy was at the SCLC meeting, his home and the First Baptist Church were bombed, as well as other homes and churches in Montgomery. Although his wife and children escaped unharmed, it was a chill warning.

In 1960 King moved to Atlanta to devote more time to the SCLC, and the following year Abernathy joined him there, becoming pastor of West Hunter Street Baptist Church. During the next few years, the two ministers devoted themselves to the SCLC, leading nonviolent marches, sit-ins, and rallies in the major cities of the South. They were arrested a number of times and threatened often, but they attracted support across the nation. Little by little the laws were changed.

By the mid-1960s the civil rights movement had achieved most of its aims, but African Americans were still disadvantaged and many were very poor. To draw attention to the poverty, King organized a Poor People's Campaign in 1968, intending to march on Washington, D.C., but he was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee, before he could carry out his plan. It was left to Abernathy to complete the task.

Abernathy had been vice-president of the SCLC since 1965, and on King's death he was elected president. In May 1968 he led the march to Washington to protest for economic and civil rights. He and his followers set up a campsite called Resurrection City near the Lincoln Memorial, to which poor and homeless people came from across the country. The results of their efforts were disappointing, largely because Congress was preoccupied with the problems of the Vietnam War. After little more than a month, Abernathy disbanded Resurrection City.

As president of the SCLC, Abernathy led several other desegregation protests in the South, including a major one in Charleston, South Carolina. He resigned in 1977 to run for Congress, but he failed to gain the seat. Undaunted, he formed an organization called Foundation for Economic Enterprises Development (FEED) to teach blacks job skills, continued his ministerial duties at his church, and lectured across the United States. He published his autobiography, And the Walls Came Tumbling Down, in 1989. He died the following year on April 17 in Atlanta.

FURTHER READINGS:

Abernathy, Donzaleigh, Partners to History: Martin Luther King, Jr., Ralph David Abernathy, and the Civil Rights Movement, General Publishing Group, 1998.

Abernathy, Ralph David, And the Walls Came Tumbling Down: An Autobiography, Harper, 1989.

Branch, Taylor, Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954-63, Touchstone, 1988.

Reef, Catherine, Ralph David Abernathy, Dillon Press, 1995.

Voices of Freedom: An Oral History of the Civil Rights Movement From the 1950s Through the 1980s, edited by Henry Hampton and Steve Fayer, with Sarah Flynn, Bantam, 1990.

The Walking City: The Montgomery Bus Boycott, 1955-56, edited by David J. Garrow, Carlson, 1989.

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Kids InfoBits - Document - Ralph David Abernathy

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Born: March 11, 1926 in Linden, Alabama, United States Died: April 17, 1990 in Atlanta, Georgia, United States Other Names: Abernathy, Ralph D.; Abernathy, Ralph David Full Text: COPYRIGHT UXL, a part of Gale, Cengage Learning Ralph Abernathy was known as the "other side" of Martin Luther King, and there is much evidence that King could not have succeeded without him.

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Welcome to Britannica Library , a safe, up-to-date, and age-appropriate information resource for Children, Young Adults, and Adults.

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Rosa Parks stood up for herself at a time when no one else would. Her courage started a movement that led to greater equality for African Americans.
Fun Facts

Rosa Parks was born February 4, 1913 in Tuskegee, Alabama. Her parents separated when she was two years old. She and her mother went to live with her grandparents, the Edwards, on a farm in Pine Level, Alabama.

Rosa's grandparents had both been slaves. They believed strongly in equality. Rosa's grandfather once stood on his front step holding a shotgun while the Klu Klux Klan marched down the street.

Rosa's mother taught her to read when she was very little. Rosa attended segregated schools. White children went to one school and black children went to another - even if they lived close to each other. The schools for African American children lacked basic supplies like desks and books.

Rosa attended high school but dropped out to take care of her mother and grandmother, who were ill. She began working in a shirt factory.

She married Raymond Parks in 1932. Raymond was a member of the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People). He encouraged Rosa to graduate from school, which she did.

Rosa went to work as a seamstress in a department store. She rode the bus to and from work every day.

In those days, the buses were segregated too. White people rode on the front of the bus; black people rode on the back of the bus. A sign was placed on a seat in the middle of the bus showing which section was which.

One afternoon, Rosa was on the bus when it filled with white people. Several of them were standing up in the aisle. The bus driver came back and moved the sign back one row. All the black people who had been sitting in those seats had to stand up. Three people moved, but Rosa said no. The bus driver asked her why she wouldn't move. She said that she didn't think she should have to.

The bus driver called the police who arrested Rosa and took her to the police station. She was released later that night.

On the morning of Rosa Parks' trial, over 500 people came to the courthouse to show their support for her. At the same time, black leaders in the community organized a boycott of the Montgomery bus system. Black people in the city vowed that they would not ride the buses until segregation ended. Instead they rode bikes, took cabs, or walked to work - sometimes for as many as 20 miles.

The bus boycott lasted almost an entire year. The buses were empty and bus drivers didn't get paid.

Some white people were angry about the boycott. They burned black churches and bombed the homes of E.D. Nixon and Martin Luther King, Jr., two leaders of the movement.

Black leaders took the matter to court, arguing that segregation was against the constitution. In November, 1956, the United States Supreme Court ruled in favor of them. Segregation was outlawed.

Vocabulary

1. Segregation: the practice of separating or excluding people because of their race

2. Equality: equal treatment and rights

Questions and Answers
Question: What happened to Rosa after the boycott?

Answer: Both she and her husband were fired from their jobs. They moved with Rosa's mother to Detroit, Michigan. Rosa wrote two books about her experiences and received many awards for her work, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Rosa died in 2005.
Learn More
about Rosa Parks' remarkable life.

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Rosa Parks stood up for herself at a time when no one else would. Her courage started a movement that led to greater equality for African Americans. Fun Facts Rosa Parks was born February 4, 1913 in Tuskegee, Alabama. Her parents separated when she was two years old.