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Poet/Writer

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

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Olympian

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Kids learn about Jesse Owens's biography and his track and field career. Fun facts about the Olympic athlete.

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Poet/Writer

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Langston Hughes (1902 - May 22, 1967) was an American poet, novelist, playwright and short story writer. Hughes was one of the writers and artists whose work was called the Harlem Renaissance.

Hughes grew up as a poor boy from Missouri, the descendant of African people who had been taken to America as slaves. At that time, the term used for African-Americans was " negro" which means a person with black skin. Most "negroes" did not remember or think about their link with the people of Africa, even though it was a big influence on their culture and, in particular, their music. Hughes was unusual for his time, because he went back to West Africa to understand more about his own culture. Through his poetry, plays, and stories, Hughes helped other black Americans to see themselves as part of a much bigger group of people, so that now the term "African-American" is used with pride.

Hughes became a famous writer, but all his life he remembered how he started out, and he helped and encouraged many other struggling writers.

Langston Hughes was born on February 1, 1902 in Joplin, Missouri. His parents were James Hughes and Carrie Langston Hughes who was a teacher. Langston's father, James Hughes, was so upset about the racism towards African-Americans that he left his family and moved to Mexico. During his childhood, Hughes was cared for by his grandmother, in Lawrence, Kansas while his mother worked to support the family. Langston's grandmother was a great story teller. She told stories that made him feel proud to be an African-American.

After his grandmother died, Hughes and his mother moved about 12 times until settling in Cleveland, and then, as a teenager went to live in Lincoln, Illinois with his mother, who had remarried. He was often left alone because his mother was at work. Even though his childhood was difficult and had lots of changes, he was able to use these things in the poetry that he started to write while he was at school. He never forgot the stories of his grandmother and tried to help other African-Americans when they were having problems. These were the people that he later wrote about in his own stories.

When Hughes went to school in Lincoln, there were only two African-American children in the class. The teacher talked to them about poetry. She said that what a poem needed most was rhythm. Langston later said that he had rhythm in his blood because, "as everyone knows", all African-Americans have rhythm. The children made him the "class poet".

At high school in Cleveland, Ohio, Langston learned to love reading. He loved the poetry of the American poets Paul Laurence Dunbar and Carl Sandburg. He wrote articles for the school newspaper, he edited the school yearbook and he wrote his first short stories and plays.

Hughes' father and Columbia University

When Langston Hughes was 17, he went to spend some time with his father in Mexico. He was very unhappy there. Hughes could not understand how his father felt. He said: "I had been thinking about my father and his strange dislike of his own people. I didn't understand it, because I was a Negro, and I liked Negroes very much!"
Hughes later wrote this poem:

When he was finished at high school in Lincoln in 1920, he went back to Mexico, to ask his father to pay for him to go to university. Hughes' father was a lawyer and a wealthy landowner. He could afford to send his son to university but he made difficulties about it. He said that Hughes could only go to university if he went overseas and studied engineering. Hughes wanted to go to a university in the US. After a time, they made an agreement that he should go to Columbia University but study engineering, not an arts degree. He went to Columbia in 1921 but left in 1922, partly because of the racism in the university.

Until 1926 Hughes did many different types of work. In 1923 he went as a crewman on the ship "S.S.Malone" and went to West Africa and Europe. He left the ship and stayed for a short time in Paris where he joined several other African-Americans who were living there. In November 1924, Hughes returned to the U.S. to live with his mother in Washington, D.C.. In 1925 he got a job as an assistant to Carter G. Woodson who worked with the Association for the Study of African American Life and History. Hughes did not enjoy his work because he did not have enough time to write, so he left and got a job as a "busboy", wiping tables and washing dishes at a hotel. Hughes is sometimes called "The Busboy Poet". Meanwhile, some of his poems were published in magazines and were being collected together for his first book of poetry. While he was working at the hotel he met the poet Vachel Lindsay, who helped to make Hughes known as a new African-American poet.

In 1926 Hughes began studying at Lincoln University, Pennsylvania. He had help from patrons, Amy Spingarn, who gave him $300 and "Godmother" Charlotte Osgood Mason. Hughes graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in 1929 and became a Doctor of Letters in 1943. He was also given an honorary doctorate by Howard University. For the rest of his life, except when he travelled to the Caribbean or West Indies, Hughes lived in Harlem, New York.

Langston Hughes sometimes went out with women, but he never married. People who have studied his life and poetry are sure that he was homosexual. In the 1930s it was harder to be open about being gay than it is nowadays. His poetry has lots of symbols which are used by other homosexual writers. Hughes thought that men who had very dark skin were particularly beautiful. It seems from his poetry that he was in love with an African-American man. He also wrote a story which might tell of his own experience. Blessed Assurance is the story of a father's anger because his son is "queer" and acts like a girl.

Hughes' life and work were an important part of the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s, alongside those Zora Neale Hurston, Wallace Thurman, Countee Cullen, Richard Bruce Nugent, and Aaron Douglas, who together started a magazine Fire!! Devoted to Younger Negro Artists. Hughes and these friends did not always agree with the ideas of some of the other African-American writers who were also part of the Harlem Renaissance because they thought their ideas were Middle class and that they treated others who had darker skin, less education and less money with discrimination. All his life, Hughes never forgot the lessons that he learned about poor and uneducated African-Americans in the stories that his grandmother told.

In 1960, the NAACP awarded Hughes the "Spingarn Medal" for "distinguished achievements by an African American". Hughes became a member of the National Institute of Arts and Letters in 1961. In 1973, an award was named after him, the "Langston Hughes Medal", awarded by the City College of New York.

Hughes became a famous American poet, but he was always ready to help other people, particularly young black writers. He was worried that many young writers hated themselves, and expressed these feelings to the world. He tried to help people feel pride, and not worry about the prejudice of other people. He also tried to help young African-Americans not to express hatred and prejudice towards white Americans.
Hughes wrote:

"The younger Negro artists who create now intend to express

our individual dark-skinned selves without fear or shame.

If white people are pleased we are glad. If they are not,

it doesn't matter. We know we are beautiful. And ugly, too.

The tom-tom cries, and the tom-tom laughs. If colored people

are pleased we are glad. If they are not, their displeasure

doesn't matter either. We build our temples for tomorrow,

strong as we know how, and we stand on top of the mountain

free within ourselves."
(A tom-tom is an African drum)

On May 22, 1967, Hughes died in New York City at the age of 65 after having surgery for prostate cancer. His ashes are buried under the floor of the Langston Hughes Auditorium in the Arthur Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem. Over his ashes is a circle with a beautiful African design called "Rivers." At the centre of the design are words from a poem by Hughes: "My soul has grown deep like the rivers."

The Weary Blues. Knopf, 1926

Fine Clothes to the Jew. Knopf, 1927

The Negro Mother and Other Dramatic Recitations, 1931

Dear Lovely Death, 1931

The Dream Keeper and Other Poems. Knopf, 1932

Scottsboro Limited: Four Poems and a Play. N.Y.: Golden Stair Press, 1932

Shakespeare in Harlem. Knopf, 1942

Freedom's Plow. 1943

Fields of Wonder. Knopf,1947

One-Way Ticket. 1949

Montage of a Dream Deferred. Holt, 1951

Selected Poems of Langston Hughes. 1958

Ask Your Mama: 12 Moods for Jazz. Hill & Wang, 1961

The Panther and the Lash: Poems of Our Times, 1967

The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes. Knopf, 1994

Let America Be America Again 2005

Not Without Laughter. Knopf, 1930

The Ways of White Folks. Knopf, 1934

Simple Speaks His Mind. 1950

Laughing to Keep from Crying, Holt, 1952

Simple Takes a Wife. 1953

Sweet Flypaper of Life, photographs by Roy DeCarava. 1955

Simple Stakes a Claim. 1957

Tambourines to Glory (book), 1958

The Best of Simple. 1961

Simple's Uncle Sam. 1965

Something in Common and Other Stories. Hill & Wang, 1963

Short Stories of Langston Hughes. Hill & Wang, 1996

Non-fiction

The Big Sea. New York: Knopf, 1940

Famous American Negroes. 1954

Marian Anderson: Famous Concert Singer. 1954

I Wonder as I Wander. New York: Rinehart & Co., 1956

A Pictorial History of the Negro in America, with Milton Meltzer. 1956

Famous Negro Heroes of America. 1958

Fight for Freedom: The Story of the NAACP. 1962

Major plays

Mule Bone, with Zora Neale Hurston. 1931

Mulatto. 1935 (renamed The Barrier, an opera, in 1950)

Troubled Island, with William Grant Still. 1936

Little Ham. 1936

Emperor of Haiti. 1936

Don't You Want to be Free? 1938

Street Scene (opera)|Street Scene, contributed lyrics. 1947

Tambourines to glory. 1956

Simply Heavenly. 1957

Black Nativity. 1961

Five Plays by Langston Hughes. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1963.

Jericho-Jim Crow. 1964

Popo and Fifina, with Arna Bontemps. 1932

The First Book of the Negroes. 1952

The First Book of Jazz. 1954

The First Book of Rhythms. 1954

The First Book of the West Indies. 1956

First Book of Africa. 1964

Related pages

Images for kids

Hughes at Lincoln University in 1928

Hughes's ashes are interred under a cosmogram medallion in the foyer of the Arthur Schomburg Center in Harlem

The Ways of White Folks, Hughes' first short story collection

The poem "Danse Africaine" as wall poem on a wall of the building at the Nieuwe Rijn [nl] 46, Leiden ( Netherlands)

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Langston Hughes (1902 - May 22, 1967) was an American poet, novelist, playwright and short story writer. Hughes was one of the writers and artists whose work was called the Harlem Renaissance. Hughes grew up as a poor boy from Missouri, the descendant of African people who had been taken to America as slaves.

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Women's Rights Activist

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Kids learn about the biography of Sojourner Truth, an enslaved person who escaped, fought for her son in the courts, and then became an abolitionist working for the freedom of all of the enslaved.

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Baseball

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Kids learn about the biography of Jackie Robinson, the first African-American to play Major League Baseball. He was a Hall of Fame player for the Brooklyn Dodgers who wore number 42.

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Boxer

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Kids learn about the biography of Muhammad Ali. Also known as Cassius Clay, he was one of the world's greatest heavyweight boxers and an Olympic gold medal winner.

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Artist

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Carl Van Vechten/Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. ( LC-USZ62-42507)

(1911-88). American painter Romare Bearden was one of the most important African American artists of the 20th century. He is best known for his collages, which he created largely from painted paper, magazine clippings, and bits of fabric. These works were done in a style influenced by Cubism. Based largely on his boyhood memories of life in the rural South and in New York during the Harlem Renaissance, Bearden's works vividly capture aspects of American black culture. In addition to being an artist, Bearden was an art historian, teacher, composer, and author. He also owned and operated an art gallery.

Romare Howard Bearden was born on September 2, 1911, in Charlotte, North Carolina. When he was a small boy, he and his family moved to the North, as did many other African Americans in what became known as the Great Migration. Bearden grew up in New York City and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Bearden graduated with a degree in education from New York University in 1935. The following year, he studied with artist George Grosz at the Art Students League in New York City. At the same time, Bearden became a social worker for the New York City Department of Social Services. He continued working at that job until the late 1960s. In 1943 Bearden studied at Columbia University in New York City. Bearden's early artworks were paintings done in a realistic style. They often had a religious theme, such as in The Annunciation (1942).

Bearden served in the military during World War II. After the war, he lived in Paris, France (1950-51), studying at the Sorbonne. Bearden traveled extensively in Europe. During this period he developed his mature, semiabstract collage style. Bearden first achieved recognition for his art in the mid-1940s. By the 1960s he was considered the top collage artist in the United States.

Carol M. Highsmith Archive/Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. (LC-DIG-highsm-02829)

Ritual, music, and family are common themes in Bearden's artwork. The complexity of his works lies in their poetic abstraction. Layered fragments of color and pattern evoke the rhythms, textures, and mysteries of a people's experience-for example, in Family (1969).

Bearden was also a songwriter and book illustrator. He occasionally designed sets for the Alvin Ailey American Dance Company. Bearden died on March 12, 1988, in New York City. In 1990 the Romare Bearden Foundation was established to promote his work and to support African American artists.

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(1911-88). American painter Romare Bearden was one of the most important African American artists of the 20th century. He is best known for his collages, which he created largely from painted paper, magazine clippings, and bits of fabric. These works were done in a style influenced by Cubism.

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Runner

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Wilma Rudolph was an outstanding athlete in track and field events. She was the first U.S. woman to win three gold medals in a single Olympics. People called her the world's fastest woman.

Wilma Glodean Rudolph was born on June 23, 1940, near Clarksville, Tennessee. As a child Wilma had many illnesses, including polio. This disease made her unable to walk without a leg brace or a special shoe. By age 12, however, she could walk normally.

Rudolph became a graceful yet powerful sprinter. She won a bronze medal at the 1956 Olympics. She won her three gold medals at the 1960 Olympics. She set world records in the 100- and 200-meter dashes and in the 4 × 100-meter relay.

After these victories Rudolph's hometown of Clarksville planned a welcome-home parade for her. Rudolph, who was African American, refused to participate unless Blacks and whites could attend the event together. This was the first time that both races had gathered together in Clarksville.

Rudolph retired from running in 1962. She later became a track coach and a national sports commentator. She died on November 12, 1994, in Brentwood, Tennessee.

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Wilma Rudolph was an outstanding athlete in track and field events. She was the first U.S. woman to win three gold medals in a single Olympics. People called her the world's fastest woman. Wilma Glodean Rudolph was born on June 23, 1940, near Clarksville, Tennessee. As a child Wilma had many illnesses, including polio.

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Educator

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Biography: Booker T. Washington for Kids

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Kids learn about the biography of Booker T. Washington, educator and civil rights leader who opened the Tuskegee college for African Americans.

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Early Life

Born on a farm near Diamond, Missouri, the exact date of Carver's birth is unknown, but it's thought he was born in January or June of 1864.

Nine years prior, Moses Carver, a white farm owner, purchased George Carver's mother Mary when she was 13 years old. The elder Carver reportedly was against slavery, but needed help with his 240-acre farm.

When Carver was an infant, he, his mother and his sister were kidnapped from the Carver farm by one of the bands of slave raiders that roamed Missouri during the Civil War era. They were resold in Kentucky.

Moses Carver hired a neighbor to retrieve them, but the neighbor only succeeded in finding George, whom he purchased by trading one of Moses' finest horses. Carver grew up knowing little about his mother or his father, who had died in an accident before he was born.

Moses Carver and his wife Susan raised the young George and his brother James as their own and taught the boys how to read and write.

James gave up his studies and focused on working the fields with Moses. George, however, was a frail and sickly child who could not help with such work; instead, Susan taught him how to cook, mend, embroider, do laundry and garden, as well as how to concoct simple herbal medicines.

At a young age, Carver took a keen interest in plants and experimented with natural pesticides, fungicides and soil conditioners. He became known as the "the plant doctor" to local farmers due to his ability to discern how to improve the health of their gardens, fields and orchards.

Education

At age 11, Carver left the farm to attend an all-Black school in the nearby town of Neosho.

He was taken in by Andrew and Mariah Watkins, a childless Black couple who gave him a roof over his head in exchange for help with household chores. A midwife and nurse, Mariah imparted on Carver her broad knowledge of medicinal herbs and her devout faith.

Disappointed with the education he received at the Neosho school, Carver moved to Kansas about two years later, joining numerous other Blacks who were traveling west.

For the next decade or so, Carver moved from one Midwestern town to another, putting himself through school and surviving off of the domestic skills he learned from his foster mothers.

He graduated from Minneapolis High School in Minneapolis, Kansas, in 1880 and applied to Highland College in Kansas (today's Highland Community College). He was initially accepted at the all-white college but was later rejected when the administration learned he was Black.

In the late 1880s, Carver befriended the Milhollands, a white couple in Winterset, Iowa, who encouraged him to pursue a higher education. Despite his former setback, he enrolled in Simpson College, a Methodist school that admitted all qualified applicants.

Carver initially studied art and piano in hopes of earning a teaching degree, but one of his professors, Etta Budd, was skeptical of a Black man being able to make a living as an artist. After learning of his interests in plants and flowers, Budd encouraged Carver to apply to the Iowa State Agricultural School (now Iowa State University) to study botany.

Carver Makes Black History

In 1894, Carver became the first African American to earn a Bachelor of Science degree. Impressed by Carver's research on the fungal infections of soybean plants, his professors asked him to stay on for graduate studies.

Carver worked with famed mycologist (fungal scientist) L.H. Pammel at the Iowa State Experimental Station, honing his skills in identifying and treating plant diseases.

In 1896, Carver earned his Master of Agriculture degree and immediately received several offers, the most attractive of which came from Booker T. Washington (whose last name George would later add to his own) of Tuskegee Institute (now Tuskegee University) in Alabama.

Washington convinced the university's trustees to establish an agricultural school, which could only be run by Carver if Tuskegee was to keep its all-Black faculty. Carver accepted the offer and would work at Tuskegee Institute for the rest of his life.

Tuskegee Institute

Carver's early years at Tuskegee were not without hiccups.

For one, agriculture training was not popular-Southern farmers believed they already knew how to farm and students saw schooling as a means to escape farming. Additionally, many faculty members resented Carver for his high salary and demand to have two dormitory rooms, one for him and one for his plant specimens.

Carver also struggled with the demands of the faculty position he held. He wanted to devote his time to researching agriculture for ways to help out poor Southern farmers, but he was also expected to manage the school's two farms, teach, ensure the school's toilets and sanitary facilities worked properly, and sit on multiple committees and councils.

Carver and Washington had a complicated relationship and would butt heads often, in part because Carver wanted little to do with teaching (though he was beloved by his students). Carver would eventually get his way when Washington died in 1915 and was succeeded by Robert Russa Moton, who relieved Carver of his teaching duties except for summer school.

What Did George Washington Carver Invent?

By this time, Carver already had great successes in the laboratory and the community. He taught poor farmers that they could feed hogs acorns instead of commercial feed and enrich croplands with swamp muck instead of fertilizers. But it was his ideas regarding crop rotation that proved to be most valuable.

Through his work on soil chemistry, Carver learned that years of growing cotton had depleted the nutrients from soil, resulting in low yields. But by growing nitrogen-fixing plants like peanuts, soybeans and sweet potatoes, the soil could be restored, allowing yield to increase dramatically when the land was reverted to cotton use a few years later.

To further help farmers, he invented the Jessup wagon, a kind of mobile (horse-drawn) classroom and laboratory used to demonstrate soil chemistry.

Carver: The Peanut Man

Farmers, of course, loved the high yields of cotton they were now getting from Carver's crop rotation technique. But the method had an unintended consequence: A surplus of peanuts and other non-cotton products.

Carver set to work on finding alternative uses for these products. For example, he invented numerous products from sweet potatoes, including edible products like flour and vinegar and non-food items such as stains, dyes, paints and writing ink.

But Carver's biggest success came from peanuts.

In all, he developed more than 300 food, industrial and commercial products from peanuts, including milk, Worcestershire sauce, punches, cooking oils, salad oil, paper, cosmetics, soaps and wood stains. He also experimented with peanut-based medicines, such as antiseptics, laxatives and goiter medications.

It should be noted, however, that many of these suggestions or discoveries remained curiosities and did not find widespread applications.

In 1921, Carver appeared before the Ways and Means Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives on behalf of the peanut industry, which was seeking tariff protection. Though his testimony did not begin well, he described the wide range of products that could be made from peanuts, which not only earned him a standing ovation but also convinced the committee to approve a high protected tariff for the common legume.

He then became known as "The Peanut Man."

Fame and Legacy

In the last two decades of his life, Carver lived as a minor celebrity but his focus was always on helping people.

He traveled the South to promote racial harmony, and he traveled to India to discuss nutrition in developing nations with Mahatma Gandhi.

Up until the year of his death, he also released bulletins for the public (44 bulletins between 1898 and 1943). Some of the bulletins reported on research findings but many others were more practical in nature and included cultivation information for farmers, science for teachers and recipes for housewives.

In the mid-1930s, when the polio virus raged in America, Carver became convinced that peanuts were the answer. He offered a treatment of peanut oil massages and reported positive results, though no scientific evidence exists that the treatments worked (the benefits patients experienced were likely due to the massage treatment and attentive care rather than the oil).

Carver died on January 5, 1943, at Tuskegee Institute after falling down the stairs of his home. He was 78 years old. Carver was buried next to Booker T. Washington on the Tuskegee Institute grounds.

Monument

Soon after, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed legislation for Carver to receive his own monument, an honor previously only granted to presidents George Washington and Abraham Lincoln.

The George Washington Carver National Monument now stands in Diamond, Missouri. Carver was also posthumously inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame.

Quotes

"Where there is no vision, there is no hope."

"How far you go in life depends on your being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving and tolerant of the weak and strong. Because someday in your life you will have been all of these."

"When you can do the common things of life in an uncommon way, you will command the attention of the world."

Sources

George Washington Carver; American Chemical Society.
George W. Carver (1865? - 1943); The State Historical Society of Missouri.
George Washington Carver; Science History Museum.
George Washington Carver, The Black History Monthiest Of Them All; NPR.
George Washington Carver And The Peanut; American Heritage.

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George Washington Carver: Facts, Inventions & Quotes | HISTORY

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George Washington Carver, born into slavery, was a scientist and inventor who developed hundreds of products using peanuts (but not peanut butter) and other crops.

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Influencer & Talk Show Host

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Oprah Gail Winfrey ( born Orpah Gail Winfrey; January 29, 1954) is an American talk show host, television producer, actress, author, and media proprietor. She is best known for her talk show, The Oprah Winfrey Show, broadcast from Chicago, which ran in national syndication for 25 years, from 1986 to 2011. Dubbed the "Queen of All Media", she was the richest African-American of the 20th century. She was once the world's only black billionaire. By 2007, she was often ranked as the most influential woman in the world.

Orpah Gail Winfrey was born on January 29, 1954, in Kosciusko, Mississippi, to an unmarried teenage mother. Her mother, Vernita Lee (1935-2018), was a housemaid.

Winfrey's biological father is usually noted as Vernon Winfrey (c. 1933-2022), a coal miner turned barber turned city councilman who was in the Armed Forces when she was born. However, Mississippi farmer and World War II Veteran Noah Robinson Sr. (born c. 1925) has claimed to be her biological father.

After Winfrey's birth, her mother traveled north, and Winfrey spent her first six years living in rural poverty with her maternal grandmother, Hattie Mae (Presley) Lee (April 15, 1900 - February 27, 1963). Her grandmother was so poor that Winfrey often wore dresses made of potato sacks, for which other children made fun of her.

At age six, Winfrey moved to an inner-city neighborhood in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, with her mother. At the age of eight, she was baptized in a Baptist church. In 1962, Winfrey was temporarily sent to live with her father Vernon in Nashville, Tennessee, as her mother had to work a lot and could not care of Oprah and her other kids well enough.

Winfrey attended Lincoln High School in Milwaukee. When she got successful in the Upward Bound program, she was transferred to the affluent suburban Nicolet High School. At this time, Winfrey was continually reminded of her poverty as she rode the bus to school with fellow African-Americans, some of whom were servants of her classmates' families.

She began to rebel and steal money from her mother in an effort to keep up with her free-spending peers. As a result, her mother once again sent her to live with Vernon in Nashville, although this time she did not take her back. Vernon was strict but encouraging, and made her education a priority. Winfrey became an honors student, was voted Most Popular Girl, and joined her high school speech team at East Nashville High School, placing second in the nation in dramatic interpretation.

She had won an oratory contest and got a full scholarship to Tennessee State University, a historically black institution. She studied communication. However, she did not deliver her final paper and receive her degree until 1987, by which time she was a successful television personality.

The first episode The Oprah Winfrey Show was broadcast nationwide on September 8, 1986 and displaced Donahue as the number-one daytime talk show in America.

In the early years of The Oprah Winfrey Show, the program was classified as a tabloid talk show. In the mid-1990s, Winfrey began to host shows on broader topics such as heart disease, geopolitics, spirituality, and meditation. She interviewed celebrities on social issues they were directly involved with, such as cancer, charity work, or personal struggles, and hosted televised giveaways.

The viewership for The Oprah Winfrey Show was highest during the 1991-92 season, when about 13.1 million U.S. viewers were watching each day. By 2003, ratings declined to 7.4 million daily viewers. Ratings briefly rebounded to approximately 9 million in 2005 and then declined again to around 7.3 million viewers in 2008, though it remained the highest rated talk show.

In 2008, Winfrey's show was airing in 140 countries internationally and seen by an estimated 46 million people in the US weekly. According to the Harris poll, Winfrey was America's favorite television personality in 1998, 2000, 2002-06, and 2009. Winfrey was especially popular among women, Democrats, political moderates, Baby Boomers, Generation X, Southern Americans, and East Coast Americans.

The series finale of The Oprah Winfrey Show aired on May 25, 2011.

Other ventures

In addition to her talk show, Winfrey also produced and co-starred in the drama miniseries The Women of Brewster Place (1989) and its short-lived spin-off, Brewster Place. As well as hosting and appearing on television shows, Winfrey co-founded the women's cable television network Oxygen which was the initial network for her Oprah After the Show program from 2002 to 2006 before moving to Oprah.com when Winfrey sold her stake in the network. She is also the president of Harpo Productions ( Oprah spelled backwards), a film and TV production company behind The Oprah Winfrey Show, Dr. Phil, Rachael Ray, The Dr. Oz Show and many others. She also moderated three ABC Afterschool Special s from 1992 to 1994.

On January 15, 2008, Winfrey and Discovery Communications announced plans to change Discovery Health Channel into a new channel called OWN: Oprah Winfrey Network. It was scheduled to launch in 2009 but was delayed, and actually launched on January 1, 2011.

In January 2017, CBS announced that Winfrey would join as a special contributor on the Sunday evening news magazine program starting in September 2017. Winfrey left 60 Minutes by the end of 2018.

In June 2018, Apple announced a multi-year content partnership with Winfrey, in which it was agreed that Winfrey would create new original programs exclusively for Apple's streaming service, Apple TV+. The first show under the deal, Oprah's Book Club, premiered on November 1, 2019. Oprah's Book Club is based on the segment of the same name from The Oprah Winfrey Show. The second show under the deal, Oprah Talks COVID-19, debuted on March 21, 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic. A third show, The Oprah Conversation debuted on July 30, 2020, with Winfrey "[continuing] to explore impactful and relevant topics with fascinating thought leaders from all over the world".

"The Oprah Effect"

The power of Winfrey's opinions and endorsement to influence public opinion, especially consumer purchasing choices, has been dubbed "the Oprah Effect". The effect has been documented or alleged in domains as diverse as book sales, beef markets, and election voting. Late in 1996, Winfrey introduced the Oprah's Book Club segment to her television show. The segment focused on new books and classics and often brought obscure novels to popular attention. The book club became such a powerful force that whenever Winfrey introduced a new book as her book-club selection, it instantly became a best-seller; for example, when she selected the classic John Steinbeck novel East of Eden, it soared to the top of the book charts. Being recognized by Winfrey often means a million additional book sales for an author.

Personal life

At 13, Winfrey ran away from home. When she was 14, she became pregnant, but her son was born prematurely and died shortly after birth.

In the 1970s, Winfrey had a romantic relationship with John Tesh. In the mid-1980s, Winfrey briefly dated movie critic Roger Ebert.

Winfrey and her partner Stedman Graham have been together since 1986. They were engaged to be married in November 1992, but the ceremony never took place.

Close friends

Winfrey's best friend since their early twenties is Gayle King. King was formerly the host of The Gayle King Show and is currently an editor of O, the Oprah Magazine.

Winfrey has also had a long friendship with Maria Shriver, after they met in Baltimore. Winfrey considered Maya Angelou, author of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, her mentor and close friend; she called Angelou her "mother-sister-friend". Winfrey hosted a week-long Caribbean cruise for Angelou and 150 guests for Angelou's 70th birthday in 1998, and in 2008, threw her "an extravagant 80th birthday celebration" at Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida.

Personal wealth

Winfrey became a millionaire at the age of 32 when her talk show received national syndication. Winfrey negotiated ownership rights to the television program and started her own production company.

At the age of 41, Winfrey had a net worth of $340 million and replaced Bill Cosby as the only African American on the Forbes 400. By 2000, with a net worth of $800 million, Winfrey is believed to have been the richest African American of the 20th century. By 2008, her yearly income had increased to $275 million.

Forbes' list of The World's Billionaires has listed Winfrey as the world's only black billionaire from 2004 to 2006 and as the first black woman billionaire in the world that was achieved in 2003. As of 2014, Winfrey had a net worth in excess of 2.9 billion dollars and had overtaken former eBay CEO Meg Whitman as the richest self-made woman in America.

Religious views

Oprah was raised a Baptist. Oprah has stated that she is a Christian and her favorite Bible verse is Acts 17:28. Oprah attends The Potter's House Church, Dallas service, an Evangelical church.

Philanthropy

In 2004, Winfrey became the first black person to rank among the 50 most generous Americans and she remained among the top 50 until 2010. By 2012, she had given away about $400 million to educational causes.

As of 2012, Winfrey had also given over 400 scholarships to Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia. Winfrey was the recipient of the first Bob Hope Humanitarian Award at the 2002 Emmy Awards for services to television and film. To celebrate two decades on national TV, and to thank her employees for their hard work, Winfrey took her staff and their families (1,065 people in total) on vacation to Hawaii in the summer of 2006.

In 2013, Winfrey donated $12 million to the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture. President Barack Obama awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom later that same year.

In 1998, Winfrey created the Oprah's Angel Network, a charity that supported charitable projects and provided grants to nonprofit organizations around the world. Oprah's Angel Network raised more than $80 million ($1 million of which was donated by Jon Bon Jovi). Winfrey personally covered all administrative costs associated with the charity, so 100% of all funds raised went to charity programs. In May 2010, with Oprah's show ending, the charity stopped accepting donations and was shut down.

In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, Oprah created the Oprah Angel Network Katrina registry which raised more than $11 million for relief efforts. Winfrey personally gave $10 million to the cause. Homes were built in Texas, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Alabama before the one-year anniversary of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

Interesting facts about Oprah Winfrey

Her first name was spelled Orpah on her birth certificate after the biblical figure in the Book of Ruth, but people mispronounced it regularly and "Oprah" stuck.

Winfrey's grandmother, Hattie Mae, taught her to read before the age of three and took her to the local church, where she was nicknamed "The Preacher" for her ability to recite Bible verses.

Winfrey acknowledged her grandmother's influence, saying it was Hattie Mae who had encouraged her to speak in public and "gave me a positive sense of myself".

As a child, she played games interviewing her corncob doll and the crows on the fence of her family's property.

A genetic test in 2006 determined that her matrilineal line originated among the Kpelle ethnic group, in the area that today is Liberia. Her genetic makeup was determined to be 89% Sub-Saharan African, 8% Native American, and 3% East Asian.

Winfrey had three younger half-siblings: half-sister Patricia (died in February 2003 at age 43), another half-sister named Patricia (she was put up for adoption) and half-brother Jeffrey, who died of AIDS-related causes in 1989.

Winfrey's first job as a teenager was working at a local grocery store.

At the age of 17, Winfrey won the Miss Black Tennessee beauty pageant.

Winfrey started her career in media as a newscaster at a local black radio station, WVOL, in Nashville, Tennessee.

Winfrey co-starred in Steven Spielberg's The Color Purple (1985), as distraught housewife Sofia. She was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance.

In 1989, she was accepted into the NAACP Image Award Hall of Fame.

In the 2008 presidential race, Winfrey endorsed Barack Obama.

The National Museum of African American History and Culture in 2018 opened a special exhibit on Winfrey's cultural influence through television.

Her 1993 interview with Michael Jackson became the fourth most-watched event in American television history as well as the most watched interview ever, with an audience of 36.5 million.

In 2021, she conducted an interview with Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, and her husband Prince Harry, which was broadcast globally and received international media attention.

Winfrey has co-authored five books.

She publishes the magazine: O, The Oprah Magazine and from 2004 to 2008 also published a magazine called O At Home.

Winfrey's company created the Oprah.com website to provide resources and interactive content related to her shows, magazines, book club, and public charity. Oprah.com averages more than 70 million page views and more than six million users per month, and receives approximately 20,000 e-mails each week.

Oprah is often listed among the most influential and powerful people in the world.

The Wall Street Journal coined the term "Oprahfication", meaning public confession as a form of therapy.

Oprah Winfrey quotes

"Turn your wounds into wisdom."

"You can have it all. Just not all at once."

"Be thankful for what you have; you'll end up having more. If you concentrate on what you don't have, you will never, ever have enough."

"The biggest adventure you can ever take is to live the life of your dreams."

"Surround yourself only with people who are going to take you higher."

"You get in life what you have the courage to ask for."

"You don't become what you want, you become what you believe."

Images for kids

Winfrey speaking at Moore's inauguration, 2023

Winfrey filming in Denmark in 2009

Filmography

1985
The Color Purple
Sofia

Nominated - Academy Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role
Nominated - Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress - Motion Picture
Nominated - Los Angeles Film Critics Association Award for Best Supporting Actress

There Are No Children Here
LaJoe Rivers

TV movie (ABC)

1998
Beloved
Sethe

Producer;
Nominated - NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Actress in a Motion Picture

1999
Our Friend, Martin Coretta Scott King
Voice role; Direct-to-video film

2013
The Butler
Gloria Gaines

African-American Film Critics Association Award for Best Supporting Actress;
Santa Barbara International Film Festival - Montecito Award;
Nominated - BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role;
Nominated - Black Reel Award for Best Supporting Actress;
Nominated - Broadcast Film Critics Association Award for Best Supporting Actress;
Nominated - Denver Film Critics Society Award for Best Supporting Actress;
Nominated - NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Motion Picture;
Nominated - Phoenix Film Critics Society Award for Best Supporting Actress;
Nominated - Satellite Award for Best Supporting Actress - Motion Picture;
Nominated - Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Supporting Role;
Nominated - Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture

2014
Selma Annie Lee Cooper
Producer;
Women Film Critics Circle Award for Best Female Action Star;
Nominated - Academy Award for Best Picture;
Nominated - Independent Spirit Award for Best Film;
Nominated - NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Motion Picture

2017
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks Deborah Lacks
TV movie; Executive producer;
Nominated - NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Actress in a Television Movie, Mini-Series or Dramatic Special;
Nominated - Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Television Movie

Crow: The Legend
The One Who Creates Everything by Thinking

Voice role

As producer only

1989 - The Oprah Winfrey Show (supervising producer - 8 episodes, 1989-2011)

1989 - The Women of Brewster Place (TV miniseries) (executive producer)

1992 - Nine (TV documentary) (executive producer)

1992 - Overexposed (TV movie) (executive producer)

1993 - ABC Afterschool Special (TV series) (producer - 1 episode "Shades of a Single Protein") (producer)

1993 - Michael Jackson Talks to... Oprah Live (TV special) (executive producer)

1997 - Before Women Had Wings (TV movie) (producer)

1998 - The Wedding (TV miniseries) (executive producer)

1998 - Beloved (producer)

1998 - David and Lisa (TV movie) (executive producer)

1999 - Tuesdays with Morrie (TV movie) (executive producer)

2001 - Amy & Isabelle (TV movie) (executive producer, producer)

2002 - Oprah After the Show (TV series) (executive producer)

2005 - Their Eyes Were Watching God (TV movie) (executive producer)

2006 - Legends Ball (TV documentary) (executive producer)

2007 - Oprah's Big Give (TV series) (executive producer)

2007 - The Oprah Winfrey Oscar Special (TV movie) (executive producer)

2007 - Building a Dream: The Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy (TV documentary) (executive producer)

2007 - Oprah Winfrey Presents: Mitch Albom's For One More Day (TV movie) (executive producer)

2007 - The Great Debaters (producer)

2009 - The Dr. Oz Show (TV series) (executive producer)

2009 - Precious (executive producer)

2009 - Christmas at the White House: An Oprah Primetime Special (TV special) (executive producer)

2010 - The Oprah Winfrey Oscar Special (TV movie) (executive producer)

2011 - Your OWN Show (TV series) (executive producer)

2011 - Extraordinary Mom (TV documentary) (executive producer)

2011 - Serving Life (TV documentary) (executive producer)

2014 - The Hundred-Foot Journey (producer)

2014 - Selma (producer)

2016-present - Queen Sugar (co-creator and executive producer)

2016-2020 - Greenleaf (executive producer)

2017 - The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (TV movie) (executive producer)

2018 - Love Is (executive producer)

2019 - When They See Us (executive producer)

2019 - Oprah Winfrey Presents: After Neverland (executive producer)

2019 - David Makes Man (executive producer)

2020 - The Water Man (executive producer)

2023 - The Color Purple (producer)

In Spanish: Oprah Winfrey para niños

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Aviator Stunt Performer

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Elizabeth "Bessie" Coleman (January 26, 1892 - April 30, 1926) was the first female African American and Native American pilot ever to hold an international pilot license. She fought discrimination to follow her dream of becoming a pilot. She became a skilled barnstormer (a pilot that travels to perform stunts and give rides) and an aviation educator.

Coleman was born in Texas in 1892. Her mother was African American and her father was Native American. She was the tenth of thirteen children. Her parents were sharecroppers. When Coleman was two, her family moved to Waxahachie, Texas, where Bessie later went to school. She loved reading and excelled in math.

Coleman's father believed that the family would be treated better if they moved to Indian Territory in Oklahoma. Unable to convince his wife to accompany him, Coleman's father left the family when she was nine. Coleman's mother worked as a maid. During the cotton harvest, everyone in the family worked in the fields to earn extra money. It was hot, difficult work, and during the harvest, African American children could not go to school. Bessie still managed to finish all eight grades in the local school. Coleman decided that she wanted to go to college, so she saved her money. In about four years, she had enough money to begin college. A year later, she ran out of money.

At the age of 23, Coleman boarded a train and traveled to Chicago, where she moved in with her brothers. Coleman took a class to learn to become a manicurist, and soon found a job at the White Sox Barber Shop in Chicago. There she heard stories of flying during wartime from pilots returning home from World War I. She took a second job at a chili parlor to save money so that she could become a pilot. In early 1917, Bessie Coleman married Claude Glenn, but she never publicly acknowledged the marriage, and the two soon separated.

At the time, aviation (flight) schools in America were not allowing women or black people to attend. Bessie's friend Robert Abbott told her that she could travel to France to fly. She studied the French language after work at night. She got a new job managing a restaurant and saved her money. Robert Abbot and her friends helped her pay for the trip, and in 1920, Coleman sailed to France. She learned to be a pilot at the Caudron Brothers' School of Aviation. In 1921, Coleman became the first female African American pilot and the first female Native American pilot to hold an international pilot license. She earned it from the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale.

Coleman went back to the United States to work as a barnstormer, performing tricks and stunts in her airplane. Barnstormers like Coleman flew planes in loops, figure eights, and other patterns while audiences watched. Coleman performed in the United States and Europe. In the 1920s, much of the United States still practiced racial segregation. Coleman refused to perform at places that did not let African Americans watch equally. For one show in Texas, Coleman refused to perform unless the showrunners let everyone in the audience enter through the same gate instead of making one gate for white people and one for black people. She also taught flying lessons and encouraged women to learn to be pilots.

Coleman wanted to open an aviation school in the United States where black students could learn to be pilots.

In April 1926, Coleman and her mechanic, William Will, were practicing for a performance the next day. Will was piloting the plane when it flipped over and started to dive. Coleman fell out of the plane and was killed. William Wills was unable to regain control of the plane and it plummeted to the ground. Wills died upon impact and the plane exploded and burst into flames. Although the wreckage of the plane was badly burned, it was later discovered that a wrench used to service the engine had jammed the controls.

Coleman is buried in Chicago's Lincoln Cemetery.

Atlanta, Texas, has a Regional History Museum that proudly displays a smaller version of Bessie Coleman's yellow bi-plane "Queen Bess." The museum display also includes a uniform and other memorabilia regarding the life and times of Bessie Coleman. Outside the regional history museum is a Texas Historical Marker located at 101 N. East Street in Historic Downtown, Atlanta, Texas. The road to the Hall-Miller Municipal Airport in Atlanta, Texas, is named Bessie Coleman Drive in her honor.

A public library in Chicago was named in Coleman's honor, as are roads at O'Hare International Airport in Chicago, Oakland International Airport in Oakland, California, Tampa International Airport in Florida, and at Germany's Frankfurt International Airport. A memorial plaque has been placed by the Chicago Cultural Center at the location of her former home, 41st and King Drive in Chicago, and it is a tradition for African-American aviators to drop flowers during flyovers of her grave at Lincoln Cemetery.

A roundabout leading to Nice Airport in the South of France was named after her in March 2016, and there are streets in Poitiers, and the 20th Arrondissement of Paris named after her.

Bessie Coleman Middle School in Cedar Hill, Texas, is named for her.

Bessie Coleman Boulevard in Waxahachie, Texas, where she lived as a child, is named in her honor.

B. Coleman Aviation, a fixed-base operator based at Gary/Chicago International Airport, is named in her honor.

Several Bessie Coleman Scholarship Awards have been established for high school seniors planning careers in aviation.

The U.S. Postal Service issued a 32-cent stamp honoring Coleman in 1995. The Bessie Coleman Commemorative is the 18th in the U.S. Postal Service Black Heritage series.

In 2001, Coleman was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame.

In 2006, she was inducted into the National Aviation Hall of Fame.

In 2012, a bronze plaque with Coleman's likeness was installed on the front doors of Paxon School for Advanced Studies located on the site of the Jacksonville airfield where Coleman's fatal flight took off.

Coleman was honored with a toy character in season 5, episode 11a of the children's animated television program Doc McStuffins.

She was placed No. 14 on Flying's 2013 list of the "51 Heroes of Aviation."

In 2014, Coleman was inducted into the International Air & Space Hall of Fame at the San Diego Air & Space Museum.

On January 25, 2015, Orlando renamed West Washington Street to recognize the street's most accomplished resident.

On January 26, 2017, the 125th anniversary of her birth, a Google Doodle was posted in her honor.

In December 2019, The New York Times featured Coleman in their Overlooked (obituary feature), "Bessie Coleman, Pioneering African-American Aviatrix."

Bessie Coleman quotes

"I refused to take no for an answer."

"You've never lived till you've flown."

"A woman is like a teabag - you can't tell how strong she is until you put her in hot water."

"Experience is simply the name we give our mistakes."

"The only source of knowledge is experience."

Interesting facts about Bessie Coleman

Bessie was extremely intelligent and fought hard against the assumption that black women were not capable of great things.

She applied to flight schools all across the United States but was not accepted at any of them.

Robert Abbot, who was the founder and publisher of the country's largest black newspaper, the Chicago Defender, heard about Coleman's determination. He published her story in his paper and raised money for her to travel to France.

The Caudron Brothers of France were famous like the Wright brothers of the United States.

Bessie learned to perform airplane stunts from Anthony Fokker.

Bessie was briefly married, but never publicly talked about it.

Coleman's nicknames included "Queen Bess" and "Brave Bessie."

She survived a plane crash in 1923, in which her plane cut out during a performance.

In Spanish: Bessie Coleman para niños

Images for kids

Coleman's grave at Lincoln Cemetery

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Gas Mask/Stop Light

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Garrett Augustus Morgan, Sr. (March 4, 1877 - July 27, 1963) was an African-American inventor and community leader.

He is known for his inventions which included a type of protective respiratory hood (or gas mask), a traffic signal, and a hair-straightening chemical. He is also known for a heroic rescue in 1916 in which he and three others used the safety hood device he'd developed to save workers trapped within a water intake tunnel, fifty feet beneath Lake Erie. He is also credited as the first African American in Cleveland, Ohio, to own an automobile.

Early life and education

Morgan was born in 1877 in Claysville, Harrison County, Kentucky, an almost exclusively African American community outside Paris, Kentucky. His father was Sydney Morgan, a son and freed slave of Confederate Gen John H. Morgan of Morgan's Raiders. His mother, also a freed slave, was Elizabeth Reed, daughter of Rev. Garrett Reed; she was part Native American. He had at least one sibling, a brother named Frank, who helped in the 1916 Lake Erie tunnel rescue. Morgan received education up to sixth grade at Branch Elementary School in Claysville, then moved in search of work at the age of 14 to Cincinnati, Ohio.

He spent most of his teenage years working as a handyman for a Cincinnati landowner. Like many American children growing up at the turn of the century, Morgan had to quit school at a young age to work full-time. Morgan was able to hire a tutor and continue his studies while working in Cincinnati. In 1895, he moved to Cleveland, where he began repairing sewing machines for a clothing manufacturer. This experience sparked Morgan's interest in how things worked, and he built a reputation for fixing them. His first invention, developed during this period, was a belt fastener for sewing machines.

In 1907, Morgan opened a sewing machine shop. One year late, more conscious of his heritage, he helped start the Cleveland Association of Colored Men in 1908. One year later, he and his wife Mary Anne opened Morgan's Cut Rate Ladies Clothing Store. The shop, which made coats, suits, dresses, and other clothing, ultimately had 32 employees.

Around 1910, his interest in repairing other people's inventions waned, and he became interested in developing some of his own. He received his first patent in 1912.

In 1916, Morgan rescued workers trapped in a water intake tunnel 50 ft (15 m) beneath Lake Erie, using a hood fashioned to protect his eyes from smoke and featuring a series of air tubes that hung near the ground to draw clean air beneath the rising smoke.

He received a patent for his smoke hood design in 1914, the year he launched the National Safety Device Company. It is unknown whether the smoke hood brought him any commercial success. No sales figures have been found but his use of guerrilla marketing, going to different venues and demonstrating his smoke hood by strapping it on and entering a smoke-filled teepee, certainly demonstrated his faith in his own invention.

In 1913 he incorporated hair care products into his growing list of patents and launched the G. A. Morgan Hair Refining Company, which sold hair care products, including his patented hair straightening cream, a hair coloring, and a hair straightening comb invented by Morgan.

Later in life he developed glaucoma and by 1943 was functionally blind. He had poor health the rest of his life, but continued to work on his inventions. One of his last was a self-extinguishing cigarette, which used a small plastic pellet filled with water placed just before the filter. He died on July 27, 1963, at age 86 and was buried at the Lake View Cemetery in Cleveland.

Products and inventions

Hair care products

Morgan experimented with a liquid that gave sewing machine needles a high polish that prevented the needle from burning fabric as it sewed. In 1905, Morgan accidentally discovered that the liquid could also straighten hair. He made the liquid into a cream and launched the G. A. Morgan Hair Refining Company to market it. He also made a black hair oil dye and invented a curved-tooth comb for hair straightening in 1910.

Garrett Morgan invented a safety hood smoke protection device after seeing firefighters struggling from the smoke they encountered in the line of duty. His device used a wet sponge to filter out smoke and cool the air. It also took advantage of the way smoke and fumes tend to rise to higher positions while leaving a layer of more breathable air below, by using an air intake tube that dangled near the floor. The safety hood used a series of tubes to draw clean air of the lowest level the tubes could extend to. Smoke, being hotter than the air around it, rises, and by drawing air from the ground, the Safety Hood provided the user with a way to perform emergency respiration. He filed for a patent on the device in 1912, and founded a company called the National Safety Device Company in 1914 to market it. He was able to sell his invention around the country, sometimes using the tactic of having a hired white actor take credit rather than revealing himself as to its inventor. For demonstrations of the device, he sometimes adopted the disguise of "Big Chief Mason", a purported full-blooded Indian from the Walpole Island Indian Reserve in Canada. He would demonstrate the device by building a noxious fire fueled by tar, sulfur, formaldehyde and manure inside an enclosed tent. Disguised as Big Chief Mason, he would enter the tent full of black smoke, and would remain there for 20 minutes before emerging unharmed.

His safety hood device was simple and effective, whereas the other devices in use at the time were generally difficult to put on, excessively complex, unreliable, or ineffective. It was patented and awarded a gold medal two years later by the International Association of Fire Chiefs. Morgan's safety hood was used to save many lives during the period of its use. By World War I, his breathing device was refined to carry its own air supply, making it a gas mask. However, upon their entry into the First World War, the United States Army adopted the British Small Box Respirator and French M2 Respirator as their standard anti-gas equipment, the former invented by Newfoundlander Cluny MacPherson.

He also developed later models that incorporated an airbag that could hold about 15 minutes of fresh air.

His invention became known nationally when he led a rescue that saved several men's lives after a July 24, 1916 tunnel explosion under Lake Erie. Before Morgan arrived, two previous rescue attempts had failed. The attempted rescuers had become victims themselves by entering the tunnel and not returning. Morgan was roused in the middle of the night after one of the members of the rescue team who had seen a demonstration of his device sent a messenger to convince him to come and to bring as many of his hoods as he could. He arrived on the scene still wearing his pajamas, and brought his brother Frank and four of the hoods with him. Most of the rescuers on the scene were initially skeptical of his device, so he and his brother went into the tunnel along with two other volunteers, and succeeded in pulling out two men from the previous rescue attempts. He emerged carrying a victim on his back, and his brother followed just behind with another. Others joined in after his team succeeded, and rescued several more. His device was also used to retrieve the bodies of the rescuers that did not survive. Morgan personally made four trips into the tunnel during the rescue, and his health was affected for years afterward from the fumes he encountered there. Cleveland's newspapers and city officials initially ignored Morgan's act of heroism as the first to rush into the tunnel for the rescue and his key role as the provider of the equipment that made the rescue possible, and it took years for the city to recognize his contributions. City officials requested the Carnegie Hero Fund Commission to issue medals to several of the men involved in the rescue, but excluded Morgan from their request. He believed that the omission was racially motivated. Later, in 1917, a group of citizens of Cleveland tried to correct for the omission by presenting him with a diamond-studded gold medal. After the heroic rescue Morgan's company received order requests from fire departments all over the country. However, the national news contained photographs of him, and officials in a number of southern cities canceled their existing orders when they discovered he was black.

He was also given a medal from the International Association of Fire Engineers, which made him an honorary member.

Morgan's invention of the safety hood was featured on the television show Inventions that Shook the World and Mysteries at the Museum (S08E05).

Traffic signal

The first American-made automobiles were introduced to consumers just before the turn of the twentieth century, and pedestrians, bicycles, animal-drawn wagons and motor vehicles all had to share the same roads. To deal with the growing problem of traffic accidents, a number of different versions of traffic signaling devices began to be developed simultaneously, starting around 1913.

Morgan had witnessed a serious accident at an intersection, and he filed a patent for a traffic control device having a third "warning" position in 1922. The patent was granted in 1923, though this was not the first system with a warning, a three-signal system being invented in 1920 by William Potts, and several other previous systems some of which had audible warnings.

Community leadership

In 1908, he co-founded the Cleveland Association of Colored Men, which later merged with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Morgan served as its treasurer. He was a member of the NAACP and donated money to Historically Black Colleges and Universities colleges.

Morgan, in 1920, founded the Cleveland Call, a weekly newspaper and, in 1938, subsequently participated in its merger that created the Cleveland Call and Post newspaper. Morgan purchased a farm near Wakeman, Ohio, and upon that land build the Wakeman Country Club, open to Blacks, unlike most country clubs then.

Morgan was a member of the Prince Hall Freemasons, in Excelsior Lodge No. 11 of Cleveland, Ohio. He belonged to Antioch Baptist Church.

In 1931, seeing that the city was neither properly addressing the needs of its African American citizens, he ran for a seat on the Cleveland City Council as an independent, but was not elected.

Personal life

He married Madge Nelson in 1896, only to divorce in 1898. In 1908 he and Mary Hasek were married and together, they had three children: John P.; Garrett A., Jr. and Cosmo.

Morgan died in Cleveland in 1963, where he was interred in Lake View Cemetery.

Awards and recognitions

At the Emancipation Centennial Celebration in Chicago, Illinois, in August 1963 (one month after his death), Morgan was nationally recognized.

In the Cleveland, Ohio area, the Garrett A. Morgan Cleveland School of Science and the Garrett A. Morgan Water Treatment Plant have been named in his honor. An elementary school in Chicago was also named after him. An elementary school bearing his name opened in the fall of 2016 in Lexington, Kentucky. In Prince George's County, Maryland, there is a street named Garrett A. Morgan Boulevard (formerly Summerfield Boulevard until 2002) and the adjacent Metro stop (Morgan Boulevard) also bears his name.

Morgan was included in the 2002 book 100 Greatest African Americans by Molefi Kete Asante.

Morgan is an honorary member of Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity.

Documentary

Morgan is featured in Bayer Mack's 2019 documentary, No Lye: An American Beauty Story, that chronicles the rise and decline of the black-owned ethnic beauty industry.

In Spanish: Garrett Augustus Morgan para niños

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Hair Product

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Madam C.J. Walker (born Sarah Breedlove; December 23, 1867 - May 25, 1919) was an African American entrepreneur, philanthropist, and political and social activist. She is recorded as the first female self-made millionaire in America in the Guinness Book of World Records. Multiple sources mention that although other women (like Mary Ellen Pleasant) might have been the first, their wealth is not as well-documented.

Walker made her fortune by developing and marketing a line of cosmetics and hair care products for black women through the business she founded, Madam C. J. Walker Manufacturing Company. She became known also for her philanthropy and activism. She made financial donations to numerous organizations such as the NAACP, and became a patron of the arts. Villa Lewaro, Walker's lavish estate in Irvington, New York, served as a social gathering place for the African-American community. At the time of her death, she was considered the wealthiest African-American businesswoman and wealthiest self-made black woman in America. Her name was a version of "Mrs. Charles Joseph Walker", after her third husband.

Sarah Breedlove was born on December 23, 1867, close to Delta, Louisiana. Her parents were Owen and Minerva (Anderson) Breedlove. She had five siblings, who included an older sister, Louvenia, and four brothers: Alexander, James, Solomon, and Owen Jr. Robert W. Burney, primarily of European ancestry, enslaved her older siblings on his Madison Parish plantation. Sarah was the first child in her family born into freedom after President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation. Her mother died in 1872, likely from cholera (an epidemic traveled with river passengers up the Mississippi, reaching Tennessee and related areas in 1873). Her father remarried but died a year later.

She was orphaned at the age of seven. Sarah moved to Vicksburg, Mississippi, at the age of 10, where she lived with Louvenia and her brother-in-law, Jesse Powell. She started working as a child as a domestic servant.

Personal life

Marriage and family

In 1882, at the age of 14, Sarah married Moses McWilliams, whose age was unknown. Sarah and Moses had one daughter, Lelia McWilliams, who was born on June 6, 1885. When Moses died in 1887, Sarah was twenty and Lelia was two. Sarah remarried in 1894, but left her second husband, John Davis, around 1903.

In January 1906, Sarah married Charles Joseph Walker, a newspaper advertising salesman she had known in St. Louis, Missouri. Through this marriage, she became known as Madam C. J. Walker. The couple divorced in 1912; Charles died in 1926. Lelia McWilliams adopted her stepfather's surname and became known as A'Lelia Walker.

In 1888, she and her daughter moved to St. Louis, where three of her brothers lived. Sarah found work as a laundress, earning barely more than a dollar a day. She was determined to make enough money to provide her daughter with formal education. During the 1880's, she lived in a community where Ragtime music was developed; she sang at St. Paul African Methodist Episcopal Church and started to yearn for an educated life as she watched the community of women at her church.

Walker was a Christian. Her Christian faith had a big impact on her philanthropy.

Starting a business

Sarah suffered severe dandruff and other scalp ailments, including baldness, due to skin disorders and the application of harsh products to cleanse hair and wash clothes. Other contributing factors to her hair loss included poor diet, illnesses, and infrequent bathing and hair washing during a time when most Americans lacked indoor plumbing, central heating, and electricity.

Initially, Sarah learned about hair care from her brothers, who were barbers in St. Louis. Around the time of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition (World's Fair at St. Louis in 1904), she became a commission agent selling products for Annie Malone, an African-American hair-care entrepreneur, millionaire, and owner of the Poro Company.

While working for Malone, who would later become Walker's largest rival in the hair-care industry, Sarah began to take her new knowledge and develop her own product line. In July 1905, when she was 37 years old, Sarah and her daughter moved to Denver, Colorado, where she continued to sell products for Malone and develop her own hair-care business. A controversy developed between Annie Malone and Sarah because Malone accused Sarah of stealing her formula, a mixture of petroleum jelly and sulfur that had been in use for a hundred years.

Madam C.J. Walker cosmetics

Following her marriage to Charles Walker in 1906, Sarah became known as Madam C. J. Walker. She marketed herself as an independent hairdresser and retailer of cosmetic creams. ("Madam" was adopted from women pioneers of the French beauty industry.) Her husband, who was also her business partner, provided advice on advertising and promotion; Sarah sold her products door to door, teaching other black women how to groom and style their hair.

In 1906, Walker put her daughter in charge of the mail-order operation in Denver while she and her husband traveled throughout the southern and eastern United States to expand the business. In 1908, Walker and her husband relocated to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where they opened a beauty parlor and established Lelia College to train "hair culturists". As an advocate of black women's economic independence, she opened training programs in the "Walker System" for her national network of licensed sales agents who earned healthy commissions (Michaels, PhD. 2015).

After Walker closed the business in Denver in 1907, A'Lelia joined her in Pittsburgh. In 1910, when Walker established a new base in Indianapolis A'Lelia ran the day-to-day operations in Pittsburgh. A'Lelia also persuaded her mother to establish an office and beauty salon in New York City's growing Harlem neighborhood in 1913; it became a center of African-American culture.

In 1910, Walker relocated her businesses to Indianapolis, where she established the headquarters for the Madam C. J. Walker Manufacturing Company. She initially purchased a house and factory at 640 North West Street. Walker later built a factory, hair salon, and beauty school to train her sales agents, and added a laboratory to help with research. She also assembled a staff that included Freeman Ransom, Robert Lee Brokenburr, Alice Kelly, and Marjorie Joyner, among others, to assist in managing the growing company. Many of her company's employees, including those in key management and staff positions, were women.

Walker's method of grooming was designed to promote hair growth and to condition the scalp through the use of her products. The system included a shampoo, a pomade stated to help hair grow, strenuous brushing, and applying iron combs to hair; the method claimed to make lackluster and brittle hair become soft and luxuriant. Walker's product line had several competitors. Similar products were produced in Europe and manufactured by other companies in the United States, which included her major rivals, Annie Turnbo Malone's Poro System from which she derived her original formula and later, Sarah Spencer Washington's Apex System.

Between 1911 and 1919, during the height of her career, Walker and her company employed several thousand women as sales agents for its products. By 1917, the company claimed to have trained nearly 20,000 women. While some sources have written that the women dressed in a characteristic uniform of white shirts and black skirts and carried black satchels, there is nothing in the Walker Beauty School manual that verifies that. Others have written the agents focused on door-to-door sales as they visited houses around the United States and in the Caribbean offering Walker's hair pomade and other products packaged in tin containers carrying her image, but the more common scenario is that the Walker beauty culturists demonstrated their products in their homes and beauty salons because they needed a source of water to be able to show how the products worked. Walker understood the power of advertising and brand awareness. Heavy advertising, primarily in African-American newspapers and magazines, in addition to Walker's frequent travels to promote her products, helped make Walker and her products well known in the United States.

In addition to training in sales and grooming, Walker showed other black women how to budget, build their own businesses, and encouraged them to become financially independent. In 1917, inspired by the model of the National Association of Colored Women, Walker began organizing her sales agents into state and local clubs. The result was the establishment of the National Beauty Culturists and Benevolent Association of Madam C. J. Walker Agents (predecessor to the Madam C. J. Walker Beauty Culturists Union of America).

Its first annual conference convened in Philadelphia during the summer of 1917 with 200 attendees. The conference is believed to have been among the first national gatherings of women entrepreneurs to discuss business and commerce. During the convention Walker gave prizes to women who had sold the most products and brought in the most new sales agents. She also rewarded those who made the largest contributions to charities in their communities.

Walker's name became even more widely known by the 1920s, after her death, as her company's business market expanded beyond the United States to Cuba, Jamaica, Haiti, Panama, and Costa Rica.

Activism and philanthropy

As Walker's wealth and notoriety increased, she became more vocal about her views. In 1912, Walker addressed an annual gathering of the National Negro Business League (NNBL) from the convention floor, where she declared: "I am a woman who came from the cotton fields of the South. From there, I was promoted to the washtub. From there, I was promoted to the cook kitchen. And from there, I promoted myself into the business of manufacturing hair goods and preparations. I have built my own factory on my own ground." The following year she addressed convention-goers from the podium as a keynote speaker.

She helped raise funds to establish a branch of YMCA in Indianapolis's black community, pledging $1,000 to the building fund for Senate Avenue YMCA. Walker also contributed scholarship funds to the Tuskegee Institute. Other beneficiaries included Indianapolis's Flanner House and Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church; Mary McLeod Bethune's Daytona Education and Industrial School for Negro Girls (which later became Bethune-Cookman University) in Daytona Beach, Florida; the Palmer Memorial Institute in North Carolina; and the Haines Normal and Industrial Institute in Georgia. Walker was also a patron of the arts.

About 1913, Walker's daughter, A'Lelia, moved to a new townhouse in Harlem, and in 1916, Walker joined her in New York, leaving the day-to-day operation of her company to her management team in Indianapolis. In 1917, Walker commissioned Vertner Tandy, the first licensed black architect in New York City and a founding member of Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity, to design her house in Irvington-on-Hudson, New York. Walker intended for Villa Lewaro, which cost $250,000 to build, to become a gathering place for community leaders and to inspire other African Americans to pursue their dreams. She moved into the house in May 1918 and hosted an opening event to honor Emmett Jay Scott, at that time the Assistant Secretary for Negro Affairs of the U.S. Department of War.

Walker became more involved in political matters after her move to New York. She delivered lectures on political, economic, and social issues at conventions sponsored by powerful black institutions. Her friends and associates included Booker T. Washington, Mary McLeod Bethune, and W. E. B. Du Bois. During World War I, Walker was a leader in the Circle For Negro War Relief and advocated for the establishment of a training camp for black army officers. In 1917, she joined the executive committee of New York chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), which organized the Silent Protest Parade on New York City's Fifth Avenue. The public demonstration drew more than 8,000 African Americans to protest a riot in East Saint Louis that killed 39 African-Americans. Also, from 1917 until her death she was a member of the Committee of Management of the Harlem YWCA, influencing development of training in beauty skills to young women by the organisation.

Profits from her business significantly impacted Walker's contributions to her political and philanthropic interests. In 1918, the National Association of Colored Women's Clubs (NACWC) honored Walker for making the largest individual contribution to help preserve Frederick Douglass's Anacostia house. Before her death in 1919, Walker pledged $5,000 (the equivalent of about $77,700 in 2019) to the NAACP's anti- lynching fund. At the time, it was the largest gift from an individual that the NAACP had ever received. Walker bequeathed nearly $100,000 to orphanages, institutions, and individuals; her will directed two-thirds of future net profits of her estate to charity.

Walker died on May 25, 1919, from kidney failure and complications of hypertension at the age of 51. Walker's remains are interred in Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx, New York City.

Her daughter, A'Lelia Walker, later became the president of the Madam C. J. Walker Manufacturing Company.

Interesting facts about Madam C. J. Walker

Walker had only three months of formal education, which she learned during Sunday school literacy lessons at the church she attended during her earlier years.

At the time of her death, Walker was considered to be worth between a half million and a million dollars. She was the wealthiest African-American woman in America.

In 1917, she had a $250,000 mansion, Villa Lewaro, built at the banks of the Hudson at Irvington.

A museum in Atlanta is devoted to Walker, as well as historic radio station WERD. Established in 2004, the museum is located at the site of a former Madam C. J. Walker Beauty Shoppe.

Walker was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame in Seneca Falls, New York, in 1993.

In 1998, the U.S. Postal Service issued a Madam Walker commemorative stamp as part of its Black Heritage Series.

In 2022, Mattel issued a Madam C.J. Walker Barbie doll as part of their Inspiring Women doll collection.

Madam C.J. Walker quotes

"If I have accomplished anything in life, it is because I have been willing to work hard."

"Don't sit down and wait for the opportunities to come. Get up and make them."

"I got my start by giving myself a start."

"I have made it possible for many colored women to abandon the washtub for a more pleasant and profitable occupation."

"My object in life is not simply to make money for myself or to spend it on myself in dressing or running around in an automobile, but I love to use a part of what I make in trying to help others."

In popular culture

In 2006, playwright and director Regina Taylor wrote The Dreams of Sarah Breedlove, recounting the history of Walker's struggles and success. The play premiered at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago. Actress L. Scott Caldwell played the role of Walker.

In 2020, actress Octavia Spencer committed to portray Walker in a TV series based on On Her Own Ground, the biography of Walker written by Walker's great-great-granddaughter, A'Lelia Bundles. The series is called Self Made: Inspired by the Life of Madam C. J. Walker. Reviews for the series were mixed, partly because of the inaccuracies of the storyline that created more of a fictional work than an authentic biography. The portrayal of Annie Malone as Addie Monroe, another black female self-made millionaire as a villain and the daughter of Walker as a lesbian were some of the complaints by audiences. Biographer A'Lelia Bundles wrote about the behind-the-scenes experience of producing Self Made in "Netflix's Self-Made Suffers from Self-Inflicted Wounds".

Documentary

Madam Walker is featured in Stanley Nelson's 1987 documentary, Two Dollars and a Dream, the first film treatment of Walker's life. As the grandson of Freeman B. Ransom, Madam Walker's attorney and Walker Company general manager, Nelson had access to original Walker business records and former Walker Company employees whom he interviewed during the 1980s.

Various scholarships and awards have been named in Walker's honor:

The Madam C. J. Walker Business and Community Recognition Awards are sponsored by the National Coalition of 100 Black Women, Oakland / Bay Area chapter. An annual luncheon honors Walker and awards outstanding women in the community with scholarships.

Spirit Awards have sponsored the Madame Walker Theatre Center in Indianapolis. Established as a tribute to Walker, the annual award has honored national leaders in entrepreneurship, philanthropy, civic engagement, and the arts since 2006. Awards presented to individuals include the Madame C. J. Walker Heritage Award as well as young entrepreneur and legacy prizes.

In Spanish: Madam C. J. Walker para niños

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1st African American to go to all white school

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Ruby Nell Bridges Hall (born September 8, 1954) is an American activist. She is known for being the first black child to attend an all- white elementary school in the South. She went to William Frantz Elementary School.

Ruby Bridges was born in Tylertown, Mississippi, to Abon and Lucille Bridges. When she was 4 years old, the family moved to New Orleans, Louisiana. In 1960, when she was 6 years old, her parents responded to a request from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Her father was hesitant, but her parents allowed her to participate in the integration of the New Orleans school system.

Integration

In a 1954 decision, Brown v. Board of Education, the U.S. Supreme Court made Racial segregation against the law. Ruby, who was born the year the law passed, was chosen to attend the all-white William Frantz Elementary School. The school board said that black children could attend the first grade if they passed a test. Bridges passed the test. As soon as Bridges entered the school, many white parents pulled their children out. Only one person agreed to teach Bridges, and that was Barbara Henry from Boston, Massachusetts. For over a year Henry taught her alone, "as if she were teaching a whole class."

On her first day of school, four U.S. Marshals had to go with her to school. Angry crowds of parents shouted threats at her and parents did not let their children go to school. There was such chaos that first day that Ruby could not make it to her classroom. For the next six months, the marshals took her to and from her school. Former United States Deputy Marshal Charles Burks later recalled, "She showed a lot of courage. She never cried. She didn't whimper. She just marched along like a little soldier, and we're all very very proud of her."

On the second day of school, the boycott broke. After this, more people started sending their children to school again. This does not mean that all of the trouble was over, however. People tried to hurt her family. Her father lost his job and her grandparents were thrown off their farm in Georgia. Ruby never missed a day of school that year. The story of her going to a white school is the subject of a Norman Rockwell painting called The Problem We All Live With.

Ruby finished elementary school and graduated from high school. Bridges went on to become a travel agent for American Express. Mrs. Ruby Bridges Hall is married and has four sons. She still lives in New Orleans. In 1999, she wrote a children's book, Through My Eyes, telling her story. The same year she started the Ruby Bridges Foundation to promote "the values of tolerance, respect, and appreciation of all differences." She travels and talks to children all over the country.

On January 8, 2001, President Bill Clinton awarded Ruby Bridges the Presidential Citizens Medal. She was one of 28 to receive the medal that day.

Ruby Bridges quotes

"Don't follow the path. Go where there is no path and begin the trail. When you start a new trail equipped with courage, strength and conviction, the only thing that can stop you is you!"

"I now know that experience comes to us for a purpose, and if we follow the guidance of the spirit within us, we will probably find that the purpose is a good one."

"Racism is a grown-up disease and we must stop using our children to spread it."

Interesting Facts About Ruby Bridges

Ruby enjoyed jumping rope, climbing trees, and playing softball when she was young.

On November 14, her first day at William Frantz Elementary School, she was the only student there.

Barbara Henry was the only teacher who agreed to teach Ruby. She began teaching Ruby on her second day of school.

Ruby's courageous story can be read to children from the book The Story of Ruby Bridges by Robert Coles.

Ruby was one of only six children who passed the entrance test, which was designed to be difficult.

Awards and honors

In September 1995, Bridges and Robert Coles were awarded honorary degrees from Connecticut College and appeared together in public for the first time to accept the awards.

Bridges' Through My Eyes won the Carter G. Woodson Book Award in 2000.

On August 10, 2000, the 40 year anniversary of her walk into William Frantz Elementary School, Deputy Attorney General Eric Holder made Ruby Bridges an Honorary Deputy U.S. Marshal.

On January 8, 2001, Bridges was awarded the Presidential Citizens Medal by President Bill Clinton.

In November 2006, Bridges was honored as a "Hero Against Racism" at the 12th annual Anti-Defamation League "Concert Against Hate" with the National Symphony Orchestra, held at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC.

On May 19, 2012, Bridges received an Honorary Degree from Tulane University at the annual graduation ceremony at the Superdome.

Two elementary schools are named after Bridges: one in Alameda, California, and another in Woodinville, Washington. A statue of Bridges stands in the courtyard of William Frantz Elementary School.

Images for kids

Ruby Bridges speaking at Texas A&M University-Commerce in February 2015

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Ruby Nell Bridges Hall (born September 8, 1954) is an American activist. She is known for being the first black child to attend an all- white elementary school in the South. She went to William Frantz Elementary School. Ruby Bridges was born in Tylertown, Mississippi, to Abon and Lucille Bridges.

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Ray Charles Robinson (September 23, 1930 - June 10, 2004), professionally known as simply Ray Charles, was an American singer, songwriter, musician, and composer. Among friends and fellow musicians he preferred being called "Brother Ray". He was often referred to as "The Genius". Charles started losing his vision at the age of 5, and by 7 he was blind.

He pioneered the soul music genre during the 1950s by combining blues, rhythm and blues, and gospel styles into the music he recorded for Atlantic. He contributed to the integration of country music, rhythm and blues, and pop music during the 1960s with his crossover success on ABC Records, notably with his two Modern Sounds albums. While he was with ABC, Charles became one of the first black musicians to be granted artistic control by a mainstream record company. Charles placed multiple singles and albums in the Top 10 of the Top 40 on various Billboard charts: 44 on the US R&B singles charts, 11 on the Hot 100 singles charts, 2 on the US Country singles charts, 8 on the Billboard 200 album charts, and one on the US Country Album charts.

Charles cited Nat King Cole as a primary influence, but his music was also influenced by Louis Jordan and Charles Brown. He became friends with Quincy Jones. Their friendship lasted until the end of Charles's life. Frank Sinatra called Ray Charles "the only true genius in show business", although Charles downplayed this notion.

In 2002, Rolling Stone ranked Charles number ten on its list of the "100 Greatest Artists of All Time", and number two on their November 2008 list of the "100 Greatest Singers of All Time". Billy Joel said, "This may sound like sacrilege, but I think Ray Charles was more important than Elvis Presley".

Charles died in 2004 from liver failure.

Images for kids

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Ray Charles Robinson (September 23, 1930 - June 10, 2004), professionally known as simply Ray Charles, was an American singer, songwriter, musician, and composer. Among friends and fellow musicians he preferred being called "Brother Ray". He was often referred to as "The Genius".

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Aretha Louise Franklin (March 25, 1942 - August 16, 2018) was an American singer, songwriter and pianist. She began her career as a child singing gospel at New Bethel Baptist Church in Detroit, Michigan, where her father, C. L. Franklin, was minister. In 1960, at the age of 18, she embarked on a secular career, recording for Columbia Records but achieving only modest success. After signing to Atlantic Records in 1967, Franklin achieved commercial acclaim and success with songs such as "Respect", "(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman", "Spanish Harlem" and "Think".

Early life and career: 1942-1960

Aretha Massacorale Franklin was born at a two-room house in Memphis located at 406 Lucy St. She was the third of four children born to Barbara (née Siggers) and C.L. Franklin and the fifth of six overall in between past relationships by her parents.

Franklin's family moved to Buffalo, when Franklin was two, and then by four, had settled in Detroit.

Following the move to Detroit, Franklin's parents, who had a troubled marriage, split. Due to her father's work as a Baptist minister, Franklin was primarily raised by her grandmother, Rachel.

Franklin suffered a tragedy when her mother died in Buffalo when Aretha was ten.

Franklin sang in church at an early age and learned how to play piano by ear. By her late preteens, Franklin was regularly singing solo numbers in her father's New Bethel Baptist Church. Franklin's father, C.L. (short for Clarence LaVaughn), was a respected and popular preacher.

Franklin grew up with local and national celebrities hanging out at her father's home including gospel greats Albertina Walker and her group The Caravans, Mahalia Jackson and Clara Ward, three women who played a pivotal role in her vocal development as a child.

Music style and image

Franklin had often been described as a great singer and musician due to "vocal flexibility, interpretive intelligence, skillful piano-playing, her ear, her experience".

Franklin's voice was described as being a "powerful mezzo-soprano voice". She was praised for her arrangements and interpretations of other artists' hit songs.

In 2015, then-President Barack Obama wrote the following regarding Franklin:

Nobody embodies more fully the connection between the African-American spiritual, the blues, R. & B., rock and roll - the way that hardship and sorrow were transformed into something full of beauty and vitality and hope. American history wells up when Aretha sings. That's why, when she sits down at a piano and sings 'A Natural Woman,' she can move me to tears - the same way that Ray Charles's version of 'America the Beautiful' will always be in my view the most patriotic piece of music ever performed - because it captures the fullness of the American experience, the view from the bottom as well as the top, the good and the bad, and the possibility of synthesis, reconciliation, transcendence.

Franklin is one of the most honored artists by the Grammy Awards, with 18 competitive Grammys and two honorary Grammys. She had 20 #1 singles on the Billboard R&B Singles Chart and two #1 hits on the Billboard Hot 100: "Respect" (1967) and "I Knew You Were Waiting (For Me)" (1987), a duet with George Michael. Since 1961, she had a total of 45 Top 40 hits on the Billboard Hot 100. She also had 14 singles that sold more than one million - more than any other female artist. Between 1967 and 1982 she had 10 #1 R&B albums - more than any other female artist.

Rolling Stone magazine ranked her at top of its list "The Greatest Singers of All Time" In 2005, she was awarded The Presidential Medal of Freedom by President George W. Bush. On February 6, 2006, she performed, along with Aaron Neville, "The Star-Spangled Banner" at Super Bowl XL. The same year she got an honorary Doctor of Music degree by the Berklee College of Music.2010, Franklin received an Honorary Doctorate in Music from Yale University.

In 1987, Franklin became the first female artist to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. She was the only featured singer at the 2009 presidential inauguration of Barack Obama.

Personal life

Franklin was the mother of four sons, Clarence, Jordan, Ted and Kecalf.

Franklin was married twice. Her first husband was Ted White, whom she married in 1961 at the age of 19. She married her second husband, actor Glynn Turman, on April 11, 1978, at her father's church. They divorced in 1984.

Franklin's sisters, Erma and Carolyn, were professional musicians and spent years performing background vocals on Franklin's recordings. Her brother Cecil became her manager.

On June 10, 1979, when her father, C. L., was shot twice at point-blank range in his Detroit home. Aretha moved back to Detroit in late 1982 to assist with the care of her father, who died at Detroit's New Light Nursing Home on July 27, 1984.

Franklin was a Christian and was a registered Democrat.

On August 13, 2018, Franklin was reported to be gravely ill at her home in Riverfront Towers, Detroit. She was reported to be under hospice care and surrounded by friends and family. Stevie Wonder, Jesse Jackson, and ex-husband Glynn Turman, among others, visited her on her deathbed. Franklin died at home on August 16, 2018, aged 76. The cause was reported to be advanced pancreatic cancer.

Franklin received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1979, had her voice declared a Michigan "natural resource" in 1985, and became the first woman inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1987.

The National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences awarded her a Grammy Legend Award in 1991, then the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1994. Franklin was a Kennedy Center Honoree in 1994, recipient of the National Medal of Arts in 1999, and was bestowed the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2005. She was inducted into the Michigan Rock and Roll Legends Hall of Fame in 2005.

Franklin became the second woman inducted to the UK Music Hall of Fame in 2005. She was the 2008 MusiCares Person of the Year, performing at the Grammys days later. Following news of Franklin's surgery and recovery in February 2011, the Grammys ceremony paid tribute to the singer with a medley of her classics performed by Christina Aguilera, Florence Welch, Jennifer Hudson, Martina McBride, and Yolanda Adams. That same year she was ranked 19th among the Billboard Hot 100 All-Time top artists, and ranked first on the Rolling Stone list of Greatest Singers of All Time. In 2013, she was again ranked first in Rolling Stone magazine's "100 Greatest Singers" list.

Inducted to the GMA Gospel Music Hall of Fame in 2012, Franklin was described as "the voice of the civil rights movement, the voice of black America" and a "symbol of black equality". Asteroid 249516 Aretha was named in her honor in 2014.

"American history wells up when Aretha sings", president Obama explained in response to her performance of "A Natural Woman" at the 2015 Kennedy Center Honors. "Nobody embodies more fully the connection between the African-American spiritual, the blues, R&B, rock and roll-the way that hardship and sorrow were transformed into something full of beauty and vitality and hope". On June 8, 2017, the City of Detroit honored Franklin's legacy by renaming a portion of Madison Street, between Brush and Witherell Streets, "Aretha Franklin Way".

On January 29, 2018, The Oakland Press′s correspondent Gary Graff confirmed that the American Idol runner-up Jennifer Hudson will take the role to play Franklin in her coming biopic. The news was announced by the the film's executive producer Clive Davis, who made public their decision on the choice of actors casting in the film two days before Graff's article was published.

An all-star tribute concert to Franklin, celebrating her music, is scheduled for November 14, 2018, at Madison Square Garden in New York City.

Grammy Awards

Aretha Franklin's 18 Grammy Award Wins

14

1988

Best R&B Performance - Duo Or Group with Vocals

R&B

I Knew You Were Waiting (For Me) (with George Michael)

18

2008

Best Gospel-Soul Vocal Performance by a Duo or Group

Gospel

Never Gonna Break My Faith (with Mary J. Blige)

Discography

Images for kids

Franklin performing in April 2007 at the Nokia Theater in Dallas, Texas

Franklin performs in the East Room of the White House in 2015

In Spanish: Aretha Franklin para niños