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African American Art and History Calendar Book 1-3 by Oran Z

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African American Art and History Calendar Book 1-3 by Oran Z

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CLICK HERE TO ACCESS CALENDAR WITH LINKS FOR EACH DATE…slideshow of books contents assembled by Ms. Amy Heffernan, Gates Middle School

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August 4th  Louis Armstrong born (artwork by Julia Levenson)

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August 4th  Louis Armstrong born (artwork by Julia Levenson)

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Julia Levenson

Louis Armstrong and his Hot Five (later on the Hot Seven) made some of the most influential music in jazz history.

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Peter W. Ray, an African American Freemason was writing to Jacob Norton, a Jewish Freemason in response to a letter he received from Norton earlier in the year, 1884. The two were discussing the recognition of African American Freemasonry in the United States  Here’s a bit of Peter Williams Ray’s backstory:  He was   a  doctor  who  came  from  a  free  middle-class  Black  family  in  New  York  City.  The  New  York  Constitution that was adopted in 1777 allowing any man to vote — white or Black — as long as he was free and met the property qualifications; some members of Ray’s family were financially well-off enough to  participate  in  elections.  But  in 1820  when New  York   moved  to  abolish  slavery  (albeit  gradually),  the  laws began to change. Property qualifications for voting were eliminated for white people, but increased for Black  people.  The  new  1821  Constitution  said,  no  man  of  colour,  unless  he  .  .  .  shall  be  seized  and  possessed  of  a  freehold  estate  of  the  value  of  two  hundred  and  fifty  dollars,  over  and  above  all  debts  and  encumbrances charged thereon; and shall have been actually rated, and paid a tax thereon, shall be entitled to vote at any such election. In other words, unless you have an estate worth at least $250, with no debt, and have paid your taxes, you cannot vote. But no one in Ray’s family owned property worth $250 or more. This law meant that almost no Black people could vote in the state of New York.  Peter W. Ray spent the rest of his life advocating for African American rights until his dying day.

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Nov. 11, 1884:  letter from Peter William Ray (painting illustration by Alli Bartley)

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Nov. 11, 1884:  letter from Peter William Ray (painting illustration by Alli Bartley)

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Put yourself in Fannie Lou Hamer’s shoes: You were born in Mississippi in 1917. By the time you were of voting age, there were constitutional amendments (the 15th and 19th) that said Black people and women had the right to vote. But you knew nothing of these laws, and white Mississippians created a constitution that made those amendments almost meaningless for someone like you. In 1890, the legislature adopted new rules that required voters to pay a poll tax for two consecutive years before an election and pass a literacy test to become registered. The literacy test required want-to-be voters to read a section of the state constitution and explain it to the satisfaction of the county clerk, who was always white. These clerks rejected responses even when they were perfect. After 1890, just about no Black people in your state became registered. It’s no wonder that when a civil rights worker came through your town in 1962 and asked if you were registered to vote, you told them you didn’t even know you had the right to vote. You were a sharecropper with no more than a 6th-grade education, and you didn’t know a single Black person who could vote, so you assumed Black people were barred from voting. After learning about your rights, you became an activist and political leader, and committed your life to helping Black people acquire political power in the United States.

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Oct 6, 1917: Fannie Lou Hamer is born (painting by Adeline Oliver)

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Oct 6, 1917: Fannie Lou Hamer is born (painting by Adeline Oliver)

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January 20: Amanda Gorman (artwork by Ciara Hughes)

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January 20: Amanda Gorman (artwork by Ciara Hughes)

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Amanda Gorman is a poet and activist who uses her words to fight against oppression of race and gender. On January 20th, 2021, Amanda preformed her poem "The Hill We Climb" at the inauguration of Joe Biden in Washington D.C. She was the youngest inaugural poet in U.S. History along with a multi-award winning writer and Harvard graduate. Her words have taken her so far in life and she is pulling the nation along with her.

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February 15th Harry Lewis (artwork by Emma Braun)

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February 15th Harry Lewis (artwork by Emma Braun)

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Emma Braun
On February 15th, 1968, Henry Lewis became the first Black conductor and music director of a major American orchestra.
I am also not sure why it added a pinkish film over the image

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October 11: The First Negro World Series 

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October 11: The First Negro World Series 

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By Caroline Railton

The Kansas City Monarchs won the first Negro World Series in 1924. The Negro Nation League (NNL) was established in 1920.

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April 15th: Jackie Robinson debut in the MLB by Thomas McMellen

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April 15th: Jackie Robinson debut in the MLB by Thomas McMellen

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He was the first black man to play in the MLB.

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by Emma Braun
Marsha P. Johnson was one of the most prominent figures of the gay rights movement of the 1960s and 1970s in New York City.  The photograph recreated here as a drawing shows Johnson at her own party in uptown NYC before going to the Stonewall Inn on the corner of Christopher Street and 7th Avenue, where the Stonewall Riot (Uprising) started on June 28th. After Stonewall, Johnson's activism continued—she joined the Gay Liberation Front, ACT UP, and cofounded the Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries (STAR) with Sylvia Rivera.  Johnson was an important advocate for homeless LGBTQ+ youth, those effected by H.I.V. and AIDS, and gay and transgender rights.

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GIF by Matthew Short
The Amistad was a Spanish slave ship which had captured Africans from Sierra Leone. After one of the captives managed to escape from his chains and help several others escape as well, they took over the ship, and were eventually towed into New London, CT. They were faced with slavery and execution, but two court cases, one in Connecticut court, and one in the Supreme Court, voted in favor of them, and they were set free.

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by Louisa Kinsley
On December 1, 1955, the Montgomery Bus Boycott began, sparked by Rosa Parks, as she refused to give up her seat to a white man on a bus. Rosa Parks's bravery was very significant in paving the way for the civil rights movement.

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365 Days: First Graphite Transfer Composition

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By Molly Lovering
On this day, the NAACP was founded by a group consisting of W.E.B. Du Bois, Ida Bell Wells-Barnett, and others concerned with the challenges facing African Americans. The goal was to secure the political, educational, social, and economic equality of rights in order to eliminate race-based discrimination.

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October 15: 1966 Black Panther Party formed in Oakland, CA

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October 15: 1966 Black Panther Party formed in Oakland, CA

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The Panther Party's members confronted politicians, challenged the police, and protected black citizens from brutality. From 1967 to 1971, Cleaver was the Panthers' communications secretary, committed to eradicating the injustices that she continued to witness. Read more about the group's formation here: https://nmaahc.si.edu/explore/stories/black-panther-party-challenging-police-and-promoting-social-change

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February 17th: Micheal Jordan's Birthday

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February 17th: Micheal Jordan's Birthday

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By: Elie Gibson

Micheal Jordan was born on February 17th, 1963 in Brooklyn, New York. He is a famous basketball player who played on the Bulls for 13 years. He has made history in basketball. Micheal Jordan ended up winning 6 NBA finals with his team and he had the first Air Jordans made with Nike in 1984

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On February 18th, 1959, Muhammad Ali won the Golden Gloves after beating fellow boxer, Charles Dobbins. His win was considered unanimous. This was one of the many times that he had won the Golden Gloves.

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Kaylee Liang

On this date in 1921, Harry Herbert Pace organized the Pace Phonograph Corporation Inc. Pace did not have an easy time entering the record business. White record companies threw up obstacles to keep him out when he attempted to use a local pressing company. A largely white company purchased the plant and would not do business with him. He was able to get a local studio to record but had to send the master to a pressing plant in Port Washington, Wisconsin.

Finally, after about six weeks with all the preliminary work and all the necessary ingredients in place, recording laboratories, wrapping paper, and corrugated board, he began manufacturing Black Swan Records. The name Black Swan was used to honor the talents of Elizabeth Taylor Greenfield, a remarkable Negro singer known as "The Black Swan."

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May 17, 2019 Tyler the Creator's 6th studio album, Igor released. 

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May 17, 2019 Tyler the Creator's 6th studio album, Igor released. 

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Tyler the Creator is an american rapper and singer he has been the receiver of many accolades including two Grammys. He won the Grammy Award for Best Rap Album in 2020 from his studio album Igor.

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June 12, 1991, Michael Jordan’s 1st NBA Championship (artwork by Lily Gerhart)

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June 12, 1991, Michael Jordan’s 1st NBA Championship (artwork by Lily Gerhart)

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Michael Jordan earned his first NBA championship in 1991, as he led the Chicago Bulls to their first-ever championship. The Bulls had finished with the best record in the league that season. This was one of Michael's greatest achievements, and he's been a huge inspiration to so many around the world. He is also admired for his gratitude and humbleness.

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December 3 1970 first Black

Woman to win Miss

World, Jennifer

Josephine Hosten (Lilly Mays)

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Dr. Guion Blueford (Jimmy)

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Put yourself in Frederick Douglass’s shoes: The first time you registered to vote, you committed voter fraud. You had freed yourself (run away) from your enslavement in Maryland and fled first to New York, then to Massachusetts. There, you registered to vote under your new name, Douglass. You were essentially a criminal, a fugitive, since under the federal Fugitive Slave Law you were still the legal “property” of your former “owner,” Thomas Auld. If found out, you could be captured and returned to slavery at any time. Over time, you became one of the most famous abolitionists in the country. But you were never a one-issue activist. You campaigned for women’s rights alongside your campaign against slavery. After the Civil War, you broke with white suffrage activists like Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. They opposed the 15th Amendment, as worded — which extended the vote to Black men — because it did not ensure women’s right to vote. You would have been happy to see the 15th Amendment cover women’s rights as well, but given the politics of the era, and the fact that newly freed Black people were under attack all across the country, you didn’t think the issue could wait. You worked hard for passage of the 15th Amendment, and it passed in 1870. Some Black people could already vote in some states, but after this amendment, no state was allowed to deny Black men the right to vote on the basis of race.

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1840-1870: Frederick Douglass (painting by Allison McGourty)

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1840-1870: Frederick Douglass (painting by Allison McGourty)

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Put yourself in Frances Ellen Watkins Harper’s shoes:  You are a Black woman who was born free in Maryland, a state where slavery was legal. You became an antislavery activist, during the 1850s and 1860s. You gave abolitionist speeches across the country and were active in the Underground Railroad. After the Civil War, you joined the American Equal Rights Association to fight for both the rights of women and Black people. Unfortunately, the movement became divided between the issue of who should get the vote first: white women or Black men. You did not believe that giving white women the ballot would be a cure for racism — after all, didn’t many white women enslave Black people? So you focused your efforts on winning Black male suffrage. The 15th Amendment, one of three Reconstruction amendments, was adopted in 1870, stating, the right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude. But the ink wasn’t even dry before you got back to work fighting for women’s suffrage. You wrote, “When they are reconstructing the government, why not lay the whole foundation anew. . . . Is it not the Negro woman’s hour also? Has she not as many rights and claims as the Negro man?” You argued the vote should immediately be extended to women.

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1860s: Francis Harper (painting illustration by Deryn Collins)

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1860s: Francis Harper (painting illustration by Deryn Collins)

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Put yourself in Oscar J. Dunn’s shoes:  You were born in New Orleans in 1826 to an enslaved woman, which meant, under the laws of the time, you too were enslaved. But your father was a carpenter who saved up enough money to buy the freedom of your mother, your sister, and you. By the time you were 6, your family was part of the largest community of free Black people in the Deep South. Though free Blacks in New Orleans enjoyed far more rights than in other states — the right to travel without restriction and testify in court against whites — you still could not vote. During the Civil War, you were in the 1st Louisiana Native Guard, one of the first all-Black regiments to fight for the Union Army. When the war was over, in spite of your military service, you still could not vote. That all changed with the passage of the new Reconstruction era 1868 Louisiana Constitution, which stated “Every male person, of the age of twenty-one years or upwards, born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, and a resident of this State one year next preceding an election . . . shall be deemed an elector . . .” With Black men finally voting, you were one of seven Black men elected to Louisiana’s senate and the only former slave elected to that body.

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1826: Oscar J Dunn (painting by Kolina Nugent)

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1826: Oscar J Dunn (painting by Kolina Nugent)

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Put yourself in Lamar Smith’s shoes:  You were born in Mississippi in 1892. You were 63 in 1955 when you were murdered, shot at close range, in broad daylight, on the lawn of a county courthouse. You were a farmer and a World War I veteran. But what got you killed was your work registering Black voters. Black people like you faced all kinds of obstacles to voting — literacy tests, poll taxes, grandfather clauses — but in the rare event that you made it through all these hoops, you still faced a final hurdle: racist violence. In fact, that is why you were on the courthouse lawn that day. You were helping Black voters access absentee ballots, so they could avoid white people violently attacking them on voting day. In spite of the fact that there were more than 30 witnesses to your murder and a white man was seen leaving the scene with a blood-soaked shirt, the authorities never charged anyone with your murder. White law enforcement’s unwillingness to punish white criminal violence against Black voters carried a clear message for Black Mississippians: Don’t vote, or else.

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1955:Lamar Smith (painting by Ruben Thompkins)

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1955:Lamar Smith (painting by Ruben Thompkins)

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Put yourself in Elzie McGill’s shoes:  You were born in Lowndes County, Alabama, in 1903. Though the U.S. Constitution’s 15th Amendment affirmed the right of a Black man like you to vote, in reality, in Alabama, like in most states that had made up the Confederacy during the Civil War, Black people could rarely register, much less vote. Even if you somehow  passed  the  literacy  test  required  to  register  (which  was  always  “scored”  by  a  white  registrar),  white terrorist violence was used to keep you from the ballot box. When you became active in organizing for change, there were 5,122 eligible Black voters in your county, but not a single one was registered. You worked with the Lowndes County Christian Movement for Human Rights (LCCMHR) to register more Black voters. The work was slow and dangerous. But following the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, change came more quickly. It said states couldn’t use literacy tests to disenfranchise voters and that precincts  with  a  history  of  racist  voter  disenfranchisement  would  be  subject  to  federal  oversight  —  the  federal government literally sent election observers to make sure Black people’s right to register and vote was not being denied. Black voter registration shot up overnight. In Alabama alone, registration of Black voters went from about 19 percent to about 50 percent in less than three years.

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1965: Elsie McGill (painting by May Watkins)

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1965: Elsie McGill (painting by May Watkins)

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Put yourself in Joseph Jackson’s shoes: In 2008, you were one of a very small and select group of voters in the United States: You cast your ballot in the historic election of Barack Obama from within the confines of a maximum security prison. You were a Black man in Maine, serving 19 years for manslaughter. Only Maine and Vermont — the two whitest states in the nation — allow felons to vote from behind bars. That means that nearly all convicted felons are disenfranchised during their prison sentences and, sometimes, long after their release. Experts estimate that in the 2016 election, felony disenfranchisement laws kept more than 6 million Americans from exercising the vote. There are a disproportionate number of Black, Brown, and Native American people who are incarcerated in the United States. But these rates of disenfranchisement fall most heavily on the Black communities, already hit hard by fewer polling sites, longer wait times, and strict Voter ID laws. While you were in prison, you organized your fellow inmates, and led voter registration drives. You say that your involvement in politics behind bars put you on a healthy path for life after prison. You were released in 2013, earned a master’s degree, and now you advocate for inmates and their families with the Maine Prisoner Advocacy Coalition.

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2008: Joseph Jackson (painting illustration by Keira Svensen)

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2008: Joseph Jackson (painting illustration by Keira Svensen)

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Put yourself in Floyd Carrier’s shoes:   You are an African American Korean War veteran in your 80s. In 2011, when you tried to register to vote in the precinct nearest to your home in Beaumont, Texas, you offered up your Veterans Administration card as identification, which you have used for the last 50 years to vote. But the state’s new Voter ID law required  government  issued  photo  identification,  which  you  did  not  have.  As  you  told  one  journalist:  It was like overnight you were not a citizen anymore. At first, a federal judge said Texas’s photo ID law violated the Voting Rights Act of 1965. But in 2013, in the landmark case, Shelby County v. Holder, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned one of the most important parts of that law, the part that said states with a  history  of  voter  suppression  or  discrimination  had  to  get  pre-clearance  (that  is,  permission  from  the  federal  government)  before  passing  new  voting  laws.  Texas  politicians,  like  Republican  governor  Greg  Abbott,  promise  to  continue  to  defend  the  photo  ID  statute,  and  now,  with  no  one  looking  over  their  shoulder, you worry that other qualified voters will also be denied the right to vote.

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2011: Floyd Carrier (painting by Alice Sullivan)

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2011: Floyd Carrier (painting by Alice Sullivan)

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Put Yourself in Lawrence Aaron Nixon’s shoes: You are a Black doctor living in Texas. You wanted to use your vote to elect candidates who would protect your rights and safety. But in a state like Texas, where the Republican Party was basically nonexistent at the time, this meant casting votes for the least bad of two Democratic, segregationist candidates in the primary, or wasting your vote altogether. In 1914, you helped organize a local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), an organization that would help you challenge voting restrictions that kept you out of the Democratic primary. In 1923, the Texas legislature passed a new law, creating an all-white primary. Texas now said the Democratic Party was a private organization, and as such, could allow only white people to vote in its primaries. In 1924, you took your poll tax receipt (proving you had paid the tax making you eligible to vote) and went to vote at your local polling site; under the new law, you were denied entry. You sued. For the next 20 years, you and the NAACP pursued legal action to get back your right to vote in the Democratic primary. Twice — in 1927 and 1932 — your cases made it to the Supreme Court, and both times it sided with you. But Texas continued to create new rules to keep Black people from the primary. Finally, in 1944, after decades of struggle, you voted for the first time in the Democratic primary in El Paso. It had been more than 20 years since you’d last voted.

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March 7, 1927: NAACP Supreme Court Victory: Nixon v. Herndon  (acrylic painting featuring Lawrence Aaron Nixon by Oliver Sherman, SHS grade 11)

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March 7, 1927: NAACP Supreme Court Victory: Nixon v. Herndon  (acrylic painting featuring Lawrence Aaron Nixon by Oliver Sherman, SHS grade 11)

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Voting Rights Timeline in USA: 1740 - 2018

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Voting Rights Timeline in USA: 1740 - 2018

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Housing Segregation: Knowing Our History

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Housing Segregation: Knowing Our History

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August 22: Fannie Lou Hamar, Voting Rights Activist

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August 22: Fannie Lou Hamar, Voting Rights Activist

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On Aug 22, 1964, Fannie Lou Hamar testified at the National Democratic Convention on behalf of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party