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Black History Month Summary
- 2. Known as the “Mother of the Civil Rights Movement” Born: 1913 Died: 2005 MLK Jr. started a boycott of Montgomery buses due to her resistance coupled with the arrest. The 17,000 black residents of Montgomery pulled together and kept the boycott going for more than a year. “It was not pre-arranged. It just happened that the driver made a demand and I just didn't feel like obeying his demand. I was quite tired after spending a full day working.” “At the time I was arrested I had no idea it would turn into this. It was just a day like any other day. The only thing that made it significant was that the masses of the people joined in.”
- 3. “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.” Born: 1899 Died: 1968 King's philosophy of "tough-mindedness and tenderheartedness" was not only highly effective, but it gave the civil rights movement an inspiring moral authority and grace. “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”
- 4. First African-American Supreme Court Justice Born: 1908 Died: 1993 Marshall realized that one of the best ways to bring about change was through the legal system. Between 1938 and 1961, he presented more than 30 civil rights cases before the Supreme Court. He won 29 of them. “I have a lifetime appointment and I intend to serve it. I expect to die at 110, shot by a jealous husband.” “What is the quality of your intent?”
- 5. The Little Rock Nine were the first black teenagers to attend an all-white school. "I tried to see a friendly face somewhere in the mob. . . . I looked into the face of an old woman, and it seemed a kind face, but when I looked at her again, she spat at me." The Little Rock Nine included: Terrence Roberts, Carlotta Walls, Jefferson Thomas, Ernest Green, Gloria Ray, Melba Pattillo, Thelma Mothershed, Elizabeth Eckford and Minnijean Brown “I went to the first day of school with Ernest… and it burst my bubble, I usually say that. That’s when I became aware that the world of open and available doors… were in no way going to be open and available to me.”
- 6. Born Malcolm Little. X is the name he gave himself. Born: 1925 Died: 1965 “If you're not ready to die for it, put the word 'freedom' out of your vocabulary.” "What is your real name?" an interviewer asked him. "Malcolm, Malcolm X," he replied. "What was your father's real name?" the interviewer went on. Malcolm answered: "My father didn't know his real name. My father got his name from his grandfather and he got his name from his grandfather and he got it from the slave master."
- 7. American abolitionist “I had reasoned this out in my mind, there was one of two things I had a right to, liberty or death; if I could not have one, I would have the other.” Born: 1820 Died: 1913 “If I could have convinced more slaves that they were slaves, I could have freed thousands more.” “I was the conductor of the Underground Railroad for eight years, and I can say what most conductors can't say; I never ran my train off the track and I never lost a passenger.”
- 8. Women’s Rights Activist Born: 1797 Died: 1883 “The rich rob the poor and the poor rob one another.” “That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud-puddles, or gives me any best place! And ain't I a woman? Look at me! Look at my arm! I have ploughed and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me! And ain't I a woman? I could work as much and eat as much as a man - when I could get it - and bear the lash as well! And ain't I a woman? I have borne thirteen children, and seen most all sold off to slavery, and when I cried out with my mother's grief, none but Jesus heard me! And ain't I a woman?”
- 9. Yes we can. “I don't oppose all wars. What I am opposed to is a dumb war. What I am opposed to is a rash war.” Born: 1961 Died: N/A “The thing about hip-hop today is it's smart, it's insightful. The way they can communicate a complex message in a very short space is remarkable.” The 44th President of the United States of America “My parents shared not only an improbable love, they shared an abiding faith in the possibilities of this nation. They would give me an African name, Barack, or blessed, believing that in a tolerant America your name is no barrier to success.”
- 10. First African-American woman in space. “There have been lots of other women who had the talent and ability before me. I think this can be seen as an affirmation that we're moving ahead. And I hope it means that I'm just the first in a long line.” Born: 1956 Died: N/A “I'm very aware of the fact that I'm not the first African-American woman who had the skills, the talent, the desire to be an astronaut. I happen to be the first one NASA selected.” "More women should demand to be involved. It's our right. This is one area where we can get in on the ground floor and possibly help to direct where space exploration will go in the future. "
- 11. Greatly influential jazz player Born: 1901 Died: 1971 “Musicians don't retire; they stop when there's no more music in them.” "I think that anybody from the 20th century, up to now, has to be aware that if it wasn't for Louis Armstrong, we'd all be wearing powdered wigs. I think that Louis Armstrong loosened the world, helped people to be able to say "Yeah," and to walk with a little dip in their hip. Before Louis Armstrong, the world was definitely square, just like Christopher Columbus thought." -- South African trumpet legend Hugh Masekela
Notes de l'éditeur
- On December 1, 1955, in Montgomery, Alabama, Rosa Parks, an African-American seamstress, left work and boarded a bus for home. As the bus became crowded, the bus driver ordered Parks to give up her seat to a white passenger. Montgomery's buses were segregated, with the seats in the front reserved for "whites only." Blacks had to sit at the back of the bus. But if the bus was crowded and all the "whites only" seats were filled, black people were expected to give up their seats—a black person sitting while a white person stood would never be tolerated in the racist South. Rosa had had enough of such humiliation, and refused to give up her seat. "I felt I had a right to stay where I was," she said. "I wanted this particular driver to know that we were being treated unfairly as individuals and as a people." The bus driver had her arrested.
- It wasn't just that Martin Luther King became the leader of the civil rights movement that made him so extraordinary—it was the way in which he led the movement. King advocated civil disobedience, the non-violent resistance against unjust laws: "Non-violence is a powerful and just weapon which cuts without wounding and ennobles the man who wields it." Civil rights activists organized demonstrations, marches, boycotts, strikes, and voter-registration drives, and refused to obey laws that they knew were wrong and unjust. These peaceful forms of protest were often met with vicious threats, arrests, beatings, and worse. King emphasized how important it was that the civil rights movement did not sink to the level of the racists and hate mongers they fought against: "Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred," he urged. "We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline."
- Thurgood Marshall was a courageous civil rights lawyer during a period when racial segregation was the law of the land. His most important case was Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (1954), which ended segregation in public schools. By law, black and white students had to attend separate public schools. As long as schools were "separate but equal"—providing equal education for all races—segregation was considered fair. In reality, segregated schools were shamefully unequal: white schools were far more privileged than black schools, which were largely poor and overcrowded. Marshall challenged the doctrine, pointing out that "separate but equal" was just a myth disguising racism. He argued that if all students were indeed equal, then why was it necessary to separate them? The Supreme Court agreed, ruling that "separate educational facilities are inherently unequal." Marshall went on to become the first African-American Supreme Court Justice in American history.
- These remarkable young African-American students challenged segregation in the deep South and won. Although Brown v. Board of Education outlawed segregation in schools, many racist school systems defied the law by intimidating and threatening black students—Central High School was a notorious example. But the Little Rock Nine were determined to attend the school and receive the same education offered to white students, no matter what. Things grew ugly and frightening right away. On the first day of school, the governor of Arkansas ordered the state's National Guard to block the black students from entering the school. Imagine what it must have been like to be a student confronted by armed soldiers! President Eisenhower had to send in federal troops to protect the students. But that was only the beginning of their ordeal. Every morning on their way to school angry crowds of whites taunted and insulted the Little Rock Nine—they even received death threats. As scared as they were, the students wouldn't give up, and several went on to graduate from Central High. Nine black teenagers challenged a racist system and defeated it.
- He was introduced to the Black Muslims while serving a prison term and became a Muslim minister upon his release in 1952. He quickly became very prominent in the movement with a following perhaps equaling that of its leader, Elijah Muhammad. In 1963, Malcolm was suspended by Elijah after a speech in which Malcolm suggested that President Kennedy's assassination was a matter of the “chickens coming home to roost.” He then formed a rival organization of his own, the Muslim Mosque, Inc. In 1964, after a pilgrimage to Mecca, he announced his conversion to orthodox Islam and his new belief that there could be brotherhood between black and white. In his Organization of Afro-American Unity, formed after his return, the tone was still that of militant black nationalism but no longer of separation. In Feb., 1965, he was shot and killed in a public auditorium in New York City. His assassins were vaguely identified as Black Muslims, but this is a matter of controversy.
- Born into slavery, she escaped to Phildelphia in 1849, and subsequently became one of the most successful “conductors” on the Underground Railroad. Returning to the South more than a dozen times, she is generally credited with leading more than 300 slaves (including her parents and brother) to freedom, sometimes forcing the timid ahead with a loaded revolver. She became a speaker on the anti-slavery lecture circuit and a friend of the principal abolitionists, and John Brown almost certainly confided his Harpers Ferry plan to her. During the Civil War, Tubman attached herself to the Union forces in coastal South Carolina, serving as a nurse, cook, laundress, scout, and spy, and in 1863 she played an important part in a raid that resulted in the freeing of more than 700 slaves. At Auburn, N.Y., her home for many years after the war, the Cayuga co. courthouse contains a tablet in her honor.
- American abolitionist, a freed slave, originally called Isabella, b. Ulster co., N.Y. Convinced that she heard heavenly voices, she left (1843) domestic employment in New York City, adopted the name Sojourner Truth, and traveled throughout the North preaching emancipation and women's rights. A remarkable personality, she spoke with much effectiveness even though she remained illiterate.
- Obama's platform has focused on advocating for working families and poor communities, education, caring for the environment, and ethics reform. Obama was born in Hawaii in 1961 to an American mother and a Kenyan father. When he was two, his parents, who had met as students at the University of Hawaii, divorced. Obama's Harvard-educated father then returned to Kenya, where he worked in the economics ministry. Obama lived in Indonesia with his mother and stepfather for part of his childhood, returning to Hawaii to finish high school. He graduated from Columbia University, where he majored in political science and specialized in international relations. He then attended Harvard Law School, graduated magna cum laude, and served as the first African-American president of the Harvard Law Review. After law school, he worked as a community organizer and a civil rights lawyer in Chicago. He also taught at the University of Chicago Law School as a senior lecturer specializing in constitutional law. Obama represented the South Side of Chicago in the Illinois State Senate from 1996–2004 as a Democrat. In 2004, he was elected to the U.S. Senate, winning with 70% of the vote against the conservative black Republican, Alan Keyes. Obama became the only African-American serving in the U.S. Senate (and the fifth in U.S. history).
- Astronaut Mae Jemison became the first African-American woman to enter space when she served on the crew of the Space Shuttle Endeavor in September 1992. Jemison's life, however, is also full of terrestrial accomplishments. A high school graduate at the age of 16, she attended Stanford University on a scholarship, graduating with a B.S. degree in chemical engineering and having fulfilled the requirements for an A.B. in African and Afro-American Studies. After graduating from medical school (Cornell University, 1981), Jemison joined the Peace Corps, serving as its area medical officer from 1983 to 1985 in the West African countries of Sierra Leone and Liberia. After serving in NASA from 1987 to 1993, Jemison founded The Jemison Group, Inc., which developed ALAFIYA, a satellite-based telecommunications systems intended to improve health care delivery in developing nations. She also was a professor in the Environmental Studies Program at Dartmouth College, where she directed the Jemison Institute for Advancing Technology in Developing Countries.
- American jazz trumpet virtuoso, singer, and bandleader, b. New Orleans. He learned to play the cornet in the band of the Waif's Home in New Orleans, and after playing with Kid Ory's orchestra he made several trips (1918–21) with a Mississippi riverboat band. He joined (1922) King Oliver's group in Chicago, where he met and married the pianist Lilian Hardin. His early playing was noted for improvisation, and his reputation as trumpeter and as vocalist was quickly established. Armstrong was a major influence on the melodic development of jazz in the 1920s; because of him solo performance attained a position of great importance in jazz. He organized several large bands, and beginning in 1932 made numerous foreign tours. Armstrong appeared in Broadway shows, at countless jazz festivals, and in several American and foreign films. His archives are housed at Queens College, which also maintains the Louis Armstrong House. More than a great trumpeter, Armstrong was a bandleader, singer, soloist, film star, and comedian. One of his most remarkable feats was his frequent conquest of the popular market with recordings that thinly disguised authentic jazz with Armstrong's contagious humour. He nonetheless made his greatest impact on the evolution of jazz itself, which at the start of his career was popularly considered to be little more than a novelty. With his great sensitivity, technique, and capacity to express emotion, Armstrong not only ensured the survival of jazz but led in its development into a fine art.