History

Monday, February 25, 2008

Black History's Forgotten Sportin' Life Players

Beyond Jackie Robinson, Tiger Woods, Wilma Rudolph, and other famous sports legends, black history honor rolls are filled with many other competitive athletes who made their mark.

Here are 5 sports originals who richly deserve a second look, although they may not be the best known.

  1. Alice Coachman - Represented the women’s track team at Tuskegee Institute.  Alice was the only woman on the 1948 U.S. Olympic team to win a gold medal in track and field (high jump).

  2. Dan Bankhead - The first African American pitcher in Major League Baseball (August 1947 for the Brooklyn Dodgers).

  3. Fritz Pollard - First black All-American (1916).  This football legend played for Brown University between 1915 - 1916.  He played in the first Rose Bowl game (January 1, 1916 - Brown vs. Washington State).

  4. Marshall W. “Major” Taylor - A cyclist who won the World Cycle Racing Championship in 1899.  Taylor won the U.S. trophy in 1900.  He was called the fastest bike rider in the world.

  5. Pele’ - Born Edson Arantes De Nascimento in Tres Coracoes, Brazil, “The Black Pearl” became the most famous soccer player in the world.  At 17, he led the Brazilian team to their first World Cup in Sweden (1958).

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Posted by Hugh Smith on 02/25 at 12:02 AM
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Wednesday, February 20, 2008

25 Innovative & Original Black History Champions

From the digital pages of Empower Encyclopedia(c) 1998 - 2008, here are 25 innovative and original black history champions from A - M.

There are many more of course, but this time, we shine the beacon on these 25:

  1. Dr. Sadie Tanner Alexander - The first Black woman Ph.D. in the United States (Doctorate in economics from the University of Pennsylvania, 1921).

  2. Guion Stewart Bluford Jr.- First African American astronaut (in space) aboard the space shuttle Challenger on August 30, 1983.

  3. Justice Jane M. Bolin - America’s first African American woman judge, appointed to the Court of Domestic Relations in New York City by Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia on July 22, 1939.

  4. Thomas Bradley (1917-1998) - First African American elected Mayor of Los Angeles in 1973.

  5. Ensign Jesse Brown - First black aviator in the U.S. Navy in 1948.

  6. Jill Brown - First black woman accepted for pilot training by the U.S. Navy in 1974. In 1978, she became the first African American female pilot/First Officer with a major carrier: Texas International Airlines.

  7. Dr. Ralph J. Bunche - First African American to win the Nobel Peace Prize (1950).

  8. Yvonne Brathwaite Burke - First woman elected chair of the Congressional Black Caucus (1976).

  9. Sergeant William H. Carney - First African American awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor.

  10. Gwendolyn B. Cherry, (1924-1979) - First African American woman elected to the Florida Legislature (1970).

  11. Nathaniel Sweetwater Clifton - First African American to play in the National Basketball Association (1950 with the New York Knicks).

  12. Bessie Coleman, (1892-1926) - First black woman in the United States to receive a pilot’s license.

  13. Ernie Davis, (1940-1963) - First African American to win the Heisman Trophy (1961 as a football half-back with Syracuse University).

  14. Dr. Charles R. Drew, (1904-1950) - Founded the first blood bank (1940).

  15. Lelia Foley - First African American female mayor in America (Taft, Oklahoma, April 3, 1973).

  16. W. Wilson Goode - First African American elected Mayor of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (sworn in on January 2, 1984).

  17. Patricia R. Harris, (1924-1985) - First black woman to hold a top cabinet post (Secretary of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) under President Jimmy Carter in 1977).

  18. Judge William H. Hastie, (1904-1976) - First African American U.S. federal judge… and the youngest at age 32 (1936).

  19. Matthew A. Henson, (1866-1954) - First explorer to reach the North Pole on (April 6, 1909).

  20. General Daniel “Chappie” James Jr. - First African American (Air Force) to obtain the rank of full four-star General (1975).

  21. Hazel W. Johnson - First African American woman (Army) to obtain the rank of General (September, 1979).

  22. William H. Lewis - First African American to hold the position of Assistant U.S. Attorney General (1911 by President William H. Taft).

  23. Autherine Lucy - First African American student enrolled at the University of Alabama in 1956.

  24. Mary Elizabeth Mahoney, (1846-1926) - First African American to graduate with a diploma in nursing (1879).

  25. Thurgood Marshall, (1908-1993) - First African American appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court (by President Lyndon Johnson in 1967).

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Posted by Hugh Smith on 02/20 at 12:02 AM
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Monday, February 04, 2008

5 African Americans who Changed the World

Here are 5 outstanding African Americans who made contributions during the 20th century to change our world.  These 5 black history people usually rise to the top in the spotlight during black history month.


1) Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.


Martin Luther King Jr. is the father of the modern civil rights movement.  He was born Michael Luther King, January 15, 1929, in Atlanta Georgia.

Dr. King earned his Ph.D. from Boston University in 1955 (a Doctorate in Theology).

He married Coretta Scott King in 1953.  The young 26 year-old Martin organized the Montgomery bus boycott with the Reverend Ralph David Abernathy and the NAACP in 1955 after Rosa Parks refused to surrender her bus seat to whites.

King became the first leader of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in 1957.  By 1961, he was supporting freedom rides to integrate Southern lunch counters and rest rooms.

His famous “I Have a Dream Speech” was delivered on the Washington D.C. mall in 1963.  King won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964.  He was assassinated in 1968 as he was preparing to lead a labor protest march on behalf of sanitation workers in Memphis, Tennessee.


2) Rosa Parks


The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1956 that segregation on common carrier buses was illegal.  The decision was reached primarily because of the Montgomery bus boycott that lasted one year.

Rosa Parks, an African American seamstress, refused to surrender her seat to a white passenger (December 1, 1955).  Arrested for her act, Parks eventually found justice in the courts.

In 1999, President Bill Clinton presented her with the Congressional Gold Medal, the highest honor for a U.S. civilian.


3) Thurgood Marshall


Thurgood Marshall, (1908-1993), was born in Baltimore, Maryland.  “Mr. Civil Rights,” changed history in 1954 when he successfully argued Brown vs. the Board of Education before the U.S. Supreme Court.

The Brown case outlawed segregation in schools.

Marshall was educated at Lincoln University and Howard Law School.  He began practicing law in 1933, became assistant special counsel for the NAACP in 1936, then chief counsel in 1938.

He was the first director/chief counsel for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund (1940-1961).

In 1961, President John Kennedy appointed him Second Circuit United States Court of Appeals judge.  By 1965 he was appointed solicitor general in the Department of Justice.

Marshall was appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court by President Lyndon Johnson in 1967 becoming the first African American on the court.

Thurgood Marshall is considered the most prominent civil rights lawyer of the 20th Century.


4) Jackie Robinson


U.S. Army Lieutenant and former UCLA football great Jackie Robinson (1919-1972), entered major league baseball in 1945 by signing a contract with the Brooklyn Dodgers’ farm team, the Montreal Royals.

Robinson, the first ever black player at the start of the 1947 season, was one of three African Americans on the roster of a major league baseball franchise by the end of 1947 (joined by Larry Doby of the Cleveland Indians, and Henry Thompson of the St. Louis Browns).


5) Muhammad Ali


Muhammad Ali, born Cassius Clay on January 17, 1942, won an Olympic gold medal in Rome as a light heavy weight in 1960.

He defeated Sonny Liston in 1964 to win the heavy weight championship for the first time.  Ali won the crown again in 1974 by beating George Foreman.

"The Greatest” became the first in boxing history to win the heavy-weight title three times when he took out Leon Spinks in 1978.

Ali refused to be drafted into the U.S. Army (he was a conscientious objector on religious and moral grounds).  He was stripped of his first title in 1967.

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Posted by Hugh Smith on 02/04 at 12:02 AM
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Wednesday, January 30, 2008

First Lady Shirley Chisholm Targets the White House

Long before the presidential aspirations of Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, Carol Moseley Braun, Alan Keyes, Barack Obama, and others, there was Shirley Chisholm.

Shirley St. Hill Chisholm, (1924-2005), was elected to the U.S. Congress in 1968.

She was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1924.  Shirley was the first African American woman elected to Congress, and the first black to wage a serious campaign for the 1972 Democratic nomination for president.

Chisholm retired from Congress in 1982.

Listen to Congresswoman Chisholm’s historic 2 minute announcement for her candidacy for President of the United States, recorded 36 years ago, in 1972, outside of the U.S. Capitol in Washington D.C.

What remarkable parallels can you hear between Chisholm’s diplomatic words and so many similar voices of the candidates of today?

Chisholm is truly a black history pioneer in American politics.

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Posted by Hugh Smith on 01/30 at 06:00 PM
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Monday, January 21, 2008

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Saluted with Selma the Musical

In 2008, we’ll mark the 40th anniversary of the death of Martin Luther King Jr.

In June of 1972, inspired by the life of Dr. King, Tommy Butler began a 9-month effort to write Selma, the musical.

After opening in a small theater in Los Angeles in 1976, Selma was brought to the attention of comedian Redd Foxx, who thought the production would be perfect for the 1976 bi-centennial celebration.

Selma the musical, who’s title comes from the famous march between Selma and Montgomery, Alabama, chronicles the life of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., as well as other civil rights activists of the era.

Watch the story of Selma, the musical tribute to Martin Luther King Jr, produced by BlackHistoryPeople.com for Black History Month 2008.

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Posted by Hugh Smith on 01/21 at 12:02 AM
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Wednesday, January 09, 2008

Richard Wright’s 2008 Centennial

2008 is the centennial of the birth of author Richard Wright.

Richard Nathaniel Wright, (1908-1960), was born on September 4, in Adams County, Mississippi.  Wright was the first African American author to gain a large mainstream audience.

He accomplished this by writing honestly about black inner city life.  Wright spent his early years on a sharecropper farm in Natchez, Mississippi.  His family moved from Natchez to Memphis, Tennessee, then to Jackson, Mississippi.

As an eight grader in 1923, he wrote The Voodoo of Hell’s Half Acre, a short story that was published in Jackson’s Southern Register (a weekly newspaper targeted towards blacks).

After High School graduation, Wright returned to Memphis for a couple of years.  While in the South, Southern Editor H.L. Mencken had a significant impact on Wright’s consideration of writing as a career.

Wright realized through Mencken’s literary journalism that words were an effective weapon in the social struggle for equality.

As a young man, Wright’s fascination with writing and literature led him to unsuccessfully attempt prose in the style of many authors he admired including Theodore Dreiser, Sherwood Anderson, and Sinclair Lewis.

In 1927, Wright moved to Chicago.  He got a job in the Post Office.  Postal service friends who were members of the Communist Party encouraged him to join the party too.  Artists, writers, and intellectuals of the day who sympathized with communism became affiliated with the John Reed Club (a group sponsored by the party).

Wright joined, and had his poems published in Left Front, a John Reed Club publication (1934).  In 1936, the WPA assigned him to the Federal Theater Project where he worked as a public relations writer.

Late in 1936, Wright’s short story Big Boy Leaves Home appeared in The New Caravan anthology.  A November 1936 review by The New York Times and The New Republic called his story the best in the collection.

By 1937, Wright was in his right career as a writer.  His first novel, Native Son, was published in March of 1940.  The stage adaptation of Wright’s best seller opened in 1941 at New York City’s St. James Theater.

John Houseman produced and Orson Welles directed.  The National Urban League picketed the production expressing their dissatisfaction that “Native Son” portrayed blacks in an unfavorable light.

Wright toured Brazil, Paris, and Europe in 1946.  After writing 12 Million Black Voices, Wright was kept under surveillance by the FBI.  By 1947, he decided to move to Paris.  During the 1950’s he traveled to Africa and Indonesia.  He was a Pan Africanist who refuted Africa’s arbitrary border divisions (imposed by Europeans).

Wright excelled in authoring Japanese poetry, writing over 4,000 haiku poems.  He died in Paris on November 28, 1960.

For the 2008 Wright centennial, Harper Collins Publishers has released A Father’s Law, (on sale January 8, 2008).

This unfinished and previously unpublished novel was found by Wright’s daughter Julia after his death.

A Father’s Law, and Richard Wright, are great black history month projects.

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Posted by Hugh Smith on 01/09 at 12:02 AM
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Wednesday, December 05, 2007

Conductors Tubman, Harper, and Harris Lead the Underground Railroad

Harriet Tubman, (1820-1913), helped nearly 300 slaves escape bondage from the Southern United States by using a network of safe houses, homes, and churches known as the Underground Railroad.

Through ingenious disguises, she evaded capture while leading slaves along the Underground Railroad into the North.  Some were lead as far north as Canada (outside the jurisdiction of the U.S. Fugitive Slave Law).

Frances E. Harper, (1825-1911), (the first black woman to publish a novel in 1860 - Iola Leroy...The Shadows Lifted), was also very active in the Underground Railroad in 1853.

Catherine Harris, (1809-1907), operated an Underground Railroad station in Jamestown, New York, (beginning in 1835), for 25 years.

Harriet Tubman, Frances E. Harper, and Catherine Harris are three black history people who engineered the secret success of the Underground Railroad.

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Posted by Hugh Smith on 12/05 at 08:02 AM
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Wednesday, November 07, 2007

Stokes, Hatcher, and McCree Breakthrough as Mr. Mayor

Many have come since, but in November, 1967, 40 years ago, these 3 black history people were elected as the first African American mayors of major U.S. cities.

  • Carl B. Stokes was elected mayor of Cleveland, Ohio.
  • Floyd McCree was elected mayor of Flint, Michigan.
  • Richard B. Hatcher was elected mayor of Gary, Indiana.

The mid 20th century civil rights movement helped lead to these important political gains.

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Posted by Hugh Smith on 11/07 at 07:11 AM
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Wednesday, October 24, 2007

Azie Taylor Morton Billed as the first African American Female Treasurer of the U.S.

Azie Taylor Morton, (1936 - 2003), was the first African American woman Treasurer of the United States (1977).

Blanche Kelso Bruce was the first black appointed to the position in 1881.

Before her post as the 36th Treasurer, Morton, a Dale, Texas native, was a teacher, a U.S. EEOC (Equal Employment Opportunity Commission) investigator, and a special assistant to the Chairman of the Democratic National Committee.

Morton’s signature appeared on $1, $5, and $10 bills issued between September, 1977 - August 1979.  If you have one of these bills, they are very rare.

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Posted by Hugh Smith on 10/24 at 06:00 PM
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Wednesday, October 10, 2007

James Weldon Johnson's Community Connection

James Weldon Johnson, (1871-1938), wrote the famous poem, “Lift Every Voice and Sing” - now known as The Negro National Anthem.

He wrote several books and poems, including, The Autobiography of an ex-Colored Man, (1912), and Negro American, What Now? (1934).

Johnson collaborated with his brother to write hundreds of songs.  Many of these tunes were featured on Broadway.

He was the first African American admitted to the Florida Bar, marking another of his numerous accomplishments as a contributor to black history.

President Teddy Roosevelt appointed Johnson U.S. Consul to Venezuela and Nicaragua in 1906.  Johnson joined the NAACP in 1916, and became Executive Secretary of the organization in 1920.

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Posted by Hugh Smith on 10/10 at 07:14 AM
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Wednesday, September 05, 2007

50th Anniversary of “the Little Rock Nine” Students who made Black History

Ernest Green and Daisy Bates are important black history people central to the story of the “Little Rock Nine."

Little Rock Nine student Ernest Green was cast into the national spotlight in 1957 integrating all white Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas.

He graduated in 1958, then went on to achieve his B.A. from Michigan State University in 1962, and his M.A. in 1964.  In 1977, President Jimmy Carter nominated Green to become Assistant Secretary of Labor in charge of employment and training.

Activist Daisy Bates co-founded Arkansas’ State-Press Newspaper.  In 1953, she was elected President of the Arkansas Conference of NAACP branches.

After the 1954 Brown vs. the Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas Supreme Court case (outlawing segregation in public schools), Bates pressured the Little Rock School Board to desegregate.

In 1957, nine students were selected to enroll in Central High School.  Twice during September of 1957, the Little Rock Nine were prevented from entering Central High.

Daisy Bates appealed to President Eisenhower.  Eisenhower sent federal troops to Little Rock and the nine students were enrolled.  Governor Faubus of Arkansas then closed the high schools.  In August, 1958, the U.S. Eight Circuit of Appeals reopened the high schools.

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Posted by Hugh Smith on 09/05 at 06:30 PM
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Wednesday, August 22, 2007

20 Black History Attorneys Take the Law into their own Hands

During the golden age of the civil rights movement, a prestigious law degree meant ambitious graduates had a powerful new tool to use to help facilitate social change.  Challenges to the legal system could be channeled through the courts by a new generation of activists and leaders.

Here are 20 people in black history who took advantage of their law degrees to move society forward.

  1. Dr. Sadie Tanner Alexander was the first black woman graduate of the University of Pennsylvania Law School, 1927.  She was the first Black woman admitted to the Philadelphia Bar Association.

  2. Justice Jane M. Bolin, a graduate of Wellesley College and the Yale Law School, was appointed judge to the Court of Domestic Relations in New York City by Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia on July 22, 1939.  Her appointment made her America’s first African American woman judge.

  3. Patricia R. Harris, (1924-1985), was an African American woman of many firsts.  She was the first black woman in charge of an American embassy as Ambassador to Luxembourg in 1965.  She graduated from Howard University in Washington D.C., earned her Masters from the University of Chicago, and her law degree from George Washington Law School.  She’s excelled as a civil rights advocate, law judge, and law firm partner.

  4. Judge William H. Hastie, (1904-1976), was the first African American federal judge.  He was born in Knoxville, Tennessee, and raised in Washington, D.C.  Hastie earned his law degree from Amherst College, and a Ph.D. in juristic science from the Harvard Law School.  His outstanding career is marked by numerous achievements: faculty member of the Howard Law School, Assistant Solicitor of the Department of Interior, Dean of the Howard Law School, youngest U.S. Federal judge at age 32 (1936).

  5. Benjamin L. Hooks became the first black criminal court judge in Tennessee in 1965.  He was the first African American member of the Federal Communications Commission in 1972.  In 1977, Hooks succeeded Roy Wilkins to become Executive Director of the nation’s top civil rights organization, the NAACP.  Rev. Hooks earned his law degree from De Paul University in 1949.  Early in his career he was a public defender, a politician, a Baptist minister, and a vice president of a saving and loan association.

  6. Charles H. Houston, (1895-1950), was a premier constitutional lawyer and civil rights pioneer.  Under his watch as Dean at the Howard University Law School, many great lawyers were educated, including future Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall. Houston is credited with planing the strategy (before his death) for the landmark Brown vs. the Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas (successfully argued before the U.S. Supreme Court by Thurgood Marshall in 1954).

  7. Jane Edna Hunter, (1882-1971), founded the Phillis Wheatley Association in 1911, and the Phillis Wheatley Foundation Scholarship fund for black students.  This South Carolinian achieved law school success, including passing the Ohio state bar.  Jane Edna Hunter was an inspirational role model for her community.

  8. Barbara Charlene Jordan, (1936-1996), from Houston, Texas, graduated from Texas Southern University in 1956, and from Boston University Law School in 1959.  Jordan was elected to the Texas State Senate in 1966, becoming the state’s first black Senator since 1883.  She was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives and spent six successful years there (1973-1978).  In 1982, she stepped away from national politics to become a professor at the Lyndon Baines Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas in Austin.

  9. Vernon E. Jordan Jr. has had a colorful career as a noted civil rights leader and as a powerful Washington, D.C. lawyer.  He earned his law degree from Howard University in 1960.  In the 60’s he was quite involved with civil rights as Field Secretary for Georgia’s NAACP.  In 1971, Jordan became National Director of The Urban League.  He quit the Urban League in 1981 to practice law full time.

  10. Amayla Kearse was the first woman named to the Federal Appeals Court in New York.  President Jimmy Carter nominated her to the Second U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in 1979.  Kearse, a respected judge, earned her law degree from the University of Michigan.

  11. Thurgood Marshall, (1908-1993), changed history in 1954 when he successfully argued Brown vs. the Board of Education before the U.S. Supreme Court.  The Brown case outlawed segregation in schools.  He was educated at Lincoln University and Howard Law School.  Marshall began practicing law in 1933, became assistant special counsel for the NAACP in 1936, then chief counsel in 1938.  He was the first director/chief counsel for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund (1940-1961).  In 1961, President John Kennedy appointed him Second Circuit United States Court of Appeals judge.  By 1965 he was appointed solicitor general in the Department of Justice.  Marshall was appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court by President Lyndon Johnson in 1967 becoming the first African American on the court.  Marshall is considered the most prominent civil rights lawyer of the 20th Century.

  12. Judge Wade Hampton McCree was nominated U.S. Solicitor General in 1977 by President Jimmy Carter.  President Lyndon Johnson appointed him to the U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals in 1966.  President John F. Kennedy named him to a U.S. District Court Judge seat in 1961.  McCree, a World War II veteran, is a graduate of Fisk University and Harvard Law School.

  13. Arthur W. Mitchell, (1886-1968), was the first black Democrat elected to the U.S. Congress (1934 - 1943).  Mitchell studied under Booker T. Washington at Tuskegee Institute.  The Congressman, representing the First Congressional District of Illinois, received his law school instruction at Columbia and Harvard.

  14. Attorney Constance Baker Motley, (1921 - 2005), started her brilliant civil rights career with the NAACP Legal Defense Fund in 1945 as a law clerk.  She was educated at Fisk, New York University, and Columbia Law School.  Motley was an Assistant Counsel by 1950.  She was part of the law team to win Brown vs. The Board of Education in 1954.  Motley successfully argued James Meredith vs. The University of Mississippi in 1962.  She was elected a New York State Senator in 1964, and became the first black woman to hold the position of borough President of Manhattan in 1965.  In 1966, President Lyndon Johnson appointed her to a seat as the first African American woman Federal District Judge.  Her bench was in the Southern District of New York.

  15. Dr. Pauli Murray, graduate of Howard University Law School, received her Doctorate from Yale.  In 1945, she was the first African American to serve as Deputy Attorney General in California.  Dr. Murray, active in civil rights, became an ordained Episcopal Priest in 1977.

  16. Judge James B. Parsons was the first African American Federal Judge in the United States. (1961).  Judge Parsons presided over U.S. District Court in Chicago, Illinois.  He received his law degree from the University of Chicago.

  17. Howard University graduate Vel Phillips was the first African American woman to receive a law degree from the University of Wisconsin.  The Milwaukee native became Wisconsin’s first woman elected Secretary of State.

  18. Princeton New Jersey’s famous graduate Paul Robeson (1898-1976) is best known as the consummate “Renaissance Man.” He spoke or read over 20 languages, including Russian and Chinese.  Robeson may have been the most internationally famous African American in the 1930’s.  He carved out a lasting legacy as a world class artist, activist, singer, actor, lawyer, and athlete.  A Phi Beta Kappa Rutgers University graduate and a Columbia Law School graduate, Robeson was the first African American “All American."

  19. Judge Edith Sampson was born in Meadville, Pennsylvania.  She was the first woman to earn a law degree from Loyola University.  Sampson was the first African American United Nations delegate (appointed by President Harry Truman in 1950).  Judge Sampson was the first black woman elected to the U.S. Circuit Court of Cook County (Chicago) bench in 1962.

  20. Harold Washington, (1922-1987), was Chicago’s first black Mayor (1983). He graduated from Northwestern University in 1952 with a law degree and worked as a lawyer for the city of Chicago from 1954-1958.  Washington became an arbitrator for the Illinois Industrial Commission between 1960-1964.  In 1965, he was voted into his first elected office serving six terms in the Illinois State Legislature (1965-1976).

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Posted by Hugh Smith on 08/22 at 06:30 PM
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Wednesday, August 08, 2007

Henry Aaron the Trailblazer for Survivor Barry Bonds

Two different eras, two different people, and one amazing record that continues to astonish the sports world.

Hank Aaron’s America of the 1950’s, 1960’s, and 1970’s was a different world from today’s social environment in and outside of baseball.

Aaron’s achievement was clearly associated with not only sports greatness, but with civil rights advancement and black history, reflective of mid and late 20th Century cultural changes in America.

It’s clear that the Aaron milestone, more than Barry Bonds’ achievement (noted below), was a crowning confirmation of the capabilities of African Americans (in a society of doubters) during the age of Ali, R&B, and Roots.

Let’s look back on the Aaron legacy.

Henry Aaron is the only corporate executive in the world that can brag about hitting 755 lifetime home runs as a player in United States Major League Baseball.

Hammerin’ Hank passed Babe Ruth’s record on April 8th, 1974 when he hit home run number 715.

Aaron became a professional player in 1952 for the Indianapolis Clowns, a black barnstorming team.  The National League Milwaukee Braves purchased his contract for $2,500 and assigned him to their Eau Claire Wisconsin farm team the same year.

Hank Aaron was promoted to Jacksonville in the Sally League in 1953 finally breaking in at the major league level in 1954, never to look back.

On August 1, 1982, Aaron was inducted into the baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York.  He’s now the second greatest home run hitter of all time (Barry Bonds passed him with 756 on August 7, 2007).

In life after baseball, Henry Aaron has been a success in the business world as a corporate Vice President of Community Relations for Turner Broadcasting System, Inc.

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Posted by Hugh Smith on 08/08 at 07:00 AM
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Wednesday, July 04, 2007

Lena Horne Celebrates 90

Celebrating her 90th birthday, Lena Horne, entertainer extraordinaire, was born in Brooklyn, New York on June 30, 1917.

She was a 16-year-old chorus girl at Harlem’s famous Cotton Club in 1933.  Horne’s legacy includes success with radio, movies, television, records, and Broadway.

Her first big Broadway role was in the 1957 production of “Jamaica” with Ricardo Montalban.  As a singer, she’s won 3 Grammy Awards.

Horne has appeared in 16 Hollywood feature films.

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Posted by Hugh Smith on 07/04 at 12:02 AM
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Wednesday, June 27, 2007

Diana Ross Challenges 2007 BET Award Recipients to Raise the Bar

On a night in which she was honored with a lifetime achievement award, Diana Ross had some positive words of wisdom for her inexperienced peers.

Ms. Ross encouraged young artists gathered for the June 26, 2007 BET Awards that long careers are possible without using sleaze and vulgarities.

Her 5 decades of success speaks well for Diana’s magic staying power.

As one of the most popular female vocalists of all time, Ms. Ross is now a black history role model for a new generation of performers.

This photo is from her early 2007 I Love You CD.  Diana is still cranking out the hits.

From humble beginnings to international stardom, the career of Diana Ross has stood the test of time.  She has reached out and touched the world as a recording legend, film actor, and night club performer.

"The Boss” began her climb to fame at age 14 as part of a singing group with Mary Wilson and Florence Ballard.

The Primettes sang at parties around Detroit, Michigan.  They auditioned for Motown in 1960.  Owner Berry Gordy renamed the group, the Supremes.  The vocal trio belted out hit after hit during the 1960’s.

In 1970, Diana Ross went solo.  She signed a huge recording contract with RCA in 1981 (after 20 years with Motown).  In 1982, Diana’s star was placed on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.



Posted by Hugh Smith on 06/27 at 12:15 AM
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