February 27 - March 5, 2023

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Arts & Entertainment Event highlights of the week!

SportsWise

Chatting about the Super Bowl (and Rihanna!).

Cover Story: The Tulsa Race massacre

Dr. Alicia Odewale, a native Tulsan and Black archaeologist, is re-examining a mix of historical data to illuminate a new perspective on community resilience in one of the nation's worst incidents of racial violence. Odewale gave a presentation in Chicago for Black History Month.

Voice of the streets (Op-Ed)

Donald Wheeler, vice president of information technology at the YWCA Metropolitan Chicago, shares the stories of 3 hidden heroes he celebrates during Black History Month.

The Playground

ON THE COVER: “Searching for bodies in ruins of Gurley Hotel.” Photograph of the aftermath of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre (National Archives, NAID 157670060, image 181). THIS PAGE: Dr. Alicia Odewale is an assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Tulsa, pictured here in Tulsa. Her latest research project seeks to reanalyze historical evidence from the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre (National Geographic photo).

DISCLAIMER: The views, opinions, positions or strategies expressed by the authors and those providing comments are theirs alone, and do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, or positions of StreetWise.

Dave Hamilton, Creative Director/Publisher dhamilton@streetwise.org

Suzanne Hanney, Editor-In-Chief suzannestreetwise@yahoo.com

Amanda Jones, Director of programs ajones@streetwise.org

Julie Youngquist, Executive director jyoungquist@streetwise.org

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ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT RECOMMENDATIONS

Compiled by Emma Murphy

Dance Legends!

Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater

The Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater will perform three different programs during its return to the Auditorium Theatre for only six performances. In addition to the variety of new works, the inspiring finale of all programs will be Alvin Ailey’s American masterpiece “Revelations.” Springing from Ailey’s childhood memories of growing up in the South and attending services at Mount Olive Baptist Church in Texas, “Revelations” pays homage to the rich culture of African American heritage and explores the emotional spectrum of the human condition. The performances are March 8 - 12 at the Auditorium Theatre at 50 E. Ida B. Wells Drive. Tickets $40+ at auditoriumtheatre.org

Centuries of Resilience!

‘Surviving the Long Wars: Reckon and Reimagine’ Featuring powerful work of Indigenous artists responding to the “American Indian Wars” alongside artists from the Greater Middle East reacting to the "Global War on Terror,” this exhibition explores how these works complicate and relate to the creative practices of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) veterans whose experiences profoundly challenge the dominant histories of these long wars. The exhibition “Surviving the Long Wars: Reckon and Reimagine” will run March 4 - June 4 at the Chicago Cultural Center, 78 E. Washington St. Admission is free; more information at chicago.gov

Occupy Your Space!

“Layalina" is a surprising new play about how families fall apart and find each other again, amidst turbulent global and social change. In 2003, newlywed Layal and her family prepared to emigrate from Baghdad, Iraq, to a Chicago suburb. Seventeen years later, Layal’s life looks unimaginably different from what she had envisioned two decades prior, as she and her siblings explore queerness, face their grief, and discover what it takes to make a home in a new place. This moving play premieres on the Owen Stage as part of the Goodman’s New Stages and Future Labs programs. The show runs March 3 - April 2. $15+ at goodmantheatre.org

You Know That's Right!

‘Do the Right Thing’

Dr. Karla Rae Fuller will read sections from her book “Do the Right Thing: Five Screenplays that Embrace Diversity” on screenwriting strategies that focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion. Five films will be highlighted: “Moonlight,” “Get Out,” “Mudbound,” “Roma,” and “Always Be My Maybe.” There will be video clips and audience Q&A throughout the event. Filmmakers and screenwriters will leave further inspired to embrace their own unique voices. This event will be from 6 - 8:30 p.m. March 3 at the Claudia Cassidy Theater of the Chicago Cultural Center at 78 E. Washington St. Admission is FREE. More information at chicago.gov

‘1776’

It's A Hard-Knock Life!

‘Annie’

This celebration of family, optimism and the American spirit remains the ultimate cure for all the hard knocks life throws your way. “Annie” returns with the feel-good story you remember, following Annie as her luck changes, remembering that holding onto hope when times are tough can take an awful lot of determination, and sometimes, an awful lot of determination comes in a surprisingly small package. The show will run at the Cadillac Palace Theatre at 151 W. Randolph St. from March 7- 19 at 2 p.m., 7:30 p.m., or 8 p.m. $31+ at broadwayinchicago.com

Let Me Hear You Say Yeah!

‘Reasons: A Tribute to Earth, Wind and Fire’

“Reasons” is a play that takes the audience on a journey of how the band Earth, Wind, and Fire was formed from humble beginnings to become the revolutionaries that changed the course of music. The show describes how they took a vision no one said would work, and turned it into a musical powerhouse that still continues today. Performances are March 5 - April 16 on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays at 3 and 8 p.m. Tickets are $55 - $65 with more information at blackensembletheater.org

Pastitsio Please!

Greektown Restaurant Week

For the second year, Greektown Chicago brings back Greektown Restaurant Week, March 1-7. Restaurants throughout the neighborhood, some that have been in Greektown for decades, will offer special dishes, discounts, and offers. One example of a delicious deal includes Artopolis Bakery and Café’s Artopita Happy Hour (11 a.m. - 3 p.m. serving $6 pastries). Participating businesses and specials are at greektownchicago.org

The Art of West Africa!

Gretchen Beck - ‘Gan nda Donie Koy’

The title of the exhibition “Gan nda Donie Koy” translates in the Djarma language to “Leader of Dance and Song.” For the past 30 years, Gretchen Beck has rendered imagery that reflects the vibrancy of Nigerian culture. She lived in Niger, West Africa, for three years as a Peace Corps Volunteer and has returned to study the abstract aesthetic within Djarma and Fulani art forms. This free exhibit will be displayed from March 3 to April 15 at the Epiphany Center for the Arts, 201 S. Ashland Ave. More information at epiphanychi.com

Momma, Look Sharp!

A cast that reflects multiple representations of race, gender, and ethnicity, portrays the fiery founders of this country, putting history in the hands of the people who were left out the first time around. The Tony Award-winning Best Musical from directors Jeffrey L. Page and Diane Paulus reimagines the founding of this country with two dozen diverse, passionate, and complicated individuals. The show runs February 28 - March 12: at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday- Friday, 2 & 8 p.m. Saturdays, 2 p.m.

Sundays and Wednesday March 8 at CIBC Theatre, 18 W. Monroe St. Tickets at broadwayinchicago.com

Sounds of Ireland!

‘World Music Wednesday’

Join Old Town School of Folk Music as it hosts Dervish, a traditional Irish band. Dervish has been bringing traditional Irish music to the world for more than 25 years. All six members of Dervish are steeped in the musical traditions of counties Sligo and Leitrim in northwest Ireland, an area which combines the Atlantic coastline with mountains and rural landscapes. Dervish will perform at 8 p.m. March 1 at Gary and Laura Maurer Concert Hall at 4544 N. Lincoln Ave. Tickets are $28 and can be reserved at www.oldtownschool.org/concerts/

Rashanah Baldwin

Vendors Russell Adams, John Hagan and Donald Morris chat about the world of sports with Executive Assistant Patrick Edwards.

'THEY WERE BOMBED BY AMERICANSUNCOVERING THE TRUTHS OF THE

by Suzanne Hanney & Emma Murphy

Archaeologist Dr. Alicia Odewale’s great-grandmother, Polly Curtis, is among the missing people from the Tulsa Race Massacre of May 31-June 1, 1921. Although the official death count was 36 people, historians now say the real number could be over 300. Odewale surmises Curtis could be in any one of 35 previously unknown and unmarked potential mass grave sites she has identified.

“The hardest day in the field was when we discovered a child’s coffin. Families were destroyed, children murdered.” Odewale has not gone back to the site since that day in 2021. She spoke in a January 29 National Geographic Live presentation on the Black neighborhood of Greenwood in Tulsa, OK, and its century of resilience, at the Auditorium Theatre in Chicago.

Survivor Eddie Faye Gates was a child at the time and said that his mother saw four men with torches come into their home and set the curtains on fire. They also killed his little bulldog. The family hid in the attic but heard bullets raining down on their rooftop – probably from an airplane.

“Some folks you never heard of anymore,” Gates said in a filmed documentary in the 1990s. “You never forget that.”

Ernestine Gibbs said in the same film that not a building was standing in Greenwood, the 40-block square area of Tulsa that Booker T. Washington had christened “Negro Wall Street.” The mob went block by block, Gibbs said, burning buildings to the ground.

By the time their violence was over, 198 businesses had been destroyed including five hotels, two theaters, 41 grocery stores, six clothing stores, 15 barbershops, 10 laundries, 17 doctors’ offices, two schools, seven churches, a library and a hospital. Destroyed businesses included the 54-room luxury Stradford Hotel – largest in Oklahoma – owned by J.B. Stradford, a graduate of Oberlin College and Indiana University Law School; and the 750-seat Dreamland Theater that showed silent movies.

According to the Red Cross, 1,256 buildings burned and 314 homes were looted, 10,000 people were made homeless, 531 needed surgical care or first aid, and 183 were hospitalized.

The Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921 is one of the nation’s worst acts of racial terror, said Odewale, an assistant professor of

anthropology at the University of Tulsa. But while most people think archaeology is simply the study of ancient pottery fragments, Odewale said the discipline is helping her to define the boundaries of this incident of violence. Black Tulsans no longer call it the “Tulsa Race Riot,” she said, but an attack, a massacre, a pogrom. In fact, “riot” was the term used by whites so that insurance would not pay on claims.

Odewale’s current research project, “Mapping Historical Trauma in Tulsa from 1921-2021,” is re-examining historical and archaeological evidence of the period – from personal survivor stories to old Sanborn maps that tell where businesses were— focusing not on the attack itself, but instead on illuminating a new perspective on the impact of racism and racial violence in America, through the lens of a community that continues to survive against all odds.

“The people calling the shots in 1921 hid the truth, and spun a story about people rioting for no reason and burning down the community,” Odewale told her Chicago audience. “They vindicated the arsonists and banned the story from textbooks. A lot of people worked really hard to keep this out of the public eye and away from people like you. Our job is to make sure it never happens again.”

Indeed, photos of the damage appear to be uncharacteristically deteriorating themselves, from negatives that seem to have melted in the heat. Some photos have been restored, however, and a large collection is in the National Archives.

“The near-total erasure of this horrific event from historical narratives covering this period reveals how politically motivated historical accounts can be,” noted National Archives blogger Bob Nowatzki at the centennial of the massacre. “Fortunately, there are records in the National Archives,...that can help us keep the memory of this event and its survivors alive.”

In Tulsa of 1921, the Ku Klux Klan ran everything in the city, Odewale said. Its roster included everyone from carpenters to oil tycoons, school principals to the city treasurer, the deputy sheriff, the chief of police – and the mayor. After the massacre, KKK membership grew so that it opened chapters for both children and women.

“THE PEOPLE CALLING THE SHOTS IN 1921 HID THE TRUTH, AND SPUN A STORY ABOUT PEOPLE RIOTING FOR NO REASON AND BURNING DOWN THE COMMUNITY”

-DR. ALICIA ODEWALE

THE TULSA RACE MASSACRE

"Front Page of the Tulsa Tribune, June 1, 1921": The Tulsa Tribune was one of the local newspapers that reported the events of May 31 and June 1, 1921. This issue describes a scene from the massacre: “The machine guns were set up and for 20 minutes poured a stream of lead on the negroes who sought refuge behind buildings, telephone poles, and in ditches.” Inset: "Photograph of People Standing Amid Rubble in the Greenwood District, June 1, 1921." (National Archives photos.)

People didn’t talk about the story for fear they would be killed. However, most people heard about it in high school, or in Odewale’s case, grade school. Don Ross learned about it in high school in the 1950s and was incredulous. His teacher was W.D. Williams, whose parents, John and Lula Williams, had owned the Dreamland Theatre, as well as a garage, a confectionery, and a doughnut shop.

“Teachers are important!” Odewale said, to applause from the Auditorium audience.

Because of Williams, Ross gathered survivor stories and, in the 1960s and 70s, became one of the first journalists to write about the Tulsa Race Massacre. Later, as a member of the Oklahoma House of Representatives, he also created the Tulsa Riot Commission. Because of his actions, Oklahoma became the first state in the U.S. to take down official Confederate flags.

Greenwood stands out as a foremost national incident of racial terror because the entire neighborhood that was destroyed was comparable to Beale Street in Memphis or State Street in Chicago, according to Oklahomapreservation.org. The Brookings Institution went even farther in a blog during the centennial: “Greenwood was likely the richest Black community in the United States, and racist neighboring communities perceived its economic flourishing as an existential threat.”

Ron Carter, who chairs Black Wall Street Chicago, was at Odewale’s presentation, but he questions the Brookings Institution

designation of Greenwood as the richest Black community of the 1920s. Chicago’s Black State Street extended from 18th to 47th Streets: larger than Greenwood, but perhaps only 50 percent of its businesses Black-owned. Moreover, the financial impact of numbers running (the policy game that became the Illinois lottery) has not been adequately taken into account in Chicago, because it was both illegal and underground, Carter said.

Part of Tulsa’s prosperity had to do with the state of Oklahoma, which had been Native American territory. Settlement there came with citizenship, freedom and acreage, Odewale said. In the late 19th century, Black people pooled their resources to create all-Black towns in Oklahoma, with their own schools and churches separate from the Jim Crow South, in order to be truly free.

Greenwood had been established in 1906 by O.W. Gurley, a former teacher and postal worker born in Alabama and raised in Arkansas. Believing that the South would never give him any opportunities, he moved first to Perry, OK, and then to Tulsa, where he purchased 40 acres on its North Side and sold lots to other residents and entrepreneurs.

But as Black towns grew, so did the white “sundown” towns where Blacks could not travel after dark. Greenwood was surrounded by six sundown towns, including Tulsa.

By

1921, according to the Oklahoma Economist blog by the Kansas City Federal Reserve Bank, Tulsa had gone through two oil booms to become the center of the petroleum industry

and an aviation nexus. Its population had grown from 1,000 in 1900 to 100,000 in 1920; Blacks comprised 10 percent of the population. They may have worked for newly rich white oil barons, but because of the segregated South, they spent all their money in Greenwood.

The origins of the riot were in downtown Tulsa. African American shoeshiner Dick Rowland, 19 years old, was on the way to the only restroom Blacks were allowed to use downtown, on the Drexel Building’s top floor. Rowland got on an elevator run by Sarah Page, who was 17 and white. What happened next is unclear. The elevator came to an uneven stop at the top floor. He may have fallen onto Page, possibly grabbed her arm and tore her blouse. Or, he stepped on her shoe. She screamed. Rowland ran, which prompted a local merchant to call police.

Later, Page urged that all charges against Rowland be dropped, so people believed they had a relationship, which was illegal at the time, Odewale said.

By midday, Rowland was brought to the Tulsa County Courthouse. Inflamed by a white Tulsa newspaper headline, the police received a call at 4 p.m. from a lynch mob that demanded Rowland be handed over. Police moved him to the top floor of the building.

Simultaneously, up to 40 Black men, many of them World War I veterans with arms, also went to the courthouse to protect Rowland. They were refused, and returned to Greenwood.

At 10 p.m., however, according to the Oklahoma Historical Society, a false rumor hit Greenwood that whites had stormed the courthouse. This time, a larger contingent, perhaps 75 African Americans, returned to the courthouse and were again turned down. But as they were leaving, a white tried to disarm a Black man. A shot was fired and the riot began.

“Over the next six hours Tulsa was plunged into chaos as angry whites, frustrated over the failed lynching, began to vent their rage at African Americans in general.” An unarmed African American man was murdered in a downtown movie theater and carloads of whites began drive-by shootings in Black residential neighborhoods. They set fires at the edge of Greenwood, and as they sat in the all-white cafes, they planned for a dawn invasion. Then, they began looting homes and businesses, before setting them on fire.

Several eyewitnesses reported seeing planes fly over Greenwood, with shots fired and explosives dropped from the air. “They were bombed by Americans – 20 years before Pearl Harbor,” Odewale said.

By the time the National Guard arrived at 9:15 a.m. June 1, most of Greenwood was burning.

“From a 10-room and basement modern brick home, I am now living in what was my coal barn,” C.L. Netherland was quoted in a Harvard blog on the centennial of the massacre. “From a five-chair white enamel barber shop, four baths, electric clippers, electric fan, two lavatories and shampoo stands, four

Left: The Greenwood District, circa 1917 (Mary E. Jones Parrish Collection, Oklahoma Historical Society photo). Center: People running from rubble in the Greenwood District, June 1, 1921. Right: Man being detained during the Massacre. (National Archives photos.)

workmen, double-marble shine stand, a porter and income of over $500 or $600 per month, to a razor, strop and folding chair on the sidewalk.”

For the first time outside of a natural disaster, the Red Cross was mobilized to provide relief, from June through December 1921. The Red Cross also supplied half a million feet of lumber, but no extra labor to help residents rebuild. Residents reinforced tents from the Red Cross with side panels or built wood frame shacks with their own hands.

Ten thousand were homeless – roughly Greenwood’s entire population. Several thousand wound up at the Tulsa Convention center, Odewale said. They were given ID cards and were not allowed to leave unless a white Tulsan vouched for them.

Furthermore, the white mayor of Tulsa sent a message to the Tulsa City Commission two weeks afterward in which Blacks were blamed for the violence, according to the National Archives’ Rediscoveringblackhistory.org. Mayor T.D. Evans also proposed displacing Greenwood residents and destroying businesses by building a railroad station and an industrial park there. The proposal was blocked by prominent Greenwood attorney, Buck Colbert Franklin, father of the historian John Hope Franklin.

Greenwood had rebuilt itself by 1925, however, when it hosted the national conference of the Negro Business League, and it was even more prosperous in the 1940s, with 242 businesses.

But from the 1960s to the 1980s, urban renewal by white city planners was again Greenwood’s undoing, according to the

Brookings Institution. As detailed in a Human Rights Watch 2020 report that recommended reparations, these policies included eminent domain, rezoning and construction of the Crosstown Highway, I-244, right through the Greenwood business district. This led to displacement and plunging property values, while redlining prevented the injection of new capital into the community. “What I call the second attack on Greenwood. The first was by fire, the second by design,” Odewale said.

Greenwood is still denied a listing on the National Register of Historic Places, she noted, because it was rebuilt with different materials. As a result, it cannot receive tax credits and other investments.

Carter, of Chicago’s Black Wall Street, visited Tulsa in 2011 and noted the historical monuments, but he’s skeptical of commercial development, especially post-COVID. “Is there a future? The only ethnic communities that are pretty strong on the South Side of Chicago are 26th Street/Little Village and Chinatown,” he said.

The Oklahoma Economist blog took a nuanced view of commercial development at the massacre’s centennial. “While the Black Wall Street of the past cannot be recreated as it was and the current economic challenges of the Greenwood area are clear, many local Tulsans are working to rekindle the entrepreneurial spirit and economic vibrancy of Black Wall Street.” Just three of many organizations are Black Tech Street, Tulsa Economic Development Corp. and the Black Wall Street Chamber of Commerce. And John Hope Franklin Reconciliation Park was dedicated in 2018, in honor of the University of Chicago professor who defined African American history.

The group is also working on a school curriculum that is both archaeologist- and descendant-led, Odewale said, and she is hoping to reconnect families through the Greenwood Diaspora Project. There were perhaps two descendants who identified themselves publicly at her Auditorium Theatre presentation.

“Mapping Historical Trauma in Tulsa from 19212021,” launched by Odewale and another native Tulsan, Dr. Peter Van Valkenburgh of Brown University, will connect the past and present through a Web GIS portal, embedded with historical maps, photos, census data, and more, that show the shifting shape of Greenwood. Primary data from all over the nation will be available to anyone with internet, she wrote in the Society of Black Archaelogists newsletter in 2020, “which places the tools of analysis primarily in the hands of community members, descendants, students and educators.”

Users will be able to click on the former location of the 54-room Stradford Hotel, for example, and interact with all the maps and photos related to it.

Odewale herself knows the location of an ancestor’s grocery store in 1921, and she has survivor accounts of potential mass grave sites.

“We will keep searching until we bring them all home,” she said at her Chicago presentation.

REFLECTING ON BLACK HISTORY MONTH

by Nicole R. Robinson

Black History Month offers us all a moment to reflect and share ways we can support racial and economic equity today.

THE LEGACY OF TULSA’S BLACK WALL STREET

Although we regularly reflect on the income inequality and racial wealth gap that exist today, there have been many moments throughout history when Black communities were thriving. One era of Black economic prosperity was when Tulsa, Oklahoma’s Greenwood District became known as “Black Wall Street.” It was the most prominent and prosperous Black community in the United States, with churches, schools, and community organizations, as well as hundreds of Black businesses by 1921. It was a self-sustaining community where Black families owned their own homes, hotels, retail stores, restaurants, movie theaters and grocery stores, as well as offices for doctors, dentists, and lawyers.

Unfortunately, this economic and social utopia for Black Americans would perish during one of the largest racial massacres in American history, when a white mob destroyed 1,200 homes, along with dozens of buildings and churches. An estimated 300 people were killed, with unmarked graves still being uncovered today. When it was over, the Black community was financially and physically decimated. Today’s value of what was lost is estimated at $200 million dollars.

THE FUTURE OF BLACK-OWNED ARIEL INVESTMENTS

One of the descendants of the massacre is Chicagoan and business leader John H. Rodgers, founder of Ariel Investments, the largest Black-owned investment firm in the United States. Rodgers’ great-grandfather, J. B. Stradford, owned a luxury hotel and multiple businesses in Tulsa prior to the massacre. Undeniably, Rodgers’ family was resilient, given his rise to success as founder of Ariel Investments, but imagine the wealth his family would have created had his grandfather’s financial legacy not been destroyed.

In spite of the erasure of Rodger’s family hotel legacy, he and his co-CEO Melody Hobson continue to build a dynamic economic legacy, having most recently launched a $1.45 billion private equity fund that will invest in minority-owned companies that can serve as suppliers to Fortune 500 companies.

In fact, this month, John Rodgers is featured in Fortune Magazine alongside Hobson (she’s on the cover!) as part of the Black History Month edition.

Nicole R. Robinson is CEO of YWCA Metropolitan Chicago.

Left: A photograph of a car filled with men holding rifles is labeled "Searching for Negroes, June 1, 1921." It appears that the photograph has been melted or damaged.

Right: Displaced Greenwood residents gather at the entrance to the Tulsa Fairgrounds, which became a makeshift refugee camp. (National Archives photos).

innovators to celebrate during black history month op-ed

by Donald Wheeler

In the ongoing celebration of Black History, we salute some unknown innovators in Health & Security as well as a late blooming comedian…

Marie Van Brittan Brown was the inventor of the security system and also the first closed circuit television, which influenced modern security systems still used today by small businesses, single family homes and offices. Brown was born in Queens, New York, on Oct. 22, 1922, and lived there until her death on Feb. 2, 1999, at age 76.

Brown’s invention was inspired by the security risk that her home faced. She worked as a nurse, and her husband, Albert, worked as an electronics technician. Their work hours were not the standard 9-to-5, and the crime rate in their neighborhood was very high. Even when the police were contacted in the event of an emergency, the response time tended to be slow. As a result, Brown looked for ways to increase her level of personal security.

Brown’s security system was comprised of peepholes, a camera, monitors, and a two-way microphone. The final element was an alarm button that could be pressed to contact the police immediately.

There was also a voice component to enable Brown to speak to the person outside. If the person was perceived to be an intruder, the police would be notified with the push of a button. If the person was a welcome or expected visitor, the door could be unlocked via remote control.

Marie and Albert Brown filed for a “Home Security System Utilizing Television Surveillance” patent on Aug. 1, 1966 and it was approved on Dec. 2, 1969. She received an award from the National Scientists Committee and an interview with The New York Times on Dec. 6, 1969.

Dr. Charles Drew was an African American surgeon who organized the first large-scale blood bank in the U.S. in the 1940s.

Born in Washington, D.C., on June 3, 1904, Drew went to Amherst College in Massachusetts on an athletic scholarship. He earned money for medical school by taking a job as athletic director, and instructor of biology and chemistry at what is now Morgan State University in Baltimore.

After medical school at McGill University in Montreal, he joined the faculty at Howard University College of Medicine in 1935.

Howard was upgrading its programs with help from the Rockefeller Foundation's General Education Board, which included appointing well-qualified white department chairs to set up and run residency programs and train Black successors. Drew’s main project was an experimental blood bank at Presbyterian, opened in August 1939. In June 1940, he received his doctorate in medical science from Columbia: the first African American to do so.

Drew returned to Howard University as assistant professor of surgery, then was called back to New York in September 1940 to direct the Blood for Britain project during World War II. He instituted uniform procedures and standards for collecting blood and processing blood plasma at the participating hospitals. When the program ended in January 1941, Drew was appointed assistant director of a pilot program for a national blood banking system, jointly sponsored by the National Research Council and the American Red Cross. Among his innovations were mobile blood donation stations, later called "bloodmobiles."

Drew died on April 1, 1950, in Burlington, NC, from injuries sustained in a car accident.

On Feb. 1, 1938, Sherman Hemsley was born in Philadelphia...and got his start in theatre in his late 20s and early 30s before being discovered by writer & creator Norman Lear in 1971...The rest is history...as he was famously known as George Jefferson in “All in the Family” & “The Jeffersons” in the 1970s & 1980s.

Donald Wheeler is vice president of information technology at the YWCA Metropolitan Chicago.

Top: Marie Van Brittan Brown (Library of Congress photo).

Below: Charles Drew (National Library of Medicine photo).

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