Alabama’s Black Struggle
(Where it all Began) By Therlee Gipson
Preface Do you ever wonder what the United States would be like today if Rosa Parks had moved back on the bus? Being a member of the NAACP, she just could not take discrimination anymore (however she took this action on her own). Local leaders asked an unknown Pastor from Atlanta, Georgia, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to come and support them in creating the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA). They boycotted the Transit System for 381 days and won the Court battle that ended segregation in public transportation. That incident sparked the Civil Rights Movement that led the freedom all Americans enjoy today. You hold in your hands, one of the most important books I have ever compiled: Alabama’s Black Struggle (Where it all Began) of facts, dates, events and individuals from all walks of life consists of: • • • •
History of Alabama (Chapter I) Civil Rights Struggle (Montgomery)(Chapter II) Civil Rights Struggle (Birmingham)((Chapter III) Civil Rights Struggle (Selma)((Chapter IV) 1. Outstanding Achievers (Chapter V) • Institutions of Higher Learning (Chapter VI) • NAACP Beginning (Chapter VII) The time has come for me to give recognition to all people who sacrificed their lives and political careers breaking down the segregated racist system into an integrated society which practice equal justice for all. Those people are the "forgotten heroes." Therefore, they will be recognized in this history book. Blacks must never forget that there have always been good decent Americans who wanted to do the right thing in the first place, regardless of race, creed or color. Lets begin to celebrate Alabama’s Black Struggle (Where it all Began) recognizing all races who participated in making the United State a better country we live in today. Finally, we must began to realize we all are Americans who cherish freedom and the pursuit of happiness. Last but not least, I love America and it is the greatest Country on Earth. Therlee Gipson Copyright© 2011 by Therlee Gipson. ISBN: 978-1460919323 All rights reserved. No part of this material may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, without written permission from Therlee Gipson, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. Printed in the United States of America 2
Table of Contents
Page No.
Title of book…………………………………………………………………………...
1
Preface…………………………………………………………………………………
2
Table of Contents……………………………………………………………………..
3— 6
Chapter I History of Alabama…………………………………………………………………...
7—10
•
Statehood, Civil War and Reconstruction:…………………………………………
8
•
1900-1960…………………………………………………………………………..
8, 9
•
1960– Present………………………………………………………………………
9, 10
Chapter II Civil Rights Struggle (Montgomery)………………………………………………...
11
•
Clifford Durr………………………………………………………………………..
12
•
Edgar Daniel Nixon………………………………………………………………...
13
•
Johnnie Rebecca (Daniels) Carr……………………………………………………
14
•
Jo Ann Gibson Robinson…………………………………………………………...
15
•
Rosa "Lee" Louise (McCauley) Parks……………………………………………...
16, 17
•
Henry Vance Graham ……………………………………………………………...
18
•
Charles Douglas Langford …………………………………………………………
19
•
Ralph David Abernathy, Sr. ……………………………………………………….
20— 23
•
Coretta (Scott) King………………………………………………………………..
24
•
Martin Luther King, Jr……………………………………………………………..
25—31
•
Fred Gray …………………………………………………………………………..
32
•
John Lewis …………………………………………………………………………
33
•
1961— Montgomery Freedom Riders: ……………………………………………
34
•
James Zwerg ……………………………………………………………………….
34
3
Table of Contents
Page No.
Chapter III Civil Rights Struggle (Birmingham)…………………………………………………
35
•
The Birmingham Campaign:……………………………………………………….
36, 37
•
16th Street Baptist Church Bombing……………………………………………….
38— 41
•
The Letter from Birmingham Jail…………………………………………………..
42
•
Civil Rights Museum (Birmingham)……………………………………………….
43
•
Theophilus Eugene "Bull" Connor………………………………………………...
44
•
George Corley Wallace ……………………………………………………………
45—47
•
Fred Shuttlesworth…………………………………………………………………
48
Chapter IV Voting Rights Struggle (Selma)………………………………………………………
49
•
Selma to Montgomery March……………………………………………………...
50—57
•
James Clark………………………………………………………………………...
58
•
Viola Fauver Gregg Liuzzo………………………………………………………..
59—61
•
Sheyann Webb……………………………………………………………………...
62, 63
The Boll Weevil Monument (Enterprise)……………………………………………
64
Chapter V Outstanding Achievers………………………………………………………………..
65
•
Helen Keller………………………………………………………………………..
66
•
Zora Neale Hurston ………………………………………………………………..
67
•
Percy Lavon Julian…………………………………………………………………
68
•
Arthur Davis Shores………………………………………………………………..
69
•
Leroy Robert "Satchel" Paige……………………………………………………...
70
•
Erskine Ramsay Hawkins………………………………………………………….
71
•
Monford Merrill "Monte" Irvin…………………………………………………….
72
4
Table of Contents
Page No.
Chapter V (cont.) •
Nathaniel Adams Cole (aka Nat King Cole)……………………………………….
73
•
Willie Mae "Big Mama" Thornton…………………………………………………
74, 75
•
David Johnson Vann……………………………………………………………….
76
•
Odetta Holmes (aka Odetta)………………………………………………………..
77
•
Comer Joseph Cottrell, Jr…………………………………………………………..
78
•
Henry Louis "Hank" Aaron ………………………………………………………..
79
•
Eugene Sawyer …………………………………………………………………….
80
•
Richard Arrington Jr. ……………………………………………………………...
81
•
Eddie Floyd ………………………………………………………………………..
82
•
Clarence Carter …………………………………………………………………….
83
•
Marva Collins ……………………………………………………………………...
84
•
David Satcher ……………………………………………………………………...
85
•
William Joseph Baxley, II …………………………………………………………
86
•
Johnny L. Ford …………………………………………………………………….
87
•
David Melvin English ……………………………………………………………..
88
•
Bernard Kincaid …………………………………………………………………...
89
•
Lonnie G. Johnson …………………………………………………………………
90
•
Carole Catlin Smitherman …………………………………………………………
91
•
Condoleezza Rice ………………………………………………………………….
92
•
Frederick Carlton "Carl" Lewis ……………………………………………………
93
•
Doug Williams …………………………………………………………………….
94
•
Roderick V. Royal ………………………………………………………………...
95
•
Jimmy Donal "Jimbo" Wales ……………………………………………………..
96
5
Table of Contents
Page No.
Chapter VI Institutions of Higher Learning……………………………………………………..
97
•
Alabama State University…………………………………………………………..
98— 105
•
Concordia College, Selma………………………………………………………….
106
•
Daniel Payne College………………………………………………………………
107
•
Miles College………………………………………………………………………
108
•
Talladega College………………………………………………………………….
109, 110
Tuskegee University………………………………………………………………….. 111— 120 •
Booker T. Washington's leadership………………………………………………...
112, 113
•
Legacy……………………………………………………………………………...
114
•
Tuskegee Institute National Historic Site………………………………………….
115
•
Academics, Schools and Colleges
•
Notable alumni……………………………………………………………………..
119, 120
•
Tuskegee Airmen…………………………………………………………………..
121
•
Tuskegee syphilis experiment: (1932– 1972)……………………………………...
122
•
Booker T. Washington……………………………………………………………..
123
•
George Washington Carver………………………………………………………..
124
116— 118
Chapter VII NAACP Beginning…………………………………………………………………….
125
•
NAACP History……………………………………………………………………
126
•
NAACP Co-Founders……………………………………………………………... 127— 139
Index…………………………………………………………………………………... 140—143 •
Indexing Purpose, Conventional Indexing…………………………………………
143
•
Origins of the book, Introduction of Paper………………………………………...
143
•
Acknowledgement, Source of information………………………………………...
144
•
Public Domain, Disclaimer………………………………………………………...
144
6
Chapter I
History of Alabama Many of us do not know Alabama
is a State located in the Southeastern region of the United States of America. It is bordered by Tennessee to the North, Georgia to the East, Florida and the Gulf of Mexico to the South, and Mississippi to the West. Alabama ranks 30th in total land area and ranks second in the size of its inland waterways. The State ranks 23rd in population with 4.7 million residents in 2009. From the American Civil War until World War II, Alabama, like many Southern States, suffered economic hardship, in part because of continued dependence on agriculture. Despite the growth of major industries and urban centers, White rural interests dominated the State Legislature until the 1960s, while urban interests and African Americans were under-represented. Following World War II, Alabama experienced growth as the economy of the State transitioned from agriculture to diversified interests in heavy manufacturing, mineral extraction, education, and technology. In addition, the establishment or expansion of multiple military installations, primarily those of the U.S. Army and U.S. Air Force, added to State jobs. Alabama is unofficially nicknamed the Yellowhammer State, after the State bird. Alabama is also known as the "Heart of Dixie". The State tree is the Longleaf Pine, the State flower is the Camellia. The capital of Alabama is Montgomery. The largest City by population is Birmingham. The largest City by total land area is Huntsville. The oldest City is Mobile, founded by French Colonists. (cont.)
7
History of Alabama Statehood, Civil War and Reconstruction: Alabama became the twenty-second State —admitted to the Union in 1819. Part of the frontier in the 1820s and 1830s, its constitution provided for universal suffrage for White men. Settlers rapidly arrived to take advantage of the fertile soil. Southeastern planters and traders from the Upper South brought Slaves with them as the cotton plantations expanded. The economy of the central "Black Belt" (named for its dark, productive soil) was built around large cotton plantations whose owners' wealth grew largely from slave labor. The area also drew many poor, disfranchised people who became subsistence farmers. The 1860 census records show that enslaved Africans comprised 45% of the State's total population of 964,201. There were only 2,690 free persons of color living in Alabama at the time. On January 11, 1861, Alabama seceded from the Union and joined the Confederate States of America. While few battles were fought in the State, Alabama contributed about 120,000 soldiers to the American Civil War. Alabama's Slaves were freed by the 13th Amendment in 1865.During Reconstruction, the new State Legislators created a public school system for the first time, as well as establishing some welfare institutions to help its people. Alabama was officially restored to the Union in 1868. After the Civil War, the State was still chiefly agricultural, with an economy tied to cotton. Planters resisted working with free labor during Reconstruction and sought to re-establish controls over freedmen. In the early years the Ku Klux Klan had numerous independent chapters in Alabama that attacked freedmen and other Republicans. After it was suppressed, insurgent Whites organized paramilitary groups, such as the Red Shirts and White League, that acted more openly to suppress Black voting. Regaining power by the late 1870s, in the last decade of the nineteenth century, white Democrats passed electoral laws and constitutional amendments to disfranchise most Blacks and many poor Whites. Having regained power in the State Legislature, Democrats passed Jim Crow laws, including racial segregation in public facilities, to restore White supremacy.
1900-1960: In its new constitution of 1901, the legislature effectively disfranchised African Americans through voting restrictions. While the planter class had engaged poor Whites in supporting these legislative efforts, the new restrictions resulted in disfranchising poor Whites as well, due mostly to imposition of a cumulative poll tax. The law was in effect for decades. By 1941, a total of more Whites than Blacks had been disfranchised: 600,000 Whites to 520,000 Blacks. The damage to the African-American community was pervasive, as nearly all its citizens lost the ability to vote. In 1900, fourteen Black Belt counties (which were primarily African American) had more than 79,000 voters on the rolls. By June 1, 1903, the number of registered voters had dropped to 1,081. In 1900, Alabama had more than 181,000 African Americans eligible to vote. (cont.) 8
History of Alabama 1900-1960: (cont.) By 1903, only 2,980 had managed to "qualify" to register, although at least 74,000 Black voters were literate. The shut out was long-lasting. The disfranchisement was ended only by African Americans' leading the Civil Rights Movement and gaining Federal legislation in the mid-1960s to protect their voting and Civil Rights. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 also protected the suffrage of poor Whites. The rural-dominated Legislature consistently underfunded schools and services for the disfranchised African Americans in the segregated State, but did not relieve them of paying taxes. Continued racial discrimination, agricultural depression, and the failure of the cotton crops due to boll weevil infestation led tens of thousands of African Americans to seek opportunities in Northern Cities. They left Alabama in the early 20th century as part of the Great Migration to industrial jobs and better futures in Northern industrial Cities. The population growth rate in Alabama dropped by nearly half from 1910–1920, reflecting the effect of emigration. At the same time, many rural Whites and Blacks migrated to the City of Birmingham for work in new industrial jobs. It experienced such rapid growth that it was nicknamed "The Magic City". By the 1920s, Birmingham was the 19th largest City in the U.S. and held more than 30% of the population of the State. Heavy industry and mining were the basis of the economy. Industrial development related to the demands of World War II brought prosperity. Cotton faded in importance as the state developed a manufacturing and service base. In the 1960s under Governor George Wallace, many Whites in the State opposed integration efforts.
1960-Present: Despite massive population changes in the State from 1901 to 1961, the rural-dominated Legislature refused to reapportion House and Senate seats based on population. They held on to old representation to maintain political and economic power in agricultural areas. In addition, the State Legislature gerrymandered the few Birmingham Legislative seats to ensure election by persons living outside Birmingham. One result was that Jefferson County, containing Birmingham's industrial and economic powerhouse, contributed more than one-third of all tax revenue to the state, but did not receive a proportional amount in services. Urban interests were consistently underrepresented in the legislature. A 1960 study noted that because of rural domination, "A minority of about 25 per cent of the total State population is in majority control of the Alabama Legislature." African Americans were presumed partial to Republicans for historical reasons, but they were disfranchised. White Alabamans felt bitter towards the Republican Party in the aftermath of the Civil War and Reconstruction. These factors created a longstanding tradition that any candidate who wanted to be viable with White voters had to run as a Democrat regardless of political beliefs. (cont.) 9
History of Alabama 1960-Present: (cont.) During the Civil Rights Movement, African Americans achieved a protection of voting and other Civil Rights through the passage of the national Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. De jure segregation ended in the states as Jim Crow laws were invalidated or repealed Under the Voting Rights Act of 1965, cases were filed in Federal courts to force Alabama to properly redistrict by population both the state legislature House and Senate. In 1972, for the first time since 1901, the legislature implemented the Alabama constitution's provision for periodic redistricting based on population. This benefited the urban areas that had developed, as well as all in the population who had been underrepresented for more than 60 years. After 1972, the State's White voters shifted much of their support to Republican candidates in presidential elections (as also occurred in neighboring Southern States). Since 1990 the majority of Whites in the State have voted increasingly Republican in State elections. In 2010, Republicans won control of both houses of the legislature for the first time in 136 years.
Race and Ancestry: According to the 2006-2008 American Community Survey, the racial composition of the state was: 70.4% White (Non-Hispanic Whites: 68.7%), 26.2% Black or African American, 0.5% Native American, 1.0% Asian, less than 0.1% Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific islander, 0.8% from some other race, and 1.2% from two or more races. Hispanics or Latinos (of any race) make up 2.7% of the total population. The largest reported ancestry groups in Alabama: African American (26.2%), English (23.6%), Irish (7.7%), German (5.7%), and Scots-Irish (2%). In the 2000 Census 621,080 people claimed to be of "American" ancestry, most them are of overwhelmingly English extraction, however most English Americans identify simply as having American ancestry because their roots have been in North America for so long, in many cases since the early sixteen hundreds. Demographers estimate that roughly 23% of people in Alabama are of predominantly English ancestry. There are also many more people in Alabama of Scots-Irish origins than are self-reported. In 1984 under the Davis-Strong Act, Alabama established a state Indian Commission and officially recognized seven American Indian tribes, including the Echota Cherokee Tribe of Alabama, which is a 501 (c3) group. It is made up of descendants of the Chickamauga Cherokee and others who managed to evade Indian Removal in the 1830s. Working with Auburn University, the tribe has begun a revival of the Cherokee language. (*)
(*) see Source on page 144
10
Chapter II
Civil Rights Struggle (Montgomery)
11
Civil Rights Struggle (Montgomery) (1899 – 1975) Clifford Durr
was an Alabama lawyer who played an important role in defending activists and others accused of disloyalty during the New Deal and McCarthy eras and who represented Rosa Parks in her challenge to the constitutionality of the ordinance requiring the segregation of passengers on buses in Montgomery that launched the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Durr was born into a patrician Alabama family. After studying at the University of Alabama he went to Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar. He returned to the United States to study law, then joined a prominent law firm in Birmingham, Alabama in 1924. In 1926 he married Virginia Foster, whose sister would be the first wife of Hugo Black.
Durr lost his job in 1927. His brother-in-law Black, then a Senator, asked him to come to Washington, D.C. to interview for a job with the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, the agency charged with recapitalizing banks and trusts. Durr took the job. He resigned from that agency in 1941 after a series of disagreements with his superiors over their approval of agreements with defense contractors that allowed them to concentrate their monopoly position and derive windfall profits from war preparation efforts. President Roosevelt then appointed Durr to the Federal Communications Commission to counter the increasing power and concentration of broadcasters, many of whom were opponents of the New Deal. This spurred investigations of the FCC by the House Un-American Activities Committee and J. Edgar Hoover's FBI. The Durrs then returned to Montgomery, Alabama in the hope of returning to a more prosperous, less controversial life. However, Senator James Eastland of Mississippi soon subpoenaed Clifford Durr and his associate Aubrey Williams to a hearing of the Senate Subcommittee on Internal Security investigating. With the assistance of Senator Lyndon Johnson Durr succeeded in discrediting the hearing. However, Durr's health and law practice suffered, as Durr lost most of his white clients while the FBI increased its surveillance of him and those around him. Durr continued to practice in Montgomery as counsel, along with a local attorney Fred Gray, for black citizens whose rights had been violated. He and Gray were prepared to appeal the conviction of Claudette Colvin, but elected not to do so when E.D. Nixon, later of the Montgomery Improvement Association, and other Black activists decided that hers was not the case to use to challenge the law. Durr was therefore ready in December, 1955, when police arrested Rosa Parks for refusing to give her seat to a White man. Durr and Gray represented Parks in her criminal appeals in State court, while Gray took on the federal court litigation challenging the constitutionality of the ordinance. They won the case. Durr continued to represent activists in the Civil Rights Movement. He eventually closed his firm in 1964. He lectured after his retirement. He died at his grandfather's farm in 1975. (*) (*) see Source on page 144
12
Civil Rights Struggle (Montgomery) (1899-1987) Edgar Daniel Nixon was born on July 12, 1899
in Montgomery, Alabama. As a boy, Nixon received about one year of formal education. After working in a train station baggage room, he finally became a Pullman car porter. Nixon was a key organizer of the Montgomery Bus Boycott of 1955-56.
A Montgomery ordinance reserved the front seats on buses for White passengers only, forcing African-American riders to sit in the back. Before the activists could mount the court challenge, they needed someone to voluntarily break this bus seating law and be arrested for it. Nixon carefully searched for a suitable plaintiff.
In the early 1950s, Nixon and Jo Ann Robinson, president of the Women's Political Council, decided to mount a court challenge to the discriminatory seating practices on Montgomery's municipal buses along with a boycott of the bus company. A Montgomery ordinance reserved the front seats on these buses for white passengers only, forcing African-American riders to sit in the back. Before the activists could mount the court challenge, they needed someone to voluntarily break this bus seating law and be arrested for it. Nixon carefully searched for a suitable plaintiff. He rejected one candidate because he didn't believe she had the fortitude to see the case through. Nixon rejected a second candidate because she was an unwed mother and a third candidate because her father was an alcoholic. The final choice was Rosa Parks, the elected secretary of the Montgomery NAACP. On December 1, 1955, Parks entered a Montgomery bus, refused to give up her seat for a white passenger, and was then arrested. After being called about Parks' arrest, Nixon went to bail her out of jail. He arranged for Parks' friend Clifford Durr, a sympathetic White lawyer, to represent her. Nixon was an organizer of and became the treasurer of the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA), the organization formed to run the Bus Boycott; Martin Luther King, Jr. was elected its president. What was expected to be a short boycott lasted 381 days. Despite fierce political opposition, police coercion, and personal threats, the boycott held. Bus ridership plummeted and the bus company was on the verge of financial ruin. On February 1, 1956, a bomb exploded in front of Nixon's home. In the meantime, the court challenge worked its way through the court system until it reached the United States Supreme Court. The boycott finally ended following the Supreme Court decision holding that Montgomery's segregation policy was unlawful. Nixon's relationship with the MIA was contentious. He frequently had sharp disagreements with others in the MIA. He also expressed resentment that King and Abernathy had received most of the credit for the boycott as opposed to the local activists, including himself, who had spent years struggling against racism. After retiring from the railroad, Nixon worked as the recreation director of a public housing project. Edgar Nixon died at age 87 on February 25, 1987. (*) (*) see Source on page 144
13
Civil Rights Struggle (Montgomery) (1911-2008) Johnnie Rebecca (Daniels) Carr
was born on January 26, 1911in Montgomery, Alabama. In 1964 Arlam Carr Sr., and his wife Johnnie Carr, were members of the Montgomery Improvement Association, filed a desegregation lawsuit on behalf of their son, Arlam Jr., eventually led to the integration of the Montgomery County school system in Alabama.
Their son was one of only 13 Black students at Sidney Lanier High School when he began attending it. In 1967, Johnnie Carr became President of the Montgomery Improvement Association, succeeding the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.. Carr held this office until she died. Johnnie was a childhood friend of Rosa Parks and is considered, along with Parks, to be an important face in the Civil Rights Movement in Montgomery, Alabama. Mrs. Carr could've just relaxed and sat at home or just not get involved in injustice around her, but she was determined to use every bit of her energy to accomplish the things she thought was important to freedom. "She was a fighter. She was very much in control of what she was thinking and saying and doing. Just an amazing woman."-- The Rev. Robert Graetz, friend and the only White Montgomery minister to openly support the Montgomery Bus Boycott of 1955. Carr died on February 22, 2008 of a massive stroke at the age of 97(*) Civil Rights pioneer and U.S. Representative John Lewis, D-Ga., said, "Mrs. Carr must be looked on as one of the founders of a new America because she was there with Rosa Parks, E.D. Nixon, Martin Luther King Jr. and so many others."
Arlam Carr Sr., and his wife Johnnie Carr home (*) see Source on page 144
14
Civil Rights Struggle (Montgomery) (1912-1992) Jo Ann Gibson Robinson was a Civil Rights activist and educator in Montgomery, Alabama. Born near Culloden, Georgia, she was the youngest of twelve children. She attended Fort Valley State College and then became a public school teacher in Macon, where she was married to Wilbur Robinson for a short time. Five years later, she went to Atlanta, where she earned an M.A. in English at Atlanta University. She then accepted a position at Alabama State College in Montgomery. It was there that she joined the Women's Political Council, which Mary Fair Burks had founded three years earlier. In 1949, Robinson was verbally attacked by a bus driver, which lead to her involvement in activism. In late 1950, she succeeded Burks as president of the WPC and helped focus the group's efforts on bus abuses. On Thursday, December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to move to the back of the bus from the neutral section on the bus. Mrs. Parks was an organizer. That night, with Mrs. Parks' permission, Mrs. Robinson stayed up mimeographing 35,000 handbills calling for a boycott of the Montgomery bus system. The boycott was initially planned to be for just the following Monday. She passed out the leaflets at a Friday afternoon meeting of AME Zionist clergy among other place and Reverend L. Roy Bennett told other ministers to themselves attend a meeting that Friday night and to urge their congregations to take part in the boycott. Reverend Ralph Abernathy then helped Robinson pass out the handbills to high school students leaving school that afternoon. He wanted to help her so that she would not be solely blamed. After the success of the one-day boycott, black citizens decided to continue the boycott and established the Montgomery Improvement Association to focus on the boycott. The Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. was elected president. Jo Ann Robinson became a member of this group. She served on its executive board and edited their newsletter. In order to protect her position at Alabama State College and to protect her colleagues, Robinson purposely stayed out of the limelight even though she worked diligently with the MIA. Robinson and other WPC members also helped sustain the boycott by providing transportation for boycotters. The boycott lasted over a year because the bus company would not give into any of their demands for rights. Robinson left Alabama State College and moved out of Montgomery in 1960. She taught at Grambling College in Louisiana for one year and then moved to Los Angeles and taught English in the public school system. In LA, she continued to be active in local women’s organizations. She taught in the LA schools until she retired from teaching in 1976. Robinson’s name is often glossed over in history lessons despite her role in organizing the boycott. Robinson's memoir, The Montgomery Bus Boycott and the Women Who Started It, edited by David J. Garrow, was published in 1987 by the University of Tennessee Press. (cont.) 15
Civil Rights Struggle (Montgomery) (1913–2005) Rosa "Lee" Louise (McCauley) Parks was born Rosa Louise McCauley on February 4, 1913 in Tuskegee, Alabama to James McCauley and Leona Edwards, respectively, a carpenter and a teacher, and was of African-American, Cherokee-Creek and ScotsIrish ancestry. Parks' great grandfather was a Scottish-Irishman. She was small, even for a child, and she suffered poor health and had chronic tonsillitis. When her parents separated, she moved with her mother to Pine Level, just outside Montgomery, Alabama. just outside Montgomery. For years the Black community had complained about this severe unfairness to riding public transportation, and Mrs. Parks was no exception. Parks said, " My resisting being mistreated on the bus did not begin with that particular arrest...I did a lot of walking in Montgomery." Parks had her first run-in on the public bus in on a rainy day in 1943 when the bus driver, James Blake demanded that she get off the bus and reenter through the back door like every other Black person. As she began to exit by the front door, she dropped her purse. Then Parks deliberately sat in a seat for White passengers, apparently to pick up her purse. The bus driver was enraged and had barely let her step off the bus before speeding off. Incensed, Rosa walked the more than five miles home in the rain. On that notable day in 1955 at about 6 p.m., Mrs. Parks boarded the bus in downtown Montgomery, paid her fare, and sat in an empty seat in the first row of back seats reserved for Blacks (near the middle of the bus, behind the 10 seats reserved for Whites). Initially, she had not noticed that the bus driver was the same man, James Blake, who had mistreated her in 1943. As the bus traveled through its regular route, all of the "White-only" seats in the bus were filled. The bus reached the third stop in front of the Empire Theater, and several White passengers boarded the bus. Following the standard practice of segregation, Blake noted that the front of the bus was filled with White passengers and there were two or three men standing and thus moved the sign behind Parks and demanded that four Blacks give up their seats in the middle section so the White passengers could sit. By Parks' account, Blake said, "Y'all better make it light on yourselves and let me have those seats." Three of them complied. Parks said, "The driver wanted us to stand up, the four of us. We didn't move at the beginning, but he says, 'Let me have these seats.' And the other three people moved, but I didn't." The Black man sitting next to her gave his seat up. Parks moved, but toward the window seat. She did not get up or off her seat. Blake said, "Why don't you stand up?" Parks said, "I said I don't think I should have to stand up." (cont,) 16
Civil Rights Struggle (Montgomery) Parks (cont) Blake called the police to arrest Parks. When recalling the incident for Eyes on the Prize, a 1987 public television series on the Civil Rights Movement, Parks said, " When he saw me still sitting, he asked if I was going to stand up and I said, 'No, I'm not'. And he said, 'Well, if you don't stand up, I'm going to have to call the police and have you arrested.' I said, 'You may do that.' " When Parks refused to give up her seat, a police officer arrested her. As the officer took her away, she recalled that she asked, " Why do you push us around?" The officer's response, "I don't know, but the law's the law, and you're under arrest." Parks was charged with a violation of Chapter 6, Section 11 segregation law of the Montgomery City code even though she had not taken up a "White-only" seat — she was in a "Colored section" but she was told to get up to allow a White man to sit. Four days later, she was tried on charges of disorderly conduct and violating a local ordinance. The trial lasted 30 minutes. Parks was found guilty and fined $10, plus $4 in court costs. On Monday, December 5, 1955, the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA) was formed. Its members elected as their president a virtual newcomer to Montgomery, a young and relatively unknown minister of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. That Monday night, 50 leaders of the African American community, headed by Dr. King, gathered to discuss the proper actions to be taken as a result of Mrs. Parks' arrest. The entire Black community ended up boycotting public buses for 381 days. On November 13, 1956, the United States Supreme Court outlawed racial segregation on buses, deeming it unconstitutional. The court order arrived in Montgomery, Alabama, on December 20, 1956, and the bus boycott ended the next day. However, more violence erupted following the court order, as snipers fired into buses and into King's home, and terrorists threw bombs into churches and into the homes of many church ministers, including Martin Luther King Jr.'s friend Ralph Abernathy. At the time of her action, Parks was secretary of the Montgomery chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) (See on page 125) and had recently attended the Highlander Folk School, a Tennessee center for workers' rights and racial equality. Nonetheless, she took her action as a private citizen "tired of giving in". Although widely honored in later years for her action, she suffered for it, losing her job as a seamstress in a local department store. Eventually, she moved to Detroit, Michigan, where she found similar work. From 1965 to 1988 she served as secretary and receptionist to African-American U.S. Representative John Conyers. After retirement from this position, she wrote an autobiography and lived a largely private life in Detroit. In her final years she suffered from dementia and became embroiled in a lawsuit filed on her behalf against American hip-hop duo OutKast. October 24, 2005 Rosa Parks died at the age of 92, whom the United States Congress called the "Mother of the Modern Day Civil Rights Movement." In death, Rosa Parks is joining a select few, including presidents and war heroes, accorded a public viewing in the Capitol Rotunda. It's the place where, six years ago, President Bill Clinton and congressional leaders lauded the former seamstress for a simple act of defiance that changed the course of history. (*)
(*) see Source on page 144
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Civil Rights Struggle (Montgomery) (1916-1999) Henry Vance Graham was born on. May 7, 1916 in Birmingham, Alabama. was a National Guard general who protected Black activists during the Civil Rights era. He is most famous for asking Alabama Governor George Wallace to step aside and permit Black students to register for classes at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa in 1963 during the "Stand in the Schoolhouse Door". In 1934, at the age of 18, Graham joined the National Guard and served in the United States Army in Europe during World War II. In 1945, he attained the rank of Lt. Colonel and served in the Korean War in 1952. For his military services he received Bronze Stars and a Legion of Merit. He also served as Adjutant General for the State of Alabama from 1959 to 1961. In 1961, Graham was awarded the title of Brigadier General. General Graham had several prominent roles in the American Civil Rights Movement. In 1961, General Graham led the Alabama National Guard to protect the Freedom Riders from mob violence. On the evening of May 21, 1961, Freedom Riders and their supporters met at Ralph Abernathy's First Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama to honor their struggle. Martin Luther King, Jr. also flew in to offer support. As White mobs gathered outside the church and became increasingly agitated, the Kennedy Administration and Alabama Governor John Malcolm Patterson agreed to employ Alabama National Guard troops to surround the church for safety. At the request of King, General Graham entered the church to inform the crowd that they would have to wait until the next morning to leave the church. At dawn, Graham arranged for the members of the crowd to be escorted to their homes. Two days later, on May 24, Graham was responsible for escorting the Freedom Riders from the Montgomery bus terminal to the Alabama-Mississippi border using a convoy of three planes, two helicopters, and seventeen highway patrol cars. From March 21 to 24, 1965, General Graham was responsible for escorting voting-rights marchers in their third attempt to walk from Selma to Montgomery, Ala. This occurred two weeks after marchers had been beaten and tear-gassed in front of news media for an earlier attempt to march in what became known as Bloody Sunday. In his most prominent role, on June 11, 1963, General Graham confronted Governor George Wallace at the University of Alabama for refusing to allow two Black students, James Hood and Vivian Malone, to register for classes. Among a crowd of media, Governor Wallace obstructed the doorway of Foster Auditorium in an attempt to disregard federal law requiring the University to integrate. Assistant U.S. Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach approached Wallace earlier in the day and requested his cooperation to stand aside. When Wallace refused, President Kennedy mobilized the Alabama National Guard and General Graham was called to the University. Graham approached Wallace with four sergeants, saluted Wallace and said "It is my sad duty to ask you to step aside under the orders of the President of the United States General Graham died on March 21, 1999. (*) (*) see Source on page 144
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Civil Rights Struggle (Montgomery) (1922-2007) Charles Douglas Langford was born on December 9, 1922 in Montgomery, Alabama. He was an Alabama State Senator who represented Rosa Parks in the famous Civil Rights case of the 1950's. Attorney Langford served in the Alabama Legislature as a State Representative, District 77, Montgomery County, from 1976 to 1983, and as a State Senator, District 26, Montgomery County, from 1983 to 2002. He was the sixth child of Nathan G. and Lucy Brown Langford. Mr. Langford was one of two Black lawyers in Montgomery at this time. He was born into a Christian family and was baptized as an infant at St. John’s AME Church. Mr. Charles Langford completed two years at Tuskegee Institute before being drafted in the U.S. Army during World War II, where he served overseas as a truck driver in the European Theater Operation. Mr. Langford received an honorable discharge from the Army in 1946. Mr. Langford earned his law degree from The Catholic University. He continued his education at Tennessee State University, earning a Bachelor of Science Degree in Business in 1948. He was a partner in the law firm of Gray, Langford, Sapp, McGowan, Gray and Nathanson.
Cases Involved In: Mr. Langford was also a lawyer who represented Civil Rights activist Rosa Parks subsequent to her arrest on December 1, 1955 for refusing to give up her seat to a White man on a Montgomery bus. In 1993, representing a group of Black Legislators, Mr. Langford helped end the flying of a Confederate battle flag from the dome of the State Capitol in Montgomery. In 1964 he represented Arlam Carr in a lawsuit against Montgomery’s Board of Education that led to the desegregation of the City’s public schools.
Organization Affiliations: St. John's A.M.E. Church (Trustee Board); Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity (charter member of Alpha Upsilon Lambda chapter); Southern Pride Elks Lodge #431 (former Exalter Ruler); Montgomery Improvement Association; and the list goes on.
Later on in Life: In 1953, he was admitted to the Alabama State Bar, and opened his law office on Monroe Street in Montgomery. Langford stayed in Montgomery and continued to represent local AfricanAmericans in Civil Rights cases. He served five terms in the Senate before retiring in 2002. Mr Langford died on February 11, 2007 at his home in Montgomery. He was 84. Mr. Langford died in his sleep. Survivors include a sister, Mattie Lee Langford. (*) (*) see Source on page 144
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Civil Rights Struggle (Montgomery) (1926-1990) Ralph David Abernathy, Sr. was born March 11, 1926 to W. L. Abernathy on the family 500-acre (2.0 km2) farm in Linden, Alabama. After serving in the United States Army during World War II, he enrolled at Alabama State University. In 1951 he earned a Masters of Science degree in sociology from Atlanta University (later Clark Atlanta University). As an officer of the Montgomery, Alabama NAACP, he organized the first mass meeting of the Montgomery Bus Boycott to protest Rosa Park's arrest on December 1,1955. He cofounded the Civil Rights Movement with Martin Luther King, Jr. As the Vice President of the Montgomery Improvement Association, he completed his Master’s Thesis in Sociology for Atlanta University, The Natural History of A Social Movement: The Montgomery Improvement Association, which was first referenced in 1984, then published as a chapter in 1989 In the beginning of the Civil Rights Movement, Dr. Abernathy was the young pastor of the largest Black church and a college professor, who, along with fellow English professor JoAnne Robinson, called for and distributed flyers asking the Negro Citizens of Montgomery to stay off of the buses for what would become the Montgomery Bus Boycott. At the end of the boycott, on January 10, 1957, Dr. Abernathy's church and his home (1327 South Hall Street) were severely bombed; his wife, Juanita, and infant daughter, Juandalynn, were unharmed. Martin Luther King, Jr. said at the beginning of his last speech, "I've been to the mountain top," that "Ralph David Abernathy is the best friend that I have in the world." They first met in Atlanta, while still in school and formed a lifelong friendship and partnership which ended April 4, 1968, when King died in a Memphis, Tennessee hospital after being shot.
Civil Rights work: Ralph attended Linden Academy, a Baptist school founded by the First Mt. Pleasant District Association; he was financially supported by his father, who always said, “the bottom rail will come to the top, one day and justice will not always be denied to the Colored man.” His gentle father taught him, “If you see a good fight, get in it and fight to win it!” At Linden Academy, David led his first demonstration to protest the inferior Science Lab. The school improved the science lab as a result of his persistent actions. During World War II, David enlisted in the military as Ralph David, and rose to the rank of Platoon Sergeant before earning an honorable discharge as a result of his bout of rheumatic fever in Europe. In 1945, he enrolled in Alabama State Teacher College, now called Alabama State University in Montgomery, Alabama, where he became student body President and Class President. He graduated with High Honors and a Bachelor of Science Degree in Mathematics. (cont.)
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Civil Rights Struggle (Montgomery) Abernathy (cont.) While still a college student, he announced his call to the ministry, which he had envisioned since he was a small boy growing up in a devout Baptist family. He preached his first sermon on Mother's Day, 1948, in honor of his recently deceased mother. Abernathy began his professional career in 1950, when he was appointed Personnel Director at Alabama State University; he later assumed the position of Dean of Men and Professor of Social Studies and Mathematics. During this period, he hosted a radio show and became the first black man on radio in Montgomery. In February 1952, he was called as the Senior Pastor of the First Baptist Church, the largest black church in Montgomery, Alabama, where he served for ten years. He married Juanita Odessa Jones of Uniontown, Alabama on August 31, 1952 and their union produced five children, Ralph David Abernathy Jr., (August 16, 1953 - August 18, 1953), Juandalynn Ralpheda, Donzaleigh Avis, Ralph David III and Kwame Luthuli Abernathy. On December 2, 1955, in response to the arrest of his NAACP co-worker, Rosa Parks, Abernathy and his dearest friend, Dr. Martin Luther King, organized the Montgomery Bus Boycott and cofounded the American Civil Rights Movement. The Montgomery Improvement Association led the successful 381 days transit boycott challenging “Jim Crow” Segregation laws, and ended Alabama’s bus segregation. While actively involved in the beginning of the Civil Rights Movement, he completed his Master’s Degree in Sociology at Atlanta University. His master’s thesis, “The Natural History of A Social Movement: The Montgomery Improvement Association,” was published by Carlson Publishing in David Garrow’s book entitled, “The Walking City – The Montgomery Bus Boycott, 1955-1956.” The Abernathy home and church were bombed in January 1957, along with Mt. Olive Church, Bell Street Church and the home of Reverend Robert Graetz, on the evening that Dr. King, Dr. Abernathy and other Ministers were planning to convene to create the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) in Atlanta. Dr. King and Dr. Abernathy immediately returned to Montgomery, leaving Mrs. Coretta Scott King to conduct the first meeting of SCLC. Dr. Abernathy served as SCLC’s first Financial Secretary/Treasurer and Vice President At-Large during the years that Dr. King was its president, and assumed the presidency at Dr. King’s request upon Dr. King's death. After the success of the Freedom Riders in Montgomery, Birmingham and Huntsville in 1961, Dr. King insisted Rev. Abernathy assume the Pastorate of the West Hunter Street Baptist Church in Atlanta, moving his family from Montgomery, Alabama in 1962. He served as the Senior Pastor at that church until the time of his death. The King/Abernathy partnership spearheaded successful nonviolent movements in Montgomery, Albany, Birmingham, Mississippi, Washington, Selma, St. Augustine, Chicago and Memphis. Their work helped to secure the passage of the landmark Civil Rights Bill of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the abolition of Jim Crow Segregation Laws in the southern United States. (cont.) 21
Civil Rights Struggle (Montgomery) Abernathy (cont.) For 13 turbulent years, from 1955 until Dr. King’s death on April 4, 1968, Dr. King and Dr. Abernathy journeyed together, every step of the way and were inseparable as best friends, sharing the same hotel rooms, jail cells and leisure times with their wives, children, family and friends, all the way to the end. By tearing down the walls of segregation, discrimination and helping to establish new legislation, Dr. King and Dr. Abernathy were able to instill a new sense of pride, dignity and self-worth in millions of African Americans and people of all colors, all over the world. Their Civil and Human Rights Movement serves as an inspiration and model of America’s principled non violent struggle for freedom, justice and equality. On the eve of the Apollo 11 launch, July 15, 1969, Abernathy arrived at Cape Canaveral with several hundred members of the poor people to protest spending of government space exploration, while many Americans remained poor. He was met by Thomas O. Paine, the Administrator of NASA, whom he told that in the face of such suffering, space flight represented an inhuman priority and funds should be spent instead to "feed the hungry, clothe the naked, tend the sick, and house the homeless." Mr. Paine told Abernathy that the advances in space exploration were child's play compared to the tremendously difficult human problems of the society, and told him that "if we could solve the problems of poverty by not pushing the button to launch men to the moon tomorrow, then we would not push that button." On the day of the launch, Dr. Abernathy led a small group of protesters to the restricted guest viewing area of the space center and chanted, "We are not astronauts, but we are people." Abernathy testified, along with his executive associate, James Peterson of Berkeley, California, before the Congressional Hearings calling for the Extension of the Voting Rights Act, which has and continues to serve as the only legal method to ensure equal and fair voting practices in the Southern States, guaranteeing that everyone born in the United States of America, regardless of race, is entitled to full citizenship and the right to vote. In the 1980s, the Unification Church hired Dr. Abernathy as a spokesperson to protest the news media's use of the term "Moonies", which they compared with the word "Nigger". Abernathy also served as vice president of the Unification Church-affiliated group American Freedom Coalition and served on two Unification Church boards of directors. In 1989, Harper Collins published Abernathy’s autobiography, “And The Walls Came Tumbling Down.” It was his final accounting of his close friendship—indeed, partnership—with Martin Luther King, Jr. and their work in the Civil Rights Movement.
Death: Abernathy died at Emory Crawford Long Memorial Hospital, from two blood clots that traveled to his heart and lungs, five weeks after his 64th birthday on the morning of April 17, 1990.(*)
(*) see Source on page 144
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Civil Rights Struggle (Montgomery) (1927–2006) Coretta (Scott) King
was born on April 27, 1927 in Heiberger, Alabama to Obadiah (Obie) and Bernice McMurry Scott. Though her family owned the land, it was often a hard life. All the children had to pick cotton during the "Great Depression" to help the family make ends meet. Graduating from Lincoln Normal School in Marion, Alabama at the top of her class in 1945, Scott went to Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio. After graduation she moved to Boston, Massachusetts where she met Martin Luther King Jr. The Kings were married on June 18, 1953 on the lawn of her parents' house and with the ceremony performed by King's father. Coretta King received a degree in Voice and Violin at the New England Conservatory, then moved with her husband to Montgomery, Alabama in September 1954 after he was named pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church. Martin and Coretta had four children. Coretta Scott King took part in the Montgomery Bus Boycott of 1955 and took an active role in advocating for Civil Rights Legislation. Most prominently, perhaps, she worked hard to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Her Husband, Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated on April 4, 1968 in Memphis Tennessee. Not long after her husband's assassination in 1968, Coretta approached the African American entertainer and activist Josephine Baker to take her husband's place as leader of The Civil Rights Movement. After many days of thinking it over Baker declined, stating that her twelve adopted children (known as the "rainbow tribe") were " ... too young to lose their mother." Shortly after that Coretta decided to take the helm of the movement herself. Coretta Scott King broadened her focus to include Women's Rights, LGBT Rights, economic issues, world peace, and various other causes. As early as December 1968, she called for women to "unite and form a solid block of women power to fight the three great evils of racism, poverty and war," during a Solidarity Day speech. As leader of the Movement, Coretta Scott King founded the Martin Luther King, Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change in Atlanta. She served as the center's president and CEO from its inception until she passed the reins of leadership to son Dexter Scott King. She published her memoirs, My Life with Martin Luther King, Jr., in 1969. Coretta Scott King was also under surveillance by the Federal Bureau of Investigation from 1968 until 1972. During the 1980s, Scott King reaffirmed her long-standing opposition to apartheid, participating in a series of sit-in protests in Washington, D.C. that prompted nationwide demonstrations against South African racial policies. She died in her sleep on the evening of January 30, 2006. (*) (*) see Source on page 144
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Civil Rights Struggle (Montgomery) 1928Robert S. Graetz
was born on May 16, 1928 in Clarksburg, West Virginia, and educated in Columbus, Ohio. He graduated from Capital University in Bexley, Ohio in 1950 and received a B.D. in 1955 from Evangelical Lutheran Theological Seminary in Columbus, Ohio (now Trinity Lutheran Seminary. He married Jean Ellis (known as Jeannie) on June 10, 1951 in East Springfield, Pennsylvania.
Graetz' first full-time job as pastor was to a Black congregation, Trinity Lutheran Church in Montgomery. He began working there in 1955, the year of the Montgomery Bus Boycott. A personal friend of Rosa Parks, Graetz became secretary of the Montgomery Improvement Association, the organization founded to organize and support the boycott. Graetz' support of the movement included appearing at meetings led by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. For his support of the boycott, Graetz and his family were ostracized by other Whites and suffered several episodes of harassment, including tire slashing, arrest and bombings. Bombs were planted at his home on three occasions; the largest did not explode. Graetz wrote A White Preacher's Memoir: The Montgomery Bus Boycott (Black Belt Press, September 1999. ISBN 1579660150) about his experiences. The book They Walked to Freedom 1955-1956: The Story of the Montgomery Bus Boycott by Kenneth M. Hare (Sports Publishing LLC, 2005. ISBN 1596700106) contains a first-person account of his experiences as well as photographs of Graetz with Dr. King and others. In 2008 the Graetz family returned to Montgomery, Alabama, where they are actively involved in various civic activities including the diversity group One Montgomery and the League of Women Voters. Each year they host the annual Graetz Symposium at the National Center for the Study of Civil Rights and African-American Culture at Alabama State University.
Awards: Russwurm Award, National Negro Newspaper Publishers Association, 1957 Selma Humanitarian Award, from the producers and cast of the musical "Selma," about life and work of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., 1976 Distinguished Alumnus, Trinity Lutheran Seminary, 1986 Doctor of Humanities, Capital University, 1990 Ohio Humanitarian Award, 1993, in conjunction with Martin Luther King Day celebration (Ohio) Governor's Humanitarian Award, 1997, in conjunction with Martin Luther King Day celebration (*) (*) see Source on page 144
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Civil Rights Struggle (Montgomery Bus Boycott) (1929-1968) Martin Luther King, Jr.
was born on January 15, 1929 in Atlanta, Georgia. He was the oldest son of the Reverend and Mrs. Martin Luther King Sr.. He was named Michael Luther after his father, but later the Reverend King changed both their names to Martin Luther in honor of the great church leader. Unhappy racial experiences made a deep and lasting impression on young Martin. One day his father took him to buy new shoes. When they sat down in the store, the clerk asked them to move to the back of the store. Reverend King took Martin by the hand and left the store rather than take that kind of treatment. Another time, the parents of boys Martin played with told him that they could no longer come out to play with him because they were White and he was Black. Martin's feelings were hurt. His mother tried to explain about prejudice. She told him that Blacks were no longer Slaves, but they were not really free. His grandfather began the family's long tenure as pastors of the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, serving from 1914 to 1931; Martin Luther King Sr. served from then until his death, and Martin Luther King Jr. acted as co-pastor from 1960 until his death in 1968. Martin Luther attended segregated public schools in Georgia, graduating from high school at the age of fifteen; he received his BA degree in 1948 from Morehouse College, a distinguished Negro institution of Atlanta from which both his father and grandfather had graduated. After three years of theological study at Crozer Theological Seminary in Pennsylvania where he was elected president of a predominantly White senior class, he was awarded his BD in 1951. With a fellowship won at Crozer, he enrolled in graduate studies at Boston University, completing his residence for the doctorate in 1953 and receiving his degree in 1955. While in Boston he met and married Coretta Scott, a young woman of uncommon intellectual and artistic attainments. Two sons and two daughters were born into the family: Yolanda (b. November 17, 1955), Martin Luther III (b. October 23, 1957), Dexter (b. January 30, 1961), and Bernice Albertine (b. March 28, 1963).
Montgomery Bus Boycott: In December of 1955, Mrs. Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery bus. Mrs. Parks was later tried in Montgomery City Court, charged with and found guilty of violating a State law mandating segregation. She was fined $10. Her attorney appealed the conviction. Co-incident with Mrs. Parks' trial a one-day boycott of the buses by many members of Montgomery's Black community, was planned. Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. was asked to help, as was his friend, the Reverend Ralph Abernathy. As a result of this, an organization was established, the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA) to orchestrate a complete and ongoing response to Montgomery's segregation. (cont.) 25
King’s Struggle (March on Washington) King (cont.) Reverend King was chosen president. Blacks walked to work or took cars or taxis, but they did not ride the buses. The one-day boycott stretched out to 381 days. Finally, after more than a year of protest, on November 13, 1956, the United States Supreme Court ruled that segregation on buses was against the law. In 1957 he was elected president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), an organization formed to provide new leadership for the now burgeoning Civil Rights Movement. Martin Luther King, Jr. also wrote five books as well as numerous articles. In these years, he led a massive protest in Birmingham, Alabama that caught the attention of the entire world, providing what he called a coalition of conscience. and inspiring his Letter from a Birmingham Jail, a manifesto of the Negro revolution; he planned the drives in Alabama for the registration of Negroes as voters. (*)
1958— Assassination attempt: On September 20, 1958, while signing copies of his book Stride Toward Freedom in Harlem, a well-dressed woman approached and asked him if he was Martin Luther King, Jr. When King replied in the affirmative, she said, "I've been looking for you for five years," then Izola Curry, a deranged Black woman stabbed him in the chest with a steel letter opener. King was immediately taken by ambulance to Harlem Hospital, where surgeons spent three hours removing the blade from its precarious position. narrowly escaping death. Izola was adjudicated incompetent to stand trial and was committed to Mattawan State Hospital for the criminally insane and never heard of since.(*)
1963—March on Washington: King, representing SCLC, was among the leaders of the so-called "Big Six" Civil Right Organizations who were instrumental in the organization of the "March on Washington" for Jobs and Freedom in 1963. The other leaders and organizations comprising the Big Six were: Roy Wilkins, NAACP; Whitney Young, Jr., Urban League; A. Philip Randolph, Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters; John Lewis, SNCC; and James Farmer of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). For King, this role was another which courted controversy, as he was one of the key figures who acceded to the wishes of President John F. Kennedy in changing the focus of the march. Kennedy initially opposed the march outright, because he was concerned it would negatively impact the drive for passage of Civil Rights Legislation, but the organizers were firm that the march would proceed. The march originally was conceived as an event to dramatize the desperate condition of Blacks in the South and a very public opportunity to place organizers' concerns and grievances squarely before the seat of power in the Nation's Capital. Organizers intended to excoriate and then challenge the federal government for its failure to safeguard the Civil Rights and physical safety of Civil Right Workers and Blacks, generally, in the South. However, the group acquiesced to presidential pressure and influence, and the event ultimately took on a far less strident tone. (cont.) 26
King’s Struggle (Bloody Sunday in Selma) King (cont.) As a result, some Civil Right activists who felt it presented an inaccurate, sanitized pageant of racial harmony; Malcolm X called it the "Farce on Washington," and members of the Nation of Islam who attended the march faced a temporary suspension. The march did, however, make specific demands: an end to racial segregation in public school; meaningful Civil Rights Legislation, including a law prohibiting racial discrimination in employment; protection of Civil Right Workers from police brutality; a $2 minimum wage for all workers; and self-government for the District of Columbia, then governed by a congressional committee. Despite tensions, the march was a resounding success. More than a quarter of a million people of diverse ethnicities attended the event, sprawling from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial onto the National Mall and around the reflecting pool. At the time, it was the largest gathering of protestors in Washington's history. King's I Have a Dream speech electrified the crowd. Following the march, the organizers were invited to a reception at the White House, where President John F. Kennedy was bubbling over the success of the event.(*)
1964— Nobel Peace Prize: At the age of thirty-five, Martin Luther King, Jr., was the youngest man to have received the Nobel Peace Prize. He announced that he would turn over the prize money of $54,123.00 to the furtherance of the Civil Rights Movement. (*)
1965— Bloody Sunday in Selma: King, James Bevel, and the SCLC, in partial collaboration with SNCC, attempted to organize a march from Selma to the State Capital of Montgomery, for March 7, 1965. The first attempt to march on March 7 was aborted because of mob and police violence against the demonstrators. This day has since become known as Bloody Sunday. Bloody Sunday was a major turning point in the effort to gain public support for the Civil Rights Movement, the clearest demonstration up to that time of the dramatic potential of King's nonviolence strategy. King, however, was not present. After meeting with President Lyndon B. Johnson, he decided not to endorse the march, but it was carried out against his wishes and without his presence on March 7 by the director of the Selma Movement, James Bevel, and by local Civil Rights leaders. Footage of police brutality against the protesters was broadcast extensively and aroused national public outrage. King next attempted to organize a march for March 9. The SCLC petitioned for an injunction in federal court against the State of Alabama; this was denied and the judge issued an order blocking the march until after a hearing. Nonetheless, King led marchers on March 9 to the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, then held a short prayer session before turning the marchers around and asking them to disperse so as not to violate the court order. The unexpected ending of this second march aroused the surprise and anger of many within the local movement. The march finally went ahead fully on March 25, 1965. At the conclusion of the march and on the steps of the state capitol, King delivered a speech that has become known as "How Long, Not Long".(cont.) 27
King’s Struggle (Chicago Housing) King (cont.)
1966— Chicago Housing: In 1966, after several successes in the South, King and others in the Civil Rights Organizations tried to spread the Movement to the North, with Chicago as its first destination. King and Ralph Abernathy, both from the middle classes, moved into the slums of North Lawndale on the West side of Chicago as an educational experience and to demonstrate their support and empathy for the poor.
King and president Johnson
The SCLC formed a coalition with CCCO, Coordinating Council of Community Organizations, an organization founded by Albert Raby, and the combined organizations' efforts were fostered under the aegis of The Chicago Freedom Movement. During that spring, several dual White couple/ Black couple tests on real estate offices uncovered the practice (now banned in the U.S.) of racial steering. These tests revealed the racially selective processing of housing requests by couples who were exact matches in income, background, number of children, and other attributes, with the only difference being their race.
The needs of the Movement for radical change grew, and several larger marches were planned and executed, including those in the following neighborhoods: Bogan, Belmont Cragin, Jefferson Park, Evergreen Park (a suburb Southwest of Chicago), Gage Park and Marquette Park, among others. In Chicago, Abernathy later wrote that they received a worse reception than they had in the South. Their marches were met by thrown bottles and screaming thugs, and they were truly afraid of starting a riot. King's beliefs militated against his staging a violent event, and he negotiated an agreement with Mayor Richard J. Daley to cancel a march in order to avoid the violence that he feared would result from the demonstration. King, who received death threats throughout his involvement in the Civil Rights Movement, he was hit by a brick during one march but continued to lead marches in the face of personal danger. When King and his allies returned to the South, they left Jesse Jackson, a seminary student who had previously joined the movement in the South, in charge of their organization. Jackson continued their struggle for Civil Rights by organizing the Operation Breadbasket Movement that targeted chain stores that did not deal fairly with Blacks. (cont.)
28
King’s Struggle (Anti-Vietnam War) King (cont.)
Opposition to the Vietnam War: Starting in 1965, King began to express doubts about the United States' role in the Vietnam War. In an April 4, 1967 appearance at the New York City Riverside Church—exactly one year before his death—King delivered a speech titled "Beyond Vietnam". In the speech, he spoke strongly against the U.S.'s role in the war, insisting that the U.S. was in Vietnam "to occupy it as an American colony" and calling the U.S. government "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today".
He also argued that the country needed larger and broader moral changes: •
A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say: "This is not just."
•
King also was opposed to the Vietnam War on the grounds that the war took money and resources that could have been spent on social welfare services like the War on Poverty. The United States Congress was spending more and more on the military and less and less on anti -poverty programs at the same time. He summed up this aspect by saying, "A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death".
•
King's opposition cost him significant support among white allies, including President Johnson, union leaders and powerful publishers."The press is being stacked against me," King complained. Life Magazine called the speech "demagogic slander that sounded like a script for Radio Hanoi", and The Washington Post declared that King had "diminished his usefulness to his cause, his country, his people."
•
King stated that North Vietnam "did not begin to send in any large number of supplies or men until American forces had arrived in the tens of thousands". King also criticized the United States' resistance to North Vietnam's land reforms. He accused the United States of having killed a million Vietnamese, "mostly children." (cont.)
29
King’s Struggle (Anti-Vietnam War) King (cont.) • The speech was a reflection of King's evolving political advocacy in his later years, which paralleled the teachings of the progressive Highlander Research and Education Center, with whom King was affiliated. King began to speak of the need for fundamental changes in the political and economic life of the nation. Towards the time of his murder, King more frequently expressed his opposition to the war and his desire to see a redistribution of resources to correct racial and economic injustice. Though his public language was guarded, so as to avoid being linked to communism by his political enemies, in private he sometimes spoke of his support for democratic socialism. In one speech, he stated that "something is wrong with capitalism" and claimed, "There must be a better distribution of wealth, and maybe America must move toward a democratic socialism." •
King had read Marx while at Morehouse, but while he rejected "traditional capitalism," he also rejected Communism because of its "materialistic interpretation of history" that denied religion, its "ethical relativism," and its "political totalitarianism."
•
King also stated in his "Beyond Vietnam" speech that "true compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar....it comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. King quoted a United States official, who said that, from Vietnam to South America to Latin America, the country was "on the wrong side of a world revolution." King condemned America's "alliance with the landed gentry of Latin America," and said that the United States should support "the shirtless and barefoot people" in the Third World rather than suppressing their attempts at revolution.
•
King spoke at an Anti-Vietnam demonstration where he also brought up issues of Civil Rights and the draft.
•
I have not urged a mechanical fusion of the Civil Rights and Peace Movements. There are people who have come to see the moral imperative of equality, but who cannot yet see the moral imperative of world brotherhood. I would like to see the fervor of the Civil-Rights Movement imbued into the Peace Movement to instill it with greater strength. And I believe everyone has a duty to be in both the Civil-Rights and Peace Movements. But for those who presently choose but one, I would hope they will finally come to see the moral roots common to both.
•
In 1967, King gave another speech, in which he lashed out against what he called the "cruel irony" of American Blacks fighting and dying for a country which treated them as second class citizens:
We were taking the young Black men who had been crippled by our society and sending them eight thousand miles away to guarantee liberties which they had not found in Southwest Georgia and East Harlem.... We have been repeatedly faced with the cruel irony of watching Negro and White boys on TV screens as they kill and die together for a nation that has been unable to seat them in the same schools. (cont.) 30
King’s Struggle (Poor People Campaign) King (cont.) • On January 13, 1968, the day after President Lyndon Baines Johnson's State of the Union Address, King called for a large march on Washington against "one of history's most cruel and senseless wars". •
We need to make clear in this political year, to congressmen on both sides of the aisle and to the president of the United States, that we will no longer tolerate, we will no longer vote for men who continue to see the killings of Vietnamese and Americans as the best way of advancing the goals of freedom and self-determination in Southeast Asia.
1968—Poor People's Campaign: In 1968, King and the SCLC organized the "Poor People's Campaign" to address issues of economic justice. The campaign culminated in a march on Washington, D.C. demanding economic aid to the poorest communities of the United States. King traveled the country to assemble "a multiracial army of the poor" that would march on Washington to engage in nonviolent civil disobedience at the Capitol until Congress created a bill of rights for poor Americans However, the campaign was not unanimously supported by other leaders of the Civil Rights Movement. Rustin resigned from the march stating that the goals of the campaign were too broad, the demands unrealizable, and thought these campaigns would accelerate the backlash and repression on the poor and the Black. Throughout his participation in the Civil Rights Movement, King was criticized by many groups.
1968– King assassinated: King was booked in room 306 at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis Tennessee. On April 4, 1968 at approximately 5:45 p.m., Billy Knolls arrived to accompany Dr. King to dinner. As Dr. King, Jesse Jackson, Andrew Young, James Orange and the driver engaged in a conversation about dinner a shot rang out. Dr. King was thrown backwards to the floor with a single gunshot to the neck. As the police ran towards the motel asking where the shot had come from? Several of the men assisting Dr. King pointed to the direction of the rooming house across the parking lot. At approximately 6:05 PM., the police found a .30-06 hunting rifle wrapped in a bundle near the front door of the Canipe Amusement Company, a shop next to the rooming house. Along with the rifle was found a pair of binoculars, two unopened beer cans, a tack hammer and pliers, a shaving kit, a hair brush, a pair of men's shorts and undershirt. Dr. King was assassinated by a sniper turned out to be James Earl Ray. Ray pleaded guilty to avoid a trial conviction and thus the possibility of receiving the death penalty. Ray was sentenced to a 99-year prison term. Thousands of people bid farewell to Martin Luther King, Jr. as his Coffin passed them on a wagon drawn by a team of mules in Atlanta, GA. on April 9, 1968. (*) (*) see Source on page 144
31
Civil Rights Struggle (Montgomery) 1930Fred Gray
was born Fred David Gray, the youngest of five children, was born on December 14, 1930, in Montgomery, Alabama. Gray's father, Abraham Gray, worked as a carpenter while his mother, Nancy (Jones) Gray Arms, went to work as a domestic and cook for families in Montgomery. When he was two years old, Gray's father died. The family's dire economic circumstances, compounded by the Great Depression and lack of economic opportunity for African Americans in the South, meant that Nancy Gray had to work full-time. For this reason, she sent her youngest son off to start school a year early. Gray later joked in his memoir, Bus Ride to Justice, that the arrangement was "a 'head start' program for me. This was my first head start."
Became Ordained Minister: An excellent student, Gray was able to attend the Nashville Christian Institute beginning in 1943. The school was operated by the Church of Christ, to which Gray's family belonged. Gray became an ordained minister while in Nashville, and served as assistant minister in several Church of God congregations in later years. Finishing high school ahead of schedule in December of 1947, Gray returned to Montgomery to enroll in the Alabama State College for Negroes (later renamed Alabama State University). He finished his degree in 1951. Though intent on pursuing a law career, Gray realized that Alabama's law schools were closed to African Americans. He therefore applied to several Northern law schools and accepted an offer to study at Western Reserve University (later Case Western Reserve University) in Cleveland, Ohio. In order to keep its professional graduate programs racially segregated, the State of Alabama provided tuition, travel, and housing assistance for African Americans to study outside the State. Gray took advantage of the program and completed law school in Ohio with a delicious sense of irony. "Privately," he later wrote in his memoir, "I pledged to return to Montgomery and use the law to 'destroy everything segregated that I could find." Gray completed law school in 1954 and was admitted to practice in Ohio and Alabama that same year. In September of 1954 he opened a private law practice in Montgomery. On December 1, 1955, a friend of Gray's, Rosa Parks, refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery bus to a White passenger. The bus driver called the police, who arrested her. Although Parks was not the first African American to be arrested for violating the City's laws that mandated segregation, her case became the rallying point of a 381-day protest in Montgomery to end the practice of segregation on the City's buses. In June of 1956 a federal court ruled that the statutes requiring racial segregation on public transportation were unconstitutional. Local officials initially refused to comply with the court's decision, even after the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the ruling in November of 1956. But, bowing to the inevitable, Montgomery's officials finally allowed desegregation to take place the following month, and the boycott was called off on December 20, 1956. (*) (*) see Source on page 144
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Civil Rights Struggle (Montgomery) 1940John Lewis
was born on February 21, 1940 outside Troy, Alabama, Lewis grew up on his family's farm and attended segregated public schools. He was introduced to racism at an early age. In 1950 when he was ten years old he went to a library in downtown Troy to check out some books. To his disappointment, he was told by the librarian that the library was "Only for Whites not for Blacks". At that moment, he knew something was seriously wrong and he wanted to do something about it. But little did he know that it would be many years of personal struggle and sacrifice before he would get the changes he and most African Americans desired so much. Much has changed since the 1950s. He announced that on July 5, 2004 he was invited back to the library for a book signing ceremony "and they gave me a library card". which he proudly keeps in his wallet.
In December of 1955 at the age of fifteen, Lewis for the first time heard of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Rosa Parks. After Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her seat on a public bus to a White man. Dr. King went to Montgomery and lead a boycott in protest of the City's segregated policy. As a result, Black residents of Montgomery refused to ride the segregated buses. Instead, many walked for miles to and from work and other essential places. Lewis followed very closely the drama taking place in Montgomery, which was only fifty miles from where he lived. Recalling the event, he said "I saw people walking in dignity with pride rather than ride segregated buses." As a student, Lewis studied the philosophy and discipline of nonviolence. He studied Henry David Thoreau and civil disobedience, he studied what Mahatma Gandhi attempted to do in South Africa and what he accomplished in India and he studied Martin Luther King, Jr. and what he accomplished in the Montgomery bus boycott. Our country is a better country. We are in the process of creating a truly interracial democracy in America. Yes we have come a distance. We still have a distance to go before we create the beloved community, before we create an open society. John Lewis first SNCC Freedom Ride involvement began in 1961 of seven Blacks and six Whites, left Washington, DC for New Orleans on two buses, a Trailways bus and a Greyhound bus. The group made it through Virginia and North Carolina without incident. John Lewis knew that something was wrong the moment he led the Freedom Riders into the Montgomery bus station. The terminal was nearly deserted— save for a pack of reporters, and a few figures loitering in the shadows. Any police were conspicuously absent. "It doesn't look right," he told one of the other Riders. That was nearly all he had time to say before he was charged by a dozen White men armed with bats, bottles, and lengths of pipe. A mob soon followed, led by a woman yelling "Get those niggers!" Even the reporters were brutally beaten to the ground. John Seigenthaler, a Nashville newspaper editor working as a special observer for Robert Kennedy and the Justice Department, was clubbed unconscious when he tried to push one of the Riders into a cab. (cont.) 33
Civil Rights Struggle (Montgomery) Lewis (cont)
1961— Montgomery Freedom Riders: 1961 Supreme Court decision to end desegregation not only in travel, but also in bus terminal facilities, prompted a new set of Freedom Rides and SNCC's involvement. In 1961 a group of seven Black and six White people, including John Lewis, left Washington, D.C. for New Orleans on two buses, a Trailways bus and a Greyhound bus. The group made it through Virginia and North Carolina without incident. At the Greyhound bus station in Rock Hill, South Carolina, the group encountered violence.
Lewis and Zwerg beaten in Montgomery
A mob of twenty Whites attacked the group, and John Lewis was the first to be hit as he approached the White waiting room. Police eventually intervened and the group was allowed access to the White waiting room. The journey continued to Georgia. After leaving Atlanta, the Greyhound bus was stopped as it entered Alabama. A White mob surrounded the bus, the tires were slashed, and the bus was set on fire. The bus was burned to the ground, but the group took another bus and continued the rides. (*)
2009—Klu Klux Klan apologized: In February 2009, forty-eight years after he had been bloodied by the Klu Klux Klan during Civil Rights marches, Lewis received an apology on national television from a White Southerner, former Klansman Elwin Wilson. President Barack Obama signed a commemorative photograph for Lewis with the words, "Because of you, John. Barack Obama." (*)
James Zwerg 2009,
originally from Appleton, Wisconsin, went to the South during his junior year at Beloit College when he signed on for an exchange semester at the predominately Black Fisk University in Nashville. His interest in attending a Black institution developed through his friendship with Robert Carter, his freshman roommate and one of a handful of Black students at Beloit in the late 1950s. Zwerg de -pledged from his house and join the integrated Beta Theta Pi. He decided he wanted to experience life as a minority and chose Fisk as his setting. At Fisk, Zwerg was soon drawn to the Civil Rights Movement and met John Lewis, a Fisk student who would also take part in the Freedom Rides. Lewis, now a U.S. congressman from Atlanta, was a member of SNCC, a student-organized Civil Rights activist group. (*)
(*) see Source on page 144
34
Chapter III
Civil Rights Struggle (Birmingham)
35
Civil Rights Struggle (Birmingham) The Birmingham Campaign: In the 1950s and 1960s Birmingham received national and international attention as a center of the Civil Rights struggle for African-Americans. Locally the Movement's activists were led by Fred Shuttlesworth, a fiery preacher who became legendary for his fearlessness in the face of violence, notably a string of racially motivated bombings that earned Birmingham the derisive nickname "Bombingham".
A watershed in the Civil Rights Movement occurred in 1963 when Shuttlesworth requested that Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), which Shuttlesworth had co-founded, come to Birmingham, where King had once been a pastor, to help end segregation. Together they launched "Project C" (for "Confrontation"), a massive assault on the Jim Crow system. During April and May daily sit-ins and mass marches organized and led by Movement leader James Bevel were met with police repression, tear gas, attack dogs, fire hoses, and arrests. More than 3,000 people were arrested during these protests, almost all of them highschool age children. These protests were ultimately successful, leading not only to desegregation of public accommodations in Birmingham but also the Civil Rights Act of 1964. While imprisoned for having taken part in a nonviolent protest, Dr. King wrote the now famous Letter from Birmingham Jail, a defining treatise in his cause against segregation. Birmingham is also known for a bombing which occurred later that year, in which four Black girls were killed by a bomb planted at the 16th Street Baptist Church. The event would inspire the AfricanAmerican poet Dudley Randall's opus, "The Ballad of Birmingham", as well as jazz musician John Coltrane's song "Alabama". In 1998 the Birmingham Pledge, written by local attorney James Rotch, was introduced at the Martin Luther King Unity Breakfast. As a grassroots community commitment to combating racism and prejudice, it has since then been used for programs in all fifty States and in more than twenty countries.
Recent history: In the 1970s urban renewal efforts focused around the development of the University of Alabama at Birmingham, which developed into a major medical and research center. In 1971 Birmingham celebrated its centennial with a round of public works improvements, including the upgrading of Vulcan Park. Birmingham's banking institutions enjoyed considerable growth as well and new skyscrapers started to appear in the city center for the first time since the 1920s. These projects helped the City's economy to diversify, but did not prevent the exodus of many of the City's White residents to independent suburbs. In 1979 Birmingham elected Dr. Richard Arrington Jr. as its first African-American mayor.(*) (*) see Source on page 144
36
Civil Rights Struggle (Birmingham) The Birmingham Campaign: (cont) The campaign ran during the spring of 1963, culminating in widely publicized confrontations between Black youth and White Civic authorities, that eventually pressured the municipal government to change the City's discrimination laws. Organizers, led by Martin Luther King, Jr. used nonviolent direct action tactics to defy laws they considered unfair. King summarized the philosophy of the Birmingham campaign when he said, "The purpose of ... direct action is to create a situation so crisis-packed that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation". Protests in Birmingham began with a boycott to pressure business leaders to provide employment opportunities to people of all races, and end segregation in public facilities, restaurants, and stores. When business leaders resisted the boycott, SCLC organizer Wyatt Tee Walker and Birmingham native Fred Shuttlesworth began what they termed Project C, a series of sit -ins and marches intended to provoke mass arrests. After the campaign ran low on adult volunteers, high school, college, and elementary students were trained by SCLC coordinator James Bevel to participate, resulting in hundreds of arrests and an instant intensification of national media attention on the campaign. To dissuade demonstrators and control the protests the Birmingham Police Department, led by Eugene "Bull" Connor, used high-pressure water jets and police dogs on children and bystanders. Media coverage of these events brought intense scrutiny on racial segregation in the South. Not all of the demonstrators were peaceful, despite the avowed intentions of the SCLC. In some cases, bystanders attacked the police, who responded with force. Scenes of the ensuing mayhem caused an international outcry, leading to federal intervention by the Kennedy administration. King and the SCLC were criticized for putting children in harm's way. By the end of the campaign, King's reputation surged, Connor lost his job, the "Jim Crow" signs in Birmingham came down, and public places became more open to Blacks. The Birmingham campaign was a model of direct action protest, as it effectively shut down the City. (cont,)
37
Civil Rights Struggle (Birmingham) 16th Street Baptist Church Bombing: The 16th Street Baptist Church
in Birmingham, Alabama was bombed on Sunday, September 15, 1963. The explosion at the African-American church, which killed four girls, marked a turning point in the U.S. 1960s Civil Rights Movement and contributed to support for passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Although City leaders had reached a settlement in May with demonstrators and started to integrate public places, not everyone agreed with ending segregation. Bombings and other acts of violence followed the settlement, and the church had become an inviting target. The three-story Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama had been a rallying point for Civil Rights activities through the spring of 1963, and was where the students who were arrested during the 1963 Birmingham campaign's Children's Crusade were trained. The church was used as a meeting-place for Civil Rights leaders such as Martin Luther King, Ralph David Abernathy and Fred Shuttlesworth. Tensions became high when the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and the Congress on Racial Equality (CORE) became involved in a campaign to register African Americans to vote in Birmingham. Still, the campaign was successful. The demonstrations led to an agreement in May between the City's African-American leaders and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) to integrate public facilities in the country. In the early morning of Sunday, September 15, 1963, Bobby Frank Cherry, Thomas Blanton, Herman Frank Cash, and Robert Chambliss, members of United Klan of America, a Ku Klux Klan group, planted a box of dynamite with a time delay under the steps of the church, near the basement. At about 10:22 a.m., twenty-six children were walking into the basement assembly room to prepare for the sermon entitled “The Love That Forgives,� when the bomb exploded. Four girls, Addie Mae Collins (aged 14), Denise McNair (aged 11), Carole Robertson (aged 14), and Cynthia Wesley (aged 14), were killed in the attack, and 22 additional people were injured, one of whom was Addie Mae Collins' younger sister, Sarah. The explosion blew a hole in the church's rear wall, destroyed the back steps and all but one stained-glass window, which showed Christ leading a group of little children. (*) (*) see Source on page 144
38
Civil Rights Struggle (Birmingham) Bombing (cont.)
Investigation: On the day of the bombing, a White man was seen getting out of a white and turquoise Chevrolet car and placing a box under the steps of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church. Soon afterwards, at 10:22 a.m., the bomb exploded killing Denise McNair (11), Addie Mae Collins (14), Carole Robertson (14) and Cynthia Wesley (14). The four girls had been attending Sunday school classes at the church. Twenty-two other people were also hurt by the blast. Civil Rights activists blamed George Wallace, the Governor of Alabama, for the killings. Nicknamed “Bombingham,” the City had had more than 40 bombings since WWI Only a week before the bombing he had told The New York Times that to stop integration Alabama needed a "few first-class funerals." A witness identified Robert Chambliss, a member of the Ku Klux Klan, as the man who placed the bomb under the steps of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church. He was arrested and charged with murder and possessing a box of 122 sticks of dynamite without a permit. On October 8, 1963, Chambliss was found not guilty of murder and received a hundred-dollar fine and a sixmonth jail sentence for having the dynamite. The case was unsolved until Bill Baxley was elected attorney general of Alabama. He requested the original Federal Bureau of Investigation files on the case and discovered that the organization had accumulated a great deal of evidence against Chambliss that had not been used in the original trial. In November, 1977 Chambliss was tried once again for the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church bombing. Now aged 73, Chambliss was found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment. Chambliss died in an Alabama prison on 29 October 1985. On 17 May 2000, the FBI announced that the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church bombing had been carried out by the Ku Klux Klan splinter group, the Cahaba Boys. It was claimed that four men, Robert Chambliss, Herman Cash, Thomas Blanton and Bobby Cherry had been responsible for the crime. Cash was dead but Blanton and Cherry were arrested and Blanton has since been tried and convicted.
Reactions and aftermath: The explosions increased anger and tension, which was already high in Birmingham. Birmingham’s Mayor Albert Boutwell wept and said, “It is just sickening that a few individuals could commit such a horrible atrocity.” Two more people died in the hours following the Sunday morning bombing, including a 16-year-old African-American boy shot by police after he was caught throwing rocks at cars and refused to stop for police officers. In spite of everything, the newly-integrated schools continued to meet. School had been integrated the previous Tuesday with Black and White children in the same classrooms for the first time in that City. (cont,)
39
Civil Rights Struggle (Birmingham) Bombing (cont.) As the news story about the four girls reached the national and international press, many felt that they had not taken the Civil Rights struggle seriously enough. Milwaukee Sentinel editorial opined, “For the rest of the nation, the Birmingham church bombing should serve to goad the conscience. The deaths…in a sense are on the hands of each of us.” The City of Birmingham initially offered a $52,000 reward for the arrest of the bombers. Governor George Wallace, an outspoken segregationist, offered an additional $5,000. However, Civil Rights activist Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. wired Wallace that "the blood of four little children ... is on your hands. Your irresponsible and misguided actions have created in Birmingham and Alabama the atmosphere that has induced continued violence and now murder." Following the tragic event, White strangers visited the grieving families to express their sorrow. At the funeral for three of the girls (one family preferred a separate, private funeral), Martin Luther King, Jr., spoke about life being "as hard as crucible steel." More than 8,000 mourners, including 800 clergymen of all races, attended the service. No City officials attended. The bombing continued to increase worldwide sympathy for the Civil Rights cause. On July 2, 1964, President Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, ensuring equal rights of African Americans before the law.
Later Prosecutions: FBI investigations gathered evidence pointing to four suspects: Robert Chambliss, Thomas E. Blanton Jr, Herman Cash, and Bobby Frank Cherry. According to a later report from the Bureau, “By 1965, we had serious suspects—namely, Robert E. Chambliss (see photo on left), Bobby Frank Cherry, Herman Frank Cash, and Thomas E. Blanton, Jr., all KKK members—but witnesses were reluctant to talk and physical evidence was lacking. Also, at that time, information from our surveillances was not admissible in court. As a result, no federal charges were filed in the ’60s.” Although Chambliss was convicted on an explosives charge, no convictions were obtained in the 1960s for the killings. Alabama Attorney General William Baxley reopened the investigation after he took office in 1971, requesting evidence from the FBI and building trust with key witnesses who had been reluctant to testify in the first trial. The prosecutor had been a student at the University of Alabama when he heard about the bombing in 1963. “I wanted to do something, but I didn’t know what.” In 1977 former Ku Klux Klansman Robert "Dynamite Bob" Chambliss was indicted in the murder of all four girls, tried and convicted of the first-degree murder of Denise McNair, and sentenced to life in prison. He died eight years later in prison. (cont.)
40
Civil Rights Struggle (Birmingham) Bombing (cont.) Thomas E. Blanton, Jr. (see photo on left) was tried in 2001 and found guilty at age 62 of four counts of murder and sentenced to life in prison. Herman Cash died in 1994 without having been charged. Bobby Frank Cherry, also a former Klansman, was indicted in 2001 along with Blanton. Judge James Garrett of Jefferson County Circuit Court ruled "that Mr. Cherry's trial would be delayed indefinitely because a court-ordered psychiatric evaluation concluded that he was mentally incompetent.� (*)
The Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in 2005
(*) see Source on page 144
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Civil Rights Struggle (Birmingham) The Letter from Birmingham Jail: Also known as The Negro Is Your Brother, is an open letter written on April 16, 1963, by Martin Luther King, Jr., an American Civil Rights leader. King wrote the letter from the City jail in Birmingham, Alabama, where he was confined after being arrested for his part in the Birmingham campaign, a planned non-violent protest conducted by the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights and King's Southern Christian Leadership Conference against racial segregation by Birmingham's City Government and downtown retailers. King's letter is a response to a statement made by eight White Alabama clergymen on April 12, 1963, titled "A Call For Unity". The clergymen agreed that social injustices existed but argued that the battle against racial segregation should be fought solely in the courts, not in the streets. King responded that without nonviolent forceful direct actions such as his, true Civil Rights could never be achieved. As he put it, "This 'Wait' has almost always meant 'Never.'"
He asserted that not only was civil disobedience justified in the face of unjust laws, but that "one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws." Extensive excerpts from the letter were published, without King's consent, on May 19, 1963 in the New York Post Sunday Magazine. The letter was first published as "Letter from Birmingham Jail" in the June, 1963 issue of Liberation the June 12, 1963, edition of The Christian Century, and in the June 24, 1963, issue of The New Leader. It was reprinted shortly thereafter in The Atlantic Monthly. King included the full text in his 1964 book Why We Can't Wait. The letter includes the famous statement "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere," as well as the words attributed to William Ewart Gladstone quoted by King: "Justice too long delayed is justice denied." (*)
(*) see Source on page 144
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Civil Rights Museum (Birmingham) The Birmingham Civil Rights District: This is an area of downtown Birmingham, Alabama where several significant events in the American Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s took place. The district was designated by the City of Birmingham in 1992 and covers a six-block area.
Landmarks in the district include: 1. 16th Street Baptist Church, where four young African American girls were killed and 22 churchgoers were injured in a bombing on September 15, 1963. 2. Kelly Ingram Park, where many protests by Blacks were held, often resulting in recrimination by Birmingham police that included famous scenes of policemen turning Back protesters with fire hoses and police dogs. News coverage of the riots in this park helped turn the tide of public opinion in the United States against segregationist policies. Several sculptures in the park depict scenes from those riots. 3. The Fourth Avenue Business District where much of the City's Black businesses and entertainment venues were located; the area was the hub of the Black community for many years. The business district includes A. G. Gaston's Booker T. Washington Insurance Co. and the Gaston Hotel, a meeting place for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and Alabama Christian Movement during the early 1960s. 4. Carver Theatre, once a popular motion picture theater for Blacks in Birmingham, now renovated as a liveperformance theater and home of the Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame. 5. Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, a museum which chronicles the struggles of the Civil Rights Movement, opened in 1993. (*)
(*) see Source on page 144
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Civil Rights Struggle (Birmingham) (1897-1973) Theophilus Eugene "Bull" Connor
was born on July 11, 1897 in Selma, Alabama. Connor entered politics, running for the Alabama legislature as a Democrat in the 1920s. He was a member of the Ku Klux Klan, and a staunch advocate of racial segregation. In 1936, Connor was elected to the office of police commissioner in Birmingham, Alabama, beginning the first of two stretches that spanned a total of 23 years. Connor's first tenure ended in 1952, but resumed four years later. After returning to office in 1956, Connor quickly resumed his heavy-handed approach to dealing with perceived threats. As the Public Safety Commissioner of Birmingham, Alabama in the 1960s, Connor became a symbol of the fight against integration for using fire hoses and police attack dogs against unarmed, nonviolent protest marchers.
One prominent instance came when a meeting at the Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth's house with three Montgomery, Alabama, ministers was raided, with Connor fearing that a spread of the bus boycott that had succeeded in Montgomery was imminent. The ministers were arrested for vagrancy, which did not allow a prisoner bail, nor any visitors during the first three days of their incarceration. A federal investigation followed, but Connor refused to cooperate. Shuttlesworth, however, had been consistently in danger in the previous two years, having seen his church bombed twice. He, his wife, and a White minister were also attacked by a mob after attempting to use White restrooms at the local bus station. The day after the April election, Civil Rights leaders, led by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., began "Project 'C'" (for "confrontation") in Birmingham against the police tactics used by Connor and his subordinates (and, by extension, other Southern police officials). King's arrest during this period would provide him the opportunity to write his famous Letter from Birmingham Jail. The goal of this movement was to cause mass arrests and subsequent inability of the judicial and penal systems to deal with this volume of activity. One key strategy was the use of children to further the cause, a tactic that was criticized on both sides of the issue. The short-term effect only increased the level of violence used by Connor's officers, but in the long term the project proved largely successful, as noted above. Connor railed, "the nigger loving Kennedy's, want to change our way of life, down here". He wanted Birmingham to ignore John F. Kennedy's death. Connor stated, "Lee Harvey Oswald, a Southern hero like John Wilkes Booth". Connor died on March 10, 1973. (*)
(*) see Source on page 144
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Civil Rights Struggle (Birmingham) (1919–1998) George Corley Wallace
was born August 25, 1919 in Clio, Barbour, County Alabama. Wallace was elected governor in a landslide victory in November 1962. He took the oath of office on January 14, 1963, standing on the gold star marking the spot where, 102 years earlier, Jefferson Davis was sworn in as President of the Confederate States of America. In his inaugural speech, he used the line for which he is best known: "In the name of the greatest people that have ever trod this earth, I draw the line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny, and I say segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever."
The lines were written by Wallace's new speechwriter, Asa Earl Carter. To stop desegregation by the enrollment of Black students Vivian Malone and James Hood, he stood in front of Foster Auditorium at the University of Alabama on June 11, 1963. This became known as the "Stand in the Schoolhouse Door". After being confronted by federal marshals, Deputy Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach, and the Alabama National Guard, he stood aside. Wallace again attempted to stop four Black students from enrolling in four separate elementary schools in Huntsville in September 1963. After intervention by a federal court in Birmingham, the four children were allowed to enter on September 9, becoming the first to integrate a primary or secondary school in Alabama. Wallace disapproved vehemently of the desegregation of the State of Alabama and wanted desperately for his State to remain segregated. In his own words: "The President (John F. Kennedy) wants us to surrender this State to Martin Luther King and his group of pro-Communists who have instituted these demonstrations." (cont.)
Attempting to block integration at the University of Alabama, Governor George Wallace stands defiantly at the door while being confronted by Deputy U.S. Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach. This photo became known as the "Stand in the Schoolhouse Door".
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Civil Rights Struggle (Birmingham) 1972 assassination attempt on Wallace On 13 January 1972, Wallace declared himself a candidate, entering the field with George McGovern, 1968 nominee Hubert Humphrey, and nine other Democratic opponents. In Florida's primary, Wallace carried every county to win 42 percent of the vote. When running, Wallace claimed he was no longer for segregation, and had always been a moderate. Though no longer in favor of segregation, Wallace was opposed to desegregation bussing during his campaign, a position Nixon would adopt early on as President. For the next four months, Wallace's campaign went extremely well. However, Wallace was shot five times by Arthur Bremer while campaigning in Laurel, Maryland, on May 15, 1972, at a time when he was receiving high ratings in the opinion polls. Bremer was seen at a Wallace rally in Wheaton, Maryland, earlier that day and two days earlier at a rally in Dearborn, Michigan. As one of the bullets lodged in Wallace's spinal column, Wallace was left paralyzed from the waist down. Three others were wounded in the shooting and also survived. Bremer's diary, An Assassin's Diary, published after his arrest shows the assassination attempt was motivated by a desire for fame, not by politics, and that President Richard Nixon had been an earlier target. Bremer was sentenced to sixty-three years in prison on August 4, 1972, later reduced to fifty-three years two months later. Bremer served thirty-five years and was released on parole on November 9, 2007. Wallace forgave Bremer 23 years later, in August 1995, and wrote to him, but Bremer never replied. Bremer's actions inspired the screenplay (1972) for the 1976 movie Taxi Driver which in turn inspired the assassination attempt on the life of President Ronald Reagan by John Hinckley, Jr. in 1981. They also inspired the Peter Gabriel song Family Snapshot. Following the assassination attempt, Wallace was visited at the hospital by Democratic Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm, a Representative from Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn who at the time was the nation's only African American female member of Congress. Despite their ideological differences and the opposition of Chisholm's constituents, Chisholm visited Wallace as she felt it was the humane thing to do. Following the shooting, Wallace won primaries in Maryland and Michigan, but his near assassination effectively ended his campaign. From his wheelchair, Wallace spoke at the Democratic National Convention in Miami on July 11, 1972. Since Wallace was out of Alabama for more than twenty days while he was recovering in Holy Cross Hospital in Silver Spring, Maryland, the State Constitution required Lieutenant Governor Jere Beasley to serve as acting governor from June 5 until Wallace's return to Alabama on July 7. Wallace never returned to Maryland. He continued serving as governor, and easily won the gubernatorial primary election of 1974. (cont.) 46
Civil Rights Struggle (Birmingham) Wallace change of views: Wallace announced that he was a born-again Christian in the late 1970s, and apologized to Black Civil Rights leaders for his earlier segregationist views. He said that while he had once sought power and glory, he realized he needed to seek love and forgiveness. In 1979, as Blacks began voting in large numbers in Alabama, Wallace said of his stand in the schoolhouse door: "I was wrong. Those days are over and they ought to be over." His final term as Governor (1983–1987) saw a record number of Black appointments to Government positions. In the 1982 Alabama Gubernatorial Democratic primary, Wallace's main opponents were Lieutenant Governor George McMillan and Alabama House Speaker Joe McCorquodale. In the primary, McCorquodale was eliminated, and the vote went to a runoff with Wallace holding a slight edge over McMillan. Wallace won the Democratic nomination by a margin of 51 to 49 percent.
George final years: In 1996, when asked by a reporter which contemporary American Political figure he most admired, he paused thoughtfully for a moment, smiled, and said: "Myself." At a restaurant a few blocks from the State Capitol, Wallace became something of a fixture. In constant pain, he was surrounded by an entourage of old friends and visiting well-wishers and continued this ritual until a few weeks before his death. Wallace died of septic shock from a bacterial infection in Jackson Hospital in Montgomery on September 13, 1998. He suffered from respiratory problems in addition to complications from his gun-shot spinal injury. He is interred at Greenwood Cemetery in Montgomery. At one time, his name stood for segregation and racial hatred, the extreme margins of the White man's world. But when George Corley Wallace was laid to rest today in this Southern Capital that was his launching ground for more than four decades, he was lauded as a political legend who had overcome his prejudices and redeemed his past. By the time the former four-term Alabama Governor and four-time Presidential candidate died Sunday night at 79 after years of poor health, his role in National and State Politics had faded. But perhaps more than anyone, his career spanned – and came to symbolize – some of the most turbulent days of the Country's history, during which the White-dominated Old South reluctantly gave way to a new era of racial integration. (*) (*) see Source on page 144
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Civil Rights Struggle (Birmingham) (1922– 2011) Fred Shuttlesworth was born on March 18, 1922 in Mugler, Alabama, he became pastor of the Bethel Baptist Church in Birmingham in 1953 and was Membership Chairman of the Alabama State chapter of the NAACP in 1956, when the State of Alabama formally outlawed it from operating within the State. In May, 1956 Shuttlesworth and Ed Gardner established the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights to take up the work formerly done by the NAACP. The ACMHR raised almost all of its funds from local sources at mass meetings and used both direct action and litigation to pursue its goals. When the authorities ignored the ACMHR's demand that the City hire Black police officers, the organization sued. Similarly, when the United States Supreme Court ruled in December, 1956 that bus segregation in Montgomery, Alabama was unconstitutional, Shuttlesworth announced that the ACMHR would challenge segregation laws in Birmingham on December 26, 1956. On December 25, 1956, unknown persons tried to kill Shuttlesworth by placing sixteen sticks of dynamite under his bedroom window; Shuttlesworth somehow escaped unhurt even though his house was heavily damaged. A police officer, who also belonged to the Ku Klux Klan, told Shuttlesworth as he came out of his home "If I were you I'd get out of town as quick as I could". Shuttlesworth told him to tell the Klan that he was not leaving and "I wasn't saved to run." Shuttlesworth led a group that integrated Birmingham's buses the next day, then sued after police arrested twenty-one passengers. His congregation built a new parsonage for him and posted sentries outside his house. In 1957 Shuttlesworth, along with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Rev. Ralph Abernathy from Montgomery, Rev. Joseph Lowery from Mobile, Alabama, Rev. T.J. Jemison from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Rev. C.K. Steele from Tallahassee, Florida, Rev. A.L. Davis from New Orleans, Louisiana and Bayard Rustin founded the Southern Leadership Conference on Transportation and Nonviolent Integration, later renamed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. He organized the Greater New Light Baptist Church in 1966 and founded the Shuttlesworth Housing Foundation in 1988 to assist families who might otherwise be unable to buy their own homes. Named President of the SCLC in August, 2004, he resigned later in the year, complaining that "deceit, mistrust and a lack of spiritual discipline and truth have eaten at the core of this oncehallowed organization". On October 5, 2011, Shuttlesworth died at the age of 89 in his hometown of Birmingham, Alabama. The Birmingham Civil Rights Institute announced that it intends to include Shuttlesworth's burial site on the Civil Rights History Trail. (*) (*) see Source on page 144
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Chapter IV
Voting Rights Struggle (Selma)
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Voting Rights Struggle (Selma) Selma to Montgomery March: Before the Freedom Movement, all public facilities were strictly segregated. Blacks who attempted to eat at "White-only" lunch counters or sit in the downstairs "White" section of the movie theater were beaten and arrested. More than half of the City's residents were Black, but only one percent were registered to vote. Blacks were prevented from registering to vote by economic retaliation organized by the White Citizens' Council, Ku Klux Klan violence, police repression, and the literacy test. To discourage voter registration, the registration board only opened doors for registration two days a month, arrived late, and took long lunches. In early 1963, Bernard Lafayette and Colia Lafayette of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) began organizing in Selma alongside local Civil Rights leaders Sam, Amelia, and Bruce Boynton, Rev. L.L. Anderson of Tabernacle Baptist Church, J.L. Chestnut (Selma's first Black attorney), SCLC Citizenship School teacher Marie Foster, public school teacher Marie Moore, and others active with the Dallas County Voters League (DCVL). Against fierce opposition from Dallas County Sheriff Jim Clark and his volunteer posse, voter registration and desegregation efforts continued and expanded during 1963 and the first part of 1964. Defying intimidation, economic retaliation, arrests, firings, and beatings, an ever increasing number of Dallas County Blacks attempted to register to vote, but few were able to do so. In the summer of 1964, a sweeping injunction issued by local Judge James Hare barred any gathering of three or more people under sponsorship of SNCC, SCLC, or DCVL, or with the involvement of 41 named Civil Rights leaders. This injunction temporarily halted Civil Rights activity until Dr. King defied it by speaking at Brown Chapel on January 2, 1965. Commencing in January 1965, SCLC and SNCC initiated a revived Voting Rights Campaign designed to focus national attention on the systematic denial of Black Voting Rights in Alabama, and particularly Selma. After numerous attempts by Blacks to register, over 3,000 arrests, police violence, and economic retaliation, the campaign culminated in the Selma to Montgomery marches—initiated and organized by SCLC's Director of Direct Action, James Bevel—which represented the political and emotional peak of the modern Civil Rights Movement. On March 7, 1965, known as "Bloody Sunday", approximately 600 civil rights marchers departed Selma on U.S. Highway 80, heading east. They reached the Edmund Pettus Bridge, only six blocks away, before being met by state troopers and local sheriff's deputies, who attacked them, using tear gas and billy clubs, and drove them back to Selma. (cont.)
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Voting Rights Struggle (Selma) Selma March (cont,) Two days after the march, on March 9, 1965, Martin Luther King, Jr. led a "symbolic" march to the bridge. He and other Civil Rights leaders attempted to get court protection of a third, largerscale march from Selma to Montgomery, the site of the State capital. Frank Minis Johnson, Jr., the Federal District Court Judge for the area, decided in favor of the demonstrators, saying: •
"The law is clear that the right to petition one's government for the redress of grievances may be exercised in large groups...and these rights may be exercised by marching, even along public highways." —Frank Johnson
On March 21, 1965, a Sunday, approximately 3,200 marchers departed for Montgomery. They walked 12 miles per day, and slept in nearby fields. By the time they reached the capitol, four days later on March 25, their strength had swelled to around 25,000 people. The Selma to Montgomery marches were three marches in 1965 that marked the political and emotional peak of the American Civil Rights Movement. They grew out of the Voting Rights Movement in Selma, Alabama, launched by local African-Americans who formed the Dallas County Voters League (DCVL). In 1963, the DCVL and organizers from the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) began voter-registration work. When White resistance to Black voter registration proved intractable, the DCVL requested the assistance of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, who brought many prominent Civil Rights and civic leaders to support Voting Rights. The first march took place on March 7, 1965 — "Bloody Sunday" — when 600 Civil Rights marchers were attacked by State and local police with billy clubs and tear gas. The second march took place on March 9. Only the third march, which began on March 21 and lasted five days, made it to Montgomery, 51 miles (82 km) away. The marchers averaged 10 miles (16 km) a day along U.S. Route 80, known in Alabama as the "Jefferson Davis Highway". Protected by 2,000 soldiers of the U.S. Army, 1,900 members of the Alabama National Guard under Federal command, and many FBI agents and Federal Marshals, they arrived in Montgomery on March 24, and at the Alabama Capitol building on March 25. The route is memorialized as the Selma To Montgomery Voting Rights Trail, a U.S. National Historic Trail. (cont.)
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Voting Rights Struggle (Selma) Selma march (cont.)
Struggle for the Vote: 1963–64: Selma is the county seat and major town of Dallas County, Alabama. In 1961, the population of Dallas County was 57% Black, but of the 15,000 Blacks old enough to vote, only 130 were registered (fewer than 1%). At that time, more than 80% of Dallas County Blacks lived below the poverty line, most of them working as sharecroppers, farm hands, maids, janitors, and daylaborers Led by the Boynton family (Amelia, Sam, and son Bruce), Rev. L.L. Anderson, J.L. Chestnut, and Marie Foster, the Dallas County Voters League (DCVL) attempted to register Black citizens during the late 1950s and early 1960s. Their efforts were blocked by State and local officials, the White Citizens' Council, and the Ku Klux Klan. The methods included a literacy test, economic pressure, and violence. In early 1963, SNCC organizers Bernard and Colia Lafayette arrived in Selma to begin a voterregistration project in cooperation with the DCVL. In mid-June, Bernard was beaten and almost killed by Klansmen determined to prevent Blacks from voting. When the Lafayettes returned to school in the fall, SNCC organizers Prathia Hall and Worth Long carried on the work despite arrests, beatings, and death threats. When 32 Black school teachers applied to register as voters, they were immediately fired by the all-White school board. After the Birmingham church bombing on September 15, Black students in Selma began sit-ins at local lunch counters where they were attacked and arrested. More than 300 were arrested in two weeks of protests, including SNCC Chairman John Lewis. October 7, 1963, was one of the two days per month that citizens were allowed to go to the courthouse to apply to register to vote. SNCC and the DCVL mobilized over 300 Dallas County Blacks to line up at the voter registration office in what was called a "Freedom Day". Supporting them were author James Baldwin and his brother David, and comedian Dick Gregory and his wife Lillian (who was arrested for picketing with SNCC activists and local supporters). SNCC members who tried to bring water to the Blacks waiting on line were arrested, as were those who held signs saying "Register to Vote." After waiting all day in the hot sun, only a handful of the hundreds in the line were allowed to fill out the voter application, and most of the applications were denied. On July 2, 1964, President Lyndon Baines Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 into law, which declared segregation illegal, yet Jim Crow remained in effect. When attempts to integrate Selma's dining and entertainment venues were resumed, Blacks who tried to attend the movie theater and eat at a hamburger stand were beaten and arrested. On July 6, John Lewis led 50 Blacks to the courthouse on registration day, but Sheriff Clark arrested them rather than allow them to apply to vote. On July 9, Judge James Hare issued an injunction forbidding any gathering of three or more people under the sponsorship of Civil Rights Organizations or leaders. This injunction made it illegal to even talk to more than two people at a time about Civil Rights or voter registration in Selma, suppressing public Civil Rights activity there for the next six months. (cont.) 52
Voting Rights Struggle (Selma) Selma march (cont.) With Civil Rights activity blocked by Judge Hare's injunction, the DCVL requested the assistance of King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). Three of SCLC's main organizers — Director of Direct Action and Nonviolent Education James Bevel, Diane Nash, and James Orange — had been working on Bevel's Alabama Voting Rights Project since late 1963, a project which King and the executive board of SCLC had not joined. When SCLC officially accepted Amelia Boynton's invitation to bring their organization to Selma, Bevel, Nash, Orange and others in SCLC began working in Selma in December 1964. They also worked in the surrounding counties along with the SNCC staff who had been active there since early 1963. The Selma Voting Rights Movement officially started on January 2, 1965, when King addressed a mass meeting in Brown Chapel in defiance of the anti-meeting injunction. Over the following weeks, SCLC and SNCC activists expanded voter registration drives and protests in Selma and the adjacent Black Belt counties. In addition to Selma, marches and other protests in support of Voting Rights were held in Perry, Wilcox, Marengo, Greene, and Hale counties. On February 18, 1965, an Alabama State Trooper, corporal James Bonard Fowler, shot Jimmie Lee Jackson as he tried to protect his mother and grandfather in a café to which they had fled while being attacked by troopers during a nighttime Civil Rights demonstration in Marion, the county seat of Perry County. Jackson died eight days later, of an infection resulting from the gunshot wound, at Selma's Good Samaritan Hospital. In response, James Bevel called for a march from Selma to Montgomery.
Goals of the march: Bevel's initial plan was to march to Montgomery to ask Governor George Wallace if he had anything to do with ordering the lights out and the State Troopers to shoot during the march in which Jackson was killed. Bevel called the march in order to focus the anger and pain of the people of Selma, some of whom wanted to address Jackson's death with violence, towards a nonviolent goal. The marchers also hoped to bring attention to the violations of their rights by marching to Montgomery. Dr. King agreed with Bevel's plan, and asked for a march from Selma to Montgomery to ask Governor Wallace to protect Black registrants. Wallace denounced the march as a threat to public safety and declared he would take all measures necessary to prevent this from happening. (cont.)
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Voting Rights Struggle (Selma) Selma march (cont.)
The First March: "Bloody Sunday" On March 7, 1965, 525 to 600 Civil Rights marchers headed east out of Selma on U.S. Highway 80. The march was led by John Lewis of SNCC and the Reverend Hosea Williams of SCLC, followed by Bob Mants of SNCC and Albert Turner of SCLC. The protest went smoothly until the marchers crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge and found a wall of State Troopers waiting for them on the other side. Their commanding officer told the demonstrators to disband at once and go home. Williams tried to speak to the officer, but the man curtly informed him there was nothing to discuss. Seconds later, the troopers began shoving the demonstrators. Many were knocked to the ground and beaten with nightsticks. Another detachment of troopers fired tear gas. Mounted troopers charged the crowd on horseback. Brutal televised images of the attack, which presented people with horrifying images of marchers left bloodied and severely injured, roused support for the U.S. Civil Rights Movement. Amelia Boynton was beaten and gassed nearly to death; her photo appeared on the front page of newspapers and news magazines around the world. Seventeen marchers were hospitalized, leading to the naming of the day "Bloody Sunday". Immediately after "Bloody Sunday," King began organizing a second march to be held on Tuesday, March 9, 1965. He issued a call for clergy and citizens from across the country to join him. Awakened to issues of Civil and Voting Rights by years of Civil Rights struggles — from the Montgomery Bus Boycott to Freedom Summer — and shocked by the television images of "Bloody Sunday," many hundreds of people responded to King's call. To prevent another outbreak of violence, the marchers attempted to gain a court order that would prohibit the police from interfering. Instead of issuing the court order, Federal District Court Judge Frank Minis Johnson issued a restraining order, preventing the march from taking place until he could hold additional hearings later in the week. Based on past experience, SCLC was confident that Judge Johnson would eventually lift the restraining order and they did not want to alienate one of the few Southern judges who was often sympathetic to their cause by violating his injunction. There was also insufficient infrastructure in place to support a long march, one for which the marchers were ill-equipped. Further, a person who violates a court order may be punished for contempt even if the order is later reversed. But movement supporters, both local and from around the country, were determined to march on Tuesday to protest the "Bloody Sunday" violence and the systematic denial of Black Voting Rights in Alabama. To balance these conflicting imperatives, SCLC decided to hold a partial "ceremonial" march that would cross over the bridge but halt when ordered to do so in compliance with the injunction. (cont)
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Voting Rights Struggle (Selma) Selma march (cont.) On March 9, King led about 2,500 marchers out to the Edmund Pettus Bridge and held a short prayer session before turning the marchers back around, thereby obeying the court order preventing them from marching all the way to Montgomery. But only the SCLC leaders were told of this plan in advance, causing confusion and consternation among many marchers, including those who had traveled long distances to participate and put their bodies on the line in nonviolent opposition to police brutality. King asked them to remain in Selma for another attempt at the march once the injunction was lifted. That evening, three White ministers who had come for the march were attacked and beaten with clubs. The worst injured was James Reeb, a white Unitarian Universalist minister from Boston. Selma's public hospital refused to treat Rev. Reeb, who had to be taken to University Hospital in Birmingham, two hours away. Reeb died on Thursday, March 11 at University Hospital with his wife by his side.
Response to the Second March: Blacks in Dallas County and the Black Belt mourned the death of Rev. Reeb as they had earlier mourned the death of Jimmie Lee Jackson. But many activists were bitter that the media and national political leaders expressed great concern over Reeb's murder, but had paid scant attention to the killing of Jimmie Lee Jackson. SNCC spokesman Stokely Carmichael was reported as saying "What you want is the nation to be upset when anybody is killed‌ but it almost [seems that] for this to be recognized, a White person must be killed."
Third March: A week after Reeb's death, March 16, Judge Johnson ruled in favor of the protestors, saying their First Amendment right to march in protest could not be abridged by the state of Alabama: "The law is clear that the right to petition one's government for the redress of grievances may be exercised in large groups . . . . These rights may . . . be exercised by marching, even along public highways." Williams v. Wallace, 240 F. Supp. 100, 106 (M.D. Ala. 1960). On March 21, close to 8,000 people assembled at Brown Chapel to commence the trek to Montgomery. Most of the participants were Black, but many were White and some were Asian and Latino. Spiritual leaders of multiple faiths and races marched abreast with Dr. King, including Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth, Rabbis Abraham Joshua Heschel and Maurice Davis, and at least one Catholic nun, all of whom were depicted in a famous photo. In 1965, the road to Montgomery was four lanes wide going east from Selma, then narrowed to two lanes through Lowndes County, and then widened to four lanes again at Montgomery County border. Under the terms of Judge Johnson's order, the march was limited to no more than 300 participants for the two days they were on the two-lane portion of Highway-80, so at the end of the first day most of the marchers returned to Selma by bus and car, leaving 300 to camp overnight and take up the journey the next day. (cont,) 55
Voting Rights Struggle (Selma) Selma march (cont.) On March 22 and 23, 300 protesters marched through chilling rain across Lowndes County, camping at three sites in muddy fields. At the time of the march, the population of Lowndes County was 81% Black and 19% White, but not a single Black was registered to vote. At the same time there were 2,240 Whites registered to vote in Lowndes County, a figure that represented 118% of the adult White population (in many Southern counties of that era it was common practice to retain White voters on the rolls after they died or moved away). On the morning of the 24th, the march crossed into Montgomery County and the highway widened again to four lanes. All day as the march approached the City, additional marchers were ferried by bus and car to join the line. By evening, several thousand marchers had reached the final campsite at the City of St. Jude, a Catholic complex on the outskirts of Montgomery. That night on a makeshift stage, a "Stars for Freedom" rally was held, with singers Harry Belafonte, Tony Bennett, Frankie Laine, Peter, Paul and Mary, Sammy Davis, Jr. and Nina Simone all performing. On Thursday, March 25, 25,000 people marched from St. Jude to the steps of the State Capitol Building where King delivered the speech "How Long, Not Long." "The end we seek," King told the crowd, "is a society at peace with itself, a society that can live with its conscience. ... I know you are asking today, How long will it take? I come to say to you this afternoon however difficult the moment, however frustrating the hour, it will not be long." Later that night, Viola Liuzzo, a White mother of five from Detroit who had come to Alabama to support Voting Rights for Blacks, was assassinated by Ku Klux Klan members while she was ferrying marchers back to Selma from Montgomery. Among the Klansmen in the car from which the shots were fired was FBI informant Gary Rowe. Afterward, the FBI's COINTELPRO operation spread false rumors that Liuzzo was a member of the Communist Party and abandoned her children to have sexual relationships with African Americans involved in the Civil Rights Movement. The marches shifted public opinion about the Civil Rights Movement. The images of Alabama law enforcement beating the nonviolent protesters were shown all over the country and the world by television networks and newspapers. The visuals of such brutality being carried out by the State of Alabama helped shift the image of the Segregationist Movement from one of a movement trying to preserve the social order of the South to a system of State-endorsed terrorism against non-Whites. The marches also had a powerful effect in Washington. After witnessing TV coverage of "Bloody Sunday," President Lyndon Baines Johnson met with Governor George Wallace in Washington to discuss with him the Civil Rights situation in his State. He tried to persuade Wallace to stop the State harassment of the protesters. Two nights later, on March 15, 1965, Johnson presented a bill to a joint session of Congress. The bill itself would later pass and become the Voting Rights Act. Johnson's speech in front of Congress was considered to be a watershed moment for the Civil Rights Movement; Johnson even used the movement's most famous slogan "We shall overcome".(cont.)
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Voting Rights Struggle (Selma) Selma march (cont.) "Even if we pass this bill, the battle will not be over. What happened in Selma is part of a far larger movement which reaches into every section and State of America. It is the effort of American Negroes to secure for themselves the full blessings of American life. Their cause must be our cause, too, because it is not just Negroes but really it is all of us who must overcome the crippling legacy of bigotry and injustice. And we shall overcome." Many in the Civil Rights Movement cheered the speech and were emotionally moved that after so long, and so hard a struggle, a President was finally willing to defend Voting Rights for Blacks. According to SCLC activist C.T. Vivian, who was with King when the speech was broadcast, ...I looked over... and Martin was very quietly sitting in the chair, and a tear ran down his cheek. It was a victory like none other. It was an affirmation of the Movement. The bill became law at an August 6, 1965 ceremony attended by Amelia Boynton and many other Civil Rights leaders and activists. This act prohibited most of the unfair practices used to prevent Blacks from registering to vote, and provided for federal registrars to go to Alabama and other States with a history of voting-related discrimination to ensure that the law was implemented. In Selma, where more than 7,000 Blacks were added to the voting rolls after passage of the Act, Sheriff Jim Clark was voted out of office in 1966 (he later served a prison sentence for drug smuggling). In 1960, there were just 53,336 Black voters in the State of Alabama; three decades later, there were 537,285, a ten-fold increase, (*)
(*) see Source on page 144
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Voting Rights Struggle (Selma) (1922-2007) James Clark
was born on September 17, 1922 in Elba, Alabama. Clark was a terrifying figure to Blacks and Civil Rights supporters in Dallas County, Ala., where he served as sheriff from 1955 to 1966. Tall and beefy, he dressed in military-style helmets and jackets and wielded a .38-caliber pistol and a nightstick - even, at times, a cattle prod. He viewed Blacks seeking voting rights as demanding "Black Supremacy." As of 1965, only 300 of the City's 15,000 potential Black voters were registered. As Civil Rights organizers pressed the local Black community to register, Clark and his deputies arrested hundreds. Captured on national television, the "Bloody Sunday" incident in Selma spurred widespread revulsion. Even Gov. George Wallace, reprimanded the State troopers and Clark. Bloody Sunday was considered a seminal force behind Johnson's signing of the Voting Rights Act on Aug. 6, 1965. The next year, Mr. Clark was defeated when he ran for re-election. He went to work selling mobile homes. In 1978, he and six others were indicted by a federal grand jury in Montgomery on charges of conspiring to smuggle marijuana. Mr. Clark was convicted and spent about nine months in prison. Clark died on June 7, 2007at the age of 84.(*)
(*) see Source on page 144
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Voting Rights Struggle (Selma) (1925-1965) Viola Fauver Gregg Liuzzo was born on April 11, 1925in in California, Pennsylvania, and moved with her family to Chattanooga, Tennessee at the age of six. After just one year of high school, she dropped out, was married in 1941 at 16, then divorced within a year. In 1943, she married George Argyris, with this marriage lasting seven years and producing two children. She later married Anthony Liuzzo, a Teamsters union business agent. While raising a family that added three more children, Liuzzo sought to return to school, and attended the Carnegie Institute in Detroit, Michigan. She then enrolled part-time at Wayne State University in 1962, and was considered an average student who was academically still in her freshman year at the time of her death.
The murder and funeral: Liuzzo was horrified by the images of the aborted march on March 7, 1965 at the Edmund Pettus Bridge which became known as "Bloody Sunday." Nine days later, she took part in a protest at Wayne State, then called her husband to tell him she would be traveling to Selma, saying that the struggle, "was everybody's fight." After the march concluded on March 25, Liuzzo, assisted by Leroy Moton, a 19-year-old African American, helped drive local marchers home in her 1963 Oldsmobile. As they were driving along Route 80, a car tried to force them off the road. A car with four Klan members then pulled up alongside Liuzzo's car and shot directly at her, hitting her twice in the head, killing her instantly. Her car veered into a ditch and crashed into a fence. Although Moton was covered with blood, the bullets had missed him. He lay motionless when the Klansmen reached the car to check on their victims. After that car left, he began running for the next half hour, and eventually flagged down a truck driven by Rev. Leon Riley that was bringing Civil Rights workers back to Selma. He then was rescued. Liuzzo's funeral was held at Immaculate Heart of Mary Catholic church on March 30 in Detroit, with many prominent members of both the Civil Rights Movement and government there to pay their respects. Included in this group were Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.; NAACP executive director Roy Wilkins; Congress on Racial Equality national leader James Farmer; Michigan lieutenant governor William G. Milliken; Teamsters president Jimmy Hoffa; and United Auto Workers president Walter Reuther. (cont.)
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Voting Rights Struggle (Selma) Viola (cont.)
Arrest and legal proceedings: The four Klan members in the car, Collie Wilkins (21), FBI informant Gary Rowe (34), William Eaton (41) and Eugene Thomas (42) were quickly arrested: within 24 hours President Lyndon Johnson appeared personally on national television to announce their arrest. The remaining three suspects were indicted for Liuzzo's death on April 22, with defense lawyer Matt Murphy quickly attempting to have the case dismissed on the grounds that President Johnson had violated the suspects' Civil Rights when he named them in his televised announcement. Murphy also indicated he would call Johnson as a witness during the upcoming trial. On May 3 an all-White jury was selected for Wilkins' trial, with Rowe the key witness. Three days later, Murphy made blatantly racist comments during his final arguments, including calling Liuzzo a "White Nigger," in order to sway the jury. The tactic was successful enough to result in a mistrial the following day (10-2 in favor of conviction), and on May 10, the three accused killers were part of a Klan parade which closed with a standing ovation for them. Before the new trial got underway, Murphy was killed in an automobile accident, on August 20, when he fell asleep while driving and crashed into a gas tank truck. The former mayor of Birmingham, Alabama Art Hanes agreed to take over representation for all three defendants one week later. Hanes was a staunch segregationist who served as mayor during the tumultuous 1963 period in which police commissioner Eugene "Bull" Connor used fire hoses on African American protesters. After another all-White jury was selected on October 20, the end result two days later saw the panel take less than two hours to acquit Wilkins in Liuzzo's slaying. The next phase of the lengthy process began when a federal trial charged the defendants with conspiracy under the 1871 Ku Klux Klan Act, a Reconstruction Civil Rights statute. The charges did not specifically refer to Liuzzo's murder, but on December 3, the trio was found guilty and sentenced to 10 years in prison. While out on appeal, Wilkins and Thomas were each found guilty of firearms violations and sent to jail for those crimes. During this period, the January 15, 1966 edition of The Birmingham News published an ad offering Liuzzo's bullet-ridden car for sale. Asking $3,500, the ad read, "Do you need a crowd-getter? I have a 1963 Oldsmobile two-door in which Mrs. Viola Liuzzo was killed. Bullet holes and everything intact. Ideal to bring in crowds." (cont.)
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Voting Rights Struggle (Selma) Viola (cont.) Eaton, the only defendant who remained out of jail, died of a heart attack on March 9. Thomas was the only remaining member of the trio who had not gone to trial, with that case getting underway on September 26, 1966. The prosecution built a strong circumstantial case in the trial that included an FBI ballistics expert testifying that the bullet removed from the woman's brain was fired from a revolver owned by Thomas. Two witnesses testified they had seen Wilkins drinking beer at a VFW Hall near Birmingham, 125 miles from the murder scene, an hour or less after Liuzzo was shot. Despite the presence of eight African Americans on the jury, Thomas was acquitted of murder the following day after just 90 minutes of deliberations. State attorney general Richmond Flowers, Sr. criticized the verdict, deriding the Black members of the panel, who had been carefully screened, as "Uncle Toms." On April 27, 1967, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans upheld the convictions of the surviving defendants, with Thomas serving six years in prison for the crime. Due to threats from Klan, both before and after his testimony, Gary Thomas Rowe went into the federal witness protection program. See Rowe v. Griffin, 676 F.2d 524 (1982).
Aftermath: It is surmised by many (Civil Rights activists, Liuzzo's children, etc.) that Liuzzo's death helped with the passing of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which removed barriers to voting such as literacy tests and poll taxes. President Lyndon B. Johnson also ordered investigation immediately after the death. Shortly after his retirement in 1975, Anthony Liuzzo, who never remarried, was one of three suburban Detroit men charged with seven counts of conspiracy to burn down a supermarket for insurance money. He died on December 10, 1978. On December 28, 1977 the Liuzzo family, filed a lawsuit against the FBI, charging that Rowe, as an employee of the FBI, had failed to prevent Liuzzo's death and had in effect conspired in the murder. Then, on July 5, 1979, the American Civil Liberties Union, filed another lawsuit on behalf of the family. Rowe was indicted in 1978 and tried for his involvement in the murder, but the first trial ended in a hung jury, and the second trial ended in his acquittal. See Rowe v. Griffin, 497 F. Supp. 610 (1980) for a complete description of the case. On May 27, 1983, a judge rejected the claims in the Liuzzo family lawsuit, saying there was "no evidence the FBI was in any type of joint venture with Rowe or conspiracy against Mrs. Liuzzo. Rowe's presence in the car was the principal reason why the crime was solved so quickly." In August 1983, the FBI was awarded US$79,873 in court costs, but costs were later reduced to $3,645 after the ACLU appealed on behalf of the family. See Liuzzo v. U.S., 565 F. Supp. 640 (1983).The family's oldest son, Thomas, moved to Alabama in 1978 and legally changed his last name to Lee in 1982 after constant questions about whether he was related to the Civil Rights martyr. Liuzzo was the subject of a 2004 documentary Home of the Brave. She was featured in "Free at Last (part 3)." Her murder was dramatized in Episode 2 of the King miniseries. (*) (*) see Source on page 144
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Voting Rights Struggle (Selma) 1956Sheyann Webb
was born on February 17, 1956 in Selma, Alabama to John and Betty Webb. She grew up in a family of eight children. She attended the segregated public schools of Dallas County, Alabama. In her junior high years she was one of the first Blacks to integrate an all White school. Sheyann says that during her junior high years they were the most horrific. She was pushed down stairs, called bad names, suspended from school, and spit on, but nothing was done by the school administration. One day nine year old Sheyann and her friend Rachel were playing outside when they noticed a car drive up at Brown Chapel A.M.E. Church with several nicely dressed Negro men.
When they walked over to the car not knowing who was in the car they were introduced to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. They were told that Dr. King had come to Selma, Alabama to help the Negro people get Voting Rights. Each night when mass meeting were held at the church, Sheyann would sneak out of her house to attend the meetings. She would also lead the congregation in singing freedom songs. Her favorite freedom song was Ain't Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Around. Sheyann became so involved with the Selma movement that she began skipping school to attend the demonstrations. Despite warnings from her parents she continued to skip school. Sheyann learned many things from Dr. King. He taught her and Rachel to say when asked "Children what do you want, your answer should be freedom." He also taught her that no matter what the color of your skin is you should treat everybody right and children also had a battle to fight. There were many demonstrations held in Selma when African Americans tried to register to vote. They were only allowed two days out of the month to register. Most of the time it was unsuccessful because they were given a literacy test that was very difficult to past which kept them from registering. Also demonstrations were held in nearby counties for the same purpose. One night a young Black man by the name of Jimmie Lee Jackson was killed while demonstrating for Voting Rights. To draw attention to the death of Jimmie Lee Jackson, it was decided that a 54 mile march to the state capital of Alabama would take place. They would present a petition to Governor Wallace signed to protest that Negroes were not being treated fairly.(cont.)
(*) see Source on page 144
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Voting Rights Struggle (Selma) Sheyann (cont.) On Sunday, March 7, 1965, Sheyann was the youngest person to attempt to march to Montgomery. As they left Brown Chapel A.M.E. Church, Sheyann walked near the back with her teacher. Once the marchers had crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge they were ordered to turn back. When they refused they were chased by deputies on horseback, beat with billy clubs, and tear gassed. As she was running back with the other marchers to Brown Chapel A.M.E. Church, she was picked up by Rev. Hosea Williams, who was one of the leaders of the march.
Today: As of 2006, because of her involvement in the Selma Movement, she has determined to keep the fight alive. She currently resides in Montgomery, Alabama, and works for Alabama State University. Several ways she has chosen to do that by being the founder of KEEP (Keep Entertaining Everyday People), co-author of the book Selma Lord Selma with best childhood friend, Rachel West, which later became a Disney movie entitled Selma, Lord, Selma. Sheyann travels around the country telling her story about what happened on Bloody Sunday. As an eight year old she says that, that day changed her life forever.
Legacy: Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "Smallest Freedom Fighter" and coauthor of the book, Selma, Lord, Selma. As a nine year old, Sheyann Webb-Christburg took part in the first attempted Selma to Montgomery march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge on March 7, 1965, known as Bloody Sunday. (*)
(*) see Source on page 144
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The Boll Weevil Monument (Enterprise) Enterprise, Alabama: The founder of Enterprise, John Henry Carmichael, first settled there in 1881. Carmichael opened a store, which attracted more settlers to the area, and by the next year a post office was relocated from the settlement of Drake Eye to the North to Enterprise. In 1896, with 250 people having settled there, the City of Enterprise incorporated. Soon afterward, the Alabama Midland Railway came to Enterprise, bringing with it opportunities for commerce and growth. By 1906, ten years after the City incorporated, its population had grown to 3,750. The way of life in Enterprise came under threat in 1915. An infestation of boll weevils had found its way into the region's cotton crops, resulting in the destruction of most of the cotton in Coffee County. Facing economic ruin, the nearly bankrupt area farmers were forced to diversify, planting peanuts and other crops in an effort to lessen the damage and recoup some of the losses inflicted upon them by the invading insect. Two years later, Coffee County found itself the leading producer of peanuts in the nation. Enterprise was able not only to stave off disaster, but found their economy renewed by a thriving new crop base. In appreciation, the people of Enterprise erected a monument in the center of downtown to what the monument describes as their "herald of prosperity", the boll weevil. The Boll Weevil Monument was dedicated on December 11, 1919, standing as a reminder of how the City adjusted in the face of adversity, and the only monument to an agricultural pest in the world. (*)
Ivory Edwards
was born on June 21, 1953 in Enterprise, Alabama. He is the founder of Bama Fashions. He enlisted into the National Guard Army Reserve in Dec. 1975 for 10 years. He then went on active duty in Sept. 1988 until Aug. 2007 when he retired as a Staff Sergeant (E6). He served in Desert Storm and the Iraq wars. I met Ivory at the VA hospital in Dallas in 2003. I was a Navy veteran being treated as an out patient there. I also was trying to sell my History of America’s Multicultural Society ( The Melting Pot). Mr Edwards became fascinated about my book, and asked me if he could purchase some books from me. I sold him a few. However, we lost touch with each other for a few years. One day in 2010 he called me and asked me if I was still selling my books? I chuckled and told him "Blacks as a whole isn’t interested in Black History." Ivory, then suggested to me. He said, "Mr. Gipson maybe you should write a book about Blacks in Alabama, where I live. I think I will be able to sell them. I think we need a history book about just Blacks in Alabama." I took his idea serious. His idea motivated me to compile Alabama’s Black Struggle (Where it all Began). Ivory Edwards nephew, Tyler McGowan is Vice President and head designer of Mailloechii Clothing Co. Fred Nash is founder, president and CEO. The company was founded at Enterprise High School in 2003. They also started Mailloechii Entertainment in 2010. (Interviewed by author) (*) see Source on page 144
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Chapter V
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Outstanding Achiever (1880-1968) Helen Keller
was born on June 27, 1880 in Tuscumbia, Alabama. She was not born blind and deaf; it was not until nineteen months of age that she came down with an illness that left her in this condition. In 1886, her mother, inspired by an account in Charles Dickens' American Notes of the successful education of another deafblind child, Laura Bridgman.
Formal Education: Starting in May, 1888, Keller attended the Perkins Institute for the Blind. In 1894, Helen Keller and Anne Sullivan moved to New York to attend the Wright-Humason School for the Deaf, and to learn from Sarah Fuller at the Horace Mann School for the Deaf. In 1896, they returned to Massachusetts and Keller entered The Cambridge School for Young Ladies before gaining admittance, in 1900, to Radcliffe College, where she lived in Briggs Hall, South House. Her admirer, Mark Twain, had introduced her to Standard Oil magnate Henry Huttleston Rogers, who, with his wife, paid for her education. In 1904, at the age of 24, Keller graduated from Radcliffe, becoming the first deaf blind person to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree. She maintained a correspondence with the Austrian philosopher and pedagogue Wilhelm Jerusalem, who was one of the first to discover her literary talent.
Companions: Anne Sullivan stayed as a companion to Helen Keller long after she taught her. Anne married John Macy in 1905, and her health started failing around 1914. Polly Thompson was hired to keep house. She was a young woman from Scotland who didn't have experience with deaf or blind people. She progressed to working as a secretary as well, and eventually became a constant companion to Keller. Keller moved to Forest Hills, Queens together with Anne and John, and used the house as a base for her efforts on behalf of American Foundation for the Blind. After Anne died in 1936, Keller and Thompson moved to Connecticut. They traveled worldwide and raised funding for the blind. Thompson had a stroke in 1957 from which she never fully recovered, and died in 1960. Winnie Corbally, a nurse who was originally brought in to care for Polly Thompson in 1957, stayed on after Thompson's death and was Keller's companion for the rest of her life. Her admirer Mark Twain had introduced her to Standard Oil magnate Henry H. Rogers, who, with his wife, paid for her education. In 1904, at the age of 24, Keller graduated from Radcliffe magna cum laude, becoming the first deaf-blind person to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree. She helped to found the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). She died in her sleep on June 1, 1968. (*) (*) see Source on page 144
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Outstanding Achiever (1891-1960) Zora Neale Hurston
was born on January 7, 1891 in Notasulga, Alabama and moved to Eatonville at a young age, spending her childhood there. It was Eatonville, the first all-Black town to be incorporated in the United States, that inspired her imagination. Hurston graduated from Morgan Academy, the high school division of Morgan College,
In 1918, Hurston began undergraduate studies at Howard University, where she became one of the earliest initiates of Zeta Phi Beta Sorority and co-founded The Hilltop, the University's student newspaper. Hurston left Howard in 1924 and in 1925 was offered a scholarship to Barnard College where she was the college's sole Black student. Hurston received her B.A. in anthropology in 1927, when she was 36. While she was at Barnard, she conducted ethnographic research with noted anthropologist Franz Boas of Columbia University. She also worked with Ruth Benedict as well as fellow anthropology student Margaret Mead. After graduating from Barnard, Hurston spent two years as a graduate student in anthropology at Columbia University.
Adulthood: As an adult, Hurston traveled extensively in the Caribbean and the American South and immersed herself in local cultural practices to conduct her anthropological research. In 1927, she married Herbert Sheen, a jazz musician and former classmate at Howard who would later become a physician, but the marriage ended in 1931. In 1939, while Hurston was working for the WPA, she married Albert Price, a 23-year-old fellow WPA employee, and 25 years her junior, but this marriage ended after only a few months. In later life, in addition to continuing her literary career, Hurston served on the faculty of North Carolina College for Negroes (now North Carolina Central University) in Durham, North Carolina. She also established, in 1934, a school of dramatic arts "based on pure Negro expression" at Bethune-Cookman University (at the time, Bethune-Cookman College) in Daytona Beach, FL. In 1956 Hurston was bestowed the BethuneCookman College Award for Education and Human Relations in recognition of her vast achievements, and the English Department at Bethune-Cookman College remains dedicated to preserving her cultural legacy. In 1948, Hurston was falsely accused of molesting a ten-year-old boy, and although the case was dismissed after Hurston presented evidence that she was in Honduras when the crime supposedly occurred in the U.S., her personal life was seriously disrupted by the scandal. Hurston spent her last decade as a freelance writer for magazines and newspapers. She worked in a library in Cape Canaveral, Florida, and as a substitute teacher and maid in Fort Pierce. During a period of financial and medical difficulties, Hurston was forced to enter St. Lucie County Welfare Home, where she suffered a stroke and died of hypertensive heart disease on January 28, 1960. She was buried in an unmarked grave in the Garden of Heavenly Rest cemetery in Fort Pierce. (*) (*) see Source on page 144
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Outstanding Achiever (1899-1975) Percy Lavon Julian
was born on April 11, 1899 in Montgomery, Alabama. He graduated from DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana, in 1920 and received a M.S. degree from Harvard University in 1923 and a PhD. from the University of Vienna in 1931. Fresh with his doctorate in natural products chemistry, he went to Howard University for one year and then taught organic chemistry at his alma mater, DePauw University, from 1932 to 1936. After being denied a professorship at DePauw in 1936 for racial reasons, Julian applied for a job at the Institute of Paper Chemistry (IPC) in Wisconsin.
However, the Wisconsin City of Appleton where the institute was located, was a sundown town, forbidding African Americans from staying overnight. DuPont had offered a job to fellow chemist Josef Pikl, but declined to hire Julian, who had superlative qualifications as an organic chemist, apologizing that they were "unaware he was an African American".
Julian wrote to the Glidden Company, a supplier of soybean oil products, to request a 5-gallon sample of the oil to use as his starting point for the synthesis of human steroidal sex hormones. After receiving the request, W.J. O'Brien, a vice-president at Glidden made a telephone call to Julian, offering him the position of director of research at Glidden's Soya Products Division in Chicago. He was very likely offered the job by O'Brien because he was fluent in German and Glidden had just purchased a modern continuous countercurrent solvent extraction plant from Germany for the extraction of vegetable oil from soybeans for paints and other uses. Julian supervised the assembly of the plant at Glidden when he arrived in 1936. He then designed and supervised construction of the world's first plant for the production of industrial-grade, isolated soy protein from oil-free soybean meal. Isolated soy protein could replace the more expensive milk casein in industrial applications such as coating and sizing of paper, glue for making Douglas fir plywood, and in the manufacture of water-based paints."Subsequently, he designed the world's first plant for the production of industrial-grade, isolated soy protein from oil-free soybean meal. Around 1950 Julian moved his family from Chicago to the suburb of Oak Park, Illinois, where the Julian's were the first Colored family. Although some residents welcomed them into the community, there was also widespread antipathy towards him and his family. Their home was firebombed on Thanksgiving Day, 1950, before they moved in. After they moved in the house, it was attacked with dynamite on June 12, 1951. In 1953, he founded his own research firm, Julian Laboratories, Inc. He sold the company in 1961, and in 1964, he founded Julian Associates and Julian Research Institute, which he managed for the rest of his life. Julian died of liver cancer on April 19, 1975. (*) (*) see Source on page 144
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Outstanding Achiever (1904-1996) Arthur Davis Shores
was born in 1904 – December, 1996) was an American Civil Rights attorney who was considered Alabama's "drum major for justice". Shores graduated from Talladega College where he became a member of Alpha Phi Alpha, the first intercollegiate Greek letter organization established for Blacks. He attended only one year of law school at the University of Kansas and then pursued his law studies through the correspondence school La Salle Extension University.
Legal career: Shores passed the Alabama State Bar exam in 1937 and immediately began using his legal skills to support civil rights issues. In 1938, Shores successfully sued on behalf of seven school teachers who denied the right to vote by the Alabama Board of Registrars. In 1941, on the behalf of Black railroad workers, he won a case before the Supreme Court of the United States that a Whites-only railroad union could not exclude Blacks and then deny them better jobs because they were not union members. Shores represented Black teachers in the Jefferson County School Board to receive the same pay as White teachers. In 1955, Shores successfully argued before the U.S. Supreme Court in Lucy v. Adams to prevent the University of Alabama from denying admission solely based on race or color. Autherine Lucy became the first African-American to attend the school when she was admitted in 1956. On the third day of classes, a hostile mob assembled to prevent Lucy from attending classes. The police were called to secure her admission but, that evening, the University suspended Lucy on the grounds that it could not provide a safe environment. Shores' campaign in 1963 to integrate the Birmingham public schools brought violence to him and other residents. Shore's home was fire-bombed on August 20 and September 4 in retaliation for Black parents registering their children at White schools. Five days later a bomb killed four girls at 16th Street Baptist Church. He argued before the Supreme court in the same year that the arrests of peaceful demonstrators in Birmingham should be ruled unconstitutional. During the 1960s, he became the first Black member of the Birmingham City Council. In 1977, the NAACP honored Shores by awarding him the William Robert Ming Advocacy Award for the spirit of financial and personal sacrifice displayed in his legal work. Shores died in December 1996 at his home in Birmingham, Alabama. He was 92.(*)
(*) see Source on page 144
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Outstanding Achiever (1906-1982) Leroy Robert "Satchel" Paige was born on July 7, 1906 in a section of Mobile, Alabama known as South Bay. At age 12, Paige was sent to the Industrial School for Negro Children in Mount Meigs, Alabama for shoplifting and for truancy from School. There he developed his pitching skills under the guidance of Edward Byrd. It was Byrd who taught Paige how to kick his front foot high and to release the ball at the last possible instant. After his release from confinement, Paige joined the semi-pro Mobile Tigers baseball team. Alex Herman, was the player/manager for the Chattanooga Black Lookouts of the Negro Southern League.
He discovered Paige and wanted to sign him to a $50 per week contract. However, Abel Linares offered Paige an astounding $100 per game to play for his Santa Clara team in Cuba. Paige stayed on the island for 11 games. Paige took his $1100 and left on a steamship out of Havana. Paige, and all other Black players, knew that quibbling about the choice of the first Black player in the major leagues would do nothing productive, so, despite his inner feelings, Paige said of Jackie , "He’s the greatest Colored player I’ve ever seen." When Branch Rickey signed Jackie Robinson, a teammate of Paige, Paige realized that it was for the better that he himself was not the first Black in major league baseball. Robinson started in the minors, and had a major league team started him in its minor league affiliate, Paige would have probably seen this as an insult. Paige eventually realized that by integrating baseball in the minor leagues first with Robinson, the White major league players got the chance to “get used to” the idea of playing alongside Black players. Understanding that, Paige said in his autobiography that, “Signing Jackie like they did still hurt me deep down. I’d been the guy who’d started all that big talk about letting us in the big time. I’d been the one who’d opened up the major league parks to colored teams. I’d been the one who the White boys wanted to go barnstorming against.” Paige, and all other Black players, knew that quibbling about the choice of the first Black player in the major leagues would do nothing productive, so, despite his inner feelings, Paige said of Robinson, “He’s the greatest Colored player I’ve ever seen.” Finally, on July 7, 1948, with his Cleveland Indians in a pennant race and in desperate need of pitching, Indians owner Bill Veeck brought Paige in to try out with Indians player/manager Lou Boudreau. On that same day, his 42nd birthday, Paige signed his first major league contract, for $40,000 for the three months remaining in the season, becoming the first Negro pitcher in the American League and the seventh Negro big leaguer overall. In 1966, Paige pitched in his last game. On February 9, 1971 Bowie Kuhn, Commissioner of Baseball announced that Paige would be the first member of the "Negro wing" of the Hall of Fame. However he changed his mind. All players who are chosen would get their plaques in the "regular section" of the Hall of Fame. Paige died of a heart attack at his home in Kansas City on June 8, 1982. (*) (*) see Source on page 144
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Outstanding Achiever (1914-1993) Erskine Ramsay Hawkins was born on July 26, 1914 in Birmingham, Alabama. He was an American trumpet player and big band leader, dubbed "The 20th Century Gabriel". He is most remembered for composing the jazz standard "Tuxedo Junction" (1939) with saxophonist and arranger Bill Johnson. The song became a popular hit during World War II, rising to #7 nationally (version by the Erskine Hawkins Orchestra) and to #1 nationally (version by the Glenn Miller Orchestra). Vocalists who were featured with Erskine's orchestra include Ida James, Delores Brown and Della Reese. Hawkins was named after Alabama industrialist Erskine Ramsay.
Early years: Hawkins attended Councill Elementary School and Industrial High School (now known as Parker High School) in Birmingham, Alabama. At Industrial High School, he played in the band directed by Fess Whatley, a teacher who trained numerous African-American musicians, many of whom populated the bands of famed band leaders such as Duke Ellington, Lucky Millinder, Louis Armstrong and Skitch Henderson (of the NBC Orchestra.)
Later years: Hawkins was trumpeter and band leader in the lobby bar and show nightclub at The Concord Resort Hotel in Kiamesha Lake, New York. from 1967 to 1989. Hawkins died in Willingboro, New Jersey in November 1993, at the age of 79.
Induction into the Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame: In 1978, Erskine Hawkins became one of the first five artists inducted into the Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame. In 1989, he was inducted into the Alabama Music Hall of Fame. Hawkins was a contemporary of another Birmingham jazz musician, Sun Ra. The story of the Hawkins legacy continues to be told today, during tours of the Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame Museum, by Ray Reach (Director of Student Jazz Programs) and Dr. Frank Adams, (Director of Education, Emeritus) at the Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame.
Tributes: On his final Sunday night radio show (July 26, 2009) Malcolm Laycock celebrated the 95th anniversary of Hawkins' birth, by featuring music performed by Hawkins. Hawkins died on November 11, 1993. (*)
(*) see Source on page 144
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Outstanding Achiever 1919Monford Merrill "Monte" Irvin
was born on February 25, 1919 in Columbia, Alabama is a former left fielder and right-handed batter in the Negro leagues and Major League Baseball who played with the Newark Eagles (1938-42, 46-48), New York Giants (1949-55) and Chicago Cubs (1956).
Irvin grew up in Orange, New Jersey, one of five players who grew up in the Garden State to be elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame. In high school, he starred in four sports and set a state record in the javelin throw. Monte Irvin attended Lincoln University and was a star football player. Irvin was one of the first Black players to be signed after baseball's color line was broken by Jackie Robinson in 1947. He fashioned a career of dual excellence both with the Eagles in the Negro leagues, and with the Giants in the National League. After hitting in the Negro leagues for high marks of .422 and .396 (1940-41), Irvin led the Mexican League with a .397 batting average and 20 home runs in 63 games, being rewarded with the Most Valuable Player award. After serving in the military in World War II (1943-45), he returned to the Eagles to lead his team to a league pennant. Irvin won his second batting championship hitting .401, and was instrumental in beating the Kansas City Monarchs in a seven-game Negro League World Series, batting .462 with three home runs. He was a five -time Negro League All-Star (1941, 1946-48, including two games in 1946). In 1951, Irvin sparked the Giants' miraculous comeback to overtake the Dodgers in the pennant race, batting .312 with 24 homers and a league-best 121 runs batted in, en route to the World Series (he went 11-24 for .458). That year Irvin teamed with Hank Thompson and Willie Mays to form the first all-black outfield in the majors. Later, he finished third in the NL's MVP voting. In 1952 he was named to the NL All-Star team. In his major league career, Irvin batted .293, with 99 home runs, 443 RBI, 366 runs scored, 731 hits, 97 doubles, 31 triples, and 28 stolen bases, with 351 walks for a .383 on base percentage, and 1187 total bases for a .475 slugging average in 764 games played. After retiring, Irvin worked as a scout for the New York Mets from 1967-68 and later spent 17 years (1968-1984) as a public relations specialist for the commissioner's office under Bowie Kuhn. Monte Irvin was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1973, primarily on the basis of his play in the Negro leagues. Today, he serves on the Veterans Committee of the Hall of Fame and actively campaigns for recognition of deserving Negro league veterans. (*) (*) see Source on page 144
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Outstanding Achiever (1919-1965) Nathaniel Adams Cole (aka Nat King Cole), was born on March 17, 1919 in Montgomery, Alabama. Cole was the first African American to have his own radio program. He repeated that success in the late 1950s with the first truly national television show starring an African American. In both cases, the programs were ultimately cancelled because sponsors shied away from a Black artist. Cole fought racism all his life, refusing to perform in segregated venues. In 1956, he was attacked on stage in Birmingham, Alabama by members of the "White Citizens' Council" who apparently were attempting to kidnap him. Despite injuries, Cole completed the show, and vowed never to perform in the South again. Cole performed in many short films, and played W. C. Handy in the film Saint Louis Blues. He also appeared in The Nat King Cole Story. Nat smoked three packs of cigarettes a day - he believed smoking kept his voice low.
Making Television History: On November 5, 1956, The Nat King Cole Show debuted on NBCTV. The Cole program was the first of its kind hosted by an African -American, which created controversy at the time. Beginning as a 15-minute pops show on Monday night, the program was expanded to a half hour in July 1957. Despite the efforts of NBC, as well as many of Cole's industry colleagues—many of whom, such as Ella Fitzgerald, Harry Belafonte, Frankie Laine, Mel Tormé, Peggy Lee, and Eartha Kitt worked for industry scale (or even for no pay) in order to help the show save money—The Nat King Cole Show was ultimately done in by lack of a national sponsorship. Companies such as Rheingold Beer assumed regional sponsorship of the show, but a national sponsor never appeared. The last episode of "The Nat King Cole Show" aired December 17, 1957. Cole had survived for over a year, and it was he, not NBC, who ultimately decided to pull the plug on the show. NBC, as well as Cole himself, had been operating at an extreme financial loss. Cole frequently consulted with President Kennedy (and later President Johnson) on Civil Rights. He was also present at the Democratic National Convention in 1960 to throw his support behind President John F. Kennedy. Cole was also among the dozens of entertainers recruited by Frank Sinatra to perform at the Kennedy Inaugural gala in 1961.He died of lung cancer on February 15, 1965 and was buried in Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery. Cat Ballou was his final Hollywood film. (*) (*) see Source on page 144
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Outstanding Achiever (1926-1984) Willie Mae "Big Mama" Thornton was born on December 11, 1926 in Ariton, Alabama. Her introduction to music started in a Baptist church, where her father was a minister and her mother a church singer. She and her six siblings began to sing at very early ages. Thornton left Montgomery at age 14 in 1941, following her mother's death. She joined Sammy Green's Georgia-based Hot Harlem Revue. Her seven-year tenure with them gave her valuable singing and stage experience, and enabled her to tour the South. In 1948, she settled in Houston, Texas, where she hoped to further her career as a singer. She was also a self-taught drummer and harmonica player, and frequently played each instrument onstage.
Career: Thornton began her recording career in Houston, signing a recording contract with Peacock Records in 1951. While working with another Peacock artist, Johnny Otis, she recorded "Hound Dog", a song that composers Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller had given her in Los Angeles. The record was produced by Johnny Otis, and went to number one on the R&B chart. Although the record made her a star, she saw little of the profits. She continued to record for Peacock until 1957 and performed with R&B package tours with Junior Parker and Esther Phillips. In 1954, Thornton was one of the eyewitnesses to the accidental self-inflicted handgun death of blues singer Johnny Ace. Her career began to fade in the late 1950s and early 1960s. She left Houston and relocated to the San Francisco Bay Area, where she mostly played local blues clubs. In 1966, Thornton recorded Big Mama Thornton With The Muddy Waters Blues Band, with Muddy Waters (guitar), Sammy Lawhorn (guitar), James Cotton (harmonica), Otis Spann (piano), Luther Johnson (bass guitar), and Francis Clay (drums). Songs included "Everything Gonna Be Alright", "Big Mama's Blues", "I'm Feeling Alright", "Big Mama's Bumble Bee Blues", "Looking The World Over", "Big Mama's Shuffle", and "Since I Fell For You", amongst others. Her Ball 'n' Chain album in 1968, recorded with Lightnin' Hopkins (guitar) and Larry Williams (vocals), included the songs "Hound Dog", "Wade in the Water", "Little Red Rooster", "Ball 'n' Chain", "Money Taker", and "Prison Blues". One of Thornton's last albums was Jail (1975) for Vanguard Records. It captured her performances during a couple of mid 1970s concerts at two Northwestern prisons. She became the talented leader of a blues ensemble that featured sustained jams from George "Harmonica" Smith, as well as guitarists Doug Macleod, B. Huston and Steve Wachsman, drummer Todd Nelson, saxophonist Bill Potter, bassist Bruce Sieverson, and pianist J.D. Nicholas. (cont.) 74
Outstanding Achiever Big Mama (cont.) Thornton performed at the Monterey Jazz Festival in 1966 and 1968, and at the San Francisco Blues Festival in 1979. In 1965 she performed with the American Folk Blues Festival package in Europe. While in England that year, she recorded Big Mama Thornton in Europe and followed it up the next year in San Francisco with Big Mama Thornton with the Chicago Blues Band. Both albums came out on the Arhoolie label. Thornton continued to record for Vanguard, Mercury, and other small labels in the 1970s and to work the blues festival circuit until her death in 1984, the same year she was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame. During her career, she appeared on stages from New York City's Apollo Theater in 1952 to the Newport Jazz Festival in 1980, and was nominated for the Blues Music Awards six times. In addition to "Ball 'n' Chain" and "They Call Me Big Mama," Thornton wrote twenty other blues songs. In the 1970s years of heavy drinking began to hurt Ms. Thornton's health. She was in a serious auto accident and recovered to perform at the 1983 Newport Jazz Festival with Muddy Waters, B. B. King, and Eddie "Clean head" Vinson, a recording of which is called The Blues—A Real Summit Meeting on Buddha Records. Ms. Thornton died of a heart attack in Los Angeles on July 25, 1984, at age 57.
Legacy: Big Mama Thornton was an American rhythm and blues singer and songwriter. She was the first to record the hit song "Hound Dog" in 1952. The song was #1 on the Billboard R&B charts for seven weeks. The B-side was "They Call Me Big Mama," and the single sold almost two million copies. Three years later, Elvis Presley recorded his version, based on a version performed by Freddie Bell and the Bellboys. The 1956 remake by Elvis Presley is the best-known version; it is his version that is #19 on Rolling Stone's list of The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.[ In a similar occurrence, Big Mama wrote and recorded "Ball 'n' Chain," which became a hit for her. Janis Joplin later recorded "Ball and Chain," and was a huge success in the late 1960s. The song, best known as a cover by Janis Joplin, was featured in Big Brother and the Holding Company's Cheap Thrills album; this was their last album with Janis Joplin as primary lead vocalist. Janis' 1967 rendition of Ball 'n' Chain at the Monterey Pop Festival is widely considered to be one of her best performances. The song also became one of her more popular pieces to sing in concert. She sang the song twice at Woodstock after fans cheered for an encore. (*) (*) see Source on page 144
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Outstanding Achiever (1928-2000) David Johnson Vann
was born on August 10, 1928 in Randolph County, Alabama. He graduated from the University of Alabama in 1950, and from the University's law school in 1951. He served as clerk to United States Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black, and was present in the courtroom when the court handed down the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education school desegregation decision. After completing his term as court clerk Vann settled in Birmingham and joined the law firm of White, Bradley, Arant, All and Rose. In 1963 Vann helped organize a referendum that changed Birmingham's form of government from a three-member commission to a mayor and nine-member council. Vann served as a special assistant to Birmingham mayor Albert Boutwell under the new City government.
In 1971 Vann was elected to the Birmingham City Council. That same year he helped lead an unsuccessful campaign, known as "One Great City," to consolidate the City Governments of Birmingham and its suburbs into a single countywide Municipal Government. Vann was elected mayor of Birmingham in 1975 and served one term, losing his bid for reelection to Richard Arrington, Jr. In 1980 Vann became a lobbyist and special counsel to Arrington, and served two terms as chair of the Birmingham Water Works and Sewer Board. As counsel to the mayor Vann oversaw an aggressive annexation campaign, adding substantial areas South of Birmingham to the City limits and frustrating efforts by several Birmingham suburbs to block the City's growth. Vann was active in Civic Organizations and was a founding board member of the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute. David Vann died on June 9, 2000 at the age of 71 in Birmingham. (*)
(*) see Source on page 144
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Outstanding Achiever (1930-2008) Odetta Holmes (aka Odetta), was born on December 31, 1930 (also known with her stepfather's surname as Odetta Felious) in Birmingham, Alabama. Odetta grew up in Los Angeles, California, attended Belmont High School, and studied music at Los Angeles City College while employed as a domestic worker. She had operatic training from the age of 13. Her mother hoped she would follow Marian Anderson, but Odetta doubted a large black girl would ever perform at the Metropolitan Opera. Her first professional experience was in musical theater in 1944, as an ensemble member for four years with the Hollywood Turnabout Puppet Theatre, working alongside Elsa Lanchester; she later joined the national touring company of the musical Finian's Rainbow in 1949.While on tour with Finian's Rainbow, Odetta "fell in with an enthusiastic group of young balladeers in San Francisco", and after 1950 concentrated on folk singing. She made her name by playing around the United States: at the Blue Angel nightclub (New York City), the hungry i (San Francisco), and Tin Angel (San Francisco), where she and Larry Mohr recorded Odetta and Larry in 1954, for Fantasy Records. A solo career followed, with Odetta Sings Ballads and Blues (1956) and At the Gate of Horn (1957). Odetta Sings Folk Songs was one of 1963's best-selling folk albums. In 1961, Martin Luther King, Jr. anointed her "The Queen of American folk music". In the same year the duo Harry Belafonte and Odetta made #32 in the UK Singles Chart with the song There's a Hole in My Bucket. Many Americans remember her performance at the 1963 Civil Rights Movement's march to Washington where she sang "O Freedom." She considered her involvement in the Civil Rights Movement as being "one of the privates in a very big army." Broadening her musical scope, Odetta used band arrangements on several albums rather than playing alone, and released music of a more "jazz" style music on albums like Odetta and the Blues (1962) and Odetta (1967). She gave a remarkable performance in 1968 at the Woody Guthrie memorial concert. Odetta also acted in several films during this period, including Cinerama Holiday (1955), the film of William Faulkner's Sanctuary (1961) and The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman (1974). Her marriages to Dan Gordon and Gary Shead ended in divorce. Singer-guitarist Louisiana Red was a former companion. On December 2, 2008, Odetta died from heart disease in New York City.(*) (*) see Source on page 144
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Outstanding Achiever 1931Comer Joseph Cottrell, Jr.
was born on December 7, 1931 in Mobile, Alabama. Cottrell attended Heart of Mary Elementary and Secondary Schools. At age seventeen, Cottrell joined the United States Air Force where he attained the rank of First Sergeant and managed an Air Force PX in Okinawa. Cottrell attended the University of Detroit before leaving the service in 1954. He joined Sears Roebuck in 1964 and rose to the position of division manager in Los Angeles, California. In 1968, with an initial investment of $600.00, Cottrell and a friend got into the black hair care business. Then, with his brother, Jimmy Cottrell manufactured strawberry scented oil sheen for Afro hairstyles and founded Pro-Line Corporation in 1970.
In 1979, Cottrell took the $200.00 "Jerry Curl" out of the beauty shop and into Black homes with his $8.00 Pro-Line "Curly Kit", which increased his sales from one million dollars a year to ten million dollars in the first six months. Shortly thereafter Cottrell moved Pro-Line to Dallas, Texas. At the top of the ethnic hair care business, Cottrell became a part owner, with George W. Bush of the Texas Rangers professional baseball team in 1989; turning a $3 million dollar profit on a $500,000.00 investment. (Research by author)
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Outstanding Achiever 1934Henry Louis "Hank" Aaron was born on February 5, 1934 in Mobile, Alabama. Hank is an African American baseball player and member of the Baseball Hall of Fame. After playing with the Indianapolis Clowns of the Negro American League and in the minor leagues, Aaron started his major league career in 1954. (He is the last Negro league baseball player to have played in the major leagues.) He played 21 seasons with the Milwaukee and Atlanta Braves in the National League, and his last two years (1975–76) with the Milwaukee Brewers in the American League. His most notable achievement was setting the MLB record for most career home runs. During his professional career, Aaron performed at a consistently high level for an extended period of time. He hit 24 or more home runs every year from 1955 through 1973, and is the only player to hit 30 or more home runs in a season at least fifteen times. He is one of only four players to have at least seventeen seasons with 150 or more hits. Aaron made the All-Star team every year from 1955 until 1975 and won three Rawlings Gold Glove Awards. In 1957, he won the National League Most Valuable Player Award, while that same year, the Braves won the World Series, his one World Series victory during his career. Although Aaron himself downplayed the "chase" to surpass Babe Ruth, baseball enthusiasts and the national media grew increasingly excited as he closed in on the home run record. During the summer of 1973 Aaron received thousands of letters every week; the Braves ended up hiring a secretary to help him sort through it. At the age of 39, Aaron hit 40 home runs in 392 at-bats, ending the season one home run short of the record. He hit home run number 713 on September 29, 1973, and with one day remaining in the season, many expected him to tie the record. But in his final game that year, playing against the Houston Astros (led by manager Leo Durocher, who had once roomed with Babe Ruth), he was unable to achieve this. After the game, Aaron stated that his only fear was that he might not live to see the 1974 season. Over the winter, Aaron was the recipient of death threats and a large assortment of hate mail from people who did not want to see a black man break Ruth's nearly sacrosanct home run record. The threats extended to those providing positive press coverage of Aaron. Lewis Grizzard, then editor of the Atlanta Journal, reported receiving numerous phone calls calling them "nigger lovers" for covering Aaron's chase. While preparing the massive coverage of the home run record, he quietly had an obituary written, scared that Aaron might be murdered. Aaron is best known for setting the Major League Baseball record for most home runs in a career (755), surpassing the previous mark of 714 by Babe Ruth. In 2002 Aaron received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor. (*) (*) see Source on page 144
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Outstanding Achiever (1934-2008) Eugene Sawyer
was born on September 3, 1934 in Greensboro, Alabama and studied at Alabama State University. After graduating, he had a brief stint as a chemistry and math teacher in Prentiss, Mississippi, before moving to Chicago to do laboratory work in 1957. Soon after, he began to get involved in politics, becoming the president and financial secretary of the 6th Ward Young Democrats.
Alderman and Mayor of Chicago: In 1971, Sawyer was elected as an alderman of the 6th ward. He continued in the position until 1987, when the sudden death of Harold Washington created a vacancy in the position of mayor. Sawyer was elected mayor by the other members of the city council in a tumultuous and bitter meeting protested by thousands of angry minority and progressive citizens, and took over from interim mayor David Duvall Orr. Sawyer's inauguration for mayor occurred in the parking lot of a closed restaurant at North and Bosworth Avenues at 4:01 am on December 2, 1987. The reason for this was to avoid the type of angry demonstration that accompanied his election. Washington's tenure had culminated in the creation of a coalition of minority and progressive council members who were poised to enact a program of reforms when he died unexpectedly. That coalition had chosen another Washington lieutenant, Timothy Evans, to replace him. The opposition, mostly White old-guard conservative machine politicos, convinced Sawyer to oppose Evans, with their backing, and the progressive coalition was broken. Washington's time as mayor was filled with controversy and racial hostility from White conservative and White ethnic voters, and while Sawyer's tenure went much more smoothly, the cost was significant. Sawyer managed to pass several major initiatives begun by Washington, including placing lights in Wrigley Field, an Ethics Ordinance to prevent corruption, and one of the first Human Rights ordinances that protected gays and lesbians from discrimination. However, the progressive coalition that had finally ousted the political machine of former mayor Richard J. Daley was destroyed. Within two years Daley's son, Richard M. Daley, would be elected to succeed Sawyer, going on to reconstitute his father's organization and dominate Chicago politics for the next twenty years.
Retirement from politics and death: Sawyer was defeated by Richard M. Daley at the 1989 election, and subsequently retired from politics. After retiring, he became involved in the business community once again. Sawyer died on Saturday, January 19, 2008 at approximately 11 PM after a series of strokes and other health setbacks over the previous month. Sawyer died just one day after former Cook County Board President John Stroger, creating a lot of Chicago local news coverage on the passing of both men. (*) (*) see Source on page 144
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Outstanding Achiever 1934Richard Arrington Jr. was born on October 19, 1934 in Livingston, Alabama. He was the first African American mayor of the City of Birmingham, Alabama (U.S.), serving 20 years, from 1979 to 1999. He replaced David Vann and, upon retiring after five terms in office, installed then-City Council president William A. Bell as interim mayor. Bell went on to lose the next election to Bernard Kincaid. Arrington's father moved his family to the steel-town of Fairfield from rural Sumter County, Alabama when Richard Jr. was five years old to take a job with U.S. Steel. The steady work was an improvement over sharecropping, but Richard Sr. still had to supplement the family income by working off-hours as a brick mason. Richard, while still a teenager, served as secretary of the Sunday School at Crumbey Bethel Primitive Baptist Church. Soon he was Sunday School superintendent, a member of the choir, and eventually elected to the Board of Deacons. He was also a standout student at Fairfield Industrial High School, where he had first decided to study tailoring. With those classes full, he instead learned dry cleaning, graduating in 1951 at the age of 16 he took a job at a cleaner and applied to Fairfield's Miles College.
Academic career: Arrington majored in biology at Miles and excelled in the classroom and as a leader, rising to the presidency of his chapter of the Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity, the first intercollegiate Greek-letter fraternity established for African Americans. He was also an officer in the Honor Society and the Thespian Club. In his third year of college, while still living at home, he married Barbara Jean Watts. He graduated cum laude in 1955 and took a position as a graduate assistant at the University of Detroit in Detroit, Michigan. He earned a master's degree in 1957 and returned to Miles as an assistant professor of science where he taught for six years before entering the University of Oklahoma doctoral program in zoology in 1963, in the midst of monumental clashes between African-American protesters and City authorities in Birmingham. He earned his doctorate at Oklahoma in 1966, completing a dissertation on the "Comparative Morphology of Some Dryopoid Beetles", and, at the urging of President Lucius Pitts, returned to Miles as acting dean and director of the summer school. He was quickly promoted to chair of the Natural Sciences Department and eventually was named Dean of the College.
Political career: In 1971 Arrington began campaigning for election to the Birmingham City Council with the pledge to make Birmingham " a City of which all her people can be proud." He won his seat easily, becoming, after Arthur Shores (who had been appointed to a vacant seat by Mayor George Siebels in 1968), the second African American to serve on the council. Then he became the first African American Mayor, serving from 1979 to 1999.(*) (*) see Source on page 144
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Outstanding Achiever 1935Eddie Floyd
was born June 25, 1935in Montgomery, Alabama, He grew up in Detroit, Michigan He founded The Falcons, which also featured Mack Rice. They were forerunners to future Detroit vocal groups such as The Temptations and The Four Tops. Their most successful songs included "You're So Fine" and later, when Wilson Pickett was recruited into the group as the lead singer, "I Found a Love". Pickett then embarked on a solo career, and The Falcons disbanded. Floyd signed on with the Memphis based Stax Records as a songwriter in 1965. He wrote a hit song, "Comfort Me" recorded by Carla Thomas. He then teamed with Stax's guitarist Steve Cropper to write songs for Wilson Pickett, now signed to Atlantic Records. Atlantic distributed Stax and Jerry Wexler brought Pickett down from New York to work with Booker T. & the MGs. The Pickett sessions were successful, yielding several pop and R&B hits, including the Floyd cowritten "Ninety-Nine and a Half (Won't Do)" and "634-5789 (Soulsville USA)". In 1966, Floyd recorded a song intended for Otis Redding. Wexler convinced Stax president Jim Stewart to release Floyd's version. The Steve Cropper/Eddie Floyd "Knock On Wood" launched Floyd's solo career, and has been cut by over a hundred different artists from David Bowie to Count Basie. It became a disco hit for Amii Stewart in 1979. Floyd was one of Stax's most consistent and versatile artists. He scored several more hits on his own, including "I Never Found a Girl (To Love Me Like You Do)" and "Raise Your Hand", which was covered by both Janis Joplin and Bruce Springsteen. The song "Big Bird" (featuring Booker T. Jones on organ and guitar, Al Jackson, Jr. on drums, and Donald "Duck" Dunn on bass) was written while Floyd waited in a London airport for a plane back to the United States for Otis Redding's funeral. Although not a US hit, it became an underground favorite in the UK, was later covered by The Jam, and was featured on the video game, Test Drive Unlimited. Floyd's career did not keep him from being one of the label's most productive writers. Virtually every Stax artist recorded Floyd material, often co-written with either Cropper or Jones, including Sam & Dave ("You Don't Know What You Mean to Me"), Rufus Thomas ("The Breakdown"), Otis Redding ("I Love You More Than Words Can Say"), and Johnnie Taylor's "Just the One (I've Been Looking For)". The latter played during the opening credits of director Harold Ramis's film, Bedazzled. Floyd, in 1980, also released material on the UK record label I-Spy Records owned and created by the UK band Secret Affair. In 1998, as well as singing with The Blues Brothers Band, Floyd has been the special guest with former Rolling Stone Bill Wyman's Rhythm Kings on several dates in the US and the UK. In 2008, Floyd returned to Stax Records which is now owned by Concord Music Group. His first new album in six years, "Eddie Loves You So" released in July 2008.(*) (*) see Source on page 144
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Outstanding Achiever 1936Clarence Carter
was born on January 14, 1936 in Montgomery, Alabama. Carter attended the Alabama School for the Blind in Talladega, Alabama, and Alabama State College in Montgomery, graduating in August 1960 with a Bachelor of Science degree in music. His professional music career began with friend Calvin Scott, signing to the Fairlane Records label to release "I Wanna Dance But I Don't Know How" the following year. After the 1962 release of "I Don't Know (School Girl)," Carter and Scott left Fairlane Records for Duke Records, renaming themselves the CL Boys for their label debut, Hey. In all, the duo cut four Duke singles, none of them generating more than a shrug at radio.
In 1965, they travelled to Rick Hall's FAME Studios in Muscle Shoals to record "Step by Step" and its flip side, "Rooster Knees and Rice."Atlantic Records took notice and released "Step by Step" on its Atco Records subsidiary, but it flopped. Carter continued as a solo act, signing to the Fame Records label for 1967's "Tell Daddy." Several more solid singles followed, until Carter released "Slip Away," which hit number 6 on the Pop Charts. "Too Weak to Fight" hit number 13. Several more soul singles followed, like "Snatching It Back," "Making Love (At The Dark End of the Street)", "The Feeling Is Right," "Doing Our Thing" and "Patches." "Patches", (first recorded by Chairmen of the Board), was a UK number 2 and a U.S. number 4 in 1970, and won the Grammy Award for Best R&B Song in 1971. This disc sold over one million copies, and received a gold disc awarded by the R.I.A.A. in September 1970, just two months after its release. Following "Slip Away" and "Too Weak to Fight", it was Carter's third million seller. With the advent of disco in the mid 1970s, Carter's career suffered, before he found a new audience with bawdy songs such as "Strokin'" for Ichiban Records in the 1980s and 1990s. . Carter's strong soul sound also found an audience within the then-nascent hip-hop community. Most notably, the horn break from Carter's song "Backdoor Santa", is sampled in the Run DMC Christmas song "Christmas in Hollis".
Discography: •
1968 This Is Clarence Carter; 1969 Testifyin'; 1969 The Dynamic Clarence Carter; 1970 Patches; 1971 That's What Your Love Means to Me; 1973 Sixty Minutes; 1974 Real; 1975 Loneliness & Temptation; 1976 Heart Full of Song; 1977 I Got Caught Making Love; 1977 Let's Burn; 1981 Mr. Clarence Carter in Person; 1986 Dr. C.C.; 1987 Hooked on Love; 1989 Touch of Blues; 1990 Between a Rock and a Hard Place; 1992 Have You Met Clarence; Carter...Yet?; 1994 Live with the Dr.; 1995 Together Again; 1995 I Couldn't Refuse; 1996 Carter's Corner; 1997 Too Weak to Fight; 1999 Bring It to Me; 2001 Live in Johannesburg; 2003 All Y'all Feeling Alright; 2005 One More Hit (to the face); 2007 Messin' with My Mind; 2007- The Final Stroke.(*)
(*) see Source on page 144
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Outstanding Achiever 1936Marva Collins
was born on August 31, 1936 in Monroeville, Alabama. She graduated from Clark College in Atlanta, Georgia known today as Clark Atlanta University, and then taught school for two years in Alabama, then moved to Chicago, where she taught in public schools for fourteen years. In 1975 she started Westside Preparatory School in Garfield Park, an impoverished neighborhood of Chicago, Illinois. She ran the school for more than 30 years until it closed in 2008 due to lack of sufficient enrollment and funding. She is famous for applying classical education successfully with impoverished students, many of whom had been wrongly labeled as learning disabled by public schools.
She is famous for applying classical education successfully with impoverished students, many of whom had been labeled as 'learning-disabled' by public schools. However, her method became an educational and commercial success.
Teaching Methods: Marva Collins uses the Socratic method, modified for use in primary school. The first step is to select material with abstract content to challenge students' logic, and that will therefore have different meaning to different students, in order to aid discussion. This is done specifically to teach children to reason. Next, the teacher should read the material, because unknown material cannot be taught. New words, the words to watch, should be listed, and taught, for pronunciation, use and spelling before the material is read. Without this step, the reading is meaningless. Next, one begins a series of pertinent questions as the reading progresses, starting with a reference to the title, and a question about what the material is about. Predictions should use logic, reasoning and evidence without fallacy. The reading must be out loud, so the teacher can ask questions at pertinent points. Students are taught to test their reasoning. Afterward, they write daily letters to the author or characters, and write a critical review. Why is the work important to them? The child must be taught to refer to what was previously learned to support their opinions. In the Socratic method, the rate of information is controlled by the teacher. Properly paced, this encourages participation, reducing discipline issues and encouraging self-discipline. The program specifically avoids work-sheets and inane busy work. It establishes an intellectual atmosphere, a general attitude suspending judgment, and examining reasoning. She has written a number of manuals, books and motivational tracts describing her history and methods, and currently (2006) has a website and public speaking service. She was most widely publicized in the 1981 biographical TV movie The Marva Collins Story starring Cicely Tyson and Morgan Freeman. (*) (*) see Source on page 144
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Outstanding Achiever 1941David Satcher
was born on March 2, 1941 in Anniston, Alabama. Dr. Satcher and his wife, Nola, have four grown children. He was the 16th Surgeon General of the United States from 1998 to 2002. Dr. Satcher graduated from Morehouse College in Atlanta in 1963 and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. He received his MD and PhD. from Case Western Reserve University in 1970 with election to Alpha Omega Alpha Honor Society. He did residency/fellowship training at Strong Memorial Hospital, University of Rochester, UCLA, and KingDrew. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Family Physicians, the American College of Preventive Medicine, and the American College of Physicians.
Satcher was appointed by Bill Clinton, and remained Surgeon General until 2002, contemporaneously with the first half of the first term of President George W. Bush's administration. Satcher served simultaneously in the positions of Surgeon General and Assistant Secretary for Health from February 1998 through January 2001 at the US Department of Health and Human Services. As such, he is the first Surgeon General to be appointed as a four-star admiral in the PHSCC, to reflect his dual offices.
Criticisms of health inequality: While acknowledging progress, Satcher has criticized health disparities. Satcher supports a Medicare-for-all style single payer health plan, in which insurance companies would be eliminated and the government would pay health care costs directly to doctors, hospitals and other providers through the tax system. When Satcher left office, he was allowed to retire with his four-star grade of admiral.
Post-Surgeon General: Upon his departure from the post of Satcher became a fellow at the Kaiser Family Foundation. In the fall of 2002, he assumed the post of Director of the National Center for Primary Care at the Morehouse School of Medicine. On 20 December 2004, Satcher was named interim president at Morehouse School of Medicine until John E. Maupin, Jr., former president of Meharry Medical College assumed the current position on 26 February 2006. In June 2006, Satcher established the Satcher Health Leadership Institute (SHLI) at Morehouse School of Medicine as a natural extension of his experience in improving public health policy for all Americans and his commitment to eliminating health disparities for minorities, the poor and other disadvantaged groups. He now sits on the board of Johnson & Johnson. (*) (*) see Source on page 144
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Outstanding Achiever 1941William Joseph Baxley, II was born on June 27, 1941in Dothan, Alabama. Baxley attended law school at the University of Alabama graduating in 1964. He served as Attorney General of Alabama two terms from 1971—79 ( the youngest to hold that position in U.S. History at the age of 27), and one term as Lieutenant Governor of Alabama from 1983—87. During his time in politics Baxley aggressively prosecuted industrial polluters, strip miners, and corrupt elected officials. In 1970, William J. Baxley, a 28-year-old lawyer, was elected attorney general of Alabama. Baxley grew up in Alabama and was in college when the four girls were killed in the explosion in Birmingham. The event made a strong impact on the young student and he told his classmates that if he was ever in a position to do something about it, he would. "It was a real traumatic thing to me," he told Patsy Sims, the author of The Klan (1992), "I was just hoping it would be solved and some of those who did it, would be punished, electrocuted, or whatever." After graduating college in 1964, Baxley became an assistant district attorney in the City of Dothan in South Alabama. After working as a prosecutor for nearly six years, he left the job to become the State's Attorney General. Baxley notified his staff that solving the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church bombing would be the priority of his administration. For the next several years, Baxley's investigators worked tirelessly on the case. They reinterviewed witnesses, developed informants and traveled thousands of miles tracking down dead end leads. By 1973, it was obvious that very little progress had been made. Baxley became convinced that, to solve the crime, he needed to know what the FBI knew. Although Hoover had closed the case years before, the FBI maintained the voluminous files on the Sixteenth Street bombing. They had spent years in the Birmingham area, talked to hundreds of people and had a stable of Klan informants. And there was little doubt that the Klan was behind the murders of the four girls on September 15, 1963. It wasn't until 1976, when Baxley threatened to bring the parents of the four murdered girls to a press conference on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and tell newspapers how the FBI was withholding crucial information that the bureau finally gave in. In the spring of 1976, the files on the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church bombing were turned over to Baxley and his team of detectives. Once again, the investigation picked up steam. Stories began to appear in the newspapers that a solution to the case was near. Rumors circulated around Birmingham that the power of the Klan would soon be broken. Baxley appointed the State's first African American assistant attorney general, Myron Thompson, who later became a federal judge. Baxley succeeded in convicting Chambliss with an all White jury and minimal evidence (as J. Edgar Hoover, head of the FBI at the time, refused to relinquish tapes important to the case that was the main evidence). The victory eased the minds of the parents of Addie Mae Collins, Carole Robertson, Cynthia Wesley and Denise McNair. (*) (*) see Source on page 144
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Outstanding Achiever 1942Johnny L.. Ford
was born on August 23, 1942, in Midway, Alabama. He is an American politician and former mayor of Tuskegee, Alabama, and an Alabama State Representative. He was raised as a child and attended elementary school in Tuskegee. He is a graduate of Tuskegee Institute High School. Ford received his BA in History and Sociology from Knoxville College, his Master's of Public Administration from Auburn University Montgomery, and has received four Honorary Doctorate Degrees. He has three children: John, Christopher, and Tiffany.
Political career: Ford was first elected mayor of Tuskegee in 1972. He was, along with A.J. Cooper of Prichard, elected the first Black Mayors of Cities of more than 10,000 people in the modern era in Alabama in 1972 (although Hobson City had been Black-run since its incorporation in 1899, but it was a smaller Community). After serving six terms as Mayor, Ford was defeated in 1996 by Ronald D. Williams, a former political aide. Two years later in 1998, Ford ran for and won State Representative of the 82nd District from Macon County. He served from 1999 until 2004. In February 2003, he switched to the Republican Party, becoming Alabama's first Black Republican in the state legislature in more than 100 years. Preferring to serve in his old office as mayor, he resigned from the legislature and was elected mayor in 2004, defeating the first Black woman mayor of Tuskegee, Lucenia Williams Dunn by a 54-46% margin. Facing a tough reelection to an 8th non-consecutive term in 2008, which featured 5 candidates, challenger Omar Neal led in the August municipal election by just 12 votes (927 to 915) over Ford. Credited with turning out the "youth vote" from Tuskegee University, Neal defeated Ford by a 54-46% margin (1,463 to 1,270), in a higher turnout October runoff. As of 2008, Tuskegee has not reelected a Mayor to a consecutive term since Ford won his sixth term in 1992. Ford is the founder and Director General of the World Conference of Mayors and also serves as President of Johnny Ford and Associates, Inc. Ford is the President-emeritus and Founder of the National Conference of Black Mayors. He was an appointed to the Presidential Advisory Committee on Federalism and the U.S. Intergovernmental Policy Advisory Committee on Trade. Ford is also a past President of the Alabama League of Municipalities, is a member of Kappa Alpha Psi, and the founding President of the Tuskegee Optimist Club. Ford has rejoined the Democratic party and is running for the State Senate. (*)
(*) see Source on page 144
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Outstanding Achiever (1942-1995) David Melvin English
was born on October 12, 1942 in Montgomery, Alabama. He is better known by the stage name Melvin Franklin, was an American bass singer. Franklin is best known for his role as a member of Motown singing group The Temptations from 1961 to 1994. English, the son of a preacher, moved to Detroit, Michigan at the age of nine. Taking on his mother's married name of Franklin for his stage name, he was a member of a number of local singing groups in Detroit, including The Voice Masters with Lamont Dozier and David Ruffin (a distant cousin of Franklin), and frequently performed with his cousin Richard Street. One day, walking home from Northwestern High School, Franklin was approached by a large teenager who was adamantly trying to get his attention. Thinking the stranger was a gang member, Franklin ran away and attempted to dodge his pursuer before learning that the young man was Otis Williams, a singer in a local group called Otis Williams and the Siberians. Franklin joined the group as its bass singer, and remained with Williams and Elbridge Bryant when they, Paul Williams and Eddie Kendricks formed The Elgins in late 1960. In March 1961, the Elgins signed with Motown Records under a new name; The Temptations. He had a fondness for the color blue, and so he was nicknamed "Blue" by his friends and fellow singers. According to Otis Williams, Franklin romantically pursued Supremes singer Mary Wilson at one point. Best friends for over thirty years, Williams and Franklin were the only two Temptations to never quit the group. One of the most famous bass singers in Black music over his long career, Franklin's deep vocals became one of the group's signature trademarks. Franklin sang a handful of featured leads with the group as well, including the songs "I Truly, Truly Believe" (The Temptations "Wish It Would Rain", 1968), "Silent Night" ("Give Love At Christmas", 1980), "The Prophet" ("A Song for You", 1975), and his signature live performance number, Paul Robeson's "Ole' Man River". Franklin was usually called upon to deliver ad-libs, harmony vocals, and, during the psychedelic soul era, notable sections of the main verses. His line from The Temptations' 1970 #3 hit "Ball of Confusion (That's What the World Is Today)", and "the band played on", became Franklin's trademark. In the late 1960s, Franklin was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis, the symptoms of which he combated with cortisone so that he could continue performing. The constant use of cortisone left his immune system open to other infections and health problems; as a result Franklin developed diabetes in the early 1980s and later contracted necrotizing fasciitis. In 1978 he was shot in the hand and in the leg while trying to stop a man from stealing his car in Los Angeles. On February 23, 1995, after a number of seizures, he fell into a coma and remained unconscious until his death the same day. (*)
(*) see Source on page 144
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Outstanding Achiever 1944Angela Yvonne Davis
was born January 26, 1944 in Birmingham, Alabama to B. Frank, a teacher and businessman and Sally E. Davis, who was also a teacher. Davis was born at a time of great political unrest and racism in the United States. As a child, Davis's parents had many Communist friends and she subsequently joined a Communist youth group. Davis traveled to Germany in 1960, where she spent two years studying at the Frankfurt School under acclaimed scholar Theodor Adorno. From 1963 to 1964, Davis attended the University of Paris. Davis, then returned to the United States and attended Brandeis University, in Waltham, Massachusetts. After earning her BA (magna cum laude) in 1965, Davis flew to Germany, where she conducted graduate research. Upon returning to the U.S., Davis enrolled at the University of California at San Diego, where she began pursuing her Master's Degree, which she received in 1968. It was at the University of California at San Diego that Davis began closely studying the "Communist Party". In 1968, Davis became a member of the "Communist Party", as well as a member of the Black Panthers. It was her involvement in these radical groups that caused Davis to be watched very closely by the United States government. After teaching for only one year, it was also these radical associations that resulted in her dismissal from her position as assistant professor of philosophy at the University of California at Los Angeles. In 1970, Davis became only the third woman in history to appear on the FBI's most wanted list. Davis was charged by the authorities with conspiracy to free George Jackson with a bloody shootout in front of a courthouse in California. The FBI also asserted that Davis armed prisoners in the Marin County courthouse with guns that were registered in her name. After the warrant was issued for her arrest, Davis spent two weeks evading police. Finally, Davis was discovered in a Greenwich Village hotel, and was formally charged with murder and kidnapping, even though she didn't actually take part in the shootout in Marin County, California. Davis spent sixteen months behind bars, until her subsequent acquittal on all charges. After her release from prison, in 1971, Davis's essays were published in a collection entitled If They Come in the Morning, and Voices of Resistance. In her essays, she details her belief in "Communist theory", as well as her thoughts on racial oppression in the United States. Davis's friends then convinced her that she should draft an account of her life in the 1960s and 1970's. The result was Angela Davis: An Autobiography. In 1980, Davis ran for Vice President of the United States on the "Communist Party" ticket. Davis's next book, Women, Race, and Class was published in 1981. Angela Y. Davis continues to be a strong force for political and social activism, as well as the reformation of the prison industrial complex. She is also an accomplished cultural theorist. Davis is now a tenured professor at the University of California at Santa Cruz. On April 16, 2009, she was the keynote speaker at the University of Virginia Carter G. Woodson Institute for African American and African Studies symposium on The Problem of Punishment: Race, Inequity, and Justice. On January 21, 2011, Davis was the keynote speaker in Salem, OR. at Willamette University's MLK Week Celebration. (*) (*) see Source on page 144
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Outstanding Achiever 1949Lonnie G. Johnson
was born on October 6, 1949 in Mobile Alabama. Upon his graduation from Tuskegee University, he worked as a research engineer at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and then joined the U. S. Air Force, serving as Acting Chief of the Space Nuclear Power Safety Section at the Air Force Weapons Laboratory in Albuquerque, New Mexico. In 1979, he left the Air Force to accept a position as Senior Systems Engineer at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, where he worked on the Galileo (spacecraft)|Galileo mission to Jupiter. In 1989, Lonnie G. Johnson formed his own engineering firm and licensed his most famous invention, the Super Soaker water gun, to Larami Corporation. Two years later, the Super Soaker generated over $200 million in retail sales, and became the number one selling toy in America. Larami Corporation was eventually purchased by Hasbro, the second largest toy manufacturer in the world. Over the years, Super Soaker sales have totaled close to one billion dollars. Currently, Lonnie Johnson holds over 80 patents, with over 20 more pending.
Engineering firms: In 1989, Johnson formed his own engineering firm and licensed his most famous invention, the Super Soaker water gun, to Larami Corporation. Two years later, the Super Soaker generated over $200 million in retail sales, and became the number one selling toy in America. Larami Corporation was eventually purchased by Hasbro, the second largest toy manufacturer in the world. Over the years, Super Soaker sales have totaled close to one billion dollars. Currently, Johnson holds over 80 patents, with over 20 more pending, and is the author of several publications on spacecraft power systems.
Energy technology: Two of Johnson’s companies, Excellatron Solid State and Johnson Electro-Mechanical Systems (JEMS), are developing energy technology. Excellatron is introducing thin film batteries, a new generation of rechargeable battery technology which has significantly better abilities than the current industry leader Li-ion. JEMS has developed the Johnson Thermo-Electrochemical Converter System (JTEC), which was listed by Popular Mechanics as one of the top 10 inventions of 2008, and has potential applications including solar power plants and ocean thermal power generation. It converts thermal energy to electrical energy using a non-steam process which works by pushing hydrogen ions through two membranes, with significant advantages over alternative systems, and is claimed to be highly scalable. (*)
(*) see Source on page 144
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Outstanding Achiever 1954 Condoleezza Rice was born on November 14, 1954 in Birmingham, Alabama, the only child of Angelena Rice and the Reverend John Wesley Rice, Jr. Her father was a minister at Westminster Presbyterian Church and her mother was a music teacher. In 1967, the family moved to Denver when her father accepted an administrative position at the University of Denver. She earned her Bachelor's degree in political science, cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa, from the University of Denver in 1974; her Master's degree from the University of Notre Dame in 1975; and her PhD from the Graduate School of International Studies at the University of Denver in 1981.In June 1999, she completed a six year tenure as Stanford University 's "Provost", during which she was the institution's chief budget and academic officer. Rice became the Assistant to President George W. Bush for National Security Affairs, commonly referred to as the National Security Advisor, on January 22, 2001. November 16, 2004, President Bush named Rice to replace Powell as Secretary of State.
Secretary of State: On November 16, 2004, Bush nominated Rice to be Secretary of State. On January 26, 2005, the Senate confirmed her nomination by a vote of 85-13. She became the first Black woman Secretary of State. The negative votes, the most cast against any nomination for Secretary of State since 1825, came from Senators who, according to Senator Barbara Boxer, wanted "to hold Dr. Rice and the Bush administration accountable for their failures in Iraq and in the war on terrorism." Their reasoning was that Rice had acted irresponsibly in equating Saddam's regime with Islamist terrorism and some could not accept her previous record. Senator Robert Byrd voted against Rice’s appointment, indicating that she "has asserted that the President holds far more of the war power than the Constitution grants him." As Secretary of State, Rice championed the expansion of democratic governments. Rice stated that the September 11 attacks in 2001 were rooted in "oppression and despair" and so, the U.S. must advance democratic reform and support basic rights throughout the greater Middle East. Rice also reformed and restructured the department, as well as US diplomacy as a whole. "Transformational Diplomacy" is the goal that Rice describes as "working with our many partners around the world... Building and sustaining democratic, well-governed states that will respond to the needs of their people and conduct themselves responsibly in the international system." As Secretary of State, Rice traveled widely and initiated many diplomatic efforts on behalf of the Bush administration. Her diplomacy relied on strong presidential support and is considered to be the continuation of style defined by former Republican secretaries of state Henry Kissinger and James Baker.(*) (*) see Source on page 144
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Outstanding Achiever 1956Mae Carol Jemison, M.D. was born on October 17, 1956 in Decatur, Alabama. The family moved to Chicago, Illinois, when Jemison was three years old, to take advantage of better educational opportunities there. Her mother worked most of her career as an elementary school teacher of English and math at the Beethoven School in Chicago. Jemison says that as a young girl growing up in Chicago she always assumed she would get into space. Jemison wouldn't let anyone dissuade her from pursuing a career in science. "In kindergarten, my teacher asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, and I told her a scientist," Jemison says. "She said, 'Don't you mean a nurse?' Now, there's nothing wrong with being a nurse, but that's not what I wanted to be." Jemison says she was inspired by Martin Luther King Jr. but to her King's dream wasn't an elusive fantasy but a call to action. "Too often people paint him like Santa -- smiley and inoffensive," says Jemison. "But when I think of Martin Luther King Jr. I think of attitude, audacity, and bravery." Jemison thinks the Civil Rights Movement was all about breaking down the barriers to human potential. "The best way to make dreams come true is to wake up," says Jemison She graduated from Morgan Park High School. At sixteen, she entered Stanford University on scholarship where she graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in Chemical Engineering, and fulfilled the requirements for an AB in African and Afro-American Studies. She attended Cornell Medical College where she earned her Doctorate in Medicine in 1981. After completing her Medical , Jemison joined the staff of the Peace Corps and served as a Peace Corps Medical Officer from 1983 to 1985 responsible for the health of Peace Corps Volunteers serving in Liberia and Sierra Leone. Mae joined the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in 1987 She was the first African-American woman to travel to space. Jemison flew her only space mission from September 12 to 20, 1992 as a Mission Specialist on STS-47. "The first thing I saw from space was Chicago, my hometown," said Jemison. "I was working on the middeck where there aren't many windows, and as we passed over Chicago, the commander called me up to the flight deck. It was such a significant moment because since I was a little girl I had always assumed I would go into space," Jemison added. Dr. Jemison was Science Mission Specialist (a NASA first) on the STS-47 Spacelab J flight, a US/Japan joint mission. Jemison resigned from NASA in March 1993. Dr. Jemison founded The Jemison Group, Inc., located in Houston, Texas, to research, develop and implement advanced technologies suited to the cultural and economic context of the individual, for the developing world. Jemison is an active public speaker who appears before private and public groups promoting science and technology as well as providing an inspirational and educational message for young people.(*) (*) see Source on page 144
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Outstanding Achiever 1956Vice Admiral Regina Marcia Benjamin was born October 26, 1956 in Mobile, Alabama. Dr. Benjamin graduated from Fairhope High School in Fairhope, Alabama and then attended college at Xavier University of Louisiana in New Orleans where she was initiated into the Gamma Alpha Chapter of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc. She is also a member of the second graduating class of Morehouse School of Medicine. She received her M.D. degree from the University of Alabama at Birmingham and completed her residency in family practice at the Medical Center of Central Georgia. About her experience as the first member of her family to attend medical school, she has stated that "I had never seen a Black doctor before I went to college." After entering solo medical practice in Bayou La Batre, Benjamin worked for several years in emergency rooms and nursing homes to financially support its mission. After receiving an MBA from the Freeman School of Business at Tulane University, she converted her office to a rural health clinic.
Professional activities: Dr. Benjamin is former associate dean for rural health at the College of Medicine at the University of South Alabama, where she administered the Alabama AHEC program and previously directed its Telemedicine Program. She served as the president of the Medical Association of the State of Alabama (MASA) in 2002. In 1995, she was elected to the Board of Trustees of the American Medical Association, making her both the first physician under age 40 and the first African-American woman to be elected. She also served on the Board of Trustees of Florida A & M University, appointed by Florida Governor Jeb Bush. From 2008-2009, she served as Chair of the Board of Trustees of the Federation of State Medical Boards, a national non-profit organization representing the 70 medical boards of the United States and its territories. Dr. Benjamin's clinic was destroyed in 2005 by Hurricane Katrina and in 2006 by a fire on New Year's Day, one day before the scheduled reopening. She made headlines when she rebuilt the clinic a second time. On July 13, 2009 President Barack Obama announced the choice of Benjamin for the position of Surgeon General of the United States and as a Medical Director in the regular corps of the Public Health Service. On October 7, 2009, Benjamin was unanimously approved by the United States Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions. Benjamin was unanimously confirmed by the United States Senate on October 29, 2009. In January 2010, Dr. Benjamin released her first document, entitled "The Surgeon General’s Vision for a Healthy and Fit Nation." In it she highlighted the alarming trend of overweight and obese Americans, and offered a blueprint for grassroots efforts to make changes that promote the health and wellness of families and communities.(*) 93
Outstanding Achiever 1961Frederick Carlton "Carl" Lewis was born on July 1, 1961 in Birmingham, Alabama. Carl grew up in Willingboro, New Jersey, in the Philadelphia area. At age 13, Lewis started to compete in the long jump. With his high sprinting speed, he also performed well in the sprint events. In 1980, Carl was selected for the U.S. Olympic team, but the American boycott of the Games in Moscow delayed Lewis' debut. He received the 1981 James E. Sullivan Award as the top amateur athlete in the United States. After he had repeated his 1983 performance at the World Championships in Rome in 1987, he was set for four more golds at the 1988 Olympics in Seoul, South Korea. However, things did not all go his way. He won the 100 meter sprint, but only after Ben Johnson was disqualified for a drug offence. It has since become known that Lewis himself had failed a drug test before the games, although he was subsequently cleared by the IAAF. Carl won 10 Olympic medals (9 golds) during his career (1984 to 1996), and 8 World Championship gold medals, and 1 bronze (1983 to 1993).
Lewis Achievements: •
Carl Lewis is the only man to defend a 100 meter Olympic title successfully. Archie Hahn, 1904 Olympic champion, also won the 1906 Olympic 100 m title, but the Intercalated Games are not recognized by the IOC as being official.
•
He is also the only man to defend a long jump Olympic title successfully, winning four times overall. No other long jumper has ever won twice at the Olympic games.
•
Lewis’ mother, the former Evelyn Lawler, was an Olympian who competed at the 1952 Olympics in Helsinki in the 80 m hurdles.
•
Carl's sister Carol Lewis was also an Olympian, finishing 9th in the long jump at the 1984 Olympics, and earning a bronze medal in the same event at the 1983 World Championships. She additionally set two American records in the long jump in 1985. She has been a television broadcast announcer for a number of years.
•
Lewis is vegan. He reached the top of his career aged thirty on a vegan diet which he has claimed is better suited to him because he can eat a larger quantity without affecting his athleticism and he believes that switching to a vegan diet can lead to improved athletic.
•
Though he did not play football in college, Carl Lewis was drafted as a wide receiver in the 12th round of the 1984 NFL Draft by the Dallas Cowboys but he did not play.(*)
(*) see Source on page 144
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Outstanding Achiever 1965Roderick V. Royal
was born 1965and raised in Birmingham and held elected office early in life, as student council president at Carrie A. Tuggle Elementary School. He went on to hold the same position at A. H. Parker High School. Royal then earned a bachelor's degree in political science at Tuskegee University and a master's in public administration at Webster University in Saint Louis, Missouri. He later completed a law enforcement program at the University of Alabama. During the first implementation of Birmingham's Community Participation Program, Royal served as a youth member of the Fountain Heights Neighborhood Association. He later was elected secretary of the East Thomas Neighborhood Association, serving two terms.
Royal has been employed as a Statewide Coordinator for Job Corps, as an instructor at Miles College, as a police officer, and as an officer in the United States Army during Operation Desert Storm. Later he worked as a City Council assistant and served on several charitable boards. Royal was first elected to the Birmingham City Council in 2001 and was re-elected in 2005 and 2009. Among the initiatives he has developed are the securing of bond funds to extend sewer service to underserved communities, a program to provide breakfast bars to elementary school students, and a campaign for public-sponsored in-school dental care. Royal served for two months (November 2009-January 2010) as the 32nd Mayor of Birmingham, Alabama occupying the office in the absence of former mayor Larry Langford who was removed following a criminal conviction in a federal corruption case. Royal took over the post of acting mayor from Carole Smitherman when he was installed as Council president by the newly-seated City Council on November 24, 2009. His tenure as Mayor ended when current Mayor William A. Bell, took office on January 26, 2010. Royal and his wife have three children. (*)
(*) see Source on page 144
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Outstanding Achiever 1966Jimmy Donal "Jimbo" Wales was born on August 8, 1966 in Huntsville, Alabama. Wales received his BA in finance from Auburn University and started with the PhD finance program at the University of Alabama, where he left with a Master's. After that, he took courses offered in the PhD finance program at Indiana University. He taught at both universities during his postgraduate studies, but did not write the doctoral dissertation required to earn a PhD. In March 2000, Wales started a peer-reviewed, open-content encyclopedia, Nupedia ("the free encyclopedia"), and hired Larry Sanger to be its editor-in-chief. After Sanger publicly proposed on January 10, 2001, the idea of using a Wiki to create an encyclopedia, Wales installed Wiki software on a server and authorized Sanger to pursue the project under his supervision. Sanger dubbed the project "Wikipedia" and, with Wales, laid down the founding principles and content, establishing an Internet-based community of contributors during that year. Neither Sanger nor Wales expected very much from the Wikipedia initiative. Wales, anticipating "complete rubbish", hoped that if they were lucky, Wikipedia might yield a couple of rough draft entries for Nupedia. To the surprise of Sanger and Wales, within a few days of launching the number of articles on Wikipedia had outgrown that of Nupedia, and a small collective of editors had formed. Many of the early contributors to the site were familiar with the model of the Free Culture Movement, and, like Wales, many of them sympathized with the Open-Source Movement. Wales has said that he was initially so worried with the concept of open editing, anyone can edit the encyclopedia, that he would awake during the night and monitor what was being added. As Wikipedia expanded and its public profile grew, Wales took on the role of the project's spokesperson and promoter through speaking engagements and media appearances. His work with Wikipedia, which has become the world's largest encyclopedia, caused Time magazine to name him to its 2006 list of the world's most influential people.
Thoughts and Influence: Wales is a self-avowed "Objectivist to the core", referring to the philosophy developed by writer Ayn Rand in the mid-20th century emphasizing rationality and individualism. Wales first encountered the philosophy through reading Rand's novel The Fountainhead while an undergraduate and in 1992 founded an electronic mailing list devoted to "Moderated Discussion of Objectivist Philosophy". Though he has stated that the philosophy "colors everything I do and think", he has said "I think I do a better job—than a lot of people who self-identify as Objectivists—of not pushing my point of view on other people."When asked about Rand's influence by Brian Lamb in his appearance on C-SPAN's Q&A in September 2005, Wales cited integrity and "the virtue of independence" as important to him personally. When asked what was his political philosophy at the time of the interview, Wales reluctantly labeled himself a libertarian, qualifying his remark by referring to the United States Libertarian Party as "lunatics" and citing "freedom, liberty, basically individual rights, that idea of dealing with other people in a matter that is not initiating force against them" as his guiding principles. (*) (*) see Source on page 144
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Chapter VI
Institutions of Higher Learning 97
Institutions of Higher Learning Alabama Agricultural and Mechanical University: Alabama Agricultural and Mechanical University, also known as Alabama A&M University or AAMU, is a public, historically Black University, Land-grant university located in Normal, Madison County, Alabama. AAMU is a member school of the Thurgood Marshall Scholarship Fund.
History: Alabama A&M was originally established by an act of the Alabama State Legislature in 1873 as the State Normal School and University for the Education of the Colored Teachers and Students. Peyton Finley introduced twin bills in the State Board of Education for the establishment of four "normal" schools for whites and four for Blacks in 1875. In that same year, William Hooper Councill became founder of Alabama A&M University. By 1878, the State appropriation increased to $2,000 and the school changed its name to the State Normal and Industrial School. Industrial training began in 1883. In 1885, the name was changed to State Normal and Industrial School of Huntsville. By 1890, the students numbered 300, with 11 teachers, the school site became known as Normal, Alabama, and a post office was established. Students were called "Normalites." In 1891, the school was designated as a land-grant college through legislative enactment February 13 and received funds as a land-grant college under the terms of the Morrill Act of 1890. The name was changed to the State Agricultural and Mechanical College for Negroes. In 1896 the name changed to The State Agricultural and Mechanical College for Negroes. In 1919, the school became the State Agricultural and Mechanical Institute for Negroes, and in 1948 it was renamed the Alabama Agricultural and Mechanical College. In 1939, the State Board of Education granted authority to offer course work on the senior college level. In 1949, the name changed to Alabama A&M College. AAMU became fully accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools in 1963. Finally, in June 1969, the school adopted its current name. In 2008, Alabama Examiners of Public Accounts reported financial problems at the school, including $1.2 million of missing funds. The 2008 audit covered the period of former President John Gibson, spanning 2002 through 2005. On March 31, 2008, the school's Trustees fired Gibson's successor, Robert R. Jennings on the grounds that Jennings had given his assistant paid leave. (cont.) 98
Institutions of Higher Learning AAMU (cont.)
Campus: On May 1, 1875, the school opened with a state appropriation of $1,000, 61 pupils, and two teachers at its first location on Clinton Street in Huntsville. In 1881, the school was moved to first school-owned property on West Clinton Street (the land upon which the Von Braun Center is presently located) known as the "Dement Place." The property on West Clinton Street was deeded to the State of Alabama by trustees in 1884. In 1885, the state appropriations were increased to $4,000 and a building erected for industrial training through $1,000 grant from the Slater Fund. On September 30, 1891 the present site of 182.73 acres (739,000 m²) was purchased. The school expanded to include agriculture and home economics and Palmer Hall (named for State Superintendent Solomon Palmer) and (Governor Thomas) Seay Hall were built with student labor. The first library on the campus was built with funds from the Carnegie Foundation in 1904 for $12,000, and was named for its benefactor, Andrew Carnegie. In the 1940s, it was remodeled at a cost of $70,000 and provided additional book stacks and reading rooms. The library was two stories tall, and with a little over 4,000 square feet (370 m²); it served several purposes and housed the offices of the President, Business Manager and Treasurer, Home and Farm Demonstration Agents, the U.S. Post Office at Normal, and on the second floor, living quarters for male faculty. In 1947, the library was enlarged 5,000 square feet (460 m²), which reflected the college's growth. So rapid was the college's student growth that they even outgrew the nearly 10,000 square foot (930 m²) library, and in 1962, a new Reference Annex was added. In January 1968, a new 60,000 square foot (5,600 m²) library was completed and occupied and was named in honor of Dr. Drake. It was designed to house 300,000 volumes and 1,000 students. In 1972, the Educational Media Center and the Library merged to form the Learning Resources Center, which incorporates interactive and multi-media. In 2002 the competition of the latest renovation saw the [LRC] become a 75,000-square-foot (7,000 m2) structure now housing over 400,000 volumes, digital research sources and other student oriented services. In 1911, McCormick (Hospital) Hall and Councill Domestic Science Building were erected and Bibb Graves Hall was constructed in 1929. In 1994, the Mamie Labon Foster Student Living/Learning Complex erected. Groundbreaking was held for new School of Business facility in 1995 and stadium and residence hall construction began. In 2001, earth work began on new School of Engineering and Technology, library renovations underway and the athletic complex was expanded. The Engineering and Technology building construction was completed in 2002 and opened for classes in January 2003. The Learning Resources Center renovations were completed in 2002 . The renovation added over 15,000 square feet (1,400 m²), an interactive Distance Learning Auditorium, conference, study and class rooms, lounges, and computer lab. (cont.) 99
Institutions of Higher Learning AAMU (cont.)
Student activities: Athletics: Alabama A&M's sports teams participate in NCAA Division I (Football Championship Subdivision, formerly I-AA for football) in the Southwestern Athletic Conference (SWAC). Alabama A&M's colors are maroon and white and their mascot is the Bulldog. The Alabama A&M Department of Athletics sponsors men's intercollegiate basketball, football, baseball, cross country, golf, tennis and track & field along with women's intercollegiate tennis, basketball, soccer, track, cross country, bowling, volleyball and softball. Also offered are men's and women's swimming clubs. The football team's home games are played at Louis Crews Stadium. Both men's and women's basketball home games are played in Elmore Gymnasium. As of the end of 2010, the school has dropped men's soccer due to budget cuts. In 2005, the men's basketball team won its first SWAC regular season and tournament championship. In 2006, the football team won its first SWAC Championship.
WJAB: Alabama A&M University is the licensee for National Public Radio affiliate station WJAB 90.9which operates 24 hours a day, seven days a week on campus.
Alabama A&M University Choir: In May 2008, the Alabama A&M University Choir was slated to participate in the American Choral Music Festival in Leipzig, Germany. In 2007, the choir became the first HBCU choir to be invited to attend the American Choral Festival in Germany On Thursday, January 21, 2010 the choir performed a historical concert at the Alabama Music Educators Association (AMEA) Annual Conference. This was a historical event because the choir was the first HBCU Choir in the state to perform at that conference.
Telecommunications Program: In 2008, Telecommunications students played an active role on campus. Katherine Mitchell and Alexandria Jackson created the A&M's news show Hump Day. In 2009, Brandon Blevins and Brandon "Wizeman" Lewis created a series of Alabama A&M University short films including Ebony Fire, Tone of Demise 2 and Matters of the Heart.
Dairy Team: In 2009, the AAMU Dairy Team captured silver honors in the 8th National North American Intercollegiate Dairy Challenge. (cont.) 100
Institutions of Higher Learning AAMU (cont.)
Notable alumni: Name Don Calloway
Class year
Notability
2002
Politician, Member of the Missouri House of Representatives from the 71st district Former National Football League player (2 time Pro-Bowler, 4 time Super Bowler)
Howard Ballard Mfana Futhi Bhembe
2008
Minister and community leader in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Father of former Mississippi State University head football coach Sylvester Croom Jr.
Sylvester Croom, Sr.
L. Vann Pettaway
Former soccer player for the Bulldogs who went on to play in soccer leagues in Swaziland and in Major League Soccer.
1980
Men's head basketball coach
Cleon Jones
Former Major League Baseball player
Brick Haley
Defensive line coach for the Chicago Bears
Jean Harbor
1986
Former soccer player for the Bulldogs who went on to play in various soccer leagues in Nigeria and the United States
Marc Lacy
1991
Author, spoken word poet, lecturer, and government contractor
Sun Ra
attended
National Football League Hall of Fame member, former Pittsburgh Steelers player and four time Pro-Bowler
John Stallworth
Ruben Studdard
Jazz musician
attended
American Idol season 2 winner
Barry Wagner
Arena Football League player
Michael Crooms
Music Producer
Robert Mathis
National Football League player
Bama Boyz
Music Producers
Triena Pitts
Educator/Music Producers
(*) see Source on page 144
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References
Institutions of Higher Learning Alabama State University: Alabama State University was founded 1867, is a historically Black University located in Montgomery, Alabama. ASU is a member school of the Thurgood Marshall Scholarship
History: Alabama State University’s 142-year history is a legacy of perseverance, progress and promise. The ASU movement began with the impetus to establish a school for Black Alabamians. The Civil War resulted in not only the end of slavery, but also in the opportunity for Blacks to have the right to education. With the Northern victory, Black Southerners, with the assistance of Northern White missionaries and the leaders of African-American churches, set out to establish educational institutions for the freedmen. ASU was born in that Movement. ASU is the global entity it is today because of the fortitude of nine freed Slaves from Marion, Ala., who sought to build a school for African-Americans previously denied the right to an education. The foresight of these men, now remembered as the “Marion Nine,” created what is now known as Alabama State University. Alabama State University founded in 1856 as the Lincoln Normal School of Marion in Marion. In December 1873, the State Board accepted the transfer of title to the school after a legislative act was passed authorizing the State to fund a Normal School, and George N. Card was named President. Thus, in 1874, this predecessor of Alabama State University became America's first state-supported educational institution for Blacks. This began ASU’s rich history as a “Teacher’s College.” In 1878, the second president, William Paterson, was appointed. He is honored as a founder of Alabama State University and was the president for 37 of the first 48 years of its existence. Paterson was instrumental in the move from Marion to Montgomery in 1887. In 1887, the university opened in its new location in Montgomery but an Alabama State Supreme Court ruling forced the school to change its name; thus, the school was renamed the Normal School for Colored Students. In the decades that followed Lincoln Normal School became a junior college and in 1928 became a full four-year institution. In 1929 it became State Teachers College, Alabama State College for Negroes in 1948 and Alabama State College in 1954. In 1969, the State Board of Education, then the governing body of the university, approved a name change; the institution became Alabama State University. (*) (*) see Source on page 144
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Institutions of Higher Learning ASU (cont.) The 1995 Knight vs. Alabama remedial decree transformed ASU into a comprehensive regional institution paving the way for two new undergraduate programs, four new graduate programs, diversity scholarship funding and endowment, funding to build a state-of-the art health sciences facility and a facility renewal allocation to refurbish three existing buildings. WVAS-FM was launched on June 15, 1984, beaming 25,000 watts of power from the fifth floor of the Levi Watkins Learning Center for two years before moving to its current location at Thomas Kilby Hall. Today, WVAS has grown to 80,000 watts and enjoys a listenership that spans 18 counties, reaching a total population of more than 651,000. In recent years, the station has also begun streaming its broadcast via the Web, connecting a global audience to the university. The early 1990s witnessed the beginning of WAPR-FM (Alabama Public Radio), which Alabama State University and Troy University, both of which already held station licenses of their own, cooperated with the University of Alabama in building and operating. WAPR-FM 88.3— Selma - The signal reaches the region known colloquially as the Black Belt, about 13 counties in the west central and central parts of Alabama, including the City of Montgomery.
Academics: Alabama State University has an enrollment of more than 5,000 students from more than 40 states and six countries. Alabama State University has eight degree-granting colleges or schools or divisions: College of Business Administration; College of Education; College of Health Sciences; College of Liberal Arts & Social Sciences; College of Science, Mathematics & Technology; College of Visual & Performing Arts; Division of Aerospace Studies.
Continuing Education: Alabama State offers 47 Degree programs including 31 Bachelors’, 11 Masters’, two Education Specialist and three Doctoral programs (Doctorate in Educational Leadership, Policy, and Law (EdD), Clinical Doctorate in Physical Therapy (DPT), Doctorate in Microbiology (PhD). Alabama State is accredited by the Commission on Colleges of the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools, the Association of Collegiate Business Schools and Programs, the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education, the National Association of Schools of Music, the National Association of Directors of Teacher Education and Certification, the Accreditation Council for Occupational Therapy, the Commission of Accreditation of Allied Health Education Programs, Commission on Accreditation for Health Informatics and Information Management Education (CAHIIM, the National Association of Schools of Theatre (NAST) and the Council of Social Work Education. (*)
(*) see Source on page 144
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Institutions of Higher Learning ASU (cont.)
Campus: ASU's urban, 172-acre (0.70 km2) campus has Georgian-style red-brick classroom buildings and architecturally contemporary structures. ASU is home to the state-of-the-art 7,400-seat academic and sports facility the ASU Acadome; the Levi Watkins Learning Center; a five-story brick structure with more than 267,000 volumes, the state-of-the-art John L. Buskey Health Sciences Center; which is 80,000 square feet (7,400 m2) facility which houses classrooms, offices, an interdisciplinary clinic, three therapeutic rehabilitation labs, state-of-the-art Gross Anatomy Lab, Laboratory for the Analysis of Human Motion (LAHM), a Women’s Health/Cardiopulmonary lab, and a health sciences computer lab, and WVAS-FM 90.7; the 80,000-watt, university operated public radio station.
Student life: More than 70 student organizations are chartered at Alabama State, including nine Greek-letter organizations, a full range of men’s and women’s intramural and intercollegiate sports, and 17 honors organizations. In addition to social, cultural and religious groups, there are musical opportunities, such as the marching and symphonic bands, the choir, and departmental organizations for most majors.
The Golden Ambassadors: The Golden Ambassadors are a select group of outstanding students who are the official greeting body for Alabama State University.
Student Publications: The students are served by two media publications, The Hornet Tribune (student newspaper) and The HORNET (the student yearbook).
Athletics: The Alabama State University Department of Athletics currently sponsors Men's Intercollegiate football, baseball, basketball, golf, tennis, track and cheerleading along with Women's Intercollegiate basketball, soccer, softball, bowling, tennis, track, volleyball, golf and cheerleading. Sports teams participate in NCAA Division I (FCS - Football Championship Subdivision for football) in the Southwestern Athletic Conference (SWAC), which it joined in 1982. The university's colors are black and old gold and their nickname is the Hornets. Currently in 2009, hornets Men Basketball team have won 2 regular season and SWAC championships in the past two years. (*)
(*) see Source on page 144
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Institutions of Higher Learning ASU (cont.)
Marching Hornets: The Marching Hornets have gained national recognition as a result of their participation in the halftime shows on NBC's national televised professional football games between the NY Jets vs. KC Chiefs on December 10, 1967, and CBS's nationally televised professional football game between the New Orleans Saints vs. the Green Bay Packers in 1969, the Atlanta Falcons and the New Orleans Saints in October 1976 and 1977; and the pre-game and halftime for the Cincinnati Bengal vs. Houston Oilers at Riverfront Stadium in Cincinnati, 1976. The band was twice televised on the Blue-Gray Football Classic, Montgomery, AL, in December 1976 and 1977. In 1980, The Marching Hornets put together a halftime show saluting the late, great Joe Louis. In 1985, the Marching Hornets were invited to perform at the second annual Freedom Bowl classic in Fulton Stadium, Atlanta, GA, representing the SWAC Conference. They also performed for the Atlanta Falcon vs. Chicago Bears in 1986, were they presented a tribute to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and were the Exhibition Band for the South Central Marching Band Classic in Homewood, AL., November 1, 1986. The Marching Hornets also performed at other classics and games such as the 1991 Bronze Classic in Atlanta, the 1991 Motor City Classic in Pontiac Michigan, the 1991 Alma Heritage Bowl in Miami, the 1992 Circle City Classic of Indianapolis, the 2000 Battle of the Bands in Mobile, AL, the 2003 and 2004 Detroit Football Classic, and the 2006 Battle of the Bands in Atlanta, Ga. The band appeared on the Ellen DeGeneres Show in 2007.
Stingettes: The Stingettes is the name of Alabama State University's dance line.
The Honey Bees: The Honey Bees are a dance team that dance during the football halftime performances.
The Bama State Collegians: The Bama State Collegians is a big band jazz orchestra sponsored by Alabama State University. In the 1930s, the ensemble was directed by noted jazz trumpeter, Erskine Hawkins, an inductee of both the Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame and the Alabama Music Hall of Fame. After moving to New York City, the Collegians, directed by Hawkins, became the Erskine Hawkins Orchestra and produced a string of national hit records, including "Tuxedo Junction", "After Hours", "Tippin' In" and others. The song "Tuxedo Junction", with its recordings by Hawkins and by the Glenn Miller Orchestra, became one of the anthems of World War II in America. (*)
(*) see Source on page 144
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Institutions of Higher Learning Bishop State Community College: Bishop State Community College, founded 1927, is a State-supported, two-year, public, historically Black college (HBCU) located in Mobile, Alabama U.S.A.
History: Bishop State Community College was founded in the summer of 1927, as a Branch of Alabama State College in Montgomery, Alabama. In its first nine years of operation, the College offered extension courses for active teachers during the summer. In September 1936, the two-year college was established. In August 1965, a legislative act officially declared "Alabama State College Branch Mobile Center" a state junior college. In November 1965, the College was named "Mobile State Junior College". The name was changed in September 1971 to "S.D. Bishop State Junior College" and again in 1989 to "Bishop State Community College". On August 22, 1991, the Alabama State Board of Education consolidated Southwest State Technical College and Carver State Technical College into Bishop State Community College.
Academics: Bishop State has six academic divisions and four technical divisions: • Education • Humanities • Natural Science and Mathematics • Business and Economics • Social Sciences • Health-Related Professions
Technical: • • • •
Workforce Development Commercial and Industrial Technology Consumer & Transportation Technology Engineering and Construction
Athletics: The Bishop State Community College Department of Athletics currently sponsors Men's Basketball, Women's Basketball, Men's Baseball, and Women's Fast-pitch Softball. Jessie Tompkins (Notable Alumni) was born in August 1959 in Bessemer, Alabama. Tompkins is a graduate from Bishop State Community College in Mobile, Alabama and The United States Sports Academy in Daphne, Alabama. and later from Alabama State University. Tompkins is a professional educator. He organized and developed the East Montgomery Track Club for youths in rural Montgomery, Alabama. (*) (*) see Source on page 144
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Institutions of Higher Learning Concordia College, Selma: Concordia College, Selma is a college of the Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod's Concordia University System, located in Selma, Alabama, in the United States. It is the only historically black college in the Concordia System.
History: Concordia College has grown much from its humble beginnings in 1922 as Alabama Luther College. Today, Concordia boasts a student body representing a diversity of geographic, ethnic, and socioeconomic backgrounds, as well as the distinctive status as the nation’s only Historically-Black Lutheran College or University (HBCU). Concordia’s beginning has its root in the desire of a woman named Rosa Young to provide good Christian education to the rural African-Americans of central Alabama. Through her tireless efforts, her school in Wilcox County which began with seven students had grown to 215 in just three terms. In 1914, however, the Mexican boll weevil devastated the cotton industry and economy in the area, and many of the parents were now unable to continue sending their children to Young’s school. In desperation to find financial help, Rosa Young wrote to the famed founder of the Tuskegee Institute, Booker T. Washington. About their correspondence, Rosa Young said, “In this letter he told me he was unable to help me in the least; but he would advise me to write to the Board of Colored Missions of the Lutheran Church. He said they were doing more for the colored race than any other denomination he knew of. He liked them because of the religious training which they were giving the colored people.” By the end of 1915, Young had followed Washington’s advice and written to the Lutheran Synodical Conference of North America for help. The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod, a member of the Lutheran Synodical Conference, responded favorably to Young’s letter and sent the Rev. Nils J. Bakke to assess the situation and report back. Reverend Bakke arrived on December 17, 1915 and on December 21, he returned to St. Louis, Missouri with his report. Bakke’s report was a plea for assistance in establishing a mission to the area. In January 1916, Bakke returned to Alabama, and by Easter 1916, had performed a total of 61 baptisms and 70 confirmations in Rosebud, Alabama, including that of Rosa Young herself. Within just a few years there were almost 30 new congregations, and plans were begun for a school. A conference held in Midway, near Miller’s Ferry in 1919 adopted a resolution petitioning the Synodical Conference for funds to begin a school for the purpose of training church workers. On November 13, 1922, in a rented cottage at 521 First Avenue, the first classes of Rosa Young’s new school were held in Selma, Alabama. As the student body continued to grow, the need for space became more pressing. On September 20, 1925, the first buildings on the present campus were dedicated to the glory of God. The next year, four women made up the school’s first graduating class. (*) (*) see Source on page 144
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Institutions of Higher Learning Daniel Payne College: Daniel Payne College, also known as the Payne Institute, Payne University and Greater Payne University, was a historically Black college in Birmingham, Alabama. It was associated with the African Methodist Episcopal Church and operated from 1889 to 1979. The college was named in honor of Daniel Payne, the sixth bishop of the A.M.E. Church and the first Black president of a college in the United States.
History: The college was originally founded in Selma in 1889. Its campus was located at 1525 Franklin Street and included the Bishop Gaines Hall as the primary building, two additional classroom buildings and Coppin Hall which served as a dormitory. The college stayed at that location through 1922. It then relocated to its Woodlawn location within the City of Birmingham. During its time in Woodlawn, the college was located at 6415 Washington Boulevard. By 1974, the college had to be relocated because of airport expansion and the building of interstate highways in the area. The street on which the college was located no longer exists, so it is impossible to visit the original location; however. A remnant of University Avenue that once led to the campus connects to the Messer Airport Highway. The college moved to a new campus at the southeast corner of Cherry Avenue and Daniel Payne Drive on the far northern edge of Birmingham, where new buildings were constructed in 1974. On April 4, 1977 a destructive tornado tore through the campus, severely damaging buildings. The damage, along with mounting financial problems, forced the school to file for bankruptcy in 1978 and subsequently close its doors in 1979. At the time of its closure, the college had 120 students enrolled on the 153 acres (0.239 sq mi; 0.619 km2) campus. Later a group of students sued the former president, claiming that he had mismanaged college funds. A court established the important precedent that students have a vested interest in the operation of the college which they attend.
Physical legacy: Although the college was closed, the city of Birmingham changed the name of Sayreton Road to Daniel Payne Drive in honor of the leader. The old campus still exists, although the dormitories and cafeteria are abandoned. Another building houses a public health clinic, and yet another was used as the headquarters for the African Methodist Episcopal Church in Alabama, until 2009, when the office was relocated to downtown Birmingham.(*) (*) see Source on page 144
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Institutions of Higher Learning Gadsden State Community College: Gadsden State Community College is a two-year institution of higher learning located in Gadsden, Alabama. The college's service area includes Calhoun, Cherokee, Cleburne, Etowah, and St. Clair.
Academics: The college enrolls 5,514 students and has been accredited by the Commission on Colleges of the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools since 2003.
History: The college has an intricate history as a result of the many mergers it has engaged in over the years. The current legal entity was formed in 2003 as a result of the merger of Harry M. Ayers State Technical College and Gadsden State Community College. Ayers State Technical College was founded in 1963 as a state trade school and converted in 1973 to a State Technical College. The predecessor Gadsden State Community College was created in 1985 as a result of the merger of Alabama Technical College (founded 1925), Gadsden State Technical Institute (founded 1960), and Gadsden State Junior College (founded 1965), by the Alabama State Board of Education. In 1997, the Gadsden State Technical Institute campus, now known as the Valley Street Campus, was designated a Historically Black College or University by the U.S. Department of Education.
Campus: As of 2009, the college has four campuses and two centers: the Wallace Drive Campus, the East Broad Campus, the Ayers Campus, the Valley Street Campus, the McClellan Center, and the Gadsden State Cherokee Center
Athletics: The college fields intercollegiate teams in men's tennis, basketball, and baseball, and women's basketball, cross country, softball, and volleyball as a member of the Alabama Community College Conference. The college's mascot is the Cardinal.(*)
(*) see Source on page 144
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Institutions of Higher Learning Miles College: Miles College is a historically Black college founded in 1898. It is located in Fairfield, Alabama, which is six miles (10 km) west of Birmingham, Alabama. It is a private liberal arts institution of the Christian Methodist Episcopal Church (CME Church). Miles College is also a member of the United Negro College Fund.
History: Miles College began organization efforts in 1893 and was founded in 1898 by the Colored Methodist Episcopal Church. It was chartered as Miles Memorial College, in honor of Bishop William H. Miles. In 1941 the name was changed to Miles College.
Academics and demographics: Miles is also accredited by the Commission on Colleges of the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (for the awarding of baccalaureate degrees), the Alabama State Department of Education, and the Council of Social Work Education. Miles College offers 25 Bachelor Degrees in the following divisions: Business and Accounting, Communications, Education, Humanities, Natural Sciences and Mathematics, Social and Behavioral Sciences.
Administration, Campus: The current president of Miles College is George French, Jr., a graduate of University of Louisville and Miles Law School. The college sits on 51 acres (210,000 m2) where there are over 16 facilities. Recently, Miles College purchased the Lloyd Noland Hospital site which will increase the size of the campus to 76 acres (310,000 m2). Sloan Field is named after the college's 13th president, Albert J. H. Sloan II.
Student activities, Marching Band: The college has organizations as Student Government Association, Honors Curriculum, Academic Clubs, religious organizations, National Pan-Hellenic Council organizations, general interest clubs as well as the Gospel/Concert Choirs. The Miles College band is known as the Purple Marching Machine (PMM). The Purple Marching Machine was established in 1996, under the guidance of Prof. Arthur Means Jr. With 200+ Members in the band. The current band director is now Mr. Donald Crawford.
Athletics: The Miles College Athletics Program currently competes in the Division II (NCAA) Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (SIAC). The program has men's and women's sports that include: basketball, football, volleyball, track, baseball, softball and cross country. Their mascot is the Golden Bears.(*) (*) see Source on page 144
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Institutions of Higher Learning Oakwood University: Oakwood University of Seventh-day Adventists, commonly referred to as Oakwood University, is a historically black university located in Huntsville, Alabama. It is owned and operated by the Seventh-day Adventist Church. A group of College constituents made the decision on December 2, 2007, to change the school's name from Oakwood College to Oakwood University, effective January 1, 2008. Oakwood is accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS) and the Department of Education of the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists to award the associate, baccalaureate, and master's degrees. The first master's degree offered by the University was the Master of Pastoral Studies Degree (January 2008). The first graduate students were conferred degrees on May 9, 2009. Oakwood also conferred its first honorary doctorate on May 9, 2009, to Wintley Phipps, internationally renowned musician and the 2009 Commencement speaker. Oakwood University has been a member institution of the United Negro College Fund since 1964. Oakwood has performed well in external rankings, having listed on a regular basis among the top 20 institutions of higher learning that provide African-Americans to medical schools. Oakwood University owns and operates the Christian radio station WJOU 90.1 FM, formerly WOCG.
History: Oakwood University was founded in 1896 as Oakwood Industrial School. The school was located on land that had previously been a plantation. Legend has it that the school was named for a stand of oak trees found on the campus. The school first opened in 1896 with 16 students. Classes were offered in various trades and skills. In 1904, the name was changed to Oakwood Manual Training School, and it was chartered to grant degrees in 1907. In 1917, the school offered its first instruction at the postsecondary level, and in that same year it changed its name to Oakwood Junior College. In 1944, the name Oakwood College was adopted. The first Bachelor’s Degrees were awarded in 1945. Oakwood College received its initial accreditation from SACS in 1958, and in 2007, the college received approval to award graduate degrees. In response to this higher accreditation, the school's Board of Trustees and constituents voted to change the name of the institution again to Oakwood University of Seventh-day Adventists.
Academics: Departments: • Biological Sciences; Business and Information Systems; Chemistry; Communication; Education; English and Foreign Languages; Family and Consumer Science; Health and Physical Education; History and Political Science; Math and Computer Sciences; Music; Nursing; Psychology; Religion and Theology and Social Work.(*) (*) see Source on page 144
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Institutions of Higher Learning Selma University: Selma University is a private, historically Black, Bible College in Selma, Alabama. It is affiliated with the Alabama State Missionary Baptist Convention.
History: The institution was founded in 1878 as the Alabama Baptist Normal and Theological School to train African Americans as ministers and teachers. The school purchased the former Selma Fair Grounds later that same year, moving into the fair's old exposition buildings. Selma University was founded in 1878, with such noted men as the Reverends William H. McAlpine, James A. Foster and R. Murrell leading the effort. The purpose was for preparation of better leaders for the church and schoolroom. At a meeting in Mobile , Alabama in 1874, the first trustees were elected - they were C. O. Booth, Alexander Butler, William H. McAlpine, Holland Thompson and H. J. Europe. The school opened four years later in 1878, in the Saint Phillips Street Baptist Church of Selma. The Saint Phillip Street Baptist Church later became the First Baptist Church . The Convention voted to locate the school in Selma in 1877. In 1881, the school was incorporated by an act of the legislature under the name of Alabama Baptist Normal and Theological School of Selma. On May 14, 1908 , the name was officially changed to Selma University. The Stone-Robinson Library was erected in 1960 and named for Miss Susie Stone, Secretary of the Women's Convention and Reverend U. J. Robinson, President of the Alabama State Missionary Baptist Convention. The Jemison-Owens Auditorium/Gymnasium was completed in 1966. In 1988, the science complex was expanded with the addition of an annex that houses an auditorium, several instructional laboratories, and two computer facilities, with offices for faculty. The computer-equipped writing laboratory in Dinkins Hall, the mathematics laboratory in the Science addition, (completed in 1989) and the expanded library facility which houses a center for audiovisual instruction and computer-aided self-study (completed in 1990) are the most recent improvement on campus In the late eighties, Selma University developed from a four-year bachelor program in Religion and two year liberal arts program to a four-year institution. In the Fall of 2000, Selma University began its transformation from a Christian liberal arts college to a Bible college. In February 2001, Selma University received applicant status and in February 2005 the school received candidate status with the Commission on Accreditation of the Association for Biblical Higher Education in Orlando , Florida . On February 20, 2009 , Selma University received Initial Accreditation from the Commission on Accreditation of the Association for Biblical Higher Education in Canada and the United States . (*)
(*) see Source on page 144
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Institutions of Higher Learning Shelton State Community College: Shelton State Community College is a two-year community college located in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Operated by the Alabama State Department of Postsecondary Education, Shelton is one of the largest two-year colleges in the State. Approximately 7,000 students are enrolled in some form of coursework, including around 3,000 full-time students. Shelton State is also designated as the Alabama Junior College of the Fine Arts by the State Legislature. The Alabama Stage and Screen Hall of Fame is located here, and Theatre Tuscaloosa is based in the Bean Browne Theatre at Shelton. The Alabama Fire College and Personnel Standards Commission is also located on the Martin campus of Shelton State. The Fire College is responsible for training paid and volunteer fire fighters and EMTs throughout the State.
History: The Tuscaloosa Trade School was created by the Alabama State Board of Education in 1950 and opened for classes in 1952. Its campus was located Southeast of downtown, near what is now the intersection of 15th Street/Veterans Memorial Drive and McFarland Boulevard. In 1954, the school was renamed JP Shelton Trade School in honor of one of the State Legislature who lobbied for the opening of the trade school in Tuscaloosa. In 1976, the school's name was changed to Shelton State Technical College. Shelton State Community College was established on January 1, 1979, by the state Board of Education by combining Shelton State and the Tuscaloosa branch of Brewer State. The two campuses remained separate, with the 15th Street campus acting as the vocational and technical campus and the Skyland Boulevard campus serving as the junior college campus. In 1994, Fredd State merged with Shelton State. The new institution retained the name of Shelton State Community College, and the president of Shelton State was named president of the consolidated institution. Around this time, Shelton broke ground on a new campus on Alabama Highway 69 in the growing Taylorville suburb of Tuscaloosa. The new campus - named Martin campus opened in 1997-98 and consolidated the 15th Street and Skyland Boulevard campuses into one. The Fredd campus remained on MLK Boulevard but was renovated extensively to match the architecture of Martin campus.
Athletics: Shelton State fields six varsity sports teams in the Alabama Community College Conference (ACCC) in Division I of the National Junior College Athletic Association (NJCAA). Three of the sports are women's (soccer, softball and basketball), two are men's (baseball and basketball), and one is coed (cheerleading).(*) (*) see Source on page 144
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Institutions of Higher Learning Stillman College: Stillman College is a historically Black liberal arts college founded in 1876 and located in the West Tuscaloosa area of Tuscaloosa, Alabama.
History: Stillman College, authorized by the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the United States in 1875, held its first classes in 1876 and was chartered as a legal corporation by the State of Alabama in 1895. At that time, the name was changed from Tuscaloosa Institute to Stillman Institute. The institute was a concept initiated by the Reverend Dr. Charles Allen Stillman, pastor of First Presbyterian Church of Tuscaloosa. The mandate for the Institution expanded over the years and it acquired its present campus tract of over 100 acres (0.40 km2). A junior and senior high school was organized and the Institute established a junior college program, which was accredited in 1937. In addition, between 1930 and 1946, it operated a hospital and nurse training school. Under the administration of Dr. Samuel Burney Hay (1948-1965), the school sought to expand into a senior liberal arts institution and in 1948 the name was officially changed to Stillman College. The following year, Stillman expanded into a four-year college and graduated its first baccalaureate class in 1951. The College was accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools in 1953. Under Dr. Hay, seven new buildings were constructed: a gymnasium, a library, an administration-classroom building, two women’s residence halls, a prayer chapel, and a student center. Dr. Harold N. Stinson (1967-1980) was the first African American to assume the presidency. Under his dynamic leadership, new programs designed to improve educational quality were instituted, and the physical plant was expanded with the addition of two men’s residence halls, faculty apartments, a maintenance building, and a mathematics-science center. Snedecor Hall, Batchelor Building, and Birthright Auditorium were renovated. Constance M. Rizzi (1974-1978) was the 1st non-Black Graduate of Stillman College in 1978. She was also was one of original Founders of the Stillman College Dance Team. Under the leadership of the College’s fourth president, Dr. Cordell Wynn (1982-1997). The enrollment grew beyond 1,000 students; the endowment increased significantly; and the educational program was broadened to include the Stillman Management Institute and a community-service component. On July 1, 1997, Dr. Ernest McNealey was named the fifth president. Since then, Stillman has garnered national attention in the areas of technology, athletics and scholarly pursuits. The College received the National Innovation in Technology Award by Apple Computers and continues to be on the cusp of technological innovations in higher education. (*) (*) see Source on page 144
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Institutions of Higher Learning Talladega College: Talladega College, located in Talladega, Alabama, is a private, liberal arts college. It holds the distinction as Alabama's oldest historically Black college. As of 2009 the school received full SACS accreditation.
History: The history of Talladega College began on November 20, 1865, when two former Slaves William Savery and Thomas Tarrant, both of Talladega, met in convention with a group of new freedmen in Mobile, Alabama. From this meeting came the commitment, "...We regard the education of our children and youth as vital to the preservation of our liberties, and true religion as the foundation of all real virtue, and shall use our utmost endeavors to promote these blessings in our common country." With this as their pledge, Savery and Tarrant, aided by General Wager Swayne of the Freedmen's Bureau, began in earnest to provide a school for the children of former Slaves of the community. Their leadership resulted in the construction of a one-room school house using lumber salvaged from an abandoned carpenter's shop. The school overflowed with pupils from its opening and soon it was necessary to move into larger quarters. Meanwhile, the nearby Baptist Academy was about to be sold under mortgage default. This building had been built in 1852-53 with the help of Slaves - including Savery and Tarrant. A speedy plea was sent to General Swayne for its purchase. General Swayne in turn persuaded the American Missionary Association to buy the building and some 20 acres (81,000 m2) of land for $23,000. The grateful parents renamed the building Swayne School and it opened in November 1867 with about 140 pupils. Thus a building constructed with Slave labor for white students became the home of the state's first college dedicated to servicing the educational needs of Blacks. In 1869, Swayne School was issued a charter as Talladega College by the Judge of Probate of Talladega County. Swayne Hall has remained in service as the symbol and spirit of the beginning of the college. (*)
(*) see Source on page 144
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Institutions of Higher Learning Talladega (cont.)
Campus: Talladega College is located on the outskirts of the City of Talladega. The campus consists of 50 acres (200,000 m2) with 17 primary buildings 3 of which are National Historic Landmarks. The Savery Library completed in 1939 was built to replace a 1907 structure built with a donation from Andrew Carnegie. The Library houses hundreds of thousands of serials, a record Room, a fully equipped computer laboratory, a unique Archives Room, and the historic Amistad murals painted by Hale Woodruff. Embedded in the floor of the library is a mural of La Amistad that school tradition says must never be stepped upon. The revolt that took place upon the ship is depicted upon the surrounding walls. Finally the mezzanine floor of the library houses the Galangue Room. This room contains an extensive collection of Angolan and Nigerian artifacts.
Andrews Hall, built in 1910, houses the Music Department and the Education Department. It is named for George Whitfield Andrews, D.D., Dean of Theological Department from 1875 to 1908.
Arthur D. Shores Hall, constructed in 1974, is named for the late Attorney Arthur D. Shores, Class of 1927, who served for many years as a member and chairman of the College Board of Trustees.
De Forest Chapel, built in 1903 in commemoration of the life and service of the Rev. Henry Swift De Forest, D.D., President of the College from 1879 to 1896. DeForest Chapel was renovated in 1996 and rededicated November 1996. De Forest was the father of inventor Lee De Forest. Fanning Refectory, built in 1928 from a legacy of Dr. David H. Fanning of Worcester, Massachusetts. The building contains the student and faculty dining rooms.
Juliette Derricotte House,
built in 1940-41, was the gift of the Harkness Foundation and named for Juliette Derricotte, Class of 1918, who at the time of her death in 1932 was a member of the Board of Trustees. Formerly a staff residence and guest house, it was converted into a women's honors dormitory in 1988.
Silsby Science Hall, constructed in 1926, was named for Dr. E. C. Silsby, who was a member of the College faculty for 37 years. The building was a gift of the General Education Board and friends and alumni of the College. It contains the laboratories and classrooms for the Natural Sciences and Mathematics. (*)
(*) see Source on page 144
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Institutions of Higher Learning Tuskegee University:
Tuskegee University is a private, historically Black University located in Tuskegee, Alabama, United States. It is a member school of the Thurgood Marshall Scholarship Fund. The campus has been designated as the Tuskegee Institute National Historic Site, a National Historic Landmark.
History: The school was the dream of Lewis Adams, formerly enslaved, and George W. Campbell, a former slaveholder. Adams could read, write and speak several languages despite having no formal education. He was an experienced tinsmith, harness-maker and shoemaker and Prince Hall Freemason, an acknowledged leader of the African-American community in Macon County, Alabama. After the American Civil War, the South struggled to rebuild its Cities and economy. Still dependent on agriculture, most of its population lived in rural areas without many economic opportunities. As education of Slaves and free Blacks had been prohibited by law before the war, most blacks were still illiterate, although both adults and children eagerly sought education where available. Adams was especially concerned that, without an education, the freedmen would not be able to support themselves. Campbell had become a merchant and a banker. He had little experience with educational institutions, but he was willing to contribute his resources and efforts to make the school a success. W.F. Foster, a White candidate for the Alabama Senate, came to Adams with a question. What would Adams want in return for securing the votes of African Americans in Macon County for him and another White candidate? Adams asked for a normal school to be established in the area for Blacks, a teacher's college to raise a generation and more of teachers for his people. Adams helped secure the Black community's support for Foster and his fellow candidate. Foster worked with the fellow legislator Arthur L. Brooks to draft and pass legislation authorizing $2,000 to create such a school. Adams, Thomas Dyer, and M.B. Swanson formed Tuskegee's first board of commissioners. They wrote to Hampton Institute in Virginia, asking the school to recommend someone to head their new school. Hampton Principal Samuel C. Armstrong, a former Union general, believed that he knew just the man for the job: 25 year-old Booker T. Washington. (cont.) 117
Institutions of Higher Learning Tuskegee (cont.)
Booker T. Washington's leadership: Washington was a former enSlaved African American who, after working menial labor jobs as a freedman, had sought a formal education and worked his way through Hampton Institute. He then studied at Wayland Seminary in Washington, D.C., where he graduated in 18xx. (It is now Virginia Union University located in Richmond, Virginia). He returned to Hampton, where he worked as a teacher. Armstrong, who knew him well, strongly recommended him to Tuskegee's founders in Alabama. Lewis Adams and Tuskegee's governing body hired Washington, although such positions at other colleges at the time were typically held by Whites. Under Washington's leadership, the new normal school (for the training of teachers) opened on July 4, 1881 in space borrowed from a church. The following year, Washington bought the grounds of a former plantation and built the institute there, where the campus is still located. The school was a living example of Washington's dedication to the pursuit of self-reliance. In addition to training teachers, he believed that the practical skills needed to succeed at farming or other trades typical of the rural South, where most of his students came from, also needed to be taught. He wanted his students to see labor as practical, but also as beautiful and dignified. He had students construct most of the new buildings as part of their work-study programs. Many students earned all or part of their expenses through the construction, agricultural, and domestic work associated with the campus. Among the faculty recruited by Washington was the botanist George Washington Carver, one of the university's most notable professors.
Legacy: In 1922, Reol Productions, owned by race film producer Robert Levy, made a documentary titled The Leader of His Race. The Tuskegee Institute approached the production company to tell the story of Washington, whose memory they revered. Following this, Tuskegee commissioned a second documentary, choosing Levy again as the producer. This film, A Tuskegee Pilgrimage, was a collection of interviews with faculty and students that could be used as a marketing tool.
Presidents of the Institute: Robert Russa Moton was the successor to Booker T. Washington after his death in 1915, and the second president of Tuskegee Institute. Eleanor Roosevelt corresponded with F.D. Patterson, the third president of the Tuskegee Institute, and lent her support to the Institute whenever she was able to do so. In 1985, Tuskegee Institute achieved university status and was renamed Tuskegee University. (*) (*) see Source on page 144
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Institutions of Higher Learning Tuskegee (cont.)
Notable alumni: Name Amelia Boynton Robinson
Class year 1927
Robert Beck
Notability International Civil and Human Rights Activist who was the first woman from Alabama to run United States Congress in 1964 (affectionately known as "Queen Mother Amelia") 1970s writer Iceberg Slim
Charles William Carpenter
1909
Baptist minister and Civil Rights activist
Alice Marie Coachman
1942
American athlete who specialized in high jump, and was the first Black woman to win an Olympic gold medal
Leon Crenshaw
Former NFL player
Ralph Ellison
Scholar, Author of the Invisible Man
Milton C. Davis
1971
Lawyer who researched and advocated for the pardon of Clarence Norris, the last surviving Scottsboro Boy
Vera King Farris
1959
President of Richard Stockton College of New Jersey from 1983–2003
Drayton Florence
Current NFL player
Isaac Fisher
Educator, taught at Hampton University and Fisk
Alexander N. Green
U.S. Representative from Texas's 9th congressional district
Dr.Marvalene Hughes
president of Dillard University
General Daniel "Chappie" James
1942
Lonnie Johnson (inventor)
US Air Force Fighter pilot, who in 1975 became the first African American to reach the rank of four star General. Inventor of the Super Soaker and former NASA aerospace engineer
Tom Joyner
1971
American radio host whose daily program, The Tom Joyner Morning Show, is syndicated across the United States and heard by over 10 million radio listeners.
Marion Mann
1940
Former Dean of the College of Medicine at Howard
Claude McKay
1912
Jamaican writer and poet, Harlem Renaissance
Leo Morton
1968
Chancellor, University of Missouri at Kansas City
Albert Murray
1939
Literary and jazz critic, novelist and biographer
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References
Institutions of Higher Learning Tuskegee (cont.)
Notable alumni: (cont.) Name
Class year
Notability
Ray Nagin
1978
Former mayor of New Orleans, Louisiana
Gertrude Nelson
1929
Military, civilian, and American Red Cross nurse and college administrator from Louisiana
Dimitri Patterson
Current NFL player
Lawrence E. Roberts
A member of the Tuskegee Airmen and a Colonel in the United States Air Force
McCants Stewart
1896
70s R&B band including musician Lionel Richie
The Commodores George C. Royal
Lawyer, first African-American to practice law in Oregon
1943
Roderick V. Royal
Microbiologist who is currently professor emeritus at Howard University President of the Birmingham City Council
Herman J. Russell
1953
Founder and former President & CEO of H. J. Russell Construction Co., the largest minority owned construction company in the nation
Jake Simmons Jr.
1919
Oil broker and Civil Rights advocate
Danielle Spencer
Television actress, best known as Dee from the 1970s TV show, "What's Happening"
Frank Walker
Current NFL player
Keenan Ivory Wayans
Actor, Comedian and Television producer
Jack Whitten
Abstract painter
Dr. David Wilson
president of Morgan State University
Teddy Wilson
Jazz pianist
Ken Woodard
former NFL player
Elizabeth Evelyn Wright
educator and humanitarian, founder of Voorhees Col-
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References
Institutions of Higher Learning Tuskegee (cont.)
Tuskegee Airmen (1940’s) Background: War Department tradition and policy mandated the segregation of AfricanAmericans into separate military units staffed by "White" officers, as had been done previously with the 9th Cavalry, 10th Cavalry, 24th Infantry Regiment and 25th Infantry Regiment. When the appropriation of funds for aviation training created opportunities for pilot cadets, their numbers diminished the rosters of these older units. A further series of legislative moves by the United States Congress in 1941 forced the Army Air Corps to form an all-Black combat unit, despite the War Department's reluctance. Due to the restrictive nature of selection policies, the situation did not seem promising for African-Americans since, in 1940, the U.S. Census Bureau reported only 124 African-American pilots in the nation. The exclusionary policies failed dramatically when the Air Corps received an abundance of applications from men who qualified, even under the restrictive requirements. Many of the applicants already had participated in the Civilian Pilot Training Program, in which the historically Black Tuskegee Institute had participated since 1939. On July 19, 1941, the AAF began a program in Alabama to train Black Americans as military pilots. Primary flight training was conducted by the Division of Aeronautics of Tuskegee Institute, the famed school of learning founded by Booker T. Washington in 1881. In March 1942 George S. Roberts, Benjamin O. Davis Jr., Charles H. BeBow Jr., Mac Ross and Lemuel R. Curtis received the silver wings of Army Air Forces pilots. These men had completed standard Army flight classroom instruction and completed many hours of flying time. They were the first African-Americans to qualify as "Military Pilots" in any branch of the U.S. Armed Forces. This marked a milestone in U.S. military aviation for Black men. These five men are known today as the "Tuskegee Airmen". By the end of the war the 322nd had claimed over 400 Luftwaffe aircraft, a destroyer sunk only by machine gun fire, and numerous fuel dumps, trucks and trains. They flew more than 15,000 sorties and 1500 missions. The unit received recognition through official channels, and won two Presidential Unit Citations, 744 Air Medals, 150 Distinguished Flying Crosses, fourteen Bronze Stars and several Silver Stars. On March 29, 2007, President George W. Bush presents the Congressional Gold Medal to about 300 Tuskegee Airmen at the US Capitol rotunda in Washington, D.C.. (*)
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Institutions of Higher Learning Tuskegee (cont.)
Tuskegee syphilis experiment: (1932– 1972) The Tuskegee syphilis experiment (also known as the Tuskegee syphilis study or Public Health Service syphilis study) was a clinical study conducted between 1932 and 1972 in Tuskegee, Alabama, by the U.S. Public Health Service, to study the natural progression of untreated syphilis. The Public Health Service, working with the Tuskegee Institute, began the study in 1932. Investigators enrolled in the study 399 impoverished African-American sharecroppers from Macon County, Ala., infected with syphilis. For participating in the study, the men were given free medical exams, free meals and free burial insurance. They were never told they had syphilis, nor were they ever treated for it. According to the Centers for Disease Control, the men were told they were being treated for "bad blood," a local term used to describe several illnesses, including syphilis, anemia and fatigue. The 40-year study was controversial for reasons related to ethical standards, primarily because researchers failed to treat patients appropriately after the 1940s validation of penicillin as an effective cure for the disease. Revelation of study failures led to major changes in U.S. law and regulation on the protection of participants in clinical studies. Now studies require informed consent (with exceptions possible for U.S. Federal agencies which can be kept secret by Executive Order), communication of diagnosis, and accurate reporting of test results. By 1947 penicillin had become the standard treatment for syphilis. Choices might have included treating all syphilitic subjects and closing the study, or splitting off a control group for testing with penicillin. Instead, the Tuskegee scientists continued the study, withholding penicillin and information about it from the patients. In addition, scientists prevented participants from accessing syphilis treatment programs available to others in the area. The study continued, under numerous supervisors, until 1972, when a leak to the press resulted in its termination. Victims included numerous men who died of syphilis, wives who contracted the disease, and children born with congenital syphilis. The Tuskegee Syphilis Study, cited as "arguably the most infamous biomedical research study in U.S. history," led to the 1979 Belmont Report and the establishment of the Office for Human Research Protections (OHRP). It also led to federal regulation requiring Institutional Review Boards for protection of human subjects in studies involving human subjects. The Office for Human Research Protections (OHRP) manages this responsibility within the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). On May 16, 1997, President Bill Clinton formally apologized and held a ceremony for the Tuskegee study participants: "What was done cannot be undone. But we can end the silence. We can stop turning our heads away. We can look at you in the eye and finally say on behalf of the American people, what the United States government did was shameful, and I am sorry." (*) (*) see Source on page 144
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Institutions of Higher Learning (1856-1915) Booker T. Washington
was born April 5, 1856 on the Burroughs farm at the community of Hale's Ford . His mother Jane was a cook and his father was a White man from a nearby farm. In April of 1865, most of Virginia's Slaves were emancipated following the end of the American Civil War. He worked with his mother and other free Blacks as a salt-packer and in a coalmine. Leaving Malden at sixteen, Washington enrolled at the Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute, in Hampton, Va. From 1878 to 1879 he attended Wayland Seminary in Washington, DC, and returned to teach at Hampton. Soon, Hampton officials recommended him to become the first principal of Tuskegee Industrial Institute in Alabama.
Northern critics called Washington's followers the "Tuskegee Machine". After 1909, Washington was criticized by the leaders of the new NAACP, especially W. E. B. Du Bois, who demanded a stronger tone of protest for advancement of Civil Rights needs. Washington replied that confrontation would lead to disaster for the outnumbered Blacks, and that cooperation with supportive Whites was the only way to overcome pervasive racism in the long run. At the same time, he secretly funded litigation for Civil Rights cases, such as challenges to Southern Constitutions and laws that disenfranchised Blacks. In addition to his contributions in education, Washington wrote 14 books; his autobiography, Up From Slavery, first published in 1901, is still widely read today. During a difficult period of transition, he did much to improve the working relationship between the races. His work greatly helped Blacks to achieve higher education, financial power and understanding of the U.S. legal system. This led to a foundation of the skill set needed to support the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s and further adoption of important federal Civil Rights laws. Despite his travels and widespread work, Washington remained as principal of Tuskegee. Washington's health was deteriorating rapidly; he collapsed in New York City and was brought home to Tuskegee, where he died on November 14, 1915, at the age of 59. The cause of death was unclear, probably from nervous exhaustion and arteriosclerosis. He was buried on the campus of Tuskegee University near the University Chapel. Washington was married three times. In his autobiography Up From Slavery, he gave all three of his wives enormous credit for their work at Tuskegee and was emphatic that he would not have been successful without them. He was also the first African-American ever invited to the White House as the guest of a President – which led to a "scandal" for the inviting President, Theodore Roosevelt. (*)
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Institutions of Higher Learning (1864-1943) George Washington Carver was born a Slave on January 5, 1864 in Diamond Grove, Missouri. When George was an infant, he and his mother were kidnapped by Confederate night raiders who hoped to sell them elsewhere, a common practice. George and his mother were caught and returned to their owner. This episode caused a bout of respiratory disease that left him with a permanently weakened constitution. Because of this, he was unable to work as a hand and spent his time wandering the fields, drawn to the varieties of wild plants research and study. At the age of thirteen, due to his desire to attend the academy there, he relocated to the home of another foster family in Fort Scott, Kansas. After witnessing the beating to death of a Black man at the hands of a group of White men, George left Fort Scott. He subsequently attended a series of schools before earning his diploma at Minneapolis High School in Minneapolis, Kansas. Over the next five years, he sent several letters to colleges and was finally accepted at Highland College in Highland, Kansas. He traveled to the college, but he was rejected when they discovered that he was an African American. In early 1888, Carver obtained a $300 loan at the Bank of Ness City, stating he wanted to further his education, and by June of that year he had left the area In 1890, Carver started studying art and piano at Simpson College in Indianola, Iowa. His art teacher, Etta Budd, recognized Carver's talent for painting flowers and plants and convinced him to study botany at Iowa State Agricultural College in Ames. He transferred there in 1891 as the first Black student and later the first Black faculty member. In 1896, Carver was invited to lead the Agriculture Department at the five-year-old Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute, later Tuskegee University, by its founder, Booker T. Washington. Carver accepted the position, and remained there for 47 years, teaching former Slaves farming techniques for self-sufficiency. In response to Washington's directive to bring education to farmers, Carver designed a mobile school, called a "Jessup wagon" after the New York financier Morris Ketchum Jessup, who provided funding. Much of Carver's fame is based on his research into and promotion of alternative crops to cotton, peanuts and sweet potatoes. He wanted poor farmers to grow alternative crops both as a source of their own food and as a source of other products to improve their quality of life. The most popular of his 44 practical bulletins for farmers contained 105 food recipes that used peanuts. Carver died on January 5, 1943 at the age of 79 from complications resulting from a fall. Washington was an American scientist, botanist, educator, and inventor. (*) (*) see Source on page 144
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Chapter VII
NAACP
Beginning The Springfield Race Riot of 1908
was a mass civil disturbance in Springfield, Illinois, USA sparked by the transfer of two African American prisoners out of the City jail by the county sheriff. This act enraged many White citizens, who responded by burning Black-owned homes and businesses and killing Black citizens. By the end of the riot, there were at least seven deaths and US$200,000 in property damage. The riot led to the formation of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), a Civil Rights organization.
Incident leading to Riot On July 4, 1908, someone broke into the home of Clergy Ballard. Ballard awoke and rose to investigate, finding a man standing near his daughter's bed. The intruder fled the house and Ballard gave chase. After catching up with the intruder, Ballard's throat was slashed with a straight razor. Before he died, Ballard identified the assailant as Joe James, a Black man with a long record of minor crimes. White citizens of the town were enraged by this crime, thinking that the murder was the result of a thwarted sexual assault of a White woman by a Black man. A crowd of Whites caught James and beat him unconscious. The police rescued James, arrested him, and locked him in the City jail.(*) (*) see Source on page 144
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NAACP History National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)
is one of the oldest and most influential Civil Rights organizations in the United States. The NAACP was founded on February 12, 1909 by a diverse group composed of W.E.B. Du Bois (African American), Ida Wells-Barnett (African American), Henry Moskowitz (Jewish), Mary White Ovington (White), Oswald Garrison Villard (German-born White), and William English Walling (White, and son of a former Slave owning family), to work on behalf of the Rights of African Americans. Its name, retained in accord with tradition, is one of the last surviving uses of the term "Colored people". The group is based in Baltimore, Maryland.
History In 1905, a group of 32 prominent, outspoken African Americans met to discuss the challenges facing "People of Color" (a term that was used to describe those who are not White people) in the U.S. and possible strategies and solutions. Because hotels in the U.S. were segregated, the men convened, under the leadership of Harvard scholar W.E.B. Du Bois, at a hotel situated on the Canadian side of Niagara Falls. As a result, the group came to be known as the "Niagara Movement." A year later, three Whites joined the group: journalist William E. Walling; social worker Mary White Ovington; and Jewish social worker Henry Moskowitz. The fledgling group struggled for a time with limited resources and decided to broaden its membership in order to increase its scope and effectiveness. Solicitations for support went out to more than 60 prominent Americans of the day, and a meeting date was set for February 12 1909, intended to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the birth of President Abraham Lincoln. While the meeting did not occur until three months later, this date is often cited as the founding date of the organization. The Springfield Race Riot of 1908 in Lincoln's hometown of Springfield, Illinois the previous summer had highlighted the urgent need for a large Civil Rights Organization in the U.S. This event is often cited as the spark that initiated the formation of the NAACP. On May 30 1909, the "Niagara Movement" conference took place at New York City's Henry Street Settlement House, from which an organization of more than 40 individuals emerged, calling itself the "National Negro Committee." DuBois played a key role in organizing the event and presided over the proceedings. Also in attendance was African American journalist and anti-lynching crusader Ida B. Wells-Barnett, co-founder of the NAACP. The organization held its second conference in May of 1910, where members chose the name the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. The name was formally adopted May 30, and the NAACP incorporated a year later, in 1911. The association's charter delineated its mission: To promote equality of rights and to eradicate caste or race prejudice among the citizens of the United States; to advance the interest of Colored citizens; to secure for them impartial suffrage; and to increase their opportunities for securing justice in the courts, education for the children, employment according to their ability and complete equality before law. The conference resulted in a more viable, influential and diverse organization, where the leadership was predominantly White and heavily Jewish. In fact, at its founding, the NAACP had only one African American on its executive board, DuBois himself, and did not elect a Black president until 1975. The Jewish community contributed greatly to the NAACP's founding and continued financing. Jewish historian Howard Sachar writes in his book A History of Jews in America of how, "In 1914, Professor Emeritus Joel Spingarn of Columbia University became chairman of the NAACP and recruited for its board such Jewish leaders as Jacob Schiff, Jacob Billikopf, and Rabbi Stephen Wise." Early Jewish co-founders included Julius Rosenthal, Lillian Wald, Rabbi Emil G. Hirsch and Wise.
Fighting Jim Crow
in its early years, the NAACP concentrated on using the courts to overturn the Jim Crow statutes that legalized racial discrimination. In 1913, the NAACP organized opposition to President Woodrow Wilson's introduction of racial segregation into federal government policy. By 1914, the group had 6,000 members and 50 branches, and was influential in winning the right of African Americans to serve as officers in World War I. Six hundred African American officers were commissioned and 700,000 registered for the draft. The following year the NAACP organized a nationwide protest against D.W. Griffith's silent film Birth of a Nation, a film that glamorized the Ku Klux Klan. The NAACP also spent more than a decade seeking federal legislation barring lynching. (*)
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NAACP Co-Founders The First meeting of the NAACP were held February 12, 1909, member were:
Jane Addams
Sir Stannard Baker
Mary M. Bethune
Sophan Breckinridge
Jack Dewey
Clarence Darrow
W. E. B. Dubois
John Haynes
William D. Howells
Florence Kelly
Inez Milholland
Mary White Ovington
Josephine Ruffin
Charles Russell
Lincoln Steffens
Mary Talbert
Mary Church Terrell
Oswald G. Villard
Lillan Wald
Ida Wells
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NAACP Co-Founder (1860-1935) Jane Addams
was born on September 6, 1860 in Cedarville, Illinois. Jane Addams was the youngest of six children born into a prosperous, loving family Although she was the eighth child, two of her siblings died in infancy, leaving only six to mature. Her mother, Sarah Addams (nĂŠe Weber), died from tuberculosis during pregnancy when Jane was two years old.
Jane's father, John H. Addams, was the President of The Second National Bank of Freeport, an Illinois State Senator from 1854 to 1870, and owner of the local grain mill. He remarried when Jane was eight. Her father also was a founding member of the Republican Party and supported Abraham Lincoln. Jane was a first cousin twice removed to Charles Addams, noted cartoonist for The New Yorker. She was born with Pott's disease, which caused a curvature of her spine and lifelong health problems. Addams's father encouraged her to pursue a higher education, but not at the expense of losing her femininity and the prospect of marriage and motherhood, as expected of any young women. She was educated in the United States and Europe, graduating from the Rockford Female Seminary (now Rockford College) in Rockford, Illinois. After Rockford, she spent seven months at the Women's Medical College of Philadelphia, but dropped out. Her parents felt that she should not forget the common path of women throughout human history. After her father's sudden death, Addams inherited $50,000. In 1885, she set off for a two-year tour of Europe with her stepmother. Upon her return home, she felt bored and restless, indifferent about marriage, and wanting more than just the conventional life expected of well-to-do ladies. After painful spinal surgery, she returned to Europe for a second tour in 1887, this time with her best friend Ellen Starr and a teacher friend. During her second tour, Addams visited London's Toynbee Hall, which was a settlement house for boys based on the new philosophy of charity. Toynbee Hall was Addams's main inspiration for Hull House. In 1889 she and her college friend, Ellen Gates Starr, co-founded Hull House in Chicago, Illinois, the first settlement house in the United States. The house was named after Charles Hull, who built the building in 1856. Initially, all of the funding for the Hull House came from the $50,000 estate Addams inherited after her father died. Later, the Hull House was sponsored by Helen Culver, the wealthy real estate agent who had initially leased the house to the women. Addams and Starr were the first two occupants of the house, which would later become the residence of about 25 women. At its height, Hull House was visited each week by around 2000 people. Its facilities included a night school for adults, kindergarten classes, clubs for older children, a public kitchen, an art gallery, a coffeehouse, a gym, a girls' club, a bathhouse, a book bindery, a music school, a drama group, and a library, as well as labor-related divisions. Her adult night school was a forerunner of the continuing education classes offered by many universities today. In addition to making available social services and cultural events for the largely immigrant population of the neighborhood, Hull House afforded an opportunity for young social workers to acquire training. Eventually, the Hull House became a 13-building settlement complex, which included a playground and a summer camp (known as Bowen Country Club). She was a strong advocate of justice for immigrants and Blacks, becoming a chartered member of the NAACP. Among the projects that the members of the Hull House opened were the Immigrants' Protective League, the Juvenile Protective Association, the first juvenile court in the United States, and a Juvenile Psychopathic Clinic. She was a founder of the U.S. Settlement House Movement, and the second woman to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Jane Addams died on May 21, 1935. (*) (*) see Source on page 144
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NAACP Co-Founder (1870-1946) Ray Stannard Baker
was born on April 17, 1870 in Lansing, Michigan. He is also known by his pen name David Grayson, was an American journalist and author. After graduating from the Michigan State Agricultural College (now Michigan State University), he attended law school at the University of Michigan in 1891 before launching his career as a journalist in 1892 with the Chicago News-Record, where he covered the Pullman Strike and Coxey's Army in 1894. In 1898, Baker joined the staff of McClure's, a pioneer muckraking magazine, and quickly rose to prominence along with Lincoln Steffens and Ida Tarbell. He also dabbled in fiction, writing children's stories for the magazine Youth's Companion and a ninevolume series of stories about rural living in America, the first of which was titled "Adventures in Contentment" under the pseudonym David Grayson.
In 1906, Baker, Steffens and Tarbell left McClure's and created The American Magazine. In 1908, he wrote the book Following the Color Line, becoming the first prominent journalist to examine America's racial divide. It was extremely successful. He would continue that work with numerous articles in the following decade. In 1912, Baker supported the presidential candidacy of Woodrow Wilson, which led to a close relationship between the two men, and in 1918 Wilson sent Baker to Europe to study the war situation. During peace negotiations, Baker served as Wilson's press secretary at Versailles. He eventually published 15 volumes about Wilson and internationalism, including an 8-volume biography, the last two volumes of which won the Pulitzer Prize for Biography in 1940. Baker wrote two autobiographies, Native American (1941) and American Chronicle (1945). Baker died of a heart attack in Amherst, Massachusetts on July 12, 1946. He is buried there in Wildwood Cemetery. A dormitory at the University of Massachusetts Amherst bears Grayson's name. Oddly enough a nearby dormitory "Baker" is named after somebody else. Baker Hall on the east side of the Michigan State University campus is named in his honor.(*)
(1875-1939) Joel Elias Spingarn
was born on May 17, 1875 in New York City. He was from a well-to-do family. He graduated from Columbia College in 1895. He grew committed to the importance of the study of comparative literature as a discipline distinct from the study of English or any other language-based literary studies.
Politics was one of his lifetime passions. In 1908, as a Republican he ran unsuccessfully for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. In 1912 and 1916, he was a delegate to the national convention of the Progressive Party. At the first of those conventions, he failed in his attempts to add a statement condemning racial discrimination to the party platform. He was an American educator and literary critic. Spingarn was professor of comparative literature at Columbia University from 1899 to 1911. In 1919 he founded the publishing firm of Harcourt, Brace and Company. Spingarn was one of the first Jewish leaders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). He was chairman of the board of the NAACP from 1913 until his death. In 1913 he established the Spingarn Medal, awarded annually for outstanding achievement by an African American. He encouraged the works of African American writers during the Harlem Renaissance, a period of intense Black literary activity in the 1920s. He died on July 26, 1939. (*)
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NAACP Co-Founder (1857-1938) Clarence Seward Darrow
was born on April 18, 1857 in Kinsman Township, Trumbull County, Ohio. He was an American lawyer and leading member of the American Civil Liberties Union, best known for defending teenage thrill killers Leopold and Loeb in their trial for murdering 14-year-old Bobby Franks (1924) and defending John T. Scopes in the Scopes Trial (1925), in which he opposed William Jennings Bryan (statesman, noted orator, and three time presidential candidate for the Democratic Party). Called a "sophisticated country lawyer", he remains notable for his wit and agnosticism that marked him as one of the most famous American lawyers and Civil Libertarians.
Clarence Darrow was the son of Amirus Darrow and Emily (Eddy) Darrow. Both the Darrow and the Eddy families had deep roots in colonial New England, and several of Darrow's ancestors served in the American Revolution. Clarence's father was an ardent abolitionist and a proud iconoclast and religious free-thinker, known in town as the "village infidel." Emily Darrow was an early supporter of female Suffrage and a Women's Rights advocate. Clarence attended Allegheny College and the University of Michigan Law School but did not graduate from either institution. He was admitted to the Ohio bar in 1878. The Clarence Darrow Octagon House, which was his childhood home in the small town of Kinsman, Ohio, contains a memorial to him.
Ossian Sweet A White mob in Detroit attempted to drive a Black family out of the home they had purchased in a White neighborhood. In the struggle, a White man was killed, and the eleven Blacks in the house were arrested and charged with murder. Dr. Ossian Sweet and three members of his family were brought to trial and after an initial deadlock, Darrow argued to the all-White jury: "I insist that there is nothing but prejudice in this case; that if it was reversed and eleven White men had shot and killed a Black while protecting their home and their lives against a mob of Blacks, nobody would have dreamed of having them indicted. They would have been given medals instead..." Following the mistrial of the 11, it was agreed that each of them would be tried individually. Darrow alongside Thomas Chawke would first defend Ossian's brother Henry, who had confessed to firing the shot on Garland Street. Henry was found not guilty on grounds of self defense and the prosecution determined to drop the charges on the remaining 10. In 1925, Darrow defended John T. Scopes in the State of Tennessee v. Scopes trial of 1925. It has often been called the "Scopes-Monkey Trial," a title popularized by author and journalist H.L. Mencken. This pitted Darrow against William Jennings Bryan in an American court case that tested The Butler Act which had passed on March 21, 1925. The act forbade the teaching, in any State-funded educational establishment in Tennessee, of "any theory that denies the story of the Divine Creation of man as taught in the Bible, and to teach instead that man has descended from a lower order of animals." The law made it illegal for public school teachers in Tennessee to teach that man evolved from lower organisms, but the law was sometimes interpreted as meaning that the law forbade the teaching of any aspect of the theory of evolution. The law did not prohibit the teaching of evolution of any other species of plant or animal. During the trial, Darrow requested that Bryan be called to the stand as an expert witness on the Bible. Over the other prosecutor's objection, Bryan agreed. Many [who?] believe that the following exchange caused the trial to turn against Bryan and for Darrow. After about two hours, Judge Raulston cut the questioning short, and on the following morning ordered that the whole session (which in any case the jury had not witnessed) be expunged from the record, ruling that the testimony had no bearing on whether Scopes was guilty of teaching evolution. Scopes was found guilty and ordered to pay the minimum fine of $100. A year later, the Tennessee Supreme Court reversed the decision of the Dayton court on a technicality窶馬ot the constitutional grounds as Darrow had hoped. According to the court, the fine should have been set by the jury, not Raulston. Rather than send the case back for further action, however, the Tennessee Supreme Court dismissed the case. The court commented, "Nothing is to be gained by prolonging the life of this bizarre case. Darrow was a co-founder of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Darrow died on March 13, 1938.(*) (*) see Source on page 144
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NAACP Co-Founder (1859-1931) Florence Kelley
was born on September 12, 1859 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She was a social and political reformer. Her work against sweatshops and for the minimum wage, eight-hour workdays and children's Rights is widely regarded today. Florence Moltrop Kelley was the daughter of Congressman William Darrah "Pig Iron" Kelley, a self-made man who renounced his business activities to become an abolitionist, a founder of the Republican party and a judge, and worked for numerous political and social reforms, including the NAACP. William D. Kelley was the son of Hannah and David Kelley. Florence had two brothers and five sisters; all five sisters died in childhood. Three of the sisters were Josephine Bartram Kelley, Caroline Lincoln Kelley, and Anna Caroline Kelley. Josephine died at the age of seven months. Caroline died at the age of four months. Anna died at six years of age. She was essential in making America suitable for everyone.
Socialism and Civil Rights A graduate of Cornell University, she was a member of the Intercollegiate Socialist Society, an activist for Woman Suffrage and African-American Civil Rights. She was a follower of Karl Marx and a friend of Friedrich Engels' whose book, The Condition of the Working Class in England, she translated into English. The translation she made is still used today. After returning from Europe, she set out to write a book on the condition of the working class in the United States, but discovered that there were no adequate statistics. She campaigned first for State Statistical Bureaus and finally for the creation of the Federal Bureau of Labor Statistics, which has been the basis of much of the labor research in the United States since.
Factory inspection and child labor Kelley's father had toured her through glass factories at night when she was little. Kelley fought to make it illegal for children under the age of 14 to work and to limit the hours of children under 16. She fought to give them the Right of Education, arguing children must be nurtured to be intelligent people. From 1891 through 1899, Kelley lived at the Hull House settlement in Chicago, where in 1893, Governor Altgeld made her the Chief Factory Inspector for the State of Illinois, a newly-created position and unheard-of for a woman. Hull House resident Alzina Stevens served as one of Kelley's assistant factory inspectors. Kelley was known for her firmness and fierce energy. Hull House founder Jane Addams' nephew called Kelley "the toughest customer in the reform riot, the finest rough-and-tumble fighter for the good life for others, that Hull House ever knew."
National Consumers League and eight-hour workdays From 1899 through 1926 she lived at the Henry Street settlement house in New York City. From there she founded the National Consumers' League, which was strongly anti-sweatshop. She worked tirelessly to establish a work-day limited to eight hours. In 1907 she threw her influence into the Supreme Court case Muller v. Oregon, which sought to overturn limits to the hours female workers could work in non-hazardous professions. Kelley helped file the famous "Brandeis Brief", which included sociological and medical evidence of the hazards of working long hours, and set the precedent of the Supreme Court's recognition of sociological evidence, which was used to great effect later in the case "Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas". In 1909 Kelley helped create the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and thereafter became a friend and ally of W. E. B. Du Bois. She also worked to help the child labor laws and the working conditions. In 1917 she again filed briefs in a Supreme Court case for an eight-hour workday, this time for male workers, in the case "Bunting v. Oregon". Kelley died on February 17, 1932. (*) (*) see Source on page 144
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NAACP Co-Founder (1865-1951) Mary (White) Ovington
was born on April 11, 1865 in Brooklyn, New York. Her parents, members of the Unitarian Church were supporters of Women's Rights and had been involved in anti-Slavery Movement. Educated at Packer Collegiate Institute and Radcliffe College, Ovington became involved in the campaign for Civil Rights in 1890 after hearing Frederick Douglass speak in a Brooklyn church. In 1895 she helped found the Greenpoint Settlement in Brooklyn. Appointed head of the project the following year, Ovington remained until 1904 when she was appointed fellow of the Greenwich House Committee on Social Investigations. Over the next five years she studied employment and housing problems in Black Manhattan. During her investigations she met William Du Bois, from Harvard University and was introduced to the founding members of the Niagara Movement. Influenced by the ideas of William Morris, Ovington joined the Socialist Party in 1905, where she met people such as Daniel De Leon, Asa Philip Randolph, Floyd Dell, Max Eastman and Jack London, who argued that racial problems were as much a matter of class as of race. She wrote for radical journals and newspapers such as The Masses, New York Evening Post and the New York Call. She also worked with Ray Stannard Baker and influenced the content of his book, Following the Color Line, published in 1908. On September 3, 1908 she read an article written by socialist William English Walling entitled "Race War in the North" in The Independent. Walling described a massive race riot directed at Black residents in the hometown of Abraham Lincoln, Springfield, Illinois that led to seven deaths, 40 homes and 24 businesses destroyed, and 107 indictments against rioters. Walling ended the article by calling for a powerful body of citizens to come to the aid of Blacks. Many people responded to the "Call" that eventually led to the formation of the National Negro Committee that held its first meeting in New York on May 31 and June 1, 1909. By May, 1910 the National Negro Committee and attendants, at its second conference, organized a permanent body known as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) where Ovington was appointed as its executive secretary. Early members included Josephine Ruffin, Mary Talbert, Mary Church Terrell, Inez Milholland, Jane Addams, George Henry White, William Du Bois, Charles Edward Russell, John Dewey, Charles Darrow, Lincoln Steffens, Ray Stannard Baker, Fanny Garrison Villard, Oswald Garrison Villard and Ida Wells-Barnett. The following year Ovington attended the Universal Races Congress in London. Ovington remained active in the struggle for women's Suffrage and as a pacifist opposed America's involvement in the First World War. During the war Ovington supported Asa Philip Randolph and his magazine, The Messenger, which campaigned for Black Civil Rights. After the war, Ovington served the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People as board member, executive secretary and chairman. The NAACP fought a long legal battle against segregation and racial discrimination in housing, education, employment, voting and transportation. They appealed to the Supreme Court to rule that several laws passed by Southern States were unconstitutional and won three important judgments between 19151923 concerning Voting Rights and housing. The NAACP was criticised by some members of the African American community. Booker T. Washington opposed the group because it proposed an outspoken condemnation of racist policies in contrast to his policy of quiet diplomacy behind the scenes. Members of the organization were physically attacked by White racists. John R. Shillady, executive secretary of the NAACP, was badly beaten up when he visited Austin, Texas in 1919. Ovington wrote several books and articles, including a study of Black Manhattan, Half a Man (1911); Status of the Negro in the United States (1913); Socialism and the Feminist Movement (1914); an anthology for Black children, The Upward Path (1919); biographical sketches of prominent African Americans, Portraits in Color (1927); an autobiography, Reminiscences (1932); and a history of the NAACP, The Walls Came Tumbling Down (1947). Ovington retired as a board member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in 1947, ending 38 years of service with the organization. She died on July 15, 1951.(*) (*) see Source on page 144
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NAACP Co-Founder (1842-1924) Josephine (St. Pierre) Ruffin
was born on August 31, 1842 in Boston, Massachusetts to John St. Pierre, a Frenchman from Martinique of African descent, and Elizabeth Matilda Menhenick from Cornwall, England. Her father was a successful clothier and founder of a Boston Zion church. She attended public schools in Charleston and Salem, and a private school in New York City because of her parents' objections to the segregated schools in Boston. She completed her studies at the Bowdoin School, not to be confused with Bowdoin College, after segregation in Boston schools ended. In 1858 Ruffin married George Lewis Ruffin (1834–1886), the first African-American to graduate from Harvard Law School, and the first African American to serve on the Boston City Council, the Massachusetts state legislature, and as Boston's first Black municipal judge. The couple was active in the struggle against Slavery and, during the Civil War, they helped recruit Black soldiers for the Union Army, the Mass 54th and 55th regiments. The couple also worked for the Sanitation Commission. In 1858 they bought a house on Boston's Beacon Hill, and began a family.
Activism Ruffin supported Women's Suffrage and, in 1869, joined with Julia Ward Howe and Lucy Stone to form the American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA) in Boston. A group of these women, Julia Ward Howe and Lucy Stone also founded the New England Woman's Club in 1868. Josephine Ruffin was its first bi-racial member when she joined in the mid 1890's. Josephine also wrote for the Black weekly paper, The Courant and became a member of the New England Woman's Press Association. When George Lewis Ruffin died at the age of 52 in 1884, Josephine used her financial security and organizational abilities to start Woman's Era, the country's first newspaper published by and for African American women. While promoting interracial activities, Woman's Era called on Black women to demand increased rights for their race. In 1895, Ruffin organized the National Federation of Afro-American Women. She convened the first National Conference in Boston, which was attended by 100 women from 20 clubs in 10 States. The following year, the organization merged with the Colored Women's League to form the National Association of Colored Women (NACW). Mary Church Terrell was elected president and Ruffin served as one of the organization's vice-presidents. In 1894, Ruffin organized the Women's Era Club, an advocacy group for Black women, with the help of her daughter Florida Ridely and Maria Baldwin, a Boston school principal. From 1890 to 1897, Ruffin served as the editor and publisher of Woman's Era, the first newspaper published by, and for, African-American women. The paper highlighted the achievements of African-American women and championed Black women's Rights. Just as the NACW was forming, Josephine Ruffin was desegregating the New England Woman's Club, and when the General Federation of Woman's Clubs met in Milwaukee in 1900, she planned to attend as a representative of three organizations – the New Era Club, the New England Woman's Club and the New England Woman's Press Club. But Southern women were in positions of power in the General Federation, and when the Executive Committee discovered that all of the New Era's club members were Black women, they would not accept Ruffin's credentials. Ruffin was told that she could be seated as a representative of the two White clubs but not the Black one. She refused on principle and was excluded from the proceedings. These events became known as "The Ruffin Incident" and were widely covered in newspapers around the country, most of whom supported Ruffin. Afterwards, the Woman's Era Club made an official statement "that Colored women should confine themselves to their clubs and the large field of work open to them there." The New Era Club was disbanded in 1903 but Ruffin remained active in the struggle for equal Rights and, in 1910, helped form the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Ruffin was one of the charter members of NAACP and, along with other women who had belonged to the New Era Club, she co-founded the League of Women for Community Service which still exists today. Josephine died on March 13, 1924.(*) (*) see Source on page 144
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NAACP Co-Founder (1866-1923) Mary (Burnett) Talbert
was born on September 17, 1866 in Oberlin, Ohio. Burnett was the only African American woman in her graduating class from Oberlin College in 1886. Burnett received a Bachelor of Arts degree, then called an S.P. degree. She entered the field of education, becoming assistant principal of the Union High School in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1887, the highest position held by an African-American woman in the State. In 1891 she married William H. Talbert, moved to Buffalo, New York, and joined Buffalo's historic Michigan Avenue Baptist Church. Talbert earned a higher education degree at a time when a college education was controversial for European American women and extremely rare for African American women. When women's organizations were segregated by race, Talbert was an early advocate of women of all colors working together to advance their cause, and reminded White feminists of their obligations towards their less privileged Sisters of Color.
Described by her peers as "the best-known Colored woman in the United States," Talbert used her education and prodigious energies to improve the status of Black people at home and abroad. In addition to her anti-lynching and anti-racism work, Talbert supported Women's Suffrage. In 1915 she spoke at the "Votes for Women: A Symposium by Leading Thinkers of Colored Women" in Washington, D.C.. During her national and international lecture tours, Talbert educated audiences about oppressive conditions in African-American communities and the need for legislation to address these conditions. She was instrumental in gaining a voice for African-American women in international women's organizations of her time. As a founder of the Niagara Movement, Talbert helped to launch organized Civil Rights activism in America. The Niagara Movement was radical enough in its brief life to both spawn and absorb controversy within the Black community, preparing the way for its successor, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Central to the efforts of both organizations, Mary Talbert helped set the stage for the Civil Rights gains of the 1950s and '60s. Talbert's long leadership of women's clubs helped to develop Black female organizations and leaders in communities around New York and the United States. Women's clubs provided a forum for African-American women's voices at a time when they had restricted opportunities in public and civic life. In both Black and White communities, women's clubs fostered female leadership. As a historic preservation pioneer, Talbert saved the Frederick Douglass home in Anacostia, DC after other efforts had failed. Buffalo's 150-year-old Michigan Avenue Baptist Church, to which the Talbert family belonged, has been named to the United States National Register of Historic Places. Many prominent African Americans worshipped or spoke there. The church also had a landmark role in abolitionist activities. In 1998, a marker honoring Talbert, who served as the church's treasurer, was installed in front of the Church by the New York State Governor's Commission Honoring the Achievements of Women. Talbert died on October 15, 1923 and is buried in Forest Lawn Cemetery (Buffalo). She was an American orator, activist, suffragist and reformer. Called "The best known Colored Woman in the United States," Talbert was among the most prominent African Americans of her time. In October 2005, Talbert was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame in Seneca Falls, NY. She is also remembered around the United States as the namesake of clubs and buildings.(*) (*) see Source on page 144
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NAACP Co-Founder (1863-1954) Mary (Church) Terrell
was born on September 23, 1863 in Memphis, Tennessee to Robert Reed Church and Louisa Ayers, both former Slaves. Robert Church was said to be the son of his White master, Charles Church. He reputedly became a self-made millionaire from real-estate investments in Memphis and was married twice. When Mary was six years old, her parents sent her to the Antioch College Model School in Yellow Springs, Ohio for her elementary and secondary education. Mary, known to members of her family as "Mollie," and her brother were born during the first marriage to her mother, which terminated in divorce. Robert, Jr., and his sister, Annette, were born during the second marriage to Anna (Wright) Church. When Mary majored in classics at Oberlin College, she was an African American woman among mostly White male students. Still, the freshman class nominated her as class poet, and she was elected to two of the college's literary societies. Mary also served as an editor of the Oberlin Review. When she earned her Bachelor's degree in 1884, she was one of the first African American women known to have earned a college degree. Mary continued on to earn a Master's degree from Oberlin in 1888.
Career Mary Church taught at a Black secondary school in Washington, D.C. and at Wilberforce College, an historically Black college founded by the Methodist Church in Ohio. She studied in Europe for two years, where she became fluent in French, German, and Italian. On October 18, 1891 in Memphis, Mary married Robert Heberton Terrell, a lawyer who became the first Black municipal court judge in Washington, DC. The couple met through M Street School, where Terrell taught and became a principal. Mary had three children who died in infancy but soon gave birth to a daughter Phyllis. The Terrells later adopted a second daughter, Mary. As a high school teacher and principal, Mary Church Terrell was appointed to the District of Columbia Board of Education, 1895-1906. She was the first Black woman in the United States to hold such a position. Terrell was also an active member of the National American Woman Suffrage Association. She was particularly concerned about ensuring the organization continued to fight for Black women obtaining the vote. With Josephine St.Pierre Ruffin, she formed the Federation of Afro-American Women. In 1896, Terrell became the first president of the newly formed National Association of Colored Women's Clubs. The NACWC members established day nurseries and kindergartens, and helped orphans. In 1896, Terrell also founded the National Association of College Women, which later became the National Association of University Women (NAUW). The League started a training program and kindergarten before these were incorporated in the Washington Public School System. The Success of the League's educational initiatives led to her appointment to the District of Columbia Board of Education. Mrs. Terrell was the first Black woman in the United States to serve in this position. In 1896, Mary Church Terrell became the founder and first president of the National Association of Colored Women, a national organization of Black women's club. In 1904 Terrell was invited to speak at the International Congress of Women, held in Berlin, Germany. She was the only Black woman at the conference. Terrell received an enthusiastic ovation when she honored the host nation by delivering her address in German. She then proceeded to deliver the speech in French, and concluded with the English version. In 1909, Mary Terrell was one of two Negro woman (Ida B. Wells-Barnett was the other) invited to sign the “Call” and to attend the organizational meeting of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), thus becoming a founding member. In 1913-1914, she helped organize the Delta Sigma Theta sorority, and twenty-six years later wrote its famous creed, setting up a code of conduct for Negro women.– July 24, 1954), daughter of two former Slaves, was one of the first African-American women to earn a college degree. She became an activist who led several important associations and helped to work for Civil Rights and Suffrage. Terrell lived to see the Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Board of Education, holding unconstitutional the segregation of schools by race. She died two months later at the age of 90, on July 24, 1954, a week before the NACW was to hold its annual meeting in Washington at her home in Annapolis, Maryland at Anne Arundel General Hospital. A short distance from her summer home in Highland Beach. (*) (*) see Source on page 144
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NAACP Co-Founder (1872-1949) Oswald Garrison Villard
was born on March 13, 1872– in Wiesbaden, Germany while his parents were on a trip from the U.S., his early life was steeped in the Northern traditions of anti-Slavery, free trade, and entrepreneurialism. He was the son of Henry Villard, a wealthy railroad magnate of German origin, who owned The Nation and the New York Evening Post. His grandfather was abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison whose daughter Fanny Garrison Villard was a Suffragist and one of the founders of the Women's Peace Movement. Villard graduated from Harvard University in 1893. In 1894, he began to write regularly for the New York Evening Post and The Nation, and said that he and his fellow staff members were "radical on peace and war and on the Negro question; radical in our insistence that the United States stay at home and not go to war abroad and impose its imperialistic will upon Latin-American Republics, often with great slaughter. We were radical in our demand for Free Trade and our complete opposition to the whole protective system." Upon the death of his father, he not only wrote for both publications but owned them. Villard was also a founder of the American Anti-Imperialist League which favored independence for the territories captured in the Spanish American War. To further the cause, he worked to organize "a third ticket" in 1900 to challenge William Jennings Bryan and William McKinley. He was joined in this effort by several key veterans of the 1896 National Democratic Party. Not surprisingly, Villard made a personal appeal to ex-president Grover Cleveland, a hero of the gold Democrats, urging him to be the candidate. Cleveland demurred, asserting that voters no longer cared what he had to say. Villard was a pioneer, and today largely unsung, Civil Rights leader. In 1910, he donated space in the New York Evening Post for the "call" to the meeting which formally organized the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. For many years, Villard served as the NAACP’s disbursing treasurer while Moorfield Storey, another Cleveland Democrat, was its president. In 1916 he was elected president of the Symphony Society of New York. In 1910 he published John Brown 1800-1859: A Biography Fifty Years After, a biography of John Brown. He wrote Germany Embattled (1915) and monographs on the early history of Wall Street and on the German Imperial court. While Villard continued to champion Civil Liberties, Civil Rights, and anti-Imperialism after World War I, he had largely abandoned his previous belief in laissez-faire economics. During the 1930s, he welcomed the advent of New Deal and called for nationalization of major industries. Always independent-minded, however, he bitterly dissented from the foreign policy of the administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt in the late 1930s. He was an early member of the America First Committee which opposed U.S. entry into World War II. He broke completely with The Nation, which he had sold in 1935 because it supported American intervention. At the same time, he became increasingly repelled by the New Deal bureaucratic State, which he condemned as a precursor to American fascism. Also, he deplored the air raids carried out by the allies in the later years of World War II, saying: "What was criminal in Coventry, Rotterdam, Warsaw and London has now become heroic in Dresden and now Tokyo." After 1945, Villard made common cause with "Old Right" conservatives, such as Senator Robert A. Taft, Felix Morley, and John T. Flynn, against the Cold War policies of Harry S. Truman. Villard died on October 1, 1949.His oldest son was Henry Hilgard Villard who was head of the economics department at the City College of New York and the first male president of Planned Parenthood of New York City. His youngest son was Oswald Garrison Villard, Jr., who was a professor of electrical engineering at Stanford University. His daughter, Dorothy Villard Hammond, was a member of the American University at Cairo. Villard was an American journalist. He provided a rare direct link between the classical liberal anti-Imperialism of the late 19th century and the conservative Old Right of the 1930s and 1940s.(*)
(*) see Source on page 144
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NAACP Co-Founder (1867-1940) Lillian D. Wald
was born on March 10, 1867 in Cincinnati, Ohio, (her father was an optical dealer). In 1878, she moved with her family to Rochester, New York. She attended Miss Cruttenden's English-French Boarding and Day School for Young Ladies; upon graduation she tried to enter Vassar College but was denied, as the school thought her too young at 16. In 1889, she attended New York Hospital's School of Nursing. She graduated from the New York Hospital Training School for Nurses in 1891, then took courses at the Woman’s Medical College.
Nursing career In 1893 after a period of working at the New York Juvenile Asylum–an orphanage where children were kept and conditions were poor–Ward started to teach a home class on nursing for poor immigrant families on the Lower East Side (New York). Not long after, she began to care for sick residents of the Lower East Side as a visiting nurse. Along with another nurse, Mary Brewster, she moved into a Spartan room near her patients, in order to care for them better. In 1893 she also coined the term "public health nurse" to describe nurses whose work is integrated into the public community. Wald extended this mission as founder of the Henry Street Settlement which later attracted the attention of Jacob Schiff, a prominent Jewish philanthropist who secretly provided her the means to help more effectively the "poor Russian Jews" whose care she provided. She was able to expand her work later, having 27 nurses on staff by 1906, and succeeded in attracting broader financial support from such gentiles as Elizabeth Milbank Anderson. By 1913 the staff had grown to 92 people. Ward worked in this area for 40 years. Wald authored two books relating to this work, the first being The House on Henry Street, first published in 1911, followed by Windows on Henry Street in 1934. Both books went through numerous printings; modern reprints are available in both hard and paperback editions. Today, Lillian Wald is regarded as the founder of visiting nursing in the United States and Canada. The Henry Street Settlement eventually expanded into the Visiting Nurse Service of New York City. As an advocate for nursing in public schools her ideas led to the New York Board of Health's organizing and running the first public nursing system in the world. She was the first president of the National Organization for Public Health Nursing. Wald established a nursing insurance partnership with Metropolitan Life Insurance Company that became a model for many other corporate projects, suggested a national health insurance plan, and helped found Columbia University’s School of Nursing.
Advocacy Another of her concerns was the treatment of African Americans. As a Civil Rights activist, Wald insisted that all Henry Street classes be racially integrated. She was one of co-founders, in 1909, of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). The first major public conference to create the organization opened with a meeting at the Henry Street settlement. An advocate for Women's Suffrage and for peace, Wald organized New York City campaigns for Suffrage, marched to protest the United States’ entry into World War I, joined the Women's Peace Party and helped establish the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom. In 1915 she was elected president of the newly-formed American Union Against Militarism (AUAM) and after United States joined the war she remained involved with the AUAM's daughter organizations, the Foreign Policy Organization and the American Civil Liberties Union Wald never married. She died in 1940 of a cerebral hemorrhage at the age of seventy-three. Thousands mourned her passing at private and public meetings. Rabbi Stephen Wise of the Free Synagogue led a service at Henry Street's Neighborhood Playhouse. (*) (*) see Source on page 144
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NAACP Co-Founder (1862-1931) Ida Bell (Wells) Barnett
was born on July 16, 1862 in Holly Springs, Mississippi just before President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation. Her father James Wells was a carpenter and her mother was Elizabeth "Lizzie" Warrenton Wells. Both parents were Slaves until freed at the end of the Civil War. Ida’s father James was a master at carpentry and known as a race man. He was also very interested in politics, but he never took office. Her mother Elizabeth was a cook for the Bolling household before she was torn apart from the family. She was a religious woman who was very strict with her children, for their best interests. Wells' parents took their children's education very seriously. They wanted their children to take advantage of having the opportunity to be educated and attend school.
Wells attended the Freedmen's School Shaw University, now Rust College in Holly Springs. She was expelled from Rust College for her rebellious behavior and temper after confronting the President of the college. During her time at college, on a visit to her grandmother in Mississippi Valley, she received word that her hometown of Holly Springs had been hit by the Yellow Fever epidemic. When she was 16, both Wells' parents and her 10-month old brother, Stanley, died of yellow fever during an epidemic that swept through the South. In 1883, Wells moved to Memphis. There she got a teaching job, and during her summer vacations she attended summer sessions at Fisk University in Nashville, whose graduates were well respected in the Black community. She also attended LeMoyne Institute. Wells held strong political opinions and she upset many people with her views on Women's Rights. When she was 24, she wrote, "I will not begin at this late day by doing what my soul abhors; sugaring men, weak deceitful creatures, with flattery to retain them as escorts or to gratify a revenge." In 1896, Wells founded the National Association of Colored Women, and also founded the National Afro-American Council, which later became the NAACP. Wells formed the Women's Era Club, the first civic organization for African-American women. This club later became the Ida B. Wells Club, in honor of its' founder. In 1899, Wells was struggling to manage a home life and a career life, but she was still a fierce competitor in the anti -lynching circle. This was illustrated when The National Association of Colored Women's club met that year in Chicago. To Wells' surprise, she was not invited to take part in the festivities. When she confronted the president of the club, Mrs. Terrell, Wells was told that Terrell had received letters from the women of Chicago that if Wells were to take part in the club, they would no longer aid the association. However, Wells later came to find out that the real reason she had not been invited was because Mrs. Terrell's selfish intentions. Mrs. Terrell had been president of the association 2 years' running and wanted to be elected a third time. Mrs. Terrell thought the only way of doing that was to keep Wells out of the picture. After traveling through the British Isles and the United States teaching and giving speeches to bring awareness to the lynching problems in America, Wells settled in Chicago and worked to improve conditions for the rapidly growing African American population there. The rapid increase of African Americans into the population led to racial tensions much like those in the South. There were also tensions between the African American population and the immigrants from Europe, who were now in competition for jobs. Wells spent the latter thirty years of her life working on urban reform in Chicago. While there, she also raised her family and worked on her autobiography. After her retirement Wells wrote her autobiography, Crusade for Justice (1928). The book, however, was never finished; in fact, it ends in the middle of a sentence, in the middle of a word. Ida Bell died of uremia in Chicago on March 25, 1931, at the age of 68.(*) (*) see Source on page 144
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NAACP Leaders (1878-1971) Arthur Barnette Spingarn
was born on March 28, 1878 into a well-to-do family. He graduated from Columbia College in 1897 and from law school in 1899. He was one of a small group of White Americans who decided in the first decade of the 20th century to support the radical demands for racial justice being voiced by W.E.B. Du Bois in contrast to the more ameliorative views of Booker T. Washington. He served as head of the legal committee of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and one of its vice-presidents starting in 1911. He interrupted his legal career to serve for several years as a army captain in the Sanitary Corps during World War I and protested the discriminatory treatment of African Americans in the U.S. military. He succeeded his brother Joel Elias Spingarn as president of the NAACP in 1940 when the legal arm of the organization was spun off into the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund. He served as the NAACP's president until 1965. Spingarn was the NAACP's first president, and only Jews served as NAACP presidents from its founding until the 1970s. Joel Spingarn succeeded his brother, Arthur, and following him, Kivie Kaplan reigned over the organization. The Jewish leadership of the NAACP was little known by the public at large. When I came of age, the only name I heard associated with the NAACP was Roy Wilkins, who was its Black national secretary. Because he was so much in the press and public eye, like most Americans, I thought Wilkins was the NAACP leader. But Kaplan was the actual NAACP president during that time. Benjamin Hooks became the first Black president finally in the 1970s. Once a Black finally made it to the presidency of the organization, no longer did the public hear much about the NAACP "National Secretary." From then on the public spokesman was the NAACP president. Spingarn was an avid collector and amassed a collection of materials –books, newspapers, manuscripts, and realia –related to the African American experience worldwide, a collection "unique in its depth, breadth, and quality," which he sold to Howard University, where it was incorporated into the re-named Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, the largest and most valuable research library in America for the study of Negro life and history. The rest of his collections were sold at auction in 1966. Arthur Spingarn died at home in New York City on Dec. 1, 1971. At his memorial service, he was eulogized by Associate Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall and Roy Wilkins, executive director of the NAACP. Buell C. Gallagher, retired president of the City College of New York, called him "the rallying center of the aggressive forward movement" of the NAACP. (*)
(1893-1955) Walter Francis White
was born on July 1st, 1893 in Atlanta, Georgia. White attended African American schools and sat in the rear of buses. When he was thirteen White experienced a race riot in Atlanta. After graduating from Atlanta University in 1916, White worked for Standard Life Insurance Company. He also became secretary of the Atlanta branch of the NAACP. White organized a campaign to improve African American public facilities in the City. This brought him to the attention of James Weldon Johnson, who offered him a full-time post at the NAACP. White was an outstanding propagandist and articles that he wrote about African American Civil Rights appeared in a variety of journals including Collier's, Saturday Evening Post, The Nation, Harper's Magazine and the New Republic. White also wrote a regular column in the New York Herald Tribune and the Chicago Defender. In 1949 White offered to resign from the NAACP for medical reasons. The NAACP Board of Directors wanted White to remain and so instead gave him a one-year leave of absence. While he was away he was replaced by Roy Wilkins. Although, White remained the NAACP's official spokesman until his death on 21st March, 1955. (*) (*) see Source on page 144
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General Index A
D
Aaron, Henry Louis "Hank," 79 Abbott, Cleve, 116 Abernathy, Sr., Ralph David, 17, 20-22, 38 Addams, Jane, 127, 128 Anderson, Rev. L. L., 50 Andrews, D.D., George Whitfield, 110 Arrington Jr., Richard, 36, 81 Alabama Agricultural and Mechanical University, 98— 101 • Campus, 99 • Notable alumni, 101
Darrow, Clarence, 127, 130 Daley, Richard J., 28 Davis, Angela Yvonne, 89 Davis, Maurice, 55 Davis, Milton C., 119 De Forest, D.D., Rev. Henry Swift, 110 DeGeneres, Ellen, 105 Derricotte, Juliette, 110 Dewey, Jack, 127 Dubois, W. E. B., 123, 127, 139 Dudley, Randall, 36 Durr, Clifford, 12
B Ballard, Howard, 101 Baker, Sir Stannard, 127, 129 Barnett, Ida Bell (Wells), 127, 138 Bakke, Rev. Nils J., 106 Baxley II, William Joseph, 86 Beck, Robert, 119 Benjamin, Vice Admiral Regina Marcia, 93 Bethune, Mary M., 127 Bhembe, Mfana Futhi, 101 Birmingham Dogs / W. Hoses, 48 Blevins, Brandon, 100 Boynton, Bruce, 50 Boyz, Bama, 101 Breckinridge, Sophan, 127
C Calloway, Don, 101 Card, George N., 102 Carmichael, Stokely, 55 Carpenter, Charles William, 119 Carr, Johnnie Rebecca (Daniels), 14 Carver, George Washington, 115, 124 Carter, Clarence, 83 Chestnut, J. L., 50 Civil Rights Struggle (Birmingham), 34 Civil Rights Struggle (Montgomery), 11(Selma), 49 Clark, James, 50, 58 Clinton, Bill, 122 Coachman, Alice Marie, 119 Cole, Nathaniel Adams (aka Nat King Cole), 73 Collins, Addie Mae, 38 Collins, Marva , 84 Cottrell, Jr., Comer Joseph, 78 Crawford, Donald, 108 Crenshaw, Leon, 119 Crews, Louis, 100 Crooms, Michael, 101 Croom, Sr., Sylvester, 101 Curry, Izola, 26
E Eaton, William, 60 Edmund Pettus Bridge, 27, 50 Edwards, Ivory, 64 Ellison, Ralph, 119 English, David Melvin, 88 Enterprise, Alabama, 64
F Fanning, Dr. David H., 110 Farris, Vera King, 119 Fisher, Isaac, 119 Florence, Drayton, 119 Floyd, Eddie, 82 Ford, Johnny L., 87 Foster, Mamie Labon, 99 Foster, Marie, 50 Freedom Ride, 47 French, Jr., George, 108
G Gibson, John, 98 Graetz, Robert S., 24 Graham, Henry Vance, 18 Graves, Bibb, 99 Gray, Fred, 32 Green, Al (politician), 238 Green, Alexander N., 119
H Haley, Brick, 101; Harbor, Jean, 101 Hare, James, 50 Hawkins, Erskine Ramsay, 71, 105 Haynes, John, 127 History of Alabama. 7—10 Holmes, Odetta (aka Odetta), 77 Howell, Ken, 116 Howells, William D., 127 Hughes, Dr. Marvalene, 119 Hurston, Zora Neale, 67 140
General Index I
L
Institutions of Higher Learning, 97 • Alabama Agricultural and Mechanical University, 98—101 • Alabama State University, 102— 105 • Bishop State Community College106 • Concordia College, Selma, 107 • Daniel Payne College, 108 • Gadsden State Community College, 109 • Miles College, 110 • Oakwood University, 111 • Selma University, 112 • Shelton State Community College, 113 • Stillman College, 114 • Talladega College, 115, 116 • Tuskegee University, 117— 122 Irvin, Monford Merrill "Monte," 72
Lacy, Marc, 101 Langford, Charles Douglas, 19 Lafayette, Bernard, 50 Lafayette, Colia, 50 Lewis, Brandon "Wizeman", 100 Lewis, John, 33, 52, 54 Lewis, Frederick Carlton "Carl," 94 Liuzzo, Viola Fauver Gregg, 56— 60
J Jackson, Roy Lee, 116 Jackson, Alexandria, 100 Jackson, Jesse, 28, 31 Jackson, Jimmy Lee, 53 Jackson-Lee, Sheila, 192 James, General Daniel "Chappie", 119 Jemison, M.D., Mae Carol, 92 Jennings, Robert R., 98 Johnson, Jr., Frank Minis, 51 Johnson, Lonnie G., 90 Johnson, Lyndon Baines, 27, 31, 52, 56, 60, 61 Jones, Cleon, 101 Joplin, Janis, 75 Joyner, Tom, 119 Julian, Percy Lavon, 68 Johnson, Lonnie (inventor), 90
K Katzenbach, Nicholas, 45 Keller, Helen, 66 Kellogg Hotel and Conference Center, 115 Kelly, Florence, 127, 131 Kennedy, John F., 27, 44 Kennedy, Robert, 33 King, Coretta Scott, 23 King Jr., Martin Luther, 17, 25— 31, 33, 38, 44, 51, 105 • Montgomery Bus Boycott, 25 • 1958— Assassination attempt, 26 • March on Washington, 26 • 1968– King assassinated, 31 Knolls, Billy, 31 Ku Klux Klan, 34, 50
M Mann, Marion, 119 Marshall, Thurgood, 102 Mathis, Robert, 101 Means Jr., Prof. Arthur, 108 McGowan, Tyler, 64 McKay, Claude, 119 McNair, Denise, 38 Milholland, Inez, 127 Mills, Alan, 116 Mitchell, Katherine, 100 Montgomery Freedom Riders 1961, 34 Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA), 17 Moore, Marie, 50 Morton, Leo, 119 Murray, Albert, 119
N NAACP Beginning, 125 • NAACP History/Co-founders/Leaders, 126—139 • The Springfield Race Riot of 1908, 125 Nagin, Ray, 120 Nash, Fred, 64 Nelson, Gertrude, 120 Noland, Lloyd, 108 Norton, Eleanor Holmes, 185 Nixon, Edgar Daniel, 13
O Obama, Barack, 34 Odetta, 217 Orange, James, 31 Outstanding Achievers, 65—90 Ovington, Mary White, 127
P Paige, Leroy Robert "Satchel", 70 Parks, Rosa "Lee" Louise (McCauley), 16, 25, 33 Patterson, Dimitri, 120 Paterson, William, 102 Payne, Daniel, 107 Pettaway, L. Vann, 101 Pitts, Triena, 101 Presley, Elvis, 75 141
General Index R
T
Ra, Sun, 101 Randall, Dudley, 36 Ray, James Earl, 31 Reagan, Ronald, 46 Reeb, Rev. James, 55 Rice, Dr. Condoleezza, 91 Roberts, Lawrence E., 120 Robertson, Carole, 38 Robinson, Amelia Boynton, 119 Robinson, Jo Ann Gibson, 15 Roosevelt, Theodore, 123 Rosenwald, Julius, 113 Rotch, James, 36 Rowe, Gary, 56, 60 Royal, George C., 120 Royal, Roderick V., 95, 120 Ruffin, Josephine, 127 Russell, Herman J., 120 Russell, Charles, 127
Talbert, Mary, 127 Terrell, Mary Church, 127 The Boll Weevil Monument (Enterprise), 64 The Commodores, 120 Thomas, Eugene, 60 Thoreau, Henry David, 33 Thornton, Willie Mae "Big Mama," 74, 75 Tolson, Melvin B., 75 Tuskegee Alumni, 119, 120 Tuskegee Airmen (1940’s), 121 Tuskegee syphilis experiment: (1932– 1972), 122
S Satcher, David, 85 Sawyer, Eugene, 80 Selma to Montgomery March, 50, 51 • Struggle for the Vote, 52,53 • First march: Bloody Sunday, 54 • Response to second march, 55 • Third march, 56— 57 Shabazz, Betty Sanders, 224 Shuttlesworth, Fred, 36, 38, 44, 48, 55 Silsby, Dr. E. C., 110 Simmons Jr., Jake, 120 Shores, Arthur D., 110 Sloan II , Albert J. H., 108 Spencer, Danielle, 120 Spingarn, Arthur Barnette, 139 Stallworth, John, 101 Steffens, Lincoln, 127 Stewart, McCants, 120 Studdard, Ruben, 101
V Vann, David Johnson, 76 Vietnam War, 29—31 Villard, Oswald G., 127
W Wagner, Barry, 101 Wagner, Leon, 116 Wald, Lillan, 127 Walker, Frank, 120 Walker, Wyatt Tee, 37 Wales, Jimmy Donal "Jimbo", 96 Wallace, George Corley, 45 • Stand in the Schoolhouse door, 45 • Assassination attempt on Wallace, 46 • Wallace change of views, 47 Washington, Booker T., 106, 111, 112, 113, 115, 123, 124, 139 Watkins, Levi, 103 Wayans, Keenan Ivory, 120 Webb, Sheyann, 62, 62 Wells, Ida, 127 Wesley, Cynthia, 38 Wheatley, Phillis, 152 White, Walter Francis, 139 Whitten, Jack, 120 Williams, Hosea, 54 Wilkins, Collie, 60 Wilson, Dr. David, 120 Wilson, Elwin, 34 Wilson, Teddy, 120 Woodard, Ken, 120 Woodruff,. Hale, 110 Wright, Elizabeth Evelyn, 120
Y Young, Andrew, 31 Young, Rosa, 106
Z Zwerg, James, 34 142
General Index Indexing Purpose: Indexes are designed to help the reader find information quickly and easily. In books, indexes are usually placed near the end (this is commonly known as "BOB" or back-of-book indexing).
Conventional Indexing: The indexer reads through the text, identifying indexable concepts (those for which the text provides useful information and which will be of relevance for the text's readership). The indexer creates index headings, to represent those concepts, which are phrased such that they can be found when in alphabetical order (so 'indexing process' rather than 'how to create an index').
Origins of the book: The craft of bookbinding originated in India, where religious sutras were copied on to palm leaves (cut into two, lengthwise) with a metal stylus. The leaf was then dried and rubbed with ink, which would form a stain in the wound. The finished leaves were given numbers, and two long twines were threaded through each end through wooden boards. When closed, the excess twine would be wrapped around the boards to protect the leaves of the book. Buddhist monks took the idea through Persia, Afghanistan, Iran and to China in the first century BC. Western writers at this time wrote longer texts as scrolls, and these were stored in shelving with small cubbyholes, similar to a modern wine rack. The word volume, from the Latin word volvere ("to roll"), comes from these scrolls. Court records and notes were written on tree bark and leaves, while important documents were written on papyrus. The modern English word book comes from the Proto-Germanic *bokiz, referring to the beechwood on which early written works were recorded. The book was not needed in ancient times, as many early Greek texts—scrolls—were thirty pages long, which fits into the hand. Roman works were often longer, running to hundreds of pages. The Greeks used to comically call their books tome, meaning "to cut". The Egyptian Book of the Dead was a massive 200 pages long but was never meant to be read by the living. Torahs, editions of the Jewish holy book, were also held in special holders when read. Scrolls can be rolled in one of two ways. The first method is to wrap the scroll around a single core, similar to a modern roll of paper towels. While simple to construct, a single core scroll has a major disadvantage: in order to read text at the end of the scroll, the entire scroll must be unwound.
Introduction of paper: The Arabs revolutionized the book's production and its binding in the medieval Islamic world. They were the first to produce paper books after they learnt paper industry from the Chinese in the 8th century. Particular skills were developed for Arabic calligraphy, miniatures and bookbinding. The people who worked in making books were called Warraqin or paper professionals. The Arabs made books lighter—sewn with silk and bound with leather covered paste boards, they had a flap that wrapped the book up when not in use. As paper was less reactive to humidity, the heavy boards were not needed. (Research by author)
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Conclusion Acknowledgement: It would be impossible to list the names of all the people who have contributed in some way to the realization of this manuscript. For in a sense, the thousands of documents preserved and kept for hundreds of years made it possible to gather this information and put it into one history book; "Alabama’s Black Struggle (Where it all Began)"" . I acknowlege and give thanks to Wikipedia free encyclopedia web site for information which is available, so the public can be informed and educated. I acknowlege and give thanks to Google and Yahoo search engines for the mass of images that are available for download. Again, thank you Wikipedia for the wealth of information that made it possible for me to compile this book.
(*) Source: (*) Source information on each individual or article came from Wikipedia, Google or Yahoo; unless otherwise noted: (Research by author). Each article is only the summary of each individual’s life or event. Additional information on these subject matters can be retrieved from Wikipedia, Google or Yahoo.
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Content Disclaimer: Inclusion of articles in this book does not mean that the author agree with all the views presented in articles within this Book "Alabama’s Black Struggle (Where it all Began)"" The author will always give opposing views equal treatment: you, the readers, are clever enough to decide who has the better arguments. The author exercises its sole discretion in determining to include whatever materials happen to strike his attention; stimulate the thoughts of, or enliven discussions among others; or which otherwise informs the public about issues which are related to the goals of informing the public. Frequently, the materials included within this book will represent more than one side of any given issue. Accordingly, statements made within any documents or any other materials in any of these pages or anywhere else used to support the book "Alabama’s Black Struggle (Where it all Began)"" do not necessarily represent the views or opinions of anyone else at all, other than the author of the material in question. The author of "Alabama’s Black Struggle (Where it all Began)"" Therlee Gipson makes every effort to comply with applicable copyright and other intellectual property rights laws, as well as to avoid the publication of libelous, slanderous, or otherwise legally objectionable materials. Any actual or suspected violations of the legal rights of any person or entity should be promptly reported by sending a notification to the author of this book. None of the authors, contributors, sponsors, administrators, web sites or anyone else connected with ABES Enterprises in any way whatsoever can be responsible for the appearance of any inaccurate or libelous information or your use of the information in this book. 144