Daisy Bates (activist)
Daisy Lee Gatson Bates was an American civil rights activist, publisher and lecturer who played a leading role in the Little Rock Integration Crisis of 1957. Daisy Lee Gatson Bates was born on November 11, 1914, she grew up in southern Arkansas in the small sawmill town of Huttig. Bates was born in a shotgun house to her biological mother and father, Hezakiah Gatson and Millie Riley. Hezakiah Gatson supported the family by working as a lumber grader in a local mill. After the murder of her mother, Daisy was handed off to Gatson's close friends, Orlee Smith, a World War I veteran, Susie Smith. Daisy never saw her biological father after that. In The Death of my Mother, Bates recounted learning at eight years old, of her birth mother being first raped murdered, by three local white men, her biological mother was dropped into a millpond when Daisy was only a few months old. Learning of her mother's death and knowing that nothing was done about it fueled her anger, her adoptive father, Orlee Smith, told her that the killers were never found due to the lack of devotion to the case from the police.
This released a desire for vengeance inside Daisy: "My life now had a secret goal – to find the men who had done this horrible thing to my mother." This new mission allowed her to find one of her mother's killers. At a commissary, she stumbled upon a gaze from a young white man that would imply that he was involved. After this interaction, Daisy would go there to belittle the drunken man with just her eyes; the young man's guilt would force him to plead Daisy, "In the name of God, please leave me alone." This ended once he was found in an alleyway. The understanding of her current societal norms dominates her actions as she begins to hate white people. Out of concern and hope, on his deathbed, her adoptive father, gave her some advice: You're filled with hatred. Hate can destroy you, Daisy. Don't hate white people just because they're white. If you hate, make it count for something. Hate the humiliations we are living under in the South. Hate the discrimination that eats away at the South. Hate the discrimination that eats away at the soul of every black man and woman.
Hate the insults hurled at us by white scum—and try to do something about it, or your hate won't spell a thing. Bates said she had never forgotten that and it is from this memory that Bates claimed her strength for leadership came. Before Daisy was exposed to her biological mother's death, she played with Beatrice, a white girl around her age, they shared pennies for hard candy, got along well. Bates' childhood included the attendance to Huttig's segregated public schools, where she learned firsthand the poor conditions to which black students were exposed. Orlee Smith died. Daisy appreciated her father, leading to her own assumption that she married her husband because he shared similar qualities with her father. Bates had great adulation for the man where she couldn't "remember a time when this man I called my father didn't talk to me as if I were an adult." In contrast to their relationship, Daisy had an austere relationship with her mother. Susie Smith would punish Daisy and, "often clobbered, tamed and made to stand in the corner" Even after the death of Orlee Smith, the two had a falling out.
Daisy was 25 when she started dating Lucius Christopher Bates, an insurance salesman who had worked on newspapers in the South and West. Daisy was only 13 years old when they first met, Lucius, still married to Kasssandra Crawford. Lucius divorced his first wife in 1941 before moving to Little Rock and starting the Arkansas State Press. After dating for several months, Daisy and L. C. Bates married on March 4, 1942. In 1952, Daisy Bates was elected president of the Arkansas Conference of NAACP branches. After their move to Little Rock, the Bateses decided to act on a dream of theirs, the ownership of a newspaper, they leased a printing plant that belonged to a church publication and inaugurated the Arkansas State Press, a weekly statewide newspaper. The first issue appeared on May 9, 1941; the Arkansas State Press was concerned with advocacy journalism and was modeled off other African-American publications of the era, such as the Chicago Defender and The Crisis. Stories about civil rights ran on the front page with the rest of the paper filled with other stories that spotlighted achievements of black Arkansans.
Pictures were in abundance throughout the paper. The paper became an avid voice for civil rights before a nationally recognized movement had emerged. Daisy Bates was recognized as co-publisher of the paper; as the former president of the Arkansas State Conference of the NAACP, Bates was involved in desegregated events. Though in 1954 the United States Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education made all the segregated schools illegal, the schools in Arkansas refused to enroll African American students. Bates and her husband tried to fight against the situation in their newspaper; the state press became a fervent supporter of the NAACP's integrated public school events. The State Press editorialized, "We feel that the proper approach would be for the leaders among the Negro race—not clabber mouths, Uncle Toms, or grinning appeasers to get together and counsel with the school heads." Concerning the policy of academic desegregation, The State press cultivated a spirit of immediatism within the hearts of African American and white citizens.
Opposite to gradual approach, this newspaper wanted immediate reform in Arkansas' educational system. The Arkansas State Press reported that the NAACP was the lead organizer in these protest events, the newspaper tend
Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the United States. With 6,953,927 visitors to its three locations in 2018, it was the third most visited art museum in the world, its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among seventeen curatorial departments. The main building, on the eastern edge of Central Park along Museum Mile in Manhattan's Upper East Side is by area one of the world's largest art galleries. A much smaller second location, The Cloisters at Fort Tryon Park in Upper Manhattan, contains an extensive collection of art and artifacts from Medieval Europe. On March 18, 2016, the museum opened the Met Breuer museum at Madison Avenue on the Upper East Side; the permanent collection consists of works of art from classical antiquity and ancient Egypt and sculptures from nearly all the European masters, an extensive collection of American and modern art. The Met maintains extensive holdings of African, Oceanian and Islamic art.
The museum is home to encyclopedic collections of musical instruments and accessories, as well as antique weapons and armor from around the world. Several notable interiors, ranging from 1st-century Rome through modern American design, are installed in its galleries; the Metropolitan Museum of Art was founded in 1870 for the purposes of opening a museum to bring art and art education to the American people. It opened on February 20, 1872, was located at 681 Fifth Avenue; the Met's permanent collection is curated by seventeen separate departments, each with a specialized staff of curators and scholars, as well as six dedicated conservation departments and a Department of Scientific Research. The permanent collection includes works of art from classical antiquity and ancient Egypt and sculptures from nearly all the European masters, an extensive collection of American and modern art; the Met maintains extensive holdings of African, Oceanian and Islamic art. The museum is home to encyclopedic collections of musical instruments and accessories, antique weapons and armor from around the world.
A great number of period rooms, ranging from 1st-century Rome through modern American design, are permanently installed in the Met's galleries. In addition to its permanent exhibitions, the Met organizes and hosts large traveling shows throughout the year; the current chairman of the board, Daniel Brodsky, was elected in 2011 and became chairman three years after director Philippe de Montebello retired at the end of 2008. On March 1, 2017, the BBC reported that Daniel Weiss, the Met's president and COO, would temporarily act as CEO for the museum. Following the departure of Thomas P. Campbell as the Met's director and CEO on June 30, 2017, the search for a new director of the museum was assigned to the human resources firm Phillips Oppenheim to present a new candidate for the position "by the end of the fiscal year in June" of 2018; the next director will report to Weiss as the current president of the museum. In April 2018, Max Hollein was named director. Beginning in the late 19th century, the Met started acquiring ancient art and artifacts from the Near East.
From a few cuneiform tablets and seals, the Met's collection of Near Eastern art has grown to more than 7,000 pieces. Representing a history of the region beginning in the Neolithic Period and encompassing the fall of the Sasanian Empire and the end of Late Antiquity, the collection includes works from the Sumerian, Sasanian, Assyrian and Elamite cultures, as well as an extensive collection of unique Bronze Age objects; the highlights of the collection include a set of monumental stone lamassu, or guardian figures, from the Northwest Palace of the Assyrian king Ashurnasirpal II. Though the Met first acquired a group of Peruvian antiquities in 1882, the museum did not begin a concerted effort to collect works from Africa and the Americas until 1969, when American businessman and philanthropist Nelson A. Rockefeller donated his more than 3,000-piece collection to the museum. Today, the Met's collection contains more than 11,000 pieces from sub-Saharan Africa, the Pacific Islands, the Americas and is housed in the 40,000-square-foot Rockefeller Wing on the south end of the museum.
The collection ranges from 40,000-year-old indigenous Australian rock paintings, to a group of 15-foot-tall memorial poles carved by the Asmat people of New Guinea, to a priceless collection of ceremonial and personal objects from the Nigerian Court of Benin donated by Klaus Perls. The range of materials represented in the Africa and Americas collection is undoubtedly the widest of any department at the Met, including everything from precious metals to porcupine quills; the Met's Asian department holds a collection of Asian art, of more than 35,000 pieces, arguably the most comprehensive in the US. The collection dates back to the founding of the museum: many of the philanthropists who made the earliest gifts to the museum included Asian art in their collections. Today, an entire wing of the museum is dedicated to the Asian collection, spans 4,000 years of Asian art; every Asian civilization is represented in the Met's Asian department, the pieces on display include every type of decorative art, from painting and printmaking to sculpture and metalworking.
The department is well known for its comprehensive collection of Chinese calligraphy and painting, as well as for its Indian sculptures and Tibetan works, the arts of Burma and Thailand. All three ancient religions of India – Hinduism and Jainism – are well represented in these s
Alexa Canady
Alexa Irene Canady is a retired American medical doctor specializing in neurosurgery. She was born in Lansing and earned both her bachelors and medical degree from the University of Michigan. After completing her residency at the University of Minnesota in 1981, she became the first black person to become a neurosurgeon; this came after the first American woman was board certified in Neurosurgery in 1960. Canady specialized in pediatric neurosurgery and was the chief of neurosurgery at the Children's Hospital in Michigan from 1987 until her partial retirement in 2001. In addition to surgery she conducted research and was a professor of neurosurgery at Wayne State University. After her retirement, she moved to Florida and maintained part-time practice at Pensacola's Sacred Heart Hospital until her full retirement in January 2012. In 1989, Canady was inducted into the Michigan Women's Hall of Fame, in 1993 she received the American Medical Women's Association President's Award. Dr. Canady was known amongst her peers as a patient-focused surgeon who cared about each of her patients.
Alexa Irene Canady was born in Lansing, Michigan to Elizabeth Hortense Canady and Dr. Clinton Canady, Jr, her mother was an educator and former national president of Inc.. She spent years being active in civic affairs within the city of Lansing and her father a dentist, her parents attended Fisk University where they met and married on her mother's 18th birthday right before her father's deployment during World War II. Her father is a graduate of Dentistry of Meharry Medical College and her mother is a graduate of Fisk University. Canady's parents taught her about the importance of education and hard work as a child, which would help her graduate from high school with honors. Canady and her younger brother were raised outside of Lansing and were the only two African-American students in their school, her mother being a former President of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority Inc. and her father a dentist, she was taught the importance of education from an early age. Her mother once told her, "what if you're the token black girl.
Take that token and spend it." She faced prejudice in school, in one instance, a family member, training in psychology tested her at a young age for intelligence, when she scored on the exam, her family was surprised because her performance in school was only average. They discovered that her teacher had been switching her test scores with a white student to cover up her intelligence, they faced many obstacles throughout their school years. However, despite these obstacles, Canady stood out among her peers academically, both in the classroom and by earning high scores on her tests in school. Before university, Alexa Canady was nominated as a National Achievement Scholar in 1967. Dr. Canady attended the University of Michigan where she received her B. S. became a member of Delta Sigma Theta. Her time at the University of Michigan was not without its struggles, she dropped out of college at one point due to a "Crisis of Confidence", but learned of a minority scholarship for in medicine and decided to pursue it.
She would go on to receive her M. D. with cum laude honors from the University of Michigan Medical School in 1975. In medical school, Canady felt as if she, the other female students, were overlooked by the professors; this only encouraged her to work harder. Although she had an interest in internal medicine, Dr. Canady decided on neurosurgery after falling in love with neurology during her first two years of medical school, she settled on this specialty against the recommendations of her advisors. Knowing that gaining a residency as a black student would be difficult, Canady began building her resumé, reading countless articles and attending every conference and seminar she could, sometimes asking questions just to get known in the small field, her vast appreciation for the fluidity of human anatomy would serve her well in her competitive field. She became a surgical intern at the Yale-New Haven Hospital from 1975-1976, rotating under Dr. William F. Collins. Although being an exceptional student, she still faced prejudice and discriminative comments as she was both the first black and female intern in the program.
On her first day as an intern, she was told that “you must be our new equal-opportunity package”. Despite these prejudices, she was voted one of the top residents by her fellow physicians. After completing her internship, she went to the University of Minnesota for her residency, becoming the first female African-American neurosurgery resident in the United States. Although she has stated that she wasn't focused on the history she was making, after moving to Pensacola, Fl in 2001, she realized the significance of her accomplishments and what it meant for other African-Americans and women in medicine. In 1982, after finishing residency, Dr. Canady decided to specialize as a Pediatric neurosurgeon, becoming the first African-American and the first Woman to do so, she chose pediatrics because of her love of the children in the pediatric ward during her residency stating “it never ceased to amaze me how happy the children were”. As a patient-focused surgeon, she was known to play videogames with her pediatric patients and form relationships with each patient.
She started practicing for a short time at the Henry Ford Hospital before going to work at the Children’s hospital of Michigan. She became the first African-American woman to be a board-certified Neurosurgeon in 1984, she became Chief of Neurosurgery at the Children's Hospital of Michigan in 1987 and held the position until her partial retirement in 2001. During her time as Chief, she
Marian Wright Edelman
Marian Wright Edelman is an American activist for children's rights. She has been an advocate for disadvantaged Americans for her entire professional life, she is founder of the Children's Defense Fund. Marian Wright was born June 1939, in Bennettsville, South Carolina, her father was Arthur Jerome Wright, a Baptist minister, her mother was Maggie Leola Bowen. In 1953, her father died of a heart attack when she was 14, urging in his last words, "Don't let anything get in the way of your education." She attended Marlboro Training High School in Bennettsville, where she graduated in 1956 and went on to Spelman College in Atlanta, Georgia. Due to her academic achievement she was awarded a Merrill scholarship which allowed her to travel and study abroad, she studied French civilization at the Sorbonne University and at the University of Geneva in Switzerland. For two months during her second semester abroad she studied in the Soviet Union as a Lisle Fellow. In 1959 she returned to Spelman for her senior year, became involved in the Civil Rights Movement.
In 1960 she was arrested along with 14 other students at one of the largest sit-ins at the Atlanta City Hall. She graduated from Spelman as valedictorian, she went on to study law and enrolled at Yale Law School where she was a John Hay Whitney Fellow, earned a Juris Doctor in 1963. Member of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc. Edelman received an honorary doctorate from La Salle University in May 2018. Edelman was the first African American woman admitted to The Mississippi Bar, she began practicing law with the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund's Mississippi office, working on racial justice issues connected with the civil rights movement and representing activists during the Mississippi Freedom Summer of 1964. She helped establish the Head Start program. Edelman moved in 1968 to Washington, D. C. where she continued her work and contributed to the organizing of the Poor People's Campaign of Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. She founded the Washington Research Project, a public interest law firm, became interested in issues related to childhood development and children.
In 1973, she founded the Children's Defense Fund as a voice for poor children, children of color, children with disabilities. The work of the Children's Defense Fund revolves around its teen pregnancy prevention program; the organization has served as an advocacy and research center for children's issues, documenting the problems and possible solutions to children in need. She became involved in several school desegregation cases and served on the board of the Child Development Group of Mississippi, which represented one of the largest Head Start programs in the country; as leader and principal spokesperson for the CDF, Edelman worked to persuade United States Congress to overhaul foster care, support adoption, improve child care and protect children who are disabled, abused or neglected. As she expresses it, "If you don't like the way the world is, you have an obligation to change it. Just do it one step at a time."She continues to advocate youth pregnancy prevention, child-care funding, prenatal care, greater parental responsibility in teaching values and curtailing what she sees as children's exposure to the barrage of violent images transmitted by mass media.
Several of Edelman's books highlight the importance of children's rights. In her 1987 book titled, Families in Peril: An Agenda for Social Change, Edelman stated, "As adults, we are responsible for meeting the needs of children, it is our moral obligation. We brought about their births and their lives, they cannot fend for themselves." Edelman serves on the board of the New York City based Robin Hood Foundation, a charitable organization dedicated to the elimination of poverty. During Joseph S. Clark's and Robert F. Kennedy's tour of the Mississippi Delta in 1967, she met Peter Edelman, an assistant to Kennedy, they married on July 14, 1968. Edelman and her husband, now a Georgetown law professor, have three children: Joshua and Ezra. Joshua is an educational administrator. J.: Made in America. 1982: Candace Award, National Coalition of 100 Black Women 1985: MacArthur Fellowship 1985: Barnard Medal of Distinction 1986: Doctor of Laws, honoris causa Bates College 1988: Albert Schweitzer Prize for Humanitarianism 1991: Award for Greatest Public Service Benefiting the Disadvantaged, an award given out annually by Jefferson Awards.
1992: Boy Scouts of America, Silver Buffalo Award 1993: National Women's Hall of Fame 1995: Community of Christ International Peace Award 1996: Heinz Award in the Human Condition 2000: Presidential Medal of Freedom 2004: The National Women's History Project named her one of their Women's History Honorees, "2004: Women Inspiring Hope and Possibility" 2010: A Marlboro County library named in her honor in her hometown of Bennettsville, South Carolina. 2011: Rathbun Visiting Fellow at Stanford University Thomas, R. R.. The South Carolina Roots of African American Thought. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press. Pp. 257–260. Marian Wright Edelman at the African American Registry Biography page at CDF Children's Defense Fund Edelman identifies "weasels" in American democracy Feb 22, 2006, ·minnesota public radio Appearances on C-SPAN
Charlayne Hunter-Gault
Charlayne Hunter-Gault is an American journalist and former foreign correspondent for National Public Radio, the Public Broadcasting Service. Alberta Charlayne Hunter was born in Due West, South Carolina, daughter of Col. Charles Shepherd Henry Hunter, Jr. U. S. Army, a regimental chaplain, his wife, the former Althea Ruth Brown. In 1961, Hunter became part of the civil rights movement when she and Hamilton Holmes became the first two African-American students to enroll in the University of Georgia, she graduated in 1963. In 1967, Hunter joined the investigative news team at WRC-TV, Washington, D. C. and anchored the local evening news. In 1968, Hunter-Gault joined The New York Times as a metropolitan reporter specializing in coverage of the urban black community, she joined The MacNeil/Lehrer Report in 1978 as a correspondent, becoming The NewsHour's national correspondent in 1983. She left The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer in June 1997, she worked in South Africa, as National Public Radio's chief correspondent in Africa.
Hunter-Gault left her post as CNN's Johannesburg bureau chief and correspondent in 2005, which she had held since 1999, although she still appeared on the station and others, as an Africa specialist. During her association with The NewsHour, Hunter-Gault won additional awards: two Emmys and a Peabody for excellence in broadcast journalism for her work on Apartheid's People, a NewsHour series on South Africa, she received the 1986 Journalist of the Year Award from the National Association of Black Journalists, a Candace Award for Journalism from the National Coalition of 100 Black Women in 1988, the 1990 Sidney Hillman Award, the Good Housekeeping Broadcast Personality of the Year Award, the American Women in Radio and Television Award, two awards from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting for excellence in local programming. The University of Georgia Academic Building is named for her, along with Hamilton Holmes, as it is called the Holmes/Hunter Academic Building, as of 2001, she has been a member of the Peabody Awards Board of Jurors since 2009 and serves on the Board of Trustees at the Carter Center.
Hunter-Gault is author of In My Place, a memoir about her experiences at the University of Georgia. Shortly before she was graduated from the University of Georgia, Hunter married a classmate, Walter L. Stovall, the writer son of a chicken-feed manufacturer; the couple was first married in March 1963 and remarried in Detroit, Michigan, on June 8, 1963, because they believed that, since he was white, the first ceremony might be considered invalid as well as criminal, based on laws about interracial marriages in the unidentified state in which they had been married. Once the marriage was revealed, the governor of Georgia called it "a shame and a disgrace", while Georgia's attorney general made public statements about prosecuting the mixed-race couple under Georgia law. News reports quoted the parents of both bride and groom as being against the marriage for reasons of race. Years after the couple's 1972 divorce, Hunter-Gault gave a speech at the university in which she praised Stovall, she said, "unhesitatingly jumped into my boat with me.
He gave up going to movies. He gave up going to the Varsity because he knew they would not serve me.... We married, despite the uproar we knew it would cause, because we loved each other." Shortly after their marriage, Stovall was quoted as saying, "We are two young people who found ourselves in love and did what we feel is required of people when they are in love and want to spend the rest of their lives together. We got married." The couple had Suesan Stovall, a singer. Following her divorce from Walter Stovall, Hunter married Ronald T. Gault, a black businessman, a program officer for the Ford Foundation, he became an investment banker and consultant. They have Chuma Gault, an actor; the couple lived in Johannesburg, South Africa, where they produced wine for a label called, Passages. After moving back to the United States, the couple maintained a home in Massachusetts, where they remained active supporters of the arts. Dare to Struggle... Dare to Win Globalization & Human Rights Rights & Wrongs: Human Rights Television "A Trip to Leverton" The New Yorker.
A short story-memoir "The Talk of the Town: Notes and Comment" The New Yorker 60/52: 28–29. Talk piece about Darrell Cabey, shot by Bernhard Goetz Hackett, Hunter-Gault on Journalism, Civil Rights and Faith, Sarasota Magazine, January 21, 2019 Amanda Nash. "Charlayne Hunter-Gault". New Georgia Encyclopedia. University of Georgia. Retrieved 2008-09-21. Carol Sears Botsch. "Charlayne Hunter-Gault". USC Aiken. Archived from the original on May 17, 2008. Retrieved September 21, 2008. Charlayne Hunter-Gault on IMDb Charlayne Hunter-Gault Biography at National Public Radio Charlayne Hunter-Gault Biography at New Georgia Encyclopedia "Interview With Charlayne Hunter-Gault: Facing ‘The First Person’", July 30, 2010 at genConnect.com Maynard Institute for Journalism Education: Black Journalists Movement Appearances on C-SPAN Civil Rights Leader Who Desegregated U. of Georgia on Student-Led Movements of 1960s and Today, Interview on Democracy Now
Camille Cosby
Camille Olivia Cosby is an American television producer, author and the wife of comedian Bill Cosby. The character of Clair Huxtable from The Cosby Show was based on her. Camille was born Camille Olivia Hanks on March 20, 1944, in Washington D. C. to Guy A. Hanks Sr. and Catherine C. Hanks, she grew up in Norbeck, just outside Washington. She is the oldest of four children and is a distant cousin of Nancy Hanks Lincoln, mother of United States President Abraham Lincoln. Through Lincoln, she is a distant cousin of American actor Tom Hanks. Cosby's father was a chemist at her mother worked at a nursery. Both of Cosby's parents had college educations, with her father earning a graduate degree from Fisk University and her mother earning an undergraduate degree from Howard University. Cosby attended private Catholic schools. First, she attended. After high school, Cosby studied psychology at the University of Maryland. While a student there, she went on a blind date during her sophomore year with Bill Cosby.
Engaged shortly after they started dating, the pair married on January 25, 1964. Following their marriage and her husband had five children: Erika, Ennis and Evin. Ennis was murdered on January 16, 1997 at age 27, her daughter Ensa died February 2018 of renal disease while awaiting a kidney transplant. She was 44. Cosby acted as manager for her husband and has been depicted as a "shrewd businesswoman." During an interview with Ebony Magazine, Bill Cosby stated, "People would rather deal with me than with Camille. She's rough to deal with when it comes to my business." She "helps in the development of her husband's material", including suggestions for The Cosby Show, such as suggesting the Huxtable family be middle rather than working class. Cosby has been a supporter of African American literature. In 1993, she wrote the foreword for Thelma Williams' Our Family Table: Recipes And Food Memories From African-american Life Models. In 2009, Cosby wrote the foreword for Dear Success Seeker: Wisdom from Outstanding Women by Dr. Michele R. Wright.
In 2014, she did the foreword for The Man from Essence: Creating a Magazine for Black Women, a book by Edward Lewis of Essence. In 1994, Cosby released Television's Imageable Influences: The Self-Perception of Young African-Americans, a book that "dramatically charts the damaging impact of derogatory images of African Americans produced in our media establishments." The book was intended to be the subject of her thesis for her doctorate degree. In 2001, Cosby worked with David C. Driskell for his book The Other Side of Color: African American Art in the Collection of Camille O. and William H. Cosby Jr. which focused on the Cosby's art collection. Together and Renee Poussaint edited A Wealth of Wisdom: Legendary African American Elders Speak in 2004. Cosby was co producer for the Broadway play Having Our Say: The Delany Sisters' First 100 Years, based on the book Having Our Say: The Delany Sisters' First 100 Years by Sarah "Sadie" L. Delany and A. Elizabeth "Bessie" Delany with Amy Hill Hearth.
Following the success of the show, Cosby acquired the film and television rights to the story and acted as executive producer for the 1999 made-for-television movie of the same name. In June 1987, Howard University in Washington, D. C. presented Cosby with a Doctor of an honorary doctoral degree. In 1990, Cosby earned a master's degree from the University of Massachusetts, followed by a Ph. D. in 1992. In an interview with Oprah Winfrey, Cosby stated, "I became keenly aware of myself in my mid thirties. I went through a transition. I decided to go back to school, because I had dropped out of college to marry Bill when I was 19. I had five children, I decided to go back. I didn't feel fulfilled educationally. I dropped out of school at the end of my sophomore year. So I went back, when I did, my self-esteem grew. I got my master's decided to get my doctoral degree. Education helped me to come out of myself." Cosby's history of philanthropy includes donations to educational foundations. Her philanthropic memberships include Operation PUSH, The United Negro College Fund, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the National Council of Negro Women, Jesse Jackson's National Rainbow Coalition.
Beginning in the start of the 1980s, Cosby and her husband donated $100,000 to Central State University, a black university in Ohio, with a gift of $325,000 following in 1987. In September 1989, CSU held the "Camille and Bill Cosby Cleveland Football Classic" in honor of their contributions to the school. In January 1987, the Cosbys donated $1.3 million to Fisk University. In November 1988, they donated $20 million to Atlanta's Spelman College, a women's college with a predominantly Black enrollment. According to The New York Times, the gift was the largest donation to a black college in American history; the college has since named the five story 92,000 square foot Camille Olivia Hanks Cosby Academic Center after Cosby. A few months after the Spellman donation and her husband donated $800,000 to Meharry Medical College as well as $750,000 to Bethune-Cookman University. In July 1992, during a gala held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the National Coalition of 100 Black Women awarded Cosby the Candace Award, a recognition of minority women that have made valuable contributions to their communities.
In April 2005, Cosby donated $2 million to Saint Frances Academy of Baltimore High School. Because of the donation, the school was able to endow 16 scholarships in Cosby's
History of Ethiopia
The article covers the prehistory and history of Ethiopia from its emergence as an empire under the Aksumites to its current form as the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia as well as the history of other areas in what is now Ethiopia such as the Afar Triangle. The Ethiopian Empire was first founded by Ethiopian people in the Ethiopian Highlands. Due to migration and imperial expansion, it grew to include many other Afro-Asiatic-speaking communities, including Oromos, Somalis, Afars, Gurage and Harari, among others. One of the earliest kingdoms to rise to power in the territory was the kingdom of D'mt in the 10th century BC, which established its capital at Yeha. In the first century AD the Aksumite Kingdom rose to power in the Tigray Region with its capital at Aksum and grew into a major power on the Red Sea, subjugating Yemen and Meroe and converting to Christianity in the early fourth century; the Aksumite empire fell into decline with the rise of Islam, forcing the Ethiopians to move south into the highlands for refuge.
The Aksumites gave way to the Zagwe Dynasty who established a new capital at Lalibela, before giving way to the Solomonic Dynasty in the 13th century. During the early Solomonic period Ethiopia went through military reforms and imperial expansion that made it dominate the Horn of Africa. Portuguese missionaries arrived at this time. In 1529, a conquest of Abyssinia by the Ottoman-allied Muslim Adal Sultanate devastated the highlands, was only deterred by a Portuguese intervention. With both Ethiopia and Adal weakened by the war, the Oromo people were able to invade into the highlands, conquering the remains of the Adal Sultanate and pushing deep into Ethiopia; the Portuguese presence increased, while the Ottomans began to push into what is now Eritrea, creating the Habesh Eyalet. The Portuguese brought modern weapons and baroque architecture to Ethiopia, in 1622 converted the emperor Susenyos I to Catholicism, sparking a civil war which ended in his abdication and an expulsion of all Catholics from Ethiopia.
A new capital was established at Gondar in 1632, a period of peace and prosperity ensued until the country was split apart by warlords in the 18th century during the Zemene Mesafint. Ethiopia was reunified in 1855 under Tewodros II, beginning Ethiopia's modern history and his reign was followed by Yohannes IV, killed in action in 1889. Under Menelik II Ethiopia started its transformation to well organized technological advancement and the structure that the country has now. Ethiopia expanded to the south and east, through the conquest of the western Oromo, Gurage and other groups, resulting in the borders of modern Ethiopia. Ethiopia defeated an Italian invasion in 1896 and came to be recognised as a legitimate state by European powers. A more rapid modernisation took place under Haile Selassie. Italy launched a second invasion in 1935. From 1935-1941, Ethiopia was under Italian occupation. A joint force of British and Ethiopian rebels managed to drive the Italians out of the country in 1941, Haile Selassie was returned to the throne.
Ethiopia and Eritrea united in a federation, but when Haile Selassie ended the federation in 1961 and made Eritrea a province of Ethiopia, the 30-year Eritrean War of Independence broke out. Eritrea regained its independence after a referendum in 1993. Haile Selassie was overthrown in 1974 and the militaristic Derg Regime came to power. In 1977 Somalia invaded, trying to annex the Ogaden region, but were pushed back by Ethiopian and Cuban forces. In 1977 and 1978 the government tortured or killed hundreds of thousands of suspected enemies in the Red Terror. Ethiopia experienced famine in 1984 that killed one million people and civil war that resulted in the fall of the Derg in 1991; this resulted in the establishment of the Federal Democratic Republic under Meles Zenawi. Ethiopia remains impoverished, it was not until 1963 that evidence of the presence of ancient hominids was discovered in Ethiopia, many years after similar discoveries had been made in neighbouring Kenya and Tanzania. The discovery was made by Gerrard Dekker, a Dutch hydrologist, who found Acheulian stone tools that were over a million years old at Kella.
Since many important finds have propelled Ethiopia to the forefront of palaeontology. The oldest hominid discovered to date in Ethiopia is the 4.2 million year old Ardipithicus ramidus found by Tim D. White in 1994; the most well known hominid discovery is Lucy, found in the Awash Valley of Ethiopia's Afar region in 1974 by Donald Johanson, is one of the most complete and best preserved, adult Australopithecine fossils uncovered. Lucy's taxonomic name, Australopithecus afarensis, means'southern ape of Afar', refers to the Ethiopian region where the discovery was made. Lucy is estimated to have lived 3.2 million years ago. There have been many other notable fossil findings in the country. Near Gona stone tools were uncovered in 1992 that were 2.52 million years old, these are the oldest such tools discovered anywhere in the world. In 2010 fossilised animal bones, that were 3.4 million years old, were found with stone-tool-inflicted marks on them in the Lower Awash Valley by an international team, led by Shannon McPherron, the oldest evidence of stone tool use found anywhere in the world.
In 2004 fossils found near the Omo river at Kibbish by Richard Leakey in 1967 were redated to 195,000 years old, the oldest date in East Africa for modern Homo sapiens. Homo sapiens idaltu, found in the Middle Awash in Ethiopia in 1997, lived about 160,000 years ago; the earliest records of Ethiopia appear in Ancient Egypt, during the Old Kingdom period
