1.
W. E. B. Du Bois
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William Edward Burghardt W. E. B. Du Bois was an American sociologist, historian, civil rights activist, Pan-Africanist, author, born in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, Du Bois grew up in a relatively tolerant and integrated community. Du Bois was one of the co-founders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in 1909, Du Bois rose to national prominence as the leader of the Niagara Movement, a group of African-American activists who wanted equal rights for blacks. Instead, Du Bois insisted on full civil rights and increased political representation and he referred to this group as the Talented Tenth and believed that African Americans needed the chances for advanced education to develop its leadership. Racism was the target of Du Boiss polemics, and he strongly protested against lynching, Jim Crow laws. His cause included people of color everywhere, particularly Africans and Asians in colonies and he was a proponent of Pan-Africanism and helped organize several Pan-African Congresses to fight for independence of African colonies from European powers. Du Bois made several trips to Europe, Africa and Asia, after World War I, he surveyed the experiences of American black soldiers in France and documented widespread bigotry in the United States military. Du Bois was a prolific author and he wrote one of the first scientific treatises in the field of American sociology, and he published three autobiographies, each of which contains insightful essays on sociology, politics and history. In his role as editor of the NAACPs journal The Crisis, Du Bois believed that capitalism was a primary cause of racism, and he was generally sympathetic to socialist causes throughout his life. He was an ardent peace activist and advocated nuclear disarmament, the United States Civil Rights Act, embodying many of the reforms for which Du Bois had campaigned his entire life, was enacted a year after his death. William Edward Burghardt Du Bois was born on February 23,1868, in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, to Alfred, Mary Silvina Burghardts family was part of the very small free black population of Great Barrington and had long owned land in the state. She was descended from Dutch, African and English ancestors, William Du Boiss maternal great-great-grandfather was Tom Burghardt, a slave, who was held by the Dutch colonist Conraed Burghardt. Tom briefly served in the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War and his son Jack Burghardt was the father of Othello Burghardt, who was the father of Mary Silvina Burghardt. William Du Boiss paternal great-grandfather was James Du Bois of Poughkeepsie, New York, One of James mixed-race sons was Alexander. He traveled and worked in Haiti, where he fathered a son, Alfred, Alexander returned to Connecticut, leaving Alfred in Haiti with his mother. Sometime before 1860, Alfred Du Bois emigrated to the United States and he married Mary Silvina Burghardt on February 5,1867, in Housatonic. Alfred left Mary in 1870, two years after their son William was born, Mary Burghardt Du Bois moved with her son back to her parents house in Great Barrington until he was five. She worked to support her family, until she suffered a stroke in the early 1880s, Great Barrington had a majority European American community, who treated Du Bois generally well
W. E. B. Du Bois
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W. E. B. Du Bois in 1918
W. E. B. Du Bois
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Signature
W. E. B. Du Bois
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As a child, Du Bois attended the
Congregational Church in
Great Barrington, Massachusetts. Church members collected donations to pay Du Bois's college tuition.
W. E. B. Du Bois
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Du Bois encountered
Jim Crow segregation for the first time when he attended
Fisk University in Tennessee.
2.
NAACP
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Du Bois, Mary White Ovington and Moorfield Storey. Its mission in the 21st century is to ensure the political, educational, social and their national initiatives included political lobbying, publicity efforts, and litigation strategies developed by their legal team. The group enlarged its mission in the late 20th century by considering issues such as police misconduct, the status of foreign refugees. Its name, retained in accordance with tradition, uses the common term colored people. The NAACP bestows annual awards to people of color in two categories, Image Awards are for achievement in the arts and entertainment, and Spingarn Medals are for outstanding achievement of any kind and its headquarters is in Baltimore, Maryland. The NAACP is headquartered in Baltimore, with regional offices in New York, Michigan, Georgia, Maryland, Texas, Colorado. Each regional office is responsible for coordinating the efforts of state conferences in that region, local, youth, and college chapters organize activities for individual members. In the U. S. the NAACP is administered by a 64-member board, julian Bond, Civil Rights Movement activist and former Georgia State Senator, was chairman until replaced in February 2010 by health-care administrator Roslyn Brock. For decades in the first half of the 20th century, the organization was led by its executive secretary. James Weldon Johnson and Walter F. White, who served in that role successively from 1920 to 1958, were more widely known as NAACP leaders than were presidents during those years. Departments within the NAACP govern areas of action, local chapters are supported by the Branch and Field Services department and the Youth and College department. The Legal department focuses on cases of broad application to minorities, such as systematic discrimination in employment, government. The Washington, D. C. bureau is responsible for lobbying the U. S. government, the goal of the Health Division is to advance health care for minorities through public policy initiatives and education. As of 2007, the NAACP had approximately 425,000 paying and non-paying members, the NAACPs non-current records are housed at the Library of Congress, which has served as the organizations official repository since 1964. The records held there comprise approximately five million items spanning the NAACPs history from the time of its founding until 2003, in 1905, a group of thirty-two prominent African-American leaders met to discuss the challenges facing people of color and possible strategies and solutions. They were particularly concerned by the Southern states disenfranchisement of blacks starting with Mississippis passage of a new constitution in 1890, through 1908, southern legislatures dominated by white Democrats ratified new constitutions and laws creating barriers to voter registration and more complex election rules. In practice, this caused the exclusion of most blacks and many whites from the political system in southern states. Black voter registration and turnout dropped markedly in the South as a result of such legislation, men who had been voting for thirty years in the South were told they did not qualify to register
NAACP
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Founders of the NAACP: Moorfield Storey, Mary White Ovington and W.E.B. Du Bois.
NAACP
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National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
NAACP
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An African American drinks out of a segregated water cooler designated for "colored" patrons in 1939 at a streetcar terminal in
Oklahoma City.
NAACP
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Sign for the "colored" waiting room at a bus station in
Durham, North Carolina, 1940
3.
United States
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Forty-eight of the fifty states and the federal district are contiguous and located in North America between Canada and Mexico. The state of Alaska is in the northwest corner of North America, bordered by Canada to the east, the state of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean. The U. S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean, the geography, climate and wildlife of the country are extremely diverse. At 3.8 million square miles and with over 324 million people, the United States is the worlds third- or fourth-largest country by area, third-largest by land area. It is one of the worlds most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, paleo-Indians migrated from Asia to the North American mainland at least 15,000 years ago. European colonization began in the 16th century, the United States emerged from 13 British colonies along the East Coast. Numerous disputes between Great Britain and the following the Seven Years War led to the American Revolution. On July 4,1776, during the course of the American Revolutionary War, the war ended in 1783 with recognition of the independence of the United States by Great Britain, representing the first successful war of independence against a European power. The current constitution was adopted in 1788, after the Articles of Confederation, the first ten amendments, collectively named the Bill of Rights, were ratified in 1791 and designed to guarantee many fundamental civil liberties. During the second half of the 19th century, the American Civil War led to the end of slavery in the country. By the end of century, the United States extended into the Pacific Ocean. The Spanish–American War and World War I confirmed the status as a global military power. The end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 left the United States as the sole superpower. The U. S. is a member of the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Organization of American States. The United States is a developed country, with the worlds largest economy by nominal GDP. It ranks highly in several measures of performance, including average wage, human development, per capita GDP. While the U. S. economy is considered post-industrial, characterized by the dominance of services and knowledge economy, the United States is a prominent political and cultural force internationally, and a leader in scientific research and technological innovations. In 1507, the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller produced a map on which he named the lands of the Western Hemisphere America after the Italian explorer and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci
United States
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Native Americans meeting with Europeans, 1764
United States
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Flag
United States
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The signing of the
Mayflower Compact, 1620.
United States
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The
Declaration of Independence: the
Committee of Five presenting their draft to the
Second Continental Congress in 1776
4.
International Standard Serial Number
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An International Standard Serial Number is an eight-digit serial number used to uniquely identify a serial publication. The ISSN is especially helpful in distinguishing between serials with the same title, ISSN are used in ordering, cataloging, interlibrary loans, and other practices in connection with serial literature. The ISSN system was first drafted as an International Organization for Standardization international standard in 1971, ISO subcommittee TC 46/SC9 is responsible for maintaining the standard. When a serial with the content is published in more than one media type. For example, many serials are published both in print and electronic media, the ISSN system refers to these types as print ISSN and electronic ISSN, respectively. The format of the ISSN is an eight digit code, divided by a hyphen into two four-digit numbers, as an integer number, it can be represented by the first seven digits. The last code digit, which may be 0-9 or an X, is a check digit. Formally, the form of the ISSN code can be expressed as follows, NNNN-NNNC where N is in the set, a digit character. The ISSN of the journal Hearing Research, for example, is 0378-5955, where the final 5 is the check digit, for calculations, an upper case X in the check digit position indicates a check digit of 10. To confirm the check digit, calculate the sum of all eight digits of the ISSN multiplied by its position in the number, the modulus 11 of the sum must be 0. There is an online ISSN checker that can validate an ISSN, ISSN codes are assigned by a network of ISSN National Centres, usually located at national libraries and coordinated by the ISSN International Centre based in Paris. The International Centre is an organization created in 1974 through an agreement between UNESCO and the French government. The International Centre maintains a database of all ISSNs assigned worldwide, at the end of 2016, the ISSN Register contained records for 1,943,572 items. ISSN and ISBN codes are similar in concept, where ISBNs are assigned to individual books, an ISBN might be assigned for particular issues of a serial, in addition to the ISSN code for the serial as a whole. An ISSN, unlike the ISBN code, is an identifier associated with a serial title. For this reason a new ISSN is assigned to a serial each time it undergoes a major title change, separate ISSNs are needed for serials in different media. Thus, the print and electronic versions of a serial need separate ISSNs. Also, a CD-ROM version and a web version of a serial require different ISSNs since two different media are involved, however, the same ISSN can be used for different file formats of the same online serial
International Standard Serial Number
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ISSN encoded in an EAN-13 barcode with sequence variant 0 and issue number 5
5.
Amanitenmemide
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Amanitenmemide was a Nubian king whose throne name was Nebmaatre. His name is written in Meroitic, while his name is written in classical Egyptian hieroglyphs. He is thus far known from his pyramid in Meroe. The pyramid occupies an area of 8.6 X8.6 m and is, therefore, in front of the pyramid there was a decorated chapel. The decoration was copied by the Lepsius expedition, one wall was brought to Berlin, where it is displayed in the Neues Museum. Another, now preserved in six blocks, is in the British Museum in London. Three skeletons were found in the chamber of the pyramid - two of them belonging to women, the third to a man of about 30 years, which are, perhaps. There is little evidence for dating the king, the small size of the pyramid indicates a date after Natakamani, under whom the pyramids in general became smaller. It has been suggested that Amanitenmemide belongs to the first century AD
Amanitenmemide
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The relief of the chapel in Berlin
Amanitenmemide
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The pyramid of Amanitenmemide (on the right in the distance)
6.
Pyramids of Meroe (Begarawiyah)
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Near Meroe three royal cemeteries were constructed. South Cemetery features nine royal pyramids, four of the pyramids belonged to Kings and five belonged to queens. One hundred and ninety-five other tombs complete the cemetery, north cemetery contains forty-one royal pyramids. Thirty belonged to kings, six to queens and five to other royals, the cemetery has three more non-royal tombs for a total of forty-four. West cemetery is a non-royal site and it contains some one hundred and thirteen tombs. The southern cemetery is the place of the Meroitic side of the royal family from ca 720 -300 BCE. Towards the end the cemetery became the royal burial site for the Kings of Meroe. This cemetery contains several pyramids, Beg. S1 - Queens pyramid Beg. S2 - Queens pyramid Beg. S3 - Queens pyramid Beg. S4 - Kings sister, Kings Mother, Kenreth = Saleran. This site contains the burials of the Kings and Queens of Meroe from ca 300 BCE to about 350 AD. The northern cemetery contains many royal pyramids, Beg, n5 - Prince Arik-kharer, son of Amanitore Beg. N10 - King Shorkaror or Arikhankharer Beg, n17 - King Amanitenmemide, Nebmaatre I Beg. N18 - King Amankhanewel, Nebmaatre II, n28 - King Teqerideamani I Beg. N34 - King Artanyeszeme, Kheperkare III, n56 - Princes Pyramid Nubian pyramids The royal cemetery at el-Kurru. Buried here were Kashta, Piye, Tantamani, Shabaka and several queens are buried in pyramids at El-Kurru, King Taharqa and other royals form the kingdom of Napata are buried at Nuri
Pyramids of Meroe (Begarawiyah)
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The West Cemetery at Meroe
Pyramids of Meroe (Begarawiyah)
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The Southern Cemetery of Meroe
7.
Oswald Garrison Villard
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Oswald Garrison Villard was an American journalist and editor of the New York Evening Post. He was a rights activist, a founding member of the NAACP. In 1913 he wrote to President Woodrow Wilson to protest his administrations racial segregation of federal offices in Washington, DC, Villard also was a founder of the American Anti-Imperialist League, favoring independence for territories taken in the Spanish-American War. He provided a direct link between the anti-imperialism of the late 19th century and the conservative Old Right of the 1930s and 1940s. Villard was born in Wiesbaden, Germany, on March 13,1872 and he was the son of Henry Villard, an American newspaper correspondent who had been an immigrant from Germany, and Fanny Villard, daughter of abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison. Fanny Villard was a suffragist and one of the founders of the Womens Peace Movement and his father later invested in railroads, and bought The Nation and the New York Evening Post. The family returned to the United States soon after Villards birth, Villard graduated from Harvard University in 1893 and, after touring Europe with his father for a year, returned to Harvard to earn his graduate degree in American History. He served as an assistant, and could have pursued a career in academia. In 1896 he joined the staff of The Philadelphia Press, and he soon joined the staff of his father’s Evening Post, serving as the editor of the Saturday features page. He began to regularly for the New York Evening Post and The Nation. We were radical in our demand for trade and our complete opposition to the whole protective system. 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 no longer cared what he had to say. Villard also consistently used the page of the Evening Post to argue against imperialism and expansionism. 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 that formally organized the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Villard became a co-founder of the organization, along with W. E. B, du Bois and other influential individuals. For many years, Villard served as the NAACPs disbursing treasurer while Moorfield Storey, Villard supported Woodrow Wilson in the 1912 election, and during an interview with the president convinced Wilson to work to improve conditions for African Americans
Oswald Garrison Villard
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Villard in 1930
8.
Charles Edward Russell
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Charles Edward Russell was an American journalist, opinion columnist, newspaper editor, and political activist. The author of a number of books of biography and social commentary, he won the 1928 Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography for The American Orchestra, Russell is also remembered as one of three co-founders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Charles Edward Russell was born in Davenport, Iowa, a center located on the Mississippi River on the far eastern border of the state. His father Edward Russell was editor of the Davenport Gazette, Russells attended St. Johnsbury Academy, located in St. Johnsbury, Vermont, for his high school education and also worked under his father while at the newspaper. Russell wrote for the Minneapolis Journal, the Detroit Tribune, the New York World, William Randolph Hearsts Cosmopolitan, and the New York Herald. He was employed as a writer and editor in New York and Chicago from 1894 to 1902, working successively for the New York World, the New York American. Russell felt very strongly about the well-being of others, after seeing the struggles that people all over New York had to undergo and these struggles included the unfair working conditions and wages in which people from all walks of life were forced to endure. People were placed into cramped working spaces with few, if any breaks, aside from the physical conditions, most big employers did not value the well-being of their employees, especially the immigrants. With these horrendous mental images in place, Russell became inspired, Russell was one of a group of journalists at the turn of the 20th century who were called muckrakers. They investigated and reported—not with cold detachment—but with feeling and rage about the horrors of capitalism and this type of reporting became known as Yellow journalism. Yellow journalism and the movement helped to jumpstart numerous reforms that included, prison conditions, railroads, church building conditions. Shortly after his hiatus from writing due to the death of his first wife, Russell wrote one of his best books, The Greatest Trust in the World, comparable to the writings of Upton Sinclair, Russells most controversial expose was fixated on the Trinity Church. This report was detrimental to the reputation as it accused the church of being one of the leading slum landlords in New York City. This accusation resulted in the church taking swift action by cleaning up or selling the worst of their properties, after traveling all over the world in investigative journalism, Russells beliefs about capitalism began to form stronger and stronger. He believed that capitalism itself was faulty and that the financial endeavors of the United States that led the economy were corrupt. As his convictions became deeper, Russell recognized that his beliefs were in line with that of the Socialist party, in 1909 Russell was among 60 inspirational men and women such as Oswald Villard, William Walling, Ida B. Russells participation in the founding of the NAACP stemmed from his experiences with violence, one of the most memorable experiences included his father nearly being hanged for simply opposing slavery. Russell served and participated on the board of directors for the NAACP for the remainder of his life, in 1908 Russell joined the Socialist Party of America
Charles Edward Russell
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C.E. Russell, c. 1907
Charles Edward Russell
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Russell as drawn by Art Ward in 1912.
Charles Edward Russell
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Charles Edward Russell with other members of the United States diplomatic mission sent to Russia in 1917 by President Woodrow Wilson.
Charles Edward Russell
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Charles E. Russell
9.
Kelly Miller (scientist)
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Kelly Miller was an African-American mathematician, sociologist, essayist, newspaper columnist, author, and an important figure in the intellectual life of black America for close to half a century. He was known as The Bard of the Potomac in his day, Kelly Miller was the sixth of ten children born to Elizabeth Miller and Kelly Miller Sr. His mother was a slave and his father was a freed black man who was conscripted into the Winnsboro Regiment of the Confederacy. Miller was born in Winnsboro, South Carolina where he attend local primary, from 1878-1880 Miller attended the Fairfield Institute where his hard work paid off and he was offered a scholarship to the historically black college, Howard University. Miller finished the preparatory departments three-year curriculum in Latin and Greek, after finishing one department he quickly moved on to the next one. Miller attended the College Department at Howard from 1882 to 1886, in 1886, Kelly Miller was given the opportunity to study advanced mathematics with Captain Edgar Frisby. Frisby was an English mathematician working at the U. S Naval Observatory, frisbys attendant, Simon Newcomb noticed Millers intellectual talent and recommended him to Johns Hopkins University. Miller spent the two years at Johns Hopkins University and became the first African American student to attend the university. Kelly Miller spent his time at the university studying mathematics, physics, unfortunately, Miller was not able to keep attending Johns Hopkins University due to financial limitations. From 1889 to 1890 Miller taught mathematics at the M Street High School in Washington, appointed professor of mathematics at Howard in 1890, Miller introduced sociology into the curriculum in 1895, serving as professor of sociology from 1895 to 1934. Miller graduated from Howard University School of Law in 1903, in 1907, Miller was appointed dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. His deanship lasted twelve years and in time, the college changed significantly. The old classical curriculum was modernized and new courses in the natural sciences, Miller was an avid supporter of Howard University and actively recruited students to the school. In 1914 he planned a Negro-American Museum and Library, Miller was a prolific writer of articles and essays which were published in major newspapers and magazines, and several books, including Out of the House of Bondage. Du Bois in editing The Crisis, the journal of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Miller started off publishing his articles anonymously in the Boston Transcript and he wrote about both radical and conservative groups. Miller also shared his views in the Educational Review, Dial, Education, and his anonymous articles later became his lead essay in his book Race Adjustment published in 1908. Miller suggested that African Americans had the right to protest against the unjust circumstances that came with the rise of white supremacy in the South, Miller supported racial harmony, thrift, and institution building
Kelly Miller (scientist)
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Kelly Miller
10.
James Russell Lowell
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James Russell Lowell was an American Romantic poet, critic, editor, and diplomat. He is associated with the Fireside Poets, a group of New England writers who were among the first American poets that rivaled the popularity of British poets and these writers usually used conventional forms and meters in their poetry, making them suitable for families entertaining at their fireside. Lowell graduated from Harvard College in 1838, despite his reputation as a troublemaker and he published his first collection of poetry in 1841 and married Maria White in 1844. The couple had children, though only one survived past childhood. After moving back to Cambridge, Lowell was one of the founders of a journal called The Pioneer and he gained notoriety in 1848 with the publication of A Fable for Critics, a book-length poem satirizing contemporary critics and poets. The same year, he published The Biglow Papers, which increased his fame and he went on to publish several other poetry collections and essay collections throughout his literary career. Maria died in 1853, and Lowell accepted a professorship of languages at Harvard in 1854 and he traveled to Europe before officially assuming his teaching duties in 1856, and married Frances Dunlap shortly thereafter in 1857. That year, Lowell also became editor of The Atlantic Monthly and it was not until 20 years later that he received his first political appointment, the ambassadorship to the Kingdom of Spain. He was later appointed ambassador to the Court of St. Jamess and he spent his last years in Cambridge in the same estate where he was born, and died there in 1891. Lowell believed that the poet played an important role as a prophet and he used poetry for reform, particularly in abolitionism. However, his commitment to the anti-slavery cause wavered over the years and he attempted to emulate the true Yankee accent in the dialogue of his characters, particularly in The Biglow Papers. This depiction of the dialect, as well as his satires, was an inspiration to writers such as Mark Twain. James Russell Lowell was born February 22,1819 and he was a member of the eighth generation of the Lowell family, the descendants of Percival Lowle who settled in Newbury, Massachusetts, in 1639. His parents were the Reverend Charles Russell Lowell, Sr. a minister at a Unitarian church in Boston who had studied theology at Edinburgh. By the time that James Russell Lowell was born, the owned a large estate in Cambridge called Elmwood. He was the youngest of six children, his siblings were Charles, Rebecca, Mary, William, Lowells mother built in him an appreciation for literature at an early age, especially in poetry, ballads, and tales from her native Orkney. In his sophomore year, he was absent from required chapel attendance 14 times, in his senior year, he became one of the editors of Harvardiana literary magazine, to which he contributed prose and poetry that he admitted was of low quality. As he said later, I was as great an ass as ever brayed & thought it singing, during his undergraduate years, Lowell was a member of Hasty Pudding and served both as Secretary and Poet
James Russell Lowell
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James Russell Lowell circa 1855
James Russell Lowell
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Elmwood, birthplace and longtime home of James Russell Lowell, in
Cambridge, Massachusetts
James Russell Lowell
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James Russell Lowell in his later years
James Russell Lowell
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Grave of James Russell Lowell at
Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts
11.
Mary White Ovington
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Mary White Ovington was an American suffragist, journalist, and co-founder of the NAACP. Mary White Ovington was born April 11,1865, in Brooklyn and her grandmother attended the Connecticut congregation of Samuel Joseph May. Her parents, members of the Unitarian Church were supporters of rights and had been involved in anti-slavery movement. Educated at Packer Collegiate Institute and Radcliffe College, Ovington became involved in the campaign for 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 W. E. B. Du Bois and was introduced to the members of the Niagara Movement. Influenced by the ideas of William Morris, Ovington joined the Socialist Party of America in 1905, 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 journals and newspapers such as The Masses, New York Evening Post. She also worked with Ray Stannard Baker and influenced the content of his book, Following the Color Line, on September 3,1908 she read an article written by Socialist William English Walling, entitled Race War in the North in The Independent. Walling ended the article by calling for a body of citizens to come to the aid of blacks. Ovington responded to the article by writing Walling and meeting at his apartment in New York City along with social worker Dr. Henry Moskowitz. The group decided to launch a campaign by issuing a call for a conference on the civil and political rights of African-Americans on the centennial of Lincoln’s birthday. Many people responded to the call that led to the formation of the National Negro Committee that held its first meeting in New York on May 31. Early members included Josephine Ruffin, Mary Talbert, Mary Church Terrell, Inez Milholland, Jane Addams, George Henry White, W. E. B. Du Bois, Charles Edward Russell, John Dewey, Charles Darrow, Lincoln Steffens, Ray Stannard Baker, Fanny Garrison Villard, Oswald Garrison Villard, the following year Ovington attended the Universal Races Congress in London. Ovington remained active in the struggle for suffrage and as a pacifist opposed the United Statess involvement in the First World War. During the war Ovington supported A, philip Randolph and his magazine The Messenger, which campaigned for black civil rights
Mary White Ovington
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Portrait, c. 1910
Mary White Ovington
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Mary White Ovington's plaque on the National Volunteer Pathway
12.
Dusk of Dawn
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Dusk of Dawn, An Essay Toward an Autobiography of a Race Concept is an autobiographical text by W. E. B. Du Bois, which, published in 1940, examines Du Boiss life, in contrast to Washingtons Up From Slavery, a generic blend of slave narrative and autobiography, Dusk of Dawn traces the genealogy of the race concept as it has affected Du Boiss life. Reviewing the book in 1940, Metz P. ”Du Bois described the concept saying, This was the concept which has dominated my life. It had as I have tried to show all sorts of illogical trends, perhaps it is wrong to speak of it at all as a concept rather than as a group of contradictory forces, facts and tendencies. At any rate I hope I have made its meaning to me clear, the chapters of Dusk of Dawn can be divided thematically into three sections. The first four chapters focus on information, contextualizing each anecdote in the relevant current events of its time. The next three chapters shift to a more ideological subject—the concept of race, Du Bois uses these chapters to theorize on race as a psychological complex of irrational logics and habits which are perpetuated to support an economically exploitative society. The final two chapters return to autobiography, chronicling Du Bois’s life and ideology from 1910 to 1940, Du Bois begins with his childhood in Great Barrington and recounts his experiences through his graduation from high school. Du Bois recounts his experiences at Fisk University and his studies in Germany and he notes that while he was thinking critically about race, his analysis was confined to “the relation of my people to the world movement. I was not questioning the world movement in itself. ”This chapter covers the years 1894-1910, during this period, Du Bois began teaching, attended the Niagara Movement, and published The Crisis. Du Bois’s thinking also shifted during this time and he became increasingly disillusioned with the ability of scientific evidence to transform racial bias. Instead he began to think about racism as “forces or ideologies embraced more than our reasoned acts. They included physical, biological and psychological forces, habits, conventions and enactments. ”He also offers a description of his family tree as he discusses themes of miscegenation, racial “chauvinism, ”. In this chapter, he challenges the dominance of the world, stating plainly. It has been conceived and discussed, but not realized. ”Instead. In a conversation with a character, Roger Van Dieman. “The present question is, What is the world going to do about the current situations. ”Du Bois reflects on the status of African Americans, their exclusion from institutions. With this in mind, he outlines a plan called “the Negro co-operative movement. ”Du Bois also discusses his artistic endeavors, the ways he encouraged creative expression in the black community
Dusk of Dawn
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First edition (publ.
Harcourt Brace)
13.
Springfield race riot of 1908
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When a mob seeking to take the men for lynching discovered the sheriff had transferred them out of the city, it rioted in black neighborhoods. It killed black citizens on the street and destroyed businesses and homes and it was the first race riot in the North in half a century. By the end of the riot the next day, the governor had sent in thousands of militia to restore order, at least seven people died, and there was US$200,000 in property damage, mostly to the black neighborhoods. This was one of the few riots of whites against blacks in 20th-century United States history in more white deaths were recorded than black. The riot was a factor in the formation of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People by both blacks and whites and its goal was to improve civil rights for black people, and to educate all the populace and improve race relations. It also had a proportion of European immigrants who came for industrial jobs. Black people had been migrating north for work and to leave the social oppression of the South, industries sometimes used black workers as strikebreakers during labor strikes. Town residents worried about growing political power among black people and it is the central paradox of our history that a nation based on the respect for law and order should so often resort to violence to maintain the inequities of race and class. On Saturday, July 4,1908, a man broke into the home of Clergy Ballard, Ballard awoke and rose to investigate, finding a man standing near his daughters bed. The intruder fled the house and Ballard gave chase, after Ballard caught up with the intruder, the man turned and attacked him, slashing Ballards throat with a wavy razor. Before dying on Sunday, Ballard identified his assailant as Joe James, white residents found James sleeping off a drunk night in the North End, a white working-class neighborhood, and beat him before police took him away. They arrested him, and locked him in the city jail, the press suggested that Ballard had saved his daughter from a sexual attack, which inflamed residents more. On August 14, the local Illinois State Journal newspaper reported that a woman, Mabel Hallam, had allegedly been raped by a local black caretaker. Hallam, the 21-year-old wife of a streetcar conductor, identified Richardson as the one who had assaulted her the night before. Police arrested Richardson and took him to the city jail, the large crowd, by 7,30 pm numbering 5,000 to 10,000, went to the jail and demanded the release of the prisoners to them. Sheriff Charles Werner had already transferred the prisoners to safety in Bloomington 64 miles away, Werner had been through a race riot in Cincinnati, Ohio and hoped to avoid another one. When the crowd learned that Loper had helped transfer the two prisoners, men went to his restaurant for revenge. The sheriff sent about ten cavalry but forbade them to fire, the mob trashed Lopers fine restaurant, its elegant interior and all the furnishings, and overturned and burned his expensive automobile while he escaped
Springfield race riot of 1908
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An example of the damage caused to black residences in the riot
14.
William English Walling
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William English Walling was an American labor reformer and Socialist Republican born into a wealthy family in Louisville, Kentucky. He founded the National Womens Trade Union League in 1903 and he wrote three books on socialism in the early 20th century. He left the Socialist Party because of its policy, as he believed United States participation in the Great War was needed to defeat the Central Powers. William English Walling was born into wealth in Louisville, Kentucky, the son of Willoughby Walling, a physician who had inherited much real estate and he had an older brother, Willoughby George Walling. His fathers family were planters who had held slaves before the American Civil War, the boys maternal grandfather was William Hayden English, a successful businessman in Indiana and the Democratic candidate for vice president in 1880. Walling was educated at a school in Louisville, and at the University of Chicago. After his grandfather English died while Walling was in college, the man inherited a private income. He became a liberal and progressive, after moving to New York in 1900, he became active in state social movements and politics. Walling became involved in labor and political movements, first working at Hull House in Chicago and he vowed to live on the equivalent of a workers wage. Moving to New York City in 1900, he worked as a factory inspector, in 1903 he founded the National Womens Trade Union League. In 1906 following a trip to Russia to report on the abortive Russian Revolution of 1905, he married Anna Strunsky, a Jewish immigrant. They had four children together, Rosamond, Anna, Georgia, in 1908 Walling published Russias Message, a book inspired by the social unrest which he and his wife had observed in Russia. He joined the Socialist Party, but resigned several years later at the time of the Great War because of its anti-war stance, Walling became convinced that United States intervention in the war was needed to defeat the Central Powers. In 1908 Walling and his wife Anna went to Springfield, Illinois to investigate a race riot occurred on August 14. Ethnic whites had attacked blacks, with physical conflict arising out of job competition at the lowest levels, Walling wrote an article, The Race War in the North, for the September 3 issue of The Independent. He appealed for a large and powerful body of citizens to come to their aid, mary White Ovington wrote to him in support. She was one among a number of people, white and black, Christians and Jews, Walling was among the white founders of the NAACP, founding black members included such leaders as W. E. B. Du Bois from the Niagara Movement and they had some of their first meetings in Wallings New York apartment
William English Walling
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William English Walling in 1906
15.
Harlem Renaissance
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The Harlem Renaissance was a cultural, social, and artistic explosion that took place in Harlem, New York, spanning the 1920s. During the time, it was known as the New Negro Movement, the Harlem Renaissance was considered to be a rebirth of African-American arts. The Harlem Renaissance is generally considered to have spanned from about 1918 until the mid-1930s, many of its ideas lived on much longer. The zenith of this flowering of Negro literature, as James Weldon Johnson preferred to call the Harlem Renaissance, until the end of the Civil War, the majority of African Americans had been enslaved and lived in the South. During the Reconstruction Era, the emancipated African Americans, freedmen, began to strive for civic participation, political equality and economic, soon after the end of the Civil War the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871 gave rise to speeches by African-American Congressmen addressing this Bill. By 1875 sixteen blacks had been elected and served in Congress, the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871 was denounced by black Congressmen and resulted in the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1875, part of Reconstruction legislation by Republicans. By the late 1870s, Democratic whites managed to power in the South. From 1890 to 1908 they proceeded to pass legislation that disenfranchised most Negros and many poor whites and they established white supremacist regimes of Jim Crow segregation in the South and one-party block voting behind southern Democrats. Convict laborers were typically subject to forms of corporal punishment, overwork. While a small number of blacks were able to land shortly after the Civil War. As life in the South became increasingly difficult, African Americans began to migrate north in great numbers, most of the African-American literary movement arose from a generation that had memories of the gains and losses of Reconstruction after the Civil War. Sometimes their parents or grandparents had been slaves and their ancestors had sometimes benefited by paternal investment in cultural capital, including better-than-average education. Many in the Harlem Renaissance were part of the early 20th century Great Migration out of the South into the Negro neighborhoods of the North, African Americans sought a better standard of living and relief from the institutionalized racism in the South. Others were people of African descent from racially stratified communities in the Caribbean who came to the United States hoping for a better life, uniting most of them was their convergence in Harlem. During the enormous influx of European immigrants in the late 19th century, the once exclusive district was abandoned by the middle class. Harlem became an African-American neighborhood in the early 1900s, in 1910, a large block along 135th Street and Fifth Avenue was bought by various African-American realtors and a church group. Many more African Americans arrived during the First World War, due to the war, the migration of laborers from Europe virtually ceased, while the war effort resulted in a massive demand for unskilled industrial labor. The Great Migration brought hundreds of thousands of African Americans to cities such as Chicago, Philadelphia, Detroit, despite the increasing popularity of Negro culture, virulent white racism, often by more recent ethnic immigrants, continued to affect African-American communities, even in the North
Harlem Renaissance
–
Religion and Evolution Ad
Harlem Renaissance
Harlem Renaissance
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"An' the stars began to fall." by Aaron Douglas
Harlem Renaissance
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Langston Hughes, novelist and poet, photographed by
Carl Van Vechten, 1936
16.
Jessie Redmon Fauset
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Jessie Redmon Fauset was an American editor, poet, essayist, novelist, and educator. Before and after working on The Crisis, she worked for decades as a French teacher in schools in Washington, DC. In her early career, she traveled to Paris in the summer, after contributing numerous columns, Fauset became the literary editor of the NAACP magazine The Crisis, serving 1919 to 1926, at the height of the Harlem Renaissance. During this period, she encouraged many younger, new writers and she also was the editor and co-author of the African-American childrens magazine The Brownies Book. Du Bois, who hired her and whose work she studied and she published four novels during the 1920s and 1930s, exploring the lives of the black middle-class. She was considered to be one of the most intelligent women novelists of the Harlem Renaissance, in her lifetime she also wrote essays, poetry and short fiction. She was born Jessie Redmona Fauset on April 27,1882, in Fredericksville, Camden County, Snow Hill Center Township, the town is now know as Lawnside, New Jersey. She was the child of Redmon Fauset, an African Methodist Episcopal minister. Jessies mother died when she was young, and her father remarried and he had three children with his second wife Bella, a white Jewish woman who converted to Christianity. Bella brought three children to the family from her first marriage, both parents emphasized education for their children. Fauset came from a large family mired in poverty and her father died when she was young, two of her half-siblings were still under the age of five. She attended the Philadelphia High School for Girls, the top academic school. She graduated as valedictorian of her class and likely the schools first African-American graduate and she wanted to study at Bryn Mawr College, but they circumvented the issue of admitting a black student by finding her a scholarship for another university. She continued her education at Cornell University in upstate New York, during her time at Cornell University in 1903 through part of 1904, Fauset lived at Sage College. She would win Phi Beta Kappa honors, for many years she was considered to be the first black woman accepted to the Phi Beta Kappa Society, but later research revealed this was actually Mary Annette Anderson. Fauset later received her masters degree in French from the University of Pennsylvania, following college, Fauset became a teacher at Dunbar High School, the academic high school for black students in Washington, DC, which had a segregated public school system. She taught French and Latin, and went to Paris for the summers to study at la Sorbonne, in 1919 Fauset left teaching to become the literary editor for the The Crisis, founded by W. E. B. She served in that position until 1926, Fauset became a member of the NAACP and represented them in the Pan African Congress in 1921
Jessie Redmon Fauset
–
Jessie Redmon Fauset
Jessie Redmon Fauset
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Advertisement for There is Confusion
17.
Langston Hughes
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James Mercer Langston Hughes was an American poet, social activist, novelist, playwright, and columnist from Joplin, Missouri. He was one of the earliest innovators of the then-new literary art form called jazz poetry, Hughes is best known as a leader of the Harlem Renaissance in New York City. He famously wrote about the period that the negro was in vogue, like many African Americans, Hughes has complex ancestry. Both of Hughes paternal great-grandmothers were enslaved African Americans and both of his paternal great-grandfathers were white slave owners in Kentucky, according to Hughes, one of these men was Sam Clay, a Scottish-American whiskey distiller of Henry County and supposedly a relative of the statesman Henry Clay. The other was Silas Cushenberry, a Jewish-American slave trader of Clark County, Hughess maternal grandmother Mary Patterson was of African-American, French, English and Native American descent. One of the first women to attend Oberlin College, she married Lewis Sheridan Leary, also of mixed race, Leary subsequently joined John Browns raid on Harpers Ferry in 1859 and died from his wounds. In 1869 the widow Mary Patterson Leary married again, into the elite and her second husband was Charles Henry Langston, of African-American, Euro-American and Native American ancestry. He and his younger brother John Mercer Langston worked for the abolitionist cause, Charles Langston later moved to Kansas, where he was active as an educator and activist for voting and rights for African Americans. Charles and Marys daughter Caroline was the mother of Langston Hughes, Langston Hughes was born in Joplin, Missouri, the second child of school teacher Carrie Mercer Langston and James Nathaniel Hughes. Langston Hughes grew up in a series of Midwestern small towns, Hughes father left his family and later divorced Carrie. He traveled to Cuba and then Mexico, seeking to escape the racism in the United States. After his parents separated, his mother traveled seeking employment, and young Langston Hughes was raised mainly in Lawrence, Kansas by his maternal grandmother, Mary Patterson Langston. Through the black American oral tradition and drawing from the activist experiences of her generation and he spent most of his childhood in Lawrence. In his 1940 autobiography The Big Sea he wrote, I was unhappy for a long time, after the death of his grandmother, Hughes went to live with family friends, James and Mary Reed, for two years. Later, Hughes lived again with his mother Carrie in Lincoln and she had remarried when he was still an adolescent, and eventually they moved to Cleveland, Ohio, where he attended high school. His writing experiments began when he was young, while in grammar school in Lincoln, Hughes was elected class poet. He stated that in retrospect he thought it was because of the stereotype about African Americans having rhythm, I was a victim of a stereotype. There were only two of us Negro kids in the class and our English teacher was always stressing the importance of rhythm in poetry
Langston Hughes
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1936 photo by
Carl Van Vechten
Langston Hughes
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Hughes in 1902
Langston Hughes
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Hughes at university in 1928
Langston Hughes
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Hughes's ashes are interred under a cosmogram medallion in the foyer of the Arthur Schomburg Center in Harlem
18.
Countee Cullen
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Countee Cullen, born as Coleman Rutherford, was an African-American poet, author and scholar who was a leading figure in the Harlem Renaissance. He pronounced his name Coun-tay, not Coun-tee, Countee Cullen was possibly born on May 30, although due to conflicting accounts of his early life, a general application of the year of his birth as 1903 is reasonable. He was either born in New York City, Baltimore, or Lexington, Kentucky, Cullen was abandoned by his mother, and reared by a woman named Mrs. Porter, who was probably his paternal grandmother. Porter brought young Countee to Harlem when he was nine, no known reliable information exists of his childhood until 1918 when he was taken in, or adopted, by Reverend and Mrs Frederick A. Cullen of Harlem, New York City. The Reverend was the minister, and founder, of the Salem Methodist Episcopal Church. At some point, Cullen entered the DeWitt Clinton High School in The Bronx, in January 1922, he graduated with honors in Latin, Greek, Mathematics, and French. After graduating high school, he entered New York University, in 1923, he won second prize in the Witter Bynner undergraduate poetry contest, which was sponsored by the Poetry Society of America, with a poem entitled The Ballad of the Brown Girl. At about this time, some of his poetry was promulgated in the national periodicals Harpers, Crisis, Opportunity, The Bookman, the ensuing year he again placed second in the contest, but in 1925 he finally won. Cullen competed in a poetry contest sponsored by Opportunity and came in second with To One Who Say Me Nay, sometime thereafter, Cullen graduated from NYU as one of eleven students selected to Phi Beta Kappa. Cullen entered Harvard in 1925, to pursue a masters in English, about the time his first collection of poems. Written in a careful, traditional style, the work celebrated black beauty, the book included Heritage and Incident, probably his most famous poems. The poet accepts that there is God, and God is good, well-meaning, kind, but he finds a contradiction of his own plight in a racist society, he is black, Cullens Color was a landmark of the Harlem Renaissance. He graduated with a degree in 1926. This 1920s artistic movement produced the first large body of work in the United States written by African Americans, however, Cullen considered poetry raceless, although his poem The Black Christ took a racial theme, lynching of a black youth for a crime he did not commit. Countee Cullen was very secretive about his life and his real mother did not contact him until he became famous in the 1920s. The movement was centered in the community of Harlem, in New York City. During the 1920s, a generation of writers emerged, although a few were Harlem-born. Other leading figures included Alain Locke, James Weldon Johnson, Claude McKay, Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Wallace Thurman, Jean Toomer, the movement was accelerated by grants and scholarships and supported by such white writers as Carl Van Vechten
Countee Cullen
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Countee Cullen, photographed by
Carl Van Vechten, 1941
Countee Cullen
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The grave of Countee Cullen in
Woodlawn Cemetery
19.
Jean Toomer
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Jean Toomer was an African American poet and novelist and an important figure of the Harlem Renaissance and modernism. His first book Cane, published in 1923, is considered by many to be his most significant and he continued to write poetry, short stories and essays. After his second marriage in 1934, he moved from New York to Doylestown, Pennsylvania and his papers are held by the Beinecke Rare Book Library at Yale University. Nathan Pinchback Toomer was born in Washington, D. C. in 1894 and his father Nathan Toomer was a mixed-race freedman, born into slavery in 1839 in Chatham County, Georgia. He, his mother Kit and siblings were sold to John Toomer in Houston County, after his death, among his siblings was a sister Fannie, who later married a Mr. Colomon. Nathan worked for Henry Toomer as a valet and assistant before and after the Civil War, learning the ways of the white upper class. By 1869 Nathan Toomer had married a woman named Harriet, and they had four daughters, including Martha, who married Seymour Glover, and Theodosia. By 1870, Nathan Toomer was a farmer and the wealthiest freedman in Hancock County, with $20,000 in real estate, Harriet Toomer died on August 17,1891. Nathan Toomer in 1892 married Amanda America Dickson, a mixed-race woman and daughter of a slave, she was raised by her white planter father, David Dickson, and grandmother Elizabeth Dickson. After his death in 1885, she inherited a 15, 000-acre plantation, an agricultural reformer, Dickson and his mother had educated Amanda. In 1866 she married a European-American paternal first cousin and had two sons by him, unhappy in the marriage, in 1870 Amanda returned to her fathers house. Later she completed college at Atlanta University and she died in 1893 after about a year of marriage to Toomer. He and her sons struggled over her estate, but ultimately and her fathers will had left the estate to her sons, and she died intestate. In 1893 Toomer married Nina Pinchback, a young woman of mixed race. She was born in New Orleans as the child of people of color free before the Civil War. Her father P. B. S. Pinchback was of majority European heritage, from several nationalities and he was elected to the US Congress and Senate in 1872 and 1873, respectively, but lost challenges by Democrats in Congress. Her mother Nina Pinchback was a woman of color from Tennessee. Both Pinchback and Hawthorne had white fathers and mothers of mixed race, in 1891-1892, with white Democrats establishing Jim Crow laws in Louisiana, the Pinchbacks had moved to Washington, DC, where they were easily part of the mulatto elite
Jean Toomer
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Toomer circa 1920-1930
Jean Toomer
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Jean Toomer's passport (1926)
Jean Toomer
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Jean Toomer and Margery Latimer
20.
James Weldon Johnson
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James Weldon Johnson was an American author, educator, lawyer, diplomat, songwriter, and civil rights activist. Johnson is best remembered for his leadership of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, in 1920 he was the first African American to be chosen as executive secretary of the organization, effectively the operating officer. He served in that position from 1920 to 1930, Johnson established his reputation as a writer, and was known during the Harlem Renaissance for his poems, novels, and anthologies collecting both poems and spirituals of black culture. He was appointed under President Theodore Roosevelt as US consul in Venezuela, in 1934 he was the first African-American professor to be hired at New York University. Later in life he was a professor of literature and writing at Fisk University. Johnson was born in 1871 in Jacksonville, Florida, the son of Helen Louise Dillet, a native of Nassau, Bahamas, although originally headed to Cuba, their boat was intercepted by privateers and they were taken to Nassau, Bahamas, where they permanently settled. In 1833 Stephen Dillet became the first man of color to win election to the Bahamian legislature, jamess brother was John Rosamond Johnson, who became a composer. The boys were first educated by their mother, a musician and their mother imparted to them her great love and knowledge of English literature and the European tradition in music. At the age of 16, Johnson enrolled at Clark Atlanta University, in addition to his studies for the bachelors degree, he also completed some graduate coursework. Molded by the education for which Atlanta University was best known. He knew he was expected to devote himself to helping black people advance, Johnson was a prominent member of Phi Beta Sigma fraternity. Johnson and his brother Rosamond moved to New York City as young men and they collaborated on songwriting and achieved some success on Broadway in the early 1900s. Over the next 40 years Johnson served in several capacities, working in education, the diplomatic corps. In 1904 he participated in Theodore Roosevelts successful presidential campaign, after becoming president, Roosevelt appointed Johnson as United States consul at Puerto Cabello, Venezuela from 1906 to 1908, and to Nicaragua from 1909 to 1913. In 1910, Johnson married Grace Nail, whom he had met in New York City several years earlier while working as a songwriter, a cultured and well-educated New Yorker, Grace Nail Johnson later collaborated with her husband on a screenwriting project. After their return to New York from Nicaragua, Johnson became increasingly involved in the Harlem Renaissance and he wrote his own poetry and supported work by others, also compiling and publishing anthologies of spirituals and poetry. Owing to his influence and his poetry, Johnson became a leading voice in the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s. He became involved in civil rights activism, especially the campaign to pass legislation against lynching
James Weldon Johnson
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photographed by
Carl Van Vechten, 1932
James Weldon Johnson
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Johnson lived here in the
Logan Circle neighborhood of
Washington, D.C., while serving as national organizer for the
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).
21.
Claude McKay
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Festus Claudius Claude McKay was a Jamaican writer and poet, who was a seminal figure in the Harlem Renaissance. His 1922 poetry collection, Harlem Shadows, was among the first books published during the Harlem Renaissance and his Selected Poems was published posthumously, in 1953. McKay was attracted to communism in his life, but he always asserted that he never became an official member of the Communist Party USA. He gradually became disillusioned with communism, however, and by the mid-1930s, had begun to write negatively about it, Claude McKay was born in Nairne Castle near James Hill, Clarendon, Jamaica. He was the youngest child of Thomas Francis McKay and Hannah Ann Elizabeth Edwards, Thomas McKays parents were of Ashanti descent, like many other black Jamaicans. Claude recounted that his parents would share stories of Ashanti customs with him, at the age of four years, McKay started basic school at the church that he attended. At the age of seven, he was sent to live with his oldest brother, Uriah Theodore, while living with this brother, McKay became an avid reader of classical and British literature, as well as philosophy, science and theology. He started writing poetry at the age of 10, in 1906, McKay became apprenticed to a carriage and cabinet maker known as Old Brenga, staying in his apprenticeship for about two years. During that time, in 1907, McKay met a man named Walter Jekyll, who became a mentor, Jekyll convinced McKay to write in his native dialect and even later set some of McKays verses to music. Jekyll helped McKay publish his first book of poems, Songs of Jamaica and these were the first poems published in Jamaican Patois. McKays next volume, Constab Ballads, was based on his experiences of joining the constabulary for a period in 1911. McKay left for the U. S. in 1912 to attend Tuskegee Institute, McKay was shocked by the intense racism he encountered when he arrived in Charleston, South Carolina, where many public facilities were segregated, which inspired him to write more poetry. At Tuskegee, he disliked the semi-military, machine-like existence there, at Kansas State, he read W. E. B. Du Bois Souls of Black Folk, which had a impact on him. But despite superior academic performance, in 1914 McKay decided he did not want to be an agronomist and moved to New York City, McKay published two poems in 1917 in The Seven Arts under the pseudonym Eli Edwards while working as a waiter on the railways. In 1919, he met Crystal and Max Eastman, who produced The Liberator, the poem was reportedly later quoted by Winston Churchill during World War II. McKay became involved with a group of radicals who were unhappy both with Marcus Garveys nationalism and the middle-class reformist NAACP. These included other Caribbean writers such as Cyril Briggs, Richard B and they fought for black self-determination within the context of socialist revolution
Claude McKay
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Claude McKay
22.
Zora Neale Hurston
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Zora Neale Hurston was an African-American novelist, short story writer, folklorist, and anthropologist. Of Hurstons four novels and more than 50 published short stories, plays, Hurston was the fifth of eight children of John Hurston and Lucy Ann Hurston, two former slaves. Her father was a Baptist preacher, tenant farmer, and carpenter and she was born in Notasulga, Alabama, on January 7,1891, where her father grew up and her grandfather was the preacher of a Baptist church. When she was three, her moved to Eatonville, Florida, in 1887 it was one of the first all-black towns to be incorporated in the United States. Hurston said she felt that Eatonville was home to her as she grew up there. Her father later was elected as mayor of the town in 1897 and in 1902 became preacher of its largest church, Hurston later used Eatonville as a backdrop in her stories. It was a place where African Americans could live as they desired, in 1901, some northern schoolteachers visited Eatonville and gave Hurston a number of books that opened her mind to literature, she described it as a kind of birth. Hurston spent the remainder of her childhood in Eatonville, and describes the experience of growing up there in her 1928 essay, How It Feels to Be Colored Me. Her father remarried to Matte Moge, this was considered a minor scandal, Hurstons father and stepmother sent her away to a Baptist boarding school in Jacksonville, Florida. They eventually stopped paying her tuition and the school expelled her and she later worked as a maid to the lead singer in a traveling Gilbert & Sullivan theatrical company. In 1917, Hurston began attending Morgan College, the school division of Morgan State University. At this time, apparently to qualify for a free high-school education and she graduated from the high school of Morgan State University in 1918. In 1918, Hurston began her studies at Howard University, where she one of the earliest initiates of Zeta Phi Beta Sorority, Inc. and co-founded The Hilltop. While there, she took courses in Spanish, English, Greek and public speaking, in 1921, she wrote a short story, John Redding Goes to Sea, which qualified her to become a member of Alaine Lockes literary club, The Stylus. Hurston left Howard in 1924 and in 1925 was offered a scholarship by Barnard trustee Annie Nathan Meyer to Barnard College, Columbia University, Hurston received her B. A. in anthropology in 1928, when she was 37. While she was at Barnard, she conducted 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. Living in Harlem in the 1920s, Hurston befriended the likes of Langston Hughes and Countee Cullen and her apartment, according to some accounts, was a popular spot for social gatherings
Zora Neale Hurston
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Hurston between 1935 and 1943
Zora Neale Hurston
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Zora Neale Hurston, photo by
Carl Van Vechten (1938)
23.
Arna Bontemps
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Arnaud Arna Wendell Bontemps was an American poet, novelist and librarian, and a noted member of the Harlem Renaissance. Bontemps was born in Alexandria, Louisiana, into a Louisiana Creole family and his father, Paul Bismark Bontemps, worked as a bricklayer, his mother, Maria Carolina Pembroke, as a schoolteacher. When he was three years old, his family moved to Los Angeles, California in the Great Migration of blacks out of the South and into cities of the North and they settled in what became known as the Watts district. After attending public schools, Bontemps attended Pacific Union College in Angwin, California and he majored in English and minored in history, and he was also a member of the Omega Psi Phi fraternity. Along with many other West Coast Intellectuals, Bontemps was drawn to New York during the Harlem Renaissance, after graduation, he moved to New York to teach at the Harlem Academy in 1924. The Harlem Academy is the present day Northeastern Academy in New York City, while he was teaching, Bontemps began to publish poetry. In both 1926 and 1927, he received the Alexander Pushkin Prize of Opportunity, a National Urban League published journal, and in 1926 he won the Crisis Poetry Prize, which was an official journal of the NAACP. In New York, Bontemps met many friends including Countee Cullen, Langston Hughes. Du Bois, Zora Neale Hurston, James Weldon Johnson, Claude McKay, Hughes became a role model, collaborator, and dear friend to Bontemps. Bontemps was married in 1926 to Alberta Johnson, with whom he had six children, from oldest to youngest they are, Joan, Paul, Poppy, Camille, Connie and Alex. In 1931, he left New York and his position at the Harlem Academy as the Great Depression got severely worse. He and his moved to Huntsville, Alabama, where he had a teaching position at the Oakwood Junior College for three years. In the early 1930s, Bontemps expanded his writing as he began to publish fiction and he received a considerable amount of attention for his first novel, God Sends Sunday. This novel was a quintessential writing piece of the Harlem Renaissance movement and it followed the story of an African-American jockey named Little Augie who effortlessly earns money and then carelessly squanders it. Little Augie ends up wandering through the sporting world when his luck as a jockey eventually runs out. Bontemps was praised for his style, his re-creation of the black language. However, despite the abundant amount of praise Bontemps received for this novel, du Bois viewed it as “sordid” and equated it with other “decadent” novels of the Harlem Renaissance. Later in his career, Bontemps collaborated with Countee Cullen to create a dramatic adaption of the novel, together in 1946 they published this adaption of the book titled St. Louis Woman
Arna Bontemps
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Arna Bontemps, photographed by
Carl Van Vechten, 1938
Arna Bontemps
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The Arna Bontemps African American Museum is located downtown in his native
Alexandria,
Louisiana.
24.
Charles W. Chesnutt
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Two of his books were adapted as silent films in 1926 and 1927 by the African-American director and producer Oscar Micheaux. Following the Civil Rights Movement during the 20th century, interest in the works of Chesnutt were revived, several of his books were published in new editions, and he received formal recognition. A commemorative stamp was printed in 2008, during the early 20th century in Cleveland, Chesnutt established what became a highly successful court reporting business, which provided his main income. He became active in the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Chesnutt was born in Cleveland, Ohio, to Andrew Chesnutt and Ann Maria Chesnutt, both free persons of color from Fayetteville, North Carolina. His paternal grandfather was known to be a slaveholder. He identified as African American but noted that he was seven-eighths white, given his majority-European ancestry, Chesnutt could pass as a white man, but he never chose to do so. In many southern states at the time of his birth, Chesnutt would have been considered legally white if he had chosen to identify so. By contrast, under the one drop rule later adopted into law by the 1920s in most of the South, after the end of the Civil War and resulting emancipation, in 1867 the Chesnutt family returned to Fayetteville, Charles was nine years old. His parents ran a store, but it failed because of his fathers poor business practices. By the age of 14, Charles was a pupil-teacher at the Howard School, Chesnutt continued to study and teach. He eventually was promoted to assistant principal of the school in Fayetteville. The normal school developed into Fayetteville State University, freedmen made education a priority during the nineteenth century. Reconstruction legislatures had created the first systems of education in the states of the South. States hired black teachers for black students, in 1878 at the age of 20, Chesnutt married Susan Perry. They moved to New York City and he wanted to escape the prejudice and poverty of the South, as well as to pursue a literary career. After six months, the Chesnutts moved to Cleveland, in 1887 in Cleveland, Chesnutt read the law and passed the bar exam. Chesnutt had learned stenography as a man in North Carolina. He established what became a court reporting business, which made him financially prosperous
Charles W. Chesnutt
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Charles W. Chesnutt at the age of 40
Charles W. Chesnutt
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Chesnutt's library at his Cleveland home
25.
Marita Bonner
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Marita Bonner, also known as Marieta Bonner, was an American writer, essayist, and playwright who is commonly associated with the Harlem Renaissance. Other names she went by were Marita Occomy, Marita Odette Bonner, Marita Odette Bonner Occomy, Marita Bonner Occomy, on December 29,1921, along with 15 other women, she chartered the Iota Chapter of Delta Sigma Theta sorority. Marita Bonner was born in Boston, Massachusetts, to Joseph, Marita was one of four children and was brought up in a middle-class community in Massachusetts. She attended Brookline High School, where she contributed to the school magazine and she excelled in German and Music, and was a very talented pianist. In 1917, she graduated from Brookline High School and in 1918 enrolled in Radcliffe College, in college, she majored in English and Comparative Literature, while continuing to study German and musical composition. In addition to her studies, she was a member of a chapter of the black sorority Delta Sigma Theta. After finishing her schooling in 1922, she continued to teach at Bluefield Colored Institute in West Virginia. Two years later, she took on a position at Armstrong High School in Washington, D. C. until 1930, while in Washington, Bonner became closely associated with poet, playwright and composer Georgia Douglas Johnson. Johnsons S street salon was an important meeting place for many of the writers and they married and moved to Chicago, where Bonners writing career took off. After marrying Occomy, she began to write under her married name, after 1941, Bonner gave up publishing her works and devoted her time to her family, including three children. She began teaching again in the 1940s and finally retired in 1963, Bonner died in 1971 from smoke-inhalation complications at a hospital after her apartment caught fire. Throughout her life, Bonner wrote many stories, essays and plays. Winner of the essay contest sponsored by The Crisis, this essay encouraged black women not to dwell on their problems. Bonner also wrote short stories from 1925 to 1927, including The Prison-Bound, Nothing New, One Boys Story. Her short stories explored a multicultural universe filled with people drawn by the promises of urban life and she wrote three plays — The Pot Maker, The Purple Flower - A Play and Exit, an Illusion — the most famous being The Purple Flower, which portrays black liberation. Bonner contributed a variety of things to the Harlem Renaissance and her writings addressed the struggles of people who lived outside of Harlem. Her greatest involvement was her emphasis on claiming a strong racial and she argued against sexism and racism and advised other black women to remain silent in order to gain understanding, knowledge, and truth to fight the oppression of race and gender. She also encouraged African Americans to use the weapons of knowledge, teaching, unlike most Renaissance writers, she focused her writings on issues in and around Chicago
Marita Bonner
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Marita Bonner
26.
Walter Francis White
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He directed a broad program of legal challenges to racial segregation and disfranchisement. He was also a journalist, novelist, and essayist and he graduated in 1916 from Atlanta University, a historically black college. In 1918 White joined the national staff of the NAACP in New York at the invitation of James Weldon Johnson. He acted as Johnsons assistant national secretary and traveled to the South to investigate lynchings, of multiracial, majority-white ancestry, at times he passed as white to facilitate his investigations and protect himself in tense situations. White succeeded Johnson as the head of the NAACP, leading the organization from 1931 to 1955, White oversaw the plans and organizational structure of the fight against public segregation. He worked with President Truman on desegregating the armed forces after the Second World War, under Whites leadership, the NAACP set up its Legal Defense Fund, which conducted numerous legal challenges to segregation and disfranchisement, and achieved many successes. Among these was the Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board of Education, White also quintupled NAACP membership to nearly 500,000. Walter Francis White was the fourth of seven children born in Atlanta to George W. White, among the new middle class of blacks, George and Madeline, both born into slavery, ensured that Walter and each of their children got an education. By the time Walter was born, George had attended Atlanta University and become a postal worker, Madeline graduated from the same institution and became a teacher. White received a good growing up. He attended the Atlanta public schools, finished the Atlanta University high school in 1912, and this period of study enabled White to spend eight years in the old Atlantas unusual atmosphere at its zenith. There he was exposed to instruction which had been enriched by a decade of W. E. B, undoubtedly Whites life work reflected on the Old Atlanta Universitys pioneer and still unequaled contributions in Southern colored institutions of higher learning. The White family belonged to the influential First Congregational Church, founded after the Civil War by freedmen, of all the black denominations in Georgia, the Congregationalists were among the most socially, politically and financially powerful. Membership in First Congregational was the status symbol in Atlanta. Of mixed race with African and European ancestry on both sides, White had features showing the latter and he emphasized in his autobiography, A Man Called White, I am a Negro. My skin is white, my eyes are blue, my hair is blond, the traits of my race are nowhere visible upon me. Of his 32 great-great-great-grandparents, five were black and the other 27 were white, all members of his immediate family had fair skin, and his mother Madeline was also blue-eyed and blonde. The oral history of his mothers family is that her grandparents were Dilsia, a slave and concubine
Walter Francis White
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Walter Francis White
27.
The Souls of Black Folk
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The Souls of Black Folk is a classic work of American literature by W. E. B. It is a work in the history of sociology. The book, published in 1903, contains essays on race. To develop this work, Du Bois drew from his own experiences as an African American in the American society. Outside of its relevance in African-American history, The Souls of Black Folk also holds an important place in social science as one of the early works in the field of sociology. Columbia University English and comparative literature professor Brent Hayes Edwards writes, Chapter I, Of Our Spiritual Strivings, lays out an overview of Du Boiss thesis for the book. It says that the blacks of the South need the right to vote, the right to a good education, the first chapter also introduces Du Boiss famous metaphor of the veil. The veil is a manifestation of the color line, a problem Du Bois worked his whole life to remedy. Du Bois sublimates the function of the veil when he refers to it as a gift of sight for African-Americans. The second chapter, Of the Dawn of Freedom, covers the history of the Freedmens Bureau during reconstruction. Chapters III and VI deal with education and progress and it is here that Du Bois argues against Booker T. Washingtons idea of focusing solely on industrial education for black men. He also advocates the addition of an education to establish leaders and educators in the black community. The fifth chapter is a meditation on the necessity of higher education in the South. Chapters VII through IX are sociological studies of the black community, Du Bois investigates the influence that segregation and discrimination have had on black people. He argues that many of the stereotypes of blacks as lazy, violent. In Chapter X, Of the Faith of the Fathers, Du Bois describes the rise of the church and examines the history and contemporary state of religion. The final chapters of the book are devoted to narratives of individuals, Chapter XI, Of the Passing of the First-Born, tells the story of Du Boiss own son and his untimely death. In the next chapter, the life of Alexander Crummell is a biography of a black priest in the Episcopal Church
The Souls of Black Folk
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The title page of the second edition
28.
Roy Wilkins
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Roy Wilkins was a prominent activist in the Civil Rights Movement in the United States from the 1930s to the 1970s. Wilkins most notable role was in his leadership of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Wilkins was born in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1901. Wilkins graduated from the University of Minnesota with a degree in sociology in 1923, while attending college, Wilkins worked as a journalist at The Minnesota Daily and became editor of The Appeal, an African-American newspaper. After he graduated he became the editor of The Call in 1923 and his confrontation of the Jim Crow Laws led his activist work and in 1931, he moved to New York City as assistant NAACP secretary under Walter Francis White. Du Bois left the organization in 1934, Wilkins replaced him as editor of The Crisis, from 1949-50, Wilkins chaired the National Emergency Civil Rights Mobilization, which comprised more than 100 local and national groups. He served as an adviser to the War Department during World War II, in 1950, Wilkins — along with A. LCCR has become the premier civil rights coalition, and has coordinated the national legislative campaign on behalf of every major civil rights law since 1957. In 1955, Roy Wilkins was chosen to be the secretary of the NAACP. He had developed an excellent reputation as a spokesperson for the civil rights movement. One of his first actions was to support to civil rights activists in Mississippi who were being subject to a credit squeeze by members of the White Citizens Councils. Wilkins backed a proposal suggested by Dr. T. R. M, howard of Mound Bayou, Mississippi, who headed the Regional Council of Negro Leadership, a leading civil rights organization in the state. Under the plan, black businesses and voluntary associations shifted their accounts to the black-owned Tri-State Bank of Memphis, by the end of 1955, about $300,000 had been deposited in Tri-State for this purpose. The money enabled Tri-State to extend loans to blacks who were denied loans by white banks. Wilkins participated in the March on Washington which he helped organize, the Selma to Montgomery marches, and he believed in achieving reform by legislative means, testified before many Congressional hearings and conferred with Presidents Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, and Carter. Wilkins strongly opposed militancy in the movement for civil rights as represented by the black power movement due to his non-violence initiative, on issues of segregation, as well, he was a proponent of systematic integration instead of radical desegregation. In an 1964 interview with Robert Penn Warren for the book Who Speaks for the Negro. And, for any reformer, black or white, zealot or not, to come along and say, I’ll destroy it, if it doesnt do like I want it to do, is very dangerous business, as far as I’m concerned. However, these moderate views increasingly brought him conflict with younger. Wilkins was also a member of Omega Psi Phi, a fraternity with a civil rights focus, in 1964, he was awarded the Spingarn Medal from the NAACP
Roy Wilkins
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Roy Wilkins in 1968
Roy Wilkins
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Roy Wilkins as the Executive Secretary of the NAACP in 1963.
Roy Wilkins
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Wilkins (right) with
Sammy Davis, Jr. (left) and a reporter at the 1963.
Civil Rights March on Washington, D.C.
29.
Roger Wilkins
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Roger Wilkins was an African-American civil rights leader, professor of history, and journalist. Wilkins was born in Kansas City, Missouri, on March 25,1932 and he was educated at Crispus Attucks Elementary School in Kansas City, Missouri, then Creston High School in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Wilkins worked as a lawyer in Ohio before becoming an Assistant Attorney General in President Lyndon B. Johnsons administration at age 33, one of the highest-ranking blacks ever to serve in the branch up to that time. Roger Wilkins was sworn in as Director of Community Relations Service on Friday 4 February 1966 in a ceremony at The White House as per page 2 of President Johnsons Diary for that day. Leaving government in 1969 at the end of the Johnson administration and he left the Post in 1974 to work for the New York Times, followed five years later by a brief stay at the now-defunct Washington Star. In 1980 he became a news commentator, working for National Public Radio. Wilkins was the Robinson Professor of History and American Culture at George Mason University in Fairfax, during his tenure at George Mason, Wilkins was, arguably, one of the most preeminent professors in residence at that time. Wilkins was also the publisher of the NAACPs journal, The Crisis, and was the nephew of Roy Wilkins, Wilkins resided in Washington, D. C. and was married to Patricia King, Professor of Law at Georgetown University. Wilkins died on March 26,2017 in Kensington, Maryland from complications of dementia, quiet Riots, Race and Poverty in the United States. Edited by Wilkins and Fred Harris, Jeffersons Pillow, The Founding Fathers and the Dilemma of Black Patriotism. Appearances on C-SPAN Booknotes interview with Wilkins on Jeffersons Pillow, The Founding Fathers and the Dilemma of Black Patriotism, August 12,2001
Roger Wilkins
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Roger Wilkins speaking at a US Department of Justice meeting.
30.
The Washington Post
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The Washington Post is an American daily newspaper. It is the most widely circulated newspaper published in Washington, D. C. and was founded on December 6,1877 and its current slogan is Democracy Dies in Darkness. Located in the city of the United States, the newspaper has a particular emphasis on national politics. Daily editions are printed for the District of Columbia, Maryland, the newspaper is published as a broadsheet, with photographs printed both in color and in black and white. The newspaper has won 47 Pulitzer Prizes and this includes six separate Pulitzers awarded in 2008, the second-highest number ever awarded to a single newspaper in one year, second only to The New York Times seven awards in 2002. Post journalists have also received 18 Nieman Fellowships and 368 White House News Photographers Association awards, in years since, its investigations have led to increased review of the Walter Reed Army Medical Center. In 2013, its owners, the Graham family, sold the newspaper to billionaire entrepreneur. The newspaper is owned by Nash Holdings LLC, a holding company Bezos created for the acquisition, the Washington Post is generally regarded as one of the leading daily American newspapers, along with The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. The Post has distinguished itself through its reporting on the workings of the White House, Congress. It is one of the two daily broadsheets published in Washington D. C. the other being its smaller rival The Washington Times, unlike The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post does not print an edition for distribution away from the East Coast. In 2009, the newspaper ceased publication of its National Weekly Edition, the majority of its newsprint readership is in District of Columbia and its suburbs in Maryland and Northern Virginia. The Sunday Style section differs slightly from the weekday Style section, it is in a tabloid format, and it houses the reader-written humor contest The Style Invitational. Additional weekly sections appear on weekdays, Health & Science on Tuesday, Food on Wednesday, Local Living on Thursday, the latter two are in a tabloid format. In November 2009, it announced the closure of its U. S. regional bureaus—Chicago, Los Angeles and New York—as part of a focus on. political stories. The newspaper has bureaus in Maryland and Virginia. While its circulation has been slipping, it has one of the highest market-penetration rates of any metropolitan news daily, for many decades, the Post had its main office at 1150 15th Street NW. This real estate remained with Graham Holdings when the newspaper was sold to Jeff Bezos Nash Holdings in 2013, Graham Holdings sold 1150 15th Street for US$159 million in November 2013. The Washington Post continued to lease space at 1150 L Street NW, in May 2014, The Washington Post leased the west tower of One Franklin Square, a high-rise building at 1301 K Street NW in Washington, D. C
The Washington Post
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Front page for May 21, 2015
The Washington Post
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The headquarters of The Washington Post in
Washington, DC.
The Washington Post
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Washington Post building in 1948
The Washington Post
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The Monday, July 21, 1969, edition, with the headline
"'The Eagle Has Landed' — Two Men Walk on the Moon"
