Celebrate Black History 2021 - The Future

by Dick Mac

Contemporary black men and women are making history today and will change the world, as people have before them.

Shaun King was born in Franklin County, Kentucky, on September 17, 1979. He is a journalist and activist who has leveraged social media to effect remarkable change.  Some of his accomplishments are listed below.

Early in his online activism, he helped raise $1.5 million for Haitian earthquake relief, in 2010.

After 12-year-old Tamir Rice was murdered by Cleveland police in 2014, and his devastated mother moved into a homeless shelter, it was publicized that the boy's body remained unburied five months later. King raised over $80,000 to benefit Rice's estate and family. 

DeAndre Harris was beaten by at least three men in 2017, during the infamous "Unite The Right" white supremacy rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. Shaun King's social media campaign to publicize this injustice is credited with leading to the arrest of Daniel P. Borden, Alex Michael Ramos, and Jacob Scott Goodwin for the beating.  King's campaign highlighted the ease with which white citizens can have black citizens arrested for alleged crimes, while black citizens struggle to have law enforcement agencies even investigate white criminals whose crimes are documented.

Seven-year-old Jazmine Barnes was killed in a drive-by shooting in Houston on December 30, 2018. King used his social media accounts a to spread the story, collect information from witnesses, and raise $60,000 as a reward for the arrest of the killer.  Police acknowledge that information from King led to the arrests of Eric Black Jr. and Larry Woodruffe. 

Shaun King is changing the world. Follow his activism and consider supporting the work he does.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shaun_King

https://www.shaunking.org/

Andra Day was born on December 30, 1984, in Edmonds, Washington. She is a singer, songwriter, and actress whose work is more impressive with each project.

If we could put Ella Fitzgerald, Amy Winehouse, Billie Holiday, Eartha Kitt, and Lizzo into a blender, the resulting magnificence would be Andra Day!

She has worked as a performer and recording artist in the music business, and recorded songs for movie soundtracks.  Her acting credits are the foundation of an impressive filmography. 

Her youtube.com channel is a wonderful collection of her work.

Recently, she starred as Billie Holiday in the movie "United States vs. Billie Holiday." Her Oscar-worthy performance is breathtaking.  Her beauty, skill, and determination are present in every breath of every scene in the movie. 

Day has worked with Stevie Wonder, Common, and Lenny Kravitz. She performed at the 2016 Democratic National Convention, has appeared in television commercials, and is building a collection of awards.

Her records have all received critical acclaim, and her concerts are regularly sold-out.

Andra Day is slowly and surely becoming a major forcve in the American entertainment industry.  

If you have neither seen nor heard her, please purchase her music, get a concert ticket and watch her movie.

Andra Day is the future of American entertainment.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andra_Day

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC4sN284Diw1JCy8i7fDCHhg

Andra Day mashes-up Notorious B.I.G.'s "Big Poppa" and Marvin Gaye's "Let's Get It On": https://youtu.be/9OyCd__Ty9E

Gail Ann Dorsey was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on November 20, 1962. She is a vocalist and bass player who has worked with David Bowie, Gang Of Four, Boy George, Seal, The National, Tears for Fears, Gwen Stefani, Lenny Kravitz, among others, and has released three albums as a solo artist.

She currently resides in New York, and continues to create music and work with some of the world's biggest talents. Gail Ann is one of today's internationally acclaimed artists that you can see perform both in the largest arenas and the most intimate nightclubs.

If you are not familiar with her work, today is the day to start; and I highly recommend her live performances.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gail_Ann_Dorsey

https://www.facebook.com/gailanndorseymusic

Watch Gail Ann Dorsey perform "Under Pressure" with David Bowie: https://youtu.be/DWtSyorjXv4

Rashid Johnson was born in Chicago, Illinois, in 1977. He is a conceptual artist whose work was the beginning of the Post-Black Art genre, which was coined after his acclaimed show at the Studio Museum in Harlem in 2001. He studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

In his mid-thirties, the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art curated Johnson's first major museum solo exhibition; an amazing and hard-earned feat.

He works with paint, sculpture, photography, and audio and video installations. Johnson's work is dynamic, bold and totally accessible. In his 2016 show "Rashid Johnson, Fly Away" an  installation of metal shelving and living plants pushed forward a dialog of science and black culture.

In 2020, he produced "Untitled Anxious Red Drawings" as a benefit for the COVID-19 Solidarity Response Fund of the World Health Organization.

Rashid Johnson's work is changing the art world, and therefore is changing the world.

I love his work and am sad to say I do not have any in my collection. Pay attention to the museums and galleries in your area and see one of his exhibitions. You will not be disappointed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rashid_Johnson

https://www.artsy.net/artist/rashid-johnson

#blackhistorymonth #BlackLivesMatter #WorkForChange

Celebrate Black History 2021 - Phillis Wheatley

by Dick Mac

Phillis Wheatley was born a free woman c.1753, somewhere in West Africa, and died of unknown causes on December 5, 1784, in Boston, Massachusetts. She was 31.

Phillis Wheatley was purchased by slave traders in West Africa, and enslaved by John Wheatley and his wife as a servant, in Boston. Unlike most enslaved Africans, she learned to read and write, and her captors encouraged her talent for poetry.  In 1773 she travelled with her captors to London to find a publisher for her work.  Her "Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral" was published that year, received with enthusiasm and brought her fame (and money) in both England and the Colonies. Wheatley was emancipated after the publication of her book. 

Hers is an unusual story, because her captors educated her and she became fluent in Greek and Latin by the time she was a teenager. Her skills were recognized by the Wheatley's and she was relieved of her household duties so she could write. During the time she was with the Wheatleys, she enjoyed the attention of patrons and benefactors, but shortly after her freedom, all support stopped, she married, lost two children at birth, became impoverished when her husband was sent to debtor's prison, worked as a maid, and died in 1784. Her third, surviving infant child died shortly thereafter.

The years of her success were not easy. Colonists refused to believe that an African could write poetry and she was required to defend her work in court. Her testimony resulted in a finding by her judges, including John Hancock, that she had indeed composed her work. That attestation was included in the preface of her book.

There is much controversy about her legacy, but none of the criticisms and critiques of her history diminish the fact that she was the first African-American woman to publish a book of poetry and earn payment for her literary work.

Her poem "A Hymn to the Evening" is posted here here, without permission:

Soon as the sun forsook the eastern main

The pealing thunder shook the heav'nly plain;

Majestic grandeur! From the zephyr's wing,

Exhales the incense of the blooming spring.

Soft purl the streams, the birds renew their notes,

And through the air their mingled music floats.

Through all the heav'ns what beauteous dies are spread!

But the west glories in the deepest red:

So may our breasts with ev'ry virtue glow,

The living temples of our God below!

Fill'd with the praise of him who gives the light,

And draws the sable curtains of the night,

Let placid slumbers sooth each weary mind,

At morn to wake more heav'nly, more refin'd;

So shall the labours of the day begin

More pure, more guarded from the snares of sin.

Night's leaden sceptre seals my drowsy eyes,

Then cease, my song, till fair Aurora rise.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phillis_Wheatley

The Poetry Foundation includes some of her work here: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/phillis-wheatley

Phillis Wheatley is commemorated along with Abigail Adams and Lucy Stone in the Boston Women's Memorial: https://www.boston.gov/departments/womens-advancement/boston-womens-memorial

#blackhistorymonth #BlackLivesMatter #WorkForChange

Celebrate Black History 2021 - York

by Dick Mac

York was born enslaved some time in the 1770s, the son of Old York and Rose. He died of unknown causes around 1830. 

York was born to  Old York and Rose, slaves of explorer William Clark's family.  He grew-up as the "body servant" to the future explorer, and accompanied Clark and Merriweather Lewis on their famed expedition across North America. York was the only African American on the trip, making him the first African American to cross the continent.

York was an extremely valuable member of the expedition, negotiating with indigenous people along the route who were more inclined to negotiate with a man of color than the white men leading the group.

Upon their return from the expedition all members of the team received money and land, except for York, who returned to a live of enslavement under Clark.  After years of relative freedom on the journey, York was ill-prepared and unhappy to return to enslavement and although he requested his freedom many time, Clark kept him enslaved and hired him out to a brutal slave driver in Kentucky.

Those who would re-write history, apologists for slavery, are emboldened by words written by Washington Irving pretending that Clark freed York with six horses and a wagon to start his own business in Nashville. There is no evidence that this was true.

York's contribution to the Lewis & Clark Expedition was invaluable, likely more valuable than many of the others on the trek. However, he was denied the same rewards and stands as a symbol of the injustice that black people have suffered, and continue to suffer today, in the United States.

Recently, an anonymous artist installed a bust of York in a public park in Portland, Oregon, with the inscription “the first African American to cross North America and reach the Pacific Coast.”  (See link below.)

After years of service to this nation, York was denied the same compensation as his white peers. African Americans in the United States are still treated differently than white people, are still compensated at lower rates, and punished at higher rates; and until more white people stand up and say this must stop, it will continue. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/York_(explorer)

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/anonymous-artist-installs-bust-black-explorer-portland-180977094/

#blackhistorymonth #BlackLivesMatter #WorkForChange

Celebrate Black History 2021 - Jane Bolin

by Dick Mac

Jane Matilda Bolin was born in Poughkeepsie, NY, on April 11, 1908, and died in Queens, NY, on January 8, 2007, at the age of 98, of unspecified causes.

Jane Bolin was the first black woman to graduate from Yale Law School (1931), the first to join the New York City Bar Association (1932), the first to join the New York City Law Department, and became the first black woman judge in the United States (1939).

Bolin was on the board of the National Urban League, the NAACP, and the Child Welfare League

Her concerns for the women and children of New York led to social justice breakthroughs in her efforts to eradicate racism from public policy. She mandated that children of color receive the same consideration for public funds as their white counterparts. She worked with Eleanor Roosevelt to decrease juvenile crimes with her work in support of the Wiltwyck School. Wiltwyck was as an alternative to incarceration for emotionally disturbed boys of color who were disproportionately sentenced to prison. As we know today: despite her noble efforts, boys of color are still incarcerated at a much higher rate than their white counterparts.

As a judge, Bolin eliminated the assignment of probation officers based on ethnicity, and she required private child-care agencies to help children regardless of their background. 

Hardly a flamboyant representative of black American history, she was a very successful woman who effected much change, and inspired many women in the legal field.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Bolin

Watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=etw7sqEbBik

#blackhistorymonth #BlackLivesMatter #WorkForChange

Celebrate Black History 2021 - Gordon Parks

by Dick Mac

Gordon Roger Alexander Buchanan Parks was born in Fort Scott, Kansas on November 30, 1912, and died of cancer on March 7, 2006, in New York City.

Gordon Parks was a photographer and film director, who started his career as a portrait photographer in Chicago during the 1940s. In 1942 he was awarded a Rosenwald Fellowship that provided him a monthly income and led to a job as a government photographer for the Farm Services Administration and the Office of War Information. In the late 1940s, Vogue hired him to do a fashion shoot, where he remained for some time and began having his work published as books.

In the 1950s he began doing Hollywood work, directing documentaries for NET. In 1969, Warner Bros. hired him for "The Learning Tree" and he became the first mainstream black filmmaker. He found a groove in this industry and basically created the "blaxploitation" genre with the film "Shaft," starring Richard Roundtree. 

Although his most commercial success was likely his filmmaking, it is his work as a photographer that leaves the most indelible mark on American history. His photograph "American Gothic" (named after the famous painting) is an iconic image.

He documented many of the important events of his times.  He photographed and befriended many of the most important black Americans of the 20th Century, including Malcolm X, Stokely Carmichael, Muhammad Ali, and others. Parks was the godfather of Qubilah Shabazz, Malcolm X's daughter.

Parks was a renaissance man:  as well as his work as a photographer and filmmaker, he was a painter, writer and musician. If you are not familiar with his work, find it today. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordon_Parks

https://www.gordonparksfoundation.org/

https://www.nga.gov/education/teachers/lessons-activities/uncovering-america/parks-photography.html

Watch MoMA's Virtual Views video:
https://www.moma.org/calendar/exhibitions/5235

#blackhistorymonth #BlackLivesMatter #WorkForChange

Celebrate Black History 2021 - Dennis Davis

by Dick Mac

Dennis Davis was born in New York City on August 28, 1949, and died of cancer on April 6, 2016, in New York City. He was a drummer, percussionist, and session musician.

Davis was a true New Yorker and as a young man studied with drummers Max Roach and Elvin Jones before joining the Clark Terry Big Band. 

During the Vietnam War, he joined the U.S. Navy and was discharged in 1970.  During his military service, he honed his skills playing with the Navy's Drum and Bugle Corps.

While playing with Roy Ayers in the 1970s, he was hired to work on David Bowie's "Young Americans" album.  He became Bowie's go-to percussionist on records and tours for many years as a member of rhythm section nicknamed the "DAM Trio" for Davis, Carlos Alomar, and George Murray. 

After the commercial success of the work he did with Bowie, Davis was integral to creating the radical sounds for Bowie's "Low" album, a major breakthrough in recorded music.  Unlike many musicians who worked with David Bowie, Davis snagged a songwriting credit for "Breaking Glass" on the "Low" record. 

As well as his success with Bowie, Dennis Davis worked with the aforementioned Roy Ayers, as well as George Benson, Jermaine Jackson, Garland Jeffreys, Iggy Pop, Smokey Robinson, and Stevie Wonder.

Davis' son Hikaru Davis has produced a series of interviews with musicians who worked with his father (see link below). His son T-Bone Motta has been the drummer for Public Enemy since 2012.

History often ignores musicians who are not front men or lead singers, divas or pop stars. Dennis Davis was a major talent who was recognized by some of his era's biggest stars, making him a vital part of American music history.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dennis_Davis

Watch the Hikaru Davis video series "The HD Projects": https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCY2aDqSy2_g6hysuYU7uOPw

#blackhistorymonth #BlackLivesMatter #WorkForChange

Celebrate Black History 2021 - Gwendolyn Brooks

by Dick Mac

Gwendolyn Brooks was born in Topeka, Kansas, on June 7, 1917, and died of cancer on December 3, 2000, in Chicago, Illinois. She was 83.

Brooks was a poet whose first published piece Eventide was printed when she was 13-years-old, and in high school she became a regular contributor to The Chicago Defender newspaper. She is one of the most respected and revered poets of the last century.

In November, 1944, two of her poems, which she submitted unsolicited, were published in Poetry magazine. Unsolicited poems were historically not published by Poetry.

In 1950, she became the first African-American author to win a Pulitzer Prize, for her book Annie Allen.

In the 1960s, Brooks met political activists and artists working to further black cultural nationalism. Although left-leaning throughout her life, pursuing a black nationalist posture helped distance her from the McCarthyism that plagued so many American intellectuals.  She taught creative writing to Chicago's Blackstone Rangers, who were known as a criminal gang. She remained a voice for progress throughout her life.

Brooks was appointed Poet Laureate of Illinois in 1968 and held that honor for 32 years, until her death in 2000. In 1976, she became the first African-American woman inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 1988, she was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame

She was named the Poet Laureate Consultant to the Library of Congress for the 1985–86 term.

Brooks taught at the University of Chicago, Columbia College Chicago, Northeastern Illinois University, Chicago State University, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Elmhurst College, Columbia University, and the City College of New York.

Faced with racial bias, bigotry and discrimination throughout her life, Gwendolyn Brooks never wavered from the love of her craft and her desire to make an impact on the world around her. She is an American hero.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gwendolyn_Brooks

See, Library of Congress entry: https://www.loc.gov/item/n50041281/gwendolyn-brooks

Watch Brooks read her poem "We Real Cool": https://youtu.be/3GnlLalReRU

#blackhistorymonth #BlackLivesMatter #WorkForChange

Celebrate Black History 2021 - Robert Sengstacke Abbott

by Dick Mac

Robert Abbott was born in St. Simons, Georgia, on  November 24, 1870 and died of Bright's Disease on February 29,  1940. His parents were "freemen," having gained their freedom before the Civil War. When his father died, his mother married a German man, who added his own name "Sengstacke" to Robert Abbott's legal name to ensure he was known as part of his growing family. Abbott attended Hampton University, where he learned the publishing trade, and earned a law degree at the Kent College of Law.

In 1905, Robert Abbott founded The Chicago Defender which fought Jim Crow. The paper was instrumental in encouraging Southern blacks to migrate to the North, which was a catalyst for what is now known as the Great Migration. In some Southern states it was dangerous to distribute printed matter written and/or published by or for black people, and the newspaper relied on a surreptitious network of Pullman porters for distribution throughout the South. 

The goals of The Defender were published and were all imperatives that black Americans still work for today:

1. American race prejudice must be destroyed;
2. Opening up all trade unions to blacks as well as whites;
3. Representation in the President's Cabinet'
4. Hiring black engineers, firemen, and conductors on all American railroads, and to all jobs in government;
5. Gaining representation in all departments of the police forces over the entire United States;
6. Government schools giving preference to American citizens before foreigners;
7. Hiring black motormen and conductors on surface, elevated, and motor bus lines throughout America;
8. Federal legislation to abolish lynching; and
9. Full enfranchisement of all American citizens.

In 1919, Abbott was appointed to the Chicago Commission on Race Relations, which studied the impact of the Great Migration, which at one point saw 5,000 African Americans arriving in Chicago every week.  

He provided financial support to his stepfather's family and the descendants of Captain Charles Stevens, the former owner of his enslaved birth father before emancipation. 

Robert Abbott was a brilliant, forward-thinking intellectual whose efforts established a foundation for black publications that endures today. He was America's first black media mogul, one of the first black millionaires, a revolutionary figure of the twentieth century and an American hero.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Sengstacke_Abbott

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Chicago_Defender

Watch this: https://youtu.be/BgJYZY1KAeU

#blackhistorymonth #BlackLivesMatter #WorkForChange

Celebrate Black History 2021 - Bessie Coleman

by Dick Mac

Bessie Coleman was born in Atlanta, Texas, on January 26, 1892, and died in a plane crash, at Jacksonville, Florida, on April 30, 1926. She was 34.

Coleman's parents were sharecropper in Texas. She learned to read and write, and won a scholarship to the Missionary Baptist Church School. She went on to complete one year at the Oklahoma Colored Agricultural and Normal University in Langston, Oklahoma.

While living in Chicago in her early twenties, she was determined to become a pilot. No American flight school accepted women or people of color, so with the philanthropic assistance of banker Jesse Binga and publisher Robert Abbott she enrolled in language school, learned French, moved to Paris, enrolled in flight school and became the world's first Black licensed pilot.

With no commercial air travel, and little opportunity to earn money as a civilian aviator, she became a stunt pilot, earning money with barnstorming air shows.

She dreamed of opening a flight school for young, black aviators.  Unfortunately, her dream was not realized as she died in an accident during the test run of a flight show in Jacksonville, Florida.

Coleman was not an opportunist, she was a dreamer, and she dreamed big. She passed on opportunities that would have afforded her more financial security, but her principals were more important to her than profit.

She was a brave woman who overcame innumerable hurdles in pursuit of her dream. She embodies the American spirit and for that is an American hero.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bessie_Coleman

Watch this: https://youtu.be/jYYy-dT4498

#blackhistorymonth #BlackLivesMatter #WorkForChange

Celebrate Black History 2021 - Dorothy Height

by Dick Mac

Dorothy Irene Height was born in Richmond, Virginia, on March 24, 1912 and died in Washington, D.C., on April 20, 2010.

She was a civil rights and women's rights activist who focused on unemployment, illiteracy, and voter awareness, is credited as the first civil rights leader to speak-out about inequality of women, and was president of the National Council of Negro Women for 40 years.

She started her career as a social worker and eventually joined the YWCA. Under her leadership that organization spearheaded work in both the civil rights and women's rights movements. She also worked for reporoductive rights and freedom.

In 1994, President Bill Clinton awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom. President Barack Obama called her the godmother of the civil rights movement, and she was seated as an honored guest on the stage at Obama's first inauguration, the year before her death.

She is not as well-known as many of her contemporaries, but she was instrumental in progress made by black women in America. She embodies the American spirit and is a hero.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorothy_Height

Watch this: https://youtu.be/kShrfTu1jBU

#blackhistorymonth #BlackLivesMatter #WorkForChange

Celebrate Black History 2021 - Thurgood Marshall

by Dick Mac

Thurgood Marshall was born July 2, 1908, in Baltimore, Maryland, and died of heart failure at his home in Bethesda, Maryland, on January 24, 1993. He was 84.

Marshall was a lawyer and civil rights activist who represented the plaintiffs in the landmark Brown vs. Board of Education trial. He won the case which declared that public school segregation was unconstitutional. He attended Lincoln University, a historically black university, with classmates poet Langston Hughes and musician Cab Calloway.

He represented the NAACP in the 1934 suit Murray v. Pearson, a law school discrimination case. In this case, a black college student at Amherst College was denied admission to the University of Maryland Law School, despite his excellent grades and credentials. The law school argued that there was a separate-but-equal law school for him to attend, and Marshall successfully argued that the black school did not provide a comparable education. By 1940, Marshall was the Chief Counsel for the NAACP at the age of 32.

President John F. Kennedy appointed Marshall to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in 1961, and he became the first black Supreme Court Justice in 1967.

Thurgood Marshall championed the United States Constitution and worked as a constitutionalist to make the nation a better place for people of color. Despite the obstacles he faced, he met every challenge with dignity, grace, and intelligence. He is the embodiment of an American Hero.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thurgood_Marshall

Watch "Thurgood Marshall: Crusading Civil Rights Activist" at YouTube: https://youtu.be/fFsRVZpfjqI

#blackhistorymonth #BlackLivesMatter #WorkForChange

Celebrate Black History 2021 - Octavia Butler

by Dick Mac

Octavia Estelle Butler was a science fiction writer born in Pasadena, California, on June 22, 1947, and died February 24, 2006, in Lake Forest Park, Washington, of head injuries ostensibly caused by a fall at the onset of a stroke.

Butler began publishing her stories in 1971. Her early efforts at writing were encouraged by famed sci-fi writer Harlan Ellison, who paid her for a piece published in his anthology. This was one of the earliest professional experiences of what would become a storied career.

In 1995, she was the first sci-fi writer to receive a MacArthur Fellowship genius award. She enjoyed numerous best-sellers and won both the Hugo Award and the Nebula Award multiple times. In 2010, she was inducted into the Science Fiction Writers Hall of Fame.

Butler theorized that hierarchical thinking leads to intolerance and violence, and could ultimately be the demise of our species. Almost all of her themes focus on survivors as heroes and the exploitation of the disenfranchised.

Butler pushed the envelope of modern thinking in ways that transformed our society, and for that she is an American hero.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Octavia_E._Butler

Watch this profile of Butler at YouTube: https://youtu.be/5-cqiVQCb8Y

#blackhistorymonth #BlackLivesMatter #WorkForChange

Celebrate Black History 2021 - Maya Angelou

by Dick Mac

Maya Angelou, was born Marguerite Annie Johnson on April 4, 1928, in St. Louis, Missouri, and died in her sleep on May 28, 2014, in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. She was 86.

Angelou was a poet and civil rights activist. She published a score of books, and worked on dozens of plays, movies, and television shows. She was a powerful voice for black women everywhere, and her book "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings," published in 1969, continues to speak to, and empower, young women.

The list of awards and honors she received during her lifetime (and posthumously) is gargantuan, including a Pulitzer, a Tony, multiple Grammys, the National Medal of Arts, and scores of others.

In 2011, President Barack Obama presented her with the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Simply said: Maya Angelou is one of the most important Americans to have lived.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maya_Angelou

Watch this video: "Dr. Maya Angelou - I Am Human" https://youtu.be/ePodNjrVSsk

#BlackHistoryMonth #BlackLivesMatter #WorkForChange

Celebrate Black History 2021 - Hank Aaron

by Dick Mac

Henry Louis "Hank" Aaron was born February 5, 1934, in Mobile, Alabama, and died in his sleep of natural causes, in Atlanta, Georgia, on January 22, 2021. He was 86.

Hank Aaron played 23 seasons, from 1954 through 1976, with the Milwaukee Braves and Atlanta Braves in the National League (NL) and two seasons with the Milwaukee Brewers in the American League (AL).

He was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1982.

Aaron started his professional career in 1951 with the Indianapolis Clowns of the Negro American League. He was scouted by the Boston Braves and New York Giants, signed with the Braves, who assigned him to their minor league teams.  By the time he was brought up to the majors, the Braves had moved to Milwaukee.

Jim Crow America prevented Aaron and other black athletes from being treated with the same dignity as their white teammates. In a story published at Wikipedia, Aaron tells this story: 

We had breakfast while we were waiting for the rain to stop, and I can still envision sitting with the Clowns in a restaurant behind Griffith Stadium and hearing them break all the plates in the kitchen after we finished eating. What a horrible sound. Even as a kid, the irony of it hit me: here we were in the capital in the land of freedom and equality, and they had to destroy the plates that had touched the forks that had been in the mouths of black men. If dogs had eaten off those plates, they'd have washed them.

In 1970, Aaron collected his 3,000th hit, an important milestone in a baseball player's career.  But he is most famous for chasing and breaking Babe Ruth's home run record. Aaron ended the 1973 season one home run short of Ruth's record of 714.  In the off-season between 1973 and 1974, Aaron received so much mail that the Braves had to hire a secretary to manage it.

Sports Illustrated wrote:

Is this to be the year in which Aaron, at the age of thirty-nine, takes a moon walk above one of the most hallowed individual records in American sport? Or will it be remembered as the season in which Aaron, the most dignified of athletes, was besieged with hate mail and trapped by the cobwebs and goblins that lurk in baseball's attic?

He received death threats and hate mail from people who did not want to see Aaron, a black man, break Ruth's nearly sacrosanct home run record. Baseball apologists always spin this piece of history as though the threats were made to protect Ruth's legacy, but the truth is that these threats were leveled against Aaron because he was black, not because he was breaking a record.

Television broadcaster Vin Scully addressed the racism directly in his call of the game:

What a marvelous moment for baseball; what a marvelous moment for Atlanta and the state of Georgia; what a marvelous moment for the country and the world. A black man is getting a standing ovation in the Deep South for breaking a record of an all-time baseball idol. And it is a great moment for all of us, and particularly for Henry Aaron ... And for the first time in a long time, that poker face in Aaron shows the tremendous strain and relief of what it must have been like to live with for the past several months.

Although I was a massive baseball fan from 1966 through 2003, I never saw Hank Aaron play. I knew him as the Home Run King who suffered mightily for breaking Babe Ruth's home run record. I knew him as a quiet, dignified man who said little to the press and stood proudly in public. I knew of him as a level-headed, clear-minded executive in the Major League Baseball hierarchy.

Hank Aaron is an American hero who battled the demons and evil of institutionalized racism with dignity and honor.

Watch Aaron break the home run record, and hear Scully's commentary: https://youtu.be/QjqYThEVoSQ

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hank_Aaron

#blackhistorymonth #BlackLivesMatter #WorkForChange

Celebrate Black History 2021 - Lorraine Hansberry

by Dick Mac

Lorraine Vivian Hansberry was born in Chicago, Illinois, on May 19, 1930, and died of pancreatic cancer in New York City on January 12, 1965.  She was a playwright, journalist, and theatrical director.

Hansberry was the first black woman writer to have a play produced on Broadway when Raisin in the Sun premiered.  At 29-years-old, she won the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award, making her the first African-American dramatist and the youngest playwright to do so.

She attended  Wisconsin-Madison in the late 1940s, where she became active with the Communist Party and integrated a dormitory. In 1950, she moved to New York City and took a job writing for the "Freedom" newspaper where she worked with W.E.B. DuBois and Paul Robeson.

She enjoyed  political and personal success in an era when woman and people of color were rarely afforded success.

Although married to publisher and activist Robert Nemiroff until her death, Hansberry began a relationship with Dorothy Secules around 1960, and the two remained together until Hansberry’s premature death from cancer, at age 35.

Like most of the important, talented and successful African-American women of the 20th Century, she is barely known to the general public. Her talents and her efforts need to be promoted and celebrated, and we need to learn about her at other times than when reading a social media post in the month of February.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorraine_Hansberry

Listen to her speech "The Black Revolution and the White Backlash" https://youtu.be/wqxjc7PULJ8

#blackhistorymonth #BlackLivesMatter #WorkForChange

Celebrate Black History 2021 - Fannie Lou Hamer

by Dick Mac

Fannie Lou Hamer (née Townsend) was born in Montgomery County, Mississippi on October 6, 1917 and died of complications related to breast cancer on March 14, 1977 in Mound Bayou, Mississippi.

Hamer was a voting rights activist, and became a leader in the civil rights movement. She was a founder of both the Freedom Democratic Party and the National Women's Caucus.

Her attempts to exercise her constitutional right to vote were repeatedly thwarted, so she became active with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), joined their voters' rights mission, and organized the Mississippi Freedom Summer.

In 1963, she road by bus from Mississippi to attend a conference by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) in Charleston, South Carolina. When the bus stopped for a break, the local restaurant refused them service and called the police. The police arrived and beat the travelers with billy clubs, arresting some, including Hamer. At the jail, the travelers, including a 15-year-old girl, were beaten and sexually abused by police and other inmates. When a representative of SNCC arrived the next day to assist, he too was beaten badly.

After release, Hamer required over a month of recuperation for the beatings from which she never truly recovered. Although physically and psychologically damaged by the events, she returned to voter registration drives.

She traveled with a delegation of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP) to the 1964 Democratic National Convention and demanded to be seated as the official Mississippi delegates, which was met with resistance from the mainstream Democratic Party delegation from Mississippi.  Although a compromise was offered by Hubert Humphrey, Hamer stood her ground and eventually all white members of the Democratic delegation walked out. At the 1968 convention, the MFDP was seated as the official delegation, and in 1972 Hamer was elected as a national party delegate.

She received honorary doctorates during her lifetime and posthumously, and was enshrined in the National Women's Hall of Fame in 1993.

Fannie Lou Hamer represents everything that is great about Americans, and all who opposed her represent the failings of America.  Fannie Lou Hamer is an American hero.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fannie_Lou_Hamer

See this four-minute video about Hamer from the Smithsonian: https://youtu.be/J99ldHD6qeQ

#blackhistorymonth #BlackLivesMatter #WorkForChange

Celebrate Black History 2021 - NAACP

by Dick Mac

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was founded on this day, February 12, 1909, by W.E.B. DuBois, Ida B. Wellsa, Mary White Ovington, and Moorfield Storey, with the mission:

To ensure the political, educational, social, and economic equality of rights of all persons and to eliminate racial hatred and racial discrimination.

As a boy, I became aware of the NAACP after the assassination of Dr. Rev. Martin Luther King., Jr., and the civil turmoil that followed it. Most of what I'd heard was negative. 

Racists opposed any organization, movement, or program that provided assistance to anyone who wasn't white, and some of the progressive black men and women I knew considered the organization to be too mainstream and more interested in promoting assimilation as opposed to acceptance and change. 

Some adults told me it was actually a Jewish organization using back people as a front - I never weas told what the front was hiding. It is true that much of the original funding for the NAACP was provided by Jewish citizens, but the organization has never been a "front" for anything and has always strived to keep to its mission.

It was only the open-mindedness and activism of my mother that kept me from believing that the NAACP was a problem. 

After race riots in Springfield, Illinois in 1908, a group of concerned citizens led by Mary White Ovington, met in New York City. They garnered the support of scores of prominent Americans and set a founding ceremony of the organization for February 12th, 1909 the anniversary of the birth of Abraham Lincoln.

The NAACP works for legal reform to ensure civil rights, criminal justice, voting rights, employment rights, health advocacy, diversity promotion, environmental justice, runs a legal defense fund, an educational program, and much more. It is one of the most important organizations ever founded in the United States, and deserves the support of everyone.

Today is the 112th Anniversary of its founding.

The work done by the NAACP remains vital and the organization relies on membership dues to help cover operating expenses.  Anyone can join the NAACP, and you can do it here: https://www.naacp.org/membership/

Visit the NAACP website: https://www.naacp.org/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NAACP

See this video produced by the History Channel: https://youtu.be/JXi2lM7-NB8

#BlackHistoryMonth #BlackLivesMatter #WorkForChange

Celebrate Black History 2021 - Claudette Colvin

by Dick Mac

Claudette Colvin, was born on September 5, 1939. On March 2, 1955, at the age of 15, she was arrested in Montgomery, Alabama, for refusing to give up her seat to a white woman on a crowded, segregated bus. This occurred nine months before the more widely known incident in which Rosa Parks helped spark the 1955 Montgomery bus boycott.

She then became a plaintiff in the federal Browder v. Gayle lawsuit challenging the bus system's policies, which resulted in the end of segregation on the Montgomery Bus System.

Claudette was branded a troublemaker by many in her community. She dropped-out of college and was unable to secure employment. In 1958, she relocated to New York City.

In 2005, se said: "I feel very, very proud of what I did. I do feel like what I did was a spark and it caught on. I'm not disappointed. Let the people know Rosa Parks was the right person for the boycott. But also let them know that the attorneys took four other women to the Supreme Court to challenge the law that led to the end of segregation."

Claudette Colvin is an American hero.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claudette_Colvin

See this Democracy Now! report on Colvin, Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycott: https://youtu.be/pW80tV31eL0

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Celebrate Black History 2021 - Shirley Chisholm

by Dick Mac

Shirley Chisholm (nee St. Hill) was born in in New York City on November 24, 1923, and died in Ormond Beach, Florida on January 1, 2005, after several strokes.  She was 80 years old.

Chisholm was the first Black woman elected to Congress, and the first Black woman in a major political party to stand for the nomination of President of the United States.  She began her political career in the New York State Assembly (1965-1968) and then represented New York's 12th District (Brooklyn) in the US House of Representatives (1969-1983).

Born to immigrant parents in New York City, she excelled at Girls High School in Bedford–Stuyvesant, earned her B.A. at Brooklyn College, and her MA at Columbia's Teachers College. During her career as an educator, she became active in local Democratic Party politics.

She mounted successful campaigns to the New York State Assembly and then the U.S. House of Representatives.  In 1972, during her tenure as a member of Congress, she declared her candidacy for the the Democratic nomination for President, making her the first Black person to stand for the office, and the first woman to stand for the nomination in the Democratic Party.

On the first ballot at the Convention, she received 152 votes, placing her fourth in the running for the nomination. The nomination was decided for George McGovern who went on to lose to incumbent Richard Nixon. Filmmaker Peter Lilienthal made the documentary "Shirley Chisholm for President" during the campaign.

In 2005, a documentary about her presidential campaign was released. Watch "Shirley Chisholm '72: Unbought and Unbossed." it will probably be on some television network this month. The title is from her her 1970 book "Unbought and Unbossed."

From 1977-1981 she assumed a significant leadership role in the party as Secretary of the House Democratic Caucus.

After leaving politics, she returned to education and followed the path of  W. H. Auden and Bertrand Russell as Purington Chair at Mr. Holyoke College in Massachusetts, a highly-esteemed position at the oldest of the Seven Sisters schools. She was a co-founder and the first Chair of the National Congress of Black Women.

After her retirement to Florida in 1991, President Bill Clinton nominated her as the US Ambassador to Jamaica, but her age and poor health ultimately led to the nomination being withdrawn.

President Barack Obama posthumously awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2015.

Her burial vault is inscribed with the words "Unbought and Unbossed."

New York City's Shirley Chisholm State Park was opened on Jamaica Bay in 2019. I have not been there, but drive by it often.

Shirley Chisholm was one of the most important political figures of the 1960s and 1970s, changed the world, and is truly an American hero.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shirley_Chisholm

Watch a video of Chisholm declaring her bid for the presidency: https://youtu.be/y3JCX3WxBik

#BlackHistoryMonth #BlackLivesMatter #WorkForChange

Celebrate Black History 2021 - Mary Wilson

by Dick Mac

Mary Wilson

Mary Wilson died last night. 

She was born March 6, 1944, in Greenville, Mississippi, and died suddenly at age 76, on February 8, 2021, in Las Vegas, Nevada. 

During the Great Migration, her family moved to Detroit and she met Florence Ballard. She was a founding member of The Primettes, with Ballard, Betty McGlown and Diane Ross, the girl-group companion to The Primes. After McGlown left the remaining singers became The Supremes, while The Primes went on to become The Temptations.

Wilson was always the most dignified member of the group when tensions threatened the group because Motown president Berry Gordy changed their name to Diana Ross & The Supremes. As tensions rose, Flo Ballard left in 1967 and Ross left in 1970. Mary Wilson remained a member of every iteration of The Supremes, until the group disbanded in 1977 having become the most successful American vocal group in history with twelve #1 singles.

After her career with The Supremes, Wilson continued recording and performing, gave lectures about her experiences, toured with the musical "Leader of the Pack - The Ellie Greenwich Story," became a cultural ambassador for the United States government, and did charity work likely unparalleled by any of her peers.

After Flo Ballard's death, in 1976, Mary paid close attention to her surviving children. Flo was not afforded any financial riches from the success of The Supremes, and she struggled to support her family.  When the Florence Ballard Fan Club was founded, Mary Wilson regularly participated in the group's events. 

Flo Ballard, Mary Wilson, Diana Ross

Just before her death, Mary announced she was planning to release new solo material.

In my opinion, Wilson was never given the accolades she deserved as a member of the world's most important, influential, and successful singing group. Her quiet dignity prevented her from receiving the publicity the media heaps on poorly behaved stars and negative situations.

Mary Wilson is an American icon and represents the beauty, strength, and perseverance of all African American women.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Wilson_(singer)

I wept when I originally saw Mary Wilson deliver her acceptance speech at 1988 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Induction ceremony of the Supremes (she introduces one of Flo's daughter, who is shown briefly, and looks exactly like her mother): https://youtu.be/nIFWg3QuX5M

#blackhistorymonth #BlackLivesMatter #WorkForChange

Celebrate Black History 2021 - Richard Pryor

by Dick Mac

Richard Franklin Lennox Thomas Pryor was born in Peoria, Illinois, on December 1, 1940 and died December 10, 2005, in Los Angeles, California of heart failure believed to be the result of coronary artery disease.

I always had some comedy records in my collection: David Frye, Nichols & May, Bill Cosby, George Carlin, Firesign Theater,  Conception Corporation, Cheech & Chong, and Richard Pryor all come to mind right now.  I was 16- or 17-years-old when I heard Pryor's record "That Nigger's Crazy" and it was jaw-dropping. In 1966, use of the N-word was no longer allowed in my mother's house, and she was an active anti-racist raising 4 kids as a single-mother in a very racist city.  I approached the record with trepidation, embarrassment, and fear.  And then I laughed until I cried.

Pryor was a revolutionary comic who started his career in Greenwich Village in the 1960s, was on television regularly starting in the late-1960s, and in the 1970s became a writer in Hollywood, continued his stand-up and recording success, and hosted a short-lived television show. By the 1980s he was a household name.

Although never politically vocal or active there is a story during a run at the Aladdin Hotel, in Las Vegas, in the mid-1960s, where he walked onto the stage, looked at the audience (likely an all-white audience) and spoke into the microphone: "What am I doing here?" and walked off.

Pryor consistently and persistently pushed the issue of race into the cultural dialog. He never wavered and his brilliant comedic writing made the discussion palatable to industry executives who still, to this day, live in fear of race while they promote racist policies.

From the 1970s through the end of the nineties Pryor appeared in over fifty Hollywood movies! He was a commercial superstar. Like most superstars of his generation, the 1970s were a time of rampant sex and drug use, and tales of his partying and sexual orientation regularly circulated.

During the filming of "Stir Crazy" in 1980, as the story goes, Pryor was freebasing cocaine and was set on fire. There are multiple versions of the story, even from Pryor himself, but the result was that he was severely burned over a large part of his body. It only took a couple of years for him to work it into his stand-up routine.

An autobiography, "Pryor Convictions and Other Life Sentences" was released in 1995.

Richard Pryor was not an activist, but he raised the consciousness of all Americans about the condition of America for people of color, and the actions of police against black men, which persist today.

Richard Pryor was an American hero, and one funny motherfucker!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Pryor

This 1979 routine about police still applies in 2021: https://youtu.be/ZWulvchFpYs

#blackhistorymonth #BlackLivesMatter #WorkForChange

Celebrate Black History 2021 - Tom Atkins

by Dick Mac

Thomas Irving Atkins was born March 2, 1939, in Elkhart, Indiana, and died from complications related to ALS, on June 27, 2008.

He was the first black student body president at his high school, and the first black student body president of a Big Ten school while attending Indiana University Bloomington. He and his wife had to travel to Michigan to marry, because in 1960, interracial marriage was illegal in Indiana.

Tom Atkins was a Harvard-educated lawyer elected to the Boston City Council in 1967, just as the protracted law enforcement attacks on Black communities of the late sixties began to garner attention on the national news (and which attacks continue today).

As a member of the City Council on the day Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated, Atkins met with Boston Mayor Kevin White and negotiated an agreement that a scheduled James Brown concert would not only proceed as planned, but that local public television station WGBH-TV would broadcast the concert live. Atkins' genius was his prediction that a well-run concert would keep those attending the show focused on the entertainment, and allow those without tickets the opportunity to stay at home and watch the concert, thereby keeping people occupied and safe while most major metropolitan areas exploded in riot. The concert was a success and people across the city, including my family, watched the concert on Channel 2.

Tom Atkins and Elvis Presley

In January of 1971, Atkins and Elvis Presley were among a group named "1970s Ten Outstanding Young Men of America," by the US Jaycees at their annual conference in Memphis, Tennessee. Atkins told the story of meeting Elvis with a certain charm.

In the Summer of 1971, as I prepared to start high school and not yet old enough to get a work permit, I volunteered to work on Atkins' mayoral campaign, making phone calls, delivering yard signs, stuffing envelopes, and handing out leaflets. It was an exciting time, and although Boston was hardly ready for a black mayor, the campaign was well-received and Atkins placed fourth out of six.

I had the good fortune of meeting Atkins a number of times that Summer, and he once introduced me to a donor as "the guy who runs my Jamaica Plain office." I was thirteen years old and that introduction filled me with pride. During the victory party at the Bradford Hotel on election night, Atkins mingled with the crowd, and found me in my suit and tie weeping about the loss. He put his hands on my shoulders, looked me in the eye and said "We did a great thing. You did a good job. Thank you," and shook my hand.

I never saw him again after that, but later that year he became the first African American Cabinet Secretary in Massachusetts, heading up the Department of Community Development. He then became the president of the Boston NAACP and eventually that organization's general counsel.

Tom Atkins pushed white Bostonians to see their black neighbors as fellow citizens in a City that was grossly segregated and in sharp decline. Atkins refused to be hindered by the racism that drives America, and stood proudly and spoke directly whenever given the opportunity of a public forum.

Tom Atkins was an American hero.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_I._Atkins

#blackhistorymonth #BlackLivesMatter #WorkForChange