Monthly Archives: February 2017

THE AMERICAN BLACKSTORY 2017

DAY 28 — Rosanell Eaton

Rosanell.jpg

Before she cast her very first vote in 1939, 18-year-old Rosanell Eaton had to correctly recite the entire Preamble to the Constitution of the United States. And then she had to take a literacy test. Much to everyone’s surprise but hers, she did both.

White voters could simply show up, sign in and cast their vote. But not black people like Rosanell. They had to prove their fitness to vote by taking math, government and logic tests that were designed to fail.

But Rosanell, like a handful of other black voters, passed and she became the first black female voter in her county in North Carolina.

Rosanell understood that in the United States, the right to vote is the power to create change, and if she wanted to change the Jim Crow laws that allowed racist governmental structures to exist, she had to help other black people vote as well.

Over the course of her lifetime, Rosanell single-handedly registered over 4,000 black voters before she lost count. So when voting restrictions began passing in North Carolina again in 2013, Rosanell recognized them for exactly what they were. Because after voting religiously for over 70 years, she too was being denied the privilege all over again.

North Carolina’s new voting laws required identification that, as the granddaughter of a slave, she simply didn’t have. Because records, especially those on black people, were kept much more loosely back then, Rosanell had 3 different forms of government ID, each with a slightly different name. In 2015, she started her journey to reconcile her past. 11 trips to state agencies, 200 miles and 20 hours later, she was official.

And then she fought back and became the lead plaintiff in the historic North Carolina NAACP v. McCrory Supreme Court case, challenging the state’s restrictive voting laws as violations of the Voting Rights Act.

Having seen firsthand that the fight she thought she left behind is not yet won, the now 95-year-old Rosanell is back to work for the civil rights of the citizens of North Carolina as a speaker, activist, registrar, and of course, an inspiration.

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If this lady doesn’t move you in her Moral Monday rally speech to the North Carolina General Assembly, check your pulse.
THE AMERICAN BLACKSTORY 2017

DAY 27 — Joi McMillon & Bradford Young

Although one of the biggest Oscar stories ever happened on TV last night, a couple of much more monumental stories had played out a few weeks before when the nominations were announced.

On January 24, 2017, Joi McMillon became the first black woman nominated in the Best Film Editing category for “Moonlight.” It had been almost 50 years since a black person’s name had appeared in the category. At the same time, Bradford Young became the first black American nominated in the Best Cinematography category for “Arrival.”

The Academy Awards have been presented annually for nearly 88 years. (It was held twice in one year, hence last night being the 89th presentation.)

It’s a landmark for black people & women working behind the camera. Women were originally the ones tasked with editing film because it required laboriously cutting and piecing actual film, a task most believed to be too menial and too delicate for men’s hands. When editing equipment was introduced, women were phased out due to the now technical nature of the job. Black people never had particular access to White Hollywood, instead having to build their own film industries (see Day 9’s Oscar Micheaux).

To have received her honor on a film with such an intersectional & culturally diverse story as “Moonlight” is especially significant for Joi McMillon who said that “what acknowledgment and consideration bring to the film is validity. And I think the recognition by the Academy is telling them, ‘We hear your voice, and we’re paying attention to your voice, and we want you to continue to be heard.’”

For Bradford though, recognition for his work on “Arrival” is more bittersweet. His struggle reflects a complicated view that black America holds towards not just the Academy, but also toward the America we live in. What he says about it is just one reason that the stories we share during Black History Month serve a much greater purpose:

“The fact that I’m the first is only a reflection of [the Academy’s] failure to see us, which is our continuous struggle—just see me. If you just see me, you get to know me, then you’ll see that there have been many bodies, many spirits, many souls that should’ve been honored before.”

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Watch more on the Academy’s history (or lack thereof) of recognizing & including minorities.
THE AMERICAN BLACKSTORY 2017

DAY 26 — Leontyne Price

Leontyne Price - Opera Singer

When 9-year-old Leontyne Price saw famous singer Marian Anderson live in Jackson, Mississippi, she was so starstruck that she knew she’d be an opera singer too.

She pursued her dream so steadfastly that she was accepted to Julliard on a full scholarship. She was “discovered” during a student performance there, leading to her 1952 Broadway stage debut. Later that same year, she starred in the tour of Porgy and Bess & gave 305 performances in the lead role. Her voice was so distinctly rich and entirely unmatched that by 1955 she was cast as Tosca in NBC’s Opera Theater TV broadcast, making her the first black woman to sing opera on U.S. national television.

But it was also then that she discovered that as her fame grew, so too would her encounters with fragile racists who, like it or not, had the power to affect her career. Because she was cast opposite an Italian-American man & thus paired in an interracial relationship, 11 Southern states refused to air the NBC broadcast. When she went on tour with opera companies, her performances were protested and rioted. When black people were able to afford to see her, even paying for the privilege didn’t guarantee they’d receive it. At one of her shows, black people in orchestra seats were asked to move so as not to upset the white patrons.

But Leontyne persisted.

Leontyne as Cleopatra, 1968

She became the first black woman to be a season’s leading artist for the Metropolitan Opera before they asked her to officially join the company in 1960. In her company debut, she received a 42-minute standing ovation. Leontyne made history as a black woman in some of the most monumental roles opera had to offer — Aida, Cio-Cio-San in Madame Butterfly, and Cleopatra in Antony and Cleopatra, as just a couple of examples. By the time her career was through, she’d sang in every major opera house in the world, and won a whole host of awards including: the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1964, the National Medal of Arts, 2 Emmys, and 19 Grammys (including a Lifetime Achievement Award), more Grammys than any classical singer ever.

Although she was never an activist in the truest sense of the word, Leontyne found a way to fight back against the racism she’d faced early in her career & used her place in history to open doors for black people in the most relevant way she could: if venues wanted to have one of the best opera singers in the world grace their stages, they had to let black people sit in their seats too.

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Listen in on Leontyne singing opposite Luciano Pavarotti at the Met’s 100th Anniversary Gala.
THE AMERICAN BLACKSTORY 2017

DAY 25 — Bayard Rustin

Bayard Rustin literally wrote the book on successful protest organization. When an unbelievable 200,000 people participated in the civil rights March On Washington for Jobs and Freedom in August 1963, it was Bayard Rustin who’d planned EVERYTHING from advertising to uniting feuding speakers, and from barring violent racists to bathroom logistics. And there’s a reason that he’s been largely left out of history.

Bayard Rustin was openly gay.

If there was a person who most typified The Resistance of the time, it could be argued that it was him. In 1944, he was sentenced to 2 years in prison for refusing his World War II draft order due to his deep-seated, strictly non-violent Quaker faith. In 1953, he spent 60 days in jail for homosexuality (“sex perversion” was the specific charge). And 13 years before Rosa Parks had, Bayard was one of the first to refuse to give up his seat to white people on a Mississippi bus, a monumental action that led to the founding of the Southern Christian Leadership Coalition and his role as a key advisor to Dr. Martin Luther King.

But strangely enough, Bayard found himself fighting twice as hard against unlikely enemies. Because he was gay, both black and white people tried to blackmail him in efforts to discredit him. His skills were so revolutionary & so effective that white enemies like Senator Strom Thurmond knew that removing him from the movement would be devastating. The power he held within the movement was so great that heterosexual blacks didn’t feel that a gay man should have it & sought it for themselves.

But Bayard didn’t let that stop him one way or another. He knew that he was fighting at the intersection of two historic causes, both of which were too significant to be undermined. His partner, Walter Naegle recounted that “Bayard was willing to stand up for people — even though they had mistreated him — it was a matter of principle.”

Bayard & Walter. An interracial gay couple with a huge age difference. Such scandal.

After the Civil Rights and Voter Rights Acts were passed in the 60s, he was actively involved in the Gay Rights Movement, but felt compelled to take up a third cause. He became a vocal proponent of Workers’ Rights, demanding increased minimum wage (which was only a ridiculous 75 cents at the time) and federal programs to train & place unemployed workers.

Over the course of his life, Bayard successfully advanced the efforts of three of the most significant modern rights movements in the world, and few people recognized him. In 2013, just two months after the 50th anniversary of what Dr. King called “the greatest demonstration for freedom in American history,” President Obama posthumously awarded Bayard with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, an honor that Walter touchingly accepted on his behalf.

In a quote that sums up the person he was, the values he held, and the hopes he had for future generations, Bayard once said “We need, in every community, a group of angelic troublemakers.”

KEEP GOING BLACK IN HISTORY:

Take a moment to enjoy a short super reel of Bayard’s incredible speeches and the power he had to mobilize the people.
THE AMERICAN BLACKSTORY 2017

DAY 24 — Adm. Michelle Howard

Michelle Howard - First Female Four-Star Admiral

Michelle Howard just wanted to do her job. She was a black woman who’d excelled in the U.S. Navy for years, so naturally, all sorts of organizations wanted her to come share her stories, or to clink glasses with her at their parties.

In 1999, she’d become the first black woman to command a Navy ship, the USS Rushmore (LSD 47). And over the years, she’d also commanded tsunami rescue efforts, maritime security operations, and counter-piracy strikes. In fact, just three days into her counter-piracy command, she successfully led the well-documented rescue of Captain Richard Phillips from Somali pirates who’d hijacked & kidnapped him from the Maersk Alabama.

By then, she’d also won the Women of Color STEM Career Achievement Award, the USO Military Woman of the Year Award, the NAACP Chairman’s Award, and the Secretary of the Navy’s Captain Winifred Collins Award. She’d even started her career famously as one of the first women admitted to the United States Naval Academy.

Michelle didn’t get where she was by entertaining distractions. Back when she was little, she’d learned to stay focused after kids on the playground called her a n*gger and when she ran home crying, her father told her “You gotta toughen up. This is the country you live in.”

She wanted to shut out everything but the job when a few words from her mother changed her entire perspective: “You are where you are historically.”

So she embraced her place in history, and anything else that came along with it. Two years later, Michelle came to take it all.

Adm. Howard is pictured here with Rear Adm. Annie B. Andrews (L) and Rear Adm. Lillian E. Fishburne (C, ret.) as the first three black female admirals in the Navy.

On July 1, 2014, she became the first female four-star admiral, as well as the first black person and first woman to serve as Vice Chief of Naval Operations.

On June 7, 2016, she stepped down as Vice Chief of Naval Operations… to lead U.S. Naval Forces Europe-Africa/U.S. Sixth Fleet, becoming the first female four-star admiral to command operational forces in the process. She also leads NATO’s Allied Joint Force Command Naples – JFCNP in Italy. All that, and she’s only 56.

So when it comes to doing her job, as the highest ranking female in U.S. military history, I think it’s safe to say that she’s doing an all-around damn good one.

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Adm. Howard discusses her experiences overcoming race & gender barriers with The Empowerment Project.
THE AMERICAN BLACKSTORY 2017

DAY 23 — Bessie Stringfield

Bessie Stringfield - Lifelong Motorcyclist

When 16-year-old Bessie Stringfield asked for a motorcycle, she didn’t even know how to ride one.

That didn’t stop her from becoming the first black woman to complete a solo cross-country motorcycle ride 3 years later in 1930.

Bessie & her 1928 Indian Motorcycle Scout traveled to all 48 continental States, and even a handful of international destinations. But she did so with the knowledge that it would be harder out there on the road for her, especially alone, because she was black. Bessie sometimes slept in parking lots on her motorcycle because no one would rent a room to a black person. A white man once followed and ran her off the road, just because he could. Later in her career, she was regularly harassed by police officers in Miami who would pull her over constantly & told her that “n*gger women are not allowed to ride motorcycles.” They obviously didn’t know Bessie.

Bessie funded her motorcycle rides by performing stunts in local carnivals and winning prize money in motorcycle competitions, and she was so good, people eventually called her the “the Motorcycle Queen of Miami.” But perhaps they should have called her the Motorcycle Queen of the United States, because Bessie wasn’t just an incredible leisure rider — she found a way to use her passion to serve her country too.

During World War II, Bessie was a civilian dispatch rider for the U.S. Army, responsible for carrying messages across distances to other domestic bases, especially when there were fears that military communications were compromised. And she had the perfect cover — no one would have suspected that a black woman on a motorcycle would be carrying important missives for the armed forces, and yet, there she was.

After her first Indian, she switched to Harleys and rode 27 of them in her lifetime, so in 1990, the American Motorcyclist Association honored her in their inaugural “Heroes of Harley-Davidson” exhibit. In 2000, the AMA recognized her again with the “Bessie Stringfield Award,” presented annually to individuals who’d made great strides in introducing new communities to motorcycling. And finally, she was inducted into the AMA Motorcycle Hall of Fame in 2002. Bessie died in 1993 at the ripe old age of 82, so she didn’t live to see most of the honors she received, but when she passed, she was undoubtedly happy. Before her death, doctors advised her to give up riding. Her answer? “I told him if I don’t ride, I won’t live long. And so I never did quit.”

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THE AMERICAN BLACKSTORY 2017

DAY 22 — Tom Burrell

Tom Burrell - Advertising copywriter

When Tom Burrell became the first black man to break into Chicago advertising (which is to say, national advertising), he introduced the entire ad world to a novel concept:

“Black people are not dark-skinned white people.”

It was 1961. Seriously.

Tom started in Wade Advertising’s mailroom as a college student & within 6 months he was their first black copywriter. He went on to work as a copywriter & creative director for some of the biggest agencies in the world until he later started his own.

Before he broke into the industry, brands were placing ads in Ebony Magazine praising how the 1800s were a great time for beer. Which is wonderful, except that apparently, back then, beer had it better than black people. Makes for a hard sell. Marlboro was trying to sell cigarettes to black consumers using a brooding, white cowboy with a lasso at his side. Not exactly the most historically trustworthy figure for brown-skinned people, you know?

And that’s where Tom got his biggest break. When Philip Morris approached Tom, they needed a way to do better with black consumers. So he introduced them to black culture. He showed the world what it was to be black, cool, communal, relevant and hopeful but with a history.

And when he did, EVERYONE came calling. First, it was McDonald’s in 1972. And then more of the world’s biggest brands followed — Coca-Cola, Ford Motor Company, and P&G. And it was all because for the first time ever, black people were seeing versions of themselves on tv, in print, on billboards, and everywhere else that Tom could get them, portrayed as positive, intelligent, talented, diverse, family-oriented, worthy, and in short, REAL.

After decades of success in advertising, Tom’s retired now, but he serves as chairman emeritus for his agency, Burrell Communications, and is still active in the advertising community. Because of Tom’s work, today’s brands have recognized the value in speaking to EVERYONE in their own voice. In short, you COULD say that what Tom did changed the face of advertising, but considering how many people are only exposed to others by what they see on TV, I think there’s an argument to be made that Tom’s work actually changed the world.

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Burrell Advertising won their first Clio for this classic 1978 Coca-Cola TV ad featuring hallmarks of the black community.
And I know y’all remember McDonald’s Calvin! That commercial was created under Tom’s direction too.

Tom’s book, Brainwashed: Challenging the Myth of Black Inferiority, details the “greatest propaganda campaign of all time.”

THE AMERICAN BLACKSTORY 2017

DAY 21 — Dr. Rick Kittles

For many black Americans with longstanding roots outside of Africa, their genealogy’s paper trail ends at a bill of sale, if the trail even goes that far.

(PAUSE. Let the historical, social, economic & personal implications of that sink in. Then you may continue.)

Dr. Rick Kittles is changing that.

He’s the world’s leading African-American DNA geneticist, and his work has lead to incredible breakthroughs in sickle cell disease, colon cancer, prostate cancer and more. He’s also the geneticist behind the PBS series Finding Your Roots.

When Dr. Kittles studied West African genes & noticed that his own chromosomes (he has a Nigerian heritage) differed, he started connecting the dots. He built databases of African-American men around the United States and was able to identify not only those men’s African lineage down to the tribe, but also the European colonial control of those countries & their distribution of slaves throughout the United States. Through DNA alone. The differences he observed were from the significant European contributions, sometimes upwards of 35%, present in every African-American man’s strands.

But his breakthrough meant more than ancestral lineage for a community. It meant present discovery for EVERYONE. With such a huge database of complex Caucasian and African-American DNA distributions, he’s been able to read genetic data for how certain diseases present in a lineage, what links and/or triggers those diseases might have (like vitamin D deficiency’s link to prostate cancer), and what environmental factors might impact diseases in affected DNA. Dr. Kittles’ method of using specific genetic markers to decipher ancestry was once rejected by the scientific community. Now, it’s the standard in biomedical research.

In his “free time,” Dr. Kittles is also the director of AfricanAncestry.com, using his database of over 30,000 indigenous African samples to help black Americans establish a history for themselves that goes beyond enslavement and into empowerment.

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Dive deeper into the implications of Dr. Kittles’ work in his TED talk, “The Biology of Race in the Absence of Biological Races.”
THE AMERICAN BLACKSTORY 2017

DAY 20 — Ona Judge

*PRESIDENT’S DAY EDITION*

On May 24, 1796, the Pennsylvania Gazette published the ad here requesting the capture of Oney Judge, First Lady Martha Washington’s personal, runaway slave.

Ona “Oney” Judge was born into slavery at Mount Vernon, VA around 1773, and was groomed as Martha Washington’s body attendant. She was so treasured by the First Family that she was one of 8 slaves who moved to the nation’s new capitol of Philadelphia with them in 1790. Her status as an upper echelon household slave afforded Oney luxuries that others didn’t have — she could accompany her mistress in town, or go alone to enjoy the local attractions, she wore nice clothes, and she even had a room of her own! What more could a slave want?

The Washingtons soon found out. In 1796, Martha’s granddaughter back home was married, and she promised Oney to the newlyweds as a gift. Oney knew that if she went back south to Virginia, the home of American slavery, she’d never return. So when she packed her bags to leave the Washingtons, she decided that those bags were packed for freedom.

And for years, she ran. Oney escaped that day, but she was never actually free. The Washingtons were shocked & infuriated by her disloyalty, and doggedly attempted to recover her. Ads like the one shown here were placed in newspapers, and on at least three separate occasions over the years, the President’s friends & associates attempted to facilitate Oney’s return by negotiation or by force.

Oney settled in New Hampshire, married a free man & had children, but there was no statute of limitations on slavery. If she had ever been captured, she would have been immediately returned to the Washingtons, and her children would become slaves too — the Washingtons property rights over their mother took precedent over their free father’s parental rights. So for the next several decades, she hid until she was in her 70s, hoping to be forgotten or too old to be worth the trouble.

When she finally granted her first newspaper interview in 1845, the reporter asked if she regretted escaping into isolation & poverty, in contrast to the affluence she could have have had with the Washingtons. Her response was moving: “No, I am free.”

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Read author transcriptions of two of the only surviving interviews of Oney Judge.

On Juneteenth 2021, Mount Vernon erected a historical marker to preserve Ona’s story in the place where it happened. It’s the first marker in all of Fairfax County, VA recognizing a Black person.

Ona is “among the 19 enslaved people highlighted in ‘Lives Bound Together: Slavery at George Washington’s Mount Vernon,’ and the subject of Never Caught: The Washingtons’ Relentless Pursuit of Their Runaway Slave, Ona Judge by Erica Armstrong Dunbar.
Read more on both at the New York Times.

Dive deeper into the daily lives of Ona & another of the Washingtons’ slaves, William Lee.

THE AMERICAN BLACKSTORY 2017

DAY 19 — Greenwood, Tulsa

Greenwood District, Tulsa, Oklahoma - The Black Wall Street Massacre

In the early 20th century, black businessmen bought land in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and developed it into one of the most successful & affluent black communities ever built in America.

The Greenwood district in Tulsa, Oklahoma was once so self-sufficient & financially stable that it was known as “Black Wall Street” where black people lived, worked, bought, sold & traded with others, and everyone succeeded for it. Greenwood had its own banks, pharmacies, lawyers, doctors (including a Mayo Clinic endorsed surgeon), and published two newspapers. Large segments of the population lived with trappings of wealth that were rare even for black people in integrated northern states, like private planes.

But on May 31, 1921, it all literally burned to the ground. In a story that plays like a broken record, a rumor about a black man assaulting a white woman somehow justified genocide, and Tulsa’s racists, bolstered by the KKK, destroyed EVERYTHING in Greenwood. The community was bombed from the air & torched from below in a 2-day riot that no law enforcement official stopped & no one was ever held accountable for.

Over 800 people were injured, an estimated 10,000 were left homeless when 35 city blocks of over 1,256 residences were destroyed, more than a dozen churches and 600 successful businesses were lost, including 21 restaurants, 30 grocery stores, two movie theaters and a hospital. Greenwood’s founder alone lost over $200,000 in property assets. Archaeologists & historians estimate that as many as 300 died that day, and their bodies were dumped in a mass grave outside of the local cemetery. Known today as the Tulsa Race Riot, if estimates are correct, it ranks as the second deadliest attack on American soil behind 9/11.

Needless to say, Greenwood never recovered its original glory, and the story of what happened there only survived history because it destroyed a key milestone in black history. But it was hardly the only story of its kind. Between 1906 and 1923, notable mass murders of dozens of black people were carried out in Atlanta, East St. Louis, Rosewood, FL, and Slocum, TX. Similarly to the Tulsa Riot, ultimately, no one was held responsible for committing any of these crimes of murder, arson, kidnapping, rape, robbery and so on.

Today, when we point elsewhere to condemn senseless acts of terrorism, we should humbly acknowledge that our country has much to atone for to our own citizens in our not-so-distant past as well.

KEEP GOING BLACK IN HISTORY:

The Tulsa Historical Society & Museum has preserved an incredible collection of images of the day of the massacre, but also of black life in Greenwood before it was stolen away.

CNN produced a very thorough 7-minute short featuring images of Greenwood & its citizens in their prime, more from the day of the massacre, newspaper articles, and an interview with an elderly survivor.