Category Archives: THE AMERICAN BLACKSTORY 2020

THE AMERICAN BLACKSTORY 2020

DAY 19 — Stephanie Lampkin

February 19, 2020 The Griot

Eight interviews into the hiring process, suddenly, Stephanie Lampkin “didn’t have enough technical experience.”

By 13, she’d learned to code. By 15, she’d grown into a proficient developer. Then graduated with a Stanford University engineering degree, and an MBA from MIT Sloan School of Management, too. Her resume boasted engineering, web development and project management positions with tech giants like Microsoft, Lockheed Martin and Tripadvisor.

It was almost laughable that of all people, Stephanie Lampkin didn’t have enough technical experience. And then they dropped the punch line.

“We’ll hang onto your résumé in case a sales or marketing position opens up.”

She couldn’t have been more caught off-guard. “I thought, ‘I’ve been in computer science since I was 13. What more can I do? I have degrees from both Stanford and MIT and you’re telling me that I’m still not qualified? It was a big “aha!” moment for me.’”

Instead of looking for the right job, she’d code her way into getting the right job to look for her.

Enter Blendoor, a job-matching platform Stephanie built to eliminate unconscious bias in the hiring process, and empower companies to hire based on merit, not the majority. It provides a blind review process that removes all references to biasing demographic details – age, name, race, gender, and photos – and fills positions at diversity-minded companies with the most qualified candidates, period.

Too often, women, people of color, those with disabilities and other marginalized groups hear that companies WANT to hire diverse talent, they just can’t find it. But research indicates that the hiring pool isn’t the problem as much as the people doing the hiring are. “Are Emily and Greg More Employable Than Lakisha and Jamal?” an American Economic Association study asked. The answer then – and in repeated studies since – was overwhelmingly yes, with “white-sounding names” receiving 50% more callbacks than “black- or foreign-sounding names.” A joint study between Northwestern University, Harvard University, and the Institute for Social Research in Norway conducted repeatedly in multiple industries found that “at every step of the way, employers were more likely to proceed with white candidates.”

It’s a state of affairs many are aware of, but no one wants to believe is happening in THEIR organization. Stephanie disagrees. “Everybody has unconscious bias. It’s not a sexism thing, it’s not a racism thing, it’s a human thing.”

It’s the crucial insight behind removing the human element of the initial screening process altogether, and one she actually learned from an unlikely source: symphony auditions. When they began holding auditions behind a curtain, symphonies found that their gender diversity increased as much as five times that of the typical open audition. And when based on the talent alone, of course those symphonies found improved performance as well. Stephanie has replicated that model for the tech industry through Blendoor.

“I don’t want to get pigeonholed into, ‘Oh, this is just another Black thing or another woman thing,’” she says. “No, this is something that affects all of us and it’s limiting our potential.”

And what’s more, Stephanie doesn’t just empower clients like Apple, Facebook, Google, Intel, and Airbnb to diversity their hiring efforts, she empowers employees to leave their own anonymous rankings of their company’s internal inclusion efforts. With input from both sides of the equation, she’s able to solve for how each individual corporation can boost its hiring, retention and philanthropic efforts to ensure that everyone has access.

But even building her own start-up hasn’t given Stephanie immunity to the very problem she’s trying to solve. “The thing that I come up against that is always unspoken is the fact that a lot of these men haven’t seen a black woman create a product that leads to a billion-dollar valuation.” she explains. “But someone has to break through. You have to have the Jackie Robinson.., the Amelia Earhart of tech. There have been no examples of a black woman building a product, engineering a product, and making it a billion-dollar company. I’m representative of something people haven’t seen before.”

Since Blendoor officially launched in 2016, Stephanie’s not content with just tackling bias in tech. “I fear that there are many people in this world (including myself) who may never be able to reach their full potential, due to poverty, homophobia, transphobia, sexism, racism, and many other ‘isms,’” she explains. So she’s making it her business to tackle those issues everywhere, starting with venture capital where “black women lead more than 1.5 million businesses in the U.S., but received .002 percent of all venture funding in the past five years.” It’s a huge hill to climb, but if anyone can, it’s Stephanie.

After all, she’s got experience.

Stephanie Lampkin - Beating Bias with Experience

KEEP GOING BLACK IN HISTORY:

Explore the platform & get the details on how Blendoor works.

Read Business Insider’s profile on Stephanie & what she’s up against.

Listen to Stephanie speak at the Grace Hopper Celebration on how inclusive hiring is “#NotAPipelineProblem”.

THE AMERICAN BLACKSTORY 2020

DAY 18 — Gordon Parks

February 18, 2020 The Griot

Gordon Parks - Melanin on Both Sides of the Lens

“I saw that the camera could be a weapon against poverty, against racism, against all sorts of social wrongs. I knew at that point I had to have a camera.”

In 1938, Gordon Parks bought that camera, and for just $7.50, he became the first black man to make the world truly see its reflection through his eyes.

And those eyes had seen more in his 26 years than most had seen in a lifetime. Gordon lost his mother as a teenager and had subsequently been homeless, a high school dropout, a piano player and singer, busboy and waiter, semi-pro basketball player, and worked for the Civilian Conservation Corps. But when he chanced upon a discarded magazine featuring photojournalistic images of migrant workers, immediately Gordon envisioned himself as the man behind the camera. “Still suffering the cruelties of my past, I wanted a voice to help me escape it,” Gordon recounted in his autobiography. “I bought that Voightlander Brilliant at a Seattle pawnshop; it wasn’t much of a camera, but.. I had purchased a weapon I hoped to use against a warped past and an uncertain future.”

Whether his camera was a weapon or a good luck charm, right away, things started looking brighter for the young man. From one of his very first rolls of film came his first exhibition, a window display of his images by his developer, the local Eastman Kodak store. On their recommendation, he charmed his way into a job shooting for a women’s clothing store where his good luck just kept on growing. That store happened to cater to Marva Louis, wife of heavyweight champion Joe Louis. In Chicago, there was a true demand for a photographer of his caliber, she teased.

In hindsight, Gordon wrote, “a guy who takes a chance, who walks the line between the known and unknown, who is unafraid of failure, will succeed.” It was easy advice for the man who’d arrived in Chicago and taken freelance jobs shooting on the South Side before winning a fellowship to work in the Washington D.C. Farm Security Administration, the very same agency that’d published the photos inspiring his photography in the first place.

Gordon became an undeniable asset to the FSA in the middle of their campaign to win the hearts and minds of Americans for Roosevelt’s New Deal. Since many voting Americans didn’t know the plights of farmers, migrant workers and rural towns the New Deal was expected to help most, the FSA had been tasked with photographing that demographic sympathetically. Gordon was crucial in that effort. The extremely poverty-stricken (of all races) and people of color could allow themselves to be vulnerable to a black man who was himself already accustomed to being invisible. His photographs, including one of his most famous taken right in the offices of the FSA, were full of raw emotion and evocative scenery unlike any other captured during the mid-30s and 40s.

By then, his humanizing eye had gained a following of its own beyond the public sector, and when Gordon finally hung up his government service hat in 1943, he relocated to Harlem, where a very famous name was waiting for his services next: Vogue Magazine. At a time when some black American men were still being lynched for looking at white women, one of the world’s most recognized fashion publications sought out Gordon’s gaze as their first black photographer.

With fashion came with its own vast new world of photographic techniques, settings and points of view. Gordon dominated them all. But for a photographer used to shooting portraits and candids, fashion photography came with its own challenges. Namely, models. Their over-posing and intense awareness of the camera didn’t fit his vision of how real women wanted to see fashion, and though he’d spent 5 years delighting Vogue’s readers with his fresh new approach, when LIFE Magazine came calling next, he quickly answered, becoming their first black photographer as well.

It wasn’t all roses for Gordon though. His willingness to work for white-owned publications made him an outcast in some black communities, and a still racist society meant there were no protections for him, neither in-office nor on assignment. But navigating extremes was nothing new for Gordon, who’d seen some of the best and worst life had to offer before he’d even turned 40. “The pictures that have most persistently confronted my camera have been those of crime, racism and poverty. I was cut through by the jagged edges of all three. Yet I remain aware of imagery that lends itself to serenity and beauty, and here my camera has searched for nature’s evanescent splendors,” Gordon mused.

And for the next 20+ years, LIFE made the most of his vast wellspring of talent, access, and life experience, sending him on assignments that included the Black Panthers and Harlem gangs, celebrities, Parisian life, and even the slums of Rio de Janeiro, where he quite possibly launched the world’s first Kickstarter. When LIFE published his 1961 photo-documentary of a sick little boy named Flavio and the struggle his family faced in Brazil, the magazine’s readers spontaneously donated over $30,000 for the boy’s medical treatment in the States as well as a new home for his family. There were few clearer examples of the weapon he’d formed against poverty and racism doing its work to breaking barriers.

But Gordon had so much more to do. By 1962, he was writing books. By 1968, he was producing his own movies. And finally, by 1971, “Shaft,” his blueprint for the blaxploitation movie, made him the first black man to release a major motion picture, too. “Like souls touching… poetry, music, paint, and the camera keep calling, and I can’t bring myself to say no.”

By the time he died in 2006 at the age of 93, Gordon had won too many photography awards to count, 40 honorary doctorate degrees, the National Medal of Arts, the NAACP’s Spingarn Medal, and hundreds more. But even more significant are the millions of photographs, 12 films written or directed, 12 books and countless other artworks by a man who showed American society how much more of its beauty is visible when seen through a darker lens.

KEEP GOING BLACK IN HISTORY:

Browse the archives spanning Gordon’s years and genres of work.

Read Gordon’s compelling life story in his New York Times’ obituary.

See Gordon Parks’ images brought to life in Kendrick Lamar’s “Element” video.

THE AMERICAN BLACKSTORY 2020

DAY 17 — Ann Lowe

February 17, 2020 The Griot

Ann Lowe - White Society’s Secret Seamstress

Jacqueline Bouvier’s perfect day couldn’t have gone worse for Ann Lowe.

The cover of an article in the 1964 Saturday Evening Post captures Ann carefully detailing her signature flowers.

She’d lavishly fit celebrities, debutantes, and wealthy women with last names like Rockefeller, DuPont, and Roosevelt, but the Kennedy wedding was the moment that made Ann’s over 4 decades of sewing and sacrifice all worthwhile.

And everything that could go wrong most certainly did.

Just 10 days before the 1953 American royal event of the century, a ruptured pipe flooded Ann’s Harlem studio, waterlogging 10 of the 15 dresses Jackie’s mother commissioned Ann to create – including the bride’s, which had taken 8 weeks to construct.

With no time for tears, Ann buckled down, hired backup, rush-ordered hundreds more yards of ivory and pink silk taffeta at a loss of thousands of dollars, and still remade all 10 dresses in record time, saving her business and her well-earned reputation as high society’s master dressmaker.

Only to be humiliated when she tried to personally hand-deliver them.

The staff at the bride’s family’s Newport, Rhode Island oceanfront estate only saw a black woman arriving at the front door, and attempted to intercept her creations and steer her to the rear service entrance instead. Well aware of her value and having already established good rapport with the Bouviers from past commissions, Ann insisted that the dresses go with her through the front door or not at all. Indeed they did.

*Jackie’s opinions on her wedding gown’s portrait neckline and “lampshade” skirt didn’t stop the gown from making a stunning attraction at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum.*

Finally, the moment nearly everyone had been waiting for arrived. Jackie’s first appearance before the public and press was breathtaking, and photos published in the classic pages of Life and TIME Magazines memorialized what’s now widely regarded among fashion and wedding industry professionals as one of the most iconic bridal gowns dresses of all time. “The oohs and ahs as they come in… that’s what I like to hear,” Ann told EBONY.

But stolen breaths and gasps of wonder were no comparison to awestruck journalists and photographers clamoring to ask the new First Lady what surely everyone would want to know: WHO was the designer of her exquisite gown? Ann’s heart stopped. Having come this far had been nothing short of a miracle, but behind the scenes, so much had been beyond her control, including one secret then yet to be revealed: Jackie HATED the dress.

The worldly socialite’s trips to Paris, where slender dark-haired women like her set trends in slim and simple silhouettes, had inspired her to be wed in a fitted and fashionable number. But John’s overly-involved father Ambassador Kennedy wouldn’t have it. His son would be married to a woman wearing something traditional, American-made, and the elder Kennedy saw to it, requiring his approval for every detail of the wedding, including the final dress sketch. Ann’s close collaboration with all of her brides ensured that Jackie’s opinion at least factored in, but what would she SAY?

“Oh, a colored dressmaker did it.”

Actress Olivia de Havilland won her 1947 Oscar in a dress Ann Lowe not only made, but also hand-painted. The label inside bore the name of designer Sonia Rosenberg, who’d styled de Havilland and contracted Ann’s work.

Ann was heartbroken. Crestfallen. Utterly devastated. Not receiving credit for her designs was typical. When starlets like Olivia de Havilland walked the red carpets, they’d hoped everyone would believe they were donning the latest European fashions, not those made by a black woman in Harlem, even going so far as to have another designer’s label stitched in. But this was different. This had been Ann’s chance to go from “secret designer for the high society” to a household name. Instead, she’d been brushed aside by the most fashionable woman in the world.

Though her designs were among some of the most sought after of the time, Ann’s financial prowess left much to be desired, and the loss she’d taken from the Kennedy flood incident, combined with the fact that her race gave her little negotiating power with the most wealthy women in the world, continued to affect her bottom line. Despite gaining the favor of Christian Dior and designing in-house for Neiman Marcus, Henri Bendel, Saks Fifth Avenue, and of course, countless ladies of fame and fortune, by 1962, only 9 years after the Kennedy wedding, Ann was bankrupt. Too few profits, IRS troubles, and slowly failing vision that led to the removal of her right eye that same year, had together been too much to overcome, even though she’d regularly earned over $300,000 annually.

“I ran sobbing into the street,” Ann recalled, this time, with no dressmaking in the world distracting enough to dry her tears. In a spectacular and long overdue change of luck, she soon received notice that an anonymous donor had paid her entire $30,000 debt to the government and her suppliers. Until her dying day, Ann held fast to the belief that her benefactor was Mrs. Kennedy-Onassis, simply repaying what she owed.

Her spirits and coffers renewed, in 1968, Ann became the first black woman to open her own fashion label on New York’s illustrious Madison Avenue, but by 1972, working by describing designs to her assistants and stitching fine details through touch alone just couldn’t be sustained. Ann finally retired, ultimately passing away in 1981 as an 82-year-old legend to only a very few.

But when one of her dresses was exhibited at the newly-opened Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C., Ann’s whole life came to light. One visitor’s tweet thread was all it took for major media outlets to uncover the heirlooms and finally honor the heritage of the vibrant black woman who clothed American royalty, proving that chic comes in all colors.

KEEP GOING BLACK IN HISTORY:

View the The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York Costume Institute’s Ann Lowe collection.

Ann was commissioned as the exclusive designer for Ak-Sar-Ben, a Nebraska festival and ball. Read how her dresses came into such high demand for such a niche event here.

Read EBONY Magazine’s December 1966 interview with Ann and peek into her adorable studio.

THE AMERICAN BLACKSTORY 2020

DAY 16 — Hannah & Charlie Lucas

February 16, 2020 The Griot

Hannah & Charlie Lucas - Suicide Prevention’s Smartphone Sibs

“Oh, I’m fine.” and “Doing ok, thanks!” could be two of the most frequently uttered lies in the English language.

And even though she had good reason not to, then-15-year-old Hannah Lucas was just as guilty of telling them as any of us. But those little white lies had dangerous consequences for the teenager who’d suddenly developed a medical condition that caused unexpected and uncontrollable fainting. What if she felt a spell coming on while no one was around? Or potentially worse, while EVERYONE was around – at school, in public, or at a party?

So Hannah watched the world from inside her bedroom, where her involuntary condition presented new symptoms many disabled persons are all too familiar with: utter isolation and depression. And locked in her bedroom with the ever-looming fear that either her physical or mental disability could end life as she knew it, Hannah came too close to taking the matter into her own hands instead. When her mom intervened by chance and asked her daughter why she’d bear that burden alone, Hannah blurted out an insight turned inspiration – “I wish there was a button I could press to tell you I wasn’t okay.”

But what if there was?

With newfound focus and renewed hope, Hannah immediately set to work concepting an idea for an app that would allow an urgent outcry to her family and closest friends if she needed assistance for any reason at all, without saying or texting a word. When her code-writing little brother Charlie assured her that he could design her app, it wasn’t long before the siblings’ at-home collaboration became a digital reality.

“The notOK App® takes the guesswork out of asking for help. It’s a digital panic button to get you immediate support. Instead of typing out a text message to only delete it before sending, notOK App is super simple. With just one button press, a user’s peer support team is notified and can provide help,” Hannah wrote in a funding pitch. In fact, she and her brother pursued and secured all of their own capital, eventually partnering with a developer to launch the app on iTunes and Google Play, where it’s since gained thousands of downloads, high praise from its users, and endorsement from the Born This Way Foundation and the American Association of Suicidology as well.

With notOK App, needing help isn’t taboo and neither is being unable to ask for it.

But turning insight into action doesn’t stop there for Hannah and Charlie. When Virginia passed a bill mandating mental health training for all teachers, the siblings knew that the students in their home state of Georgia could benefit from the same. This year, they’ll present their proposed bill during the Georgia legislative session. It’s the common sense next step for the pair who recognize that notOK® is a tool for those who feel as though they have nowhere else to turn.

And that’s too many. Suicide is the second leading cause of death for those aged 10 to 34, a statistic that’s even more grim when it comes to black youths aged 10 to 19, having risen 73% for that demographic since 1991. The Lucas teens’ own mother has first-hand knowledge that “kids don’t necessarily have the vocabulary to say, ‘Hey, I’m dealing with anxiety.’” Their lived reality makes Hannah and Charlie especially suited to step into the gap, using their well-earned platform to provide resources and representation for the ones who need them most.

As for Hannah, the experience has only made her stronger and given her the courage to do the simple thing that so many others take for granted every day: live. “Now I’m not just living for myself. I have to keep on living. I have to keep on thriving,” she asserts, a sentiment her brother uses his voice to amplify. “I would really like to tell people that it’s okay to be not okay,” says Charlie. “It’s okay to be where you are right now. We just have to get through it.”

KEEP GOING BLACK IN HISTORY:

Get all the details on how notOK App makes contacting the ones you love or an emergency service as simple as pressing a button and download it FREE here.

“Today was a good day, but it almost didn’t happen.” Read Hannah’s account and inspirational journey in her own words at Teen Vogue.

If you or someone you love is struggling right now, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255) or live chat on their website.

THE AMERICAN BLACKSTORY 2020

DAY 15 — Mary Ellen Pleasant

February 15, 2020 The Griot

Mary Ellen Pleasant - Investor in Good Trouble

All of the money in California might not have been enough to buy freedom for black Americans still enslaved and oppressed in the mid-to-late 1800s.

But free woman Mary Ellen Pleasant sure had enough to try.

Through an early life enshrouded in mystery and speculation, by the 1840s, a twenty-something Mary Ellen was coming into her own and creating her story, both literally and figuratively. Mary Ellen and her first husband James, both born from mixed-raced parents, could easily pass for white, but rather than benefit selfishly, they put themselves at risk freeing the enslaved. With the fortune James inherited from his white father, he and his “white” wife financed all manner of slave escapes – purchasing their deeds only to release them later, funding their travels along the Underground Railroad, and even providing shelter in the couple’s own home, a monstrous Virginia plantation with no staff because they’d all been set free.

When James died only 4 years after they were married, Mary Ellen embraced her newfound freedom, living her life in a way that only a single woman with light skin, lots of money, and a little backbone could. She and James had been rebellious, but Mary Ellen became an unrepentant renegade who preferred to dress in disguise and concoct elaborate back stories that allowed her to “steal” slaves right off the plantation. Her brilliant surprise attacks were the stuff of legend, but after 4 years of these ruses, she was infamous among southern plantation owners and had to make an escape of her own.

Slowly moving west in the direction of growing cities and eventually remarrying along the way, Mary Ellen was soon forced to pick up the pace by the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. Although she’d never technically been a slave (Massachusetts was a free state when she lived there as an indentured child servant instead), she also didn’t have the necessary papers to prove her freedom should anyone question her skin color and lineage. In a stroke of extraordinary luck, the free state of California was in the infancy of a Gold Rush and she had an eye on growing her fortunes. So with all of her money and her moxie, Mary Ellen landed in San Francisco, where she only became an even more formidable woman.

Gliding effortlessly between both white and black communities, Mary Ellen amassed millions. When she arrived in San Francisco, surveillance was her top priority. A brilliantly clever and well-educated woman, she relied on her domestic skills and society’s traditional gender roles to blend into the background of the upper-crust homes and restaurants she worked, knowing that no man would pay much attention to a servant woman, white or black, while discussing important financial business.

*A photo of the home Mary Ellen shared with her business partner and also rented out for secondary income, reveals a sprawling property overlooking early San Francisco.*

Her eavesdropping paid off extravagantly, granting her insider information on precious metals, natural resources and the stock market. Though she had to combine her investments with that of a white partner, since women – especially those masquerading as white – still didn’t have full property or financial rights, Mary Ellen’s savvy made them both rich to the tune of $30 million ($327 million today).

But Mary Ellen wasn’t the only transplant growing wealthy from California’s bounty. Southern slaveowners were migrating too, and though California was a free state, that didn’t apply to those who came as slaves. Her riches were propelling her rapid rise in San Francisco society, but Mary Ellen couldn’t overlook those who didn’t have the luxury of freedom she enjoyed.

Instead, she used her money and power to take her abolition efforts to the next level: California law. When black citizens were discriminated against on San Francisco’s trolleys, she sued on their behalf, winning multiple cases against the city and the state over the course of the 1860s. Forbidden from testifying in California courts, black defendants often found themselves robbed of any chance of a fair trial, an injustice that Mary Ellen saw to in 1863, successfully repealing the law. Those who needed the means to escape could rely on her to front the money, transportation, food and any other necessities. She was so beloved among the black citizens of California that they soon called her home “The Black City Hall.”

When Mary Ellen’s white partner suffered an untimely death, all of that began to change. His wife ran a full-page smear campaign on Mary Ellen in the San Francisco Chronicle that destroyed what was left of her fast-crumbling reputation. After the Civil War and free from any fear of retribution (or so she thought), Mary Ellen stunned all of San Francisco when she submitted her census documents with an extravagant checkmark through the box labeled “black.” Racist rumors circulated about voodoo and black magic being the source of her wealth and social graces, and soon, unable to defend against the crushing public opinion or to distinguish her finances from her partner’s, she was left destitute and living with friends, where she died in 1904 at the age of 90.

As civil rights were won though, the details of Mary Ellen’s philanthropic and strategic impacts on black communities nationwide finally began to be revealed. All of her efforts in aiding the black people of California came to light, but on her deathbed, Mary Ellen still had one more secret to share with the world. When abolitionist John Brown – famous for the 1859 rebellion in Harper’s Ferry, West Virginia where he and a small group of enslaved men stormed a confederate arsenal – was captured & hanged, a coded letter was found crumpled in his front pocket. “The ax is laid at the foot of the tree. When the first blow is struck, there will be more money to help,” it read. It was she who’d written that note, Mary Ellen revealed, and the “more money” she’d promised was in addition to the already $30,000 invested in Brown’s cause, just shy of $90K by today’s standards.

Her life of covert deeds now public knowledge and the record of her reputation set straight, the woman who once presided over “Black City Hall” and defiantly told those who tried to deter her she’d “rather be a corpse than a coward” is now known to all as “The Mother of California Civil Rights” and the “Harriet Tubman of the California Underground.”

Mary Ellen Pleasant’s contributions to California civil rights were memorialized in this Pacific Heights plaque reading:
”Mary Ellen Pleasant Memorial Park 1814 – 1904
Mother of Civil Rights in California
She supported the Western Terminus of the Underground Railway for fugitive slaves 1850-1865. This legendary pioneer once lived on this site and planted these six trees.
Placed by the San Francisco African American Historical and Cultural Society.”

KEEP GOING BLACK IN HISTORY:

The New York Times briefly chronicled Mary Ellen’s dramatic and eventful life in their “Overlooked” series.

Read more about Mary Ellen’s powerful sway in San Francisco and the wild scandals that led to her downfall in the Paris Review.

THE AMERICAN BLACKSTORY 2020

DAY 14 — The Scottsboro Boys

February 14, 2020 The Griot 1 Comment

The Scottsboro Boys - Railroaded by History

There was no room left for the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth on the train leaving Chattanooga one fateful March day.

Unbeknownst to the conductor, along with its standard cargo, his freighter carried a truly volatile situation. When nine assorted black teenagers, a motley crew of white men, plus two white women all happened upon each other while trainhopping on March 25, 1931, their trip aboard the Southern Railroad line sparked one of the most documented, protested, and historically significant miscarriages of justice in United States history.

Four of the nine teenagers – Haywood Patterson (18), Eugene Williams (13) and brothers Roy (12) and Andy Wright (19, and the oldest of all) – traveled west together looking for more job opportunities. From seeking medical care to simply heading home, the five additional black men, who were otherwise strangers, had their own reasons to hop the railways. For all nine, the risk of riding trains illegally and their vulnerability to others’ misdeeds or undue punishment should they be caught, was worth the reward waiting at their final stops.

But when someone intentionally stomped young Roy’s hand, the perils of confronting white men didn’t stop his brother and two friends from rushing to his aid, overpowering and throwing Roy’s aggressors from the train. Relieved to have avoided worse, the boys looked forward to finishing their trip with racism behind them. They couldn’t have imagined the lifelong misery that lie ahead.

The story of Roy’s attack had been refabricated into one where he and the three companions defending him were suddenly the villains who started the fight, and according to the two women attempting to avoid trainhopping charges themselves, rapists as well. A mob waiting at the next stop in Paint Rock, Alabama ransacked each car in search of the black men who’d dared to forget their place in the still intensely racist South, snatching all nine.

Fortunately, starting in 1918, anti-lynching bills continually introduced in Congress – though none of the 200 actually passed until 2018 – signaled a growing distaste of lynching by the American public, who beforehand had only taken a stance of disapproving passivity at best. Rather than being handed over to the mob, the nine were imprisoned in Scottsboro, Alabama, and granted one laywer who hadn’t practiced in over a decade, another who practiced real estate law, and a sham of a two-week trial in which eight were immediately convicted and sentenced to death by an all-white jury.

Nearly two years of appeals later, the Alabama Supreme Court STILL upheld all eight convictions. But the scandalous trial had seized the attention of almost every major American news outlet, with even The New York Times urging President Roosevelt to intervene in the glaring discrimination against the Scottsboro Boys. Global protests as far as Cape Town, South Africa and Delhi, India erupted, until finally, the case made its way to the U.S. Supreme Court where in 1932, the convictions were overturned on the grounds of insufficient counsel.

But Alabama was relentless, and despite representation from renowned and undefeated New York defense attorney Samuel Leibowitz, when the trials reconvened in 1933, even Samuel’s legal prowess was no match for the all-white jury’s determination to turn eight innocent black teenagers into scapegoats. Doomed to become eight more anonymous black prisoners victimized by a racist justice system, the Scottsboro Boys instead inspired an unexpected moral stand from Judge James Horton who suspended their sentences and any further trials until he could ensure a “just and impartial verdict.” The details from the trial and the tribulations faced by both the Scottsboro Boys and anyone who publicly interfered with their unjust convictions inspired one of America’s greatest pieces of modern literature, Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird.”

Protestors of every race, color and creed joined to show their support for the Scottsboro Boys.

And still Alabama persisted. The judge was replaced with another who hadn’t attended a single day of law school, and after shutting down any attempt at a defense by their northern Jewish lawyer who offended every possible Southern sensibility, two of the eight men were again convicted of a crime they obviously hadn’t committed, while the others awaited retrial. But Samuel wasn’t done fighting for the Scottsboro Boys quite yet. Once again appealing to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1935, he protested Alabama’s use of all-white juries, proving that the state forged names to create the appearance of having even considered black jurors. For a second time, the convictions were federally overturned.

Refusing defeat, the state of Alabama continued their legal lynching, seeing the defendants in and out of prison repeatedly after paroles, parole violations, and new convictions for the next 20 years until their releases, plea bargains or deaths. Finally, in 2013, the Scottsboro Boys were officially exonerated of any crime and pardoned in 2013, over 80 years after their arrest and long after all nine had died.

Despite the “unmitigated tragedy” that Alabama now admits that the Scottsboro Boys suffered at the hands of a racist system clinging to its former glory, those two Supreme Court cases set landmark precedents in jury selection and defendants’ rights. But still, mirrored by modern day cases like the plight of the Central Park Five, that the Scottsboro Boys’ story remains unfinished is a national shame beyond all reasonable doubt.

From the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery:
“This 1936 photograph—featuring eight of the nine Scottsboro Boys with NAACP representatives Juanita Jackson Mitchell, Laura Kellum, and Dr. Ernest W. Taggart—was taken inside the prison where the Scottsboro Boys were being held. Falsely accused of raping two white women aboard a freight train in 1931, the nine African American teenagers were tried in Scottsboro, Alabama, in what became a sensational case attracting national attention. Eight of the defendants were found guilty and sentenced to death; the trial of the ninth ended in a mistrial. These verdicts were widely condemned at the time. Before the young men eventually won their freedom, they would endure many years in prison and face numerous retrials and hearings. The ninth member of the group, Roy Wright, refused to pose for this portrait on account of his frustration with the slow pace of their legal battle.”
(NOTE: Juanita Jackson was the first black woman to practice law in the state of Maryland.)

KEEP GOING BLACK IN HISTORY:

Read individual profiles of the Scottsboro Boys, and find more in-depth coverage of every aspect of their shocking trial here.

The Nation revisits their real-time 1930s coverage of the Scottsboro Boys’ cases in recognition of the men’s 2013 posthumous pardons.

THE AMERICAN BLACKSTORY 2020

DAY 13 — Tina Williams Brewer

February 13, 2020 The Griot

Tina Williams Brewer - Stitching Together Stories of the Diaspora

Spools, scraps, and stitches are the tools with which Tina Williams Brewer delicately crafts her stories.

**The Harvest, 1989, 60”x 40”**
“‘The Harvest’ was created in 1989, during Tina’s first decade of quilting. The door-sized piece is done in muted grays and dusky browns. Appliqued figures are lined up in two columns as if men were stacked on the deck of a ship. The quilt is about slave trade and forced relocation. Brewer said the quilt evokes dark reactions but she is unrepentant. ‘It’s really hurtful, the harshness of the topic,’ Brewer said. ‘It’s something people should see and begin to talk about. I needed to understand more about this. It was so liberating.'”
(Read More)

For over 30 years, her hands have documented intimate family moments and cultural milestones in black history, shaping those stories into the centuries-old tradition of story quilting.

In Tina’s hands, fabric scraps, including some from her former life as an interior designer, are transformed into the tragedies of the Middle Passage, the path that slaves journeyed from west Africa to the West Indies. Her photo-transferred panels pay respect to the memory of black people forgotten by history, and prevent the racist places and spaces of the world from hiding behind the folds of time. And when she stitches diamonds, with their four points symbolizing birth, life, death and rebirth in African cultures, the significance of her fingers moving with the same intention of those who came before her is almost divine.

“When I am working,” Brewer writes, “I often feel as if my fingers are being guided by forces I don’t completely understand, but that help me create far more insightfully and knowledgeably than I would be able to otherwise. I believe these forces are the thoughts, feelings and insights of my ancestors – those whose stories I try to tell.”

But the stories of her ancestors are even intertwined in the craft itself. There’s a rich legacy of black seamstresses, tailors, and clothworkers that goes untold because of its roots in slavery. Without the skills to craft their own garments, in a time when little was store-bought, members of the antebellum high society attended balls, cotillions and galas in only the finest fabrics and elaborate designs, hand-crafted by their slaves. The same was true, of course, for everything from saddles to household textiles, especially quilts which are arduous and painstaking pieces to sew entirely by hand. Though the households they worked in demanded strictly traditional quilts, slaves preserved cultural roots by sewing their own quilts in the African tradition, with abstract patterns, meaningful symbols, and mythologies representative and reminiscent of their homelands.

When Tina started quilting in the early 1980s, she too worked in traditional American and European patterns, taking up the trade as a way to spend more time with her children. But when her own research and trips to Africa taught her the history behind her hobby, she abandoned her former Western designs for something more culturally familiar.

Since finding inspiration in her history, Tina’s become widely recognized as the premier black story quilter of the modern era. Her quilts hang in places as far-flung as U.S. Embassies in Sudan and Ghana, but as close to home as New York, Dallas and Baltimore, mimicking the widespread nature of the African diaspora itself.

These stunning works of art often hold a dark history, sometimes avoided intentionally, sometimes simply left untold, but Tina makes it her goal to bring everyone to the conversation that’s been lingering for centuries.

“I think people don’t always understand the volume of history that’s taken place and sometimes they need someone to point it out to them with something that’s soft,” she muses. “I speak for those who have no voice, and I’m very blessed to be a conduit.”

Despite quilting for the last three decades, Tina has no intention of stopping, recognizing that by pouring her heart and history into each piece, and inspiring others to tell their own stories through quilting, her work sustains black history the way this medium was intended: through the hands of generations.

KEEP GOING BLACK IN HISTORY:

Visit Tina’s extensive gallery of work here.

Hear Tina describe her process in her own words and see more of her work here.

Read up on and see the work of the women of Gee’s Bend, some of the most highly-skilled and historically-treasured black quiltmakers in American history.

Explore more quilts and the history of black quilting here.

THE AMERICAN BLACKSTORY 2020

DAY 12 — Brandon P. Fleming

February 12, 2020 The Griot

Brandon P. Fleming - Diversifying Harvard

Walking onto the campus of Harvard University, 26-year-old Brandon Fleming was overcome with the gravity of his past, present and future. After dropping out of high school due to a basketball injury, finally landing at one of the most prestigious universities in the world to coach their highly acclaimed debate program seemed surreal. He’d put in work to recover from the feeling of crippling failure and arrive at this proud moment. But being here, in such dramatic contrast from where he’d come, Brandon couldn’t help but remember so many just like him. And for that matter, a question began to form – one that surely he wasn’t the first to ask… where WERE all the black people?

And soon after came an answer: why wonder, when he could bring them along?

His experience tutoring students in Georgia had given him first-hand knowledge of just how much things could change for kids who were given the tools and opportunity to succeed. But without intervention, that was most unlikely in Atlanta, the Bloomberg-described “inequality capital of the United States.” So with his past and present circumstances well in mind, a little persuasion and lots of fundraising, the permission of his new employers at the Harvard Debate Council Summer Workshops, and the help of countless other professionals who’d been in his shoes elsewhere, Brandon created an intensive 10-month “diversity pipeline to recruit, train & feed students of color into the Harvard Debate Council’s Summer Institute” – a program he named the Harvard Debate Council Diversity Project.

Designed to help Atlanta’s best, brightest and most marginalized “gain a level playing field in society and leading academic, social, and political institutions” where black Americans are still struggling for representation, Brandon’s coaching has led 120 students in his Harvard Diversity Project to do much more than just level the playing field. In their inaugural 2018 summer cohort at Harvard, the Diversity Project WON, becoming the only all-black debate team in the program’s now 128-year history to do so.

Their success might have shocked the other 100 competing teams from 15 countries, and perhaps even the Atlanta kids themselves. The viral news on nearly every media outlet was proof that it shocked the country. But of course, the one person who wasn’t surprised at all was their coach, Brandon Fleming.

From day one, he knew that compared to the preparatory and internationally educated students they were competing against, his were “just as good, just as talented & it [was] up to us to create opportunities for them to show the world exactly that.”

But Brandon’s always been clear that when it comes to opportunity, there’s only so much that he or Harvard can do. “Be intrusive in places that are not inclusive,” he insists. “Trailblazers don’t wait for opportunities – they create them.”

And intrude they have. Not only did Brandon’s second year cohort at the Harvard Debate Council Summer Tournament win AGAIN in 2019, his championship team went undefeated, by all accounts dominating the competition.

In words shared by one of his scholars, Brandon identified that “academic debate is the single most powerful tool that equips students to increase standardized testing, gpa, and overall college readiness but most importantly, the intellectual and socioemotional skills needed to emerge as world leaders and changemakers.”

And when it comes to being a changemaker, the man who embodies his mantra “excellence is attainable” by inviting black students to claim their seat with him at one of the oldest and most exclusive debate circles in America couldn’t be a better example of how much can change for so many when just one makes himself heard.

The Harvard Debate Council Diversity Project students are changing the narrative about black Americans by combining scholarship and culture.

KEEP GOING BLACK IN HISTORY:

Learn more about the Harvard Diversity Project and donate to their efforts here.

Watch the students of the Harvard Debate Council Diversity Project shine while sharing their experience themselves.

Listen to founder Brandon Fleming share how coming so far has prepared him for helping others.

THE AMERICAN BLACKSTORY 2020

DAY 11 — Marie Van Britten Brown

February 11, 2020 The Griot 1 Comment

Between civil rights, gay rights, and war protests, the New York City of the 1960s seemed in constant unrest.

Marie Van Brittan Brown just wanted to go to work and come home.

As a wife, mother and nurse, caring for others was a round-the-clock task, and in the little downtime she had, feeling safe in her own home didn’t seem like much for 43-year-old Marie to ask.

But with riots and crime falling so close to her Queens doorstep and an overextended police force, the chain lock on Marie’s front door was barely an obstacle to the discontent outside threatening the peaceful home she’d made for her babies. Like so many working parents, opposing schedules between Marie and her electronics tech husband often found them passing each other in the night, and spending her alone time wondering who might be on the other side of the door didn’t sit well with her.

So she stepped up.

And when she did, Marie’s creation didn’t just protect her family – it’s protecting yours, too.

On August 1, 1966, Mrs. Brown’s “Home Security System Utilizing Television Surveillance” was filed with the United States Patent and Trademark Office, and three years later when it was approved, the mother of 2 became the mother of modern home security as well.

Sketching a concept with the working mother in mind, Marie designed the system to operate from one central and special place to her: the bed. When the little ones climbed in or she’d just gotten settled after a long shift, the last thing she wanted to do was make herself more vulnerable to the world by leaving her bed to crack the front door. Her design took every one of those considerations in mind.

Fitted with 4 peepholes and a cabinet housing a video camera, the door’s mechanical system could be remotely operated to put her face-to-face with tall strangers or her children’s tiny playmates, and even unlock to welcome trusted guests in. An integrated audio channel allowed two-way communication with visitors as well, and should what she saw or heard give her cause for alarm, Marie’s system was so sophisticated, it could alert the authorities too.

Just days after her patent was approved, Marie, her husband and her original concept sketch were photographed for the pages of The New York Times, which had already recognized the magnitude of her achievement. After pages and pages of newsprint, department store ads and classifieds, Marie and Albert Brown appear in a rare image of the quiet couple, one of the few photographs found there at all.

While little else is known about them and Marie passed away in 1999, the Browns’ 54-year-old invention is still a global technology. In a market that’s expected to be valued at $75 billion by 2032, most modern home security patents – some filed as recently as 2013 – still reference Marie’s original design.

That design has even been broken down into its components to create the everyday security measures we take for granted. Remote-controlled doors and gates, button-trigger alarms, closed-circuit video monitors, and even instant alerts to home security agencies from your open front door each reference Marie’s patent in their builds. But the design isn’t only operational on the small scale. Global security firms, multi-unit dwellings, and military communication and surveillance systems all utilize the invention born from one mother’s necessity to protect her own.

KEEP GOING BLACK IN HISTORY:

Follow the evolution of Marie’s design to today’s Ring doorbell and the social implications of a Black woman’s design being used for surveillance rather than safety.

“You could imagine that in the late ’60s and early ’70s, as a Black woman, she wasn’t going to get accolades and money because the world wasn’t built for us in that way.” Read on about what Marie built in a world that wasn’t built to recognize her.

THE AMERICAN BLACKSTORY 2020

DAY 10 — Sepia Magazine

February 10, 2020 The Griot

Sepia Magazine - Putting Melanin in Print

In the spectrum of great black publications like JET Magazine and EBONY, there’s one often left out of the conversation: Sepia Magazine.

For almost 40 years, Sepia pushed the boundaries of design, content, and photography in black publications, positioning itself as a LIFE Magazine for black readers.

Where Jet covered a wide range of general interest topics, and Ebony documented current events in news, culture and entertainment, Sepia took a decidedly different tack, turning its pages into a in-depth, photojournalistic view into the lives of everyday black people and celebrities in arts, music and civil rights in particular.

First published one year after Ebony in 1946, Fort Worth, TX headquartered Sepia entered the black publishing landscape during a curious time for America. Although they’d suffered racism in their own armed forces, black soldiers and the valor with which they fought for a country that still hadn’t afforded them full civil rights had been recognized globally and back in the States. Those unexpected but significant gains in equality, and the fact that a newly enfranchised black populace naturally wanted to be more informed about its government, led to one of the biggest black publication booms in American history.

And while Ebony and later, Jet, had things covered on the national front, the pages of Sepia were where black Americans could feel seen and heard. Headlines like “The Black School That’s the Best in Los Angeles,” “The Ghetto Through the Eyes of Youthful Photographers,” and “The Black Chinese: How Africa and the Orient mixed in the U.S.” are just a small smattering of the diverse topics Sepia featured. So keenly were they attuned to the mindset of the middle-class black American that they soon became the highest selling magazine among that demographic. That targeting strategy paid off two-fold in that black soldiers still fighting wars abroad could browse its pages for a true temperature check on the state of affairs at home, and vice versa.

Sepia’s dual and rather polar audiences provided the opportunity to establish a dialogue unlike that of any American publication. Their column “Our Men in Vietnam” gave black soldiers a platform to sound off about their experiences in the United States military. Whether writing about the continued racism in their ranks, or having personal reservations about their role in white Western imperialism, black soldiers found a safe space in Sepia’s column that encouraged them to send their “experiences, heartaches and joys while fighting communism” and black Americans could sympathize with them like never before.

Although Sepia’s staff and content was primarily black, its original owner was a Jewish man, and that culturally rich start to the magazine led to content that eventually expanded to include Hispanic and Asian Americans as well, as their communities often faced the same institutional racism. It also gave Sepia an interesting new perspective from which they could tackle issues of racism – one they pushed to its absolute limit in their stunning exposé, “Life As a Negro.”

After controversially semi-permanently darkening his skin, a white Sepia contributor named John Howard Griffin traveled the Deep South for 6 weeks as a black man, and so eye-opening was the experience that when the magazine series ended, he expanded upon it in his iconic 1961 book, Black Like Me. John himself admitted that upon undertaking this “anthropological study” as he called it, he was embarrassed to find that even “[his] own prejudices, at the emotional level, were hopelessly ingrained in [him].” In response, one black reviewer wrote “since there are white people who doubt everything a Negro says, perhaps now they will hear us when we say the plight of the American Negro is a disgrace.” In the 1977 reprint of his book, John’s epilogue astutely and mournfully pointed out that in the years since that original printing, his “personal experience was that whites still didn’t hear.”

The 7-month long series further solidified and legitimized Sepia’s place in the American landscape and the black American experience it so richly captured. With its ambitious journalism alongside beautifully photographed moments, Sepia simultaneously shared the essence of black America and exposed a quintessentially American contradiction that John Howard Griffin himself articulated so well: “those who embrace the strangely shallow dream of white supremacy are the true killers of society based on freedom, equality and justice.” Sepia published its last issue in 1983 after being bought out by Ebony and quietly shut down, but in the 37 years that it graced newsstands, black households, and trenches worldwide, the magazine carved out a space where blackness had permission to be complex, curious, and most of all, authentic.