THE AMERICAN BLACKSTORY 2019

DAY 21 — Maurice Ashley

Maurice Ashley - Chess’s Dark Knight

“Survive. Just survive.”

Maurice Ashley couldn’t stress that enough to the defeated young man in front of him.

He’d carried that advice with him from his early childhood in Jamaica, to skirmishes in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park, and on through college. It had been just as true in each of those places as it was in this moment right now, consoling a child whom he had just squarely beat the pants off in chess.

It was lesson he didn’t mind teaching: he’d been that kid once.

After being defeated within a few minutes by one of the old masters in Prospect Park, well known for its revolving chess games, Maurice went to a local library, buried his head in chess books, and learned the game forwards and especially backwards.

“There are consequences to every single move you make in life,” he said.

And growing up in a rough part of Brooklyn, he knew it firsthand. Chess had kept him at home on Friday nights, learning strategies, building character and practicing with his friends instead of selling drugs or running with gangs like a lot of the other kids in his neighborhood did.

It certainly didn’t make him very popular, but it did put him on the path to the success that brought him full-circle.

After nearly 20 years of dedication to the craft, in 1999 Maurice Ashley became Grandmaster Maurice Ashley, the world’s very first black man to hold the chess title.

And then, he immediately went back to work in the community where it all started, founding the Harlem Chess Center just 6 months later to bring chess out of academic settings and into communities, bridging the gap between formal competition and street matches.

“People who think the game is slow and boring should come in here,” he said. ”Kids eat it. It takes nothing to get kids excited about chess. I put the pieces down, and the kids want to touch them — they’re alluring, tactile. The game is magic for kids.”

Since then, he’s channeled his competitive nature into sharing a love of chess with as many people as possible, starting with those with the least access.

In 2005, he wrote “Chess for Success” to share chess with beginners in a context that he’s always espoused: when you learn about chess, you learn about life. It’s full of lessons that “build determination, focus concentration, and teach you about yourself” but it also teaches players how to approach the world around them too.

In fact, being a chessmaster has already taken him places in the world no one would have anticipated a kid like him could go. In 2016, he was inducted into the Chess Hall of Fame for his combined professional success and efforts to bring more diverse groups of people everywhere into the game. In addition to his local grassroots work, he’s traveled the Caribbean teaching children how to play, built a critically acclaimed chess app, and he’s currently working with MIT Media Lab to integrate games like chess and their foundations into school curriculums to improve learning comprehension and application for all students.

In particular, Maurice wants to share a strategy that he uses to play, learn and live called “retrograde analysis.” Rather than teaching players to anticipate things out of their control, it teaches them to focus on the patterns, read their opponents’ previous moves, and force simple outcomes from complex, chaotic scenarios.

It’s a strategy that hasn’t just paid off for Maurice personally, or the people who are fortunate enough to learn from him, but motivates every move he makes today to benefit the kids who’ll lead our world tomorrow.

“When the kids see me walk in, they say, ‘Here’s a brother who looks like me and who is at the pinnacle of his field. I can do that, too.’ And when I see chess captivates their eyes as they’re trying to solve these complicated problems, that’s the most beautiful picture for our people to see.”

KEEP GOING BLACK IN HISTORY:

In 6 minutes, Maurice can teach you the quick steps to “retrograde analysis” so you can learn to look at things differently, even if chess isn’t for you.
Mashable produced a great 5-minute short on Maurice & it’s a fun little watch!
THE AMERICAN BLACKSTORY 2019

DAY 20 — Jessamyn Stanley

Jessamyn Stanley - Fat Girl Yogi

In a sea of thin, blonde, yoga moms, to say that Jessamyn Stanley is the odd woman out would be an understatement.

As a fat, black, queer woman, she is the polar opposite of not only the yoga stereotype, but also the media representation of a “fit woman.” And yet, in a radical move, the 30-year-old yoga instructor, author and social media maven loves herself anyway.

“The idea that you would be showing this body that society has deemed unacceptable in a way that’s actually glorious, people were thrown [by it],” Jessamyn said.

But she also had the savvy to realize that it wasn’t just A “body that society has deemed unacceptable,” it was that everything that made HER body what it was – skin color, size, and sexual orientation – was all outside the boundaries of what our society calls normal, let alone celebrates.

She’d become a regular yoga practitioner back in 2011, and when she started taking pictures of her poses to check her form, she figured she’d post them to her Instagram for a little social accountability. She wasn’t prepared for the huge response those pictures would get. She’s now just over 400,000 followers, many of whom identify with less visible communities – from plus-sized women, to the elderly and those with disabilities as well.

Jessamyn’s yoga resonates with so many because she practices what she calls “body liberation,” a theory that goes beyond body positivity to recognize that the body each of us has – whatever the race, size, gender, ability, or age – brings us joy, takes us through a lifetime of experiences and is capable of being used in whatever way we channel its energy.

“The point of wellness is that you take care of yourself so that you can be of service to others and be of service to the universe. We can’t even have that conversation because everyone is so obsessed with the way that we look for each other,” she muses.

It’s a message that’s still in stark contrast to the image-obsessed social and digital age we live in, but one that’s incredibly relevant for everyone, and especially those who already don’t “conform.”

In 2015, her blog and Instagram began catching media attention and by 2017, she’d collaborated with the The New York Times in a series to help regular people confidently break into yoga practice, and even won a Tribeca Disruptive Innovation Award “celebrat[ing] disruptive innovation across the full spectrum of traditional and non-traditional domains…at the intersection of technology and culture where frequent clashes and resistance to change impede social progress.” All of that recognition for her message, but Jessamyn didn’t see that energy paying off where it counted.

One of the premiere yoga magazines still hadn’t even had a person of color on the cover. She still didn’t see her skin color or body type featured in yogawear ads or retail stores. The yoga retreats were still largely inaccessible in so many ways. And if someone like her who’d been practicing for years felt uncomfortable navigating that landscape, how would anyone outside of the norm ever start to love yoga too?

“We have this massive visibility issue because the media only puts attention on white, slender, cisgender, heteronormative bodies. I’ve always felt as though I’m representative of the majority and not the minority….get your eyes open, boo,” she quips.

And so represent, she did. Last year, just 2 months before her 30th birthday, Jessamyn’s “Every Body Yoga” became the book version of her digital presence, with step-by-step images of her poses, tips for how to practice yoga with a non-traditional body, and encouragement to give the body you have the grace to do what it can, rather than what you (or others) think it should.

Whether she’s teaching a yoga class, posting to her Instagram, or speaking worldwide, Jessamyn encourages her audiences, and especially women in a constant battle with society about image: “Don’t feel like you need to make excuses for your body or who you are. Your body is not standing in your way. Only your mind is.”

KEEP GOING BLACK IN HISTORY:

Buy
Jessamyn’s
book!

Follow her on Instagram! You’ll be happier for it.

THE AMERICAN BLACKSTORY 2019

DAY 19 — Titus Kaphar

Titus Kaphar didn’t grow up visiting art museums. He didn’t even start seriously painting until he was in his 20s. But in each of his works, there’s a depth of history well beyond his years.

When his art history professor announced to the class that they would skip the section of their text on African art, Titus wasn’t shy about taking a stand and pointing out the slight he felt as the only black student present, but the class moved on anyway.

“Drawing the Blinds,” 2014

It was a galvanizing and crystallizing experience for the budding young artist in that it inspired him to create new artistic narratives that juxtaposed African faces with the images art historians DID focus on, and that it was such a microcosm of what he felt had happened in American art, history and culture all along: dark faces were simply left out of the picture.

So he didn’t just paint them back into our gaze, he painted them back into context. Titus’s art recreates historical artworks or events, and then dismantles, deconstructs and disfigures them to bring the black figures lost to the background and/or historical lies of omission into the light.

The best insight he gives on the content and shape of his work is in his opinion on the Confederate statue controversy: “We have this sort of binary conversation about keeping these sculptures up or taking them down. And I actually think that that binary conversation is problematic. I think there is another possibility that has to do with bringing in new work that speaks in conversation with this old work. It’s about a willingness to confront a very difficult past. There’s a third option.”

“Beyond the Myth of Benevolence,” 2014

One of his most famous pieces, “Beyond the Myth of Benevolence,” puts that theory into practice. It’s a depiction of his symbolic intention to draw back the veil on the untold and intertwined stories of black and American history. Kaphar’s painting is actually two – the top canvas, a portrait of Thomas Jefferson, hangs from a corner of the frame, just barely obscuring a portrait of an enslaved black woman that’s fully secured on all four sides. The woman is not supposed to be Sally Hemings, Jefferson’s actual kept woman, but a symbol of all the black women of the past shrouded behind glorified whitewashing. The paintings engage in such a manner that neither has the same impact without the other. Which is, of course, precisely the point.

“I’m not in the business of trying to demonize our Founding Fathers. I don’t really think there’s any benefit to that. But I’m also not trying to deify them. [I’m] pulling back the curtain on these ideas, these illusions, these stories that we tell ourselves,” he explains.

And it’s a concept that’s resonated. In 2014, Titus was commissioned by TIME Magazine to create his piece “Yet Another Fight for Remembrance” in response to the Ferguson Protests. His art has appeared in prestigious galleries like the Yale University Art Gallery and the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, and even in an installation at Princeton University where they’ve begun to acknowledge that many of their founders and leaders were also slave owners. In recognition of the historical significance and modern cultural relevance of his work, Titus was honored with the MacArthur Foundation’s “Genius Grant” just last year.

“Impressions of Liberty,” 2017. Read more about the installation on Princeton’s campus here.
“Self-Evidence,” 2011

Though he recognizes that his art can be polarizing, he maintains that it’s not fueling a public controversy that’s his intention, especially since his art predates the current conversation, but conveying another layer of emotion and complexity that’s been left off-the-record. “I make paintings that people perceive often as being very social or political. But for the most part they are all very personal. Everything stems from my relationship to a situation, to a narrative, to a story.” And he uses that relationship to illustrate a truth that “all depictions are fiction” because the reality of the human condition is usually much more complicated than any artist can convey. “I think one of our challenges is that we sort of consistently try to make [art] in a way that it’s a sentence with a period at the end. And inevitably it’s not — it’s a comma, and there should be a clause after that.”

KEEP GOING BLACK IN HISTORY:

Browse Titus Kaphar’s incredible and historical portfolio of paintings, sculptures and installations.

Titus explains the concepts throughout his body of work in a MacArthur Foundation “Genius Grant” feature.

Watch Titus take white paint to a “replica of a 17th-century Frans Hals painting, obscuring parts of the composition and bringing its hidden story into view. There’s a narrative coded in art like this, Kaphar says. What happens when we shift our focus and confront unspoken truths?”
THE AMERICAN BLACKSTORY 2019

DAY 18 — Charles Gittens

Charles Gittens - Black At the President’s Side

It was the dead of night when hysterical screams came from the First Lady’s Hyannisport bedroom.

Luckily, one of the United States Secret Service’s most level-headed agents was the first to Jackie Kennedy’s side… even though her assailant was only a giant flying bat.

From an early age, the call to serve his country in some capacity was so strong that shortly before he graduated from high school, Charles Gittens decided to enlist in the U.S. Army instead.

There, he earned his GED and a whole lot more. He ultimately served as a lieutenant in Japan during the Korean War, and once discharged, he earned two 4-year degrees in English and Spanish within just 3, with Magna Cum Laude designation.

He’d spent a year teaching in North Carolina when his friends encouraged him to take a government civil service exam. The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) was recruiting black agents and it couldn’t hurt to try, right? His high test scores, bilingualism and military background caught the attention of the Secret Service instead.

And so, in 1956, Charles Gittens became the first black agent in the United States Secret Service.

But it almost didn’t come to pass. The civil service exam was given in two parts: written and oral. After having passed the written exam, he traveled to an Atlanta regional office for the oral portion, where for one reason or another, the facilitator had it out for him. “The guy in charge had scribbled things down like, ‘speaks incoherently’ or ‘can’t be understood.’ Can you imagine such a thing?” he recounted. When he insisted on another facilitator he passed with flying colors, but never did get an explanation for the wild discrepancy.

Of course, Charles didn’t let the rough start hold him back. From his initial appointment in North Carolina, he was promoted to the agency’s largest field office in New York, where he investigated counterfeits and protected visiting presidents along with other dignitaries for 10 years. He was such an impressive and inspiring leader that he was subsequently promoted to senior agent of the Island of Puerto Rico, and finally in 1971, special agent in charge of the Washington, D.C. office, a job that put him on regular presidential protection and supervisory duties over more than 100 other agents.

He’d been so welcomed by his peers, dignitaries and presidents, and had operated in a world so separate from civilians that it was often easy to forget the racism that lurked just beyond the government’s most protected walls. But that didn’t mean he was immune to them.

“At that time, I was not a ‘negro,’ I was a Secret Service agent,” explaining how his job had become second nature to him. But the looks on the faces of the diners as he walked straight past a “No Negros” sign and into a restaurant where he was meeting other agents for breakfast told him otherwise. After an awkward wait, the manager came out and told the other agents they wouldn’t serve a black man. Despite the others coming to his defense, Charlie kept his dignity and left the situation, reminding them that they were always representing the President of the United States. (One account says the owner caught up to Charlie, apologized for the disrespect and served him after all.)

By the time Charlie ended his Secret Service career in 1979, he’d become the deputy assistant director overseeing all of the Secret Service field offices. In his 23 years of service, he protected Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon, countless diplomats, and the best interests of the country in myriad ways. And he continued doing so. After retiring from the Secret Service, he joined the Department of Justice’s Office of Special Investigations, tracking down and bringing war criminals hiding in the US to pay for their crimes.

Though he died in 2011 at the age of 82, he left a legacy of inclusion as a living testament to his devotion. During his career, he was a founding member of the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives (NOBLE), dedicated to “fairness in the administration of justice, police community relations, [and greater inclusion] of black police officers.” In each of his ranking positions, the Secret Service encouraged Charlie to recruit more female and black agents. Today, there are nearly 400 of each among approximately 3500 special agents due largely in part to Charlie’s efforts, his leadership and his determination to serve, no matter the return.

KEEP GOING BLACK IN HISTORY:

Browse the Secret Service’s permanent digital dedication for Agent Gittens, including his profile in Ebony Magazine.

Upon his death, The Boston Globe featured a complete and truly inspiring obituary for Agent Gittens.

THE AMERICAN BLACKSTORY 2019

DAY 17 — Dr. Patricia Bath

Dr. Patricia Bath - Ophthalmology Visionary

Early on, it was evident that Patricia Bath had a special insight.

By the time she was in high school, she’d outpaced her fellow students so quickly that she graduated within two years. Having heard about Dr. Albert Schweitzer’s work treating lepers in Africa, she knew that she too had work to do.

And she set to it without delay. When she won a scholarship to attend a 1959 National Science Foundation (NSF) cancer research summer workshop, the 16-year-old made a key observation that led her to develop an equation predicting cancer growth rates. So impressed were the head researchers that part of her work was included in their final research white paper.

As was her habit, Patricia breezed through studies at Hunter College and Howard University, enriching her traditional studies with travel every opportunity she could. But it was Dr. Martin Luther King’s assassination in 1968, the same year she came back home to Harlem to attend Columbia University in the City of New York, that truly opened her eyes to a problem that had been right in front of her the whole time.

Troubled by the work that Dr. King’s untimely death had left undone, and inspired by his Poor People’s Campaign that advocated the idea that all Americans should have what they need to live, she started working double duty between an ophthalmology fellowship at Columbia University, and an internship at the Harlem Hospital, where she was the only ophthalmology specialist on site. That was where she noticed a stunning disparity. A great deal of the work she did at Columbia was in preventative and minor emergency treatment, but almost all of her patients in Harlem had severe cataracts and/or were nearly blind.

Naturally, she began a study. And that study concluded that black patients were almost twice as likely to suffer from blindness as the general population, and eight times as likely to develop glaucoma than white patients. And the cause? Lack of access in both proximity and in financial means were the major factor in the very preventable eye disease Patricia observed in poorer populations of all races. She developed a program in conjunction with the doctors at Columbia to operate on Harlem’s blind patients, volunteered her time as a surgical assistant and as a result, performed the Harlem Hospital’s first major eye surgery in 1970.

That same year, she became the first black woman in residence for New York University’s ophthalmology department. Patricia used her platform to create the American Institute for the Prevention of Blindness with the founding principle that all humans had the right to eyesight. Her expertise and her compassionate care had become a calling card that was in high demand.

So in 1974 when UCLA did indeed call with an offer to make her the first female faculty member in their Department of Ophthalmology, she took it. But when she arrived, she immediately had to set things straight. The office they’d reserved for her was in the basement with the lab animals. “I didn’t say it was racist or sexist. I said it was inappropriate and succeeded in getting acceptable office space. I decided I was just going to do my work,” she remarked. And by 1983, she’d co-founded and chaired UCLA’s Ophthalmology Residency Program, becoming the first woman in the country to hold such a position.

But she hadn’t forgotten her original purpose. During these years, Patricia implemented another program to intercede on behalf of the less fortunate, but with more experience in the medical system under her belt, this time, she took things global. Over the course of the late 70s and early 80s, Patricia Bath spearheaded a new medical discipline she dubbed Community Ophthalmology. Combining public health, community medicine and ophthalmology methodologies, her program galvanized volunteers and doctors in communities worldwide to identify patients in need of treatment where they were – at home, schools, or local clinics – and provide visual treatment from glasses to major surgery at low to no cost to the patient. Today, it’s an international practice utilized by the World Health Organization and non-governmental organizations like Doctors Without Borders which developed their programs based on her model.

Dr. Patricia Bath today. Breaker of Glass Ceilings, Restorer of Eyesight.

Despite her success, Dr. Bath recognized that one thing that was entirely out of her control interfered with her ability to do her best work: the glass ceiling established by racism and sexism. And like so many other black creators before her, she left for Europe where racial and gender equality were light years ahead and new technologies were available for her research. Because most laser development in the U.S. was reserved for military purposes, when Patricia arrived in Berlin, she was able to continue developing a treatment that she’d begun in California back in 1981, but been unable to finish without the tools.

By 1988, Dr. Patricia Bath’s Laserphaco Probe was finally patented, making her the first black woman in the United States with a medical patent. (She currently has 4 others in the US, among others in Japan, Canada and Europe.) The device utilizes lasers to dissolve cataracts, remove debris, irrigate the eye and prepare it for the insertion of a new lens. The machine revolutionized eye surgeries, making them cheaper and faster so that millions more patients could be treated worldwide, and has been successful in restoring sight to those who’ve been blind for as many as 30 years.

Though she retired from official practice and her esteemed role at UCLA in 1993, Dr. Bath is still using technology to drive her work. She’s held positions at Howard University and worldwide focusing on telemedicine to help patients in even the most remote parts of the globe get the care they need. She’s been recognized, awarded and honored more times and by more organizations that I can share with you here, but there’s one thing that she points to as her reason for a lifetime dedicated to her work: “The ability to restore sight is the ultimate reward.”

KEEP GOING BLACK IN HISTORY:

View the full scope of Dr. Bath’s work at her website.

Dr. Bath regularly appeared in the New York Times, ultimately including her 2019 obituary.

Dr. Bath’s 2022 induction into the National Inventors Hall of Fame is well-earned. Read up on her achievements, or just skim the 10 Things You Need to Know About Patricia Bath.

THE AMERICAN BLACKSTORY 2019

DAY 16 — James Van Der Zee

James Van Der Zee - The All-Seeing Eye of Harlem

James Van Der Zee was a master of composition, but his most brilliant works were created not behind his violin or piano, but through the lens of his camera.

When he made his way to Harlem in 1906, it wasn’t his first time. He’d visited often from his small hometown in Massachusetts, and marveled at the pictures he’d taken in the big city since he was 14, honing his eye along the way.

A couple enters James Van Der Zee’s 135th Street brownstone basement GGG Photo Studio in Harlem.

But photography couldn’t pay the bills, and surprisingly enough, his skill as a musician could, so he created and subsequently packed theater houses with the Harlem Orchestra. He even performed with jazz icons, but still his eye wandered back to the camera. Having regularly worked small jobs between music gigs, it was no surprise when in 1915, he landed one as a darkroom assistant whose skill was proven so quickly that he was promoted to portraitist within a year, and opened his own studio on 135th Street within two.

Jean-Michel Basquiat, and his cat.

His talent couldn’t have come to fruition at a more fortuitous time for both James and the residents of Harlem. With the start of the Harlem Renaissance around 1918, black art, literature and culture was gaining international recognition, and being celebrated within black communities on its own merits and for its success in the mainstream. Black photographers were included in this praise, and also key to capturing the social, economic, and personal benefits that many black people were enjoying for the first time in America. In James’s studio, some of the most meaningful moments in everyday black lives and in all of black history were captured on film. Baby pictures, young newlyweds, funerals, civic groups and iconic portraits of black leaders and celebrities were all included in his exquisite body of work which spanned until 1982, nearly right up until his death a year later at the age of 96.

But his photographs are so much more than the sum of their parts. He didn’t just capture a black middle-class in the height of their recognition by a society that had previously enslaved them. At the start of his professional career, he made it a point to sign, date and number each of his photographs. Such care for his craft and attention to detail meant that when his work was discovered in 1967 by a researcher for The New York Metropolitan Museum of Art, his then 75,000 photographs became one of the most fully verifiable and extensive archives of black life since slave records. Because marriage/birth records and the ability to freely own property weren’t available to black people until in some cases well after the Civil War ended in 1865, further proof of our generations, personal wealth and especially a positive visual record of both beyond often sparse government and media documentation was tremendous to the culture and to the further preservation of our place in America’s past.

As a black man positioned behind a camera during one of the most significant eras of black history, James was able to show the whole world an entirely novel perspective on his subjects, no matter their status or the gravity of the occasion. When asked why and how he created such ethereal and regal images, he remarked “I wanted to make the camera take what I thought should be there.” What James Van Der Zee and his camera left behind was a legacy of black excellence.

KEEP GOING BLACK IN HISTORY:

James’ Metropolitan Museum of Art exhibit was accompanied by a catalogue of newspaper articles and curated images from Van Der Zee and other black photographers, available here.

THE AMERICAN BLACKSTORY 2019

DAY 15 — Fredi Washington

Fredi Washington - Light Skinned Actress Leading the Way

Fredi Washington’s porcelain skin and peridot green eyes bought her a level of privilege that was unheard of for black people in the 1920s and 30s.

What was even more unheard of was that she didn’t want it.

Back then, when black actors got mainstream film roles, they were typically small parts as some form of help – maids, teachers, and of course, slaves. Otherwise, their filmographies were exclusively “race films,” segregated movies with all-black casts made for black audiences, and for the first few jobs, this was Fredi’s experience too.

Until 1934, when she landed what’s arguably one of the most pivotal roles performed by a black actress in the history of cinema.

Fredi’s “Imitation of Life” title card

“Imitation of Life,” based on a 1933 book, told the story of an enterprising duo of single mothers, a white widow and black maid, raising their daughters together in the same home. But there was a twist. The black daughter, Peola, had skin light enough to “pass” as a white woman instead. The movie explored the dynamic of white and black women’s friendships and their ingenuity in finding empowerment in a sexist society, but even more impactfully, the ongoing mental, emotional and familial effects of slavery, racial segregation laws and deeply ingrained social stigmas faced by black women in particular. For its groundbreaking work, the movie earned three 1935 Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture.

Having tasted success, Fredi used her platform and privilege to empower others, establishing the Negro Actors Guild in 1937 to provide black actors with more mainstream opportunities and non-stereotypical roles in film. But due in large part to her critically acclaimed performance in “Imitation of Life,” Fredi found herself fighting a typecasting battle of her own. Her crossover success had inspired other filmmakers to explore “passing,” and of course, they all wanted to cast the most recognized name in the business as a black woman capitalizing on her white skin.

But they had gotten Fredi all wrong. As far as she was concerned, she was a black actress portraying black experiences on-screen. It had never been her intention to pass. “You don’t have to be white to be good. No matter how white I look, on the inside I feel black,” she insisted.

And that conviction was truly tested. She was too talented and pretty to be cast in a subservient background role in mainstream white films, but film production codes in Hollywood at the time strictly forbid interracial relationships, so the outspokenly black actress couldn’t be cast as a romantic female lead either. Conversely, her light skin made her a costly distraction in race films. When she attempted radio instead, she found few dramatic roles for black talent, and even fewer with black female protagonists. Because of her stance against being someone she was not, Fredi never again found the level of fame that “Imitation of Life” gained her.

Naturally, journalists were curious why she didn’t follow the example of other actresses at the time like Rita Hayworth (who was actually a passing Spanish-American) and simply pass as a white actress to find the success she so rightfully deserved. She offered without hesitation: “You see I’m a mighty proud gal, and I can’t for the life of me find any valid reason why anyone should lie about their origin, or anything else for that matter. Frankly, I do not ascribe to the stupid theory of white supremacy and hiding the fact that I am a Negro for economic or any other reasons. If I do, I would be agreeing that to be a Negro makes me inferior and that I have swallowed whole hog all of the propaganda dished out by our fascist-minded white citizens.”

Retiring from show business in the 40s, she quickly offered her insider knowledge to assist the NAACP in fighting racism and exclusion in Hollywood, and continued to work toward equality for black creators until her death in 1994. Although Fredi won very few honors herself, her role as a leading black woman in a Hollywood-produced film opened doors to equally iconic black mainstream roles for some of the world’s most influential black thespians like Sidney Poitier and Louis Gossett, Jr., among others.

Fredi struggled to fit in as a light-skinned black creative in her era, but her work has found its way among the most treasured American films of all time. “Imitation of Life” was added to the preserved collection in the United States National Film Registry at The Library of Congress in 2005, and in 2007, TIME Magazine recognized it as one of “The 25 Most Important Films on Race,” solidifying Fredi’s place in history right where she would have wanted it – beloved for being undeniably black.

KEEP GOING BLACK IN HISTORY:

“Imitation of Life” is available on Amazon Prime for $3.99, and I guarantee it’ll be money well spent.

The Amistad Research Center at Tulane University archives an assortment of Fredi’s personal belongings, and a blog entry from the center details how “Imitation of Life” impacted Fredi’s own.

THE AMERICAN BLACKSTORY 2019

DAY 14 — Dr. Heber Brown

Rev. Dr. Heber Brown - Securing Soul Food for the People

Every Sunday, Reverend Dr. Heber Brown III delivered sermons about daily bread, nourishing one’s soul, and the fruits of the Spirit with conviction.

But all the preaching and praying one man could do couldn’t change one simple fact: his congregation’s tangible food was killing them.

The Pleasant Hope Baptist Church is located in North Baltimore, where 34% of black residents live in “healthy food priority zones” (once referred to as “food deserts”), communities where access to fresh food is nearly nonexistent while convenience stores and fast food thrive. What little fresh food Reverend Brown’s congregation did have available to them was too expensive for most on limited incomes. It was a problem universities, social anthropologists and every level of government had been researching for decades, yielding very few actual results. His congregants suffering from diet-related diseases couldn’t afford to keep waiting while the diabetes and heart disease that disproportionately affects black people caught up to them.

“I had what some would call a divine discontent,” which led Reverend Brown to a simple, but novel solution in 2015 that’s grown into the The Black Church Food Security Network today.

To start, he began sowing real seeds in a 1,500 square-foot garden he cleared on the church’s property. That garden now yields half a ton of produce per year, all of which is given freely at Pleasant Hope. But that was only halfway to the self-sufficiency Reverend Brown felt was so desperately missing from the equation.

So he took it a step further by sourcing local black farmers to run pop-up markets in the church lot after every Sunday’s service. The local farmers could guarantee profitability, and the local citizens could guarantee that the produce they needed to build healthier diets would be available regularly, affordably and that their money would go right back into sustaining their own.

Soon enough, the pews were full, the congregants were happier and healthier, and churches of all ethnicities came calling to find out how to do the same. Today, the Black Church Food Security Network serves 14 different congregations in Baltimore, and many more in Washington D.C., North Carolina, and Virginia as well.

As his organization has grown, so has Reverend Brown’s faith in his cause. “Food is always going to be a priority for our communities. And churches and faith-based organizations, I got a strong hunch, will always be here,” he said. That’s why it’s crucial that the black churches with economically disadvantaged congregations relying on them can provide. Where he once led, he now teaches, consulting with churches nationally to provide them with the skills they need to do the same work he’s done in Baltimore, and spreading the gospel of good food all along the way.

KEEP GOING BLACK IN HISTORY:

Read more about The Black Church Food Security Network‘s mission and donate or invest in their future.

THE AMERICAN BLACKSTORY 2019

DAY 13 — Cheryl Brown

Cheryl Brown - The Realest Representation of Miss America

“Contestants must be of good health and of the white race.”

Rule 7 of the Miss America Pageant Handbook had been on paper since 1930, and finally overturned in 1950, but here it was 1970 and still not a single black contestant.

Even that hadn’t been without a fight though. Two years beforehand, the NAACP had challenged the lack of diversity in the pageant, and the Miss America organization had responded less enthusiastically than they’d hoped. So black entrepreneurs created their own Miss Black America Pageant in 1968 and held it in Atlantic City on the very same day as their counterpart to point out the hypocrisy in a “Miss America” without women of color, and to challenge European beauty standards that automatically disqualified black women’s dark skin, full lips, round noses, kinky hair and thick curves.

A 1968 clipping from The New York Times features the Miss America and Miss Black America pageant winners side-by-side. Read both articles for a good laugh, especially from the first blonde Miss America in 11 years.

At the same time, feminists from all races were protesting the existence of the Miss America Pageant altogether, with white women likening it to a meat market and women of color calling it “racism with roses,” in reference to their official and unofficial exclusion for so many years.

Amidst all this ongoing unrest, a black ballet dancer from New York won the title of Miss Iowa 1970, allowing her to compete as the Miss America Pageant’s first black contestant in their then 50-year history.

Cheryl Adrienne Browne was only in Iowa to attend Luther College at her pastor’s recommendation. She had participated in the pageant to win scholarship money to support her while she was away from her family, and was just as surprised as anyone else when she actually won both the swimsuit and talent competitions, and then the whole thing.

But that success didn’t come without its share of obstacles, too. When she wasn’t fighting the criticism that a black woman wasn’t worthy of a pageant win, she had to answer to those who didn’t want a non-native Iowan representing them, and those who fell into both camps. Between this and the other protests, there was so much controversy surrounding Cheryl’s win that even other Miss America contestants couldn’t help but notice the increased security presence in and around their rehearsals, travel routes and hotels.

Cheryl and Miss Maryland Sharon Ann Cannon, on the Atlantic City Boardwalk just before the Miss America 1971 pageant.

On September 12, 1970, Cheryl didn’t win the Miss America 1971 crown. She didn’t even place in the Top 10. But she did go on to represent the pageant on USO tours in one of the last groups to visit Vietnam, and served as a judge to bring equality to subsequent competitions. Today, she’s very humble about her place in history, saying “I don’t feel I personally changed the pageant, but I feel that my presence expanded people’s minds and their acceptance. And, in subsequent years, they were much more open to African-American candidates.”

Nia Imani Franklin, Miss America 2019.

And indeed they were. 13 years later, Vanessa Williams was crowned the first black Miss America in 1983, and there have been 8 more since, including this year’s Nia Franklin, all living proof that beauty, talent and brains know no racial boundaries.

KEEP GOING BLACK IN HISTORY:

THE AMERICAN BLACKSTORY 2019

DAY 12 — Malika Whitley

Malika Whitley - Happier Through the Power of Song

Her voice was the only thing in the world Malika Whitley had.

It hadn’t been that long ago that she’d had so much more. Straight A’s. A family. A home.

The quiet time was the worst. That was when the memories of those all things came flooding back, including the memory of how she’d ended up where she was in the first place. After a slow spiral into schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, Malika’s mother was jeopardizing her daughter’s safety. And with no resources, no one to trust and nowhere to go, Malika had ended up on the street, alone, trafficked and invisible.

But on Wednesdays, she could escape all of that. Slipping into a dark church basement through the side door, she found that one thing stopped all of those thoughts and gave her hope, security and control again: singing.

It was Wednesday nights that got her through her circumstances, kept her working, going to school and ultimately graduating college with degrees in international communications, cultural relations, and social economics. But she recognized that her success was unique. Thousands of kids worldwide and even right down the block from her never climbed their way out of the darkness she escaped.

During a 2010 music internship in Cape Town, South Africa, it clicked for her. She passed homeless children, who despite their situation – or because of it – sang and danced joyfully in the street. So she started a program connecting them to professionals at recording company she worked for. When her post-grad work found her in Hyderabad, India where children gathered around her to show off their creations and vie for a sale, she knew that the program she created in South Africa could have meaning here too.

So when she finally returned to the States in 2012, she set to work on building an actual program to give homeless kids the same thing she found in singing, and that she saw in the children in South Africa and Hyderabad. Since that fateful decision, her organization ChopArt (pronounced “shahp,” Cape Town slang for hello, goodbye, cool, congratulations) has given 60,000 homeless kids & teens art outreach programs, summer art camps, and year-round events to attend. But even more, ChopArt has given those children trusted circles of friends, something to look forward to each day, and a purpose to pursue. In fact, some of those kids have gone on to pursue careers in the arts with the skills they’ve developed under ChopArt’s guidance.

It’s grown from a small donation-based operation to a global non-profit bolstered by funding from socially minded corporations like Mailchimp along with thousands in competitive, merit-based, and international government grants. Today, ChopArt serves Atlanta, New Orleans, Hyderabad and Accra, Ghana to combat the effects of homelessness, sex trafficking, suicide and drug abuse on one of our most vulnerable communities. Malika’s work has been instrumental in bringing greater awareness to the 1.3 million school-aged homeless children in America alone.

And to her surprise, in her work, Malika’s found an even greater voice. “I would never be able to talk about my experience if those kids hadn’t had so much courage and trust in me,” she said. And without Malika, thousands of homeless children with stories like hers wouldn’t have had the opportunity ChopArt’s given them to change their lives through the power of creativity.

KEEP GOING BLACK IN HISTORY:

Support the work that ChopArt’s doing all over the world in “providing dignity, community, and opportunity to middle and high school aged youth experiencing homelessness through multidisciplinary arts immersion and mentorship.”

Watch Malika’s TED Talk detailing how she came to be founder & CEO of an organization helping homeless kids differently