Exam 1 guide – Flashcards

Born in 1903 in Norfolk, Virginia, Ella Baker became involved in political activism in the 1930s. She organized the Young Negroes Cooperative League in New York City, and later became a national director for the NAACP. In 1957, Baker joined the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, whose first president was Martin Luther King, Jr. She also worked with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee to support civil rights activism on college campuses. Baker died in New York City in 1986. Early Life and Education Born in Norfolk, Virginia, on December 13, 1903, Ella Baker was one of the leading figures in the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. She grew up in rural North Carolina. Baker was close to her grandmother, a former slave. Her grandmother told Baker many stories about her life, including a whipping she had received at the hands of her owner. A bright student, Baker eventually went to Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina. She was the class valedictorian when she graduated in 1927. After she completed her degree, Baker moved north to New York City. There she worked a number of jobs while trying to make ends meet. Baker helped start the Young Negroes' Cooperative League, which allowed its members to pool their funds to get better deals on goods and Civil Rights Activist Around 1940, Baker became a field secretary for the National Association for the Advancement Around 1940, Baker became a field secretary for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. She traveled extensively, raising funds and recruiting new members to the organization. In 1946, Baker became the NAACP's national director of branches. She took over care for her niece, Jackie Brockington, a few years later, which Baker to resigned from her NAACP post. She felt her position required too much travel. Staying in New York, Baker worked for a number of local organizations, including the New York Urban League. She also helped out at the New York chapter of the NAACP. In 1957, Baker joined the Southern Christian Leadership Conference as its executive director at the request of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The SCLC was a civil rights group created by African American ministers and community leaders. During her time with the SCLC, Baker set up the event that led to the creation of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in 1960. She offered her support and counsel to this organization of student activists. While she left the SCLC in 1960, Baker remained active in the SNCC for many years. She helped them form the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party in 1964 as an alternative to the state's Democratic Party, which held segregationist views. The MFDP even tried to get their delegates to serve as replacements for the Mississippi delegates at the National Democratic Convention in Atlantic City, New Jersey that same year. While they were unsuccessful in this effort, the MFDP's actions brought a lot of attention to their cause. Final Years and Legacy Baker continued to fight for social justice and equality for the rest of her life. With her many years of experience as a protester and organizer, she gave her wise counsel to numerous organizations and causes, including the Third World Women's Coordinating Committee and the Puerto Rican Solidarity Committee. Her life and accomplishments were chronicled in the 1981 documentary Fundi: The Story of Ella Baker. "Fundi" was her nickname, which comes from a Swahili word that means a person who passes down a craft to the next generation. Baker died on her 83rd birthday, on December 13, 1986, in New York City. oColoredPeople. She traveled extensively, raising funds and recruiting new members to the organization. In 1946, Baker became the NAACP's national director of branches. She took over care for her niece, Jackie Brockington, a few years later, which Baker to resigned from her NAACP post. She felt her position required too much travel. Staying in New York, Baker worked for a number of local organizations, including the New York Urban League. She also helped out at the New York chapter of the NAACP. In 1957, Baker joined the Southern Christian Leadership Conference as its executive director at the request of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The SCLC was a civil rights group created by African American ministers and community leaders. During her time with the SCLC, Baker set up the event that led to the creation of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in 1960. She offered her support and counsel to this organization of student activists. While she left the SCLC in 1960, Baker remained active in the SNCC for many years. She helped them form the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party in 1964 as an alternative to the state's Democratic Party, which held segregationist views. The MFDP even tried to get their delegates to serve as replacements for the Mississippi delegates at the National Democratic Convention in Atlantic City, New Jersey that same year. While they were unsuccessful in this effort, the MFDP's actions brought a lot of attention to their cause. Final Years and Legacy Baker continued to fight for social justice and equality for the rest of her life. With her many years of experience as a protester and organizer, she gave her wise counsel to numerous organizations and causes, including the Third World Women's Coordinating Committee and the Puerto Rican Solidarity Committee. Her life and accomplishments were chronicled in the 1981 documentary Fundi: The Story of Ella Baker. "Fundi" was her nickname, which comes from a Swahili word that means a person who passes down a craft to the next generation. Baker died on her 83rd birthday, on December 13, 1986, in New York City. Related Videos Martin Luther King Jr. - An American Legend Martin Luther King Jr. - An American Legend (TV-14; 1:11) Political Activism in Harlem Political Activism in Harlem (TV-PG; 2:14) Martin Luther King - Mini Biography Martin Luther King - Mini Biography (TV-14; 4:39)

Poet, writer, teacher, and political activist Amiri Baraka was born Everett LeRoi Jones in 1934 in Newark, New Jersey. He attended Rutgers University and Howard University, spent three years in the U.S. Air Force, and returned to New York City to attend Columbia University and the New School for Social Research. Baraka was well known for his strident social criticism, often writing in an incendiary style that made it difficult for some audiences and critics to respond with objectivity to his works. Throughout most of his career his method in poetry, drama, fiction, and essays was confrontational, calculated to shock and awaken audiences to the political concerns of black Americans. For decades, Baraka was one of the most prominent voices in the world of American literature. Baraka's own political stance changed several times, thus dividing his oeuvre into periods: as a member of the avant-garde during the 1950s, Baraka—writing as Leroi Jones—was associated with Beat poets like Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac; in the '60s, he moved to Harlem and became a Black Nationalist; in the '70s, he was involved in third-world liberation movements and identified as a Marxist. More recently, Baraka was accused of anti-Semitism for his poem "Somebody Blew up America," written in response to the September 11 attacks. Baraka incited controversy throughout his career. He was praised for speaking out against oppression as well as accused of fostering hate. Critical opinion has been sharply divided between those who agree, with Dissent contributor Stanley Kaufman, that Baraka's race and political moment have created his celebrity, and those who feel that Baraka stands among the most important writers of the twentieth century. In the American Book Review, Arnold Rampersad counted Baraka with Phyllis Wheatley, Frederick Douglass, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Richard Wright, and Ralph Ellison "as one of the eight figures . . . who have significantly affected the course of African-American literary culture." Baraka did not always identify with radical politics, nor did his writing always court controversy. During the 1950s Baraka lived in Greenwich Village, befriending Beat poets Allen Ginsberg, Frank O'Hara, and Gilbert Sorrentino. The white avant-garde—primarily Ginsberg, O'Hara, and leader of the Black Mountain poets Charles Olson—and Baraka believed in poetry as a process of discovery rather than an exercise in fulfilling traditional expectations. Baraka, like the projectivist poets, believed that a poem's form should follow the shape determined by the poet's own breath and intensity of feeling. In 1958 Baraka founded Yugen magazine and Totem Press, important forums for new verse. He was married to his co-editor, Hettie Cohen, from 1960 to 1965. His first play, A Good Girl Is Hard to Find, was produced at Sterington House in Montclair, New Jersey, that same year. Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note, Baraka's first published collection of poems appeared in 1961. M.L. Rosenthal wrote in The New Poets: American and British Poetry since World War II that these poems show Baraka's "natural gift for quick, vivid imagery and spontaneous humor." Rosenthal also praised the "sardonic or sensuous or slangily knowledgeable passages" that fill the early poems. While the cadence of blues and many allusions to black culture are found in the poems, the subject of blackness does not predominate. Throughout, rather, the poet shows his integrated, Bohemian social roots. The book's last line is "You are / as any other sad man here / american." With the rise of the civil rights movement Baraka's works took on a more militant tone. His trip to Cuba in 1959 marked an important turning point in his life. His view of his role as a writer, the purpose of art, and the degree to which ethnic awareness deserved to be his subject changed dramatically. In Cuba he met writers and artists from third world countries whose political concerns included the fight against poverty, famine, and oppressive governments. In Home: Social Essays (1966), Baraka explains how he tried to defend himself against their accusations of self-indulgence, and was further challenged by Jaime Shelley, a Mexican poet, who said, "'In that ugliness you live in, you want to cultivate your soul? Well, we've got millions of starving people to feed, and that moves me enough to make poems out of.'" Soon Baraka began to identify with third world writers and to write poems and plays with strong political messages. Dutchman, a play of entrapment in which a white woman and a middle-class black man both express their murderous hatred on a subway, was first performed Off-Broadway in 1964. While other dramatists of the time were wedded to naturalism, Baraka used symbolism and other experimental techniques to enhance the play's emotional impact. The play established Baraka's reputation as a playwright and has been often anthologized and performed. It won the Village Voice Obie Award in 1964 and was later made into a film. The plays and poems following Dutchman expressed Baraka's increasing disappointment with white America and his growing need to separate from it. Critics observed that as Baraka's poems became more politically intense, they left behind some of the flawless technique of the earlier poems. Richard Howard wrote of The Dead Lecturer (1964) in the Nation: "These are the agonized poems of a man writing to save his skin, or at least to settle in it, and so urgent is their purpose that not one of them can trouble to be perfect." To make a clean break with the Beat influence, Baraka turned to writing fiction in the mid-1960s, penning The System of Dante's Hell (1965), a novel, and Tales (1967), a collection of short stories. The stories are "'fugitive narratives' that describe the harried flight of an intensely self-conscious Afro-American artist/intellectual from neo-slavery of blinding, neutralizing whiteness, where the area of struggle is basically within the mind," Robert Elliot Fox wrote in Conscientious Sorcerers: The Black Postmodernist Fiction of LeRoi Jones/Baraka, Ishmael Reed, and Samuel R. Delany. The role of violent action in achieving political change is more prominent in these stories, as is the role of music in black life. In addition to his poems, novels and politically-charged essays, Baraka is a noted writer of music criticism. His classic history Blues People: Negro Music in White America (1963) traces black music from slavery to contemporary jazz. Finding indigenous black art forms was important to Baraka in the '60s, as he was searching for a more authentic voice for his own poetry. Baraka became known as an articulate jazz critic and a perceptive observer of social change. As Clyde Taylor stated in Amiri Baraka: The Kaleidoscopic Torch, "The connection he nailed down between the many faces of black music, the sociological sets that nurtured them, and their symbolic evolutions through socio-economic changes, in Blues People, is his most durable conception, as well as probably the one most indispensable thing said about black music." Baraka also published the important studies Black Music (1968) and The Music: Reflections on Jazz and Blues (1987). Lloyd W. Brown commented in Amiri Baraka that Baraka's essays on music are flawless: "As historian, musicological analyst, or as a journalist covering a particular performance Baraka always commands attention because of his obvious knowledge of the subject and because of a style that is engaging and persuasive even when the sentiments are questionable and controversial." After Black Muslim leader Malcolm X was killed in 1965, Baraka moved to Harlem and founded the Black Arts Repertory Theatre/School. The Black Arts Movement helped develop a new aesthetic for black art and Baraka was its primary theorist. Black American artists should follow "black," not "white" standards of beauty and value, he maintained, and should stop looking to white culture for validation. The black artist's role, he wrote in Home: Social Essays (1966), is to "aid in the destruction of America as he knows it." Foremost in this endeavor was the imperative to portray society and its ills faithfully so that the portrayal would move people to take necessary corrective action. He married his second wife, Amina, in 1967. In that same year, Baraka published the poetry collection Black Magic, which chronicles his separation from white culture and values while displaying his mastery of poetic technique. There was no doubt that Baraka's political concerns superseded his just claims to literary excellence, and critics struggled to respond to the political content of the works. Some felt the best art must be apolitical and dismissed Baraka's newer work as "a loss to literature." Kenneth Rexroth wrote in With Eye and Ear that Baraka "has succumbed to the temptation to become a professional Race Man of the most irresponsible sort. . . . His loss to literature is more serious than any literary casualty of the Second War." In 1966 Bakara moved back to Newark, New Jersey, and a year later changed his name to the Bantuized Muslim appellation Imamu ("spiritual leader," later dropped) Ameer (later Amiri, "prince") Baraka ("blessing"). By the early 1970s Baraka was recognized as an influential African-American writer. Randall noted in Black World that younger black poets Nikki Giovanni and Don L. Lee (later Haki R. Madhubuti) were "learning from LeRoi Jones, a man versed in German philosophy, conscious of literary tradition . . . who uses the structure of Dante's Divine Comedy in his System of Dante's Hell and the punctuation, spelling and line divisions of sophisticated contemporary poets." More importantly, Arnold Rampersad wrote in the American Book Review, "More than any other black poet . . . he taught younger black poets of the generation past how to respond poetically to their lived experience, rather than to depend as artists on embalmed reputations and outmoded rhetorical strategies derived from a culture often substantially different from their own."

Subscribe to NewsletterAbout BLACK HISTORY Carter G. Woodson HISTORY & CULTURE The Despair of Jackie Kennedy PEOPLE NOSTALGIA CELEBRITY HISTORY & CULTURE CRIME & SCANDAL Pauli Murray Pauli Murray Biography Priest, Civil Rights Activist, Legal Professional, Women's Reverend Pauli Murray was an American civil rights advocate and ordained priest. She is best known for furthering the civil rights and feminist causes. Synopsis Reverend Dr. Pauli Murray was an American civil rights advocate, feminist, lawyer and ordained priest. She is best known for furthering the civil rights and feminist causes. She is the co-founder of NOW, the National Organization for Women and was the first woman to be awarded a J.D.S degree from Yale. Younger Years Born Anna Pauline Murray on November 20, 1910, in Baltimore, Maryland, Pauli Murray lost her parents at a young age and was raised by relatives in Durham, North Carolina. A nearly lifelong activist for racial and gender equality, Pauli Murray became the first African American woman to be ordained as an Episcopal priest in 1977. While pursuing higher education, Pauli Murray encountered racism and sexism—unfortunately, common types of discrimination of the 1930s. After graduating from Hunter College in New York City, she was denied admission to the University of North Carolina's law school because she was African American, and was turned down by Harvard University because she was a woman. These experiences with prejudice led Murray to become active in civil rights and women's rights movements, and spurred her participation in many sit-ins and other forms of protests. Early Career and Activism After receiving law degrees from Howard University and University of California, Pauli Murray worked as a deputy attorney general of California during the 1940s. She spent time in private practice before pursuing a doctorate in law at Yale University in 1960s. When she finished her doctorate in 1965, Murray became the first African American to be awarded a J.D.S. degree from the university. Along with such leading feminists as Betty Friedan, in 1966, Murray became a founding member of a new group that addressed issues of gender equality and women's rights: the National Organization for Women. In addition to her work as a social activist, Pauli Murray taught at numerous colleges and universities, including the University of Ghana, and served as president of Benedict College in the 1960s. During the 1970s, she decided to challenge sexual discrimination in the Episcopal Church by entering the priesthood. Murray earned a master's degree in divinity from Yale in 1976, and she made history the next year when she was officially ordained. She served in churches in Washington, D.C., Baltimore and Pittsburgh until her retirement in 1984. Published Works A talented writer and editor of non-fiction and poetry, Pauli Murray had several books published. Showing great versatility in her early works, she tackled complex issues as the editor of 1951's State's Laws on Race and Color, and shared her own story in 1956's Proud Shoes. Later in her career, she explored such diverse topics as Constitution and Government of Ghana (1961) and Human Rights U.S.A. (1967). She also had poetry published, including 1970's Dark Testament and Other Poems. Death and Legacy Pauli Murray died of cancer on July 1, 1985, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She spent much of her life breaking down the barriers of race and gender in the fight for equality. Murray received numerous awards for her contributions to society, including honorary degrees from Dartmouth College, Radcliffe College and Yale. Fact Check We strive for accuracy and fairness. If you see something that doesn't look right, contact us!

Born on May 3, 1898, in Charleston, South Carolina, Septima Poinsette Clark branched out into social action with the NAACP while working as a teacher. As part of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, she set up citizenship schools that helped many African Americans register to vote. Clark was 89 when she died on December 15, 1987, on South Carolina's Johns Island. Early Life Septima Poinsette Clark was born on in Charleston, South Carolina, May 3, 1898, the second of eight children. Her father—who had been born a slave—and mother both encouraged her to get an education. Clark attended public school, then worked to earn the money needed to attend the Avery Normal Institute, a private school for African Americans. Teaching and Early Activism Clark qualified as a teacher, but Charleston did not hire African Americans to teach in its public schools. Instead, she became an instructor on South Carolina's Johns Island in 1916. In 1919, Clark returned to Charleston to teach at the Avery Institute. She also joined with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in trying to get the city to hire African-American teachers. By gathering signatures in favor of the change, Clark helped ensure that the effort was successful. Clark married Nerie Clark in 1920. Her husband died of kidney failure five years later. She then moved to Columbia, South Carolina, where she continued teaching and also joined the local chapter of the NAACP. Clark worked with the organization—and with Thurgood Marshall—on a 1945 case that sought equal pay for black and white teachers. She described it as her "first effort in a social action challenging the status quo." Her salary increased threefold when the case was won. Going back to Charleston in 1947, Clark took up another teaching post, while maintaining her NAACP membership. However, in 1956, South Carolina made it illegal for public employees to belong to civil rights groups. Clark refused to renounce the NAACP and, as a result, lost her job. Civil Rights Leader Clark was next hired by Tennessee's Highlander Folk School, an institution that supported integration and the Civil Rights Movement. She had previously participated in and led workshops there during breaks from school (Rosa Parks had attended one of her workshops in 1955). Clark soon was directing Highlander's Citizenship School program. These schools helped regular people learn how to instruct others in their communities in basic literacy and math skills. One particular benefit of this teaching was that more people were then able to register to vote (at the time, many states used literacy tests to disenfranchise African Americans). In 1961, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference took over this education project. Clark then joined the SCLC as its director of education and teaching. Under her leadership, more than 800 citizenship schools were created. Awards and Legacy Clark retired from the SCLC in 1970. In 1979, Jimmy Carter honored her with a Living Legacy Award. She received the Order of the Palmetto, South Carolina's highest civilian honor, in 1982. In 1987, Clark's second autobiography, Ready from Within: Septima Clark and Civil Rights, won an American Book Award (her first autobiography, Echo in My Soul, had been published in 1962). Clark was 89 when she died on Johns Island on December 15, 1987. Over her long career of teaching and civil rights activism, she helped many African Americans begin to take control of their lives and discover their full rights as citizens. Fact Check We strive for accuracy and fairness. If you see something that doesn't look right, contact us! Citation Information Article Title Septima Poinsette Clark Biography Author

Virginia Foster Durr (1903-1999) Virginia Foster was born in Birmingham in 1903 to Dr. Sterling and Ann Patterson Foster. After two years at Wellesley College, she began to question and challenge her world. She returned to Alabama where she met and married Clifford J. Durr, a young attorney whose family was from Montgomery, Alabama. Durr became a nationally known figure and recognized as a defender of justice, social equality and civil rights. Virginia Foster Durr As a young wife and mother in Depression-era Birmingham, Durr became active in the Junior League and volunteered for the Red Cross. While working with the Red Cross, she became aware that dairies poured their milk into the gutters when it could not be sold. She proposed a project for the Junior League to have the dairies donate the milk to the Red Cross to be distributed to the poor. When the Durrs moved to Washington D.C. for Clifford to take a position in the Roosevelt New Deal administration, Virginia worked with the Democratic National Committee women's section and First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt campaigning to abolish the poll tax. As a founding member of the Southern Conference on Human Welfare, she served as the vice-chairman of the Civil Rights Committee, a subcommittee to abolish the poll tax. Eventually, the committee split from the Southern Conference in 1941 and became the National Committee to Abolish the Poll Tax. She continued for years to work for women's rights, civil rights, labor issues and to abolish the poll tax. While working to improve labor conditions and on other labor issues, Durr worked with individuals who later became labeled "communists" or "socialists." She was called before Senator James Eastland's subcommittee investigating possible communist activities. Rather than name anyone as a communist or socialist, she refused to respond to the committee's questions. She was encouraged by more than one family member and friend to stop associating with various people and organizations and there were many times when the Durrs were ostracized from what was termed in her autobiography as the "Magic Circle," the social elite of Alabama. The Durr's interest and belief in social equality continued to develop and grow especially as they personally witnessed social injustice. With the Brown Decision and the integration of Montgomery public schools, their home became a "safe place" for African-American student Arlam Carr and other African-American students that attended Sidney Lanier High School. Both Clifford and Virginia became well known white southern supporters of the Civil Rights Movement with the Rosa Parks arrest in Montgomery in 1955. On the evening of Parks arrest, E.D. Nixon and the Durrs went to the Montgomery jail to obtain Parks' release. Their involvement continued throughout the court case and the bus boycott. Virginia Foster Durr died on February 24, 1999. At the time of her death, The Atlanta Constitution described her as a true moral authority and the white matron of the Civil Rights Movement. President Bill Clinton commented at her passing: "Her courage, outspokeness, and steely conviction in the earliest days of the civil rights movement helped change this nation forever."

Martin Luther King Jr. was a Baptist minister and social activist, who led the Civil Rights Movement in the United States from the mid-1950s until his death by assassination in 1968. Subscribe to NewsletterAbout BLACK HISTORY Carter G. Woodson HISTORY & CULTURE The Despair of Jackie Kennedy PEOPLE NOSTALGIA CELEBRITY HISTORY & CULTURE CRIME & SCANDAL Martin Luther King Jr. Martin Luther King Jr. Biography Civil Rights Activist, Minister (1929-1968) 57.3K SHARES 51.1K 0 0 QUICK FACTS NAME Martin Luther King Jr. OCCUPATION Civil Rights Activist, Minister BIRTH DATE January 15, 1929 DEATH DATE April 4, 1968 EDUCATION Boston University, Morehouse College, Crozer Theological Seminary PLACE OF BIRTH Atlanta, Georgia PLACE OF DEATH Memphis, Tennessee ORIGINALLY Michael King Jr. AKA MLK Jr. Martin Luther King MLK FULL NAME Martin Luther King Jr. SYNOPSIS EARLY YEARS EDUCATION AND SPIRITUAL GROWTH MONTGOMERY BUS BOYCOTT THE SOUTHERN CHRISTIAN LEADERSHIP CONFERENCE 'I HAVE A DREAM' ASSASSINATION AND LEGACY VIDEOS RELATED VIDEOS CITE THIS PAGE Martin Luther King Jr. was a Baptist minister and social activist, who led the Civil Rights Movement in the United States from the mid-1950s until his death by assassination in 1968. IN THESE GROUPS NOBEL PEACE PRIZE WINNERS FAMOUS PEOPLE WHO DIED IN 1968 FAMOUS PEOPLE WHO WENT TO PRISON FAMOUS CAPRICORNS Show All Groups 1 of 19 « » QUOTES "But we come here tonight to be saved from that patience that makes us patient with anything less than freedom and justice." —Martin Luther King Jr. Martin Luther King, Jr. - Mini Biography (TV-14; 4:16) Learn more about Martin Luther King, Jr.'s efforts to transform the United States' understanding of racial inequality and his campaign with other Civil Rights leaders for equal treatment under the law in this mini biography. Synopsis Martin Luther King Jr. was born on January 15, 1929, in Atlanta, Georgia. King, a Baptist minister and civil-rights activist, had a seismic impact on race relations in the United States, beginning in the mid-1950s. Among his many efforts, King headed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Through his activism and inspirational speeches he played a pivotal role in ending the legal segregation of African-American citizens in the United States, as well as the creation of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. King received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964, among several other honors. He was assassinated in April 1968, and continues to be remembered as one of the most influential and inspirational African-American leaders in history. Early Years Born as Michael King Jr. on January 15, 1929, Martin Luther King Jr. was the middle child of Michael King Sr. and Alberta Williams King. The King and Williams families were rooted in rural Georgia. Martin Jr.'s grandfather, A.D. Williams, was a rural minister for years and then moved to Atlanta in 1893. He took over the small, struggling Ebenezer Baptist church with around 13 members and made it into a forceful congregation. He married Jennie Celeste Parks and they had one child that survived, Alberta. Michael King Sr. came from a sharecropper family in a poor farming community. He married Alberta in 1926 after an eight-year courtship. The newlyweds moved to A.D. Williams home in Atlanta. Michael King Sr. stepped in as pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church upon the death of his father-in-law in 1931. He too became a successful minister, and adopted the name Martin Luther King Sr. in honor of the German Protestant religious leader Martin Luther. In due time, Michael Jr. would follow his father's lead and adopt the name himself. 21 GALLERY 21 Images Young Martin had an older sister, Willie Christine, and a younger brother, Alfred Daniel Williams King. The King children grew up in a secure and loving environment. Martin Sr. was more the disciplinarian, while his wife's gentleness easily balanced out the father's more strict hand. Though they undoubtedly tried, Martin Jr.'s parents couldn't shield him completely from racism. Martin Luther King Sr. fought against racial prejudice, not just because his race suffered, but because he considered racism and segregation to be an affront to God's will. He strongly discouraged any sense of class superiority in his children which left a lasting impression on Martin Jr. Growing up in Atlanta, Georgia, Martin Luther King Jr. entered public school at age 5. In May, 1936 he was baptized, but the event made little impression on him. In May, 1941, Martin was 12 years old when is grandmother, Jennie, died of a heart attack. The event was traumatic for Martin, more so because he was out watching a parade against his parents' wishes when she died. Distraught at the news, young Martin jumped from a second story window at the family home, allegedly attempting suicide. King attended Booker T. Washington High School, where he was said to be a precocious student. He skipped both the ninth and eleventh grades, and entered Morehouse College in Atlanta at age 15, in 1944. He was a popular student, especially with his female classmates, but an unmotivated student who floated though his first two years. Although his family was deeply involved in the church and worship, young Martin questioned religion in general and felt uncomfortable with overly emotional displays of religious worship. This discomfort continued through much of his adolescence, initially leading him to decide against entering the ministry, much to his father's dismay. But in his junior year, Martin took a Bible class, renewed his faith and began to envision a career in the ministry. In the fall of his senior year, he told his father of his decision. Education and Spiritual Growth In 1948, Martin Luther King Jr. earned a sociology degree from Morehouse College and attended the liberal Crozer Theological Seminary in Chester, Pennsylvania. He thrived in all his studies, and was valedictorian of his class in 1951, and elected student body president. He also earned a fellowship for graduate study. But Martin also rebelled against his father's more conservative influence by drinking beer and playing pool while at college. He became involved with a white woman and went through a difficult time before he could break off the affair. During his last year in seminary, Martin Luther King Jr. came under the guidance of Morehouse College President Benjamin E. Mays who influenced King's spiritual development. Mays was an outspoken advocate for racial equality and encouraged King to view Christianity as a potential force for social change. After being accepted at several colleges for his doctoral study, including Yale and Edinburgh in Scotland, King enrolled in Boston University. During the work on this doctorate, Martin Luther King Jr. met Coretta Scott, an aspiring singer and musician, at the New England Conservatory school in Boston. They were married in June 1953 and had four children, Yolanda, Martin Luther King III, Dexter Scott and Bernice. In 1954, while still working on his dissertation, King became pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church of Montgomery, Alabama. He completed his Ph.D. and was award his degree in 1955. King was only 25 years old. Montgomery Bus Boycott On March 2, 1955, a 15-year-old girl refused to give up her seat to a white man on a Montgomery city bus in violation of local law. Claudette Colvin was arrested and taken to jail. At first, the local chapter of the NAACP felt they had an excellent test case to challenge Montgomery's segregated bus policy. But then it was revealed that she was pregnant and civil rights leaders feared this would scandalize the deeply religious black community and make Colvin (and, thus the group's efforts) less credible in the eyes of sympathetic whites. On December 1, 1955, they got another chance to make their case. That evening, 42-year-old Rosa Parks boarded the Cleveland Avenue bus to go home from an exhausting day at work. She sat in the first row of the "colored" section in the middle of the bus. As the bus traveled its route, all the seats it the white section filled up, then several more white passengers boarded the bus. The bus driver noted that there were several white men standing and demanded that Parks and several other African Americans give up their seats. Three other African American passengers reluctantly gave up their places, but Parks remained seated. The driver asked her again to give up her seat and again she refused. Parks was arrested and booked for violating the Montgomery City Code. At her trial a week later, in a 30-minute hearing, Parks was found guilty and fined $10 and assessed $4 court fee. On the night that Rosa Parks was arrested, E.D. Nixon, head of the local NAACP chapter met with Martin Luther King Jr. and other local civil rights leaders to plan a citywide bus boycott. King was elected to lead the boycott because he was young, well-trained with solid family connections and had professional standing. But he was also new to the community and had few enemies, so it was felt he would have strong credibility with the black community. In his first speech as the group's president, King declared, "We have no alternative but to protest. For many years we have shown an amazing patience. We have sometimes given our white brothers the feeling that we liked the way we were being treated. But we come here tonight to be saved from that patience that makes us patient with anything less than freedom and justice." Martin Luther King Jr.'s fresh and skillful rhetoric put a new energy into the civil rights struggle in Alabama. The bus boycott would be 382 days of walking to work, harassment, violence and intimidation for the Montgomery's African-American community. Both King's and E.D. Nixon's homes were attacked. But the African-American community also took legal action against the city ordinance arguing that it was unconstitutional based on the Supreme Court's "separate is never equal" decision in Brown v. Board of Education. After being defeated in several lower court rulings and suffering large financial losses, the city of Montgomery lifted the law mandating segregated public transportation. The Southern Christian Leadership Conference Flush with victory, African-American civil rights leaders recognized the need for a national organization to help coordinate their efforts. In January 1957, Martin Luther King Jr., Ralph Abernathy, and 60 ministers and civil rights activists founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference to harness the moral authority and organizing power of black churches. They would help conduct non-violent protests to promote civil rights reform. King's participation in the organization gave him a base of operation throughout the South, as well as a national platform. The organization felt the best place to start to give African Americans a voice was to enfranchise them in the voting process. In February 1958, the SCLC sponsored more than 20 mass meetings in key southern cities to register black voters in the South. King met with religious and civil rights leaders and lectured all over the country on race-related issues. In 1959, with the help of the American Friends Service Committee, and inspired by Gandhi's success with non-violent activism, Martin Luther King visited Gandhi's birthplace in India. The trip affected him in a deeply profound way, increasing his commitment to America's civil rights struggle. African-American civil rights activist Bayard Rustin, who had studied Gandhi's teachings, became one of King's associates and counseled him to dedicate himself to the principles of non-violence. Rustin served as King's mentor and advisor throughout his early activism and was the main organizer of the 1963 March on Washington. But Rustin was also a controversial figure at the time, being a homosexual with alleged ties to the Communist Party, USA. Though his counsel was invaluable to King, many of his other supporters urged him to distance himself from Rustin. In February 1960, a group of African-American students began what became known as the "sit-in" movement in Greensboro, North Carolina. The students would sit at racially segregated lunch counters in the city's stores. When asked to leave or sit in the colored section, they just remained seated, subjecting themselves to verbal and sometimes physical abuse. The movement quickly gained traction in several other cities. In April 1960, the SCLC held a conference at Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina with local sit-in leaders. Martin Luther King Jr. encouraged students to continue to use nonviolent methods during their protests. Out of this meeting, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee formed and for a time, worked closely with the SCLC. By August of 1960, the sit-ins had been successful in ending segregation at lunch counters in 27 southern cities. By 1960, Martin Luther King Jr. was gaining national notoriety. He returned to Atlanta to become co-pastor with his father at Ebenezer Baptist Church, but also continued his civil rights efforts. On October 19, 1960, King and 75 students entered a local department store and requested lunch-counter service but were denied. When they refused to leave the counter area, King and 36 others were arrested. Realizing the incident would hurt the city's reputation, Atlanta's mayor negotiated a truce and charges were eventually dropped. But soon after, King was imprisoned for violating his probation on a traffic conviction. The news of his imprisonment entered the 1960 presidential campaign, when candidate John F. Kennedy made a phone call to Coretta Scott King. Kennedy expressed his concern for King's harsh treatment for the traffic ticket and political pressure was quickly set in motion. King was soon released. 'I Have a Dream' In the spring of 1963, Martin Luther King Jr. organized a demonstration in downtown Birmingham, Alabama. Entire families attended. City police turned dogs and fire hoses on demonstrators. Martin Luther King was jailed along with large numbers of his supporters, but the event drew nationwide attention. However, King was personally criticized by black and white clergy alike for taking risks and endangering the children who attended the demonstration. From the jail in Birmingham, King eloquently spelled out his theory of non-violence: "Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community, which has constantly refused to negotiate, is forced to confront the issue." By the end of the Birmingham campaign, Martin Luther King Jr. and his supporters were making plans for a massive demonstration on the nation's capital composed of multiple organizations, all asking for peaceful change. On August 28, 1963, the historic March on Washington drew more than 200,000 people in the shadow of the Lincoln Memorial. It was here that King made his famous "I Have a Dream" speech, emphasizing his belief that someday all men could be brothers. "I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character." — Martin Luther King, Jr. / "I Have A Dream" speech, August 28, 1963 The rising tide of civil rights agitation produced a strong effect on public opinion. Many people in cities not experiencing racial tension began to question the nation's Jim Crow laws and the near century second class treatment of African-American citizens. This resulted in the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 authorizing the federal government to enforce desegregation of public accommodations and outlawing discrimination in publicly owned facilities. This also led to Martin Luther King receiving the Nobel Peace Prize for 1964. King's struggle continued throughout the 1960s. Often, it seemed as though the pattern of progress was two steps forward and one step back. On March 7, 1965, a civil rights march, planned from Selma to Alabama's capital in Montgomery, turned violent as police with nightsticks and tear gas met the demonstrators as they tried to cross the Edmond Pettus Bridge. King was not in the march, however the attack was televised showing horrifying images of marchers being bloodied and severely injured. Seventeen demonstrators were hospitalized leading to the naming the event "Bloody Sunday." A second march was cancelled due to a restraining order to prevent the march from taking place. A third march was planned and this time King made sure he was on it. Not wanting to alienate southern judges by violating the restraining order, a different tact was taken. On March 9, 1965, a procession of 2,500 marchers, both black and white, set out once again to cross the Pettus Bridge and confronted barricades and state troopers. Instead of forcing a confrontation, King led his followers to kneel in prayer and they then turned back. The event caused King the loss of support among some younger African-American leaders, but it nonetheless aroused support for the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. From late 1965 through 1967, Martin Luther King Jr. expanded his Civil Rights Movement into other larger American cities, including Chicago and Los Angeles. But he met with increasing criticism and public challenges from young black-power leaders. King's patient, non-violent approach and appeal to white middle-class citizens alienated many black militants who considered his methods too weak and too late. In the eyes of the sharp-tongued, blue jean young urban black, King's manner was irresponsibly passive and deemed non-effective. To address this criticism King began making a link between discrimination and poverty. He expanded his civil rights efforts to the Vietnam War. He felt that America's involvement in Vietnam was politically untenable and the government's conduct of the war discriminatory to the poor. He sought to broaden his base by forming a multi-race coalition to address economic and unemployment problems of all disadvantaged people. Assassination and Legacy By 1968, the years of demonstrations and confrontations were beginning to wear on Martin Luther King Jr. He had grown tired of marches, going to jail, and living under the constant threat of death. He was becoming discouraged at the slow progress civil rights in America and the increasing criticism from other African-American leaders. Plans were in the works for another march on Washington to revive his movement and bring attention to a widening range of issues. In the spring of 1968, a labor strike by Memphis sanitation workers drew King to one last crusade. On April 3, in what proved to be an eerily prophetic speech, he told supporters, "I've seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight that we, as a people, will get to the promised land." The next day, while standing on a balcony outside his room at the Lorraine Motel, Martin Luther King Jr. was struck by a sniper's bullet. The shooter, a malcontent drifter and former convict named James Earl Ray, was eventually apprehended after a two-month, international manhunt. The killing sparked riots and demonstrations in more than 100 cities across the country. In 1969, Ray pleaded guilty to assassinating King and was sentenced to 99 years in prison. He died in prison on April 23, 1998. Martin Luther King Jr.'s life had a seismic impact on race relations in the United States. Years after his death, he is the most widely known African-American leader of his era. His life and work have been honored with a national holiday, schools and public buildings named after him, and a memorial on Independence Mall in Washington, D.C. But his life remains controversial as well. In the 1970s, FBI files, released under the Freedom of Information Act, revealed that he was under government surveillance, and suggested his involvement in adulterous relationships and communist influences. Over the years, extensive archival studies have led to a more balanced and comprehensive assessment of his life, portraying him as a complex figure: flawed, fallible and limited in his control over the mass movements with which he was associated, yet a visionary leader who was deeply committed to achieving social justice through nonviolent means. Videos Martin Luther King Jr. - Call to Activism Martin Luther King Jr. - Call to Activism (TV-14; 2:19) Martin Luther King Jr. - Pastor Martin Luther King Jr. - Pastor (TV-14; 1:57) Martin Luther King Jr. - House Bombing Martin Luther King Jr. - House Bombing (TV-14; 2:23) Martin Luther King Jr. - An American Legend Martin Luther King Jr. - An American Legend (TV-14; 1:11) Martin Luther King - The King Years Martin Luther King - The King Years (TV-14; 2:01) Martin Luther King III - On his Father's Legacy Martin Luther King III - On his Father's Legacy (TV-14; 1:26) Bill Clinton - On MLK's Legacy Bill Clinton - On MLK's Legacy (TV-14; 1:43) Tom Brokaw - On MLK's Legacy Tom Brokaw - On MLK's Legacy (TV-14; 1:49) Martin Luther King - Mini Biography Martin Luther King - Mini Biography (TV-14; 4:39) Related Videos Angela Bassett - Remembering MLK Angela Bassett - Remembering MLK (TV-14; 0:21)

Marcus Garvey was a proponent of the Black Nationalism and Pan-Africanism movements, inspiring the Nation Islam and the Rastafarian movement.

Mabel Williams, who with her husband Robert F. Williams called for armed self-defense against racist violence in Jim Crow North Carolina and lived in exile in Cuba and China for a time because of it, died on April 19. She was 82. Born in Monroe, NC in 1931, Mabel married Rob, also a Monroe native and veteran of the segregated Marine Corps, in 1947. He became a leader in the local NAACP chapter, working to integrate the public library and public swimming pools. He gained national attention for the notorious "Kissing Case," defending two black boys ages seven and nine who were jailed for letting a white girl kiss them on the cheek. Embarrassed in the international press, Gov. Luther Hodges eventually pardoned the boys, though the state refused to apologize for its harsh treatment of them. While organizing with the NAACP, Rob Williams also helped found the Union County Council on Human Relations, bringing the races together to work for black freedom. Mabel Williams served as secretary for the group, which eventually fell apart due to white supremacist backlash. The Williamses' organizing work drew the attention of the Ku Klux Klan, which was a powerful force in Monroe. The city was the hometown of segregationist U.S. Sen. Jesse Helms, whose father served as police chief. A formative incident from Rob Williams' youth was witnessing the beating and dragging of a black woman by the senior Helms as white onlookers laughed. In 1959, after a jury in Monroe acquitted a white man for the attempted rape of a black woman, Rob Williams stood on the courthouse steps and declared the right of black people to defend themselves. As he said later at a press conference: I made a statement that if the law, if the United States Constitution cannot be enforced in this social jungle called Dixie, it is time that Negroes must defend themselves even if it is necessary to resort to violence. That there is no law here, there is no need to take the white attackers to the courts because they will go free and that the federal government is not coming to the aid of people who are oppressed, and it is time for Negro men to stand up and be men and if it is necessary for us to die we must be willing to die. If it is necessary for us to kill we must be willing to kill. Rob Williams filed for a charter from the National Rifle Association and formed the Black Guard, an armed group that protected Monroe's African-American community from racist attacks. The NAACP eventually suspended Williams for advocating violence. When the Freedom Riders brought their nonviolent campaign to integrate interstate bus travel to Monroe in 1961, they were met by Klan violence and turned to Williams' Black Guard for protection. During the riot that ensued, Williams sheltered a white couple from an angry African-American mob only to be accused later by local and state authorities of kidnapping them. After the FBI issued a warrant for his arrest, Williams fled to Cuba with Mabel and their two sons. "In Monroe, North Carolina we knew that the power structure in the local town was against us," Mabel Williams recalled decades later. "But we didn't know when we started fighting that the FBI was supporting the power structure." Granted asylum in Cuba, Rob and Mabel Williams started Radio Free Dixie, broadcasting news, music and commentary throughout the eastern United States. They continued to publish The Crusader, an underground newsletter they had launched in Monroe and for which Mabel Williams drew editorial cartoons. They also collaborated on the book "Negroes With Guns", an important influence on Black Panther Party founder Huey P. Newton. In 1965, the Williams family moved to The People's Republic of China at the invitation of Mao Zedong. Mabel Williams returned to the United States in September 1969. Rob followed soon after and was arrested on the outstanding kidnapping charge, which was eventually dropped. The Williams family settled in Michigan. Rob Williams took a research position at the University of Michigan's Institute for Chinese Studies and played a role in the opening of diplomatic relations between the U.S. and China. He died of cancer in 1996; civil rights leader Rosa Parks delivered his eulogy, hailing "his courage and for his commitment to freedom." Mabel Williams did social work and continued to be active in her Michigan community. She was was a leader in her Catholic church, directing its senior meals program, and was involved in local economic development and philanthropic work as well as cultural preservation, according to her obituary in the Manistee News Advocate: She was instrumental in promoting the legacy of Idlewild, the historic African American resort community -- famous for the legendary performers who graced its stages -- where in the years of segregation many black families were able to experience a level of freedom not available in the rest of the country. As President Emeritus of the Lake County Merry Makers, she championed the work of "Friends of Historic Idlewild" and supported the development of FiveCAP's Idlewild Historic & Cultural Center and Museum. Mabel Williams, who in her writings acknowledged the double oppression faced by black women, was sometimes asked how she felt about working in the shadow of her husband. She discussed her reaction to that question during a speaking engagement that was recorded and posted to Freedom Archives. "The power structure used that, I think, to split up our movement," she said. "I feel fine. I'm fighting for my rights just like he's fighting for his. We're fighting together for the rights of our people." Mabel Williams will be buried in Monroe, at her husband's side. (For details about services planned for Mabel Williams in Detroit and Monroe, click here.)

Carl Braden American activist Carl Braden Born June 24, 1914 New Albany, Indiana USA Died February 8, 1975 (aged 60) Louisville, Kentucky, USA Movement Civil Rights Movement and Peace Movement Spouse(s) Anne Braden Children children James Braden, b. 1951; Elizabeth Braden, b. 1960 and Anita Braden b. 1953 - d. 1964 Carl Braden (June 24, 1914 - February 8, 1975) was born in New Albany, Indiana, and died in Louisville, Kentucky. He was a left-wing trade unionist and social justice activist. He worked for the Louisville Herald-Post, Cincinnati Enquirer (1937-45), and Louisville Times. He also wrote for other news services including the Harlan Daily Enterprise, the Knoxville Journal, the New York Daily News, the Chicago Tribune, the St. Louis Globe-Democrat, Newsweek, and the Federated Press. In 1948, while working as a reporter in Kentucky, he met and married fellow journalist Anne Gambrell McCarty. The Bradens had three children: James, born in 1951, a 1972 Rhodes Scholar, and a 1980 graduate of Harvard Law School (where he preceded Barack Obama as editor of the Harvard Law Review), has lived and practiced law for over 25 years in San Francisco, California. Elizabeth, born in 1960, has worked as a teacher in many countries around the world, serving as of 2006 in that capacity in rural Ethiopia. Anita, born in 1953, died of a pulmonary disorder at the age of 11. While raising their children, Carl and his wife Anne Braden remained deeply involved in the civil rights cause and the subsequent social movements it prompted from the 1960s to the 1970s, because of this they were frequent targets for attacks from southern white supremacists. Contents The Wade incident Edit In 1954, as a method of protesting the rigid practice of racial segregation in neighborhoods, the Bradens arranged to purchase a house in an all-white neighborhood of Louisville and deed it over to Andrew Wade and his wife Charlotte, who were African-American. White segregationists lashed out - initially by shooting out the windows of the house and burning a cross in front of it - and finally drove the Wades out of the home by bombing it. Carl's wife, Anne, carefully chronicled the ordeal and used it as the basis for her book The Wall Between, published in 1958. As a result of their actions, Carl Braden was charged with sedition, since working for racial integration was interpreted by many southern whites as an outright sign of communist support. He was sentenced to 15 years and ended up serving eight months before he was released on the highest bond ever set in Kentucky up to that time. In 1967, the Bradens were again charged with sedition for protesting the practice of strip-mining in Pike County, Kentucky. They used this case to test the Kentucky sedition law, which was eventually ruled unconstitutional. The Bradens dedicated their lives to impelling whites into the cause of justice for all people. After Carl's death, Anne Braden remained active in networks of anti-racist work. Early activism Edit In 1948, Carl Braden along with his wife Anne involved themselves in Henry Wallace's run on the Progressive Party for the presidency. Soon after Wallace's defeat, they left mainstream journalism to apply their talent as writers to the interracial left wing of the labor movement through the FE (Farm and Equipment Workers) Union, representing Louisville's International Harvester employees, Catherine Fosl, Subversive Southerner (Palgrave, 2002). Later activism Edit The Bradens were Blacklisted from local employment in Kentucky. They took jobs as field organizers for the Southern Conference Educational Fund (SCEF), developing their own media attention through SCEF's monthly newspaper, The Southern Patriot, and through numerous pamphlets and press releases publicizing major civil-rights campaigns. The Bradens were acclaimed by young student activists of the 1960s and among the Civil Rights Movement's most dedicated white allies. The Southern Christian Leadership Conference hosted a reception honoring Frank Wilkinson and Carl Braden on April 30, 1961, the day before they went to jail for defying the House Un-American Activities Committee. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Dr. James Dombrowski were present at this reception honoring Wilkinson and Braden. Death Edit Carl Braden died on February 8, 1975, and is buried in Eminence Cemetery in Henry County, Eminence, Kentucky. See also Edit History of Louisville, Kentucky

Simpkins' father, C. O. Simpkins, Sr., is a dentist from Shreveport, Louisiana, who served a single term from 1992 to 1996 as a Democratic member of the Louisiana House of Representatives from the heavily African American District 4.[1] His mother, the former Dorothy Herndon, is a social worker, also originally from Chicago. Until he was fourteen, Simpkins, lived with his family in Shreveport, at the time a heavily segregated city. Simpkins, Sr., took an active role in the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. Two of their family homes in Shreveport were bombed. The senior Simpkins' malpractice insurance was cancelled and he was denied renewal because he was listed as No. 1 on the death list of racist elements. These events forced the Simpkinses to leave Louisiana. The senior Simpkins later returned to Shreveport; at the age of eighty-eight in a 2013 television interview he denounced the United States Supreme Court decision that invalidated an enforcement provision of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 with the declaration, "It's time to fight again." Simpkins, II, received his undergraduate degree from Amherst College in Amherst, Massachusetts, having graduated with honors in chemistry. In his senior year at Amherst he began work on the biography of American saxophonist and composer John Coltrane. After graduation from Amherst, he earned his medical degree from Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, from which he graduated in 1974. At Harvard, he finished the book Coltrane: A Biography, which was published in 1975. Another biography of Coltrane, Chasin' the Trane by J. C. Thomas was published in the same year. It is not clear which book was published first. Coltrane: A Biography was well received by major media critics such as Mel Watkins who wrote in The New York Times Saturday book review section, "Dr. Simpkins very often accomplishes something that few other jazz biographers have done: He narratively simulates the emotional effect of the subject's music." Other favorable reviews included: Berkley Barb "We are always made to see the political and cultural context in which Trane lived. Blues, religion, black power, Africa... In reading it, one not only learns about Trane, but senses what it was like to hear him. To be alive with him...At last a fine Coltrane Biography." Amsterdam News (New York) "This book reveals Dr. Simpkins as a literary talent worthy of attention" Essence Magazine "Coltrane? What do I say? One helluva book." Ediciones Jucar, published a Spanish translation in 1985. A review was published in the June 3, 2014 online version of the Paris Review by documentarian Sam Stephenson. http://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2014/06/03/an-absolute-truth-on-writing-a-life-of-coltrane/ Coltrane biography Edit The book includes many first-hand interviews with notable individuals, including Coltrane's first wife, Naima. Coltrane: A Biography also demonstrates the major influence of Christianity, Islam and Hinduism on the jazz musicians of the time. This documentation has special significance in understanding the dynamics of the expansion of Islam and current geopolitics. The influence of Black Nationalism, rooted in the teaching of Marcus Garvey, is expressed by Coltrane through his admiration for Malcolm X. The book contains engaging information about the experimental composer and musicians, Sun Ra and Ornette Coleman. Coltrane's strong affirmation of the African-American struggle for freedom was revealed in greater detail in his 1962 letter to jazz journalist Don DeMichael. Inexplicably this letter, written with passion by Coltrane was not included in later Coltrane biographies. The significance of this letter was the focus of a chapter in a book entitled "John Coltrane & Black America's Quest for Freedom" by Leonard Brown PhD a professor and musician at Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts. This chapter also contains a brief interview with Simpkins about his book. Surgical career Edit Simpkins' completed his surgical training in 1980 at St. Luke's Hospital in New York City and Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn. After his surgical training he did research fellowships at the Boston University School of Medicine and the Naval Medical Research Institute in Bethesda, Maryland. While in the United States Navy, Simpkins achieved the rank of Commander and received two commendations for excellence in research. Simpkins is board certified in General Surgery with certification in critical care. He is also a Fellow of the American College of Surgeons and an honorary member of the Eastern Association for the Surgery of Trauma. Dr. Simpkins has consistently been a strong advocate for the provision of the best care possible for patients. This advocacy led to retaliation at the now defunct D.C. General Hospital in Washington, D.C., where he worked from 1987 to 1991. D C General retaliated by sending misleading and false information to the National Practitioner's databank without any basis or hospital process and in violation of its bylaws. Dr. Simpkins sued the databank and DC General Hospital in U.S. District Court. He won after the actions of the defendants were determined to have been "capricious and arbitrary". Dr. Simpkins' name was ordered removed from the databank. He may be the only physician whose name was ever removed from this listing. Simpkins' victimization by DC General Hospital and subsequent legal victory was celebrated by organizations that had been formed to defend physicians against "sham peer review". Sham peer review or malicious peer review is a name given to the abuse of a medical peer review process to attack a doctor for personal or other non-medical reasons. Dr. Lawrence Huntoon Chairman of the American Association of Physicians and Surgeons Committee to Combat Sham Peer Review has written extensively on this subject, http://www.aapsonline.org/index.php/article/sham_peer_review_resources_physicians/ Simpkins' case can be found on the websites of other organizations that have been formed in the wake of numerous instances of hospital processes that are manipulated to serve the self-interest of internal hospital forces, individual physicians and staff rather than the interests of patients. Examples of these organizations are: The Center for Peer Review Justice (http://www.peerreview.org/) and The Semmelweis Society (http://semmelweis.org/join-ssi/shammed-physician-cases/) named after the Hungarian physician, Ignaz Semmelweis who was attacked by the medical establishment because of his campaign to require that surgeons wash their hands before operating, an obvious practice today that was not in favor in the mid 19th century. He has made original scientific contributions concerning the pathophysiology of shock and violence prevention. In 1993, he designed and established the Violence Intervention Program (VIP) which continues at the R. Adams Cowley Shock Trauma Center in Baltimore, Maryland. Under this program a masters level social worker, Ms. Mary Hampton, interviewed hospitalized victims when they recovered sufficiently to converse. From this interview Ms. Hampton would obtain an extensive personal history and an individualized plan of intensive case management and counseling. After discharge from the hospital, the intervention continued with Ms. Hampton making home visits and conducting group sessions. The purpose of the intervention was to prepare the patient for employment and maintenance of employment once a job was secured. The first year results were encouraging. Simpkins left Shock Trauma for the State University of New York School of Medicine in Buffalo. Simpkins remained in Buffalo from 1994 to 2000. His studies of resuscitation fluids began there when he became interested in the effect of suspending cells in Ringer's lactate. Ringer's lactate is the resuscitation fluid recommended by the American College of Surgeons for patients who have lost a large amount of blood. He was motivated to study resuscitation fluids because of patients he had seen die even after the successful surgical repair of their injuries. Simpkins felt that the cause of these deaths could be found in the adverse effects of fluids used to restore lost bloodvolume. Also while seeing trauma patients in the Emergency Department of the Erie County Medical Center Dr. Simpkins was told by several patients and a husband and wife that the police had pepper sprayed them in the nose and mouth while handcuffed. Some patients reported that while handcuffed their eyelids were forced open while a policeman sprayed pepper spray into their eye. Simpkins noted that these patients had intense and painful inflammation localized to the nose and mouth that exceeded the expected response to pepper spray discharged at a short distance from the face. Simpkins concluded that these injuries were consistent with the patient's stories. Reports of his observations in the press led to an investigation of the Buffalo City Police Department by the US Department of Justice. Complaints of the misuse of pepper spray stopped soon after this investigation, that found the Department at fault. Simpkins continued his studies on Violence Prevention by collaborating with the departments of Social Work and Anthropology at the State University of New York at Buffalo. One of the results of these studies conducted with John Wodarski PhD was the finding of untreated psychiatric pathology in victims of violence. Also anthropologist Robert Knox Dentan PhD exposed him to the existence of still extant societies in which physical violence was not practiced. With these studies Simpkins realized that the problem of violence in the United States was primarily a problem of mental health that stemmed from sociological conditions and societal values. In 2006 Carnell Cooper MD who assumed the leadership of the Violence Intervention Program after Simpkins' departure from the University of Maryland School of Medicine at Baltimore published a study of the efficacy of the Violence Intervention Program that Simpkins had established. This study entitled, "Hospital Based Violence Intervention Programs Work", was published in the Journal of Trauma Volume 61 pages 534-537. The result of the study was that the program led to a significant reduction in the number of arrests for a violent crime and a reduction in the incidents of repeat violence requiring hospitalization. These reductions led to substantial savings in costs for incarceration and hospitalization for the state of Maryland. The program continues today. After leaving Buffalo Simpkins continued his research into resuscitation fluids while holding teaching positions as a trauma surgeon at the Nassau University Medical Center in East Meadow, New York and Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center in Lubbock Texas. He returned to his hometown, Shreveport, Louisiana in 2004 as the Chief of Trauma and Surgical Critical Care. While at LSU his leadership resulted in the restoration of the institution's certification by the American College of Surgeons as an adult level one trauma center. Simpkins' leadership also resulted in the granting of a new designation to LSU Health Sciences Center as a pediatric level one-trauma center. In addition he established the Surgical Critical Care Team and collaborated with the hospital Infection Control Committee, and SICU nurses to reduce the previously high infection rate to rates that were consistently well below the national average. He established a Violence Prevention Program and a monthly statewide Trauma/Critical Care Teleconference. However while at LSU in spite of his successes in modernizing and upgrading the program Simpkins met fierce oppositionfrom some of the established faculty to the changes he had made to improve the patient care in the trauma program. Another source of opposition was the written reports Simpkins made to the appropriate officials within LSU of incidents of patient neglect and incompetence on the part of some of the faculty who treated trauma patients. He demanded respect for patients in the Emergency Department and opposed physical abuse of patients in the Emergency Department, an ongoing practice in the ER that was permitted by the institutional leadership. The persistent opposition of the leadership to Dr. Simpkins led to an incident in 2006 in which the hospital credentialing process was maliciously exploited in an attempt to discredit him. Simpkins again was a victim of sham peer review. Simpkins attempted to address the falsehoods that were generated from these actions through internal processes ultimately writing letters to the LSU Board and President in an appeal to be treated fairly. When there was no response he sued LSU Health Sciences Center. In spite of the lawsuit the leadership and faculty allies in Shreveport persisted with their actions. While the leadership fiercely opposed him Simpkins was recognized for his teaching skills by the LSU students and surgery residents who awarded him with the "Best Faculty Teacher Award" in 2007. In addition, on Christmas 2007 Simpkins was given a tribute by the nurses in the ICU that stated in part, May These Seven Little Candles, Represent Seven Days a Week, That You Often Were The Only One, A Trauma Stat Could Seek Your Sole Focus Was On Saving Once Again Another Man, No One Saw The Candle Burning, At Both Ends We Understand. In July 2008, the LSU hospital administration gave Dr. Simpkins the "Team Recognition Award" for "...commitment to excellence in the care and treatment of our patients, their families and our guests." The award further noted his "... positive attitude and caring spirit". In 2009 Simpkins five-year contract with LSU Health Sciences Center expired and was not renewed without explanation. After his departure several unaddressed adverse events occurred in the management of trauma and other patients. Physical abuse of patients also continued. By 2012 LSU Health Sciences Center had lost its level one status in both adult and pediatric trauma.

Born on July 12, 1899, in Lowndes County, Alabama, E.D. Nixon went on to work as a Pullman porter, later becoming a community activist in Montgomery with leadership positions in the NAACP and the Voters League. He was key in bailing Rosa Parks out of jail and positioning her case to spark the Montgomery Bus Boycott, recruiting Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. as well. Nixon died on February 25, 1987. Background Edgar Daniel Nixon was born on July 12, 1899, in Lowndes County, Alabama, to Sue Ann Chappell and Wesley M. Nixon. His mother died when Nixon was a boy, and he later lived in Montgomery during his teens. Nixon grew up to be a statuesque young man who found employment working as a Pullman porter toward the beginning of the 1920s. Nixon became involved with the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, an African-American union founded and presided over by A. Philip Randolph. The BSCP president inspired Nixon to action, and he went on to become the leader of the BSCP Alabama branch and a thoughtful, empowering community activist who largely influenced the civil rights movement. NAACP Leader and Candidate During the early 1940s, E.D. Nixon wrote a letter to Eleanor Roosevelt calling for an establishment of a USO Club for African-American servicemen. She took action on his request, and the two later coincidentally met when she was riding on a train and he was working as a porter, beginning a friendship. Nixon also helped to organize the Montgomery Voters League, becoming its president and leading a march of more than 700 citizens to the Montgomery County Municipal Court House, calling for an end to unfair practices that blocked African-American voting rights. Around the same time he was elected to head the Montgomery chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, later becoming president of the organization's entire Alabama branch. Nixon was a shrewd strategist, and promised one year that he would mobilize African-American votes to support a police commissioner candidate in exchange for black officers being hired on the force. Nixon also ran for county office in 1954, the same year he was chosen as the Alabama Journal's Man of the Year; he lost the election only by a slim margin. Montgomery Bus Boycott Nixon was looking for a way to formally challenge the city's segregationist laws. On December 1, 1955, when fellow NAACP member Rosa Parks refused once again to surrender her seat on a bus to a white passenger, she was arrested. Nixon played a key role in providing bail for Parks and he also enlisted the aid of white attorney Clifford Durr and his spouse Virginia. Nixon believed that the event could spur a boycott of the area's bus lines and be processed via legal channels, convincing Parks of the power of her case. He also enlisted the aid of a new, young preacher at the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., to lead the boycott. As a result Nixon, King and minister Ralph D. Abernathy helped to form the Montgomery Improvement Association, with Nixon serving as treasurer. The Montgomery Bus Boycott lasted for more than 380 days, with the African-American community enduring a host of travails that included harassment and violent attacks. Nixon's home was firebombed two days after King's, and he was indicted for violating a state anti-boycott statute. Yet the boycott persevered and the city was eventually forced to lift its bus segregation laws. Split With Leaders Nixon split from the MIA in 1957, protesting class- and education-based prejudices in leadership and the condescending treatment he felt he'd received. He continued his community work and became a public-housing recreation director after his retirement as a porter. Nixon eventually received an honorary doctorate from Alabama State University, in addition to other accolades. He was married twice. His first wife, Alease, gave birth to their son, E.D. Nixon Jr., in 1928 and passed in 1934. Nixon and his second wife, Arlette, worked together in the civil rights movement. E.D. Nixon died in Montgomery on February 25, 1987, at the age of 87. Related Videos Montgomery Bus Boycott Montgomery Bus Boycott (TV-14; 3:51)

Benjamin O. Davis, Jr. is remembered for many things: Being the first Black Air Force General, leading the Tuskegee Airmen flight squadron and standing up to the military establishment in advancing the cause of Black soldiers. More than that, he is a symbol of the ability of a Black man to persevere through obstacles on the path towards excellence. Benjamin Oliver Davis Jr. was born in Washington. D.C. on December 18, 1912, the son of Benjamin O. Davis, Sr. and Elnora Dickerson Davis. His father was a renowned military officer, the first Black General in the United States Army. Benjamin, Sr. served in various capacities (beginning in the Spanish-American war) including serving in one of the original Buffalo Soldier regiments. Unfortunately, Elnora died from complications from childbirth in 1916 when Benjamin, Jr. was four years old. When Benjamin, Jr. (hereinafter just Davis) was 13 years old, he attended a barnstorming exhibition at Bolling Field in Washington, D.C. (now Bolling Air Force base). One of the pilots offered him the opportunity to accompany him on a ride in his plane. Benjamin enjoyed it so much that he became determined to pilot a plane himself one day. Benjamin O. Davis, Sr. and Benjamin O. Davis, Jr. - Great Black Heroes Benjamin O. Davis, Sr. and Benjamin O. Davis, Jr. With his father moving around in his military duties, he attended Central High School in Cleveland, Ohio and graduated in 1929. He enrolled Western Reserve University (1929-1930) and later moved on to the University of Chicago (1930-1932). Still desiring to serve as a military pilot he contacted Illinois Representative Oscar De Priest (the first Black alderman in Chicago, and at the time, the only Black serving in Congress). De Priest sponsored him for a spot in the United States Military Academy in West Point, New York. His time in the Academy was harsh, hostile and relentless in the challenges and obstacles it put in his way. Throughout his four years, none of his classmates would speak to him outside the line of duty. None would be his roommate and none would sit with him to eat. Nonetheless, he graduated in 1936, finishing 35th in his class of 278. When he received his commission as a second lieutenant in the infantry he became one of only two Black combat officers in the United States Army - the other being his father Benjamin O. Davis, Sr. "The courage, tenacity, and intelligence with which he conquered a problem incomparably more difficult than plebe year won for him the sincere admiration of his classmates, and his single-minded determination to continue in his chosen career cannot fail to inspire respect wherever fortune may lead him." — "Howitzer, Upon graduation, he married Agatha Scot, a young lady whom he had dated while attending the Academy. Because of his high standing in his graduating class, Davis should have had his choice of assignments, but when he opted to apply for the Army Air Corps he was denied because the Air Corps did not have a Black squadron. He was instead assigned to the 24th Infantry Regiment, an all-Black division located in Fort Benning, Georgia. Although an officer, he was not permitted to enter the officers club on the base. After attending the U.S. Army Infantry School, he followed in his father's footsteps and traveled to Tuskegee, Alabama to teach a military tactics course at the Tuskegee Institute. On June 19, 1939 he was promoted to the rank of First Lieutenant and subsequently up to Captain, Major and then temporarily to Lieutenant Colonel (a rank he would hold permanently in June 1948). Despite the prestige of being an instructor, Davis still wanted to fly. Fortunately, others had the same desire and pressure was mounted on the Roosevelt administration to allow for greater participation by Blacks as the country was moving towards war. The administration, therefore, directed the War Department to create a Black flying unit. To his delight, Davis was assigned to undergo training in the first class at the Tuskegee Army Air Field. In 1942 he finished his training and was one of only five Blacks to complete the course and then became the first Black Officer to make a solo flight in an Army Air Corps plane. He was promoted to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel and in July 1942 he was assigned as the commander of the 99th Pursuit Squadron, known by history as the Tuskegee Airmen. In 1943, the 99th Pursuit Squadron was assigned first to Tunisia, then to a combat mission in the German-held Island of Pantelleria and finally took part in the allied invasion of Sicily. In September, Davis was recalled to to Tuskegee to take over a larger all-black unit preparing for combat in Europe, the 332nd Fighter Group. Benjamin O. Davis, Jr. and Edward Gleed - Great Black Heroes Benjamin O. Davis, Jr. and Edward Gleed Almost immediately, however, problems arose for Davis. A number of Senior Army Air Corps officers complained to Army Chief of Staff George Marshall that the 99th Fighter Squadron had under-performed and should thereafter be taken out of combat. Major General Edwin House, Commander of the XII Air Support Command wrote in September 1943 that "the Negro type has not the proper reflexes to make a first-class fighter pilot." A furious Davis argued that no information had been presented to him that showed anything to suggest that the Black fighter pilots had performed unsatisfactorily. He presented his case to the War Department and held a press conference at the Pentagon. General Marshall did call for an inquiry but allowed the 99th Squadron to continue to fight while the investigation continued. When the results of the inquiry came back, the 99th Squadron was vindicated and found to have performed similarly to other fighter squadrons. Any continuing arguments ceased in January 1944 when the 99th shot down 12 German fighters in a two day period. Soon thereafter Colonel Davis and the 332nd Fighter Group arrived in Italy where they were based at Ramitelli Airfield. The 332nd, called the Red Tails because of the distinctive paint scheme on the tails of their planes, performed well as bomber escorts, often being requested by bomber pilots because of their insistence on not abandoning the bombers. The group would eventually move into the use of state of the art P-47 Thunderbolts. Davis participated in numerous missions, flying in P-47 Thunderbolts and P-51 Mustangs. He was awarded the Silver Star for a mission in Austria and won the Distinguished Flying Cross for a bomber-escort mission to Munich, Germany in June, 1944. In 1945, Colonel Davis was placed in charge of 477th Bombardment Group, the group being comprised entirely of Blacks, stationed at Godman Field in Kentucky. After the end of World War II, the new President Harry Truman dispatched an order to fully integrate the military branches. Colonel Davis was called upon to help draft the new "Air Force" plan for carrying out this order. For the next few years he was assigned to the Pentagon and to posts overseas. When the Korean War broke out, he once again participated in the fighting, manning a F-86 fighter jet and leading the 51st Fighter-Interceptor Wing. Benjamin O. Davis, Jr. - Great Black HeroesIn the summer of 1949, Davis was assigned to attend the Air War College. He was the first Black permitted to attend the college and it was significant because further promotion was dependent upon successful graduation. Despite dealing with the racial climate in place in Montgomery, Alabama, where the war college took place, he persevered and excelled and upon graduation received an assignment to serve at the United States Air Force Headwaters at the Pentagon.

Anna Arnold Hedgeman. Oil on canvas, 1945, by Betsy Graves Reyneau. National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; gift of the Harmon Foundation. Hedgeman, Anna Arnold (5 July 1899-17 Jan. 1990), educator, policy consultant, and political activist, was born Anna Marie Arnold in Marshalltown, Iowa, the daughter and eldest child of William James Arnold II, an entrepreneur, and Marie Ellen Parker Arnold. The Arnolds subsequently moved to Anoka, Minnesota, becoming the only black family in that town. Young Anna graduated from high school in 1918 and went on to attend Hamline University in nearby Saint Paul, becoming the college's first black graduate in 1922. When discrimination prevented her from obtaining a teaching job in Minnesota, Anna Arnold accepted a position at Rust College, a historically black college in Holly Springs, Mississippi. She was horrified by the workings of Jim Crow, and after two years she returned north, accepting a job as an executive director of a YWCA in Springfield, Ohio. She worked for the organization for the next several years, at segregated black YWCA branches in Ohio, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and New York. While working at the Harlem branch of the YWCA in New York City, she met Merritt Hedgeman, a musician. They married in 1933. The couple did not have children. During the Great Depression, Anna Arnold Hedgeman worked for New York City's Emergency Relief Bureau, which later became the Department of Welfare, as its first consultant on racial problems. She investigated the "Bronx Slave Markets," in which black women were hired out by the day to serve as domestics in near-slave conditions. She also completed the first study of the living conditions of Puerto Ricans in New York and advocated successfully for civil service appointments for black and Puerto Rican New Yorkers. During World War II Hedgeman served as a civil defense official for New York, New Jersey, and Delaware, focusing on the needs and struggles of black workers who found much defense-related employment closed to them. In 1944 she moved to Washington, D.C., becoming the executive director of the National Council for a Permanent Fair Employment Practices Commission. In 1946, after the legislation failed to pass, she became assistant dean of women at Howard University. In 1948 she became the executive director of Harry S. Truman's presidential reelection campaign, taking responsibility for enlisting black Americans in the effort. Hedgeman's work on behalf of President Truman's successful reelection bid led to her appointment as an executive in the Federal Security Agency (later the Department of Health, Education and Welfare) in 1949. She welcomed foreign visitors to the nation's capital and was sent to India to represent her country. She always spoke respectfully about the United States even as she pointed out its shortcomings where race was concerned. During this time Hedgeman developed an international consciousness and a feminist consciousness. In these Cold War years she also drew the attention of the FBI, which for many years kept note of her paid work, volunteer work, and international travel, concluding that she was a fiercely loyal, if occasionally obstreperous, American. In 1954 Hedgeman became the first African American and first woman appointed to a New York City mayoral cabinet, that of Mayor Robert F. Wagner, Jr. She became, once again, a forceful advocate for New York City's poor. She also ran unsuccessfully for political office in New York City three times. Having received an honorary doctorate from Hamline University in 1948, she became widely known in Harlem, her adopted home, as "Dr. Hedgeman." Hedgeman was as conscious of the workings of gender as she was of the workings of race, acutely aware that the two could rarely be disentangled. She gave lectures on women's rights long before the feminist movement took hold, and in 1960 she was invited to be the keynote speaker at the first Conference of the Women of Africa and African Descent in Accra, Ghana, following that country's independence. Later, in 1966, she would be one of the founders of the National Organization for Women, pushing the group to focus its efforts most on the needs of poor women. A devout Methodist, Hedgeman found employment in religious organizations in the early 1960s, first with the higher education division of the American Missionary Association, where she worked on exchanges between white and predominantly black colleges and between colleges in Africa and in the United States. She then worked for the Commission on Religion and Race of the National Council of Churches (NCC), taking responsibility for outreach on projects of racial reconciliation. Hedgeman was a significant factor in the 1963 March on Washington. At the march organizer A. Philip Randolph's invitation, she joined the administrative committee for the march. She also took responsibility, in her job at the NCC, for inviting, or better yet, summoning, thirty thousand white Protestants to the event. Drawing on her longstanding relationships in government and in the black, religious, and women's communities she had served, Hedgeman worked tirelessly to get the message out to white Christians about the hazards of racism, and the NCC later estimated that forty thousand people, the majority of them white, had marched under its banner. Hedgeman, to put it simply, recruited the majority of white attendees to the March on Washington. She also advocated, with some limited success, for the inclusion of more African-American women in the planning and implementation of the march, and in the immediate aftermath she played a central role in the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. In 1966, when young African Americans began to make demands for black power, Hedgeman was one of the few of her generation to urge her peers to listen carefully to these activists. She developed her own Christian theology and was the only woman and the only non-clergy to sign the black power statement supported by hundreds of black clergy that appeared as a full page in the New York Times. After her retirement from the NCC in 1967, Anna and Merritt founded the Hedgeman Consultant Service. For the next dozen years she served as a consultant on race issues for colleges, schools, churches, and municipalities. She received countless awards from religious, civic, and civil rights organizations, including an Extraordinary Woman of Achievement Award from the National Conference of Christians and Jews. On 5 July 1986, her eighty-seventh birthday, Hedgeman was admitted to the Greater Harlem Nursing Home. She died in Harlem Hospital less than four years later, at age ninety. Anna Arnold Hedgeman played a vital role in more than six decades of racial justice efforts. Her life story embodies the enormous changes America underwent in the twentieth century as well as the still unfinished social justice work that remained on her passing. Bibliography More than two hundred boxes of Hedgeman's papers are held at the National Afro-American Museum and Cultural Center, Wilberforce, Ohio. Because they are unprocessed, they are not readily searchable. Both the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York Public Library, hold far smaller but well-cataloged collections of Hedgeman's papers. Transcripts of oral interviews with Hedgeman are available at the Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Howard University, Washington, D.C. She wrote two books about her life, The Trumpet Sounds: A Memoir of Negro Leadership (1964) and The Gift of Chaos: Decades of American Discontent (1977), and she was in the process of writing a book on African-American women's history when she died. A few contemporary scholars of Hedgeman's work include Julie A. Gallagher, Black Women and Politics in New York City (2012), and Thomas J. Sugrue, Sweet Land of Liberty: The Forgotten Struggle for Civil Rights in the North (2008). Also see the sole biography of Hedgeman, Jennifer Scanlon, We Have a Dream: Anna Arnold Hedgeman and America's Freedom Struggles (forthcoming). An obituary appeared in the New York Times, 26 Jan. 1990. Jennifer Scanlon Back to the top Citation: Jennifer Scanlon. "Hedgeman, Anna Arnold"; http://www.anb.org/articles/15/15-01364.html; American National Biography Online Update October 2014. Access Date: Mon Feb 06 2017 14:24:23 GMT-0600 (CST) Copyright © 2014 American Council of Learned Societies. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. Privacy Policy.

Synopsis Born in Virginia in 1912, Dorothy Height was a leader in addressing the rights of both women and African Americans as the president of the National Council of Negro Women. In the 1990s, she drew young people into her cause in the war against drugs, illiteracy and unemployment. The numerous honors bestowed upon her include the Presidential Medal of Freedom (1994) and the Congressional Gold Medal (2004). She died on April 20, 2010, in Washington, D.C. Early Life Born on March 24, 1912, in Richmond, Virginia, African-American activist Dorothy Height spent her life fighting for civil rights and women's rights. The daughter of a building contractor and a nurse, Height moved with her family to Rankin, Pennsylvania, in her youth. There, she attended racially integrated schools. In high school, Height showed great talent as an orator. She also became socially and politically active, participating in anti-lynching campaigns. Height's skills as a speaker took her all the way to a national oratory competition. Winning the event, she was awarded a college scholarship. Height had applied to and been accepted to Barnard College in New York, but as the start of school neared, the college changed its mind about her admittance, telling Height that they had already met their quota for black students. Undeterred, she applied to New York University, where she would earn two degrees: a bachelor's degree in education in 1930 and a master's degree in psychology in 1932. Tireless Activist After working for a time as a social worker, Height joined the staff of the Harlem YWCA in 1937. She had a life-changing encounter not long after starting work there. Height met educator and founder of the National Council of Negro Women Mary McLeod Bethune when Bethune and U.S. first lady Eleanor Roosevelt came to visit her facility. Height soon volunteered with the NCNW and became close to McLeod. One of Height's major accomplishments at the YWCA was directing the integration of all of its centers in 1946. She also established its Center for Racial Justice in 1965, which she ran until 1977. In 1957, Height became the president of the National Council of Negro Women. Through the center and the council, she became one of the leading figures of the Civil Rights Movement. Height worked with Martin Luther King Jr., A. Philip Randolph, Roy Wilkins, Whitney Young, John Lewis and James Farmer—sometimes called the "Big Six" of the Civil Rights Movement—on different campaigns and initiatives. In 1963, Height was one of the organizers of the famed March on Washington. She stood close to Martin Luther King Jr. when he delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech. Despite her skills as a speaker and a leader, Height was not invited to talk that day. Height later wrote that the March on Washington event had been an eye-opening experience for her. Her male counterparts "were happy to include women in the human family, but there was no question as to who headed the household," she said, according to the Los Angeles Times. Height joined in the fight for women's rights. In 1971, she helped found the National Women's Political Caucus with Gloria Steinem, Betty Friedan and Shirley Chisholm. While she retired from the YWCA in 1977, Height continued to run the NCNW for two more decades. One of her later projects was focused on strengthening the African-American family. In 1986, Height organized the first Black Family Reunion, a celebration of traditions and values which is still held annually. Later Years

Synopsis Born on July 10, 1875, in Mayesville, South Carolina, Mary McLeod Bethune was a child of former slaves. She graduated from the Scotia Seminary for Girls in 1893. Believing that education provided the key to racial advancement, Bethune founded the Daytona Normal and Industrial Institute in 1904, which later became Bethune-Cookman College. She founded the National Council of Negro Women in 1935. Bethune died in 1955. Early Life Born Mary Jane Mcleod on July 10, 1875, in Mayesville, South Carolina, Mary Mcleod Bethune was a leading educator and civil rights activist. She grew up in poverty, as one of 17 children born to former slaves. Everyone in the family worked, and many toiled in the fields, picking cotton. Bethune became the one and only child in her family to go to school when a missionary opened a school nearby for African-American children. Traveling miles each way, she walked to school each day and did her best to share her newfound knowledge with her family. Bethune later received a scholarship to the Scotia Seminary (now Barber-Scotia College), a school for girls in Concord, North Carolina. After graduating from the seminary in 1893, she went to the Dwight Moody's Institute for Home and Foreign Missions (also known as Moody Bible Institute) in Chicago. Bethune complete her studies there two years later. Returning to the South, she began her career as a teacher. Acclaimed Educator For nearly a decade, Bethune worked as an educator. She married fellow teacher Albertus Bethune in 1898. The couple had one son together—Albert Mcleod Bethune—before ending their marriage in 1907. She believed that education provided the key to racial advancement. To that end, Bethune founded the Daytona Normal and Industrial Institute for Negro Girls in Daytona, Florida, in 1904. Starting out with only five students, she helped grow the school to more 250 students over the next years. Bethune served as the school's president, and she remained its leader even after it was combined with the Cookman Institute for Men in 1923 (some sources say 1929). The merged institution became known as the Bethune-Cookman College. The college was one of the few places that African-American students could pursue a college degree. Bethune stayed with the college until 1942. Activist and Advisor In addition to her work at the school, Bethune did much to contribute to American society at large. She served as the president of the Florida chapter of the National Association of Colored Women for many years. In 1924, Bethune became the organization's national leader, beating out fellow reformer Ida B. Wells for the top post. Bethune also became involved in government service, lending her expertise to several presidents. President Calvin Coolidge invited her to participate a conference on child welfare. For President Herbert Hoover, she served on Commission on Home Building and Home Ownership and was appointed to a committee on child health. But her most significant roles in public service came from President Franklin D. Roosevelt. In 1935, Bethune became a special advisor to President Roosevelt on minority affairs. That same year, she also started up her own civil rights organization, the National Council of Negro Women. Bethune created this organization to represent numerous groups working on critical issues for African-American women. She received another appointment from President Roosevelt the following year. In 1936, she became the director of the Division of Negro Affairs of the National Youth Administration. One of her main concerns in this position was helping young people find job opportunities. In addition to her official role in the Roosevelt administration, Bethune became a trusted friend and adviser to both the president and his wife Eleanor Roosevelt. Later Years and Legacy One of the nation's leading educators and activists, Mary Mcleod Bethune spent much of the rest of her life devoted to social causes after leaving Bethune-Cookman College in 1942. She took up residence at its new National Council of Negro Women headquarters in a Washington, D.C., townhouse in 1943 and lived there for several years. An early member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, she helped represent the group at the 1945 conference on the founding of the United Nations along with W.E.B. DuBois. In the early 1950s, President Harry Truman appointed her to a committee on national defense and appointed her to serve as an official delegate to a presidential inauguration in Liberia. "I leave you a thirst for education. Knowledge is the prime need of the hour." Eventually returning to Florida in her retirement, Bethune died on May 18, 1955, in Daytona, Florida. She is remembered for her work to advance the rights of both African Americans and women. Before her death, Bethune penned "My Last Will and Testament," which served as a reflection on her own life and legacy in addition to addressing a few estate matters. Among her list of spiritual bequests, she wrote "I leave you a thirst for education. Knowledge is the prime need of the hour." Bethune closed with 'If I have a legacy to leave my people, it is my philosophy of living and serving." Since her passing, Bethune has been honored in many ways. In 1973, she was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame. The U.S. Postal Service issued a stamp with her likeness in 1985. In 1994, the U.S. Park Service bought the former headquarters of the NCNW. The site is now known as the Mary Mcleod Bethune Council House National Historic Site. Fact Check

Baker Ross Ross K. Baker is Professor of Political Science at Rutgers University. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania. He was a research associate at the Brookings Institution and has served on the staffs of five U.S. Senators and a member of the House. He was a Fulbright Lecturer in 1992 at the Swedish Institute of International Affairs. His most recent Capitol Hill service was with Senator Chuck Hagel, a Nebraska Republican in 2000 and with Senator Patrick J. Leahy, a Vermont Democrat. In 2008 he was Scholar-in-Residence in the Office of the Majority Leader of the Senate, Senator Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada. Professor Baker is currently a member of the Board of Contributors of USA Today. His most recent book is the 4th edition of House and Senate, (W.W. Norton: 2008) He is also author of Strangers on a Hill published in 2007 by W.W. Norton. Baker Ross's Recent Discussions

Civil rights activist Rosa Parks was born on February 4, 1913, in Tuskegee, Alabama. Her refusal to surrender her seat to a white passenger on a Montgomery, Alabama bus spurred a city-wide boycott. The city of Montgomery had no choice but to lift the law requiring segregation on public buses. Rosa Parks received many accolades during her lifetime, including the NAACP's highest award. Civil Rights Pioneer Famed civil rights activist Rosa Parks was born Rosa Louise McCauley on February 4, 1913, in Tuskegee, Alabama. Her refusal to surrender her seat to a white passenger on a public bus Montgomery, Alabama, spurred on a citywide boycott and helped launch nationwide efforts to end segregation of public facilities. 15 GALLERY 15 Images Early Life and Education Rosa Parks's childhood brought her early experiences with racial discrimination and activism for racial equality. After her parents separated, Rosa's mother moved the family to Pine Level, Alabama to live with her parents, Rose and Sylvester Edwards—both former slaves and strong advocates for racial equality; the family lived on the Edwards' farm, where Rosa would spend her youth. In one experience, Rosa's grandfather stood in front of their house with a shotgun while Ku Klux Klan members marched down the street. Taught to read by her mother at a young age, Rosa went on to attend a segregated, one-room school in Pine Level, Alabama, that often lacked adequate school supplies such as desks. African-American students were forced to walk to the 1st- through 6th-grade schoolhouse, while the city of Pine Level provided bus transportation as well as a new school building for white students. Through the rest of Rosa's education, she attended segregated schools in Montgomery, including the city's Industrial School for Girls (beginning at age 11). In 1929, while in the 11th grade and attending a laboratory school for secondary education led by the Alabama State Teachers College for Negroes, Rosa left school to attend to both her sick grandmother and mother back in Pine Level. She never returned to her studies; instead, she got a job at a shirt factory in Montgomery. In 1932, at age 19, Rosa met and married Raymond Parks, a barber and an active member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. With Raymond's support, Rosa earned her high school degree in 1933. She soon became actively involved in civil rights issues by joining the Montgomery chapter of the NAACP in 1943, serving as the chapter's youth leader as well as secretary to NAACP President E.D. Nixon—a post she held until 1957. Ordered to the Back of the Bus The Montgomery City Code required that all public transportation be segregated and that bus drivers had the "powers of a police officer of the city while in actual charge of any bus for the purposes of carrying out the provisions" of the code. While operating a bus, drivers were required to provide separate but equal accommodations for white and black passengers by assigning seats. This was accomplished with a line roughly in the middle of the bus separating white passengers in the front of the bus and African-American passengers in the back. When an African-American passenger boarded the bus, they had to get on at the front to pay their fare and then get off and re-board the bus at the back door. When the seats in the front of the bus filled up and more white passengers got on, the bus driver would move back the sign separating black and white passengers and, if necessary, ask black passengers give up their seat. On December 1, 1955, after a long day's work at a Montgomery department store, where she worked as a seamstress, Rosa Parks boarded the Cleveland Avenue bus for home. She took a seat in the first of several rows designated for "colored" passengers. Though the city's bus ordinance did give drivers the authority to assign seats, it didn't specifically give them the authority to demand a passenger to give up a seat to anyone (regardless of color). However, Montgomery bus drivers had adopted the custom of requiring black passengers to give up their seats to white passengers, when no other seats were available. If the black passenger protested, the bus driver had the authority to refuse service and could call the police to have them removed. As the bus Rosa was riding continued on its route, it began to fill with white passengers. Eventually, the bus was full and the driver noticed that several white passengers were standing in the aisle. He stopped the bus and moved the sign separating the two sections back one row and asked four black passengers to give up their seats. Three complied, but Rosa refused and remained seated. The driver demanded, "Why don't you stand up?" to which Rosa replied, "I don't think I should have to stand up." The driver called the police and had her arrested. Later, Rosa recalled that her refusal wasn't because she was physically tired, but that she was tired of giving in. The police arrested Rosa at the scene and charged her with violation of Chapter 6, Section 11, of the Montgomery City Code. She was taken to police headquarters, where, later that night, she was released on bail. Montgomery Bus Boycott Montgomery Bus Boycott (TV-14; 3:51) For 382 days, almost the entire African-American population of Montgomery, Alabama, including leaders Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks, refused to ride on segregated buses, a turning point in the American civil rights movement. On the evening that Rosa Parks was arrested, E.D. Nixon, head of the local chapter of the NAACP, began forming plans to organize a boycott of Montgomery's city buses. Ads were placed in local papers, and handbills were printed and distributed in black neighborhoods. Members of the African-American community were asked to stay off city buses on Monday, December 5, 1955—the day of Rosa's trial—in protest of her arrest. People were encouraged to stay home from work or school, take a cab or walk to work. With most of the African-American community not riding the bus, organizers believed a longer boycott might be successful. On the morning of December 5, a group of leaders from the African-American community gathered at the Mt. Zion Church in Montgomery to discuss strategies, and determined that their boycott effort required a new organization and strong leadership. They formed the Montgomery Improvement Association, electing Montgomery newcomer Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. as minister of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church. The MIA believed that Rosa Parks's case provided an excellent opportunity to take further action to create real change. When Rosa arrived at the courthouse for trial that morning with her attorney, Fred Gray, she was greeted by a bustling crowd of around 500 local supporters, who rooted her on. Following a 30-minute hearing, Rosa was found guilty of violating a local ordinance and was fined $10, as well as a $4 court fee. Inarguably the biggest event of the day, however, was what Rosa's trial had triggered. The Montgomery Bus Boycott, as it came to be known, was a huge success. The city's buses were, by and large, empty. Some people carpooled and others rode in African-American-operated cabs, but most of the estimated 40,000 African-American commuters living in the city at the time had opted to walk to work that day—some as far as 20 miles. Due to the size and scope of, and loyalty to, boycott participation, the effort continued for several months. The city Montgomery had become a victorious eyesore, with dozens of public buses sitting idle, ultimately severely crippling finances for its transit company. With the boycott's progress, however, came strong resistance. Some segregationists retaliated with violence. Black churches were burned, and both Martin Luther King Jr.'s and E.D. Nixon's homes were destroyed by bombings. Still, further attempts were made to end the boycott. The insurance was canceled for the city taxi system that was used by African Americans. Black citizens were arrested for violating an antiquated law prohibiting boycotts. In response to the ensuing events, members of the African-American community took legal action. Armed with the Brown v. Board of Education decision, which stated that separate but equal policies had no place in public education, a black legal team took the issue of segregation on public transit systems to the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Alabama, Northern (Montgomery) Division; Rosa's attorney, Fred Gray, filed the suit. In June 1956, the district court declared racial segregation laws (also known as "Jim Crow laws") unconstitutional. The city of Montgomery appealed the court's decision shortly thereafter, but on November 13, 1956, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the lower court's ruling. With the transit company and downtown businesses suffering financial loss and the legal system ruling against them, the city of Montgomery had no choice but to lift its enforcement of segregation on public buses, and the boycott officially ended on December 20, 1956. The combination of legal action, backed by the unrelenting determination of the African-American community, made the 381-day Montgomery Bus Boycott one of the largest and most successful mass movements against racial segregation in history. Racial Discrimination Although she had become a symbol of the Civil Rights Movement, Rosa Parks suffered hardship in the months following her arrest in Montgomery and the subsequent boycott. She lost her department store job and her husband was fired after his boss forbade him to talk about his wife or their legal case. Unable to find work, they eventually left Montgomery; the couple, along with Rosa's mother, moved to Detroit, Michigan. There, Rosa made a new life for herself, working as a secretary and receptionist in U.S. Representative John Conyer's congressional office. She also served on the board of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America.

Conrad J. Lynn was born in 1908 in Newport, Rhode Island, to parents who had moved north from Georgia. His mother was a domestic worker and his father, a Republican, worked as a laborer. When he was a child, the family moved to Rockville Centre in Nassau County on Long Island. Lynn attended law school at Syracuse University on a debating scholarship, in 1932 becoming the first African American to graduate from the Syracuse University College of Law.[1] As a young man in the 1920s and 1930s, he was a member of the Communist Party, but he was ousted in the late 1930s because he had defied the party by supporting Trinidadian oil workers who went on strike against Britain.[1] He never rejoined.[2] Years later, the House Un-American Activities Committee was to describe him erroneously as "indiscriminate in support of Communist organizations."[3] Career as a lawyer and activist Edit African-American civil rights Edit In April 1947, Lynn participated in the Journey of Reconciliation, a challenge to Jim Crow laws that later came to be considered the first "freedom ride" of the American civil rights movement; it was a forerunner to the Freedom Rides of the early 1960s.[1][4] Sixteen civil rights activists, eight of them black and eight of them white, boarded Greyhound and Trailways buses and traveled through Virginia, North Carolina, Kentucky, and Tennessee to bring public attention to the reality of racial segregation and dramatize the South's widespread disregard of the 1946 U.S. Supreme Court decision Irene Morgan v. Commonwealth of Virginia. This held that the U.S. Constitution barred racial segregation in interstate transportation. Lynn was the first of the group to be arrested, for sitting in the white section of a Trailways bus departing from Richmond, Virginia. Lynn told the bus driver that the Supreme Court had ruled against segregation on interstate buses, but the driver responded that his employer was Trailways, not the Supreme Court, and he was following Trailways rules. After being released on bail in Richmond, Lynn traveled to Raleigh, North Carolina, where he joined his colleagues on the bus and completed the journey.[4] In 1958, Lynn became involved in the highly publicized North Carolina "Kissing Case", involving a pair of African-American boys, 7 and 9 years old, who were jailed, prosecuted and convicted of rape, and sentenced to reform school until age 21 after they playfully kissed (or were kissed by) a white girl their age as part of a game.[1][5] The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) could not enlist any of its attorneys to represent the boys and referred the case to Lynn. After learning that the boys had already been convicted and sentenced by a county juvenile court judge without having either legal counsel or an opportunity to confront their accusers, as required by the Sixth Amendment to the Constitution, Lynn appealed the conviction, but without result. He then contacted former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt for assistance; she urged President Dwight Eisenhower to intervene in the situation.[5] As a result of these efforts and international attention that Lynn and others generated for the case, which was embarrassing for the US government, after three months' detention the boys were pardoned by the governor of North Carolina and released.[1][6] The "Kissing Case" was Lynn's first collaboration with North Carolina civil rights activist Robert F. Williams.[7] In 1959, Lynn protested Williams' suspension from the NAACP, and urged the organization to adopt a more "militant program".[8] Lynn later represented Williams as his lawyer during the 1960s, when Williams, who had become increasingly militant, exiled himself in Cuba, China, and Tanzania to escape prosecution in the United States for a charge of kidnapping.[9] Lynn visited Williams in Cuba. In the mid-1960s, Lynn teamed with attorney William Kunstler to represent the Harlem Six (six black teenagers) in appealing their murder conviction for robbing a secondhand store and killing one of the store's proprietors.[10] The two attorneys believed that the teenagers had been framed. In the appeal filed in 1965, Lynn and Kunstler asked for the convictions to be overturned on the grounds that the Six had not had competent legal counsel for their trial. The convictions were reversed for a different reason - that some trial evidence had been inappropriately admitted. Retrials were ordered, beginning in November 1970, when two of the Six were retried. Lynn and Kunstler revealed their discovery that two prosecution witnesses had committed perjury in the first trial. After the trial concluded, the jury reported that it could not reach a verdict, so the trial was declared a mistrial. After another trial was held, again ending in a mistrial, the defendants were allowed to plead guilty to manslaughter in exchange for their immediate release from confinement.[10] Military draft Edit During World War II, Lynn represented his eldest brother Winfred Lynn in his resistance against the draft. Winfred Lynn refused induction into the United States Army as a protest against the Army's racial segregation, telling the government that he would gladly serve in the unsegregated Canadian Army, but would not serve in the segregated U.S. Army.[1][11] Conrad Lynn's decision to handle his brother's case was contrary to the advice of civil rights organizations such as the NAACP, which considered support of the U.S. war effort to be in the best interest of African Americans.[1] The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) also refused to take the case, but ACLU attorney Arthur Garfield Hays participated with Conrad Lynn in Winfred Lynn's defense. Socialist Party leader Norman Thomas and journalist Dwight MacDonald led a support effort under the name 'Lynn Committee to End Discrimination in the Armed Forces.' Winfred Lynn's case was based on a contention that racial discrimination in the military violated the Selective Service Act of 1940. After the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against Lynn in February 1944, opining that the Selective Service Act's ban on discrimination did not bar segregation, the plaintiffs appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. In 1945, the Supreme Court denied Winfred Lynn's certiorari request on the grounds that the case was moot because Winfred Lynn (who had been informed by an earlier court ruling that he needed to submit to military induction to keep his case alive) was by then in military service overseas.[12][13] Looking back on the case in 1973, Conrad Lynn told a reporter that the legal battle had served "to make the public — particularly the white majority — aware that black people resented segregation as a mark of inferiority" and had helped bring an end to segregation in the Army in 1948 under President Harry S. Truman.[11] Two decades later, in the 1960s, Lynn represented a number of men who resisted the draft due to their opposition to the Vietnam War.[1] In 1970 he argued the case of Gillette v. United States before the United States Supreme Court, challenging the constitutionality of the law that limited conscientious objector status to men who objected to war in general. He did not prevail in that case; the court's ruling in 1971 rejected all three arguments that had been advanced in support of selective conscientious objection.[14]

Synopsis Born on July 2, 1925, in Onalua, Belgian Congo (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo), Patrice Lumumba was a writer and civic organizer before co-founding the Congolese National Movement. He became the first prime minister of the Democratic Republic of Congo with the country's independence; yet massive unrest followed with other leaders' uprisings, along with U.S. and Belgian involvement. Lumumba was killed on January 17, 1961. Background and Early Career Future Prime Minister Patrice Émery Lumumba was born Élias Okit'Asombo on July 2, 1925, in the Kasai province of Belgian Congo (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo), in the village of Onalua. He was able to hone his love for literature and learning while attending missionary school and borrowing books to read. After some travels within his country and acquiring different languages, Lumumba became a postal service clerk during the mid-1940s in what is now Kinshasa, later working as an accountant in another region. He also wrote poems and essays for publication, earning acclaim, and became increasingly involved in political movements, keeping in mind the oppression endured by Africans from the Belgian colonial system. After having established himself as a leader in organizing unions, Lumumba co-established the Congolese National Movement in 1958. He called for countrywide unity, bringing together different ethnic backgrounds, and freedom from colonial atrocities, with major links to Pan-Africanist movements as well. Becomes Prime Minister On June 30, 1960, the Democratic Republic of Congo officially took its independence from Belgium, and, at 35 years old, Lumumba became the country's first prime minister. However, nationwide disarray was to follow with various leaders vying for power, including a Belgian-fortified secession of the region of Katanga, headed by Moise Tshombe. Lumumba called for United Nations aid to no avail and turned to the Soviet Union for military intervention, with the Congo thus caught in Cold War politics and Lumumba perceived by the U.S. as having communist ties. Years later it was revealed that a C.I.A. operative in the field during the Eisenhower administration was instructed to poison Lumumba; the agent recounted in a 2008 New York Times article he secretly chose not to do so, though some accounts clash with this. Death and Legacy With the country falling under the control of military leader Joseph Mobutu, Lumumba was captured and, though at one point escaping, was eventually taken to Katanga, where he was beaten and killed on January 17, 1961. His death ignited international outrage and years later continues to provoke dialogue on foreign investment in creating the turmoil seen after his rise to power and African independence in general. Congo soon endured the decades-long, highly-damaging reign of Joseph Mobutu, who would become known as Mobutu Sésé Seko. Lumumba, his story and vision have been chronicled in a number of literary works and films, including the 2001 book The Assassination of Lumumba, by Ludo De Whitte, and the Raoul Peck movie released the same year, Lumumba. Peck had also directed a documentary on the leader. Fact Check We strive for accuracy and fairness. If you see something that doesn't look right, contact us! Citation Information Article Title Patrice Lumumba Biography Author Biography.com Editors Website Name The Biography.com website URL

Stokely Carmichael was born in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago, on June 29, 1941. Carmichael rose to prominence as a member and later the chairman of SNCC, working with Martin Luther King Jr. and other Southern leaders to stage protests. Carmichael later lost faith in the tactic of non-violence, promoting "Black Power" and allying himself with the militant Black Panther Party. Early Life and Education Famed civil rights leader Stokely Carmichael was born on June 29, 1941, in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago. Carmichael's parents immigrated to New York when he was a toddler, leaving him in the care of his grandmother until the age of 11, when he followed his parents to the United States. His mother, Mabel, was a stewardess for a steamship line, and his father, Adolphus, worked as a carpenter by day and a taxi driver by night. An industrious and optimistic immigrant, Adolphus Carmichael chased a version of the American Dream that his son would later criticize as an instrument of racist economic oppression. As Stokely Carmichael later said, "My old man believed in this work-and-overcome stuff. He was religious, never lied, never cheated or stole. He did carpentry all day and drove taxis all night& The next thing that came to that poor black man was death—from working too hard. And he was only in his 40s." In 1954, at the age of 13, Stokely Carmichael became a naturalized American citizen and his family moved to a predominantly Italian and Jewish neighborhood in the Bronx called Morris Park. Soon Carmichael became the only black member of a street gang called the Morris Park Dukes. In 1956, he passed the admissions test to get into the prestigious Bronx High School of Science, where he was introduced to an entirely different social set—the children of New York City's rich white liberal elite. Carmichael was popular among his new classmates; he attended parties frequently and dated white girls. However, even at that age, he was highly conscious of the racial differences that divided him from his classmates. Carmichael later recalled his high school friendships in harsh terms: "Now that I realize how phony they all were, how I hate myself for it. Being liberal was an intellectual game with these cats. They were still white, and I was black.'' Though he had been aware of the American Civil Rights Movement for years, it was not until one night toward the end of high school, when he saw footage of a sit-in on television, that Carmichael felt compelled to join the struggle. "When I first heard about the Negroes sitting in at lunch counters down South," he later recalled, "I thought they were just a bunch of publicity hounds. But one night when I saw those young kids on TV, getting back up on the lunch counter stools after being knocked off them, sugar in their eyes, ketchup in their hair—well, something happened to me. Suddenly I was burning.'' He joined the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), picketed a Woolworth's store in New York and traveled to sit-ins in Virginia and South Carolina. A stellar student, Carmichael received scholarship offers to a variety of prestigious predominantly white universities after graduating high school in 1960. He chose instead to attend the historically black Howard University in Washington, D.C. There he majored in philosophy, studying the works of Camus, Sartre and Santayana and considering ways to apply their theoretical frameworks to the issues facing the civil rights movement. At the same time, Carmichael continued to increase his participation in the movement itself. While still a freshman in 1961, he went on his first Freedom Ride—an integrated bus tour through the South to challenge the segregation of interstate travel. During that trip, he was arrested in Jackson, Mississippi for entering the "whites only" bus stop waiting room and jailed for 49 days. Undeterred, Carmichael remained actively involved in the civil rights movement throughout his college years, participating in another Freedom Ride in Maryland, a demonstration in Georgia and a hospital workers' strike in New York. He graduated from Howard University with honors in 1964. Trinidadian-American Civil Rights activist Stokely Carmichael (later known as Kwame Toure, 1941 - 1998) at City College of New York, New York, December 3, 1968 (Photo: David Fenton / Getty Images) Trinidadian-American Civil Rights activist Stokely Carmichael (later known as Kwame Toure, 1941 - 1998) at City College of New York, New York, December 3, 1968 (Photo: David Fenton / Getty Images) Begins Career with the SNCC Carmichael left school at a critical moment in the history of the Civil Rights Movement. The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee dubbed the summer of 1964 "Freedom Summer," rolling out an aggressive campaign to register black voters in the Deep South. Carmichael joined the SNCC as a newly minted college graduate, using his eloquence and natural leadership skills to quickly be appointed field organizer for Lowndes County, Alabama. When Carmichael arrived in Lowndes County in 1965, African Americans made up the majority of the population but remained entirely unrepresented in government. In one year, Carmichael managed to raise the number of registered black voters from 70 to 2,600—300 more than the number of registered white voters in the county. Unsatisfied with the response of either of the major political parties to his registration efforts, Carmichael founded his own party, the Lowndes County Freedom Organization. To satisfy a requirement that all political parties have an official logo, he chose a black panther, which later provided the inspiration for the Black Panthers (a different black activist organization founded in Oakland, California). At this stage in his life, Carmichael adhered to the philosophy of nonviolent resistance espoused by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. In addition to moral opposition to violence, proponents of nonviolent resistance believed that the strategy would win public support for civil rights by drawing a sharp contrast—captured on nightly television—between the peacefulness of the protestors and the brutality of the police and hecklers opposing them. However, as time went on, Carmichael—like many young activists—became frustrated with the slow pace of progress and with having to endure repeated acts of violence and humiliation at the hands of white police officers without recourse. By the time he was elected national chairman of SNCC in May 1966, Carmichael had largely lost faith in the theory of nonviolent resistance that he—and SNCC—had once held dear. As chairman, he turned SNCC in a sharply radical direction, making it clear that white members, once actively recruited, were no longer welcome. The defining moment of Carmichael's tenure as chairman—and perhaps of his life—came only weeks after he took over leadership of the organization. In June 1966, James Meredith, a civil rights activist who had been the first black student to attend the University of Mississippi, embarked on a solitary "Walk Against Fear" from Memphis, Tennessee to Jackson, Mississippi. About 20 miles into Mississippi, Meredith was shot and wounded too severely to continue. Carmichael decided that SNCC volunteers should carry on the march in his place, and upon reaching Greenwood, Mississippi, on June 16, an enraged Carmichael gave the address for which he would forever be best remembered. "We been saying 'freedom' for six years," he said. "What we are going to start saying now is 'Black Power.'"

Anne McCarty Braden (July 28, 1924 - March 6, 2006) was an American civil rights activist, journalist, and educator dedicated to the cause of racial equality.[1] Born in Louisville, Kentucky, and raised in rigidly segregated Anniston, Alabama, Braden grew up in a white, middle-class family that accepted southern racial mores wholeheartedly.[2] A devout Episcopalian, Braden was bothered by racial segregation, but never questioned it until her college years at Randolph-Macon Woman's College in Virginia. After working on newspapers in Anniston and Birmingham, Alabama, she returned to Kentucky as a young adult to write for the Louisville Times. There, in 1948, she met and married fellow newspaperman Carl Braden, a left-wing trade unionist. She became a supporter of the civil rights movement at a time when it was unpopular among southern whites. Contents Early activism Edit In 1948, Anne and Carl Braden immersed themselves in Henry Wallace's run on the Progressive Party for the presidency. Soon after Wallace's defeat, they left mainstream journalism to apply their writing talents to the interracial left wing of the labor movement through the FE (Farm and Equipment Workers) Union, representing Louisville's International Harvester employees.[3] Even as the postwar labor movement splintered and grew less militant, civil rights causes heated up. In 1950, Anne Braden spearheaded a hospital desegregation drive in Kentucky. She endured her first arrest in 1951 when she led a delegation of southern white women organized by the Civil Rights Congress to Mississippi to protest the execution of Willie McGee, an African American man convicted of the rape of a white woman, Willette Hawkins.[3] The Wade case Edit In 1954, Andrew and Charlotte Wade, an African-American couple who knew the Bradens through association, approached them with a proposal that would drastically alter all lives involved.[2] Like many other Americans after World War II, the Wades wanted to buy a house in a suburban neighborhood. Because of Jim Crow housing practices, the Wades had been unsuccessful for months in their quest to purchase a home on their own. The Bradens, who never wavered in their support for African American civil rights, agreed to purchase the home for the Wades. On May 15, 1954, Wade and his wife spent their first night in their new home in the Louisville suburb of Shively, Kentucky. Upon discovering that black people had moved in, white neighbors burned a cross in front of the house, shot out windows, and condemned the Bradens for buying it on the Wades' behalf. The Wades moved in two days before the U.S. Supreme Court's landmark condemnation of public schools' racial segregation policy in Brown v. Board of Education, Topeka, KS. Six weeks later, amid constant community tensions, the Wades' new house was dynamited one evening while they were out.[3] While Vernon Bown (an associate of the Wades and the Bradens) was indicted for the bombing, the actual bombers were never sought nor brought to trial. McCarthyism affected the ordeal. Instead of addressing the segregationists' violence, the investigators alleged that the Bradens and others helping the Wades were affiliated with the Communist Party, and made that the main subject of concern. White supremacists who were pro-segregation at the time charged that these alleged Communists had engineered the bombing to provide a cause célèbre and fund-raising opportunity, but this was never proven. Nonetheless, on October 1954, Anne and Carl Braden and five other whites were charged with sedition.[4] After a sensationalized trial, Carl Braden—the perceived ringleader—was convicted of sedition and sentenced to 15 years' imprisonment. As Anne and the other defendants awaited a similar fate, Carl served eight months, but got out on $40,000 bond after a U.S. Supreme Court decision (Pennsylvania v. Nelson in 1956) invalidated state sedition laws (Steven Nelson had been arrested under the Pennsylvania Sedition Law but the federal Smith Act superseded it). All charges were dropped against Braden, but the Wades moved back to Louisville. Later activism Edit Blacklisted from local employment, the Bradens took jobs as field organizers for the Southern Conference Educational Fund (SCEF), a small, New Orleans-based civil rights organization whose mission was to solicit white southern support for the beleaguered southern civil rights movement.[2] In the years before southern civil rights violations made national news, the Bradens developed their own media, both through SCEF's monthly newspaper, The Southern Patriot, and through numerous pamphlets and press releases publicizing major civil rights campaigns. In 1958 Anne wrote The Wall Between, a memoir of their sedition case.[4] One of the few books of its time to unpack the psychology of white southern racism from within, it was praised by human rights leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr. and Eleanor Roosevelt, and became a runner-up for the National Book Award. Although their radical politics marginalized them among many of their own generation, the Bradens were reclaimed by young student activists of the 1960s. They were among the civil rights movement's most dedicated white allies. The Bradens also had three children: James, born in 1951, a 1972 Rhodes Scholar, and a 1980 graduate of Harvard Law School (where he preceded Barack Obama as editor of the Harvard Law Review), has lived and practiced law for over 25 years in San Francisco, California. Elizabeth, born in 1960, has worked as a teacher in many countries around the world, serving as of 2006 in that capacity in rural Ethiopia. Anita, born in 1953, died of a pulmonary disorder at age 11. While raising their children, the couple remained deeply involved in the civil rights cause and the subsequent social movements it prompted from the 1960s to the 1970s. After Carl's death in 1975, Anne Braden remained among the nation's most outspoken white anti-racist activists. She instigated the formation of a new regional multiracial organization, the Southern Organizing Committee for Economic and Social Justice (SOC), which initiated battles against environmental racism. She became an instrumental voice in the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition of the 1980s and in the two Jesse Jackson presidential campaigns, as well as organizing across racial divides in the new environmental, women's, and anti-nuclear movements that sprang up in that decade. Later life and death Edit From the 1980s into the 2000s, Braden wrote for Southern Exposure, Southern Changes, and the National Guardian and Fellowship. No longer a pariah, Anne received the American Civil Liberties Union's first Roger Baldwin Medal of Liberty in 1990 for her contributions to civil liberties. As she aged, her activism focused more on Louisville, where she remained a leader in anti-racist drives and taught social justice history classes at University of Louisville and Northern Kentucky University. In 2005, she joined Louisville antiwar demonstrations in a wheelchair.[5] She cofounded the Kentucky Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression and continued involvement in local activism addressing modern concerns of police brutality, environmental racism, and LGBT rights.[5]

Home › Occupations › Women's issues/topics Nash, Diane Judith (1938- ) Back to Online Encyclopedia Index Image Courtesy of Diane Nash Civil rights activist Diane Judith Nash was born on May 15, 1938 in Chicago, Illinois to Leon Nash and Dorothy Bolton Nash. Nash grew up a Roman Catholic and attended parochial and public schools in Chicago. In 1956, she graduated from Hyde Park High School in Chicago, Illinois and began her college career at Howard University in Washington, D.C. before transferring to Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee. While a student in Nashville Nash witnessed southern racial segregation for the first time in her life. In 1959, she attended nonviolent protest workshops led by Reverend James Lawson who was affiliated with the Nashville Christian Leadership Conference. Later that year she protested exclusionary racial policies by participating in impromptu sit-ins at Nashville's downtown lunch counters. Nash was elected chair of the Student Central Committee because of her nonviolent protest philosophy and her reputation from these sit-ins. By February 13, 1960, the mass sit-ins that began in Greensboro, North Carolina on February 1 had spread to Nashville. Nash organized and led many of the protests which ultimately involved hundreds of black and white area college students. As a result, by early April Nashville Mayor Ben West publicly called for the desegregation of Nashville's lunch counters and organized negotiations between Nash and other student leaders and downtown business interests. Because of these negotiations, on May 10, 1960 Nashville, Tennessee became the first southern city to desegregate lunch counters. Meanwhile Nash and other students from across the South assembled in Raleigh, North Carolina at the urging of NAACP activist Ella Baker. There they founded the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in April 1960. After the Nashville sit-ins, Nash helped coordinate and participated in the 1961 Freedom Rides across the Deep South. Later that year Nash dropped out of college to become a full-time organizer, strategist, and instructor for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) headed by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Nash married civil rights activist James Bevel in 1961 and moved to Jackson, Mississippi where she began organizing voter registration and school desegregation campaigns for SCLC. Arrested dozens of times for their civil rights work in Mississippi and Alabama in the early 1960s, Nash and her husband, James Bevel, received SCLC's Rosa Parks award from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1965. Dr. King cited especially their contributions to the Selma Right-to-vote movement that eventually led to the Voting Rights Act of 1965. In 1966, Nash joined the Vietnam Peace Movement. Through the 1960s she stayed involved in political and social transformation. In the 1980s she fought for women's rights. Nash now works in real estate in her home town Chicago, Illinois, but continues to speak out for social change. Sources: Rosetta E. Ross, Witnessing and Testifying: Black Women, Religion, and Civil Rights (Minneapolis, Minnesota: Fortress Press, 2003); http://tennesseeencyclopedia.net/imagegallery.php?EntryID=N003. Contributor: Kealoha, Samantha Nicholas University of Washington, Seattle Entry Categories: - See more at: http://www.blackpast.org/aah/nash-diane-judith-1938#sthash.HXa42ECr.dpuf

Irene Amos Morgan (April 9, 1917 - August 10, 2007), later known as Irene Morgan Kirkaldy, was an African-American woman who was arrested in Middlesex County, Virginia, in 1944 for refusing to give up her seat on an interstate bus according to a state law on segregation. She consulted with attorneys to appeal her conviction. With the help of William H. Hastie, the former governor of the U.S. Virgin Islands and later a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, and Thurgood Marshall, legal counsel of the NAACP, her case, Irene Morgan v. Commonwealth of Virginia, 328 U.S. 373 (1946), was taken to the United States Supreme Court. In 1946 in a landmark decision, the Court ruled that the Virginia law was unconstitutional, as the Commerce clause protected interstate traffic. Contents Early life, education and family Edit Irene Morgan was born in 1917 in Baltimore, Maryland. She attended local schools and was raised as a Seventh-day Adventist. Morgan was married twice. She had two children, a son and a daughter, with first husband Sherwood Morgan Sr., who died in 1948. She then married Stanley Kirkaldy, with whom she ran a child-care center in Queens, NY.[1] She received her bachelor's degree from St. John's University when she was 68 years old. Five years later Morgan earned a master's degree in Urban Studies from Queens College.[2] Arrest, jail and conviction Edit In 1944, the 27-year-old Irene Morgan was traveling to Baltimore, Maryland when she was arrested and jailed in Virginia for refusing to sit in a segregated section on an interstate Greyhound bus. Although interstate transportation was supposed to be desegregated, the state enforced segregated seating within its borders.[3] The bus driver stopped in Middlesex County, Virginia, and summoned the sheriff. When he tried to arrest Morgan, she tore up the arrest warrant, kicked the sheriff in the groin, and fought with the deputy who tried to pull her off the bus. She was convicted of violating state law for segregation on buses and other public transportation. Morgan pleaded guilty to the charge of resisting arrest and was fined $100. However, she refused the guilty plea for violating Virginia's segregation law.[4] Irene Morgan appealed her case. After exhausting appeals in state courts,[5] she and her lawyers took her case on constitutional grounds to the federal courts, all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. In 1946, the justices agreed to hear the case. U.S. Supreme Court case Edit Her case, Irene Morgan v. Commonwealth of Virginia, 328 U.S. 373 (1946), was argued by William H. Hastie, the former governor of the U.S. Virgin Islands and later a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. Thurgood Marshall was co-counsel and later became a Supreme Court justice.[6] The action resulted in a landmark ruling in 1946, in which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6-1 that Virginia's state law enforcing segregation on interstate buses was illegal.[7][8] Hastie and Marshall used an innovative strategy to brief and argue the case. Instead of relying upon the Equal Protection clause of the 14th Amendment, they argued successfully that segregation on interstate travel violated the Interstate Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution.[9] "If something happens to you which is wrong, the best thing to do is have it corrected in the best way you can," said Morgan. "The best thing for me to do was to go to the Supreme Court." In 1960, in Boynton v. Virginia, the Supreme Court extended the Morgan ruling to bus terminals used in interstate bus service. African Americans continued to be ejected or arrested when they tried to integrate such facilities, as Southern states refused to obey Morgan v. Virginia.[10] Journey of Reconciliation Edit Morgan's case inspired the 1947 Journey of Reconciliation, during which 16 activists from the Chicago-based Congress of Racial Equality rode on interstate buses through the Upper South to test the enforcement of the Supreme Court's ruling. The activists divided themselves between the interstate Greyhound and Trailways bus lines. They usually placed an interracial pair in the white-area of the bus. Other activists, disguised as ordinary passengers, rode in the racial sections "reserved" for them.[9] The group traveled uneventfully through Virginia, but when they reached North Carolina, they encountered arrests and violence. By the end of the Journey, the protesters had conducted over 24 "tests," and endured 12 arrests and dangerous mob violence. In a flagrant violation of the Morgan decision, North Carolina police arrested the civil rights activist Bayard Rustin. A jury convicted him and he was and sentenced to 22 days on a chain gang for violating the state's segregation laws, although he had been on an interstate bus.[9] The 1947 Journey of Reconciliation, ahead of its time in the use of tactics of nonviolent direct action, inspired the highly publicized Freedom Rides of 1961, also organized by CORE. In 2000, Mrs. Kirkaldy was honored by Gloucester County during its 350th anniversary celebration, and in 2001, President Bill Clinton awarded her the Presidential Citizens Medal.[4] Irene Morgan was a member of the Seventh-day Adventist Church.[11] In later life, Morgan moved to Gloucester County, Virginia. She died on August 10, 2007, at her daughter's home, at 90 years of age.[6] Legacy and honors Edit 1995, Robin Washington was the producer for the documentary You Don't Have to Ride Jim Crow!, aired on New Hampshire Public TV. It featured Morgan Kirkaldy and survivors of the 1947 "Journey of Reconciliation." Morgan received renewed attention for her contributions. In 2000 Morgan Kirkaldy was honored by Gloucester County, Virginia during its 350th anniversary celebration. In 2001, President Bill Clinton awarded her the Presidential Citizens Medal. In 2002, PBS featured a four-part series entitled, The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow. Associated materials include an article on Morgan v. Virginia.[9] 2010, Kirkaldy was inducted into the Maryland Women's Hall of Fame[12]

George Samuel Schuyler, conservative columnist, was born in Providence, Rhode Island on February 25, 1895 to George Francis and Eliza Jane Schuyler. Upon his father's death in 1898, George and his mother moved to Syracuse, New York. In 1912, at age 17, George enlisted in the Army, serving in the all-black 25th US Infantry. Eventually he achieved the rank of Lieutenant. Despite his status as an officer, Schuyler went AWOL in 1918 in response to the systemic racism he experienced in the Army. He was captured in Chicago, Illinois and imprisoned for nine months for desertion. Following his release, Schuyler worked odd jobs in New York, joining the Socialist Party of America and the anti-Marcus Garvey organization, Friends of Negro Freedom. During this time he submitted articles and editorials to the newly created, socialist-oriented Messenger magazine. He eventually wrote a regular column for The Messenger, entitled "Shafts and Darts: A Page of Calumny and Satire." By 1924 he was also writing a weekly column for The Pittsburgh Courier, one of the two largest black newspapers in the United States at the time. Schuyler's columns attracted the attention of social critic and editor of American Mercury H.L. Mencken. Their close working relationship and comparable political views led to Schuyler's being labeled as "The Black Mencken." Schuyler's prominence as a social critic increased when he was named the chief editorial writer for The Pittsburgh Courier in 1926, the same year he published arguably his most famous editorial entitled "The Negro-Art Hokum," a scathing criticism of the then-burgeoning cultural movement known as the Harlem Renaissance. Throughout the 1920s and early 1930s, Schuyler continued to provide a more conservative and critical view of the Harlem Renaissance. Nonetheless he remained a member of prominent civil rights organizations including the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. In 1937, he was named the business manager for the NAACP and remained in that post until 1944. In the early 1950s during the investigations led by Senator Joseph McCarthy, Schuyler's political views shifted from moderate to extreme conservatism. By the 1960s Schuyler criticized and condemned social activists such as W.E.B. DuBois, Malcolm X, and even Martin Luther King, Jr. in journals such as the arch-conservative John Birch Society's American Opinion. Schuyler's conservative opinions eventually cost him his job at The Pittsburgh Courier, as many readers threatened to cancel their subscriptions in protest to his columns. Schuyler published his autobiography, Black and Conservative, in 1966 but he never again attained the popularity he had in the 1920s or 1930s. George Schuyler died in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in 1977 at the age of 82. - See more at: http://www.blackpast.org/aah/schuyler-george-1895-1977#sthash.WhDGdhec.dpuf

PRINT CITE A. Philip Randolph (1889-1979) was the most important civil rights leader to emerge from the labor movement. Throughout his long career, he consistently kept the interests of black workers at the forefront of the racial agenda. Whereas W. E. B. Du Bois argued that the problem of the twentieth century was "the color line," Randolph concluded that it was the question of the "common man." History Vault Promo King Leads the March on WashingtonPlay video King Leads the March on Washington 4min Bet You Didn't Know: March on WashingtonPlay video Bet You Didn't Know: March on Washington 3min Sound Smart: The Haymarket Square RiotPlay video Sound Smart: The Haymarket Square Riot 2min Randolph's politics were rooted in the World War I era. A child of hard-working parents who respected learning, he left Crescent City, Florida, for New York City in 1911. Working during the day and studying at the City College at night, Randolph broadened his intellectual horizons as he read modern economic and political writers, including Marx. This theoretical grounding predisposed him to view the black working class, not the black elite, as the major hope for black progress. His associations with socialists and the continuing urbanization of the black population strengthened his working-class orientation. In 1917, Randolph and his friend Chandler Owen founded the Messenger. The magazine's intelligent and spirited prose criticized President Woodrow Wilson as readily as Booker T. Washington and Du Bois. Its approval of the Bolshevik Revolution was cited by various government watchdogs during the red scare of 1919, although Randolph always resisted the appeal of the communists. The postwar reaction limited the possibilities of working-class organization, but after a few false starts, Randolph in 1925 became general organizer of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters. Following a long struggle, the porters, an overwhelmingly black group, won an election and then a contract with the railroads in 1937. The victory made Randolph the leading black figure in the labor movement. He headed the new National Negro Congress, an umbrella movement of mass organizations, but resigned in 1940, believing the group was controlled by communists. Striking out independently, he organized the March on Washington movement in 1941, which succeeded in pressuring President Franklin D. Roosevelt to issue Executive Order 8802 banning discrimination in defense industries. After the war, a similar technique led to President Harry S. Truman's order desegregating the army. While expanding his targets, Randolph never forgot the interests of black workers and was a constant critic of discrimination in some unions. The originator of the March on Washington in 1963, Randolph aimed to obtain government sponsorship of black jobs. Although his goal was overshadowed by the demands of the southern civil rights movement, Randolph's understanding of the economic needs of blacks predated the riots that drew the nation's attention to them. He also became a critic of the black power movement, which he believed was programmatically bankrupt. Despite his concern for ordinary workers, Randolph's style was intellectual and aloof. Perhaps because he believed in the controlling force of self-interest, he could not fully comprehend the social and psychological impetus for the black power movement. But his theoretical bent and rationality enabled him to construct political alliances and to choose and win significant labor and civil rights objectives. Judith Stein The Reader's Companion to American History. Eric Foner and John A. Garraty, Editors. Copyright © 1991 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Synopsis Born on August 30, 1901, in St. Louis, Missouri, Roy Wilkins worked as a journalist/activist before becoming involved with the NAACP, succeeding Walter White as its leader in the 1950s. Wilkins was a major figure of the Civil Rights Movement and was involved in an array of key events, including the Brown v. Board of Education ruling and the March on Washington. He died on September 8, 1981. Background and Education Roy Wilkins was born on August 30, 1901, in St. Louis, Missouri. After his mother died when he was just 4 years old, he and his siblings went to live with his maternal aunt and her spouse in the region of St. Paul, Minnesota. He majored in sociology and journalism at the University of Minnesota, working various jobs to support his way—including as an editor for the university newspaper and the African-American periodical The St. Paul Appeal. Wilkins graduated from the school in 1923. He wed social worker Aminda "Minnie" Badeau in 1929. Confronts Jim Crow Upon his move to Kansas City, taking an editorial position with the Kansas City Call in 1923, Wilkins was confronted with the viciousness of Jim Crow laws. He engaged in staunch activist work, eyeing politicians who were known for their overt racism, and eventually moved to New York in 1931 to serve as assistant to Walter White, head of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Working with the group's strong anti-lynching efforts, Wilkins also went undercover to observe and take part in the horrible job conditions African Americans toiled under as part of a federally funded river initiative in Mississippi. Wilkins's ensuing Mississippi Slave Labor report was instrumental in producing change for the workers. Becomes Head of NAACP By the mid-1930s, Wilkins had succeed intellectual W.E.B. Du Bois as editor of the NAACP's Crisis magazine, which Wilkins ran for a decade and a half. Later on, he was one of the key players in getting the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education case to the Supreme Court, whose ruling declared public school segregation illegal. With White's passing in 1955, Wilkins was voted in as the NAACP's executive secretary, later known as executive director. Wilkins continued his work as a pivotal figure in the Civil Rights Movement. He believed in achieving social equality through legislation and Constitutional backing, and during speeches, urged African Americans to embrace U.S. citizenship. He went on to become an advocate of black-owned bank lending power and met with various U.S. presidents, including John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, to advocate on his constituency's behalf. Civil Rights Acts Wilkins was also an instrumental figure in Congress' passing of the Civil Rights Acts of the 1950s and '60s, and was one of the key leaders in organizing the historic March on Washington, where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. shared his "I Have a Dream" speech. Additionally, Wilkins helped to oversee a rise in NAACP membership from 25,000 members in the 1930s to more than 400,000 by the 1970s. During the late '60s, Wilkins was wary of the more militant Black Power Movement, and was accused by some of having too conciliatory a tone. After being asked to step down by some within the organization and initially refusing, he retired from the NAACP in 1977, with Benjamin Hooks taking over leadership. Death and Legacy Wilkins died on September 8, 1981, in New York City, due to kidney failure and heart issues. He received many awards and honors during his lifetime; books on him include his 1982 posthumously published autobiography, Standing Fast, as well as 2005's Roy Wilkins: Leader of the NAACP by Calvin Craig Miller. Wilkins's alma mater, the University of Minnesota, created the Roy Wilkins Center for Human Relations and Human Justice.

Marvel Cooke was a pioneering African American female journalist and political activist. Cooke's groundbreaking career was spent in a world where she was often the only female African American. Talking about her work for the white-owned newspaper the Compass, she told biographer Kay Mills in 1988, ''there were no black workers there and no women." Marvel Jackson was born in 1901. She was the first African American child to be born in the city of Mankato. Her father, Madison Jackson, was the son of a free Ohio farmer. A graduate of the Ohio State University Law School, Madison could not get a job as a lawyer because of racist hiring practices. He worked as a railroad porter. Marvel's mother, Amy Wood Jackson, was a teacher. Jackson moved with her parents to Minneapolis in 1907. They were the first African American residents of the Prospect Park neighborhood. Jackson recalled public meetings and attempts to get her family to leave, but her parents refused. Over time the community grew to accept Marvel and her family. Jackson was the first African American ever to attend the Sydney Pratt Elementary School in Prospect Park. Her sisters were the second and third. Jackson said in a 1989 interview, "It didn't bother me at all. I'm by nature, an outgoing person, and I had a lot of friends." She majored in English at the University of Minnesota, where she was one of five African Americans who graduated in 1925. However, while at the University, Marvel felt her best friend throughout her childhood pretended not to know her rather than explain the inter-racial friendship to her college boyfriend. It was then that Jackson decided, as she stated in an interview with the Washington Press Club years later, "I am not going to live in Minneapolis; I won't stay there." She decided to move to Harlem, saying, "It wasn't south, but it was black, and I decided I wanted to come to Harlem." She moved there in 1926 to work as an editorial assistant for W. E. B. DuBois at the NAACP publication the Crisis. In 1928 Jackson became the New York Amsterdam News's first female reporter. She helped organize the first union at a black-owned newspaper while working there. In 1931 she organized a successful eleven-week strike at the paper. Jailed twice for picketing, Jackson was quoted as saying, "the bosses are not necessarily in your corner, even if they are your own color." Her political beliefs influenced her personal life as well. She ended her engagement to fellow Minnesotan Roy Wilkins, a prominent civil rights activist. Jackson later told a biographer she did not marry Wilkins because he was politically more conservative than she was. She went on to wed world-class sprinter and Olympic-champion sailor Cecil Cooke in 1929. Cooke's writing quickly made her a star in mainstream media. She got a job at the Compass, a white-owned newspaper. She was the only African American and the only female reporter. Cooke won recognition for her undercover reporting on New York City domestic workers. She exposed "the horrible working conditions to which these women were subjected." In her article "The Bronx Slave Market," Cooke stated, "I was part of the Bronx Slave Market long enough to experience all the viciousness and indignity of system which forces women to the streets in search of work." In 1953 she left the Compass and was elected as New York Director of the Council of Arts, Sciences, and Professions. In a 1989 interview Cooke described both jobs as the happiest time of her life. During that period, Cooke decided to devote her life to political activism. She became a member of the Communist Party. In 1954 Joseph McCarthy forced her to testify twice before the United States Senate's Subcommittee on Investigations because of her political beliefs. The Senate investigation did not slow down her political career. Cooke worked as the national legal defense secretary for 1960s radical Angela Davis. She continued her political activism throughout her life, serving as national vice chairman of the American-Soviet Friendship Committee from 1990 to 1998. Marvel Cooke died of leukemia on November 29, 2000, in Harlem, New York, at the age of ninety-nine. She spent the last two years of her life writing for the New World Review and helping to sponsor political events. Cooke's accomplishments and achievements in journalism, politics, and civil rights made her an important figure in each of those fields. Cite Francois, Sherick. "Cooke, Marvel Jackson (1901-2000)." MNopedia, Minnesota Historical Society. http://www.mnopedia.org/person/cooke-marvel-jackson-1901-2000 (accessed February 6, 2017). Share TwitterTwitter FacebookFacebook CorrectPrint

Jo Ann Robinson was born on April 17, degreMontgomeryAlabama, to teach at Alabama State College. After a verbally abusive encounter on a segregated city bus, Robinson became an advocate for equal rights for African Americans. She led a successful city bus boycott that gained national attention and the support of Martin Luther King Jr.

Robert Franklin Williams (February 26, 1925 - October 15, 1996) was an American civil rights leader and author, best known for serving as president of the Monroe, North Carolina, chapter of the NAACP in the 1950s and early 1960s. At a time when racial tension was high and official abuses were rampant, Williams was a key figure in promoting armed black self-defense in the United States. He succeeded in integrating the local public library and swimming pool in Monroe. He helped gain gubernatorial pardons for two African-American boys convicted for molestation in the controversial Kissing Case of 1958. He obtained a charter from the National Rifle Association and set up a rifle club which became active defending blacks from Ku Klux Klan nightriders. He used the NAACP to support Freedom Riders who came to Monroe in the summer of 1961. That year he and his wife were forced to leave the United States to avoid prosecution for kidnapping, on charges trumped up during violence related to white opposition to the Freedom Ride. The kidnapping charges came after a white couple sought shelter in Williams' home when they were confronted by black protesters while driving through Monroe's black community. A self-professed Black Nationalist, Williams lived in both Cuba and The People's Republic of China during his exile between 1961 and 1969. Williams' book Negroes with Guns (1962) details his experience with violent racism and his disagreement with the pacifist wing of the Civil Rights Movement. The text was widely influential; Black Panther Party founder Huey Newton cited it as a major inspiration. Rosa Parks gave the eulogy at Williams' funeral in 1996, praising him for "his courage and for his commitment to freedom", and concluding that "The sacrifices he made, and what he did, should go down in history and never be forgotten."[1] Contents Early life Edit Williams was born in Monroe, North Carolina, in 1925 to Emma Carter and John L. Williams, a railroad boiler washer. His grandmother, a former slave, gave Williams the rifle with which his grandfather, a Republican campaigner and publisher of the newspaper The People's Voice, had defended himself in the hard years after Reconstruction in North Carolina. At the age of 11, Williams witnessed the beating and dragging of a black woman by a police officer, Jesse Helms, Sr.[2][3] (Later chief of police, he was the father of future US Senator Jesse Helms.)[citation needed] As a young man, Williams joined the Great Migration, traveling north for work during World War II. He witnessed race riots in Detroit in 1943, prompted by labor competition between European Americans and African Americans. Drafted in 1944, he served for a year and a half in the segregated Marines before returning home to Monroe.[citation needed] Marriage and family Edit In 1947, Williams married Mabel Robinson, a fellow civil rights activist. They had two children.[citation needed]

Born on March 18, 1922, in Mount Meigs, Alabama, Fred Shuttlesworth was a Baptist minister and one of the South's most prominent Civil Rights leaders. He worked closely with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., co-founding the SCLC and organizing direct-action protests in Birmingham, refusing to waver even after multiple attacks. Also a community activist in Cincinnati, he died on October 5, 2011. Civil Rights Leader Shuttlesworth became pastor of Birmingham's Bethel Baptist Church in 1953. After the Brown v. Board of Education ruling, he was further inspired to actively participate in the growing Civil Rights Movement. He called for the hiring of African-American police officers and, with the outlawing of the NAACP in his home state, Shuttlesworth established the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights in 1956. He also co-founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference with other leaders, including Martin Luther King Jr. and Bayard Rustin. Shuttlesworth, with King and fellow minister Ralph D. Abernathy, would later be seen as one of the movement's "Big Three." After the desegregation of Montgomery busses due to the citywide boycott inspired by Rosa Parks, Shuttlesworth was organizing efforts in his city to implement bus desegregation as well when his residence was bombed on Christmas, with the pastor inside. He nonetheless steadfastly proceeded with plans; later, when he and his wife took their daughter to integrate a white school, the couple were brutally attacked by a Ku Klux Klan mob. Youth Protests and Voting Rights Shuttlesworth held fast to his firm belief in direct action and was a key leader throughout the history of the movement, though he had relocated to Cincinnati in the early 1960s and hence routinely travelled back to the South. After the May 14, 1961, attacks on the Freedom Riders, Shuttlesworth provided refuge for the activists, with outreach made to Attorney General Robert Kennedy for assistance. He also convinced Dr. King to have Birmingham become a focal point of the movement and organized well-documented youth-driven marches and protests, in which he was badly hurt at one point in 1963. And Shuttlesworth was an organizer of the 1965 Selma to Montgomery voting rights march. Shuttlesworth was arrested many, many times over the course of his activism, yet in later interviews would talk about the power of his faith in sustaining him. Later Years Shuttlesworth later established the Greater New Light Baptist Church in the middle of the 1960s in Cincinnati. Fast forward to the 1980s, and he founded another organization, the Shuttlesworth Housing Foundation, providing grants for home ownership. In the new millennium, Shuttlesworth received the Presidential Citizens Medal from Bill Clinton in 2001, with the Birmingham-Shuttlesworth International Airport named in his honor in 2008. Shuttlesworth also became president of the SCLC mid-decade, though he soon left due to disagreements with the internal workings of the organization. In 2007, Fred Shuttlesworth moved back to Birmingham, where died on October 5, 2011, at 89 years old. The minister at one point had thought he wouldn't live to see 40, dwelling in the Deep South during tumult. He was survived by Sephira Bailey, his second wife, and a large family. An award-winning 1999 biography on Shuttlesworth—A Fire You Can't Put Out—was penned by Andrew M. Manis. Related Videos Martin Luther King Jr. - An American Legend Martin Luther King Jr. - An American Legend (TV-14; 1:11) John Lewis - Civil Rights Leader John Lewis - Civil Rights Leader (TV-14; 1:56) Logo PEOPLE NOSTALGIA CELEBRITY HISTORY & CULTURE CRIME & SCANDAL Subscribe to NewsletterAbout BLACK HISTORY Carter G. Woodson HISTORY & CULTURE The Despair of Jackie Kennedy PEOPLE NOSTALGIA CELEBRITY HISTORY & CULTURE CRIME & SCANDAL Fred Shuttlesworth Fred Shuttlesworth Biography

Dorothy Simpkins (Photo: Courtesy Dr. C.O. Simpkins II) 350 CONNECT TWEET 14 LINKEDIN 1 COMMENT EMAIL MORE Dorothy Herndon Simpkins, Shreveport civil rights figure of the 1960s and the first wife of fellow local civil rights icon Dr. C.O. Simpkins Sr., died Sunday at her home after a lengthy illness. She was 89. A native of Brinkley, Arkansas, she grew up in the Chicago area where John Lomax, her birth father was, according to an unpublished family history penned by one of her daughters, a chauffeur. Her mother, Ida Mae Pettus, later married Chicago minister Rev. Robert E. Herndon. She attended Fisk University and graduated from Tennessee State University, where she was influenced by social activists and scholar/diplomats Hugh and Mabel Smythe. She was accepted to study in a graduate program with sociologist W.E.B. Dubois. But instead she met and married Shreveport dentist Dr. C.O. Simpkins, who would go on to help lead the civil rights movement in Shreveport in the 1950s and 1960s, had his house firebombed and later ran unsuccessfully for mayor. The two later divorced. "She was responsible for keeping the police from finding the affidavits of people who were denied the right to vote that were sent to the civil rights commission in Washington, D.C.," her son, Shreveport physician and author Dr. C.O. "Tuffy" Simpkins recalled. "She also was responsible for my father's meeting the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King. When Reverend King would come to our home she had many conversations with him as well as the other civil rights leaders who would visit. She had a very close relationship with Ella Baker." Baker, who died in 1986, was a behind-the-scenes organizer and motivator in the civil rights movement, who worked for figures ranging from Dubois to King. ADVERTISING Simpkins recalled an incident when his mother was arrested in Shreveport. "I was with her when she was arrested by police chief (Harvey) Teasley for riding in the front of the trolley," he recalled. "She did not say one word and neither did I, following her lead. I must have been about 8 or 9 years old. The Boy Scouts that our mother had taken on a field trip, sitting in the back, shouted 'Don't get up, Mrs. Simpkins. Don't get up.' Later she said with them shouting that to her she couldn't have gotten up even had she wanted to." She also helped arrange for cabs from a company owned by a black businessman to come pick up the scouts so they wouldn't be humiliated, he said. "She was always concerned about preserving the little light that shines in children. Our mother told me to get in the cab. I did as she told me and then I lost it. I cried and cried and cried." Simpkins said his mother "was courageous and highly intelligent and totally committed to the cause of freedom and justice for all people. We were so blessed that she walked this earth." She also edited and mimeograph/published a local civil rights newsletter, "Freedom," with the elder C.O. Simpkins, her son said. She also was involved in early voter education and voter registration drives. Survivors include sons Eric and Dr. C.O. Simpkins II; daughters Alicia Simpkins Richens and Deborah Simpkins Savage; grandchildren Nicolas Carillo, Victor Millan-Simpkins, Gerard Millan and Hayden M. Simpkins; and great-grandchildrenSurya Millan-Simpkins and Kyoko Millan. Funeral arrangements are pending through J.S. Williams & Son Funeral Home in Shreveport with the Rev. James Jackmon of Central Free Methodist Church in Shreveport officiating. Simpkins will be buried in Chicago next to her mother. 350 CONNECT TWEET 14 LINKEDIN 1 COMMENT EMAIL

Synopsis Bayard Rustin was born in West Chester, Pennsylvania, on March 17, 1912. He moved to New York in the 1930s and was involved in pacifist groups and early civil rights protests. Combining non-violent resistance with organizational skills, he was a key adviser to Martin Luther King Jr. in the 1960s. Though he was arrested several times for his own civil disobedience and open homosexuality, he continued to fight for equality. He died in New York City on August 24, 1987. Early Life and Education Bayard Rustin was born on March 17, 1912, in West Chester, Pennsylvania. He had been raised to believe that his parents were Julia and Janifer Rustin, when in fact they were his grandparents. He discovered the truth before adolescence, that the woman he thought was his sibling, Florence, was in fact his mother, who'd had Rustin with West Indian immigrant Archie Hopkins. Rustin attended Wilberforce University in Ohio, and Cheyney State Teachers College (now Cheney University of Pennsylvania) in Pennsylvania, both historically black schools. In 1937 he moved to New York City and studied at City College of New York. He was briefly involved with the Young Communist League in 1930s before he became disillusioned with its activities and resigned. Political Philosophy and Civil Rights Career In his personal philosophy, Rustin combined the pacifism of the Quaker religion, the non-violent resistance taught by Mahatma Gandhi, and the socialism espoused by African-American labor leader A. Philip Randolph. During the Second World War he worked for Randolph, fighting against racial discrimination in war-related hiring. After meeting A. J. Muste, a minister and labor organizer, he also participated in several pacifist groups, including the Fellowship of Reconciliation. Rustin was punished several times for his beliefs. During the war, he was jailed for two years when he refused to register for the draft. When he took part in protests against the segregated public transit system in 1947, he was arrested in North Carolina and sentenced to work on a chain gang for several weeks. In 1953 he was arrested on a morals charge for publicly engaging in homosexual activity and was sent to jail for 60 days; however, he continued to live as an openly gay man. By the 1950s, Rustin was an expert organizer of human rights protests. In 1958, he played an important role in coordinating a march in Aldermaston, England, in which 10,000 attendees demonstrated against nuclear weapons. Martin Luther King and the March on Washington Rustin met the young civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in the 1950s and began working with King as an organizer and strategist in 1955. He taught King about Gandhi's philosophy of non-violent resistance and advised him on the tactics of civil disobedience. He assisted King with the boycott of segregated buses in Montgomery, Alabama in 1956. Most famously, Rustin was a key figure in the organization of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, at which King delivered his legendary "I Have a Dream" speech on August 28, 1963. In 1965, Rustin and his mentor Randolph co-founded the A. Philip Randolph Institute, a labor organization for African-American trade union members. Rustin continued his work within the civil rights and peace movements, and was much in demand as a public speaker. Later Career and Publications Rustin received numerous awards and honorary degrees throughout his career. His writings about civil rights were published in the collection Down the Line in 1971 and in Strategies for Freedom in 1976. He continued to speak about the importance of economic equality within the Civil Rights Movement, as well as the need for social rights for gays and lesbians. Bayard Rustin died of a ruptured appendix in New York City on August 24, 1987, at the age of 75. Related Videos

Synopsis Born on July 9, 1905, in the region of Savannah, Tennessee, Myles Horton was inspired by progressive Danish schools and his own community activism to found the Highlander Folk School in 1932. Despite attacks, the institution made strides in labor organizing and Civil Rights Movement work, actively opposing segregation. A great believer in free thought, Horton died on January 19, 1990. Background Myles Falls Horton was born on July 9, 1905, in a rural area near Savannah, Tennessee, to Elsie Falls and Perry Horton, educators who later worked an assortment of jobs. Though growing up with limited financial resources, Horton was taught by his parents to value others in his community as well as the power of organizing. Horton attended Cumberland University in the 1920s, experiencing ethnic diversity. In the summer of 1927, he worked for the Presbyterian Church and ran community meetings, with an emphasis on people telling their stories. After studying at Union Theological Seminary and the University of Chicago by the start of the 1930s, Horton traveled to Europe. He visited and scrutinized the folk schools of Denmark, which emphasized social engagement of issues over more dogmatic, academic styles of learning. Founding Highlander While abroad, Horton resolved to create a school in his home region that would focus on people sharing and analyzing their experiences, using revelations to effect social change and initiate self-growth. With a group of others, he started the Southern Mountains School (later renamed the Highlander Folk School) in 1932 in Monteagle, Tennessee. Highlander was known for its advocacy for the impoverished and labor organizing, working with the Congress of Industrial Organizations and implementing training programs. The school later initiated classes for African-American students with the intent of driving voter registration, and became a place for discussing Civil Rights Movement strategies. Highlander thus was a unique oasis in the legally segregated state, where black and white citizens freely co-mingled. People who attended and/or taught at Highlander include Rosa Parks, Pete Seeger, Julian Bond, Eleanor Roosevelt, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Fannie Lou Hamer. Vitriol and Violence Highlander faced opposition from regional governmental forces as well as the Ku Klux Klan, with staff being physically attacked and the organization facing slurs and accusations of communism from political conservatives. The school was shut down by the state in 1961, only to be reopened immediately by Horton as the Highland Research and Education Center, relocating to Knoxville. Beliefs, Expansion and Legacy Horton believed in the importance of a pluralistic, free-thinking society that deviated from systems of indoctrination often put forth by traditional education. "People are creative," Horton said at age 75 in a television interview on Bill Moyers' Journal. "You've got to allow them to do a lot of things that don't fit any kind of system." In 1972, Highlander moved to the expansive, hilltop farm site of New Market, Tennessee, continuing its activism over the years with work on immigrant's and women's rights and anti-globalization policies. Horton retired as director in 1973, but remained active with the institution afterward. Myles Horton died in New Market on January 19, 1990, of brain cancer. He was survived by his two children. Books on his life include his autobiography, The Long Haul, and We Make the Road by Walking: Conversations on Education and Social Change by Paulo Freire; both works were published in the year of his passing. A documentary on Highlander and its activists—You Got to Move: Stories of Change in the South—was released in 1985. Fact Check We strive for accuracy and fairness. If you see something that doesn't look right, contact us! Citation Information