Sojourner Truth’s

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Her speech did not have a title originally, but because of the popularity of the words spoken and the repeated question therein, it became known as the “Ain’t I A Woman” speech.

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The speech was delivered in a laid-back fashion as Sojourner Truth spoke plainly to the struggles women faced in an oppressive patriarchal society that saw the female gender as weak and inferior. Truth’s speech, while impromptu, was an honest directive that focused a glaring lens on the gender inequality of the times. Sojourner Truth was a dynamic woman filled with an unyielding thirst for freedom and equality for slaves and women alike. Truth’s fight for human right and against the staggering specter of injustice was made even more remarkable considering she could neither read nor write.

Yet Sojourner Truth was able to achieve resonance among many simply by determination alone and amassed several connections during her lecturing years, particular among those in the abolitionism movement such as Amy Post and Susan B. Anthony. From her birthplace in  New York, to her final resting place in Battle Creek, Mi., Sojourner Truth blazed an undeniable trail.

No one could argue with Truth’s story of triumph, tragedy and her tenacity to free her people, even when she continually faced odds that would break most men.

From a rendered version of the speech:

Then that little man in black there, he says women can’t have as much rights as men, ’cause Christ wasn’t a woman! Where did your Christ come from? Where did your Christ come from? From God and a woman! Man had nothing to do with Him.

If the first woman God ever made was strong enough to turn the world upside down all alone, these women together ought to be able to turn it back, and get it right side up again! And now they is asking to do it, the men better let them.

Ms. Sojourner was one tough woman!

Watch Cicely Tyson recite the speech below:

Cicely Tyson ‘Ain’t I A Woman?’

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Shabazz was born Betty Dean Sanders in 1934 on this day in Detroit to young parents, moving at the age of 11 to live with Lorenzo and Helen Malloy, a prominent Black couple who gave the youngster a good life and largely kept her from experiencing the racism that existed beyond their confines. However, Shabazz would witness two race riots that opened her eyes to world far more turbulent than she had known.

Betty Shabazz Takes On Former LA Police Chief On Police Brutality

Because of her upbringing, Shabazz had never known what racism felt like. The Malloys employed the tactic many Blacks used in keeping silent about the issue. However, Shabazz went south to attend her adopted father’s alma mater, Tuskegee Institute, where she was experienced racism firsthand. Never able to adjust to the pressures of studying and fending off prejudiced Whites, Shabazz would switch her major from education to nursing. Her decision would lead her to head to New York City’s Brooklyn State College of Nursing.

Interview With Betty Shabazz After The Assassination Of Malcolm X

Shabazz may have escaped the southern brand of racism, but endured an entirely different sort of racial hatred while working in New York. White nurses routinely looked down on their Black counterparts, often taking better jobs and verbally berating them. While in nursing school, a chance invitation to a dinner party to a Nation of Islam dinner party in Harlem led to Shabazz eventually meeting her future husband. Then known as Malcolm X, the fiery minister impressed Shabazz and eventually they formed a relationship. After Malcolm X convinced Betty to convert, they underwent the traditional Islamic courtship to prepare for marriage.

The pair was wed in January of 1958. On the day of their wedding, Shabazz would also obtain her nursing degree. The couple would go on the have six children and enjoyed a balanced marriage where Shabazz was seen as an equal by her husband. After much debate and new eye-opening experiences, Malcolm X and his wife left the Nation of Islam in 1964 and became Sunni Muslims.

Tragedy struck in February 1965 after gunmen from the Nation of Islam assassinated Malcolm X in Manhattan’s Audubon Ballroom where he was giving a speech. Betty Shabazz witnessed the slaying of her husband alongside her children, and it had weighed on her heavily according to past interviews and reports. She would eventually make a pilgrimage to the Holy City of Mecca in Saudi Arabia, returning to America with renewed purpose.

Shabazz had a tough time raising her children on her own, but assistance in the form of royalties from the sales of her husband’s autobiography co-written by Alex Haley helped. Actress Ruby Dee and the then-wife of actor Sidney Poitier raised funds for Shabazz to assist her in purchasing a home in Mount Vernon. Driven by a will to be an educator, Shabazz would complete her undergraduate studies in one year, and then went on to earn a doctorate from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. She would then go on to teach at Medgar Evans College, eventually becoming a leading administrator and director for the college in 1984 until the time of her passing.

Shabazz would unfortunately die at the hands of her grandson, Malcolm, then just 10 years of age. He was sent to live with her while his mother, Qubliah, dealt with legal issues regarding Louis Farrakhan, who the family felt was responsible in the death of her husband. Malcolm set a fire in Shabazz’s home, where she suffered severe burns. After three weeks of treatment, she would eventually succumb to her injuries on June 23, 1997.

Shabazz would be honored in several ways after her untimely death, with the Community Healthcare Network renaming one of its nursing centers after her. In Chicago, a charter school bears her name and this year, New York officials renamed the corner of West 165^th Street near the Audubon Ballroom Betty Shabazz Way.

Betty Shabazz’s devotion to her children and also her husband’s vision lands her atop a long list of Black women who have achieved much in the face of adversity. Her tenacity and will to continue on where others might have withered proves that she was worthy of the accolades that still accompany her name.

Rest In Power and Happy Birthday, Dr. Betty Shabazz.

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Innovative in his approach to music, Davis challenged himself constantly and introduced new styles of playing that are still peerless in every way. On what would have been Davis’ 86^th turn around the sun, we celebrate the jazz great on his day of birth by remembering his towering musical achievements.

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Miles Dewey Davis III was born today on 1926 in the southern Illinois city of Alton to a dentist father and a housewife mother. Raised primarily between East St. Louis and Arkansas, Miles enjoyed a charmed life full of the trappings of affluence. His mother, Cleota Mae, was a trained pianist and wanted her son to learn the instrument. His father, Miles Henry, gave his son a trumpet at 13 – which Miles Davis said was an affront to his pianist mother, who hated the sound of the instrument. After being trained by a local musician, Miles would go on to join the music society at his school and played professionally during off-hours at age 16.

WATCH Miles Davis Perform “So What”

Many large bandleaders tried to recruit the prodigious Davis, but at his mother’s urging, he finished high school before chasing his dreams. Graduating in 1944, he would encounter the Billy Eckstine Band during a stop in East St. Louis; the band featured future jazz legends Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie. While the band took residence in the city, Davis would replace regular trumpeter Buddy Anderson, filling big shoes and doing enough to impress the vets. However, Davis’ parents wanted their child to gain advanced education so he left for New York’s Julliard School of Music that same year.

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Arriving in the big city, Davis would join jam sessions and also seek out his idol Charlie Parker, playing in some of Harlem’s famous nightclubs honing his craft. The early seeds of the “bebop” jazz movements were being planted and the players came together to form this new, upbeat and largely improvisational style of music. Davis would eventually drop out of Julliard to focus on a professional jazz career at his father’s blessing. He would go on to join Charlie Parker’s quintet, which also featured drummer Max Roach. During a tough time on tour where Parker suffered a breakdown, Davis would rejoin Billy Eckstine in California and returned to New York after being stranded on the west coast. However, Davis would leave Parker’s quintet amid tension and other issues.

Although a celebrated piece of work now, Davis’ album in 1957 The Birth Of Cool ushered in a new sound in jazz that confused and enthralled many. It was not a commercial success but would prove to cement Davis in the annals of musical lore for his contributions. The 1950s proved to be a turbulent time for Davis, after splitting time between New York and Paris. Rumors of drug addiction swirled about in jazz circles, and he too began to develop a heroin habit himself. Kicking the habit in 1955, Davis would enact the Miles Davis Quintet and sever his ties with the bebop movement after leaving New York to get clean and returning to the big city.

Of Davis’s 48 studio albums and 53 live recordings, his thirty-year relationship with Columbia Records would spawn groundbreaking albums such as Kind Of Blue, Bitches Brew and Quiet Nights with his mentor Gil Evans.  Davis would also begin experimenting with rock and funk artists such as Sly and the Family Stone, James Brown, Jimi Hendrix and others. His psychedelic songs of the later periods were often misunderstood but Davis’ vision was fully realized as his career went on. Davis’ music has been sampled heavily by Hip-Hop producers, most notably his 1972 album On The Corner and it is fitting because he wanted his music to be relatable to younger African-Americans.

Davis would pass in Santa Monica, Ca. at the age of 65 from a stroke and respiratory failure associated with pneumonia. His gravesite is located at the Woodlawn Cemetery in his beloved New York. The legacy he’s left behind was an impenetrable cool, a playing style that no musician has been able to mimic since and leaving his mark on music in a way that style baffles critics of today. Miles Davis is a true legend in every sense of the word.

Rest In Power, Miles Davis and Happy Birthday!

Lt. Cmdr. Wesley Brown

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Brown was born in Baltimore in 1927, graduated from Dunbar High School in the District, and became the first in his family to attend college at Howard University. He entered the Naval Academy in 1945, where he was an accomplished athlete running cross-country with Jimmy Carter who was also a Naval Academy graduate.  Brown graduated from the Academy in 1949, ranking in the top half of his class.  Although he was in fact the sixth Black person to be admitted, he was the first to actually graduate.

Ironically, it was only a year earlier that president Harry S. Truman made the executive decision to desegregate the military.

During the 20th century, the U.S. Naval Academy evolved from a racist institution to one that ranked equal opportunity, but the journey to arrive at that point was a rocky one. Civil  rights advocates’ demands for equal opportunity shaped the Naval Academy’s evolution.

The time Brown spent at the Academy was trying for him but he held his ground and refused to cave.  Brown endured isolation and harassment, but he was not bitter.  He was featured in the book, “Breaking the Color Barrier: The U.S. Naval Academy’s First Black Midshipmen and the Struggle for Racial Equality” by Robert J. Schneller Jr.  According to the Naval historian, the racial attitudes of many of the naval officers and midshipmen at the Academy reflected the kinds of attitudes that had given rise to slavery and the Ku Klux Klan.

According to the Associated Press, Brown said in a 2005 interview with the Baltimore Sun that upperclassmen would give Brown excessive demerits for allegedly not maintaining his uniform properly and some classmates would not sit next to him in the cafeteria.  Brown spent his four years at the Academy without a roommate by choice, he recalled in the interview.  He said he didn’t want to feel responsible for unwilling or friendly White midshipmen.

He told the Baltimore Sun that he learned to not be frustrated when faced with a situation that couldn’t be changed.

“When I came to the Academy, I learned that there were all kinds of prejudices — against Jews, Catholics, even the Irish — and I looked around and thought that these prejudices were instilled in them by their families and they could not be blamed for feeling the way they did,” he said during the interview.

Brown was a veteran of World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War.  He had a 20-year career with the Navy. He helped build houses in Hawaii, roads in Liberia, waterfront facilities in the Philippines, and a seawater conversion plant in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

He retired from civilian employment at Howard University in 1988.

In 2008, the Naval Academy constructed the Wesley Brown Field House to accommodate physical education classes as well as the academy’s athletic programs.

Minorities now make up 22 percent of the brigade of midshipmen today. More than 1,700 African Americans have graduated from the Academy, including admirals, astronauts, and such celebrities as basketball player David Robinson and former talk show host-turned-actor Montel Williams.

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What the Act also helped promote is Lincoln’s inclusion of African-Americans in the Armed Forces beyond the capacity of workers and made them soldiers, even though the President was opposed to Black fighters in the Army. Nonetheless, Congress and the United States War Department issued General Order Number 143 on this day 149 years ago. The Order allowed Black soldiers to fight alongside Whites during the Civil War and beyond.

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Towards the end of the Civil War, the United States Colored Troops (USCT) numbered around 179,000 soldiers (the number spiked to 185,000 if non-Blacks are included). The USCT accounted for ten percent of the Union Army; an additional 19,000 served in the Navy. Although roughly 40,000 soldiers died over the length of the war, 30,000 of the troops perished to disease and infections.

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The troops were mostly artillery and infantry soldiers, but many more were relegated to noncombat positions such as kitchen workers, medical staff, scouts, spies, steamboat pilots and other positions that kept Black fighters off the frontline. Surprisingly enough, there were 80 commissioned Black officers.

Women also served, although they were not official members of the USCT. The most well-known woman who helped support the USCT and the Union was Harriet Tubman. Several Black soldiers were recognized for their efforts, with some winning the nation’s highest award. Sergeant William Harvey Carney of the 54th Massachusetts (Colored) Volunteer Infantry was awarded the Medal of Honor for his actions at the Battle of Fort Wagner. The war film “Glory” depicted the acts of the 54th Massachusetts (Colored) Volunteer Infantry, which landed actor Denzel Washington his first Oscar.
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Later, Sergeant Major Christian Fleetwood was awarded the Medal of Honor for acts alongside the 4th USCT in the Battle of Chaffin’s Farm in Virginia in September 1864. A year later, the USCT was disbanded, and the troops were ordered to serve alongside regiments in the US Army across the country.

In Washington, the African-American Civil War Memorial was erected in 1997 to show honor to the USCT and other Black fighters of the epic clash. Unfortunately, many of the soldiers who served and risked their lives for America’s freedom were shunned and discarded as secondary citizens. Still, the legacy of the USCT remains intact as historians have clearly shown that Black soldiers were vital in supporting the Union’s victory in the Civil War and beyond.

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The clinical study — ordered by the U.S. Public Health Service to study the progression of the disease syphilis in poor, rural Black men — was masked to the subjects as free health care from the government. With the Public Health Service working in tandem with the Tuskegee Institute, Black sharecroppers were left suffering with the disease, even though there was a known treatment in 1947 using penicillin.

Watch the infamous Tuskegee Syphylis experiment here:

White researcher Peter Buxtun blew the whistle on the study, after questioning the ethics of the study, prompting its end in 1972. Although a 1973 class-action lawsuit was filed on behalf of the victims and their families in 1974 for a $10-million settlement, Tuskegee survivors had not heard a formal word of apology from the government until former President Clinton’s impassioned remarks:

“To the survivors, to the wives and family members, the children and the grandchildren, I say what you know: No power on Earth can give you back the lives lost, the pain suffered, the years of internal torment and anguish.  What was done cannot be undone.  But we can end the silence.  We can stop turning our heads away.  We can look at you in the eye and finally say on behalf of the American people, what the United States government did was shameful, and I am sorry.”

As part of the 1974 settlement, the survivors’ beneficiaries and offspring received health and medical benefits even to this day; according to a CDC timeline, 15 offspring of the study’s survivors are still receiving their benefits. The Tuskegee syphilis experiment did much to damage the already wide rift between Black and White citizens, especially during a time when racist acts had become increasingly violent and more frequent toward African Americans.

Healing the wounds have not come easy: Many African Americans continue to harbor a mistrust of the government and medical facilities – an understandable by-product of the mistreatment Blacks suffered over the decades.  Because of the sacrifices made by the Tuskegee survivors, there are government programs in place to help prevent such acts from ever happening again.

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Jesse Washington worked on a farm owned by George and Lucy Fryer, English immigrants who were well-known in their farming community. On May 8, 1916, Lucy Fryer was murdered in her home and the news spread quickly as locals immediately named Washington as a suspect. Washington was arrested and held for questioning alongside his family — this after authorities discovered blood on his overalls that he attributed to a nosebleed.

Although Washington denied any wrongdoing, some feel that he was pressured into confessing to the rape and murder of Mrs. Fryer. History professor at Baylor University James M. SoRelle suggested that Washington may have been mentally challenged and that he may not have had a good recollection of the events that evening.

A lynch mob stormed the local jail to serve their version of justice, but Washington was moved to another location. After several days, Washington’s trial was held May 15 to a packed courthouse rabid for vengeance. Although his responses were deemed unintelligible, Washington was deemed guilty and ordered to be publicly lynched.

After being dragged through the street by court officials and getting beaten, stabbed, and kicked by the mob, he was covered in oil and hung from a tree with a chain. The mob cut off his genitals, fingers, and toes.

Washington was lit ablaze as executioners kept him alive long enough to continue his suffering.

After he died, bystanders collected memorabilia from the scene. Papers in cities as far away as New York and even overseas in London reported on the lynching of Washington. The New York Times said:

“In no other land even pretending to be civilized could a man be burned to death in the streets of a considerable city amid the savage exultation of its inhabitants.”

W.E.B. Du Bois also remarked on the lynching in part, saying, “Any talk of the triumph of Christianity, or the spread of human culture, is idle twaddle as long as the Waco lynching is possible in the United States.”

Elizabeth Freeman and other researchers in later times concluded that Washington may have killed Dryer due to harsh treatment from her husband but do not think he had the wherewithal to sexually assault her.

The lynching highlighted the racial tensions of the South and how the rise of the Ku Klux Klan coincided with the killings and assaults of Blacks during the early 1900s. The legacy of the Waco Horror gave way to a very public criticism of the practice, with many likening Washington as a sacrifice as many White residents held archaic notions of Black people as evil beings.

The actions of the lynching would mark the Waco area as a haven for White racists, as many African Americans in the area began to show resistance to the oppression felt in their town. As one of the ugly reminders of the racism Black people suffered in through the 20^th century, the Waco Horror’s chilling images only need to be seen once to burn their way into one’s minds forever.

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But his name was largely lost to history after his 1883 murder in Mississippi by a white mob irate that he had protected a black man who was targeted for a beating.

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Nearly 130 years later, federal authorities on Monday honored Foote by adding his name to a memorial wall at the headquarters of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. The ATF says Foote, a deputy collector at one of the bureau’s predecessor agencies, was the first black federal law enforcement official to die in the line of duty after Reconstruction.

“He lost his life as all of these agents did, protecting our community and enforcing the rule of law,” acting ATF director B. Todd Jones said, referring to the fallen agents honored on the wall.

Foote’s story was brought to the ATF’s attention by the bureau’s historian, Barbara Osteika, who came upon newspaper articles about his death while doing research. She drew from news coverage, academic articles, government records and family stories passed down through generations to piece together the biography and the circumstances of his death

The son of a barber and a homemaker, Foote was born into a free black family in Vicksburg, Miss., in 1843. He served in the Civil War, and is thought to have attended Oberlin College in Ohio. After the war, he became a community leader, once riding on horseback to rally voters who were being blocked from entering a polling place. He acted as town marshal and served in the state legislature.

Foote took a position in Yazoo City as a deputy collector for the Bureau of Internal Revenue, which was responsible for enforcing the nation’s liquor tax laws and seizing illicit distilleries. It was a busy and intense job, at a time when liquor was flowing freely. Steamboats traveling the Yazoo River would deliver liquor to merchants, barrels of whiskey were shipped from town to town and Yazoo City — home to fewer than 2,500 residents — was served by some 40 liquor stores and saloons in the 1870s, according to Osteika’s biography.

Race relations were raw and blacks remained targets of hangings, beatings and other violence.

On Christmas Eve 1883, Foote left his family at a church service after learning that a white merchant, John T. Posey, had come into town with plans to whip a black man, John James, in revenge for a slight. Foote intervened between James and the whipping party. Three white men, including Posey, were killed in the gunfight that followed.

“Courageous men are men who understand the danger and still choose to act,” said Dr. Sharon Malone, the wife of Attorney General Eric Holder and a sixth-generation Alabaman who detailed Foote’s biography at Monday’s ceremony. “There’s no doubt that William Henderson Foote understood exactly what awaited him that day and yet chose to stand up and do the right thing.”

Foote and 10 others were arrested. But on Dec. 29, a mob of more than 200 people overwhelmed the Yazoo City jail, where Foote was awaiting trial. Foote was shot so many times as to be unrecognizable and three other black prisoners were also killed.

Foote has also been honored at the National Police Officers Memorial in Washington as part of National Police Week. Many of his descendants attended Monday’s ATF ceremony, posing for photographs and placing flowers against the memorial wall.

His great-niece, Bettye Gardner, a history professor, said stories about Foote’s life and death had been passed down by her mother. She said she was overwhelmed that Foote was “getting the level of recognition, the level of honor that he should — given the life that he led.”

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Davis encountered the uprising of Black Nationalism in London during a quick stop on the trip back home to finish her schooling in America. Staunchly devoted to communist theories, Davis was initially appalled by Black activists’ rejection of the radical philosophies she adopted in her fight for the working class against capitalism. Davis would follow her mentor Herbert Marcuse to the University of California in San Diego, earning her Master’s there. She would later obtain her doctorate of Philosophy  at Humboldt University in East Berlin.

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As a professor of Philosophy at UCLA, Davis would become one of the central figures of Black activism, voicing her politics and aligning herself with the Black Panther Party. Controversy would ensue as she routinely spoke out against injustice, even from her perch as an educator. She would be fired by the school in 1970, thrusting her into one of the more explosive moments of her life. After developing a relationship of letter correspondence with jailed activist and Black Panther member George Jackson, she would find herself labeled a fugitive and terrorist after a courthouse shooting in August of 1970 went awry, resulting in the death of Jackson’s 17-year old brother, Jonathan.

Watch Davis talk about growing up with bombs going off in her neighborhood here:

Davis was arrested that fall in New York, and after a tense trial in Marin County Superior Court, she was sentenced and held in the Women’s Detention Center in California. Becoming a legendary figure in both the Black community and abroad, she would find support from across the globe in trying to obtain her freedom. Davis would serve 18 months in prison, spurring her ongoing fight against what has been labeled as the “prison industrial complex.”

Watch Davis talk about the prison industrial complex here:

Davis has authored 11 books, with two recent works focused heavily on prison and the justice system. An upcoming book, “The Meaning Of Freedom And Other Difficult Dialogues,” is a collection of unpublished speeches meant to capture the wide breadth of Davis’ work, including feminism, oppression, and abolishing the prison system as a whole.

Angela Davis and her revolutionary spirit remains a resonant reminder of both her turbulent yet enriching past. She continues to be one of the world’s leading voices against inequality, racism, and injustice. Angela Davis is a Mother of the Civil Rights Movement.

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Ben Bratton

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Naturally, Bratton would be expected to take his winning ways to the 2012 London Summer Olympics. But he will merely be a spectator like countless others because he is not allowed to participate in this summer’s Games, The Daily reports.

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It seems that with regards to fencing, the International Olympic Committee puts a cap on the number of medals the sport can receive, one team from men’s and women’s fencing is eliminated every four years as part of a rotation. So this year, the men’s team epee in which men use the tips of their swords to score points by touching a competitor anywhere on their person, was eliminated as an Olympic event.

Although Bratton won’t be seeing Big Ben or the London Bridge this summer, his World Championship medal is still a hugely satisfying accomplishment. The 26-year-old Queens, New York native is still keeping hope alive that he’ll be able to participate in the Olympic Games in 2016. “Everything’s happened very quickly,” he said. “I’m always looking forward. I don’t have much time to reflect right now, there’s still a lot of things I need to do,” he told The Daily.
Bratton has been fencing since he was ten-years-old. After graduating from St. John’s University in 2007, the young man set his eyes on competing in the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games. Although Bratton didn’t make the fencing team, he didn’t want to give up his passion. Though he worked as a beer distributor and a real estate agent to pay the bills, but he never gave up fencing. He eventually got back into fighting form during his off-hours and made the national fencing team.

The young athlete decided that he had to sacrifice those day jobs in order to give fencing his full attention, so he began to train twice a day. This meant moving back into his mother’s house.  “It’s about sacrifice,” said. “The Olympians we have here, you talk to anyone who’s ever done it, that will be the common thread.”

Bratton is determined to compete in the 2016 Olympic Games and nothing will deter him.  “Now I have the tools to get there. I’ve gone through all the ups and downs and know what can be thrown at me in an Olympic year, completely,” he said. “I feel more prepared for the next go around.”

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Hall of Famer Andrew “Rube” Foster, a former player and owner of the Chicago American Giants, helped to guide the forming of an organized league comprised of a handful of teams from the Midwest. Calling itself the Negro National League, the first game of the 1920 season was held between Foster’s American Giants and the home team Indianapolis ABC’s. Although the American Giants would win the league championship that year, they would lose the opener to the hosting squad 4-2.

The establishment of the Negro National League spawned rival Black baseball leagues across the country, such as the Eastern Colored League (ECL) and the Negro American League (NAL). Major League Baseball (MLB) began to take notice of the talent and speed of Black players and began recruiting players directly from the scattered leagues. After Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in 1947, the NAL suddenly experienced an exodus of its best players heading to play for MLB teams. The NAL would eventually end in 1960.

For more detailed information on the Negro Leagues, including team names and history, follow this link.

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Saluting Civil Rights Icon Julian Bond

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Queen Mother Moore (pictured) was a die-hard civil right activist and Black nationalist  who stood side-by-side with Jamaican-born scholar and Pan-Africanist leader Marcus Garvey, supporting his “Back to Africa Movement.” Moore was also a hero to countless folks in her beloved Harlem community, where she fought for tenant rights and more solid education for its residents.  Although her birth name was Audley Moore, she was renamed Queen Mother Moore by the Ashanti tribe in Ghana who gave her the honorary title on one of her many trips to the Motherland.

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She had a powerful voice that she used for speaking against the injustices that Black people suffered at the hands of this country that had literally turned its back on them.  Moore was once quoted as saying, ”They not only called us Negroes, they made us Negroes, things that don’t know where they came from and don’t even care that they don’t know. Negro is a state of mind, and they massacred our minds.”
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Moore was born on July 27, 1898, in New Iberia, Louisiana,  a town west of New Orleans.  Moore’s grandmother was a slave, whose Mother was raped by her enslaver who happened to be a physician.  Moore’s grandfather was lynched as his wife watched, and she was left to raise five children alone. To top that off, Moore lost both her parents before she reached fourth grade.

Moore was forced to enter the workforce after her parents died.  At the time, New Orleans was a rough place for an orphaned young girl. Moore often talked about how the police in and around New Orleans used to routinely round up Black men for vagrancy if they were just standing on a corner talking. She also told how the police would raid restaurants and arrest all the Black men only to return later and rape the Black women.

It was around age 15 that Moore made the decision to jump into the struggle that she saw going on around her. Her decision turned into a lifelong search for answers about how to change things.

Marcus Garvey, who founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) in 1914, moved to Harlem, New York, in 1916, where UNIA thrived. By now a formidable public speaker, Garvey spoke across America. He urged African Americans to be proud of their race and return to Africa, their ancestral homeland, and attracted thousands of supporters.  He also campaigned against lynching, Jim Crow laws, denial of Black voting rights, and racial discrimination.

His dynamism caught the eyes and ears of Moore.

Moore left Louisiana in the 1920s, and as soon as she arrived in Harlem, she immediately threw herself into the struggle there.  She joined Garvey’s UNIA movement and became a leader until the movement collapsed in 1927.

Moore organized rent strikes against abusive landlords, came to the aid of domestic workers in New York City, and agitated for Black political representation, prisoner rights, and the integration of the armed forces.  She joined the Communist Party in 1933, because it rallied around the idea of self-determination for Blacks.

Watch Queen Mother Moore talk about reparations here:

Moore ran as a Communist for New York’s state assembly in 1938, but left the party in 1950.  In 1955, Moore helped to organize a campaign demanding that Blacks receive reparations for the travesties that they suffered in this country all the way back to the days of slavery.  Moore also teamed up with controversial Black nationalist Malcolm X, joining his Organization of Afro-American Unity.

Moore was Bishop of the Apostolic Orthodox Church of Judea. She is a founding member of the Commission to Eliminate Racism, Council of Churches of Greater New York.

In organizing this commission, she staged a 24-hour sit-in for three weeks.

She is also a founder of the African American Cultural Foundation, Inc., which led the fight against usage of the slave term “Negro.”

Moore led protests against the Apollo Theatre for showing racist shows.  She helped organize CIO unions and the Work Progress Administration (WPA). She forced the WPA to employ Black women on sewing projects who were previously relegated to domestic work. Moore also led the fight to break Jim Crow policy in the Coast Guard and became the first Black stewardess to be hired.

She was arrested three times and even organized her fellow inmates: Moore was first cuffed during her struggle for defending the rights of Black children to use a public park pool without bringing along their birth certificates. The second time she was arrested for defending a peddler from arrest for selling tomatoes to support his seven little children. The final time, she was arrested for trying to register people to vote in Green County, New York.

Queen Mother Moore was present when former South African president Nelson Mandela came to New York in the summer of 1990, and she was one of only five invited female speakers to address the historical Million Man March in October 1995.  By the time Moore was 97, she had outlasted a stroke, two mastectomies, and a broken hip.

The formidable warrior passed away of natural causes at age 99 on May 2, 1997, leaving one son, five grandchildren and a great-grandson.

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The show ran for eight years, joining a small and elite class of network long-running television shows with a predominantly Black cast. The Cosby Show aired its last episode twenty years ago today, interestingly enough during the height of the race-related Los Angeles riots inspired by the Rodney King case.

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The visionary aspects of Cosby’s show were often criticized by some for only showing a small slice of the African-American family, but that same distinction was also praised by many. With Cosby portraying Heathcliff Huxtable, an obstetrician and his co-star Phylicia Rashad playing his attorney wife Clair, the show was inspired by much of the main star’s personal journey in education, marriage and family life. The Huxtables and their four unique but generally well-mannered children were often resistant to Cosby’s teachable moments.

A smash hit in the 80s, even surpassing long-running CBS evening program 60 Minutes at one point, the show’s ratings had begun to plummet toward the end. NBC ran an hour-long special episode for the series finale that was centered on lone son, Theo Huxtable, graduating from New York University, cementing Cosby’s personal theme of the importance of education. Daughter Denise, now married, revealed to her family that she was pregnant and young Olivia goes to join her father and stepmother in Singapore. The show sweetly ends with Cliff and Clair dancing together on the set stage and exiting to raucous applause.

During the first half-hour segment, Cosby taped a small segment pleading to LA rioters to cease their actions and instead watch the show.

While some attacked Cosby’s preachy themes, there should be no criticism levied upon the show considering what has been left in its wake. Today, bawdier primetime shows exist that are replete with suggestive language and situations, certainly not proper for younger viewers. The sitcom would launch a spinoff series, A Different World, focusing on the college life of Denise Huxtable. The show was a hit.

The Cosby Show was a rare gem in that it was fit for all ages, and when the messages and funny bits connected, it left a resonant mark on the mind. It is no wonder, then, why this show is still discussed with passion and adoration two decades later.

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During his 50-plus year career, Ellington composed thousands of songs for the stage, screen and composition book, according to Biography.com. Some of his notable songs include, “It don’t mean a thing,” “Echoes of Harlem,” “East St. Louis Toodle-oo,” and “The Mooche.” Ellington was awarded twelve Grammys from 1959 to 2000, nine of those came during his lifetime.

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His path to musical greatness began at the tender age of seven when he began playing the piano. Inspired by his job as a soda jerk, he wrote his first song, “Soda Mountain Rag,” at age 15. At age 17, he earned a scholarship to the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. But Ellington had a passion for ragtime, so he passed on sharpening his craft in the Ivory Tower in favor of playing in standing-room-only venues nationwide.

WATCH Duke Ellington Perform “If It Don’t Mean A Thing”

Biography has more:

In the 1920s, Ellington performed in Broadway nightclubs as the bandleader of a sextet, a group which in time grew to a 10-piece ensemble. Ellington sought out musicians with unique playing styles, such as Bubber Miley, who used a plunger to make the “wa-wa” sound, and Joe Nanton, who gave the world his trombone “growl.” At various times, his ensemble included the trumpeter Cootie Williams, cornetist Rex Stewart and alto saxophonist Johnny Hodges. Ellington made hundreds of recordings with his bands, appeared in films and on radio, and toured Europe on two occasions in the 1930s.

Ellington’s fame rose to the rafters in the 1940s when he composed several masterworks, including “Concerto for Cootie,” “Cotton Tail” and “Ko-Ko.” Some of his most popular songs included “It Don’t Mean a Thing if It Ain’t Got That Swing,” “Sophisticated Lady,” “Prelude to a Kiss,” “Solitude,” and “Satin Doll.” A number of his hits were sung by the impressive Ivie Anderson, a favorite female vocalist of Duke’s band.

Ellington continued to perform until shortly before his death at the age of 75. More than 12,000 people attended his funeral. His dying words were reported to have been, “Music is how I live, why I live and how I will be remembered.”

So true, Mr. Ellington, so true.

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Indeed, Ali was a man whose boxing skills were unmatched. He had one of the fastest jabs, arguable the best, in the history of the sport. His reflexes were akin to that of a pugilist thirty-pounds lighter. And his tenacious resolve to fight through adversity (He he fought through a broken jaw in a loss to Ken Norton) is match only by the greatest of sports Gods. But, it is his integrity as a man that solidifies his helm atop the boxing world.

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In 1967, at the height of his career, Ali was the World Boxing Association (WBA) Champion when he refused a call to serve in the United States Army. He was promptly stripped of his belt by the The New York State Athletic Commission (NYSAC) and the WBA as a result. Ali was arrested and found guilty of draft evasion.

Edwin B. Dooley, chairman of NYSAC, was quoted by the New York Times as saying, “(Ali’s) refusal to enter the service is regarded by the commission to be detrimental to the best interests of boxing.”

M. Robert Evans, president of the W.B.A., told The Times, “I feel that Muhammad Ali has defied the laws of the United States regarding selective service. His action today leaves me no alternative.”

Ali, in true form, had this to say of his refusal to join Uncle Sam’s Army: “I ain’t got no quarrel with them Viet Cong…No Viet Cong ever call me Nigger.”

Watch Muhammad Ali Talk About Refusing To Join The U.S. Army

Ali was sentenced to four years in prison, but was never imprisoned due to the active appeal of his conviction. His case made it all the way up to the Supreme Court where the justices ruled in his favor. While he won the moral war, his legal battles kept him out of the ring for nearly four years.

(He did, however, fight in 1970 against Jerry Quarry because the Atlanta Athletic Commission granted him a license to fight)

Nearly four years out of the ring would have kept even the most gifted boxers outside of the ropes for good. But Ali was not merely a gifted fighter.

He was “The Greatest.”

Ali returned to action and lost a thrilling match against Joe Frazier in 1971. He rebounded with multiple victors in 1972 and eventually regained his title on October 30, 1974 when he beat George Foreman in the “Rumble In The Jungle.” That fight is considered one of the greatest sports events in the history of athletics. He retired in 1981 after losing to to up-and-coming fighter Trevor Berbick.

In today’s sport’s culture where athletes seems to speak for nothing, Ali stood and spoke for everything and everyone that keeps America honest. He refused defend his country when it was not quite ready to fight for his rights. He was unwilling to trade in his integrity for money and endorsements, something few superstar athletes of today would do.

It is for this reason that we thank Muhammad Ali for standing up to America and making her better. Thank for being, “The Greatest.”

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It was a day that marked the beginning of one of the deadliest, most destructive race riots in the nation’s history, and one in which Watson’s spur-of-the-moment decision to take part made him one of the enduring faces of the violence.

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He was at home that day like thousands of others when he heard the news that was racing across Los Angeles: A jury with no Black members had acquitted four police officers in the videotaped beating (pictured) of Rodney King, a Black man stopped for speeding nearly 14 months before.

“I got caught up in the emotions like everyone else,” Watson says 20 years after a riot that would leave 55 people dead, more than 2,300 injured and himself forever recognized as one of the attackers of White truck driver Reginald Denny, who himself became the enduring image of the innocents victimized during the chaos.

Watch King and the L.A. Race Riots here:

South Los Angeles, where the riot began, has changed considerably two decades later, as has Watson. But many things remain the same.

While racial tensions fanned by the verdict and the general feeling of disenfranchisement and distrust of police among LA’s black population have moderated, residents of the city’s largely Black and Hispanic South Side complain that the area still is plagued by too few jobs, too few grocery stores and a lack of redevelopment that would bring more life to the area.

One place in particular that time seemingly forgot is the intersection of Florence and Normandie, where Denny was attacked on that dark day the riot began. It remains a gritty corner that’s home to gas stations where men rush up to incoming cars and pump fuel for spare change, as well as a liquor store with more foot traffic than any other business in sight.

“Have things changed? Not really. People are just more mellow these days,” Frank Owens says with a smile. The unemployed landscaper sat on a bus stop bench near the intersection recently, visiting with friends before going across the street to buy lottery tickets at the liquor store and joke with its owner, James Oh.

Much like Los Angeles as a whole, the neighborhood’s Latino population has grown while the black population has declined.

In this part of town, high school dropout rates are higher than for the city as a whole, and only 8 percent of the area’s residents have college degrees, compared with 30 percent for all residents of Los Angeles, according to American Community Survey estimates from 2006 to 2010.

More than three times as many households in the area reported yearly incomes of less than $20,000 during the same period than homes with yearly incomes of more than $100,000. That’s in stark contrast to the city as a whole, where there were more households with incomes above $100,000 than those with incomes of less than $20,000.

The economic disparity, coupled with racial animosity and distrust of the police created the powder keg that was the neighborhood on April 29, 1992, Watson says. Then word of the King verdict set it off.

“The riots were the last spark,” said Connie Rice, a director of the civil rights group Advancement Project and an attorney who has brought numerous civil rights lawsuits against the Los Angeles Police Department. “People had had enough.”

As the liquor store at the intersection of Florence and Normandie was being looted and white passersby were fleeing a barrage of rocks and bottles, Denny stopped his big rig to avoid running over someone.

He was quickly dragged from the cab and nearly beaten to death by Watson and a handful of others. As the attack unfolded on live TV, Watson stepped on Denny’s head after Damian Williams smashed the trucker’s skull in with a brick.

Rioting spread across the city and into neighboring suburbs. Cars were demolished and homes and businesses were burned. Before order was restored, more than 1,500 buildings were damaged or destroyed. Almost a quarter century had passed since the tumultuous urban riots of 1968, and even longer since LA’s Watts rioting in 1965. The magnitude of this new racial paroxysm shocked a nation that thought it had moved on.

Today, Watson still struggles to explain why he took part in the destruction. Known as Keith to his family and “KeeKee” to friends, he was a 27-year-old ex-Marine with a wife and a job who came from a good family. His father had been his neighborhood’s block captain, no less, and he acknowledges his family didn’t raise him to be a troublemaker.

“I guess you could say, you know, looking at my background and whatever, how could I have gotten caught up in it?” he mused on a recent sun-splashed morning as he sat on the front porch of the home he grew up in, located just a few blocks from the intersection.

After a long pause and a sigh, he continues: “You know, honestly, it was something that just happened, man. I never even knew Reginald Denny. Just the anger and the rage just took hold to where I nor anyone who was out there that day was in their right frame of mind.”

Watson was convicted of misdemeanor assault and sentenced to time served for the 17 months he spent in jail before his case was resolved.

But that day was a rage, he and others in the community say, fueled by years of high unemployment, abuse and neglect by police, and rising tension with recently arrived Korean store owners.

“We wanted jobs around here, we wanted respect and we didn’t get none of that. And then the police just harassed us all the time,” says Sharon McSwain, who for 22 of her 45 years has lived within walking distance of the intersection where Denny was attacked. He was saved by a black truck driver who rushed out to help after seeing the brutal beating on television.

Tensions in the community had been running high before the riot, fueled in part by the case of a Korean grocer who shot to death a black teenager she had accused of trying to steal a bottle of orange juice. The grocer, Soon Ja Du, was convicted of manslaughter for killing 15-year-old Latasha Harlins, but received a sentence of only probation and community service.

Like King’s beating, the shooting had been captured on videotape, by Du’s store surveillance camera. The images stoked the anger.

The store shooting occurred just two weeks after George Holliday stood on the terrace outside his San Fernando Valley home and videotaped four LAPD officers kicking King, using stun guns on him and delivering more than 50 blows from their police batons.

On April 29, 1992, it seemed Holliday’s videotape would be the key evidence leading to a guilty verdict against the officers. When they were instead acquitted, violence erupted immediately.

Police, seemingly caught off-guard, were quickly outnumbered by rioters and retreated. As the uprising spread to the city’s Koreatown area, shop owners armed themselves and engaged in running gun battles with looters.

“I think we did the right thing,” says attorney David Kim, who had gone on Korean-language radio to encourage people to take up arms because the police weren’t protecting them.

Not that violence had been totally unexpected.

In the weeks before the verdict, nearly a dozen black community leaders had been meeting regularly with then-Mayor Tom Bradley, discussing what to do if there was an acquittal, the Rev. Cecil “Chip” Murray recounts.

When the verdict was announced, some 150 volunteers fanned out across the city, urging calm, says Murray, retired pastor of the First African Methodist Episcopal Church and now a religious studies professor at the University of Southern California. They were successful in some instances and likely would have been more so if police had backed them up, he says.

King himself, in his recently published memoir, “The Riot Within: My Journey From Rebellion to Redemption,” says FBI agents warned him a riot was expected if the officers walked. They advised him to keep a low profile so as not to inflame passions.

He did until the third day, when he went on television and made an emotional plea for calm, famously asking, “Can we all get along?”

In the aftermath, much of the blame was placed on Police Chief Daryl Gates, who resigned under pressure soon after.

Before the uprising, Gates had been hailed in national police circles as an innovator, widely credited with helping pioneer both the modern police special weapons and tactics team and the Drug Abuse Resistance Education program that partners police with schools.

Until his death in 2010, he angrily defended his actions, accusing his officers of failing to carry out a plan he said was in place to stop any trouble. He was particularly critical of his command staff for leading the retreat.

“The captain, lieutenant, deputy chiefs, commanders – they all screwed up in my judgment,” Gates, who had been chief for 14 years, told The Associated Press in 2002.

Whoever was to blame, Gates remains a polarizing figure in LA’s black community, where words like Gestapo, Nazi and racist are routinely used to describe the way he ran the LAPD.

After the riot, a number of reforms were instituted, including limiting a police chief to a maximum of two five-year terms. Stricter guidelines in the way the LAPD investigates civilian complaints and disciplines its officers were also implemented after both federal officials and an independent review board concluded the department had for years been guilty of a pattern of civil rights abuses.

Anger toward the department as a whole is less intense now.

“Cops are still cops,” says Marqueece Harris-Dawson, president of the Community Coalition of South Los Angeles. “They do lots of things we don’t like but this idea you’re under threat of assassination or torture or beating, it’s just not as present anymore.”

“There is no figure on the scene in this region that has the vitriol, the racism and the open disregard for the citizens of this city that Darryl Gates had,” Harris-Dawson adds.

Violent crime fell citywide by 76 percent between 1992 and 2010, according to Los Angeles police statistics.

Meanwhile, tensions between the black and Korean communities have lessened over the years, according to both sides. Rioters targeted and caused $400 million worth of damage to Korean-American businesses, many of them liquor stores that residents said were blights on the community. Language barriers and cultural differences were also key.

Tom’s Liquor, on the corner of Florence and Normandie, was once notorious in the neighborhood for selling hardly anything but booze and for allowing drunks to congregate out front.

The Korean-born Oh, who took ownership three years ago, says he has gone out of his way to treat all his customers as special and to learn the names of his regulars.

“It’s just common sense to communicate with people, to understand each other, to know each other’s cultures,” Oh says.

Since taking charge, Oh says, he has asked the drinkers to leave, painted over the graffiti and expanded his inventory to include a selection of food, baby items and other goods he says people have told him they are hard-pressed to find in the neighborhood.

About a mile from Florence and Normandie things have gotten better. A popular strip mall has sprouted, developed by Magic Johnson and others. It boasts a Starbucks, a grocery store, several name-brand shops and a Jamba Juice where $4 fruit smoothies were selling fast on a recent day.

Many problems still persist in nearby neighborhoods, however.

Some businesses never returned after they were destroyed, including Maria Muniz’s father’s welding workshop. Unable to buy new equipment, he never reopened. Eventually her parents divorced and her mother took a job in a sweatshop.

“I don’t know what would have been of our lives if the riots hadn’t happened,” says Muniz, who now works for Community Coalition.

Watson, meanwhile, has gotten on with his life. He’s become a successful businessman, having “taken lemons and made lemonade,” he likes to say with a laugh.

He has two daughters in college and for years has operated his own limousine business. Following a drug possession bust a few years after the riot he has stayed out of trouble and now helps keep watch on his neighborhood, just as his late father once did. He has spent most of his life in the neighborhood, returning to the house he grew up in last year to care for his elderly mother.

His limo customers, he says, have included everyone from a Saudi Arabian princess he chauffeured last year to people from the neighborhood celebrating birthdays and weddings and, as more Hispanics have moved into the area, quinceaneras.

“You get a sense of pride and accomplishment when you can help a person’s evening or event and you see the smiles and the love and the joy on their faces,” says the burly Watson, breaking into a smile himself.

Asked if he feels badly about what he did to Denny, he says simply that what happened to the trucker that day was “unfortunate.”

“But I can’t take it back. There’s nothing I can do.”

Watson did apologize personally to Denny some years ago, the only one of his attackers to do so. Another time he offered to send a limo to pick him up and take him to Florence and Normandie, then somewhere afterward where the two could have a drink and talk.

He says Denny, who lives quietly in Arizona these days, declined. The trucker has shunned interviews for years, and repeated attempts to contact him by mail, phone and in person for this story were unsuccessful.

“He chooses to remain in private,” Watson said. “And we respect his privacy. So be it.”

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With a three-octave vocal range, booming histrionics and the uncanny ability to improvise with her signature scats, Ms. Fitzgerald towers over her contemporaries and remains an inspiration to other singers. As we celebrate the life of Ms. Fitzgerald on this day of her birth, News One takes a look back at the life 59-year career of the late Grammy Award-winning pioneer.

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Fitzgerald was born in Newport News, Virginia to parents William and Temperance. After her parents dissolved their common-law marriage, Ella’s mother moved to Yonkers, New York with a boyfriend. As a young girl, Ella had dancing aspirations but enjoyed listening to Bing Crosby, Louis Armstrong and others. It was the Boswell Sisters, however, she found to be most influential early on in her career. But soon after, tragedy struck and Ella began down a sordid life path.

When her mother passed in 1932, Ella began running numbers, working at a bordello and pursuing other miscellaneous acts. She would become an orphan of the state and eventually ended up homeless for a spell. In 1934, at the age of 17, Ella would debut her vocal talents at the famed Apollo Theater of Harlem. She was going to show off her dancing abilities, but opted instead to sing one of her favorite Boswell Sisters songs and captured the winning prize.

In 1935, Ella caught a break singing with bandleader and drummer Chuck Webb, opening for him and joining his orchestra. When Webb passed in 1939, Ella scored a hit a year prior with the song “A Tisket, A-Tasket,” a song she co-wrote. She was named head of the band, but the group abruptly broke up in 1942, which launched her solo career. She eventually found her way alongside trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie and invented her famous “scat-singing” style. She fashioned the vocal technique much in the way Dizzy would go off into improvisational horn riffs.

Fitzgerald went mainstream in the 50s, scoring success with a series of eight “songbooks” that she recorded on famous jazz label, Verve. The albums were a critical and commercial boon for Fitzgerald, cementing her in the annals of Jazz history. This move led the way to several more albums under Verve until she moved on to various record labels over the course of her career.

She would amass 13 Grammy Awards, and received a Lifetime Achievement award in 1967.

Ms. Fitzgerald passed away in June of 1996, leaving behind a rich legacy of recordings and influence over the Jazz landscape. Diabetes would rob the great singer of her life, but a series of her works are enshrined by the Smithsonian’s National Museum Of American History, Library of Congress, Harvard University and UCLA.

Happy Birthday to the Queen, Ella Fitzgerald!

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Foreman Rufus McDonald and his crew were moments away from destroying a storage trunk in a building in Chicago’s South Side neighborhood. Deciding to save the trunk, McDonald unveiled a gold mine of findings. Documents, photos and books were found, prompting McDonald to take the items to a local rare book dealer, giving the construction worker a valuable history lesson in the process.

“He said, ‘Do you know who this is?’ I said, ‘Nah, who is it?’ He said, ‘It’s Richard Theodore Greener,” McDonald recalls. “I said, ‘Who is he?’” chuckled McDonald. Learning quickly about Greener’s past, the discovery of the trunk garnered interest from Harvard, and museums across the country, including Chicago’s DuSable Museum of African-American History. Carol Adams, president of DuSable, even considers Greener’s achievements the spark that led to the intellectual rise of President Barack Obama.

To listen to the NPR story, click here.

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Since Cornelius suffered an aneurysm in 1997, seizures plagued him in later years. In the final six months of his life, though, the pain of his condition had become debilitating, causing Cornelius to fall in to a deep depression.

From the autopsy report, it is stated that Cornelius called his son at 3 a.m., saying, “I don’t know how long I can take this.” TMZ reports:

Don’s son told him he’d rush right over … and Don said he’d leave the back door open. When Don’s son arrived to Cornelius’ Los Angeles home, he detected an odor of smoke and saw Don seated in a chair with a pistol in his right hand.

The autopsy report also reveals that Cornelius pulled the trigger from his left temple and the bullet exited his right temple. Oddly enough, there were also paper bags over his hands:

The decedent was 75-year-old Black male. He was observed supine on a hospital bed in the emergency room. He was covered with a white sheet. He was clad in black pants, black underwear, and a white hospital gown. No tattoos were noted. … His hands were covered with brown paper bags. … I found what appears to be a bullet entrance contact wound to the right temple. I saw what appears to be an exit wound to the upper left side of his head. No other trauma was noted.

View the rest of the autopsy report here.

R.I.P., Mr. Cornelius.

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The tragedy of Martin’s untimely and senseless death will forever haunt his mother, Sybrina Fulton (pictured), and this Mother’s Day, she will be without her beloved son.

Still, the unfortunate Martin murder has inspired a campaign, For Sybrina Project, that will hopefully allow Fulton to feel an outpouring of love and support on Mother’s Day.

Huffington Post BlackVoices has partnered with writer and activist Michaela Angela Davis for the Sybrina Project.  Davis, is best known for her controversial stance against hiring a White fashion director at ESSENCE magazine a couple of years ago.  Now Davis is making a heartfelt plea, asking that folks show their love and support to Fulton, so that she does not feel alone on the day that Mother’s everywhere are celebrated.

The public can honor Fulton this Mother’s Day with words of encouragement, poems, photographs, and drawings. To contribute to the For Sybrina Project, send your cards:

• Directly to the For Sybrina Project Tumblr
• E-mail them to forsybrina@gmail.com
• Share them on Twitter with the tag #4sybrina
• Share it on Instagram with the tag #4sybrina

Submissions will be shared on the For Sybrina Tumblr site.  The contributions that stand out the most will be placed in a photo book that will be sent directly to Fulton.

For further information about the For Sybrina Project labor of love, check out the video below:

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Charlotte E. Ray was born on January 13, 1850. As one of seven children, she grew up in a large family. Her father, Charles, was a minister and an active participant in the slavery abolishment movement. Known as a driven scholar, Ray would make her way to Washington in the early 1860s, enrolling at the Institute for the Education of Colored Youth, one of the few such establishments to offer a high level of quality teaching for their students.

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By the end of her tenure at the institute, her academic ambitions led her to become an educator at the Normal and Preparatory Department at Howard University. Around this time, Ray also enrolled in the Law Department of Howard University by using a bit of deception: Knowing that women were not graciously admitted into the law school, Ray would file her application under the name “C.E. Ray,” which would guarantee her entry. Excelling in her classes, with a focus on corporate law, she graduated from the law program in 1872. She was admitted to the District of Columbia Bar, officially marking her historic triumph — but the victory would be bittersweet.

The times were not kind to Black people, even those with the educational credentials of Ray. Even though she opened a law office in Washington, her business would fail due to prejudice and the like. Shuttering her doors, she would return to her native New York and taught in the public school system, finding root in Brooklyn. She would marry in the 1880s, taking her husband’s last name, Fraim. She was active in the women’s suffrage movement along with other social causes and then joined the National Association of Colored Women as well. Ray passed on January 4, 1911.

Charlotte E. Ray’s legacy is quite intact and although her name isn’t mainstream, she is properly recognized by Howard University’s law school and has been a Black History Month focal point as well. Her inspiring tale in the face of insurmountable odds will continue to be told, yet it deserves to be a larger part of the conversation when speaking to young women entering the halls of academia.

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Yet school districts across the country continued to remain largely segregated due to demographics and a lack of adequate means for students to travel to other schools. Forty-one years ago today, the Supreme Court ruled in a North Carolina case that schools must integrate their schools by way of busing students from various neighborhoods, which sought to promote racial diversity.

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The NAACP Legal Defense Fund built a case for segregation on the behalf of six-year old James Swann and nine other families. In 1965, a district court judge ruled the Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education case in favor of the board, stating that there was not a constitutional obligation to increase diversity in schools. Swann’s father, a theology professor, most certainly could afford to send his son anywhere but the family’s inclusion made a stronger case as a result. The case was heard again in 1969 and won, making then-Judge James B. McMillan an unpopular figure in the south.

The judge ordered a plan that stated Black students in Charlotte should be bused to suburban and predominately White schools while White students should be bused into the inner city. McMillan was met with heavy resistance from not only the school districts, but also angry parents unhappy with the idea of race mixing in schools. After an appeals court ruling that negated the plan, the case made its way to the Supreme Court where the justices ruled 9-0 in favor of the Swann side of the argument. The Court was careful to call the ruling a “remedial technique” in achieving racial balance.

Not surprisingly, the federal case gave way to similar measures being passed in cities such as Detroit and other major school districts. Suburban families, still buckling under the weight of decades of racial tension, were largely resistant to busing as a means of integration. White parents were staunchly against the ruling, and in 1974, a Massachusetts court ruling led to race-fueled protests in segregated South Boston.

The landmark decision in North Carolina expired just ten years ago, after a 1999 ruling showed that the busing technique may have been a touch archaic. Other school districts began dropping the busing rule, deciding that students would be allowed to attend any school they wanted to. In northern district and points west, the busing ruling was not implemented as widely, basing student placement on neighborhood demographics alone.

School integration is certainly a hot button issue, even in the 21^st century. However, with Black students making up a significantly smaller portion of the entire student body nationwide, there has to be more data produced that point to the necessity of diversity and a stronger focus on improving the quality of education for all students. Beyond making racial balance in schools a priority, students of color deserve the same opportunity to succeed afforded to all who attend public schools.

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Such day-and-date releases have become increasingly common in recent years for smaller independent films. But this will be the first such U.S. film to stream concurrently on the social media behemoth while opening in theaters.

The film, directed by Kevin Macdonald, will be available for a $6.99 rental beginning April 20th. A portion of the proceeds from Facebook sales will benefit Save the Children, the charity for needy children.

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“Marley” is also being released via video-on-demand on April 20th.

Facebook began hosting movie rentals in March 2011. Digital delivery of new releases and older films has been a highly competitive frontier, particularly among Google Inc.’s YouTube, Apple Inc.’s iTunes and subscription service Netflix.

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While the museum states that there was no systematic program for the elimination of Blacks as there was for Jews and other groups, people of African descent were certainly not safe during the Holocaust period.

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During the war, Black Americans and Europeans captured by the Nazis were interned in concentrations camps. Bayume Mohamed Hussein of Tanzania died in the Sachsenhausen camp, near Berlin and Lionel Romney, an American sailor with the U.S. Merchant Marine, was imprisoned in the Mauthausen concentration camp. There were many more:

Black prisoners of war faced illegal incarceration and mistreatment at the hands of the Nazis, who did not uphold the regulations imposed by the Geneva Convention (international agreement on the conduct of war and the treatment of wounded and captured soldiers). Lieutenant Darwin Nichols, an African American pilot, was incarcerated in a Gestapo prison in Butzbach. Black soldiers of the American, French, and British armies were worked to death on construction projects or died as a result of mistreatment in concentration or prisoner-of-war camps. Others were never even incarcerated, but were instead immediately killed by the SS or Gestapo.

Even before WWII, the Nazis treated its native black citizenry (Children whose mothers were usually German and fathers were of African descent) with pure inhumanity:

African German mulatto children were marginalized in German society, isolated socially and economically, and not allowed to attend university. Racial discrimination prohibited them from seeking most jobs, including service in the military. With the Nazi rise to power they became a target of racial and population policy. By 1937, the Gestapo (German secret state police) had secretly rounded up and forcibly sterilized many of them. Some were subjected to medical experiments; others mysteriously “disappeared.”

Go to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum for more history facts on black victims of the holocaust.

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That’s the idea behind the Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia, which says it has amassed the nation’s largest public collection of artifacts spanning the segregation era, from Reconstruction until the civil rights movement, and beyond.

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The museum in a gleaming new exhibit hall at Ferris State University “is all about teaching, not a shrine to racism,” said David Pilgrim, the founder and curator who started building the collection as a teenager.

Pilgrim, who is black, makes no apologies for the provocative exhibits. The goal of the $1.3 million gallery, he explained, is “to get people to think deeply.”

The displays are startling. The n-word is prevalent throughout, and many items portray black men as lazy, violent or inarticulate. Black women are shown as kerchief-wearing mammies, sexually charged Jezebels or other stereotypes.

The shocking images exact an emotional cost.

“There’s parts in that room – the main room – where it’s quite gut-wrenching,” said Nancy Mettlach, a student conduct specialist at Ferris. “And the thought that was going through my mind was: `How can one human being do this to another human being?’”

Pilgrim, a former sociology professor at Ferris State, started the collection in the 1970s in Alabama. Along the way, he “spent more time in antique and flea markets than the people who work there.” His quest for more examples was boundless.

“At some point, the collecting becomes the thing,” he said. “It became the way I relaxed.” He spent most of his free time and money on acquisitions.

In 1996, Pilgrim donated his 2,000-piece collection to the school after concluding that it “needed a real home.”

The collection spent the next 15 years housed in a single room and could be seen only by appointment. Thanks to the financial support of the university and donors – notably from the charitable arm of Detroit utility DTE Energy – Pilgrim’s collection now has a permanent home, which will have a grand opening ceremony April 26. Admission is free.

Today, the school has 9,000 pieces that depict African-Americans in stereotypical ways and, in some cases, glorify violence against them.

Not all of the museum’s holdings are on display, but the 3,500-square-foot space in the lower level of the university library is packed with items that demonstrate how racist ideas and anti-black images dominated American culture for decades.

Visitors can forget about touring the exhibits and retiring untroubled to a cafe or gift shop. Some leave angry or offended. Most feel a kind of “reflective sadness,” Pilgrim said.

But that’s not enough. If the museum “stayed at that, then we failed,” he said. “The only real value of the museum has ever been to really engage people in a dialogue.”

So Pilgrim designed the tour to give visitors a last stop in a “room of dialogue,” where they’re encouraged to discuss what they’ve seen and how the objects might be used to promote tolerance and social justice.

Some of the objects in the museum are a century old. Others were made as recently as this year.

Ferris State sophomore Nehemiah Israel was particularly troubled by a series of items about President Barack Obama.

One T-shirt on display reads: “Any White Guy 2012.” Another shirt that says “Obama ’08″ is accompanied by a cartoon monkey holding a banana. A mouse pad shows robe-wearing Ku Klux Klan members chasing an Obama caricature above the words, “Run Obama Run.”

“I was like, `Wow. People still think this. This is crazy,’” Israel said.

One of the first rooms in the museum features a full-size replica of a tree with a lynching noose hanging from it. Several feet away, a television screen shows a video of racist images through the years.

The location of the museum – in the shadow of university founder Woodbridge Ferris’ statue – also catches some by surprise. Ferris, who later served as Michigan governor and as a U.S. senator, founded the school more than a century ago. He once said Americans should work to provide an “education for all children, all men and all women.”

The mostly white college town of Big Rapids is 150 miles from Detroit, the state’s largest predominantly black city.

Pilgrim, who is also Ferris State’s vice president for diversity and inclusion, initially considered giving his collection to a historically black college, but he wanted to be “near it enough to make sure it was taken care of.”

Most of the objects “are anti-black caricatures, everyday objects or they are segregationist memorabilia,” he said. Because they represent a cruel, inflammatory past, they “should either be in a garbage can or a museum.”

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Along with his various accolades and still-prominent stature in the game, Russell also holds the honorable distinction of being the first African-American coach in the NBA 46 years ago today.

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Surly Celtics Coach Red Auerbach, who also broke racial barriers in drafting the first Black NBA player in Chuck Cooper in 1950 and introducing an all-Black starting lineup in 1964, sought out other White players on his team to coach after his abrupt retirement before the 1966-67 season. After they refused, he asked Russell, who was still an active player, to coach the team. Russell accepted the position and signed the contract, saying to reporters in a famous quote, “”I wasn’t offered the job because I am a Negro, I was offered it because Red figured I could do it.”

That season, Russell’s biggest rival was fellow big man Wilt Chamberlain who then played for the Philadelphia 76ers. The 76ers were on a tear that year, winning a record 68 games and vanquished the Celtics four games to one in the Eastern Conference Finals. Russell was said to have visited Chamberlain after the game and congratulated him on the win. It was also the year when Russell became first Black coach in the NBA. Given the racial tensions of the time, this act was easily among the top racial coups of the decade.

As player-coach, Russell would get his revenge against Chamberlain by defeating the Sixers in the 1967-68 Eastern Division finals, even though Black players on both sides of the ball struggled with the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Facing the Jerry West-led Los Angeles Lakers in the NBA Finals, Russell would win title number 10 in over 12 years of playing. Russell would also win Sports Illlustrated’s Sportsman Of The Year award as well, cementing his name firmly in the annals of basketball history.

The 1968-69 season would be Russell’s last, and he capped it by winning his 11^th championship title, defeating Jerry West and familiar rival Wilt Chamberlain in thrilling fashion. Never comfortable in the spotlight or with the media, Russell would skip the victory parade and abruptly ended his career, saying he owed the Celtics or the adoring public nothing. It was reported that Russell internalized a lot of events such as the JFK assassination, the loss of Dr. King, his failing marriage and other factors. Although many see Russell as the grandfatherly man who hugged Kevin Garnett at the end of the 2008 NBA championship, Russell was not a gracious media presence. Unlike the flashier Chamberlain, who relished the spotlight, Russell preferred to let his game speak for him.

After mending the fences with Boston, his number 6 jersey was retired in 1972 and he was inducted into the NBA Hall Of Fame in 1975, although he wasn’t present to accept the award. Much like his playing days, Russell believed the game was bigger than him and kept away from the fanfare that seemed to follow him.

Russell led the way for other Black coaches such as Lenny Wilkens and his Boston teammate K.C. Jones. Beyond his contribution to the game on the playing end, Russell’s coaching job ushered in a new wave of African-American prominence in a game that was largely dominated by Whites at one time. For that, the game owes Bill Russell a great debt.

Thank you, Bill Russell.

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Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s

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Dr. King shined as well in written form, most notably in his famous open letter penned to fellow clergymen during his incarceration inside an Alabama jail cell 49 years ago today. Generally known as the “Letter From Birmingham Jail,” Dr. King’s vibrant words to other men of the cloth came as a result of criticism he faced as a vocal leader of racial injustice.

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King’s letter was actually a response to an open letter titled “A Call For Unity” released on April 12 from eight local clergymen that suggested the protests and other organizing events were not helpful. They further asserted that King and others should take their fight for injustice to the court of law and thought of the protests largely as an annoyance. King’s reply was replete with his typical eloquence, resonating far beyond the time it was written, remaining as a testament to his will and faith. Although the letter’s most quoted line is “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere,” there are other memorable moments as well.

”Just as Socrates felt that it was necessary to create a tension in the mind so that individuals could rise from the bondage of myths and half-truths to the unfettered realm of creative analysis and objective appraisal, so must we see the need for nonviolent gadflies to create the kind of tension in society that will help men rise from the dark depths of prejudice and racism to the majestic heights of understanding and brotherhood.”

For the full text, please click here.

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But what few people are aware of is that there was a Haitian-born, French-educated man on the Titanic by the name of Joseph Laroche.

He was traveling his wife, Juliette Lafargue, and two children on a journey that was suppose to eventually take them to his native Haiti in 1912.

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But, like more than 1,500 other passengers, he never made it to his destination.

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Laroche moved to France at the age of 15 to study engineering because such schools were not available in Haiti. He earned excellent grades and graduated with an engineering degree. Along the way, he met and married his wife Juliette in 1908. Though Laroche was well-educated he could not find work in his profession.

When Laroche graduated he expected to find employment in his field because of the many opportunities in Paris for someone with his education. Unfortunately, there was one problem he had not taken into consideration — racism.  Although France is a bucolic country with beautiful scenery, marvelous cities and nice people, racial prejudice at that time could prevent someone from employing a young dark-skinned man. Though Laroche eventually did find work, his employers found any excuse — from racism to inexperience — to pay him poorly.

Tired of struggling to find work and dealing with the barely sheathed discrimination, Laroche decided that he and his young family should go to Haiti where he could find work. They originally planned to travel on the ship “France,” but the ship’s policy stipulated that children could not eat with their parents. The Laroches did not like this policy, so they switched their tickets to the Titanic instead. It was an innocent — though devastating — decision with well-known fatal consequences.

The Laroche family boarded the Titanic at Cherbourg, France on April 10, 1912. Less than four days later, Joseph met his fate along with 1,517 other passengers:

Shortly after the Titanic struck the iceberg at 11:40 p.m. on April 14, Joseph woke Juliette and told her that the ship had suffered an accident. He put all of their valuables in his pockets, and he and his wife carried each of their sleeping daughters to the ship’s deck. It is not known for sure which lifeboat Juliette and her daughters escaped in, although Juliette remembered a countess being in her lifeboat. There was a countess on board the ship, Noël Leslie, Countess of Rothes, who escaped in lifeboat 8, so it is likely that Juliette, Simonne and Louise all escaped the ship on this lifeboat. Joseph died in the sinking and his body, if recovered, was never identified.

For a complete story of Joseph Laroche’s tragic journey on the Titanic, go to The Titanic Historical Society.

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We can talk about his barrier-shattering accomplishment on the baseball field on April 15, 1947 — 65 years ago today.  Crossing the color-wall of “America’s Favorite Past-time” with confidence and integrity, Robinson became the first Black American to play in a Major League Baseball game when he joined the Brooklyn Dodgers on the field. He eventually became the first Black American television analyst in Major League Baseball.

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We can touch on the fact that his #42 jersey was retired in 1997 and that April 15 was designated “Jackie Robinson Day” by the MLB in 2004.

We can even discuss his storied matriculation through the University of California, Los Angeles, where he became the university’s first student to win varsity letters in four sports: football, basketball, track, and baseball.

It would also be interesting to shed light on his brief time in Hawaii with the semi-professional Honolulu Bears in 1941, before he was forced to enter World War II.

But his contributions to the world of sports — as larger-than-life and transcendent as they unequivocally are — dwell parallel to the passionate civil rights advocacy that defined his life.

Married for 26 years, his widow, Rachel Robinson, has always made it clear that baseball was but a facet of her husband’s life:

To the average man in the average American community, Jackie Robinson was just what the sports pages said he was, no more, no less. He was the first Negro to play baseball in the major leagues. Everybody knew that. . . . In remembering him, I tend to de-emphasize him as a ball player and emphasize him as an informal civil rights leader. That’s the part that drops out, that people forget.”

Born in Cairo, Georgia on January 31, 1919, young Jackie was the youngest of 5 children raised in financial poverty by a single mother. After excelling in sports throughout high school and college, he proved during WWII that in spite of the malicious racism running rampant in the United States, he would not let this country define his manhood. Refusing to move to the back of a segregated bus during training camp, he was arrested and court martialed — over a decade before Rosa Parks refusing to give up her bus seat to a White person would spark the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

In fact, three years before that fateful day in 1955 that introduced the nation to a young Dr. Martin L. King, Jr., Robinson was calling out the Yankees organization for not having any Black players on their team 5 years after he joined the Dodgers.

Retiring from professional baseball in 1956, Robinson never stopped breaking barriers. Feeling that it was of the utmost importance that Black people have control of their own money, Robinson worked diligently as an executive for the Chock Full O’ Nuts coffee company and restaurant chain to realize another dream — the financial security of Black Americans. That vision manifested into the Freedom National Bank in Harlem and before it’s eventual closing, it was the largest Black-owned and operated bank in New York state.

Not stopping there, he joined and became a pivotal figure in the NAACP, dedicated himself to developing housing construction and also penned columns for the Amstersdam News and The New York Post.

Inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1962 and receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom posthumously from President Ronald Reagan in 1984, these two honors serve as iconography of a multi-faceted life of complexity, unwavering skill, truthfulness and fearlessness.

From that first defiant stance on a military bus on July 6, 1944, to the time he was forced to flee Sanford, Florida in 1946 due to racist threats — a razor-sharp depiction of a town  that serves as the bloodied landscape of Trayvon Martin‘s murder –  to his death on October 24, 1972 of a heart attack, Robinson has been a beacon of light in the Civil Rights Movement. His sheer tenacity and refusal to accept invisible boundaries continues to illuminate the path of men and women walking proudly in his footsteps.

In his last public appearance during Game 2 of the 1972 World Series, Robinson said that there was a need for more diversity in baseball’s ownership and coaching roles. Though that need still persists, it is nothing less than poetic justice that NBA legend, Earvin “Magic” Johnson became the first Black owner of a Major League Baseball team when he and a team of investors bought the Los Angeles Dodgers, formerly the Brooklyn Dodgers — the very team where Jackie Robinson made history on this day in 1947.

While there is much to say about the life of this great man, no words are more poignant, powerful and profound than those of Robinson himself:

Baseball was just a part of my life. Thank God that I didn’t allow a sport or a business or any part of my life to dominate me completely. . . . I felt that I had my time in athletics and that was it.

The right of every American to first-class citizenship is the most important issue of our time.

I don’t think that I or any other Negro, as an American citizen, should have to ask for anything that is rightfully his. We are demanding that we just be given the things that are rightfully ours and that we’re not looking for anything else.

I guess you’d call me an independent, since I’ve never identified myself with one party or another in politics. . . . I always decide my vote by taking as careful a look as I can at the actual candidates and issues themselves, no matter what the party label.

Civil rights is not by any means the only issue that concerns me–nor, I think any other Negro. As Americans, we have as much at stake in this country as anyone else. But since effective participation in a democracy is based upon enjoyment of basic freedoms that everyone else takes for granted, we need make no apologies for being especially interested in catching up on civil rights.

I won’t ‘have it made’ until the most underprivileged Negro in Mississippi can live in equal dignity with anyone else in America.

I believe in the goodness of a free society. And I believe that society can remain good only as long as we are willing to fight for it–and to fight against whatever imperfections may exist.

The measure of a man delves deeper and reaches higher than mere statistics and trophies. And on this day, April 15, 2012, even in death Jackie Robinson stands as a giant among men.

Newsone salutes you, Mr. Robinson.

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One hundred and eighteen years ago today, Smith was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee in 1894. She was raised in poverty and often ran away as a teenager to join traveling shows as a dancer.

Around 1912, she began singing in shows with another Black blues legend, Ma Rainey. Smith’s career took off in 1923 when she started recording her songs.

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Back in those days, it was a big deal for an artist to record their voice for it was the next step for an aspiring singer to take his or her career to a higher level. Smith signed with Columbia Records and her first recording was “Down Hearted Blues.”

This sista knew a thing or two about “the blues.” Her first husband, Earl Love, died just two years after they married. Her second marriage to Jack Gee didn’t work out, either. And like many talented artists of those days and today, Smith had a few issues with the bottle. On top of that, slavery ended just some sixty years before, so you know the racism was on, to take Kanye’s words, “on a hundred, thousand trillion.” But that didn’t stop her from becoming one of the best selling artists of her day.

What really separated Smith from many of her peers — and there were few — were her lyrics. She was certainly not a dignified, down home Southern Belle in the traditional sense. More conservative Black folks referred to her melodies as “the Devil’s music.” Take the first verse from Smith’s “Empty Bed Blues,” for example:

I woke up this morning with a awful aching head
I woke up this morning with a awful aching head
My new man had left me, just a room and a empty bed
Bought me a
coffee grinder
that’s the best one I could find
Bought me a coffee grinder that’s the best one I could find
Oh, he could grind my coffee, ’cause he had a brand new grind
He’s a deep sea diver with a stroke that can’t go wrong
He’s a deep sea diver with a stroke that can’t go wrong
He can stay at the bottom and his wind holds out so long
He knows how to thrill me and he thrills me night and day
Oh, he knows how to thrill me, he thrills me night and day
He’s got a new way of loving, almost takes my breath away
Lord, he’s got that sweet somethin’ and I told my girlfriend Lou
He’s got that sweet somethin’ and I told my girlfriend Lou
From the way she’s raving, she must have gone and tried it too

If that’s not freak music, then what is? So anyone who says that today’s artists are too sexual need to learn there history. There was certainly a historical precedent. Here is the audio to the song below.

One of Smith’s more memorable songs was “St. Louis Blues” recorded in 1929. The song was actually a tw0-reeler where Smith appeared on film for her first and only time.

Though she died tragically as a result of  injuries from a car accident on Sept. 27, 1937 at the age of 43, her legend lives on. She was inducted into the “Rock and Roll Hall of Fame” in 1989 and three of her songs, “Down Hearted Blues,” “Empty Bed Blues,” and “St. Louis Blues,” are enshrined in the Grammy Hall Of Fame.

Mrs. Bessie Smith, you are one of our all-time greats. What a fine sista’ and diva you were and continue to be.

Happy Birthday!

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