Thanks Stillwater!:D

excerpted from 2/20/02's Columbus Dispatch:

The United States went 46 years without winning a bobsled medal, until Americans Jill Bakken and Vonetta Flowers did so last night in the first-ever women's competition. Americans haven't won a cross- country skiing medal since 1976. The last ski-jumping medal was 78 years ago. An American has never medaled in the biathlon or Nordic combined.

http://www.dispatch.com/sports-story...2/1099872.html

a quiz
 

correct answers are in bold.

1. William Wells is known for:
a.) His jump shot
b.) Inventing the fire extinguisher
c.) His Literary talents
d.) His son, "Charlie"


2. The Red Ball Express supplied vital supplies during:
a.) World War II
b.) The 2001 Super Bowl Game
c.) The Cold War
d.) The Civil War


3. The first African American to hold a federal employment position was:
a.) Michael Cooper
b.) William Cooper Nell
c.) Neil Foote
d.) Lloyd Garrison


4. Isaac Murphy was the first person to win:
a.) The Daytona 500
b.) The Heisman Trophy in his sophomore year
c.) The Nobel Peace Prize for physics
d.) The Kentucky Derby three times

February 21
 

1895
North Carolina Legislature, dominated by Black Republicans and white Populists, adjourned for the day to mark the death of Frederick Douglass.


1917
Thelonious Sphere Monk(1917--82) Jazz musician; born in Rocky Mount, N.C. He was raised in New York


1933
Nina Simone(Eunice Waymon), 66, singer ("I Love You Porgy," "Trouble in Mind") born Tryon, NC, Feb 21, 1933.


1936
Barbara Jordan, who will be the first African American woman elected to the House of Representatives, is born

1965
Bro. El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz (Malcolm X (39)) assassinated in Audubon Ballroom at a rally of his organization. Three Blacks were later convicted of the crime and sentenced to life imprisonment.

1987
African Americans in Tampa, Florida rebelled after an African American man was killed by a white police officer while in custody.

1992
Eva Jessye choral director for the first Broadway production of Porgy and Bess died in Ann Arbor.

February 22nd
 

1888
In West Chester, Pennsylvania, African American painter Horace Pippin was born. Pippin is considered one of the major American painters of his period. One of his more significant works, "John Brown Going to His Hanging," is owned by the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts.

1898
Black postmaster lynched and his wife and three daughters shot and maimed for life in Lake City, S.C.

1911
On this day, the "Bronze Muse" died in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Frances Ellen Watkins Harper wrote more than a dozen books, including 'Poems on Miscellaneous Subjects'(1854); 'Moses, a Story of the Nile'(1869); and 'Sketches of Southern Life'(1872). Harper was the most famous female poet of her day and the most famous African-American poet of the 19th century. Also a well-known orator, she spoke frequently in public(sometimes twice in one day)promoting equal rights for women and African-Americans. She was a worker for the Underground Railroad, and in 1896 she helped establish the National Association of Colored Women.

1950
Julius Winfield( "Dr.J") Erving, 52, former basketball player, born Roosevelt, NY.

Thanks 12dn/Frederick Douglass
 

Thanks for picking up my slack these past two days. I have been umm a wee bit weary of copying and pasting but thank you. :D

--------------------
City unveils first historical marker in Fells Point to honor Douglass
--------------------

He lived in neighborhood before escaping slavery

By Jamil Roberts
Sun Staff

February 22, 2002

Baltimore officials signaled yesterday that the city is prepared to
officially mark Frederick Douglass' place in local history.

A historical marker honoring Douglass was unveiled yesterday at Fells PointSquare, the first of up to six signs that will be erected throughout the area where Douglass lived, worked and prayed.

The marker is scheduled to be replaced with a plaque Sept. 3 - National Frederick Douglass Freedom Day - the day that Douglass escaped from slavery in Baltimore.

"I think the recognition of Frederick Douglass is way overdue," said Mayor Martin O'Malley, who performed the ribbon cutting at the ceremony.

The mayor echoed the sentiments of Baltimore residents who have criticized the city for failing to recognize the contributions of manyAfrican-Americans and the city's role in the slave trade.

"I think that the city was embarrassed of its history. Other cities
have already had historical markers," said Robert E. Reyes, 46, board member of the Friends of the President Street Station.

For two years, Louis C. Fields lobbied the city to create the
memorials. With the help of the Frederick Douglass Organization, founded by Frederick Douglass IV, and tourism groups, Fields hopes to increase African-American tourism in Baltimore.

"This is a realization of a dream," said Fields, president of Black
Baltimore Heritage Tours, who helped create the Frederick Douglass Historical Marker Program.

Born Frederick Bailey in Talbot County, Douglass came to Fells Point in 1826, about the age of 8. There, he learned to read and write and bought his first book. He also worked as a caulker.

Posing as a sailor, he escaped from bondage in 1838, taking a train to Philadelphia. He went to New York and then to Massachusetts, where he changed his last name to Douglass and became a preacher, lecturer, writer, and activist. He ultimately became an international abolitionist and orator, an ambassador to Haiti and presidential adviser.

Copyright (c) 2002, The Baltimore Sun

Link to the article:
http://www.sunspot.net/bal-md.douglass22feb22.story

Langston Hughes' Enduring Legacy
 

Langston Hughes' enduring legacy


His inspirational writings have kept the poet current 100 years after his birth.
By M. Dion Thompson
Sun Staff

February 22, 2002

Langston Hughes lives!

Listen to his poetry sounding through the voice of a fifth-grade boy who ends a recitation of "I, Too, Sing America" by raising a defiant fist straight from the days of Black Power:

They'll see how beautiful I am

And be ashamed -

I, too, am America.

Langston Hughes, the black poet laureate of the Harlem Renaissance, lives. He's on a postage stamp issued this month. He looks good, suave and elegant in that classic style. You could easily imagine him toasting the evening with Duke Ellington and keeping company with Lena Horne. After all, he was a night owl, most comfortable between 11 p.m. and 5 a.m.

He lives because in this, the centennial year of his birth, his art
continues to set off sympathetic vibrations in the hearts of those who approach his work.

Andrea Jackson, who this month is guiding her Northwood Elementary School students on a journey through Hughes' life and literature, knows this to be true. As the young defiant one takes his seat, she turns to her class andasks:
"What connections did you make?"

"That we are proud to be black, and proud to be Americans," one student replies.

Therein lies a summation of Hughes, a writer who, in the words of
Professor Dolan Hubbard, a Hughes scholar, celebrated "the linguistic universe of black people."

Of course, he wasn't always a revered figure. Hughes, whose life
includes the classic wanderlust of American writers, was controversial when he began publishing in the 1920s. Works that have since become touchstones of America's literary voice were then cause for concern.

Critics complained his poetry was too straightforward, too simple. It lacked depth. For the first time black literary expression was being widely recognized. Writers struggled over who would speak for black America and with what voice.

On one hand there was Countee Cullen, whose eloquent sonnets of black life -"Yet Do I Marvel" and "From The Dark Tower" - sounded a tone handed down from Shakespeare and John Donne. Some would say Cullen wrote in a foreign tongue. Then there was Hughes.

"Langston Hughes harkens back to a Walt Whitman, who said the poets should write in the language of the people," said Hubbard, chairman of the department of English and language arts at Morgan State University.

Maybe that is why his poems are well-remembered and recited by
children, like the ones from Highlandtown Middle School who gave a presentation earlier this week at the main branch of the post office on East Fayette Street. Maybe that is why the playwright Lorraine Hansberry turned to his "Dream Deferred" for the title of her groundbreaking play, A Raisin In The Sun. Hughes' language was familiar. It came from the American experience.

"He wrote about the common black people, and what could be more indicative of the common black people than the language they created, the vernacular, the blues," said Hubbard, also president of the Langston Hughes Society, a national group of academics and Hughes devotees. "Hughes was not only
looking to liberate black language, but liberate black expression from the Anglo-European aesthetic traditions."

In "Madam and her Madam" his narrator gives off this blues lament:

I worked for a woman,

She wasn't mean -

But she had a twelve-room

House to clean.

He wanted his poems to be a true statement of the lives of his people. Then as now, it was too easy to fall into stereotypes and caricatures, too easy to turn the vernacular into a comic dialect. Hughes consciously sought to avoid that trap. And his audiences responded.

"When he read his poetry, people could see themselves in his words," said Hubbard. "They could hear the voice of their relatives and their friends."

Jackson said her fifth-grade students were fascinated by Hughes' life as much as by his poetry.

He was born in Joplin, Mo., in 1902 to a family that numbered among its ancestors a militant abolitionist, a member of John Brown's fighters at Harper's Ferry, and John Mercer Langston, a prominent black man of the 19th century. Hughes was raised by his maternal grandmother, Mary Langston.

He left Columbia University in New York after a year and began three years of wandering. For awhile he worked aboard a freighter off the west coast of Africa. He also spent several months in Paris, the de rigueur stop for American artists, before returning to the United States in 1924. He had already published "The Negro Speaks of Rivers."

It is the type of poem fit for Paul Robeson or James Earl Jones,
someone with a sonorous, commanding voice, someone who can bring a certain stature to the words.

I've known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood in human veins. ...

I've known rivers:

Ancient, dusky rivers.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

But in Jackson's class the task falls to a little girl, who speaks
softly, shyly, the last phrase falling away. The teacher challenges her students to take their understanding to a deeper level where they can begin to see the motivations that prodded his pen, the experiences that gave him a positive view of black American life.

"We didn't want to just recite poetry. We wanted to make a connection," said Jackson. "He's proof that you can achieve anything. He had a gift, and with that gift he made a marvelous contribution."

For Kwame Alexander, poet and founder of BlackWords Inc. publishing house in Alexandria, Va., Hughes was the consummate writer, versatile, able to make a living from his craft.

"He's written it all. The poetry. The music. The film," said Alexander, who is writing a theatrical tribute based on Hughes' Jesse B. Semple stories. "They have the humor. They have the social protest. They are so timely."

A favorite is "Feet Live Their Own Life" in which Semple, a common man of the people, says the story of his life begins with his feet.

"These feet have walked 10,000 miles working for white folks and
another 10,000 keeping up with colored," says Semple, whose name forms a code for Hughes' approach to writing.

Just Be Simple.

"I think that's the beauty of quality literature, of literature that
comes from a place of passion, as opposed to a place of packaging," said Alexander. "It just resonates with you. It never stops resonating with you."

There were complicated times in his life, especially during the
McCarthy era of the 1950s. In 1953, he was forced to appear before U.S. Sen. Joseph McCarthy and the House Un-American Activities Committee. Though he denied ever being a member of the Communist Party, Hughes characterized as misguided some of his earlier verse. Hubbard believes Hughes was trying
to escape the hell that had been brought down on the heads of Paul Robeson and W.E.B. DuBois.

"He did not want to have his pen silenced," said Hubbard. "But, to be fair to the historical record, that was not Hughes' finest hour."

The testimony did not follow Hughes. His career continued with
musicals, children's books and poetry. He died of cancer on May 22, 1967, in Harlem. His block on East 127th Street has been renamed Langston Hughes Place.

In 1926, while still a young man, Hughes penned a manifesto that would inform his work for the rest of his life. The essay, "The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain," remains a definitive statement.

"We younger Negro artists who create now intend to express our
individual dark-skinned selves without fear or shame," he wrote. "We know we are beautiful. And ugly too ... We build our temples for tomorrow, strong as we know how, and we stand on the top of the mountain, free within ourselves."

Copyright (c) 2002, The Baltimore Sun

Link to the article: http://www.sunspot.net/bal-to.hughes22feb22.story

Re: Thanks 12dn/Frederick Douglass
 

This is very significant because these markers will be in a very prominent place. Fels Point is a major shopping and nightlife district and is located adjacent to the famous Inner Harbor, a mecca for tourists.

BLACK HISTORY PROGRAMMING
 

**COMPLIMENTS OF ESSENCE MAGAZINE**

For TV programmers, February may be sweeps month, but for us this month means a bonanza of documentaries and docudramas. But you don't have to fumble with the remote to catch the good shows. Let our Black History Month Highlights below be your guide to the best can't-miss specials:
-- Janice R. Littlejohn

Inside TV Land: African-Americans in Television is a documentary treasure trove of rare clips and memorable scenes from sitcoms, dramas and variety shows. Combined with insightful interviews from actors, writers, producers, TV executives and historians, the show details nearly 80 years of struggle and progress for African-American actors on the tube. TV Land, Feb. 8, 15, 22, at 9 p.m. EST.
http://www.tvland.com/insidetvl/aa/

The Black Filmmaker Showcase celebrates the 10th year of Showtime's platform for up-and-coming African-American directors. The showcase highlights six short films, including winner Rayce R. Denton's gritty romance, Flight of the Bumblebee. Showtime, Wednesday, Feb. 6, at 7:30 p.m. EST..
http://www.sho.com/movies/

Adapted for television by Walter Mosley, The Middle Passage is a poignant drama recounting the horrors of a slaveship's transatlantic voyage. It's narrated by Amistad star Djimon Hounsou, who plays a dead captive who haunts the seas. HBO, Saturday, Feb. 9, at 10 p.m. EST.

Heroes of Black Comedy highlights the careers of Chris Rock, Whoopi Goldberg, Richard Pryor and the Original Kings of Comedy with performance clips and interviews with family and friends. Comedy Central, Feb. 4, 11, 18, 25 at 10 p.m. EST.
www.comedycentral.com

In Red Sneakers, a math whiz learns the value of his skills when a pair of magical red high-tops transform him into a high school basketball star. Gregory Hines co-stars and directs. Showtime, Sunday, Feb. 10, at 8 p.m. EST.

Lumumba is an intense docudrama chronicling the rise and fall of Patrice Lumumba, who led the newly independent Congo in the 1960s. HBO, Saturday, Feb. 16, at 10:05 p.m. EST.

Keep The Faith, Baby explores the tumultuous life and career of Congressman Adam Clayton Powell (Harry Lennix), the charismatic Harlem minister who became one of the most powerful politicians in the country. Vanessa Williams also stars. Showtime, Sunday, Feb. 17, at 8 p.m. EST.
http://www.sho.com/movies/

A Huey P. Newton Story Roger Guenveur Smith stars in this one-man show about the Black Panther Party co-founder, directed by Spike Lee. PBS, Tuesday, Feb. 19, at 9 p.m. EST.
http://www.pbs.org/hueypnewton/index.html

American Masters presents Ralph Ellison: An American Journey offers a look at the career of the author of the seminal novel, The Invisible Man. PBS, Tuesday, Feb. 19, at 10 p.m. EST.
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/

Angela Bassett stars in The Rosa Parks Story as the "accidental activist" whose protest on a Montgomery bus sparked the Civil Rights Movement. Cicely Tyson also stars. CBS, Sunday, Feb. 24, at 9 p.m. EST.
http://www.cbs.com/specials/rosa_parks/

Emmy-award winner Andre Braugher stars as labor organizer Asa Philip Randolph in 10,000 Black Men Named George, the saga of a 12-year battle to unionize Black railway porters. Directed by Robert Townsend, Mario Van Pebbles and Charles Dutton also star. Showtime, Sunday, Feb. 24, at 8 p.m. EST.
http://www.sho.com/movies/

Homes of the Underground Railroad is an unusual journey through some of the safe havens that housed scores of fugitive slaves on their way to freedom. HGTV, Sunday, Feb. 24, at 9 p.m. EST.
http://www.hgtv.com/

1868
On this day Dr.William Edward Burghardt DuBois, educator and civil rights advocate, is born in Great Barrington, Mass.

1869
Louisiana governor signed public accommodations law.

1895
William H. Heard, AME minister and educator, named minister to Liberia.

1915
Death of Robert Smalls (75), Reconstruction congressman, in Beaufort, South Carolina.

1925
Louis Stokes, former mayor of Detroit, Michigan, and member of the US House of Representatives, was born in Cleveland, Ohio. Stokes was the first African American elected to the House from Ohio.

1929
Baseball catcher Elston Gene Howard was born in St. Louis, Missouri. In 1965, Howard signed a $70,000 contract with the NY Yankees and became the highest paid player in the history of baseball at the time.

1965
Constance Baker Motley elected Manhattan Borough president, the highest elective office held by a Black woman in a major American city.

1979
Frank E. Peterson Jr. named the first Black general in the Marine Corps.

Virtual Black History Museum
 

FEBRUARY 24, 2002

1811
Bishop of AME Church Daniel Payne born

1864
Rebecca Lee Crumpler becomes the first black woman to receive an M.D. degree. She graduated from the New England Female Medical College. Rebecca Lee Crumpler was born in 1833. She worked from 1852-1860 as a nurse in Massachusetts.

1868
House of Representatives voted, 126 to 47, to impeach President Andrew Johnson.

1940
Former world heavyweight boxing champion Jimmy Ellis was born James Albert Ellis in Louisville, Kentucky. Ellis won the World Boxing Association title after beating Jerry Quarry in April 1968.

1966
Elected leader and first president of Ghana, Kwame Nkrumah, ousted in military coup while he is away on a peace mission to Vietnam.

Let Celebrate our Historic Winter Olympians!
 

Vonetta Flowers :D


Congratualtions to Vonetta Flowers, the first African American woman to win a gold medal at the Winter Olympics. (She is also the first African American to win a GOLD MEDAL at the Winter Olympics) (Apologies to Debbie Thomas)

http://www.usatoday.com/olympics/sal...2-19-women.htm


Garrett Hines and Randy Jones:D

Add Randy Jones and Garrett Hines to our list of historic Olympians, they are the first African-American men to win medals at the Winter Olympics. It looks like Vonetta Flowers finally has come company!:-)

http://www.msnbc.com/news/714083.asp?pne=11947#BODY

February 25, 2002

1839
Seminoles and their Black allies shipped from Tampa Bay, Florida, to the West.

1870
Hirman R. Revels of Mississippi sworn in as first Black U.S. senator and first Black representative in Congress.

1928
"One-Man Show of Art by Negro, First of Kind Here, Opens Today," read the headline of a front-page article in 'The New York Times' on this day. The article announced the opening of Archibald J. Motley, Jr's show at the New Gallery on Madison Avenue. This was the first time in History that an artist had made the front page of 'The New York Times' and it was the second one-person show by an African-American artist (the first being Henry O. Tanner). African scenes, voodoo dances, and African-Americans at leisure were themes presented by the artist.

1948
Martin Luther King ordained as a Baptist minister.

1964
Muhammad Ali defeated Sonny Liston for world heavyweight boxing championship.

1964
Nat King Cole, the singer with the "Golden Voice", dies.

1971
President Nixon met with members of the Congressional Black Caucus and appointed a White House panel to study a list of recommendations made by the group.

1975
Death of Elijah Muhammad (77), leader of the Nation of Islam, in Chicago. He was succeeded by his son, Wallace D. Muhammad.

1978
Death of Daniel ("Chappie") James Jr. (58), retired Air Force general and the first Black promoted to four-star rank, at the Air Force Academy, Colorado.

1987
Edward Daniel Nixon, former president of the Georgia NAACP, died at age 87.

1989
Boxer Mike Tyson becomes the undisputed Heavyweight Champion of the World by defeating challenger Frank Bruno of England.

1999
White supremacist John King, one of three white men accused of chaining James Byrd to a pickup and dragging him along a Texas road until he was decapitated,:mad:was sentenced to death by lethal injection. If his death penalty is carried out, he will be the first white Texan executed for killing a black person since slavery ended. :eek:

THOMAS JENNINGS
 

Thomas Jennings (1791-1859) "Receives first Patent by African American"

Thomas Jennings was the first African American to receive a Patent. As the owner of a New York dry cleaning store, Jennings patented a process for cleaning clothing. He later used the money he earned with his invention to buy his family out of slavery. Active as an abolitionist, Jennings published petitions that advocated the end of slavery in New York.

Online Black History Quiz