BLACK FACTS: HBCUs

[CrimsonTide4]

February 26, 2002

1869
Fifteenth Amendment guaranteeing the right to vote sent to the states for ratification.

1870
Wyatt Outlaw, Black leader of the Union League in Alamance County, N.C., Lynched.

1877
At a conference in the Wormley Hotel in Washington, representatives of Rutherford B. Hayes and representatives of the South negotiated agreement which paved the way for the election of Hayes as president and the withdrawal of federal troops from the South.

1884
Birthday of Congressman James E. O'Hara of North Carolina. First elected March 4, 1833, O'Hara served two terms, the second ending March 3, 1887.

1926
Carter G. Woddson started Negro History Week. This week would later become Black History Month.

1926
Theodore "Georgia Deacon" Flowers wins middleweight boxing title.

1928
Singer "Fats" Domino born.

1930
The Green Pastures opened at mansfield Theater.

1933
Godfrey Cambridge, actor and comedian born in New York.

1946
Race riot, Columbia, Tennessee. Two killed and ten wounded.

1964
On this day, the Kentucky boxer known to all as Cassius Clay, changed his name to Muhammad Ali as he accepted Islam and rejected Christianity. "I believe in the religion of Islam. I believe in Allah and in peace...I'm not a Christian anymore."

1965
Jimmie Lee Jackson, civil rights activist, died of injuries reportedly inflicted by officers in Marion, Alabama.

1985
On this day at the Grammy Awards ceremony, African-American
musicians won awards in several categories. Lionel Richie's
'Can't Slow Down' won best album of 1984. Tina Turner's
'What's Love Got to Do With It' took the best record slot
and earned her the title Best Female Pop Vocalist. The Pointer
Sisters won best Pop Group for 'Jump.'

[CrimsonTide4]

February 27, 2002

Independence Day for Dominican Republic

1788
Prince Hall, Revolutionary War Veteran and founder of African Masonic Lodges, *may* have been born on this date. Though his accomplishments are well celebrated, little is known of Prince Hall's early life.

1833
On this day in 1833, Maria W. Steward delivered one of the four speeches which confirmed her place in history as the first American-born woman to give public lecturers. Stewards lecturers
focused on encouraging African-Americans to attain education,
political rights, and public recognition for their achievements. Her speech on thi day delivered at the African Masonic Hall in Boston, Massachusetts, was titled "On African Rights and Liberty."

Sixty-seven years later in Boston on this same day, African-American teacher and poet Angelina Weld Grimke was born. Grimke was a descendant of the famous white abolitionist and feminist sisters Angelina and Sarah Grimke.

1869
John W. Menard spoke in Congress in defense of his claim to a contested seat in Louisiana's Second Congressional District. Congress decided against both claimants. Congressman James A. Garfield of the examining committee said "it was too early to admit a Negro to the U.S. Congress." Menard was the first Black to make a speech in Congress.

1869
Congress adopted the 15th constitutional amendment, making it illegal for the US or any single government to deny or abridge the right to vote "on account of race, color or previous condition of servitude."

1883
Walter B. Purvis patented hand stamp.

1902
On this day Marian Anderson, who will become a world-renowned opera singer and the first African American soloist to perform at the White House, is born in Philadelphia, PA.

1942
Journalist Charlayne Hunter Gault was born this day in Due West, South Carolina.

1964
Anna Julia Cooper, champion for the rights of black women, dies at the age of 105.

1988
Figure skater Debi Thomas becomes the first African American to win a medal (bronze) at the winter Olympic Games.

[stillwater15]

2.26.02

this is a day late, but significant nevertheless. yesterday, venus williams became the first african-american woman to achieve the #1 rank in tennis. i don't know how to put in links, so maybe soror ct4 could help me out.

[12dn94dst]

will I do soror stillwater?

the easiest way to put a link in a post is to copy it from your browser & paste it into your post. the software will/should automatically make it clickable.

Here's the link to the article about Venus:
http://espn.go.com/tennis/news/2002/0225/1340188.html

[CrimsonTide4]

FEBRUARY 28, 2002

1704
Elias Neau, a Frenchman, opened school for Blacks in New York City.
1708
Slave revolt, Newton, Long Island (N.Y.). Seven whites killed. Two Black male slaves and an Indian slave were hanged, and a Black woman was burned alive.

1778
Rhode Island General Assembly in precedent-breaking act authorized the enlistment of slaves.

1859
Arkansas legislature required free Blacks to choose between exile and enslavement.

1871
Second Enforcement Act gave federal officers and courts control of registration and voting in congressional elections.

1879
Southern Blacks fled political and economic exploitation in "Exodus of 1879." Exodus continued for several years. One of the major leaders of the Exodus movement was a former slave, Benjamin ("Pap") Singleton.

1932
Richard Spikes invented the automatic gear shift

1940
United States population: 131,669,275. Black population: 12,865,518 (9.8 per cent).
Richard Wright's Native Son published.

1942
Race riot, Sojourner Truth Homes, Detroit.

1943
Porgy and Bess opened on Broadway with Anne Brown and Todd Duncan in starring roles.

1948
Sgt. Cornelius F. Adjetey becomes the first martyr for
national independence of Ghana.

1977
Death of comedian Eddie ("Rochester") Anderson (71).

1984
Musician and entertainer Michael Jackson wins eight Grammy Awards. His album, "Thriller", broke all sales records to-date, and remains one of the top-grossing albums of all time.

1990
Philip Emeagwali awarded the Gordon Bell Prize (computing's Nobel Prize) for solving one of the twenty most difficult problems in the computing field.

1990
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee Cornelius Gunter, lead singer of the Coasters, was shot to death in Las Vegas, Nevada. Gunter joined the group in 1957 and was around for such hits as "Poison Ivy" and "Charlie Brown."

[CrimsonTide4]

Today begins National Women's History Month but you know how BLACK FOLKS do, we put a special little spin on it.

MARCH 1, 2002

1892
The pastry fork was invented by a black woman, Ms. Anna M. Mangin.

1933
On this day Merlie Evers-Williams, who will become a civil rights activist and the first woman to head the NAACP, is born.

[CrimsonTide4]

March 2nd 1867
Howard University established. Also founded or chartered in 1867 were Talladege College, Morgan State University, Johnson C. Smith College, and St. Augustine's College.

March 2nd 1961
Through 25th Some 180 Black students and a white minister arrested in Columbia, S.C., after anti-segregation march.

1990 - Carole Gist, of Detroit, Michigan, is crowned Miss USA. She becomes the first African American to win the title.

[CrimsonTide4]

IDEAL and I both had Mr. Johnson (a man of Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity, Inc.) and I also was taught by Ms. Campbell.


A longer lesson in black history

03/02/02

Lila J. Mills
Plain Dealer Reporter

Warrensville Heights

- Lessons in black history last longer than 28 days in February at Warrensville Heights High School.



In an attempt to boost students' self-esteem, school administrators this year made a course in black history and one on black literature requirements for graduation.

"Young African-Americans know so little about their history," Board of Education member Martha Bonner said. And learning about important, but little-known, black accomplishments should give students more academic confidence, she added.

The district, which is more than 99 percent black, serves about 3,000 students from Warrensville Heights, North Randall and Highland Hills. It is believed to be the only district in Northeast Ohio with mandatory black history and literature classes, although other schools offer the courses.

The history class begins with the slave trade and the American Revolution and ends at the civil rights movement. In literature class, students read material that varies from slave narratives to the poetry of Rita Dove.

A number of research papers are required in both of the semester-long classes. Students also complete daily assignments including a project that outlines the meaning of African names.

In a recent class, history teacher Hal Johnson strolled the aisles dressed in a flowing African tunic.

He outlined the role of runaway slave Crispus Attucks in the Boston Massacre, the notorious clash that led to the American Revolution.

Attucks was the first person to die fighting British soldiers that day.

Police blamed Rodney King for his beating in Los Angeles, Johnson said, "and the same thing happened with this man, Crispus Attucks in Boston. The lawyer [John Adams, who would later become the second U.S. president] blamed Crispus Attucks."

Murmurs rippled through the classroom.

Mikila Jones, 17, creased her brow and ran her fingers along her perfectly locked cornrows. "So if [Adams] was so bad," she said, "why did they name a school after him?"

"You have schools named after these men all across the country," Johnson said, "because these men were leaders. The Boston Tea Party, the Declaration of Independence - they were involved in all of that. But remember, you have to read more to find out the true character of these men."

Although some students challenged Johnson's interpretation of Adams and Attucks, they said they enjoy his class.

"In this class, everything is about our ancestors," said Taisha Cromity, 15, as Johnson moved on to the next lesson and played music by Aretha Franklin, Marvin Gaye and the Jackson 5. "It makes me feel good. Now I know there are more [black] leaders than they show on TV."

Literature teacher Debra Campbell, who has been teaching for 19 years, hopes the required classes will catch on in other districts that aren't predominantly black.

"I would like to see other schools start teaching it," she said. "It is American history, after all. Don't just limit [black history] to February and then try to cram everything in."

[CrimsonTide4]

1932
African actress and singer Miriam Makeba born in Johannesburg, South Africa.

1962
Jacqueline Joyner-Kersee
TRACK & FIELD
Birthplace: East St. Louis, Illinois
March 3, 1962 -

Jacqueline Joyner-Kersee is part of the Joyner family of American
track-and-field stars. Jackie first gained national attention by winning 4 consecutive National Junior Pentathlon Championships. She set the heptathlon world record (7,291 points) at the 1988 Olympics. In 1988, she was the first woman selected Athlete of the Year by the Sporting News. This impressive female athlete earned the U.S. record and won the World Championship for the long jump twice (1987 and 1991). In 1992, she became the first winner of back-to-back gold medals in the heptathlon event. Jackie retired from track and field, and joined one of the new women's professional basketball leagues.

1988
Juanita Kidd Stout becomes the first African American woman to serve on a state supreme court when she is sworn in as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania. Her husband (upon her bequest) established the Juanita Kidd Stout Scholarship in her memory for study in the area of Criminal Justice for graduate and undergraduate study. It is given to Deltas only.

[CrimsonTide4]

Why We Need Black History Month - All Year Around
From "Ghana Review" Vol 1. No. 6
Friday 27 January 1995
Supplement
Black History Month
N.B. Posted with permission of GHANA REVIEW.

Having lived in Canada for many years now, I have come to know the month of February as Black History Month. In fact, since 1926, February has been designated as Black History month in North America.

During one of the Black History Month celebrations here in Edmonton, I engaged in a chat with a gentleman who had come to find out what it was all about. During our conversation he kept asking me why do Black people need a month to celebrate their history? He wanted to know what is Black history? And if there is any history of African people at all to talk or read about.

I must say I was not surprised at his queries. I cannot remember the number of times I have heard or read somewhere that, as Africans we have not contributed anything substantial to history. In fact, to many Westerners we have no history at all. This statement by a Columbia University professor is very typical: "Over the past 5,000 years," he noted, "the history of black Africa is blank. The black African had no written language; no numerals; no calendar, or system of measurement. He did not devise a plough or wheel, nor did he domesticate an animal; he built nothing more complex than a mud hut or thatched stockade. The African had no external trade except in slaves of his own race, in ivory, and (on the West Coast) in palm oil and mahogany."

And of course, there is the much quoted pronouncement by the eminent Oxford University historian, Professor Hugh Trevor-Roper who said that: "Perhaps in the future there will be some African history to teach. But at the present there is none; there is only the history of Europeans in Africa. The rest is darkness ... and darkness is not the subject of history".

Or what about the view expressed by the British scholar of Africa, Margery Perham, who wrote that: "Until the very recent penetration of Europe the greater part of the [African] continent was without the wheel, the plough or the transport animal; without stone houses or clothes except skins; without writing and so without history."

In his book, Progress and Evolution of Man in Africa, Dr. L. S. B. Leakey wrote that: "In every country that one visits and where one is drawn into a conversation about Africa, the question is regularly asked by people who should know better: "But what has Africa contributed to world progress?"

What I have found troubling though is how many of us in the Black or African communities still believe some of these statements. I have encountered Blacks who are completely ignorant or have less knowledge about African history - despite the many fine books on African history and the rise of the Afrocentric movement in North America.

African-American historian John Hope Franklin was right when he told an interviewer that: "[Blacks] can never expect the public schools to teach us as much about our history as we want to know. We can urge them, we can press them to teach more, but I think that much of this lies with us."

As someone interested in Black education, I find it a tragedy that many Black and African children grow up today convinced of their own inferiority. The educational process largely ignores the contributions of Blacks to world civilization and is full of negative perceptions of Blacks and their culture. The school system in North America has continually perpetuated the historical myths and stereotypes about the African past.

I was almost moved to tears to read in a recent Canadian newspaper report about a Black student who until enrolling in a Black-oriented remedial school never knew or read a book by a Black author. There have been reports about how studies in Black history have been an "eye-opener for [Black] students" in Canadian high schools.

One account noted that students are not taught any African or Black history in regular classes. As one student put it: "They have always taken Canadian history, prime ministers, kings, queens. Maybe some US history. But they've never taken anything African". Or as another student said at a high school in Toronto: "History, Canadian history, English or anything else, was always about white people."

In a Windsor high school where a history course in African history has just began, teachers observed how Black students are "amazed and are absolutely intrigued about what they learn about the African past." Similarly, the introduction of Black history in a Toronto high school in 1993 +is part of an initiative to engage more black students in academics, to hook in kids who come from educational jurisdictions outside Canada.

Their vital interest in the course would be the means to develop their learning skills+researching, communicating, reading. " Already, teachers in Canadian schools have noticed what one called +signs of a newly informed dissent." One teacher observed that: "A few weeks ago, one of my students, stood up in his Grade 11 English class and asked why there weren+t any black writers on the reading list." And "through the influence of the black history course, a number of "high-risk" students are taking on more academically demanding courses and faring well."

I have always believed what African American historian John Henrik Clarke said a long time ago that, to control a people you must first control what they think about themselves and how they regard their history and culture. And when your conqueror makes you ashamed of your culture and your history, he needs no prison walls and no chains to hold you.

The chains on your mind are more than enough. Over time, many of us Africans have been injected with inferiority complexes, humiliation and cultural degradation as a result of the lack of knowledge of ourselves and our past. We have become caricatures and an inferior subset of the human race in the body of Western thought. Teacher, historian and educational psychologist, Asa Hilliard has said many times that no groups other than Native Americans and African Americans, in the history of the United States have undergone more defamation of character through distortion, omission, suppression of information, and genocide.

African American historian Carter Woodson has written about how "the thought of the inferiority of the Negro is drilled into him in almost every class he enters and in almost every book he studies .... To handicap a student by teaching him that his black face is a curse and that his struggle to change his condition is hopeless is the worst form of lynching. It kills one's aspirations and dooms him to vagabondage and crime".

This degradation of African peoples goes on till this day. Just witness the recent publication of Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray's "The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American life", a book that assigns genetically inferior intelligence to African peoples everywhere.

It is enough of a tragedy for colonialists and white racists to degrade Africans in this manner, but this tragedy is compounded when as Africans we join in the mockery. Therefore, to me, there can be no freedom until there is freedom of the mind. I always remember the lyric by the late Bob Marley which says: "Emancipate yourself from mental slavery; None but ourselves can free our minds."

This brings me back to why there is a Black History Month in North America. Why is it important to know our history? Carter Woodson, who is credited with founding Black History Month was the premier Black historian to put forward the idea of African history as a form of Black cultural empowerment and emancipation.

In his view, the knowledge and dissemination of African history would, "besides building self-esteem among blacks, help eliminate prejudice among whites." He aimed both "to inculcate in the mind of the youth of African blood an appreciation of what their race has thought and felt and done" and to publicize the facts of the Black among whites, so that "the Negro may enjoy a larger share of the privileges of democracy as a result of the recognition of his worth."

In a speech at Hampton Institute in 1921 Woodson addressed the issue head on: "We have a wonderful history behind us. ... If you are unable to demonstrate to the world that you have this record, the world will say to you, 'You are not worthy to enjoy the blessings of democracy or anything else'. They will say to you, +Who are you, anyway? Your ancestors have never controlled empires or kingdoms and most of your race have contributed little or nothing to science and philosophy and mathematics."

So far as you know, they have not; but if you will read the history of Africa, the history of your ancestors' people of whom you should feel proud+you will realize that they have a history that is worth while. They have traditions...of which you can boast and upon which you can base a claim for a right to a share in the blessings of democracy.

Let us, then, study...this history...with the understanding that we are not, after all, an inferior people. ... We are going back to that beautiful history and it is going to inspire us to greater achievements. It is not going to be long before we can sing the story to the outside world as to convince it of the value of our history...and we are going to be recognized as men.

In his 1933 classic work, The Miseducation of the Negro, Woodson showed the fundamental problems concerning the education of the African person. He noted how Blacks have been educated away from their own culture and traditions and how as African peoples we have attached ourselves to European culture often to the detriment of our own heritage.

Who would believe for example that, the music department of Fisk University, a traditionally Black university, concentrated on classical European music to the exclusion of the music that expressed the Black experience in America, and Black history and sociology courses were rare and exceptional until after World War 1? Or that French textbooks on African history taught to African children on the African continent, even to this day, would treat French colonialism in Africa as an unqualified blessing and joy for the African?

If education is ever to be substantive and meaningful within the context of North American and world history, Woodson argued, it must first address the African+s historical experiences, both in Africa and the Diaspora. "No nation, no race," observed Dr. Charles Finch of the Morehouse School of Medicine "can face the future unless it knows what it is capable of. This is the function of history."

Thus, as James Walker notes in his book, A History of Blacks in Canada: "...the study of black history can give blacks a sense of the positive achievements of their people, and provide self-confidence and self-pride which are essential to any program of assertiveness." Cornell University Professor Martin Bernal, author of Black Athena, has acknowledged that: "Eurocentric history as taught in schools and universities has had a very large ego-boosting, if not therapeutic, purpose for whites. ... It's in a way normal for the idea that Blacks should have some confidence building in their pedagogy."

There is a Swahili adage which says: "You are what you make of yourself, and not what others make you." In fact, a positive identity or enhanced self-concept is critical for the academic, social, and personal success of Black students everywhere. And this is where Black history becomes important.

Ghana's Kwame Nkrumah has written about the need for "a re-awakening [of] consciousness among Africans and peoples of African descent of the bonds that unite us - our historical past, our culture, our common experience and our aspirations."

And the late Afro-Guyanese historian, Walter Rodney made the same point when he wrote that: "What we need is confidence in ourselves, so that as Africans we can be conscious, united, independent and creative. A knowledge of African achievements in art, education, religion, politics, agriculture, medicine, science and the mining of metals can help us gain the necessary confidence which has been removed by slavery and colonialism."

So if they say as Africans we don't have a history, we should be able to point out the fallacy in such ignorant statements by referring to works by distinguished African historians such as Cheikh Anta Diop, Chancellor Williams, Walter Rodney, Adu Boahen, John Jackson, Yosef Ben-Jochannan, John Hope Franklin, Leronne Bennett Jr., John Henrik Clarke, J. F. Ade Ajayi and many more. Thanks to their works, we've come to know that when we talk about African history, we are also talking about African astronomy, African mathematics, African metallurgy, African medicine, African engineering and so on.

And thanks to the great contribution by the late African historian, Cheikh Anta Diop, we now know that the history that we need to recover includes that Egyptian science and technology which laid the foundation for the development of Europe. The use of historical knowledge must be a weapon in our struggle for complete liberation.

An overall view of ancient African civilizations and ancient African cultures is required to get rid of all myths about the African past, which continues to linger in the minds of Black and African peoples everywhere. And that is what Black History Month is all about. Remember the African saying: "Know your history and you will always be wise."

Henry Martey Codjoe
A Policy Consultant
with the Alberta Department of Education, Canada.

January 1995

*Forthcoming in African Link, Volume 5, No. 1 (February 1995) under the title, "A Commentary on Black History Month in North America." This is also a modified version of an article, "On the Importance of History in Black and African Development," in Caribbean Source, Volume 2, No. 7 (February 1993).

[CrimsonTide4]

1920
Leontine T.C. Kelly, the first African-American woman to become a bishop within the Methodist denomination, was born.

[CrimsonTide4]

PAULA GIDDINGS

Nationality: American
Occupation: Educator, Editor, Journalist, Social historian

PERSONAL
Born Paula Jane Giddings, November 16, 1947, in Yonkers, NY; daughter of Curtis G. (a guidance counselor and school teacher) and Virginia (Stokes; a guidance counselor) Giddings. Education: Howard University, BA, 1969. Memberships: Delta Sigma Theta, 1967--; National Coalition of 100 Black Women, 1985; American Historical Association, 1990--; International Association of Poets, Playwrights, Editors, Essayists, and Novelists (PEN; board member), 1990--; Author's Guild of America (treasurer), 1991; Century Club; Association of Black Women Historians; National Women's Studies Association; Author's League Foundation (board member); Organization of American Historians; Women's WORLD (World Organization for Rights, Literature, and Development; cofounder and board member). Addresses: Home--New York, NY.

CAREER
Random House, editorial assistant, 1969-70, copy editor, 1970-72; Howard University Press, associate book editor, 1972-75; Encore America/Worldwide News, Paris bureau chief, Paris, France, 1975-77, associate editor, New York, NY, 1977-79; Essence, contributing and book review editor, 1985-90; Spelman College, distinguished United Negro College Fund (UNCF) scholar, 1986-87, visiting scholar, 1991-92; Rutgers University/Douglass College, Laurie New Jersey chair in women's studies, 1989-91; Princeton University, visiting professor, 1992-93; Phi Beta Kappa visiting scholar, 1995-96. Fellow, Barnard Center for Research on Women, 1990-93, New York University Institute for the Humanities, 1991--, John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, 1993-94, National Humanities Center, Research Triangle Park, NC, 1993-95.

AWARDS
Ford Foundation Grant, 1982; Candace Award, National Coalition of 100 Black Women, 1985; Alumni Award, Howard University, 1985; Westchester Black Women's Political Caucus Award, 1986; Building Brick Award, New York Urban League, 1986; Anna Julia Cooper Award, Sage: A Scholarly Journal on Black Women, 1990, Bennett College, Greensboro, NC, honorary doctorate in humane letters 1990.

WRITINGS:
Books
When and Where I Enter: The Impact of Black Women on Race and Sex in America, William Morrow, 1984, Bantam, 1985.
In Search of Sisterhood: Delta Sigma Theta and the Challenge of the Black Sorority, William Morrow, 1988, Quill, 1995.
(With Cornel West) Regarding Malcolm X, Amistad Press, 1994.
Plays
The Reunion, reading at Judith Anderson Theater, New York City, 1991.

NARRATIVE ESSAY:
Paula Giddings has made her name and reputation carrying out a simple but formidable project, recovering the lost voices of silent generations of American black women. Giddings has put her strongest efforts into restoring and understanding the perspective of others in her two well-received, major books of social history, When and Where I Enter: The Impact of Black Women on Race and Sex in America and In Search of Sisterhood: Delta Sigma Theta and the Challenge of the Black Sorority Movement. Giddings credits her interest in language to her mother who taught her the importance of having a voice. Giddings has been recognized for her hard work by many group, including the National Coalition of 100 Black Women, the New York Urban League, and Bennett College in Greensboro, North Carolina--awarded her an honorary doctorate in human letters in 1990.

In Essence Giddings recalled one particularly formative experience from her childhood in the 1950s. She was the first black child to go to her privately run elementary school; the other children made fun of her African looks and taunted her with racial epithets, but Giddings did not respond. Her diffidence bothers her to this day. She wrote in Essence, "It was my first experience with the politics of difference, and my reaction, I am ashamed to say, was one of stunned silence." In a process similar to ones she would document in her later work, she found her voice suddenly muted.

The white administrators were sympathetic enough to Giddings plight but were ineffectual in dealing with the childrens' cruelty. Not knowing what to do, they approached Giddings's mother, perhaps silently hoping she would remove her daughter from the school. Instead Mrs. Giddings asked to address the class. For the future writer, it was an important lesson. The author recollected in Essence, "She exuded such authority ... that the kids fell in line right away." Her mother a children's book about dealing with differences to the class.

After finishing the book, Mrs. Giddings encouraged the children to speak up about their feelings of race. The youngsters, un-used to receiving such respect from an adult on such an important issue, were allowed to express openly the fears and prejudices that they were usually forced to suppress. The mother who had come in to help her daughter "find her voice" also performed the same service for her child's tormentors.

When the dark feelings of the other children were brought out into the open and dealt with, they lost most of their virulence. Giddings compared what her mother did to an exorcism of "the monstrous images" that had come to dominate the children's understanding of black people. It was an extraordinary experience, bringing the children to feel true remorse for the inhuman way they had been treating another human being; and for the little girl, Paula, the encounter between her mother and her classmates became an emblem for the dignity of the human voice and the power of the story teller's art.

Giddings mother was no stranger to the educational system. The Giddings family had been active in education and civil rights for generations. Paula's great-great-grandmother, a slave and daughter of her Virginia slave master, was taught "the rudiments of education, fine embroidery, and music, as well as the harsher lessons of being black and a woman in America," according to the preface to Giddings' Where and When I Enter. Both Paula's parents were college educated, and both taught in the public school system. Her father also founded the local chapter of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) in Yonkers, New York. From a young age, Paula knew she wanted to write. She went to Howard University in Washington, DC, and became editor of the literary magazine Afro-American Review, but about this time she also began to move away from her own creative writing towards journalism and social history. Giddings graduated with an undergraduate degree in English in 1969.

The 1970s were a period of search for Giddings. After graduating, she worked as a Random House copy editor during an exciting time there, when its authors included the black political activists, Angela Davis and Stokely Carmichael. Toni Morrison, the eventual author of such acclaimed novels as Beloved, was also an editor there at the same time. After a couple of years Giddings and her mentor at Random House, Charles Harris, went to Howard University Press where she helped develop book ideas and took part in deciding what should be published as well as performing the usual grunge work associated with preparing a manuscript for publication.

The job was satisfying to her in many way, but Giddings remained restless. A desire to work overseas led her to open the Paris bureau of Encore American & World Wide News for famed publisher Ida Lewis in 1975. From Paris, Giddings not only covered Europe, she also traveled through Africa, reporting on news and interviewing such personages as Uganda's notorious dictator, Idi Amin, and South African activist under apartheid, Winnie Mandela. Encore brought her back to New York in 1977 to work as an associate editor.

In 1979 Giddings reached an important turning point. While working on a program initiated by the U.S. government to produce a series of books on the historical experience of black women in America, Giddings came to realize how dramatically small was the documentation of the black female voice in our history. She became determined to do what she could to rectify the situation, and so began the research into the book that five years later would come out under the title, When and Where I Enter: The Impact of Black Women on Race and Sex in America. To write the book, Giddings searched out the hidden primary sources of the past, from diaries to letters and even to obscure novels. Along the way she received a Ford Foundation Grant to help her complete the project.

In the preface to When and Where I Enter Giddings noted that "despite the range and significance of our [black women's] history, we have been perceived as token women in black texts and as token blacks in feminist ones." Emergent themes in Giddings work include the relationship between sexism and racism, the effect of "double discrimination" on the basis of gender and race on black women, and the relevance of historical issues to contemporary life. Writing in the New York Times Book Review, Gloria Naylor described When and Where I Enter as the "narrative history of black women from the seventeenth century to the present" as "a labor of commitment and love--and it shows." Naylor went on in her glowing review to call the work "jarringly fresh and challenging...." In fitting tribute to the woman who had protected her voice, Paula Giddings dedicated the book to her mother.

The response to the book was strong and very favorable. Her former colleague, Toni Morrison called When and Where I Enter, "History at its best." Publishers Weekly predicted correctly that it would become a standard in its field and The Women's Review of Books went so far as to call it the "best interpretation of black women and race and sex that we have." The Book of the Month Club made it an alternate selection, and When and Where I Enter was translated into several foreign languages. The success of the book not only made her a speaker much in demand on the lecture circuit, it also launched an academic career for her.

Giddings first academic post came in the mid-1980s at Atlanta's Spelman College, where she was a United Negro College Fund Distinguished Scholar. Giddings also deeply immersed herself in traditional journalistic work. She went to work at Essence, a magazine aimed at black women, as both a contributing editor and editor of the publication's book section. In 1987, the prestigious journal Harper's, edited by Lewis Lapham, invited Giddings to take part in a forum on whether or not conditions for African Americans in the United States were improving.

Giddings comments in Harper's tended to focus on the wedge that was perceived to be growing between middle class blacks and their underclass brothers and sisters. Troubled by this development, she pointed out that the differences between the classes were to some degree illusory since the "fate of all blacks is inseparable by class.... The black middle class will remain fragile as long as there's a large and growing underclass."

In 1988, Giddings followed up When and Where I Enter with In Search of Sisterhood: Delta Sigma Theta and the Challenge of the Black Sorority. The sorority differed from the "Greek" organization stereotype of initiation rituals, or hazing and raucous toga parties. Instead, Delta Sigma Theta, founded at Howard University in 1913, took the education of its members concerning political change and civil rights legislation as its mission from the very beginning

In the first year of its existence, the "Deltas" joined 5,000 female protesters marching up Washington, DC's Pennsylvania Avenue to bring to the government their demand that women receive the right to vote. A member herself, other famous members of Delta Sigma Theta include Barbara Jordan, a professor and former congresswoman from Texas, singer Lena Horne, and the opera diva Leontyne Price. A more obscure but no less impressive alumna of the sorority is Sadie T. M. Alexander, the first woman of color to earn a doctorate in the United States.

Critics were quick to praise In Search of Sisterhood. Writing in The Washington Post, Dorothy Gilliam gave Giddings "a hearty cheer for bringing to the fore yet another piece of overlooked black women's history." The Los Angeles Times said, the book "succeeds as a detailed study of an organization that has touched the lives of some of the most prominent black women in America."

In the early 1990s, Giddings continued to juggle writing and teaching, beginning with a three-year fellowship at the Barnard Center for Research on Women. In 1991, the Women's Project Productions of New York City commissioned her to write a one-act play, The Reunion, which was given a staged reading at one of New York City's most famous theaters, the Judith Anderson. The same year, Giddings was invited back to Spelman as a visiting scholar, Rutgers University's Douglass College asked her to chair their women's studies program, and she was honored with a fellowship at the New York University Institute for Humanities.

Giddings spent 1992 as a visiting professor at Princeton University, a distinct honor in light of the fact she'd never earned an advanced degree and most Ivy League institutions usually hire graduate-degree wielding scholars. Other fellowships were bestowed upon her during the next few years, including one-year associations with the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation and the National Humanities Center in Research Triangle Park in North Carolina. The culmination of these experiences was an academic year spent as a visiting scholar with Phi Beta Kappa in 1995 to 1996.

An energetic woman, Giddings still found the time throughout her career participate as a high ranking member of such esteemed organizations as the International Association of Poets, Playwrights, Editors, Essayists, and Novelists (PEN); the Author's League Foundation; the Author's Guild of America; and Women's WORLD (World Organization for Rights, Literature and Development), the latter being an anti-censorship group that she cofounded. After helping the National Book Award committee judge the nonfiction output of 1989, she also sat on the judging committee's for PEN's Gerard Fund Award in 1992 and the National Association of Colored People (NAACP) ACT-SO award as well as serving on various advisory committees for a number of academic institutions.

Despite all her other obligations, expressing herself with words remained Giddings number one priority and love. "For a black woman to write about black women is at once personal and an objective undertaking. It is personal," she explained in the preface to When and Where I Enter, "because the women whose blood runs through my veins breathe admist the statistics. [It] is also an objective enterprise because one must put such experiences into historical context, find in them a rational meaning so that the forces that shape our own lives may be understood." With that ethic in mind, Giddings was planning a biography of the former slave, outspoken journalist, and anti-lynching crusader Ida B. Wells-Barnett, who died in 1931. Always in the midst of a project, she also co-edited, with social critic Cornel West, an anthology of essays about Malcolm X entitled Regarding Malcolm X. As Giddings noted in an interview with Notable Black American Women, "I will write 'till I say goodbye to this world."

SOURCES:
BOOKS
Giddings, Paula, When and Where I Enter: The Impact of Black Women on Race and Sex in America, William Morrow, 1984, pp. 1, 5-8.
Notable Black American Women, edited by Jessie Carney Smith, Gale, 1992, pp. 402-03.

PERIODICALS
Booklist, August 1988, p. 1872.
Essence, May 1995, pp. 196-98.
Harper's, February 1987, p. 35ff.
Los Angeles Times Book Review, July 31, 1988, p. 1.
New Directions for Women, March 1989, p. 18.
New York Times Book Review, July 8, 1984, p. 10.
Publishers Weekly, July 8, 1988, p. 44.
Washington Post, August 12, 1988.
Additional information for this profile was obtained via information provided to CBB by Paula Giddings on January 4, 1996.

[CrimsonTide4]

Osceola McCarthy Adams

Soror Adams was a native of Albany, Georgia.
Soror Adams was an actress and member of the Repertory Playhouse Associates of New York. She also was the directress of the American Negro Theater and directed "Days of Our Youth" the play in which Harry Belefonte and Sidney Poitier premiered their dramatic careers. She also served as Teacher of dramatics at Bennett College in Greensboro, North Carolina and directress of the Harlem School of the Arts.

Soror Adams along with Soror Marguerite Y. Alexander founded the Lambda Chapter of Delta Sigma Theta in 1919.

[CrimsonTide4]

MARGUERITE YOUNG ALEXANDER & WINONA CARGILE ALEXANDER

Soror Marguerite Young Alexander, a native of the state of Illinois, founded with the help of Soror Adams the Lambda Chapter of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc in 1919. Lambda Chapter serves the Chicago area colleges.

Soror Winona Cargile Alexander, a native, of Columbus, Georgia, served as the 1st Custodian of Alpha Chapter. She also holds the distinction of being the 1st black social worker with the New York City and County Charities.

[CrimsonTide4]

ETHEL CUFF BLACK
BERTHA PITTS CAMPBELL
ZEPHYR CHISOM CARTER

Soror Ethel Cuff Black, a native of Wilmington, Delaware, was the first BLACK teacher in Richmond County, New York. She also was the Charter Member of the Queens Alumnae Chapter.

Soror Bertha Pitts Campbell, a native of Winfield, KS, was involved in improving race relations in Seattle, Washington. She was one of the primary forces behind organizing the Christian Friends for Racial Equality in Seattle.

Zephyr Chisom Carter, a native of El Paso, Texas, did back up singing for television shows and movies. Upon the founding of Delta, Soror Carter held the position of reporter.