-1795- September 17, 1858 -After the death of his original owner, he was sold to another man and spent time as a slave in two free states. Scott tried to buy freedom for himself and his family from their heirs of his second owner after his owner’s death but failed. -In the late 1840s, Scott filed suit to gain his freedom with help from two St. Louis attorneys. The basis of his case was that he had been taken from Missouri, a slave state, to Illinois, a free state. The case dragged on for years, finally making its way to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1857. The Supreme Court ruled…
Black History Month Featuring Ella Baker
-December 13, 1903- December 13, 1986 -Civil rights and human rights activist beginning in the 1930s. She was a behind-the-scenes activist whose career spanned over five decades. -As a girl, Baker listened to her grandmother tell stories about slave revolts. As a slave, her grandmother had been whipped for refusing to marry a man chosen for her by the slave owner. -Baker attended Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina, graduating as class valedictorian in 1927 at the age of 24. As a student she challenged school policies that she thought were unfair. -During 1929 – 1930 she was an editorial staff member of the American West Indian News,…
Black History Month- Ida B. Wells-Barnett
-July 16, 1862- March 25, 1931 -She was a journalist who led an anti-lynching crusade in the United States in the 1890s and went on to found and become integral in groups striving for justice for African Americans. -She was educated at Rust University, a freedmen’s school in her native Holly Springs, Mississippi, and at age 14 began teaching in a country school. She continued to teach after moving to Memphis, Tennessee, in 1884 and attended Fisk University in Nashville during several summer sessions. -In 1887 the Tennessee Supreme Court, reversing a Circuit Court decision, ruled against Wells in a suit she had brought against the Chesapeake &…
Black History Month- Frederick Douglass
-February 1818- February 20, 1895 -African American who was one of the most eminent human-rights leaders of the 19th century. His oratorical and literary brilliance thrust him into the forefront of the U.S. abolition movement, and he became the first black citizen to hold high rank in the U.S. government. -Separated as an infant from his slave mother (he never knew his white father), Frederick lived with his grandmother on a Maryland plantation until, at age eight, his owner sent him to Baltimore to live as a house servant with the family of Hugh Auld, whose wife defied state law by teaching the boy to read. -Frederick tried to…
Black History Month- W.E.B DuBois
-February 23, 1868- August 27, 1963 -American sociologist, the most important black protest leader in the United States during the first half of the 20th century. -For more than a decade he devoted himself to sociological investigations of blacks in America, producing 16 research monographs published between 1897 and 1914 at Atlanta (Georgia) University, where he was a professor, as well as The Philadelphia Negro; A Social Study (1899), the first case study of a black community in the United States. -He was indicted in 1951 as an unregistered agent for a foreign power but was acquitted and moved to Ghana where he remained until his death in…
Black History Month Featuring Barack Obama
-Born August 4, 1961 -He was elected the 44th President of the United States on November 4, 2008, and sworn in on January 20, 2009. Also the 1st African American President of the United States. -He was a civil rights lawyer before pursuing a political career, first as Illinois State Senator. -While living with his grandparents, Obama enrolled in the esteemed Punahou Academy, excelling in basketball and graduating with academic honors in 1979. -As one of only three black students at the school, Obama became conscious of racism and what it meant to be African-American. -He later described how he struggled to reconcile social perceptions of his multiracial heritage…
Black History Month- Nat Turner
-October 2, 1800- November 11, 1831 -Leader of a slave insurrection. -Sold three times in his childhood and hired out to John Travis (1820s), he became a fiery preacher and leader of African-American slaves on Benjamin Turner’s plantation and in his Southampton County neighborhood, claiming that he was chosen by God to lead them from bondage. -Believing in signs and hearing divine voices, Turner was convinced by an eclipse of the Sun (1831) that the time to rise up had come, and he enlisted the help of four other slaves in the area. -An insurrection was planned, aborted, and rescheduled for August 21, 1831, when he and six other slaves…
Black History Month- Rosa Parks
-February 4, 1913- October 24, 2005 -Named “The Mother of the Modern-Day Civil Rights Movement” – Most historians date the beginning of the modern civil rights movement in the United States to December 1, 1955. -That was the day when an unknown seamstress in Montgomery, Alabama refused to give up her bus seat to a white passenger. This brave woman, Rosa Parks, was arrested and fined for violating a city ordinance, but her lonely act of defiance began a movement that ended legal segregation in America, and made her an inspiration to freedom-loving people everywhere. -Opportunities were few indeed. “Back then,” Mrs. Parks recalled in an interview, “we didn’t…
Black History Month Featuring Marcus Garvey
-August 17, 1887- June 10, 1940 -An orator for the Black Nationalism and Pan-Africanism movements, to which end he founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League. -He advanced a Pan-African philosophy which inspired a global mass movement, known as Garveyism. Garveyism would eventually inspire others, from the Nation of Islam to the Rastafari movement. -In the United States he launched several businesses to promote a separate black nation. -After he was convicted of mail fraud and deported back to Jamaica, he continued his work for black repatriation to Africa. -In 1903, he traveled to Kingston, Jamaica, and soon became involved in union activities. -In 1907, he…
Black History Month- Thurgood Marshall
-July 2, 1908- January 24, 1993 -On June 13, 1967, President Johnson nominated Marshall to the Supreme Court. -Marshall was confirmed as an Associate Justice by a Senate vote of 69–11 on August 30, 1967. -He was the 96th person to hold the position, and the first African American. President Johnson confidently predicted to one biographer, Doris Kearns Goodwin, that a lot of black baby boys would be named “Thurgood” in honor of this choice. -He served on the Court for the next twenty-four years, compiling a liberal record that included strong support for Constitutional protection of individual rights, especially the rights of criminal suspects against the government. -At…
Black History Month- Dr. Garrett Morgan
-March 4, 1877- August 27, 1963 -On July 25, 1916, he made national news for using his gas mask to rescue 32 men trapped during an explosion in an underground tunnel 250 feet beneath Lake Erie. -Morgan’s company received requests from fire departments around the country who wished to purchase the new masks. -The Morgan gas mask was later refined for use by U.S. Army during World War I. In 1914, Garrett Morgan was awarded a patent for a Safety Hood and Smoke Protector. -Two years later, a refined model of his early gas mask won a gold medal at the International Exposition of Sanitation and Safety, and another…
Black History Month- George Washington Carver
-July 12, 1864- January 5, 1943 -Carver’s reputation is based on his research into and promotion of alternative crops to cotton, such as peanuts, soybeans and sweet potatoes, which also aided nutrition for farm families. -He wanted poor farmers to grow alternative crops both as a source of their own food and as a source of other products to improve their quality of life. -The most popular of his 44 practical bulletins for farmers contained 105 food recipes using peanuts. -He also developed and promoted about 100 products made from peanuts that were useful for the house and farm, including cosmetics, dyes, paints, plastics, gasoline, and nitroglycerin. He…
Black History Month- Jackie Robinson
-January 31, 1919- October 24, 1972 -First black player in the MLB, making his debut in 1947 for the Brooklyn Dodgers. -His major league debut brought an end to approximately sixty years of segregation in professional baseball. -Him breaking of the baseball color line and his professional success symbolized these broader changes and demonstrated that the fight for equality was more than simply a political matter. -Martin Luther King said that he was “a legend and a symbol in his own time”, and that he “challenged the dark skies of intolerance and frustration.” -According to historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, Robinson’s “efforts were a monumental step in the civil-rights revolution…
Black History Month- Dr. Carter Godwin Woodson
-December 19, 1875- April 3, 1950 -Founder of Black History -Historian, author, journalist and the founder of the Association for the Study African American Life and History -Founder of the Journal of Negro History, now called The Journal of African-American History -Coming from a large, poor family, he could not regularly attend school. Through self-instruction, Woodson mastered the fundamentals of common school subjects by age 17. -Convinced that the role of his own people in American history and in the history of other cultures was being ignored or misrepresented among scholars. -He realized the need for research into the neglected past of African Americans. -His final professional appointment…
Black History Month- Susan B. Anthony
-February 15, 1820- March 13, 1906 -She dedicated her life to “the cause,” the woman suffrage movement. -The accomplishments of Susan B. Anthony paved the way for the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920 (14 years after her death) which gave women the right to vote. -Founded the National Woman’s Suffrage Association in 1869 with life-long friend Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Together they worked for women’s suffrage for over 50 years. -Published “The Revolution” from 1868-1870, a weekly paper about the woman suffrage movement whose motto read, “Men their rights and nothing more, women their rights and nothing less. -First person arrested, put on trial and fined for voting…
Black History Month- Harriet Tubman
Harriet Tubman – 1820 to March 10, 1913 -Born Araminta Harriet Ross -Born a slave in Maryland, Harriet Tubman escaped to freedom, and later led more than 300 other slaves to the North and to Canada to their freedom, too. -The best-known conductor on the Underground Railroad. -She spoke against slavery and for women’s rights. -Acquainted with many of the social reformers and abolitionists of her time. -During the Civil War she served with the U.S. Army in South Carolina, as a nurse, scout, spy and soldier. -Most famously she led the Combahee River expedition, under the command of James Montgomery, helping to blow up Southern supply lines…
Black History Month- Booker T. Washington
Okay we all know that the month of February is Black History Month. So what I’m doing this month is featuring a different person everyday with facts you know or may not know about that person. Hopefully you’ll take time to read more about them by googling them and maybe share with your kids, nieces, nephews or whoever because this is something they’ll never learn in schools. They do teach about Martin Luther King, which is good but there is so much more to know. Booker T. Washington -April 5, 1856 to November 15, 1915 -Educationist and reformer -Most Influential spokesman for Black Americans between 1895 to 1915 -Determined…
Period Packs Review
I always said that fatherhood has changed me for the better in so many ways. As a father of 2 girls, I’ve also had to learn a lot of things over the years. As my oldest daughter becomes older and starts going through puberty, I knew things were going to change fast. I have always tried to be the father and friend; my kids feel comfortable talking to about anything, even those uncomfortable situations. The other week on twitter I noticed a new follower. I always check out my new followers and try to learn more about them and build friendships. To me I am all about quality over…
