Tag: black-history

As most of you know February Black History Month. Accordingly, I think that this is an appropriate time to pay homage to some of the people of color who have made outstanding contributions to the history of blacks and to America. Some of them, such as Dr. Martin Luther King, Barack Obama, Muhammed Ali, and Jackie Robinson, to name a few, are household names and have been the subject of movies, tv productions and books; others are only known to students of history and the civil rights movement. It is the latter group that I will highlight for this blog. I don’t have the time and space to write about all of them, but below please find brief summaries of some:

1. Shirley Chisholm – She was the first Black woman to be elected to Congress. She represented NYC’s 12th district in the House of Representatives from 1969 to 1983. In 1972, she became the first woman to run for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination. 
2. Bayard Rustin – He was a prominent civil rights leader in the 1960s. He is best known for organizing and strategizing the famous March on Washington in August 1963, the one in which Dr. King delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” speech.
3. Claudette Colvin – Before Parks refused to give up her seat on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1955, there was a brave 15-year-old who also chose not to surrender her seat on a bus to a white person and move to the back. She was arrested for her impudence. Few people know her story. She was fifteen and pregnant at the time. Therefore, civil rights leaders declined to sue preferring to wait for a case with a better fact pattern in order to enhance their chances of winning.
4. James Baldwin – He was writer and civil rights activist best known for his essays, novels, plays, and poems. Time magazine ranked his 1953 novel Go Tell It on the Mountain as one of the top 100 English-language novels. In addition, he was an influential public figure and orator during the early days of the civil rights movement.
5. Jesse Owens – He was a track-and-field athlete best known for winning four gold medals in the 1936 Olympic Games, which were held in Nazi Germany. His performance embarrassed Hitler and all those who believed the Nazis were the Master Race and blacks were inferior. In 1976, Owens received the Presidential Medal of Freedom and was posthumously awarded the Congressional Gold Medal in 1990.
6. Jane Bolin – She was the first Black woman to attend Yale Law School in 1931. In 1939, she became the first black female judge in the United States. 
7. Benjamin O. Davis, Sr. – He was the first Black general in the U.S. Army. His long and distinguished 50-year career included stints as a first lieutenant during the Spanish American War, a professor of military science at Tuskegee and Wilberforce University, commander of the 369th Infantry of the New York National Guard, and Special Assistant to the Commanding General, among many other positions. He is a recipient of the Bronze Star Medal and the Distinguished Service Medal and is buried at Arlington National Cemetery.
8. Dr. Rebecca Lee Crumpler – She was the first Black woman to earn a medical degree in the United States. After working as a nurse for eight years she was accepted to the New England Female Medical College (which later merged with Boston University) in 1860. 
9. Gerald Wilson – Before Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington and other famous black jazz musicians there was Gerald Wilson. He was a trumpeter, jazz composer, arranger, and bandleader known for “redefin[ing] Big Band.” His band was considered to be one of the greatest in the jazz world, with a sound heavily influenced by the blues mixed with other styles.
10. Moses Fleetwood Walker – Who was the first black MLB player? No, it was not Jackie Robinson. According to The Society for American Baseball Research (SABR) Moses “Fleetwood” Walker is credited with being the first African American baseball player in the major leagues. He was a catcher who played 42 MLB games in 1884. It should be noted that five years’ prior in 1879 William Edward White played one professional baseball game for the Providence Grays of the National League. However, White’s light complexion enabled him to “pass” as white, and he identified as such. Therefore, unlike Walker who was open about his black heritage, he was spared the racial bigotries, indignities and hostilities that were prevalent at the time. Hence SABR credits Walker with being the first.
11. Thurgood Marshall – He was an American civil rights lawyer and jurist who served as the first black associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1967 until 1991. As an attorney for the NAACP he defended numerous blacks who had been accused of crimes. His most famous case was Brown vs the School Boards of Kansas, South Carolina, Delaware, Virginia, and the District of Columbia.  His landmark victory overturned the then-prevalent “separate but equal” Plessey decision, which had stood since 1896 and paved the way for the integration of public schools.
12. Crispus Attucks – He was a black whaler, sailor, and stevedore who is generally regarded as the first person killed in the American Revolutionary War.

CONCLUSION

The foregoing are just a few of many black Americans who have made significant contributions to black history and American history. I’m sure I omitted some that were equally worthy, but time and space dd not enable me to mention everyone. Besides, the blog would have been so long no one would have read it.