CJS.j://6& For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office Washington, D.C. 20402 Stock Number 003-017-00443-1 2nd Annual Commemoration of Black History February 1979 Coordinated by; Barbara Gray, Project Coordinator; Computer Specialist, MDSP, NOS, NOAA Landry Williams, Jr., Associate Project Coordinator; Physical Scientist, MDSP, NOS, NOAA U.S.DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE Juanita M. Kreps, Secretary National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Richard A. Frank, Administrator The project coordinators acknowledge the following individuals who contributed towards the success of this publication: Theodore Gleiter, Former Assistant Administrator for Administration, NOAA Ray Moses, Manager of Marine Data Systems Project, NOS, NOAA Raymond Perkins, Project Consultant and Researcher; Professor at the University of D.C. Bibliographic Note v In discussing and reviewing history, one must distinguish between what actually happened and what historians say has happened. To move forward, it is necessary to look backward. Rarely does history provide the whole of humanity with the courage to know a people who have been systematically excluded from the history books. The biased emphasis on Blacks in their capacity as slaves obscures the more vigorous scientific, intellectual, and cultural contributions that many Black men and women made to the growth and development of the United States of America during its first two and one half centuries. This booklet provides some knowledge for those persons who desire a better understanding of, and feeling for, the unique heritage, life, culture, and problems of Americans of African descent. For the most part, majority-oriented texts have been seriously deficient in their treatment of minorities in general and Black people in particular. Given the background of American history, one discovers how the treatment of past and present problems affected the black environment. We present a few biographical examples that serve as inspirational reminders worthy of emulation. The more we study and observe history, the more we will respect the wisdom of the men and women who contributed to the growth and development of this country. They knew that freedom was both priceless and fragile, and they told us to treat it with great care. We hope that this booklet will stimulate a knowledgeable citizenry, both Black and White, to understand better the slavery system, prejudice and discrimination, and the civil rights movement. That is America's heritage and challenge. it Letter From the Administrator The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration marks the 53d National Commemoration of the Afro-American Contribution to the Development and History of America by sponsoring its second observance of Black History Week. As a souvenir, this book highlights the strides of individual men and women, as well as the proud panorama of a people who enriched American life and culture. It reveals the long and arduous pilgrimage that began more than 400 years ago on the African Continent, often marked by tragedy, but sustained by spirit. It further reveals a people setting their mark upon the history of their times and keeping pace with their contemporaries to secure the democratic rights of "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," which are inherent in our Nation's founding principles . The human search to create a more attractive life is endless; however, brighter conditions prevail today. Educational opportunities are increasing, and new technically oriented opportunities are expanding. Minority men and women are invited and encouraged to investigate the wide range of opportunities that require talent, skill, and imagination. Despite the imperfections in our society, perseverance and determination are not without reward. During this occasion, we join all of America in pausing to take note of the complete and positive contributions made by Black Americans to the total growth and development of these United States. CU A Richard Frank in Donna J. Bonner (Drawing) Foreword In the beginning... Africa is believed to be the cradle of the human race, as pointed out by Charles Darwin in The Origin of Species in 1859 and The Descent of Man in 1871. In 1959 at Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania, East Africa, British anthropologists Louis S. B. and Mary Leakey discovered Homo zinjanthropus , an African ancestor, 1 1/2 million years after Zinjanthropus died there. One of the first places humans put down roots is in the Great Rift Valley in the savannah country that stretches across Northern Kenya and Southwest Ethiopia, near Lake Rudolph, in the Valley of the River Omo. The Biblical chronicles of the Old Testament and the monumental works of Homer, Herodotus, and others contain many references to Ethiopia. The term "Ethiopian" is a designation for all dark-skinned Africans, including Black Africans and mulattoes. Before narrating the story of Blacks in American culture, the long-lost roots of the Black heritage must be sought in the Old World environment of the African. Africa is the mother of Blacks and the mother of civilization in general . The history of the Negro in America begins with the rediscovery of Africa by the Portuguese. Prince Henry the Navigator sent Captain Antam Goncalvez of Portugal to get skins and oil in West Africa. Reinforced by men from Captain Nuno Tristam's ship, the Portuguese made a surprise attack on a band of 40 Africans. Four Africans were killed, 10 were captured, and the rest escaped. The captives Captain Goncalvez took to Portugal in 1441 marked the beginning of direct European involvement in the African slave trade. On May 14, 1607, the history of English America began when three ships of Captain Christopher Newport, carrying only men, discharged their passengers at Jamestown, Va . , the first permanent English settlement in the New World. A fort, a church, a stonehouse, and a row of huts would proliferate and signal the events of a world to come. The golden promise of America as a refuge from oppression and the prospects of new opportunities were given new encouragement in 1619 when John Rolfe, husband of the Indian Princess Pocahontas, demonstrated the economic value of the tobacco plant. The evolving agricultural economy would give rise to the plantation system, redirect the lives and fortunes (or misfortunes) of millions, and lay the foundation for great profits that became heritable wealth in company a diversifying and expanding economy. By the year 1619, Virginia had no more than 2,000 people, but the events of that year were destined to strain the very foundations of American democratic ideology. The first legislative assembly of the colony met. A shipload of marriageable women, to be sold for 120 pounds of tobacco each, was sent to Virginia by the chartered Virginia trading children from London slums were sent as apprentices. Farmer John Rolfe reported in his journal that on August 20, "there came in a Dutch man-of-warre that sole us 20 negars," and America inherited a new breed of people when the 20 Blacks stepped off at Jamestown. These first Blacks were indentured servants, working for a specified number of years and then given freedom. Two of the 20, Antony and Isabella, married; their firstborn, in 1624, William Tucker, the first Black child born in the English North American colonies, was baptized in Jamestown. In 1620 the Mayflower anchored at Plymouth, Mass. Within 20 years, the system of slavery became institutionalized for the Black immigrants. VI Table of Contents The Road to Revolution , 1 Ben j amin Banneke r , 3 narrieL lUDuian ••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• w DO ] Oil T TIG IT 1 ITU til • ••••••••••••••••♦•••••• •••»•• ••••»• ••• 9 Frederick Douglass % If Patrick Francis Healy, S.J II Blanche K. Bruce 14 George H. White II Lewis Howard Latimer 17 Daniel Hale Williams If Charles Henry Turner m 21 Homer Plessy 23 William Edward Burghardt Du Bois 24 Booker Taliaferro Washington 9 Matthew Alexander Henson H George Washington Carver 31 Archie A. Alexander 32 Ralph J. Bunche • - ••• M Mary McLeod Bethune 31 Percy L. Julian « 31 Famous Quotations 41 vii Crispus Attucks leads Boston townspeople against British troops Office of the Architect of the Capitol ■1 TacT, .OODY ^ r ks&acxz *> ■eL- -^ 1 r. . . Tj iirt u' r TT r 1 iTIibmi Tilt iMirml taMniwilMltnT TiltiJ f ' — i* ivaseBmik th-ira™!*"^^-! <»n o.^n. onpraft «m4I«ii«iC— t.ih«fc»id»I(.t - tt«Ui«l. Ailhiind-wi'i: ,.-.-ovrflreW>«>r.irli»*ftindS Ibe |*ji. weOhoft. ctVSd.mi&KhMlWfc |?.a The Metropolitan Museum of Art, * GiftofMrs. Russell Sage, 1910 The Road to Revolution A new concept in Human Rights Crispus Attucks, a 47-year-old runaway slave, from Framingham, Mass., emerged from obsurity on March 5, 1770. Seaman Attucks was shot dead at the "Boston Massacre" while leading patriots who were protesting the presence of British troops in Boston. In the Revolutionary generation, people talked of all humans being created equal and having the God-given rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Seeking freedom from British oppression in the land of the free and the home of the brave, the colonists were on the road to the American Revolution and the ultimate destiny of the American Nation was launched. Blacks were moving along with the historical currents. The presence of British soldiers inflamed Bostonians. There were daily confrontations between townspeople and troops. The people hurled insults, taunts, profanity, and missiles at the soldiers. On that fateful snowy evening of March 5th, protesting for human rights, seaman Attucks waved his cordwood club and urged the crowd forward. A British sentry in Captain Thomas Preston's company opened fire; Crispus Attucks was the first American to die physically defending American liberty. "From that moment (March 5, 1770), we may date the Severance of the British Empire," said Daniel Webster. Second President John Adams wrote, "Not the battle of Lexington or Bunker Hill, not the surrender of Burgoyne or Cornwallis, were more important events in American history than the battle of King Street on 5th of March 1770." Crispus Attucks' body lay in state in Faneuil Hall. He was buried with three of the victims, in one grave, in the Old Granary Burying Ground. Later, in Faneuil Hall Orator Wendell Phillips said, "I place this Crispus Attucks in the foremost ranks of the men that dared. When we talk of courage, he rises with his dark face in his clothes of the laborer, his head uncovered, his arms raised above him defying bayonets and when the proper symbols are placed round the base of the statue of Washington, one corner will be filled by the colored man defying the British muskets." And for the dedication of the Crispus Attucks monument on Boston Commons, poet John Boyle O'Reilly wrote, "And honor to Crispus Attucks, who was leader and voice that day: The first to defy, and first to die, with Maverick, Carr and Gray. Call it riot or revolution, or mob or crowd as you may, Such deaths have been seed of nations, such lives shall be honored for ay..." Once the American Revolution fanned the fires of freedom, Blacks began to ask about their freedom. John Adams reported in his diary on November 5, 1776, that Massachusetts slaves brought court action of trespass against their masters to challenge the legality of slavery. The action proved futile. LEXINGTON AND CONCORD, BUNKER HILL, AND YORKTOWN - the names of those historic Revolutionary battles still blaze in the American imagination. Some 5,000 Blacks served in the Continental array and navy during the Revolution. Blacks took part in the first engagement of the Revolution, United States Postal Service the Battle of Lexington and Concord, April 19, 1775. On June 17, 1775, a freed slave named Salem Poor became a hero of the Battle of Bunker Hill, killing Major Pitcairn, whose redcoats had fired on the patriots of Lexington. When General Washington assumed command of the Continental Army in July 1775, he issued an order excluding all Blacks from service in the war. Blacks protested the order. Further, the British countered by offering freedom to all slaves who joined the Crown's forces. The British move forced Washington to modify his position and permit free Blacks to serve. On July 4, 1776, the delegates in the State House (later to be named Independence Hall) in Philadelphia approved author Thomas Jefferson's Declaration of Independence - a bill of particulars drawn against King George III of England. Struggling with a sense of purpose and heightened by the colonist's readiness for "the birthday of a new world," the delegates proceeded to edit the document, striking two extravagant charges: an indictment of George III for forcing the slave trade on the colonies, and a denunciation of the English people. Jefferson's Clause 20 of the Declaration, dealing with slavery, was left out entirely. Politically, it was too dangerous, because many colonists, including members of Congress, still supported the practice. Their work done, the delegates approved the Declaration, and the United States was born. □ The Declaration of Independence by John Trumbull Yale University Art Gallery Benjamin Banneker Astronomer, Mathematician, and Surveyor Major Andrew Ellicott and Benjamin Banneker. The Federal Territory Survey William A. Smith, N.A. - Maryland House on the John F. Kennedy Highway Measured against the time in which he lived, the first Afro-American scientist and one of the most influential voices for Black freedom in Eighteenth Century America deserves the title, "The Amazing Benjamin Banneker." Freeborn near Baltimore, Md . , Banneker learned to read from his grandmother, an English woman who had been an indentured servant. Mechanical and mathematical aptitude combined to produce in this man a noteworthy American scientific pioneer. While a young man, he made the first wooden clock in America. By 1789, with books borrowed from a Quaker neighbor to give him command of mathematics and astronomy, self-trained Banneker accurately predicted a solar TP k "" Btnjamin II:... *S* p snjvlVania, Di.lwvuo, Makv i \\ ,;, and Virginia A L M A N A C, ) OR I III YEAR of our LORD 1795; the TliirJ after Lca]>-Ycmr. I Ell X f i 77ie coyer ofBannaker's Almanac, for the Year 1795 /rein "?rr,nn •rin /nrjenor-fc ,1 )^ ^nc~ r ODBBroaOBA 1 ,onh r ''«nnnnn '^coconncprjfcs. bennr :Hnnh/< ir.rxnnnnnc; r~]rqr— i r nirjDfJ^ri^nSnnr nnt nm^ L^cnf/rnnn^- qrj B*5^8|E5nccrjo* 5 -nn nnnnnnnnornnr'^ •* C^ScCnODDC35 a O^C\^n8fe^ nr Snnpr-,,nnar-' • ^nnnoennnno n,l 1 iODnrnnnnp._iuu >» !£»=*= . ■inn/flnnqqglr^ar] nm, od/doodd-J t — m* muvr r,rf Lat.CajHtol^. AN, Loi^jr 0: 0. Pfan of #ie C/fy of Washington The Library of Congress eclipse and issued widely circulated almanacs that provided information about the Sun, Moon, and tides. He provided information on the social behavior of bees, and reported his observations on the life cycle of the 17-year locust. After the adoption of the Constitution of the United States in 1790, the States of Maryland and Virginia ceded that portion of their territory that was to become the Federal city, Washington, D.C.. The Secretary of State, Thomas Jefferson, suggested to President Washington in 1790 that Banneker be appointed to serve on a three-member Commission to survey the land for the City of Washington. This was the first presidential appointment of an Afro- American and the Nation's first recognition of Banneker 1 s abilities. The Commission head, Major Pierre L'Enfant of France, quit the Commission because of continued disputes, returned to Paris, and took the printed plans with him. Banneker and surveyor Major Andrew Ellicott reconstructed the plans from memory and, under orders from President Washington, located the sites of the Capitol, the President's house, the Treasury, and other public buildings. James McHenry, who became Secretary of War in the Cabinet of John Adams, said that "Benjamin Banneker was fresh proof that the powers of the mind are disconnected with the color of the skin." This was a striking contradiction to David Hume's (Scottish philosopher and historian) doctrine that Negroes are naturally inferior to the Whites and unsusceptible of attainment in arts and sciences . Dred Scott The Dred Scott Decision Dred Scott, 1858 Missouri Historical Society In July 1847, Dred Scott, a Black resident of Missouri, brought suit in a Federal court for his freedom. In 1835, Dr. John Emerson, a U.S. Army surgeon, moved from Missouri to Illinois. Emerson took with him Dred Scott, a Negro slave. Emerson and Scott returned to Missouri in 1838. After Emerson died, Scott sued Emerson's widow for his freedom on the grounds that his residence in the free territory of Illinois had ended his bondage. Scott claimed that because he had been transported into territory (Illinois) in which slavery was forbidden by an Act of Congress, as well as State law, he was now a free man. Mrs. Emerson and her new husband, a prominent abolitionist Congressional Representative, Dr. C.C. Chaffee, developed a plan. The Chaffees wanted to get the Scott case into a Federal court and hoped that a favorable decision would create a precedent upon which other slaves could gain freedom with the backing of the judiciary. To avoid having Chaffee appear in court as a defendant slaveholder, Scott was technically "sold" to Mrs. Chaffee's brother, J.F.A. Sanford. The case was heard in several lower courts and, after 10 years, reached the U.S. Supreme Court. With Southerners dominating the Court, Chief Justice Roger Taney handed down a decision that proclaimed slavery a national concept, and freedom a strictly sectional consideration. In early March 1857, the court denied Dred Scott's claim on three basic grounds: (1) Illinois laws could not affect his position as a slave in Missouri; (2) the Act of Congress that had declared territory north of latitude 36° 30'N to be prohibited to slavery was itself unconstitutional; and (3) in the part of the decision that was most humiliating and outraged Black Americans, Justice Taney ruled that Negroes did not come within the meaning of the Constitution's "people of the United States." He said, "people of African descent are not and cannot be citizens of the United States, and cannot sue in any court of the United States..." The Court held that a Negro had "no rights which a white man need respect." n Blacks stealing away from their homes in the South during the Civil War ASALH (The Associated Publishers, Inc.) United States Postal Service A Ride For Liberty The Brooklyn Museum Harriet Tubman Freedom Fighter Araminta Ross, better known as Harriet Tubman, was one of the most daring and successful "conductors of the underground railroad." (The underground railroad was a secret organization that actively aided slaves in their attempts to flee from bondage. The "passengers" on this railroad were fugitives from slavery who were concealed by day at "stations," which were the homes of abolitionists) . In 1849, Harriet escaped from her life as a field hand on the Eastern Shore of Maryland at Bucktown, near Cambridge, in Dorchester County. She was the "property" of Edward Broadmus. When the Federal Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 was passed, a fee was offered to Federal officers for captured slaves. Rewards of $40,000 were posted for Harriet's recapture. Abolitionist John Brown called her "General Moses," because of her daring. In 1857, Harriet led her parents from Dorchester County, Md . , to Auburn N.Y. , and freedom. The Federal Fugitive Slave Law allowed any claimants of a runaway slave to take possession of the slave upon establishing proof of ownership before a Federal commissioner. No protection for the captive, such as jury trial or judicial hearings, were included. The Act provided fines of $1,000 and 6 months' imprisonment for citizens or officials who failed to help in the capture of fugitives. Within 36 hours of the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law, localities began to report a rapid increase in slave runaways. Harriet Tubman during the same year of the passage of the Act, returned to the South, to Baltimore, and led her sister and two children to freedom. The Ohio Colored Convention reported the formation of the Colored American League to help runaway slaves improve the conditions of Blacks and encourage Black Harriett Tubman ASALH (The Associated Publishers, Inc.) communities to establish military companies. Black slaves ran away so frequently that Dr. Samuel Cartwright of the University of Louisiana, a respected Southern medical man, described the action in "Diseases and Peculiarities of the Negro Race," DeBow' s Review , Vol. 11 (September 1851), pages 331-334. One of his discoveries was "Dr ape toman ia, or the Hunted Slave Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, Howard University disease causing Negroes to run away." He wrote, "The cause in most cases, that induces the Negro to run away from service, is as much a disease of the mind as any other species of mental alienation and much more curable as a general rule. With the advantages of proper medical advice, strictly followed, this troublesome practice that many Negroes have of running away, can almost be prevented, ...whipping them out of it, as a preventive measure..." In a bid for freedom, sometimes slaves "borrowed" their master's horse. Others hid in barns, cellars, churches, woodsheds, and caves, often wading in water to frustrate pursuing bloodhounds. Friends helped with food and clothing and used covered wagons or carts with false bottoms for the "passengers" or "merchandise" making the freedom journey from way station to way station. Harriet Tubman worked with John Brown and other abolitionists, including the major New England writers, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Oliver Wendell Holmes, William Cullen Bryant, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, John Greenleaf Whittier, and Henry David Thoreau. During the Civil War she served as cook, Union Array Scout, guide, spy, and nurse. Unable to read or write, she was a forceful speaker and spoke before numerous antislavery groups. Harriet Tubman settled in a home in Auburn, N.Y. , on land that an underground railroad sympathizer, Senator William Henry Seward (later Secretary of State), sold to her. Despite the postwar efforts of friends, Congress refused to vote a pension for her unpaid wartime service. In 1869, she married Nelson Davis, a Civil War veteran. On his death in 1890, she received a widow's pension of $8 monthly which was increased to $20 monthly in 1898. To supplement her income, she sold vegetables door-to-door, but continued to use much of her meager proceeds to lecture in behalf of equal rights. Until the end, she cared for all who came in need of a friend. In her home, she died at the age of 93. 8 Sojourner Truth Abolitionist Suffragette In 1864, at the White House, President Lincoln received Sojourner Truth. Born Isabella Baumfree, she was an illiterate former slave but a moving and dramatic speaker who emerged on the national scene in 1843 as the first Afro- American woman orator to speak out against slavery. Sojourner Truth came to counsel with the Civil War President. Born a slave in Ulster County, N.Y., Isabella Baumfree was sold many times and, after running away to freedom, worked as a domestic. She had been married to a fellow slave and had five children, all but one of whom were taken away and probably sold into slavery. She took her only remaining child and moved to New York City. Convinced of divine revelation, she adopted the name Sojourner Truth and began traveling through Connecticut, Massachusetts, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Kansas proclaiming "liberty throughout the land unto all the inhabitants thereof." She thundered from countless rostrums for two important issues of the day: Emancipation and Woman's Rights. Frequent efforts were made to silence her. She was beaten and stoned, but nothing could stop her. During the Civil War, she served as a nurse, helped runaway Blacks from the South, preached doctrines of cleanliness and hard work, and made visits to army camps. She battled segregation on the street cars of Washington by simply refusing to leave the white section. From 1865 on, she lectured and toured, urging better educational opportunities for Blacks. Having fought the battles from the lecture platform and in the courts, she was helped by friends and admirers to buy a small house in Battle Creek, Mich., where she died . "A Wanderer in search of Truth," Sojourner once said, "I'm not going to die, honey, I'm going home like a shooting star." □ Sojourner Truth and President Lincoln The Library of Congress Sojourner Truth speaking to an antislavery audience ASALH (Association for the Study of Afro-American Life and History) 9 Frederick Douglass with President Lincoln National Capital Parks Frederick Douglass National Capital Parks 10 Frederic Douglass Freedom Fighter The greatest American Black leader for half a century was Frederick Douglass. Abraham Lincoln referred to Douglass as "the most meritorious man of the 19th century," considering the handicaps he had to overcome. He courageously fought American racism and oppression throughout his life. He worked vigorously to lift his people out of wretchedness and bondage. His efforts helped to bring about the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863, the Thirteenth Amendment freeing the slaves, the Fourteenth granting citizenship, and the Fifteenth guaranteeing the right to vote. Born to a slave woman and an unknown white man, at Tuckahoe in Talbot County on Maryland's Eastern Shore, he was originally named Frederick Bailey. Lucretia Auld, the wife of Bailey's owner, started to teach him to read. When her husband discovered this, he informed her that she was breaking the law because it was a crime to teach Blacks to read or write. He forbade her to teach Bailey anymore. Bailey continued to learn, and when he was 21, used his knowledge of letters to forge papers that enabled him to escape. He went to New York, but was advised not to stay. He lingered just long enough to be joined by Anna Murray, a free Black from Baltimore, who became his wife . Taking the name Douglass, he soon became an antislavery crusader and spoke out so ably at a meeting in 1841 that the Antislavery Society hired him as a lecturer. He fought for racial equality in jobs, politics, and education, citing himself as an example if the Blacks were allowed to achieve freedom and education. He protested and resisted discrimination, segregation, and prejudice wherever he found them in the North. He lectured extensively and with such impact that many doubted his statement that he was a self- taught exslave. To quiet such doubts, he wrote the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass , an American Slave (1845). The book was so explicitly factual and became so popular that it exposed him to the hazard of seizure and re-enslavement. When his real identity became known, Douglass fled to England to avoid prosecution as a fugitive slave and re- enslavement. With money raised by English friends, he returned to America, bought his freedom, and continued to lead the fight for the abolition of slavery. Additional funds were donated to help him establish a newspaper, The North Star , which he published in Rochester, N.Y. , from 1847 to 1863, renaming it Frederick Douglass' s Paper in the early 1850's. His was the most successful, long-lasting, and outstanding of pre-Civil War Black newspapers. He became the chief spokesman for his people. He was also active in many other causes, especially women's rights. He was for Irish freedom, world peace, Federal aid to education, and the right of the oppressed everywhere to the equal protection of the laws. He told a London audience in 1846, "You may rely upon me as one who will never desert the cause of the poor, no matter whether Black or White." Douglass is especially remembered for a Fourth of July declaration he delivered before a largely white audience at Rochester, N.Y. , "What to the American slave is your Fourth of July?" His editorials in his newspaper demanded the end of capital punishment, mistreatment of Chinese immigrants and American Indians, and neglect of education for the poor. He said, "My sympathies are not limited by my relations to any race. I can take no part in oppressing and persecuting any variety of the human family, whether in Russia, Germany, or California, my sympathy is with the oppressed, be he Chinaman or Hebrew." His Rochester home was a station on the underground railroad. He engaged in politics as a Lincoln Republican. He was 11 - .v >»V} Frederick Douglass' Anacostia, Washington, D.C. Home National Capital Parks outlawed by the Governor of West Virginia because he counselled John Brown, although he had tried to dissuade Brown from his heroic and ill-fated attempt with insurrection at Harpers Ferry. When the Civil War broke out, Douglass joined Sojourner Truth in urging Lincoln to enlist Blacks in the Union Army. When Lincoln yielded in 1862, he helped to recruit the 54th and 55th Massachusetts Negro Regiments and enlisted his own two sons. In 1861, he said, "Liberty won by white men would lose half its luster. Who would be free, themselves must strike the blow. Better even die free, than to live slaves." Some 186,000 Blacks enlisted in the Union Army; 93,000 from the seceded States, 40,000 from the 12 border States, and 52,000 from the free States. At least 38,000 Black soldiers died to save the Republic and put an end to slavery. On defying racial segregation on public vehicles of transportation, Douglass reported: "I was often dragged out of my seat, beaten and severely bruised, by conductors and brakeraen." The end of the war found him organizing Blacks to work against discrimination and segregation. Frederick Douglass, the exslave, the man of the century, was appointed Marshal for the District of Columbia under President Grant, Recorder of Deeds under President Hayes, and Minister to Haiti under President Arthur. D Patrick Francis Healy, S.J. Georgetown University's 29th President The familiar landmark of Georgetown University for nearly a century has been the towering, 209-foot spire of the Healy Building. Distinctly less familiar is the fact that the possessor of that name happened to be the first Black president of a predominantly white college in the United States, and the person generally acclaimed as Georgetown's "second founder ." Georgetown University - the Nation's oldest Catholic institution of higher learning - was founded in 1789. In May 1973, the University marked the 100th anniversary of the Reverend Patrick Healy' s inauguration as Georgetown's 29th President, 1873-82. The school, in 1873, was enmeshed in the divisive problems of Civil War Reconstruction that plagued so much of the Nation, and was in grievous need of leadership. It became, in a few short years thereafter, a true university. Father Healy introduced science courses and laid out plans for a curriculum of educational excellence. He dreamed of making Georgetown University "the great Catholic University of North America." His plans called for a reorganization of both the medical and law schools. A postgraduate course in law was introduced for the first time. While he sought to strengthen the academic structure, Father Healy also worked to make the university more attractive. Born in Georgia, Father Healy was the son of an Irish planter and a mulatto slave. He had seven brothers and sisters. One brother became the Nation's first Black Catholic Bishop and another a prominent Boston priest. A sister, Emma, founded a Catholic order dedicated to teaching Black children. After his Quaker schooling in Long Island, N.Y., he enrolled at Holy Cross College, graduated, took his vows as a Jesuit, taught 6 years, and then attended the University of Louvain, in Leige, Belgium, where he earned his Ph.D. In 1866, Father Healy joined the Georgetown faculty as a Professor of Philosophy and quickly advanced in the academic hierarchy. First he became Dean of Studies and then vice President, In 1873 he was confirmed by Rome as Georgetown's 29th President. □ Father Patrick J. Healy Healy Building on the Georgetown University campus Blanche K. Bruce United States Senator Senator Blanche Kelso Bruce Association for the Study of Afro-American Life and History One of the two Black Senators, both from Mississippi, freeborn former Army chaplain Hiram R. Revels was elected to fill out the uncompleted term of Jefferson Davis, 1870-71. The other Senator, a former slave, Senator Blanche Kelso Bruce, at the age of 33 followed Revels and served in the Senate 1875-81. Bruce was born in Farmville, Prince Edward County, Va . A slave, he was taken to Missouri several years before the Civil War, and at Brunswick learned the printer's trade. In 1861, Bruce escaped and organized a school in Hannibal, Mo. After the Civil War, he took a 2-year course at Oberlin College. In 1869, he went to Mississippi and held many local positions at different times, serving as Assessor of Taxes in Bolivar County, Tax Collector, Sheriff, Superintendent of Schools, and member of the Levee Board. He became a planter and member of the Republican Party. In the Senate he introduced a number of bills to improve the conditions of Blacks. He spoke for P.B.S. Pinchback, who was denied a seat in the Senate to which he had been elected from Louisiana. In 1876, Senator Bruce introduced a bill on racial affairs, which was reported out of committee adversely. In an executive session of the Senate, he denounced President Grant and the Republican Party for not caring about the Southern Negro, and he then refused to go to the White House in response to a summons from President Grant. He told the Senate he could not vote for a law that restricted the immigration of Orientals: "Representing as I do a people who but a few years ago were considered essentially disqualified from enjoying the privileges and immunities of American citizenship. .. I shall vote against the bill." In 1880, he demanded that the 14 Government deal justly with all Indian tribes. On April 7, during a Senate debate on the Indian, he took to the floor: "...I believe that we have reached a period when the public sentiment of the country demands such a modification in the Indian policy, in its purpose, and in its methods, as shall save and not destroy these people... The American people are beginning to reach the conscientious conviction that redemption and civilization are due to the Indian tribes of the United States, and the popular purpose is not to exterminate but to perpetuate them on this continent." His remarks were inserted in the Congressional Record of the Senate, 46th Congress, 2nd Session, pages 2195-2196. He introduced 21 bills in the Senate during this same year, none of which became law. Some dealt with the Geneva Award for Alabama claims, aid to education, railroad construction, and reimbursement of depositors in the Freedmen's Bank. He spoke on behalf of admitting duty-free clothing sent from England to destitute Blacks in Kansas. On May 4, he presided over the Senate. Like Hiram Revels, Bruce also supported legislation aimed at eliminating reprisals against those who had opposed Black emancipation. At the Republican National Convention in 1880, he reversed his opinion of President Grant and supported him. At one point, he was called to the chair to preside temporarily. At this time when several delegates were asking for recognition, he recognized delegate James A. Garfield. Garfield made such a good impression on the convention that he was nominated for President. Bruce received eight votes for Vice President. James Garfield won the Presidential election and campaigned on a "bloody shirt" platform, promising protection to the Southern Negro. After he completed his term in the Senate, Bruce was named Register of the Treasury Department by President Garfield. In 1889, President Benjamin Harrison appointed him Recorder of Deeds in Washington, D.C. In 1895, President McKinley reappointed him to his former post as Register of the Treasury. D CONGRESSIONAL RECORD V- CONTAINING THE PROCEEDINGS AM) DEBATES FORTY"- SIXTH CONGRESS, SECOND SESSION. VOLUME X. WASHINGTON: GOVERNMENT MINTING OFFICE, 1880. ?**/ The Library of Congress 15 George H. White United States Congress George White was the last Black Congressional Representative of the Post^ Reconstruction Era. The Black presence would not be seen again in the Congress until the election in 1928 of Oscar DePriest, from the First Illinois Congressional District. With the election of DePriest, White's farewell prediction to the Congress upon his departure in 1901 that Blacks would return to the Congress, came true. The most noted Black politician during the Populist era, George White, a former slave, was born in Rosedale, N.C., and educated at Howard University. He taught in North Carolina and studied law. Admitted to the bar in 1879, he gained a reputation as a brilliant lawyer. A State Representative in 1880, State Senator in 1884, and State Solicitor in 1886, he was elected by Black and White voters of his State to the House of Representatives in 1896 and re-elected in 1898, despite widespread anti-Negro violence. Both in and out of the Congress, Representative White sought to advance the industrial and agricultural interests of his State. He spoke for equal constitutional rights for Black Americans. Among his many contributions was his attempt to get a nationally accepted antilynching law, which failed to pass Congress. Nevertheless, White's efforts did draw attention to lynching in America. He gave several speeches on the floor of the Congress, revealing the atrocities he thought to be the most evil crime ever conceived by humans. As would be the situation with Representative DePriest 27 years later, Representative White never forgot that he spoke "as the sole representative for nine million people." White made the most of his last opportunity to address the Congress. By 1901, almost all of the Blacks had been eliminated from Southern legislatures and city councils. White reviewed the whole Representative George H. White of North Carolina ASAtH (The Associated Publishers, Inc.) dreary story — the rise of the Blacks to political power, the undermining of Reconstruction, the gutting of the Fourteenth Amendment, and the birth of Jim Crow, in his farewell: "...With all these odds against us, we are forging our way ahead, slowly perhaps, but surely. You may tie us and then taunt us for a lack of bravery, but one day we will break the bonds. You may use our labor for two and a half centuries and then taunt us for our poverty, but let me remind you, we will not always remain poor. You may withhold even the knowledge of how to read God's word and learn the way from the earth to glory and then taunt us for our ignorance, but we would remind you that there is plenty of room at the top, and we are climbing ..." "This, Mr. Chairman, is perhaps the Negroes' temporary farewell to the American Congress; but let me say, Phoenix-like he will rise up some day and come again. These parting words are in behalf of an outraged, heartbroken, bruised, and bleeding, but God-fearing people, faithful, industrious, loyal people — rising people -- full of potential force. . ." "The only apology that I have to make for the earnestness with which I have spoken is that I am pleading for the life, the liberty, the future happiness and manhood suffrage of one-eighth of the entire population of the United States." White placed his address in the Congressional Record , 56th Congress, 2nd Session, pp. 1636-1 638. D 16 Lewis Howard Latimer Pioneer in the Electric Light Industry Lewis H. Latimer in 1918, upon joining the Edison Pioneers Original Maxim-Latimer incandescent Lamp patented by Lewis H. Latimer - 1882. The Lamp is No. 35 from the William J. Hammer Lamp collection in the possession of the Edison Institute Collections of Greenfield Village and the Henry Ford Museum, Dearborn, Michigan Lewis Latimer patented the first incandescent electric lamp with carbon filaments. He made the drawings for the first telephone for Alexander Graham Bell, and he was the chief draftsman for General Electric and Westinghouse . Latimer wrote the first textbook on the lighting system used by the Edison Company. Latimer was born at Chelsea, Mass., the son of a runaway slave from Norfolk, Va . , immortalized in John Greenleaf Whittier's poem, "From Massachusetts to Virginia." When his father George's owner attempted to return George to bondage, the interest and sympathy of the Black and White abolitionists of the State of Massachusetts were aroused. Through their efforts, the $400 bondage fee was paid and his freedom secured. Among his many jobs as freedman, he worked as a self-employed 17 barber and paperhanger. Lewis developed an avid interest in reading, drawing, and writing literary compositions. Determined to obtain an education, but aware of the need to help support the family, Lewis worked with his father at night in a store as a paperhanger. Later he went into a lawyer's office as a junior office helper. Because of his father's background, Lewis had deep feelings concerning the abolition of slavery and enlisted in the Naval Service at 16. He served as an apprentice sailor on the U.S.S. Massasoit , a sidewheel gunboat, until the end of the Civil War when he was honorably discharged . Returning home to a job with a firm of patent solicitors, he developed an interest in drafting. In his spare time he taught himself to become a draftsman. Lewis believed that "whatever a man knew he put in a book." He watched the draftsmen in the office, and then went home and practiced what he saw, using secondhand drawing instruments and a book on drawing as a guide. He proved himself to the head of the firm and was then hired as a draftsman, eventually achieving the position of Chief Draftsman. By 1874, Latimer was spending many hours of his leisure time working on methods to improve mechanical devices then in common use. In 1876, he executed the drawings and helped prepare the patent applications for Alexander Graham Bell's telephone - an invention that heralded a great change in the field of communications. Hiram S. Maxim, American inventor and founder of the United States Electric Lighting Company at Bridgeport, Conn., was impressed by Latimer's inventive abilities and in 1880 invited him to join the company as a draftsman and general assistant. While working in this capacity, Latimer developed a process for manufacturing carbon filaments for incandescent lamps. He also assisted in the installation of some of the earliest Maxim incandescent and arc lighting plants in New York City, Philadelphia, Canada, and England. To convey technical instructions to his French-speaking workers, Latimer spent his evenings in Montreal learning conversational French from a company clerk. He established the first incandescent lamp department for the Maxim-Weston Electric Light Company in 1881 at London, England. He taught the workers glassblowing and all other processes for the production of the lamp, leaving the plant in a commercially operative condition 9 months later. After a series of challenging opportunities, in 1884 he joined the Edison Electric Light Company in New York, where he was employed as a draftsman- engineer. With the formation of the Edison General Electric Company in 1889, Latimer wrote a dissertation entitled, Incandescent Electric Lighting - A Practical Description of the Edison System , published in 1890 by D. Van No strand Company of New York. Latimer maintained another interest, creative writing. In the same year his dissertation was published, he completed the compilation of poems of love and life. Because of his vast experience with Edison patents, he worked in the legal department of the Edison Company as Chief Draftsman, and was called to testify as a patent authority in a number of infringement cases involving Edison patents. Lewis Latimer was one of the pioneers in the electric light industry from its creation until it attained worldwide influence. Latimer retired in the early part of 1924 at the age of 75; and when he died on December 11, 1928, the historian of the Edison Pioneers made the following entry in their permanent records: "He was of the colored race, the only one in our organization, and was one of those to respond to the initial call that led to the formation of the Edison Pioneers, January 24th, 1918. Broadmindedness, versatility in the accomplishment of things intellectual and cultural, a linguist, a devoted husband and father, all were characteristic of him, and his genial presence will be missed from our gatherings .. .We hardly mourn his inevitable going so much as we rejoice in pleasant memory at having been associated with him in a great work for all peoples under a great man." D 18 Daniel Hale Williams Pioneer Surgeon and Physician Dr. Daniel Hale Williams Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, Howard University Model of the human heart National Institutes of Health In 1893, Dr. Daniel Hale Williams performed an operation publicized as the world's first open-heart surgery. Daniel Williams was born in Hollidaysburg , Pa., where his father was a businessman, abolitionist, and equal rights spokesman. When Daniel was 11, his father died. Apprenticed to a Baltimore shoemaker, he eventually worked in barbershops and on lake boats. He worked part-time, attended high school, and later enrolled in Hare's Classical Academy in Jamesville, Wis., from which he graduated in 1877. Williams studied in a law office briefly. In 1878, the town's Dr. Henry Barber, Wisconsin's surgeon general and a customer of the barbershop, accepted him and two whites as apprentices. Two years later, in 1880, the three entered Chicago 19 Medical College, an affiliate of Northwestern University. With borrowed money, he boarded in the home of a Black realtor and won his medical degree in 1883. He served as staff physician with the Protestant Orphan Asylum, an unpaid job, but valuable for experience and prestige - which enhanced his reputation and increased clientele, both Black and White. He was appointed to the surgical staff of Chicago's South Side Dispensary and a part-time anatomy and surgical instructor at his alma mater, the medical school. In 1889, he was appointed to the Illinois Board of Health. Finding it difficult to secure hospital accommodations for his Black patients, and keenly feeling the need for a hospital where Black interns, nurses, and physicians could train and enjoy staff privileges, he founded in 1891 the Provident Hospital in Chicago, 111., the Nation's first interracial hospital. At this hospital a man by the name of Cornish needed surgery because of a knife wound to the heart. Wonder drugs, blood transfusions, x-rays, and heart-lung machines were unknown, and even the surgical instruments were primitive for this pioneering feat that made medical history. By opening the patient 's chest, repairing the damage, and closing the incision, Williams made possible the survival and continued life of the patient . In 1894, Williams was appointed by president Grover Cleveland to serve as surgeon-in-chief of the 200-bed Freedmen's Hospital in Washington, D.C., elevating it to a respectable status. Returning to Provident Hospital and his Chicago practice in 1898, he served on the surgical staff of Cook County Hospital from 1900 to 1906, and became associate attending surgeon at St. Luke's Hospital, 1907-31. In 1899, he was appointed visiting professor of surgery at Meharry Medical College. He was founder and first vice president of the National Medical Association, an organization of Black physicians. When the American College of surgeons was founded in 1913, he was the only Black invited to become a charter member. The pioneering contributions of Williams laid foundations for further challenges by Blacks and Whites in science and med ic ine . 20 Charles Henry Turner Scientist, Teacher, Author, Humanitarian Although unequal rights and opportunities in education and jobs kept many Afro-Americans from gaining the knowledge and experience necessary for scientific achievement, Dr. Charles Turner's early thirst for knowledge, his natural bent toward science, and his piercing questions about the mysteries of life helped the world better understand not only the behavior of insects and small animals but also helped expand the foundations for understanding human behavior. When Turner died in Chicago, February 14, 1923, and was memorialized in St. Louis, Mo., a few months later, the St . Louis Argus concluded in a tribute that Turner was easily the greatest scientist his race ever produced and, in fact, stood in the front rank of the scientists of the world. Charles Turner was born in Cincinnati, Ohio. His mother was a practical nurse and his father a church custodian. His father, an avid reader, acquired a large home library of several hundred books. It was here that young Charles began to acquire a knowledge of science. After graduating from high school, he completed a college course at the University of Cincinnati in 1891 and obtained the degree of Master of Science there the following year. During the year 1892-93, he taught at the University in the biological sciences. From 1893 to 1905, Turner was in charge of the Science Department and professor of Biology at Clark College in Atlanta, Ga. Clark College was founded in 1869 by the Freedman's Aid Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church to elevate Black people through education. In 1907 the University of Chicago conferred upon him the degree Clark University President's Office, Clark College Charles Turner ASALH (Association for the Study of Afro-American Life and History) 21 United States Department of Agriculture of Ph.D - magna cum laude . He never held a teaching position in any large American university with adequate research fac il ities . Between 1892 and 1923, Turner published more than 50 papers on animal behavior, revealing the behavior of many animals and insects that had mystified the scientific world. His search for answers to numerous questions about insect and animal behavior led him to become one of the great scientists of the 20th century through his research on bees, moths, ants, cockroaches, and other insects. By ingenious experiments, he discovered that ants are not guided home by odors but by light rays. He proved that wasps find their way home by landmarks. Turner found that any change in topography confuses the homing of burrowing bees. He investigated tropisms (involuntary movements of an organism to a stimulus) and demonstrated that certain invertebrates exhibit a "turning" activity upon sensory excitation (response to light) . A type of characteristic behavior in insects has the adopted name "Turner's Circling" after his detailed description. He solved the problem of bees' responses to color. He observed death- feigning postures in the antlion (an insect, also called "doodlebug"), and termed it terror paralysis, which had become hereditary in this particular organism. His observations and experiments on spiders, crayfish, ants, and other invertebrates were done alone and unaided. He used his own small salary to purchase his tools and specimens and meet his own library needs. Later, he taught biology and psychology in St. Louis high schools. He took classes on field trips to observe and experiment and to develop a scientific curiosity about nature and a reverence for life. He had a wealth of first-hand information for his students. He worked for civil rights and the betterment of life for his people and pioneered in developing social work. Charles Turner left behind a strength of character, devotion to work, faithfulness to ideals, respect for truth, a keen sense of regard for humanity, and an unselfishness in sharing the little he had for the betterment of all. □ 22 Homer Plessy The Black's "Place" in Society Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) was the first racial-segregation case decided by the Supreme Court. Homer Plessy was seven-eighths white and one-eighth negro; he charged that a Louisiana statute requiring segregation on trains within the State violated rights guaranteed him by the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution. Plessy 1 s main argument was a warning that if a physical distinction, such as color of skin, could be used as a basis for segregation, then discrimination against blondes and redheads could also be considered reasonable and legal. Furthermore, argued Plessy, in providing legal sanction for the segregation of some of its citizens, Louisiana implied that such citizens were inferior. In an 8-1 decision, the Court denied that segregation by race necessarily implied racial inferiority. Declaring the case to be reduced to a "question of whether the statute of Louisiana (was) a reasonable regulation," the Court held that for a legislature to act in conformity with "established usages, customs, and traditions of a people... and the preservation of the public peace and good order" was, in fact, "reasonable." The Court cited as a precedent the earlier cast of Roberts v. City of Boston (in 1849 a Black, Benjamin F. Roberts, sued the city of Boston on behalf of his 5-year-old daughter, Sarah. He asked for damages because the city refused to allow her in white public schools nearest her home. The case was argued by Charles Sumner and Robert Morris, with no success. The Supreme Court of Massachusetts rejected the appeal and established in its decision the precedent for the controversial "separate but equal" doctrine in U.S. law. ) Plessy, arrested for refusing to move from a "white" to a "colored" railway coach in defiance of Louisiana law, brought suit for a writ of prohibition against the judge who was scheduled to try him. Plessy may have found some satisfaction in Justice John Marshall Harlan's dissent: "In the view of the Constitution. . .there is in this country no superior, dominant, ruling class of citizens. There is no caste here. Our Constitution is colorblind. In respect of civil rights, all citizens are equal before the law. . .The thin disguise of 'equal' accommodations for passengers in railroad coaches will not mislead anyone, nor atone for the wrong this day done." But the Court's decision in Plessy v . Ferguson established the "separate but equal" doctrine that remained a legal guidepost until May 17, 1954. With the sanction of the High Court, the Black people of America, particularly in the South, were condemned to another 60 years of legal segregation; to the kind of indignity and intimidation marked "White Men," "White Ladies," and "Colored;" to inferior education and second-class citizenship. Q Illustration from Harper's Weekly, 1861-1873 Interior of a Palace Hotel car used on the Pacific Railroad The Metropolitan Museum of Art Harris Brisbane Dick Fund, 1929 23 William Edward Burghardt Du Bois Historian In the aftermath of World War I in 1918, Dr. Du Bo is wrote the following remarkable forecast of the world to come: "This war is an end and, also, a beginning. Never again will darker people of the world occupy just the place they had before. Out of this place will rise, sooner or later, an independent China, a self-governing India, an Egypt with representative institutions, an Africa for the Africans and not merely for business exploitation. Out of this war will rise, too, an American Negro with the right to vote and the right to live without insults ." Du Bo is was born in Great Barrington, Mass., in 1868. He earned a B.A. at Fisk University and another at Harvard College where he also received an M.A. Following 2 years of study at the University of Berlin, he became the first Black to receive a Ph.D (1895) at Harvard College, 253 years after the founding of the college. Du Bois' dissertation, The Suppression of the African Slave Trade to America , was the first volume issued in the Harvard Historical Series. Du Bois can be called a scholar and teacher, poet, novelist, editor, and political activist. He was the recognized leader and eloquent defender of full rights for Blacks through the Niagara Movement, which he founded in 1905. He opposed Booker T. Washington for his lack of emphasis on dignity and manhood and his failure to oppose discrimination. In 1910, he joined the newly formed National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and served the association in various ways until 1948. He fielded attacks on the legal barriers to Black equality and opportunity and called for the enforcement of the applicable Federal constitutional amendments, winning a great victory when the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the notorious "grandfather clause" as Dr. William Edward Burghardt Du Bois Essayist, Reformer, and Prophet ASALH (Association for the Study of Afro-American Life and History) unconstitutional. He was editor of the official NAACP publication, Crisis , which by 1914 had a monthly distribution of 35,000 readers. Strongly in favor of the total concept of human rights, writing in Crisis in 1919, Du Bois called on every Black voter in the State of New York to cast his ballot in favor of woman's suffrage. He further stated that all other Negroes should do the same thing. Since his first Pan-African Conference in 1919, he is revered as the "Godfather of African Independence." The publication in 1903 of his essays in a volume entitled Souls of Black Folk met with strong opposition from the conservative voices of both the North and the South. "This book is dangerous for the Negro to read, for it will only excite discontent and fill his imagination with things that do not exist, or should not bear upon his mind," said the Banner in Nashville. "The problem of the 20th Century is the color line," countered Du Bois. Q 24 Booker Taliaferro Washington Leader and Educator Statue of Booker T. Washington 'Lifting the Veil of Ignorance From the Black Man ' Tuskegee Institute In America, the years 1865-1910 may be viewed as years of accommodation and protest, the ambivalence in the life of Blacks. The North won the military victory in the Civil War, but expected changes did not materialize. In the South, American Blacks were still subject to the whims of the white world. A few Blacks benefited from the activities of the Freedman's Bureau, which helped to ease the transition from slavery to freedom. A few were privileged to attend the Yankee missionary schools, which were built somewhat less quickly than they were burned down by Southern whites who opposed educating former slaves. Between 1869 and 1874 Southern Blacks voted in sufficient strength to influence some State legislation and sent 16 fellow Blacks, a small minority, to the National Congress 25 "The Orator' Booker T. Washington delivering speech Tuskegee Institute (controlled by a powerful and dominant majority) . The terrorist Ku Klux Klan and other groups brought an end to Black voting even before Federal troops, charged with protecting the right to vote, were withdrawn from the South. Reconstruction for the Blacks came to an end when, in conferences at the Wormley Hotel in Washington, D.C., on February 26 and 27, 1877, Rutherford B. Hayes promised Southern delegates that he would remove the Federal troops from the South, and leave the States alone in return for support from Democratic Southern Congressional Representatives. In the North, few could afford schooling even where there were a few free schools. Jobs were difficult to get and keep, for there was increasing competition with Whites, who often mobbed Black workers. The right to vote was generally acknowledged, but few Blacks were sophisticated enough to see the value of exercising that right. The great majority of Blacks in the North and the South accepted segregation and discrimination, believing that as they approached the white world's standards they would win the white world's tolerance, be accepted, and "things would be better." A handful protested. The eloquent spokesman, W.E. B. Du Bois, wrote, "We demand every single right that belongs to a freeborn American - political, civil, and social; and until we get these rights, we will never cease to protest and assail the ears of America." Into the picture stepped Booker T. Washington, who became the most powerful Black in America. For more than 30 years Washington so completely dominated the scene that the period was stamped with his name and personality. A historical assessment would suggest that the era when Washington rose to power was one of the bleakest periods for Blacks in American history. In the year 1895, the militant leader Frederick Douglass died. Lynchings were increasing (112 in 1895), and Southern States were rewriting their constitutions to eliminate the rights of Black citizens. The Supreme Court was considering the case of Homer Plessy, a New Orleans Black arrested because he violated the Jim Crow laws of Louisiana in purchasing a ticket to ride unsegregated in a railroad car from New Orleans to Covington. Booker Washington's attitude of separation and submission appealed to the racial prejudices of whites and to the rising political conservatism in the country. On September 18, 1895, he made his most famous statement of accommodations at the Cotton States Exposition in Atlanta, the "Atlanta Compromise." He said, "...as separate as the five fingers, yet one as the hand..." In 1896, the Supreme Court in Plessy v . Ferguson , upheld the principle of "separate but equal ." (The Plessy 26 decision would make segregation legal in America for the next 58 years) . In Atlanta, Washington was given a standing ovation. In one speech, Washington had turned Blacks away from the dominant theme of militancy in Black leadership, as exemplified by Douglass, who for 50 years called upon the race to agitate constantly for its rights. Throughout the land Washington's speech at Atlanta was hailed in the press, in letters, and by President Cleveland. In 1896, Harvard College made him the first Black to receive its honorary Master of Arts degree. In 1901, President Theodore Roosevelt invited him to the White House for an interview and dinner. One of his vehement Black critics was W.E.B. Du Bois, who represented the Douglass brand of leadership. Du Bois condemned the speech as the "Atlanta Compromise" and, in his 1903 book, Souls of Black Folk , took sharp issue with Washington's views. As the most eloquent spokesman for a growing number of Blacks, Du Bois was alarmed by the ultimate effect of Washington's leadership. Booker T. Washington became "a compromiser between the South, the North, and the Negro" and was consulted whenever any matters arose affecting Blacks anywhere in the United States. In his autobiography, Up From Slavery , Booker T. Washington wrote, "I was born a slave on a plantation in Franklin County, Virginia" (Burrough's Plantation near Hale's Ford, Va. ) He was the son of a slave woman and a white father. In 1865, after the Civil War, the Washingtons moved to Maiden, W. Va., where he worked in coal mines and attended night school a few hours every day. In 1872, with $1.50 in his pocket, he traveled 500 miles, mostly walking, to Hampton Normal and Industrial Institute, the Black vocational school in Virginia. Working his way through school as a janitor, he absorbed the ideas of the Institute's founder, General Samuel Chapman Armstrong. After graduation from Hampton in 1875, he taught in Maiden. He returned to Hampton in 1879, took charge of a group of Indian students, and organized Hampton's first night school. In 1881, he was sent to Tuskegee, Ala., to start a new school of the Hampton type on an annual budget of $2,000. There in the backwoods of Alabama, Washington built the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute, one of the best known educational centers in America. Under his presidency, it soon became the leading center for industrial education for Blacks. Washington thought that through industrial education Blacks could become skilled mechanics and farmers and learn the virtues of thrift and self- sufficiency. He regarded training in such intellectually demanding subjects as science, history, and mathematics as impractical. For this reason his ideas became popular with many white Southerners and Northerners who did not want Blacks to advance above the condition of servitude. At Tuskegee, Washington found none of the equipment with which to develop an educational institution. But, he found a white community hostile to the idea of a school for Blacks. His task was twofold: Secure the necessary resources to operate a school and at the same time conciliate the white community. In its first two decades 40 buildings were erected, almost exclusively by the students themselves. Students produced and cooked the food and performed other tasks. Assurances were given to the community that the students were there to serve and not to antagonize. Washington became the apostle of a form of industrial education that he saw would not antagonize the South and that would, at the same time, prepare the Black students for a way of life in their communities. The hostility of the white community began to disappear with Washington's program of training Blacks to become farmers, mechanics, and domestic servants. Washington openly supported Jim Crow legislation; however, behind the scenes he helped fight against railroad segregation. During the period 1892-1911, Washington organized the Negro Business League, issued the first call for a conference of farmers at Tuskegee, was one of the sponsors of the National League of Urban Conditions Among Negroes (currently known as the National Urban League) , and inaugurated Negro Health Week. □ 27 Photography by Admiral Robert E. Peary, Courtesy Robert E. Peary, Jr., (c) National Geographic Society Photography by Admiral Robert E. Peary, Courtesy Robert E. Peary, Jr. , (c) National Geographic Society 28 Matthew Alexander Henson Explorer - Co-Discoverer of the North Pole At latitude 90°N, Mathew Henson made his calculations. Forty-five minutes later, Robert E. Peary, on his sled driven by four Eskimos, joined Henson. Peary's check confirmed the discovery of the North Pole. On April 6, 1909, 27 marches from Cape Columbia, Commander Peary wrote, "I have with me 5 men: Matthew Henson, colored; Oatah, Sginwah, Seeglo, and Ookeah, Eskimos; and 5 dogs. ...For the honor and prestige of the United States of America. ...This scene my eyes will never see again. Plant the Stars and Stripes over there, Matt ...at the North Pole," - — Peary Matthew Henson was born on a farm, the site of a former slave market in Nanjemoy, Charles County, Md . At the age of 13, he ran away to sea for 5 years. The skipper, Captain Childs, taught him to read and write, do some mathematics, and understand principles of navigation. After working in a Washington, D.C. , hat store, he then signed on with Lt . Robert E. Peary, explorer, on an expedition to Nicaragua. For 22 years, Henson followed Peary, first as a valet, later as a dependable assistant, finally as his most trusted companion. On Peary's arctic expeditions Henson was invaluable: He repaired the heavy sledges, drove the dogs, found food where there was no food, constructed igloos, cooked, learned the Eskimo language, won the complete admiration of the Eskimos, and saved Peary's life on two occasions . Peary was rewarded with promotion to Rear Admiral, and all his crew except Henson received medals. Matt Henson went home to obscurity, working as a porter, a carpenter, a blacksmith, and a messenger. In 1945, 36 years after the discovery of the North Pole, Henson was brought to a downtown New York office where a Navy captain read a citation and gave him a silver medal. He was awarded the M.S. degree by Morgan State College and Howard University, Life Membership in the Explorers Club, a medal from the Chicago Geographical Society, a citation by the U.S. Department of Defense, and other medals and plaques from civic organizations. One year before his death on April 6, 1954, he and his wife were honored at the White House with a commendation from President Eisenhower. Through the efforts of an old friend, Herbert Frisby, on the 50th anniversary of the discovery, the State of Maryland declared April 6 "Matthew A. Henson Day." On November 18, 1961, the State of Maryland honored him with a plaque in the State House, identifying Matthew Henson as "Co-Discoverer of the North Pole." n Matthew Hzvuon Photography by Admiral Robert E. Peary, Courtesy Robert E. Peary, Jr. , (c) National Geographic Society 29 George Washington Carver greets President Franklin Delano Roosevelt Ted Hyman 30 George Washington Carver Agricultural Chemist In the 1930' s, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt cited the South as the Nation's number one economic problem, George Washington Carver and the peanut profoundly affected the lives and fortunes of Blacks and Whites in the deep South and in the entire Nation. Carver was born in slavery near Diamond Grove, Mo. (now a national monument) . When he was a baby, he and his mother were kidnapped by night raiders. His mother was sold, and he never saw her again. Carver's master, Moses Carter, got him back, raised him, and set him free at the end of the Civil War. He roamed through Kansas, Colorado, Minnesota, and Iowa, working at innumerable jobs and overcoming bitter and frustrating obstacles while continuing his education. Beginning college at the age of 30, he received his M.S. degree from Iowa State College in 1896. He became a faculty member at Tuskegee Institute in 1896 and, in 1916, a Fellow of the Royal Academy of England. In 1923, he was awarded the Spingarn Medal from the NAACP, and, in 1939, the Roosevelt Medal for distinguished service to science. "King Cotton" was the tyrant of the one-crop South, but Carver believed that planting peanuts would restore the fertility of the wornout soil. When the poor farmers were eventually convinced, bumper crops glutted the market; and Carver set to work developing industrial products that could be made of the surplus. He invented new, improved kinds of peanut butter and while he was at it produced more than 300 products from the peanut, using peanuts to make shampoo, facial cream, ink, linoleum, coffee, wood stain, salad oil, paper, plastics, meat substitutes, milk, buttermilk, cheese, and breakfast foods. Some of the more than 100 products he made from sweet potatoes include flour, fuel, syrup, alcohol, starch, and glue. From cotton he produced George Washington Carver, shown in his laboratory at Tuskegee Institute in Alabama United States Department of Agriculture rugs, paper, cordage, insulating boards, and asphalt paving blocks. Products were developed from the clays of the South. He was the first to use soybeans in paint making. Carver made important discoveries in plant pathology. His balanced life also showed him as an excellent pianist and artist; his paintings were awarded prizes at the Columbian Exposition in Chicago. George Washington Carver, the exslave, was the greatest single benefit to Southern agriculture following the Civil War, and a man who gave his discoveries to the world. The revitalized Nation could give thanks to the man who had a great impact on improving the Nation's economy; his epitaph is one that best sums up his life: "He could have added fortune to fame, but caring for neither, he found happiness and honor in being helpful to the World." □ 31 "'^•"Uk The Tidal Basin Bridge, near the famed cherry trees in the Nation's capital National Capital Parks The Whitehurst Freeway, and the Key Bridge National Archives 32 Archie A. Alexander Engineer - Bridge Builder Archie Alexander and partner Maurice A. Repass work on the blueprints for the Whitehurst Freeway, near the Potomac River National Archives Archie Alexander with President Eisenhower National Archives The Tidal Basin Bridge, which commands a magnificent view of the cherry blossoms near the Jefferson Memorial each spring, was engineered and built by the son of a Des Moines coachman and janitor. The first Black football player at the State University of Iowa, Archie A. Alexander graduated in 1912 with a B.S. in Civil Engineering. The head of his undergraduate university advised him to avoid a career in engineering because of racial predudice; but in later years, as the head of his own company employing workers of both races, he had the opportunity on one job to replace the signs on the restrooms marked "colored" and "white" to "skilled" and "unskilled." During a 42-year career as a design engineer and builder, Alexander gained a national reputation and left his stamp on the landscape of America. He built bridges and freeways, apartments and airfields, powerplants, and railroad trestles. In 1914, he established his own general contracting firm and later joined Maurice A. Repass, a former classmate, to form a partnership. In the District of Columbia, the firm of Alexander and Repass built grade separation structures on Independence Avenue, the seawall at the Tidal Basin, the overpass that took Riggs Road under the track of the B&O Railroad, the Whitehurst Freeway along the Potomac, and apartment buildings. Nominated by President Eisenhower for the post of Governor of the Virgin Islands, he was confirmed by the Senate in January 1954. As governor, he effected a greater measure of self-government and put in order the territory's financial structure. Active in community and civic activities, as well as in the movement for civil rights, he also served as a trustee of Tuskegee Institute and Howard University. In 1947, the State University of Iowa honored him as one of the university's 100 most outstanding graduates among some 30,000 alumni. □ 33 7 Headquarters of the United Nations, New York United Nations Dr. Bunche holds press conference in LeopoldviUe, 9 January 1963 United Nations 34 Ralph J. Bunche Statesman Dr. Bunche, distinguished American diplomat, received the 1950 Nobel Peace Prize for his great contributions toward the settlement of the Arab-Israeli War in 1948. Named to the second position in the United Nations in 1955, as Under Secretary for Special Political Affairs, he was the highest ranking American in the United Nations. Born in Detroit, Bunche was the son of a struggling barber and a musician mother and the grandson of a slave. When he was 11 years old, both parents died and he went to live with his grandmother. Enduring a life of poverty, he sold newspapers and shined shoes to help his family. Awarded a scholarship which allowed him to work as a gymnasium janitor, he starred in basketball and graduated from college summa cum laude in 192 7. Aided by money raised by Black club women, he attended Harvard University and received the Tappan Prize for his dissertation in 1934 for a Ph.D. in Political Science. He did postdoctoral work at Northwestern University, the London School of Economics, and the University of Capetown in South Africa. He developed the Political Science Department at Howard University, becoming its first chairman. With the outbreak of World War II, he joined the Office of Strategic Services, becoming Chief of the African Section, which laid the intelligence groundwork for the Allied campaign in North Africa. At the State Department in 1944 he was the first Black desk officer in department history. In 1945, he took part as a technical expert at the Security Conference in San Francisco where the United Nations Charter began to take form. He wrote the charter sections dealing with United Nations trusteeships. In 1948, during the infancy of the United Nations, when Swedish Count Folke Bernadotte was assassinated while attempting to bring JJ/SEmkE .' / '^ s -=-«a=«- | f. SPv ' IHv*vH^E"rT m L- i^ "i" iT ^^A M ^^ ^ t^m ^^—^dgM *" «# Dr. Bundle and United Nations Secretary-General U Thant (left) United Nations peace to the Middle East, Bunche was a mediator who maneuvered delegates to the conference table for 81 days until an armistice was signed. He played a key role in other United Nations peace-keeping missions. During the 1965 Selma civil rights march to Montgomery for human dignity, Bunche marched in the forefront with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and other leaders . He held the singular distinction of being the first Black to be honored with the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to bring peace. (Albert J. Luthuli of South Africa was the second, in 1960, and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the third, in 1964). The labor and enterprise of Bunche, like other Black Americans, helped to make America great. His contributions to his country, and to the world, secure his place in the history of America and the councils of the world. His prophetic remarks remind us of his faith and dedication: "The kind of world we long for can and will be achieved... a world in which all men will walk together as equals and with dignity." Q 35 Mary McLeod Bethune Leader, Educator, Stateswoman Mary McLeod Bethune National Council of Negro Women Mary McLeod Bethune was considered along with Eleanor Roosevelt as one of the two greatest women that America has produced. Among her many accomplishments, Mrs. Bethune had the distinctive honor of being assigned to attend the first meeting of the San Francisco conference in 1945 for the formation of the United Nations. She served along with Eleanor Roosevelt as a consultant to help frame the charter for the Declaration of Human Rights. She received the NAACP Spingarn award in 1935. More than two decades before the centennial celebration of the Emancipation Proclamation, the Black American leadership again had become pessimistic. In a still newer era, as contrasted with the era of Frederick Douglass, Mary Bethune made a prophetic promise for the future, "Doors will open everywhere. The flood tide of a new life is coming in." Born on a plantation near Mayes- ville, S.C. , of poor exslave parents — sharecropping cotton and rice farmers — she joined her family and worked barefoot in the cotton fields to help with the crop. Mary Jane McLeod was 11 before Presbyterian missionaries founded a school at Mayesville. For 4 years she walked 5 miles each way to school to acquire the rudiments of reading, spelling , writing, and arithmetic. With financial assistance from a white Quaker school teacher in Denver, Colo.,, she attended Scotia Seminary for Negro girls in Concord, N.C., and graduated in 1893. On a 1-year scholarship, she attended the Moody Bible Institute in Chicago. With no openings to become a missionary in Africa, her interest at the time, she then devoted her, efforts to teaching at Presbyterian schools in Georgia and South Carolina. When her husband, Albert Bethune, also a teacher, died, she became dedicated to the idea of starting her own school. Educator Bethune moved to Daytona, Fla. 36 In 1904, she began her school of higher education in Daytona, in a one-room rented cabin with orange crates as the school's first benches, five little girl pupils, and $1.50, but with faith, prayer, and sweat. Bethune sought help from business, civic, and religious leaders, and, in 1905, she managed to take out a charter for the Daytona Normal and Industrial Institute for Negro Girls. In 1907, on an old dumping ground in the town's Black section, she saw erected the first building on her little campus, Faith Hall. In 1923, Bethune' s school affiliated with the Board of Education of the Methodist Church and absorbed its Cookman Institute to become Bethune-Cookman Institute and later Bethune-Cookman College. Mary Bethune was its president until 1947 and president-emeritus and trustee thereafter. In 1924, she was elected President of the National Association of Colored Women and, beginning in 1935, the founder- president of the National Council of Negro Women. In 1931, she was selected as one of the 50 women who have "contributed most to the enrichment of American life." In 1934, she was called to Washington, D.C., as President Franklin Roosevelt's special adviser on minority affairs and in 1936 was appointed Director of Negro Affairs in the National Youth Administration, the first Black woman to head a Federal office. Bethune helped to form an informal "Black Cabinet" to develop programs of relief, recovery, and reform to assist Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal policy for alleviating the massive unemployment that followed the economic crash of October 1929. Out of the stresses of the Depression and World War II came the social legislation of a later day. Two weeks after Bethune died on May 18, 1955, the Supreme Court handed down its guidelines for school desegregation "with all deliberate speed." She died when "the flood tide of a new life was coming in," her prophecy of an earlier day. □ Mrs. Bethune at the San Francisco Conference of the United Nations, May 26, 1945 United Nations/Greene 37 Percy L. Julian Research Organic Chemist Dr. Percy L. Julian in the late 1940's with Adrian D. Joyce, founder of the former Glidden Company. Dr. Julian served as Chief of Glidden 's soya research Glidden Coatings & Resins, Division of SCM Corporation Poorly prepared for college work, Percy Julian entered DePauw University at Greencastle, Ind . , in 1916 as a "sub freshman" and went on to earn the Phi Beta Kappa Key, was elected to Sigma Xi honor society, and graduated in 1920, valedictorian of his class. In numerous instances he managed to pilot his genius through obstacles and turn them into opportunities, a classic example of the human mind in pursuit of excellence. In his time, it was believed that he would find little advantage in the field of chemical research. One evening at DePauw, Julian was shown a small sampling of correspondence sent to one of his chemistry professors from a leading school of chemistry. "Discourage your bright, colored lad. We couldn't get him a job when he's done, and it'll only mean frustration. Why don't you find him a teaching job in a Negro 38 college in the South? He doesn't need a Ph.D. for that." Julian ignored advice that attempted to steer him away from the career in which he was to win an international reputation. Earning his Master's degree at Harvard, he then went on to complete doctoral studies at the University of Vienna where he studied under the famed chemist Dr. Ernst Spath. Between his graduate studies, he taught chemistry at several colleges. In 1932, Julian returned as a research fellow to DePauw where he succeeded in synthesizing physostigmine, the drug used in the treatment of the eye disease, glaucoma. Then, in 1936, he entered private industry as director of research in the Glidden Company's Chicago- based soya products division. Finally, in 1954, he set up his own Julian Laboratories, Inc., in Franklin Park, 111., followed by a companion laboratory in Mexico City in 1955. Julian had more than 175 scientific publications and 17 honorary degrees, and was intensively active in theological, medical, civil rights, and educational activities. He served on the Boards of Trustees of six universities. During World War II, he isolated a soybean protein that was the basis of a firefighting substance, Aero-Foam, affectionately called "bean soup" by Navy flyers . This compound was used to put out oil and gasoline fires and saved the lives of hundreds of airmen in small planes that crashed on the decks of aircraft carriers. In 1953, Julian discovered the means of synthetically producing cortisone, the medication used in treating arthritis. In solving problems of isolating complex sterols, he produced the artificial female hormone progesterone, considered a boon to pregnant women threatened with spontaneous abortion. By further devising new means to filter the chemicals from soybean oil, he provided quantity production of the male hormone testosterone, sometimes used in treating aging male patients who are losing their vitality. His laboratory prepared and sold the compound pre-vitamin Do, used in the manufacture of Vitamin D itself. His company had more that 50 percent of the business for this preparation in the United States. Julian continued studies to determine the metabolic pathways of Vitamin D in the living body. In 1950, when Julian was named "Chicago's Man of the Year," he moved to Oak Park, 111., a suburb of Chicago, to be near his business, but his home was bombed. In later years, however, he was named President of the Oak Park Rotary Club. Julian was born in the deep South and educated in the secondary school system of Montgomery, Ala.. His father, a railway mail clerk, was the son of slaves; his mother was a school teacher. The powerfully minded slave- founder of the clan passed down to Julian a creed for attaining greatness: "Never pretend to be something you aren't. Make yourself something to be proud of, and then you don't have to pretend." D 39 Famous Quotations With this Faith This afternoon I have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I have a dream that one day right down in Georgia and Mississippi and Alabama the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to live together as brothers... I have a dream this afternoon that one day men will no longer burn down houses and the church of God simply because people want to be free. I have a dream this afternoon that there will be a day... when all men can live with dignity... that my four little children will not come up in the same young days that I came up in - that they will be judged on the basis of the content of their character, not the color of their skin. . . I have a dream this afternoon that one day in this land the words of Amos will become real. And justice will roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty s tream . . . I have a dream this afternoon that one day everybody will be exalted - every hill and valley shall be made low - the rough places will be made plain and the crooked places will be made straight and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together. I have a dream this afternoon that the brotherhood of man will become a reality in this day. With this faith I will go out to carve a tunnel of hope through the mountain of despair. With this faith I will go out with you and transform dark yesterdays into bright tomorrows. With this faith we will be able to achieve this new day when all God's children - Black men and White men, Jew and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics - will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we're free at last!" Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., from "I Have a Dream" March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom - August 28, 1963 ■fr U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE : 1 979 O— 286-7 1 2 40 Deprivation "The Negro baby born in America today, regardless of the section of the Nation in which he is born, has about one-half as much chance of completing high school as a white baby born in the same place on the same day; one-third as much chance of completing college; one-third as much chance of becoming a professional man; twice as much chance of becoming unemployed; about one-seventh as much chance of earning $10,000 a year; a life expectancy which is seven years shorter and the prospects of earning only half as much . " John F . Kennedy June 11, 1963 Human Rights... I speak tonight for the dignity of man and the destiny of democracy... At times history and fate meet at a single time in a single place to shape a turning point in man's unending search for freedom. So it was at Lexington and Concord. So it was a century ago at Appomattox. So it was last week in Selma, Alabama. There is no constitutional issue here. The command of the Constitution is plain. There is no moral issue. It is wrong - deadly wrong - to deny any of your fellow Americans the right to vote in this country. There is no issue of States' rights or national rights. There is only the struggle for human rights... This time, on this issue, there must be no delay, no hesitation, and no compromise with our purpose. But even if we pass this bill, the battle will not be over. What happened in Selma is part of a far larger movement which reaches into every section and State of America. It is the effort of American Negroes to secure for themselves the full blessings of American life. Their cause must be our cause, too. Because it is not just Negroes, but really it is all of us who must overcome the crippling legacy of bigotry and injustice. And... we... shall. . . overcome. President Lyndon Baines Johnson from a speech before the U.S. Congress March 15, 1965 PENN STATE UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES ADDDD7D c iMS01D