Lost Black History

     The comic “Color Line” was broken on July 31, 1969 with the introduction of Franklin Armstrong to the Peanuts family. Franklin was penned by the courage of Charles Schultz. Placing the first Black character was a big splash into the comic strip pool. The country had endured years of Civil Rights growing pains and it was debatable if it was ready for this subtle but unapologetic step toward integration. […]

  A 1908 race riot in the city of Springfield, Il, was the final tipping point that led to the creation of the N.A.AC.P. The organization’s historical records chronicled the origin: “Appalled at this rampant violence, a group of White liberals that included Mary White Ovington and Oswald Garrison Villard (both the descendants of famous abolitionists), William English Walling and Dr. Henry Moscowitz issued a call for a meeting to discuss racial justice. […]

The 1964 Freedom Summer was a catalyst for Black men to bear arms against the brutal tactics of Klan members to stop Blacks from voting. The project was designed to draw the nation’s attention to the violence Blacks experienced in Mississippi while exercising their right to vote. Robert Williams in his riveting book Negroes With Guns wrote, “The Deacons for Defense and Justice was an armed African American self-defense group founded in November 1964… On February 21, 1965—the day of Malcolm X’s assassination—the first affiliated chapter was founded in Bogalusa, Louisiana, followed by a total of 20 other chapters in this state, Mississippi, Arkansas, and Alabama. […]

The “Great Migration” led  thousands of discontented Black Southerners to the big cities of the North. That evolved into financially and culturally vibrant meccas like Harlem (and it’s Renaissance), Sweet Auburn avenue (Atlanta), U”-Street (Washington D.C.), Overtown (Miami), “Black Wall Street” (Tulsa) and Bronzeville/“The Black Metropolis” in Chicago.  Bronzeville Vincennes.com wrote, “Bronzeville provided an isolated area for Blacks to live and work together. […]

A scant few months after the war, this caldron of racial discontent boiled over and created the Red Summer. History.com wrote, “On July 27, 1919, an African American teenager drowned in Lake Michigan after violating the unofficial segregation of Chicago’s beaches and being stoned by a group of White youths. […]

“The U.S. Army’s 369th Infantry Regiment, popularly known as the ‘Harlem Hellfighters,’ was the best known African American unit of World War I.” In an interview with N.P.R. Max Brooks, the author of The Harlem Hellfighters said, “The French called them the ‘Men of Bronze’ out of respect, and the Germans called them the ‘Harlem Hellfighters’ out of fear,…’” […]

      Ella Baker, “The Mother of Civil Rights” earned her bonafides by the    influence she had on shaping the Civil Rights Movement. Hers was not a charismatic flame like Dr. King’s, but nearly as instrumental! From teaching Rosa Parks how to protest, to being one of the female voices of the SCLC, she quietly had her fingerprints all over the Civil Rights Movement. […]

The legendary Huey Newton, Angela Davis, Stokeley Carmichael, Eldridge Cleaver, Bobby Seele, and H. Rap Brown are some of the names we remember from the Black Panther Party. Sadly it was the violent acts adjacent to the Panthers that we learned in school. The Panthers had many more layers of peaceful participation that were rarely exposed. In 1966 Bobby Seele and Huey Newton, at a small White college in Oakland, made the schematic for the Panthers. […]

      The annals of school curriculums have vanquished another stout hero into the shadows of obscurity. This time it was the double edge blade of “Intersectionality” that prevented Ida B. Wells from her proper helm in our school books. She was not just a woman, but carried a second cross of being a Black Woman. […]