The Brownies’ Book was published by Dr. Du Bois and his partner A.G. Dill. They had collaborated on the popular Crisis magazine. It was subtitled “A Monthly Magazine for the Children of the Sun.” -BlackPast.org.
Browsing: Lost Black History
By Don Valentine Congressman Rainey was seated in Congress December 12, 1870. A fact that is not taught in school curriculums is that he was the…
Alice Travis was our Black Queen who opened the door for the current mainstream Black women newscasters. Thanks to her fortitude, courage and above par talent, we have her proteges all across the country.
Another omission in the historical curriculum is the crucial role a slave played in the Lewis & Clark expedition. The only Black man on the crew was a robust slave named York. When Clark was a little boy his father gave him York as personal “body servant.”
The honorable Hiram Rhodes Revels became the first Black man elected to the US Senate in 1870. He was elected by the great state of Mississippi to fill the seat held by Jefferson Davis. Senator Davis vacated the seat when the south seceded from the Union to start the civil war in 1861. It was a weird twist of fate that a Black man after the war would take the seat held by the former President of the Confederacy.
A Black Invention
Pullman Porters/Brotherhood for Sleeping Car Porters ushered in the origin of the Black Middle Class. According to the History Channel, “The first Pullman porter began working aboard the sleeper cars around 1867, and quickly became a fixture of the company’s sought-after traveling experience…Pullman recruited only Black men, many of them former slave states, to work as porters. Their job was to lug baggage, shine shoes, set up and clean the sleeping berths…” George Pullman, the founder, sold fully pampered travel perfection to the White passengers.
America’s first racially integrated conflict was the Vietnam war. Blacks had fought in all of America’s preceding military engagements in segregated units. President Truman’s executive order in 1948 mandated the integration of the armed forces. Implementation was slow due to racial biases and some units in the Korean war were still segregated. The Vietnam war had Blacks and Whites fighting together, but fighting each other.
Interracial relationships and later marriages were an unanticipated irritant of free slave labor. This dalliance was illegal in all but 9 states. An article by the Jim Crow Museum [motto: “Witness, Understand, Heal”] delineated the argument against miscegenation; “The fear of interracial marriage was a major argument used to support racial segregation during the Jim Crow Era.
Dr. McNair was an academic prodigy and began studying calculus math at 9-years-old. This precocious 4th grader should have been learning his introductory multiplication tables. In 1959 the police were called to remove a young menace to the backwater town library of Lake City, SC. It was a tiny snapshot of how craven the Jim Crow era was for our society. The White librarian proved to be a heinous recreant and told a little boy he could not read a book!