Year: 2020

Kate Brown vs Washington-Alexandria Railroad Case

February 8, 1868 As a Senate employee “in charge of the ladies’ retiring room,” Kate Brown worked hard. Senators noticed her “lady-like character” and described her as “intelligent” and “refined.” She was not a rebel or a troublemaker, but on a chilly afternoon in 1868 Kate Brown rebelled. Her story is a nearly forgotten chapter […]

Before Rosa Parks, There Was Claudette Colvin

Retiree Claudette Colvin was 15 the day she refused to give up her seat on the bus. “My head was just too full of black history, you know, the oppression that we went through,” she says. Few people know the story of Claudette Colvin: When she was 15, she refused to move to the back […]

GORDON PARKS – AMERICAN GOTHIC

WILLIE O’REE, 1ST NHL PLAYER

Willie Eldon O’Ree, CM ONB (born October 15, 1935) is a Canadian former professional ice hockey player, best known for being the first black player in the National Hockey League. O’Ree played as a winger for the Boston Bruins. O’Ree is referred to as the “Jackie Robinson of ice hockey” for breaking the black colour barrier in the sport,[1][NB 1] and has stated publicly that he had met Jackie Robinson when he […]

Public Schools Are Increasingly More Deficient

From 1957 to 1970, I attended class everyday in the Los Angeles Unified School District. It was not until I was in my middle ages that I believed there was a better option. Attending school when I did was everything because there was highly valued socialization. There were of course rudimentary academic things that sparked […]

WILLIE O’REE, 1ST NHL PLAYER

Willie Eldon O’Ree, CM ONB (born October 15, 1935) is a Canadian former professional ice hockey player, best known for being the first black player in the National Hockey League. O’Ree played as a winger for the Boston Bruins. O’Ree is referred to as the “Jackie Robinson of ice hockey” for breaking the black colour barrier in the sport,[1][NB 1] and has stated publicly that he had met Jackie Robinson when he […]

NASA Legend – Katherine Johnson

Katherine Coleman Goble Johnson (August 26, 1918 – February 24, 2020) was an American mathematician whose calculations of orbital mechanics as a NASA employee were critical to the success of the first and subsequent U.S. crewed spaceflights.[2] During her 35-year career at NASA and its predecessor, she earned a reputation for mastering complex manual calculations […]

Frank “Sugar Chile” Robinson – Caldonia

Robinson was born in Detroit, Michigan. At an early age he showed unusual gifts singing the blues and accompanying himself on the piano.[2] According to contemporary newsreels, he was self-taught and managed to use techniques including slapping the keys with elbows and fists.[3] He won a talent show at the Paradise Theatre in Detroit at […]

Quakers, 1st group opposing human oppression and slave trade

Quakers, also known as “The Society of Friends,” have a long history of abolition. But it was four Pennsylvania Friends from Germantown who wrote the initial protest in the 17th century. They saw the slave trade as a grave injustice against their fellow man and used the Golden Rule to argue against such inhumane treatment; […]

Bessie Coleman, June of 1921, receives international air pilot’s license

Born in Atlanta, Texas in 1892, Bessie Coleman grew up in a world of harsh poverty, discrimination and segregation. She moved to Chicago at 23 to seek her fortune, but found little opportunity there as well. Wild tales of flying exploits from returning WWI soldiers first inspired her to explore aviation, but she faced a […]

1919 Race Riots in Chicago: A look back 100 years later

Beaumont Race Riot of 1943: 75 Years Later

Elaine Massacre: The bloodiest racial conflict in U.S. history | Dark History | New York Post

American Oppression

1946 Columbia, TN Race Riot

The Lie of Carolyn Bryant Donham

A racially segregated courtroom in Sumner, Mississippi, two white men, J.W. Milam and his half-brother Roy Bryant—a country-store owner—were acquitted of the murder of Emmett Till, a 14-year-old black from Chicago IL On August 28, 1955, while visiting a Deep South that he didn’t understand, Till had entered a store to buy two cents worth […]

Return Legacy of Black Oystermen (shuckers) to New York City

By Korsha Wilson June 21, 2022 On a recent afternoon in Brooklyn, a man known as Moody stood behind his dark blue cart in front of the Bushwick location of BK Lobster, gingerly prying open Fanny Bay, bluepoint and Prince Edward Island oysters with his shucking knife and presenting them to customers on a bed of ice. […]

Marcus Garvey – Documentary 

Carlos Marcello | The Little Man

Carlos Marcello (born Calogero Minacore; February 6, 1910 – March 2, 1993) was an American crime boss of the New Orleans crime family from 1947 until the late 1980s. G. Robert Blakey and other conspiracy theorists have asserted that Marcello along with Santo Trafficante, Jr. and Sam Giancana masterminded the 1963 assassination of United States […]

What Ever Happened to Hazel Scott?

The Hazel Scott Show was an early American television program broadcast on the now defunct DuMont Television Network. The series, hosted by Hazel Scott, ran during the summer of 1950, and is most notable for being one of the first U.S. network television series to be hosted by any person of African descent.[

YORK, the slave of William Clark

Destination Freedom – Arctic Biography: The Story Of Mathew Henson (August 22, 1948)

Matthew Alexander Henson (August 8, 1866 – March 9, 1955) was an American explorer who accompanied Robert Peary on seven voyages to the Arctic over a period of nearly 23 years. They spent a total of 18 years on expeditions together.[1] He is best known for his participation in the 1908-1909 expedition that claimed to […]

World Explorer: Mansa Abubakari Keita II

Mexican American Families Start Legal Fight Against School Segregation

Brown v. Board of Education was the landmark Supreme Court case that ended racial segregation in schools in 1954. But it wasn’t the first to take on the issue. Eight years earlier, in 1946, a group of Mexican American families in California won the very first federal court case ruling that segregation of public schools […]

The iconic cartoon character Betty Boop was inspired by a Black jazz singer in Harlem

The iconic cartoon character Betty Boop was inspired by a Black jazz singer in Harlem. Introduced by cartoonist Max Fleischer in 1930, the caricature of the jazz age flapper was the first and most famous sex symbol in animation. Betty Boop is best known for her revealing dress, curvaceous figure, and signature vocals “Boop Oop […]

Claudette Colvin legally challenged bus segregation

Claudette Colvin (born September 5, 1939) is a retired American nurse aide who was a pioneer of the 1950s civil rights movement. On March 2, 1955, she was arrested at the age of 15 in Montgomery, Alabama, for refusing to give up her seat to a white woman on a crowded, segregated bus. This occurred […]

The First Female Self-made American Millionaire – Annie Malone

Annie Minerva Turnbo Malone (August 9, 1877 – May 10, 1957) was an African-American businesswoman, inventor and philanthropist. She was one of the first African American women to become a millionaire. In the first three decades of the 20th century, she founded and developed a large and prominent commercial and educational enterprise centered on cosmetics […]

Maggie Lena Walker

Maggie Lena Walker was born on July 15, 1864, in Richmond, Virginia. She attended school and graduated in 1883, having been trained as a teacher. She married a brick contractor in 1886 and left her teaching job, at which point she became more active within the Independent Order of St. Luke, an an organization dedicated […]

Robert Smalls Sailed Americans to Freedom

Robert Smalls (1839-1915) was an enslaved African American assigned to steer the Confederate transport ship CSS Planter during the American Civil War. On May 13th, 1862–and while the ship’s three white officers were spending the night ashore–Smalls dressed as a Captain (along with most other enslaved crewmen) and sailed the Planter out of the Southern […]

Loyalist Fled America’s Racially Prejudiced Governance

As a result of the looming crisis in 1775, the Royal Governor of Virginia, Lord Dunmore, issued a proclamation that promised freedom to servants and slaved people who were able to bear arms and join his Loyalist Ethiopian Regiment. Many of the slaves in the South joined the Loyalists with intentions of gaining freedom and escaping […]

Colorado once had the 2nd largest Ku Klux Klan

From the Grand Dragon to known KKK appointees in the police, mayor and governor offices, Colorado once had the 2nd largest Ku Klux Klan membership in the United States. Discover the sordid history of the KKK in Colorado and the impact they had on Catholics, Jews and African

Madame C.J. Walker

Michelle Miller reports on who else helped to start Jack Daniel’s whiskey.

Former enslaved American became a deputy U.S. Marshal arresting more than 3,000 felons

A profile of Bass Reeves (1838-1910), a former enslaved American who became a deputy U.S. marshal and is thought to be the inspiration for the Lone Ranger, credited with more than 3,000 felony arrests.

The real lone ranger Bass Reeves

On this episode we discuss the story of Bass Reeves. Reeves was the first African American to become a U.S. Deputy Marshal and is considered by many historians to be the man that the Lone Ranger character is based on.