When you say "Women's Aviation History" the name Amelia Earhart often comes to mind. But born before Amelia and flying before Amelia was one more beautiful black woman by the name of Bessie Coleman. Bessie got her license two years before Earhart from France. Because Coleman was black she was denied entry into US aeronautic schools that Earhart was able to attend. Consequently Bessie Coleman was the first African American woman in the world to receive an International pilot license.
Bessie Coleman was the tenth of thirteen children born in 1892 in Atlanta, Texas. She went to a one room all black school for her primary education. After her part Cherokee father left his family to seek a better life on an Indian reservation Bessie completed her high school education at a Missionary Baptist school and at 18 had one semester at the Oklahoma Colored Agricultural and Normal University (now called Langston University). She ran out of money to further her education so she moved to Chicago to stay with her two brothers. Coleman then attended beauty school and got a job as a manicurist. It was in Chicago that she began to consider a career in aviation. Coleman's brother shared stories of his service during World War I and noted the many French women who flew and were supposedly "superior" to her who would never fly. Such stories only strengthened Bessie Coleman's resolve.
She couldn't gain entry into any of the American aviation schools because she was black and in addition to that a female. On the advice and part sponsorship of Robert S. Abbott, the black owner of "The Chicago Defender" an African American weekly newspaper, she saved some money, took french classes at the Berlitz school and went to France. She was trained at the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale in November 1920.
On June 15, 1921 she became the first African American woman in the world to get an international pilot license.
Upon returning to the States Coleman realized that she would only be able to earn a living as a stunt flyer so she went back to France and then Holland for additional training. She then returned to the States where she made a name for herself doing airshows. A great crowd-pleaser, people began to call her Queen Bessie. She used her fame to affect racial discrimination as much as she could. When she returned to her hometown to perform Coleman refused to do so unless both blacks and whites went through the same ticket gates. She also turned down a movie role because she would have to demean her appearance in the movie to support stereotypes of African Americans. She dreamed of running an aviation school of her own to train other black pilots but this was thwarted by an accident in Jacksonville Florida in 1926. Her mechanic accidentally left a wrench in the engine area of the plane which jammed the gearbox during flight and caused the plane to spin out of control killing both Bessie Coleman and her mechanic William Wills.
The effect of her life on African Americans and aviation was evident after her death. Thousands of mourners attended her funeral including several important black leaders like Ida B. Wells. Several Bessie Coleman flying clubs were created and in 1931 a group of African American pilots established an annual flyover for Coleman's grave.
In 1995 Bessie Coleman was inducted into the Women in Aviation Hall of Fame and put on a US postal stamp. So the next time women in aviation comes up think Bessie Coleman first. She flew first.
Wednesday, June 9, 2010
Tuesday, June 1, 2010
The First Black Presidential Candidate
"The United States was said not to be ready to elect a Catholic to the Presidency when Al Smith ran in the 1920's. But Smith's nomination may have helped pave the way for the successful campaign John F. Kennedy waged in 1960. Who can tell? What I hope most is that now there will be others who will feel themselves as capable of running for high political office as any wealthy, good-looking white male." --Shirley Chisholm.
This woman who with her incisive wit, drive, courage and foresight cut a path for Barack Obama and all blacks to the Oval office of the White House was a first generation American of Barbadian descent born in Brooklyn, NY, in 1924. At three she was sent to her grandmother in Barbados for a few years which she credits with her educational success for starting her off with a traditional British styled education. Then she returned to America at the height of the Depression at age ten. When it came time to go to college she was accepted to several great ones with tuition scholarships but unable to afford the room and board Chisholm attended Brooklyn college instead. She received her BA in 1946 and later an MA in elementary education from Columbia in 1952.
"One distressing thing is the way men react to women who assert their equality: their ultimate weapon is to call them unfeminine. They think she is anti-male; they even whisper that she's probably a lesbian."-- Shirley Chisholm
It was while she was on campus that Chisholm first became active in various campus groups. Later on while working in the educational field she became active with the Democratic Party fighting for women and blacks. As the Civil Rights movement swell crested Chisholm decided to run for The New York State assembly and was elected in 1964 where she sponsored fifty bills. In 1968 she was the first black woman elected into the House of Congress and in 1972 was the first black presidential candidate. After failing to win she was voted one of the ten most admired women in the world and continued in Congress until she retired in 1982. Chisholm fought for justice and equality on many fronts by speaking out on topics such as police brutality, prison reform, and a woman's right to choose. She earned a reputation as a challenger of the status quo.
Shirley Chisholm was married twice. First to Conrad Chisholm (1949-1977) and then to Arthur Hardwick Jr., who died in 1986. Shirley died in 2005.
You can learn more about Shirley Chisholm by reading "Chisholm '72 - Unbought & Unbossed."
"I want history to remember me not just as the first black woman to be elected to Congress, not as the first black woman to have made a bid for the presidency of the United States, but as a black woman who lived in the 20th century and dared to be herself." -- Shirley Chisholm
This woman who with her incisive wit, drive, courage and foresight cut a path for Barack Obama and all blacks to the Oval office of the White House was a first generation American of Barbadian descent born in Brooklyn, NY, in 1924. At three she was sent to her grandmother in Barbados for a few years which she credits with her educational success for starting her off with a traditional British styled education. Then she returned to America at the height of the Depression at age ten. When it came time to go to college she was accepted to several great ones with tuition scholarships but unable to afford the room and board Chisholm attended Brooklyn college instead. She received her BA in 1946 and later an MA in elementary education from Columbia in 1952.
"One distressing thing is the way men react to women who assert their equality: their ultimate weapon is to call them unfeminine. They think she is anti-male; they even whisper that she's probably a lesbian."-- Shirley Chisholm
It was while she was on campus that Chisholm first became active in various campus groups. Later on while working in the educational field she became active with the Democratic Party fighting for women and blacks. As the Civil Rights movement swell crested Chisholm decided to run for The New York State assembly and was elected in 1964 where she sponsored fifty bills. In 1968 she was the first black woman elected into the House of Congress and in 1972 was the first black presidential candidate. After failing to win she was voted one of the ten most admired women in the world and continued in Congress until she retired in 1982. Chisholm fought for justice and equality on many fronts by speaking out on topics such as police brutality, prison reform, and a woman's right to choose. She earned a reputation as a challenger of the status quo.
Shirley Chisholm was married twice. First to Conrad Chisholm (1949-1977) and then to Arthur Hardwick Jr., who died in 1986. Shirley died in 2005.
You can learn more about Shirley Chisholm by reading "Chisholm '72 - Unbought & Unbossed."
"I want history to remember me not just as the first black woman to be elected to Congress, not as the first black woman to have made a bid for the presidency of the United States, but as a black woman who lived in the 20th century and dared to be herself." -- Shirley Chisholm
Thursday, May 20, 2010
Education For a Higher Calling
A Washington DC native born in 1893, Eva Beatrice Dykes was one of three African American women who, all in 1921, were the first African American women to received their PhDs. Her degree was in English from Radcliffe College at Harvard, where she had also received a Masters and second Bachelors after completing a Bachelors at Howard University. With this distinction Eva could have chosen one of a few unprecedented paths before her but in keeping with her character chose to pursue a life of service to her people and God. A devout Seventh Day Adventist member Eva was guided by her desire to be the best she could be in service to others through God's will.
The defining aspects of her life were her trail blazing academic accomplishments and her involvement in the development of the Seventh-Day Adventist church for black members. In fact her acceptance of a teaching position at Howard University was contingent on their understanding her religious obligations which included keeping the Sabbath from Friday sundown to Saturday sundown. In addition to this she helped form the National Association for the Advancement of World-wide Work Among Colored Seventh-day Adventists on October 16, 1943 to address racial discrimination in the SDA church.
This religious dedication permeated her whole life and most remarkable about her career path is the selfless way she choose to resign her position at Howard University in D.C. and take up permanent tenure at a small black Seventh Day Adventist college in Huntsville, Alabama. This happened in1944. A time when Huntsville had little to recommend it in comparison to the nation's capital. But she believed it was the greater need and therefore the path of greater service to God and her people. Her move to Oakland facilitated its move to becoming an accredited college. This answer to a higher call to a purpose driven life influenced her choices and goals as she believed that it was only when you resisted God that you remained nothing.
She was also considered a child prodigy who was gifted as a pianist and organist. She founded at Oakland College (now Oakland University) the Aeolian Choral Group in 1946, which performed Handel's Messiah and presently performs a range of music from the Baroque era to the twentieth century as well as Negro spirituals and work songs. The choir has since achieved world wide fame and performed at the Kennedy Center in D.C. , Good Morning America and several concerts in the US, Canada, Bermuda, the Bahamas, Romania, Poland and UK
Dedicating over half a century to education and writing articles and books she was recognized for work as an educator and wrote the book "The Negro in English Romantic Thought." She died in Huntsville, Alabama on Oct. 29th, 1986 at 93 years of age.
You can learn more about Eva Beatrice Dykes by reading the book "She fulfilled the Impossible Dream" by Dewitt S. Williams, and visiting the Oakland University website.
The defining aspects of her life were her trail blazing academic accomplishments and her involvement in the development of the Seventh-Day Adventist church for black members. In fact her acceptance of a teaching position at Howard University was contingent on their understanding her religious obligations which included keeping the Sabbath from Friday sundown to Saturday sundown. In addition to this she helped form the National Association for the Advancement of World-wide Work Among Colored Seventh-day Adventists on October 16, 1943 to address racial discrimination in the SDA church.
This religious dedication permeated her whole life and most remarkable about her career path is the selfless way she choose to resign her position at Howard University in D.C. and take up permanent tenure at a small black Seventh Day Adventist college in Huntsville, Alabama. This happened in1944. A time when Huntsville had little to recommend it in comparison to the nation's capital. But she believed it was the greater need and therefore the path of greater service to God and her people. Her move to Oakland facilitated its move to becoming an accredited college. This answer to a higher call to a purpose driven life influenced her choices and goals as she believed that it was only when you resisted God that you remained nothing.
She was also considered a child prodigy who was gifted as a pianist and organist. She founded at Oakland College (now Oakland University) the Aeolian Choral Group in 1946, which performed Handel's Messiah and presently performs a range of music from the Baroque era to the twentieth century as well as Negro spirituals and work songs. The choir has since achieved world wide fame and performed at the Kennedy Center in D.C. , Good Morning America and several concerts in the US, Canada, Bermuda, the Bahamas, Romania, Poland and UK
Dedicating over half a century to education and writing articles and books she was recognized for work as an educator and wrote the book "The Negro in English Romantic Thought." She died in Huntsville, Alabama on Oct. 29th, 1986 at 93 years of age.
You can learn more about Eva Beatrice Dykes by reading the book "She fulfilled the Impossible Dream" by Dewitt S. Williams, and visiting the Oakland University website.
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Forever Giving
This week’s beautiful black woman is Henrietta Lacks (August 1, 1920- October 4, 1951). During her lifetime Lacks was an unknown tobacco farmer born and raised in southern Virginia. She was one of ten children born to Eliza and John Pleasant. Lacks married David Lacks and bore five children. In 1943 she and her family moved to Baltimore where she lived until her death.
In February, 1950 at age 30 Lacks was diagnosed with cervical cancer. During her treatment at John Hopkins Hospital doctors removed part of her tumor without her consent and began using her cells for medical research. Dr. George Gey discovered that Henrietta Lack’s cells were eternally viable in the laboratory and could be mass produced. Lack’s cells were the first human cells found capable of surviving outside of the body FOREVER. Normal cells had a lifespan but Henrietta's cell's were immortal. This was clearly a milestone for medicine. Dr. Gey named the cells HeLa and they were immediately cultured and used for medical research. Lacks died just eight months later for the cancer. Just three years after Henrietta Lack’s death, HeLa cells were used by the famous Dr. Jonas Salk to find the polio vaccine. Since then, Hela cells have been used worldwide in medical research.
The crazy piece of this story is that while HeLa cells were being produced and sold in laboratories all over the world the Lack’s family was unaware of HeLa for over twenty years. In 2001 the National Foundation for Cancer Research announced plans to honor Henrietta lack’s contribution to medicine but plans were derailed with the events of 9/11.
This past February scientist Rebecca Skloot published The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks with Crown books. It is the first biography of Henrietta Lacks and has drawn renewed attention to this medical milestone and the woman behind it all.
Learn more about Hernietta by visiting Skloot’s website.
You can also read a good interview on Smithsonian online magazine
In February, 1950 at age 30 Lacks was diagnosed with cervical cancer. During her treatment at John Hopkins Hospital doctors removed part of her tumor without her consent and began using her cells for medical research. Dr. George Gey discovered that Henrietta Lack’s cells were eternally viable in the laboratory and could be mass produced. Lack’s cells were the first human cells found capable of surviving outside of the body FOREVER. Normal cells had a lifespan but Henrietta's cell's were immortal. This was clearly a milestone for medicine. Dr. Gey named the cells HeLa and they were immediately cultured and used for medical research. Lacks died just eight months later for the cancer. Just three years after Henrietta Lack’s death, HeLa cells were used by the famous Dr. Jonas Salk to find the polio vaccine. Since then, Hela cells have been used worldwide in medical research.
The crazy piece of this story is that while HeLa cells were being produced and sold in laboratories all over the world the Lack’s family was unaware of HeLa for over twenty years. In 2001 the National Foundation for Cancer Research announced plans to honor Henrietta lack’s contribution to medicine but plans were derailed with the events of 9/11.
This past February scientist Rebecca Skloot published The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks with Crown books. It is the first biography of Henrietta Lacks and has drawn renewed attention to this medical milestone and the woman behind it all.
Learn more about Hernietta by visiting Skloot’s website.
You can also read a good interview on Smithsonian online magazine
Monday, December 14, 2009
Writing for Justice
Ida B. Wells was a woman of substance, conviction and determination. Born just before the Emancipation Proclamation in Holly Springs, Mississippi in 1862 to freed slaves James and Elizabeth Wells, Ida was one of eight children. When she was 15 or 16 years old her parents and one of her siblings died in a Yellow Fever epidemic. At the risk of having her family torn apart even more Wells took it upon herself to get a job teaching so she could support her siblings and keep the family together.
Wells' formative years with her parents instilled in her a sense of conviction to fight for what she believed in and towards justice for herself and others. In 1880 she moved to Memphis and began taking classes at Fisk University. She was more interested in creating a life of purpose for herself than she was in securing a husband. She is quoted as saying "I will not begin at this late day by doing what my soul abhors; sugaring men, weak deceitful creatures, with flattery to retain them as escorts or to gratify a revenge."
While in her early twenties life took a definitive turn for Wells during a random moment in her daily routine. Accustomed to riding the train back and forth one day on the Chesapeake, Ohio and Southwestern Railroad train she was asked to give up her seat for a white man and move to the Jim Crow section. Wells refused even to the extent of biting the hands that tried to remove her. It took three men to forcibly move her. Aware that the Supreme court has recently banned segregation in public places Ida returned and hired a lawyer to sue the railway. She won her case in a local court but the Tennessee Supreme Court reversed the ruling based on her supposed poor intentions. Ida B. Wells continued her defense and wrote a newspaper article about her treatment.
Her journalistic career took off. She had a voice with a message and blacks and Christians wanted to hear more from her. In 1889, she helped found an anti-segregationist newspaper in Memphis called Free Speech.Despite the growing public awareness Ida persisted in writing about racial injustice for newspapers in Memphis, Philadelphia and Chicago. When three of her friends who owned a black grocery store were lynched by w white mob under the pretexts of having raped a white woman, Ida turned her focus to researching and writing about the lynching epidemic. She believed that the root causes behind lynching had nothing to with interracial sexual relations but were more a result of white fear of black economic progress. Her encouraged blacks to stop feeding the local economy and to leave Memphis because it was not a place the promoted justice for blacks. Her own writing eventually drove her out of Memphis when her newspaper was destroyed and her life threatened.
Wells became very instrumental in educating both Americans and Europeans about lynching in the South. She became President of the Anti-Lynching Crusade and worked with Frederick Douglas to write about these issues. Along with other supporters Wells and Douglas boycotted the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago. While in Chicago Wells also helped start women suffrage organizations. She worked with Jane Addams to secure disegregation in Chicago's public schools.
In 1995 Wells married attorney and editor of the Chicago Conservatory newspaper, Ferdinand L. Barnett. He also happened to be the President of the Ida B. Wells club in Chicago. Wells had four children with him but always struggled to balance the demands of domestic life and her vocation to write and speak out for racial justice. She took her children on her speaking engagements and was one of the first American women to keep her maiden name in marriage, always recognizing her self-identity as a woman fighting for justice and equality.She covered this struggle in her autobiography under a chapter called "A Divided Duty."
Wells traveled to Europe twice speaking and raising awareness and support against lynching practices. Before her second trip she took the initiative to contact the editor of the Daily Inter-Ocean, the only white American newspaper writing openly and consistently about lynching. The editor asked her to write a column while she was away and Wells became the first paid black female foreign correspondent writing for an American white newspaper.
Ida B. Wells worked with and influenced the likes of Fredick Douglass, W.E.B Dubois and many others in the right for racial and gender equality. She was one of only two Black women to help found the NAACP in 1909. She was also one of the few women who spoke out openly against the pedagogical and sociopolitical beliefs of Booker T. Washington.
Wells worked till her end. In 1930 at the age of 67 she ran for state legislature in Illinois, becoming one of the first black women run for US public office. She died a year later in the midst of writing another of several books.
To learn more about this beautiful black woman please visit the Ida B. Wells Memorial Foundation created and maintained by the Ida B. Wells Family. http://www.idabwells.org/
Wells' formative years with her parents instilled in her a sense of conviction to fight for what she believed in and towards justice for herself and others. In 1880 she moved to Memphis and began taking classes at Fisk University. She was more interested in creating a life of purpose for herself than she was in securing a husband. She is quoted as saying "I will not begin at this late day by doing what my soul abhors; sugaring men, weak deceitful creatures, with flattery to retain them as escorts or to gratify a revenge."
While in her early twenties life took a definitive turn for Wells during a random moment in her daily routine. Accustomed to riding the train back and forth one day on the Chesapeake, Ohio and Southwestern Railroad train she was asked to give up her seat for a white man and move to the Jim Crow section. Wells refused even to the extent of biting the hands that tried to remove her. It took three men to forcibly move her. Aware that the Supreme court has recently banned segregation in public places Ida returned and hired a lawyer to sue the railway. She won her case in a local court but the Tennessee Supreme Court reversed the ruling based on her supposed poor intentions. Ida B. Wells continued her defense and wrote a newspaper article about her treatment.
Her journalistic career took off. She had a voice with a message and blacks and Christians wanted to hear more from her. In 1889, she helped found an anti-segregationist newspaper in Memphis called Free Speech.Despite the growing public awareness Ida persisted in writing about racial injustice for newspapers in Memphis, Philadelphia and Chicago. When three of her friends who owned a black grocery store were lynched by w white mob under the pretexts of having raped a white woman, Ida turned her focus to researching and writing about the lynching epidemic. She believed that the root causes behind lynching had nothing to with interracial sexual relations but were more a result of white fear of black economic progress. Her encouraged blacks to stop feeding the local economy and to leave Memphis because it was not a place the promoted justice for blacks. Her own writing eventually drove her out of Memphis when her newspaper was destroyed and her life threatened.
Wells became very instrumental in educating both Americans and Europeans about lynching in the South. She became President of the Anti-Lynching Crusade and worked with Frederick Douglas to write about these issues. Along with other supporters Wells and Douglas boycotted the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago. While in Chicago Wells also helped start women suffrage organizations. She worked with Jane Addams to secure disegregation in Chicago's public schools.
In 1995 Wells married attorney and editor of the Chicago Conservatory newspaper, Ferdinand L. Barnett. He also happened to be the President of the Ida B. Wells club in Chicago. Wells had four children with him but always struggled to balance the demands of domestic life and her vocation to write and speak out for racial justice. She took her children on her speaking engagements and was one of the first American women to keep her maiden name in marriage, always recognizing her self-identity as a woman fighting for justice and equality.She covered this struggle in her autobiography under a chapter called "A Divided Duty."
Wells traveled to Europe twice speaking and raising awareness and support against lynching practices. Before her second trip she took the initiative to contact the editor of the Daily Inter-Ocean, the only white American newspaper writing openly and consistently about lynching. The editor asked her to write a column while she was away and Wells became the first paid black female foreign correspondent writing for an American white newspaper.
Ida B. Wells worked with and influenced the likes of Fredick Douglass, W.E.B Dubois and many others in the right for racial and gender equality. She was one of only two Black women to help found the NAACP in 1909. She was also one of the few women who spoke out openly against the pedagogical and sociopolitical beliefs of Booker T. Washington.
Wells worked till her end. In 1930 at the age of 67 she ran for state legislature in Illinois, becoming one of the first black women run for US public office. She died a year later in the midst of writing another of several books.
To learn more about this beautiful black woman please visit the Ida B. Wells Memorial Foundation created and maintained by the Ida B. Wells Family. http://www.idabwells.org/
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
A Woman Who Pushed the Limits: Pauli Murray
It happens to be Pauli Murray week here in Durham, North Carolina so it’s only fitting to make Ms. Murray our beautiful black woman of the week! She was a lawyer, poet, writer, educator, civil rights activist, and priest - the first black woman ordained in the Episcopal church. With every new woman I research I feel a little volt of excitement, hope, and inspiration. Women like Pauli Murray were challenging racism and sexism decades before the civil rights movement. It’s fascinating to me that most of us either are unaware of or forget that most world transforming movements of social and political justice begin long before the larger public gets a wisp of it. They begin with the hands, feet, and minds of countless, often unnamed brave, determined, passionate men and women of integrity who tire of seeing daily human injustices on a range of levels. It makes me think and wonder what injustices I see regularly but fail to be moved enough to take any steps against.
Anne Pauline Murray was born on November 20, 1910 in Baltimore, Maryland. Though born into a loving two-parent home her childhood changed drastically at age three when her mother died from a brain hemorrhage. Her father had earlier suffered medical and mental complications from a bout with Typhoid fever. Unable to care for his six children alone he split up the family and sent Pauli to live with her aunt and grandparents in Durham, North Carolina. Pauli Murray's new family was made up of educators committed to civil and social justice who influenced her love of reading and learning from a very early age. The courage and fortitude she observed from her caregivers helped shape Murray's future work and determination to strive for what she believed was right and just. After receiving a mediocre education in the South because that was all that was available to blacks, she was determined to go to a good desegregated college, even if it meant repeating high school courses up north. She moved to Queens, and after a year of high school classes she enrolled at Hunter College in 1928. Four years later Murray graduated with honors and degrees in English and History. She was one of only four black students in a class of 247.
Her life and work experiences following college compelled her to further her education. She wanted to fight racial discrimination with her mind as well as her heart and hands. In 1938 she applied to UNC-Chapel Hill but was denied on account of her race, Murray wrote letters of appeal to the president of the college, members of the NAACP and even Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt. Though she wasn’t accepted to UNC she was able to secure her reputation with influential leaders as a black woman willing to fight for civil rights. It would not be the last time she called upon the United States President and his wife.
In order to better fight for civil rights Murray continued her education to become a civil rights lawyer at the historical black college, Howard University where she received her first law degree in 1944. Her thesis at Howard proposed a legal challenge to segregation based on the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which guarantees equal protection under the law to all Americans. In 1951 she further developed this thesis into a book "States' Laws on Race and Color." It became the foundation of the NAACP's groundbreaking work in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, which led to desegregation in public schools.
It was at the male dominated Howard that Murray truly encountered the new battle she was forced to fight, that of sex discrimination. This continued when she applied to Harvard Law School for her LLM, Masters in Law. She was the recipient of the Rosenfield Fellowship that usually secured entrance to Harvard, but the University was not accepting women. Murray again fought this decision and even got President Roosevelt to write a letter on her behalf. But it would be another two decades before women were admitted to Harvard. So Murray went to the University of California at Berkeley instead and received her Masters in 1945. But she would continue her fight against sex discrimination more professionally.
She spent the next several years working in law and even began chronicling her life story as it was wrapped in these social and civil injustices. Amongst many achievements she is well known for her memoir, Proud Shoes: The Story of an American family. The book explores issues of personal and societal cultural and racial relations in a country still struggling to find its identity post Civil War.
In 1961 while on the President’s Commission on the Status of Women Committee, Murray continued her fight for women's rights by cataloging all the ways in which state laws kept women from legal equality. She pushed for the Supreme Court to disqualify these laws based in the fifth and fourteenth Amendments. In 1964 she campaigned for sex discrimination in the Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. The bill passed and became law in 1965. To help ensure that this new law didn’t slip under the rug and become ineffective Murray got to work and wrote and published a ground breaking piece in the George Washington Law Review entitled, “Jane Crow and the Law: Sex Discrimination and Title VII." Then in 1966 she and 29 others founded the National Organization for Women (NOW)
Pauli Murray never seemed to tire of pushing the boundaries and cracking open the doors for those whom would come after her. After all that she had already accomplished in her lifetime she took another step. At the age of 62 she decided to go to seminary. She enrolled at the General Theological Seminary in NYC and received a Masters of Divinity degree. On January 8, 1977 at the National Cathedral of Washington D.C. Anne Pauline Murray became the first black woman to be ordained in the Episcopal Church. But perhaps the most personally moving piece to this was that Murray celebrated her first Eucharist service in a little church back in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. This happened to be the same church in which Murray’s grandmother, a slave, had been baptized in 1864. Pauli Murray recounts the significance of this in her autobiographical narrative,
"All the strands of my life had come together. Descendant of slave and of slave owner … [n]ow I was empowered to minister the sacrament of One in whom there is no north or south, no black or white, no male or female - only the spirit of love and reconciliation drawing us all toward the goal of human wholeness."
Pauli Murray died in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on July 1, 1985.
The Pauli Murray Human Relations Award was created in 1990 in Orange Country, NC. It is awarded annually to a youth, adult, and business that, according to the county's website, "have served the community with distinction in the pursuit of equality, justice, and human rights for all citizens.
Learn More - Visit Durham's "The Pauli Murray Project" website at http://paulimurrayproject.org/
Anne Pauline Murray was born on November 20, 1910 in Baltimore, Maryland. Though born into a loving two-parent home her childhood changed drastically at age three when her mother died from a brain hemorrhage. Her father had earlier suffered medical and mental complications from a bout with Typhoid fever. Unable to care for his six children alone he split up the family and sent Pauli to live with her aunt and grandparents in Durham, North Carolina. Pauli Murray's new family was made up of educators committed to civil and social justice who influenced her love of reading and learning from a very early age. The courage and fortitude she observed from her caregivers helped shape Murray's future work and determination to strive for what she believed was right and just. After receiving a mediocre education in the South because that was all that was available to blacks, she was determined to go to a good desegregated college, even if it meant repeating high school courses up north. She moved to Queens, and after a year of high school classes she enrolled at Hunter College in 1928. Four years later Murray graduated with honors and degrees in English and History. She was one of only four black students in a class of 247.
Her life and work experiences following college compelled her to further her education. She wanted to fight racial discrimination with her mind as well as her heart and hands. In 1938 she applied to UNC-Chapel Hill but was denied on account of her race, Murray wrote letters of appeal to the president of the college, members of the NAACP and even Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt. Though she wasn’t accepted to UNC she was able to secure her reputation with influential leaders as a black woman willing to fight for civil rights. It would not be the last time she called upon the United States President and his wife.
In order to better fight for civil rights Murray continued her education to become a civil rights lawyer at the historical black college, Howard University where she received her first law degree in 1944. Her thesis at Howard proposed a legal challenge to segregation based on the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which guarantees equal protection under the law to all Americans. In 1951 she further developed this thesis into a book "States' Laws on Race and Color." It became the foundation of the NAACP's groundbreaking work in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, which led to desegregation in public schools.
It was at the male dominated Howard that Murray truly encountered the new battle she was forced to fight, that of sex discrimination. This continued when she applied to Harvard Law School for her LLM, Masters in Law. She was the recipient of the Rosenfield Fellowship that usually secured entrance to Harvard, but the University was not accepting women. Murray again fought this decision and even got President Roosevelt to write a letter on her behalf. But it would be another two decades before women were admitted to Harvard. So Murray went to the University of California at Berkeley instead and received her Masters in 1945. But she would continue her fight against sex discrimination more professionally.
She spent the next several years working in law and even began chronicling her life story as it was wrapped in these social and civil injustices. Amongst many achievements she is well known for her memoir, Proud Shoes: The Story of an American family. The book explores issues of personal and societal cultural and racial relations in a country still struggling to find its identity post Civil War.
In 1961 while on the President’s Commission on the Status of Women Committee, Murray continued her fight for women's rights by cataloging all the ways in which state laws kept women from legal equality. She pushed for the Supreme Court to disqualify these laws based in the fifth and fourteenth Amendments. In 1964 she campaigned for sex discrimination in the Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. The bill passed and became law in 1965. To help ensure that this new law didn’t slip under the rug and become ineffective Murray got to work and wrote and published a ground breaking piece in the George Washington Law Review entitled, “Jane Crow and the Law: Sex Discrimination and Title VII." Then in 1966 she and 29 others founded the National Organization for Women (NOW)
Pauli Murray never seemed to tire of pushing the boundaries and cracking open the doors for those whom would come after her. After all that she had already accomplished in her lifetime she took another step. At the age of 62 she decided to go to seminary. She enrolled at the General Theological Seminary in NYC and received a Masters of Divinity degree. On January 8, 1977 at the National Cathedral of Washington D.C. Anne Pauline Murray became the first black woman to be ordained in the Episcopal Church. But perhaps the most personally moving piece to this was that Murray celebrated her first Eucharist service in a little church back in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. This happened to be the same church in which Murray’s grandmother, a slave, had been baptized in 1864. Pauli Murray recounts the significance of this in her autobiographical narrative,
"All the strands of my life had come together. Descendant of slave and of slave owner … [n]ow I was empowered to minister the sacrament of One in whom there is no north or south, no black or white, no male or female - only the spirit of love and reconciliation drawing us all toward the goal of human wholeness."
Pauli Murray died in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on July 1, 1985.
The Pauli Murray Human Relations Award was created in 1990 in Orange Country, NC. It is awarded annually to a youth, adult, and business that, according to the county's website, "have served the community with distinction in the pursuit of equality, justice, and human rights for all citizens.
Learn More - Visit Durham's "The Pauli Murray Project" website at http://paulimurrayproject.org/
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Pioneering the Visual Arts-Meta Fuller
I have been reading about what First Lady Michelle Obama and her husband are doing in the White House with the arts. Mrs. O is quoted on the AMERICA.Gov blog post dated May 19, 2009 as saying, “My husband and I believe strongly that arts education is essential for building innovative thinkers who will be our nation’s leaders for tomorrow.” I am inspired by their efforts while saddened that I have to dig around on the internet to find out about these things. How many people know that on October 2, 2009 President Obama declared October as National Arts and Humanities Month? How many people know that last July Michelle Obama brought together representatives from major art institutions to the White House to discuss how to make the arts more accessible to people with disabilities? I didn't know that until recently. But maybe I'm the only one.
Anyway, this got me thinking about black women in the arts. I started doing a little research and discovered the life and work of Meta Vaux Warrick Fuller, often considered one of the pioneering black women in sculpture and visual art in America.
Although often classified under the Harlem Renaissance, Meta actually did all her work in Paris, Pennsylvania, Boston and Framingham, MA. She was born in Philadelphia on June 9, 1877 and raised in middle class America by her father, a barber and a lover of the arts and her mother, a wigmaker. At the young age of 16 Meta Fuller won a three-year scholarship to study at the Pennsylvania School of Industrial Art. From 1899-1902 she studied in Paris at the Academie Colarossi and at the Ecole des Beaux Arts, While in Paris she met African American artist Henry Ossawa Tanner and received private instruction from French artist Auguste Rodin.
When Meta returned to the USA she found that the Philly art society was not ready to embrace a black female artist as openly as they had in Paris. But she persevered in her talents and passion for the arts. From 1903-1907 she continued her education at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia and in 1907 was commissioned to create art for the Jamestown Tercentennial Exposition. Her art depicted the progress of African Americans since their 1619 arrival in Jamestown, VA. She became the first black female artist to receive a federal commission for her work.
In 1910, just three years later a warehouse fire in Philadelphia destroyed 16 years worth of her artwork. Despite this devastating loss Meta continued creating and turned her sights to art that celebrated African and African American strength of spirit, historical struggle and heritage. Her work depicted the suffering and joys of the human condition. She did not shy away from uncomfortable subject matter. Around 1914 she created one of her most famous pieces, Ethiopia Awakening (Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York Public Library.) This sculpture symbolized several things; the African American lineage to North Africa, the bourgeoning of African American culture in mainstream society, and the call for African Americans to recognize the intellectual and spiritual influence that Africa could have on their ongoing formation in racist America. Meta was one of the first female artists to encourage art with afro-centric themes, art that did not cater to white ideals. There were many factors influencing Fuller’s art including African American philosophers and educators such as Alain Locke and W.E.B. Dubois.
In 1937 Fuller created Talking Skull, (Museum of Afro-American History, Boston, MA) a powerful sculpture of a man kneeling on a corpse in apparent conversation with a skull. Other Fuller sculptures worth seeing are Silence and Repose, and Sorrow (private galleries.)
Fuller was also an accomplished painter. During the Civil Rights Movement she painted pieces to honor the men who walked with Dr. MLK across the Edmund Pettus Bridge on March 9 (The Good Shepherd) and when the four little black girls died in the bombing of Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Alabama Fuller painted The Crucifixion.
She died on March 18, 1968 at 90 years old. She was a wife to Dr. Solomon Fuller, a West African immigrant, and a mother of three.
Learn more about Meta Fuller online at The University of the Arts Library http://library.uarts.edu/archives/alumni/warrickfuller.html
Anyway, this got me thinking about black women in the arts. I started doing a little research and discovered the life and work of Meta Vaux Warrick Fuller, often considered one of the pioneering black women in sculpture and visual art in America.
Although often classified under the Harlem Renaissance, Meta actually did all her work in Paris, Pennsylvania, Boston and Framingham, MA. She was born in Philadelphia on June 9, 1877 and raised in middle class America by her father, a barber and a lover of the arts and her mother, a wigmaker. At the young age of 16 Meta Fuller won a three-year scholarship to study at the Pennsylvania School of Industrial Art. From 1899-1902 she studied in Paris at the Academie Colarossi and at the Ecole des Beaux Arts, While in Paris she met African American artist Henry Ossawa Tanner and received private instruction from French artist Auguste Rodin.
When Meta returned to the USA she found that the Philly art society was not ready to embrace a black female artist as openly as they had in Paris. But she persevered in her talents and passion for the arts. From 1903-1907 she continued her education at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia and in 1907 was commissioned to create art for the Jamestown Tercentennial Exposition. Her art depicted the progress of African Americans since their 1619 arrival in Jamestown, VA. She became the first black female artist to receive a federal commission for her work.
In 1910, just three years later a warehouse fire in Philadelphia destroyed 16 years worth of her artwork. Despite this devastating loss Meta continued creating and turned her sights to art that celebrated African and African American strength of spirit, historical struggle and heritage. Her work depicted the suffering and joys of the human condition. She did not shy away from uncomfortable subject matter. Around 1914 she created one of her most famous pieces, Ethiopia Awakening (Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York Public Library.) This sculpture symbolized several things; the African American lineage to North Africa, the bourgeoning of African American culture in mainstream society, and the call for African Americans to recognize the intellectual and spiritual influence that Africa could have on their ongoing formation in racist America. Meta was one of the first female artists to encourage art with afro-centric themes, art that did not cater to white ideals. There were many factors influencing Fuller’s art including African American philosophers and educators such as Alain Locke and W.E.B. Dubois.
In 1937 Fuller created Talking Skull, (Museum of Afro-American History, Boston, MA) a powerful sculpture of a man kneeling on a corpse in apparent conversation with a skull. Other Fuller sculptures worth seeing are Silence and Repose, and Sorrow (private galleries.)
Fuller was also an accomplished painter. During the Civil Rights Movement she painted pieces to honor the men who walked with Dr. MLK across the Edmund Pettus Bridge on March 9 (The Good Shepherd) and when the four little black girls died in the bombing of Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Alabama Fuller painted The Crucifixion.
She died on March 18, 1968 at 90 years old. She was a wife to Dr. Solomon Fuller, a West African immigrant, and a mother of three.
Learn more about Meta Fuller online at The University of the Arts Library http://library.uarts.edu/archives/alumni/warrickfuller.html
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