Thursday, August 21, 2008 |
Dr. Shirley A. Jackson (1946-) is a physicist and president of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, the nation’s oldest technological university.
Born to Beatrice and George Jackson in Washington, D.C., Jackson developed a passion for science at the age of 8, spurred by her father’s assistance with projects for her science classes. She joined the accelerated programs for math and science and graduated valedictorian from segregated Roosevelt High School in 1964. Later that year, she became one of the first black students to be accepted at MIT and the only one studying theoretical physics.
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Thursday, August 14, 2008 |
Allen Allensworth (1842-1914) was once the highest ranking black officer in American history and founded the all-black town of Allensworth, California.
Born to slave parents in Louisville, Kentucky, Allensworth educated himself illegally and escaped from slavery at twenty by joining the army. During the Civil War, he was a civilian nurse in Nashville. A year later, he had joined the Navy serving on a gunboat in the Ohio River. By 1865, he had become a chief petty officer and then returned to Louisville, where he converted to the Baptist faith and joined the Fifth Street Church.
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Thursday, August 7, 2008 |
Dr. Benjamin E. Mays (1894-1984) was a teacher, preacher and one of the most outspoken critics of segregation prior to the modern Civil Rights Movement.
Born in Epworth, South Carolina, on August 1, 1894, Mays was the youngest of eight to former slaves. His childhood played an important role in shaping who he would become, and one of his earliest memories included a white mob approaching his family’s home on horseback forcing his father to remove his hat and bow repeatedly. The atmosphere of hate and segregation that plagued the country at that time became the defining period of his life. It was then that he realized he wanted something better for his life and for others around him.
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Thursday, July 31, 2008 |
Lena Baker (1901-1945) was a maid and the only woman ever put to death in Georgia’s electric chair.
Baker was born to a poor family of sharecroppers, and as a child, she and her family chopped cotton for a farmer named J.A. Cox. At the age of 20, she and a friend decided to make money by entertaining gentlemen. Their clientele were white, and since interracial relationships were illegal at that time, this sparked attention from the Randolph County sheriff. While prostitution was illegal, the authorities would have likely ignored it had Baker’s clients been exclusively black. She and her friend were arrested and spent several months in a workhouse. Upon release, Baker was ostracized by the community, which lead her to become an alcoholic.
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Thursday, July 24, 2008 |
Maria Fearing (1838-1937) was a teacher, missionary and former slave.
Born to Mary and Jesse on William O. Winston’s Oak Hill Plantation, near Gainesville, Alabama, on July 26, 1838, she spent much of her time with her mistress and the other children. Amanda Winston taught her children and Maria the Presbyterian catechism, told them Bible stories and tales about missionaries in Africa.
After emancipation, Jesse and his family took the surname of a previous owner, Fearing, and Maria learned how to read and write at the age of thirty-three. She worked her way through the Freedman’s Bureau School in Talladega to become a teacher and taught for a number of years in the rural schools of Calhoun County.
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Thursday, July 17, 2008 |
E. Frederic Morrow (1906-1994) was the first black person to hold an executive position at the White House and the first black corporate executive.
Born April 20, 1909, in Hackensack, New Jersey, Morrow was a minister’s son who graduated from Bowdoin College in 1930. Following graduation, he worked for the National Urban League and the NAACP as a field secretary before entering Army service during World War II. After the war, Morrow obtained a law degree from Rutgers University and worked for the public affairs division at the Columbia Broadcasting System. In 1952, Morrow served as an administrative aide and adviser to President Dwight D. Eisenhower on his campaign trail. He was an adviser on business affairs in the Commerce Department when the President appointed him Administrative Officer for Special Projects in 1955. Continue Reading »
Thursday, July 10, 2008 |
Mary Ellen Pleasant (1814-1904) was an abolitionist, businesswoman and entrepreneur during the Gold Rush.
Born the illegitimate daughter of an enslaved voodoo priestess and a Virginia governor’s son on August 19, 1814, near Augusta, Georgia, Mary had no last name. She witnessed a plantation overseer murder her mother and was sold at the age of nine and sent to work as a linen worker at the Ursuline Convent in New Orleans.
Following her service there, she worked as a free servant to Louis Alexander Williams, a Cincinnati merchant. He promised that after she served for some time, she would be freed. However, Williams, in debt and jealous of his wife Ellen’s affection for Mary, placed her in nine years of indenture with an aging Quaker merchant known as Grandma Hussey in Nantucket, Massachusetts. Indentured servants could be of any race, and Mary was told not to reveal her race since she could pass for white. She also adopted Ellen Williams’ name, becoming Mary Ellen Williams.
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