John Lewis

Next Saturday will mark the 50th anniversary of the "Bloody Sunday" March from Selma to Montgomery. Hundreds of civil rights activists, led by John Lewis of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and Reverand Hosea Williams of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), attempted to march 54 miles from Selma to Montgomery, the Alabama state capital, to ask the state government to allow blacks the right to vote.

Today, Lewis votes as a congressman on the floor of the United States House of Representatives. 

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In 1940, John Lewis was born in rural Alabama to parents who were sharecroppers, a post-slavery form of forced bondage. Growing up, Lewis had very little contact with white people but he did know that there were two different worlds in the South: white and black. After graduating from high school, Lewis decided that he wanted to attend college.

By this time, the Montgomery Bus Boycott had already taken place and Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. was a household name associated with civil rights. Lewis wrote to King, informing him that he wanted to attend Troy College but had not heard back from the school, most likely because he was black. By the time King received this letter, Lewis had already started at another school in Nashville, but it put him in touch with King. 

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As a student, Lewis became involved in civil rights efforts. He attended workshops in non-violent behavior in the face of violence and he began to organize sit-ins at Nashville lunch counters in order to desegregate them. From these sit-ins, he moved on to the SNCC Freedom Ride of 1961, in which he and other students rode interstate buses to force desegregation. In 1963, Lewis was elected chairman of SNCC. 

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That same year, Lewis helped to plan the March on Washington and was a keynote speaker, despite his youth. Today, he is the only speaker from the march who is still alive. 

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Between 1961 and 1964, SNCC attempted to register black voters in the rural South but struggled against extreme violence. This led to the Freedom Summer of 1964, an effort to draw national attention to the situation in the South. Even with a number of white students coming to the South to help with voter registration, SNCC struggled with their goal due to violence and Jim Crow laws. To help, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the SCLC came in 1965 to draw more national attention to the issue. 

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In his lifetime, Lewis has been arrested 45 times: 40 as a civil rights activist and five while he has been a US congressman. Most recently, Congressman Lewis has said that if nothing is done to reform immigration policy, he expects to be arrested again.

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Since the end of the 1960s-era Civil Rights Movement, Lewis has continued the principles of non-violence and is a champion for voter registration, education and volunteer work. In 1977, he was appointed by President Jimmy Carter to head the federal volunteer agency ACTION, which at the time managed VISTA, Volunteers in Service to America.

In 1986, he was elected to represent Georgia's Fifth Congressional District in the US Congress and is still serving today.

In 2011, Lewis received a phone call. The first African American president, Barack Obama, told Lewis that he was to be awarded the highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, for his work in the Civil Rights Movement.

Photo: cleveland.com

Congressman John Lewis is a living legend and true American hero. I was deeply honored to meet him last week when he spoke in Washington, DC about his new book, March: Book Two. When he signed my book, he shook my hand and I managed to tell him what an honor it was to meet him. He in turn thanked me for my service with AmeriCorps.

Malcolm X

This past Saturday marked the 50th anniversary of the assassination of El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, better known as Malcolm X. He was a leader of the controversial religious movement Nation of Islam, a human rights activist and founder of Muslim Mosque, Inc.

Photo: malcolmx.com

In 1925, Malcolm Little was born in Omaha, Nebraska. Due to threats of violence from the Ku Klux Klan, the Little family moved away to Michigan where the Black Legion, another white racist group, harassed the family and burned their house. In 1931, Little's father was killed in what was ruled as a streetcar accident, but his mother believed her husband was murdered by the Black Legion. In 1938, his mother had a mental breakdown and was placed in the Kalamazoo State Hospital. Malcolm and his siblings were placed in foster care.

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Malcolm attended a white high school where he was the only black student. He excelled in his studies, but he later described his experience as feeling like the class pet. When he was 14, his English teacher asked him what he wanted to do after school and he said he wanted to be a lawyer. His teacher told him that he needed to be realistic and suggested he pursue carpentry instead. This teacher's comment, combined with his troubled childhood, became a turning point and he dropped out of school. 

 

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Little was arrested in 1946 for larceny and sentenced to ten years in prison. While in prison, he was introduced to a small African American sect of Islam. The Nation of Islam was founded in 1930 by Wallace D. Fard Muhammad and its goal was to improve the lives of African Americans, especially economically. By the time of his parole in 1952, Malcolm had converted to NOI and had changed his last name to "X" because he felt "Little" was a slave name. 

 

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Malcolm X became a leader in the church and is credited with attracting thousands of new followers. Eventually, though, he became disillusioned with the Nation of Islam because he felt the actions of Elijah Muhammed, the leader of the group, went against the beliefs of their religion. In 1964, Malcolm X left the Nation of Islam and went on a pilgrimage to Mecca. While on his trip, he experienced a number of different cultures, became amenable to integration and converted to Sunni Islam.
 

Photo: nofi.fr

On February 20, 1965, three gunmen rushed the New York City stage where Malcolm X was speaking and shot and killed him. All three of the assassins were members of the Nation of Islam. Today, Malcolm X is viewed as one of the most influential figures in American history.

 
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"Power in defense of freedom is greater than power on behalf of tyranny and oppression, because power, real power, comes from our conviction which produces action, uncompromising action." -Malcolm X

Pullman National Monument

Thursday, President Obama created Chicago's first National Park unit: Pullman National Monument. While it is named after George Pullman, it will honor and interpret the history of the people who lived in the district. 

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George Pullman was an engineer known for designing the sleeping car, a train car with beds to accommodate sleeping passengers. He is also known for founding a company town for the workers who built the train cars. In addition, Pullman hired African Americans as porters and maids on the trains and they became known for the elite service they provided. 

Photo: pullman-museum.org

In 1893, America experienced an economic downturn, commonly known as the Panic of 1893. This hurt Pullman's business and the next year he lowered the wages of his employees without lowering the price of rent or other goods sold in his company town. This sparked a strike started by employees of Pullman and eventually spread across the country to disrupt train service. The strike turned violent and the Army was called in to suppress it. 

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By the 1920s, the Pullman company employed a large number of African Americans and paid them well enough that they were considered middle class within their own community. However, porters depended on tips from the white train passengers to make up most of their income and could not be promoted to conductor. While they could ride the rides on their days off at half price, they were prohibited from riding in a Pullman car. In 1925, many Pullman Porters met and decided to organize, with a leader who was not employed by the company. That night, the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters was born, the first predominantly African American labor union, led by union organizer and civil rights pioneer A. Philip Randolph.

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"This site is at the heart of what would become America's labor movement and as a consequence at the heart of what would become America's middle class," said President Obama when he created the Pullman National Monument. 

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Thurgood Marshall

In 1967, in the midst of the Civil Rights Movement and a year before the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the first African American was nominated to the Supreme Court. Thurgood Marshall, grandson of a slave, rejected from the University of Maryland Law School because of his skin color and a trailblazing civil rights lawyer, made history when President Lyndon Johnson nominated him to the highest court in the land. 

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Marshall was born in 1908 in Baltimore, Maryland and from a young age he was taught to value the US Constitution. In 1925, he and his brother attended a historically black school of higher education, Lincoln University, alongside the poet Langston Hughes and band leader Cab Calloway. When Marshall was denied entry to the University of Maryland Law School, he began to use the Constitution as his legal tool; that rejection helped shape his future career as a civil rights lawyer. 

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Marshall attended the Howard University Law School in Washington, DC under the tutelage of Charles Hamilton Houston. Houston, the dean of the school, focused on applying the Constitution to all Americans and argued against the unconstitutionality of Plessy v Ferguson, which enforced segregation through the doctrine of "separate but equal". Three years after his rejection from the University of Maryland, Marshall successfully sued that school when it refused to admit African America Donald Gaines Murray. 

Photo: americanhistory.si.edu

(From left to right, Marshall, Murray, Houston)

After law school, Marshall became Chief Counsel to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). In this position, he helped the United Nations and the United Kingdom draft conditions for the new African countries of Ghana and present day Tanzania. When Brown v Board of Education came before the Supreme Court, Marshall was the lawyer for the plaintiffs, all of whom were supported by the NAACP. During the case, Marshall stated: 

"It follows that with education, this Court has made segregation and inequality equivalent concepts. They have equal rating, equal footing, and if segregation thus necessarily imports inequality, it makes no great difference whether we say that the Negro is wronged because he is segregated, or that he is wronged because he received unequal treatment.."

The Supreme Court ruled in favor of the plaintiffs, a ruling that is considered to be one of the most important and impactful in history. Separate was NOT equal. 

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When he was named a Supreme Court Justice, Marshall continued his efforts to support equal justice under the law for all Americans, not only for African Americans, but everyone -- women, children, prisoners and the homeless. 

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Nelson Mandela

What do you think of when you hear the name Nelson Mandela? He is a hugely influential figure in history for his civil rights work in South Africa and an example for the rest of the world.

Mandela was born in 1918 to a father who was the principal counsellor to the Acting King of the Thembu people. When his father died in 1930, Mandela became a ward and was brought up by the elders who regaled him with stories of his ancestors during the wars of resistance. 

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Mandela, whose given name was Rolihlahla, received the name "Nelson" when he went to school because all children were given Christian names. He attended the University College of Fort Hare for a Bachelor of Arts but did not complete his degree because he was expelled for joining a student protest. 

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In 1944, Mandela helped found the African National Congress Youth League, an offshoot of the African National Congress. When the Youth League gained control of the ANC by the late 1940s, its members called for civil disobedience and strikes to protest apartheid laws in South Africa. In 1952, Mandela became the Volunteer in Chief of the Defiance Campaign, which aimed civil disobedience actions at six unjust laws. 

Photo: sahistory.org.za

In 1955, Mandela was arrested and tried during the Treason Trial. More than 100 people were tried in this six year trial; ultimately they were all found not guilty. Mandela planned to write to the Prime Minister to request a national convention on a non-racial constitution while the trial was still in progress. 

Photo: sahistory.org.za

When the trial was over, the anti-apartheid movement began to become violent and Mandela helped to establish and lead the group "Spear of the Nation." The militarization of the movement came about because of the Sharpeville Massacre in 1960 and the realization that the ANC could no longer limit itself to nonviolence. 

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After leaving the country in 1962 to seek international support, Mandela was arrested again for leaving without permission and inciting a strike. He was sentenced and convicted to five years of prison. In 1963, he was put on trial again for sabotage. He gave a speech during the trial in 1964 which became known as the "Speech from the Dock", and his words became famous:

"I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if it needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die."

Mandela was sentenced to life in prison. 

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February 11, 1990, Mandela was released from prison and he began talks to negotiate an end to white minority rule. For his work, he won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993. The following year he voted for the first time and became the first democratically elected president of South Africa. He served only one term.

Mandela died in 2013 but his memory will live on as an inspiration to all who are oppressed, deprived of liberty and indomitable in their dedication to democracy. 

Photo: Hilary Grabowska

Black Astronauts

Yesterday, as a part of Black History Month events, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden spoke about his experiences growing up in the segregated South and his journey to become the first African American Administrator of NASA. While Bolden has achieved much in his life and is a promoter of diversity in the workplace, he was not the first African American to go into space. 

 
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Guion Bluford was born in Philadelphia in 1942. He remained in Philly until he went to college at Penn State, where he studied aerospace engineering. In addition to the B.S., he received an M.S. and a Ph.D. in aerospace engineering. Bluford also became a pilot for the Air Force and flew 64 of 144 combat missions over North Vietnam. 

 
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In 1979, NASA selected Bluford from a pool of candidates to become an astronaut. On August 30, 1983, he became the first African American to fly in space. Not only was his participation as a black man momentous, but it was also the first night launch for the Challenger. When asked about the event later, Bluford said he was surprised that people had showed up to watch: it was at 1:00 a.m. and it was raining. 

 
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When Bluford went up for the first time, he had not expected to be the first African American in space. Fred Gregory and Rob McNair were other African Americans in the NASA program who could have gone up first. As he has stated, "The No. 2 guy would probably be a lot more fun." Either way, Bluford made his first space mission fun because when the crew listened to the audio of the ascent, they  realized that Bluford laughed during the entire launch
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Bluford's last mission took place on December 2, 1992. With this last mission, Bluford had logged 688 hours (28 days, 16 hours and 33 minutes) in space. As Bluford later said, he "wanted to set the standard, do the best job possible so that other people would be comfortable with African-Americans flying in space, and African-Americans would be proud of being participants in the space program and encourage others to do the same."
Photo: jsc.nasa.gov

Rosa Parks

102 years ago, Rosa McCauley was born in Tuskeegee, Alabama. At that time, Jim Crow reigned supreme in the South: blacks could not vote, there were separate bathrooms for the different "races" and the economic distance between blacks and whites was vast. Within her lifetime, Rosa would see blacks gain the right to vote, the military integrated and "separate but equal" be ruled as unconstitutional. 

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Rosa McCauley, better known as Rosa Parks, was born on February 4, 1913 to a teacher and a carpenter. She grew up with her mother and grandparents on a farm outside of Montgomery where she would stay up with her grandfather, who would guard against roving bands of the Ku Klux Klan. It was when she went to school that Rosa began to see that there were two different worlds in the South: the white world where students rode a bus to school and the black world where students had to walk to school. 

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In 1932, Rosa married Raymond Parks, the love of her life. When they married, he was working for the NAACP, raising money for the Scottsboro Nine trial. Two years later, Rosa joined the NAACP as well and was elected secretary. This began her involvement in the Civil Rights Movement and prepared her for the momentous arrest for refusing to give up her seat on a Montgomery bus. 

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The Montgomery Bus incident and subsequent bus boycott launched Rosa to prominence but this resulted in trying times for her and her husband. She lost her job and her husband quit his when his boss forbade him from talking about his wife and her arrest. In 1957, she and Raymond moved north, first to Hampton, Virginia and then to Detroit. 

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Even when the Civil Right Movement of the 1960s came to an end, Parks continued to fight for civil rights. She focused on housing issues in Detroit as well as access to education. In 1977, Raymond Parks died. They never had children and Rosa never remarried. 

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October 24, 2005, at the age of 92, Rosa Parks died. Detroit and Montgomery honored her by draping in black the front seats of all city buses. Her body lay in state in the US Capitol, the first woman so honored, before returning to Detroit where she was buried beside her husband. Prior to her death, Rosa Parks placed a headstone on her future resting place with the inscription "Rosa L. Parks, wife, 1913-"

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Black History Month

February is a time to examine and acknowledge African American achievements. Despite the brevity of American history, it is extremely rich, complex and full of a variety of cultures. Carter G. Woodson, one of the first scholars to study African American history, is considered the father of Black History Month.
 
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In 1926, after noting that much of African American culture and history was being overlooked due to racial prejudice, Woodson established the second week of February as Negro History Week. He chose this week because it included the birthdays of Abraham Lincoln and renowned abolitionist Frederick Douglass. 

 
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Between 1926 and the 1960s, the popularity of Negro History Week grew and spread across the country and morphed into Black History Month on college campuses. But this recognition was not official until President Gerald Ford officially recognized it in 1976. Ford started the tradition that each year, the president would officially recognize the month of February as Black History Month. 

 
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While Black History Month is meant to be a time to focus on the history of a people often overlooked, it is also a time to realize that African American history is American history. The first Africans arrived in 1619 to Jamestown on an English warship. While this was 12 years after the establishment of Jamestown, African American history continued up until the present day right alongside white American history. However, as Woodson noticed, much of African American history still is overlooked because of racial prejudice. The need for the awareness and education that Black History Month brings will continue until racial prejudice ends.


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