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blackkudos · 5 years ago

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A. Philip Randolph

Asa Philip Randolph (April 15, 1889 – May 16, 1979) was an American labor unionist, civil rights activist, and socialist politician.

In 1925, he organized and led the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, the first predominantly African-American labor union. In the early Civil Rights Movement and the Labor Movement, Randolph was a voice that would not be silenced. His continuous agitation with the support of fellow labor rights activists against unfair labor practices in relation to people of color eventually led President Franklin D. Roosevelt to issue Executive Order 8802 in 1941, banning discrimination in the defense industries during World War II. The group then successfully pressured President Harry S. Truman to issue Executive Order 9981 in 1948, ending segregation in the armed services.

In 1963, Randolph was the head of the March on Washington, which was organized by Bayard Rustin, at which Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his "I Have A Dream" speech. Randolph inspired the "Freedom Budget", sometimes called the "Randolph Freedom budget", which aimed to deal with the economic problems facing the black community, it was published by the Randolph Institute in January 1967 as "A Freedom Budget for All Americans".

Early life and education

Randolph was born April 15, 1889, in Crescent City, Florida, the second son of the Rev. James William Randolph, a tailor and minister in an African Methodist Episcopal Church, and Elizabeth Robinson Randolph, a skilled seamstress. In 1891, the family moved to Jacksonville, Florida, which had a thriving, well-established African-American community.

From his father, Randolph learned that color was less important than a person's character and conduct. From his mother, he learned the importance of education and of defending oneself physically against those who would seek to hurt one or one's family, if necessary. Randolph remembered vividly the night his mother sat in the front room of their house with a loaded shotgun across her lap, while his father tucked a pistol under his coat and went off to prevent a mob from lynching a man at the local county jail.

Asa and his brother, James, were superior students. They attended the Cookman Institute in East Jacksonville, the only academic high school in Florida for African Americans. Asa excelled in literature, drama, and public speaking; he also starred on the school's baseball team, sang solos with the school choir, and was valedictorian of the 1907 graduating class.

After graduation, Randolph worked odd jobs and devoted his time to singing, acting, and reading. Reading W. E. B. Du Bois' The Souls of Black Folk convinced him that the fight for social equality was most important. Barred by discrimination from all but manual jobs in the South, Randolph moved to New York City in 1911, where he worked at odd jobs and took social sciences courses at City College.

Marriage and family

In 1913 Randolph courted and married Mrs. Lucille Campbell Green, a widow, Howard University graduate, and entrepreneur who shared his socialist politics. She earned enough money to support them both. The couple had no children.

Early career

Shortly after Randolph's marriage, he helped organize the Shakespearean Society in Harlem. With them he played the roles of Hamlet, Othello, and Romeo, among others. Randolph aimed to become an actor but gave up after failing to win his parents' approval.

In New York, Randolph became familiar with socialism and the ideologies espoused by the Industrial Workers of the World. He met Columbia University Law student Chandler Owen, and the two developed a synthesis of Marxist economics and the sociological ideas of Lester Frank Ward, arguing that people could only be free if not subject to economic deprivation. At this point, Randolph developed what would become his distinctive form of civil rights activism, which emphasized the importance of collective action as a way for black people to gain legal and economic equality. To this end, he and Owen opened an employment office in Harlem to provide job training for southern migrants and encourage them to join trade unions.

Like others in the labor movement, Randolph favored immigration restriction. He opposed African Americans' having to compete with people willing to work for low wages. Unlike other immigration restrictionists, however, he rejected the notions of racial hierarchy that became popular in the 1920s.

In 1917, Randolph and Chandler Owen founded The Messenger with the help of the Socialist Party of America. It was a radical monthly magazine, which campaigned against lynching, opposed U.S. participation in World War I, urged African Americans to resist being drafted, to fight for an integrated society, and urged them to join radical unions. The Department of Justice called The Messenger "the most able and the most dangerous of all the Negro publications." When The Messenger began publishing the work of black poets and authors, a critic called it "one of the most brilliantly edited magazines in the history of Negro journalism."

Soon thereafter, however, the editorial staff of The Messenger became divided by three issues – the growing rift between West Indian and African Americans, support for the Bolshevik revolution, and support for Marcus Garvey's Back-to-Africa movement. In 1919, most West Indian radicals joined the new Communist Party, while African-American leftists – Randolph included – mostly supported the Socialist Party. The infighting left The Messenger short of financial support, and it went into decline.

Randolph ran on the Socialist Party ticket for New York State Comptroller in 1920, and for Secretary of State of New York in 1922, unsuccessfully.

Union organizer

Randolph's first experience with labor organization came in 1917, when he organized a union of elevator operators in New York City. In 1919 he became president of the National Brotherhood of Workers of America, a union which organized among African-American shipyard and dock workers in the Tidewater region of Virginia. The union dissolved in 1921, under pressure from the American Federation of Labor.

His greatest success came with the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, who elected him President in 1925. This was the first serious effort to form a labor institution for employees of the Pullman Company, which was a major employer of African Americans. The railroads had expanded dramatically in the early 20th century, and the jobs offered relatively good employment at a time of widespread racial discrimination. Because porters were not unionized, however, most suffered poor working conditions and were underpaid.

Under Randolph's direction, the BSCP managed to enroll 51 percent of porters within a year, to which Pullman responded with violence and firings. In 1928, after failing to win mediation under the Watson-Parker Railway Labor Act, Randolph planned a strike. This was postponed after rumors circulated that Pullman had 5,000 replacement workers ready to take the place of BSCP members. As a result of its perceived ineffectiveness membership of the union declined; by 1933 it had only 658 members and electricity and telephone service at headquarters had been disconnected because of nonpayment of bills.

Fortunes of the BSCP changed with the election of President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1932. With amendments to the Railway Labor Act in 1934, porters were granted rights under federal law. Membership in the Brotherhood jumped to more than 7,000. After years of bitter struggle, the Pullman Company finally began to negotiate with the Brotherhood in 1935, and agreed to a contract with them in 1937. Employees gained $2,000,000 in pay increases, a shorter workweek, and overtime pay. Randolph maintained the Brotherhood's affiliation with the American Federation of Labor through the 1955 AFL-CIO merger.

Civil rights leader

Through his success with the BSCP, Randolph emerged as one of the most visible spokespeople for African-American civil rights. In 1941, he, Bayard Rustin, and A. J. Muste proposed a march on Washington to protest racial discrimination in war industries, an end to segregation, access to defense employment, the proposal of an anti-lynching law and of the desegregation of the American Armed forces. Randolph's belief in the power of peaceful direct action was inspired partly by Mahatma Gandhi's success in using such tactics against British occupation in India. Randolph threatened to have 50,000 blacks march on the city; it was cancelled after President of the United States Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 8802, or the Fair Employment Act. Some activists, including Rustin, felt betrayed because Roosevelt's order applied only to banning discrimination within war industries and not the armed forces. Nonetheless, the Fair Employment Act is generally considered an important early civil rights victory.

And the movement continued to gain momentum. In 1942, an estimated 18,000 blacks gathered at Madison Square Garden to hear Randolph kick off a campaign against discrimination in the military, in war industries, in government agencies, and in labor unions. Following passage of the Act, during the Philadelphia transit strike of 1944, the government backed African-American workers' striking to gain positions formerly limited to white employees.

Buoyed by these successes, Randolph and other activists continued to press for the rights of African Americans. In 1947, Randolph, along with colleague Grant Reynolds, renewed efforts to end discrimination in the armed services, forming the Committee Against Jim Crow in Military Service, later renamed the League for Non-Violent Civil disobedience. When President Truman asked Congress for a peacetime draft law, Randolph urged young black men to refuse to register. Since Truman was vulnerable to defeat in 1948 and needed the support of the growing black population in northern states, he eventually capitulated. On July 26, 1948, President Harry S. Truman abolished racial segregation in the armed forces through Executive Order 9981.

In 1950, along with Roy Wilkins, Executive Secretary of the NAACP, and, Arnold Aronson, a leader of the National Jewish Community Relations Advisory Council, Randolph founded the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights (LCCR). LCCR has been a major civil rights coalition. It coordinated a national legislative campaign on behalf of every major civil rights law since 1957.

Randolph and Rustin also formed an important alliance with Martin Luther King, Jr. In 1957, when schools in the south resisted school integration following Brown v. Board of Education, Randolph organized the Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom with Martin Luther King, Jr. In 1958 and 1959, Randolph organized Youth Marches for Integrated Schools in Washington, DC. At the same time, he arranged for Rustin to teach King how to organize peaceful demonstrations in Alabama and to form alliances with progressive whites. The protests directed by James Bevel in cities such as Birmingham and Montgomery provoked a violent backlash by police and the local Ku Klux Klan throughout the summer of 1963, which was captured on television and broadcast throughout the nation and the world. Rustin later remarked that Birmingham "was one of television's finest hours. Evening after evening, television brought into the living-rooms of America the violence, brutality, stupidity, and ugliness of {police commissioner} Eugene "Bull" Connor's effort to maintain racial segregation." Partly as a result of the violent spectacle in Birmingham, which was becoming an international embarrassment, the Kennedy administration drafted civil rights legislation aimed at ending Jim Crow once and for all.

Randolph finally realized his vision for a March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom on August 28, 1963, which attracted between 200,000–300,000 to the nation's capital. The rally is often remembered as the high-point of the Civil Rights Movement, and it did help keep the issue in the public consciousness. However, when President Kennedy was assassinated three months later, Civil Rights legislation was stalled in the Senate. It was not until the following year, under President Lyndon B. Johnson, that the Civil Rights Act was finally passed. In 1965, the Voting Rights Act was passed. Although King and Bevel rightly deserve great credit for these legislative victories, the importance of Randolph's contributions to the Civil Rights Movement is large.

Religion

Randolph avoided speaking publicly about his religious beliefs to avoid alienating his diverse constituencies. Though he is sometimes identified as an atheist, particularly by his detractors, Randolph identified with the African Methodist Episcopal Church he was raised in. He pioneered the use of prayer protests, which became a key tactic of the civil rights movement. In 1973, he signed the Humanist Manifesto II.

Death

Randolph died in his Manhattan apartment on May 16, 1979. For several years prior to his death, he had a heart condition and high blood pressure. He had no known living relatives, as his wife had died in 1963, before the March on Washington.

Awards and accolades

In 1942, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People awarded Randolph the Spingarn Medal.

In 1953, the IBPOEW (Black Elks) awarded him their Elijah P. Lovejoy Medal, given "to that American who shall have worked most successfully to advance the cause of human rights, and for the freedom of Negro people."

On September 14, 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson presented Randolph with the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

In 1967 awarded the Eugene V. Debs Award

In 1967 awarded the Pacem in Terris Peace and Freedom Award. It was named after a 1963 encyclical letter by Pope John XXIII that calls upon all people of good will to secure peace among all nations.

Named Humanist of the Year in 1970 by the American Humanist Association.

Named to the Florida Civil Rights Hall of Fame in January 2014.

Legacy

Randolph had a significant impact on the Civil Rights Movement from the 1930s onward. The Montgomery Bus Boycott in Alabama was directed by E.D. Nixon, who had been a member of the BSCP and was influenced by Randolph's methods of nonviolent confrontation. Nationwide, the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s and 1960s used tactics pioneered by Randolph, such as encouraging African Americans to vote as a bloc, mass voter registration, and training activists for nonviolent direct action.

In buildings, streets, and trains

Amtrak named one of their best sleeping cars, Superliner II Deluxe Sleeper 32503, the "A. Philip Randolph" in his honor.

A. Philip Randolph Academies of Technology, in Jacksonville, FL, is named in his honor.

A. Phillip Randolph Boulevard in Jacksonville, Florida, formerly named Florida Avenue, was renamed in A. Phillip Randolph's honor. It is located on Jacksonville's east side, near EverBank Field.

A. Philip Randolph Campus High School (New York City High School 540), located on the City College of New York campus, is named in honor of Randolph. The school serves students predominantly from Harlem and surrounding neighborhoods.

The A. Philip Randolph Career Academy in Philadelphia, Pa was named in his honor.

The A. Philip Randolph Career and Technician Center in Detroit, MI is named in his honor.

The A. Philip Randolph Institute is named in his honor.

PS 76 A. Philip Randolph in New York City, NY is named in his honor

A. Philip Randolph Pullman Porter Museum is in Chicago's Pullman Historic District.

Edward Waters College in Jacksonville, Florida houses a permanent exhibit on the life and accomplishments of A. Philip Randolph.

Randolph Street, in Crescent City, Florida, was dedicated to him.

A. Philip Randolph Library, at Borough of Manhattan Community College

A. Philip Randolph Square park in Central Harlem was renamed to honor A. Philip Randolph in 1964 by the City Council, under a local law introduced by Council Member J. Raymond Jones and signed by Mayor John V. Lindsay. In 1981, a group of loosely organized residents began acting as stewards of the park, during the dark days of abandonment and disinvestment in Central Harlem. By 2010 that group, now the Friends of A. Philip Randolph Square--founded by Gregory C. Baggett, who named longterm residents Ms. Gloria Wright; Ms. Ivy Walker; and Mr. Cleveland Manley, as Trustee of the park--would be formally incorporated to provide better stewardship and programming at a time when the neighborhood would be undergoing rapid growth and diversification. In 2018, the Friends of A. Philip Randolph Square would further expand the scope of its work beyond stewardship over the park to prepare a major revitalization plan "to improve conditions in the park and the neighborhood around the park" operating under a new entity, the A. Philip Randolph Neighborhood Development Alliance that seeks to obtain broad neighborhood and community representation for its revitalization plan based on building the personal and collective assets within the neighborhood.

Arts, entertainment, and media

+ 1994 Documentary A. Philip Randolph: For Jobs and Freedom, PBS

In 2002, scholar Molefi Kete Asante listed A. Philip Randolph on his list of 100 Greatest African Americans.

The story of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters was made into the 2002 Robert Townsend film 10,000 Black Men Named George starring Andre Braugher as A. Philip Randolph. The title refers to the demeaning custom of the time when Pullman porters, all of whom were black, were just addressed as "George".

A statue of A. Philip Randolph was erected in his honor in the concourse of Union Station in Washington, D.C..

In 1986 a nine-foot bronze statue of Randolph by Tina Allen was erected in Boston's Back Bay commuter train station.

On February 3, 1989, the United States Postal Service issued a 25-cent postage stamp in Randolph's honor.

Other

James L. Farmer, Jr., co-founder of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), cited Randolph as one of his primary influences as a Civil Rights leader.

Randolph is a member of the Labor Hall of Fame.

#04/15 #05/16

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steamedtangerine · 5 years ago

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‘Stride Toward Freedom” by Martin Luther King Jr. published 1958

The release of this book was far from being without incident....the most famous being that a mentally ill woman, named Izola Curry-who had growing delusions of paranoia-mostly directed against the NAACP-approached King at a book-signing in Harlem and stabbed him.

According to wiki: King went on a tour to promote his book, Stride Toward Freedom, soon after it was published. During a book signing at Blumstein's department store in Harlem, on September 20, 1958, Curry approached and asked him if he was Martin Luther King, Jr. When King replied in the affirmative, Curry stabbed him in the chest with a steel letter opener.

Careful surgery was required to remove the blade. King wrote in his posthumously published autobiography that he was told that the razor tip of the instrument had been touching my aorta and that my whole chest had to be opened to extract it. 'If you had sneezed during all those hours of waiting,' Dr. Maynard said, 'your aorta would have been punctured and you would have drowned in your own blood.'

While he was still in the hospital, on September 30, King issued a press release in which he reaffirmed his belief in "the redemptive power of nonviolence" and issued a hopeful statement about his attacker: "I felt no ill will toward Mrs. Izola Currey [sic] and know that thoughtful people will do all in their power to see that she gets the help she apparently needs if she is to become a free and constructive member of society." He issued a similar statement on his return home, again stating that he hoped she would get help, and that society would improve so that "a disorganized personality need not become a menace to any man."

On October 17, after hearing King's testimony, a grand jury indicted Curry for attempted murder. At the time of her attack on King, Curry was also carrying a loaded Galesi-Brescia pistol, hidden inside her bra.

I find it crucial here to say now (more than ever-and do pardon my sermon here):

Like so many who have forgiven their attackers: popes, Gandhi, Rosa Parks, the Amish community of Nickel Mines, Robert Rule (father of Green River Killer victim), Tiana Carruthers (first shooting victim of Kalamazoo, MI spree killer Jason “MAGA” Dalton https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/2016/04/14/kalamazoo-shooting-tiana-carruthers/83043798/), the family members and friends of the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, SC (that was targeted by 21 yo. white supremacist Dylann Roof), Ann Arbor resident Keshia Thomas, Theresa Bond (daughter of victim of once-prominent South Boston gangster James “Whitey” Bulger), and so many others of various crimes and senseless attacks and events resulting of gross negligence across this globe, one will never see an act so removed from reflex-based conformist thinking than forgiveness. It is a thing rarely encouraged in TV, films, or popular media saturated with themes of violence and vengeance laden with climatic scenes of the “hero” making a pithy quip before “offing” the bad guy.

The very act of forgiveness just feels so wrong-so awkward and uncharted. It doesn’t make you seem funny or strong....but it requires a different kind of strength-the strength to be vulnerable and to restrain a poison instilled in you that wants to take you over and consume you.

Search and you will come to the proper deduction that there is definitely some potent shadow that remains like some indelible and almost imperceptible pearl only when you set aside the white noise of the culture we’ve been conditioned to accept all around us.

Now we have a right to be angry at an injustice done to us. We have a right to speak out strongly against it and hope to alter the surrounding circumstances that keep creating such similar injustices.

You are under no requirement to continue any interaction with anyone who has hurt you----you are also well in your right to warn others of the behavior of someone still living an unchecked life of victimizing...

....Yet, if we hope to rise above the ones who hurt us, if we even hope to create a miracle---a very profound and sublime miracle of healing in a way that transcends beyond the way the physical body can be healed and can actually create subtle reverberations in our culture-then we must get acquainted with what has now become the incomprehensibly alien notion of forgiveness and the ability to forgive our enemies (for they do exist)-even if just from a distance.

#hope #top tier

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auskultu · 7 years ago

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PRAYERS FOR RACIAL PEACE LED BY PRESIDENT

Will Lissner, The New York Times, 31 July 1967

In their homes and in churches and synagogues, Americans responded to the President’s call and observed a day of prayer for civil and racial peace yesterday.

President Johnson, with Mrs. Johnson and their daughter Lynda, attended a service at the National City Christian Church in downtown Washington, half a mile from the White House. They and the rest of the congregation were led by the Rev. Dr. George Davis in prayer “for the reconciliation of this nation, for the binding up of wounds, for the healing of hurts.”

“Let us pray,” said Dr. Davis, “that bitterness and anger, and malice, and vengefulness be no part of our nature.”

There, as in many other churches and synagogues in the New York area and around the country, the white limestone church was packed to capacity, with standees crushed into the back of the edifice. Worshipers included people from 17 states and Canada.

Dr. Davis deplored anarchy and extremism, praised the President’s efforts for civil rights and called upon Congress to pass the rat control bill that the House, which has provided such funds for farmers, has refused to consider for city slum dwellers.

The Johnsons joined in with vigor when the congregation sang "America.”

In the New York area, at the request of Cardinal Spellman, a special prayer was offered in all Roman Catholic churches of the New York archdiocese that "tensions may lessen and order prevail throughout our nation” and that Americans may work and pray together for progress and social justice.

The Rev. John J. Barry, who preached at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, called for prayers for and cooperation with “our President and his special commission so that their studies and investigations may prove most fruitful so that our nation may never again be so saddened and sickened."

Temple Emanu-El, at Fifth Avenue and 65th Street, was opened for a special service.

At it, the Rev. Dr. Julius Marks, senior rabbi of the congregation, said that “all responsible citizens, whatever their race, creed or nationality, are agreed that the rioting, the burning, the looting, the shooting, the sniping and the senseless murders that have erupted in cities throughout the land must be stopped whenever and wherever they occur.”

Dr. Mark called for “a massive program, a crash program, to right the wrongs of the last three or four hundred years.” During the service, Rabbi Ronald B. Sobel read “Ten Commandments of Goodwill,” which was composed during World War II by the late Rev. Dr. Walter M. Van Kirk, Methodist official of the National Council of Churches. It follows:

I will respect all men and women regardless of race and religion.

I will protect and defend my neighbor and my neighbor’s children against the ravages of racial and religious bigotry.

I will exemplify in my own life the spirit of good will and understanding.

I will challenge the philosophy of racial superiority by whomsoever it may he proclaimed, whether they' be kings, dictators or demagogues.

I will not be misled by the lying propaganda of those who seek to set race against race or nation against nation.

I will refuse to support any organization that has for its purpose the spreading of anti-Semitism, anti-Catholicism or anti-Protestantism.

I will establish comradeship with those who seek to exalt the spirit of love and conciliation throughout the! world.

I will attribute to those who differ from me the same degree of sincerity that I claim for myself.

I will uphold the civil rights and religious liberties of all citizens and groups whether I agree with them or not.

I will do more than live and let live—I will live and help live.

Prayers in Harlem At the Abyssinian Baptist Church at 132 West 138th Street, one of the country’s oldest Negro Baptist churches, 1,500 persons who filled the pews heard the Rev. Dr. David N. Licorish, associate minister, pray for forgiveness because “we have left undone the things we should have done.” Dr. Licorish also prayed for the “strength to remove the evil of our wrongdoings of pillage and plunder, looting and rioting in retaliation for the wrongs we suffer” and for “those who must enforce the laws of the land, so that order and decorum may prevail for the good of all.”

Several ministers and priests called for better parental control and better police control of teenagers who terrorize communities.

The Rev. Joseph Gorney preaching at St. Cecilia’s Roman Catholic Church, 125 East 106th Street, held that much of the recent trouble in East Harlen could have been avoided parents had exercised greater authority over their children.

Prayers were offered ni Greek Orthodox churches both for "the unscrupulous instigators of disorder” and th Presidential Commission appointed to investigate the riot.

Comparison Drawn Canon Edward West, sub-dean of the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine, compared racial-disturbance prevention with forest-fire prevention. Just as tinderbox conditions must be eliminated from the forests, he said, so must ghettos be abolished from cities.

The Harlem Protestant Council held services at various sites throughout the day, offering prayers for peace and for those who lost their lives in the racial strife.

The clergy differed in assaying the causes of the strife.

Patrick Cardinal O’Boyle, Archbishop of Washington, said said he was encouraged by the fact that so many, instead of blaming a scapegoat, were now willing "to assume their own share of responsibility."

But the Episcopal Bishop for upper South Carolina, the Rt. Rev, John A. Plckncy, saw the rioting as "part of a Communist plot to take over the world."

Archbishop John F. Dcardcn of Detroit told a congregation in the ravaged city, “Each of us must ask himself these questions: Have we ignored too long the conditions of slum dwellings? Slammed the doors in the faces of job seekers? Ignored the ghetto schools where learning is handcapped?"

In Louisville, Ky., a leader of open housing demonstrations, the Rev. Leo Lesser, said at the Greater St. James African Methodist Episcopal Church, “We must quickly find ways to remove the mood of hopelessness, disrespect for law and psychological alienation."

Several, including the Rev. Dr. M. Moran Weston, rector of St. Philip’s Episcopal Church in Harlem, and Abyssinian Baptist’s Dr. Licorish, criticized the President for failing to include on the commission “the true representatives of the poor and excluded.”

They did not indicate who they thought the “true representatives” were. The commission includes Roy Wilkins, executive director of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

Not all the clergy heeded the President. A past president of FIGHT, a militant civil rights organization, the Rev. F. D. R. Florence of Rochester’s Church of Christ, said the President’s call for a day of prayer was premature.

“If prayer is to he effective, the President must first get rid of the sinners, racists and bigots around him," Mr. Florence said. “People would rather die nn their feet, than their knees.”

#1960s #1967 #1967 detroit riot #60s #african americans #civil rights #day of prayer #equality #lbj #lyndon johnson #race riot #racism #religion #sixties #social justice #riots

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oldnewyorkpictures · 7 years ago

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Looking south towards the southeast corner of Central Park, 1858. This view is from atop the State Arsenal, which was designed by Martin E. Thompson and completed in 1851. In 1856, Mayor Fernando Wood approved the purchase of a large tract of land to the north of the city for a park, and created a Board of Commissioners to control it. Nearby Jones’ Wood was briefly considered before the Commissioners decided on a more central location, which they recognized would significantly boost #realestate values. Engineer Egbert Viele came up with a plan for the park, but it was not used, and a competition was held to find a plan for the park. 33 entries were submitted, and Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux’s Greensward Plan won the competition. Following the adoption of their plan, crews began tearing down structures and removing residents from the land. Over 1,600 people were evicted, many of whom were residents of Seneca Village, a vibrant community of blacks and immigrants that was established in 1825; it was located to the west of the old Croton Reservoir, near 86th Street (the foundations of what is thought to be the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church can be seen in the grass near the Spector playground). Taming the land was an immense undertaking. More than 2.5 million cubic yards of dirt and stone were removed, each load taken out in wagons. Workers labored from 6 A.M. to 5 P.M. six days a week, earning an average of $1.25 per hour. Over the course of construction, twenty thousand laborers were employed. Roughly a fifth of the workers were skilled workers, including blacksmiths, stonecutters, and gardeners who helped craft the park into the idyllic playground that Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux imagined. The Lake was the first section of the park to open, as it was a wildly popular place for people to skate in the winter and boat in the #summer. Most of the park was finished by 1863, although later that year the boundaries of the park, which formerly ended at 106th Street, were extended to 110th Street, which included the historic McGowan’s Pass and the Harlem Meer #NYC #CentralPark #GrandArmyPlaza #NYCParks #history #NYChistory #DiscoveringNYC via ✨ @padgram ✨(http://dl.padgram.com) https://www.instagram.com/p/BWPU91CgCIP/

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historysisco · 8 years ago

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Just a little history while on my walk through Bronx Park. Here is what the sign says: "Olinville playground bears the name of the Bronx neighborhood of Olinville, named after the author, professor and Methodist bishop, Stephen Olin (1797-1851). A tiny village that emerged in the 1840s as a result of the New York and Harlem Railroad, Olinville originally began as two distinct settlements, Olinville No.1 and Olinville No.2, separated by Olin Avenue. The villages were eventually incorporated between 1852 and 1854. Stephen Olin was born in Leicester, Vermont. He became an instructor at Tabernacle Academy in South Carolina in 1820, was admitted on trial as a preacher to the Methodist Episcopal Church in 1824, and was ordained in 1826. He became professor of ethics and belles-lettres at the University of Georgia in 1827, and from 1834 to 1837, he served as the first President of Randolph-Macon College, a recently founded Methodist institution in Virginia. Renowned as one of the most powerful and fervent preachers of his day, he served as President of Wesleyan University in Connecticut from 1842 to 1851. He wrote with the same zeal with which he preached, contributing to the Christian Advocate and Journal and writing numerous books. Travels in Egypt, Arabia, Petraea, and the Holy Land was published in 1843, but the majority of his works were released posthumously. These include The Works of Stephen Olin (1852), Life and Letters (1853), Greece and the Golden Horn (1854), and College Life and Practice (1867)." #StephenOlin #Olinville #Bronx #BronxHistory #BronxPark #NewYorkCityHistory #NYCHistory #NewYorkHistory #NYC #TouristinNYC #History #Historia #Histoire #HistorySisco (at Bronx Park)

#stephenolin #historysisco #newyorkcityhistory #nyc #bronxhistory #olinville #historia #touristinnyc #histoire #history #newyorkhistory #bronx #bronxpark #nychistory

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milliecoverdale-blog · 7 years ago

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This is America

If you haven’t heard Donald Glover’s (A.K.A Childish Gambino) ground-breaking number 1 single “This is America” this week, then you’ve likely been living under a rock (or perhaps you aren’t hooked up to the media sphere for life-support like 99% of the world’s population – so congrats). But “This is America” is hugely significant to the politics of today, being both informed by and a reaction to the state of America in 2018, and carrying a crucial message in terms of gun crime and the treatment of black people in the USA.

With already over 100 million views on YouTube within the first week of release, Glover’s latest piece of art has undeniably gone viral, and so the question on everyone’s lips is – why?

Well, not least because of the fact that it is a ‘good song’, “This is America” has gone viral for political reasons. It stands to make a statement in the current sociological climate of the USA, just as McLuhan predicted that electronic media would call upon ethnic minorities for more in-depth participation (as discussed in the first blog of this series). Since we know that the likes of YouTube, Facebook and Twitter are so immensely popular in modern society, it makes sense that activists and artists alike turn to these platforms to get their voices heard. “This is America” is woven with both subtle and not-so subtle political indicators, such as references to Jim Crow; the Horsemen of the Apocalypse; and the 2015 massacre at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina.

However, one of the most prominent themes to emerge within the video is that of media indifference, represented through the children’s mimicry of Gambino’s exaggerated dance moves. The children can be seen to copy his every move despite the fires and executions that surround them. This can be seen as a representation of the kind of viral videos that we use to distract ourselves the realities of society (remember the Harlem Shake?).

Yet even after the children become aware of the dangers surrounding them, they return back to their dancing within moments, as if having forgotten the very real threat that they just faced. Here, Glover is aiming to represent how the media is quick to shift coverage back towards pop culture despite the very real issues that America faces with regards to gun crime, racism, and police brutality (to name but a few), highlighting the cyclical nature of reactions towards violence in America.

Ironically, despite the severity of the message behind “This is America”, just as the internet does when a popular work enters the mainstream consciousness, Glover’s work has fallen victim to countless online reconfigurations. Be it the “This is America, so call me maybe” YouTube “hit”, or memes about getting soap in your eye, it seems that even a viral video about the consequences of the media on society cannot hide from that exact problem.

This epidemic highlights societies obsession with digital media.

What’s more important, the 13,000 fatalities by cause firearm each year in the US, or your social media popularity?

#childish gambino #donald glover #this is america #viralvideo

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nycreligion · 1 month ago

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Lost and found department: synagogues of Manhattan

Illustration by A Journey through NYC religions Ellen Levitt is one of the most interesting detectives in the city. Her job as a writer is finding lost synagogues. The book about her sleuthing in Manhattan, Staten Island and Governeur’s Island is available for purchase. The Last Synagogues of Manhattan is a densely packed treasure trove of architectural observations, naming practices, and…

#Abelardo Berrios #B&039;nai Menasheh #Beit Knesset HaGadol #Beth Ha-Knesset Ha Gadal #Congregation B’nai Israel #Ellen Levitt #Iglesia Pentecostal Camino A Damasco #John Lugo #La Sinagoga #Methodist Episcopal Church of the Savior #Nachlath Svi #Nachlath Zvi B’nai Israel Linoth Hazedek B’nai Menashe #South Harlem Methodist Episcopal Church #The Lost Synagogues of Manhattan

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blackkudos · 5 years ago

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A. Philip Randolph

Asa Philip Randolph (April 15, 1889 – May 16, 1979) was an American labor unionist, civil rights activist, and socialist politician.

Early life and education

Marriage and family

Early career

Randolph ran on the Socialist Party ticket for New York State Comptroller in 1920, and for Secretary of State of New York in 1922, unsuccessfully.

Union organizer

Civil rights leader

Religion

Death

Awards and accolades

In 1942, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People awarded Randolph the Spingarn Medal.

On September 14, 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson presented Randolph with the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

In 1967 awarded the Eugene V. Debs Award

In 1967 awarded the Pacem in Terris Peace and Freedom Award. It was named after a 1963 encyclical letter by Pope John XXIII that calls upon all people of good will to secure peace among all nations.

Named Humanist of the Year in 1970 by the American Humanist Association.

Named to the Florida Civil Rights Hall of Fame in January 2014.

Legacy

In buildings, streets, and trains

Amtrak named one of their best sleeping cars, Superliner II Deluxe Sleeper 32503, the "A. Philip Randolph" in his honor.

A. Philip Randolph Academies of Technology, in Jacksonville, FL, is named in his honor.

A. Phillip Randolph Boulevard in Jacksonville, Florida, formerly named Florida Avenue, was renamed in A. Phillip Randolph's honor. It is located on Jacksonville's east side, near EverBank Field.

The A. Philip Randolph Career Academy in Philadelphia, Pa was named in his honor.

The A. Philip Randolph Career and Technician Center in Detroit, MI is named in his honor.

The A. Philip Randolph Institute is named in his honor.

PS 76 A. Philip Randolph in New York City, NY is named in his honor

A. Philip Randolph Pullman Porter Museum is in Chicago's Pullman Historic District.

Edward Waters College in Jacksonville, Florida houses a permanent exhibit on the life and accomplishments of A. Philip Randolph.

Randolph Street, in Crescent City, Florida, was dedicated to him.

A. Philip Randolph Library, at Borough of Manhattan Community College

Arts, entertainment, and media

+ 1994 Documentary A. Philip Randolph: For Jobs and Freedom, PBS

In 2002, scholar Molefi Kete Asante listed A. Philip Randolph on his list of 100 Greatest African Americans.

A statue of A. Philip Randolph was erected in his honor in the concourse of Union Station in Washington, D.C..

In 1986 a nine-foot bronze statue of Randolph by Tina Allen was erected in Boston's Back Bay commuter train station.

On February 3, 1989, the United States Postal Service issued a 25-cent postage stamp in Randolph's honor.

Other

James L. Farmer, Jr., co-founder of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), cited Randolph as one of his primary influences as a Civil Rights leader.

Randolph is a member of the Labor Hall of Fame.

#04/15 #05/16

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blackkudos · 6 years ago

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Betty Shabazz

Betty Shabazz (May 28, 1934 – June 23, 1997), born Betty Dean Sanders and also known as Betty X, was an American educator and civil rights advocate. She was the wife of Malcolm X.

Shabazz grew up in Detroit, Michigan, where her foster parents largely sheltered her from racism. She attended the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, where she had her first encounters with racism. Unhappy with the situation in Alabama, she moved to New York City, where she became a nurse. It was there that she met Malcolm X and, in 1956, joined the Nation of Islam. The couple married in 1958.

Along with her husband, Shabazz left the Nation of Islam in 1964. She witnessed his assassination the following year. Left with the responsibility of raising six daughters as a single mother, Shabazz pursued a higher education, and went to work at Medgar Evers College in Brooklyn, New York.

Following the arrest of her daughter Qubilah for allegedly conspiring to murder Louis Farrakhan, Shabazz took in her young grandson Malcolm. He set a fire in her apartment that caused severe burns to Shabazz. Shabazz died three weeks later as a result of her injuries.

Early years

Betty Dean Sanders was born on May 28, 1934, to Ollie Mae Sanders and Shelman Sandlin. Sandlin was 21 years old and Ollie Mae Sanders was a teenager; the couple was unmarried. Throughout her life, Betty Sanders maintained that she had been born in Detroit, Michigan, but early records—such as her high-school and college transcripts—show Pinehurst, Georgia, as her place of birth. Authorities in Georgia and Michigan have not been able to locate her birth certificate.

By most accounts, Ollie Mae Sanders abused Betty Sanders, whom she was raising in Detroit. When Betty was about 11 years old, she was taken in by Lorenzo and Helen Malloy, a prominent businessman and his wife. Helen Malloy was a founding member of the Housewives League of Detroit, a group of African-American women who organized campaigns to support black-owned businesses and boycott stores that refused to hire black employees. She was also a member of the National Council of Negro Women and the NAACP. The Malloys were both active members of their local Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church.

Despite their lessons on black self-reliance, the Malloys never spoke with Sanders about racism. Looking back in 1995, Shabazz wrote: "Race relations were not discussed and it was hoped that by denying the existence of race problems, the problems would go away. Anyone who openly discussed race relations was quickly viewed as a 'troublemaker.'" Still, two race riots during her childhood—in 1942 when the Sojourner Truth housing project was desegregated, and one the following year on Belle Isle—made up what Shabazz later called the "psychological background for my formative years".

Young adult years

After she graduated from high school, Sanders left her foster parents' home in Detroit to study at the Tuskegee Institute (now Tuskegee University), a historically black college in Alabama that was Lorenzo Malloy's alma mater. She intended to earn a degree in education and become a teacher. When she left Detroit to go to Alabama, her foster mother stood at the train station crying. Shabazz later recalled that Malloy was trying to mumble something, but the words would not come out. By the time she arrived in Alabama, she felt she knew what her foster mother was saying. "The minute I got off that train, I knew what she was trying to say. She was trying to tell me in ten words or less about racism."

Nothing had prepared Sanders for Southern racism. So long as she stayed on campus, she could avoid interacting with white people, but weekend trips into Montgomery, the nearest city, would try her patience. Black students had to wait until every white person in a store had been helped before the staff would serve them—if they received any service at all. When she complained to the Malloys, they refused to discuss the issue; in a 1989 interview, Shabazz summarized their attitude as "if you're just quiet it will go away."

Sanders' studies suffered as a result of her growing frustration. She decided to change her field of study from education to nursing. The dean of nursing, Lillian Harvey, encouraged Sanders to consider studying in a Tuskegee-affiliated program at the Brooklyn State College School of Nursing in New York City. Against her foster parents' wishes, Sanders left Alabama for New York in 1953.

In New York, Sanders encountered a different form of racism. At Montefiore Hospital, where she performed her clinical training, black nurses were given worse assignments than white nurses. White patients sometimes were abusive toward black nurses. While the racial climate in New York was better than the situation in Alabama, Sanders frequently wondered whether she had merely exchanged Jim Crow racism for a more genteel prejudice.

Nation of Islam

During her second year of nursing school, Sanders was invited by an older nurse's aide to a Friday-night dinner party at the Nation of Islam temple in Harlem. "The food was delicious," Shabazz recalled in 1992, "I'd never tasted food like that." After dinner, the woman asked Sanders to come to the Muslims' lecture. Sanders agreed. After the speech, the nurse's aide invited Sanders to join the Nation of Islam; Sanders politely declined. When the woman asked her why she chose not to join the Nation of Islam after visiting, Sanders replied that she did not know she had been brought there to join. "Besides, my mother would kill me, and additionally I don’t even understand the philosophy." The Malloys were Methodists, and when she was 13, Sanders had decided she would remain a Methodist for the rest of her life.

The nurse's aide told Sanders about her minister, who was not at the temple that night: "Just wait until you hear my minister talk. He's very disciplined, he's good-looking, and all the sisters want him." Sanders enjoyed the food so much, she agreed to come back and meet the woman's minister. At the second dinner, the nurse's aide told her the minister was present and Sanders thought to herself, "Big deal." In 1992 she recalled how her demeanor changed when she caught a glimpse of Malcolm X:

Then, I looked over and saw this man on the extreme right aisle sort of galloping to the podium. He was tall, he was thin, and the way he was galloping it looked as though he was going someplace much more important than the podium. ... He got to the podium—and I sat up straight. I was impressed with him.

Sanders met Malcolm X again at a dinner party. The two had a long conversation about Sanders's life: her childhood in Detroit, the racial hostility she had encountered in Alabama, and her studies in New York. He spoke to her about the condition of African Americans and the causes of racism. Sanders began to see things from a different perspective. "I really had a lot of pent-up anxiety about my experience in the South," Shabazz recalled in a 1990 interview, "and Malcolm reassured me that it was understandable how I felt."

Soon Sanders was attending all of Malcolm X's lectures at Temple Number Seven in Harlem. He always sought her out afterwards, and he would ask her a lot of questions. Sanders was impressed with Malcolm X's leadership and work ethic. She felt he was selfless when it came to helping others, but he had no one to lean on when he needed help. She thought maybe she could be that person. He also began to pressure her to join the Nation of Islam. In mid 1956, Sanders converted. Like many members of the Nation of Islam, she changed her surname to "X", which represented the family name of her African ancestors that she could never know.

Marriage and family

Betty X and Malcolm X did not have a conventional courtship. One-on-one dates were contrary to the teachings of the Nation of Islam. Instead, the couple shared their "dates" with dozens, or even hundreds of other members. Malcolm X frequently took groups to visit New York's museums and libraries, and he always invited Betty X.

Although they had never discussed the subject, Betty X suspected that Malcolm X was interested in marriage. One day he called and asked her to marry him, and they were married on January 14, 1958, in Lansing, Michigan. By coincidence, Betty X became a licensed nurse on the same day.

At first, their relationship followed the Nation of Islam's strictures concerning marriage; Malcolm X set the rules and Betty X obediently followed them. In 1969, Shabazz wrote that "his indoctrination was so thorough, even to me, that it has become a pattern for our [family's] lives." Over time, the family dynamic changed, as Malcolm X made small concessions to Betty X's demands for more independence. In 1969, Shabazz recalled:

We would have little family talks. They began at first with Malcolm telling me what he expected of a wife. But the first time I told him what I expected of him as a husband it came as a shock. After dinner one night he said, "Boy, Betty, something you said hit me like a ton of bricks. Here I've been going along having our little workshops with me doing all the talking and you doing all the listening." He concluded our marriage should be a mutual exchange.

The couple had six daughters. Their names were Attallah, born in 1958 and named after Attila the Hun; Qubilah, born in 1960 and named after Kublai Khan; Ilyasah, born in 1962 and named after Elijah Muhammad; Gamilah Lumumba, born in 1964 and named after Patrice Lumumba; and twins, Malikah and Malaak, born in 1965 after their father's assassination and named for him.

Leaving the Nation of Islam

On March 8, 1964, Malcolm X announced that he was leaving the Nation of Islam. He and Betty X, now known as Betty Shabazz, became Sunni Muslims.

Assassination of Malcolm X

On February 21, 1965, in Manhattan's Audubon Ballroom, Malcolm X began to speak to a meeting of the Organization of Afro-American Unity when a disturbance broke out in the crowd of 400. As Malcolm X and his bodyguards moved to quiet the disturbance, a man rushed forward and shot Malcolm in the chest with a sawed-off shotgun. Two other men charged the stage and fired handguns, hitting Malcolm X 16 times.

Shabazz was in the audience near the stage with her daughters. When she heard the gunfire, she grabbed the children and pushed them to the floor beneath the bench, where she shielded them with her body. When the shooting stopped, Shabazz ran toward her husband and tried to perform CPR. Police officers and Malcolm X's associates used a stretcher to carry him up the block to Columbia Presbyterian Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

Angry onlookers caught and beat one of the assassins, who was arrested on the scene. Eyewitnesses identified two more suspects. All three men, who were members of the Nation of Islam, were convicted and sentenced to life in prison.

After Malcolm's assassination

Immediately afterward

Shabazz had difficulty sleeping for weeks after Malcolm X's assassination. She suffered from nightmares in which she relived the death of her husband. She also worried about how she would support herself and her family. The publication of The Autobiography of Malcolm X helped, because Shabazz received half of the royalties. (Alex Haley, who assisted Malcolm X in writing the book, got the other half. After the publication of his best-seller Roots, Haley signed over his portion of the royalties to Shabazz.)

Actor and activist Ruby Dee and Juanita Poitier (wife of Sidney Poitier) established the Committee of Concerned Mothers, to raise funds to buy a house, and pay educational expenses for the Shabazz family. The Committee held a series of benefit concerts at which they raised $17,000. They bought a large two-family home in Mount Vernon, New York, from Congressmember Bella Abzug.

Looking back, Shabazz said she initially made an "unrealistic decision" to isolate herself because of the injustice of her husband's assassination. She realized, however, that giving up because of her husband’s death would not help the world. "It is impossible to create an environment for children to grow in and develop in isolation. It is imperative that one mix in society on some level and at some time."

Pilgrimage to Mecca

In late March 1965, Shabazz made the pilgrimage to Mecca (Hajj), as her husband had the year before. Recalling the experience in 1992, Shabazz wrote:

I really don't know where I'd be today if I had not gone to Mecca to make Hajj shortly after Malcolm was assassinated. ... That is what helped put me back on track. ... Going to Mecca, making Hajj, was very good for me because it made me think of all the people in the world who loved me and were for me, who prayed that I would get my life back together. I stopped focusing on the people who were trying to tear me and my family apart.

Shabazz returned from Mecca with a new name that a fellow pilgrim had bestowed upon her, Bahiyah (meaning "beautiful and radiant").

Raising her family

Raising six children by herself exhausted Shabazz. Providing for them was difficult as well. Shabazz's share of the royalties from The Autobiography of Malcolm X was equivalent to an annual salary. In 1966, she sold the movie rights to the Autobiography to film-maker Marvin Worth. She began to authorize the publication of Malcolm X's speeches, which provided another source of income.

When her daughters were enrolled in day care, Shabazz became an active member of the day care center's parents organization. In time, she became the parents' representative on the school board. Several years later, she became president of the Westchester Day Care Council.

Shabazz began to accept speaking engagements at colleges and universities. She often spoke about the black nationalist philosophy of Malcolm X, but she also spoke about her role as a wife and mother. Shabazz felt that some of the images of her husband projected by the media were misrepresentations. "They attempted to promote him as a violent person, a hater of whites," she explained. "He was a sensitive man, a very understanding person and yes, he disliked the behavior of some whites.... He had a reality-based agenda."

As her daughters grew older, Shabazz sent them to private schools and summer camps. They joined Jack and Jill, a social club for the children of well-off African Americans.

Advanced education

In late 1969, Shabazz enrolled at Jersey City State College (now New Jersey City University) to complete the degree in education she left behind when she became a nurse. She completed her undergraduate studies in one year, and decided to earn a master's degree in health administration. In 1972, Shabazz enrolled at the University of Massachusetts Amherst to pursue an Ed.D. in higher education administration and curriculum development. For the next three years, she drove from Mount Vernon to Amherst, Massachusetts, every Monday morning, and returned home Wednesday night. In July 1975, she defended her dissertation and earned her doctorate.

Shabazz joined Delta Sigma Theta in April 1974.

Medgar Evers College

In January 1976, Shabazz became associate professor of health sciences with a concentration in nursing at New York's Medgar Evers College. The student body at Medgar Evers was 90 percent black and predominantly working-class, with an average age of 26. Black women made up most of the faculty, and 75 percent of the students were female, two-thirds of them mothers. These were all qualities that made Medgar Evers College attractive to Shabazz.

By 1980, Shabazz was overseeing the health sciences department, and the college president decided she could be more effective in a purely administrative position than she was in the classroom. She was promoted to Director of Institutional Advancement. In her new position, she became a booster and fund-raiser for the college. A year later, she was given tenure. In 1984, Shabazz was given a new title, Director of Institutional Advancement and Public Affairs; she held that position at the college until her death.

Volunteerism

During the 1970s and 1980s, Shabazz continued her volunteer activities. In 1975, President Ford invited her to serve on the American Revolution Bicentennial Council. Shabazz served on an advisory committee on family planning for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. In 1984, she hosted the New York convention of the National Council of Negro Women. Shabazz became active in the NAACP and the National Urban League. When Nelson and Winnie Mandela visited Harlem during 1990, Shabazz was asked to introduce Winnie Mandela.

Shabazz befriended Myrlie Evers-Williams, the widow of Medgar Evers, and Coretta Scott King, the widow of Martin Luther King Jr. They had the common experience of losing their activist husbands at a young age and raising their children as single mothers. The press came to refer to the three, who made numerous joint public appearances, as the "Movement widows". Evers-Williams and King were frequent guests at Medgar Evers College, and Shabazz occasionally visited the King Center in Atlanta. Writing about Shabazz, Evers-Williams described her as a "free spirit, in the best sense of the word. When she laughed, she had this beauty; when she smiled, it lit up the whole room."

Louis Farrakhan

For many years, Shabazz harbored resentment toward the Nation of Islam—and Louis Farrakhan in particular—for what she felt was their role in the assassination of her husband. Farrakhan seemed to boast of the assassination in a 1993 speech:

Was Malcolm your traitor or ours? And if we dealt with him like a nation deals with a traitor, what the hell business is it of yours? A nation has to be able to deal with traitors and cutthroats and turncoats.

In a 1994 interview, Gabe Pressman asked Shabazz whether Farrakhan "had anything to do" with Malcolm X's death. She replied: "Of course, yes. Nobody kept it a secret. It was a badge of honor. Everybody talked about it, yes." Farrakhan denied the allegations, stating "I never had anything to do with Malcolm's death", although he said he had "created an atmosphere that allowed Malcolm to be assassinated."

In January 1995, Qubilah Shabazz was charged with trying to hire an assassin to kill Farrakhan in retaliation for the murder of her father. Farrakhan surprised the Shabazz family when he defended Qubilah, saying he did not think she was guilty and that he hoped she would not be convicted. That May, Betty Shabazz and Farrakhan shook hands on the stage of the Apollo Theater during a public event intended to raise money for Qubilah's legal defense. Some heralded the evening as a reconciliation between the two, but others thought Shabazz was doing whatever she had to in order to protect her daughter. Regardless, nearly $250,000 was raised that evening. In the aftermath, Shabazz maintained a cool relationship with Farrakhan, although she agreed to speak at his Million Man March that October.

Qubilah accepted a plea agreement with respect to the charges, in which she maintained her innocence but accepted responsibility for her actions. Under the terms of the agreement, she was required to undergo psychological counseling and treatment for drug and alcohol abuse for a two-year period in order to avoid a prison sentence. For the duration of her treatment, Qubilah's ten-year-old son, Malcolm, was sent to live with Shabazz at her apartment in Yonkers, New York.

Death

On June 1, 1997, young grandson Malcolm set a fire in Shabazz's apartment. Shabazz suffered burns over 80 percent of her body, and remained in intensive care for three weeks, at Jacobi Medical Center in the Bronx, New York. She underwent five skin-replacement operations as doctors struggled to replace damaged skin and save her life. Shabazz died of her injuries on June 23, 1997. Malcolm Shabazz was sentenced to 18 months in juvenile detention for manslaughter and arson.

More than 2,000 mourners attended a memorial service for Shabazz, at New York's Riverside Church. Many prominent leaders were present, including Coretta Scott King and Myrlie Evers-Williams, poet Maya Angelou, actor-activists Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee, New York Governor George Pataki, and four New York City mayors—Abraham Beame, Ed Koch, David Dinkins, and Rudy Giuliani. U.S. Secretary of Labor Alexis Herman delivered a tribute from President Bill Clinton. In a statement released after Shabazz's death, civil rights leader Jesse Jackson said, "She never stopped giving and she never became cynical. She leaves today the legacy of one who epitomized hope and healing."

Shabazz's funeral service was held at the Islamic Cultural Center in New York City. Her public viewing was at the Unity Funeral Home in Harlem, the same place where Malcolm X's viewing had taken place 32 years earlier. Shabazz was buried next to her husband, El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz (Malcolm X), at Ferncliff Cemetery in Hartsdale, New York.

Memorials

In late 1997, the Community Healthcare Network renamed one of its Brooklyn, New York, clinics the Dr. Betty Shabazz Health Center, in honor of Shabazz. The Betty Shabazz International Charter School was founded in Chicago, Illinois, in 1998 and named in her honor. In 2005, Columbia University announced the opening of the Malcolm X and Dr. Betty Shabazz Memorial and Educational Center. The memorial is located in the Audubon Ballroom, where Malcolm X was assassinated. In March 2012, New York City co-named Broadway at the corner of West 165th Street, the corner in front of the Audubon Ballroom, Betty Shabazz Way.

Portrayals in film

Shabazz was the subject of the 2013 television movie Betty & Coretta, in which she was played by Mary J. Blige. She was portrayed by Angela Bassett in the 1992 film Malcolm X. Bassett also played the part of Shabazz in the 1995 film Panther. Yolanda King, the daughter of Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King, played Shabazz in the 1981 television movie Death of a Prophet, and Shabazz was portrayed by Victoria Dillard in the 2001 film Ali.

Wikipedia

#Betty Shabazz #05-28 #06-23

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blackkudos · 7 years ago

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A. Philip Randolph

Asa Philip Randolph (April 15, 1889 – May 16, 1979) was a leader in the Civil Rights Movement, the American labor movement, and socialist political parties.

He organized and led the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, the first predominantly African-American labor union. In the early early Civil Rights Movement and the Labor Movement, Randolph was a voice that would not be silenced. His continuous agitation with the support of fellow labor rights activists against unfair labor practices in relation to people of color eventually led President Franklin D. Roosevelt to issue Executive Order 8802 in 1941, banning discrimination in the defense industries during World War II. The group then successfully pressured President Harry S. Truman to issue Executive Order 9981 in 1948, ending segregation in the armed services.

Early life and education

Marriage and family

Early career

In 1917, Randolph and Chandler Owen founded the Messenger with the help of the Socialist Party of America. It was a radical monthly magazine, which campaigned against lynching, opposed U.S. participation in World War I, urged African Americans to resist being drafted, to fight for an integrated society, and urged them to join radical unions. The Department of Justice called the Messenger "the most able and the most dangerous of all the Negro publications." When the Messenger began publishing the work of black poets and authors, a critic called it "one of the most brilliantly edited magazines in the history of Negro journalism."

Soon thereafter, however, the editorial staff of the Messenger became divided by three issues – the growing rift between West Indian and African Americans, support for the Bolshevik revolution, and support for Marcus Garvey's Back-to-Africa movement. In 1919, most West Indian radicals joined the new Communist Party, while African-American leftists – Randolph included – mostly supported the Socialist Party. The infighting left the Messenger short of financial support, and it went into decline.

Randolph ran on the Socialist Party ticket for New York State Comptroller in 1920, and for Secretary of State of New York in 1922, unsuccessfully.

Union organizer

Randolph’s first experience with labor organization came in 1917, when he organized a union of elevator operators in New York City. In 1919 he became president of the National Brotherhood of Workers of America, a union which organised amongst African-American shipyard and dock workers in the Tidewater region of Virginia. The union dissolved in 1921, under pressure from the American Federation of Labor.

Civil rights leader

Religion

Death

Randolph died in his Manhattan apartment. He had had a heart condition and high blood pressure for several years. He had no known living relatives, as his wife had died in 1963, before the March on Washington.

Awards and accolades

In 1942, received the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Spingarn Medal

On September 14, 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson presented Randolph with the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

In 1967 awarded the Pacem in Terris Peace and Freedom Award. It was named after a 1963 encyclical letter by Pope John XXIII that calls upon all people of good will to secure peace among all nations. Pacem in terris is Latin for 'Peace on Earth'.

Named Humanist of the Year in 1970 by the American Humanist Association.

Named to the Florida Civil Rights Hall of Fame in January, 2014.

Legacy

Randolph had a significant impact on the Civil Rights Movement from the 1930s onward. The Montgomery Bus Boycott in Alabama was directed by E.D. Nixon, who had been a member of the BSCP and was influenced by Randolph’s methods of nonviolent confrontation. Nationwide, the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s and 1960s used tactics pioneered by Randolph, such as encouraging African Americans to vote as a bloc, mass voter registration, and training activists for nonviolent direct action.

In buildings, streets, and trains

Amtrak named one of their best sleeping cars, Superliner II Deluxe Sleeper 32503, the "A. Philip Randolph" in his honor.

A. Philip Randolph Academies of Technology, in Jacksonville, FL, is named in his honor.

A. Phillip Randolph Boulevard in Jacksonville, Florida, formerly named Florida Avenue, was renamed in A. Phillip Randolph's honor. It is located on Jacksonville's east side, near EverBank Field.

The A. Philip Randolph Career Academy in Philadelphia, Pa was named in his honor.

The A. Philip Randolph Career and Technician Center in Detroit, MI is named in his honor.

The A. Philip Randolph Institute is named in his honor.

A. Philip Randolph Pullman Porter Museum is in Chicago's Pullman Historic District.

Edward Waters College in Jacksonville, Florida houses a permanent exhibit on the life and accomplishments of A. Philip Randolph.

Randolph Street, in Crescent City, Florida, was dedicated to him.

'A. Philip Randolph Library', at Borough of Manhattan Community College,

Arts, entertainment, and media

+ 1994 Documentary A. Philip Randolph: For Jobs and Freedom, PBS

In 2002, scholar Molefi Kete Asante listed A. Philip Randolph on his list of 100 Greatest African Americans.

A statue of A. Philip Randolph was erected in his honor in the concourse of Union Station in Washington, D.C..

In 1986 a nine-foot bronze statue of Randolph by Tina Allen was erected in Boston's Back Bay commuter train station.

On February 3, 1989, the United States Postal Service issued a 25 cent postage stamp in Randolph's honor.

Other

James L. Farmer, Jr., co-founder of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), cited Randolph as one of his primary influences as a Civil Rights leader.

Randolph is a member of the Labor Hall of Fame.

Wikipedia

#A. Philip Randolph #04-15 #05-16

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blackkudos · 8 years ago

Text

Betty Shabazz

Betty Shabazz (May 28, 1934 – June 23, 1997), born Betty Dean Sanders and also known as Betty X, was an American educator and civil rights advocate. She was the wife of Malcolm X.

Early years

Young adult years

Nation of Islam

Marriage and family

Leaving the Nation of Islam

On March 8, 1964, Malcolm X announced that he was leaving the Nation of Islam. He and Betty X, now known as Betty Shabazz, became Sunni Muslims.

Assassination of Malcolm X

After Malcolm's assassination

Immediately afterward

Pilgrimage to Mecca

In late March 1965, Shabazz made the pilgrimage to Mecca (Hajj), as her husband had the year before. Recalling the experience in 1992, Shabazz wrote:

Shabazz returned from Mecca with a new name that a fellow pilgrim had bestowed upon her, Bahiyah (meaning "beautiful and radiant").

Raising her family

As her daughters grew older, Shabazz sent them to private schools and summer camps. They joined Jack and Jill, a social club for the children of well-off African Americans.

Advanced education

Shabazz joined Delta Sigma Theta in April 1974.

Medgar Evers College

Volunteerism

Louis Farrakhan

Death

Memorials

Portrayals in film

Wikipedia

#Betty Shabazz #05-28 #06-23

3 notes · View notes

blackkudos · 8 years ago

Text

A. Philip Randolph

Asa Philip Randolph (April 15, 1889 – May 16, 1979) was a leader in the Civil Rights Movement, the American labor movement, and socialist political parties.

Early life and education

Marriage and family

Early career

Randolph ran on the Socialist Party ticket for New York State Comptroller in 1920, and for Secretary of State of New York in 1922, unsuccessfully.

Union organizer

Civil rights leader

Religion

Death

Awards and accolades

In 1942, received the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Spingarn Medal

On September 14, 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson presented Randolph with the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Named Humanist of the Year in 1970 by the American Humanist Association.

Named to the Florida Civil Rights Hall of Fame in January, 2014.

Legacy

Randolph had a significant impact on the Civil Rights Movement from the 1930s onward. The Montgomery Bus Boycott in Alabama was directed by E.D. Nixon, who had been a member of the BSCP and was influenced by Randolph’s methods of nonviolent confrontation. Nationwide, the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s and 1960s used tactics pioneered by Randolph, such as encouraging African Americans to vote as a bloc, mass voter registration, and training activists for nonviolent direct action.

In buildings, streets, and trains

Amtrak named one of their best sleeping cars, Superliner II Deluxe Sleeper 32503, the "A. Philip Randolph" in his honor.

A. Philip Randolph Academies of Technology, in Jacksonville, FL, is named in his honor.

A. Phillip Randolph Boulevard in Jacksonville, Florida, formerly named Florida Avenue, was renamed in A. Phillip Randolph's honor. It is located on Jacksonville's east side, near EverBank Field.

The A. Philip Randolph Career Academy in Philadelphia, Pa was named in his honor.

The A. Philip Randolph Career and Technician Center in Detroit, MI is named in his honor.

The A. Philip Randolph Institute is named in his honor.

A. Philip Randolph Pullman Porter Museum is in Chicago's Pullman Historic District.

Edward Waters College in Jacksonville, Florida houses a permanent exhibit on the life and accomplishments of A. Philip Randolph.

Randolph Street, in Crescent City, Florida, was dedicated to him.

'A. Philip Randolph Library', at Borough of Manhattan Community College,

Arts, entertainment, and media

+ 1994 Documentary A. Philip Randolph: For Jobs and Freedom, PBS

In 2002, scholar Molefi Kete Asante listed A. Philip Randolph on his list of 100 Greatest African Americans.

A statue of A. Philip Randolph was erected in his honor in the concourse of Union Station in Washington, D.C..

In 1986 a nine-foot bronze statue of Randolph by Tina Allen was erected in Boston's Back Bay commuter train station.

On February 3, 1989, the United States Postal Service issued a 25 cent postage stamp in Randolph's honor.

Other

James L. Farmer, Jr., co-founder of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), cited Randolph as one of his primary influences as a Civil Rights leader.

Randolph is a member of the Labor Hall of Fame.

Wikipedia

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Madam C. J. Walker

Sarah Breedlove (December 23, 1867 – May 25, 1919), known as Madam C. J. Walker, was an African American entrepreneur, philanthropist, and a political and social activist. Eulogized as the first female self-made millionaire in America, she became one of the wealthiest African American women in the country, "the world's most successful female entrepreneur of her time," and one of the most successful African-American business owners ever.

Walker made her fortune by developing and marketing a line of beauty and hair products for black women through Madame C.J. Walker Manufacturing Company, the successful business she founded. Walker was also known for her philanthropy and activism. She made financial donations to numerous organizations and became a patron of the arts. Villa Lewaro, Walker’s lavish estate in Irvington-on-Hudson, New York, served as a social gathering place for the African American community.

Early life

Breedlove was born on December 23, 1867, near Delta, Louisiana, to Owen and Minerva (Anderson) Breedlove. Sarah was one of six children, which included an older sister, Louvenia, and four brothers: Alexander, James, Solomon, and Owen Jr. Breedlove's parents and her older siblings were enslaved on Robert W. Burney's Madison Parish plantation, but Sarah was the first child in her family born into freedom after the Emancipation Proclamation was signed. Her mother died, possibly from cholera, in 1872; her father remarried, but he died within a few years. Orphaned at the age of seven, Sarah moved to Vicksburg, Mississippi, at the age of ten and worked as a domestic. Prior to her first marriage, she lived with her older sister, Louvenia, and brother-in-law, Jesse Powell.

Marriage and family

In 1882, at the age of fourteen, Sarah married Moses McWilliams, possibly to escape mistreatment from her brother-in-law. Sarah and Moses had one daughter, Lelia McWilliams, born on June 6, 1885. When Moses died in 1887, Sarah was twenty; Lelia was two years old. Sarah remarried in 1894, but left her second husband, John Davis, around 1903 and moved to Denver, Colorado, in 1905.

In January 1906, Sarah married Charles Joseph Walker, a newspaper advertising salesman she had known in Missouri. Through this marriage, she became known as Madam C. J. Walker. The couple divorced in 1912; Charles died in 1926. Lelia McWilliams adopted her stepfather's surname and became known as A'Lelia Walker.

Career

In 1888 Sarah and her daughter moved to Saint Louis, Missouri, where three of her brothers lived. Sarah found work as a laundress, barely earning more than a dollar a day, but she was determined to make enough money to provide her daughter with a formal education. During the 1880s, Breedlove lived in a community where ragtime music was developed—she sang at the St. Paul African Methodist Episcopal Church and started to yearn for an educated life as she watched the community of women at her church. As was common among black women of her era, Sarah experienced severe dandruff and other scalp ailments, including baldness, due to skin disorders and the application of harsh products such as lye that were included in soaps to cleanse hair and wash clothes. Other contributing factors to her hair loss included poor diet, illnesses, and infrequent bathing and hair washing during a time when most Americans lacked indoor plumbing, central heating and electricity.

Initially, Sarah learned about hair care from her brothers, who were barbers in Saint Louis. Around the time of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition (World's Fair at St. Louis in 1904), she became a commission agent selling products for Annie Turnbo Malone, an African American hair-care entrepreneur and owner of the Poro Company. While working for Malone, who would later become Walker’s largest rival in the hair-care industry, Sarah began to adapt her knowledge of hair and hair products to develop her own product line.

In July 1905, when she was thirty-seven years old, Sarah and her daughter moved to Denver, Colorado, where she continued to sell products for Malone and develop her own hair-care business. Following her marriage to Charles Walker in 1906, she became known as Madam C. J. Walker and marketed herself as an independent hairdresser and retailer of cosmetic creams. (“Madam” was adopted from women pioneers of the French beauty industry.) Her husband, who was also her business partner, provided advice on advertising and promotion; Sarah sold her products door to door, teaching other black women how to groom and style their hair.

In 1906 Walker put her daughter in charge of the mail order operation in Denver while she and her husband traveled throughout the southern and eastern United States to expand the business. In 1908 Walker and her husband relocated to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where they opened a beauty parlor and established Lelia College to train "hair culturists." After closing the business in Denver in 1907, A'lelia ran the day-to-day operations from Pittsburgh, while Walker established a new base in Indianapolis in 1910. A'lelia also persuaded her mother to establish an office and beauty salon in New York City's Harlem neighborhood in 1913.

In 1910 Walker relocated her business to Indianapolis, where she established the headquarters for the Madame C. J. Walker Manufacturing Company. She initially purchased a house and factory at 640 North West Street. Walker later built a factory, hair salon, and beauty school to train her sales agents, and added a laboratory to help with research. She also assembled a competent staff that included Freeman Ransom, Robert Lee Brokenburr, Alice Kelly, and Marjorie Stewart Joyner, among others, to assist in managing the growing company. Many of her company's employees, including those in key management and staff positions, were women.

To increase her company's sales force, Walker trained other women to become "beauty culturists" using "The Walker System", her method of grooming that was designed to promote hair growth and to condition the scalp through the use of her products. Walker's system included a shampoo, a pomade stated to help hair grow, strenuous brushing, and applying iron combs to hair. This method claimed to make lackluster and brittle hair become soft and luxurious. Walker's product line had several competitors. Similar products were produced in Europe and manufactured by other companies in the United States, which included her major rivals, Annie Turnbo Malone's Poro System and later, Sarah Spencer Washington's Apex System.

Between 1911 and 1919, during the height of her career, Walker and her company employed several thousand women as sales agents for its products. By 1917 the company claimed to have trained nearly 20,000 women. Dressed in a characteristic uniform of white shirts and black skirts and carrying black satchels, they visited houses around the United States and in the Caribbean offering Walker's hair pomade and other products packaged in tin containers carrying her image. Walker understood the power of advertising and brand awareness. Heavy advertising, primarily in African American newspapers and magazines, in addition to Walker's frequent travels to promote her products, helped make Walker and her products well known in the United States. Walker became even more widely known by the 1920s as her business market expanded beyond the United States to Cuba, Jamaica, Haiti, Panama, and Costa Rica.

In addition to training in sales and grooming, Walker showed other black women how to budget, build their own businesses, and encouraged them to become financially independent. In 1917, inspired by the model of the National Association of Colored Women, Walker began organizing her sales agents into state and local clubs. The result was the establishment of the National Beauty Culturists and Benevolent Association of Madam C. J. Walker Agents (predecessor to the Madam C. J. Walker Beauty Culturists Union of America). Its first annual conference convened in Philadelphia during the summer of 1917 with 200 attendees. The conference is believed to have been among the first national gatherings of women entrepreneurs to discuss business and commerce. During the convention Walker gave prizes to women who had sold the most products and brought in the most new sales agents. She also rewarded those who made the largest contributions to charities in their communities.

Activism and philanthropy

As Walker's wealth and notoriety increased, she became more vocal about her views. In 1912 Walker addressed an annual gathering of the National Negro Business League (NNBL) from the convention floor, where she declared: "I am a woman who came from the cotton fields of the South. From there I was promoted to the washtub. From there, I was promoted to the cook kitchen. And from there, I promoted myself into the business of manufacturing hair goods and preparations. I have built my own factory on my own ground." The following year she addressed convention-goers from the podium as a keynote speaker.

Walker helped raise funds to establish a branch of the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) in Indianapolis's black community, pledging $1,000 to the building fund for the Senate Avenue YMCA. Walker also contributed scholarship funds to the Tuskegee Institute. Other beneficiaries included Indianapolis's Flanner House and Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church; Mary McLeod Bethune's Daytona Education and Industrial School for Negro Girls (which later became Bethune-Cookman University) in Daytona Beach, Florida; the Palmer Memorial Institute in North Carolina; and the Haines Normal and Industrial Institute in Georgia. Walker was also a patron of the arts.

About 1913 Walker's daughter, A'Lelia, moved to a new townhouse in Harlem, and in 1916 Walker joined her in New York, leaving the day-to-day operation of her company to her management team in Indianapolis. In 1917 Walker commissioned Vertner Tandy, the first licensed black architect in New York City and a founding member of Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity, to design her house in Irvington-on-Hudson, New York. Walker intended for Villa Lewaro, which cost $250,000 to build, to become a gathering place for community leaders and to inspire other African Americans to purse their dreams. She moved into the house in May 1918 and hosted an opening event to honor Emmett Jay Scott, at that time the Assistant Secretary for Negro Affairs of the U.S. Department of War.

Walker became more involved in political matters after her move to New York. She delivered lectures on political, economic, and social issues at conventions sponsored by powerful black institutions. Her friends and associates included Booker T. Washington, Mary McLeod Bethune, and W. E. B. Du Bois, among others. During World War I Walker was a leader in the Circle For Negro War Relief and advocated for the establishment of a training camp for black army officers. In 1917 she joined the executive committee of New York chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), which organized the Silent Protest Parade on New York City's Fifth Avenue. The public demonstration drew more than 8,000 African Americans to protest a riot in East Saint Louis that killed thirty-nine African Americans.

Profits from her business significantly impacted Walker's contributions to her political and philanthropic interests. In 1918 the National Association of Colored Women's Clubs (NACWC) honored Walker for making the largest individual contribution to help preserve Frederick Douglass’s Anacostia house. Prior to her death in 1919, Walker pledged $5,000 (the equivalent of about $65,000 in 2012) to the NAACP's antilynching fund. At the time it was the largest gift from an individual that the NAACP had ever received. Walker bequeathed nearly $100,000 to orphanages, institutions, and individuals; her will directed two-thirds of future net profits of her estate to charity.

Death and legacy

Walker died on May 25, 1919, from kidney failure and complications of hypertension at the age of fifty-one. Walker's remains are interred in Woodlawn Cemetery in The Bronx, New York City.

At the time of her death Walker was considered to be the wealthiest African American woman in America. She was eulogized as the first female self-made millionaire in America, but Walker's estate was only worth an estimated $600,000 (approximately $8 million in present-day dollars) upon her death. According to Walker's New York Times obituary, "she said herself two years ago [in 1917] that she was not yet a millionaire, but hoped to be some time." Her daughter, A'Lelia Walker, became the president of the Madame C.J. Walker Manufacturing Company.

Walker's personal papers are preserved at the Indiana Historical Society in Indianapolis. Her legacy also continues through two properties listed on the National Register of Historic Places: Villa Lewaro in Irvington, New York, and the Madame Walker Theatre Center in Indianapolis. Villa Lewaro was sold following A'Lelia Walker's death to a fraternal organization called the Companions of the Forest in America in 1932. The house was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1979. The National Trust for Historic Preservation has designated the privately-owned property a National Treasure. Indianapolis's Walker Manufacturing Company headquarters building, renamed the Madame Walker Theatre Center, opened in December 1927; it included the company's offices and factory as well as a theater, beauty school, hair salon and barbershop, restaurant, drugstore, and a ballroom for the community. The building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1980.

In 2006, playwright and director Regina Taylor wrote The Dreams of Sarah Breedlove, recounting the history of Walker’s struggles and success. The play premiered at the Goodman Theater in Chicago. Actress L. Scott Caldwell played the role of Walker.

On March 4, 2016, skincare and haircare company Sundial Brands launched a collaboration with Sephora in honor of Walker’s legacy. The launch, titled “Madam C.J. Walker Beauty Culture”, comprised four collections and focused on the use of natural ingredients to care for different types of hair.

Tributes

Various scholarships and awards have been named in Walker's honor:

The Madam C. J Walker Business and Community Recognition Awards are sponsored by the National Coalition of 100 Black Women, Oakland/Bay Area chapter. An annual luncheon honors Walker and awards outstanding women in the community with scholarships.

Spirit Awards are sponsored the Madame Walker Theatre Center in Indianapolis. Established as a tribute to Walker, the annual awards have honored national leaders in entrepreneurship, philanthropy, civic engagement, and the arts since 2006. Awards presented to individuals include the Madame C. J Walker Heritage Award as well as young entrepreneur and legacy prizes.

Walker was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame in Seneca, New York, in 1993. In 1998 the U.S. Postal Service issued a Madam Walker commemorative stamp as part of its Black Heritage Series.

Wikipedia

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