Tag: African-American History
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Meet The Black Patrolman Who Saved Martin Luther King’s Life In 1958
Advertisements The time was around 2:00 on a Saturday in September of 1958. Al Howard, a police officer in Harlem, and Philip Romano, a new recruit, were sharing a patrol car. In his position as an officer, Howard, age 31, had already logged three years of service. That was the first time he’d ever met […]
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The American League Of Colored Laborers Was The First Black Labor Union, Founded In 1850
Advertisements The American League of Colored Laborers (ALCL) was the first black labor union in the United States. It was founded in 1850 in New York City as a collective for competent free craftsmen with the goal of developing agricultural and industrial arts abilities among its members and encouraging African American entrepreneurship. In response to […]
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How Black Children Were Cooked And Fed to Hogs, Plus Were Used as Alligator Bait in the Early 1900s In America
Advertisements In 1957, Johnny Lee Gaddy watched African American children being actually fed to the hogs on the campus of the infamous Arthur G. Dozier Reform School in the Florida Panhandle, according to peonage researcher Dr. Antoinette Harrell. In addition, a 1923 article in the New York Times Magazine revealed that Black babies were being […]
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How James Meredith Was Shot By A White Snipper For His “March Against Fear” In Protest Of Racial Violence In 1966
Advertisements James Meredith, a civil rights leader, organized the “March Against Fear” on June 5, 1966. He had enrolled at the University of Mississippi in 1962, four years earlier, being the first African American student to do so. Meredith chose to take a 21-day lone march from the Peabody Hotel in Memphis, Tennessee, to the […]
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Meet America’s Cruelest, Richest Slave Traders, Notorious For Raping Enslaved African Women – Isaac Franklin And John Armfield
Advertisements The two most brutal domestic slave dealers in America used a code to communicate. Slave trading was considered a “sport.” They were courageous “pirates” or “one-eyed men,” a metaphor for their penises, Isaac Franklin and John Armfield. The women they bought and sold were referred to as “fancy maids,” a term that connotes youth, […]
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From Slave To Bank Owner: How William Washington Browne Founded The 1st Black-Owned Bank In The U.S. In 1888
Advertisements The Savings Bank of the Grand Fountain United Order of True Reformers in Richmond, Virginia was the first Black-owned bank in the United States. Reverend William Washington Browne created the bank on March 2, 1888, and it opened its doors on April 3, 1889. The Capitol Savings Bank of Washington, D.C. was the first […]
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How Whites Kidnapped, Tied And Drowned 15-Year Old Willie Howard For Sending A Christmas Card To A White Girl
Advertisements Individuals will send unique notes to loved ones, family, and coworkers as the year draw to a close and Christmas approaches. Willie James Howard, a 15-year-old who was kidnapped by three white male adults and drowned, died as a result of such a seemingly benign act. Willie Howard was attractive, well-liked, a talented singer, […]
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Homer Plessy, Shoemaker Who Defied Segregation On A Louisiana Train Before Rosa Parks
Advertisements Homer Plessy’s one act of civil disobedience inspired the Civil Rights Movement of the twentieth century. He is most known as the plaintiff in Plessy v. Ferguson, a landmark court case opposing segregation. In 1892, as a racially mixed shoemaker, he defied Louisiana segregation laws by refusing to board a whites-only train car. He […]
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Black Surgeon Who Performed World’s 1st Successful Open Heart Surgery In 1893 – Dr. Daniel Hale Williams
Advertisements Dr. Daniel Hale Williams, an African-American cardiologist, became the first surgeon in the United States to execute a successful open-heart treatment in 1893, exactly 125 years ago today. Because he was one of the few black cardiologists in the United States at the time, William’s surgery became a notable milestone in medical history and […]
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Reverend Who Was Bombed & Beaten For Trying To Enroll His Daughter Into All-White School – Rev. Fred L. Shuttlesworth
Advertisements Rev. Fred L. Shuttlesworth was bombed twice and imprisoned more than 35 times during his lifetime, in addition to being beaten unconscious for seeking to enroll his kids in an all-white school. Before his death in October 2011, the American preacher and civil rights leader was the last of the civil rights movement’s “Big […]
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How African-Americans OF Harlem Fought To Save Ethiopia From Italian Dictator Mussolini
Advertisements The Second Italo-Ethiopian War, also known as the Second Italo-Abyssinian War, started in 1935 and lasted seven months, culminating in the military occupation of Ethiopia. Italy attempted an invasion of Ethiopia for the second time. Ethiopia was a sovereign nation with a robust army and a strong monarchy at the time, while the rest […]
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The Assassination Of Martin Luther King, Jr. – Who Was Really Behind The Trigger?
Advertisements On April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King, Jr. was slain in Memphis, Tennessee, an incident that sent shockwaves around the world. King, a Baptist minister and the founder of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), had led the civil rights movement since the mid-1950s, fighting segregation and achieving significant civil rights advances for African […]
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How Black Fisherman Gary Duncan Was Arrested For Touching A White Boy’s Arm In 1966
Advertisements Black Fisherman Gary Duncan, a 19-year-old Black fisherman from Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana, witnessed his nephew and cousin being mobbed by a gang of White boys outside a recently integrated high school in October 1966. Duncan approached them in order to avoid a brawl. In the process, he touched the arm of a White youngster. […]
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An Account of the Assassination of MLK’s Mother Alberta King In 1974, Six Years After MLK’s Murder
Advertisements Account of the Assassination of MLK’s Mother Alberta King In 1974: The assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who was widely regarded as America’s final chance for racial harmony at the time, is widely regarded as one of the most tragic incidents in the country’s history. His assassination caused days of unrest across […]
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Lynching Of Michael Donald & How His Mother Bankrupted The KKK While Seeking Justice In 1981
Advertisements Michael Donald, the 19-year-old son of Beulah Mae Donald, was kidnapped, assaulted, and lynched by members of the United Klans of America on March 21, 1981, in Mobile, Alabama (an Alabama faction of the KKK). The United Klans of America was one of the country’s largest and most violent organizations at the time. The […]
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Frank Embree Was Falsely Accused Of Rape And Lynched In 1899 And Gory Photos Used For Postcards
Advertisements Frank Embree’s narrative is a terrifying one that highlights the dangers of being born black in the United States, particularly during the age of slavery, its abolition, and the Jim Crow era. The treatment that Frank Embree received before he died for a crime he did not commit needs to be told over and […]
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The Waco Lynching Of Jesse Washington
Advertisements Violence and White Supremacy within the United States have for over three centuries been mutually inclusive. This was the means by which whites maintained economic, social, and political dominion over blacks especially. Though, emancipation allowed for the abolishment of chattel slavery, blacks were no fewer victims to the oppressiveness of racism. It could be […]
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Tignon Law: How Black Women Were Banned From Displaying Their Hair Out Of Envy In The U.S
Advertisements Over the centuries, black hair remains a topic of conversation and fascination all over the world. While many praise black hair as exceptionally beautiful by every standard. The texture of black hair is suitable for forming unique styles from the afro to, others look down upon it with disdain, and mostly envy. Today, black […]
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Meet Mae Jemison: The First Black Woman To Travel To Space
Advertisements Mae Carol Jemison was born on October 17, 1956, in Decatur, Alabama, U.S., and was an American physician and the first African American woman to become an astronaut. She spent more than a week in 1992 orbiting Earth in the space shuttle Endeavour. At the age of three, Jemison moved with her family to […]
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Black Girls Died From A Bomb Planted In A Church By White Men In Birmingham, In 1963
Advertisements When one scrolls through the pages of history, one will find that no one has carried out acts of terrorism on humans more than the Caucasian man. He has spent thousands of years matching round the earth killing, maiming, brutalizing, stealing, and terrorizing various indigenous populations. When bombing of churches are mentioned, what comes […]
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How White Mob Lynched Two Black Men In Indiana, 1930
Advertisements On August 7, 1930, a mob of ten to fifteen thousand whites abducted three young black men from the jail in Marion, Indiana on August 7, 1930. They lynched Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith. Sixteen-year-old James Cameron narrowly survived after being beaten by the mob. Lawrence Beitler’s photograph of the two victims’ hanging bodies […]
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The Lynching Of Two Black Men And Their Pregnant Wives In Georgia, In 1946
Advertisements This story is one of the most depressing and hurtful accounts of lynchings in American history that we have had to report in our existence as a platform. This is a bitter account of how four African American sharecroppers were lynched at Moore’s Ford in northeast Georgia on July 25, 1946. The event is […]
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History Of The Lynching Of 40-Year-Old Black Man In Omaha, 1919
Advertisements During the “Red Summer” of 1919, a wave of racial and labor violence swept through the United States. The Omaha Courthouse Lynching of 1919 was an infamous part of the wave. It was witnessed by an estimated 20,000 people, making it one of the largest individual spectacles of racial violence in the nation’s history. […]