Juneteenth - Freedom Day

Juneteenth, also known as Freedom Day or Emancipation Day, is a holiday honoring African-American heritage and commemorates the announcement of the abolition of slavery in the state of Texas in 1865.

Celebrated on June 19, the term is a combination of June and nineteenth, and is recognized as a state holiday in 36 states.

The holiday originated in Galveston, Texas; for more than a century, the state of Texas was the primary home of Juneteenth celebrations, and since 1980, Juneteenth has been an official state holiday in Texas History

Though President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on September 22, 1862, with an effective date of January 1, 1863. It had minimal immediate effect on most slaves’ day-to-day lives, particularly in Texas. Texas was resistant to the Emancipation Proclamation, and though slavery was very prevalent in East Texas, it was not as common in the Western areas of Texas, particularly the Hill Country, where most German-Americans were opposed to the practice.

Juneteenth commemorates June 18 and 19, 1865. June 18 is the day Union General Gordon Granger and 2,000 federal troops arrived inGalveston, Texas, to take possession of the state and enforce the emancipation of its slaves. On June 19, 1865, Granger read the following declaration:

‘The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between them becomes that between employer and hired labor. The freedmen are advised to remain quietly at their present homes and work for wages. They are informed that they will not be allowed to collect at military posts and that they will not be supported in idleness either there or elsewhere.’

On June 19, 1865, in Galveston, Texas, the newly freed slaves held large public celebrations and so the tradition was started to celebrate future Juneteenth activities.

Here, in Buffalo, NY the celebration of Juneteenth is held for two days every June. This year it is today and tomorrow (June 16th and 17th). It starts with a colorful, joyful parade. Thousands of people attend the event in MLK Park, which has music, plenty of good food, vendors selling African jewelry and clothing. There are booths from many local agencies such as the NAACP, Urban League, Health Services. The tradition is an important part of local history and enjoyed by all that attend.

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African American History - Remembering Gordon Parks

Gordon Roger Alexander Buchannan Parks: Born November 30, 1912 in Fort Scott, Kansas.

He was stillborn -- no heartbeat, declared dead by the family doctor, and put aside for later burial. Another doctor in the delivery room had an idea, and immersed the newborn in ice-cold water. The shock caused his heart to start beating, and the baby was soon crying and healthy, and named for Dr. Gordon, who had saved his life. In the more than ninety years of his life, Gordon Parks became internationally renowned as a Photographer, Writer, Musician, Poet, Journalist, Motion Picture Director and Composer.

Parks grew up poor in Fort Scott, Kansas, and the youngest of 15 children. One of his early memories was hearing his all-black class told by their white schoolteacher, "You'll all wind up porters and maids." Following the death of his mother when he was 15, he left Kansas for Minnesota. Between bouts of homelessness, he earned rent as a piano player in a bordello. He also worked as a busboy, a Civilian Conservation Corpsman, and as his teacher had predicted, as a porter and later waiter on the transcontinental North Coast Limited.

In 1941, Parks met Ella Watson, a government cleaning woman, who became one of his most important subjects. His best-known photograph of Watson is American Gothic, 1942, today an icon of American culture. It shows a dignified woman posed like the farmer in Grant Wood’s 1930 composition, holding a broom and mop in place of the farmer’s pitchfork. Behind her hangs the American flag.

At 25, he bought a used camera for $7.50 and began working as a self-taught freelance photographer, focusing on everything from fashion to the effects the depression in Chicago's slums.

Parks chose to fight the poverty and racism of his past, selecting a camera as his principal “weapon.”

Parks was a close friend of Muhammad Ali, and godfather for Malcolm X's daughter Quibilah Shabazz. He was a co-founder of Essence magazine, and wrote a ballet called Martin, in honor of King.

By 1944, he was the only black photographer working for Vogue, and in 1948 he became the first black photographer at Life, the most prestigious magazine of its day for photography. Eventually Life sent him to France, Italy, and Spain, and stateside he became known for his photos documenting the civil rights movement.

He reported on segregation in Alabama in 1956, the growing Nation of Islam movement in the 1960s, and the assassination of Martin Luther King. In his spare time, he also directed a few low-budget films.

His art was about social issues such as poverty, race, segregation and crime. It also enhanced our understanding of beauty, nature, childhood, music, fashion and memory.

His autobiographical first novel, The Learning Tree (1963), and his subsequent autobiographies demonstrate that he had learned to value his parents' hard work, compassion, integrity, and capacity for hope as well as to fear the brutality and perversity of personal and institutionalized racism.

He attended and took photos at the Civil Rights March on Washington, 1963.

He died on March 7, 2006 (aged 93) in New York City.

*****

I have always admired the works of Gordon Parks who recorded an accurate documentation in his writings, and black and white photography, which allows future generations to understand the truth about life and the history of the United States during his personal lifetime.

peacesojourner

all photos by Gordon Parks

African American History Month - Rosa Parks

Rosa Parks is fondly remembered for her part in the Civil Rights Movement.

Rosa Parks Timeline

Feb. 4, 1913 - Rosa Louise McCauley is born in Tuskegee, Alabama to James and Leona McCauley.

1932 - Marries Raymond Parks, a barber from Montgomery, Alabama. Raymond is a member of the NAACP.

1934 - Receives her high school diploma after her husband urges her to do so.

Dec. 1943 - Ms. Parks joins the Montgomery chapter of the NAACP and is elected secretary to its president, E.D. Nixon. She later says of this: "I was the only woman there, and they needed a secretary, and I was too timid to say no."

Dec. 1, 1955 - She refuses to give up her bus seat to a white man when the bus driver orders her to do so. She is arrested and fined $14.

Dec. 5, 1955 - Ms. Parks stands trial and is found guilty of breaking the segregation laws. This leads to a 381-day boycott of the Montgomery bus system organized by Martin Luther King, Jr.

1957 - After receiving threats and losing her job, Parks and her husband move from Alabama to Detroit.

1977 - Her husband, Raymond, dies of cancer.

1980 - In honor of the 25th anniversary of her bus stand, The Detroit News and Detroit Public Schools establish the Rosa Parks Scholarship Foundation.

1987 – Ms. Parks founds the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self Development.

1992 - Publishes her first book, Rosa Parks My Story.

1995 - Speaks at the Million Man March in Washington, D.C.

1999 - President Clinton awards her the Congressional Gold Medal of Honor.

2000 - The Rosa Parks Museum and Library opens in Montgomery, Alabama.

Oct. 2004 - In Detroit her landlord decides to let her live indefinitely in her apartment without having to pay rent.

Oct. 25, 2005 - Ms. Parks dies in Detroit at the age of 92.

Oct. 30, 2005 - She Became the first woman to lie in honor in the Capitol Rotunda, Washington D.C.

Nov. 2, 2005 - Rosa Parks is buried in Detroit with the bodies of her husband and her mother.

2006 - Statue of Rosa Parks placed in National Statuary Hall in Washington, D.C.

The NAACP Celebrates 103rd Anniversary Today

1909 - 
On February 12th The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People was founded by a multiracial group of activists, who answered "The Call," in the New York City, NY. They initially called themselves the National Negro Committee.

FOUNDERS
Ida Wells-Barnett, W.E.B. DuBois, Henry Moscowitz, Mary White Ovington, Oswald Garrison Villiard, William English Walling led the "Call" to renew the struggle for civil and political liberty.

Here are just a few of the actions taken by the NAACP in the first ten years. I am reminded of the courage that it must have taken to stand up against racism and injustice in those very turbulent times.

1910 - 
In the face of intense adversity, the NAACP begins its legacy of fighting legal battles addressing social injustice with the Pink Franklin case, which involved a Black farmhand, who unknowingly killed a policeman in self-defense when the officer broke into his home at 3 a.m. to arrest him on a civil charge. After losing at the Supreme Court, the following year the renowned NAACP official Joel Spingarn and his brother Arthur start a concerted effort to fight such cases.

1913
- President Woodrow Wilson officially introduces segregation into the Federal Government. Horrified that the President would sanction such a policy, the NAACP launched a public protest.

1915
- The NAACP organizes a nationwide protest D.W. Griffiths racially-inflammatory and bigoted silent film, "Birth of a Nation."

1917 - 
In Buchanan vs. Warley, the Supreme Court has to concede that states can not restrict and officially segregate African Americans into residential districts. Also, the NAACP fights and wins the battle to enable African Americans to be commissioned as officers in World War I. Six hundred officers are commissioned, and 700,000 register for the draft..

1918
- After persistent pressure by the NAACP, President Woodrow Wilson finally makes a public statement against lynching.

1920
- To ensure that everyone, especially the Klan, knew that the NAACP would not be intimidated, the annual conference was held in Atlanta, considered one of the most active Klan areas.

*****

I have highlighted only the first ten years, however, the NAACP was instrumental in

making many, many more changes over the past century.

Today, one hundred and three years later, there are still people who take the time to fight against injustice and who have the courage to stand up for basic human rights.

The National NAACP along with its 1,700 branches nation wide will host anniversary celebrations and observances in their local communities.

I am a proud Life Member of the NAACP and currently attend the Buffalo, New York Branch. I encourage anyone who may be reading this to consider joining.

To contact the organization :www.naacp.org

Thank you to those early organizers who had the courage to stand up and speak out.

*****

peacesojourner

African American History Month - Sojourner Truth

Sojourner Truth - Abolitionist, Women's Rights Advocate

The following reminiscences were recorded by Frances Gage who was in attendance at The Ohio Women’s rights Convention, Akron Convention, Akron, Ohio, May 1851.
"There were very few women in those days who dared to "speak in meeting"; When, slowly from her seat in the corner she rose. She moved slowly and solemnly to the front, laid her old bonnet at her feet, and turned her great speaking eyes to me - I rose and announced "Sojourner Truth," She stood nearly six feet high, head erect, and eyes piercing the upper air like one in a dream. At her first word there was a profound hush.

Ain’t I a Woman?

That man over there say a woman needs to be helped into carriages

and lifted over ditches and to have the best place everywhere. 


Nobody ever helped me into carriages

or over mud puddles or gives me a best place . . .

And ain’t I a woman? 


Look at me. Look at my arm! I have plowed and planted

and gathered into barns and no man could head me . . .


And ain’t I a woman?


I could work as much and eat as much as a man–


when I could get to it–
and bear the lash as well


And ain’t I a woman?


I have born 13 children and seen most all sold into slavery

and when I cried out a mother’s grief none but Jesus heard me . . .


And ain’t I a woman? 


That little man in black there say a woman can’t have as much rights,

as a man cause Christ wasn’t a woman


Where did your Christ come from?

From God and a woman! Man had nothing to do with him!


If the first woman God ever made was strong enough to turn the world upside down,

all alone together women ought to be able to turn it
rightside up again.

*****

Sojourner Truth - Born: (c. 1797-1883)

Born one of twelve children, Isabella Baumfree in Ulster County, New York, she was freed by the New York State Emancipation Act of 1827 and lived in New York City for a time.

Around this time she had a life-changing religious experience and became a devout Christian. On June 1, 1843 she took the name Sojourner Truth which she felt God had given her and she assumed the "mission" of spreading "the Truth" across the country. She became famous as an itinerant preacher, drawing huge crowds with her oratory (and some said "mystical gifts") wherever she appeared. She became one of an active group of black women abolitionists, lectured before numerous abolitionist audiences, and was friends with such leading white abolitionists as James and Lucretia Mott and Harriet Beecher Stowe. She also became involved with the Women’s Suffrage Movement.

Some amazing statistics for a woman in the 1800’s – especially a woman of African descent:

- Before freedom she was sold three times: 1806, 1808, 1810

- She had five children -- Diana (c. 1815); Peter (c. 1822); Elizabeth (c. 1825); Sophia (c.1826) and Hannah who died in infancy. (Some controversy came about her ‘Ain’t I a Woman’ speech. In it Sojourner is quoted as having 13 children. Historians today primarily agree on five.)
- She filed and won a lawsuit to secure the return of her son, Peter, who had been illegally sold into slavery in Alabama from New York (1827-28).

- With the outbreak of the Civil War she raised money to purchase gifts for the soldiers, distributing them herself in the camps. She also helped African Americans who had escaped to the North to find habitation and shelter.

- In 1844, she joined the Northampton Association of Education and Industry in Massachusetts. Founded by abolitionists, the organization supported women's rights and religious tolerance as well as pacifism.

- In 1853 she met with Harriet Beecher Stowe in Andover, Mass.

- She owned three homes in all. Northampton, Mass. (1850), Harmonia village outside Battle Creek, Michigan (1857) and College Street, Battle Creek, Michigan (1867).

- In 1864, Sojourner was employed by the National Freedman's Relief Association in Washington, D.C. She worked diligently to improve conditions for African-Americans.

- In 1865, while working at the Freedman's Hospital in Washington, she rode in the streetcars to help force their desegregation. (90 years before Rosa Parks claimed her seat on the bus.)

- 1871 - Frederick Douglass signed her Book of Life while she was making rounds for freedom in New York.

- In 1872, she returned to Battle Creek and tried to vote in the presidential election, but was turned away at the polling place.

- She actually had an audience with two Presidents of the United States in the White House. Abraham Lincoln (1864) and Ulysses Grant (1870).

Age and ill health caused her to retire from the lecture circuit, and she spent her last days in a sanatorium in Battle Creek, Michigan. When she died on November 26, 1883, her last words were, "Be a follower of Jesus."

She is buried in Oak Hill Cemetery, Battle Creek, Michigan. Her grandsons, Sammy Banks and William Boyd, and her daughters, Elizabeth Banks Boyd and Diana Corbin are buried in the same plot. Despite her hardships she had managed to keep her family together.

Illiterate all of her life, Sojourner’s courage and candid, homespun way of speaking against the evils of slavery and the denial of women’s rights made her a major presence in her day. She still stands preeminently as the only woman of color who gained a national reputation on the lecture platform in the days before the Civil War.

A woman of courage and tenacity who believed she had God on her side.

Her life is a testimony that she did.

*****

peacesojourner

February is African American History Month

African American History Month

National African American History Month in February celebrates the contributions that African Americans have made to American history in their struggles for freedom and equality and deepens our understanding of our Nation's history.

On occasion, I have heard the complaint ‘Why is African American History month the shortest month in the calendar?’

National African American History Month had its origins in 1915 when historian and author Dr. Carter G. Woodson founded the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History. Through this organization Dr. Woodson initiated the first Negro History Week in February 1926. Dr. Woodson selected the week in February that included the birthdays of Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass, two key figures in the history of African Americans.

So the answer to that questions is that it was originally one week and the person who started it was African American.

In 1976 this commemoration of black history in the United States was expanded to Black History Month, also known as African American History Month, and President Ford issued the first Message on the Observance of Black History Month that year.

In 1986 Congress passed Public Law 99-244 which designated February 1986 as "National Black (Afro-American) History Month.” This law noted that February 1, 1986 would “mark the beginning of the sixtieth annual public and private salute to Black History.” The law further called upon the President to issue a proclamation calling on the people of the United States to observe February 1986 as Black History Month with the appropriate ceremonies and activities.

In 2008 President Bush issued Presidential Proclamation 8218. The theme for 2008 honored Carter G. Woodson who established the first Negro History Week and whose organization, ASALH, is responsible for setting the theme for "National African American History Month each year."

Dr. Woodson was born in 1875 in Buckingham County, Virginia. The son of former slaves, he worked in mines and quarries until the age of 20 when he became determined to receive an education. He received his high school diploma at the age of 22 and went on to get a master's degree in history from the University of Chicago. In 1912, Woodson received a doctorate in history from Harvard.
 His best-known book is "The Miseducation of the Negro."

Unable to land a teaching post at the elite university because Harvard wasn't hiring black professors, he went to teach at one of the nation's leading black colleges, Howard University. 

 He believed that education without the inclusion of Black history was detrimental to the health of a nation whose inherent promise is life, liberty and justice for all.

 Besides building self-esteem among blacks, Black History education would help eliminate prejudice among whites. 

So, Dr. Goodson embarked on a quest to establish a national celebration of black heritage. In 1926, Negro History Week was born.


Thank you Dr. Carter G. Woodson.


*****

Celebrating Kwanzaa: December 26 - January 1, 2012

Kwanzaa is a non-religious African American holiday that celebrates family, community, and culture. It is celebrated for seven days: December 26 - January 1^st.

Dr. Maulana Karenga, professor and chairman of Black Studies at California State University, Long Beach, created Kwanzaa in 1966. He founded US, a cultural organization, and started to research African "first fruit" (harvest) celebrations. Dr. Karenga combined aspects of several different harvest celebrations, such as those of the Ashanti and those of the Zulu, to form the basis of Kwanzaa.

The name Kwanzaa is derived from the phrase "matunda ya kwanza" which means "first fruits" in Swahili. The traditional Kwanzaa greeting is "Habari gani?"

Each family celebrates Kwanzaa in its own way, but celebrations often include songs and dances, African drums, storytelling, poetry reading, and a large traditional meal. An African feast, called a Karamu, is held on December 31.

Kwanzaa celebrates what its founder called the seven principles of Kwanzaa, or Nguzo Saba (originally Nguzu Saba—the seven principles of blackness), which Karenga said, "is a communitarian African philosophy. These seven principles comprise Kawaida, a Swahili term for tradition and reason. Each of the seven days of Kwanzaa is dedicated to one of the following principles, as follows:

“The first candle lit is the center black one that represents the first principle- Umoja, meaning "Unity," on the first day. To strive for, and to maintain, unity in the family, community, nation, and race.

On the second day, the second candle lit is the farthest red one on the left, this represents the second principle- Kujichagulia (Self-Determination): To define ourselves, name ourselves, create for ourselves, and speak for ourselves.

On the third day, the third candle is lit on the farthest right green one which represents Ujima (Collective Work and Responsibility): To build and maintain our community together and make our brothers' and sisters' problems our problems, and to solve them together.

We return back to the next red on from the left for the fourth day, representing Ujamaa (Cooperative Economics): To build and maintain our own stores, shops, and other businesses and to profit from them together.

The fifth day, we light the next green candle from the right which represents Nia (Purpose): To make our collective vocation the building and developing of our community in order to restore our people to their traditional greatness.

Going back to the red side, on the sixth day, the next candle from the left closest to the black candle is lit representing Kuumba (Creativity): To do always as much as we can, in the way we can, in order to leave our community more beautiful and beneficial than we inherited it.

This falls on New Year's Eve also and usually when we feast. It is at this feast we have someone in the family recite, and usually an elder, reads:

Strive for discipline, dedication, and achievement in all you do. Dare struggle and sacrifice and gain the strength that comes from this.

Build where you are and dare leave a legacy that will last as long as the sun shines and the water flows.

Practice daily Umoja, Kujichagulia, Ujima, Ujamaa, Nia, Kuumba, and Imani. And may the wisdom of the ancestors always walk with us. May the year's end meet us laughing, and stronger.

May our children honor us by following our example in love and struggle. And at the end of next year, may we sit together again, in larger numbers, with greater achievement and closer to liberation and a higher level of life. Harambee.

On the seventh day of Kwanzaa, the last green candle is lit, which represents Imani (Faith): To believe with all our heart in our people, our parents, our teachers, our leaders, and the righteousness and victory of our struggle.”

The last day is no different, except that after the principle is discussed, the candles are extinguished and Kwanzaa is over.

Kwanzaa gifts, or zawadi, are usually given daily. The gifts recognize achievements of the recipient while stressing the themes and principles of the holiday. Gifts related to education, African and African-American culture, or the arts make good zawadi.

Happy Kwanzaa

Today is the 6th Queen City Jazz Fest - Buffalo New York

Today they held the 6^th Annual Queen City Jazz Fest outdoors in front of the Colored Musicians Jazz Club.

The event was free and open to all.

This is one of Buffalo's top events of the year.

There is no other place in the world like Buffalo's Colored Musicians Club.

In the 1930's, 40's, and 50's, all the great stars of jazz that came to town stopped in at the Colored Musicians Club to jam with their friends and local musicians. The club offers live jazz in an intimate setting, and some of the best jazz you can find anywhere. It is open to non-members who want to share a love of jazz, and are seeking a relaxing time in a friendly place.

The Buffalo Colored Musicians Club at 145 Broadway is as endearing a place as it is historically significant. The club holds memories of times past when it was nothing for jazz greats such as Dizzy Gillespie, Count Basie, Art Blakey, Duke Ellington, Lionel Hampton, Billie Holiday, and Ella Fitzgerald, Lena Horne to be passing through.

Through the years the club fostered an environment where people of different racial and ethnic backgrounds could come together over a mutual love of the American phenomenon called jazz.

Before the Colored Musicians Club found its permanent home at 145 Broadway in 1934, it was housed in other locations. When the Colored Musicians Club moved into 145 Broadway it was merely a vacant storefront. The actual building had been constructed between 1880 and 1900 and it initially housed the shop of boot and shoemaker Charles Zifle, then Michael McNamara's cigar and tobacco stand, a billiards parlor, several union locals and Niagara China and Equipment Company. (Davis)

The Colored Musicians Club received its charter and became incorporated on May 14, 1935. At this point, the club utilized the space upstairs for practice, rehearsals, and performances while, downstairs, the union would hold its meetings.

In 1979, the Club was granted historic landmark status. In 1999, the Club was designated a historical preservation site. Today, the Colored Musicians Club is the only remaining African American club in the entire United States and, as such, it actively encourages historical research and preservation of the history of jazz in Buffalo

*****

Today - The weather was perfect and the music was outstanding.

Hundreds came out and enjoyed the good music and good company.

This is one of Buffalo's top events of the year and I am so glad that it happens just about one mile from my home. A big thank you to the organizers and the musicians. A perfect day!

peacesojourner

Poet - Paul Laurence Dunbar - Born June 27, 1872

Sympathy

by Paul Laurence Dunbar

I know what the caged bird feels, alas!

When the sun is bright on the upland slopes;

When the wind stirs soft through the springing grass,

And the river flows like a stream of glass;

When the first bird sings and the first bud opes,

And the faint perfume from its chalice steals--

I know what the caged bird feels!

I know why the caged bird beats its wing

Till its blood is red on the cruel bars;

For he must fly back to his perch and cling

When he fain would be on the bough a-swing;

And a pain still throbs in the old, old scars

And they pulse again with a keener sting--

I know why he beats his wing!

I know why the caged bird sings, ah me,

When his wing is bruised and his bosom sore,--

When he beats his bars and he would be free;

It is not a carol of joy or glee,

But a prayer that he sends from his heart's deep core,

But a plea, that upward to Heaven he flings--

I know why the caged bird sings!

We Wear the Mask

by Paul Laurence Dunbar

We wear the mask that grins and lies,

It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,--

This debt we pay to human guile;

With torn and bleeding hearts we smile,

And mouth with myriad subtleties.

Why should the world be overwise,

In counting all our tears and sighs?

Nay, let them only see us, while

We wear the mask.

We smile, but, O great Christ, our cries

To thee from tortured souls arise.

We sing, but oh the clay is vile

Beneath our feet, and long the mile;

But let the world dream otherwise,

We wear the mask!

Paul Laurence Dunbar

*****

Paul Laurence Dunbar was one of the first African-American poets to gain national
recognition. He was born in Dayton, Ohio, on June 27, 1872, to Joshua and Matilda Murphy Dunbar, freed slaves from Kentucky. His parents separated shortly after his birth, but Dunbar would draw on their stories of plantation life throughout his writing career.

By the age of fourteen, Dunbar had poems published in the Dayton Herald. While in high school he edited the Dayton Tattler, a short-lived black newspaper published by classmate Orville Wright. Despite being a fine student, Dunbar was financially unable to attend college and took a job as an elevator operator.

In 1893, Dunbar self-published a collection called Oak and Ivy. To help pay the publishing costs, he sold the book for a dollar to people riding in his elevator.

Later that year, Dunbar moved to Chicago, hoping to find work at the first World's Fair. He was befriended by Frederick Douglass, who found him a job as a clerk, and also arranged for him to read a selection of his poems. Douglass said of Dunbar that he was "the most promising young colored man in America."

By 1895, Dunbar's poems began appearing in major national newspapers and magazines, such as The New York Times. With the help of friends, he published the second collection, Majors and Minors (1895). The poems written in Standard English were called "majors," and those in dialect were termed "minors." Although the "major" poems outnumber those written in dialect, it was the dialect poems that brought Dunbar the most attention. This recognition helped Dunbar gain national and international acclaim, and in 1897 he embarked on a six-month reading tour of England. He also brought out a new collection, Lyrics of Lowly Life (1896).

Upon returning to America, Dunbar received a clerkship at the Library of Congress in Washington, DC, and shortly thereafter he married the writer Alice Ruth Moore.

In 1898, Dunbar's health deteriorated; he believed the dust in the library contributed to his tuberculosis and left his job to dedicate himself full time to writing and giving readings. Over the next five years, he would produce three more novels and three short story collections.

Dunbar separated from his wife in 1902, and shortly thereafter he suffered a nervous breakdown and a bout of pneumonia. Although ill Dunbar continued to write poems. His collections from this time include Lyrics of Love and Laughter (1903), Howdy, Howdy, Howdy (1905), and Lyrics of Sunshine and Shadow (1905). These books confirmed his position as America's premier black poet.

Dunbar's steadily deteriorating health caused him to return to his mother's home in Dayton, Ohio, where died on February 9, 1906, at the age of thirty-three.

*****

As a young woman I had never heard of Paul Laurence Dunbar until I met a person who had graduated from a high school in Alabama that was named after the poet. I researched the poets work and enjoyed his poetry. I am still a fan today.

peacesojourner

African American History Month-Marian Anderson

Marian Anderson was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, February 27, 1897.

Today is the 114th anniversary of her birth. She was a contralto, perhaps best remembered for her performance on Easter Sunday, 1939 on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.

Ms. Anderson joined a junior church choir at the age of six, and applied to an all-white music school after her graduation from high school in 1921, but was turned away because she was black. Later, she debuted with the New York Philharmonic on August 26, 1925 and scored an immediate success with the critics. In 1928, she sang for the first time at Carnegie Hall. Her reputation was further advanced by her tour through Europe in the early 1930s where she did not encounter the racial prejudices she had experienced in America.

Ms. Anderson won the Julius Rosenwald scholarship allowing her to train abroad in England, France, Belgium, Holland, the former Soviet Union and Scandinavia. She toured Europe many times in her career.

In 1939, she was denied the right to perform at Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C. because the venue owners, The Daughters of the American Revolution enforced a clause in their contract that stated “concerts by whites only.” DAR member Eleanor Roosevelt and several other members resigned in protest.

As an alternative to the Constitution Hall concert, Marian’s representatives arranged for her to perform at the Lincoln Memorial. In attendance were 75,000 people, the largest turnout to date at that time, and heard by millions of listeners on the radio.

Although she was reluctant to view herself as an activist, the Lincoln Memorial concert has been said to be one of the most dramatic events in civil rights history.

Several weeks later, at the invitation of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Ms. Anderson performed at the White House for King George VI and Queen Elizabeth of England, making her the first African American to perform at the White House.

In spite of her treatment by the Daughters of the American Revolution Ms. Anderson remained a patriot. She performed in hospitals and bases for the troops in World War II and the Korean War.

In 1957 she toured India and the Far East as a goodwill ambassador through the U.S. State Department and the American National Theater and Academy. She traveled 35,000 miles in 12 weeks, giving 24 concerts.

Upon her return President Eisenhower appointed her as a delegate to the United Nations Human Rights Committee. As a member of the United Nations Trusteeship Committee, Ms. Anderson helped oversee the well-being of more than 100 million people living in U.N. trust territories in Africa and the South Pacific.

She sang at the inaugurations of Presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy.
Most important was her international stardom – she traveled the world extensively and enjoyed more freedom and appreciation abroad than at home.

In 1963 Ms. Anderson also sang at the historic March on Washington. She was alongside Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. I was able to see and hear her on that day along with my family and friends who attended the March. That same year she was awarded the American Medal of Freedom.

Ironically, Marion Anderson launched her retirement tour at the very hall where she had been denied so many years before, Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C.

Marian Anderson passed away on April 8, 1993 at the age of 96, leaving a legacy of excellence and selfless service to a world of adoring fans.

On January 27, 2005, a commemorative U.S. postage stamp honored her as part of the Black Heritage series.

Ms. Anderson was a recipient of the Silver Buffalo Award, the highest adult award given by the Boy Scouts of America.

She symbolized the civil rights movement with dignity and grace; and was the first African-American to be named a permanent member of Metropolitan Opera Company, also, she was a frequent performer at the White House.

Four years ago, while visiting Philadelphia, I had the opportunity to visit the home of Marian Anderson. It was a special experience as we were shown around by her family members. The home has the original furniture, piano, and china just as Ms. Anderson used them when she lived there. Even some of her dresses were on display. I would encourage anyone who is in the area to make an appointment to visit.

While hearing the personal stories of her life, I was, once again, in awe to think of the many experiences that she had and the courage that she exhibited while enduring racism and prejudice by others. She carried herself with dignity and with her head held high.

Her story is an inspiration for everyone.