‘Black Bodies’: Short film, long impact

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‘Black Bodies’: Short film, long impact

It starts out with the striking voice of literary and visual artist, Komi Olafimihan, articulating a poignant spoken word poem and sounds of panicked breathing in the background from the lead female played by Donisha Prendergast, whose sudden...

Source: Jamaica Gleaner

Clarence Thomas

Clarence Thomas is a renowned personality, currently serving as a Conservative Associate Justice in the American Supreme Court. Born in Pin Point, Georgia on June 23, 1948, Thomas served as a law-abiding judicial nominee under the administrations of Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush. What

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Source: Black History Resources

BlackPast.org, an online reference center makes availablea wealth of materials on African American history in one centrallocation on the Internet. These materials include an onlineencyclopedia of over 4,000 entries, the complete transcript of more than 300speeches by African Americans, other people

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Source: Black Past

Rust College [Holly Springs] (1866- )

Rust College was founded in 1866 by the Freeman’s Aid Society’s missionaries of the Methodist Episcopal Church with the goal of providing basic education for adults and children who had formerly been enslaved. Located outside Holly Springs, Mississippi, the College is currently affiliated with the

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Source: Black Past

Chica da Silva (1731/5-1796)

Francisca da Silva de Oliveira, better known as Chica da Silva (or spelled Xica da Silva), was a Brazilian woman born into slavery, who went on to gain her freedom and become a powerful and well-known member of Brazilian

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Source: Black Past

Name at birth: David Wark Griffith

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Source: Fact Monster - Black History

(1877) Alexander Crummell, “Address Before the American Geographical Society”

African American intellectual Alexander Crummell was one of the few19th century scholars known and respected widely among European Americans. In an address before the American Geographical Society delivered in Chickering Hall in New York City on May 22, 1877, Crummell demonstrates his appeal to one

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Source: Black Past

May

22

1877

(1970) Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm, “I Am For the Equal Rights Amendment.”

Shirley Anita St. Hill Chisholm became in 1968 the first African American woman elected to Congress. Four years later in 1972, she launched a bid to become the Democratic nominee for President of the United States, another first for an African American woman. Throughout her career in Congress

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Source: Black Past

Aug

10

1970

Flipper, Henry Ossian (1856-1940)

Born near Thomasville, Georgia on March 21, 1856, Henry O. Flipper rose to prominence as the first African American graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1877. Despite being born into slavery to Festus, a shoemaker, and Isabella Flipper, Henry was reared in a family that

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Source: Black Past

Brawley, Tawana Glenda (1972– )

Tawana Brawley is an African American woman from Wappinger’s Falls, New York, who became known when she was 15 years old in 1987 for wrongly accusing four white men for brutally raping her in Dutchess

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Source: Black Past

Nov

28

1987

Simpson, O. J. (Orenthal James Simpson), 1947–, American football player, b. San Francisco. As a running back for the Univ. of Southern California, he won the Heisman Trophy as the best college player of 1968. The Juice played with the Buffalo Bills (1969–77) and San Francisco 49ers (1978–79) and

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Source: Fact Monster - Black History

Lane, William Henry/Master Juba (1825-c. 1852)

William Henry Lane is credited as one of the most influential figures in the creation of American tap dance. Lane developed a unique style of using his body as a musical instrument, blending African-derived syncopated rhythms with movements of the Irish jig and reel. Lane’s melding of these

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Source: Black Past

(1987) Thurgood Marshall, “A Colorblind Society Remains an Aspiration”

On August 15, 1987 U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall spoke to a gathering of federal judges. Reflecting on his two decades on the Court and particularly on recent affirmative action rulings by the High Court, Justice Marshall reminded his audience that the United States had not yet

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Source: Black Past

Aug

15

1987

Ashe, Arthur Robert

Ashe, Arthur Robert | FactMonster

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Source: Fact Monster - Black History

O'Neal, Shaquille

ONeal, Shaquille | FactMonster

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Source: Fact Monster - Black History

Jackson-Lee, Sheila (1950 - )

Sheila Jackson-Lee was born on January 12, 1950 in Queens, New York. She graduated from Jamaica High School in Queens, New York in 1968. She then graduated from Yale University in Connecticut with a B.A. in political science in 1972 followed in 1975 by a J.D. from the University of Virginia Law

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Source: Black Past

Jan

12

1950

Founded in 1909 in New York City by a group of black and white citizens committed to social justice, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is the nations largest and strongest civil rights

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Source: Blackfacts.com

Feb

12

1909

From Finland to “Not in My Neighborhood”: Antero Pietila's Journey To and Through Racially Divided America

In the article below Antero Pietila, longtime reporter for the Baltimore Sun, describes his arrival as a Finnish immigrant in the United States as the nation was being convulsed by the Civil Rights Movement. Pietila describes his initial introduction into the nations racial dilemma through Harlem

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Source: Black Past

(1846) Lewis Richardson, “I am Free From American Slavery” 1846

By the 1840s a number of fugitive slaves, the most prominent being Frederick Douglass, took to the lecture circuit usually appearing before abolitionist societies where they told their personal stories of bondage. The speech of Lewis Richardson, however, attracted particular attention because he

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Source: Black Past

Foster, Abigail Kelley

Foster, Abigail Kelley | FactMonster

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Source: Fact Monster - Black History

U.S. Department of State Background Note

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Source: Fact Monster - Black History

Bissagos Islands

Bissagos Islands | FactMonster

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Source: Fact Monster - Black History

Castries, St. Lucia (1650 - )

Castries, capital of St. Lucia, is also the largest city on the island. The latest estimates show its population as about 20,000. St. Lucia with a total population of 163,362 (July 2014 est.) is part of the Windward Islands chain which forms the boundary between the Atlantic Ocean and the

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Source: Black Past

Feb

22

1979

(1903) W.E.B. Du Bois, “Training Negroes for Social Power”

In this 1903 speech, W.E.B. Du Bois describes his educational philosophy and in the process, contrasts his views with those of the Tuskegee educator Booker T. Washington who was then at the height of his

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Source: Black Past

Marshall, Thurgood (1908-1993)

Thurgood Marshall was an American civil rights activist with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the first African American to serve on the Supreme Court of the United States. He is remembered as a lawyer who had one of the highest rates of success before the

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Source: Black Past

Executive Order 9808

In the aftermath of World War II, mob violence and lynching of Black Americans, in conjunction with the continuing controversy about segregation in American society, led President Harry S. Truman to issue Executive Order 9808 on this day which set up a committee to study the protection of civil

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Source: Blackfacts.com

Dec

5

1946

Muholi, Zanele (1972-)

Zanele Muholi is one of the most prominent lesbian activists in South Africa and a world-renowned, award-winning photographer. She is a trailblazer with her images of black lesbians in candid yet intimate poses. She challenges the manner in which black women’s bodies have heretofore been

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Source: Black Past

Amo, Anton Wilhelm (1703? -1753)

Anton Wilhelm Amo, also known as Antonius Guilielmus Amo Afer ab Aximo in Guinea, was the first intellectual of African ancestry to study in Germany. He obtained a doctorate degree in philosophy and held lectures at the universities of Halle and Jena. Having spent forty years of his life in

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Source: Black Past

Owen, Robert, 1771–1858, British social reformer and socialist, pioneer in the cooperative movement. The son of a saddler, he had little formal education but was a zealous reader. At the age of 10 he began working in the textile business and by 1794 had become a successful cotton manufacturer in

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Source: Fact Monster - Black History

Second Baptist Church of Detroit (1836- )

The Second Baptist Church of Detroit, located in the Greektown district of downtown Detroit, is the oldest African American congregation in Michigan and, according to some sources, the

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Source: Black Past

Arroyo, Martina (1936- )

Born to a Puerto Rican father and African American mother, Martina Arroyo was a world-renowned operatic soprano from the 1960s through 1989, the year of her professional retirement. She and her contemporaries were the first generation of African American opera soloists to attain international

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Source: Black Past

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