Ronda Racha Penrice

Article / Updated 10-09-2023

The rap music of today is an outgrowth of the mid-1970s hip-hop, a brash mixture of rhythm and boastful talking. Out of nowhere, the Sugarhill Gang's "Rapper's Delight," rhymed over CHIC's "Good Times" and cut in 1979, became a commercial hit on the R&B, pop, and U.K. charts. By the early 1980s, hip-hop pioneers, such as Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, Kurtis Blow (the first rapper signed to a major label, Mercury Records), the Funky Four Plus One, and Run-D.M.C., were changing the music scene. Run-D.M.C.'s 1986 album Raising Hell, which became the first rap album in the Billboard Top 10, along with their rock collaboration with white rock band Aerosmith on "Walk This Way," paved the way for hip-hop's subsequent dominance. Hip-hop matures Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five had shown rap's political potential with 1982's "The Message," which detailed the horrendous conditions of ghetto life, but Public Enemy completely embodied it. Signed to Def Jam Records, Public Enemy, marked by lead rapper Chuck D's preacher-like presentation, directly politicized rap in the late 1980s and beyond with hits like "Fight the Power." Hip-hop also came into its own artistically. The Bomb Squad, Public Enemy's producers, took hip-hop production to another level with multitextured layering and customized beats. Artists such as Rakim from Eric B & Rakim and KRS-One placed a greater emphasis on lyricism, as metaphors became a hip-hop staple. Others, such as X-Clan, the Jungle Brothers, and A Tribe Called Quest, comfortably flexed their Afrocentric views. During the late 1980s into the early 1990s, a variety of hip-hop styles flourished. Def Jam's first artist, LL Cool J, even emerged as a sex symbol. The West Coast opens rap up The West Coast was the first area to expand hip-hop beyond the East Coast. Initially, Too Short, Ice T, and N.W.A. were the artists that shined the brightest. Too Short injected the pimp game into rap lyrics, and Ice T incorporated themes of pimping and hustling into his rhymes. N.W.A., however, had the biggest impact. The brainchild of Eric "Eazy-E" Wright, N.W.A. core members included Dr. Dre, Ice Cube, MC Ren, and Eazy-E. Although "Boyz-N-the-Hood" was their first hit, the group headed in a bolder direction with their second album, Straight Outta Compton, released in 1988. Guns, women, liquor, and other aspects of urban life weren't new to hip-hop, but those things viewed from the perspective of a gangster were. Ironically, N.W.A. uncovered both the hopelessness and resiliency borne out of oppressed conditions. "F*** Tha Police," a response to police brutality, officially placed N.W.A. on the FBI's radar and labeled hip-hop, and gangsta rap in particular, America's real public enemy number one. After leaving N.W.A., Ice Cube successfully established a solo career as a lyricist from the West Coast with his 1990 debut, AmeriKKKa's Most Wanted. Meanwhile, Dr. Dre's 1992 multi-platinum solo debut, The Chronic, officially ended the East Coast's rap dominance. It also formalized a new sound, G-Funk, inspired by the music of funkateers Roger Troutman (and Zapp) and George Clinton, and established Snoop Doggy Dogg, whose 1993 debut Doggystyle entered the charts at number one, as a star. Heavily influenced by his family's Mississippi roots, Snoop's rap style arguably made the Southern drawl more acceptable to the rap masses. Personal arguments and misunderstandings between the West and East Coast rap communities — most notably between label owners Suge Knight and Sean "Puffy" Combs and their rappers Tupac Shakur and the Notorious B.I.G. (also known as Biggie) — culminated in the violent, unsolved murders of Tupac in 1995 and Biggie in 1996. Stunned by the tragic loss of two hip-hop titans, the rap community took steps to mend the rift between the coasts. Violence, however, has remained an issue. In 2002, Run-D.M.C.'s Jam Master Jay became another victim of violence. Equally as frustrating to the rap community has been the police's inability to make arrests in any of these murders. Women and the state of rap Rap has continually battled allegations of sexism and misogyny. Miami-based 2 Live Crew fueled those objections with its signature Miami Bass music, featuring pulsating rhythms and sexually explicit lyrics such as those on the 1989 hit "Me So Horny" off the Nasty As They Wanna Be album. In addition, the mostly naked women featured on the group's album covers and in their videos generated more outrage. Some women, however, have grabbed the mic to represent for themselves. Rap's most visible female pioneers have been Salt-N-Pepa, MC Lyte, Queen Latifah, and Yo Yo. Guided by Atlanta-based hip-hop producer Jermaine Dupri, Chicago native Da Brat became the first female rapper to go platinum with 1994's Funkdafied. Beginning in the mid-1990s, Lauryn Hill made a big splash, first as a member of the Fugees and then as a solo artist, with her hip-hop infused The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, her 1998 album that won five Grammys. Lil Kim, Foxy Brown, Missy Elliott, Eve, and Trina created a second wave of female rappers. Mary J. Blige, known as the queen of hip-hop soul, mastered the fusion of hip-hop with R&B, especially with her 1992 debut What's the 411? to give the everyday young urban woman a voice within the hard-edged genre.

Article / Updated 01-30-2023

February is Black History Month, a celebration of African American achievements and civil rights pioneers, such as Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, and Martin Luther King Jr. The month also celebrates the history of Black American leaders in politics, industry, science, culture, and more. Hundreds of sites around the country have important stories to tell about the history of Black people in America. If February is a good time for you to travel, you might consider visiting one or more of these places as a way to celebrate Black History Month. Reading or watching a documentary is a great way to learn about history, but actually being in a place where an event happened or a historic figure once walked can lend an even deeper significance to your experience. See the list of 10 Black American history sites below. Of course, there are many more, but these, hopefully, will give you some ideas, and spark your interest in exploring further. The origins of Black History Month Black History Month began in 1915, when thousands of African Americans traveled to Chicago to participate in a national 50th anniversary celebration of the 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery. That year, Harvard-trained historian Carter G. Woodson — known as the “Father of Black History” — led the effort to form the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History, today called the Association for the Study of African American Life and History. In February 1926, that organization established Negro History Week — to coincide with the birthdays of Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass. During the following decades, mayors across the nation began issuing proclamations recognizing the special week, and by the 1960s, it had evolved into Black History Month. Woodson’s home in Washington, D.C., is a National Historic Site managed by the National Park Service. It’s scheduled to reopen in the spring of 2023 after a full renovation project. Another Woodson-related site in Washington is the Carter G. Woodson Memorial Park. Important sites in Black American history Frederick Douglass House National Historic Site in Washington, D.C.: This site preserves the last residence of Douglass (1818-1895), who escaped slavery and became a prominent activist, abolitionist, orator, writer, and statesman. The house is expected to reopen in 2023 after being closed to the public in March 2022 for renovations. Harriet Tubman Byway and Underground Railroad State Park and Visitor Center in Church Creek, Maryland: You can go on a self-guided driving tour of more than 30 sites that tell the story of this amazing woman who, from 1849 to 1860, operated the Underground Railroad – a secret network of routes, places, and people who provided shelter and assistance to escaping slaves. Tuskegee Airmen National Historic Site in Tuskegee, Alabama: The Tuskegee Airmen were the first African American fighter pilots in the U.S. armed forces, and they earned three Distinguished Unit Citations During World War II for successful air strikes in Italy and Berlin. National Museum of African American History & Culture in Washington, D.C.: Part of the Smithsonian Institution, the museum is dedicated to the documentation of African American life, history, and culture. It opened in 2016 and has more than 40,000 artifacts and close to 100,000 members. Whitney Plantation in Edgard, Louisiana: The plantation opened to the public as a museum in 2014 and is dedicated to educating the public about slavery in America. Guided and self-guided tours cover the generations of Africans and their descendants who were enslaved there, the plantation owners, the buildings, and how the plantation operated. The King Center in Atlanta: Coretta Scott King, wife of Martin Luther King Jr., established the nonprofit Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change (The King Center) in 1968. The organization provides resources and education about the life, legacy, and teachings of Martin Luther King Jr. The campus includes the Kings’s burial site and the Freedom Hall exhibition building. Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta: This National Historic Site is where Martin Luther King Jr. served as pastor between 1933 and 1975. Go to the church’s website to learn about visiting the church and other King-related sites in Atlanta. Freedom Rides Museum in Montgomery, Alabama: This museum tells the story of the Freedom Riders, groups of courageous Black and white college students who rode Greyhound buses through the segregated south in 1961. Their mission was to compel the U.S. government to enforce Supreme Court decisions outlawing segregated transportation seating and facilities. A group of these Freedom Riders was attacked by an angry White mob in the spring of 1961 in Montgomery. Selma, Alabama: There are several places to visit in Selma, including the Edmund Pettus Bridge, the site of a brutal attack by law enforcement on a group of civil rights marchers on March 7, 1965. Famous civil rights leader John Lewis (later, a congressman) led the march for voting rights. He suffered a skull fracture in the attack, an event that became known as “Bloody Sunday.” Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City, Missouri: The museum preserves and tells the story of African American baseball and how it impacted social advancement.

Article / Updated 01-24-2023

Black American directors became more and more visible in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, with Spike Lee at the forefront. This article identifies just some of the many Black American directors who made a name for themselves, and a sampling of their work. Spike Lee: Getting personal From the 1986 film She’s Gotta Have It to his later work on Netflix, Spike Lee truly helped inspire a generation of filmmakers. In 2006, Lee, whose career had always been marked by generating his own projects, helmed a rare studio film, Inside Man, starring Denzel Washington, Jodie Foster, and Clive Owen; it became the highest grossing film of his career at roughly $88 million in the U.S. and Canada and more than $95 million overseas. Lee hit high marks with critics for his 2002 movie 25th Hour, his rare film with White main leads (Edward Norton and Philip Seymour Hoffman) and not-so-high critical marks with his 2008 film Miracle at St. Anna, a film he specifically made reclaiming Black WWII history Hollywood films consistently erased. His 2018 film BlacKkKlansman, written by him, Kevin Willmott, David Rabinowitz, and Charlie Wachtel, became an Academy Award darling; it was adapted from Rob Stallworth’s 2014 memoir Black Klansman about his efforts as a Black man to thwart the Ku Klux Klan in Colorado. BlacKkKlansman, which grossed more than $90 million worldwide, was nominated for six Academy Awards, winning one for Best Adapted Screenplay — a first for Lee, who had received an honorary Oscar for his contribution to film in 2015. Over his prolific feature film career, Lee had only received one nomination, in 1990 for Best Original Screenplay for Do the Right Thing. He fared slightly better with documentaries, receiving a nomination for his provocative 4 Little Girls (1997), chronicling the murder of four girls in the Birmingham church bombing in 1963. In 2020, Lee released Da 5 Bloods via Netflix. This epic Vietnam veteran tale reteamed him with Delroy Lindo (from Crooklyn) and Clarke Peters (from his 2012 film Red Hook Summer) and marked his first time working with newcomer Jonathan Majors as well as with Chadwick Boseman. With Da 5 Bloods, Lee achieved the distinction of having released films in five different decades, from the 1980s to the 2020s. Lee, a long-time professor at his film school alma mater, helped produce films of several filmmakers, including Gina Prince-Bythewood’s feature debut Love & Basketball in 2000. 1990s and early 2000s: The music video launch The rise of hip-hop music gave Black directors opportunities to showcase their vision and skill in music videos. Both Spike Lee and John Singleton directed music videos, most notably Public Enemy’s “Fight the Power” for Lee and Michael Jackson’s “Remember the Time” for Singleton. Hype Williams elevated music videos with his innovative “The Rain (Supa Dupa Fly)” (1997) by Missy Elliott and “Big Pimpin’” (2000) by Jay-Z and UGK, among many greats. Williams’s debut 1998 film Belly helped introduce rapper DMX as a leading man. Music video directors, like F. Gary Gray, Tim Story, Antoine Fuqua, and Millicent Shelton, began transitioning primarily into film. Gray would hit with Friday (1995) and Set It Off (1996), starring rappers Ice Cube and Queen Latifah, respectively, on his way to later direct The Italian Job (2003), which made more than $175 million worldwide. Gray also directed Straight Outta Compton (2015), which made more than $160 million domestically and $200 million globally, and Fate of the Furious (2017) in the mighty The Fast and the Furious franchise. This made him the first Black American director to have a film reach $1 billion dollars in global box office receipts. Black directors without strong music video roots were also active at this time, including Carl Franklin with Devil in a Blue Dress (1995), Rick Famuyiwa with The Wood (1999), Malcolm D. Lee with The Best Man (1999), and Gina Prince-Bythewood with Love & Basketball (2000). Lee Daniels, who produced the feature film Monster’s Ball (2001), for which Halle Berry became the first Black woman to win the Academy Award for Best Actress, directed several films that made a huge impact. Daniels's influential films during this time period include Precious, in 2009, which was adapted from Sapphire’s 1996 book Push and introduced actress Gabourey Sidibe. The film was nominated for six Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director. Mo’Nique won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress and Geoffrey Fletcher became the first Black screenwriter to win the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay. The 2010s: Drama, horror, heroes, and more The late 1990s and early 2000s gave only a glimpse into what was to come. The 2010s ushered in Black directors who experienced even more notable breakthroughs, most notably Ava DuVernay, Barry Jenkins, Jordan Peele, and Ryan Coogler. Ava DuVernay Ava DuVernay, a Los Angeles area native, began her Hollywood career as a film publicist specializing in outreach to Black audiences. She worked on a string of successful films, including The Brothers (2001), Shrek 2 (2004), and Dreamgirls (2006), which launched Jennifer Hudson’s career. She directed several small films prior to breaking through at Sundance, first with I Will Follow in 2011 and then with Middle of Nowhere in 2012, with which she became the first Black female director to win its U.S. Directing Award: Dramatic. As her career progressed, DuVernay became acclaimed for both her filmmaking and her bold advocacy for inclusion. Filming Selma (2014), the first Hollywood feature film directly centered on Martin Luther King Jr., brought together DuVernay and Oprah Winfrey, who portrayed the real-life Annie Lee Cooper and her courageous struggle to vote in Jim Crow Alabama. That led to DuVernay’s spearheading the dramatic series Queen Sugar as its creator and visionary. Adapted from Natalie Baszile’s 2014 novel, the series revolves around three siblings from the Bordelon clan. With the launch of Queen Sugar in 2016, DuVernay committed to utilizing all female directors, which opened up additional opportunities for Black women directors, including Julie Dash, the first Black woman director to have a film distributed theatrically with her 1991 film Daughters of the Dust. Also directing for Queen Sugar were Tina Mabry, known for Mississippi Damned, Channing Godfrey Peoples, known for Miss Juneteenth, and Felicia Pride, known for the short Tender. With her 2018 film A Wrinkle in Time, adapted from Madeleine L’Engle’s classic 1962 novel and starring Storm Reid, along with Oprah Winfrey, Reese Witherspoon, and Mindy Kaling, DuVernay became the first Black woman director to have a film pass $100 million at the box office. Through the streaming platform Netflix, DuVernay was able to make profound social justice statements, particularly through her 2016 documentary 13th, exploring the constitutional amendment and its relation to the mass incarceration of Black people. This documentary won four Emmys and an NAACP Image Award and garnered an Oscar nomination. Her Netflix limited series When They See Us, about the Central Park Five (later known as the Exonerated Five), who were falsely imprisoned for the 1989 rape of the Central Park jogger, won several African American Film Critics Association (AAFCA) and NAACP Image Awards. It also won the Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Limited Series or a Movie for Jharrel Jerome, a first for an Afro-Latino actor. Barry Jenkins Director Barry Jenkins’s 2016 film Moonlight is a tender coming-of-age story based on playwright Tarell Alvin McCraney’s unpublished semiautobiographical play In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue, centered on a young man exploring his sexuality. It surprised critics and fans when it won the Oscar for Best Picture in 2017 over frontrunner La La Land after a dramatic mix-up initially announced La La Land as the winner. Jenkins’s 2018 film adaptation of James Baldwin’s celebrated 1974 novel If Beale Street Could Talk, addressing mass incarceration, resulted in actress Regina King winning her first Oscar for Best Supporting Actress. The Underground Railroad, Jenkins’s limited series for Amazon, a first for him, was adapted from Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize–winning novel. Jordan Peele Jordan Peele surprised many when his 2017 feature film debut Get Out garnered him a Best Director and a Best Picture Oscar nomination, a first-time combo for a Black director. It was also a win for Black horror films and horror in general. Get Out, starring British actor Daniel Kaluuya, takes a turn when he and his white girlfriend visit her parents and he begins meeting Black people in a “sunken place” devoid of their essence or souls. He suspects it’s intentional and tries to escape the same fate. Made for less than $5 million, Get Out, also starring Lil Rel Howery, LaKeith Stanfield, and Betty Gabriel, grossed $255.5 million worldwide. Peele followed Get Out with Us (2019), starring Oscar winner Lupita Nyong’o as both the protagonist and the antagonist, grossing more than $255 million worldwide. Ryan Coogler California Bay Area native Ryan Coogler’s first feature film, Fruitvale Station — about the 2008 Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) cop killing of 22-year-old Oscar Grant III — was released in 2013 This came at the same time as the acquittal of George Zimmerman in the murder of Trayvon Martin. Fruitvale Station starred Michael B. Jordan, who was just starting to make a real push toward the big screen. It was the rare film that humanized the victims of cop killings and not just the cop. From there, Coogler turned his attention to Sylvester Stallone’s iconic Rocky franchise and created Creed, his 2015 film, shifting the focus to Adonis “Donnie” Creed. Creed starred Michael B. Jordan as an offspring of Apollo Creed and starred Sylvester Stallone as Rocky. That film grossed more than $170 million worldwide. None of Coogler’s previous achievements, as impressive as they were for a director, especially one younger than 30 and Black, foreshadowed how significantly he would change the film landscape as the co-writer and director of Black Panther, the first standalone Black-cast film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Black Panther starred Chadwick Boseman as T’Challa/Black Panther, the would-be king of the fictional African nation of Wakanda and Michael B. Jordan as Killmonger, a challenger to the throne. Released February 16, 2018, to critical and popular acclaim, Black Panther, with its African Diasporic casting of actors from the United States, England, various parts of the African Continent, and the Caribbean, proved to be a global sensation. In the United States and Canada alone, Black Panther grossed more than $700 million on its way to a worldwide gross of more than $1.3 billion. This made Coogler the highest-grossing Black director, just ahead of Gray’s The Fate of the Furious, which grossed more than $1.2 billion in 2017. The love and pride audiences have for Black Panther made the unexpected passing of Chadwick Boseman on August 28, 2020, at age 43, a cause of national and international mourning. 2020: A stream of Black women directors A high point of 2020 was the emergence of Black women directors, with a Black woman-directed feature-length film released almost every month. It began with Numa Perrier’s Jezebel on Netflix in January 2020, followed by Radha Blank’s The 40-Year-Old Version, which won Sundance’s U.S. Dramatic Competition Directing Award prior to being shown on Netflix that October. That February, Canadian-American director Stella Meghie released The Photograph, which she wrote and directed, starring Issa Rae and LaKeith Stanfield on the big screen. Other films that followed include the high school mean-girl tale Selah and the Spades from writer/director Tayarisha Poe on Amazon Prime Video; writer/director Channing Godfrey Peoples’ Miss Juneteenth, starring Nicole Beharie, on video-on-demand; and Gina Prince-Bythewood’s action film The Old Guard for Netflix, starring white South African Charlize Theron and Black actress KiKi Layne. In the year prior, 2019, Melina Matsoukas, a music video master known for her collaborations with Beyoncé, Rihanna, and even Whitney Houston, had gotten the party started early with her feature film debut Queen & Slim, starring Kaluuya and Jodie Turner Smith. It generated considerable buzz. So did the announcement that Nia DaCosta, whose anticipated Candyman reboot was pushed to 2021, would direct the next Captain Marvel film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Article / Updated 03-07-2022

From the mid-1960s to the early 1970s, black women were in a difficult position. Between the civil rights and feminist movements, where did they fit in? They had been the backbone of the civil rights movement, but their contributions were deemphasized as black men — often emasculated by white society — felt compelled to adopt patriarchal roles. When black women flocked to the feminist movement, white women discriminated against them and devoted little attention to class issues that seriously affected black women, who tended to also be poor. Historically, black women have chosen race over gender concerns, a choice that was especially poignant during Reconstruction when African American female leaders, such as Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, supported the Fifteenth Amendment giving black men the right to vote over the objections of white women suffragists. Black women have a long feminist tradition dating back to 19th-century activists such as Maria W. Stewart and Sojourner Truth as well as organizations like the National Association of Colored Women's Clubs (NACWC) and the National Council of Negro Women, founded in 1896 and 1935, respectively. Events of the 1960s and 1970s, not to mention black men's changing attitudes regarding the role of black women, focused awareness around new concerns such as race, gender, and class, and several organizations attempted to address these issues: The ANC (Aid to Needy Children) Mothers Anonymous of Watts and the National Welfare Rights Organization (NWRO): Johnnie Tillmon was an early pioneer of addressing the concerns of poor black women. A welfare mother living in Los Angeles's Nickerson Projects, Tillmon helped found ANC (Aid to Needy Children) Mothers Anonymous of Watts in 1963. She was later tapped to lead the National Welfare Rights Organization (NWRO), founded in 1966. Through these organizations, Tillmon addressed such issues as equal pay for women, child care, and voter registration. Black Women's Liberation Committee (BWLC): Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) member Francis Beal was one of the founders of the Black Women's Liberation Committee (BWLC) in 1968. In 1969, Beal helped clarify the struggles of black women in the influential essay "Double Jeopardy: To Be Black and Female" that also appeared in the landmark 1970 anthology The Black Woman, which ushered in a new wave of black female writers. Beal identified capitalism as a key factor in the chasm between black men and women. During the early 1970s, the BWLC evolved into the Third World Women's Alliance. National Organization for Women (NOW): Reverend Dr. Anna Pauline (Pauli) Murray is a cofounder of the nation's most prominent feminist organization, the National Organization for Women (NOW), founded in 1966. The National Black Feminist Organization: While many black women remain active in mainstream feminist organizations only, other black women have created organizations aimed at addressing black women's unique concerns more effectively. The National Black Feminist Organization launched in 1973 with the specific goal of including black women of all ages, classes, and sexual orientation. Although it and similar organizations didn't outlive the 1970s, the legacy of black feminism lives on. In 1983, Alice Walker coined the term womanism, a feminist ideology that addresses the black woman's unique history of racial and gender oppression. Women such as Angela Davis; law professor Kimberlé Crenshaw; academics Patricia Hill Collins, Beverly Guy Sheftall, and Bell Hooks; and historians Darlene Clark Hine, Paula Giddings, and Deborah Gray White have greatly expanded the context in which black women and their history and activism are discussed by underscoring black women's issues related to race, gender, and class.

Cheat Sheet / Updated 06-08-2021

Black American history is a cornerstone of American history. Major events in America's timeline have been impacted by Black Americans. This cheat sheet includes a brief overview of some of the great institutions that preserve that history, the words to the most popular part of the Black National Anthem, and a list of some important dates in Black American history.

Article / Updated 03-26-2016

At the beginning of the 19th century, many black abolitionists favored moderate and strategic action over violence to end slavery. Since white Americans outnumbered black Americans, violence just wasn't a viable option. Even in communities where African Americans weren't outnumbered, their behavior was so restricted that amassing substantial firepower would have been difficult. Therefore, violence wasn't practical. So the pen, the written word, became one of the biggest weapons against slavery. Proslavery factions feared African American literacy and passed many laws restricting the teaching of reading and writing to African Americans. Mere suspicion of being able to read and write posed a danger to many black Southerners, slave or free. Slave narratives Most white Americans were completely unfamiliar with how slaves were treated. Slave narratives were open testimony from those who actually survived the horrors, and they enlightened those who were clueless about life in bondage. Slave narratives such as Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (1845) and Solomon Northrup's Twelve Years a Slave (1853) were important antislavery treatises that sold well both in the United States and abroad. Douglass's narrative stood out because, more than other narratives, it created an emotional connection with readers. He not only detailed slavery's horrors; he made readers feel how horrible slavery felt. Other narratives outlined the injustices, but Douglass tugged at readers' heartstrings. His work underscored the fact that African Americans were indeed human beings. Slave narratives' ability to create a human connection also played an important role in the early development of African American literature. Origins of the black press White abolitionists proved that newspapers such as Benjamin Lundy's two publications, The Philanthropist and The Genius of Universal Emancipation, and Garrison's Liberator could be very effective tools in the fight against slavery. African American publishers found that newspapers specifically targeting African Americans created forums in which blacks could truly express who they were and where they were going. Early African American newspapers began the important legacy of providing the African American community with a voice that celebrated African American milestones as well as agitated for equal rights. The black press also became an important mechanism for galvanizing African Americans nationally. Prior to the Civil War, more than 40 such newspapers emerged, but Freedom's Journal, launched by Samuel E. Cornish and John B. Russwurm, and The North Star, launched by Frederick Douglass, were two of the most important. Freedom's Journal: The nation's first black newspaper, Freedom's Journal pushed for an end to slavery, as well as informed the more than 300,000 free blacks in the U.S. about national and international news. The newspaper included profiles of great African Americans as well as stories about often-ignored historic achievements. At its height, Freedom's Journal's distribution spanned 11 states, Washington, D.C., Haiti, Europe, and Canada. Unfortunately, it folded in March 1829, in part because coeditors Russwurm and Cornish disagreed over the issue of colonization. The North Star: Frederick Douglass's The North Star, first published in 1847, became the most prominent of all early African American newspapers mainly because of Douglass's stature. The North Star went beyond just advocating slavery's end and equal rights for African Americans; it also championed equal rights for women. Its motto was "Right is of no Sex — Truth is of no Color — God is the Father of us all, and we are all brethren." Within these pages, Douglass expanded his vision of freedom and, like Freedom's Journal, provided a forum for critical African American issues overlooked by white abolitionist papers. The paper was far from a financial success, however. To stay afloat, Douglass continued lecturing. In 1851, he merged his paper with the Liberty Party Paper to form Frederick Douglass' Paper, which published until 1860. Douglass published a monthly before settling into political life in the 1870s.

Article / Updated 03-26-2016

Although best known for slogans such as "By Any Means Necessary" as well as posters depicting him with a gun, Malcolm X was a very complex man. An ex-convict, Malcolm X's strength, charisma, and intelligence only underscored the potential the nation tucked away in its prison systems. The Autobiography of Malcolm X, published months after his death, offered insight into who he once was, who he became, and who he might have been. His initial views proclaiming white people as devils, a view consistent with the Nation of Islam (NOI) and its leader Elijah Muhammad, propelled him to the attention of the news media — that and the tens of thousands who came to hear him speak. Ultimately, Malcolm X's break with the NOI, as well as his renunciation of equating white people to the devil, placed him in greater favor with many, black and white. Unfortunately, violence cut that new journey short — but not his legacy as one of the 20th century's elite freedom fighters. The rise of Malcolm X As a child, Nebraska-born Malcolm Little's life was torn apart when a group of white extremists murdered his father. Forced to go on welfare, the Little household became unstable, and the children often lived in foster homes. Extremely bright, Little dropped out of school when a white teacher told him that becoming a lawyer wasn't a realistic goal for someone of his color. With limited opportunities available to him, Little ventured into a life of crime. While serving a ten-year sentence for burglary, he seriously explored the Nation of Islam and eventually dedicated himself to the group, even conversing with leader Elijah Muhammad. By the time Little was released from prison in 1952, he had met Elijah Muhammad and officially joined the NOI, adopting the name Malcolm X to rid himself of what he characterized as his slave surname. He moved to Chicago and studied directly under Muhammad, who sent Malcolm X to spearhead a Harlem branch for the NOI as part of a plan to expand the organization's reach. Malcolm's message As a national NOI spokesperson, the handsome and articulate Malcolm X generated much media attention, particularly for his disagreements with Martin Luther King, Jr.'s nonviolent methods of protest as well as for the NOI's message of black self-sufficiency and separatism. Malcolm X's criticism landed him a public platform when he appeared in a weeklong television special titled "The Hate That Hate Produced," with TV journalist Mike Wallace. Conflicts with the Nation of Islam As Malcolm X's public stature grew, tensions developed within the NOI. Malcolm X, also known as El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, lived by a strict moral code. After becoming a Muslim, he remained celibate until he married Betty Shabazz in 1958. In addition, he didn't engage in extramarital affairs (as confirmed by the FBI agents who followed him). In 1963, he discovered that Elijah Muhammad had engaged in sexual relations with as many as six women in the NOI and that some of those affairs had produced children. Muhammad's moral failings greatly contributed to Malcolm X's eventual split from the NOI. Around the same time, Malcolm X offended many with his response to President Kennedy's assassination. According to Malcolm X, Kennedy "never foresaw that the chickens would come home to roost so soon," meaning that white Americans or presidents weren't exempt from the violence that denied life and liberty to African Americans. Although Elijah Muhammad suspended and silenced Malcolm X for 90 days for his statements, Malcolm X suspected that Muhammad had other reasons for silencing him. In March 1964, Malcolm X left the NOI and formed the Muslim Mosque, Inc. But he wasn't finished evolving. After traveling to Mecca, Saudi Arabia, in April 1964 and sharing his religious pilgrimage with Muslims of all races, Malcolm X returned to the U.S. and softened his stance on racial separatism. In May 1964, he founded the Organization of Afro-American Unity. The death of Malcolm X By early 1965, it was clear that Malcolm X was marked for assassination. On February 14, someone firebombed his family's New York home, but the family escaped unharmed. On February 21, Malcolm X wasn't so lucky: During a speech at the Audubon Ballroom in Harlem, three men later revealed to be members of the NOI (a fact some people debate) fatally shot Malcolm X multiple times at close range. Many contend that the three men, convicted of first-degree murder in 1966, colluded with the FBI. While it's impossible to know where Malcolm X would have directed his talents, many believe that he would have worked more closely with Martin Luther King, Jr. Despite depictions of the two as opponents, Malcolm X shared King's commitment to freedom and equality. Just before his death, he had corresponded with King about his efforts in Selma. In addition, Malcolm X had become increasingly more pan-Africanist in his view: Before his death, he began to draw great correlations between the American oppression of black Americans and the worldwide oppression of people of color in general. Without him, the Organization of Afro-American Unity ended.

Article / Updated 03-26-2016

No period of African American literary history receives as much attention as the Harlem Renaissance, which ranged roughly from the beginning of World War I to the Great Depression. For the first time, African American artists from various realms — literature, art, and music — formed a collective movement. Although Harlem still gets most of the credit, Washington, D.C., specifically Howard University, was another important site, mainly because of the significant role Howard University professor Alain Locke played in the movement. The movement wasn't originally dubbed the Harlem Renaissance. Alain Locke and others referred to it as the New Negro Movement, which reflected the sweeping changes African Americans all over the nation were experiencing. Jacksonville, Florida, native James Weldon Johnson, a writer who became a leader of the NAACP, actually coined the movement the "Harlem Renaissance," and the moniker stuck. A large number of artists representing various parts of the country participated in the Harlem Renaissance. The overwhelming majority were highly educated, hailing from some of the most prestigious black and mainstream universities in the nation. Harlem Renaissance writers embraced a myriad of themes, but middle-class black America figured prominently in many of the works, as did the theme of passing, an expansion of the tragic mulatto theme first introduced in the mid-19th century. Nella Larsen's Passing (1929), about a chance encounter that reunites two childhood female friends, one who is passing for white and another living as a black woman, is a seminal work. Another highly regarded book on the subject is James Weldon Johnson's The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man (1912). The book, written as a fictional autobiography about a man who ultimately chooses to pass as white to free himself from the mistreatment black people receive, achieved popularity when it was reissued in 1927. Ultimately, class tensions created a sizable rift among many Harlem Renaissance writers, with Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston becoming the most famous advocates of the black folk. Both Hughes and Hurston rebuffed arguments that writing about the black middle class would improve race relations by showing white readers that many African Americans were like them. Critics of Hurston and Hughes felt that embracing the black folk would reinforce primitive stereotypes about black people instead of setting the record straight. Others had simply internalized feelings that African American life and culture was inferior to that of white Americans. Jean Toomer Jean Toomer's background was racially mixed, and he didn't identify himself as African American until time spent in Sparta, Georgia, brought him into intimate contact with black rural life. As much a reflection of Toomer's own search for identity, his mixture of poems, short stories, and drama, Cane (1923) presents black Southern culture as well as the black Southerner's adaptation to the urban North before reconciling those two realities in the black South. In critical ways, Cane encapsulated the massive search for black identity that underscored the key debates of the Harlem Renaissance. Many artists and leaders, even those who embraced their racial heritage, weren't quite sure how to incorporate their past into their present. While this tension wasn't a new concern, rendering it in a distinctly artistic mode was unique. Cane demonstrated the artistic potential and merit of these tensions as grounding forces for great literary work. Langston Hughes One of the Harlem Renaissance's first published writers, Hughes's poem "The Negro Speaks of Rivers" appeared in the NAACP magazine The Crisis in 1921. Even though Harlem Renaissance artists were encouraged to depict black life, some advisors championed black middle-class life and values over those of the working class. Hughes disagreed, and in his influential 1926 essay, "The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountaintop," he asserted that the black artist who ran away from himself couldn't be great. Hughes championed black art that reflected black life, not just appropriate black life. Hughes was later known for his seminal 1951 poem "Harlem," often erroneously labeled "A Dream Deferred" for its famous line, "what happens to a dream deferred?" Zora Neale Hurston Zora Neale Hurston never outgrew her Harlem Renaissance fame. A student of anthropology who studied with Columbia University's Franz Boas, Hurston also worked for noted black historian Carter G. Woodson and accompanied Alan Lomax on some of his most celebrated folklore missions. Raised in the all-black town of Eatonville, Florida, Hurston was an outspoken supporter of rural African Americans and black folk traditions. Hurston's white patronage did trouble many of her black contemporaries, who accused her of pandering to whites. Despite winning several contests for impressive short stories like "Spunk" and writing for a number of noted publications during the height of the Harlem Renaissance, Hurston published most of her acclaimed works in the 1930s, during the Harlem Renaissance's decline. After Alice Walker's rediscovery of Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937) in the 1970s, the novel became an important text in the African American literary canon and in many Southern literature classes as well. Other noteworthy artists Other important Harlem Renaissance figures include Wallace Thurman, best known for The Blacker the Berry (1929); poet Countee Cullen, noted for his poem, "Heritage"; and poet Claude McKay, known for his poem "If We Must Die" and the novel Home to Harlem (1928).

Article / Updated 03-26-2016

Although the successful Montgomery Bus Boycott made Martin Luther King, Jr., a national figure, the deaths of four Birmingham girls in a 1963 church bombing, as well as countless others, had been tough to swallow. Yet King and others under his Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) umbrella returned to the contentious state in January 1965 to begin Project Alabama, a campaign to secure federal protection for voting rights. Getting arrested again To bring attention to Alabama's voting inequities, King needed authorities to arrest him and others. On February 1, he succeeded by leading a group of demonstrators in defiance of the July 1963 judgment banning all meetings and marches in Selma. When authorities, led by Sheriff Jim Clark, arrested him, local black students marched in defiance and police arrested them, which is what King anticipated. The national media captured the sequence of events. During a peaceful march on February 18, the situation became very dramatic when 26-year-old Jimmie Lee Jackson was shot and killed trying to protect his mother from the blows of a billy club. His death galvanized momentum for a federal voter registration law. Once again, the American public placed civil rights at the top of the nation's agenda. Then on Sunday, March 7, a group of 600 people, led by Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) Chairman John Lewis and SCLC's Hosea Williams, defied the armed Alabama state troopers blocking their way and attempted to cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge. As the group marched, ignoring Major John Cloud's demand to turn around, officers charged them, in the process trampling, whipping, beating, and tear-gassing them. Referred to as Bloody Sunday, the event was captured by the media and broadcast nationwide on the evening news. The ABC network even preempted its showing of the film Judgment at Nuremberg with coverage from Selma. Marching from Selma to Montgomery After Bloody Sunday, a court order banned King from leading a second march on March 9, so King took the group of protesters to the edge of the Edmund Pettus Bridge, knelt in prayer, and turned the group back. With court approval and the protection of armed forces, King led a third march from Selma to Montgomery on Sunday, March 21. King, with wife Coretta as well as Rosa Parks and several other key civil rights leaders by his side, reached the state capitol on March 25. Approximately 25,000 people attended the victory rally. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 Without Selma, it's doubtful that the Voting Rights Act of 1965 would ever have passed. Although black men had received the right to vote with the Fifteenth Amendment, and the Nineteenth amendment had extended voting rights to all women, Southern states actively hindered black voting by using several methods, the two most popular being the poll tax and literacy tests: Poll tax: Black voters, many of whom were poor, were charged fees to deter them from voting. Literacy test: In order to vote, black Southerners, many of them with little formal education, were given a myriad of tasks such as reciting parts of the Constitution to the administrator's satisfaction, transcribing passages from the Constitution, and answering obscure technical questions such as, "How many people can testify against a person denying his guilt of treason?" With Southern states actively stopping African Americans from voting, a practice that had gone on for decades, the federal government finally stepped in. On August 6, 1965, President Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act (VRA) into law. Key features of the law include Federal supervision of voter registration in areas where less than 50 percent of the nonwhite population hadn't registered to vote: Instead of waiting for grievances to be filed, the federal government became proactive in identifying areas where whites were intimidating blacks from voting. Federal approval of change in local voting laws: In areas with a history of disenfranchisement as well as less than 50 percent of the black population registered to vote, the federal government had to approve any changes in voting requirements. Prohibition of literacy tests: The federal government banned the use of literacy tests for all American voters. Authorizing the U.S. attorney general to investigate the use of poll taxes. Although the VRA itself didn't ban poll taxes, that change did come eventually. While the Twenty-fourth Amendment, passed in 1964, banned the use of poll taxes in federal elections, the Supreme Court banned the use of poll taxes in state elections in 1966 with Harper v. Virginia Board of Elections. The VRA made it emphatically clear that the nation as a whole would no longer tolerate blatant voter discrimination. The law made an immediate impact. Within three weeks, more than 27,000 African Americans in Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana registered to vote. Renewed four times since its passage, the VRA received a 25-year extension in 2006.

Article / Updated 03-26-2016

The dramatic civil rights and segregation battles that set the tone for much of the 1960s didn’t just happen. Several events preceded those battles, perhaps none more important than the 1954 Supreme Court decision of Brown v. Board of Education. That decision overturned the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson edict, which set the precedent for legalized segregation. Segregation precedent prior to Brown v. Board of Education Before the 1950s, most court cases challenging segregated schooling targeted higher education. Longtime Howard Law School dean Charles Hamilton Houston, the first African American editor of the Harvard Law Review, crafted the brilliant strategy to challenge Jim Crow’s “separate but equal” mandate in graduate education in the 1930s when he led the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. Consequently, the NAACP legal team, which had tried many of the key segregation cases since 1935, gained momentum with these 1950 landmark decisions: Sweatt v. Painter: Denied admission to the University of Texas School of Law in 1946 despite meeting all requirements but race, Heman Marion Sweatt pursued legal action to force the school to accept him. Because a law school admitting blacks opened in 1947 while his case was still being heard, the Texas courts upheld the University of Texas’s denial of admission to Sweatt. The Supreme Court overturned the Texas courts’ decision citing that the University of Texas had substantially more professors and students plus a larger law library than the black law school, marking the first time the Court factored in issues of substantive quality and not just the existence of a separate school. McLaurin v. Oklahoma State Regents: Although admitted to the University of Oklahoma, doctoral student George W. McLaurin was forced to sit in a designated row in class, at a separate table for lunch, and at a special desk in the library. Oklahoma courts denied McLaurin’s appeal to remove these separate restrictions. The Supreme Court overturned the lower court’s decision, ruling that Oklahoma’s treatment of McLaurin violated the Fourteenth Amendment, which prevents any separate treatment based on race. In essence, these decisions undermined the rationale behind the Supreme Court’s 1896 ruling in Plessy v. Ferguson: that separate facilities were equal. In June 1950, NAACP lead attorney Thurgood Marshall, who later became the first black Supreme Court Justice, convened the NAACP’s board of directors and some of the nation’s top lawyers to discuss the next phase of attack. They decided that the NAACP, which had already initiated some lawsuits, would pursue a full-out legal assault on school segregation. Brown v. Board of Education and the legal strategy behind the verdict Wanting to form a representative sample of the nation as a whole, the Supreme Court consolidated five cases to form the more popularly known Brown v. Board of Education. To get Plessy overturned, Thurgood Marshall and his team knew they had to show that segregation in and of itself actually harmed black children. To do so, he relied on the research of Dr. Kenneth Clark and his wife Mamie Phipps Clark, the first and second African Americans to receive doctorates in psychology from Columbia University. To figure out how black children saw themselves, the Clarks placed white and black dolls before black children and asked them to identify the “nice” and “bad” doll as well as choose the one most like them. Most children identified the white doll as nice and the black doll as bad even when they identified themselves with the black doll. Based on these findings, the Clarks concluded that black children had impaired self-images. Few expected the unanimous decision finally delivered on May 17, 1954. “[I]n the field of public education the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ has no place,” ruled the Supreme Court. “Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.” A year later, on May 31, 1955, the case known as Brown II, the Court established guidelines to desegregate all public education in the United States. As the implementation of the Brown ruling began, the nation discovered that restoring equality and applying its principle were two different battles. Although many whites didn’t fully support the Supreme Court’s decision, they abided by it. Others simply refused. In parts of the South, resistance reached dramatic heights.