Album Black In Time from Kicha

Sarah Vaughan

nobody@ipernity.com (Kicha) — Fri, 06 May 2016 21:23:31 +0000

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January 1950 advert in Our World featuring the great Sarah Vaughan. Our World Magazine, was published by African American businessman, John Preston Davis (1905 - 1973). It was a full-size, nationally-distributed magazine edited for African American readers. Its first issue, with singer and actress Lena Horne on the cover, arrived on the nation's newsstands in April 1946. Our World was a premier publication for African American men and women covering contemporary topics from black history to sports and entertainment with regular articles on health, fashion, politics and social awareness, was headquartered out of New York City. Our World portrayed Black America as no other national publication had ever done. The magazine had a run of eleven years before folding. [The John P Davis Collection]

First Graders

nobody@ipernity.com (Kicha) — Wed, 18 Oct 2023 19:48:35 +0000

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Class portrait of 1st Graders at Sumner Elementary School in Martinsburg, West Virginia. Standing in the doorway is school teacher Ms. Corsey, and Principal Fred Ramer.

A plaque located at 515 West Martin Street reads: The present building was completed in 1917 under the leadership of Fred R Ramer. He was the first principal in Berkeley County to have a school named after him. Ramer school served the black community until 1964. [Photo: A. O. & Dorothy Steele Collection]

First Black School in Kansas

nobody@ipernity.com (Kicha) — Wed, 18 Oct 2023 19:47:15 +0000

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This photograph shows a group of African American students and their teachers standing in front of the first black school in Kansas. The structure was located in Grasshopper Falls which is present day Valley Falls, Kansas. The photo is dated between the 1920s and 1930s. [kansasmemory.org]

Palmer Institute Faculty Members

nobody@ipernity.com (Kicha) — Wed, 18 Oct 2023 19:45:52 +0000

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Founder Dr. Brown is in the center wearing eyeglasses. [Palmer Inst. Archives]

Palmer Institute founded by Dr. Charlotte Hawkins Brown was the only school for African American children in the area. Most walked a long way to reach the one-room schoolhouse. Students who could not pay for their education worked at the school. But all of the students had daily chores because Hawkins believed that working gave them a sense of responsibility.

Charlotte Hawkins Brown soon became a leader in the African American community both in North Carolina and across the country. She often spoke out against the unfair treatment of African Americans, and she fought for equality. She also supported women’s rights, including the right to vote.

Brown built Palmer Memorial Institute into an outstanding private school. Palmer highlighted cultural education and offered classes in drama, music, art, math, literature, and foreign languages. It attracted students from across the United States and from other countries. Brown saw more than one thousand students graduate from Palmer during her fifty years as president.

Following her death in 1961, the school had a hard time withstanding some financial problems, and in 1971 a fire destroyed the administration and classroom building forcing them to close.

In 1987, it was reopened as the Charlotte Hawkins Brown memorial State Historic site.

Class of 1891

nobody@ipernity.com (Kicha) — Wed, 18 Oct 2023 19:39:06 +0000

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Pictured above was the first graduating class of Kortrecht High School, Class of 1891. Rebecca E. Driver, Fannie B. Turner, Gueiler D. Miller, Sarah E. Martin, and Katie L. Merriwether. Photographed by Tennessee's first black professional photographer, James P. Newton.

Kortrecht, the first brick building built for African American students, would eventually become Booker T. Washington High School. G. P. Hamilton was the first principal there and first principal of Booker T. Washington High School. Hamilton wrote "The Bright Side of Memphis" in 1908, spotlighting black Memphians who had made significant contributions to the city. Hamilton Elementary School, Hamilton Junior High, and Hamilton High are named in his honor.

Sources: Memphis Public Library

Students from Covert School

nobody@ipernity.com (Kicha) — Wed, 18 Oct 2023 19:30:10 +0000

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Townline School, Packard Station. Despite the rise in segregation across the country because of the growing strength of Jim Crow laws, Covert's schools continued to be integrated. The school was never segregated.

Source: A Stronger Kinship: One Town's Extraordinary Story of Hope and Faith by Anna-Lisa Cox

Class of 1891

nobody@ipernity.com (Kicha) — Wed, 18 Oct 2023 19:07:51 +0000

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Barber-Scotia College was founded as Scotia Seminary in January, 1867, by Reverend Luke Dorland who was commissioned by the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) to establish in the South an institution for the training of newly emancipated Negro women. A survey of situations and of needs resulted in the selection of Concord, North Carolina, as the place for the location of the school. Organization included a program of elementary, secondary, and normal school work.

The original purpose of the College was to prepare teachers and social workers to improve the '101 of the freedman and to provide a pool of leaders.' Accordingly, subjects classified as normal, academic, and homemaking were offered in a pattern which anticipated state certification, but which always pointed to the collegiate level.

The second period of academic development came in 1916 when the name of the institution was changed to Scotia Women's College. In 1930, Barber Memorial College of Anniston, Alabama, merged with Scotia Women's College. The present name, Barber-Scotia College, was adopted in 1932.

Rating and accreditation by this time had become a point of great urgency in education in the South, and four years after the merger of Scotia with Barber, the Southern Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools granted Barber-Scotia full approval as a Class 'A' junior college. Eight years later (1942), the Board of National Missions took action to support fully a four-year program for the College; and in 1945, the first class to be granted the Bachelor's degree was graduated. The North Carolina Board of Education granted the College a four-year rating in 1946, which made it possible for graduates who plan to teach to receive the 'A' certificate.

On April 2, 1954, the charter was amended to admit students without regard to race or sex. Following closely on this event, the College was admitted to full membership in the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools.

Barber-Scotia College is historically related to the former Presbyterian Church in the United States of America, and currently to the Presbyterian Church (USA), as of June, 1983. The Presbyterian Church (USA) in its Church World Mission Goals, revised by the 202nd General Assembly's June 1990 Statement, stated: 'As a continuing goal, upholding church-related educational institutions, we will seek to form close partnerships with various church related educational institutions, especially with racial ethnic institutions." The Presbyterian Church (USA) and Barber-Scotia College are strengthening the ties in fulfilling the mission to provide a cadre of educated Black Leaders.

Info: Barber-Scotia College
Image: Historic Cabarrus Assoc. Inc., The Concord Museum

Jacksonville Old Folks Home

nobody@ipernity.com (Kicha) — Wed, 18 Oct 2023 18:56:17 +0000

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Eartha M.M. White (in white) along with residents of the Jacksonville Old Folks Home.

Eartha Mary Magdalene White was born in Jacksonville, Florida on November 8, 1876. She was adopted by Lafayette and Clara English White. Mr. White died in 1881 when Eartha was five years old. Clara White, who was born a slave on Harrison Plantation in Nassau County, Florida, worked at various times as a maid and as a stewardess at hotels in Jacksonville and on steamboats operating from Jacksonville to various ports north at the height of the tourist industry in north Florida. A charter member of Bethel Baptist Institutional Church, Clara White was a dedicated humanitarian who had an enormous influence on her daughter. In the 1880′s, Clara White began operating a soup kitchen at her residence to feed underprivileged people in the community. This activity continued in various locations and was eventually moved to 611-15 Ashley Street in the early 1930′s. The facility was named the Clara White Mission by Miss Eartha White to honor her mother who had died in 1920.

Eartha White graduated from the Stanton School in 1893 and moved to New York City to avoid a Yellow Fever outbreak in Jacksonville. There, she attended the Madam Hall Beauty School and the National Conservatory of Music. She was selected as a member of the Oriental American Opera Company, the first African American opera company in the United States. The Oriental American included Madam Plato and Sidney Woodward and was directed by J. Rosamond Johnson, a native of Jacksonville and brother of James Weldon Johnson. The Company opened on Broadway in New York and then toured extensively for a year throughout the United States and Europe. In 1896, Miss White returned to Jacksonville to attend classes at and graduate from Florida Baptist Academy. After graduating with a college degree, she began a sixteen year teaching career in Bayard, Florida and later at her alma mater, the Stanton School in Jacksonville.

During this period, Miss White also engaged in various business enterprises including the ownership of a dry goods store on the east side of Jacksonville, an employment and housekeeping bureau, a steam laundry and a taxi company. She was a charter member of the National Negro Business League, the first woman employee of the Afro-American Life Insurance Company and a real estate broker. She had extensive real estate holdings throughout these years and used them to partially finance her businesses and settlement work activities.

In 1902, Eartha White established the Colored Old Folks’ home for indigent, elderly African Americans in Duval County that eventually became the Eartha M. M. White Nursing Home in 1967. On the same campus with the Home, she operated the only orphanage for African-American children in the State of Florida at that time. She also sponsored a home for unwed mothers, established Mercy Hospital for tuberculosis patients, pioneered public recreation programs for African American children in Jacksonville and did extensive work with prisoners. She was a member of and leader in the Negro Women’s Club Movement working along side Mrs. Booker T. Washington and Mrs. Mary McLeod Bethune among others. She was a member of the Republican Party and was a well recognized political “power broker” throughout her long life.

The Clara White Mission was headquarters for the WPA’s Negro Division and ran numerous programs to help relieve the effects of the Depression. Cultural programs, including music and art activities, occurred at that time. During WWII, Miss White established a USO for Colored servicemen and women and participated in the activities of the Red Cross. After the War and into the 1970′s, the Clara White Mission continued to provide programs for the needy, adapting to the changes in the national and local political landscape, and the social changes taking place around it.

Miss White received the 1970 Lane Bryant Award for Volunteer Service, a national award presented to her by President Richard M. Nixon. The award was accompanied by a cash gift which Miss White used for the Clara White Mission’s work. She was appointed to the President’s National Center for Volunteer Action in 1971. Eartha M.M. White never married. She died on January 18, 1974, in Jacksonville, Florida, at the age of 97.

Sources: Florida African American Heritage Network; State Archives of Florida, Florida Memory

Burial of a Fighter

nobody@ipernity.com (Kicha) — Wed, 18 Oct 2023 18:50:34 +0000

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Gravesite of Harriet Tubman, March 1913.
Photographer, Gerald Martineau

Written on her tombstone:
To the Memory of Harriet Tubman Davis
Heroine of the Underground Railroad.
Nurse and Scout in the Civil War.
Born about 1820 in Maryland.
Died March 10, 1913 at Auburn, NY
"Servant of God, Well Done"
Erected by the Empire State
Federation of Women Clubs

Earliest Sit-Ins

nobody@ipernity.com (Kicha) — Mon, 16 Oct 2023 20:03:51 +0000

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From left to right: William Evans, Otto Tucker, Edward Gaddis, Morris Murray, and Robert Strange.

One of America's first sit-ins took place at Alexandria Library on Friday, August 21, 1939.

The present-day Barrett Branch Library on Queen Street (originally called Alexandria Library) was the only library building in a city with a population of 33,000. It was built in 1937 with money donated by the family of Kate Waller Barrett (1857-1925). However, as with many public services in the country financed by the community's taxpayers, the library was only available to whites. African Americans, though they voted and paid taxes, were not allowed to use the library.

Samuel Wilbert Tucker (1913-1990), who grew up only two blocks from the Barrett Branch, then known as Alexandria Library, graduated from Howard University and prepared for the field of law. He passed Virginia’s bar exam at age 20, but Tucker, an outstanding student, was too young to be sworn in. A year later, he took the oath. Tucker tried for several years to establish equal access to community resources, but the white community, including the Alexandria Library Board, remained unswayed.

In the summer of 1939, Tucker, now 26, developed a strategy by preparing a select group of African American men for a deliberate act of civil disobedience. Ranging in age from 18 to 22 years, these Alexandrians challenged the status quo.

On Friday, August 21, 1939, Alexandria Library staff and patrons watched as a young African American entered and asked to register for a library card. When he was refused, he picked up a book, took a seat, and began to read. Minutes later, another well-groomed and polite young adult repeated these actions. This continued until William Evans, Otto L. Tucker (the attorney’s brother), Edward Gaddis, Morris Murray and Clarence Strange occupied five tables. Each one sat in silence and read a book.

Flustered library staff called the police. As planned, Robert Strange (his older brother Clarence was one of the silent protestors) ran to Tucker's law office to let him know that the police were on their way. Officers arrived and escorted the protestors from the library, arresting them for “disorderly conduct.” Samuel Tucker had called a photographer, who took a photo, and then quickly arranged for their release. He planned to challenge the city in court on the grounds that all citizens were entitled to equal access to public services. But the city, in an effort to resist integration, stalled the process with intense negotiations.

Virtually ignored by most newspapers, the case continued to be widely reported in the African American press across the country. Tucker became seriously ill and was unable to pursue the case. In 1940, community leaders proceeded without the young attorney’s involvement and accepted the promise of a “separate but equal” library. Tucker was infuriated. The Alexandria Library Board quickly approved the construction of the Robert H. Robinson Library, appropriated funding for books, and hired an African American librarian.

On February 13, 1940, Samuel Tucker replied to a letter from Librarian Katharine A. Scoggins inviting him to apply for a library card at Robinson Library. His strongly worded reply demonstrates Tucker’s commitment to equal protection under the law: “I refuse and will always refuse to accept a card to be used at the library to be constructed and operated at Alfred and Wythe Streets in lieu of [a] card to be used at the existing library on Queen Street for which I have made application."

Samuel W. Tucker remained a leader in the war against segregation and intolerance. He argued groundbreaking civil rights cases across the state. He served as the lead lawyer for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in Virginia, appeared before the U.S. Supreme Court four times, and was a founding partner in the prominent Richmond law firm, Hill, Tucker, and Marsh.

On October 19, 2000, a decade after Tucker's passing, his hometown dedicated its newest elementary school in his honor. The sit-in is chronicled in a documentary called Out of Obscurity. Copies may be borrowed from Alexandria Library. On Friday, August 21, 2009, Alexandria Library hosted the 70th Anniversary of this first civil rights sit-in.

AlexandriaLibrary.com

Sweet Taste of Freedom

nobody@ipernity.com (Kicha) — Wed, 18 Oct 2023 05:13:38 +0000

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Portrait of a newly freed African American family --- names and exact location unknown.

Bullwhip Days: The Slave Remembers, An Oral History, edited by James Mellon

Mrs. Nancy Green

nobody@ipernity.com (Kicha) — Wed, 18 Oct 2023 05:09:55 +0000

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"Aunt Jemima" Victim of Auto
The Daily Herald (Chicago, Illinois)
October 12, 1923

Colored Mammy of Pancake Fame Crushed to Death in Chicago; Born in Kentucky

Chicago ----- Pancake season is here, but in some Chicago households the sizzling of the griddle will bring memories tinged with sadness.

"Aunt Jemima" is dead. The aged negro woman whose ability to make "flapjacks" was capitalized by millers, whose bandanna-wreathed smile forms a mental picture for thousand of lovers of a "plate of wheats" and whose skill with the pancake turner furnished amusement for and drew the envy of those who attended expositions and fairs ever since the Chicago World's Fair of 1893, fell a victim to an automobile in Chicago recently.

Her death marks the passing of an interesting character who will be mourned not only by the negro race but by numerous wealthy Chicago families as well. For Mrs. Nancy Green will live longest in memory as "Aunt Jemima."

"Aunt Jemima" was born in Montgomery County, Kentucky in 1834 and came to Chicago as a nurse for the Walker family. She nursed and made pancakes for the late Circuit Judge Charles M. Walker, chief justice of the Municipal court, and his brother, Dr. Samuel, now a leading North side physician, when they were boys. They spread her fame among their boy chums, and before long "Aunt Jemima's pancakes" became a common phrase in Chicago when good things to eat were discussed.

A milling company heard of her, searched her out, obtained her recipe and induced her to make pancakes at the World's Fair. After that she went from one Exposition to another demonstrating her skill. There was one, however, that she refused to attend the Paris Exposition. All inducements that could be made were put forward, but "Aunt Jemima" refused to budge.

"No, suh," she said. "They ain't no man gonna git me on th watah. I was bo'n in this country an' I'm gonna die heah, not somewheah 'twixt heah an' somewheah's else."

She was one of the first colored missionary workers and one of the organizers of the Olivet Baptist church, now the largest colored church in the world, with a membership of over 9000.

She is buried in Oak Woods Cemetery in Chicago Cook County, Illinois.

Source: On December 12, 2017, Lesley Martin, a reference librarian at the Chicago History Museum Research Center, found an actual image of Mrs. Green as it appeared in The Daily Herald in an article on her death.

In Remembrance

nobody@ipernity.com (Kicha) — Wed, 18 Oct 2023 05:03:05 +0000

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This gentleman was identified not by a name but by what America imposed on him ... slavery. A formerly enslaved human being sits beside a portrait of his mother. Name and photographer unknown.

Source: A Saga of the Black Man; by Rosetta Lucas Quisenberry

Haunted

nobody@ipernity.com (Kicha) — Wed, 18 Oct 2023 04:36:17 +0000

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The look of war ---- a WWI soldier rests. Saga of Blacks in America by Rosetta Lucas Quisenberry

A WWI Soldier and his Automobile

nobody@ipernity.com (Kicha) — Wed, 18 Oct 2023 04:34:13 +0000

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Portrait of an unknown Black soldier from WWI. A Saga of the Black Man; by Rosetta Lucas Quisenberry

A Girl and Her Pal

nobody@ipernity.com (Kicha) — Wed, 18 Oct 2023 04:02:20 +0000

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It looks like these two would go through hell and high water for the other .... names and locale unknown. [ebay]

Vintage Little One

nobody@ipernity.com (Kicha) — Wed, 18 Oct 2023 04:00:30 +0000

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An adorable little cutie (name unknown) with a very stylish coat. Archives and Research Library of the Charles H. Wright Museum, of African American History

William Hurley

nobody@ipernity.com (Kicha) — Wed, 18 Oct 2023 03:54:40 +0000

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Here photographed in 1909, William "Bill" Hurley, of Charlottesville, Virginia was a liveryman, coachman, and stable owner; he worked for J. Samuel McCue, the Charlottesville's mayor, who, in 1904, was tried for the murder of his wife. Hurley testified against the mayor, who was convicted and sentenced to death. Mayor McCue was hanged in the courtyard of the Charlottesville City Jail, February of 1905. It was whispered later that the Mayor's mistress had killed his wife and that the Mayor had taken the murder rap for her.

Source: Holsinger Studio, Charlottesville, Virginia, Virginia Historical Society.

A Passion for Fashion

nobody@ipernity.com (Kicha) — Wed, 18 Oct 2023 02:47:56 +0000

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Two attractive fashionably dressed ladies.
Names and locale unknown. John W Mosley, Photographer
Charles L Blockson Afro-American Collection, Temple University

Tate Travel Club

nobody@ipernity.com (Kicha) — Wed, 18 Oct 2023 01:50:46 +0000

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Merze Tate is the woman with the white hat holding the banner) formed her travel club in the 1940s.

Vernie Merze Tate grew up in west Michigan the only black student in her class. She graduated with honors from Western Michigan University and later was the first African-American to graduate from Oxford University in 1932. Tate traveled the globe as a writer, and eventually became a teacher at an all-black high school in Indiana. While there Tate started a travel club for her students.

She taught as a history teacher at Crispus Attucks High School in Indianapolis, Indiana from 1927-32.

As a teacher she wanted her students to see the world they learned about. Her determination led to her founding the school travel club which went to such places as Washington D.C., Niagara Falls, and Pennsylvania. One news article criticized her efforts of taking these students into the world, as they were not expected to be more than domestics. Tate proved them wrong. All of the members of the club were honor roll students and many went on to college.

Source: Western Michigan University Archives