>On That Day In History

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I was born on January 27–which makes me, as I like to say, Aqueerius.

Here are some other important events that happened that day:

1825: The US Congress approves Indian Territory–in present-day Oklahoma–clearing the way for forced relocation of the Eastern Indians on the “Trail of Tears.”
1870: The first women’s fraternity, Kappa Alpha Theta, is formed at DePauw University.
1888: The National Geographic Society is founded in Washington, D.C..
1951: Nuclear testing at the Nevada Test Site begins with a one-kiloton bomb dropped on Frenchman Flats.
1967: Apollo 1 – Astronauts Gus Grissom, Edward White and Roger Chaffee are killed in a fire during a test of the spacecraft at the Kennedy Space Center.
1967: More than sixty nations sign the Outer Space Treaty banning nuclear weapons in space.
1967: The Doors self titled debut album is released.
1973: Paris Peace Accords officially end the Vietnam War.

1996: Germany first observes International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

And here are some other important people born that day:

1756: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
1832: Lewis Carroll, English author.
1850: Edward J. Smith, captain of the Titanic.
1885: Jerome Kern, American composer.
1908: William Randolph Hearst, Jr., American newspaper magnate.
1912: Arne Næss, Norwegian philosopher and Diana Ross’ second husband.
1918: Skitch Henderson, bandleader.
1918: Elmore James, blues musician.
1921: Donna Reed, actress.
1930: Bobby Blue Bland, singer.
1933: Mohamed Al-Fayed, billionaire businessman.
1936: Troy Donahue, actor.

1940: James Cromwell, actor.

1944: Nick Mason, Pink Floyd drummer.

1948: Mikhail Baryshnikov, dancer.

1949: Ethan Mordden, author.
1959: Keith Olbermann, news presenter .
1961: Marciso Rodriguez, fashion designer.
1964: Bridget Fonda, actress.
1965: Alan Cumming, actor.
1980: Marat Safin, tennis player.
1987: Zuleidy, Spanish porn star.

These other important people, sadly, died on January 27th:

1595: Sir Francis Drake, explorer.

1837: Alexander Pushkin, poet.

1851: John James Audubon, naturalist and ornithologist.

1901: Giuseppe Verdi, composer.
1910: Thomas Crapper, inventor.

1922: Nellie Bly, journalist and writer.

1967: Roger Chaffee – Crew of Apollo 1.

1967: Virgil “Gus” Grissom – Crew of Apollo 1.
1967: Edward White – Crew of Apollo 1.

1972: Mahalia Jackson, gospel singer.

1993: Andre the Giant, professional wrestler and actor.
2004: Jack Paar, television show host.

2009: John Updike, novelist.

>Stimulus

>My Dad sent this to me.
It’s funny ‘cuz it’s true.

>Rosa Parks

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I do like to save the best for last.

Rosa Parks is one of my heroes. Ask most anyone who knows me and they’ll tell you that I would have loved to have known her; that she is an inspiration to me, to stand up….or sit down….when you want to make a change.

She was born Rosa Louise McCauley on February 4, 1913, in Tuskegee, Alabama. Her childhood brought her early experiences with racial discrimination and activism for racial equality. After her parents separated, Rosa’s mother moved the family to Pine Level, Alabama to live with her parents, Rose and Sylvester Edwards, on their farm. Both her grandparents were former slaves and strong advocates for racial equality.

In one experience, Rosa’s grandfather stood in front of their house with a shotgun while Ku Klux Klan members marched down the street. The city of Pine Level, Alabama had a new school building and bus transportation for white students while African American students walked to a one-room schoolhouse, often lacking desks and adequate school supplies. Rosa knew that, merely because of the color of her skin, she would not be treated equally.

In 1929, while in the eleventh grade, Rosa left school to attend to her sick grandmother in Pine Level. She never returned to school, but instead got a job at a shirt factory in Montgomery. In 1932, she married a barber named Raymond Parks who was an active member of the NAACP. With Raymond’s support, Rosa Parks finished her high school degree in 1933 and she, herself, soon became actively involved in civil rights issues.

Rosa Parks joined the Montgomery chapter of the NAACP in 1943, and served as the secretary to the president, E.D. Nixon until 1957.

Now, in those days, not so very long ago, in Montgomery, Alabama, city code required that all public transportation be segregated, and that all bus drivers be given “powers of a police officer of the city while in actual charge of any bus for the purposes of carrying out the provisions” of the code.

While operating a bus, drivers were required to provide “separate but equal”–there’s that old chestnut again–accommodations for white and black passengers by assigning seats. This was accomplished with a line, an actual sign, roughly in the middle of the bus separating white passengers in the front and African Americans in the back.

But African Americans didn’t just have to ride in the back. When they got on the bus, they would pay their fare, then get off the bus, walk to the back and reboard. No one wanted colored people walking in between the white people.

If the seats in the front of the bus filled up, and more white passengers got on, the bus driver would simply move the sign back, separating black and white passengers, and ask black passengers give up their seats so the whites could sit down.

On December 1, 1955, after a long day working at the Montgomery Fair department store, Rosa Parks boarded the Cleveland Avenue bus for home. She got on, paid her fare, got off, walked to the back, got on again, and found a seat in the first of several rows designated for “colored” passengers.

Though the city’s bus ordinance did give drivers the authority to assign seats, it didn’t specifically give them the authority to demand a passenger to give up a seat to anyone regardless of color. However, Montgomery bus drivers had adopted the custom of requiring black passengers to give up their seats to white passengers when no other seats were available. If the black passenger protested, the bus driver had the authority to refuse service and could call the police to have them removed.

As the bus Rosa was riding continued on its route, it began to fill with white passengers. Eventually, the bus was full and the driver noticed that several white passengers were standing in the aisle. This apparently was unacceptable. He stopped the bus and moved the sign separating the two sections back one row and asked the four black passengers in that row to give up their seats. Three complied, but Rosa refused. She stayed seated.

The driver demanded, “Why don’t you stand up?”

Rosa replied, “I don’t think I should have to stand up.”

Can I get a You Go, Girl.

The driver called the police, who arrested Rosa at the scene and charged her with violation of Chapter 6, section 11 of the Montgomery City code. She was taken to police headquarters where later that night she was released on bail. On December 8, Rosa faced trial and in a thirty-minute hearing was found guilty of violating a local ordinance. She was fined ten dollars, plus a four-dollar court fee.

The very evening she was arrested, E.D. Nixon, head of the local chapter of the NAACP, began to organize a boycott of Montgomery’s city buses. Ads were placed in local papers and handbills were printed and distributed in black neighborhoods. Members of the African American community were asked to stay off the buses Monday, December 5th in protest of Rosa’s arrest. People were encouraged to stay home from work or school, take a cab or walk to work. With most of the African American community not riding the bus, organizers believed a longer boycott might be successful.

On Monday, December 5, 1955, a group of African-American community leaders gathered at Mt. Zion Church to discuss strategies. They determined that the effort required a new organization and strong leadership. They formed the “Montgomery Improvement Association”–the MIA–and elected Montgomery newcomer Dr. Martin Luther King, as their first president.

The boycott of December 5th was a success, and so it was continued. Some African-Americans carpooled, others rode in African American-operated cabs. But most of the estimated 40,000 African American commuters walked, some as far as 20 miles to get to work.

Public buses sat idle for months, severely crippling the transit company’s finances. But the boycott faced strong resistance, with some segregationists retaliating with violence. Black churches were burned and both Martin Luther King and E.D. Nixon’s homes were attacked. Other attempts were made to end the boycott as well. The taxi system used by the African American community to help people get around had its insurance canceled. Other blacks were arrested for violating an old law prohibiting boycotts.

See, the black folks weren’t allowed to protest, or have an opinion, or stay seated.

But the African American community also took action. Under the Brown v. Board of Education decision that said “separate but equal” policies had no place in public education, a black legal team took the issue of segregation on public transit systems to federal court.

In June of 1956, the court declared Alabama’s racial segregation laws for public transit unconstitutional. The city appealed and on November 13, 1956, the Supreme Court upheld the lower court’s ruling. With the transit company and downtown businesses suffering financial loss and the legal system ruling against them, the city of Montgomery had no choice but to lift the law requiring segregation on public buses.

The combination of legal action, backed by the unrelenting determination of the African American community made the 382-day Montgomery Bus Boycott one of the largest and most successful mass movements against racial segregation in history.

That’s right, people. The boycott lasted over a year!

Although she was now a symbol for the Civil Rights Movement, Rosa Parks suffered as a result. She lost her job at the department store and her husband lost his after his boss forbade him to discuss his wife or their legal case. They were unable to find work and eventually left Montgomery.

Rosa Parks moved her family–her husband and mother–to Detroit, where she made a new life for herself, working as a secretary and receptionists in U.S. Representative John Conyer’s congressional office. She also served on the board of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America.

In 1987, at age seventy-four, Rosa Parks, along with life-long friend Elaine Eason Steele, founded the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self-Development. The institute runs the “Pathways to Freedom” bus tours, introducing young people to important civil rights and Underground Railroad sites throughout the country.

In 1992, she published Rosa Parks: My Story, an autobiography recounting her life in the segregated South. In 1995, her memoirs, Quiet Strength, focused on the role religious faith played in her life.

Rosa Parks received many accolades during her lifetime including the Spingarn Medal, the NAACP’s highest award. She also received the Martin Luther King Jr. Award. On September 9, 1996 President Bill Clinton awarded Rosa Parks the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest honor given by the U.S. executive branch. The next year, she was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal, the highest award given by the U.S. legislative branch. In 1999, Time magazine named Rosa Parks one of the 20 most influential people of the twentieth century.

On October 24, 2005, at the age of ninety-two, Rosa Parks quietly died in her apartment. She had been diagnosed the previous year with progressive dementia. Her death was marked by several memorial services, among them lying in state at the Capitol Rotunda in Washington D.C. where an estimated 50,000 people viewed her casket. Rosa was interred between her husband and mother at Detroit’s Woodlawn Cemetery in the chapel’s mausoleum. Shortly after her death the chapel was renamed the Rosa L. Parks Freedom Chapel.

All of that because she wouldn’t give up her seat. People used to say that Rosa wouldn’t get up because she’d worked all day and was tired.

She, herself, said she wasn’t physically tired, she was just “tired of giving in.”

I know that feeling all too well.

>Freedom Summer

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Freedom Summer was a highly publicized campaign in the Deep South to register blacks to vote during the summer of 1964. Thousands of civil rights activists, many of them white college students from the North, descended on Mississippi and other Southern states that summer to put an end to the long-time political disenfranchisement of African Americans in the region. Although black men had won the right to vote in 1870, thanks to the 15th Amendment, for the next 100 years many were unable to exercise that right.

White local and state officials systematically kept blacks from voting through formal methods, such as poll taxes and literacy tests, and through cruder methods of fear and intimidation, which included beatings and lynchings.

The inability to vote was just one of many problems blacks encountered in the racist South, but the civil-rights officials who decided to zero in on voter registration understood its crucial significance; so did the white supremacists. An African American voting bloc would be able to effect social and political change, especially in the South with its large African American population.

Freedom Summer marked the climax of intensive voter-registration activities in the South that had started in 1961. Organizers chose to focus their efforts on Mississippi because of the state’s particularly dismal voting-rights record: in 1962 only 6.7% of African Americans in Mississippi were registered to vote, the lowest in the nation.

The Freedom Summer campaign was organized by a coalition called the Mississippi Council of Federated Organizations, which was led by the Congress of Racial Equality–CORE–and included the NAACP, and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee–SNCC.

By mobilizing volunteer white college students from the North to join them, the coalition scored a major public relations coup as hundreds of reporters came to Mississippi from around the country to cover the voter-registration campaign.

The organization of the Mississippi Freedom Party–MFDP–was a major focus of the summer program. More than 80,000 Mississippians joined the new party, which elected a slate of sixty-eight delegates to the national Democratic Party convention in Atlantic City. The MFDP delegation challenged the seating of the delegates representing Mississippi’s all white Democratic Party.

While the effort failed, it drew national attention, particularly through the dramatic televised appeal of MFDP delegate Fannie Lou Hamer. The MFDP challenge also lead to a ban on racially discriminatory delegations at future conventions.

Freedom Summer officials also established 30 “Freedom Schools” in towns throughout Mississippi to address the racial inequalities in that state’s educational system. Mississippi’s black schools were invariably poorly funded, and teachers had to use hand-me-down textbooks that offered a racist slant on American history.

Many of the white college students were assigned to teach in these schools, whose curriculum included black history, the philosophy of the Civil Rights Movement, and leadership development in addition to remedial instruction in reading and arithmetic.

The Freedom Schools had hoped to draw at least 1000 students that first summer, and ended up with 3000. The schools became a model for future social programs like Head Start, as well as alternative educational institutions.

Freedom Summer activists faced threats and harassment throughout the campaign, not only from white supremacist groups, but from local residents and police. Freedom School buildings and the volunteers’ homes were frequent targets; 37 black churches and 30 black homes and businesses were firebombed or burned during the summer of 1964; and the cases often went unsolved.

More than 1000 black and white volunteers were arrested, and at least 80 were beaten by white mobs or racist police officers. But the summer’s most infamous act of violence was the murder of three young civil rights workers, a black volunteer, James Chaney, and his white coworkers, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner.

On June 21, Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner set out to investigate a church bombing near Philadelphia, Mississippi, but were arrested that afternoon and held for several hours on alleged traffic violations. Their release from jail was the last time they were seen alive before their badly decomposed bodies were discovered under a nearby dam six weeks later. Goodman and Schwerner had died from single gunshot wounds to the chest, and Chaney, the only African American in the trio, from a savage beating.

The murders made headlines all over the country, and provoked an outpouring of national support for the Civil Rights Movement. But many black volunteers realized that because two of the victims were white, these murders were attracting much more attention than previous attacks in which the victims had been black, and this added to the growing resentment they had begun to feel towards the white volunteers.

There was also growing dissension among the ranks over charges of assumed white elitism. Black volunteers complained that whites seemed to think they had a natural claim on leadership roles, and that they treated the rural blacks as though they were ignorant. There was also increasing hostility from both black and white workers over the interracial romances that developed the summer. Meanwhile, women volunteers of both races were charging both the black and white men with sexist behavior.

But despite the internal divisions, Freedom Summer left a positive legacy. The well-publicized voter registration drives brought national attention to the subject of black disenfranchisement, and this eventually led to the 1965 Voting Rights Act, federal legislation that, among other things, outlawed the tactics Southern states had used to prevent blacks from voting.

Freedom Summer also instilled among African Americans a new consciousness and a new confidence in political action. As Fannie Lou Hamer later said, “Before the 1964 project there were people that wanted change, but they hadn’t dared to come out. After 1964 people began moving. To me it’s one of the greatest things that ever happened in Mississippi.”

>Black History Month

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African American abolitionist Harriet Tubman was born into slavery, but escaped to Philadelphia in 1849, and subsequently became one of the most successful “conductors” on the Underground Railroad.
Returning to the South more than a dozen times, she is generally credited with leading more than 300 slaves–including her parents and brother–to freedom, sometimes forcing the timid ahead with a loaded revolver.
She became a speaker on the anti-slavery lecture circuit and a friend of the principal abolitionists; John Brown almost certainly confided his Harpers Ferry plan to her.
During the Civil War, Tubman attached herself to the Union forces in coastal South Carolina, serving as a nurse, cook, laundress, scout, and spy, and in 1863 she played an important part in a raid that resulted in the freeing of more than 700 slaves.

African American civil-rights leader Julian Bond, was a a student at Morehouse College, participating in sit-ins at segregated Atlanta restaurants. In 1960 he founded the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee–SNCC–serving as its communications director until 1965, when he was elected to the Georgia assembly.
Bond was denied his seat because of his statements opposing the war in Vietnam, but reelected in 1966, he began serving after the U.S. Supreme Court upheld his right to hold office. A state representative until 1974, he then served as a state senator from 1975 until 1987.
Bond led a group of black delegates to the 1968 Democratic Convention where he challenged the party’s unit rule and won representation at the expense of the regular Georgia delegation.
In 1986 he lost a Georgia congressional race to John Lewis.
In 1998 he became chairman of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

African American civil-rights leader Ralph David Abernathy was a Baptist minister who helped Martin Luther King, Jr., organize the Montgomery bus boycott in 1955. He was treasurer, vice president, and, after King’s assassination in 1968, president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC).
An advocate of nonviolence as a means to social change, he led the Poor People’s Campaign on Washington, D.C., after King’s death.

African American contralto, Marian Anderson was the first African American to be named a permanent member of the Metropolitan Opera Company, as well as the first to perform at the White House.
Anderson first sang in Philadelphia church choirs, then studied with Giuseppe Boghetti. She began her concert career in 1924 and achieved her first great successes in Europe.
Her rich, wide-ranged voice was superbly suited to opera, lieder, and the spirituals that she included in her concerts and recordings.
In 1939, when the Daughters of the American Revolution refused to allow her to perform at Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C., Eleanor Roosevelt resigned her DAR membership in protest and sponsored Anderson’s concert at the Lincoln Memorial.
In 1955 Anderson made her debut with the Metropolitan Opera. She was appointed an alternate delegate to the United Nations in 1958 and in 1963 was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

African American author Ralph Ellison was a graduate of the Tuskegee Institute.
Originally a trumpet player and aspiring composer, he moved to New York City in 1936, where he met Langston Hughes, who became his mentor, and became friends with Richard Wright, who radicalized his thinking.
Ellison’s earliest published writings were reviews and stories in the politically radical New Masses magazine. His literary reputation rests almost completely on one novel, Invisible Man. A classic of American literature, it draws upon the author’s experiences to detail the harrowing progress of a nameless young black man struggling to live in a hostile society.

African American playwright and poet August Wilson was a largely self-educated man.
Wilson first attracted wide critical attention with his Broadway debut, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom in 1984–a play set in 1927 that dramatized the clash between the blues diva and a member of her band, and the larger conflicts brought about by racist American society.
Wilson’s plays center on the struggles and identity of African Americans and the deleterious effect of white American institutions on black American life. Wilson’s works draw heavily on his own experiences growing up in the Hill district of Pittsburgh, a black ghetto where nearly all of his plays are set.
His characters are ordinary people whose histories, frustrations, and aspirations Wilson astutely portrays. His cycle of ten dramas written over a period of more than 20 years include various overlapping characters and themes. In addition to Ma Rainey, it includes Jitney in 1982; Fences, a Pulitzer prize winner from 1987; Joe Turner’s Come and Gone in 1988; The Piano Lesson the 1990 Pulitzer prize winner; Two Trains Running from 1992; Seven Guitars from 1995; King Hedley II in 2001; Gem of the Ocean in 2003; and Radio Golf in 2005.
Acclaimed as landmarks in the history of black American culture, these works focus on the major issues confronting African Americans during each of the decades of the 20th century.
In 2003, Wilson starred in a production of his autobiographical one-man play How I Learned What I Learned.

African American James Lafayette Armistead was a patriot of the American Revolution. A slave in Virginia, Armistead sought and received permission from his master, William Armistead, to enlist under General Marquis de Lafayette, a French officer who joined Washington’s army during the Revolutionary War.
Lafayette was seeking men to spy on British general Cornwallis and his army at Yorktown. Impressed with Armistead’s intelligence, Lafayette had Armistead pose as a laborer looking for work. He was hired at Cornwallis’s camp and was able to relay information about Cornwallis’s plans to Lafayette.
Armistead also earned the trust of Cornwallis, who asked him to spy on the Americans.
As a double agent, Armistead was able to move freely between both camps. He provided Lafayette with critical information that enabled the general to intercept Cornwallis’s much-needed naval support and ultimately defeat Cornwallis at Yorktown in Oct. 1781, the decisive battle that ended the Revolution.
After the war, Armistead returned to the Armistead plantation as a slave. He met with Lafayette in 1784, when the general visited the United States. Lafayette wrote a glowing recommendation for his former spy, which Armistead used when he petitioned the Virginia House of Delegates for freedom.
He was finally freed on New Year’s Day 1787, and assumed Lafayette as his surname. He spent the rest of his life as a farmer in Virginia.

African American Stokely Carmichael lived in New York City after 1952 and graduated from Howard University in 1964. Carmichael participated in the Congress of Racial Equality’s “freedom rides” in 1961, and by 1964 was a field organizer for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee–SNCC–in Alabama.
As SNCC chair in 1966, he ejected more moderate leaders and set off a storm of controversy by calling for “black power,” a concept he elaborated in a 1967 book. His increasingly separatist politics isolated him from most of the civil-rights movement, and he emigrated to Conakry, Guinea, in 1969. There he spent the rest of his life, calling himself a pan-African revolutionary but largely relegated to the political fringe.

African American Alvin Ailey, Jr studied dance in Los Angeles with Lester Horton, whose strong, dramatic style and views about multiracial casting influenced his choreography and artistic direction.
Ailey moved to New York in 1954, where he studied dance with Martha Graham and Charles Weidman and acting with Stella Adler. In 1958 he formed his own company, the American Dance Theater, which, multiracial since 1963, has been internationally acclaimed and has brought recognition to many African-American and Asian dancers via works that combine elements of jazz, modern, and African rhythms.

African American Joycelyn Jones Elders briefly served as the surgeon general of the United States under President Clinton. She was confirmed in September 1993 and angered conservatives from the get-go, as she was vocal in her support of sex education, the distribution of condoms in schools, abortion rights, and the medical use of marijuana.
But it was her December 1994 statement that “masturbation is part of human sexuality and a part of something that perhaps should be taught” that prompted President Clinton to seek and receive her resignation.

African American Crispus Attucks was an American revolutionary patriot of mixed African and American Indian ancestry; Attucks was the slave of William Brown of Framingham, Mass. He escaped around 1750 to work on whaling ships.
On March 5, 1770, Boston patriot Samuel Adams convinced sailors and dockworkers to protest the presence of British troops, and Attucks was the leader of the 50 men in the protest, shouting “Don’t be afraid,” as they advanced on the British. The soldiers fired on the protestors, killing Attucks and four others in what became known as the Boston Massacre. The bodies of the dead lay in state at Faneuil Hall for three days before receiving a public funeral attended by 10,000 people.
Although the soldiers were acquitted of the shootings on the grounds that the seamen were inciting a riot, Attucks and the others became heroes.

African American civil rights activist Ella Baker was a driving force in the creation of the country’s premier civil rights organizations.
After graduating as valedictorian from North Carolina’s Shaw University in 1927, Baker moved to New York City, where she lived in utter poverty, the result of the Great Depression. She and a group of others, founded the Young Negroes Cooperative League, whose members pooled funds to buy products and services at reduced cost.
In 1935, Ella Baker joined the NAACP as a field secretary and later served as a its national director. She scaled back her national responsibilities with the group eleven years later, but still worked at the local level to improve and integrate New York City’s schools.
Baker and several Southern black ministers and activists established the Southern Christian Leadership Conference–SCLC–in 1957; the SCLC was a major force in organizing the civil rights movement. Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. served as the group’s first president and Baker was the director, though she mainly worked behind the scenes, while King was its spokesman.
In 1960 Baker left the SCLC when she helped students organize the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee–SNCC–at her alma mater, Shaw University. The SNCC’s purpose was to give young blacks a more organized voice in the civil rights movement.

African American writer and performer, Maya Angelou toured Europe and Africa in the 1950s in the musical Porgy and Bess. She sang in New York City nightclubs, joined the Harlem Writers Guild, and took part in several off-Broadway productions, including Genet’s The Blacks and her own Cabaret for Freedom.
During the 1960s she was active in the African-American political movement; she subsequently spent several years in Ghana as editor of the African Review. Her six autobiographical volumes, beginning with I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, have generally been well-received. She has also published several volumes of poetry, including And I Still Rise.
Angelou read her poem “On the Pulse of Morning” at the inauguration of President Clinton in 1993.