tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-89944272024-02-20T07:10:29.909-05:00African American News and GenealogyThis site was developed to provide you with news that relates to African American Genealogy, History and News. Please feel free to forward this link to others. I hope you enjoy this site and good luck with your research!
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Kenyatta D. Berry
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DiscoverGenealogy.comKenyattahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00529384675899964226noreply@blogger.comBlogger295125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8994427.post-1171791402036212252007-02-18T04:35:00.000-05:002007-02-20T08:57:32.776-05:00Growing Number of Museums Preserving Black History and CultureTourists drawn to exhibits on slavery, civil rights movement, achievements
Museums that focus on the critical role of African Americans in U.S. history and culture are more popular than ever, and several cities are planning new or expanded facilities to attract tourists and scholars.
"There's a new generation of [African-American culture] museums that are competitive in size and budget with most mainstream museums - and that's a very new phenomenon," said John Fleming, president of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History.
"The black community is interested in preserving [its] history and culture on a scale that our patrimony deserves," he said. The African-American experience largely was ignored or misrepresented until recent decades, and even now, most students have a poor understanding of important people and events, Fleming told USINFO. "They know who Martin Luther King is, but they don't really understand his significance in American history."
African-American museums attract many visitors, he added. "Cities and states are interested in cultural tourism. You see where they put the Baltimore Afro-American museum [Reginald F. Lewis Museum of Maryland African American History and Culture], right on the waterfront, right in the tourist area? And the Birmingham [Alabama] Civil Rights Institute [BCRI] has been a major tourism draw for the city."
BCRI Executive Director Lawrence Pijeaux agreed. "We are one of the major destination points for tourism in the state of Alabama," he said. A recent economic impact study found that BCRI visitors spent about $5.7 million in the Birmingham metropolitan area between July 2002 and July 2003, and that 4 percent of the visitors were from foreign countries.
Full Story: <a href="http://newsblaze.com/story/20070215062309tsop.nb/newsblaze/TOPSTORY/Top-Stories.html">http://newsblaze.com/story/20070215062309tsop.nb/newsblaze/TOPSTORY/Top-Stories.html</a>Kenyattahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00529384675899964226noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8994427.post-1159038054997954032006-09-23T15:00:00.000-04:002006-09-23T15:00:55.000-04:00Recording history of black churches tells nation's storyThey may not have ornate stained-glass windows and seating for a thousand people, yet these small, rural churches that dot the landscape of Rutherford County and America are often the foundation of the black community.
Singing, shouting and soul-saving emanate from them on Sundays and some weeknights when church congregations gather to share their problems and accomplishments and lift their spirits together toward heaven.
Yet because many of these churches aren't considered architecturally significant, they are often overlooked in historic preservation circles in documenting and maintaining them.
Carroll Van West, director of the MTSU Center for Historic Preservation, hopes to change that with the African-American Rural Church Project, a chronicling of churches such as Stones River United Methodist on Old Nashville Highway in Rutherford County.
Leonora Washington, a Smyrna Primary School teacher, can attest to the impact the church has had on her life. "There's a closeness there. We share our problems together, and we share our faith. It's something that your earn."
Full Story: <a href="http://dnj.midsouthnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060920/OPINION01/609200317/1014">http://dnj.midsouthnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060920/OPINION01/609200317/1014</a>Kenyattahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00529384675899964226noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8994427.post-1159037528396275422006-09-23T14:51:00.000-04:002006-09-23T14:52:08.416-04:00Chapel Added To State RegistrySociety Hopes Chapel Will Serve As Living History
By Jenny Jones
KEEZELTOWN — Al Jenkins propped a small ladder against the crumbling stone columns that hold up Longs Chapel, stepped carefully up the rungs and climbed into the old wooden structure.
Inside, Jenkins’ voice echoed off the stark walls and barren space that once served as a church and a schoolhouse for Zenda, a former community in northern Rockingham County that was established by newly freed slaves in the mid to late 1800s. He pointed out markings on the walls where the original pews once stood, and he explained the dignity of the building and the people who constructed it.
"They went from being property to owning property," said Jenkins, talking about the freed slaves who, with the help of the United Brethren Church and a contractor named Jacob Long, built Longs Chapel between 1869 and 1871. "And as soon as they were able to, they built their own church. That was a major accomplishment."
Full Story:<a href="http://www.dnronline.com/news_details.php?AID=6437&CHID=2">http://www.dnronline.com/news_details.php?AID=6437&CHID=2</a>Kenyattahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00529384675899964226noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8994427.post-1154313218145546442006-07-30T22:33:00.000-04:002006-07-30T22:33:38.163-04:00Cheaney, respected KSU professor diesBy Jennifer Hewlett
HERALD-LEADER STAFF WRITER
Henry Ellis Cheaney, a respected retired Kentucky State University history professor, died Tuesday at Frankfort Regional Medical Center after an illness. He was 94.
Mr. Cheaney wore many other hats, including those of debate team coach, boxing coach, publicity director and chaplain, during his 46-year tenure at KSU. But perhaps it was in the classroom that he made the greatest impact.
He was known as a hard-driving, but highly entertaining professor, who expected his students to go beyond attending classes and reading textbooks.
William Wilson, former chairman of the KSU board of regents and a former student of Mr. Cheaney, recalled how Mr. Cheaney would assign each student a topic to research and then grill them on it for an entire class period. Wilson's topic for his "day in court" was the Cuban Missile Crisis. Wilson made sure to find out what those missiles looked like and what television program President John F. Kennedy interrupted to tell the public about the crisis, he said.
"When you went to Dr. Cheaney's class you'd better be prepared," Wilson said.
Not only were students required to know their history, they were required to know how to do historical research and how to talk and write about history, too, he said.
"He would flunk you on your grammar. If you did not, in fact, write well, you were in serious trouble," Wilson said. "Our exams for Dr. Cheaney would take hours."
Wilson recalled one history lesson that Mr. Cheaney began by writing a long chemical formula on the chalkboard. A student walked in the classroom, then quickly left because he thought he was in a chemistry class.
"What Dr. Cheaney frequently lectured on was not always in your textbook, which is why it was always so important to take notes," Wilson said.
Sometimes students got so engrossed in Mr. Cheaney's lectures -- his "cowboy lecture" about the westward movement in the United States came complete with sound effects -- that they forgot they were in a classroom.
"People have flunked his course because they got so engrossed in his telling of stories that they forgot to take notes," Wilson said.
Mr. Cheaney was a "phenomenal teacher" and an "intellectual giant," Wilson said.
"Dr. Henry Cheaney is revered as a legend in the history of Kentucky State University," KSU Provost Juanita Fleming said.
"Professor Cheaney was the epitome of what one would assume a professor represented. He was articulate. He was kind. He was intellectually superior, and he left a lasting mark on anyone he touched," said Betty Griffin, former chairwoman of the KSU Division of Education and Human Services.
Full Story: <a href="http://www.kentucky.com/mld/kentucky/15085872.htm">http://www.kentucky.com/mld/kentucky/15085872.htm</a>Kenyattahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00529384675899964226noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8994427.post-1153704180807655132006-07-23T21:18:00.000-04:002006-07-23T21:23:00.810-04:00Series will retell explorer Sheppard's lifeLarry Muhammad - <a href="mailto:lmuhammad@courier-journal.com">lmuhammad@courier-journal.com</a>
The Courier-Journal
Who was the swashbuckling explorer, big-game hunter, missionary in Africa and human rights activist that the Smoketown housing project Sheppard Square was named for?
That would be Dr. William H. Sheppard, the self-styled "Black Livingstone."
Professor Blaine Hudson, dean of the University of Louisville's College of Arts and Sciences, will tell the story of the Louisville leader in a public presentation Saturday.
"Sheppard is a very unusual case," Hudson said, "when you think about a black man being a missionary, an explorer in central Africa in the 1890s and early 1900s, helping expose atrocities in Belgian colonization and then ending up in Smoketown."
The son of freed slaves, Sheppard became a celebrated missionary adventurer in Africa for 20 years.
He grew up in a well-to-do black Presbyterian household in Virginia and, after his travels, settled in Louisville, becoming a leader of the African-American community in the early 1900s.
Sheppard pastored Grace Hope Presbyterian Church from 1912 to 1927, when he died at age 62.
"Pioneers in the Congo," his 1917 autobiography, recorded his exploits 230 miles into the African continent, where he administered mission services, learned native tongues and built a rapport with leaders through his hunting skills.
Full Story: <a href="http://www.courier-journal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060720/FEATURES/607200323">http://www.courier-journal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060720/FEATURES/607200323</a>Kenyattahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00529384675899964226noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8994427.post-1153703591661872512006-07-23T21:12:00.000-04:002006-07-23T21:13:11.666-04:00BCC course explores slavery in MonmouthMany escaped and fought with the British army in the Battle of Monmouth
BY KAREN E. BOWES, Staff Writer
MIDDLETOWN - Slavery in Monmouth County was once the norm, especially in the township, Freehold, Tinton Falls and Shrewsbury, where they worked as iron miners, farmers and domestics up until 1865.
An expert on the subject, visiting Professor Graham Russell Hodges of Colgate University, Hamilton, N.Y., arrived at Brookdale Community College this week, leading students on historic tours of the area and speaking about slavery's impact on the local economy.
The author of the book "Slavery and Freedom in the Rural North: African Americans in Monmouth County, N.J., 1665-1865," Hodges appeared in the 2005 PBS series "Slavery and the Making of America."
During the television series, Hodges spoke about an escaped slave from Shrewsbury who fought for the British at the Battle of Monmouth in June 1778. Named Titus by his master, the slave renamed himself Tye after escaping. The British army bestowed the honorary title of Col. Tye for his gallantry in battle, and for becoming "one of the war's most feared Loyalists, white or black," Hodges wrote.
A local newspaper ran an ad for the runaway slave on Nov. 8, 1775. The owner offered a 3-pound reward for "Titus," described as "about 21 years of age. Not very black, near 6 feet high, had on a gray homespun coat, brown breeches, blue and white stockings."
According to Hodges, many other black men from the county fought at the Battle of Monmouth, including some from Middletown. All fought for the British during the battle.
Students in Professor Jess Levine's "History of New Jersey" class at Brookdale are also learning about the role religion played in the institution of slavery, as local Christian denominations differed on the topic of slavery's morality. Interestingly, Quakers, historically abolitionists, were divided on the subject in Monmouth County. Col. Tye's former master, John Corlis, was a Quaker and was said to be quite cruel.
Both slavery and indentured servitude were legal in New Jersey prior to 1865, when the Emancipation Proclamation ended both forms of human ownership. And while a few slaves were purchased at an auction in Perth Amboy, the vast majority of slaves were born into servitude or traded between friends, Hodges said in an interview on Thursday.
"Between 1718 and 1764, 480 slaves from the West Indies were imported into Perth Amboy, located in Middlesex County a few miles from Monmouth," wrote Hodges. "This total averages about 10 per year, and not all went to Monmouth."
In 1790, there were 1,596 slaves in Monmouth County. By 1820, about 1,000 slaves lived in the county. Ten years later in 1830, there were 224 slaves, according to census reports.
Gradual Emancipation, an 1804 state law that guaranteed slaves their freedom between the ages of 24 and 39, played a large part in the changing numbers. Still, many slave owners found new ways to exploit the recently freed slaves. They waited until the slave's 39th birthday or paid extremely low wages to those former slaves still living in cottages on the slaveholder's property. And by utilizing the recently legalized "cottagers system," a landowner could effectively keep his labor force at a rock bottom price.
Hodges has written several books on the topic of slavery, as well as other historical topics, including an account of New York City's very first taxicab drivers.Kenyattahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00529384675899964226noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8994427.post-1153703374125162952006-07-23T21:09:00.000-04:002006-07-23T21:09:34.143-04:00Discovering The Underground RailroadAs the first state to abolish slavery in 1780, Pennsylvania was a key part of the Underground Railroad. The abolitionists and free blacks within the state’s borders acted boldly and inspired others. Today, Pennsylvania is creating new and different ways for visitors to learn more about the risks and sacrifices that helped change society through a series of attractions and special events. One of the main routes of the Underground Railroad was through central Pennsylvania and much of the escape route ran along Route 30, which is also known as the Old Lincoln Highway. Towns along Route 30, like Gettysburg, York, Columbia, Lancaster and Philadelphia, were home to hundreds of abolitionists. Many of them were the first contact that freedom seekers encountered after they left the South. In an effort to revive the legacy of this route, historical societies in central and eastern Pennsylvania have formed Quest for Freedom to tell the story of what was once a major network of flight and survival. Visit <a href="http://www.questforfreedom.org/">www.questforfreedom.org</a> for information on attractions, tours and special events and packages throughout the summer. York native William C. Goodridge, one of the most active conductors in the Underground Railroad who helped save thousands of slaves, was also a participant in the Christiana Riots of 1851. Goodridge defied laws and risked imprisonment to house and transport Africans. His home now serves as a museum where tours and a first-hand perspective on people involved in the Underground Railroad can be explored. Visit the Quest for Freedom Web site, or contact the York Convention and Visitors Bureau at 717-852-9675, ext. 110, for hours. Although Route 30 was a hotbed for Underground Railroad activity, significant events took place throughout the state. Stories of rebellion and triumph abound in Cumberland County, where half of all enslaved Africans in Pennsylvania lived. The McClintock riot of 1847, led by Dickinson University professor John McClintock who, with the help of free black men, rushed a carriage returning escaped slaves to Maryland, took place in Cumberland County. Cumberland County was so rebellious that Confederate soldiers attempted to capture civilians in addition to slaves. Richard Woods was one of those civilians and one of the most effective conductors of the Underground Railroad. Looking to share these lesser known stories, the region offers tours of historical Underground Railroad sites. Visit the Educational Programs section of <a href="http://www.historicalsociety.com/">www.historicalsociety.com</a> for information on how to book a tour. Fleeing and resisting the confederate south were just part of the struggle to obtain freedom. Newly-freed slaves often struggled to settle and purchase homes. In the northeastern coal region of Lackawanna County, however, Pennsylvanians were viewed as progressive. Participating in notable anti-slavery activities, many of its residents, churches, and institutions worked for the advancement of freed slaves and helped African Americans establish themselves in the community. In A Place I Call Home: Explorations of the Underground Railroad in Northeastern Pennsylvania special tours July 29-30 and Aug. 19-20 will bring these efforts to life. Visit <a href="http://www.antislaverystudies.org/">www.antislaverystudies.org</a> for more information. Other special events planned throughout the summer include: · Davis-Bailey Family: Our Town Our Stories – An ongoing exhibit at the house museum of a former colored troop soldier. Contact the Pike County Historical Society, or visit <a href="http://www.pikehistory.org/">www.pikehistory.org</a> · Tribute to Freedom’s Crossing Presents African American Heritage in Columbia – An interactive tour highlighting colored troops and abolitionists, running July 15-Aug. 26. Visit <a href="http://www.padutchcountry.com/columbiatour">www.padutchcountry.com/columbiatour</a> for more information. · Passport to Freedom – Tours and ceremonies will highlight the town of Blairsville’s fight to resist slavery, Aug. 18-19. For more information go to <a href="http://www.visitindianacountypa.org/">www.visitindianacountypa.org</a> · Taking a Stand for Freedom: The Underground Railroad in Philadelphia – Reenactments will take place at Mother Bethel AME Church, the Civil War & Underground Railroad Museum and the Johnson House in Germantown. Meet Harriet Tubman, William Still and other “conductors” Aug. 19, Sept. 16 and Oct. 21. For details visit <a href="http://www.gophila.com/">www.gophila.com</a> The Pennsylvania Tourism Office, under the state Department of Community and Economic Development, is dedicated to fulfilling the needs and aspirations of travelers by presenting them with the information and resources they need to plan and enjoy the activities, attractions and destinations that are uniquely Pennsylvania. For more information about Pennsylvania’s tourism industry, go to <a href="http://www.visitpa.com/">www.visitpa.com</a> or call (800) VISIT PA
POSTED 060720_1400 ETKenyattahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00529384675899964226noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8994427.post-1153180657689985532006-07-17T19:57:00.000-04:002006-07-17T19:57:37.706-04:00Ex-slaves' land heirs feel island shiftCoastal S. Carolina's Gullah-Geechees find ancestral plots are vulnerable to grabsBy Dahleen GlantonTribune national correspondentPublished July 11, 2006
WARSAW ISLAND, S.C. -- No one in Sargent Parker's family ever gave much thought to the 26 acres of marshland he bought in 1869, six years after becoming a free man. But everyone knew it was there, sheltered behind rows of palmetto trees, as a reminder of the family's rich heritage.The story of how Parker, who died in 1915 at age 85, purchased the land has been passed down through generations. It was four years after Union Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman issued Special Field Orders, No. 15, ordering every freed slave to be given 40 acres. But after the directive was rescinded, blacks were forced to return the land.
Emancipated slaves such as Parker then worked hard as sharecroppers to raise the $1.25 an acre needed to buy soggy marshland deemed undesirable by whites. By 1869, former slaves whose descendants are known as Gullah-Geechees owned half of Beaufort County.So everyone was shocked last October when Richardean Aiken, the widow of Parker's great-great-grandson, was browsing the newspaper and saw a legal notice that a portion of the land had been sold and that the new owner was attempting to acquire clear title. No one in the family had agreed to sell it, and all insisted they never would.`This can't be happening'"I said, `Oh hell no, this can't be happening,'" Aiken said before getting on the phone and calling her relatives. "When I saw Sargent Parker's name, I knew something was wrong."Throughout coastal South Carolina, Gullah-Geechee people have been fighting for decades to hold onto property left to them by their ancestors. But often there is no will, making it difficult to prove ownership, even when taxes have been paid on the land for generations. Many of the problems are due to infighting among family members. It takes only one heir to agree to sell the property for a dispute to be settled by a judge and the land to end up being auctioned.
Full Story: <a href="http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0607110145jul11,1,7098536.story?coll=chi-newsnationworld-hed&ctrack=1&cset=true">http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0607110145jul11,1,7098536.story?coll=chi-newsnationworld-hed&ctrack=1&cset=true</a>Kenyattahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00529384675899964226noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8994427.post-1153102384591488382006-07-16T22:12:00.000-04:002006-07-16T22:13:04.606-04:00A Land of Racial Harmony?<p>New Philadelphia, Ill., settled by a freed slave, was seen as a colorblind utopia. Amid doubts, town descendants want the truth unearthed.
By P.J. Huffstutter, Times Staff WriterJuly 14, 2006
</p><p>HADLEY TOWNSHIP, Ill. — Sandra McWorter knelt on the soil and gingerly swept through the dirt with a tiny brush to find hints of her heritage.The clues hidden beneath the wild grasses and rolling hills could give McWorter insight into what life was like for her pioneer ancestors in the Land of Lincoln. "Free Frank" McWorter bought his freedom from slavery and came here in 1831 to build New Philadelphia — the first town in the U.S. legally settled, platted and surveyed by an African American.</p>Regional lore hails the town as a haven of racial harmony: a place where whites and blacks lived side by side, farmed the land, sold their goods, married one another and worshiped together — more than two decades before the Civil War. But there's no evidence — no recorded memories, no journals, no newspaper accounts — that proves or dismisses such camaraderie.Today, New Philadelphia is a lily-covered pasture, and its Main Street a gravel path to a farmhouse. What remains is a puzzle that has teased scholars, history buffs and New Philadelphia descendants for years: Was this actually an island of racial tranquillity in west-central Illinois, when abolitionists were shot on their doorsteps and bounty hunters roamed the countryside kidnapping freed slaves?Or is this a case of historical revisionism?It's a question that has provoked a debate among the McWorter clan and other descendants of the 120 families that settled in New Philadelphia between the 1830s (when Free Frank bought the land and sold off the first parcel) and the 1860s (when the town population reached its peak).Now, with a grant from the National Science Foundation, archeologists, anthropologists and students from more than a dozen universities are working to settle the matter and preserve the area as a national historic landmark.
Full Story: <a href="http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-newphiladelphia14jul14,1,6149288.story?coll=la-headlines-nation&track=crosspromo">http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-newphiladelphia14jul14,1,6149288.story?coll=la-headlines-nation&track=crosspromo</a>Kenyattahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00529384675899964226noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8994427.post-1153102236587662972006-07-16T22:09:00.000-04:002006-07-16T22:10:36.616-04:00Long Memories in Land of the Freed<p>Begun by Ex-Slaves, a Prince George's Community Values Its Past
By Tony Glaros -- Special to The Washington Post, Saturday, July 15, 2006; Page G01
</p><p>Squeezed by the thickening sweep of suburbia, Muirkirk remains a slower spot. Residents of the northeastern Prince George's County community still find time to spin stories, keep the nearby graveyard tidy and set the table at church suppers.
Old Muirkirk Road remains the neighborhood's focal point, a slice of relative calm between Beltsville and Laurel. The 15 houses on the shady, winding street vary in age and style, from 100 years old to a contemporary rancher.</p>Growing up, Marsha Brown referred to the neighborhood as Rossville, a name that dates back to when it was settled by freed slaves. She still does. But Rossville, she explained, was always considered a subdivision of Muirkirk. "It was never something that was official. I guess you could say Old Muirkirk Road has become the central area of the community. The church is there. The schools used to be there."
The American Legion hall is around the corner on Muirkirk Road, she pointed out. At one time, she said, Muirkirk even had its own post office down by the railroad tracks.
The signs of the older community are still there in the form of the historic graveyard and the church across the street, Queen's Chapel United Methodist. The congregation traces its roots to 1870, when the first structure went up where the cemetery is today, said Brown, who wrote a book about the history of the church.
Full Story: <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/14/AR2006071400691.html">http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/14/AR2006071400691.html</a>Kenyattahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00529384675899964226noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8994427.post-1153101779654161422006-07-16T22:01:00.000-04:002006-07-16T22:02:59.673-04:00Black scholar joins Sons of the American Revolution<p>10:40 AM CDT on Tuesday, July 11, 2006
By JEROME WEEKS / The Dallas Morning News
ADDISON – Groucho Marx would have approved. </p><p>On Monday, Henry Louis Gates Jr. – noted black scholar (The Signifying Monkey), Harvard professor and TV host (America Beyond the Color Line) – joined an organization that wouldn't have had him as a member not too long ago.
Dr. Gates was inducted into the Sons of the American Revolution at the lineage society's 116th annual convention, which is being held through Wednesday at Addison's Hotel Intercontinental. He joins only a few dozen black Americans among the 26,000 members. The event was taped for the second season of African-American Lives, Dr. Gates' PBS series on black genealogy.
"You could have knocked me over with a feather," Dr. Gates recalled Monday of the moment he learned he had an ancestor who served in the Continental Army. It happened in February during a taping for African-American Lives. Dr. Gates was shown evidence of an ancestor, seven generations in the past, but not the white slaveholder he'd expected. Rather, it was a free mulatto, John Redman, who enlisted in a Virginia regiment in 1778.
About 5,000 black Americans served during the Revolutionary War, but that is only a guess, said Joseph Dooley, head of the membership committee. "Perhaps as much as 10 percent of the Continental Army was black."
Dr. Gates' fascination with family history inspired his PBS series as well as his hiring genealogist Jane Ailes to research his family. Although white, Ms. Ailes, it turns out, is also a distant relative.
The Sons of the American Revolution and its sibling organization, the Daughters of the American Revolution, have had a history of segregation, Dr. Gates pointed out to the several hundred assembled members. He cited the DAR's infamous 1939 ban on the black contralto Marian Anderson from singing at Washington, D.C.'s Constitution Hall as well as black educator W.E.B. DuBois' rejected attempt to join the SAR in 1908.
There have been black members for decades now, however, and last year, current SAR president general Roland Downing reported, the DuBois decision was overturned.
Black or white, not many new members get to address the annual meeting. "Oh, they do this for everybody," Dr. Gates joked. "Everybody who comes with a PBS film crew."
But Dr. Gates also spoke to the SAR to announce a project with Mr. Dooley that may lead to many more black Americans joining. Supported by Harvard's W.E.B. DuBois Institute, Ms. Ailes will compare 80,000 pension requests from Revolutionary veterans with census records to determine which vets were black. She's already found six.
"Just think," Dr. Gates said looking out over the hotel ballroom. "Pretty soon, this place gonna look like Harlem."
E-mail <a href="mailto:jweeks@dallasnews.com">jweeks@dallasnews.com</a> </p>Kenyattahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00529384675899964226noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8994427.post-1153099812925955972006-07-16T21:28:00.000-04:002006-07-16T21:30:12.926-04:00Black astronaut helps to erase myth of race limitationsI am really ashamed to admit it, but shuttle launches have become so routine I seldom pay them close attention.
After the loss of seven astronauts aboard the shuttle Columbia in 2003, I've been forcing myself to read a little background on the astronauts who risk their lives to explore space, those who have "slipped the surly bonds of Earth."
I'm always glad I did, but especially this time.
On board right now, serving as a mission specialist, is Stephanie D. Wilson, the second black woman to fly in space.
I was determined to bring this to your attention because all kids, but especially black kids, should know that African-Americans are smart enough to do whatever they set their minds to.
We tend to hear the opposite, tend to limit our own potential, severely cramping any possibility of living up to the greatness of our ancestors.
When we turn deaf ears to the talk and open our own minds to new things, our children, black or white, rich or poor, can be like Wilson.
Wilson said her growing up in a small town with few distractions allowed the stars to catch her imagination. She became interested in astronomy first and later gravitated to engineering.
In a preflight interview with NASA, Wilson said she thought "that aerospace engineering would be a good combination of my interest in space and my interest in engineering."
That's a mind that has not given any credence to those who might say being smart is "acting white."
After high school, she majored in engineering science at Harvard University and earned her masters in aerospace engineering from the University of Texas at Austin.
She has worked for two companies, specializing in robotic spacecraft and launch vehicles, before being accepted by NASA into its two-year astronaut program in April 1996.
If you have a dream, achieving it takes more than rolling over and waking up.
Full Story: <a href="http://www.kentucky.com/mld/kentucky/news/columnists/14984064.htm">http://www.kentucky.com/mld/kentucky/news/columnists/14984064.htm</a>Kenyattahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00529384675899964226noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8994427.post-1153099506434504182006-07-16T21:23:00.000-04:002006-07-16T21:25:06.453-04:00Slavery reparations effort continues to gain groundBy Erin Texeira
Associated Press
Originally published July 10, 2006
Advocates who say black Americans should be compensated for slavery and its Jim Crow aftermath are quietly chalking up victories and gaining momentum.
Fueled by the work of scholars and lawyers, their campaign has evolved in recent years from a fringe group's rallying cry into sophisticated mainstream movement. Most recently, a pair of churches apologized for their part in the slave trade, and one is studying ways to repay black church members.
The overall issue is hardly settled, even among black Americans: Some say that focusing on slavery shouldn't be a top priority or that it doesn't make sense to compensate people generations after a historical wrong. Yet reparations efforts have led many cities and states to approve measures that force businesses to publicize their historical ties to slavery. Several reparations court cases are in progress, and international human rights officials are increasingly spotlighting the issue. "This matter is growing in significance rather than declining," said Charles Ogletree, a Harvard law professor and a leading reparations activist. "It has more vigor and vitality in the 21st century than it's had in the history of the reparations movement."
The most recent victories for reparations advocates came last month, when the Moravian Church and the Episcopal Church apologized for owning slaves and promised to battle racism. The Episcopalians also launched a national probe into the church's slavery links and into whether the church should compensate black members. A white church member, Katrina Browne, also screened a documentary focusing on white culpability at the denomination's national assembly.
The Episcopalians debated slavery and reparations for years before reaching an agreement, said Jayne Oasin, social justice officer for the denomination, who will oversee its work on the issue.
Historically, slavery was an uncomfortable topic for the church. Some Episcopal bishops owned slaves - and the Bible was used to justify the practice, Oasin said.
Also last month, a North Carolina commission urged the state to repay the descendants of victims of a violent 1898 campaign by white supremacists to strip blacks of power in Wilmington, N.C. The commission also recommended state-funded programs to support local black businesses and home ownership. The report came weeks after the Organization of American States requested information from the U.S. government about a 1921 race riot in Tulsa, Okla., in which 1,200 homes were burned and as many as 300 blacks killed. An OAS official said the group might pursue the issue as a violation of international human rights.
Full Story: <a href="http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/nationworld/bal-te.slavery10jul10,0,6627506.story?coll=bal-nationworld-headlines">http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/nationworld/bal-te.slavery10jul10,0,6627506.story?coll=bal-nationworld-headlines</a>Kenyattahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00529384675899964226noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8994427.post-1152678211112012372006-07-12T00:22:00.000-04:002006-07-12T00:23:31.130-04:00Students unearth history, inspirationJuly 11, 2006
BY ESTHER J. CEPEDA Staff Reporter
Twenty miles east of Kankakee, on the side of a dusty one-lane gravel road, lay the abandoned scraps of one family's story, gutted years ago by a fire. There, in Hopkins Park, the cinder block skeleton of a garage and the outer walls of what was once a small home still stand.
Those remnants are breathing new life as 22 students and two Field Museum archeologists sift through its weedy terrain hoping to unearth clues about the people who once lived there, and that of the Native Americans who had settled there before them.
The Field Museum has brought the Budding Archeologist Field School to the sixth-, seventh- and eighth-grade students of Lorenzo R. Smith Elementary School in Hopkins Park as part of an educational outreach program designed so kids can investigate the lives of early settlers through hands-on mapping, surveying and excavating an African-American settlement dating back to the Reconstruction era.
Full Story: <a href="http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/cst-nws-dig11.html">http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/cst-nws-dig11.html</a>Kenyattahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00529384675899964226noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8994427.post-1150579624988776442006-06-17T17:26:00.000-04:002006-06-17T17:27:04.990-04:00Unifying Culture: Black History Museum’s new exhibit examines Alexandria’s roots in Africa.When Louis Hicks became director of the Alexandria Black History Museum, he found an impressive, but fragmented, array of items and exhibits. “We didn’t have a complete document assembled about African-American culture,” he explained. The museum’s efforts to create this document quickly became broader and deeper than had been imagined, and not so unified after all. At the urging of Jean Federico, the director of the Office of Historic Alexandria at the time, the museum decided to make slavery the focal point of its exploration of black culture. This created a need to portray the life in Africa that slavery destroyed. The ambition to document black history over 250 years produced a plethora of material “that was way beyond our space capacity,” said Hicks. So planners of the exhibit, titled “Securing the Blessings of Liberty,” decided to break it into three phases. The first phase begins with life in Africa and covers a time span up to 1820. It will open June 23 and run for about two years. Audrey Davis, the museum’s assistant director and exhibit curator, said it was important to trace black culture to its roots in Africa. “When people talk about slavery, they … don’t talk about the full lives of the people that were taken, like they lived in this vacuum before they were enslaved,” said Davis. “But they had what people had in this country: their own societies, their own culture. They had a life in Africa that was disrupted by the slave trade. They were taken away from that and brought here and had this new life enforced on them.”Davis said “Securing the Blessings of Liberty” will focus on what life was like for black people in Alexandria. “Alexandria was a very bustling town,” Davis said. It exported tobacco and received exports from all over the world. “Part of that cargo was human cargo.” Davis said research indicates Market Square was the site of slave sales. But there was also a burgeoning free black population that developed at the turn of the century. “You would have these people who were enslaved living next door to people who were free,” Davis said. “I’m sure there were relationships that developed where people fell in love.” She said she had seen documentation of freed slaves trying to buy the freedom of a family member, or a man trying to buy the freedom of a woman he wanted to marry.DAVIS SAID she thought the most fascinating aspect of the exhibit was “learning the survival strategies that slaves would have to use to get by or that free blacks had to use. Even though you’re free and had your manumission papers, you didn’t know that people would always honor those … you never knew what action you could take one day that could result in your death the next day.” But finding these stories of survival “with that kind of fear,” as Davis put it, was a difficult task. The nature of slavery meant that few artifacts of its existence survived, and much fewer were purposefully preserved. Planning and research for the exhibition began in 2001. It was an effort that involved every department and every museum in the Office of Historic Alexandria. Jackie Cohan, Alexandria’s archivist, said she played only a small role in the collaboration, compiling lists of research for other researchers. “It was very, very difficult to find items,” she said. Most of the records that exist on slavery were compiled by slave-owners. But the efforts of the Historical Office paid off.
Full Story: <a href="http://www.connectionnewspapers.com/article.asp?article=67188&paper=69&cat=115">http://www.connectionnewspapers.com/article.asp?article=67188&paper=69&cat=115</a>Kenyattahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00529384675899964226noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8994427.post-1150579562331380352006-06-17T17:25:00.000-04:002006-06-17T17:26:02.376-04:00June 19th Marks a Joyous, Yet Solemn, OccasionToday, June 19th, is America's second Independence Day. There's the biggie -- the July 4th celebration of the nation's founding. But five states and 205 U.S. cities have also proclaimed June 19th an independence holiday. "<a id="CPNEWWIN:child^toolbar=" location="1,directories=" status="1,menubar=" scrollbars="1,resizable=" onmouseover=" return self.status='http://www.americaslibrary.gov/cgi-bin/page.cgi/es/tx/june_1'; " onmouseout=" return self.status=''; " href="javascript:HandleLink(" toolbar="1,location=1,directories=0,status=1,menubar=1,scrollbars=1,resizable=1@http://www.americaslibrary.gov/cgi-bin/page.cgi/es/tx/june_1');"">Juneteenth</a>," as it is called, commemorates the official and final end of slavery for about four million African Americans 141 years ago.
Two years into the U.S. Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, declaring slaves in the southern Confederacy free. But it had little practical effect, since the war was raging, and the Union was in no position to enforce it. Even ten weeks after the southern army surrendered in April 1865, defiant slaveholders still held human chattel in Texas, the most remote of the Confederate states. But on June 19th, 1865, Union general Gordon Granger landed at Galveston, then the biggest city in Texas, and announced that the last southern slaves were henceforth free.
For years thereafter, many southern blacks took off work on June 19th to gather for home-cooked meals, prayer, storytelling, re-enactments of General Granger's proclamation, and lots of singing.
Full Story: <a href="http://www.voanews.com/english/AmericanLife/2006-06-15-voa41.cfm">http://www.voanews.com/english/AmericanLife/2006-06-15-voa41.cfm</a>Kenyattahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00529384675899964226noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8994427.post-1149471714490895782006-06-04T21:40:00.000-04:002006-06-04T21:41:54.493-04:00Staying slavery museum's courseAfter 13 years, Wilder still raising money; weekend gala to help
BY KIRAN KRISHNAMURTHY
TIMES-DISPATCH STAFF WRITER
FREDERICKSBURG -- L. Douglas Wilder can remember as a boy asking about his grandparents, who were slaves.
"He would not talk about it," Wilder recalled of his father during a speech this year in Washington. "My mother would encourage him and said, 'Robert, tell him, please!' And he would bite down on his pipe, clench it and almost snap it in two. And he would tell a little, and a little, and I would ask for more."
Wilder, who rose to become the nation's first elected black governor, is pressing to build a museum in Fredericksburg that will tell the story of his grandparents and millions of others who suffered under the yoke of slavery in the United States.
It is a mission he first conceived during a trip to West Africa as governor of Virginia in the early 1990s. Tomorrow night, the journey takes him to the Warner Theatre in Washington for a black-tie gala fundraiser, featuring entertainers Bill Cosby and Ben Vereen, to benefit the United States National Slavery Museum.
Full Story: <a href="http://www.timesdispatch.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=RTD%2FMGArticle%2FRTD_BasicArticle&c=MGArticle&cid=1149188187564&path=!news&s=1045855934842">http://www.timesdispatch.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=RTD%2FMGArticle%2FRTD_BasicArticle&c=MGArticle&cid=1149188187564&path=!news&s=1045855934842</a>Kenyattahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00529384675899964226noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8994427.post-1149471506883632552006-06-04T21:37:00.000-04:002006-06-04T21:38:26.900-04:00A tribute for the pioneers<p>Negro League players honored in ceremony
By DON WALKER<a href="mailto:dwalker@journalsentinel.com" s_oc="null">dwalker@journalsentinel.com</a>
Posted: June 2, 2006
Rickie Weeks, Prince Fielder and Bill Hall represent the future of the Milwaukee Brewers.</p><p>Buck O'Neil, James Jake Sanders and Dennis Biddle represent baseball's past.
So it was both symbolic and poignant that, in pregame ceremonies before Milwaukee's game Friday night, the young Brewers expressed their appreciation of the three Negro League veterans with hugs and handshakes behind home plate.
Friday night was the Brewers' first Negro Leagues Tribute, an event they plan to stage each season. This year, the Brewers brought in Buck O'Neil, still active at 94; James Jake Sanders, 73; and Dennis Biddle, 70, of Milwaukee as the first honorees.
The names of all three were placed on the Miller Park Wall of Honor.
On the field, the Brewers sported reproductions of uniforms worn by the Milwaukee Bears, a team that played in the Negro National League in 1923, while the Washington Nationals wore uniforms of the Negro National League's Homestead Grays. That team played in Washington from 1937-'48.
The three Negro Leaguers all have résumés from the Negro Leagues era, especially O'Neil, who had a long and prosperous career with the old Kansas City Monarchs. In 1962, he became the first African-American coach in the major leagues when he was with the Chicago Cubs.
Sanders played in 1956 for the Detroit / New Orleans Stars, played briefly in the Dodgers farm system in 1957 and later returned to the Kansas City Monarchs through the 1958 season.</p><p>Full Story: <a href="http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=431280">http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=431280</a></p>Kenyattahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00529384675899964226noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8994427.post-1148914686821844152006-05-29T10:57:00.000-04:002006-10-25T03:16:33.586-04:00A soldier's true colorA soldier's true color
Iowa cemetery honors discovery that Revolutionary War fighter was black
Gerome Crayton of Keokuk is taking to heart his portrayal of Cato Mead, a black Revolutionary War soldier buried near Montrose."This guy was a neat guy. He was looking for a peace in his life, and he settled here in Iowa,'' Crayton said. "I'm glad that after his story has been hidden in the dark for many years, he is finally getting recognized.''On Memorial Day weekend, when the graves of so many soldiers, sailors and Marines are decorated, a monument to Mead will be among the seven featured in a cemetery tour today.One of 41 Revolutionary War soldiers who died or were buried in Iowa, Mead "may very well be" the only black Revolutionary War soldier buried west of the Mississippi River, said Maurice Barboza, founder of a Washington, D.C.-based organization dedicated to erecting a monument to the more than 5,000 blacks who fought in the War for Independence.Residents of Montrose have known for years that the area was the final resting place for a Revolutionary War soldier. But there was an important nugget of information about Mead that slipped from common knowledge as the story passed from generation to generation, local historians say.The fact that Mead was black resurfaced last fall as researchers prepared for Memorial Day 2006 weekend observances in this Lee County community of about 900 people.Barbara MacLeish of Minneapolis, whose father lives in Montrose, discovered in census records that Mead was a "freed man of color," a black man who served in the Revolutionary War."It was just unbelievable at first," said Mary Sue Chatfield, a member of Montrose Riverfront Inc., which recently opened the Hunold Heritage Center museum. "We were just amazed. It was known that he was a Revolutionary War soldier, but no one paid that close attention. ... There aren't many living descendants of people buried in the old part of the cemetery."Even in small communities, names of many settlers have long been forgotten.
Full Story: <a href="http://desmoinesregister.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060528/NEWS08/605280356/1001/NEWS">http://desmoinesregister.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060528/NEWS08/605280356/1001/NEWS</a>Kenyattahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00529384675899964226noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8994427.post-1148760235261565662006-05-27T16:03:00.000-04:002006-05-27T16:03:55.283-04:00Ghana to Offer Lifetime Visas to U.S. Slave DescendantsBY LAURIE GOERING
Chicago Tribune
ACCRA, Ghana - Ever since Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana's first president, invited his classmates from Pennsylvania's Lincoln University to come home with him to help build Africa, African-Americans have been coming to Ghana to visit, work, volunteer, invest or live in what has become the quintessential African homeland.
W.E.B. Du Bois lived here. So did Maya Angelou. Today the country, once at the heart of Africa's slave-trading routes, has the largest community of African-Americans in West Africa, most of whom have come looking for their roots and a sense of purpose.
Now Ghana, a poor country eager for more American tourists, donors and investors, is about to make life even easier for its far-flung black diaspora: It plans to soon offer slave descendants lifetime visas or even dual Ghanaian-U.S. citizenship.
"Who we most want as tourists and investors are our own people who left 200 or 300 years ago," said Jake Otanka Obetsebi-Lamptey, the country's tourism chief, whose department last month was renamed the Ministry for Tourism and Diasporan Relations. "It's not just about blood ties. It's good economic sense."
Lifetime visas should be easy for regular visitors to get. But the new passports - still awaiting approval in Parliament - won't be handed to just anyone, Obetsebi-Lamptey said. African-Americans eager for formal Ghanaian identity will have to commit to invest, help develop or live in Ghana because "citizenship carries some responsibility," he said.
Ghana does not offer any particular tax breaks for investors from the diaspora. But it is eager for help from its relations abroad, be it regular visits from American tourists, donations to development projects or investment in job-creating enterprises it desperately needs, officials said.
Full Story: <a href="http://www.sanluisobispo.com/mld/sanluisobispo/news/world/14573293.htm">http://www.sanluisobispo.com/mld/sanluisobispo/news/world/14573293.htm</a>Kenyattahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00529384675899964226noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8994427.post-1148751386537091372006-05-27T13:35:00.000-04:002006-05-27T13:36:26.566-04:00Tend the graves, but also preserve the stories of those lying in themI remember Memorial Day 1977. It was hot, and my mother's people piled into their cars and headed out to pull weeds and clean off the graves at the old Mt. Olive Hills Cemetery.
It was still customary then for families to take turns cleaning up their ancestral graveyards.
Today Mt. Olive Cemetery is dwarfed by new development. But 30 years ago that ancient burial ground off Maryland Rte. 31, between New Windsor and Libertytown, was in the woods, and with my citified self I recall being terrified that I'd be bitten by a snake.
Needless to say, I didn't do much grave-cleaning, but I walked the grounds reading tombstones and taking pictures, including the one to the right of my great Uncle Howard Brown, my grandfather's younger brother.
My mother's sister, Aunt Eloise, is buried in Mt. Olive Hills. Her son, Charles Hollingsworth, lives nearby, and recently shared with me some of his recollections of the cemetery and the long-since disappeared Mt. Olive Hills United Methodist Church that our family attended for years.
Full Story: <a href="http://www.courier-journal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060525/COLUMNISTS09/605250351">http://www.courier-journal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060525/COLUMNISTS09/605250351</a>Kenyattahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00529384675899964226noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8994427.post-1148750026134623912006-05-27T13:12:00.000-04:002006-05-27T13:13:46.150-04:00County to buy ex-slave townOfficials say deal keeps Mitchelville from builders
BY GINNY SKALSKI, The Island Packet
Published Tuesday, May 23, 2006
BEAUFORT -- Portions of historical land on Hilton Head Island that once served as the country's first town for freed slaves would be saved from development under a purchase approved Monday by the Beaufort County Council.
The council voted to spend $225,000 toward buying 2.31 acres that once made up the town of Mitchelville, the first community established on Hilton Head after the Civil War.
The purchase eventually could pave the way for the expansion of Fish Haul Creek Park -- a large chunk of the Mitchelville site already under the town's control -- to near Dillon Road.
The deal is contingent upon the Hilton Head Town Council agreeing to contribute $225,000. The approval is expected to come at its next meeting, according to Russ Marane, project manager for The Trust for Public Land, a national nonprofit organization hired by the county and town to manage land acquisition programs.
The land fronts Dillon Road near its intersection with Beach City Road. The Trust for Public Land is working to help the governments acquire six parcels totaling eight acres of the historic Mitchelville property, Marane said.
"These properties are the only ones where we have the potential for willing sellers," Marane said. "The owners of other properties intend to develop their property."
In all, he estimates it would cost about $3 million to buy the eight acres, with Beaufort County's share being up to $1 million. The town, state and federal government could contribute the rest, Marane said.
The land's location near the shores of Port Royal Sound is desirable to developers, but Marane said there are a lot of groups interested in preserving it. Although no other land owners have agreed to sell, a replica of a Civil War general's house sits on some of the land under consideration, Marane said.
Full Story: <a href="http://www.islandpacket.com/news/local/story/5760022p-5151535c.html">http://www.islandpacket.com/news/local/story/5760022p-5151535c.html</a>Kenyattahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00529384675899964226noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8994427.post-1148252290521273022006-05-21T18:57:00.000-04:002006-05-21T18:58:10.550-04:00Those who love Fairview plan for next incarnationSunday, May 21, 2006
By Caitlin Cleary, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Barbara Calloway still remembers, as a little girl, the way her heart would start beating faster whenever the family car pulled onto the country road leading to Fairview Park.
A hundred acres of lush, green countryside set in the middle of Westmoreland County's rolling hills, Fairview Park was far from the city and all of its racial land mines, the whites-only lunch counters at the five-and-ten, the off-limits department store dressing rooms, the Kennywood swimming pool that officials reportedly opted to close in the early 1950s rather than integrate.
Out here, there were no restrictions, said Mrs. Calloway, a retired teacher from Point Breeze. "You could just run and run, and not worry."
During the 1940s, a group of African-American churches from Pittsburgh and the Monongahela Valley had come together to find an alternative to local amusement parks such as Kennywood and West View, which excluded blacks. In 1945, they bought 100 acres in Westmoreland County, envisioning a place for Sunday school picnics, family reunions, weddings, where African-American families could have fun and a sense of belonging.
During the height of its popularity, Fairview Park had a roller coaster, a merry-go-round, a skating rink, a swimming pool, softball fields, swings, see-saws, a sandbox, a petting zoo, even hot-air balloon rides on Fairview Park Day. And its well water "was the best-tasting water in the world," said Mrs. Calloway, 63.
Full Story: <a href="http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/06141/691918-85.stm">http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/06141/691918-85.stm</a>Kenyattahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00529384675899964226noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8994427.post-1147908562749512652006-05-17T19:28:00.000-04:002006-05-17T19:29:22.793-04:00Rachel Eubanks, 83; Music Teacher Set High Standards for Her Students for 50-Plus YearsBy Jocelyn Y. Stewart, Times Staff Writer
May 13, 2006
Among the first students to study piano under Rachel Eubanks were her two younger brothers, who learned in the living room of the family home during the Great Depression.The boys soon discovered that their teacher was aiming high. She expected her students to focus, use proper hand position, appreciate the work of the masters — never mind that they were only 6 and 9 or that she was just 12.
She wanted to direct us to a high standard," recalled Jonathan Eubanks, who was 6 when he began studying with his sister. "She was a disciplinarian. In other words, don't waste her time. We couldn't sit there and decide to play boogie-woogie if she was teaching us Beethoven."For more than 50 years, Eubanks taught music in Los Angeles in much the same manner. Many of those years were spent on Crenshaw Boulevard near 48th Street, where two converted houses served as the campus for the Eubanks Conservatory of Music and Arts.At its height, the nonprofit institution was accredited by the state and each year offered hundreds of students classical training, pushing generation after generation to strive for musical greatness.
Full Story: <a href="http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/california/la-me-eubanks13may13,1,7232316.story?coll=la-headlines-pe-california&ctrack=1&cset=true">http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/california/la-me-eubanks13may13,1,7232316.story?coll=la-headlines-pe-california&ctrack=1&cset=true</a>Kenyattahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00529384675899964226noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8994427.post-1147053575993029462006-05-07T21:58:00.000-04:002006-05-07T21:59:36.020-04:0040-acre order pledged ex-slaves land on St. JohnsJim Robison Special to the Sentinel
Posted May 7, 2006
Got plans for the summer? I do. Books, books and more books.I just took my final exam for a UCF history class on the Gilded Age and the Progressive Era, one of several classes I'm taking to get a better perspective on what was going on in this nation and the world during Florida's frontier years.
That exam covered six books, including W.E. B. Du Bois' The Souls of Black Folk, the African-American scholar's 1903 collection of essays considered by many historians as essential reading. I read it some three decades ago, but that was long before I started writing Seminole's Past.I don't recall if this sentence jumped out at me then, but it sure did on re-reading. In his chapter "Of the Dawn of Freedom" on the Freedmen's Bureau created in the post-Civil War federal government's efforts to provide education and jobs for former slaves, Du Bois writes, "The islands from Charleston south, the abandoned rice fields along the rivers for thirty miles back from the sea, and the country bordering the St. Johns River, Florida, are reserved and set apart for the settlement of Negroes now made free by act of war."Du Bois is quoting from Union Gen. William T. Sherman's famed "Forty Acres and a Mule" provisions of his Field Order Number Fifteen. After the reference to the war, the actual document reads "and the proclamation of the President of the United States."Just consider what that order meant for the St. Johns River valley, which starts its northern flow just west of Vero Beach and meanders through the interior to become the east boundary of Seminole County before rolling on an eastern loop back to the Atlantic at Jacksonville. Seminole County's lakes Monroe, Jesup and Harney are really just wide spots along the St. Johns.All that land on both sides of the river and stretching inland for no specific distance was included in Sherman's order.Sherman, whose scorched-earth March to the Sea after burning Atlanta made him one of the most hated Union generals among Confederates, issued his order because so many freed slaves were following his army. Besides reserving a huge territory of abandoned lands in farms of up to 40 acres, Sherman later added mules from the Army's surplus herd.
Full Story: <a href="http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/local/seminole/orl-sjimr0706may07,0,4614205.story?coll=orl-news-headlines-seminole">http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/local/seminole/orl-sjimr0706may07,0,4614205.story?coll=orl-news-headlines-seminole</a>Kenyattahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00529384675899964226noreply@blogger.com0