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NEW CHRISTIAN LIFE MINISTRIES

Transformational, life teaching, personal and spiritual development, world changing movement!

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A New Christian Community

Started by Richard A. Young Aug 4, 2010. 0 Replies

Following Pentecost Sunday Pastor Young taught us in a series, "The Results of Pentecost". Acts 2 reveals 7 results to the Apostle Peter's Pentecost Preaching in the development of the early church.…Continue

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Comment by Richard A. Young on February 14, 2010 at 10:14am
Vashti Murphy McKenzie (born 28 May 1947) was elected as the first female bishop in the African Methodist Episcopal Church. She is also the national chaplain of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Incorporated and the granddaughter of Delta founder Vashti Turley Murphy. McKenzie received a Bachelor of Arts degree in journalism from the University of Maryland, College Park. Later she received Master of Divinity degree from Howard University and her Doctor of Ministry degree from United Theological Seminary in Ohio. McKenzie received her first ordination in 1984 when she was made an itinerant deacon and appointed to pastor a small church in Chesapeake City, Maryland. She was later ordained an itinerant elder and was sent to pastor in Baltimore. While serving as the pastor of historic Payne Memorial AME Church in Baltimore, Maryland, McKenzie sought election to the office of Bishop in the AME Church. She was elected and consecrated the 117th bishop of the church at the General Conference of 2000. Prior to McKenzie's consecration, no female had ever served in the office of bishop in any predominantly African-American Methodist denomination in America. She currently serves as the presiding prelate of the 13th Episcopal District which encompasses Tennessee and Kentucky. Prior to this appointment, McKenzie was the chief pastor of the 18th Episcopal District in southeast Africa. In 2005, McKenzie again made history by becoming the first female president of the Council of Bishops of the AME Church, and the Titular head of the Church. The president of the Council of Bishops serves a one year term. Each member of the council serves a term as president, assuming the office in the order in which they were elected. When asked about her the significance of her election to the office of bishop, McKenzie reportedly told Ebony Magazine that the "stained-glass ceiling had been broken."
Bishop Vashti Murphy McKenzie served as the chairperson of the General Conference Commission for the 48th Quadrennial Session of the General Conference of the AME Church. At this General Conference, she was reappointed to serve a second term as the presiding prelate of the 13th Episcopal district.
Wikipedia Online Article
Comment by Richard A. Young on February 13, 2010 at 9:16am
Fannie Lou Hamer (born Fannie Lou Townsend on October 6, 1917 – March 14, 1977) was an American voting rights activist and civil rights leader.
She was instrumental in organizing Mississippi Freedom Summer for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), and later became the Vice-Chair of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, attending the 1964 Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City, New Jersey, in that capacity. Her plain-spoken manner and fervent belief in the Biblical righteousness of her cause gained her a reputation as an electrifying speaker and constant champion of civil rights.
Hamer attended several annual conferences of the Regional Council of Negro Leadership (RCNL) in the all-black town of Mound Bayou, Mississippi. The RCNL was led by Dr. T.R.M. Howard, a civil rights leader and wealthy black entrepreneur, and was a combination civil rights and self-help organization. The annual RCNL conferences featured entertainers, such as Mahalia Jackson, speakers, such as Thurgood Marshall and Rep. Charles Diggs of Michigan, and panels on voting rights and other civil rights issues. [1] Without her knowledge or consent, she was sterilized in 1961 by a white doctor as a part of the state of Mississippi's plan to reduce the number of poor blacks in the state.[2][dubious – discuss]
On August 23, 1962, Rev. James Bevel, an organizer for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and an associate of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., gave a sermon in Ruleville, Mississippi and followed it with an appeal to those assembled to register to vote. Black people who registered to vote in the South faced serious hardships at that time due to institutionalized racism, including harassment, the loss of their jobs, physical beatings, and lynchings; nonetheless, Hamer was the first volunteer. She later said, "I guess if I'd had any sense, I'd have been a little scared - but what was the point of being scared? The only thing they [white people] could do was kill me, and it seemed they'd been trying to do that a little bit at a time since I could remember."
On August 31, she traveled on a rented bus with other attendees of Bevel's sermon toIndianola, Mississippi to register. In what would become a signature trait of Hamer's activist career, she began singing Christian hymns, such as "Go Tell It on the Mountain" and "This Little Light of Mine," to the group in order to bolster their resolve. The hymns also reflected Hamer's belief that the civil rights struggle was a deeply spiritual one.
Hamer's courage and leadership in Indianola came to the attention of SNCC organizer Bob Moses, who dispatched Charles McLaurin from the organization with instructions to find "the lady who sings the hymns". McLaurin found and recruited Hamer, and though she remained based in Mississippi, she began traveling around the South doing activist work for the organization.
On June 9, 1963, Hamer was on her way back from Charleston, South Carolina with other activists from a literacy workshop. Stopping in Winona, Mississippi, the group was arrested on a false charge and jailed by white policemen. Once in jail, Hamer and her colleagues were beaten savagely by the police, almost to the point of death.
Released on June 12, she needed more than a month to recover. Though the incident had profound physical and psychological effects, Hamer returned to Mississippi to organize voter registration drives, including the "Freedom Ballot Campaign", a mock election, in 1963, and the "Freedom Summer" initiative in 1964. She was known to the volunteers of Freedom Summer - most of whom were young, white, and from northern states - as a motherly figure who believed that the civil rights effort should be multi-racial in nature.
In the summer of 1964, the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, or "Freedom Democrats" for short, was organized with the purpose of challenging Mississippi's all-white and anti-civil rights delegation to the Democratic National Convention of that year as not representative of all Mississippians. Hamer was elected Vice-Chair.
The Freedom Democrats' efforts drew national attention to the plight of African-Americans in Mississippi, and represented a challenge to President Lyndon B. Johnson, who was seeking the Democratic Party's nomination for reelection; their success would mean that other Southern delegations, who were already leaning toward Republican challenger Barry Goldwater, would publicly break from the convention's decision to nominate Johnson — meaning in turn that he would almost certainly lose those states' electoral votes in the election. Hamer, singing her signature hymns, drew a great deal of attention from the media, enraging Johnson, who referred to her in speaking to his advisors as "that illiterate woman".
Hamer was invited, along with the rest of the MFDP officers, to address the Convention's Credentials Committee. She recounted the problems she had encountered in registration, and the ordeal of the jail in Winona, and, near tears, concluded:
"All of this is on account we want to register [sic], to become first-class citizens, and if the Freedom Democratic Party is not seated now, I question America. Is this America, the land of the free and the home of the brave where we have to sleep with our telephones off the hooks because our lives be threatened daily because we want to live as decent human beings - in America?"
In Washington, D.C., President Johnson called an emergency press conference in an effort to divert press coverage away from Hamer's testimony; but many television networks ran the speech unedited on their late news programs. The Credentials Committee received thousands of calls and letters in support of the Freedom Democrats.
Johnson then dispatched several trusted Democratic Party operatives to attempt to negotiate with the Freedom Democrats, including Senator Hubert Humphrey (who was campaigning for the Vice-Presidential nomination), Walter Mondale, Walter Reuther, and J. Edgar Hoover. They suggested a compromise which would give the MFDP two non-voting seats in exchange for other concessions, and secured the endorsement of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference for the plan. But when Humphrey outlined the compromise, saying that his position on the ticket was at stake, Hamer, invoking her Christian beliefs, sharply rebuked him:
"Do you mean to tell me that your position is more important than four hundred thousand black people's lives? Senator Humphrey, I know lots of people in Mississippi who have lost their jobs trying to register to vote. I had to leave the plantation where I worked in Sunflower County, Mississippi. Now if you lose this job of Vice-President because you do what is right, because you help the MFDP, everything will be all right. God will take care of you. But if you take [the nomination] this way, why, you will never be able to do any good for civil rights, for poor people, for peace, or any of those things you talk about. Senator Humphrey, I'm going to pray to Jesus for you."
Future negotiations were conducted without Hamer, and the compromise was modified such that the Convention would select the two delegates to be seated, for fear the MFDP would appoint Hamer. In the end, the MFDP rejected the compromise, but had changed the debate to the point that the Democratic Party adopted a clause which demanded equality of representation from their states' delegations in 1968.
Hamer continued to work in Mississippi for the Freedom Democrats and for local civil rights causes. She ran for Congress in 1964 and 1965, and was then seated as a member of Mississippi's legitimate delegation to the Democratic National Convention of 1968, where she was an outspoken critic of the Vietnam War.
She continued to work on other projects, including grassroots-level Head Start programs, the Freedom Farm Cooperative in Sunflower County, and Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Poor People's Campaign.
Hamer died of breast cancer on March 14, 1977, at the age of 59 at a hospital in Mound Bayou, Mississippi and is buried in her hometown of Ruleville, Mississippi. Her tombstone reads, "I am sick and tired of being sick and tired".
"We didn't come all the way up here to compromise for no more than we’d gotten here. We didn't come all this way for no two seats, 'cause all of us is tired."
"I am sick and tired of being sick and tired." (This quote was later employed as her epitaph.)
"Nobody's free until everybody's free."
Wikipedia Online Article
Comment by Richard A. Young on February 12, 2010 at 6:48am
Mary Jane McLeod Bethune (July 10, 1875 – May 18, 1955) was an American educator and civil rights leader best known for starting a school for black students in Daytona Beach, Florida that eventually became Bethune-Cookman University and for being an advisor to President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Born in South Carolina to parents who had been slaves,and having to work in fields at age 5, she took an early interest in her own education. With the help of benefactors, Bethune attended college hoping to become a missionary in Africa. When that did not materialize, she started a school for black girls in Daytona Beach. From six students it grew and merged with an institute for black boys and eventually became the Bethune-Cookman School. Its quality far surpassed the standards of education for black students, and rivaled those of white schools. Bethune worked tirelessly to ensure funding for the school, and used it as a showcase for tourists and donors, to exhibit what educated black people could do. She was president of the college from 1923 to 1942 and 1946 to 1947, one of the few women in the world who served as a college president at that time.
Bethune was also active in women's clubs, and her leadership in them allowed her to become nationally prominent. She worked for the election of Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1932, and became a member of Roosevelt's Black Cabinet, sharing the concerns of black people with the Roosevelt administration while spreading Roosevelt's message to blacks, who had been traditionally Republican voters. Upon her death, columnist Louis E. Martin said, "She gave out faith and hope as if they were pills and she some sort of doctor."[1] Her home in Daytona Beach is a National Historic Landmark,[2] her house in Washington, D.C. in Logan Circle is preserved by the National Park Service as a National Historic Site,[3] and a sculpture of her is located in Lincoln Park in Washington, D.C.[4]
Mary Jane McLeod was born near Mayesville, South Carolina on a rice and cotton farm, in a small log cabin, the fifteenth of seventeen children to Samuel and Patsy McIntosh McLeod, both former slaves.[5][6][7] Most of her siblings were born into slavery. Her mother worked for her former owner, and her father farmed cotton near a large house they called "The Homestead."
After demonstrating a desire to read and write, McLeod attended Mayesville's one-room schoolhouse, Trinity Mission School that was run by the Presbyterian Board of Missions of Freedmen. Her teacher, Emma Jane Wilson, became a significant mentor in her life.[8] Wilson had attended Scotia Seminary (now Barber-Scotia College), so arranged for McLeod to attend the same school on a scholarship, which she did from 1888-1894. She then attended Dwight Moody's Institute for Home and Foreign Missions in Chicago (now the Moody Bible Institute), hoping to become a missionary in Africa. However, she was told that she would not be able to go because black missionaries were not needed, so she instead planned to teach.[7]
She married Albertus Bethune in 1898 and they subsequently lived in Savannah, Georgia for a year while she did some social work. She was persuaded by a visiting Presbyterian minister named Coyden Harold Uggams (grandfather of entertainer Leslie Uggams) to relocate to Palatka, Florida to run a mission school.[9] She did so in 1899 and began an outreach to prisoners and ran the mission school. She supplemented her income by selling life insurance.[7] Albertus left the family in 1907 and did not seek a divorce, but relocated to South Carolina. He died in 1918.[10]
In October 1904 she rented a small house for $11.00 per month, making benches and desks out of discarded crates and obtaining items through charity. During this year Bethune used $1.50 to start the Literary and Industrial Training School for Negro Girls in Daytona. She had six students—five girls aged six to twelve, and her son, Albert. Bethune chose Daytona because its economic opportunities held more possibilities than Palatka: Daytona had become a popular tourist destination. The school bordered Daytona's dump, and Bethune, parents, and church members raised money by making sweet potato pies, ice cream, and fried fish and selling them to construction crews. Ink for pens was made from elderberry juice, pencils from burned wood, and they scrounged local businesses for furniture. Bethune wrote later, "I considered cash money as the smallest part of my resources. I had faith in a loving God, faith in myself, and a desire to serve."[13] The school received donations of money, equipment, and labor from local black churches. Bethune also courted wealthy white organizations like the ladies' Palmetto Club and asked powerful white men to sit on the board of the school; these included James Gamble (of Procter & Gamble) and Thomas White (of White Sewing Machines). A 1912 visit from Booker T. Washington helped to impress upon her the importance of appealing to white benefactors.[8] Bethune had first gone to see Washington in 1896 and was impressed by his clout with his donors. She later recalled a dream she had of Washington where he showed her a soiled handkerchief and pulled from it a large diamond and said, "Here, take this and build your school."[14]
Curriculum at the school started as a rigorous Christian life, having girls rise at 5:30 a.m. for Bible Study, classes in home economics and other industrial skills such as dressmaking, millinery, cooking, and other crafts that emphasized a life of self-sufficiency. Students' days ended at 9 pm. Soon science and business courses were added, then high school courses of math, English, and foreign languages.[11]
In 1910, the enrollment of the school rose to 102, most of them being boarders.[10] The success of the school was measured in its growing enrollment, addition of higher education courses, and the value of the school reaching $100,000 by 1920, with an enrollment of 351 students.[8] Bethune renamed the school the Daytona Normal and Industrial Institute and included courses to prepare teachers because she was finding difficulty staffing the school. The school merged with the Cookman Institute for Men from Jacksonville, Florida and became co-educational in 1923 and the value of the school's eight buildings was reassessed at $250,000. The curriculum of the Bethune-Cookman School rivaled the segregated Daytona High School. In contrast, the Daytona Colored Public School neglected to provide education past the eighth grade until after 1920. An agent of the General Education Board noted that "Daytona is probably the best school for Negroes in Florida."[10]
However, Bethune constantly found it necessary to search for more funding; almost everywhere she went in her travels she begged for money for the school. A donation by John D. Rockefeller in 1905 for $62,000 helped, as did her friendship with the Roosevelts. Through the Great Depression, the school was able to function meeting the educational standards of the State of Florida. From 1936 to 1942 she served only part-time as president of the college as she had duties in Washington, DC, and the lower funding reflected her absence.[10] By 1942 Bethune was forced to give up the presidency of the school as it had begun to affect her health.
In 1896, the National Association of Colored Women (NACW) was formed to promote the dual needs of black women. Bethune served as the Florida chapter president of the NACW from 1917 to 1925 and made it a mission to register as many black voters as possible, which prompted several visits from the Ku Klux Klan.[7][10] Bethune served as the president of the Southeastern Federation of Colored Women's Clubs from 1920 to 1925, an organization that served to amplify black women's voices for better opportunities. Her presence in the organization earned her the NACW national presidency in 1924. Despite the NACW being underfunded, Bethune's vision of the organization having a headquarters with a professional executive secretary came to fruition under her leadership when the organization purchased a Washington DC property at 1318 Vermont Avenue (with half the mortgage paid). Just prior to her leaving the presidency of the NACW, she saw it become the first black-controlled organization represented in Washington, DC.
She was invited to attend the Child Welfare Conference called by President Calvin Coolidge in 1928. In 1930 Herbert Hoover appointed her to the White House Conference on Child Health.
Bethune founded the National Council of Negro Women in New York City in 1935 bringing together 28 different organizations to form a council to facilitate the improvement of quality of life for women and their communities. About the organization, Bethune stated: "It is our pledge to make a lasting contribution to all that is finest and best in America, to cherish and enrich her heritage of freedom and progress by working for the integration of all her people regardless of race, creed, or national origin, into her spiritual, social, cultural, civic, and economic life, and thus aid her to achieve the glorious destiny of a true and unfettered democracy."[15] In 1938, the NCNW hosted the White House Conference on Negro Women and Children significantly displaying the presence of black women in democratic roles. They claimed their biggest impact came in getting black women into military officer roles in the Women's Army Corps during World War II.[10]
The National Youth Administration (NYA) was a federal agency created with the support of the Works Progress Administration (WPA). Its purpose was to provide programs to promote relief and employment for young people. It focused on citizens aged sixteen to twenty-five years who no longer had regular attendance in school and did not have paid employment.[16] Bethune lobbied the organization so aggressively and effectively for minority involvement that she earned herself a full-time staff position in 1936 as an assistant. Within two years, Bethune was appointed to position of Director of the Division of Negro Affairs, and as such, became the first African-American female federal agency head.[17] She was responsible for releasing NYA funds to help black students through school based programs. She was the only black agent of the NYA who was releasing funds. She made sure that black colleges participated in the Civilian Pilot Training Program, which graduated some of the first black pilots.[10] Awed by her accomplishments, the director of the NYA, said in 1939 of Bethune, "No one can do what Mrs. Bethune can do."[18]
Bethune’s determination helped national officials recognize the need for advancing the employable conditions for black youth. The NYA’s final report, issued in 1943, stated that, "more than 300,000 black young men and women were given employment and work training on NYA projects. These projects opened to these youth, training opportunities and enabled the majority of them to qualify for jobs heretofore closed to them."[16] Within the administration, Bethune used her position as Director of Negro Affairs to advocate for the appointment of black NYA officials to positions of political power. Bethune’s administrative assistants were numerous and served as liaisons between the National Division of Negro Affairs and the NYA agencies on the state and local levels. The high number of administrative assistants made up a reasonable work force commanded by Bethune. This attributed to better job and salary opportunities elsewhere.[17] During her tenure Bethune also pushed national executives to approve a program of consumer education for blacks, a foundation for black crippled children and planned for a compile of studies pertaining to black workers’ education councils. However, these programs were rejected by national officials due to inadequate funding and fear of duplicating the work of private governmental agencies.[17] The NYA was terminated in 1943.
Bethune played a dual role as close and loyal friend of Eleanor and Franklin Roosevelt. Eleanor Roosevelt respected Bethune to the extent that the segregation rules at the Southern Conference on Human Welfare in 1938, being held in Birmingham, Alabama, were changed on Roosevelt's request so she could sit next to Bethune. Roosevelt frequently referred to Bethune as "her closest friend in her age group."[19] Bethune, in her turn took it upon herself to disperse the message of the Democratic Party to black voters, and make the concerns of black people known to the Roosevelts at the same time. She had unprecedented access to the White House through her relationship with the First Lady. She used it to form a coalition of leaders from black organizations called the Federal Council on Negro Affairs, but which came to be known as the Black Cabinet.[10] The role of the Black Cabinet was to serve as an advisory board to the Roosevelt administration on issues facing black people in America. It gathered talented blacks in positions within federal agencies, creating the first collective of black people enjoying higher positions in government than ever before. It also served to show to voters that the Roosevelt administration cared about black concerns. The group gathered in Bethune's office or apartment and met informally, rarely keeping minutes. Although as advisers they had little role in creating public policy, they were a respected leadership among black voters and were able to influence political appointments and disbursement of funds to organizations that would benefit black people.[20]
When the Methodist Church facilitated the merging of the Daytona Normal and Industrial School and the Cookman College for Men into Bethune-Cookman College, Bethune became a member of the church. However, the church was largely segregated in the South, forming two separate denominations. Bethune was prominent in the primarily black Florida Conference, and though she worked to integrate the mostly white Methodist Episcopal Church, South, she protested initial plans for integration because they required separate jurisdictions based on race.[21]
She dedicated her life to the education of both whites and blacks about the accomplishments and needs of black people, writing in 1938, "If our people are to fight their way up out of bondage we must arm them with the sword and the shield and buckler of pride - belief in themselves and their possibilities, based upon a sure knowledge of the achievements of the past."[22] and a year later, "Not only the Negro child but children of all races should read and know of the achievements, accomplishments and deeds of the Negro. World peace and brotherhood are based on a common understanding of the contributions and cultures of all races and creeds."[23]
One of her most effective methods of reaching this goal was to open her school on Sundays to tourists in Daytona Beach, showing off the accomplishments of her students, hosting national speakers on black issues, and taking donations. These Community Meetings were deliberately integrated. One black teenager in Daytona at the turn of the 20th century remembers that as the most impressive aspect: "Many tourists attended, sitting wherever there were empty seats. There was no special section for white people."[18]
On the turnover of Plessy v Ferguson by the U.S. Supreme Court, Bethune took the opportunity to defend the decision by writing her opinion in the Chicago Defender in 1954:
There can be no divided democracy, no class government, no half-free county, under the constitution. Therefore, there can be no discrimination, no segregation, no separation of some citizens from the rights which belong to all... We are on our way. But these are frontiers which we must conquer... We must gain full equality in education ...in the franchise... in economic opportunity, and full equality in the abundance of life.
In 1930, journalist Ida Tarbell included Bethune as number 10 on her list of America's greatest women.[7][8] Bethune was awarded the Spingarn Medal in 1935 by the NAACP.[24] Mary McLeod Bethune was the only black woman present at the founding of the United Nations in San Francisco in 1948, representing the NAACP with W. E. B. Du Bois and Walter White. In 1949 she became the first woman to be given the Medal of Honor and Merit at the Haitian Exposition, Haiti's highest award.[25] She served as the US emissary to the induction of President William V.S. Tubman of Liberia in 1949. She was also an honorary member of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Incorporated, the second oldest African-American sorority.[26]
On May 18, 1955, Bethune died of a heart attack. Her death was followed by editorial tributes in newspapers all over America. The Oklahoma City Black Dispatch stated she was, "Exhibit No. 1 for all who have faith in American and the democratic process." The Atlanta Daily World said her life was, "One of the most dramatic careers ever enacted at any time upon the stage of human activity." And in the Pittsburgh Courier, it was stated, "In any race or nation she would have been an outstanding personality and made a noteworthy contribution because her chief attribute was her indomitable soul." The mainstream press praised her as well. Christian Century suggested, "the story of her life should be taught every school child for generations to come." The New York Times noted she was, "one of the most potent factors in the growth of interracial goodwill in America." The Washington Post read, "So great were her dynamism and force that it was almost impossible to resist her... Not only her own people, but all America has been enriched and ennobled by her courageous, ebullient spirit." Her hometown newspaper, the Daytona Beach Evening News printed, "To some she seemed unreal, something that could not be... What right had she to greatness?... The lesson of Mrs. Bethune's life is that genius knows no racial barriers."[10]
Bethune stood five feet four inches tall and cut a matronly figure even in her 30s. Unlike other black personalities who were effective in part for their lighter skin, Bethune was notable for how dark her skin actually was; she was often described as "ebony" in complexion. She carried a cane with her, not for support but for effect. She said it gave her "swank". She was a teetotaler and preached temperance for African Americans, taking opportunities to chastise drunken blacks she encountered in public.[10] Bethune stated more than once that the school and the students in Daytona were her first family and that her son and extended family came second. Her students often referred to her as "Mama Bethune."
Her effectiveness in getting what she wanted was duly noted throughout her life. Dr. Robert Weaver, who served with her on Roosevelt's Black Cabinet said of her, "She had the most marvelous gift of effecting feminine helplessness in order to attain her aims with masculine ruthlessness."[27] But when a white Daytona resident threatened Bethune's students who walked in front of his home with a Winchester rifle, Bethune made it a priority to assuage his anger. The director of the McLeod Hospital recalled that, "Mrs. Bethune treated him with courtesy and developed such goodwill in him that we found him protecting the children and going so far as to say, 'If anybody bothers old Mary, I will protect her with my life.'"[28]
Self-sufficiency was a high priority throughout her life. Bethune invested in several businesses in her life including the Pittsburgh Courier, a black newspaper, and several life insurance companies, one of which she began: Central Life Insurance of Florida. When blacks were not allowed to visit the beach, she and several other business owners invested in Paradise Beach, purchasing a 2-mile (3.2 km) stretch of beach and the surrounding properties, splitting it up and selling it to black families, and allowing white families to visit. Paradise Beach was later renamed to Bethune-Volusia Beach. She also was a part of the Welricha Motel in Daytona, of which she was one-fourth owner.[18][29]
In 1973, Mary McLeod Bethune was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame.[30] In 1974, a sculpture was erected in her honor in Lincoln Park, Washington, D.C. by sculptor Robert Berks. Engraved in the side is a passage from her "Last Will and Testament": "I leave you love. I leave you hope. I leave you the challenge of developing confidence in one another. I leave you a thirst for education. I leave you a respect for the use of power. I leave you faith. I leave you racial dignity. I leave you a desire to live harmoniously with your fellow men. I leave you, finally, a responsibility to our young people." Approximately 250,000 people attended the unveiling ceremony, including Shirley Chisholm, the first African American woman elected to Congress.[31]
In 1985 the US Postal Service issued a stamp in her honor.[32] In 1989 Ebony Magazine listed her on their list of "50 Most Important Figures in Black US History", and named her again in 1999, Ebony Magazine included Mary McLeod Bethune as one of the 100 Most Fascinating Black Women of the 20th century.[33] In 2004, the National Park Service acquired Bethune's last residence, the Council House at 1318 Vermont Avenue, NW: the headquarters for the NACW. It became the Mary McLeod Bethune Council House National Historic Site.[3]
Schools are named in her honor in Los Angeles, Dallas, Palm Beach, Florida, Moreno Valley, California, Minneapolis, Ft. Lauderdale, Atlanta, Philadelphia, Folkston and College Park, Georgia, New Orleans, Rochester, New York, and Jacksonville, Florida. In 2002, scholar Molefi Kete Asante listed Mary McLeod Bethune on his list of 100 Greatest African Americans.[34]
In 2004, Bethune-Cookman University celebrated its 100-year anniversary. It currently sits on 70 acres (280,000 m2) in Daytona Beach. There are now 36 buildings that educate nearly 4,000 students from almost every state in the United States and 35 countries, and the school is located on Mary Mcleod Bethune Boulevard, which was once 2nd Avenue.[10] Their annual operating budget is $50 million, and they have a $26 million endowment. The university offers 37 majors in six major colleges: education, business, science, social science, mathematics, nursing, engineering, and arts and humanities. The university's website contends that, "the vision of the founder remains in full view over one-hundred years later. The institution prevails in order that others might improve their heads, hearts, and hands."[35] The university's vice president recalled her legacy in saying, "During Mrs. Bethune's time, this was the only place in the city of Daytona Beach where Whites and Blacks could sit in the same room and enjoy what she called 'gems from students'—their recitations and songs. This is a person who was able to bring Black people and White together."[36]
There is a historical marker in Maysville, Sumter County, South Carolina commemorating her birthplace.
Wikipedia Online Article
Comment by Richard A. Young on February 12, 2010 at 6:47am
Mary Jane McLeod Bethune (July 10, 1875 – May 18, 1955) was an American educator and civil rights leader best known for starting a school for black students in Daytona Beach, Florida that eventually became Bethune-Cookman University and for being an advisor to President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Born in South Carolina to parents who had been slaves,and having to work in fields at age 5, she took an early interest in her own education. With the help of benefactors, Bethune attended college hoping to become a missionary in Africa. When that did not materialize, she started a school for black girls in Daytona Beach. From six students it grew and merged with an institute for black boys and eventually became the Bethune-Cookman School. Its quality far surpassed the standards of education for black students, and rivaled those of white schools. Bethune worked tirelessly to ensure funding for the school, and used it as a showcase for tourists and donors, to exhibit what educated black people could do. She was president of the college from 1923 to 1942 and 1946 to 1947, one of the few women in the world who served as a college president at that time.
Bethune was also active in women's clubs, and her leadership in them allowed her to become nationally prominent. She worked for the election of Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1932, and became a member of Roosevelt's Black Cabinet, sharing the concerns of black people with the Roosevelt administration while spreading Roosevelt's message to blacks, who had been traditionally Republican voters. Upon her death, columnist Louis E. Martin said, "She gave out faith and hope as if they were pills and she some sort of doctor."[1] Her home in Daytona Beach is a National Historic Landmark,[2] her house in Washington, D.C. in Logan Circle is preserved by the National Park Service as a National Historic Site,[3] and a sculpture of her is located in Lincoln Park in Washington, D.C.[4]
Mary Jane McLeod was born near Mayesville, South Carolina on a rice and cotton farm, in a small log cabin, the fifteenth of seventeen children to Samuel and Patsy McIntosh McLeod, both former slaves.[5][6][7] Most of her siblings were born into slavery. Her mother worked for her former owner, and her father farmed cotton near a large house they called "The Homestead."
After demonstrating a desire to read and write, McLeod attended Mayesville's one-room schoolhouse, Trinity Mission School that was run by the Presbyterian Board of Missions of Freedmen. Her teacher, Emma Jane Wilson, became a significant mentor in her life.[8] Wilson had attended Scotia Seminary (now Barber-Scotia College), so arranged for McLeod to attend the same school on a scholarship, which she did from 1888-1894. She then attended Dwight Moody's Institute for Home and Foreign Missions in Chicago (now the Moody Bible Institute), hoping to become a missionary in Africa. However, she was told that she would not be able to go because black missionaries were not needed, so she instead planned to teach.[7]
She married Albertus Bethune in 1898 and they subsequently lived in Savannah, Georgia for a year while she did some social work. She was persuaded by a visiting Presbyterian minister named Coyden Harold Uggams (grandfather of entertainer Leslie Uggams) to relocate to Palatka, Florida to run a mission school.[9] She did so in 1899 and began an outreach to prisoners and ran the mission school. She supplemented her income by selling life insurance.[7] Albertus left the family in 1907 and did not seek a divorce, but relocated to South Carolina. He died in 1918.[10]
In October 1904 she rented a small house for $11.00 per month, making benches and desks out of discarded crates and obtaining items through charity. During this year Bethune used $1.50 to start the Literary and Industrial Training School for Negro Girls in Daytona. She had six students—five girls aged six to twelve, and her son, Albert. Bethune chose Daytona because its economic opportunities held more possibilities than Palatka: Daytona had become a popular tourist destination. The school bordered Daytona's dump, and Bethune, parents, and church members raised money by making sweet potato pies, ice cream, and fried fish and selling them to construction crews. Ink for pens was made from elderberry juice, pencils from burned wood, and they scrounged local businesses for furniture. Bethune wrote later, "I considered cash money as the smallest part of my resources. I had faith in a loving God, faith in myself, and a desire to serve."[13] The school received donations of money, equipment, and labor from local black churches. Bethune also courted wealthy white organizations like the ladies' Palmetto Club and asked powerful white men to sit on the board of the school; these included James Gamble (of Procter & Gamble) and Thomas White (of White Sewing Machines). A 1912 visit from Booker T. Washington helped to impress upon her the importance of appealing to white benefactors.[8] Bethune had first gone to see Washington in 1896 and was impressed by his clout with his donors. She later recalled a dream she had of Washington where he showed her a soiled handkerchief and pulled from it a large diamond and said, "Here, take this and build your school."[14]
Curriculum at the school started as a rigorous Christian life, having girls rise at 5:30 a.m. for Bible Study, classes in home economics and other industrial skills such as dressmaking, millinery, cooking, and other crafts that emphasized a life of self-sufficiency. Students' days ended at 9 pm. Soon science and business courses were added, then high school courses of math, English, and foreign languages.[11]
In 1910, the enrollment of the school rose to 102, most of them being boarders.[10] The success of the school was measured in its growing enrollment, addition of higher education courses, and the value of the school reaching $100,000 by 1920, with an enrollment of 351 students.[8] Bethune renamed the school the Daytona Normal and Industrial Institute and included courses to prepare teachers because she was finding difficulty staffing the school. The school merged with the Cookman Institute for Men from Jacksonville, Florida and became co-educational in 1923 and the value of the school's eight buildings was reassessed at $250,000. The curriculum of the Bethune-Cookman School rivaled the segregated Daytona High School. In contrast, the Daytona Colored Public School neglected to provide education past the eighth grade until after 1920. An agent of the General Education Board noted that "Daytona is probably the best school for Negroes in Florida."[10]
However, Bethune constantly found it necessary to search for more funding; almost everywhere she went in her travels she begged for money for the school. A donation by John D. Rockefeller in 1905 for $62,000 helped, as did her friendship with the Roosevelts. Through the Great Depression, the school was able to function meeting the educational standards of the State of Florida. From 1936 to 1942 she served only part-time as president of the college as she had duties in Washington, DC, and the lower funding reflected her absence.[10] By 1942 Bethune was forced to give up the presidency of the school as it had begun to affect her health.
In 1896, the National Association of Colored Women (NACW) was formed to promote the dual needs of black women. Bethune served as the Florida chapter president of the NACW from 1917 to 1925 and made it a mission to register as many black voters as possible, which prompted several visits from the Ku Klux Klan.[7][10] Bethune served as the president of the Southeastern Federation of Colored Women's Clubs from 1920 to 1925, an organization that served to amplify black women's voices for better opportunities. Her presence in the organization earned her the NACW national presidency in 1924. Despite the NACW being underfunded, Bethune's vision of the organization having a headquarters with a professional executive secretary came to fruition under her leadership when the organization purchased a Washington DC property at 1318 Vermont Avenue (with half the mortgage paid). Just prior to her leaving the presidency of the NACW, she saw it become the first black-controlled organization represented in Washington, DC.
She was invited to attend the Child Welfare Conference called by President Calvin Coolidge in 1928. In 1930 Herbert Hoover appointed her to the White House Conference on Child Health.
Bethune founded the National Council of Negro Women in New York City in 1935 bringing together 28 different organizations to form a council to facilitate the improvement of quality of life for women and their communities. About the organization, Bethune stated: "It is our pledge to make a lasting contribution to all that is finest and best in America, to cherish and enrich her heritage of freedom and progress by working for the integration of all her people regardless of race, creed, or national origin, into her spiritual, social, cultural, civic, and economic life, and thus aid her to achieve the glorious destiny of a true and unfettered democracy."[15] In 1938, the NCNW hosted the White House Conference on Negro Women and Children significantly displaying the presence of black women in democratic roles. They claimed their biggest impact came in getting black women into military officer roles in the Women's Army Corps during World War II.[10]
The National Youth Administration (NYA) was a federal agency created with the support of the Works Progress Administration (WPA). Its purpose was to provide programs to promote relief and employment for young people. It focused on citizens aged sixteen to twenty-five years who no longer had regular attendance in school and did not have paid employment.[16] Bethune lobbied the organization so aggressively and effectively for minority involvement that she earned herself a full-time staff position in 1936 as an assistant. Within two years, Bethune was appointed to position of Director of the Division of Negro Affairs, and as such, became the first African-American female federal agency head.[17] She was responsible for releasing NYA funds to help black students through school based programs. She was the only black agent of the NYA who was releasing funds. She made sure that black colleges participated in the Civilian Pilot Training Program, which graduated some of the first black pilots.[10] Awed by her accomplishments, the director of the NYA, said in 1939 of Bethune, "No one can do what Mrs. Bethune can do."[18]
Bethune’s determination helped national officials recognize the need for advancing the employable conditions for black youth. The NYA’s final report, issued in 1943, stated that, "more than 300,000 black young men and women were given employment and work training on NYA projects. These projects opened to these youth, training opportunities and enabled the majority of them to qualify for jobs heretofore closed to them."[16] Within the administration, Bethune used her position as Director of Negro Affairs to advocate for the appointment of black NYA officials to positions of political power. Bethune’s administrative assistants were numerous and served as liaisons between the National Division of Negro Affairs and the NYA agencies on the state and local levels. The high number of administrative assistants made up a reasonable work force commanded by Bethune. This attributed to better job and salary opportunities elsewhere.[17] During her tenure Bethune also pushed national executives to approve a program of consumer education for blacks, a foundation for black crippled children and planned for a compile of studies pertaining to black workers’ education councils. However, these programs were rejected by national officials due to inadequate funding and fear of duplicating the work of private governmental agencies.[17] The NYA was terminated in 1943.
Bethune played a dual role as close and loyal friend of Eleanor and Franklin Roosevelt. Eleanor Roosevelt respected Bethune to the extent that the segregation rules at the Southern Conference on Human Welfare in 1938, being held in Birmingham, Alabama, were changed on Roosevelt's request so she could sit next to Bethune. Roosevelt frequently referred to Bethune as "her closest friend in her age group."[19] Bethune, in her turn took it upon herself to disperse the message of the Democratic Party to black voters, and make the concerns of black people known to the Roosevelts at the same time. She had unprecedented access to the White House through her relationship with the First Lady. She used it to form a coalition of leaders from black organizations called the Federal Council on Negro Affairs, but which came to be known as the Black Cabinet.[10] The role of the Black Cabinet was to serve as an advisory board to the Roosevelt administration on issues facing black people in America. It gathered talented blacks in positions within federal agencies, creating the first collective of black people enjoying higher positions in government than ever before. It also served to show to voters that the Roosevelt administration cared about black concerns. The group gathered in Bethune's office or apartment and met informally, rarely keeping minutes. Although as advisers they had little role in creating public policy, they were a respected leadership among black voters and were able to influence political appointments and disbursement of funds to organizations that would benefit black people.[20]
When the Methodist Church facilitated the merging of the Daytona Normal and Industrial School and the Cookman College for Men into Bethune-Cookman College, Bethune became a member of the church. However, the church was largely segregated in the South, forming two separate denominations. Bethune was prominent in the primarily black Florida Conference, and though she worked to integrate the mostly white Methodist Episcopal Church, South, she protested initial plans for integration because they required separate jurisdictions based on race.[21]
She dedicated her life to the education of both whites and blacks about the accomplishments and needs of black people, writing in 1938, "If our people are to fight their way up out of bondage we must arm them with the sword and the shield and buckler of pride - belief in themselves and their possibilities, based upon a sure knowledge of the achievements of the past."[22] and a year later, "Not only the Negro child but children of all races should read and know of the achievements, accomplishments and deeds of the Negro. World peace and brotherhood are based on a common understanding of the contributions and cultures of all races and creeds."[23]
One of her most effective methods of reaching this goal was to open her school on Sundays to tourists in Daytona Beach, showing off the accomplishments of her students, hosting national speakers on black issues, and taking donations. These Community Meetings were deliberately integrated. One black teenager in Daytona at the turn of the 20th century remembers that as the most impressive aspect: "Many tourists attended, sitting wherever there were empty seats. There was no special section for white people."[18]
On the turnover of Plessy v Ferguson by the U.S. Supreme Court, Bethune took the opportunity to defend the decision by writing her opinion in the Chicago Defender in 1954:
There can be no divided democracy, no class government, no half-free county, under the constitution. Therefore, there can be no discrimination, no segregation, no separation of some citizens from the rights which belong to all... We are on our way. But these are frontiers which we must conquer... We must gain full equality in education ...in the franchise... in economic opportunity, and full equality in the abundance of life.
In 1930, journalist Ida Tarbell included Bethune as number 10 on her list of America's greatest women.[7][8] Bethune was awarded the Spingarn Medal in 1935 by the NAACP.[24] Mary McLeod Bethune was the only black woman present at the founding of the United Nations in San Francisco in 1948, representing the NAACP with W. E. B. Du Bois and Walter White. In 1949 she became the first woman to be given the Medal of Honor and Merit at the Haitian Exposition, Haiti's highest award.[25] She served as the US emissary to the induction of President William V.S. Tubman of Liberia in 1949. She was also an honorary member of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Incorporated, the second oldest African-American sorority.[26]
On May 18, 1955, Bethune died of a heart attack. Her death was followed by editorial tributes in newspapers all over America. The Oklahoma City Black Dispatch stated she was, "Exhibit No. 1 for all who have faith in American and the democratic process." The Atlanta Daily World said her life was, "One of the most dramatic careers ever enacted at any time upon the stage of human activity." And in the Pittsburgh Courier, it was stated, "In any race or nation she would have been an outstanding personality and made a noteworthy contribution because her chief attribute was her indomitable soul." The mainstream press praised her as well. Christian Century suggested, "the story of her life should be taught every school child for generations to come." The New York Times noted she was, "one of the most potent factors in the growth of interracial goodwill in America." The Washington Post read, "So great were her dynamism and force that it was almost impossible to resist her... Not only her own people, but all America has been enriched and ennobled by her courageous, ebullient spirit." Her hometown newspaper, the Daytona Beach Evening News printed, "To some she seemed unreal, something that could not be... What right had she to greatness?... The lesson of Mrs. Bethune's life is that genius knows no racial barriers."[10]
Bethune stood five feet four inches tall and cut a matronly figure even in her 30s. Unlike other black personalities who were effective in part for their lighter skin, Bethune was notable for how dark her skin actually was; she was often described as "ebony" in complexion. She carried a cane with her, not for support but for effect. She said it gave her "swank". She was a teetotaler and preached temperance for African Americans, taking opportunities to chastise drunken blacks she encountered in public.[10] Bethune stated more than once that the school and the students in Daytona were her first family and that her son and extended family came second. Her students often referred to her as "Mama Bethune."
Her effectiveness in getting what she wanted was duly noted throughout her life. Dr. Robert Weaver, who served with her on Roosevelt's Black Cabinet said of her, "She had the most marvelous gift of effecting feminine helplessness in order to attain her aims with masculine ruthlessness."[27] But when a white Daytona resident threatened Bethune's students who walked in front of his home with a Winchester rifle, Bethune made it a priority to assuage his anger. The director of the McLeod Hospital recalled that, "Mrs. Bethune treated him with courtesy and developed such goodwill in him that we found him protecting the children and going so far as to say, 'If anybody bothers old Mary, I will protect her with my life.'"[28]
Self-sufficiency was a high priority throughout her life. Bethune invested in several businesses in her life including the Pittsburgh Courier, a black newspaper, and several life insurance companies, one of which she began: Central Life Insurance of Florida. When blacks were not allowed to visit the beach, she and several other business owners invested in Paradise Beach, purchasing a 2-mile (3.2 km) stretch of beach and the surrounding properties, splitting it up and selling it to black families, and allowing white families to visit. Paradise Beach was later renamed to Bethune-Volusia Beach. She also was a part of the Welricha Motel in Daytona, of which she was one-fourth owner.[18][29]
In 1973, Mary McLeod Bethune was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame.[30] In 1974, a sculpture was erected in her honor in Lincoln Park, Washington, D.C. by sculptor Robert Berks. Engraved in the side is a passage from her "Last Will and Testament": "I leave you love. I leave you hope. I leave you the challenge of developing confidence in one another. I leave you a thirst for education. I leave you a respect for the use of power. I leave you faith. I leave you racial dignity. I leave you a desire to live harmoniously with your fellow men. I leave you, finally, a responsibility to our young people." Approximately 250,000 people attended the unveiling ceremony, including Shirley Chisholm, the first African American woman elected to Congress.[31]
In 1985 the US Postal Service issued a stamp in her honor.[32] In 1989 Ebony Magazine listed her on their list of "50 Most Important Figures in Black US History", and named her again in 1999, Ebony Magazine included Mary McLeod Bethune as one of the 100 Most Fascinating Black Women of the 20th century.[33] In 2004, the National Park Service acquired Bethune's last residence, the Council House at 1318 Vermont Avenue, NW: the headquarters for the NACW. It became the Mary McLeod Bethune Council House National Historic Site.[3]
Schools are named in her honor in Los Angeles, Dallas, Palm Beach, Florida, Moreno Valley, California, Minneapolis, Ft. Lauderdale, Atlanta, Philadelphia, Folkston and College Park, Georgia, New Orleans, Rochester, New York, and Jacksonville, Florida. In 2002, scholar Molefi Kete Asante listed Mary McLeod Bethune on his list of 100 Greatest African Americans.[34]
In 2004, Bethune-Cookman University celebrated its 100-year anniversary. It currently sits on 70 acres (280,000 m2) in Daytona Beach. There are now 36 buildings that educate nearly 4,000 students from almost every state in the United States and 35 countries, and the school is located on Mary Mcleod Bethune Boulevard, which was once 2nd Avenue.[10] Their annual operating budget is $50 million, and they have a $26 million endowment. The university offers 37 majors in six major colleges: education, business, science, social science, mathematics, nursing, engineering, and arts and humanities. The university's website contends that, "the vision of the founder remains in full view over one-hundred years later. The institution prevails in order that others might improve their heads, hearts, and hands."[35] The university's vice president recalled her legacy in saying, "During Mrs. Bethune's time, this was the only place in the city of Daytona Beach where Whites and Blacks could sit in the same room and enjoy what she called 'gems from students'—their recitations and songs. This is a person who was able to bring Black people and White together."[36]
There is a historical marker in Maysville, Sumter County, South Carolina commemorating her birthplace.
Comment by Richard A. Young on February 11, 2010 at 10:18am
Madam C.J. Walker (December 23, 1867 – May 25, 1919) was an African-American businesswoman, hair care entrepreneur and philanthropist. She made her fortune by developing and marketing a hugely successful line of beauty and hair products for black women, under the company she founded, Madam C.J. Walker Manufacturing Company.
The Guinness Book of Records cites Walker as the first female who became a millionaire by her own achievements.
She was born Sarah Breedlove in Delta, Louisiana, the first member of her family to be born free, to parents who had been slaves. At age 14, she married a man named Moses McWilliams and was widowed at age 20. She then moved to St. Louis, Missouri to join her brothers. Sarah worked as a laundress for as little as a dollar and a half a day, but she was able to save enough to educate her daughter. While living in St. Louis, she joined St. Paul's African Methodist Episcopal Church, which helped develop her speaking, interpersonal and organizational skills.
In 1905, she worked as a sales agent for Annie Malone, another black woman entrepreneur who manufactured hair care products. Sarah also consulted with a Denver pharmacist, who analyzed Malone's formula and helped Walker formulate her own products. In addition, she often told reporters that the ingredients for her "Wonderful Hair Grower" had come to her in a dream.
In 1906 she married Charles Joseph Walker, a St. Louis newspaperman[1], and changed her name to "Madam C.J. Walker". She founded the Madam C.J. Walker Manufacturing Company to sell hair care products and cosmetics. Madam Walker divorced Walker in 1910 and moved her growing manufacturing operations from St. Louis to a new industrial complex in Indianapolis. By 1917 she had the largest business in the United States owned by an African-American.
“ I am a woman who came from the cotton fields of the South. From there I was promoted to the washtub. From there I was promoted to the cook kitchen. And from there I promoted myself into the business of manufacturing hair goods and preparations...I have built my own factory on my own ground.[2]

Walker saw her personal wealth not as an end in itself, but as a means to promote economic opportunities for others, especially black people. She took great pride in the profitable employment — and alternative to domestic labor — that her company afforded many thousands of black women who worked as commissioned agents. Her agents could earn from $5 to $15 per day in an era when unskilled white laborers were making about $11 per week.[3] Marjorie Joyner, who started work as one of her employees, went on to lead the next generation of African-American beauty entrepreneurs.
Walker was known for her philanthropy, leaving two-thirds of her estate to educational institutions and charities, including the NAACP, the Tuskegee Institute and Bethune-Cookman College. In 1919, her $5,000 pledge to the NAACP's anti-lynching campaign was the largest gift the organization had ever received.
Walker had a mansion called "Villa Lewaro" built in the wealthy New York suburb of Irvington on Hudson, New York, near the estates of John D. Rockefeller and Jay Gould. She spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on furnishings.[4] The Italianate villa was designed by architect Vertner Tandy, the first registered black architect in the state of New York, in 1915. Walker also owned townhouses in Indianapolis and New York.
Madam Walker died on May 25, 1919, at age 51, at her estate Villa Lewaro. She was buried at Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx.
Her daughter A'Lelia Walker carried on the tradition of hospitality, opening her mother's home and her own to writers and artists of the emergent Harlem Renaissance. She promoted important members of that movement.[5] She converted a section of her Harlem townhouse at 108-110 West 136th Street into the Dark Tower, a salon and tearoom where Harlem and Greenwich Village artists, writers and musicians gathered. Poet Langston Hughes called her "The joy goddess of Harlem's 1920s" in his autobiography The Big Sea, because of the lavish parties she hosted in Harlem and Irvington.
Ms. Walker was inducted into the Junior Achievement U.S. Business Hall of Fame in 1992 and in 2002, Molefi Kete Asante listed Madam C. J. Walker on his list of 100 Greatest African Americans.[6]. On 28 January, 1998 the USPS, as part of it's Black Heritage Series, issued the Madam C.J. Walker Commemorative stamp.[7]
Wikipedia Online Article
Comment by Richard A. Young on February 11, 2010 at 10:17am
Madam C.J. Walker (December 23, 1867 – May 25, 1919) was an African-American businesswoman, hair care entrepreneur and philanthropist. She made her fortune by developing and marketing a hugely successful line of beauty and hair products for black women, under the company she founded, Madam C.J. Walker Manufacturing Company.
The Guinness Book of Records cites Walker as the first female who became a millionaire by her own achievements.
She was born Sarah Breedlove in Delta, Louisiana, the first member of her family to be born free, to parents who had been slaves. At age 14, she married a man named Moses McWilliams and was widowed at age 20. She then moved to St. Louis, Missouri to join her brothers. Sarah worked as a laundress for as little as a dollar and a half a day, but she was able to save enough to educate her daughter. While living in St. Louis, she joined St. Paul's African Methodist Episcopal Church, which helped develop her speaking, interpersonal and organizational skills.
In 1905, she worked as a sales agent for Annie Malone, another black woman entrepreneur who manufactured hair care products. Sarah also consulted with a Denver pharmacist, who analyzed Malone's formula and helped Walker formulate her own products. In addition, she often told reporters that the ingredients for her "Wonderful Hair Grower" had come to her in a dream.
In 1906 she married Charles Joseph Walker, a St. Louis newspaperman[1], and changed her name to "Madam C.J. Walker". She founded the Madam C.J. Walker Manufacturing Company to sell hair care products and cosmetics. Madam Walker divorced Walker in 1910 and moved her growing manufacturing operations from St. Louis to a new industrial complex in Indianapolis. By 1917 she had the largest business in the United States owned by an African-American.
“ I am a woman who came from the cotton fields of the South. From there I was promoted to the washtub. From there I was promoted to the cook kitchen. And from there I promoted myself into the business of manufacturing hair goods and preparations...I have built my own factory on my own ground.[2]

Walker saw her personal wealth not as an end in itself, but as a means to promote economic opportunities for others, especially black people. She took great pride in the profitable employment — and alternative to domestic labor — that her company afforded many thousands of black women who worked as commissioned agents. Her agents could earn from $5 to $15 per day in an era when unskilled white laborers were making about $11 per week.[3] Marjorie Joyner, who started work as one of her employees, went on to lead the next generation of African-American beauty entrepreneurs.
Walker was known for her philanthropy, leaving two-thirds of her estate to educational institutions and charities, including the NAACP, the Tuskegee Institute and Bethune-Cookman College. In 1919, her $5,000 pledge to the NAACP's anti-lynching campaign was the largest gift the organization had ever received.
Walker had a mansion called "Villa Lewaro" built in the wealthy New York suburb of Irvington on Hudson, New York, near the estates of John D. Rockefeller and Jay Gould. She spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on furnishings.[4] The Italianate villa was designed by architect Vertner Tandy, the first registered black architect in the state of New York, in 1915. Walker also owned townhouses in Indianapolis and New York.
Madam Walker died on May 25, 1919, at age 51, at her estate Villa Lewaro. She was buried at Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx.
Her daughter A'Lelia Walker carried on the tradition of hospitality, opening her mother's home and her own to writers and artists of the emergent Harlem Renaissance. She promoted important members of that movement.[5] She converted a section of her Harlem townhouse at 108-110 West 136th Street into the Dark Tower, a salon and tearoom where Harlem and Greenwich Village artists, writers and musicians gathered. Poet Langston Hughes called her "The joy goddess of Harlem's 1920s" in his autobiography The Big Sea, because of the lavish parties she hosted in Harlem and Irvington.
Ms. Walker was inducted into the Junior Achievement U.S. Business Hall of Fame in 1992 and in 2002, Molefi Kete Asante listed Madam C. J. Walker on his list of 100 Greatest African Americans.[6]. On 28 January, 1998 the USPS, as part of it's Black Heritage Series, issued the Madam C.J. Walker Commemorative stamp.[7]
Comment by Richard A. Young on February 10, 2010 at 1:08pm
Phillis Wheatley (1753 – December 5, 1784) was the first African American poet and the first African-American woman whose writings were published.[1] Born in Gambia, Senegal, she was enslaved at age seven. She was purchased by the Wheatley family of Boston, who taught her to read and write, and helped encourage her poetry.
[edit] Education
Mrs.Wheatley arranged for Phillis to work around the house and allowed Mary wheatley to tutor Phillis.
Mary Wheatley taught Phillis science, geography, and history. Phillis was also taught English and studied the American Bible extensively. Within 2 1/2 years of joining the Wheatley family, Phillis was fully literate. Phillis was encouraged to continue to learn and was allowed to express herself, so much so she was also provided pen and paper on her nightstand in case she was inspired to write during the night (13).
At the age of 12 she was reading the Greek and Latin classics, and passages from the Bible. The family was astonished.
[edit] Later life
In 1773, Wheatley was sent to London with Nathaniel Wheatley to recover her health. However, Wheatley’s visit did not go unnoticed. She held an audience with the Lord Mayor of London (a further audience with George III was arranged but Phillis returned home beforehand) as well as with other significant members of British society. A collection of her poetry was also published in London during this visit. Wheatley was emancipated from slavery, but not given the full rights of a free woman, on October 18, 1773. [She was given this “emancipation” as a result of her popularity and influence as a poet and increasing pressure on the Wheatley family from abolitionists and sympathetic upper-class British socialites]. In 1775, she published a poem celebrating George Washington entitled, “To his Excellency General Washington.” In 1776, Washington invited Wheatley to his home as thanks for the poem ,and Thomas Jefferson republished the poem in the Pennsylvania Gazette as a result of Wheatley’s audience with Washington. Whilst Wheatley was a supporter of the American Revolution, the war proved to be detrimental to the publication of her poetry because readers were swept up in the frenzy of the war and seemingly disinterested in poetry. In 1778, Wheatley was legally freed from the bonds of slavery when her master John Wheatley died. Three months later, Wheatley married John Peters, a free black grocer. Her marriage was shaky as a result of poor living conditions and the death of two infant children. Wheatley was unable to publish another volume of her poetry because of her financial circumstances, the loss of patrons after her emancipation and the impact of the Revolutionary War. Wheatley’s husband, John Peters, was imprisoned for debt in 1784, leaving an impoverished Wheatley behind with a sickly infant son. Wheatley became a scullery maid at a boarding house, forced into domestic labor that she had avoided earlier in life while enslaved. Wheatley died alone on December 5, 1784, at age 31. Her infant son died three and a half hours after her death.
[edit] Poetry
In 1768, Wheatley wrote "To the King's Most Excellent Majesty" in which she praised George III for repealing the Stamp Act.[2] However, as the American Revolution gained strength, Wheatley's writing turned to themes from the point of view of the colonists.


John Wheatley's grave in Granary Burying Ground. Phillis Wheatley's grave is unmarked
In 1770 Wheatley wrote a poetic tribute to George Whitefield that received widespread acclaim. Wheatley's poetry overwhelmingly revolves around Christian themes, with many poems dedicated to famous personalities. Over one-third consist of elegies, the remainder being on religious, classical, and abstract themes.[3] She rarely mentions her own situation in her poems. One of the few which refers to slavery is "On being brought from Africa to America":
Twas mercy brought me from my Pagan land,
Taught my benighted soul to understand
That there's a God, that there's a Saviour too:
Once I redemption neither sought nor knew.
Some view our sable race with scornful eye,
"Their colour is a diabolic dye."
Remember, Christians, Negroes, black as Cain,
May be refin'd, and join th' angelic train.´
Many white Americans of the time found it hard to believe that an African woman could write poetry, and Wheatley had to defend her literary ability in court in 1772.[4][5] She was examined by a group of Boston luminaries, including John Erving, Reverend Charles Chauncey, John Hancock, Thomas Hutchinson, the governor of Massachusetts, and his lieutenant governor Andrew Oliver. They concluded she had written the poems ascribed to her and signed an attestation which was published in the preface to her book Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral published in Aldgate, London in 1773. The book was published in London because publishers in Boston had refused to publish the text. Wheatley and her master's son, Nathanial Wheatley, went to London, where Selina, Countess of Huntingdon and the Earl of Dartmouth helped with the publication.
Through her poetry, Wheatley is credited with helping found African American literature.[4]
In 1778, African American poet Jupiter Hammon wrote an ode to Wheatley. Hammon never mentions himself in the poem, but it appears that in choosing Wheatley as a subject, he was acknowledging their common bond.
[edit] Style, structure, and influences on poetry
Wheatley, like most authors, wrote about what she knew or experienced. She believed that the power of poetry is immeasurable (Shields 101). John C. Shields notes that the poetry formed from her knowledge is not just a literature review of the novels she’s read but has significance to Wheatley’s personal ideas and beliefs. Shields’ writes, “Wheatley had more in mind than simple conformity. It will be shown later that her allusions to the sun god and to the goddess of the morn, always appearing as they do here in close association with her quest for poetic inspiration, are of central importance to her” (100). For example, her poem “Ode to Neptune” signifies her life in many ways. The language of the poem starts out shaky and chaotic but the mood is adventurous yet scary (reflecting much of her life experiences). By the end of the poem the language and attitude seems to generate an emotion of a calm peaceful journey that served of great importance. This poem is arranged into three stanzas of four lines in iambic tetrameter followed by a concluding couplet in iambic pentameter. The rhyme scheme is ABABCC (Shields 101). Her structure or form of the poetry depicts the tone of the writing and what the reader show gain from the poem in both a literary sense and a historical analysis.
She is known to use three different elements to create make her poetry meaningful: Christianity, classicism, and hierophantic solar worship. The use of classicism and Christianity do not only combine to make the structure of Wheatley’s work completely pagan or Christian due to a third element used in her poetry, hierophantic solar worship (Shields 103). The hierophantic solar worship is what she brought with her from Africa; this is the worship of sun gods (depicting her African culure). This idea of the sun worship is significant due to the fact that her parents were sun worshipers. This is also why she refers to the different words for sun so many times. The word “Aurora appears eight times, Apollo seven, Phoebus twelve, and Sol twice” (Shields 103). The word light is of high importance to her, because it marks her history. Therefore the significance of her writing about it alludes to the past which she has left behind. But creating these experiences for the reader gives her work an emotional appeal that captures her readers.
But remembering that the word Sun can also be written as Son is important, inflicting a pun on the son of Christ which alludes to her biblical ideas of writing (Shields 103). Other biblical references include the references to muses. While other writers throw the word heavenly around, Wheatley only uses the phrase “heav’nly muse” in two of her poems: “To a Clergy Man on the Death of his Lady” and “Isaiah LXIII” signifying her idea of the Christian deity and the biblical effects that inspire her work (Shields 102). This shows how important the biblical aspects of her work really are. But her use of classicism is what sets her work apart from others. Shield writes that, “Wheatley’s use of classicism distinguishes her work as original and unique and deserves extended treatment” (98). Classicism is the use of language that maintains the formal aspects of language but refuses the norm. Therefore, Phillis Wheatley being the first African American poet is not only an accomplishment in itself but for her to set outside the norms and find a writing style that works for her is courageous. Shield’s sums up Wheatley’s writing by saying, most of Wheatley’s poems are “contemplative and reflective rather than brilliant and shimmering” (Shields 100). Her contemplative and reflective aspects as well as her race are what set her apart.
[edit] Recognition and legacy


Phillis Wheatley statue on Commonwealth Ave. in Boston as part of the Boston Women's Memorial
With the 1774 publication of Wheatley's book Poems on Various Subjects, she "became the most famous African on the face of the earth."[6] Voltaire stated in a letter to a friend that Wheatley had proved that black people could write poetry. John Paul Jones asked a fellow officer to deliver some of his personal writings to "Phillis the African favorite of the Nine (muses) and Apollo."[6] She was also honored by many of America's founding fathers, including George Washington.
Wheatley's book is today seen as helping create the genre of African American literature.[7]
She is honored as the first African American woman to publish a book and the first to make a living[?] from her writing.[8]
Wikipedia Online Article
There is a building named in her honor at the University of Massachusetts Boston.
In 2002, scholar Molefi Kete Asante listed Phillis Wheatley on his list of 100 Greatest African Americans.[9]
Comment by Richard A. Young on February 7, 2010 at 10:16am
Richard Allen (February 14, 1760 – March 26, 1831) was a minister, educator, writer, and the founder in 1816 of the African Methodist Episcopal (AME), the first independent black denomination in the United States. He opened its first church in 1794 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He was elected the first bishop of the AME Church. Allen had started as a Methodist preacher but wanted to establish a black congregation independent of white control. The AME church is the oldest denomination among independent African-American churches.
Wikipedia Online Article
Comment by Richard A. Young on February 6, 2010 at 6:47am
Thurgood Marshall (July 2, 1908 – January 24, 1993) was an American jurist and the first African American to serve on the Supreme Court of the United States. Before becoming a judge, he was a lawyer who was best remembered for his high success rate in arguing before the Supreme Court and for the victory in Brown v. Board of Education. He was nominated to the court by President Lyndon Johnson in 1967. Marshall was born in Baltimore, Maryland on July 2, 1908, the great-grandson of a slave. His original name was Thoroughgood, but he shortened it to Thurgood in second grade because he disliked spelling it. His father, William Marshall, who was a railroad porter, instilled in him an appreciation for the Constitution of the United States and the rule of law.[2] Additionally, as a child in Baltimore, he was punished for his school misbehavior by being forced to write copies of the Constitution, which he later said piqued his interest in the document.
Wikipedia Online Article
Comment by Richard A. Young on February 5, 2010 at 7:00am
Paul LeRoy Bustill Robeson (April 9, 1898 – January 23, 1976) was an internationally renowned American bass-baritone concert singer, scholar, actor of film and stage, All-American and professional athlete, writer, multi-lingual orator and lawyer who was also noted for his wide-ranging social justice activism. A forerunner of the civil rights movement, Robeson was a trade union activist, peace activist, Phi Beta Kappa Society laureate, and a recipient of the Spingarn Medal and Stalin Peace Prize. Robeson achieved worldwide fame during his life for his artistic accomplishments, and his outspoken, radical beliefs which largely clashed with the colonial powers of Western Europe and the Jim Crow climate of the pre-civil rights United States, thus becoming a prime target during the McCarthyist era.[1][2][3][4]Despite his being one of the most internationally famous cultural figures of the first half of the 20th century, persecution by the US government and media virtually erased Robeson from mainstream US culture and subsequent interpretations of US history, including civil rights and black history.[3]
Wikipedia Online Article
 

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