Remembering Lena Horne

Lena Horne was beautiful, talented and passionate. However, most of all Lena Horne was a trailblazer. She passed away last year at the age of 92 leaving behind a legacy of a career that spanned 70 years, as noted in the CBS news clip. Horne is an incredible inspiration; she grappled with discrimination and adversity before and during the volatile Civil Rights era. However, she gracefully handled the difficulties, which helped her to persevere. Lena Horne was a pioneer. As stated in the report, she was the first African American to accomplish many achievements in the entertainment industry. It could not have been easy to pave the way. She was met with many blatant examples of discrimination and racism. Her story may be different but most definitely resonates with that of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs. Horne, along with Douglass and Jacobs, had the courage to push beyond prevalent stereotypes and misconceptions that in turn helped to redefine America. It’s unimaginable that large cities in America like Memphis, Tennessee actually cut footage of Horne from being shown to the public. To look back now, it seems ridiculous. In the past, people’s personal prejudices and ignorance affected the lives of every African American. Lena Horne was just a famous example. However, she did not let these negative forces overtake her. She joined the fight for equality and even marched in Washington D.C. in 1963. Lena Horne will be forever remembered for her beauty and elegance in her music and movies, but America must also remember her as the heroine she was as well.

Whites Only

This picture I have come across takes us back to the days that sparked the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s. This is a picture of a water fountain that can be found in many public establishments and institutions, but as you can clearly see, there is a sign is something wrong with this picture. Above this water fountain hangs a sign that reads “Whites only”. Although slavery ended with the Civil War over a century ago from this time period, African Americans faced more hardships with racism and inequalities. Segregation was very prevalent in this era; white people and black people were not allowed to eat in the same restaurants, use the same restroom, and go to school with each other. Like most people, I am somewhat befuddled on the matter of why this racism came about. I understand that the times were different, but how could people in the 1950s and 1960s overlook the facts they were harming their neighbors, brothers, and sisters? White people would not be hurt by African Americans if they drank from the same fountain: it was the sure unjust hatred that brought this about. However, this sort of discrimination could be argued to be a blessing in disguise. It is because of things that African Americans started waking up, and standing up for themselves. These bits and pieces of segregation brought African Americans together, and eventually led to the fight for their equality, and freedom, which was eventually obtained. I believe racism still exists in this world today, and we may need to work hard to eliminate it completely, but we have come a long way, and the steps we as a nation have taken are very positive.

- Jake Robinson

Emmett Till

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Emmett Louis Till was a 14 year-old African-American boy who was murdered in Mississippi after supposedly flirting with another white woman. He was from Chicago, Illinois visiting his relatives in the Mississippi Delta region when he spoke to a white woman named Carolyn Bryant, the married proprietor of a small grocery store. A few nights later, the woman’s husband and his half-brother, arrived at Till's great-uncle's house. They took him and transported him to a barn, then repeatedly beat him and gouged out one of his eyes. After torturing the boy, they shot him through the head and disposed of his body in a river, weighting it with a 70-pound cotton gin fan tied around his neck with barbed wire. His body was discovered and retrieved from the river three days later. Till was returned to Chicago and his mother insisted on a public funeral service with an open casket to show the world the brutality of the killing. Tens of thousands attended his funeral or viewed his casket and images of his mutilated body were published in black magazines and newspapers, rallying popular black support and white sympathy across the U.S. Intense scrutiny was brought to bear on the condition of black civil rights in Mississippi, with newspapers around the country critical of the state. Although initially local newspapers and law enforcement officials decried the violence against Till and called for justice, they soon began responding to national criticism by defending Mississippians, which eventually transformed into support for the killers. The trial attracted a vast amount of press attention. Bryant and Milam were released of Till's kidnapping and murder, but months later they admitted to killing him in a magazine interview. Till's murder is noted as one of the leading events that motivated the African-American Civil Rights Movement.

Uncle Tom's Cabin

Uncle Tom's Cabin is an anti-slavery novel by American author Harriet Beecher Stowe.

Published in 1852

Stowe, a Connecticut-born teacher at the Hartford Female Academy and an active abolitionist, focused the novel on the character of Uncle Tom, a long-suffering black slave around whom the stories of other characters—both fellow slaves and slave owners—revolve. The sentimental novel depicts the reality of slavery while also asserting that Christian love can overcome something as destructive as enslavement of fellow human beings.

Uncle Tom's Cabin was the best-selling novel of the 19th century, and the second best-selling book of that century, following the Bible. It is credited with helping fuel the abolitionist cause in the 1850s.In the first year after it was published, 300,000 copies of the book were sold in the United States alone. In 1855, three years after it was published, it was called "the most popular novel of our day."The impact attributed to the book is great, reinforced by a story that when Abraham Lincoln met Stowe at the start of the Civil War, Lincoln declared, "So this is the little lady who started this great war." The quote is apocryphal; it did not appear in print until 1896, and it has been argued that "The long-term durability of Lincoln's greeting as an anecdote in literary studies and Stowe scholarship can perhaps be explained in part by the desire among many contemporary intellectuals ... to affirm the role of literature as an agent of social change."

Lucy Terry

Lucy Terry (c.1730-1821) is the author of the oldest known work of literature by an African American. Terry was stolen from Africa and sold into slavery as an infant. She was owned by Ebenezer Wells of Deerfield, who allowed her to be baptized into the Christian faith at about five years of age during the Great Awakening. Her work, "Bars Fight", is a ballad about attack upon two white families by Native Americans on August 25, 1746. The attack occurred in Deerfield, Massachusetts in an area called "The Bars", which was a colonial term for a meadow. The poem was preserved orally until it was finally published in 1855.A successful free black man named Abijah Prince purchased her freedom and married her in 1756. In 1764, the Princes settled in Guilford, Vermont, where all six of their children were born.

A persuasive orator, Terry successfully negotiated a land case before the Supreme Court of Vermont in the 1790s. She argued against two of the leading lawyers in the state, (one of whom later became the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Vermont) and won her case against the false land claims of Colonel Eli Bronson. Samuel Chase, the presiding justice of the Court, said that her argument was better than he'd heard from any Vermont lawyer. Prince died in 1794. By 1803, Terry moved to nearby Sunderland. She rode on horseback annually to visit his grave until she died in 1821 on July 11.

Dred Scott (1795-1858)

Dred Scott is an African American slave born in Southampton County, Virginia. Dred's real name was Sam, but when his older brother Dred passed away, he decided to use his name. With his masters, the Blow family, he moved to different states during his life, like Illinois, Alabama or Missouri, detail that will be important to explain the turning point of his life.

Dred Scott could not manage to get freed, so in 1846 he suied his master in St. Louis Circuit Court, unsuccessfuly. However, about 4 years later, as new evidences were provided, he was allowed another appearance before the Court, and obtained freedom for him and his wife. Indeed, some of the states that they lived in with their masters prohibited slavery, making Scott's enslavement illegal. That is why in 1850, Dred Scott and his wife were given their freedom by the court.

However, two years later, their freedom was taken away, as they did not sue when they actually lived in the slavery-free states. In 1857, the Scotts appeared in Court again hoping for citizenship, but the Court ruled that African Americans had no claim to freedom or citizenship. Three months later, Scott and his wife were returned to their original owners who freed them, as they had become part of the anti-slavery movement.

Dred Scott's case was a big event that aggravated the tensions between North and South, and that for sure brought America even closer to the Civil War that was right around the corner.

Brooker T. Washington

Booker Taliaferro Washington represents the last generation of African Americans born in slavery. He was born in 1856 in the state of Virginia as a slave and was freed in 1865 as the civil war ended. After working for years in different manual jobs, Washington finally gots an education at Virginia Union University. He soon became a great and influential spokesman and leader for the black community in the United States. He believed that black citizens should temporarily abandon their fights for full civil rights and focus more on getting industrial jobs, saying that this would help the African American community get stable and be stronger to go forward in the future. For Washington, the acceptance of blacks by the white community had to go through a temporarily acceptance of discrimination and segregation. This strategy was suppose to wipe off the divisions between the two races and would leads to equal citizenship for all. These sentiments were later called the “Atlanta compromise.” Washington was received at the white house 1901 to defend his ideas. Among his generation, he was definitely the most influential spokesman.
Nonetheless, Washington encountered some opposition to this strategy in his own community. Indeed W.E.B Dubois deplored Washington's emphasis on industrial skills rather than academic development and civil rights.
I found really interesting to see how the black community did not have a common standpoint in the strategy to adopt in order for black people to achieve equal citizenship and civil rights. The personality of Washington could be related to Fredrick Douglass in that they have both been influential spokesman of the African American community.