Black History Month - Page 4

Black History Month: Audre Lorde

By Leah Asmelash “Black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet.” That’s how Audre Lorde famously introduced herself. Her career as a teacher and a writer spanned decades and though she died almost 30 years ago, much of the work she left behind is still cherished and quoted today. Born to immigrant parents from Grenada, Lorde was raised in Manhattan and published her first poem while still in high school. She served as a librarian in New York public schools before her first book of poetry was published in 1968. In her work, she called out racism and homophobia and chronicled her own

A spacecraft named for ‘Hidden Figures’ mathematician Katherine Johnson has arrived on the International Space Station

By Harmeet Kaur, CNN A spacecraft named for the famed NASA mathematician Katherine Johnson has arrived at the International Space Station with about 8,000 pounds of cargo in tow. The S.S. Katherine Johnson, a Northrop Grumman Cygnus resupply spacecraft, launched on Saturday from a NASA facility in Virginia and made it to the space station early Monday morning. It carries a massive amount of science and research, crew supplies and vehicle hardware that will assist researchers there in numerous investigations. The spacecraft will support experiments that are exploring treatments to restore vision to those with retinal degenerative diseases, why astronauts

Black women’s roles in the civil rights movement have been understated — but that’s changing

Analysis by Brandon Tensley and Skylar Mitchell, CNN Video by Deborah Brunswick, Janelle Gonzalez, Abby Phillip, Jeff Simon and Cassie Spodak Claudette Colvin did a revolutionary act nearly 10 months before Rosa Parks. In March 1955, the 15-year-old was arrested for refusing to give up her seat to a White person on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama. The teenager and others challenged the law in court. But civil rights leaders, pointing to circumstances in Colvin’s personal life, thought that Parks would be the better representative of the movement. “People said I was crazy,” Colvin recently told CNN’s Abby Phillip. “Because

Black History Month: Ella Baker

By John Blake She played a major role in three of the biggest groups of the civil rights movement, but Ella Baker somehow still remains largely unknown outside activist circles. Baker grew up in North Carolina, where her grandmother’s stories about life under slavery inspired her passion for social justice. As an adult, she became an organizer within the NAACP and helped co-found the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the organization that the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. led. She also helped found the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). For her efforts, Baker has been called the “mother of the civil

Black History Month: Fritz Pollard

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By Amir Vera The son of a boxer, Fritz Pollard (1894-1986) had grit in his veins. At 5 feet, 9 inches and 165 pounds, he was small for football. But that didn’t stop him from bulldozing barriers on and off the field. Pollard attended Brown University, where he majored in chemistry and played halfback on the football team. He was the school’s first Black player and led Brown to the 1916 Rose Bowl, although porters refused to serve him on the team’s train trip to California. After serving in the Army during World War I, he joined the Akron Pros

Congress is again discussing reparations for slavery.

By Harmeet Kaur, CNN Slavery reparations are back in the national spotlight. A House Judiciary subcommittee held a hearing this week to discuss establishing a federal commission that would explore how the US government might compensate the descendants of enslaved Americans. And though the White House press secretary declined to say whether President Joe Biden would sign legislation to develop reparations for slavery, she did say he supported a study on the matter. Lawmakers have been advocating for a federal effort to study slavery reparations for more than 30 years now — to no avail. But since the widespread protests

Black History Month: Gil Scott-Heron

By Harmeet Kaur Gil Scott-Heron (1949-2011) was a New York City poet, activist, musician, social critic and spoken-word performer whose songs in the ‘70s helped lay the foundation for rap music. Whether you realize it or not, you’ve probably come across one of his poetic turns of phrase. Some have called Scott-Heron the “godfather of rap,” though he was always reluctant to embrace that title. Still, the imprint he left on the genre – and music, more broadly – is unmistakable. His work has been sampled, referenced or reinterpreted by Common, Drake, Kanye West, Kendrick Lamar, Jamie xx, LCD Soundsystem

The Black church is having a moment

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By John Blake, CNN The Rev. Jemar Tisby describes himself as a “theological mutt.” He was baptized in a Southern Baptist church, joined a White nondenominational congregation and spent much of his time attending Catholic schools. But once he attended a small Black Baptist church in the Mississippi Delta, he found a home. Located in a former warehouse, the church had concrete floors, metal folding chairs for pews and an elderly congregation of only about 12 people. What they lacked in size, though, they made up for in spiritual fervor. When members of the congregation began to “feel the spirit,”

The late Marsha P. Johnson is celebrated today as a veteran of the Stonewall Inn protests

By Harmeet Kaur The late Marsha P. Johnson is celebrated today as a veteran of the Stonewall Inn protests, a pioneering transgender activist and a pivotal figure in the gay liberation movement. Monuments to her life are planned in New York City and her hometown of Elizabeth, New Jersey. During her lifetime (1945-1992), though, she wasn’t always treated with the same dignity. When police raided the New York gay bar known as the Stonewall Inn in 1969, Johnson was said to be among the first to resist them. The next year, she marched in the city’s first Gay Pride demonstration.

White violence and Black protests during the 1918 flu have a lesson for today

By Kristen Rogers, CNN Adella Bond fired her revolver outside her window into the South Philadelphia air, hoping to attract police as a mob of Irish American people gathered around her home to tell her she wasn’t welcome. Bond, a Black woman who was a municipal court probation officer, knew that racial conflicts unfolded in neighborhoods that had once belonged to only White people but were beginning to house Black people as they migrated from the South to the North during the Great Migration, said Kenneth Finkel, a professor in the department of history at Temple University in Philadelphia, and

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