Black History Month - Page 4

Black History Month: Bayard Rustin

By John Blake Bayard Rustin (1912-1987) overcame prejudice on multiple levels to become a key ally of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and one of the most important civil rights leaders of the 20th century. An openly gay Black man during the Jim Crow era, Rustin was arrested for having sex with men at a time when homosexuality was widely considered a form of mental illness. He served more than two years in federal prison for refusing to fight in World War II because of his pacifist Quaker beliefs. But it was Rustin’s connection with King that became perhaps the

University of Tennessee, Knoxville, renames 2 dorms for Black civil rights leaders

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By Amir Vera and Jamiel Lynch, CNN Two dorms at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, will now bear the names of two Black civil rights leaders in the state “whose fight for equity and social justice transformed the state’s higher education system and the university,” according to a news release from the school. The dorms will be named after Rita Sanders Geier, a Memphis native, and Theotis Robinson of Knoxville. Robinson is known as the first Black undergraduate student admitted to the university and one of the three Black students to fully desegregate the university in 1961. Geier is known

BLACK HISTORY MONTH: SADIE TANNER MOSSELL ALEXANDER

By Simret Aklilu To say that Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander shattered multiple glass ceilings is an understatement. The Philadelphia native was the first Black person in the nation to earn a Ph.D. in economics in 1921. Three years later, she earned a law degree and went on to become the first Black woman to pass the Pennsylvania bar and practice law in the state. Alexander accomplished all this while often facing bitter acts of racial prejudice. As a first-year undergraduate at the University of Pennsylvania, she was told she couldn’t check books out of the school library. A dean at

More than 160 Confederate symbols came down in 2020, SPLC says

By Harmeet Kaur, CNN More than 160 Confederate symbols came down last year after the killing of George Floyd prompted a nationwide reckoning with racism. That count comes from the Southern Poverty Law Center, which released new figures Tuesday as part of an update to a report that tracks public symbols associated with the Confederacy across the nation. The Alabama-based civil rights advocacy group reported that 168 Confederate symbols were renamed or removed from public spaces in 2020, including one marker in Arizona that was stolen. That number refers not only to statues, flags and monuments but also city seals,

Black History Month: Howard Thurman

By John Blake He was a shy man who didn’t lead marches or give dramatic speeches. But Howard Thurman was a spiritual genius who transformed history. Thurman was a pastor and professor and mystic whose groundbreaking book, “Jesus and the Disinherited,” was a condemnation of a form of Christianity which Thurman said was far too often “on the side of the strong and the powerful against the weak and oppressed.” The book revolutionized the traditional portrait of Jesus and had a profound influence on the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s faith and activism. Born in Florida during the “nadir” of

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

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