Black History Month - Page 5

7 National Parks Showcasing Untold Black History Stories

Courtesy of NPCA, National parks preserve the legacies of visionaries such as Martin Luther King Jr., Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass and Booker T. Washington, as well as landmark sites in the struggle for equality, including the Brown v. Board of Education and Little Rock Central High School National Historic Sites and dozens of Civil War battlefields where soldiers fought and died to end slavery and preserve the union. Yet many other lesser-known parks share compelling and unexpected stories. Here are seven fascinating but less obvious places to learn about Black history. Note that many of these sites are temporarily closed

MLB honors Black baseball legends with art for history month

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By Sydney N. Walton Major League Baseball celebrated Black History Month this year by merging America’s favorite pastime with art. The MLB commissioned 10 artists to celebrate the careers of legendary Black baseball players, in an effort to “honor the past and current game changers in baseball,” said Barbara McHugh, MLB’s senior vice president of marketing. “We also wanted to use this as a moment to really get visibility to some of the future cultural game changers,” McHugh told CNN. The players honored this past month include: Jackie Robinson, who played for the Brooklyn Dodgers from 1947-1956; Hank Aaron, who

C.T. Vivian’s Memoir Honors Civil Rights and Nonviolence

By Nicole Chavez, CNN Standing on the steps of a courthouse, the Rev. Cordy Tindell “C.T.” Vivian pleaded for the right of every person to vote with “verbal jabs” when a sheriff literally jabbed him, beating and knocking him to the ground. The Baptist minister and director of national affiliates for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) had led a group of people to register to vote in Selma, Alabama, on February 16, 1965. In his posthumous memoir, “It’s in the Action: Memories of a Nonviolent Warrior,” the civil rights leader recalled the infamous showdown with the sheriff that blocked

NASA HQ Renamed to Honor Trailblazer Mary Jackson

By Shirin Ali and Melissa Gray, CNN The name of Mary Jackson, NASA’s first African American female engineer and one of the barrier-breaking inspirations for the book “Hidden Figures,” will officially adorn the space agency’s Washington, DC, headquarters Friday. NASA announced its decision last year to name the building in Jackson’s honor. Members of her family, including granddaughter Wanda Jackson, are expected to be at Friday’s renaming ceremony along with Acting NASA Administrator Steve Jurczyk, the agency announced. Jackson died in 2005 at the age of 83. The renaming ceremony is scheduled for 1 p.m. ET and will air live

Bayard Rustin: Gay Civil Rights Leader Behind MLK’s Dream

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

UT Knoxville Dorms Renamed 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

Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander: Trailblazing Civil Rights Icon

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

168 Confederate Symbols Removed in 2020 After Protests

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,

Howard Thurman: Spiritual Leader Who Shaped MLK

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

Audre Lorde: Black Lesbian Poet Who Shaped Feminism

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

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