Black History Month: Claudette Colvin

In Montgomery, Alabama, a bus driver ordered a black passenger to give up her seat to a white rider.

She said, "No."

The bus driver had her arrested and taken off the bus.

You know the rest of the story.

No, you don't.

Not in this case.

The date was March 2, 1955, and the rider who refused to move was Claudette Colvin, a 15-year-old girl.  She was born in Montgomery, Alabama, on September 5, 1939.

When Colvin was ordered to move, she told the bus driver, "It's my constitutional right to sit here.  I paid my fare."

For that, she was handcuffed, dragged off the bus, and taken to an adult jail, where she spent several hours until her parents came.  She was terrified.  She didn't know what white people would do to her. She was charged with disorderly conduct, defying the segregation law, and assault and battery.

Her minister came and paid her bail, and after Claudette came home, her father sat up all night with a shotgun, fearful of reprisals from the KKK.  One can only imagine the level of tension and fear in the house; jumping at every creak, every rustle of a leaf in the yard.  In 1955, in the South, the Colvins had good reason to be afraid.

When Colvin went back to school, some students applauded her for her courage.  Others thought she'd made it harder for them.  She lost most of her friends, because their parents said that Colvin was "crazy" and "an extremist".

Rather than just sit by quietly, Colvin wanted to fight.  She talked to Fred Gray, who was one of two African-American lawyers in Montgomery.  When Gray talked with Colvin, he was ready to file a lawsuit.  But after discussing her case with other community leaders, they decided to wait.  Colvin was young, she didn't have civil rights training, and the community wasn't quite ready for her situation.

Right about that time, Colvin became pregnant out of wedlock.  The community felt that Colvin's image as a young, unwed mother would attract too much negative attention.

But African-Americans didn't have to wait very long for the event that would challenge Montgomery's segregationist laws.  Nine months later, on December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks was arrested for the same "crime" that Claudette Colvin had committed.

Colvin said that she understood why the NACCP chose Rosa Parks to challenge the law.  "They thought I would be too militant for them.  They wanted someone mild and genteel like Rosa."

Colvin paid a legal and personal price for her actions on that Montgomery bus.  While she pled not guilty to the charges against her, the court found her guilty and gave her probation.  She was labeled as a troublemaker, and she eventually dropped out of college.  And her reputation made it impossible for her to find work.

She ended up moving to New York City, where she worked in Manhattan as a nurse's aide in a nursing home.  In 2004, she retired.

Recently, she said, "It's good to see some of the fruit of my labor . . . I don't mind being named, as long as we have someone out there to tell our story."

Fred Gray, her attorney, also credited Colvin with giving everyone "moral courage.  If she had not done what she did, I am not sure that we would have been able to mount the support for Mrs. Parks," he said in an interview with Newsweek.

Fred Gray, along with Charles D. Langford, became the lawyers that filed Browder v. Gayle, the federal lawsuit that would eventually end segregation on city buses in Montgomery, Alabama.  Four plaintiffs were involved in that case.

Fred Gray's star witness?

Claudette Colvin.

Rosa Parks sat down for the civil rights movement.  But Claudette Colvin opened the way for her to do it.

Sources used:

"Claudette Colvin," Biography.com website
"Before Rosa Parks, A Teenager Defied Segregation On An Alabama Bus," NPR.org

Black History Month: Howard Thurman

Howard Thurman had no more money.  He had spent every penny he had buying a train ticket to Jacksonville, Florida, and he'd just been told that he'd have to pay extra to ship his trunk.  The schools in his hometown, Daytona Beach, Florida, only went to the seventh grade, and if he wanted to go to high school, he had to go to Jacksonville.

He sat down on the steps and began to cry.  A black man, dressed in overalls, saw him, walked over, and paid the charges.

He never introduced himself.

When Howard Thurman published his autobiography, With Head and Heart, he dedicated it "to the stranger in the railroad station in Daytona Beach who restored my broken dream sixty-five years ago."

Perhaps, if that stranger had not happened by and been moved to pay for Howard Thurman's baggage, we would never have heard the "I Have a Dream" speech in 1963.

Howard Thurman was born in Daytona Beach, Florida, on November 18, 1899, and raised by his grandmother, who was a former slave.  After high school, he went on to Atlanta's Morehouse College, where he graduated in 1923 as valedictorian.  From there, he attended Rochester Theological Seminary, graduating in 1926.  His first church was Mount Zion Baptist in Oberlin, Ohio.

Thurman, in January, 1929, left his pastorate and studied at Haverford College.  There, he encountered the Quaker theologian Rufus Jones, who led the Fellowship of Reconciliation, a group that was both pacifist and interracial.  While studying with Jones, Thurman became aware of the need to cultivate a personal relationship with God.  Thurman's time at Haverford started him on his path that would emphasize activism rooted in faith, guided by spirit, and maintained in peace.  He described his time with Jones as the watershed event of his life.  But where Jones thought in a global sense, Thurman thought locally.  He asked the question, "How can we manage the carking fear of the white man's power and not be defeated by our own rage and hatred?"

He began exploring these issues, and three years later, he wrote an essay titled, "Peace Tactics and a Racial Minority."  In this essay, he wrote of a white America who had the "will to dominate and control the Negro minority", which gave blacks a hatred that was spiritually crippling.  Perhaps, he suggested, a "technique of relaxation" may break the cycle.

In 1935-36, Thurman led a delegation of African-Americans to South Asia, where they met the great Mohandas Ghandi.  Ghandi, in his discussions with Thurman, asked, did Christianity have the power to overcome white racism? He pointed out that Hindu principles gave his countrymen a basis for their nonviolence resistance to British power.  Couldn't Christianity do the same for African-Americans?

Thurman pondered that question in the years that followed.  He began to combine what he had learned from Ghandi about nonviolence with what he'd learned from Jones about one's personal relationship with God, and infused his learning with a religious sense of protest against race-based segregation.

In 1944, Thurman went to San Francisco and helped found the Church for the Fellowship of All Peoples.  It was the first congregation in the United States that was fully integrated and multi-cultural.  "Do not be silent," he encouraged its members.  "There is no limit to the power that may be released through you."

Thurman's 1949 book, Jesus and the Disinherited, was a foundational work for a nonviolent civil rights movement.  He interpreted the basic goal of Jesus' life as helping the disinherited people of the world change from within so that they could survive in the face of oppression.  He wrote that a love rooted in the "deep river of faith" would help people overcome persecution.

In 1953, Thurman became the dean of Marsh Chapel, located at Boston University.  He taught classes and preached sermons that inspired students who were committed to social justice, and who would later lead and participate in the Civil Rights movement.

One of the students he inspired was a fellow Morehouse man who'd come to Boston to earn a doctoral degree.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Thurman served as Marsh Chapel's dean for twelve years.  During that time, he ministered to over 30,000 people from a variety of faiths and nationalities.  He retired from Boston University in 1965, and then founded the Howard Thurman Educational Trust.  The Trust would provide funding for college students in need.  He continued to write and speak until his death, eventually authoring 21 books.  He died on April 10, 1981.

In his book, Footprints of a Dream, Thurman wrote, "The movement of the Spirit of God in the hearts of men often calls them to act against the spirit of their times or causes them to anticipate a spirit which is yet in the making.  In a moment of dedication, they are given wisdom and courage to dare a deed that challenges and to kindle a hope that inspires."

Perhaps it was the movement of the spirit of God that gave an anonymous man the wisdom to "dare a deed", and pay the freight charges for a young boy, so that the boy's hope would be kindled and thus inspire others, including those that would lead the fight for civil rights.

Sources used:

Stefon, Matt, "Howard Thurman : American Theologican and Scholar," Encyclopaedia Britannica Online
"This Far By Faith: People of Faith: Howard Thurman," PBS.org website
"About Dr. Thurman," Boston University, Howard Thurman Center for Common Ground, website.

Black History Month: Phillis Wheatley

When she was 14, she published her first book of poetry.

Before that, she learned Latin and Greek, theology, and ancient history; as well as mythology and literature.

Did I mention that her poetry book was published in 1773, and that the author was a slave?

Her name was Phillis Wheatley.  We don't know the actual date or place of her birth, only that she was probably born in Senegal/Gambia about 1753.  Some biographers think that she may have been a Fula, a Muslim people who read Arabic.  In 1761, she was likely kidnapped and taken into slavery. She arrived in Boston, Massachusetts that year on a slave slip called "The Phillis".  There, she was bought by a couple, John and Susannah Wheatley, and became Susannah's personal servant.  They gave her a new name, Phillis Wheatley.  Her first name came from the ship that brought her to Boston; her last name became that of her owners.

I can only imagine what thoughts this little girl was having.  She was around seven or eight years old, taken from her native land, probably chained in the ship's hold--or, at the least, transported in horrible circumstances--then hauled up onto an auction block, inspected, eyed, ogled, and finally, after the words, "Going once, going twice, sold!", delivered into the hands of a master.  She had no idea how he was going to treat her.  Would he whip her?  Rape her?

Apparently, John and Susannah saw something in this young girl.  The Wheatley's daughter Mary began teaching her English, and Phillis learned very quickly.  Less than a year and a half later, she was reading difficult passages in the Bible.  She started studying Latin and English literature when she was 12.

For a white, male 12-year-old, these would be major accomplishments.  For a white, female, 12-year-old, it would be unheard of.  For a 12-year-old female slave?  Impossible!

Except it wasn't.

Wheatley started writing poetry.  When she was around 13, the Newport Mercury published her first poem, about two men who nearly drowned at sea.  As she grew up, her owners would show her off to their friends, who called her a "lively and brilliant conversationalist".  While the Wheatleys appreciated her and her talents, Phillis Wheatley would never be considered their social equal.  She was a privileged slave, but still a slave.  The white world gave Wheatley her "place" in that society.

When Wheatley was 20, her owners sent her and their son Nathaniel to England.  She wrote a poem to Mrs. Wheatley:  "Susannah mourns, not can I bear,/ To see the crystal shower, /Or mark the tender falling tear, /At sad departure's hour."  The lines show Phillis' affection for her mistress.  

While Wheatley was in England, she published her first and only book of poetry, "Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral," and dedicated it to her English patron, Selina Hastings, Countess of Huntingdon.  The volume included a statement from John Wheatley and a preface where 17 prominent Bostonians, including John Hancock, said that she, indeed, had written the included poems.

When Phillis Wheatley published her book of poems, she became the first African-American and first American slave to publish poetry, and only the third American woman to do so.  She continued to write after her book was published.  She wrote several poems honoring George Washington, and sent one of them to him in 1775.  He invited her to visit him at his headquarters, she accepted, and visited him in 1776.  

Although Wheatley's poetry won her fame, she faced serious struggles in her later life.  She suffered from poor health all her life, and one of the reasons she traveled to London was to be treated for her health problems.  But she had to return from London in 1774 due to the death of Susannah Wheatley. Susannah's husband John died just four years later.  And when the Revolutionary War broke out, it took front and center stage in the United States, and because her patrons had British connections, that made it impossible for them to support and promote her poetry.  Wheatley, ultimately, was unable to publish another collection of her poems.  

Wheatley became a free woman upon the death of her masters.  She eventually married John Peters and had three children.  While she continued to write poetry, she lived in poverty, and all three of her children died in infancy.  She was around 31 when she died in Boston, on December 5, 1784.

Phillis Wheatley has been criticized for adopting a "white voice" and abandoning her own race.  But she had to walk the line between her feelings, her patrons, her readers, and the God in whom she strongly believed.  Alice Walker, among other African-American feminist poets, claims Phillis Wheatley as an inspiration.

Her slavery was tragic, and so was her life after slavery.  And her history as a slave was a unique one, one not experienced by the vast majority of slaves.  But she used her position to write and to publish, and thus secured for herself a special place in African-American history.

Sources used:

"Phillis Wheatley", Biography.com
Virginia Commonwealth University, Ann Woodlief's Web Study Texts, "On Phillis Wheatley".

Black History Month: Debi Thomas

Sadly, Debi Thomas has been in the news lately for being broke and unemployed.

Which is a shame, given her accomplishments as figure skater and doctor.

Debra Janine Thomas was born in Poughkeepsie, New York, on March 25, 1967.  When she was five years old, she strapped on a pair of ice skates and started skating.   By the time she was nine, she was taking formal lessons and winning skating competitions.  When she was ten years old, Alex McGowan became her coach, and he was responsible for shaping her career as she headed for the Olympic Games.

Judges often discriminated against Thomas when scoring her routines, giving higher scores to skaters with skills not as impressive.  But she kept going.  At 12, in the national novice finals, she won the silver medal.

Thomas kept skating and studying.  In February, 1986--while studying engineering at Stanford University--she won the US Figure Skating Championships, becoming the first African-American to do so.  Shortly afterwards, she won the world figure skating championship--again, the first African-American to do so.

She won the US Championships again in 1988 and was favored to win a gold medal at the Winter Olympics that year.  Thomas and and figure skater Katarina Witt, from East Germany, both used the music from the opera Carmen in their long program, leading the sports media to dub Thomas' and Witt's rivalry the "Battle of the Carmens".  Thomas, unfortunately, lost that battle to Witt.  Witt won the gold medal; Thomas, the bronze.  Thomas' bronze medal was the first earned by any African-American, male or female, in a Winter Olympics; a fact that the sports media seemed to gloss over.

Thomas had gotten married just a few days before the Olympics in 1988.  The newly married skater went on to earn her bachelor's from Stanford in 1991.  The next year, she retired from skating and entered medical school at Northwestern University.  When she graduated in 1997, she decided to become an orthopedic surgeon.  Over the next years, she did a residency at Charles R. Drew University in Los Angeles, and received a fellowship at the Dorr Arthritis Institute, located in Inglewood.

She opened her own practice in Virginia in 2010, doing knee and hip replacements.

As a skater, Thomas received much recognition, being inducted into the U.S. Figure Skating Hall of Fame in 2000, and being a representative for the U.S. Olympic Committee at the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City.  She also supported several charities, such as the Make-A-Wish Foundation.

So what happened?  What went wrong?

Her first marriage ended in divorce, Thomas said, because he "felt lost" in the middle of her fame.  A second marriage also ended in divorce, and she lost custody of her son from that marriage.

As a doctor, she lost two jobs, then opened up her own practice.  The second divorce caused her to lose her savings, and forced her to close her private practice.

Thomas' struggles are not uncommon for athletes and others who were once in the spotlight.  Any athlete needs not only physical strength and conditioning, but mental toughness as well.  Debi Thomas had both during her years in figure skating.  If she can summon up the mental toughness she had in those days, chances are that she can once again come out on top.

Sources used:

McRady, Rachel, "Olympic Figure Skater Debi Thomas Reveals She's Broke, Jobless," Us Magazine, November 9, 2015
"Debi Thomas," Biography.com website.
Capretto, Lisa, "How an Olympic Icon Ended Up Living In A Bug-Infested Trailer," Huffington Post website, November 6, 2015

Black History Month: Dominique Dawes

Dominique Dawes got her first piece of fan mail when she was 11 years old.  She'd been competing as a gymnast for about a year.

During her career as a gymnast, she didn't realize the impact she was making among young African-American girls.

She does now.  In a 2008 interview, she said, "I compare it to -- of course, it's not as big of a deal, but -- Tiger playing golf or the Williams sisters in tennis.  Being there on that stage and having young girls see a diverse team is what allows that sport to be seen as an opportunity for them because they see Tiger, or Venus, or me or someone who looks like them finding success."

Dominique Dawes got one thing wrong in that interview.

It is as big of a deal.

Dominique Margaux Dawes was born on November 20, 1976, in Silver Spring, Maryland.  (Just four months previously, Nadia Comaneci had wowed the world with the first perfect scores in Olympic gymnastics history.)  She started taking gymnastics lessons when she was six years old.  The woman who coached her, Kelli Hill, remained Dawes' coach for her entire career.  Dawes says of her coach, "I wouldn't be where I am without her support and guidance . . . She made me focus on the things I had control of and everything else was just put aside in a stack -- everything from how to judges felt about me to the temperature of the gym.  She was very big on instilling that lesson."

Dawes, at nine, would write "determination" on her mirror to prepare herself for her meets.  That attitude paid off as she moved upward in the world of gymnastics.

In 1988, she was the first African-American to make the US woman's national gymnastics team. Then four years later -- just five years after her very first gymnastics meet -- she and Betty Okino became the first African-American women to compete in the Olympic Games for the United States. She took home a bronze team medal.

Two years later, at the National Championships, Dawes was the first woman in 25 years to "sweep the board". She won the all-around and all four individual events (balance beam, uneven bars, vault, and floor exercise.)  That accomplishment helped name her "Sportsperson of the Year" by USA Gymnastics.

She competed in the Olympics again, in 1996, as part of the "Magnificent Seven" team that won the gold medal, the first US women's gymnastics team to do so.  But during the all-around competition, a fall and a step out of bounds cost Dawes the chance to win an individual medal there.  She rebounded during the individual floor exercise event, however, and ended up winning the bronze medal.  It was the first individual gymnastics medal won by an African-American woman.

Four years later, in Sydney, Dawes again competed as part of the American team.  The team finished fourth.  Ten years later, though, after an investigation, the US team was moved up to third place when a Chinese gymnast was found to be underage.  The Chinese had won the team bronze in 2000.  When the Chinese had to give up the bronze medal, the medals went to the United States team . . . which meant that Dominique Dawes became the first gymnast to belong to three separate medal-winning gymnastics teams.

Dawes retired from gymnastics after the 2000 Olympics.  Since then, she's been a motivational speaker and appeared on Broadway in the musical Grease.  She married teacher Jeff Thompson in 2013 and, in 2014, they had a baby girl.

Dawes will not rest on her laurels.  She says, "If you're just like, 'Hey, I won a gold medal and I have three Olympics under my belt and I broke down barriers,' and you do nothing else, it means nothing."

"Not as big of a deal"?

Not a chance!

Sources used:

Buckheit, Mary, "Catching Up With Dominique Dawes," ESPN.com, February 27, 2008 
"Dominique Dawes", Biography.com
Wilson, Stephen, "Former US Olympian Dominique Dawes Gets Medal 10 Years Later," Christian Science Monitor online, April 30, 2010.
 "Newly Catholic Dominique Dawes Is Expecting a Baby Girl," Belly Itch Blog, February 8, 2014.

Black History Month: Betty Okino

When Betty Okino's coaches asked her if she understood Romanian, Betty answered, "Of course."

Big mistake.

From then on, her coaches started speaking in Hungarian, so Betty couldn't tell the other girls what they were saying.

Okino's coaches were Marta and Bela Karolyi, famous for training Nadia Comaneci and Mary Lou Retton, both of whom were Olympic all-around champions in women's gymnastics.

Elizabeth Anna "Betty" Okino, the daughter of a Ugandan father and Romanian mother, was born in Kampala, Uganda, on June 4, 1975. She came to the United States when she was three and, at first, was a competitive dancer. She began gymnastics at the age of nine, which is late in gymnastics circles. Her dance training served her well, though, and four years later, she was competing at the junior elite level.

In 1991, she won the American Cup competition, and she also won two medals at the World Championship--a bronze medal on the balance beam and a silver medal with her teammates. Undoubtedly, this contributed to her being selected to the Olympic gymnastics team in 1992. Okino and gymnast Dominque Dawes were the first African-American girls to be on an Olympic gymnastics team.

Six weeks before the Olympics, Okino fractured her back. She describes this as "quite literally the battle of good vs. evil". Would she give up, or would she hold on to her dream?

She chose the latter. In Barcelona, Spain, site of the 1992 Olympics, she won a bronze team medal, competed in the finals of the balance beam, and placed 12th in the all-around. Okino has described herself as being "tired and drained" by the time she got there. Despite her exhaustion, though, she was grateful for representing the United States at the Olympics.

The Code of Points, the handbook that is used by gymnastics judges, contains two skills--a triple pirouette on the balance beam and a dismount from the uneven bars--named the "Okino", after Betty. It is a type of fame achieved by very few gymnasts.

Okino retired from gymnastics after the Olympics and acted in several TV series. Today, she is married to Jacob Daniel DeVere, and together, they have pursued their interests in art, film and music. She can be found at One Drop Within the Wave, her website. 

In 2012, twenty years after Betty Okino's performance in Barcelona, the world watched as Gabrielle Douglas became the first African-American to win the all-around Olympic gold medal in women's gymnastics. Betty Okino deserves part of the credit for opening the door for her.

Sources used:

"Rewind: Interview with Betty Okino," Triple Twist Gym Blog, January 14, 2014

Hersh, Phil, "For Moves, Local Gymnast Special," July 18, 1990
"Betty Okino biography", Internet Movie Database

Black History Month: Robert Smalls

"Pass the Planter."

The cry from the sentinel at Fort Sumter was the response Robert Smalls had been hoping for.  He put the Planter, a Confederate steamboat, in motion and headed straight for the ships that blockaded the coast.  The first ship that saw the Planter, the USS Onward, almost fired.

Then they saw the white flag.

Robert Smalls had just executed perhaps the most daring escape of the Civil War.  He'd swiped a Confederate ship, hundreds of rounds of ammunition, Howitzer guns, other weapons, and seventeen slaves, among them his own wife and children -- and did it all right under the noses of the Confederacy.

Smalls was born in 1839 in Beaufort, South Carolina, the son of a black slave and a white man.  As a child, his mother, a house slave, sent her son into the fields to experience true slavery.  She wanted her son to see the inhumanity of slavery, and she succeeded.  That experience gave him the spirit he would need to later escape to freedom.

Smalls was sent to Charleston when he was 12.  He learned to sail, and proved himself a capable and worthy seafarer.  Slowly, he earned the trust of his slave masters.  When he was assigned to steer the Planter, an armed Confederate steamship, he began thinking of his escape plan.  He knew the waterways, and he knew the signals that the Planter's whistle would give.  Now, all he needed was the chance.

It came on the night of May 12, 1862.  The three white officers in charge of the Planter, instead of spending the night aboard the ship, decided to stay on shore instead.  Smalls, and eight other crewmen, were left aboard.  When Smalls told them his plan, most of them decided to go with him.

Remembering a remark a fellow crewman had made -- "Boy, you look 'jes like de captain" -- Smalls put on the jacket and straw hat of the ship's captain and set out on his journey.  They made one stop, at a nearby wharf, to pick up other slaves, including Smalls' wife and children.  If caught, Smalls matter-of-factly stated to his wife, he'd be shot.

But the Planter was passed, and when it reached the USS Onward, the now-free slaves broke into celebration, singing, dancing, and laughing.  When Smalls met the captain of the Onward, he commented, "I thought the Planter might be of some use to Uncle Abe."

After the Civil War ended, he returned to South Carolina and bought his former owner's house.  He then began several business ventures, including a store, a school for black children, and a newspaper. Smalls also began a political career that culminated in his serving for five terms in the US House of Representatives.

Smalls once stated, "My race needs no special defense, for the past history of them in this country proves them to be equal of any people anywhere.  All they need is an equal chance in the battle of life."

Robert Smalls' courage and ingenuity proves the truth of his statement.



Sources used:

White, Micah, "Black History Unsung Heroes: Robert Smalls." Biography.com
Roberts, Blain and Kytle, Ethan, "Robert Small's Great Escape," New York Times website, May 12, 2012
"Smalls, Robert, 1839-1915," United States House of Representatives, History, Art and Archives

Black History Month: Marshall Keeble

If you are not a member or former member of the Churches of Christ, you've probably never heard of Marshall Keeble.

Come to think of it, if you're a member of the Churches of Christ, you may not have heard of Marshall Keeble.

You should, no matter whether you are or are not part of Churches of Christ.

Marshall Keeble was born near Murphreesboro, Tennessee, on December 7, 1878, the son of former slaves. When he died on April 20, 1968, it was estimated that he'd baptized an estimated 40,000 people.

He and his family moved to Nashville when Keeble was four.  He went to school until the 7th grade, and then went to work at a soap factory.

At 17, Keeble was baptized at the Gay Street Christian Church.  Two years later--after marrying Minnie Womack, a minister's daughter--he began to preach at the Jackson Street Church of Christ.  In 1914,  he decided to devote himself exclusively to preaching.  He traveled to brush-arbors, tents, barns, church buildings, and wherever else people would listen to the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  Not only did he go throughout the United States, he also made several trips to Nigeria.  Keeble's 1962 autobiography was abtly titled, From Mule Back to Super Jet with the Gospel.

Around 1920, A.B. Burton, friend, a fellow Church of Christ member, and founded of the Life and Casuality Insurance Company, started financing Keeble's work.  A website dedicated to the history of the Restoration Movement (which birthed the Churches of Christ), says that "The Bible and Burton gave Keeble the ability to make the world a better place."

Not only did Keeble preach, he also debated many from other religious groups.  He tackled the subjects of baptism, foot-washing, the Lord's Supper, miracles, the Holy Spirit, the Church, the Sabbath, and probably many, many other subjects.  It's said that after Keeble's debate opponents faced Keeble, they all retired from the debating arena and never came back for a second try.

Keeble's marriage to Minnie Womack lasted until her death in 1932.  They had five children; sadly, all of them died before Keeble did.  Two children died in infancy, one was electrocuted at ten, a daughter died in 1935, and their last child died in 1964.  Keeble married again, to Laura Johnson, in 1934.

Keeble was criticized for being "too accomodating" to the white people that supported him.  He encouraged Christian blacks to "turn the other cheek", but didn't ask for similar Christian behavior from whites.  He did preach to mixed groups, and when doing so, would reserve "whites-only" seating.  There were whites who embraced Keeble because he came across as "knowing his place" in society and in the church.

On the other hand, Keeble did address discrimination when he trained ministers at the Nashville Christian Institute.  And he mentored two people who became leaders in the American Civil Rights movement:  Fred Gray, who later defended Rosa Parks; and Floyd Rose, a minister who also advocated for civil rights.

When he died, over 3,000 people, both black and white, attended his funeral.

In 2000, the Christian Chronicle, a newspaper covering issues in Churches of Christ, named Marshall Keeble their "Person of the Decade" for the years 1940-1940.

There are transcripts and recordings still available of Keeble's sermons.  Those who go looking for them will find a picture of a passionate man of God who devoted his life to telling others about the Jesus he loved.


Sources used:

"Marshall Keeble, 1878-1968," Restoration History
"Marshall Keeble," Tennessee Encyclopedia of History and Culture

Black History Month: Benjamin Banneker

Silvo A. Bendini's biography of Benjamin Banneker was titled The Life of Benjamin Banneker: The First African-American Man of Science.  Fewer true words could be spoken about Bendini's subject.

Benjamin Banneker, a free black man, was born November 9, 1731, in Ellicott's Mills, Maryland. His parents, Robert and Mary Banneker, were also free blacks.  Robert had purchased his freedom, and Mary was the daughter of a freed slave and an English woman.

While Banneker was largely self-taught, he enrolled in a Quaker school as a young man.  He was especially gifted in mathematics, and soon grew beyond what his teacher could teach him--to the point that Banneker would make up his own math problems in order to solve them.

A watch marked a turning point in young Banneker's life.  He was so fascinated with a watch owned by a friend of the family, Josef Levi, that Mr. Levi gave him the watch to keep and told him how it worked.  Banneker kept taking the watch apart and putting it bck together.  Then, he borrowed a book on geometry and a book on Isaac Newton's laws of motion.  It took him two years, but he eventually finished a hand-carved wooden clock. It reportedly kept perfect time for the next thirty years.

Banneker also grew fascinated with the stars and astronomy.  His talents caught the eye of a family in the Baltimore area, the Ellicots, who loaned Banneker books on astronomy and other areas of study. In 1791, a member of the family hired Banneker to help survey territory for the city that would eventually become Washington, D.C.  His job included working in the observatory tent recording the movements of the stars.  Unfortunately, Banneker suddenly became ill after only three months.

He later gained attention from the almanacs he published between 1792 and 1797.  The almanacs contained his astronomical calculations, opinion articles, some literature, and information on the tides--the latter being very useful to fishermen.

While Banneker was publishing his almanacs, he also carried on a correspondence with then-Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson.  Jefferson was a slaveholder, but Banneker thought that he would be open to seeing African Americans as more that just slaves.  So he wrote to Jefferson, saying that he was a free man "of the African race" and also acknowleging that he was taking a risk by writing to him, given "the almost general prejudice and prepossession which is so prevalent in the world against those of my complexion."  He then gently criticized Jefferson and others for enslaving people like him while, at the same time, fighting for their own independence.  Banneker hoped in his letter to encourage Jefferson to "readily embrace every opportunity to eradicate that train of absurd and false ideas and opinions which so generally prevail with respect to us."  Enclosed with the letter was a handwritten almanac for 1792.

Jefferson wrote back, telling Banneker that he'd sent his almanace to the secretary of the French Academy of Sciences because he "considered it as a document to which your whole colour had a right for their justification against the doubts which have been entertained of them."  In 1793, Banneker published his letter to Jefferson, and Jefferson's response, in his almanac for that year.

Banneker died on October 9, 1806, shortly after his usual morning walk.  Two days later, during Banneker's funeral, his house caught on fire and burned, destroying nearly everything, including the wooden clock he'd so painstakingly assembled.  Had Banneker's nephew not given a copy of Banneker's astronomical journal to the Ellicott family, we would probably have no record of his life.

Next time you hear a story about a Ron McNair (of the Challenger mission), a Mae Jemison, or any other African-American inventor or scientist, pause a moment and give thanks for Benjamin Banneker, who pointed the way.

Sources used:

The Black Inventor On-Line Museum, "Inventor: Benjamin Banneker."
"Benjamin Banneker," Biography.com

Black History Month: Mae Jemison

Mae Jemison may have decided to become an astronaut because of . . . pus.

When Mae was a little girl, she got a splinter in her thumb, and the thumb became infected. She showed the thumb to her mother, who explained that that yellow stuff that was in her wound was pus.
"What's that?" Mae wondered.

Because her mother encouraged her to find out the answer for herself, she ended up doing an entire project on pus.

That curiosity and determination to learn answers molded her into engineer, doctor, and then the first African-American woman in space.

Mae Jemison was born in Decatur, Alabama on October 17, 1956, the daughter of a roofer/carpenter and an elementary school teacher. When she was three, her family moved to Chicago.  She grew up in an atmopshere where she was supported and encouraged, as shown by how her mother handled the question about pus.

Jemison showed a talent not only for science but also for dance. In fact, during her childhood, she wanted to be a professional dancer. As she got older, she decided to become a biochemical engineer, and when she graduated from high school in 1973, she went to Stanford University.

Jemison was 16 when she went away to school. Only later did she realize that there were any issues associated with her being so young or with her parents being confident enough to send her so far away from home. She also had professors who were uncomfortable with a young black woman being in their classes. Even with that, though, she found her time at Stanford to be "wonderful and very positive" and believes that her not-so-positive experiences there made her a better person.

After graduating from Stanford, Jemison went on to Cornell Medical College. She earned her degree in 1981 and then joined the Peace Corps. Over the next few years, she traveled to places such as Cuba and Kenya and Thailand, giving medical care to those who needed it. She later served as a Peace Corps medical officer in Sierra Leone and Liberia.

So how and why did Mae Jemison make the leap from engineer and doctor to the astronaut program?

Because of Lieutenant Uhura.

Mae Jemison is a child of the '60's, and she was fascinated by the role Nichelle Nichols played in Star Trek as communications officer. Jemison says that "images show us possibilities", and that image, of a black woman involved in a scientific pursuit, planted a dream inside her to go into space.

She got her chance on June 4, 1987, the day she was admitted into the astronaut training program as its first African-American woman. Had the Challenger not blown up the previous year, she would have been admitted sooner. Her training earned her the title of "science mission specialist", responsible for conducting scientific experiments on the space shuttle.

Five years after beginning her training, on September 12, 1992, Mae Jemison sat at the top of the space shuttle Endeavour and listened as NASA counted down, "Five . . . four . . . three . . . two . . . one . . . and, liftoff!" That liftoff put her into history as the first African-American woman to go into space.

Before that liftoff, she telephoned Nichelle Nichols and thanked her for inspiring her to become an astronaut, and then promised her that, during her time in space, she'd do something that fans of Star Trek would appreciate. She began each shift with the words, "Hailing frequencies open," the line Lieutenant Uhura used in her duties as the fictional USS Enterprise's communication officer. She spent eight days in space, conducting experiments on weightlessness and motion sickness on the crew and on herself as well.

Jemison left NASA in 1993. Since then, she's taught at Dartmouth and Cornell Universities, and she's formed her own consulting company, the Jemison Group, which researches and develops advanced technologies. And she's traveled around the United States speaking about her experiences as astronaut and scientist.

And it all happened because a little girl who was curious about her infected finger was encouraged to go find out the answer.

Sources used:

"Dr. Mae Jemison interview," Scholastic.com
"Mae C. Jemison", Biography.com
Katz, Jesse. "Shooting Star: Former Astronaut Mae Jemison Brings Her Message Down to Earth." Stanford Today, July/August, 1996.
Greene, Nick. "Mae Jemison: First African-American Woman Astronaut." About.com

Black History Month: Charles Drew

Let's clear up one myth right now:  Charles Drew, a black man, did not die because a white hospital refused to treat him.

It's understandable how such a story got started, because in 1950, the year he died, the South was still under the thumb of Jim Crow, and Charles Drew died in North Carolina.

There is an irony to his death, but it's not that he, a black doctor, was refused treatment at a white hospital.  It is that he, the man that helped in developing blood banks, who performed research into blood transfusions, was unable to be helped by his own work.

Before we talk about the end of his life, let's review the life he lived.

Charles Richard Drew, the son of a carpet layer, was born on June 3, 1904, in Washington, D.C.  He grew up in Foggy Bottom, a Washington neighborhood now mostly occupied by the campus of George Washington University.

As a child and later, as a high school student, Drew excelled as an athlete.  He swam, played football, basketball, and other sports.  He graduated from Dunbar High school in 1922, and his talent and athletic accomplishments earned him a scholarship to Amherst College.  At Amherst, he played football and ran track, which earned him the Mossman trophy as "the man who contributed the most to athletics for four years".

He wanted to become a doctor, but did not have the money to pursue medical studies.  So he went to Baltimore and joined the faculty of Morgan State College (now Morgan State University).  For two years, he taught biology and worked as a coach, passing on his knowledge to his students in the classroom and on the athletic fields.

In 1928, he applied to medical school and began his studies in Montreal, at McGill University. During the five years Drew attended medical school, he joined Omega Psi Phi, became an Alpha Omega Alpha Scholar, and won the J. Francis Williams Fellowship, the result of a exam given to the top five students in his graduating class.  When Drew graduated from McGill in 1933, he was number two in his graduating class.

Drew taught pathology at Howard University, then became an instructor in surgery and assistant surgeon at Freedman's Hospital, which was associated with Howard.  In 1938, he received a Rockefeller fellowship in surgery and started post-graduate work at Columbia University, which awarded him a Doctor of Science in Surgery.

Dr. Charles Drew is mainly associated with the area of blood storage and blood transfusion.  What sparked his interest?  It may have been during his years at McGill, where he saved a man's life by giving him a blood transfusion.  In a child's biography of Dr. Drew that I read years ago, the author said that as Drew watched his blood flow out, he saw that "his blood wasn't black.  It was red."  He then told the people doing the transfusion: "Take all you need.  Beans make good blood."

Whether it was that event, or other events, or just something that made him think, Drew began study of techniques of preserving blood.  He learned that when you separated blood plasma (the liquid part of blood, which is a pale amber color) from whole blood (where red blood cells exist), and then refrigerate them separately, you could combine them for a blood transfusion up to a week later. Blood, prior to this, couldn't be stored for more than two days because red blood cells break down rapidly.  Drew also learned that while people have different blood types, we all have the same type of plasma.  This is why you can donate plasma to someone with a different blood type than yours.

Drew's work and research resulted in the following:  his doctoral thesis, entitled "Banked Blood", and a blood bank at Columbia University.  He became the first African American to receive a Doctor of Medical Science degree from Columbia.

His work came just in time.  With World War II on the horizon, never before had there been such a vital need for blood and blood preservation.

World War II began on September 1, 1939, with Germany's invasion of Poland.  Twenty-eight days later, Drew married Lenore Robbins.  They would go on to have four children.  Not long after his marriage, Drew, because he was the authority in the field of preserving blood, became the director of the Blood for Britian project.  He was the supervisor of the Blood Transfusion Association of New York City, and as part of his job, he provided plasma to Britian's blood bank.

Later, Drew was named as a project director for the American Red Cross, the one organization that the US and the world associates with the collection of blood. 

But, despite the fact that blood is red no matter who it comes from, the War Department ordered that blood be segregated. Blood from white donors would be separated from that of black donors. d Cross but soon resigned his post after the United States War Department issued a directive that blood taken from White donors should be segregated from that of Black donors.  Later, the military said that blood taken from African Americans could be used--but only for African-American soldiers.

Charles Drew was outraged.  And so, in the face of the racism of the military, he resigned his post after only a few months.  

Between 1942 and 1950, Drew built a career for himself as surgeon and instructor.  He headed Howard University's Department of Surgery and was Chief of Surgery at Freedmen's Hospital; later becoming the hospital's chief of staff and medical director.  

He received numerous honors and accolades:  
--An honorary degree of Doctor of Science from Virginia State College and Amherst College
--Fellow of the International College of Surgeons
--The E.S. Jones Award for research in medical science
--The first African-American to be appointed an examiner by the American Board of Surgery
--Surgical consultant for the US Army's European theatre

In 1948, the NAACP awarded Drew its Spingarn Medal for outstanding achievement by an African-American. His work in blood plasma earned him this honor. (Neurosurgeon Ben Carson is also a recipient of this award.) 

Charles Drew died at the age of 45, as the result of an automobile accident in North Carolina. He, and three resident doctors from Howard University, were traveling to Tuskegee, Alabama to give a lecture.  Apparently, Drew fell asleep at the wheel.  The car ran off the road, he was thrown from the car, and the vehicle rolled over him.  His leg was nearly severed, and he sustained massive chest injuries, brain damage, a broken neck, and blood flow to his heart was completely blocked.  

He was raced to a nearby hospital in Burlington, North Carolina, but it was too late.   According to one website, Drew did receive a blood transfusion, but he was beyond medical help by that time. After Drew's death, his family wrote to the doctors that tried and failed to save his life, expressing their appreciation for their help.


In the biography of Drew I read as a child, the author said that Drew had gotten a new pair of shoes right before the trip to Tuskegee.  He never got to wear those shoes.  He was buried in them.

Almost immediately, the rumors started:  "They took him to a whites-only hospital and the hospital wouldn't give him a blood transfusion."  The TV show MASH repeated that rumor on one episode, and probably helped to perpetuate the story.  Given the circumstances of 1950, and the location of Drew's accident--North Carolina, the South, where segregation ruled--it was a story that very likely could have been true.  Drew, as stated above, did have an experience with racism when he briefly worked with the Red Cross, and no doubt, he suffered more experiences of racism throughout his life. The circumstances of his death are tragic enough without adding a layer of rumor on top of them.

It is because of Dr. Charles Drew that I was able to donate plasma to someone who had cancer and needed the plasma badly.  It's because of him that the term "blood bank" entered the American lexicon.  Because of his blood storage techniques, countless lives over the years have been saved, including that of my minister.

One slogan that is used in encouraging blood donation is "give the gift of life".  We all can do that, thanks to Charles Drew.




Sources used:

Jim Crow Museum, Question Of the Month: The Truth About the Death of Charles Drew (hosted by Ferris State University)
Biography.com: Charles Drew Biography - Doctor, Surgeon
Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science - About Dr. Charles R. Drew
Omega Psi Phi, Official Website: Famous Omega Men, Science
The Black Inventor On-Line Museum: Charles Drew

Black History Month: Off the Beaten Path

Tomorrow is the beginning of Black History Month, or African-American History Month.

Quick, name me a famous African-American!

Odds are, you just said Martin Luther King.  Or Barack Obama.  Or the name of an African-American in the entertainment industry, or in professional athletics.

I want to change that.  I want you to think of some other people, not necessarily the "go-to" people we think of when we think of famous African-Americans.  Several years ago, I thought about what I would do if I were a teacher during Black History Month.  What I decided I'd do was to give my students two assignments:

1. Research and write about a famous or accomplished African-American.  You may not write about any of the following:
a. Martin Luther King or any member of the King family.
b. Barack Obama or any member of the Obama family.
c. Any professional athlete.
d. Anyone in the film, TV, or music business.

2. Research and write about whites who were active in either the abolitionist movement or the Civil Rights movement.

The reason for the first assignment?  To give my students an idea of African-Americans that are famous or accomplished and who are not sports, entertainment, or athletic stars; or who are not Martin Luther King or Barack Obama.

The reason for the second assignment?  To show my students that white people are not necessarily "the enemy" when it comes to black people.

I'm not a teacher, so I can't give that assignment.  But I am a writer, and I asked myself:  why not write up a series of blog posts about this very subject?

So this month, I will be writing a series of posts going "off the beaten path", as it were, profiling some African-Americans that aren't as well known as Martin Luther King, or Barack Obama.  I'll be talking about scientists, amateur athletes, preachers, and other such people.  I'll also be writing about white people who sided with African-Americans in their struggle for freedom.

At the end of the month, I'm sure I will have learned a great deal.

I hope you will, too.

Just my .04, adjusted for inflation.