Black History Month: Clarence Jordan

A little over a year ago, I picked up a paintbrush and spent nearly an entire day applying a coat of white paint to a bedroom door.  The reason it took so long was because the door kept absorbing the paint.

The door was located inside a house built by Habitat for Humanity, the well-known non-profit whose mission is to provide housing for low-income residents.  I was lucky enough to get to see the dedication of that house, now the home to a single mom and her two daughters.

Had it not been for a man named Clarence Jordan, I never would have picked up that paintbrush.

Clarence Jordan was born July 29, 1912, in Talbotton, Georgia, located between Macon and Columbus.  Growing up, he was influenced by his Southern Baptist culture but also by the values of what was called the "Social Gospel".

While a student at the University of Georgia, he went to conferences put on by the YMCA, and he became convinced that the gospel of Christianity and the cultural and racial traditions of that time didn't mix.  After he graduated from college, he went to seminary at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville.  He studied the Greek New Testament and eventually earned a doctorate.

Jordan, while in Louisville, met a man named Martin England.  England, a Northern Baptist minister, was interested in collective farming.  They both agreed that creating an interracial cooperative would both show the Christian values of harmony and virtue while helping both black and white sharecroppers.

In 1942, their idea led them to Sumter County, Georgia, and the tiny town of Americus.  (Americus is just down the road from Plains, Georgia, known as the hometown of former president Jimmy Carter.) Jordan, England, and their wives eventually founded Koinonia Farm.  "Koinonia"is a word transliterated from Greek meaning "Christian fellowship or communion".  Koinonia Farm would be a Christian community where resources would be pooled into a common treasury and all persons would be treated as equals.

The Jordans and the Englands built this community around four core beliefs:

• Treat all human beings with dignity and justice.
• Choose love over violence (pacifism).
• Share all possessions and live simply.
• Be stewards of the land. 

One of Koinonia Farm's goals was to teach local farmers--both black and white--farming techniques that they hoped would increase production and profit. By doing this, they hoped to break the cycle of poverty that entrapped so many local families.  A handful of families joined the farm, and they began growing crops and producing products that they sold to the community around them. 

Koinonia's commitment to both pacifism and racial equality, unfortunately, earned them threats, ostracism, and violence.  During the late 1940's, the farm held interracial Bible studies for their neighbors.  Because of their views on race, in 1950, the Jordans and other members of Koinonia were expelled from their church, the Rehoboth Southern Baptist Church.  

In 1954, hostility started focusing on Koinonia, and over the next several years, the farm became the target of a community boycott.  Their produce stand was shot at.  The Ku Klux Klan threatened violence unless the farm was sold.  By 1963, only four adults were left at Koinonia.  

That was the year Clarence Jordan put his Greek New Testatment knowledge to use.  He wrote and eventually published the Cotton Patch Gospel, meant to communicate the New Testament into the language of the American South.  For example, Jesus is born in Gainesville, baptizes in the Chattahoochee River, and tells people, "Come to me, all of you who are frustrated and have had a bellyful, and I will give you zest." Atlanta actor Tom Key and stage director Russell Treyz wrote a musical based on Jordan's translation of the Gospels of Matthew and John, which ran successfully off-Broadway and has had other successful productions as well.

When a new couple, Millard and Linda Fuller, arrived at Koinonia, they and the Jordans changed their focus.  They incorporated as Koinonia Partners, and in 1968, they started the Fund for Humanity.  This fund would finance the construction of adequate housing for people in need.  

If the phrase "adequate housing for people in need" sounds familiar, it should.  This is the concept behind Habitat For Humanity.  

Clarence Jordan died on October 29, 1969.  Koinonia Farms still exists today, growing and selling their products, providing guided retreats and courses, and giving its guests a place of refreshment. 

When I picked up that paintbrush to paint a door, I had no idea that I was part of a movement that came from one man's committment to treating all with dignity, choosing love, caring for the land, and living simply.  

Sources used:

Chancey, Andrew S. "Clarence Jordan: 1912-1969." New Georgia Encyclopedia: Arts and Culture: Religion
"Koinonia Farm," Blackpast.org
"Koinonia History Timeline", Koinonia Farms website
Waskey, A.J.L, "Cotton Patch Gospel." New Georgia Encyclopedia: Arts and Culture: Theater
Hatfield, Edward A, "Habitat For Humanity International." New Georgia Encyclopedia: Business and Economy: Non-Profit Organizations.

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: William Henry Seward

Look in your average American history book, and any reference you find to William Henry Seward will probably be because a) he negotiated the purchase of Alaska from Russia, and/or b) he was the Secretary of State under President Lincoln.

Few of those books would focus on Seward's abolitionists beliefs.

(For the record, I am not related to William Seward.  Seward is my married name.  My husband's grandfather Seward came from England in the early 1900's.)

William Henry Seward was born in Florida, New York, on May 16, 1801.  His father, Samuel, was the town postmaster, and he was a slaveowner.  At the time, slavery was legal in New York State; it was abolished in 1827.  Seward went to school with the children of his father's slaves and later, he said he preferred the atmosphere of the slave kitchen to that of his father's parlor.  Later, he wrote in his autobiography, "I early came to the conclusion that something was wrong with slavery and that determined me to be an abolitionist."

In 1820, he graduated from Union College.  Two years later, he was admitted to the bar.  After moving to Auburn, New York, he became a junior partner to Judge Elijah Miller.  Soon, he would also be Miller's son-in-law. He fell in love and married Miller's daughter Frances.  They both believed that slavery was wrong, and that was the core belief that brought them together.

Seward supported the rights of African-Americans and, throughout his career, stayed opposed to slavery.  He called for a gradual ending of slavery throughout the United States; his wife, however, wanted immediate abolition and emancipation of all slaves.  Both Sewards used their wealth to support the abolition movement, and they also financially supported Frederick Douglass' North Star newspaper, based in Rochester.

He served two terms as governor of New York, between 1839 and 1843, and it was during that time that he gained a national reputation as an outspoken abolitionist.  When southern states asked for fugitive slaves to be returned, Seward refused.

Seward was elected to the Senate in 1849, and his repeated statements that slavery was morally wrong angered Southerners.  While he acknowledged that, under the Constitution, slavery was legal, he denied that the Constitution recognized or protected slavery.  In 1850, he remarked that "there is a higher law than the Constitution".

During the 1850's, the Sewards used their house at Auburn, New York as a safe house for runaway slaves.  It was a deliberate act of civil disobedience.  They used two rooms in the house as hiding places.

In 1859, the Sewards helped Harriet Tubman, who led hundreds of slaves to freedom, buy seven acres of land on their property.  There, Tubman built a home where she lived until she died.

Seward's role as President Lincoln's Secretary of State is much better known.  Seward didn't like Lincoln very much at first, but as they continued to work together, Seward came to respect Lincoln and was known as Lincoln's right-hand man.  They became close friends because of their collaboration.  He worked with Lincoln on the Emancipation Proclamation, and negotiated an 1862 treaty, the Lyons-Seward Treaty, which outlined measures by which the United States and Great Britian would end the Atlantic slave trade.

Abraham Lincoln was not the only one attacked on April 15, 1865.  Lewis Powell, a confederate of John Wilkes Booth, was assigned to attack Seward as part of a plot that included killing Lincoln. Powell stabbed Seward, who was confined to bed due to a carriage accident, several times in the face and neck.  Seward carried the scars for the rest of his life.

Seward would go on to serve as Secretary of State under President Andrew Johnson.  He died on October 10, 1872.  Thus ended the life of a man whose moral opposition to slavery helped end its practice.


Sources used:

McLean, Maggie, "Frances Seward", Civil War Women
"William Henry Seward", Seward House Historic Museum

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

Manic Monday: Annnnd they're off!

Tonight is the Iowa caucus, the kickoff of the political season.  If you live there, go caucus!

This year we desperately need participation in the political process.  And in my opinion, if you don't vote, you have no right to complain about the government you get.

Just my .04, adjusted for inflation.

Black History Month: William Lloyd Garrison

"I am in earnest -- I will not equivocate -- I will not excuse -- I will not retreat a single inch -- AND I WILL BE HEARD."

With those words, on January 1, 1831, William Lloyd Garrison threw down the gauntlet.  

He opened the year of 1831 with the first issue of The Liberator, a newsletter that came out of New England.  The cause he was so earnest about, and from which he wouldn't retreat? The end of slavery.  

It is said that "the pen is mightier that the sword", and although William Lloyd Garrison wasn't using a literal pen in publishing The Liberator, his "penned" words helped fight and win the battle to end slavery in the United States.

He was born December 10, 1805 in Newburyport, Massachusetts.  When he was three, his father abandoned the family, and Garrison and his siblings were raised by his mother.  At 13, he began an apprenticeship as a writer and editor under the editor of the Newburyport Herald.  Two other attempts, at shoemaking and cabinetmaking, had ended in failure. Young Garrison's true gift lay not in physical labor, but in the use of words.

He was 20 when he finished his apprenticeship, and he bought a newspaper, renamed it the Newburyport Free Press, and started writing. The paper went out of business after six months, and Garrison then moved to Boston.  

While working as printer and editor, Garrison met Benjamin Lundy, editor of the Genius of Emancipation. Lundy was a Quaker, and he'd been raised to oppose violence and the enslavement of others.  Lundy was 19 and living in Wheeling, Virginia (now West Virginia) when he became aware of slavery's brutality, and determined to be a part of ending slavery. 

Lundy offered Garrison a job at his paper, and Garrison accepted.  The job was Garrison's initiation into the abolitionist movement.

As part of Garrison's involvement with abolition, he'd joined the American Colonization Society.  He believed, at first, that the group's goal--to have blacks move to the west coast of Africa--was a worthy cause.  But the longer he remained a member, the more he realized what the group really wanted.  They wanted fewer free slaves in the United States. Encouraging free blacks to go to Africa, Garrison concluded, would only support slavery.  

So he left the American Colonization Society and started his own paper.  That paper, The Liberator, was responsible for Garrison's reputation as an abolitionist.  His goal:  show people that slavery is immoral.  Once they see slavery is immoral, they'll join you in helping you end it.  Garrison needed plenty of help in his effort, and one source of that help was free African-Americans, who made up about 75 percent of his readers.  

Garrison paid a heavy price for his earnestness and his insistence on being heard. 

In 1833, Garrison founded the American Antislavery Society, dedicated to the cause of abolition.  But since he was a pacifist, and he wasn't willing to take political action to achieve his goals, several people left his group and formed their own organization.

On one occasion, in Boston, he was dragged through the streets and almost killed.

Someone placed a bounty of $4,000 on his head.  

In 1854, he burned a copy of the US Constitution because it allowed slavery.  He also wanted the Union to be dissolved, rather than saved; and called for the North to secede from the United States and sever all ties with the South.

But he continued to publish, and to speak, and to be heard.  Thirty-five years later, after 1,820 issues, Garrison published the final issue of The Liberator in December, 1865, proclaiming "my vocation as an abolitionist is ended".  He hadn't missed a single issue. He'd lived long enough to see the 13th Amendment passed, outlawing slavery forever.  

Garrison swore that he would not equivocate, he would not excuse, he would not retreat, and he would be heard.  

And in the end, he was.

Sources used:

Ushistory.org: William Lloyd Garrison and The Liberator

Biography.com: William Lloyd Garrison

Ohio History Central: Benjamin Lundy
Accessible Archives: The Liberator

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