...shared through 2022
Do you recognize the people on this page?
These are individuals we should know more about. Their amazing lives open up opportunities to explore the times in which they lived and the important issues and events of which they were a part.
Ernest Withers (1922-2007)
Ernest Columbus Withers, Sr. was an African-American photojournalist. He documented over 60 years of African-American history in the segregated Southern Unites States, with iconic images of the Montgomery bus boycott, Emmett Till, Memphis sanitation strike, Negro league baseball, and musicians including those related to Memphis blues and Memphis soul. Withers was the only photographer to fully cover the Emmett Till trial.
See trial photo below this text. Withers is in the foreground with his back to the camera.
Withers's work has been archived by the Library of Congress, slated for the permanent collection of the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of African American History and Culture, in Washington, D.C.
The Ernest Withers Museum and Collection opened in Memphis, on Beale Street, in May 2011. The Museum features images of Ernest Withers spanning the eras of his work, while the complete archive is held in an offsite location. Find out more, listen to his daughter, and view a digital collection of his work on the right.
But there's more to the story of Ernest Withers.
In 2010, it was revealed that Withers was recruited and paid by the FBI's COINTELPRO program to inform on the US Civil Rights Movement for nearly two decades, beginning shortly after his first photograph of Martin Luther King, Jr.
Here is one of the first reports of Withers' double life on PBS NewsHour. September 15, 2010
Below is a description of the material about Withers obtained via FOIA from the FBI in 2013.
(Very interesting bits highlighted)
FBI Document ReleaseWithers.docxThe New Yorker also wrote about Withers in 2010.
Below is Withers' New York Times obituary.
Learn more about Ernest Withers on the podcast, Ernie's Secret. Below is a PBS interview with its creator.
Below is a February 2019 article and interview with Preston Lauterbach, the author of Bluff City:The Secret Life of Photographer Ernest Withers.
A documentary on the life of Ernest Withers premiers on January 30, 2023.
Directed by Phil Bertelsoen
Was he a friend of the civil rights community, an enemy -- or both?
The New Museum New York CIty
Faith Ringgold: American People
2/17/22 - 6/5/2022
"Artist, author, educator, and organizer, Faith Ringgold is one of the most influential cultural figures of her generation, with a career linking the multi-disciplinary practices of the Harlem Renaissance to the political art of young Black artists working today. For sixty years, Ringgold has drawn from both personal autobiography and collective histories to both document her life as an artist and mother and to amplify the struggles for social justice and equity. From creating some of the most indelible artworks of the civil rights era to challenging accepted hierarchies of art versus craft through her experimental story quilts, Faith Ringgold has produced a body of work that bears witness to the complexity of the American experience." -- Description from the New Museum
She just made the TIME 100 List of the most influential people in 2022.
You can see more of her work and a little more biography HERE.
This 2020 article from the New York Times (below) contains images of a number of her works.
For lots of information on her beautiful quilts, check out That's Not Your Story: Faith Ringgold Publishing on Cloth by Jessica Hemmings.
Click HERE
Parse Journal, Summer 2020
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Below, "Faith Ringgold Has All the Answers" from Interview, February 17, 2022. Eighteen artists, writers, musicians, actors, and filmmakers ask her a range of questions, which she answered at her home in New Jersey, with the help of her older daughter, the writer and activist Michele Wallace.
Jackie Robinson (1919-1972)
We think we know him.... but there's more to know
April 15, 2022 was the 75th anniversary of Jackie Robinson's Major League Baseball debut with the Brooklyn Dodgers.
Jackie Robinson Again _ The New Yorker.pdfRoger Angell (New Yorker, 2013) shares a memory, above.
FOR MORE ... Ken Burns released a documentary, Jackie Robinson, in 2016. Below is the trailer. The entire film is viewable if you have GBH Passport.
Below is a series of clips from the Ken Burns documentary.
Lewis H. Latimer (1848-1928)
Engineer, inventor, highly accomplished African-American pioneer in the field of electricity, Lewis Howard Latimer worked closely with inventors Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas Edison to help bring about the 20th century's technological revolution.
His own inventions include an evaporative air conditioner, an improved process for manufacturing carbon filaments for light bulbs, and an improved toilet system for railroad cars.
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Ever determined to make something of his life, Latimer was, as he himself said, "unconquered and unconquerable." Lewis Latimer died on December 11, 1928 in Flushing, Queens but was buried in Fall River, Massachusetts.
The UMass Amherst collection of the Papers of W.E.B. DuBois contains this obituary, drafted for print in the Crisis . Click HERE to view the PDF.
For more details about his life, check the out his Wikipedia entry (HERE).
Click HERE for a 1995 New York Times article about Latimer, PLAYING IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD: JAMAICA; An Inventor Who Kept Lights Burning.
Click the graphic above to access the webpage for the Lewis Latimer House Museum in Flushing, Queens.
Watch the video below to learn more.
Here is a cool video, part of a YouTube series- Coach Spivey Science - hosted by a Black father and son team whose goal is to share Black accomplishments in the sciences.
Click on the graphic above to watch the February 17, 2022, PBS NewsHour segment on Constance Baker Motley.
(6:04)
Constance Baker Motley (1921-2005)
The first Black woman appointed to the federal judiciary and the first to argue before the Supreme Court
Randall Kennedy in conversation with Tomiko Brown-Nagin about her recently published book, Civil Rights Queen: Constance Baker Motley and the Struggle for Equality
Harvard Bookstore January 31, 2022
A series of videos from a long interview with Constance Baker Motley (date unknown).
From the National Visionary Leadership (NVLP), a resource for oral history interviews with African American elders who shaped the 20th century.
"Fear, as a Black Lawyer (4:01)
Click the graphic above to access Constance Baker Motley: Judiciary's Unsung Rights Here from the website of the United States Courts. (February 20, 2020)
For additional Motley videos from the NVLP, click on the titles below:
My Inspiration to Be a Lawyer (5:55)
Brown v. Board of Education (4:28)
The March on Washington (5:03)
Defining Myself (2:02)
Edmonia Lewis (1844 - 1907)
Click on the graphic (above) to read an August 22, 2019, article about Edmonia Lewis from the Smithsonian Magazine.
"As the first African American and Native American sculptor to earn international recognition, Edmonia Lewis challenged social barriers and assumptions about artists in mid-19th century America," ... US Postal Service
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The video below is an interesting look at Edmonia Lewis, with a focus on what is perhaps, her best known sculpture, now at the Smithsonian.
The Death of Cleopatra.
(13:57)
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In July 25, 2018, the New York Times included an obituary of Lewis in their series Overlooked (left).
For a PDF of the New Yorker article above, click HERE.
Josephine Baker (1906-1975)
Recently in the news, Josephine Baker is someone most of us know as an American-born entertainer who spent much of her adult life in France.
On December 5, CBS Sunday Morning ran an informative piece on Baker (below) that provides more about her life, while highlighting her recent honor: Induction into the French Pantheon.
(6:19)
Leon F. Litwack (1929-2021)
An author and professor of history at UC Berkeley for more than 40 years
" The amount of information imparted in the classroom is less important than than the dialogue we begin with our students, in which we engage them in that elusive pursuit of truth, wherever it may lead, in which, as Mark Twain once suggested in defining education, we guide them along 'the path from cocky ignorance to miserable uncertainty.'"
Click HERE to read an extensive Litwack interview conducted as part of the American Social History Project / Center for Media and Learning (Graduate Center, CUNY) and the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and the New Media (George Mason University) -- History Matters Webpage, Great History Teachers. The interview was conducted by Roy Rosenzweig in January 2001.
Litwack's Pulitzer Prize winning book, Been in the Storm So Long: The Aftermath of Slavery (1979), is a great read.
Above: Curator tour of the MassArt installation, Valkyrie Mumbet. Portuguese artist Joana Vasconcelos created this monumental installation as part of her Valkyries series, which pays homage to inspiring women. Vasconecelos, in her first U.S. solo show, chose to honor Elizabeth "Mumbet" Freeman. (5:25)
Right: The Massachusetts Historical Society provides a brief introduction to Elizabeth Freeman.
Elizabeth "Mumbet" Freeman (ca. 1742 - 1829)
The Trustees created the clip above that takes you to the places she called home. (6:46)
A website - https://elizabethfreeman.mumbet.com/ - contains a great deal of material about Elizabeth Freeman, as well as the Sedgwick family and other people and events associated with her life. One of the more interesting sections describes her experience at the time of Shay's Rebellion (August 1786–February 1787):
Ann Lowe (1898 - 1981)
Hidden Figures: Ann Lowe (23/29)
Sensei Aishitemasu tells Ann Lowe's story as a part of her Hidden Figures series of YouTube clips. (5:49)
The New Yorker, March 29, 2021, by Judith Thurman
This article describes Ann Lowe's life, highlights a number of her her creations, and incorporates the story of Elizabeth Keckley, a Black seamstress Mary Todd Lincoln hired as her personal "modiste."
You can access the article directly by clicking on the graphic above or read the PDF here.
Who designed Jacqueline Bouvier's wedding dress ?
"F0llowing the wedding, Lowe did not get the credit she deserved, despite the clamor for who designed the gown. Reportedly, when Kennedy was asked who made her wedding gown, she originally responded, "a colored dressmaker did it." Lowe remained relatively obscured from name recognition from that point, regardless of her ongoing working relationship with the First Lady."
Access the New York Times article or view the PDF below.
Melvin Van Peebles, Champion of New Black Cinema, Dies at 89 - The New York Times.pdfMelvin Van Peebles ( 1932-2021)
The recent IndieWire article, above, includes the trailer for Van Peebles' [1967] feature film debut. For more on the film, click HERE. It is available to stream on Fandor. The New Yorker article says the film is available on Amazon and Kanopy but it doesn't seem to be available on either. Perhaps more streaming services will pick up his films as a result of his re-emergence in the news. Meanwhile, Criterion has released a box set with four of his best known films, including this one, HERE.
Access the article directly above or view the pdf below:
Labor Day is a good time to remember the Black women who fought for labor rights - The Washington Post.pdfNannie Helen Burroughs (1879-1961)
Access the article directly above or view the pdf below:
Nannie Helen Burroughs, told she was too Black to be a teacher, started her own D.C. school - The Washington Post.pdfFrom the New Yorker (above), a closer look at Bob Moses, and an interesting idea he was promoting towards the end of his life -- an idea he called "constitutional citizenship," a key aspect of which would be a new constitutional amendment establishing a federal guarantee of a high-quality education."
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And, from John Biewen and Chenjerai Kumanyika of Scene on Radio, an episode about Freedom Summer (Mississippi, 1964), that includes an interview with Bob Moses. Click on the photo (right) then scroll down to listen.
