1. The Black Panthers were birth like any revolution out of a necessity for change.
2. The symbolism of the Panther wasn’t just because black is beautiful.
3. In 1966, at Merritt College, Huey P. Newton & Bobby Seale created The Black Panthers.
4. After the Watts Riots of 1965, and inspired by Robert Williams’ Negroes with Guns, the organization’s intentions were to empower the black community.
5. And they did so in congruence with the law.
6. But as the law would have it…
7. But this was still a telling moment as to how politically powerful the Panthers were even at an early stage.
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8.
But the Panthers forged forward because this was about protecting their communities, even though they were facing the unchecked police.
9. The Panthers were considered to be a terrorist organization though.
10. And then things changed.
11. And 2 days after MLK’s assassination, the Panthers’ first recruit Bobby Hutton was gunned down. He was 17yo.
Let’s not forget about these trailblazing women this Black History Month.
Shirley Chisolm (1924–2005)
Chisolm broke major barriers when she became the first black congresswoman in 1968. She continued on her political track when she ran for president four years later, making her the first major-party black candidate to run.
Claudette Colvin (1939-)
Several months before Rosa Parks’ refusal to give up her seat on a bus, Colvin was the FIRST person arrested for resisting bus segregation in Montgomery, Alabama, at the age of 15.
Septima Poinsette Clark (1898–1987)
Clark was an educator and civil rights activist who established citizenship schools that helped many African Americans register to vote. Regarded as a pioneer in grassroots citizenship education, she was active with the NAACP in getting more black teachers hired in the South.
Mary Church Terrell (1863–1954)
This women’s suffrage activist and journalist was the first president of the National Association of Colored Women and a charter member of the NAACP. She was also one of the first African American women to be awarded a college degree.
Angela Davis (1944-)
Davis is an American revolutionary and educator. The former Black Panther has fought for race, class and gender equality over the years.
Ida B. Wells-Barnett (1862-1931)
Wells helped bring international attention to the horrors of lynching in the South with her investigative journalism. She was also elected as the Secretary of the Colored Press Association in 1889.
Kathleen Cleaver (1945-)
Kathleen Cleaver is one of the central figures in Black Panther history. She was the first communications secretary for the organization and is currently a law professor at Emory University. She also helped found the Human Rights Research Fund.
Dr. Dorothy Height (1912-2010)
Dr. Height was regarded by President Barack Obama as “the godmother of the Civil Rights Movement.” She served as the president of the National Council of Negro Women for over two decades and was instrumental in the integration of all YWCA centers in 1946.
Phillis Wheatley (1753-1784)
Wheatley was a former slave who was kidnapped from West Africa and brought to America. She was bought by a Boston family and became their personal servant. With the aid of the family, she learned to read and eventually became one of the first women to publish a book of poetry in 1773.
Audre Lorde (1934-1992)
This Caribbean-American writer and activist was a self-described “black, lesbian, mother, warrior and poet.” She empowered her readers with her moving poetry often tackling the injustices of racism, sexism and homophobia. She’s known for her poetry and memoirs such as, From a Land Where Other People Live,The Black Unicorn and A Burst of Light.
Flo Kennedy (1916-2000)
Kennedy was a founding member of the National Organization of Women and one of the first black female lawyers to graduate from Columbia Law School.
Marsha P. Johnson (1945-1992)
Johnson was an outspoken and fearless trans woman who was a vital part in the fight for civil rights for the LGBT community in New York. She was known as the patron at Stonewall Inn who initiated resistance on the night the police raided the bar.
Sojourner Truth (1797-1883)
Born Isabella Baumfree, she escaped slavery with her infant daughter and changed her name to Sojourner Truth. She’s best known for her speech delivered at the Ohio Women’s Rights Convention in 1851 titled “Ain’t I A Woman?”
Fannie Lou Hamer (1917-1977)
Hamer was a civil rights activist and organizer of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee Fannie Lou Hamer
Dr. Mary McLeod Bethune (1875-1955)
Dr. Bethune was an educator and civil rights activist who believed education was the key to racial advancement. She served as the president of the National Association of Colored Women and founded the National Council of Negro Women.
Gwendolyn Brooks (1917-2000)
This poet was the first African American to win a Pulitzer Prize for her 1949 book titled Annie Allen.
Bessie Coleman (1892-1926)
Coleman became the first black woman to earn a pilot’s license and the first black woman to stage a public flight in the United States
Lena Horne (1917-2010)
Horne was a popular actress and singer who was most known for her performances in the films “Stormy Weather” and “The Wiz.” She worked closely with civil rights groups and refused to play roles that stereotyped black women.
Wilma Rudolph (1940-1994)
Nicknamed “the black gazelle,” Rudolph was born premature and was stricken with polio as a child. Though her doctor said she would never be able to walk without her brace, she went on to become a track star. She became the first American woman to win three gold medals at a single Olympics in 1960.
Billie Holiday (1915-1959)
Holiday was an extremely influential jazz vocalist who was known for her “distinctive phrasing and expressive, sometimes melancholy voice.” Two of her most famous songs are “God Bless the Child” and “Strange Fruit,” a heart-wrenching ballad about blacks being lynched in the South.
Diane Nash (1938-)
Nash is a founding member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. She was instrumental in organizing the Freedom Rides, which helped desegregate interstate buses in the South.
Zora Neale Hurston (1891-1960)
Hurston was an anthropologist and author during the Harlem Renaissance. Though she didn’t receive much recognition for her work while she was alive, her works of fiction, especially Their Eyes Were Watching God, became staples in American literature.
Hattie McDaniel (1893-1952)
As an actress, McDaniel appeared in more than 300 films and was the first African American to win an Oscar in 1940. She was also the star of the CBS Radio program, “The Beulah Show.”
Ruby Bridges (1954-)
Ruby Bridges was six years old when she became the first black child to integrate an all-white school in the South. She was escorted to class by her mother and U.S. marshals due to violent mobs outside of the Mississippi school.
Charlayne Hunter-Gault (1942-)
Hunter-Gault was the first black woman to enroll at the University of Georgia. She became an award-winning journalist after she graduated and worked for outlets such as the New York Times, PBS and NPR.
Daisy Bates (1914-1999)
As a civil rights activist and journalist, Bates documented the fight to end segregation in Arkansas. Along with her husband, she ran a weekly black newspaper and became the president of the Arkansas chapter of the NAACP.
Dr. Mae Jemison (1956-)
Dr. Jemison is the first black woman to be admitted into the astronaut training program and fly into space in 1987. Jemison also developed and participated in research projects on the Hepatitis B vaccine and rabies.
Ella Baker (1903-1986)
Baker was the national director for the NAACP. She also worked with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. As one of the leading figures in the civil rights movement, Baker is known for her leadership style which helped develop others’ skills to become leaders in the fight for a better future.
Let’s not forget about these trailblazing women this Black History Month.
One of the most fascinating figures of the 18th century was the Chevalier de Saint-Georges, a composer, violinist, fencing champion and military hero whose fame spanned continents. That he was black, born in 1745 to a white planter and his slave mistress in Guadeloupe, not only shaped his life in France but has fed a growing interest in him today.
Though Saint-Georges’s life reads like a Hollywood screenplay, it was his musical talent that most interested Gabriel Banat, a concert violinist and musicologist whose biography, “The Chevalier de Saint-Georges: Virtuoso of the Sword and the Bow,” was published by Pendragon Press in 2006.
“He’s not a Mozart, but his innovative violin technique makes him a bridge between Italian virtuosos like Vivaldi and Locatelli and Beethoven in his violin writing,” Mr. Banat said in an interview in his home here. “He did a lot for the violin in bringing Italian virtuoso technique to the great masters.”
Saint-Georges, who died in 1799, wrote 14 violin concertos, 8 symphony concertantes and 5 operas, among other works.
Now retired, Mr. Banat, 81, has spent years researching and writing about Saint-Georges, who made music in the court of Marie Antoinette and went on to lead a regiment of black soldiers in the French Revolution.
This is one of the best essays I have ever read on this topic – a topic I usually see dredged up by assholes trying to either derail discussions or argue slavery was not about race -_-
Theroot.com in general is just a first class site for awesome history essays. I have yet to read anything not well researched or well cited.
Let’s not forget to acknowledge Alexandre Dumas this Black History Month
The writer of two of the most well known stories worldwide, The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo was a black man.
That’s excellence.
Let’s not forget that he was played on screen by a white man. And the fact that he was black is barely ever mentioned or the book he wrote inspired by his experiences.
