Erika Hayes James, will lead the Goizueta Business School as the next dean.James became the first black woman named dean at a top-twenty business school.
Official Black History Month Thread (2015)
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Erika Hayes James, will lead the Goizueta Business School as the next dean.James became the first black woman named dean at a top-twenty business school.
Queen Candace Of Meroe -
In the kingdom of Kush (called Ethiopia by classical authors), particularly during the Meroitic period, women played prominent roles in affairs of the state, occupying positions of power and prestige, the natural outgrowth of which was the development of a line of queens. Unlike the queens of Egypt who derived power from their husbands, the Queens of Kush were independent rulers, to the extent that it was often thought that Meroe never had a king. Four of these queens—Amanerinas, Amanishakhete, Nawidemak and Maleqereabar—became distinctively known as Candaces, a corruption of the word Kentake.
The word is a transcription of the Meroitic ktke or kdke, which means "queen mother. " All royal consorts were by definition Kdkes. The queen mother played two important roles, which ensured the line of succession and also consolidated her power. She played a prominent role in the choice and coronation of the new king and, unique to Meroitic society, she officially adopted her daughter-in-law. Basically, some of the traits of the matriarchs of Meroe correspond to those of the queen mother in matrilineal societies in other parts of Africa.
What little is known of the Candaces was learned primarily from Roman sources and more recently from excavations, iconography, and inscriptions on monuments. Classical writers have attested to their power and leadership. One of them is mentioned in the Acts of the Apostles (8:28-39) where, on the road from Jerusalem to Gaza, Philip converted "an Ethiopian eunuch, a court official of the Candace, that is, the queen of the Ethiopians, in charge of her entire treasury..." Pliny, who provided valuable details of the great city of Meroe, which have been borne out by subsequent excavations, states that, "The queens of the country bore the name Candace, a title that had passed from queen to queen for many years."
The Candaces have repeatedly appeared in the writings of classical authors. Pseudo-Callisthenes recounted that Alexander visited Candace, Queen of Meroe. Legend has it that she would not let him enter Ethiopia and warned him not to despise them because they were black for "We are whiter and brighter in our souls than the whitest of you." Strabo, in his report of the military clash between the Romans and the Ethiopians, describes a Candace, probably Amanerinas, as "a masculine sort of woman, blind in one eye." This incident purportedly brought Kush onto the stage of world history: After Petronius' punitive invasion of Napata, the Candace waited until most of his troops went off to another campaign and attacked the Romans. Petronius returned and a standoff ensued between the two armies until the Ethiopian ambassadors were allowed to negotiate a peace treaty with Augustus Caesar. The tribute exacted from the Meroites was renounced and a border was demarcated between Roman territory and the kingdom of Kush.
We know that, for a period of 1250 years (ending in 350 CE), the kingdom of Kush flourished as a unique civilization which, beneath an Egyptian façade, remained profoundly African; and that the title of Candace existed for 500 years. However, without a concerted effort in archaeology and a breakthrough in deciphering the Meroitic script, the world will never know the true glory of the kingdom of Kush and the magnificence of the Candaces.
In the kingdom of Kush (called Ethiopia by classical authors), particularly during the Meroitic period, women played prominent roles in affairs of the state, occupying positions of power and prestige, the natural outgrowth of which was the development of a line of queens. Unlike the queens of Egypt who derived power from their husbands, the Queens of Kush were independent rulers, to the extent that it was often thought that Meroe never had a king. Four of these queens—Amanerinas, Amanishakhete, Nawidemak and Maleqereabar—became distinctively known as Candaces, a corruption of the word Kentake.
The word is a transcription of the Meroitic ktke or kdke, which means "queen mother. " All royal consorts were by definition Kdkes. The queen mother played two important roles, which ensured the line of succession and also consolidated her power. She played a prominent role in the choice and coronation of the new king and, unique to Meroitic society, she officially adopted her daughter-in-law. Basically, some of the traits of the matriarchs of Meroe correspond to those of the queen mother in matrilineal societies in other parts of Africa.
What little is known of the Candaces was learned primarily from Roman sources and more recently from excavations, iconography, and inscriptions on monuments. Classical writers have attested to their power and leadership. One of them is mentioned in the Acts of the Apostles (8:28-39) where, on the road from Jerusalem to Gaza, Philip converted "an Ethiopian eunuch, a court official of the Candace, that is, the queen of the Ethiopians, in charge of her entire treasury..." Pliny, who provided valuable details of the great city of Meroe, which have been borne out by subsequent excavations, states that, "The queens of the country bore the name Candace, a title that had passed from queen to queen for many years."
The Candaces have repeatedly appeared in the writings of classical authors. Pseudo-Callisthenes recounted that Alexander visited Candace, Queen of Meroe. Legend has it that she would not let him enter Ethiopia and warned him not to despise them because they were black for "We are whiter and brighter in our souls than the whitest of you." Strabo, in his report of the military clash between the Romans and the Ethiopians, describes a Candace, probably Amanerinas, as "a masculine sort of woman, blind in one eye." This incident purportedly brought Kush onto the stage of world history: After Petronius' punitive invasion of Napata, the Candace waited until most of his troops went off to another campaign and attacked the Romans. Petronius returned and a standoff ensued between the two armies until the Ethiopian ambassadors were allowed to negotiate a peace treaty with Augustus Caesar. The tribute exacted from the Meroites was renounced and a border was demarcated between Roman territory and the kingdom of Kush.
We know that, for a period of 1250 years (ending in 350 CE), the kingdom of Kush flourished as a unique civilization which, beneath an Egyptian façade, remained profoundly African; and that the title of Candace existed for 500 years. However, without a concerted effort in archaeology and a breakthrough in deciphering the Meroitic script, the world will never know the true glory of the kingdom of Kush and the magnificence of the Candaces.
Ruth Simmons was the 18th president of Brown University, the first black president of an Ivy League institution. Simmons was elected Brown's first female president in November 2000.
Joseph Rainey, was the first Black man to serve in the US House of Representatives as well as the first elected to Congress, being elected to the first of four terms in 1870 from South Carolina.
Anna J Cooper
Born in 1858 in North Carolina to her enslaved mother, Hannah Stanley Haywood, and her white slaveholder, Anna Julia Cooper spent her lifetime of over a century redefining the limitations and opportunities for women of color in a society set up for their disempowerment and subjugation. A distinguished scholar and educator, Cooper saw the status and agency of black women as central to the equality and progress of the nation. She famously wrote in her 1892 book A Voice from the South, “only the BLACK WOMAN can say when and where I enter, in the quiet, undisputed dignity of my womanhood, without violence and without suing or special patronage, then and there the whole Negro race enters with me.” She fought tirelessly throughout her life to re-center and uplift the voice of black women in pursuit of a more just society for everyone.
Cooper’s political action began at age nine in St. Augustine’s Normal School and Collegiate Institute, where she protested the preferential treatment given to men as candidates for the ministry and petitioned to take classes traditionally administered only to boys. She continued this trend at Oberlin College, where she declined the inferior “ladies course” in favor of the “gentleman’s course.” Cooper received her B.A. in 1884, and then returned to earn a M.A. in mathematics in 1887. After attaining her degree, Cooper moved to Washington, DC and was recruited to work at Washington Colored High School, or M Street School, the only all-black school in DC.
The colored woman feels that woman’s cause is one and universal; and that not till the image of God, whether in parian or ebony, is sacred and inviolable; not till race, color, sex, and condition are seen as the accidents, and not the substance of life; not till the universal title of humanity to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness is conceded to be inalienable to all; not till then is woman’s lesson taught and woman’s cause won–not the white woman’s, nor the black woman’s, nor the red woman’s, but the cause of every man and of every woman who has writhed silently under a mighty wrong. Woman’s wrongs are thus indissolubly linked with all undefended woe, and the acquirement of her “rights” will mean the final triumph of all right over might, the supremacy of the moral forces of reason, and justice, and love in the government of the nations of earth.
Anna Julia Cooper
Describing her own vocation as “the education of neglected people,” Cooper saw education, and specifically higher education, as the means of black women’s advancement. She believed “that intellectual development, with the self-reliance and capacity for earning a livelihood which it gives,” would supersede any need for dependence on men, allowing women to extend their horizons and have their “sympathies… broadened and deepened and multiplied.” Cooper began at M Street School as a math and science teacher, and was promoted to principal in 1902. With her firm resolve in education as tantamount to the progress of people of color, Cooper rejected her white supervisor’s mandate to teach her students trades, and instead trained and prepared them for college. Cooper sent her students to prestigious universities and attained accreditation for M Street School from Harvard, but her success was received with hostility rather than celebration from a power structure that was not necessarily interested in the advancement of black youth.
The Middle Years
During her time at M Street School, Cooper was also involved in building new spaces for black women outside of the educational sphere. She founded the Colored Women’s League of Washington in 1892, and seven years later helped open the first YWCA chapter for black women, in response to their unwillingness to allow women of color into the organization. She spoke at the Pan African Congress and the Women’s Congress in Chicago, with a speech entitled “The Needs and the Status of Black Women.” It was also in this last decade of the 19th century that Cooper published her landmark text A Voice From the South, in which she dissects the way black women are affected by living at the intersection of oppressions and explains their status and progress as a definitive marker of the status and progress of the nation. In VFTS, Cooper also emphasizes the need to privilege black women’s voices, criticizing white scholars who wrote about and acted as authorities on the lives of black men and women despite their ignorance on the subject. Cooper believed that black women’s subjection to intersecting oppressions gave them a unique and invaluable outlook on society, arguing that rather than being suppressed, it was the voices of these women that needed to be front and center as society moved forward.
Cooper’s achievements both in and outside of the classroom garnered contempt from white colleagues and supervisors, and she was dismissed from M Street School in 1906 after a controversy erupted surrounding her character and behavior. As a testament to her reputation and achievements at M Street School, Cooper was re-hired in 1910 as a teacher by a new superintendent. Motivated rather than defeated by this scandal, Cooper decided to return to school, and in 1924 became only the fourth black woman in the United States to receive a doctorate degree, attaining her Ph.D at the University of Paris. While teaching and working on her doctorate, Cooper was also raising five children whom she had adopted in 1915 after her brother passed away.
The Later Years
Cooper’s retirement from M Street School in 1930 was by no means the end of her political activism. The same year she retired, she accepted the position of president at Frelinghuysen University, a school founded to provide classes for DC residents lacking access to higher education. Cooper worked for Frelinghuysen for twenty years, first as president and then as registrar, and left the school only a decade before she passed away in 1964 at the age of 105. While notable for her long life span, Cooper is most remarkable for the amount and significance of her accomplishments over the course of her lifetime, as well as the dedication and perseverance she exhibited while fighting tirelessly for what she thought was just. Cooper made no concessions in her fight; believing “a cause is not worthier than its weakest elements,” she decried movements advocating for women’s rights and racial justice for ignoring black women who were victims of both oppressions. Cooper was critical of black men for hailing opportunities that were not open to black women as markers of racial progress, and openly confronted leaders of the women’s movement for allowing the racism within it to remain unchecked. She recognized that neither movement could achieve its cause while still being divided by race or gender.
Adamant in her fight for a just, equal society, Anna Julia Cooper lived a remarkable life in which she refused to acquiesce to the demands and expectations of a white, male dominated society. In a place and time largely unreceptive to the needs of people of color and women, Cooper broke barriers and insisted that her voice as a black woman from the south be heard and acknowledged. Her accomplishments and vision have helped not only make Cooper one of the most noted African-American intellectuals in the history of the nation, but have helped reframe the understanding of intersections of race and gender and their political, cultural and personal implications in pursuit of a better nation.
Dr. Shirley Jackson, has a staggering list of firsts. In '73, she became the first Black woman to receive a doctorate from MIT. This made her one of the first two Black women to receive a doctorate in physics. She was the first Black commissioner of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and the first Black person and the first woman to serve as chairman of the commission. She also became President of Rensselaer Polytechnic, the first Black female at the helm of a major tech institute.
John Roy Lynch was a Congressman, Soldier, and Author. First Black American Speaker of the House of Representatives (Mississippi).
Master Juba was an African American dancer active in the 1840s. He was one of the first black performers in the United States to play onstage
Janet Harmon Bragg, one of the first female African American aviators
Cathay Williams: The Only Black Woman Buffalo Soldier
James Milton, 1st African American to serve in the U.S. diplomatic corps James Milton Turner was an African American Missourian who was a prominent politician, education advocate and diplomat in the years after the Civil War.
Henry McNeal Turner (1834-1915)
One of the most influential African American leaders in late-nineteenth-century Georgia,Henry McNeal Turner was a pioneering church organizer and missionary for the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME) in Georgia, later rising to the rank of bishop. Turner was also an active politician and Reconstruction-era state legislator from Macon. Later in life, he became an outspoken advocate of back-to-Africa emigration.
Turner was born in 1834 in Newberry Courthouse, South Carolina, to Sarah Greer and Hardy Turner. Turner was never a slave. His paternal grandmother was a white plantation owner. His maternal grandfather, David Greer, arrived in North America aboard a slave ship but, according to family legend, was found to have a tattoo with the Mandingo coat of arms, signifying his royal status. The South Carolinians decided not to sell Greer into slavery and sent him to live with a Quaker family.
Against great odds, Turner managed to receive an education. An Abbeville, South Carolina, law firm employed him at age fifteen to do janitorial tasks, and the firm's lawyers, appreciating his high intelligence, helped provide him with a well-rounded education. About a year earlier, Turner had been converted during a Methodist revival and decided he would one day become a preacher. After receiving his preacher's license in 1853, he traveled throughout the South as an itinerant evangelist, going as far as New Orleans, Louisiana. Much of his time was spent in Georgia, where he preached at revivals in Macon, Athens, and Atlanta. In 1856 he married Eliza Peacher, the daughter of a wealthy African American house builder in Columbia, South Carolina. They had fourteen children, only four of whom survived into adulthood.
In 1858 he and his family journeyed north to St. Louis, Missouri, where he was accepted as a preacher in the African Methodist Episcopal Church. Turner feared southern legislation threatening enslavement of free African Americans. For the next five years, he filled pastorates in Baltimore, Maryland, and in Washington, D.C., and witnessed the outbreak of the Civil War (1861-65). During his time in Washington, he befriended Charles Sumner, Thaddeus Stevens, and other powerful Republican legislators. In 1863 Turner was instrumental in organizing the First Regiment of U.S. Colored Troops in his own churchyard and was mustered into service as an army chaplain for that regiment. He and his regiment were involved in numerous battles in the Virginia theater.
At the war's end, U.S. president Andrew Johnson reassigned Turner to a black regiment in Atlanta, but Turner resigned when he realized it already had a chaplain. He spent much of the next three years traveling throughout Georgia, helping to organize the African Methodist Episcopal Church in what was virgin, but not always friendly, territory. African Americans flocked to the new denomination, but the lack of such essentials as trained pastors and adequate meeting space challenged Turner.
In 1867, after Congress passed the Reconstruction Acts, Turner switched his energies to the political sphere. He helped organize Georgia's Republican Party. He served in the state's constitutional convention and then was elected to the Georgia House of Representatives, representing Macon. In 1868, when the vast majority of white legislators decided to expel their African American peers on the grounds that officeholding was a privilege denied those from a servile background, Turner delivered an eloquent speech from the floor. Unfortunately, it did little to sway his fellow legislators. Soon afterward Turner received threats from the Ku Klux Klan.
In 1869 he was appointed postmaster of Macon by U.S. president Ulysses S. Grant but was forced to resign a few weeks later under fire from allegations that he consorted with prostitutes and had passed defective currency. At the behest of the U.S. Congress, he did reclaim his legislative seat in 1870, but he was denied reelection in a fraud-filled contest a few months later. Turner moved to Savannah, where he worked at the Custom House and served as a pastor of the prestigious St. Philip's AME Church. In 1876 he was elected manager of the publishing house of the church. Four years later, in a hard-fought and controversial contest, he won election as the twelfth bishop of the AME Church.
Turner was an extremely vigorous and successful bishop. In 1885 he became the first AME bishop to ordain a woman, Sarah Ann Hughes, to the office of deacon. He wrote The Genius and Theory of Methodist Polity (1885), a learned guide to Methodist policies and practices. He twice entered the political ranks in support of prohibition referenda in Atlanta. After his wife, Eliza, died in 1889, Turner eventually married three more times: Martha Elizabeth DeWitt in 1893; Harriet A. Wayman in 1900; and Laura Pearl Lemon in 1907. Between 1891 and 1898, Turner traveled four times to Africa. He was instrumental in promoting the annual conferences in Liberia and Sierra Leone and in attaining a merger with the Ethiopian Church in South Africa. Turner also sought to promote the growth of the AME Church in Latin America, sending missionaries to Cuba and Mexico.
With the support of white businessmen from Alabama, Turner helped organize the International Migration Society to promote the return of African Americans to Africa. To further the emigrationist cause, he established his own newspapers: The Voice of Missions (editor, 1893-1900) and later The Voice of the People (editor, 1901-4). Two ships with a total of 500 or more emigrants sailed to Liberia in 1895 and 1896, but a number returned, complaining about disease and the country's poor economic prospects. Turner remained an advocate of back-to-Africa programs but was unable to make further headway against the negative reactions of returned emigrants. In his later years he felt increasingly estranged from the South.
Turner died on May 8, 1915, in Windsor, Canada, while traveling on church business. He is buried in Atlanta. A portrait of Turner hangs in the state capitol.
One of the most influential African American leaders in late-nineteenth-century Georgia,Henry McNeal Turner was a pioneering church organizer and missionary for the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME) in Georgia, later rising to the rank of bishop. Turner was also an active politician and Reconstruction-era state legislator from Macon. Later in life, he became an outspoken advocate of back-to-Africa emigration.
Turner was born in 1834 in Newberry Courthouse, South Carolina, to Sarah Greer and Hardy Turner. Turner was never a slave. His paternal grandmother was a white plantation owner. His maternal grandfather, David Greer, arrived in North America aboard a slave ship but, according to family legend, was found to have a tattoo with the Mandingo coat of arms, signifying his royal status. The South Carolinians decided not to sell Greer into slavery and sent him to live with a Quaker family.
Against great odds, Turner managed to receive an education. An Abbeville, South Carolina, law firm employed him at age fifteen to do janitorial tasks, and the firm's lawyers, appreciating his high intelligence, helped provide him with a well-rounded education. About a year earlier, Turner had been converted during a Methodist revival and decided he would one day become a preacher. After receiving his preacher's license in 1853, he traveled throughout the South as an itinerant evangelist, going as far as New Orleans, Louisiana. Much of his time was spent in Georgia, where he preached at revivals in Macon, Athens, and Atlanta. In 1856 he married Eliza Peacher, the daughter of a wealthy African American house builder in Columbia, South Carolina. They had fourteen children, only four of whom survived into adulthood.
In 1858 he and his family journeyed north to St. Louis, Missouri, where he was accepted as a preacher in the African Methodist Episcopal Church. Turner feared southern legislation threatening enslavement of free African Americans. For the next five years, he filled pastorates in Baltimore, Maryland, and in Washington, D.C., and witnessed the outbreak of the Civil War (1861-65). During his time in Washington, he befriended Charles Sumner, Thaddeus Stevens, and other powerful Republican legislators. In 1863 Turner was instrumental in organizing the First Regiment of U.S. Colored Troops in his own churchyard and was mustered into service as an army chaplain for that regiment. He and his regiment were involved in numerous battles in the Virginia theater.
At the war's end, U.S. president Andrew Johnson reassigned Turner to a black regiment in Atlanta, but Turner resigned when he realized it already had a chaplain. He spent much of the next three years traveling throughout Georgia, helping to organize the African Methodist Episcopal Church in what was virgin, but not always friendly, territory. African Americans flocked to the new denomination, but the lack of such essentials as trained pastors and adequate meeting space challenged Turner.
In 1867, after Congress passed the Reconstruction Acts, Turner switched his energies to the political sphere. He helped organize Georgia's Republican Party. He served in the state's constitutional convention and then was elected to the Georgia House of Representatives, representing Macon. In 1868, when the vast majority of white legislators decided to expel their African American peers on the grounds that officeholding was a privilege denied those from a servile background, Turner delivered an eloquent speech from the floor. Unfortunately, it did little to sway his fellow legislators. Soon afterward Turner received threats from the Ku Klux Klan.
In 1869 he was appointed postmaster of Macon by U.S. president Ulysses S. Grant but was forced to resign a few weeks later under fire from allegations that he consorted with prostitutes and had passed defective currency. At the behest of the U.S. Congress, he did reclaim his legislative seat in 1870, but he was denied reelection in a fraud-filled contest a few months later. Turner moved to Savannah, where he worked at the Custom House and served as a pastor of the prestigious St. Philip's AME Church. In 1876 he was elected manager of the publishing house of the church. Four years later, in a hard-fought and controversial contest, he won election as the twelfth bishop of the AME Church.
Turner was an extremely vigorous and successful bishop. In 1885 he became the first AME bishop to ordain a woman, Sarah Ann Hughes, to the office of deacon. He wrote The Genius and Theory of Methodist Polity (1885), a learned guide to Methodist policies and practices. He twice entered the political ranks in support of prohibition referenda in Atlanta. After his wife, Eliza, died in 1889, Turner eventually married three more times: Martha Elizabeth DeWitt in 1893; Harriet A. Wayman in 1900; and Laura Pearl Lemon in 1907. Between 1891 and 1898, Turner traveled four times to Africa. He was instrumental in promoting the annual conferences in Liberia and Sierra Leone and in attaining a merger with the Ethiopian Church in South Africa. Turner also sought to promote the growth of the AME Church in Latin America, sending missionaries to Cuba and Mexico.
With the support of white businessmen from Alabama, Turner helped organize the International Migration Society to promote the return of African Americans to Africa. To further the emigrationist cause, he established his own newspapers: The Voice of Missions (editor, 1893-1900) and later The Voice of the People (editor, 1901-4). Two ships with a total of 500 or more emigrants sailed to Liberia in 1895 and 1896, but a number returned, complaining about disease and the country's poor economic prospects. Turner remained an advocate of back-to-Africa programs but was unable to make further headway against the negative reactions of returned emigrants. In his later years he felt increasingly estranged from the South.
Turner died on May 8, 1915, in Windsor, Canada, while traveling on church business. He is buried in Atlanta. A portrait of Turner hangs in the state capitol.
Nat “The Bush Doctor” opened his first shop in 1969 when he was 23 years old. It was called Nat’s Hair Care Clinic. When Afros first came out, people were just wearing them natural and it put a lot of people out of work because of the European standards. Nat's idea was focused on how to treat the hair, not just cut it. He got the name Bush Doctor because he called himself the Hair Doctor. When the Afro came out and he started styling it, the neighborhood started call him the Bush Doctor.
Alexander Crummell
Alexander Crummell, an Episcopalian priest, missionary, scholar and teacher, was born in New York City in 1819 to free black parents. He spent much of his life addressing the conditions of African Americans while urging an educated black elite to aspire to the highest intellectual attainments as a refutation of the theory of black inferiority.
Crummell began his education at an integrated school in New Hampshire. He later transferred to an abolitionist institute in Whitesboro, New York where he learned both the classics and manual labor skills. However, after being denied admittance to the General Theological Seminary of the Episcopal Church because of his race, Crummell was forced to study privately. Nonetheless at the age of 25 he became an Episcopalian minister.
From 1848 to 1853 Crummell lectured and studied in England. He also graduated from Queens’ College, Cambridge University in 1853. Crummell left England to become an educator in Liberia, accepting a faculty position at Liberia College in Monrovia. From his new post, Crummell urged African Americans to emigrate to Liberia.
Internal politics, however, forced Crummell to leave Liberia in 1872, shattering his dream of the West African nation as a Christian Republic populated by both indigenous people and African American immigrants. Crummell returned to the United States and settled in Washington, D.C. where he founded St. Luke’s Episcopal Church. When some Episcopal bishops proposed a segregated missionary district for black parishes, Crummell organized a group now known as the Union of Black Episcopalians to fight the proposal. Crummell also lectured widely across the United States stressing the social responsibilities of educated middle class African Americans as race leaders.
From 1895 to 1897 Crummell taught at Howard University in Washington, D.C. In 1897, the last year of his life, Crummell helped found the American Negro Academy and became its first president, with W.E.B. DuBois and William Saunders Scarborough as vice presidents. Alexander Crummell, who would become a major influence on myriad black leaders including DuBois, Paul Lawrence Dunbar, and Marcus Garvey, died in Point Pleasant, New Jersey in 1898.
Clarence “Skip” Ellis was the first African-American to earn a PhD in Computer Science. He helped develop the concept of clicking icons which lead to the development of user friendly operating systems such as Windows or Mac. Most computer users, even highly proficient users, would not be able to operate their computer without this simple concept.
