Black History Month 2011-Day 23

The First Black Governor



In 1872 Pinckney Benton Stewart Pinchback (1837-1921) became the first black governor of any state. He served from December 9, 1872, to January 13, 1873, while Louisiana governor Henry Clay Warmoth faced impeachment proceedings. Born of a white father and a freed slave mother in Mississippi, Pinchback had been sent to Ohio for an education. He became active in Louisiana politics; his election to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1872 was disputed, as was his election to the U.S. Senate in 1873. He became surveyor of customs in New Orleans about 1883. In the 1890s he moved permanently to Washington, D.C.

Source: Carney Smith, Jessie. Black Firsts: Groundbreaking Events in African American History. New York: Fall River Press, 2009.

As a side note; it was not until 1990 that another African American became governor of any U.S. state. In 1990, Douglas Wilder of Virginia became the second African-American state governor (and the first to be elected to office). (See Wikipedia link below).

For more information on P.B.S. Pinchback please follow the links below:

http://www.sos.louisiana.gov/tabid/383/Default.aspx

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P._B._S._Pinchback

Black History Month 2011-Day 22

Hello everyone! Well, taking a step away from the Black Firsts theme to celebrate the life of an individual who contributed many ideas and characters to the Comic Book community, Dwayne McDuffie, passed away today.

For those that knew him outside the comic book world he looked like this:



For those that knew him inside the comic book world he is most recognizable as this:



For a good part of his career he worked as a freelance cartoonist, but in 1993 he (along with three other African-American writers) created Milestone Media. This was under the DC Comics label, but was meant to focus on the under-representation of minorities in the comic book world.

This is what he had to say about the beginning of Milestone Media:

“If you do a black character or a female character or an Asian character, then they aren't just that character. They represent that race or that sex, and they can't be interesting because everything they do has to represent an entire block of people. You know, Superman isn't all white people and neither is Lex Luthor. We knew we had to present a range of characters within each ethnic group, which means that we couldn't do just one book. We had to do a series of books and we had to present a view of the world that's wider than the world we've seen before.”

This was the first time minority characters were represented as characters instead of representatives of their race. Milestone Media also grew from that focus to be known for its storytelling more than anything else. The most popular character that has come from Milestone is Static and this character became part of the animated kids show Static Shock.



For more information of Dwayne McDuffie and his work check out some of my sources:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dwayne_McDuffie
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Static_shock
http://www.blacksuperhero.com/articles/art3-Lander.html
http://www.toplessrobot.com/2011/02/rip_dwayne_mcduffie.php
http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=30969

Black History Month 2011 - Days 17-21

Hello everyone, first and foremost, Happy President’s Day! Today also marks the 46th anniversary of the assassination of Malcolm X. I would also like to apologize for the absence of emails the past few days. I have been a bit under the weather and have been resting up to recoup. We will do some quick facts to catch us up for the past few days, courtesy of biography.com.

• Macon Bolling Allen was the first African-American to pass the bar and practice law in the United States in 1845.

• Writer and performer Maya Angelou worked as the first black female streetcar conductor in San Francisco, California, before graduating from high school.

• Deford Bailey was a wizard at playing the harmonica, and was most notable for mimicking the sound of locomotives. He was the first African-American to perform at the Grand Ole Opry and one of the first African-American stars of country music.

• Barbara Brandon was the country’s only black female cartoonist to be nationally syndicated. Her strip was named “Where I’m Coming From.”

• Actress Diahann Carroll won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Television Series in 1968 for her role on the sitcom Julia. Carroll was the first African-American actress to star in her own television series where she did not play a domestic worker.

Black History Month 2011-Day 16

Hello everyone. This is one that is not the best Black first, but it is important to note. I could not find much more information on this film, but I hope you find the information on the history of Blackface interesting.

Day 16- “The Wooing & Wedding of a Coon”

The Wooing and Wedding of a Coon is the earliest known American-made film with an all-black cast came out in 1905. A derogatory one-reel film, it presented undisguised mockery of black life and featured the first movie version of a “coon.” One of the most insulting black caricatures, the coon (a short version of raccoon) depicted the person as lazy, inarticulate, easily frightened, and a buffoon. The caricature was born during the slavery period and reflected the masters’ and overseers’ view of their slaves as “slow,” “lazy,” and “trifling.” Hollywood films as well as minstrel shows did much to extend the coon image and to lay the groundwork for movies of the 1930s and 1940s that used the image.

Source: Carney Smith, Jessie. Black Firsts: Groundbreaking Events in African American History. New York: Fall River Press, 2009.

For information on the history of Blackface look here:

http://black-face.com/

Black History Month 2011-Day 15

Bloody Sunday (Not the Northern Ireland one)



"Bloody Sunday" occurred on March 7, 1965, when 600 civil rights marchers were attacked by state and local police with Billy clubs and tear gas so the march was cancelled. The route taken by the marchers is memorialized as the Selma to Montgomery National Historic Trail. On March 7, 1965, 525 to 600 civil rights marchers headed east out of Selma on U.S. Highway 80. Discrimination and intimidation had prevented Selma's Black population, roughly half of the city, from registering to vote three weeks earlier. On February 18, 1965, a trooper, Corporal James Bonard Fowler, shot Jimmie Lee Jackson as Jackson tried to protect his mother and grandfather in a café that they fled to while being attacked by troopers during a civil rights demonstration. Jackson died of an infection at Selma's Good Samaritan Hospital eight days later. The marchers hoped to bring notice to the violations of their rights by marching to the state capitol of Montgomery, Ala.

Watch this video about the anniversary:



Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. called for a march from Selma to Montgomery to ask then-Governor, George Wallace, to protect Black registrants. Wallace denounced the march as a threat to public safety and declared he would take all measures necessary to prevent it. In their first march, led by John Lewis and the Reverend Hosea Williams, they made it only as far as the Edmund Pettus Bridge, which was just six blocks away. State troopers and sheriffs from the county police department, some of who were mounted on horseback, awaited the protestors. In the presence of the news media, the police attacked the peaceful demonstrators with Billy clubs, tear gas and bull whips, and drove them back into Selma.

Source: http://www.blackhistory.com/cgi-bin/blog.cgi?blog_id=60918&cid=54



For more information on the Selma to Montgomery “Bloody Sunday” look here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloody_Sunday_(1965)#First_march

http://www.nps.gov/nr/travel/civilrights/al4.htm

http://www.history.com/topics/selma-montgomery-march

Black History Month 2011-Day 14

Tom “Blind Tom” Wiggins



Introducing one of the nineteenth century's most famous and perplexing pianists, Blind Tom. Born a slave in Georgia, Blind Tom died an international celebrity in 1908. He had an encyclopedic memory, an all-consuming passion for music and a mind boggling capacity to imitate - both verbally and musically - any sound he heard. These extraordinary savant powers rocketed him to fame and made his name a household word, a byword for eccentric, oddball genius.

Source: http://www.blackhistory.com/cgi-bin/blog.cgi?blog_id=177100&cid=54



Read an excerpt of the book The Ballad of Blind Tom, Slave Pianist.

Find out more information about Blind Tom here:

http://www.blindtom.org/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_Tom_Wiggins

http://www.blackpast.org/?q=perspectives/confounded-enigma-blind-tom-wiggins

To hear one of his compositions and to see a short video about him look here:

Black History Month 2011-Day 13

Michael Steele



On January 30, 2009, Michael Steele became the first African American to lead the Republican Party as Chairman of the Republican National Committee. Chairman Steele is also only the second African American to lead either the Democratic or Republican Parties. The late Ron Brown was the first, chairing the Democratic National Committee from 1989-1993. Two out of the six men campaigning for the RNC Chair, this year, were African Americans. The other African American candidate was former Ohio Secretary of State, Ken Blackwell. Elected in 2000, to be the chairman of the Maryland Republican Party, Steele was also the first African American to chair any state party for the GOP.



Source: http://www.blackhistory.com/cgi-bin/blog.cgi?blog_id=119228&cid=54

For more information on Michael Steel look here:

http://www.foxnews.com/topics/politics/michael-steele.htm

http://www.gop.com/index.php/chairman_steele/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Steele