Continue reading ‘BLACK HISTORY MONTH PROFILE: Euphemia Lofton Haynes’ »]]> Dr. Euphemia Lofton Haynes was the first African American woman to earn a Ph.D. in Mathematics.

“Martha Euphemia Lofton was born in Washington, D.C. in 1890, the first child and only daughter of Dr. Willian Lofton and Mrs. Lavinia Day Lofton. Her father, Dr. William S. Lofton was a renown African-American dentist and financier in the African-American business community. Lavinia Day Lofton, her mother, was active in the Catholic church. After graduating from Washington D.C. Miner Normal School with distinction, she went on to earn an undergraduate mathematics major (and psychology minor) from Smith College in 1914. In 1917 she married Harold Appo Haynes.

Haynes pursued graduate studies in mathematics and education at the University of Chicago, earning a masters degree in education in 1930. She continued her graduate work in mathematics at the Catholic University of America where in 1943 she became the first African-American woman to earn a Ph.D. in mathematics. Her dissertation on “The Determination of Sets of Independent Conditions Characterizing Certain Special Cases of Symmetric Correspondences” was written under the supervision of Professor Aubrey Landrey.

Euphemia Haynes devoted her life to education in the Washington, D.C. area for forty-seven years, including teaching mathematics at Armstrong High School and Dunbar High School. She became a professor of mathematics at Miner Teachers College in 1930 where she established the mathematics department and served as chair of the Division of Mathematics and Business Education (in 1955 Minor Teachers College and Wilson Teachers College united to form the District of Columbia Teachers College.) From July 1966 to July 1967, Haynes served as the first woman to chair the District of Columbia School Board. She played a central role in the integration of the DC public schools. Upon her death, she left $700,000 to the Catholic University of America which was used to establish the Euphemia Lofton Haynes Chair in the Department of Education and to support a student loan fund in the School of Education.

In addition to her academic work, Euphemia Haynes also served as president of the Catholic Interracial Council of the District of Columbia and president of the Washington Archdiocesan Council on Catholic Women.” In 1959, she received the Papal medal, “Pro Ecclesia et Pontifex” for her service to the church and her community. It is the highest award that can be awarded to a layman by the papacy.

Sources: Euphemia Lofton Haynes and Martha Euphemia Lofton Haynes.

Continue reading ‘The “Indian Experiment” at Hampton Institute’ »]]> Did you know that from 1878 to 1923, Native American students were brought to Hampton Institute from Northern Plains tribes to be “re-educated?” The first group to come were prisoners of western Indians wars who were being held in St Augustine, FL. More non-captive students came as time passed. Black and Indian students took classes together. In “Indians at Hampton Institute, 1877-1923,” author Donald Lindsey shows “the complicated way that one black institution, while still under white control, devised to manage the education and socialization of African and Native American students, not for their needs but in the interests of the broader Anglo-American society.”

Louis Firetail (Sioux, Crow Creek), wearing tribal clothing, in American history class, Hampton Institute, Hampton, Virginia. Frances Benjamin Johnston Collection (Library of Congress)

A listing of students by name and tribal affiliation as well as some first person accounts written by students can be found online: http://www.twofrog.com/hampton.html.

Read more at “The American Indian at Hampton Institute, Virginia” and “The ‘Indian Experiment’ at Hampton Institute.

Continue reading ‘BLACK HISTORY MONTH PROFILE: Timothy Thomas Fortune’ »]]> Timothy Thomas Fortune was born a slave in Marianna, Florida, to Sarah Jane and Emanuel Fortune on October 3, 1856. He attended Howard University from 1876 to 1877. He was trained as a printer and traveled to New York where he was hired by “The New York Sun” in 1878 and later promoted to the editorial staff. From 1891 to 1907 he was the editor and co-owner of several influential New York-based black newspapers including “The New York Globe” and “The New York Freeman,” the latter of which was renamed “The New York Age” in 1887. Fortune’s tenure at “The New York Age” for over 20 years established him as the leading African American journalist of the late 19th and early 20th century. Under his editorial direction, the paper became the nation’s most influential black paper, and was used to protest discrimination, lynching, mob violence, and disenfranchisement.

In 1890 Fortune co-founded the Afro-American League. It was one of the earliest equal rights organizations in the United States and a precursor of the Niagara Falls Movement and The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Fortune wrote intermittently for “The Amsterdam News” and for “The Norfolk Journal and Guide.” He also served as an editor of Marcus Garvey’s “Negro World.” At its height the “Negro World” had a circulation of over 200,000. With distribution throughout the United States, Canada, Europe, Africa, the Caribbean, and in Central America it may have been the most widely distributed newspaper in the world at that time. Thomas Fortune died on June 2, 1928.

Read more about T. Thomas Fortune: http://to.pbs.org/15vLIde

Continue reading ‘The Cherokees Free Their Slaves’ »]]> The status of the slaves of the Cherokee Nation has been in dispute for a long time.

Following on the heels of the Emancipation Proclamation, in February 1863 the Cherokee Nation declared that all slaves within its limits were “forever free.” In 1983, the descendants of these slaves, known as the Cherokee Freedmen, were removed from tribal membership rolls and prohibited from voting in Cherokee elections. A series of protracted legal battles over Freedmen citizenship ensued and continue today.

Read the rest of the story on the Disunion blog.

Continue reading ‘Guide to African American Resources in Florida Available Online’ »]]> “The Black Experience” in an online guide to resources that are available for the study of African American history in the State Archives of Florida. It is an update of the material presented in the 1988 (revised 2002) publication, “The Black Experience: A Guide to African American Resources in the State Library and Archives of Florida.” The revised guide includes recent acquisitions in addition to older resources that remain important.

Continue reading ‘BLACK HISTORY MONTH PROFILE: Septima Poinsette Clark’ »]]> Septima Poinsette Clark (1898-1987), an educator and civil and human rights activist, is often referred to as the “Grandmother of the Civil Rights Movement.” One of her greatest contributions to the movement was the development of citizenship schools throughout the South. From 1962 to 1964 she trained more than 10,000 teachers for the schools and registered 700,000 black voters.

“Many phenomenal African American women remain unrecognized for their contributions to the progression of the Civil Rights Movement. These women were behind the scenes working just as hard as men for little to no acknowledgment…Clark is perhaps the only woman to play a significant role in educating African Americans for full citizenship rights without gaining sufficient gratitude. ” Source: http://bit.ly/YveOCW

“Septima Clark was born in Charleston, South Carolina, on May 3, 1898, and was the second of eight children. In 1916 she finished 12th grade and, unable financially to attend Fisk University as her teachers had hoped and, as an African American, forbidden to teach in the Charleston public schools at that time, Poinsette took the state examination that would permit her to teach in rural areas. Her first job was on John’s Island, South Carolina. The racial inequity of teachers’ salaries and facilities she experienced while there motivated her to become an advocate for change.

Clark left John’s Island in 1919 in order to teach and to campaign for a law allowing black teachers in the Charleston public schools. The same year that the law was passed (1920), Septima Poinsette married Nerie Clark, a navy cook. The marriage ended five years later when Nerie Clark died of kidney failure. The couple had two children; one died in infancy. Clark returned to teaching on John’s Island until 1927, when she moved to Columbia, South Carolina. There she continued to teach and to pursue her own education, studying during summers at Columbia University in New York City and with W.E.B. Du Bois at Atlanta University in Georgia. She received a bachelor’s degree from Benedict College in 1942 and a master’s degree from Hampton Institute in 1945. During this time she was also active in several social and civic organizations, among them the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) with whom she campaigned, along with attorney Thurgood Marshall, for equal pay for black teachers in Columbia. In an effort to diminish the effectiveness of the NAACP, the South Carolina state legislature banned state employees from being associated with civil rights organizations, and in 1956 Clark was forced to leave South Carolina for a job in Tennessee when she refused to withdraw her membership from the NAACP.

In Tennessee she helped found citizenship schools that were designed to achieve literacy and political empowerment within the black community. Clark joined the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) in 1961 as director of education and teaching. In 1962 the SCLC joined with other organizations to form the Voter Education Project, which served to train teachers for citizenship schools and assisted in increased voter registration among African Americans. A decade later the first African Americans since Reconstruction were elected to the U.S. Congress.

After Clark retired from active SCLC work in 1970, she fought and won reinstatement of the teaching pension and back pay that had been canceled when she was dismissed in 1956. She later served two terms on the Charleston County School Board. In 1979 Clark received a Living Legacy Award from U.S. President Jimmy Carter. She died on John’s Island, South Carolina, on December 15, 1987.” Source: http://bit.ly/XaKr6G

Here’s the story behind the famous photo of Septima Clark, taken when she was 89 years old by Brian Lanker for “I Dream a World: Portraits of Black Women Who Changed America,” the book he collaborated on with Maya Angelou.

Continue reading ‘BLACK HISTORY MONTH PROFILE: Frances Ellen Watkins Harper’ »]]> Frances Ellen Watkins Harper (September 24, 1825 – February 22, 1911) was an African-American abolitionist, poet and author. Born free in Baltimore, Maryland, she had a long and prolific career, publishing her first book of poetry at age 20 and her first novel, the widely praised “Iola Leroy,” at age 67.

“Born in Baltimore, poet, fiction writer, journalist, and activist Frances Ellen Watkins Harper was the only child of free African American parents. She was raised by her aunt and uncle after her mother died when Frances was three years old. She attended the Academy for Negro Youth, a school run by her uncle, until the age of 13, and then found domestic work in a Quaker household, where she had access to a wide range of literature. After teaching for two years in Ohio and Pennsylvania, she embarked on a career as a traveling speaker on the abolitionist circuit. She helped slaves escape through the Underground Railroad and wrote frequently for anti-slavery newspapers, earning her a reputation as the mother of African American journalism.

A prolific writer, Harper published many collections of poetry, including Autumn Leaves (also published as Forest Leaves) (1845); Poems on Miscellaneous Subjects (1854), which was reprinted 20 times; Sketches of Southern Life (1872), which chronicles Reconstruction; Poems (1857); The Martyr of Alabama and Other Poems (1892); The Sparrow’s Fall and Other Poems (1894); and Atlanta Offering (1895). Harper also published several novels, including Iola Leroy (1892), and essay collections. Her short story “The Two Offers” was the first short story published by an African American. Her poetry has been collected in Complete Poems of Frances E.W. Harper (1988, ed. Maryemma Graham), and her prose in A Brighter Coming Day (1990, ed. Frances Smith Foster).

She married Fenton Harper in 1860. He brought to the marriage three children of his own, and together they had a daughter. When her husband died in 1864, Harper continued to support her family though speaking engagements. During Reconstruction she was an activist for civil rights, women’s rights, and educational opportunities for all. She was superintendent of the Colored Section of the Philadelphia and Pennsylvania Women’s Christian Temperance Union, co-founder and vice president of the National Association of Colored Women, and a member of the American Women’s Suffrage Association. Harper was also the director of the American Association of Colored Youth.

She was active in both African Methodist Episcopalian and Unitarian Universalist churches, and was buried in Philadelphia’s Eden Cemetery, next to her daughter Mary.”

Source: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/frances-ellen-watkins-harper.