Louis Farrakhan
Best Known For...
Louis Farrakhan has led the Nation of Islam, an African American movement that combined elements of Islam with black nationalism since 1978.
Louis Farrakhan was born Louis Eugene Walcott on May 11, 1933, in the Bronx, New York. He joined the Nation of Islam in 1955 and in 1978 led a breakaway group of the Nation of Islam that preserved the original teachings of Elijah Muhammad. In the 1980s, Farrakhan was criticized for making anti-Semitic remarks; he denies being anti-Semitic. In 1995, he led the Million Man March on Washington, D.C.
Born Louis Eugene Wolcott, Louis Farrakhan grew up near Boston. He was raised by his mother, who came to the United States from the Caribbean island of St. Kitts. At first, Farrakhan sought to become an educator, winning a scholarship to Winston-Salem Teacher's College. But he left after two years to pursue his passion for music. He had many talents, including being a skilled violinist and a good singer.
Known as the Charmer, Farrakhan enjoyed some success in his career. He had a hit with the song "Jumbie Jamboree." But Farrakhan soon discovered a different calling after attending a Nation of Islam event while performing in Chicago. The organization had been established by Elijah Muhammad in the 1930s. In his teachings, Muhammad called for the establishment of a separate nation for African Americans, and he decried whites as their oppressors. With encouragement from Muhammad's right-hand man, Malcolm X, Farrakhan joined this Muslim movement in 1955. He took the name Louis X. Using his musical abilities, Farrakhan penned the song "A White Man's Heaven Is a Black Man's Hell" for his new religious group.
Farrakhan rose up in the organization's hierarchy. He worked as assistant minister to Malcolm X at a Boston mosque and then took over Malcolm X's place when he went to preach at the Nation of Islam mosque in New York City's Harlem neighborhood. The movement's leader, Elijah Muhammad, also bestowed a holy name upon him, calling him Farrakhan.
When Malcolm X split from the group in 1964, Farrakhan quickly filled his shoes, growing even closer to Elijah Muhammad. His relationship with Malcolm X turned bitter as Malcolm X started to speak about the group's divisive racial theology and possible abuses of power by Muhammad. Some thought that Farrakhan may have been involved in Malcolm X's assassination the following year. Three members of the Nation of Islam were later arrested for Malcolm X's murder.
When Elijah Muhammad died in 1975, the Nation of Islam eventually fragmented. Muhammad had appointed as his successor his son, Warith Deen Mohammad (or Mohammed, according to some sources), who sought to take the group toward a more traditional practice of the Muslim faith. Farrakhan was not happy with this turn of events, and he eventually broke away from the group.
In the late 1970s, Farrakhan started up a new Nation of Islam, one that adhered to the teachings of Elijah Muhammad. He started a newspaper, The Final Call, to help him communicate his views to others around this time. In his new position, Farrakhan remained outspoken on social and political issues, sometimes drawing fire for his racial and religious comments.
In the early 1980s, Farrakhan threw his support behind Reverend Jesse Jackson's presidential bid. A group within his organization, Fruit of Islam, provided security for Jackson during his 1984 run. Jackson's campaign ran into trouble when Jackson made an anti-Semitic remark and Farrakhan rose to his defense. Over the years, Farrakhan has blamed the Jewish community for some of the suffering endured by African Americans. He has also criticized other ethnicities and racial groups.
One of Farrakhan's most significant accomplishments has been organizing the 1995 Million Man March on Washington, D.C. That October, Farrakhan brought together a variety of African American leaders, such as Reverend Jesse Jackson, civil rights pioneer Rosa Parks and Malcolm X's widow Betty Shabazz, to speak on important social issues to the crowd gathered there. The total number of participants has been a topic of debate, with estimates ranging from 400,000 to 2 million attendees. Farrakhan also held a Million Family March in 2000.
While many recognize the value of Nation of Islam's social and educational programs, Farrakhan has been criticized for some of his other activities. He toured 18 nations in 1996, which included a stop in Libya. Farrakhan accepted funds from the late Libyan leader Muammar al-Qaddafi for the Nation of Islam, but the U.S. government refused to let him keep the money.
Farrakhan remains a polarizing figure to this day. He continues to fight oppression wherever he sees it, whether it's in the nation's educational system, government or urban communities. And Farrakhan is still making waves with his public comments.
Source: Louis Farrakhan. (2013). The Biography Channel website. Retrieved 10:51, Feb 07, 2013, from http://www.biography.com/people/louis-farrakhan-9291850.
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Marcus Mosiah Garvey was the last of 11 children born to Marcus Garvey, Sr. and Sarah Jane Richards. His father was a stone mason, and his mother a domestic worker and farmer. Garvey, Sr. was a great influence on Marcus, who once described him as "severe, firm, determined, bold, and strong, refusing to yield even to superior forces if he believed he was right." His father was known to have a large library, where young Garvey learned to read.
In 1922, Marcus Garvey and three other UNIA officials were charged with mail fraud involving the Black Star Line. The trial records indicate several improprieties occurred in the prosecution of the case. It didn't help that the shipping line's books contained many accounting irregularities. On June 23, 1923, Garvey was convicted and sentenced to prison for five years. Claiming to be a victim of a politically motivated miscarriage of justice, Garvey appealed his conviction, but was denied. In 1927 he was released from prison and deported to Jamaica.
"The money I have made and will be making means nothing to me compared to the fact that about half of the black people I meet—ranging from the most sophisticated to the least sophisticated—say to me, 'I'm proud of you.' I feel strongly about always earning that and never letting black people down."
"In every conceivable manner, the family is link to our past, bridge to our future."
Alex Haley was born Alexander Murray Palmer Haley on August 11, 1921, in Ithaca, New York. At the time of his birth, Haley's father, Simon Haley, a World War I veteran, was a graduate student in agriculture at Cornell University, and his mother, Bertha Palmer Haley, was a teacher.
For the first five years of his life, Haley lived with his mother and grandparents in Henning, Tennessee, while his father finished his studies. When Simon Haley completed his degree, he joined the family in Tennessee and taught as a professor of agriculture at various southern universities. Alex Haley was always remarkably proud of his father, whom he said had overcome the immense obstacles of racism to achieve high levels of success and provide better opportunities for his children.
An exceptionally bright child and gifted student, Haley graduated from high school at the age of 15 and enrolled at Alcorn A&M College (Alcorn State University) in Mississippi, where he says he "was easily the most undistinguished freshman." After one year at Alcorn, he transferred to Elizabeth City State Teachers College in North Carolina.
In 1939, at the age of 17, Haley quit school to enlist in the Coast Guard. Although he enlisted as a seaman, he quickly became a third class petty officer in the inglorious rate of mess attendant. To relieve his boredom while on ship, Haley bought a portable typewriter and typed out love letters for his less articulate friends. He also wrote short stories and articles and sent them to magazines and publishers back in the United States. Although he received mostly rejection letters in return, a handful of his stories were published, encouraging Haley to keep writing.
At the conclusion of World War II, the Coast Guard permitted Haley to transfer into the field of journalism, and by 1949 he had achieved the rank of first class petty officer in the rate of journalist. Haley was soon promoted to chief journalist of the Coast Guard, a rank he held until his retirement in 1959, after 20 years of service. A highly decorated veteran, Haley has received the American Defense Service Medal, World War II Victory Medal, National Defense Service Medal and an honorary degree from the Coast Guard Academy. A Coast Guard Cutter was also named in Haley's honor: the USCGC Alex Haley.
Upon retiring from the Coast Guard in 1959, Haley set out to make it as a freelance writer. Although he published many articles during these years, the pay was barely enough to make ends meet. Haley recalls working 16-hour days for about $2,000 a year, surviving on nothing but canned sardines for weeks at a time.
Then, in 1962, Haley got his big break when Playboy magazine assigned him to conduct an interview with the famous trumpeter Miles Davis.
In the aftermath of The Autobiography of Malcolm X, freelance writing offers for Haley began pouring in, and he could have easily lived out his lifelong dream of being a successful independent writer. Instead, Haley embarked on a hugely ambitious new project to trace and retell the story of his ancestors' journey from Africa to America as slaves, and then their rise from slavery to freedom. During a decade of research on three continents, Haley examined slave ship records at archives in the United States and England and traveled to Gambia, the home of his ancestors in West Africa.
In his ancestral village of Juffure, Haley listened to a tribal historian recount how Kunta Kinte, Haley's ancestor and the protagonist of his book, was captured and sold into slavery. Still, despite his meticulous research, Haley often despaired that he could never recapture the true spirit of his ancestors. He once recalled, "I asked myself, what right had I to be sitting in a carpeted high-rise apartment writing about what it was like in the hold of a slave ship?" In an attempt to answer this question, he booked passage on a ship from Liberia to America and spent his nights lying on a board in the hold of the ship in nothing but his underwear. When Haley finally published Roots in 1976—part fictionalized novel, part richly detailed historical account—the book caused a national sensation.
A review in The New York Times stated, "No other novelist or historian has
provided such a shattering, human view of slavery," and the book went on to win the Pulitzer Prize. In 1977, ABC adapted Roots into a television miniseries that attracted a record-shattering 130 million viewers. Thirty-seven American cities declared January 23-30, the week the program aired, "Roots Week."
Haley's later works include A Different Kind of Christmas (1988) and Queen, another historical novel based on a different branch of his family, published posthumously in 1993.
Haley died of a heart attack on February 10, 1992, at the age of 70.
Alex Haley married Nannie Branch in 1941, and they remained married for 13 years before divorcing in 1954. That same year, he married Juliette Collins; they split in 1972. He later married Myra Lewis, to whom he remained married for the duration of his life. Haley had three children, a son and two daughters.
Famed African-American explorer Matthew Henson was born in Charles County, Maryland, on August 8, 1866. Explorer Robert Peary hired Henson as his valet for expeditions. For over two decades they explored the Arctic, and on April 6, 1909 Peary, Henson and their team made history, becoming the first people to reach the North Pole. Henson died in New York City on March 9, 1955.
"Peary shook my hand and beamed at our four Eskimo dog drivers at 10:30 A. M., Eastern Standard Time, on April 6, 1909."
American explorer Matthew Henson was born Matthew Alexander Henson on August 8, 1866, in Charles County, Maryland. The son of two freeborn black sharecroppers, Henson lost his mother at an early age. When Henson was 4 years old, his father moved the family to Washington, D.C. in search for work opportunities. His father died there, leaving Henson and his siblings in the care of relatives.
In 1891, Henson joined Peary on a Greenland expedition. While there, Henson embraced the local Eskimo culture, learning the language and the natives' Arctic survival skills. At the trip’s end, in 1893, Henson remained the sole member of Peary’s entourage—the rest of the team had abandoned the mission.
Their next trip to Greenland came in 1895, this time with a goal of charting the entire ice cap. The journey almost ended in tragedy, with Peary’s team on the brink of starvation; members of the team managed to survive by eating all but one of their sled dogs. Over the next two years, the explorers returned to Greenland to collect three meteorites found during prior explorations, ultimately selling them to the American Museum of Natural History and using the proceeds to help fund their future expeditions.
Over the next several years, Peary and Henson would make multiple attempts to reach the North Pole. Their 1902 attempt proved tragic, with six Eskimo team members perishing due to a lack of food and supplies. They made more progress during their 1906 trip: Backed by President Theodore Roosevelt and armed with a then state-of-the-art vessel that had the ability to cut through ice, the team was able to sail within 174 miles of the North Pole. Melted ice blocking the sea path thwarted the mission’s completion.
The team's final attempt to reach the North Pole took place in 1908. Henson proved an invaluable team member, building sledges and training others on sled-handling. Of Henson, expedition member Donald Macmillan once noted, "With years of experience equal to that of Peary himself, he was indispensable."
The expedition continued into the following year (1909). While other team members turned back, Peary and the ever-loyal Henson trudged on. Peary knew that the mission's success depended on his trusty companion, stating at the time, "Henson must go all the way. I can't make it there without him." On April 6, 1909, Peary, Henson, four Eskimos and 40 dogs finally reached the North Pole.
Triumphant when they returned, Peary received many accolades for his accomplishment. A sign of the times, the African-American Henson was largely overlooked.
Henson spent the next three decades working as a clerk in a New York federal customs house, but he never forgot his life as an explorer. He recorded his Arctic memoirs in 1912, in the book A Negro Explorer at the North Pole. In 1937, a 70-year-old Henson finally received the acknowledgements he deserved: The highly-regarded Explorers Club in New York accepted him as an honorary member, and the U.S. Navy awarded him a medal in 1946. He also received a cherished gold medal from the Chicago Geographic Society. The following year, he worked with Bradley Robinson to write his biography, Dark Companion.
In April 1891 Henson married Eva Flint. The long periods of separation during Henson’s expeditions took its toll, and Flint divorced him in 1897.
Henson died in New York City on March 5, 1955, and was buried in Woodlawn Cemetery. The body of his wife, Lucy, was buried there in 1968. In a move to honor Henson, in 1987, President Ronald Reagan approved the transportation of Henson and his wife for re-interment at Arlington National Cemetery, per the request of Dr. S. Allen Counter of Harvard University. The national cemetery is also the burial site of Peary and his wife.
Marcus Garvey
Best Known For...
Marcus Garvey was a proponent of the Black Nationalism and Pan-Africanism movements, inspiring the Nation of Islam and the Rastafarian movement.
Born in Jamaica, Marcus Garvey was an orator for the Black Nationalism and Pan-Africanism movements, to which end he founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League. Garvey advanced a Pan-African philosophy which inspired a global mass movement, known as Garveyism. Garveyism would eventually inspire others, from the Nation of Islam to the Rastafari movement.
Social Activist. Born Marcus Mosiah Garvey, Jr. on August 17, 1887, in St. Ann's Bay, Jamica. Self-educated, Garvey founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association, dedicated to promoting African-Americans and resettlement in Africa. In the United States he launched several businesses to promote a separate black nation. After he was convicted of mail fraud and deported back to Jamaica, he continued his work for black repatriation to Africa.
Marcus Mosiah Garvey was the last of 11 children born to Marcus Garvey, Sr. and Sarah Jane Richards. His father was a stone mason, and his mother a domestic worker and farmer. Garvey, Sr. was a great influence on Marcus, who once described him as "severe, firm, determined, bold, and strong, refusing to yield even to superior forces if he believed he was right." His father was known to have a large library, where young Garvey learned to read.
At age 14, Marcus became a printer's apprentice. In 1903, he traveled to Kingston, Jamaica, and soon became involved in union activities. In 1907, he took part in an unsuccessful printer's strike and the experience kindled in him a passion for political activism. Three years later, he traveled throughout Central America working as an newspaper editor and writing about the exploitation of migrant workers in the plantations. He later traveled to London where he attended Birkbeck College (University of London) and worked for the African Times and Orient Review, which advocated Pan-African nationalism.
Inspired by these experiences, Marcus Garvey returned to Jamaica in 1912 and founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) with the goal of uniting all of African diaspora to "establish a country and absolute government of their own." After corresponding with Booker T. Washington, the American educator who founded Tuskegee Institute, Garvey traveled to the United States in 1916 to raise funds for a similar venture in Jamaica. He settled in New York City and formed a UNIA chapter in Harlem to promote a separatist philosophy of social, political, and economic freedom for blacks. In 1918, Garvey began publishing the widely distributed newspaper Negro World to convey his message.
By 1919, Marcus Garvey and UNIA had launched the Black Star Line, a shipping company that would establish trade and commerce between Africans in America, the Caribbean, South and Central America, Canada, and Africa. At the same time, Garvey started the Negros Factories Association, a series of companies that would manufacture marketable commodities in every big industrial center in the Western hemisphere and Africa.
In August 1920, UNIA claimed 4 million members and held its first International Convention at Madison Square Garden in New York City. Before a crowd of 25,000 people from all over world, Marcus Garvey spoke of having pride in African history and culture. Many found his words inspiring, but not all. Some established black leaders found his separatist philosophy ill-conceived. W.E.B. Du Bois, a prominent black leader and officer of the N.A.A.C.P. called Garvey, "the most dangerous enemy of the Negro race in America." Garvey felt Du Bois was an agent of the white elite.
In 1922, Marcus Garvey and three other UNIA officials were charged with mail fraud involving the Black Star Line. The trial records indicate several improprieties occurred in the prosecution of the case. It didn't help that the shipping line's books contained many accounting irregularities. On June 23, 1923, Garvey was convicted and sentenced to prison for five years. Claiming to be a victim of a politically motivated miscarriage of justice, Garvey appealed his conviction, but was denied. In 1927 he was released from prison and deported to Jamaica.
Garvey continued his political activism and the work of UNIA in Jamaica, and then moved to London in 1935. But he did not command the same influence he had earlier. Perhaps in desperation or maybe in delusion, Garvey collaborated with outspoken segregationist and white supremacist Senator Theodore Bilbo of Mississippi to promote a reparations scheme. The Greater Liberia Act of 1939 would deport 12 million African-Americans to Liberia at federal expense to relieve unemployment. The act failed in Congress, and Garvey lost even more support among the black population.
Marcus Garvey died in London in 1940 after several strokes. Due to travel restrictions during World War II, his body was interred in London. In 1964, his remains were exhumed and taken to Jamaica, where the government proclaimed him Jamaica's first national hero and re-interred him at a shrine in the National Heroes Park. But his memory and influence remain. His message of pride and dignity inspired many in the early days of the Civil Rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s. In tribute to his many contributions, Garvey's bust has been displayed in the Organization of American States' Hall of Heroes in Washington, D.C. The country of Ghana has named its shipping line the Black Star Line and its national soccer team the Black Stars, in honor of Garvey.
VIDEO: Macrus Garvey
Source: Marcus Garvey. (2013). The Biography Channel website. Retrieved 10:54, Feb 07, 2013, from http://www.biography.com/people/marcus-garvey-9307319.
Alex Haley
Best Known For...
Alex Haley was an American writer whose works of historical fiction and reportage depicted the struggles of African Americans
Born on August 11, 1921, in Ithaca, New York, Alex Haley was an American writer whose works, including Roots and The Autobiography of Malcolm X, centered on the struggles of African Americans. He died in Seattle, Washington, on February 10, 1992.
Quotes
"Either you deal with what is the reality, or you can be sure that the reality is going to deal with you.
– Alex Haley
"The money I have made and will be making means nothing to me compared to the fact that about half of the black people I meet—ranging from the most sophisticated to the least sophisticated—say to me, 'I'm proud of you.' I feel strongly about always earning that and never letting black people down."
– Alex Haley
"In every conceivable manner, the family is link to our past, bridge to our future."
– Alex Haley
Alex Haley was born Alexander Murray Palmer Haley on August 11, 1921, in Ithaca, New York. At the time of his birth, Haley's father, Simon Haley, a World War I veteran, was a graduate student in agriculture at Cornell University, and his mother, Bertha Palmer Haley, was a teacher.
For the first five years of his life, Haley lived with his mother and grandparents in Henning, Tennessee, while his father finished his studies. When Simon Haley completed his degree, he joined the family in Tennessee and taught as a professor of agriculture at various southern universities. Alex Haley was always remarkably proud of his father, whom he said had overcome the immense obstacles of racism to achieve high levels of success and provide better opportunities for his children.
An exceptionally bright child and gifted student, Haley graduated from high school at the age of 15 and enrolled at Alcorn A&M College (Alcorn State University) in Mississippi, where he says he "was easily the most undistinguished freshman." After one year at Alcorn, he transferred to Elizabeth City State Teachers College in North Carolina.
In 1939, at the age of 17, Haley quit school to enlist in the Coast Guard. Although he enlisted as a seaman, he quickly became a third class petty officer in the inglorious rate of mess attendant. To relieve his boredom while on ship, Haley bought a portable typewriter and typed out love letters for his less articulate friends. He also wrote short stories and articles and sent them to magazines and publishers back in the United States. Although he received mostly rejection letters in return, a handful of his stories were published, encouraging Haley to keep writing.
At the conclusion of World War II, the Coast Guard permitted Haley to transfer into the field of journalism, and by 1949 he had achieved the rank of first class petty officer in the rate of journalist. Haley was soon promoted to chief journalist of the Coast Guard, a rank he held until his retirement in 1959, after 20 years of service. A highly decorated veteran, Haley has received the American Defense Service Medal, World War II Victory Medal, National Defense Service Medal and an honorary degree from the Coast Guard Academy. A Coast Guard Cutter was also named in Haley's honor: the USCGC Alex Haley.
Upon retiring from the Coast Guard in 1959, Haley set out to make it as a freelance writer. Although he published many articles during these years, the pay was barely enough to make ends meet. Haley recalls working 16-hour days for about $2,000 a year, surviving on nothing but canned sardines for weeks at a time.
Then, in 1962, Haley got his big break when Playboy magazine assigned him to conduct an interview with the famous trumpeter Miles Davis.
The interview was such a success that the magazine contracted Haley to do a series of interviews with prominent African-Americans. Known as "The Playboy Interviews," Haley interviewed such prominent figures as Martin Luther King Jr., Sammy Davis Jr., Quincy Jones and Malcolm X. After concluding his 1963 interview with Malcolm X, Haley asked the civil rights leader if he could write a book on his life. The result, two years later, was The Autobiography of Malcolm X: As Told to Alex Haley. A seminal book of the civil rights movement as well as an international bestseller, the book memorialized for eternity the life of Malcolm X while transforming Haley, his collaborator, into a celebrated writer.
In the aftermath of The Autobiography of Malcolm X, freelance writing offers for Haley began pouring in, and he could have easily lived out his lifelong dream of being a successful independent writer. Instead, Haley embarked on a hugely ambitious new project to trace and retell the story of his ancestors' journey from Africa to America as slaves, and then their rise from slavery to freedom. During a decade of research on three continents, Haley examined slave ship records at archives in the United States and England and traveled to Gambia, the home of his ancestors in West Africa.
In his ancestral village of Juffure, Haley listened to a tribal historian recount how Kunta Kinte, Haley's ancestor and the protagonist of his book, was captured and sold into slavery. Still, despite his meticulous research, Haley often despaired that he could never recapture the true spirit of his ancestors. He once recalled, "I asked myself, what right had I to be sitting in a carpeted high-rise apartment writing about what it was like in the hold of a slave ship?" In an attempt to answer this question, he booked passage on a ship from Liberia to America and spent his nights lying on a board in the hold of the ship in nothing but his underwear. When Haley finally published Roots in 1976—part fictionalized novel, part richly detailed historical account—the book caused a national sensation.
A review in The New York Times stated, "No other novelist or historian has
provided such a shattering, human view of slavery," and the book went on to win the Pulitzer Prize. In 1977, ABC adapted Roots into a television miniseries that attracted a record-shattering 130 million viewers. Thirty-seven American cities declared January 23-30, the week the program aired, "Roots Week."
Haley's later works include A Different Kind of Christmas (1988) and Queen, another historical novel based on a different branch of his family, published posthumously in 1993.
Haley died of a heart attack on February 10, 1992, at the age of 70.
Today, Haley is credited with inspiring a nationwide interest in genealogy and contributed to the easing of racial tensions in America. Time magazine called The Autobiography of Malcolm X one of the 10 most important nonfiction books of the 20th century.
Haley always maintained that the goal of his writing and his life was simply to advance the cause of black people. He once said, "The money I have made and will be making means nothing to me compared to the fact that about half of the black people I meet—ranging from the most sophisticated to the least sophisticated—say to me, 'I'm proud of you.' I feel strongly about always earning that and never letting black people down."
Alex Haley married Nannie Branch in 1941, and they remained married for 13 years before divorcing in 1954. That same year, he married Juliette Collins; they split in 1972. He later married Myra Lewis, to whom he remained married for the duration of his life. Haley had three children, a son and two daughters.
Source: Alex Haley. (2013). The Biography Channel website. Retrieved 10:58, Feb 07, 2013, from http://www.biography.com/people/alex-haley-39420.
Matthew Henson
Best Known For...
Matthew Henson was an African American explorer best known as the co-discoverer of the North Pole with Robert E. Peary in 1909
Famed African-American explorer Matthew Henson was born in Charles County, Maryland, on August 8, 1866. Explorer Robert Peary hired Henson as his valet for expeditions. For over two decades they explored the Arctic, and on April 6, 1909 Peary, Henson and their team made history, becoming the first people to reach the North Pole. Henson died in New York City on March 9, 1955.
Quotes
"Peary shook my hand and beamed at our four Eskimo dog drivers at 10:30 A. M., Eastern Standard Time, on April 6, 1909."
– Matthew Henson
American explorer Matthew Henson was born Matthew Alexander Henson on August 8, 1866, in Charles County, Maryland. The son of two freeborn black sharecroppers, Henson lost his mother at an early age. When Henson was 4 years old, his father moved the family to Washington, D.C. in search for work opportunities. His father died there, leaving Henson and his siblings in the care of relatives.
Henson ran away from home at age 11, and was taken in by a woman who lived near his home. At age 12, he left to work as a cabin boy on a ship. Over the next six years and under the mentorship of Captain Childs, Henson learned literacy and navigation skills.
After Captain Childs died, Henson returned to Washington, D.C. and worked as a store clerk for a furrier. It was there that he met Robert E. Peary, an explorer and officer in the U.S. Navy Corps of Civil Engineers. On the recommendation of the store owner, Peary hired Henson as his valet for his travel expeditions.
In 1891, Henson joined Peary on a Greenland expedition. While there, Henson embraced the local Eskimo culture, learning the language and the natives' Arctic survival skills. At the trip’s end, in 1893, Henson remained the sole member of Peary’s entourage—the rest of the team had abandoned the mission.
Their next trip to Greenland came in 1895, this time with a goal of charting the entire ice cap. The journey almost ended in tragedy, with Peary’s team on the brink of starvation; members of the team managed to survive by eating all but one of their sled dogs. Over the next two years, the explorers returned to Greenland to collect three meteorites found during prior explorations, ultimately selling them to the American Museum of Natural History and using the proceeds to help fund their future expeditions.
Over the next several years, Peary and Henson would make multiple attempts to reach the North Pole. Their 1902 attempt proved tragic, with six Eskimo team members perishing due to a lack of food and supplies. They made more progress during their 1906 trip: Backed by President Theodore Roosevelt and armed with a then state-of-the-art vessel that had the ability to cut through ice, the team was able to sail within 174 miles of the North Pole. Melted ice blocking the sea path thwarted the mission’s completion.
The team's final attempt to reach the North Pole took place in 1908. Henson proved an invaluable team member, building sledges and training others on sled-handling. Of Henson, expedition member Donald Macmillan once noted, "With years of experience equal to that of Peary himself, he was indispensable."
The expedition continued into the following year (1909). While other team members turned back, Peary and the ever-loyal Henson trudged on. Peary knew that the mission's success depended on his trusty companion, stating at the time, "Henson must go all the way. I can't make it there without him." On April 6, 1909, Peary, Henson, four Eskimos and 40 dogs finally reached the North Pole.
Triumphant when they returned, Peary received many accolades for his accomplishment. A sign of the times, the African-American Henson was largely overlooked.
Henson spent the next three decades working as a clerk in a New York federal customs house, but he never forgot his life as an explorer. He recorded his Arctic memoirs in 1912, in the book A Negro Explorer at the North Pole. In 1937, a 70-year-old Henson finally received the acknowledgements he deserved: The highly-regarded Explorers Club in New York accepted him as an honorary member, and the U.S. Navy awarded him a medal in 1946. He also received a cherished gold medal from the Chicago Geographic Society. The following year, he worked with Bradley Robinson to write his biography, Dark Companion.
In April 1891 Henson married Eva Flint. The long periods of separation during Henson’s expeditions took its toll, and Flint divorced him in 1897.
Henson married Lucy Ross in 1906. They never bore any children, but like Peary, Henson had relations with Intuit women during their expeditions. In circa 1906, Henson fathered his only child, a son named Anauakaq. Henson did not play a role in his son’s upbringing, though in 1987 Anauakaq reunited with Peary descendants in the United States as documented in the book North Pole Legacy: Black, White and Eskimo.
Henson died in New York City on March 5, 1955, and was buried in Woodlawn Cemetery. The body of his wife, Lucy, was buried there in 1968. In a move to honor Henson, in 1987, President Ronald Reagan approved the transportation of Henson and his wife for re-interment at Arlington National Cemetery, per the request of Dr. S. Allen Counter of Harvard University. The national cemetery is also the burial site of Peary and his wife.
Source: Matthew Henson. (2013). The Biography Channel website. Retrieved 11:00, Feb 07, 2013, from http://www.biography.com/people/matthew-henson-9335648.
Benjamin L. Hooks
Best Known For...
Benjamin Hooks became a minister and public defender during the civil rights movement. He would later become the executive director of the NAACP
Quick Facts
Benjamin Lawson Hooks
- OCCUPATION: Civil Rights Activist, Lawyer
- BIRTH DATE: January 31, 1925
- DEATH DATE: April 15, 2010
- EDUCATION: Le Moyne College, Howard University, De Paul University Law
- PLACE OF BIRTH: Memphis, Tennessee
- PLACE OF DEATH: Memphis, Tennessee
Benjamin Hooks, born in Memphis, Tennessee, became a minister and public defender during the civil rights movement. He worked with Martin Luther King, Jr. and later became the first African-American commissioner of the FCC. Hooks resigned the position to become the executive director of the NAACP (1977-1993).
Source: Benjamin Hooks. (2013). The Biography Channel website. Retrieved 11:03, Feb 07, 2013, from http://www.biography.com/people/benjamin-hooks-9343297.
Jesse Jackson
Best Known For...
Jesse Jackson is an American civil rights leader, Baptist minister and politician who twice ran for U.S. president.
Jesse Jackson was born October 8, 1941, in Greenville, South Carolina. While an undergraduate Jackson became involved in the civil rights movement. In 1965, he went to Selma, Alabama to march with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. In the 1980s he became a leading national spokesman for African-Americans. After being appointed special envoy to Africa, he was awarded the 2000 Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Quotes
"Deliberation and debate is the way you stir the soul of our democracy."
– Jesse Jackson
"We must not measure greatness from the mansion down, but from the manger up."
– Jesse Jackson
A pioneering and controversial civil rights leader, Jesse Jackson was born as Jesse Louis Burns on October 8, 1941, in Greenville, South Carolina. His parents, Helen Burns, a high school student at the time of her son's birth, and Noah Robinson, a 33-year-old married man who was her neighbor, never married.
A year after Jesse's birth, his mother married Charles Henry Jackson, a post office maintenance worker, who later adopted Jesse. In the small, black-and-white divided town of Greenville, a young Jackson learned early what segregation looked like. He and his mother had to sit in the back of the bus, while his black elementary school lacked the amenities the town's white elementary school had.
"There was no grass in the yard," Jackson later recalled. "I couldn't play, couldn't roll over because our school yard was full of sand. And if it rained, it turned into red dirt." Jackson, though, showed promise and potential. His biological father would recall that he always seemed kind of special.
"Jesse was an unusual kind of fella, even when he was just learning to talk," Noah Robinson told The New York Times in 1984. "He would say he's going to be a preacher. He would say, 'I'm going to lead people through the rivers of the water.'"
In school Jackson was a good student and an exceptional athlete. He was elected class president and in the fall of 1959 attended the University of Illinois on a football scholarship. But Jackson spent just a year at the largely white school before transferring to the Agricultural and Technical College of North Carolina (now called the North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University) in Greensboro, where he got involved in the civil rights demonstrations in the town. It was during this time that he also met Jacqueline Lavinia Brown, whom he married in 1962. The couple has five children together.
Dr. King
In 1964, Jackson graduated from college with a degree in sociology. The next year he went to Selma, Alabama, to march with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., eventually becoming a worker in King's Southern Christian Leadership Conference. In 1966, he moved his young family to Chicago, where he did graduate work at the Chicago Theological Seminary. Jackson never finished his studies, but was later ordained by the minister of a Chicago church.
Jackson made the decision to leave school in order to work for King, who, impressed with the young leader's drive and passion, appointed him director of Operation Breadbasket, the economic arm of the SCLC. But Jackson's tenure with the SCLC was not entirely smooth. While King, at first, was enamored with the brashness of the young leader, not everyone in the organization felt the same way. Many felt that Jackson acted too independently, and eventually King came to tire of him as well. Just five days before his assassination, King stormed out of a meeting after Jackson had repeatedly interrupted him.
Still, Jackson traveled with King to Memphis, where King was assassinated on April 4, 1968, while standing on the balcony of his hotel room. Jackson, who was in a room one floor below King's, later told reporters he was the last to talk to Dr. King, who passed away, he claimed, in his arms. The events, as Jackson described them, immediately set off a wave of anger among others who were at the scene and claimed Jackson had overstated his presence at King's shooting for his own gain.
Jackson was eventually suspended by the SCLC. He formally resigned from the organization in 1971.
Political Involvement
The same year Jackson left the SCLC, he founded Operation PUSH (People United to Save Humanity). Jackson created the organization, based in Chicago, in order to advocate black self-help and in a sense serve as Jackson's political pulpit. In 1984 Jackson established the National Rainbow Coalition, whose mission was to establish equal rights for African-Americans, women and homosexuals. The two organizations merged in 1996 to form the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition.
As Jackson's national profile increased, so did his political involvement. Beginning in the late 1970s he began traveling around the world to mediate or spotlight problems and disputes. He visited South Africa in 1979 and spoke out against the country's apartheid policies, and later traveled to the Middle East to throw his support behind the creation of a Palestinian state. He also got behind democratic efforts in the small island nation of Haiti.
In 1984 Jesse Jackson became the second African-American (Shirley Chisholm preceded him) to make a national run for the U.S. presidency. The campaign was historic in terms of its success. Jackson placed third in the Democratic primary voting and garnered a total of 3.5 million votes, surpassing Chisholm's ballot success.
But the campaign also sparked some controversy when in January 1984, Jackson, in an interview with a Washington Post reporter, referred to Jews as "Hymies" and to New York City as "Hymietown." Protests erupted, and Jackson apologized for the remarks one month later.
In 1988 Jackson made a second presidential run, this time finishing second in the Democratic primaries to Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis, winning more than seven million votes.
Later Years
While Jackson declined to run for the U.S. presidency again, he's continued to be a force on the political stage. He has continued to push for African-American rights and has been a featured speaker at Democratic conventions.
In 1990 he won his first election, when he captured one of two special unpaid "statehood senator" posts created by the Washington City Council in order to lobby the U.S. Congress for statehood for the District of Columbia.
But Jackson has been dogged by continued controversies. In 2001 it was revealed he had fathered a child out of wedlock. Seven years later, during then Senator Barack Obama's campaign for the U.S. presidency, a firestorm erupted after he accused Obama of "talking down to black people." He later apologized for the remarks.
Still, there's no denying Jackson's impact on American politics and civil rights. In 2000 President Clinton awarded Jackson the Presidential Medal of Freedom. That same year he received a Master of Divinity degree from the Chicago Theological Seminary.
A noted author, his books include Straight from the Heart (1987) and Legal Lynching: Racism, Injustice, and the Death Penalty (1995).
VIDEO: Jesse Jackson
Source: Jesse Jackson. (2013). The Biography Channel website. Retrieved 11:07, Feb 07, 2013, from http://www.biography.com/people/jesse-jackson-9351181.
John Edwards Jacob
During his term as president of the National Urban League, John E. Jacob (born 1934) pushed for the social and economic progress of African Americans and other minority groups.
"America will become a second-rate power unless we undertake policies to insure that our neglected minority population gets the education, housing, health care and job skills they need to help America compete successfully in a global economy," John E. Jacob, president of the National Urban League, told Martin Tolchin in the New York Times. Reiterated in his annual address to the organization, titled "The State of Black America," Jacob's efforts are often controversial; he repeatedly attacks what he views as the indifference of the American political system to the plight of the disadvantaged. During the 1980s, he called for the withdrawal of billions of dollars from the military budget to be used for training minorities to become skilled laborers. Jacob commented to Ari L. Goldman in the New York Times, "America has only one hope of entering the 21st century as a world power and a global economic force. That is its ability to achieve racial parity and to make full use of the African Americans and minorities it has so long rejected."
Born December 16, 1934, in Trout, Louisiana, Jacob is the son of Baptist minister Emory Jacob and his wife Claudia. Emory eventually moved the family to Houston, Texas, where he worked in carpentry and construction to supplement the small income he received from the church. "I grew up so poor," Jacob recalled to Luix Overbea in the Christian Science Monitor. "Two rooms and a kitchen for seven people. No gas. No electricity. We did our homework by the light of a kerosene lamp and bathed in a washtub in the kitchen." He told Jacqueline Trescott in the Washington Post that his parents' "very rigid middle-class standards," including "southern Baptist principles—no drinking, no dancing, no card playing, no movies on Sunday," saved the family from the "syndrome of poverty." "The overriding principle," Jacob related to Trescott, "was 'Do unto others as you would have them do unto you… . ' You had to do well in school; you had to work. I can never remember not working. You could not create any problems for anybody, at any time. So we grew up straight, upright, good, well-mannered, smart poor kids."
In 1957 Jacob received a bachelor's degree in economics from Howard University in Washington, D.C.; an E. E. Worthing scholarship made college possible. After spending a brief period in the U.S. Army where he achieved the rank of second lieutenant, he returned to Washington. His first job, as a post office clerk, was secured several months later with the intervention of the office of Senator Lyndon B. Johnson. Jacob experienced frustration that his employment opportunities were limited because of his race. "I hated the work [in the post office]," he told Trescott. "I went to work mad, I came home mad."
Two years of postal work preceded Jacob's employment as a public assistance caseworker with the Baltimore Department of Public Welfare in 1960, a position he held while pursuing his masters degree in social work at Howard University. During his five years with the department, Jacob was made child welfare supervisor, a post he considered his most difficult. He explained to Trescott that when taking a child from a parent, you "just have to hope you are right, that what you are doing is right for the child and the parent, at least for the child." In 1965, two years after Jacob completed his masters degree, he was appointed director of education and youth incentives at the Washington Urban League.
Established Leader in His Field
After the turbulent summer of 1967, when racial tensions resulted in urban riots across the United States, Jacob oversaw the creation of Project Alert in the nation's capitol. Rioting in Washington was confined to one day, and 34 persons were arrested for disruptive acts, including arson and looting. The Washington Urban League responded by becoming a liaison for the community; youths from the ghetto were recruited as leaders to bring slum residents' problems to the League, which then directed families to appropriate social services. By 1968, when Jacob was named acting executive director of the Washington Urban League, he led his organization's participation in several other development programs, including the Ford Foundation-funded Operation Equality and the government-funded Project Enable (Education and Neighborhood Action for a Better Living Environment).
During the 1970s, Jacob served as the head of several levels of the National Urban League, including director of community organizing and training for the League's eastern region and director of the San Diego Urban League. In 1975, he returned to the east coast as president of the Washington Urban League and in 1979 was appointed executive vice-president of the National Urban League. The League was renowned for its passage of progressive acts against racial discrimination throughout the 1970s, particularly the 1972 federal Employment Opportunity Act. The Supreme Court upheld the legality of the organization's affirmative action programs, which required those corporations seeking federal contracts to integrate their workforce under specific guidelines involving racial quotas for hiring and promotions.
When National Urban League chief executive Vernon Jordan, was seriously injured in an assassination attempt in 1980, Jacob became acting chief executive of the League. Jordan retired in 1982, and Jacob was subsequently elected to the presidency of the organization by unanimous vote. By this time, the politics of the country had changed under Republican President Ronald Reagan, who was opposed to affirmative action and mandatory busing of school children to desegregate public schools. Under the Reagan administration, several policies, including cutbacks in federal social programs, increased the strain on the financially beleaguered National Urban League. Jacob was outspoken in his objections to the administration, citing in particular its appointment of a conservative majority to the Civil Rights Commission; the result, he felt, would be a weakening of the agencies that protected civil rights. The 1980s also marked the Supreme Court ruling that valid employment seniority systems take precedence over the protection of minority jobs in Firefighters v. Stotts. Additionally, suits filed by the Justice Department against public employers who used the affirmative action tactics of quotas and specific numerical goals increased significantly. Jacob responded by joining other civil rights groups in their boycott of the hearings on employment quotas by the Civil Rights Commission.
Called for Domestic Marshall Plan
During the early 1980s, Jacob formulated a new philosophy for the National Urban League that was similar to the 1947 Marshall Plan initiated by the United States to assist the recovery of European nations after World War II. Aid was sought from private sectors to facilitate entry-level job training programs, and Jacob proposed the League give direct assistance from its own resources to poverty-stricken minorities and whites, including housing and job placement. In addition, he suggested the federal government institute full employment through substantial public works and job training programs, and he joined other civil rights groups in supporting economic boycotts against private industry to induce corporate funding for developing markets and jobs for racial minorities.
Jacob is an adherent of self-help, particularly as advocated by black churches, civil rights and social welfare agencies, and community-led groups. He outlined various strategies—tutoring and counseling to raise Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) scores, a comprehensive teenage pregnancy prevention plan, and a male responsibility program for fatherhood and parenthood—for addressing contributing factors to the cycle of poverty in black America. Key issues he cited were the plight of unwed, adolescent mothers who often dropped out of school and entered welfare roles, the nearly half of all black households headed by single women, and black victims of black crime. Jacob added voter registration, education, and drug control to the League's agenda of top priorities, issues to be addressed through the nineties. "What has distinguished us organizationally, is that in addition to our civil rights portfolio," Jacob told Ebony, "we have always been a direct service organization." Reasoning that blacks should attack their internal problems themselves, he pointed out in Ebony that the Reagan years "may wind up being a blessing." Jacob reckoned, "As a people, we must remember that we are not as weak as we have allowed ourselves to be painted and we are not as strong as we can be."
During the presidency of George Bush—in the late 1980s and early 1990s—Jacob persisted in advocating an Urban Marshall Plan. Inspired by the lessening of tensions between the Eastern and Western worlds, he proposed that funding for the $50 billion project to train minority workers be transferred from the military budget. Although Bush declined an invitation to address the National Urban League when he was campaigning for the presidency, Jacob was encouraged by Bush's civil rights record in Congress. In 1989, Jacob praised Bush's administration to Julie Johnson in the New York Times for the "fresh winds of openness it has brought to our Government." When Bush was receptive to Jacob's domestic Marshall Plan proposals, Jacob welcomed dialogue with the new administration, but Bush's veto of the Civil Rights Act of 1990 soon soured the relationship. In the 1990s, Jacob faced repeated resistance to affirmative action in the courts and legislature, where conservative politicians, white and black, spurned government intervention programs in favor of self-reliance.
Warned of Economic Suicide
While acknowledging that self-reliance is a factor in social reform, Jacob postulates that self-help alone will not deter racial discrimination against blacks and other minorities. He asserts that government funding is necessary to provide fair competition at work and school and argues that the costs are justified to produce skilled laborers, capable of global competition. "Job discrimination is not only a civil rights issue—it's a form of economic suicide," Jacob remarked to Goldman, expressing his hope that the American work force will admit more Hispanics, women immigrants, and African-Americans.
Winner of numerous honorary degrees and social service awards, Jacob, as head of the National Urban League, oversees the operations of one of the largest black organizations in the country. The League—founded by black social worker George Edmund Hayes and white philanthropist Ruth Standish Baldwin in 1910 as the Committee on Urban Conditions among Negroes—began as an organization aiding black laborers from the South who migrated to northern urban areas at the beginning of the twentieth century. In 1911 the Committee combined with two other groups under the appellation the National League on Urban Conditions among Negroes. The National Urban League, an abbreviation of the original League's name, became the organization's designation when affiliates were chartered. Over the decades, the League has grown to encompass a national staff of more than 30,000 salaried workers and non-salaried volunteers and a national governing board made up of 60 trustees chosen from various fields, including churches, corporations, universities, youth groups, labor unions, and civic organizations. Funding from businesses, individuals, and nonprofit organizations, including the United Way, provides the large sum of money required to operate the National Urban League and its affiliates.
A longtime proponent of change, Jacob revealed his aspirations for American society in an address delivered at a conference on public policy and African-Americans. As quoted in Vital Speeches, the activist reminded the forum of the words of the late Episcopal Bishop of Washington, John Walker, who said, "It is God's will that we live together in peace. It's God's will that we grow beyond our racial animosities and that we must commit ourselves to continue that work." Jacob added, "That strikes me as a credo that will serve us well as we go about our business today, tomorrow and into eternity."
New Challenges Ahead
Jacob decided to announce his retirement in 1993 from the National Urban League. He stayed on as president and CEO of the organization until 1994 when accepting the position of executive vice president of Anheuser-Busch. His new responsibilities include working on the company's marketing strategies in minority and foreign markets and educating the public about Anheuser's other companies and theme parks.
John H. Johnson
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