A quick search on the Internet yielded fascinating information about the Azande Warriors, a tribe of North Central Africa.

Who knew?? I certainly didn’t! I set out to find my models for the shoot that would accurately depict a portrait of the man/boy-wife relationship of an ancient Azande Warrior. One of the models (Kobi), I had already known, but I put a call out on Craigslist looking for the young boy-wife "character", and got quite a few responses before settling on Jhaye. Both Kobi and Jhaye were the perfect match to how I had envisioned the African features of the models and the overall "look" and mood of the image. The shoot took place in a non-descript section of Central Park on a chilly September day, as we quickly approached the submission deadline. The models were troopers for posing wearing only loincloths in the wind and chilly weather, all for the sake of art! Thanks you guys!!!

The turning point in Truth’s life came on June 1, 1843, when she adopted a new name, Sojourner, and headed east for the purpose of “exhorting the people to embrace Jesus, and refrain from sin.” For several years, she preached at camp meetings and lived in a utopian community. She also toured the public speaking circuit on behalf of abolition and women’s rights, and in 1851, she gave her infamous “Ain’t I A Woman” speech at a Women’s Rights Convention. The plight of freed slaves then caught her attention, and she championed the idea of a colony for freed slaves in the West, where they would have a chance to become self-supporting and self-reliant. She lived her later years in a Spiritualist community in Harmonia, Michigan.

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News of Jeffries's defeat ignited numerous incidents of white violence against blacks. However, black poet William Waring Cuney captured the exuberant African American reaction in his poem, "My Lord, What a Morning":

O my Lord
What a morning,
O my Lord,
What a feeling,
When Jack Johnson
Turned Jim Jeffries'
Snow-white face
to the ceiling

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They grilled meat, a tradition started in Texas, where Juneteenth originated. They prayed over shackles and chains provided by a historian friend for ancestors who had been enslaved. Bingham dramatized “The Meaning of the Fourth of July for the Negro,” Frederick Douglass’s impassioned commentary on the hypocrisy of the holiday.

That small gathering has grown into Prince George’s first countywide celebration this year of Juneteenth Independence Day, a once-obscure commemoration that has spread to more than two dozen states and a national program today that is expected to draw thousands to the Lincoln Memorial.

“The Fourth of July was America’s independence day, not ours,” said Bingham, 50, of Landover, a trainer with the Maryland Police and Correctional Training Commission. “It wasn’t until almost a century later that the nation finally realized that ‘We need to let these folks be free, too.’

“Juneteenth Day,” he added, ” is our independence day.”

A combination of the words “June” and “nineteenth,” Juneteenth was born out of a spontaneous celebration that erupted June 19, 1865, when Union Maj. Gen. Gordon Granger landed in Galveston, declared U.S. sovereignty over Texas and officially notified the state’s 250,000 slaves that they were free. That was 30 months after President Abraham Lincoln delivered the Emancipation Proclamation.

The anniversary, traditionally celebrated on the third Saturday of the month, is now observed formally in 17 states, and several others have recognized it through gubernatorial proclamations or legislation, officials said. Texas made it a paid state holiday in 1980. New York Gov. George E. Pataki (R) last year signed a law establishing Juneteenth Freedom Day. The District passed legislation in 2003 recognizing Juneteenth. Maryland and Virginia do not formally recognize it, though celebrations are planned in Alexandria, Montgomery County and Southern Maryland.

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Evers, the field agent for the Mississippi NAACP, was on the Coast a day earlier, planning a wade-in with Dr. Gilbert Mason for June 16, 1963. They hoped the protest would lead to blacks being allowed access to Mississippi's public beaches.

"Every year this time," said Robert L. Stepney, who fell quiet before remembering the anniversary of his friend's death. He thinks about Evers, his college roommate for three years, and said, "You don't have many good friends."

The two met at Alcorn State University, where Evers went after serving in an all-black Army regiment in Europe during World War II. Evers was a quarterback on the football team and Stepney was his favorite wide receiver.

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Regardless of the Little's efforts to elude the Legion, in 1929 their Lansing, Michigan home was burned to the ground. Two years later, Earl's body was found lying across the town's trolley tracks. Police ruled both incidents as accidents, but the Little's were certain that members of the Black Legion were responsible. Louise suffered emotional breakdown several years after the death of her husband and was committed to a mental institution. Her children were split up amongst various foster homes and orphanages.

Breaking a tradition of 167 years, the U.S Marine Corps started enlisting Negroes on June 1, 1942. The first class of 1200 Negro volunteers began their training 3months later as members of the 51st Composite Defense Battalion at Montford Point. Photo from the collection of the National Archives.

Following the Revolutionary War, African Americans were barred from enlisting in the Marines. It would take more than 160 years for a U.S. President to bring on another revolution: the beginning of the end of racial discrimination in military policy.

By the start of World War II, African Americans were being admitted into the Army and Navy in segregated units. On June 25, 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order No. 8802, which established the Fair Employment Practices Commission and created a policy of non-discrimination in all branches of the service.

On April 7, 1942, the Secretary of the Navy announced that the Navy, Coast Guard, and Marine Corps would soon allow Blacks to enlist, and later specified that a battalion of 900 Blacks would be formed by the Marine Corps.

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Hiram Revels

Hiram Revels of Mississippi became the first African American senator in 1870.  Born in North Carolina in 1827, Revels attended Knox College in Illinois and later served as minister in the African Methodist Episcopal Church in Baltimore, Maryland.  He raised two black regiments during the Civil War and fought at the battle of Vicksburg in Mississippi.  The Mississippi state legislature sent him to the U.S. Senate during Reconstruction where he became an outspoken opponent of racial segregation.  Although Revels served in the Senate for just a year, he broke new ground for African Americans in Congress.  (Photo: Library of Congress)

Blanche K. Bruce

Born into slavery in 1841, Blanche K. Bruce spent his childhood years in Virginia where he received his earliest education from the tutor hired to teach his master's son.  At the dawn of the Civil War, Bruce escaped slavery and traveled north to  begin a distinguished career in education and politics. Elected to the Senate in 1874 by the Mississippi state legislature, he served from 1875 to 1881. In 2002, the Senate commissioned a new portrait of Bruce, now on display in the U.S. Capitol.  (Photo: Library of Congress)

 

Edward Brooke

The first African American elected to the Senate by popular vote, Edward Brooke of Massachusetts served two full terms, from 1967 to 1979. Born in Washington, D.C. in 1919, Brooke graduated from Howard University before serving in the United States Army during World War II.  After the war, he received a law degree from Boston University. During his Senate career he championed the causes of low-income housing and an increased minimum wage, and promoted commuter rail and mass transit systems. He also worked tirelessly to promote racial equality in the South.  (Photo: Senate Historical Office)

Carol Moseley Braun

Some called 1992 the "Year of the Woman." More women than ever before were elected to political office in November of that year, and five of them came to the U.S. Senate.  Carol Moseley Braun of Illinois not only joined that class on January 3, 1993, but also became the first African American woman ever to serve as U.S. Senator.  During her Senate career, Moseley Braun sponsored progressive education bills and campaigned for gun control. Moseley Braun left the Senate in January of 1999, and soon after became the U.S. Ambassador to New Zealand, a position she held until 2001. Moseley Braun ran for the Democratic nomination for president in 2004. (Photo: Senate Historical Office)

 

Barack Obama

Barack Obama (D-IL)

Barack Obama was born in Hawaii on August 4th, 1961. He received his earliest education in Hawaii and Indonesia, and then graduated from Columbia University in 1983. He moved to Chicago in 1985 to work for a church-based group seeking to improve living conditions in poor neighborhoods. In 1991, Obama graduated from Harvard Law School where he was the first African American president of the Harvard Law Review. He served in the Illinois state senate from 1997 to 2004. Elected to the United States Senate in November of 2004, he took the oath of office and became the fifth African American to serve in the Senate on January 3, 2005.

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Sound familiar? That was 1790. Just 14 years after the Revolutionary War, this ‘great' nation was struggling with many of the same issues it is now. In his newly published book, "Washington, The Making of the American Capital" (Amistad/HarperCollins Publishers Imprint, 27.95, 384 pp) author Fergus M. Bordewich offers an insightful, thorough and ironic picture of America.

As the nation chooses what is likely to be its first African-American Democratic presidential nominee and potential president, Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) would be making history in many ways. He would move full-time into a city that once was a bustling city for slave trade, and live in a house built by slaves.

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Controversial in death as in life, Akhenaten was first known as Amenhotep IV. He was a Pharaoh of the Eighteenth dynasty of Egypt. He is especially noted for attempting to compel the Egyptian population in the monotheistic worship of Aten, although there are doubts as to how successful he was at this. Never the less, to some scholars Akhenaten is considered the father of the western concept of monotheism... the worship of one god.

He was born to Amenhotep III and his Chief Queen Tiye and was their younger son. Akhenaten was not originally designated as the successor to the throne until the untimely death of his older brother, Thutmose.

Amenhotep IV succeeded his father after Amenhotep III's death at the end of his 38-year reign, possibly after a short coregency lasting between either 1 to 2 years. Akhenaten's chief wife was Nefertiti, made world-famous by the discovery of her exquisitely moulded and painted bust, now displayed in the Altes Museum of Berlin, and among the most recognised works of art surviving from the ancient world.

The appeal of the Amarna period

Some people are drawn by interest in Akhenaten himself or his religion, others by a fascination with the unusual art which appeals strongly to the tastes of modern viewers and provides a sense of immediacy rarely felt with traditional Egyptian representation. The radical changes Akhenaten made have led to his characterisation as the 'first individual in human history' and this in turn has led to endless speculation about his background and motivation; he is cast as hero or villain according to the viewpoint of the commentator.

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