By Ruthe Stein

(1941-2004)

Actor

By the time of Paul Winfield's death, black actors were a common sight on TV and in movies. They owe their jobs to predecessors like Winfield, who led the way by distinguishing himself in ground-breaking roles.

Paul Winfield was only the third black person to be nominated for an Oscar for best actor, after Sidney Poitier and James Earl Jones. Winfield's 1972 performance in "Sounder" as a Louisiana sharecropper struggling to provide for his family during the Depression was a stark contrast to the "blaxploitation" movies of the era, like "Shaft" and "Superfly."

But his movie career failed to take off, and he found himself scrambling for work on television, where he had started out as Diahann Carroll's boyfriend on the landmark black sitcom "Julia."

"I was given a lot of prestige as a distinguished black actor but very little power," Winfield recalled in an interview. "They give prestige out by the buckets, but they give power by the teaspoon, just enough to stoke your ego."

His frustration with Hollywood factored into Winfield's decision to move to San Francisco in 1975. Winfield, who grew up in the Watts area of Los Angeles, knew the city from attending Stanford on a scholarship and described it in an interview as "a place where a lot of people go to find themselves. There's a lot of introspection, a lot of social and sexual and interpersonal experimentation."

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Eric Gupton

1960-2003

Performer

Eric Gupton was a flamboyant warrior. As a founding member of Pomo Afro Homos, the audacious black theater troupe that blazed a broad-spectrum view of homosexuality in the 1990s, he stood in a singular bright light with his stage cohorts. Gupton did it as a performer who was by turns funny, wrathful and tender and always fearless wherever he and his material went.

In "Fierce Love: Stories From Black Gay Life," the company's breakthrough first show, he left a memorable imprint in a sketch called "Good Hands," set in the erotically heated backroom of a club. In "Dark Fruit" he played a timid office temp who gets lured into a relationship with a power-wielding boss. Another sketch from that show cast Gupton as a black student who is caught in the arms of a white boy and suffers by far the harsher fate.

"As we announce so clearly in our shows," Gupton said in a 1994 interview with the Los Angeles Times, "these are just some of the stories. We merely present the mirror, the community at large with all its flaws. What it should do is empower people to say you have value in your life. It may not be reflected in a sitcom, but you should honor it."

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The has been much debate in the recent political atmostphere over who is the real black leader. In reality, African Americans have been blessed with a long line of leaders who rose above adversity and added their unique contributions to our history.

In honor of Black History Month, GBMNews is featuring a short biography of a few of those  influential leaders all this week.

 

Paul Cuffe (1759-1817) Paul Cuffe, a free Black from Massachusetts, was a shipowner and advocate of sending free Blacks voluntarily back to Africa. Cuffe's efforts helped encourage the American Colonization Society to found settlements in what was to become Liberia. Altogether, some 15,000 American Blacks moved there during the colonization effort.
Richard Allen (1760-1831) Born a slave, Richard Allen began his career as a clergyman with the conversion of his master. Shrewd and hardworking, Allen bought his freedom and moved to Philadelphia. After being rebuffed at white churches, he formed an independent Black Methodist church. In 1816, he became the first bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, the first national organization of its kind. During this era, it was said, Allen's house was never shut ''against the friendless, homeless, penniless fugitive from the house of bondage.'' Allen is also reported by his contemporaries to have had ''greater influence upon the colored people of the North than any other man of his times.''
Frederick Douglass (1817-1895) Born into slavery on a Maryland farm, Frederick Douglass became the foremost African-American abolitionist in the United States. At the age of 21, he escaped to Massachusetts where he become a lecturer for the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society. In 1847, Douglass founded a newspaper, The North Star, whose masthead read: ''Right is of no sex – Truth is of no color – God is the Father of us all, and we are all Brethren.'' During the Civil War, Douglass recruited Black regiments for the North and spoke eloquently for Black suffrage and civil rights.
Sojourner Truth (Isabella) (1820-1883) Born a slave in New York, Sojourner Truth escaped just before the state abolished slavery. Becoming a preacher-prophet, she adopted the name ''Sojourner Truth.'' By 1843, she began touring America denouncing slavery and championing equal rights for Blacks and women before religious, abolitionist and women's organizations. Truth visited President Abraham Lincoln at the White House in 1864, then remained in Washington to help runaway slaves. Her last years were spent urging Congress to allocate land and money for freed Blacks in the West. In her honor, NASA named the first pioneering rover sent to Mars, "Sojourner".
Harriet Tubman (c. 1821-1913) Harriet Tubman was born a slave in Maryland. At age 25, she escaped to freedom. She was to become the most famous conductor on the ''Underground Railroad,'' a secret network of hiding places where fugitive slaves found sanctuary on their way north. All told, she made 19 trips back to the South, helping more than 300 slaves escape to freedom. During the Civil War, Tubman worked for the Union as a nurse, a spy and a scout. At one time $40,000 was offered for her capture. Her later years were given to establishing an old-age home for impoverished Blacks.
Booker T. Washington (1856-1915) Booker Taliferro Washington, the most influential African-American leader at the turn of the century was born a slave in Virginia and freed with the Emancipation Proclamation. In 1881, Washington became head of Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute in Alabama, where he advocated industrial and agricultural training for African-Americans. Under his leadership the school became one of the nation's leading Black universities. After delivering his famous ''Atlanta Compromise'' speech in 1895, Washington was recognized as the chief spokesman for Black Americans. Advocating the dignity of common labor, Washington steered Blacks toward careers in agriculture, mechanics and domestic service. In 1900, Washington organized the National Negro Business league which emphasized skill, thrift and Black capitalism.

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Former Artistic Director of  San Francisco's Theatre Rhinoceros

1945-1994 Actor, director

"We want to provide a home to gays and other minority groups," Kenneth R. Dixon said in an interview, shortly after becoming artistic director of Theatre Rhinoceros in 1987. "I hope because I'm here, people of color will want to come here."

The first African American artistic director of a gay theater company, and one of the few black artists to head a non-black-identified arts organization, Dixon did more than break down boundaries by his mere presence. In three years at the helm of the nation's oldest gay theater, Dixon built upon a policy of increasing inclusiveness initiated by his predecessors - founder Allan Estes and Kris Gannon, who took over when Estes died of AIDS - that already had expanded the company's mission to include lesbian as well as gay male artists. Dixon devoted himself and his work to confronting racism within the gay community and homophobia among African Americans.

Born in Chicago, Dixon trained as a psychologist, graduating from Southern Illinois University and earning a master's degree in clinical psychology from Boston University, where he also worked with one of the nation's first gay and lesbian counseling services. It was during graduate school that he was bitten by the theater bug. Performing led to acting classes in New York and in San Francisco, where he lived in the 1970s.

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By Mark Pratt

Stagecoach Mary Fields

Stagecoach Mary Fields was a gun-toting, hard-drinking, cigar-smoking frontierswoman who gambled, brawled and reputedly even killed a man. Well into her 60s, she dependably steered her coach through some of Montana's harshest weather to deliver the mail. She was also a beloved housekeeper at a convent, tended her own vegetable garden and late in life presented bouquets to men who hit home runs during baseball games in Cascade, Mont.

Fields, who died in 1914 in her early 80s, is just one of thousands of black historical figures whose life stories have been relegated to the edges of American history, but who are being brought to light again in the "African American National Biography."

The ambitious project, seven years in the making, includes the stories of more than 4,000 black Americans -- from household names, including Martin Luther King Jr. and former Secretary of State Colin Powell -- to the obscure and almost forgotten, including Fields and Richard Potter, a magician and ventriloquist.

"Black achievement has been trapped in amber, and what we've been able to do is find these people again and restore them so they'll never be lost again," said Henry Louis Gates Jr., the Harvard University scholar and co-editor of what he says is the largest research project in the history of African-American studies.

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By Millie Jefferson

Geroge Washington Carver

1. Not only did George Washington Carver research 300 products made from peanuts and 118 products from the sweet potato, but 75 from the pecan as well.

(Source: Huntsville Urban Network:www.huntsvilleurbannetwork.net)

2. Most folks think of Motown as America's first and only African-American record company. But, before Barry Gordy and Motown, there was Harry Pace. Pace formed the Pace Phonographic Record Company in 1921, which issued records under the Black Swan Label.

(Source: African-American Firsts: Famous, little-known and unsung triumphs of blacks in America by Joan Potter with Constance Claytor - Pinto Press 1994)

3. The W.E.B. in W.E.B. DuBois stands for William Edward Burghardt. And even though DuBois is French, the correct pronunciation, the pronunciation that DuBois used himself is (Do-boyz).

(Source: Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._E._B._Du_Bois )

4. Most people think Lawrence Douglas Wilder was the first black governor in the United States, they are partially correct. He was the first black governor elected. The first black governor to serve was actually Pinckney Benton Stewart Pinchback in 1872. He was serving as lieutenant governor at the time and the sitting governor was impeached.

(Source: African-American Firsts: Famous, little-known and unsung triumphs of blacks in America by Joan Potter with Constance Claytor - Pinto Press 1994)

5. African-Americans were among the first non-Native settlers of the Ohio Valley. For example, when Knox County, Ohio, was established, there were already famous blacks. One being an expert stable hand and handler of horses, Enoch "Knuck" Harris. Although, most blacks were servants to white families, they were generally not slaves and eventually obtained and farmed small parcels of land.

(Source: 1001 Things Everyone Should Know about African American History, by Jeffrey C. Stewart- Doubleday 1996)

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A new two-part, four hour edition of African American Lives will debut this Wednesday night, February 6 at 9:00 p.m. Hosted by Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates, the series follows genealogical investigations into the ancestry of many well-known African Americans, along with that of college administrator Kathleen Henderson, who was selected from more than 2,000 applicants to have her family history researched and DNA tested alongside the series' more well-known guests.

Other individuals profiled on the show include poet Maya Angelou, author Bliss Broyard, actor Don Cheadle, actor Morgan Freeman, theologian Peter Gomes, publisher Linda Johnson Rice, athlete Jackie Joyner-Kersee, radio personality Tom Joyner, comedian Chris Rock and music legend Tina Turner. Chris Rock learns that his grandfather served as a Union corporal in the Civil War, was elected to the South Carolina legislature, and went from being a slave to owning 66 acres of land. Radio personality Tom Joyner is surprised when it's uncovered that two of his great-uncles (his grandmother's brothers) were lynched for a crime they most likely did not commit. Don Cheadle discovers ancestors who were enslaved by Chickasaw Indians and brought to Oklahoma on the infamous "Trail of Tears."

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By Rafael Medoff

While in Israel, President Bush remarked that the United States should have bombed the Auschwitz death camp in 1944. The followoing week, Americans will commemorated the birthday of Martin Luther King Jr. and the struggle for Civil Rights.

What do these two occasions have in common? More than one might think.

The link between the two is the Tuskegee Airmen of World War II, the first African American pilots in the United States military. The Tuskegee veterans, who have come to symbolize the early years of the civil rights struggle, often speak at events honoring Dr. King. Again and again, these pilots were victimized by racist War Department officials who regarded them as inferior and did not want them to fly. Yet again and again they persevered, and their extraordinary achievements in battle undermined the claims of their racist opponents.

Tuskegee squadrons shot down a total of 109 German planes and repeatedly won Distinguished Unit Citations and other medals for performance in their missions over Europe. They were so admired by their fellow pilots that bomber groups often specifically requested the Tuskegee units as escorts for their bombing raids.

One of those raids took place in the skies over Auschwitz.

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BlackHistory.com helps African-Americans celebrate Black History Month.

Columbus, OH (PRWEB) January 11, 2008 -- Black History Month is fast approaching, and many local and national festivities are already in place. Two entrepreneurs, William Moss (founder of HBCU.com) and Dante Lee (founder of BlackNews.com), have come together to launch BlackHistory.com - the first web site of its kind.

BlackHistory.com is a 100% free online encyclopedia that features information, pictures and video content about African American accomplishments. It is divided into five major categories: people, places, events, terms and organizations.

The site is also a social networking platform that allows African American visitors to chronicle their own contributions to Black History and to connect in a way like never before. Members can interact with each other and post profiles, pictures, and even history-related content.

Moss comments, "BlackHistory.com is a valuable asset to students and professionals looking to conduct research, but also to advertisers who want to show their strong support for Black History month."

THE GAY MAN WHO ORGANIZED THE 1963 MARCH ON WASHINGTON

By Nick Gier

Bayard Rustin

As a politically active black man in 1950s and 1960s, Bayard Rustin had, in addition to his race, three strikes against him: he was a pacifist; he was a Communist; and he was openly homosexual.

In 1936 Rustin became a member of the Young Communist League, but he broke with the party when it decided to deemphasize civil rights in favor of supporting the Soviet Union in the war.

During World War II he began his long association with the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR), a pacifist organization founded in 1914 by an English Quaker and a German Lutheran. His grandmother, who raised him, was a Quaker, but she and her grandson attended a local African Methodist Episcopal Church.

From 1944 to 1946 Rustin served 28 months in a federal penitentiary for refusing to report for military service. While in prison he worked diligently to end segregation in the prison dining hall.

Rustin was an all-inclusive civil rights worker. He traveled to California to protect the property of Japanese Americans who had been interned during the war. While in prison he established the FOR's Free India Committee, and he later convinced Martin Luther King, Jr. to follow Gandhi’s principle of active nonviolence.

In 1947 Rustin led a FOR attempt to integrate the interstate bus system. In Chapel Hill, North Carolina, he and his associates were set upon by a mob, but it was he, rather than his attackers, who served 22 days of hard labor for "inciting" this incident.

In 1953 he was arrested for having sex with two other men. Thanks to a recent Supreme Court decision decriminalizing sodomy, no one can be arrested for consensual sex of any sort in today's America. The Texas law that was truck down was particularly discriminatory in that it did not outlaw "unnatural" sex acts between heterosexuals.

Because of the gay sex charge, Rustin was fired from the FOR staff. Even though under this dark cloud, King nonetheless took him on as an adviser in 1956. As a seasoned civil rights worker, his experience was crucial to the success of the Montgomery bus boycott.

The story of the Chevalier de Saint-George ("Knight of Saint-George") depicts the rise, fall, and rebirth of an athletic, musical, and military hero who became a superstar in 18th century France. Born on Christmas Day, 1745 in the French-Caribbean island of Guadeloupe, to a Senegalese slave and a French colonialist, Saint-George was a breakthrough composer and violin virtuoso who came to be called "Le Mozart Noir". He became the first black man to lead France`s most important orchestras. Saint-George was also Europe`s finest fencer, a master horseman, elite musketeer, infamous playboy, and a Colonel who led an army in the French Revolution. Described by poets of his day as a "French Hercules", "a veritable Mars", and a "rival of Apollo", Saint-George stands out as one of the most extraordinary figures of the 18th century.

The "King of Pop" of his age, Saint-George`s celebrity was known throughout Europe and word of his fame eventually reached the U.S. John Adams, the 2nd U.S. President, was reportedly given an account of Saint-George by one of his aides: "He is the most accomplished man in Europe, in riding, running, shooting, fencing, dancing, music. He will hit the button - any button on the coat or waistcoat of the greatest masters. He will hit a crown-piece in the air with a pistol-ball."

A $621 million project is not expected to be ready for tourists until next fall. Congress has set an encouraging standard, emphasizing the center's educational mission by naming the main wel-coming chamber Emancipation Hall. The name honors the forgotten African-American slaves that were forced to help build the original Capitol in the 18th and 19th centuries.

Researchers found slaves were rented as Capitol labor by the federal government for $5.00 a month, which was paid directly to local slave owners. "Negro hires" was the term used in the construction of what early on was called, no irony recorded, the "Temple of Liberty."

The slaves worked six days a week, 12 hours a day, quarrying stone, sawing timber and hauling supplies. Until now, all they earned for this back-breaking labor was anonymity. Emancipation Hall will be the main point of welcome for crowds of constituents in the 580,000-square-foot visitors' center.

It is expected to become a prime Washington destination, designed to handle greater throngs in a more secure, inspiring and informative setting. Amid all the tower-ing patriotism depicted, exhibits are planned about the slaves' lot of hardship and creativity in realizing the Capitol.

A slave named Philip Reid is credited with helping to cast the Statue of Freedom - the Capitol dome's crowning decoration - after the original white craftsmen refused to do so without a pay raise. Reid was ultimately made a free man by an act of Congress, the rare special-interest legis-lation that deserves to be cited in the new Emancipation Hall.

By Kellie Geist

As the holidays roll around, it's easy to get caught up in the spirit of Christmas or Chanukah. But what about the spirit of Kwanzaa?

Despite some misconceptions, Kwanzaa is not a religious holiday. However, it is a time to revel in many of the same comforts.

"Kwanzaa is an African American tradition that celebrates family, community and culture," said Cynthia Pinchback-Hines, associate dean of African American Student Affairs and Ethnic Services.

Each year the African American Student Affairs and Ethic Services holds a Kwanzaa celebration. This year, the event will be from 12:15 to 1:30 p.m. Dec. 5 in the Otto Budig Theater and will feature a medley of cultural expression, a discussion of Kwanzaa and its seven principles as well as a ceremony for the holiday.

Miles Dean, a 52-year-old social studies teacher in Newark, is on a half-year, 6,000-mile horseback journey from New York to California. His goal: To heighten awareness of black cowboys and other African-Americans who helped forge American history.

"The journey is a journey of celebration of the achievements of our African-American ancestors in the exploration, expansion and settlement of the United States," Dean said.

Dean, who calls himself "a modern African-American pioneer," started at the African-American Burial Ground in Lower Manhattan on Saturday, Sept. 22, and he made subsequent stops in New Jersey. Dean traveled through Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington, D.C. - stopping at several college campuses along the way - before he disappeared for two weeks into the valleys of West Virginia. Now, he's re-emerged with cell phone service, and is on his way to Charleston, W.Va., and then to Kentucky.

As Dean travels, he's calling The Star-Ledger along the way to report on his trip. With his help, we'll keep you posted on his progress.

The Savoy Ballroom located in Harlem, New York City, was a medium sized ballroom for music and public dancing that was in operation from 1926 to 1958. It was located between 140th and 141st Streets on Lenox Avenue.

The Savoy was a popular dance venue from the late 1920s to the 1950s and many dances such as Lindy Hop became famous here. It was known downtown as the "Home of Happy Feet" but uptown, in Harlem, as "the Track". Unlike the 'whites only' policy of the Cotton Club, the Savoy Ballroom was integrated where white and black Americans danced together.

Chick Webb was the leader of the best known Savoy house band during the mid-1930s. A teenage Ella Fitzgerald, fresh from a talent show win at the Apollo Theater, became its vocalist.

The Savoy regularly staged "Battle of the Bands" promotions that usually occurred between a house and a guest band, although not necessarily. Sometimes the bands would trade numbers at the change-over point between sets. Invariably packed when these events took place, there was little room to dance, and the crowd would vote as to who was their favourite band, band leader, vocalist etc.

Two of the most famous "battles" happened when the Benny Goodman Orchestra challenged Chick Webb in 1937 and in 1938 when the Count Basie Band did the same. The general assessment was that they both lost, to Chick Webb.

The ballroom was on the second floor and a block long. It had a double bandstand that held one large and one medium sized band running against its east wall. Music was continuous as the alternative band was always ready in position ready to pick up the beat, when the previous one had completed its set. The Savoy was unique in having the constant presence of a skilled elite of the best Lindy Hoppers.

Usually known as "Savoy Lindy Hoppers" occasionally they turned professional, such as Whitey's Lindy Hoppers and performed in Broadway and Hollywood productions.

"Stompin' at the Savoy", a 1934 Big Band classic song and jazz standard, was named after the ballroom. Its credits say its music was written by Benny Goodman, Chick Webb, and Edgar Sampson, and the lyrics by Andy Razaf, in reality it was Sampson who actually wrote the number.[verification needed]

On 26 May 2002, a commemorative plaque for the Savoy Ballroom was revealed on Lenox Ave between 140th and 141st Streets. The plaque was unveiled by Frankie Manning and Norma Miller, surviving members of Whitey's Lindy Hoppers.

Source: Wikipedia

The Abyssinian Baptist Church is among the most famous of the many churches in Harlem, New York City.

The church traces its roots to 1808, when black parishioners left the First Baptist Church of New York in protest over racially segregated seating.[1] In 1908, Adam Clayton Powell, Sr. became pastor of the church, and in 1923, he oversaw its move uptown to its current location on West 138th Street in Harlem. By the time he handed the reins of the church to his son, Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., in 1935, the Abyssinian Baptist Church was the largest Protestant congregation in America.

In the early 1930s Pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer attended the church on occasions, and this experience gave him insights about the real struggle for social justice, when the Nazis took power in his German homeland.

It was an important location for non-secular music in the Harlem Renaissance, and remains a center for the Harlem gospel tradition. Fats Waller's father was once minister at the church. Among many important events there, the church conducted the funeral of "The Father of Blues," W.C. Handy in 1958.

Today, under the direction of Rev. Calvin O. Butts, the church is a vital political, social, and religious institution in New York.

Source: Wikipedia

Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela (born 18 July 1918) is a former President of South Africa, the first to be elected in fully representative democratic elections. Before his presidency, Mandela was an anti-apartheid activist and leader of the African National Congress.

Through his 27 years in prison, much of it spent in a cell on Robben Island, Mandela became the most widely known figure in the struggle against apartheid. Among opponents of apartheid in South Africa and internationally, he became a cultural icon as a proponent of freedom and equality while the apartheid government and nations sympathetic to it condemned him and the ANC as communists and terrorists.

People's memories of China's support fail

By Mo Hong'e

BEIJING, Sept. 12 -- It is not surprising to learn that the selection of a Chinese sculptor to carve a monument to Martin Luther King Jr on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. triggered controversy in the United States. After all, King was an outstanding leader of the African-American people and the feeling his statue should have been commissioned to an African-American artist is quite understandable.

But I did not expect some of the critics would oppose the selection out of resentment against the country where the artist is from. They challenged the artist's qualifications because of China's so-called "poor human rights record," which they asserted would have been "abhorred" by King.

I don't know what King would have "abhorred." In his time, he and his comrades regarded China and the Chinese people as their most reliable allies, and indeed they turned to China for support in their civil rights struggle.

The article "African victim of Nazis won't be forgotten" mentions only a single victim of Nazi atrocities, a black man named Mahjub bin Adam Mohamed from Tanzania, who is honoured with a brass plaque in Germany.

Whether the glaring omission is by design or by ignorance, it is imperative to disclose more egregious past world war German violations of the sanctity of human life in which many black people died.

As a result, no amount of brass plaques will assuage the long term effects of destruction and suffering wreaked by German bombers and troops.

For the first time, an African victim of the Nazis will be honored with one of the over 12,500 copper monument markers spread throughout Germany by a German artist to mark the former residences of Nazi victims.

The stone will be placed in front of the house on Brunnenstrasse in Berlin's Mitte neighborhood formerly occupied by Mahjub bin Adam Mohamed, a Sudanese man, who enlisted as a soldier in the colonial forces of then German East Africa. In 1929 Mahjub moved to Berlin, where he worked as a waiter in an upscale hotel while holding bit roles in 20 films from 1934 to 1941.

In 1941, Mahjub was arrested by the Nazi authorities and accused of miscegenation. He died in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp on the outskirts of Berlin on Nov. 24, 1944.