This is Walter Francis White, what is interesting about White was the executive secretary for the NAACP from 1931-1955. His appearance was that of a White man because he was. White was biracial, but chose to go through his life as a black man despite his appearance. His main goal was to abolish lynching. Throughout his career investigations of lynchings and race riots and conducted a vigorous, sustained drive for enactment of a federal antilynching law. Although no such law was enacted, the climate of public opinion was markedly changed by his investigations and exposés. In 1918, when he joined the NAACP staff, 67 persons, all but 4 of them blacks, were lynched. In the year of his death, 1955, there were only three recorded lynchings, and none had occurred in the five previous years. Lynchings had become a rarity and were soon to disappear from the American scene. As he put it in his book, “I am not white. There is nothing within my mind and heart which tempts me to think I am. Yet I realize acutely that the only characteristic which matters to either the white or the colored race—the appearance of whiteness—is mine. There is magic in a white skin; there is tragedy, loneliness, exile, in a black skin.” I don’t know about that tragedy and loneliness part, I guess I understand, but great work.
Black History 365 | # 162 E. Franklin Frazier
E. Franklin Frazier was a sociologist whose work on American African social structure provided insights into many of the problems affecting the black community. Frazier received his A.B. from Howard University (1916) and his A.M. in sociology from Clark University (1920). After being awarded a fellowship to the New York School of Social Work (1920–21), he accepted an American-Scandinavian Foundation grant to study folk high schools and the Cooperative Movement in Denmark (1921–22). He taught sociology at Morehouse College, a historically black institution in Atlanta, Georgia, where he organized the Atlanta University School of Social Work, later becoming its director. With the controversy surrounding the publication (1927) of Frazier’s “The Pathology of Race Prejudice” in Forum, he was forced to leave Morehouse. He received a fellowship from the University of Chicago (1927), where he took his Ph.D. (1931), and publication of his thesis, The Negro Family in Chicago (1932), sustained the university’s interest in his work on the black family. Black Bourgeoisie (1957) was Frazier’s most celebrated and criticized work. In this book, Frazier seared contemporary blacks who saw themselves as middle class. This false consciousness, as he called it, led to a cultural elitism and material existence based solely on acquisitiveness.
Black History 365 | # 160 James P. Beckwourth
James P. Beckwourth was an American mountain man, fur trader and explorer. He was born into slavery in 1805 as the son of a slave and an aristrocratic white father. Beckwourth was the only African American in the West to record his life story. He played a major role in the early exploration and settlement of the American West. Although there were people of many races and nationalities on the frontier, Beckwourth was the only African American who recorded his life story, and his adventures took him from the everglades of Florida to the Pacific Ocean and from southern Canada to northern Mexico. He dictated his autobiography to Thomas D. Bonner, an itinerant Justice of the Peace in the gold fields of California, in 1854-55. After Bonner "polished up" Beckwourth's rough narrative, The Life and Adventures of James P. Beckwourth, Mountaineer, Scout, and Pioneer, and Chief of the Crow Nation of Indians was published by Harper and Brothers in 1856. The book apparently achieved a certain amount of popular success, for it was followed by an English edition in the same year, a second printing two years later, and a French translation in 1860.
Black History 365 | # 159 Sojourner Truth, "Ain't I A Woman?"
Born into slavery in 1797, Isabella Baumfree, who later changed her name to Sojourner Truth, would become one of the most powerful advocates for human rights in the nineteenth century. Her early childhood was spent on a New York estate owned by a Dutch American named Colonel Johannes Hardenbergh. Like other slaves, she experienced the miseries of being sold and was cruelly beaten and mistreated. Around 1815 she fell in love with a fellow slave named Robert, but they were forced apart by Robert’s master. Isabella was instead forced to marry a slave named Thomas, with whom she had five children. Her most famous words, “Ain’t I A Woman?” was actually never said. Frances Gage, played her. The original, was delivered by Sojourner and transcribed by Marius Robinson, a journalist, who was in the audience at the Woman's Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio on May 29, 1851. And Gage’s version was written 12 years later, added a faux-southern dialect and published in 1863. Sojourner Truth had a Dutch accent. She didn’t speak like that. Hear the original speech here.
Black History 365 | # 158 Dr. Gholdy Muhammad
Dr. Gholnecsar (Gholdy) Muhammad is an Associate Professor of Literacy, Language, and Culture . She studies Black historical excellence within educational communities with goals of reframing curriculum and instruction today. Her book Cultivating Genius is her contribution to reframing how we should be treating black students. It’s a great read.