Maya Angelou

Maya Angelou was born Marguerite Annie Johnson in St. Louis, Missouri, on April 4, 1928.

When Maya Angelou was just eight, she was raped by her mother’s boyfriend and for the next five years was mute. At 16, she gave birth to a son.

Maya Angelou is best known for her autobiographical books: ‘All God’s Children Need Traveling Shoes’, ‘The Heart of a Woman’, ‘Singin’ and Swingin’ and Gettin’ Merry Like Christmas’, ‘Gather Together in My Name’, and ‘I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings’, which was nominated for the National Book Award.

She worked with Martin Luther King (and refused to celebrate her birthday for many years because it fell on the day of his assassination).

In 1993, Angelou wrote and delivered a poem, “On The Pulse of the Morning,” at the inauguration for President Bill Clinton at his request.

According to The Observer: “During the weeks before President Bill Clinton’s inauguration, Maya Angelou began work at 5.30 every morning in a hotel room and with the help of sherry, a dictionary, Roget’s Thesaurus and the Bible, tried to write a poem. She filled six yellow pads but still no luck. She phoned her friend Jessica Mitford ‘quite distraught, in a terrible state with the responsibility of it, trying to meet the deadline. But we knew she would pull it off. She’s a superstar.’”

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Jack Roosevelt Robinson

Jack Roosevelt Robinson (January 31, 1919 – October 24, 1972) became the first African American Major League Baseball player of the modern era in 1947. Robinson’s achievement has been recognized by the retirement by each Major League team of his uniform number, 42.

Contents

1 Before the Major League
2 The Dodgers
3 Post Dodgers

Before the Major League

Born in Cairo, Georgia, Robinson moved with his mother and siblings to Pasadena, California in 1920, after his father deserted the family. At the University of California, Los Angeles, he was a football, basketball, track, and baseball star where he played with Kenny Washington, who would become one of the first black players in the National Football League since the early 1930s. His brother Matthew “Mack” Robinson (1912-2000) competed in the 1936 Summer Olympics, finishing second in the 200-meter sprint behind Jesse Owens.

After leaving UCLA without a degree in 1942, Robinson enlisted in the US Army during World War II. He trained with the segregated U.S. 761st Tank Battalion. Initially refused entry to Officer Candidate School, he fought for it and eventually was accepted, graduating as a second lieutenant. While training at Fort Hood, Texas, Robinson refused to go to the back of a bus, knowing that the practice had recently been outlawed on military vehicles. He was court-martialed for insubordination, and never shipped out to Europe with his unit. He received an honorable discharge in 1944, after being exonerated at a trial with all charges dismissed.

Jackie played baseball in 1944 for the Kansas City Monarchs in the Negro American League where he caught the eye of Clyde Sukeforth, a scout working for Branch Rickey.

The Dodgers

Branch Rickey was the club president and general manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers, and had the secret goal of signing the Negro Leagues’ top players to the team. Although there was no official ban on blacks in organized baseball, previous attempts at signing black ballplayers had been thwarted by league officials and rival clubs in the past, and so Rickey operated undercover. His scouts were told that they were seeking players for a new all-black league Rickey was forming; not even the scouts knew his true objective.

Robinson drew national attention when Rickey selected him from a list of promising candidates and signed him. In 1946, Robinson was assigned to play for the Dodgers’ minor league affiliate in Montreal, the Montreal Royals. Although that season was very tiring emotionally for Robinson, it was also a spectacular success in a city that treated him with all the wild fan support that made the Canadian city a welcome refuge from the hateful harassment he experienced elsewhere.

Robinson was a slightly curious candidate to be the first black Major Leaguer in sixty years (see Moses Fleetwood Walker). Not only was he 27 (relatively old for a prospect), he also had a fiery temperament. While some felt his more laid-back future teammate Roy Campanella might have been a better candidate to face the expected abuse, Rickey chose Robinson knowing that Jackie’s outspoken nature would, in the long run, be more beneficial for their cause than Campanella’s relative docility.

Robinson’s debut at first base with the Brooklyn Dodgers on April 15, 1947 (he batted 0 for 3) was one of the most eagerly-awaited events in baseball history, and one of the most profound in the history of the U.S. civil rights movement. Although he played his entire rookie year at first base, Robinson spent most of his career as a second baseman. He also played many games at third base and in the outfield.

During that first season, the abuse to which Robinson was subjected made him come close to losing his patience more than once. Many Dodgers were initially resistant to his presence. A group of Dodger players, mostly Southerners led by Dixie Walker, suggested they would strike rather than play alongside Robinson, but the mutiny was ended when Dodger management informed the players they were welcome to find employment elsewhere. He did have the support of Kentucky-born shortstop Pee Wee Reese, who proved to be his closest comrade on the team. The pair became a very effective defensive combination as a result. Pittsburgh Pirate Hank Greenberg, the first major Jewish baseball star who experienced anti-semitic abuse, also gave Robinson encouragement.

During the season, Robinson experienced considerable harassment from both players and fans. The Philadelphia Phillies – encouraged by manager Ben Chapman- were particularly abusive. In their April 22 game against the Dodgers, they barracked him continually, calling him a “nigger” from the bench, telling him to “go back to the jungle.” Rickey would later recall that “Chapman did more than anybody to unite the Dodgers.

When he poured out that string of unconscionable abuse, he solidified and united 30 men.” Baseball Commissioner Albert “Happy” Chandler admonished the Phillies but asked Robinson to pose for photographs with Chapman as a conciliatory gesture. Robinson didn’t refuse, but the ensuing session was likely difficult for both participants.

During Robinson’s rookie season, he earned the major-league minimum salary of $5000. He played in 151 games, hit .297, and was the league leader in stolen bases with 29.

Robinson was awarded the Rookie of the Year award in 1947, and the Most Valuable Player award for the National League in 1949. He not only contributed to Brooklyn pennants in both years, but his determination and hustle kept the Dodgers in pennant races in 1950 and 1951 when they might otherwise have been eliminated much sooner.

Robinson’s Major League career was fairly short. He did not enter the majors until he was 28, was often injured as he aged, and he retired at age 37. But in his prime, he was respected by every opposing team in the league. By the time of his retirement, he was disillusioned with the Dodgers, and in particular Walter O’Malley (who had forced Rickey out as General Manager) and manager Walter Alston.

Robinson was an exceptionally talented and disciplined hitter, with a career average of .311 and substantially more walks than strikeouts. He played several defensive positions extremely well and was the most aggressive and successful baserunner of his era; he was among the few players to “steal home” frequently[1]. By his talent and physical presence, he disrupted the concentration of pitchers, catchers and middle infielders. Robinson’s overall talent was such that he is often cited as among the best players of his era. It is also frequently claimed that Robinson was one of the most intelligent baseball players ever, a claim that is well supported by his home plate discipline and defensive prowess. Robinson was regarded as a fierce competitor in the truest sense: he never gave up on a game if his team was losing, to the point that he would try everything to avoid being the last man out for his side.

Post Dodgers

Jackie Robinson and his son David
Being Interviewed at the “March on Washington”
August 28, 1963
From the National Archives

Robinson retired from the game on January 5, 1957. He had wanted to manage or coach in the major leagues, but received no offers. He became a vice-president for the Chock Full O’ Nuts corporation instead, and served on the board of the NAACP till 1967, when he resigned because of the movement’s lack of younger voices. In 1960, he involved himself in the presidential election, campaigning first for Hubert Humphrey, and then meeting both Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy: citing his record on Civil Rights, Robinson supported Nixon. After Nixon was elected in 1968, Robinson wrote that he regretted the endorsement. He campaigned diligently for Humphrey in 1968.

He was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1962, his first year of eligibility, becoming the first African-American so honored. On June 4, 1972 the Dodgers retired his uniform number 42 alongside Roy Campanella (39) and Sandy Koufax (32). Robinson made his final public appearance on October 14, 1972 before Game 2 of the World Series in Cincinnati.

Robinson’s final few years were marked by tragedy. In 1971, his elder son, Jackie, Jr., was killed in an automobile accident. Also, the diabetes that plagued him in middle age had left him virtually blind and contributed to his severe heart troubles. Jackie Robinson died in Stamford, Connecticut on October 24, 1972 and was interred in the Cypress Hills Cemetery in Brooklyn, New York. For details, see Jules Tygiel’s book, Baseball’s Great Experiment.

In 1997 (the 50th anniversary of his major league debut), his number (42) was retired from all MLB teams. In 2004, Major League Baseball designated that April 15 each year would be marked as “Jackie Robinson Day” in all their ballparks.

On October 29, 2003, the United States Congress posthumously awarded Robinson the Congressional Gold Medal, the highest award the Congress can bestow. Robinson’s widow accepted the award in a ceremony in the Capital Rotunda on March 2, 2005.

Zora Neale Hurston

Zora Neale Hurston (January 7, 1891 – January 28, 1960) was an African-American author. Her most famous novel is Their Eyes Were Watching God.

Hurston was born in Notasulga, Alabama, grew up in Eatonville, Florida; and grew up to study anthropology at Barnard College and under Franz Boas at Columbia University.

Hurston’s work was largely ignored until 1975, when an article by Alice Walker about Hurston was published in Ms. Magazine. Before this, her work had slid into obscurity for a number of reasons, cultural and political.

Dialogue in Hurston’s work is roughly transcribed so as to mimic the actual speech of the period, and thus it embraces the dialect and culture of Black America of the early 20th century. For example ( Amy from the opening of Jonah’s Gourd Vine ):

Quote:”Dat’s a big ole resurrection lie, Ned. Uh slew-foot, drag-leg lie at dat, and Ah dare yuh tuh hit me too. You know Ahm uh fightin’ dawg and mah hide is worth money. Hit me if you dare! Ah’ll wash yo’ tub uh ‘gator guts and dat quick.”

Many felt that rendering the language this way was making a caricature of Black culture and thus was not deserving of respect. Recently, however, critics have praised her for her artful capture of the actual language and idiom of the day.

During the 1930s and 1940s when her work was published, the preminent Black American author was Richard Wright. Unlike Hurston, Wright wrote in explicitly political terms, using the struggle of Black Americans as both the setting and the motivation for his work. Because the political struggle of the time was aligned with Wright’s writings, Hurston’s work was ignored because it simply didn’t fit in with this struggle. Other popular Black authors of the time, such as Ralph Ellison and Langston Hughes, were aligned with Wright’s vision of the struggle of Black Americans, and did not sink into obscurity.

The rediscovery in the mainstream of Hurston’s work has coincided with the popularity and critical acclaim of authors such as Toni Morrison and Alice Walker, whose works are centered in a Black American experience which includes but don’t necessarily focus on racial struggle.

Bibliography

Jonah’s Gourd Vine (1934)
Mules and Men (1935)
Tell My Horse (1937)
Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937)
Moses, Man of the Mountain (1939)
Dust Tracks on a Road (1942)
Seraph on the Suwanee (1948)
Sanctified Church (1981)
Mule Bone (A play written with Langston Hughes) (1996)
Spunk (1985)
The Complete Stories (1995)
Novels and Stories
Folklore, Memoirs, and Other Writings
Barracoon (1999)

Harriet Tubman

Born into slavery in 1820 in Bucktown on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. Reared in slavery, she married a free black, John Tubman, in 1844. He opposed her plans to flee north, so she escaped alone via the Underground Railroad in 1849, and over the next decade she led nearly 300 Maryland slaves to safety, including several siblings and her elderly parents.

Originally named Araminta, or “Minty”, known as “the Moses of her people,” Harriet Tubman was devoutly religious and a believer in decisive action. She helped John Brown organize his 1859 raid on Harper’s Ferry, Virginia, but was prevented by illness from accompanying him. During the Civil War she repeatedly went behind enemy lines to spy for the Union, and recruit slaves to fight in the army.

In her later years, living in Auburn, New York, she helped support relatives and other former slaves, and raised money for freedmen’s schools and a home for elderly blacks.

Carol Moseley Braun

Politician, Senator, lawyer, educator. Born Carol Elizabeth Moseley on August 16, 1947, in Chicago, Illinois. A leading African American political figure, Moseley Braun’s career has been marked by great successes and missteps.

She graduated from University of Illinois in 1969 with a degree in political science and then went on to the university’s law school. Moseley Braun earned her law degree in 1972 and began working as assistant United States attorney in Chicago the next year.

Moseley Braun held her first political post as a Democratic representative to Illinois House of Representatives, beginning in 1978. As a representative, she was known as an advocate for social change, working for reforms in education, government, and healthcare. In 1988, she took another challenge. She was elected recorder of deeds for Cook County, Illinois and oversaw hundreds of employees and the public agency’s multimillion budget.

In 1992, Moseley Braun made the leap to the national political arena. She ran for the U.S. Senate, looking to unseat incumbent Democratic senator Alan Dixon in the Democratic primary. Up against a seasoned politician who had spent decades in office, Moseley Braun appeared to be the underdog. But many responded to Moseley Braun as a chance for political change. She won the primary, but faced another tough opponent in Republican Richard Williamson. Williamson tried to capitalize on Moseley Braun’s mishandling of a tax situation. Although the scandal marred her campaign, she won the election. Moseley Braun became the first African American woman to be elected to the Senate.

As a senator, Moseley Braun tackled many issues, including women’s rights and civil rights. She served on several committees, including the powerful Senate Finance Committee. Moseley Braun continued to support educational reforms and called for more restrictive gun control laws. Her time in office, however, was affected by claims that she misused funds from her 1992 campaign, spending the money on personal expenses. While no charges were ever filed, this allegation clung to Moseley Braun as she sought re-election in 1998.

Her re-election campaign was also hindered by her Republican opponent Peter Fitzgerald. A self-financed candidate, Fitzgerald didn’t have restrictions on how much he could spend during his campaign. He won the election by a close margin. After leaving office, Moseley Braun was appointed U.S. ambassador to New Zealand and Samoa by President Bill Clinton in 1999. She left the post at the end of the Clinton administration. A career-long advocate for education, Moseley Braun then taught at Morris Brown College.

In 2003, she campaigned for the Democratic presidential nomination. Moseley Braun opposed the war in Iraq and spoke out about the country’s economic situation, but she dropped out of the race in early 2004 after failing to garner enough support. She asked her supporters to vote for Howard Dean.

Since then, Moseley Braun has been working as a business consultant and started an organic foods company called Good Foods Organics. She has one child-a son named Michael from her marriage to Michael Braun, which ended in divorce.

Colin Powell

Colin Luther Powell, US Army General was born in Harlem on April 5, 1937. His parents were Jamaican immigrants who stressed the importance of education and personal achievement, Powell was raised in the South Bronx and where he graduated from high school without having formed any definite ambition or direction in life. A member of ROTC, he took an army commission after graduation and later served in Vietnam. Powell also earned his Masters of Business Administration from George Washington University.

Powell was a professional soldier for 35 years, holding a series of senior commands and rising to the rank of 4-star General before being appointed Head of the National Security Council by President Reagan in 1987. Two years later, he took over the Army Forces Command, and was made Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff by President Bush. The post is the the highest military position in the Department of Defense and Powell is the first African-American officer to receive this distinction. He oversaw 28 crises, including Operation Desert Storm in 1991.

Powell served a second tour of duty in Vietnam in 1968-69. During this second tour he was injured in a helicopter crash. Despite his own injuries, he managed to rescue his comrades from the burning helicopter and was awarded the Soldier’s Medal. In all, he has received 11 decorations, including the Legion of Merit.

Powell retired from the army in 1993 and published a best-selling autobiography, My American Journey, in 1995. From 1997 to 2000, he was chairman of America’s Promise, a nonprofit organization dedicated to fostering character and competence in young people.

In 2000, President George W. Bush appointed Powell Secretary of State, and he was unanimously confirmed by the U.S. Senate. During his tenure, Powell came under fire for his role in building the case for the 2003 invasion of Iraq. His chief role before and after the invasion was to garner international support for a multi-national coalition. In 2004, after acknowledging that it was unlikely that Iraq possessed stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction, Powell announced his resignation as Secretary of State. National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice was his successor.

Since his retirement, Powell has remained vocal on political topics, openly criticizing the Bush Administration on a number of issues. In 2006, he was a speaker at a special series called Get Motivated, along with former New York Mayor Rudolph Guiliani. Powell also joined Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers, a Silicon Valley venture capital firm, as a “strategic limited partner.”

Powell is married to Alma Vivian Johnson; they have three children and two grandchildren.

Barack Obama

United States Senator. Barack Obama was born in Hawaii on August 4th, 1961. His father, Barack Obama Sr., was born and raised in a small village in Kenya, where he grew up herding goats with his own father, who was a domestic servant to the British. At the age of six, Obama moved with his family to Djakarta, Indonesia, after his mother remarried.

Barack’s mother, Ann Dunham, grew up in small-town Kansas. Her father worked on oil rigs during the Depression, and then signed up for World War II after Pearl Harbor, where he marched across Europe in Patton’s army. Her mother went to work on a bomber assembly line, and after the war, they studied on the G.I. Bill, bought a house through the Federal Housing Program, and moved west to Hawaii.

It was there, at the University of Hawaii, where Barack’s parents met. His mother was a student there, and his father had won a scholarship that allowed him to leave Kenya and pursue his dreams in America.

Barack’s father eventually returned to Kenya, and Barack grew up with his mother in Hawaii, and for a few years in Indonesia. Later, he moved to New York, where he graduated from Columbia University in 1983.

Remembering the values of empathy and service that his mother taught him, Barack put law school and corporate life on hold after college and moved to Chicago in 1985, where he became a community organizer with a church-based group seeking to improve living conditions in poor neighborhoods plagued with crime and high unemployment.

The group had some success, but Barack had come to realize that in order to truly improve the lives of people in that community and other communities, it would take not just a change at the local level, but a change in our laws and in our politics.

He went on to earn his law degree from Harvard in 1991, where he became the first African-American president of the Harvard Law Review. Soon after, he returned to Chicago to practice as a civil rights lawyer and teach constitutional law. Finally, his advocacy work led him to run for the Illinois State Senate, where he served for eight years. In 2004, he became the third African American since Reconstruction to be elected to the U.S. Senate.

It has been the rich and varied experiences of Barack Obama’s life – growing up in different places with people who had differing ideas – that have animated his political journey. Amid the partisanship and bickering of today’s public debate, he still believes in the ability to unite people around a politics of purpose – a politics that puts solving the challenges of everyday Americans ahead of partisan calculation and political gain.

In the Illinois State Senate, this meant working with both Democrats and Republicans to help working families get ahead by creating programs like the state Earned Income Tax Credit, which in three years provided over $100 million in tax cuts to families across the state. He also pushed through an expansion of early childhood education, and after a number of inmates on death row were found innocent, Senator Obama worked with law enforcement officials to require the videotaping of interrogations and confessions in all capital cases.

In the U.S. Senate, he has focused on tackling the challenges of a globalized, 21st century world with fresh thinking and a politics that no longer settles for the lowest common denominator. His first law was passed with Republican Tom Coburn, a measure to rebuild trust in government by allowing every American to go online and see how and where every dime of their tax dollars is spent. He has also been the lead voice in championing ethics reform that would root out Jack Abramoff-style corruption in Congress.

As a member of the Veterans’ Affairs Committee, Senator Obama has fought to help Illinois veterans get the disability pay they were promised, while working to prepare the VA for the return of the thousands of veterans who will need care after Iraq and Afghanistan. Recognizing the terrorist threat posed by weapons of mass destruction, he traveled to Russia with Republican Dick Lugar to begin a new generation of non-proliferation efforts designed to find and secure deadly weapons around the world. And knowing the threat we face to our economy and our security from America’s addiction to oil, he’s working to bring auto companies, unions, farmers, businesses and politicians of both parties together to promote the greater use of alternative fuels and higher fuel standards in our cars.

Whether it’s the poverty exposed by Katrina, the genocide in Darfur, or the role of faith in our politics, Barack Obama continues to speak out on the issues that will define America in the 21st century. But above all his accomplishments and experiences, he is most proud and grateful for his family. His wife, Michelle, and his two daughters, Malia, 9, and Sasha, 6, live on Chicago’s South Side where they attend Trinity United Church of Christ.