History

Shirley Chisholm, the first African American woman in the U.S. House of Representatives, was elected in 1968, almost one hundred years after the election of the first African American man to Congress. Twenty-four years after Chisholm’s election, the first black woman, Carol Moseley-Braun, was elected to the U.S. Senate. It was not until 1993, when … Read more

Most Black Power supporters rejected the old civil rights strategies. They suggested a new strategy based on black control of the schools, stores, and other institutions in the black community. Some urged creation of separate black political parties. Others felt there should be a separate black state. But the main idea was to achieve black … Read more

In 1953, the black community in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, had boycotted a segregated bus company and won. They successfully petitioned the city council to pass an ordinance allowing African Americans to be seated on a first-come, first-served basis on city buses. But the white bus drivers ignored the ordinance. To get them to comply with … Read more

Although people had been working for civil rights for African Americans for some time, one famous event is considered the beginning of the civil rights movement. In the South of the 1950s, public transportation was segregated. On buses, white people rode in the front and black people rode in the back. There were signs on … Read more

In 1967, Thurgood Marshall (1908-1993) became the first black justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. As the black residents of central-city areas became sizable minorities, and sometimes majorities, of the voting population, black candidates were able to win local elections. In 1967, Carl Stokes became the first black mayor of a major U.S. city, Cleveland, … Read more

The march, scheduled for August 28, 1963, was organized by civil rights leaders James Farmer, Martin Luther King Jr., John Lewis, A. Philip Randolph, Roy Wilkins, and Whitney Young. Bayard Rustin was chosen to direct the march. The plan was to get the marchers, who came from all over the country, into Washington by 9:00 … Read more

Most states did not want to accept the ruling. Besides, the Supreme Court’s decision did not include instructions on how the ruling was to be put into practice. Desegregation began almost immediately in Washington, D.C., and Baltimore, while Texas integrated only one school district, Arkansas only two, and in the rest of the South, not … Read more

In September 1957, nine black teenagers, Jefferson Thomas, Carlotta Walls, Gloria Ray, Elizabeth Eckford, Thelma Mothershed, Melba Pattillo, Terrance Roberts, Minniejean Brown, and Ernest Green, tried to enroll at Central High School, an all-white school, in Little Rock, Arkansas. The governor called the Arkansas National Guard to prevent them from entering. Mobs of angry whites … Read more

In the 1940s and 1950s, according to the laws of most southern states, there were separate schools for blacks and whites, from elementary school through college. Linda Brown was a seven-year-old black girl who lived in Topeka, Kansas, in 1950. There were two schools in the town: one for black children, which was far from … Read more

Civil rights are the rights each citizen has to equal protection under the law and equal opportunity to participate completely in national life, regardless of race, religion, or sex. But during the first half of the twentieth century, especially in the South, segregation was practiced in most areas of American life. Blacks and whites could … Read more

Established under President Roosevelt’s Executive Order Number 8802, the Committee on Fair Employment Practice encouraged African Americans to move to cities such as Detroit and Los Angeles, where there were jobs in defense plants. This migration more than tripled the black population in the western states. As more African Americans moved from the rural South … Read more

Books published during the 1930s and 1940s helped the larger population understand the black experience. These included Richard Wright’s novel Native Son (1940); Black Metropolis (1945), an important sociological study, by St. Clair Drake and Horace Cayton; An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy (1944), by the Swedish economist Gunnar Myrdal; and From … Read more

The growing number of educated and affluent blacks in the cities made major political gains possible. Black urban voters heavily supported liberal Democratic candidates. In 1954, three blacks, Augustus Hawkins of California, Adam Clayton Powell Jr. of New York, and William L. Dawson of Illinois, were elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, the largest … Read more

There were about 40,000 African Americans in the city of Montgomery. Black leaders had to make sure that they all found out about the plan. Nixon, together with Jo Ann Robinson, an English teacher at Alabama State College, planned the strategy for the boycott. Fortunately, there were a lot of community organizations and churches, and … Read more

Charlayne Hunter-Gault is known to millions of Americans as the national correspondent for the Public Broadcasting System’s (PBS) MacNeil/ Lehrer News Hour. In January 1961, she was one of two black students to enter the University of Georgia, which had been ordered by a federal court to desegregate. When the two arrived at the school, … Read more

Not one black person rode on a Montgomery bus. The black community was so proud that they voted unanimously to continue the boycott and demand a fairer system of segregation on the buses: They wanted the bus company to let seated black passengers keep their seats for the whole ride. A new young preacher named … Read more

Rosa Parks became a national figure and a hero in the black community after the Montgomery bus boycott. Already active in the NAACP and her church, she moved to Detroit in 1957 and later worked for Congressman John Conyers as a staff assistant. She received many awards and honorary degrees, and in 1987 founded the … Read more

Adam Clayton Powell Jr. (1908-1972) was one of the most controversial and flamboyant figures in American politics. He began speaking out for the oppressed from the pulpit of the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem, where his father had been pastor. In 1941, he became New York’s first black city councilman, helped by the 14,000 members … Read more

Charles Drew (1904-1950), a physician, was an expert on blood. His breakthrough research in plasma and blood preservation led to the establishment in New York City of the first successful blood bank. Great Britain called upon him to create donor banks for soldiers during World War II, and he did the same for the American … Read more

During the civil rights movement, protest songs were often sung when participants gathered together and when mass demonstrations were being planned or held. People would grasp each other’s hands, move from side to side, and sing these “freedom songs” as loud as they could. Many of these songs came from nineteenth-century spirituals, but during the … Read more

In the summer of 1943, a riot startled when blacks were promoted at a Mobile, Alabama, shipyard. The National Guard was called out to maintain order. In a Beaumont, Texas, riot on June 16, two persons were killed and martial law was declared. In Detroit, twenty-five blacks and nine whites were killed before federal troops … Read more

The 332nd Fighter Group, known as the Tuskegee Airmen because they were graduates of the segregated pilot training program at Tuskegee, Alabama, set records for their aerial expertise in World War II. During more than 200 missions as heavy bomber escorts, they never lost an escorted plane to enemy fighters; and they managed to sink … Read more

The U.S. Army and Navy remained segregated during World War II. The War Department eventually approved the training of black officers, and allowed blacks to serve as pilots and in medical and engineering units. Approximately half a million blacks served overseas in segregated units in the Pacific and Europe, but in many cases racial conflicts … Read more

World War II was the most destructive war in human history. It began in 1939 when Germany invaded Poland, but eventually grew to include most of the countries of the world. In Europe, Germany fought England and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR); in the Pacific, the United States fought Japan. The most horrible … Read more

The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), often pronounced as “snick,” was formed in 1960 to coordinate student protests, such as the sit-ins in the South. SNCC’s goals were to desegregate public lunch counters, rest rooms, parks, theaters, and schools; to register all blacks in the South to vote; and to get whites to practice nondiscriminatory … Read more

In many cases the students were attacked, beaten, and arrested. The black community raised money to bail them out. But the sit-ins attracted national publicity, and the students decided to keep up the pressure. By the end of February 1960, sit-ins were being held in fifteen cities in a number of states, including North Carolina, … Read more

After serving nine years in the U.S. Air Force, James Meredith returned to his home state of Mississippi in 1960 and applied for admission to the University of Mississippi, the all-white university of the most racist state in the country. But Meredith was determined to attend, because of “a personal responsibility to change the status … Read more

The Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) was born of the Montgomery bus boycott. Founded in 1957, it consisted of black ministers from ten southern states. The group elected Martin Luther King Jr. as its president. It placed emphasis on legal action combined with nonviolent protest as the means to desegregate public transportation, public places, and … Read more

Ella Baker, the executive director of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), was one of the organization’s most militant members. She asked her colleagues at colleges and churches to help, and suggested that the SCLC call a meeting of students involved in the sit-ins. Three hundred students, black and white, attended. She advised them to … Read more

Another unpleasant aspect of segregated life for African Americans in the South could be found at restaurants and lunch counters. In those days, blacks could only be served at counters that had signs reading COLORED ONLY. The success of the Montgomery bus boycott had made blacks more determined to break down segregation wherever it existed, … Read more

Even though the Supreme Court had ruled that African Americans had every right to sit anywhere they wanted to on a bus, or to use bus terminal facilities without facing segregation, when they tried to do so they were beaten, thrown out, or jailed. In response to letters of complaint CORE had received from these … Read more

The Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) was founded in Chicago in 1942 by James Farmer. Its goal was to confront racism and discrimination with direct action. CORE’s first project was to desegregate a roller skating rink called White City on the South Side of Chicago. By 1944, CORE chapters had been formed in New York, … Read more

In 1955, the black community was shocked by the brutal murder of Emmett Till, a fourteen-year-old black Chicago boy. He was murdered in Mississippi by two white men, for “talking fresh” to a white woman. Emmett had been shot through the head and so badly beaten and mutilated that he was unrecognizable. To show the … Read more

On May 14, 1961, one of the buses was attacked by 200 angry people and then firebombed. A photograph of the burning bus covered the front pages of the nation’s newspapers. In Birmingham, Alabama, riders of another bus were attacked by an angry mob. One of them was paralyzed for life. The violence against the … Read more

Nonviolence required compassion, commitment, courage, faith, and discipline. A group called the Fellowship of Reconciliation printed an illustrated pamphlet entitled Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Montgomery Story and distributed it throughout the South. It gave instructions on passive resistance. In workshops throughout the South, James Lawson, a young minister, helped Martin Luther King Jr. … Read more

Nonviolent resistance (also called passive resistance) is a method of protest developed in the 1920s by an Indian leader named Mohandas K. (Mahatma) Gandhi to fight against British colonial rule in India. Gandhi believed that people should not obey unfair laws, and should be willing to go to jail for disobeying those laws. While Gandhi … Read more

The depression affected everyone. Many businesses went bankrupt, banks failed, and more than 12 million people lost their jobs. Among African Americans, unemployment and poverty were already high. During the depression, blacks helped one another by selling dinners and homemade liquor and by holding rent parties where each guest would pay a few cents to … Read more

Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi, an Indian leader of the 1920s, greatly influenced Martin Luther King. Gandhi’s beliefs were central to Martin Luther King Jr.’s mode of protest. Gandhi used the term Satyagraha, which meant “hold us to the truth,” when explaining nonviolent resistance: “I discovered in the earliest stages that the pursuit of truth did not … Read more

A union (short for trade or labor union) is an association of workers established to improve economic and social conditions on the job. A trade union helps its members get fair salaries and working conditions through a process called collective bargaining with the employer. If the union and the employer cannot agree, a union may … Read more

The Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters (BSCP) was the nation’s first all-black union. During the 1800s and early 1900s most people traveled long distances by train, and Pullman sleeping cars allowed them to travel in style. By the 1920s the Pullman Company was one of the nation’s most powerful companies, and the largest private employer … Read more

In 1936, at the Berlin Olympics, Jesse Owens (1913-1980) won four gold medals in track and field, at that time the most universally acclaimed feat in the history of the games. When Adolf Hitler, the German Nazi dictator, refused to present him the medals he had won in the various competitions, Owens became even more … Read more

The Communist party was one political organization that made a special effort to attract African Americans, especially those in the inner cities. Based on a political system begun in Russia, Communism is a system in which the main resources and means of production are owned by the state instead of by individuals. The party staged … Read more

Asa Philip Randolph spent many years working to better the lives of African Americans. In 1925, he founded the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, the first railway union open to black porters. In the summer of 1941, Randolph threatened to organize a mass march to Washington by 100,000 blacks if the needs of unemployed blacks … Read more

Iames Weldon Johnson (1871-1938). Novelist, poet, and composer. He was also Florida’s first black attorney, and the first field secretary of the NAACP. He wrote and arranged Negro spirituals with his brother J. Rosamond Johnson. Aaron Douglas (1899-1979). Illustrator and muralist. Lois Mailou Jones (1905- ). Painter and designer. J. Rosamond Johnson (1873 -1954). Composer. … Read more

On October 29, 1929, the U.S. stock market crashed. This meant that the value of stocks went way down, because everyone sold their stocks in a panic. This stock market panic was caused by many factors, including risky investments and overproduction of products. The crash resulted in the Great Depression, which spread over the United … Read more

The black cultural awakening of the 1920s slowed down in the 1930s as the worldwide economic depression diverted people’s attention from cultural to economic matters. The Great Depression made it harder for artists and writers to earn money. Many of them found it impossible to stay off relief, but for some the Roosevelt administration’s national … Read more

Influential artists of the Harlem Renaissance included Meta Vaux Warrick Fuller (1871-1968), a sculptor; Palmer Hayden (1890-1973), a painter who depicted real experiences of African Americans in the urban North and rural South; William Henry Johnson (1901-1970), a painter; and Henry Ossawa Tanner (1859-1937), a painter, known for The Banjo Lesson. Other entertainers were composer … Read more

Before 1900, black musicians in New Orleans (a city with a rich international heritage) were playing upbeat music that was called “hot blues,” and that eventually came to be known as jazz. Jazz came about from the mixing of several types of music: spirituals, blues, ragtime, and gospel. It was spontaneous music; musicians played around … Read more

The coming together of blacks and sympathetic whites in a common economic cause opened the door for future civil rights changes. During the 1930s, for example, the NAACP began a legal battle against segregation in public schools. In 1938, it gained a victory when the U.S. Supreme Court ordered the University of Missouri law school … Read more

American farmers were the first group to be affected by the Great Depression. The farmers in the South did not have the money to buy seeds or supplies or even the goods that they helped to produce. Most blacks in the South worked as farm laborers. When farmers started losing money, the black farm laborers … Read more

Louis “Satchmo” Armstrong holds a very important place in jazz history. He played all over the world, recorded several best-selling records, and influenced a host of musicians, vocalists, and bandleaders with his pioneering work. Many people call him the most influential and creative musician of this century. Louis Armstrong was born in a shack in … Read more

Although African Americans were not as represented in dramatic theater as they were in musicals, some blacks nonetheless stood out for their work in drama during the Harlem Renaissance. Paul Robeson performed in the plays of Eugene O’Neill, starred in William Shakespeare’s Othello, and later gained prominence as a singer of black spirituals and working-class … Read more

Gertrude “Ma” Rainey (1886-1939). Known as the “Mother of the Blues.” Performed with her husband, singer/dancer William “Pa” Rainey. Recorded the classic “See See Rider Blues” with Louis Armstrong; also recorded with Coleman Hawkins and Fletcher Henderson. Bessie Smith (1894-1937). Known as “The Empress of the Blues.” Her first record, “Down-Hearted Blues,” sold more than … Read more

As a mess attendant aboard the battleship USS West Virginia, stationed at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, Doris (Dorie) Miller’s job was to serve food to the white officers and clear away their dirty dishes. But when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, Miller manned a machine gun on deck and shot down four … Read more

Because the Social Security Act excluded farmers and domestic workers, 65 percent of all African American workers were not eligible for the benefits. Federal mortgages were not available to blacks who bought homes in white neighborhoods. Many federal housing programs also continued to operate under segregation. In 1941, A. Philip Randolph threatened a mass march … Read more

Poor blacks were able to get financial relief and affordable housing. They also benefited economically from new jobs that were created and from the minimum wage laws. African Americans were also hired to build the new government-financed housing. Eleanor Roosevelt, President Roosevelt’s wife, convinced him to get a group of black leaders to provide input … Read more

Native Son, written by Richard Wright (1908-1960) and published in 1940, was the story of a young black man who murdered a white woman. It showed the horror and hatred that could be caused by poverty. The first book by a black person to become a Book-of-the-Month Club selection, it helped to inspire the next … Read more

President Roosevelt’s New Deal agency, the Works Progress Administration (WPA), did much to promote black participation in the American arts in the 1930s. One of the programs sponsored by the WPA was the Federal Theater Project. This project enabled more than 800 African Americans to act in circuses, vaudeville comedies, children’s theatrical performances, and in … Read more

By the mid-1930s, nearly fifty African Americans had received appointments in various New Deal agencies and cabinet departments. A. Philip Randolph was president of a black labor organization with 8,000 members. As executive secretary of the NAACP, writer Walter White had helped to increase its membership from 15,000 to well over 200,000 by 1936. The … Read more

One of President Roosevelt’s most successful New Deal programs was the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), which began in 1933. The CCC was created to give jobs to unemployed men between the ages of 18 and 25. This program was good for two reasons: Men were given work, and the country’s natural resources were protected and … Read more

Under the New Deal, federal relief programs were created to help poor people. The major legislation was the Social Security Act of 1935, which provided unemployment insurance, old age insurance, and money to the states for relief for the blind and for homeless children. The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 established the first minimum … Read more

In 1932, the incumbent president, Herbert Hoover, lost the election to Franklin D. Roosevelt, who had promised a “new deal” for the American people. The New Deal was designed to correct the damage caused by the Great Depression. It involved new and groundbreaking legislation and social programs, which were put into effect between 1933 and … Read more

Horace Pippin (1881-1946). Painter. Self-taught artist who started painting in 1920. Many of his early works were burned into wood panels with a hot poker. Portrayed scenes from World War I, during which he became partially paralyzed. His work was shown in 1938 at an exhibit entitled “Masters of Popular Painting, Artists of the People” … Read more

After graduating from Moody Bible Institute in 1895 (where she had been the only black student), Mary McLeod Bethune (1875-1955) taught at Haines Institute in Georgia. In 1904 she traveled to Daytona Beach, Florida, to establish a school for young black women, despite having only $1.50 in her pocket. Using money raised from selling sweet … Read more

The Federal Writers’ Project (FWP) gave young black writers and scholars such as Horace R. Cayton, St. Clair Drake, Ralph Ellison, Zora Neale Hurston, and Richard Wright job opportunities and training. The Federal Music Project staged concerts including the works of black composers; the Federal Art Project employed hundreds of black artists; and the Federal … Read more

In 1932, the U.S. government’s public health service division began studying a disease called syphilis in Alabama near the Tuskegee Institute. The white doctors used African American men as their research subjects. All of these men were poor. Some had the disease, others didn’t. The men with the syphilis called what they had “bad blood.” … Read more

The Scottsboro case was a legal case involving two white girls who accused nine black boys, aged twelve to nineteen, from Scottsboro, Alabama, of rape in March 1931. The nine, Clarence Norris, Olen Montgomery, Andrew Wright, Willie Roberson, Ozie Powell, Eugene Williams, Charley Weems, Roy Wright, and Haywood Patterson, became known as the Scottsboro Boys, … Read more

No one agrees on exactly when the Harlem Renaissance began, but everyone acknowledges that it reached its peak in the 1920s. Some consider Main Locke (1886-1954), a philosophy professor at Howard University, the father of the Harlem Renaissance. His book The New Negro, published in 1925, contained numerous poems, essays, stories, and art that clearly … Read more

The works of the writers, artists, and performers of the Harlem Renaissance were published in black journals, often with the help of white patrons and black editors, such as Charles S. Johnson at Opportunity (published by the Urban League); A. Philip Randolph, editor of the Messenger, and Jessie Fauset (1886-1961) and W. E. B. Du … Read more

The Harlem Renaissance affected the whole world. Blacks everywhere became inspired, and started poetry circles, little theaters, and painting classes. Although New York City was the center of the Harlem Renaissance, there were many creative blacks in other cities: in Boston, William Stanley Braithwaite (1878-1962), a poet; and in Washington, D.C., writers Georgia Douglas Johnson … Read more

Renaissance means “rebirth.” In the 1920s, black artists flocked to Harlem, a section of New York City that also attracted immigrants from Barbados, Haiti, Puerto Rico, Cuba, and other Caribbean countries. Harlem was a black city within a city: exciting, modern, with many nationalities, languages, and cultures. It attracted young black artists and intellectuals from … Read more

World War I had just ended, and people, both black and white, were experiencing new feelings and attitudes and were interested in trying new things. Black migrants left the South to start new lives in the North, where they saw black organizations, businesses, and publications growing everywhere. African Americans were beginning to look at themselves … Read more

The Harlem Renaissance, also called the Black Renaissance and the New Negro Movement, was a time in the 1920s when a large number of black poets, writers, artists, musicians, and performers expressed themselves and their experiences as blacks in America through their writing, art, and music. Black artists were able to educate the public about … Read more

Marcus Garvey traveled throughout the United States and established branches of UNIA in most cities where blacks lived. In 1920, he held the first UNIA International Convention of the Negro Peoples of the World at Madison Square Garden in New York City. It lasted thirty-one days, with 25,000 persons attending. A result of this convention … Read more

When Josephine Baker was a teenager, she performed as a chorus girl in the successful musical comedy Shuffle Along. From there she landed other parts in shows, but it wasn’t until she went to Paris that she became a sensation. She appeared in La Revue Negre, where she performed outrageous and daring dances. The audiences … Read more

Marcus Garvey (1887-1940) a Jamaican immigrant (someone who moves to another country voluntarily), was the most popular militant black leader of the 1920s. In Jamaica, he had formed an all-black organization in 1914 called the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA). It soon developed financial problems, and in 1917 Garvey came to New York to start … Read more

Garvey’s weekly paper, Negro World, was published from 1918 to 1933 and became one of the leading African American periodicals. It sponsored beauty contests for black women, encouraged followers to support black businesses, and refused to carry advertisements for skin bleaches and hair straighteners. In 1920, Garvey established the Negro Factories Corporation to build factories … Read more

Both whites and blacks sought work after World War I. Because there were so few jobs, whites felt that their jobs were being taken away from them, and vice versa. When African Americans moved into any formerly white neighborhood, it caused tension, too. In 1917, between forty and two hundred African Americans were killed in … Read more

Though she studied dance as a child, Katherine Dunham (1910- ) never thought about becoming a professional dancer. She majored in anthropology at the University of Chicago and, before graduating, received a fellowship to study the Moors, a group of people on the island of Jamaica. She lived with them and became passionately interested in … Read more

By the early 1920s, some African Americans on the lower social and economic levels felt that organizations such as the NAACP were only for those African Americans on the upper levels. There also was increased competition for jobs and housing after World War I. As a result, riots and other violent events were occurring all … Read more

Improvements in transportation and communication had a huge impact on the daily lives of every American citizen, including blacks. Commercial radio broadcasting in the United States began in November 1920, providing people access to the news almost as soon as it happened. By 1924 there were 580 radio stations with thousands of listeners who could … Read more

Despite their unfair treatment, the 369th Infantry Regiment, also known as the “Harlem Hell Fighters,” had the best World War I record of any U.S Army regiment. Two members of the all-black 369th Infantry, Sergeant Henry Johnson and Needham Roberts, were awarded the French Croix de Guerre for aborting a German surprise attack. The two … Read more

There were 370,000 black soldiers and 1,400 black officers who served during World War I. A little more than half of these soldiers served in France. African Americans were barred from the marines and could not become officers in the navy. Black officers and soldiers, even those with college degrees, were assigned to menial duties … Read more

Another well-known poet to emerge from this period was Countee Cullen (1903-1946). Cullen was orphaned while very young and was adopted by a prominent pastor of a Methodist Church in New York. He was praised for his poems when he was only in high school, and he published his first book, Color, in 1925. Two … Read more

From The Weary Blues, by Langston Hughes: We cry among the skyscrapers As our ancestors Cried among the palms in Africa Because we are alone, It is night, And we’re afraid.

Although they also wrote novels, Claude McKay and Langston Hughes were probably most famous for their poetry. Claude McKay was born in Jamaica, and in 1913 he arrived in America to study agriculture at Tuskegee Institute. His interest in writing brought him to New York City, the center of book and magazine publishing. He eventually … Read more

Jessie Fauset (1894-1967), who was also an editor of Crisis, wrote novels about respectable members of the educated black middle class who had to deal with problems involving race. Her book There is Confusion (1924) was the first Harlem Renaissance novel by a woman. Rudolf Fisher (1897-1934) was a doctor and an intellectual who also … Read more

Jean Toomer (1894-1967) wrote several poems exploring black experience; but his novel Cane, published in 1923, is widely considered one of the best literary works of the Harlem Renaissance. Cane, a lyrical novel of symbolic, mystical sketches and poems, explores the lifestyles of the black poor in a white America. Many critics consider Cane a … Read more

Black writers and artists of the Harlem Renaissance did not want to write like other writers had. They agreed that their work might have a racial theme, but would be for both black and non-black audiences. Previous black writing featured grinning characters who spoke poor English, but the new writers did not want to write … Read more

Florence Mills, born in Washington, D.C., in 1895, fell in love with performing at an early age. She participated in many amateur shows and debuted in Sons of Ham when she was just five years old. In 1910, she moved to New York and formed an act with her sisters called the Mills Trio, and … Read more