Category: 19: This Month in Black History

19: This Month in Black History – Black Nativity and Black Christianity

Posted on by Katrina Frank

As we enter the holiday season, perhaps many of you have seen the Black Nativity movie or play. So, here is the rest of the story…

On December 11, 1961, Black Nativity, a musical about the Christian origin story of the birth of Christ, was mounted on an Off-Broadway stage with an all-Black cast. It was originally titled Wasn’t It a Might Day? written by the well-known African-American poet, Langston Hughes. Hughes is perhaps best-known for his earlier work during the era known as the Harlem Renaissance (1920s). Hughes was born in Joplin, Missouri in 1902, and traveled around with his family much of his young life. While a teenager and young adult, he spent a year in Mexico followed by a year at Columbia University in New York City. During this time, he worked as an assistant cook, launderer, and busboy and then traveled to Africa, Europe and the Caribbean working as a seaman; all the while, writing poetry. He is also well-known for turning the blues and jazz rhythms into syntax in his writing, and became, for many newly arrived members of northern urban Black communities, a peoples’ poet.

Hughes died in 1967 and is one of the most prolific American writers of the twentieth century. He authored two autobiographies and published sixteen volumes of poetry, three short story collections, two novels, eleven plays, and nine children’s books. Interestingly, Black Nativity was the first all-Black play to be featured on Off-Broadway, and the first to mix Gospel with African drums and other motifs of diasporic Black culture. In a 2013 National Public Radio interview Rachel Martin stated that roughly a quarter million people had seen the Black Nativity play. Since then, it continues to be mounted throughout the US and in other parts of the world as part of annual Christmas holiday offerings, sometimes true to its original story but often reimagined to more contemporary times. In 2013, for example, Filmmaker Kasi Lemmons brought it to the big screen with actors Forest Whitaker, Jennifer Hudson and Angela Bassett. This musical put Hughes’ story into a modern tale of economic struggle with a young single mother and her teenaged son getting evicted. Staging Black Nativity has become a traditional season staple in many US cities, with Boston and Seattle, having mounted it every holiday season for fifty and twenty years, respectively.

Other than wanting to tell the story of Christ’s birth within a Black perspective, we have found little on why Hughes wrote Black Nativity; it is important that he did. While many people accept that one of the three kings who visited the Bethlehem manger where Christ was born was Black, few know why. It is important to note that Africans in the north eastern horn of Africa became Christians long before Christianity reached Western Europe. In fact, the Ethiopian (Axum) and Egyptian Kingdoms of the time, which included parts of what today is Sudan, adopted Christianity in significant ways in the third and fourth centuries AD. Most Christians in this part of the world continue to practice this, which is today known as Coptic Christianity.

Many Black people who grew up in the West do not know this history because Christianity was brought to the Americas by Europeans after 1492 AD, and most Africans that were captured and enslaved were from West Africa where indigenous African religions and Islam were the predominant spiritual practices. Notably, the African Methodist (AME) Church, founded in the late 1700s in Philadelphia began using Ethiopia as a touchstone part of their origin stories and began centering blackness. By the late 1960s, Black American theologians, led by the Reverend Dr. James Cone, began theorizing on what is now called Black Liberation Theology (BLT). BLT draws on Christianity’s African roots, but also on the principles of Liberation Theologians working with the poor in Latin America. Today, many Black ministers, although not all, practice Black Liberation Theology. Thus, Black Nativity has roots deeper than many know.

Wishing you Peace, Love, and Health during this Holiday season.

Regina Stevens-Truss, HHMI Inclusive Excellence + Chemistry department
Lisa Brock, ACSJL + History department

19: This Month in Black History – James Baldwin

Posted on by Katrina Frank

By: Bruce Mills

Over the past few years, the words of novelist, playwright, essayist, and activist James Baldwin (1924-1987) have been prominent in our national dialogue. Creating his documentary from Baldwin’s writings and interviews, Raoul Peck received an academy award nomination for I Am Not Your Negro in 2016. Two years later, Barry Jenkins wrote and directed If Beale Street Could Talk based on the novel of the same name. From brief references to full articles on Baldwin in a range of sites such as theGrio, New York Times, and The Atlantic, we can see how broadly his voice informs discussions of race.

That Baldwin’s work is experiencing a renaissance is not surprising given his incisive, humane, radical, and intimate insights on what it means to navigate private and public spaces as a gay Black man in America. For this installment of the 19th series, I wish to offer a snapshot of how the life and writing of James Baldwin intersected with Kalamazoo College.

Baldwin at K
Invited by members of the English Department, Baldwin came to campus in mid-November 1960 where he delivered a talk on “the novel” and an address in the lecture series “Goals on the American Society.” By this time in his career, he had published an autobiographical novel, Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953), a first play, The Amen Corner (1954), an essay collection, Notes of a Native Son (1955), and Giovanni’s Room (1956).

During his week-long stay, he met with students, faculty, and staff during lunches, dinners, “fireside” chats, and in English classes. Archival photos of his visit show him in conversation with faculty and students in Hicks and in K’s WJMD radio studio. In this latter picture, we can see a copy of Notes of a Native Son. In astutely examining the legacy of white supremacy in America and abroad as well as his own experiences growing up in Harlem, Baldwin emerged as one of the country’s premier essayists. And, with the publication of The Fire Next Time in January of 1963, he was recognized as one of the leading writers, intellectuals, and activists of the 1960s, sharing the stage, often quite literally, with Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Jr., and other well- and lesser-known individuals battling for civil rights.

But the lasting presence of his voice at K came through the publication of his campus address, “In Search of a Majority,” in Nobody Knows My Name (1961). Called upon to speak on “minority rights,” he flips the script. In front of a nearly all White audience, he began with these reflections: “I am supposed to speak this evening on the goals of American society as they involve minority rights, but what I am really going to do is to invite you to join me in a series of speculations. Some of them are dangerous, some of them painful, all of them reckless.” He concluded this opening with the following assertion: “It seems to me that before we can begin to speak of minority rights in this country, we’ve got to make some attempt to isolate or to define the majority.”

Baldwin then asked his White listeners to learn of their own history, to reflect upon the evolution of White identity, and thus to resist the tendency to seek absolution through some redemptive story of Black life. Running through his talk is a central strand of Baldwin’s ongoing reflections on America. “The great force of history,” he would write in “The White Man’s Guilt” (1965), “comes from the fact that we carry it within us, are unconsciously controlled by it in many ways, and history is literally present in all that we do. It could scarcely be otherwise, since it is to history that we owe our frames of reference, our identities, and our aspirations.”

This is why he invites the Kalamazoo College audience of 1960 to understand “minority” as a definition constructed by and for the “majority.” In effect, history teaches that a White majority marks their status on a kind of racial ladder. The question for Baldwin is not who am I (as a “minority” in American society) but who, exactly, are you (as a so-called “majority”)? He asks, how have you constructed me? What desires or fears drive the failure to account for my human weight and complexity, something that he explores in “Stranger in the Village,” the concluding essay in Notes of a Native Son.

What so many current readers—Black, Brown, and White—hear in James Baldwin is a truth telling. Of course, different audiences will receive and interpret these truths from the varied spaces of their own lived experiences and histories. To end, then, it seems fitting to return to what those at the College heard from the final lines of “In Search of a Majority” sixty years ago. As with any truth, they stitch together past, present, and future. Listen:

…and I want to suggest this: that the majority for which everyone is seeking which must reassess and release us from our past and deal with the present and create standards worthy of what a man may be—this majority is you. No one else can do it. The world is before you and you need not take it or leave it as it was when you came in.

These messages are aimed at educating the K community on African-American history and culture, and are brought to you by The Faculty Advisory Board of the Arcus Center for Social Justice leadership and the HHMI Inclusive Excellence Faculty team, as we continue to work towards being an anti-racist Institution. 19 marks 1619, the year in which the first set of African slaves were brought to what would become the United States, and June 19th, 1865, marks the day that Blacks celebrate the end of enslavement in the US. Both of these dates, and their meanings, were largely unknown to many outside of the Black community. We need to understand that much of the “surprise” experienced by many at the continued uprisings led by the Black lives Matter movement derives from a lack of knowledge of the rich fabric of Black History.

Regina Stevens-Truss, HHMI Inclusive Excellence + Chemistry department
Lisa Brock, ACSJL + History department

19: This Month in Black History – Lonnie Johnson

Posted on by Katrina Frank
Dr. Lonnie Johnson, president and CEO at Excellatron, but probably best known as the inventor of the Super Soaker, talks about global energy and environmental challenges as part of the Office of Naval Research's (ONR) 70th Anniversary Edition Distinguished Lecture Series.

Engineer Lonnie Johnson, Black Inventor

As we are all watching the horrific and polarizing news of an attempted plot to kidnap the Governor of Michigan, the seating of an anti-women’s rights Supreme Court justice, voter suppression and the precarity of our national election, we decided to lighten up your day by giving you something positive to share with your children and your communities. We’d like to introduce you to one of the hundreds of Black inventors in our history that few know about.

Lonnie G. Johnson, a prolific Black inventor was born on October 3, 1949. Growing up in the Jim Crow south, his father worked as a civilian driver at nearby Air Force bases, while his mother worked as a nurses’ aid and in a laundromat. During the summers both of Johnson’s parents, like most Black people in the South at the time, also picked cotton. Also, out of both interest and economic necessity, Johnson’s father was a skilled handyman who taught all of his six children to build their own toys. Lonnie though, was the one most excited to do so. When Lonnie was still a small boy, he and his dad built a pressurized chinaberry shooter out of bamboo shoots. At age thirteen, the young Johnson attached a lawnmower engine to a go-kart he built from junkyard scraps and raced it along the highway until the police pulled him over.

From a very young age, Johnson dreamed of becoming an inventor but growing up in Mobile, Alabama in the days of legal segregation, education was limited, and despite his intelligence and creativity, he was told not to aspire beyond a career as a technician. Undaunted and inspired by George Washington Carver, the Tuskegee University based agricultural engineer, he continued. The more and more curious he became about the way things worked, the more ambitious his experimentation became—sometimes to the concern and worry of his family. According to his mother, “Lonnie tore up his sister’s baby doll to see what made the eyes close,” and another time, he nearly burned the house down when he attempted to cook up rocket fuel in one of his mother’s saucepans and the concoction exploded.

Nicknamed “The Professor” by his high school buddies, Johnson represented his Black school at a 1968 science fair sponsored by the Junior Engineering Technical Society (JETS). The fair took place at the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa, where, just five years earlier, Alabama Governor George Wallace tried to prevent two Black students from enrolling in the school by standing in the entry to the Foster Auditorium – this is now known as the “Stand in the Schoolhouse Door,” one of the last Segregationists’ moves at the University of Alabama. Johnson was the only Black student in the competition where he debuted a compressed-air-powered robot, called “the Linex,” that he built from junkyard scraps over the course of a year. Much to the chagrin of racist university officials, Johnson won first prize.

After graduating from high school in 1969, Johnson attended Tuskegee University on a scholarship. He earned a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering in 1973, and two years later he received a master’s degree in nuclear engineering. From 1979 to 1991, he worked in NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory where he worked on a variety of projects, including the Air Force missions Lab, developing the nuclear power source for the Galileo mission to Jupiter and several weapons related projects. He also served as a key engineer on the Mariner Mark ll Spacecraft series for Comet Rendezvous and for Saturn Orbiter Probe missions. He was also assigned to the Strategic Air Command, where he helped develop the stealth bomber program.

In 1991, Johnson founded his own company, Johnson Research and Development Co., Inc., (JEMS) of which he is also the president. More recently, he teamed up with scientists from Tulane University and Tuskegee University to develop a method of transforming heat into electricity with the goal of making green energy more affordable. JEMS developed the Johnson Thermo-Electrochemical Converter System (JTEC), which was listed by Popular Mechanics as one of the top 10 inventions of 2009. This system developed promising applications in solar power plants and ocean thermal power generation. It converts thermal energy to electrical energy using a non-steam process which works by pushing hydrogen ions through two membranes, with claimed advantages over alternative systems.

His best-known invention is probably one we have all used, however. At least hundreds of children use it in backyards and in parks during hot summer days. This large gun-like toy is used by children to shoot water at each other. In 1989, this toy became a massively successful item, and topped $200 million in sales in 1991, and went on to annually rank among the world’s Top 20 best-selling toys.

So, what is his best-known invention? The Super Soaker!

*These messages are aimed at educating the K community on African-American history and culture, and are brought to you by The Faculty Advisory Board of the Arcus Center for Social Justice leadership and the HHMI Inclusive Excellence Faculty team, as we continue to work towards being an anti-racist Institution. 19 marks 1619, the year in which the first set of African slaves were brought to what would become the United States, and June 19th, 1865, marks the day that Blacks celebrate the end of enslavement in the US. Both of these dates, and their meanings, were largely unknown to many outside of the Black community. We need to understand that much of the “surprise” experienced by many at the continued uprisings led by the Black lives Matter movement derives from a lack of knowledge of the rich fabric of Black History.

Regina Stevens-Truss, HHMI Inclusive Excellence + Chemistry department
Lisa Brock, ACSJL + History department

19: This Month in Black History – The Stono Rebellion

Posted on by Katrina Frank

The fear of Black rebellion and centering Black notions of freedom, color much of what is happening today in the USA.

Early on the morning of Sunday, September 9, 1739, a group of Black men and women, who were enslaved, met near the Stono River, approximately twenty miles southwest of Charles Town (Charleston), South Carolina. At Stono’s bridge, they took guns and powder from a white owned store called Hutcheson’s. “With cries of ‘Liberty’ and beating of drums,” they gathered more Black recruits along the way and killed those whites who attempted to stop them, sparing one innkeeper, according to historian Peter Wood, who was known to be kind to his Blacks. The most visible leader of the group was a man known as Jemmy or Cato, and he, like most of his band, was from the greater Kongo Empire, in what today is known as Angola. Thus, commenced the Stono Rebellion, which is the largest slave uprising in Colonial America, decades before the American Revolution. The fact that they knew the word Liberty raises interesting research questions.

The rebels were organized and knew where they were headed. They were marching south toward the Spanish town of St. Augustine, Florida, where because of tensions between Britain and Spain, they would be declared free if escaping British enslavement. Given that many Atlantic sea trading vessels included enslaved Black sailors, who shared information in the port cities and towns of the Atlantic, the rebels knew about St. Augustine. They were likely also aware of other insurrections. For example, the 1733 revolt on the Danish Island of St. John (now the US Virgin Islands), and the 1738 joint attempt by enslaved Blacks and Irish workers to burn down the city of Savannah, Georgia. In fact, there were dozens of revolts attempted and launched in the America’s during this time. Most of those enslaved at this time were from Africa, and they were fighting captivity in hopes of returning home.

By pure chance, South Carolina’s Lieutenant Governor, William Bull and four of his companions, were in the area and came upon the Stono rebels, now close to 160 persons. Unprepared to take on the rebels, Bull and his companions retreated on horseback to mobilize the planter-class militia. After having traveled some ten miles, the rebels encountered the militia and a bloody battle ensued. The rebels fought well and bravely, but ultimately were defeated. Interestingly, some thirty rebels escaped and were only caught days and weeks later; one rebel leader was not captured until 1742, three years later. According to Bull’s documents, some of the rebels were spared if they convinced the planters that they were forced to join. Those who refused to surrender were decapitated and their heads put on poles to deter further uprisings.

The story of the Stono Rebellion is important to know for several reasons. First, too few students in the United States (US) learn of rebellions in US history that are not connected to the American Revolution and the nation-state project. Second, it shows that exploited people were often willing to risk life and limb for freedom. And third, the notion of who is and who is not a hero is challenged by this history. Imagine what today would be like if it was understood that people of African-Descent had a deep notion of freedom before the founding fathers? This is an interesting question for a US history classes.

The Faculty Advisory Board of the Arcus Center for Social Justice leadership and the HHMI Inclusive Excellence Faculty team present this monthly notice aimed at educating the K community on African-American history and culture. 19 marks 1619, the year in which the first set of African captives were brought to what would become the United States, and June 19th, 1865, the day that Blacks celebrate the end of enslavement in the US. Both of these dates, and their meanings, were largely unknown to many outsides of the Black community. We feel much of the “surprise” at recent uprisings led by the Black lives Matter movement derives from a lack of knowledge of the rich fabric of Black History. This month, and every month, hereafter, we will offer messages like this one to help better educate our College community as we work towards being an anti-racist Institution.

Regina Stevens-Truss, HHMI Inclusive Excellence + Chemistry department
Lisa Brock, ACSJL + History department

19: This Month in Black History – John Lewis & Voting Rights

Posted on by Katrina Frank

Good Trouble: John Lewis and the Voting Rights Act

On August 6, 1965, the Voting’s Rights Act was signed into law after eleven years of consistent civil rights direct actions. While Black men were guaranteed the right to vote with the 14th and 15th amendments (1868 and 1870, respectively) and Black women in 1920, state officials and white vigilantes continued to deny this right to Black people with state statues such as the grandfather clause, literacy tests, poll taxes, and violence. State systems were key enforcers of Jim Crow, which was never just segregation but an attempt to deny Black people many rights afforded them by law.

Because of this long history of voter suppression, the Voting Rights Act banned the use of literacy tests, provided for federal oversight of voter registration in areas where less than 50 percent of the non-white population had not registered to vote, and authorized the U.S. attorney general to investigate illegal acts by states to deny the vote.

A major force in the fight for Voting Rights was Congressman John Lewis who passed away at the age of 81 on July 17, 2020. Like many compelled to act on behalf of justice, Lewis, when at the age of 15 he learned of the August 28, 1955 racist murder of 14-year-old Emmett Till in Money, Mississippi, began following Rosa Parks and Dr. King. He attended Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee and at the age of 21, became a leader of the Freedom Riders movement which trained young people to engage in non-violent desegregation efforts. By age 23, he was a leader of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee which focused on voting rights in the South. At that age, he was the youngest speaker at the now famous 1963 March on Washington. Importantly, it was in March of 1965, that John Lewis, along with Dianne Nash, Amelia Boynton Robinson, Viola Liuzzo, Annie Lee Cooper, Josea Hudson, and many more, marched across the Pettus Bridge to the State Capital in Selma. Lewis, said we must always make the Good and Necessary Trouble!

With the passing of John Lewis and the rise of new movements of young people challenging police killings of unarmed Black people, the defunding of Black schools and poor communities, and the prison industrial complex, we are reminded of the bravery of the young people who fought for civil rights. Like many young people today, the honorable John Lewis was jailed and attacked in the fight for justice. In fact, we are reminded of this sacrifice, as one of our own Kalamazoo College students, was unjustly arrested on Saturday August 14th, 2020 for using his voice to protest the white supremacist group, the Proud Boys, who invaded our city and beat up people that day.

Just as crucial is this: the Voting Rights Act was gutted by the US Supreme Court in 2013, and voter suppression is happening still today, from gerrymandering voting districts, shutting down polling stations, restructuring postal delivery, confusing the state rules for student voters, and removing hundreds of thousands of black people from the voter rolls. Join the movement to reinstate the Voting Rights Act – John Lewis Voting Rights Act.

The Faculty Advisory Board of the Arcus Center for Social Justice leadership and the HHMI Inclusive Excellence Faculty team present this monthly notice aimed at educating the K community on African-American history and culture. 19 marks 1619, the year in which the first set of African captives were brought to what would become the United States, and June 19th, 1865, the day that Blacks celebrate the end of enslavement in the US. Both of these dates, and their meanings, were largely unknown to many outsides of the Black community. We feel much of the “surprise” at recent uprisings led by the Black lives Matter movement derives from a lack of knowledge of the rich fabric of Black History. Thus, this month, and every month, hereafter, we will offer messages like this one to help better educate our College community as we work towards being an anti-racist Institution.

Regina Stevens-Truss, HHMI Inclusive Excellence + Chemistry department
Lisa Brock, ACSJL + History department

John Lewis speaking at a meeting of American Society of Newspaper Editors, Statler Hilton Hotel, Washington, D.C.
John Lewis speaking at a meeting of American Society of Newspaper Editors, Statler Hilton Hotel, Washington, D.C.

Voting Rights

Want to learn more about voting rights?

Visit the Kalamazoo College Library Voting Rights Resources Collection to find books on the topic.

Racist Performances and Incidents at K College.

The fight for voting rights is linked to a history of racism leading to many atrocities. Learn more about racist performances and incidents on our own campus. Disclaimer: This collection on the college’s digital archive includes disturbing photos.

See the Racist and Hate Incidents page on the K College digital archive.

Regina Stevens-Truss, HHMI Inclusive Excellence + Chemistry department
Lisa Brock, ACSJL + History department

19: This Month in Black History – Thurgood Marshall

Posted on by Katrina Frank

Thurgood Marshall was born in Baltimore, Maryland on July 2, 1908, as the grandson of a slave. His father was a Pullman Porter and his mother a teacher. He attended the historically Black Lincoln University in Pennsylvania where his classmates at Lincoln included a distinguished group of future Black leaders such as the poet Langston Hughes, the future President of Ghana, Kwame Nkrumah, and musician Cab Calloway.

In 1930, Thurgood applied to the University of Maryland Law School, but was denied admission because he was Black. He then sought admission and was accepted at the Howard University Law School, another distinguished HBCU that same year and came under the immediate influence of the dynamic activist dean, Charles Hamilton Houston. Paramount in Houston’s outlook was the need to overturn the 1898 Supreme Court ruling, Plessy v. Ferguson which established the legal doctrine called, “separate but equal.” All of Hamilton’s students entered the profession with this goal. Marshall’s first major court case came in 1933 when he successfully sued the University of Maryland to admit a young African American Amherst University graduate named Donald Gaines Murray.

Thurgood Marshall followed his Howard University mentor, Charles Hamilton Houston to New York and later became Chief Counsel for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). During this period, Mr. Marshall was asked by the United Nations and the United Kingdom to help draft the constitutions of the emerging African nations of Ghana and what is now Tanzania. After amassing an impressive record of Supreme Court challenges to state-sponsored discrimination, he, along with others, argued the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954, which led to the desegregation of public institutions. President John F. Kennedy appointed Thurgood Marshall to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. In this capacity, he wrote over 150 decisions including support for the rights of immigrants, limiting government intrusion in cases involving illegal search and seizure, double jeopardy, and right to privacy. Biographers Michael Davis and Hunter Clark note that, “none of his (Marshall’s) 98 majority decisions was ever reversed by the Supreme Court.” In 1965 President Lyndon Johnson appointed Judge Marshall to the office of U.S. Solicitor General. While in this position, he won 14 of the 19 cases he argued before the Supreme Court. Indeed, Thurgood Marshall represented and won more cases before the United States Supreme Court than any other American.

He was nominated to the United States Supreme Court in 1967, and was Justice on this Court until his retirement in 1991. Justice Marshall died on January 24, 1993.

The Faculty Advisory Board of the Arcus Center for Social Justice leadership and the HHMI Inclusive Excellence Faculty team present this monthly notice aimed at educating the K community on African-American history and culture. 19 marks 1619, the year in which the first set of African captives were brought to what would become the United States, and June 19th, 1865, the day that Blacks celebrate the end of enslavement in the US. Both of these dates, and their meanings, were largely unknown to many outsides of the Black community. We feel much of the “surprise” at recent uprisings led by the Black lives Matter movement derives from a lack of knowledge of the rich fabric of Black History. This month and every month, hereafter, we will offer messages like this one to help better educate our College community as we work towards being an anti-racist Institution.

Regina Stevens-Truss, HHMI Inclusive Excellence + Chemistry department
Lisa Brock, ACSJL + History department