The union and biography of Absalom Jones and Richard Allen is a unique tale. Nonetheless, when we think of major influences in black history theirs is not amongst the names that readily come to mind. When discussing great advocates for equality and rights for the African Americans, names such as Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, Rosa Parks, and other prominent advocates widely televised are thought about. But seldom, if ever, are we are we told the tale of two seemingly distant African-American men, who unite for a similar cause and later leave one of the most important impacts made in the city of Philadelphia. Although Jones and Allen were not popular as other well-known leaders, their background story is much more distinctive. Both born into slavery in Delaware, living just a few hours away from each other, they both eventually earned their suffrage and began their own lives. But as providence would have it their individuality was much more entwined than they knew. Absalom Jones and Richard Allen were great men who were able to transform their lives from bondage to founders of great establishments and principal figures amongst Philadelphia’s African- American community. Absalom Jones was born into slavery in Delaware, Sussex County on November 1746. Jones and his family served Benjamin Wynkoop who was a well known merchant. Due to his illiteracy, Jones sought to teach himself how to read and write by spending his allowances on spelling books and reading materials. Well into his childhood Jones was separated from his mother and six other siblings, but Wynkoop chose to keep Jones. This serves as an opportunity for Jones to begin earning wages and was given permission to attend a school set up for African-Americans. Into 17... ... middle of paper ... ...ractices in Pennsylvania.” CommonwealthofPennsylvania, February 21, 2012, http://www.portal.state.pa.us/portal/server.pt/community/community/18326/religion/673925 “Richard Allen.” Christianitytoday , August 8, 2008, http://www.christianitytoday.com/ch/131christians/denominationalfounders/richardallen.html “A Narrative of the Proceedings of the Black People... “ PBSOnline, February 21, 2012 http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part3/3h456.html Dean Kevin, “Saints of the Week.” EpicospalCathedral.org, last modified February 20, 2012, http://www.episcopalcathedral.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=69&Itemid=73 Scott Miltenberger, “Absalom Jones.” OxfordUniversityPress, February 21, 2012 www2.oxfordaasc.com/article/opr/t0004/e0320 “Mother Bethel AME Church.” IndependenceHallAssociation, February 21, 2012, www.ushistory.org/tour/mother-bethel.htm
The history of The Black Civil Rights Movement in the United States is a fascinating account of a group of human beings, forcibly taken from their homeland, brought to a strange new continent, and forced to endure countless inhuman atrocities. Forced into a life of involuntary servitude to white slave owners, African Americans were to face an uphill battle for many years to come. Who would face that battle? To say the fight for black civil rights "was a grassroots movement of ordinary people who accomplished extraordinary things" would be an understatement. Countless people made it their life's work to see the progression of civil rights in America. People like W.E.B. DuBois, Marcus Garvey, A Phillip Randolph, Eleanor Roosevelt, and many others contributed to the fight although it would take ordinary people as well to lead the way in the fight for civil rights. This paper will focus on two people whose intelligence and bravery influenced future generations of civil rights organizers and crusaders. Ida B.Wells and Mary Mcleod Bethune were two African American women whose tenacity and influence would define the term "ordinary to extraordinary".
Keen, Benjamin. 1969. The Black Legend Revisited: Assumptions and realities. The Hispanic American Historical Review. volume 49. no. 4
Gates J.R., Henry Louis & West, Cornel. The African-American Century. New York: The Free Press 2000
Marable, Manning. Race, Reform, and Rebellion: The Second Reconstruction and Beyond in Black America, 1945-2006. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2007.
Purnell, Brian. 2009. "INTERVIEW WITH DR. JOHN HOPE FRANKLIN." Journal Of African American History 94, no. 3: 407-421. Academic Search Premier, EBSCOhost (accessed December 8, 2013).
The African-American Years: Chronologies of American History and Experience. Ed. Gabriel Burns Stepto. New York: Charles Scribner 's Sons, 2003.
This historic broadcast, in which Mississippians for the first time were presented a black perspective on segregation and civil rights, has never been located. Nonetheless, recordings of irate reactions by Mississippians slurred with racist epithets, “What are you people of Mississippi going to do? Just stand by a let the nigger take over. They better get his black ass off or I am gonna come up there and take it off” (Pinkston, 2013), have been found preserved at the Mississippi Department of Archives and History. Some say, history is the process by which people recall, lay claim to and strive to understand. On that day in May 1963, Mississippi’s lay to claim: Racism.
In his later life, Ware showed up in court several times. But this time not as defendant, but as expert witness on behalf of black musicians and as party in a suit aimed to get religious shrines and other sacred objects returned to his congregation. Different from the more notorious black power advocates like Stokely Carmichael and H. Rap Brown, Ware’s life trajectory has received little attention. The encounter in Nashville was the only one in which he stood in the limelight, at least as far as the Banner was concerned. Receiving only limited attention from the nation’s most popular newspapers, Ware arrest in Nassau coincided with a wave of urban unrests unheard of in the nation’s history. Moreover, it happened during a time of consolidation, when Southern local and state governments began to cooperate with federal police agencies to “contain” the increasingly unruly masses of poor people in the nation’s urban centers. In addition, different from the two other black power proponents, whose audacious rhetoric and later life stories squarely fit into a historical narrative that long portrayed the black power movement and its most prominent protagonists as at best mentally unstable at worst as outright criminal, and responsible for both the decline of whites’ support for blacks’ civil rights and that of the nation’s cities, Ware’s later life looks, at least at the first glance, suspiciously ordinary (for the sake of a better word). It has the potential to demonstrate the more nuanced and less easily detectable reverberations of a search for black empowerment that for many, including Ware, was also a struggle to define a positive identity during a time that many cultural, social, and economic traditions of Africans or African-descendants were deemed utterly backward, if not outright
America – “the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave” – is the land where diverse citizens have equally respected rights (Key). This adage was not always considered, though. Before the collaboration from a plethora of African Americans commenced, African Americans had restricted rights. Many people worked together to achieve freedom, and in the process, they helped configure what Florida is today. One African American that stood out from the rest, in particular, was Jonathan Clarkson Gibbs.
Nabrit, James M. Jr. “The Relative Progress and the Negro in the United States: Critical Summary and Evaluation.” Journal of Negro History 32.4 (1963): 507-516. JSTOR. U of Illinois Lib., Urbana. 11 Apr. 2004
Chafe, William, Raymond Gavins, and Robert Korstad. Remembering Jim Crow. New York: The New Press, 2001.
Boser, Ulrich. "The Black Man's Burden." U.S. News & World Report 133.8 (2002): 50. Academic
The time has come again to celebrate the achievements of all black men and women who have chipped in to form the Black society. There are television programs about the African Queens and Kings who never set sail for America, but are acknowledged as the pillars of our identity. In addition, our black school children finally get to hear about the history of their ancestors instead of hearing about Columbus and the founding of America. The great founding of America briefly includes the slavery period and the Antebellum south, but readily excludes both black men and women, such as George Washington Carver, Langston Hughes, and Mary Bethune. These men and women have contributed greatly to American society. However, many of us only know brief histories regarding these excellent black men and women, because many of our teachers have posters with brief synopses describing the achievements of such men and women. The Black students at this University need to realize that the accomplishments of African Americans cannot be limited to one month per year, but should be recognized everyday of every year both in our schools and in our homes.
John A. Kirk, History Toady volume 52 issue 2, The Long Road to Equality for African-Americans
The above-mentioned essays are: Nihilism in Black America, The Pitfalls of Racial Reasoning, The Crisis of Black Leadership, Demystifying the Black Conservatism, Beyond Affirmative Action: Equality and Identity, On Black-Jewish Relations, Black Sexuality: T...