The most important contributions made by Howard Thurman include him becoming the first black dean of a university chapel in America. He was hired for the role at Boston University in 1953-1965.He later began an interdenominational congregation in San Francisco. This is a large contribution because he had people of all ethnicities in the church. He changed the way people in America viewed Christianity. His struggles paralleled some of the struggles of black people in his time period. He had a college education, theology education, his wife did as well. During the Great Depression, his wife became ill from practicing Social Work which was the reason she died. There were medical bills left and he was able to borrow money from his life insurance.
Many blacks in his time did not even have life insurance. He transcended racism by creating a very large multinational congregation and leading his chapel. His ideology behind thinking about the bigger picture of all the issues of the world helped him as well. He was able to work around certain boundaries because of the approach he took in theology. His mentors taught him to think of the larger issues. Many do not consider Thurman an activist because he was not a vigorous advocate. However, her worked for the betterment of humanity through his humane works. Thurman was very different in American Christianity because his approach to racial issues. He is known for taking a less ethnocentric approach because of the influences he met in India. This voyage made him question all he knew. Secondly, He connected with nature and went to homelands to learn lessons. No spiritual leader of his time was so connected to nature as he was. The things that made him uniquely suited as a minister was his patience, eloquence, passion for church. He was trained by some great speakers and teachers in his life. His role models helped him understand his message and purpose. Lastly, the ways his trip to India was important to his development in his personal life and the emergence of nonviolence in America in terms of meeting Gandhi was how he saw nonviolence resistance. After meeting Gandhi, Thurman realized the impact nonviolence resistance is the only form of of resistance. Gandhi influenced Thurman to look deep into his religious faith when dealing with social issues.
The “ Father of Black History” as we know today, Dr. Carter G. Woodson was born on December 19, 1875 to James and Anne Eliza Woodson in New Canton, Virginia. Woodson was the first child of nine children of James and Anne Eliza who where newly freed slaves. Carter’s supported his family at a very young age by working in a coal mine. At the age of seventeen Carter and his family moved to Fayette, Virginia where he worked in a coal mine. Carter was allowed to attend school at Douglas High School part time where he successfully earned a high school diploma and graduated in approximately a year and a half in 1896. Carter then went on to attend Berea College in Kentucky.
To determine what factors Brown had to overcome to become a success, we must look at what was against him. He was a black man in a white dominant society. The only factor that could have made Brown being black any worse was if he grew up in the South. He shows us this through his parents they moved from the South to Harlem to escape its prejudices. Like many black families Brown’s parents wanted to be the first Northern urban generation of Negro’s. He showed the kind of Southern black mentality his parents had with the jobs they took and the way they reacted to his quitting of what they called good paying jobs....
Washington’s life story was told during the mid to late 1800’s into the early 1900’s, in the time when the Emancipation Proclamation had gone into effect. The Emancipation Proclamation was one major event in history that forever changed our country. All slaves were free and had to go find a new place to live and a new place to work. When the slaves were first freed there was alot ofhostile feelings from the whites towards the newly freed slaves. To blacks living within post- Reconstruction South, Washington offered industrial education as the means of escape from sharecropping and allowed blacks to become self-employed, while owning their own land, or small business.
Upon discovering this from his grandfather Al Sharpton decided to better himself so he could fight injustice not just for his grandfather but for the African community. Al Sharpton was an ongoing church person, Sharpton showed so much interest in preaching teaching and helping others that at the age of 10 he sought out to be a minister and then became an ordained minister in his church in New York. As Al Sharpton grew so did his hunger for knowledge and for equality for his fellow African race. In the late 1960s, Sharpton decided to become an activist and to join the civil rights movement by committing himself to joining the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.
His family was considered a middle class family. Both of his parents were relatively educated compared to other colored families at the time. Martin Luther King Jr’s mother in particular was very well educated because she graduated from Spelman College. His father was a Reverend at the Ebenezer Baptist Church. From a background and environment so comforting, Martin Luther King Jr. grew up with a peaceful and intellectual state of mind. He was surrounded by knowledgeable people. That is why he was so well spoken with ideas that people can rally behind. Compared to Malcolm Little’s childhood and where he came from, Martin was a privileged person. In Martin Luther King Jr’s speech, he proclaimed
They didn’t why clearly why he dropped out of school. One time Duke dealt racial experience at a restaurant. And he was also a sheriff and a great husband but he never had any kids. He died of a heart attack and that was a heartbreak to society.
After graduating from high school in 1919, Wilkins attended the University of Minnesota, majoring in sociology and minoring in journalism. As a student, he earned money to pay for his education by working as a porter, redcap, dishwasher, caddy, dining car waiter, and packinghouse laborer. Despite his class work and many jobs, he was able to serve as night editor of the campus newspaper, the Minnesota Daily, and editor of a black weekly newspaper, the St. Paul Appeal. At the same time, he actively participated in the local branch of the NAACP, thus beginning a lifetime struggle for social justice.
"And so he climbed, unclogged by ethnic weights," he prospered despite his race. The fact that he was African-American never "weighted down" what he wanted to do.
You would think that his rough life of poverty and abuse could have made him more of a bitter person but instead it only produced a more compassionate spiritual man, who would live by these beliefs “who has ever seen people persuade to love God by harshness?” and “Where there is no love, put love and you will find the love.” He left many of his books full of practical advice on the spiritual growth and prayer that are still relevant today as they were back then. Some of his writings included Dark Night of the Soul and Ascent of Mount Carmel.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Was a Negro man who was in the day and age of segregation. He knew segregation was a wrong way to live. During his childhood he had many encounters with this problem. He had personal experiences, such as when his two friends stopped playing with him, He had role models and mentors, that helped him and guided him along his way, and his education also took a major part in his civil rights movement of making the world a non segregated place. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. played a major part in the civil rights movement of discrimination against white people, his childhood, role models, and his education helped form him into his beliefs and actions of the non segregation movement.
As of 2013, only forty-eight out of one-hundred percent of African Americans attend college (Black Demographics). This is still a tremendous amount compared to the statistics for the black people between 1891-1915 due to the lack of educational opportunities. During this time, there were circumstances restricting them from literacy, including slavery. Meaning, even if they wanted a better life for themselves it was practically impossible. Having to deal with being a slave and catering to their own families, there was no time to actually improve their education. One man who truly stood up for these people was Booker T. Washington. Fighting for the rights of African American children to have an education, Booker T. Washington and his partner, Julius Rosenwald, took a stand which was a step towards equal education for all races.
King was born in 1929. He grew up to not only be a Baptist minister but also as the civil rights activist well known today for his contributions in the 1950’s (Martin History). Growing up King had two siblings, his sister, Willie Christian King, and his brother Alfred Daniel Williams (Early). King grew up in Georgia and was subject to segregation in schools for his entire life; despite this disadvantage, he still persevered and ended up graduating at fifteen years old. This just shows that determination can help you overcome anything, no matter what it may be. Furthermore, King received his degree in 1948 from Morehouse College; he then pursued theology at Crozer, where he studied for three years and was also elected president. This is an amazing feat for an African American to graduate college. Later King also received his doctorate in 1955 from Boston University. King was an inspiration to people before he even thought of acting in civil disobedience and his name will live on forever. Even though King was born on January 15, 1929 as Michael Luther King, he decided to change his name later on in his life (Martin Nobel). Later in life King went on to marry Coretta Scott, another civil rights activist. Mrs. King was renowned for her brave acts in the Montgomery Bus Boycott and many other acts of civil disobedience. She also opened the Center of Nonviolent Social Exchange to commemorate King’s death in
The first one being the death of his grandmother and the second one being the loss of his best childhood friend, a White child. After these two events, he had a lot of resentment towards the system of segregation and he felt the injustice just because he was a kid of color and his friend was White (Carson, 7). At a young age he started to realize how things were not easy for African Americans. He saw police brutality and “Negroes receive the most tragic injustice inn the courts”. He still remembered White supremacy power (Ku Klux Klan) and learned that all the economic injustice had to do with racial injustice, even Whites who weren’t wealthy (good economic standing) were being exploited (Carson, 10). It is said that life events help shape ones’ mind and beliefs, well Martin Luther King, Jr. had many experience on segregation, racial discrimination and
Growing up he was fairly poor. His dad worked very hard “Daddy worked hard and had to because as a black man nothing came easy.”
Booker T. Washington fought for African American Rights and founded the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute. He urged blacks to accept discrimination and concentrate on elevating themselves through hard work and material prosperity. He believed in education in the crafts, industrial