African American Studies Commons^™

About Private Tommie D. Smith Guy, Wac, Reinette F. Jones

Library Presentations

Tommie D. Smith [Guy], from Lexington, KY, was one of the three African American WACs who were beaten by the local police and charged with disorderly conduct for sitting in the white waiting area of the bus station in Elizabethtown, KY. The three WACs were with the 1550th Service Command Unit, WAC Section II. The three women were eventually found not guilty of any charges.

Marietta J. Tanner, Mark Naison

Bronx African American History Project (BAAHP)

Interviewee: Marietta J. Tanner

Interviewers: Mark Naison, Donna Joseph, Saudah Muhammad

Date: July 2020

Summarized by Sophia Maier

Marietta J. Tanner was born in 1928 in Willow Grove, Pennsylvania. Influenced by the activism of her father and the wartime experiences of her uncle, Marietta is a life-long political activist. Her parents explained to her from a young age their experiences in Jim Crow era Pennsylvania and by the age of six she was passing out political pamphlets and registering people to vote with the rest of her family. After attending a segregated school in her youth and a brief period …

Carolyn Bowman, Mark Naison

Oral Histories

Interviewees: Carolyn Bowman

Interviewers: Mark Naison, Avery Russell, Diana Joseph, Saudah Muhammad

Date:August 2020

Transcriber: Kate Caperan

Soror Carolyn Bowman was initiated on the first line of the Eta Omega Omega Chapter of the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority in 1966. Bowman was born and raised in Harlem, Manhattan. After graduating from Julia Richmond High School, Bowman attended the City College of New York (CCNY) for her undergraduate years, and the Rabinowitz School of Social Work at Hunter College from which she received a Master’s Degree in 1964. She then briefly worked at the Brooklyn Bureau of Community Service in Foster …

Founding Of Naacp In San Antonio 1918: A Call To Activism, Eric D. Nolden

Methods of Historical Research: Spring 2020

Enter the Progressive era a time of social activism and political reform, an era aimed at finding a cure for industrialization and urbanization nationally. There were also societal issues that needed to be resolved, issues of governmental corruption, government machines and their overseers, women’s suffrage, child labor laws, the practice of Eugenics, and safer food and medicine for all citizens. Although the reformers of the era were trying to create a “Great America,” the Progressive era encouraged discriminatory rules; rules which aided in the re-emergence of the KKK and lay the foundation for the Immigration Act of 1917. Policies that …

Aa Ms 01 Gerald E. Talbot Collection Finding Aid, David Andreasen, Kristin D. Morris, Karin A. France, Marieke Van Der Steenhoven, Caroline Remley, Andrea Harkins, Kara Kralik, Anya O'Meara

Search the Manuscript Collection (Finding Aids)

Description:

Gerald E. Talbot was the first African American to be elected to the Maine State Legislature. He served in the Maine House of Representatives from 1972 to 1978, and worked with the Maine chapter of the NAACP and the State Board of Education. He also took part in the struggle for civil rights in other parts of the country, as well as in Maine. The Collection includes Talbot’s personal papers, records of his term in the Maine House of Representatives, of his work with the NAACP in Maine and with the State Board of Education. The Collection contains books, …

2016 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Breakfast Celebration, University Of Maine Student Life

Cultural Affairs Distinguished Lecture Series

Alison Beyea is the Executive Director of the ACLU of Maine, where she oversees the organization's legal, legislative, public education and development activities. With 3,000 members, the ACLU of Maine is the state's oldest and largest civil liberties organization.

The state of the union from the Citizen's Perspective delivered by Alison Beyea will be the focus of a keynote address at the 20th annual Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Breakfast on Jan. 18, 2016 sponsored by the Greater Bangor Area NAACP and the University of Maine. Keynote Speaker Alison Beyea will speak on current national affairs and trends, education, …

Throwing The Switch: Eisenhower, Stevenson And The African-American Vote In The 1956 Election, Lincoln M. Fitch

Student Publications

This paper seeks to contextualize the 1956 election by providing a summary of the African American political alignment during the preceding half-century. Winning a greater portion of the black vote was a central tenant of the 1956 Eisenhower Campaign strategy. In the 1956 election a substantial shift occurred among the historically democratic black electorate. The vote shifted because of disillusionment with the Democrats and Eisenhower’s civil rights record. The swing however, was less pronounced for Republican congressional candidates. This paper draws upon extensive primary material, including countless newspapers, magazines, the NAACP Papers, and published primary sources to form the core …

Sam Gen Ms 01 Jean Byers Sampson Papers Finding Aid, John D. Knowlton, Susannah Clark

Search the Manuscript Collection (Finding Aids)

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Jean Byers Sampson was a 1944 graduate of Smith College. Early in her post-Smith career, she conducted and wrote the 1947, “A Study of the Negro in Military Service,” which contributed to President Harry Truman’s decision to desegregate the armed forces. Sampson moved to Maine in the early 1950s with her husband, Richard Sampson, a Bates College mathematics professor, and she played a unique and critical role in the state until her death in 1996. Over the course of her life in Maine, she served as the founder of the first chapter of the NAACP in Maine, local and …

Associational Privacy And The First Amendment: Naacp V. Alabama, Privacy And Data Protection, Anita L. Allen

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Farmville, 1963: The Long Hot Summer, Jill Ogline Titus

Civil War Institute Faculty Publications

On July 9, 1963, a reporter for the Richmond Times-Dispatch informed his readers that black protesters had attempted two sit-ins in the college town of Farmville, the hub of rural Prince Edward County. Obviously shocked by these developments, he termed the events at the College Shoppe restaurant and the State Theater "the first reported Negro movement in this Southside Virginia locality, which has gained prominence in recent years as the focal point of a struggle over the closings of Prince Edward County's schools." In this writer's mind, and perhaps many of his readers' as well, social movements were synonymous with …

Greene, Aurelia, Bronx African American History Project

Oral Histories

Greene grew up in the Morrisania section of The Bronx; Third Avenue and 171^st street in the 1940s and ‘50s and it was a racially mixed neighborhood. There were a few African-Americans, mostly Irish, some Italians, and some Jewish people too. Her parents separated and her maternal grandparents, Maud and Harold Russell raised her. Maud was from Trinidad and her grandfather was from St. Vincent. Maud “was Mulatto and she could pass for white”, as it was difficult during the Depression for African-Americans to get jobs, so she worked as a domestic in hotels downtown. She was very conscious …

Fearon, Shirley, Bronx African American History Project

Oral Histories

Shirley Fearon was born on July 8, 1945 in Harlem. However, she spent her early years in the South Bronx on Brook Avenue. Her parents met in Harlem and then moved to the Bronx. Shortly after she was born, her parents split up and she and her mother moved to Williamsbridge with her grandparents. This neighborhood was mostly Italians, but all the children got along well. Her grandparents lived in a private home. She and her family attended New Bedford, which is part of St. Luke’s. This church was predominately black, with both people from the Caribbean and African-Americans.

She …

Mulraine, Edward, Bronx African American History Project

Oral Histories

In this interview, the Reverend Edward Mulraine (b. 2/9/1969), pastor of a Baptist church in Mount Vernon New York, shares with the Bronx African American History Project his experiences growing up in the Bronx during the turbulent 1980s, as well as details of his work in the community as a high ranking official in the Williamsbridge office of the NAACP.

Born to a mother who immigrated to the Bronx from St. Thomas, Mulraine estimates that he lived in some fifteen different locations in the Bronx during the course of his childhood. Telling of his time in the Northeast Bronx, Mulraine …

Coleman, Dennis And Mcfeaters, Harriet Interview 3, Bronx African American History Project

Oral Histories

Dennis Coleman moved into the Castle Hill Projects from Morrissania with his wife and children. He was very active in the community and was quickly elected as Vice President of the Tennant Association of Castle Hill. One of the first issues he dealt with was racial discrimination. He attended a few churches while living at Castle hill, like St. Andrew’s in Castle Hill. He goes in to detail about the racial tension that existed in the community prior to the construction of the Castle Hill Projects and after their completion. There were also issues facing where to send the children …

Brindle, Donna, Bronx African American History Project

Oral Histories

Interviewers: Mark Naison and Natasha Lightfoot

Interviewee: Donna Brindle

Date: May 23, 2005

Summarized by Leigh Waterbury

Donna Brindle was born in 1953 in the Bronx and lived on Intervale Avenue until around the age of 11. Her parents initially moved to the Bronx because other friends of theirs were, and those socializations became an important part of Donna’s upbringing. Both of her parents were musicians, her father was a concert pianist and one of the founders of The Symphony of the New World in the 1950‘s. Her parents were also politically active. Her mother worked with NAACP as well …

Coleman, Dennis And Mcfeaters, Harriet Interview 2, Bronx African American History Project

Oral Histories

Dennis Coleman is a longtime Bronx activists, political leader, and educator. This interview examines his experiences with the Board of Education in the Bronx. Coleman served in the New York State Senate from 1955-1956 and was on a committee that examined different education programs throughout the state, especially in inner city schools. When he returned to the Bronx, he was appointed to serve on a local Board of Education in 1966.

Coleman discusses the 1968 Bronx Teachers strike, specifically the actions of teachers on both sides of the picket line, the issues, parental involvement, and the participation of advocacy groups, …

Coleman, Dennis And Mcfeaters, Harriet Interview 1, Bronx African American History Project

Oral Histories

Interviewers: Dr. Mark Naison, Natasha Lightfoot, and Claude Mangum

Interview took place on January 26, 2005

Summarized by Alice Stryker

Harriet McFeeters was a teacher, administrator, staff developer, and Assistant District Superintendent in the New York School System and originally from the Bronx. She begins by talking about the way in which the Bronx schools became integrated. Dennis Coleman says that they had to try and come up with a number of new ways attempt to comply with the federal laws on integrating schools. One of the ways they integrated the schools was through rezoning. In addition to the need …

Sogrue, Jim, Bronx African American History Project

Oral Histories

Jim Sogrue was an assistant pastor at St. Augustine’s Church in Morrisania, South Bronx from September 1957 until June of 1964. He was ordained in June of 1957, traveled to Puerto Rico to study Spanish and Spanish culture and upon returning was assigned to a Spanish mission in the Archdiocese of New York. Sogrue grew up in an Irish neighborhood on Wadsworth Avenue between 173^rd and 174^th in Washington Heights. He remembers forty families living in his apartment house and only one was not an Irish family. He did not know any black, Hispanic or Latino kids growing …