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Justice Wright was born in Princeton, New Jersey and reared in Harlem, New York. Wright graduated from Lincoln University, attended Fordham Law School and obtained his law degree from New York Law School. After obtaining his law degree he worked for the law firm, Proskauer Rose, where he represented such jazz legends as Billie Holiday, Miles Davis, John Coltrane and Max Roach. In 1970 Wright began what he calls "From 1970 to 1982, Wright worked as a criminal and civil lawyer. He retired from the bench in 1995.
Justice Wright was made an honorary member of Princeton's 2001 graduating class after having been awarded a scholarship to attend Princeton in 1939, but then being denied admission when the university learned that he was black. (Wright's father is an African-American, his mother is white.) Wright was denied admission to Notre Dame on the same grounds.
Brown University halfback Fritz Pollard is shown in this 1916 photo. Pollard later became one of the first two African-American NFL football players, helping to lead the Akron Pros to the championship in 1920. He became the co-head coach for the team in 1921, making him the first black NFL head coach. (Pro Football Hall Of Fame/NFL)
Elizabeth Key Grinstead (b. 1630 - d. c. after 1665) was the first woman of African ancestry in the North American colonies to sue for her freedom from slavery and win.
Elizabeth Key won her freedom and that of her infant son John Grinstead on July 21, 1656 in the colony of Virginia. She sued based on the fact that her father was an Englishman and that she was a baptized Christian. Based on these two factors, her English attorney and common-law husband William Grinstead argued successfully that she should be freed. The lawsuit in 1655 was one of the earliest "freedom suits" by a person of African ancestry in the English colonies.
In response to Key's suit and other challenges, in 1662 the Virginia House of Burgesses passed a law that the status of children born in the colony would follow the status of the mother, "bond or free", rather than the father, as had been the precedent in English common law and was the case in England. This was the principle of partus sequitur ventrum, also called partus. The legislation hardened the boundaries of slavery by ensuring that all children of women slaves, regardless of paternity, would be kept as slaves for labor unless explicitly freed.
Saint Elmo Brady (December 22, 1884 - December 25, 1966) was the first African American to obtain a Ph.D. degree in chemistry in the United States, which he earned in 1916 from the University of Illinois. He taught at Tuskegee, Fisk, Howard and Tougaloo, and was the first African American admitted to Phi Lambda Upsilon, the chemistry honor society
On behave of all Americans of African descent, let me apologize to all the helpless urban men who have ever gone on what should have been a wonderful rafting vacation only to hear this:
The banjo was first created by African slaves, and it was soon picked up on by the poor whites who often worked side by side with them in the early south.
It was almost exclusively played by blacks until Joel Sweeney, a man who would play a banjo as part of his "black face" routine started to play it without the make up, and popularized it among southern whites.
So the next time you get lost in swamp country and your rectum gets violated by Big Jim McGee and his cousin/brother Cletus, remember it was Africans who provided the soundtrack
It is a great irony that the instrument almost exclusively associated with inbreeding, rebel flags and moonshine brewing is actually a black invention. Can you imagine the reaction of a black man playing a banjo in NYC or something and when people ask him what he's doing he says "I'm getting back to my roots."
Again, without reading into the thread, may I assume right-wingers jumped in with faux outrage at the idea of selecting a month to honor members of a particular race? Call it a hunch.
Anyways, how about Fred Shuttlesworth. Talk about balls of steel. The real tough guys don't carry guns:
Wow! What a nice thread. I didn't click until now, because I assumed it would be just another black bashing thread.
Madame C.J. Walker was America’s first self-made female millionaire. She amassed her fortune through hard work, innovative ideas, and a fierce dedication to her craft and her people. Contrary to most historical accounts, Madame C.J. Walker did not invent the pressing comb. Per her own words, Madame Walker started the “hair-growing” business, borne out her desire to remedy her own hair loss.
In 1910 Madame C.J. Walker moved her ever expanding “Special Correspondence Course” business, founded on her System of Beauty Culture, to Indianapolis. There she purchased and paid for her home adjoining which was a factory and laboratory. On September 2, 1911 she petitioned the Indiana Secretary of State to become incorporated and on September 19th, 1911, said petition was granted, marking the genesis of the Madame C.J. Walker Manufacturing Company of Indiana, Inc. wherein Madame Walker was the President and sole shareholder of all 1,000 shares of stock.
She was also an early civil rights advocate on behalf of Black people, and an avid financial supporter of what today we call HBCU”s or Historically Black Colleges and Universities. By the time of her passing in 1919, Madame C.J. Walker had built one of the largest black owned manufacturing companies in the world, an international network of over 15,000 Madame Walker agents, beauty schools in three states, and a 32 room mansion at Irvington-on-the-Hudson, New York.
Madame’s only child, A’Lelia Walker became President of the Madame C.J. Walker Manufacturing Company of Indiana upon her mother’s passing. Per Madame’s will, two-thirds of the stock of the Company was placed in a Trust, over which were five Trustees. The other one-third of the stock of the company was bequeathed to her only child. When A’Lelia died, the one-third share of stock she owned was “split” between two people, each receiving onesixth share. The majority two-thirds remained in the Trust.
Over six decades later, in 1985, the Trustees petitioned the Marion County Probate court to allow them to sell the stock and assets of Madame Walker’s company, including inventory and historical documents, to a man named Raymond Randolph. The owners of the remaining shares of stock also agreed to sell their shares to Raymond Randolph. Thus, on December 20th, 1985, Raymond L. Randolph became the first person since Madame C.J. Walker herself to own all 1000 shares of stock in the Madame C.J. Walker Manufacturing Company of Indiana, aka the Madame C.J. Walker Manufacturing Company.
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