Glendale Community College
Home MenuACADEMICS » Special Programs » Student Equity Programs » Cultural Diversity » Black History Month Highlights
2022 BLACK HISTORY MONTH HIGHLIGHTS
A series highlighting Black/African American individuals who made amazing contributions to the United States in honor of Black History Month 2022.
Black History Month 2022 Profile
Produced by the Multicultural & Community Engagement Center
at Glendale Community College
Rev. Dr. Pauli Murray,
Civil Rights Activist, Lawyer, Advocate, Priest, and Author
We close this year's profiles for Black History Month with Dr. Rev. Pauli Murray, a multi-faceted and amazing individual with very impressive accomplishments.
Pauli chose a gender neutral name over their birth name. Murray self-described as a “he/she personality” in correspondence with family members during the early years of their life. Later in journals, essays, letters and autobiographical works, Pauli employed “she/her/hers'' pronouns.
Murray was born in 1910 in Baltimore. They moved to New York to attend Hunter College at the age of 16, earning a BA in English. Continued with their education, they earned a Master’s degree from UC Berkeley and in 1965 becoming the first African American to receive a Doctor of Juridical Science degree from Yale Law School.
Most of their legal work focused on gender equity/equality and discrimination against women. They were one of the co-founders of the National Organization for Women (NOW). Murray was appointed to serve on the 1961–1963 Presidential Commission on the Status of Women by President John F. Kennedy and was also listed as co-author of a brief on gender discrimination with Ruth Bader Ginsberg (who worked at the ACLU at that time).
In 1973 Murray left the legal field and focused on working with the Episcopal Church and became an ordained priest in 1977. This was a continuation of the work to advocate for gender equity in the church. In addition to the legal, advocacy, and religious work, Murray published two well-reviewed autobiographies and a volume of poetry. Their volume of poetry, Dark Testament (1970), was republished in 2018.
In January 2021, a documentary named "My Name is Pauli Murray" debuted at the Sundance Film Festival and is currently available through streaming services. Though their life and achievements were too many to list here, the documentary offers insight into their work and passion. Murray passed away in 1985 in a home owned jointly with their close friend in Pittsburg.
Sources
Black History Month 2022 Profile
Produced by the Multicultural & Community Engagement Center
at Glendale Community College
Maria P. Williams
Filmmaker, Activist, Publisher …
Maria P. Williams is often an overlooked figure in American history. Some of this is due to very little information being available about her. She is the first Black woman to write, produce, and star in a film, The Flames of Wrath (1923). Arguably, she was also the director of the film since at that time, producing and directing were often very closely interrelated. However, the official credit of first Black female director went to someone else the previous year.
Sadly, only one frame of The Flames of Wrath is known to exist; it’s in the "George P. Johnson Negro Film Collection, 1916-1977" in the Young Research Library at UCLA.
Maria Priscilla Thurston Williams was born and raised in Missouri in 1866. She then moved to Kansas City where she became a school teacher. There, she met her first husband, Jesse L. Williams, a local businessman who owned quite a few businesses in Kansas City. They married in 1916 and she became the assistant manager of the movie theater her husband owned. While working there, she wrote, produced, and starred in Flames of Wrath. In order to distribute the film, she and her husband created The Western Film Producing Company and Booking Exchange. After her husband died, she remarried.
In addition to being a teacher, a filmmaker, publisher, and actor, she also wrote regularly on topics of the day. She was an activist and traveled the state of Missouri to give talks in support of certain candidates who were running for state office. She belonged to the Good Citizens League which organized her speaking engagements.
In 1916 she published her memoir called My Work and Public Sentiment. She died under some mysterious and questionable circumstances in 1932. Apparently, she was called away to help with an unknown person who was sick. Soon after that, she was found shot to death a few miles from her home. To this day, her case has not been solved.
Black History Month 2022 Profile
Produced by the Multicultural & Community Engagement Center
at Glendale Community College
Edmonia Lewis
Artist/Sculptor
Edmonia Lewis was a Black and Native American sculptor born in New York state in 1844. She earned much praise for her work which included religious and classical themes. She had little formal training in sculpting but gained notoriety early in life.
Her Native American roots came from her mother whose background was Black and Mississauga Ojibwe tribe. Both her parents died by the time she reached the age of 9. She was adopted by her maternal aunts at that point and lived near Niagara Falls in New York state.
In 1856, she enrolled in a college prep school but in her own words: "Until I was twelve years old I led this wandering life, fishing and swimming ...and making moccasins. I was then sent to school for three years in [McGrawville], but was declared to be wild—they could do nothing with me."
Her brother had literally hit gold in the American west and provided her with all living expenses. That is when she went to Ohio and attended Oberlin College, which was one of the first higher education institutions to admit women and individuals of different ethnic backgrounds. However, she was the only Black student at the college with a student body of 1,000. She was subjected to daily racism and discrimination at the school.
She found her environment in the United States stifling for an artist and moved to Italy, "I was practically driven to Rome in order to obtain the opportunities for art culture, and to find a social atmosphere where I was not constantly reminded of my color. The land of liberty had no room for a colored sculptor."
Soon after moving to Rome, she gained international recognition as a sculptor. In 1877, former president Grant commissioned her for a bust of him, which he adored. Her work is also a part of the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Some of her amazing work included "The Death of Cleopatra" and "Moses (After Michelangelo)." You can see some of her sculptures at the following link
There is some confusion on the documentation of the circumstance of her passing away but in many biographies, she is said to have died in London in 1907 from Kidney failure, which was listed as the cause on her official death certificate.
Sources
Black History Month 2022 Profile
Produced by the Multicultural & Community Engagement Center
at Glendale Community College
Jane Bolin, Lawyer
Over the course of her lifetime, Jane Bolin broke many barriers but perhaps the most important one (and the one she was best known for) was that of the first Black woman judge in the United States.
Bolin was born in Poughkeepsie, N.Y. on April 11, 1908. Her father (Gaius C. Bolin) was the first Black graduate of Williams College and had his own practice. As a child, Bolin recalled falling in love with her father's leather bound law books which became the inspiration for her to learn more and do more.
Bolin would go on to continue her studies at Wellesley College, the prestigious, private women’s liberal arts college in Massachusetts. She was one of two Black freshmen attending the school…where racism was so rampant (and they so ostracized) that the two of them opted to move off-campus. Despite the trials that Bolin faced, she graduated in 1928 as one of the top students and was named a “Wellesley Scholar” where she received her B.A.
Later on, Bolin would be accepted into Yale Law School, where she would ultimately become the first Black woman to earn her law degree from the esteemed institution. She would later become the first Black woman to join the New York City Bar Association. Upon graduation and being admitted to the state bar, she was often dismissed as a lawyer, most likely due to her gender and race. However, she began practicing law with her first husband.
In New York where she practiced family law, she eventually became sworn in as a Judge by Mayor La Guardia and went on to serve for four decades in the Family Court system. She also changed segregationist policies that had been entrenched in the system, including skin-color based assignments for probation officers. Additionally, Bolin worked with first lady Eleanor Roosevelt in providing support for the Wiltwyck School, a comprehensive, holistic program to help eradicate juvenile crime among boys.
A 2011 biography was published on Bolin's career — Daughter of the Empire State: The Life of Judge Jane Bolin by Jacqueline A. McLeod for the University of Illinois Press. The cover of the book features a mid-1940s painting of Bolin by Betsey Graves Reyneau, which is part of the National Portrait Gallery's collection.
She died in Long Island City at the age of 98 on January 8, 2007.
Sources
Black History Month 2022 Profile
Produced by the Multicultural & Community Engagement Center at Glendale Community College
Flyer in text format:
Robert Sengstacke Abbot was born in Georgia on December 24, 1870 to parents who were both enslaved. He graduated from Hampton Institute in Virgina as well as Chicago's Kent College of Law (known as Kent Law School back then) in 1898 but wasn't able to practice law due to racial prejudice. However, he had a printing background by that point and with just $25, he started the Chicago Defender Newspaper, which eventually gained between 200,000 and 500,000 weekly circulation. The circulation numbers are a wide range because many of the sold copies were handed down and each copy was estimated to be read by at least four people. It was also read out loud in barber shops, churches, and other common gathering venues.
In the burgeoning economic times of the 1920s, with the growth of advertising, the Defender became an economic success and Abbott became one of the first African American millionaires.
The paper attacked racial injustice, particularly lynching in the south. The Defender did not use the words “Negro” or “black” in its pages. Instead, African Americans were referred to as “the Race” and black men and women as “Race men and Race women.” Many places in the south effectively banned the paper. He also used the power of the press and his influence to encourage southern black readers of The Defender to migrate north. As a result of his influence and efforts, approximately one million people moved north and approximately 100,000 to Chicago.
The newspaper also fostered literary careers. At 17, Gwendolyn Brooks started submitting her work to "Lights and Shadows," the newspaper’s poetry column, and eventually published almost a hundred poems there. Willard Motley and Langston Hughes were just a few of the other big names for whom the Defender was a literary home. Fun Fact: Gwendolyn Brooks read her poetry at GCC in the late 80's or early 90's.
Abbott, a member of Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity, died in Chicago on February 29, 1940 at the age of 69, with the Defender still a success.
Sources
https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/abbott-robert-sengstacke-1870-1940/
https://chicagoliteraryhof.org/inductees/profile/robert-sengstacke-abbott
Black History Month 2022 Profile
Produced by the Multicultural & Community Engagement Center
at Glendale Community College
Willi Ninja
William R. Leake was born in Queens on April 12, 1961, and grew up in Flushing. He began dancing at 7. By the early 1980’s he was vogueing in Washington Square Park in Greenwich Village and at drag balls throughout Harlem. He prided himself on being a clean, sharp dancer, with swiftly moving arms and hands, and he was deeply inspired by the martial arts —hence his adopted name, Ninja. He was also known as the "grandfather of vogue."
Voguing, which dates to gay Harlem ballrooms in the first half of the 20th century, consists of a combination of model-like poses and creative arm, leg and body movements.
Ninja, inspired by Fred Astaire, "Great Performances" on PBS, Asian culture and Olympic gymnasts, was a self-taught performer who stitched together a patchwork of a career that covered the worlds of dance, fashion and music.
He performed with dance companies, worked under renowned choreographers and instructed models and socialites how to walk and pose for the paparazzi with frisson. But it was for the magic Ninja worked on the ballroom floor and his appearance in the 1990 documentary "Paris Is Burning" that he was probably best known.
The documentary chronicles the elaborate ball competitions in which participants walk in various categories/themes and are judged on the realness of their drag impersonations. On a deeper level, the balls are spins on issues of gender, class and race expressed through performance, observers say. Ball participants are known as children of houses, improvised families that often serve as havens from hardships such as homophobia, poverty and racism many members face.
"Paris Is Burning" director Jennie Livingston said that Ninja was a "supremely gifted dancer" who was extremely focused and dedicated to his craft and that he was "one of the main reasons" she made the film. The filmmaker also noted Ninja’s warmth and ability to guide, nurture and love those around him, particularly the children in the House of Ninja, which he founded in the mid-1980s.
He passed away in 2006 at the age of 45. The cause of death was AIDS-related heart failure.
Sources: