Nameless thousands have resisted even unto death for the liberation of African people, beginning on the shores of the Mother continent itself and continuing through the Middle Passage, Slavery, Jim Crow, the Civil Rights Struggle, the Black Liberation Struggle, and the struggles of today. The fact that the names of many of those individuals are not known does not reduce the significance of their contribution to the struggle for Black Liberation. This compilation is an attempt to recognize and pay homage to those individuals who made the ultimate sacrifice for the liberation of Black/African people and should not be looked upon as discrediting the thousands, perhaps even millions of others that have also struggled for true freedom, justice, and equality. Our generation must now accept the torch that has been passed to us to guarantee our existence and our children's future. The Struggle Continues!

Zumbi dos Palmares (1655 - 1695)
Killed on November 20, 1695, in an ambush by Portuguese soldiers while conducting a guerilla campaign to maintain the independence of the Quilombo known as Palmares located in modern day Brazil. He was post-humously decapitated and his head impaled and placed on public display.

Camuanga dos Palmares (? - 1704)
Killed by Portuguese soldiers while leading a guerilla campaign to re-establish the independence of the Palmares Quilombo.

Gabriel Prosser (? - 1800)
Executed: October 7, 1800 by state of Virginia for plotting slave insurrection in Norfolk County.

Toussaint L'Ouverture (1743 - 1803)
Died due to complications related to imprisonment in a cold, mountain cell in France.

Denmark Vesey (1767 - 1822)
Executed: July 2, 1822 by state of South Carolina along with 34 other Blacks for plotting slave insurrection in Charleston.

Bob Ferebee (? - 1823)
Executed: July, 1823 by state of Virginia for leading slave insurrection in Norfolk County.

David Walker (1785 - 1830)
Died under mysterious circumstances in Boston shortly after the publication and circulation of his widely read "Walker's Appeal". Believed to be poisoned.

Jean Dessalines (? - 1806)
Assassinated: October 17, 1806 while functioning as the Revolutionary leader of Haiti.

John Brown (1800 - 1859)
Executed: October, 1859 for leading raid on Harper's Ferry in Virginia.

John Copeland (? - 1859)
Executed: December 16, 1859 for participating in raid on Harper's Ferry in Virginia.

Shields Green (? - 1859)
Executed: December 16, 1859 for participating in raid on Harper's Ferry in Virginia.

Nat Turner (1800 - 1831)
Executed: November 11, 1831 by state of Virginia for leading slave insurrection in Southampton County.

Sam Sharpe (1801 - 1832)
Executed: October 24, 1865 in Montego Bay, Jamaica by British colonialists.

Paul Bogle (1815 - 1865)
Executed: October 24, 1865 along with 438 supporters in Morant Bay, Jamaica by British colonialists.

Antonio Maceo CRP (1848 - 1896)
Killed in battle while fighting to liberate the island of Cuba from the Spanish colonialists.

Samoury Toure (? - 1900)
Died on June 2, 1900 while imprisoned in France.

Marcus Garvey [UNIA, ACL] (1887 - 1940)
Died in exile after being wrongly convicted of mail fraud by the U.S. Government and deported. Garvey was subsequently denied entry into most countries and their colonies where he enjoyed a strong following in an attempt to isolate him from his organizational apparatus.

Josina Machel [FRELIMO] (1945 - )
Killed while fighting the Portuguese Colonialists.

M'Balia Camara (? -1955 )
Murdered by agents of the French Government.

Dedan Kimathi (?-1957)
Leader Of Mau-Mau murdered by agents of the British Government

Felix Moumie [UPC] (? - 1960)
Poisoined: November 3, 1960 by French imperialist agents in Cameroon.

Patrice Lumumba [Prime Minister - Congo] (1925 - 1961)
Assassinated: January 17, 1961 by U.S. CIA backed counter-revolutionary forces while in the custody of the illegitimate Katanga government.

Medger Evers [NAACP] (1928 - 1963)
Assassinated: June 12, 1963 in Mississippi by convicted murder Byron De La Beck member of the kkk

Malcolm X [MMI, OAAU] (1925 - 1965)
Assassinated: February 21, 1965 in New York City by persons affiliated with the Nation Of Islam. Assassins believed to be FBI infiltrators.

T. Hainyeko [PLAN] (? - 1967)
Killed on May 18, 1967 while fighting the South African government.

Martin Luther King [SCLC] (1929 - 1968)
Assassinated: April 4, 1968 in Memphis. James Earl Ray convicted but believed to be part of a larger government conspiracy.

Arthur Glenn Carter [BPP] (1940 - 1968)
Assassinated: March, 1968 by government agents in Los Angeles.

Bobby "L'il Bobby" Hutton [BPP] (1950 - 1968)
Assassinated: April 6, 1968 by Oakland Police.

Steve Bartholemew [BPP] (1947 - 1968)
Assassinated: August 5, 1968 by Los Angeles Police.

Robert Lawrence [BPP] (1946 -1968)
Assassinated: August 5, 1968 by Los Angeles Police.

Tommy Lewis [BPP] (1950 - 1968)
Assassinated: August 5, 1968 by Los Angeles Police.

Welton "Butch" Armstead [BPP] (1951 - 1968)
Assassinated: October 5, 1968 by Seattle Police.

Sidney Miller [BPP] (1947 - 1968)
Assassinated: December 2, 1968 - Shot in the head at point blank range by a racist businessman in Seattle who was never charged for the crime.

Frank "Capt. Franco" Diggs [BPP] (1928 - 1968)
Assassinated: December 19, 1968 by unknown assailants in Los Angeles.

Alprentice "Bunchy" Carter [BPP] (1942 - 1969)
Killed: January 17, 1969 In Revolutionary Action.

John Huggins [BPP] (1946 - 1969)
Killed: January 17, 1969 In Revolutionary Action .

Eduardo Mondlane [FRELIMO] (? - 1969)
Assassinated: February, 1969 with a parcel bomb in Tanzania by Portuguese agents.

Alex Rackley [BPP] (1944 -1969)
Assassinated: 1969 in New Haven in an atmosphere of confusion engineered by the FBI's COINTELPRO campaign. Body was discovered May 21, 1969. Circumstances surrounding his death remains a controversy to date.

Sylvester Bell [BPP] (? - 1969)
Assassinated: May, 1969 in San Diego by members of the US organization apparently resulting from tensions engendered by the FBI's COINTELPRO campaign.

John Savage [BPP] (1948 - 1969)
Assassinated: May 23, 1969 in San Diego by members of the US organization apparently resulting from tensions engendered by the FBI's COINTELPRO campaign.

Larry Roberson [BPP] (1949 - 1969)
Assassinated: Died on September 4, 1969 from gunshot wounds sustained by Chicago Police on
July 16, 1969.

Nathaniel Clark [BPP] (1950 - 1969)
Assassinated: September 12, 1969 as he slept by unknown assailants in Los Angeles.

Walter "Toure" Pope [BPP] (1949-1969)
Assassinated: October 18, 1969 by the Los Angeles Metro Squad.

Carlos Marighela (? - 1969)
Assassinated: November 4, 1969 in ambush by Brazilian police.

Spurgeon "Jake" Winters [BPP] (1950 - 1969)
Assassinated: November 13, 1969 by Chicago Police.

Fred Hampton [BPP] (1948 - 1969)
Assassinated: December 4, 1969 While sleep in a pre-dawn raid in Chicago by the Special Prosecution Unit acting on behalf of the State Attorney Office. Believed to have been drugged by FBI informant William O'neil prior to the raid.

Mark Clark [BPP] (1947 - 1969)
Assassinated: December 4, 1969 While sleep in a pre-dawn raid in Chicago by the Special Prosecution Unit acting on behalf of the State Attorney Office.

Ron Black [BPP] (? - 1969)
Assassinated: April 5, 1969 - In Detroit.
Allah fka (Clarence "Puddin" Smith) [NGE] (1928-1969)

Assassinated: June 12, 1969- in the elevator of M.L.K. Towers on 112 St. In East Harlem

Eugene Anderson [BPP] (? - 1969)
Assassinated: October, 1969 - In Baltimore.

Sterling Jones [BPP] (1952 - 1969)
Assassinated: December 25, 1969 - Shot in the face at point blank range by an unknown assailant in Chicago.

Ralph Featherstone [SNCC] (? - 1970)
Assassinated: March 9, 1970 by a car bomb in Maryland outside of the court house where H. Rap Brown was to stand trial.

Che Payne [SNCC] (? - 1970)
Assassinated: March 9, 1970 by a car bomb in Maryland outside of the court house where where H. Rap Brown was to stand trial.

Larry Ward [BPP] (? - 1970)
Assassinated: May 15, 1970 - In Seattle.

Babatunde X Omowale [BPP] (1944 - 1970)
Assassinated: By Chicago Police who mutilated his body beyond recognition by placing it across railroad tracks. Fragments of his remains were found July 27, 1970.

Carl Hampton [PP] (? - 1970)
Assassinated: July 28, 1970 by Houston Police.

Jonathan Jackson [BPP] (1953 - 1970)
Assassinated: August 7, 1970 by San Quentin Prison Guards as he led an attempted prison break at Marin County Courthouse. single-handed, with a satchel full of handguns, an assault rifle and a shotgun hidden under his raincoat. To reporters gathering quickly outside the courthouse, Jonathan shouted, "You can take our pictures. We are the
revolutionaries!"


Fred Bennett [BPP, PA] (? - 1971)
Assassinated: Victim of fratricide orchestrated by COINTELPRO following the internal "split" of the Party. Fragments of what was reported to be his remains were found February, 1971.

Robert Webb [BPP] (1949 - 1971)
Assassinated: March 8, 1971 - Victim of FBI orchestrated fratricide following the internal "split" of the Party.

Samuel Napier [BPP] (? - 1971)
Assassinated: April 17, 1971 by unknown assailants in Queens.

George Jackson [BPP, PA] (1941 - 1971)
Assassinated: August 21, 1971 by San Quentin Prison Guards after numerous failed attempts on his life, the State finally succeeded in assassinating George Jackson, then Field Marshall of the Black Panther Party, in what was described by prison officials as an
escape attempt in which Jackson allegedly smuggled a gun into San Quentin
in a wig. That feat was proven impossible, and evidence subsequently suggested a setup designed by prison officials to eliminate Jackson once and for all.

Sandra "Red" Pratt [BPP] (? - 1971)
Assassinated: November, 1971 in Los Angeles while visibly in her eighth month of pregnancy and stuffed in a garbage dumpster.

Kwame Nkrumah [CPP, AAPRP] (?-1972)
Assassinated: April 27, 1972 poisoned by the CIA

Jimmy Carr [BPP, PA] (? - 1972)
Assassinated: April 6, 1972 - In San Francisco.

Joseph "Joe-Dell" Waddell [BPP] (1951 - 1972)
Assassinated: June 13, 1972 by Central Prison Guards in Raleigh.

Cindy Smallwood [BPP] (1955 - 1973)
Died due to complications associated with car accident while conducting Party business in Oakland.

Zayd Malik Shakur [BPP, BLA] (? - 1973)
Assassinated: May 2, 1973 by New Jersey State Troopers on the New Jersey Turnpike.

Twymon Myers [BPP, BLA] (1952 -1973)
Assassinated: November, 1973 by agents of the FBI in Manhattan.

Rory Hithe [BPP, BLA] (? - 1973)
Assassinated: November 13, 1973 at a community meeting in San Francisco. His assailant was released only days following the assassination.

Amilcar Cabral [PAIGC] (? - 1973)
Assassinated: January, 1973 in Guinea by Portuguese agents.

Herbert Chitepo [ANC] (? - 1975)
Assassinated: March 17, 1975 in Zambia.

Steve Bantu Biko [BCM] (1946 - 1977)
Assassinated: September 12, 1977 while in custody of pro-aparthied South African Police.

Mangaliso Sobukwe [PAC] (1924 - 1977)
Died of cancer shortly after release from prison at Robben Island in pro-apartheid South Africa. Believed to be exposed to carcinogens while in prison.

Fred Ahmed Evans (1928 - 1978)
Died of cancer while imprisoned in the Ohio State Penitentiary. Believed to be exposed to carcinogens while in prison.

Agostinho Neto [President - Angola] (1922 - 1979) Died September 10, 1979 while serving as Angola's first President. Believed to be poisoned by Portuguese agents.

Walter Rodney [WPA] (1942 - 1980)
Assassinated: June 13, 1980 by a car bomb planted by agents of the CIA backed Guyana government.

Robert Nesta Marley (1945-1981)
Died under mysterious circumstances in a Florida hospital.

Mtayari Shabaka Sundiata (? - 1981)
Killed on October 20, 1981 while attempting to expropriate funds from an armoured truck to finance underground Revolutionary activities.

Maurice Bishop [Prime Minister - Grenada] (1944 - 1983)
Executed: October 19, 1983 in a counter-revolutionary military coup led by forces loyal to Bernard Coard.

Jacqueline Creft [Member of Cabinet - Grenada] (1946 - 1983)
Executed: October 19, 1983 in a counter-revolutionary military coup led by forces loyal to Bernard Coard.

Fitzroy Bain [Member of Cabinet - Grenada] (1946 - 1983)

Executed: October 19, 1983 in a counter-revolutionary military coup led by forces loyal to Bernard Coard.

Norris Bain [Member of Cabinet - Grenada] (1946 - 1983)
Executed: October 19, 1983 in a counter-revolutionary military coup led by forces loyal to Bernard Coard.

Vincent Noel [Member of Cabinet - Grenada] (1946 - 1983)
Executed: October 19, 1983 in a counter-revolutionary military coup led by forces loyal to Bernard Coard.

Unison Whiteman [Member of Cabinet - Grenada] (1946 -1983)
Executed: October 19, 1983 in a counter-revolutionary military coup led by forces loyal to Bernard Coard.

Kuwasi Balagoon [BPP, BLA] (1946 - 1986)
Died while imprisoned due to complications associated with the AIDS virus. Believed to be exposed to the virus while serving prison term.

Samora Machel [President - Mozambique] (1933 - 1986)
Killed: October 19, 1986 in a mysterious plane crash over South Africa.

Peter Tosh fka (Winston H. McIntosh) [Pan-Africanist - Reggae Artist] (1944-1987)
Murdered: September 11, 1987 by Jamaican Government Agents.

Thomas Sankara [President - Burkino Faso] (1950 - 1987)
Assassinated: October 15, 1987 in a counter-revolutionary military coup led by troops loyal to Capt. Blaise Compaore.

Huey P. Newton [BPP] (1942 -1989)
Murdered: 1989 by a supposedly low level drug dealer.

Chris Hani [ANC, SACP] (? - 1993)
Assassinated: April 10, 1993 by pro-apartheid forces in South Africa.

Ken Saro Wiwa, John Kpuinen, Barinem Kiobel, Baribor Bera, Daniel Gbokoo, Felix Nuate, Saturday Dobee, Paul Levura and Nordu Eawo [Ogoni Patriot] Murdered: November 10, 1995, by the corrupt Nigerian Government working in the interests of multinational oil companies

Kwame Ture fka (Stokley Carmichael) [SNCC, BPP, AAPRP] (1941-1998)
Assassinated: November 15, 1998 by the united snakes of amerikkka, poisoned with a "fbi-cia induced cancer".

Dimitri Tsafendas died: October 1999 while in the pro-apartheid South African government's custody for the 1966 elimination of racist Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd

Rosie Douglas Prime Minister Of Dominica Assassinated October 2000 with poison from british agents

Khallid Abdul Muhammad [NBPP] February 2001 dies under mysterious circumstances in a North Georgia hospital

Sugar Industry of British Guiana, built up by the Negro, was saved by the East Indians

Williams, Eric Eustace, The Historical Background of British Guiana's Problems, The Journal of Negro History Volume 30 Number 4 – October, 1945 Pages 357-381.

The myth of the laziness of the Negro is one of the most mischievous legacies of the slavery period. Its origin lies in ˜the hypothesis,' as the Governor of Jamaica put it, ˜expressed or understood that the system of husbandry pursued during slavery was alone suited to tropical cultivation.'

Lord Russell reminded the Governor of British Guiana, "the happiness of the inhabitants of the colony you are appointed to govern is the chief object."

Thus, in 1833, the British Guiana planter stood with his back to the wall. A formidable combination of adversaries was arrayed against him – the British Government, the capitalists, the humanitarians, and the slaves. Escape was impossible. He was doomed. He could not fight his adversaries in England and his adversaries in Guiana at one and the same time. Whilst Britain was haggling over the price of his sugar, his slaves were refusing to produce that sugar. Emancipation was not only a moral necessity, as the humanitarians emphasized; not only an economic necessity, as the capitalists insisted; it was a political necessity as the slaves demanded. If the government had not stepped in to emancipate the slaves, the slaves would have emancipated themselves.

The problems of the British West Indies, in fact of the entire Caribbean area, are basically economic. The root of these problems lies in one fact that can be simply stated: the staple of Caribbean economy, sugar, has for a hundred years been fighting desperately for survival in the world market. Competition has come from two quarters – the extension of cane cultivation in other tropical regions of the globe, and the development of beet sugar in the temperate regions.

"As to my office, it is a delusion. There is no protection for the Slave Population; and they will very shortly take the matter into their own hands, and destroy the property. The only way of saving these Countries is to give the Slaves a reasonable share in the produce of their labour. I am desperately unpopular". Captain Elliott, in 1832, the Protector of Slaves.

In 1808 a Negro revolt was betrayed. The ringleaders were arrested. They consisted of "the drivers, tradesmen, and other most sensible slaves on the estates. The planters paid no heed. In 1823 another and more serious slave revolt broke out on the East Coast. The slaves demanded, "Unconditional emancipation". "These things were no comfort to them, God had made them of the same flesh and blood as the whites, and they were tired of being slaves to them, that they should be free and they would not work any more."

The sugar industry of British Guiana, built up by the Negro, was saved by the East Indians.

"None of the most inveterate opponents of our recent measures of emancipation, allege that the Negroes have turned robbers, or plunderers, or bloodthirsty insurgents. What appears from their statement is that they have become shopkeepers, and petty traders, and hucksters, and small freeholders; a blessed change..."

Economically, British Guiana today is what it was a century ago, its difficulties aggravated. It is still sparsely populated, its hinterland still unknown. Capital still steers clear of the colony, at least in quantities commensurate with the size of the area. The upkeep of the sea defenses and the drainage and irrigation system still constitutes a severe drain on slender financial resources. The defenders of the plantation economy are still challenged by the protagonists of the subsistence farm.

British Guiana's sugar, like the sugar of the British West Indies islands, is still seeking a remunerative market, the prospect of which recedes further and further into the background. The colony is as much a victim of world economy today as it was yesterday – of the religion of free trade in 1844, of the passion for autarchy in 1944.

Guianese born Blacks in Science and Medicine

Notice biographical data of the following Guianese born medical professionals; James Augustus Trotman, Moses Alfred Haynes, Aubre deL Maynard, Thomas Adolphus Jones, Clifton Orin Dummett, Robert Isaac Greenidge in the book, "Blacks in Science and Medicine", written by Vivian Ovelton Sammons, Science Librarian at the Library of Congress, 1962-1987, and published by Hemisphere Publishing Corporation in 1990.

I am thinking you would love to request permission from Hemisphere Publishing Corporation, on the behalf of the GGBS to use the copyright material on the web site.


James Augustus Trotman 1876-19??
Physician, Surgeon, Gynecologist, and Obstetrician
Born in Georgetown, British Guiana (now Guyana), March 11, 1876.
University of Vermont, 1904-07;
M.D., Temple University, 1908;
Post Graduate Work, 1920-22;
Fellowship Courses in Surgery, Royal College of Surgeons, Royal Pathological Museum, Royal Infirmary, Edinburgh, Scotland;
Post Graduate Courses, Faculte de Med., Universite de Paris, Surgery (Gynecology, Urology) and Obstetrics.

Memberships and Awards:
Philadelphia County Medical Society; American Medical Association; National Medical Association; Kappa Alpha Psi.

Ref:
Who's who in Colored American, 1928-29 p 370 (p) opp. p370.
Who's who in Colored American, 1933-37 p 526 (p) opp. P527.
Sammons, Vivian Ovelton (1990) Blacks in Science and Medicine p 234.

Moses Alfred Haynes 1921
Physician
Born in Georgetown, British Guiana (now Guyana), November 11, 1921.
US Citizen, 1955.
B.S., Columbia University, 1951;
M.D., State University of New York, 1954;
M.P.H., Harvard University, 1963;
Physician , US Public Health Service Indian Hospital, Cheyenne Agy, SD, 1955-59;
Assistant Professor, Community Medicine, University of Vermont, 1959-64;
Associate Professor, School of Public Health, Johns Hopkins, 1966-69;
Professor, Preventive and Social Medicine and Public Health, UCLA, 1969-77;
Associate Dean, Drew Post Graduate Medical School, Los Angles, 1969-77;
Chairman, Department of Community Medicine,1969-74; Acting Dean, 1975-76; Dean, 1979 -

Memberships and Awards:
Cancer Review Committee, National Cancer Institute; President's Commission on Health Education, 1972; Executive Director, National Association Foundation, 1968-69; Member, Advisory Committee, National Center for Health statistics, 1974-76; Fellow, American College of Preventive Medicine, President, 1983-85; AAAS; Alpha Omega Alpha; Association of Teachers of Preventive Medicine.

Ref:
Who's Who in American, 1986-87 p 1229.
Living Legends in Black, p 25.
Sammons, Vivian Ovelton (1990) Blacks in Science and Medicine p 115.

Thomas Adolphus Jones 1873-19??
Physician, Surgeon
Born in British Guiana (now Guyana),SA, May 6, 1873.
Howard University Medical School, 1900;
M.D., Boston College of Physicians and Surgeon, Boston, MA, 1903;
MD., CM., McGill University, 1913;
Professor of Bacteriology and Chemistry, Flint Medical College, 1903-04;
Medical Examiner, Bergen Lodge no. 43, K. of P. and St. Marks Lodge, Odd Fellows;
Founded and was Medical Director of an Obstetrical School for colored students, Gonzales, TX, 1904; the school graduated the first four females and two males to pass the Texas State Board of Obstetricians.

Memberships and Awards:
President, Hudson County Physicians Association.

Ref:
Who's Who in Colored American, 1928-29 p 219.
Who's Who in Colored American, 1930-32 p 250.
Who's Who in Colored American, 1933-37 p 302.
Who's Who in Colored American, 1938-40 p 302.
Who's Who in Colored American, 1941-44 p 299.
Who's Who of the Colored Race, 1915 p 164.

Sammons, Vivian Ovelton (1990) Blacks in Science and Medicine p 234.

Robert Isaac Greenidge (1888-19??)
Physician
Born in Georgetown, British Guiana (now Guyana), October 27, 1888.
B.S., Battle Creek College, MI, 1910;
M.D., College of Medicine, Detroit, 1915;
Further Study Cook County Hospital, Chicago; Illinois Post Graduate Hospital, Superintendent, Fairview Sanatorium, Detroit, 1930;
Director, East Side Medical Laboratory, 1927-;
Medical Directory, Vice-President, Great Lakes Mutual Life Insurance, 1928-

Memberships and Awards:
Alpha Phi Alpha; Wayne County Medical Society; Michigan State Medical Society; American College of Radiology; American Medical Association; National Medical Association;

Ref:
The National Register, 1952 p575
Ebony Oct., 1950 p 41 (p)
Who's Who in Colored American, 1941-44 pp 217-218..
Sammons, Vivian Ovelton (1990) Blacks in Science and Medicine p 106.

Clifton Orin Dummett (1919)
Dentist
Born in Georgetown, British Guiana (now Guyana), May 20, 1919.
B.S., Roosevelt University, 1941;
D.D.S., Northwestern University, 1941;
M.S.D., 1942;
M.P.H., 1947;
One of the first three Dentists to get a PhD in Dentistry.
Chief Dental Services, VA Hospital, Tuskegee, 1949-1965;
VA Research Hospital Chicago, 1965-66;
Dean and Director, Dental Education, Meharry Medical College, 1942-47;

Memberships and Awards:
Julius Rosenwald Fellow; American Public Health Association; American College of Dentists; International College of Dentists; Honorary Member, American Dental Association; International Association for Dental Research; National Dental Association; American Academy of Dental Medicine; Sigma X1; Delta Omega; Sigma Pi Phi; Alpha Phi Alpha.

Pub:
The Growth and Development of the Negro in Dentistry in the United States. Chicago, National Dental Association, 1952.

Ref:
Chicago Black Dental Professional, p 100.
Medico-Chirurgical Society of the District of Columbia, Inc., Bulletin, April 1949 p1, (p)
Who's Who among Black Americans, 1985 p 239.
Sammons, Vivian Ovelton (1990) Blacks in Science and Medicine pp.79-80.

Aubre deL Maynard 1901-19??
Physician, Surgeon (Thoracic)
Born in Georgetown, British Guiana (now Guyana), 1901.
B.S., College City of New York, 1922;
M.D., New York University Medical College, 1926;
Surgical Director, Harlem Hospital New York, 1952-;
Surgeon in Charge of the removal of the knife from the chest of Dr. Martin Luther King, jr., Harlem Hospital, 1958.

Memberships and Awards:
New York Academy of Medicine; New York Thoracic Surgical; New York Surgical Society; Diplomate, American Board of Surgery.

Ref:
Crisis, June/July 1954 pp 354-356 (p)
Crisis, June/July 1956 pp 337 (p)
A Century of Black Surgeons p 171-179 (p).
Living Legends in Black, p 25.
Sammons, Vivian Ovelton (1990) Blacks in Science and Medicine p 165.

http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,2019775,00.html

The weight of colour
Frank Bowling used to lament his 'benign neglect' in Britain. Finally, in 2005, he became the first black Royal Academician, and now his work is being celebrated in a series of shows

Maya Jaggi
Saturday February 24, 2007

Guardian

It was 1953 when Frank Bowling, as a teenager doing his national service in London, "discovered art". His RAF friends were art school students, and "we'd hang out in the National Gallery, waiting for the bar to open in the Naafi", he says. "I didn't know anything about drawing or painting. But I was hooked." He graduated from the Royal College of Art in 1962, alongside David Hockney, RB Kitaj, Allen Jones and Derek Boshier, winning the silver medal to Hockney's gold. But unlike contemporaries who founded British pop art, Bowling took a singular path, from Bacon-esque figurative painting to an abstract art touched by personal memory and history.
Now 70, he has criss-crossed the Atlantic for 40 years. After leaving British Guyana for a school in London when he was 15, he moved to New York in the mid-1960s, and later set up permanent studios in south London and Brooklyn. With two Guggenheim fellowships, and dealers in Manhattan, Washington, Chicago and Philadelphia, his US reputation and sales have sustained him. Though he has always had admirers in Britain, from his early mentor Carel Weight to critic Matthew Collings and artist and film-maker Isaac Julien, he was not represented by a UK gallery until 2002.

There are other signs that Britain's art world may be catching on. Bowling was elected a member of the Royal Academy in 2005 - the first black artist so honoured in its 200-year history. "I never expected it," he says, pointing out that his name was first put forward in 1966. He has since been taken on by the gallery Rollo Contemporary Art, and the Tate - which included him in its 1960s group show - has purchased two more paintings to add to the sole Bowling in its collection since 1987. Frank's Colour, an exhibition of 22 paintings since the 1980s, is in the Sir Hugh Casson Room at the Royal Academy until March 14. A solo show begins at Peg Alston Fine Arts in New York in April, and another at the Arts Club in London in May.

Bowling's work is known for the astonishing range and vibrancy of its palette - though he mixes his acrylic paints in jam jars, whose tops occasionally find their way on to the canvas, along with mundane objects embedded in gel. His tools include decorator's brushes and plasterer's scrapers, and for a while he let chance influence his "poured paintings". Though abstract, his canvases can evoke earth and foliage, swirling depths and mist, shimmering light and tidal flats. The Guyanese artist Dennis de Caires saw them as "not landscape but land". Bowling is a "painter's painter, and a visionary", says Gilane Tawadros, curator and founding director of the Institute of International Visual Arts (inIVA) in London. "His experiments in paint in the 1960s, and since, were way ahead of their time. He paved the way for other artists for whom political and aesthetic considerations are not seen as separate."

Bowling lives a stone's throw from Tate Britain, in Pimlico, with his partner of 18 years, Rachel Scott, a textile artist. She shows visitors around his crammed, dank studio across the Thames in Peacock's Yard. "I can't stand being in the studio while people are looking at my paintings," he says in a rather plummy English accent that can veer across the Atlantic. In Brooklyn, where he goes three times a year, he has a loft under Manhattan Bridge on the East River. "I work very long hours," he says. "The view fills me with delight. It's invigorating being right there on the edge of the water." Though dapper in red braces and a trilby, Bowling is fretful since he fell and gashed his right hand, making work difficult. "I bled profusely, being diabetic."

His White paintings, shown at ArtSway in the New Forest last year, counterpoint his colour-filled canvases. Spanning 40 years, they were inspired by intimate moments in his life. The first series, done in January 1962 before the birth of his eldest son Dan, are "landscapes of snow-laden trees, with still lifes of milk and wine bottles. I was learning how to handle paint, waiting for my son to be born." The second came 30 years later, during heavy snowfall in Brooklyn, and the third after Dan, a drummer in a band, then a novelist and screenwriter, died suddenly of a suspected brain clot in November 2001. "Even now I wake up in the middle of the night, wondering what happened," Bowling says. "On the way to the shops, he fell down in the street, was taken to hospital and never got off the slab. I was so stunned and frozen by his death that I had no way of coping. I broke down at the funeral. It seemed like such a thunderbolt." He worked on ready-made canvases given to him by a friend of his son. "I felt I owed it to Dan, as a homage to his life, a memorial," he says. "There was no way to mourn, or let go, but the show helped me come to terms with it."

His son's death came soon after September 11, when the twin towers vanished from his studio window, and "piles of contaminated cars were put on rafts and dumped outside our building". Though he shies away from linking the two events, he says, "it did seem that these shocking moments came together - I felt unhinged all the time". Yet he no longer felt drawn to reflect political upheaval on his canvas, as he had as a student. "I've had to live through so many world events - the end of colonialism, judicial murder, people hanging from trees."

He was born in 1936 in Bartica, at the confluence of three rivers in British Guyana. His father was a police district paymaster and his mother a seamstress, and they lived above Bowling's Variety Store in a colonial-style house. Traces of his mother recur in his paintings, in needles and thread fixed in gel, or canvases cut with pinking shears.

After joining an uncle in London in 1950, he studied at the Chelsea School of Art, then the Royal College - where he was temporarily expelled in 1960 for marrying a staff member. His early work was inspired by the old masters, while English painting, from Gainsborough to Turner, has "always had a hold over my imagination", he says. Spurred by "a deep urge to right wrongs", he drew on Goya "as a young artist trying to express outrage at war". Hockney was a friend ("we'd bet on cricket and go on vegetarian diets"), but Bowling's contemporary influence was Francis Bacon, whom he'd meet in pubs.

He exhibited with the London Group in 1964, but stopped being included in group shows of British art. Pressured to exhibit at the First World Festival of Negro Art in Senegal, "I freaked - I began to feel I was being isolated from my peers because I was black," he says. "I felt people had a locked-in view of what I should be doing as an artist, that my role was to represent a certain viewpoint. I resented being pre- packaged, as though put in a trick bag, and I had to fight my way out."

In New York, he found himself as an artist. As a contributing editor of Arts Magazine in the late 1960s, he took issue with the Black Arts Movement, insisting there was no such thing as "black art". Many African Americans, he says, "thought they shouldn't be practising 'white art'. They were making trivialised versions of African art, punching the air about black power." Yet for Bowling, "the black soul, if there is such a thing, belongs in modernism". He says: "The African input in modernism has never been acknowledged; we talk about 'primitivism' instead. But the Middle Passage was a cleansing of old notions: the new way of making art stems from what the same people they put in chains and dragged across the water brought to the New World."

A visit to Guyana after graduation triggered childhood memories. In New York, Bowling made his Map paintings, using a worn photographic image of his mother's store, the contours of an enlarged South America and layers of colour. As Jasper Johns and Larry Rivers deconstructed US power with maps and flags, Bowling, just after Guyana's independence in 1966, reimagined in paint a world de-centred and redrawn by the end of empire. "I didn't feel brave enough to go straight into abstraction. I dallied with the maps," he says. Encouraged by the US critic Clement Greenberg, he found a freedom in abstract art, alongside Mark Rothko, Jackson Pollock and Barnett Newman.

He met hostility. "I felt they were saying black people can't make abstract art - how dare you? It sent me to the psychiatrist's couch. I was in therapy in New York for the first few years." From another quarter, the St Lucian poet and watercolourist Derek Walcott "berated me for betraying the Caribbean spirit; if you weren't painting cane-cutters and suffering, you weren't a Caribbean artist. But everything I felt attached to was London-born."

Bowling had separated from his wife, and had two more sons in Britain in the early 1960s: Benjamin, now an academic, and Sacha Jason, a filmmaker. In 1975 he "yielded to pressure to return to London to play father to my three teenage sons", and taught at art colleges ("a punishment").

According to Tawadros, his work "doesn't sit comfortably within the existing historiography of postwar British art". It has begun to be re-evaluated with greater understanding of post- colonial and diaspora artists. In the view of critic Kobena Mercer, it touches on "themes of loss, separation and survival". For Bowling, "it's the geometry and weight of colour that allow me to say a picture is complete. But I'll never be able to rule out that world events may creep in."

He has also grappled with the influence of his tropical childhood in Guyana's wetlands. "I had to face people saying, 'Frank, that colour is so ******ish.' Or they said it had a Caribbean tinge, as though it was carried in the genes. I resisted it, but it crept up on me that my leaning to a range of colour could depend on what I first saw when I opened my eyes, a certain light. I'm leary about this, but I'm willing to accept the unconscious." As for his evocation of oceans and rivers, "I'm driven to living near water - it's a fact of my life."

Though Bowling used to lament his "benign neglect", he may have suffered from others' bogus expectations. His Map paintings were in storage for three decades until they caused a stir at the 2003 Venice Biennale. In the view of Tawadros, who curated that show, "a major retrospective is long overdue".

"It's impossible to escape race, but I don't want it in my studio," Bowling says. His sole aim has been "to make some good art. I'm constantly looking for new ways to do the same thing - dipping, spilling; edging towards one recognisable thing, and backing away." After each series, "I'm dissatisfied - but I'll keep trying."

Martin Wylde Carter

Martin Wylde Carter was born in 1927 in Georgetown, British Guiana. His family, of mixed African, Indian and European ancestry, was part of the coloured middle class. His father was a civil servant, a reader and discusser of philosophy and mother also a lover of books and reciting verse. Martin Carter attended the prestigious Queen's College between 1939 and 1945. In that year he got a job in the civil service, first in the Post Office, then as secretary to the superintendent of prisons. By 1945, it seems likely that he had come into contact with the Marxist ideas of the Political Affairs Committee (the Jagans, Cheddi and Janet, and HJM Hubbard). A friendship with the Jagans began, with access to their extensive, radical library.

His first poems began to appear in Thunder in 1950 and in Kyk-over-Al in the following year. He was also writing political pieces in Thunder under the pseudonym of M. Black (to protect his civil service post). In 1951, his first short collection, The Hill of Fire Glows Red, appeared in A.J. Seymour's Miniature Poet Series, followed by The Kind Eagle (Poems of Prison), 1952 and The Hidden Man (Other Poems of Prison) - at this stage the prison was still metaphorical. In 1954 came the collection that established Carter's international reputation, Poems of Resistance from British Guiana, published in London by the Communist publishers Lawrence and Wishart.

By this time, the constitution had been suspended after 133 days of PPP government and Carter was one of those who were detained. The prison became actual. By 1955, the beginnings of Martin Carter's breach with the PPP was evident. He had been criticised by Cheddi Jagan as an ultra-leftist, and he was dismayed by the way in which race had become the chief recruiter to the Jagan/Burnham divide. He wrote the deeply pessimistic ˜Poems of Shape and Motion' in this year.

From 1954-1959 Carter worked as a school teacher and published no poems until 1961. In 1959 he joined the multinational firm of Bookers (then owner of Guyana's sugar estates as information officer, editing Bookers News between 1965 and 1966. The riots of 1962 brought him onto the streets on the side of the strikers against the Jagan government. The sequence of poems, ˜Jail Me Quickly' come from this period. In 1967 he served under the Burnham government as a delegate to the UN, and in 1968 joined that government as Minister of Information, a post he held until 1970, when he resigned, publishing the poem, ˜...the mouth is muzzled/by the food it eats to live'. By this stage the incipient corruption, authoritarianism and racism of the Burnham government was more than a man of integrity could stand.

During the 1970s, Carter's poems took on a more personal and reflective cast. His Poems of Succession was published by New Beacon in 1978. In that same year, Carter re-entered the political struggle as the Working Peoples Alliance, under the leadership of Walter Rodney began a political and physical struggle against the attempts of Burnham and the PNC to install their corrupt clique in permanent political power. Carter, beloved national poet, was beaten up by PNC thugs in 1978 in protests against the PNC's refusal to hold elections; he was present at the 1979 demonstration when a Fr Darke, photographer for the Catholic Herald, was murdered in broad daylight (see Carter's ˜Bastille Day - Georgetown'). His ˜Open Letter to the people of Guyana' was a brave public attempt to draw attention to the depraved depths to which the PNC was taking Guyanese society - brave because of the killing at this time of a number of WPA activists, including of course Walter Rodney. Carter's poetic response came in the brief, gnomic, densely multi-layered poems in Poems of Affinity 1978-80 (Release Publishers, 1980) which will provide an eloquent statement of how the artist can anatomise the dark heart of bleak times, which will be remembered long after the misdeeds of the Burnham regime are forgotten.

Whilst essays by critics such as Kamau Brathwaite and Gordon Rohlehr had made it very clear that Carter was to be regarded as in the very front rank of Caribbean poets, with the exception of other poets, his reputation did not extend much beyond Guyana, and there was a tendency to see him merely as a poet of protest. A number of publications have begun to change that situation. The publication of Rupert Roopnaraine's brilliant essay Web of October: Rereading Martin Carter (Peepal Tree, 1987) showed how completely the personal and philosophical interpenetrated the political, and vice-versa, in his poetry. His Selected Poems came out in 1989 (Demerara Publishers) and again, enlarged and corrected, in 1997 (Red Thread Press) and it became possible for the first time to see just how considerable a body there was of Carter's poetry, of the highest quality; while Poesias Escogidas (Peepal Tree, 1999), a dual English/Spanish translation of selected poems, reminded readers that Carter was a world poet who had to be seen in the highest company of the great Latin American poets, Neruda, Guillen and Cesar Vallejo.

In 2000, Peepal Tree published All Are Involved: The Art of Martin Carter, ed. Stewart Brown, which with essays from virtually all significant Caribbean critics, Carter's contemporaries, including Lamming and Walcott, and younger writers who recorded their debt to Carter's poetic and human example, provided all the means that were needed to make sense of Carter's giant achievement.

Carter himself was suffering from failing health in the 1990s, and it is sad but symptomatic that much of this recognition came at the end, or indeed, after his death in 1997. He never sought fame, was never a self-promoter of his work. He had to write the poems that he did. All Are Involved demonstrates the immense regard with which he was held by his fellow writers. Beyond them were the countless numbers of Guyanese people who carry Carter's poetry in their hearts.



Source

African American Soldiers in the Army

William H. Carney

First African American Medal of Honor Recipient

In 1863, Sergeant William Carney entered the military and became a member of the 54th Massachusetts Colored Infantry. In July of that same year, Carney found himself in the fierce Battle of Fort Wagner. After being wounded, Sergeant Carney saw that the color bearer had been shot down a few feet away. Carney summoned all his strength to retrieve the fallen colors and continued the charge. During the charge Carney was shot several more times, yet he kept the colors flying high. Once delivering the flag back to his regiment, he shouted "The Old Flag never touched the ground!" For this act Sergeant Carney became the first African American to receive the Medal of Honor.

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Cathay Williams aka William Cathay

First African American Female to Enlist in the U.S. Army.

On November 15, 1866, Cathay Williams enlisted in the Army using the name William Cathay. She informed her recruiting officer that she was a 22-year-old cook. He described her as 5' 9", with black eyes, black hair and black complexion. An Army surgeon examined Cathay and determined the recruit was fit for duty, thus sealing her fate in history as the first documented African American woman to enlist in the Army even though U.S. Army regulations forbade the enlistment of women. She was assigned to the 38th U.S. Infantry and traveled throughout the west with her unit. During her service, she was hospitalized at least five times, but no one discovered she was a female. After less than two years of service, Cathay was given a disability discharge but little is known of the exact medical reasons.

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Henry Ossian Flipper

First African American Graduate of the U.S. Military Academy

In 1877, Henry Flipper became the first African American to graduate from the U.S Military Academy. He was commissioned second lieutenant and assigned to the 10th Cavalry Unit. Although Flipper became the first African American Army officer, his military career was brief. In 1882, he was a part of a controversial dismissal for "conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentlemen" following questionable charges of embezzling funds. Throughout his civilian life, Flipper maintained that he was innocent of the charges. Following his death in 1940, his family and supporters continued the fight to clear his name. In 1999, President William Jefferson Clinton pardoned Lieutenant Henry O. Flipper, recognizing the error and acknowledging the lifetime accomplishments of this American Soldier.

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Benjamin Oliver Davis, Sr.

First African American Army General Officer

Benjamin O. Davis entered the service during the War with Spain as a temporary first lieutenant of the 8th U.S. Volunteer Infantry. In 1899, he was discharged from the service. In June of the same year, he again enlisted, this time as a private in the 9th Cavalry. He then served as corporal and squadron sergeant major, and on February 2, 1901, he was commissioned a second lieutenant of Cavalry. In 1940, he became the first African American General Officer in the U.S. Armed Forces, earning the rank of brigadier general. General Davis served as an inspector for the Inspector General and later as a special investigator for the Secretary of War's Advisory Committee on Negro Troop Policies. His investigations of discrimination and racial disturbances brought to light the problems of a racially closed military.

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Colin L. Powell

First African American Appointed to Secretary of State

On January 20, 2001, Colin L. Powell became the first African American to be appointed to the position of Secretary of State. Before becoming Secretary of State, Powell served 35 years in the Army, achieving the rank of General and serving as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during Operation Desert Shield/Desert Storm. Powell began his military career in the ROTC program at the City College of New York and received his commission upon graduation in June 1958. Currently, Secretary Powell uses both his military and diplomatic skills in representing our country and its interests in the Global War on Terrorism. The Secretary has also led the State Department in major efforts to solve regional and civil conflicts throughout the world, enhance U.S. trade and business, and fight global infectious disease around the world, especially the HIV/AIDS pandemic.

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CSM Michelle S. Jones

First Female Command Sergeant Major of the Army Reserve

Command Sergeant Major Jones enlisted in the Army in 1982. She is the first woman to serve as class president at the United States Sergeants Major Academy, as a division Command Sergeant Major, and as Command Sergeant Major of the Army Reserve. Throughout her military career, CSM Jones has dedicated herself to the issues of the enlisted Soldier. This is especially true with her current position. She dedicates the majority of her time traveling throughout the United States and overseas visiting and listening to Soldiers and their families. She represents their concerns and issues at all levels within the Army, Department of Defense and Congress. She believes in going to the Soldiers and not waiting for them to come to her.

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CSM Evelyn Hollis

First Female Command Sergeant Major of a Combat Arms Unit

CSM Evelyn Hollis entered the Army in 1979 during a time of great debate over whether women should serve in combat units. She started her military career as an Administrative Specialist. In the 1990s, numerous opportunities began opening for women to serve in combat arms units. During this time, she was offered the opportunity to advance her career by switching her career field to Air Defense Artillery. Since then, Hollis has moved through the ranks and received the Bronze Star for her service during Operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom. In April 2004, she made history when she became the first female command sergeant major of a combat arms unit by assuming command of the 1st Battalion 31st Air Defense Artillery Command.

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BG Vincent K. Brooks

Known as the "Face of the Military"

At West Point, Brooks became the first African American in the school's history to be named cadet brigade commander (the top-ranking cadet), a position in which, somewhat like the president of a college class, he led more than 4,000 cadets during his senior year. Brooks graduated first in his class in 1980. Moving through the ranks in the Army, Brooks served as a brigade commander during Operation Joint Guardian in Kosovo. In June 2002, he became the spokesman for the U.S. Army Central Command in Qatar during Operation Enduring Freedom. During the American-led war with Iraq in the early months of 2003, Brooks handled the daily press conferences for the command and was widely referred to as "the face of the U.S. military."

MAKEDA

QUEEN OF SHEBA (The symbol of Beauty) (960 B.C.)

"I am black but comely, O ye daughters of Jerusalem, As the tents of Kedar, As the curtains of Solomon, Look not upon me because I am black Because the sun hath scorched me." (Song of Solomon)

Although most of Black history is suppressed, distorted or ignored by an ungrateful modern world, some African traditions are so persistent that all of the power and deception of the Western academic establishment have failed to stamp them out. One such story is that of Makeda, the Queen of Sheba, and King Solomon of Israel. Black women of antiquity were legendary for their beauty and power. Especially great were the Queens of Ethiopia. This nation was also known as Nubia, Kush, Axum and Sheba. One thousand years before Christ, Ethiopia was ruled by a line of virgin queens. The one whose story has survived into our time was known as Makeda, "the Queen of Sheba." Her remarkable tradition was recorded in the Kebar Nagast, or the Glory of Kings, and the Bible. The Bible tells us that, during his reign, King Solomon of Israel decided to build a magnificent temple. To announce this endeavor, the king sent forth messengers to various foreign countries to invite merchants from abroad to come to Jerusalem with their caravans so that they might engage in trade there. At this time, Ethiopia was second only to Egypt in power and fame. Hence, King Solomon was enthralled by Ethiopia's beautiful people, rich history, deep spiritual tradition and wealth. He was especially interested in engaging in commerce with one of Queen Makeda's subjects, an important merchant by the name of Tamrin.1 Solomon sent for Tamrin who "packed up stores of valuables including ebony, sapphires and red gold, which he took to Jerusalem to sell to the king."2 It turns out that Tamrin's visit was momentous. Although accustomed to the grandeur and luxury of Egypt and Ethiopia, Tamrin was still impressed by King Solomon and his young nation. During a prolonged stay in Israel, Tamrin observed the magnificent buildings and was intrigued by the Jewish people and their culture. But above all else, he was deeply moved by Solomon's wisdom and compassion for his subjects. Upon returning to his country, Tamrin poured forth elaborate details about his trip to Queen Makeda. She was so impressed by the exciting story that the great queen decided to visit King Solomon herself.3 To understand the significance of state visits in antiquity in contrast to those of today, we must completely remove ourselves from the present place and time. In ancient times, royal visits were very significant ceremonial affairs. The visiting regent was expected to favor the host with elaborate gifts and the state visit might well last for weeks or even months. Even by ancient standards, however, Queen Makeda's visit to King Solomon was extraordinary. In I Kings 10:1-2, the Bible tells us: "1. And when the Queen of Sheba heard of the fame of Solomon concerning the name of the Lord, she came to prove him with hard questions. "2. And she came to Jerusalem with a very great train, with camels that bear spices and very much gold, and precious stones. And when she was come to Solomon she communed with him of all that was in her heart." I Kings 10:10 adds: "She gave the king 120 talents of gold, and of spices very great store and precious stones; there came no more such abundance of spices as these which the Queen of Sheba gave to King Solomon." We should pause to consider the staggering sight of this beautiful Black woman and her vast array of resplendent attendants travelling over the Sahara desert into Israel with more than 797 camels plus donkeys and mules too numerous to count. The value of the gold alone, which she gave to King Solomon, would be $3,690,000 today and was of much greater worth in antiquity. King Solomon, and undoubtedly the Jewish people, were flabbergasted by this great woman and her people. He took great pains to accommodate her every need. A special apartment was built for her lodging while she remained in his country. She was also provided with the best of food and eleven changes of garments daily. As so many African leaders before her, this young maiden, though impressed with the beauty of Solomon's temple and his thriving domain, had come to Israel seeking wisdom and the truth about the God of the Jewish people. Responding to her quest for knowledge, Solomon had a throne set up for the queen beside his. "It was covered with silken carpets, adorned with fringes of gold and silver, and studded with diamonds and pearls. From this she listened while he delivered judgments."4 Queen Makeda also accompanied Solomon throughout his kingdom. She observed the wise, compassionate and spiritual ruler as he interacted with his subjects in everyday affairs. Speaking of the value of her visit with the King and her administration for him, Queen Makeda stated: "My Lord, how happy I am. Would that I could remain here always, if but as the humblest of your workers, so that I could always hear your words and obey you.

"How happy I am when I interrogate you! How happy when you answer me. My whole being is moved with pleasure; my soul is filled; my feet no longer stumble; I thrill with delight.

"Your wisdom and goodness," she continued, "are beyond all measure. They are excellence itself. Under your influence I am placing new values on life. I see light in the darkness; the firefly in the garden reveals itself in newer beauty. I discover added lustre in the pearl; a greater radiance in the morning star, and a softer harmony in the moonlight. Blessed be the God that brought me here; blessed be He who permitted your majestic mind to be revealed to me; blessed be the One who brought me into your house to hear your voice.

Solomon had a harem of over 700 wives and concubines, yet, he was enamored by the young Black virgin from Ethiopia. Although he held elaborate banquets in her honor and wined, dined and otherwise entertained her during the length of her visit, they both knew that, according to Ethiopian tradition, the Queen must remain chaste. Nevertheless, the Jewish monarch wished to plant his seed in Makeda, so that he might have a son from her regal African lineage. To this end the shrewd king conspired to conquer the affection of this young queen with whom he had fallen in love. When, after six months in Israel, Queen Makeda announced to King Solomon that she was ready to return to Ethiopia, he invited her to a magnificent farewell dinner at his palace. The meal lasted for several hours and featured hot, spicy foods that were certain to make all who ate thirsty and sleepy (as King Solomon had planned.) Since the meal ended very late, the king invited Queen Makeda to stay overnight in the palace in his quarters. She agreed as long as they would sleep in separate beds and the king would not seek to take advantage of her. He vowed to honor her chastity, but also requested that she not take anything in the palace. Outraged by such a suggestion, the Queen protested that she was not a thief and then promised as requested. Not long after the encounter, the Queen, dying of thirst, searched the palace for water. Once she found a large water jar and proceeded to drink, the King startled her by stating: "You have broken your oath that you would not take anything by force that is in my palace. The Queen protested, of course, that surely the promise did not cover something so insignificant and plentiful as water, but Solomon argued that there was nothing in the world more valuable than water, for without it nothing could live. Makeda reluctantly admitted the truth of this and apologized for her mistake, begging for water for her parched throat. Solomon, now released from his promise, assuaged her thirst and his own, immediately taking the Queen as his lover."6 The following day as the Queen and her entourage prepared to leave Israel, the King placed a ring on her hand and stated, "If you have a son, give this to him and send him to me." After returning to the land of Sheba, Queen Makeda did indeed have a son, whom she named Son-of-the-wise-man, and reared as a prince and her heir apparent to the throne. Upon reaching adulthood, the young man wished to visit his father, so the Queen prepared another entourage, this time headed by Tamrin. She sent a message to Solomon to anoint their son as king of Ethiopia and to mandate that thenceforth only the males descended from their son should rule Sheba. Solomon and the Jewish people rejoiced when his son arrived in Israel. The king anointed him as the Queen had requested and renamed him Menelik, meaning "how handsome he is." Though Solomon had many wives, only one had produced a son, Rehoboam, a boy of seven. So the king begged Menelik to remain, but the young prince would not. Solomon therefore called his leaders and nobles and announced that, since he was sending his first born son back to Ethiopia, he wanted all of them to send their firstborn sons "to be his counselors and officers." And they agreed to do so. Menelik asked his father for a relic of the Ark of the Covenant to take back with him to the land of Sheba. It is said that while Solomon intended to provide his son with a relic, the sons of the counselors, angry at having to leave their homes and go to Sheba with Menelik, actually stole the real Ark and took it to Ethiopia. Menelik returned to Sheba and, according to tradition, ruled wisely and well. And his famous line has continued down to the 20th century when, even now, the ruler of Ethiopia is the "conquering lion of Judah" descended directly from King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba.

Written by Legrand H. Clegg II

Other Great African Queens


NZINGHA - AMAZON QUEEN OF MATAMBA WEST AFRICA (1582-1663)



A very good military leader who waged war against the savage slave-hunting Europeans. This war lasted for more than thirty years. Nzingha was of Angoloan descent and is known as a symbol of inspiration for people everywhere. Queen Nzingha is also known by some as Jinga by others as Ginga. She was a member of the ethnic Jagas a militant group that formed a human shield against the Portuguese slave traders. As a visionary political leader, competent, and self sacrificing she was completely devoted to the resistance movement. She formed alliances with other foreign powers pitting them against one another to free Angola of European influence. She possessed both masculine hardness and feminine charm and used them both depending on the situation. She even used religion as a political tool when it suited her. Her death on December 17, 1663 helped open the door for the massive Portuguese slave trade. Yet her struggle helped awaken others that followed her and forced them to mount offensives against the invaders. These include Madame Tinubu of Nigeria; Nandi, the mother of the great Zulu warrior Chaka; Kaipkire of the Herero people of South West Africa; and the female army that followed the Dahomian King, Behanzin Bowelle.

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AMINA - Queen of Zaria (1588 - 1589)



This queen of Zazzua, a province of Nigeria now known as Zaria, was born around 1533 during the reign of Sarkin (king) Zazzau Nohir. She was probably his granddaughter. Zazzua was one of a number of Hausa city-states which dominated the trans-Saharan trade after the collapse of the Songhai empire to the west. Its wealth was due to trade of mainly leather goods, cloth, kola, salt, horses and imported metals. At the age of sixteen, Amina became the heir apparent (Magajiya) to her mother, Bakwa of Turunku, the ruling queen of Zazzua. With the title came the responsibility for a ward in the city and daily councils with other officials. Although her mother's reign was known for peace and prosperity, Amina also chose to learn military skills from the warriors. Queen Bakwa died around 1566 and the reign of Zazzua passed to her younger brother Karama. At this time Amina emerged as the leading warrior of Zazzua cavalry. Her military achievements brought her great wealth and power. When Karama died after a ten-year rule, Amina became queen of Zazzua. She set off on her first military expedition three months after coming to power and continued fighting until her death. In her thirty-four year reign, she expanded the domain of Zazzua to its largest size ever. Her main focus, however, was not on annexation of neighboring lands, but on forcing local rulers to accept vassal status and permit Hausa traders safe passage. She is credited with popularizing the earthen city wall fortifications, which became characteristic of Hausa city-states since then. She ordered building of a defensive wall around each military camp that she established. Later, towns grew within these protective walls, many of which are still in existence. They're known as "ganuwar Amina", or Amina's walls. She is mostly remembered as "Amina, Yar Bakwa ta san rana," meaning "Amina, daughter of Nikatau, a woman as capable as a man.

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CLEOPATRA VII - QUEEN OF KEMET (Ancient Egypt the land of the blacks) (69-30 B.C)

Although known to be of African descent she is still deliberately portrayed as being white. She came to power at the tender age of seventeen and the most popular of seven queens to have had this name. She was also known to be a great linguist and was instumental in making Kemet(Egypt) into the world number one super power at that time.

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HATSHEPSUT - QUEEN OF KEMET (Ancient Egypt the land of the blacks) (1503-1482 B.C.)



One of the greatest queens of ancient Kemet was Queen Hatshepsut. While she was known as a "warrior" queen, her battles were engaged with her own rivals for the position of power in Kemetic hierarchy. A born dynast in her own right, Hatshepsut proved to be an aggressive and overpowering force. However, it was not in war, but in her aspiration to ascend to the "Heru (Horus) consciousness," she displayed the strength that has given her a place in history. She adopted the Truth of Maat and became involved in the elimination of undesirable people and elements from Kemet. Determined to be revered in times yet to come, Hatshepsut depicted herself in as many masculine attributes as possible, i.e. male attire, king's beard, etc. Although she ascended to the throne upon the death of her king-brother Thutmose II, she exerted her rightful claim to the throne. In exercising her power, she involved herself in foreign campaigns, a concentration on domestic affairs, extensive building and commercial ventures. The most famous of her commercial ventures was the Punt expedition in which goods and produce were acquired from the rich market there to be brought back to Kemet. While it would appear that her opponents were not antagonistic regarding her sex, they were so regarding her non-aggressive philosophy.
Even before becoming legal ruler, Hatshepsut, was actively pushing things dearest to the hearts of all Africans leaders: the expansion of foreign trade, international diplomatic relations, perfection of national defense, vast public building programs, securing the South and the North through either peace or war and, one of her "pet projects", building a great navy for both commerce and war. Her success on most of these fronts made her one of the giants of the race.

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NANDI - QUEEN OF ZULULAND (Symbol of a woman of high esteem) (1778-1826)



The year was 1786. The King of Zululand was overjoyed. His wife, Nandi, had given birth to a son, his first son, whom they named Shaka. But the King's other wives, jealous and bitter, pressured him to banish Nandi and the young boy into exile. Steadfast and proud, she raised her son with the kind of training and guidance a royal heir should have. For her many sacrifices, Nandi was finally rewarded when her son, Shaka, later returned to become the greatest of all Zulu kings.

To this day, the Zulu people use her name, "Nandi," to refer to a woman of high esteem.

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NEFERTARI - QUEEN OF KEMET (the land of the blacks) (1292-1225 B.C)

Her marriage to the great Rameses II of lower Ancient Egypt is known as one of the greatest royal love affair ever. This marriage also brought an end to the hundred year war between upper and lower ancient Kemet (Egypt), which in essence unified both sections into one great Kemet which was the world leading country. Monuments of this love affair still remains today in the temples that Rameses built for his wife at Abu Simbel.
The immense structures known as the two temples of Abu Simbel are among the most magnificent monuments in the world. Built during the New Kingdom nearly 3,000 years ago, it was hewn from the mountain which contains it as an everlasting dedication to King Ramses and his wife Nefertari. Superb reliefs on the temple detail the Battle of Kadesh, and Ramses and Nefertari consorting with the deities and performing religous rituals. The rays of the sun still penetrate to the Holy of Holies in the rock of the main temple on the same two days of the year: the 20th of October and the 20th of Febuary. This timing is probably connected to the symbolic unification, via the rays of the sun, of the statue of Ra-Herakhty and the statue of Ramses II. Up to today these structures remains as the largest, most majestic structures ever built to honor a wife.

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NEHANDA - MBUYA(Grandmother) OF ZIMBABWE


When the English invaded Zimbabwe in 1896 and began confiscating land and cattle, Nehanda and other leaders declared war. Nehanda also displayed remarkable leadership and organizational skills at a young age. Though dead for nearly a hundred years, Nehanda remains what she was when alive, the single most important person in the modern history of Zimbabwe. She is still referred to as Mbuya (Grandmother) Nehanda by Zimbabwean patriots.

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Yaa Asantewa - QUEEN Mother of Ejisu



"In Africa the woman's `place' was not only with her family; she often ruled nations with unquestionable authority. Many African women were great militarists and on occasion led their armies in battle. Long before they knew of the existence of Europe the Africans had produced a way of life where men were secure enough to let women advance as far as their talent would take them."
--John Henrik Clarke


Near the end of the nineteenth century, the British exiled King Prempeh from the hinterlands of the Gold Coast (present day Ghana), in an attempt to assume power. By 1900, still not gaining dominance, the British sent a governor to the city of Kumasi, the capital of the Ashanti, to demand the Golden Stool, described as "the Ark of the Covenant of the Ashanti people." The Golden Stool was the supreme symbol of the sovereignty and independence of the Ashantis--an aggressive and warlike people who inhabit the dense rain forests of what is now the central portion of Ghana, West Africa.

Yaa Asantewa (1850-1921) was present at the meeting with the British governor, Lord Hodgson, and the Ashanti leaders. When the Ashanti kings made no reply to Hodgson's demands she chastised them and vilified them for their cowardice. Her speech found an African audience and stirred up the men when she said, "If you men of Ashanti will not go forward, then we will. We the women will. I will call upon my fellow women. We will fight the white men until the last of us falls on the battlefields."

The Ashantis, led by Yaa Asantewa, fought bravely and gallantly. The British sent 1400 soldiers with guns to Kumasi, eventually capturing Yaa Asantewa and other leaders and sent them into exile. The war with the British started in 1805 and ended a century later. Yaa Asantewa's War was the last major war led by an African woman.

Yaa Asantewa's name and bravery will always be remembered. According to Dr. John Henrik Clarke, "Because her agitation for the return of Prempeh was converted into stirring demands for independence, it is safe to say that she helped to create part of the theoretical basis for the political emergence of modern Africa."

SOURCES:
African Warrior Queens, by John Henrik Clarke
Ghana: A History for Primary Schools, by E.A. Addy

Great African Kings


Shaka - 1818-1828 AD, King of the Zulus



A strong leader and military innovator, Shaka is noted for revolutionizing 19th century Bantu warfare by first grouping regiments by age, and training his men to use standardized weapons and special tactics. He developed the "assegai," a short stabbing spear, and marched his regiments in tight formation, using large shields to fend off the enemies throwing spears. Over the years, Shaka's troops earned such a reputation that many enemies would flee at the sight of them.

With cunning and confidence as his tools, Shaka built a small Zulu tribe into a powerful nation of more than one million people, and united all tribes in South Africa against Colonial rule.

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Ja Ja - 1821-1891, King of the Opobo



Jubo Jubogha, the son of an unknown member of the Ibo people, was forced into slavery at age 12, but gained his freedom while still young and prospered as an independent trader (known as Ja Ja by the Europeans). He became chief of his people and the head of his Eastern Nigerian City State of Bonny. He later established and became king of his own territory, Opobo, an area near the Eastern Nigeria River more favorable for trading.

As years passed, European governments, mainly British, attempted to gain control of Nigerian trade. Ja Ja's fierce resistance to any outside influence led to his exile at age 70 to the West Indies by the British. The greatest Ibo chief of the nineteenth century never saw his kingdom again.

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Samory Toure - 1830-1900 AD, The Black Napoleon of the Sudan



The ascendance of Samory Toure began when his native Bissandugu was attacked and his mother taken captive. After a persuasive appeal, Samory was allowed to take her place, but later escaped and joined the army of King Bitike Souane of Torona. Following a quick rise through the ranks of Bitike's army, Samory returned to Bissandugu where he was soon installed as king and defied French expansionism in Africa by launching a conquest to unify West Africa into a single state.

During the eighteen-year conflict with France, Samory continually frustrated the Europeans with his military strategy and tactics. This astute military prowess prompted some of France's greatest commanders to entitle the African monarch, "the Black Napoleon of the Sudan."

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Behanzin Hossu Bowelle - 1841-1906 AD, The King Shark



Behanzin was the most powerful ruler in West Africa during the end of the nineteenth century. He was determined to prevent European intervention into his country, but readily welcomed European visitors, taking precautionary measures to prevent their spread of influence. To defend his nations sovereignty, he maintained a physically fit army, which included a division of five thousand female warriors.

The people of Dahomey often referred to their monarch, Behanzin, as the "King Shark", a Dahomeyan surname which symbolized strength and wisdom. He was a fond lover of the humanities, and is credited with the creation of some of the finest song and poetry ever produced in Dahomey.

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Menelek II - 1844-1913 AD, King of Kings of Abyssinia



Proclaimed to be a descendant of the legendary Queen of Sheba and King Soloman, Menelek was the overshadowing figure of his time in Africa. He converted a group of independent kingdoms into the strong, stable empire known as the United States of Abyssinia (Ethiopia).

His feat of pulling together several kingdoms which often fiercely opposed each other earned him a place as one of the great statesmen of African history. His further accomplishments in dealing on the international scene with the world powers, coupled with his stunning victory over Italy in the 1896 Battle of Adwa, an attempt to invade his country, placed him among the great leaders of world history and maintained his country's independence until 1935.

Before the NHL, there was a Black Hockey League


http://www.blackathlete.net/Hockey/hockey020802.html

Charles Drew
AKA Charles Richard Drew

Born: 3-Jun-1904
Birthplace: Washington, DC
Died: 1-Apr-1950
Location of death: Burlington, NC
Cause of death: Accident - Automobile


Gender: Male
Race or Ethnicity: Black
Sexual orientation: Straight
Occupation: Doctor

Nationality: United States
Executive summary: First to separate blood plasma

Charles Drew was a medical doctor and surgeon remembered as the inventor of the blood bank. He also established, and was the first director of, the blood bank of the American Red Cross. Although of African-American heritage in an age of rampant racial discrimination, Drew managed to achieve an extremely high level of education (BA from Amherst in 1926, MD and Master of Surgery from McGill University in Montreal 1933, and a Doctor of Science in Medicine from Columbia University in 1940) and to become a well-respected surgeon and professor.

While still at McGill University, Drew studied under anatomy instructor Dr. John Beattie who was interested in blood transfusion. Drew also had occasion, as an intern, to save a patient's life via blood transfusion. But the technology of blood transfusions was vastly limited in that up to that point, blood could only be stored for two days, because of the rapid breakdown of red blood cells.

During his residency at Columbia University's Presbyterian Hospital, Drew conducted research on blood transfusions and developed a technique for the long-term preservation of blood plasma. He found that if he separated the plasma (the liquid part of blood) from the whole blood (containing the red blood cells) and then refrigerated the two separately, he could combine them up to a week later for transfusion.

He also determined that while each person has a certain type of blood (A, B, AB, or O) and is therefore prevented from receiving a full blood transfusion from someone with a different blood type, everyone has the same type of plasma. Thus in certain cases it was possible to give a plasma transfusion which could be administered from anyone to anyone, regardless of blood types.

Drew's discoveries, and his work in organizing and administering blood banks in Europe and the Pacific during World War II (including during the "Blood for Britain" program) saved countless lives. Furthermore, his insistence on ignoring the racial background of donors and transfusion receivers meant that non-white soldiers no longer bled to death waiting for a same-race donor to contribute blood.



~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
(Nuff Addendum)

Ironically Drew was involved in a car accident and was denied admittance to a white hospital for a blood transfusion (something he had invented "blood transfusion"). By the time he arrived at the more distant hospital for blacks he had lost so much blood that a transfusion was of no avail.

Then & Now: Bernard Shaw

(CNN) -- As an original anchor for CNN, Bernard Shaw was a witness to the birth of the 24-hour news network. Today, Shaw is retired from broadcasting and is working on a book and other writing projects.

After signing with CNN on June 1, 1980, Shaw covered some of the biggest stories of the past decades, providing live coverage of the student demonstrations in Beijing's Tiananmen Square, the 1994 earthquake in Los Angeles, the funeral of Princess Diana, President Clinton's impeachment trial and the 2000 U.S. election.

The former U.S. Marine may be best known, however, for making television history as one of the "Boys of Baghdad."

In January 1991, Shaw stayed behind -- with Peter Arnett and the late John Holliman -- after other Western reporters had deserted the city. As bombs rained down on the city outside their hotel window, the three, reporting by phone, coolly brought those images into living rooms across the world during the first attacks of the Persian Gulf War.

"All kinds of ordnance was being dropped, all kinds of bombs, and I made my peace with myself that I could die at any moment," Shaw told CNN recently. "We knew the dangers around us. I always believed that two major forces -- one of them supreme -- saved us that night: God and some extremely well trained and well disciplined American pilots."

But Shaw says the most important story he covered was not the Gulf War, but the 1985 Geneva summit between President Reagan and the Soviet Union's Mikhail Gorbachev.

"When these two leaders met in Geneva, they began the process that led to so many important treaties and the beginning of disarmament (which we don't have now)," he explained. "But these two men meeting as they did at that summit was, in my judgment, the most important story I ever covered; important to the human race, important to all the occupants of this planet."

Throughout his career, Shaw -- a history major in college -- was often an eyewitness to some of the biggest events of the last quarter-century, a position he did not take lightly.

"Whenever I found myself with a box seat on a historic story, the one thing I always strove to do was realize I had a responsibility ... It made me focus even more on the disciplines of journalism -- being fair, being accurate."

"[You also need to have] regard for viewers, listeners and readers," he continued. "If people are depending on you, if you are the only source of accurate information, you have a dreadful responsibility. I say dreadful because it's so awesome."

In 2001, at the age of 60, Bernard Shaw decided to retire from CNN. He now spends time with his wife, Linda, and two children.

"We've been enjoying doing the things we couldn't do when I was chasing around the country and around the world covering news."

The many historic events he witnessed firsthand during his career would fill a book -- and that is exactly what Shaw is now working on. Besides an autobiography, Shaw has said that he wants to write fiction, a book of essays and a journalism primer.

Occasionally, he still makes an appearance on the network. In May 2005, for example, when a small plane flew near the White House and buildings were evacuated, Shaw called in to CNN to give a report. From his home in the Maryland suburbs, he'd seen two F-16 jets circling a single-engine plane and firing warning flares.

Shaw says he misses his colleagues, but he does not miss working.

"I do not miss being on call 24-hours a day, seven days a week," he said. "I never worked as hard in my life as I did at CNN, but I never enjoyed broadcast journalism more. I have no regrets."

H.J. Russell and Company - www.hjrussell.com



H. J. Russell & Company is one of the 10 largest businesses in the US owned by an African American.

Over the past 50 years, excellence has been the hallmark of H.J. Russell & Company. Herman Russell, the company's founder, believed "By being your best and never accepting mediocrity, you will be paid back tenfold." By committing this belief to practice, the company evolved into one of the most successful and recognized African-American owned companies in the country.

The following provides a brief historical overview of the company's success by decade:

1950s
Herman Russell entered the construction business at age 16 when he bought a vacant lot in Atlanta and built his first property. A few years later, as an enterprising construction major at Tuskegee University, he established H.J. Russell Plastering Company and worked as a subcontractor. In 1959, the young Mr. Russell formed Paradise Management, Inc., a residential and commercial property management company with 18 apartment units. This was the beginning of his great success.

1960s
The 60s were important for both the United States and H.J. Russell & Company. While African-American leaders were fighting for Civil Rights in the South, Mr. Russell began his first major project, a development of 12 units on South Avenue in Atlanta. In 1962, H.J. Russell Construction Company was born. The following year they gained the coveted assignment of plastering the Atlanta Fulton County Stadium. This was the first in what was to become an impressive portfolio of clients. In 1968, HUD began its building program and H.J. Russell & Company became one of the largest constructors of HUD housing in the Southeast.

1970s
With the development of PaceSetter Apartments and Shenandoah Apartments, the company grew to more than 1,000 apartment units in metro Atlanta by 1973. These projects were unique because they were multi-use HUD-sponsored luxury developments that included a clubhouse, pool, tennis courts and other amenities that fostered a sense of community. These were the first such apartments of their kind in the African-American community.

During this period, Herman Russell founded City Beverage Company, a national beverage distributor; became a 50% stockholder in DDR International, Inc., a construction management firm; a 65% stockholder in Russell-Rowe Communications; and founded Concessions International. He also bought 10% of the Atlanta Hawks and The Atlanta Flames hockey team, won the contract to build the Ashby Street MARTA station, and constructed the headquarters of Delta Air Lines during this time.

1980s
By the end of the 80s, H.J. Russell & Company had catapulted to a new level of success. They had residential property developments that included more than 4,500 units, completed the Atlanta Life Insurance Company headquarters, built the Georgia-Pacific headquarters in partnership with J.A. Jones Construction Company and landed a prime project at Hartsfield Atlanta. They expanded their business to include educational, judicial, banking, recreational and headquarters facilities. Their projects included: The Coca-Cola headquarters (1987); Wachovia Bank Operations Center (1987), Grady High School (1989); Fulton County jail (1989) and Lakewood Amphitheater (1989).

1990s
The 1990s marked by impressive local and national projects. The most high profile and highly coveted included the athletic facilities in downtown Atlanta: the Georgia Dome, Centennial Olympic Stadium/Turner Filed and Philips Arena.

2000
H.J. Russell is committed to continuing a legacy of giving back and leaving the world a better place than when he found it. Perhaps the project closest to his heart is the ambitious, multi-use, mixed-use $300 million development in Castleberry Hill located in downtown Atlanta. In 2001, H.J. Russell continued his personal investment in the revitalization of his company's neighborhood, including construction of The Castleberry Inn/Extended Stay Hotel, Legacy Lofts, Intown Lofts and Paschal's Restaurant.

Well aware that he's built a strong foundation for future success, in 2004, H.J. Russell passed on the mantle of leadership to his sons and daughter. Under the leadership of the Russell siblings, the first decade of the new millennium is in great hands and off to an impressive start. H.J. Russell currently serves as Chairman of the company.

Please do not ruin the quality of this thread with non related posts and idle posts.

Also avoid over quoting.

Thanks

For Black History Month in Canada, we now on the verge of Black focused schools in Toronto:

http://www.thestar.com/search?&q=black%20focused%20school&r=

A great thread indeed. What about that chap called Dunbar? He was undoubtedly the one of the most impressive of the musicians from Guyana?

Guyanese Actor For Barbados Black History Month Celebration



CaribWorldNews, TAMPA, FL, Fri. Feb. 1, 2008: Guyanese actor, Ron Bobb-Semple, is set to mark the beginning of Black History Month in Barbados today as Marcus Mosiah Garvey.

The actor, who has risen to fame for his portrayal of Garvey around the world is set to be part of the celebration in honor of Black History Month set for the Frank Collymore Hall in Barbados, today from 6.30 p.m.

The event is being presented by Khemit Konnections, which bills itself as `a not for profit organization of like-minded people committed to creating better societies by reawakening the Afrikan consciousness.` For more information, log on to: http://www.healingearthlifeproducts.com/khemitkonnections.asp.

Sir James Douglas likely to be included in list of historic Guyanese


A little-known Guyanese who was born in the early nineteenth century made an indelible mark on the Province of British Columbia and Canada and is expected now to be given formal recognition.

Sir James Douglas, born in Belmont, Mahaica in 1803, to a mother who was a slave and a father who was a wealthy Scottish sugar merchant is expected to be given memorial recognition, according to a release from the Government Information Agency (GINA).

Through the auspices of President of the Canadian Cultural Association of British Columbia, Clyde Duncan, efforts are being made with support from government to honour Sir James in this regard.

Duncan is a Guyanese who departed for Canada with his parents in 1967. He was former chairman of the Advisory Committee on diversity issues in Vancouver, Canada. He is at present serving as a railway union activist.

The release said Duncan on Thursday met with Prime Minister Samuel Hinds, Minister of Culture Youth and Sport, Dr Frank Anthony, Canadian High Commissioner Charles Court, representatives of the National Trust, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Belmont, Mahaica Neighbourhood Democratic Council (NDC) among others to discuss a proposal made to celebrate the life and work of Sir James. The meeting was held at the Office of the Prime Minister.

According to GINA, Duncan in an invited comment said his talk with the Prime Minister and several other Guyanese about Sir James Douglas is intended to establish platforms for commemoration so that Guyanese in the education and other sectors can benefit.

Duncan, while explaining the biography of Sir James, said his commemoration is in keeping with the 150th anniversary of the Province of British Columbia and Canada. Sir James was the first governor of the Province.

Sir James, according to Duncan, departed then British Guiana with his mother, father and brother Alexander for Scotland where they received their education.

From there, the family migrated to Chester in England then to Montreal in Canada where Sir James worked his way up to Governor of British Columbia.

He added that among the key attributes of Sir James during that time in history, was his instrumentality in inviting American blacks up north where the gold rush was peaking.

The National Trust of Guyana which is involved in the preservation of Guyana's history and culture has agreed to the proposal for commemorative activities for Sir James since it will strengthen cordial relations in areas of institutionalized cultural heritage, the release concluded.

There's something very special about Odetta King. She's smart, she's beautiful, and most of all, she has a bright sparkling spirit that makes her rich and full of life. There is never a dull moment when she's around.

We had the pleasure of shooting her recently in New York City. Let's just say that she brought some well-needed heat to cold-cold New York. Make room for Ms. King.

Here is Odetta in the first person:

Name
Odetta King

Code Name
Videolight

Age
33

Profession
Corporate Sales Manager

Hometown
Georgetown, Guyana

Base
Brooklyn, NY

Hobbies
Reading, Traveling, Arts & Culture, modeling, fashion

Influences
God and myself

Inspiration
God

Bio
Guyanese born with French influence from living in French Guiana, I moved to the USA in 1995. Always love modeling and fashion. Been modeling since I was 18 years old but always on part-time basis due to hectic academic and corporate immediate goals.

Future Plans
To launch my new online fashion business and finish my Tourism master degree @ New York University. Ultimately, to promote and position Guyana as a tourism destination.

Advice to humankind
Always strive to do your best and don't let anyone get in your way

Contact Info
Email: Odetta_TSA@hotmail.com
Myspace Page: http://www.myspace.com/videolighte
Credits
Clothing: Vaine Fashion, by Abiola Davis
Email: abenna@msn.com Tel: 917-674-9360

Make-up: Shundel Fredericks
Email: sdfredericks369@yahoo.com
Tel : 718 495 2282 / cell 718 683 2895

Be sure to visit Revenge Fashion Mall and support the designers and stores there.

Revenge Fashion Magazine
A Passion for Empowerment™

Odetta Picture Gallery

Obama, Barack (1961-)

.[/QUOTE]
Thanks for sharing this...I truly admired this man ... amazing ..

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Garrett Morgan 1877-1963

Gas Mask and Traffic Signal

Garrett Morgan was an inventor and businessman from Cleveland who invented a device called the Morgan safety hood and smoke protector in 1914. On July 25, 1916, Garrett Morgan made national news for using his gas mask to rescue 32 men trapped during an explosion in an underground tunnel 250 feet beneath Lake Erie. Morgan and a team of volunteers donned the new "gas masks" and went to the rescue. After the rescue, Morgan's company received requests from fire departments around the country who wished to purchase the new masks. The Morgan gas mask was later refined for use by U.S. Army during World War I. In 1914, Garrett Morgan was awarded a patent for a Safety Hood and Smoke Protector. Two years later, a refined model of his early gas mask won a gold medal at the International Exposition of Sanitation and Safety, and another gold medal from the International Association of Fire Chiefs.
Garrett Morgan's Early Life
The son of former slaves, Garrett Morgan was born in Paris, Kentucky on March 4, 1877. His early childhood was spent attending school and working on the family farm with his brothers and sisters. While still a teenager, he left Kentucky and moved north to Cincinnati, Ohio in search of opportunity.

Although Garrett Morgan's formal education never took him beyond elementary school, he hired a tutor while living in Cincinnati and continued his studies in English grammar. In 1895, Morgan moved to Cleveland, Ohio, where he went to work as a sewing machine repair man for a clothing manufacturer. News of his proficiency for fixing things and experimenting traveled fast and led to numerous job offers from various manufacturing firms in the Cleveland area.

It is rare to find a man of the caliber of George Washington Carver. A man who would decline an invitation to work for a salary of more than $100,000 a year (almost a million today) to continue his research on behalf of his countrymen.

Agricultural chemist, Carver discovered three hundred uses for peanuts and hundreds more uses for soybeans, pecans and sweet potatoes. Among the listed items that he suggested to southern farmers to help them economically were his recipes and improvements to/for: adhesives, axle grease, bleach, buttermilk, chili sauce, fuel briquettes, ink, instant coffee, linoleum, mayonnaise, meat tenderizer, metal polish, paper, plastic, pavement, shaving cream, shoe polish, synthetic rubber, talcum powder and wood stain. Three patents were issued to Carver.

George Washington Carver was born in 1864 near Diamond Grove, Missouri on the farm of Moses Carver. He was born into difficult and changing times near the end of the Civil War. The infant George and his mother kidnapped by Confederate night-raiders and possibly sent away to Arkansas. Moses Carver found and reclaimed George after the war but his mother had disappeared forever. The identity of Carver's father remains unknown, although he believed his father was a slave from a neighboring farm. Moses and Susan Carver reared George and his brother as their own children. It was on the Moses' farm where George first fell in love with nature, where he earned the nickname 'The Plant Doctor' and collected in earnest all manner of rocks and plants.

He began his formal education at the age of twelve, which required him to leave the home of his adopted parents. Schools segregated by race at that time with no school available for black students near Carver's home. He moved to Newton County in southwest Missouri, where he worked as a farm hand and studied in a one-room schoolhouse. He went on to attend Minneapolis High School in Kansas. College entrance was a struggle, again because of racial barriers. At the age of thirty, Carver gained acceptance to Simpson College in Indianola, Iowa, where he was the first black student. Carver had to study piano and art and the college did not offer science classes. Intent on a science career, he later transferred to Iowa Agricultural College (now Iowa State University) in 1891, where he gained a Bachelor of Science degree in 1894 and a Master of Science degree in bacterial botany and agriculture in 1897. Carver became a member of the faculty of the Iowa State College of Agriculture and Mechanics (the first black faculty member for Iowa College), teaching classes about soil conservation and chemurgy.

In 1897, Booker T. Washington, founder of the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute for Negroes, convinced Carver to come south and serve as the school's Director of Agriculture. Carver remained on the faculty until his death in 1943. (Read the pamphlet - Help For Hard Times - written by Carver and forwarded by Booker T. Washington as an example of the educational material provided to farmers by Carver.)

At Tuskegee Carver developed his crop rotation method, which revolutionized southern agriculture. He educated the farmers to alternate the soil-depleting cotton crops with soil-enriching crops such as; peanuts, peas, soybeans, sweet potato, and pecans. America's economy was heavily dependent upon agriculture during this era making Carver's achievements very significant. Decades of growing only cotton and tobacco had depleted the soils of the southern area of the United States of America. The economy of the farming south had been devastated by years of civil war and the fact that the cotton and tobacco plantations could no longer (ab)use slave labor. Carver convinced the southern farmers to follow his suggestions and helped the region to recover.

Carver also worked at developing industrial applications from agricultural crops. During World War I, he found a way to replace the textile dyes formerly imported from Europe. He produced dyes of 500 different shades of dye and he was responsible for the invention in 1927 of a process for producing paints and stains from soybeans. For that he received three separate patents:

U.S. 1,522,176 Cosmetics and Producing the Same. January 6, 1925. George W. Carver. Tuskegee, Alabama.
U.S. 1,541,478 Paint and Stain and Producing the Same June 9, 1925. George W. Carver. Tuskegee, Alabama.
U.S. 1,632,365 Producing Paints and Stains. June 14, 1927. George W. Carver. Tuskegee, Alabama.
Carver did not patent or profit from most of his products. He freely gave his discoveries to mankind. Most important was the fact that he changed the South from being a one-crop land of cotton, to being multi-crop farmlands, with farmers having hundreds of profitable uses for their new crops. "God gave them to me." he would say about his ideas, "How can I sell them to someone else?" In 1940, Carver donated his life savings to the establishment of the Carver Research Foundation at Tuskegee, for continuing research in agriculture.
George Washington Carver was bestowed an honorary doctorate from Simpson College in 1928. He was an honorary member of the Royal Society of Arts in London, England. In 1923, he received the Spingarn Medal given every year by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. In 1939, he received the Roosevelt medal for restoring southern agriculture. On July 14, 1943, U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt honored Carver with a national monument dedicated to his accomplishments. The area of Carver's childhood near Diamond Grove, Missouri preserved as a park, this park was the first designated national monument to an African American in the United States.

Famous Black Americans

African Americans have played a vital role in the history and culture of their country since its founding. An important part of the curriculum at the Institute for African American Studies is devoted to creative research on the lives and work of prominent African Americans and to placing them within their cultural context. On this page you will find brief biographical sketches of several key figures in African American history.


Benjamin Banneker - 1731-1806


Although he spent nearly his entire life on one farm, Banneker had an important influence on how African Americans were viewed during the Federalist and Jeffersonian periods of American history. Born in Baltimore County, Maryland, Banneker was the child of a free black father. He had little formal education, but he became literate and read widely. At 21, he built a clock with every part made of wood--it ran for 40 years. After the death of his father, he lived on his father's 100-acre farm, largely secluded from the outside world, with his sisters. Self taught in the fields of astronomy and surveying, he assisted in the survey of the Federal Territory of 1791 and calculated ephemerides and made eclipse projections for Benjamin Banneker's Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland and Virginia Almanack and Epheremis, published during the years 1792-1797. He retired from tobacco farming to concentrate wholly upon his studies. He corresponded with Thomas Jefferson and urged Jefferson to work for the abolition of slavery.


Sojourner Truth - 1797-1883


Sojourner Truth, a nationally known speaker on human rights for slaves and women, was born Isabella Baumfree, a slave in Hurley, New York, and spoke only Dutch during her childhood. Sold and resold, denied her choice in husband, and treated cruelly by her masters, Truth ran away in 1826, leaving all but one of her children behind. After her freedom was bought for $25, she moved to New York City in 1829 and became a member of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church. In 1853, she helped form a utopian community called "The Kingdom," at Sing Sing, New York, which was soon disbanded following the death and possible murder of its leader. Truth was implicated in the scandal but courageously fought the falsehoods aimed at her.

After the death of her son, she took the name Sojourner Truth to signify her new role as traveler telling the truth about slavery. She set out on June 1, 1843, walking for miles in a northeasterly direction with 25 cents in her pocket, and rested only when she found lodging offered by either rich or poor. First she attended religious meetings, then began to hold meetings herself that would bring audience members to tears. As she logged mile after mile, her fame grew and her reputation preceded her. Truth's popularity was enhanced by her biography written by the abolitionist Olive Gilbert, with a preface written by William Lloyd Garrison. In 1864, she was invited to the White House, where President Abraham Lincoln personally received her. Later she served as a counselor for the National Freedman's Relief Association, retiring in 1875 to Battle Creek, Michigan.


Harriet Jacobs - 1813-1897

Known primarily for her narrative Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl: Written by Herself, Harriet Jacobs was a reformer, Civil War and Reconstruction relief worker, and antislavery activist. In Incidents, Jacobs describes her life as Southern slave, her abuse by her master and involvement with another white man to escape the first, and the children born of that liaison. Also described is her 1835 runaway, her seven years in hiding in a tiny crawlspace in her grandmother's home, and her subsequent escape north to reunion with her children and freedom. During the war, Jacobs began a career working among black refugees. In 1863 she and her daughter moved to Alexandria, where they supplied emergency relief, organized primary medical care, and established the Jacobs Free School--black led and black taught--for the refugees. After the war they sailed to England and successfully raised money for a home for Savannah's black orphans and aged. Moving to Washington, D.C., she continued to work among the destitute freed people and her daughter worked in the newly established "colored schools" and, later, at Howard University. In 1896, Harriet Jacobs was present at the organizing meetings of the National Association of Colored Women.


Alexander Crummell - 1819-1898


Alexander Crummell, clergyman and author, was born in New York City to free parents. Crummell was a descendant of West African royalty since his paternal grandfather was a tribal king. He attended Mulberry Street School in New York, and in 1831 he was enrolled briefly in a new high school in Canaan, New Hampshire, before it was destroyed by neighborhood residents. In 1836 Crummell attended Oneida Institute manual labor school. He was received as a candidate for Holy Orders in 1839 and applied for admission to the General Theological Seminary of the Episcopal Church, but was not admitted because of his color. He was eventually received in the diocese of Massachusetts and ordained to the diaconate there. After study at Queen's College, Cambridge, England, he went to Africa as a missionary, becoming a professor of mental and moral science in Liberia. While there, Crummell became widely known as a public figure; in 1862 he published a volume of his addresses, most of which had been delivered in Africa. After spending 20 years on that continent, Crummell returned to the United States and became rector of St. Luke's Church, Washington, D.C., and later founded the American Negro Academy.


Harriet Tubman - 1821-1913

Heralded as the "Moses" of her people, Underground Railroad conductor Harriet Tubman became a legend during her lifetime, leading approximately 300 slaves to freedom during a decade of freedom work. Denied any real childhood or formal education, Tubman labored in physically demanding jobs as a woodcutter, a field hand, and in lifting and loading barrels of flour. Although she had heard of kind masters, she never experienced one, and she vowed from an early age that she would strive to emancipate her people. In 1844, at age 24, she married John Tubman, a freeman, and in the summer of 1849 she decided to make her escape from slavery. At the last minute, her husband refused to leave with her, so she set out by herself with only the North Star to serve as her guide, making her way to freedom in Pennsylvania. A year later, she returned to Baltimore to rescue her sister, then began guiding others to freedom. Travel became more dangerous with the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law, but she was not deterred, despite rewards offered by slaveowners for her capture totaling $40,000.

Tubman's heroism was further highlighted by her activities between 1862 and 1865, when she was sent to the South to serve as a spy and a scout for the Union Army. Her gift for directions and knowledge of geography remained an asset as she explored the countryside in search of Confederate fortifications. Although she receive official commendation from Union officers, she was never paid for the services she rendered the government.

After the war she returned to Auburn, New York, working to establish a home for indigent aged blacks, and in 1869 she married her second husband, a Union soldier. She became involved in a number of causes, including the women's suffrage movement. Her death brought obituaries that demonstrated her fame throughout the United States and in Europe. She was buried with military rites, with Booker T. Washington serving as funeral speaker.


Booker T. Washington - 1856-1915


Born into slavery, Booker T. Washington was the most prominent spokesperson for African Americans after the death of Frederick Douglass. Much more conciliatory than Douglass, Washington sought--but never demanded--social betterment for African Americans through economic progress. As a boy, he picked Washington as his last name. After emancipation his mother and stepfather moved to West Virginia, where Washington worked in the coal mines but attended school whenever possible. In 1871, Washington returned to Virginia and enrolled in the Hampton Institute. After graduation in 1875, he first taught in West Virginia and then studied at the Wayland Seminary before returning to teach at Hampton. In 1881 he left Hampton to begin the single most important undertaking of his life: founding the Tuskegee Normal School in Alabama. Washington, his small staff, and their students worked as carpenters to build Tuskegee. In its first year of operation Tuskegee had 37 students and a faculty of three; when Washington died in 1915, Tuskegee had 1,500 students, a faculty of 180, and an endowment of $2,000,000.

African Americans have criticized Washington for what they saw as his overly-deferential attitude to his white benefactors and for his position that university education was basically irrelevant for blacks, who should concentrate on vocational training. This, along with his acceptance of segregation, increasingly led W.E.B. Du Bois and other leaders to speak out against Washington. In October 1915 Washington collapsed while delivering a speech in New York City and was hospitalized. He asked to be returned home to die and was taken back to Tuskegee, where he died the next day at home on his beloved campus.


George Washington Carver - 1860-1943

One of the best known agricultural scientists of his generation, Carver was born into slavery near Diamond Grove, Missouri. Slave raiders kidnapped Carver and his mother when he was a six-week old infant, but his owner allegedly ransomed back the boy with a $300 prize race horse. Although Carver had to work and live on his own while still a boy, he managed to finish high school and became the first African American student to enroll at Simpson College in Indianola, Iowa. He then put himself through the Iowa Agricultural College by working as a janitor, earning a B.S. in 1894 and an M.S. in 1896 in agricultural science. The same year, Carver joined Booker T. Washington at the Tuskegee Institute, directing Tuskegee's agricultural research department continuously until his death in 1943. At Tuskegee, Carver concentrated on persuading Southern farmers to end their virtually exclusive reliance on the cotton farming that had leached the soil of nutrients, producing increasingly poor crops. Carver encouraged farmers to diversify and plant sweet potatoes and peas. In order to make these crops more profitable, Carver did extensive research, producing more than 300 derivative products from the peanut and 118 from the sweet potato. In 1923 Carver won the Spingarn award, the highest annual prize given by the National Association for Colored People. In 1938 he took $30,000--virtually his entire life's savings--and founded the George Washington Carver Foundation to continue his work after his death. When he died in 1943 the rest of his estate went to the foundation. He was buried beside his great friend and mentor, Booker T. Washington, on the Tuskegee campus.


Ida Wells-Barnett - 1862-1931


Born to a slave cook and a slave carpenter, Ida Wells was a prominent antilynching leader, suffragist, journalist, and speaker. At age 16 she took over the raising of her siblings after the death of her parents to smallpox. With the help of the black community, Wells attended Rust College, afterward finding employment as a teacher.

In May 1884 Wells sued and won a case against a railroad for forcefully removing her from a segregated ladies' coach. The incident served as a catalyst to a more militant Wells. As part owner and editor of the Memphis Free Speech and Headlight, she spent much of her time writing about the poor conditions for black children in local schools. After the 1892 lynching of three of her friends, she was diligent in her antilynching crusade, writing Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases. In 1893 Wells carried her fight for equality to the Chicago World's Fair, then remained in Chicago and helped spawn the growth of numerous black female and reform organizations. Wells marched in the 1913 suffrage parade in Washington, D.C., and was one of two African American women to sign the call for the formation of the NAACP. She married Ferdinand Barnett, owner of the Chicago Conservator, in 1895, and continued her "crusade for justice" until her death in 1931. View the text of Well's 1902 letter to the members of the Anti-Lynching Bureau.


W.E.B. Du Bois - 1868-1963


Born in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, W.E.B. Du Bois became the most respected and effective spokesperson for the full rights of African Americans in the decades before World War II. In 1888 Du Bois earned an A.B. at Fiske University, where he had his first experience of overt racial prejudice. Returning to Massachusetts, he earned his M.A. at Harvard and then spent two years studying at the University of Berlin before becoming the first African American to earn a Ph.D. from Harvard. Du Bois taught at Wilberforce University, the University of Pennsylvania, and Atlanta University. Throughout his life Du Bois combined an illustrious academic career with his work for full rights for African Americans. He is perhaps best known for his work in founding the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in 1909 and helping it to become the country's single most influential organization for African Americans.

Du Bois argued for the creation of a black elite which would win social equality for African Americans by winning the respect of powerful educated whites. Frustrated by the slow progress in civil rights at home, he increasingly looked abroad, espousing the cause of Pan-Africanism, for which he won the NAACP's highest honor, the Spingarn award, in 1920. But in 1934 he resigned from the NAACP to protest their goal of accommodation with white society. Increasingly disillusioned with life in the United States, he visited Europe and the Soviet Union, where he was awarded the Lenin Peace Prize in 1959. In 1961 he announced that he had joined the Communist Party and emigrated to Accra, Ghana, at age 93. He died there two years later.


Mary McLeoad Bethune - 1875-1955


One of the most widely known African American women of the twentieth century, Mary McLeod Bethune was an educator, political advisor, and civil rights leader. After graduation from the Scotia Seminary in 1895, she taught at the Haines Institute in Augusta, Georgia, then at Kendall Institute in Sumter, South Carolina, where she met and later married Albertus Bethune. In October 1904, Bethune founded the Daytona Normal and Industrial Institute for Negro Girls in a small rented cabin, and continued to develop the school over the next two decades. When white hospitals denied service to black patients and training for black residents and nurses, Bethune founded McLeod Hospital to serve the community and to provide training for black physicians and nurses. By 1922, the school had over 300 students and a staff of 25, later becoming the Bethune-Cookman College. As well as working for education, Bethune founded the Circle of Negro War Relief in New York City during World War I, was vice president of the Commission on Interracial Cooperation, and served as president for two terms in the National Association of Colored Women, advising the Coolidge and Hoover administrations on African American issues. In 1935, Bethune founded the National Council of Negro Women and served as president until 1949. She retired from public life on her seventy-fifth birthday in 1950, settling in her home on the campus of Bethune-Cookman College, and over the next five years received 12 honorary degrees.


Jessie Fauset - 1882-1961

Jessie Fauset, essayist, editor, and novelist, displayed in her work the complexities of life for literary artists during the Harlem Renaissance and the Great Depression. Her career as a teacher provided the stability of income and permanence that allowed her to write her novels and essays.

As a college student at Cornell University, Fauset had started corresponding with W.E.B. Du Bois, editor of the NAACP's journal The Crisis, and later submitted articles to the journal. After completing her master's degree in French in 1920, she was invited to become The Crisis's literary editor, holding the job until 1923 and afterward becoming the managing editor. As both a foster mother to and a product of the Harlem Renaissance, Fauset wrote more novels than any other black writer from 1924 to 1933. The black characters in her novels reflect the "Talented Tenth" and her own experiences with the hard-working, self-respecting black middle class. Fauset left The Crisis in 1927 to achieve a more ordered life as a French teacher at De Witt Clinton High School. She continued to teach in New York until 1944 and later taught as a visiting professor in the English Department at Hampton Institute.


Zora Neale Hurston - 1891-1960


Born in the small all-black town of Eatonville, Florida, Zora Neale Hurston was to become, for 30 years, the most prolific African American female author in the United States. Despite this, Hurston and her work drifted into obscurity until her rediscovery in the 1970s. Much of this neglect can be attributed to the controversy that always seemed to surround this independent and free-spirited woman.

Protected from racial prejudice as a child and inspired by her mother, Hurston grew into an outspoken, eccentric, and racially proud woman, one who chose to write about the positive side of black Americans. After moving to Washington, D.C., she attended Howard University and first published her writing in 1921. Hurston moved to New York City in 1925 and became one of the members of the Harlem Renaissance. After attending Barnard College on a scholarship and completing her undergraduate work in 1927, she returned to Florida to collect black folklore and was awarded a Julius Rosenward Fellowship in 1934 for her collection of folklore. During the 1930s, her novels Jonah's Gourd Vine and Their Eyes Were Watching God were published. Her career produced seven books and more than fifty shorter works from autobiography to folklore to music and mythology. After World War II, her fortunes declined until her death in 1960, a penniless inmate at the Saint Lucie County Welfare Home. Although she was believed married three times, she died alone, and her grave remained unmarked until novelist Alice Walker located it in an overgrown Florida cemetery.


E. Franklin Frazier - 1894-1962

Sociologist and educator, E. Franklin Frazier was born in Baltimore, Maryland. In 1916 he graduated cum laude from Howard University with a B.A. degree and accepted a position as mathematics instructor at Tuskegee Institute. He received his M.A. degree from Clark University in 1920 and his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1931. A grant from the American Scandinavian Foundation enabled him to go to Denmark to study "folk" schools. From 1922 to 1924, Frazier taught sociology and African studies at Morehouse College in Atlanta, then served as director of the Atlanta School of Social Work until 1927. He was on the faculty at Fisk University from 1931 until 1934, after which he became head of Howard University's department of sociology, a post he held until named professor emeritus in 1959. Frazier was a prolific writer; he was the author of several books including the controversial Black Bourgeoise. His numerous awards included a 1940 Guggenheim Fellowship and the John Anisfield Award.


James Langston Hughes - 1902-1967


One of the original writers of the Harlem Renaissance, Langston Hughes was born in Joplin, Missouri. In 1921 he began studies at Columbia University but left after a year, going off to work on a freighter and traveling that way to Africa, then living in Paris and Rome. Returning to the U.S., he graduated from Lincoln University in 1926, publishing his first book of poetry, The Weary Blues, that same year. Also in 1926, Hughes published a critical essay, "The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain," which became a defining piece for the Harlem Renaissance movement. During the next four decades he continued to write in a number of forms--novels, poetry, short stories, plays, autobiography, and nonfiction. In 1942 he began a column in a Chicago newspaper that introduced his character, "Simple," an African American Everyman who wittily comments on the ironies besetting black people's lives. He eventually published five volumes of his "Simple Stories." Amazingly prolific, admirably versatile, and a man capable of hearty humor as well as bitter criticism, he fell in and out of favor with the public, but the best of his work promises to survive.


Charles Drew - 1904-1950

The man who discovered the modern processes for preserving blood for transfusions, Charles Drew grew up in a solid but poor family in a Washington, D.C. ghetto. His intelligence and athletic skill won him a scholarship to Amherst College, where he was captain of the track team, starting halfback on the football team, and an honors student. For two years following graduation, Drew taught and coached at Morgan College in Baltimore, earning money to attend the medical school at McGill University in Montreal. There he became increasingly interested in the general field of medical research and in the specific problems of blood transfusion. After graduation from McGill in 1932, Drew did his three-year residency at Montreal General Hospital before joining the faculty of Howard University, where he was eventually appointed head of surgery.

During the last decade of his life, Drew continued his pioneering research into the separation and preservation of blood. When the U.S. entered World War II, he was appointed head of the National Blood Bank program. Furious at the official government policy that mandated whites' and African Americans' blood would be given only to members of their respective races, he resigned from his post and returned to Howard. In 1944 he became chief of surgery at Freedmen's Hospital in Washington, D.C., where his presence encouraged other young African Americans to enter the field of medicine. Drew died in a car crash in 1950.



Margaret Walker - Born 1915

Poet, novelist, and teacher Margaret Walker spent a culturally rich southern childhood that influenced her poetic and artistic vision. Her father, a scholar and lover of literature, instilled in his daughter a love of American and English classics, the Bible, and poetry. Her mother played music, especially ragtime, and read poetry. The family household included her maternal grandmother, who told the children folktales. One story stayed in Walker's consciousness and became a part of her famous novel, Jubilee.

The Depression served as the context for the 1934 publication of her first poem, and the beginning of her association with the WPA Writer's Project, where her experience was enriched by her contact with other writers and artists. In 1939, Walker finished her first novel, Goose Island, which was never published. A collection of poetry was published by Yale University Press in 1941, also winning the Yale Younger Poet's Award. The same year, Walker began teaching, and her long career took her to Livingstone College, West Virginia State College, and Jackson State University. Since her retirement from teaching, Walker has continued to write and has undertaken rigorous speaking tours.



Malcolm X - 1925-1965

One of the most controversial figures in the civil rights movement, Malcolm X's career was cut short by an assassin. Born Malcolm Little, his minister father died when he was 6. After a childhood spent in institutions and foster homes, Malcolm headed east, settling in Boston and supporting himself with odd jobs and pimping. In 1943 he moved to New York where he began to lead an increasingly marginal life. After receiving a 10-year sentence for burglary in 1946, he was transformed in prison, becoming a follower of Elijah Muhammad's Nation of Islam movement. Paroled in 1952, he was ordained as a minister, taking the name Malcolm X. His militant stance and depiction of whites as "blue-eyed devils" won him considerable press coverage and a good deal of suspicion from the white community; in many ways he seemed the antithesis of Martin Luthor King, Jr., who preached non-violence. In 1963 he formed the Organization of Afro-American Unity, and in 1964 he made a pilgrimage to Mecca and converted to orthodox Islam.

At the time of his death, Malcolm X seemed to be moderating his hostile view of whites. Nonetheless, he spoke in the months before his death of his fear that he might be assassinated by opponents in the Nation of Islam or by the U.S. government. His assassin was apparantly a member of a dissident black group, though mystery still remains about the event.

Download a sound file from an early Malcolm X speech. Running time :10
128K .aiff format



Martin Luther King, Jr. - 1929-1968


The most influential leader in modern civil rights, Martin Luther King, Jr. was born in Atlanta, Georgia. His father was a Baptist minister, providing a strong religious tradition for King. He attended the Atlanta public schools and was graduated with his A.B. from Morehouse College in 1948 when he was 19 years old. He went on to Crozer Theological Seminary and graduated in 1951 at the top of his class, going from there to Boston University for his Ph.D. There he met and married Coretta Scott in 1953. By then an ordained minister, King took the pastorate of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama, and quickly became involved in the civil rights movement. He soon found himself in the forefront of a boycott of Montgomery's segregated buses, which led to a Supreme Court decision in 1956 against Alabama's segregation laws. Following this triumph King was made president of the newly formed Southern Christian Leadership Conference, committing his life to nonviolent activism and bringing the civil rights movement to the forefront of American public life.

Between 1960 and 1965, King continued to lead numerous demonstrations and protests on behalf of civil rights, leading the 1963 March on Washington where he delivered his most quoted speech, "I have a dream. . . ." In 1964 he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Martin Luther King, Jr. was shot and killed on April 3, 1968 in Memphis, Tennessee; he was there to support striking sanitation workers. His death devastated the nation.

Download a sound file from King's "I Have a Dream" speech. Running time 1:03
689K .aiff format



Lorraine Hansberry - 1930-1965

Lorraine Hansberry's life as celebrated playwright and activist artist earned her the tile of "Warrior Intellectual." When she died at age 34, her testimonial was demonstrated by the number of eulogies given by prominent figures in government, the arts, and the civil rights movement.

Born into an affluent family in Chicago, Hansberry grew up among such family friends as Paul Robeson, Duke Ellington, and Jesse Owens. Her interest in theater was sparked during her years at the University of Wisconsin, but in 1950 she left college for New York and "an education of a different sort." She worked as a writer for Freedom, Paul Robeson's radical black newspaper, and covered such issues as colonial freedom, equal rights for blacks, the conditions of Harlem schools, and variants of racial discrimination. She married Robert Nemiroff, a white student whom she met on a picket line at New York University, where he was a student.

Lorraine Hansberry left Freedom in 1953 to concentrate on her play writing. earning her position in American letters with the production of A Raisin in the Sun in 1959, becoming the first black woman to have a play on Broadway and the first African American to win the New York Drama Critics Circle Award. Her success revitalized black theater, enabling other blacks to get their plays produced. Politically active throughout her short life, Hansberry worked to abolish the House Un-American Activities Committee, served on a panel to meet with Attorney General Robert Kennedy about the racial crisis, and was instrumental in civil rights.



Colin Powell - Born 1937

Born and raised in New York City, Colin Powell would go on to become one of the country's best known figures during Operation Desert Storm, the U.S.-led United Nations offensive against Saddam Hussein's Iraq in 1990-1991. Upon graduation from City University of New York in 1958, Powell received a second lieutenant's commission and became a career army officer, serving with distinction in Vietnam. Rising through the ranks and increasingly responsible commands, from 1987 to 1989 he was a presidential assistant for national security in the Reagan administration. As such, he was the highest ranking African American in the administration. In 1988 he was nominated to become one of only ten four-star army generals. His responsibilities included the command of all army personnel serving in the mainland United States and the defense of the mainland in the event of enemy attack. During the Reagan years he advised the president at summit conferences in both Moscow and Washington, D.C. In 1989 he became the first African American to serve as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, a position he held until he retired from the army in 1993. Upon retirement he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.



Charlayne Hunter-Gault - Born 1942

Charlayne Hunter-Gault and Hamilton Holmes were the first two black American Students to attend the University of Georgia in January 1961. Students rioted to protest. Hunter-Gault says of the experience, "If you've ever been in the middle of a riot or the eye of a hurricane, you know it's very calm. That is exactly how I felt the night of the riot." Hunter-Gault knew at the age of twelve that she wanted to be a journalist, and despite the oppressive racial climate she encountered at the University of Georgia, she stayed and earned her B.A. in journalism in 1963.

After graduating from college, Hunter-Gault went to work for the New Yorker magazine, and in 1967 she received a Russell Sage Fellowship to study social science at Washington University. Later she went to Washington, D.C., to cover the Poor People's Campaign, and in 1968 she accepted a position with the New York Times. Over the years Hunter-Gault has received numerous awards, including the New York Times Publishers Award, two National News and Documentary Emmys, and the George Foster Peabody Award, given to her by the University of Georgia for the documentary "Apartheid's People." Presently she is a journalist on PBS television.



August Wilson - Born 1945

Despite never finishing high school, August Wilson holds the distinction of having twice won the Pulitzer Prize, for plays depicting the African American experience: Fences and The Piano Lesson. Wilson set out to create a cycle of plays on the African American experience, concentrating on the twentieth century. His first play, Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, set in the 1920s, won the New York Drama Critics Circle Award, and his Joe Turner's Come and Gone, set in 1911 and focusing on black migration to the North, was voted the best new play in 1988 by the New York Drama Critics Circle. While many of his plays have opened in New Haven, Connecticut, all have moved on to long New York runs and to countless productions elsewhere. Wilson is also founder of the Black Horizons Theater Company.



Carole Moseley-Braun - Born 1947

In 1992 Moseley-Braun was elected a Senator (D.) from Illinois, becoming the first African American woman to sit in the U.S. Senate and only the second African American since Reconstruction to be a Senator. The daughter of a Chicago police officer, Moseley-Braun received a law degree from the University of Chicago and worked in the U.S. Attorney's Office, where she won the Special Achievement Award. In 1978 she was elected to the Illinois House of Representatives, where she was voted Best Legislator each of the ten years she served. In 1988 she became the first African American to hold high office in Cook County when she was elected Cook County Recorder of Deeds, an important stepping stone to her Senate race.


Cynthia A. McKinney Born - 1955

One of the strongest voices for modern black interests in the Georgia's state legislature has long been J. E. "Billy" McKinney, a civil rights activist who first served in 1973. Fifteen years later his daughter, Cynthia, a political scientist who had taught at Clark Atlanta University and Agnes Scott College, a century-old woman's college in DeKalb County, also won a seat in the state House. Together they became the only father-daughter legislative team in the country. Cynthia McKinney brought to her post the same commitment to defending minority interests her father had; she was just 10 when the Voting Rights Act was passed and she has recalled that, as a child, she often rode on her father's shoulders as he walked in civil rights marches. She won a seat on the Georgia legislature's redistricting committee and helped to craft the two new black-majority districts. In 1992 McKinney ran as a Democrat for the right to represent one of the districts she had helped create, the Eleventh. She won with 73% of the vote and was later reelected to a second term.

Stephen S. Carryl, MD

OMAT President Stephen S. Carryl, MD was featured on the cover of the February 2007-Annual Best Doctors Issue of The Network Journal, The article summarized OMAT's humble beginnings, its history and current humanitarian efforts. Dr. Carryl's was also lauded for his role as the Chair of Surgery at The Brooklyn Hospital Center.

"I thank TNJ for this wonderful tribute, Dr. Carryl said. "It comes as we are celebrating 15 years of humanitarian work. There is so much more to do; and, with the help of our supporters, we plan to remain viable for the next 15 years and beyond."

The Network Journal, founded in 1993 by Aziz Gueye Adetimirin, is dedicated to educating and empowering Black professionals and small business owners. To read the full article, entitled, ˜Healing at Home and Abroad' by Angela Johnson Meadows, please log on to http://www.tnj.com/cover_story.php.

Dr. Carryl practices Bariatric Surgery and General Surgery in Brooklyn, New York. Dr. Stephen Carryl, a male, graduated from the University School of Med with an MD and has been in the profession for 20 years.

OVERSEAS MEDICAL ASSISTANCE TEAM

History/Profile:

In a bygone era doctors made house calls to their ailing patients. Armed with that familiar little black bag, the doctor would journey to the sick to provide care that would result in some form of healing. Today, Dr. Stephen S. Carryl, Guyana native and the current Chairman of Surgery at The Brooklyn Hospital, carries on that tradition on a much larger scale. As President of the Overseas Medical Assistance Team (OMAT), Dr. Carryl makes "house calls" of a different kind. He goes to various nations in the Caribbean and has made one trip to Africa to provide care to impoverished communities. His "little black bag" contains medical supplies, pharmaceuticals, equipment and many other necessities to help the health care facilities or individuals function better.

The Overseas Medical Assistance Team had a humble but focused beginning. In 1991, Dr. Carryl led a group of nurses, physicians and other volunteers on a humanitarian mission to the Linden Hospital Complex in Guyana. There, the group responded to the needs of the community by conducting surgeries, medical clinics, health fairs, non-invasive screenings and wellness lectures. The response was so positive, that Dr. Carryl, with the assistance and blessing of his late father and other supporters, decided to organize the group.

A year later, the Overseas Medical Assistance Team was officially founded as a non-profit organization with the mission to enhance the quality of medical care in developing countries by:

§ Providing medical assistance through volunteer physicians, nurses and other health care professionals;

§ Donating medical equipment and supplies to health care organizations in the Caribbean and Africa;

§ Conducting in-service training and health education seminars for health care providers in these countries;

§ Raising funds for related activities and projects; and,

§ Arranging for severely ill patients from the Caribbean to be brought to the United States for treatment

OMAT's success in fulfilling that mission was due to a core group of dedicated volunteers. Even today, these physicians, nurses and other health care providers pay their airfare and lodging costs and donate their particular expertise on each trip overseas.

Due to demands for additional services, in 2004 OMAT appointed it first executive director, Beryl R. Williams, to reconfigure its operations. OMAT also opened its first office in Brooklyn New York. Under her direction, OMAT expanded its mission to begin providing assistance to vulnerable and at-risk populations in developing countries and in the United States through dedicated volunteers. With the donation of office space by the Central Brooklyn Medical Group in January 2007 and a solid organizational structure, OMAT is now a fully-run volunteer operation.

In order to better fulfill its mission, OMAT hosts an annual gala to raise funds for its humanitarian ventures.

Humanitarian Missions:

TBA, 2008 Hopital Sacre Coeur, MILOT, HAITI

TBA, 2008 Africa Redemption Alliance, NIGERIA, AFRICA

June 2007 GUYANA, SOUTH AMERICA

April 2007 Hopital Sacre Coeur, MILOT, HAITI

October 2006 GUYANA, SOUTH AMERICA

April 2006 Hopital Sacre Coeur, MILOT, HAITI

July 2005 GUYANA, SOUTH AMERICA

April 2005 Hospital Sacre Coeur, MILOT, HAITI

July 2004 Linden Hospital Complex, GUYANA, SOUTH AMERICA, Davis Memorial Hospital, GUYANA, SOUTH AMERICA

April 2004 San Pedro, DOMINICAN PEPUBLIC

April 2003 Hospital Sacre Coeur, MILOT, HAITI

July 2003 Linden Hospital Complex, GUYANA, SOUTH AMERICA, Davis Memorial Hospital, GUYANA, SOUTH AMERICA

January 2003 Ministry of Health. ROSEAU, DOMINICA, WEST INDIES

July 2002 Linden Hospital Complex, GUYANA, SOUTH AMERICA
Davis Memorial Hospital, GUYANA, SOUTH AMERICA

April 2002 Hopital Sacre Coeur, MILOT, HAITI

July 2001 Hopital Sacre Coeur, MILOT, HAITI

October 2000 PORT-AU-PRINCE, HAITI

August 1999 Hopital Lumiere, BONNE FIN, HAITI

August 1998 Linden Hospital Complex, GUYANA, SOUTH AMERICA

April 1996 Local Hospital in Castries, ST. LUCIA, WEST INDIES

August 1995 Linden Hospital Complex, GUYANA, SOUTH AMERICA

November 1994 St. Georges General Hospital, GRENADA, WEST INDIES

June 1994 Princess Margaret Hospital, DOMINICA, WEST INDIES

November 1993 St. Georges General Hospital, GRENADA, WEST INDIES

April 1993 Kanye Medical Center, BOTSWANA, SOUTH AFRICA

June 1992 Linden Hospital Complex, GUYANA, SOUTH AMERICA Davis Memorial Hospital, GUYANA, SOUTH AMERICA

April 1991 Linden Hospital Complex, GUYANA, SOUTH AMERICA

To Volunteer or support OMAT, contact:

Stephen S. Carryl, MD, President

Overseas Medical Assistance Team

c/o CBMG- Bedford Williamsburg Center

233 Nostrand Avenue

Brooklyn, NY 11205
E-mail: OMATmission@verizon.net / OMATmission@aol.com

BROOKLYN COLLEGE ARCHIVES AND SPECIAL COLLECTIONS

The Una Clarke Papers


Accession Number 2003-002

Biographical Note

First elected in 1991 to represent the newly created 40th Council District in Brooklyn, Council member Una Clarke is the first Caribbean-born woman to serve in the City Legislature. As a member of the City Council she has served on the committees on Aging, Youth Services, and Economic Development, and has been a chair of the Subcommittee on Mental Health, Mental Retardation, Alcoholism and Substance Abuse Services. She has been also a member of the Council's Black and Hispanic Caucus.

Before her election to the Council, she had a distinguished career for more than three decades in diverse fields, ranging from labor activism and early childhood education to immigrants rights and the struggle for empowerment of women and minorities.

Una Clarke has served as a senior consultant on Early Education with the New York City Agency for Child Development, overseeing 38 publicly funded daycare centers, and as an adjunct professor at the both Brooklyn College and MedgarEvers College. She also has served on the boards of numerous professional institutions and held leadership positions in various political and advocacy organizations including the Caribbean Action Lobby.

She has been honored with numerous awards from both community and professional organizations including the Congressional Brain Trust on Education and the Martin Luther King Commission.

Una Clarke holds a Bachelor of Science degree from Long Island University and a Masters of Education degree from New York University, with additional post-graduate studies at Teachers College and the School of Business at Columbia University. In 1984, she was the first foreign-born recipient of Columbia's prestigious Revson Fellowship.

In recognition of her academic and professional accomplishments, Una Clarke is listed in the Who's Who Among Students in American Colleges Universities.

In Her Mother's Footsteps, and Now in Shirley Chisholm's, Too

Chang W. Lee/The New York Times
Yvette D. Clarke, left, was congratulated by Councilwoman Rosie Mendez in Council chambers yesterday.


Yvette Diane Clarke (born November 21, 1964) currently is a member of the United States House of Representatives from New York's 11th congressional district. She won the Democratic primary election on September 12, 2006, defeating David Yassky, Carl Andrews and Chris Owens. In this heavily Democratic district, Clarke won the general election with 89% of the vote and filled the seat vacated by retiring Representative Major Owens and once held by Shirley Chisholm. The district includes much of central Brooklyn, including Brownsville, Crown Heights, East Flatbush, Flatbush, Kensington, Midwood, and Park Slope. Clarke was formerly a member of the New York City Council, representing the 40th council district in Brooklyn.

The daughter of successful Jamaican immigrant parents, Clarke has lived all her life in the heart of Flatbush. Upon graduating from Edward R. Murrow High School, she earned a scholarship to Oberlin College in Ohio, where she completed most of her education before transferring to Medgar Evers College. She does not hold a college degree. She was a recipient of the prestigious APPAH/Sloan Fellowship in Public Policy and Policy Analysis.[citation needed] Before coming to the City Council, Clarke was Director of Business Development for the Bronx Overall Economic Development Corporation and was the second Director of the Bronx portion of the New York City Empowerment Zone.

Brooklyn's 40th council district elected Clarke to the New York City Council in 2001. She succeeded her mother, former City Council member Una S.T. Clarke, who held the seat for more than a decade. Ms. Clarke instituted an HIV/AIDS Task Force, a Sanitation Task Force, a Youth Task Force and organized an Ad Hoc Clergy Committee.

When Una Clarke was first elected to the city council, U.S. Congressman Major Owens broke with Democratic Party leadership to support Una's candidacy. Owens was the only elected official from Brooklyn to do so and he continued to campaign for Una despite the fact that he was then recovering from quintuple bypass heart surgery. At Owens' insistence, the 40th district was drawn in such a way as to help assure the election of the Council's first member of Caribbean descent.

Clarke was chair of the Contracts Committee and was also co-chair of the Council's Women's Caucus. She also served on the Education; Fire & Criminal Justice Services; Health; Land Use; Planning, Dispositions & Concessions; and, Rules, Privileges & Elections committees.

As a vocal advocate for the empowerment of women and people of color, Clarke introduced legislation that resulted in the Council's historic Minority & Women-Owned Business Empowerment (MWBE) study that confirmed that women and minority-owned businesses are not awarded their fair share of city contracts and forced New York City to end its system of economic discrimination. As co-chair of the New York Council's Women's Caucus, she was directly responsible for securing $9.5 million in funding for 24 organizations that address the issues of domestic violence prevention, breast cancer awareness, housing advocacy and HIV/AIDS counseling for New York City women.

Councilmember Clarke has used her position in city government to speak out on national issues as well. She cosponsored City Council resolutions that opposed the war in Iraq, criticized the federal USA PATRIOT Act, and called for a national moratorium on the death penalty. She has been a frequent critic of the Bush administration's policies, and has spoken out against budget cuts by Bush and the Republican Congress on the following federal programs: Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), elimination of the Women's Educational Equity Act (WEEA), the elimination of nutritional Food Stamp Programs and early education services for low-income children and families.

In 2000, Una Clarke ran a Democratic primary against U.S. Congressman Major Owens, losing to the incumbent. In the 2004 election cycle, Yvette Clarke, with only two and a half years' service as an elected official, ran for Owens' seat in the 2004 election cycle, narrowly losing. Yvette Clark ran again in the next cycle.

In May of 2006, another Caribbean-American candidate, Assemblyman N. Nick Perry, withdrew from the race to succeed Congressman Major Owens, leading some observers to contend that Clarke's chances for winning the race would improve now that another candidate from the same community was no longer competing.

On August 24, 2006, Clarke made a public disclosure revealing that her prior claims to have graduated from Oberlin College were false, asserting that her previous erroneous statements were the result of a faulty memory. Her campaign website for the 2004 elections had made the statement that she was an alumna of Oberlin, a claim that was repeated in her campaign biography submitted for the Campaign Finance Board Voter Guide the following year.

The Campaign Finance Board requires that candidates running for office in New York City sign "sworn statements that the information in their profiles is true to the best of their knowledge."

Aides to Yvette Clarke maintain that she did in fact attend Oberlin, but completed her degree-bearing program at Medgar Evers College in Brooklyn. Clarke went on to explain the discrepancy by asserting that she did not attain her degree "” contrary to her initial belief "” and was in contact with school officials, who maintained that she had to complete two classes in order to acquire her diploma.

In the days following this revelation, it was disclosed that in 1996, the New York State Office of Higher Education "” now known as the Higher Education Services Corp. "” sought a court injunction forcing Clarke to begin to repay outstanding student loans, $4,268 of which she is still in arrears, according to state officials. A spokesman for the Clarke campaign, Stefan Friedman, maintained that Clarke had "redeemed her loan from the Higher Educational Services Corporation in 1996," and that "she has consistently paid down those loans in accordance with an agreed-upon payment schedule."

Contemporaneous with this disclosure, Congressman and former mayoral candidate Anthony Weiner endorsed Clarke. Weiner is the most prominent Democratic elected official within New York City to endorse her campaign to date. Recently, she has also been endorsed by Congressman John Murtha, who has gained national attention recently for his calls for American troops to be redeployed outside of Iraq.

Clarke has also recently received the endorsements of SEIU-1199 "” representing millions of service and healthcare workers in New York "” and 32BJ, which represents over 50,000 city building service workers, including doormen, repairmen, concierges, porters, cleaning, and maintenance crews.

On September 7, 2006, The New York Daily News endorsed Yvette Clarke's bid for Congress.

On September 12, 2006, Clarke won the nomination to Congress with 31.20% of the vote. (In multi-candidate congressional elections in New York, a plurality is sufficient to nominate.)

In the general election on November 7, Clarke was elected to the House of Representatives with 89% of the vote against token Republican opposition.

Congresswoman Clarke is a member of the Committee on Education and Labor, the Small Business Committee, and also a member of the Congressional Black Caucus.

FELICIA PERSAUD



Felicia Juanita Persaud is a Guyanese-born journalist who since migrating to New York City has continued her work in this field, with primary emphasis on the burgeoning immigrant and Caribbean American population in the U.S. Persaud has served in the capacity of managing editor and assistant editor at several local ethnic publications throughout the city including, The New York Trend, The Caribbean American, The Queens Chronicle, The New York Voice and The Caribbean Times.

In 2000, due to the persuasion of several media colleagues, Persaud formed Hard Beat Communications, Inc., an ethnic news service to provide news of importance to this particular ethnic community. In April 2002, she expanded Hardbeat into a full service public relations and special events firm in collaboration with partner Sentient Information Systems, Inc.

Her writings appear constantly in The Daily News Caribbeat Magazine, Kip Business Report, Black Elegance magazine, the Caribbean Life, the Caribbean Voice and the Caribbean-American Business Journal. In the past, she has also contributed to InnerCityNews, The Jamaica Gleaner, The African Sun Times, Cricket International, Sky Writings and NOU magazine in the Caribbean region. Her column ˜Immigration Korner,' in the African Times earned her tremendous acclaim in the African circles along with her investigative pieces on the plights of various immigrants throughout the city. ˜Immigration Korner,' now also appears in the Caribbeat Daily News, The Haitian Times, The Caribbean Voice, The Caribbean Business Journal, and in the Caribbean, the Guyana Chronicle and the Cayman Net News.

Persaud also moonlighted in the broadcast medium, presenting news packages on various Caribbean programs including CIS Talk, formerly of Link Up Radio 93.5FM and other programs on WNWK, WWRL and WGBB. Her venture into radio was basically an effort to continue her broadcasting career, which she had begun in her homeland of Guyana. She also served as the entertainment news anchor on the program, Caribbean Billboard Television.

Additionally, Persaud has worked in politics, serving as communications coordinator on the committee to elect Bangladeshi immigrant Morshed Alam to the State Senate and recently, the City Council. In Guyana, she was the parliamentary assistant to Dr. Rupert Roopnarine of the opposition Working Peoples Alliance Party.

Persaud is a mass communications graduate from the University of Guyana and an alumnus of the country's top high school, Queens College.

She is the recipient of a New York Association of Black Journalists and the Independent Press Association awards for excellence in writing as well as several local community and civic awards.

Persaud hopes that small companies and organizations will take advantage of the services of Hard Beat and get professional publicity at a price they can comfortably afford.

She sees it as a way of giving back to their community. The dynamic duo also hope Hard Beat Communications, Inc. will be able to serve as a conduit for larger companies interested in tapping into the burgeoning ethnic markets, whether it be the Caribbean-American, African-American or African. HardBeat has won the the BlackWeb Awards in the two years the Award has been listed by BlackWeb.

I liked that opening post by Freak. Dove I was hoping to see something about Walter Rodney.

Eddy Grant (born Edmond Montague Grant, 5 March 1948) is a Plaisance, Guyana born musician.

When he was still a young boy, his parents emigrated to Liverpool, UK, where he settled. He had his first Number One hit in 1968, when he was the lead guitarist and main songwriter of the multiracial group The Equals, with his self-penned song "Baby Come Back". The tune also later topped the UK Singles Chart again when covered by Pato Banton. Notably, he openly used his songwriting for political purposes, especially against the then-current apartheid regime of South Africa. The Clash recorded a version of "Police On My Back" for their Sandinista! set.

1 Musical achievements
2 Ice Records
3 UK chart single discography
4 Discography
4.1 Albums
4.2 Box Sets / Compilations
5 External links

Musical achievements
In 1982, his solo recording of "I Don't Wanna Dance" spent three weeks at Number one in the UK Singles Chart. He scored a Top Ten album in the same year, with Killer On The Rampage.
"Electric Avenue" was both a UK and U.S. number 2 in 1983, selling over a million copies. Plus, a later remix of the song was a UK Top Ten hit again in 2001.

In 1984 Grant had a minor hit single in the U.S. with his original song written to accompany the Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner film, Romancing the Stone. Despite being commissioned by the film's producers, all but the guitar solo would be cut from the film during its final edit. The song did not appear on its soundtrack. Grant released the song as a single with the original video that featured scenes from the film until it was re-edited without the Romancing the Stone clips.

His later single, "Gimme Hope Jo'anna", during the apartheid regime ("Joanna" stands for Johannesburg, South Africa) was a song about apartheid in that country, and was subsequently banned by it. Lyrics include:

"Well Joanna she runs a country, she runs in Durban and the Transvaal.

She makes a few of her people happy, she don't care about the rest at all.

She got a system they call apartheid, it keeps a brother in subjection.

But maybe pressure will make Joanna see, how everybody could live as one."

This song was later adapted for use on a commercial for Yop, a commercially available yogurt-based drink, with the altered lyrics "give me Yop (me mama?) when the morning come".

(Other songs, such as "War Party" were also political protest songs. "The only decoration is the one upon the grave". "Living On The Front Line" was another. "They got me living on top of my existence, oh appreciating my resistance")

In 2001, Eddy Grant, The Greatest Hits was released.

Ice Records
Grant set up his own recording company, Ice Records, but more recently has returned to the West Indies from London, choosing Barbados as a more realistic venue for a recording company, rather than his country of origin. He has also produced for the likes of Sting, Mick Jagger and Elvis Costello.


UK chart single discography
"Living on the Front Line" - 1979 - #11
"Do You Feel My Love" - 1980 - #8
"Can't Get Enough of You" - 1981 - #13
"I Love You, Yes I Love You" - 1981 - #37
"I Don't Wanna Dance" - 1982 - #1
"Electric Avenue" - 1983 - #2
"Living on the Front Line / Do You Feel My Love" - re-issue - 1983 - #47
"War Party" - 1983 - #42
"Till I Can't Take Love No More" - 1983 - #42
"Romancing the Stone" - 1984 - #52
"Boys in the Street" - 1984 - #78
"Gimme Hope Jo'anna" - 1988 - #7
"Harmless Piece of Fun" - 1988 - #90
"Put a Hold on It" - 1988 #79
"Walking on Sunshine" - 1989 - #63
"Electric Avenue" - remix - 2001 - #5
"Walking on Sunshine" - remix - 2001 - #57

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