Enlightened Free Thinking Nubian Kings And Queens

Nikki Giovanni was born in  Knoxville, Tennessee ,   to Yolande Cornelia, Sr. and Jones "Gus" Giovanni. She grew up in  Lincoln Heights , a suburb of  Cincinnati, Ohio , though she returned to Knoxville to live with her grandparents in 1958, and attended the city's  Austin High School . In 1960, she began her studies at her grandfather's alma mater,  Fisk University  in  Nashville, Tennessee . She had a difficult time adjusting to college life and was subsequently expelled. However, she realized that she needed an education, drove back to Nashville, spoke with the Dean of Women, and was readmitted. In 1967, she graduated with honors with a B.A. in History. She returned to Cincinnati and established the city's first Black Arts Festival. Giovanni also began writing the poems that are included in her first self-published volume,  Black Feeling, Black Talk  (1968). Afterward she went on to attend graduate school at the  University o...

On May 4, 1970, four students were killed and nine others were injured when National Guard troops fired into a crowd of Vietnam War protestors on the campus of Kent State University. The shooting of the students caused national uproar, impacted the course of American politics, and spurred the writing of countless articles and books both in the immediate aftermath of the tragedy and in the years that have followed (Lewis & Hensley, n.d.). Additionally, school children around the United States still receive lessons detailing the shooting of the student protestors. Conversely, the murder of 3 young men and the wounding of 27 young men and women in a similar incident on the campus of South Carolina State College over two years before the Kent State shooting has received limited exposure to this day. In early 1968, Orangeburg, South Carolina was a "staunchly conservative, rural-oriented town of 20,000 located forty miles southeast of the state capital at Columbia" that al...

John T. Gayton, one of Seattle’s earliest black residents, a community leader, and patriarch of one of the city’s most outstanding black families, came to Seattle in 1889.  He was born in Benton, Mississippi to former slaves.  With little formal education, he moved to Yazoo City, Mississippi, and made the fortuitous decision to work for a physician, Dr. Henry Yandell, as servant and coachman.  It brought him to Seattle when Dr. Yandell joined the movement to the new state of Washington.    Soon after his arrival in Seattle, he tried his hand as a painter, painting contractor, barber, and bellboy.  He worked as a waiter at the Arctic Club and later at the Rainier Club, where he was promoted to head waiter.  In 1901 he became the first black steward at the Rainier Club, overseeing the servants and the preparation of food.   Before long, he was called upon to cater large parties and banquets.  He also catered every day for a downtow...

THERE IS A GRAVE MISCONCEPTION OF THE ASSISTANCE PROGRAM A BRIEF OVERVIEW OF RACE AND SOCIAL WELFARE HISTORY- KEY LEGISLATION Following are some key events of racism in the history of social welfare. Unless otherwise cited, this history is drawn from Neubeck and Cazanave's (2001)  Welfare Racism: Playing the Race Card Against America’s Poor. Mother’s Pensions in the early 1900s. In the early 1900s, state legislatures began to pass bills that supported single mothers called "Mother‟s Pensions.‟ While African Americans were more deeply impoverished, the aid was given almost solely to white women with Anglo ancestry. Because benefits were administered locally, rules frequently were created explicitly to exclude women of color. One common requirement was that a mother maintained a "suitable home‟ for her children. The term „suitable‟, which was not clearly defined, was frequently used to exclude African-American women due to negative stereotypes of African American...

I am a TBI (Traumatic Brain Injury) Survivor. I was only 11 years old when I was struck down from the inside. I had just started the 6th grade at Scarbrough Middle School in Mobile, Alabama.I had been having worse than horrible migraines which were so bad and so painful until sometimes I'd pass out. I became forgetful and sometimes I'd be there but, I wouldn't be there. If you understand what I'm saying. The final straw came when my principal had to call my mom and tell her that I had passed out and no one knew what was wrong with me but, before I passed out I had been complaining that my head was hurting. My mom called my godmother Valerie Finley who was also my neighbor. She came and picked her up from her job and the two of them came to my school and picked me up and took me straight to the Emergency Room. When I got to the ER I had regained consciousness but, my head felt like it was about to explode. They ran all kinds of tests on me. They even tapped my spi...

Lucile Berkeley Buchanan-Jones was the first African American woman to graduate from the University of Colorado.  Buchanan was born on June 13, 1884, on the second floor of the family’s mule and horse barn in the town of Barnum, southwest of Denver, Colorado.  She was the daughter of Sarah Lavinia and James Fenton Buchanan, emancipated slaves from adjoining plantations in northern Virginia. Sarah and James Buchanan were married in 1872.  Within ten years  of their marriage the couple, and their four Virginia-born children, migrated to Colorado. When the Buchanans arrived in Colorado in 1882, Lucile’s mother, Sarah, bought five lots of land in an unincorporated area outside the Denver city limits from P.T. Barnum of the Barnum and Bailey Circus.  The Buchanans were one of three black families in this predominately first-generation European immigrant community. In 1903, 19-year-old Lucile enrolled in the two-year teacher certification program at the Colorado...

Walter Arthur Gordon, attorney and civil rights activist was born on October 10, 1894, in Atlanta, Georgia, to Henry B. and Georgia Bryant Gordon.  He was the son of a Pullman porter and the grandson of slaves. His family moved to Riverside, California, in 1904. He graduated from Riverside Polytechnic High School in 1913. In 1914, Gordon entered the University of California at Berkeley. He was an intercollegiate boxer and wrestler, winning the state championship in both categories. He also played every position except center on the offensive and defensive lines of the varsity football team. Gordon was named to the annual football All-American team in 1918, the second African American to receive the award. Walter Gordon graduated from UC Berkeley in 1918. The following year, Chief August Vollmer invited him to join the Berkeley Police Department, where he became the city’s first black officer. While doing police work, Gordon earned a degree in 1922 from Boalt Hall Schoo...