Black History Month Blog

Every February, the Academy of American Poets joins the national celebration of Black History Month by spotlighting the achievements of poets and scholars from the earliest days of America to the present time. The Academy's website features biographies of poets and extensive discussion of their achievements, as well as resources for further study of these important writers. A major focus on the Harlem Renaissance poets includes historical and cultural background for this major movement in American literature. For more information, visit the Academy of American Poets website at http://www.poets.org/page.php/prmID/370

Kevin Farley, Humanities Librarian - Collection Management

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For a good overview of the history and contributions of African American artists to the visual arts, check out the following reference books:

African Americans in the Visual Arts by Steven Otfinoski (Cabell Reference N6538 .N5 O86 2003) is a biographical dictionary covering more than 190 artists. Each entry concentrates on the events of the subject's life which have informed or affected his or her artistic output. The entries also include overviews of major works and a brief bibliography of further reading on each artist.

A History of African-American Artists, from 1792 to the present by Romare Bearden and Harry Henderson (Cabell Reference N6538 .N5 B38 1993) is a comprehensive survey of African American artists from the late eighteenth century through the post World War II era. Full color and black and white illustrations accompany the text, which attempts to uncover the hidden history of these artists, long neglected by traditional American art survey texts.

To search for other books and videos on African American artists in the VCU Libraries type in "African American art" as a subject in the Catalog. Titles that may be of interest include:

• African American art: past and present (videorecording). Cabell Media and Reserves Film and Video N6538.N5 A34 1992
• Farrington, Lisa E. Creating Their Own Image: the History of African American Women Artists. Cabell Stacks N6538.N5 F27 2005
• Metropolitan Museum of Art. African-American Artists, 1929-1945: Prints, Drawings, and Paintings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Cabell Stacks N6538.N5 M47 2003

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A new 39-cent stamp was released this year honoring the first lady of song, Ella Fitzgerald. The stamp is the 30th in the Black Heritage series, which includes stamps of Marian Andersen, Thurgood Marshall, Malcolm X, and Langston Hughes.

Ella Fitzgerald, a native Virginian born in Newport News, went on to become one of the most recognizable voices in music with a vocal range spanning three octaves. At an early age she began winning talent competitions, breaking into the professional music business when she was hired to sing with Chick Webb's orchestra. She became known for her scat singing and performed with great musicians and composers such as Dizzie Gillespie, Harold Arlen, Irving Berlin, Cole Porter and Johnny Mercer. During her career, she won many awards including 13 Grammy's.

For more information on Ella Fitzgerald, visit her official website: http://www.ellafitzgerald.com/ or the biography on PBS.org: http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/database/fitzgerald_e.html. For more information on the Black Heritage series stamps, visit the U.S. Department of State, International Information Programs website: http://usinfo.state.gov/usa/blackhis/stamps.htm.

--Donna Coghill, Director, Marketing & Public Relations - VCU Libraries

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Edna Lewis, known as the Grande Dame of southern cooking, passed away yesterday at the age of 89. Lewis, the granddaughter of slaves, was a notable chef and cookbook author whose area of expertise was in Southern cuisine. A native of Freetown, Virginia, she was one of the first African Americans to author a cookbook, The Taste of Country Cooking, that would reach a wide audience and generate interest in authentic Southern cooking. While Lewis is now gone, her cooking was an inspiration to many chefs who carry on her tradition. Lewis was profiled on the Black History Month Blog last year (http://blog.vcu.edu/blackhistory/2005/02/edna_lewis.html) and you can also learn more about her life and influence at Epicurious.com (http://www.epicurious.com/cooking/holiday/black_history/lewis).

--Jill Stover, Undergraduate Services Librarian - Research and Reference Services

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Coretta Scott King passed away Monday night at the age of 78, but she will always be remembered for her work as a prominent civil rights leader and strong proponent of social change through nonviolent means.

Mrs. King was born on April 27, 1927 in Marion, Alabama. She graduated from Antioch College with a B.A. in Music and Elementary Education and, in 1951, she enrolled in Boston's New England Conservatory of Music where she earned a Mus.B. in Voice. It was here that she met her husband, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who was pursuing his doctorate at Boston University's School of Theology. The Kings were married in June of 1953 and had four children.

Mrs. King, a tireless civil rights advocate, worked closely with her husband in organizing and participating in sit-ins, marches, speaking events and various international trips. Coretta also took part in "freedom concerts" and often contributed her singing talents to civil rights efforts. Mrs. King was a long-standing advocate for peace and in 1962 she served as a Women's Strike for Peace delegate to the Disarmament Conference in Geneva, Switzerland.

After the assassination of her husband, Mrs. King devoted her life to the continuation of Dr. King's work and philosophy of nonviolence. Among her many accomplishments, she established the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change in 1968, and wrote her autobiography, My Life with Martin Luther King Jr. in 1969. Notably, she successfully worked to establish Martin Luther King Jr. Day as a national holiday, which began in 1986.

To learn more about Coretta Scott King and her contributions to civil rights, women's rights and world peace, stop by Cabell Library for the Black Women in America series in the Reference area (Call Number E185.96 .F2 1997). Also, see Mrs. King's obituary on CNN.com, which includes photos and video clips.

[Source consulted: Facts on File Encyclopedia of Black Women in America: Social Activism]

--Jill Stover, Undergraduate Services Librarian - Research and Reference Services

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In Gregory, South Dakota, the Oscar Micheaux Festival is an eagerly anticipated annual event. This is the place where the young, enterprising Micheaux wrote, published, and distributed his first semi-autobiographical novel, The Conquest (1913). South Dakota is also the state where he filmed, The Homesteader, which was the first full-length feature film directed, written and produced by an African-American.

Micheaux went on to write, direct, produce, and distribute over forty films nationally and internationally from 1918-1931. While Micheaux died in relative obscurity in 1951, his accomplishments as a pioneer in the film industry are honored by The Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame and the Producers Guild of America; a star bears his name on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. His works have been resurrected in retrospectives and festivals.

Search by name in the VCU library catalog and you will find books and films by and about Micheaux including:

• Within our Gates, which attacked the racism portrayed in D.W. Griffiths, The Birth of a Nation. Find both films in Media and Reserves, JBC library 3rd. floor PN1997.A1 L5 v. 1 and PN1997 .B55 1998 respectively


• The Life and Work of Oscar Micheaux: pioneer black author and filmmaker, 1884-1951. E-book PN1998.3.M494 Y68 2002eb


• Oscar Micheaux & His Circle : African-American filmmaking and race cinema of the silent era. PN1998.3.M494 O83 2001

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Rev. John Jasper founded Richmond's Sixth Mount Zion Baptist Church in 1867 to house his growing congregation of freed slaves. A preacher slave before the war, Jasper achieved national fame in 1878 when he first delivered his "The Sun Do Move" sermon. People of all races flocked to Richmond and Jasper's church to see his unique combination of zeal, imagery and oratory. He would deliver his famous sermon, always in the dialect of the American slave, more than 250 times before his death including before the joint Virginia General Assembly. One of several biographies of Jasper, none currently in print, is available through UNC's Document South collection.

--Curtis Lyons, Head, Special Collections and Archives.

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Edna Lewis was born in 1916 in Freetown, Virginia, a rural community of freed slaves founded by her grandfather in the late nineteenth century. Growing, harvesting, and cooking with fresh foods was a way of life she has celebrated in four exceptional cookbooks on "Southern cooking" which have brought her numerous culinary awards and international celebrity.

Now known as the Grande Dame of Southern Cooking, Edna Lewis has given us books which weave memoir and recipe into delightful histories of Southern food, rural life, and cooking. Her devotion to the use of fresh vegetables and fruits presaged the contemporary "fresh foods" movement in American cooking. She has lived and worked in Chapel Hill, North Carolina; Manhattan, New York; Charleston, South Carolina; and currently resides in Decatur, Georgia, a vibrant intown community of Atlanta, Georgia.

In 2003, at age 87,Lewis published her fourth book, The Gift of Southern Cooking, with Scott Peacock, a noted Alabama chef. To read the full text of an article describing her fascinating life and cooking legacy, use the E-Journals search to find "Southern Secrets from Edna Lewis," by Gwendolyn Glenn in American Visions, Feb/Mar 1997. This article is cited in the International Index to Black Periodicals Full Text, available as a VCU research database.

The Black History Month link on the Epicurious website gives another biographical look at Edna Lewis: http://www.epicurious.com/cooking/holiday/black_history.

--Phyllis Jennings, Reference Librarian.

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The Faces of Science: African Americans in the Sciences contains information on African-American men and women who have "contributed to the advancement of science and engineering." Among the biographical sketches linked on this web site is one for Augustus Nathaniel Lushington, a Trinidad native who became the first African-American to earn Doctor of Veterinary Medicine degree. Lushington received his degree from the University of Pennsylvania in 1897 and eventually settled in Lynchburg, Virginia where he established his practice.

--Jodi Koste, Archivist, MCV Campus.

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Did you know that a synthetic version of cortisone was developed by Dr. Julian Percy, an African-American chemist? Or did you know that in 1995, Shirley Ann Jackson was named chairperson of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the first African-American woman to hold that post? Want to learn more? Visit the U.S. Census Bureau's Profile America Black History Month 2005 Web site, which features 28 daily vignettes that highlight the accomplishments of prominent African-Americans.

The sixty-second stories can be heard in Quicktime, or downloaded in mp3 format. In addition to the audio clips, links to text versions of the scripts are included, complete with photos of the featured individuals. The stories also present current information regarding the numbers or percentages of African-Americans in the featured fields, from sculpting to teaching to engineering. For more information about Profile America and its Black History Month feature, please visit http://www.census.gov/pubinfo/www/radio/bhfeb.html.

Want more government resources? Check these out!

• Gateway to African-American History


• Black family research : records of post-Civil War federal agencies at the National Archives Cabell Library Government Docs AE1.124:108/2003


• A print version of a U.S. Department of Commerce film called "From Dreams to Reality: A Tribute to Minority Inventors" and related materials are also available in Cabell. Ask Government Information Librarian Renée Bosman for details.

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Take some time during Black History Month to uncover some lesser-known facts about the history of African Americans in the United States. While many of us readily recognize the incredible achievements of such prominent figures as Frederick Douglass and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., it's important to remember the contributions of African Americans in all places and times throughout our nation's past. For instance, many know that Dr. King received a Nobel Peace Prize in 1964, but some may not know that the first African American to receive that honor was actually Ralph Bunche in 1950 for his work in the Middle East. Bunche, born in the slums of Detroit, became the first African American to earn a PhD in Political Science from Harvard University in 1934, and later rose to become the undersecretary general of the United Nations.

You can find more of these kinds of facts in a book entitled, Black Firsts: 4,000 Ground-Breaking and Pioneering Historical Events in Cabell's Reference section (Call Number: Ref E 185.B574 2003). While you're in this section, take a look at other books in the E 185 area. Here, you'll find African American encyclopedias, statistics, images, biographical resources, historical documents, and much more. For example, in the book African-American Political Leaders (Call Number: Ref E 185.96.C18 2004), you can discover how Norfolk, Virginia native Ella Baker came to help found the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, or how former slave Blanche Kelso Bruce beat all odds to become the second African American to serve in the U.S. Senate, and the first be elected to and serve a full term.

Continue reading "VCU Libraries Biographical Resources" »

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VCU's Provost Emeritus Grace Harris is a dramatic example of the trials which African Americans underwent in 20th century Virginia and the greater opportunities they have today. Denied admission to the School of Social Work in 1954 because of her race, she joined the School's faculty in 1967, was named the School's Dean in 1982, became Vice Provost for Continuing Studies and Public Service in 1990, and was Academic Provost from 1993 until her retirement in 1999. She was also Acting President of VCU during the Summer of 1995 and again in 1998. Upon her retirement, the Board of Visitors created the Grace E. Harris Leadership Institute which she continues to lead.

While each of these promotions marked a significant accomplishment both for Dr. Harris and VCU, in a 1995 article in VCU's alumni magazine she states "becoming Dean was the most significant professional accomplishment and personal victory for me given the complete turn of events it entailed."

To learn more about African American history at VCU, visit the library's online version of the VCU alumni magazine article, "This Was My Time"--Integrating RPI and VCU. A timeline of African American history at VCU is available online and a display with images from the University Archives is also on exhibit on the first floor of Cabell Library.

--Ray Bonis, Special Collections and Archives.

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On this day in 1909, Dr. Helen Octavia Dickens was born in Dayton Ohio. Dickens received her medical education from the University of Illinois in 1934. Following a residency at Chicago's Provident Hospital, she worked with Dr. Virginia Alexander at the Aspiranto Health Home in North Philadelphia where she developed and interest in obstetrics and gynecology. She pursued advanced training ob-gyn and became the first female African-American physician in Philadelphia to receive board certified in hers specialty in 1945. Five years later she was elected a fellow of the American College of Surgeons becoming the first African American woman to be so honored.

Dickens is one of several African-American physicians included in the National Library of Medicine's exhibit, "Changing the Face of Medicine." Currently the exhibit can be viewed at the National Library of Medicine in Bethesda, Maryland. An online version is available at http://www.nlm.nih.gov/changingthefaceofmedicine/

VCU Libraries will host the traveling version of "Changing the Face of Medicine" at some point in 2006.

--Jodi Koste, Archivist, MCV Campus.

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Carrie Marie Sharpe (1881-1967) was the founder and first president of the State Association of Colored Graduate Nurses, later Old Dominion Graduate Nurses Association. A role model for African-American nurses, Sharpe was actively involved in professional nursing associations on a national level and in her native Virginia. Her accomplishments were recognized in 2001 when she was one of ten nurses inducted into the newly created Virginia Nursing Hall of Fame.

--Jodi Koste, Archivist, MCV Campus.

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African American women made their mark in the twentieth century in all areas of life and scholarship. However, the scientists are usually overshadowed by their counterparts in the civil rights movement, entertainment, business and sports. This piece highlights the achievements of some female scientists who despite obvious obstacles, succeeded in various scientific fields often seen to be the realm of men. These women are an inspiration to all women of color all around the world.

Download file (Word document)

--Ibironke Lawal, Engineering and Science Librarian.

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The Richmond Times-Dispatch features profiles of black Virginians throughout the month of February. Previous years' profile listings are also available from 1996-2004.

Some 2005 profiles include Benjamin Leroy Wigfall, Barbara Johns, Julius Erving, Daphne Maxwell Reid, and Tim Reid.

--Jill Stover, Undergraduate Services Librarian.

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The African-American experience has been largely shaped by religious leaders who were historically some of the most influential members of their communities. African-American Religious Leaders is a biographical reference book that examines the lives of well-known figures such as Louis Farrakhan, Al Sharpton, J. W. C. Pennington, and Sojourner Truth. Coverage also extends to lesser-known individuals, including George Lee, a Mississippi voting rights advocate and Baptist pastor, and Daniel Payne, an AME Bishop and educator. Celebrities known for their religious leadership, including athletes Reggie White and George Foreman, are also included.

You can find African-American Religious Leaders in the Reference section on the first floor of Cabell Library, call number REF BL72 .A27 2003. Read a review of this title on Amazon!

-- Monique Prince, Undergraduate Services Librarian.

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Virginia native, Ella Fitzgerald, has been dubbed the "First Lady of Song." Born in Newport News on April 25, 1917, Ella moved with her mother to Yonkers, N.Y. when her parents went separate ways early in her life. She was a tomboy who loved neighborhood baseball games and occasionally took the train to Harlem to see the acts at the Apollo Theater.

Rougher days followed when Ella's mother was killed in a car accident. During this period of great instability, Ella became embroiled in trouble at school and with the police and soon found herself in a reform school. She escaped from the harsh regimen of this school and began living alone, at the age of 15, during the Great Depression.

Reflecting on the struggle of her early years, Ella often credited this time with giving her the determination to become a successful singer of great intensity and style. She was "discovered" during an Amateur Night at the same Apollo Theater she had loved as a carefree child. The rest, for lovers of great jazz and ballad singing, is history.

To hear or read about the lives of other outstanding African-Americans, both famous and obscure, visit the Black History Month 2005 Feature Stories website from the U.S. Census Bureau. You can listen to 60 second radio clips, one biography for each day of February, from their Profile America radio series. This site is available on VCU Libraries' Black History Month Research and Topic guide.

-- Phyllis Jennings, Reference Librarian.

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Not only does the first day of February usher in Black History Month, it is
the birthdate of Langston Hughes (1902-1967), one of the nation's most respected writers. VCU Libraries is unveiling its latest online exhibit on what would have been Hughes' 103rd birthday.
"Something Very Real" - Langston Hughes and Richmond, Virginia explores
Hughes' visit to Richmond on Friday, November 19, 1926. His appearance at Virginia Union University marked his first reading in the South.

On the night before his reading, Hughes attended a small party given in his honor in the Richmond home of Hunter Stagg (1895-1960), remembered best as one of the founding editors of The Reviewer, Richmond literary magazine that received national attention in the 1920s. Hughes' papers are housed in VCU Libraries' Special Collections and Archives and materials in the collection are featured in the exhibit.

-- Ray Bonis, Special Collections and Archives.

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