“To be a poor man is hard, but to be a poor race in a land of dollars is the very bottom of hardships.”
W.E.B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk ch. 1 (1903)
Excerpted from: Schapiro, Fred, ed. The Yale Book of Quotations. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006.
Posted in Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
Tagged black history, united states history
Charlie Parker (originally Charles Christopher): (1920-1955) U.S. saxophonist and composer, one of the originators of bebop and among the greatest improvisers in jazz. Born in Kansas City, Parker played with Jay McShann’s big band (1940-42) and those or Earl Hines (1942-44) and Billy Eckstine (1944) before leading his own small groups in New York. (A nickname acquired in the early 1940s, Yardbird, was shortened to Bird and used throughout his career.) Parker frequently worked with Dizzy Gillespie in the mid-1940s, making a series of small-group recordings that heralded the arrival of bebop as a mature outgrowth of the improvisation of the late swing era. His direct, cutting tone and unprecedented dexterity on the alto saxophone made rapid tempos and fast flurries of notes trademarks of bebop, and his complex, subtle harmonic understanding brought and altogether new sound to the music. Easily the most influential jazz musician of his generation, his chronic drug addiction and early death contributed to making him a tragic legend.
Excerpted/Adapted from: Stevens, Mark A., Ed. Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Encyclopedia. Springfield, Massachusetts: Merriam-Webster, 2000.
“Alice Childress: (1917-1994) American novelist, playwright, and actress. Born in Charleston, South Carolina, Childress was well aware of racism and used her writing as an attempt to change social conditions. Childress joined the American Negro Theater as a young woman and became a prolific playwright. In the 1950s, she wrote Trouble in Mind, one of the first plays with black themes to be produced, and was a peer of such notable black writers as Richard Wright and Lorraine Hansberry. Other notable plays by Childress include Florence, Gold Through the Trees, and Wedding Band (collected, 1971), which was produced at the New York Shakespeare Festival and later broadcast on television. Childress’s novels include When the Rattlesnake Sounds (1975), Rainbow Jordan (1882), and Those Other People (1989). She is best known for the young adult novel A Hero Ain’t Nothin’ But a Sandwich (1973), a blistering account of black urban life.”
Excerpted from: Murphy, Bruce, ed. Benet’s Reader’s Encyclopedia, Fourth Edition. New York: Harper Collins, 1996.
“National liberation, national renaissance, the restoration of nationhood to the people, commonwealth: whatever may be the headings used or the new formulas introduced, decolonization is always a violent phenomenon.”
Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth “Concerning Violence” (1961) (translation by Constance Farrington)
Excerpted from: Schapiro, Fred, ed. The Yale Book of Quotations. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006.
Posted in Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
Tagged black history, philosophy/religion, professional development
Ousmane Sembene: (1923-2007) Senegalese writer and film director. He fought with the Free French in World War II. After the war, he worked as a docker and taught himself French. His writings, often on historical-political themes, include The Black Docker (1965), God’s Bits of Wood (1960), and Niiwam and Taaw (1987). Around 1960 he became interested in film; since studying in Moscow, he has made films reflecting a strong social commitment, including Black Girl (1966), the first feature produced in sub-Saharan Africa. With Mandabi (1968), he began to film in the Wolof language; his later films have included Xala (1974), Ceddo (1977), Camp de Thiaroye (1987), and Guelwaar (1994).
Excerpted from: Stevens, Mark A., Ed. Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Encyclopedia. Springfield, Massachusetts: Merriam-Webster, 2000.
“James (August Joseph) Van Der Zee: (1886-1983) U.S. photographer. Born in Lenox, Massachusetts, he moved in 1906 with his family to Harlem in New York City. In 1915 he moved to Newark, New Jersey, to take a job in a portrait studio. He soon returned to Harlem to set up his own studio, and the portraits he took from 1918 to 1945 chronicled the Harlem Renaissance; among his many renowned subjects were Countee Cullen, Bill Robinson, and Marcus Garvey. After World War II his fortunes declined along with Harlem’s, until the Metropolitan Museum of Art exhibited his photographs in 1969.”
Excerpted/Adapted from: Stevens, Mark A., Ed. Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Encyclopedia. Springfield, Massachusetts: Merriam-Webster, 2000.
“The Cultural Bias: This normally takes the form of linguistic difference between West Indian English and ‘standard classroom’ English. The West Indian child’s choice of words, usage, and meaning of words, pronunciation, and intonation, sometimes present tremendous difficulties in communication with the teacher, and vice versa. This factor, while recognized in a lip service way by many of the teachers and other authorities involved, is often ignored when assessing and generally relating to the child. Thus, teachers often presume to describe West Indian children as being ‘dull’, when in fact no educated assessment of the child’s intelligence can be made under these circumstances. In addition, many behaviour patterns and ways of relating to the teacher which are part of West Indian culture are misunderstood by the teacher, who usually has no understanding of or inclination to learn about the West Indian culture. The ILEA report (page 10) points out that only three of the nineteen schools suggested as a helpful method the training of teachers about the culture of the immigrant’s country. While certain initial attempts are being made to educate teachers in this direction, the scope and direction of the programme—and the people running it—make one very sceptical about its usefulness.
On common difficulty, for instance, arises from the fact that the child is not expected to talk and ‘talk back’ as much in the West Indian classroom as he is here, in the English classroom. English teachers tend to interpret this apparent shyness and relative unresponsiveness as indicating silent hostility or low intelligence. Many teachers have said to me that only after years of experience have they discovered that when the West Indian child does not understand what they are saying, he replies ‘Yes’, because he thinks this is expected of him in his relationship with the teacher. Moreover, many children fear that they may arouse the teacher’s anger or be thought stupid if they as her to repeat what she has said.”
Excerpted from: Coard, Bernard. How the West Indian Child Is Made Educationally Sub-Normal in the British School System: 50th Anniversary Expanded Fifth Edition. Kingston, Jamaica: McDermott Publishing, 2021.
“Perry Preschool Project: A longitudinal study that examined the lives of 123 African American children born in poverty and at high risk of school failure. From 1962 to 1967, at ages 3 and 4, the subjects were randomly divided into a program group that received a high-quality preschool program and a comparison group that received no preschool program. Those who participated in the high-quality preschool program were later found to have higher earnings, to be more likely to be employed, to be less likely to have committed crimes, and to be more likely to have graduated from high school than were adults from the comparison group who had received no preschool education.”
Excerpted from: Ravitch, Diane. EdSpeak: A Glossary of Education Terms, Phrases, Buzzwords, and Jargon. Alexandria, VA: ASCD, 2007.
“No, I make no pretension to patriotism. So long as my voice can be heard on this or the other side of the Atlantic, I will hold up America to the lightning scorn of moral indignation. In doing this, I shall feel myself discharging the duty of a true patriot; for he is a lover of this country who rebukes and does not excuse its sins.”
Speech at Market Hall, New York, N.Y., 22 Oct. 1847
Excerpted from: Schapiro, Fred, ed. The Yale Book of Quotations. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006.
“African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME Church): African-American Methodist denomination, formally organized in 1816. It originated with a group of black Philadelphians who withdrew in 1787 from St. George’s Methodist Episcopal Church because of racial discrimination and built Bethel African Methodist Church. In 1799 Richard Allen became minister of Bethel, and in 1816 he was consecrated bishop of the newly organized African Methodist Episcopal Church. Limited at first to the Northern states, the church spread rapidly in the South after the Civil War. It founded many colleges and seminaries, notably Wilberforce University (1856) in Ohio. Today it has 3,600 churches and more than a million members worldwide.”
Excerpted/Adapted from: Stevens, Mark A., Ed. Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Encyclopedia. Springfield, Massachusetts: Merriam-Webster, 2000.
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