Black History Month: Daily Updates

Your Black History Update Homework - Learn More

I hope that this past month of Black History Updates has been as inspiring to you as it has been for me. In curating, editing, and researching these brief profiles, I've learned a lot about 19 individuals who have not - for the most part - been at the forefront of Black History celebrations. Many have been featured in the New York Times Overlooked series which has sought to make up for not celebrating the lives and contributions of women and people of color in their white, male-dominated obituaries. Others have a local connection to the Chicago area, or small, but dedicated communities devoted to reminding us that there is more to Black History Month than the icons we know well.

I'm grateful to the members of the COD community who not only nominated figures for these updates, but wrote profiles that shine bright with their personal connections to their nominees. These contributions ensured that the Black History Updates spanned three centuries and represented the arts, sciences, and humanities as well as activists and people who led their lives extraordinarily.

I would also like to thank my friends and family who followed along on Facebook and provided their own suggestions for profiles. Of course, as the shortest month of the year, there simply aren't enough days in February for Updates for all the people I'd love to share with you. Instead, I'm assigning you some homework - below are five folks whose names came to me just this week, each with a single Learn More link.

Knowing the past opens the door to the future. I look forward to seeing it with you.

Until next year,

--Jenn.

Alain Locke (1885 - 1954) - Writer, Philosopher, Educator

Dubbed the "Dean of the Harlem Renaissance," Locke was the first African American Rhodes Scholar and editor of the 1925 book The New Negro: An Interpretation, an anthology of fiction, poetry, and essays on African and African American art and literature.

LISTEN: The Birth of a 'New Negro' - Code Switch (37 min)

Bessie Colman (1892-1926) - Aviator

Colman was the first African-American woman and the first Native-American to hold a pilot license.

WATCH: The Daredevil Aviatrix That History Forgot - American Masters: Unladylike2020 (9 min)

Prince Martin (1895 - 1965) - Bartender

READ: The Extraordinary Life of Pioneering Bartender Prince Martin

Arthur Mitchell (1934 - 2018) - Ballet dancer, choreographer

At the age of 21, Mitchell became the first African-American dancer with the New York City Ballet and was promoted to principal dancer the following year - an almost unheard of accomplishment.

WATCH: Arthur Mitchell: A Day of Reflection - Dance Theatre of Harlem (34 min)

Betty Davis (1945 - ) - American funk and soul singer

Born Betty Mabry, the funk diva who influenced the jazz fusion of trumpeter Miles Davis kept her ex-husband's name long after the end of their 1-year marriage - "Every day married to him was a day I earned the name Davis." She modeled in London, released three albums, and became a legendary cult figure, only to disappear from the music scene in 1979. The 2017 film Betty: They Say I'm Different tells the story of this "bold soul sister."

READ: Betty Davis Was a Raw Funk Pioneer. Her Decades of Silence Are Over - The New York Times

Lola Falana (1942 - ) Singer

In junior high, Lola Falana was already performing as a dancer at nightclubs (escorted by her mother, of course) in Philadelphia.  Over a career as a performer that would span four decades, she would display her talent as an actor, singer, and dancer adapting herself to fit a wide range of genres and styles.

As a dancer, Lola Falana received her first big break when she was just sixteen.  Dinah Washington, while performing at a nightclub in Philadelphia, hired Lola to open for her act.  While she was performing as a chorus girl in Atlantic City, Sammy Davis Jr. took notice of her and in 1964 cast her in a role in his Broadway show Golden Boy.  In the 1960s, she would also find success as a singer with her first hit, "My Baby".

Lola Falana followed her success on stage with success on the big and small screens.  She made her debut in A Man Called Adam where she acted alongside such jazz greats as Mel Torme, Frank Sinatra, and Louis Armstrong.  She also saw early success as a TV and film actress in Italy.  While learning to speak Italian fluently, she made a number of films, including a Spaghetti Western, and was a regular on Italian television.

In the 1970s, Lola Falana's fame on the big screen reached a U.S. audience.  She won a golden globe for her role in The Liberation of L.B. Jones and had a leading role in the blaxploitation era movie Lady Cocoa.  With her star on the rise, she was also a regular on U.S. television appearing on shows such as The Joey Bishop Show, The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, The Hollywood Palace, The New Bill Cosby Show, The Flip Wilson Show, Laugh In and The Muppet Show.  Her popularity put her on the cover of Jet, Playboy, and  Ebony as well as earning her a position as the spokesmodel for a Faberge perfume.

In the mid-1970s, Lola Falana returned to Broadway as the lead in the show Doctor Jazz.  Throughout the late 70s, she starred in a series of stage shows in Las Vegas, eventually landing at The Aladdin where she became the highest-paid female performer on the strip in her own hit show.

Lola Falana's career as a star performer was ended in the late 1980s by multiple sclerosis.  Her career had already spanned the jazz and disco eras and her acting had been featured from Hollywood to Broadway.  For nearly the last three decades, she has devoted her efforts to charity work.

WATCH: Sammy Chit Chats with Lola - The Sammy Davis, Jr. Show (9 min)

LISTEN: The World's Most Famous Show Girl: Lola Falana - Vixen Podcast (18 min)

BONUS: Lola Falana - He's the Greatest Dancer - The Muppet Show

Spike Lee (1957 - ) Film director

Inarguably the most important and well-known Black film director in American history, Spike Lee has built a varied filmography devoted to chronicling Black experiences in the United States. From highly personal movies set in his native New York City to sweeping historical epics to trenchant social criticism, Lee’s confrontational, dynamic cinematic style is equal parts infuriating and electrifying, but also singularly his own.

According to author Todd McGowan, “Spike Lee is a filmmaker of excess. Excess characterizes each of his films—through unconventional shots, extreme characters, improbable scenes, and many other ways. Lee’s films employ these types of excess to intervene in critical issues that trouble the contemporary world—the question of the subject’s singularity, the role that fantasy plays in structuring our reality, the political impact of passion, the power of paranoia in shaping social relations, the damage that the insistence on community inflicts, the problem of transcendence, and the struggles of the spectator.”

A graduate of Morehouse College, a historically Black institution in Atlanta, GA, Lee made his directorial debut with the low-budget black-and-white feature She’s Gotta Have It in 1986. His most lasting and important film is 1989’s Do The Right Thing, which is set on one block in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn, New York on the hottest day of the summer. An initial disagreement between a Black resident and the white Italian-American owner of a neighborhood pizzeria escalates into a conflagration by the film’s end. Its incendiary conclusion, in which a Black man is choked to death by a New York City police officer, was met with outrage and criticism by the largely white film commentariat under the ludicrous assumption that Black audiences would riot in the theatres. Lee himself finds the critiques absurd: “I don't remember people saying people were going to come out of theaters killing people after they watched Arnold Schwarzenegger films.”

Since Do The Right Thing, Lee has been a stalwart American filmmaker, bringing an innovative visual style to his work that shows his interest in the history of cinema. In addition to directing, Lee teaches film production at New York University and compiled a list of films he thinks are essential to any aspiring filmmaker’s education. Meanwhile, he has directed such notable films as Malcolm X (1992), a biopic of the Civil Rights activist starring frequent collaborator Denzel Washington in the title role; Clockers (1995), an adaptation of a novel by Richard Price that examines violence in the drug trade in Brooklyn housing projects; Bamboozled (2000), a lacerating satire about images of Black people in film and television; and 25th Hour (2002), the first major film to be shot in New York City after 9/11. Primarily known for his narrative film work, Lee is also an accomplished documentarian, telling the story of the Birmingham, AL church bombing in his film 4 Little Girls (1996) and post-Hurricane Katrina New Orleans in When The Levees Broke (2006) and If God Is Willing and Da Creek Don’t Rise (2011). 

Though many of Lee’s films have garnered praise throughout his career, his 2018 effort BlacKkKlansman, a fictionalization of the true story of Ron Stallworth, a Black Colorado Springs police officer who, working with a white partner, infiltrated the Ku Klux Klan, led to renewed appreciation of his contributions to cinema history. His most recent fiction film, the Vietnam vet story Da 5 Bloods, premiered in 2020 and is now streaming on Netflix, and his concert film David Byrne’s American Utopia debuted in the fall of 2021 on HBO.

Spike Lee’s unique point of view demonstrates the importance of a diverse filmmaking landscape. He holds up a mirror to American society, even when—some might argue especially when—it is unlikely to like what it sees.

In Their Words

“I want people to think about the power of images, not just in terms of race, but how imagery is used and what sort of social impact it has—how it influences how we talk, how we think, how we view one another. In particular, I want them to see how film and television have historically, from the birth of both mediums, produced and perpetuated distorted images.”

Learn More

LISTEN: "Spike Lee" - The Black List Podacst (46 min)

READ: Contemporary Film Makers: Spike Lee

WATCH: ‘Do the Right Thing’ | Anatomy of a Scene - The New York Times

Hughie Lee-Smith (1915-1999) Artist

Hughie Lee-Smith was a classically trained artist, beginning his art education at the Cleveland Institute of Art during the 1920s.  Upon completing his studies there, he worked as an artist for the Works Project America, which was a part of then-President Franklin Roosevelt’s “New Deal” program to provide employment for out-of-work Americans.  Like other WPA artists at the time, Lee-Smith felt the pull of social justice causes, wishing to illustrate how art could call attention to inequality.   

Lee-Smith is known for his neo-surrealist interpretation of social and cultural alienation, rejection, and isolation.  This sense of alienation and isolation was influenced by his experiences as a  Black artist, even though he lived nearly his entire life in urban areas.  Inspired by the work of artists such as Edward Hopper, Lee-Smith examined social alienation in a variety of settings, including an unidentified rural area in one of his better-known works, The Stranger.  This work evokes feelings of loneliness and the disconnection individuals find in a vast rural location.  The race of the individual was intentionally ambiguous, conveying the feelings of isolation not only experienced by African Americans, but of all people, or as he describes it, the  “everyman.”  

Much of Lee-Smith’s art was created in the midwest.  In fact, his first solo gallery show was held in Chicago in 1945.   The Art Institute of Chicago has one of his works in their collection;  Desert Form, which was painted in 1945, that provides another example with his focus on desolate locations and alienation.  In his time living in Chicago,  Lee-Smith also found a community of like-minded thinkers at the Southside Community Art Center, where he hung out with fellow artist Rex Goreleigh, and the poet Gwendolyn Brooks.

In addition to the Art Institute of Chicago, you’ll find his work in many other museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, and Howard University.  

-- post contributed by Ken Orenic, Library

In their words

“I think my paintings have to do with an invisible life—a reality on a different level,”

​“In my case, aloneness, I think, has stemmed from the fact that I’m black. Unconsciously it has a lot to do with a sense of alienation.”

“I’m not a narrative painter. That is to say, I don’t paint stories. What I tried to do was project a feeling, an emotional sense.”

Learn more

READ:  A History of African-American Artists: From 1792 to the Present 

WATCH: Fred Jones and Hughie Lee Smith - BLACKLITE Episode 5 (11 min)

VIEW: Hughie Lee-Smith’s work is viewable on Google https://bit.ly/3u0562F 

Katherine Dunham (1909-2006) Anthropologist, choreographer, activist

Katherine Dunham was an African-American dancer, choreographer, creator of the Dunham Technique, author, educator, anthropologist, and social activist. Dunham had one of the most successful dance careers in African-American and European theater of the 20th century, and She is credited for bringing these Caribbean and African influences to a European-dominated dance world.

Dunham lived in Glen Ellyn, Illinois until the age of three when her widowed father remarried and moved the family to Joliet. Here, the young Katherine began to pursue her interest in dance and performance. Before she graduated high school she had already organized a fundraising cabaret and formed a dance school for young, aspiring Black dancers. When she completed her studies at Joliet Junior College, Dunham went on to the University of Chicago where she formed one of the first African American ballet companies in the U.S. 

Dunham’s academic major, however, was anthropology. Throughout her studies at UChicago (she earned her bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degrees there) her focus was on the preservation of African traditions in dance. 

Asked about her proposed research, she suddenly decided: “Do you mind if I just show you?” As the astonished committee stared, Dunham slipped off her woolen suit to reveal a leotard and flowing dance skirt; she demonstrated ballet first, then pulsing African dance. The committee voted unanimously to award $2,400 (more than $40,000 in today’s money) to support her fieldwork in the Caribbean. At the recommendation of her mentor Melville Herskovits, PhB’20—a Northwestern University anthropologist and African studies expert—Dunham’s calling cards read both “dancer” and “anthropologist.” (Grace Notes)

In Katherine Dunham: Recovering An Anthropological Legacy, Choreographing Ethnographic Futures, Emily Chin writes that Dunham’s performative anthropology is a kind of “a radical reimagining of what anthropology might be.”

--with contributions from Diana Martinez, the MAC

In their words

“Go within every day and find your inner strength, so that the world will not blow your candle out" 

"When you have faith in something, it's your reason to be alive and to fight for it."

“Be sure that your every breath, every thought, every movement, every deed is being helpful to someone or something. Be sure that you are honest and true.”

Learn more

WATCH: Katherine Dunham - Living St. Louis (26 min)

READ: “Grace notes: Katherine Dunham, PhB’36, forged a unique career as a dancer and anthropologist.” The University of Chicago Magazine, Winter 2016.

LISTEN: “Mentorship from the Great Katherine Dunham” The Memoir My Dad Wouldn't Write podcast (25 min)

Bass Reeves (1838-1910) U.S. Marshal

Fans of the HBO series The Watchmen will know the name Bass Reeves as the Black masked lawman of silent film that inspires a young boy’s pride, enthusiasm, and strange journey central to the show. What many might not realize, however, is that unlike Hooded Justice, Sister Night, and other characters in The Watchmen, Bass Reeves was a real man. While he wasn’t exactly a masked hero in the comic book sense, he was known to employ disguises in his pursuit of criminals and is commonly believed to be the inspiration for another fictional mask-wearer - the Lone Ranger.

Bass Reeves was one of a “surprising number” of Black deputy U.S. marshals who served in the Indian and Oklahoma territories after Reconstruction. Born into slavery, and raised in Arkansas and Texas, Bass served as the valet, or “body servant” of his master Colonel George R. Reeves. Author Paul L. Brady writes that Colonel Reeves “indulged” Bass by teaching him how to handle a gun, but refused to permit his slaves to learn to read or write. 

Reeves accompanied the colonel in the Civil War, but after a fist-fight with the man over a game of cards, he fled into Native American territory where he lived with Cherokees and Seminoles until the Emancipation Proclamation “officially” freed him in 1863. Reeves’ gained knowledge of Muscogee contributed to his success when he “became one of the first men who “rode for Parker” - Judge Isaac Parker - in Fort Smith, Arkansas. 

In his 32 years as a U.S. Marshal and subsequent years as a police officer in Muskogee, Oklahoma, Reeves arrested over 3,000 outlaws and felons. His exploits - including costumes, ambidextrous marksmanship, and much-reported feats of bravery - became legendary and may even have served as the template for other legends.

In his book Black Gun, Silver Star: The Life and Legend of Frontier Marshal Bass Reeves, Arthur Burton outlines the “uncanny similarities” between Reeves and the fictional Lone Ranger:

Federal law mandated that deputy U.S. marshals have at least one posseman with them whenever they went out in the field. Oftentimes the men who assisted Reeves were Native Americans, like the character Tonto who assisted the Lone Ranger. It was common practice for Reeves to work in disguise while trying to capture fugitives from justice, à la the Lone Ranger, who wore a black mask. Many times the white settlers in the territory didn’t know Reeves’s name and called him the “Black Marshal”; likewise, many didn’t know the name of the Lone Ranger. For most African Americans during this time in American history, their dark faces became a black mask to white America—they became “invisible.”

Now, a Bass Reeves Monument stands in Ross Pendercraft Park, Fort Smith, Arkansas, not far from the federal courthouse where so many of the men and women he captured ultimately stood trial.

In Their Words

“For thirty-one years, going on thirty-two, I have ridden as a deputy marshal … and when [Chief Marshal] Bennett goes out of office I am going to farming for a living.”

Learn More

WATCH: Bass Reeves: The Lone Ranger - Biographics (17 min)

READ: The Best Trick U.S. Marshal Bass Reeves Ever Pulled on a Criminal - Atlas Obscura

LISTEN:  Bass Reeve‪s‬ - Dr. History's Tales of the Old West podcast (23 min)

Marsha P. Johnson (1944 -1992) Human Rights Activist

The life and death of Marsha P. Johnson - like those of Ida B. Wells, Henrietta Lacks, and Nella Larson - were commemorated with a much-belated obituary as part of the New York Times “Overlooked” series. The obituary paints a picture of her life and highlights her legacy:

“She has been praised for her insistent calls for social and economic justice; for working on behalf of homeless street youth ostracized by their families for being gay or otherwise not conforming to traditional ideas about gender; and, later, for her advocacy on behalf of AIDS patients. Some have called her a saint.

Many transgender people have also come to hail Johnson, and her longtime friend and colleague Sylvia Rivera, as pioneering heroes. (The term transgender was not in wide use in Johnson’s lifetime; she usually used female pronouns for herself, but also referred to herself as gay, as a transvestite or simply as a queen.)”

Alongside Sylvia Rivera, Johnson founded STAR, Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries - “we needed to do something for our own” recalled Rivera in The Death and Life of Marsha P. Johnson. STAR began as a series of sit-ins and became STAR House, “the first LGBT youth shelter in North America, … the first trans woman of colour led organisation in the USA… and the first trans sex worker labour organisation.”

Johnson’s activism began in the late sixties. The New York Times writes that she was among the forefront of people to resist police arrest during the Stonewall uprising. Although she famously denied responsibility for throwing the first “shot” at the Stonewall Inn, the story became part of her legacy:

“The story ... was that Marsha Johnson said, 'I got my civil rights' and then threw a shot glass into a mirror and that started the riots. … This became known as the shot glass that was heard around the world.” (David Carter, Pay it No Mind).

The circumstances around Johnson’s death are unclear. In the documentary, The Death and Life of Marsha P. Johnson, transgender activist Victoria Cruz investigates Johnson’s 1992 drowning, which, at the time was ruled a suicide but then reclassified as death from “undetermined causes.” 

In Pay it No Mind, Bob Kohler recalls the community that came together to celebrate her life. The plan had been to begin at a church and scatter Johnson’s ashes in the river. However, hundreds of people showed up hoping to join the procession, far too many to simply use the sidewalk. Kohler turns to one of the police officers he knew from Christopher Street and says “you've gotta give me the street… Look, it’s for Marsha. And the head-cop looked at me and he said, 'Marsha was a good queen.'” The police closed down 7th Avenue and the procession continued to the river. “It was that kind of effect that Marsha would have.”

In their own words

"History isn't something you look back at and say it was inevitable; it happens because people make decisions that are sometimes very impulsive and of the moment, but those moments are cumulative realities."

"Darling, I want my gay rights now."

"What’s the point of complaining? It don’t get you nowhere."
 

Learn more

WATCH: Pay it No Mind: Marsha P. Johnson (55 min)

LISTEN: “Marsha P. Johnson & Randy Wicker” - Making Gay History podcast (17 min)

READ: “New York City Monument Will Honor Transgender Activists Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera” - Smithsonian

A. Philip Randolph (1889-1979) American labor unionist, civil rights activist

A. Philip Randolph was one of the most influential African American leaders of the twentieth century. From 1917 until his death on May 16, 1979, Randolph worked as a labor organizer, a journalist, and a civil rights leader.

Raised in Jacksonville, Florida, Asa Philip Randoloph excelled in his studies at the only public school open to Black students in the state. While his first passions were drama and literature, Randolph found not only inspiration but a call to activism in W.E.B. DuBois’ The Souls of Black Folk. 

Alan Gevinson writes: “Throughout his career, Randolph believed that moral objectives of equality and justice could be secured only through fundamental changes in the economic structure of American society. He insisted that civil rights legislation by itself would not solve deeply rooted inequities in American life and that African Americans would never lose their status as second-class citizens until opportunities for economic and educational advancement were guaranteed to all on an equal basis. In pursuance of that perspective, he successfully challenged U.S. presidents and persuaded them to support his agenda.”

The AFL-CIO, for which Randolph served as vice-president, pays tribute to the labor union leader, summarizing his contributions:

A. Philip Randolph brought the gospel of trade unionism to millions of African American households. Randolph led a 10-year drive to organize the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters (BSCP) and served as the organization's first president. Randolph directed the March on Washington movement to end employment discrimination in the defense industry and a national civil disobedience campaign to ban segregation in the armed forces. The nonviolent protest and mass action effort inspired the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s.

In 1964, A. Philip Randolph received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Lyndon Johnson.

In Their Words

"The essence of trade unionism is social uplift. The labor movement has been the haven for the dispossessed, the despised, the neglected, the downtrodden, the poor.”

“Those who deplore our militants, who exhort patience in the name of a false peace, are in fact supporting segregation and exploitation. They would have social peace at the expense of social and racial justice. They are more concerned with easing racial tension than enforcing racial democracy.”

"Justice is never given; it is exacted and the struggle must be continuous for freedom is never a final fact, but a continuing evolving process to higher and higher levels of human, social, economic, political and religious relationship.”

Learn More

LISTEN: The Most Dangerous Negro in America - Black History Bootcamp (42 min)

WATCH: A Philip Randolph: For Jobs and Freedom - California Newsreel (2 min)

READ:  “A. Philip Randolph at the National Press Club, August 26, 1963” - Alan Gevinson, Special Assistant to the Chief, National Audio-Visual Conservation Center, Library of Congress

Jerry Lawson (1940-2011) Electrical Engineer

Jerry Lawson led the development of the first cartridge-based home gaming console, Fairchild Channel F, introduced to the market in 1976. The primary focus of Fairchild was arcade games until the introduction of the Channel F system. Before Channel F, games were built into the device hardware so the player could only use one game at a time. Swappable game cartridges allowed people to play many different games at home on the same console. Mr. Lawson’s innovation was the precursor for the home gaming systems that we know today. Although the Channel F was not a commercial success, it led the way for the Atari 2600 home gaming console released in 1977 and revolutionized the video game market.  He also was the first game engineer to implement the Pause Game functionality which saved the lives (and bladders) of many a gaming addict! 

Mr. Lawson was finally recognized for his achievements in 2011 by the International Game Developers Association. 

- post contributed by Denise Cote, Library

In their Words

“The whole reason I did games was because people said, ‘You can’t do it.’ I’m one of the guys, if you tell me I can’t do something, I’ll turn around and do it.”

Learn More

WATCH: Jerry Lawson - clip from High Score (4 min)

LISTEN: Jerry Lawson: The Engineer Who Changed the Game - Command Line Heroes podcast (33 min)

READ: 

• Engineers of History: Jerry Lawson, Video Game Pioneer (1940-2011) - All About Circuits

• Gerald A. Lawson, Video Game Pioneer, Dies at 70 - New York Times

Claudette Colvin (1939 -) Nurse and civil rights activist

Many biographical articles about Claudette Colvin share the same features - the title features the phrase “Before Rosa Parks” and the article starts with the assertion that the reader has not heard of Claudette Colvin, the 15-year old Montgomery, Alabama student who refused to relinquish her seat nine months before Parks’ more famous refusal.

That Colvin’s name is not synonymous with the Montgomery Bus Boycott can be put down to respectability politics. In his book Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice, Phillip Hoose describes where Colvin grew up in north Montgomery: “King Hill, as the neighborhood was called, consisted of three unpaved streets lined with red shotgun shacks and frame houses … Toilets were out of doors… King Hill had a citywide reputation as a depressed and dangerous neighborhood” (p. 15). Or as Colvin herself said, "Middle-class blacks looked down on King Hill.”

That Colvin was poor, young, and wore her hair in braids when her classmates were using “straightening combs and pomade,” may have been enough for the leaders of the civil rights movement in Montgomery to look elsewhere for a standard-bearer, but Colvin became pregnant not long after her arrest. Rosa Parks, who ultimately became the symbol of quiet dignity and resistance to racial segregation, said of Colvin’s pregnancy, "If the white press got ahold of that information, they would have [had] a field day. They'd call her a bad girl, and her case wouldn't have a chance."

Nevertheless, Colvin was one of the five original plaintiffs and a “star witness” in the Browder v. Gayle challenge to public bus segregation, a case that would ultimately go to the Supreme Court and end Alabama’s segregated bus policy.

In Their Words

“…as a teenager, I kept thinking, Why don’t the adults around here just say something? Say it so that they know we don’t accept segregation? I knew then and I know now that, when it comes to justice, there is no easy way to get it. You can’t sugarcoat it. You have to take a stand and say, ‘This is not right.’ And I did.”

“I just couldn’t move. History had me glued to the seat”

Learn More

READ: “She Would Not Be Moved” - Gary Younge, The Guardian (Dec. 2000)

LISTEN: Claudette Colvin: “History Had Me Glued To The Seat” - Radio Diaries (11 min)

WATCH: Michele Norris Interviews Civil Rights Pioneer, Claudette Colvin - Embrace Ambition Summit (17 min)