I originally posted this list on my teen site earlier this week.

AA Book Reading List Suggestions

List compiled by Shelia M. Goss

Below is a list of books either by or about African-American pioneers. The books can be found at your local library or from an online retailer.

The early black history movement, Carter G. Woodson, and Lorenzo Johnston Greene.
Dagbovie, Pero Gaglo

Carter G. Woodson : the father of Black history
McKissack, Pat

Carter G. Woodson : a life in Black history
Goggin, Jacqueline Anne

Art from her heart : folk artist Clementine Hunter
Whitehead, Kathy

Clementine Hunter : the African house murals
Hunter, Clementine

Talking with Tebe : Clementine Hunter, memory artist
Hunter, Clementine

Coretta Scott King
Waxman, Laura Hamilton

Coretta Scott King : first lady of civil rights
Stanley, George E.

Coretta Scott King : civil rights activist
Rhodes, Lisa Renee

Minnie’s sacrifice ; Sowing and reaping ; Trial and triumph : three rediscovered novels
Harper, Frances Ellen Watkins

A brighter coming day : a Frances Ellen Watkins Harper reader
Harper, Frances Ellen Watkins

Three classic African-American novels
Brown, William Wells

Maggie L. Walker National Historic Site : junior ranger activity book. DOC
United States. National Park Service.

Freedom’s Teacher: The Life of Septima Clark by Katherine Mellen Charron

Ready from Within: Septima Clark & the Civil Rights Movement, A First Person Narrative by Septima Poinsette Clark and Cynthia Stokes Brown

From Slavery to Freedom: A History of African Americans by John Hope Franklin and Alfred A. Moss Jr.

Shelia M. Goss compiled this list for her in person lecture during Black History Month. She is the author of the young adult series – The Lip Gloss Chronicles: The Ultimate Test, Splitsville, and Paper Thin.

For more information or to sign up to The Lip Gloss Chronicles mailing list, visit www.thelipglosschronicles.com or www.sheliagoss.com.

I’m highlighting Mary Eliza Mahoney today for two reasons. #1 She was the first African-American registered nurse and #2 Our past might be entwined as her name comes up when I trace my family history on my Dad’s side.

Her exact date of birth is questionable. Some sources say she was born in April and others May of 1845.

According to various sources, including ASU, Mary Eliza Mahoney was the first African-American registered nurse in the U.S.A. She was born free on April 7 or May 7, 1845 in Dorchester, Massachusetts and became interested in nursing when she was a teenager. She worked for fifteen years at the New England Hospital for Women and Children (now Dimock Community Health Center) in Roxbury, Massachusetts as a cook, janitor, washerwoman and an unofficial nurse’s assistant. In 1878, at the age of thirty-three, she was admitted as a student into the hospital’s nursing program established by Dr. Marie Zakrzewska. Sixteen months later, she was one of four who completed the rigorous course (of forty-two who started with her). After graduation she worked primarily as a private duty nurse for the next thirty years all over the Eastern Seaboard of the United States. She ended her nursing career as director of an orphanage in Long Island, New York, the position she had held for a decade. She never married.In 1896, Mahoney became one of the original members of a predominately white Nurses Associated Alumnae of the United States and Canada (later known as the American Nurses Association or ANA). In 1908 she was cofounder of the National Association of Colored Graduate Nurses (NACGN). Mahoney gave the welcoming address at the first convention of the NACGN and served as the association’s national chaplain. Mary Eliza Mahoney died January 4, 1926. She is buried in the Woodlawn Cemetery in Everett, Massachusetts.

In 1936, the NACGN created an award in honor of Mahoney for women who contributed to racial integration in nursing. This award was then continued by the ANA after the NACGN was dissolved in 1951. In 1976, fifty years after her death, Mary Eliza Mahoney was inducted into the Nursing Hall of Fame.

To read more about Mary Eliza Mahoney, click here.

If you know someone interested in nursing, there’s a Mary Mahoney scholarship given out to minority nursing students. There’s a site dedicated to Mary Mahoney. Please visit: http://www.marymahoney.org
Win a copy of Martin Luther King: The Essential Box Set:

The Landmark Speeches and Sermons of Martin Luther King, Jr. By Clayborne Carson, Kris Shepard, Peter Holloran

What do you have to do to enter? Leave a comment on this blog post. This is the last opportunity to enter. You can check archives to enter on previous blog posts. (Sign up to mailing list so you’ll be alerted of the March contests–2 books and 1 DVD). The more you comment, the more chances you have to win. Contest ends on February 28, 2010. U.S. & Canada residents only. Avoid where prohibited by law.

Social activist Dorothy Height was born in Richmond, Virginia, on March 24, 1912.

At an early age, she moved with her family to Rankin, Pennsylvania. While in high school, Height was awarded a scholarship to New York University for her oratory skills, where she studied and earned her master’s degree.

Height began her career working as a caseworker with the New York City Welfare Department, but at the age of twenty-five, she began her career as a civil rights activist when she joined the National Council of Negro Women. She fought for equal rights for both African Americans and women, and in 1944 she joined the national staff of the YWCA. She remained active with the organization until 1977, and while there she developed leadership training programs and interracial and ecumenical education programs.

In 1957, Height was named president of the National Council of Negro Women, a position she held until 1997. During the height of the civil rights movement of the 1960s, Height organized “Wednesdays in Mississippi,” which brought together black and white women from the north and South to create a dialogue of understanding. Leaders of the United States regularly took her counsel, including First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, and Height also encouraged President Dwight D. Eisenhower to desegregate schools and President Lyndon B. Johnson to appoint African American women to positions in government.

Height has served on a number of committees, including as a consultant on African affairs to the secretary of state, the President’s Committee on the Employment of the Handicapped and the President’s Committee on the Status of Women. Her tireless efforts for equal rights have earned her the praise and recognition of numerous organizations, as well. She has received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Freedom From Want Award and the NAACP Spingarn Medal. She has also been inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame. In 2004, Height was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal by President George W. Bush.

To read more, go to History Makers.

Dorothy I. Height has received many awards and citations. See list compiled by NCNW:

• John F. Kennedy Memorial Award
• Hadassah Myrtle Wreath of Achievement
• Ministerial Interfaith Association Award
• Ladies Home Journal - Woman of the Year
• Congressional Black Caucus - Decades of Service
• President Ronald Reagan - Citizens Medal
• Franklin Roosevelt - Freedom Medal
• Essence Award
• Camille Cosby World of Children Award
• Caring Institute - Caring Award
• NAACP - Spingarn Medal
• National Women’s Hall of Fame
• President Bill Clinton - Presidential Medal of Freedom
• On Height’s 92nd birthday March 24, 2004, President George W. Bush presented her the Congressional Gold Medal, the highest civilian and most distinguished award presented by the United States Congress.

Learn more about Dr. Dorothy Height by adding her book to your collection and sharing it with someone else.

In the 1948 summer Olympics, Alice Coachman became the first African American woman to win a gold medal.

According to the New Georgia Encylopedia, Few athletes have dominated a sport as thoroughly as Alice Coachman dominated the high jump. Named to five All-American teams, she won a gold medal in the 1948 Olympics, becoming the first African American woman to do so. She has been inducted into eight halls of fame.

Born in 1923 in Albany, GA, the fifth of Fred and Evelyn Coachman’s ten children, Coachman grew up in the segregated South. Barred from public sports facilities because of her race, Coachman used whatever materials she could piece together to practice jumping. Coping with a society that discouraged women from being involved in sports, Coachman struggled to develop as an athlete.

When Coachman finally got the chance to compete in the Olympics, in the 1948 London games, she qualified easily despite a back injury. She defeated her closest competitor, the British high jumper Dorothy Tyler, on the first jump of the finals, setting a record of 5 feet 6 1/8 inches. King George VI personally presented the gold medal to her.

Coachman returned to the United States a hero. After her Olympic victory she retired from athletics, even though she was only twenty-five and in excellent physical condition. She became the first African American woman to benefit from endorsements. She also taught, coached, and became involved in the Job Corps. Always a supporter of athletes, she later formed the Alice Coachman Track and Field Foundation, a nonprofit organization that provides assistance to young athletes and helps former Olympic athletes adjust to life after the games. During the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta she was honored as one of the 100 greatest Olympic athletes in history.

To read more facts about Alice Coachman, visit her website: http://www.alicecoachman.org/bio_accomplishments.html

My nephew’s mom was named after the woman I’m highlighting today–Septima Poinsette Clark (1898-1987). I found out a few weeks ago that Septima’s mother communicated with Ms. Clark on numerous occasions and that’s how she ended up with the unique name.

Who is Septima Poinsette Clark? She was an American educator and civil rights activist. She is known as the “Queen mother” or “Grandmother of the American Civil Rights Movement.”

Clark was born in Charleston, South Carolina in 1898. Her father, Peter Poinsette, was born a slave on the Joel Poinsette farm between the Waccamaw River and Georgetown. After the Civil War, he got a job as a caterer. Her mother, Victoria Warren Anderson Poinsette, was born in Charleston but raised in Haiti by her uncle, who took her and her two sisters there in 1864. She returned to Charleston after the Civil War and worked as a launderer.

Clark graduated from high school in 1916. Due to financial constraints, she was not able to attend college, but began work as a school teacher. As an African American, she was barred from teaching in the Charleston, South Carolina public schools, but was able to find a position teaching in a rural school district, on John’s Island, the largest of the Sea Islands.

In 1919, she returned to Charleston to teach sixth grade at Avery Normal Institute, a private academy for black children. In Charleston, she began attending meetings of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Her first task with the NAACP was to knock on doors and ask people to sign petitions. One of the causes she petitioned for was to allow blacks to become principals in Charleston’s public schools.

Clark is most famous for establishing “Citizenship Schools” teaching reading to adults throughout the Deep South. While the project served to increase literacy, it also served as a means to empower Black communities. Citizenship schools were frequently taught in the back room of a shop so as to elude the violence of racist whites. The teachers of citizenship schools were often people who had learned to read as adults as well, as one of the primary goals of the citizenship schools was to develop more local leaders for people’s movements. Teaching people how to read helped countless Black Southerners push for the right to vote, but beyond that, it developed leaders across the country that would help push the civil rights movement long after 1964. The citizenship schools are just one example of the empowerment strategy for developing leaders that was core to the civil rights movement in the South.

To read her entire bio, click here.

I would also recommend a book co-authored by Septima Clark herself: Ready from Within: Septima Clark & the Civil Rights Movement, A First Person Narrative

According to BlackAmericaWeb, Sarah Rector, a former slave, became one of the richest little girls in America in 1914. The headlines would read: “Oil Made Pickaninny Rich – Oklahoma Girl With $15,000 A Month Gets Many Proposals – Four White Men in Germany Want to Marry the Negro Child That They Might Share Her Fortune.”

$15,000 a month back then is probably the equivalent to millions a month now. I came across the most fascinating article the other day about Sarah Rector. Below is a short excerpt from the article and the link.

When she was born, Rector was given a rough, hilly allotment, considered worthless agriculturally, in Glenpool, 60 miles from where she and her family lived. Her father had petitioned the Muskogee County Court to sell the land, but he was denied because of certain restrictions placed on the land, for which he was required to continue paying taxes.

In 1913, when she was ten years old, large pools of oil were discovered on Rector’s land.  One year later, her land produced so much oil that she had already yielded $300,000; her fortune was increasing at a rate of $10,000 per month. Her mother had died years earlier from tuberculosis. In 1914, her father died in prison, leaving her orphaned.

Even before her father’s death, Rector was appointed a guardian who was responsible for managing Rector’s money and providing for her education and care. The law at the time required full-blooded Indians, black adults and children who were citizens of Indian Territory with significant property and money, to be assigned “well-respected” white guardians who often cheated them out of their lands. There are stories of swindlers, oil tycoons and other unscrupulous types who kidnapped and murdered the children and adults to get their land.

Click on the link to read more: http://www.thedefendersonline.com/2009/02/18/sarah-rector-the-richest-colored-girl-in-the-world/comment-page-1/#comment-2773

Norma Sklarek became the first black woman to be licensed as an architect in New York and California.

According to the African-American Registry website: From New York City she graduated from Barnard College (part of Columbia University) with a degree in architecture in 1950. Sklarek became the first African-American woman to be licensed as an architect in the United States with certification in New York State in 1954 and in California in 1962. She was the first African-American woman director of architecture at Gruen and Associates in Los Angeles. In 1966, she was the first woman to be elected Fellow of the American Institute of Architects.

Some twenty years later, in 1985, she became the first African-American woman architect to form her own architectural firm: Siegel, Sklarek, Diamond. At the time, this was the largest woman-owned and mostly woman-staffed architectural firm. Among Sklarek’s designs are the City Hall in San Bernardino, California, the Fox Plaza in San Francisco, Terminal One at the Los Angeles International Airport and the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo. From 1989 to 1992, Sklarek was a principal at The Jerde Partnership.

There she was in charge of project management and review of the functional and technological aspects of projects. Norma Sklarek is now semi-retired serving as Chair of the AIA National Ethics Council.

In her honor, Howard University offers the Norma Merrick Sklarek Architectural Scholarship Award.

To learn more about Norma Sklarek, go to: http://www.essortment.com/all/normasklarek_rqbo.htm

Win a copy of Martin Luther King: The Essential Box Set:

The Landmark Speeches and Sermons of Martin Luther King, Jr. By Clayborne Carson, Kris Shepard, Peter Holloran

What do you have to do to enter? Leave a comment on this blog post and there will be several other opportunities this month to enter but you have to check the bottom of random blog posts. (Sign up to mailing list so you’ll be alerted of new posts). The more you comment, the more chances you have to win. Contest ends on February 28, 2010. U.S. & Canada residents only. Avoid where prohibited by law.

Maggie Lena Walker (July 15, 1864-December 15, 1934) was an American teacher, businesswoman, and first African American woman bank president. She was the first woman to charter a bank in the United States. As a leader, she achieved successes with the vision to make tangible improvements in the way of life for African Americans and women. Disabled by paralysis and limited to a wheelchair later in life, Walker also became an example for persons with disabilities.

 According to wikipedia, she was a daughter of former slaves, Elizabeth Draper Mitchell and William Mitchell, who worked in the mansion of the abolitionist Elizabeth Van Lew. After a few years of living at the mansion, her father got a job as the head waiter at the Saint Charles Hotel and the family moved to a small house in town. Her father was murdered, presumably a victim of robbery and her mother supported herself and her two children with her laundry business while Maggie helped with the chores. In addition, Maggie attended the Lancaster School and then the Armstrong Normal School. After graduation in 1883, she taught at the Lancaster School until her marriage to Armstead Walker, Jr., a building contractor, in September 1886. They subsequently had three sons, though one died in infancy. She also became an agent for an insurance company, the Woman’s Union.

Since the age of fourteen, she had been a member of the Grand United Order of St. Luke, an African-American fraternal and cooperative insurance society founded in Baltimore in 1867 by a former slave, Mary Prout, with headquarters established in Richmond in 1889. The order had been established to assure proper health care and burial arrangements of its members and encouraged self-help and racial solidarity. Walker worked her way up until, in 1899, she became the executive secretary-treasurer of the organization, now renamed the Independent Order of St. Luke. The order was in debt at the time so she accepted a reduced salary of eight dollars per month.

In 1902, she started publishing a newsletter, the St. Luke Herald to increase awareness of the activities of the organization and to help in the educational work of the order. The following year, she opened the St. Luke Penny Savings Bank and became its president. The bank’s goal was to facilitate loans to the community. By 1920, the bank helped purchase about 600 homes. By 1924, the Independent Order of St. Luke had 50,000 members, 1500 local chapters, a staff of 50 working in its Richmond headquarters and assets of almost $400,000. The Penny Savings Bank absorbed all other black-owned banks in Richmond in 1929 and became the Consolidated Bank and Trust Companany with Walker as its chairman of the board.

Walker suffered more personal tragedies in her life. In 1907, she fell on the front steps of her home and injured her knees. The damaged nerves and tendons continued to trouble her for the rest of her life. She also suffered from diabetes and was confined to a wheelchair after 1928. Her husband died in 1915 when her son, Russell Ecles Talmage, mistook his father for a prowler on the porch and shot him. Russell was acquitted of the murder charge, but he never recovered from this ordeal and he died in 1923.

Walker died in Richmond, Virginia, on December 15, 1934. The cause of her death was listed as “diabetes gangrene.” The house her family occupied from 1904 to 1934 is now a Maggie L. Walker National Historic Site and is located at 110 1/2 East Leigh Street.

To read more about Maggie L Walker, go to: http://www.distinguishedwomen.com/biographies/walker-ml.html

I found out about Phyliss Wheatley, the first AA female poet, when I was in high school but it would be years later that I would find out about Frances Harper. I read a synopsis of one of her novels and had to get a copy.

Below is more information about Frances E.W. Harper from Wikipedia.

Today, I am highlighting a Louisiana native. She was well-known in our parts and for those who like art, you’re probably familiar with her already–Clementine Hunter (1887-1988).

I will highlight from several sources information about this dynamic painter. She not only painted, she made dolls, quilts, baskets, lace curtains, etc.  She reminds me of a very creative friend of mine–Peggy Eldridge Love.

One thing I learned about Clementine Hunter’s  story is that you’re never too old to pursue your dreams.

Hunter was born on Hidden Hill Plantation near Cloutierville, Louisiana; a place so isolated and harsh that local legend claimed it was the real-life inspiration for Uncle Tom’s Cabin. her family moved north to the Cane River area when she was a child, and eventually they moved to Melrose Plantation near Natchitoches, where Hunter spent a lot of her life picking cotton. She attended school for just 10 days and never learned to read or write.

But in the late 1940s, one of the many artists who visited the plantation left behind some tubes of paint. Plantation curator Francois Mignon encouraged Hunter to try her own hand at painting. During the next four decades, she created thousands of paintings.

It was often midnight before she was free to ”mark some pictures,” as she once said of her painting; using cardboard, paper bags, lumber scraps, milk jugs, the insides of soap boxes, and other throw-outs. Almost all of her works were ”memory paintings,” showing plantation life as she remembered it: picking cotton, gathering figs, threshing pecans; the weddings, baptisms, funerals, and other scenes of everyday life. Her titles were often intriguing, too.

A June 1953 article in Look magazine brought her to national attention. In 1957, some critics dubbed her “’the Black Grandma Moses.” And, in 1979, Robert Bishop, director of The Museum of American Folk Art in Washington, called the artist, then in her 90s, ”the most celebrated of all Southern contemporary painters.” By the 1970s, there were large public and private collections of Hunter’s work, and by the 1980s, several important traveling exhibitions featured her paintings. The prices for her work had risen from 25 cents to several thousand dollars.

In the last years of her life, Hunter left her rented cabin and moved upriver, living in a trailer she bought with money from selling her paintings. She painted until the last few months of her life, dying at the age of 100 on January 1, 1988. Hunter was more modest about her abilities. “God puts those pictures in my head and I just puts them on the canvas, like He wants me to,” the artist said.

Reference:
Black Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia
Volumes 1 and 2, edited by Darlene Clark Hine
Copyright 1993, Carlson Publishing Inc., Brooklyn, New York
ISBN 0-926019-61-9

Click to see original Look and Saturday Evening Post articles

If you’ve never been to Natchitoches, LA, please make plans to visit. It is rich in African-American history.  If you do decide to come, I’m only an hour and some minutes away so shoot me an email offloop and I’ll even meet you there.

The answer to yesterday’s quiz question was Harriett Tubman.

Today’s Black History question is What state was the first to have more blacks than whites?

Missouri
Florida
South Carolina
Tennessee

P.S. - If you’re an aspiring writer or want to learn about self-publishing, check out today’s post on Blogging in Black: http://blogginginblack.com/?p=1169