E. Franklin Frazier was a sociologist whose work on American African social structure provided insights into many of the problems affecting the black community. Frazier received his A.B. from Howard University (1916) and his A.M. in sociology from Clark University (1920). After being awarded a fellowship to the New York School of Social Work (1920–21), he accepted an American-Scandinavian Foundation grant to study folk high schools and the Cooperative Movement in Denmark (1921–22). He taught sociology at Morehouse College, a historically black institution in Atlanta, Georgia, where he organized the Atlanta University School of Social Work, later becoming its director. With the controversy surrounding the publication (1927) of Frazier’s “The Pathology of Race Prejudice” in Forum, he was forced to leave Morehouse. He received a fellowship from the University of Chicago (1927), where he took his Ph.D. (1931), and publication of his thesis, The Negro Family in Chicago (1932), sustained the university’s interest in his work on the black family. Black Bourgeoisie (1957) was Frazier’s most celebrated and criticized work. In this book, Frazier seared contemporary blacks who saw themselves as middle class. This false consciousness, as he called it, led to a cultural elitism and material existence based solely on acquisitiveness.
Black History 365 | # 160 James P. Beckwourth
James P. Beckwourth was an American mountain man, fur trader and explorer. He was born into slavery in 1805 as the son of a slave and an aristrocratic white father. Beckwourth was the only African American in the West to record his life story. He played a major role in the early exploration and settlement of the American West. Although there were people of many races and nationalities on the frontier, Beckwourth was the only African American who recorded his life story, and his adventures took him from the everglades of Florida to the Pacific Ocean and from southern Canada to northern Mexico. He dictated his autobiography to Thomas D. Bonner, an itinerant Justice of the Peace in the gold fields of California, in 1854-55. After Bonner "polished up" Beckwourth's rough narrative, The Life and Adventures of James P. Beckwourth, Mountaineer, Scout, and Pioneer, and Chief of the Crow Nation of Indians was published by Harper and Brothers in 1856. The book apparently achieved a certain amount of popular success, for it was followed by an English edition in the same year, a second printing two years later, and a French translation in 1860.
Black History 365 | # 159 Sojourner Truth, "Ain't I A Woman?"
Born into slavery in 1797, Isabella Baumfree, who later changed her name to Sojourner Truth, would become one of the most powerful advocates for human rights in the nineteenth century. Her early childhood was spent on a New York estate owned by a Dutch American named Colonel Johannes Hardenbergh. Like other slaves, she experienced the miseries of being sold and was cruelly beaten and mistreated. Around 1815 she fell in love with a fellow slave named Robert, but they were forced apart by Robert’s master. Isabella was instead forced to marry a slave named Thomas, with whom she had five children. Her most famous words, “Ain’t I A Woman?” was actually never said. Frances Gage, played her. The original, was delivered by Sojourner and transcribed by Marius Robinson, a journalist, who was in the audience at the Woman's Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio on May 29, 1851. And Gage’s version was written 12 years later, added a faux-southern dialect and published in 1863. Sojourner Truth had a Dutch accent. She didn’t speak like that. Hear the original speech here.
Black History 365 | # 158 Dr. Gholdy Muhammad
Dr. Gholnecsar (Gholdy) Muhammad is an Associate Professor of Literacy, Language, and Culture . She studies Black historical excellence within educational communities with goals of reframing curriculum and instruction today. Her book Cultivating Genius is her contribution to reframing how we should be treating black students. It’s a great read.
Black History 365 | # 157 Booker T. Washington
Booker T. Washington was one of the most powerful African Americans at the turn of the twentieth century. Born a slave in Hale's Ford, Virginia, the son of a white man who did not acknowledge him and a slave woman named Jane (Burroughs) who later married a fellow slave, Booker T. Washington became a leader in black education, and a strong influence as a racial representative in national politics. He founded Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute (Now Tuskegee University) in 1881 and the National Negro Business League two decades later. Washington advised Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft. His infamous conflicts with Black leaders like W. E. B. Du Bois over segregation caused a stir, but today, he is remembered as the most influential African American speaker of his time. In his 1900 autobiography, Up From Slavery, Booker T. Washington wrote: "I had no schooling whatever while I was a slave, though I remember on several occasions I went as far as the schoolhouse door with one of my young mistresses to carry her books. The picture of several dozen boys and girls in a schoolroom engaged in study made a deep impression on me, and I had the feeling that to get into a schoolhouse and study in this way would be about the same as getting into paradise." Dr. John Henrik Clarke has a critique on Booker T. Washington, essentially stating that Booker T. Washington was a product of white philanthropy. In other words he was a chosen leader for black people. But what is notable is that Washington knew he was gonna get got, BUT more importantly he was going to, and got his more than he got got doe. This is the insidious nature of the situation Booker T. Washington was dealt with. If you have a moment listen to Dr. Clarke’s critique on Booker T. Washington’s Atlanta Compromise Speech of 1895.