Black History 365 | # 161 Noah Lyles
In August 2023, Lyles became a six-time world champion when he took home three gold medals in the 100m, 200m and relay in Budapest. He became the first man since Usain Bolt to complete the sprint treble at a World Championships and is placed second behind him on the 200m world all-time list at the World Athletics Championships. Lyles won two gold medals in the 200m and the relay at the 2019 World Championships held in Doha. In 2021, he went on to win his first ever Olympic bronze medal in Tokyo in the 200m men's final. Two years later, the 26-year-old claimed his second global title in the 200m and surpassed Michael Johnson's longstanding national record of 19.32 by running 19.31 which moved him to third on the world all-time list, winning gold and silver medals. Lyles has been quoted as saying, "To be honest, I just see myself as an athlete. Of course, I am black, and I do have that representation, but I feel I hate when I have to say that I am black. It's a tough journey no matter who you are, I feel that is important for all of us to recognize. I am going to show all my sides. Of course, I am going to show my black side - that's why I grow out my hair, plait my hair, wear it in different styles because I know that there is probably a black kid out there who's been told their hair is ugly and I'm out here, being a star, being seen on TV and going to the Olympics and showing that you can do your hair however you want, you're still going to be fine." We gon’ stall him out. Congratulations.
Black History 365 | # 163 Walter Francis White
This is Walter Francis White, what is interesting about White was the executive secretary for the NAACP from 1931-1955. His appearance was that of a White man because he was. White was biracial, but chose to go through his life as a black man despite his appearance. His main goal was to abolish lynching. Throughout his career investigations of lynchings and race riots and conducted a vigorous, sustained drive for enactment of a federal antilynching law. Although no such law was enacted, the climate of public opinion was markedly changed by his investigations and exposés. In 1918, when he joined the NAACP staff, 67 persons, all but 4 of them blacks, were lynched. In the year of his death, 1955, there were only three recorded lynchings, and none had occurred in the five previous years. Lynchings had become a rarity and were soon to disappear from the American scene. As he put it in his book, “I am not white. There is nothing within my mind and heart which tempts me to think I am. Yet I realize acutely that the only characteristic which matters to either the white or the colored race—the appearance of whiteness—is mine. There is magic in a white skin; there is tragedy, loneliness, exile, in a black skin.” I don’t know about that tragedy and loneliness part, I guess I understand, but great work.
Black History 365 | # 162 E. Franklin Frazier
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.