A few notable biographies of African-American icons.

Martin Luther, Jr King (1929–68)

originally Michael L King

Baptist minister and civil rights leader, born in Atlanta, Georgia, USA. The grandson and son of Baptist ministers, in 1935 his father changed both their names to Martin to honour the German Protestant. Young Martin graduated from Morehouse College in Georgia (1948) and Crozer Theological Seminary (1951) and then took a PhD from Boston University (1955), where he also met his future (1957) wife, Coretta Scott, with whom he had four children. Ordained a minister (1947) at his father's Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, he became pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, AL (1953).

Relatively untested when Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat in a bus in December 1955, he led the boycott of Montgomery's segregated buses for over a year (eventually resulting in the Supreme Court decision outlawing discrimination in public transportation). In 1957 he was chosen president of the newly formed Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and he began to broaden his active role in the civil-rights struggle while advocating his nonviolent approach to achieving results. His approach was based on the ideas of Henry David Thoreau and Mohandas Gandhi as well on Christian teachings.

In 1959 he moved to Atlanta to become co-pastor of his father's church, and in the ensuing years gave much of his energies to organizing protest demonstrations and marches in such cities as Birmingham, AL (1963), St Augustine, FL (1964), and Selma, AL (1965). During these years he was arrested and jailed by Southern officials on several occasions, he was stoned and physically attacked, and his house was bombed. He was also placed under secret surveillance by the FBI due to the strong prejudices of its director, J Edgar Hoover, who wanted to discredit King as both a leftist and a womanizer. King's finest hour came on 28 August 1963 when he led the great march in Washington, DC, that culminated with his famous ‘I have a dream’ speech at the Lincoln Memorial. At the height of his influence, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964 and he used his new-found powers to attack discrimination in the US North. Meanwhile, as the Vietnam War began to consume the country, he also broadened his criticisms of American society because he saw the impact of the war on the country's resources and energies.

In the spring of 1968 he went to Memphis, TN to show support for the striking city workers, and he was shot and killed as he stood on the balcony of his motel there. (James Earl Ray pleaded guilty to the murder, although he later insisted that he was innocent.) With his oratorical style that drew directly on the force of the Bible, and with his serene confidence derived from his non-violent philosophy, he had advocated a programme of moderation and inclusion, and although later generations would question some of his message, few could deny that he had been the guiding light for 15 of the most crucial years in America's civil-rights struggle.

Malcolm X (1925–65)

originally Malcolm Little

African-American activist, born in Omaha, Nebraska, USA. He claimed that his father, a minister and follower of Marcus Garvey, was murdered by racists in Lansing, MI (1931) (but at least one researcher claims his father died accidentally). Moving to Boston, he turned to pimping and drugs as a teenager, and was sentenced to 10 years in prison for burglary (1946), where he discovered the anti-white Black Muslims. Joining the Muslims (1952), he became a recruiter, changed his name, and came to national attention with his writings and through a television documentary (1959), both of which tended to portray him as a threat to white people.

Breaking with the Muslims (1964), he founded the Muslim Mosque in an effort to internationalize the Afro-American struggle, and journeyed to Muslim lands abroad where he was impressed with their lack of racial bias. Returning to the US convinced that whites were not inherently racist, he called himself El-Hajj Malik El Shabazz and formed the Organization of African American Unity, hoping to co-operate with progressive white groups. Before his assassination in the Audubon Ballroom in New York City (Mar 1965), he came to believe that leaders of the Nation of Islam and powerful elements within the US government wanted him dead; the only legal trial put all the blame on members of the Nation of Islam.

Alex Haley helped immortalize him as co-author of The autobiography of Malcolm X (1965), and Spike Lee's 1992 film renewed interest in the man and his message. He proved as powerful after his death as alive, influencing disparate movements with his positions on black power and neo-colonialism, and transforming the consciousness of a generation of African-Americans.

Marcus (Moziah) Garvey (1887–1940)

Social activist, born in St Ann's Bay, Jamaica. Largely self-educated, he worked as a printer in Jamaica, edited several short-lived newspapers in Costa Rica and Panama, then founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) in Jamaica (1914). In 1916 he moved to New York City where he established UNIA headquarters and began the Negro World, a popular weekly newspaper that con- veyed his message of black pride. Launching several other African-American capitalist ventures, he presided over an international convention of black people in New York (1920), where he called for freedom from white domination in Africa. His later life, however, was anticlimatic. In 1923 he was convicted of mail fraud when selling stock in his failed Black Star steamship line, which was launched for maritime trade between black nations, and he was sentenced (1923) to a five-year prison term. Other ventures also failed, including an attempt to foster black colonization to Liberia. After his release from prison (1927) he was deported to Jamaica, and in 1934 moved to London, but he never regained prominence. However, in stirring African-Americans with his message of pride in ancestry and prospects of self-sufficiency, he prefigured a later generation of African-American leaders such as Malcolm X.

Ralph J(ohnson) Bunche (1904–71)

Diplomat, statesman. Born Ralph Johnson Bunche on August 7, 1904 in Detroit, Michigan. He worked his way through college and then travelled, taught at Howard University (1928–41), and wrote A World View of Race (1937). He served in the Office of Strategic Services (1941–4) and then the State Department (1944–7).

At the start of his long career with the United Nations (1947–71), he was the acting mediator for the UN Palestine Commission (1948–9), and won the Nobel Peace Prize for this work (1950). He subsequently became under-secretary (1955–67) and under-secretary-general (1967–71) for the United Nations.

Most noted for his expertise in colonial affairs and race relations, he directed UN peacekeeping efforts in the Suez (1956), the Congo (1964), and Cyprus (1964). Although he was not an overt activist or spokesman during his public career he was arguably the most prominent role model for his fellow African-Americans until the emergence of Martin Luther King Jr.

Medgar Evers (1925-1963)

Civil rights activist. Born July 2, 1925, in Decatur, Mississippi. After growing up in a Mississippi farming family, Evers enlisted in the United States Army in 1943. He fought in both France and Germany during World War II before receiving an honorable discharge in 1946. In 1948, he entered Alcorn Agricutural and Mechanical College (now Alcorn State University) in Lorman, Mississippi. During his senior year, Evers married a fellow student, Myrlie Beasley; they later had three children: Darrell, Reena, and James.

Upon graduation from college in 1952, Evers moved to Philadelphia, Mississippi, where he began working as an insurance salesman. He and his older brother, Charles Evers, also worked on behalf of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), organizing local affiliates in Philadelphia.

In 1954, the year of the momentous Supreme Court decision Brown v. Board of Education, which purportedly ended segregation of schools, Medgar quit the insurance business; he subsequently applied and was denied admission to the University of Mississippi Law School. His unsuccessful effort to integrate the state’s oldest public educational institution attracted the attention of the NAACP’s national office. Later that year, Evers moved to the state capital of Jackson and became the first state field secretary of the NAACP in Mississippi.

As state field secretary, Evers recruited members throughout Mississippi and organized voter-registration efforts, demonstrations, and economic boycotts of white-owned companies that practiced discrimination. He also worked to investigate crimes perpetrated against blacks, most notably the lynching of Emmett Till, a 14-year-old African-American boy who had allegedly been killed for talking to a white woman.

As early as 1955, Evers’ activism made him the most visible civil rights leader in the state of Missisippi. As a result, he and his family were subjected to numerous threats and violent actions over the years, including a firebombing of their house in May 1963. At 12:40 a.m. on June 12, 1963, Evers was shot in the back in the driveway of his home in Jackson. He died less than a hour later at a nearby hospital.

Evers was buried with full military honors in Arlington National Cemetery, and the NAACP posthumously awarded him their 1963 Spingarn Medal. The national outrage over Evers’ murder increased support for legislation that would become the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Immediately after Evers’ death, the NAACP appointed his brother Charles to his position. Charles Evers went on to become a major political figure in the state; in 1969, he was elected the mayor of Fayette, Mississippi, becoming the first African-American mayor of a racially mixed Southern town since the Reconstruction.

A police and FBI investigation of the murder quickly unearthed a prime suspect—Byron De La Beckwith, a white segregationist and founding member of Mississippi’s White Citizens Council. Despite mounting evidence against him—a rifle found near the crime scene was registered to Beckwith and had his fingerprints on the scope, and several witnesses placed him in the area—Beckwith denied shooting Evers. He maintained that the gun had been stolen, and produced several witnesses to testify that he was elsewhere on the night of the murder. The bitter conflict over segregation surrounded the two trials that followed. Beckwith received the support of some of Mississippi’s most prominent citizens, including then-Governor Ross Barnett, who appeared at Beckwith’s first trial to shake hands with the defendant in full view of the jury. In 1964, Beckwith was set free after two all-white juries deadlocked.

After Beckwith’s second trial, Myrlie Evers moved with her children to California, where she earned a degree from Pomona College and was later named to the Los Angeles Commission of Public Works. Convinced that her husband’s killer had not been brought to justice, she continued to search for new evidence in the case.

In 1989, the question of Beckwith’s guilt was again raised when a Jackson newspaper published accounts of the files of the now-defunct Mississippi Sovereignty Commission, an organization that existed during the 1950s to help raise popular support for the maintenance of segregation. The accounts showed that the commission had helped lawyers for Beckwith screen potential jurors during the first two trials. A review by the Hinds County District Attorney’s office found no evidence of such jury tampering, but it did locate a number of new witnesses, including several individuals who would eventually testify that Beckwith had bragged to them about the murder.

In December 1990, Beckwith was again indicted for the murder of Medgar Evers. After a number of appeals, the Mississippi Supreme Court finally ruled in favor of a third trial in April 1993. Ten months later, testimony began before a racially mixed jury of eight blacks and four whites. In February 1994, nearly 31 years after Evers’ death, Beckwith was convicted and sentenced to life in prison. He died in January 2001 at the age of 80.

In 1995, Myrlie Evers-Williams (she is now remarried and lives in Oregon) was elected chairwoman of the board of directors of the NAACP. She is currently a member of the board’s executive committee.

Ossie Davis (1917–2005)

RELATED WORKS

* Films
* 1953 The Joe Louis Story
* 1963 Purlie Victorious
* 1970 Cotton Comes to Harlem (director)

Actor, playwright, and director, born in Cogdell, Georgia, USA. Interested in literature from an early age, he finished school at the height of the Depression, and although offered scholarships to Savannah State College and Tuskegee Institute in Alabama he was unable to accept. Later he was able to take up a place at Howard University in Washington (1935) where he began acting with a Harlem theatre company and also became an active lifelong campaigner for civil rights. During World War 2 he worked in an army hospital in Liberia, spending his free time writing and producing plays to entertain troops and local people. He made his Broadway debut in 1946 in Jeb, where he met his future wife, Ruby Dee. They co-starred in many stage productions and films, and during the 1970s had their own radio show The Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee Story Hour. Among his best-known film roles are The Joe Louis Story (1953) and Purlie Victorious (1963), and his directorial debut was a comedy-action film Cotton Comes to Harlem (1970).

Jesse (Louis) Jackson (1941– )

Civil rights activist, Baptist minister, and presidential candidate, born in Greenville, South Carolina, USA. Son of an Alabama sharecropper (he adopted his stepfather's last name), he was a good enough athlete in high school to be offered a contract by the Chicago White Sox, but he turned it down because a white player was given so much more money. He also turned down an athletic scholarship at the University of Illinois when he was told that as a black he could not expect to play quarterback. Instead he attended the mostly black Agricultural and Technical College of North Carolina in Greensboro, and in addition to being an outstanding athlete, student, and campus leader, he took a lead in protests that forced Greensboro, NC, to integrate its restaurants and theatres.

He trained for the ministry at Chicago Theological Seminary and, having joined the protest movement led by Martin Luther King Jr and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), he was named head of the Chicago branch of Operation Breadbasket (1965), becoming its national head in 1967. Operation Breadbasket was the SCLC's programme to persuade American businesses to hire blacks and to get companies to sell products made by blacks, and Jackson proved highly successful in this for several years. He also helped create the Chicago Freedom Movement (1966) to press for integrated schools and open housing. He was beside King when he was assassinated (1968) and although Jackson was viewed by some as the potential successor to King as the leader in the struggle for rights, he never quite gained the full support of all elements of the black community. Ordained a Baptist minister in 1968, he concentrated his fight for rights in Chicago, and after a falling-out with the SCLC removed him from Operation Breadbasket (1971), he founded his own organization, PUSH (People United to Save Humanity), which would continue to work for improving African-Americans' lives in a variety of fronts.

Increasingly more active on the political scene, in 1972 he led a group that successfully challenged Mayor Richard J Daley's slate of delegates at the Democratic national convention. Backed by yet another of his organizations, the Rainbow Coalition, he ran twice in the Democratic presidential primaries (1984, 1988), gaining enough votes to make him a presence at the convention. And although his occasionally extreme rhetoric and sometimes angry demeanor seemed to frighten off the broadbased support he sought, he constantly won favour with surprising constituencies as he inserted himself into a variety of events, including rushing off to Syria to gain the freedom of an American pilot, and joining picket lines at all kinds of labour actions.

In January 2001, Jackson decided to withdraw temporarily from public life following revelations of an extra-marital affair with a staffer that resulted in the birth of a daughter. He reemerged on the political scene in 2004 following the voting debacle that plagued the presidential election. He called for a congressional debate on the matter, asking for a fair count and national voting standards. His son, Jesse Jackson, Jr., has also emerged as a political figure, becoming a member of the House of Representatives from Illinois.

As controversial as he was charismatic, Jackson continued to be named whenever there was talk of the need for a new African-American leader (whether a mayor of Chicago or the first senator of Washington, DC, if it became a state), and if this very omnipresence also suggested he might be diluting his energies and abilities, he undoubtedly remained one of the more striking figures in American public life in the late 20th-c.

Absalom Jones

Absalom Jones (1746 – February 13, 1818), was an African American (a.k.a "Black" or "Negro") abolitionist and clergyman. He was the first African-American priest in the Episcopal Church and is listed on the calendar of saints and blessed under the date of his decease, February 13, in the 1979 Book of Common Prayer as "Absalom Jones, Priest, 1818".

Jones was born into slavery in Delaware. When he was 16, he was sold to a store owner in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. While still a slave of Mr. Wynkoop, he married Mary King, another slave, on January 4, 1770. He paid for her freedom by 1778, and by 1784, he paid for his own freedom.

He became a lay minister for black members in a Methodist church. He later founded St. Thomas African Church in Philadelphia, which petitioned to become an Episcopal parish. Jones was later ordained as the first African-American priest in the Episcopal Church. He was a well-known orator and helped establish the tradition of New Year's antislavery sermons.

Jones was also part of the first group of African-Americans to petition the U.S. Congress. The petition was in regard to cruelty and brutality encouraged by the 1793 Fugitive Slave Act. While House of Representatives member George Thatcher of Massachusetts responded with the desire to amend the Fugitive Slave Act, resistance to changing the law forced the proposal to fail.

Absalom Jones and Richard Allen founded the Free African Society

Booker T(aliaferro) Washington (1856–1915)

Writer, black leader, educator. Born Booker Taliaferro Washington on April 5, 1856 in Franklin County, Virginia. The son of a white slave owner and a black slave, Washington was freed after emancipation (1865) and worked as a houseboy where he learned to read and write. He studied to be a teacher at Hampton Institute, Virginia, and eventually became a writer and speaker on black issues and struggles.

In 1881, Washington was appointed principal of the newly opened Tuskegee Institute, Alabama, and built it up into a major center of black education. By cooperating with white people and enlisting the support of wealthy philanthropists, he helped raise funds to establish and operate hundreds of small community schools and institutions of higher education for blacks.

Though he was strongly criticized by W. E. B. Du Bois and his policies were repudiated by the civil rights movement, Washington remains the foremost black leader of the late 1800s. He received national prominence for his Atlanta Address of 1895 and won white support through his acceptance of the separation of blacks and whites. His autobiography, Up From Slavery, first published in 1901, is still widely read.

Colin (Luther) Powell (1937– )

US army general. Born Colin Luther Powell on April 5, 1937 in New York City. The son of Jamaican immigrants, Powell was raised in the South Bronx and graduated from the City College of New York. A member of ROTC, he took an army commission after graduation and later served in Vietnam. Powell also earned his Masters of Business Administration from George Washington University.

Powell was a professional soldier for 35 years, holding a series of senior commands and rising to the rank of 4-star General before being appointed Head of the National Security Council by President Reagan in 1987. Two years later, he took over the Army Forces Command, and was made Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff by President Bush. The post is the the highest military position in the Department of Defense and Powell is the first African-American officer to receive this distinction. He oversaw 28 crises, including Operation Desert Storm in 1991.

Powell retired from the army in 1993 and published a best-selling autobiography, My American Journey, in 1995. From 1997 to 2000, he was chairman of America's Promise, a nonprofit organization dedicated to fostering character and competence in young people.

In 2000, President George W. Bush appointed Powell Secretary of State, and he was unanimously confirmed by the U.S. Senate. During his tenure, Powell came under fire for his role in building the case for the 2003 invasion of Iraq. His chief role before and after the invasion was to garner international support for a multi-national coalition. In 2004, after acknowledging that it was unlikely that Iraq possessed stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction, Powell announced his resignation as Secretary of State. National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice was his successor.

Since his retirement, Powell has remained vocal on political topics, openly criticizing the Bush Administration on a number of issues. In 2006, he was a speaker at a special series called Get Motivated, along with former New York Mayor Rudolph Guiliani. Powell also joined Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers, a Silicon Valley venture capital firm, as a "strategic limited partner."

Powell is married to Alma Vivian Johnson; they have three children and two grandchildren.

James (Arthur) Baldwin (1924–87)

RELATED WORKS

* Novels
* 1954 Go Tell it on the Mountain
* 1957 Giovanni's Room
* 1962 Another Country
* 1965 Going to Meet the Man

Writer. Born August 2, 1924 in Harlem, New York. The son of a preacher, as a teenager he preached in a Harlem pentecostal church. After high school he began publishing polemical essays on the black experience in such journals as The Nation and Commentary.

Supported largely by fellowships, he began writing fiction in Paris (1948–56). His first novels, the autobiographical Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953) and Giovanni's Room (1956), established him as a promising novelist and anticipated some of his later themes such as racism and homosexuality. In the United States, from 1957 until the 1970s, he became a civil rights activist, and through his essays, plays, and lectures, something of a celebrity as a spokesman for angry African Americans.

His novels include Another Country (1962), Tell Me How Long the Train's Been Gone (1968), and Just Above My Head (1979). His essays were collected in several volumes including Notes of a Native Son (1955), Nobody Knows My Name (1961), The Fire Next Time (1963), and The Price of a Ticket (1985). Among his plays are The Amen Corner (produced 1955) and Blues for Mister Charlie (1964).

Baldwin lived in France during his last years, although he returned to the United States to hold special academic appointments.

Thurgood Marshall (1908–93)

Supreme Court judge, civil rights advocate. Born Thoroughgood Marshall on July 2, 1908 in Baltimore, Maryland. The great-grandson of a slave, he graduated as valedictorian from Howard University Law School (1933) and soon began to represent civil-rights activists. Becoming a counsel for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (1938), during the next 23 years he won 29 of the 32 major cases he undertook for that organization; several of the cases set constitutional precedents in matters such as voting rights and breaking down segregated transportation and education. His finest moment came with Brown v. Board of Education (1954), which overturned Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) and its ‘separate but equal’ ruling that perpetuated segregated institutions and facilities.

President John F Kennedy named him to the US Court of Appeals, a seat he finally took despite the resistance of Southern senators (1962–5). President Lyndon Johnson appointed him US solicitor general (1965–7) and then to the US Supreme Court, the first African-American to hold such an office (1967–91). Consistently voting with the liberal block, he found himself increasingly isolated as the court's make-up changed, and he was forced by ill health to retire and see his seat taken by the conservative Clarence Thomas.

Marshall died of heart failure on January 24, 1993. He was buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

W(illiam) E(dward) B(urghardt) Du Bois (1868–1963)

RELATED WORKS

* 1899 The Philadelphia Negro
* 1903 The Soul of Black Folk (essays)
* 1940 Dusk of Dawn (autobiography)

Historian, sociologist, political activist, and writer, born in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, USA. Supported by the local school headmaster and the Congregational Church in Great Barrington, he was educated at Fisk University (1885–8), where he was shocked by the racial segregation he experienced in the South. He went on to take a PhD at Harvard (1895), with two years at the University of Berlin (1892–4). Under the auspices of the University of Pennsylvania, he studied black life in the Philadelphia ghetto, writing The Philadelphia Negro (1899). A professor of economics, history, and sociology at Atlanta University (1898–1910), he sponsored an annual conference for the Study of the Negro Problem and wrote essays compiled in The Soul of Black Folk (1903), calling for an activist African-American middle class to change racial politics. Founding the Niagara Movement (1905) to fight segregation, he also organized its official magazine, Horizon: A Journal of the Color Line (1907–10).

He resigned from teaching (1910) to serve as director of publications and research for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in New York, editing Crisis: A Record of the Darker Races (1910–34), a magazine that was credited with encouraging many early civil-rights activists. However, when he argued that African-Americans should voluntarily segregate themselves to organize economically during the Great Depression of the 1930s, he alienated the NAACP leadership, so he resigned in 1934. He returned to Atlanta University to chair the sociology department (1934–44), where he founded a scholarly journal, Phylon: A Review of Race and Culture (1940–4), and completed his autobiography, Dusk of Dawn (1940).

Forced to retire at age 76, he returned to the NAACP, serving as director of special research (1944–8), leaving when his Marxist politics became a liability. Chairman of the Peace Information Centre, an antinuclear weapons group, he was indicted as a foreign agent (1951), and although acquitted his passport was revoked (1952–8). He later toured Europe, China, and the Soviet Union, where he received the Lenin Peace Prize (1959). After joining the Communist Party (1961), he moved to Accra, Ghana, becoming a naturalized citizen just before he died.

George Washington Carver (1861–1943)

Agricultural chemist, educator, botanist. Born c. 1864 near Diamond Grove, Missouri. Born to slave parents, he began his education at age 14 and earned a BS and MS in agriculture (1894, 1896) from Iowa State College. He directed the agricultural research department at Tuskegee Institute, Alabama (1896–1943), teaching and pioneering an extension programme of ‘movable schools’ to train black farmers in agriculture and home economics.

Aiming to revitalize and conserve depleted soil, he influenced the southern shift from single-crop to diversified agriculture by developing numerous products made from peanuts, sweet potatoes, and other crops, many of them commercially viable. He developed a hybrid cotton and was a noted collector of fungi.

Working with very limited resources outside the white scientific establishment, he published little more than his 44 Tuskegee Experiment Station bulletins (1898–1942) and, wishing his work to be widely available, obtained only three patents; nevertheless he became a researcher of international stature. He chose not to challenge the system of segregation that existed during his lifetime, but became an outstanding example of what African-Americans could accomplish.

Dred Scott (c.1795–c.1858)

Slave, born in Southampton Co, Virginia, USA. He made legal and constitutional history in the Dred Scott Case (1848–57), which sought to obtain his freedom on the ground that his master took him from Missouri (a slave state) to Illinois (a free state). The Supreme Court ruled against him, but the decision served to increase anti-slavery agitation in the North. He was soon emancipated, and became a hotel porter in St Louis, MO.

Frederick Douglass (c.1817–95)

RELATED WORKS

* 1845 Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave
* 1881 Life and Times of Frederick Douglass

Abolitionist, writer, and public official, born near Tuckahoe, Maryland, USA. Born into slavery (his father was white, his mother was part American Indian), he was taught to read as a household servant but at age 16 was sent out to work as a field hand. In 1836 he was apprenticed to a shipyard in Baltimore, MD but he escaped (1838) and settled in New Bedford, MA, where he assumed the name by which he became known.

After he made a speech before the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society (1841), he was hired as an agent and he lectured throughout the North. Because his intelligence and speaking abilities led some to question whether he had been a slave, he published Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (1845). Then, fearing for his freedom, he fled to England, where he lectured with such effect that the British contributed a generous sum of money that, together with money contributed by Americans, helped him buy his freedom when he returned to the USA (1847). He went to Rochester, NY, where he co-founded (with Martin Delany) the abolitionist periodical North Star, which he edited for 16 years (the Frederick Douglass's Paper from 1851). In 1859 he took refuge in Canada for a short time because he was falsely accused of aiding John Brown. He took a more gradualist approach to ending slavery but never wavered as the leading voice of African-Americans' call for freedom and equality. During the Civil War he urged President Lincoln to emancipate the slaves, and he helped recruit African-American troops.

After the war he spoke out for other social reforms such as women's suffrage. He also held a series of government posts, including assistant secretary to the Santo Domingo Commission, marshal of the District of Columbia (1877–81), district recorder of deeds (1881–6), and ambassador to Haiti (1889–91). In 1881 he issued a final revision of his autobiography as Life and Times of Frederick Douglass.

W(illiam) C(hristopher) Handy (1873–1958)

RELATED WORKS

* Compositions
* 1912 Memphis Blues
* 1914 St. Louis Blues
* 1914 Yellow Dog Blues
* 1916 Beale Street Blues

Composer, musician, music publisher. Born on November 16, 1873, in Florence, Alabama. Sometimes called the “Father of the Blues,” Handy is credited with helping popularize blues music. The son and grandson of ministers, he showed his love of music at an early age. Some reports say that he joined a minstrel show—a theatrical production that featured African American music—at the age of fifteen. Handy later studied at Teachers Agricultural and Mechanical College, in Huntsville, Alabama, around 1892. He became a schoolteacher briefly, but decided to pursue his music career.

In 1896, Handy joined W. A. Mahara’s Minstrels, as its bandleader. He stayed with the group for several years. Handy worked with a few other bands and ended up in Memphis in the early 1900s. He wrote his first song in 1909—a campaign song called “Mr. Crump” for a candidate for mayor of Memphis. The song was later changed and became “Memphis Blues.” He made a deal to get the song published in 1912, making it the first published commercial blues song. “Memphis Blues” became a big hit, but Handy didn’t get to reap the rewards of its success since he had sold the rights to it. To avoid this problem, he published his next successful song, “St. Louis Blues” (1914), using his own company which was later known Handy Brothers Music Company. Other Handy hit songs included Yellow Dog Blues (1914) and “Beale Street Blues” (1916).

In 1918, Handy moved his business to New York and later scored success with the composition “Aunt Hagar’s Blues.” He continued to promote blues to mainstream audiences in the 1920s, editing Blues: An Anthology (1926) and putting together the first blues performance in New York City’s Carnegie Hall in 1928. Handy continued working steadily through the 1930s, publishing collections of African American music.

Handy’s autobiography, Father of the Blues, was published in 1941. Having experienced problems with his eyesight for years, he became blind by the mid-1940s. The legendary blues composer died of pneumonia on March 29, 1958. Only months after his death, his life story was playing on the silver screen in movie theaters across the country in the film Father of the Blues, which starred singer Nat King Cole as Handy.

Sidney Poitier (1924– )

RELATED WORKS

* Films
* 1955 The Blackboard Jungle
* 1958 The Defiant Ones
* 1963 Lilies of the Field
* 1967 Guess Who's Coming to Dinner

Actor, director. Born February 20, 1927 in Miami, Florida. Born prematurely on the high seas en route to Miami, Poitier grew up in The Bahamas. His youth was filled with delinquency, and his parents eventually sent him to live with his brother in Florida at age 16. Poitier served a short stint in the United States Army before moving to New York to pursue an acting career.

A student at the American Negro Theater in New York City, Poitier appeared on stage and in films before making his Hollywood debut in 1950. Cast mainly in supporting roles, he won an Oscar for Lilies of the Field (1963). The win marked the first Oscar awarded to a black actor and made Poitier cinema's first African American superstar, one who consciously defied racial stereotyping. Handsome and unassuming, he brought dignity to the portrayal of noble and intelligent characters, including Philadelphia detective Virgil Tibbs in In the Heat of the Night (1967). Other notable films include The Defiant Ones and Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967).

During the 1970s he also began to direct, producing a number of lowbrow comedies such as the successful Richard Pryor-Gene Wilder vehicle Stir Crazy (1980) and Ghost Dad (1990). He returned to acting after a 10-year absence, appearing in Shoot to Kill (1988), Little Nikita (1988), Sneakers (1992), and One Man, One Vote (1997). In 2001, he received a Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album for his autobiographical book The Measure of a Man. In 2002, he received and an honorary Oscar.

Poitier was married to Juanita Hardy from 1950 until 1965; the couple has four children. He is currently married to Canadian-born actress Joanna Shimkus, they have two children. He was appointed a Knight Commander of the British Empire in 1974, which entitles him to use the title "Sir," though he chooses not to do so. He has also served as non-resident Bahamian ambassador to Japan and to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization.

(James Mercer) Langston Hughes (1902–67)

RELATED WORKS

* 1926 The Weary Blues
* 1927 Fine Clothes to the Jew
* 1942 Shakespeare in Harlem
* 1947 Fields of Wonder
* 1951 Montage of a Dream Deferred

Poet, writer, playwright.Born February 1, 1902 in Joplin, Missouri. After publishing his first poem, ‘The Negro Speaks of Rivers’ (1921), he attended Columbia University (1921), but left after one year to work on a freighter, travelling to Africa, living in Paris and Rome, and supporting himself with odd jobs. After his poetry was promoted by Vachel Linday, he attended Lincoln University (1925–9), and while there his first book of poems, The Weary Blues (1926), launched his career as a writer.

As one of the founders of the cultural movement known as the Harlem Renaissance, which he practically defined in his essay, ‘The Negro Artist and the Radical Mountain’ (1926), he was innovative in his use of jazz rhythms and dialect to depict the life of urban blacks in his poetry, stories, and plays. Having provided the lyrics for the musical Street Scene (1947) and the play that inspired the opera Troubled Island (1949), in the 1960s he returned to the stage with works that drew on black gospel music, such as Black Nativity (1961).

A prolific writer for four decades, he abandoned the Marxism of his youth, but never gave up protesting the injustices committed against his fellow African Americans. Among his most popular creations was Jesse B Semple, better known as ‘Simple’, a black Everyman featured in the syndicated column he began in 1942 for the Chicago Defender.

In his later years, Hughes completed a two-volume autobiography and edited anthologies and pictorial volumes. Because he often employed humour and seldom portrayed or endorsed violent confrontations, he was for some years disregarded as a model by black writers, but by the 1980s he was being reappraised and was newly appreciated as a significant voice of African Americans.