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Henry Johnson

Private Henry Johnson distinguished himself by extraordinary acts of heroism at the risk of his life above and be­yond the call of duty while serving as a mem­ber of Company C, 369th Infantry Regi­ment, 93d Infantry Division, American Expe­di­tionary Forces on May 15, 1918, during combat operations against the enemy on the front lines of the Western Front in France. In the early morning hours, Private Johnson and another soldier were on sentry duty at a forward outpost when they received a surprise attack from a German raiding party consisting of at least 12 soldiers. While under intense enemy fire and despite receiving significant wounds, Private Johnson mounted a brave retaliation, resulting in several enemy casualties. When his fellow soldier was badly wounded and being carried away by the enemy, Private Johnson exposed himself to grave danger by advancing from his position to engage the two enemy captors in hand-to-hand combat.

Wielding only a knife and gravely wounded himself, Private John­son continued fight­ing, defeating the two cap­tors and rescu­ing the wounded soldier. Dis­playing great cour­age, he continued to hold back the larger enemy force until the defeated enemy retreated leav­ing behind a large cache of weapons and equip­ment and pro­viding valuable intelli­gence. Without Private Johnson's quick actions and continued fighting, even in the face of almost certain death, the enemy might have succeeded in capturing prisoners and the out­post, without aban­don­ing valu­able intelli­gence. Private John­son's extraor­dinary heroism and self­less­ness above and beyond the call of duty are in keeping with the highest traditions of the military service and reflect great credit upon himself, Company C, 369th Infantry Regiment, 93d Infantry Division and the United States Army.

He died penniless and unrecognized at the time. For a biography, go HERE.

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Click on headline to read the (somewhat long) article...

The woman who defied the odds as the first Black nurse in the U.S.

At a time when Black women were largely excluded from formal training, Mary Eliza Mahoney set a new standard for who could serve in American hospitals.

Sixteen-hour days, seven days a week, scrubbing floors, em­ptying bedpans, and even­tually assisting nurses and doctors. For 15 years, Mary Eliza Mahoney toiled at Bos­ton’s New England Hospital for Women and Children as a maid, cook, and washer­woman. These were the only jobs open to Black women during an era historians now darkly recall as “the nadir of American race relations.”

Despite how limited her options were, Mahoney dreamed of being at the forefront of patient care. In 1878, a 33-year-old Mahoney applied to nursing school at the hospital where she worked. Although she was two years older than the pro­gram permitted, the admin­is­trators waived the age re­quire­ment, as they'd seen years of her work.

Mahoney became the first Black professionally trained nurse in the United States and also went on to raise nursing’s standards and open its doors to other Black women, insisting that professional excellence and racial justice were inseparable.

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Women's History Month continues...

Margaret Mitchell

Margaret Mitchell (born November 8, 1900, Atlanta, Georgia, U.S.—died August 16, 1949, Atlanta) was the American author and journalist who wrote Gone With the Wind, a novel that achieved enormous popu­larity after its publica­tion in 1936. It earned her a National Book Award and a Pulitzer Prize, and it was the source of the Oscar-winning film of the same name released in 1939. Mitchell’s romanticized depiction of the South during the Civil War era, particularly her disregard for the realities of slavery, has drawn criticism. Gone With the Wind is the only book by Mitchell that was published during her lifetime.

SOURCE

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Click on headline to read all about her...

Margaret E Knight: The Most Famous Woman Inventor of the 19th Century

Margaret E Knight was a prolific female American inventor of the 19th century who created many machines and mechanisms used for a variety of industrial and everyday purposes. She is most noted for her invention of a machine used to make flat-bottom paper bags, facilitating the mass production of these. Indeed this type of paper bag is often used by many Americans in particular to carry groceries and packed-lunches to this day. Knight obtained this patent at a time when few women held any intellectual property, making her achievement all the more impressive, becoming a symbol for women’s empowerment.

By the time she died in 1914, Knight had gone on to patent 27 inventions and had made around 90 inventions, with her obituary describing her as a ‘woman Edison’. Here we look at her life, inventions and legacy.

Patent model for the Paper Bag Machine

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For Women's History Month...

Irena Sendler

Between 1942 and 1943, Irena Sendler and her network of 10 compatriots rescued 2,500 Jewish children from the Warsaw ghetto. Disguised as an infec­tion-control nurse, Sendler knocked on doors in the ghetto, asking parents and grandparents to give up their children and grandchildren so that she could smuggle them out. Each child was given a new Polish name and forged identity papers and hidden in foster homes, orphan­ages, or convents. Sendler in­sisted that lists of the children be kept, documenting their Jewish and Polish names, so that after the war they would know their original identities. She hid the lists in milk jars that were buried in the backyard of one of her co-conspirators.

The German occupiers suspected Sendler's involvement in the Pol­ish Underground and in Octo­ber 1943 she was arrested by the Gestapo, but she man­aged to hide the list of the names and locations of the rescued Jewish children, preventing this information from falling into the hands of the Gestapo. With­stand­ing torture and imprisonment, Sendler never revealed anything about her work or the location of the saved children. She was sentenced to death but narrowly escaped on the day of her scheduled execution, after some cohorts bribed German officials to obtain her release.

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March is...

'Who Wear the Pants?' Women -- By Court Okay

Helen Hulick Beebe walked into the courtroom wearing slacks. She wasn't doing so to make any kind of state­ment. Rather, the com­for­table pants were simply part of her daily work attire as a kindergarten teacher in Los Angeles, CA.

But this was 1938. And when Helen took the witness stand to testify in a burglary case against two men who had broken into her home, the judge commented on her slacks. He told her to come back the following court day wearing a dress.

As she told reporters at the time, “Listen, I’ve worn slacks since I was 15. I don’t own a dress except a formal. If he wants me to appear in a formal gown that’s okay with me. I’ll come back in slacks and if he puts me in jail I hope it will help to free women forever of anti-slackism.”

She arrived the next day wearing her pants again. To which the judge said,

Click on headline above to read what the judge had to say.

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Click on headline to learn more about her...

Josephine Baker’s Daring Double Life as a World War II Spy

Using fame as a cover, the glamorous entertainer spied for the French Resistance against the Nazis.

As war drums reverberated across Europe in 1939, the head of France’s military intelligence ser­vice recruited an unlikely spy: France’s most famous woman—Josephine Baker.

Jacques Abtey had spent the early days of World War II recruiting spies to collect infor­mation on Nazi Germany and other Axis powers. Typically, the secret service chief sought out men who could travel incognito. Then again, nothing was typical when it came to the American-born dancer and singer.

Born into poverty in St. Louis in 1906, Baker had grown up fatherless in a series of rat-infested hovels. She had only sporadic schooling and married for the first time at age 13. Stung by discrimination in Jim Crow America based on her skin color, she left at the age of 19 to perform as a burlesque dancer in the music halls of Paris where her risqué dance routines while clad in little more than a string of pearls and a rubber banana skirt made her a Jazz Age sensation. After branching out into singing and acting in films, she became Europe’s highest-paid entertainer.

A celebrity of Baker’s stature made for a most unlikely spy candidate since she could never travel surreptitiously—but that’s exactly what made her such an enticing prospect. Fame would be her cover. Abtey hoped Baker could use her charm, beauty and stardom to seduce secrets from the lips of fawning diplomats at embassy parties.

Having found in France the freedom that America promised on parchment, Baker agreed to spy for her adopted country. “France made me what I am,” she told Abtey. “The Parisians gave me their hearts, and I am ready to give them my life.”

The cries of “Go back to Africa!” she had heard from fascists while performing across Europe also fueled her decision. “Of course I wanted to do all I could to aid France, my adopted country,” she told Ebony magazine decades later, “but an overriding con­sider­ation, the thing that drove me as strongly as did patriotism, was my violent hatred of discrimination in any form.”

(Images are from Google.)

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Max Robinson

Max Robinson shattered racial barriers in Ameri­can journal­ism. As the first Afri­can Ameri­can man to anchor a net­work news­cast, he reshaped how Black Americans were seen and represented on national television. In 1965 he joined WTOP-TV in Wash­ing­ton, D.C., as a correspondent and camera operator, but he moved quickly to nearby WRC-TV, where he won awards for cov­erage of race riots and docu­men­tary on life in poor urban neigh­bor­hoods. While his on-air presence challenged stereotypes and inspired countless aspiring journalists, his impact went beyond. He co-founded the National Association of Black Journalists, advocating for media diversity and empowering future generations of Black voices. Don Lemon said, "Max Robinson was an inspirational figure for me when I decided to become a TV journalist and news anchor," according to The Aids Monument. Robinson's legacy stands as a testament to the power of breaking through barriers and using your platform to amplify underrepresented narratives. He paved the way for a more inclusive media landscape, leaving a lasting impact on both journalism and the perception of Black communities in America.

He died of complications from AIDS and kept his diagnosis hidden to avoid facing the stigma associated with the disease at the time. However, he asked his wife to go public with his cause of death before he passed in an effort to raise awareness and educate the Black community about the seriousness of AIDS.

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Ella Baker

Baker was an essential activist during the civil rights movement. She was a field secretary and branch director for the NAACP and co-founded an organization that raised money to fight Jim Crow laws. Additionally, Baker was a key organizer for Martin Luther King Jr.'s Southern Christian Lead­er­ship Conference. But what was perhaps her biggest contribution to the move­ment was the Student Non­vio­lent Coordinating Committee which priori­tized non­vio­lent protest, assisted in organizing the 1961 Freedom Rides, and aided in registering Black voters. The Ella Baker Center for Human Rights exists today to carry on her legacy.

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Ruby Bridges

On Bridges’ first day at William Frantz Ele­men­tary, she had to be accom­pa­nied by U.S. Marshals. Protests from white parents and offi­cials led to concerns for her safety. In fact, “...White parents in Louisiana vehemently protested the idea, and school boards and poli­ticians sought to block desegregation in the state,” (Devlin 2020). Once let into the school, Bridges was brought to the principal’s office immediately. She recalls that, “...The crowd that was outside, they immediately rushed in behind me. They started to run into every class, and they took every child out of school. So, by the end of that day, 500 kids… were taken out,” (Bridges 2024). She mused that her entire first day was spent in the principal’s office.

Upon attending the once all-white school for the first time, Bridges not only faced blatant discrimination but was also the only student in her class. Her teacher, Barbara Henry, was a white woman from Boston. She solely taught Bridges for the entirety of first grade. Many years later, Bridges’ spoke highly of Henry and remarked that “Even though she looked exactly like people outside the school, she showed me her heart,” (Bridges 2015). Despite these circumstances, Bridges never once missed a day of school. She was escorted each day by both her mother and U.S. Marshals (Smith 2021).

The racism she faced each day while attending school took on various forms: many white students’ parents chose to homeschool them, objects were thrown at her, and, perhaps most harrowing, Bridges recalls being “greeted” by a woman displaying a black doll in a wooden coffin (Hilbert College n.d.). Additionally, Bridges could not partake in communal spaces such as the cafeteria (she brought her own lunch for fear of being poisoned) or the playground (she often played inside with her teacher), and when she needed to use the bathroom, she was accompanied by a U.S. Marshall (Rose, 2021; Hilbert College n.d.).

SOURCE

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Clementine Hunter

Born in the late 1880s, Clemen­tine Hunter spent most of her early life work­ing on a farm before moving to Mel­rose Plantation as a teen­ager. During the period of time she worked at Melrose, the home’s owner — Cammie Henry — hosted several artists on the grounds under the condition that the artists create or leave. One of the artists left his sup­plies at the home after his stay. These sup­plies were found by Clementine Hunter and famously used to create her first art piece. In 1955, Hunter was the first African-American artist to have a solo art show at a gallery in New Orleans and another at North­western State College (now University.) As an African-American, she was not allowed into the college gal­lery with white patrons; she had to be snuck in the back to see her own exhibition.

Hunter was a prolific painter who started in her 50s and eventually created more than 5,000 works of art literally leaving her legacy on every spare piece of flat surface avail­able. She painted scenes from the plantation world around her: hanging clothes to dry, funeral processionals and people in her community. Using both bright colors and the size and scale of objects in her paintings, she conveyed how she felt about the people in her community (being painted bigger meant being important). Because of the vast number of paintings and her unique painting style, her artwork plays an important role in under­stand­ing life in the Cane River region during the early- to mid-twentieth century. Although Hunter originally sold her artwork for as little as one dollar (or 25 cents to look through her gallery), her pieces often sell for top price today and have been featured in many prestigious art museums across the globe. Hunter passed in 1988 at age 100.

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Worth reading...

Untitled 1990 Art Piece by David Wojnarowicz

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For Black History Month...

Josephine Baker

Freda Josephine Baker was an American-born French singer, dancer, actress, and activist. A Jazz Age icon known for her risqué performances, Baker became a World War II spy for the French Resistance. She used her celebrity to gain access to high-ranking Axis officials. Baker was a civil rights advocate who participated in demonstrations and boycotted segregated venues.

"You know, friends, that I do not lie to you when I tell you I have walked into the palaces of kings and queens and into the houses of presidents. And much more. But I could not walk into a hotel in America and get a cup of coffee, and that made me mad.”

MORE HERE

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For Black History Month...

Lena Horne

"I was unique in that I was a kind of black that white peo­ple could accept," she once said.
"I was their day­dream. I had
the worst kind of accep­tance because it was never for how great I was or what I con­trib­uted. It was because of the way I looked."

In the 1940s, she was one of the first black per­formers hired to sing with a major white band, the first to play the Copa­cabana night­club and among a hand­ful with a Holly­wood contract.

In 1943, MGM Studios loaned her to 20th Century-Fox to play the role of Selina Rogers in the all-black movie musical "Stormy Weather." Her ren­di­tion of the title song became a major hit and her sig­na­ture piece.

But Horne was perpetually frustrated with the public humiliation of racism. While at MGM, she starred in the all-black "Cabin in the Sky," in 1943, but in most of her other movies, she appeared only in musical numbers that could be cut in the racially insensitive South without affecting the story. These included "I Dood It," a Red Skelton comedy, "Thou­sands Cheer" and "Swing Fever," all in 1943; "Broadway Rhythm" in 1944; and "Ziegfeld Follies" in 1946.

Later she embraced activism, breaking loose as a voice for civil rights and as an artist.
In the last decades of her life, she rode a new wave of popularity as a revered icon of American popular music.

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For Black History Month...

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I found out about this only yesterday...

Anita Bryant, popular singer who became vocal opponent of gay rights, dies at 84

SOURCE

I hope she's spinning in her grave right now.

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I never knew this. In my youth I had a crush on him. Click on headline to read entire medium-length article...

Tommy Kirk: Clean-cut child star of Old Yeller

Although he was largely adored by critics and audiences for his role in the 1950s tear­jerker, Kirk’s career eventually fell victim to the rampant homophobia of the time after coming out as gay

For a few years beginning in the late 1950s, Walt Disney’s busiest actor was a young man named Tommy Kirk, a clean-cut Kentucky native who came to personify the studio’s brand of wholesome family entertainment.

Frequently starring opposite Fred MacMurray or Annette Funicello, he befriended a scrappy dog on the Texas frontier in Old Yeller (1957), transformed into a sheepdog after trying on a cursed ring in The Shaggy Dog (1959), explored a remote island in Swiss Family Robinson (1960) and experimented with mind-reading while playing a teenage genius in The Misadventures of Merlin Jones (1964).

His movies were so popular that, according to Kirk, Disney once introduced him to Hollywood gossip columnist Hedda Hopper by saying, “This is my good-luck piece here.” Some three decades later, the comment still resonated. “I never forgot that,” Kirk told the Orlando Sentinel in 1991. “That’s the nicest compliment he ever paid me.”

Friday...

November 22, 1963

John F. Kennedy

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Emile Treville Holley

Photo: Bettmann Archives/Getty Images/Fine Art America

Emile Treville Holley, center, spring 1922, being congratulated by CCNY classmates.

Holley had been an outstanding student at high school in Flushing, and enrolled in City College when he was only 16. The following spring, Congressman Martin Ansorge nomi­nated him for admission to the Naval Academy at Annapolis. It caused an uproar at the school.

Midshipmen (undergraduates) said he would be “condemned to Coventry” (i.e., socially ostracized). Officers (faculty) expressed sympathy for Holley but said there was no regu­lation under which they could compel the white students to treat him as an equal.

In any event, Holley did not pass the entrance examination. He transferred to Middlebury College and became its first African-American graduate in 1925, earning a cum laude degree with honors in philosophy and English and membership in Phi Beta Kappa. He went on to earn a master’s degree from Middlebury and became a professor of English and philosophy in a number of African-American colleges and universities.