Timothy Thomas Fortune

During twenty years of active journalism in New York I have found it to be true that the successes we achieve in life, of whatever character, usually cost us so much in effort and anxiety that very little capacity for the enjoyment of the fruits of our labors is left us.

Timothy Thomas Fortune was born October 3, 1856 in Marianna, Florida. He was educated at the first Freedmen's School in Florida and served as a page in the State Senate before apprenticing at a Jacksonville newspaper. After studying journalism for a year at Howard University he worked at the People's Advocate newspaper in Washington, D.C. before relocating to New York City in 1881.

Fortune then worked as a printer and editor for several newspapers before acquiring financing in 1884 to establish his own paper, The New York Globe, later known as The New York Freedman and The New York Age. Also in 1884 he published his first book, Black and White: Land, Labor and Politics in the South, a vivid description of the discrimination and racism of the post-Reconstruction era. His writing appeared in 30 books, including a volume of poetry, Dreams of Life, in 1905.

In 1890 Fortune led a meeting of over 100 delegates from 23 states to form the National Afro-American League, which he had proposed in an earlier editorial as a "national all-black coalition of state and local chapters to assert equal rights and protest discrimination, disenfranchisement, lynching, and mob law." The League only lasted four years but was revived in 1898 as the National Afro-American Council, which again met with little success yet stayed in existence long enough to serve as a fore-runner of the Niagara Movement. Fortune is credited with being the first person to use the term "Afro-American."

Although after the death of Frederick Douglass in 1895 Fortune was considered the most outspokenly militant African American in the North, he frequently collaborated with Booker T. Washington, editing  for Washington and promoting his views in the Age. This stance led to criticism and decreased revenue for the paper, and after years of heavy drinking Fortune suffered a nervous breakdown in 1907. His biographer, Emma Lou Thornbrough wrote that "unable to bend as Washington had, he was broken." Washington, as a major stockholder, took control of the Age, later selling it to Fred R. Moore. It continued to be published until 1960.

Fortune gradually recovered and worked at newspapers in Philadelphia, Washington, and Indianapolis, and in 1923 became editor of Marcus Garvey's Negro World. He died in Philadelphia on June 2, 1928 at the age of 71.


Bartow Black

’Twas when the Proclamation came,—
   Far in the sixties back,—
He left his lord, and changed his name
   To “Mister Bartow Black.”

He learned to think himself a man,
   And privileged, you know,
To adopt a new and different plan,—
   To lay aside the hoe.

He took the lead in politics,
   And handled all the “notes,”—
For he was up to all the tricks
   That gather in the votes;

For when the war came to a close
   And negroes “took a stand,”
Young Bartow with the current rose,
   The foremost in command.

His voice upon the “stump” was heard;
   He “Yankeedom” did prate;
The “carpet-bagger” he revered;
   The Southerner did hate.

He now was greater than the lord
   Who used to call him slave,
For he was on the “County Board,”
   With every right to rave.

But this amazing run of luck
   Was far too good to stand;
And soon the chivalrous “Ku-Klux”
   Rose in the Southern land.

Then Bartow got a little note,—
   ’Twas very queerly signed,—
It simply told him not to vote,
   Or be to death resigned.

Young Bartow thought this little game
   Was very fine and nice
To bring his courage rare to shame
   And knowledge of justice.

“What right have they to think I fear?”
   He to himself did say.
“Dare they presume that I do care
   How loudly they do bray?

“This is my home, and here I die,
   Contending for my right!
Then let them come! My colors fly!
   I’m ready now to fight!

“Let those who think that Bartow Black,—
   An office-holder, too!—
Will to the cowards show his back,
   Their vain presumption rue!”

Bartow pursued his office game,
   And made the money, too,
But home at nights he wisely came
   And played the husband true.

When they had got their subject tame,
   And well-matured their plan,
They at the hour of midnight came,
   And armed was every man!

They numbered fifty Southern sons,
   And masked was every face;
And Winfield rifles were their guns,—
   You could that plainly trace.

One Southern brave did have a key,
   An entrance quick to make;
They entered all; but meek, you see,
   Their victim not to wake!

They reached his room! He was in bed,—
   His wife was by his side!
They struck a match above his head,—
   His eyes he opened wide!

Poor Bartow could not reach his gun,
   Though quick his arm did stretch,
For twenty bullets through him spun,
   That stiffly laid the wretch.

And then they rolled his carcass o’er,
   And filled both sides with lead;
And then they turned it on the floor,
   And shot away his head!

Ere Black his bloody end did meet
   His wife had swooned away;
The Southern braves did now retreat,—
   There was no need to stay!

Alain Locke

"For generations the Negro has been the peasant matrix of that section of America which has most undervalued him, and here he has contributed not only materially in labor and in social patience, but spiritually as well.... In less than half a generation it will be easier to recognize this, but the fact remains that a leaven of humor, sentiment, imagination and tropic nonchalance has gone into the making of the South from a humble, unacknowledged source."

Alain Locke was born September 13, 1886 in Philadelphia. His grandfather, Ishmael Locke, had studied at Cambridge and established schools in Liberia before becoming the headmaster of a school in Providence, Rhode Island. He attended Harvard University, graduating summa cum laude with degrees in History and philosophy in three years as a member of Phi Beta Kappa, and became the first African American Rhodes Scholar, studying at Hertford College of Oxford University. He then attended the University of Berlin and the College de France.

In 1912 Locke began teaching English at Howard University, where W.E.B. DuBois and Carter G. Woodson were also on the faculty. In 1917 he returned to Harvard, earning a doctorate in philosophy. His dissertation was on the premise that prejudices are not objectively true or false, and therefore are not universal. This was the beginning of his theory of "cultural pluralism", the view that the uniqueness of different styles and values within a culture are to be maintained and appreciated.

Locke returned to Howard as a full professor of philosophy but his desire for a curriculum including African American studies led to conflicts with the university president and all-white board of directors, and he was dismissed in 1925. Protests by students, alumni and the African American press led to his reinstatement but he did not return until three years later when an African American, Mordecai Johnson, was named president.

During this three-year period Locke firmly established his reputation as the leading authority on African American culture with the publication of The New Negro, an anthology of poems and prose, linked together by his essays about the increased race-consciousness, self-determination and sophistication of young, urban African Americans. He brought the Harlem Renaissance to the attention of white America, and mentored writers such  as Zora Neale Hurston, Langston Hughes and Countee Cullen. Throughout his lifetime he published over 300 books and articles, including an annual list of books relevant to African American culture.

Locke was never able to promote African American studies at Howard, but he was successful in creating a department of social sciences in 1935 and a Phi Beta Kappa chapter in 1953. He died in New York City on June 9, 1954 at the age of 67. He was a member of Phi Beta Sigma fraternity.

Larry Neal

"...On the road:
It would be some hoodoo town
It would be some cracker place
you might meet redneck lynchers
face to face
but mostly you meet mean horn blowers
running obscene riffs..."


(from "Don't Say Goodbye to the Porkpie Hat")


Lawrence Paul Neal was born September 5, 1937 in Atlanta. When he was a small child his family moved to Philadelphia, where he graduated from Lincoln University in 1961 with a double major in English and History. He then earned a master's degree from the University of Pennsylvania and taught briefly at Drexel before moving to New York City.

Neal became arts editor of the black nationalist magazine The Liberator, where he reviewed African American events and became a leading voice of the Black Arts Movement which he described in a 1968 essay as being

...radically opposed to any concept of the artist that alienates him from his community. Black Art is the aesthetic and spiritual sister of the Black Power concept. As such, it envisions an art that speaks directly to the needs and aspirations of Black America....The Black Arts and the Black Power concept both relate broadly to the Afro-American’s desire for self-determination and nationhood. Both concepts are nationalistic. One is politics; the other with the art of politics.

Recently, these two movements have begun to merge: the political values inerent in the Black Power concept are now finding concrete expression in the aesthetics of Afro-American dramatists, poets, choreographers, musicians, and novelists. A main tenet of Black Power is the necessity for Black people to define the world in their own terms. The Black artist has made the same point in the context of aesthetics. The two movements postulate that there are in fact and in spirit two Americas—one black, one white.... 

Neal collaborated with Amiri Baraka editing Black Fire: An Anthology of Afro-American Writing, published in 1968. The two had worked together earlier founding the Black Arts Repertory Theater and School, staging plays and poetry readings on the streets of Harlem. Although it folded after three months, it became a model for similar efforts around the country.


In addition to numerous essays in both arts periodicals and general publications such as Partisan Review, The New York Times and Ebony, Neal wrote two plays, The Glorious Monster In the Bell of the Horn (1979) and In an Upstate Motel  (1981). His poetry appeared in two volumes, Black Boogaloo (1969) which addressed the African roots of the Black Arts Movement, and Hoodoo Hollerin Bebop Ghosts (1971) concentrating on the experience of the American South.



Neal continued to teach as well as write. At various times he was on the faculties of the City University of New York and of Wesleyan College in Middletown, Connecticut, and held a chair in humanities at Howard University. From 1970 to 1975 he taught at Yale; during this time he was the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship.  In 1975 he became executive director of the Washington D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities.

Neal died of a sudden heart attack on January 6, 1981 while leading a theater workshop at Colgate University. He was 43 years old. At the time of his death he was working with drummer Max Roach on Roach's autobiography, writing the introduction for a three-volume set of the works of Zora Neale Hurston, and compiling a series on jazz for the Boston PBS television station WGBH. A partially completed manuscript on the rise of the Black Arts Movement and black consciousness, Visions of a Liberated Future, was completed by his widow and published in 1989.

Poppa Stoppa Speaks From His Grave

Remember me baby in my best light,
lovely hip style and all;
all laid out in my green velour
stashing on corners
in my boxcar coat--
so sure of myself, too cool for words
and running down a beautiful game.

It would be super righteous
if you would think of me that way sometimes;
and since it can't be that way,
just the thought of you digging me that way
would be hip and lovely even from here.

Yeah, you got a sweet body, baby,
but out this way, I won't be needing it;
but remember and think of me
that way sometimes.

But don't make it no big thing though;
don't jump jive and blow your real romance.
but in a word, while you high-steppin and finger-popping
tell your lovin man that I was a bad
motherfucker till the Butcher cut me down.

Charles H Houston

"From the start, it was evident that [Houston] had a mind ideally contoured for a career at law. He relished the kind of abstract thinking needed to shape the building blocks of the law. He had a clarity of thought and grace of phraseology, a retentive brain, a doggedness for research, and a drive within him that few of his colleagues could match or understand." ~ Richard Kluger, Simple Justice

Charles Hamilton Houston was born September 3, 1895 in Washington, D.C. His father was an attorney, later serving as Assistant U. S. Attorney General, and his mother had taught school before their marriage. Houston attended M Street High School (now Paul L. Dunbar High), one of the few academic high schools for African Americans at the time. He won a scholarship to Amherst College in Massachusetts where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa and graduated Magna Cum Laude as valedictorian in 1915. He returned to Washington and taught English composition and literature at Howard University until the outbreak of World War I.

Houston enlisted in the Army and applied for Officer's Candidate School. He served as a First Lieutenant in the Infantry in France, and the unequal treatment of African American soldiers he witnessed and experienced there shaped his future as an attorney. In Richard Kluger's biography of Houston, Simple Justice, he is quoted as saying, “I made up my mind that I would never get caught again without knowing my rights; that if luck was with me, and I got through this war, I would study law and use my time fighting for men who could not strike back.”

Houston returned to the states in February of 1919, and events of that year's Red Summer of riots also influenced him as his father -- who usually worked in civil law -- took the case of Theodore Micajah Walker, who was accused of murder while defending himself. Walker was found guilty by an all-white jury.

In the fall, Houston was accepted at Harvard Law School. He was the first African American to serve on the Law Review, and graduated in the top 5% of his class in 1922. He stayed on at Harvard to earn a doctorate in Juridical Science under Felix Frankfurter, and spent another year at the University of Madrid where he was granted a doctorate in Civil Law.

Houston then joined his father's law firm and began teaching part-time at the Howard Law School. He became an Associate Professor in 1929, and Dean of the Law School in 1932. He raised the academic standards and improved the library and curriculum, setting high standards for students and training them in civil rights law. Said student Thurgood Marshall,

"He used to tell us that doctors could bury their mistakes but lawyers couldn't. And he'd drive home to us that we would be competing not only with white lawyers but really well-trained white lawyers, so there just wasn't any point crying in our beer about being Negroes. … He made it clear to all of us that when we were done, we were expected to go out and do something with our lives."

Recruited as the NAACP's first full-time paid legal counsel in 1935, Houston systematically chose a succession of cases to challenge the constitutionality of the "separate but equal" basis of Plessy v Ferguson. Many involved education, and others addressed union membership, restrictive clauses in real estate sales, and hiring practices. Dating back to his days at Howard Law School, there were few civil rights cases that were heard by the U. S. Supreme Court that Houston was not involved in, and these cases laid the groundwork for the landmark Brown decision in 1954.

Houston died of a heart attack on April 22, 1950 in Washington, and received the NAACP's Spingarn Medal posthumously that year. As his protege Thurgood Marshall rose to prominence his contribution to justice for African Americans became more widely known. The Charles Hamilton Houston Institute For Race and Justice at Harvard is named in his honor, as is Charles Hamilton Houston Hall, the main building at the Howard Law School. He was a member of Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity.

Vernon Jordan

"There is a definition of black America but no definition of white America. And we are just as mixed up in views, needs, and aspirations as any other group of people. It's never been monolithic. There's always been dissent. There's always been a difference of opinion, and a difference of approach. And that's healthy."

Vernon Eulion Jordan, Jr. was born August 15, 1935 in Atlanta, Georgia. He graduated from DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana in 1957 and earned a law degree from Howard University in 1960. He joined the law firm of Donald L. Hollowell in Atlanta, where Constance Baker Motley also worked. The firm won a suit in Federal court against the University of Georgia over the enrollment of Charlayne Hunter and Hamilton Holmes, and Jordan gained national coverage escorting Hunter to the admissions office past a mob of white protesters.

Jordan later served as Georgia NAACP Field Director, as Director of the Southern Regional Council's Voter Education Project and as Executive Director of the United Negro College Fund. In 1970 he was named President of the National Urban League, where he originated the annual State of Black America reports.

On May 29, 1980 Jordan was shot by Joseph Paul Franklin in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Franklin was acquitted of attempted murder in 1982 but later confessed to the shooting.

After recovering from his injuries, Jordan resigned from the Urban League and joined the law firm of Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld. He was part of President Bill Clinton's transition team in 1992-1993 and continued to serve as an adviser to Clinton, a close friend. In 2000 he became Senior Managing Director of Lazard Freres & Co., LLC, an investment banking firm. He serves on a number of corporate boards.

"What I know about this world is that white people will take care of themselves. And what I have learned is that if you are where they are on an equal basis, they cannot take care of themselves without taking care of you."

Jordan was awarded the 2001 NAACP Spingarn Medal. He is a member of Omega Psi Phi and Sigma Pi Phi fraternities.

Ernest Just

"The Brotherhood of Man is not so much a Christian doctrine as a fundamental biological law. For biology does not and cannot recognize any specific differences among humans. This is a fact of tremendous significance for the human family. The peace of the world lives here. And the transcendent value of science to man will be measured in just proportion to which we can realize this truth."

Ernest Everett Just was born August 14, 1883 in Charleston, South Carolina. His mother, a teacher, thought that educational opportunities for African Americans were limited in the south, and he was sent to Kimball Union Academy, a college prep boarding school in Meriden, New Hampshire. He finished the four-year program in three years, graduating as valedictorian, having served as class president, editor of the school newspaper, and president of the debate team. He then attended Dartmouth College, earning bachelor's degrees in history and biology with special honors in zoology, again as valedictorian as the only Magna Cum Laude graduate and Phi Beta Kappa member in the class.

Despite his academic achievements, the only teaching positions Just was offered were at African American colleges. In 1907 he joined the faculty of Howard University, becoming chair of the Zoology Department in 1912, and serving on the Howard Medical School faculty as head of the Physiology Department. He organized the first drama club at Howard, and with three students founded Omega Psi Phi fraternity in 1911.

Just began graduate studies as a research assistant at the Marine Biology Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, and took a year's leave of absence from Howard to attend the University of Chicago, receiving a PhD in experimental embryology in 1916. He had already become known as an expert on the reproductive systems and cells of marine animals, and was awarded the NAACP's first Spingarn Medal in 1915. His work is summarized in his 1939 book The Biology of the Cell Surface.

He continued his summer research at Woods Hole until 1929 when he went to the Zoological Station in Naples, Italy. The next year he was the first American to be invited to the prestigious Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Berlin, where he worked until the rise of the rise of the Nazi Party led him to relocate to Paris in 1933.  Foreigners were warned to leave the country in 1940, but he stayed to finish his current research and was placed in a prisoner of war camp after the German invasion. The U. S. State Department quickly arranged his release, and he returned to the United States. Already in ill health, he died October 27, 1941 in Washington, DC at the age of 58.

Ralph Bunche

"And so class will some day supplant race in world affairs. Race war will then be merely a side-show to the gigantic class war which will be waged in the big tent we call the world." ~ Ralph Bunche, A World View of Race

Ralph Johnson Bunche was born in Detroit on August 7, 1903 [some sources put the date as August 8 and the year as 1904]. He later lived in Toledo, Ohio, and Albuquerque, New Mexico, before attending Jefferson High School in Los Angeles while living with his maternal grandmother. He was valedictorian of his class at Jefferson High School and was awarded an athletic scholarship to UCLA. While working as a janitor to cover living expenses, he again graduated at the top of his class with with a degree in international relations and was awarded a scholarship to Harvard where he earned a master's degree in political science, followed by a doctorate while teaching at Howard University.

From 1928 through 1950 Bunche chaired the department of Political Science at Howard. During World War II he worked in the Office of Strategic Services (forerunner of CIA) as a senior analyst on colonial affairs, and in the State Department under Alger Hiss.  He was part of the Dunbarton Oaks Conference in 1944 which led to the creation of the United Nations and was instrumental in drafting both the UN Charter and the Declaration of Human Rights.


Bunche was then assigned to the UN Special Committee on Palestine and became the chief mediatiator upon the assassination of Count Folke Bernadotte of Sweden. He negotiated an armistice between Israel and the Arab States in August 1949 which led to his being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1950.

Bunche continued his diplomatic career in crisis spots such as the Suez Canal (1956), the Congo (1960) and Cyprus (1964), rising to the position of Undersecretary General of the UN. Domestically he served on the New York City Board of Education, the Harvard Board of Overseers and the NAACP Board of Directors. 


He passed away on December 9, 1971 in New York City at the age of 68.

Benjamin E. Mays

Every man and woman is born into the world to do something unique and something distinctive and if he or she does not do it, it will never be done. ~Benjamin E. Mays

Benjamin Elijah Mays, whom Martin Luther King Jr. called his "spiritual mentor", was born August 1, 1894 in Greenwood County, South Carolina. After graduating as high school valedictorian, he attended Bates College in Lewiston, Maine where he graduated with honors as a class leader in 1920. He explained his choice of a primarily white, New England college in his 1971 autobiography Born to Rebel, saying "How could I know I was not inferior to the white man, having never had a chance to compete with him?"


Mays then taught at psychology, debate and religion at Morehouse College in Atlanta and pastored Shiloh Avenue Baptist Church before attending the University of Chicago where he earned an MA (1925) and PhD from the School of Religion (1935). With Joseph Nicholson he co-authored The Negro's Church in 1933, a study funded by the Institute of Social and Religious Research.

With Bates College Debate Team, 1920

Mays served as Dean of the Howard University School of Religion from 1934 to 1940. During this time he traveled to India, meeting Mohandas Gandhi and was greatly influenced by Gandhi's view on non-violent resistance. He then became president of Morehouse College, a position he held until 1967.

While at Morehouse he excelled at fundraising and other administrative duties, keeping enrollment steady during World War II. He avidly supported students participating in sit-ins during the 1960's, one of a minority of college presidents nationwide to do so. In addition to Dr. King, other alumni he influenced were theologian Howard Thurman, Atlanta Mayor Andrew Young, and Georgia State Senator Julian Bond. After retirement he served on the Atlanta Board of Education from 1970 to 1981, becoming its first African American president.

Mays died in Atlanta on March 28, 1984 at the age of 89. He was a member of Omega Psi Phi fraternity. His philosophy of education is reflected in these quotes from Born to Rebel:

"The tragedy doesn't lie in not reaching your goal. The tragedy lies in having no goal to reach. It isn't a calamity to die with dreams unfilled, but it is a calamity not to dream. It isn't a disgrace not to reach the stars, but it is a disgrace to have no stars to reach for."

"To me black power must mean hard work, trained minds, and perfected skills to perform in a competitive society.The injustices imposed upon the black man for centuries make it all the more obligatory that he develop himself…. There must be no dichotomy between the development of one's mind and a deep sense of appreciation of one's heritage. An unjust penalty has been imposed upon the Negro because he is black. The dice are loaded against him. Knowing this, as the Jew knows about anti-Semitism, the black man must never forget the necessity that he perfect his talents and potentials to the ultimate."

Gwendolyn Bennett

"Texans feel they have a claim on her and that the beautiful and poignant lyrics she writes resulted partially from the impression of her early Texas surroundings. ~ J Mason Brewer, folklorist

To a Dark Girl

I love you for your brownness,
And the rounded darkness of your breast,
I love you for the breaking sadness in your voice
And shadows where your wayward eyelids rest.
Something of old forgotten queens
Lurks in the lithe abandon of your walk
And something of the shackled slave
Sobs in the rhythm of your talk.
Oh, little brown girl, born for sorrow's mate,
Keep all you have of queenliness,
Forgetting that you once were slave,
And let your full lips laugh at Fate!

Gwendolyn Bennett was born July 8, 1902 in Giddings, Texas between Austin and Houston. She spent her childhood on the Paiute Indian Reservation in Nevada where her parents taught for the Bureau of Indian Affairs, in Washington DC, and in New York City. She graduated from both Columbia University and the Pratt Institute in 1924 and for one year taught design and crafts at Howard University. She attended the Academie Julian and Ecole du Pantheon in Paris.

The Pipes of Pan
by Gwendolyn Bennett

Bennett's first published work was in the NAACP's Crisis Magazine in November 1923. She later designed covers for the magazine. Her work also appeared in Opportunity, the magazine of the National Urban League, and she became its assistant editor in 1926. There, she wrote a column entitled "The Ebony Flute" showcasing artists of the Harlem Renaissance, and co-founded the literary journal Fire, where her best-known short story "Wedding Day" was published. She also started a support group for young writers such as Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen and Zora Neale Hurston. 

She married in 1927 and moved to Florida but returned to New York when she was widowed in 1936. She led the Harlem Community Art Center and was on the board of the Negro Playwrights Guild. She also helped develop the George Washington Carver Community School and worked for the Consumers Union during the later years of her life. She died in Pennsylvania on June 30, 1981.