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.

Molefi Kete Asante

"It is true that I am different from you and yet at the same time my alternity carries its own identity and it is not simply, the other. In either case, whether in love of difference or love of identity, we are bundles of affections and cognitions that are evident in our communications."

Arthur Lee Smith, Jr. was born on August 14, 1942 in Valdosta, Georgia, and took the name Molefi Kete Asante in 1976 to reflect his African heritage after finding that a library in Accra, Ghana had one of his books but it was presumed to be written by an Englishman.

Asante began studying African culture and history after meeting Essien Essien, a Nigerian, while he was attending Southwestern Christian College in Terrell, Texas. He later graduated from Oklahoma Christian College, then earning a master's degree from Pepperdine University and a PhD in communication studies from UCLA in 1968. He taught at Purdue and UCLA before joining the faculty of SUNY Buffalo in 1973, where he headed the Department of Communications and became a full professor in 1976. In 1984 he moved to Temple University where he still teaches, starting the first doctoral program in African American studies in 1986.

Asante is considered one of the most influential voices in the field of African American studies. He is a leading proponent of Afrocentricity, which seeks to move studies in all disciplines away from the traditional European-based viewpoint. He explains it this way:

One of the key assumptions of the Afrocentrist is that all relationships are based on centers and margins and the distances from either the center or the margin. When black people view themselves as centered and central in their own history then they see themselves as agents, actors, and participants rather than as marginals on the periphery of political or economic experience. Using this paradigm, human beings have discovered that all phenomena are expressed in the fundamental categories of space and time. Furthermore, it is then understood that relationships develop and knowledge increases to the extent we are able to appreciate the issues of space and time. (Afrocentricity, 2009)

Asante has written prolifically, publishing 70 books and over 400 article and essays, most notably in the field of intercultural comunication.

Humans are responsible for all conventions by which we live regardless of our societies. If I do not want for you what I want for myself then I am reducing you to something other than human. In effect, to be human, as I am human or think I am, I have certain expectations but if I am able to separate you from me and to define you as outside of those expectations, then I have reduced you, thrown you into a pile of trash, or to the human wayside. This is the core meaning of all forms of human discrimination. The racist says, “You are not me and you do not deserve the rights or expectations that I have.” All societies have dank corners of these antiqúe beliefs in their closets because all societies have individuals who believe they are better than others. Chattel slavery in the past was the epitome of the idea of otherness, the enslaved were those who were really not considered human at all, but property, to be owned, managed, and disposed of at will. (The Ordeal of Citizenship in the Digital Era, 2011)

Joycelyn Elders

“I went to Washington, not to get that job but to do that job. I wanted to do something about the problems that I saw out there that were happening in our country. I wanted to do something to make sure that all people had access to health care. I wanted to do something to reduce teenage pregnancies and begin to address the needs of our adolescents.”

Joycelyn Elders was born Minnie Lee Jones in Schaal, Arkansas on August 12, 1933, and began using the name Joycelyn Lee in college. Her mother stressed the value of education to all eight of her children, saying “if you want to get out of the cotton patch, you’ve got to get something in your head” and teaching them to read at an early age, correcting their mistakes with a switch.

Elders was valedictorian of her high school class but  had no plans to attend college until graduation night when she was awarded a United Methodist Women's scholarship to Philander Smith College in Little Rock.  Her brothers and sisters picked cotton to raise the $3.83 she needed for bus fare. She majored in biology and aspired to be a lab technician until she heard Edith Irby Jones, the first African American to attend the University of Arkansas Medical School, speak at a chapel service.

After graduation Elders joined the Army, serving in the Women's Medical Specialist Corps and training in physical therapy. After her 3-year enlistment was up in 1956 she enrolled at the University of Arkansas Medical School, where she and the two other African American medical students were not permitted in the student lunchroom, eating instead with the African American hospital staff.

Elders interned at the University of Minnesota, and returned to the University of Arkansas for her residency in pediatrics and an MS in biochemistry, becoming chief resident and joining the U of A faculty where she became a full professor in 1976. She became the only physician in Arkansas to be certified in pediatric endocrinology in 1978 and has published over 100 research papers, primarily on juvenile diabetes. This research, including the effects of diabetes on pregnancy, led to her study of sexuality and advocacy on behalf of young people.

In 1987 Governor Bill Clinton named her Director of the Arkansas Department of Health, where she established health clinics in schools, expanded pre-natal care and increased home care opportunities. When Clinton took office as President in January 1993 he nominated her for Surgeon General, but she was not confirmed until September because of conservatives' objections to her views on abortion rights and sex education.

While serving as Surgeon General she continued to be outspoken on these issues, as well as the possibility of legalizing drugs to reduce crime. After responding to a comment from an audience member about masturbation after U. N. Conference on AIDS she was fired by the White House. (Her description of the incident can be read in this interview by UMC.org Profiles on page 5.)

Elders returned to the faculty of the University of Arkansas Medical School. She is now retired but continues to be a strong advocate for reproductive rights and health education.

Uncle Tom's Cabin, Aunt Jemima, and "The Help"

"Why should I complain about making seven thousand dollars a week playing a maid? If I didn't, I'd be making seven dollars a week actually being one." ~ Hattie McDaniel (Mammy in Gone With the Wind)

Viola Davis, The Help

Set in 1961 in Jackson, Mississippi, the newly-released film The Help focuses on relationships between two African American maids and the white women they work for. Although almost all those who commentered agree that it is well-done with outstanding acting, a number of them -- most notably Melissa Harris-Perry and The Association of Black Women Historians -- are deeply disturbed by the shallowness of the historical context. In addition to her remarks on MSNBCs "The Last Word", Harris-Perry tweeted that "Skeeter's date got the same amount of screen time as Medgar Ever's assassination". The ABWH says:

"During the 1960s, the era covered in The Help, legal segregation and economic inequalities  limited black women's employment opportunities.  Up to 90 per cent of working black women  in the South labored as domestic servants in white homes.  The Help’s representation of these  women is a disappointing resurrection of Mammy—a mythical stereotype of black women who  were compelled, either by slavery or segregation, to serve white families.  Portrayed as asexual,  loyal, and contented caretakers of whites, the caricature of Mammy allowed mainstream America  to ignore the systemic racism that bound black women to back-breaking, low paying jobs where  employers routinely exploited them.  The popularity of this most recent iteration is troubling  because it reveals a contemporary nostalgia for the days when a black woman could only hope to  clean the White House rather than reside in it."

Hattie McDaniel, Gone With the Wind

Hollywood's Mammy stereotype began in 1915 with D. W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation, and is most visible in Hattie McDaniel's Oscar-winning role in Gone With the Wind. Another portrayal was by Louise Beavers in Imitation of Life, Beavers' character sharing a family pancake recipe with her boss (Claudette Colbert) who expanded it into a successful business. Beavers also appeared in maid roles on television, and was one of the four women who starred in the title role of Beulah.

Before motion pictures, the Mammy figure appeared in print with Aunt Chloe in Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852) described this way:

"A round, black, shiny face is hers, so glossy as to suggest the idea that she might have been washed over with the whites of eggs, like one of her own tea rusks. Her whole plump countenance beams with satisfaction and contentment from under a well-starched checkered turban, bearing on it; however, if we must confess it, a little of that tinge of self-consciousness which becomes the first cook of the neighborhood, as Aunt Chloe was universally held and acknowledged to be."

Advertising has brought many other examples throughout the years, with the most long-lasting being Aunt Jemima. The pancake mix was first marketed in 1889, coming to national attention with an exhibition at the 1893 Chicago World's Fair featuring Nancy Green, who was born into slavery in 1834, portraying Aunt Jemima, cooking pancakes and telling idyllic stories about the Old South. Green continued to make appearances throughout the country until her death in 1923, and the brand soon became one of the most popular and trusted symbols in America.  It was sold to Quaker Oats in 1926.

In an excellent overview of the Mammy stereotype, the Jim Crow Museum describes "Commercial Mammies":

"The mainstreaming of Mammy was primarily, but not exclusively, the result of the fledgling advertising industry. The mammy image was used to sell almost any household item, especially breakfast foods, detergents, planters, ashtrays, sewing accessories, and beverages. As early as 1875, Aunt Sally, a Mammy image, appeared on cans of baking powder. Later, different Mammy images appeared on Luzianne coffee and cleaners, Fun to Wash detergent, Aunt Dinah molasses, and other products. Mammy represented wholesomeness. You can trust the mammy pitchwoman."

Aunt Jemima appeared at the peak of the Jim Crow era near the time that Plessy v. Ferguson maintained the status quo of "separate but equal". Gone With the Wind was released just before World War II labor shortages and opportunities in the military opened new areas of employment for African Americans. This is not an image that needs to be continued into the 21st century.

Carl Rowan

"We ought not think of this involvement in citizenship only in terms of something somebody would call charitable. . . . If somebody on this campus, a handful of students, said 'You know, I can stop this polarization by getting involved in some organized way in making use of diversity, making diversity work'--that would be a tremendous service." ~ Carl Rowan, quoted in Oberlin Alumni Magazine, Winter 1995

Journalist, cabinet member and ambassador Carl Thomas Rowan was born August 11, 1925 in Ravenscroft, Tennessee. He graduated from high school as valedictorian and class president, briefly attending Tennessee State University where he took part in a training program enabling him to become one of the first African Americans to serve as a commissioned officer in the U. S. Navy during World War II.

After the war Rowan attended  Oberlin College where he had trained while in the Navy, graduating in 1947 with a degree in mathematics. The next year he earned a master's degree in journalism from the University of Minnesota and worked on two African American weekly newspapers, the Minneapolis Spokesman and the St. Paul Register. He was soon hired by the Minneapolis Tribune as a copywriter, becoming a staff writer in 1950, extensively covering the Civil Rights Movement. A series of columns exploring racial issues led to his first book, South of Freedom, published in 1952, and he became the only journalist to win three Sigma Delta Chi awards in a row from 1954 to 1956.

Rowan was named Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs by President Kennedy in 1961, overseeing news coverage of military involvement in Vietnam. He was part of the negotiating team that secured the exchange of pilot Francis Gary Powers and served as a delegate to the UN during the Cuban Missile Crisis. In 1963 he was appointed Ambassador to Finland, and in 1964 was named Director of the U. S. Intelligence Agency, thus becoming the first African American to be on the National Security Council.

With President Lyndon B. Johnson

Rowan left government service in 1966 to resume his career in journalism. He wrote a widely read syndicated column for the Chicago Sun-Times until 1998, and appeared as a panelist on Inside Washington. He received the NAACP Spingarn Medal in 1988, was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 1995, and received the National Press Club's Fourth Estate Award for lifetime achievement in 1999.

Rowan founded Project Excellence in 1987 to provide college scholarships for African American youth in the Washington DC area who excel in writing and speaking. The organization has awarded $76 million to almost 3000 students. He died in Washington DC on September 23, 2000 at the age of 75.

Alex Haley

"Racism is taught in our society, it is not automatic. It is learned behavior toward persons with dissimilar physical characteristics."

Alex Haley was born August 11, 1921 in Ithaca, New York where his father was attending Cornell University. The family soon returned to their home town of Henning, Tennessee and later lived in various college towns throught the south where the senior Haley taught agriculture.

Although Haley graduated from high school at the age of 15, he was not a particularly good college student and enlisted in the Coast Guard at the age of 18. During World War II he served as a mess attendant and steward while spending spare time writing short stories as well as letters for his fellow sailors. After the war he transferred to the area of journalism and served in that field until he retired as a Chief Petty Officer after 20 years of service.

Haley had been serving in New York City, and he stayed there to pursue a writing career. His first break came in  1962 with the first interview published by Playboy, featuring Miles Davis. His later interviews included Martin Luther King Jr., Jim Brown, Muhammed Ali, Johnny Carson, Melvin Belli, and Quincy Davis.

After two years of interviews Haley published The Autobiography of Malcolm X in 1965, two weeks before the assassination of Malcolm X. The Chronology of Twentieth Century History called  it "a personal witnessing by a black militant of the tenets of universal faith to which he, at least, attributed the potential to resolve the increasingly divisive struggle for civil rights all over the world.."

 Haley is best known for his 1976 work Roots: The Saga of an American Family, based on stories of family history he heard as a child from his maternal grandmother. It traces the family back seven generations to the abduction of Kunta Kente from Gambia in 1767. The book was made into an ABC mini-series, drawing a record 130 million viewers, and sparked a nation-wide interest in genealogy.

Levar Burton as Kunta Kinte

Historians and geneaologists have since disputed Haley's findings, discovering contradictions in both his research through African griots and American records. He was also sued by Harold Courlander, who claimed that Haley copied passagers from Courlander's 1967 novel The African. After a month-long trial the case was ended with a financial settlement and a statement that "Alex Haley acknowledges and regrets that various materials from The African by Harold Courlander found their way into his book, Roots."

Haley later began a third book, this time based on his father's side of the family. It was posthumously finished by David Stevens and published as Alex Haley's Queen. He died February 10, 1992 in Seattle while on a lecture tour.

Anna Julia Cooper

"It is not the intelligent woman v. the ignorant woman; nor the white woman v. the black, the brown, and the red, it is not even the cause of woman v. man. Nay, tis womans strongest vindication for speaking that the world needs to hear her voice."

Anna Julia Haywood was born in Raleigh, North Carolina on August 10, 1858 to Hannah Stanley Haywood, an enslaved woman, and George Washington Haywood, her master. She attended St. Augustine's Normal School and Collegiate Institute, an elementary and teachers' training school in Raleigh, where she battled to take the courses usually reserved for boys.

After graduation she married George Cooper, a Bahamian-born Greek instructor, who passed away two years later. She then enrolled in Ohio's Oberlin College, again insisting on taking the "gentleman's course", graduating in 1884. She taught briefly, then returned to Oberlin to earn a master's degree in mathematics in 1887. She then was hired to teach math and science at M Street High School in Washington, DC, later known as Paul Lawrence Dunbar High School, and became principal in 1902.

Cooper began coursework on her doctorate at Columbia University in 1914, while continuing her duties at M Street and after the death of her brother raising his five grandchildren. She transferred to the University of Paris Sorbonne, receiving her degree in 1925 at the age of 64 and becoming only the fourth African American woman to earn a doctorate. She continued working at M Street until her retirement in 1930, and then became president of Frelinghuysen University, a night school for working people. She stepped down as president in 1940, but served as registrar for another 10 years.

Cooper's only book, A Voice from the South: By a Woman from the South, published in 1892, established her as the first African American feminist. She was a speaker at the World's Congress of Representative Women at the 1893 Chicago World's Fair to a primarily white audience, saying "I speak for the colored women of the South, because it is there that the millions of blacks in this country have watered the soil with blood and tears, and it is there too that the colored woman of America has made her characteristic history, and there her destiny is evolving." She was also one of the few female speakers at the 1900 First Pan African Conference in London organized by W. E. B. DuBois.

Cooper founded the Colored Women's League of Washington in 1892, and was instrumental in starting YWCA chapters for African American women. She also helped to organize the first chapter of Campfire Girls. She died  on February 27, 1964 at the age of 105.