Religion
Also called WALLI FARRAD, FARRAD MOHAMMED, F. MOHAMMED ALI, or WALLACE FARD MUHAMMAD (b. c. 1877, Mecca–d. 1934?), Mecca-born founder of the Nation of Islam (sometimes called Black Muslim) movement in the United States.
Fard immigrated to the United States sometime before 1930. In that year, he established in Detroit the Temple of Islam as well as the University of Islam, which was the temple’s school, and the Fruit of Islam, a corps of male guards. Fard preached that blacks (who were not to be called Negroes) must prepare for an inevitable race war and that Christianity was the religion of slaveowners. Accordingly, he gave his followers Arabic names to replace those that had originated in slavery. Fard offered blacks a credo of moral and cultural superiority to their white oppressors. In 1934 he disappeared without a trace. Members of the movement believe Fard to be the incarnation of Allah, and his birthday, February 26, is observed as Saviour’s Day.
Inventions
Sam Mangwana is an innovator of the Congolese rumba, a hybrid of what most Americans know as the Cuban rumba which was introduced to Africa in the 1960s when Cuban musicians toured the Congo and performed the country-style blues of Cuba known as the son.
Mangwana blends a rare mix of accordion, vocals and drums and guitar in his fusion of traditional music from the Congo, the guaguanco and the columbia. Afro-Cuban rhythms that he fondly defines as “our music that went across the Atlantic Ocean and came back in a suit and tie
Civil Rights
American nonsectarian agency with headquarters in Atlanta, Ga., established by the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., and his followers in 1957 to coordinate and assist local organizations working for the full equality of blacks in all aspects of American life. The organization worked primarily in the South and some border states, conducting leadership-training programs, citizen-education projects, and voter-registration drives. The SCLC played a major part in the civil-rights march on Washington, D.C., in 1963 and in antidiscrimination and voter-registration drives, notably at Albany, Ga., and Birmingham and Selma, Ala., in the early 1960s–campaigns that spurred passage of the federal Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
After King’s assassination in April 1968, his place as president was taken by the Reverend Ralph David Abernathy. While the SCLC kept its philosophy of nonviolent social change, it soon ceased to mount giant demonstrations and confined itself to smaller campaigns, chiefly in the South. The organization was further weakened by several schisms, including the departure early in 1972 of the Chicago leader, the Reverend Jesse L. Jackson, and his followers who had staffed Operation Breadbasket, which was directed at economic goals. Jackson set up a new organization, Operation PUSH (People United to Save Humanity), with similar economic aims.
Education
(1905-10), organization of black intellectuals led by W.E.B. Du Bois and calling for full political, civil, and social rights for black Americans. This stance stood in notable contrast to the accommodation philosophy proposed by Booker T. Washington in the Atlanta Compromise of 1895. The Niagara Movement was the forerunner of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). In the summer of 1905, 29 prominent blacks, including Du Bois, met secretly at Niagara Falls, Ont., and drew up a manifesto calling for full civil liberties, abolition of racial discrimination, and recognition of human brotherhood. Subsequent annual meetings were held in such symbolic locations as Harpers Ferry, W.Va., and Boston’s Faneuil Hall.
Despite the establishment of 30 branches and the achievement of a few scattered civil-rights victories at the local level, the group suffered from organizational weakness and lack of funds as well as a permanent headquarters or staff, and it never was able to attract mass support. After the Springfield (Ill.) Race Riot of 1908, however, white liberals joined with the nucleus of Niagara “militants” and founded the NAACP the following year. The Niagara Movement disbanded in 1910, with the leadership of Du Bois forming the main continuity between the two organizations.
Military
Mary Elizabeth Bowser was a black women that served as a spy for the Union Army during the Civil War. She was born a slave outside of Richmond, Virginia where she served the Van Lew family until the death of her master, John Van Lew. She remained with the Van Lew family and Mrs. Van Lew sent her to Philadelphia to obtain an education.
At the start of the Civil War she returned to Richmond to do espionage work with Mrs. Van Lew. Mrs. Van Lew was able to hire her Bowser out as a servant at the Confederate White House to spy on Jefferson Davis. It is said that she did a great job at pretending to be quite dumb while she listened to the dinner conversation of the Confederate President. Each night Bowser would recite to Mrs. Van Lew word for word the military plans discussed over dinner by leaders of the confederacy.
