Literature
(b. June 7, 1917, Topeka, Kan., U.S.), American poet whose works deal with the everyday life of urban blacks. She was the first black poet to win the Pulitzer Prize, and in 1968 she was named the poet laureate of Illinois.
Brooks graduated from Wilson Junior College in 1936. Her early verses appeared in the Chicago Defender, a newspaper written primarily for the black community of Chicago. Her first published collection, A Street in Bronzeville (1945), reveals her talent for making the ordinary life of her neighbours extraordinary. Annie Allen (1949), for which she won the Pulitzer Prize, is a loosely connected series of poems related to a black girl’s growing up in Chicago. The same theme was used for Brooks’s novel Maud Martha (1953).
The Bean Eaters (1960) contains some of her best verse. Her Selected Poems (1963) was followed in 1968 by In the Mecca, half of which is a long narrative poem about people in the Mecca, a vast, fortresslike apartment building erected on the South Side of Chicago in 1891, which had long since deteriorated into a slum. The second half of the book contains individual poems, among which the most noteworthy are “Boy Breaking Glass” and “Malcolm X.” Brooks also wrote a book for children, Bronzeville Boys and Girls (1956). The autobiographical Report from Part One (1972) was an assemblage of personal memoirs, interviews, and letters. Later works include Primer for Blacks (1980), Young Poets’ Primer (1980), and Blacks (1987), a collection of her published works.
In 1985-86 Brooks was Library of Congress consultant in poetry. In 1990 she became professor of English at Chicago State University.
Military
Hannibal Barca was one of the greatest military leaders in history. His most famous campaign took place during the so-called Second Punic War (218-202), when he caught the Romans off guard by crossing the Alps using elephants.
Jona Lendering has a GREAT SITE about Hannibal Barca.
Slavery
Harriet Tubman was born a slave in 1821 near the eastern shore of Maryland. When she heard that her deceased master’s property would be sold she escaped to freedom in Pennsylvania. When she discovered what it was to be free, she wanted to help other people to freedom. She knew that her efforts would require money and therefore she worked part-time jobs until she had enough money for her first mission. She traveled to Baltimore and rescued her sister and her two children. She made at least fifteen trips to the south and lead at least 200 people to freedom.
All Harriet Tubman’s trips were successful because she was a master in planning the strategy of each of her escape operations. No detail was missed by her. She planned for food, clothing, train tickets and forged passes. She even included sedatives for crying babies. She never lost a passenger. On at least one occasion, she threatened to shoot a passenger who had second thoughts about escaping. The overnight stops on what came to be know as the Underground Railroad were a network of homes and churches. The churches raised money to assist Tubman’s efforts.
With the outbreak of the Civil War, Harriet Tubman supported the war effort as a nurse, a cook and a scout for the Union Army. Whatever she did, her services were always welcome. Tubman received official commendations from numerous Union Army officers. It is said that no officer failed to tip his hat when he saw her. Despite her efforts for the war, she received no veterans benefits of her own.
Her reputation for freeing slaves was known throughout the slave community. She was often compared to Moses who led the Israelites of the Bible to freedom. Her contemporaries referred to her as a heroine, saying “her likes it is probable was never known before or since.”
Throughout her life Harriet Tubman maintained an interest in the welfare of others. She raised money for schools, former slaves, destitute children and assisted the sick and the disabled. Toward the end of her life Harriet Tubman worked to establish a home for the elderly. She passed away in 1913 in the “Harriet Tubman Home for Aged and Indigent Colored People.”
The singer Paul Robeson would sing the spiritual “Go Down Moses” and explain that it was a protest song of slaves who had Harriet Tubman in mind.
‘Go down Moses, Way down in Egypt land, Tell ole pharaoh, Let my people go.’
Religion
“I am here to demand my rights and to hurl thunderbolts at the man who would dare to cross the threshold of my manhood. . . .”
Henry McNeal Turner is remembered mostly as one of the first Bishops in the African American Episcopal Church, yet his occupations were many. He was an army chaplain, political organizer, magazine editor, college chancellor and preacher. From his youth Turner was active in Georgia politics. During reconstruction he worked with Georgia politicians with hopes to make life for 19th century Georgia a better place for blacks. During his political career Turner introduced bills for higher education for blacks and for the creation of a Black militia to protect black people form the Klu Klux Klan. He also introduced a bill to give women the right to vote.
Turner later became frustrated with the treatment that Black people received in the south and vigorously encouraged black people to return to Africa. He had the support of thousands of black peasants and sharecroppers in the south.
Henry McNeal Turner was a theologian and the thinking of the Black church was a major concern to him. Much of his time was spent trying to explain the relationship between God, history and the struggle of black people in America. Turner would declare that, “God is a Negro.” He told black people to reject everything that the white church said about the inferiority of blacks. Turner believed that the role of the black church was to develop racial pride and consciousness among the millions of blacks that had been beaten down by centuries of slavery and oppression. Turner played a major role in the introduction of the African Methodist Episcopal Church into South Africa.
Bishop Turner’s funeral was attended by 25,000 people. There were many dignitaries present, however most of the crowd was poor blacks. Henry McNeal Turner was an agitator and a prophet who addressed the hopes and frustrations of African-Americans struggling in the 19th century.
Civil Rights
HUEY PERCY NEWTON (b. Feb. 17, 1942, New Orleans, La., U.S.–d. Aug. 22, 1989, Oakland, Calif.), American political activist, cofounder (with Bobby Seale) of the Black Panther Party (originally called Black Panther Party for Self-Defense).
An illiterate high-school graduate, Newton taught himself how to read before attending Merritt College in Oakland and the San Francisco School of Law, where he met Seale. In Oakland in 1966 they formed the Black Panther group in response to incidents of alleged police brutality and racism and as an illustration of the need for black self-reliance. At the height of its popularity during the late 1960s, the party had 2,000 members in chapters in several cities.
In 1967 Newton was convicted of voluntary manslaughter in the death of a police officer, but his conviction was overturned 22 months later, and he was released from prison. In 1971 he announced that the party would adopt a nonviolent manifesto and dedicate itself to providing social services to the black community. In 1974 he was accused of another murder and fled to Cuba for three years before returning to face charges; two trials resulted in hung juries.
Newton received a Ph.D. in social philosophy from the University of California at Santa Cruz (1980); his dissertation, “War Against the Panthers,” was subtitled “A Study of Repression in America.” Succumbing to factionalism and pressure from government agencies, the party disbanded in 1982. In March 1989 Newton was sentenced to a six-month jail term for misappropriating public funds intended for a Panther-founded Oakland school. In August of that year he was found shot dead on a street in Oakland.
