Black History, Sports
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During the Jim Crow era, African American college teams were barred from the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) and the National Invitational Tournament (NIT). But a brave few found ways around these restrictions. A secret game held in 1944 between a white team from Duke University and a black team from North Carolina Central University was one of the first integrated sports events in the South.
In early 1944, black and white students from North Carolina Central University and Duke University met at the Durham YMCA for clandestine prayer meetings. A friendly challenge led to a basketball game between the NCCU varsity team and the team from Duke’s medical school to determine the best team in Durham. (more…)
Black History, Education
Mississippi Valley State University (commonly referred to as MVSU or “The Valley”) is a historically black university located in unincorporated Leflore County, Mississippi, in the Mississippi Delta, near Itta Bena. MVSU is a member- school of the Thurgood Marshall College Fund.
The institution, which opened in 1950, was created by the Mississippi Legislature as Mississippi Vocational College. The legislature anticipated that legal segregation of public education was in danger (and would in four years be declared unconstitutional in the United States Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. Board of Education the institution, hoping that its existence would draw African-American applicants who might have otherwise applied to attend Mississippi’s premier whites-only institutions—the University of Mississippi, Mississippi State University, and the University of Southern Mississippi. (more…)
Black History, Space
Mae Jemison
Born in 1956 in Decatur, Alabama – the youngest of three children- to Charlie and Dorothy Jemison, Mae Jemison was the first African American woman to travel to space! Her father was a maintenance supervisor for charitable organization and her mother taught English and math. When she was three her family moved to Chicago.
In 1977, at the age of 16, Mae received a National Achievement Scholarship to go to Stanford University in Northern California. There she double majored in chemical engineering and African-American Studies. She went on to medical school at Cornell where she received her MD in 1981. Not one to shy away from challenges, she traveled to Cuba, Kenya and Thailand providing medical care to those in need. (more…)
Black History, Education
Dr. Benjamin E. Mays
Dr. Benjamin Elijah Mays was a giant in the Christian ministry and American education. He is remembered for his outstanding leadership and service as a teacher, preacher, mentor, scholar, author and activist in the civil rights movement.
Born August 1, 1894 near Epworth, South Carolina, he was a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Bates College in Maine. He served as pastor of Shiloh Baptist Church from 1921-1923 in Atlanta, Georgia. Recruited by Morehouse President John Hope, Mays would join the faculty as a mathematics teacher and debate coach. He obtained a master’s degree in 1925 and in 1935 a Ph.D. degree from the University of Chicago. In 1934, he was appointed dean of the School of Religion at Howard University and served until 1940. (more…)
Abolition, Black History
Mary Livermore
Mary Ashton Rice was born in Boston, Massachusetts on December 19, 1820 to Timothy Rice and Zebiah Vose (Ashton) Rice. She was a direct descendant of Edmund Rice an early Puritan immigrant to Massachusetts Bay Colony. She attended school at an all-female seminary in Charlestown, Massachusetts, and read the entire bible every year until the age of 23. She graduated from the seminary in 1836, but stayed there as a teacher for two years. In 1839, she started a job as a tutor on a Virginia plantation, and after witnessing the cruel institution of slavery, she became an abolitionist. In 1842, she left the plantation to take charge of a private school in Duxbury, Massachusetts, where she worked for three years.
She married Daniel P. Livermore, a Universalist minister in May 1845, and in 1857, Livermore and her husband moved to Chicago. She published a collection of nineteen essays entitled Pen Pictures in 1863. As a member of the Republican party, Livermore campaigned for Abraham Lincoln in the 1860 presidential election. (more…)
