The Arts
No single person has combed through as many books, traveled to as many places or reproduced as many historical documents – written and photographic – on the subject of black history as Joel Augustus Rogers. The father of anthrophotojournalism, Rogers laid a broad foundation for research into the history of blacks around the world. Some of his classic works are: World’s Great Men of Color, Sex and Race, Africa’s Gift to America, NAture Knows No Color Line and One Hundred Amazing Facts About the Negro with Complete Proof.
Born in Jamaica on September 6, 1880, Rogers came to the United States in 1917. Mostly self educated, he learned several foreign languages. This knowledge aided him tremendously with his research in Europe and Africa. He wrote for the Pittsburg Courier: The Journal of Negro History, Crisis and The Messenger. He self published most of his books. His goal was to present the complete history of blacks and their relationship with other races and cultures in order to promote better understanding among the branches of the human race.
Roger encountered public criticism from some black scholars who cited his lack of formal education and deemed his methods unacceptable in their lack of scholasticism. One of those critics, W.E.B. Du Bois, accurately described Rogers in his book The World and Africa. Du Bois wrote: “I have learned much from J.A. Rogers. Rogers is an untrained American Negro writer who has done his work under great difficulty, without funds and much personal sacrifice. But no man living has revealed as many important facts about the Negro race as has Rogers.”
Business
1810-1848
Born in the Virgin Islands, William A. Leidesdorff moved to New Orleans, Louisiana, at age twenty-nine. In 1841, he relocated to Yerba Buena, a settlement that later became San Francisco. Over the next four years, Leidesdorff sailed ships with trade goods between San Francisco and Hawaii, and he operated the first steamer to pass through the Golden Gate. After piloting a schooner from New York to California by way of the southern tip of South America, he turned to civic matters.
As a business and educational leader, Leidesdorff built San Francisco’s first hotel (City Hotel), served as city treasurer, and established the city’s first public school. Leidesdorff’s body lies beneath the stone floor of the Mission Dolores in San Francisco. Leidesdorff Street, which runs through San Francisco’s financial district in the shadow of the Transamerica Building, pays tribute to him.
Medicine
Vivien T. Thomas was a key player in pioneering the anastomosis of the subclavian artery to the pulmonary artery.The surgical work he performed with Alfred Blalock paved the way for the successful outcome of the Blalock-Taussig shunt.
In January 1930, Vivien Thomas, a young African-American who was forced for lack of funds to leave his first year of college, came to work for Blalock in his laboratory. At that point Blalock’s increasing obligations were cutting into the time he could spend in the laboratory and he needed a surgical assistant. A more fortunate choice could not have been made. Vivien Thomas learned to perform the surgical operations and chemical determinations needed for their experiments, to calculate the results, and to keep precise records; he remained an invaluable associate throughout Blalock’s career.
Education
Born in Philadelphia and raised in Boston,
Greener attended Oberlin and Phillips Academy
before entering Harvard University, where he
became the first African-American graduate in 1870.
After his graduation, he taught high school in Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., and in 1873 accepted the chair of mental and moral philosophy, sacred literature, and evidences of Christianity at the University of South Carolina. As a teacher of philosophy, Latin, Greek, and law, and in the University?s preparatory school, Greener was a student favorite. He was active on campus and in state politics as well. Greener also served as the University?s librarian, being credited with restoring order to the library, which had been in disarray since the war. When the University was closed by South Carolina?s conservative government in 1877, Greener left USC for the position of dean of the School of Law at Howard University. After that law school closed, he embarked on a law career in Washington, D.C., served as secretary of the Grant Monument Association in New York, and later served as U.S. consul to Vladivostok. He died in 1922
The Arts
(b. March 1, 1914, Oklahoma City, Okla., U.S.–d. April 16, 1994, New York, N.Y.), American teacher and writer who won eminence with his first and only novel, Invisible Man (1952).
Ellison left Tuskegee Institute (Alabama) in 1936 after three years’ study of music and joined the Federal Writers’ Project in New York City. In 1939 he began contributing short stories, reviews, and essays to various periodicals. Following service in World War II, he produced Invisible Man, which won the 1953 National Book Award for fiction. The story tells of a naive and idealistic Southern black youth who goes to Harlem, joins the fight against white oppression, and ends up ignored by his fellow blacks as well as by whites. After his novel appeared, Ellison published only two collections of essays, Shadow and Act (1964) and Going to the Territory (1986).
He lectured widely on black culture, folklore, and creative writing and taught at various American colleges and universities. He left a second novel unfinished at his death. Flying Home and Other Stories was published posthumously in 1996.
