FEBRUARY IS BLACK HISTORY MONTH - SHIRLEY GRAHAM DUBOIS AND ESLANDA GOODE ROBESON

[note: every image I searched for Black History or African American History Month never included Paul Robeson - and I find that highly disturbing.]

I always wondered why February was African American History month? why the shortest month? It is also the month for many wonderful things such as:  [a list from National Day Calendar]

• Free and Open Source Software Month *
• American Heart Month
• An Affair to Remember Month
• Black History Month
• Canned Food Month
• Creative Romance Month
• Great American Pie Month
• National Bake for Family Fun Month
• National Bird Feeding Month
• National Cherry Month
• National Children’s Dental Health Month
• National Grapefruit Month
• National Heart Month
• National Hot Breakfast Month
• National Library Lover’s Month
• National Macadamia Nut Month
• National North American Inclusion Month
• National Snack Food Month
• National Weddings Month
• National Embroidery Month
• Teen Dating Violence Awareness Month

And today I learned that February 16th is WORLD READ ALOUD DAY

  

   Last year at this time I devoted myself to profiling some wonderful African Americans for African American or Black History Month.  This I did pretty faithfully every day until I learned I had to go in for surgery and experience the unfortunate occurrence of having two kinds of cancer discovered in my female organs (and more).
   My blogs were a labor of love.  There are so many fine African Americans who are not even known to people in this country -- I could've kept writing every day to profile more.
   Well, this time I have decided to stick to some of the more obscure people who need to be taught to students -- under the heading of Ethnic Studies perhaps -- but really, as part of their learning about the history of the United States.  Why I wonder every time is this a separate celebration? Obviously because it would not be observed at all if there weren't a special month set aside.


   HAVE YOU EVER HEARD OF ESLANDA ROBESON?   SHIRLEY GRAHAM DUBOIS?  CHARLOTTA BASS?     THELMA DALE PERKINS?     ALICE DUNBAR (PAUL LAURENCE DUNBAR'S WIFE)?       ELIZABETH CATLETT ?    OCTAVIA BUTLER?

   Let's start with Shirley Graham DuBois, a prolific writer, singer, composer and more and who wrote a wonderful book called There Was Once A Slave about the life of Frederick Douglass.   I own a copy of the 1947 book published by Julian Messner, a first edition I believe.   I will quote from the back of the jacket cover about Shirley Graham (as she is called at the time of this edition):  
   "Shirley Graham brought to her research and study a youthful admiration for Douglass.  When she as a child, her father used to tell her stories of how Douglass visited the old Wayne County farmhouse where Miss Graham was born.  The farmhouse had been purchased by her great-great-grandfather long before the Civil War after he had been freed from slavery, and it subsequently became a station in the underground railway.  Frederick Douglass had been a frequent visitor during her father's childhood.
   "Miss Graham is a graduate of Oberlin College where she also took her Master's Degree.  She studied at the Sorbonne in Paris and later after receiving a Julius Rosenwald Foundation Fellowship for creative writing, she studied at the Yale School of Drama.  Miss Graham supervised the Chicago Federal Unit that brought the Swing Mikado to Broadway and designed and wrote the music for the popular and highly praised children's production, Little Black Sambo.  She is the author of Dr. George Washington Carver, Scientist and, Paul Robeson: Citizen of the World, both biographies for young people.
   "There Was Once A Slave, The Heroic Story of Frederick Douglass is her first book for adult readers and was selected from over six hundred manuscripts submitted in the Contest. The judges were Carl Van Doren, Lewis Gannett, and Clifton Fadiman."
   "The Julian Messner Award for the Best Book Combating Intolerance in America was augmented by the Lionel Judah Tachna Foundation to $6500.00 -- $5000.00 outright and $1500.00 against royalties.  The Foundation was established by Max Tachna in memory of his son lost during the Battle of the Coral Sea when the USS Sims went down."
   Shirley Graham married W.E.B. DuBois in 1951 after the death of his first wife. Graham-DuBois career didn't stop, even after the move to Ghana, and later to Cairo when the President of Ghana Nkrumah was overthrown. For further biographical information, see Gerald Horne, Race Woman: The Lives of Shirley Graham Du Bois (2000)

   [A blog titled "9 Influential Women in Black History You Won't Hear About In School"  https://mic.com/articles/110702/9-influential-women-in-black-history-you-won-t-hear-about-in-school#.LdqJvpwuD   includes Fannie Lou Hamer, Marsha P. Johnson, Madam C.J. Walker, Mary McLeod Bethune, Ruby Bridges, Dorothy Height, Audre Lorde, Ella Baker, and Shirley Chisholm.  This is a great list and I will include some of them here.]

   Eslanda Goode Robeson is even less well known than Shirley Graham DuBois, just as Paul Robeson is left off displays of great African Americans for Black History Month.  Here's a teaser from the book by Dr. Barbara Ransby, PhD:  "Eslanda: The Large and Unconventional Life of Mrs. Paul Robeson (Yale University Press, January 8, 2013) is a deeply researched biography that chronicles an amazing life set against the backdrop of some of the most pivotal events of the twentieth century: the Great Depression and the rise of fascism; the anti-colonial struggles in Africa, Asia and the Caribbean; World War II and the founding of the United Nations: the Chinese revolution; the anti-communist witch hunts of the 1950s; and the rise of the U.S. Civil Rights and Black Power movements. Eslanda (Essie) Robeson traveled to every corner of the globe and witnessed history in the making, a history she wrote about and spoke about.

"Her friends and associates included heads of state, world-renowned artists and writers, and revolutionaries. Her career and commitments took her many places: colonial Africa in 1936, the front lines of the Spanish Civil War, the founding meeting of the United Nations, Nazi-occupied Berlin, Stalin’s Russia, and China two months after Mao’s revolution. She studied with Bronislaw Malinowski, vacationed with Nikita Khrushchev, befriended Jawaharlal Nehru, interviewed Mahatma Gandhi, danced with Eugene O’Neill, flirted with Marcel Duchamp, dined with Noel Coward and maintained deep and complicated friendships with Vijaya Pandit, Emma Goldman, Jomo Kenyatta, W.E.B. and Shirley DuBois, Langston Hughes, and Kwame Nkrumah. She was a woman of unusual accomplishment—an anthropologist, a prolific journalist, a tireless advocate of women’s rights, an outspoken anti-colonial and antiracist activist, and an internationally sought-after speaker.

"Yet historians, for the most part, have confined Essie to the role of Mrs. Paul Robeson, a wife hidden in the large shadow cast by her famous husband. This book, by award-winning biographer, Barbara Ransby (author of Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement) changes all that. Essie Robeson’s story is told for the first time in all of its complexity and in the context of the dynamic historical times in which she lived."

   My family pride includes my father's friendship with both W.E.B. Du Bois and Paul Robeson.  I was concerned that my father may not have given their wives their due. But then I found among my parents' books a copy of Eslanda Robeson's book African Journey - which is signed to my father - in a very loving way. "For Charlie Kramer with thanks for so cheerfully accepting me  as one of the gang.  Gratefully Eslanda Goode Robeson  May 1949" 

   I realize that my study into not so well known African Americans also has a great deal to do with books. Both these wonderful women were authors, as well as so much more.  I will continue to write about more African American women later this month.

REFERENCES

World Read Aloud Day - http://www.jumpintoabook.com/2017/02/world-read-aloud-day-february-16-2017-lets-celebrate/  

African American History Month - http://www.africanamericanhistorymonth.gov 

Biographies - https://www.who2.com/list/black-history-month-biographies/ 

Shirley Graham DuBois - http://scua.library.umass.edu/duboisopedia/doku.php?id=about:du_bois_shirley_graham 
Papers, Shirley Graham DuBois 1896-1977 - http://oasis.lib.harvard.edu/oasis/deliver/~sch00211 

Eslanda Goode Robeson profiled on Democracy Now - https://www.democracynow.org/2013/2/12/remembering_the_overlooked_life_eslanda_robeson 

Dr. Barbara Ransby on Eslanda Good Robeson - http://barbararansby.com/eslanda/ 

FEBRUARY IS AFRICAN AMERICAN HISTORY MONTH - LENA HORNE

 

   Lena Horne - so many beautiful and talented and complex women have passed through our world.  A load of questions have passed through my mind as I write these short biographies of famous and not so famous African Americans.  Why aren't they better known? How did they manage in such a negative world to project their talent and beauty and leave us all with lasting memories of them? Why didn't they give up in despair?  All of these women were fighters, not just for themselves, but for all African Americans - and therefore, all people.
   Lena Horne was born in 1917 and died in 2010, a long life truly!  Not only was she a talented and beautiful singer and actress, she was also a civil rights activist. How many people knew that about her?   That she refused to accept roles that were stereotypical about African Americans meant that her career was much more difficult for her.  Success while there was not fulfilled.

   Ms Horne became part of a well known white swing band that was one of the first to integrate, yet she had to quit due to the fact that she couldn't stay with them when she traveled.  In 1941 she returned to New York to work at the Cafe Society nightclub, a popular venue for both Black and white patrons and artists.  [My parents told me how they went to see Billie Holiday, Lena Horne, Art Tatum and more.  Billie Holiday debuted her song "Strange Fruit" at Cafe Society. Located at One Sheridan Square, it was opened precisely to give a venue for ordinary people by Barney Josephson, brother of Leon Josephson, a communist friend of my parents.  Most vividly they told me they took their shell-shocked friends who had returned from the Spanish Civil War in order to help them feel better, if possible.]

   Lena Horne's career began to take off -- "A long run at the Savoy-Plaza Hotel nightclub in 1943 gave Horne’s career a boost. She was featured in Life magazine and became the highest-paid black entertainer at the time. After signing a seven-year contract with MGM Studios, she moved to Hollywood, where she filmed movies like Stormy Weather and Cabin in the Sky. Producers quickly realized that she was a difficult woman to cast, however. She could only get limited roles in films with whites, and her light skin made it difficult to cast her alongside popular African-American actors in full-color films. Horne also refused to accept parts that stereotyped African-American women, and she was shunned by the community of black actors."

   Now that we have a President who is half African-American, half white we can perhaps one day talk about the difficulties of "mixed race" people such as Lena Horne.  Generally shunned by both Blacks and whites, their lives were so much more fraught with loneliness and pain.  I will never forget taking my daughter to a movie at the African American Movie Festival in Los Angeles which was basically about how the one mixed-race person was the traitor on the plantation, working in the master's house, having an easier life.  The movie was ground-breaking in many ways - Sankofa - because it openly detailed slavery. But I felt to put the blame on a mixed race person was egregious at the least.

   Lena Horne suffered this type of discrimination - shunned by both sides. "By the end of the 1940s, Horne had sued a variety of restaurants and theaters for discrimination and become an outspoken member of the leftist group Progressive Citizens of America with Paul Robeson. McCarthyism was sweeping through Hollywood, and Horne soon found herself blacklisted. Since she was unable to work in film, television, theater or recording, she performed primarily in posh nightclubs around the country. The ban eased in the mid-1950s, and Horne returned to the screen in the 1956 comedy Meet Me in Las Vegas."   She was still active in the civil rights movement despite being blacklisted.  She participated in the March on Washington in 1963.

   From the NY Times Obituary -
“The whole thing that made me a star was the war,” Ms. Horne said in the 1990 interview. “Of course the black guys couldn’t put Betty Grable’s picture in their footlockers. But they could put mine.”

"Touring Army camps for the U.S.O., Ms. Horne was outspoken in her criticism of the way black soldiers were treated. “So the U.S.O. got mad,” she recalled. “And they said, ‘You’re not going to be allowed to go anyplace anymore under our auspices.’ So from then on I was labeled a bad little Red girl.”

   In 1970 and 1971 Lena Horne's son, husband, and father all died and she spent much time in mourning. "Horne made her final film appearance in the 1978 movie The Wiz. The film was a version of The Wizard of Oz that featured an entirely African-American cast including Michael Jackson and Diana Ross, and Horne played Glinda the Good Witch."  She made a triumphant return to Broadway in a one-woman show for which she won a Drama Desk Award, a Tony, and two Grammy Awards for soundtrack.
   "In 1994 Horne gave one of her last concerts, at New York’s Supper Club. The performance was recorded and was released in 1995 as An Evening With Lena Horne: Live at the Supper Club, which won a Grammy for Best Jazz Vocal Album. Though she contributed occasional recordings after this, she largely retreated from public life."
   "Lena Horne died of heart failure on May 9, 2010, in New York City."

   As IMDB states in its biography of Lena Horne - "Had it not been for the prevailing racial attitudes during the time when Lena was just starting her career, it's fair to say that it would have been much bigger, and come much sooner, than it was. Even taking those factors into account, Lena Horne is still one of the most respected, talented and beautiful performers of all time--and she's still singing!"

   From Notable biographies  - "In the 1990s Horne cut back on performing. She was drawn back from semiretirement to do a tribute concert for a long-time friend, composer Billy Strayhorn, at the JVC Jazz Festival. At age seventy-six she released her first album in a decade, We'll Be Together Again. In 1997, on the occasion of her eightieth birthday, Horne was honored at the JVC Jazz Festival with a tribute concert and the Ella Award for Lifetime Achievement in Vocal Artistry. In 1999 she was honored at the New York City's Avery Fisher Hall with an all-star salute."
   "Lena Horne is an amazing woman. Her pride in her heritage, her refusal to compromise herself, and her innate elegance, grace, and dignity has made her a legendary figure. Her role as a person who has helped to improve the status of African Americans in the performing arts has provided a permanent legacy."

Read more: http://www.notablebiographies.com/Ho-Jo/Horne-Lena.html#ixzz40d6ejtco



Lena Horne Biography - http://www.biography.com/people/lena-horne-9344086 
Ephemeral Cafe Society - https://ephemeralnewyork.wordpress.com/tag/cafe-society-1930s/  
IMDB lists 55 soundtracks - http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0395043/ 
IMDB biography - http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0395043/bio 
Notable biographies - http://www.notablebiographies.com/Ho-Jo/Horne-Lena.html 
NY Times Obituary - http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/10/arts/music/10horne.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0 

Books:
Buckley, Gail Lumet. The Hornes: An American Family. New York: Knopf, 1986.

Haskins, James, and Kathleen Benson. Lena: A Biography of Lena Horne. Chelsea, MI: Scarborough House, 1991.

Palmer, Leslie. Lena Horne: Entertainer. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1989.


Read more: http://www.notablebiographies.com/Ho-Jo/Horne-Lena.html#ixzz40dOoiHsM

FEBRUARY IS AFRICAN AMERICAN HISTORY MONTH -- THELMA DALE PERKINS

   I met Thelma Dale Perkins a few times when she came to visit my parents in Los Angeles. Such a gracious and lovely person, I knew there was something special about her besides just her friendship with my parents.  My plan was to try to visit her in North Carolina where she had retired but I never made it.  She died in 2014 and I feared I would never learn her true history. I knew snippets - that she was a friend of WEB DuBois; that she was a feminist activist in New York City. But not much more.
   Here is one site that talks about her "civic engagement" - and I am indebted to them for writing this although it gives an entirely one-sided picture of this dynamic and energetic fighter for the rights of African Americans, especially women.
   One photograph captures the dignity of this beautiful woman:
 

   A bit of her illustrious history may explain some of her accomplishments:  She was born in Washington D.C. in 1915 to parents who had settled in DC post Reconstruction.  "Her maternal uncle Frederick Douglass Patterson was the third president of Tuskegee Institution and received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1987." "The youngest of four children, Thelma attended Birney Elementary School and the locally renowned Paul Laurence Dunbar High School, America’s first public school for African Americans. In 1932, she entered Howard University to study teaching and social work."

   Thelma Dale joined organizations in college that promoted the role of African Americans in larger society.  She attended chats with Eleanor Roosevelt at the White House discussing issues facing youth at the time.  "After graduating in 1936, she worked for distinguished Howard University sociologist Dr. E. Franklin Frasier on a National Youth Administration Fellowship and for the Federal Government.  [I believe that this was where my father met Thelma Dale Perkins as he was the organizer of the National Youth Administration and gave scholarships to students.] "Integration continued to be an important cause for Thelma and in the 1940s she accepted the position of acting Secretary of the National Negro Congress. During that time, Thelma assisted with early civil rights activities and formed lifelong friendships with such luminaries as Paul Robeson and Dr. W.E.B. DuBois."

   Mrs. Perkins later recalled, “I resigned from the government rather than sign a loyalty oath and accepted the job of National Secretary of the National Negro Congress in New York City.”

   Thelma Dale was friends with Paul and Eslanda Robeson. She was managing editor for Paul Robeson's newspaper Freedom and involved in the campaign to restore Robeson's passport (taken from him in the McCarthy era). 

   In 1957 she married Lawrence Rickman Perkins, Jr. and adopted two children: Lawrence Dale Perkins and Patrice Dale Perkins.

   An excerpt from a book gives a better picture of the activist Thelma Dale:  "In 1945, Thelma Dale, a member of the United States' Southern Negro Youth Congress (SNYC) and engaged political activist, attended the foundational meeting of the Women's International Democratic Federation (WIDF) in Paris, France.  She described the gathering as an "exhilarating experience," and gave a glowing account of its civility and spirit of solidarity in stark contrast to everyday life under segregation back home. Dale cherished the opportunity to internationalize the struggle of Black women in the United States, and hoped for fruitful learning experiences and rewarding interactions 'with women from the colonial countries, the Soviet Union and many other lands."  "Indeed, about 850 women from 40 countries had accepted the invitation to the meeting from the Union des Femmes Francaises, women who had been active in the French Resistance movement in World War II and had close links to the Communist Party."

   Thelma Dale Perkins is also mentioned in the book about Eslanda Robeson by Barbara Ransby.  "Sojourners for Truth and Justice was made up of a dynamic mix of creative Black women, many of them leftists and communists.  Essie, author Shirley Graham DuBois, actress Beulah (Beah) Richards, author Alice Childress, Thelma Dale Perkins, and activist Louise Thompson Patterson were among the founding core.  They were joined by California publisher Charlotta Bass, who served as the group's president...They described the Sojourners as "a militant Negro women's movement...dedicated to the militant struggle for full freedom of the Negro people and an uncompromising fight against white supremacy."  Sojourners fought for the freedom of a Georgia sharecropper who had killed at white man in 1947. She and two teenage sons were sentenced to death for the killing, even though it was clearly an act of self-defense.  Ultimately they won their freedom and The Sojourners were certainly the most helpful in that outcome.  

   I'll never forget Mrs. Perkins admonishing my father because he did not attend the speeches given by the great Charlotta Base while she campaigned for Vice President with the Progressive Party.  He thought it wouldn't be helpful but Mrs. Perkins thought he was wrong.  I was too shy to ask her why but I think she felt that a white man's support for the struggle of African Americans was important to the outcome of that struggle.

   Thelma Dale Perkins has a tribute to Paul Robeson in the book Paul Robeson: The Great Forerunner.  I hope you will take the time to read this.  

   There is really not enough material available about this woman whose contributions to the struggle for freedom can't be overstated.

More Links:

Radicalism at the Crossroads: African American Women Activists in the Cold War by Dayo F. Gore - https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=32622      

A pdf of her history - http://www.chapelhillhistoricalsociety.org/en/2011/pdf/thelma_perkins_2012.

Excerpt from a book - https://books.google.com/books?id=dYKN7GnhruEC&pg=PA52&hl=en#v=onepage&q&f=false   De-Centering Cold War History: Local and Global Change edited by Jadwiga E. Pieper Mooney, Fabio Lanza.   Chapter 3. 

Book about Eslanda Robeson - https://books.google.com/books?id=0PFnw_10dzcC&pg=RA8-PA1947#v=onepage&q=Thelma%20Dale%20Perkins&f=false   

Mrs. Perkins' tribute to Robesons - https://books.google.com/books?id=L8pcRKhKjdoC&pg=PA304&lpg=PA304&dq=thelma+dale+perkins&source=bl&ots=kHp_JJsJEW&sig=kA4L9Fz9Fb6C5Csfy1_Hs6nTcOo&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwit1JmYoOXKAhVY22MKHT0UAFEQ6AEIRDAJ#v=onepage&q=thelma%20dale%20perkins&f=false