FEBRUARY IS AFRICAN AMERICAN HISTORY MONTH - EARTHA KITT

   Eartha Kitt's name always conjures up a memory of her singing "Santa Baby" and also her beautiful face.  I thought she was a very accomplished singer, dancer, movie star, and more.  Most people remember her as the infamous CATWOMAN in the Batman TV series.  I don't think I owned a TV at that time.
   Here is her "official" website which gives quite a good deal of information about her.   And this image:

   The Guardian wrote a sympathetic column about Eartha Kitt, especially the fact that she never learned who her white father was.  She wasn't permitted to see his name as it was blacked out of her birth certificate by the white racist South Carolinian authorities.  She was very bitter about this.  Imagine being born in 1927 in the deep south and being shunned by both whites and Blacks.  Her own mother gave her up to relatives who abused her.
   Her daughter Kitt Shapiro had this to say about Eartha:  "She never found out her father's name, but always assumed he was white. My mother was referred to as a 'yellow gal', which was not a compliment. It meant someone who thought they were better than everyone else even though my mother was just a child at the time. She was horribly abused in the South. She was beaten, mistreated, emotionally and physically."
   "Kitt became a leading light in the civil rights movement in the 1960s but when she condemned the Vietnam war on a visit to the White House her career in the US ended and the CIA branded her "a sadistic nymphomaniac". By then Kitt had divorced the father of her daughter, Bill McDonald, who was a white businessman and wounded Korean war veteran addicted to painkillers, and mother and daughter moved to London to relaunch her career in Europe. Shapiro said: "We lived in Knightsbridge and later Fulham. I went to school in London and spent many a year in England. My mother regarded England as a second home."
   From the N.Y. Times obituary:  "As bookings dried up, she was exiled in Europe for almost a decade. But President Jimmy Carter invited her back to the White House in 1978, and that year she earned her first Tony nomination for her work in “Timbuktu!,” an all-black remake of “Kismet.”
   Astonishing that people in this country know so little about Eartha Kitt other than her singing and Catwoman status.     

   Eartha Kitt's daughter has set up the Eartha Kitt Foundation to benefit the area where her mother was born.  Apparently it is still suffering from the effects of the October 2015 floods and 40,000 people still don't have access to potable water.  "The state’s infrastructure and agricultural industry are in disarray: more than 60 dams have been destroyed, and countless acres of farmland have been deemed barren and unusable. As is often the case, small businesses have been hit especially hard by this statewide downturn, shutting their doors at an alarming rate. The fiscal total of this damage is valued at roughly $1.2 billion. In the wake of this natural disaster, South Carolina’s economy has been devastated." 
   

I hope that people will learn what a complex and accomplished person Eartha Kitt was but also a strong fighter for the rights of people, a supporter of the civil rights movement, and a person who risked her entire life opposing the war in Vietnam at a luncheon with Lady Byrd Johnson.  I would love to be as courageous as she was. 

   Here is a photo of Eartha and daughter Kitt to whom she gave unconditional love.

   

More reading:

A blog called Simply Eartha - http://www.simplyeartha.com/water-eartha/#.VrWh6Evobwd   

Official website -  www.earthakitt.com/  

Links to her music - http://www.last.fm/music/Eartha+Kitt   

Guardian article - http://www.theguardian.com/music/2013/oct/19/eartha-kitt-suffered-over-identity  

Facebook page - https://www.facebook.com/TheEarthaKitt/    

New York Times obituary - http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/26/arts/26kitt.html?_r=0   

  

February is African American History Month - Bayard Rustin

UNKNOWN HEROES - well in this case - lesser known.
   Bayard Rustin was a complicated and accomplished and amazing individual who was so ahead of his time in so many ways.  There is finally a movie "Brother Outsider" about his life which you can buy for $24.95 at the website.
   There are lots of links with information about Mr. Rustin - this one  is from A & E Television and not too bad.  Here is the photo that seems to be all over the Internet.

   Here's a "synopsis" of his life:   "Bayard Rustin was born in West Chester, Pennsylvania, on March 17, 1912. He moved to New York in the 1930s and was involved in pacifist groups and early civil rights protests. Combining non-violent resistance with organizational skills, he was a key adviser to Martin Luther King Jr. in the 1960s. Though he was arrested several times for his own civil disobedience and open homosexuality, he continued to fight for equality. He died in New York City on August 24, 1987."

   Rustin is known as the main organizer of the 1963 March on Washington.  He is also credited with encouraging nonviolence for the movement.  

   But he was so many other things as well -- he was a pacifist and a Quaker, a socialist, anti-war activist -- jailed for his pacifism and spending two years there.  Spent more time in jail for civil disobedience against discrimination in public transit as well as homosexual activity. He lived openly as a gay man -- certainly a man ahead of his time with seeming unsurpassed courage.  He organized a demonstration against nuclear weapons in England!  He went to India to meet with Gandhi.

   He wrote books and was a speaker. So many talents, he was a singer -- you can also get a CD of his songs at the same link for "Brother Outsider".  PBS has an even better site about him - written by Henry Louis Gates. 

   Rustin organized the 1963 March on Washington which was a tremendous success. Although never appreciated in his lifetime, saddled with homophobia and racism, Rustin was surely one of the key figures of the civil rights movement.  

   More from Henry Louis Gates [who says he had been thinking about Rustin for 40 years] which shows the profundity of Rustin:  "It is noteworthy that it was President Kennedy who made awarding the Medal of Freedom a presidential privilege in February 1963, the same year as the march. Later this year, Barack Obama, the president whose elections the march made possible — and the first to support publicly gay marriage — will make things right by awarding it to Rustin. “A Change Is Gonna Come,” Sam Cooke sang for the first time in a recording studio in 1963. I, like many, am glad that change is now coming for Rustin in 2013, not only because it is the march’s golden anniversary but because it is also the year the Supreme Court ended discrimination against gay couples seeking federal benefits while protecting their right to marry in California, the very state where in 1953 Rustin’s fate was sealed as the black leader destined to be “closeted” behind the scenes."

Some great links and books:

http://www.out.com/news-opinion/2013/08/28/bayard-rustin-walter-naegle-partner-gay-civil-rights-activist-march-washington  Rustin's partner talks about him and his life.  "Being black, being homosexual, being a political radical, that’s a combination that’s pretty volatile and it comes along like Halley’s Comet,” Naegle says, adding, “Bayard’s life was complex, but at the same time I think it makes it a lot more interesting.”

http://www.religionnews.com/2015/06/30/gay-civil-rights-activist-mlk-mentor-bayard-rustin-honored/    Wonderful photos of Rustin at this site - I need permission to use them.

http://www.amazon.com/Lost-Prophet-Times-Bayard-Rustin/dp/0226142698  Lost Prophet: Life and Times of Bayard Rustin by John D'Emilio

http://www.amazon.com/We-Are-One-Bayard-Rustin/dp/1590784987/ref=pd_sim_14_6?ie=UTF8&dpID=51PQOsRIiEL&dpSrc=sims&preST=_AC_UL160_SR160%2C160_&refRID=16E0CVK7RMBWTNA6CB8G   We Are One: The Story of Bayard Rustin by Larry Dane Brimner - a book for children.    Quote from Larry Dane Brimner’s book We Are One:   “Bayard was a man of many dimensions - an intellectual, an organizer, a speaker, a singer, a stage actor, an artist, and a collector. Yet, it was his social activism and his use of Gandhian methods of nonviolence that most interested me. Seemingly without fear, he fought for the dignity of an entire people knowing that every time he stood for his beliegs, it could - and likely would - mean a brutal beating or an arrest or both.”