Posts Tagged African American history

WNDMG WEDNESDAY – HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO IDA B. WELLS

By Heather Murphy Capps on July 13, 2022 / Articles, WNDMG

Illustration by: Aixa Perez-Prado

Happy Birthday Ida B. Wells

This month on We Need Diverse MG (WNDMG), we celebrate the July 16 birthday of Ida B. Wells. The 19th -century journalist, author, and activist would be 160 years old this year.

Test Your Ida Facts

To honor her birthday, I’ve put together a little booklist and a quiz … see if you can guess True or False for each of these statements about Ida B. Wells (answers below):

She was born into slavery.
She was an elementary school teacher.
She started her journalism career by writing for a white newspaper.
She marched at the back of the procession in the 1913 Woman Suffrage Procession.
She campaigned for anti-lynching laws.
She married young.
She visited the White House.
While riding on a train to work one morning, she was asked to move from the White car to the Black (Jim Crow) car. She did so quietly, vowing to dedicate her news career to fighting Jim Crow laws.

Answer Key:

T: She was born in 1862, before the end of the Civil War emancipated enslaved people.
T: Her parents died of Yellow Fever when she was only 16. To keep her brothers and sisters from being separated and farmed out to various relatives, she pretended she was an adult and got a job as a teacher.
F: She started her journalism career writing for a Black newspaper that was part of a social group she participated in, where they wrote and performed speeches.
F: March organizer Alice Paul asked to her to march in the back, to accommodate the wishes of the Southern women, but she refused. She marched in the middle of the parade along with the white women who had come with her from her home state of Illinois.
T: She wrote tirelessly about the crisis of lynching, and she used data-driven investigations to bolster her call for anti-lynching laws. Her data clearly supported what the Black community already knew: that the number of lynchings skyrocketed after Reconstruction and that they targeted mostly Black men, but also Black women. She also gave speeches all over the country and in the UK to drum up support for anti-lynching laws, but they were never passed during her lifetime.
F: She didn’t marry Ferdinand Lee Barnett until she was 33, which was considered old in her time.
T: She visited President William McKinley at the White House in 1898 to lobby for her anti-lynching law.
F: She did not quietly leave the white car for the Black car… she protested and refused. Ultimately, the train conductors threw her off the train!

Learn More About Ida B. Wells

Ida B. Wells, Voice of Truth: Educator, Feminist, and Anti-Lynching Civil Rights Leader, by Michelle Duster (Henry Holt and Co.) January 2022 *NOTE: Michelle Duster is Ida B. Wells’s great-granddaughter.
Discovering History’s HEROES: Ida B. Wells, Fighter for Justice, by Diane Bailey (Aladdin) August 2019
Who was Ida B. Wells? By Sarah Fabiny (Penguin Workshop) June 2020
It’s Her Story, Ida B. Wells (Graphic Novel), by Anastasia Magloire Williams (Sunbird Books) November 2021

5) Indigo and Ida, by Heather Murphy Capps (Carolrhoda Books/Lerner) Launching April 2023

((COVER NOT YET RELEASED))

((Like booklists featuring activists and journalists? Check out this and this post from MUF))

Ida Fought Today’s Battles

Yes, you read that right — the last book on the list is actually my debut! I’m so excited to join the collection of books about this amazing woman.

My book, INDIGO AND IDA, illustrates many of the pivotal moments in Wells’s life you just read about in the above T/F activity. That exploration happens as my main character, Indigo, reads (historical fiction) letters from Ida. Indigo is a 21st-century middle-school journalist, but what she realizes is that many of the battles Ida fought during her lifetime are the same or similar to the ones Indigo herself faces.

Ida knew she would not be able to finish the social justice work she so tirelessly pursued her whole life, but with her body of work, she left a powerful legacy of activism for future generations to pick up and carry to the finish line.

Happy Birthday, Ida, and thank you.

WNDMG Wednesday – Tracey Baptiste on AFRICAN ICONS

By Heather Murphy Capps on October 6, 2021 / Articles, WNDMG

Illustration by: Aixa Perez-Prado

AFRICAN ICONS on WNDMG Wednesday

Welcome to WNDMG Wednesday–we have quite a treat for you. New York Times bestselling author Tracey Baptiste is here to talk about her newest book, AFRICAN ICONS, (Algonquin Books, October 2021) which has already garnered a Kirkus Reviews star: “empowering, necessary, required reading for all” and “game-changing.” AFRICAN ICONS expands how Black History is presented by spotlighting the incredible achievements of ten awe-inspiring African innovators who have been too often ignored by history books.

“In African Icons: Ten People Who Shaped History, Baptiste engages in the hard work of unveiling the myths about the African continent to young readers. She pieces together the stories of ten people in a continent that fueled the world. This is a great beginner’s guide to pre-colonial Africa.”

–Dr. Ibram X. Kendi

(Kendi quote sourced from author’s website)

AFRICAN ICONS Origin Story

MUF: We’re so excited about your new book …. Can you tell us a little bit about the origin story for AFRICAN ICONS?

TB: This started as a blog post called “Africans Before Slavery” which I wrote in February 2017 Africans before slavery – Tracey Baptiste (wordpress.com). It was a response to the then president of the United States saying some embarrassingly ignorant things at a Black History Month breakfast. A few kidlit writers responded with a series of posts directing educators to better resources about Black people in history. All of their posts though, highlighted Abolition, Freed Slaves, or the Civil Rights movement. This has long been a source of aggravation for me from when my kids would come home with their Black History Month projects and nothing pre-slavery was ever mentioned. So I did some quick research and posted it. My editor, Elise Howard, saw the post and asked if I would like to write an entire book about pre-slavery Black history. Of course, I said yes.

The Research Journey

MUF: Where did you do your research?

TB: I did most of my research in libraries and museums and using online searches for articles. Academia.edu was particularly helpful, but most helpful were professors in African studies, museum curators, librarians at African library collections. Most of my physical searches were in New York City, Boston, and Cambridge, MA.

Illustration from Tracey Baptiste Website

Illustration Sourced from Tracey Baptiste Website: traceybaptiste.com

MUF: Following up on the research question: one of the most exciting/challenging parts of research is following threads of information to unearth new details and source material. Do you have any fun stories that illustrate this part of the journey? Were there any surprises?

TB: One of my favorite research trips was to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where I met with one of the curators, Yaëlle Biro. She walked me through several pieces of art in the Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas exhibits which is where I got my first introduction to Queen Mother Idia of Benin. She brought many of the pieces alive for me, and I started to see the real people behind the artworks. The big surprise came with one of the pieces which was covered in Venetian glass beads. It was the first time I saw the real connection in trade between Africa and Europe. I had been looking to find the long-established relationships between the two continents, and it was right there in front of me. I was really excited about that. Then when I left the museum, there was a west African woman selling beaded wire sculptures on the street on the sidewalk. It was exactly in the tradition of the artwork I had just seen behind glass at the Met. So revered inside, but outside, this was street art. A total discard. There weren’t even reproductions of any of the African art pieces at the gift shop. It laid bare for me that despite the displays, African art isn’t valued.

Illustration sourced from Tracey Baptiste Website: traceybaptiste.com

((Enjoying this interview? Read this archived MUF interview with Tracey about her book THE JUMBIES))

Favorite Icon

MUF: Do you have a favorite icon or part of the book?

TB: My favorite section is probably “Across the Golden Sand.” It was also one of the earliest pieces I wrote for the book. I can see the Berbers lined up and the caravans secured as they cross the dunes. It’s an exciting visual and was a lot of fun to write.

My favorite icon is probably Amanirenas. Imagine going toe to toe with a Caesar and winning! I had never thought of an African Queen being so formidable as to defeat Rome, because it was never in any of my history books. As far as I knew from what I’d read growing up, when Rome was in its heyday, Africans didn’t have anything at all, let alone kingdoms with warriors who would defend their borders against Rome, and diplomats who would negotiate with Caesar himself.

MUF: How did you narrow your list of icons to write about?

TB: The book started with a set of kingdoms and circumstances. When Elise read the first draft, she saw that there were ten icons, and asked me to focus on them. (Actually, there were eleven. We left off one, Prince Alemayehu of Ethiopia, because it was after the period we wanted to cover, and because he didn’t have a lot of agency in his life.)

Biased and Incomplete Records

MUF: Is there anything else I haven’t asked that you want to share with us?

TB: The research was incredibly difficult in large part because of the bias and racism in the written records, and the bias and racism that kept things out of the written records. Often, I would go down rabbit holes of research and find dead ends because no one bothered to follow up on threads. There was one story about a European king who tried to marry his daughter off to an African king because of the wealth coming out of the country, but I could never find anything to verify that story, who the players might have been, or what eventually happened. It was one offhand remark. Maybe it was true, maybe it wasn’t. It’s frustrating not to know for sure.

MUF: We’re grateful that AFRICAN ICONS will now be available to other researchers to fill in the blanks you found. Thank you for your time and many congratulations!

Photo Credit: Latifah Abdur Photography

About Tracey Baptiste:

I am the New York Times bestselling author of Minecraft: The Crash, as well as the creepy Caribbean series The Jumbies, which includes The Jumbies (2015), Rise of the Jumbies (2017), and The Jumbie God’s Revenge (scheduled for 2019). I’ve also written the contemporary YA novel Angel’s Grace and 9 non-fiction books for kids in elementary through high school.

I’m a former elementary school teacher, I do lots of author visits, and I’m on the faculty at Lesley University’s Creative Writing MFA program.

My name is pronounced buhTEEST.

How to stay in touch:

Twitter: @TraceyBaptiste

Instagram: @TraceyBaptisteWrites

Celebrating Black History Month

By Laurie J. Edwards on February 21, 2020 / For Teachers

Dr. Carter G._Woodson

“Never be limited by other people’s limited imaginations.”
~Dr. Mae Jemison, first African-American female astronaut

As we near the end of Black History Month, I hope everyone has been following the Brown Bookshelf, which spends every day in February posting about fabulous books by authors of color. What an awesome way to celebrate!

Another great way to celebrate the month with your children or students is to research the history of this month-long celebration. One of the first people to realize the need to honor black culture and history, Carter G. Woodson (1875–1950), along with the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History (ASALH), came up with the idea of Negro History Week in 1926. They chose the second week of February because it fell between the birthdays of Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) and Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865).

Frederick Douglass
Credit: Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division [reproduction number, LC-USZ62-15887]

Fifty years later in 1976, the first presidential proclamation declared February as Black History Month. Every year, a theme is established to focus attention on an important historical topic central to the black experience. For 2020, ASALH chose the theme “African Americans and the Vote.” Their website provides additional information about the history of the month and the themes, and includes a downloadable pdf.

This year marks the 150^th anniversary of the Fifteenth Amendment (1870), which gave black men the right to vote. Fifty years later, women received that right, so in 2020, we’re also recognizing the centennial of the Nineteenth Amendment. Because both of these landmark celebrations occur this year, the emphasis on the right to vote is important. This month’s celebration also honors “the rise of black elected and appointed officials at the local and national levels, campaigns for equal rights legislation, as well as the role of blacks in traditional and alternative political parties,” according to the ASALH.

The Fifteenth Amendment and its results / drawn by G.F. Kahl
Credit: Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, [reproduction number, e.g., LC-USZ62-90145

Some websites to explore with middle graders include:

History.com’s “Voting Rights Act of 1965”

Library of Congress’s primary source document: “15th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution”

Pathways to Freedom

Rosa Parks: How I Fought for Civil Rights

Timeline of African American History

Top Ten African American Inventors

African American History Challenge

African American Inventors

Biographies of Great African Americans

Black History from A to Z

Black Inventors Online Museum