1. The Road Not Taken Reflections on African American History
Sundra Kincey, Doctoral Candidate
Educational Leadership and Policy Studies
Office of Minority Affairs Presentation
Florida State University
February 23, 2006
Updated and edited RTate 24 December 2012

2. IMPORTANT Note!!!!
Please, please, take good notes. You will be assessed at the end of this study, and this assessment will come from your notes and what you learned in Class!!

3. Carter G. Woodson 1875 - 1950 Founder of Negro History Week
During the dawning decades of the twentieth century, it was commonly presumed that black people had little history besides the subjugation of slavery. Today, it is clear that blacks have significantly impacted the development of the social, political, and economic structures of the United States and the world. Credit for the evolving awareness of the true place of blacks in history can, in large part, be bestowed on one man, Carter G. Woodson. And, his brainchild the Association for the Study of African American Life and History, Inc. is continuing Woodson’s tradition of disseminating information about black life, history and culture to the global community. Known as the “Father of Black History,” Woodson ( ) was the son of former slaves, and understood how important gaining a proper education is when striving to secure and make the most out of one’s divine right of freedom.
Founder of Negro History Week
(now “Black History Month”)
Tate Jr. Updated 24 December 2012

4. Frederick Douglass (1817 – 1895)
The son of a slave woman and an unknown white man, "Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey" was born in February of 1818 on Maryland's eastern shore. He spent his early years with his grandparents and with an aunt, seeing his mother only four or five times before her death when he was seven. (All Douglass knew of his father was that he was white.) During this time he was exposed to the degradations of slavery, witnessing firsthand brutal whippings and spending much time cold and hungry. When he was eight he was sent to Baltimore to live with a ship carpenter named Hugh Auld. There he learned to read and first heard the words abolition and abolitionists. "Going to live at Baltimore," Douglass would later say, "laid the foundation, and opened the gateway, to all my subsequent prosperity.“
On January 1, 1836, Douglass made a resolution that he would be free by the end of the year. He planned an escape. But early in April he was jailed after his plan was discovered. Two years later, while living in Baltimore and working at a shipyard, Douglass would finally realize his dream: he fled the city on September 3, Travelling by train, then steamboat, then train, he arrived in New York City the following day. Several weeks later he had settled in New Bedford, Massachusetts, living with his newlywed bride (whom he met in Baltimore and married in New York) under his new name, Frederick Douglass. Frederick Douglass would continue his active involvement to better the lives of African Americans. He conferred with Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War and recruited northern blacks for the Union Army. After the War he fought for the rights of women and African Americans alike.
Abolitionist, orator and writer who fought against slavery and
for women's rights. Douglass was the first African-American citizen
appointed to high ranks in the U.S. government.
Tate Jr. Updated 24 December 2012

5. Heroes

6. The First Black Vote
The 15th Amendment provides that governments in the United States may not prevent a citizen from voting because of his race, color or previous condition of servitude. It was ratified on February 3, Section 1 says:The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude, and section 2 states: The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
Though there would be still so many rivers to cross and mountains to climb, this was indeed a glorious, inspiring, landmark event. We can sense the many years this gray-haired man has waited for this moment to cast his ballot. In line are others, including a military man.   HARPER'S WEEKLY, November 16, 1867
24 December 2012
Tate Jr. Updated 24 December 2012

7. Reconstruction Amendments

8. Booker T. Washington
Booker T. Washington, born in 1856, was an American educator, author, orator, and political leader. He was the dominant figure in the African American community in the United States from 1890 to Representative of the last generation of black leaders born in slavery, he spoke on behalf of blacks living in the South.
Founder of Tuskegee Normal School in Alabama
(now Tuskegee University)
24 Dec 2012
Tate Jr. Updated 24 December 2012

9. Booker T. Washington
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10. George Washington Carver (1864-1943)
George Washington Carver was born in 1864 near Diamond Grove, Missouri on the farm of Moses Carver. He was born into difficult and changing times near the end of the Civil War. The infant George and his mother kidnapped by Confederate night-raiders and possibly sent away to Arkansas. Moses Carver found and reclaimed George after the war but his mother had disappeared forever. The identity of Carver's father remains unknown, although he believed his father was a slave from a neighboring farm. Moses and Susan Carver reared George and his brother as their own children. It was on the Moses' farm where George first fell in love with nature, where he earned the nickname 'The Plant Doctor' and collected in earnest all manner of rocks and plants.
As an agricultural chemist, Carver discovered three hundred uses for peanuts and hundreds more uses for soybeans, pecans and sweet potatoes. Among the listed items that he suggested to southern farmers to help them economically were his recipes and improvements to/for: adhesives, axle grease, bleach, buttermilk, chili sauce, fuel briquettes, ink, instant coffee, linoleum, mayonnaise, meat tenderizer, metal polish, paper, plastic, pavement, shaving cream, shoe polish, synthetic rubber, talcum powder and wood stain.
In 1897, Booker T. Washington, founder of the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute for Negroes, convinced Carver to come south and serve as the school's Director of Agriculture. Carver remained on the faculty until his death in 1943.
American scientist, educator, humanitarian, and former slave. Carver developed hundreds of products from peanuts, sweet potatoes, pecans, and soybeans; his discoveries greatly improved the agricultural output and the health of Southern farmers.
Tate Jr. Updated 24 December 2012

11. George Washington Carver
Tate Jr. Updated 24 December 2012

12. W.E.B. DuBois
Labeled as a "radical," he was ignored by those who hoped that his massive contributions would be buried along side of him. But, as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote, "history cannot ignore W.E.B. DuBois because history has to reflect truth and Dr. DuBois was a tireless explorer and a gifted discoverer of social truths. His singular greatness lay in his quest for truth about his own people. There were very few scholars who concerned themselves with honest study of the black man and he sought to fill this immense void. The degree to which he succeeded disclosed the great dimensions of the man."
First African American to receive a Ph.D. from Harvard University
Co-Founder of the NAACP
Tate Jr. Updated 24 December 2012

13. W.E.B. DuBois

14. Martin Luther King, Jr
National leader of the civil rights movement, leading boycotts and
staging protests against segregation in the South.

15. Martin Luther King, Jr. 15 Minutes!! Tate Jr. Updated 24 December 2012

16. First African American elevated to U.S. Supreme Court
Thurgood Marshall (1908 – 1993)
Born in Baltimore, Maryland on July 2, 1908, Thurgood Marshall was the grandson of a slave. His father, William Marshall, instilled in him from youth an appreciation for the United States Constitution and the rule of law. After completing high school in 1925, Thurgood followed his brother, William Aubrey Marshall, at the historically black Lincoln University in Chester County, Pennsylvania. His classmates at Lincoln included a distinguished group of future Black leaders such as the poet and author Langston Hughes, the future President of Ghana, Kwame Nkrumah, and musician Cab Calloway. Just before graduation, he married his first wife, Vivian "Buster" Burey. Their twenty-five year marriage ended with her death from cancer in 1955.
In 1930, he applied to the University of Maryland Law School, but was denied admission because he was Black. This was an event that was to haunt him and direct his future professional life. Thurgood sought admission and was accepted at the Howard University Law School that same year and came under the immediate influence of the dynamic new dean, Charles Hamilton Houston, who instilled in all of his students the desire to apply the tenets of the Constitution to all Americans.
In 1965 President Lyndon Johnson appointed Judge Marshall to the office of U.S. Solicitor General. Before his subsequent nomination to the United States Supreme Court in 1967, Thurgood Marshall won 14 of the 19 cases he argued before the Supreme Court on behalf of the government. Indeed, Thurgood Marshall represented and won more cases before the United States Supreme Court than any other American.
As an Associate Supreme Court Justice, Thurgood Marshall leaves a legacy that expands that early sensitivity to include all of America's voiceless. Justice Marshall died on January 24, 1993.
First African American elevated to U.S. Supreme Court
( )
Tate Jr. Updated 24 December 2012

17. Thurgood Marshall

18. Colin Powell Born 1937 First African American to serve as
Colin Luther Powell is a United States statesman and a retired four-star general in the United States Army.He was the 65th United States Secretary of State (20012005), serving under President George W. Bush. He was the first African American appointed to that position. He was the first, and so far the only, African American to serve on the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Quotes
"You can't make someone else's choices. You shouldn't let someone else make yours." – Colin Powell
First African American to serve as
chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Tate Jr. Updated 24 December 2012

19. Colin Powell

21. Sojourner Truth
Sojourner Truth was the self-given name, from 1843 onward, of Isabella Baumfree, an African-American abolitionist and women's rights activist. Truth was born into slavery in Swartekill, New York, but escaped with her infant daughter to freedom in Her best-known extemporaneous speech on racial inequalities, Ain't I a Woman?, was delivered in 1851 at the Ohio Women's Rights Convention.
Nationally known speaker on human rights for slaves and women
Tate Jr. Updated 24 December 2012

22. Sojourner Truth

23. Harriet Tubman ( )
Harriet Tuban (born c. 1820, Dorchester county, Maryland, U.S. - d. March 10, 1913, Auburn, New York) was an American bondwoman who escaped from slavery in the South to become a leading abolitionist before the American Civil War. She led hundreds of bondsmen to freedom in the North along the route of the Underground Railroadan elaborate secret network of safe houses organized for that purpose.
Devoted her life to fighting slavery, helping slaves and ex-slaves,
and championing the rights of women. An incredibly brave woman,
she was known as the "Moses of her people." Conductor for the
Underground Railroad who helped slaves flee to freedom in the North
Tate Jr. Updated 24 December 2012

24. Harriet Tubman

25. Rosa Parks 1913-2005 "mother of the civil rights movement"
Civil rights activist Rosa Parks was born on February 4, 1913, in Tuskegee, Alabama. Her refusal to surrender her seat to a white passenger on a Montgomery, Alabama bus spurred a city-wide boycott. The city of Montgomery had no choice but to lift the law requiring segregation on public buses. Rosa Parks received many accolades during her lifetime, including the NAACP's highest award.
"mother of the civil rights movement"
Tate Jr. Updated 24 December 2012

26. Rosa Parks

27. Shirley Chisholm ( )
orn in New York City in 1924, Shirley Chisholm became the first black congresswoman and for seven terms represented New York State in the House. She ran for the Democratic nomination for president in Throughout her political career Chisholm fought for education opportunities and social justice. She left congress in 1983 to teach and lecture. She died in 2005.
First African-American woman elected to the US Congress.
During her long political career, she fought for the rights of women
and minorities.
Tate Jr. Updated 24 December 2012

28. Bessie Coleman ( )
(born Jan. 26, 1893, Atlanta, Texas, U.S.—died April 30, 1926, Jacksonville, Fla.) American aviator and a star of early aviation exhibitions and air shows.One of 13 children, Coleman grew up in Waxahatchie, Texas, where her mathematical aptitude freed her from working in the cotton fields. She attended college in Langston, Oklahoma, briefly, then moved to Chicago, where she worked as a manicurist and restaurant manager and became interested in the then-new profession of aviation.
Discrimination thwarted Coleman's attempts to enter aviation schools in the United States. Undaunted, she learned French and at age 27 was accepted at the Caudron Brothers School of Aviation in Le Crotoy, France. Black philanthropists Robert Abbott, founder of the Chicago Defender, and Jesse Binga, a banker, assisted with her tuition. On June 15, 1921, she became the first American woman to obtain an international pilot's license from the Fédération Aéronitique Internationale. In further training in France, she specialized in stunt flying and parachuting; her exploits were captured on newsreel films. She returned to the United States, where racial and gender biases precluded her becoming a commercial pilot. Stunt flying, or barnstorming, was her only career option.
Coleman staged the first public flight by an African American woman in America on Labor Day, September 3, She became a popular flier at aerial shows, though she refused to perform before segregated audiences in the South. Speaking at schools and churches, she encouraged blacks' interest in aviation; she also raised money to found a school to train black aviators. Before she could found her school, however, during a rehearsal for an aerial show, the plane carrying Coleman spun out of control, catapulting her 2,000 feet to her death.
First black female pilot and the first woman to receive an
international pilot's license.
Tate Jr. Updated 24 December 2012

29. Bessie Coleman

30. Mae C. Jemison NASA Astronaut (former)
hysician Mae C. Jemison was born October 17, 1956, in Decatur, Alabama. On June 4, 1987, she became the first African American woman ever admitted into the astronaut training program. On September 12, 1992, Jemison finally flew into space with six other astronauts aboard the Endeavour on mission STS47. In recognition of her accomplishments, Jemison received several awards and honorary doctorates.
First African-American Woman in Space
Tate Jr. Updated 24 December 2012

31. First African-American woman to reach billionaire status
Oprah Winfrey
First African-American woman
to reach billionaire status

32. Black History: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow
Thank You!

33. Reference
Ambrose Video Publishing (Producer). (2005). A History of Black Achievement in America: Blacks Enter the Gilded Age . [Full Video]. Available from
National Underground Railroad Freedom Center (Producer). (2005). Who Are Your Heroes?. [Video Segment]. Available from
All Biography snsyopsis: Name. (2011). Biography.com. Retrieved 11:08, Dec 24, 2011 from
All video were downloaded clips were downloaded using the LPB cyberchannel discovery learning.com

34. References
Bessie Coleman. (2011). Biography.com. Retrieved 11:27, Dec 24, 2011 from
Paul Fuqua (Producer). (1995). Women Aviators. Besse Coleman. Available from
Mae Carol Jemison. (2011). Biography.com. Retrieved 11:36, Dec 24, 2011 from