Black History Month: Hidden History

To offer further opportunities to learn about key personalities, events and contributions Black Americans have made to U.S. history, Christopher Hunter, Director of Equity and Engagement, has curated this selection of videos:

See more Black History content at schoolcraft.edu/BHM

Contact the Student Activities Office to RSVP

A key event to celebrate Black History Month will be the first-ever Black Excellence Gala, presented by the Black Student Union at Schoolcraft College.

This formal event will include hors d’oeuvres and a strolling-style buffet. It will be held from 6:00 to 8:00 p.m. on Wednesday, February 23, in the Wilson Room in the Waterman Wing of the VisTaTech Center. Please RSVP by contacting the Student Activities Office at 734-462-4422

This inaugural event will be a celebration of Black Excellence that lifts the voices of past and present African Americans that highlight the very definition of perseverance, fortitude and the grit that it takes to reside in skin filled with melanin. BSU will showcase Black art, poetry, music, achievements and every other aspect of the Black experience that has helped to shape and mold the world in which we live.

Catreese Qualls, Schoolcraft College student and Division III International Vice President of Phi Theta Kappa Honor Society, sees the Gala as an important event for the College.

“Over the pandemic, we recognized that the Black voices were being drowned out by the chaos and confusion of the Black Lives Matter Movement,” she said. “As student leaders and Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Change Agents, DeSean Knight (President of the Black Student Union) and myself decided to draw from these experiences and take what we’d gleaned from the aftermath of the marches and rallies. 

“We decided that in order to paint a different picture, one that revisits the great works of peaceful Civil Rights leaders, that we ourselves would manifest those same inward thoughts and begin to outwardly manifest positivity by creating a space where civility would be a the root of every conversation, and hope would rest as the bridge to carry our mission of replacing fear and ignorance with acceptance and knowledge.

“It’s our hope that on this night, that through our spoken words and the culture of inclusion we have created on our campus, that we will have done what the iconic Civil Rights leader John Lewis compels us through his words and works to do: ‘We must get into trouble, good trouble, necessary trouble in order to redeem the soul of America.’”

The Gala also will serve to honor the work of student leaders and administrators over the past three years that has led to hiring Christopher Hunter as Director of Equity and Engagement.

“Over the unprecedented time of the COVID and race pandemics, we remained in the trenches advocating for access to the necessary resources that our most underrepresented student populations needed in order to maintain enrollment,” Qualls said. “Furthermore, we sought to help bridge the gap in the barriers that continue to keep us all divided. We achieved this through presentations, workshops and movie nights supported by our SAO Director Todd Stowell and Dean of Student Resources Dr. Marty Heator. So on this night, we will lift the names of Schoolcraft students and administrators who help us to keep the torch of equality through inclusivity a flame and moving forward.”

The Gala will be preceded by a Town Hall presented by the Black Student Union: “Lifting Black Voices.” This program runs from 11:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. in Room 440 of the VisTaTech Center. Learn more about the event.

Frederick Douglass

Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey was born into slavery on the Eastern Shore of Maryland in February 1818. He had a difficult family life. He barely knew his mother, who lived on a different plantation and died when he was a young child. He never discovered the identity of his father. When he turned 8 years old, his slaveowner hired him out to work as a body servant in Baltimore.

At an early age, Frederick realized there was a connection between literacy and freedom. Not allowed to attend school, he taught himself to read and write in the streets of Baltimore. At 12, he bought a book called The Columbian Orator. It was a collection of revolutionary speeches, debates, and writings on natural rights.

• 

• 

When Frederick was 15, his slaveowner sent him back to the Eastern Shore to labor as a field hand. Frederick rebelled intensely. He educated other slaves, physically fought back against a “slave-breaker,” and plotted an unsuccessful escape.

Frustrated, his slaveowner returned him to Baltimore. This time, Frederick met a young free Black woman named Anna Murray, who agreed to help him escape. On September 3, 1838, he disguised himself as a sailor and boarded a northbound train, using money from Anna to pay for his ticket. In less than 24 hours, Frederick arrived in New York City and declared himself free. He had successfully escaped from slavery.

The Abolitionist Movement

After escaping, Frederick Douglass first lived at the Nathan and Polly Johnson house in New Bedford, Massachusetts. The home is now a National Historic Landmark.

After escaping from slavery, Frederick married Anna. They decided that New York City was not a safe place for Frederick to remain as a fugitive, so they settled in New Bedford, Massachusetts. There, they adopted the last name “Douglass” and they started their family, which would eventually grow to include five children: Rosetta, Lewis, Frederick, Charles, and Annie.

After finding employment as a laborer, Douglass began to attend abolitionist meetings and speak about his experiences in slavery. He soon gained a reputation as an orator, landing a job as an agent for the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society. The job took him on speaking tours across the North and Midwest.

Douglass’s fame as an orator increased as he traveled. Still, some of his audiences suspected he was not truly a fugitive slave. In 1845, he published his first autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, to lay those doubts to rest. The narrative gave a clear record of names and places from his enslavement.

To avoid being captured and re-enslaved, Douglass traveled overseas. For almost two years, he gave speeches and sold copies of his narrative in England, Ireland, and Scotland. When abolitionists offered to purchase his freedom, Douglass accepted and returned home to the United States legally free. He relocated Anna and their children to Rochester, New York.

In Rochester, Douglass took his work in new directions. He embraced the women’s rights movement, helped people on the Underground Railroad, and supported anti-slavery political parties. Once an ally of William Lloyd Garrison and his followers, Douglass started to work more closely with Gerrit Smith and John Brown. He bought a printing press and ran his own newspaper, The North Star. In 1855, he published his second autobiography, My Bondage and My Freedom, which expanded on his first autobiography and challenged racial segregation in the North.

Civil War and Reconstruction

In 1861, the nation erupted into civil war over the issue of slavery. Frederick Douglass worked tirelessly to make sure that emancipation would be one of the war’s outcomes. He recruited African American men to fight in the U.S. Army, including two of his own sons, who served in the famous 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry. When Black troops protested they were not receiving pay and treatment equal to that of white troops, Douglass met with President Abraham Lincoln to advocate on their behalf.

As the Civil War progressed and emancipation seemed imminent, Douglass intensified the fight for equal citizenship. He argued that freedom would be empty if former slaves were not guaranteed the rights and protections of American citizens. A series of postwar amendments sought to make some of these tremendous changes. The 13th Amendment (ratified in 1865) abolished slavery, the 14th Amendment (ratified in 1868) granted national birthright citizenship, and the 15th Amendment (ratified in 1870) stated nobody could be denied voting rights on the basis of race, skin color, or previous servitude.

In 1872, the Douglasses moved to Washington, D.C. There were multiple reasons for their move: Douglass had been traveling frequently to the area ever since the Civil War, all three of their sons already lived in the federal district, and the old family home in Rochester had burned. A widely known public figure by the time of Reconstruction, Douglass started to hold prestigious offices, including assistant secretary of the Santo Domingo Commission, legislative council member of the D.C. Territorial Government, board member of Howard University, and president of the Freedman’s Bank.

Post-Reconstruction and Death

After the fall of Reconstruction, Frederick Douglass managed to retain high-ranking federal appointments. He served under five presidents as U.S. Marshal for D.C. (1877-1881), Recorder of Deeds for D.C. (1881-1886), and Minister Resident and Consul General to Haiti (1889-1891). Significantly, he held these positions at a time when violence and fraud severely restricted African American political activism.

On top of his federal work, Douglass kept a vigorous speaking tour schedule. His speeches continued to agitate for racial equality and women’s rights. In 1881, Douglass published his third autobiography, Life and Times of Frederick Douglass, which took a long view of his life’s work, the nation’s progress, and the work left to do. Although the nation had made great strides during Reconstruction, there was still injustice and a basic lack of freedom for many Americans.

Tragedy struck Douglass’s life in 1882 when Anna died from a stroke. He remarried in 1884 to Helen Pitts, an activist and the daughter of former abolitionists. The marriage stirred controversy, as Helen was white and 20 years younger than him. Part of their married life was spent abroad. They traveled to Europe and Africa in 1886-1887, and they took up temporary residence in Haiti during Douglass’s service there in 1889-1891.

On February 20, 1895, Douglass attended a meeting for the National Council of Women. He returned home to Cedar Hill in the late afternoon and was preparing to give a speech at a local church when he suffered a heart attack and passed away. Douglass was 77. He had remained a central figure in the fight for equality and justice for his entire life.

• From the Frederick Douglass National Historic Site

Harriet Tubman

Known as the “Moses of her people,” Harriet Tubman was enslaved, escaped, and helped others gain their freedom as a “conductor” of the Underground Railroad. Tubman also served as a scout, spy, guerrilla soldier, and nurse for the Union Army during the Civil War. She is considered the first African American woman to serve in the military.

Tubman’s exact birth date is unknown, but estimates place it between 1820 and 1822 in Dorchester County, Maryland. Born Araminta Ross, the daughter of Harriet Green and Benjamin Ross, Tubman had eight siblings. By age 5, Tubman’s owners rented her out to neighbors as a domestic servant. Early signs of her resistance to slavery and its abuses came at age 12 when she intervened to keep her master from beating an enslaved man who tried to escape. She was hit in the head with a 2-pound weight, leaving her with a lifetime of severe headaches and narcolepsy.

Although slaves were not legally allowed to marry, Tubman entered a marital union with John Tubman, a free Black man, in 1844. She took his name and dubbed herself Harriet.

• 

• 

Contrary to legend, Tubman did not create the Underground Railroad; it was established in the late 18th century by Black and white abolitionists. Tubman likely benefitted from this network of escape routes and safe houses in 1849, when she and two brothers escaped north. Her husband refused to join her, and by 1851 he had married a free Black woman. Tubman returned to the South several times and helped dozens of people escape. Her success led slaveowners to post a $40,000 reward for her capture or death.

Tubman was never caught and never lost a “passenger.” She participated in other antislavery efforts, including supporting John Brown in his failed 1859 raid on the Harpers Ferry, Virginia, arsenal.

Through the Underground Railroad, Tubman learned the towns and transportation routes characterizing the South—information that made her important to Union military commanders during the Civil War. As a Union spy and scout, Tubman often transformed herself into an aging woman. She would wander the streets under Confederate control and learn from the enslaved population about Confederate troop placements and supply lines. Tubman helped many of these individuals find food, shelter, and even jobs in the North. She also became a respected guerrilla operative. As a nurse, Tubman dispensed herbal remedies to Black and white soldiers dying from infection and disease.

After the war, Tubman raised funds to aid freedmen, joined Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony in their quest for women’s suffrage, cared for her aging parents, and worked with white writer Sarah Bradford on her autobiography as a potential source of income. She married a Union soldier Nelson Davis, also born into slavery, who was more than 20 years her junior.

Residing in Auburn, New York, she cared for the elderly in her home and in 1874, the Davises adopted a daughter. After an extensive campaign for a military pension, she was finally awarded $8 per month in 1895 as Davis’s widow (he died in 1888) and $20 in 1899 for her service. In 1896, she established the Harriet Tubman Home for the Aged on land near her home. Tubman died in 1913 and was buried with military honors at Fort Hill Cemetery in Auburn, New York.

Biography from womenshistory.org. Edited by Debra Michals, Ph.D., 2015

See more Black History content at schoolcraft.edu/BHM

To offer further opportunities to learn about key personalities and moments of the African Diaspora, Christopher Hunter, Director of Equity and Engagement, has curated a selection of videos from the “Crash Course” series.

See more Black History content at schoolcraft.edu/BHM

Florence Beatrice Price

The following short biography of Florence Beatrice Price is from cedillerecords.org. A more extensive biography can be found at florenceprice.com.

Born in Little Rock, Arkansas, Florence Beatrice Price (1887-1953) is the first African American woman to have an orchestral piece played by a major American orchestra. Her Symphony in E Minor was performed by Frederick Stock and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in 1933.

Price began her studies at the age of 16 with the New England Conservatory, where she earned two artist diplomas. Her early career was as an educator based in the South, first in Little Rock, AK, and then eventually as the head of the music department at Clark University in Atlanta until 1912. Following racial incidents in 1927, her family joined the Great Migration to the north and settled in Chicago.

This move led to a burst of compositional creativity and widespread recognition for Price’s compositions beginning in the 1930s. By the end of her life, Price’s works numbered over 300 (unfortunately, most remain unpublished). She is perhaps best known for her vocal works (including two songs that appear on baritone Thomas Hampson’s 2018 Cedille album, “Songs from Chicago”). Price’s Spiritual arrangements were frequently performed by singers such as Marian Anderson and Leontyne Price and remain important to the American vocal canon.

See more Black History content at schoolcraft.edu/BHM

Malcolm X

Malcolm X, or known as El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz in the Muslim world, was one of the key figures of the Civil Rights Movement, and his legacy continues today. Born Malcolm Little on May 19, 1925, in Omaha, Nebraska, his family relocated to Lansing, Michigan. When Malcolm was 6 years old, his father Earl Little, a Baptist Minister and teacher of Marcus Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), was murdered in Lansing. Although, local authorities made claims it was a suicide, the back of Little’s head had been smashed with a hammer before he was tied to streetcar tracks and run over.

The family could not receive a payout from Earl Little’s life insurance, as it wouldn’t pay over cases of suicide.  Malcolm’s mother Louise Little struggled to keep the family together financially. Overcome with stress and grief, she was committed to an insane asylum and the 10 children were separated between foster homes and family members. While in foster care, Malcolm excelled academically, but became disinterested in school after a teacher told him his desires to become a lawyer were unrealistic because he was Black. This led Malcolm into years of juvenile delinquency.

During a period of incarceration, Malcolm become a devoted follower of the Nation of Islam (NOI). In “The Autobiography of Malcolm X” as told to author Alex Haley, Malcolm discussed the meaning of the ‘X’ as taken by NOI members to represent the mathematical symbol signifying the unknown. This because Africans born in America through enslavement were stripped of culture, names and heritage and given the names of enslavers of their ancestors. After his release from prison in 1952, Malcolm X began his work in Detroit, expanding NOI Temple #1, and then across the county. He became a controversial figure within the Civil Rights Movement as he opposed the “Non-Violent” approach of other leaders as a sole strategy, instead promoting self-defense when appropriate.

In 1963 a rift developed between Malcolm X and senior leaders of the Nation of Islam for his activism in the Civil Rights Movement and work toward international human rights. In his Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca in 1964, Malcolm X would find the philosophy of white people being devils, as taught in the Nation Of Islam, to be a contradiction to the traditional teachings of Islam. During the pilgrimage, Malcolm met white Muslims who were opposed to the systemic oppression of Blacks in America.

This experience in Mecca guided his understanding to work with whites and other Civil Rights leaders, such as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. On February 21, 1965, Malcolm X was killed during his weekly address to the Organization of Afro-American Unity, a human rights organization he established. This was just seven days after he, his wife Betty Shabazz, pregnant with twins, and their four daughters were nearly killed in a fire bombing. In recent years new information, such as the Netflix series Who Killed Malcolm X?, has revealed the role of the FBI and local police units in his death.

The location of Malcolm’s murder has since been transformed into The Shabazz Center, a cultural and educational institution that harnesses the legacies of Malcolm X and Dr. Betty Shabazz to incubate social, racial, and global justice movements. You may learn more at https://theshabazzcenter.org/

See more Black History content at schoolcraft.edu/BHM

Arnold Wicker Sr., Emeritus Professor

Arnold Wicker Sr. taught several courses related to Criminal Justice for more than a decade at Schoolcraft College. This followed a distinguished 30-year career with the Detroit Police Department as Arnold retired at the rank of Commander.

To help celebrate Black History Month, we’re pleased to share “My Story, My Voice,” a series of essays written by Schoolcraft College students, faculty, staff and alumni. Please go to schoolcraft.edu/BHM to read the complete collection.

By Arnold Wicker Sr., Emeritus Professor

Everyone has a story, which is something I have begun to embrace. Until I was given this homework assignment, I had not given any real thought as to what my story entailed. How do you condense 3 score and almost 12 years into less than a page? Everyone has a story: my students, those I encounter as I facilitate trainings, even strangers. I am grateful to reflect upon and give you this tiny part of my story.

One advantage of getting old and retiring three times allows reflection. I look back on how I became an Emeritus Professor after enjoying over 15 years in the classroom/online at Schoolcraft College and beyond. Managing an executive career in law enforcement before retiring after 30 years. Which leads me to my third and current act: Facilitating training that focuses on understanding and recognizing signs and symptoms of those who live with mental illness or are experiencing a mental health crisis. This training is for the community as a whole and specifically for first responders. The trainings are Mental Health First Aid and Crisis Intervention Teams. I get to share that we all go through something; however, “It is OK not to be OK” is an important message for everyone to receive.

I don’t have much of a story without a 91-year-old mother that while she never said you can do it, more importantly, she never said you can’t do it!

In closing, Linda Ellis asks, “Would you be proud of the things they say about how you spent your dash?” Honestly, I don’t know. But I think I will leave that part of my story to be told by someone else.

For now I will use the adage, I am not ending my journey, I am continuing it!

Kevin Edmonds, Schoolcraft College Police Officer

Kevin Edmonds joined the Schoolcraft College Police Department in November of 2014. He previously served with the Detroit Police Department and the city of Oak Park’s Public Safety Department.

To help celebrate Black History Month, we’re pleased to share “My Story, My Voice,” a series of essays written by Schoolcraft College students, faculty, staff and alumni. Please go to schoolcraft.edu/BHM to read the complete collection.

By Kevin Edmonds, Schoolcraft College Police Officer

I grew up on the west side of Detroit in the shadow of famed Kronk Gym. I grew up in a neighborhood where neighbors knew you by name, and everyone looked out for each other. One of the values that was instilled in me as a child by my mom was the “Golden Rule”: Treat everybody the way you want to be treated. I have lived by that mantra in both my personal and professional life.

After graduating from Henry Ford High School, I began working for Ford Motor Company before starting my career in public service with the Detroit Police Department (DPD) in 1989. I worked for DPD for two years and was laid-off. Unemployment was short-lived, as just weeks after being laid-off, I was hired by the City of Oak Park’s Public Safety Department (OPDPS). I served the Oak Park DPS for 23 years, retiring in October of 2014.

As with my time being laid-off, my retirement was also short-lived. Within weeks after I retired, I was hired by the Schoolcraft College Police Department (SCPD) in November of 2014. Not a bad retirement gig at all!

Entering into my eighth year at SCPD, I have enjoyed my job here at Schoolcraft College thus far. I enjoy coming to work, my co-workers at SCPD, the staff and faculty at the college. I enjoy what I do on a daily basis here at Schoolcraft College assisting students, staff, and guest of Schoolcraft College.

In conclusion, working at SCPD has inspired me to return to college to complete the last 10 credits of my bachelor’s degree program. My goal is to complete my degree work to walk across the stage this December. Wish me luck!