Breaking Down Barriers

Shirley Chisholm became the first African-American congresswoman in 1968. Four years later, she became the first major-party black candidate to make a bid for the U.S. presidency.

Famed U.S. congresswoman and lifelong social activist Shirley Chisholm was born Shirley St. Hill on November 30, 1924, in a predominantly black neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York. Chisholm spent part of her childhood in Barbados with her grandmother. After graduating from Brooklyn College in 1946, she began her career as a teacher and went on to earn a master's degree in elementary education from Columbia University.  

 

Chisholm served as director of the Hamilton-Madison Child Care Center from 1953 to 1959, and as an educational consultant for New York City's Bureau of Child Welfare from 1959 to 1964.

 

 

http://www.biography.com/people/shirley-chisholm-9247015

Founder of a Great City

Jean Baptiste Point du Sable was the first settler of Chicago. He was also the city's first black resident.

As a free black man, Point du Sable is believed to have been born most likely in Haiti sometime before 1750. His biography is sketchy, pieced together from the rare instances when he had to deal with the British or American governments.

From 1768 or so, Point du Sable operated as an engagé, a fur trader with an official license from the British government. In the early years of the United States, Point du Sable was managing a trading post in Indiana. The area was officially Indian-owned (he was a tenant) and Point du Sable was harassed by both British and American troops who passed through the Midwest.  



 A picture of how Chicago might have appeared when Du Sable was there

 

 By 1788 he had established a farm in Chicago and lived there with his wife, Catherine, a son and a daughter. In the years that the family lived there, they provided some stability to an area that was primarily frequented by peripatetic traders. With the end of the Revolutionary War, Point du Sable's farm prospered. People as far away as the East coast knew Point du Sable as the only source of farmed produce in the area.
Suzanne Point du Sable, Jean Baptiste and Catherine's daughter, was married in 1790 and bore a daughter, Eulalie, in 1796. Her brother, Jean Baptiste Jr., worked as a trader on the Missouri River. He died in 1814.
Point du Sable left Chicago in 1800, selling his property to a neighbor. His wife did not sign the bill of sale, and may have been deceased at the time. Point moved to St. Charles in Spanish Louisiana. His business deals did not go well, and was declared insolvent in the territory in 1813. At the end of his life, Point du Sable was destitute and depended on the goodwill of a neighbor, possibly a lover, for his housekeeping.
Jean Baptiste Point du Sable died on August 28, 1818.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/chicago/peopleevents/p_dusable.html

The Titanic

Laroche's mother sent the family tickets to return to Haiti aboard the La France.  However, the ocean liner's policy banning children dining with their parents in the dining room led Laroche to exchange their first class tickets for the La France for second class tickets on the R.M.S. Titanic. 

On April 10, 1912, Laroche and his family boarded the Titanic from the harbor of Grande Rade near Fort de l'Quest. The Laroches enjoyed the opulent amenities of the ship, dining in the same dining room as its first-class passengers. However, they were subjected to stares and some insults from fellow passengers and crew who frowned upon their interracial marriage.  After the sinking of the Titanic, the White Star Line extended a public apology for the racism exhibited by its crew members toward its non-white passengers including Laroche.

As the ship sank in the early morning of April 15, Laroche stuffed the pockets of his coat with money and jewels and took his wife and children up to the boat deck.  He wrapped the coat around his wife, and his last words to her were: "Here, take this, you are going to need it. I'll get another boat. God be with you.  I'll see you in New York."

Joseph Laroche died in the sinking of the Titanic. His body was never recovered.  His wife Juliette returned to Paris with her daughters and gave birth to their son, Joseph Lemercier Laroche on December 17, 1912. 

 

http://www.blackpast.org/gah/laroche-joseph-phillipe-lemercier-1889-1912

A Trophy Winning Performance

 

Ernie Davis became the 1st African-American to win college football's most prestigious award, the Heisman Trophy. Davis competed collegiately for Syracuse University before being drafted by the Washington Redskins, then almost immediately traded to the Cleveland Browns in December 1961. However, he would never play a professional game, as he was diagnosed with leukemia in 1962 and died in May 1963.

 

 

https://blackthen.com/%E2%80%8Bnovember-28-1961-ernie-davis-makes-college-football-history/

Gifted Hands

Ben Carson was born in Detroit, Michigan, on September 18, 1951. His mother, though under-educated herself, pushed her sons to read and believe in themselves. Carson went from being a poor student to receiving academic honors and eventually attending medical school. As a doctor, he became director of pediatric neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital at age 33 and earned fame for his groundbreaking work separating conjoined twins. He retired from medicine in 2013, and two years later he entered politics, making a bid to become the Republican candidate for U.S. president. After struggling in the primary elections, Carson dropped out of the race in March 2016, and then became a vocal supporter of Republican nominee and former rival Donald Trump. After Trump was elected president, he nominated Carson to be the secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

http://www.biography.com/people/ben-carson-475422#synopsis

Reaching the North Pole

Famed African-American explorer Matthew Henson was born in Charles County, Maryland, in 1866. Explorer Robert Edwin Peary hired Henson as his valet for expeditions. For more than two decades, they explored the Arctic, and on April 6, 1909, Peary, Henson and the rest of their team made history, becoming the first people to reach the North Pole—or at least they claimed to have. Henson died in New York City in 1955.

 

Learn more about this great American Explorer: http://www.blackpast.org/aah/henson-matthew-1866-1955

Power to the People

 

In October of 1966, in Oakland California, Huey Newton and Bobby Seale founded the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense. They fought to establish revolutionary socialism through mass organizing and community based programs. Some of the programs still exist today.

 

 

To learn more about a documentary that was made about this organization go here: http://theblackpanthers.com/home/