One hundred and twenty years before Barack Obama became the 44th president of the United States in 2008, Abolitionist Frederick Douglass received one roll call vote by a state representative after speaking at the 1888 Republican National Convention. This did not make Douglass a serious contender, but it serves as an incredible historical milestone.

In 1904 George Edwin Taylor would run unsuccessfully on the ticket of the National Negro Civil Liberty Party. It would take the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which allowed blacks to participate in politics and to run as major party presidential candidates, before the next landmark achievement would be made.

Shirley Chisholm became the first major party candidate for president on the Democratic ticket in 1972. She campaigned in 12 states and initially won 28 delegates. She would gain 124 more delegates from disaffected voters at the Democratic National Convention that same year for a total of 152.   [Read more…]

By Phillip Timothy / Facebook

Next Tuesday we will have an “active shooter” / intruder drill at our school, and I will hunker down behind flimsy wooden cabinet doors with my students.

You see, we open the cabinets and hide behind the doors so that anyone peering into the classrooms will not see us, and maybe think it is an empty room. Maybe we will be unnoticed, which just means maybe he will go to another classroom.

In preparation, I will remind my students tomorrow that our hallway doors should always be locked, so if an intruder shows up we can just pull the doors closed without fiddling with keys. I have assigned students whose job it is to check those doors every period to make sure we don’t forget.

I will try to keep the children quiet during our drill on Tuesday. It’s hard. They’re packed in tight behind those cabinet doors, and they talk and giggle. Because they’re children. They look like young adults, but they’re children.   [Read more…]

Phillis Wheatley was born in Senegal/Gambia around 1753, and captured and sold into slavery in the United States at the age of 7 or 8. Purchased by John Wheatley as a servant for his wife, Susanna, the young girl’s intelligence was impossible to miss. She was educated by the Wheatleys and quickly became fluent in Greek and Latin.

At the age of 13 she wrote her first poem, and by the age of 20 she had completed her first volume, Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral. The year was 1773, and Wheatley became the first African American woman and U.S. slave to publish a book of poems, and the third American woman ever. In order to prove her authorship of the book,a preface was included in which 17 Boston men, including John Hancock, declared that she had, in fact, written each of the poems.   [Read more…]

Cathay Williams decided to enlist in the Army alongside her cousin and a friend. Since women were prohibited from joining the Army, the 5-foot-9 Williams disguised herself a man and switched her first and last name to complete the rouse.

On November 15, 1866, Williams was considered fit for duty and assigned to Company A of the 38th Infantry, one of four all-black units newly formed that year. She became the first African American woman to serve in the U.S. Army, and the only black woman documented to serve in the Army in the 19th Century.   [Read more…]