Our national parks can also be reminders of America’s history of race and civil rights

(Pictured above: Black sailors at Port Chicago Naval Magazine, Calif., 1944)

When the National Park Service was established 100 years ago, it was with the intent of creating a federal agency that would “conserve the scenery and the natural and historic objects” in the nation’s wilderness area. But over the decades, the NPS’ portfolio has expanded. Of its 413 units, more than a third are historic places and sites — and it’s through some of these that the park service has begun dialogues about race.

That is the case at Tule Lake, as well as at the Nicodemus National Historic Site in Kansas, which harbors a roughly century-old settlement established by freed slaves after the Civil War, and the 54-mile Selma to Montgomery National Historic Trail in Alabama, which marks the path of the fraught 1965 march to secure equal voting rights for African Americans in the U.S. One site in California is devoted to the Port Chicago Naval Magazine where in July 1944 an accident lighted up a pair of munitions ships and triggered an explosion so massive that it registered 3.4 on the Richter scale. The 320 men on site, most of them African American, were killed instantly. For most, their remains were never found.

“It’s an inherent mission and responsibility to tell the complete American narrative,” said NPS Director John Jarvis. “Not just the good and rosy stories, but the full story.” (read more)

Note: The National Park Service celebrates African American Heritage throughout the year. Visit a multitude of park sites dedicated to African American history and culture. View Museum exhibits, go on a travel itinerary, or read in-depth histories and interviews of famous African Americans and how they shaped the United States.


African Americans and Cuba’s First Experiment in Tourism: The Joe Louis Commission in Post Revolutionary Havana, 1959-1960

fidel_castro__joe_louisUniversity of California, Riverside historian Ralph Crowder describes this fascinating but little known attempt by Joe Louis and Fidel Castro to encourage middle class African American tourism to Cuba  in the first year of the new regime.

When Fidel Castro successfully toppled Fulgencio Batista’s regime in January 1959, he and his fellow Cuban revolutionaries closed the gambling casinos and forced American gangsters to leave the island.  This action was enthusiastically supported by working-class and peasant Cubans since the casino world was one of the best examples of American imperialism and the prostitution of Cuban women who staffed brothels financed and managed by foreign gangsters. Castro and his advisors quickly realized that this popular initiative created serious economic problems for Cuba’s tourist industry.   Large hotels stood empty, jobs that supported Cuban households disappeared, and the island nation lost a $60 million dollar industry that could have been used to reconstruct Cuba’s economic infrastructure.

Nearly ten months after Castro’s government had consolidated power, unrest had become widespread.  Unemployment, a persistent problem in Cuba, had been exacerbated by the discharge of soldiers and former civil servants associated with Batista’s rule, and dislocations of landowners and businessmen. Nonetheless, Castro’s personal popularity remained high and the “overwhelming majority of Cubans continued to support Fidel Castro and his regime.”  One strategy that Castro employed in the early years of Cuba’s post revolutionary government was to take personal supervision of new ventures.  This enlarged his personal powers and involved him directly in the administration of all new government programs. As president of the National Tourist Institute, Castro launched a campaign to revive Cuba’s tourist industry.

During the spring of 1959, Castro contacted former boxing champion Joe Louis through Rowe-Louis-Fischer-Lockhart, Inc., an advertising firm based in New York City.  Joe Louis and Billy Rowe, a former columnist with the Pittsburgh Courier, had been long-time friends and partners in this advertising business since 1935.  The former heavy weight champion helped Rowe recruit clients, made commercial appearances, and participated in social and promotional events arranged by wealthy businessmen who wanted to bask in the fame and national prominence of the Brown Bomber.

Castro, who witnessed the glory years of Louis’s boxing career as a Cuban youth in the 1930s, also admired Louis’s athletic achievements and his struggle against overwhelming disadvantages as the son of an Alabama sharecropper and great grandson of a slave.  The accomplishments of the former boxing champion captured the imagination of African America, elevated the Brown Bomber to the status of the first black hero in white America, and made Joe Louis an international celebrity among colonial subjects who had battled the ravages of American and European imperialism.  The Cuban leader also understood that Joe Louis could provide the first serious link with middle-class African Americans.  They had tourist dollars to spend but were prohibited by “Jim Crow” restrictions that were standard problems for African American travelers throughout resort venues in the Caribbean. (read more)


Literary: “Blood at the Root, A Racial Cleansing in America” by Patrick Phillips

American Apartheid — A Georgia County Drove Out All Its Black Citizens in 1912

american-apartheid

Segregationist protesters preparing to attack a civil rights march in Forsyth County, January 1987. Credit Steve Deal/Atlanta Journal-Constitution, via Associated Press

Patrick Phillips’s book, at its core, is about the lies told over and over again until they become the truth. Lies ­crafted to exonerate white residents, who deployed terror, lynching and the law to racially cleanse all black people from Forsyth County, Ga. Lies proffered to explain why, despite the civil rights movement and the area’s proximity to Atlanta, the ­county remained virtually all-white into the 1990s. “Blood at the Root,” whose title is taken from a stanza of “Strange Fruit,” the hauntingly painful song about lynching, is no redemption tale. By the end, it is clear that the white supremacy responsible for killing black bodies and stealing land and property remains, to this day, unbowed and ­unrepentant.

Phillips begins with his childhood. In the late 1970s, his family had moved out of Atlanta and, like so many, purchased a home in a white suburban setting. But, Phillips began to think: Why this white? Not one black person in the entire county? How could that be? Years later, still asking those questions, he began his quest.

“Blood at the Root” meticulously and elegantly reveals the power of white supremacy in its many guises — be it active, complicit or complacent; rural or suburban — to distort and destroy, not only lives and accomplishments, but historical memory, the law and basic human civility. (read more)


For Kids: Building Blocks Teach Black History

building-blocksToy building blocks have traditionally been a way for children to use their imaginations to build, stack and create. Now, with the History Makers Puzzle Block Set, toys can also teach children about Black history.

The History Makers Puzzle Block Set consists of 30 multifunctional wooden blocks. The blocks form three puzzles: two are Black history puzzles, and the other is a puzzle that teaches children leadership skills. The puzzle block set was created by Tiffney T. Laing.

“What makes

[the blocks] so different is that they share and tell the Black experience through the lens of self leadership,” Tiffney T. Laing, founder and owner of the History Makers Puzzle Block Set, told AFRO. “They shouldn’t have to wait until they’re older to learn it.” (read more)


TIPHC Bookshelf

requiem_jacketcoverPublished scholarship on black history in Texas is growing and we’d like to share with you some suggested readings, both current and past, from some of the preeminent history scholars in Texas and beyond. We invite you to take a look at our bookshelf page — including a featured selection — and check back as the list grows. A different selection will be featured each week. We welcome suggestions and reviews. This week, we offer, “Requiem For A Classic, Thanksgiving Turkey Day Classic,” by Thurman W. Robins.

Established during the era of Jim Crow and a segregated society the Jack Yates and Phillis Wheatley High Schools met in an annual football classic which was the largest attended schoolboy game in America.

The two teams began their yearly play in 1927.  The classic battles on Thanksgiving Day didn’t begin until 1935, and they continued on Thanksgiving until 1966.

The Classic was filled with excitement as there were a myriad number of events surrounding the contest.  There were marching bands, drill squads, other performing groups, an annual parades, pep-rallies, dances and even a yearly breakfast to celebrate the affair.  The halftime ceremonies were as important as the game itself. One of the highlights of halftime was the crowning of the school’s queens.

The Thanksgiving Day Classic came to a swift end with the integration of public schools in Texas, as most 3A high schools began play under the University Interscholastic League (UIL) governance in 1967.  The UIL playoff format required that all district games be completed by the second week of November therefore, the Thanksgiving Classic became defunct.


This Week In Texas Black History, Nov. 27-Dec. 3

Mickey Leland27 — On this day in 1944, U.S. Congressman Mickey Leland was born in Lubbock. He graduated from Houston’s Phillis Wheatley High School in 1963 and earned a pharmacy degree from Texas Southern University in 1970. Leland served six terms in Congress (18th District) and five years as a Texas state legislator (88th District). He was a civil rights activist and a staunch advocate in the fight against hunger. He was the lead supporter for passage of the Africa Famine Relief and Recovery Act of 1985, legislation that provided $800 million in food and humanitarian relief supplies. Leland died in a plane crash on August 7, 1989 while on a relief mission to an isolated refugee camp, Fugnido, in Ethiopia, which sheltered thousands of unaccompanied children fleeing the civil conflict in neighboring Sudan.

 

yates-wheatley game28 — The Jack Yates-Phillis Wheatley high school football rivalry in Houston started in 1927, but the game officially became the “Turkey Day Classic” on this day in 1946. Played at Jeppesen Stadium — then a venue for public school sports events, the Thanksgiving Day game would be played until 1966 and drew standing room only crowds of 30,000-plus fans making it, for many years, the largest event in the nation for high school football. (See TIPHC Bookshelf, “Requiem For A Classic”)

 

claude-black28 — Claude William Black, Jr., minister and political figure, was born on this day in 1916 in San Antonio. Rev. Black was pastor of Mt. Zion First Baptist Church in San Antonio for almost 50 years, but was also a noted Civil Rights leader who became a four-term city councilman (1973-1978) and the city’s first black Mayor Pro Tem. He was an associate of Martin Luther King, Jr., A. Phillip Randolph, and Thurgood Marshall. During President Lyndon Johnson’s administration, Black was a delegate to the White House Conference on Civil Rights.

 

 

December

Alvin Ailey1 – On this day in 1989 dancer and choreographer Alvin Ailey died in New York City of blood dyscrasia. Ailey, a native or Rogers, Texas, founded his namesake dance theater in 1958. A native of Rogers (Bell County), Ailey made his Broadway debut in 1954 and in 1958 gained his first critical success for his choreography for Blues Suite, which also marked the beginning of the Alvin Ailey Dance Company. His troupe, in 1970, became the first American dance company to tour the USSR in 50 years and received a 20-minute ovation for their performance in Leningrad.

 

 

charles-brown-utep1 – On this day in 1956, Charles Brown became the first black athlete to participate in a major college sport in Texas when he suited up for Texas Western College (now Univ. of Texas at El Paso), 10 years before John Westbrook at Baylor and Jerry LeVias at Southern Methodist University broke the color line for the Southwest Conference in September 1966. Brown had attended predominantly black Douglass High School in El Paso, served in the Air Force during the Korean War then attended Amarillo Junior College before he and his nephew, Cecil, joined Texas Western. In his debut, Brown scored 16 points and, according to the El Paso Times, “dazzled the crowd” as the Miners beat New Mexico Western 73-48. Though only 6-foot-1, from 1956-1959, Brown led the Border Conference in scoring and rebounding. He concluded his career with 1,170 points and 578 rebounds, averaging 17.5 points and 8.6 rebounds. Brown was inducted into the El Paso Athletic Hall of Fame in 1999 and the UTEP Athletic Hall of Fame in 2008. On March 2, 2011, UTEP hung Brown’s jersey No. 25 in the rafters. On Sunday, May 11, 2014, Brown passed away in Antioch, California at the age of 83.

James Cash1 – James Cash becomes the first African American to play basketball in the Southwest Conference on this day in 1966 when Texas Christian University opened its season at Oklahoma, losing 90-76. Cash had starred at Fort Worth I.M. Terrell High School playing for legendary coach Robert Hughes. Cash graduated from Terrell in 1965, but because of the NCAA’s freshmen ineligible rule, would not take the court for TCU until 1966. In his first season, 1966-67, Cash started at forward and averaged 11.5 points, and led the team in rebounds with 266. The team would finish the season 10-14 overall, 8-6 in the SWC (second place). However, Cash would help lead the team to a conference championship and NCAA Tournament (first round loss) the next season. An Academic All-American, Cash received a degree in math and later a master’s and Ph.D. from Purdue University and would become a full-time professor and then Dean of the MBA Program at the Harvard Business School (and the school’s first tenured black professor). Cash served on various corporate boards including Microsoft, General Electric, and Wal-Mart and became part owner of the NBA Boston Celtics.

clarksville1 – On this day in 1976, the Clarksville neighborhood in Austin was added to National Register of Historic Places. Clarksville was originally the location of slave quarters for a plantation outside of Austin owned by Texas Governor Elisha M. Pease who gave the land to his emancipated slaves. Freedman Charles Clark established the community in 1871 and subdivided the land among other freedmen.

 

 

 

 


Blog: Ron Goodwin, author, PVAMU history professor

goodwinRon Goodwin’s bi-weekly blog appears exclusively for TIPHC/TBHPP. Goodwin is a San Antonio native and Air Force veteran. Generally, his column will address contemporary issues in the black community and how they relate to black history. He and the TIPHC/TBHPP staff welcome your comments. His latest blog is, “Post Obama = Neo Hate” Read it here.

 

 

 


Submissions Wanted

Historians, scholars, students, lend us your…writings. Help us produce the most comprehensive documentation ever undertaken for the African American experience in Texas. We encourage you to contribute items about people, places, events, issues, politics/legislation, sports, entertainment, religion, etc., as general entries or essays. Our documentation is wide-ranging and diverse, and you may research and write about the subject of your interest or, to start, please consult our list of suggested biographical entries and see submission guidelines. However, all topics must be approved by TIPHC/TBHPP editors before beginning your research/writing.

We welcome your questions or comments via email or telephone – mdhurd@pvamu.edu.