How Dorie Miller’s bravery helped fight bigotry in the Navy

Image: Doris Miller was an African-American Sailor who earned the Navy Cross for bravery during the attack on Pearl Harbor in World War II. (Navy)

(Navy Times) Among the pantheon of America’s heroes, none might seem more improbable than the black son of Texas sharecroppers and grandson of slaves, Doris Miller.

Miller, known to many as “Dorie,” was born on October 12, 1919, during the darkest days of the lynching epidemic that blighted the South in the 20th century’s first decades. Only three years before Miller was born, his hometown of Waco became the scene of one of the most brutal lynchings on record when 17-year-old Jesse Washington was burned alive on the lawn of the city hall.

Miller was compelled to drop out of high school in order to help support his struggling family — “We were a little hungry in those days,” his mother later explained — but when he could not find work, in September 1939, at 19, he joined the U.S. Navy.

At that time, black men serving in the Navy were not only ineligible for promotion, they were consigned to the lowly messman branch, where they were tasked with making the beds and shining the shoes of their white officers and waiting on them in the officers’ mess.

As one of Miller’s fellow messmen said, they were merely “seagoing bellhops, chambermaids, and dishwashers.” (more)


In the 1960s, Michigan State truly helped integrate college football

The Spartans won the 1966 national championship with black QB Jimmy Raye II

Michigan State football integration

Michigan State players who helped integrate Big Ten football and win two national titles in 1965 and ’66 for the Spartans, from left to right: Clinton Jones, Bob Apisa, Charles “Bubba” Smith, Head Coach Duffy Daugherty, Gene Washington and George Webster.

(The Undefeated) As college football embraces its 150th season, black athletes have been at the center of that story.

As early as 1890, black athletes have played football at predominantly white universities. However, the catalyst for true integration of college football began with the success of Michigan State’s 1965 and 1966 national championship teams, which featured 20 black players. This is the story of one of those players.

Jimmy Raye II was the quarterback of the 1966 national title team for the Spartans. Raye said his family assessed his escape from segregated Fayetteville, North Carolina, to take a chance at college football’s promised land.

For Raye, a star football and basketball player among the all-black high school leagues in the early 1960s, the main concerns involved football.

“The apprehension was about whether I’d get to play the position [quarterback] that I wanted to play or whether I’d be switched,” Raye told The Undefeated, “or that I had never played against white players.”

Raye, who went on to play defensive back in the NFL and enjoy a long coaching career, had climbed aboard Spartans coach Duffy Daugherty’s “underground railroad,” which brought in the first large influx of African-American athletes from the South. (more)


This building was prominent in African-American history in Fort Worth

African-American Masonic Temple building in Fort Worth

AA Masonic Temple_Fort Worth

Ralph J. Diamond, an insurance agent, stands in a doorway to the African American Masonic Temple building in Fort Worth in 1960. (Courtesy La Vida News Collection, Tarrant County Black Historical & Genealogical Society.) 

(Fort Worth Star-Telegram) Insurance agent Ralph J. Diamond stands quietly in the door holding a pile of voter information pamphlets.

His demeanor and the deceptively ordinary appearance of this old Polaroid photograph don’t immediately reveal either the historical significance of the location or the groundbreaking work that went on inside the building’s walls.

The building depicted is the African American Masonic Temple, built in 1907 by the powerhouse banker and Republican political activist William Madison “Gooseneck Bill” McDonald. By 1912 it housed McDonald’s Fraternal Bank & Trust Co. on the ground floor, along with offices for three African-American physicians, a drug store, and a barber shop.

Lodge meeting rooms were on the upper floors so that the public couldn’t see the rituals being performed as they walked by. A photograph of the entire building is in the Dallas Public Library photographic archives.

The Masonic Temple stood at the corner of Ninth and Jones in the heart of Fort Worth’s black business community, on the current site of Fort Worth Central Station (Intermodal Transportation Center). For decades, the building served as one of a few secular meeting places for African-Americans and hosted everything from conventions to lectures, dances, exhibitions, and work space for black Red Cross volunteers. (more)

TIPHC Bookshelf

Crossing the ContinentPublished 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, “Crossing the Continent, 1527-1540, The Story of the First African-American Explorer of the American South,” by Robert Goodwin.

The true story of America’s first great explorer and adventurer—an African slave named Esteban Dorantes.

“Crossing the Continent” takes us on an epic journey from Africa to Europe and America as Dr. Robert Goodwin chronicles the incredible adventures of the African slave Esteban Dorantes (1500-1539), the first pioneer from the Old World to explore the entirety of the American south and the first African-born man to die in North America about whom anything is known. Goodwin’s groundbreaking research in Spanish archives has led to a radical new interpretation of American history—one in which an African slave emerges as the nation’s first great explorer and adventurer.

Nearly three centuries before Lewis and Clark’s epic trek to the Pacific coast, Esteban and three Spanish noblemen survived shipwreck, famine, disease, and Native American hostility to make the first crossing of North America in recorded history. Drawing on contemporary accounts and long-lost records, Goodwin recounts the extraordinary story of Esteban’s sixteenth-century odyssey, which began in Florida and wound through what is now Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona, as far as the Gulf of California. Born in Africa and captured at a young age by slave traders, Esteban was serving his owner, a Spanish captain, when their disastrous sea voyage to the New World nearly claimed his life. Eventually, he emerged as the leader of the few survivors of this expedition, guiding them on an extraordinary eight-year march westward to safety.

On the group’s return to the Spanish imperial capital at Mexico City, the viceroy appointed Esteban as the military commander of a religious expedition sent to establish a permanent Spanish route into Arizona and New Mexico. But during this new adventure, as Esteban pushed deeper and deeper into the unknown north, Spaniards far to the south began to hear strange rumors of his death at Zuni Pueblo in New Mexico.

Filled with tales of physical endurance, natural calamities, geographical wonders, strange discoveries, and Esteban’s almost mystical dealings with Native Americans, “Crossing the Continent” challenges the traditional telling of our nation’s early history, placing an African and his relationship with the Indians he encountered at the heart of a new historical record.


This Week in Texas Black History

Nov. 3

Bones Hooks

Matthew “Bones” Hooks was born on this day in 1867 to former slave parents in Robertson County, Texas. Hooks was a cowboy and legendary horse breaker, who was also one of the first black cowboys to work alongside whites as a ranch hand. He later became a civic leader and worked with youth groups in Amarillo.

Nov. 5

Etta Moten

On this day in 1901, actress and singer Etta Moten was born in Weimar, Texas. Moten was touted as the “new Negro woman” for her ground-breaking movie roles. She married Claude Barnett, founder of the Associated Negro Press in 1934 the same year, she became first black woman to sing at the White House when she performed for President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s birthday celebration. For the production of “Porgy and Bess,“ Broadway composer George Gershwin wrote the female lead character with Barnett in mind.

Nov. 6

Esteban

On this cold, post-storm morning in 1528, Moroccan Moor servant Esteban (Estevanico) waded ashore near Galveston with a group of shipwrecked Spanish conquistadors and became the first African to set foot in what would become Texas. He and the other survivors would wander for eight years, at times as hostages of Native American tribes, through Texas and along the Rio Grande and into Mexico. Esteban is also considered the first black person to explore Arizona and New Mexico.

Nov. 6

Gen. Gordon Granger

Maj. Gen. Gordon Granger was born on this day in 1822 in Joy, Wayne County, New York. As Union commander of the Department of Texas, Granger would arrive at Galveston on June 19, 1865 and deliver General Order No. 3 announcing that slaves in Texas were free, as a result of the Emancipation Proclamation, issued two years earlier. The announcement is the basis for Juneteenth celebrations.

Nov. 6

Tom Bradley

In 1973, on this day, Los Angeles elected its first black mayor, Tom Bradley, a native of Calvert, Texas. The son of sharecroppers and the grandson of slaves, Bradley moved with his family to Los Angeles at age seven. In 1963, after an outstanding career with the Los Angeles Police Department, Bradley became the first African-American elected to the Los Angeles city council. Ten years later, he became the first African-American mayor of a predominantly white city and served an unprecedented five terms. His achievements included securing the 1984 Summer Olympic Games for Los Angeles.


Blog: Ron Goodwin, Ph.D., author, PVAMU history professor

Ron Goodwin is an assistant professor of history at Prairie View A&M University. Even though he was a military “brat,” he still considers San Antonio home. Like his father and brother, Ron joined the U.S. Air Force and while enlisted received his undergraduate degree from Texas Lutheran University in Seguin, Texas. After his honorable discharge, he completed graduate degrees from Texas Southern University. Goodwin’s book, Blacks in Houston, is a pictorial history of Houston’s black community. His most recent book, Remembering the Days of Sorrow, examines the institution of slavery in Texas from the perspective of the New Deal’s Slave Narratives.

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Football is still football

October 14th, 2019

Since we’re into the football season I thought it was time to interject my two cents. I’ve noticed several teams starting black quarterbacks these days. Some because of injury, but others have been under center since training camp. By my count, the first weekend of the National Football League season in September saw nine African…(more)

1960s Revisited

October 1st, 2019

Over the last few years our society has spent a great amount of energy reliving and analyzing the 1960s. Every event – from the deaths of the Kennedy brothers, MLK and Malcolm X, landing on the moon, war protests, and the hippie revolution – has been scrutinized through the microscope of history. The interesting thing about history’s microscope, though, is that it often blots out the nasty and the ugly. The concept of revisionism centers…(more)


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 editors before beginning your research/writing.

We welcome your questions or comments. Please contact Michael Hurd, Director of TIPHC, at mdhurd@pvamu.edu.