Justice Thomas’ story deserves more in-depth telling at African-American museum
(Chicago Tribune) By most social standards, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas would be considered a model African-American.
Born into poverty in the rural South, Thomas worked his way to judicial heights that only one other African-American — Thurgood Marshall — has reached. He could have been a champion for the rights of other African-Americans to reach their greatest potential. But he has chosen not to carry that torch.
Instead, he has spent the last 25 years on the court protecting barriers and putting up new ones designed to stifle blacks and other minorities.
African-Americans have labeled him an “Uncle Tom” — a sellout and traitor to his own people.
But like it or not, Thomas is a historical icon. He deserves a prominent spot in the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African-American History and Culture.
If this acclaimed museum is to tell the true story of the African-American journey, it cannot sugarcoat the course. To preserve the integrity of the black experience, there must be a place for those who devoted their lives to moving us forward as well as those who have held us back. (read more)
SOA students win sandcastle competition — 10th time in 15 years; SOA 2016 student successes
A team of students from the PVAMU School of Architecture, led by professor Barry Norwood, won the 15th Annual AIA (American Institute of Architecture) College Challenge Sandcastle Competition in Galveston this summer. The SOA has captured the event’s title in 10 of the competition’s 15 years.
The student’s theme for this year’s design was, “Sweeping fluid forms of Beauty. There are 360 degrees so why stick to one.” Their project was based on famed architect Zaha Hadid’s design of the Glasgow Riverside Museum of Transport in Scotland. The museum was announced as the Winner of the 2013 European Museum of the Year Award.
Over 60 teams competed in various levels of the sandcastle competition for Houston-area architects, designers, engineers contractors and universities who spent five hours building a variety of sandcastles on Galveston’s East Beach.
In late August, another group of SOA students won an AIA Design Award for their work creating healthy, sustainable, energy efficient homes in Houston’s Independence Heights neighborhood. A film about their work is entered in the AIA I Look Up Film Challenge, with the winning entry to be shown at various conferences around the country next year, including, the Architecture & Design Film Festival in Washington, D.C. The AIA Houston Design Awards program recognizes design excellence in architecture, residential architecture, interior architecture, restoration/renovation, and urban design. Criteria to be used by the jury include quality of design, resolution of the program idea, sustainable responsibility, innovation, thoughtfulness, and technique.
Click here for a list (PDF) of other 2016 SOA student successes.
PV alum Izola Collins debuts composition, “Galveston Survives,” directs Galveston symphony orchestra
Izola Fedford Collins fulfilled a lifelong dream on Sep. 4 when she directed the Galveston Symphony Orchestra as they performed her original composition “Galveston Survives.” The composition tells a short story, describing the city’s history. The opening fanfare denotes prosperity, followed by the slow pace of life in Galveston showing relaxation, but also an undercurrent pattern of unrest.
As the years go by, the piece has a rhythm unique to the city sets in, with the variety of ethnicities in its population. As the composition evolves, the climate becomes unsettled. Storms of nature, politics, religion, and personal life develop. As the devastation clears, Galveston pops up again, like a cork, over and over again. The circumstances may change, but the people come back, and once more, Galveston Survives.
Collins is a Galveston native and a graduate of Central High School, the first black high school in Texas for African Americans. She attended PV in 1944 and joined the Prairie View Coeds, a wartime All-Girls Jazz Orchestra that traveled throughout the East, including the Apollo Theater in New York. She has a master’s degree in music from Northwestern University and has taught band at several area high schools. She has also authored several books, including “Island of Color, Where Juneteeth Started.”
Her composition is available on CD. Click here to contact Ms. Collins.
TIPHC Bookshelf
Published 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, “Unforgivable Blackness, The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson,” by Geoffrey C. Ward.
In this vivid biography Ward brings back to life the most celebrated — and the most reviled — African American of his age. Jack Johnson battled his way out of obscurity and poverty in the Jim Crow South to win the title of heavyweight champion of the world. At a time when whites ran everything in America, he took orders from no one and resolved to live as if color did not exist. While most blacks struggled simply to exist, he reveled in his riches and his fame, sleeping with whomever he pleased, to the consternation and anger of much of white America. Because he did so the federal government set out to destroy him, and he was forced to endure prison and seven years of exile. This definitive biography portrays Jack Johnson as he really was — a battler against the bigotry of his era and the embodiment of American individualism.
This Week In Texas Black History, Oct. 16-22
18 — On this day in 1912, World Heavyweight Champion and Galveston native Jack Johnson was arrested for violating the Mann Act against transporting women across state lines for immoral purposes, specifically prostitution, because of his relationship with a white woman who was Johnson’s fiancée. Her refusal to cooperate in his prosecution doomed the case though Johnson would be arrested again less than a month later on similar charges, however, the woman involved this time testified against him. Johnson was convicted by an all-white jury and sentenced to a year and a day in prison, but he jumped bail and left the country for France. He wouldn’t fight for over a year until he defeated Jim Johnson, an African-American, in Paris in the first fight for the heavyweight championship between two black men. (See TIPHC Bookshelf for “Unforgivable Blackness, The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson.”)
19 – Two-time Grammy Award winner Jennifer Holliday was born on this day in 1960 in Houston. Inspired by congresswoman and fellow Houston native Barbara Jordan to be a good citizen and a good person, Holliday began singing in the Pleasant Grove Baptist Church choir. She gained fame in the starring role of Effie “Melody” White in the Broadway production “Dreamgirls,” for which Holiday earned a Tony Award for Best Actress In A Musical. In the show, she sings “And I Am Telling You I’m not Going,” which also reached No. 1 on R&B charts.
22 – Christia Daniels Adair, suffragist and civil rights activist, was born on this day in 1893, in Victoria, Texas. A graduate of Prairie View Normal College, Adair was an elementary school teacher in Kingsville where she organized a group of black and white women to acquire voting rights in 1919. She later became one of the first black women to vote in the state’s previously all-white primary. Adair and her husband relocated to Houston where she would become executive secretary for the Houston chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. With the NAACP she led campaigns to desegregate the city’s public schools, libraries, transportation, hospitals and other public facilities. In 1952, Adair help found the first Harris County interracial political group, the Harris County Democrats. In 1977, a Houston city park was named for her.
22 – In 1936, Bobby Seale was born on this day in Dallas. Seale would become a political activist and revolutionist, and in 1966 co-founded (with Huey Newton) and was national chairman of the Black Panther Party. J. Edgar Hoover, Federal Bureau of Investigation director, described the Panthers as “the greatest threat to the internal security of the country.” Seale was also one of the “Chicago Eight” defendants charged with conspiring to incite riots at the 1968 Democratic Party Convention. Seale was charged with 16 counts of contempt of court after repeated outbursts during the trial for which he was bound and gagged. He spent four years in prison. In 1973, he finished second in a run for mayor of Oakland, Ca. Since, Seale has been a community activist and author. Among his several books are his biography, “Seize the Time,” and a cook book, “Barbeque’n with Bobby.”
Blog: Ron Goodwin, author, PVAMU history professor
Ron 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, “Breaking my promise” Read it
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.