Background on Black History Month 2004
Background on Black History Month 2004
The theme of the 2004 Black History Month 2004 observance at Princeton University is “Celebrating the Diaspora Through the Arts.” Several of our events are named after notable African Americans who have made great contributions to their fields. We’ve provided brief information on these figures below so that their legacies on our celebration can be fully understood.
Alvin Ailey
W. E. B. DuBois
Heddye Ducree
Duke Ellington
Loraine Hansbery
Zora Neale Hurston
Jam Master Jay
Patti LaBelle
Jacob Lawrence
Paul Robeson
Arthur A. Schomburg
John Singleton
Bessie Smith
Alvin Ailey
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Alvin Ailey's dancing career started in 1949 when a high school friend, Carmen DeLavallade, introduced him to Lester Horton, his first dance instructor at the Lester Horton Dance Theater. In 1958 Ailey assembled his own dance company, the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. Ailey himself stopped dancing in 1965 and cut back on his choreographic assignments during the 1970s in order to seek more funding for his growing dance enterprise. The company toured the United States and the world so extensively that by 1989, the year that Ailey died, they had performed for an estimated 15 million people in 48 states and 45 countries in six continents. Two of the most significant awards Ailey received for his achievements in dance included the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People's prestigious Spingarn medal (1976) and the Samuel H. Scripps American Dance Festival Award (1987).
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W. E. B. DuBois
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|W. E. B. Dubois was born on February 23, 1868 in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. He was one of the most influential black leaders of|
|the first half of the 20th Century. Dubois co-founded the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, or NAACP, in |
|1909. Dubois was the first African American to receive a Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1896. Between 1897 and 1914 Dubois |
|conducted numerous studies of black society in America, publishing 16 research papers. He organized the first four Pan-African |
|Congresses (1919-1927), and presided over the fifth. A prolific writer capable of expressing himself in many disciplines, DuBois, |
|among other works, wrote a sociological study of blacks in Philadelphia (1899), historical books on abolitionist John Brown (1909) |
|and on Reconstruction (1935), and fictional novels such as Quest of the Silver Fleece, (1911). |
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Heddye Ducree
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Heddye Brinson Ducree served as the Director of the Carl A. Fields Center for Equality and Cultural Understanding from 1994 to 2003. She worked as part of a larger institutional team that has as its purpose support of multiculturalism in student and University life and enhancement of the collegiate experience of students of color. Her strength and determination inspired students and administrators alike. Heddye led students in demanding greater resources for ethnic studies at Princeton University, spoke openly on the culture of Eating Clubs, and personally fought for students facing discrimination on campus. The Association of Black Princeton Alumni recognized Ms. Ducree with the Dr. Carl A. Fields Memorial University Service Award in 1999. Additionally, the Minority Business Association of Princeton University awarded Ms. Ducree the 2003 Whitney M. Young Pinnacle Award.
"Just as the world looks to Princeton for its intellectual leadership, it should also be precedent-setting in its relationships, policies and procedures that make for a campus and college community that is truly hospitable to all.”
-Heddye Ducree
Duke Ellington
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Edward Kennedy Ellington was born into the world on April 29, 1899 in Washington, D.C. Duke was taken under the wings of Oliver "Doc" Perry and Louis Brown, who taught Duke how to read music and helped improve his overall piano playing skills. Three months shy of High School graduation, Duke dropped out of school and began his professional music career. In 1923, Ellington left the security that Washington offered him and moved to New York. Duke’s band became the most sought-after band in the United States and even throughout the world. Some of Ellington’s greatest works include "Rockin’ in Rhythm," "Satin Doll," "New Orleans," "A Drum is a Women," "Take the 'A' Train," "Happy-Go-Lucky Local," "The Mooche," and "Crescendo in Blue." Duke Ellington and his band went on to play everywhere from New York to New Delhi, Chicago to Cairo, and Los Angeles to London. Ellington and his band played with such greats as Miles Davis, Cab Calloway, Dizzy Gillespie, Ella Fitzgerald, Tony Bennett and Louis Armstrong.
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Lorraine Hansberry
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In 1959, Lorraine Vivian Hansberry, became the first black woman to have a play produced on Broadway with A Raisin in the Sun. A drama about the dreams of a black family for a better life, it won the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for the 1959 season, and was subsequently made into a film (1961) and a musical (1973). Hansberry's only other completed play is The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window (1964). Les Blancs (1970), adapted by Hansberry's husband Robert Nemiroff after her death, is one of the first major plays to deal with black liberation. Nemiroff also compiled Hansberry's writings in To Be Young, Gifted, and Black (1969). Deeply committed to the black struggle for human rights, Hansberry was nevertheless not a militant writer, a stance that distinguishes her work from the plays of black writers of the 1960s.
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Zora Neale Hurston
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On January 7, 1891, Zora Neale Hurston was born in the tiny town of Notasulga, Alabama. Her father John was a carpenter, sharecropper, and a Baptist preacher; and her mother Lucy, a former schoolteacher. Within a year of Zora's birth, the family moved to Eatonville, Florida; a town, which held historical significance as the first, incorporated Black municipality in the United States. In 1925, Hurston headed to New York, just as the Harlem Renaissance was at its crest. She enrolled in Barnard College to study under Franz Boas, the father of anthropology. The 1930's and early 1940's marked the peak of Hurston's literary career. It was during this time that she completed graduate work at Columbia, published four novels and an autobiography, and was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship. Her writing brought her to the Caribbean where she became so intrigued by the practice of voodoo that she began incorporating these supernatural elements into her novels and stories.
Jam Master Jay
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For close to 20 years, Jam Master Jay (Jason Mizell), Run (Joseph Simmons) and DMC (Darryl McDaniels) have been touching the lives of many as the group Run DMC. Their b-boy style introduced Hip Hop to the world with classic songs such as "Rock Box," "King of Rock" and "Walk This Way." Jam Master Jay’s scratching and mixing exhibitions on songs such as "Jam Master Jay," "Sucker MCs" and "Peter Piper" were influential on future Hip Hop discjockeys. Outside of the group, Jay mentored several other artists, signing Onyx to his JMJ Records imprint and helping to produce their multi-platinum debut, 1993's Bacdaf--up. Years later, Jay wouldn't have to travel out of his native borough of Queens to discover another act who would go on to sell millions of records — 50 Cent spent time under Jay's wing, at one point recording 36 songs in 18 days, before eventually making the move to the Trackmasters' camp and subsequently landing in the Shady/Aftermath Records fold. Jay Master Jay’s life was tragically cut short in October 2002, however his legacy lives on with his foundation dedicated to providing music education in public schools.
Patti LaBelle
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Patti Labelle was in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on May 24th, 1944. She discovered a gift for music in her church choir and soared up from that point. Patti Labelle & the Bluebells had a number of big hits, and Labelle created one of the anthems of the disco era with "Lady Marmalade.” LaBelle began her solo career in the late 1970s. She found a comfortable mix of her dance and pop leanings, and translated it into monstrous success yet again. She has been nominated for eight Grammys and has been called the hardest working woman in show business, and recently won a battle with cancer. LaBelle’s accomplishments transcend music and include a flourishing acting career and mastership at the culinary arts.
Jacob Lawrence
Born on Sept. 17, 1917 in Atlantic City, N.J., Lawrence was the first African-American artist to exhibit in a mainstream New York gallery. In 1941, at the age of 24, he created a sensation with an exhibit of his "Migration of the American Negro" series, depicting the flight of African Americans from the South. It became the first work by a black artist to be part of the collection at the Museum of Modern Art. By the age of 30, Time magazine rated him "the foremost black artist in the United States." His work, usually in a narrative series of small paintings, explored racism in America, intermarriage, discrimination in public schools, and the progress of the civil rights movement.
Paul Robeson
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Born in 1898, he was a Phi Beta Kappa and Valedictorian of the graduating class at Rutgers University. He became a lawyer, writer, orator, musicologist and fluent in several languages. As a film star, he appeared in 13 features, including Emperor Jones, Proud Valley, Song of Freedom and Showboat. Roberson’s acting career also included work on Broadway. As a singer, Paul Roberson recorded dozens of albums. His concert tours spanned four decades and carried him to every continent. In addition to his great achievements, Paul Roberson was also an eloquent and outspoken champion for his race, expressing pride, vision and determination that moved multitudes of people. In every aspect of his extraordinary life, he dedicated himself to struggles and causes, never compromising, even when he fought those who would restrict his freedom of speech and political opinions.
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Arthur A. Schomburg
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Arthur Alfonso Schomburg, a self-described "Afroborinqueño" (Black Puerto Rican), was born January 24, 1874, of María Josefa and Carlos Féderico Schomburg. They lived in Puerto Rico, in a community now known as Santurce. Schomburg immigrated to New York on April 17, 1891, where he was active in the decolonization movement, and where he began amassing the materials needed to further untangle the African thread of history in the fabric of the Americas. In 1911 Schomburg co-founded the Negro Society for Historical Research, an archival institute that published several important papers on Black history. The keystone of Schomburg's legacy was the world-renowned collection he had built over the years. Comprising thousands of slave narratives, manuscripts, rare books, journals, artwork and other remnants of African history, his collection was presented to the New York Public Library's Division of Negro History in 1926 through a $10,000 grant from the Carnegie Foundation. Schomburg eventually curated his own collection, now renamed the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.
John Singleton
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Born January 6, 1968, in the South Central L.A. neighborhood he would later immortalize on celluloid, Singleton was the son of a mortgage broker father and a company sales executive mother. Raised jointly by his divorced parents, he went on to attend the University of Southern California, where he majored in film writing. While a student at U.S.C., Singleton won a number of writing awards that led to a deal with the Creative Artists Agency during his sophomore year. At the age of 23, he wrote and directed Boyz N’ the Hood, a coming-of-age drama that centered on an intelligent 17-year-old's efforts to make it out of his neighborhood alive. The film was a major critical and commercial triumph. One of the highest-grossing films in history to have been directed by an African American, Boyz N’ the Hood also made history with its twin Best Screenplay and Best Director Oscar nominations for its young writer/director. In addition to those nominations, Singleton was also honored with the New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best First-Time Director. Singleton has also directed acclaimed films, Poetic Justice, Higher Learning, Rosewood, Shaft and Baby Boy.
Bessie Smith
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Bessie Smith, the "Empress of the Blues" as she was called at the time, was a powerful, strong-willed woman who made her mark in history through singing the blues in the 1920’s and 30’s. Her professional career began in 1912 when her brother Clarence arranged an audition with Moses Stokes’ travelling show, with which Clarence had been working since 1904. In that show she met Ma Rainey, generally considered the first woman blues singer. Ma Rainey became Bessie’s mentor. The major breakthrough for Bessie, and for the recording industry, came in 1923. Mamie Smith in 1920 had recorded "Crazy Blues" in 1920, which sold so well (against all expectations) that Columbia set up a separate division for "race" records. Frank Walker, in charge of the division, had been so impressed years earlier by Bessie’s singing, that he sent the pianist Clarence Williams to bring her to New York .As she arrived, Columbia was on the verge of bankruptcy. Her debut record, "Downhearted Blues" and "Gulf Coast Blues" , sold 780,000 copies in the six months after she recorded the pieces, and helped save Columbia. Over the years she made 160 recordings.
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