Lecture 15 of Clay Carsons Introduction to African-American History Course (HIST 166) concentrating on the Modern Freedom Struggle (Fall 2007). This lecture is entitled Outlaw feminist Angela Davis. Recorded November 15, 2007 at Stanford University.
This course introduces the viewer to African-American history, with particular emphasis on the political thought and protest movements of the period after 1930, focusing on selected individuals who have shaped and been shaped by modern African-American struggles for freedom and justice. Clayborne Carson is a professor in the History Department at Stanford University.
Westerfield was born in Chicago, Illinois on November 15, 1919 to Dr. Samuel Z.C. Westerfield and Rachael Weddleton Colquitt. His father was the first black student to graduate with a Ph.D. in Engineering from the University of Nebraska. Westerfield married Helene Bryant in 1945. She was an educator and a graduate of Spelman College in Atlanta, Georgia. They had two children: a daughter, Shelia, and a son, Samuel Z. Westerfield III.
In the article below historian Gwendolyn Midlo Hall recounts her role as a founder of the New Orleans Youth Congress and the early years of the Southern Negro Youth Congress. This account is part of her soon to be published memoirs.
Few of us know what we should know about the continuity of the movements for full racial equality in the Deep South. Amnesia about black history cuts us off from the past and undermines our self-image and our confidence that we can bring about important, constructive change in the world. I write as a historian whose life and work was inspired by the movements for racial equality in the South during the 1940s. The long civil rights movement in the south was powerful during the 1930s and 1940s. It was an interracial struggle with strong ties to the movements of sharecroppers, small farmers and industrial workers, university professors, students, business people, professionals and intellectuals. I share here some of my memories as a founder and participant in the New Orleans Youth Congress which became closely tied to the Southern Negro Youth Congress. One of SNYC’s greatest achievements after World War II was organizing the Southern Youth Legislature held in Columbia, South Carolina in October, 1946. By 1947 SNYC was destroyed by racist and political terror, the cold war and the Red Scare and largely erased from historical and popular memory. Professional historians have begun to study the massive amount of previously unknown documents about these forgotten movements. I present here what I remember about the Southern Negro Youth Congress during its brief time of triumph after World War II and its sudden collapse in 1947 although it was not formally dissolved until 1949.
John Mercer Langston, the youngest of four children, was born a free black in Louisa County, Virginia in 1829. Langston gained distinction as an abolitionist, politician, and attorney. Despite the prominence of his slaveowner father, Ralph Quarles, Langston took his surname from his mother, Lucy Langston, an emancipated slave of Indian and black ancestry. When both parents died of unrelated illnesses in 1834, five-year-old Langston and his older siblings were transported to Missouri where they were taken in by William Gooch, a friend of Ralph Quarles.
At fourteen Langston began his studies at the Preparatory Department at Oberlin College. Known for its radicalism and abolitionist politics, Oberlin was the first college in the United States to admit black and white students. Langston completed his studies in 1849, becoming the fifth African American male to graduate from Oberlin’s Collegiate Department.
In 1854, Langston married Caroline Matilda Wall, an emancipated slave from North Carolina. She and Langston had remarkably similar backgrounds. Both had been born into slavery and were freed by their slaveowning fathers who provided for them financially. Once freed and sent north, they were able to obtain an education. When Wall was a young girl, she and her sister, Sara, were sent to Ohio by their father, Colonel Stephen Wall. Under the guardianship of a wealthy family friend, the sisters were brought up in an affluent Quaker household. Like Langston, Caroline Wall also attended Oberlin, graduating in 1856.
In 1855 Langston was elected town clerk of Brownhelm Township in Ohio, becoming the first black elected official in the state. In addition to his law practice and activities as town clerk, Langston and his brothers, Gideon and Charles, participated in the Underground Railroad. John Mercer Langston caught the attention of Frederick Douglass, who encouraged him to deliver antislavery speeches. During the Civil War, Langston recruited black volunteers for the Massachusetts 54th Infantry Regiment.
Richard Allen, the first AME bishop compiled the first black hymnal, "Collection of Spiritual Songs and Hymns, Selected from Various Authors."
In the early fall of 1945, shortly after World War II ended, I read an announcement in the New Orleans Times Picayune informing the public that an international youth delegation was returning from the founding conference of the United Nations in San Francisco and stopping in various cities across the United States
On this day in:
1660 Asser Levy from Portugal, applied for a license to sell kosher meat. He was the first kosher butcher in New Amsterdam (New York).
1849 The first poultry show in the U.S. was held on November 15-16 in Boston, Massachusetts. 1,423 birds were exhibited by 219 exhibitors.
1868 James Mayer de Rothschild died (born May 15, 1792). European banker and founder of the French branch of the Rothschild family. In 1868 he acquired the famous Chateau Lafite vineyards in Bordeaux, France.
1881 The Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions of the United States and Canada (FOTLU) was organized at Turner Hall in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It changed its name to the American Federation of Labor (AFL) on Dec 8, 1886.
1882 Felix Frankfurter, U. S. Supreme Court justice, was born.
1904 King Camp Gillette was issued U.S. patent No. 775,134 for his disposable razor (applied for on Dec 3, 1901).
1952 'Jambalaya (On The Bayou)' by Hank Williams was number one on the country music charts.
1964 Bernard Frank died (born March 7, 1902). American forester and conservationist, he was one of the eight co-founders of the Wilderness Society.
1967 Elmer McCollum died. He was a chemist who discovered vitamins A, B and D. He was also the originator or the letter system for naming vitamins.
1969 The first color TV commercial in Britain was aired, for Birdseye Peas.
1969 Dave Thomas opened the first Wendy's Old-Fashioned Hamburger restaurant in downtown Columbus, Ohio. He named it for his 8 year old daughter Melinda, whose nickname was Wendy.
2022 The U.N. estimates that world population is now 8 billion people.