A00026 - Marcus Garvey, Charismatic African Jamaican Leader

Marcus Garvey, in full Marcus Moziah Garvey   (b. August 17, 1887, St. Ann’s Bay, Jamaica —d. June 10, 1940, London, England), was a charismatic African Jamaican leader who organized the first important American black nationalist movement (1919–26), based in New York City’s Harlem. 

Largely self-taught, Garvey attended school in Jamaica until he was 14. After traveling in Central America and living in London from 1912 to 1914, he returned to Jamaica, where, with a group of friends, he founded, on August 1, 1914, the Universal Negro Improvement and Conservation Association and African Communities League, usually called the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), which sought, among other things, to build in Africa a black-governed nation.

Failing to attract a following in Jamaica, Garvey went to the United States in 1916 and soon established branches of the UNIA in Harlem and the other principal urban areas of the North. By 1919, the rising “Black Moses” claimed a following of about 2,000,000, although the exact number of association members was never clear. From the platform of the Association’s Liberty Hall in Harlem, Garvey spoke of a “new Negro,” proud of being black. His newspaper, Negro World, told of the exploits of heroes of the race and of the splendors of African culture. Garvey taught that blacks would be respected only when they were economically strong, and he preached an independent black economy within the framework of white capitalism. To forward these ends, he established the Negro Factories Corporation and the Black Star Line (1919), as well as a chain of restaurants and grocery stores, laundries, a hotel, and a printing press.

Garvey reached the height of his power in 1920, when he presided at an international convention in Liberty Hall, with delegates present from 25 countries. The affair was climaxed by a parade of 50,000 through the streets of Harlem, led by Garvey in flamboyant array. His slipshod business methods, however, and his doctrine of racial purity and separatism (he even approved of the white racist Ku Klux Klan because it sought to separate the races) brought him bitter enemies among established African American leaders, including labor leader A. Philip Randolph and W. E. B. Du Bois, head of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Garvey’s influence declined rapidly when he and other UNIA members were indicted for mail fraud in 1922 in connection with the sale of stock for the Black Star Line. He served two years of a five-year prison term, but in 1927 his sentence was commuted by President Calvin Coolidge, and he was deported as an undesirable alien. He was never able to revive the movement abroad, and he died in virtual obscurity.

A00025 - W. E. B. Du Bois, NAACP Founder, Author and Sociologist

W. E. B. Du Bois, in full William Edward Burghardt Du Bois (b. February 23, 1868, Great Barrington, Massachusetts — d. August 27, 1963, Accra, Ghana), American sociologist, was the most important African American leader in the United States during the first half of the 20th century. He shared in the creation of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1909 and edited The Crisis, its magazine, from 1910 to 1934. Late in life he became identified with communist causes.

Du Bois graduated from Fisk University, an African American institution at Nashville, Tennessee, in 1888. He received a Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1895. His doctoral dissertation, The Suppression of the African Slave-Trade to the United States of America, 1638–1870, was published in 1896. Although Du Bois took an advanced degree in history, he was broadly trained in the social sciences; and, at a time when sociologists were theorizing about race relations, he was conducting empirical inquiries into the condition of African Americans. For more than a decade he devoted himself to sociological investigations of African Americans, producing 16 research monographs published between 1897 and 1914  at Atlanta (Georgia) University, where he was a professor, as well as The Philadelphia Negro; A Social Study (1899), the first case study of an African American community in the United States.

Although Du Bois had originally believed that social science could provide the knowledge to solve the race problem, he gradually came to the conclusion that in a climate of virulent racism, expressed in such evils as lynching, peonage, disfranchisement, Jim Crow segregation laws, and race riots, social change could be accomplished only through agitation and protest. In this view, he clashed with the most influential African American leader of the period, Booker T. Washington, who, preaching a philosophy of accommodation, urged African Americans to accept discrimination for the time being and elevate themselves through hard work and economic gain, thus winning the respect of the European Americans. In 1903, in his famous book The Souls of Black Folk, Du Bois charged that Washington’s strategy, rather than freeing the African American from oppression, would serve only to perpetuate it. This attack crystallized the opposition to Booker T. Washington among many African American intellectuals, polarizing the leaders of the African American community into two wings—the “conservative” supporters of Washington and his “radical” critics.

Two years later, in 1905, Du Bois took the lead in founding the Niagara Movement, which was dedicated chiefly to attacking the platform of Booker T. Washington. The small organization, which met annually until 1909, was seriously weakened by internal squabbles and Washington’s opposition. But it was significant as an ideological forerunner and direct inspiration for the interracial NAACP, founded in 1909. Du Bois played a prominent part in the creation of the NAACP and became the association’s director of research and editor of its magazine, The Crisis. In this role he wielded an unequaled influence among middle-class blacks and progressive whites as the propagandist for the black protest from 1910 until 1934.

Both in the Niagara Movement and in the NAACP, Du Bois acted mainly as an integrationist, but his thinking always exhibited, to varying degrees, separatist-nationalist tendencies. In The Souls of Black Folk he had expressed the characteristic dualism of African Americans:

One ever feels his twoness—an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.…He simply wishes to make it possible for a man to be both a Negro and an American, without being cursed and spit upon by his fellows, without having the doors of Opportunity closed roughly in his face.

Du Bois’s black nationalism took several forms—the most influential being his pioneering advocacy of Pan-Africanism. the belief that all people of African descent had common interests and should work together in the struggle for their freedom. Du Bois was a leader of the first Pan-African Conference in London in 1900 and the architect of four Pan-African Congresses held between 1919 and 1927. Second, he articulated a cultural nationalism.  As the editor of The Crisis, he encouraged the development of African American literature and art and urged his readers to see “Beauty in Black.” Third, Du Bois’s black nationalism is seen in his belief that African Americans should develop a separate “group economy” of producers’ and consumers’ cooperatives as a weapon for fighting economic discrimination and African American poverty. This doctrine became especially important during the economic catastrophe of the 1930s and precipitated an ideological struggle within the NAACP.

He resigned from the editorship of The Crisis and the NAACP in 1934, yielding his influence as a race leader and charging that the organization was dedicated to the interests of the black bourgeoisie and ignored the problems of the masses. Du Bois' interest in cooperatives was a part of his nationalism that developed out of his Marxist leanings. At the turn of the century, he had been an advocate of African American capitalism and African American support of African American business, but by about 1905 he had been drawn toward socialist doctrines. Although he joined the Socialist Party only briefly in 1912, he remained sympathetic with Marxist ideas throughout the rest of his life.

Upon leaving the NAACP, he returned to Atlanta University, where he devoted the next 10 years to teaching and scholarship. In 1940 he founded the magazine Phylon, Atlanta University’s “Review of Race and Culture.” In 1945 he published the “Preparatory Volume” of a projected encyclopaedia of people of African descent, for which he had been appointed editor in chief. He also produced two major books during this period. Black Reconstruction: An Essay Toward a History of the Part Which Black Folk Played in the Attempt to Reconstruct Democracy in America, 1860–1880 (1935) was an important Marxist interpretation of the Reconstruction era (the period following the American Civil War during which the seceded Southern states were reorganized according to the wishes of Congress), and, more significantly, it provided the first synthesis of existing knowledge of the role of African Americans in that critical period of American history. In 1940 appeared Dusk of Dawn, subtitled An Essay Toward an Autobiography of a Race Concept. In this book, Du Bois explained his role in both the African and the African American struggles for freedom, viewing his career as an ideological case study illuminating the complexity of the black-white conflict.

Following this fruitful decade at Atlanta University, he returned once more to a research position at the NAACP (1944–48). This brief connection ended in a second bitter quarrel, and thereafter Du Bois moved steadily leftward politically. Identified with pro-Russian causes, he was indicted in 1951 as an unregistered agent for a foreign power. Although a federal judge directed his acquittal, Du Bois had become completely disillusioned with the United States. In 1961 he joined the Communist Party and, moving to Ghana, renounced his American citizenship more than a year later. The Autobiography of W.E.B. Du Bois was published in 1968.

A00024 - James Douglas, African Canadian Governor of Vancouver Island

James Douglas,  (b. August 15, 1803, Demerara, British Guiana — d. August 2, 1877, Victoria, British Columbia, Canada), Canadian statesman known as “the father of British Columbia.” He became its first governor when it was a newly formed wilderness colony.

James Douglas was born in 1803 in Demerara (later part of British Guiana, now Guyana) to John Douglas, a Scottish planter and merchant from Glasgow, who was in business with three of his brothers. His mother was Martha Ann Telfer, also known as "a Miss Richie." She was a Creole of mixed race from Barbados. The couple had three children together: Alexander, born 1801 or 1802; James, born 1803, and Cecilia, born 1812, but never formally married. Telfer was classified as free coloured, which in that time and place meant a free person of mixed African and European ancestry. James Douglas and his siblings thus were all mixed race. However, James appeared majority European. In 1812 John Douglas returned to Scotland with his children, putting James into school at Lanark to be schooled. He married Jessie Hamilton in Scotland in 1819, and had more children with her, making a second family. James went to school or was tutored by a French Huguenot in Chester, England, where he learned to speak and write in fluent French, which helped him in North America.

Douglas joined the Hudson's Bay Company in 1821 and rose to become senior member of the board, in charge of operations west of the Rocky Mountains. After the establishment of the southwestern boundary with the United States,he moved the company’s headquarters from Oregon to Vancouver Island in 1849. As governor (1851–64) of Vancouver Island when gold was discovered on the Fraser River in 1858, he extended his authority to the mainland in order to preserve Britain’s foothold on the Pacific in the face of an influx of settlers from the United States. His action was approved by the British government, which then created the colony of British Columbia. Douglas became its governor in 1858 after severing his connection with the Hudson’s Bay Company. He was knighted in 1863 and retired in 1864.

A00023 - Elbert Williams, Civil Rights Activist

Elbert Williams is the first known member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) to be murdered for his civil rights activities.  Williams was born on October 15, 1908 in rural Haywood County, Tennessee, the son of farmer Albert Williams and wife Mary Green Williams.

In 1929, Williams married Annie Mitchell. After trying farming, the couple moved in the early 1930s to Brownsville, the county seat, where they worked for a laundry until Williams’ murder in 1940.

In 1939, the Williamses became charter members of Brownsville’s NAACP Branch.

On May 6, 1940, five members of Brownsville’s NAACP Branch unsuccessfully attempted to register to vote. No African American had been allowed to register to vote in Haywood County during the 20^th Century. The next day, the threats began.

Early on the morning of June 16, would-be registrant Elisha Davis was abducted from home by a white mob led by Brownsville policemen Tip Hunter and Charles Read, taken to a nearby swamp, surrounded, and threatened with death unless he named members of the Brownsville NAACP. After naming some, Davis was forced to immediately leave the county, under threat of death should he ever return. Many African American families fled. The Williamses did not.

Late on the night of June 20, policemen Hunter and Read, and a third man, Ed Lee, manager of the local Coca-Cola bottling company, took Williams from his home and jailed him.  There they questioned him about an NAACP meeting he was suspected of planning. Hunter claimed that he released Williams who never returned home, and was never again seen alive.

Three days later, Williams’ corpse was found floating in the nearby Hatchie River.  Annie Williams identified her husband’s body, and saw two bullet-like holes in his chest. The Coroner ordered no medical examination, and held his inquest on the riverbank that same morning.  The Coroner’s jury’s verdict was "Cause of death:   unknown." The Coroner ordered an immediate burial and Williams was buried the same day in an unmarked grave.

A local grand jury found that Williams’ death was caused by “foul violence at the hands of parties unknown.”

Under pressure from the NAACP National Office, the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) ordered the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to investigate, and promised a broad inquiry.

NAACP Special Counsel Thurgood Marshall, later a United States Supreme Court Justice, monitored the DOJ/FBI investigation, and travelled to Brownsville to collect evidence.

The DOJ ordered the United States Attorney in Memphis to present the case to a Federal Grand Jury, but then reversed its decision and closed the case, citing insufficient evidence. Thurgood Marshall was livid, but unable to get the case reopened.

Elbert Williams’ murderer was never prosecuted. 

A00022 - Daniel Hale Williams,19th Century Surgeon Who Performed Heart Surgery

Daniel Hale Williams,  (b. January 18, 1858, Hollidaysburg, Pennsylvania — d. August 4, 1931, Idlewild, Michigan), American physician and founder of Provident Hospital in Chicago, credited with the first successful heart surgery.

Williams graduated from Chicago Medical College in 1883. He served as surgeon for the South Side Dispensary (1884–92) and physician for the Protestant Orphan Asylum (1884–93). In response to the lack of opportunity for African Americans in the medical professions, he founded (in 1891) the nation’s first interracial hospital, Provident, to provide training for black interns and the first school for black nurses in the United States. He was a surgeon at Provident (1892–93, 1898–1912) and surgeon in chief of Freedmen’s Hospital, Washington, D.C. (1894–98), where he established another school for African American nurses.

It was at Provident Hospital that Williams performed daring heart surgery on July 10, 1893. Although contemporary medical opinion disapproved of surgical treatment of heart wounds, Williams opened the patient’s thoracic cavity without aid of blood transfusions or modern anesthetics and antibiotics. During the surgery he examined the heart, sutured a wound of the pericardium (the sac surrounding the heart), and closed the chest. The patient lived at least 20 years following the surgery. Williams’ procedure is cited as the first recorded repair of the pericardium; some sources, however, cite a similar operation performed by H.C. Dalton of St. Louis in 1891.

Williams later served on the staffs of Cook County Hospital (1903–09) and St. Luke’s Hospital (1912–31), both in Chicago. From 1899 he was professor of clinical surgery at Meharry Medical College in Nashville, Tennessee, and was a member of the Illinois State Board of Health (1889–91). He published several articles on surgery in medical journals. Williams became the only African American charter member of the American College of Surgeons in 1913.

A00021 - Edwin Harleston, Artist and Civil Rights Leader

Edwin A. Harleston (b. 1882, Charleston, South Carolina - d. 1931)  was one of the most distinguished artists and civil rights leaders of his generation.  Born in 1882, in Charleston, South Carolina, he graduated from Avery Institute in 1900 and Atlanta University in 1904.  He studied at Howard University with the intention of becoming a physician, but instead set his sights on art.  From 1906 to 1912, he attended the School Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.

In 1913, Harleston returned to Charleston to help with the family funeral business.  He soon became an active artist, businessman, and civil rights leader.  Harleston founded the Charleston NAACP in 1916 and was successful in its efforts toward educational reform for Black schools, teachers and principals.  He was a firm believer in civil rights for all Americans.  By the 1920's Harleston's reputation as an artist had flourished.  An active participant in the Harlem Renaissance, he received portrait commissions from all over the United States.  Even though his primary mode of art was portraiture, his work also showed the people and culture of the era.

In 1931, Harleston joined the Harmon Foundation at International House in New York.  The House had presented the first all African American exhibition in the United States.  Harleston created sensitive humanistic portraits of mostly African American civic leaders, businessmen, and their families.  He always captured the strength and depth of his subjects' personalities.  The Gibbes Museum and Art Gallery and the Avery Institute in his native Charleston co-hosted an exhibition of his work, Edwin Harleston: Painter of An Era, on the 101st anniversary of his birth.

Among the portraits displayed was his painting of Aaron Douglas, one of the most significant African-American artists of the 20th century.  This portrait was purchased by the Gibbes Museum. Many of Harleston's famous works, including "Mending Sock" and "The Old Servant" are in anthologies of African American Art.  Edwin Harleston died in 1931 at the age of 49.

A00020 - Buddy Bolden, Founding Father of Jazz

Buddy Bolden, byname of Charles Joseph Bolden (b. September 6, 1877, New Orleans, Louisiana - d. November 4, 1931, Jackson, Louisiana), was a cornetist and is a founding father of jazz. Many jazz musician, including Jelly Roll Morton and the great trumpeter Louis Armstrong acclaimed him as one of the most powerful musicians ever to play jazz.

Little is known about the details of Bolden's career, but it is documented that by about 1895 he was leading a band.  The acknowledged king of New Orleans lower musical life, Bolden often worked with six or seven different bands simultaneously.  In 1906, Bolden's emotional stability began to crumble, and the following year he was committed to the East Louisiana State Hospital, from which he never emerged.