William H. Twiggs

William H. Twiggs (1865-1960), entrepreneur and community leader. Twiggs was born to free parents in Davenport, Iowa the year that the Civil War ended, part of a small but prosperous black community that included lawyers, business owners, three churches, fraternal and sororal orders, and other institutions. In 1884 he moved to the Chicago suburbs of Evanston, part of the most rapidly growing urban community in the world. Chicago was home to only 4,000 people in 1840 but 299,000 in 1870 and 1.7 million by 1900, and Evanston became home to wealthy families who were seeking an escape from the crowded city and who were drawn by the educational institutions Northwestern University and Garrett Biblical Institute (now Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary). Few of these new residents of the Chicago area were African American, though. In 1900 blacks were less than 2% of Chicago’s population, and there were only 737 African Americans in Evanston, nearly all domestic servants for the prosperous white families. One of the exceptions to that rule was the teenaged Twiggs, who became one of the only black students at Garrett before going to work in a barbershop and then opening a shop of his own. Until the modern safety razor was invented in the early 1900s, most upper and middle-class white men went to barbershops daily to be shaved, and many of the barbers who serviced them were black men. Most black men worked as manual or farm laborers for little money, and so barbers like Twiggs were respected tradesmen and community leaders with higher incomes and access to the white power structure through their clients. Twiggs also learned the printing trade and founded a newspaper called the Afro-American Budget with his former roommate from Garrett. In a time when the mainstream white media mostly ignored African Americans except to mock them or report on crime, the Budget was one of hundreds of black newspapers around the country that advocated for racial equality and reported positively on black life. The paper started in 1889 and was initially printed by a university-affiliated white press, but Twiggs shortly thereafter started his own printing business and issued the Budget through that.

The late 1800s and early 1900s were the worst period in the history of American racism, with African Americans were hindered by southern segregation, disenfranchisement, and violence and by northern white indifference, and many sought to survive and rise up by forming their own community institutions and promoting economic power through black businesses. In Evanston this included Ebenezer African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church, which Twiggs served for seventy years as Sunday School superintendent and trustee. He was also active in local chapters of the fraternal orders Prince Hall Masons, Knights of Pythias, and Order of the Eastern Star. When African Americans were banned from joining the local YMCA, Twiggs led a fundraising team to start an all-black YMCA. The Emerson Street YMCA opened in 1909 and erected a new $23,000 building five years later. This organization provided counseling services, a meeting place for other organizations, housing to black Northwestern students who were barred from the dorms, and physical education to Evanston Township High School students who were not allowed to take part in sports. Access to beaches and swimming pools was so limited for African Americans that the 1919 Chicago Race Riot, in which white Chicagoans murdered twenty-three blacks and destroyed more than 1,000 black-owned homes, was sparked by a black boy crossing an imaginary line in the water at a South Side beach and being killed by rock-throwing whites, but in Evanston the pool at the Emerson Y provided generations of African Americans with a place to swim. Twiggs and his wife also helped organize a daycare center that looked after black children while their mothers were at their domestic service jobs. Additionally, although there were few black elected officials anywhere in the country, many northern white politicians tried to win the favor of black voters by appointing community leaders like Twiggs to various positions. He was named City Sealer by the mayor of Evanston in the late 1890s, holding this position for two decades, and in 1915 was appointed Permit Clerk by another mayor. He also continued to run his print shop, issuing publications such as his newspaper, the Evanston city directory, the newsletter for the Knights of Pythias, and tickets for the 1933-34 Century of Progress exposition in Chicago, which drew more than 48 million visitors. His office contained a “Historical Den” with photographs and other records of Evanston’s black history, although most of its contents were destroyed by a fire shortly before his death. The black communities in Evanston and broader Chicago grew rapidly after World War I, with Evanston’s black population reaching 8,000 by 1924 (including his granddaughter Kay Davis, who sang with the Duke Ellington Orchestra during the 1940s) and forming a distinct neighborhood on the west side of town. This helped increase black economic and political power, as numerous other black businesses were created and in 1935 both Twiggs and another African American ran for the city council, with his opponent ultimately winning. In the 1950s Evanston’s white institutions finally began to fully desegregate, but this led to the demise of many black institutions. In 1969, for instance, the Emerson Y that William H. Twiggs had helped found was closed and absorbed into the white YMCA, which was opened to all.  He himself did not live to see this, having died in 1960 at the age of 95. In 1986 Evanston dedicated William H. Twiggs Park in the west side neighborhood that had been home to so many of the black businesses, churches, and other organizations that he led from the end of Reconstruction to the Civil Rights Movement.

©David Brodnax, Sr.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (1977- ), Nigerian-American author. Adichie was born in the southeastern Nigeria city of Enugu and grew up in nearby Nsukka, home to the University of Nigeria, where her father was a statistics professor and her mother was the first female registrar. Both of her grandfathers had died in the late 1960s during the Biafran War, when her Igbo people seceded from Nigeria and briefly formed an independent nation. This chaos and bloodshed was followed by a military dictatorship that ended when she was two, only to be followed by another one that lasted from 1983 to 1999. Adichie was first inspired to become a writer by Things Fall Apart, the classic novel by fellow Nigerian Chinua Achebe, and as a child she loved to write in her father’s study, later recalling “I didn’t choose writing, writing chose me.” Her feminist worldview was shaped in part by her great-grandmother, who in her words “may never have used that word [feminist] – obviously, that word doesn’t exist in Igbo – but she was because she pushed back against all of these sort of cultural ideas that held her back because she was a woman.” At age nineteen she came to the United States to attend college, graduating from Eastern Connecticut State University with highest honors in 2001. She and her sister were among the more than 277,000 Nigeria natives living in the U.S., with another 100,000 reporting Nigerian ancestry. The connection between the U.S. and Africa’s most populous nation began in the 1600s when thousands of Igbo, Yoruba, Hausa, Fulani, and others were brought to America as slaves; in the 1700s, for instance, 30,000 Igbo were brought to Virginia alone. Ironically, Nigerians and other Africans could enter the U.S. as slaves but not as free immigrants until the Civil Rights Movement ended racial restrictions on immigration. Since then, more black people have voluntarily entered the U.S. from Africa, the Caribbean, and Europe than the total number that were brought as slaves from 1620 to 1865, and Nigerian Americans ranked highest among all U.S. ethnic groups in formal education.

While still a student, Adichie began publishing poems, plays, and short stories such as “You in America” and “The American Embassy.” In 2003 she published her first novel Purple Hibiscus, whose main character is a Nigerian teenaged girl living under the oppression of the dictatorship and of her own father, who is financially successful and publicly pious but in private physically and psychologically terrorizes his family. The book reflected her views as a person of Christian faith who also argues that religion often oppresses women and divides people. Purple Hibiscus won several awards for best first novel and was nominated for the Best Books for Young Adults Award. Her second book, Half of a Yellow Sun (2006), is set during the Biafran War and focuses on two sisters, their love interests, and the poor child who works for them until he is forced into the war. Adichie said of this novel that “The need to write about it came from growing up in its shadow. This thing that I didn’t quite understand was my legacy. It hovered over everything.” It received the 2007 Orange Prize for Fiction, given to the best English-language novel written by a woman, and was named to the New York Times “100 Most Notable Books of the Year” list. In 2013 it was made into a feature film directed by fellow Nigerian Biyi Bandele, filmed in Nigeria (at the insistence of Adichie), and starring Chiwetel Ejiofor, Thandie Newton, Anika Noni Rose, and John Boyega. Six years later, the novel was named the tenth best book published since 2000 by The Guardian and to the BBC’s list of “100 most inspiring novels” by the British Broadcasting Company. Her 2009 collection of short stories The Thing Around Your Neck (2009), like her earlier writing, focuses on characters are of Nigerian origin, but some of them are immigrants living in the U.S., making this Adichie’s first writing outside of her native country. This trend continued with her third novel Americanah (2013), in which the main character is a young Nigerian who comes to America to attend college and is forced to engage with American racism and black identity. It was named one of the ten best books of the year by the New York Times Book Review, won the National Book Critics Circle Award, and was the March 2017 selection for the “One Book, One New York” program, which encouraged all New York residents to read the same book in a single month. HBO is currently developing it as a miniseries starring Lupita Nyongo’o and Danai Gurira.

In addition to her novels, Adichie has also received wide acclaim for other works. Her 2009 TED Talk “The Danger of a Single Story” emphasized the importance of diverse narratives and of understanding others beyond outward appearances. This is expressed through her experiences as a child reading books without black characters, a college student in America stereotyped by her roommate, and as a Nigerian from a prosperous background who was surprised to learn that the brother of her family’s servant had made a basket because “It had not occurred to me that anybody in his family could actually make something. All I had heard about them was how poor they were, so that it had become impossible for me to see them as anything else but poor. Their poverty was my single story of them.” This became one of the most widely viewed TED Talks of all time. Even more successful was her 2012 TED Talk “We should all be feminists,” which explores the ways that gender construction shapes and limits people. Beyoncé later sampled part of this talk in her song “Flawless.” Adichie’s academic accomplishments include two master’s degrees, fellowships at Princeton and Harvard, a 2008 “Genius Grant” from the MacArthur Foundation, and being elected into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2017 she published Dear Ijeawele, or A Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions, an extended version of an email that she had originally written to a friend who asked for advice on how to raise her daughter as a feminist and which begins with “Your feminist premise should be: I matter. I matter equally. Not ‘if only. Not ‘as long as.’ I matter equally. Full stop.” In one of her numerous interviews and lectures on current events, she commented on the election and presidency of Donald Trump, who in 2020 banned further immigration from Nigeria, by stating that “I remember saying this fairly early on when he became president. That it felt like Americans…had given a toddler the keys to a very expensive and complicated car, and said to the toddler, ‘Okay, you drive.’…While I mourn all the ways in which I think America has failed and disappointed me, there’s a sense in me in which I don’t despair, because I’ve seen enough of how this has also propelled people to do things that can remake the world.”

©David Brodnax, Sr.

Edgar Amos Love

Bishop Edgar A. Love (1891-1974), minister and fraternity founder. Edgar Amos Love was born in Harrisburg, Virginia, the son of a minister, and grew up in Baltimore. He attended high school at the Academy of Morgan College before enrolling at Howard University. At the beginning of his junior year in 1911, Love and his close friends Frank Coleman and Oscar J. Cooper decided to form a Greek-letter fraternity. This was part of a broader movement in the black community to fight for racial equality through black institutions such as literary societies, women’s clubs, and now Greek-letter organizations, in part because African Americans were excluded from white groups but primarily because of a desire to have their own institutions that they could control and use in culturally a appropriate manner. Two other organizations had previously been founded at predominantly white universities, but the vast majority of black college students attended black universities like Howard, and Love and his friends felt that creating a fraternity at a historically black college could help inspire young African Americans to fight against discrimination. As he later remembered, the fraternity was “born out of a dream.” On the evening of November 17, 1911, Love, Cooper, Coleman and faculty member Ernest Everett Just founded Omega Psi Phi Fraternity, along with the motto “Friendship Is Essential to the Soul.” The men quickly inducted other members and selected officers. They initially met opposition from Howard’s administration, but Love’s perseverance eventually convinced the president and faculty to recognize them as an official campus organization and allow them to organize other chapters. In 1914, Omega Psi Phi was nationally incorporated, with Love serving as the first Grand Basileus (national leader). While still in college, he held this office for two terms, overseeing the creation of new chapters and induction of new members, including his brother John.

After completing his bachelor’s degree in 1913, with high honors for his scholarship, Love earned additional degrees from Howard and Boston University and also took graduate courses at the University of Chicago. When the United States entered World War I, he entered the Officers Training Camp at Fort Des Moines, where he was commissioned a first lieutenant and established a “War Chapter” to induct more men into the fraternity. He was sent to France as chaplain for the 368^th Infantry, displaying his manhood in several conflict zones despite being exposed to poison gas. Love also developed a literacy program for uneducated soldiers; this eventually grew into a full-fledged school. After leaving the service in 1919, Love worked at Morgan State University as a professor of history and the Bible and as athletic director. He then accepted a pastoral position at a Methodist Episcopal church in Fairmount Heights, Virginia, later serving other congregations in Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Baltimore. During the 1950s, he was elevated to the level of bishop. He also sought to uplift the black community by working with the Maryland Interracial Commission, to which he was appointed by the governor. In addition to his fraternal service, Love was an active member of the American Legion, the Prince Hall Masons, president of the Alumni Association of Howard University School of Religion, president of the Inter-denominational Ministers Alliance of Washington, and district superintendent of the Washington District for the M.E. Church.  “It’s easy to go along with the crowd,” he reflected later in life, “but the man or woman who carries civilization afar is the individual who takes leadership and goes against the public opinion if it is not in harmony with the highest ideals of the individual.” Edgar Amos Love died in 1974, the last surviving founder of Omega Psi Phi. As of 2020, more than 250,000 men had been initiated into one of the 750 chapters around the world.

©David Brodnax, Sr.

Charley Pride

Charley Pride (1934-2020), musician. Charley Frank Pride was born in the son of sharecroppers in Sledge, Mississippi, one of eleven children. He grew up picking cotton and attending segregated schools, later recalling that as he and his classmates recited the Pledge of Allegiance phrase “with liberty and justice for all,” he’d “look out the window and see that it wasn’t so.” He taught himself to play guitar as a child and listened to country music on the radio, but when Jackie Robinson integrated Major League Baseball in 1947 he told himself “here’s my way out of the cotton fields.” In 1952 he signed with the Memphis Red Sox of the Negro American League as a pitcher. Although integration had caused the Negro Leagues to go into sharp decline, many young black players still started there before signing with the Major Leagues, and the Memphis franchise was still prosperous in part because the city had no Major League team. Pride signed a minor league contract with the New York Yankees in 1953, and if he had made it to the majors he would have become their first black player, but he an arm injury hindered his career. Over the next few years he played for several minor league and Negro League teams, becoming an all-star with Memphis in 1956, and also spending two years in the army. After being released by a team in Missoula, Montana in 1962, he moved to nearby Helena to work at a lead smelting plant and play for the semipro team, but he also began performing country music songs before each game and in local venues. He earned a popular local following, although he and his family were also denied service in a restaurant and by a real estate broker because of their race. Pride also traveled to Memphis to record at the legendary Sun Studios, and his demo tape drew the attention of country star Chet Atkins, who encouraged RCA Victor to give him a record deal in 1966. His first two songs on RCA did not sell well, but his third song “Just Between You and Me” reached number nine on the U.S. country charts and was nominated for a Grammy. All three songs were released without Pride’s photograph, leading many people then and now to believe that RCA did not want the overwhelmingly white and conservative country music fans to know Pride’s race. At one early show, for instance, fans applauded upon hearing his name and then fell into stunned silence when he took the stage, but he said “I realize that I’ve got that permanent tan, but my name’s Charley Pride and I am from Mississippi, my daddy was a farmer down there. And I sing country music. I want to entertain you if you’ll let me.” Knowledge of his racial identity became a moot point in 1967 when he performed at the Grand Ole Opry, a concert and radio broadcast venue in Nashville that since the 1920s had been the centerpiece of country music. Performing at the Opry was considered the crowning achievement of success, and Pride was the first African American to do so since 1941. Even so, some club promoters were reluctant to book or promote him, and even musicians who respected his ability did so in racist terms. One producer declared “I’m fixin’ to cut [a record with] this nigger,” while a fellow singer harmonized with him and exclaimed “I’m singing with a jig, and I don’t even mind it!” Pride navigated all of this through his quiet dignity, telling one man who insulted him “Sir, my name’s not Nigger. It’s Charley Pride.”

Pride’s first hit single and Opry appearance helped to launch one of the most successful careers in country music history. Between 1969 and 1982, 28 of his 42 singles reached the top spot on the U.S. Country Hit Parade charts, including every song he released between 1969 and 1973 except for several gospel records, and even those sold well. His biggest hit “Kiss An Angel Good Mornin’” sold a million copies, spent five weeks at the top of the country charts, made the top ten of the Adult Contemporary charts, and became his only song to reach the pop top-40, peaking at number 21. His 1970 song “All His Children” was included in the Paul Newman film Sometimes a Great Nation and received an Oscar nomination for best song, making Pride one of the first black musicians to be so honored. He would eventually have more than fifty songs that reached the top ten on the country charts. His albums were equally successful, with eleven of them going to number one on the Top Country Charts, another thirteen making the top ten, and eight making the top fifty of the Billboard 200, a further sign that he was popular with a wide variety of fans. Overall, Pride sold more records for RCA Victor than any other musician except Elvis Presley. The Country Music Association named him Entertainer of the Year in 1971 and Male Vocalist of the Year in 1971 and 1972, becoming the first artist to win the latter award twice and still one of only three to accomplish that goal. He was also awarded three Grammys, including two for his gospel recordings. His influence in country music was also seen in another way when songwriter Steve Goodman name-dropped him, along with fellow giants Waylon Jennings and Merle Haggard, in the satirical song “You Never Even Called Me by My Name.” In yet another example of country’s conflict between its legacy of racism and its embrace of Pride, the most popular version of this song was made by David Allan Coe, who also released several songs with the word “nigger.” Pride’s success was a reflection of several broader trends in American music and society. Country music had long been hugely popular among rural and working-class whites, and it had also sold well in the early days of the record charts, but by the mid-1950s it was eclipsed by other genres, including the rock music that it had helped to shape. In the late 1960s, though, it moved towards a more crossover sound with artists like Pride. At the same time, the Civil Rights Movement had helped increase the profile of black musicians in multiple genres. Even though country music was seen as outside of this progress and in fact was preferred by many whites who rejected rock, R&B, and the 1960s in general, the shift in American culture was so profound that it helped create space even for Charley Pride. His success also helped country music become an importance influence in R&B, with country songs now being recorded by artists like the Temptations, Dobie Gray, and Candi Staton. Additionally, although the Great Migration had shifted the black population from the rural South to the urban North and West, Pride’s music was a reminder that nearly all African Americans had once been rural southerners like him and that many still were.

Although Pride’s star began to fade after the mid-1970s, his songs and albums continued to sell well. In 1975 he traveled to Belfast, Northern Ireland, which had been avoided by other performers because of religious violence, but his performance temporarily brought both sides together and encouraged other musicians to follow him. He sang the national anthem at the 1980 World Series, Super Bowl VIII in Houston, at the 2010 World Series (which included the Texas Rangers team of which he had become part owner), and at a Memphis Grizzlies game during their 2014 Martin Luther King Day celebrations. In 1983 he became a member of the Grand Ole Opry, only the second black artist to receive what is considered the highest honor in country music. He continued to perform and record even after suffering from bipolar disorder and having a tumor removed from his vocal cords. He was humorously introduced to a new generation of black music lovers in a 1994 episode of the TV show Martin in which Martin Lawrence’s radio personality character is forced to play country music and tries to remain true to his heritage without getting fired by playing Charley Pride records non-stop. To date his 47 studio albums, 11 compilation albums, and 72 singles have sold more than 70 million copies combined, including fourteen gold albums and a greatest hits collection that has sold four million. He has also received induction into the Country Music Hall of Fame and a 2017 Lifetime Achievement Award from the Grammys. Although country music still remains overwhelmingly white in its fan base and artists, Pride also helped pave the way for current stars Darius Rucker, Jimmie Allen, Kane Brown, and Lil Nas X. Charley Pride died of COVID-19 in 2020.
©David Brodnax, Sr.