President Vicente Guerrero

President Vicente Guerrero (1782-1831), Mexican military leader and politician. Vicente Ramón Guerrero Saldaña was born in Tixtla, a small town in southwestern Mexico, to a working-class family of African, Native American and Spanish ancestry. He received little formal education and worked as a mule driver in his early adulthood. When a rebellion against Spanish rule began in 1810, Guerrero was one of the first to join, seeing independence as a way to end slavery, racism and class discrimination. His knowledge of the land, ability to speak Native languages, and innate understanding of tactics made him a natural military leader. By 1815, however, nearly all of the other leaders had been killed or captured, and General Guerrero was now the top-ranked officer in the Mexican Revolution. Despite being outnumbered, he fought a successful guerilla war in the south and won numerous victories. The Spanish commander Agustín de Iturbide enlisted his Guerrero’s own father to try to convince him to surrender, but the son answered “The will of my father is for me sacred, but my Motherland is first.” Finally, Iturbide called for a peace treaty, promising to help create an independent government that guaranteed racial equality. The two generals joined forces in 1821, and in September, the Spanish government finally agreed to recognize Mexico’s independence. Guerrero, who became a high-ranking official in the new government, declared that “We have defeated the colossus, and we bathe in the glow of new found happiness…living with a knowledge that no one is above anyone else, and that there is no title more honored than that of the citizen.” 

Iturbide, however, declared himself emperor and refused to act on his earlier promises, so Guerrero led the effort to force him out of power. In 1828, he himself decided to run for president. His opponent was declared the winner, but Guerrero claimed that the election results were fraudulent and carried out a coup d’état in April 1829, thus becoming Mexico’s first and only black president. In his first address to Congress, President Guerrero announced that “The administration is obliged to procure the widest possible benefits and apply them from the palace of the rich to the wooden shack of the humble laborer.” He abolished the death penalty, raised taxes to assist the poor, and in September 1829 abolished slavery, ending the enslavement of Africans after 300 years. He also successfully defended the country against a Spanish invasion. These policies, however, put him at odds with conservative landowners. In December, an uprising began under his vice-president, and he was forced to leave Mexico City and flee to the south. Several months later, he was betrayed by a former ally, captured, and executed by a firing squad. Although he was only the latest political leader to be forced out of power in a time of great instability, most others sent into exile, not killed; his black ancestry and poor background, though, made him a greater threat. As one historian has written, “Guerrero's execution was perhaps a warning to men considered as socially and ethnically inferior not to dare to dream of becoming president.” In 1925, his remains were reburied, along with those of thirteen other revolutionary leaders, at the Columna de la Independencia memorial in downtown Mexico City. The state of Guerrero, which includes his hometown, is named in his honor; it is the only of Mexico’s thirty-two states named for a former president. He remains one of the most widely known patriotic heroes in a country where people of African descent are often overlooked, ignored or simply forgotten altogether.

©David Brodnax, Sr.

Zelda Wynn Valdes

Zelda Wynn Valdes (1905-2001), fashion designer. Zelda Christian Barbour was born in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, the oldest of seven children in a working-class family. As a child, she learned dressmaking from her grandmother and made outfits for her dolls. When she was thirteen her grandmother declined her offer to make a dress for her, saying “you can’t sew for me. I’m too tall and too big,” but Zelda sewed it anyway; “She was so happy with that dress,” she later recalled, “She was buried in it.” Her sense of style was also shaped by her study of classical piano at the Catholic Conservatory of Music. After graduating from Chambersburg High School she moved to White Plains, New York, and worked at her uncle’s tailoring shop. She then found a job in the stock room of a boutique, working her way up to become the store’s first black clerk and tailor despite the fact that some clients were unhappy seeing a black woman behind the counter. “It wasn’t a pleasant time,” she said many years later, “but the idea was to see what I could do.” In 1935 she opened her own dressmaking business in White Plains. Her success there led to an even larger shop called Zelda Wynn, which opened in 1948 on Broadway, making her the first African American storeowner on the iconic street. She first gained notoriety for dressing the bridal party of the 1948 wedding of Nat King Cole and Maria Cole.

From there Valdes’ client base grew to include many of the black female celebrities of the era: Dorothy Dandridge, Josephine Baker, Ella Fitzgerald, Eartha Kitt, Marian Anderson, Ella Fitzgerald, Ruby Dee, Diahann Carroll, Edna Robinson (wife of Sugar Ray Robinson) and Joyce Bryant. Despite their success and fame these women were often disrespected by white designers, but Valdes provided a space where they could get the clothing and the respect that they wanted. During the post-World War II period large numbers of black women celebrities were gaining notoriety and success across racial lines for the first time in American history, and Valdes’ clothing played an important role in expanding views of celebrity and of beauty. Her aesthetic included elaborate sequin and hand beading patterns woven onto top-quality fabrics like satin and crepe in patterns that were both form-clinging and sophisticated; in her words, “I have a God-given talent for making people beautiful.” Valdes’ work with Bryant to develop the singer develop a new public image accelerated Bryant’s career; her record sales increased, and Life magazine called her the “Black Marilyn Monroe.” Her work with Fitzgerald, which due to the singer’s hectic schedule often had to be done through photographs rather than in-person measurements, was even more lucrative and culturally significant. Fitzgerald’s full figure had led many to label her as unattractive, but Valdes’s dressed led to a more glamorous image and helped to slowly change popular ideas about body shape. Her work also gained more respect for her as a creator. Black women who created clothing had traditionally been dismissed with the label “seamstress” while their white counterparts were called “designers” or “couturiers,” but Wynn insisted on the latter terms. She also drew the patronage of white celebrities such as Mae West and Marlene Dietrich. In 1949 she became president of the National Association of Fashion Accessory Designers, an organization of black women in the design business created by Mary McLeod Bethune to, in the words of historian Tanisha C. Ford, “elevate other black female designers while helping them build networks, address discrimination in the workplace and promote racial diversity in the fashion industry.”

In the 1950s Valdes closed the Zelda Wynn store and opened a new one called Chez Zelda next to Carnegie Hall in Midtown Manhattan, the largest central business district in the world and home to the highest real estate prices on the planet. She employed nine dressmakers and charged nearly $1,000 for each gown. Although some designers focused on either costumes for performance or fashion garments for social events, Valdes was comfortable working in both genres. The most famous example of this was her work on the famous Playboy Bunny costume for Hugh Hefner’s Playboy Club. Some stories state that she singlehandedly invented the outfit, but it is more likely that she played an important collaborative role in its creation. In any event, the Bunny costume became one of the iconic symbols of the 1960s and was the first commercial uniform to be registered by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, although it also drew criticism for objectifying women. Her work also led “Zelda at the Playboy” fashion shows at the Playboy Club. In the 1960s she became the director of the Fashion and Design Workshop for a youth outreach program called the Harlem Youth Opportunities Unlimited and Associated Community Teams. In this capacity she taught costume design and sewing to thousands of children. In 1970 she became costume designer for Arthur Mitchell’s Dance Theatre of Harlem, the country’s first black classical ballet company. Over the next thirty-one years, she created pieces for eighty-two productions. Before Valdes’ work with the company all dancers’ tights were colored pink and labeled “flesh” or “nude” on the assumption that all dancers were white, but Valdes colored the tights for the Dance Theatre to match the skin tone of each dancer. She closed Chez Zelda in 1989 because of her frequent travel and sister’s declining health, but she continued to work with the Dance Theatre until her death in 2001. Although she was largely forgotten at the time of her passing, the success of other black designers in the last few decades and the inclusion of different body types in the fashion industry has led some to look back to the pioneer who helped make this possible.

©David Brodnax, Sr.

Capitol Officer Crystal Griner

Capitol Officer Crystal Griner (1984- ), law enforcement official. Griner grew up in Ellicott City, Maryland, a mid-sized town near Baltimore. She attended Mount Hebron High School, where she was a member of the National Honors Society and an award-winning member of the softball and basketball teams. “She played inside for us,” her high school coach later recalled, “like a Charles Barkley-type player because she wasn’t big. She was tough.” Her athletic and academic accomplishments came in spite of the fact that her mother died of cancer right before the start of her senior year. After high school, she attended Hood College in Maryland, where as a freshman she finished near the top of the team in scoring and helped the Cougars reach the NCAA Division III Women’s Basketball Tournament. In 2006 she graduated from Hood with a degree in biology. 

After completing her degree, Griner joined the United States Capitol Police, the law enforcement agency given the responsibility of protecting members of Congress.  As a member of the Capitol Police, Griner was assigned to protect Representative Steve Scalise, a Louisiana Republican who for many years had helped lead efforts against marriage equality and other LGBT civil rights concerns and in 2002 spoke at a white supremacist convention, although he later stated that he had not been aware of the convention’s purpose and that he condemned it. Although U.S. representatives do not automatically receive police protection at all times, Scalise was entitled to such protection due to his role as House Majority Whip: the representative who is elected by other members of his party to coordinate ideas for legislation and encourage support for it. One of the other officers assigned to Scalise is also African American, while the third is Latino. In 2015, Griner married her girlfriend in Maryland, which had legalized same-sex marriage in 2012, three years before the U.S. Supreme Court made it legal throughout the country over the objections of Scalise and many other Republican lawmakers. On 14 June 2017 Scalise, several dozen of his colleagues, and their aides were at Eugene Simpson Stadium Park in Alexandria, Virginia, to practice for the Congressional Baseball Game, an annual charity event that pits congresspersons from the two major political parties against each other. Griner and her two colleagues were stationed behind near the field while the Republicans practiced. Also present was James Hodgkinson, a downstate Illinois resident who had a history of confrontations with police, including an arrest for domestic assault, and of writing anti-Trump and anti-Republican statements on social media and to newspapers. After Hodgkinson learned that the people on the field were Republicans, he began shooting at them with a rifle and handgun. Scalise and two others were hit almost immediately. Griner and one of the other officers ran onto the field to protect the people there, and all three began returning fire at Hodgkinson, as did members of the Alexandria police department upon their arrival. As they did so, several of the congressmen provided medical aid to the wounded. Griner was hit in the ankle during the ten-minute shootout, during which as many as 100 shots were exchanged. It ended when an Alexandria police officer shot Hodgkinson, who later died of his injuries. 

The actions of Griner and the other officers had kept Hodgkinson pinned down behind the dugout and drawn his fire away from the civilians. Senator Rand Paul observed that “Our lives were saved by the Capitol Police. Had they not been there I think it would have been a massacre.” Her high school basketball coach stated “She put it all on the line as a player, just like she put her life on the line protecting others. She was mentally and physically tough as a player. And those qualities are why she’s now a hero.” Griner, Scalise, and the other injured parties were taken to local hospitals, and all are expected to make full recoveries. Because Griner and her wife were legally married, the wife was able to take an active role in the recovery process in ways that had previously been barred to same-sex couples. While in the hospital, Griner and her wife were visited by the Trumps and by Vice President Mike Pence, who like Scalise and many of the others whose lives were saved strongly opposes LGBT rights. One week after the shooting, Griner threw out the first pitch at the Congressional Women’s Softball Game, which raises money for breast cancer research, from a wheelchair. The soft-spoken officer has no social media presence and has made no public statements about these events, but the actress Martha Plimpton tweeted “A queer Black woman saved Steve Scalise’s life, so let’s send her & him our best wishes & hope his voting record changes from here on out.” The Congressional Baseball Game was also played as scheduled, drawing double the usual crowd and raising more than $1 million for charity.

©David Brodnax, Sr.

Simon Kimbangu

Simon Kimbangu (1887-1951), Congolese religious leader. Simon Kimbangu was born in Nkamba, a small town in Central Africa. His homeland had once been one of the most powerful nations in Africa, but by the late 1800s it was weakened from centuries of European and East African efforts to conquer the region and enslave its inhabitants. Two years before Kimbangu’s birth, European countries and the United States held a conference to divide all of Africa between them, and the king of Belgium claimed the Congo as his personal property and used private companies to conquer it. The Congolese people were enslaved and forced to harvest natural resources such as rubber and gold, and those who resisted were beaten, killed, or had a hand severed. As a result, an estimated 10 million people died between 1885 and 1908. The Belgians also tried to convert the Congolese to Christianity, but even those who did were closely supervised by white religious leaders.

Although it is difficult to separate some of the legends about Kimbangu from what actually happened, according to one story, when he was an infant his mother had protected a missionary from harm and was blessed with the promise that “her child would do the work of God.” He began having religious visions as a young child and was educated in a Baptist missionary school. In 1917 or 1918, he felt a calling to ministry and spent several years as a religious teacher. He then, as he described to his followers, spoke directly with God, who told him to heal the sick and declared “I am Christ. My servants are unfaithful. I have chosen you to bear witness before your brethren and convert them. Tend my flock.” Kimbangu was initially reluctant and instead moved to the colonial capital of Leopoldville (now Kinshasa), where he worked at an oil refinery, but another vision encouraged him to return home and begin his own ministry in 1921. Over the next few months, his ministry grew rapidly and drew thousands of people from all over the Congo to Nkamba, which became known as “New Jerusalem,” to join the Ngunza (“prophet” in the Kikongo language).  His followers believed that he had the power to cure illness and resurrect the dead through faith healings. This was especially attractive in a region that had been devastated by colonial rule, World War I, and a global influenza pandemic. Additionally, his strict moral code, which banned practices such as drinking, smoking, and polygamy, brought a sense of stability to many people’s lives. He also blended traditional and European practices in a way that resonated with many and made them proud of their heritage. For instance, his white robes symbolized both Christian notions of purity and the Congolese tradition in which white was the color of the dead, making some believe that the ancestors would help restore the Congo to glory, and his staff had a black flag tied to it and was called “The Staff of the Rule of the Blacks.” In one sermon he declared “God had promised Simon Kimbangu that, whenever your enemies confront you, it is you who shall speak: I will send the Prince of Angels, Gabriel, to defend you. Thus God did not renege on his promise when the Whiteman arrived.”

The Belgian authorities, though, saw his movement as a threat. Some of his followers preached that the Congolese should refuse to pay their colonial taxes or even overthrow the colonial government, and although Kimbangu himself never stated these things, he was still accused of believing them. By preaching that God had called him to lead his movement, he implied that white religious leaders were not necessary and should not be in charge. The simple fact that an African man had become more important in the Congo than any colonial leader made him dangerous to colonialism. When one government official came to confront him, Kimbangu read him the story of David and Goliath. Another story held that when soldiers came, he told one to “keep still” and the man was unable to move; he then told another “Have you come to fight God? Who are you looking for? Truly, I know that others are relying on their knives to make me suffer, but the Lord God knows all the plans of men; he sees them like small flowers.” The authorities finally tried to arrest him, killing several members of his flock in the process, but he escaped and continued preaching in hiding. Kimbangu finally turned himself in and was tried before a military court for disturbing the peace and undermining public security. During the trial, which violated numerous Belgian legal rules (for instance, Kimbangu was not allowed an attorney), he told the judge “the Spirit took a black to do God’s work, because the whites were discontented with the work of God.” He was found guilty and sentenced to death by 120 lashes, but this sentence was protested by prominent Europeans, so the king of Belgium commuted it to life in prison. He was sent to the Elisabethville prison and banned from seeing his family or anyone else. Many of his followers were also imprisoned or exiled to remote areas of the Congo, and his movement was outlawed, but it continued to grow under the leadership of his sons and others. So did the anticolonial movement, which was inspired in part by his example but was also increasing throughout Africa and the rest of the world. In 1959 the Belgian government finally gave legal recognition to what was then known as the Kimbanguist Church. A year later, the Congo gained its independence; it is now known as the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Simon Kimbangu did not live to see these events, as he died in prison in 1951 after thirty years of confinement. Today the Kimbanguist Church (officially called the Église de Jésus-Christ sur Terre par le Prophète Simon Kimbangu, or Church of Jesus Christ on Earth by the Prophet Simon Kimbangu) is the third largest religious group in the Congo, one of the largest African-founded religious groups on the entire continent, and the first independent African church to be admitted to the World Council of Churches.

©David Brodnax, Sr.

Prime Minister Agathe Uwilingiyimana

Prime Minister Agathe Uwilingiyimana (1953-1994), Rwandan educator and politician. Uwilingiyimana was born in the village of Nyaruhengeri, the fourth of eight children born to farming parents. She attended Notre Dame des Citeaux High School, where she headed clothing drives and worked to improve relations among the Hutu and Tutsi, Rwanda’s two major ethnic groups. She became certified to teach humanities, mathematics and chemistry and worked at a school in the town of Butare. In 1983, Uwilingiyimana became a chemistry professor at the National University of Rwanda and later earned an advanced degree in chemistry despite criticism from those who thought that females should not study science. Three years later, she created a credit union for teachers in Butare. This drew the attention of the government, which wanted to include talented individuals from southern Rwanda, and so she was appointed her Director of Small and Medium Sized Industries. Although some people opposed placing a woman in a high position of authority, she ultimately won the respect of many of them; one later recalled, “Not only did the men accept her for her competence but the women adopted her for her generosity.” Uwilingiyimana helped create the Seruka (“Show Me”) Association, which provided education, job training and business opportunities for women. 

In 1992, she was appointed Minister of Education. In her short time in this office, she appointed larger numbers of women to high-ranking positions in the school system; encouraged girls to pursue careers in science; ended the policy of expelling pregnant girls from school; helped establish the Forum for African Women Educationalists (FAWE), a multinational organization that increased girls’ access to education; and awarded scholarships based solely on merit, thus ending the old ethnic quota system. The last of these policies angered Hutu extremists; although the Hutu already controlled the government, some wanted to completely eliminate Tutsi influence and destroy the Tutsi rebels who opposed the government. In 1993, she became the first woman prime minister in Rwanda and the second in all of Africa. Her appointment had been based in part on the president’s belief that she would divide his opponents and their belief that they could control her, but she quickly proved to be a formidable politician by helping to create the Arusha Accords, a peace agreement between the government and the rebels. This was the final straw for Hutu extremists, who in April 1994 assassinated Rwanda’s president and blamed Tutsi rebels for the crime. This immediately led to the Rwandan Genocide, in which soldiers and militiamen murdered Tutsi men, women and children, along with any Hutu who they considered a traitor. This included Agathe Uwilingiyimana. In an international radio broadcast on the night that the Genocide began, she announced “there is shooting, people are being terrorized, people are inside their homes lying on the floor. We are suffering the consequences of the death of the head of state, I believe. We, the civilians, are in no way responsible.” 

She refused to flee the country, instead staying to help restore the peace. She and her family were initially protected in their house by United Nations troops, but Hutu troops ordered them to lay down their arms, so Uwilingiyimana and her family took refuge in a UN compound the next morning. Two hours later, troops entered the compound. Agathe and her husband came out voluntarily to give their children a chance to escape, and they were immediately executed. Their children eventually fled to Switzerland. Agathe Uwilingiyimana was one of the first of 937,000 people killed in only 100 days during the Rwandan Genocide. After the killings ended and peace was restored, the new government gave her an official state burial. FAWE established the Agathe Innovative Award Competition to encourage educational and economic projects for African girls. She is still the only female prime minister in Rwandan history.

©David Brodnax, Sr.

Allen Toussaint

Allen Toussaint (1938-2015), musician. Allen Toussaint was born in the working-class Gert Town neighborhood of New Orleans. His early musical instruction came from his father, a railroad worker who also played trumpet, and from a neighbor who gave him piano lessons. While still a teenager he began performing with local stars like Earl King and Dave Bartholomew. In 1957 he entered the recording industry by playing on the Fats Domino song “I Want You to Know” and producing the song “Walking with Mr. Lee” for Lee Allen. Using the pseudonym Tousan, a year later he recorded The Wild Sound of New Orleans, an all instrumental album with songs that he had written. One of them, “Java,” was later a hit for Al Hirt in 1964, becoming the first of many Toussaint compositions that other artists successfully recorded. During the 1960s Toussaint became one of the most important creative forces in R&B and rock music, working behind the scenes as a songwriter, producer, arranger, piano player, and record label executive who found and developed new musicians. As he recalled many years later, “I never thought of myself as a performer…My comfort zone is behind the scenes.” In its impact on R&B music, New Orleans ranked behind only Detroit, Chicago, and Memphis. Toussaint wrote hit songs such as: “Ooh Poo Pah Doo” by Jessie Hill; “A Certain Girl” and “Mother-in-Law” by Ernie K-Doe; “Over You” by Aaron Neville; “I Like It Like That” by Chris Kenner; “Lipstick Traces (On a Cigarette”) and “Fortune Teller” by Benny Spellman; “Work, Work, Work” by The Artwoods; and “Ruler of My Heart” by Irma Thomas. When Otis Redding recorded the latter song as “Pain in My Heart” with slightly modified lyrics and himself listed as songwriter, Toussaint successfully sued him for songwriter credit and royalties. His music also reached a wider audience when white rock musicians such as the Rolling Stones, the Yardbirds, the Who, and the Hollies began recording them. One music critic later wrote, “Toussaint didn’t just play New Orleans R&B, he was the New Orleans R&B guy – an avatar for regional culture that skirted the mainstream but never really became it.”

In 1963 Toussaint was drafted into the army, but he continued to record while home on leave. One of his songs from this period, the instrumental “Whipped Cream,” became a hit for Herb Alpert and was used as the theme song for the TV show The Dating Game. When he returned to civilian life in 1965 he founded his own record label, Sansu Enterprises, writing and producing hits like the Chris Kenner song “Working in the Coal Mine,” a subtle protest against the exploitation of the working class. The rhythm section used on many Sansu songs was a band called the Meters, and their collaboration with Toussaint helped move his music in new directions that more fully reflected New Orleans’ unique cultural heritage, with a slower tempo and heavier syncopation than what was found in most other R&B. One early sign of this was the 1969 Lee Dorsey song “Everything I Do Gonna Be Funky.” The Meters eventually began making albums of their own, and Toussaint produced these as well as work by new artists like Dr. John and the Wild Tchoupitoulas. In 1973 he created a new record label called Sea-Saint and the recording studio Sea-Saint Productions. This studio was used by some of the most popular musicians in the world, including B.J. Thomas, Robert Palmer, Paul McCartney, Paul Simon, Joe Cocker, Albert King, Little Feat, and Elvis Costello. He also continued to write for other artists. His “Yes We Can Can,” a song about racial pride, became the first major hit for the Pointer Sisters; his “What Do You Want the Girl to Do” was successfully recorded by Boz Scaggs; and “Get Out of My Life, Woman” became a blues standard recorded by many artists. His biggest hit, though, was one that he did not write but produced: Labelle’s 1975 “Lady Marmalade.” In addition to this work with other artists, Toussaint began recording his own music for the first time since the 1950s with albums such as Toussaint (1971), Life, Love and Faith (1972), and Southern Nights (1975). His solo work earned critical praise but did not sell as well as when the songs were recorded by other musicians; for instance, in 1977 his song “Southern Nights” became a number one hit for country musician Glen Campbell. Throughout all of this, few people outside the music industry knew the name of the person who had written, arranged, and/or produced so many popular and influential songs. This was largely due to Toussaint’s unwillingness to enter the spotlight; “I’m not accustomed to talking about myself,” he told one audience, “I talk in the studio with musicians. Or through my songs.”

Toussaint’s success as a writer and producer diminished somewhat after the 1970s, but his work began to find a new audience as his beats and lyrics were sampled by the British pop group Sugababes and by hip hop artists like A Tribe Called Quest, The Beastie Boys, the Black Eyed Peas, and the Notorious B.I.G. His “Hand Clapping Song” has become one of the most recognizable samples in hip hop history, and overall his songs have been sampled nearly 900 times. In 1987 he served as musical director for the successful off-Broadway show Staggerlee. In 1996 he created a new record label, NYNO Records, which focused on New Orleans artists and issued a series of critically acclaimed albums. In 2005, however, Toussaint lost his home, his recording studio, and most of his other possessions in Hurricane Katrina. After taking refuge in a hotel he headed to New York, and a week after the hurricane he performed on the Late Show with David Letterman. He wryly referred to Katrina as “his booking agent” because it compelled him to begin performing live again for the first time in years. This included Festival New Orleans, which helped to bring tourism back to the city. In 2006 he returned to New Orleans to record the album The River in Reverse with Elvis Costello; this was the first major musical work created in the Crescent City since the hurricane. He moved back home permanently in 2009 but continued to give live performances around the world and to record albums of classic jazz and R&B songs. In his albums and his live shows, he increasingly saw himself as the conservator and ambassador for New Orleans’ musical heritage, sharing stories on stage about his half-century in the music industry. After one such show in Madrid in 2013, Allen Toussaint died of a heart attack. A year later his final album American Tunes was released. Before his death he had been inducted into the Louisiana Music Hall of Fame, the Songwriter’s Hall of Fame, the Blues Hall of Fame, and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (becoming only the fourth New Orleans-based musician inducted into the Rock Hall) and had been awarded the 2013 National Medal of Arts by President Obama, who said at the ceremony that he and the other recipients had “used their talents in the arts and the humanities to open up minds and nourish souls, and help us understand what it means to be human, and what it means to be an American.”

©David Brodnax, Sr.

Solomon Linda

Solomon Linda (1909-1962), South African musician. Solomon Popoli Linda was born near the town of Pomeroy, a member of the Zulu ethnic group. At the time of his birth, South Africa was ruled by a tiny white population that kept the black majority in an impoverished, oppressed state, stripped of their land, unable to vote, and barred from nearly all professions. He began singing at weddings and feasts at a young age, combining Zulu traditions with ideas that he learned from touring African American singers. In 1931 he moved to Johannesburg, where he worked in his uncle’s furniture store while singing in a group called the Evening Birds. The group won numerous competitions and rapidly grew in popularity due to its sense of style, which included pinstriped suits and bowler hats, but even more so because of its music. Linda almost singlehandedly created the isicathamiya musical style, including multiple bass singers and fasi pathi, a high falsetto lead part that he sang himself. In 1939, the Evening Birds were spotted by a talent scout and recorded several songs at Gallo Records, the only recording studio in sub-Saharan Africa. One of these was a song that Linda improvised on the spot and entitled “Mbube” (“lion”), inspired by a childhood memory of chasing lions away from the family cattle. “Mbube” eventually sold more than 100,000 copies; the original master recording was re-pressed so many times that it finally disintegrated. The Evening Birds also recorded other songs, including “Yetulisgqoko” (“Take off Your Hat”), which criticized police brutality and ended with the words sikhalela izwe lakithi (“we mourn for our country”).

After the group broke up in 1948, Linda continued to perform throughout South Africa while also raising a family. By then the racial oppression in his country had grown even worse and become known as apartheid ("separateness"). In 1952, the American folk singer Pete Seeger recorded his own version of “Mbube,” which he entitled “Wimoweh” (a misspelling of the chant “uyimbube”). It became even more popular in 1961 when it was re-written as “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” and recorded by the Tokens. The song went to number one on the American charts and has been recorded by more than 160 other musicians; one journalist describes it as “the most famous melody ever to emerge from Africa…a tune that has penetrated so deep into the human consciousness over so many generations that one can truly say, here is a song the whole world knows.” Linda did not benefit from this, though, as he had sold his rights to the song to Gallo Records for less than $2; South African law did not allow blacks to own royalties. Seeger sent Linda a check for $1,000 and instructed his publishing company to send additional payments to Linda’s family, but this never happened. Even Linda did not realize that he had been swindled; “he was happy,” his daughter later recalled, “he didn’t know he was supposed to get something.” He collapsed on stage in 1959 and was diagnosed with kidney failure, which finally took his life three years later. When he died, he was so poor that his grave had no tombstone and his family could not pay for proper Zulu burial rites.

Under South African law, the rights to “Mbube” should have reverted to them in 1987, but they received no compensation, even after the song was introduced to a new generation in Disney’s 1994 film The Lion King. In 2000, though, a South African journalist wrote an article telling Linda’s story and estimating that the song had earned $15 million over the years. Linda’s family brought a lawsuit and in 2006 agreed to a settlement that included back royalties and additional payments for any future use; the publishing company also agreed to pay for a memorial to Linda. By then, he had also earned recognition as one of the pioneers of South African music, inspiring later artists such as Miriam Makeba and Ladysmith Black Mambazo.

©David Brodnax, Sr.

Professor Rachel Isum Robinson

Professor Rachel Isum Robinson (1922- ), nurse, educator, and activist. Rachel Annetta Isum was born in Los Angeles. Her father, a World War I veteran, worked as a bookbinder and linotyper at the Los Angeles Times and on one occasion successfully sued a restaurant that tried to charge him higher prices than white customers. When an illness from his military service forced him to retire early, Rachel’s mother started a catering business, and Rachel also helped support the family by working in the business, working at the library, and sewing baby clothes. The Isums were one of the only black families in their neighborhoods, and she was forced to sit in the balcony when she went to the movie theater. After graduating from high school in 1940 Rachel entered the nursing program at UCLA, where she helped pay her tuition by working as a riveter in a factory that made airplanes for the World War II effort; she often worked the night shift, drove to campus at dawn, and then went to class. “The struggle to be someone despite what the society is saying about me and my people,” she recalled, “got implemented in me in a way that made me strive harder.” Her perspective on race relations was also shaped by watching her Japanese-American next-door neighbors be forced to sell their home and move into an internment camp; “I remember being just heartbroken about that and not understanding it at all,” she later said, “because they were American citizens.”

While at UCLA Rachel began dating a fellow student named Jackie Robinson, and the two were quickly engaged, but at her insistence they did not marry until she had finished her degree in 1945. Several months later, Jackie signed a contract with the Brooklyn Dodgers and thus became the first African American in white professional baseball since 1884. A year later the Robinsons took were in the New Orleans airport on their way to spring training, and Rachel had her first experience with southern Jim Crow. Upon seeing a “Whites Only” sign outside the women’s restroom, she walked in anyway. Jackie soon integrated Major League Baseball, performing at a Hall of Fame level despite suffering horrible abuse from fans and other players, and Rachel provided the foundation that made it possible. One journalist wrote of her: “She was not simply the dutiful little wife. She was Jack’s co-pioneer. She had to live through the death threats, endure the vile screams of the fans and watch her husband get knocked down by pitch after pitch. And because he was under the strictest discipline not to [fight back], she was the one who had to absorb everything he brought home.” She herself said “I was the support person so often misidentified as the ‘little woman behind the great man,’ but I was neither little nor behind him. I felt powerful by his side as his partner, essential, challenged, and greatly loved.”

When Rachel tried to purchase a home in the New York suburbs, every property that she viewed was denied to her until a Jewish community activist intervened on their behalf and lodged them with her own family (including her young daughter and future music star Carly Simon) until the Robinsons were ready to move into their new place. Beginning in 1963, they used their home to host the Afternoon of Jazz, an annual concert that featured performers like Ella Fitzgerald and Dizzy Gillespie and which raised money for jailed civil rights protesters, Dr. King’s children after his assassination, and other activists. Rachel also took part in the 1963 March on Washington and other aspects of the Civil Rights Movement. In 1960 she resumed her nursing career, earning a master’s degree in psychiatric nursing from New York University; “I was always interested in,” she later said, “the combination of the mind, the body, and the soul. I was always concerned about trying to intervene and help.” She worked as a researcher and clinician at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York from 1960 to 1965, helping to start America’s first day psychiatric hospital, which enabled the mentally ill to receive treatment while still living at home. From 1965 to 1972 she was a professor at Yale School of Nursing, teaching graduate students and serving as director of their new community mental health center. During a two-year span between 1971 and 1973, though, Rachel endured the deaths of her oldest son, her husband, and her mother, but she emerged from her grief more determined to help the less fortunate. In 1972 she founded the Jackie Robinson Development Corporation, a real estate company that in ten years built more than 1,300 housing units for poor and working-class families. She also created the Jackie Robinson Foundation, which has provided $14 million in college scholarships, internships, mentoring, and other assistance to more than 1,400 minority students. The Foundation has also worked to preserve the memory of Jackie Robinson’s baseball career and activism, and its museum is scheduled to open in 2019. In 1996 she authored the biography Jackie Robinson: An Intimate Portrait. She was instrumental in Major League Baseball’s decision to retire Jackie’s “42” uniform number (making him the first American professional athlete so honored) and in the production of the 2013 biographical film 42, and she has also pushed the league to hire more minority managers and executives. On her 75^th birthday, she celebrated by climbing 10,000 feet on Mount Kilimanjaro. Her numerous awards include: the Candace Award for Distinguished Service from the National Coalition of 100 Black Women; the Associated Black Charities Black History Makers Award; the UCLA Medal; the Commissioner’s Historic Achievement Award in 2007 (making her the first non-player recipient); the 2017 Buck O’Neil Lifetime Achievement Award from the Baseball Hall of Fame; and twelve honorary doctorates. When asked why she and her husband had been so committed to the fight against inequality, the then-82 year old simply stated “You can’t stand still for that stuff.”

©David Brodnax, Sr.

Judge Fred "Duke" Slater

Judge Fred “Duke” Slater (1898-1966), athlete and lawyer. Nicknamed “Duke” after the family dog, Frederick Wayman Slater grew up in Normal, Illinois and Clinton, Iowa. His father, an AME minister, stressed the importance of education and hard work; when Duke declared that he wanted to quit school, the elder Slater got him a job cutting ice on the Mississippi River, and he quickly changed his mind. Duke was so large that when he joined the high school football team, his cleats had to be ordered from Chicago, and since the family could not afford a helmet as well, he played without one. Starring at the offensive and defensive tackle positions, Slater led Clinton High School to the 1914 state championship. Several years later, he became one of the first African Americans in college football when he enrolled at the University of Iowa. He was named to the All-Big Ten and All-American teams in three consecutive years, and during his senior year the Hawkeyes went undefeated, including an upset of Notre Dame in which he enabled his teammate to score the winning touchdown by blocking three defenders at once. Newspapers referred to him as the “colored colossus,” while a competitor said “Duke Slater was the best tackle I ever played against. I tried to block him throughout my college career but never once did I impede his progress to the ball carrier.”

After graduating in 1922, he decided to play in the recently founded National Football League. During his ten-year professional career, he starred for the Milwaukee Badgers, Rock Island Independents, and Chicago (now Arizona) Cardinals. As one of the only African Americans in the league, Slater faced numerous indignities; in 1924, for example, he sat out a game in Kansas City after objections by the home team. Despite these obstacles, he was named to the All-NFL team five times, and in 1929 his blocking enabled a teammate to set the all-time record with six touchdowns in a game against the Bears. He was also known for his sense of fair play even when the same was not extended to him. When asked why he did not hit a running back as hard as he could, for example, he replied “The little fellow was stopped – why should I hurt him?” Slater retired in 1932, just before the NFL expelled all of its black players; there would be no others until after World War II.

He had returned to Iowa after each season to work on a law degree, graduating in 1928, and he began practicing law full time after his football career ended. He also became active in local politics and was named an assistant district attorney in 1935. Thirteen years later, he ran for a Cook County municipal judgeship and was easily elected, receiving nearly a million votes. Slater was also active in Iowa alumni affairs, recruiting numerous other black student-athletes and speaking with the team before big games. In 1951, he was named an inaugural member of the Iowa Sports Hall of Fame and the College Football Hall of Fame, becoming their first African American member. Many football historians have also advocated for his induction into the NFL Hall of Fame, although the lack of statistics for linemen has hindered this effort. After Slater’s death from stomach cancer in 1966, a new student residence building on the University of Iowa campus was named for him (he is the only former student-athlete so honored), as were the Judge Slater Apartments on Chicago’s South Side. One sportswriter memorialized him by stating “that Slater must have been raised to stand on his own two feet! Proud in the knowledge that in America, as in no other country, a man regardless of creed or color can advance by the sweat of his brow and the muscle of his mind!”

© David Brodnax, Sr.

U.S. Representative Lauren Underwood

U.S. Representative Lauren Underwood (1986- ), nurse and politician. Lauren Ashley Underwood was born in the Cleveland suburb of Mayfield Heights and moved to the Chicago suburb of Naperville as a small child. Although she grew up in an overwhelmingly white community, she was inspired by Oprah Winfrey and then-Senator Carol Moseley Braun; “to me,” she later recalled, those were the two most powerful black women in the world. It made me feel I could do whatever I wanted to do.” She was also inspired to seek a career in health care by the doctors and nurses who helped her after she was diagnosed with a heart condition at the age of eight. While a student at Neuqua Valley High School, she served on the city’s fair housing advisory commission. She earned a degree in nursing from the University of Michigan, where a course on nursing politics led her to pursue a career in healthcare policy. After completing her bachelor’s degree she worked in pediatric intensive care, discharge planning, psychiatric programs, and medical-surgical units while also earning master’s degrees in nursing and public health from Johns Hopkins University.

In 2010 Underwood went to work at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), tasked with helping to implement the Affordable Care Act that had massively expanded Americans’ access to health care since its passage earlier that year. She also became an adjunct professor in advanced practice nursing at Georgetown University. In 2014 she was appointed a special assistant in President Barack Obama’s administration, working to address public health emergencies and disasters such as bioterror threats and the water crisis in Flint, Michigan. Two years later she was appointed to the position of senior advisor at HHS. In 2017 she returned to Naperville to work as senior director of strategy and regulatory affairs at Next Level Health, a managed care company in Chicago. That year she also took part in the first Women’s March, which was held the day after Donald Trump’s inauguration, brought more than three million people together in various cities around the country, and sought to mobilize women to get involved in politics. “I’m one of the women who marched in the Women’s March and decided to campaign,” she later said, “’Time Magazine called us ‘The Avengers.” What was very clear is that women have been mobilized in a very specific and concrete way to engage in our country.”

In 2017, Underwood decided to become even more involved in politics. Her Naperville home is part of Illinois’ 14^th Congressional District, a large, seven-county district that includes the far western Chicago suburbs, small towns, and largely rural areas. As of the 2010 census the district is 86% white, and the Democrats had won only three of thirty-five elections since 1938. This Republican dominance included staunch conservative Randy Hultgren, who had easily defeated his Democratic opponents in the previous four elections. In 2017 Underwood attended a public event at which Hultgren promised to protect health coverage for people with pre-existing conditions: medical conditions that occurred before the person sought or received health insurance. Later that year, though, he voted in favor of a bill that would repeal the Affordable Care Act and make it easier for health insurance companies to discriminate against people with pre-existing conditions, which included Underwood, many of her patients, and 25% of all Americans under the age of 65. Hultgren’s vote motivated her to challenge him for his seat in Congress; leaving the meeting, she told herself “It’s on. I’m running.” In the Democratic primary against six other candidates, all white men, she won 57% of the votes, with no other candidate receiving more than 13%. This meant that she would now go up against Hultgren in the general election in November 2018. Underwood ran on a platform that focused on health care, especially defending and improving the Affordable Care Act, but also on job creation, infrastructure, universal background checks for firearm purchases, greater funding for college education, environmental protection, immigration reform, and paid family leave. Although the racial and political demographics of her district were not in her favor, she told reporters, “I learned to be a black woman in this community. This is my home, and the idea that I might not be a good fit is an idea I never gave a lot of consideration to.” She sought to get female voters and young voters of all genders involved and to mobilize the support groups created after the Women’s March, she also traveled throughout her district, including the most rural and conservative areas, to reach out to those voters as well. She also received the endorsement of her former boss Barack Obama, who in 2008 had been the only Democratic presidential candidate in the 21^st century to win a majority of votes in the 14^th District. On 6 November 2018, Underwood defeated Hultgren, winning 156,035 votes (52.5%) to his 141,164 (47.5%). She was part of a national wave that saw the Democrats garner ten million more votes than the Republicans, pick up 40 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives (their largest gain since 1974), and take back control of the House. On election night she told a crowd of supporters, “a regular middle-class woman, working full time, is able to…figure out how to get on the ballot, knock doors, get signatures, invite herself to political events and conversations…in the United States of America, we the people come together to make our community, our country, a better place, and tonight we the people have stood up to say that health care is a human right.”

Underwood was sworn into Congress on 3 January 2018. At the age of 32, she is the youngest black woman to ever serve in Congress. She is also the only black congressperson in Illinois history to represent a district entirely outside the Chicago city limits. The 116^th U.S. Congress is the most diverse in U.S. history, with the House now including 102 women, 56 African Americans, 44 Latinx, 15 Asian Americans, 4 Native Americans, and eight LGBT members. This Congress, she declared, “is what [she] always hoped the United States Congress could look like.” The same day that she was sworn in, the House passed a rules package that she co-wrote to combat sexual harassment against women working for members of Congress. “In the Democratic Majority, when the American people have elected the most diverse Congress with more women serving than before,” Underwood said, “we are demonstrating a commitment to conducting the business of our Nation with the highest standards of ethics and decency…’Time’s Up’ has come to the halls of Congress.”

© David Brodnax, Sr.