February 28
 Ruby Bridges was one of the youngest civil rights heroes of the twentieth century. Born in 1954, the year that the Supreme Court ordered the desegregation of public schools, Bridges was one of the first African-American students to attend a formerly all-white elementary school in New Orleans in 1960. The first grader showed remarkable courage and perseverance as she attended school each day escorted by federal marshals. Last year school children in Milwaukee were instrumental in lobbying Congress to pass a resolution recognizing the significance of these events. Learn more about Ruby Bridges at your Milwaukee Public Library.
February 27
 Louis Armstrong (1901-1971) is considered by many to be the greatest jazz performer who ever lived. His virtuosic trumpet playing, distinctive vocal stylings, and inventive musicianship strongly influenced the development of jazz for decades and made Armstrong famous throughout the world. Learn more about Louis Armstrong (in books for adults or children) today at your Milwaukee Public Library.
February 26
 When Gwendolynne S. Moore was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from Wisconsin’s Fourth Congressional District in 2004, she became the first African-American legislator to represent our state in Congress. Prior to her election to Congress, Moore served two terms in the Wisconsin State Assembly and was the first African-American woman to serve in the Wisconsin State Senate. Learn more about African American women legislators at your Milwaukee Public Library.
February 25
 In 1963, Sidney Poitier became the first African American to receive an Academy Award as an actor in a leading role, for his performance in Lilies of the Field. Poitier was born in Miami, Florida, grew up in the Bahamas, and returned to the United States after he finished school. He started acting on stage in New York City before launching an extraordinary Hollywood career that spanned forty years and nearly forty films. Learn more about Sidney Poitier at your Milwaukee Public Library.
February 24
 In the 19th century, Wisconsin’s Cheyenne Valley was home to the largest rural settlement of African Americans in the state. These farming families soon intermarried with their white neighbors and developed a thriving, multiracial community, home to the state’s first integrated schools and churches. Listen to a Lake Effect radio program segment from WUWM about descendents of the African American settlers of the Cheyenne Valley, or read more about this community and others in Black Settlers in Rural Wisconsin today at your Milwaukee Public Library.
February 23
 Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960-1988) was an American artist of Haitian and Puerto Rican descent who rose from obscurity as a grafitti artist selling postcards of his art on street corners in New York City to become one of the first black artists to receive international recognition within the art community. The fastest rising and most controversial artist of the 1980s, Basquiat’s neo-expressionist paintings sold for large sums at New York and European exihibitions of his work. Basquiat’s larger-than-life persona and tragically young death turned his life into legend. Learn more about Jean-Michel Basquiat at your Milwaukee Public Library.
February 22
 Milwaukee’s Bronzeville was a vibrant African American neighborhood located between State Street and North Avenue, between 3rd and 12th streets, with a thriving business district centered on Walnut Street. African Americans came to Milwaukee in the early to mid-twentieth century in search of employment and better living conditions, and created a city within a city in Bronzeville that formed an economic and cultural center for African American residents and their neighbors. Bronzeville's heyday lasted until the 1950s and 1960s, when city plans to battle urban blight leveled many buildings to make way for revitalization. Construction of the freeway I-43 cut directly across the neighborhood, eliminating thousands of homes and destroying the heart of the community. Check out a copy of Bronzeville: A Milwaukee Lifestyle by cultural anthropologist Ivory Abena Black today at your Milwaukee Public Library.
February 21
 Edwidge Danticat is a Haitian-American writer who is known for her moving and insightful depictions of Haiti’s complex history and for enriching our understanding of the Haitian-American immigrant experience in her novels and short stories. In recognition of her talent, Danticat was awarded a MacArthur Foundation genius award in 2009. Check out a book by Edwidge Danticat today at your Milwaukee Public Library.
February 20
 U.S. speed skater Shani Davis made history in the 2006 Winter Olympics in Torino, Italy, where he became the first African-American athlete to win an Olympic gold medal in an individual event. Davis, who trains at Pettit National Ice Center in West Allis and resides in Milwaukee, is the world record holder in the 1,000 and 1,500 meters and is one of the top contenders in these events at the Olympic Games currently underway in Vancouver, Canada. Follow Shani Davis at the Vancouver Olympics and find out more about this great athlete in reference books or databases at your Milwaukee Public Library.
February 19
 Gertrude “Ma” Rainey (1886-1939) became known as the “Mother of the Blues” for her role in introducing this melancholic, improvisational musical style to a wide audience during the 1920s. After building a following across the southern United States performing on the vaudeville circuit, Ma Rainey came to the attention of northern audiences primarily through her recorded music, which was released by Wisconsin’s own Paramount Records. Learn more about Ma Rainey or blues music today at your Milwaukee Public Library.
February 18
 On January 20, 2009, Barack Obama was inaugurated as the 44th president of the United States, making him the first African American to hold the highest office in the land. Before being elected president in 2008, Obama served in the United States Senate and the Illinois state senate, practiced law in Chicago, and wrote two successful memoirs, Dreams from My Father and The Audacity of Hope. View a video or check out a book about President Obama’s inauguration day at your Milwaukee Public Library. [photo from official portrait by Pete Souza]
February 17
 Shirley Chisholm (1924-2005) was the first African American woman elected to Congress and the first African American and first woman to run for President from a major political party. The New York Congresswoman served for 14 years in the House of Representatives where she co-founded the Congressional Black Caucus, along with fellow African American legislators Louis Stokes of Ohio, William L. Clay of Missouri and others. In her historic presidential campaign in 1972, Chisholm entered several state primaries and won 151 delegate votes. Learn more about Shirley Chisholm today at your Milwaukee Public Library.
February 16
 Wally “Famous” Amos (1937- ) founded the first African-American-owned gourmet cookie company to build a national following. Inspired by the cookies made by his Aunt Della, with whom he lived from the age of twelve, Wally Amos began distributing his cookies to friends and clients of his talent agency in Los Angeles in the mid-1970s. He then opened a store in Hollywood, which was the first of its kind dedicated to chocolate chip gourmet cookies. Soon his profits grew and he was distributing his cookies nationally. In 1985, Amos sold the company, and a few years later he started another cookie business. You can find books by Wally Amos or about the Famous Amos Chocolate Chip Cookie Corporation at your Milwaukee Public Library.
February 15
 Zora Neale Hurston (1891-1960) was the most prolific and accomplished African American woman writer of the decades between 1930 and 1960. Her fiction was full of the rich culture of African American life in the South, most famously in her masterpiece, Their Eyes Were Watching God. Hurston also did significant work as an anthropologist researching black folklore across the American South and the Caribbean. Read a book by Zora Neale Hurston today at your Milwaukee Public Library.
February 14
 Frederick Douglass (1818-1895) was born into slavery in Talbot County, Maryland and escaped to the North at age twenty. He joined the abolitionist movement and became one of the most powerful orators of the nineteenth century, touring the North on the anti-slavery lecture circuit. Douglass also gained prominence as a newspaper publisher. His first autobiography became a bestseller in both the United States and Europe, and he published additional, more comprehensive versions, culminating in The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass. Learn more about this great American today at your Milwaukee Public Library.
February 13
 On February 1, 1865, President Abraham Lincoln approved the 13th Amendment to the United States Constitution, which abolished slavery. It reads:
Section 1.
Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
Section 2.
Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
The amendment had been proposed by Congress Jan 31, 1865. Ratification was completed Dec 6, 1865. Learn more about the Thirteenth Amendment and the emancipation of slaves in the United States at your Milwaukee Public Library.
February 12
 Author James Baldwin found greater acceptance as an African American, homosexual writer in France during the 1950s than he had in the United States, but when the civil rights movement heated up in the U.S. near the end of that decade, he returned home to actively participate in the struggle. Throughout the 1960s, Baldwin’s writings contributed eloquently to ongoing discussions of civil and political rights, stirringly provoking his readers to reconsider their views on race in the United States. Read the novel Go Tell It On the Mountain, best-selling essay collection The Fire Next Time, or one of dozens of other books by James Baldwin at your Milwaukee Public Library.
February 11
 On May 17, 1954, U.S. Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education ended legal segregation in public schools. An American Dilemma, the ground-breaking 1944 study of the economic and social conditions of African Americans in the United States by Swedish economist Gunnar Myrdal, strongly influenced the court’s decision. Learn more about Brown v. Board of Education at your Milwaukee Public Library and online at the Smithsonian Institution’s Separate is Not Equal: Brown v. Board of Education website.
February 10
 Over the past thirty years, few cultural developments have been as permeating as hip hop music and culture. Teens today have never known a world without it, but it still seems to baffle many older listeners. From the origins of rap music in New York City in the 1970s (inspired by the Jamaican dub style, in which disc jockeys would “toast” (talk) over recorded music they played in clubs) to the spread of hip hop culture (involving clothing, break dancing and graffiti as well as hip hop music), you can learn all about Hip Hop at your Milwaukee Public Library.
February 9
 On May 26, 1956, Althea Gibson became the first African American to win a major tennis title when she won the women’s singles in the French Open. She won the U.S. and Wimbledon championships in 1957 and Wimbledon again in 1958. In 1968 Gibson became the first African American inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame. Check out one of the many books about Althea Gibson at your Milwaukee Public Library.
February 8
 On August 28, 1963, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., led a march on Washington, D.C. and delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech to a crowd of 200,000 from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. You can read his stirring words in A Call to Conscience: the Landmark Speeches of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. or find dozens of other writings by Dr. King at your Milwaukee Public Library.
February 7
 Bessie Coleman (1892-1926) was the first African-American female aviator. After American aviation schools rejected her application based on her race or gender, Coleman went to France, where she became the first black person to earn an international pilot’s license. After her return to the United States in 1922, “Brave Bessie” became nationally famous for her flying exhibitions and air show appearances. Coleman died in an air accident on May 1, 1926. Learn more about Bessie Coleman and other African American aviators at your Milwaukee Public Library.
February 6
 The 369th Infantry was an African-American regiment in the United States Army during World War I who displayed astounding heroism. Arriving in France in 1918, they were assigned to fight under French command. The regiment held off a German attack at Bois d’Hauza for two months, and eventually fought their way through other encounters to the Rhine, never once retreating. The 369th was cited for bravery 11 times and 171 of its members were awarded the French Legion of Honor. Read more about the 369th Infantry or check out one of the dozens of books about the achievements of African Americans in the U.S. armed services at your Milwaukee Public Library.
February 5
 Vel Phillips was the first woman and first African American on Milwaukee’s Common Council and the first woman and first African American elected to a Wisconsin statewide office (Secretary of State). Central Library’s Humanities Desk has a subject in their vertical file collection titled African Americans-Wisconsin-Milwaukee-Firsts that includes brief citations to many African American “firsts” in Wisconsin and Milwaukee. Also found at the Humanities Desk is one of the best short histories of the African American community in Milwaukee through 1985. It’s found in Central Business District Historic Resources Survey.
February 4
 On August 30, 1967, Thurgood Marshall (1908-1993) was confirmed by the U.S. Senate as the first African American member of the Supreme Court. Justice Marshall served for close to a quarter century before retiring in 1991. Earlier in his legal career, Marshall was chief counsel for the NAACP, for whom he successfully argued dozens of cases before the U.S. Supreme Court, including the landmark Brown v. Board of Education case that ended school segregation. He also served as U.S. Solicitor General from 1965 until his appointment to the Supreme Court. Learn more about Thurgood Marshall at your Milwaukee Public Library.
February 3
 Thomas L. Jennings (1791-1859) is believed to be the first African American to receive a patent, for a dry-cleaning process, on March 3, 1821. If you knew that, you might do well at African-American Jeopardy, an African-American History Month event for children and their families. A tailor and dry cleaner in New York City, Jennings was an active abolitionist who founded and was president of the Legal Rights Association in that city. Check out a book about African American inventors (for adults or children) at your Milwaukee Public Library.
February 2
 The small town of Gee’s Bend, Alabama, was founded after the Civil War by freed slaves who became tenant farmers in the area. Through six generations, the women of the community developed “a distinctive, bold, and sophisticated quilting style based on traditional American (and African American) quilts, but with a geometric simplicity reminiscent of Amish quilts and modern art.” Learn more about the rich history of quilting in Gee’s Bend at your Milwaukee Public Library through books or video, or, if you have a child between the ages of 5 and 12, bring them to one of the “Quilting Bee in the Style of Gee’s Bend Quilters” arts and crafts programs at your Milwaukee Public Library:
February 1
 African American History Month began as Negro History Week in 1926, when it was launched by Carter G. Woodson. Black History Month Resource Book is a great source for teachers and others interested in making African American history come alive for those in their care. Learn more about African American History Month and this year’s theme, "The Quest for Black Citizenship in the Americas." |
