5 Innovative Black figures of Black History Month
Photo Credit: Wix Shuttershock
The celebration of African American History Month every February tends to repeatedly concentrate on the same individuals. We constantly hear about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Jackie Robinson. Rosa Parks, and Harriet Tubman. Civil rights leaders and abolitionists whose faces we see stacked on calendars and postage stamps. All of whom were very significant to the history of America. Although they are far from the only African Americans, we should know about. Many more unheard African Americans ( Hidden Figures) have significantly contributed to Black History who deserve to be recalled and celebrated during Black History Month. Each considerably changed America. Most of them unfit the usual definition of an idol. Some were bad-tempered, held by their demons, and mistaken by their generations. This paper will address five unheard of African Americans who have contributed to Black History.
Sojourner Truth
Truth was one of the few African American women to contribute to slavery and women's rights movements. Born in 1797 in Hurley, New York, Truth was given Isabella Baumfree. She was in bondage for almost 28 years of her life. She spoke Dutch as her first language and communicated with a Dutch accent for her life. As much as she could not read, Sojourner knew sections of the Bible by hearing. In 1827, one year before New York's law freeing enslaved people was implemented, Sojourner escaped with her child to a close-by abolitionist family. Her freedom was bought for $20 and assisted Sojourner effectively suing for the return of Peter, his five-year-old son (Michals, 2015).
As a protestor and traveling preacher, Truth comprehended the significance of fighting for sovereignty. In the 1860s, Sojourner operated for the Freedman's Bureau, a brief government program to assist previous bondsmen's move into freedom (Balan, 2018). She motivated African Americans to fight for their collective rights to freedom and effectively repositioned many previous bondmen to northern and western settlements, including her son Peter. He had been unlawfully traded from New York to Alabama. She has the difference of being the first African American woman to win a lawsuit in the US. First, the Truth fought for Peter's freedom after the illegal sale. She sued a newspaper for slander after they had accused her of poisoning a leader in a religious group and won a $125 judgment.
In 1851, she started a lecture tour that constituted of women's rights conference in Akron, Ohio, even though it was regarded unsuitable for women to voice openly. In this conference of 1851, she delivered her famous "Ain't I a woman." This speech sternly chastises those who feel women and black people are inferior. When the Civil war broke in 1861, Truth encouraged young men to join the Union cause and organize supplies for black troops.
Bayard Rustin
Rustin overcame preconceptions on various levels to be a close friend of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and the most significant civil rights leaders of the 20th century. Being an explicitly gay African American during the Jim Crow regime, he was in prison for engaging in sex with men when homosexuality was greatly regarded as a type of brain illness (Blake, Bayard Rustin (1912-1987), 2022). He spent two years in jail for being reluctant to enlist in WWII due to his pacifist Quaker beliefs. Motivated by the lessons of Gandhi, he traveled to Martin's homestead in 1956 after kind had grown to be countrywide recognized for leading the Montgomery Bus Boycott. He convinced King to embrace pacifism as a protest strategy and a mode of living. His arguments were an exposé to Martin. In 1957, Rustin aided King in founding the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. They worked closely with King, who was pressured to drop Rustin because of his sexual orientation. King was reluctant, but Rustin had to maintain a low profile during the civil rights movement.
Rusting's most significant achievement was arranging the March on Washington, which gathered more than 200,000 non-violent activists of diverse races and beliefs to the country's principal in August 1963. In King's "I Have a Dream" speech, the March climaxed was an outstanding achievement.
Ella Baker
Ella was raised in North Carolina when a grandma's narration about life under bondage motivated her desire for social justice. Ella had a primary part in 3 of the most influential groups of the civil rights movement. Ella was a coordinator inside the NAACP and assisted in co-forming the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, which Rev. Martin led. Also, she assisted in founding the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) (Blake, 2022). She was branded "mother of the civil rights movement" through her efforts, although she remains unheard of in the outside activist circle. Ella educated volunteers that the civil rights movement could rely only on enigmatic frontrunners and inspired them to join activism in their communal.
This technique directed Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee when it began on its Freedom Summer voter registration drive in 1964 in Mississippi. She frequently risked her life traveling to Southern states to organize. Some historians say King has trouble with assertive women and her relationship with him remains a matter of discussion. She left SCLC but still made her mark.
Jane Bolin
Bolin has made history repeatedly. She became the first Black woman to graduate from Yale Law School, the first Black woman to join the New York City Bar Association, and the country's first Black female judge (Karimi, 2022). Jane Bolin was a child of a powerful attorney, and she grew up admiring her parent's leather books. Desiring a profession in social justice, she advanced from Wellesley and Yale Law School and private practice in New York. She was appointed a family judge in 1939. She made headlined that year for becoming the first Black Female Judge in the nation. This job was good for her since she was compassionate. She never wore justice housecoats in a law court to make kids feel more comfortable. She dedicated herself to finding equivalent conduct for those who came before her despite their financial or national family.
Charles Richard Drew
Richard's massive assistance to the medicinal arena made him one of the most significant scientists of the 20th century. Any person who has received a blood transfusion is indebted to Charles Richard. He assisted in developing America's first large-scale blood banking program in the 1940s, giving him the name "father of the blood bank" (Walton, 2022). Drew was given an athletic studentship for football and track at Amherst College, there was ethnic exclusion. This restricted the choices for medical training of Black individuals, making him join the med school at McGill University in Montreal. Drew was the first Black student to gain a medical doctorate from Columbia University, where his interest in blood transfusion resulted in ground-breaking work separating plasma from the blood. In 1940 he led to transport blood and plasma to Great Britain, where Germans were under attack. This program saved many lives and became a model for the Red Cross's initial program for mass production of dried plasma.