1790 Media

February 12, 2021: Happy Black History Month Creator, Doer, Thinker: Gordan Park (1912 - 2006)the first African American lensman hired by Life Magazine and director of a major Hollywood film, The Learning Tree. Born in 1912, Parksa self-taught photographerwrote, I chose my camera as a weapon against all the things I dislike about Americapoverty, racism, discrimination. After picking up his camera in 1937, Parks worked Farm Security Administration, where he created Ame...rican Gothic, a portrait of Ella Watson, who symbolizes the American black worker. Watson stands in the middle of the picture in front of the American flag that hangs down the wall behind her. In contrast to Grant Wood’s slightly surreal 1930 American Gothic painting of a white rural couple, Parks makes visible the often-invisible labor performed by so many African-Americans in both rural and urban America. Over sixty-plus years, Parks documented black life through portraits of prominent black Americans, poverty and oppression in the 1940s and ‘50s, and the Civil Rights movement in the ‘60s for magazines such as Ebony, Glamourand Life (1948). During the ‘50s, ‘60s, and ‘70s, Parks was also a fixture in Hollywood; he directed the Learning Tree in 1969, Shaft in 1971, and numerous documentaries. With Boundless energy, Parks painted, wrote 15 books, and co-founded Essence magazine. Parks was truly a renaissance man. And his imprint on photography is captured in Philip Brookman’s book on Parks, writing, A photographer can be a storyteller. Images of experience captured on film, when put together like words, can weave tales of feeling and emotion as bold as literature. [Photographers] bring together fact and fiction, experience, imagination, and feelings in a visual dialogue that has enormous impact on how we observe and relate to the external world and our internal selves. (Sources: MoMa, American Legacy magazine, and The Gordon Parks Foundation.) #1790media #gordonparks #lifemagazine See more

February 11, 2021: Happy Black History Month Creators, Doers, Thinkers: Alpha Kappa Alphathe first Black Sorority (1908). With over 300,000 members in 1,026 chapters located in 47 States (1 Territory) and 9 countries, AKA members make a lifetime commitment to continue the legacy of building social capital and uphold the strong ideals of education, integrity, public service and activism. (My mother, at 86, is still active.) As noted at the Learning to Give website, The for...mation of African American Greek-letter societies was in direct defiance to the view that Blacks were incapable of understanding Greek study [and] their exclusion from White Greek-letter groups. Black sororities are far more than social organizations, as members actively work to alleviate poverty, illiteracy, and injustice in the communities in which their college is locatedas well as the nation. From the women’s suffrage movement (where they had to march in the rear); to working with the Mississippi Health Project providing education and books to rural areas, and beginning a Summer School for Rural Teachers offering courses for self-improvement during the Depression, to supporting the historic election of Kamala Harrisblack sororities have played significant roles in education, philanthropy, and politics. A few notables: Dr. Mae Jemison, First Black Woman Astronaut (AKA); Marian Anderson, World Famous Opera Singer (AKA); Maya Angelou, Author and Poet (AKA); and Sharon Pratt Kelly, First Woman Mayor of Washington, D.C. (AKA). (Sources: Harper’s Bazaar, 8/20/20, Learning to Give website, Black Enterprise.) See more

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Happy Black History Month: February 10, 2021 Creator, Doer, and Thinker: The XIII and XIV Amendments of the Constitution. Amendment XIII, 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. - December 6, 1865... Amendment XIV, Section 1: All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. July 8, 1868 #Constitution #1790media

February 9, 2021: Happy Black History Month Creators, Doers, and Thinkers: Cheyney University (1837 Present)the oldest HBCU (Historically Black Colleges and Universities). With limited opportunities to gain higher education, America’s African American community and its allies established over 100 colleges and universities before the Civil Rights Voting Act of 1964. These public and private institutions, located primarily in the South, would become the backbone of higher ed...ucation for millions of African Americans. As noted by author Harry Holt Jr., HBCUs produce 40% of all black engineers, 80% of black federal judges, 60% of black judges, 60% of black attorneys, 59% of black teachers, 80% of black [Army officers], and 80% of black doctors and dentists. Many of these Americans matriculated to and graduated from the nation’s oldest black college: Cheyney University. The school founding represented Richard Humphrey's wishesa Quaker philanthropist who bequeathed $10,000to design and establish the first institution of higher education for African Americans. In a recent presentation on the school’s history, Dr. Charlene Conyers stated that his Will charged thirteen fellow Quakers to design an institution: ‘...to instruct the descendants of the African Race in school learning, in the various branches of the Mechanic Arts, trades and Agriculture, to prepare and fit and qualify them to act as teachers...’ Alumni of note, which there are many: Octavius Catto founded the Pennsylvania State Equal Rights League in 1864; Julian Able (1902)the first black architecture student at the University of Pennsylvaniawould design/contribute to the building of over 250 building, including the Philadelphia Museum of Art; William Adger, an 1875 graduate, became the University of Pennsylvania’s first African American graduate (1883); journalist, Ed Bradley (1964); and Ronald S. Coleman, the second three-star general in the United States Marine Corps. (Sources: Cheyney University website and a PowerPoint presentation by Dr. Charlene Conyers). See more