History We Must Know
History of great people who came before us and those that are still here. How grand and beneficial it is for all people to be aware of the enormous work, dedication, suffering, and creative ability, that these distinguished, brave individuals, and others invented for the people and this country.
Dr. Marcellus Clayton Cooper's 1862-1929
Former Slave Born in Dallas, Texas
M.C. Cooper became the first Black dentist in Texas at age 34 and opened an office on Commerce Street. Cooper was active in his community and continually supported Black organizations and establishments. He was a member of the Dallas Black Chamber of Commerce and invested in the Lewis Dry Goods Store, the first Black-owned downtown department store.
Cooper also helped establish Penny Savings Bank, the first African American bank in Dallas, and he served as a Superintendent of Sunday School at Bethel A.M.E. Church. His final practice location was in the Knights of Pythias Temple in Deep Ellum, before he passed away 1929.
Dr. Marcellus Clayton Cooper, As you travel down Hwy 75 North to Exit 4B, you cannot help but notice Caruth Haven. Dallas historians made a permanent mark of the old Caruth family and its plantations. But, the story of a little Black boy born on February 12, 1862, to a Black woman and a White worker has, to this point, been less notable.
Marcellus Clayton Cooper came into the world months before the Emancipation Proclamation would become law. And, while America declared freedom in January 1862, but Texas did not recognize Pres. Abraham Lincoln’s decree until June 19, 1865.
Texas has a long and storied tradition of denying the civil rights of its non-white citizens. Cooper spent his childhood on the Caruth Farm, matriculating at public schools in East Dallas. These segregated campuses were near Black settlements around White Rock Lake. Sometime during his teens, he moved to Springfield, Mo., to live with his father. While there, he finished high school and later moved back to Dallas. Cooper went on to work for Sanger Brothers Department Store for 11 years before moving to Tennessee to study at the Meharry Medical School in Nashville, the first medical school in the South for Blacks.
Texas A&M’s new free clinic celebrates Dr. Marcellus Clayton Cooper’s legacy
SIX TRIPLE EIGHT
In 1945, the 6888th, an all-Black, all-female Army unit, made history by clearing a massive mail backlog to support troops during World War II. They delivered 17Million pieces of mail in 90 days. Commanding Officer Charity Adams Earley leading the six triple eight army unit.
Charity Adams Earley - Six Triple Eight Commanding Officer
1918-2002
Educator, soldier, and psychologist, Charity Adams Earley paved the way for African American women in the military, in education, and in her community. Her most prominent role was leading the first African American women unit of the army on a tour of duty overseas during World War II.
Earley was intellectually gifted, and began elementary school as a second grader. During her last year in elementary school, she, along with other students in her class were tested for early advancement to high school. Earley and twelve others passed the test for high school.
She graduated valedictorian from Booker T. Washington High School. Graduating top of her class enabled her to gain a scholarship, so that she could attend Wilburforce University in Ohio, one of the best African American higher educational institutions at the time.
While at university, Earley majored in mathematics, Latin, and physics, while she minored in history. She was also very active in school groups, participating in the university’s branches of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the Women’s Self-Government Association, and the Greek sorority, Delta Sigma Theta. She graduated from Wilberforce University with a Bachelor of Arts in 1938.She graduated valedictorian from Booker T. Washington High School. Graduating top of her class enabled her to gain a scholarship, so that she could attend Wilburforce University in Ohio, one of the best African American higher educational institutions at the time.
While at university, Earley majored in mathematics, Latin, and physics, while she minored in history. She was also very active in school groups, participating in the university’s branches of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the Women’s Self-Government Association, and the Greek sorority, Delta Sigma Theta. She graduated from Wilberforce University with a Bachelor of Arts in 1938.
Charity Adams Earley Biography
Hidden Valley Ranch Dressing
Steve Henson, creator of Hidden Valley Ranch Dressing. It was invented in the late 1940s by Steve Henson, a plumbing contractor in Alaska who often made meals to fuel his construction crewmates during the workday.
The special buttermilk, mayo, and sour cream dressing he served on salads was a favorite of the crew. Years later, that dressing recipe went on to sell in a business deal worth $60 million dollars today.
Steve Henson had an entrepreneurial spirit, which led him and his wife Gayle to leave Alaska and the plumbing industry to buy a ranch in southern California. They named the ranch "Hidden Valley" and opened the ranch to guests, hosting parties where they served dinner and, once again, Steve made his crowd-pleasing creamy condiment. The dressing was so popular they began selling it to nearby restaurants, and people would buy the seasoning packets needed to make it directly from Steve and Gayle. This is how Hidden Valley Ranch Dressing was born.
JUANITA CRAFT
February 9, 1902 – August 6, 1985
Granddaughter of slaves, Juanita Craft transformed the deep hurts of racial discrimination into a lifetime of courageous work for its elimination. She was greatly affected by her mother's death from tuberculosis after being refused hospital treatment when there were no state hospitals for black Texans.
Despite having a college degree, Craft had to work as a maid at the Adolphus Hotel in Dallas. In 1935, she joined the NAACP and was named the Dallas membership chair in 1942. In 1946, Craft was hired as Texas field organizer and organized dozens of branches. In the 1940s, Craft organized the Dallas NAACP Youth Council, which became a nationwide model. She was the first black woman to vote in Dallas County and for 20 years was a Democratic Party precinct chair.
In the 1950s, she helped open the University of Texas and North Texas State College to blacks. In 1967, her youth group desegregated the State Fair of Texas. She and other African Americans worked to integrate public facilities through sit-ins and other demonstrations in the 1960s. She received the prestigious Linz Award in 1969 for helping end fraudulent recruiting by Dallas trade schools. In 1975, at age 73 she was elected to the Dallas City Council and later re-elected to a second term.
Wilmington massacre in North Carolina Left Lasting Scars
The Wilmington, North Carolina massacre decimated Black political and economic power in the city for nearly 100 years. It was the only successful coup d'état in the history of the United States and a story of racial terror largely obscured from the annals of American history.
In 1898, a group of white rebels—angry and fearful at the newly elected biracial local government joined forces with area militias to rain terror on Wilmington, North Carolina, then the South’s most progressive Black-majority city.
After stoking fear of a Black uprising that would upend their way of life, endanger their women and bring about an unfathomable new American reality in which Black men—not white—governed, white city leaders pledged to “choke the current of the Cape Fear with carcasses” rather than allow Wilmington’s Black citizens to succeed, and lead.
In addition to the killings, the mob forced virtually all of Wilmington’s Black middle and upper class citizens to flee town. Once gone, the newly elected local government then began instituting Jim Crow segregationist policies as local law.
Bryan Stevenson - Influential Lawyer, Author
Founding Equal Justice Initiative-Social Justice Activist "Movie Just Mercy"
Founded in 1989 by Bryan Stevenson, a widely acclaimed public interest lawyer and best-selling author of Just Mercy, EJI is a private, 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. We work with communities that have been marginalized by poverty and discouraged by unequal treatment, and we are committed to changing the narrative about race in America.EJI is dedicated to helping the poor, the incarcerated, and the condemned. We provide legal assistance to innocent death row prisoners, confront abuse of the incarcerated and the mentally ill, and aid children prosecuted as adults.
EJI is actively engaged in a campaign to recognize the victims of lynching by collecting soil from lynching sites, erecting historical markers, and creating a national memorial that acknowledges the horrors of racial injustice. Click here to learn more about our Community Remembrance Project. The Legacy Museum: From Enslavement to Mass Incarceration is situated on a site in Montgomery where enslaved people were once warehoused. A block from one of the most prominent slave auction spaces in America, the Legacy Museum is steps away from an Alabama dock and rail station where tens of thousands of black people were trafficked during the 19th century.
https://museumandmemorial.eji.org/about
Freedmantown/North Dallas, Texas
Allen Street Taxi Company in Freedmantown/North Dallas, ca. 1929. Courtesy DeGolyer Library, Southern Methodist University, and included in accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107.
Upon learning of their emancipation in 1865, many African Americans in Texas left their former masters’ homes to embark on a new life as freedmen. Settling throughout the state, some sought agricultural work in rural areas, while others were drawn to towns where greater employment opportunities and benefits might be found.
In and near the Dallas city limits, a number of freedmen communities arose, including Upper White Rock, Lower White Rock, Fields, The Prairie, Egypt (or Little Egypt), Elm Thicket, Tenth Street, and Joppa. One settlement in particular became known simply as Freedmantown (also called Freedman’s Town).
Located almost two miles northeast of downtown Dallas, Freedmantown was noted in an 1873 Dallas Herald article, which announced, “There are over five hundred negroes living in what is called Freedmantown, adjoining East Dallas.”
During the early 1900s many Black residents established themselves as professionals in a variety of fields. When William Elisha King founded a weekly Black-owned newspaper in 1892, he brought attention to African American life in Dallas and especially to Freedmantown/North Dallas. The Dallas Express, as it was later known, covered African American news at the local, state, and national levels.
A number of Freedmantown/North Dallas residents entered medical professions. Physician Benjamin Bluitt, received a license to operate a sanitarium in 1906 on Commerce Street in Deep Ellum. Ollie Louise Bryant Bryan, the first woman to graduate in dentistry from the prestigious Meharry Medical College (Tennessee), moved to Freedmantown/North Dallas by 1906 and maintained a practice for the next decade. Marcellus C. Cooper, who at one time worked for the Sanger Brothers store in downtown, also graduated from Meharry Medical College in dentistry and returned to
Freedmantown/North Dallas. Not only was he a successful dentist, but he also invested in the city’s first Black-owned lending institution, the Penny Savings Bank, established in 1907.
Over several decades, the Black medical community continued to expand, and doctors established additional clinics and sanitariums.
In 1923 William R. McMillan opened the McMillan Sanitarium at the corner of Hall and State streets in Freedmantown/North Dallas. The facility quickly gained a reputation for quality care, and one of its doctors, Lee G. Pinkston, eventually established his own successful clinic.
The Paul Lawrence Dunbar Branch of the Dallas Public Library opened in 1931 in the Freedmantown/North Dallas community and was the first Dallas library opened to serve African Americans.
Fields of Angels - Whitney Plantation
The Field of Angels is a memorial dedicated to 2,200 enslaved children who died in St. John the Baptist Parish between the 1820s and the 1860s. Their deaths were documented in the Sacramental Records of the Archdiocese of New Orleans. Their names are engraved on granite slabs along with WPA slave narrative quotes which describe the daily lives of enslaved children in the South.
Death rates on Louisiana’s cane plantations were relatively high compared to cotton or tobacco plantations. Many of the children honored at this memorial died of diseases, but some of them died under tragic circumstance
This is also apparent in the documents related to Whitney Plantation, which show that some women enslaved here had their first children by the age of 14. During the period 1823-1863, the era depicted in this memorial, thirty-nine children died at Whitney Plantation, almost one per year.
Only six had reached the age of five.
This memorial is anchored by a powerful bronze statue by Rod Moorehead called Coming Home. This statue depicts a black angel carrying a baby to heaven. Moorhead’s work ranges from small clay figures to large bronzes. In 1993 he started Southside Gallery in Oxford, Mississippi, and was co-owner until 1997.
Among his public commissions are Concerto, a seventeen foot bronze of a violinist and cellist which stands in front of the Gertrude Ford Center for the Performing Arts at the University of Mississippi, and a life-size sculpture of James Meredith for the Civil Rights Memorial also at the University of Mississippi. He has work in the Roger Ogden Collection in New Orleans, and the collection of Morgan Freeman, among others.
The Field of f Angels | Whitney Plantation
13 Amendment Soldiers 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: Abolition of Slavery (1865)
Passed by Congress on January 31, 1865, and ratified on December 6, 1865, the 13th Amendment abolished slavery in the United States.
In 1863 President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation declaring “all persons held as slaves within any State, or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free.”
Nonetheless, the Emancipation Proclamation did not end slavery in the nation since it only applied to areas of the Confederacy currently in a state of rebellion (and not even to the loyal “border states” that remained in the Union). Lincoln recognized that the Emancipation Proclamation would have to be followed by a constitutional amendment in order to guarantee the abolishment of slavery. The 13th Amendment was passed at the end of the Civil War before the Southern states had been restored to the Union, and should have easily passed in Congress. However, though the Senate passed it in April 1864, the House initially did not. At that point, Lincoln took an active role to ensure passage through Congress. He insisted that passage of the 13th Amendment be added to the Republican Party platform for the upcoming 1864 Presidential election.
His efforts met with success when the House passed the bill in January 1865 with a vote of 119–56. On February 1, 1865, President Abraham Lincoln approved the Joint Resolution of Congress submitting the proposed amendment to the state legislatures. The necessary number of states (three-fourths) ratified it by December 6, 1865. The 13th Amendment to the United States Constitution provides that "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." With the adoption of the 13th Amendment, the United States found a final constitutional solution to the issue of slavery. The 13th Amendment, along with the 14th and 15th, is one of the trio of Civil War amendments that greatly expanded the civil rights of Americans.
https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/13th-amendment#page-header
HARRIET TUBMAN 1820-1913
Harriet Tubman was born into slavery in Maryland. She escaped slavery in 1849 to become a leading abolitionist. She led hundreds of enslaved people to freedom along the route of the Underground Railroad.
When Harriet was five years old, she was rented out as a nursemaid where she was whipped when the baby cried, leaving her with permanent emotional and physical scars. Around age seven Harriet was rented out to a planter to set muskrat traps and was later rented out as a field hand
By age 12 Minty was considered strong enough to work in the fields. She was hired by a man named Barrett. Tubman preferred the harsh physical work in the plantation rather than doing domestic work and being subjected to a white woman. At this time during the beginning of her adolescent years, Minty’s Christian faith started to intensify.
One day when Tubman was in the grocery store she spotted a fugitive slave. His overseer was about to confront him as he tried to escape the store. Minty stood in the doorway blocking the overseer’s way as to give the slave enough time to escape. The overseer had just picked up a heavy metal weight from the counter and aimed it at the slave but instead hit Minty in the head. Years later she remembered the episode:
“The weight broke my skull and cut a piece of that shawl clean off and drove it into my head. They carried me to the house all bleeding and fainting. I had no bed, no place to lie down on at all, and they laid me on the seat of the loom, and I stayed there all day and the next”.
Harriet Tubman: Facts, Underground Railroad & Legacy | HISTORY
Ida B. Wells - 1862-1931
Prominent Journalist, Activist, Researcher, Writer
Ida Bell Wells was born in Holly Springs, Mississippi on July 16th, 1862. She was born into slavery during the Civil War. After the lynching of one of her friends, Wells-Barnett turned her attention to white mob violence. She became skeptical about the reasons black men were lynched an d set out to investigate several cases. She published her findings in a pamphlet and wrote several columns in local newspapers.
Her expose about an 1892 lynching enraged locals, who burned her press and drove her from Memphis. After a few months, the threats became so bad she was forced to move to Chicago, Illinois.
Ida B. Wells-Barnett was a prominent journalist, activist, and researcher, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In her lifetime, she battled sexism, racism, and violence. As a skilled writer, Wells-Barnett also used her skills as a journalist to shed light on the conditions of African Americans throughout the South.
Quote Source
A Hero of U.S. Diplomacy: Dr. Ralph J. Bunche
(1904-1971)
Dr. Ralph J. Bunche was a pioneering African American diplomat who shaped some of the most remarkable moments in the twentieth century.
Dr. Ralph Bunche as a civil rights activist
Born in the era of segregation and Jim Crow, Dr. Bunche spent his life engaged as a civil rights activist in the United States while working for peace in troubled regions around the world. Bunche was valedictorian of UCLA’s class of 1927. At Harvard, he earned a master’s in political science in 1928 and a Ph.D. in government and international relations in 1934. He taught at Howard University where he founded the Political Science Department.
OneUnited Bank is Black America’s National Bank
1898 - Generations of Community Development
OneUnited Bank CEO's great-great-grandfather, Charles Cohee Jr. (1848-1908), successfully lobbied Congress and the U.S. President for 40-acre allotments for Freedmen, leading to the growth of Black Wall Street in Greenwood, Oklahoma. OneUnited Bank continues this legacy of promoting economic and social development.
1968 - Founding - Civil Rights Movement
The predecessors of OneUnited Bank, Unity Bank & Trust Company, and Boston Bank of Commerce (BBOC), were established in today’s Nubian Square in Boston. The Bank's history can be traced back to the civil rights movement of the 1960s.
1995 - Leadership Change
The bank came under the leadership of new owners, Chairman and CEO Kevin Cohee and President and COO Teri Williams. Cohee and Williams continue to lead the bank to this day.
1999 - Interstate Expansion
Acquired three African-American-owned banks. BBOC became the first interstate African-American-owned bank in the country through its acquisition of Peoples National Bank of Commerce, South Florida’s only African-American-owned bank.
Becoming OneUnited
BBOC and Peoples merged with Founders National Bank of Commerce and Family Savings Bank in Los Angeles and changed the name to OneUnited Bank creating the nation’s largest Black-owned bank. Won 1st of 14 Bank Enterprise Awards for community development lending.
Racism in Dallas, Texas at Lonestar Restaurant
Can you believe it was a law where Blacks and Hispanics were not allowed in this restaurant. This was pure Evil and works of the devil. Even the bus line had a law that Black passengers had to occupy certain seats.
African American Museum in Dallas, Texas
Dr. Patricia Bath 1942-2019
Eye Surgical Tool
In 1981 (patent in 1988), Dr. Bath invented the surgical tool that is used during eye surgery to correct cataracts. This tools is called the Laserphaco Probe. Dr. Bath was the first black to complete a residency in Ophthalmology. She was the first woman to chair an ophthalmology residency program in the United States. She is also the first black female doctor to secure a medical patent. Dr. Bath also co-founded the American Institute for the Prevention of Blindness.
To learn more about Dr. Patricia Bath, click on the link below. http://teacher.scholastic.com/activities/bhistory/inventors/bath.
Thomas Jennings 1791-1856
Early Life and Career
Jennings was born in 1791 in New York City. He started his career as a tailor and eventually opened one of New York’s leading clothing shops. Inspired by frequent requests for cleaning advice, he began researching cleaning solutions. Jennings found that many of his customers were unhappy when their clothing became soiled. However, because of the material used to make the garments, conventional methods at the time were ineffective in cleaning them.
Invents Dry Cleaning
Jennings began experimenting with different solutions and cleaning agents. He tested them on various fabrics until he found the right combination to treat and clean them. He called his method “dry-scouring,” a process now known as dry cleaning.
Jennings filed for a patent in 1820 and was granted a patent for the "dry-scouring" (dry cleaning) process he had invented just a year later. Tragically, the original patent was lost in a fire. But by then, Jennings' process of using solvents to clean clothes was well-known and widely heralded.
Jennings spent the first money he earned from his patent on legal fees to buy his family out of enslavement. After that, most of his income went to his abolitionist activities. In 1831, Jennings became assistant secretary for the First Annual Convention of the People of Color in Philadelphia.
SOURCES
Chamberlain, Gaius. “Thomas Jennings.” The Black Inventor Online Museum, Gaius Chamberlain.
Thomas Jennings.” Ms. Darbus: Well Call It, Senior Year! Sharpay Evans: [Sarcastically] Genius., quotes.net.
Volk, Kyle G. "Moral Minorities and the Making of American Democracy." Oxford University Press, New York.