Sigma Pi Phi

Famous African Americans

Rosa Parks - Born: 4 February 1913, Birthplace: Tuskegee, Alabama, Died: 24 October 2005, Best Known As: The civil rights icon who wouldn't give up her bus seat

Name at birth: Rosa Louise McCauley

In 1955, Rosa Parks was an African-American living in Montgomery, Alabama -- a city with laws that strictly segregated blacks and whites. On 1 December 1955, after her day of work as a seamstress at a local department store, Rosa Parks boarded a city bus. When she refused to give up her seat to a white man, the bus driver called police, and Rosa Parks was arrested and fined. The resulting bus boycott by African-Americans, led by Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., caused a national sensation. The boycott was a success and led to desegregation in Montgomery and elsewhere in the United States. Over time, Rosa Parks became a national icon of civil rights and African-American pride. Parks worked as an aide to Michigan Congressman John Conyers, Jr. from 1966 until her retirement in 1988, and she founded the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self Development in 1987. She was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Bill Clinton in 1996.

Rosa Parks married Raymond Parks, a barber, in 1932, and they remained married until his death in 1977. They had no children. Raymond Parks was born in 1903... Her hometown of Tuskegee, Alabama was home to the Tuskegee Institute, which was led for many years by Booker T. Washington. He died in 1915, two years after Rosa Parks was born... Parks's bus ride was reminiscent of Homer Plessy's refusal to leave an all-white rail car in Louisiana in 1892.

"All I was doing was trying to get home from work. At the time I was arrested I had no idea it would turn into this. It was just a day like any other day. The only thing that made it significant was that the masses of the people joined in." - Rosa Parks 


Rosa Parks

Each person must live their life as a model for others.
Rosa Parks

Have you ever been hurt and the place tries to heal a bit, and you just pull the scar off of it over and over again.
Rosa Parks

I have learned over the years that when one's mind is made up, this diminishes fear; knowing what must be done does away with fear.
Rosa Parks

I would like to be remembered as a person who wanted to be free... so other people would be also free.
Rosa Parks

I'm tired of being treated like a second-class citizen.
Rosa Parks

It was not pre-arranged. It just happened that the driver made a demand and I just didn't feel like obeying his demand. I was quite tired after spending a full day working.
Rosa Parks

Memories of our lives, of our works and our deeds will continue in others.
Rosa Parks

My only concern was to get home after a hard day's work.
Rosa Parks

Racism is still with us. But it is up to us to prepare our children for what they have to meet, and, hopefully, we shall overcome.
Rosa Parks

Whatever my individual desires were to be free, I was not alone. There were many others who felt the same way.
Rosa Parks

Why do you all push us around?
Rosa Parks

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Martin Luther King, Jr., (January 15, 1929-April 4, 1968) was born Michael Luther King, Jr., but later had his name changed to Martin. His grandfather began the family's long tenure as pastors of the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, serving from 1914 to 1931; his father has served from then until the present, and from 1960 until his death Martin Luther acted as co-pastor. Martin Luther attended segregated public schools in Georgia, graduating from high school at the age of fifteen; he received the B. A. degree in 1948 from Morehouse College, a distinguished Negro institution of Atlanta from which both his father and grandfather had graduated. After three years of theological study at Crozer Theological Seminary in Pennsylvania where he was elected president of a predominantly white senior class, he was awarded the B.D. in 1951. With a fellowship won at Crozer, he enrolled in graduate studies at Boston University, completing his residence for the doctorate in 1953 and receiving the degree in 1955. In Boston he met and married Coretta Scott, a young woman of uncommon intellectual and artistic attainments. Two sons and two daughters were born into the family.

In 1954, Martin Luther King became pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama. Always a strong worker for civil rights for members of his race, King was, by this time, a member of the executive committee of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the leading organization of its kind in the nation. He was ready, then, early in December, 1955, to accept the leadership of the first great Negro nonviolent demonstration of contemporary times in the United States, the bus boycott described by Gunnar Jahn in his presentation speech in honor of the laureate. The boycott lasted 382 days. On December 21, 1956, after the Supreme Court of the United States had declared unconstitutional the laws requiring segregation on buses, Negroes and whites rode the buses as equals. During these days of boycott, King was arrested, his home was bombed, he was subjected to personal abuse, but at the same time he emerged as a Negro leader of the first rank.

In 1957 he was elected president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, an organization formed to provide new leadership for the now burgeoning civil rights movement. The ideals for this organization he took from Christianity; its operational techniques from Gandhi. In the eleven-year period between 1957 and 1968, King traveled over six million miles and spoke over twenty-five hundred times, appearing wherever there was injustice, protest, and action; and meanwhile he wrote five books as well as numerous articles. In these years, he led a massive protest in Birmingham, Alabama, that caught the attention of the entire world, providing what he called a coalition of conscience. and inspiring his "Letter from a Birmingham Jail", a manifesto of the Negro revolution; he planned the drives in Alabama for the registration of Negroes as voters; he directed the peaceful march on Washington, D.C., of 250,000 people to whom he delivered his address, "l Have a Dream", he conferred with President John F. Kennedy and campaigned for President Lyndon B. Johnson; he was arrested upwards of twenty times and assaulted at least four times; he was awarded five honorary degrees; was named Man of the Year by Time magazine in 1963; and became not only the symbolic leader of American blacks but also a world figure.

At the age of thirty-five, Martin Luther King, Jr., was the youngest man to have received the Nobel Peace Prize. When notified of his selection, he announced that he would turn over the prize money of $54,123 to the furtherance of the civil rights movement.

On the evening of April 4, 1968, while standing on the balcony of his motel room in Memphis, Tennessee, where he was to lead a protest march in sympathy with striking garbage workers of that city, he was assassinated.

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Malcolm X - Born: 19 May 1925, Birthplace: Omaha, Nebraska, Died: 21 February 1965 (assassination) Best Known As: Assassinated leader of the 1960s black power movement

Name at birth: Malcolm Little

While in prison for burglary, Malcolm Little adopted the Black Muslim faith and became a minister of the Nation of Islam upon his release in 1952. As Malcolm X, he was a charismatic advocate of black separatism who rejected Martin Luther King, Jr.'s policies of non-violence. At first a follower of Elijah Muhammad, Malcolm X broke with the Nation of Islam in 1964. That same year he made a pilgrimage to Mecca and shortly afterwards he embraced orthodox Islam and took the name El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz. He recanted some of his earlier more strident viewpoints on race, though he remained a staunch advocate of "black power." He was shot to death by a group of men while giving a speech in New York City in 1965; some of the men had connections to the Nation of Islam, though a formal tie between that group and the assassination was never proven.

The Autobiography of Malcolm X was published after his death in 1965 and became a best-seller; the book was co-written by Alex Haley, later the author of Roots... X's widow, Betty Shabazz, died on 23 June 1997 after being severely burned in an apartment fire set by her 12-year-old grandson... Actor Denzel Washington played Malcolm X in the 1992 Spike Lee movie X.

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Booker T. Washington - Born: 5 April 1856, Birthplace: Franklin County, Virginia, Died: 14 November 1915, Best Known As: First head of the Tuskegee Institute

Born a slave and deprived of any early education, Booker Taliaferro Washington nonetheless became America's foremost black educator of the early 20th century. He was the first teacher and principal of the Tuskegee Institute in Tuskegee, Alabama, a school for African-Americans where he championed vocational training as a means for black self-reliance. A well-known orator, Washington also wrote a best-selling autobiography (Up From Slavery, 1901) and advised Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and William Taft on race relations. His rather flaccid nickname of "The Great Accommodator" provides a clue as to why he was later criticized by W. E. B. Du Bois and the N.A.A.C.P. Washington was principal of Tuskegee Institute from 1881 until his death in 1915; it was originally called the Normal School for Colored Teachers and is now known as Tuskegee University.

Washington's middle name was Taliaferro... According to the Tuskegee University website, Washington was married three times: to Fannie Smith from 1882 until her death in 1884; to Olivia Davis, from 1885 until her death in 1889; and Margaret Murray, from 1893 until his death in 1915... He was unrelated to President George Washington or botanist George Washington Carver... The Tuskegee Institute was the training ground for the Tuskegee Airmen, the famous all-black flying squadron of World War II.

The Association for the Study of African American Life and History has launched the national theme for Black History Month.

In the continued tradition of excellence and directive on historical perspective regarding the tremendous impact of African Americans started by Dr. Carter G. Woodson, the Father of Black History in 1915, the Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH) is excited to announce the 2011 National Black History Month Theme as “African Americans and the Civil War.” As the Founder of Black History Month, ASALH chose this theme to honor the efforts of people of African descent to destroy slavery and inaugurate universal freedom in the United States.

In 1861, as the United States stood at the brink of Civil War, people of African descent, both enslaved and free persons, waited with a watchful eye. They understood that a war between the North and the South might bring about jubilee--the destruction of slavery and universal freedom. When the Confederacy fired upon Fort Sumter and war ensued, President Abraham Lincoln maintained that the paramount cause was to preserve the Union, not end slavery. Frederick Douglass, the most prominent black leader, opined that regardless of intentions, the war would bring an end to slavery, America’s “peculiar institution.”

Over the course of the war, the four million people of African descent in the United States proved Douglass right. Free and enslaved blacks rallied around the Union flag in the cause of freedom. From the cotton and tobacco fields of the South to the small towns and big cities of the North, nearly 200,000 joined the Grand Army of the Republic and took up arms to destroy the Confederacy. They served as recruiters, soldiers, nurses, and spies, and endured unequal treatment, massacres, and riots as they pursued their quest for freedom and equality. Their record of service speaks for itself, and Americans have never fully realized how their efforts saved the Union.

This theme is also the focus of the 85th Annual Black History Luncheon scheduled on Saturday, February 26, 2011 that will be held at the Renaissance Washington, DC Hotel on 999 9th Street NW; click on http://www.asalh.org/Annual_Luncheon.html.

ASALH encourages all Americans to study and reflect on the value of their contributions to the nation.