Like most of you, this morning we learned of the passing of Dorothy Height at age 98 of natural causes in Washington D.C.

Born on March 24, 1912, in Richmond, Virginia, Dorothy Irene Height  grew up in Rankin, Pennsylvania. Winning a national oratorical contest gained her a scholarship to Barnard College, but Height was refused entry because the college had already filled its quota of two black students per year. Height went on to earn her bachelor’s and master’s degrees at New York University, with postgraduate studies in social work.

By 1933 Height was fighting for anti-lynching laws and for other reforms in the U.S. criminal justice system. But it was November 7, 1937 that was the turning point in the activist’s life. First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt was to attending a meeting of the National Council of Negro Women in New York City. Height, who was the assistant director of the Harlem YWCA was given the job of escorting Mrs. Roosevelt into the meeting. Mary McLeod Bethune, the founder and president of the National Council of Negro Women, noticed Height, and later asked her to help advocate for women’s rights. Height took a volunteer position with the NCNW, and continued to work with the YWCA, creating programs and polices that helped gain equality and advancement for women of color, and working to successfully integrate the facilities nationwide.

In 1947 Height was elected as the national president of the Delta Sigma Theta Sorority As she had with the Y and NCNW she moved the sorority into a new era of activism on both the national and international scenes. Her appointment as the president of the National Council of Negro Women ten years later was a perfect fit. For the next 40 years she would oversee causes such as voting rights, poverty, and AIDS. She worked closely with civil rights leaders, participating in most major civil and human rights event in the 1960s (she was the only woman to sit on the platform with Dr. King and other activists during the 1963 March on Washington). Still, The New York Times called her “the unheralded seventh, the leader who was cropped out, figuratively and often literally, of images of the era that contained the “Big Six” civil rights leaders: The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., James Farmer, John Lewis, A. Philip Randolph, Roy Wilkins, and Whitney Young.

Height worked simultaneously for all three organizations, retiring from the YWCA in 1977 and from the NCNW in 1998 (at the time of her death she was the council’s president emerita). She has received numerous awards for her tireless efforts, including the Citizens Medal Award from President Ronald Reagan in 1989 and the Medal of Freedom from President Bill Clinton in 1994. In 2004 Pres. George W. Bush awarded her with the Congressional Gold Medal and she was inducted into the Democracy Hall of Fame. Most recently, Dr. Height served as an adviser to President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama.

For interviews with Height and more information please visit NPR

“We believe strongly that the arts aren’t somehow an ‘extra’ part of our national life, but instead we feel that the arts are at the heart of our national life. It is through our music, our literature, our art, drama and dance that we tell the story of our past and we express our hopes for the future. Our artists challenge our assumptions in ways that many cannot and do not. They expand our understandings, and push us to view our world in new and very unexpected ways….. ” First Lady Michelle Obama

In these days of recession it may seem frivolous to spend money on works of art. Still, it is our deep belief that art feeds the soul. Recently we received notice of a sale at the Swann Galleries in New York City. The auction house will be holding its sixth  African American Fine Art sale (and second one this year) on October 8. I’ve met and worked with Nigel Freeman, the director of African-American fine art at Swann. He is as thoughtful a curator as any one could be, and passionate about what he does, eager to continue to help gain black artists their rightful place in history. He really wants you to come look at the pieces in person and we urge you to go see the works.

It’s wonderful to see pieces by artists of color more and more in mainstream venues.

The fact that the bid prices are low, compared to works by white contemporaries—for instance, Shotguns (In reference to the shotgun houses found throughout the South) by John Biggers is listed at $200,000/250,000, the highest in this year’s catalog for a single work of art—is a double-edged sword: not great for the artists, a number of whom are still living, but advantageous to regular folks who cherish and love works by these artists:  Biggers, Elizabeth Catlett, Hughie Lee-Smith,  Charles White, Norman Lewis, Hale Woodruff, Henry Ossawa Tanner, Charles Sebree, Dox Thrash, Ernest Crichlow, Barkley Hendricks, Howardena Pindell, While many pieces are in the tens of thousands, there are some beautiful masterworks in the $1,000/2,500 range. While that’s not chump change for many of us, especially during these times, owning something by an artist you love is still within the realm of possibility.

The preview exhibition begins Friday October 2 and runs through Thursday, October 8, with the auction taking place at 2:30 pm. The catalog is available, for a price, but you can look at it for free online here for regular and here for 3D.  And if you have any questions I know Nigel or one of his colleagues will be happy to answer them. You can contact him at (nfreeman@swanngalleries.com

Images from top to bottom: John Biggers, Shotguns 1987. Hughie Lee-Smith’s Après Midid, 1987. Barkley Hendricks, Bid ‘Em In/Slave (Angie), 1973.

A number of special items are now on display in the Visitor Center’s Exhibition Hall in celebration of the bicentennial of the birth of President Abraham Lincoln. These  include the telegram that President Lincoln sent to Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant on August 17, 1864, agreeing with his strategy to maintain pressure on the Confederate Army at Petersburg, Virginia, rather than pull the Army north to protect Washington, DC.

Also included is President Lincoln’s Annual Message to Congress for 1862 (today known as the State of the Union address) referring to the battle of Antietam as a “fiery trial.” In this address, President Lincoln calls upon Congress to abolish slavery by Constitutional amendment.  He writes,

“In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free – honorable alike in what we give, and what we preserve.  We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best, hope of earth . . . The way is plain, peaceful, generous, just – a way, which, if followed, the world will forever applaud, and God must forever bless.”

Also on display will be Lincoln’s draft of legislation to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia dated January 10, 1849.  The draft is actually Lincoln’s notes for a bill written while he was a House member.  The President was unable to garner enough support for the legislation, and it did not move forward.

The display of Lincoln documents will continue through September 30, 2009. For more information about the Capitol Visitor Center, go to www.visitthecapitol.gov

He may not be a household name, but anyone who’s heard his recordings—or his player-piano rolls—will tell you that James P. Johnson was one of the all-time greats of early jazz piano. Picking up where Scott Joplin left off, he developed “Harlem Stride,” the freewheeling style later popularized by one of his pupils, Fats Waller, and Willie “The Lion” Smith. Johnson was Bessie Smith’s and Ethel Waters’s favorite accompanist. He was also a top songwriter on Broadway, and one of his tunes, “Charleston,” became the defining song of the Roaring Twenties. Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Art Tatum, and Thelonius Monk are just a few of the musicians Johnson influenced.

By the 1930s and ’40s, Johnson was composing orchestral works like “Yamenkraw” and “Harlem Symphony,” and a one-act opera, “De Organizer,” done with poet Langston Hughes. But changing tastes and failing health took their toll, and when Johnson died in 1955, he was buried in an unmarked grave at the Olivet Cemetery in Queens, New York.

Now, the James P. Johnson Foundation, Smalls Jazz Club in New York City, and the Johnson family are throwing a “rent party” to raise money for a monument for Johnson’s grave. On Sunday, October 4, Smalls will be celebrating “The Father of Stride Piano” with nonstop performances by Dick Hyman, Tardo Hammer, Terry Waldo, and other musicians. The day kicks off with a talk by Scott E. Brown, author of the biography James P. Johnson: A Case of Mistaken Identity, at 1:30; the music starts at 4:00 and runs until 9 p.m. Donation of $20 or more. For more information, check the James P. Johnson Foundation site or Smalls Jazz Club

Above Photo:Gjon Mili/Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images.

We all of us cannot help but notice the nasty tone that has reigned at the town hall meetings President Obama and members of congress have organized to explain healthcare. Disrespectful, rude behavior toward elected officials is the least of it—many of the so-called dissenters seem less interested in actually offering an alternative solution to the healthcare problem and more intent on drowning out fellow citizens. Healthy debate is what makes a democracy, but when people show up with guns, and stand with those weapons in close proximity to the President of the United States, one has to wonder: What message are these people trying to send? That they have a right to own them, carry them, display them? At a debate? One has to wonder what the debate is really about, and if those people toting guns really want to debate at all.  With that in mind we thought we’d look back at an event in history where a group of angry Americans dispensed with any kind of discussion and went straight to violence as a “solution.” These individuals sought to get what they believed was their country back, too.

In July of 1863 a mob of white males, mostly Irish, rioted through the streets of New York City, torturing and killing African-Americans. This riot had been brewing since President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, freeing the slaves. Northern newspapers made dire predictions, claiming that newly emancipated slaves would flood the north, grabbing jobs and livelihoods away from poor whites. What they failed to mention is that the Proclamation only applied to hostile Confederate states that had seceded from the Union, and where Union troops were already encamped. What the newspapers failed to state is that enslaved blacks had to mostly find their own way to freedom, and that wasn’t easy. What the newspapers failed to say was that slave states that remained loyal to the Union could keep their slaves. The New York  media failed to state much, it seems, (and even newspapers that did carry accurate news were ignored for the more sensationalist tales) instead made the decision to focus on narrow reportage, fanning the flames of discontent among poor whites.

What finally set the mob to rioting in New York City on July 13, 1863, was a military draft that had been enacted some months earlier requiring three years of military service of any conscripted man between the ages of 18 and 35. A loophole allowed a man to buy out of the draft with $300 (about $5,200 today) or supply a substitute. The poor and lower middle class, who couldn’t hope to pay such a sum, saw the draft as grossly unfair, particularly since many did not want to fight to free Negroes in the first place.

For two full days the rioters rampaged through midtown Manhattan, burning down buildings and beating and killing blacks, whites they felt were agents of the draft, and any police officers who were there to restore order. A mob of 2,000 even set fire to the Colored Orphans Asylum; the children themselves were saved, fleeing the burning building to the jeers of  “Murder the damned monkeys!” as reported in Harper’s Weekly. In the end more than 100 people were killed, including 11 black men who were lynched (they hanged a man and burned his body; they beat another and threw him into the river. They dragged a man through the streets and hung him from a lamppost. They jumped on the chest of a black sailor, stabbed him with a knife and smashed him with stones. And so on) . Many African-Americans were driven from the city, and the black population dropped, according to Leslie Harris’s In the Shadow of Slavery: African-Americans in New York City, 1626–1863 ”

Well after the Civil War ended, and Reconstruction collapsed with the withdrawal of federal troops from the South, African-American communities suffered from a string of racially motivated attacks in Wilmington, North Carolina in 1898; Atlanta in 1906, Springfield, Illinois in 1908, East St. Louis, Illinois in 1917, and Chicago a year later. One that has been brought again to the fore was the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921.  Please read on.

The changes sweeping through Washington are a source of hope and pride for many Americans. But for long-ago residents of Tulsa, Oklahoma, they could also mean resolution of a legal struggle that began in 1921.

That spring, a wave of racial violence destroyed the prosperous Tulsa neighborhood of Greenwood, once known as “The Black Wall Street.” In a 24-hour timespan, rampaging whites killed an estimated 300 or more people and reduced a 35-block area to rubble. Dozens of black-owned businesses were destroyed. Though survivors filed lawsuits, the Oklahoma courts rejected them out of hand.

In 2003, the remaining survivors—by then in their 80s, 90s, and 100s—again tried to secure justice. Led by Harvard law professor Charles J. Ogletree, a team of legal experts filed a new claim on their behalf, only to see it denied on the grounds that the statute of limitations had run out. Appeals went all the way to the U. S. Supreme Court, which in 2005 declined to hear the case. In terms of the legal system, the survivors had hit the wall.

They turned to Congress. In April 2007, a bill addressing the survivors’ legal rights was introduced in the House of Representatives. Survivor Dr. Olivia Hooker and noted historian Dr. John Hope Franklin—son of survivor B. C. Franklin—were among those who spoke at a House judiciary committee hearing. (Before They Die!, a film about the survivors’ struggle for justice, includes riveting footage of their testimony, click here for a preview.)

Now that the 111th Congress has convened, a revised version of the bill (known as the Tulsa-Greenwood Race Riot Claims Accountability Act) is expected to be presented quickly. Modeled on the 1988 law giving reparations to Asian Americans who had been interned during World War II, it proposes compensation for victims and their descendants, and resources for educating the public about the riot and its aftermath.

“We’re optimistic that there will be some important progress occurring in short order,” says Prof. Ogletree. “Congress is now aware of [the] travesty that happened more than 80 years ago, and they have a definite interest in the resolution.”

So does the White House. In 2005, when survivors went to Washington for the Supreme Court ruling, Prof. Ogletree—one of the president’s mentors at Harvard and an advisor to his campaign—introduced them to then-Senator Obama, who took a personal interest in their cause. “He has been very conscious and aware of [the situation],” says Prof. Ogletree, “and very much protective of  the rights and interests of the survivors.”
In October 2008 Tulsa Mayor Kathy Taylor hosted the premiere of Before They Die! at the Tulsa Perfroming Arts Center. Twenty-five of the 66 known living survivors of the riot attended the screening, along with Tulsa-born actress Alfre Woodard.

According to Associated Press coverage of the screening, Mayor Taylor was asked by an audience member why no one had ever apologized for the riot. In response, she stated, “Let me as mayor say to the survivors of the 1921 race riot, we are sorry.” Otis Clark—at 105 the oldest living survivor—also spoke at the screening. “I think we put away a lot of the prejudices,” he said.
November 2008 saw the groundbreaking for Tulsa’s John Hope Franklin Park, a memorial to victims of the riot. Scheduled for completion in mid-2009, the park is the first phase of the proposed John Hope Franklin Center for Reconciliation, which, when completed, will include a research library, museum, and education center.

The passing of Dr. John Hope Franklin this March has spurned those on Capital Hill to re-focus their efforts towards passage of HR 1995. It is expected to be renamed in Franklin’s honor.—Susan Delson

Before They Die!, a film about the 1921 Tulsa Race Riot and the survivors’ fight for justice, is touring the country as a fundraiser for the survivors. Director Reginald Turner presents the film at each screening, and survivors also attend many screenings to speak about their experiences.

For more information, visit beforetheydiemovie.com.

Dr. Hooker was the first African-American woman to enlist and go on active duty in the Coast Guard during World War II. She earned a Ph.D. in psychology from the University of Rochester, and taught at Fordham University until retiring in 1985. At the time of the riots, she was six years old.

What was Greenwood like before the riot?

The Greenwood community stuck together. Everything worked very well. People cooperated, and we had everything we needed. We didn’t have to go out of the neighborhood to get anything. Except to the bank—and of course, being six years old, I wasn’t much in the banking world. But we did buy things like materials to sew—my grandmother sewed. Somebody would go downtown and buy yard goods. My father sold readymade clothes, but he didn’t sell yard goods.

How did your family fare during the riot?

Our mother always reminded us, the mob broke all her Caruso records. They didn’t break “The Old Rugged Cross,” and they didn’t break Paul Robeson—they didn’t know who Paul Robeson and Roland Hayes were, so they didn’t break those. So we did have some records left, although the phonograph was broken. They smashed that, and they chopped up my sister’s piano. But they didn’t know that the main thing in a piano is the sounding board, so they chopped the cabinet. And she was still able to play her beloved piano, which my father had ordered from Arkansas, because there were no piano stores in Muskogee, where we were born.

How about your father’s business?

Well, we lost everything. Everything was down to just bricks and rock, you know. And his store had been fully stocked, on credit, and so he spent years trying to pay off all those debts instead of declaring bankruptcy. He tried to pay them all, but he finally went bankrupt in 1927.
But he was walking in the rubble shortly after the riot, and he saw his safe was still sitting there. It was too big for them to take. So he opened the safe and everything was intact. He didn’t have money there, but he had bonds. And he had money from many people who used to bring a little bag and say, “Mr. Hooker, I was lucky,” and, you know, “Put my name on this and put this in your safe.” People would go over and say, “Keep this for me until I need it.” And Papa went around and gave them all [their money]. He found all of them, the ones that were in his safe, and he gave [the money] back.

He and Mama decided that we could cash the bonds and then [my father] and the YMCA secretary would go on a speaking tour of the black churches. Mainly they went to Washington and Richmond and places like that, and talked to the black ministers. And they were the ones who mobilized barrels of clothes and that sort of thing for the people who had nothing. Because they took everything that was good and burned everything that wasn’t. It was really devastating for all of the people.

Interview conducted by Susan Delson

Some years back in our Spring 2002 issue, we featured and artist named Whitfield Lovell in an article titled “Whispers from the Walls.” The Bronx-born Lovell, whose three dimensional tableaux—life-size charcoal drawings on pineboard, decorated punctuated with everyday (and not so everyday) objects, tell the life stories of ancestors, family, and once anonymous individuals. If you live in Atlanta or happen to be traveling there, the exhibition Mercy, Patience and Destiny: The Women of Whitfield Lovell’s Tableaux will be continuing at the ACS Gallery at SCAD located at the Woodruff Arts Center, closing on August 23.

Above: Whitfield Lovell, Servilis, 2006, Conté on wood, pedestals, stuffed bird replicas

Back in December 2008, prompted by the death of the folk music queen Odetta, I began to prepare an entry about all of the musical lights the world has lost since our 2008 Music issue. The plan was to post it here during Black Music month. But it seemed that every time I started to work on it, another name had to be added. Already on my list was Bo Diddley, who brought American music his timeless rhythm, and Isaac Hayes, funk king extraordinaire, both of whom died in the summer of 2008. In the fall we lost Levi Stubbs, lead singer of The Four Tops, Dee Dee Warwick, and Miriam Makeba, the South African singer and civil rights activist who broke down barriers around the world with her music and message (Remember “Pata Pata”?) Then came Odetta, followed by the unmatchable Eartha Kitt on Christmas. At the beginning of this month, just three days in, my mom called me to tell me that the blues queen Koko Taylor had passed.

Yesterday, I got on the train to go home and a man who sat behind me said to anyone in the car within earshot “Michael Jackson is dead”. One woman said, “you must have gotten that confused with someone else.” Most people simply did not believe him at first—I think we’ve all been misled by the media rumor mills at least once. But it was more than that. He was only 50 years old. And this man had been a part of American culture for more than four decades, nearly all my life (and I’m 46). When I got off the train and pulled out my phone, I saw that I had several missed calls and messages, one from a person I know had to hunt for my number. The knowledge of his death spread swiftly through all quarters, to all corners.

When I was 7 years old, I decided I was going to marry my first crush. Michael Jackson’s poster went up on my closet door where I could see him before I went to sleep at night. It was 1969 and the Jackson 5 had come out with their first hit “I Want You Back”. Michael would have been around 11. For a lot of us little black girls, he was our prince charming, handsome and talented, and so much cooler than, say, Donny Osmond (sorry!).

Yes, his personal life was murky and sometimes disturbing, and there were deep and troubling questions left unanswered. They may yet be answered, and we may be shocked; I hope not. Still I think back to those more innocent times and the fact that Michael Jackson enriched and transformed the American musical songbook forever. That cannot be denied.
—Audrey Peterson

Billie Holiday: Rare Live Recordings 1934-1959 landed in our office some time ago. Produced by ESP-Disk Ltd. in Brooklyn, the five-CD set is exhaustive, covering 25 years of Holiday’s career—from her 1935 cameo in the film Symphony in Black, in which the 20-year old Billie, backed by the Duke Ellington Orchestra, sings “Lost My Man Blues” to her final appearance at the Storyville Club in Boston, a little less than three months before her July 1959 death at 44.

We’re not talking crystal clear recordings here—this was back when, and the magic of these disks does not lie in the remastering, but the content. The crackle and pop sound of a radio transmission live from Clark Monroe’s Uptown House in Harlem, complete with shouts of encouragement and enthusiastic applause take the listener back to a boozy, smoky room with Lady Day (she earned her famous nickname in 1937 from the great saxophonist Lester Young) front and center, torching the audience

Billie sang a sublime version of “I Cover the Waterfront” at the Esquire All Star Jazz Concert in 1945. The song pops up three more times, sung at various times later in her career, giving us the chance to hear how Holiday’s performance of the same song evolved. For instance, a later Storyville Club appearance reinforce the sad fact that the vicissitudes of life had left their mark: There is less of the starry-eyed girl in Holiday’s voice and tempo, and more of the experienced, if jaded, woman.

I think the most interesting of the live disks are a series of rehearsals that likely took place in 1958. In them we hear not only a master at her craft, but also a person with a sharp sense of humor and an unexpurgated tongue (the Lady sure could cuss). We love the idea of Billie the woman, who could turn a salty phrase while wearing a gardenia in her hair.

For more information or to order the set, visit ESP-Disk here.

Credit: Image courtesy of the Library of Congress.