Author: Champion One

25Aug

August 25 1956- Centralized Operations under COINTELPRO

GM – FBF – Today I would like to share with you a story about our government spying, paying off, infiltrating and disbanding individuals or groups that they deemed as a threat to the American cause. This group operated unchecked by the media or congress for decades. If you never heard of this ask one of your elders or research it for yourself. Enjoy!

Remember – “Prevent the RISE OF A “MESSIAH” who could unify, and electrify, the militant Black Nationalist movement. Malcolm X might have been such a “messiah;” he is the martyr of the movement today. Martin Luther King, Stokely Carmichael and Elijah Muhammed all aspire to this position. Elijah Muhammed is less of a threat because of his age. King could be a very real contender for this position should he abandon his supposed “obedience” to “white, liberal doctrines” (nonviolence) and embrace Black Nationalism. Carmichael has the necessary charisma to be a real threat in this way.” – J. Edgar Hoover – FBI Director

Today in our History – August 25, 1956 -Centralized operations under COINTELPRO officially began on August 25, 1956 with a program designed to “increase factionalism, cause disruption and win defections” inside the Communist Party USA (CPUSA).

COINTELPRO (Portmanteau derived from COunter INTELligence PROgram) (1956–1971) was a series of covert, and at times illegal, projects conducted by the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) aimed at surveilling, infiltrating, discrediting, and disrupting domestic political organizations. FBI records show that COINTELPRO resources targeted groups and individuals that the FBI deemed subversive, including the Communist Party USA, anti-Vietnam War organizers, activists of the civil rights movement or Black Power movement (e.g. Martin Luther King Jr., Nation of Islam, and the Black Panther Party), feminist organizations, independence movements (such as Puerto Rican independence groups like the Young Lords), and a variety of organizations that were part of the broader New Left.

The program also targeted white supremacist groups including the Ku Klux Klan and nationalist groups including Irish Republicans and Cuban exiles. The FBI also financed, armed, and controlled an extreme right-wing group of former Minutemen, transforming it into a group called the Secret Army Organization that targeted groups, activists, and leaders involved in the Anti-War Movement, using both intimidation and violent acts.

Centralized operations under COINTELPRO officially began on August 25, 1956 with a program designed to “increase factionalism, cause disruption and win defections” inside the Communist Party USA (CPUSA). Tactics included anonymous phone calls, IRS audits, and the creation of documents that would divide the American communist organization internally. An October 1956 memo from Hoover reclassified the FBI’s ongoing surveillance of black leaders, including it within COINTELPRO, with the justification that the movement was infiltrated by communists. In 1956, Hoover sent an open letter denouncing Dr. T.R.M. Howard, a civil rights leader, surgeon, and wealthy entrepreneur in Mississippi who had criticized FBI inaction in solving recent murders of George W. Lee, Emmett Till, and other black people in the South.[30] When the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), an African-American civil rights organization, was founded in 1957, the FBI began to monitor and target the group almost immediately, focusing particularly on Bayard Rustin, Stanley Levison, and eventually Martin Luther King Jr.

The “suicide letter”, that the FBI mailed anonymously to Martin Luther King Jr. in an attempt to convince him to commit suicide.

After the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, Hoover singled out King as a major target for COINTELPRO. Under pressure from Hoover to focus on King, Sullivan wrote:
In the light of King’s powerful demagogic speech. … We must mark him now if we have not done so before, as the most dangerous Negro of the future in this nation from the standpoint of communism, the Negro, and national security.
Soon after, the FBI was systematically bugging King’s home and his hotel rooms, as they were now aware that King was growing in stature daily as the leader among leaders of the civil rights movement.

In the mid-1960s, King began publicly criticizing the Bureau for giving insufficient attention to the use of terrorism by white supremacists. Hoover responded by publicly calling King the most “notorious liar” in the United States. IN his 1991 memoir, Washington Post journalist Carl Rowan asserted that the FBI had sent at least one anonymous letter to King encouraging him to commit suicide. Historian Taylor Branch documents an anonymous November 21, 1964 “suicide package” sent by the FBI that contained audio recordings, which were obtained through tapping King’s phone and placing bugs throughout various hotel rooms over the past two years was created two days after the announcement of King’s impending Nobel Peace Prize.

The tape, which was prepared by FBI audio technician John
Matter documented a series of King’s sexual indiscretions combined with a letter telling him “There is only one way out for you. You better take it before your filthy, abnormal, fraudulent self is bared to the nation”. King was subsequently informed that the audio would be released to the media if he did not acquiesce and commit suicide prior to accepting his Nobel Peace Award. When King refused to satisfy their coercion tactics, FBI Associate Director, Cartha D. DeLoach, commenced a media campaign offering the surveillance transcript to various news organizations including, Newsweek and Newsday. And even by 1969, as has been noted elsewhere, “[FBI] efforts to ‘expose’ Martin Luther King Jr. had not slackened even though King had been dead for a year. [The Bureau] furnished ammunition to conservatives to attack King’s memory, and…tried to block efforts to honor the slain leader.”

During the same period the program also targeted Malcolm X. While an FBI spokesman has denied that the FBI was “directly” involved in Malcolm’s murder, it is documented that the Bureau worked to “widen the rift” between Malcolm and Elijah Muhammad through infiltration and the “sparking of acrimonious debates within the organization,” rumor-mongering, and other tactics designed to foster internal disputes, which ultimately led to Malcolm’s assassination. The FBI heavily infiltrated Malcolm’s Organization of Afro-American Unity in the final months of his life. The Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of Malcolm X by Manning Marable asserts that most of the men who plotted Malcolm’s assassination were never apprehended and that the full extent of the FBI’s involvement in his death cannot be known.

Amidst the urban unrest of July–August 1967, the FBI began “COINTELPRO–BLACK HATE”, which focused on King and the SCLC as well as the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), the Revolutionary Action Movement (RAM), the Deacons for Defense and Justice, Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), and the Nation of Islam. BLACK HATE established the Ghetto Informant Program and instructed 23 FBI offices to “disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize the activities of black nationalist hate type organizations”.

A March 1968 memo stated the program’s goal was to “prevent the coalition of militant black nationalist groups”; to “Prevent the RISE OF A ‘MESSIAH’ who could unify…the militant black nationalist movement”; “to pinpoint potential troublemakers and neutralize them before they exercise their potential for violence [against authorities].”; to “Prevent militant black nationalist groups and leaders from gaining RESPECTABILITY, by discrediting them to…both the responsible community and to liberals who have vestiges of sympathy…”; and to “prevent the long-range GROWTH of militant black organizations, especially among youth.” Dr. King was said to have potential to be the “messiah” figure, should he abandon nonviolence and integrationism, and Stokely Carmichael was noted to have “the necessary charisma to be a real threat in this way” as he was portrayed as someone who espoused a much more militant vision of “black power.”

While the FBI was particularly concerned with leaders and organizers, they did not limit their scope of target to the heads of organizations. Individuals such as writers were also listed among the targets of operations.

This program coincided with a broader federal effort to prepare military responses for urban riots, and began increased collaboration between the FBI, Central Intelligence Agency, National Security Agency, and the Department of Defense. The CIA launched its own domestic espionage project in 1967 called Operation CHAOS. A particular target was the Poor People’s Campaign, a national effort organized by King and the SCLC to occupy Washington, D.C. The FBI monitored and disrupted the campaign on a national level, while using targeted smear tactics locally to undermine support for the march.[49] The Black Panther Party was another targeted organization, wherein the FBI collaborated to destroy the party from the inside out.

Overall, COINTELPRO encompassed disruption and sabotage of the Socialist Workers Party (1961), the Ku Klux Klan (1964), the Nation of Islam, the Black Panther Party (1967), and the entire New Left social/political movement, which included antiwar, community, and religious groups (1968). A later investigation by the Senate’s Church Committee (see below) stated that “COINTELPRO began in 1956, in part because of frustration with Supreme Court rulings limiting the Government’s power to proceed overtly against dissident groups …” Official congressional committees and several court cases have concluded that COINTELPRO operations against communist and socialist groups exceeded statutory limits on FBI activity and violated constitutional guarantees of freedom of speech and association.

The program was successfully kept secret until 1971, when the Citizens’ Commission to Investigate the FBI burgled an FBI field office in Media, Pennsylvania, took several dossiers, and exposed the program by passing this material to news agencies.[51] The Fight of the Century between Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier provided cover for the activist group to successfully pull off the burglary; Muhammad Ali was himself a COINTELPRO target due to his involvement with the Nation of Islam and the anti-war movement. Many news organizations initially refused to publish the information. Within the year, Director J. Edgar Hoover declared that the centralized COINTELPRO was over, and that all future counterintelligence operations would be handled on a case-by-case basis.

Additional documents were revealed in the course of separate lawsuits filed against the FBI by NBC correspondent Carl Stern, the Socialist Workers Party, and a number of other groups. In 1976 the Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities of the United States Senate, commonly referred to as the “Church Committee” for its chairman, Senator Frank Church of Idaho, launched a major investigation of the FBI and COINTELPRO. Many released documents have been partly, or entirely, redacted.

The Final Report of the Select Committee castigated the conduct of the intelligence community in its domestic operations (including COINTELPRO) in no uncertain terms:
The Committee finds that the domestic activities of the intelligence community at times violated specific statutory prohibitions and infringed the constitutional rights of American citizens. The legal questions involved in intelligence programs were often not considered. On other occasions, they were intentionally disregarded in the belief that because the programs served the “national security” the law did not apply. While intelligence officers on occasion failed to disclose to their superiors programs which were illegal or of questionable legality, the Committee finds that the most serious breaches of duty were those of senior officials, who were responsible for controlling intelligence activities and generally failed to assure compliance with the law.

Many of the techniques used would be intolerable in a democratic society even if all of the targets had been involved in violent activity, but COINTELPRO went far beyond that … the Bureau conducted a sophisticated vigilante operation aimed squarely at preventing the exercise of First Amendment rights of speech and association, on the theory that preventing the growth of dangerous groups and the propagation of dangerous ideas would protect the national security and deter violence.

The Church Committee documented a history of the FBI exercising political repression as far back as World War I, through the 1920s, when agents were charged with rounding up “anarchists, communists, socialists, reformists and revolutionaries” for deportation. The domestic operations were increased against political and anti-war groups from 1936 through 1976. Research more about our government working to keep Black groups, Individuals and entertainers from gaining power. Share with your babies and make it a champion day!

24Aug

August 24 1987- Bayard Rustin

GM – FBF – Today I would like to share with you a person who gave his energy, passion and knowledge to Black America. If you have ever heard of A. Phillip Randolph to Martin Luther King, Jr. To me he was the greatest mass organizer that Blacks had ever had because when you think of protest marches in cities across America or our Nation’s Capital it was a production of his from the 40’s to the 60’s. Enjoy!

Remember – “When an individual is protesting society’s refusal to acknowledge his dignity as a human being, his very act of protest confers dignity on him.” ― Bayard Rustin

Today in our History – August 24, 1987 – Bayard Rustin dies.

Bayard Rustin was one of the most important, and yet least known, Civil Rights advocates in the twentieth century. He was born in West Chester, Pennsylvania and raised by his maternal grandparents. His grandmother, Julia, was both a Quaker and an active member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Quakerism, and NAACP leaders W.E.B. Du Bois and James Weldon Johnson, who were frequent visitors, proved influential in Rustin’s life.

Rustin attended Wilberforce University (1932-1936) and Cheyney State Teachers College (1936), in each instance without graduating. After completing an activist training program conducted by the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), he moved to Harlem, New York in 1937. In Harlem, he enrolled at the City College of New York, began singing in local clubs with black folksingers including John White and Huddie Ledbetter, became active in the efforts to free the Scottsboro Boys, and joined the Young Communist League, motivated by their advocacy of racial equality.

By 1941, Rustin quit the Communist Party and began working with union organizer A. Philip Randolph and A.J. Muste, leader of the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR). Together they organized the March on Washington Movement which protested segregation in the military and African Americans exclusion from employment in defense industries. Their protests resulted in President Franklin Delano Roosevelt issuing Executive Order 8802 creating the Fair Employment Practices Committee.

Rustin along with FOR members George Houser, Bernice Fisher, and James L. Farmer helped create the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) which pioneered the civil rights strategy of non-violent direct action. In 1944, he traveled to California to help protect the property of Japanese Americans interned during the war. In 1947, he and Houser organized the Journey of Reconciliation, the first Freedom Ride testing the Supreme Court decision outlawing racial discrimination in interstate travel. After organizing FOR’s Free India Committee, he traveled to India to study nonviolence; and to Africa meeting with leaders of the Ghanaian and Nigerian independence movements.

As a pacifist, Rustin was arrested for violating the Selective Service Act and was imprisoned at Lewisberg Federal Penitentiary from 1944 to 1946. Throughout his civil rights career he was arrested twenty-three times, including a 1953 charge for vagrancy and lewd conduct in Pasadena, California.

Rustin was openly gay and lived with partner, Walter Naegle, at a time when homosexuality was criminalized throughout the U.S. He was subsequently fired by the FOR, but became executive secretary of the War Resisters League. He also served as a member of the AFSC task force that wrote one of the most widely influential pacifist essays in U.S. history, “Speak Truth to Power: A Quaker Search for an Alternative to Violence,” in 1955.

In 1956, Rustin went to Montgomery, Alabama and advised Martin Luther King, Jr. on nonviolent strategies of resistance during the Montgomery Bus Boycott. King and Rustin helped organize the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). However, in 1960 New York Congressman, Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. forced him to resign from SCLC due to concerns shared by many black leaders about Rustin’s homosexuality and communist past.

Due to the combination of the homophobia of these leaders and their fear he might compromise the movement, Rustin would not receive public recognition for his role in the movement. Nevertheless, Rustin continued to work in the Civil Rights Movement, organizing the seminal 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom with A. Philip Randolph

Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, Rustin remained politically active. Although he often shared their commitment to human rights, Rustin was a vocal critic of emerging black power politics. Toward the end of his life he continued to work as a human rights advocate, while serving on the Board of Trustees of the University of Notre Dame. The year before he died he testified in favor of New York State’s Gay Rights Bill. Bayard Rustin died in New York on August 24, 1987 from a perforated appendix. Research more about this great American and share with your babies. Make it a champion day!

23Aug

August 23 1848 Henry “box” Brown

GM – FBF – Today, I would like to share with you a story about a man who wanted freedom so bad that he shipped his way to freedom by package to Philadelphia. Out of all of the stories in many text books of the 1960’s and 1970’s this story was in the slavery section. Enjoy!

Remember – “When they took my family away and sold them to another plantation. I said that I was leaving too” – Henry “Box” Brown

Today in our History – August 23, Brown, Henry “Box” – August 23, 1848. Henry “Box” Brown’s family was sold to a plantation in North Carolina.

To escape enslavement on a plantation near Richmond, Virginia, Henry “Box” Brown in 1849 exploited maritime elements of the Underground Railroad. Brown’s moniker “Box” was a result of his squeezing himself into a box and having himself shipped 250 miles from Richmond, Virginia to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Henry Brown, born enslaved in 1816 to John Barret, a former mayor of Richmond, eventually married another slave named Nancy and the couple had three children. Brown became an active member of Richmond’s First African Baptist Church where he was known for singing in the choir. In 1848 Brown’s wife and children were abruptly sold to away to North Carolina. Using “overwork” (overtime) money, Brown decided to arrange for his freedom.

He constructed a wooden crate three feet long and two feet six inches deep with two air holes. With help from Philadelphia abolitionists, he obtained a legal freight contract from Adams Express. This freight company with both rail and steamboat capabilities arranged to ship his package labeled “Dry Goods” to Philadelphia. The package was a heavy wooden box holding Brown’s 200 pounds.

Henry “Box” Brown loaded himself in Richmond on March 22, 1849, and from there the package moved via horse-drawn carriage to the rail depot of the Richmond-Fredericksburg-Potomac Railroad. Brown’s freight car was off-loaded 56 miles north on the Potomac River’s Aquia Landing and then placed aboard a Potomac River steamboat and shipped 40 miles upriver into Washington D.C. Here, the “package” transferred to the Washington & Baltimore Train Depot and passed by rail through Baltimore, arriving 149 miles later in the Port of Philadelphia on March 24, 1849. A local Philadelphia carting firm delivered “the package” to the Philadelphia Anti-Slavery Society. Delivered in 27 hours, Brown was welcomed by Philadelphia abolitionists led by Underground Railroad organizer, William Still.

Brown carried a bladder filled with drinking water and a gimlet if he needed to drive more air holes in the box. Tossed about and turned upside down when moved by drayage men aboard a steamship, he wrote that “veins on his temple grossly distended with eyes swelling and popping pain.” A fellow passenger, tired of standing, righted the box and had a seat, unaware of its human cargo. When the freight package opened, Henry “Box” Brown started singing a song of celebration and thanksgiving. After his escape “Box” Brown became a popular abolitionist speaker.

Upon passage of the 1850 Fugitive Slave Law, Brown left the United States for England. Here as a featured speaker in England’s abolitionist circuit he used visual aids such as a landscaped “moving panorama,” a painted scroll showing a lengthy series of related inter-connected panels painted on a single cloth.

By 1875 Brown had returned to New England and married a second time. He lectured under the name Professor H. “Box” Brown until his death. Brown is believed to have died around 1889. Samuel Rowse’s, Resurrection of Henry “Box” Brown lithograph, immortalizes Brown’s 1849 journey. Research more about how Blacks found their way north to freedom and share with your babies. Make it a champion day!

22Aug

August 22 1791- Toussaint L’Ouverture

GM – FBF – On this day in our History, the peoples of a small Island refused to be treated like slaves and fought for their freedom. Since this was the first time it has happened successfully in the Western Hemisphere, the word got out to other European slave owners to start taking harsher measures toward their property or they too will be in battled with the Africans. Once this Island nation was free an embargo went out to most countried not to conduct any trade with them. As you know if you live on an Island trade is Important to your survival. Let’s take a closer look at this story. Enjoy!

Remember – “Citizens, not less generous than myself, let your most precious moments be employed in causing the past to be forgotten; let all my fellow-citizens swear never to recall the past; let them receive their misled brethren with open arms, and let them, in future, be on their guard against the traps of bad men.” – Toussaint Louverture

Today in our History – August 22, 1791 – “The “Night of Fire” in which slaves revolted by setting fire to plantation houses and fields and killing whites.
Known to his contemporaries as “The Black Napoleon,” Toussaint L’Ouverture was a former slave who rose to become the leader of the only successful slave revolt in modern history that created an independent state, the Haitian Revolution.

Born into slavery on May 20, 1743 in the French colony of Saint Dominque, L’Ouverture was the eldest son of Gaou Guinon, an African prince who was captured by slavers. At a time when revisions to the French Code Noir (Black Code) legalized the harsh treatment of slaves as property, young L’ Overture instead inspired kindness from those in authority over him. His godfather, the priest Simon Baptiste, for example, taught him to read and write. Impressed by L’Ouverture, Bayon de Libertad, the manager of the Breda plantation on which L’Ouverture was born, allowed him unlimited access to his personal library. By the time he was twenty, the well-read and tri-lingual L’Ouverture—he spoke French, Creole, and some Latin—had also gained a reputation as a skilled horseman and for his knowledge of medicinal plants and herbs. More importantly, L’Ouverture had secured his freedom from de Libertad even as he continued to manage his former owner’s household personnel and to act as his coachman. Over the course of the next 18 years, L’Ouverture settled into life on the Breda plantation marrying fellow Catholic Suzanne Simon and parenting two sons, Isaac and Saint-Jean.

The events of August 22, 1791, the “Night of Fire” in which slaves revolted by setting fire to plantation houses and fields and killing whites, convinced the 48-year-old L’Ouverture that he should join the growing insurgency, although not before securing the safety of his wife and children in the Spanish-controlled eastern half of the island (Santo Domingo) and assuring that Bayon de Libertad and his wife were safely onboard a ship bound for the United States.

Inspired by French Revolutionary ideology and angered by generations of abuse at the hands of white planters, the initial slave uprising was quelled within several days, but ongoing fighting between the slaves, free blacks, and planters continued. Although he was free, L’Ouverture joined the slave insurgency and quickly developed a reputation first as a capable soldier and then as military secretary to Georges Biassou, one of the insurgency’s leaders. When the insurgency’s leadership chose to ally itself with Spain against France, L’Ouverture followed. Threatened by Spain and Britain’s attempts to control the island, the French National Convention acted to preserve its colonial rule in 1794 by securing the loyalty of the black population; France granted citizenship rights and freedom to all blacks within the empire.

Following France’s decision to emancipate the slaves, L’Ouverture allied with France against Spain, and from 1794 to 1802, he was the dominant political and military leader in the French colony. Operating under the self-assumed title of General-in-Chief of the Army, L’Ouverture led the French in ousting the British and then in capturing the Spanish controlled half of the island. By 1801, although Saint Dominque remained ostensibly a French colony, L’Ouverture was ruling it as an independent state. He drafted a constitution in which he reiterated the 1794 abolition of slavery and appointed himself governor for “the rest of his glorious life.”

L’Ouverture’s actions eventually aroused the ire of Napoleon Bonaparte. In 1802 Napoleon dispatched his brother-in-law, Charles Leclerc, to capture L’Ouverture and return the island to slavery under French control. Captured and imprisoned at Fort de Joux in France, L’Ouverture died of pneumonia on April 7, 1803. Independence for Saint Dominque would follow one year later under the leadership of Jean-Jacques Dessalines, one of L’Ouverture’s generals. Research more about this Island and its people and share with your babes and make it a champion day!

21Aug

August 21 1893- George Speck

GM – FBF – Today I would like to share with you a story that you all love or his Invention anyway. You love it so much that your parents introduced it to you and you have welcomed it to your family. It was a hard road for this Black man but he overcame the odds. Enjoy!

Remember – ” Who would have thought that potato shavings would be a treat for the world. – George Crum

Today in our History – August 21,1893 – The Potato Chip was massed produced.

George Speck (also called George Crum; 1824– July 22, 1914) was an American chef. He worked as a hunter, guide, and cook in the Adirondack mountains, and became renowned for his culinary skills after being hired at Moon’s Lake House on Saratoga Lake, near Saratoga Springs, New York.

Speck’s specialities included wild game, especially venison and duck, and he often experimented in the kitchen. During the 1850s, while working at Moon’s Lake House in the midst of a dinner rush, Speck tried slicing the potatoes extra thin and dropping it into the deep hot fat of the frying pan. Although recipes for potato chips were published in several cookbooks decades prior to the 1850s, a local legend associates Speck with the creation of potato chip.

Speck was born on July 15, 1824 in Saratoga County in upstate New York. Some sources suggest that the family lived in Ballston Spa or Malta; others suggest they came from the Adirondacks. Depending upon the source, his father, Abraham, and mother Diana, were variously identified as African American, Oneida, Stockbridge, and/or Mohawk. Some sources associate the family with the St. Regis (Akwesasne) Mohawk reservation that straddles the US/Canada border. Speck and his sister Kate Wicks, like other Native American or mixed-race people of that era, were variously described as “Indian,” “Mulatto,” “Black,” or just “Colored,” depending on the snap judgement of the census taker.

Speck developed his culinary skills at Cary Moon’s Lake House on Saratoga Lake, noted as an expensive restaurant at a time when wealthy families from Manhattan and other areas were building summer “camps” in the area. Speck and his sister, Wicks, also cooked at the Sans Souci in Ballston Spa, alongside another St. Regis Mohawk Indian known for his skills as a guide and cook, Pete Francis. One of the regular customers at Moon’s was Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt, who, although he savored the food, could never seem to remember Speck’s name. On one occasion, he called a waiter over to ask “Crum,” “How long before we shall eat?” Rather than take offense, Speck decided to embrace the nickname, figuring that, “A crumb is bigger than a speck.”[

One of the regular customers at Moon’s was Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt, who, although he savored the food, could never seem to remember Speck’s name. On one occasion, he called a waiter over to ask “Crum,” “How long before we shall eat?” Rather than take offense, Speck decided to embrace th e nickname, figuring that, “A crumb is bigger than a speck.” a yed no favorites.” Guests were obliged to wait their turn, the millionaire as well as the wage-earner. Mr. Vanderbilt once was obliged to wait an hour and a half for a meal…With none but rich pleasure-seekers as his guests, Speck kept his tables laden with the best of everything, and for it all charged Delmonico prices.”[

Recipes for frying potato slices were published in several cookbooks in the 19th century. In 1832, a recipe for fried potato “shavings” was included in a United States cookbook derived from an earlier English collection. William Kitchiner’s The Cook’s Oracle (1822), also included techniques for such a dish. Similarly, N.K.M. Lee’s cookbook, The Cook’s Own Book (1832), has a recipe that is very similar to Kitchiner’s.

The New York Tribune ran a feature article on “Crum’s: The Famous Eating House on Saratoga Lake” in December 1891, but mentioned nothing about potato chips. Neither did Crum’s commissioned biography, published in 1893, nor did one 1914 obituary in a local paper. Another obituary states “Crum is said to have been the actual inventor of “Saratoga chips.”” When Wicks died in 1924, however, her obituary authoritatively identified her as follows: “A sister of George Crum, Mrs. Catherine Wicks, died at the age of 102, and was the cook at Moon’s Lake House. She first invented and fried the famous Saratoga Chips.”

Wicks recalled the invention of Saratoga Chips as an accident: she had “chipped off a piece of the potato which, by the merest accident, fell into the pan of fat. She fished it out with a fork and set it down upon a plate beside her on the table.” Her brother tasted it, declared it good, and said, “We’ll have plenty of these.” In a 1932 interview with the Saratogian newspaper, her grandson, John Gilbert Freeman, asserted Wicks’s role as the true inventor of the potato chip.

Hugh Bradley’s 1940 history of Saratoga contains some information about Speck, based on local folklore as much as on any specific historical primary sources. In their 1983 article in Western Folklore, Fox and Banner say that Bradley had cited an 1885 article in the Hotel Gazette about Speck and the potato chips. Bradley repeated some material from that article, including that “Crum was born in 1828, the son of Abe Speck, a mulatto jockey who had come from Kentucky to Saratoga Springs and married a Stockbridge Indian woman,” and that, “Crum also claimed to have considerable German and Spanish blood.”

In any event, Speck helped popularize the potato chip, first as a cook at Moon’s and then in his own place. Cary Moon, owner of Moon’s Lake House, later rushed to claim credit for the invention, and began mass-producing the chips, first served in paper cones, then packaged in boxes. They became wildly popular: “It was at Moon’s that Clio first tasted the famous Saratoga chips, said to have originated there, and it was she who first scandalized spa society by strolling along Broadway and about the paddock at the race track crunching the crisp circlets out of a paper sack as though they were candy or peanuts. She made it the fashion, and soon you saw all Saratoga dipping into cornucopias filled with golden-brown paper-thin potatoes; a gathered crowd was likely to create a sound like a scuffling through dried autumn leaves.” Visitors to Saratoga Springs were advised to take the 10-mile journey around the lake to Moon’s if only for the chips: “the hobby of the Lake House is Fried Potatoes, and these they serve in good style. They are sold in papers like confectionary.”

A 1973 advertising campaign by the St. Regis Paper Company, which manufactured packaging for chips, featured an ad for Speck and his story, published in the national magazines, Fortune and Time. During the late 1970s, the variant of the story featuring Vanderbilt became popular because of the interest in his wealth and name, and evidence suggests the source was an advertising agency for the Potato Chip/Snack Food Association.

A 1983 article in Western Folklore identifies potato chips as having originated in Saratoga Springs, New York, while critiquing the variants of popular stories. In all versions, the chips became popular and subsequently known as “Saratoga chips” or “potato crunches”.

The 21st-century Snopes website writes that Crum’s customer, if he existed, was more likely an obscure one. Vanderbilt was indeed a regular customer at both Crum’s Malta restaurant and Moon’s Lake House, but there is no evidence that he played a role by requesting or promoting potato chips. Research more about Black Inventors and share with your babies. Make it a champion day!

20Aug

August 20 1964- President lyndon Johnson

GM – FBF – Today I would like to share with you a Federal National Program that was Introduce to the country in hopes to give a facade of help but it was really and has been ever since a program of dependency. The United States President that started the program and the ones that Inherited the program really did not allow the program in its full totally to work. Let’s look at what has been called THE WAR ON POVERTY. Enjoy!

Remember – “Some years ago, the federal government declared a war on poverty and won,” – President Ronald Reagan

Today in our History – August 20, 1964 President Lyndon Johnson signed the Economic Opportunity Act (EOA) and created the Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO), providing both the strategy and the ammunition to fight the War on Poverty.

The Civil Rights Movement and investigative journalism combined in the early 1960s, inciting a nation to address the growing problem of poverty in America. A 1963 New York Times series on Appalachian poverty and Michael Harrington’s The Other America (1962) inspired discontent young Americans as well as President John F. Kennedy to take action. In response, Kennedy initiated federal pilot programs to address job creation, skills training, and hunger. Kennedy’s successor, President Lyndon Johnson, would use these as the basis for his War on Poverty.

In his State of the Union address on January 8, 1964, in the midst of the civil rights movement, President Johnson informed the nation that he had declared “unconditional war on poverty in America.” On August 20 of the same year, Johnson signed the Economic Opportunity Act (EOA) and created the Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO), providing both the strategy and the ammunition to fight the War on Poverty. One of the key provisions of the EOA was the creation of community action agencies that could apply for federal funds to support the development of service programs like Head Start, Legal Services, Job Corps, and VISTA (Volunteers in Service To America). These agencies were to include “maximum feasible participation of the poor.”

For many African Americans, the War on Poverty in general offered economic opportunities. The community action programs, in particular, provided a framework to further pursue the democratic goals of the civil rights movement. Following the Watts Riots in August of 1965, many black community organizations saw the community action programs of the War on Poverty as a way to gain some economic, political, and cultural power within their own communities. These organizations often directly challenged entrenched political and economic power structures. As a result, community action programs became the most controversial aspect of the War on Poverty.

Initially embraced by Congress and the American public, the OEO quickly came under constant scrutiny and criticism. Amidst the controversy over community action, President Johnson also was hesitant to expand the OEO budget at a time when he needed Congressional support for America’s increased involvement in Vietnam. As a result, the War on Poverty never received the funding necessary to effectively attack poverty. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., expressed the sentiments of many civil rights and antipoverty activists when he argued that the War on Poverty was being “shot down on the battlefields of Vietnam.” The administrations of Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford further emasculated OEO, either transferring its programs to other federal agencies or completely eliminating them. By the late 1970s, the OEO itself was gone.

But the War on Poverty lived on through some of the programs like Head Start and Legal Services that were transferred to other federal departments and especially through community antipoverty organizations. In urban areas like Los Angeles (California), Newark (New Jersey), Baltimore (Maryland) and New York, African Americans, inspired by the civil rights/ black power movement and the participatory ideals of the War on Poverty, formed black-controlled community organizations in the 1960s and 1970s that provided jobs, job training, housing, credit unions, and cultural programs, many of which are still active today.

The War on Poverty fell well short of its stated goal of eliminating poverty, but broadened efforts to democratize America and established community organizations that continue to battle poverty. Research more about Federal Government programs and the Impact on the society or the challenges made to the United States Supreme Court as being unconstitutional and share with your babies. Make it a champion day!

19Aug

August 19 1974

GM – FBF – Today, I would like to give you some insight on our 33rd state that entered the Union. Did you know that Oregon was set up as a place where Blacks were not welcomed? The resulting Article 1, Section 35 of the Oregon state constitution:
No free negro, or mulatto, not residing in this State at the time of the adoption of this Constitution, shall come, reside, or be within this State, or hold any real estate, or make any contracts, or maintain any suit therein; and the Legislative Assembly shall provide by penal laws, for the removal, by public officers, of all such negroes, and mulattoes, and for their effectual exclusion from the State, and for the punishment of persons who shall bring them into the state, or employ, or harbor them. – I want to share with you a story of a Black woman who fought to be heard. Enjoy!

Remember – “The object of the National Association for the Advancement of the Colored People as you know is to make 12 million American Negroes physically free from…mentally free from ignorance, politically free from disenfranchisement and socially free from insult.” – Beatrice Morrow Cannady

Today in our History – August 19, 1974 – Beatrice Morrow Cannady dies. (1889 – 1974)

Beatrice Morrow Cannady was the most noted civil rights activist in early twentieth-century Oregon. Using her position as editor of the Advocate, Oregon’s largest, and at times the only, African American newspaper, Cannady launched numerous efforts to defend the civil rights of the approximately 2,500 African Americans in the state (in 1930) and to challenge racial discrimination in its varied forms.

Beatrice Morrow was born in 1889 in Littig, Texas. She reportedly graduated from Wiley College in Marshall, Texas, in 1908, worked briefly as a teacher in Oklahoma, and then enrolled in the University of Chicago, where she studied music. In 1912, she left the city for Portland, Oregon, to marry Edward Daniel Cannady, the founder and editor of the Advocate. Upon their marriage, Beatrice Cannady became assistant editor of the newspaper, beginning an affiliation that would continue for the next twenty-four years; she would become the editor and owner of the Advocate in 1930 after her divorce from Edward. In 1922, at the age of thirty-three, Cannady became the first African American woman to graduate from Northwestern College of Law in Portland. She was one of only two women in a class of twenty-two.

Two years after joining the Advocate, Cannady became a founding member of the Portland NAACP. She quickly emerged as its most powerful voice when she directed the local protest against the controversial anti-black film, The Birth of a Nation. Cannady and other community leaders carried on a fifteen-year campaign to limit the showing of the film. In 1928, NAACP Executive Secretary James Weldon Johnson invited her to address the association’s convention in Los Angeles. In her speech, which followed the keynote by W.E.B. DuBois, she said, “It is the duty of the Negro woman to see that in the home there are histories of her race written by Negro historians. . . . The Negro mother has it within her power to invest less in overstuffed furniture . . . and more in books and music by and about the Negro race so that our youth my grow up with a pride of race which can never be had any other way.”

Through the pages of the Advocate Cannady confronted the racial discrimination routinely practiced by restaurants, hotels, and movie theaters in Oregon and the Pacific Northwest. She successfully challenged the exclusion of African American children from public schools in Longview, Washington, and Vernonia, Oregon, and kept her readers informed of Ku Klux Klan activity throughout the state.

Cannady also assumed the role of unofficial ambassador of racial goodwill, writing articles, giving lectures, and using the new medium of radio to promote African American history and racial equality. Maintaining a collection of over three hundred volumes on African American history and literature, as well as a complete file of leading civil rights organization publications such as the NAACP’s Crisis magazine, Cannady transformed her living room into a reading and lending library about African Americans. In 1929, her efforts were recognized nationally when she was nominated for the Harmon Award in Race Relations, given by the Harmon Foundation in New York City.

Cannady’s activism extended far beyond U.S. race relations issues. She served as a member of the Oregon Prison Association and the Near East Relief Organization and used her affiliation with the Oregon Committee on the Cause and Cure of War to warn Oregonians about the dangers of war and militarism. Cannady also joined the Pan African Congress and in 1927 represented Oregon at its national convention in New York City. In 1932, she ran unsuccessfully for the office of state representative from District 5, Multnomah County.

Six years later, she left Oregon—and public life—when she moved to Los Angeles. Cannady died there in 1974. Research more about Black women freedom fighters and share with your babies. Make it a champion day!

18Aug

August 18 1907- Howard Swanson

GM – FBF – Today as America still morns the death of the great Aretha Franklin, I want to bring together two outstanding Black poets and one of the world’s best opera singers of her day, who was Black – they will come together in composistion to give this Black composer honors that no other composer received before his time. He would go on to compose works for the prestigious Julliard School of Music. Enjoy!

Remember – “When I hear the words of the poets and the vison of their words on paper it inspires me to write beautiful music” – Howard Swanson

Today in our History – August 18, 1907 – Howard Swanson was an African American composer best known for his art songs based on the poetry of Langston Hughes and Paul Lawrence Dunbar. Swanson was born in Atlanta, Georgia on August 18, 1907. Born in a middle class home, Swanson’s family sent his two older brothers to college which was for the time unusual.

Swanson’s music career started after the family relocated to Cleveland, Ohio in 1916. As a young boy he often sang in his church, sometimes performing duets with his mother. In 1925 when he was 18, Swanson’s father died which immediately and dramatically changed the family’s circumstances. Howard Swanson now had to earn money to support the family. After high school graduation he worked in the Cleveland Post Office.

In 1927, as his circumstances improved, Swanson decided to continue his education. He attended the Cleveland Institute of Music where he studied piano, eventually graduating with a Bachelor’s degree in music theory a decade later. In 1939 he received a Rosenwald Fellowship which allowed him to study in Paris, France with famed music instructor Nadia Boulanger. Swanson had planned to pursue graduate studies in Paris but in 1940 he was forced to evacuate Paris as the German Army overran France.

Swanson was virtually unknown until Marian Anderson included his setting of The Negro Speaks of Rivers at Carnegie Hall in 1949, and then the New York Critics Circle decided American composers were now well enough advanced that they could bestow their annual award on a local composer. Swanson was selected, and his Short Symphony was acclaimed the best new work performed in New York during the 1950-51 seasons. It was during this period that Joy was composed, soon becoming known by the recordings of Helen Thigpen, and of Phalese Tassie, and often performed by baritone Ben Holt.

Upon return to the United States he got a job with the Internal Revenue Service while studying and composing music on the side. In 1950, at the age of 43, Howard Swanson produced his first significant composition, “The Negro Speaks of Rivers,” a musical set to Langston Hughes’s famous poem of that name. His composition was performed in Carnegie Hall by Marian Anderson. Later that year his work Short Symphony was played by the New York Philharmonic orchestra. Swanson’s other works include “Music for Strings” (1952), “Concerto for Orchestra” (1957), and “Symphony No. 3” (1969).

Howard Swanson’s style was of the neo-classical school. Although his music drew mostly from western European styles he did incorporate African American styles with the addition of rhythmic complexity, syncopation, and instances of beat phrasing. Swanson returned to Paris after being awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1952. He remained there until 1966. While in Europe he was commissioned to compose works for the Louisville Symphony Orchestra and the Julliard School of Music. In 1966 he returned to New York City.
Howard Swanson died in New York City on November 12, 1978. Research more about great American Black composers and share with your babies. Make it A Champion Day!

17Aug

August 17 1990- Pearl Mae Bailey

GM – FBF- Today, America is still morning the passing of “The Queen of Soul” Aretha Franklin yesterday and more will be said and shared with her and her family over the week. Did you know that there was a Black female entertainer who sung, played as an actress in Hollywood and performed on Broadway, besides staring in her own television show and sat in as guest host more than once for Johnny Carson of the famed “Tonight Show”? She also shared the stage with Aretha Franklin on many occasions. We who lived in and around Philadelphia and South Jersey saw her more than others as she frequent Atlantic City and The Latin Casino in Cherry Hill, NJ. She was known effectually as “PEARL”. Enjoy!

Remember – “Never, never rest contented with any circle of ideas, but always be certain that a wider one is still possible.” Pearl Bailey

Today in our History – August 17, 1990, Pearl Mae Bailey died in Philadelphia, PA. from coronary artery disease.

Legendary entertainer Pearl Mae Bailey was born on March 29, 1918 in Southamption County, Virginia to Rev. Joseph and Ella Mae Bailey. She grew up in Newport News, Virginia. Bailey began her acting and singing career early at the age of 15 with her debut performance at an amateur contest at Philadelphia’s Pearl Theater. Encouraged to enter the contest by her older brother, Bill Bailey, an aspiring tap dancer, Pearl Bailey won first prize in the competition.

After winning a similar contest at Harlem’s Apollo Theater, Bailey decided to start performing as a professional. In the 1930s she took jobs singing and dancing in Philadelphia’s black nightclubs. After the start of World War II, Bailey decided to tour the country with the USO where she performed for US troops. The USO performances spread her name and reputation across the country.

After the war ended Bailey moved to New York. She continued to perform in nightclubs but she also garnered a recording contract and now went on tour to promote her music. Her 1952 recording, “Takes Two to Tango,” was one of the top songs of the year. In 1946 Bailey made her Broadway debut in St. Louis Woman where she played the role of Hagar in a cast that also included Mahalia Jackson, Eartha Kitt and Nat King Cole. Although Bailey performed on stage she still performed in concert tours. On November 9, 1952, Bailey married jazz drummer Louie Bellson in London.

In 1954 Bailey made her film debut as a supporting actress in Carmen Jones. Playing the character, Frankie, she was most remembered for her rendition of “Beat Out That Rhythm on the Drum. Bailey also starred in the Broadway musical House of Flowers in 1954. By 1959 she was considered a leading African American actor and starred in films such as Porgy and Bess with Sidney Poitier and Dorothy Dandridge.

In 1970, Bailey, a lifelong Republican, was appointed by President Richard Nixon as America’s “Ambassador of Love.” In that post she attended several meetings at the United Nations. She later made a television commercial for President Gerald Ford in the 1976 election.

Although Bailey continued to release records and star in various films through the 1960s, had a short-lived television series in the early 1970s, her most celebrated entertainment achievement came in 1975 when she returned to the stage to star in an all-black production of Hello Dolly where she won a Tony Award.

While taking a break from acting, Bailey went back to school and earned a B.A. in theology from Georgetown University in 1985. In 1987 Bailey won an Emmy Award for her performance in an ABC Afterschool Special, Cindy Eller: A Modern Fairy Tale. The following year she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Ronald Reagan.
On August 17, 1990, Pearl Mae Bailey died in Philadelphia from coronary artery disease. She was 72. Research more about this great American and share with your babies. Make it a champion day!

16Aug

August 16 1947-Carol Moseley Braun

GM – FBF – Get ready for a great day! Let’s go back and examine the story of the first Black woman elected to sreve in the United States Senate. Enjoy!

Remember – “Bush is giving the rich a tax cut instead of putting that cut in the pockets of working people.” – Carol Moseley

Today in our History – August 16, 1947 – Carol Moseley Braun, the first African American woman to be elected to the U.S. Senate, was born in Chicago, Illinois.

Braun, attended the Chicago Public Schools and received a degree from the University of Illinois in 1969. She earned her degree from the University of Chicago Law School in 1972.

Moseley Braun served as assistant prosecutor in the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Chicago from 1972 to 1978. In the latter year she was elected to the Illinois House of Representatives and served in that body for ten years. During her tenure Moseley Braun made educational reform a priority. She also became the first African American assistant majority leader in the history of the Illinois legislature. Moseley Braun returned to Chicago in 1988 to serve as Cook County Recorder of Deeds.

Capitalizing on the public furor over the Clarence Thomas-Anita Hill controversy and in particular the way in which Hill was treated by U.S. Senators, Carol Moseley Braun upset incumbent Senator Alan Dixon in the Illinois Democratic Primary in 1992 and went on to become the first female Senator elected from Illinois and the first African American woman in the U.S. Senate. During her term in the U.S. Senate (1992-1998) Moseley Braun focused on education issues. She served on the Senate Finance, Banking and Judiciary Committee; the
Small Business Committee; and the Housing and Urban Affairs Committee.

In 1998, Moseley Braun was defeated for re-election in a campaign marred by allegations of illegal campaign donations during her 1992 campaign, although she was never formally charged with misconduct. Moseley Braun was also hurt by her business ties to Nigerian dictator Sami Abacha. After her 1998 defeat President Bill Clinton nominated Moseley Braun to the post of U.S. Ambassador to New Zealand and Samoa, a post she held until 2001

Late in 2003 Moseley Braun announced her candidacy for the Democratic Nomination for President. However, she failed to attract financial support and withdrew from the race on January 14, 2004.

After teaching briefly at Morris Brown College in Atlanta, Georgia, Moseley Braun returned to Chicago where she now lives. Research more about the great American and share with your babies. Make it a champion day!