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Saturday, July 23, 2016

Jim Crow, Marian Anderson, Eleanor Roosevelt and the Lincoln Memorial


Marian Anderson and Eleanor Roosevelt Cut Path through Jim Crow Laws in 1939 at the Lincoln Memorial.


Eleanor Roosevelt (left) presents Marian Anderson (right) the NAACP 1939 Spingarn Medal Awarded each year for outstanding achievement by an African American.
Eleanor Roosevelt (left) presents Marian Anderson (right) the NAACP 1939 Spingarn Medal
Awarded each year for outstanding achievement by an African American.

Marian Anderson sang a historic concert at the Lincoln Memorial in 1939, more than a quarter of a century before the Lincoln Memorial became the location of the Martin Luther King "I Have a Dream Speech" at the conclusion of the March on Washington in 1963.


Eleanor Roosevelt was deeply angered when the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) refused to grant Marian Anderson a contract to sing at Constitution Hall on the grounds that she was a black performer. In response, Eleanor Roosevelt arranged for Marian Anderson to perform a concert at the Lincoln Memorial, forging the path for Rosa Parks 16 years later to lead the Montgomery Bus Boycott, which launched the career of Martin Luther King and led to King's "I Have a Dream Speech" at the conclusion of the March on Washington. 


DAR's action against Marian Anderson was directed by Jim Crow law and tradition.


"The DAR had adopted a rule excluding African-American artists from the Constitution Hall stage in 1932 following protests over "mixed seating," blacks and whites seated together, at concerts of black artists. You may read a 2-page letter from Mrs. Henry M. Robert, Jr., president general of the DAR, responding to Mrs. Roosevelt's resignation." "From: National Archives and Records Administration

DAR Letter to Eleanor Roosevelt refusing Marian Anderson use of Constitution Hall for concert that later took place at the Lincoln Memorial

Page 1, Letter to Eleanor; Page 2 Letter to Eleanor

Marian Anderson's application for performance at Constitution Hall was denied, based on her race. Anderson was not permitted to bring song to Constitution Hall for her performance because the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR), in charge of the facility, did not rent the space to nonwhite performers.


First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt's letter of resignation from the DAR after DAR refused use of Constitution Hall to Marian Anderson

When Eleanor read the letter about the DAR Jim Crow snub toward Marian Anderson's request to book her concert at Constitution Hall, First Lady Roosevelt wrote a letter resigning her membership in DAR and expressing her great displeasure of the organization's treatment of Marian Anderson. The First Lady Roosevelt, then went about making alternative arrangements for the Marian Anderson concert at the Lincoln Memorial. African American opera singer, Marian Anderson, sang on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and her performance launched her as the voice of the Civil Rights Movement. The audience was silent as Anderson presented her program with dignified presence, commanding respect of the universe.



First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt arranged Marian Anderson's concert at the Lincoln Memorial, which, in retrospect, a great number of Americans thought was a far more appropriate location for the concert than Constitution Hall, denied to Anderson by DAR.


Teen Photo of Eleanor Roosevelt before she became First Lady
The civil rights activism of First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt did not begin or end with the Marian Anderson affair. The daughter of the brother of President Theodore Roosevelt, Eleanor like learned her politics at the dinner table. Being of independent mind from the start and maturing into an independent person of action, Eleanor became force with which to be reckoned.

After marrying Franklin Roosevelt and then becoming First Lady, her columns, speeches, journals were captured in print. Behind the scenes it is said that she influenced the president's racial tolerance, although, not so much his actual civil rights policies, which were avoided due to southern dominance of the Democratic party.

The First Lady's philosophy is published in books, newspapers and magazines. So, it was no surprise that the Marian Anderson concert was arranged by First Lady, Eleanor Roosevelt, when the Daughters of the American Revolution refused to honor Anderson's application for a license to perform at Constitution Hall in Washington DC. The policy of the segregated city of Washington supported their decision. Anderson "was not white," her manager Sol Hurok was told by facility administration.

First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and Tuskeegee Airman, Charles Alfred Anderson, the first African American to earn a U.S. pilot's license
Until her death in 1962, Eleanor Roosevelt was a dedicated supporter of civil rights. Her social activism dates back to the 1939 Marian Anderson and DAR controversy over the use of Constitution Hall in Washington DC, the establishment of the Tuskegee Airmen in World War II and support of the peaceful protest doctrine of Martin Luther King.

"Charles Alfred Anderson, the first African American to earn a U.S. pilot's license, became the first flight instructor when the Civilian Pilot Training Program (CPTP) was organized at Tuskegee Institute in October 1939. The army decided to model its training program on the CPTP and hired Anderson to teach the Tuskegee pilots," Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Project

From 1949 until she died in 1962, Eleanor Roosevelt wrote a column in McCall's, If You Ask Me, in which the former First Lady answered reader questions. In 1963, the same year as the March on Washington, Roosevelt's quotations were collected and published.

Marian Anderson in concert at the Lincoln Memorial in 1939 after being denied use of Constitution Hall by DAR
Marian Anderson at Lincoln Memorial
Marian Anderson's concert at the Lincoln Memorial attracted an orderly racially mixed audience of more than 75,000 in defiance of Jim Crow, evolving into its own dignified and cultured protest against Jim Crow racism in America, forging a path for another peaceful protest at the Lincoln Memorial almost a quarter century later--the 1963 Martin Luther King speech, "I Have A Dream" culminating the March on Washington, which attracted an orderly racially mixed audience of more than 200,000 in defiance of Jim Crow racism in America. 


Both the March on Washington, led by Martin Luther King, and the Marian Anderson concert drew suspicion of trouble with gatherings so large in the nation's capitol. However, neither reported trouble. They both drew like-minded people who were there to make difference in the way the United States of America conducted its business at home and abroad in regards to race relations in America.

Marion Anderson, Eleanor Roosevelt and Martin Luther King did the same thing with their powerful voices. And there was no question in my mind after reading and listening to these powerful messages that those in attendance were witnessing history as portrayed by true Americans. Both First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and opera singer, Marian Anderson, lived to see Dr. Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech at the Lincoln Memorial in 1963.


  • Eleanor Roosevelt was born in 1884 and died in 1962.
  • Martin Luther King, Jr., was born in 1928 and died in 1968.
  • Marian Anderson was born in 1897 and died in 1993.



No person of any color, creed, religion, ethnic origin, nationality or economic class is more American than Marian Anderson, Eleanor Roosevelt and Martin Luther King, all of whom came upon this earth called to do a duty and none failed in their performance of that duty. 

What is the lesson left to the rest of us by the actions of Marian Anderson, Eleanor Roosevelt and Martin Luther King?


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Thursday, July 21, 2016

Black Female Olympian, Flo Jo, Helped Change Jim Crow Beauty Standards

Black Female Olympian, Flo Jo, winner of three gold medals in Olympics track and field, helped to bring down Jim Crow attitudes toward the beauty of black women.


Florence "Flo Jo" Griffith-Joyner

Flo Jo may not have set out to use her glamorous style, natural beauty and sex appeal to combat Jim Crow, but her tactics worked.



In my research for a new book, I did not discover substantiation of an elaborate plan created and implemented by Florence Flo Jo Griffith-Joyner to mount an all-out attack on long-held racist American beauty standards, just that she began to develop her unique way when she was still young and living at home with her mother. 

Flo Jo's style set her apart in the athletic world and the rest of the universe, as well. 


Her daring flash followed her into an athletic career and Olympic stardom in track and field, effectively bringing emphatic and immediate world attention to the allure of the black woman, which until her time, had been completely ignored the general public and mass media and, at best, given a back seat in the United States. The Olympic star used track and field events to launch her iconic image that would stage an assault on Jim Crow's regard for and treatment of African American women.

No female track and field star had ever come out of the blocks looking like Flo Jo and the world took notice of this woman as stunning as any film actress


Flo Jo
Do not misunderstand me. I am not saying that Florence Flo Jo Griffith-Joyner did something comparable to what Rosa Parks did in leading the Montgomery Bus Boycott. What I am saying is that Joyner's contribution to social justice and civil rights pushed equality forward on a different front. Her bold use of glamour in track and field to change the perception of black female beauty gained a certain justice that was as real, although not as significant many may argue, as the victory Rosa Parks won. 

Remember, Flo Jo came along 30 years after Rosa Parks led the Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1955-56. In the 1980s, many laws had changed the legal footing on which discrimination had stood. The new racism, tainted with traces of the old, still lurked in employment opportunities, higher education, business ownership, political elections and beauty pageants.  


Rosa Parks & Martin Luther King Montgomery Bus Boycott Mugshot
Rosa Parks & Martin Luther King
Montgomery Bus Boycott Mugshot
Rosa Parks nor Florence Joyner could hide from media coverage and both were beautiful women. However, Rosa Parks became part of a strategic plan devised by the NAACP to organize a movement against Jim Crow laws in the Deep South. Older and of a different era than Flo Jo, Rosa Parks was chosen by the NAACP for her conservative appearance and dressed by those standards to avoid discrediting the Civil Rights Movement and leaders of the movement, namely, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. 

Fashion Model,  Beauty Consultant & Fitness Expert
Florence Flo Jo Griffith-Joyner
Fashion Model, 
Beauty Consultant & Fitness Expert
Joyner, having been born after the Montgomery Bus Boycott, had no direct experience with the blatant legal racism and oppression that occurred during the era of Rosa Parks and Martin Luther king. However, Jim Crow racism continued to exist in different forms and had to be met with different tools like education, voting and, yes, beauty.

After Jim Crow met Flo Jo, everything about the beauty game changed.


Florence "Flo Jo"
 Griffith-Joyner
One reason for the television camera's romance with track and field star, Florence Flo Jo Griffith-Joyner, was the fact that she was articulate and educated, and looked so good no matter what! Whether she was warming up, coming out of the block, running on the track or winning at the finish line in a stream of steam, Flo Jo looked glamorous. Every woman in the world--young, old, black, white and everything in between--wanted to look so good working so hard while making the job look so easy.

Flo Jo splashed onto international television and changed Jim Crow traditions regarding the acknowledgement of and acceptance of black female beauty. 


After the meeting of Flo Jo and Jim Crow, beauty stereotypes began to crumble. She not only changed the way track and field females participated in their game, she changed the way American women of all colors looked at themselves in the mirror preparing to meet their world every day. 

Florence Flo Jo Griffith-Joyner 1988 Summer Olympics Seoul, Korea
Florence Flo Jo Griffith-Joyner
1988 Summer Olympics
Seoul, South Korea
Florence Flo Jo Griffith-Joyner knew the principles and psychology of beauty, which she applied.


That's it--the beauty of it all! I know that's how I felt when I saw Flo Jo on a television screen or a magazine cover during her moment at the finish line. She always looked as great finishing a race as she did when the race began. The controlled image she portrayed was part of her mystic, the brand she was developing that was intended to take her into a different career after her running days were over. 

Flo Jo helped change the stereotype of America beauty.


Florence Flo Jo Griffith-Joyner
Florence Flo Jo Griffith-Joyner
So completely aware of herself, Flo Jo began preparing for her finish line face before she warmed up or lined up in the blocks. That brand building required self control over every aspect of her own being. She knew the cameras were on her and she was prepared to give them what they wanted at all times. The legacy of Flo Jo's beauty, equal to that of any beauty queen, goes deeper than a woman wanting to look her best, which caused many to judge her as vain. 

During the Jim Crow era, black women were not allowed to be considered beautiful outside their black communities, which was part of the negative racial conditioning, one more method to keep a people looking down on their own kind as not good enough to be deemed fully human. Being considered beautiful would have bestowed value upon black women. The reasoning being: if black women were considered beautiful, it placed them on equal footing with white women, which was against all Jim Crow principles of racial inequality. However, African Americans developed their own standards of beauty, albeit, multiracial women or women of lighter complexion being preferred to represent that standard of beauty, an infiltration of Jim Crow beauty standards in the black community.

Cheryl Brown, Miss Iowa First Black Miss America Contestant
Cheryl Brown, Miss Iowa
First Black Miss America Contestant
1970
Vanessa Williams First Black Miss America 1984
Vanessa Williams
First Black Miss America
1984
American society, in general, reserved the title of beautiful for white women. This sentiment was expressed from the beginning of the Miss America competition in 1921 until 1970 when the first black woman, Cheryl Brown, Miss Iowa, was a contestant. It was 14 years later in 1984 that a black woman first reigned as Miss America. A sizable segment of the American population either objected or was confused and displeased by this development.


The Jim Crow American society still had a long way to go.



The same year, 1984, that Vanessa Williams won the Miss America crown and garnered media attention, Flo Jo entered the scene when she debuted in the Summer Olympic Games in Los Angeles, where she won a silver medal for the 200-meter run. There Joyner introduced glamour for the first time to track and field and captured the imagination of the world in a way that Miss America had not. Not only was Joyner beautiful enough in in her own right to be a beauty queen, she had physical gifts that would propel her to her title--fastest woman on earth--with beauty, brains and body to justify her claim. 

Flo Jo Elevated the Image of Black Women
Flo Jo Elevated the Image of Black Feminity

Flo Jo's legacy was like a knife in the heart of Jim Crow. 


Flo Jo worked as hard as any man on the docks. But she made her job look easy by maintaining her poise and extreme beauty at the same time that she was winning gold at the Olympics. Flo Jo learned to keep a flattering expression on her face because she knew newspaper, magazine and television cameras would capture her every nostril flare and eye twitch. She knew how to hold her face as indicated by her file photos.

Flo Jo’s speed at the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul, South Korea, won her the title of the fastest female in the world and most glamorous woman in the history of track and field.

Flo Jo's victories in the 1988 Olympics earned her the title Fastest Woman in the World and landed her on the cover of Sports Illustrated. She had set a world record at the U.S. Olympics quarterfinals trials, caused a sensation in female athletics with records still unbroken, and won three gold medals at the 1988 Seoul, Korea, Olympics, all while creating that Flo Jo image.


Florence Flo Jo Griffith-Joyner - 1988 Olympics, Seoul, South Korea--Fastest Woman in the World


Perfect makeup--glossy lips, alluring eyelashes, flowing hair and manicured fingernails put a glamorous face on track and field, rivaled only by beauty pageants and Hollywood movies. Florence Flo Jo Joyner became a star track and field athlete, television actor, fashion model, designer, makeup and fitness professional, and writer.

Mojave, California 1950s - Mojave Virtual Museum
Mojave, California 1950sMojave Virtual Museum
Born Delorez Florence Griffith on December 21, 1959, Flo Jo was the seventh of eleven children born to Florence and Robert Griffith in the small town of Mojave, California, in the southwestern region of the Mojave Desert, ninety miles north of Los Angeles. According to the 2010 Census, the town reported 4.238 residents, which in 1959, would have offered few opportunities for a budding national athlete or aspiring Olympian like Florence.

When she was four years old, her parents separated and her mother moved the family to the Jordan Downs Public Housing Project in the Los Angeles Watts area. However, spending time with her father, who had a job as an electrical technician in Mojave, young Florence began running when she was seven years old, chasing jackrabbits in the Mojave Desert. Her father had no idea he was beginning the training for an Olympic  star, let alone the fastest woman in the world.

Jordan Downs Public Housing Project Housing Authority City of Los Angeles
Jordan Downs Public Housing Project
Housing Authority City of Los Angeles
After summers in the Mojave Desert with her father, Flo Jo returned home to her family at Jordan Downs Public Housing Project in Watts. Determined to get an education, Flo Jo graduated from Jordan High School in Los Angeles where she continued to run on the track and field team. 

Then Florance Joyner enrolled at California State University, Northridge, and continued running, but had to drop out of school and get a job in banking to help support her family. She re-enrolled in school when she found financial aid, changing colleges, transferring to the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) to join her track coach, Bob Kersee. 

Flo Jo

In fact, Flo Jo was forced to drop out of school several times due to financial difficulties. In the meanwhile, she made money at a banking job and additional money on the side with jobs as hairstylist and manicurist, skills she would use later to reinvent herself as the glamorous Flo Jo. 

"[Florence Griffith Joyner] was someone who wanted to make a fashion statement, as well as do it while running so fast you could barely see the fashion," says Phil Hersh of the Chicago Tribune on ESPN Classic's Sports Century series. Going to school on financial aid and loans, Flo Jo continued her track training. In 1983, she won the NCAA 400 and then graduated from UCLA with her bachelor's degree in psychology. In 1987, Joyner married 1984 Olympic triple jump gold medalist, Al Joyner, brother of heptathlon Olympian, Jackie Joyner-Kersee. In 1990, their daughter, Mary Ruth, was born. 

Flo Jo did not take off her running shoes until she had won three gold medals in the Olympics and an assortment of silver medals and other running distinctions. Although her 1988 records still stand, Flo Jo was accused by other athletes of using performance-enhancement drugs in order to win gold medals. However, Flo Jo never failed a drug test.

Add caption
After her 1988 triple gold-medal Olympics, Joyner was inducted into the Track and Field Hall of Fame, named by The Associated Press 1988 Female Athlete of the Year, won the James E. Sullivan Award as the nation's top amateur star athlete and served as co-chair of the President's Council on Physical Fitness. There were other black female  Olympic medalists, like Wilma Rudolph, who dismantled Jim Crow in athletics and created the path for Florence Joyner to run without overt racism and to exude the beauty and confidence that gave her so much more than gold medals in the Olympics.

President Ronald Reagan
& Florence Griffith-Joyner
After an illustrious career, Flo Jo  retired and established a foundation for underprivileged children, remembering her own childhood in Watts. She also began her own clothing line of sports athletic uniforms, using sewing skills she learned from her seamstress mother. When she was a youngster, she designed and made her own wardrobes for school and made clothes for her dolls, so the new profession came natural to her.

We watched Joyner on television gracing the track like a fashion model on a runway or an film actress on the red carpet for her latest role in the movies. And as fate would have it, Flo Jo acted in several television shows

She began having seizures in 1996. Two years later, on September 21, 1998, at age 38, Flo Jo suffered an epileptic seizure in her sleep and died. That was just ten years after she became famous as the fastest woman in the world and captured the attention of television cameras around the world for her glamour on and off the track. Flo Jo's Olympic record still stands. She is still the fastest woman in the world.


Wednesday, July 20, 2016

First Black Female Olympics Medal Winner

In 1948, Audrey Patterson became the first African American woman to win an Olympic medal.


Audrey "Mickey" Patterson, President Harry S. Truman The White House 1948
Audrey Patterson & President Harry S. Truman
The White House 1948

Audrey Patterson



Audrey Patterson was the first African American woman to win an Olympic medal--bronze--in 1948. 


With all that gold being earned by African American women at the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio, we should remember the first African American women to win Olympic medals, lest we forget that Audrey Patterson helped lay the groundwork for black female gold medalists in the 2016 Summer Olympic in Rio. 


Audrey Patterson was born in 1926 in New Orleans, Louisiana, in the heart of Jim Crow America. 

The Olympic Games were cancelled in 1940 and 1944 as many Americans were glued to the radio listening for developments of war with Germany. Audrey Patterson was in high school at the world was fighting in the European and Pacific theaters. No doubt, Patterson knew black soldiers in her family, her community or her school--although not allowed to enter combat in a meaningful way due to Jim Crow laws.  

African American men nationwide were on the cusp of gaining important civil rights for themselves in the military, as well as for other American blacks back home. 


During WWII, the Tuskegee Airmen, a unit of black pilots was organized at the instigation of black activist, A. Philip Randolph. The Army trained these men for air combat.Their proficiency proved so strong that they led to the desegregation of the U.S. Army by the Executive Order of President Harry S. Truman. After WWII ended in 1945, the next time a black American woman competed in the Olympics was in 1948. This was just before the official opening of the modern Civil Rights Movement when Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King burst onto the scene in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1954. In the meanwhile, black Americans were on the hunt for heroes to use in the fight against Jim Crow laws and the Olympics seemed as good a place as any. Female Olympians were training at both Tuskegee and Tennessee State in the tradition of former Olympic competitors.

Black females had been qualifying for the Olympics since 1932 in integrated track and field teams.


1936 U.S. Female Olympic Track & Field

Trained at Tuskegee Institute, Tydie Pickett and Louise Stokes entered competition with the 1932 Los Angeles Olympics and the 1936 Berlin Olympics teams. Both times, Pickett and Stokes were replaced at the last minute by white teammates they had previously defeated.These political decisions were made by Olympic officials and seemed to have something to do with race.

The Berlin Olympics of 1936, however, belonged to black male track star, Jesse Owens, who won four individual gold medals at the Olympics. Legend has it that Jesse Owens was snubbed by Adolph Hitler. However, Owens said in his biography that he felt more of a snub by his own country upon his return from the Berlin Olympics. Touring with his Olympics team, he was discriminated against in hotel accommodations, restaurants and transportation due to Jim Crow laws in the United States. 

Further, Jesse Owens was not invited to the White House until many years after his victory when he was invited to the White House by President Dwight Eisenhower and appointed Athletic Ambassador. Owens when around the world promoting the goodwill of the United States by speaking to school children. Owens also made the rounds among schools in the United States, especially in the south where Jim Crow laws still prevailed.

Audrey Patterson said she felt that 1936 Olympic gold medal winner, Jesse Owens, was speaking to her in 1944 when he told a group at Gilbert Academy, "There is a boy or a girl in this audience who will go to the Olympics."In 1947, Patterson enrolled at Wiley College in Marshall, Texas, where she became a track star, winning the Tuskegee Relays in the 100- and 220-yard dashes and the Amateur Athletic Union National Indoor Title in the 220-yard event. In 1948, Patterson transferred from Wiley to Tennessee State in Nashville, where she dominated the American record with another undefeated season. Patterson went to Providence, Rhode Island, for trials in the 1948 Olympics and earned a position on the U.S. Women's All-American Track & Field Team for the London Olympics. Patterson was one of the nine black females on the 12-member team.

At the time of the 1948 Olympics, Audrey Patterson, also known as Mickey, was a 22-year running beauty, who got cheers whenever the crowd caught a glimpse of her. And Mickey did not disappoint her international fans. By edging out Shirley Strickland of Australia, Patterson won a bronze medal for the 200-meter dash in the first Olympic Games that offered women the 200-meter race for competition. Fanny Blankers-Koen of the Netherlands won the race, her third gold medal. A few days later, African American track and field star from Tuskegee Institute, Alice Coachman, won a gold medal for the high jump.

When Audrey Patterson returned from the Olympics, her hometown newspaper, The Times-Picayune, did not mention her victory, which was interpreted by the black community as a snub because Patterson was an African American. The mayor did not attend her celebration ceremony, sending a certificate in his stead. However, President Harry Truman invited Patterson to the White House for a congratulatory visit after her history-making Olympic performance. 


Google

In 1948, Rosa Parks had started her civil rights career with the Montgomery, Alabama, branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) as a principal investigator in rape cases involving black Alabama women. Rape was a primary offense against black women during the era of Jim Crow laws, used to control activities and suppress esteem in the black community. It was during the next decade, that Rosa Parks and Dr. Martin Luther King led the Montgomery Bus Boycott that led to the dismantling of Jim Crow laws across America.

Although, during this same period changes were occurring nationally in race relations. The Tuskegee Airmen, a unit  of black pilots had helped the United States win WWII and President Harry Truman had desegregated the U.S. Army. Both of these events were brought about by the encouragement of former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and black activist, A. Philip Randolph, labeled the most dangerous black man in America.

1948 U.S. Female Olympic Track & Field

At the 1948 London Olympics, nine of the 12  members of the U.S. Women’s All-American Track & Field Team were African American. Audrey "Mickey" Patterson of Tennessee State became the first African American woman in Olympic history to win a medal. 

Audrey Patterson was born in 1926 in New Orleans, Louisiana, in the heart of the Jim Crow south, steeping in discrimination against African Americans. 

Audrey Patterson won a bronze medal for the 200-meter dash in the 1948 Olympics. That was the first time the 200-meter race was included in Olympic competition for female runners. In that 1948 Olympic Games, another African American female became the first black American woman to win a gold medal in Olympics history; Alice Coachman won the high jump and was inducted into eight athletic Halls of Fame. Later that year, the Amateur Athletic Union announced that Audrey Patterson had been named Woman Athlete of the Year

In 1965, Audrey Patterson founded Mickey's Missiles track club for girls six to 18, and produced Olympic track star, sprinter Jackie Thompson, who competed in the 200-meter Olympics in 1972. In 1982, Patterson founded the Martin Luther King Freedom Run in San Diego and was inducted into the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame. Audrey Patterson died in 1996.









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    Bigmama Didn’t Shop  At Woolworth’s  Sunny Nash

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Sunny Nash author of bigmama didn't shop at woolworth's
Sunny Nash is an author, producer, photographer and leading writer on U.S. race relations. 

Sunny Nash writes books, blogs, articles and reviews, and produces media and images on U.S. history and contemporary American topics, ranging from Jim Crow laws to social media networking. Sunny Nash is the author of Bigmama Didn't Shop At Woolworth's (Texas A&M University Press), about life with her part-Comanche grandmother during the Civil Rights Movement.

Sunny Nash’s book is recognized by the Association of American University Presses as essential for understanding U.S. race relations. Nash's book is also listed in the Bibliographic Guide for black studies at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in New York; and recommended for Native American collections by the Miami-Dade Public Library System in Florida. Nash uses her book to write articles and blogs on race relations in America through topics relating to her life--from music, film, early radio and television, entertainment, social media, Internet technology, publishing, journalism, sports, education, employment, the military, fashion, performing arts, literature, women's issues, adolescence and childhood, equal rights, social and political movements--past and present—to today's post-racism.


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