Little Known Black History Facts

Reference:The Encyclopedia of African-American Heritageby Susan AltmanCopyright 1997, Facts on File, Inc. New YorkISBN 0-8160-3289-0

Dr. Ralph J. Bunche was born on August 7,1904; he was an African-American scholar and diplomat, known for his work in the United Nations and the first black to win a Nobel Peace Prize.He was born in Detroit, Michigan. He graduated from the University of California at Los Angeles in 1927 and earned a doctorate in government and international relations from Harvard University in 1934. He taught political science at Howard University, while completing his doctorate work at Harvard. From 1938 until 1940, he worked with the Swedish sociologist Gunnar Myrdal on a classical study of African- Americans that resulted in Myrdal's 1944 book, An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and American Democracy.Dr. Bunche served in the Office of Strategic Services from 1941 to 1944, during World War II, and joined the United States Department of State in 1944; in 1945, he became the first black to head a departmental division in federal government, the Division of Dependent Area Affairs. An expert on trusteeship matters, Ralph Bunche participated in the writing of the UN Charter and in 1946, he became director of the trusteeship division of the UN.Beginning in 1947, as a senior member of the staff of the UN commission on Palestine, he participated in the mediation efforts that resulted in recognition of the state of Israel. Bunche won international recognition for his skill as a mediator, and he was awarded the 1950 Nobel Peace Prize after negotiating the four armistice agreements that halted the 1948-1949 Arab-Israeli War. Continuing to work at the UN, he became an Undersecretary in 1955. In 1969, this title was changed to Undersecretary General of the UN. Until his retirement from the UN in 1971 Bunche directed peacekeeping operations for the UN and was responsible for the UN program on peaceful uses of atomic energy.Throughout his life, Bunche worked to improve race relations and further the cause of civil rights. For 22 years, he served on the board of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), earning its highest honor, the Spingarn Medal, in 1949. He participated in several civil rights demonstrations, including the 1963 March on Washington. That same year, U. S. President John F. Kennedy awarded him the Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian award. Ralph Bunche died in 1971.

Dr. Ralph J. Bunche

Reference: Rita DoveTo be a Writer

Rita Dove was born on August 28,1952. She is an African-American writer and poet.Rita Frances Dove was born to Ray and Elvira Dove in Akron, Ohio. A National Merit Scholar, she graduated from Miami University in Ohio summa cum laude in 1973. She then attended the Universitaet Tuebingen in West Germany on a Fulbright Scholarship from 1974-1975. In 1977, she graduated from the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop with an MFA.It was in Iowa that Dove met her husband, German novelist Fred Viebahn; they married in 1979, and have one daughter, Aviva Chantal Tamu Dove-Viebahn.After publishing “Ten Poems” in 1977, Dove was awarded grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Ohio Arts Council. Four years later, she accepted a position as aAssistant professor in the English Department at Arizona State University (ASU). She left ASU in 1989 as pProfessor of English for a similar position at. the University of Virginia In 1993, she was named Commonwealth Professor of English, a position she continues to hold. That same year the Library of Congress named Rita Dove Poet Laureate of the United States, the youngest person and only African American until then to be named to that post, an appointment she held for two years.During her tenure, she brought Crow Indian schoolchildren from Montana to read their poems at the Library of Congress, helped launch a series of public-service ads about poetry in conjunction with the Lifetime cable network, and organized other programs in an attempt to make poetry more "user-friendly." Included among her numerous awards is a Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1987 for “Thomas and Beulah”; a National Book Award; a Guggenheim Fellowship; a Rockefeller Foundation Residency; a Mellon Fellowship; a Heinz Award in Arts and Humanities; an Amy Lowell Fellowship; and a Shelley Memorial Award.She has received honorary doctorates from 18 universities including Boston College, Dartmouth College, the University of Pennsylvania, Northeastern University, the University of North Carolina, Columbia University, and Washington and Lee. Rita Dove remains one of the most influential representatives of poetry’s past, present, and future and the value of Spoken Word through poetry in America.

Rita Dove

Reference:Chauncey E. Spencer II,2nd Vice President Central Region,Tuskegee Airmen, Inc.,2510 Fullerton,Detroit, Michigan. 48238,(313) 865-1591

Chauncey Spencer was born November 6, 1906, in Lynchburg, VA. He was one of three children of Edward Spencer and noted Harlem Renaissance poet Anne Spencer. One of the most respected families in Lynchburg, visitors to the Spencer home included George Washington Carver, Paul Robeson, James Weldon Johnson, Walter White, Clarence Muse, Dean Pickens, Adam Clayton Powell, Langston Hughes, Thurgood Marshall, and W.E.B. Dubois.At the age of 11, he fell in love with flying, but after graduating from college, no aviation school in Virginia would admit him because of his color. Spencer moved to Chicago in 1934 and joined with a group of African American aviators in organizing the National Airmen Association of America (NAAA). Working for $16-a-week as a kitchen helper, he paid $11 an hour for flying lessons.In May 1939, he and fellow aviator Dale Lawrence White, also an NAAA member, flew a rented Lincoln-Paige biplane with only two flight instruments on a ten-city tour that started in Chicago and ended in Washington, DC. Realizing that war in Europe was imminent, they demonstrated the aviation abilities of Negroes and lobbied Congress to include of people of color in the Civilian Pilot Training Program for the Army Air Corps. Their flight drew national attention and proved that African Americans could fly an airplane, contrary to the beliefs and opinions of most Army Air Corps and government leaders.They met with Harry Truman and others in Congress, convincing them to support their cause. Later, while employed by the Army, Spencer worked with Judge William H. Hastie for fair treatment of African American air cadets being trained at Tuskegee Institute in Alabama and other air bases during World War II. He encountered considerable resistance from whites as well as blacks as the Civilian Personnel Employee Relations Officer at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio. Despite this, he persisted and made steady progress towards integration of the Air Force. In 1948, Spencer received the Exceptional Civilian Service Award for service during World War II, the highest honor the Air Force could bestow upon a civilian.In 1953, the United States Air Force referred to his role in the integration of the military as "unique though strangely unsung." However, his refusal to drag his feet on integration created resentment among highly-placed officials who wished to see integration fail. Consequently, in 1953, Spencer was charged with disloyalty and accused of being a Communist. He was relieved of his position and his family suffered great humiliation and economic deprivation. In June 1954 the Air Force cleared him of all charges. Spencer and his family would never fully recover from this ordeal.Despite ill-treatment, he continued to maintain his belief in the goodness and strength of mankind and America until his death on August 21, 2002.

Chauncey Spencer

On July 15,1867, Maggie Lena Walker was born. She was a noted African-American businesswoman, civics leader, and the first Black female bank president in America.Walker spent her childhood at the Van Lew Mansion in Richmond, VA, where her mother, a former slave, worked as a cook’s helper. Miss Van Lew, an abolitionist, made sure that all of her servants received a good education. It was here that Walker began to learn the value and importance of education. Like many educated Black women during that time, Walker's first contribution was in the field of education. She taught in the public school system after her graduation from Armstrong Normal School in Richmond. She left teaching after her marriage and soon saw the limited availability of jobs for Black women.It was Walker's belief that Black American women had an instrumental part to play in the economic and political success of the Black American community. In 1903, she founded the Saint Luke Penny Saving Bank in Richmond, (her hometown). She retired for health reasons in 1933 and died a year later. The bank survived the depression and remains solvent to this day.

Reference:Black Women in America: An Historical EncyclopediaVolumes 1 and 2, edited by Darlene Clark HineCopyright 1993, Carlson Publishing Inc., Brooklyn, New YorkISBN 0-926019-61-9

Maggie Lena Walker

Reference:Black Americans In Congress, 1870-1989.Bruce A. Ragsdale & Joel D. TreeseU.S. Government Printing OfficeRaymond W. Smock, historian and director 1990E185.96.R25

John Mercer Langston, born December 15, 1829 was an American abolitionist, attorney, educator, and political activist.Langston was born free to a white plantation owner John Quarles and Lucy Jane Langston, a slave. He was the youngest of four children. His older brother, Charles Henry, became noted abolitionist Charles Henry Langston, and John was the great-uncle of renowned poet Langston Hughes.When he was 4, both his parents died and he went with a family friend to Oberlin, Ohio. At the age of 14, Langston enrolled in the Preparatory Department at Oberlin College. He enrolled in the graduate program in Theology at Oberlin in preparation for later legal study. Although he obtained a Master's degree, he was denied entry to law school, and he read law under a lawyer in Elyria. He was the first Black lawyer in Ohio admitted to the bar, in 1854.Langston married Caroline Wall, a student at Oberlin, settled in Brownhelm, OH, and established a law practice. He was elected to the post of Town Clerk in 1855, perhaps the first African American elected to public office in the United States, and later, after he moved back to Oberlin in 1856, he was elected city councilman and later to the board of education.Langston helped create the Republican Party in 1854. With the aid of his brothers Gideon and Charles, Langston organized antislavery societies at both the state and local levels. He helped runaway slaves to escape along the Ohio border as part of the Underground Railroad.He played a major role in recruiting Black soldiers for the Union Army during the Civil War. When the war ended, he was appointed inspector general for the Freedmen's Bureau, a federal agency created to assist freed slaves.Langston moved to Washington in 1868 to organize and become dean of the first Black law school in the nation at Howard University. He also became the first Black to practice before the U.S. Supreme Court. He was elected a delegate to the Republican National Convention in 1876, and a year later named U.S. minister to Haiti.Langston returned to Virginia in 1885 to serve as the first president of what is now Virginia State University. In 1888, he ran as an independent for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. He won, the first African American elected to Congress from Virginia, but his victory was contested for 18 months and he served only 6 months before being unseated in the next election.Langston retired to Washington, where he wrote his autobiography, "From the Virginia plantation to the National Capitol: or, The only Negro representative in Congress from the Old Dominion," published in 1894. He died in 1897.

John Mercer Langston

Reference:Outside InAfrican-American History in Iowa 1838-2000by Bill Silag, Susan-Koch Bridgford, Hal ChaseCopyright 2001Published by the State Historical Society if IowaISBN 0-8033-013-1

Gertrude E. Rush, an African-American attorney and activist was born June 26,1880. She was born in Texas, the daughter of a Baptist minister. Her family also lived in Kansas before landing in Oskaloosa, Iowa. Gertrude attended Des Moines University and studied the law under her attorney-husband James B. Rush. She further studied at Drake and LaSalle universities. Rush was admitted to the Iowa Bar in 1918 as the state's first Black female lawyer.Rush co-founded the Charity League in 1917 and the National Bar Association in 1925, and served as an unprecedented role model for young Black women seeking professional careers. An avid church activist, Rush also practiced law in Chicago and traveled internationally. Gertrude Rush died in 1962.

Gertrude E. Rush

Reference:Jet Magazine,Chicago, Ill.11/2004

On November 7, 1989, Virginia became the first state in America to elect a Black man as its governor. Lawrence Douglas Wilder, a Richmond native, ran the state from 1990 to 1994. State law limits each governor’s service to one four-year term.Wilder, a graduate of Virginia Union and Howard University also was the first Black elected to the Virginia Senate in 1969.

Lawrence Douglas Wilder

References: The Literature NetworkWikimedia Foundation204 37th Avenue North Suite330St. Petersburg, FL. 33704

Alexandre Dumas was born on July 24,1802. He was a Black European who was one of the more prolific writers in the 19th century theater world.Born in Villers-Cotterêts near Paris, Dumas' grandfather was the Marquis Antoine-Alexandre Davy de la Pailleterie and his grandmother was Marie-Céssette Dumas, a Black slave from Jérémie, Saint-Domingue (Haiti). Young Alexandre grew up in Villers-Cotterêts. Dumas's father was a general in Napoleon's army, who had fallen out of favor. After the father's death in 1806, the family lived in poverty. Dumas worked as a clerk and went in 1823 to Paris to find work.Because of his stylish handwriting he got work with the Duc d'Orléans, later King Louis Philippe. He also began working in theater and as a magazine publisher. By age 25, he had his first success as a playwright with "Henri III et Sa Cour" (1829), produced by the Comedie Francaise. It was successful and Dumas went on to write additional plays. "La Tour de Nesle" (1832), "The Tower of Nesle" is considered the greatest masterpiece of French melodrama. He wrote constantly, producing a steady stream of plays, novels, and short stories.Dumas has written many interesting observations about the world during his life. Much can be found in his piece “Mes Mémoires.” Dumas also wrote several children's stories, and a culinary dictionary. He did not shy away from collaborating with other authors or rewriting older stories.Writing brought Dumas enormous fortune, but he spent money faster than he made it. He produced some 250 books with his 73 assistants, especially with the history teacher Auguste Maquet, who worked independently. His most successful novels contained vivid adventures with action, and bigger-than-life characters. He took great liberty with the truth to achieve a good story.His son, Alexandre Dumas fils, wrote several important novels including "La Dame aux Camélias," the basis of Verdi's opera "La Traviata." Dumas’ life as a writer was filled years of traveling, and carousing. Some of his writings were "The Count of Monte-Cristo," "The Man in the Iron Mask," and "The Three Musketeers." In a shorter piece, “Georges” (1843), Dumas examined the question of race and colonialism. The main character, a half-French mulatto, leaves Mauritius to be educated in France, and returns to revenge for the affronts he had suffered as a boy. Alexandre Dumas died in Puys, near Dieppe, on December 5, 1870.

Alexandre Dumas

Reference:The World Book Encyclopedia.Copyright 1996, World Book, Inc.ISBN 0-7166-0096-X

Mary Jane Patterson was born on September 12, 1840. She was a black teacher.Born in Raleigh, NC, Patterson was the oldest of Henry and Emeline Patterson's seven children. In 1856, she and her family moved to Oberlin, Ohio, where they joined a growing community of free Black families who worked to send their children to the college. Her father worked as a master mason, and for many years the family boarded large numbers of Black students in their home. In 1862, she graduated from Oberlin College, becoming the first Black woman to receive a B. A. degree from an established American college. Eventually, four Patterson children graduated from Oberlin College, and all became teachers.Mary Jane Patterson's first known teaching appointment was in 1865, when she became an assistant to Fanny Jackson in the Female Department of the Institute for Colored Youth in Philadelphia. In 1869, Patterson accepted a teaching position in Washington, D. C., at the newly organized Preparatory High School for Colored Youth, later known as Dunbar High School. She served as the school's first Black principal, from 1871 to 1874. During her administration, the name "Preparatory High School" was dropped, high school commencements were initiated, and a teacher-training department was added.Patterson's commitment to thoroughness as well as her personality helped her establish the school's strong intellectual standards. Patterson also devoted time and money to other Black institutions in Washington, D. C., especially to industrial schools for young Black women, as well as to the Home for Aged and Infirm Colored People. She never married, nor did her two Oberlin-educated sisters (Chanie and Emeline), who later joined her and taught in district schools.Patterson died in Washington, D. C., September 24, 1894, at the age of 54. Her pioneering educational attainments and her achievements as a leading Black educator influenced generations of Black students.

Mary Jane Patterson

Reference:The African American Desk ReferenceSchomburg Center for research in Black CultureCopyright 1999 The Stonesong Press Inc. andThe New York Public Library, John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Pub.ISBN 0-471-23924-0

Lewis Howard Latimer was born on September 4, 1848. He was an African-American inventor and innovator in the electric lighting industry.As a boy Latimer worked in his father’s barbershop in Chelsea, Massachusetts. He joined the Union Navy during the Civil War and after an honorable discharge in 1865 he found work with a firm of patent lawyers. Although Latimer was hired as an office boy, he cultivated drafting skills in his spare time until he was qualified for blueprint work. Latimer brainstormed his own work, patenting in 1874 a "pivot bottom" for water closets on trains. His high-caliber draftsmanship impressed Alexander Graham Bell, whose 1876 telephone blueprints were drawn up by Latimer.In 1880 Latimer went to work for the inventor Hiram Maxim, who ran the United States Electric Lighting Company in Bridgeport, Connecticut and was one of Thomas Edison's prime competitors in the institutionalization of electric light. Under Maxim, Latimer supervised the installation of electric light in New York, Philadelphia, London, and Montreal. He also developed other inventions of his own, co-patenting an electric lamp with Joseph V. Nichols in 1881, and, most important, refining light-bulb technology in 1882. In 1884 he was invited to work for Maxim's arch rival, Thomas Alva Edison, in New York.An expert electrical engineer, Latimer's work for Edison was critical for the following reasons: his thorough knowledge of electric lighting and power guided Edison through the process of filing patent forms properly at the U. S. Patent Office, protecting the company from infringements of his inventions; Latimer was also in charge of the company library, collecting information from around the world, translating data in French and German to protect the company from European challenges. He became Edison's patent investigator and expert witness in cases against persons trying to benefit from Edison's inventions without legal permission.Edison encouraged Latimer to write the book, Incandescent Electric Lighting: A Practical Description of the Edison System. Published in 1890 , it was extremely popular as it explained how an incandescent lamp produces light in an easy-to-understand manner. On February 11, 1918, Latimer became one of the 28 charter members of the Edison Pioneers, the only African-American in this prestigious, highly selective group. After leaving Edison, Latimer worked for a patent consultant firm until 1922 when failing eyesight caused an end to his career. Lewis Howard Latimer settled in Flushing, New York and lived there until his death in 1928. He was an active member of the local community, teaching English and drafting to immigrants at the Henry Street Settlement in 1906. In 1968, Latimer was posthumously honored by the borough of Brooklyn when a public school was named after him.

Lewis Howard Latimer

Elizabeth "Bessie" Coleman (January 26, 1892 – April 30, 1926) was an American civil aviator. She was the first female pilot of African American descent and the first person of African American descent to hold an international pilot licensee. In 1915, at the age of 23, she moved to Chicago, Illinois, where she worked at the White Sox Barber Shop as a manicurist, where she heard stories from pilots returning home from World War I about flying during the war. She could not gain admission to American flight schools because she was black and a woman. No black U.S. aviator would train her either. Robert S. Abbott, founder and publisher of the Chicago Defender, encouraged her to study abroad. Coleman received financial backing from a banker named Jesse Binga and the Defender. Coleman took a French language class at the Berlitz school in Chicago, and then traveled to Paris on November 20, 1920. Coleman learned to fly in a Nieuport Type 82 biplane, with "a steering system that consisted of a vertical stick the thickness of a baseball bat in front of the pilot and a rudder bar under the pilot's feet.“ On June 15, 1921, Coleman became not only the first African-American woman to earn an international aviation license from the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale, but the first African American woman in the world to earn an aviation pilot's license.

Elizabeth "Bessie" Coleman

Reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bessie_Coleman

In 1829, when John Mercer Langston was born:

There were only 23 states in the United States Slavery still existed in the United States Andrew Jackson was inaugurated as President, and he owned slaves

Yet, John Mercer Langston accomplished all that he did underimpossible circumstances.

What’s your excuse for not achieving?

In 1862, when Mary Jane Patterson was earning herBachelors degree:

Slavery still existed in the United StatesWomen did not have the right to vote in the United StatesAbraham Lincoln was President and the Civil War was raging.

Yet, Mary Jane Patterson accomplished all that she did underimpossible circumstances.

What’s your excuse for not achieving?

Notable African Americans from Virginia

Blanche Kelso Bruce (March 1, 1841-1898) was the first African-American who served a full term in the U.S. Senate. Senator Bruce was born a slave on the Farmville Plantation,Virginia. He was educated by his owner's son, and he later went to Oberlin Colllege (in Ohio). Bruce was a Republican senator representing Mississippi; he served from March 5, 1875 until March 3, 1881. During his term, Bruce fought for the rights of minority groups, including African-Americans, Native Americans, and Asian immigrants. After his term as senator, Bruce was appointed registrar of the treasury. He rejected an offer of a ministerial appointment to Brazil because slavery was still legal there.

Reference: http://www.enchantedlearning.com/history/us/aframer/bios/

Reference: http://www.enchantedlearning.com/history/us/aframer/bios/

Booker T. (Taliafero) Washington (April 15?, 1856 - Nov. 15, 1915) was an orator, civil rights activist, professor, writer, and poet. He was born a slave in Virginia, but was freed by Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation (when it went into effect in the South, in 1865). Washington dedicated his life to education as a means of obtaining equality. He founded the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute in Tuskegee, Alabama, and the National Negro Business League.

Mary Elizabeth Bowser - (1839-unknown) Richmond; Union spy working as a servant for Varina Davis, wife of the President of the Confederacy, Jefferson Davis. Inducted into the U.S. Army Military Intelligence Corps Hall of Fame (1995).

Reference: lkwdpl.org/wihohio/bows-mar.htm

William Harvey Carney - (1840-1908) Norfolk; First black Medal of Honor recipient, decorated for his "extraordinary heroism on 18 July 1863 ... when the color sergeant was shot down, Sergeant Carney grasped the flag, led the way ... was twice severely wounded."

Reference: militarytimes.com/citations-medals-awards/recipient.php?recipientid=3296

Roger Arliner Young - (1889-1964) Clifton Forge; Zoologist; The first African-American woman to be awarded a Ph.D. in zoology. She was an American scientist of zoology, biology, and marine biology. Roger Arliner Young received her Bachelor of Science from Howard University in 1923. After graduating in 1923, she was hired at Howard University as an assistant professor of zoology. In 1926, Roger Arliner Young received a Master of Science in Zoology from University of Chicago, where she was elected to Sigma Xi (the honor society for biosciences). Between 1927 to 1936 she spent summers doing research at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, the leading biological research institution in the United States. She was the first black woman to conduct and publish research in her field. In 1924, working with her mentor, Ernest Everett Just, she made a significant contribution to the study of structures that control salt concentration in Paramecium. Later, in 1928 she published several notable studies on the effects of direct and indirect radiation on sea urchin eggs.

References: infoplease.com/ipa/A0800427.html ; https://webfiles.uci.edu/mcbrown/display/young.html

Oliver White Hill - (1907-2007) Richmond; Lead attorney with Davis v. County School Board of Prince Edward County, which was consolidated with Brown v. Board of Education at the Supreme Court; First African American Richmond City Council member (1949). Highly decorated with the top-prize being the Presidential Medal of Freedom bestowed by President William J. Clinton (1999).

References: brownat50.org/brownbios/BioOliverHill.html

Ninety percent of microphones used today are based on the ingenuity of James Edward West, an African-American inventor born in 1931 in Prince Edwards County, VA. If you’ve ever talked on the telephone, you’ve probably used his invention.Dr. James E. West and a colleague, Gerhard Sessler, developed the mic (officially known as the Electroacoustic Transducer Electret Microphone) while with Bell Laboratories, and they received a patent for it in 1962. The acoustical technologies employed became widely used for many reasons including high performance, acoustical accuracy and reliability. It is also small, lightweight and cost effective.West started at Bell labs as an intern and joined them full-time in 1957 after graduating from Temple University. As the inventor of the microphone, James West has received numerous awards and honors including a Fellow of IEEE, Industrial Research Institute's 1998 Achievement Award, 1995 Inventor of the Year from the State of New Jersey and induction in the Inventors Hall of Fame in 1999. James E. West holds 47 US patents and more than 200 foreign patents from his 40-year career with Bell Laboratories.During his career, West also involved himself with programs designed to encourage minorities to take more of a role in the sciences. In the 1970's, he was a member of the Association of Black Laboratories Employees (ABLE) at Bell Labs that influenced management to fund the Summer Research Program (SRP) and Cooperate Research Fellowship Program (CRFP) – programs that helped more than 500 non-white students graduate with degrees in science, engineering and mathematics.James Edward West now works with Johns Hopkins University as a research professor.

Reference: http://www.black-inventor.com/James-E-West.asp

ALINE BLACK (1906–1974)A plaintiff in a case challenging the disparate pay of African American and white teachers in Norfolk, Aline Elizabeth Black was born in Norfolk on March 23, 1906. She began working in the local school system as a science instructor in 1924. She attended Virginia Normal and Industrial Institute (later Virginia State University) while teaching and continued her education at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, where she received an M.S. in 1935.As an African American, Black received a substantially smaller salary than a comparably qualified white teacher. When the Norfolk Teachers Association and the Virginia State Teachers Association, together with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, decided to challenge the double standard as a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, Black volunteered to be the plaintiff in the suit. Filed in the state circuit court in Norfolk in March 1939, the case was dismissed by the local court, and Black's attorneys, among whom was Thurgood Marshall, filed an appeal. In June 1939 Black lost her teaching contract in retaliation for her suit against the school system. The Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals then denied the appeal on the grounds that Black was no longer an employee.Another Norfolk teacher, Melvin O. Alston, took Black's place as plaintiff, and a new suit was filed. In November 1940 the Supreme Court of the United States upheld an appellate court's ruling that teacher salaries fell under the protection of the Fourteenth Amendment. The Norfolk School Board then promised to raise the salaries of black teachers. In 1941 the Norfolk school board rehired Black and she resumed teaching science at Booker T. Washington High School.She remained there until 1970, when she became an instructional development specialist at Jacox Junior High School, retiring in 1973. She had married Frank A. Hicks during World War II, and they had one daughter. Black died on August 22, 1974, in Norfolk, where she was buried at Calvary Cemetery.

Reference: http://www.virginiamemory.com/online_classroom/shaping_the_constitution/people/aline_black

“To make our way, we must have firm resolve, persistence, tenacity. We must gear ourselves to work hard all the way. We can never let up.”

-Ralph Bunche