Rosa Parks was a civil rights activist who refused to surrender her seat to a white passenger on a segregated bus in Montgomery, Alabama. Her defiance sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Its success launched nationwide efforts to end racial segregation of public facilities.
The Montgomery City Code required that all public transportation be segregated. This was accomplished with a line roughly in the middle of the bus separating white passengers in the front of the bus and African American passengers in the back.
On December 1, 1955, after a long day's work at a Montgomery department store, where she worked as a seamstress, Rosa Parks boarded the Cleveland Avenue bus for home. She took a seat in the first of several rows designated for "colored" passengers. Eventually, the bus was full and the driver noticed that several white passengers were standing in the aisle. The bus driver stopped the bus and moved the sign separating the two sections back one row, asking four black passengers to give up their seats.
Three of the other black passengers on the bus complied with the driver, but Parks refused and remained seated. The driver demanded, "Why don't you stand up?" to which Rosa Parks replied, "I don't think I should have to stand up." The driver called the police and had her arrested.
Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing a bus driver's instructions to give up her seat to a white passenger. She later recalled that her refusal wasn't because she was physically tired, but that she was tired of giving in.
Rosa Parks’ arrest led to the Montgomery Bus Boycott, which lasted for 381 days and ended with a Supreme Court ruling declaring segregation on public transit systems to be unconstitutional.
About this project
This tweet by @oshinsims made me realise that, unlike other celebrations (such as Pride), there is not much of a celebration of Black History Month around the simblr community (at least that I have seen). So I thought it would be nice to commemorate Black History Month this year by learning and then by spreading knowledge, which is what this celebration should be all about. Anyone who is interested is of course welcome to do this too! I would love to see who inspired you!
I decided to start with Rosa Parks because her story was the first contact I had with the civil rights movement. I remember I was so shocked to learn about segregation in public facilities when I was kid and her story and bravery stuck with me so much.
Born as a slave in Dinwiddie County, Virginia, Elizabeth Hobbs Keckley (1818 – 1907) gained renown as a seamstress, author, and philanthropist.
Elizabeth learned to sew as a young child from her mother, Aggy, and this skill would eventually bring her freedom and success. In her late teens, she developed into an accomplished seamstress with many clients - the income from her dressmaking alone was able to support the entire family of 17 that enslaved her. More importantly, it enabled Keckley to engineer her manumission and in 1855, with her own earnings and loans from several clients, she purchased her freedom and that of her son.
After working diligently for five years to repay her patrons, Keckley and her son moved in Washington, D.C. in 1860. Keckley’s reputation preceded her, quickly resulting in commissions from several of the Capital’s leading women, including Varina Davis, the wife of future Confederate President Jefferson Davis.
Word of mouth would continue to be good to Keckley, and a rushed commission from another socialite came with an offer attached to introduce the seamstress to the First Lady. Elizabeth Keckley met Mary Todd Lincoln on March 4, 1861, the day of Abraham Lincoln's first inauguration. Soon after she would make daily visits to Lafayette Square as the First Lady's regular dressmaker.
In addition to dressmaking, Keckley assisted Mrs. Lincoln each day as her personal dresser, or modiste, and also helped Mrs. Lincoln prepare for official receptions and other social events. Known for her love of fashion, the First Lady kept Keckley busy maintaining and creating new pieces for her extensive wardrobe.
During her time with the Lincolns, Keckley became concerned with the welfare of recently freed slaves who flooded into Washington during the Civil War. In August 1862, Keckley founded the Contraband Relief Association (CRA). The CRA provided food, shelter, clothing, and emotional support to recently freed slaves and to sick and wounded soldiers. They sent funds to new freedpeople, food to other organisations feeding the hungry, and helped to place African-American teachers in newly built schools.
The Contraband Relief Association set the standards and showed the need for relief organisations to provide aid to the poor and displaced black community. The work of the Contraband Relief Association within the black community is credited with helping to create black autonomy in the years immediately following the Civil War. Keckley worked to recruit support for the association from figures such as Frederick Douglass, Wendell Phillips, and the Lincolns.
Over the course of Lincoln’s presidency, Keckley became an intimate witness to the private life of the First Family and was in almost constant close quarters with Mrs Lincoln. The two women developed an intimate friendship that was to be written in stone later that year, as they both grieved for sons who had died within seven months of one another.
Keckley would be the one person for whom the First Lady asked in the hours after her husband's assassination, and in private correspondence Lincoln would go so far as to describe Keckley as “my best living friend.” The two women maintained their close connection until the publication of Keckley's memoir in 1868.
Entitled “Behind the Scenes, Or, Thirty Years a Slave and Four Years in the White House”, the book was Keckley’s attempt to paint a sympathetic portrait of her former employer and help to restore Mrs Lincoln’s reputation, but had the opposite effect, and Mrs. Lincoln felt betrayed by her confidant. Although legend goes that the bosom friends never spoke again, Keckley would claim in later years that she and Mrs Lincoln had reconciled prior to her passing in 1882.
After being discharged from Mary Todd Lincoln’s service, Keckley continued her dressmaking business in Washington, where she also trained other African American women to be seamstresses. She kept this up until the 1892 when she accepted a position on the faculty at Ohio's Wilberforce University as head of the Department of Sewing and Domestic Science Arts and moved to Ohio. Not content with her achievements to date, within a year Elizabeth had organised a dress exhibit at the Chicago World's Fair.
Keckley would ultimately return to Washington, D.C. in the late 1890s, later dying there at the age of 89 in 1907. Presumably in ill-health at the time of her passing, Keckley died at the National Home for Destitute Colored Women and Children - a hospice funded by money she had raised for the Contraband Relief Association that she founded.
After seeing the Black History Month project started by @anotherplumbob, I felt inspired to join in. Not many of Keckley’s designs or garments have survived to present day, but Mary Todd Lincoln had several photographs taken in some of her favourites. Here they are. ❤
Black History Month - Marsha P. Johnson (1945 - 1992)
Marsha P. Johnson was an African American transgender woman and revolutionary LGBTQ+ rights activist. The “P” in her name stands for “Pay it no mind.”
Earlier in her life, Johnson was homeless and prostituted herself to make ends meet after she moved out of her home. She could not afford expensive clothing for her drag, but often wore flower crowns from leftover flowers she received from sleeping under tables in the Manhattan Flower District.
During the 1950s and 1960s, homosexuality was illegal in the states. LGBTQ+ members were often harassed and violently discriminated against by members of the public and the police which resulted in fines and imprisonment.
Marsha played a key role on the June 28, 1969 Stonewall riots. After the police aggressively raided and persecuted gay and transgender patrons at the Stonewall Inn (New York City), they decided enough was enough. The patrons barricaded the officers inside whilst they fought off other officers outside and demanded equal rights which lasted for three days. Though the riot was considered violent, nobody died at Stonewall.
She later co-founded Street Trans Action Revolutionaries (STAR), which provided services including shelter to homeless LGBTQ. She funded the organization largely through sex work.
Pride Month is in June to commemorate the Stonewall riots.
In 1992, Marsha P. Johnson was tragically murdered, but her legacy lives on. It’s thanks to Marsha, STAR and the patrons of Stonewall that the LGBTQ+ community found the courage to fight back.
Thank you @anotherplumbob and @oshinsims for bringing this project to my attention by commemorating Black History Month through learning and spreading knowledge.
Nichelle Nichols was the first African-American actress in a leading role on TV. She starred as Lt. Uhura in the Star Trek (TOS) from 1960-1963. After the first season she was considering leaving the show, but Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. persuaded her to stay.
And at this his face totally changed, and he said "What are you talking about?!" and so I told him I would be leaving the show, because; and that was as far as he let me go, and he said, "STOP! You cannot! You cannot leave this show! Do you not understand what you are doing?! You are the first non-stereotypical role in television! Of intelligence, and of a woman and a woman of color?! That you are playing a role that is not about your color! That this role could be played by anyone? This is not a black role. This is not a female role! A blue eyed blond or a pointed ear green person could take this role!" And I am looking at him and looking at him and buzzing, and he said, "Nichelle, for the first time, not only our little children and people can look on and see themselves, but people who don't look like us, people who don't look like us, from all over the world, for the first time, the first time on television, they can see us, as we should be!
As intelligent, brilliant, people!
Source.
______________
I’m super inspired by @anotherplumbob post about Rose Parks. Read more about this project here.
Gladys Mae West was born in 1930, in Sutherland, Virginia. She finished on top of her high school graduating class and earned a full scholarship to Virginia State University, graduating in 1952 with a bachelor of science in mathematics.
She is an American mathematician known for her contributions to the mathematical modeling of the shape of the Earth, and her work on the development of the satellite geodesy models that were eventually incorporated into the Global Positioning System (GPS).
Gladys was inducted into the United States Air Force Hall of Fame in 2018.
Thank you so much @anotherplumbob and @oshinsims for bringing this to the simblr community. Personally, I didn’t even know about Black History Month and it’s really sad that it’s not as celebrated as Pride, for example. I’d love to do more of these but right now I have little free time...
Highlighting the work of Black and Afro-Latine creators!
Please click here for last year’s Black History Month event!
Last year we had the great honor of featuring content from many talented creators during Black History Month!
For the entirety of this month, Latinx Dragon Age would like to once more highlight the work of Black and Afro-Latinx creators in the Dragon Age fandom. Tag us in posts, submit posts directly, or @latinxdragonage so we can reblog your content!
We’ll reblog fanart, fanfiction, headcanons and meta, commission posts, graphics, gifs, etc. All posts featured for Black History Month will be bumped to the top of the queue!
Submitted work does not have to be Dragon Age related; we’ll accept original work as well!
You can also reply to THIS post with your art tag or art blog. We’ll be glad to look through them! 😊 Happy Black History Month!
“I’d rather go down in history as one lone Negro who dared to tell the government that it had done a dastardly thing than to save my skin by taking back what I said.” -Mrs. Ida B. Wells
(Translation: I said what I said!)
- Ashley Robertson Preston, Ph.D.
“Ida Bell Wells (July 16, 1862 to March 25, 1931), better known as Ida B. Wells, was an African-American journalist, abolitionist and feminist who led an anti-lynching crusade in the United States in the 1890s. She went on to found and become integral in groups striving for African-American justice.” (x)
