Good morning POU! Continuing this week’s theme, more little known facts are below:
Fact 1: Olympic medal-winning athletes John Carlos and Tommie Smith made headlines around the world by raising their black-gloved fists at the 1968 award ceremony. Both athletes wore black socks and no shoes on the podium to represent Black poverty in America.
Fact 2: In the 1920s and ’30s, multi-instrumentalist Valaida Snow captivated audiences with her effervescent singing and jazz trumpet playing. Her abilities earned her the nicknames “Queen of the Trumpet” and “Little Louis,” regarding the style of musician Louis Armstrong.
Fact 3: Before Forest Whitaker was a film star, he was accepted into the music conservatory at the University of Southern California to study opera as a tenor.
Fact 4: The “Dee” in actor Billy Dee Williams’ name is short for his middle name, “December.”
Fact 5: Renowned African American architect Paul R. Williams mastered the art of rendering drawings upside-down so that his clients would see the drawings right side up. Williams’s style became associated with California glamour, beauty and naturalism, and he joined the American Institute of Architects in 1923.
Fact 6: In the 1800s, Philadelphia was known as the “Black Capital of Anti–Slavery” because of its powerful abolitionist presence, which included groups like the Philadelphia Anti–Slavery Society
Fact 7: John Baxter Taylor, the first African American to win an Olympic gold medal, also held a degree in veterinary medicine from the University of Pennsylvania.
Fact 8: In 1944 in Fort Hood, Texas, future baseball legend Jackie Robinson, who was serving as a lieutenant for the U.S. Army, refused to give up his seat and move to the back of a bus when ordered to by the driver. Robinson dealt with racial slurs and was court-martialed, but was ultimately acquitted. His excellent reputation, combined with the united efforts of friends, the NAACP, and various Black newspapers, shed public light on the injustice. Robinson requested to be discharged soon afterward.
Fact 9: Performer Paul Robeson was conversant in many languages.
Fact 10: Nat “Deadwood Dick” Love, a renowned and skilled cowboy, wrote his autobiographical work The Life and Adventures of Nat Love, Better Known in the Cattle Country as Deadwood Dick, published in 1907.