Good morning POU! Continuing with the theme for this week, below are ten little known black history facts.
Fact 1: An heirloom tomato variety originating in Russia is named after actor, athlete and civil rights activist Paul Robeson, who enjoyed and spoke highly of Russian culture.
Fact 2: African American tap dancer Howard Sims was known as the “Sandman” because he often sprinkled sand onstage at the Apollo Theater to amplify his steps. Sims was an acclaimed dancer and footwork master whose students included Muhammad Ali, Gregory Hines and Ben Vereen.
Fact 3: Bill Pickett, a renowned rodeo performer, was inducted into the National Cowboy Hall of Fame in 1971, the first African American to receive the honor. The U.S. Postal Service also recognized him as one of the 20 “Legends of the West” in a series of stamps.
Fact 4: Legendary baseball player Satchel Paige would travel 30,000 miles a year to pitch as a free agent, to locales that included Cuba and the Dominican Republic. In 1971, Paige also became the first African American pitcher to be inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame.
Fact 5: In 1881, Sophia B. Packard and Harriet E. Giles founded what would become the first college for Black women in the United States. The school named Spelman College after Laura Spelman Rockefeller and her parents, who were abolitionists. Laura was also the wife of John D. Rockefeller, who made a significant donation to the school.
Fact 6: Jockey Isaac Burns Murphy was the first to win three Kentucky Derbies and the only racer to win the Kentucky Derby, the Kentucky Oaks and the Clark Handicap within the same year. He was inducted into the National Museum of Racing’s Hall of Fame in 1956.
Fact 7: The Loew’s Grand Theatre on Peachtree Street in Atlanta, Georgia, was selected to air the premiere of the film Gone with the Wind in 1939. All the film’s Black actors, including future Academy Award winner Hattie McDaniel, were barred from attending.
Fact 8: Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall was a classmate of jazz vocalist Cab Calloway, Harlem Renaissance writer Langston Hughes and future Ghanaian president Kwame Nkrumah during their studies at Lincoln University.
Fact 9: After the success of Negro Digest, publisher John H. Johnson created a magazine to showcase Black achievement while also looking at current issues affecting African Americans. The first issue of his publication, Ebony, sold out in a matter of hours.
Fact 10: Jesse Jackson successfully negotiated the release of Lieutenant Robert O. Goodman Jr., an African American pilot who was shot down over Syria and taken hostage in 1983.