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Tyehimba Jess
Tyehimba Jess (born 1965 in Detroit) is an American poet. His book '' Olio'' received the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. Biography Early life Tyehimba Jess was born Jesse S. Goodwin. He grew up in Detroit, where his father worked in that city's Department of Health. His father later became the first vice president of Detroit's chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Jess's mother was a teacher and nurse, who founded a nursing school at Wayne County Community College in 1972. According to Jess, he started writing poetry at age 16. Within just a few years, when he was 18, he had won second prize for poetry at an NAACP academic competition. He graduated from high school in 1984. Next, he enrolled at the University of Chicago, where he intended to be an English major and pursue his poetry writing. However, he soon abandoned this as an option, and dropped out of the university in 1987. During this time, to support himself, Jess worked as an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Detroit
Detroit ( , ; , ) is the largest city in the U.S. state of Michigan. It is also the largest U.S. city on the United States–Canada border, and the seat of government of Wayne County. The City of Detroit had a population of 639,111 at the 2020 census, making it the 27th-most populous city in the United States. The metropolitan area, known as Metro Detroit, is home to 4.3 million people, making it the second-largest in the Midwest after the Chicago metropolitan area, and the 14th-largest in the United States. Regarded as a major cultural center, Detroit is known for its contributions to music, art, architecture and design, in addition to its historical automotive background. ''Time'' named Detroit as one of the fifty World's Greatest Places of 2022 to explore. Detroit is a major port on the Detroit River, one of the four major straits that connect the Great Lakes system to the Saint Lawrence Seaway. The City of Detroit anchors the second-largest regional economy in t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Watering Hole Organization
''The'' () is a grammatical article in English, denoting persons or things that are already or about to be mentioned, under discussion, implied or otherwise presumed familiar to listeners, readers, or speakers. It is the definite article in English. ''The'' is the most frequently used word in the English language; studies and analyses of texts have found it to account for seven percent of all printed English-language words. It is derived from gendered articles in Old English which combined in Middle English and now has a single form used with nouns of any gender. The word can be used with both singular and plural nouns, and with a noun that starts with any letter. This is different from many other languages, which have different forms of the definite article for different genders or numbers. Pronunciation In most dialects, "the" is pronounced as (with the voiced dental fricative followed by a schwa) when followed by a consonant sound, and as (homophone of the archaic pron ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Millie And Christine McKoy
Millie and Christine McKoy (also spelled ''McCoy''; July 11, 1851 – October 8, 1912) were African-American pygopagus conjoined twins who went by the stage names "The Carolina Twins", "The Two-Headed Nightingale" and "The Eighth Wonder of the World". The twins traveled throughout the world performing song and dance for entertainment, overcoming years of slavery, forced medical observations, and forced participation in fairs and freak shows. Life Millie and Christine (the "Carolina Twins") were born in Whiteville, North Carolina on July 11, 1851, to Jacob and Monemia McKoy who were enslaved by the blacksmith Jabez McKay. The McKay farm was near the town of Whiteville. Prior to the sisters' birth, their mother had given birth to seven other children, five boys and two girls, all of ordinary size and form. The twins were conjoined at the lower spine and stood at an approximately 90-degree angle to each other. The twins were first sold at 10 months of age to South Carolinian John C. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Scott Joplin
Scott Joplin ( 1868 – April 1, 1917) was an American composer and pianist. Because of the fame achieved for his ragtime compositions, he was dubbed the "King of Ragtime." During his career, he wrote over 40 original ragtime pieces, one ragtime ballet, and two operas. One of his first and most popular pieces, the '' Maple Leaf Rag'', became the genre's first and most influential hit, later being recognized as the archetypal rag. Joplin considered ragtime to be a form of classical music and largely disdained the practice of ragtime such as that in honky tonk. Joplin grew up in a musical family of railway laborers in Texarkana, Arkansas, developing his own musical knowledge with the help of local teachers. While in Texarkana, he formed a vocal quartet and taught mandolin and guitar. During the late 1880s, he left his job as a railroad laborer and traveled the American South as an itinerant musician. He went to Chicago for the World's Fair of 1893, which played a major part i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Matilda Sissieretta Joyner Jones
Matilda Sissieretta Joyner Jones (January 5, 1868 or 1869 – June 24, 1933) was an American soprano. She sometimes was called "The Black Patti" in reference to Italian opera singer Adelina Patti. Jones' repertoire included grand opera, light opera, and popular music. Trained at the Providence Academy of Music and the New England Conservatory of Music, Jones made her New York debut in 1888 at Steinway Hall, and four years later she performed at the White House for President Benjamin Harrison. She eventually sang for four consecutive presidents and the British royal family, and met with international success. Besides the United States and the West Indies, Jones toured in South America, Australia, India, southern Africa, and Europe. The highest-paid African-American performer of her time, later in her career she founded the Black Patti Troubadours (later renamed the Black Patti Musical Comedy Company), a musical and acrobatic act made up of 40 jugglers, comedians, dancers and a c ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ernest Hogan
Ernest Hogan (born Ernest Reuben Crowdus; 1865 – May 20, 1909) was the first African-American entertainer to produce and star in a Broadway show (''The Oyster Man'' in 1907) and helped to popularize the musical genre of ragtime. A native of Bowling Green, Kentucky, as a teenager Hogan worked in traveling minstrel shows as a dancer, musician, and comedian. In 1895 Hogan composed several popular songs, including "La Pas Ma La" and "All Coons Look Alike to Me". The success of the latter song created many derogatory imitations, known as "coon songs" because of their use of racist and stereotypical images of black people. Hogan was considered one of the most talented performers and comedians of his day.''Tap Roots: The Early History of Tap Dancing'' by Mark Knowles, McFarland & Company, 2002, , pages 119-20. His contribution to the racist "coon song" craze haunted him—before his death he stated that he regretted using the racial slur in his song. Early years He was born Ernest R ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fisk Jubilee Singers
The Fisk Jubilee Singers are an African-American ''a cappella'' ensemble, consisting of students at Fisk University. The first group was organized in 1871 to tour and raise funds for college. Their early repertoire consisted mostly of traditional spiritual (music), spirituals, but included some songs by Stephen Foster. The original group toured along the Underground Railroad path in the United States, as well as performing in England and Europe. Later 19th-century groups also toured in Europe. In 2002 the Library of Congress honored their 1909 recording of "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot" by adding it in the List of recordings preserved in the United States National Recording Registry, United States National Recording Registry. In 2008 they were awarded a National Medal of Arts. History The singers were organized as a fundraising effort for Fisk University. The Historically black colleges and universities, historically black college in Nashville, Tennessee, was founded by the Ameri ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Paul Laurence Dunbar
Paul Laurence Dunbar (June 27, 1872 – February 9, 1906) was an American poet, novelist, and short story writer of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Born in Dayton, Ohio, to parents who had been enslaved in Kentucky before the American Civil War, Dunbar began writing stories and verse when he was a child. He published his first poems at the age of 16 in a Dayton newspaper, and served as president of his high school's literary society. Dunbar's popularity increased rapidly after his work was praised by William Dean Howells, a leading editor associated with ''Harper's Weekly''. Dunbar became one of the first African-American writers to establish an international reputation. In addition to his poems, short stories, and novels, he also wrote the lyrics for the musical comedy ''In Dahomey'' (1903), the first all-African-American musical produced on Broadway in New York. The musical later toured in the United States and the United Kingdom. Suffering from tuberculosis, which the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Henry Box Brown
Henry Box Brown (c. 1815 – June 15, 1897) was a 19th-century Virginia slave who escaped to freedom at the age of 33 by arranging to have himself mailed in a wooden crate in 1849 to abolitionists in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. For a short time, Brown became a noted abolitionist speaker in the northeast United States. As a public figure and fugitive slave, Brown felt extremely endangered by passage of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, which increased pressure to capture escaped slaves. He moved to England and lived there for 25 years, touring with an anti-slavery panorama, becoming a magician and showman. Brown married and started a family with an English woman, Jane Floyd. Brown's first wife, Nancy, remained in slavery. Brown returned to the United States with his English family in 1875, where he continued to earn a living as an entertainer. He toured and performed as a magician, speaker, and mesmerist until at least 1889. The last decade of his life (1886–97) was spent in T ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John William Boone
John William "Blind" Boone (May 17, 1864 – October 4, 1927) was an American pianist and composer of ragtime music. Early life Boone was born in a Federal militia camp near Miami, Missouri, May 17, 1864, to a contraband slave, Rachel, who used the surname, Boone, on the 1870 Federal Census. On John W. Boone's 1927 Missouri Death Record, Rachel's maiden name is said to be Carpenter. His father was a bugler in the 7th Missouri State Militia Cavalry (Union). At six months Boone fell ill to "brain fever" and to release the swelling of the brain a radical surgical procedure was performed, removing both of his eyes. This is how he became "blind" Boone. He grew up in Warrensburg, Missouri, where Camp Grover was the headquarters of the 7th MSM at the end of the Civil War. Boone's mother, Rachel Boone Hendricks (when she married Harrison Hendricks in 1871, she used the Boone surname), worried that her son would find life too difficult without some sort of education. Because of this, his ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Edmonia Lewis
Mary Edmonia Lewis, also known as "Wildfire" (c. July 4, 1844 – September 17, 1907), was an American sculptor, of mixed African-American and Native American ( Mississauga Ojibwe) heritage. Born free in Upstate New York, she worked for most of her career in Rome, Italy. She was the first African-American and Native American sculptor to achieve national and then international prominence. She began to gain prominence in the United States during the Civil War; at the end of the 19th century, she remained the only Black woman artist who had participated in and been recognized to any extent by the American artistic mainstream. In 2002, the scholar Molefi Kete Asante named Edmonia Lewis on his list of ''100 Greatest African Americans''. Her work is known for incorporating themes relating to Black people and indigenous peoples of the Americas into Neoclassical-style sculpture. Life and career Early life According to the ''American National Biography'', reliable information about ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Black Issues Book Review
''Black Issues Book Review'' was a bimonthly magazine published in New York City, U.S., in which books of interest to African-American readers were reviewed. It was published from 1999 until 2007. History and profile ''Black Issues Book Review'' was founded in late 1998 by William E. Cox, Adrienne Ingrum, and Susan McHenry. Cox had been the publisher of ''Black Issues in Higher Education'', which ran a single book review in each issue. He wanted to expand its coverage of books, but after considering the large number of books aimed at Black readers, he came to the conclusion that a new magazine would be more appropriate. Ingrum was a book industry veteran, with nearly 20 years of experience in publishing and book-selling. McHenry had served in editorial positions at several magazines, including ''Black Enterprise'', ''Essence'', and ''Ms.'' ''Library Journal'' named ''Black Issues Book Review'' one of the 10 best new magazines of 1998. ''The New York Times'' reported that the magaz ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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