Ida refused to move to the smoking coach while using the train to get to work. She was a local teacher. Becoming outraged by the conductor, Ida bit him, yes bit him, and filed a a law suit against the railroad.

As a repporter, she used her journalist contacts to learn about lynchings. She used the information in her writing and helped create a worldwide condemnation of lynching in America.

Ida also helped found the NAACP. She organized the first suffrage group among black women and worked to block segregation in Chicago schools.

There have been over 500 years of black achievement dating back to 1492 when Pedro Alonzo Nino a black man served on Christopher Columbus’s ship on the first Spanish voyage to the New World. Too present time where we as the people of the United States of America have elected our first African American President. That would be President Barack Obama that will I am certain of this bring us out of this recession.

There is also some people in between that are apart on Black America that helps us advance in life.  To name a few you have Vivian Thomas which was the first black man to bring open heart surgery to reality.  His brother Harold Thomas is the reason why African American teachers get paid the same as White Teacher’s. He helped bring the case to Supreme Court that also helps make the career of Thurgood Marshall.  You have Alvin Ailey help black people get recognized for the dance skills when at a time it was just White America being seen in the dance world. Now they perform all over the world.  Then in the sports world where we have sport called swimming where you mostly see white faces. In 1973 Jim Ellis decided he would take his love for the sport and teach it to young black adolescents to keep them out the streets and out of trouble.  Some of his students have been to the Olympic trials. That’s just to name a few.                                 

I must say maybe one of the greatest members of Black America would be the late great Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and that is because he had a dream.  Because of his dream I believe that is why our country has come together. We came together and voted the great President Barack Obama in office. It is once an African American man that has made history.

With the help of Black America we have had quite some breakthroughs that helped form our history. It’s astonishing how far we have come. African Americans once were slaves that were looked down upon.  Now we have our first Black President. Let’s not forget that without Black America Columbus might not have found the new world. Open heart surgery might not have become what it is today. Teachers of different color would have been getting paid different because of the color of their skin. Black dancers would be still in the background and still no black swimmers that can swim at the Olympic level.  So thank goodness for Black America. Without Black American we wouldn’t be where we are today.          

By: James David Dickson

1/1/08

(Feature-review, Bill Cosby’s Come On, People)

Columnist Gregory Kane retells a by-now infamous Malcolm X story. The civil rights leader, standing outside of a black housing project, asks his followers how many reference books and dictionaries they’d expect to find if they searched every apartment therein.

“Enough to fill a trunk of this car? Enough to fill a suitcase?”

That that question was worth pondering betrays its answer — not many. Certainly not enough.

“Malcolm was saying,” Kane explains, “that being black and poor didn’t absolve poor black folks of their responsibility to “hold up their end of the bargain” in education. If there are no reference books, dictionaries, and other reading material in poor black homes, then who’s to blame?”

Since deciding, in 2004, to speak out on the social ills that mar the black community — violence, illegitimacy, and miseducation chief among them, Bill Cosby has been branded with the scarlet letter of elitism.

But Cosby’s latest effort, Come On, People: On the Path from Victims to Victors, a collection of testimonials from Cosby’s Call-Outs from the last several years, overlaid with Cosby’s own commentary, seeks to clear the air.

There’s a thin line between tough love and outright contempt, and Cosby’s critics, led by University of Pennsylvania professor Michael Eric Dyson, believe he’s crossed it.

Dyson, who could not be reached in multiple attempts, is author of 2006 bestseller Is Cosby Right? and self-styled defender of black Americans “left behind” after the civil rights revolution.

Cosby’s critics claim that the entertainer’s interest in the black community is new-fangled. That Cosby, for decades, never spoke about race, preferring “universal themes.”

But the notion that Cosby’s roots with the black community are only three and a half years deep is laughable. Since co-starring in I Spy, 42 years ago, Bill Cosby has been putting his fame and talents to use to help his community.

Cosby’s 1989 donation of $20 million kept historically black Tuskegee University afloat. Spike Lee’s epic Malcolm X wouldn’t have seen theaters but for Cosby’s largesse. And according to Poussaint, Cosby has sent scores of black youth to college over the years, and sought neither credit nor publicity. Perhaps that’s why Cosby’s critics are so foggy on his record.

Indeed, Cosby wouldn’t have met his co-author but for his work in the black community. The two met, over 30 years ago, at a BlackExpo event at which Cosby was performing. Cosby the entertainer made fast friends with Poussaint the doctor.

Astute readers will remember Poussaint as a consultant on The Cosby Show, a partnership that’s persisted into other ventures, including The Cosby Show’s spinoff, A Different World, based in fictitious historically-black Hillman University.

“Part of my job was to make sure that the show wasn’t stereotypic, and that it was psychologically believable,” said Poussaint, now director of the Judge Baker Children’s Center at Harvard University. Poussaint’s work at Judge Baker involves troubles children with emotional problems and the impact of sexualized media on young girls.

Poussaint’s work on Come On, People was to put Cosby’s ideas into words. Much of the book is derivative from dialogues at Cosby’s Call-Outs, but Poussaint’s expertise in media as relates to child development came in handy.

“It was always important, to Cosby, that we stressed education,” Poussaint recalled. “That’s why he’d wear sweatshirts from black colleges The Cosby Show– he wanted black parents thinking about sending their children to college, and he wanted black youth thinking about going to college.”

“And [Cosby] absolutely wanted to highlight the importance of fathers in the home environment.”

When asked about Dyson’s carping, Poussaint takes the high road. “I don’t know what’s going on in Michael Eric Dyson’s head,” Dr. Poussaint answered, tersely.

But, no good deed goes unpunished, and Cosby’s haven’t. Still, if Cosby’s history doesn’t free him from criticism, then Dyson’s certainly doesn’t, as Cosby asserted at a Washington, D.C. Call-Out in May 2006.

“Bill Cosby can be a very funny guy,” wrote Clarence Page of The Chicago Tribune, “but he does not suffer fools gladly.”

After a heckler insisted that Cosby address Professor Dyson’s criticisms head-on, Cosby leapt from the stage and came down near the heckler. Page reported the scene: “I’m sick of you and your Dyson,” Cosby declared. “Dyson is not a truthful man.”

“How much does it cost to go to Penn?” Cosby demanded. “How many black students go to Penn?”

Then Cosby struck the kill blow: “If Dyson taught at a school like UDC (University of the District of Columbia), that serves mostly lower-income non-whites, then maybe he could talk.”

Still, one of the more effective criticisms of Cosby’s approach is that no one likes a sermon. Why, it’s been wondered, does a man who has made a career of humor based on what Poussaint referred to as “universal themes” choose, now, to finger-wag and give speeches?

Those critiques have been well-heeded.

Tracy Dell’Angela and Johnathon E. Briggs of The Tribune reported the scene from a December 2006 Call-Out, at which Cosby seduced — not scolded — his audience, to great effect. “Instead of railing about teenage pregnancies,” they write, “Cosby urged the crowd to set straight any young girl who says she wants to have a baby because she wants someone to love her. “Tell her to her face: “The baby has not signed the contract,”" he said, drawing laughter and some head shaking.”

When Cosby preaches finger-wagging Jeremiads against the lifestyles of poor blacks, all the history in the world doesn’t matter, because no one likes being judged. But when Cosby plays the charmer, he can get away with most anything.

Black America can handle tough love; all it asks is that Cosby not forget that second element.

Maybe it’s true, after all, that it’s not what you say, but how you say it.