Black History Month Story Archives - West Virginia Public Broadcasting

Black Policy Day Returned To The Legislature

Black Policy Day returned to the West Virginia Legislature Wednesday for its second year to highlight the policy issues facing Black West Virginians.

Wednesday was Black Policy Day at the West Virginia Legislature. The event is in its second year and is an opportunity for advocates to highlight the policy issues facing Black West Virginians.

Katonya Hart, one of the day’s organizers, said she wants the legislative process to be open so that all can participate. This year, the day’s focus expanded to not only look at policy, but also to help community members learn about and engage with the process directly.

“It’s that diversity when everyone’s at the table,” Hart said. “Having an opportunity to put in that we become strong, that there is a ‘we’ and there’s no longer that separation, that we’re able to keep our identity while supporting and standing in solidarity with each other.”

She said the day’s focus is broad, bringing attention and action to issues facing all West Virginians. Hart is tracking more than 200 bills this session. However one bill, the CROWN Act, is of particular interest. Hart and many other activists around the rotunda wore crowns during the day as a symbol of support for the legislation.

“CROWN stands for, ‘creating a respectable and open world for natural hair and culturally relevant hairstyles,’” Hart said.

“If I wake up in the morning and I wash my hair and I go to work and not straighten it, perm it, it’s okay,” she continued. “Nobody’s gonna say ‘That looks wild and unruly and unprofessional,’ and send me home and try to have me press it like another culture’s hair in order to file papers, to type a letter. What is the necessity of that? What is the reason for that? But so many people have found themselves in that situation, showing up for work and someone saying ‘Your Afro, your curly hair is just not professional.’”

Several municipalities, including Morgantown, Charleston and Beckley, have created their own ordinances to codify the CROWN Act’s protection locally, but advocates have been waiting to see it become state law for four years.

Hart listed issues of funding for education, the regulating of women’s bodies and legislation targeted at the LGBTQ+ community as other areas of focus.

Kasha Snyder-McDonald, the president of the West Virginia Black Pride Foundation, echoed the importance of passing the CROWN Act.

“People of color, we do have distinct hair, hair quality, something that Caucasian people have no understanding of,” she said. “Therefore it is no other body’s place to tell a person of color, what to do with their hair, how we wear our hair. Our hair is a sign of our glory.”

As an LGBTQ+ advocate, Snyder-McDonald also had her eye on several bills aimed at banning drag shows in the state, which she said is often a crucial source of income for people in the community.

“People are scared of what they do not understand or what they do not know. When it comes to the drag community, they do not know that some people that do drag, the majority of people that do drag, is because it is their livelihood, it is their way of employment,” Snyder-McDonald said. “There are so many doors that are close to the LGBTQ+ community, especially the LGBTQ+ community of color.”

“Here in West Virginia, we don’t have a lot of representation for the LGBTQ+ community, including within our own community,” she continued. “It’s very hard for us to get people to understand our vision and to see that we’re here and we’re just like everyone else. Each and every day is a struggle. We’re fighting just to be seen and just to be heard.”

Snyder-McDonald and Hart both expressed their excitement for the opportunity that Black Policy Day provides for Black West Virginians to organize and stand together for a better future.

Huntington Banner Program Honors Black History Month

he City of Huntington is recognizing 150 Black people of note through a street banner program as part of Black History Month. The installation by the Public Works Department of the banners Monday on 3rd and 4th avenues coincides with the launch of a website, www.huntingtonblackhistory.com, with photographs and biographies of each featured individual.

The City of Huntington is recognizing 150 Black people of note through a street banner program as part of Black History Month.

The installation by the Public Works Department of the banners Monday on 3rd and 4th avenues coincides with the launch of a website, www.huntingtonblackhistory.com, with photographs and biographies of each featured individual.

Individuals chosen for the honor must have resided in Huntington for at least five years, or have made a notable contribution on a city, state or national level.

In a release, Mayor Steve Williams remembered Huntington’s native son, Dr. Carter G. Woodson who is credited with the creation of Black History Month itself.

“These endeavors are the City of Huntington’s intentional steps toward defining Black History Month as a quintessential gift to the rest of the world through the life and experience of Huntington’s native son, Dr. Carter G. Woodson,” Williams said. “Without the contributions of Dr. Woodson and all of the other individuals that we are honoring, Huntington would not be what it is today – a quilt of diversity and cultures that is accepting and loving of all people.”

The street banners will remain on display through the month of March.

Carter G. Woodson Founded Black History Month. His Journey Began In West Virginia

Carter G. Woodson, the founder of Black History Month, was born in Virginia and spent most of his adult life in Washington, D.C. But Woodson spent his formative years in West Virginia.

Woodson came to West Virginia as a young man. He worked in the coal mines in the New River Gorge. He attended Frederick Douglass High School in Huntington, where his lifelong dedication to education began.

At the time, West Virginia was a relatively new state. Though it was not segregated by law, African-Americans, as elsewhere in the country, lived apart from whites. They had their own churches and their own schools.

Douglass High School was one such place. Woodson later became its principal.

“It was the centerpiece of black intellectual engagement. And cultural enrichment and engagement,” said Cicero Fain, a visiting diversity scholar at Marshall University. “Carter G. Woodson was just one of many people of exceptional acumen and aptitude who graduated from there.”

Fain said Blacks during the period created such places out of necessity.

“It’s clear that Black people – their primary goal was to establish their own institutions, their own networks that allowed them to operate in a racialized environment to move their people forward as best they could,” he said. “Because they really couldn’t count on white support.”

Another such institution was the West Virginia Collegiate Institute. Woodson served as a dean at the school, which is now called West Virginia State University.

Fain said it was through his experience at Douglass and West Virginia State that Woodson interacted with other Black leaders in West Virginia and the country. And that helped form his core conviction that education was the best way for Black people to succeed.

“Within that racial uplift rubric, you follow these principles, you follow these guidelines, get an education, you will move forward,” Fain said. “Individually, and as a race.”

After earning degrees from Berea College in Kentucky and the University of Chicago, Woodson became the second African-American to receive a doctorate from Harvard. The first was W.E.B. DuBois. Woodson later wrote that to his dismay, his professors at Harvard showed little interest in the contributions of Black Americans beyond enslavement.

Woodson founded the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History. The group began Negro History Week in 1926 in honor of the birthdays of Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass. In 1976, Black History Week became Black History Month.

This year’s Black History Month comes at a time when state legislatures, including West Virginia’s, are debating legislation to limit what public schools can teach about Black history and the history of racism in America.

Fain said that wouldn’t sit well with Woodson.

“His whole goal was not to demonize white America,” Fain said. “His goal was to elevate Black contributions and experiences. Black History Month is not about demonizing white people. It’s about providing an opportunity to chronicle, acknowledge and celebrate the Black experience in this country.”

Fain noted that Woodson’s most popular book, “The Miseducation of the Negro,” called out an educational system that made Black Americans’ contributions and experiences invisible. It called on Black people to learn about their own history.

“I think Carter G. Woodson would be greatly dismayed at these legislative attempts that are now taking place,” Fain said.

Civil War Art Exhibit Coming To W.Va. Recounts The Lives Of Black Soldiers

An art exhibit of full-sized portraits of 17 Black Civil War soldiers from across America alongside biographies of their lives before, during, and after the Civil War. Artist and medical illustrator Shayne Davidson has been touring the country with the exhibit titled Seventeen Men since 2012.

This spring, the exhibit is coming to Charleston’s Craik-Patton House, a historic, 19th-century home listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Reporter Shepherd Snyder sat down with Davidson and Craik-Patton House Director Nathan Jones to talk about the exhibit.

The transcript below has been lightly edited for clarity.

Snyder: Shayne, I’m going to start with a couple of questions for you. Can you tell me a little bit about this exhibit? What inspired Seventeen Men in particular? Was there anything in particular you wanted to convey with this exhibit?

Davidson: You’ll have to bear with me, because there’s a little bit of backstory to it. I was working on a family tree for a friend, and she happened to mention that she had this tiny little album of Civil War soldiers that had belonged to her great-grandfather. And she asked me if I was interested in seeing it, even though the men in the album weren’t related to him… So I said, sure, I’d be interested in seeing it, as I also collect vintage photography. And I knew that photos of Black Civil War soldiers were very unusual. They’re quite rare. So I was interested in seeing it, and she photographed all the photos in it. There were 18 photos. She photographed them all and emailed them to me. And as I was looking at them, I thought they were really fascinating photos, even though they’re extremely tiny – about the size of a postage stamp. They’re what’s called a gem photo. And I realized that, as I was looking at them, they were identified. Somebody had written their name on the matte around the photo for each person. So I got intrigued with this little album, and I decided to do a family tree for each man to see if I could kind of give him some background. So when I had some time, I started to do full size portraits of each man, after I had done the genealogical background. And I ended up doing portraits of all the men in the album, and then writing little biographical accounts of their lives. Since then, the people who own the album have donated it to the African American Museum of History and Culture at the Smithsonian in Washington, DC, where it is on display. I knew it was a rare piece. But now I understand how rare identified Black Civil War soldier photos are. So it wasn’t really planned, it just sort of happened.

Snyder: And speaking of biographies, Shayne, you said that each of the drawings in your art exhibit come with a biography of each depicted person’s life story before, during, and after the Civil War. Can you touch on that a little bit?

Davidson: Well, that was part of what inspired me to do the drawings. I found so much information out about them. Most of the men; not all, but most – there’s one man who isn’t identified. And by the way, the identifications, we’re fairly sure, were done by Captain (William A.) Prickett (of the United States Colored Troops) who owned the album. We believe that the album was a gift to him from the men. We don’t know that for sure, but we think that’s probably how it came to exist. And let me say that, as far as I know, gifts like that were extremely unusual and to have it survive is more unusual still. He apparently wrote the names of the men in the album, which allowed me to identify them and do the research into them. So there are little biographical stories about each man. Some of them were free when they signed up to serve. Several of them were signed up by their slave holders, the slave holder receiving the bounty that would have been paid to the man. And some of them it’s just a little unclear. The men who, for instance, lived in Delaware, a border state. There was one man from Maryland. It’s a little unclear whether they were free or enslaved at the time of signing up. It’s also possible that a couple of the men may have actually left the country through the Underground Railroad and came back to sign up. They may have been in Canada and came back to sign up for the USCT because they signed up in Erie, Pennsylvania, very close to Lake Erie.

Snyder: I’m going to pivot here and ask Nathan: As the director of Charleston’s Craik-Patton House, why was it important for the museum to feature this exhibit?

Jones: Well, with nearly 200,000 African American men serving as soldiers and sailors during the Civil War, it’s a subject that is not often portrayed. And I felt like it would be a wonderful opportunity for us to share this with our community. I believe it was the spring of 2020 here in Charleston, the state set up a historical roadside marker for the 45th United States Colored Troops. It was something that when I first saw it, I was excited that they had placed it there. And when (Executive Director) Drew Gruber approached me from the Civil War Trails Association with Shayne’s exhibit, I knew that the Craik-Patton House was the place for this display. I think it’s an excellent exhibit that does not get the recognition that it deserves. And that’s one of the reasons why we wanted to have it here on display at the Craik-Patton House.

Spacecraft Named After Famed NASA Mathematician, W.Va. Native Katherine Johnson

A new spacecraft headed to the International Space Station later this month will be named after NASA mathematician Katherine Johnson, a native West Virginian.

“Her work at NASA quite literally launched Americans into space, and her legacy continues to inspire young black women every day,” Northrop Grumman wrote in a press release this week.

The company traditionally names each spacecraft after a person who played a pivotal role in human space flight.

Over her 33-year NASA career, Johnson’s calculations were critical to some of America’s great space achievements including John Glenn’s trip orbiting the Earth and the Apollo 11 moon landing.

“If she says they’re good, then I’m ready to go,” Glenn notably said.

Johnson, a native of White Sulphur Springs, W. Va., received a degree in mathematics and French from West Virginia State College at the age of 18. She took every math class offered at the school.

After that, she was one of three Black students chosen to integrate West Virginia’s graduate school and the first Black woman to attend graduate school at West Virginia University.

In 2015, Johnson was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama, the nation’s highest civilian honor. She passed away last year at the age of 101.

Carter G. Woodson Lyceum Established at Marshall University

Marshall University announced Friday the launch of the Carter G. Woodson Lyceum. Named after the Huntington native and “Father of Black History Month,” the program will strive to teach about the history of black history month and Woodson.

The lyceum will be operated as a collaboration between the Drinko Academy and the W. Page Pitt School of Journalism and Mass Communications.

The first act of the lyceum is to open up application for the Dr. Carter G. Woodson Lyceum Summer Program for Black History Instruction. Through a West Virginia Humanities Council Grant, a four-day workshop will be offered in June for educators in the state to receive black history instruction. Participants will receive three hours of graduate level college credit and a $500 stipend. All West Virginia teachers are eligible to apply for one of the 20 available slots. Deadline is February 15^th.