Black History as We Know It

To many Black history month is a time period that we show respect and honor to the African Americans who have change the world by not only using their voice but their actions as well. When people think of black history, they think of well-known heroes such as Martin Luther King JR, Rosa Parks, Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass, Malcolm X and many more. I am going to take you on a journey back to the past to introduce you to the Africans American that contributed the change in the way that blacks were treated, spoken to, approached and their ability to learn also progress in life.

Billie Holliday is known as the greatest woman to ever sing the Blues. With her amazing talent and strong vocals, Ms. Holliday quickly went straight to the top but it was not always look that. Billie Holliday (Eleanora Fagan) was in Philadelphia then moved with her mother to a poor area in Baltimore. At the age of 11 Eleanora reported that she had was rapped. The claim combined with her frequent truancy she had been sent to The House of the Good Shepherd. Thanks to a family friend, Eleanora was released after 2 years and moved to New York with her mother. Times after those years were hard she encountered prostitution, living paycheck to pay check working in clubs. Talent scout John Hammond discovered Billie in a local nightclub. Make her recording debut on a 1933 Benny Goodman date, and Goodman was also on hand in, when she continued her recording career with a group led by pianist Teddy Wilson. Their first collaboration included "What A Little Moonlight Can Do" and "Miss Brown To You", which helped to establish Billie Holiday as a major vocalist. She began recording under her own name a year later, producing a series of extraordinary performances with groups comprising the Swing Era's finest musicians.

Among the musicians who accompanied her frequently was tenor saxophonist Lester Young, who had been a boarder at her mother's house in 1934 and with whom she had a special rapport. "Well, I think you can hear that on some of the old records, you know. Some time I'd sit down and listen to 'em myself, and it sound like two of the same voices, if you don't be careful, you know, or the same mind, or something like that." [6] Young nicknamed her "Lady Day" and she, in turn, dubbed him "Prez." she also had brief stints as a big band vocalist with Count Basie and Artie Shaw being the first black woman to work with a white orchestra, back then that arrangement went against the temper of the times. Billie Holliday opened the doors for many African American singers that had a passion for singing.

Bessie Coleman the first African American woman to become an airplane license and first American woman to earn an international pilots license. Bessie’s early childhood was a happy one, spent playing in the front yard or on the porch. Sunday mornings and afternoons were spent at church. As the other children began to age and find work in the fields, Coleman assumed responsibilities around the house. She looked after her sisters, helped her mother, Susan Coleman, works in her garden, and performed many of the everyday chores of running the house.

Coleman began school at the age of six and had to walk four miles each day to her all-black, one-room school. Despite sometimes lacking such materials as chalk and pencils Bessie was an excellent student. She loved to read and established herself as an outstanding math student. Bessie completed all eight grades of her one-room school. Every year Coleman’s routine of school, chores, and church was interrupted by the cotton harvest. Each man, woman, and child was needed to pick the cotton, so the Coleman family worked together in the fields during the harvest.

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