afro black history character education week 1 - at the crossroads of freedom

2 Character Education/Black History Month February 2, 2013 Afro-American Newspapers

4 Black History Introduction

5 Character Education Profile: BGE

6 Black History Month: The Proclamation Set Slaves Free to Find Their Fit in the Nation’s Fabric

9 Character Education Profile: Legg Mason

A publication of the Afro-American Newspapers

The Baltimore Afro-American Newspaper

2519 N. Charles StreetBaltimore, MD 21218

(410) 554-8200

The Washington Afro-American Newspaper

1917 Benning Road NEWashington, DC 20002

(202) 332-0080

John J. Oliver Jr.Chairman/Publisher

Executive Editor Avis Thomas-Lester

Character Education Project ManagerDiane Hocker

Character Education CoordinatorTakiea Hinton

Project EditorRev. Dorothy Boulware

LayoutDenise Dorsey

Cover Design Denise DorseyVickie Johnson

Cover Photos: Courtesy Office.Microsoft.com,Rob Roberts, AFRO Archives

Character EducationBlack History Month

At the Crossroads of Freedom and Equality:

The Emancipation Proclamation and the March on Washington

Table of Contents

Afro-American Newspapers February 2, 2013 Character Education/Black History Month 3

The Afro-American Newspapers’ Character Education program is

designed to promote positive character traits in our public school students. Each year, several corporate professionals and business leaders join our effort and share stories that illustrate how the building of their character not only helps them personally but also in the workplace. During Black History Month, the AFRO is delivered to public middle schools across the region including Anne Arundel County, Baltimore City and Baltimore County, Howard County, Montgomery County, Prince George’s County and Washington, D.C. Each publication contains the testimonies of our corporate partners.

How does it work?During the AFRO’s Black History

Month series – the newspapers’ most active and sought after series each year– we feature a Black History and Character Education publication that profiles diverse corporate professionals, their success stories and helpful strategies for planning a successful career. Each week, eighth-graders in participating

jurisdictions receive the publication at no cost. The goal is for students to read the featured profiles and Black history content and submit an essay connecting what they’ve learned from a particular profile to the importance of character building. Winners of the essay contest are awarded valuable prizes to further their education and an opportunity to meet the corporate professional they chose to write about.

Why eighth-graders?Our research shows that by the

eighth grade, most students have started to seriously think about their career goals and and are more receptive to the information shared by the business community.

How can the schools help?• Allow the AFRO to deliver

Character Education to your school on a weekly basis throughout the month of February. In addition, provide the Afro-American Newspapers in your school’s media center or library on a weekly basis for the current calendar year.

• Assist in coordinating the distribution of the publication within participating school districts.

• Identify a liaison to advise us on information concerning character education that can be included in each edition.

• Encourage teachers and students to participate in the essay contest.

How do schools benefit?• The AFRO encourages staff and

students of participating schools to submit stories, columns, photos, etc., about the importance of education and good character.

• During February, all participating schools receive the Character Education publication to assist students in their learning of Black history and to further promote literacy.

Partnership opportunityCorporations, nonprofits and other

organizations are invited to become strategic partners with this campaign. By becoming a partner, your company will help provide the AFRO as an educational tool to eighth-graders throughout the region. In addition, your company will illustrate its support for professional development among today’s youth.

Welcome to Character Education 2013


The Emancipation Proclamation mandated freedom for Black slaves, 150 years ago, opening doors to unknown opportunities, clearing roads to pre-

viously unimagined destinations.

Some newly freed Americans were afraid so they “stayed put.” Oth-ers went out on their own but soon returned for whatever reasons.

But many ventured forth to become the “firsts” that we celebrate each year during the shortest month of the year. Here at the AFRO, the celebration is ongoing and is alive and well in AFRO archives that detail the ascendancy from slave to sharecropper to landowner to entrepreneur.

The journey was long and hard with many bumps in the road, but they persevered and became our heroes and sheroes. They laid the foundation for generations to come who would have the audacity to dream a dream of freedom that extended beyond separate but equal – a dream fueled by Brown v. Board of Education, a dream eventually fueled by the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Most poignantly, a dream articulated by a young Black man, a Nobel Prize winner, a Baptist preacher, son of a Baptist preacher.

The estimated 250,000 people gathered at the foot of the Lincoln Memorial on August 28, 1963, were accosted with a phraseology unheard of – being judged on the content of character rather than skin color, black children and

white children playing peacefully together, rings of justice sound-ing from the south as well as the north.

This Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. headlined the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom organized by A. Phillip Randolph and other civil rights leaders who had the audac-ity to take it to the capital, built by slaves, and demand the American dream for all people.

At this time, the Civil Rights Act backed by then president John Ken-nedy was being held hostage in Con-gress. Demonstrations had been held all over the country. The time was right. The right combination of people were at the planning table. Those who wanted a seat were ready to claim it. The full freedom that had been pend-ing was again demanded, and not just for African Americans, but a conscious sense of justice that should be had by all.

Slave children, names and date unknown


I come from a very close-knit family with a strong set of values. I always looked up to the resilient men and women in my family who supported me and told me I could be whatever and whomever I wanted. They made sure I stayed on the right path and always pursued my goals. It was in middle school that I really started to learn what it meant to take responsibility and understand that I was accountable for my own actions.

As a child, I was very shy. While I struggled with shyness in class, I was able to excel outside of the classroom. As I got older, I surrounded myself with outgoing people and participated in team sports, like basketball, which taught me that each person served a particular role and the team as a whole relied on each member to succeed. Basketball really helped me come out of my shell and feel comfortable with myself.

Working at BGE over the past 11 years, I also feel like I’m part of a team. As a customer relations trainer, I’ve had the opportunity to help new and existing customer service representatives improve upon their communication and customer service abilities to ensure that our customers always get the highest level of service. As someone who dislikes being in the spotlight, I find that I am really able to shine as a trainer because I realize it’s not about me, it’s about helping some-one else grow and develop new skills to become suc-cessful in their own roles. Years ago, I never would have seen myself in a leadership role, but I enjoy watching the representatives I instruct excel at their jobs. It’s like being a teacher and watching students advance to the next level, knowing you contributed to their achieve-ments. Without the help and guidance of the many role models in my life growing up, I wouldn’t be in a place now where I’m able to inspire others to realize their dreams.

I encourage anyone unsure of where they want to be in their life to pursue as many opportunities as pos-sible – join a club or team and surround yourself with people who will bring out the best in you. Get involved and challenge yourself as much as possible.

Find Your Own Place

Ebony SimmsCustomers Relations Trainer


By Zenitha PrinceSpecial to the AFRO

A merica was on the cusp of the third year of its bloody Civil War when Union President Abraham Lincoln adopted a stratagem that changed everything. On Jan. 1, 1863, he

issued the Emancipation Proclamation declaring that “all persons held as slaves within any States…in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free.”

The presidential edict was less about ending the demoralizing institution of slavery as it was about bringing the Confederate states of the South into line. Slave-holding states that were loyal to the Union were given a pass.

“The Emancipation Proclamation basically had no impact on African Americans,” said Molefi Kete Asante, author of more than 75 books on African-American history and culture and a professor at Temple University. “It was a signal to southern states in the Confederacy that if they did not discontinue their rebellion, the Africans who were enslaved in those states would be free.”

For antebellum abolitionists, then, the Proclamation was a sketchy victory—it did not free all the enslaved in the United States, only those in states that seceded from the Union; and the liberation of those slaves depended on the North’s military success—about 50,000 slaves won immediate freedom after the edict because of the presence of the Union militia.

William Seward, Lincoln’s secretary of state, commented on the irony of the law, saying, “We show our sympathy with slavery by emancipating slaves where we cannot reach them and holding them in bondage where we can set them free.”

Despite the Proclamation’s underlying intent, for 4 million enslaved Blacks, it was the sun’s first rays on a dawning reality.

“Black people saw the Proclamation as a promise of freedom and

equality,” said Professor Edna Medford, chair, Department of History at Howard University. But they were not mere passive recipients of that promise, she added. “It required Africans to take action, to take up and leave the plantation for themselves.”

Even before the edict was read, Blacks had already begun their freedom search—from the very inception of American slavery—with those efforts reaching their peak in the years before and after the Emancipation Proclamation. According to professor Asante, during the period 1860-1865, more Blacks escaped from slavery than ever before. And many joined the Union forces, offering up their will, their skills and their very blood to advance the cause of liberty. By the end of the war, almost 200,000 Black soldiers and sailors had served in the Union military. Their involvement turned the tide of the Civil War—they strengthened the Union militarily and added moral and political force to its cause.

It was that strength of will, which impelled Black slaves to individually and collectively challenge the monolith of slavery, that fuelled their achievements in the years following Lincoln’s edict. America’s Blacks, both free-born and enslaved, had found distinction in business, academia, religion and other fields even before 1863. And, during the Reconstruction period after the Civil War, the possibilities for Blacks seemed endless.

“In the post-Emancipation period, America was at a crossroads; we could have gone in any direction,” Medford, the Howard University professor, said. “For a while it looked like there were great possibilities for Blacks to get a decent education, to see increased land ownership and to

get a chance at the economic independence we had earned.

“But America abandoned African Americans to Southern White men and as a consequence, we were kept in second-class citizenship.”

Thus, Black accomplishments during this time were Herculean, belying

The Proclamation Set Slaves Free to Find Their Fit in the Nation’s Fabric

Dec. 2012 - The original Emancipation Proclamation was on rare display in Washington, D.C.


the hatred of the thwarted plantocracy toward their former slaves and the eventual reinstatement of restrictive “Black codes” in the South, the resentment of poor Northern Whites who saw the newly-liberated Blacks as unwanted competition in a depressed economy and the complicity of the federal government in the oppression of Blacks via laws such as the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson ruling. And so, the AFRO honors those who thrived in this hostile environment.

RELIGIONBlack accomplishment in religion

began even before the American Revolution, around 1758, when one of the first known Black churches in America was created. Called the African Baptist or “Bluestone” Church, this house of worship was founded on the William Byrd plantation near the Bluestone River, in Mecklenburg, Va., according to the African American Registry.

“The Black Church was one of the most important institutions in the Black community even before African Americans were freed,” Medford said. “And, one of the first things African Americans did after emancipation was to establish their own churches.”

In fact, after Emancipation, the proliferation of Black churches was astounding. For example, the African Methodist Episcopal Church, established in 1794, gained 50,000 congregants in the first year after the war ended. For Blacks, the Church was one of the first things that was “theirs”—it was their first chance at self-determination, land-ownership and other marks of freedom.

“The church became not only an employment agency but a benevolent society that helped when they had no money to bury their dead or to buy food; it was a courting area, it was a school, it was place where they could exercise their political voice—the church became everything,” Medford said.

Rev. Alexander BettisBorn into slavery on a plantation in Edgefield

County, S.C., Alexander Bettis was taught to read and converted to Christianity by his owner, Widow Jones. According to Alfred W. Nicholson, author

of Brief Sketch of the Life and Labors of Rev. Alexander Bettis, the infant Alexander had such powerful lungs that Jones unwittingly prophesied,

“He shall be a Baptist preacher, and shall lead many negroes to serve the Lord.”

In early adulthood Bettis was licensed to preach and he ministered throughout the Civil War, during which he worked as an overseer and sawmill manager.

In 1868, after the local Baptist association refused to ordain him, Bettis and a group of 17 other free Blacks organized Mt. Canaan Baptist Church. As the only ordained Black preacher in

the area, Bettis was in high demand, organizing churches and ordaining other Blacks to the

ministry. He was the pastor of as many as 10 churches at a time, according to Nicholson, and he founded over 40 churches, serving four

of them continuously from their organization until the time of his death.

Bettis’ churches were organized into the Mount Canaan Association, which, in 1881, founded the Bettis Academy and Junior College, a primary, secondary and tertiary school for the African-American youth of the region.

MILITARYAfrican Americans have always distinguished

themselves in battle, beginning with Crispus Attucks who became the first American to die in the Revolutionary War. The Civil War was no different. In the wake of the Emancipation Proclamation, and even before, escaping slaves often made their way to Union lines, serving its forces in various capacities, including as cooks, scouts, laborers, sailors and soldiers.

The singular role of Black troops in the

Continued on page 8

Rev. Alexander Bettis


Continued on page 10

outcome of the Civil War was encapsulated in President Lincoln’s 1865 statement: “Without the military help of black freedmen, the war against the South could not have been won.”

By war’s end, 16 Black soldiers had been awarded the Medal of Honor for their valor. And, there were some, who, though unrewarded, played integral roles in the military.

Harriet TubmanIn 1849, Harriet Tubman escaped from

slavery in Maryland, despite her husband’s unwillingness to leave. Dubbed the “Moses” of the Underground Railroad, Tubman safely shepherded hundreds of Black slaves from the “Egypt” of the South to the “Promised Land” of the North. Her years of successfully eluding angry slave owners and fugitive slave catchers honed her ability to organize and strategize. Thus, when abolitionist John Brown began recruiting supporters for an attack on slaveholders at Harper’s Ferry, Va., he turned to “General Tubman” for help.

According to M.W. Taylor’s essay “General Tubman Goes to War” found in Harriet Tubman, Black Americans of Achievement, in April 1860 Tubman led a raid in Troy, N.Y., where she overwhelmed dozens of lawmen to rescue fugitive slave Charles Nalle. “‘Harriet Tubman’s victory,’ commented biographer Earl Conrad, ‘was a high point of the fugitive slave history that racked the nation’s breast for 10 years. If Brown’s Virginia raid was a dress rehearsal for the Civil War, Harriet’s action was a bugle call for the war to begin,’” Taylor cited.

During the Civil War, Tubman lent her skills to the Union cause, serving as a cook and nurse and later an armed scout and spy. In 1863, on commission from the Union Army, Tubman organized a sophisticated network of scouts -- and spies -- among Blacks in the South.

In July of 1863, Tubman headed the Combahee River Expedition, becoming the first woman to lead an armed mission in the war. Under her leadership, the Union troops destroyed bridges and railroads, thus disrupting Southern supply lines, and also freed more than 750 slaves.

Gen. Rufus Saxton, who reported the raid to Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, said “This is the

only military command in American history wherein a woman, black or white, led the raid and under whose inspiration it was originated and conducted,” according to About.com.

Despite her distinguished service, Tubman never received military wages or pension.

Sgt. William H. CarneySgt. William H. Carney was born a slave in Harriet Tubman

Sgt. William H. Carney


The majority of things I have learned about being honorable, I learned from my family. Not just “what is right,” but “what feels right.” Being virtuous starts with the home, and extends into your life, your education, and your career.

Here’s a good example: As a side job, I used to walk dogs when I was younger. One January, it got very cold, and I didn’t want to walk the dog those mornings. Instead of walking him around the block, like I was supposed to, I walked him to the corner and back instead. Nobody would know the difference, and I still got paid. Life was good.

Or so I thought, until I found out that my grandmother was following me. “She’s paying you to do a specific job, and you need to complete that job,” she told me. She did more than just punish me; she made me apologize to the owner, and made me pay back everything I was paid over the previous two months. While that may seem over the top, she did it because it was “the right thing to do,” and I absolutely trust her judgment. I’ve been through high school, college and three jobs since then, and I still take those words to heart. It doesn’t matter what is quicker; what matters is doing the right thing. Even if no one else knows, YOU will know, and that counts for a lot.

So when your parents give you some boring lecture about honor and decency don’t ignore them. Listen to their advice; ask questions, and learn from them and, as you gain experience, do the same for others. Will they teach you everything you need to know about right and wrong? Maybe not, but you will find no better foundation and the more you learn from them, the better.

After all, learning from your family is the right thing to do.

Do the Right Thing

Antoine D. PollardLegal Reporting



Norfolk, Va., in 1840, according to Blackpast.org. His father escaped slavery via the Underground Railroad and earned enough money to free his wife and son. After obtaining freedom, the Carneys moved to New Bedford, Mass.

Though he had aspirations toward the ministry, he instead enlisted in the Union army in 1863, when the passing of the Emancipation Proclamation authorized Blacks to serve.

Carney joined the now famous all-Black 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment commanded by Col. Robert Gould Shaw. Because of his high education and his strong ability to lead others, he quickly rose to sergeant.

In the summer of 1863, the unit arrived in James Island, S.C., where it engaged in its first combat. Two days later, the 54th, led by Carney, was ordered into battle to take charge over the heavily guarded Fort Wagner.

In the heat of the battle, Shaw was pinned down under the parapet of the fort and desperately wanted his men to push forward. Carney seized control of the colors and prevented them from touching the ground. Despite numerous wounds and heavy gunfire, Carney kept the flags aloft. When reinforcements arrived, the unit was able to withdraw. Carney, while struggling back to Union lines, stated, “Boys the old flag never touched the ground.”

After being discharged due to his wounds, Carney received the highest military award, the Congressional Medal of Honor, for his act of heroism at Fort Wagner. This achievement made Carney the very first African-American to receive the award.

EDUCATIONThe system of slavery was adept at suppressing

Black education, so much so that over 90 percent

of the adult Black population in the Southern states was illiterate in 1860 at the start of the Civil War, according to the Encyclopedia of African-American Politics.

Therefore, early Black achievements in education were concentrated among free men and women. It was this inaugural “Talented Tenth” who, after the Civil War, worked with Northern White missionaries and philanthropists to advance education among Blacks.

But the former slaves were not mere supplicants, according to the Encyclopedia.

“The black community, although hindered by poverty, contributed significantly to the development of early black education,” it stated. “In all of the Southern states the black church and other organizations solicited funds to establish schools. In some parts of the South, the schools organized by blacks were the first to be established in a town or village.”

Susie King TaylorBorn a slave in Liberty

County, Ga., in 1848, Susie King Baker was the daughter of a domestic servant, according to the African American Registry. At 7 years old, she was sent to live with her grandmother in Savannah.

By attending secret schools taught by Blacks in the area, Baker quickly became a skilled reader and writer.

Baker was sent back to live with her mother in April 1862, around the time federal forces attacked Fort Pulaski. After Union soldiers captured the fort, she fled with her relatives to the Union-controlled St. Simons Island.

Army officers quickly learned about Baker’s superb reading and writing ability

and offered her books and school supplies if she agreed to teach a

school on St. Simon’s Island. She accepted the offer and became the

first Black teacher to lawfully instruct African-American

students in the United States. Often pulling long hours, she taught children during

the day and adults at night.

She met and married Edward King, a commissioned officer in the Union Army, while teaching. As Susan Baker King, she traveled with her husband’s regiment working as a laundress, nurse and a teacher to Black soldiers.

Upon returning to

Savannah in 1866, she opened a school for freed Black children.

Susie King Taylor


She wrote about her experience in the Civil War and her memoirs were published in 1902 as Reminisces of My Life in Camp with the 33rd US Colored Troops.

ENTREPRENEURSHIPEven before Emancipation there were Blacks

with substantial business holdings: Paul Cuffe, a former slave, owned a small fleet of whaling ships among other ventures; and William Leidesdorff was a maritime tradesman, who established a number of business enterprises in San Francisco, including its first hotel, and was America’s first Black millionaire.

And there were Blacks, including slaves, who conducted small business enterprises such as laundry services, catering companies, market stalls and more, and that continued after the Emancipation Proclamation. Black Civil War veterans were especially prosperous, using their military pay to purchase lots of land for farming or to start small businesses.

Granville T. WoodsGranville T. Woods was born in

Columbus, Ohio, on April 23, 1856, to free African Americans. Woods only received schooling until the age of 10. He further educated himself by working in railroad machine

shops and steel mills in his early teens as well as by reading about electricity. Since Blacks were not allowed to go to libraries, Woods often had his friends check out library books for him. In this manner, he was able

to read up enough on electricity to put to work his knowledge of electrical engineering.

In the early 1880s, Woods set up his own company to develop, manufacture and sell electrical apparatus, and in 1889, he filed his first patent for an improved steam boiler furnace. Other inventions followed, including “telegraphony,” a process that allowed operators to send and receive messages more quickly and which was later acquired by Alexander Graham Bell’s company. Bell’s purchase of the telegraphony was Woods’ pathway to becoming a full-time inventor.

Known as “Black Edison,” he registered nearly 60 patents in his lifetime, including a telephone transmitter, a trolley wheel and the multiplex telegraph (over which he defeated a lawsuit by Thomas Edison).

Maggie Lena WalkerMaggie Lena Walker (1867-1934) was a

former kitchen slave who cooked in the Civil War household of Union sympathizer Elizabeth Van

Lew, and she grew up helping her mother run a small laundry service.

Her early work experiences led to her being elected, at age 17, to an office in the Independent Order of St. Luke, a Black burial society in Richmond, Va. In 1903, Walker pooled her community’s resources and

founded the St. Luke Penny Savings Bank

(now Consolidated and Trust Company)—the nation’s oldest continuously

existing African-

American bank—and became known as the first female bank president in the United States.

POLITICSIn the early period of Reconstruction,

and following Lincoln’s assassination, President Andrew Johnson, adopted policies that excluded Blacks from southern politics and allowed state legislatures to pass restrictive “black codes” that kept freed men and women in second-class citizenship. Fierce resistance to his policies led to a Republican victory in the U.S. congressional elections of 1866 and to a new

Maggie Lena Walker

Granville T. Woods


phase of Reconstruction, which allowed Blacks to move into positions as commissioners of revenue, sheriffs, and local and national legislators.

Joseph H. Rainey,First Black Congressman According to the African American

Registry, Joseph Hayne Rainey was a former enslaved African American born in Georgetown, S.C., on June 21, 1832. The son of a barber, who bought the family’s freedom, Rainey received some private schooling and took up his father’s barbering trade in Charleston, S.C. During the American Civil War he was forced to work on the fortifications in Charleston harbor but managed to escape to the West Indies, where he remained until the end of the war in 1865. Upon his return to South Carolina, he was a delegate to the state constitutional convention in 1868 and served briefly in the state senate. Elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1870, he was re- elected four times, the longest tenure in the House of any Black man during the Reconstruction era. Upon leaving the House in 1879, he was appointed U.S. Internal Revenue Agent of South Carolina. He resigned from that post in 1881 to engage in banking and brokerage enterprises in Washington, D.C.

Hiram Revels, First Black U.S. Senator

According to the State Library of North Carolina, Hiram Revels was born a free man in Fayetteville, N.C., in 1822. He was born of mixed African and Croatan

Joseph H. Rainey

Hiram Revels



Black Pioneers In Business

J. E. ReedBorn of free parents in North Carolina, he

moved to New Bedford, Massachusetts, in 1878. IN 1880 he secured employment as an

errand boy in the Photograph Galleries of G. F. Parlow. Parlow, recognizing the abilities of Reed, taught him photography.

After mastering the profession he became an assistant to Parlow. In 1888 Reed formed a partnership with a young white man named P.C. Headly and bought the gallery from Parlow.

The firm of Headly and Reed continued in business until 1895, when Reed bought out the interest of Headly.

H. A. TandyIn the face of extreme

prejudice, a lack of skilled mechanics, labor union rejection, H. A. Tandy became one of the most successful contractors and builders in Lexington, Kentucky.

The greatest testimony to his ability was in 1898 the awarding of a contract for the brick work on the new courthouse in Lexington, which was one of the finest and largest courthouses in the United States.

Stansbury BoyceIn 1890 he owned and operated a department store in

Jacksonville, Florida. The store was patterned after major department stores with a black salesgirl heading each department.

His millinery department attracted the most affluent white ladies in Jacksonville.

Elizabeth S. SlaughterOne of the many black women who helped compel

white people to see black women as competitors rather than cooks, and washwomen, was Elizabeth B. Slaughter. She was a graduate of the “Armour Institute,” Chicago, Illinois, where she learned the millinery trade and business.

In the late part of the 1890’s she opened her own business in Louisville, Kentucky, where her patrons numbered among both black and white.


Indian heritage to free parents. Revels became the first African-American member of Congress.

Revels attended various schools including a Quaker school in Indiana. He later attended Knox College in Galesburg, Ill. Revels was ordained as a minister by the African Methodist Episcopal Church and traveled extensively ministering to African-American congregations in Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Tennessee, Kentucky, Missouri and Kansas. He eventually settled in Baltimore where he became principal of a school for African Americans as well as pastor of a local church. At the outbreak of the Civil War, Revels assisted in recruiting two regiments of Black troops in Maryland. He later established a freedom school in St. Louis, Mo. He settled in Natchez, Miss., where he became an elected alderman in 1868. By 1870, Revel was a member of the state senate. That same year he was elected as the first African American to serve as a U.S. Republican senator. He served for only one year, however, after the Senate resolved a challenge to his credentials.

After leaving the Senate, he became secretary of state ad interim of Mississippi in 1873. He also served as president of the Alcorn Agricultural College in Rodney, Miss. from 1876-1882.

P.B.S. Pinchback, First Black Governor

Pinckney Benton Stewart Pinchback, the son of a Mississippi White planter and a freed slave was born in 1837 in Macon, Ga. He was schooled in Cincinnati and fled after the passing of his father because he feared that his paternal relatives would force him back into slavery. He then worked as a hotel porter and barber in Terre Haute, Ind. During the Civil War, Pinchback traveled to Louisiana and became the only African-American captain in the Union-controlled First Louisiana National Guards. After the war, he became active in Republican Party politics in Louisiana as a delegate in the Republican state convention of 1867 and to the Constitutional Convention of 1868. In 1871, Pinchback became lieutenant governor of Louisiana under Henry Clay Warmoth. He served as acting governor while impeachment proceedings were in progress against Warmoth. In the meantime he went into business and acquired control of a Republican paper, the New Orleans Louisianian. He held office for only 35 days, but during his short term in office 10 acts became law. Pinchback continued his career, holding various offices including a seat on the State Board of Education, Internal Revenue agent and as a member of the Board of Trustees of Southern University. Pinchback helped establish Southern University when, in the Constitutional Convention of 1879, he pushed for the creation of a college for Blacks in Louisiana.

P.B.S. Pinchback

Photo Courtesy Library of Congress


Afro-American Newspapers’ Character Education Essay Contest

T he Afro-American Newspapers’ Character Education

Contest was launched 16 years ago to promote

positive character development among the nation’s

leaders of tomorrow – our youth.

We believe good character has to be taught and

modeled, which is why we have chosen to profile local corporate

professionals and business leaders in our publication.

The featured individuals, time and time again, incorporate positive

character traits – such as honesty, respect, responsibility, courage

and perseverance – in their everyday lives, proving to be positive role

models in their community.

For the contest, students are asked to read the featured profiles

and choose the one that inspires them most to incorporate positive

character traits in their own lives. Students should then write an essay

that best explains why they chose the article and how they plan to use

what they’ve learned to shape their future.

• Essays should be between two and four pages in length (double-

spaced) and must be typed.

• Essays will be judged on neatness, grammar, punctuation and the

student’s ability to give insight on what they learned from the profile.

Judges are impartial volunteers and may include teachers, staff from

local colleges and universities and the editorial staff at the AFRO.

For more information concerning the Afro-American Newspapers’

Character Education Contest, please contact: Diane Hocker,

410-554-8243.

Deadline: April 8, 2013Mail typed essays to:

Diane Hocker • Afro-American Newspapers 2519 N. Charles Street • Baltimore, Md. 21218

or e-mail them to: [email protected]

No faxes will be accepted

Cash prizes to be awarded

Eighth-Graders Only

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