BLACK HISTORY: LITTLE KNOWN FACTS

- The banjo originated in Africa and up until the 1800s was considered an instrument only played by blacks.

– Paul Cuffee (1759 – 1817) an African–American, philanthropist, ship captain, and devout Quaker transported 38 free African–Americans to Sierra Leone, Africa in 1815 in the hopes of establishing Western Africa. He also founded the first integrated school in Massachusetts in 1797.

– Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (1929 – 1968) was stabbed by an African–American woman in 1958 while attending his book signing at Blumstein’s department store in Harlem. The next year Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and his wife Coretta Scott King visited India to study Ghandi’s nonviolence philosophy.

– Jazz, an African–American musical form born out of the Blues, Ragtime, and marching bands originated in Louisiana during the turn of the 19th century. The word Jazz is a slang term that at one point referred to a sexual act.

– In the mid 1800s Philadelphia was known as “The Black Capital of Anti–Slavery,” because of the strong abolitionist presence there and such groups as The Philadelphia Female Anti–Slavery Society, The Philadelphia Young Men’s Anti–Slavery Society and The Philadelphia Anti–Slavery Society.

– The African Free School in New York City was the first free school for African-Americans. It was started by the abolitionist group the New York Manumission Society in 1787.

– Maya Angelou’s autobiographical, “I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings” is the first non-fiction work by an African-American woman to make the best-seller list.