|
Lucille
Bluford, born 1
July 1911,
in
Salisbury, North Carolina. Her parents were
John Henry Bluford, Sr. and Viola Harris Bluford. She had two
brothers, John Jr. and Guion. When Lucile was only four, her mother
died. Her father later married
Addie Alston, and in 1918 he accepted a position teaching science at
Lincoln High School in Kansas City, Missouri. Lucile moved with her
family to Kansas City when she was seven years old. . . .
Lucille discovered
while working on the high school newspaper and yearbook
that she wanted to become a journalist. She thought
about where she could go to college to study journalism,
but her choices were very limited. She knew she couldn’t
attend the University of Missouri in Columbia, which had
the oldest and most respected journalism school in the
country. It wouldn’t admit African Americans. Black
students were supposed to study at the historically
black college, Lincoln University, in Jefferson City,
but it did not have a journalism program. So Lucile
attended the University of Kansas in Lawrence instead.
She graduated in 1932 with high honors.
Lucile Bluford
began her journalism career in Atlanta, Georgia, where
she was a reporter for the Daily World, an African
American newspaper. Returning home, she worked at the
the Kansas City American and then at the Kansas City
Call, both African American-owned newspapers. At the
Call, Bluford worked for
Chester A. Franklin and advanced from the position
of reporter to city editor, managing editor, and finally
to editor and publisher.
In 1939, Bluford
applied to the University of Missouri School of
Journalism to do graduate work. She was accepted into
the program, but when she went to Columbia to enroll,
she was turned away. University officials had not known
that she was African American. Just the year before,
Lloyd Gaines, an honors student from Lincoln
University, had sued the University of Missouri to be
accepted into its School of Law. After his case went to
the United States Supreme Court and the court ruled in
his favor, Gaines mysteriously disappeared.
With the help of
the National Association for the Advancement of Colored
People (NAACP), Bluford strove to break down the system
of injustice against African Americans in higher
education. She believed that education was the key to
advancement and equal treatment in society. She tried
eleven times to enter the University of Missouri. She
filed the first of several lawsuits against the
university on October 13, 1939. Bluford’s case was
denied time and time again.
In 1941 the state
Supreme Court finally ruled in Bluford’s favor. The
University of Missouri had to admit her because no equal
program existed at Lincoln University. In response, the
School of Journalism closed its graduate program. It
claimed that it could not operate properly because a
majority of its professors and students were serving in
World War II.
Though Bluford
ended her legal battle with the University of Missouri,
she kept fighting racism. She became a leading voice in
the civil rights movement in Kansas City and helped make
the Call one of the largest and most important black
newspapers in the nation. Eventually, the University of
Missouri honored her. In 1984, a year after her nephew
Guion S. Bluford, Jr. became the first African
American astronaut in space, Bluford received an Honor
Medal for Distinguished Service in Journalism from the
School of Journalism. In 1989 the university gave her an
honorary doctorate. Bluford said that she accepted the
degree “not only for myself, but for the thousands of
black students” the university had discriminated against
over the years.—UMSystem
Bluford was denied admission to the University
of Missouri-Columbia's School of Journalism in 1939 because she was
African American, Lincoln's School of Journalism was created..
She became the managing editor and later the owner of the Kansas City
Call.
Lucille Bluford was
also the
first Black female to be enshrined in the National Newspaper Publishers
Association.—Law.Du.edu
Outstanding Black Missourian called the “Conscience
of Kansas City”
|
“When we talk about
Lucile Bluford in terms of Missouri history
and especially Kansas City history, she has
been a very prominent community leader over
the years,” said MU history professor Robert
Weems, who described The Call as an
important and influential black newspaper in
America. Bluford joined The Call
shortly after graduating from KU and became
an editor in 1955 following the death of
Chester Franklin, who in 1919 founded what
would become one of the nation’s largest
black-owned weekly newspapers. She also
served as part-owner and publisher. Bluford
was among those who were with then-Vice
President Harry Truman at a downtown Kansas
City hotel on the night he upset Thomas
Dewey to win the presidency in November
1948. And Cleaver remembered her once
scolding another presidential candidate—Jesse
Jackson—before
a crowd of 7,000 people for visiting Kansas
City without first notifying the black
media.—BlackMissouri
Lucile Bluford, 91,
editor and publisher of the Kansas City Call
and a champion of the civil rights movement
died on June 13, 2003 in Kansas City.—BlackMissouri
|
 |
* * *
* *
 |
Sources:
Chapter VI. "The Instruction of Negroes." In Edgar W.
Knight. A Documentary History of Education in the South before 1860.
Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina, 1953
Chapter 10 "Up From Slavery: Educational and
other Rights of Negroes." In Edgar W. Knight and Clifton L. Hall. Readings
in American Educational History. New York Appleton-Century-Crofts,
Inc., 1951. Many states had laws prohibiting
the education of blacks; here black youngsters are turned away at the
school door |
* * *
* *
* * * * *
|
The New Jim Crow
Mass Incarceration in the Age of
Colorblindness
By Michele Alexander
Contrary to the
rosy picture of race embodied in Barack
Obama's political success and Oprah
Winfrey's financial success, legal
scholar Alexander argues vigorously and
persuasively that [w]e have not ended
racial caste in America; we have merely
redesigned it. Jim Crow and legal racial
segregation has been replaced by mass
incarceration as a system of social
control (More African Americans are
under correctional control today... than
were enslaved in 1850). Alexander
reviews American racial history from the
colonies to the Clinton administration,
delineating its transformation into the
war on drugs. She offers an acute
analysis of the effect of this mass
incarceration upon former inmates who
will be discriminated against, legally,
for the rest of their lives, denied
employment, housing, education, and
public benefits. Most provocatively, she
reveals how both the move toward
colorblindness and affirmative action
may blur our vision of injustice: most
Americans know and don't know the truth
about mass incarceration—but her
carefully researched, deeply engaging,
and thoroughly readable book should
change that.—Publishers
Weekly |
 |
*
* * * *
 |
Blacks in Hispanic Literature: Critical Essays
Edited by
Miriam DeCosta-Willis
Blacks in Hispanic Literature is a
collection of fourteen essays by scholars and
creative writers from Africa and the Americas.
Called one of two significant critical works on
Afro-Hispanic literature to appear in the late
1970s, it includes the pioneering studies of
Carter G. Woodson and
Valaurez B. Spratlin, published in the 1930s, as
well as the essays of scholars whose interpretations
were shaped by the Black aesthetic. The early
essays, primarily of the Black-as-subject in Spanish
medieval and Golden Age literature, provide an
historical context for understanding 20th-century
creative works by African-descended, Hispanophone
writers, such as Cuban
Nicolás Guillén and Ecuadorean poet, novelist,
and scholar
Adalberto Ortiz, whose essay analyzes the
significance of Negritude in Latin America. This
collaborative text set the tone for later
conferences in which writers and scholars worked
together to promote, disseminate, and critique the
literature of Spanish-speaking people of African
descent. . . .
Cited by a
literary critic in 2004 as "the seminal study in the
field of Afro-Hispanic Literature . . . on which
most scholars in the field 'cut their teeth'."
|
* * * * *
The White Masters of the
World
From
The World and Africa, 1965
By W. E. B. Du Bois
W. E. B. Du Bois’
Arraignment and Indictment of White Civilization
(Fletcher)
* *
* * *
Ancient African Nations
* * * * *
If you like this page consider making a donation
* * * * *
Negro Digest /
Black World
Browse all issues
1950
1960
1965
1970
1975
1980
1985
1990
1995
2000
____ 2005
Enjoy!
* * * * *
The Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan
/
The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
/
Only a Pawn in Their Game
Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson Thanks America for
Slavery /
George Jackson /
Hurricane Carter
* *
* * *
The Journal of Negro History issues at Project Gutenberg
The
Haitian Declaration of Independence 1804
/
January 1, 1804 -- The Founding of
Haiti
* * * * *
* *
* * *
update 22 July 2008
|
