by Tammy Ditmore | Feb 18, 2026 | Black History Month
When Ronald McNair was 9 years old, he tried to check out some science textbooks from the public library near his home in South Carolina. A librarian refused, telling him the library was only for white residents. Ron persisted, so the librarian called the police, but...
by Tammy Ditmore | Feb 17, 2026 | Black History Month
Scott Joplin was the “king of ragtime,” a musical genre popularized in the U.S. in the early 20th century. Born in the late 1860s somewhere around Texarkana, Joplin began playing the piano as a child and was a traveling musician by the time he was a teen. Over the...
by Tammy Ditmore | Feb 16, 2026 | Black History Month
In November 2016, I managed to get a reservation to visit the Smithsonian’s newest museum in Washington, D.C.: the National Museum of African American History and Culture. I lined up on a cold, damp day in the shadow of the Washington Monument with hundreds of others...
by Tammy Ditmore | Feb 15, 2026 | Editing
Born into poverty in 1930 in Mississippi, John M. Perkins rose to become a civil rights legend, counselor to presidents, a towering community development leader, and one of the most important voices for civil rights in the evangelical Christian community. Perkins left...
by Tammy Ditmore | Feb 14, 2026 | Editing
Frederick Douglass never knew exactly when he was born, as birthdates were rarely recorded for slaves. But he chose to celebrate his birthday on February 14 because he liked the day for its emphasis on love and because he said he last saw his mother on...
by Tammy Ditmore | Feb 13, 2026 | Black History Month
As a Los Angeles Dodgers fan, I get to claim some amazing history that comes with this team. Jackie Robinson became the first African American player in Major League Baseball when he started for the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947. Robinson became the star the Dodgers were...
by Tammy Ditmore | Feb 12, 2026 | Black History Month
By Robert Hayden Sundays too my father got up early and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold, then with cracked hands that ached from labor in the weekday weather made banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him. I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking....
by Tammy Ditmore | Feb 11, 2026 | Black History Month
Mavis Staples began singing with her family in churches when she was 8 years old. At almost 87, she is still out there singing. After several hit gospel albums in the 1950s, the Staple Singers became the voice of the Civil Rights movement in the1960s. Mavis marched...
by Tammy Ditmore | Feb 10, 2026 | Black History Month
On February 1, 1960, Ezell Blair Jr., Franklin McCain, Joseph McNeil, and David Richmond bought a few items at a Woolworth’s store in Greensboro, North Carolina, and then sat down at the store’s “whites-only” lunch counter and tried to place orders. Staff...
by Tammy Ditmore | Feb 9, 2026 | Black History Month
Katherine Johnson was a brilliant mathematician who helped make NASA spaceflights possible. Johnson was one of the “West Area Computers,” Black, female mathematicians who did complicated calculations by hand that were essential for developments in flight and...
