by Tammy Ditmore | Feb 23, 2026 | Editing
Alex Haley began his career as an author by ghost-writing love letters for his less eloquent shipmates while serving in the Coast Guard during World War II. After the war, Haley convinced the Coast Guard to let him work as a journalist, which he did until he retired...
by Tammy Ditmore | Feb 22, 2026 | Black History Month
Richard Allen, who founded the first African American denomination, was born into slavery in Delaware in 1760. As a teenager, Allen began attending a Methodist church, which was one of the few American churches that was open to Black worshippers, and he quickly became...
by Tammy Ditmore | Feb 21, 2026 | Black History Month
Mary McLeod Bethune was born in 1875 near Mayesville, South Carolina, the fifteenth of seventeen children. She moved to Daytona Beach, Florida, in 1904 with $1.50 in her pocket and founded a school for Black girls, with five students, using discarded crates for desks...
by Tammy Ditmore | Feb 20, 2026 | Black History Month
When my then-four-year-old grandson chose to give a report on John Coltrane in his transitional kindergarten class in 2025, I decided it was time to learn a little more about this jazz saxophonist. Lucky for me, I got access to a video of that presentation, and I...
by Tammy Ditmore | Feb 19, 2026 | Black History Month
Born in 1941, Jesse Jackson grew up in Greenville, South Carolina, and came of age just as the Civil Rights movement was gaining a foothold in the U.S. A star athlete, Jackson earned a scholarship to the University of Illinois but left when he discovered that a Black...
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...
