In this 1964 article, the cherished Gospel singer Mahalia Jackson (1911 – 1972) explained for the reader the relationship she had with the Almighty and further remarked that this relationship was the exact one God required from Christians:
– you have to have a made-up mind. You don’t straddle the fence serving God; we must put our all on the alter and let God abide.
A small notice from 1947 that reported on the archdiocese of St. Louis standing up in favor of racially integrating their school system – while simultaneously threatening excommunication to all members of the flock who contested the decision.
This book review of Scott Nearing’s Black America
was published on the eve of the Great Depression and it provides a very accurate account of that community.
There are in the United States today, if statistics do not lie, some twelve million Negroes. The population of the Argentine is not so large, nor that of Holland, nor that of Sweden. Eight million of these dark Americans live in the South. In Georgia alone there are more than a million colored people…How do they live – these blacks in a country controlled by whites.
Author Scott Nearing (1883 – 1983) was an American naturalist, educator and civil rights advocate.
Click here to read an article by Ralph Ellison concerning Black writers of the 1930s.
Starting in the 1940s, small articles like the one here began appearing in magazines and newspapers across the nation – snippets indicating that the American people (ie. whites) were slowly catching on to the system of racial injustice they had inherited – and wondering aloud as to the tyranny of it all:
To 13 co-eds at Uppsala College, East Orange, N.J., democracy is something more than a worn text-book theory. It is a living, though thorny, reality. Shortly before school’s end, they formed one of the nation’s first interracial, interfaith college social sororities.
Another article about segregation’s end can be read here.
Although the attached article is indeed about the famous civil rights march on Washington that took place in August of 1963, the journalist made his primary concern the political gains and losses that remained after all was said and done.
This article recalls the story behind the 1954 Supreme Court case Brown vs. the Board of Education.
By citing numerous examples of American jurisprudence spanning the early to mid-Fifties, this uncredited journalist illustrates that the era of Jim Crow was being disassembled brick-by-bigoted-brick:
All across the South, the segregation wall is cracking. The hammer is being wielded by the courts… The executive branch is also moving into the civil rights field.
The men of the Enola Gay were hand-picked experts, chosen for intelligence, emotional stability and discipline, qualities they have put to good use in their post-war careers. Four remained in the service (one died in 1953) and the others are all successful in their business carees. They earn above-average salaries, all but one are married and they have 26 children among them. None of them has been to Japan since the war, and few have met since separation.
For the production of Snow White (1938), the Disney artists had gone to great lengths in order to properly portray the manner in which young women move; these efforts were rewarded at the box-office to such a high degree that the same devotion was applied to the study of deer anatomy in their efforts to create Bambi (1942).
We had to remember, that Disney has a ruthless fidelity to the physical scene, to the truth of nature, even when he may seem to be distorting nature.
Click here to read more articles about Disney animation.
Coca-Cola may be the real thing, but in 1940 Pepsi had launched the ad that made Madison Avenue sit up and realize the true power of radio advertising. It was the famous radio jingle that we still hear today in every play, movie and TV show wishing to create the perfect Forties atmosphere – you know the one: Pepsi Cola hits the spot, etc., etc., etc. A real toe-tapper. The attached article will clue you-in to it’s significance.
