Robert Robinson Taylor

The gentleman pictured here was a "first" in more than one category.

Taylor was:the first African-American enrolled at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; the first African-American architect; the first African-American architect to be officially accredited;
the designer of much of the campus of Tuskeegee University at Tuskeegee; and second in command to Booker T. Washington.

More Common Ground

Once again, in researching today's post, I found common ground with a well-known African-American.  For three years, I taught at Lincoln University of Pennsylvania.  This afternoon, I found that the subject of today's post, the poet and activist Langston Hughes, was accepted at Lincoln in 1925, and graduated from there in 1929.  Shortly before that, he began to participate in putting together the cultural movement that came to be known as the Harlem Renaissance.

As a poet, Hughes' work was most influenced by that of Carl Sandburg and Walt Whitman.  Having acted as a war correspondent during the Spanish Civil War, Hughes also contributed to translations into English of the work of such giants of Spanish literature as Federico Garcia Lorca.

Tracking Ancestors

During the Civil War, about 179,000 black men, or over 10% of the Union Army, served as soldiers.  Another 19,000 served in the Navy.  Black soldiers could be found in artillery and infantry units, and performed all noncombat support functions as well.  For instance, there are records of black carpenters, chaplains, cooks, guards, laborers, nurses, scouts, spies, steamboat pilots, surgeons, and teamsters.  There were nearly 80 black commissioned officers.  Even black women served - as nurses, spies, and scouts.  Among these was a conductor on the Underground Railroad/  Harriet Tubman scouted for the 2nd South Carolina Volunteers.

A member of the South Carolina Volunteers

What I find potentially, at least to individuals, the most meaningful about all this, is that one can find any of one's ancestors who might have been among the 200,000 cited above.  Ancestry.com offers a tool to do so.

Black Cowboys

Texas ranchers, most of whom fought for the Confederacy in the Civil War, depended on slaves to maintain their cattle herds.  That required the slaves in question to develop skills related to cattle-tending.  That in turn made these African-Americans invaluable to the cattle industry in the post-Civil-war era.  As one historian observed,  Cowboys had to depend on one another. They couldn’t stop in the middle of something like a stampede to worry about who’s black and who’s white. Black people operated on a level of equality with  cowboys.

Nat Love

In his 1907 autobiography, cowboy Nat Love describes his life as a cowboy.  Another such story is that written by Larry McMurtry, for the television series Lonesome Dove.  In that vehicle, Danny Glover played ex-slave Joshua Deets, a ranch hand, scout, tracker, and friend of the ranch owner for whom he works.

 

Despite what popular media seem, to suggest, black cowboys weren't unusual.  In fact, it's thought they were at  least 25% of that work-force.

 

Melvin Tolson

Again I find I share beliefs with the subject of one of our posts.

Melvin Tolson has been described as a poet, educator, columnist, and political activist.  I'm certainly not the first of those, but I have dabbled in the latter three.  That's one reason why I appreciate work like Tolson's Rendezvous with America.  

Read it; you'll appreciate it as well.

Bayard Rustin

In researching this post, I learned I have a couple of things in common with a leader of the civil rights and labor movements.

Bayard Rustin was born in West Chester, PA, very near where I've lived for decades.  He attended Cheyney, at that time a state teachers college but since then a university, at which I was lucky enough to teach.

Rustin trained in India with Gandhi; applied that training to a variety of civil disobedience efforts; and became the chief tactician for activities like the boycott of the public bus system in Montgomery, Alabama.