The African Diaspora thru Picture - Page 5

Mr. Equanimity · (#101 (**permalink**))

Jacob Lawrence (1917-2000) and Gwendolyn Knight (1913-2005)

"Jacob Lawrence and Gwendolyn Knight, two of the country's preeminent visual artists, moved to Seattle in 1971 when he accepted a teaching position in University of Washington's art department. The two African American artists met and wed in Harlem in 1941 and later built national reputations as painters and printmakers, and as art educators and activists."

"Jacob Lawrence was born in 1917 in Atlantic City, New Jersey. He moved to New York City in 1930 at the age of 13. His family, originally from the south, migrated north looking for work. Jacob remembered New York as a vibrant community a-bustle with noises, sounds, and smells alive all around him. For this bright-eyed young man, Harlem was the churches, storefronts, street vendors, libraries, artist’s studios, museums, and eateries peopled by a tight-knit community of people who all knew each other. “We didn’t all know each other personally,” he’d say, “but we knew each other by sight because we saw the same people on the street every day.” There was a comfort in seeing those same faces every day."

"Gwendolyn Knight, born in Barbados, West Indies, came to the United States with her family when she was seven. She lived in Saint Louis until she was in her early teens, when she moved again with her family, this time to New York. While she cannot remember when she first decided to become an artist, she recalls completing her first paintings when she was eight or nine years old. She too, was nurtured by the burgeoning community in Harlem. “We had every thing we needed, she said, “stores, libraries, restaurants, artist workshops, and theatres. We didn’t have to go anywhere else to find it because it was all right there.” It was a rich time, and she and Jacob never ceased to pay homage to those in Harlem who played a pivotal part in their development."

Breadfruit · (#102 (**permalink**))

Memphis, USA 1968

Breadfruit · (#103 (**permalink**))

Praising - London

Breadfruit · (#104 (**permalink**))

Trinidad, West Indies

Breadfruit · (#105 (**permalink**))

Savior's Day - Nation of Islam, Chicago

Breadfruit · (#106 (**permalink**))

Birmingham, Alabama - 1963. Young Africans arrested for non violent protest.

Maat · (#107 (**permalink**))

Mary Seacole (1805 - 1881)

Seacole was a pioneering nurse and heroine of the Crimean War. Born in Kingston, Jamaica, in 1805, she learned her nursing skills from her mother who kept a boarding house for invalid soldiers.

Her father was a Scottish military officer and her mother a Jamaican mulatto. In 1826, she married Edward Seacole. Although technically 'free' being of mixed race, Seacole and her family had few civil rights - they could not vote, hold public office or enter the professions.

With her husband she travelled around other Caribbean islands, including Cuba, Haiti and the Bahamas, as well as mainland America and England. On these trips she complimented her traditional knowledge with European medical ideas, recounting her exploits in The Wonderful Adventures of Mrs Seacole in Many Lands.

In 1854 Seacole travelled to England and approached the war office to ask to be sent as an army nurse to the Crimea. Because of her ethnicity she was refused interviews with the war office and Elizabeth Herbert, the wife of the secretary of state for war who was recruiting nurses. Undaunted Seacole funded her own trip to the Crimea where she established the British Hotel near Balaclava to provide 'a mess-table and comfortable quarters for sick and convalescent officers'. On the battlefield she nursed the wounded and was known as 'Mother Seacole'.

Maat · (#108 (**permalink**))

Dr. Harold Moody (1882 - 1947)

Dr Harold Moody's father was a well off retail chemist. He moved to London from Jamaica in 1904 to study medicine at Kings College. He qualified in 1910, but faced with discrimination in employment and housing he set his own practice in Peckham South London in 1913.

A devout Christain he was involved in various religious and charitable organisations. In 1931 with a number of others in the Central YMCA Tottenham Court Road London he founded the League of Coloured Peoples and remained its president from 1931 until his death in 1947.

Maat · (#109 (**permalink**))

Brixton riots 1981

Breadfruit · (#110 (**permalink**))

Marvin Gaye (1939 - 1984) - Recording Artist

"An artist, if he is truly an artist, is only interested in one thing,
and that is to wake up the minds of men."

Marvin Gaye

Maat · (#111 (**permalink**))

Maya Angelou - poet, educator, historian, best-selling author, actress, playwright, civil-rights activist, producer and director

Mr. Equanimity · (#112 (**permalink**))

Hubert Harrison
writer, orator, educator, critic, and radical political activist

"....go to Africa, live among the natives and learn what they have to teach us (for they have much to teach us). Let us go there - not in the coastlands, - but in the interior, in Nigeria and Nyasaland; let us study engineering and physics, chemistry and commerce, agriculture and industry; let us learn more of nitrates of copper, rubber and electricity; so will we know why Belgium, France, England and Germany want to be in Africa. Let us begin by studying the scientific works of African explorers and stop reading and believing the silly slush which ignorant missionaries put into our heads about the alleged degradation of our people in Africa. Let us learn to know Africa and Africans so well that every educated Negro will be able at a glance to put his hand on the map of Africa and tell where to find Jolofs, Ekoisi, Mandingoes, Yorubas, Beehuanas or Basutos and can tell something of their marriage customs, their property laws, their agriculture and system of worship. For not until we can do this will it be seemly for us to pretend to be anxious about their political welfare."

Mr. Equanimity · (#113 (**permalink**))

Palo de Mayo festival, nicaragua