Truth Comes to the U.S. Capitol

After a nearly decade-long effort, the National Congress of Black Women on Tuesday honored Sojourner Truth by making her the first Black woman to have a memorial bust in the U.S. Capitol.

Truth, whose given name was Isabella Baumfree, was a slave who became one of the most respected abolitionists and women's rights activists.

"One could only imagine what Sojourner Truth, an outspoken, tell-it-like-it-is kind of woman ... what she would have to say about this incredible gathering," First Lady Michelle Obama said at the Celebration of Truth ceremony. "We are all here because, as my husband says time and time again, we stand on the shoulders of giants like Sojourner Truth."

Dignitaries and congressional leaders attended the ceremony marking the unveiling of the statue.
Along with musical performances, actress Cicely Tyson recited "Ain't I A Woman," Truth's famous 1851 speech to a women's rights convention. Secretary of State Hilary Clinton and Representative Sheila Jackson Lee, who worked together to draft legislation to commission the bust, were among speakers who paid tribute to the late C. Delores Tucker, former chairwoman of the NCBW, who spearheaded the effort for the Truth memorial.

Secretary of State Clinton said, "She is a sojourner of truth, by truth, and for truth. And her words, her example and her legacy will never perish from this earth, so long as men and women stand up and say loudly and clearly, 'We hear you echoing down through the years of history. We believe that your journey is not yet over, and we will make the rest of that journey with you.' "

The bronze statue, which was crafted by Los Angeles, California, sculptor Artis Lane, will stand in Emancipation Hall at the Capitol Visitor Center. "All the visitors in the U.S. Capitol will hear the story of brave women who endured the greatest of humanity's indignities. They'll hear the story of Sojourner Truth, who didn't allow those indignities to destroy her spirit, who fought for her own freedom and then used her powers ... to help others," First Lady Obama said.

The Satisfied Smile on an Historic Day

Where do I began…well let me begin by saying that I made it through the day with only misty eyes; unlike the night then Senator Barack Obama had enough votes to become the Democratic Party representative for president; unlike the night he formally accepted the Democratic Party’s nomination for president; unlike the night of November 4 when he won the election for president. The were times that the tears flooded my face and I was overcome by joy as I remember being raised in Louisiana in the middle of the Jim Crow era and not realizing how hard my parents had it because they sheltered us from the overt racism of the deep south. That is until one day that when I was seven or eight years old (1959 or 1960) and inside of Morgan and Lindsey’s Department Store with my mother and this young White woman (maybe she was even an older teenager) was dressing down my mother because I happened to drink out of the wrong water fountain. My mother taught me a very valuable lesson that day. No the lesson was not to drink from the colored only fountain, but to not spend my money in a place that made differences in their facilities according to your race. She put back the clothes and other things she had and told me to never shop in that store or one like it ever. And that was her favorite store. We shopped at J. C. Penny’s from then own. And nobody we knew shopped there again.

It is with similar memories that Black people of my generation looked to January 20, 2009 with pride and sadness that people we loved did not live to see this day. I know how Jesse Jackson felt and how Congressman John Lewis felt with the tears flowing down on November 4th and how there was nothing but large smiles on yesterday. As I watched President Obama take the oath the smile on my face must have been a mile wide. Every Black person in the building that I work in had the same look on their faces. No words had to be said, it was just that knowing look and extra pep in their step.

All the tears of joy were gone; there was just the smile of pride left; the satisfied smile of knowing how far we have come.

Tuskegee Airmen Invited to Inauguration

The Tuskegee Airmen, who made history during World War II as the country's first Black military pilots only to return home to discrimination and exclusion from victory parades, have been invited to President-elect Barack Obama's inauguration. Senator Dianne Feinstein of California sent the invitation to Tuskegee Airmen Inc. The Arlington, Virginia-based organization represents 330 of the original pilots, whose ranks were once about 1,000.

The Tuskegee Airmen were recruited into an Army Air Corps program that trained Blacks to fly and maintain combat aircraft. They trained as a segregated unit at an air base in Tuskegee, Alabama. After fighting the Nazis, they returned home to face discrimination. Blacks weren't allowed to participate in victory parades with other troops returning from Europe after World War II.

Each member will receive two tickets to the January 20 inauguration, and they have 10 days to decide if they will attend. A spokeswoman for the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies, said the airmen's seating assignment will be within the ticketed viewing area around the U.S. Capitol. Robert Rose, first vice president of Tuskegee Airmen, said local chapters are contacting airmen. Most are in their late 80s and early 90s, making travel difficult.

"I want to come hopping, skipping and jumping!" said 92-year-old Spann Watson, an airman from Westbury, New York, who flew above Pennsylvania Avenue for President Truman's inauguration. "We had a part in changing these United States." John L. Harrison Jr. an original airman now in his 80s, also said he plans to attend Barack Obama's inauguration. "It makes us very very proud," said Harrison, of Philadelphia. "And it sort of compensates for a lot of the things that we had to endure in the early days. We were excluded out of everything and hidden from everything," he said. "Now this time is our time, and to have a Black man as the elected president, this is indeed a turn in history."

Amazing Grace: The Black Notes

105 Year Old Woman Remembers Dr. King's 'I Have a Dream' Speech

Della Jones, 105 years old, remembers well Dr. Martin Luther King's "I have a dream" speech during the March on Washington, D.C., delivered 45 years ago today from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. "Oh, I thought it was wonderful," Della said of the historic 1963 speech. "I think we all should have a dream for our lives and work towards that dream."

Della's dream was to be a teacher, and she taught for 36 1/2 years, first in Kentucky's Black schools and eventually in its integrated schools. "I just kept persevering, and I always had good results for doing so," she said in a recent interview.

Della began her teaching career in 1924 in a segregated rural school in southeastern Kentucky, crying herself to sleep at night because she was away from her home near Cincinnati for the first time. She was 19 years old.

"It was such a secluded place, but I made a commitment and was determined to finish up the year." In fact Della kept her commitment and only stopped teaching in 1929 when she married Bradley Jones. When she decided to get her college degree, she cleaned dorms for 17 straight summers to pay her way through Kentucky State University. She received her degree at the age of 53 in June of 1957, and Dr. King gave the commencement address at her college graduation. He was 29 at the time, already a famous civil rights leader. Della got to meet and shake Dr. King’s hand.

Della taught grade school and high school during her long teaching career and finished up as a high school librarian. Her husband died in 1969, and their daughter passed away in 1972. Della retired in 1974 and lives alone in the same house in Williamstown, Kentucky, that she has been in for 85 years, despite being a double amputee and confined to a wheelchair.

She's surrounded by devoted friends and family, including the local sheriff, who lives down the street and looks in on her regularly. They all got together for Della's birthday on July 7.

Senator Obama Officially Nominated

Senator Barack Obama swept to the Democratic presidential nomination Wednesday night, a transforming triumph that made him the first Black American to lead a major party into the fall campaign for the White House. Thousands of national convention delegates stood and cheered as they made history.

Former rival Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton asked Democrats in the convention hall to make their verdict unanimous "in the spirit of unity, with the goal of victory." And they did, with a roar. Chants of "Obama" and "Yes we can" surged up from the convention floor as the outcome of the roll call of the states was announced. Earlier in the day, Senator Clinton formally released her delegates and cast her official delegate vote for Senator Obama.

Senator Obama was across town as the party handed him its top prize, a ticket into the general election campaign against the Republican candidate. He was expected to briefly visit the arena later in the evening to thank the delegates. His formal acceptance speech Thursday night is expected to draw a crowd of 75,000 at the nearby football stadium.

Senator Obama's nomination sealed a political ascent as astonishing as any other in recent memory — made all the more so by his race, in a nation founded by slave owners. The son of a White mother from Kansas and a Black father from Kenya whom he barely knew, he attended college and Harvard Law School. In between was a turn as a $12,000-a-year community worker on the streets of Chicago. Just to show how far Senator Obama has come, you have to realize that in 2000 he couldn’t even get a ticket to the convention.

As I set watching the state roll call as it got closer, and the moment that the nomination became official, with tears running, I thought about my parents and how I wished that they were alive to witness this historic occasion. I believe this is what my grandfather meant when he said one day there would be changes in this country. And now my grandchildren know for sure that they can be ANYTHING they set their sights to be.

Horace King from Slave to Master Builder

Horace King (aka Horace Godwin) was an architect, engineer, and bridge builder. He is considered the most respected bridge builder of the 19th century Deep South, constructing dozens of bridges in Alabama, Georgia, and Mississippi. Born into slavery in the Cheraw District of South Carolina (present-day Chesterfield County) in 1807, King became a prominent bridge architect and construction manager in the Chattahoochee River Valley region of Alabama and Georgia. He went on to construct lattice truss bridges at every major crossing of the Chattahoochee River and over every major river in the Deep South between the Oconee and Tombigbee rivers.

King's father was half Black and half White while his mother was half Black and half Catawba Indian. Records indicate King spent his first 23 years near his birthplace, with his first introduction to bridge construction in 1824. In 1824, bridge architect Ithiel Town came to Cheraw to assist in the construction of a bridge over the Pee Dee River. While it is unknown whether King assisted in the construction of this bridge or its replacement span built in 1828, Town's lattice truss design used in both Pee Dee bridges became a hallmark of King's future work.

When King's first master, Edward King, died around 1830, King was sold to wealthy building contractor John Godwin, who also worked on the Pee Dee bridge. In 1832, Godwin received a contract to construct a 560-foot bridge across the Chattahoochee River from Columbus, Georgia into Girard, Alabama (today Phenix City). He and King moved to Girard that year to work on the project, which was completed in 1833. This bridge was the first known to be built by King, who planned the construction of the bridge and managed the slave laborers who built the span.

Between the completion of the "Godwin-King Bridge" in 1833 and the early 1840s, King and Godwin partnered on at least eight major construction projects throughout the South. The partners constructed some forty cotton warehouses in Apalachicola, Florida in 1834, the courthouses of Muscogee County, Georgia and Russell County, Alabama from 1839-1841, and bridges in West Point, Georgia (1838), Eufaula, Alabama (1838-39), Florence, Georgia (1840), and Columbus (1841), replacing their original span which had been destroyed in a flood in 1838. By 1840, King was being publicly acknowledged as being a "co-builder" along with his master, an uncommon honor for a slave. In the 1840s, King's prominence eclipsed that of his master, and he worked independently as architect and superintendent of major bridge projects in Wetumpka, Alabama and Columbus, Mississippi. While working on the Eufaula bridge, King met Tuscaloosa attorney and entrepreneur Robert Jemison, Jr., who soon began using King on a number of different projects in Lowndes County, Mississippi, including the 420-foot Columbus, Mississippi bridge, and who would remain King's friend and associate for the rest of his life.

Despite his enslavement, King was allowed a significant income from his work and, in 1846, used some of his earnings to purchase his freedom from Godwin. However, under Alabama law of the time, a freed slave was only allowed to remain in the state for a year after manumission. Robert Jemison, who served in the Alabama State Senate, arranged for the state legislature to pass a special law giving King his freedom and exempting him from the manumission law. In 1852, King used this freedom to purchase land near his former master.

In 1849, the Alabama State Capitol burned, and King was hired to construct the framework of the new capitol building, as well as design and build the double spiral entry staircases. King used his knowledge of bridge-building to cantilever the stairs' support beams so that the staircases appeared to "float", without any central support.

Around 1855, King formed a partnership with two other men to construct a bridge, known as "Moore's Bridge" over the Chattahoochee River between Newnan and Carrollton, Georgia, near Whitesburg. Instead of collecting a fee for his work, King took stock instead, gaining a one-third interest in the bridge. King soon moved his family to Carroll County, adjacent to the bridge, though continued to maintain his home in Girard. The income from Moore's bridge allowed King a steady income, though he continued to design and construct major bridge projects through the remainder of the 1850s, including a major bridge in Milledgeville, Georgia and a second Chattahoochee crossing in Columbus, Georgia.

As the U.S. Civil War approached in 1860, King, like many Blacks in the South, opposed secession of the Southern states and was a confirmed Unionist. After the outbreak of hostilities, King attempted to continue his business as an architect and builder, constructing a factory and a mill in Coweta County, Georgia and a bridge in Columbus, Georgia. While working on the Columbus bridge, King was conscripted by Confederate authorities to build obstructions in the Apalachicola River, 200 miles south of Columbus to prevent a naval attack on that city. After completing the obstructions on the Apalachicola, King was tasked to construct defenses on the Alabama River before returning to Columbus in 1863. By this time, Columbus had become a major shipbuilding city for the Confederacy, and King and his men were assigned to assist construction of naval vessels at the Columbus Iron Works and Navy Yard. In 1863-64, King constructed a rolling mill for the Iron Works, providing cladding for Confederate ironclad warships. King's crews also provided lumber and timbers for the Navy Yard, and was at least peripherally involved with the construction of the CSS Muscogee. As the war approached its end in 1864, many of King's bridges were destroyed by Union troops, including Moore's Bridge, which King owned. Raiders under Union general James H. Wilson assaulted Columbus in April of 1865, burning all of King's bridges in the city, including the one he had finished less than two years earlier.

The destruction of the war led to new opportunities for King and made him one of the wealthiest Black men in the South. Within six months after the war's end, King and a partner had constructed a 32,000 square foot cotton warehouse in Columbus and King, for the third time, rebuilt the original Godwin-King bridge. Over the next three years, King would construct three more bridges across the Chattahoochee in Columbus rivers, a major bridge in West Point, Georgia, two large factories, and the Lee County, Alabama courthouse.

When the Reconstruction Acts were implemented in 1867, King became a registrar for voters in Russell County, Alabama. Later that year, he attempted to establish a colony of freedmen in Georgia. While that plan was unsuccessful, King went on to be elected to the Alabama House of Representatives in 1868 as a Republican representing Russell County. King, though, busy in his construction business in Columbus, did not take his seat until over a year later, in November of 1869. King was reelected in 1870. King did not seek reelection in 1872.

After King left the Alabama legislature in 1872, he moved to LaGrange, Georgia. While in LaGrange, King continued building bridges, but also expanded to include other construction projects, specifically businesses and schools. By the mid-1870s, King had begun to pass his bridge construction activities to his five children, who formed the King Brothers Bridge Company. He died on May 28, 1885 in LaGrange. King received laudatory obituaries in each of Georgia's major newspapers, a rarity for Blacks in the 1880s South. King was posthumously inducted into the Alabama Engineers Hall of Fame at the University of Alabama. The award was accepted on his behalf by his great grandson, Horace H. King Jr. He was remembered both for his engineering skill and for his character and ability to bridge the gap between the races.