Everything I Am

Soulaan in my bones bitch ‼️

Our story is forever

Black is history

Our History Our Story Our Legacy

Happy Black History Month

Black Jazz Musicians

Their names are presented below, in chronological order from top to bottom

Louis Armstrong 1901-1971

Ella Fitzgerald 1917-1996

Duke Ellington 1899-1974

Miles Davis 1926-1991

Billie Holiday 1915-1959

Count Baise 1904-1984

Sarah Vaughn 1924-1990

She was called Phillis, because that was the name of the ship that brought her, and Wheatley, which was the name of the merchant who bought her. She was born in Senegal.

In Boston, the slave traders put her up for sale: “She's 7 years old! She will be a good mare!”

At thirteen, she was already writing poems in a language that was not her own. No one believed that she was the author. At the age of twenty, Phillis was questioned by a court of eighteen enlightened men in robes and wigs.

She had to recite passages from Virgil and Milton and some verses from the Bible, and she also had to vow that the poems she had composed were not copied. From a chair, she underwent her lengthy examination, until the court approved her: she was a woman, she was Black, she was enslaved, but she was a poet.

Phillis Wheatley was the first African-American writer to publish a book in the United States.

“Mary Wallace was the first woman bus driver with the Chicago Transit Authority in 1974. Her job applications were rejected for three years, but her persistence paid off. She was eventually hired under an affirmative action program. Wallace became one of the city’s most popular drivers over her thirty-three year career.”

The Red Lines Policy