Loved....

My precious godbaby!

Happy Birthday Aunt Arzalia Bratton! I love you so much. Maybe because we are close in age, all the fun hangout times, or you just being a bad influence 😜! You, Kim, and Buttons were so bad and I sucked it all up with a straw 🍹, so I guess I’m the eavesdropper who knows where all the bodies are 😂🤣😂🤣. Enjoy your day, week, and the whole month! https://www.instagram.com/p/CpSqOK4uvw-/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

Edna Guy was born in Summit, New Jersey in 1907. She had an interest in modern dance as a teenager and sought admission to Denishawn, the influential modern dance school founded by St. Denis and her husband Ted Shawn. She was considered unprepared and encouraged her to first seek experience elsewhere. Guy applied to other schools of modern dance and was admitted to one, but was forced to leave because "some of the other girls didn't like a colored girl in their class." She also sought work as a chorus girl, but was rejected as too dark. In 1924, St. Denis relented and Guy was admitted to Denishawn. Although she was a favorite of the teachers there, she was not allowed to dance in public with the group due to the color barrier, and was relegated to the role of company seamstress. She began creating dances to Negro spirituals with friends. She was forced to leave Denishawn in 1930, the same time as the Harlem Renaisance. In April 1931 Guy and Winfield co-directed the “First Negro Dance Recital In America” in which she performed the piece A Figure From Angkor Wat. Later that year she choreographed a concert at Harlem’s 138th Street YWCA, which concluded with a St. Denis lecture entitled Dance as an Art. Guy continued to dance and organize, and in 1937 co-produced Negro Dance Evening with Allison Burroughs, featuring Katherine Dunham’s company performing. Guy sought to elevate the image of Black people through their art. Particularly significant is her organization of the First Negro Dance Recital in America (1931) with Hemsley Winfield and the Negro Dance Evening (1937) with Alison Burroughs. Guy’s legacy is marked by her determination to, as she put it, ‘do beautiful’ as a Black woman,1 and create a space for Black representation within the modernist project. https://www.instagram.com/p/Co-Pbgou_T6/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

My 1st born 10 lbs. 2 oz. and 24 inches long. You were born at the end of 7 months. There was no more room for you to grow. You have always been advanced, a quick study, and exceptional. You are my precious baby boy, my Sonshine. I am so thankful that God so blessed me with you, Love Mom (at Minnesota State University, Mankato) https://www.instagram.com/p/Co8-Jf4Ob1X/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

Thank you for all my get well/valentine wishes, cards, and gifts! 6 weeks to go for physical therapy. Thank you Miss Audrey for the churro doughnuts. Yup, I also got butter crunch cookies too! (at Sittin Up in My Room) https://www.instagram.com/p/Cogovo1uWKo/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

My son Shawn Brodie, NSIC Champion! Is football life or is life football? C’est la vie…. (at Minnesota State University, Mankato) https://www.instagram.com/p/CoaG2yrOW3x/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

Black history in the making! Allow me to introduce my son, Shawn Brodie. NSIC Champion!!!!! (at Minnesota State University, Mankato) https://www.instagram.com/p/CoaAJvfuB7c/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

Billie Holiday was born April 7, 1915 in Philadelphia, PA and died July 17, 1959 at age 44. She was born Eleanora Fagan Gough and was an American jazz singer and songwriter. Nicknamed Lady Day, she would later influence the styles of jazz and pop singing. Her vocal style, strongly inspired by jazz instrumentalists, pioneered a new way of manipulating phrasing and tempo. Above all, she was admired for her deeply personal and intimate approach to singing. Lady Sings the Blues, first published in 1956 and later revealed to contain many inaccuracies. Her professional pseudonym was taken from Billie Dove, an actress she admired, and Clarence Holiday, her probable father. She was raised in Baltimore, a poor section. Her parents married when she was three, but they soon divorced. At the age of 10, she reported that she had been raped. That claim, combined with her frequent truancy, resulted in her being sent to The House of the Good Shepherd, a Catholic reform school, in 1925. It was only through the assistance of a family friend that she was released two years later. Scarred by these experiences, Holiday moved to New York City with her mother in 1928. In 1929 Holiday's mother discovered a neighbor, Wilbert Rich, in the act of raping her daughter; Rich was sentenced to three months in jail. According to Billie Holiday's own account, she was recruited by a brothel, worked as a prostitute in 1930, and was eventually imprisoned for a short time for solicitation. It was in Harlem, New York in the early 1930s that she started singing for tips in various night clubs. According to legend, penniless and facing eviction, she sang "Travelin All Alone" in a local club and reduced the audience to tears. She later worked at various clubs for tips, ultimately landing at Pod's and Jerry's, a well known Harlem jazz club. https://www.instagram.com/p/CoYpW6Cujck/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

Born: 1877, Paris, KY Died: 1963, Cleveland, OH He created Affordable Gas Masks and a life-saving device, mechanical traffic signals. Son of Freed Slaves Garrett Morgan's safety hood saved the lives of countless firefighters and others. He was born in Kentucky during the Reconstruction era, in 1877. His father was the mixed-race son of a slave and a Confederate colonel, John Hunt Morgan. His mother, half Indian and half black, was the daughter of a Baptist minister. His race would impact Morgan's career profoundly. Finding work in a textile factory, he learned how the machines worked, and became the only Negro adjuster, fixing and improving mechanical problems. In 1907 he opened his own repair shop, and soon launched a clothing business with his wife. Becoming the first black man in Cleveland to own a car. He branched out into cosmetic products, joined a new organization called the NAACP, and soon was donating money to Negro colleges. In 1920, he started a newspaper for African Americans, The Cleveland Call, and opened an all-black country club. Morgan died in 1963, vindicated as a hero of the Lake Erie rescue and restored to his place in history. https://www.instagram.com/p/CoV2BpSOM1l/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

"Southern trees bear a strange fruit, Blood on the leaves and blood at the root, Black body swinging in the Southern breeze, Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees..." https://www.instagram.com/p/CoVONtEO6lt/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

Lynching, unfortunately is a very big part of our American history. The Anti-Lynching Bill of 1937, also known as the Gavagan-Wagner Act or Wagner-Gavagan Act, was a proposed anti-lynching legislation sponsored by Democrats Joseph A. Gavagan and Robert F. Wagner, both from New York. It was introduced in response to the failure of the U.S. Senate to pass the 1934–35 Costigan-Wagner Act. The bill passed the United States House of Representatives with support from Republicans and Northern Democrats. It did not pass the Senate due to a filibuster by Texas liberal segregationist Tom Connally. Etymologically speaking, picnic is a French word, pique-nique. It only means a potluck dinner. Yet in the south, white people made lynchings a regular occurrence at picnics, the word took on a different meaning for Black Americans. The word picnic was used in tandem with pic-a-nigger. The word, picnic, carries with it the memory that there was a time when white folks gathered to eat outside, burning black flesh would be on the menu. It was their entertainment after eating together, usually after church on Sunday. https://www.instagram.com/p/CoVK4ASucsH/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

Lynching, unfortunately is a very big part of our American history. The Anti-Lynching Bill of 1937, also known as the Gavagan-Wagner Act or Wagner-Gavagan Act, was a proposed anti-lynching legislation sponsored by Democrats Joseph A. Gavagan and Robert F. Wagner, both from New York. It was introduced in response to the failure of the U.S. Senate to pass the 1934–35 Costigan-Wagner Act. The bill passed the United States House of Representatives with support from Republicans and Northern Democrats. It did not pass the Senate due to a filibuster by Texas liberal segregationist Tom Connally. Etymologically speaking, picnic is a French word, pique-nique. It only means a potluck dinner. Yet in the south, white people made lynchings a regular occurrence at picnics, the word took on a different meaning for Black Americans. The word picnic was used in tandem with pic-a-nigger. The word, picnic, carries with it the memory that there was a time when white folks gathered to eat outside, burning black flesh would be on the menu. It was their entertainment after eating together, usually after church on Sunday. https://www.instagram.com/p/CoVKUivOyKE/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=