by Marlon West (FB: marlon.west1 Threads: @stlmarlonwest IG: stlmarlonwest Bluesky: @marlonweststl.bsky.social Spotify: marlonwest)

Happy Music Monday! It’s your groove pathfinder, Marlon, back with another musical offering.

While reggae and dancehall are well-known when it comes to Jamaican music, not everyone may be in tune with its more electronically-minded cousin, dub reggae, and the sound system culture that accompanies it.

Dub music grew out of reggae in the 1960s and 1970s. The songs largely consisted of heavily-edited remixes of existing records, created by removing the vocal sections and placing increased focus on the rhythm section, or riddim.

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Audio effects like reverb and delay would then be applied, often quite generously, and vocal snippets and other instruments from the original song (and other songs) can be worked into the track by means of dubbing or sampling. The term ‘dubbing‘ has also come to mean emphasizing the bass and the drums.

Included in this collection are works of influential figures including Lee Scratch Perry, Osbourne Ruddock (better known as “King Tubby”), and Hopeton Overton Brown (aka “Scientist”) and many others.

The influence of Dub can be heard across many genres of music, including rock, hip hop, techno, ambient, house music, trip hop and others

This collection features classic works and tracks across the decades. Hope you all enjoy this essential collection of Dub Reggae.

Until next month, stay safe, sane, and kind.

by Marlon West (FB: marlon.west1 Threads: @stlmarlonwest IG: stlmarlonwest Bluesky: @marlonweststl.bsky.social Spotify: marlonwest)

Happy Music Monday!! I hope everyone had a wonderful Mother’s Day weekend for folks.

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Last week was the 93rd anniversary of James Brown’s birth. I realized that I have never done a playlist devoted solely to the music of The Godfather of Soul, The Hardest Working Man In Show Business, Mr. Dynamite, The Amazing Mr. “Please, Please” himself, James Brown. So it was time to remedy that situation.

Like so many artists, he was inspired by preachers in the Black church and started out singing in gospel quartets. James Brown transitioned into a secular soul singer though his live shows had the spirit of a church revival.

His flamboyant and theatrical moves, including falling on his knees, erupting into splits and half spins, and popping the mic to the floor and back, became signature moves and the stuff of legend.

He is an often-cited influence on the styles of Michael Jackson, Prince, Mick Jagger, Usher, Sharon Jones, Bruno Mars and others.

As the architect of Funk, Brown revolutionized music by focusing on “the One” - emphasizing the first beat of every measure. Tracks like “Cold Sweat” and “Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag” used interlocking, syncopated rhythms that laid the foundation of soul, disco, and hip-hop.

James Brown is the world’s most sampled artist. I have not included any of the plethora of songs where he’s sampled. “Funky Drummer,” featuring a break by drummer Clyde Stubblefield, has provided the rhythmic DNA for thousands of hip-hop and pop recordings. That could be a playlist for another Music Monday.

Here is a collection of essential tracks by Soul Brother No. 1. I’ve gathered tracks from across James Brown’s impactful career, spanning more than half a century. Please enjoy and I’ll return with more tasty tunes next month.

Until such time, stay safe, sane, and kind.

by Marlon West (FB: marlon.west1 Threads: @stlmarlonwest IG: stlmarlonwest Bluesky: @marlonweststl.bsky.social Spotify: marlonwest)

Back in February, Gorillaz shared a new eight-minute short film titled The Mountain, The Moon Cave & The Sad God. The beautiful hand-drawn animated film follows the adventures of the fictional band members Noodle, Murdoc, 2-D and Russel as they journey across India, in connection with the release of their new album, The Mountain. 

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For over 25 years, Gorillaz has functioned as a massive collaborative project helmed by Blur’s Damon Albarn and Tank Girl co-creator Jamie Hewlett.

Their distinct sound, which fluidly blends hip-hop, electronic, and alternative rock, is defined by a dynamic roster of contributors, including both legendary figures and emerging artists.

Their collaborators include the late actor, Dennis Hopper, Carly Simon, Mick Jones & Paul Simonon of The Clash, Lou Reed, Shaun Ryder (Happy Mondays), Mark E. Smith (The Fall), The Cure’s frontman, Robert Smith, Beck, Vince Staples, Little Dragon, Kali Uchis, Bad Bunny and others.

This collection though focuses on their frequent partnerships with celebrated Black artists across hip-hop, soul, Afrobeat, and R&B. Notable past collaborators include the late Bobby Womack, the living treasure Mavis Staples, hip-hop royalty De La Soul, Snoop Dogg, and Mos Def/Yasiin Bey.

Other partners include Little Simz, who has contributed to the track “Garage Palace” and participated in the band’s tours. Del the Funky Homosapien provided the rap vocals on “Clint Eastwood” and “Rock the House,” and Bootie Brown is notable for his contributions to “Dirty Harry” and “Stylo”, along with many other great artists.

The Mountain continues that tradition featuring artists like Black Thought and Jalen Ngonda, as well as archived material from legends such as Tony Allen and Bobby Womack.

Hope you all enjoy this funky collection by the free-wheeling collective, Gorillaz.

As always, stay safe, sane, and kind!

by Marlon West (FB: marlon.west1 Threads: @stlmarlonwest IG: stlmarlonwest Bluesky: @marlonweststl.bsky.social Spotify: marlonwest)

Happy Women’s History Month! Welcome to another Music Monday at GBN. Your monthly groove wrangler is back with a new collection for your musical pleasure.

When discussing Jamaica’s greatest reggae producers, names like Lee “Scratch” Perry, Clement “Coxsone” Dodd, King Tubby, Bunny Lee, and Joe Gibbs are frequently bandied about. However, Sonia Pottinger—the “First Lady of Reggae”—is seldom included in that conversation.

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Against all odds, Pottinger became a formidable force in Jamaica’s male-dominated music industry as the country’s first female record producer, record shop owner, and label head. Today, we are shining an audio light on her incredible work.

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Affectionately known as “Miss P,” she was one of Jamaica’s most noteworthy producers from the 1960s through the 1980s. She excelled through an individualized approach to production bolstered by keen business acumen, leaving behind a catalog of outstanding breadth and quality.

From the rocksteady craze of 1966 and ‘67 to the classic roots reggae recordings of The Gladiators, I have gathered this collection of Sonia Pottinger’s essential tracks.

Please enjoy!

As always, stay safe, sane, and kind. See you next month for another dose.

Sick and tired of having to constantly read racist commentary in the mainstream press of the United States, free Black Americans Rev. Samuel E. Cornish and John B. Russwurm started their own paper – Freedom’s Journal.

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First published on March 16, 1827 in New York City -- the same year New York State abolished slavery - the four-page weekly was the first Black-owned newspaper of record in the United States. At its zenith, Freedom’s Journal circulated in 11 states, the District of Columbia, Haiti, Europe, and Canada.

In addition to covering general news and current events, Freedom’s Journal included editorials denouncing slavery, lynchings and challenged the racist attacks against Black people that appeared in other newspapers.

The paper also contained articles advocating for voting rights, repatriation of Blacks to Africa, covered international news, celebrated Black achievements, offered biographies of prominent African Americans and published vital record listings of births, deaths and marriages in the African-American New York community.

Although Freedom’s Journal folded in 1829, shortly before Russwurm emigrated to Liberia, its two-year existence helped spawn at least 40 similar papers over the next four decades and kicked off the long standing, time-honored tradition of the Black Press in America.

To learn more about Freedom’s Journal, you can check out the digitized archive of all 103 issues of the paper on wisconsinhistory.org, as well as other sources linked above and below.

Sources:

• https://www.pbs.org/blackpress/news_bios/newbios/nwsppr/freedom/freedom.html

• https://www.loc.gov/item/sn83030455/

• https://maap.columbia.edu/place/29.html

• https://americanantiquarian.org/earlyamericannewsmedia/items/show/93

• https://www.jstor.org/stable/3559045

• https://www.nyhistory.org/web/africanfreeschool/bios/samuel-cornish.html

• https://www.britannica.com/topic/Freedoms-Journal#ref1200859

• https://maap.columbia.edu/place/29.html

• https://library.bowdoin.edu/arch/subject-guides/africana-resources/john-brown-russwurm/index.shtml

• https://npg.si.edu/object/npg_NPG.79.252

by Lori Lakin Hutcherson, GBN Founder and Editor-in-Chief

You’ve likely heard of Jack Johnson, the first Black world heavyweight champion boxer and Jesse Owens, the first Black world champion sprinter. But have you ever heard of Marshall “Major” Taylor, the first Black world champion of cycling?

Taylor not only was the first African-American world champion in cycling, he might have been the first internationally known sports celebrity ever.

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Born in 1878 in Indianapolis, Taylor was one of eight children and the son of a formerly enslaved Civil War veteran. In his youth, Taylor was given a bicycle by the wealthy family his father Gilbert worked for, and was soon earning money delivering newspapers and riding barefoot for miles a day.

When he wasn’t working his paper route, Taylor mastered several stunts and tricks on his bicycle. To drum up business, Taylor was hired by a local bicycle shop to dress in a military uniform and perform his feats in front of the store - and it worked.

Taylor was nicknamed “Major” and was soon hired to work for the shop full-time. By the 1890s, America was experiencing a bicycle boom, so shop’s owners also entered Taylor into local cycling races, which he easily won.

Though Taylor was prevented from joining any local riding clubs, he kept competing and winning. When there were “whites only” races, friends would smuggle him in and though he couldn’t officially compete, his times could be measured.

At 17, Taylor knocked two-fifths of a second off the world record held by professional racer Ray MacDonald. Taylor’s time could not be submitted for official recognition, but everyone watching the race knew what they had witnessed. Major Taylor earned a second nickname: "The Black Cyclone.”

Taylor soon became a professional racer and won 29 of the 49 races he entered. By 1899, he won the cycling world championship officially, and the victory earned Taylor widespread fame.

Even so, Taylor remained barred from cycling races in the South. Even when he wasn’t, racist spectators would at times throw ice or nails at him, and several white cyclists would jostle him, shove him or box him in.

Taylor started using his competitors’ hatred as fuel -- in order to ensure that he wouldn’t be physically accosted or pulled from his bike, he would ride several lengths ahead and stay there.

At the end of a one-mile race in Massachusetts however, cyclist W.E. Becker, upset he finished behind Taylor, pulled Taylor to the ground after the race. “Becker choked him into a state of insensibility,” the New York Times reported, “and the police were obliged to interfere. It was fully fifteen minutes before Taylor recovered consciousness.” Becker was fined $50 for the assault.

After that, Taylor started competing in Europe, where a Black athlete could ride
without fear of racially-motivated violence. Promoters shifted events from Sundays to accommodate Taylor, who refused to race on the Sabbath. In 1902, Taylor dominated the European Tour, winning the majority of races he entered and cementing his reputation as the fastest cyclist in the world.

Reportedly earning $30,000 a year, Taylor raced consistently for the rest of the decade, making him one of the wealthiest athletes of his day, Black or white. But as the automobile emerged as a more exciting mode of movement, mass interest in cycling began to ebb.

In 1910, 32 year-old Taylor retired, living off his sizable earnings. But by 1929, with the Wall Street crash and some other bad investments, Taylor’s fortune was all but wiped out. He self-published his autobiography, The Fastest Bicycle Rider in the World in 1929 and spent the last years of his life in Chicago selling it door-to-door. When Taylor died in 1932 at 53, he was buried in a pauper’s grave at the Mount Glenwood Cemetery in Chicago.

When some former racing stars learned of this, they convinced Frank Schwinn, owner of the Schwinn Bicycle Company, to have Taylor’s remains exhumed and transferred to the cemetery’s Memorial Garden of the Good Shepherd and mark it with a bronze tablet that reads: “Worlds champion bicycle racer who came up the hard way —Without hatred in his heart—An honest, courageous and God-fearing, clean-living gentlemanly athlete. A credit to his race who always gave out his best—Gone but not forgotten.”

To learn more about Taylor, check out the 2012 Smithsonian.com article by Gilbert King, the 2024 PBS documentary Major Taylor: Champion of the Race, 2021’s The World’s Fastest Man: The Extraordinary Life of Cyclist Major Taylor, America's First Black Sports Hero by Michael Kranish, or Major: A Black Athlete, a White Era, and the Fight to Be the World's Fastest Human Being (2009) by Todd Balf.

Other Sources:

• https://www.indianamuseum.org/experience/major-taylor/

• https://www.outsideonline.com/outdoor-adventure/biking/why-havent-you-heard-marshall-major-taylor/

• http://www.majortaylorassociation.org/who.shtml

• https://www.schwinnbikes.com/blogs/compass/the-great-major-taylor?srsltid=AfmBOoqQgMpme1wM6i_rxBAIuhSfJ0XRp85HHG80Q5qs8yHFX9FALpvg

• https://guides.loc.gov/chronicling-america-major-taylor

by Lori Lakin Hutcherson, GBN Editor-in-Chief

On Presidents Day, we are honoring someone who was all too familiar with the United States’ first president George Washington — her name was Ona “Oney” Judge.

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Judge knew there was no time like dinnertime to make her escape. Enslaved by President George Washington and his wife, Martha, in 1796 Judge secretly booked passage on a boat and left the nation’s then capital, Philadelphia, as the Washingtons ate their supper, determined not to return to their plantation in Mount Vernon and remain enslaved.

Judge hid in Portsmouth, New Hampshire (by then a free state). As president of a nation that just attained its freedom from the British, Washington knew he might face serious criticism and scrutiny if he used a slave catcher to recapture Judge. Instead, he used advertisements and sent emissaries after her three times, but Judge refused to return.

Though she technically was still a fugitive when Washington died in 1799, she was finally left alone, free and remained “never caught.” On February 25, 2008, Philadelphia celebrated the first “Oney Judge Day” at the President’s House site.

To learn more about Judge, read the 2018 book Never Caught: The Washingtons’ Relentless Pursuit of their Runaway Slave, Ona Judge by Erica Armstrong Dunbar or the 2020 children’s book Never Caught, the Story of Ona Judge: George and Martha Washington’s Courageous Slave Who Dared to Run Away; Young Readers Edition, also by Erica Armstrong Dunbar, you can watch the Mount Vernon video on Ona Judge.

Sources:

• https://www.zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/ona-judge-escapes/

• https://www.mountvernon.org/library/digitalhistory/digital-encyclopedia/article/ona-judge/

• https://www.beyondthebelltours.com/blog/badass-women-of-philadelphia-ona-judge

• https://www.nps.gov/articles/independence-oneyjudge.htm

• https://www.whitehousehistory.org/the-remarkable-story-of-ona-judge

• https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/06/arts/george-washington-mount-vernon-slavery.html?_r=0

by Marlon West (FB: marlon.west1 Threads: @stlmarlonwest IG: stlmarlonwest Bluesky: @marlonweststl.bsky.social Spotify: marlonwest)

Happy Music Monday! It’s your monthly Rhythm Broker, Marlon West, back with another sonic adventure.

On this post-Valentine’s and President’s Day Monday, I have been thinking about the legendary musical seeker, John Coltrane. For my second Black History Month offering, I am pleased to share “A Love Supreme.” This collection brings together the essential tracks of one of the 20th century’s most influential musical figures.

While John Coltrane is renowned for the fiery playing that pioneered modal and free jazz — infusing deep spirituality into landmark albums like Giant Steps and A Love Supreme — he also mastered the art of the love song.

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This collection includes “Naima,” the 1959 ballad named after his then-wife, Juanita Naima Grubbs, along with standards such as “I Want To Talk About You,” “My One And Only Love,” and “Dedicated To You.”

From his collaborations with Miles Davis to his personal spiritual journey from classic Bebop to the edges of the avant-garde, I have assembled nine hours of John Coltrane’s finest work for you to enjoy.

Please savor the sounds of the man known to fans and fellow musicians alike as “Trane.” I look forward to sharing another collection with you next month.

As always, stay safe, sane, and kind.

On March 6, 1857, United States Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger Taney oversaw a 7-2 vote against enslaved spouses Dred Scott and Harriet Scott, who had bravely and rightfully petitioned the Court for their freedom.

As agreed to in the Missouri Compromise, if enslaved people worked and lived in free states with or for their owners, this gave the enslaved persons the right to be free.

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However, in the majority opinion, Chief Justice Taney stated all people of African descent, free or enslaved, weren’t U.S. citizens and therefore did not have the right to sue in federal court, on top of having the gall to argue that the Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional, as well as the Kansas-Nebraska Act.

This U.S. Supreme Court decision outraged Northern politicians and abolitionists while bolstering Southern politicians and pro-slavery adherents. The debate raged so deeply that it stoked both sides to believe that only war or succession would “solve” the nation’s slavery dilemma.

Though they didn’t obtain their freedom through the justice system, the Scotts were purchased by people who freed them in May of 1857. Dred found work as a porter in a St. Louis hotel until he contracted tuberculosis and died in September 1858.

Harriet continued living in St. Louis, working as a washerwoman to support herself and her daughters. She lived through the Civil War, witnessing the final abolition of slavery, and passed away on June 20, 1876.

In 1997, Dred Scott and Harriet Robinson Scott were posthumously inducted into the St. Louis Walk of Fame.

On March 6, 2017, 160 years to the day after that horrible Supreme Court decision, Charlie Taney, the great great grand nephew of Justice Taney, apologized on behalf of his family to Lynne M. Jackson, the great great granddaughter of the Scotts, outside the Maryland State House in front of Roger Taney’s statue.

In August 2017, that same statue of Taney was removed from the entrance of Maryland’s State House. In 2023, a new, nine-foot-tall granite memorial monument for Dred Scott was dedicated at Calvary Cemetery in St. Louis, MO.

To learn more about Dred Scott, Harriet Robinson Scott and the Dred Scott Decision, check out the PBS video What Was the Dred Scott Decision?, the 2019 book Dred Scott: The Inside Story by David Hardy, 2008’s Dred Scott and the Problem of Constitutional Evil by Mark A. Graber, and the 2009 book on Harriet Scott called Mrs. Dred Scott: A Life on Slavery’s Frontier by Lea Vandervelde.

Sources:

• https://www.pbs.org/video/american-experience-what-was-dred-scott-decision/

• https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/dred-scott-v-sandford

• https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/from-a-descendant-of-roger-taney-to-a-descendant-of-dred-scott-im-sorry/2017/03/06/d2871308-0286-11e7-b1e9-a05d3c21f7cf_story.html

• https://news.stlpublicradio.org/show/st-louis-on-the-air/2020-09-22/thursday-the-effort-to-make-dred-scotts-grave-a-place-worthy-of-pilgrimage

• https://www.nps.gov/people/harriet-robinson-scott.htm?utm_source=person&utm_medium=website&utm_campaign=experience_more&utm_content=large

• https://www.phillytrib.com/commentary/michaelcoard/coard-15-things-you-didnt-know-about-dred-scott-case/article_74fb153f-8bd6-5f38-b9a9-19dbe2adb394.htmlhttps://www.history.com/topics/black-history/dred-scott-case

• https://wams.nyhistory.org/a-nation-divided/antebellum/harriet-robinson-scott/#:~:text=But%20Irene%20kept%20the%20money,support%20herself%20and%20her%20family.

by Lori Lakin Hutcherson, GBN Founder and Editor-in-Chief

Many may know Lorraine Hansberry as the award-winning playwright of the now-classic 1959 Broadway play A Raisin in The Sun, adapted into a 1961 movie starring Sidney Poitier and Ruby Dee in 1961, and remade for television in 2008 starring Phylicia Rashad, Audra McDonald and Sanaa Lathan.

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Some may know of her civil rights activism and advocacy for universal healthcare, women’s rights, and for the demise of colonialism and imperialism. Or know of her family’s fight to end restrictive housing covenants in Chicago that went all the way to the Supreme Court (Hansberry v. Lee), a ruling that helped pave the way for the 1948 landmark case Shelley v. Kraemer, which declared all restrictive covenants in the U.S. unconstitutional.

A few may even know of her embrace of her queer identity and desire to fight for gay rights towards the end of her too-short life.

I know all of these things because my personal connection to Lorraine Hansberry started when she became the first (and only) Black woman writer I got to read as a part of English curriculum in either middle school or high school in the 1980s.

We read A Raisin In The Sun as a class in 11th grade AP English, and when my teacher Dr. Victor had his students spend our spring semester studying one author in depth of our own choosing, I chose Lorraine.

When I read Raisin, A Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window, the never-produced NBC TV script for The Drinking Gourd, Les Blancs and especially, To Be Young, Gifted and Black — a phrase she employed when speaking to youth just weeks before her death — Hansberry’s work filled me with hope, possibility and inspired me to believe I could become a writer as well. (This is why REPRESENTATION MATTERS!)

In addition to being a vastly talented writer, Hansberry was a searing intellect. One of the greatest thrills of my own intellectual life was finding and listening to The Lorraine Hansberry Audio Collection on cassette tape and in particular wearing out her interview with Mike Wallace entitled “The Beauty of Things Black-Towards Total Liberation.”

In it, she masterfully counters his presumptions and condescension about racism and race relations with brilliance, prowess, coolness and confidence. I got lifted every time I heard it and her voice.

Even though she died at the way-too-young age of 34, Lorraine Hansberry made her mark as one of the great American playwrights, thinkers and liberation fighters.

Nina Simone was inspired to compose (with lyricist Weldon Irvine) “Young, Gifted and Black” to honor her friend by crafting a song that would “make Black children all over the world feel good about themselves forever.” I was most definitely one of them.

To learn more about Lorraine Hansberry, check out the Audio Collection mentioned above, the 2018 PBS American Masters documentary Lorraine Hansberry: Sighted Eyes/Feeling Heart.

You can also read about her in the Imani Perry biography from 2018, Looking for Lorraine: The Radiant and Radical Life of Lorraine Hansberry. or in Radical Vision: A Biography of Lorraine Hansberry (2022) by Soyica Diggs Colbert.

Sources:

• https://nmaahc.si.edu/lorraine-hansberry

• https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/lorraine-hansberry

• https://www.chipublib.org/lorraine-hansberry-biography/

On a January evening in 1988, Doug Williams became first Black quarterback in the National Football League to both start and win a Super Bowl. Williams’ performance leading the Washington Redskins (now Commanders) in Super Bowl XXII remains one of the most significant moments in sports history, a triumph that resonated far beyond the gridiron.

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Born August 9, 1955, in Zachary, Louisiana, Williams grew up in an era when the very idea of a Black quarterback leading an NFL team seemed impossible. He honed his skills at Grambling State University from 1974 to 1977, playing under legendary coach Eddie Robinson. At Grambling, Williams passed for over 8,000 yards and 93 touchdowns, leading the Tigers to three Black College National Championships and finishing fourth in Heisman Trophy voting in 1977.

In 1978, Williams made history when the Tampa Bay Buccaneers selected him 17th overall, making him the first Black quarterback drafted in the first round. Over five seasons with Tampa Bay, he led the team to the playoffs three times, including an NFC Championship Game appearance in 1979.

Despite his success, Williams was significantly underpaid compared to his white counterparts, a disparity he later attributed to racism. After a brief stint in the now-defunct USFL (United States Football League), Williams joined Washington’s team in 1986 as a backup QB. When head coach Joe Gibbs named him the starter for the 1987 playoffs, few could have predicted the historic performance that would follow.

In Super Bowl XXII against the Denver Broncos, Williams delivered one of the greatest quarters in football history, throwing four touchdown passes in the second quarter alone. He finished with 340 passing yards and led his team to a commanding 42-10 victory, earning Super Bowl MVP honors.

When a reporter at Media Day asked Williams, “How long have you been a Black quarterback?” he famously responded, “I’ve been a quarterback since high school, and I’ve been Black all my life.”

Following his historic Super Bowl XXII win, Williams continued playing for Washington through the 1989 season, though injuries limited his playing time in subsequent years. After retiring as a player, Williams transitioned into coaching and personnel roles.

He returned to his alma mater Grambling, serving as head coach (1998-2003, 2011-2013), where he won four Southwestern Athletic Conference championships. In 2010, Williams helped establish the Black College Football Hall of Fame, ensuring that the achievements of HBCU athletes would be properly honored and remembered.

In 2024, Williams was selected as the American Football Coaches Association's recipient of the Trailblazer Award as one of the most storied “G-Men” in the history of Grambling State’s program.

After a stint in the NFL as a personnel executive with Tampa Bay, Williams eventually rejoined the Washington franchise in various front office capacities, and currently serves as senior advisor to the Commanders. In a full-circle moment, his son D.J. Williams was named the team’s quarterbacks coach in January 2026.

To learn more about Williams, read The Great Black Hope: Doug Williams, Vince Evans, and the Making of the Black Quarterback by Louis Moore or Black Trailblazers in Sports: Doug Williams by David Lee Morgan, Jr.

Sources:

• https://www.nfl.com/players/doug-williams/

• https://www.thehistorymakers.org/biography/doug-williams

• https://www.commanders.com/team/front-office-roster/doug-williams

• https://heavy.com/sports/nfl/washington-commanders/hire-dj-williams-quarterbacks-coach/

• https://www.thegramblinite.com/2023/02/09/history-made-by-gsus-doug-williams-being-built-on-in-super-bowl-lvii/

• https://www.pro-football-reference.com/players/W/WillDo01.htm

• https://gsutigers.com/news/2024/10/29/football-grambling-state-legend-doug-williams-selected-as-the-2024-afca-trailblazer-award-recipient.aspx

*This year marks the 100th anniversary since Dr. Carter G. Woodson founded Negro History Week in February 1926. Fifty years after that, President Gerald Ford officially recognized Black History Month. In 1986, Congress passed a law designating February as Black History Month across the U.S.

Growing up in 1920s New York, Mabel Fairbanks dreamed of becoming a champion figure skater, but was denied entry to ice rinks due to segregation. She learned how to skate in part by eavesdropping on white skating instructors until her local rink manager finally admitted her.

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Unable to try out for the U.S. Skating Team because it wouldn’t accept Black skaters, Fairbanks showed off her skills by skating instead in entertaining ice shows such as the Ice Capades or Ice Follies.

After her professional career on the ice ended, Fairbanks became a figure skating coach and worked with World Champion pairs team Tai Babilonia and Randy Gardner, Olympic gold medalists Scott Hamilton and Kristi Yamaguchi, and Atoy Wilson, the first African American athlete to win a U.S. skating title.

Though she was never able to compete for her own prizes, Fairbanks was recognized as a pioneer of the sport when she became the first African American inducted into the U.S. Figure Skating Hall of Fame in 1997. She was posthumously inducted into the International Women’s Sports Hall of Fame in October 2001.

Fairbanks’ resting place at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery in Los Angeles is marked by a plaque etched with a pair of figure skates and the words “Skatingly Yours,” the phrase she’d add whenever she signed autographs.

U.S. Figure Skating currently champions The Mabel Fairbanks Skatingly Yours Fund, which financially assists and supports the training and development of promising Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC) figure skaters with the goal of helping them realize and achieve their maximum athletic potential. There is also Mabel Fairbanks merchandise available at usskating.org where the proceeds go directly to the Skatingly Yours fund.

To learn more about Fairbanks, check out the NPR Code Switch podcast episode about her story and legacy and the 2019 children’s book Ice Breaker: How Mabel Fairbanks Changed Figure Skating (She Made History) written by Rose Viña and illustrated by Claire Almon.

Links to these and other sources are provided in today’s show notes and in the episode’s full transcript posted on goodblacknews.org.

Sources:

• https://www.npr.org/2022/02/28/1083461601/ice-breaker

• https://usfigureskating.org/sports/2025/8/22/mabel-fairbanks-skatingly-yours-fund.aspx

• https://www.latimes.com/sports/story/2020-08-21/racism-mabel-fairbanks-figure-skater-telling-her-story

• https://www.nbcwashington.com/celebrating-black-history/mabel-fairbanks-changing-the-face-of-figure-skating/2582568/

• https://www.icetheatre.org/mabel-fairbanks-bio.html

• https://www.theguardian.com/news/2001/oct/08/guardianobituaries

*This year marks the 100th anniversary since Dr. Carter G. Woodson founded Negro History Week in February 1926. Fifty years after that, President Gerald Ford officially recognized Black History Month. In 1986, Congress passed a law designating February as Black History Month across the U.S.

Nicknames in the Old West had to be earned, not given. “Stagecoach Mary” was no exception. In 1895, “Stagecoach Mary” Fields became the first Black woman contracted by the postal service to deliver the U.S. mail. With her guns and tough demeanor, Fields unfailingly protected her stagecoach and her mail route from wolves and bandits alike.

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Born enslaved in Tennessee in the early 1830s, once Fields was emancipated at the the end of the Civil War, she traveled around working odd jobs until she eventually made her way to a convent in Toledo, Ohio, working as a groundskeeper and game hunter, and eventually moved to Cascade, Montana and did the same at a different convent.

After clashing with several nuns who objected to her smoking, drinking and gun-toting gruffness, Fields accepted a donated stagecoach from a sympathetic Mother Superior and used it to pursue a new line of work in Cascade.

Mary never missed a day in the eight years she had her postal route - when she couldn’t drive her stagecoach through the snow, she would don snowshoes and trek to deliver the mail. After retiring from her postal service, Mary established her own laundry business in town. She died in 1914 and is buried in Cascade.

To learn more about Stagecoach Mary, read Deliverance Mary Fields, First African American Woman Star Route Mail Carrier in the United States: A Montana History by Miantae Metcalf McConnell from 2016, the 2019 children’s picture book Fearless Mary: Mary Fields, American Stagecoach Driver written by Tami Charles and illustrated by Claire Almon or African American Women of the Old West by Tricia Wagner on which Mary graces the cover.

You can also listen to the very informative 2021 episode about Mary on the podcast Black Cowboys.

Sources:

• https://postalmuseum.si.edu/stagecoach-mary-fields

• https://www.nps.gov/people/mary-fields.htm

• https://www.history.com/.amp/news/meet-stagecoach-mary-the-daring-black-pioneer-who-protected-wild-west-stagecoaches

*This year marks the 100th anniversary since Dr. Carter G. Woodson founded Negro History Week in February 1926. Fifty years after that, President Gerald Ford officially recognized Black History Month. In 1986, Congress passed a law designating February as Black History Month across the U.S.

Some may know the names of Black astronauts like Mae Jemison, Charles Bolden or Victor Glover but how many know the names of the first African-American astronauts or what they contributed to NASA’s space program?

Guion “Guy” Bluford, Ron McNair and Frederick Gregory were the first three African-Americans in space. They were also NASA classmates in its famous “Class of 1978” - the first class to train women as astronauts (Sally Ride) as well as the first Asian-American man (Ellison Onizuka).

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Guy Bluford graduated from Penn State and joined the Air Force in 1964 to become a pilot. Bluford was deployed to Vietnam and flew over 140 combat missions. After Vietnam, Bluford remained in the Air Force, using his skills to train future fighter pilots. In the 1970s, Bluford earned advanced degrees in aerospace engineering and eventually became chief of the Air Force’s aerospace laboratory.

Some years later, Bluford wanted to do even more to contribute to flight, science and aerospace. Upon hearing about NASA’s efforts to recruit and train new astronauts, he applied and got accepted to the program.

In the Penn State tribute video to Bluford, there are images of some of the rigorous “Top Gun”-style training he and his classmates went through to be deemed space-ready by NASA.

On August 30, 1983, Bluford got his chance to head into space. It was the third flight for the Orbiter Challenger and the first mission with a night launch and night landing. Because Bluford was making history as the first person of African ancestry to travel in space, the night of the launch, there was a crowd people waiting outside in the rain to watch.

Listening to Bluford talk about the whole thing himself is pretty special, especially his two revelations: 1) when they listened back to the audiotapes of the launch, they realized one of the astronauts was giggling all the way up into orbit. It was Bluford. 2) the first thing he saw once in orbit was Africa over the horizon. While adjusting to zero gravity, two of the flight crew members threw up. Guy was okay and quite comfortable in space.

Guy, though happy to have been “the first,” he really just wanted to make a contribution to the program. Bluford logged over 700 hours in space shuttle program, managed orbital experiments, and launched satellites from orbit. In 2023, NASA celebrated the 40th anniversary of Bluford’s first mission and his legacy.

Ron McNair came from rural poverty in Lake City, SC, attended segregated schools but was a naturally gregarious and spirited young man with an appetite for learning. McNair was at his local Lake City library one day and found some math books he was eager to read. When he tried to check them out he was told he couldn’t.

Instead of walking out of the library empty-handed, McNair sat on the check-out desk refused to leave until he was allowed to borrow the books. Both the police and his parents were called - his one-young-man-protest was successful - he was allowed to check the books out. Decades later, this same library became the site for the Ron McNair Memorial and Ron McNair Center for Learning (pictured below).

McNair’s spirit, curiosity and perseverance led to him eventually earning an engineering PhD from MIT. The outgoing McNair was generally loved at NASA. He was known as a real motivator and leader and larger than life, despite his “small guy” status (height-wise).

This 5th degree black belt and accomplished jazz saxophonist became second African American in space on the Challenger, and he was part of the crew that tested allowing man himself to become a satellite in space.

McNair’s career as an astronaut, along with six others, was tragically cut short on January 28, 1986 when the Challenger exploded soon after launch. The accident led to a two-and-a-half year grounding of the shuttle fleet. McNair has subsequently been honored by NASA for his contributions and service, as well as inducted into the South Carolina Hall of Fame.

___________

Frederick Gregory was an Air Force and Navy Test Pilot who had no lifelong dreams or intentions of ever becoming an astronaut. He went to the Air Force Academy and majored in engineering, but loved studying Classical English and had hopes of one day becoming a history professor.

But one day he saw an advertisement in Aviation Week for a new astronaut-training program at NASA. Then he saw promo materials featuring Nichelle Nichols - NASA had hired Lt. Uhuru from Star Trek to help recruit women and minorities to the space program - and in Gregory’s own words, she was the biggest motivator for him to apply.

Gregory’s first time in space happened to be on a classified military mission in regards to national security, so he couldn’t talk about it to family, friends or the press. He couldn’t even tell his wife where he was going for training and would have to disappear for weeks at a time.

What Gregory could talk about though, was what it was like to go up in space:

“When I launched the first time, I pretty much thought I knew the answer to everything, I thought I‘d seen everything, that this would just be a thrill ride for me. But when I got to orbit and… went from 3g to 0g and my arms floated and everything around me was floating, I had never anticipated anything like that. And when I looked out the window at the heavens and saw how orderly and how in harmony it was, I said to myself... God has put that there for me to see. And to look down at Earth and see the interaction and reactions of the water and the atmosphere and the dirt and the continents down there… My sense of where I came from went from Washington D.C. to the United States to the World. So I came back as a world citizen as opposed to a citizen from D.C., where I was born...”

Later in his NASA career, Gregory became the first African-American to command a space flight in November of 1989, and in 2005 became Acting Administrator for NASA. Two years ago, Gregory, now 85, was named to the National Aviation Hall of Fame Class of 2024.

Additional sources:

• https://www.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/bluford_guion.pdf

• https://www.nasa.gov/people/frederick-d-gregory/

• https://airandspace.si.edu/stories/editorial/quietly-soaring-history-first-african-american-space

Ruby Doris Smith-Robinson, one of the unsung champions of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s, was the only woman to serve as Executive Secretary for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and was known for her verve, toughness and willingness to take on anything or anyone.

Kwame Ture (fka Stokely Carmichael, one of the original SNCC Freedom Riders) once said of Ruby, “She was convinced that there was nothing that she could not do… she was a tower of strength.”

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Ruby was arrested several times and served 100 days in prison, voluntarily adopting SNCC’s “Jail-no-Bail” strategy to keep bail money from further funding racist police departments.

Ruby participated in multiple sit-ins in Atlanta as part of the Atlanta Student Movement while she attended Spelman College, joined the Freedom Riders, was attacked and beaten in Montgomery, and in Atlanta worked to integrate hospitals after lunch counters were successfully desegregated.

At one hospital demonstration, the receptionist told Ruby and her fellow protestors to leave when they came through the white hospital entrance. “Besides you’re not sick anyway,” the receptionist added. Ruby walked right up to the desk, looked the receptionist in the eye, then vomited on the counter and retorted, “Is that sick enough for you?”

Former SNCC leader and NAACP Chairman Julian Bond remembered that when SNCC staff was preparing to board a plane for Africa in 1964 to observe the success of the nonviolence technique, an airline representative told them the plane was overbooked, they were being bumped and would have to take a later flight. This angered Smith-Robinson so much that without consulting the rest of the group she went and sat down in the jetway and refused to move. (They were given seats on the original flight.)

Smith-Robinson also created the Sojourner Truth Motor Fleet for SNCC to make sure the field staff always had cars available.

Only one year after Ruby succeeded James Forman as SNCC’s Executive Secretary, she died from cancer at 25 – a devastating loss to her movement colleagues and SNCC itself. On the headstone at her Atlanta grave site are words appropriate for both her life and SNCC: “If you think free, you are free.”

In 2017, Smith-Robinson’s niece Keisha Lance Bottoms was elected Mayor of Atlanta.

To learn more about Ruby, check out her biography Soon We Will Not Cry: The Liberation of Ruby Doris Smith-Robinson (2000) by Cynthia Griggs Fleming or SNCC’s digital profile on her at: https://snccdigital.org/people/ruby-doris-smith-robinson/

*[This year marks the 100th anniversary since Dr. Carter G. Woodson founded Negro History Week in February 1926. Fifty years after that, President Gerald Ford officially recognized Black History Month. In 1986, Congress passed a law designating February as Black History Month across the U.S.]

Today GBN celebrates Brad Lomax, the Black Panther Party member and independent living activist who helped lead the 1977 "504 Sit In" to demand the federal government provide accessibility in a federal buildings and institutions.

While a student at Howard University in Washington D.C., Lomax was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. When he started having to use a wheelchair every day, Lomax began to notice an often unseen “ism” — ableism.

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Public buildings and transit without ramps. Inaccessible schools, housing, and workplaces. Lomax moved to Oakland, CA and soon joined the Center for Independent Living, the Bay Area group which successfully lobbied for curb cuts on street corners.

In 1977, Lomax helped lead a protest that became known as the “504 Sit-In” in the San Francisco Federal Building, where disabled activists took the federal government to task for not implementing Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, which required accessibility in all federal programs and institutions.

The protest lasted longer than any other sit-in a federal building in U.S. history, due in large part to Lomax arranging for the Oakland chapter of the Black Panthers to deliver food and provisions to the activists daily.

After a month, the government finally began to implement Section 504 in all federal programs and institutions. This action helped pave the way for the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) pass in Congress and be signed into law on July 26, 1990.

To learn more about Brad Lomax, the 504 sit in and the disability rights movement, watch the 2024 short documentary Brad Lomax: Creating Communities of Care with accessibility options on PBS.org or via American Masters on YouTube.

You can also read the 2020 New York Times feature article on Lomax, The Disability Rights Movement: From Charity to Confrontation by Doris Fleischer and Frieda James from 2011 or watch the 2020 documentary Crip Camp on Netflix.

Sources:

• http://sfbayview.com/2014/02/black-history-of-504-sit-in-for-disability-rights-more-than-serving-food-when-will-the-healing-begin/

• https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/08/obituaries/brad-lomax-overlooked.html

• https://www.ndrn.org/resource/drib2020-brad-lomax/

• https://www.centerforlearnerequity.org/news/brad-lomax-uniting-the-civil-rights-and-disability-rights-communities/

• http://dsq-sds.org/article/view/1371/1539

• https://dredf.org/504-sit-in-20th-anniversary/short-history-of-the-504-sit-in/

• https://newrepublic.com/article/158618/americans-disabilities-act-teach-todays-protesters

Robert Smalls was the first Black man elected to U.S. Congress during Reconstruction, but of course his incredible story and accomplishments did not begin there. Smalls was born into slavery in 1839 in Beaufort, South Carolina and started his journey to national prominence by daring to escape slavery during the Civil War.

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Smalls, like many other enslaved people, was made to work for the Confederate forces. Menial labor such as grave digging, cooking, digging trenches, etc. were the most common jobs, but some enslaved people were used in skilled labor positions. Smalls, who could navigate the waters in and around Charleston, was used to guide transport ships for the Confederate Navy.

On May 13, 1862, Smalls convinced several other enslaved people to help him commandeer a Confederate transport ship, the CSS Planter, in Charleston Harbor. Smalls, in a captain hat and using Confederate hand signals, sailed from Confederate-controlled waters to the U.S. Naval blockade. By doing so, Smalls gained freedom for himself, several other enslaved people and also for his family.

Smalls’ example of cunning and bravery helped convince President Abraham Lincoln to accept Black soldiers into the U.S. Army and Navy. Smalls became Captain of the same boat for the Union Navy and helped free enslaved peoples as he fought and outwitted the Confederate Navy several more times during the duration of the War.

Check out the PBS NewsHour video about this event:

After the South surrendered, Smalls returned to Beaufort, S.C. and purchased his enslaver’s house, which was seized by the Union in 1863. His enslaver sued to get it back, but lost in court to Smalls.

Smalls learned to read and write during this time, and after going into business to service the needs of freedmen, Smalls was elected to the State House of South Carolina. While there, Smalls authored state legislation to provide South Carolina with the first free and compulsory public school system in the United States. He also founded the Republican Party of South Carolina.

In 1874, Smalls was elected the first Black member of U.S. Congress. In backlash to his election, his opposers began gerrymandering across South Carolina to start tilting seats back to white men.

Conservative Southern Bourbon Democrats, who called themselves the Redeemers, also resorted to violence and election fraud to regain control of the South Carolina state legislature. As part of wide-ranging white efforts to reduce African-American political power, Smalls was charged and convicted of taking a bribe five years prior in connection with the awarding of a printing contract.

Smalls was pardoned as part of an agreement by which charges were also dropped against Democrats accused of election fraud. But the scandal took a political toll, and Smalls was defeated by Democrat George D. Tillman in the senate election in 1878, and again, narrowly, in 1880. Smalls successfully contested the 1880 result and regained the seat in 1882.

In 1884 he was elected to fill a seat in a different district. He was nominated for Senate but defeated by Wade Hampton in 1886. Smalls died of malaria and diabetes in 1915 at the age of 75 and was buried in his family’s plot in the churchyard of the Tabernacle Baptist Church in downtown Beaufort.

According to curators at the National Museum of African American History and Culture, Smalls’ family went on to be very successful, and there is a Robert Smalls lecture at the University of South Carolina every year.

The monument to Smalls in the churchyard is inscribed with a statement he made to the South Carolina legislature in 1895:

My race needs no special defense, for the past history of them in this country proves them to be the equal of any people anywhere. All they need is an equal chance in the battle of life.

To learn more about Robert Smalls, check out Be Free or Die by Cate Lineberry or Gullah Statesman: Robert Smalls, From Slavery to Congress 1839 to 1915 by Edward A. Miller, Jr.

“Sick and tired of being sick and tired,” in the 1960s Mississippi plantation worker Fannie Lou Hamer was fired, threatened by white supremacists, and beaten in police custody when she tried to vote and register others to do the same.

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But Hamer would not be silenced. She worked with other activists in her church and volunteers from the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) to travel county to county to register other Black people to vote.

Hamer then formed the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party and demanded to represent her state at the 1964 Democratic Convention. Hamer fought for voting rights, education rights, and economic rights (she formed the Freedom Farm Collective to fight for redistribution of wealth from usurious sharecropping) and even ran for Senate.

Although she wasn’t rich, traditionally educated or well-connected, Hamer was a grassroots leader who got involved – and stayed involved - because she believed to her core “Nobody’s free until everybody’s free.”

Hamer passed in 1977 after years of dealing with serious health issues, but her legacy as an outspoken and effective champion for equal rights will never be forgotten.

The documentary Fannie Lou Hamer’s America debuted on PBS in 2022 and can now be seen in full via WORLD Channel on YouTube.

To learn more about Fannie Lou Hamer, you can read her autobiography on snccdigital.org, read 2013’s The Speeches of Fannie Lou Hamer: To Tell It Like it Is, check out 2021’s Until I Am Free: Fannie Lou Hamer’s Enduring Message to America by Keisha N. Blain, This Little Light of Mine: The Life of Fannie Lou Hamer by Kay Mills or Walk With Me: A Biography of Fannie Lou Hamer by Kate Clifford Larson.

You can also watch clips of Hamer’s speeches on YouTube.

Sources:

• https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/fannie-lou-hamer

• How The Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party Started (by Unstripped Voice)

• Fannie Lou Hamer: Stand Up (Mississippi Public Broadcasting)

• https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/freedomsummer-hamer/

• https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/fannie-lou-hamers-dauntless-fight-for-black-americans-right-vote-180975610/

• https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/hamer-fannie-lou

• https://goodblacknews.org/2021/02/28/bhm-good-black-news-celebrates-fannie-lou-hamer-sharecropper-senate-candidate-voting-and-civil-rights-activist/

by Marlon West (FB: marlon.west1 Threads: @stlmarlonwest IG: stlmarlonwest Bluesky: @marlonweststl.bsky.social Spotify: marlonwest)

Happy Music Monday! It’s your monthly Groove Agent back with another playlist on this Reverend Martin Luther King Holiday. Today we are celebrating the life and music of the legendary Fela Kuti.

He famously asserted “Music is the weapon. Music is the weapon of the future.” and some nearly 30 years after his death in 1997, his music is still inspiring generations.

Fela Kuti has been described as Malcolm X, James Brown, Bob Marley, Muhammad Ali, and Dr. King all rolled into one defiant package. All contemporary forms of Black music, from funk to hiphop, owe debt to the driving grooves of the Afrobeat genre that he created.

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Fela recorded more than 60 albums and spent a lifetime fighting against political corruption in his homeland of Nigeria. He was in a decades-long cycle of recording music, being arrested and beaten for it, making a song about that - REPEAT. In his homeland and around the world he was affectionately called “Black President.”

This collection was inspired by Jad Abumrad’s “Fela Kuti: Fear No Man” podcast. It’s a twelve- episode exploration of Fela Anikulapo-Kuti and an amazing deep dive into the life and legacy of the multi-instrumentalist, sociopolitical powerhouse, and father of Afrobeat.

Kuti endures as one of the most important musical figures of the 20th century.

Please enjoy 9 hours of the essential works of the man often simply called: Fela!

by Marlon West (FB: marlon.west1 Threads: @stlmarlonwest IG: stlmarlonwest Bluesky: @marlonweststl.bsky.social Spotify: marlonwest)

Hello and Happy Holidays,

It’s your friend and selector, Marlon West, with another collection for GOOD BLACK NEWS. GROOVE CHRISTMAS 2025 is an eclectic mix of Christmas music, much of which was released this year.

This collection features favorites from Donny Hathaway, Nina Simone, Lou Rawls and John Legend, alongside recent releases by artists like Rebel Rae, Aloe Blacc, Alex Harris and CoCo Jones. I’ve also included selections from Duke Ellington’s classic 1960 “Nutcracker Suite” as a unifying thread.

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I hope this seasonal collection introduces you to new classics and favorites to enjoy this year and beyond.

Please also feel free to dig into my earlier offerings, including “Soulful Christmas,“ “Cool Yule: A Jazzy Christmas Playlist,” and “Christmas Around The World,” all of which are still available.

Have a wonderful Holiday Season. I will be back with another offering in January 2026.

Until then, stay safe, sane, and kind.