Ida B Wells

                                         Ida B Wells
"One had better die fighting against injustice than die like a dog or a rat in a trap." Ida B. Wells 

Ida B. Wells-Barnett was a fearless anti-lynching crusader, suffragist, women's rights advocate, journalist, and speaker. She stands as one of our nation's most uncompromising leaders and most ardent defenders of democracy.  

The courage, determination and drive of Ida B. Wells stands out as a story we need to know and model ourselves after. 

Ida B. Wells was born July 16, 1862, as the child of slaves in Holly Springs, Mississippi. Her father, James, was a Native American and a skilled carpenter. Her mother, Elizabeth Bell, was Black and was a "famous" cook.  Her father helped start Shaw University in Holly Springs. It later became Rust College, which still exists today.

When Ida was only fourteen, a tragic epidemic of Yellow Fever swept through Holly Springs and killed her parents and youngest sibling. Emblematic of the righteousness, responsibility, and fortitude that characterized her life, she kept the family together by securing a job teaching. Her paternal grandmother, Peggy Wells, along with other friends and relatives, stayed with her siblings and cared for them during the week while Wells was away teaching. Without this help, she would have not been able to keep her siblings together.  Wells resented that in the segregated school system, white teachers were paid $80 a month and she was paid only $30 a month. This discrimination made her more interested in the politics of race and improving the education of black people. She managed to continue her education by attending near-by Rust College.

In 1883, Wells took three of her younger siblings to Memphis, Tennessee, to live with her aunt and to be closer to other family members. She also learned that she could earn higher wages there as a teacher than in Mississippi. Soon after moving, she was hired in Woodstock for the Shelby County school system. During her summer vacations she attended summer sessions at Fisk University, a historically black college in Nashville. She also attended LeMoyne. She held strong political opinions and provoked many people with her views on women's rights. At 24, she wrote, "I will not begin at this late day by doing what my soul abhors; sugaring men, weak deceitful creatures, with flattery to retain them as escorts or to gratify a revenge."

On May 4, 1884, a train conductor with the Memphis and Charleston Railroad ordered Wells to give up her seat in the first-class ladies car and move to the smoking car, which was already crowded with other passengers. The year before, the Supreme Court had ruled against the federal Civil Rights Act of 1875 (which had banned racial discrimination in public accommodations). This verdict supported railroad companies that chose to racially segregate their passengers.

Wells refused to give up her seat. The conductor and two men dragged Wells out of the car. When she returned to Memphis, she hired an African-American attorney to sue the railroad. Wells gained publicity in Memphis when she wrote a newspaper article for The Living Way, a black church weekly, about her treatment on the train. When her lawyer was paid off by the railroad, she hired a white attorney. She won her case on December 24, 1884, when the local circuit court granted her a $500 award.

The railroad company appealed to the Tennessee Supreme Court, which reversed the lower court's ruling in 1887. It concluded, "We think it is evident that the purpose of the defendant in error was to harass with a view to this suit, and that her persistence was not in good faith to obtain a comfortable seat for the short ride." Wells was ordered to pay court costs. Wells' reaction to the higher court's decision expressed her strong convictions on civil rights and religious faith, as she responded: "I felt so disappointed because I had hoped such great things from my suit for my people...O God, is there no...justice in this land for us?"

While teaching elementary school, Wells was offered an editorial position for the Evening Star in Washington, DC. She also wrote weekly articles for The Living Way weekly newspaper under the pen name "Iola," gaining a reputation for writing about the race issue. In 1889, she became co-owner and editor of Free Speech and Headlight, an anti-segregation newspaper that was started by the Reverend Taylor Nightingale and was based at the Beale Street Baptist Church in Memphis. It published articles about racial injustice. In 1891, Wells was dismissed from her teaching post by the Memphis Board of Education due to her articles that criticized conditions in the colored schools of the region. Wells was devastated but undaunted, and concentrated her energy on writing articles for the The Living Way and the Free Speech and Headlight.

In 1889 Thomas Moss, a friend of Wells, opened the Peoples Grocery in the "Curve," a black neighborhood just outside the Memphis city limits. It did well and competed with a white-owned grocery store across the street. While Wells was out of town in Natchez, Mississippi, a white mob invaded her friends' store. During the altercation, three white men were shot and injured. Moss and two other black men, named McDowell and Stewart, were arrested and jailed pending trial. A large white lynch mob stormed the jail and killed the three men.

After the lynching of her friends, Wells wrote in Free Speech and Headlight, urging blacks to leave Memphis altogether:

   "There is, therefore, only one thing left to do; save our money and leave a    town which will neither protect our lives and property, nor give us a fair    trial in the courts, but takes us out and murders us in cold blood when       accused by white persons".

Wells emphasized the public spectacle of the lynching. More than 6,000 black people did leave Memphis; others organized boycotts of white-owned businesses. After being threatened with violence, she bought a pistol. She later wrote, "They had made me an exile and threatened my life for hinting at the truth."

 Her newspaper office was destroyed as a result of the muckraking and investigative journalism she pursued after the killing of her three friends. She could not return to Memphis, so she moved to Chicago. She however continued her blistering journalistic attacks on Southern injustices, being especially active in investigating and exposing the fraudulent "reasons" given to lynch Black men, which by now had become a common occurrence.

In Chicago, she helped develop numerous African American women and reform organizations, but she remained diligent in her anti-lynching crusade, writing Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases. She also became a tireless worker for women's suffrage, and happened to march in the famous 1913 march for universal suffrage in Washington, D.C. Not able to tolerate injustice of any kind, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, along with Jane Addams, successfully blocked the establishment of segregated schools in Chicago.

 

                                     Ida B Wells with her children,1909 

In 1895 Wells married the editor of one of Chicago's early Black newspapers. She wrote: "I was married in the city of Chicago to attorney Ferdinand L. Barnett, a widower with two sons, Ferdinand and Albert. She was one of the first married American women to keep her own last name as well as taking her husband's.She retired to what she thought was the privacy of a home." She did not stay retired long and continued writing and organizing. By 1901, she bought all shares in the paper and became the owner. In 1906, she joined with William E.B. DuBois and others to further the Niagara Movement, and she was one of two African American women to sign "the call" to form the NAACP in 1909.

                       Ida B. Wells Barnett and Ferdinand Barnett with their family

Although Ida B. Wells was one of the founding members of the National Association for the
 Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), she was also among the few Black leaders to explicitly oppose Booker T. Washington and his strategies. As a result, she was viewed as one the most radical of the so-called "radicals" who organized the NAACP and marginalized from positions within its leadership. As late as 1930, she became disgusted by the nominees of the major parties to the state legislature, so Wells-Barnett decided to run for the Illinois State legislature  which made her one of the first Black women to run for public office in the United States. A year later, she passed away after a lifetime crusading for justice.

             

Ida B Wells & Her Great Passion For Justice

Source: Wikipedia, Andrew Bozeman,SF BayView http://people.duke.edu/~ldbaker/classes/AAIH/caaih/ibw

Annie Turnbo Malone

              Annie Minerva Turnbo Malone

Annie Minerva Turnbo Malone born August 9, 1869 – May 10, 1957, was an American businesswoman, inventor and philanthropist. In the first three decades of the 20th century, she founded and developed a large and prominent commercial and educational enterprise centered on cosmetics for African-American women.

Entrepreneur and philanthropist Annie Minerva Turnbo Malone was born to Robert Turnbo and Isabella Cook in Metropolis, Illinois on August 9, 1869.  Her parents were former slaves and her father joined the Union Army during the Civil War. When her father went off to fight for the Union with the 1st Kentucky Cavalry in the Civil War, Isabella took the couple's children and escaped from Kentucky, a neutral border state that maintained slavery. After traveling down the Ohio River, she found refuge in Metropolis, Illinois. There Annie Turnbo was later born, the tenth of eleven children.

Annie Turnbo was born on a farm near Metropolis in Massac County, Illinois. Orphaned at a young age, Annie attended a public school in Metropolis before moving to Peoria to live with her older sister Ada Moody in 1896. There Annie attended high school, taking particular interest in chemistry. However, due to frequent illness, Annie was forced to withdraw from classes.

While out of school, Annie grew so fascinated with hair and hair care that she often practiced hairdressing with her sister. With expertise in both chemistry and hair care, Turnbo began to develop her own hair care products. At the time, many women used goose fat, heavy oils, soap, or bacon grease to straighten their curls, which damaged both scalp and hair.

When she and her family moved to Lovejoy, Illinois, now known as Brooklyn, Illinois., Annie decided she wanted to become a "beauty doctor."  At the age of 20 she had already developed her own shampoo and scalp treatment to grow and straighten hair.  Taking her creation to the streets, she went around in a buggy making speeches to demonstrate and promote the new shampoo.

While living in Brooklyn, Illinois, around the turn of the century, Malone developed a chemical product that straightened African American hair without damage. She claimed to have studied chemistry and to have been influenced by an aunt who was trained as an herbal doctor. Her first store front was located at Madison and 4th Street. She expanded her hair care line to include other beauty products, including her popular Wonderful Hair Grower. She developed and patented the pressing comb which is still in use today. To promote her new product, Turnbo sold the Wonderful Hair Grower in bottles from door-to-door. Her products and sales began to revolutionize hair care methods for all African Americans.

In 1902, Turnbo moved to a thriving St. Louis, where she and three hired assistants sold her hair care products from door-to-door. As part of her marketing, she gave away free treatments to attract more customers.

In 1902 she married Nelson Pope; the couple divorced in 1907.

Due to the high demand for her product in St. Louis, Turnbo opened her first shop  there on 2223 Market Street in 1902. She also launched a wide advertising campaign in the black press, held news conferences, toured many southern states, and recruited many women whom she trained to sell her products.

Due to the growth in her business, in 1910 Turnbo moved to a larger facility on 3100 Pine Street. In addition to a manufacturing plant, it contained facilities for a beauty college, which she named Poro College. The building included a manufacturing plant, a retail store where Poro products were sold, business offices, a 500-seat auditorium, dining and meeting rooms, a roof garden, dormitory, gymnasium, bakery, and chapel. It served the African-American community as a center for religious and social functions.

The College's curriculum addressed the whole student; students were coached on personal style for work: on walking, talking, and a style of dress designed to maintain a solid persona. Poro College employed nearly 200 people in St. Louis. Through its school and franchise businesses, the college created jobs for almost 75,000 women in North and South America, Africa and the Philippines.

On April 28, 1914, Annie Turnbo married Aaron Eugene Malone, a former teacher and religious book salesman. Turnbo Malone, by then was worth well over a million dollars.

By the 1920s, Annie Turnbo Malone had become a multi-millionaire. In 1924 she paid income tax of nearly $40,000, reportedly the highest in Missouri. While extremely wealthy, Malone lived modestly, giving thousands of dollars to the local black YMCA and the Howard University College of Medicine in Washington, DC. She also donated money to the St. Louis Colored Orphans Home, where she served as president on the board of directors from 1919 to 1943. With her help, in 1922 the Home bought a facility at 2612 Goode Avenue (which was renamed Annie Malone Drive in her honor).

The Orphans Home is still located in the historic Ville neighborhood. Upgraded and expanded, the facility was renamed in the entrepreneur's honor as the Annie Malone Children and Family Service Center.  As well as funding many programs, Malone ensured that her employees, all African American, were paid well and given opportunities for advancement.

Her business thrived until 1927, when her husband filed for divorce. Having served as president of the company, he demanded half of the business' value, based on his claim that his contributions had been integral to its success.  The divorce suit forced Poro College into a court-ordered receivership. With support from her employees and powerful figures such as Mary McLeod Bethune, she negotiated a settlement of $200,000. This affirmed her as the sole owner of Poro College, and the divorce was granted.

After the divorce, Turnbo Malone moved most of her business to Chicago’s South Parkway, where she bought an entire city block.  Other lawsuits followed. In 1937, during the Great Depression, a former employee filed suit, also claiming credit for Poro's success. To raise money for the settlement, Turnbo Malone sold her St. Louis property. Although much reduced in size, her business continued to thrive

On May 10, 1957, Annie Malone suffered a stroke and died at Chicago's Provident Hospital. Childless, she had bequeathed her business and remaining fortune to her nieces and nephews. At the time of her death, her estate was valued at $100,000.

Sources:Wikipedia , Mark C. Carnes and John A. Garraty, eds., American National Biography , http://www.freemaninstitute.com 

                                    The Annie Malone Story


        KETC | Living St. Louis | Annie Malone


        Annie Malone: The Creator of the African-American Hair Care Industry

Madam C. J. Walker

                                            Madam C. J. Walker

"I am not merely satisfied in making money for myself, for I am endeavoring to provide employment for hundreds of women of my race. ... I want to say to every Negro woman present, don't sit down and wait for the opportunities to come. Get up and make them!"

"I am a woman who came from the cotton fields of the South. From there I was promoted to the washtub. From there I was promoted to the cook kitchen. And from there I promoted myself into the business of manufacturing hair goods and preparations....I have built my own factory on my own ground."

"I want you to understand that your first duty is to humanity. I want others to look at us and see that we care not just about ourselves but about others."

Sarah Breedlove December 23, 1867 – May 25, 1919 , known as Madam C. J. Walker, was an African American entrepreneur, philanthropist, and a political and social activist. Eulogized as the first female self-made millionaire in America, she became one of the wealthiest African American women in the country, "the world's most successful female entrepreneur of her time," and one of the most successful African-American business owners ever.

Walker made her fortune by developing and marketing a line of beauty and hair products for black women through Madame C.J. Walker Manufacturing Company, the successful business she founded. Walker was also known for her philanthropy and activism. She made financial donations to numerous organizations and became a patron of the arts. Villa Lewaro, Walker’s lavish estate in Irvington-on-Hudson, New York, served as a social gathering place for the African American community.

Sarah Breedlove–who later would come to be known as Madam C. J. Walker–was born on December 23, 1867 on the same Delta, Louisiana plantation where her parents, Owen and Minerva Anderson Breedlove, had been enslaved before the end of the Civil War.  This child of sharecroppers transformed herself from an uneducated farm laborer and laundress into one of the twentieth century’s most successful, self-made women entrepreneurs.

Orphaned at age seven, she often said, “I got my start by giving myself a start.” She and her older sister, Louvenia, survived by working in the cotton fields of Delta and nearby Vicksburg, Mississippi. At 14, she married Moses McWilliams to escape abuse from her cruel brother-in-law, Jesse Powell.

Her only daughter, Lelia (later known as A’Lelia Walker) was born on June 6, 1885. When her husband died two years later, she moved to St. Louis to join her four brothers who had established themselves as barbers. Working for as little as $1.50 a day, she managed to save enough money to educate her daughter in the city’s public schools. Friendships with other black women who were members of St. Paul A.M.E. Church and the National Association of Colored Women exposed her to a new way of viewing the world.

Initially, Sarah learned about hair care from her brothers, who were barbers in Saint Louis. Around the time of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition (World's Fair at St. Louis in 1904), she became a commission agent selling products for Annie Turnbo Malone, an African American hair-care entrepreneur and owner of the Poro Company. While working for Malone, who would later become Walker’s largest rival in the hair-care industry, Sarah began to adapt her knowledge of hair and hair products to develop her own product line.

In July 1905, when she was thirty-seven years old, Sarah and her daughter moved to Denver, Colorado, where she continued to sell products for Malone and develop her own hair-care business. Following her marriage to Charles Walker in 1906, she became known as Madam C. J. Walker and marketed herself as an independent hairdresser and retailer of cosmetic creams. (“Madam” was adopted from women pioneers of the French beauty industry.  Her husband, who was also her business partner, provided advice on advertising and promotion; Sarah sold her products door to door, teaching other black women how to groom and style their hair.

In 1906 Walker put her daughter in charge of the mail order operation in Denver while she and her husband traveled throughout the southern and eastern United States to expand the business. In 1908 Walker and her husband relocated to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where they opened a beauty parlor and established Lelia College to train "hair culturists." After closing the business in Denver in 1907, A'lelia ran the day-to-day operations from Pittsburgh, while Walker established a new base in Indianapolis in 1910. A'lelia also persuaded her mother to establish an office and beauty salon in New York City's Harlem neighborhood in 1913.

In 1910 Walker relocated her business to Indianapolis, where she established the headquarters for the Madame C. J. Walker Manufacturing Company. She initially purchased a house and factory at 640 North West Street. Walker later built a factory, hair salon, and beauty school to train her sales agents, and added a laboratory to help with research. She also assembled a competent staff that included Freeman Ransom, Robert Lee Brokenburr, Alice Kelly, and Marjorie Stewart Joyner, among others, to assist in managing the growing company.  Many of her company's employees, including those in key management and staff positions, were women.

In 1913, while Walker traveled to Central America and the Caribbean to expand her business, her daughter A’Lelia, moved into a fabulous new Harlem townhouse and Walker Salon, designed by black architect, Vertner Tandy. “There is nothing to equal it,” she wrote to her attorney, F.B. Ransom. “Not even on Fifth Avenue.”

Walker herself moved to New York in 1916, leaving the day-to-day operations of the Madam C. J. Walker Manufacturing Company in Indianapolis to Ransom and Alice Kelly, her factory forelady and a former school teacher. She continued to oversee the business and to work in the New York office. Once in Harlem, she quickly became involved in Harlem’s social and political life, taking special interest in the NAACP’s anti-lynching movement to which she contributed $5,000.                                                                                                                                      
In July 1917, when a white mob murdered more
than three dozen blacks in East St. Louis, Illinois, Walker joined a group of Harlem leaders who visited the White House to present a petition advocating federal anti-lynching legislation.

As her business continued to grow, Walker organized her agents into local and state clubs. Her Madam C. J. Walker Hair Culturists Union of America convention in Philadelphia in 1917 must have been one of the first national meetings of businesswomen in the country. Walker used the gathering not only to reward her agents for their business success, but to encourage their political activism as well. “This is the greatest country under the sun,” she told them. “But we must not let our love of country, our patriotic loyalty cause us to abate one whit in our protest against wrong and injustice. We should protest until the American sense of justice is so aroused that such affairs as the East St. Louis riot be forever impossible.”

Between 1911 and 1919, during the height of her career, Walker and her company employed several thousand women as sales agents for its products. By 1917 the company claimed to have trained nearly 20,000 women. Dressed in a characteristic uniform of white shirts and black skirts and carrying black satchels, they visited houses around the United States and in the Caribbean offering Walker's hair pomade and other products packaged in tin containers carrying her image. Walker understood the power of advertising and brand awareness. Heavy advertising, primarily in African American newspapers and magazines, in addition to Walker's frequent travels to promote her products, helped make Walker and her products well known in the United States. Walker became even more widely known by the 1920s as her business market expanded beyond the United States to Cuba, Jamaica, Haiti, Panama, and Costa Rica.

In addition to training in sales and grooming, Walker showed other black women how to budget, build their own businesses, and encouraged them to become financially independent. In 1917, inspired by the model of the National Association of Colored Women, Walker began organizing her sales agents into state and local clubs. The result was the establishment of the National Beauty Culturists and Benevolent Association of Madam C. J. Walker Agents (predecessor to the Madam C. J. Walker Beauty Culturists Union of America). Its first annual conference convened in Philadelphia during the summer of 1917 with 200 attendees. The conference is believed to have been among the first national gatherings of women entrepreneurs to discuss business and commerce.  During the convention Walker gave prizes to women who had sold the most products and brought in the most new sales agents. She also rewarded those who made the largest contributions to charities in their communities.

Walker contributed scholarship funds to the Tuskegee Institute. Other beneficiaries included Indianapolis's Flanner House and Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church; Mary McLeod Bethune's Daytona Education and Industrial School for Negro Girls (which later became Bethune-Cookman University) in Daytona Beach, Florida; the Palmer Memorial Institute in North Carolina; and the Haines Normal and Industrial Institute in Georgia. Walker was also a patron of the arts.

In 1917 Walker commissioned Vertner Tandy, the first licensed black architect in New York City and a founding member of Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity, to design her house in Irvington-on-Hudson, New York. Walker intended for Villa Lewaro, which cost $250,000 to build, to become a gathering place for community leaders and to inspire other African Americans to pursue their dreams. She moved into the house in May 1918.

Walker became more involved in political matters after her move to New York. She delivered lectures on political, economic, and social issues at conventions sponsored by powerful black institutions. Her friends and associates included Booker T. Washington, Mary McLeod Bethune, and W. E. B. Du Bois, among others. During World War I Walker was a leader in the Circle For Negro War Relief and advocated for the establishment of a training camp for black army officers.  In 1917 she joined the executive committee of New York chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), which organized the Silent Protest Parade on New York City's Fifth Avenue. The public demonstration drew more than 8,000 African Americans to protest a riot in East Saint Louis that killed thirty-nine African Americans.

The New York Times pronounced it “a place fit for a fairy princess.” Enrico Caruso, the world-famous opera tenor, was so entranced by its similarity to estates in his native Naples that he coined the name “Lewaro” in honor of A’Lelia Walker Robinson, Madam Walker’s only daughter.

Walker told her friend Ida B. Wells, the journalist and anti-lynching activist, that after working so hard all her life -- first as a farm laborer, then as a maid and a cook, and finally as the founder of an international hair care enterprise -- she wanted a place to relax and garden and entertain her friends.

She also wanted to make a statement, so it was no accident that she purchased four and a half acres in Irvington-on-Hudson, New York, not far from Jay Gould’s Lyndhurst and John D. Rockefeller’s Kykuit amidst America’s wealthiest families. She directed Vertner Woodson Tandy -- the architect who already had designed her opulent Harlem townhouse -- to position the 34-room mansion close to the village’s main thoroughfare so it was easily visible by travelers en route from Manhattan to Albany.

Indeed, the Times reported that her new neighbors were “puzzled” and “gasped in astonishment” when they learned that a black woman was the owner. “Impossible!” they exclaimed. “No woman of her race could afford such a place.”

The woman born in a dim Louisiana sharecropper’s cabin on the banks of the Mississippi River now awoke each morning in a sunny master suite with a view of the Hudson River and the New Jersey Palisades. The child who had crawled on dirt floors now walked on carpets of Persian silk. The destitute laundress, who had lived across the alley from the St. Louis bar where Scott Joplin composed ragtime tunes, now hosted private concerts beneath shimmering chandeliers in her gold music room.

But the home was not constructed merely for her personal pleasure. Villa Lewaro, she hoped, would inspire young African-Americans to “do big things” and to see “what can be accomplished by thrift, industry and intelligent investment of money.”

“Do not fail to mention that the Irvington home, after my death, will be left to some cause that will be beneficial to the race -- a sort of monument,” she instructed her attorney, F. B. Ransom. As the largest contributor to the fund that saved Frederick Douglass’s Anacostia home, Cedar Hill, she understood the importance of preservation as a way to claim and influence history’s narrative.

For her opening gathering in August 1918, Madam Walker honored Emmett Scott, then the Special Assistant to the U. S. Secretary of War in Charge of Negro Affairs and the highest ranking African-American in the federal government. At this “conference of interest to the race” -- with its who’s who of black Americans and progressive whites -- she encouraged discussion and debate about civil rights, lynching, racial discrimination, and the status of black soldiers then serving in France during World War I.

After a weekend of conversation, collegiality, and music provided by J. Rosamond Johnson -- co-composer of “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing” -- and Joseph Douglass, master violinist and grandson of Frederick Douglass, Scott wrote to her, “No such assemblage has ever gathered at the private home of any representative of our race, I am sure.”

After Madam Walker died at Villa Lewaro on May 25, 1919 -- barely a year after moving in -- her daughter continued the tradition of hosting events, occasionally opening the home for public tours to honor Walker’s legacy. Later dubbed the “joy goddess of Harlem’s 1920s” by poet Langston Hughes because of her impressive soirees, A’Lelia Walker feted Liberian President Charles D. B. King and his entourage in 1921 with a Fourth of July fireworks display and concert by the Ford Dabney Orchestra.

       Black History Month Feature: Madam CJ Walker - The First Female Self-Made Millionaire


       Meet the First Self-Made Female Millionaire

Dr.Daniel Hale Williams III

                                            Dr.Daniel Hale Williams III

Biography.com Editors,and James Janega

Daniel Hale Williams III was born on January 18, 1856, in Hollidaysburg, Pennsylvania, to Sarah Price Williams and Daniel Hale Williams II. The couple had several children, with the elder Daniel H. Williams inheriting a barber business. He also worked with the Equal Rights League, a black civil rights organization active during the Reconstruction era.

After the elder Williams died, a 10-year-old Daniel was sent to live in Baltimore, Maryland, with family friends. He became a shoemaker’s apprentice but disliked the work and decided to return to his family, who had moved to Illinois. Like his father, he took up barbering, but ultimately decided he wanted to pursue his education. He worked as an apprentice with Dr. Henry Palmer, a highly accomplished surgeon, and then completed further training at Chicago Medical College.

Williams set up his own practice in Chicago’s South Side and taught anatomy at his alma mater, also becoming the first African-American physician to work for the city’s street railway system. Williams—who was called Dr. Dan by patients— adopted sterilization procedures for his office informed by the recent findings on germ transmission and prevention from Louis Pasteur and Joseph Lister.

Due to the discrimination of the day, African-American citizens were still barred from being admitted to hospitals and black doctors were refused staff positions. Firmly believing this needed to change, in May 1891, Williams opened Provident Hospital and Training School for Nurses, the nation’s first hospital with a nursing and intern program that had a racially integrated staff. The facility, where Williams worked as a surgeon, was publicly championed by famed abolitionist and writer Frederick Douglass.

The first successful open-heart surgery took place on Chicago’s South Side on July 9, 1893. The patient was James Cornish, a young man with a knife wound to the chest from a barroom brawl. The surgeon, was Dr. Daniel Hale Williams.
The surgery took place in Provident Hospital, the city’s first interracial hospital, which Williams helped to found. Both patient and surgeon were African-American.

Medical textbooks of the time said that operating on a human heart was too dangerous, and there was no precedent for opening the chest, longtime Tribune science and medical reporter Ronald Kotulak wrote more than a century later.

Despite lacking X-rays, antibiotics, adequate anesthesia or other tools of modern surgery, Williams stepped in.

“With a scalpel, he cut a small hole in Cornish’s chest,” Kotulak wrote, “carefully picking his way past nerves, muscle, blood vessels and ribs until he reached the rapidly beating heart. Exploring the wound, Williams found a severed artery. He closed it with sutures, but then discerned an inch-long gash in the pericardium, the tough sac that surrounds the heart. The heart itself had only been nicked and did not need sutures. But the damaged sac had to be closed. With Cornish’s heart beating 130 times a minute beneath his nimble fingers, Williams closed the wound with catgut.”

Cornish lived, and Williams went on to acclaim. In 1894, Williams was appointed chief surgeon at the Freedmen’s Hospital in Washington D.C.,The facility had fallen into neglect and had a high mortality rate. Williams worked diligently on revitalization, improving surgical procedures, increasing specialization, launching ambulance services and continuing to provide opportunities for black medical professionals, among other feats. In 1895, he co-founded the National Medical Association, a professional organization for black medical practitioners, as an alternative to the American Medical Association, which didn’t allow African-American membership.

Williams left Freedmen’s Hospital in 1898. He married Alice Johnson, and the newlyweds moved to Chicago, where Williams returned to his work at Provident. Soon after the turn of the century, he worked at Cook County Hospital and later at St. Luke’s, a large medical institution with ample resources.

Beginning in 1899, Williams also made annual trips to Nashville, Tennessee, where he was a voluntary visiting clinical professor at Meharry Medical College for more than two decades. He became a charter member of the American College of Surgeons in 1913.

Daniel Hale Williams experienced a debilitating stroke in 1926 and died five years later, on August 4, 1931, in Idlewild, Michigan.

Today, Williams's work as a pioneering physician and advocate for an African-American presence in medicine continues to be honored by institutions worldwide.
 
                   Dr Daniel Hale Williams 300

Dr. Patricia Bath

From Wikipedia

Patricia Era Bath ,born November 4, 1942 in the Harlem neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City. She is an American ophthalmologist, inventor and academic. She has broken ground for women and African Americans in a number of areas. Prior to Bath, no woman had served on the staff of the Jules Stein Eye Institute, headed a post-graduate training program in ophthalmology, or been elected to the honorary staff of the UCLA Medical Center (an honor bestowed on her after her retirement). Before Bath, no black person had served as a resident in ophthalmology at New York University and no black woman had ever served on staff as a surgeon at the UCLA Medical Center. Bath is the first African-American woman doctor to receive a patent for a medical purpose. The holder of four patents, she also founded the company of the American Institute for the Prevention of Blindness in Washington, D.C.

Dr.Bath is the daughter of Rupert and Gladys Bath. Her father, an immigrant from Trinidad, was a newspaper columnist, a merchant seaman and the first black man to work for the New York City Subway as a motorman. Her father inspired her love for culture and encouraged Bath to explore different cultures. Her mother descended from African slaves and Cherokee Native Americans. She decided to be a homemaker while her children were young, then later became a housekeeper to help fund for her children's educations. Raised in Harlem, Bath struggled with sexism, racism, and poverty though she was encouraged academically by her parents. It was evident by Bath's teachers that she was a gifted student and pushed her to explore her strengths in school. With the help of a microscope set she was given as a young child, Bath knew she had a love for math and science. Bath attended Charles Evans Hughes High School where she excelled at such a rapid pace causing her to get a diploma in just two and a half years.

Growing up,Dr.Bath always battled with sexism, racism and poverty. It was hard for her since there were no black physicians that she knew of while she was growing up. She grew up in a predominantly black community where blacks were not accepted into many medical schools. It was also not easy for her to go to medical school since her family did not have the funds for it.

Patricia Bath applied for and won a National Science Foundation Scholarship while attending high school; this led her to a research project at Yeshiva University and Harlem Hospital Center on connection between cancer, nutrition and stress which helped her interest in science shift to medicine. The head of the researched program realized the significance to her findings during the research and published them in a scientific paper that he later presented.  In 1960, still a teenager,Patricia Bath won the "Merit Award" of Mademoiselle magazine for her contribution to the project.

Dr.Bath received her Bachelor of Arts in chemistry from Manhattan's Hunter College in 1964.  She relocated to Washington, D.C. to attend Howard University College of Medicine, from which she received her doctoral degree in 1968. During her time at Howard, she was president of the Student National Medical Association and received fellowships from the National Institutes of Health and the National Institute of Mental Health.

Dr.Bath interned at Harlem Hospital Center, subsequently serving as a fellow at Columbia University.  Bath traveled to Yugoslavia in 1967 to study children's health which caused her to become aware that the practice of eye care was uneven among racial minorities and poor populations, with much higher incidence of blindness among her black and poor patients.  She determined that, as a physician, she would help address this issue. She persuaded her professors from Columbia to operate on blind patients at Harlem Hospital Center, which had not previously offered eye surgery, at no cost.  Bath pioneered the worldwide discipline of "community ophthalmology", a volunteer-based outreach to bring necessary eye care to underserved populations.

She served her residency in ophthalmology at New York University from 1970 to 1973, the first African American to do so in her field.

After completing her education, Bath served briefly as an assistant professor at Jules Stein Eye Institute at UCLA and Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science before becoming the first woman on faculty at the Eye Institute.  In 1978, Bath co-founded the American Institute for the Prevention of Blindness, for which she served as president. In 1983, she became the head of a residency in her field at Charles R. Drew, the first woman ever to head such a department. In 1993, she retired from UCLA, which subsequently elected her the first woman on its honorary staff.

She served as a professor of Ophthalmology at Howard University's School of Medicine and as a professor of Telemedicine and Ophthalmology at St. Georges University.  She was among the co-founders of the King-Drew Medical Center ophthalmology training program.

 Dr. Patricia Bath has lectured internationally and authored over 100 papers.

Dr.Bath holds four patents in the United States. In 1981, she conceived the Laserphaco Probe, a medical device that improves on the use of lasers to remove cataracts, and "for ablating and removing cataract lenses". The device was completed in 1986 after Bath conducted research on lasers in Berlin and patented in 1988, making her the first African-American female doctor to receive a patent for a medical purpose.  The device — which quickly and nearly painlessly dissolves the cataract with a laser, irrigates and cleans the eye and permits the easy insertion of a new lens — is used internationally to treat the disease. Bath has continued to improve the device and has successfully restored vision to people who have been unable to see for decades.

Three of Dr.Bath's four patents relate to the Laserphaco Probe. In 2000, she was granted a patent for a method she devised for using ultrasound technology to treat cataracts.


    Women's History Month - Patricia Bath


    Dr. Bath Describes Laserphaco Invention at 1987 ASCRS Convention

Coretta Scott King

                                        Coretta Scott King
"As one whose husband and mother-in-law have both died the victims of murder assassination, I stand firmly and unequivocally opposed to the death penalty for those convicted of capital offenses. An evil deed is not redeemed by an evil deed of retaliation. Justice is never advanced in the taking of a human life. Morality is never upheld by legalized murder."

Coretta Scott King was more than just the wife of a legend, she was a singer, an organizer and an activist in her own right, pledging her support to nonviolence, tolerance and equality for all races, genders and classes. The widow of one of the most influential leaders in the world, Coretta Scott King provided Martin Luther King, Jr. with what he called the ‘‘love, sacrifices, and loyalty [without which] neither life nor work would bring fulfillment’’ (King, Stride 11). An activist in her own right, Coretta King made numerous contributions to the struggle for social justice and human rights throughout her life.

Coretta Scott was born on 27 April 1927, near Marion, Alabama. Her parents, Obadiah ‘‘Obie’’ Scott and Bernice McMurray Scott, were farm owners committed to ensuring that their children received the best education possible. Scott attended the private Lincoln High School in Marion, where she developed her interest in music. There she took formal vocal lessons, learned to read music, and played several instruments. By the age of 15, she had become the choir director and pianist of her church’s junior choir.  Growing up in rural Alabama, Coretta saw discrimination everywhere, from the segregated movie theaters to the school buses only white children could ride.

Like most families of the Depression Era, the Scotts struggled. Coretta, her brother and sister picked cotton to help with the finances. But her parents were resourceful. She told the Academy of Achievement, “My mother always told me that I was going to go to college, even if she didn’t have but one dress to put on.”

Coretta graduated first in her class at Lincoln High School.  Scott won a partial scholarship to Antioch College, in Yellow Springs, Ohio, the same university her sister Edythe had attended as the first African American student. While at Antioch, Scott studied voice and music education. She also became a member of the local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, as well as the Race Relations and Civil Liberties Committees. In an article, ‘‘Why I Came to College,’’ published in Opportunity in 1948, Scott wrote that college graduates, ‘‘had greater freedom of movement: they went on trips; they visited cities; they knew more about the world’’. She later credited Antioch with preparing her for her role in the civil rights movement, stating that ‘‘the college’s emphasis on service to mankind reinforced the Christian spirit of giving and sharing’’ and provided ‘‘a new self-assurance that encouraged me in competition with all people’’.

In 1951, Scott enrolled in Boston’s New England Conservatory of Music with a grant from the Jessie Smith Noyes Foundation. In early 1952, her friend Mary Powell introduced her to King, then a doctoral candidate at Boston University’s School of Theology. While initially wary of dating a Baptist minister, she was impressed by his sophistication and intellect and recalled King telling her: ‘‘You have everything I have ever wanted in a wife’’  King wooed her saying, “The four things that I look for in a wife are character, personality, intelligence and beauty. And you have them all.”

Having decided to become a concert singer, Scott was reluctant to give up her career to be a preacher’s wife, but King proposed. Six months later she accepted. When they married in 1953, the future Mrs. King asked King’s father, also a reverend, to strike the word “obey” from her vows; though taken aback, he conceded.The two were married at the Scott family home near Marion on 18 June 1953. After the wedding, they returned to Boston to complete their degrees. Coretta Scott King earned her bachelor of music degree in June 1954.

Although Coretta Scott King was focused on raising the couple’s four children
, she continued to play a critical role in many of the civil rights campaigns of the 1950s and 1960s, performing in freedom concerts that included poetry recitation, singing, and lectures related to the history of the civil rights movement. The proceeds from these concerts were donated to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

After Dr.King’s assassination on 4 April 1968, Coretta Scott King devoted much of her life to spreading her husband’s philosophy of nonviolence. Just days after his death, she led a march on behalf of sanitation workers in Memphis, Tennessee. Later that month, she stood in for her husband at an anti–Vietnam War rally in New York. In May 1968, she helped to launch the Poor People’s Campaign, and thereafter participated in numerous anti-poverty efforts.

With a deep commitment to preserving Dr.King’s legacy, almost immediately Coretta Scott King began mobilizing support for the Martin Luther King, Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change. As founding president of the King Center, she guided its construction next to Ebenezer Baptist Church, where Dr.King had served as co-pastor with his father, Martin Luther King, Sr.

During the 1980’s, Coretta Scott King reaffirmed her long-standing opposition to South African apartheid, participating in a series of sit-in protests in Washington,DC that prompted nationwide demonstrations against South African racial policies. In 1986, she traveled to South Africa and met with Winnie Mandela. She also remained active in various women’s organizations, including the National Organization for Women, the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, and United Church Women.




        Coretta Scott King Sings - There Is A Balm In Gilead

Coretta Scott King Sings There Is A Balm In Gilead at The Funeral of The Four Little Girls Church Bombing in Birmingham AL

                      King Coretta Scott MasterEdit 1

Robert Frederick Smith

From Wikipedia

Robert Frederick Smith was born December 1, 1962, he is an American investor. He is the founder, chairman and CEO of Vista Equity Partners, an investment firm with over $26 billion in assets as of September 2016. Smith was ranked by Forbes in 2016 as the 274th richest person in America, the second wealthiest African American on the list after Oprah Winfrey.  He was #688 on Forbes 2016 list of the world's billionaires, with a net worth of US$2.5 billion.

Robert F. Smith was born to two parents with PhDs, who were school teachers. He grew up in a mostly African American, middle class neighborhood in Denver, and attended a newly-integrated school.

When he was an infant, his mother carried him at the March on Washington, where the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech.

In high school, he applied for an internship at Bell Labs but was told the program was intended for college students. Smith persisted, calling every day. When a student from M.I.T. did not show up, he got the position, and that summer he developed a reliability test for semiconductors.

Smith trained as a chemical engineer at Cornell University, earning his B.S. in Chemical Engineering.  At Cornell he was a brother of Alpha Phi Alpha.

After working at Kraft General Foods, where he earned two United States and two European patents, he attended Columbia Business School. Smith graduated with honors. From 1994–2000, he joined Goldman Sachs in tech investment banking, first in New York and then in Silicon Valley. As Co-Head of Enterprise Systems and Storage, he executed and advised on over $50B in merger and acquisition activity with companies such as Apple, Microsoft, Texas Instruments, eBay and Yahoo. He was the first person at Goldman Sachs to focus solely on Tech M&A and foreign countries .

In 2000, Smith founded Vista Equity Partners, of which he is the Founder, Chairman and CEO. Vista has exclusively focused on the enterprise software, data and technology enabled solutions sectors. Among Vista’s portfolio companies are Misys, TIBCO, Solera, Active Network, Bullhorn, Omnitracs, and Newscyle.

Robert F. Smith is the Founder, Chairman and CEO of Vista Equity Partners.   As Vista’s Chairman and CEO, Mr. Smith directs Vista’s investment strategy and decisions, firm governance and investor relations.

Vista currently manages cumulative capital commitments of over $26 billion and oversees a portfolio of over 35 software companies that employ approximately 42,000 employees worldwide. Since Vista’s founding in 2000, Mr. Smith has overseen over 240 completed transactions by the firm.  During that time, Vista has managed capital for hundreds of limited partners, including many prominent public, private and corporate pension plans, endowments, family offices, and high net worth individuals.

Under Robert Smith’s leadership, Vista has exclusively focused on the enterprise software, data and technology enabled solutions sectors. Mr. Smith is a member of the investment committees of the Firm's funds and currently serves on, or participates on, the boards of many of the Vista Flagship and Foundation Funds' portfolio companies.

In January 2015, based on its performance over the last 10 years, Vista Equity Partners was named the world’s #1 performing private equity firm, according to the HEC-Dow Jones annual ranking conducted by professor Oliver Gottschalg. Preqin, a consulting firm that tracks the industry, reports that Vista’s third fund returned $2.46 for every dollar invested, better than every other big fund raised between 2006 and 2010, the boom years for private equity.

Mr. Smith’s business achievements and global philanthropic works have received recognition from numerous entities - including the Reginald F. Lewis Achievement Award, the Humanitarian of the Year Award from the Robert Toigo Foundation, the Ripple of Hope Award from the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights, the Award of Excellence from the National Association of Investment Companies, and the Columbia University BBSA Distinguished Alumni Award.

Mr. Smith is the Chairman of the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights, Member of the Cornell Engineering College Council, and a Trustee of the Boys and Girls Clubs of San Francisco. Mr. Smith is a Board Member of Carnegie Hall. He is also an avid fly fisherman.

In October 2014, Vista closed its Fund V at $5.8 billion, its largest fund to date.

In July 2015, Smith married Hope Dworaczyk, a former Playboy Playmate, model, healthy living advocate, and fashion editor.  He has five children, three from a previous marriage and two with Dworaczyk.  Their first child, Hendrix Robert Smith, was born in December 2014. Smith resides in Austin, Texas.

      Robert F Smith at Youth Symposium 2016 HD


      Robert Smith, Vista Equity Partners, at 2015 Color of Wealth Summit

Ophelia Devore

By Maureen McGavin,Bob Hufford,others:

In 1946 model and entrepreneur Ophelia Devore started Grace Del Marco, the first model agency in America to focus on ethnic talent. Devore identified and nurtured the careers of several household names, including Diahann Carroll, Richard Roundtree (Shaft), and Cicely Tyson.

Ophelia DeVore Mitchell, a model, businesswoman and pioneer in the "black is beautiful" movement, DeVore exemplified power, pride, presence and beauty in African American women. A former model and longtime business executive, she started one of the first modeling agencies for black models, which helped launch the early careers of actresses Diahann Carroll and Cicely Tyson, among other celebrities.

DeVore also opened a charm school for young black women to learn etiquette, self-presentation and confidence; launched a cosmetics company catering to African American women, and took over the Columbus Times, a daily newspaper for the African American community in Columbus, Ga..She was appointed by President Reagan to the John F. Kennedy Center Committee on the Arts in 1985 and has been involved in many community programs throughout her career.

One of the first mixed-race models in the United States, Emma Ophelia DeVore was born in Edgefield, S.C., in 1922, to parents of German, French, Native American and African American heritage. She was raised in coastal South Carolina and received training in dance, art, and music in addition to her basic education. In 1933, DeVore was sent to New York City to live with her aunt and complete her education. she graduated from Hunter College High School and earned a degree in mathematics and languages from New York University. She enrolled in the Vogue School of Modeling, and not until another black girl was rejected did she realize that the school management thought her a dark-skinned white.

Finding her opportunities limited in America, at least until "Ebony" magazine was founded in 1945, she journeyed to Europe where she received numerous assignments, especially in France, though again she sometimes 'passed' as Norwegian. Realizing that there were few avenues for her, and none at all for dark-skinned blacks

In 1946, she and four friends co-founded Grace del Marco Models; in addition to Diahann Carroll and Cicely Tyson, the agency represented such notable figures as Richard Roundtree ("Shaft"), Gail Fisher ("Mannix"); Trudy Haynes, one of the first African American female TV reporters; and Helen Williams, one of the first successful African American models. The agency sought to encourage the media to portray African Americans in non-stereotypical ways.

DeVore took on mainstream publications, advertisers and other agencies who avoided hiring African American models, and she was a tough businesswoman proud of her accomplishments. She once sued Life Magazine after it published a story in 1969 on black models for which she was interviewed; the resulting article cited white-owned agencies instead.

Over the years she hosted ABC's "Spotlight on Harlem", sponsored the first black beauty pageants, wrote columns for "The Pittsburgh Courrier" and for the National Newspaper Publisher's Association, and had her own "Ophelia DeVore Show" on cable television.

The Ophelia DeVore School of Charm, which opened in 1948, offered social training for African American young women. It provided lessons in etiquette, poise and posture, ballet, speech, and self-presentation (including grooming lessons in hair styling, applying makeup, and dressing in flattering clothes). Hip-hop artist Faith Evans, widow of the Notorious B.I.G., is one of many notable graduates.

The school, which closed in 2006, reached its peak between the 1960s and the 1990s, and at times graduated about 100 students in a class, says James D. Carter, DeVore's son, who took over the charm school for a number of years and ran other aspects of various DeVore businesses.

DeVore had five children with her first husband, Harold Carter, whom she married in 1941. She married her second husband, Columbus Times publisher Vernon Mitchell, in 1968. When he passed away in 1972, she took the newspaper's helm as its owner, with her daughter, Carol Gertjegerdes, as co-publisher and executive editor.

       Ophelia DeVore-Mitchell: A Modeling Career


        The Official Tony Brown's Journal -- Ophelia DeVore

The Real Lone Ranger

                  Deputy U.S. Marshal Bass Reeves

Over his 32-year career as a Deputy U.S. Marshal, Bass Reeves arrested 3,000 felons, killed 14 men, and was never shot himself. His reputation for persistence, his total fearlessness, his skills with a gun, and his ability to outsmart outlaws struck terror into lawbreakers in what we now call Oklahoma. Although other colorful characters made their way into our pop culture, Bass was the real badass of the Old West.

         Legends lies the real west Season 1 Episode 9 the real lone ranger bass reeves1


Bass Reeves was a former slave-turned-lawman who served with the US Marshals Service for 32 years at the turn of the 20th century in part of eastern Oklahoma and western Arkansas known as Indian Territory. Though he was illiterate, Reeves became an expert tracker and detective – a man who, in Burton’s words, “walked in the valley of death every day for 35 years and brought in some of the worst outlaws from that period”.

Bass Reeves was born a slave in Arkansas in 1838. His slavemaster, William S. Reeves, moved the household to Texas in 1846. When the Civil War broke out, William Reeves' son George was made a colonel in the Confederate army and took Bass to war with him. At the most opportune moment, Reeves escaped while George was sleeping and took off out west for Indian Territory. Accounts vary on whether Bass beat up George as he left, and whether his immediate aim was freedom or to escape punishment over a card game dispute. In any case, Reeves went to live among the Creek and Seminole Indians. He learned their customs and languages and became a proficient territorial scout. Reeves eventually procured a homestead in Van Buren, Arkansas, where he was the first black settler. He married Nellie Jennie, built an eight-room house with his bare hands, and raised ten children—five girls and five boys. Life was good, but it was about to change for Bass Reeves.

For ten years, he was just a peaceful farmer with a wife and ten children.  (Five boys and five girls.)  But in 1875, Isaac C. Parker was appointed federal judge for the Indian Territory, and he appointed, in turn, James Fagin as head U.S, Marshal.  Fagin knew Reeves by reputation -- knew he was intimate with the Indian Territory and could speak a number of Indian languages -- and Bass Reeves became the first black Deputy U.S. Marshal west of the Mississippi.

Indian Territory was where the Creek, Cherokee, Choctaw, Seminole, and Chickasaw tribes who were forcibly removed from their homes were resettled following the Indian Removal Act of 1830. But they weren't the only citizens of Indian Territory. There were also former slaves of the tribes, freed and made tribal members after the Civil War, settlers from the East (both black and white) who sharecropped tribal property, and a good measure of outlaws fleeing from civilization. Indian territory was attractive to lawbreakers because of its peculiar judiciary arrangement: The tribal courts had jurisdiction only over tribal members. Non-Indians were under the jurisdiction of federal courts, but there were few marshals to supervise a very large area.

Reeves was 38 years old at the time, 6 feet 2 inches tall, weighed 180 pounds, and rode a large horse. He cut an imposing figure as he patrolled the 75,000 square miles of Indian Territory. He quickly gained a reputation as a tough and fearless lawman who managed to bring in outlaws thought to be invincible. Reeves traveled the long circuit with a wagon, cook, and often a posse. He carried chains to secure prisoners to the wagon, as he sometimes had a dozen or more by the time he returned to Ft. Smith, where Judge Parker held court.

Reeves was so quick with a pistol he was likened to a “Methodist preacher reaching for a platter of fried chicken during Sunday dinner at the deacon’s house.” Another story had Reeves using “superhuman strength” to free a steer that had become stuck in a bog, despite failed attempts by a group of cowboys to help the animal. One book about Reeves had it that his hat and clothes were riddled with bullets, his horses killed, his gunbelt shot off his body – but “miraculously, he was never wounded”.

Reeves approached the three murderous Brunter brothers and handed them a warrant for their arrest. The three outlaws laughed and read the warrant, and in the split second they all took their eyes off Reeves, he managed to draw his gun and kill two of them, and immediately disarmed and arrested the third.

In 1889, after Reeves was assigned to Paris, Texas, he went after the Tom Story gang for their long-term horse theft operation. He waited along the route Tom Story used, and surprised him with an arrest warrant. Story panicked and drew his gun, but Reeves drew and shot him dead before Story could fire. The rest of the gang disbanded and were never heard from again.

Oklahoma became a state in 1907, and Reeves' commission as marshal ended. He was 68 years old by then, but took on another position with the Muskogee Police Department, which he kept until his health began to fail. Reeves died of Bright's disease in 1910. In his 32 years as a Deputy U.S. Marshal, Reeves had seen bullets fly through his clothing and hat, but was never injured by an outlaw. His record of 3,000 arrests dwarfs the arrest records of better known Old West lawmen such as Bat Masterson, Wyatt Earp, and Wild Bill Hickok.

                                The life story of Bass Reeves


        Bass Reeves film - Lawless


       A Deputy US Marshal Must Arrest His Own Son


       Legends and Lies The Real West s01e09 Bass Reeves - TV show


       Marshal Bass Reeves