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Black History, London (2026)

16/12/2019

On December 16, 1945, the Fontana, California, home of the Short family erupted in flames, killing Helen Short and her two children, Barry, 9, and Carol Ann, 7.
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Husband and father O'Day H. Short survived the explosion but stayed in critical condition at a nearby hospital for several weeks until he also succumbed to his injuries. Until their deaths, the Shorts were the first and only black family living in their neighborhood.
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Initially organized as a collection of chicken farms and citrus groves in the early 20th century, by the early 1940s, the opening of a wartime steel mill had transformed the small San Bernardino County town of Fontana into an industrial center.
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As the community grew and became more diverse, strict segregation lines emerged: black families moving out of the overcrowded Los Angeles area were relegated to living in the rocky plains of “North Fontana” and working in the dirtiest departments of the mill.
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Ku Klux Klan activity also surged throughout Southern California during this time period, with white supremacists poised to terrorize black and Chicano veterans of WWII returning with ideas of racial equality.
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This was reality in the fall of 1945, when O’day Short—a Mississippi native and Los Angeles civil rights activist—purchased a tract of Fontana land in the white section of town and made arrangements to move there with his family.
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As the Shorts built their modest home and prepared to live in it full time, local forces of all kinds tried to stop them.
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In early December 1945, “vigilantes” visited Short and ordered him to move or risk harm to his family; he refused and reported the threats to the FBI and local sheriff.
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Sheriff’s deputies did not offer protection and instead reiterated the warning that Short should leave before his family was harmed.
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Shortly after, members of the Fontana Chamber of Commerce visited the home, encouraging Mr. Short to move to the North Fontana area, and offering to buy his home. He refused.
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Just days later, an explosion “of unusual intensity” destroyed the home, killing Short’s wife and children.
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[caption continued in comments section below]

13/12/2019

Ella Baker, speaking at the Jeannette Rankin news conference, January 3, 1968. Ruby Dee at right. (📸: Jack Harris/AP Images)
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Ella Josephine Baker was an African-American civil rights and human rights activist in the United States.
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Born in Norfolk, Virginia on December 13, 1903, Baker was a largely behind-the-scenes organizer whose career spanned more than five decades; and is known for her critiques not only of racism within American culture, but also of sexism within the civil rights movement.
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Baker criticized professionalized, charismatic leadership; she promoted grassroots organizing, radical democracy, and the ability of the oppressed to understand their worlds and advocate for themselves.
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In 1957, she met with a group of southern black ministers and helped form the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) to coordinate reform efforts throughout the south.
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Martin Luther King, Jr., served as the SCLC’s first president and Ella Baker as its director.
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She left the SCLC in 1960 to help student leaders of college activist groups organize the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC).
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With her guidance and encouragement, SNCC became one of the foremost advocates for human rights in the country.
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Her influence was reflected in the nickname she acquired: “Fundi,” a Swahili word meaning a person who teaches a craft to the next generation.
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In New York City and the south, she worked alongside some of the most noted civil rights leaders of the 20th century, including W. E. B. Du Bois, Thurgood Marshall, A. Philip Randolph, and Martin Luther King Jr.
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She also mentored many emerging activists, such as Diane Nash, Stokely Carmichael, Rosa Parks, and Bob Moses, whom she first mentored as leaders in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC).
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11/12/2019

On December 11, 1906, Birago Diop, Senegalese poet and recorder of traditional folktales and legends of the Wolof people was born.
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Diop received his education in Dakar and Saint-Louis, Senegal, and then studied veterinary medicine at the University of Toulouse until 1933.
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This was followed by a series of tours as government veterinary surgeon in the French Sudan (now Mali), Côte d’Ivoire, Upper Volta (now Burkina Faso), and Mauritania.
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From 1961 to 1965 he served as newly independent Senegal’s ambassador to Tunisia.
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He is known for his small but beautifully composed output of lyric poetry. With his compatriot Léopold Sédar Senghor, Diop was active in the Negritude movement in the 1930s, which sought a return to African cultural values.
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Diop explored the mystique of African life in Leurres et lueurs (“Lures and Glimmerings”), a selection of his verse written between 1925 and 1960.
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Diop received literary awards in 1964 for Les Contes d’Amadou Koumba (1947; Tales of Amadou Koumba) and Les Nouveaux Contes d’Amadou Koumba (1958), both reprinted in the 1960s, and for Contes et lavanes (1963; Tales and Commentaries).
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These books contained tales that were first told him by his family’s griot (a storyteller whose role is to preserve the oral traditions of his tribe).
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Diop’s skill in rendering the nuances of dialogue and gesture furthered the popularity of his books, selections from which were reprinted in a school-text edition in 1967.
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Les Contes d’Awa (“Tales of Awa”) appeared in 1978. His autobiography, La Plume raboutée (The Spliced Pen), was also published in 1978.

09/12/2019

Julius Kambarage Nyerere was a Tanzanian anti-colonial activist, politician, and political theorist.
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He governed Tanganyika as Prime Minister from 1961 to 1962 and then as President from 1963 to 1964, after which he led its successor state, Tanzania, as President from 1964 to 1985.
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Ideologically an African nationalist and African socialist, he promoted a political philosophy known as Ujamaa.
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He trained as a teacher at Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda.
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On gaining his certificate, he taught for three years and then went on a government scholarship to study history and political economy for his Master of Arts at the University of Edinburgh (he was the first Tanzanian to study at a British university and only the second to gain a university degree outside Africa.)
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In Edinburgh, partly through his encounter with Fabian thinking, Nyerere began to develop his particular vision of connecting socialism with African communal living.
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On his return to Tanganyika, Nyerere was forced by the colonial authorities to make a choice between his political activities and his teaching.
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He was reported as saying that he was a schoolmaster by choice and a politician by accident.
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Working to bring a number of different nationalist factions into one grouping he achieved this in 1954 with the formation of TANU (the Tanganyika African National Union).
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He became President of the Union (a post he held until 1977), entered the Legislative Council in 1958 and became chief minister in 1960.
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A year later Tanganyika was granted internal self-government and Nyerere became premier.
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British rule ended on December 9, 1961, with Julius Nyerere becoming the first prime minister.
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Nyerere’s integrity, ability as a political orator and organizer, and readiness to work with different groupings was a significant factor in independence being achieved without bloodshed.
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In 1964, following a coup in Zanzibar (and an attempted coup in Tanganyika itself) Nyerere negotiated with the new leaders in Zanzibar and agreed to absorb them into the union government.
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The result was the creation of the Republic of Tanzania.

05/12/2019

Charity Adams Earley was the first African-American woman to be an officer in the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps (later WACS) and was the commanding officer of the first battalion of African-American women to serve overseas during World War II.
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Adams enlisted in the U.S. Army's Women's Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC) in July 1942. She was the first African-American woman to be an officer in the WAAC.
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At the time, the U.S. Army was still segregated, so she was placed in a company with fellow female African-American women officers and stationed at Fort Des Moines.
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In 1943, she was assigned to be the training supervisor at base headquarters.
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In early 1944, Adams was reassigned as the Training Center control officer in charge of improving efficiency and job training.
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She also had other responsibilities, such as surveying officer (finding lost property) and summary court officer (handling women's minor offenses).
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In December 1944, Adams led the only company of black WACs ever to serve overseas. They were stationed in Birmingham, England.
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The women began to socialize with the citizens and broke through prejudices on both sides. Adams was put in charge of a postal directory service unit.
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Another part of her job included raising the morale of women. Adams achieved this by creating beauty parlors for the women to relax and socialize in.
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In March 1945, she was appointed the commanding officer of the first battalion of African-American women, the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion.
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They were stationed first in Birmingham. Three months later, they were moved to Rouen, France, then to Paris.
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They were responsible for the delivery of mail to over seven million soldiers during World War II.
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By the completion of the war, Lieutenant Colonel Adams was the highest ranking African-American woman in the military.
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At the conclusion of the war, when asked about her ground breaking achievements, Adams responded simply, "I just wanted to do my job".
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She decided to leave the service in 1946 when she was called to serve at the Pentagon.

05/12/2019

Sarah E. Gorham was the first woman to be sent out as a missionary from the African Methodist Episcopal Church.
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Born on December 5, 1832, Her life is not documented until 1880, when she visited family members who had moved to Liberia, presumably via the American Colonization Society.
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While there, she became interested in the people of the area and the programs of the missionaries. She has been described as a "missionary, church leaders, social worker".
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After this visit, she returned to the United States and was involved at the Charles Street African Methodist Episcopal Church.
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In 1888, at the age of 56, she went to the Magbelle mission in Sierra Leone (about 75 miles from Freetown), as the AME's first woman foreign missionary.
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At Magbelle she established the Sarah Gorham Mission School, which gave both religious and industrial training.
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In July 1894 she was bedridden with malaria and died the next month. She was buried in the Kissy Road Cemetery in Freetown, Sierra Leone.

04/12/2019

Chicago police remove the body of Fred Hampton, leader of the Illinois Black Panther Party, who was slain by police on Chicago’s West Side on December 4, 1969.
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Fifty years ago today on December 4, 1969, Fred Hampton, the rising star of the Black Panther Party, was killed in a police raid at his West Side apartment in Chicago, which immortalized him as a hero of the civil rights movement.
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Hampton had quickly risen in the Black Panther Party, and his talent as a political organizer was described as remarkable.
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In 1968, he was on the verge of creating a merger between the BPP and a south side street gang with thousands of members, which would have doubled the size of the national BPP.
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This alliance would have extended the Black Panther Party influence with white (including ethnic Italian), and Latino organizers, a step which Hoover viewed as an untenable threat. He ordered an intensified FBI crackdown to the level of "any means necessary" to destroy the BPP.
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The FBI, determined to prevent any enhancement of the BPP leadership's effectiveness, decided to set up an arms raid on Hampton's Chicago apartment.
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Informant William O'Neal provided them with detailed information about Hampton's apartment, including the layout of furniture and the bed in which Hampton and his fiancée slept.
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On the evening of December 3, Hampton taught a political education course at a local church, which was attended by most members. Afterward, as was typical, several Panthers went to his apartment to spend the night.
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There they were met by O'Neal, who had prepared a late dinner, which the group ate around midnight. O'Neal had slipped the barbiturate sleep agent secobarbitol into a drink that Hampton consumed during the dinner, in order to sedate Hampton so he would not awaken during the subsequent raid.
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The raid was organized by the office of Cook County State's Attorney Edward Hanrahan, using officers attached to his office.
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Hanrahan had recently been strongly criticized by Hampton, who said that Hanrahan's talk about a "war on gangs" was really rhetoric used to enable him to carry out a "war on black youth".
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[caption continued in comments section below]

03/12/2019

The five finalists in the Miss World 1970 contest at the Royal Albert Hall—the winner, Jennifer Hosten (Miss Grenada), surrounded by (l-r) Miss Israel, Miss South Africa, Miss Africa South and Miss Sweden.
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On December 3, 1970, amidst global racism and tensions between the black and white communities all over the world, Jennifer Hosten, a 22 year old representative for Grenada at the 1970 Miss World pageant made history when she won the coveted crown.
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She became the first black woman to be named Miss World overcoming challenges the show had experienced then.
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The 1970 Miss World ceremony is marked as one of the most controversial in the history of the pageant since it began in July 1951.
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Prior to the event, there had been a lot of debates about the number of black women in the pageant as well as the fact that South Africa had sent two delegates for the pageant: a white Miss South Africa and a black Miss South Africa.
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Even greater controversy then followed after the result was announced. Jennifer Hosten won, becoming the first black woman to win Miss World, and the black contestant from South Africa was placed second.
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The BBC and newspapers received numerous protests about the result and accusations of racism were made by all sides.
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Four of the nine judges had given first-place votes to Miss Sweden, while Miss Grenada received only two firsts while receiving the most overall points. Miss Sweden, who was favored to win, finished fourth.
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Furthermore, the Prime Minister of Grenada, Sir Eric Gairy, was on the judging panel. Although there were judges from several other countries which also took part in the contest, there were many accusations that the contest had been rigged. Some of the audience gathered in the street outside Royal Albert Hall after the contest and chanted "Swe-den, Swe-den".
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Four days later the organizing director, Julia Morley, resigned because of the intense pressure from the newspapers. Years later Miss Sweden, Marjorie Christel Johansson, was reported as saying that she had been cheated out of the title.
@ London, United Kingdom

27/11/2019

Mary Alexander, Daisy E. Lampkin, Dorothy Height, and Mary White, gathered for Pittsburgh Council of Negro Women event at Warren Methodist Church, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 1958.
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On November 27, 1957, Dorothy Height was elected president of the National Council of Negro Women (NCNW).
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In 1957 she became the fourth president of the NCNW, which she steered through the civil rights struggles of the 1960s by organizing voter registration in the south, voter education in the north, and scholarship programs for student civil rights workers.
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When founder Mary McLeod Bethune stepped down from the presidency of the NCNW, in November 1949 at the age of 74, her two successors, Dorothy B. Ferebee, who presided from 1949 to 1953, and Vivian C. Mason who presided from 1953 to 1957, carried on the tradition of “black first”.
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After 1958, under Dorothy Height’s leadership, the NCNW began to move in new directions to come to terms with a number of old problems, and she works to bring the organization up to date with the times.
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In her first years as president, Height concentrated on achieving concrete goals: the acquisition of tax-exempt status; the er****on of the Bethune Memorial Statue; the professionalization of the NCNW; and the establishment of Mary McLeod Bethune Memorial Museum and National Archives for Black Women's History.
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One of Heights main concerns was with the problems many black people faced as a result of their poverty. So, she began a campaign in Mississippi that would make better food and shelter available for those at a disadvantage by partnering with the federal government to support black women with getting houses built for their families.
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The main project of this campaign was to establish a "pig bank" which would lend pigs to black families and charge interest equal to one pig per family. By 1957 the original "pig banks," of what was 55 had grown to over 2,000 pigs.
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Thus, the NCNW aided many poor families in the rural south by helping them to make many practical improvements in their daily lives. This program helped many families out of poverty giving them free meals to live off of.
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In the 1970s she helped the NCNW win grants to pr

26/11/2019

Slave Quarters, William Johnson farm, Tyler County, West Virginia. circa 1900. In 1840, he sent his former slaves to Liberia.
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On November 26, 1861, a section of the state of Virginia began proceedings to separate and create the new state of West Virginia.
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The new state was formed from a region of Virginia that strongly opposed the State’s decision to secede from the Union and to join the Confederacy in the Civil War. That disagreement was largely related to the institution of slavery.
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As the Northern and Southern regions of the country represented a growing divide between abolition and slavery throughout the first decades of the 19th century, so did the Western and Eastern regions of Virginia.
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Settlers of western Virginia generally did not own enslaved people, while eastern Virginia planters held many enslaved people and much of the power in the Virginia legislature (due to the larger populations in their region, fueled in part by the enslaved people).
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When voters of eastern Virginia voted to join the Confederacy on April 17, 1861, a group of western delegates led by John S. Carlile walked out and swore to form a government that would remain loyal to the Union.
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Over the next few months, delegates held an alternative convention and voted to form the new state of West Virginia.
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At the Constitutional Convention that began on November 26, 1861 and lasted until February 1862, delegates considered key decisions such as which Virginia counties would be included in their new state.
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Slavery was the most contentious topic of discussion for drafters of the West Virginia constitution; some residents of the new state were slave owners, but the Union would not permit West Virginia to be admitted as a state if it permitted slavery.
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One delegate, Methodist minister Gordon Battelle, proposed gradual emancipation for currently enslaved black people in the new West Virginia state boundaries and freedom for any enslaved child born after July 5, 1865.
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‪[caption continued in comments section below]‬

25/11/2019

Ike and Tina Turner photographed by Jack Robinson in New York, November 1969.

23/11/2019

King said in an interview that this photograph was taken as he tried to explain to his daughter Yolanda why she could not go to Funtown, a whites-only amusement park in Atlanta, Georgia.
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King claims to have been tongue-tied when speaking to her.
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“One of the most painful experiences I have ever faced was to see her tears when I told her Funtown was closed to colored children, for I realized the first dark cloud of inferiority had floated into her little mental sky.”

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