The

Urban League
of
Essex County
Celebrates

Black
History

The Urban League of Essex County

Celebrates Black History
Willie Williams
2015

Design, Layout and unattributed Articles

by
Willie Williams
[email protected]

Urban League of Essex County Celebrates Black History

In the beginning God created the heaven

and earth. And the earth was without
form and void; and darkness was upon the
face of the deep. And the spirit of God
moved upon the face of the deep. Bible ,
Genesis 1:1-2

Urban League of Essex County Celebrates Black History

12

Whitney Moore Young Jr. (July

31, 1921 March 11, 1971) turned
the National Urban League from a
relatively passive civil
rights organization into one that aggressively fought for equitable access to socioeconomic opportunity
for the historically disenfranchised.
In 1961, at age 40, Young became
Executive Director of the National
Urban League. He was unanimously
selected by the National Urban
League's Board of Directors, sucWhitney Young Jr. ceeding Lester Granger on October
1, 1961. Within four years he expanded the organization from 38 employees to 1,600 employees; and from an annual budget of $325,000 to one of
$6,100,000. Young served as President of the Urban
League until his death in 1971. The Urban League had
traditionally been a cautious and moderate organization
with many white members. During Young's ten-year tenure at the League, he brought the organization to the forefront of the American Civil Rights Movement. He both
greatly expanded its mission and kept the support of influential white business and political leaders. As part of the
League's new mission, Young initiated programs like
"Street Academy", an alternative education system to prepare high school dropouts for college, and "New Thrust",
an effort to help local black leaders identify and solve
community problems.
Young also pushed for federal aid to cities, proposing a
domestic "Marshall Plan". This plan, which called for
$145 billion in spending over 10 years, was partially incorporated into President Lyndon B. Johnson's War on
Poverty. Young described his proposals for integration,
social programs, and affirmative action in his two
books, To Be Equal (1964) and Beyond Racism (1969).
(Source: Wikipedia)

He created you from a single being, then

made its mate of the same (kind) . . . He creates you in the wombs of your mothers
creation after creation in triple darkness.
Holy Quran 39:6 (Maulana Muhammad Ali
translation)

Urban League of Essex County Celebrates Black History

Introduction
While no writing can adequately cover the history of
Black people, the Urban League of Essex County
has the honor to present a brief compilation of our
history.

October 7, 1897 February 25,

1975)
was
a
BlackAmerican religious leader, who led
the Nation of Islam from 1934 until
his death in 1975. He introduced and
converted tens of thousands of
Black Americans to the religion of
Islam. His teachings stressed self
reliance, morality, the protection
and elevation of Black women, and
Black racial pride. While the Orthodox, Arab world of Islam condemned his teachings and methods,
He was nonetheless allowed to make
The Honorable
the Hajj to Mecca, Arabia. Among
Mr. Elijah Muhammad the masses that He taught and influenced, Mr. Muhammad taught Malcolm X, Louis Farrakhan, Muhammad Ali, and his son Warith
Deen Mohammed.

Urban League of Essex County Celebrates Black History

Elijah
Muhammad (born Elijah Robert Poole;

Fannie Lou Hamer; October 6, 1917 March 14, 1977)

was a Black American voting rights activist and civil
rights leader. She was instrumental in organizing Mississippi Freedom Summer for the Student Nonviolent
Coordinating Committee (SNCC), and later became the ViceChair of the Mississippi Freedom DeFannie Lou Hamer
mocratic Party attended the 1964
Democratic National Convention in
Atlantic City, New Jersey, in that
capacity. Her plain-spoken manner
and fervent belief in
the Biblical righteousness of her
cause gained her a reputation as an
electrifying speaker and constant
activist of civil rights. (Source:
Wikipedia)
2

11

Urban League of Essex County Celebrates Black History

was born into slavery (July 16,

1862March 25, 1931), and her
life was dedicated to ending
horrible injustices against Black
-Americans. She traveled the
country speaking and writing
about civil rights issues, unfair
laws, and crimes against blacks.
As more and more civil rights
laws were ignored by society in
the late 1800s, she became increasingly involved in politics
to stop the trend of social injustice. She was instrumental in the
fight against lynching, proving
that these acts were essentially
Ida Bell Wells-Barnett
murders of innocent black men,
women, and children, and boldly demanded that their white
murderers be held responsible for their crimes. (Source: Wikipedia)

Marcus Mosiah Garvey, Jr., (August 17, 1887June

10, 1940), was a Jamaican political
leader, publisher, journalist, entrepreneur, and great orator who was
a staunch proponent of the Black
nationalism and PanAfricanism movements, to which
end he founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association and
African Communities
League (UNIA-ACL). He started
the Black Star Line, part of
the Back-to-Africa movement,
which promoted the return of
the African diaspora to their ancestral lands. (Source: Wikipedia)
10

Marcus Garvey

Narmer was an ancient

Egyptian pharaoh of
the Early Dynastic Period (c. 31st century
B.C.). Some consider
him the unifier of Egypt
and founder of the First
Dynasty, and the first
pharaoh of unified
Egypt. The identity of
Narmer is the subject of
on going debate, although mainstream
Egyptological consensus identifies Narmer
with the First DyNarmer
nasty pharaoh Menes,
Menes is also credited with the unification of Egypt as the first
pharaoh. (Partial Source: Wikipedia)

Urban League of Essex County Celebrates Black History

Ida Bell Wells-Barnett

Imhotep was the visor (wazir) to the pharaoh Dojser of the 3d

dynasty. Imhotep oversaw construction
of Egypt's first monumental stone pyramid, at the beginning of the Third Dynasty (ca. 2650-2600 B.C.). His accomplishments in science and architecture made such an impression on
the Egyptians that Imhotep was remembered and honored in later Egyptian history. Beginning in the New
Kingdom, he was invoked as the patron of writing and wisdom, and by
the time this statue was made he had
achieved fully divine status with his
own mythology and cult. Imhotep was
also invoked for his intercession in
sickness and infertility, and he was
later equated by the Greeks with their
own god of medicine, Asklepios.

Imhotep

Urban League of Essex County Celebrates Black History

dynasty pharaoh thought to

be the builder of the astounding, great pyramid of
Giza.

Khufu
The Great Pyramid of
Ahmose I (sometimes written Amosis I, Amenes, and
Aahm es) was a pharaoh of ancient Egypt, and the
founder of the celebrated 18th
dynast y. He was of
the Theban royal house, the son
of pharaoh Seqenenre Tao and
brother of the last pharaoh of
the
17th
dynasty,
King Kamose. After the HykAhmose I
sos (Asistic whites) conquered
Lower Egypt, the Black Egyptians retreated to holy city of
Thebes. While there, Ahmose became Pharaoh and raised an
army of Blacks Egyptians and Nubians and marched north to
the delta and expelled the Hyksos from Lower Egypt thereby
restoring Theban ruleBlack ruleover the whole of Egypt
and successfully re-asserted Egyptian power in its former subject territories of Nubia and Canaan. Ahmose reigned about
1539-1514 B.C., and laid the foundation for the New Kingdom
and the glorious 18th Egyptian Dynasty under which Egyptian
power reached its peak. (Partial Source: Wikipedia)

Prince Hall (17351807) was a Black

American noted as a tireless abolitionist,
for his leadership in the free
black community in Boston, and as the
founder of Prince Hall Masonry. It is
said that Hall received the charter to
form his Masonic Lodge from George
Washington himself after the Revolutionary War. However, the Mother
Lodge of the Scottish Rite did not recognize Prince Halls Lodge because he was
Black. Hall sought a place for free and
enslaved blacks in Freemasonry, education and the military, which were some
Prince Hall
of the most crucial spheres of society in his
time. Hall is considered the founder of Black Freemasonry in
the United States, known today as Prince Hall Freemasonry.
Hall formed the African Grand Lodge of North America. He
was unanimously elected its Grand Master and served until his
death in 1807. (Partial Source: Wikipedia)

Harriet Tubman (Araminta

Harriet Ross) (1820March 10,
1913) was a Black American abolitionist, humanitarian,
and Union spy during the American
Civil War. Born into slavery, Tubman escaped and subsequently made
more than nineteen missions to rescue over 300 slaves using the network of antislavery activists and
safe houses known as the Underground Railroad. She later
helped John Brown recruit men
for his raid on Harpers Ferry, and in
the post-war era, she struggled
for women's suffrage. (Source:
Wikipedia)

Urban League of Essex County Celebrates Black History

Khufu (Cheops) 4th

Harriet Tubman

Urban League of Essex County Celebrates Black History

cated slave, was the leader

of the Haitian slave revolt
(August 1791). L'Ouverture trained his followers
in tactics of guerrilla warfare, and he, along with his
lieutenants and Black,
slave army, not only beat
the French slavemasters,
but they also out fought
and defeated the French,
Toussaint L'Ouverture
Emperor
Na poleon s
European, well-trained professional army. As such, by
1795, Toussaint was widely renowned for ending slavery
on the island. (Partial Source: Wikipedia)

Jean-Jacques
Dessalines was born around
1758 in Africa and was enslaved in the French colony
of Saint-Domingue (Haiti).
He served as a lieutenant under Toussaint L'Ouverture after the 1791 slave revolt and later repelled incoming French forces. Dessalines
renamed the colony Haiti in
1804 and declared himself
emperor. A severe, oftentimes
brutal leader, he was killed in
a mulatto revolt on October
17, 1806, in Pont Rouge, near
Port-au-Prince, Haiti.
(Source: Wikipedia)
8

Queen
Ahm o s e Nefertari,
was
born royal heiress
and became one of
Africa's most brilliant queens. After
the 25 year reign of
h e r
h u s band
Ahmose
I (Aahmes I), she
governed jointly with
Queen Ahmose-Nefertari
her son Amenhotep I,
the 2nd King of Egypt's 18th Dynasty. Nefertari had seven
children; three sons, two died young; four daughters, three died
young. The only children that lived was her son Amenhotep I;
and daughter Aahhotep II. They married each other and had a
daughter named Aahmes. Aahmes married Tuthmosis I and
had a daughter named Hatshepsut. Ahmose Nefertari is Queen
Hatshepsut's great grand mother. (Source: Wikipedia)

Urban League of Essex County Celebrates Black History

Toussaint
L'Ouverture, the son of an edu-

Queen Hatshepsut lived between 1508 and 1458 B.C.,

Jacques Dessalines

ruling Egypt for about two decades. As a part of the glorious,

Black 18th dynasty, whom defeated the Hyksos invaders, she is
renowned in history as the Female Pharoah,a Black
woman. Hatshepsut was
Hatshepsut
the daughter of Thutmose I. She studied the
art of leadership under
her father, and among
her accomplishments
are making a pilgrimage to Punt, the land of
the Gods (present day
Somalia), and keeping
the rule of Egypt from
her half-brother and
nephew Thutmose III.
5

Urban League of Essex County Celebrates Black History

Jesus son of Mary

While we have no true pictures or statues of Jesus , it
is clear that he was a Blackman! The Bible book of Revelation 1:14-15 gives his description: His head and his
hairs were white like wool, as white as snow; and his eyes
were as a flame of fire; And his feet like unto fine brass, as
if they burned in a furnace; and his voice as the sound of
many waters. This describes a Blackman! Even the Sunnah
of Prophet Muhammad says that Jesus was brown skinned
(See Sahih Al-Bukhari, Darusssalam Publishers 1997) Volume 4, page 408, hadith 3440). It must always be remembered that Prophet Jesus was the last prophet sent to the
House of Israel.
6

Hannibal

is the
Black, Carthaginian
military genius that
is still remembered
today for his astonishing feat in 218
B.C., of taking his
African army of
50,000 men, 9,000
Hannibal
horses, and 37 fighting elephants across the icy mountains of Southern
France into Northern Italy to wage war against the upstart Roman Empire for the supremacy of the Mediterranean Sea. While the Caucasian world has claimed Hannibal as their own because of the great military success,
this coin represents the true image of Hannibal notice
the elephant on the reverse side. (Source: Worlds
Great Men of Color, by J.A. Rogers)

Urban League of Essex County Celebrates Black History

Though he is regarded as
t he g re at est Eg ypt i an
pharaoh of them all,
Thutmose III, nevertheless, had to wait until
the end of Hatshepsuts
(his step-mother/aunt) rule
to reach the throne. He
ruled a united Upper and
Lower Egypt for 54 years,
from 1,483 to 1,429 B.C.,
and built a great navy that
reigned supreme in the
Mediterranean Sea. He
conquered Syria, Mesopotamia, Arabia, Armenia,
Ethiopia, and the Sudan.
Thutmose III was also a
great builder, as his const ruct i on proj ect s are
countless, and one of his
greatest works was adding
Thutmose III
on to the colossal temple
of Karnak. (There is some confusion if this bust is actually Amenhotep III, but I believe it to be Thutmose III).
(Partial Source: Wikipedia)

Prophet Muhammad
(Abu al-Qasim Muhammad, ibn Abd Allah,
ibn Abd al-Muttalib, ibn Hashim)
Prophet Muhammad was born into the important
Semitic, Arabian tribe of Quraish from the family of
Hashim on his fathers side. His grandfather Abd Muttalib was apparently a dark skin, southern Arab who fathered 10 sons, and one of them was Abdullah. Abdullah married a Semitic, Arab woman named Aminah, and
together they had Prophet Muhammad. At the age of 40
years old, Prophet Muhammad began to teach his Arab
brothers in Makkah (Mecca), Arabia, to follow the old
religion of Prophet Abraham, which they strayed from
and became idol worshippers. He stressed that there
was only One God whose proper name is Allah; the
Kabah had to be purified of all idols; and that pilgrimage had to be followed as Abraham and Ishmael taught
it. Muhammad re-named the religion of Abraham: Islam. Prophet Muhammads teachings are embodied in
the Holy Quran.