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BlackFacts Minute: February 11

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Black Facts for February 11th

2005 - Dudley, Edward Richard (1911-2005)

Edward Dudley was the first black American to lead a U.S. Mission abroad with the rank of Ambassador. Dudley was born on March 11, 1911 in South Boston, Virginia to Edward Richard and Nellie (Johnson) Dudley. After receiving his Bachelor’s degree from Johnson C. Smith College in Charlotte, North Carolina in 1932, Dudley briefly taught in a one-room Virginia school. He later moved to Washington, D.C., and enrolled in Howard University’s dentistry program. After deciding dentistry was not for him, Dudley moved to New York City, New York, eventually enrolling at St. John’s University where he earned a Bachelor of Laws (LL.B.) degree in 1941.  While at St. John’s he served on its prestigious Law Review.

After law school Dudley entered private practice and became active in local civil rights activities. In 1942 he was appointed to the New York Attorney General’s Office, where he served until he was recruited the following year by Thurgood Marshall, the Chief Legal Counsel of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) to become a Special Assistant Counsel.  Dudley served in that capacity between 1943 and 1945. While there he wrote briefs and prepared civil rights cases for trial. In 1945, Dudley became the Legal Counsel to the Governor of the U.S. Virgin Islands.  He served Governor Charles Harwood until 1946 and then served William Hastie, the first African American appointed Governor of a U.S. Territory, until 1948.

In 1948, President Harry Truman sent Dudley to Liberia as U.S. Envoy and Minister. Upon elevation of the Mission in Liberia to a full U.S. Embassy, Dudley was promoted to the rank of Ambassador in May of 1949. With that, Ambassador Dudley became the first black Ambassador in U.S. history. This also made him the highest ranking diplomat, often referred to as the Dean of the Diplomatic Corps, in Liberia’s capital, Monrovia.  

While in Liberia, Ambassador Dudley led U.S. government efforts to promote a strong commercial environment. He also continued his civil rights efforts,

1958 - Taylor, Ruth Carol (1931- )

Journalist and nurse Ruth Carol Taylor became the first African American airline flight attendant in the United States when she joined Mohawk Airlines in 1958. While she is most commonly known for her achievement in the airline industry, she spent much of her career as an activist for minority and women’s rights.

Taylor was born in Boston, Massachusetts on December 27, 1931 to Ruth Irene Powell Taylor, a nurse, and William Edison Taylor, a barber. When Ruth was young, her family moved to a farm in upstate New York. She attended Elmira College in New York and in 1955 graduated from the Bellevue School of Nursing in New York City as a registered nurse. After working for several years as a nurse, Taylor decided to break the color barrier that existed in the career of airline stewardesses.

Now called flight attendants, stewardesses at the time were hired primarily based on physical attractiveness and height/weight conformity. Wishing to be the first African American stewardess, Taylor applied to Trans World Airline (TWA) but was rejected and subsequently filed a complaint against the company with the New York State Commission on Discrimination. About the same time, the regional carrier Mohawk Airlines expressed interest in hiring minority flight attendants, and Taylor applied for a position. She was selected from 800 black applicants and was hired in December 1957. On February 11, 1958, she became the first African American flight attendant on a flight from Ithaca to New York City. Three months later, Margaret Grant was hired amid pressure by TWA as the first African American flight attendant for a major airline carrier.

In a 1997 Jet interview, Taylor admitted that she had no long-term career aspirations as a flight attendant but merely wanted to break the color barrier. Six months after making aviation history, Taylor married Rex Legall and was forced to resign from Mohawk due to restrictions that flight attendants remain single. The couple lived in the British West Indies and then London, UK but divorced

1990 - Nelson Mandela is released

Nelson Mandelas greatest pleasure, his most private moment, is watching the sun set with the music of Handel or Tchaikovsky playing.

Locked up in his cell during daylight hours, deprived of music, both these simple pleasures were denied him for decades. With his fellow prisoners, concerts were organised when possible, particularly at Christmas time, where they would sing. Nelson Mandela finds music very uplifting, and takes a keen interest not only in European classical music but also in African choral music and the many talents in South African music. But one voice stands out above all - that of Paul Robeson, whom he describes as our hero.

The years in jail reinforced habits that were already entrenched: the disciplined eating regime of an athlete began in the 1940s, as did the early morning exercise. Still today Nelson Mandela is up by 4.30am, irrespective of how late he has worked the previous evening. By 5am he has begun his exercise routine that lasts at least an hour. Breakfast is by 6.30, when the days newspapers are read. The day s work has begun.

With a standard working day of at least 12 hours, time management is critical and Nelson Mandela is extremely impatient with unpunctuality, regarding it as insulting to those you are dealing with.

When speaking of the extensive travelling he has undertaken since his release from prison, Nelson Mandela says: I was helped when preparing for my release by the biography of Pandit Nehru, who wrote of what happens when you leave jail. My daughter Zinzi says that she grew up without a father, who, when he returned, became a father of the nation. This has placed a great responsibility of my shoulders. And wherever I travel, I immediately begin to miss the familiar - the mine dumps, the colour and smell that is uniquely South African, and, above all, the people. I do not like to be away for any length of time. For me, there is no place like home.

Mandela accepted the Nobel Peace Prize as an accolade to all people who have worked for peace and stood against

1958 - Bell Smith, Leopoldine Emma Doualla (1939– )

Leopoldine Emma Doualla-Bell Smith is the world’s first black flight attendant. Smith was born in Cameroon which, at the time, France controlled. Smith was a princess of the royal Douala family of Cameroon. She was offered a rare after-school employment opportunity in her hometown of Douala, then the capital of the colony, to serve as a ground hostess for Union Aeromaritime de Transport (UAT), the airline that served France’s African routes.

After her graduation from high school in 1956 at the age of seventeen, Smith was sent to Paris for additional ground hostess training by Air France and then moved to UAT for flight training. In 1957 Smith began flying as a stewardess with UAT which would later merge to become part of Union de Transports Aeriens (UTA). Smith, at the time, didn’t know that she was making history as the first black person to serve as a flight attendant for any airline. She took to the air the year prior to Ruth Carol Taylor who is credited with being the first black flight attendant in the United States. Taylor’s initial flight took place on February 11, 1958, on a Mohawk Airlines flight from Ithaca, New York, to New York City. 

In 1960 Smith was invited to join Air Afrique, the airline created to serve eleven newly independent French-speaking nations that were former colonies of France. Smith was the only qualified African in a French aviation; her employment identification card was No. 001. She was eventually promoted to an Air Afrique first cabin chief. During her time as a flight attendant, Smith flew throughout Africa and as far away as Australia. Because of the color of her skin, some white passengers treated her like an outcast, but dark-skinned passengers often welcomed her presence. Smith experienced frequent sexual harassment; on one occasion, she slapped a white man who had touched her breast.

In 1969 after twelve years as a flight attendant, Smith left Air Afrique to become manager of Reunited Transport Leaders Travel Agency in Libreville, Gabon. Six years later, she relocated

1989 - Penn's 1996 Baccalaureate Speaker is The Right Reverend Barbara Clementine Harri

Penns 1996 Baccalaureate Speaker is The Right Reverend Barbara Clementine Harris, a Philadelphian who was the first woman ever to become a bishop in the Anglican Communion. Bishop Harris entered the priesthood after a long and successful career in public and community relations in Philadelphia between 1949 and 1977. On graduation from the Charles Morris Price School she joined Joseph V. Baker Associates Inc and rose to president. She also held senior posts with the Sun Company from 1968 until 1977, when she began her theological studies at Villanova University. Studying later at the Urban Theology Unit in Sheffield, England, she then graduated from the Pennsylvania Foundation for Pastoral Counseling, and was ordained a deacon in 1979 and a priest in 1980. Before she was consecrated a bishop in 1989, she had been Priest-in-Charge of St. Augustine of Hippo in Norristown, serving also as as a prison chaplain and as counsel to industrial corporations for public policy issues and social concerns. Named executive director of the Episcopal Church Publishing Company in 1984, she was also publisher of The Witness, and she held the additional post of interim rector of Philadelphias Church of the Advocate in 1988. Bishop Harris is a member of the Union of Black Episcopalians, and among other activities she represents the national Episcopal Church on the board of the Prisoner Visitation and Support Committee, and is vice president of Episcopal City Mission of the Diocese of Massachusetts.