Marion Motley
Credit: © Bettmann/Getty Images

February is Black History Month, an annual observance of the achievements and culture of Black Americans. This month, Behind the Headlines will feature Black pioneers in a variety of areas. 

Today, many Black football players are in the National Football League (NFL). But, this was not always the case. Black players had played in the early history of professional football, but all had been forced out by 1934. This changed in 1946, when the Cleveland Browns teammates Marion Motley (1920-1999) and Bill Willis (1921-2007) became two of a handful of players who permanently broke football’s color barrier, opening professional football to Black players.

Marion Motley was born June 5, 1920, near Albany, Georgia. He grew up in Canton, Ohio, where he attended Canton McKinley High School. Motley attended South Carolina State College, a historically Black college, in 1939. He then played for the University of Nevada, Reno, from 1940 to 1942. In Reno, Motley played fullback on offense, linebacker on defense, and kick returner. According to local accounts, he was also a skilled kicker and passer.

Motley joined the U.S. Navy in 1944 and was stationed at Naval Station Great Lakes near Chicago, Illinois. There, he played football under head coach Paul Brown.

In 1946, the Cleveland Browns began play as part of the All-America Football Conference (AAFC), a rival to the NFL. Paul Brown, Motley’s coach at Great Lakes, was named head coach and general manager. Brown recruited Motley to the new team. Motley anchored the powerful offense alongside quarterback Otto Graham. The Browns dominated the AAFC, winning championships all four years of the league’s existence.

Motley played fullback during his professional career. He was agile enough to dodge defenders, but he was also strong enough to break tackles. He did not shy away from hits and often ran defenders over.

In 1950, the Browns and two other teams from the AAFC joined the NFL. That year, Motley led the NFL with 810 rushing yards and was named to the Pro-Bowl team. The Browns went on to win the 1950 NFL championship game.

Motley was plagued by injuries in his later career, likely the result of his aggressive style of play. Motley left the Browns before the 1954 season and was later traded to the NFL Pittsburgh Steelers. He appeared with the Steelers in a few games in 1955 before retiring. He was elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1968. Motley died on June 27, 1999, in Cleveland.

Bill Willis
Credit: © Bettmann/Getty Images

William Karnet Willis was born on Oct. 5, 1921, in Columbus, Ohio. He attended East High School. He then enrolled at Ohio State University, where he played under head coach Paul Brown. The Buckeyes won their first national championship in 1942. Willis was named to the All-American team in 1943 and 1944, his senior year.

In 1946, when the Cleveland Browns began play as part of the AAFC, Willis’s college coach Paul Brown recruited Willis to the new team. With Willis anchoring the defense, the Browns won all four AAFC championships.

Willis played middle guard, a position similar to middle linebacker in modern defensive play. He chose to play this position despite being relatively small for a defensive player, at 6 feet 2 inches (1.9 meters) and 213 pounds (96 kilograms). Despite his size, he became one of the most feared defensive players due to his exceptional quickness and strong tackling ability.

When the Browns and two other teams from the AAFC joined the NFL in 1950, Willis’s speed saved the Brown’s season during a playoff game against the New York Giants. On a play in which the Giants running back had broken away from the defense and was heading for the end zone, Willis chased him down and tackled him at the 4 yard-line. The play preserved Cleveland’s victory, and the Browns went on to win the 1950 NFL championship game.

Willis was named to three NFL Pro-Bowl teams. He retired after the 1953 season and was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1977. Willis died Nov. 27, 2007, in Columbus.

Ibram X. Kendi
Credit: © Stephen Voss

February is Black History Month, an annual observance of the achievements and culture of Black Americans. This month, Behind the Headlines will feature Black pioneers in a variety of areas.

You have probably heard of racism—and many of you have even experienced it—but have you heard of antiracism? A central idea of antiracism is that it is not enough for people to simply avoid racism. Rather, people must actively look for and work to eradicate racism in their own beliefs and in society’s institutions. Ibram X. Kendi (1982-…), an American author, historian, and activist, is a major advocate for antiracism. Kendi is known for his groundbreaking work as a scholar of race studies and Black history. His writings explore the idea of antiracism and the history of racism in America.

Ibram Henry Rogers was born in New York City on Aug. 13, 1982. He staged his first antiracist protest as a child in the third grade. He noticed that his teacher called on white students while ignoring non-white students. He witnessed her treating Black students disrespectfully. He protested his teacher’s racist behavior by refusing to return to class.

In 2004, he received a bachelor’s degree in journalism and African American studies from Florida A&M University. He received a Ph.D. degree in African American studies from Temple University in 2010. He married the American physician Sadiqa Edmonds in 2013. That year, the couple changed their last name to Kendi, and Ibram changed his middle name to Xolani. Kendi is a humanities professor at Boston University. He is also the founding director of the university’s Center for Antiracist Research.

Kendi has written several books focusing on racism, antiracism, and the Black American experience. His first book, The Black Campus Movement: Black Students and the Racial Reconstitution of Higher Education, 1965-1972, was published in 2012. In 2016, Kendi became the youngest person ever to receive the National Book Award for nonfiction for his book Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America (2016). He went on to write the popular How to Be an Antiracist (2019) and Antiracist Baby (2020), a children’s picture book.

Kendi also wrote the introduction for an adaption of the book Stamped for middle school and teen readers written by Jason Reynolds (1983-…), a popular American author of books for young people. The adaptation is called Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You (2020). Reynolds writes novels and poetry for young adult and middle-grade readers. His works explore a variety of topics from a young person’s perspective. Such topics include the Black experience. They also include such issues as gun and gang violence.

Jason Reynolds
Credit: © Gary Gershoff, Getty Images

Reynolds became interested in poetry at a young age. An interest in rap music inspired him to explore literature. He advocates using rap and comic books as nontraditional ways to reach young readers. Reynolds’s first book, When I Was the Greatest, was published in 2014. It tells the story of three Black teenage boys growing up in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn, in New York City. Reynolds often chooses Black teenagers—particularly teenage boys—as his subjects. He portrays the uncertainty or fear many of the boys feel, to encourage young male readers to express their own emotions.

Wally Amos, cookie entrepreneur
Credit: © David L Ryan, The Boston Globe/Getty Images

February is Black History Month, an annual observance of the achievements and culture of Black Americans. This month, Behind the Headlines will feature Black pioneers in a variety of areas.

No matter where you eat a bag of Famous Amos chocolate chip cookies, you are home. Well, it might not be your home. But in a way, it is the home of a woman named Aunt Della. She is the woman who inspired the American businessman and cookie entrepreneur Wally Amos to found the Famous Amos cookie company in the 1970’s. Amos worked as a talent agent before founding the company. After selling Famous Amos, he went on to found other cookie companies, write books, and eventually return as the spokesperson for his original brand.

Wallace Amos, Jr., was born on July 1, 1936, in Tallahassee, Florida. It was after his parents separated that he moved to New York City to live with his Aunt Della. She often baked chocolate chip and pecan cookies. Amos studied the culinary (cooking) arts for two years at the Food and Maritime Trades Vocational High School in New York City. He served four years in the United States Air Force. In 1957, Amos returned to New York. He worked at the department store Saks Fifth Avenue before getting a job in the mail room at the William Morris Agency, a talent agency.

Amos worked his way up at the William Morris Agency. In 1962, he became the company’s first Black talent agent. Amos signed the singing duo Simon and Garfunkel. He eventually became the head of the agency’s rock music department. There, he worked with such famous Black singers as Sam Cooke, Marvin Gaye, and Diana Ross.

In 1967, Amos moved to Los Angeles, California, to open his own management company. Without much business, he began baking chocolate chip cookies. He set out to open a cookie store using a version of his Aunt Della’s recipe. Amos got a loan from Gaye and the singer Helen Reddy. He staged a large advertising campaign and grand opening gala to launch his cookie business. In 1975, he opened the first Famous Amos cookie store in Los Angeles. Soon after, he opened two more stores on the West Coast and one in the Bloomingdale’s department store in New York City.

In 1985, Amos began selling off parts of Famous Amos. In 1988, an investment group purchased the company and repositioned the cookie as a lower-priced snack food. In 1991, Amos launched the Wally Amos Presents Chip & Cookie company. He was sued by the owners of Famous Amos for infringing on the brand and forbidden to use his own likeness to sell food products. In 1998, the Keebler Company purchased Famous Amos. Amos returned to the brand as a spokesperson.

In 1993, Amos and the distributor Lou Avignone launched the Uncle Noname Cookie Company. In 1999, it became Uncle Wally’s Muffin Company. In 2005, Amos started Chip & Cookie. In 2016, another Amos business, the Hawaii-based Cookie Kahuna, was featured on the television investment show “Shark Tank.”

Amos wrote many books, including the memoir The Famous Amos Story: The Face That Launched a Thousand Chips (1983, with Leroy Robinson). His other works include two inspirational books written with Stu Glauberman, Watermelon Magic: Seeds of Wisdom, Slices of Life (1996) and Watermelon Credo: The Book (2010).

Wally Amos was far from the first Black inventor to be obsessed with food. George Washington Carver (1864?-1943) won international fame for his agricultural research. He was especially noted for his work with peanuts. Carver made more than 300 products from peanuts, including a milk substitute, face powder, printer’s ink, and soap. He also created more than 75 products from pecans and more than 100 products from sweet potatoes, including flour, shoe polish, and candy.

February 26, 2020

In the waning days of February, Black History Month in the United States, today World Book looks back at the career of the African American mathematician and computer programmer Dorothy Vaughan. Vaughan was the first African American to hold a managerial position for the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), the agency that preceded the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). Vaughan’s work at NACA and NASA helped break down gender and racial barriers in the sciences. In 2016, her story was among those told in the Hollywood feature film Hidden Figures.

Dorothy Vaughan helped pave the way for women and African Americans to excel in mathematics and science careers. Credit:NASA

Vaughan was born Dorothy Johnson on Sept. 20, 1910, in Kansas City, Missouri. In 1929, she earned a bachelor’s degree in mathematics from Wilberforce University in Ohio. In 1931, Johnson was hired as a mathematics teacher at Robert Russa Moton High School in Farmville, Virginia. There, she met Howard Vaughan, a hotel bellhop. Johnson and Vaughan were married in 1932.

On Dec. 7, 1941, Japan attacked the American military base at Pearl Harbor, bringing the United States into World War II (1939-1945). Millions of American men left the workforce to fight in the war, and many jobs were left vacant. In an effort to fill these vacancies, NACA’s Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory began hiring women for positions that had previously been available only to men. Vaughan was hired in 1943. She was assigned to a racially segregated, all-black unit of women mathematicians called West Area Computing. In 1949, Vaughan was promoted to section head, making her NACA’s first black supervisor, and one of the agency’s few female supervisors. Under Vaughan’s supervision, the West Area Computing unit mathematically analyzed the aerodynamic properties of aircraft.

February is African American History Month in the United States. Credit: © African American History Month

When NACA transitioned to NASA in 1958, segregated facilities were outlawed. This marked the end of West Area Computing, and Vaughan was transferred to the new Analysis and Computation Division. There, she became an expert in FORTRAN (Formula Translation), an early high-level computer language. A high-level language is a computer programming language that allows the user to write programs that are independent of the computer’s hardware. As a FORTRAN programmer, Vaughan had an important role in the development of space vehicles. She also contributed to the Scout Launch Vehicle Program, which launched over 100 satellites and probes into outer space.

Vaughan retired from NASA in 1971. Her work at NACA and NASA helped pave the way for women and African Americans to excel in mathematics and science careers. She died on Nov. 10, 2008. The American author Margot Lee Shetterly’s book Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race (2016) chronicles Vaughan’s life and career, along with those of other members of the West Area Computing unit. The American actress Octavia Spencer depicted Vaughan in the film based on the book.

The former NASA mathematician Katherine Goble Johnson died at age 101 on Feb. 24, 2020. Credit: NASA/LRC

Another prominent African American mathematician of West Area Computing, Katherine Goble Johnson, died at age 101 on Monday, Feb. 24, 2020. Read her Behind the Headlines feature from last year’s Women’s History Month here.

February 19, 2020

In honor of Black History Month, today World Book remembers the Tuskegee Airmen, a group of African Americans who served in the United States Army Air Corps during World War II (1939-1945). The name Tuskegee Airmen is used most often to refer to combat pilots, but the group also included bombardiers, navigators, maintenance crews, and support staff. Members of the Tuskegee Airmen were the first African Americans to qualify as military aviators in any branch of the armed forces. Many became decorated war heroes. In 2007, the United States awarded the Tuskegee Airmen the Congressional Gold Medal, the highest civilian award given by Congress.

The Tuskegee Airmen were a group of African American pilots, crew, and support staff that served in the Army Air Corps during World War II (1939-1945). This photograph, taken in Ramitelli, Italy, in 1945, shows airmen at a tactical meeting. Credit: Library of Congress

Last February, the National Air and Space Museum at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., hosted an event called “African American Pioneers in Aviation and Space.” Among the special guests at the event was the Tuskegee Airman Charles McGee, who turned 100 years old in December 2019. McGee flew 409 aerial combat missions during World War II, the Korean War (1950-1953), and the Vietnam War (1957-1975). His military honors include the Legion of Merit, the Distinguished Flying Cross, and two Presidential Unit Citations. McGee was inducted into the National Aviation Hall of Fame in 2011.

Daniel “Chappie” James, one of the famous Tuskegee Airmen, poses with his P-51 Mustang fighter plane during the Korean War. Credit: U.S. Air Force

At the time of World War II, the U.S. War Department had a policy of racial segregation. Black soldiers were trained separately from white soldiers and served in separate units. They were not allowed into elite military units. In 1941, under pressure from African American organizations and Congress, the Army Air Corps began accepting black men and admitting them into flight training. The men were trained at Tuskegee Army Air Base, near Tuskegee Institute (now Tuskegee University), a college for black students in rural Alabama.

Credit: © African American History Month

The training program began in 1941. One of the first men to earn the wings of an Army Air Corps pilot was Benjamin O. Davis, Jr., who later became the first black general in the U.S. Air Force. Davis commanded the 99th Pursuit Squadron, the nation’s first all-black squadron, which trained at Tuskegee. The 99th operated in northern Africa. Davis later commanded the 332nd Fighter Group, which also trained at Tuskegee. The 332nd became known for its success escorting bombers on missions over Europe.

February 22, 2019

In honor of Black History Month, World Book looks at African American poet, playwright, and social worker Useni Eugene Perkins. As a writer, he is best known for his 1975 children’s poem “Hey Black Child.” Perkins composed this lyrical poem to celebrate black children in particular. However, the verse attempts to inspire all young people to dream big dreams and work to achieve their goals in life.

Hey Black Child by Useni Eugene Perkins and Bryan Collier. Credit: © Little, Brown Books for Young Readers

Perkins’s poem was originally written as lyrics for a song in his children’s play Black Fairy (1975), but it quickly gained popularity as a stand-alone work in black classrooms and homes. Over the years, confusion has often surrounded the authorship of “Hey Black Child.” The poem has mistakenly been attributed to such African American writers as Maya Angelou and Countee Cullen. The popularity of the poem led to the creation of the 2017 picture book Hey Black Child, illustrated by Bryan Collier. The book helped to end the confusion over the poem’s creation.

Credit: © African American History Month

Eugene Perkins was born on Sept. 13, 1932, in Chicago, Illinois. He later added Useni as his first name. Perkins attended George Williams College, earning a B.S. degree in group social work in 1961 and an M.S. degree in administration in 1964. He has spent most of his adult life as a social worker in Chicago.

Throughout his life, Perkins has made contributions to African American poetry and drama, particularly works for children. He was a leader of the Black Arts Movement of the 1960’s and 1970’s, which rejected the literary forms and values of white culture. His poetry has been collected in Black Is Beautiful (1968), When You Grow Up: Poems for Children (1982) and Midnight Blues in the Afternoon and Other Poems (1984). He has written plays about such important black leaders in history as Steve Biko, W. E. B. Du Bois, Leadbelly, Paul Robeson, and Ida B. Wells-Barnett, among others. Some of his plays for children have been collected in Black Fairy and Other Plays (1993).

February 13, 2019

Last week, in celebration of African American History Month, the African and Middle Eastern Division at the Library of Congress (LOC) in Washington, D.C., hosted an event called “Conversation on the Omar ibn Said Collection.” Omar ibn Said was a western African scholar who was captured and sold into slavery in the United States in the early 1800′s. Noted for his education and intelligence, Said—a Muslim who spoke Arabic—gained notoriety during his lifetime and wrote an autobiography in 1831.

Omar ibn Said in North Carolina in 1850. Credit: Yale University Beinecke Library (licensed under CC BY 2.0)

Autobiography of Omar ibn Said, Slave in North Carolina is the only known memoir written in Arabic by a slave in the United States. The LOC’s Omar Ibn Said Collection includes the original manuscript of his autobiography, as well as texts written in Arabic by western African slaves held in countries other than the United States. The conversation on Said’s autobiography included an examination of Muslim communities in Africa and the people who continued to practice Islam after being forced into slavery.

Credit: © African American History Month

Omar ibn Said was born around 1770 in what is now Senegal. After years of schooling in Africa, he was enslaved and taken by ship to Charleston, South Carolina. Shortly after Said’s arrival in the United States, he escaped but was captured in North Carolina and briefly imprisoned. During his 16-day detainment, Said wrote in Arabic on the prison walls. His writing caught the attention of wealthy farmer James Owen, who purchased Said and apparently encouraged his literary efforts. Said then wrote his autobiography and many works related to the Qur’ān, the sacred book of the Muslims. Although highly critical of Christians who supported and participated in slavery, Said converted to Christianity during his captivity. He died in North Carolina in 1864. An English-language version of Said’s memoir was first published in 1925.

February 23, 2018

World Book’s celebration of Black History Month continues with happy birthday wishes for African American leader W. E. B. Du Bois <<doo BOYS>>, who was born 150 years ago today on Feb. 23, 1868. During the first half of the 1900′s, Du Bois was the leading black opponent of racial discrimination in the United States. He also won fame as a historian and sociologist. Modern day historians still use Du Bois’s research on blacks in American society.

W. E. B. Du Bois was born 150 years ago today on Feb. 23, 1868. Credit: Library of Congress

Du Bois was one of the first African Americans to express the idea of Pan-Africanism. Pan-Africanism is the belief that all people of African descent have common interests and should work together to conquer prejudice. In 1900, Du Bois predicted that humanity’s chief problem of the new century would be “the color line.”

Credit: © African American History Month

William Edward Burghardt Du Bois was born on Feb. 23, 1868, in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. He graduated from Fisk University in 1888. In 1895, he became the first African American to receive a Ph.D. degree at Harvard University. From 1897 to 1910, Du Bois taught history and economics at Atlanta University. In 1900, he attended the First Pan-African Conference in London, England. He later organized Pan-African conferences in Europe and the United States.

To fight racial discrimination, Du Bois founded the Niagara Movement in 1905. In 1909, he helped found the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). From 1910 to 1934, he was editor of the NAACP magazine, The Crisis. Du Bois left the NAACP in 1934 and returned to the faculty at Atlanta University. From 1944 to 1948, he again worked for the NAACP. After 1948, Du Bois became increasingly dissatisfied with the slow progress of race relations in the United States. He moved to the west African country of Ghana in 1961. Du Bois died in Accra, the Ghanaian capital, on Aug. 27, 1963.

February 8, 2018

In honor of Black History Month, today World Book looks at the Whitney Plantation, an open-air historical museum near New Orleans, Louisiana, dedicated to the victims of slavery in the United States. The sprawling Whitney Plantation Historic District includes fields of sugar cane, a French Creole barn, the opulent “Big House,” quarters in which enslaved people lived, and haunting ceramic statues of the “children of Whitney.” Whitney Plantation is one of many sites featured on the Louisiana African American Heritage Trail.

Statues of slave children await visitors to the Antioch Baptist Church which was relocated to Whitney Plantation. Credit: Corey Balazowich (licensed under CC BY-ND 2.0)

Whitney Plantation was originally known as Habitation Haydel after the family who owned it from the late 1700′s until after the American Civil War (1861-1865). According to an 1819 document, the Haydel family owned 40 men, 21 women, and 9 children. By 1860, there were 101 people enslaved on the Haydel property. The slaves worked the sugar cane and rice fields, maintained the many plantation buildings, and cooked, cleaned, and cared for the Haydel family—as well as for one another. After the war ended and the 13th Amendment to the Constitution officially abolished slavery in the United States in December 1865, distilling and sugar magnate Bradish Johnson purchased Habitation Haydel and renamed it in honor of his grandson, Harry Payne Whitney.

Credit: © African American History Month

New Orleans attorney and real estate developer John Cummings purchased the Whitney Plantation in 1999. He soon began turning it into a museum, and set about restoring the grounds, constructing new buildings, hiring artists and scholars, and digging into the plantation’s historical records. Cummings’s staff at Whitney obtained the oral histories of about 4,000 Louisiana slaves compiled by the Works Progress Administration in the 1930′s. Memorial walls constructed at Whitney list the single names of thousands of Louisiana slaves, and a “Field of Angels” remembers the many slave children who died at Whitney and other Louisiana plantations. Other installations and placards re-create the harsh lives of the slave population. The Whitney Plantation opened to visitors in 2014 and has been listed on the National Register of Historic Places since 1992.