Ella Fitzgerald was born on April 25, 1917, in Newport News, Virginia. She was the daughter of William Fitzgerald and Temperance "Tempie" Henry. Her parents never married and her father left her mother shortly after she was born. She began her formal education at the age of six and was an outstanding student. Starting in third grade, she danced and performed for her peers on the way to school and at lunchtime.
In 1932, when Fitzgerald was fifteen, her mother died from injuries sustained in a car accident. Her stepfather took care of her until April 1933, at which point she moved to Harlem to live with her aunt. Fitzgerald soon began skipping school and her grades suffered. She worked as a lookout at a bordello and with a numbers runner. When the authorities caught up with her, she was placed in foster care and then a reformatory in New York.
During 1933 and 1934 she sang on the streets of Harlem, until she had her big break on November 21,1934, when she made her debut in one of the earliest Amateur Nights at the Apollo Theater and won first prize. She later said, "Once up there, I felt the acceptance and love from my audience. I knew I wanted to sing before people the rest of my life."
In January 1935, Fitzgerald won the chance to perform for a week with the Tiny Bradshaw band at the Harlem Opera House. Although the program director, Chick Webb, was reluctant to sign her because she was a 'diamond in the rough’, he offered her the opportunity to test with the band when they played a dance at Yale University. Met with approval by both audiences and her fellow musicians, Fitzgerald was asked to join Webb's orchestra and gained acclaim as part of the group's performances at Harlem's Savoy Ballroom.
Throughout the ‘30s and ‘40s, Fitzgerald continued to win singing contests, work with bands, and record hit records. Her first million-seller, a novelty tune called "A-Tisket, A-Tasket," became a major hit on the radio and was also one of the biggest-selling records of the decade.
Despite her success, Fitzgerald faced discrimination as during that era, band singers were mostly blond, sophisticated and had mainstream physical features. Fitzgerald was often called “awkward and gawky” and in the words of one newspaper writer, "a big, light-colored gal." This superficial criticism notwithstanding, no one could dispute that Fitzgerald had impeccable timing and perfect pitch. In fact, band musicians would tune their instruments to her voice. Endlessly inventive, only on one record did she sing the same way twice. There was no sad edge to her voice — Ella Fitzgerald had listeners smiling by the second note.
Influenced by her work with Dizzy Gillespie'’s big band, she pioneered “scat” singing and incorporated it as a major part of her performance repertoire. While singing with Gillespie, Fitzgerald recalled, "I just tried to do [with my voice] what I heard the horns in the band doing."
She also began appearing on television variety shows. She quickly became a favorite and frequent guest on numerous programs, including "The Bing Crosby Show," "The Dinah Shore Show," "The Frank Sinatra Show," "The Ed Sullivan Show," "The Tonight Show," "The Nat King Cole Show," "The Andy Willams Show" and "The Dean Martin Show."
Dubbed "The First Lady of Song," Ella Fitzgerald was the most popular female jazz singer in the United States for more than half a century. In her lifetime, she won 13 Grammy awards and sold over 40 million albums. Her voice was flexible, wide-ranging, accurate and ageless. She could sing sultry ballads, sweet jazz and imitate every instrument in an orchestra. She worked with Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Nat King Cole, Frank Sinatra, Dizzy Gillespie, Benny Goodman and many more. She performed at top venues all over the world and packed them to the hilt. Her audiences were as diverse as her vocal range. They were rich and poor, made up of all ethnicities, all religions and all nationalities. In fact, many of them had just one binding factor in common - they all loved Ella Fitzgerald.
To learn more about Ms. Fitzgerald’s tremendous life and legacy, please visit:
http://www.ellafitzgerald.com/about/biography, https://www.npr.org/2010/03/29/125170386/ella-fitzgerald-americas-first-lady-of-song and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ella_Fitzgerald. To view footage of Ms. Fitzgerald, please visit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=myRc-3oF1d0.
Claudette Colvin was born in Montgomery, Alabama, on September 5, 1939. Colvin and her younger sister were raised by their great aunt and uncle, Mary Anne and Q. P. Colvin in King Hill, a poor Black neighborhood in Montgomery. Colvin attended the segregated Booker T. Washington High School, where she was a good student and a member of the NAACP Youth Council.
On March 2, 1955, 15 year-old Colvin was riding on the public bus on her way home after school. She was seated at the front of the “colored section” of the bus which began on the row behind the “white section.” The bus operated under the rule that if the bus became so crowded that all the "white seats" in the front of the bus were filled such that white people were standing, any African Americans seated nearest to the “white section” were expected to give up their seats to allow the white passengers to sit down.
If there were no free seats in the “colored section,” African Americans were expected to stand in the aisle.
When a young white woman got on the bus that afternoon and was left standing in the front, the bus driver commanded Colvin and three other young Black women in her row to move to the back. Even though only one seat was needed, Blacks could not sit on the same row as whites so all four young ladies were ordered to move. Colvin’s three companions moved; Colvin did not.
Eventually, the bus driver summoned the police. Upon seeing Colvin, one of the officers responded, "That's nothing new . . . I've had trouble with that 'thing' before." The officers then ordered Colvin to move, but she refused, saying, "It's my constitutional right to sit here as much as that lady. I paid my fare, it's my constitutional right." Colvin felt compelled to stand her ground, later recalling, "History kept me stuck to my seat. I felt the hand of Harriet Tubman pushing down on one shoulder and Sojourner Truth pushing down on the other—saying, 'Sit down girl!' I was glued to my seat."
The police officers forcibly handcuffed Colvin, arrested her, and dragged her from the bus. Colvin later said, "Mine was the first cry for justice, and a loud one."
The police officers who took her to the station made sexual comments about her body and took turns guessing her bra size throughout the ride. One of the police officers sat in the backseat of the patrol car with her as they rode to the station causing her to fear that he would sexually assault her. After being held in jail for hours, she was bailed out by her pastor, who told her that she had “brought the revolution to Montgomery.”
Colvin was charged with disturbing the peace, violating the segregation laws, and battering and assaulting a police officer. She was tried in juvenile court, convicted on all three charges and sentenced to “indefinite probation.” When Colvin's case was appealed to the Montgomery Circuit Court on May 6, 1955, the charges of disturbing the peace and violating the segregation laws were dropped, although her conviction for assaulting a police officer was upheld.
This event took place nine months before the NAACP secretary Rosa Parks was arrested for the same offense. Colvin did not receive the same attention as Parks because as Colvin later stated, she did not have “good hair”, she was not fair-skinned, she was a teenager, and she got pregnant. The leaders in the Civil Rights Movement were very mindful of the public perception of protesters and tried to ensure that only the most sympathetic and “appealing” protesters would receive media attention. Civil rights leaders felt that Colvin’s status as an unwed teenage mother made her an inappropriate symbol for a test case. Colvin became one of four plaintiffs in Browder v. Gayle, which ruled that Montgomery’s segregated bus system was unconstitutional.
Colvin had difficulty finding and keeping work following her participation in the Browder v. Gayle case and was branded a “troublemaker” by many in her community. This led to Colvin and her son Raymond leaving Montgomery to move to New York, where she became a nurse's aide, retiring after 35 years of service.
In 2021, Colvin applied to have her juvenile record expunged. The District Attorney supported her motion, stating, "[h]er actions back in March of 1955 were conscientious, not criminal; inspired, not illegal; they should have led to praise and not prosecution.” The judge ordered that the juvenile record be expunged and destroyed in December 2021, stating that Colvin's refusal had "been recognized as a courageous act.”
To learn more about Ms. Colvin’s tremendous life and legacy, please visit:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claudette_Colvin, https://www.biography.com/activist/claudette-colvin, and https://www.npr.org/2009/03/15/101719889/before-rosa-parks-there-was-claudette-colvin. To view footage of Ms. Colvin, please visit:
Dr. Rebecca Lee Crumpler was born in Christiana, Delaware in 1831 to Matilda Webber and Absolum Davis. She was raised in Pennsylvania by her aunt who acted as the doctor in her community, caring for community members who fell ill. Inspired by her aunt, in 1852, Dr. Crumpler moved to Charlestown, Massachusetts, where she worked as a nurse for eight years.
In 1860, she was accepted to New England Female Medical College. When she graduated from medical school in 1864, Dr. Crumpler became the first African-American woman in the United States to earn an M.D. degree, and the only African-American woman to graduate from the New England Female Medical College, which closed in 1873.
Dr. Crumpler practiced medicine in Boston until 1865, when the Civil War ended. She then moved to Richmond, Virginia, because, in her own words, she felt it would be "a proper field for real missionary work, and one that would present ample opportunities to become acquainted with the diseases of women and children.” There she served the 30,000 African-American residents of her community, many of whom were indigent. She provided medical care to anyone who requested treatment, regardless of their ability to pay for her services. Dr. Crumpler also worked with the Freedmen’s Bureau, joining other Black physicians caring for freed slaves who would otherwise have had no access to medical care. As a Black physician, she experienced intense racism working in the postwar South.
Dr. Crumpler also experienced intense sexism, as during this time many men believed that a man's brain was 10 percent larger than a woman’s brain on average, and that a woman's job was to act submissively and focus on her appearance. Because of this, many male physicians did not respect Dr. Crumpler, and would not approve her prescriptions for patients or listen to her medical opinions. Undeterred by this unjust treatment, Dr. Crumpler persevered and continued to work passionately and with dedication.
Dr. Crumpler later moved back to Boston to continue to treat women and children. In 1883, she published a renowned book, Book of Medical Discourses In Two Parts, believed by many to be the first medical text written by an African-American author. The book has two parts that cover the prevention and cure of infantile bowel complaints, and the life and growth of human beings. Dedicated to nurses and mothers, it focuses on maternal and pediatric medical care.
Dr. Crumpler died in 1895, leaving behind a grieving husband, Arthur Crumpler (who died in 1910), and a daughter. Initially buried in unmarked graves, on July 16, 2020, Dr. Crumpler and her husband received new granite headstones through funds raised to celebrate her status as a pioneer in the medical field.
Shortly before her death the Boston Globe wrote the following about her, “Dr. Rebecca Crumpler is the one woman who, as a physician, made an enviable place for herself in the ranks of the medical fraternity.”
The Rebecca Lee Society, one of the first medical societies for African-American women, was named in her honor. In 2019, Virginia Governor Ralph Northam declared March 30 (National Doctors Day) the Dr. Rebecca Lee Crumpler Day. At Syracuse University there is a pre-health club named "The Rebecca Lee Pre-Health Society.” This club encourages people of diverse backgrounds to pursue health professions.
To learn more about Dr. Crumpler’s tremendous life and legacy, please visit: https://www.baystatebanner.com/2012/09/05/dr-crumpler-nations-first-african-american-woman-physician/, https://www.marieclaire.com/culture/news/g4431/black-history-month-unsung-heroes/, https://cfmedicine.nlm.nih.gov/physicians/biography_73.html and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebecca_Lee_Crumpler.
