My Account of It

In 1861, General Robert E. Lee wrote a letter to his cousin. General Lee is explaining that he has resigned from the U.S. Army to fight for the Confederate Army. Listen.

Happy National Poetry Month from My Account of It #1 The Negro Speaks Of Rivers read by Quincy Jones for the album Poems by Langston Hughes #2 Kitchenette Building read by Gwendolyn Brooks #3 And Still I Rise read by Maya Angelou from the book And Still I Rise

A first-person account of President Abraham Lincoln's assassination. This account was written by James Suydam Knox. Listen.

Phillis Wheatley published her first collection of poems in 1773. It was the first book published by an African American.

Bessie Coleman worked hard to be successful at something she loved, flying. Although instructors in the United States refused to teach her how to operate an airplane, she did not let it stop her. She just went around the obstacles. “She refused to take no for an answer” and became the first black woman to earn her pilot’s license.

Elizabeth Keckley wrote Behind the Scenes, or, Thirty Years a Slave, and Four Years in the White House (1868) to call attention to the struggles newly freed slaves faced when they arrived in Washington. Her role as a seamstress in the White House afforded her a unique perspective on their lives and the life of the first lady. The book was not well received because of the widespread belief that it violated the privacy of the former first lady.

This advertisement is against Women's Suffrage. It ran in the Tulsa Daily World on Sunday, November 3, 1918. Listen.

Mary Church was born on September 26, 1863 in Memphis, Tennessee. Her father, a self-educated former slave, became a millionaire investing in real estate. She received a Bachelor's degree in 1884 from Oberlin College. In 1887, she moved to Washington, D.C. to teach at the M Street High School. After receiving a Master's degree from Oberlin in 1888, she toured Europe to study languages. In 1892, she founded the Colored Woman’s League of Washington, D.C., one of the first black women’s clubs. The League started a training program and a kindergarten before these were incorporated in the Washington public school system. Here's Mary Church Terrell's account of the state of "colored" children. She delivered this address before the National American Women's Suffrage Association at the Columbia Theater, Washington, D.C., February 18, 1898.

Dr. Halle Tanner Dillion Johnson was the first woman and the first black woman to practice medicine in Alabama. She was licensed in 1891. Dr. Johnson worked for the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute and throughout rural Alabama. Here's her account of the state of healthcare in the rural Alabama. This account was published in 1894.