black history

Black Excellence: Charlotte Forten Grimké

Charlotte Forten Grimké stands as a testament to Black excellence in education and activism. Her life, though marked by challenges, demonstrates a powerful commitment to fighting for racial and gender equality through the transformative power of learning.

Born in 1837 into a prominent abolitionist family in Philadelphia, Forten's early education took place at home, as her father refused to send her to the city's segregated public schools. However, a significant turning point arrived when, at 16, she moved to Salem, Massachusetts, to live with the abolitionist Remond family and attend Higginson Grammar School. This relocation, which can be seen as an informal adoption into a more progressive educational and social environment, profoundly shaped her future. Forten's mother died when she was three, and her father, Robert Bridges Forten, did not want her to attend Philadelphia's segregated schools. Instead, he sent her to the more progressive Salem, Massachusetts, where she boarded with the Remond family, who were also prominent Black abolitionists. The move to the Remond family's household provided Charlotte with the opportunity to pursue a higher quality and integrated education not available to her in Philadelphia.

In Salem, Forten gained access to an integrated education that had been denied to her in Philadelphia. She attended Higginson Grammar School, where she was the only Black student in a class of 200, and later the Salem Normal School (now Salem State University), training to become a teacher.

Forten's time in Salem further immersed her in the abolitionist movement. Living with the Remonds and joining the Salem Female Anti-Slavery Society connected her with prominent figures like William Lloyd Garrison. She began publishing her own poetry and essays in abolitionist periodicals, using her voice to advocate for change. This period marked the emergence of her powerful literary and activist voice.

Forten’s commitment to education and equality led her to the Sea Islands of South Carolina during the Civil War as part of the Port Royal Experiment. There, she joined efforts to establish schools for formerly enslaved people, according to Horizons National. This was a pivotal time where she connected with the Gullah people and experienced firsthand the thirst for knowledge among a community that had been denied access to formal education. Although initially met with skepticism by some, she earned their trust and affection, chronicling her experiences in her journals and published essays like "Life on the Sea Islands". These writings not only documented her personal experiences but also provided valuable insights into the lives of both free and enslaved Black Americans during this tumultuous period.

After the war, Forten Grimké continued her work as an educator and activist, serving the Freedmen's Union Commission and teaching at various schools. She later married Reverend Francis J. Grimké, a prominent Presbyterian minister and civil rights advocate. Together, they continued their fight for racial justice and equality, with Charlotte becoming a co-founder of the Colored Women's League and actively involved in the women's suffrage movement. Charlotte Forten Grimké's story is a powerful reminder of the enduring spirit of Black excellence. Her determination to seek education, her unwavering commitment to social justice, and her eloquent use of words to fight for equality continue to inspire generations. Her legacy is one of resilience, leadership, and a profound belief in the transformative power of education for all.

Each month, we take time to highlight the remarkable contributions of Black leaders, trailblazers, and changemakers whose impact continues to shape our world. These stories serve as a valuable opportunity for transracial families to learn, reflect, and engage in meaningful conversations about Black history and culture. We invite you to explore our past Black Excellence features in the carousel below, where you’ll find inspiring figures from various fields—activism, science, arts, sports, and beyond. If you haven’t already, be sure to subscribe to our monthly newsletter to receive these stories, along with discussion prompts and book recommendations, right in your inbox.

Book Corner – August 2025

The 1619 Project: Born on the Water

by Nikole Hannah-Jones & Renee Watson,
illustrated by Nikkolas Smith

Grades 2-5, Ages 7-10

Her school assignment is “trace your roots.” How can a young Black girl, who can only trace her family back three generations, complete this assignment? Her grandmother gathers the family around to tell them about their beginnings. She talks about the vibrant civilization enjoyed by African people before they were kidnapped and enslaved. She tells stories of the terrible journey to America, and what happened to the survivors when they arrived. Ending on a hopeful note, this is a moving and important book..

https://www.asiabookcenter.com/store/p4041/The_1619_Project%3A_Born_on_the_Water.html

Black Excellence: Albert Ely Edwards

In the tapestry of Black excellence, certain threads shine with particular brilliance, woven from dedication, foresight, and an unwavering commitment to community. Albert Ely Edwards stands as one of these luminous figures, a man whose life was a testament to the power of public service, whose legacy continues to resonate deeply within the communities he served and the family he nurtured, and whose tireless efforts earned him the revered title of the "Father of Juneteenth."

Born in the post-Reconstruction era, Edwards navigated a landscape often fraught with racial prejudice and systemic barriers. Yet, he rose above these challenges, demonstrating an extraordinary capacity for leadership and a profound dedication to uplifting his fellow citizens. While specific details of his early life might require deeper historical dives, his impact as a public servant is well-documented and celebrated.

Edwards was a pioneering force in the political arena. He broke barriers and opened doors, demonstrating that Black voices were not only vital but essential to the democratic process. His work in advocating for equitable resources, championing civil rights, and fighting for fair representation laid crucial groundwork for future generations. He understood that true progress required a seat at the table, and he tirelessly worked to ensure that those seats were accessible to all.

Beyond the political realm, Edwards' influence undoubtedly extended into the social and economic fabric of his community. Like many Black leaders of his time, he likely played a pivotal role in establishing and strengthening institutions that served the needs of African Americans – from schools and churches to benevolent societies and businesses. These were the anchors of resilience and self-determination in an era of segregation, and the efforts of individuals like Edwards were instrumental in their success.

Crucially, Albert Ely Edwards' excellence was not confined solely to his public achievements; it was also reflected in his role as a father. While historical records might not always highlight the intimate details of family life, the very nature of his public service – fighting for a better world, advocating for future generations, and building stronger communities – speaks volumes about the values he would have instilled in his own children. A father committed to justice and equality would undoubtedly have raised his children with a strong moral compass, a sense of civic duty, and the resilience to navigate a complex world. He would have been a living example of perseverance and the importance of contributing to something larger than oneself.

However, it is his singular dedication to the recognition of Juneteenth that forever etched his name into the annals of American history. While serving as a Texas State Representative in 1979, Edwards authored and successfully sponsored House Bill 1016, making Texas the very first state to officially recognize June 19th (Juneteenth) as a paid state holiday. This groundbreaking achievement was not merely a legislative victory; it was a profound act of historical reclamation and a powerful statement of enduring freedom.

But Edwards' vision extended far beyond the borders of Texas. He understood the national significance of Juneteenth and tirelessly campaigned for its widespread adoption. In 1985, he founded Juneteenth, USA, the oldest Juneteenth non-profit advocacy organization in the nation. For over four decades, Edwards dedicated his life to ensuring that America fully acknowledged the historical significance of the abolition of slavery and the emancipation of African Americans on June 19, 1865. Through his persistent advocacy, he inspired legislative efforts across the country, leading to over 30 states recognizing Juneteenth as a holiday before his passing.

The essence of Black excellence lies not just in individual achievement, but in the collective upliftment it inspires. Albert Ely Edwards embodied this principle, extending his commitment to community directly into the heart of his family, and to the very fabric of American remembrance. His career was not merely about personal accolades, but about creating opportunities and fostering an environment where both his community and his own children could thrive. He understood that the fight for equality was a marathon, not a sprint, and he dedicated his life to advancing the cause, one step at a time, leaving a monumental legacy of public service, paternal guidance, and ultimately, the national recognition of a pivotal moment in American history.

Today, as we reflect on the ongoing journey towards a more just and equitable society, it is imperative to remember and celebrate the contributions of figures like Albert Ely Edwards, the "Father of Juneteenth." His life serves as a powerful reminder that excellence is not defined by the absence of struggle, but by the courage to confront it, the vision to overcome it, and the unwavering commitment to building a better future for all – both in the broader society and within the sacred bonds of family. His legacy is a beacon, illuminating the path forward and inspiring us to continue the work of forging a truly inclusive and equitable world for generations to come.

Each month, we take time to highlight the remarkable contributions of Black leaders, trailblazers, and changemakers whose impact continues to shape our world. These stories serve as a valuable opportunity for transracial families to learn, reflect, and engage in meaningful conversations about Black history and culture. We invite you to explore our past Black Excellence features in the carousel below, where you’ll find inspiring figures from various fields—activism, science, arts, sports, and beyond. If you haven’t already, be sure to subscribe to our monthly newsletter to receive these stories, along with discussion prompts and book recommendations, right in your inbox.

Black Excellence: Eartha Kitt

Eartha Kitt is known for popularizing the iconic Christmas song, “Santa Baby,” as well as her role as Catwoman in the 1960s tv show, Batman. But she was so much more. Her career spanned almost 70 years, and most of those were during a time when racism and sexism created insurmountable obstacles for any Black and Native American woman pursuing a career of any kind.

Born in 1927 in South Carolina. Her mother was a Black and Cherokee sharecropper and her father, the white son of the plantation owner, did not seek a consensual relationship with her mother. Kitt picked cotton before moving to Harlem when she was 16, where she became a dancer and toured with the Katherine Dunham Company for five years.

Eartha Kitt wore a literal mask in her role as Catwoman, but how many other invisible masks did she wear in her life? Code switching is a form of masking that many find helpful while navigating workplaces and social gatherings where respectability politics control whether or not you will encounter discrimination.

Kitt went on to perform on Broadway, become a popular singer and recording artist, be nominated for two Tony Awards, write three autobiographies, and was an actor and voice actor in film and tv right up until just before her death in 2008. It’s impossible to endure the rejection (perceived or real) of a parent, the violence and discrimination caused by racism and sexism, and grow as a creative public figure without hiding parts of yourself nearly constantly in some way. But Eartha Kitt also generously took her masks off in order to advocate for marginalized groups, despite intense political and economic consequences. Most notable are her ongoing public support of the LGBTQ+ community as well as the time when she spoke against the Vietnam War at a White House luncheon in 1968. These remarks effectively ended her career in the United States for ten years, during which time her LGBT supporters kept her name alive.

Kitt performed in numerous nightclubs and was active in Civil Rights communities throughout her life. Eartha Kitt was a strong, independent artist unwilling to let discrimination dictate how far she could go.

Each person in the transracial adoption community has potentially many intersections of identity to navigate in a world that often does not honor all of them at once, and at times none at all. When is it good to have a mask on and use it as a tool? For preserving energy, for protection or for art or even just for fun?

Learn more:
● When Eartha Kitt Condemned Poverty and War at the White House
● 1982 Documentary: All By Myself, The Eartha Kitt Story
● NYT Obituary: Eartha Kitt, A Seducer of Audiences, Dies at 81

Books, Books and More Books featuring Black protagonists!

by Avril McInally and Vicki Richards

August is the month we prepare our children for going back to school and April’s August card for Facing and Embracing Differences of Race and Culture asks some introspective questions that might prepare our families for the school year to come.

What can you do to better prepare me for what I might face at school?
How do you think your experiences in school were different from mine?

To help us adults to remember and to introduce our children to a range of possibilities and experiences that might unfold for them in the academic year ahead, we choose to focus on differences of race and culture via our recently-launched Transracial Journeys Bibliography. This bibliography has been a year in the making and prepared for our families by myself (a professional adult librarian) and my friend and colleague Vicki Richards, a professional children’s librarian. From birth through adulthood, we’ve curated a collection of titles that share experiences (fictitiously and non-fictitiously) that touch on topics and stories shared from the perspective of African Americans. Whenever we could find them, we also included stories and experiences of adoption, fostering, blended families, and LGBTQ+ people. There isn’t a lot out there about adoption, but there is more now than there has been in the past. Vicki and I are searching for more for next year’s bibliography.

In this Transracial Journeys Bibliography 2023, back-to-school and school themes are prevalent as stories like the following unfold:

Vanessa in “Becoming Vanessa” grapples with her name on the first day of school
“Goodbye Summer, Hello Autumn” depicts a multicultural society experiencing the change of season
“Henry at Home” illustrates what happens between siblings when one of them leaves home for the first time to attend kindergarten
In “Class Act” we see our Black protagonist enter 9th grade in a mostly white school
Dax Devlon-Ross in “Letters to My White Male Friends” shares a lot about transitioning from an all Black school to an all white private school as a child in D.C.. His memoir imparts glimpses into racial situations our own children might be navigating but don’t want to talk about.

In most of the fiction for teens or young adults, there are lots of school scenarios depicting not only first love but also attending Black Lives Matter marches or children coping with racism and/or bullying.

Between us, Vicki and I have read every single title on this bibliography and either one or both of us has wholeheartedly endorsed the books that made it to our list. It’s in your hands to promote, support and share this growing, beautiful body of Black authors and illustrators. It’s in your power to create a reading experience for your children populated with bedtime stories, humor, comics, memoirs and literary experiences featuring Black characters and protagonists. There is a literary African American canon, unfolding and building momentum, of authors and illustrators we should be sharing with all of our children (Black and white). It would be a loss to not grow up experiencing the books of Kadir Nelson, Sharon Flake, Jewell Parker Rhodes, Sharon Draper, Kwame Alexander, Justin Reynolds, Jason Reynolds or L.L. McKinney to name a few.

It’s our hope that you not only share these titles with your children, but that you (the grown ups) read them too in order to get some insight into the landscapes our children navigate away from home and away from us (their parents, their teachers, their neighbors, etc.). We also would ask that you share these books with non Black or non adopted children and adults to help promote more understanding of the sometimes invisible challenges of racism or phobias our children encounter. These books help us get back to Facing and embracing differences of race and culture. Sometimes this embrace can be as simple as cracking open a book, turning the page and sharing it with a loved one.

With a love of and wonder in reading,

Vicki Richards and Avril McInally

(click here to open/print/download Transracial Journeys Bibliography 2023)

Black Excellence: Victor Hugo Green

Victor Hugo Green and The Travelers’ Green Book

“There will be a day sometime in the near future when this guide will not have to be published. That is when we as a race will have equal opportunities and privileges in the United States. It will be a great day for us to suspend this publication for then we can go wherever we please, and without embarrassment.”

Born in Manhattan, New York City in 1892, Victor Hugo Green grew up to become a postal carrier with the U.S. postal service. He married Alma Duke, a woman from Richmond, Virginia, and they settled in Harlem at the same time the Harlem Renaissance was blossoming.

Mr. Green had spent most of his life in Hackensack, NJ and in New York City, but after his marriage, he began to travel to Richmond with his wife. He then realized the need to find safe places to stay, eat, use the toilet and put gas in his car while on his travels, and he realized a lot of other people had this same need too. It was then, he had the idea of creating a small guidebook to not only support Black-owned businesses, but also to support the safety of Black travelers and holiday-goers in the United States.

“He found a model for his publication in the guides for Jewish travelers that appeared in Jewish newspapers.” His first installation of the “Green Book” appeared as “The Negro Motorist Green Book” in 1936. The first edition was a small, 15-page booklet which listed businesses that were Black-owned and/or friendly to Black travelers and diners. It included places to stay and places to eat. “By the early 1940s, thousands of establishments nationwide - identified as either black-owned or verified to be non-discriminatory - were listed in the Green Book.”

Over the years, the guide grew to cover much more territory in the United States as well as as places in Canada and Europe. Using the nationwide help of fellow postal carriers, he used their input to expand and promote safe travel for Black people in the Jim Crow era.

“By the early 1940s, thousands of establishments nationwide - identified as either black-owned or verified to be non-discriminatory - were listed in the Green Book.” Although the guide ceased publication during WWII, it was re-started and eventually grew to have a print run of 15,000 copies per year. Mr. Green died in 1960, but his wife continued as editor publishing the guide until its cessation in 1966.

You can watch a short video about the impact of The Green Book and some of the experiences of Black travelers in the 20th century here: The real story of the Green Book.

Black Excellence: James Weldon Johnson

One of his most famous writings is the lyric to the song “Lift Every Voice and Sing” which he wrote in 1900 to commemorate President Lincoln’s birthday. In 1919, the NAACP claimed this song as the Negro national anthem. Now considered the Black National Anthem, it was initially written as a poem. When put to music by his brother John Rosamond Johnson, it became the hymn we now know it by today. Recently, the hymn was sung for the first time at a Superbowl (February, 2023) by African American performer Sheryl Lee Ralph.

Over the course of his life, Johnson accumulated many achievements as an author (The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man), a statesman in international politics, a leader in the ranks of the NAACP, as the first African American professor at NYU, as the first Black lawyer admitted to the Florida state bar after the Reconstruction era and as a lifelong advocate for civil rights.

He tragically died in a railroad accident in 1938 while on vacation in Maine. He is buried in Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn.

Black Excellence: Maya Angelou – April 4, 1928-May 20, 2014

Poet, author, singer, dancer, activist, playwright and director Maya Angelou nee Marguerite Ann Johnson was born April 4, 1928. Over the span of her life and career, she accomplished many things, but the list of her extraordinary accomplishments may have started in San Francisco where, as a girl of 15, she became the first female African American streetcar conductor! Close to the end of her life, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2011 by President Barack Obama.

One of her most notable works was her autobiography “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings” which begins with the story of her life in Stamps, Arkansas where she was raised with her brother Bailey by their grandmother for part of their childhood. Angelou overcame almost insurmountable hurdles in childhood throughout her life to become one of the most important voices of American history. She is thought by many to be a “symbol of strength and leadership for the plight of women and the underprivileged.”

Black Excellence: Martin Luther King, Jr formerly known as Michael Luther King, Jr

This month’s Black Excellence piece concerns famous African Americans who either changed their names or had their names changed by someone else.

With your child, choose someone from this list and try to do a little independent research on that individual and the names they’ve had. Have a conversation with your family about these name changes and why they happened. After that, have a conversation about your own names, their meanings and the reasons why any of your names may have changed. You’ll discover that people change their names for many different reasons.

Did you know Martin Luther King, Jr’s name was changed when he was five years old? His father, for whom he was named, made a visit to a Baptist World Alliance convention in Berlin, Germany in 1934. While there, he learned about the Protestant Reformation leader Martin Luther. King Sr was so impressed by Martin Luther that he changed his name from Michael to Martin. Even though Martin Jr’s name was changed when he was five, his birth certificate wasn’t amended until he was 28!

Note: If you have the TRJ Conversations cards, they can guide you in these discussions about names. Stay tuned for a new and improved edition of June in April conversation cards coming soon!

See April's Conversation Cards

Black Excellence: Spotlight on blackhistorymonth.gov

This month, we shine our spotlight on blackhistorymonth.gov, a website created with contributions from:

The Library of Congress
The National Archives and Records Administration
The National Endowment for the Humanities
The National Gallery of Art
The National Park Service
The Smithsonian Institution
The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

On this website, you’ll find curated compilations of the contributions and lived experiences, both historic and contemporary, of Black people in the United States. Collections of images, audio and video along with links to beautiful exhibits created by the aforementioned institutions populate this online tribute to Black History Month. Please take the time to visit the site and share some of its content with your children as well as with their teachers. Take some time to acknowledge and celebrate Black History Month this February with your family.

Championing education and equality: The legacy of Charlotte Forten Grimké

Black Excellence Posts:

The 1619 Project: Born on the Water

A Legacy Forged in Service, Family, and Freedom: The Enduring Impact of Albert Ely Edwards, the "Father of Juneteenth"

Black Excellence Posts:

Victor Hugo Green and The Travelers’ Green Book

Lift Every Voice and Sing Lyrics