In the 1930’s and well into the 1940’s, African-Americans who had begun to expand their intellect at Historically Black Colleges beginning after the Civil War and into the early 1900’s recognized the power in organizing collective thought and action. The 1930’s and 40’s saw the establishment of The Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters and Maids led by A. Phillip Randolph, Mary McLeod Bethune organized the National Council of Negro Women, and Katherine Dunham formed the Negro Dance Group. This was the same period of the arrest of the Scottsboro Boys in Alamaba, the Great Depression and the birth of the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment by the U.S. Public Health Service. Joyful triumphs also existed. Jessie Owens won 4 Olympic gold medals, Hattie McDaniel was the first African-American woman to win a supporting actress Oscar for Gone with the Wind and Nat King Cole became the first African-American to have a radio variety show, just to name a few. Faith’s first two models were born during the 1930’s and 1940’s at the height of the southern Jim Crow system. These women witnessed firsts for the African-American race and were themselves local firsts. They withstood overt racism to establish the path for future generations to follow. Elmer Lucille Allen is the first African-American professional hired by the Brown-Forman Company. She retired from the company after decades of working there as a chemist. Ms. Elmer Lucille did all of this while caring for her family and supporting the community. She wanted her boys to be able to play baseball in their Chickasaw neighborhood but there was not a formal, organized little league in her area. She worked with her husband to establish and manage the first youth baseball league in Louisville’s West End at Chickasaw Park, the blacks only park. Well beyond the age of 50 she became a ceramic artist. She originally began working with clay as a treatment for arthritis in her fingers. After retiring from Brown-Forman, she enrolled at the University of Louisville and earned an MA in Fine Art with a focus on ceramics and textiles. Ms. Elmer Lucille has supported generations of artists representing various ethnicities, backgrounds and races. She has collected a number of accolades over her lifetime. At the age of 84 and as a two-time cancer survivor, she continues to spend every day of her life interacting with people to improve her community. She once told me her secret to life, “Never stop moving and doing. When you stop, you die.” Faith overheard this secret and often reminds me that activity is what will keep me alive. Harriet Miller Dallum is Faith’s grandmother and my mother. Ironically, Ms. Elmer Lucille helped to induct my mother into the Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc. on Unversity of Louisville’s campus. I learned the importance of commitment and dedication from my mother. She was married to my father for over 40 years in which they encountered numerous joys and challenges. My mother was among the first African-American students to attend Louisville’s Presentation Academy, an all-girls Catholic high school. She and my father sacrificed to purchase their first home in Louisville’s Hallmark neighborhood, one of the first neighborhoods outside of Louisville’s historically black neighborhoods where blacks were allowed to build in the 1960’s. Their house was the first on the block. Circumstances prevented my mother from graduating from the University of Louisville, but at the urging of my father, she went back to college to graduate with an education degree from Spalding College in the 1970s . She taught at West End Catholic Elementary School in Louisville’s historically black Park DuValle neighborhood. Her school provided an outstanding education for young people living in the subsidized housing developments surrounding the school. She also served as the last principal of West End Catholic. Harriet always encouraged me to seek out opportunities, try new things, and follow my dreams. As a child, my mother shared how her parents wouldn’t allow her to march in the 1960’s Civil Rights protests. It wasn’t until she was helping to knit “Pussy Hats” for the 2017 Women’s March on Washington that she revealed that she defied her parents and participated in a Civil Rights March. Her participation was discovered when her father recognized her coat in a photo published the following day in Louisville’s Courier-Journal newspaper. I believe my intention to speak truth to power in my own way must come from my mother. She is my best friend and role model. I believe my relationship with Faith is a reflection of the relationship Faith witnesses between her grandmother and me. Both of these women are examples of the many living African-American women warriors who were closest to the overt oppression of Jim Crow. They demonstrated how to move through America with tenacity, courage, and confidence. Their perseverance was inspired by earlier generations who clawed their way to obtain knowledge and they instilled that desire in their children. Their experience taught them to be simultaneously aware, hopeful and skeptical.
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AuthorRamona Dallum Lindsey is an artist, speaker and curious citizen who finds strength in the wisdom of her elders. Archives
February 2019
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