GM – FBF – Today’s American Champion was an American economist, commentator, and academic. He was the John M. Olin Distinguished Professor of Economics at George Mason University, as well as a syndicated columnist and author known for his classical liberal and libertarian views. His writings frequently appeared on Townhall.com, WND, and Jewish World Review.Today in our History – March 31, 1936 – Walter Edward Williams (March 31, 1936 – December 1, 2020) was born.Williams was born in Philadelphia on March 31, 1936. His family during childhood consisted of his mother, his sister, and him; Williams’s father played no role in raising Williams or his sister.The family initially lived in West Philadelphia, moving to North Philadelphia and the Richard Allen housing projects when Williams was ten years old. His neighbors included a young Bill Cosby. Williams knew many of the individuals that Cosby speaks of from his childhood, including Weird Harold and Fat Albert.Following graduation from Benjamin Franklin High School, William went to California to live with his father and attend one semester at Los Angeles City College. He later returned to Philadelphia and drove a taxi for Yellow Cab Company.In 1959, he was drafted into the military and served as a private in the United States Army. While stationed in the South, he “waged a one-man battle against Jim Crow from inside the army”. He challenged the racial order with provocative statements to his fellow soldiers. This resulted in an overseeing officer filing a court-martial proceeding against Williams. Williams argued his own case and was found not guilty. While considering filing countercharges against the officer who had brought him up for court-martial, Williams found himself transferred to Korea. Upon arriving there, Williams marked “Caucasian” for race on his personnel form. When challenged on this, Williams replied wryly if he had marked “Black”, he would end up getting all the worst jobs. From Korea, Williams wrote a letter to President John F. Kennedy denouncing the pervasive racism in the American government and military and questioning the actions black Americans should take given the state of affairs, writing:Should Negroes be relieved of their service obligation or continue defending and dying for empty promises of freedom and equality? Or should we demand human rights as our Founding Fathers did at the risk of being called extremists … I contend that we relieve ourselves of oppression in a manner that is in keeping with the great heritage of our nation.He received a reply from the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense, Alfred B. Fitt, a response which he termed “the most reasonable response that I received from any official.”Following his military service, Williams served as a juvenile group supervisor for the Los Angeles County Probation Department from 1963 to 1967. Williams also resumed his education, earning a bachelor’s degree in economics in 1965 from California State College at Los Angeles (now California State University, Los Angeles, or Cal State Los Angeles for short). He earned both his master’s degree (1967) and his Ph.D. (1972) in economics from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Williams’s doctoral thesis was titled The low-income marketplace.Speaking of his early college days, Williams said: “I was more than anything a radical. I was more sympathetic to Malcolm X than Martin Luther King because Malcolm X was more of a radical who was willing to confront discrimination in ways that I thought it should be confronted, including perhaps the use of violence. But I really just wanted to be left alone. I thought some laws, like minimum-wage laws, helped poor people and poor black people and protected workers from exploitation. I thought they were a good thing until I was pressed by professors to look at the evidence.” While at UCLA, Williams came into contact with economists such as Armen Alchian, James M. Buchanan, and Axel Leijonhufvud who challenged his assumptions.While Williams was at UCLA, Thomas Sowell arrived on campus in 1969 as a visiting professor. Although he never took a class from Dr. Sowell, the two met and began a friendship that lasted for decades. In the summer of 1972, Sowell was hired as director of the Urban Institute’s Ethnic Minorities Project, which Williams joined shortly thereafter. Correspondence between Sowell and Williams appears in the 2007 “A Man of Letters” piece by Sowell.During his doctoral studies, Williams was an instructor in economics at Los Angeles City College from 1967 to 1969 and Cal State Los Angeles from 1967 to 1971.Returning to his native Philadelphia, Williams was an economics professor at Temple University from 1973 to 1980. For the 1975–76 academic year, Williams was a visiting scholar at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. In 1980, Williams joined the economics faculty at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia; Williams began writing a syndicated column, “A Minority View”, for Heritage Features Syndicate, which merged with Creators Syndicate in 1991. From 1995 to 2001, Williams chaired the economics department at George Mason. Courses taught by Williams at George Mason include “Intermediate Microeconomics” for undergraduate students and “Microeconomic Theory I” for graduate students. He continued to teach at George Mason until his death in 2020. From 1971, Williams wrote hundreds of research articles, book reviews, and commentaries for scholarly journals including American Economic Review, Policy Review, and Journal of Labor Research as well as popular journals including The American Spectator, Newsweek, Reason, and The Wall Street Journal.Williams was awarded an honorary degree at Universidad Francisco Marroquín. He served on advisory boards including the Review Board of Economics Studies for the National Science Foundation, Reason Foundation, the National Tax Limitation Committee, and Hoover Institute.Williams wrote ten books, beginning in 1982 with The State Against Blacks and America: A Minority Viewpoint. He wrote and hosted documentaries for PBS in 1985. The “Good Intentions” documentary was based on his book The State Against Blacks.As an economist, Williams was a proponent of free-market economics and opposed socialist systems of government intervention. Williams believed laissez-faire capitalism is the most moral, most productive system humans have ever devised.In the mid-to-late 1970s, Williams conducted research into the Davis-Bacon Act of 1931 and on the impact of minimum wage laws on minority employment. His research led him to conclude the government’s interventional programs are harmful. Among those state programs, Williams was critical of were minimum wage and affirmative action laws, stating both practices inhibit liberty and are detrimental to the blacks they are intended to help.He published his results in his 1982 book The State Against Blacks, where he argued that laws regulating economic activity are far greater obstacles to economic progress for blacks than racial bigotry and discrimination. Subsequently, Williams spoke on the topic and penned a number of articles detailing his view that increases in the minimum wage price low skill workers out of the market, eliminating their opportunities for employment. Williams believed that racism and the legacy of slavery in the United States are overemphasized as problems faced by the black community today. He pointed to the crippling effects of a welfare state and the disintegration of the black family as more pressing concerns. “The welfare state has done to black Americans what slavery couldn’t do, and that is to destroy the black family.” Although in favor of equal access to government institutions such as courthouses, city halls, and libraries, Williams opposed anti-discrimination laws directed at the private sector on the grounds that such laws infringe upon the people’s right of freedom of association.Williams viewed gun control laws as a governmental infringement upon the rights of individuals and argued that they end up endangering the innocent while failing to reduce crime. Williams also made the argument that the true proof of whether or not an individual owns something is whether or not they have the right to sell it. Taking this argument to its conclusion, he supported the legalization of selling one’s own bodily organs. He argued that the government prohibiting the selling of one’s bodily organs is an infringement upon one’s property rights.Williams praised the views of Thomas DiLorenzo, and wrote a foreword to DiLorenzo’s anti-Abraham Lincoln book. Williams maintained that the U.S. states are entitled to secede from the union if they wish, as the Confederate states attempted to do during the Civil War, and asserted that the Union’s victory in the Civil War allowed the federal government “to run amok over states’ rights, so much so that the protections of the Ninth and Tenth Amendments mean little or nothing today.”In reaction to what he viewed as inappropriate racial sensitivity that he saw hurting blacks in higher education, Williams began in the 1970s to offer colleagues a “certificate of amnesty and pardon” to all white people for Western Civilization’s sins against blacks – and “thus obliged them not to act like damn fools in their relationships with Americans of African ancestry.” He still offers it to anyone. The certificate can be obtained at his website.Williams was opposed to the Federal Reserve System arguing that central banks are dangerous.In his autobiography, Williams cited Frederick Bastiat, Ludwig von Mises, F. A. Hayek, and Milton Friedman as influences that led him to become a libertarian. Williams praised Ayn Rand’s 1967 work Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal as “one of the best defenses and explanations of capitalism one is likely to read.”Besides his weekly columns, Williams acted as guest host for Rush Limbaugh’s radio program when Limbaugh was away traveling. Reason called Williams “one of the country’s leading libertarian voices.” In 2009, Greg Ransom, a writer for the Ludwig von Mises Institute, ranked Williams as the third-most important “Hayekian” Public Intellectual in America, behind only Thomas Sowell and John Stossel.Williams lived in Devon, Pennsylvania, since 1973. He was married to Connie (née Taylor) from 1960 until her death on December 29, 2007. They had one daughter, Devyn. When he began teaching at George Mason, he rented a cheap hotel room in Fairfax, Virginia, where he lived from Tuesdays through Thursdays around his teaching schedule. Williams was a cousin of former NBA player Julius Erving.Williams served on the board of directors of Media General from 2001 until his retirement from the board in 2011. He was also chairman of the Audit Committee.Williams died on December 1, 2020, at age 84, shortly after teaching a class at George Mason. His daughter said that he suffered from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and hypertension. Research more about this great American Champion and share it with your babies. Make it a champion day!

GM – FBF – Today’s American Champion event was added to the U.S. Cons tuition to the United States Constitution prohibits the federal government and each state from denying a citizen the right to vote based on that citizen’s “race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” It was ratified on February 3, 1870, as the third and last of the Reconstruction Amendments.In the final years of the American Civil War and the Reconstruction Era that followed, Congress repeatedly debated the rights of the millions of former black slaves. By 1869, amendments had been passed to abolish slavery and provide citizenship and equal protection under the laws, but the election of Ulysses S. Grant to the presidency in 1868 convinced a majority of Republicans that protecting the franchise of black male voters was important for the party’s future. On February 26, 1869, after rejecting more sweeping versions of a suffrage amendment, Congress proposed a compromise amendment banning franchise restrictions on the basis of race, color, or previous servitude. After surviving a difficult ratification fight, the amendment was certified as duly ratified and part of the Constitution on March 30, 1870.United States Supreme Court decisions in the late nineteenth century interpreted the amendment narrowly. From 1890 to 1910, southern states adopted new state constitutions and enacted laws that raised barriers to voter registration. This resulted in most black voters and many poor white ones being disenfranchised by poll taxes and discriminatory literacy tests, among other barriers to voting, from which white male voters were exempted by grandfather clauses. A system of white primaries and violent intimidation by white groups also suppressed black participation.In the twentieth century, the Court began to interpret the amendment more broadly, striking down grandfather clauses in Guinn v. United States (1915) and dismantling the white primary system in the “Texas primary cases” (1927–1953). Voting rights were further incorporated into the Constitution in the Nineteenth Amendment (voting rights for women) and the Twenty-fourth Amendment (prohibiting poll taxes in federal elections). The Voting Rights Act of 1965 provided federal oversight of elections in discriminatory jurisdictions, banned literacy tests and similar discriminatory devices, and created legal remedies for people affected by voting discrimination. The Court also found poll taxes in state election unconstitutional under the Fourteenth Amendment in Harper v. Virginia State Board of Elections Today in our History – March 30, 1870 – the 15th amendment was certified as duly ratified and part of the U.S. Constitution.Following its ratification by the requisite three-fourths of the states, the 15th Amendment, granting African American men the right to vote, is formally adopted into the U.S. Constitution.Passed by Congress the year before, the amendment reads, “the right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” One day after it was adopted, Thomas Peterson-Mundy of Perth Amboy, New Jersey, became the first African American to vote under the authority of the 15th Amendment.In 1867, the Republican-dominated Congress passed the First Reconstruction Act, over President Andrew Johnson’s veto, dividing the South into five military districts and outlining how new governments based on universal manhood suffrage were to be established. With the adoption of the 15th Amendment in 1870, a politically mobilized African American community joined with white allies in the Southern states to elect the Republican Party to power, which brought about radical changes across the South. By late 1870, all the former Confederate states had been readmitted to the Union, and most were controlled by the Republican Party, thanks to the support of African American voters.In the same year, Hiram Rhodes Revels, a Republican from Natchez, Mississippi, became the first African American ever to sit in Congress. Although African American Republicans never obtained political office in proportion to their overwhelming electoral majority, Revels and a dozen other African American men served in Congress during Reconstruction, more than 600 served in state legislatures, and many more held local offices.However, in the late 1870s, the Southern Republican Party vanished with the end of Reconstruction, and Southern state governments effectively nullified the 14th and 15th Amendments, stripping Southern African Americans of the right to vote. It would be nearly a century before the nation would again attempt to establish equal rights for African Americans in the South. Research more about this great American Champion event and share it with your babies. Make it a champion day!

GM – FBF – Today’s American Champion event is about the founding in 1865, Bowie State University is Maryland’s oldest historically black university, and one of the ten oldest African American institutions of higher education in the United States. It is also one of eleven senior colleges and universities in the University of Maryland system. The institution is located on a scenic wooded tract adjacent to the city of Bowie, Maryland, about mid-way between Washington, D.C. and Annapolis, the state capital, and about 25 miles south of Baltimore.Today in our History – March 29, 1968 – Students seized building at Bowie State College.Founded Bowie State University traces its history back to a school opened in Baltimore in January of 1865 by the Baltimore Association for the Moral and Educational Improvement of Colored People. The first classes were held in the African Baptist Church of Baltimore. In 1868, with assistance from the Freedmen’s Bureau, the school relocated to a building purchased from the Society of Friends at Courtland and Saratoga Streets. The institution re-organized solely as a normal school to train black teachers in 1893.In 1908 the school requested permanent status and funding as an “institution for the training of Negro teachers.” The state legislature approved this request, and authorized the Board of Education to assume control of the school, designating it as Normal School #3, and relocating it to its current location in Prince George’s County.In 1914 the school was renamed the Maryland Normal and Industrial School at Bowie. The original two-year teacher preparation program was eventually expanded to a three-year course of study, and finally to a four-year degree in 1935, when the school was again renamed as the Maryland State Teachers College at Bowie. A liberal arts program was started in 1963, and the school, now known as Bowie State College, was authorized to grant its first graduate degree in 1970. In 1988 the school became Bowie State University, and granted its first doctoral degrees in 2005.As of 2008, Bowie State University had an enrollment 5,483 with a student to teacher ratio of 17:1. There are 219 full time faculty members. Approximately one-quarter of the students live in on-campus housing, and the student body includes students from more than fifty countries. Bowie State University offers twenty undergraduate majors, twenty master’s programs, and two doctoral programs, and has been recognized for the strength of its mathematics, science, and engineering programs by the National Science Foundation.Students protest in Annapolis about poor conditions at Bowie State, resulting in the arrest of 228 students.Their request to meet with Maryland Governor Spiro Agnew was refused, although he later met with student government leaders after a week of protests on campus. Research more about this great American Champion event and share it with your babies. Make it a champion day!

GM – FBF – Today’s American Champion event took place to honor, the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the work that he had done while here on earth. Sports fans may remember and most people who are not sports fans never knew about this huge event.Today in our History – March 28, 1970 – The East-West Major League Baseball Classic took place at 2 p.m. before 31,694 fans at Dodger Stadium, including Hall of Famer Jackie Robinson, on a sunny and warm Saturday afternoon.it was announced that an East-West all-star exhibition game was scheduled for March 28, 1970, at Dodger Stadium, the proceeds going toward the programs of the SCLC and the Dr. Martin Luther King Memorial Center being established in Atlanta.The game, which pitted players from the Eastern Divisions of both leagues against players from the two Western Divisions, featured two players from each of the 24 major league clubs.The starting lineups were selected by members of the Los Angeles-Anaheim chapter of the Baseball Writers’ Association of America and the Southern California Sportscasters Association.Inside in the game program, Baseball Commissioner Bowie Kuhn, in an open letter to SCLC President Rev. Ralph Abernathy, wrote, in part, “It seems only right that Baseball should pause today to pay tribute to one of the great disciples of integration and brotherhood, a recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.“As Commissioner of Baseball, and as an American, I am proud to give my blessing to this classic which demonstrates that Baseball is democracy at work.”Before the game, a taped recording of part of Dr. King’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech was played, pitcher Jim “Mudcat” Grant of the Athletics sang a soulful version of the National Anthem from center field, and Coretta Scott King, widow of Dr. King, threw out the first ball to Reds Hall of Fame catcher Johnny Bench.The crowd was addressed by Rev. H.H. Brookins, president of the SCLC West; Rev. Abernathy, Dr. King’s successor as SCLC president; and Baseball Commissioner Kuhn.A pair of Hall of Famers served as the day’s managers, with Joe DiMaggio, the great Yankees center fielder, skippering the East squad, assisted by coaches Billy Martin, Satchel Paige, Stan Musial and John McNamara. Roy Campanella, the Brooklyn Dodgers catcher paralyzed in a 1958 automobile accident, managed the West stars, with Sandy Koufax, Don Drysdale, Don Newcombe and Elston Howard serving as his coaches.Tom Seaver of the Mets, the reigning National League Cy Young Award winner, picked up the win, starting for the East and tossing three scoreless innings in a 5-1 victory. Working behind home plate was Emmett Ashford, big league baseball’s first African-American umpire.Research more about this American Champion event and share it with your babies. Make it a champion day!

GM – FBF – Today’s American Champion was a civil rights activist, social worker, race relations specialist, and the first female African American state legislator elected in the United States, based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.Born in Maryland and raised in Boston, she started her professional career as a public school teacher in Boston.She would then go onto work for the Young Women’s Christian Association, and then with the American Friends Service Committee. In 1935, she became assistant to the director of Philadelphia’s Works Progress Administration and also began politically organizing for the Democratic National Committee. In 1938, she was elected to the Pennsylvania state legislature. She served for a year as a state representative in which she introduced nine bills and three amendments on issues ranging from affordable housing projects to fair employment legislation.During the Roosevelt administration, she was appointed to the Office of Civilian Defense on October 20, 1941, and worked as a race relations advisor. In 1944, she broke away from the Democratic Party and publicly supported the Republican presidential candidate. In her later years, she turned to global issues and helped found the United Nations Council of Philadelphia, later known as the World Affairs CouncilToday in our History – March 27, 1965 – Crystal Bird Fauset (June 27, 1893 – March 27, 1965) dies.Crystal Bird Fauset, the first African-American female state legislators in the United States, was born on June 27, 1894 in Princess Anne, Maryland. She grew up in Boston, Massachusetts but spent most of her adult and political life in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Between 1914 and 1918 Fauset worked as a public school teacher in Philadelphia. In 1918 she began working as a field secretary for African American girls in the Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA), a job she held until 1926. In 1925 the Interracial Section of the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC or Quakers) was formed and Fauset joined the organization in 1926, wanting, as she said, to work on her interest “in having people of other racial groups understand the humanness of the Negro wherever he is found.” Between September 1927 and September 1928 she made 210 appearances before more than 40,000 people for the AFSC. During the late 1920’s Fauset studied at Teacher’s College, Columbia University, graduating in 1931.In 1932 Fauset founded the Colored Women’s Activities Club for the Democratic National Committee where she helped African American women register to vote. In response to her efforts the Roosevelt Administration appointed her Director of the Women and Professional Project in the Works Progress Administration (WPA) in Philadelphia. In 1935 she also served on the Federal Housing Advisory Board. That same year Crystal Bird married sociologist and political thinker Arthur Fauset and they became a dynamic political couple. Fauset then began to work on the Joint Committee on Race Relations of the Arch and Race Streets (Quaker) Yearly Meetings where she helped establish the famous Swarthmore College Institute of Race Relations which documented employment and housing discrimination against Pennsylvania African Americans.In 1938 Fauset was elected to the Pennsylvania State Legislature, representing the 18th District of Philadelphia, which was 66% white at that time. As a state representative Fauset introduced nine bills and three amendments on issues concerning improvements in public health, housing for the poor, public relief, and supporting women’s rights in the workplace.In 1941 Fauset’s friendship with First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt helped her secure a position as assistant director and race relations director of the Office of Civil Defense, becoming part of President Roosevelt’s “Black Cabinet” and promoting civil defense planning in black communities, recruitment of blacks in the military, and dealing with complaints about racial discrimination.In 1944, disappointed by the Democratic Party’s failure to advance civil rights, Fauset switched to the Republican Party and later became a member of the Republican National Committee’s division on Negro Affairs.After World War II Fauset turned her attentions to a more global forum, helping to found the United Nations Council of Philadelphia, which later became the World Affairs Council. Throughout the 1950s she travelled to Africa, India, and the Middle East to meet and support independence leaders. Fauset died on March 27, 1965 in Philadelphia. Research more about this great American Champion and share it with your babies. Make it a champion day!

GM – FBF – Today’s American Champion was, a Black inventor, who was awarded a patent for the Fire Extinguisher on March 26, 1872. The patent refers to pipe and valves and not the wall hanging type of extinguisher that is normally displayed. His fire extinguisher would be attached to a reservoir of stored water and used to spray burning fires.Today in our History – March 26, 1872 – THOMAS JEFFERSON MARTIN Patents Improved Fire Extinguisher. Black inventors were plentiful in the 19th Century, often creating innovative tools and techniques despite a known struggle to be recognized for their hard work. In the annals of Black History, the name Thomas J. Martin may not be immediately familiar, but his work as an inventor is quite notable. In 1872, Martin would make an improvement upon an earlier model of the fire extinguisher and was granted a patent (pictured) for his version of the fire-fighting tool on this day.Not much is known about Martin, but what is known is that he lived in the town of Dowagiac in the state of Michigan. According to research compiled by BlackInventions.org, Martin’s fire extinguisher would wisely be attached to a reservoir of stored water and used to spray burning fires.Below is a description of the invention from the awarded patent:The nature of invention relates to the construction, arrangement and combination of suitable pipes and valves for conducting water from suitable reservoirs to buildings by means of stationary engines, for the purpose of preventing or extinguishing fires in dwellings, mills, factories, towns and cities and may also be used for warning, ventilating and washing buildings and for washing pavements and sprinkling streets.Although British Captain George William Manby is credited with creating the modern style of the fire extinguisher in 1818, Martin’s improved version is often regarded as the first practical use of the machinery by some historians.Thomas Jefferson Martin, was a merchant and lived on a farm near Harpersville, Alabama. He was born May 29, 1842, near his place of residence. He had passed the greater part of his life as a merchant in Harpersville, retiring to his farm in 1897. He was the son of John Martin and Sarah (Thweat) Martin, both natives of South Carolina, where they married and soon afterward, 1820, located in Shelby County, Alabama They reared a family of eleven children, five of whom were surviving in 1904. The father was a well-to-do farmer, a Democrat, and he and his wife belonged to the Baptist church. He died in 1874, she in 1877.Thomas J. Martin was reared to farm life and given a fair common school education. He took an honorable part in the Civil war. He enlisted as a private in Company I, of the Eighteenth Alabama infantry. He was wounded at the battle of Shiloh and incapacitated for further service.He began a mercantile business in 1866 at Harpersville, which he continued with success until 1897. He at one time dealt largely in real estate and was one of the largest landowners in the county.He married, March 3, 1868, Evaline Moore Kidd. She was the daughter of Joseph W. Kidd and Caroline E. (Moore) Kidd and was born in Shelby County, Oct. 22, 1843. Her father was a son of William Kidd and Polly Henderson Kidd, while her maternal grandparents were Everett Moore and Anna Graham Moore. Both sides of the family were early comers to Alabama, the Kidds from Georgia, the Moores from North Carolina.Mr. and Mrs. Martin had five children in 1904, their names were: Thomas Algernon Martin, Sallie Graham Martin, John Renfro Martin, Joseph Webb Martin and Earl Thweat Martin. Thomas J. Martin and his family were among the best citizens of Shelby county, and merit the very high measure of esteem accorded them through all the countryside.On March 26 1872, Thomas J Martin, an African-American, was granted a patent for his version of the fire extinguisher. Martin’s invention, listed in the U. S. Patent Office in Washington, DC under patent number 125,063, was an improvement upon an earlier model of the fire extinguisher.The patent refers to pipe and valves and not the wall hanging type of extinguisher that is normally displayed.Martin’s fire extinguisher would wisely be attached to a reservoir of stored water and used to spray burning fires.Below is a description of the invention from the awarded patent:The nature of invention relates to the construction, arrangement and combination of suitable pipes and valves for conducting water from suitable reservoirs to buildings by means of stationary engines, for the purpose of preventing or extinguishing fires in dwellings, mills, factories, towns and cities and may also be used for warning, ventilating and washing buildings and for washing pavements and sprinkling streets.Although British Captain George William Manby is credited with creating the modern style of the fire extinguisher in 1818, Martin’s improved version is often regarded as the first practical use of the machinery by some historians.Research more about this great American Champion and share it with your babies. Make it a champion day!

GM – FBF – Today’s American Champion event is in honor of our ancestors who moved to Canada for safety and a better life. The history of Black Canadian voting rights is marked by contrasting shifts. Enslaved during the period 1600–1834, Black persons could not vote.Emancipated, they were entitled to the rights, freedoms and privileges enjoyed by British subjects, including the franchise; however, racial discrimination did at times impede Black Canadians’ right to vote. The rights and freedoms of Black women were further restricted by virtue of their sex. Black communities in Canada represent an array of experiences, below are some that relate to the right to vote.Today in our History – March 24, 1937 – Blacks win the right to vote in Canada.During the period of African enslavement in Canada, from the early 1600s until its abolition on 1 August 1834,Black persons were legally deemed to be chattel property (personal possessions). As such, Black persons were not considered to be “people” and therefore did not possess the rights or freedoms enjoyed by full citizens, including protections under the law and involvement in the democratic process.Black persons in Canada secured some rights and freedoms as their social status changed from enslaved persons to British subjects with the gradual abolition of enslavement, during the period 1793 to 1834 (see also Chloe Cooley and the Act to Limit Slavery).As British subjects, they were technically entitled to all of the rights, freedoms and privileges that status carried. However, because of their skin colour, Black Canadians faced racism and their civil rights and civil liberties were limited. The rights and freedoms of Black women were further restricted by virtue of their sex. Most women did not gain suffrage at the federal level until 1918 and between 1916 and 1940 at the provincial level (see Women’s Suffrage).Black men had the right to vote provided they were naturalized subjects and owned taxable property. Until 1920, most colonies or provinces required eligible voters to own property or have a taxable net worth — a practice that excluded poor people, the working class and many racialized minorities.Though Black Canadians were not prohibited by law from exercising the right to vote, public sentiment against extending the franchise to Blacks did exist, and local conventions did prevent Black persons from voting. The prejudice and discrimination they faced affected Black peoples’ decision to attend polling stations.Black residents felt strongly about the franchise and took measures to secure this right when it was encroached or threatened. In 1848, Black men in Colchester, Canada West (Ontario), attended the election of parish and township officers. Though Black residents accounted for a third of the town’s population, the white men in attendance physically blocked them from voting. Blacks in Colchester sought the legal intervention of a local judge, who ordered that their rights be restored. Their voting rights were affirmed by the local courts and the chairman of the township meeting was subsequently prosecuted and received a heavy fine.Black Canadians publicly expressed their anger at the mistreatment of the Black voters in Colchester. In an article published in Voice of the Fugitive, Black abolitionist and Provincial Freeman co-editor Samuel Ringgold Ward charged that the right to vote was the “most sacred” of all rights. He remarked that had the white men stolen all of the Black voters’ grain and cattle and left them with nothing, that violation would pale in comparison to that of taking away their “right of a British vote.”Although the Black vote represented a small fraction of the electorate in many places, it was a valuable and deciding factor in a number of elections. Black voter support was courted by white politicians, and on several occasions, Black communities used this as a means to address issues of concern. In 1849, for instance, Edwin Larwill, a politician in Canada West, brought forth several anti-Black resolutions at a Western District council meeting, including a petition to the government requesting that African American immigrants be charged a poll tax. Larwill also asked the provincial government to contemplate whether Blacks should have the right to vote. Years later, in 1857, Larwill lost his seat on the Legislative Assembly to Archibald McKellar, due in large part to Black voters strategically casting their vote for McKellar, who opposed Larwill’s anti-Black discrimination.Both Liberal and Conservative candidates vied for the Black vote during Nova Scotia’s 1843 and 1847 elections. Widely supported Reform (Liberal) leader Joseph Howe delivered speeches in the Black communities of Preston and Hammond Plains to rally their votes, for instance.He pledged to improve the difficult conditions faced by Black Nova Scotians due to racism and the hardships of settlement. Howe also vowed to address the Black community’s concerns about the government withholding land grants to Black Loyalists (see also Loyalists).When Albert Jackson was hired as the first Black mail carrier in Toronto in May 1882, his white colleagues refused to train him for the job and did not want to work alongside him. Toronto’s Black community held meetings to decide on a course of action and wrote letters to newspaper editors. James David Edgar, who was pursuing a Liberal nomination for the federal election, supported Jackson in order to obtain votes from members of the Black community. Meanwhile, Conservative Prime Minister Sir John A. Macdonald was approached by Black citizens while on the campaign trail in Toronto. They demanded that Jackson be trained and returned to his post. Jackson’s boss, Toronto postmaster Thomas Charles Patterson, was a close friend of the Prime Minister. Macdonald persuaded him to yield to the Black community’s grievance and to train Jackson. One month after he was hired, Jackson received his mail delivery route. Research more about this great American event and share it with your babies. Make it a champion day!

GM – FBF – Today’s American Champion event is in honor of our ancestors who moved to Canada for safety and a better life. The history of Black Canadian voting rights is marked by contrasting shifts. Enslaved during the period 1600–1834, Black persons could not vote.Emancipated, they were entitled to the rights, freedoms and privileges enjoyed by British subjects, including the franchise; however, racial discrimination did at times impede Black Canadians’ right to vote. The rights and freedoms of Black women were further restricted by virtue of their sex. Black communities in Canada represent an array of experiences, below are some that relate to the right to vote.Today in our History – March 24, 1937 – Blacks win the right to vote in Canada.During the period of African enslavement in Canada, from the early 1600s until its abolition on 1 August 1834,Black persons were legally deemed to be chattel property (personal possessions). As such, Black persons were not considered to be “people” and therefore did not possess the rights or freedoms enjoyed by full citizens, including protections under the law and involvement in the democratic process.Black persons in Canada secured some rights and freedoms as their social status changed from enslaved persons to British subjects with the gradual abolition of enslavement, during the period 1793 to 1834 (see also Chloe Cooley and the Act to Limit Slavery).As British subjects, they were technically entitled to all of the rights, freedoms and privileges that status carried. However, because of their skin colour, Black Canadians faced racism and their civil rights and civil liberties were limited. The rights and freedoms of Black women were further restricted by virtue of their sex. Most women did not gain suffrage at the federal level until 1918 and between 1916 and 1940 at the provincial level (see Women’s Suffrage).Black men had the right to vote provided they were naturalized subjects and owned taxable property. Until 1920, most colonies or provinces required eligible voters to own property or have a taxable net worth — a practice that excluded poor people, the working class and many racialized minorities.Though Black Canadians were not prohibited by law from exercising the right to vote, public sentiment against extending the franchise to Blacks did exist, and local conventions did prevent Black persons from voting. The prejudice and discrimination they faced affected Black peoples’ decision to attend polling stations.Black residents felt strongly about the franchise and took measures to secure this right when it was encroached or threatened. In 1848, Black men in Colchester, Canada West (Ontario), attended the election of parish and township officers. Though Black residents accounted for a third of the town’s population, the white men in attendance physically blocked them from voting. Blacks in Colchester sought the legal intervention of a local judge, who ordered that their rights be restored. Their voting rights were affirmed by the local courts and the chairman of the township meeting was subsequently prosecuted and received a heavy fine.Black Canadians publicly expressed their anger at the mistreatment of the Black voters in Colchester. In an article published in Voice of the Fugitive, Black abolitionist and Provincial Freeman co-editor Samuel Ringgold Ward charged that the right to vote was the “most sacred” of all rights. He remarked that had the white men stolen all of the Black voters’ grain and cattle and left them with nothing, that violation would pale in comparison to that of taking away their “right of a British vote.”Although the Black vote represented a small fraction of the electorate in many places, it was a valuable and deciding factor in a number of elections. Black voter support was courted by white politicians, and on several occasions, Black communities used this as a means to address issues of concern. In 1849, for instance, Edwin Larwill, a politician in Canada West, brought forth several anti-Black resolutions at a Western District council meeting, including a petition to the government requesting that African American immigrants be charged a poll tax. Larwill also asked the provincial government to contemplate whether Blacks should have the right to vote. Years later, in 1857, Larwill lost his seat on the Legislative Assembly to Archibald McKellar, due in large part to Black voters strategically casting their vote for McKellar, who opposed Larwill’s anti-Black discrimination.Both Liberal and Conservative candidates vied for the Black vote during Nova Scotia’s 1843 and 1847 elections. Widely supported Reform (Liberal) leader Joseph Howe delivered speeches in the Black communities of Preston and Hammond Plains to rally their votes, for instance.He pledged to improve the difficult conditions faced by Black Nova Scotians due to racism and the hardships of settlement. Howe also vowed to address the Black community’s concerns about the government withholding land grants to Black Loyalists (see also Loyalists).When Albert Jackson was hired as the first Black mail carrier in Toronto in May 1882, his white colleagues refused to train him for the job and did not want to work alongside him. Toronto’s Black community held meetings to decide on a course of action and wrote letters to newspaper editors. James David Edgar, who was pursuing a Liberal nomination for the federal election, supported Jackson in order to obtain votes from members of the Black community. Meanwhile, Conservative Prime Minister Sir John A. Macdonald was approached by Black citizens while on the campaign trail in Toronto. They demanded that Jackson be trained and returned to his post. Jackson’s boss, Toronto postmaster Thomas Charles Patterson, was a close friend of the Prime Minister. Macdonald persuaded him to yield to the Black community’s grievance and to train Jackson. One month after he was hired, Jackson received his mail delivery route. Research more about this great American event and share it with your babies. Make it a champion day!

GM – FBF – Today’s American Champion was an American singer, dancer, actor, vaudevillian and comedian whom critic Randy Blaser called “the greatest entertainer ever to grace a stage in these United States.” At age three, Davis began his career in vaudeville with his father Sammy Davis Sr. and the Will Mastin Trio, which toured nationally, and his film career began in 1933. After military service, Davis returned to the trio and became an overnight sensation following a nightclub performance at Ciro’s (in West Hollywood) after the 1951 Academy Awards.With the trio, he became a recording artist. In 1954, at the age of 29, he lost his left eye in a car accident. Several years later, he converted to Judaism, finding commonalities between the oppression experienced by African-American and Jewish communities. After a starring role on Broadway in Mr. Wonderful with Chita Rivera (1956), he returned to the stage in 1964 in a musical adaptation of Clifford Odets’ Golden Boy opposite Paula Wayne. Davis was nominated for a Tony Award for his performance and the show was said to have featured the first interracial kiss on Broadway. In 1960, he appeared in the Rat Pack film Ocean’s 11.In 1966, he had his own TV variety show, titled The Sammy Davis Jr. Show. While Davis’s career slowed in the late 1960s, his biggest hit, “The Candy Man”, reached the top of the Billboard Hot 100 in June 1972, and he became a star in Las Vegas, earning him the nickname “Mister Show Business”.Davis’s popularity helped break the race barrier of the segregated entertainment industry. He did however have a complex relationship with the black community and drew criticism after publicly supporting President Richard Nixon in 1972.One day on a golf course with Jack Benny, he was asked what his handicap was. “Handicap?” he asked. “Talk about handicap. I’m a one-eyed Negro who’s Jewish.” This was to become a signature comment, recounted in his autobiography and in many articles. After reuniting with Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin in 1987, Davis toured with them and Liza Minnelli internationally, before his death in 1990. He died in debt to the Internal Revenue Service, and his estate was the subject of legal battles after the death of his wife. Davis was awarded the Spingarn Medal by the NAACP and was nominated for a Golden Globe Award and an Emmy Award for his television performances. He was a recipient of the Kennedy Center Honors in 1987, and in 2001, he was posthumously awarded the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.Today in our History – March 23, 1951- the Will Mastin Trio appeared at Ciro’s as the opening act for headliner Janis Paige. They were to perform for only 20 minutes, but the reaction from the celebrity-filled crowd was so enthusiastic, especially when Davis launched into his impressions, that they performed for nearly an hour, and Paige insisted the order of the show be flipped. Davis began to achieve success on his own and was singled out for praise by critics, releasing several albums. Davis’ talent was developed at a young age. At the age of three, he started dancing in vaudeville and eventually joined forces with his father and Will Mastin as the Will Mastin Trio. In 1933, he made his film debut in “Rufus Jones for President.” Thanks to the calculated efforts of his father and “Uncle” Will Mastin, Davis was shielded from the harsh realities of racism. When he was drafted into the United States Army during World War II, Davis encountered blatant racial discrimination for the first time.“Overnight the world looked different,” Davis said, as noted by The Oral Cancer Foundation. “It wasn’t one color anymore. I could see the protection I’d gotten all my life from my father and Will. I appreciated their loving hope that I’d never need to know about prejudice and hate, but they were wrong.”Eventually, he was transferred to an entertainment regiment, which lessen the mistreatment he had received up until that point.“My talent was the weapon, the power, the way for me to fight,” he said. “It was the one way I might hope to affect a man’s thinking,”After he was discharged from the military, he rejoined the Will Mastin Trio. By the 1950s, the group was headlining major acts throughout the nation. However, in 1954, he was involved in a car accident in which he lost his eye. During his recovery, he spoke with a rabbi and learned of many similarities between the struggles endured by Jewish people and Black Americans. After the incident, he converted to Judaism and frequently joked that he was the only one-eyed Jewish Black man in entertainment.Davis’s first two albums, “Starring Sammy Davis, Jr.,” “and Sammy Davis, Jr. Sings Just for Lovers,” both received much critical and commercial acclaim. He appeared in various television shows and became a founding member of the Rat Pack along with Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin, which allotted him a reliable income and a high profile.Despite his success, he was a frequent target of racism in his personal and professional lives. He eventually refused to perform at venues that practiced racial segregation, and was forced to hire bodyguards after he married his second wife. During the 1960s, he became active in the Civil Rights Movement and participated in the 1963 March on Washington.Davis continued his groundbreaking career throughout the 1970s and 80s, with various television appearances and chart-topping hits. However, his health began to decline and in 1989, a tumor was discovered in his throat. In April 1990, a television special was filmed in Davis’ honor, and a few weeks later, he passed away from throat cancer. In memoriam, the lights on the Las Vegas Strip were darkened for 10 minutes; only the deaths of President John F. Kennedy and of Martin Luther King, Jr., were previously granted the same honor.Davis was granted many accolades throughout his life. He was nominated for a Golden Globe Award and an Emmy Award. He was the recipient of the Kennedy Center Honors and the Spingarn Medal by the NAACP. In 2001, he was posthumously awarded the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.Various biographies and autobiograhies were released during his life and after. In 1965, he published his first autobiography “Yes I Can: The Story of Sammy Davis, Jr.,” and “Why Me?” in 1980. A third autobiography, “Sammy,” was released posthumously in 2000, and the Wil Haygood biography, “In Black and White: The Life of Sammy Davis, Jr.,” was published in 2003.In August 1989, Davis began to develop symptoms: a tickle in his throat and an inability to taste food. Doctors found a cancerous tumor in Davis’s throat. He had often smoked four packs of cigarettes a day as an adult. When told that surgery (laryngectomy) offered him the best chance of survival, Davis replied he would rather keep his voice than have a part of his throat removed; he was initially treated with a combination of chemotherapy and radiation. His larynx was later removed when his cancer recurred. He was released from the hospital on March 13, 1990. Davis died of complications from throat cancer two months later at his home in Beverly Hills, California, on May 16, 1990, at age 64. He was buried at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California. On May 18, 1990, two days after his death, the neon lights of the Las Vegas Strip were darkened for 10 minutes as a tribute. Research more about this great American Champion and share it with your babies. Make it a champion day!

GM – FBF – Today’s American Champion event is the Equal Rights Amendment passed by Congress. It is a proposed amendment to the United States Constitution designed to guarantee equal legal rights for all American citizens regardless of sex. It seeks to end the legal distinctions between men and women in matters of divorce, property, employment, and other matters. The first version of an ERA was written by Alice Paul and Crystal Eastman and introduced in Congress in December 1923 In the early history of the Equal Rights Amendment, middle-class women were largely supportive, while those speaking for the working class were often opposed, pointing out that employed women needed special protections regarding working conditions and employment hours. With the rise of the women’s movement in the United States during the 1960s, the ERA garnered increasing support, and, after being reintroduced by Representative Martha Griffiths in 1971,it was approved by the U.S. House of Representatives on October 12, 1971, and by the U.S. Senate on March 22, 1972, thus submitting the ERA to the state legislatures for ratification, as provided for in Article V of the U.S. Constitution.Congress had originally set a ratification deadline of March 22, 1979, for the state legislatures to consider the ERA. Through 1977, the amendment received 35 of the necessary 38 state ratifications.[note 2] With wide, bipartisan support (including that of both major political parties, both houses of Congress, and presidents Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, and Jimmy Carter) the ERA seemed destined for ratification until Phyllis Schlafly mobilized conservative women in opposition. These women argued that the ERA would disadvantage housewives, cause women to be drafted into the military and to lose protections such as alimony, and eliminate the tendency for mothers to obtain custody over their children in divorce cases. Many labor feminists also opposed the ERA on the basis that it would eliminate protections for women in labor law, though over time more and more unions and labor feminist leaders turned toward supporting it.Five state legislatures (Idaho, Kentucky, Nebraska, Tennessee, and South Dakota) voted to revoke their ERA ratifications. The first four rescinded before the original March 22, 1979, ratification deadline, while the South Dakota legislature did so by voting to sunset its ratification as of that original deadline. However, it remains an unresolved legal question as to whether a state can revoke its ratification of a federal constitutional amendment.In 1978, Congress passed (by simple majorities in each house), and President Carter signed, a joint resolution with the intent of extending the ratification deadline to June 30, 1982. Because no additional state legislatures ratified the ERA between March 22, 1979, and June 30, 1982, the validity of that disputed extension was rendered academic.Since 1978, attempts have been made in Congress to extend or remove the deadline.In the 2010s, due in part to fourth-wave feminism and the Me Too movement, interest in getting the ERA adopted was revived.[8][9] In 2017, Nevada became the first state to ratify the ERA after the expiration of both deadlines,[10] and Illinois followed in 2018.[11] In 2020, Virginia’s General Assembly passed a ratification resolution for the ERA,[12][13] claiming to bring the number of ratifications to 38. However, experts and advocates have acknowledged legal uncertainty about the consequences of the Virginian ratification, due to expired deadlines and five states’ revocations.[Today in our History – March 22, 1972 – On March 22, 1972, the Equal Rights Amendment is passed by the U.S. Senate and sent to the states for ratification.First proposed by the National Woman’s political party in 1923, the Equal Rights Amendment was to provide for the legal equality of the sexes and prohibit discrimination on the basis of sex.More than four decades later, the revival of feminism in the late 1960s spurred its introduction into Congress. Under the leadership of U.S. Representative Bella Abzug of New York and feminists Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem, it won the requisite two-thirds vote from the U.S. House of Representatives in October 1971. In March 1972, it was approved by the U.S. Senate and sent to the states.Hawaii was the first state to ratify what would have been the 27th Amendment, followed by some 30 other states within a year. However, during the mid-1970s, a conservative backlash against feminism eroded support for the Equal Rights Amendment, which ultimately failed to achieve ratification by the a requisite 38, or three-fourths, of the states.Because of the rejection of the Equal Rights Amendment, sexual equality, with the notable exception of when it pertains to the right to vote, is not protected by the U.S. Constitution. However, in the late 20th century, the federal government and all states have passed considerable legislation protecting the legal rights of women. The Equal Rights Amendment, in its most recently proposed form, reads, “Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any State on account of sex.” Research more about this great American Champion event and share it with your babies. Make it a champion day!