Muskogee African American History & Art

GUARANTEE GOLD BOND LOAN AND SAVINGS CO. Muskogee Indian Territory 1905 - Newspapers.com Clipping found in The Topeka Plaindealer in Topeka, Kansas on Feb 10, 1905. GUARANTEE GOLD BOND LOAN AND SAVINGS CO. Muskogee Indian Territory 1905: Institution was organized by DR. W. H. SIMS, PHYSICIAN & SURGEON The only Afro-American optician south and west of the Mississippi River.

Preserving & Supporting Cities' Talent and Heritage View Schedule

It is International Peace Keeper's Day and today we salute Captain (ret'd) Clarence "Gus" Este.
Korean War and 33 Year military service veteran Clarence “ Gus” Este was born in Montreal, Quebec in 1931. He is the oldest child with two brothers and two sisters. His father worked as a porter on Canadian Pacific Railways. After attending school and achieving grade 11, Mr. Este decided to find employment onboard ships as a skipper.

In 1950, Mr. Este joined the Canadian Army Special Force, obtaining medical assistant trades with training in Camp Borden. He then went to Seattle, Washington and received advanced training in the medical field and gave service during the Korean War effort as a medical assistant.

He was discharged from the service and worked at Canada Post for three years. Mr. Este later decided to re-join the service in postal corps and rose from the rank of Private to Master Warrant Officer then commissioned to Captain in 1974. He participated in tours of to Germany, Egypt (3) and Cyprus.

In 1977, as a major on Chief Logistics Office Staff, he was responsible for all Postal Operations for the group of United Nations serving in the Middle East. Mr. Este also participated in tours to Egypt and Germany. In 1987, he retired with recognition of 33 years of military service.

Since retiring in 1987, he has been active in the community, volunteering his time with numerous organizations such as the Ontario Lung Association, the Nepean Public Library board, the Mayor of Nepean’s Task Force on Visible Minorities, the Korea Veterans Association of Canada, and the Royal Canadian Legion.

In 2013, the City of Ottawa named Barrhaven Park 'Gus Este Park' in honour of a local Barrhaven veteran, to commemorate the Year of the Korean War Veteran and to honour a local hero and life-long community member.

At the ceremony, eldest child Dr. David Este, University of Calgary Faculty of Social Work professor, said the dedication of a park in his father’s name was a major honour for him and the family.

“Through his contributions to Canadian society with a career in the military and subsequently through an array of volunteer activities, he has served as a positive role model not only for my three siblings and me but countless others from different racial and cultural backgrounds,” he said. “My father is driven by an important and fundamental value and that’s ensuring that all Canadians have opportunities to fully use their knowledge and abilities and that all of us are valued and recognized in this society.”

As a part of the commemorative naming, Veterans Affairs Canada agreed to have the logo for the 60th Anniversary of the Korean War included on the park's sign. This sign was officially unveiled in July 2013. The park is located at 26 Brookstone Street in Barrhaven.

Deputy Mayor Steve Desroche said, “ Mr. Este is a model of lifetime service to Canada and his community and “This commemorative park naming will serve to honour one of Barrhaven’s most active, decorated and well-known community members as well as recognize Canada’s contribution in the Korean War.”

Gus and his wife Olive have been married for 68 years and are parents four children David, Denise, Dwight and Deborah.

It is International Peace Keepers day and today we salute “Gus Este”

Fayetteville State University Names Cox as Dean of College of Humanities and Social Sciences Marcus S. Cox, Ph.D., has been named Dean of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences at Fayetteville State University (FSU), effective August 1, 2022. He assumes the deanship from Interim Dean Sharon E. Williams, Ph.D., who has served in that capacity since October 2020. Cox comes to FSU fro

Female Student Who Graduated 2nd Best in Her Engineering Class Lands Full Scholarship To Pursue PhD A young, brilliant and beautiful Ghanian lady identified as Hillary Nana Yaa Owusu took to her social media page to share another feat of hers; winning a

Netflix Sets Sundance Award-Winning Doc ‘Descendant’ for October Release (EXCLUSIVE) Following news that the award-winning documentary “Descendant” will screen as an official selection at the 60th New York Film Festival, Variety can exclusively announce that the film wi…

DOJ charges current, former police officers in connection with raid that killed Breonna Taylor The Justice Department has filed civil rights violations charges in connection with a 2020 raid that killed Breonna Taylor.

Judge: Tulsa Race Massacre victims' descendants can't sue

An Oklahoma judge said six descendants of victims of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre cannot sue for reparations
ByKEN MILLER Associated Press
August 04, 2022, 2:09 PM

Judge: Tulsa Race Massacre victims' descendants can't sue An Oklahoma judge said six descendants of victims of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre cannot sue for reparations

Michael E. Langley Named Marine Corps' 1st Black 4-Star General In Its 246-Year History

Thursday, August 4th 2022, 4:39 am
By: CBS News

Michael E. Langley Named Marine Corps' 1st Black 4-Star General In Its 246-Year History U.S. Marine Corps Lt. Gen. Michael E. Langley has been confirmed as a general, making history as the first Black four-star Marine general in 246 years, the Marine Corps announced this week.

Suzanne Thomas is picking up a softer canvas these days. The fine linens, tulles and laces she colors are as delicate as her hand-embroidered designs.

“I am still a painter, but I wanted to be a fashion designer when I was a kid. So working with fabric and needles and color — it just makes sense that I would start doing this [embroidery]. I’ve always liked sheer fabric and lace; I’m such a girl!” Thomas said, with a laugh.

Thomas started creating layered embroidery artwork about five years ago. She was seeking a medium less taxing than painting, one that wouldn’t require her to report to a studio, and she found embroidery to be soothing, almost meditative. After a long day of teaching students art history, painting and drawing at Rose State, she loves cuddling up on the couch with a handful of fabrics and threads.
Photo by Lexi Hoebing

Though her canvas is soft, the resulting artwork celebrates strong black women. One dons a ballgown. One plays guitar. Another, a cowgirl, rides a horse. Thomas is inspired by vintage photos of black Hollywood actresses like Eartha Kitt, Lena Horne and Dorothy Dandridge. She also references Jet Magazine’s Beauty of the Week.

“They’re all adventurous, beautiful and glamorous,” Thomas said. “I’ve always found black women the most beautiful women in the world. In my paintings, I would paint a lot with gold. I try to put gold undertones in brown skin because it’s precious. It is fine quality.”

Through a hefty dose of teaching and volunteer work, Thomas strives to make art inclusive and accessible to all. As president of Inclusion in Art, she works to create space and opportunities for artists of color in Oklahoma.
Photo by Lexi Hoebing

“I want to see everybody,” Thomas said, adding that engaging with the artist community is the most rewarding part of being an artist.

“Even when you don’t agree on everything — whether it’s political or social or whatever — talking about art seems to be one thing we can all come together on,” she said. “Listening to their ideas and being inspired by what you see them do as artists, that’s what’s exciting; because art is not made in a vacuum.

“I tell my students that there’s nothing new under the sun. What you do with something is what makes it unique and different — how you say it, how you approach it.”

Her unique approach to embroidery can be viewed in the Oklahoma Visual Arts Coalition and Inclusion in Art Connect galleries, as well as on Instagram .

Local Artist Spotlight: Suzanne Thomas - 405 Magazine Suzanne Thomas is picking up a softer canvas these days. The fine linens, tulles and laces she colors are as delicate as her designs.

The One-Eyed African Queen Who Defeated the Roman Empire

Cocky male monarchs underestimated Queen Amanirenas for her gender, her race, and her disability. Each time, they did so at their own peri

The One-Eyed African Queen Who Defeated the Roman Empire Cocky male monarchs underestimated Queen Amanirenas for her gender, her race, and her disability. Each time, they did so at their own peril.

The Tuskegee Experiment: The Granddaughter of One of the Syphilis Study Victims Explains How His Story Has Implications That Are Still Felt Today
Willie Harris was one of 623 men unknowingly subjected to human experimentation. His granddaughter now wants to use this travesty to better educate the Black community about overall health and wellness.

The Tuskegee Experiment: The Granddaughter of One of the Syphilis Study Victims Wants His Story To Have A More Positive Ending Her hope is to use this travesty to better educate the Black community about overall health and wellness.

She Just Became NYC School Chancellor, The First Black Woman To Lead The Nation's Largest School System Black women get the job done! Meisha Ross Porter will replace New York City Schools Chancellor, Richard Carranza, and become the first Black woman to lead the nation's largest school system, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced Friday. Currently, Porter is the executive superintendent of the Bronx. The 47...

The City of Muskogee is accepting applications for the position of Director of Economic and Community Development. For more information go to www.muskogeeonline.org/jobs.

OKC artist pairs with local roaster to sell coffee in Walmart Local artist Ebony Iman Dallas collaborates with Leap Coffee Roasters on Mystic Moments as part of the artist of the year program to support local art

Ebony Mitchell wins Miss Arkansas 2022 Miss Dogwood Ebony Mitchell from Harrison won Miss Arkansas 2022 on Saturday, June 18. She will represent Arkansas at Miss America in Connecticut.

In this Aug. 26, 2020 file photo, the former home of Emmett and Mamie Till at 6427 S St. Lawrence Avenue is pictured in the West Woodlawn neighborhood of Chicago. (Anthony Vazquez / Chicago Sun-Times via AP, File)In this Aug. 26, 2020 file photo, the former home of Emmett and Mamie Till at 6427 S St. Lawrence Avenue is pictured in the West Woodlawn neighborhood of Chicago. (Anthony Vazquez / Chicago Sun-Times via AP, File)

CHICAGO (AP) — Emmett Till left his mother’s house on Chicago’s South Side in 1955 to visit relatives in Mississippi, where the Black teenager was abducted and brutally slain for reportedly whistling at a white woman.

A cultural preservation organization announced Tuesday that the house will receive a share of $3 million in grants being distributed to 33 sites and organizations nationwide that are important pieces of African American history.

Some of the grant money from the African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund will go to rehabilitate buildings, such as a bank in Mississippi founded by a man described by Booker T. Washington as the “most influential business man in the United States,” the first Black masonic lodge in North Carolina, and a school in rural Oklahoma for the children of Black farm workers and laborers.

The money will also help restore the Virginia home where a tennis coach helped turn Black athletes such as Arthur Ashe and Althea Gibson into champions, rehabilitate the Blue Bird Inn in Detroit that is considered the birthplace of bebop jazz, and protect and preserve African American cemeteries in Pennsylvania and a tiny island off the coast of South Carolina.

Brent Leggs, executive director of the organization that is in its fifth year of awarding the grants, said the effort is intended to fill “some gaps in the nation’s understanding of the civil rights movement.”

Till’s brutal slaying helped galvanize the civil rights movement. The Chicago home where Mamie Till Mobley and her son lived will receive funding for a project director to oversee restoration efforts, including renovating the second floor to what it looked like when the Tills lived there.

“This house is a sacred treasure from our perspective and our goal is to restore it and reinvent it as an international heritage pilgrimage destination,” said Naomi Davis, executive director of Blacks in Green, a local nonprofit group that bought the house in 2020. She said the plan is to time the 2025 opening with that of the Obama Presidential Library a few miles away.

Leggs said it is particularly important to do something that shines a light on Mamie Till Mobley. After her 14-year-old son’s lynching, Till Mobley insisted that his body be displayed in an open casket as it looked when it was pulled from a river, to show the world what racism looked like.

It was a display that influenced thousands of mourners who filed by the casket and the millions more who saw the photographs in Jet Magazine — one of whom was Rosa Parks whose refusal to give up her seat on a Montgomery, Alabama, bus to a white man about three months later remains one of the pivotal acts of defiance in American history.

“It was a catalytic moment in the civil rights movement and through this we lift and honor Black women in civil rights,” Leggs said.

And the news follows a recent revelation about the discovery of an unserved arrest warrant of the woman whose accusation put in motion the chain of events that led to the teen’s lynching.

The house and the story of the casket highlight the risks that the remnants of such history can vanish if not protected. As recently as 2019 when it was sold to a developer, the red brick Victorian house built more than a century earlier was falling into disrepair before it was granted landmark status by the city of Chicago. And the glass-topped casket that held Till’s remains was only donated to the Smithsonian Institution because it was discovered in 2009 rusting in a shed at a suburban Chicago cemetery where it was discarded after the teen’s body was exhumed years earlier.

That discovery of the casket, which only happened because of a scandal at the cemetery, underscores how easily significant pieces of history can simply vanish, said Annie Wright, whose late husband, Simeon, was sleeping with his cousin, Emmett, the night he was abducted.

“We got to remember what happened and if we don’t tell it, if people don’t see (the house) they’ll forget and we don’t want to forget tragedy in these United States,” said Wright, 76

Emmett Till’s House, African American Historical Sites to Get Landmarks Funds A cultural preservation organization announced Tuesday that the house will receive a share of $3 million in grants being distributed to 33 sites and organizations nationwide that are important pieces of African American history.

Please join me in wishing a Happy 100th Birthday to Mrs. Rachel Robinson, wife of my hero and friend, the late, great Jackie Robinson. I spoke with Mrs. Robinson today. We had prayer together. She is one of the greatest human beings in history. She used suffering, sacrifice and discipline for the greater good at her personal expense. 💯

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NBCU Academy Scholarship IAIA has been selected by NBC Universal News Group to be a part of the initial cohort of institutions to participate in the launch of NBCU Academy.

📌 Cherokee Nation is hosting a series of in-person events to help parents and students apply for the tribe's $150 clothing assistance program that may not have access to a computer or reliable Internet. Check out the list below to find an in-person sign-up event near you! ⬇️⬇️⬇️

➡️ 𝐄𝐥𝐢𝐠𝐢𝐛𝐢𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐲: The clothing assistance program is for any Cherokee Nation citizen from birth to 18 and enrolled in high school, as well as those in college or career tech and up to age of 22.

➡️ Those who can are encouraged to use the Gadugi Portal to sign up online at this link: https://gadugiportal.cherokee.org.

➡️ For more information on the program, visit the link here: https://anadisgoi.com/index.php/government-stories/993-cherokee-nation-further-expands-clothing-assistance-program-to-include-college-career-tech-students

Tomorrow, this statue of activist Mary McLeod Bethune will replace a Confederate general in the National Statuary Hall in the U.S. Capitol. She will be the first Black woman honored there, after over 150 years. This is good news that you’re not hearing about in the mainstream media.

https://flaglerlive.com/178454/bethune-stature-capitol/

Right Now Oklahoma
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The Godfather star James Caan dies aged 82 - NewsBreak James Caan, the American actor renowned for his role as Sonny Corleone in the mafia epic The Godfather, as well as a string of key films in the 1970s, has died aged 82. The news was released by his Twitter account on Thursday. A statement. : “It is with great...

Veterans Claims Examiner (Education) The Veterans Claims Examiner (VCE) position is located in the Educational Division within the Department of Veterans Affairs, Regional Processing Office (RPO) in Muskogee, Oklahoma. The Education Call Center (ECC) has been established at the Muskogee RPO to centralize the VA's toll-free phone activi...

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In 1916, this Harris & Ewing image of three formerly enslaved centenarians was captured in front of Cosmopolitan Baptist Temple in Washington, DC.

Lewis Martin, age 100, Martha Elizabeth Banks, age 104, and Amy Ware, age 103, with Rev. S.P. Drew, who was born free.

Because of them, we are.

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This image was colorized by Pat Seg. Harris & Ewing were White House photographers from 1905 to 1955. In the late 1930s, Harris & Ewing was the largest photographic studio in the United States. At its peak, it had five studios, 120 employees, and a news photo service.

On his retirement, Harris gave some 700,000 glass and film negatives to the Library of Congress, which preserves them as the Harris & Ewing Collection in the Prints and Photographs Division. 🥰🫶🏾✊🏿♠️🥷💡🙏🏽

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Ketanji Brown Jackson Sworn In As Supreme Court Justice, Becoming First Black Woman ...

Ketanji Brown Jackson Sworn In As Supreme Court Justice, Becoming First Black Woman On High Court Ketanji Brown Jackson was sworn as an associate justice of the Supreme Court on Thursday, officially taking her place in history as the first Black woman to serve on the nation's highest court.

First African American Women to vote in Ettrick, VA, 1920. from caption: "These women, left to right, are Eva Conner, Evie Carpenter, Odelle Green, Virginia Mary Branch, Anna Lindsay, Edna Colson, Edwina Wright, Johnella Frazer, and Nannie.

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Muskogee roots!

Women in Business: Helena Gadison - Talk Business & Politics Residence: Springdale Education: B.S., communications; M.S. leadership, John Brown University Professional background: Since August 2019, Gadison has held a senior sales role for Conair LLC. Before that, she spent more...

On June 19, 1865, U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Gordon Granger proclaimed the end of slavery at Galveston, Texas. News of emancipation spread north to the enslaved people in Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma) at different times during the summer of 1865. However, emancipation was not immediate for all enslaved people—it was enforced later through the Reconstruction Treaties of 1866.

Photo of Dolly Stidham, a Freedwoman (20382.759, Jennie Elrod Collection, OHS)

Mark your calendars Muskogee!

6-10-1940, a living became a Great . One who inspired everyone in his era as well as EVERY ERA since his untimely transition. There hasn't been a Soul walking this planet who influenced NATIONS to adopt his flag colors, who envoked MILLIONS among the melanated masses to be Prideful, Persistent, Independent and Unified.

If you are an enemy of Excellence, you would do everything in your power to keep His demonstration hidden...
That's exactly what the dominant society has done.

It is an honor and a privilege for me to have been born 44 years later on this day to continue where he left off!
Because of I will be . RiseUp Responsibly.
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Muskogee let's give blood today and tomorrow 11 AM to 6 PM at arrowhead mall. Give life, save a life. 

Tulsa mass shooter identified as 45-year-old Michelet Louis, family says
The Black Wall Street Times.. as Michelet Louis, a 45-year-old Black man from Muskogee, Oklahoma. He also goes by Michael Louis, according to a Muskogee law enforcement ...

Tulsa mass shooter identified as 45-year-old Michelet (Michael) Louis, family says “Tulsa Police called me and verified that it’s my uncle,” she texted Thursday morning. “We are so distraught.”

TULSA, Oklahoma -

The Black Wall Street Legacy Festival is happening now and continues all day Saturday.

It's a survivor and descendant-led commemoration of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre.

"This festival is important so that we just never forget, never forget,” said Tulsa City Councilwoman Vanessa Hall-Harper.

The Black Wall Street Legacy Festival commemorates 101 years since the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre. It kicked off Friday morning at the Greenwood Cultural Center leading up to a panel discussion this afternoon.

On Saturday, there will be festivities throughout the Greenwood District, including a memorial march, performances, vendors, and live music. Hall-Harper says for her, this event is about honoring history.

"I think it means that we remember as we continue to have these festivals, we want to remember that we are on sacred land,” Hall-Harper said.

"It's really big actually. I'm like, excited. It's just an exciting experience,” said volunteer Ziasia Zachary.

Zachary is volunteering with her mom and sister to help set up.

"It's fun to have a family bonding time, even though we live together,” Zachary said.

The stage is set up in the Vernon AME Church parking lot, where concerts will be happening on Saturday for the festival. The remaining survivors will participate in some events.

"We have to continue to honor that legacy so that we can continue to build and learn from our ancestors,” Hall-Harper said.

Hall-Harper says it's about reflecting and growing.

"So we remember the good and we remember the bad, and we remember where we want to go in the future,” Hall-Harper said.

The events are free to attend and open to everyone.

Black Wall Street Legacy Festival Happening This Weekend The Black Wall Street Legacy Festival is happening now and continues all day Saturday.