Friday Open Thread- Little Known Black History Facts

This entire week's open thread has been dedicated to learning about little known bits of black history.

Artist Charles Alston founded the "306 Group", a club that provided support and apprenticeship for African-American artists during the 1940s. It served as a studio space for prominent African-American artists such as poet Langston Hughes; sculptor Augusta Savage; and mixed-media artist Romare Bearden.

Allensworth is the only California community to be founded, financed and governed by African-Americans. Created by Allen Allensworth in 1908, the town was built with the intention of establishing a self-sufficient, all-black city where African-Americans could live their lives free of racial discrimination.

Jazz, an African–American musical form born out of the Blues, Ragtime, and marching bands originated in Louisiana during the turn of the 19th century. The word Jazz is a slang term that at one point referred to a sexual act.


Nat "Deadwood Dick" Love, a renowned and skilled cowboy, was the only African-American cowboy to write his autobiography The Life and Adventures of Nat Love, Better Known in the Cattle Country as Deadwood Dick, published in 1907.





Tice Davids, a runaway slave from Kentucky, was the inspiration for the first usage of the term "Underground Railroad." Davids' owner assumed the slave had drowned when he attempted his swim across the Ohio River. He told the local paper that if Davids had escaped, he must have traveled on "an underground railroad." Davids, however, did live, giving the Underground Railroad its now-famous name.





***Information courtesy of About.com***