Our blog tracks Jose Arguelles' Dreamspell Calendar. "As chaos and confusion rise, galactic consciousness based on the Law of Time serves as planetary medicine, lifting us into the awareness that we exist within a higher, more expanded realm of existence than the world of third-dimensional form and appearance. Daily practice will elevate consciousness and increase experiences of synchronicity." (Arguelles)
Bobbi Jean Baker (1964–2014) was a transgender activist and minister. She was born in Memphis, Tennessee, and moved to San Francisco from Tennessee in 1992. She served as a case manager, domestic violence specialist, housing manager, and peer advocate. Additionally, she was a lay minister at Transcending Transgender Ministries and an ordained minister at City Refuge United Church of Christ, and the West Coast Regional TransSaints Minister of the Fellowship of Affirming Ministries.
For over ten years she was part of the transgender group Transcendence Gospel Choir.
She died at age 49 in 2014 on New Year's Day after a car crash.
Footage of an interview with Baker was included in the documentary film Major!, about the life of transgender activist Miss Major Griffin-Gracy. Baker was later portrayed by Jazzmun in the 2017 miniseries When We Rise.*
Katherine "Flossie" Bailey (1895–February 6, 1952) was a civil rights and anti-lynching activist from Indiana. She established a local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in Marion, Indiana, in 1918 and became especially active fighting for justice and equality following the double lynching of Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith in 1930. As president of the Indiana NAACP, Bailey was pivotal in lobbying for passage of a statewide anti-lynching law in Indiana in 1931 and advocated for a similar bill at the national level. She was also a recipient of the national NAACP's Madam C. J. Walker Medal.
Early life and education
Katherine Harvey, the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Charles Harvey, was born in Kokomo, Indiana, in 1895. Known as "Flossie", she grew up in Kokomo and attended Kokomo High School.
Marriage and family
Flossie married Walter T. Bailey, a physician, in 1917. The couple resided in Marion, Indiana.Doctor Bailey died on February 10, 1950. Their only surviving child was a son, named Walter Charles Bailey.
While living in Marion, Bailey also became actively involved in the Marion community. She was a member of the city's Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church congregation.
Career
Bailey spent her adult life seeking equality and justice as a civil rights activist. In 1918 Bailey established the Marion branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Initially it did not receive much support. In June 1930 it had 96 members; however, after the Marion community was the site of a lynching in August 1930, the local chapter's membership increase to 155 members by the end of 1930.
On August 7, 1930, a mob broke into the Grant County, Indiana, jail in Marion, dragged two African American men, Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith, to the Courthouse Square and lynched (hanged) them from a tree. Bailey, who was the president of the local branch of the NAACP, tried to obtain police protection for the jailed men prior to the lynching. Afterward, she was actively involved in organizing a Hoosier delegation of NAACP members to speak to Indiana governor Harry Leslie and persuade him to intervene in the investigation of the men's murders.
Bailey and a number of others worked hard to obtain a fair investigation into the double lynching. Despite objections from those in the Marion community who wanted to forget about the event, Bailey and the NAACP played an important role in seeking justice for the murders of Shipp and Smith, as well as to restore calm in Marion. Two men were indicted and went on trial for the lynching, but neither one was found guilty of the crime and no one was ever punished for the deaths of Shipp and Smith.
In 1930, Bailey was elected president of the Indiana NAACP and helped plan its second annual meeting. The Bailey home in Marion became the Indiana headquarters for the NAACP. The national organization recognized Bailey's efforts by awarding her the Madam C. J. Walker Medal for "the person who has done the best work in the NAACP during the year."
Bailey worked to ensure nothing like the lynching in Marion would occur again. She lobbied the Indiana General Assembly to pass stricter anti-lynching laws. When opponents to the bill rejected many of the safety measures, Bailey organized a statewide effort, calling on chapters of the NAACP, Optimist Clubs, Exchange Clubs, and Democratic organizations to lobby state legislators. Bailey's efforts were successful and the governor signed a stricter anti-lynching law in March 1931. Once the Indiana bill became law, Bailey began lobbying for a national anti-lynching law, as well as for the fair treatment of African Americans in other sectors of American life. Bailey especially focused on fighting to end the segregation of schools, hospitals, and other public spaces such as movie theaters.
Later years
Bailey and the NAACP struggled during the years of the Great Depression. Her husband, who suffered a stroke, closed his medical practice in Marion around 1940, and the couple moved to Indianapolis.
Death and legacy
Bailey died in Indianapolis on February 6, 1952. As an activist and president of the Indiana NAACP in the 1930's, her leadership helped establish a foundation for the civil rights movement of the 1950's.*
Bacon-Bercey was born and raised in Wichita. She earned her bachelor's degree in 1954 from the University of Kansas and her master's degree in 1955 from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). She earned a Masters of Public Administration (MPA) from the University of Southern California in 1979.
Career
Bacon-Bercey began her career as an engineer, when she worked for the Sperry Corporation, then worked for a variety of federal organizations including the United States Atomic Energy Commission (as a consultant), the National Weather Service Aviation Branch, and the National Meteorological Center.
Beginning in 1979, Bacon-Bercey spent nearly ten years as the chief administrator for Television Weather Activities at NOAA and worked on a number of other projects.
Increasing the participation of African-American women in meteorology and geophysical science has been a major focus for Bacon-Bercey. In 1978, she published an analysis of African-American meteorologists in the US. She had won $64,000 on a TV quiz show in 1977, which she used to establish a scholarship fund for young women interested in atmospheric sciences, administered by the American Geophysical Union (AGU). Bacon-Bercey served on the AGU's Committee on Women and Minorities in Atmospheric Sciences, and co-founded the American Metereological Society's Board on Women in Minorities.
In 2006, Bacon-Bercey featured in a book for young people, June Bacon-Bercey: a meteorologist talks about the weather.
Honors
Bacon-Bercey was the first woman, as well as the first African-American, to be awarded the American Meteorological Society's Seal of Approval for excellence in television weather casting when she was working in Buffalo, New York in the 1970's.
In 2000, she was honored during a three-day conference at Howard University for her contributions including: helping to establish a meteorology lab at Jackson State University in Mississippi, her endowment of the scholarship, and her work in California's public schools. Bacon-Bercey was also named a Minority Pioneer for Achievement in Atmospheric Sciences by NASA.*
Blanche Mae Armwood (1890–1939), Educator, activist and the first African-American woman in the state of Florida to graduate from an accredited law school. Armwood is also known for being the first Executive Secretary of the Tampa Urban League and as a founder of five Household Industrial Arts Schools for African-American woman in five different states. Armwood High School in Seffner, Florida is named in her honor.
Early life
Blanche Armwood was born on January 23, 1890 in Tampa, Florida to Levin Armwood Jr. and Margaret Holloman. Born into a prominent middle-class family, she was the youngest of five children. Her mother was a skilled dressmaker and her father was Tampa’s first black policeman in the late 1870's and a county deputy sheriff in 1895. He was also the Supervisor of County Roads and the supervisor of Mt. Zion school. Her father and her brother, Walter, owned the only black-owned drugstore in Tampa, the “Gem.” Walter Armwood was also a professor at Bethune-Cookman University and a state supervisor for the U.S. Bureau of Negro Economics.
Blanche Armwood's father and paternal grandfather, Levin Armwood Sr., were both born into slavery, in Georgia and North Carolina respectively. The family moved to Hillsborough County in 1866 when Levin Jr. was eleven years old. Her great uncle, John Armwood, was an early landowner who homesteaded 159 acres of land in Hillsborough County and served as a negotiator between the Seminole Native Americans and white settlers along the Florida frontier. Her maternal grandfather, Adam Holloman, was a freeman who spent his entire life in the Tampa area. He owned citrus groves and was the Hillsborough County Commissioner from 1873 to 1877.
Blanche Armwood's parents, having been unable to complete their formal educations, sent her to a private school, St. Peter Claver Catholic School. She graduated with honors in 1902. That same year, at the age of twelve, Armwood passed the State Uniform Teacher’s Examination. As Tampa did not have a high school for black students, she attended Spelman Seminary (later Spelman College) in Atlanta, Georgia. She excelled in English and Latin courses. In 1906, at age sixteen, graduated summa cum laude from Spelman earning a teacher’s certificate.
Career and activism
Armwood returned to Tampa and began teaching in the Hillsborough County Public Schools where she would remain for the next seven years. In 1913, Armwood suspended her teaching career when she married attorney Daniel Webster Perkins and relocated to Knoxville, Tennessee. The marriage was annulled the following year and Armwood returned to Tampa. Armwood’s service to the community began in 1914 when the Tampa Gas Company, in conjunction with the Hillsborough County Board of Education and the Colored Ministers Alliance commissioned her to organize an industrial arts school designed to train black women in the domestic sciences. This alliance spawned the Tampa School of Household Arts which was founded around 1915. The school trained black women and girls to use then modern household gas appliances as well as other skills which would enable the students to excel in domestic service. Following the school’s first year of operation, over two hundred women received certificates of completion. Later, Armwood would establish similar schools in Roanoke, Virginia; Rock Hill, South Carolina; Athens, Georgia and New Orleans, Louisiana.
Between 1917 and 1920, while living in New Orleans and married to dentist John C. Beatty, Armwood received state and federal acclaim for her work in training domestic workers. In 1918, she published Food Conservation in the Home a cookbook which was popular with women of all races. The cookbook, published during World War I, had a particularly poignant introduction, stating that: “Every pound of white flour saved is equal to a bullet in our Nation’s defense.”
In 1922, Jesse Thomas of the National Urban League nominated Armwood as the first Executive Secretary of the Tampa Urban League. Under her leadership, the Tampa Urban League established a public playground, a day care center, and a kindergarten for black children and played a significant role in the development of a subdivision offering blacks decent and affordable housing. Throughout her tenure with the league, she served as assistant principal at Tampa’s Harlem Academy School.
Armwood was appointed as the first Supervisor of Negro Schools by the Hillsborough County School Board. During her tenure, 1926-1934, she was instrumental in the school board's establishment of five new school buildings, improving the older schools, providing a vocational school for black students, increasing black teacher salaries, organizing parent-teacher associations at each school, and extending the school year for black students from six to nine months. She is also credited with establishing Booker T. Washington School in 1925. Initially a junior high school, the first for black students in Tampa, it was quickly expanded to include black senior high school students, another first, and was the first accredited school for black students in the county.
In addition to her leadership positions in Tampa, Armwood held positions in several national organizations, including the Chair of the Home Economics Department of the National Association of Colored Women, National Campaign Speaker for the Republican Party, and as State Organizer for the Louisiana Chapter of the NAACP. She was a frequent speaker on national and international lecture circuits, speaking about voting rights and racial inequality.
Armwood participated in the suffrage and the anti-lynching crusades. She worked closely with anti-lynching advocate Mary McLeod Bethune, including helping to raise funds and other resources for Bethune-Cookman College and other black schools. She was close friends with Clara Frye, a black nurse who provided the first medical facilities for blacks in Tampa. Armwood raised funds for Frye and helped establish the first training program for licensed black nurses and some of the first blood banks for blacks in Florida.
Her increased interest in politics and equal rights for blacks and women led her to pursue a career in law. In 1934, Armwood enrolled in Howard Law School. She earned her juris doctor in 1938 making her the first black female from the state of Florida to graduate from an accredited law school.
Death
While on a speaking tour in Medford, Massachusetts, Armwood became ill and died unexpectedly on October 16, 1939. She is buried in her family's plot at Tampa's L'Unione Italiana Cemetery, land purchased from the Armwood family by The Italian Club.
In 1984, Congressman Michael Bilirakis and the Florida House of Representatives paid tribute to Armwood’s legacy. That same year, Blanche Armwood Comprehensive High School, known today as Armwood High School, was opened in Tampa in her honor. Armwood is also memorialized on historical markers for Booker T. Washington School and L'Unione Italiana Cemetery. In 2014 she was memorialized with a bronze bust on Tampa Riverwalk's Historical Monument Trail. Encore!, the revitalization of Tampa's black business and entertainment district, has renamed a street in Armwood's honor.*
Anna Gardner Goodwin (October 1874 — 1959) was an American composer, mainly of religious music and marches.
Early life
Anna Gardner was born in Augusta, Georgia.
Career
Goodwin wrote and taught music for much of her adult life. She assisted her husband in playing and leading music at Morehouse College, and accompanying the school's glee club. Her published compositions included "I Will Follow Jesus" (1906), "Do Not Touch the Wine Cup" (1906), "Jesus Don't Pass Me By" (1906), "Praise the Lord" (1906), "Tell the Story Everywhere" (1906), "Willing Workers" (1906), "Adalene" (1909), and "I'm Lonely Just for You" (1934). Her last composition, "Freedom to All March", was written to commemorate the 1951 race riot in Cicero, Illinois. Goodwin's "Cuba Libre March" (1898) was included in Black Women Composers: A Century of Piano Music, 1893-1990 (1992).
Goodwin was assistant house director of the Chicago YWCA in the 1930's.
Personal life
Anna Gardner married the Rev. George A. Goodwin, a professor of theology at Morehouse College, in 1895. They had a son, George Jr., and daughters Janie, Anna, and Eunice. She was widowed when George died in 1914. In widowhood she lived with her widowed sister Janie Gardner Burruss in Chicago. Anna Gardner Goodwin died in 1959, aged 85 years.
Her papers are archived at the Center for Black Music Research, Columbia College Chicago. Her great-grandsons David E. Robinson III and Rick Robinson both became professional musicians and composers.*
The soul, the mind and consciousness are part of one continuum. The soul cannot develop without a mind. The mind cannot develop without consciousness.*
*Star Traveler's 13 Moon Almanac of Synchronicity, Galactic Research Institute, Law of Time Press, Ashland, Oregon, 2017-2018.
Angie Dickerson was a New York-based tenants' rights organizer involved in the Communist Party, and was under surveillance by the FBI. She was one of the members of Sojourners for Truth and Justice, a leftist, black feminist organization formed in 1951.
She was a member of the World Peace Council and advocated for US withdrawal from Vietnam and Korea. For the conference held in East Berlin of the World Peace Council from 21–23 June 1969 to convince the US to recognize the German Democratic Republic, Dickerson was sent 20 tickets for Aeroflot passage from New York City for conference attendees.
In 1970, Dickerson chaired, along with Ossie Davis, Dick Gregory and others, a National Emergency Conference to defend the right of the Black Panther Party to exist. Believing that the US Attorney was attempting to destroy the party, a wide group of church leaders, civil rights groups, labor groups and colleges sponsored the conference. The sponsors included: Ralph David Abernathy head of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (S.C.L.C.); Roy Innis, Chairman of the Congress of Racial Equality (C.O.R.E.); Irving Sarnoff of the Los Angeles Peace Action Council; and Rev. Quincy Cooper, of Black Methodists for Church Renewal.*
