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Usborne First Book of Nature

Usborne First Book of Nature designed by David Bennett, 1980.

I remember getting this book as a present from my grandmother as a child because my grandmother was an amateur naturalist. Although it’s a nonfiction book, I’m sentimental about it for that reason.

The book is divided into four sections covering different types of plants and creatures (each of which has its own book in the Usborne collection, but this book is a compilation):

Birds

This chapter explains about the parts of birds, like the different shapes of beaks and feet different birds have, aspects of birds lives and behavior, and how birds fly.

Trees

This chapter explains the parts of trees, like how roots and twigs grow and the differences between different types of leaves, tree flowers, and seeds.

Flowers

This chapter explains the parts of flowers and about pollen and seeds. It also points out the creatures that like to visit flowers, like bees and hummingbirds.

Butterflies and Moths

This chapter explains the similarities and differences between butterflies and moths and what their life cycles are like.

One of the best parts of this book is that it is designed to be interactive as well as informative. Some of the activities are explained at the beginning of each chapter, and there’s a puzzle or game at the end of each chapter. The upper right corners of each chapter have images that are meant to be used as a flip book. In the bird section, readers can quickly flip the pages to watch a bird fly. In the tree section, a leaf bud opens. In the flower section, a flower opens. In the butterfly and moth section, a butterfly opens and closes its wings.

Each chapter also has a game where you hunt for different creatures within the pages of that chapter and see how many you can find, and then, there’s another game or puzzle at the end. At the end of the bird chapter, there’s a picture puzzle where you have to find all the birds hidden in a black-and-white picture. At the end of the tree section, you have to find how many products are made from or come from trees in a busy market scene. At the end of the flower chapter, you have to match up different types of fruits with their flowers. The butterfly and moth section doesn’t have a game at the end.

This book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive.

Posted on by TracyC

Famous American Negros

Famous American Negroes by Langston Hughes, 1954.

I sought out an electronic copy of this book because I don’t own a physical one, and after I found out that it existed, I knew that I had to cover it at some point! The book is part of a series of biographies for children that I covered earlier, but what caught my attention was the author of the book, Langston Hughes, the famous poet of the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s and 1930s. I mostly knew Langston Hughes for his poetry, and I wasn’t aware that he had written any children’s books until I found out that he had written several biography books for this series. When I found out that he specifically wrote books about African Americans and other notable black people from history, it occurred to me that he might have even written biographies of people he knew personally because of the circles he traveled in.

This book focuses on prominent African Americans through history. It contains a series of short biographies and profiles, beginning in the Colonial times and continuing into the mid-20th century, when the book was written. Some were contemporaries of Langston Hughes, but since the biographies are brief and focus only on providing an overview of the subjects’ lives, there is no indication whether Hughes ever met any of them himself. I was a little disappointed about that because I would have enjoyed hearing a personal perspective, but the personalities covered are still fascinating. I also enjoyed how some of the earliest biographies in the book relate to some of the later ones because of the influence some of the earlier people had on the lives of others.

If you’re wondering why he uses the term “Negro” instead of “African American”, it’s because that term was one of the more polite and acceptable terms during his youth and around the time when he wrote this book. (That’s why the UNCF, or United Negro College Fund uses it as well. It was one of the polite terms in use at the time of its founding.) It sounds a bit out of date to people of the 21st century because, around the time of the Civil Rights Movement, which began around the time this book was written, people began advocating for a shift in the words used to describe black people. They wanted to distance themselves from old attitudes about race by using newer terms that didn’t have as much emotional baggage attached to them. This is when terms like “colored” and “Negro” feel out of use and were replaced by “African American” as the correct, formal term to specifically describe an American with African ancestry and “black” (considered somewhat impolite a century earlier, as I understand it, see the Rainbow and Lucky series for an example – I discussed it in the historical description of the 1830s) as the generic term to describe a person with dark skin and African ancestry, regardless of their nationality.

Because this book was written in the mid-1950s, some of the information included is long out of date. People who were alive when Langston Hughes wrote the book are obviously not alive now, almost 70 years later. There are more recent books that cover the same topic and include information about late 20th century and early 21st century musicians Langston Hughes wouldn’t have known about. However, this vintage book is still interesting because of its famous author and because it was written at a turning point in American history, when society was changing and racial issues were being challenged.

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive.

The biographies included in the book are:

Introduction

The book begins with a brief history of black people in America. Langston Hughes points out that histories of African Americans often begin with slavery, but there were people of African ancestry who came to the Americas before that, not as slaves. Some traveled with explorers from Europe as members of their crews and expeditions.

After the slave trade began, slavery affected the lives of black people throughout the American Colonies and, later, the United States. Some slaves managed to find ways to take their fate into their own hands by running away, and of those, some helped others to escape to freedom. Some slaves were able to hire themselves out for wages on the side and saved up enough money to purchase themselves and gain freedom in that way. Some slaves were even freed by the the people who owned them, although others simply lived and died in slavery.

After the end of the Civil War and the end of slavery, former slaves were free to pursue their own destiny, but they were in a precarious position because they had no resources from which to start building their independent lives. Slaves had work experience, but much of their experience was in unskilled labor, which brought low wages. Most slaves had no education. (In many places, it was illegal to teach slaves to read. There were a few exceptions, and some people skirted the law, but this was a major problem for many formerslaves once they were granted their freedom, lacking an essential skill.) They had no money or land of their own. Getting established in their new lives meant building something from nothing or almost nothing, and it was a long, uphill struggle.

Even generations later, racial discrimination added obstacles to the lives of African Americans. The biographies in this book are about people who triumphed over the obstacles in their lives to leave a lasting mark on society.

Phillis Wheatley (c. 1753-1784) – Whose Poetry George Washington Praised

Phillis Wheatley was brought to the American colonies from Senegal as a slave when she was only a small child (approximately age 6 or 7 because she was still losing baby teeth when she arrived). Phillis was not her original name, but it is unknown what her original name was, exactly when she was born, how she became a slave, or what happened to her parents. She was purchased by a tailor named John Wheatley in Boston to be a servant for his family, and the Wheatley family gave her the name Phillis. When she first arrived in Boston, Phillis could not speak England and no one could speak Senegalese, so it was some time before anybody could truly communicate with her, which is part of why we know so little about her earliest years.

Fortunately, the Wheatley family was kind and even nurturing toward Phillis. Even though they purchased her to work for them, they cared about educating her. They taught her read and write, even though it was discouraged to teach slaves those skills and even illegal in some areas. When Phillis learned English and was able to read and write, it soon became apparent that she had a talent for poetry. The Wheatleys supported her poetry, and the granted Phillis her freedom in 1772. By the time she was about 21 years old, her poetry had been printed all over the colonies and in England. Although her poetry was successful, Phillis’s life took an unfortunate turn when she married a ne’er-do-well, and she died in poverty.

Richard Allen (c. 1760-1831)- Founder of the African Methodist Episcopal Church

Sometimes, slave owners used Christianity as an excuse for slavery, claiming that they were saving the souls of heathens. However, even though they converted slaves from Africa to Christianity, they didn’t provide much opportunity for their slaves to have religious worship. Richard Allen was born into a slave family in Philadelphia, and he was a child when he was sold to a farmer in Delaware. When he grew up, he became a Methodist preacher, and his owner let him perform religious services for the other slaves. He also became a wagon driver during the Revolutionary War and earned enough money to buy his freedom.

Once he was free, he returned to Philadelphia as a preacher. There was no Methodist congregation that was only for black people at that time, so he sometimes preached for a mixed congregation. However, some of the white members of the congregation protested to his presence as a black preacher, and some also objected to the presence of the other black parishioners as well. When Allen and a couple of friends were interrupted while praying one Sunday and told to leave the church, Allen realized that the only way any of them would be able to worship in peace would be to form their own group. The society he and his friends formed was the Free African Society, and that group went on to found the Bethel Methodist Episcopal Church. They were among those who helped to tend the sick and bury the dead during the yellow fever epidemic that struck the city in the 1790s.

Ira Aldridge (1807-1867) – A Star Who Never Came Home

Ira Aldridge was the son of a Presbyterian minister in New York. Aldridge started acting at a young age and became part of a black theater troupe, performing in a theater close to the African Free School he attended and the famous Fraunces’ Tavern (mentioned earlier in Phoebe the Spy, this book says that it was owned by a black family but other accounts say that the Fraunces family was mixed race – it has never been firmly established which is more accurate). His father wanted him to further his education, so he sent him to the University of Glasgow in Scotland, which accepted black students. It is unknown whether Ira Aldridge ever completed his degree there, but from there, he went to London to continue his acting career and won acclaim for his portrayal of Othello at the Royalty Theater. Ira Aldridge toured Europe and gathered a prominent following, even winning awards from some of the royal families of Europe. The reason why he never returned home was that he remained in Europe for the rest of his life, still touring as a successful actor up until his death at age 60.

Frederick Douglass (c. 1817-1895) – Fighter for Freedom

Frederick Douglass was born into slavery, originally with the last name of Bailey. In most cases, we know very little about the early lives of individual slaves because few slaves could read and write and their owners didn’t think it was important to even record their birth dates. Frederick Douglass is an exception because he learned to read and write and later wrote his famous autobiography. (The autobiography is now public domain, and you can read it for free online in many places, including Documenting the American South, Project Gutenberg, and Internet Archive (multiple copies). The reading level isn’t difficult, although parts are emotionally wrenching.) His autobiography contains many details of his early life (although even he never knew his own birth date, which is why we can only estimate). The description that follows is a brief summary of both the chapter in this book and the contents of his autobiography:

Frederick’s mother was a slave, but his father was a white man (or in some sources I’ve seen, possibly mixed race). (The book doesn’t identify his father, and his identity has never been definitely established, although there are theories. According to the Library of Congress, Frederick’s “Mother is a slave, Harriet Bailey, and father is a white man, rumored to be his master, Aaron Anthony.”) Because his mother had to work in the fields all the time, he rarely saw her when he was a child. (This book doesn’t mention it, but Frederick’s mother died while he was still young.) He was raised by his grandmother during his earliest years and later by a woman who abused and neglected her young charges. Then, young Frederick was sent to live with and work for another part of the family who owned him in Baltimore. At first, the mother of family was nice to Frederick and gave him his first reading lessons, but her husband put a stop to that, telling his wife in Frederick’s presence that if a slave learns to read and write, they’ll probably run away. Frederick managed to continue his reading lessons in secret with the help of some of the white children in the neighborhood. His new skills did help him to learn more about human rights and what freedom meant, and he also learned about the existence of abolitionists. Newspapers in Baltimore called abolitionists anarchists and accused them of being in the service of the devil, but young Frederick began to see them as possible allies.

As a teenager, Frederick was sent to live with a different branch of the same family in a smaller town. This family became suspicious of him when they found out that he could read and write and that he had joined a Sunday school that was run by a free black man. They decided to send Frederick to a man named Covey who was a “Negro breaker“, which was someone who would “tame” slaves by “breaking” them physically, mentally, and spiritually. In his autobiography, Frederick states that Covey did break him and very nearly killed him, but after a particularly vicious beating at Covey’s hands, Frederick realized both that he couldn’t take anymore and that he wasn’t going to take any more. He fought back. That’s when he began planning to run away. Somehow, plans of his escape leaked out, and he was sent away to work in the shipyards in Baltimore. There, he disguised himself as a sailor, borrowed some papers belonging to a sailor, and sneaked onto a train headed for New York.

When he arrived in New York, he was free, but he wasn’t quite sure where to go or what to at first. He had no place to stay and didn’t know anybody he could trust. Fortunately, a real sailor gave him a place to stay and helped him to connect with a society that helped escaped slaves. He found a job on the wharves and gave himself the name surname Douglass.

What truly makes Frederick Douglass famous is not just that he escaped from slavery, but once he did so, he wanted to help others gain their freedom. He became an abolitionist and gave public talks about slavery alongside many other famous abolitionists. When he met with violence, he moved his family to Canada, but he returned when the Civil War broke out to meet with President Lincoln. His sons became Union soldiers, and after the war, Frederick Douglass held various government offices, including US Marshall, Recorder of Deeds for the District of Columbia, and US Minister to the Republic of Haiti.

Harriet Tubman (c. 1823-1913) – The Moses of Her People

Like Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman was born as a slave in Maryland, but unlike Frederick Douglass, she had no early education. From an early age, she had a willful and rebellious personality, which was part of the reason why she was assigned to work in the fields instead of the house. One day, another young slave had gone to a local store without permission, and the overseer decided to whip him. He told Harriet help him to tie up the young slave first. When she refused to do it, the young slave ran away. I’m not completely clear on whether what happened next was deliberately aimed at Harriet or whether she was just in the way when the overseer tried to vent his wrath, but what is known is that the overseer picked up an iron weight and threw it. The weight struck Harriet in the head, cracking her skull. Harriet almost died of the injury and spent days lying unconscious. She eventually recovered, but she never recovered completely. Throughout the whole rest of her life, she bore a scar from the injury and would suffer from periodic seizures and sudden loss of consciousness. Her owner thought that the head injury had left her with diminished intelligence, which wasn’t true, but Harriet realized that it was useful to let him think that.

A few years later, her owner died, and she found out that she and two of her brothers were going to be sold to someone else. At first, they planned to run away together, but her brothers backed out of the plan, and Harriet left by herself. She managed to make her way to Philadelphia, found a job there, and established a new life. However, she didn’t stay in Philadelphia. She returned many times to help other people escape as one of the “conductors” on the Underground Railroad. Her own parents were among the people she rescued, and she never lost any of her “passengers” (partly because if anybody started to panic or turn back, she’d threaten to shoot them, but it worked without her actually shooting anyone). When the Civil War began, she became a Union nurse. She lived a long life, and although her exact age was unknown, she was probably somewhere in her 90s when she passed away.

Booker T. Washington (c. 1858 -1915) – Founder of Tuskegee

Booker T. Washington was also born as a slave to a black mother and a white father. (His mother was a cook called Jane. The identity of his father is still unknown, although the popular belief was that his father was a plantation owner. His mother later married a man named Washington Ferguson, who became Booker’s stepfather.) During the Civil War, Booker’s stepfather was with the Union army, and after the war ended, he rejoined the family and took them to Malden, West Virginia, where he worked in the salt mines. Although Booker was still a child, he also had to work, tending a salt furnace, because his family was poor and needed the money. Both he and his mother wanted to learn to read, but they had to struggle to learn by themselves at first because there was no school for them. When a black man who was able to read moved to the community, the others in town paid him to open a school to teach them. Booker began to take lessons after work, and the school was where he gave himself his last name. In his early life, he had only been known by one name – Booker, but when all the students at the school introduced themselves, he realized that most had two names. Wanting a second name for himself, he called himself Booker Washington.

Wanting a better life than working in the salt mines, Booker decided to pursue an education. He had heard that there was a school in Virginia he could attend called Hampton and decided to go there. It was a difficult journey, and he had to work along the way for money, but he finally made it. When he arrived at Hampton, he was dirty, looked somewhat disreputable, and didn’t have much money, so the head teacher initially had some doubts about admitting him, but he was willing to work at the school as a janitor to pay for his education, so she accepted him. Booker made the most of the opportunity and eventually graduated with honors in 1875. After he graduated, he returned to Malden, West Virginia, as a teacher. Since the previous teacher had left, Booker T. Washington was the only teacher in town. He encouraged his students, including his own brother, to go on to Hampton for higher education, like he had. The founder of Hampton was so impressed with Booker’s students that he offered Booker a job as a teacher at Hampton and house father for a dormitory of Native American students. Booker accepted the job and did well. Then, he received a new offer to establish a school in Tuskegee, Alabama.

Establishing a school for black children in Tuskegee was no easy task. Between limited funds, poor facilities, and threats of violence from the Ku Klux Klan, it was an uphill struggle all the way. However, Booker persevered, and his school became the Tuskegee Institute. One of the innovations that of the Tuskegee Institute that I particularly found interesting was that they had a “movable school”, meaning that they carried books and teachers to rural areas where people could not come to school, bringing school to them. It’s not quite the same as the bookmobiles I grew up with because these were more mobile schools than mobile libraries, but it seems like a kind of precursor. The Tuskegee Institute eventually became Tuskegee University, which still exists.

Daniel Hale Williams (1858-1931) – Great Physician

Daniel Hale Williams‘ early life was more peaceful than many black people of his time because his family was free, not slaves. His earliest years were spent in Pennsylvania, but after his father died, his mother moved the family to Wisconsin. Williams loved to read and received an education in his youth. At first, he thought that he might like to be a lawyer, but he soon learned that he didn’t like the constant arguing in presenting law cases. Instead, he developed an interest in medicine. He found a job working for the Surgeon General of the State and attended Northwestern University in Illinois. After obtaining his medical degree, he became a surgeon in Chicago. He helped other young black people who wanted to study medicine and were having difficulty finding training schools that would accept them and hospitals that would accept them as interns. Dr. Williams became famous for a successful operation on a man who had been stabbed in the heart, the first successful operation of its kind.

Henry Ossawa Tanner (1859-1937) – Who Painting Hangs in the Luxembourg

Henry Ossawa Tanner was the son of a bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Church and was raised in Pennsylvania. When he was still a child, he saw a man painting a picture in a park, and it inspired him to become an artist himself. His father thought that his artistic ambitions were impractical, but Tanner began experimenting with different types of media, including paint and clay, and he attended the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. He began selling his paintings professionally while he was still a student. After he graduated, he found a job teaching art at Clark University. He continued to paint and opened a photography studio on the side. A generous churchman gave Tanner some money so he could study art in Europe, so Tanner lived and painted in Paris for several years. He found the artistic life of the city inspiring, and he did a series of paintings with religious themes. In particular, he is known for his painting of The Resurrection of Lazarus, which he painted in 1896. The French government purchased this painting to hang in the Luxembourg, a famous art gallery. Tanner did return to the United States for a time, but finding life in Europe easier because Europe did not practice racial segregation like the United States did at that time, he decided to return to Paris, where he lived the rest of his life.

George Washington Carver (c. 1864-1943) – Agricultural Chemist

George Washington Carver was born a slave, and his father died in an accident while he was still an infant (or shortly before his birth, according to other sources – since he was a slave and slave birthdays were not recorded, that might explain the differing accounts). In fact, while he was still an infant, he and his mother were abducted from the farm where they lived in Missouri by Night Riders, a gang of criminals who kidnapped slaves to sell to different owners in other states. The fate of his mother is unknown (according to the book, although other sources say that she and George’s sister, who was also abducted, were sold to someone in Kentucky), but little George was found because he was ill with whooping cough, so the Night Riders simply abandoned him by the road. George was returned to the people who owned him and his mother, the Carvers, who had offered a reward for his return. The Carvers had no other slaves beyond George and his family. George also had an older brother who managed to avoid being captured by the Night Riders and remained with the Carvers. The Carvers ended up raising George and his brother like adopted children after the loss of their parents and the end of slavery.

During his childhood, George liked to play in the woods and fields near the Carvers’ farm, and he developed a fascination for plants. He often brought samples of different plants to Mrs. Carver to ask her what they were. The Carvers didn’t have much education, but they told him what they knew and gave him his first lessons in reading. Later, George attended a school for black children in another town, Neosha, living with a black woman named Mariah Watkins. From there, he became an itinerant worker, finding jobs and continuing his education wherever he could. Eventually, he attended Iowa State College, studying agriculture. He graduated at the top of his class and wrote a thesis called “Plants as Modified by Man.” He stayed on at the college to get his Masters degree, working as an assistant botany instructor. After he got his MA, Booker T. Washington invited him to teach at Tuskegee as the head of the agriculture department. Carver’s work at Tuskegee made him famous. He ran experiments to determine new uses for agricultural products, devoting the rest of his life to agricultural research.

Robert S. Abbott (1870-1940) – A Crusading Journalist

Robert Sengstacke Abbott was the son of a minister in Georgia. He loved books since childhood and found a job as an apprentice printer after graduating from Hampton. Because his opportunities for advancement were limited in the South, he moved to Chicago, but he still met with discrimination and found it difficult to get work in the printing industry. Discouraged, he studied and practiced law for a time, but he missed his printing work. Instead, he decided to buy his own printing press and start his own newspaper. He knew that African Americans and their concerns weren’t being represented in existing newspapers, so he wanted to become their voice. The newspaper he started was called the Chicago Defender, which became a national newspaper (and which still exists in an online format), although some Southern communities outright banned the newspaper and even made it a crime for a black person to simply possess a copy under the claim that it would incite black people to riot.

Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872-1906) – The Robert Burns of Negro Poetry

Paul Laurence Dunbar‘s father escape from slavery in his youth, returning to fight on the side of the Union during the Civil War. Paul was born after the war, and his father died when he was only twelve years old. His mother didn’t have much education, but she wanted him to be educated and worked hard to make it possible. Paul enjoyed writing poems since he was a child, and when he was in high school, he became the editor of the school paper. One of his English teachers was so impressed by his poetry that she arranged for him to write a poem and read it before a meeting of the Western Association of Writers. When Paul had enough poems to make a book, he had them published with the help of a publisher who loaned him money to cover the publishing costs. He sold enough copies of the book to cover the loan and make a nice profit.

After a stint working for Frederick Douglass at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago, Paul wrote a second book of poetry that made him nationally famous. He received many orders for copies of the book, and he was invited to give public readings of his poems. He even went to London to give readings during Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee. When he returned to the US, he got a job at the Library of Congress and got married, but unfortunately, his life was cut short by tuberculosis.

W. C. Handy (1873-(later D. 1958)) – Father of the Blues

W. C. Handy is mentioned in a later book by Langston Hughes in the same biography series, Famous Negro Music Makers, but his biography doesn’t appear in that book although he made his living in music.

William Christopher Handy was born in Alabama. When he started school, his favorite subject was music. His teacher was a graduate of Fisk University (an African American college with a strong musical tradition, which is also described in Famous Negro Music Makers), and he introduced his students to a variety of musical styles. Handy’s father was a Methodist minister, and he didn’t believe in music outside of church and school. Musicians had a bad reputation, so he didn’t support his son’s musical interests and wouldn’t let him have an instrument of his own. Handy often improvised instruments, and he was inspired by traveling musicians who came to town. In spite of his father’s opposition, Handy joined up with musical groups.

Handy’s father wanted him to follow in his footsteps and be a minister, but Handy told his father that he’d rather be a teacher. When he found out how bad teachers’ salaries were, he found a job in a foundry instead. In his free time, he continued to play music in his church and started an orchestra and brass band. When he lost his job at the foundry due to an economic depression, he formed a quartet with some other young men, and they headed off to the World’s Fair in Chicago. They sang for their food and transportation along the way, only to learn that the World’s Fair was postponed. Instead, they decided to go to St. Louis, but still unable to find singing jobs, the group broke up.

Handy was too proud to go home to his father and admit defeat, so he continued to travel around and pick up whatever odd jobs he could find. Eventually, he joined up with a minstrel group, and he began to make a career in music. He traveled all over the country, giving performances, but when he became a father, he decided that it was time to settle somewhere to give his child a stable life. He took a job teaching music and English in Alabama, but he didn’t like the job because he wasn’t allowed to teach popular music, only hymns and classics. He returned to playing minstrel shows and became the bandmaster for a Knights of Pythias band in Mississippi. He composed music, writing The Memphis Blues and The St. Louis Blues. These songs were big hits, and The St. Louis Blues made Handy a great deal of money. Handy became a music publisher on Broadway, and his company was the largest African American owned publishing company in the US.

Charles C. Spaulding (1874-1952) – Executive of World’s Largest Negro Business

In the years immediately following the end of the Civil War and the Emancipation of the slaves, things were very difficult for black people. The newly-freed slaves had no money or assets to help them establish their new lives or even to take care of their sick or bury their dead. To help each other, they banded together and formed benevolent societies and fraternal organizations to share the resources they had and support each other. Some organizations of this type already existed, but Emancipation led to the expansion of such groups and the formation of new ones.

Charles C. Spaulding was the first manager and later president of the North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Company. He had grown up poor and only had an eighth grade education. He worked at various jobs until he was approached by the owner of a series of barber shops who was interested in starting an insurance company. Spaulding’s uncle was also interested in the venture, and they hired Spaulding to be the manager of this small company. At first, Spaulding didn’t know much about insurance, and he had to wear a lot of hats in the business, starting out as bookkeeper and janitor of the business as well as its manager. In fact, he was originally the only employee of the company. The very first customer of the insurance company died only a few days into his policy, putting the company into debt immediately, but the owners of the company dutifully paid what they owed to the man’s widow, giving the company a reputation for reliability and earning them more customers. As the business grew, the company also supported public projects of interest to the African Americans in their community, such as the formation of a new library and a new hospital. Spaulding inherited the company after his uncle’s death, and he continued supporting civic projects.

A. Philip Randolph (1889-(Later D. 1979)) – Distinguished Labor Leader

Asa Philip Randolph was born in Florida. His father was a Methodist preacher, and he grew up reading his father’s books of sermons and Shakespeare. After he graduated from high school, he decided to go to New York to look for work. He worked at various jobs, and he became interested in improving working conditions for black people. Randolph gave public talks on the subject in Harlem and helped to start a magazine called The Messenger to advocate for the rights of African Americans. He began to travel to other cities to give talks and fiery speeches, and at one point, he was called “the most dangerous Negro in America” because some people feared what he might stir up in discontented African Americans faced with discrimination and bad working conditions.

Randolph was invited to speak to the Pullman Porters Athletic Association about the importance of trade unions because the porters had unsuccessfully tried to unionize before. Their working conditions were harsh, their pay was low, and the porters hadn’t made any real progress toward improvement. Randolph hadn’t worked as a porter, but he was interested in unions and labor organizations. The porters in New York asked him to help them organize, and they formed the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters in 1925. Some porters were reluctant to join at first because they were afraid of being fired, but Randolph continued to travel and speak about the importance of unions, recruiting new members. The Great Depression was hard on the porters, but the union managed to negotiate for better working conditions and pay.

Ralph Bunche (1903- (later D. 1971)) – Statesman and Political Scientist

This particular biography begins with a brief history of Israel and Palestine and the conflict between the two because of the aftermath of WWII, a conflict that has continued into the 21st century.

Ralph Bunche was the son of a barber in Detroit, Michigan. While he was still young, his parents suffered health problems and were advised to go to a drier climate, so the entire family moved to New Mexico. Ralph enjoyed living in the Southwest, but unfortunately, his parents died, leaving him and his sister with their grandmother. Ralph’s grandmother insisted on him continuing his education, and he also worked part time. After he graduated from high school, his grandmother insisted that he go on to college. He got a scholarship for the University of California, and from there, he got another scholarship to attend Harvard. At Harvard, Ralph studied political science, and after he graduated, he accepted a job from Howard University in Washington DC which wanted to set up a political science department of its own. Washington DC was more segregated than other places Ralph had lived, and he turned his attention to seriously studying racial relations. In 1936, he became one of the co-directors of the Institute of Race Relations at Swarthmore College.

During WWII, Dr. Bunche could not serve in the armed forces because he was deaf in one ear. However, he served the Office of Strategic Services, researching cultural and political attitudes in Africa where the US had strategic interests and wanted to establish military bases. Because he performed this job well, he was chosen to be the Associate Chief of the Division of Dependent Territories in the State Department, making him the first black person to be in charge of a State Department office. After the war, he became one of the consultants in the drafting of the charter of the United Nations, which is how he became involved with the conflict in Israel. Dr. Bunche attended session of the UN, and in 1947, he became part of a UN Special Committee sent to Palestine to negotiate peace. It was a dangerous mission, and other members of the committee were actually assassinated. While the situation in Israel and Palestine has yet to be completely resolved, Dr. Bunche made more progress than the rest of the committee in the 1940s, getting the two sides to agree to an armistice. At the end of the tense negotiations, he had the respect of both sides, and his work earned him a Nobel Peace Prize is 1950.

Marian Anderson (1897-(Later D. 1993)) – Famous Concert Singer

Marian Anderson was a famous singer who became the first black person to sing for the Metropolitan Opera Company the year after this book was written. A later book by Langston Hughes in the same biography series, Famous Negro Music Makers, describes this achievement and other details of her life and work.

Jackie Robinson (1919-(Later D. 1972)) – First Negro in Big League Baseball

Jackie Robinson was the youngest of a family of five children. His father died when he was still an infant, and his mother moved the family from Georgia to California to live with her half brother and find non-segregated schools for the children. Jackie was young during the Great Depression, and times were hard for his family. He sometimes had little to eat. However, he excelled at athletics in school, which helped him to get into Pasadena Junior College and the University of California. He played football for UCLA, but he left college in his final year to find a job and help his family financially. He got a job as an athletic director for a Civilian Conservation Corp camp. When the US joined WWII, Jackie Robinson joined the army, but he was honorably discharged before the end of the war due to an old football injury that began troubling him again. After that, he took a job as an athletic director at a small college, and then, he joined a baseball team called the Kansas City Monarchs.

During the 1940s, black people were barred from joining major league teams, so at first, Jackie Robinson didn’t take it seriously when he was approached by a scout for the Brooklyn Dodgers. However, WWII had brought about changes in racial attitudes and new opportunities for black people. After a stint with the Montreal Royals, Jackie Robinson did join the Dodgers and became famous as a baseball player.

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Famous Negro Music Makers

Famous Biographies for Young People

Famous Negro Music Makers by Langston Hughes, 1955.

I sought out an electronic copy of this book because I don’t own a physical one, and after I found out that it existed, I knew that I had to cover it at some point! The book is part of a series of biographies for children that I covered earlier, but what caught my attention was the author of the book, Langston Hughes, the famous poet of the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s and 1930s. I mostly knew Langston Hughes for his poetry, and I wasn’t aware that he had written any children’s books until I found out that he had written several biography books for this children’s biography series. When I found out that he specifically wrote books about African Americans and other notable black people from history, it occurred to me that he might have even written biographies of people he knew personally because of the circles he traveled in.

This book focuses on prominent African American musicians. It contains a series of short biographies and profiles, beginning with musicians from the 19th century and continuing into the mid-20th century. Most of the musicians described in the book were contemporaries of Langston Hughes, but since the biographies are brief and focus only on providing an overview of the subjects’ lives, there is no indication whether Hughes ever met any of them himself. I was a little disappointed about that because I would have enjoyed hearing a personal perspective, but the personalities covered are still fascinating.

If you’re wondering why he uses the term “Negro” instead of “African American”, it’s because that term was one of the more polite and acceptable terms during his youth and around the time when he wrote this book. (That’s why the UNCF, or United Negro College Fund uses it as well. It was one of the polite terms in use at the time of its founding.) It sounds a bit out of date to people of the 21st century because, around the time of the Civil Rights Movement, which began around the time this book was written, people began advocating for a shift in the words used to describe black people. They wanted to distance themselves from old attitudes about race by using newer terms that didn’t have as much emotional baggage attached to them. This is when terms like “colored” and “Negro” feel out of use and were replaced by “African American” as the correct, formal term to specifically describe an American with African ancestry and “black” (considered somewhat impolite a century earlier, as I understand it, see the Rainbow and Lucky series for an example – I discussed it in the historical description of the 1830s) as the generic term to describe a person with dark skin and African ancestry, regardless of their nationality.

I enjoyed the range of different styles of music covered in the book. Recognized some of the most famous singers in the book by name alone, before I even started reading, but this book also introduced me to some musicians I hadn’t known about before. I knew about Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, Bessie Smith, and Marian Anderson, but I hadn’t heard of Lena Horne or Roland Hayes and some of the others. I’m sure that modern children would also be unfamiliar with some of the musicians included in the book. The biographies begin with musicians from the 19th century and end with musicians who were contemporaries of Langston Hughes in the 1950s.

Because this book was written in the mid-1950s, some of the information included is long out of date. People who were alive when Langston Hughes wrote the book are obviously not alive now, almost 70 years later. There are more recent books that cover the same topic and include information about late 20th century and early 21st century musicians Langston Hughes wouldn’t have known about. However, this vintage book is still interesting because of its famous author and because it was written at a turning point in American history, when society was changing and racial issues were being challenged.

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive.

The biographies included in the book are:

The Fisk Jubilee Singers, The Story of the Spirituals

This musical group began touring and singing spirituals in 1871. Some of the first members of this group had been born in slavery. After the end of the Civil War, the American Missionary Association of the Congregational Church established the Fisk School in abandoned army barracks in Nashville to teach black children at the high school level. However, it attracted a much larger student body than high school students. Many of the students had grown up in slavery and never learned to read, so that was the first skill they had to master. In addition to children of all ages, the school attracted older adults who wanted to learn enough to read Bible stories before they died. There was local opposition to a school for black people, and a lack of funding endangered the school’s existence. The school’s treasurer came up with the idea of holding musical performances to raise money. At first, the performers weren’t sure they wanted to sing their spirituals in front of white audiences, but they turned out to be very successful. They even did a European tour and sang before Queen Victoria. The Fisk School continued to grow and later became Fisk University, which still exists in Nashville and is considered one of the top historically black colleges in the US.

James A. Bland (1854-1911), Minstrel Composer

This section begins with an explanation of the creation of the banjo as an American instrument by slaves. People have negative associations with the term “minstrel show” in modern times, but the book explains that the first minstrel shows were performed by black slaves who had a talent for music. They were allowed to travel between plantations to perform their musical shows. Later, white actors and musicians adopted the style of these performances and started wearing blackface to perform their own minstrel shows.

However, James Bland fell in love with banjo music and the style of minstrel performances from a young age. Although minstrel music had a poor reputation, and his parents disapproved of his interest in this style of music, Bland earned extra money by giving street performances while he was in college. Although most theaters only wanted to book all-white minstrel groups in blackface as opposed to all-black minstrel groups, Bland managed to join an all-black group and make a name for himself as both a performer and composer.

Bert Williams (1875-1922), Artist of Comedy Song

In his youth, Bert Williams helped earn money for his family by singing in the street. Later, he formed a partnership with George Walker, and the two of them developed a musical comedy act. Bert Williams became famous for his act, but it also troubled him because he weirdly had to use blackface, even as a black person, because that’s what audiences expected, and he also had to act dumb when he was actually very smart. He wanted to move on to more serious roles as an actor, but people didn’t think he could play anything other than comedic roles. Also, in spite of his fame, he was treated as a second-class citizen everywhere outside of the theater because of Jim Crow laws. He was quoted describing the situation, “It is no disgrace to be a Negro, but it is very inconvenient.”

Bill Robinson (1878-1949), Music with His Feet

Bill Robinson was a famous tap dancer, often credited under his nickname, Bojangles. He was orphaned at a young age and partially raised by his grandmother, who was a former slave. He left school at the age of eight and got a job in a riding stable because he loved horses. He also earned extra money by dancing on street corners and ended up joining a traveling show. He became famous for his dancing and had dancing roles in movies. He is particularly remembered for his appearances in Shirley Temple movies in the 1930s.

(Note: He and Shirley Temple are regarded as the first interracial dance team in movies. While people of the time might have been scandalized by an interracial adult dancing team, it was acceptable for little Shirley Temple to dance with Bill Robinson because of her youth and innocence. Basically, because she was a young child, and he was in his 50s, it was obvious that there could be no romantic relationship between the two of them. Segregationists of the early 20th century feared interracial marriages and created laws to prevent them, which is why they feared any suggestion of romance between a black person and a white person. Shirley Temple was a safe person for Robinson to dance with because she was just a cute little girl dancing with her “Uncle Billy”, not a potential romantic partner.)

Leadbelly (1880s-1949), The Essence of Folk Song

His original name was Huddie Leadbetter, and he had a wild youth. He was a rough fighter who was even charged with murder and assault and sent to prison and escaped multiple times. (The book notes that he may not have actually killed anybody. The book explains that he was involved in brawls with other local people at Saturday night dances, where he was in demand as a musician. During one of these fights, in which a large number of people were involved, a man was killed, and Leadbelly, as he came to be called, was the one who was apprehended and charged for his death. However, in this type of free-for-all fight, it’s difficult to tell who did what, so it isn’t definite that he was responsible for the man’s death. I’m not completely sure whether the description of the fight in the book is fully accurate, though, because I saw it described differently elsewhere. It’s enough for readers to know that he had a rough youth, that he got in trouble for a fight in which someone was killed, and that he was in and out of prison for a time.) However, he had a natural talent for music and a love of folk songs that helped him to build a better life. His performances and recordings are credited for preserving songs that might otherwise have been lost to time.

Jelly Roll Morton (1885-1941), From Ragtime to Jazz

His original name was Ferdinand Joseph Le Menthe, and he grew up in a mixed race family in New Orleans. New Orleans was an exciting city with many different types of music, and Morton (as he later called himself) discovered his love of music early in life. He worked a variety of jobs in his youth, but through it all, he continued to play his music. He traveled the country, learning and playing ragtime and jazz music, eventually composing his own songs.

Roland Hayes (1887-(later D. 1977)), Famous Concert Artist

Roland Hayes was a student at Fisk University (whose origins were described in the first chapter of this book) in his youth. However, while the Fisk Jubilee Singers had popularized Negro spirituals and helped make it acceptable for theaters to book black people to sing these songs, Hayes was in love with classical music from Europe, the style of Beethoven and Brahms and classical opera, and theaters would not book a black performer to perform that style of music. Still, Hayes was determined to find a way to perform the music he loved. Strangely, motion pictures helped him to get his start. Because movies were silent then, all music had to be provided by live musicians in the theater. Hayes got his start singing behind the screens of movie theaters, where no one could tell that the performer was a black man. He also toured with the Fisk Jubilee Singers and made a name for himself in London, where he even sang before King George V.

William Grant Still (1895-(later D. 1978)), Distinguished Composer

In his day, William Grant Still was considered “the most prolific of American Negro composers.” He was raised to have a love of learning and music, although his mother and stepfather thought that music would be an unreliable career, unless he was teaching. For a while, he studied science at Wilberforce University, but he later attended Oberlin College to learn musical composition. He also worked for W. C. Handy’s music publishing company. He later moved to California and composed and arranged music for movies in Hollywood. However, his work extended beyond movies, and he is mainly remembered as a symphony composer.

Bessie Smith (1896-1937), “The Empress of the Blues”

Bessie Smith is described as being a large and tall woman with a powerful voice. She was a blues singer who mainly performed before black vaudeville audiences. The blues style of music had its roots in folk music, and it was considered lowbrow in the early 1900s. Gradually, it began to enter the wider culture and helped to form the style of popular jazz, but at the time, Bessie Smith’s style wasn’t taken seriously by Broadway. Bessie Smith was well-loved in her performances and may have gone on to be a bigger star, but unfortunately, she died from injuries in a car accident. According to the book,she might have survived, but the nearest hospital was for white people only and refused to take her. She died on the way to a hospital that would accept black people. This was just one of the harsh realities of life and death in the segregated South. However, the story about the whites-only hospital appears to have been discredited since this book was written. It seems that she did reach a hospital that accepted black people and lived to have her badly-damaged arm amputated, but she was too badly injured to survive.

Duke Ellington (1899-(later D. 1974)), Composer and Band Leader

Duke Ellington‘s birth name was Edward Kennedy Ellington. His father worked for the Navy Department of the Government, and he was born in Washington, DC. His early interests in life were art and baseball, but his mother had him take piano lessons. In high school, he and some friends started a ragtime band. The band was successful, and they moved to New York. After a few years, they began recording for Columbia Records and other recording companies. He composed music throughout his career, jazz and symphony orchestra.

Ethel Waters was born into a poor family in Pennsylvania and had a hard childhood. She started working as a hotel maid in her early teenage years, and she worked her way up through adversity in the theatrical world. She became a vaudeville singer and actress, eventually going on to make Hollywood movies.

Louis Armstrong (1900-(later D. 1971)), King of the Trumpet Players

Louis Armstrong began his musical education in a very odd way. When he was twelve years old, he was apprehend on the streets of New Orleans for firing a gun in the air on New Year’s Eve. Firing a gun in the air is a dangerous thing to do (people are sometimes killed by celebratory fire), and the authorities decided that he was he was a young hoodlum for running around, firing a gun in the streets. The sent him to the Colored Waif’s Home, which was being used as a youth reformatory as well as an orphanage. As a younger child, he had played music on street corners with some of his friends and had admired musicians who played horns, but he had never had a horn of his own. At the reform school, he was given a coronet and music lessons. Louis loved it, and he loved playing in the reform school’s band when it marched in local parades. He was disappointed when he didn’t get to keep the coronet when he left the reform school. However, his talent had become known. The owner of a local restaurant bought him a horn from a pawnshop so he could play in some of the local bands. At first, he had trouble adjusting to playing again because it had been so long since he had played regularly at the school, and his lip got sore. When that happened, he would fill in the trumpet part by singing in his gravelly voice. It was such a unique sound that word of it spread, and soon, he was getting attention from audiences and other musicians. Early on, he found it difficult to read music, so he learned to play by ear, and he had a talent for adding his own embellishments and variations to songs. He became famous for his scat singing.

Marian Anderson (early 1900s-(later D. 1993)), Metropolitan Opera Star

Marian Anderson began singing in the church choir as a child, and she was so talented that her church raised money to pay for her musical education. Later, she was also sponsored by the Philadelphia Choral Society. In 1925, she entered the New York Philharmonic Competitions and won first place. She did a singing tour of Europe, where she made a name for herself, and when she returned to the US, she became an acclaimed concert artist. In January 1955, she became the first black performer to sing for the Metropolitan Opera Company. (That was the year this book was written, and it discusses this event as a landmark for black musicians.)

Bennie Benjamin (1907-(later D. 1989)), Broadway Song Writer

I couldn’t remember having heard of Bennie Benjamin before, but I had heard of one of his songs, I Don’t Want to Set the World On Fire. It was his first big success, and he became a famous Broadway song writer. Something that made his music different from other black song writers of his day was that his music wasn’t inspired by spirituals, blues, or jazz. He was originally from the West Indies, and he moved to New York as a young man, so he was always more interested in Broadway styles of music than Southern music. At the time this book was written, he was still alive and writing songs.

Mahalia Jackson (1911-(later D. 1972)), Singer of Gospel Songs

As a child in New Orleans, Mahalia Jackson listened to Bessie Smith’s records and was inspired by her singing style. Mahalia’s specialty was gospel music. She never wanted to perform secular songs, but her music wasn’t the same as spirituals. Gospel music is different from spirituals because spirituals evolved from folk music with no known composer, and gospel music is more modern with known professional composers.

Dean Dixon (1915-(later D. 1976)), Symphony Conductor

Dean Dixon‘s mother was a music lover, and when he was a young child, she would take him to symphonies at Carnegie Hall. She had him learn to play the violin, and he played in his high school orchestra. He developed an interest in orchestration, and he formed a small chamber orchestra at the local YMCA, where he acted as the conductor. After high school, he attended the Julliard School of Music and did graduate work at Columbia University. While he was studying, he also led a mixed race symphony of children and adults in Harlem. He went on to become the first black person to conduct the New York Philharmonic Symphony.

Lena Horne (1917-(later D. 2010)), Singing Star of Hollywood

Lena Horne was an actress and singer. In 1942, she became the first black female singer to appear in a Hollywood move as a featured star in a film with white actors. At that time, typical movie roles for black people were minor comedic parts and servants. Even though black people in American society were educated and held professions like doctor or lawyer, movies typically showed them in more menial jobs, like chauffeur or maid. Lena Horne’s role in the movie Panama Hattie, in which she played a singer, helped to set a new precedent. During WWII she toured with the USO. After she became famous, she was known to turn down singing engagements in places that practiced segregation.

Famous Jazz Musicians (1800-1955), Congo Square to Carnegie Hall

This chapter explains the history and evolution of jazz music and discusses some prominent musicians from the early to mid-20th century who have not been discussed earlier in the book. Toward the end of the chapter, the author discusses a particularly interesting point that the National Association of Music Therapy was researching therapeutic uses for jazz music in the 1950s. Langston Hughes was also pleased that jazz could be used to encourage people to take an interest in other aspects of African American culture, like poetry, and how this style of music has spread all over the world.

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Abraham Lincoln Joke Book

The Abraham Lincoln Joke Book by Beatrice Schenk de Regniers, 1965.

I love joke books on oddly specific topics! This one is a little bittersweet because it was published 100 years after Abraham Lincoln’s death, but the book isn’t about that. Instead, it’s a fun celebration of some funny stories about Lincoln and some of his favorite jokes.

The jokes are mostly in story form, and many of them are stories about incidents from Lincoln’s own life. Some of them are stories about his youth, like the time he helped a classmate secretly during a spelling bee and the time he played a prank on his stepmother by holding some younger boys upside down so they could walk across the ceiling of the house, leaving muddy footprints.

Not all of the stories in the book are true tales about Lincoln. The book admits that some of them are “tall tales” that other people told about him. Many of them were jokes that people told about Lincoln’s height because that was one of the first things that people noticed about him. It was all the more notable when he was standing next to his wife because he was especially tall and she was especially short.

The end of the book discusses how Lincoln would often use jokes and stories to make a point in a conversation or soften the blow of criticism. As President, he liked to read joke books or humorous stories to cheer himself up during stressful times. He is quoted as saying, “I laugh because I must not cry.” The book ends with a timeline of events in Lincoln’s life.

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies).

Posted on by TracyC

101 Valentine Jokes

101 Valentine Jokes by Pat Brigandi, illustrated by Don Orehek, 1994.

This is one of those little themed joke books that I used to pick up at school book fairs and used book sales when I was a kid. Most of the jokes are really corny, but I remember finding them fun when I was a kid. Happy Valentine’s Day!

One of the things that surprised me about this book is that some of the jokes are weirdly insulting for a Valentine-themed book. It just struck me as odd that there were jokes with people basically insulting their boyfriends or girlfriends or sending insulting Valentines.

Actually, as I kid, I think I understood the point of the insulting joke Valentine cards because, when you’re a kid in school, there are rules that require you to give a Valentine to every person in class, whether you like them or get along with them or not, so nobody feels left out. Those rules make sense because teachers don’t want to create a situation a situation where somebody in class is being deliberately ignored by other students or the kids are playing one-upmanship about who is more popular than who. But at the same time, when someone else in class has been picking on you all year, that’s the last person you want to give a Valentine. You can’t really give people nasty Valentines like this (at least, not without getting into trouble), but there are times when it can be fun to imagine that you could so you can tell off some jerk who desperately needs it.

But, when it comes to people insulting their boyfriends or girlfriends, I’m just thinking, “If you feel that way about this person, why are you going out with them? Go find someone else!”

Fortunately, not all the jokes in this book are mean. It would have been depressing if all of them were negative in some way. There are the usual knock-knock jokes, jokes based on puns, and a few jokes that are told in story form or silly conversations.

There is one long joke that’s a form letter for “thanking” someone for a present. (Hint: It’s implied that the present wasn’t that great and the person isn’t thankful for it. It reminded me of one of the joke poems in The D- Minus Poems of Jeremy Bloom, and I think the poem was better.)

Overall, I think the best jokes were the kind that I think I kids really could use in class Valentines without getting in trouble. Because of all the insulting ones, though, I felt like there weren’t enough of this kind of joke.

What did the chewing gum say to the show?
I’m stuck on you.

This book does have the classic:

Will you remember me tomorrow?
Of course I will.
Will you remember me next week?
Of course I will.
Will you remember me next month?
Of course I will.
Will you remember me next year?
Of course I will.
Knock, knock.
Who’s there?
See, you forgot me already!

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive.

Posted on by TracyC

Tools of Native Americans

Tools of Native Americans by Kim Kavin, 2006.

This nonfiction book is part of a series recommended for kids ages 9 to 12. It provides insights into the daily lives of Native Americans of the past by explaining their tools and inventions. I was intrigued by the idea immediately because I love books that give insights into history through the lives of ordinary people.

The book is divided into time periods and geographic areas of North America. At the beginning of the book, there is a timeline of important events in the history of North America and Native American culture, beginning c. 20,000 to 8000 BCE, when the ancestors of Native Americans are believed to have migrated to the continent and ending in 2006, the year the book was published. There is also a map showing major geographic regions of North America and the Native American tribes that live there. The chapters of the book are mostly grouped by region, except for the first two, which are about the First Americans and Archaic and Formative Periods.

The first chapter, called The First Americans, discusses theories about how the ancestors of Native Americans first arrived on the continent from Asia. The exact circumstances of their arrival are unknown, but there are some possible migration paths that they could have taken. The chapter discusses the Ice Age that existed when this migration took place, how people found food, and Clovis culture, one of the earliest known civilizations in the Americas. One of the activities from this section is about archaeology, which is what we use to learn more about ancient civilizations that did not leave written records, and how to create an archaeological site of your own.

The next chapter is about the Archaic and Formative Periods, which were characterized by climate change as the Ice Age came to an end and many plants and animals that had thrived in the colder climate died off. The changes in the environment cause Native American groups to make changes in their own lifestyles. Rather than relying on herds of large animals for food, they began cultivating crops. They made pottery and developed new cooking techniques. They still hunted, using a device called an atlatl to throw their spears further and with more power. Civilizations like the Maya flourished.

After the second chapter, the other chapters discuss tribes by region:

The Northeast Woodland and Great Lakes Tribes – The Algonquian and Iroquois

This chapter discusses Native American tribes from the East Coast to the Midwest, around the Great Lakes, who primarily lived in woodland areas. The Iroquois and the Algonquian were both collections confederated tribes. There is information about the Algonquian language, which contributed some words to English, including moccasin, succotash, hominy, hickory, and moose. There is also an activity about creating Algonquian style pictographs and petroglyphs.

The Southeast Tribes – The Cherokee, Catawba, Creeks, and Seminoles

The tribes in this chapter lived in and around the Appalachian Mountains. It explains about Sequoyah, who developed a system of writing for the Cherokee language.

The Great Plains Tribes – The Cheyenne, Lakota Sioux, and Comanche

The tribes of the Great Plains were migratory, following herds of buffalo, which were a primary source of food. Because they moved often, everything they owned, from the tepees where they lived to the tools and other objects they used, had to be easily portable. The Comanche were particularly known for being expert horsemen. This chapter also discusses the Lewis and Clark Expedition and Sacagawea, who was part of the Shoshone tribe from the Rocky Mountains. She had been abducted when she was young, and when she joined the Expedition, she was able to guide Lewis and Clark and their men back to the territory she had known when she was a child and to the Pacific Ocean. Activities for this chapter include making a rattle of the kind children used as toys, making a miniature bullboat, and making a war bonnet (using pieces of poster board instead of feathers).

The Southwest and Mesoamerican Tribes – The Hohokam, Mogollon, Anasazi, Maya, Aztec, Hopi, Apache, and Navajo

I know this area because this is where I grew up. Much of it is desert, and the book is correct that there can be sharp differences in temperature between day and night. In modern Southwestern cities, buildings and pavement can hold in heat even at night, but there isn’t much to hold in heat in the open countryside, not even much humidity in the air to hold heat once the sun goes down. There is an abundance of clay in the soil in this region which local tribes used to make pottery and adobe homes.

Among the civilizations discussed in this section are the Hohokam, whose name means “Vanished Ones” (I’ve seen different versions of the translation of that name, but they’re all words to that effect – that they are gone, vanished, disappeared, etc.) because, for unknown reasons, they seem to have suddenly abandoned the area where they had previously lived and farmed for generations. They don’t seem to have died off, at least not all of them. It’s believed that they were the ancestors of the Pima and Tohono O’odham tribes, and the book discusses that a little further on in the chapter. There is a Pima story about a fierce rainstorm and a massive flood that killed many people, but The Hohokam were the ones who built the original irrigation canals for watering their crops. Later, when settlers came from the Eastern United States, they found these abandoned canals, dug them out, and started using them again. The canals are still in use today, and one of the activities in this chapter of the book is about irrigation.

This section of the book also covers the Maya and the Aztecs, who lived in what is now Mexico and Guatemala. There is an activity about creating hieroglyphs, like the kind that the Maya once used.

In the part that describes the Navajo, there are activities for sand painting and Navajo-style jewelry.

The Pacific Northwest Tribes – The Nootkas, Makahs, and Tlingits

Much of this chapter discusses hunting and fishing and the preservation of food. Because food-related work mostly took place during a single season due to the severity of the winters, there were periods of time when the members of the Pacific Northwest Tribes had time for social and artistic pursuits. The book explains the meaning of totem poles, and there is an activity for readers to create their own.

The Arctic Tribes – The Inuit

The lives of the Inuit were shaped by learning to live in a very cold environment. The book explains how they built igloos out of packed snow and ice, but really, igloos were temporary shelters. The houses they lived in long term where made of sod and were partially built underground for insulation. There are activities for building a snow cave called a quinzy (this requires that you live in a place with snow) and for playing a game called Nugluktaq.

The last chapter in the book is called New Immigrants, Manifest Destiny, and the Trail of Tears. It’s about how European settlers arrived in the Americas, the westward expansion of the United States, and the confinement of Native American tribes to reservations.

The book ends with an Appendix with further information about Native American Sites and Museums State by State. There is also a glossary, index, and bibliography.

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Indian Sign Language

Indian Sign Language by William Tomkins, 1969.

This is the third book I’ve reviewed on the topic of Indian Sign Language, and the reason why I wanted to include this one is that it was part of the list of recommended reading in one of the others, a book that was written much later. I can see why it was recommended. I found the readability of this book to be lower than the later book, but there is information found in this book that isn’t found in the later book.

The introductory notes at the beginning of the book explain a little about the author’s background. He grew up near the Sioux Indian Reservation in the Dakota Territory during the late 1800s, which was where he was first introduced to this form of sign language. He was not Native American himself, but he was later ceremonially adopted into the Sioux tribe. He became a lecturer about American Indian issues, and he discovered that people were very interested in his sign language demonstrations. He wanted to create this book so there would be a readily-available text explaining how the language works. He credits this form of sign language as being “probably the first American language. It is the first an only American universal language. It may be the first universal language produced by any people.” I’m not completely sure that’s true, but the author does have great respect for the beauty and utility of the sign language and the role that it played in Native American history.

The later book had the vocabulary of the sign language organized by topic, but this book (like an earlier one) had it organized in alphabetical sections, like a dictionary. The hand signs are shown in drawings on one side of the page, with lines and arrows to indicate movement where necessary, and written descriptions of the hand signs on the other.

The range of vocabulary is much more broad in this book than in the newer book, and it includes descriptions of more complex words and concepts that can be conveyed by combining some of the signs for simpler words. For example, the word “generous” can be indicated by making the signs for “heart” and “big”, and there is a list of synonyms for words. The book also demonstrates how to form sentences using the vocabulary words.

There are a couple of sections in the back of this book that provide additional information about other forms of communication, pictographs and smoke signals, which is interesting because the later book that I mentioned also made references to these other forms of communication but didn’t really offer details about how they work. This book is very detailed on the subject of pictographs, showing what different ideographs mean and explaining how to tell entire stories with them. It even explains the correlations between sign language and pictography. The book ends with some historical information about this form of sign language and suggestions for a unit about Indian sign language for a boy scout troop meeting, which include a somewhat cheesy play where the boy scouts pretend to be American Indians and use words like “How” and “paleface” with each other. The book seems very good and thorough on the technical explanations of the language, but I suspect it could be a little better on the subject of cultural representation.

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies).

Posted on by TracyC

How Sign Talk in Pictures

How; Sign Talk in Pictures by Iron Eyes Cody, 1952.

I like nonfiction books on esoteric topics! This one has kind of a kitschy feel to it. It’s partly the “How” in the title, like the way Native Americans talk in old movies, but it was written around the time those old black-and-white westerns were made, and this sort of movie theme is actually a major issue with both the book and the author. We found this book as a library discard, and part of the interest for me is that another book by the same author (available through Internet Archive) was used as recommending reading in a later book on the same subject.

The author and his wife appear frequently in pictures in the book, demonstrating different signals in Indian sign language. Part of the book near the beginning explains about the author’s life, and what it says actually isn’t true, but the real story of the life of “Iron Eyes Cody” is pretty interesting. The main reason for the deception is that Iron Eyes Cody was an actor known for playing Native Americans in films, beginning in the 1920s. To support his film persona, he claimed to be of Native American descent, but the truth is that both of his parents were Italian. His birth name was Espera Oscar de Corti. In the book, he says that he was born on his family’s ranch in Texas, but he was actually born in Louisiana, and his parents owned a grocery store. The family did live in Texas for awhile. After his father died, he and his brothers moved to California to pursue acting careers, changing their last name to Cody. As part of his film persona, he was known to wear his Native American costumes on a daily basis, as if he were living a Native American lifestyle. Many people really believed he was Native American, but this costume quality is part of what gives the book that kitschy vibe. If you think that you’ve never seen or heard of Iron Eyes Cody before, it’s actually very likely that you have because one of his acting roles was that of the “Crying Indian” in the “Keep America Beautiful” anti-pollution PSAs of the 1970s. Yep! He’s that guy, and that’s the man who wrote this book.

So, you can disregard many of the details of Cody’s brief autobiography (there’s a fanciful story there about how he got the name “Iron Eyes”, but Chief Iron Eyes was actually the name of the character he played in the 1948 movie The Paleface with Bob Hope), but what is real is that he was married to an archaeologist of Native American descent, Bertha Parker (referred to as Yeawas in the book and also appearing in pictures to demonstrate the sign language), and they had two adopted children, also of Native American descent (one of which appears in pictures in the book). Outside of his acting work, Cody supported many charitable causes that helped Native Americans and promoted the study of Native American culture. He had a collection of Native American costumes and art that he called the Moosehead Museum, and he offered lessons in Native American arts and crafts, songs and dances, and lore out of his home. (The book doesn’t really offer details about how that worked, but my guess would be that his wife, the archaeologist, provided much of the instruction or at least educated Cody about these subjects before he taught others.) Cody also worked with the Boy Scouts, helping with Scout-O-Ramas and acting as an adviser about Indian (Native American) lore. He also sometimes helped the Girl Scouts. The book is dedicated to “the youth of America, especially the Boy Scouts of America.” If you would like to know a little more about Cody, I recommend this YouTube video and this one.

On the one hand, a person who is deceptive or misleading about their identity and credentials is worrisome and probably rightly considered unreliable. However, as near as I can tell (not being an expert on this topic myself), the information presented here seems reasonably accurate, and I think that’s probably due to research, consulting with experts, and the influence of the author’s wife, who did have credentials as an archaeologist and ethnologist and had connections to other scholars through her museum work. One of the beginning sections of the book is called “A Brief History of Sign Language by Bertha Parker Cody” with an accompanying list of works consulted (texts spanning 1880 to 1926, the 19th century ones apparently written by army officers because their ranks are given, if you’re curious – Bertha’s a woman after my own heart because she also added a note to her citation about a book with a particularly good bibliography section, and I’m a great believer in notes).

So, now that you know who’s talking here, let’s discuss what they have to say about Indian Sign Language, the main topic of this book.

In a foreword to the book, F. W. Hodge, director of the Southwest Museum in Los Angeles, where Bertha Parker used to work, discusses the concept of sign language and non-verbal cues used in communication by people all over the world. People in different countries, speaking different languages, might recognize a nod of the head as meaning “yes” or a finger placed against the lips as a gesture to be quiet, but sign languages convey much more than these simple ideas, allowing people to hold entire conversations. The Indian Sign Language presented in this book was used by many different tribes, ranging from Canada all the way south to Mexico. If members of different tribes encountered each other, they could use this language to communicate, no matter which language they spoke verbally. When people of European descent learned this sign language, they also gained the same ability to communicate with a wide range of Native Americans, without even needing to speak a single word aloud. Hodge said that this was an uncommon skill for people of European descent, although he does mention one of the army officers referenced by Bertha Parker Cody in her essay.

In her essay, Bertha Parker Cody also explains the concept of sign language, referring to it as a kind of “universal language.” She explains how people have used hand signs and gestures to convey ideas and concepts throughout history. She says that the reason why this type of universal language based on gestures was necessary because, in the territory now known as North America, there were once more than 500 different spoken languages among Native Americans. Even groups who were living no more than 10 miles away from each other might be speaking completely different languages, but they would need to be able to interact with each other and communicate. It is unknown exactly who invented this particular system of sign language (although there are some possible theories), but it was particularly developed by the Plains Indians because they were nomadic buffalo hunters, often encountering other tribes as they followed the herds. As an added benefit, because the language is completely silent, hunters could use it without startling their prey, and warriors could use it with each other before a surprise attack on an enemy. Chiefs of tribes would even use sign language to convey important messages because it would guarantee that people would pay attention and focus on the hand signs to interpret what they were saying. She explains that there are signs that the language changed over time and variations existed among different tribes, there was enough commonality that members of different tribes could communicate with each other effectively. She concludes by saying that their hope was that this book would help to keep knowledge of this sign language alive among young people at a time when it was falling out of use and living knowledge.

The actual vocabulary of the sign language is presented in sections organized alphabetically, with drawings and photographs of Cody and his wife performing each of the hand signs.

The book ends with a section about hand signs for numbers and counting and a section presenting examples for forming complete sentences using the hand signs presented in the book.

The final part of the book contains an Acknowledgement from Cody to all of the people who helped with the research and writing of the book, including the photographer and the artist who did the drawn pictures.

My Reaction

I’ve already given some of my thoughts and reactions in the review above, but there is one more thought that I had about this book. I completely understand why this book was library discard. It is an older book, and there are newer ones that cover the same topic as well or better. The author is an actor who is not as culturally relevant as he once was, and although it wasn’t known at the time of his popularity, he was deceptive about his life and past. In some ways, though, reading and researching this book and its background was educational. The education I would say that I got from this book wasn’t just about sign language but also about perceptions vs. reality, the roles people play, the personas created by the movie industry, and also the expectations of the public and the credentials we require or are willing to accept from those with a message to spread.

That last part is the most complicated part, but the resources that I consulted to get the details of Cody’s life pointed out that he did genuinely encourage interest in Native American culture and support causes important to Native Americans, which begs the question of whether he would have been accepted in that role of spreading interest and providing support if it had been known at the time that he was not actually a Native American himself. The truth is that he was something of a fake and a poser. He wasn’t really what he pretended to be, and in a sense, he was acting in a permanent role, even outside movies. He was given roles as a Native American in films because his physical appearance made it credible that he could have been one, and as far as movies are concerned, that’s really all that matters. Average people believed he really was a Native American because he was a good actor and convincing, and they didn’t know enough about real Native Americans to spot the parts about his dress and act that didn’t quite ring true. However, I think that Cody’s interest in Native American culture was genuine, probably the most genuine part of his performance, and he appears to have taken a genuine pride in it. A person lying about their background is deceptive and makes other things that they do suspect, but I’m still left with some questions. If he had been honest about his family’s background, would his interest in Native American culture been accepted or would people have sneered and said that he should have stuck to speaking only about the culture his family came from? Is it possible for someone to adopt a new culture not based on family or upbringing but pure personal interest and choice, and if so, could it ever be as deep or authentic as the culture one is born into and brought up in? Or, will it only ever just be an act or a deception, something that might only fool those who don’t know how to see the reality? What is the difference, or is there one? Could the person doing it even get so deep into the act that they themselves don’t know the difference anymore?

Posted on by TracyC · 2 Comments

North American Indian Sign Language

North American Indian Sign Language by Karen Liptak, 1990, 1995.

This book is going to be one of three I’m planning to cover on the same topic because this book includes a list of recommended reading about North American Indian Sign Language, and I happen to have two other sources from that list in my collection. The other books I have are much older, and I’d like to compare them to this newer book and explain why the newer one does things differently.

To begin with, older books about this topic frequently just use the term “Indian” or “American Indian” to refer to Native Americans. This particular book defines its terms right at the beginning. The author says, “North American Indians are currently called both American Indians and Native Americans. I have chosen the term American Indians to reflect the preference voiced in a recent informal survey at an intertribal powwow in Reno, Nevada, and to help readers find the book more easily. The signs presented in this book are based on the sign language used by the American Indians of the Great Plains.” I appreciate it when authors explain their thinking clearly.

The introductory section of the book explains the purpose and history of using sign language for intertribal communications. It starts with an example of a fictional encounter between two members of different tribes who are strangers to each other. At first, they’re not sure who the other one is and if they’re someone who can be trusted, but when they begin using sign language to signal to each other who they are and what their intentions are, they realize that they’re from tribes who are friendly with each other and that it’s safe to continue communicating.

This particular form of sign language was particularly popular among Native Americans of the Great Plains, including the Cheyenne, Sioux, Kiowa, and Blackfoot tribes to allow communication between tribes that did not share a common spoken language and also within tribes in situations that demanded silent communication, such as during hunting and warfare or when communicating with people who could not hear well. American Indian sign language isn’t commonly used in modern times because there are others more commonly used, but it still appears sometimes at powwows or in Native American ceremonial festivals. This book is meant to present the sign language for fun and education.

It begins by explaining basic hand and finger positions and introducing some basic vocabulary, demonstrating signals for simple words, like “I”, “You”, “Yes”, and “No.” All of the hand signs are shown in drawings with arrows to indicate movement where necessary. It also introduces how to signal that you are asking a question.

The rest of the vocabulary is presented in themed sections, introducing words for family members, counting, seasons of the year, weather, time, food, clothing, feelings. This is different from the older books about American Indian sign language, which had vocabulary words organized alphabetically, like a dictionary. I prefer the approach of the themed sections because they demonstrate related words together and provide information for forming sentences as needed, like how to indicate that a concept is past tense. Later sections build on earlier sections, like when the section about seasons draws on the earlier concepts of counting and how to ask questions to demonstrate how to ask how old someone is or how to tell someone your age.

There are also sections at the back of the book discussing other methods of communication used by Native Americans, including smoke signals, pictographs, and petroglyphs.

The book is part of a series by the same author about various aspects of Native American culture. It’s available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive.

Posted on by TracyC

The FunCraft Book of Spycraft

The FunCraft Book of Spycraft by Falcon Travis and Judy Hindley, 1975, 1976.

This book is a part of a series of craft and hobby books that was first printed in Britain. It’s meant for kids who like to play at being spies, and it teaches kids how to use secret codes make disguises, and other tips and tricks for being a spy.

Much of the book focuses on different types of secret codes and techniques for sending secret messages. In fact, I would say that there is more about secret codes and messages than there is about anything else, but what they have to say is interesting. Most of the codes in the book are fairly easy, which is good for kids who are just beginning. The book explains popular codes like the pig-pen code and gives instructions for making simple code machines, like the popular code wheels for alphabet shifts. However, I enjoyed the variety and creativity of other codes and methods of sending secret messages, like the code based on music notes and the suggestion of using clocks or watches to represent semaphore figures.

The book not only explains some well-known and standard codes and signals, like semaphore and Morse code, but also explains how to adapt these codes in new ways. Morse code messages could be shown in a sequence of knots on a rope or in the placement of objects in a picture.

Some methods of sending secret messages don’t rely on codes so much as pre-arranged signals, like the placements of certain objects or arrangements of certain colors. These objects or color patterns might look completely ordinary to most people, but they can have special meanings to those who understand what each signal stands for.

The book also covers other topics related to spies, like how spy rings are organized, where messages can be concealed, types of equipment spies use, how to make maps, how to spot and interpret clues, and how to set traps.

There are also disguise tips. The book points out various ways that people can make themselves look different, like changing the way they comb their hair, changing their hair color, or trying to make themselves look older or fatter. One piece of advice about changing your skin tone by rubbing talcum powder on it to make it look lighter or cocoa powder on it to look darker sounds messy, and I’m not sure I’d recommend it, but the other parts seem okay. There are instructions for making a false beard, nose, and glasses and a bald-headed wig. None of these would really be convincing disguises, but they could be entertaining for kids to try to make and might be useful for Halloween costumes.

There is also a spy-themed board game in the book where one player controls a pair of spies and the other controls a pair of spycatchers. The player controlling the spies has to evade the spycatchers in order to win.

Overall, I think that the book is pretty entertaining, and kids who are really into spies and spy games would find it fun. With all of the different codes, disguise ideas, and the board game, there are plenty of fun activities to try!

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (under an alternate title – The Knowhow Book of Spycraft).