The Black Doll of Sawtell
Posted on June 22, 2020 by Royal Rosamond Press
Race Relations is difficult study, but it is our study.
This morning I was fed the news that little black girls were thrilled to see the Little Mermaid – is now black! This dovetails nicely with the alleged racist arguments going on over the treatment of Tolkien’s New Tales. Black folks are introduced! Wow!
Ho-hum! I’m already on it – me and Eric Richardson, who ragged on Walt Disney. Eric’s father was black, and his mother – white? I could have this info – reversed! Eric didn’t want to hear about my kindred, John Fremont, and the Radical Republicans that tried to put him in the White House – because they believed Lincoln was not radical enough. As it – WAS – Marxists and the first Communists, put Honest Abe in office. Eric was wallowing in His Victimhood. All white people – had to be racists – and have it out for the Black Man. As for the White Union Soldiers – they had a ulterior motive. So said Marilyn Reed, the White Woman who married a Black Man – who is Eric’s Mentor!
“I doubt the common white Union soldier was privy to all the alleged intribues. Yet they lay down their lives to free THE BLACK MAN – who had not guns!”
No comment! My childhood sweetheart deliberately did not invite me to the opening of the Mim’s House lest I spoil the Boo-Hoo Fest!
I was going to SAVE Ovington for my book – and make money and a name for myself! But, the IGNORANCE in America – is at a real crisis level. Mary was inspired by my hero, William Morris, who inspired Tolkien. Wake the fuck up! We are MAKING HISTORY every damn minute of the day! We are having a – NEW CIVIL WAR!
John Presco
Ovington joined the Socialist Party of America in 1905, influenced by the ideas of William Morris where she met A. Philip Randolph, Floyd Dell, Max Eastman and Jack London, who argued racial problems were as much a matter of class as of race. She wrote for journals and newspapers such as The Masses, New York Evening Post, and the New York Call. She also worked with Ray Stannard Baker and influenced the content of his book, Following the Color Line, published in 1908.
Mary White Ovington – Wikipedia
Asa Philip Randolph[1] (April 15, 1889 – May 16, 1979) was an American labor unionist and civil rights activist. In 1925, he organized and led the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, the first successful African-American led labor union. In the early Civil Rights Movement and the Labor Movement, Randolph was a prominent voice. His continuous agitation with the support of fellow labor rights activists against racist unfair labor practices, eventually helped lead President Franklin D. Roosevelt to issue Executive Order 8802 in 1941, banning discrimination in the defense industries during World War II. The group then successfully maintained pressure, so that President Harry S. Truman, proposed a new Civil Rights Act, and issued Executive Orders 9980 and 9981 in 1948, promoting fair employment, anti-discrimination policies in federal government hiring, and ending racial segregation in the armed services.
https://rosamondpress.com/2016/08/23/the-black-doll-revisited/
The Black Doll Of La La Land | Rosamond Press
‘She’s brown like me!’: Girls react to seeing a Black Ariel (nbcnews.com)
Parents are posting TikToks of their Black daughters getting excited about Halle Bailey in ‘The Little Mermaid’ trailer
The touching responses came after a slew of backlash directed at Bailey and Disney for casting a Black lead.
Halle Bailey in “The Little Mermaid.” Walt Disney Studios via YouTube
“Vivien Leigh was my heroine,” Elizabeth once said. “She was innocence on the verge of decadence, always there to be saved.”
Mary White Ovington and The Ring
Posted on December 3, 2019 by Royal Rosamond Press
When Eric Richardson ragged on Walt Disney, I knew about Mary Ovington being influenced by my Hero, William Morris, the Pre-Raphaelite. Tolkien was very inspired by William Morris, who ragged on Walt the “poor boob”. In 1969 I declared myself a New Pre-Raphaelite, and let my hair grow real long. The Evil Lord of Modor is stomping around Europe today, and no one has a clue how to stop him. I got more than a clue! How about Eric, and the NAACP?
John ‘The Pre-Raphaelite’
Mary Ovington – White Co-Founder of NAACP
Posted on April 29, 2019by Royal Rosamond Press
Is there a movement in the Democratic Party to move white people to the curb, and let the Woman of Color parade, march by? We have to be on the same team, and may not know what our team looks like. We can do as many restarts as we need. We may end up with a fantastic new look!
John Presco
Portrait, c. 1910
Mary White Ovington (April 11, 1865 – July 15, 1951) was an American suffragist, journalist, and co-founder of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).[1]
Biography
Mary White Ovington was born April 11, 1865 in Brooklyn, New York. Her grandmother attended the Connecticut congregation of Samuel Joseph May. Her parents, members of the Unitarian Church were supporters of women’s rights and had been involved in anti-slavery movement. Educated at Packer Collegiate Institute and Radcliffe College, Ovington became involved in the campaign for civil rights in 1890 after hearing Frederick Douglass speak in a Brooklyn New York City church and a 1903 speech by Booker T. Washington at the Social Reform Club.
In 1895 she helped found the Greenpoint Settlement in Brooklyn. Appointed head of the project the following year, Ovington remained until 1904 when she was appointed fellow of the Greenwich House Committee on Social Investigations. Over the next five years, she studied employment and housing problems in black Manhattan. During her investigations, she met W.E.B. Du Bois and was introduced to the founding members of the Niagara Movement.[2]
Ovington joined the Socialist Party of America in 1905, influenced by the ideas of William Morris where she met A. Philip Randolph, Floyd Dell, Max Eastman and Jack London, who argued racial problems were as much a matter of class as of race. She wrote for journals and newspapers such as The Masses, New York Evening Post, and the New York Call. She also worked with Ray Stannard Baker and influenced the content of his book, Following the Color Line, published in 1908.
On September 3, 1908 she read an article written by Socialist William English Walling, entitled “Race War in the North” in The Independent. Walling described a massive race riot directed at black residents in the hometown of Abraham Lincoln, Springfield, Illinois that led to seven deaths, the destruction of 40 homes and 24 businesses, and 107 indictments against rioters. Walling ended the article by calling for a powerful body of citizens to come to the aid of blacks. Ovington responded to the article by writing Walling and meeting at his apartment in New York City along with social worker Dr. Henry Moskowitz. The group decided to launch a campaign by issuing a call for a national conference on the civil and political rights of African-Americans on the centennial of Lincoln’s birthday, February 12, 1909.[2]
The National Negro Committee held its first meeting in New York on May 31 and June 1, 1909.[2] By May, 1910 the National Negro Committee and attendants, at its second conference, organized a permanent body known as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Ovington was appointed as its executive secretary. Early members included Josephine Ruffin, Mary Talbert, Mary Church Terrell, Inez Milholland, Jane Addams, George Henry White, W.E.B. Du Bois, Charles Edward Russell, John Dewey, Charles Darrow, Lincoln Steffens, Ray Stannard Baker, Fanny Garrison Villard, Oswald Garrison Villard, and Ida B. Wells-Barnett.[3] The following year Ovington attended the Universal Races Congress in London. Richetta Randolph Wallace, who had worked with Ovington as a secretary for several years, was hired as the first office staff at NAACP headquarters in 1912.[4]
Ovington remained active in the struggle for women’s suffrage. She was also a pacifist who opposed the United States’s involvement in the First World War. During the war Ovington supported A. Philip Randolph and his magazine The Messenger, which campaigned for black civil rights.[3]
Mary White Ovington’splaque on theNational Volunteer Pathway
After the war, Ovington served the NAACP as board member, executive secretary, and chairman. She inspired other women to join the NAACP, and in so doing, made a significant contribution to the multi-cultural composition of the organization.[5] NAACP fought a long legal battle against segregation and racial discrimination in housing, education, employment, voting, and transportation. They appealed to the Supreme Court to rule that several laws passed by Southern states were unconstitutional and won three important judgments between 1915-1923 concerning voting rights and housing.
In June 1934, Mary White Ovington gave speeches to 14 different colleges. Her goal was to show the youth that the NAACP association was made up of blacks and whites, specifically to show black youth that there were whites who hated race oppression. [3] During her speeches, Ovington would show the geography of all the NAACP location branches and how far the association has come. “They should know the power the race has gained” – Mary White Ovington[6]
The NAACP was criticised by some members of the African American community. Members of the organization were physically attacked by white racists. John R. Shillady, executive secretary of the NAACP, was badly beaten up when he visited Austin, Texas in 1919.
Ovington wrote several books and articles, including a study of black Manhattan, Half a Man (1911); Status of the Negro in the United States (1913); Socialism and the Feminist Movement (1914); an anthology for black children, The Upward Path (1919); biographical sketches of prominent African Americans, Portraits in Color (1927); an autobiography, Reminiscences (1932); and a history of the NAACP, The Walls Came Tumbling Down (1947).
Ovington retired as a board member of the NAACP in 1947, ending 38 years of service with the organization. She died on July 15, 1951. Mary White Ovington I.S.30 Middle School in Brooklyn was named in her honor. She is one of the persons named on The Extra Mile—Points of Light Volunteer Pathway National Memorial in Washington, D.C. In 2009 she was depicted on a United States postage stamp with Mary Church Terrell.[7]
Final years
Mary White Ovington was forced to resign from the NAACP due to poor health. In her eighties, Ovington spent her final years with her sister in Massachusetts and in 1951 died in Newton Highlands, Massachusetts, at the age of 86. Ovington also wrote novels and children’s books, including Hazel, which told the story of a young Boston Black girl spending a winter in Alabama at the turn of the century.[8]
References
- Ralph Luker, Black and White Sat Down Together: The Reminiscences of an NAACP Founder. New York: The Feminist Press at CUNY, 1996. Hardcover: ISBN 1-55861-099-5.
- “Mary White Ovington”. Biography. Retrieved 2018-05-07.
- “Ovington, Mary White – Social Welfare History Project”. Social Welfare History Project. 2014-04-27. Retrieved 2018-05-07.
- “NAACP Honors Richetta Randolph” New York Age (January 9, 1943): 4. via Newspapers.com
- Gillespie, Fern. “Women Leaders are the backbone of NAACP” (PDF). Retrieved December 13, 2013.
- White Ovington, Mary. Students Eager for International Forums. the Crisis.
- “Civil Rights Pioneers Honored on Stamps: Stamps highlight NAACP’s 100th Anniversary”. about.usps.com: United States Postal Service. Retrieved March 26, 2012.
- Digital Collections, The New York Public Library. “Hazel, (1913)”. The New York Public Library, Astor, Lennox, and Tilden Foundation. Retrieved June 13, 2018.
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