In an alarming move reflecting ongoing tensions over diverse narratives in education and public discourse, the Trump administration is reportedly pushing to ban a biography of Jackie Robinson from the Nimitz Library at the U.S. Naval Academy. This follows a week of controversy sparked by the temporary removal and subsequent restoration of an article on Robinson’s Army service from the Pentagon’s website.

According to a report from The New York Times, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has directed the Naval Academy to review its library collection for works that embody themes of diversity, equity, and inclusion. The biography of Robinson, alongside around 900 other titles—including Martin Luther King Jr.’s autobiography and “Einstein on Race and Racism”—has been flagged for removal under this directive.

Cmdr. Tim Hawkins, a spokesman for the Naval Academy, stated, “The U.S. Naval Academy is fully committed to executing and implementing all directives outlined in executive orders issued by the president and is currently reviewing the Nimitz Library collection to ensure compliance. The Navy is carrying out these actions with utmost professionalism, efficiency, and in alignment with national security objectives.”

With Hegseth scheduled to visit the Academy soon, it remains uncertain whether these controversial titles will be removed from the library before his arrival. The issue has sparked substantial outcry, particularly in light of the administration’s recent criticism over removing articles that celebrate influential figures in U.S. history, like Robinson and the Navajo code talkers.

In a discussion prompted by ESPN’s Jeff Passan, Pentagon press secretary John Ullyot reiterated the administration’s stance against diversity initiatives, indicating that some content may have been removed inadvertently. His comments drew significant backlash, leading to a follow-up statement emphasizing “patriotism and dedication to the warfighting mission” rather than racial or ethnic identities.

Robinson, a second lieutenant in the Army from 1942 to 1944, served with the 761st Tank Battalion, the first Black tank unit to see combat in World War II. His court-martial for refusing to adhere to a racist bus policy only underscores his enduring struggle against racial injustice, paving the way for his groundbreaking success in Major League Baseball as he broke the color barrier.

The Los Angeles Dodgers, Robinson’s team for a decade, are scheduled to visit President Trump at the White House to celebrate their 2024 World Series title this April, coinciding with Jackie Robinson Day. This timing juxtaposes their celebration of his legacy against the backdrop of an administration taking steps to diminish recognition of such key figures in American history.

As this situation unfolds, it raises critical questions about the role of educational institutions, historical representation, and the importance of equitable narratives in our national dialogue. In today’s divided political landscape, the removal of influential and diverse voices from public access can serve not just as a reflection of current priorities but also as a forewarning about the future of discourse surrounding diversity and inclusion in America.

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Related article: https://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/article/trump-administration-reportedly-moves-to-ban-jackie-robinson-biography-from-naval-academy-library-235013259.html

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Kate Clifford Larson, Brandeis University

Harriet Tubman was barely 5 feet tall and didn’t have a dime to her name.

What she did have was a deep faith and powerful passion for justice that was fueled by a network of Black and white abolitionists determined to end slavery in America.

“I had reasoned this out in my mind,” Tubman once told an interviewer. “There was one of two things I had a right to, liberty, or death. If I could not have one, I would have the other; for no man should take me alive.”

Though Tubman is most famous for her successes along the Underground Railroad, her activities as a Civil War spy are less well known.

As a biographer of Tubman, I think this is a shame. Her devotion to America and its promise of freedom endured despite suffering decades of enslavement and second class citizenship.

It is only in modern times that her life is receiving the renown it deserves, most notably her likeness appearing on a US$20 bill in 2030. The Harriet Tubman $20 bill will replace the current one featuring a portrait of U.S. President Andrew Jackson.

In another recognition, Tubman was accepted in June 2021 to the United States Army Military Intelligence Corps Hall of Fame at Fort Huachuca, Arizona. She is one of 278 members, 17 of whom are women, honored for their special operations leadership and intelligence work.

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Though traditional accolades escaped Tubman for most of her life, she did achieve an honor usually reserved for white officers on the Civil War battlefield.

After she led a successful raid of a Confederate outpost in South Carolina that saw 750 Black people rescued from slavery, a white commanding officer fetched a pitcher of water for Tubman as she remained seated at a table.

A different education

Believed to have been born in March 1822 in Dorchester County, Maryland, Tubman was named Araminta by her enslaved parents, Rit and Ben Ross.

“Minty” was the fifth of nine Ross children. She was frequently separated from her family by her white enslaver, Edward Brodess, who started leasing her to white neighbors when she was just 6 years old.

At their hands, she endured physical abuse, harsh labor, poor nutrition and intense loneliness.

As I learned during my research into Tubman’s life, her education did not happen in a traditional classroom, but instead was crafted from the dirt. She learned to read the natural world – forests and fields, rivers and marshes, the clouds and stars.

She learned to walk silently across fields and through the woods at night with no lights to guide her. She foraged for food and learned a botanist’s and chemist’s knowledge of edible and poisonous plants – and those most useful for ingredients in medical treatments.

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She could not swim, and that forced her to learn the ways of rivers and streams – their depths, currents and traps.

She studied people, learned their habits, watched their movements – all without being noticed. Most important, she also figured out how to distinguish character. Her survival depended on her ability to remember every detail.

After a brain injury left her with recurring seizures, she was still able to work at jobs often reserved for men. She toiled on the shipping docks and learned the secret communication and transportation networks of Black mariners.

Known as Black Jacks, these men traveled throughout the Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic seaboard. With them, she studied the night sky and the placement and movement of the constellations.

She used all those skills to navigate on the water and land.

“… and I prayed to God,” she told one friend, “to make me strong and able to fight, and that’s what I’ve always prayed for ever since.”

Tubman was clear on her mission. “I should fight for my liberty,” she told an admirer, “as long as my strength lasted.”

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The Moses of the Underground Railroad

In the fall of 1849, when she was about to be sold away from her family and free husband John Tubman, she fled Maryland to freedom in Philadelphia.

Between 1850 and 1860, she returned to the Eastern Shore of Maryland about 13 times and successfully rescued nearly 70 friends and family members, all of whom were enslaved. It was an extraordinary feat given the perils of the 1850 Slave Fugitive Act, which enabled anyone to capture and return any Black man or woman, regardless of legal status, to slavery.

Those leadership qualities and survival skills earned her the nickname “Moses” because of her work on the Underground Railroad, the interracial network of abolitionists who enabled Black people to escape from slavery in the South to freedom in the North and Canada.

As a result, she attracted influential abolitionists and politicians who were struck by her courage and resolve – men like William Lloyd Garrison, John Brown and Frederick Douglass. Susan B. Anthony, one of the world’s leading activists for women’s equal rights, also knew of Tubman, as did abolitionist Lucretia Mott and women’s rights activist Amy Post.

“I was the conductor of the Underground Railroad for eight years,” Tubman once said. “and I can say what most conductors can’t say; I never ran my train off the track and I never lost a passenger.”

Battlefield soldier

When the Civil War started in the spring of 1861, Tubman put aside her fight against slavery to conduct combat as a soldier and spy for the United States Army. She offered her services to a powerful politician.

Known for his campaign to form the all-Black 54th and 55th regiments, Massachusetts Gov. John Andrew admired Tubman and thought she would be a great intelligence asset for the Union forces.

He arranged for her to go to Beaufort, South Carolina, to work with Army officers in charge of the recently captured Hilton Head District.

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There, she provided nursing care to soldiers and hundreds of newly liberated people who crowded Union camps. Tubman’s skill curing soldiers stricken by a variety of diseases became legendary.

But it was her military service of spying and scouting behind Confederate lines that earned her the highest praise.

She recruited eight men and together they skillfully infiltrated enemy territory. Tubman made contact with local enslaved people who secretly shared their knowledge of Confederate movements and plans.

Wary of white Union soldiers, many local African Americans trusted and respected Tubman.

According to George Garrison, a second lieutenant with the 55th Massachusetts Regiment, Tubman secured “more intelligence from them than anybody else.”

In early June 1863, she became the first woman in U.S. history to command an armed military raid when she guided Col. James Montgomery and his 2nd South Carolina Colored Volunteers Regiment along the Combahee River.

While there, they routed Confederate outposts, destroyed stores of cotton, food and weapons – and liberated over 750 enslaved people.

The Union victory was widely celebrated. Newspapers from Boston to Wisconsin reported on the river assault by Montgomery and his Black regiment, noting Tubman’s important role as the “Black she Moses … who led the raid, and under whose inspiration it was originated and conducted.”

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Ten days after the successful attack, radical abolitionist and soldier Francis Jackson Merriam witnessed Maj. Gen. David Hunter, commander of the Hilton Head district, “go and fetch a pitcher of water and stand waiting with it in his hand while a black woman drank, as if he had been one of his own servants.”

In that letter to Gov. Andrew, Merriam added, “that woman was Harriet Tubman.”

Lifelong struggle

Despite earning commendations as a valuable scout and soldier, Tubman still faced the racism and sexism of America after the Civil War.

When she sought payment for her service as a spy, the U.S. Congress denied her claim. It paid the eight Black male scouts, but not her.

Unlike the Union officers who knew her, the congressmen did not believe – they could not imagine – that she had served her country like the men under her command, because she was a woman.

Gen. Rufus Saxton wrote that he bore “witness to the value of her services… She was employed in the Hospitals and as a spy [and] made many a raid inside the enemy’s lines displaying remarkable courage, zeal and fidelity.”

Thirty years later, in 1899, Congress awarded her a pension for her service as a Civil War nurse, but not as a soldier spy.

When she died from pneumonia on March 10, 1913, she was believed to have been 91 years old and had been fighting for gender equality and the right to vote as a free Black woman for more than 50 years after her work during the Civil War.

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Surrounded by friends and family, the deeply religious Tubman showed one last sign of leadership, telling them: “I go to prepare a place for you.”

Kate Clifford Larson, Professor of History, Brandeis University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Minnita Daniel-Cox, University of Dayton

Paul Laurence Dunbar was only 33 years old when he died in 1906.

In his short yet prolific life, Dunbar used folk dialect to give voice and dignity to the experience of Black Americans at the turn of the 20th century. He was the first Black American to make a living as a writer and was seminal in the start of the New Negro Movement and Harlem Renaissance.

Dunbar also penned one of the most iconic phrases in Black literature – “I know why the caged bird sings” – his poem “Sympathy.”

“… When his wing is bruised and his bosom sore, When he beats his bars and he would be free; It is not a carol of joy or glee, But a prayer that he sends from his heart’s deep core, But a plea, that upward to Heaven he flings – I know why the caged bird sings!”

Published in 1899, “Sympathy” inspired acclaimed Black writer and activist Maya Angelou to use Dunbar’s line as the title of her seminal autobiography.

But Dunbar’s artistic legacy is often overlooked. This, despite the fact that his work influenced a number of other great African American literary giants, including Langston Hughes, Nikki Giovanni, James Weldon Johnson, Zora Neale Hurston and Margaret Walker.

In a very real sense, Dunbar is your favorite poet’s favorite poet.

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A blooming life of writing

Born on June 27, 1872, to two formerly enslaved people from Kentucky, Dunbar was raised by his mother, and they eventually settled in Dayton, Ohio.

While there, Dunbar attended the integrated Dayton Central High School. An exceptional writer, Dunbar was the only Black student in his class and became editor-in-chief of the high school newspaper as well as a member of the literary and drama clubs and debating society.

He also became friends with a white classmate who, with his brother, would later invent the airplane – Orville Wright.

The two knew each other well.

Their friendship led to business as the Wright brothers, who owned a printing press, were the first to print Dunbar’s writings, including the newspaper Dunbar started and edited, the Dayton Tattler, the first Black newspaper in that city.

After high school, the lives of Dunbar and Wright took different turns.

Unable to find consistent pay for his writing, Dunbar worked a variety of jobs, including as a janitor in one downtown Dayton office building and as an elevator operator in another. Not one to miss a business opportunity, the 20-year-old Dunbar sold his first book of poetry, “Oak and Ivy,” to passengers he met on the elevator.

He found another such job after he moved to Washington, D.C., and worked stacking shelves at the Library of Congress. According to his wife, Alice Dunbar, an accomplished writer in her own right, it was there that her husband began to think about a caged bird.

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“… The torrid sun poured its rays down into the courtyard of the library and heated the iron grilling of the book stacks until they were like prison bars in more senses than one,” Dunbar wrote. “The dry dust of the dry books … rasped sharply in his hot throat, and he understood how the bird felt when it beats its wings against its cage.”

Dunbar’s first break came when he was invited to recite his poems at the 1893 Worlds Fair, where he met Frederick Douglass, the famous abolitionist. Impressed, Douglass gave Dunbar a job and called him the “the most promising young colored man in America.”

Dunbar’s second break came three years later. On his 24th birthday, he received a glowing Harper’s Weekly review of his second book of poetry, “Majors and Minors,” from the prominent Ohio-raised literary critic William Dean Howells.

That review came with a mixed blessing. Howells’ praise of Dunbar’s use of dialect limited Dunbar’s ability to sell his other styles of writing.

But that same review helped catapult Dunbar to international acclaim.

His stardom didn’t last long, though.

Diagnosed with tuberculosis in 1900, Dunbar died from complications of the disease on Feb. 9, 1906.

But his work survives.

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Dunbar’s musical legacy

In all, Dunbar wrote 600 poems, 12 books of poetry, five novels, four volumes of short stories, essays, hundreds of newspaper articles and lyrics for musicals.

His poetry has been continuously set by composers, from his contemporaries to living composers still living today, including Carrie Jacobs Bond, John Carpenter, Harry Thacker Burleigh, William Bolcom and Zenobia Powell Perry.

Florence Price’s numerous settings of his texts include popular and advertisement music, while William Grant Still’s “Afro-American” symphony features spoken epigraphs of Dunbar poems before each movement.

Dunbar’s legacy in apparent not only in the concert hall, but on the theatrical stage as well.

Dunbar was librettist for an operetta by Samuel Coleridge Taylor, “Dream Lovers,” written specifically for Black singers.

Dunbar’s own extraordinary life became the subject for operas as composers Adolphus Hailstork, Richard Thompson, Steven Allen and Jeff Arwady composed works depicting Dunbar’s legacy.

The collaborations of Dunbar and Will Marion Cook produced the first examples of contemporary musical theater.

Without Paul’s contributions with “In Dahomey” and “Jes Lak White Fo’ks,” in my view there would be no “Hamilton,” the modern Broadway musical written by Lin-Manuel Miranda in 2015.

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‘We wear the mask’

Dunbar’s works celebrated all of humanity.

He turned the plantation tradition on its head by using dialect to not only offer critical social commentary, as in his poem “When Malindy Sings,” but also to portray oft-ignored humanity, as in “When Dey ‘Listed Colored Soldiers.”

Dunbar’s works provide historical snapshots into the everyday lives of working-class Black Americans.

None were as poignant as his poem “We Wear the Mask.”

“We wear the mask that grins and lies, It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes, This debt we pay to human guile; With torn and bleeding hearts we smile, And mouth with myriad subtleties.”

Minnita Daniel-Cox, Associate Professor of Music, University of Dayton

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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