You may have heard of Black astronauts like Mae Jemison, Charles Bolden or Victor Glover, but do you know about the first African-American astronauts or what they contributed to NASA’s space program?
Guion “Guy” Bluford, Ron McNair and Frederick Gregory were the first three African-Americans in space. They were also NASA classmates in its famous “Class of 1978” – the first class to train women as astronauts (Sally Ride) as well as the first Asian-American man (Ellison Onizuka).
Guy Bluford graduated from Penn State and joined the Air Force in 1964 to become a pilot. Bluford was deployed to Vietnam and flew over 140 combat missions. After Vietnam, Bluford remained in the Air Force, using his skills to train future fighter pilots. In the 1970s, Bluford earned advanced degrees in aerospace engineering and eventually became chief of the Air Force’s aerospace laboratory.
Ruby Doris Smith-Robinson, one of the unsung champions of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s, was the only woman to serve as Executive Secretary for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee(SNCC) and was known for her verve and willingness to take on anything or anyone.
Kwame Ture (fka Stokely Carmichael, one of the original SNCC Freedom Riders) once said of Ruby, “She was convinced that there was nothing that she could not do… she was a tower of strength.”
Ruby was arrested several times and served 100 days in prison, voluntarily adopting SNCC’s “Jail-no-Bail” strategy to keep bail money from further funding racist police departments.
Ruby participated in multiple sit-ins in Atlanta as part of the Atlanta Student Movement while she attended Spelman College, joined the Freedom Riders, was attacked and beaten in Montgomery, and in Atlanta worked to integrate hospitals after lunch counters were successfully desegregated.
At one hospital demonstration, the receptionist told Ruby and her fellow protestors to leave when they came through the white hospital entrance. “Besides you’re not sick anyway,” the receptionist added. Ruby walked right up to the desk, looked the receptionist in the eye, then vomited on the counter and retorted, “Is that sick enough for you?”
Former SNCC leader and NAACP Chairman Julian Bond remembered that when SNCC staff was preparing to board a plane for Africa in 1964 to observe the success of the nonviolence technique, an airline representative told them the plane was overbooked, they were being bumped and would have to take a later flight. This angered Smith-Robinson so much that without consulting the rest of the group she went and sat down in the jetway and refused to move. (They were given seats on the original flight.)
Smith-Robinson also created theSojourner Truth Motor Fleet for SNCC to make sure the field staff always had cars available.
Only one year after Ruby succeeded James Forman as SNCC’s Executive Secretary, she died from cancer at 25 – a devastating loss to her movement colleagues and SNCC itself. On the headstone at her Atlanta grave site are words appropriate for both her life and SNCC: “If you think free, you are free.”
In 2017, Smith-Robinson’s nieceKeisha Lance Bottoms was elected Mayor of Atlanta.
*[This year marks the 100th anniversary since Dr. Carter G. Woodson founded Negro History Week in February 1926. Fifty years after that, President Gerald Ford officially recognized Black History Month. In 1986, Congress passed a law designating February as Black History Month across the U.S.]
[*This year marks the 100th anniversary since Dr. Carter G. Woodson, the “Father of Black History” founded Negro History Week in February 1926. Fifty years after that, President Gerald Ford officially recognized Black History Month. In 1986, Congress passed a law designating February as Black History Month across the U.S.]
Robert Smalls was the first Black man elected to U.S. Congress during Reconstruction, but of course his incredible story and accomplishments did not begin there. Smalls was born into slavey in 1839 in Beaufort, South Carolina and started his journey to national prominence by daring to escape slavery during the Civil War.
Smalls, like many other enslaved people, was made to work for the Confederate forces. Menial labor such as grave digging, cooking, digging trenches, etc. were the most common jobs, but some enslaved people were used in skilled labor positions. Smalls, who could navigate the waters in and around Charleston, was used to guide transport ships for the Confederate Navy.
On May 13, 1862, Smalls convinced several other enslaved people to help him commandeer a Confederate transport ship, the CSS Planter, in Charleston Harbor. Smalls, in a captain hat and using Confederate hand signals, sailed from Confederate-controlled waters to the U.S. Naval blockade. By doing so, Smalls gained freedom for himself, several other enslaved people and also for his family.
Illus. in: Harper’s Weekly, v. 6, 1862 June 14, p. 372. (via PICRYL Public Domain)
Smalls’ example of cunning and bravery helped convince President Abraham Lincoln to accept Black soldiers into the U.S. Army and Navy. Smalls became Captain of the same boat for the Union Navy and helped free enslaved peoples as he fought and outwitted the Confederate Navy several more times during the duration of the War.
After the South surrendered, Smalls returned to Beaufort, S.C. and purchased his enslaver’s house, which was seized by the Union in 1863. His enslaver sued to get it back, but lost in court to Smalls.
Smalls learned to read and write during this time, and after going into business to service the needs of freedmen, Smalls was elected to the State House of South Carolina. While there, Smalls authored state legislation to provide South Carolina with the first free and compulsory public school system in the United States. He also founded the Republican Party of South Carolina.
In 1874, Smalls was elected the first Black member of U.S. Congress. In backlash to his election, his opposers began gerrymandering across South Carolina to start tilting seats back to white men.
Conservative Southern Bourbon Democrats, who called themselves the Redeemers, also resorted to violence and election fraud to regain control of the South Carolina state legislature. As part of wide-ranging white efforts to reduce African-American political power, Smalls was charged and convicted of taking a bribe five years prior in connection with the awarding of a printing contract.
Smalls was pardoned as part of an agreement by which charges were also dropped against Democrats accused of election fraud. But the scandal took a political toll, and Smalls was defeated by Democrat George D. Tillman in the senate election in 1878, and again, narrowly, in 1880. Smalls successfully contested the 1880 result and regained the seat in 1882.
In 1884 he was elected to fill a seat in a different district. He was nominated for Senate but defeated by Wade Hampton in 1886. Smalls died of malaria and diabetes in 1915 at the age of 75 and was buried in his family’s plot in the churchyard of the Tabernacle Baptist Church in downtown Beaufort.
According to curators at the National Museum of African American History and Culture, Smalls’ family went on to be very successful, and there is a Robert Smalls lecture at the University of South Carolina every year.
The monument to Smalls in the churchyard is inscribed with a statement he made to the South Carolina legislature in 1895:
My race needs no special defense, for the past history of them in this country proves them to be the equal of any people anywhere. All they need is an equal chance in the battle of life.
[*This year marks the 100th anniversary since Carter G. Woodson, the “Father of Black History” founded Negro History Week in February 1926. Fifty years after that, President Gerald Ford officially recognized Black History Month. In 1986, Congress passed a law officially designating February as Black History Month.]
“Sick and tired of being sick and tired” in the 1960s, Mississippi plantation worker Fannie Lou Hamer was fired, threatened by white supremacists, and beaten in police custody when she tried to vote and register others to do the same.
Fannie Lou Hamer (photo via PICRYL Creative Commons)
But Hamer would not be silenced. She worked with other activists in her church and volunteers from the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) to travel county to county to register other Black people to vote.
Hamer then formed the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party and demanded to represent her state at the 1964 Democratic Convention. Hamer fought for voting rights, education rights, and economic rights (she formed the Freedom Farm Collective to fight for redistribution of wealth from usurious sharecropping) and even ran for Senate.
Although she wasn’t rich, traditionally educated or well-connected, Hamer was a grassroots leader who got involved – and stayed involved – because she believed to her core “Nobody’s free until everybody’s free.”
Hamer passed in 1977 after years of dealing with serious health issues, but her legacy as an outspoken and effective champion for equal rights will never be forgotten.
It’s your friend and selector, Marlon West, with another collection for GOOD BLACK NEWS. GROOVE CHRISTMAS 2025 is an eclectic mix of Christmas music, much of which was released this year.
This collection features favorites from Donny Hathaway, Nina Simone, Lou Rawls and John Legend, alongside recent releases by artists like Rebel Rae, Aloe Blacc, Alex Harris and CoCo Jones. I’ve also included selections from Duke Ellington’s classic 1960 “Nutcracker Suite” as a unifying thread.
I hope this seasonal collection introduces you to new classics and favorites to enjoy this year and beyond.
It’s Music Monday and Halloween here at Good Black News! It’s your friend and selector, the groove conductor, Marlon West. I’ve returned once more during this Season of the Witch with another collection.
I am just back from a screening and discussion with Ryan Coogler and part of his creative team behind SINNERS. It was the fifth viewing for me, in whole or in part.
I saw it opening day laser projected, two weeks later on 70mm IMAX, streamed it twice, once with a sista in the lower right corner offering Black ASL, and today a 70mm print projected at the Directors Guild of America‘s theater with a very diverse and reactive crowd early on a Sunday morning. I was delighted to run into our GBN Editor-In-Chief Lori Lakin Hutcherson and her mother at the same screening.
As any of you that enjoy my Music Monday playlist knows, I love me some Halloween. This is at least the fifth All-Hallows Eve collection I’ve done for Good Black News.
The cinematic juggernaut that is SINNERS is a good reminder of just how much the blues has dealt with scares both supernatural and real-world based.
From Robert Johnson’s mythic trip the the crossroads to Blind Willie Johnson’s “Dark Was The Night, Cold Was The Ground,” the blues has provided its share of eerie moments. Bo Diddley’s iconic ‘Who Do You Love” opens with following boasts:
I walked forty-seven miles of barbed wire Used a cobra snake for a necktie Got a brand new house on the roadside Made from rattlesnake hide Got a brand new chimney made on top Made out of a human skull
Oh, that’s a Halloween song, all right! Howlin’ Wolf, Koko Taylor, RL Burnside, Norma Tanega, Gary Clark Jr., and so many more purveyors of the blues are present for this Halloween collection.
Whether your plans include handing out candy to hobgoblins of all ages, chillin’ with friends, or kickin’ at home with that porch light out, here is another autumnal offer to enjoy during this Halloween Season.
Happy Music Monday, you all. I hope this missive finds you smiling and well. It’s your friend and selector, Marlon West, back again with a new collection of tasty tracks to enjoy today and all week long.
Not long ago I was chatting with a pal who doesn’t like jazz, because she can’t dance to it. While of course there was and is big band jazz created for dancing. What they were talking about was the kind of grooves that lovers of R&B, Soul, and Funk enjoy so much.
Being always up for a challenge I created this collection of “Dance Jazz”.
It features New Orleans brass bands, remixes of jazz standards, and collaborations with jazz musicians and hip hop artists.
You’ll find genre-bending musicians like Roy Ayers, Stanley Clarke, George Duke, and Herbie Hancock.
There are offerings of “Jukebox Jazz” created by Art Blakey, Lou Donaldson, Dorothy Ashby and others as a response to the more accessible and popular Rhythm and Blues of the 1960s.
Like all these GOOD BLACK NEWS collections, this one has have been fun to make.
Hope you will enjoy these shimmy-inducing jazz tracks. Stay tuned for some Halloween candy-slinging next month.
Happy Music Monday, you all. And welcome to this second week of Black Music Month.
Back in April, PBS dropped Independent Lens: We Want the Funk! Director Stanley Nelson and producer Nicole London’s documentary features the history, stars, themes and theory behind this most Blackest and inclusive style of music.
Everyone can shake a tail feather on “The One”. It is a celebratory film looking at one of history’s most important musical genres. It offers dazzling archival performances from James Brown, Sly & the Family Stone, Parliament Funkadelic, Labelle, Fela Kuti, and others.
This “Great Moments in Funk aka Funk 101” playlist offers the classic funk songs featured in the film and includes many hip hop tracks that sample them. I’ve also added modern funk disciples like Silk Sonic, Sam Pounds, Big Joanie and others.
Starting in the 1960s, through the Vietnam War, the struggle for civil rights, the rise of the Black Power movement, and right up to the current Black Lives Matter movement, there is no bolder and joyful celebration of Black identity than Funk. Please enjoy this hours-long celebration of decades of funky music.
See you all next month! And as always, stay sane, safe and kind!
Happy Music Monday, you all. It’s your pal and musician marshal is back with another dose of fine tunes.
After Fruitvale Station, Rocky spin-off/reboot Creed, Black Panther and its sequel, Wakanda Forever, Ryan Coogler has proven himself one of the most masterful filmmakers working today.
Though Sinners, which arrived in theaters three weeks ago, is his first film not derived from real life or other properties.
Michael B. Jordan in the dual role of 1930s gangster twins Smoke and Stack, leads a charming ensemble of characters in a blistering, sexy southern gothic horror. It is a blues-infused vampire flick in which the music flows as freely as R-rated gore.
This month’s offering celebrates Sinners’ soundtrack featuring Miles Caton, Alice Smith, Rod Wave, co-star Hailee Steinfeld and others.
There are also offerings from Alabama Shakes’ Brittany Howard, Raphael Saadiq, Bobby Rush and the legendary Buddy Guy, who also appears in the film. (If you haven’t seen the film yet, stay put for the poignant mid-credits sequence.) There are passages of the original score, from Coogler’s frequent collaborator, Ludwig Göransson.
Of course, I have included songs and performances that surely inspired Coogler and his creative team. There are songs by Robert Johnson, Charley Patton, Howlin’ Wolf, Muddy Waters, Koko Taylor and so many others.
The gospel blues track “Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground” by Blind Willie Johnson is one of 27 pieces of music sent to space in 1977 on the “Voyager Golden Record” to represent the rich diversity of life on Earth. I can’t think of a better example of the cultural import of the blues.
I’m thrilled to offer this playlist celebrating the blues’ enduring impact, and the film that celebrates Black community, tenacity, and ownership.
See you all next month, and as always: Stay safe, sane, and kind.
Greetings! It’s your friend and selector, Marlon, again.
Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson’s joyous, crisply edited and well observed documentary about Sly Stone dropped in February on Hulu and Disney+.
SLY LIVES! (aka The Burden of Black Genius)is a worthy follow-up to the Oscar-winning documentary Summer of Soul, and examines the life and lasting legacy of Sly & The Family Stone.
It was the inspiration of this playlist about the groundbreaking band led by the enigmatic and charismatic Sly Stone.
This wonderful film captures the Sly Stone’s rise, reign and subsequent fadeout, and as the subtitle suggests, sheds light on the unseen and often unspoken burden that comes with success for Black artists in America.
Here are songs from across Sly and The Family Stone’s ten studio albums, their live records, and a fraction of the hit songs that sample this legendary group.
From LL Cool J to Janet Jackson to Beastie Boys to Jungle Brothers, there are tracks included that are driven by grooves of Sly Stone.
Please enjoy this 100 song collection of essential tracks by and featuring Sly & The Family Stone.
And as always, stay safe, sane and kind. See you next month!!
