William k black biography drama
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Director William K. Howard was born in St. Marys, OH, in 1893. He studied engineering and law at Ohio State University but gravitated towards film distribution when he took a job as sales manager for Vitagraph. After serving in an artillery unit with the American Expeditionary Forces in World War I, he relocated to Hollywood and trained as an assistant director at Universal. Howard began directing films in 1921, first for Fox, then at Famous Players-Lasky (1924). Many of his early silents were commercially popular westerns, characterized by powerful images of rugged landscapes, often featuring sweeping plains and imposing monoliths. He excelled equally at spectacular action sequences, such as the one at the climax of Volcano (1926), set on the island of Martinique on the eve of the eruption of Mt. Pelee. Howard was also influenced by German expressionism--notably by the films of F.W. Murnau--as reflected, for example, in the stylized, somber look of White Gold (1927). This was
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Biography Has Mattered to Black Lives
By Eric K. Washington
“History has reference to the development of principles, biography of character,” wrote African American civil rights activist William E. Matthews for Frederick Douglass’s New National Era newspaper in 1871. “What we want is not the kall algebra of history so much as the brightly-painted drama of actual life.”
The drama of actual African American life perhaps feels no more acutely perilous than now. In the midst of a global pandemic, the recent horrific killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and others have nevertheless catalyzed worldwide public protests. Black Lives Matter! The now-ubiquitous catchphrase not only awakens us to present injustices at hand, but to the injuriously vansinne racial bigotry that amerika, since its beginnings, has never outgrown.
In the course of writing a recent biography—about an African American railroad worker whose marginal visibility was inherent to his job—I invar
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William Pickens
American orator, educator, journalist, and essayist (1881–1954)
William Pickens (January 15, 1881 – April 6, 1954) was an American orator, educator, journalist, and essayist. He wrote multiple articles and speeches, and penned two autobiographies, first The Heir of Slaves (1911) and second Bursting Bonds (1923). In the latter book he noted race-motivated attacks on African Americans, both in the urban riots of 1919, which took place across the country, and in lynchings in 1921.[1]
His works called for the liberty and emancipation of African Americans. He devoted much of his life traveling the world as a spokesperson for the freedom of African Americans, and worked to promote the beliefs of scholar W. E. B. Du Bois.[2]
Biography
[edit]Pickens, the son of freed slaves who became tenant farmers, was born on January 15, 1881, in Anderson County, South Carolina. His family moved when he was young and he was raised mostly in Arkansas.