CuriShorts
CuriPow on 07/02/2022

The Worlds Of Bernice Bing

Bernice Bing, a native San Franciscan of Chinese heritage, received a National Scholastic Award to attend California College of Arts and Crafts, where she studied with Richard Diebenkorn, Saburo Hasegawa, and Nathan Oliveira. She transferred to the San Francisco Art Institute to work with Elmer Bischoff and Frank Lobdell, earning a Bachelor of Fine Arts (B.F.A.) degree with honors. She continued her studies in the San Francisco Art Institute graduate program, and in 1961 earned a Master of Fine Arts (M.F.A.) degree.

CuriPow on 07/01/2022

Between Two Worlds

A ceramist and author of two best-selling autobiogrophies---Fifth Chinese Daughter and No Chinese Stranger, Jade Snow Wong was among the first Chinese-American artist to have her work shown in major American museums, while her books pioneered the rich tradition of memoir writing among Chinese-American women.

CuriPow on 06/30/2022

Latin Lover

Antonio Moreno was born and raised in Spain. He moved to New York at an early age to pursue a career on stage. Moreno traveled to California and worked in bit parts in films until he was discovered by the film pioneer D.W. Griffith, who launched him on a screen career in 1914.

CuriPow on 06/29/2022

Making Smiles First

In 1890 Dr. Ida Gray Nelson Rollins became the first black woman to earn a doctor of dental surgery degree in the United States when she graduated from the University of Michigan. She opened her practice in Cincinnati, where she was able to serve all races, genders, and ages.

CuriPow on 06/28/2022

AIRFA

On August 11, 1978, Congress passed the American Indian Religious Freedom Act (AIRFA). After noting the U.S. right to freedom of religion and the inconsistent extension of that right to Native American people, Congress acknowledged its obligation to "protect and preserve for Native Americans their inherent right of freedom to believe, express, and exercise the traditional religions on the Native American Indian, Eskimo, Aleut, and Native Hawaiian, including but not limited to access to sites, use and possession and sacred objects, and the freedom to worship through ceremonial and traditional rites.

CuriPow on 06/27/2022

Four Stars

Horacio Rivera, Jr., was the first Puerto Rican four-star admiral and second Hispanic to rise to full admiral, was born in Ponce, Puerto Rico, where Rivero received his primary and secondary education in the public schools of San Juan, Puerto Rico.

CuriPow on 06/26/2022

Keeping The Spirit Alive

Gloria Bird is a poet and scholar and member of the Spokane Tribe of Washington State. She is one of the founding members of the Northwest Native American Writers Association. Bird then attended Lewis & Clark College in Portland, OR where she received her B.A. in English in 1990, moving on to the University of Arizona in Tucson, AZ where she received her M.A. in English in 1992.

CuriPow on 06/25/2022

Windy City

Jean-Baptist-Point Du Sable, born in St. Marc, Sainte-Domingue (now Haiti), was a black pioneer trader and discoverer of the settlement that later became the city of Chicago.

CuriPow on 06/24/2022

Social Scientist For Civil Rights

Mamie Phipps Clark was born in Hot Springs, Ark., and Kenneth Clark was born and raised in Harlem, N.Y. Both obtained their bachelor's and master's degrees from Howard University. Influenced by her work with children in an all-black nursery school, Mamie decided to conduct her master’s thesis, "The Development of Consciousness of Self in Negro Pre-School Children". Not long after, she met her soon-to-be husband, Kenneth Clark, who partnered with her to extend her thesis research on self-identification in black children. This work was later developed into the famous doll experiments that exposed internalized racism and the negative effects of segregation for African-American children.

CuriPow on 06/23/2022

The Foreign Miner Tax

In addition to prospecting for gold in California, many Chinese also came as contract laborers to Hawaii to work in sugarcane plantations. However, while in California, Chinese miners experienced their first taste of discrimination in the form of the Foreign Miner Tax. This was supposed to be collected from every foreign miner but in reality, it was only collected from the Chinese, despite the multitude of miners from European countries there as well.

CuriPow on 06/22/2022

Pioneering Punjabi

Kartar Dhillon was a South Asian American writer and activist. Her father, Mr. Bakshish Singh, was one of the first Punjabi pioneers to arrive in the United States in 1897. Her mother, Rattan Kaur, later joined him in 1910. The family lived primarily in Astoria, Oregon and, southern California, but her family maintained ties to the Sacramento Valley and father worked in the Sacramento Delta at one time.

CuriPow on 06/22/2022

Changing Hearts And Minds

In 1820, The Emancipator was the first anti-slavery magazine, edited and published by abolitionist Elihu Embree who was once a slave owner himself. At the time of his death, Mr. Embree had a subscription of over 2000, which was equivalent to any major regional publication of the day.

CuriPow on 06/21/2022

Twenty-one black women

In 1828 21 black women met in New York to draw up plans for the African Dorcas Society. This was the first black women's charitable group. Its principal objective was to aid young blacks in attending schools and supplying them with clothes, hats, and shoes.

CuriPow on 06/19/2022

The First Lebanese

The first known Lebanese immigrant to the United States was Antonios Bachaalani and Karim Bou Orm Filus, who arrived in Boston Harbor in 1854.

CuriPow on 06/18/2022

For Parents and Teachers Of Color

Selena Sloan Butler was an educator, child welfare advocate, and community leader. Throughout her life, Butler was active in many civic and service organizations, among them the American Red Cross, the Georgia Commission on Interracial Cooperation, and the Phyllis Wheatley branch of the Young Women's Christian Association. An organizer of the Atlanta Women's Club and Atlanta's Ruth Chapter of the Order of the Eastern Star, she also published "The Woman's Advocate," a monthly paper devoted to the concerns and interests of African American women.

CuriPow on 06/17/2022

Manilamen

Filipino men began arriving in Louisiana as early as 1765, arguably establishing the first Asian community in North America. They came by way of the Spanish galleon trade between Manila and Acapulco, and while it may be easy to picture them becoming dissatisfied with their lives as merchant seamen, it takes a little more imagination to figure how and why they made their way from the Pacific coast of Mexico to the New Orleans area. Filipino sailors are rumored to have been among Jean Lafitte’s Baratarians at the Battle of New Orleans.

CuriPow on 06/16/2022

Creating The Path Forward

Maria Amparo Ruiz de Burton is among the best-remembered authors of nineteenth-century Mexican American literature. Fully bilingual, de Burton was the first female Mexican American to write novels in English: Who Would Have Thought It? and The Squatter and the Don.

CuriPow on 06/15/2022

The Niagara Movement

In 1905 Twenty-nine black intellectuals and activist from fourteen states met near Niagara Falls, New York to establish the Niagara Movement. Led By W.E.B. Du Bois and William Monroe Trotter, the organization encouraged blacks to press for immediate civil rights without compromise. In 1909 the movement merged with the NAACP.

CuriPow on 06/14/2022

United States v. Wong Kim Ark

In 1898, Wong Kim Ark, a Chinese American, won a landmark Supreme Court case, which established the precedent of birthright citizenship.

CuriPow on 06/14/2022

Turtle Island

North America (the United States and Canada) was originally known as Turtle Island. The name comes from the Aboriginal Creation story of the Anishinaabek and was renamed to the Americas after the Italian explorer, Amerigo Vespucci.

CuriPow on 06/13/2022

The Borinqueneers

The 65th Infantry originated as a Puerto Rican outfit in the form of the Battalion of Porto Rican Volunteers (May 20, 1899) in the aftermath of the Spanish-American War of 1898. They were regarded as colonial troops, part of the first “American Colonial Army.” In 1908, and by then a regiment, the unit officially became part of the U.S. Army. It came to be known as the Porto Rican Regiment. During WWI the regiment was sent to the Canal Zone in Panama- far from the European battlefields. In 1920, the unit’s name changed from the Porto Rican Regiment to the 65th Infantry Regiment, United States Army.

CuriPow on 06/12/2022

Fighting For The Rights Of A Community

Clarence Takeya Arai was a founding member and the first president of the Japanese American Citizens Leauge (JACL), an organization that has advocated since 1930 for the inclusion of Japanese in American society, the restoration of Asian American civil rights, and the Japanese American redress claims of 1948 and 1988.

CuriPow on 06/11/2022

Adelfa Botello Callejo

Adelfa Botello Callejo was the first Hispanic woman to graduate in law from Southern Methodist University (SMU) after taking night classes while working full time during the day. When she opened her law office, she was the first Mexican American woman to practice law in Dallas Texas. After her husband completed a law degree, they established the law firm of Callejo and Callejo.

CuriPow on 06/10/2022

Overacheiver

Testtdi Antonia Novella overcame childhood poverty and illness to become one of the leading doctors in the United States. She was trained as a pediatrician and served in the public health sector. After spending several years at the National Insitute of Health (NIH), Novello was appointed United States Surgeon General by President George Bush. She was the first woman and Latina to hold this position. Novello used this role to bring national attention to important health issues, such as alcohol abuse, smoking, violence, and AIDS, as well as issues that especially affected women and Hispanics.