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African American History, Los Angeles, CA, United States, California (2026)

02/20/2026

Football Feature: First African-American Players In The NFL
Four black pro-ball players pushed against that barrier: Washington, Strode, Willis and Motley. All of them signed NFL contracts in 1946.
The fourth player in 1946 was Bill Marion Motley
Marion Motley (June 5, 1920 – June 27, 1999) was a fullback and linebacker who played for the Cleveland Browns in the All-America Football Conference(AAFC) and National Football League (NFL). He was a leading pass-blocker and rusher in the late 1940s and early 1950s, and ended his career with an average of 5.7 yards per carry, a record for a fullback that still stands. A versatile player who possessed both quickness and size, Motley was a force on both offense and defense. Joe Perry once called him “the greatest all-around football player there ever was”. Motley was also one of the first African-Americans to play the professional game in the modern era.
Motley grew up in Canton, Ohio. He played football through high school and college in the 1930s before enlisting in the military during World War II. While training in the U.S. Navy in 1944, he played for a service team coached by Paul Brown. Following the war, he went back to work in Canton before Brown invited him to try out for the Cleveland Browns, a team he was coaching in the newly formed AAFC. Motley made the team in 1946 and became a cornerstone of Cleveland’s success in the late 1940s. The team won four AAFC championships before the league dissolved and the Browns were absorbed by the more established NFL. Motley was the AAFC’s leading rusher in 1948 and the NFL leader in 1950, when the Browns won another championship.
Motley and fellow black teammate Bill Willis contended with racism throughout their careers. Although the color barrier was broken in all major American sports by 1950, the men endured shouted insults on the field and racial discrimination off of it. “They found out that while they were calling us ni***rs and alligator bait, I was running for touchdowns and Willis was knocking the s**t out of them,” Motley once said. “So they stopped calling us names and started trying to catch up with us.” Focused exclusively on winning, Brown did not tolerate racism within the team.
Slowed by knee injuries, Motley left the Browns after the 1953 season. He attempted a comeback in 1955 as a linebacker for the Pittsburgh Steelers but was released before the end of the year. He then pursued a coaching career, but was turned away by the Browns and other teams he approached. He attributed his trouble finding a job in football to racial discrimination, questioning whether teams were ready to hire a black coach. Motley was elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1968.

02/17/2026

Curtis Jenkins, a Texas school bus driver, brought holiday cheer to over 50 children by gifting each of them a Christmas present. Jenkins fulfilled their wishes with thoughtful gifts like bicycles and headphones. Jenkins also mentors the kids on his route and saves throughout the year to make these moments special. His acts of kindness have warmed hearts and inspired many.

02/04/2026

Christian Cooper, whose life changed after a racial profiling incident in Central Park, turned his fame into a powerful platform for wildlife advocacy. From producing a book and graphic novel to hosting his Emmy-winning show Extraordinary Birder on Nat Geo, Cooper has shown how passion and resilience can lead to success. His Daytime Emmy for Outstanding Daytime Personality is a testament to his perseverance and love for birdwatching. 🦜

02/02/2026

FATHER & SON: James Earl Jones with his Father Robert Earl Jones on Stage in the 1962 Production "Moon on a Rainbow Shawl."
Robert Earl Jones (February 3, 1910 – September 7, 2006), sometimes credited as Earl Jones, was an American actor and professional boxer. One of the first prominent Black film stars, Jones was a living link with the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s and 1930s, having worked with Langston Hughes early in his career.
Jones was best known for his leading roles in films such as Lying Lips (1939) and later in his career for supporting roles in films such as The Sting (1973), Trading Places (1983), The Cotton Club (1984), and Witness (1985).
Jones was born in northwestern Mississippi; the specific location is unclear as some sources indicate Senatobia, while others suggest nearby Coldwater. He left school at an early age to work as a sharecropper to help his family. He later became a prizefighter. Under the name "Battling Bill Stovall", he was a sparring partner of Joe Louis.
Jones became interested in theater after he moved to Chicago, as one of the thousands leaving the South in the Great Migration. He moved on to New York by the 1930s. He worked with young people in the Works Progress Administration, the largest New Deal agency, through which he met Langston Hughes, a young poet and playwright. Hughes cast him in his 1938 play, Don't You Want to Be Free?.
Jones also entered the film business, appearing in more than twenty films. His film career started with the leading role of a detective in the 1939 race film Lying Lips, written and directed by Oscar Micheaux, and Jones made his next screen appearance in Micheaux's The Notorious Elinor Lee (1940). Jones acted mostly in crime movies and dramas after that, with such highlights as Wild River (1960) and One Potato, Two Potato (1964). In the Oscar-winning 1973 film The Sting, he played Luther Coleman, an aging grifter whose con is requited with murder leading to the eponymous "sting". In the later 20th century, Jones appeared in several other noted films: Trading Places (1983) and Witness (1985).
Toward the end of his life, Jones was noted for his stage portrayal of Creon in The Gospel at Colonus (1988), a black musical version of the Oedipus legend. He also appeared in episodes of the long-running TV shows Lou Grant and Kojak. One of his last stage roles was in a 1991 Broadway production of Mule Bone by Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston, another important writer of the Harlem Renaissance. His last film was Rain Without Thunder (1993).
Although blacklisted by the House Un-American Activities Committee in the 1950s due to involvement with leftist groups, Jones was ultimately honored with a lifetime achievement award by the U.S. National Black Theatre Festival.
Jones was married three times. As a young man, he married Ruth Connolly (died 1986) in 1929; they had a son, James Earl Jones. Jones and Connolly separated before James was born in 1931, and the couple divorced in 1933. Jones did not come to know his son until the mid-1950s. He adopted a second son, Matthew Earl Jones. Jones died on September 7, 2006, in Englewood, New Jersey, from natural causes at age 96.
THEATRE
1945 The Hasty Heart (Blossom) Hudson Theatre, Broadway
1945 Strange Fruit (Henry) McIntosh NY theater production
1948 Volpone (Commendatori) City Center
1948 Set My People Free (Ned Bennett) Hudson Theatre, Broadway
1949 Caesar and Cleopatra (Nubian Slave) National Theatre, Broadway
1952 Fancy Meeting You Again (Second Nubian) Royale Theatre, Broadway
1956 Mister Johnson (Moma) Martin Beck Theater, Broadway
1962 Infidel Caesar (Soldier) Music Box Theater, Broadway
1962 The Moon Besieged (Shields Green) Lyceum Theatre, Broadway
1962 Moon on a Rainbow Shawl (Charlie Adams) East 11th Street Theatre, New York
1968 More Stately Mansions (Cato) Broadhurst Theatre, Broadway
1975 All God's Chillun Got Wings (Street Person) Circle in the Square Theatre, Broadway
1975 Death of a Salesman (Charley)
1977 Unexpected Guests (Man) Little Theatre, Broadway
1988 The Gospel at Colonus (Creon) Lunt-Fontanne Theatre, Broadway
1991 Mule Bone (Willie Lewis) Ethel Barrymore Theatre, Broadway
FILMS
1939 Lying Lips (Detective Wenzer )
1940 The Notorious Elinor Lee (Benny Blue)
1959 Odds Against Tomorrow (Club Employee uncredited)
1960 Wild River (Sam Johnson uncredited)
1960 The Secret of the Purple Reef (Tobias)
1964 Terror in the City (Farmer)
1964 One Potato, Two Potato (William Richards)
1968 Hang 'Em High
1971 Mississippi Summer (Performer)
1973 The Sting (Luther Coleman)
1974 Cockfighter (Buford)
1977 Proof of the Man (Wilshire Hayward )
1982 Cold River (The Trapper)
1983 Trading Places (Attendant)
1983 Sleepaway Camp (Ben)
1984 The Cotton Club (Stage Door Joe)
1984 Billions for Boris (Grandaddy)
1985 Witness (Custodian)
1988 Starlight: A Musical Movie (Joe)
1990 Maniac Cop 2 (Harry)
1993 Rain Without Thunder (Old Lawyer)
TELEVISION
1964 The Defenders (Joe Dean) Episode: The Brother Killers
1976 Kojak (Judge) Episode: Where to Go if you Have Nowhere to Go?
1977 The Displaced Person (Astor) Television movie
1978 Lou Grant (Earl Humphrey) Episode: Renewal
1979 Jennifer's Journey (Reuven )Television movie
1980 Oye Ollie (Performer) Television series
1981 The Sophisticated Gents (Big Ralph Joplin) 3 episodes
1982 One Life to Live
1985 Great Performances (Creon) Episode: The Gospel at Colonus
1990 True Blue (Performer) Episode: Blue Monday

02/01/2026

he historic Cort Theatre has been renamed the James Earl Jones Theatre, honoring the legendary actor’s 64-year Broadway career. Jones made his Broadway debut in 1958 and remains celebrated in theater, film, and television. The $47 million renovation marks a significant tribute to his

02/01/2026

The City of Boston has a 10-foot tall bronze sculpture in the South End depicting Harriet Tubman leading a group of people up North to freedom, the first memorial erected in Boston to a woman on city-owned property.

01/31/2026

EDDIE TOLAN: UNKNOWN ACHIEVER
The 1932 double Olympic champion, African American Eddie Tolan, was a case in point. Born in Denver in 1908, he started off as a football player, until a knee-ligament injury ended his hopes and left him with a limp. After this he took up sprinting, eventually securing a scholarship to the University of Michigan, which had produced Olympic sprint champions Archie Hahn and Ralph Craig. But these were the days of American segregation, and so Tolan was one of only two black athletes on campus. Nevertheless, he rose above the harsh discriminations of the time and qualified for the 1932 Olympic games, held in Los Angeles.
Tolan cut a figure like no other sportsman of his era — he was just five-foot-four and 145 pounds, with centre-parted short Afro hair, and round spectacles that he wore taped to the sides of his head while running. He had the look of a Baptist minister. He also liked to chew gum while he sprinted, in sync with each step, which he claimed relieved stress and improved his acceleration.
THE 1932 OLYMPIC GAMES
Going into the Olympic games, Tolan, otherwise known as the “Midnight Express”, (sprinters had stage names in those days), was ranked number two behind fellow African American sprinter Ralph Metcalfe, who had won both sprint distances in the Olympic trials. The pair were scheduled to line up against each other in the 100m and 200m sprint finals, in what would become the most talked about rivalry of the 1932 games.
On August 1, 1932, Tolan, a compact, powerful runner with lightning reflexes and a low centre of gravity, pipped Metcalfe at the post in the 100m, taking the title in 10.3 seconds, equalling the world record. There was a nothing to separate both athletes at the line, and Metcalfe's time was also given at 10.3. Metcalfe felt aggrieved, and maintained to his dying breath that the race should have been a dead heat.
But even Metcalfe had to concede two days later, when Tolan beat him in the 200, in a new world record of 21.2 seconds. Metcalfe was magnanimous in defeat, although he claimed that he had inadvertently dug his starting blocks into the wrong place on the track, giving Tolan an advantage of some four-feet.
Although Tolan became the only American track athlete in history to win two gold medals at the Olympic games, he was never able to exploit his success financially. Back home in Michigan he was supported by his mother. In desperation he finally accepted a job touring the Vaudeville circuit, telling stories about his Olympic career. The pay was supposed to be $1,500 a week, but the money never came, as the show closed after one week. After this he drifted through a series of mundane jobs. In 1967 he died of a heart attack at the age of 57.
Over the course of his short sprinting career Eddie Tolan won 300 races, and lost only seven — in the process paving the way for a long line of high-achieving black sprinters, the next of whom would be the great Jesse Owens. But despite his incredible achievements he remains largely unknown within black history and sporting circles, and sprinting is all the poorer without his unique brand of funky running.

01/31/2026

JOYRIDE | 1923 Vintage photograph of an African-American couple in a car. Via Gullringstorpgoatgal Sweden on Pinterest.

01/31/2026

Kim Hamilton (born Dorothy Mae Aiken; September 12, 1932 – September 16, 2013) was an American film and television actress, as well as a director, writer, and artist. Her career spanned more than half a century, from the early 1950s to 2010. Hamilton's early film credits included the 1959 film noir Odds Against Tomorrow opposite Harry Belafonte and The Leech Woman in 1960.She was also one of the first African-American actors to appear on the soap opera Days of Our Lives and was the only African-American to appear in a speaking role on Leave It to Beaver.
Hamilton portrayed, in an uncredited role, Helen Robinson in the 1962 film adaptation of To Kill a Mockingbird, based on Harper Lee's novel of the same name. She was the film's last surviving African-American adult cast member with a speaking role.

01/30/2026

Stock car racing driver Wendell Oliver Scott (August 29, 1921 – December 23, 1990) from Danville, Virginia was the only black driver to win a race in what is now the Sprint Cup Series in the 1950s. Scott, broke the color barrier in Southern stock car racing on May 23, 1952, at the Danville Fairgrounds Speedway.
The book, "Hard Driving: The American Odyssey of NASCAR's First Black Driver," by Brian Donovan (Steerforth Press), says that after gaining experience and winning some local races at various Virginia tracks, Scott became the first African-American to obtain a NASCAR racing license, apparently in 1953, although NASCAR does not have the exact date. The book says that Scott's career was repeatedly affected by racial prejudice and problems with top-level NASCAR officials. However, his determined struggle as an underdog won him thousands of white fans and many friends and admirers among his fellow racers.
The film Greased Lightning, starring Richard Pryor as Scott, was loosely based on Wendell Scott’s biography. Filmmaker John W. Warner directed a documentary about Scott, titled The Wendell Scott Story, released in 2003. In April 2012, Scott was nominated for inclusion in the NASCAR Hall of Fame. Scott broke racial barriers in NASCAR, with a 13-year career that included 20 top five and 147 top ten finishes.

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