The Encyclopedia of African American Culture & History    New York: MacMillan Press, 2001  (Jack Salzman, editor)

 

COLORED FARMERS ALLIANCE Agrarian organization founded in Houston County, Texas, in 1886, the Colored Farmers' Alliance became the largest organization of primarily black farmers and agricultural laborers in the late nineteenth century. It began by espousing self-help and economic cooperation but took a series of radical measures with lobbying efforts, boycotts, and calls for strikes as it met resistance from local authorities and the segregated Southern Farmers' Alliance. Within five years the Colored Alliance spread to every state in the South and maintained an estimated membership of 1,200,000, of whom 300,000 were women. African Americans who joined the Colored Alliance were previously active in the Grange, the Agricultural Wheel, and the Knights of Labor. Richard M. Humphrey, a white Baptist minister and former Confederate soldier, served as the organization's General Superintendent and national spokesperson. In 1891 the Colored Alliance launched a national cotton pickers' strike, demanding a minimum of one dollar per hundred pounds. The strike was broken by the Southern Alliance leadership and local planters. Frustrated members became active in independent electoral politics. The organization voted unanimously to endorse the failed Lodge Bill, for federal supervision of elections. The Colored Alliance served as the primary network for the recruitment and development of black populists in the People's Party, the most successful third party in the 1890s. As the new party grew, the Colored Alliance began to dissolve, but its tradition of black agrarian radicalism was revived in the Southern Tenant Farmers' Union and the Alabama Sharecroppers Union in the 1930s. Omar H. Ali Gaither, Gerald H. Blacks and the Populist Revolt: Ballots and Bigotry in the "New South." 1977. Goodwyn, Lawrence C. "The Populist Response to Black America." In Democratic Promise: The Populist Moment in America. 1976. Abromowitz, Jack. "Accommodation and Militancy in Negro Life 1876-1916." Ph.D. dissertation, Columbia University. 1950. FULANI, LENORA BRANCH (April 25, 1950-), developmental psychologist and independent political leader. Fulani twice ran for President of the United States as an independent, making history in 1988 when she became the first woman and the first African American to get on the ballot in all fifty states. She is a pioneer of left/center/right coalitions, a founder of the Reform Party, and chair of the Committee for a Unified Independent Party, Inc., a strategy center for political independents. Fulani was raised in Chester, PA, the daughter of a nurse and a baggage carrier on the Pennsylvania Railroad. A youth leader in church and school, she won a scholarship to Hofstra University. The mother of two children, Ainka and Amani, Fulani went on to study at Columbia University's Teachers College and the City University of New York, where she received her Ph.D. in developmental psychology. While working as a researcher at Rockefeller University specializing in the interplay of social environment and learning, she decided that the social crisis in the black community required her to leave academia for activism. With Dr. Fred Newman, the major theoretical influence in her work, she co-founded the All-Stars Talent Show Network and the Development School for Youth, which now reach over twenty-thousand inner-city youths. In 1993, with activists who supported Ross Perot for President in 1992, Fulani launched a nation-wide effort to create a new pro-reform populist party that could provide black Americans with an electoral alternative. She has spearheaded numerous legislative and legal reform initiatives including ballot access reform, term limits, and same day voter registration. Fulani writes a nationally syndicated column and hosts a weekly public affairs television show. She is the author of The Making of A Fringe Candidate and editor of The Psychopathology of Everyday Racism & Sexism. Omar H. Ali Ali, Omar "Perot." In History in Dispute: American Social and Political Movements, 1945-2000, edited by Robert J. Allison. 2000. Bigelow, Barbara C., ed. Contemporary Black Biography: Profiles from the International Black Community. 1996. Fulani, Lenora B. The Making of a Fringe Candidate. 1992. CROMWELL, OLIVER (1752-1853). American Revolutionary War soldier. Cromwell was born free in Columbus near the city of Burlington, NJ, where he worked as a farmer before joining the war for American independence. At the outbreak of the war he enlisted in a company attached to the Second New Jersey Regiment under the command of Colonel Israel Shreve. Though General George Washington had initially opposed the inclusion of black soldiers in the Continental Army, Cromwell was among the soldiers who accompanied him across the Delaware River. Cromwell subsequently fought in the battles of Princeton and Brandywine in 1777, the battle of Monmouth in 1778, and reportedly witnessed the last man killed in the war at the battle of Yorktown in 1781. On June 5, 1783, General Washington personally signed Cromwell's honorable discharge papers and awarded him a medal as a private in the New Jersey Battalion. An endorsement of Cromwell stated that he was "honored with the Badge of Merit for six years faithful service." Following the war, he applied for a veteran's pension but was denied. Since he was unable to read or write, local lawyers, judges and politicians came to Cromwell's assistance. He was eventually granted a federal pension of ninety-six dollars a year. With his pension in hand, Cromwell purchased a one-hundred-acre farm in Burlington County. He spent his last years at his residence on Union Street in Burlington, where he lived to be just over one hundred years old. Cromwell is buried in the cemetery of the Broad Street Methodist Church near his home. At his death in January 1853, he was survived by several children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. Omar H. Ali Logan, Rayford "Oliver Cromwell." In Dictionary of American Negro Biography, edited by Rayford Logan and Michael Winston. 1982. Biographical sketch, Oliver Cromwell Black History Society of Historic Burlington City, New Jersey. Quareles, Benjamin. The Negro in the American Revolution. 1961. LATIMER, LEWIS HOWARD (September 4, 1848-December 11, 1928), engineer and inventor. A pioneer in the development of electric lighting, Latimer was born in Chelsea, MA, the son of a runaway. In his youth, Latimer sold copies of abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison's Liberator. In 1863 Latimer enlisted in the Union Navy and saw action on the James River aboard the U.S.S. Massoit. Honorably discharged in 1865, he became an office boy for the patent solicitors Crosby and Gould. With secondhand drafting tools and available books, Latimer trained himself as a mechanical draftsman. In 1876 Latimer prepared drawings for Alexander Graham Bell's telephone. Four years later, he joined United States Electric Lighting Co., a competitor of Thomas A. Edison, who had patented the incandescent light in 1879. Latimer shared a patent for an electric lamp in 1881 and the following year made his most important invention: a carbon filament that increased the brightness and longevity of light bulbs. The filament's lower cost made electric lighting more accessible. Latimer supervised the installation of electric-light systems in New York City, Philadelphia, Montreal, and later in London. In 1884 Edison Electric Light Co. hired him to conduct research on electrical lighting. Latimer published Incandescent Electric Lighting in 1896, a technical book for lighting engineers, and served as an expert witness for Edison against patent infringements by rival companies. Latimer circulated a petition presented in 1902 to New York City Mayor Seth Low, regarding the lack of African American representation on the school board. Latimer also taught mechanical drawing to immigrants at the Henry Street Settlement in Manhattan. Latimer's book of poetry, Poems of Love and Life, was privately published in 1925, three years before he passed away in Flushing, NY, at the age of eighty. Omar H. Ali Clarke, John Henrick "Lewis H. Latimer." In Dictionary of American Negro Biography, edited by Rayford Logan and Michael Winston. 1982. Hayden, Robert C. Eight Black American Inventors. 1972. Klein, Aaron E. The Hidden Contributors: Black Scientists and Inventors in America. 1971.

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