How Beverly Johnson became American Vogue's first black cover girl

Model agents told her she'd never make it, hairdressers refused to touch her hair and Kodak didn't even make film that could cope with her skin tone, but somehow 40 years ago Beverly Johnson became the first black woman on the cover of American Vogue.

"You mean there's never been a woman of colour on the cover of Vogue magazine? Are you kidding me? We're in the 1970s."

When Beverly Johnson found out that she'd made the August 1974 cover of the fashion bible she was ecstatic - but also outraged to discover she was breaking a racial taboo for the first time.

At 21, she'd only been modelling for a couple of years and didn't know that her goal - to be on Vogue's front cover - would put her in the history books.

When the picture hit the newsstands - with Johnson, her hair swept back, wearing an unseasonably warm angora cardigan and Bulgari diamond loop earrings - she started getting calls from newspapers and magazines from all over the world.

"That's when I knew it was a big deal, when people told me it was a big deal," she says.

"I was interviewed by people from Africa and from Europe. They were saying, 'It's about time that America woke up!' It was just life-changing."

Johnson grew up in an all-white neighbourhood in Buffalo, upstate New York, largely unaware of the racial tensions elsewhere.

Her mother, an African American from Louisiana, and her father, a Native American, never spoke about race.

Funny! Jesse Duplantis on White Preachers and Black Preachers

Top 10 Quotes From I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings By Maya Angelou

An incredible gem of her generation. She won three Grammys, spoke six languages and was the second poet in history to recite a poem at a presidential inauguration. Here is top 10 Quotes From I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings By Maya Angelou:

“But a caged bird stands on the grave of dreams
his shadow shouts on a nightmare scream
his wings are clipped and his feet are tied
so he opens his throat to sing.”  

 

 “Anything that works against you can also work for you once you understand the Principle of Reverse.”  

 
“Instead, pursue the things you love doing, and then do them so well that people can't take their eyes off you....see, you don't have to think about doing the right thing. If you're for the right thing, then you do it without thinking."
 
“Hoping for the best, prepared for the worst, and unsurprised by anything in between.”
 
“People whose history and future were threatened each day by extinction considered that it was only by divine intervention that they were able to live at all. I find it interesting that the meanest life, the poorest existence, is attributed to God's will, but as human beings become more affluent, as their living standard and style begin to ascend the material scale, God descends the scale of responsibility at a commensurate speed.”  

Legendary Poet Maya Angelou has died at age 86

Maya Angelou, a modern Renaissance woman who survived the harshest of childhoods to become a force on stage, screen, the printed page and the inaugural dais, has died. She was 86.

Her death was confirmed in a statement issued by Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, where she had served as a professor of American Studies since 1982.

Tall and regal, with a deep, majestic voice, Angelou defied all probability and category, becoming one of the first black women to enjoy mainstream success as an author and thriving in virtually every artistic medium. The young single mother who performed at strip clubs to earn a living later wrote and recited the most popular presidential inaugural poem in history. The childhood victim of rape wrote a million-selling memoir, befriended Malcolm X, Nelson Mandela and the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., and performed on stages around the world.

An actress, singer and dancer in the 1950s and 1960s, she broke through as an author in 1970 with "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings," which became standard (and occasionally censored) reading, and was the first of a multipart autobiography that continued through the decades. In 1993, she was a sensation reading her cautiously hopeful "On the Pulse of the Morning" at former President Bill Clinton's first inauguration. Her confident performance openly delighted Clinton and made the poem a bestseller, if not a critical favourite. For former President George W. Bush, she read another poem, "Amazing Peace," at the 2005 Christmas tree lighting ceremony at the White House.

She remained close enough to the Clintons that in 2008 she supported Hillary Rodham Clinton's candidacy over the ultimately successful run of the country's first black president, Barack Obama. But a few days before Obama's inauguration, she was clearly overjoyed.

When I was Black Poem

History of Black Canadian Veterans From First World War To Post War Years

Pre-First World War

Victoria Rifles standing at attention
 

The tradition of military service by Black Canadians goes back long before Confederation. Indeed, many Black Canadians can trace their family roots to Loyalists who emigrated North in the 1780s after the American Revolutionary War. American slaves had been offered freedom and land if they agreed to fight in the British cause and thousands seized this opportunity to build a new life in British North America.

Top 10 Famous Quotes From Martin Luther King, Jr.

The quotes come from public speeches given by King, a letter, and one of his books. Each section contains a link to the original source.

10 famous quotes

1. “We are not wrong, we are not wrong in what we are doing. If we are wrong, the Supreme Court of this nation is wrong. If we are wrong, the Constitution of the United States is wrong. And if we are wrong, God Almighty is wrong. If we are wrong, Jesus of Nazareth was merely a utopian dreamer that never came down to Earth. If we are wrong, justice is a lie, love has no meaning. And we are determined here in Montgomery to work and fight until justice runs down like water, and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

Address at Holt Street Baptist Church, Montgomery, Alabama, 1955

2. “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

Letter from Birmingham Jail, April 16, 1963

3. “The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy. The true neighbor will risk his position, his prestige, and even his life for the welfare of others.”