Condoleezza Rice

Hello, I am Condoleezza Rice. I was born November 14th 1954. I was born in Alabama Brimingham. I am the second woman or african american to be U.S. Secretary of State. I consider myself a republican with moderate views. I have the highest position for an african american female to hold in the presidential cabinet. I became Republican in 1984, because I decided that Democrats patronized the helpless and the poor. When I was growing up my eleven year old friend, Denise McNair, was killed in 1963 in the bombing of Brimingham's 16th Street Baptist Church. When I was three years old I mastered the piano and people told me that my career could be as a prfessional pianist. When I was growing up I skipped the first grade and the seventh grade. I entered college when I was fifeteen years old. I have three degrees, and I got my masters in just one year. I was a professor around 1981-1999 in Stanford University, and I taught Political Science. In 1993-99 I became Stanford's provost. I had a big responsiblility. I had to see the schools budget and their academic programs. I was a memeber of the National Security staff while George Bush was president, then I was the National Security Advisor when the second George Bush was president, before becoming Secreatary of State in 2005. That is how I became famous by hard work.

Roberto Clemente #21 - One of the Best Baseball Players of All Time

  Roberto Clemente:

Hello my name is Roberto Clemente In 1955 I was spotted by a scout from the professional hardball team in the Puerto Rican town of Santurce and offered a contract. I signed with the club for forty dollars per month, plus a five hundred dollar bonus. It wasn't long before i caught the attention of the major league scouts and, in 1954, I signed up with the Los Angeles Dodgers who sent me to their minor league team in Montreal. In 1955, i was drafted by the Pittsburgh Pirates and started as their right fielder. It took a few years for me to learn the rules in the major leagues, but by 1960 i was the best player in professional baseball, helping lead the Pirates to win both the National League pennant and the World Series. Shortly after i joined the Pirates, i chose 21 for my uniform. Twenty-one was the total number of letters in the name–Roberto Clemente Walker. The Pirates retired his number at the start of the 1973 season, and the right field wall at the Pirates' PNC Park is 21 feet high in honor of me. Tragically, my life ended on December 31, 1972 in a plane crash while going to Nicaragua with relief supplies for earthquake victims.

 

Hello,

I was born a slave on a small farm in western Virginia, I was nine years old when the Civil War ended. I worked in a salt furnace as soon as i turned ten started serving as a houseboy for a white family where I first learned the virtues of frugality, cleanliness, and personal morality. I was educated at Hampton Institute, one of the earliest freedmen's schools devoted to industrial education. Growing up during Reconstruction and imbued with moral as opposed to intellectual training, I came to believe that postwar social uplift had begun at the wrong end. I was a pragmatist who engaged in deliberate ambiguity in order to sustain white recognition of my leadership. Such visibility won me international fame and the role of black adviser to Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft. I widely read autobiography, Up from Slavery (1901), stands as a classic in the genre of narratives by American self-made men, as well as the prime source for me social and historical philosophy. My philosophy did not long survive my death, but in theory and practice, my views on economic self-reliance have remained one of the deepest strains in Afro-American thought.

-Booker T. Washington

Jackie Robinson

Dominic Diaz

Civics Blog

Jackie Robinson

Hey, I’m Jackie Roosevelt Robinson and I was born in Cairo, Georgia in 1919 in a family of sharecroppers. My mother, Mallie Robinson, single-handedly raised me and four of my siblings. Me and my family were the only black family on the block, and the prejudice I encountered only strengthened our bond. From this beginning would grow to be the first baseball player to break Major League Baseball's color barrier that destroyed the sport for more than 50 years.

Growing up in a large, single-parent family, I was great at all sports and learned to make his own way in life. At UCLA, I became the first athlete to win varsity letters in four sports: baseball, basketball, football and track. In 1941, I was named to the All-American football team. Due to money, I was forced to leave college, and eventually I decided to enlist in the U.S. Army. After two years in the army, I had gone up to second lieutenant. My army career was cut short when I was court-martialed in relation to objections with incidents of racial discrimination. At the end, I left the Army. In my rookie season, I hit 297. with 32 steals and 12 homers. That’s my life and I hope you enjoyed.

In this picture, I was playing for the Brooklyn Dodgers. They don’t exist anymore but I’ll never forget them.

Christian Campos

Civics Blog

2-9-11

Michael Jeffrey Jordan

Hi, I’m Michael Jeffrey Jordan I was born on Feb. 17, 1963 in Brooklyn, New York, United States. I attended Emsley A. Laney High School and then I went to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. I’m 6ft. 6in. tall, and I weigh 215lb. I was the 3rd overall pick in the first round and was drafted into the Chicago Bulls in 1984. My leaping ability, was illustrated by performing slam dunks from the free throw line in slam dunk contests and earned me the nicknames "Air Jordan" and "His Airness". I also gained a reputation for being one of the best defensive players in basketball. During my first season in the NBA, I averaged 28.2 points on 51.5% shooting. I quickly became a fan favorite even in opposing arenas, and appeared on the cover of Sports Illustrated with the heading "A Star is Born" just over a month into my professional career. My second season was cut short by a broken foot which caused me to miss 64 games. Then I got my first MVP award in my third season. In my 1988-89 careers, I led the league in points with 53.5 percent shooting average. With Phil Jackson's contract expiring, the pending departures of Scottie Pippen and Dennis Rodman looming, and being in the latter stages of an owner-induced lockout of NBA players, I retired on January 13, 1999. As of 2007, I’ve lived in Highland Park, Illinois, and both of my sons attended Loyola Academy, a private Roman Catholic high school located in Wilmette, Illinois.

Maya Angelou

Hi, my name is Maya Angelou. I was born in Missouri, St. Louis. When I was fourteen years old I became the first African-American female to be a cable car conductor in San Fransisco. When I finished high school I gave birth to a boy, and I named him Guy. I was young and a single mother I had to work as a waitress and a cook. I loved poetry, music, dancing, and performance. Aorund 1954-55 I went to Europe with the production of Porgy and Bess. I ended up studying dance with Martha Graham. Alvin Ailey and I danced on television. I made recorded my own album in 1957 called Calypso Lady. I moved to New York around 1958, there I entered the Harlem Writers Guild. Then I moved to Egypt Cairo, around 1960. While I was in Egypt I was the editor of the English language weekly, The Arab Observer. Soon I moved to Ghana. In Ghana I taught at the Universityy of Ghana's School of Music and Drama. There I worked as one of the editors for The African Review, and I also wrote for The Ghanaian Times. Later on, I was a coordinator for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. asked me to help him. I was devasted when Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr died on my birthday in 1968. I hada friend named James Baldwin. Because of him, I worked on a book that became, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings was publishe in 1970. I composed and wrote the flim Georgia, Georgia. I stille appear in films, and on television. Later, I served on two presidential commitees. I got the Presidential Medal of Arts in the year 2000.
Then I got the Lincoln Medal in 2008. I have also recieved three Grammy Awards. Clinton requested that I should make him a poem for his Inaguration in 1993. The poem I did was called, On the Pulse of the Morning. It was all over the world, and it was live. I have recieved thirty honorary degrees.Well, that is all I ave to say today, so rmeber to follow your drems.

The Greatest Fighter Known to Man Kind

          I am Mohammed Ali but, I was born Cassius Marcellus Clay in 1942 in Louisville, Kentucky. I am ready to proclaim my gold medal title in the 1960 U.S. Olympics in Rome. I have gone through many fights over the years but, today is a different kind of fight. It is the fight for a medal, a title, and overall respect. I know some of you fans think I boast too much before a fight but when it’s over you realized that all of that smack was not fake at all. Today I will “flow like a butterfly and sting like a bee” no fighter will get in my way and no punch will knock me down. I am the heavy weight champion of the world and now known as the greatest boxer known to man. I won the Golden Gloves championships twice and now I will win the Olympic fights so I can be in the Hall of Fame vas the greatest fighter the U.S. has ever created. I’m fighting during the segregation period and even though people think that good things come out of black people I have been a living proof that success can comes in any color. I will some become an associate of Malcolm X during my years to come. I have helped the U.S. with foreign countries and their treaties with fighting and making a bond with the people of our nations. This is a farewell and thank you to all of my wonderful fans who have helped me get to the Olympics.                                    

                      Sincerely,                                                Mohammed Ali