Dr. Charlotte Hawkins, forged friendships with Langston Hughes, W. E. B. DuBois, and Booker T. Washington to name a few. She was also the aunt of singer, Natalie Cole.
The granddaughter of slaves, Dr. Charlotte Hawkins was born in 1883 in North Carolina. She founded the Palmer Memorial Institute, one of the first prep schools for African-Americans. The school was located in Sedalia, North Carolina. Dr. Hawkins also penned a book on etiquette entitled, “The Correct Thing.”
“It took me three winters on St. Simon’s to hear a single slave song, three times as many winters to see the religious dance called the ring-shout, still more winters to unearth the Buzzard Lope and similar solo dances, and the game songs known as ring-play…The secretiveness of the Negro is, I believe, the fundamental reason for our ignorance of the race and its background, and this trait is in itself probably an African survival. Melville J. Herskovits…quotes a Dutch Guiana Bush Negro as saying: ‘Long ago our ancestors taught us that it is unwise for a man to tell anyone more than half of what he knows about anything.’ It is musing to question southerns as to the number of the times they remember hearing Negroes volunteer information. Not one so far has recalled an instance in which something has been told that was not common knowledge.” -From, “Slave Culture
The Black Panther Party Breakfast Program
“I prefer to be true to myself, even at the hazard of incurring the ridicule of others, rather than to be false, and to incur my own abhorrence.” -Frederick Douglass
“I never use the word ‘failure’ because failure doesn’t really exist apart from in our mind. I call it something else: ‘an unsatisfactory outcome’; or even better, ‘a stepping stone to success.'” -Bear Grylls
Harlem Underground Clothing Company
20 East 125th Street (Between 5th and Madison)
(212) 987-9385
