Speaking of my History

"Speaking of my History" Podcast, we talk about Claudette Colvin. Claudette Colvin is a pioneer of the Civil Rights Movement. On March 2, 1955, she was arrested for refusing to give up her seat on a bus in segregated Montgomery, Alabama, nine months prior to Rosa Parks' famous arrest for the same offense.

"Speaking of My History" season 1 episode 4 - Reginald F. Lewis (December 7, 1942 – January 19, 1993), was an American businessman. He was the richest African-American man in the 1980s. Born in Baltimore, Maryland, he grew up in a middle-class neighborhood. He won a football scholarship to Virginia State College, graduating with a degree in economics in 1965. He graduated from Harvard Law School in 1968 and was a member of Kappa Alpha Psi. Recruited to top New York law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP immediately after law school, Lewis left to start his own firm two years later. After 15 years as a corporate lawyer with his own practice, Lewis focused on corporate law, structuring investments in minority-owned businesses and became special counsel to major corporations like General Foods and Equitable Life (now AXA). Mr. Lewis was also counsel to the New York-based Commission for Racial Justice and represented The Wilmington Ten. He was successful in forcing North Carolina to pay interest on the Wilmington Ten bond. he moved to the other side of the table by creating TLC Group L.P., a venture capital firm, in 1983. His first major deal was the purchase of the McCall Pattern Company, a home sewing pattern business, for $22.5 million. Lewis had learned from a Fortune magazine article that the Esmark holding company, which had recently purchased Norton Simon, planned to divest from the McCall Pattern Company, a maker of home sewing patterns founded in 1870. With fewer and fewer people sewing at home, McCall was seemingly on the decline—though it had posted profits of $6 million in 1983 on sales of $51.9 million. At the time, McCall was number two in its industry, holding 29.7 percent of the market, compared to industry leader Simplicity Patterns with 39.4 percent. He managed to negotiate the price down, then raised $1 million himself from family and friends and borrowed the rest from institutional investors and investment banking firm First Boston Corp. Within a year, he turned the company around by freeing up capital tied in fixed assets such as building and machinery, and finding a new use for machinery during downtime by manufacturing greeting card. In 1987, Lewis bought Beatrice International Foods from Beatrice Companies for $985 million, renaming it TLC Beatrice International, a snack food, beverage, and grocery store conglomerate that was the largest African-American owned and managed business in the U.S. The deal was partly financed through Mike Milken of the maverick investment bank Drexel Burnham Lambert. In order to reduce the amount needed to finance the leveraged buyout, Lewis came up with a plan to sell off some of the division's assets simultaneous with the takeover. When TLC Beatrice reported revenue of $1.8 billion in 1987, it became the first black-owned company to have more than $1 billion in annual sales. At its peak in 1996, TLC Beatrice International Holdings Inc. had sales of $2.2 billion and was number 512 on Fortune magazine's list of 1,000 largest companies. In 1992, Lewis donated $3 million to Harvard Law School, the largest grant at the time in the school's history.[5] The school renamed its International Law Center the Reginald F. Lewis International Law Center, the first major facility at Harvard named in honor of an African-American on January 19, 1993 (aged 50) New York City, Lewis died , from brain cancer. Mr. Lewis wife Loida Lewis took over the company a year after his death.[11] Loida Lewis currently Chairs the Reginald F. Lewis (RFL) Foundation, which also supports the Reginald F. Lewis College of Business at Virginia State University. In 2005, the Reginald F. Lewis Museum of Maryland African American History & Culture opened in Baltimore with the support of a $5 million grant from his foundation.[7] It is the East Coast's largest African American museum occupying an 82,000 square-foot facility with permanent and special exhibition space.

Season 1 Episode 3 'Frederick Douglass "Fritz" Pollard' one of the first African-American players and the first African-American QB & Head Coach in the NFL in 1920 the year the National Football league (NFL) was founded.

"Speaking of my History" season 1 episode 2. Black US Army bands and their bandmasters.

New Episode "Speaking of my History" season 1 episode 2 " Dr. Olivia J. Hooker" first African American Woman to join the U.S Coast Guard and the last living survivor of the Tulsa Massacre of Black Wall Street in 1921. Dr. Hooker is 103 years old! This was a very enlightening story and I hope it encourages you. Enjoy! #SpeakingofmyHistory #Podcast #ONTV #OliviaHooker #FirstBlackWomaninUScoastguard #BlackWallStreet