2024: 1930 Chronology: Appendix 35: Robin Winks, Noted Historian and Author of The Blacks in Canada

Appendix 35 

Robin Winks

Noted Historian and Author 

of 

The Blacks in Canada 

Robin W. Winks (b. December 5, 1930, Indiana – d. April 7, 2003, New Haven, Connecticut) was an American academic, historian, diplomat, and writer on the subject of fiction, especially detective novels, and advocate for the National Parks. After joining the faculty of Yale University in 1957, he rose in 1996-1999 to become the Randolph Townsend Professor of History and Master of Berkeley College.  At Oxford University, he served as George Eastman Professor in 1992-3, and as Harmsworth Visiting Professor of American History in 1999-2000.

Born in Indiana in 1930, Winks graduated magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Colorado in 1952. As a Fulbright Scholar in New Zealand, Winks earned a master's degree in Maori studies from Victoria University before returning to the University of Colorado to earn a second master's degree in ethnography. He then earned a Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University in 1957 with a dissertation on Canadian and American relations. After a year of teaching at Connecticut College, he joined the faculty at Yale in 1957, where he remained for the rest of his career. He held visiting lectureships and conducted research at universities around the nation and the world, including at Sydney University in 1963 where he lectured memorably on American History, Canada, Great Britain, New Zealand, South Africa, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, and the Middle East. He was on leave 1969-71 to serve as United States Cultural Attache to the American Embassy in London and was a regular adviser to various governmental agencies.

Winks was a Fellow of the Explorers Club, the Society of American Historians, the Royal Historical Society, the Royal Commonwealth Society, and a member of both the Athenaeum Club and Special Forces Club. He was a Guggenheim Fellow, a Smith-Mundt Fellow, and a Stimson Grant winner.  In 1989, he won the Donner Medal from the Association for Canadian Studies in the United States.  

Winks held offices and committee chairmanships in the American Historical Association, the Canadian Historical Association, and the Organization of American Historians. He was honored with a Doctor of Humane Letters from the University of Nebraska and from the University of Colorado. 

Winks died in 2003 in New Haven, Connecticut. 

Winks was a lover of the outdoors and spent much of his career advocating for the protection of open spaces. He served as chair of the National Parks System Advisory Board, and in 1988, was awarded the Department of the Interior’s Conservationist of the Year Award. In 1998, he became the first person to have visited all of the National Park Service units (there were 376 at that time). In 1999, the National Parks Conservation Association honored him with its first award for contributions to public education on behalf of the national parks. They subsequently established the honor as an annual award named the Robin W. Winks Award for Enhancing Public Understanding of National Parks. 

Robin Winks is the author of The Blacks in Canada: A History.  In The Blacks in Canada, Winks details the diverse experiences of Black immigrants to Canada, including Black slaves brought to Nova Scotia and the Canadas by Loyalists at the end of the American Revolution, Black refugees who fled to Nova Scotia following the War of 1812, Jamaican Maroons, and fugitive slaves who fled to British North America. He also looks at Black West Coast businessmen who helped found British Columbia, particularly Victoria, and Black settlements in the prairie provinces. Throughout Winks explores efforts by African Canadians to establish and maintain meaningful lifestyles in Canada. The Blacks in Canada (the second edition, 2000) investigates the French and English periods of slavery, the abolitionist movement in Canada, and the role played by Canadians in the broader continental anti-slavery crusade, as well as Canadian adaptations to nineteenth- and twentieth-century racial mores. 

2024: 1930 Chronology: Appendix 34: Robert Williams and the Birth of Ebonics

Appendix 34

Robert Williams and the Birth of Ebonics 

Robert Lee Williams II (b. February 20, 1930, Biscoe, Arkansas – d. August 12, 2020, St. Louis, Missouri) was a professor emeritus of psychology and African and Afro-American studies at Washington University in St. Louis and a prominent figure in the history of African American Psychology. He founded the department of Black Studies at Washington University and served as its first director, developing a curriculum that would serve as a model throughout the country. Williams was well known as a stalwart critic of racial and cultural biases in standard IQ testing, coining the word "Ebonics" in 1973 and developing the Black Intelligence Test of Cultural Homogeneity. He published more than sixty professional articles and several books. He was a founding member of the Association of Black Psychologists and served as its second president.

Robert Lee Williams was born in Biscoe, Arkansas, on February 20, 1930, during the Jim Crow Era. His parents received no formal education whatsoever. His father, Robert L. Williams, worked as a millwright and died when his son was just five years old. Williams' mother, Rosie L. Williams, worked in the homes of white families until her death in 1978. Williams credited his mother as a central figure in his intellectual pursuits after she instilled the importance of education in him from an early age. He had one sister, Dorothy Jean. He married Ava L. Kemp in 1948, at the age of 18. They had eight children, 19 grandchildren, 19 great-grandchildren and two great-great children. All eight of Williams's children attended Washington University. Four of them became psychologists while his other children became a nurse, a journalist, a teacher, and a leather craftswoman, respectively.

Williams graduated from Dunbar High School in Little Rock at sixteen before attending Dunbar Junior College. However, he only attended Dunbar for one year, as he dropped out after being discouraged by an IQ test. After receiving a lower than expected score which recommended a career in manual labor rather than going to college, Williams later reported feeling that he "lost [his] confidence for a long time". This would become a defining moment in his life because it clearly inspired some of Williams' most notable future work, namely the Black Intelligence Test of Cultural Homogeneity or BITCH-100. Williams earned a BA degree (cum laude with distinction in the field), from Philander Smith College, in 1953. He earned a M.Ed. from Wayne State University in educational psychology in 1955, at a time when all graduate programs in the South remained segregated, and a Ph.D. in 1961 from Washington University in St. Louis in clinical psychology.  

Williams worked as a staff psychologist at Arkansas State Hospital starting in 1955, the first African American psychologist to be hired at a state mental health facility in Arkansas. After earning his doctorate in 1961, he served as an associate chief psychologist at the Jefferson Barracks Veterans Affairs Hospital in St. Louis, Missouri from 1961 to 1966, and then as director of a hospital improvement project in Spokane, Washington, and a consultant for the National Institute of Mental Health. 

In 1968, Williams was a founding member of the Association of Black Psychologists (ABP) and served as its second president. The ABP was established as a response to the American Psychological Association (APA) due to backlash at what was perceived by some psychologists as the APA's conscious and unconscious support for the racist nature of American society. A central ethos of the ABP was that members understood that they were "Black people first and psychologists second". The focus of Black psychology for Williams was to "be about the business of setting forth new definitions, conceptual models, test theories, normative behavior, all of which must come from the heart of the Black experience". While serving as President of the Association of Black Psychologists (1969-1970), Williams created "The 10 Point Plan" and mailed it to 300 colleges and universities. This plan was instrumental in recruiting and sustaining Black graduate students in Masters and Ph.D. psychology programs throughout the United States.

From 1970 to 1992, Williams served as a professor of psychology and African and African American Studies at Washington University in St. Louis. He founded the department of Black Studies at Washington University and served as its first director, ultimately developing a curriculum that would serve as a model throughout the country. As chair of the Black Studies department, Williams proactively substantiated and grew the program through a series of actions, instituting honors, awards and integrating the program with various college organizations. Under Williams' leadership, the department also offered opportunities for international travel and scholarship. Furthermore, he established an Institute for Black Studies and subsequently conducted his own research alongside students. Williams' associates in the field described him as highly respected, strong, and compassionate. He was considered a pillar of the national black psychology community, inspiring young black students to pursue their academic goals, especially at Washington University, the predominantly white institution where he held tenure. After his retirement from Washington University, Williams worked at the University of Missouri in Columbia as a visiting professor from 2001 to 2004, becoming the interim director of Black studies for the years 2002–2003. Williams wrote over 60 scholarly papers throughout his career on topics across psychology and black studies. In 2014, Washington University honored his legacy with a conference regarding the importance of maintaining diversity within academia. In 2017, he received a Legacy Award at the university's Trailblazers recognition ceremony.

Williams was an early critic of racial bias within standardized testing and theorized that European Americans tended to score higher on tests than African Americans due to bias towards European Americans built into the tests. Williams' theory led to him constructing his own standardized test, the Black Intelligence Test of Cultural Homogeneity or BITCH-100, which he predicted would result in higher testing scores for African Americans. The test was created by drawing from a glossary of African American speech and personal experience. The Black Intelligence Test of Cultural Homogeneity consisted of 100 questions initially titled "Danger: Testing and De-humanizing Black Children." Though structured similarly to traditional IQ testing, European Americans scored consistently lower on the BITCH than African Americans. Williams did not conclude, as had European psychologists, that this discrepancy in outcomes proved the intellectual inferiority of European Americans.

Williams' theories overlapped with other contemporary arguments on the subject. For example, the NAACP backed a 1977 lawsuit in San Francisco to stop black students from being classified as "mentally retarded" on the basis of traditional standardized test scores. Williams provided expert witness testimony in this case. Explaining his perspective on IQ tests in relation to his own children's learning, Williams stated, "My kids need education, not testing. If they are tested, the tests should help us understand what their educational needs are." Williams received some backlash for his IQ testing theories, with critics arguing that he was attempting to lower standards for black students. He once even received a threatening letter stating that the FBI had "proof" that he was a communist. Williams' refuted his critics by declaring that traditional IQ tests often result in "death sentences" that black children acquire early and are stuck with the rest of their lives. Williams asserted that "When [he] did well in school, administrators would say [his] below-normal test results were a fluke," and claimed, "that the standard IQ test is not an adequate measure of black students' abilities, of their capacity to profit from further experience or of what they're going to do in the future."

On January 26, 1973, Williams created the term "Ebonics" (a combination of "ebony" and "phonics") to refer to African American English at a conference called "The Cognitive and Language Development of Black Children," which he organized in St. Louis in 1973. Williams defined Ebonics as "linguistic and paralinguistic features which on a concentric continuum represent the communicative competence of the West African, Caribbean, and United States slave descendants of African origin." He formally outlined his linguistic theory in his 1975 book, Ebonics: The True Language of Black Folks, which explained the African roots of Ebonics and refuted the popular conception that Ebonics was simply slang or deficient English.

Williams' work on Ebonics catapulted him into the public spotlight, especially after Ebonics became recognized as an official language for 28,000 African American students in the school district of Oakland, California, on December 18, 1996. Ebonics has long remained a popular topic of contention, with several linguists questioning the accuracy of William's work and others arguing that the Williams theory of Ebonics harms black children by lowering their academic achievement standards.

Williams formulated his "Black Personality Theory," presented in his second book, The Collective Mind: Toward an Afrocentric Theory of Black Personality. His theory argued that black personality could not be understood using European philosophy and values. Instead, the Black Personality Theory would draw on an African philosophy of collectiveness diametrically opposed to Western individualism. He described how many white children came to be indoctrinated to embrace racist tendencies through "racial scripting" that promoted misguided myths regarding racial superiority or inferiority.

In his book, Racism Learned at an Early Age Through Racial Scripting, Williams argues that white children acquire racist predispositions at a young age through the process of "racial scripting," and these scripts are taught to children by parents, schools, religious groups, etc. Williams defines racial scripts as "myths and stereotypes individuals form about ethnic and racial groups to which they do not belong." Racial scripts received in childhood can shape adult perceptions, claimed Williams. In his book, Williams identifies several myths and stereotypes that form these racial scripts. Including the myth of black genetic deficiency, the deteriorating black family, cultural deprivation, black language deficiency, black self-hatred, damaged black psyche, the superior sexual stud, the superior black athlete, and the lazy Negro. He argues that racial scripts form a racial schema that individuals draw upon to understand situations and that these scripts can be positive, negative, or neutral.

Williams appeared in the public eye on numerous occasions, including television appearances with Dan Rather, Phil Donahue, and Montel Williams. His work has been cited by many major newspapers and served as a theme for an episode of Good Times. 

Williams was 18 years old when he married Ava L. Kemp in 1948. They had eight children, 19 grandchildren, 19 great-grandchildren, and two great-great-grandchildren. All eight of Williams' children attended Washington University. Four of his children became psychologists while his other children became a nurse, a journalist, a teacher, and a leather craftswoman, respectively. William's wife of nearly 70 years, Ava Lee (Kemp) Williams, died in 2018. Williams died on August 12, 2020, following a decline in his health.

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Ebonics (a portmanteau [a linguistic blending] of the words ebony and phonics) is a term that was originally intended to refer to the language of all people descended from African slaves, particularly in West Africa, the Caribbean, and North America. The term Ebonics was created in 1973 by a group of black scholars who disapproved of the negative terms being used to describe this type of language. Since the 1996 controversy over its use by the Oakland School Board, the term Ebonics has primarily been used to refer to the sociolect African American English, a dialect distinctively different from Standard American English. 

The word Ebonics was originally coined in 1973 by African American social psychologist Robert Williams in a discussion with linguist Ernie Smith (as well as other language scholars and researchers) that took place in a conference on "Cognitive and Language Development of the Black Child", held in St. Louis, Missouri.  His intention was to give a name to the language of African Americans that acknowledged the linguistic consequence of the slave trade and avoided the negative connotations of other terms like "nonstandard Negro English":

We need to define what we speak. We need to give a clear definition to our language...We know that ebony means black and that phonics refers to speech sounds or the science of sounds. Thus, we are really talking about the science of black speech sounds or language.

In 1975, the term appeared in Ebonics: The True Language of Black Folks, a book edited and co-written by Williams:

A two-year-old term created by a group of black scholars, Ebonics may be defined as "the linguistic and paralinguistic features which on a concentric continuum represent the communicative competence of the West African, Caribbean, and United States slave descendants of African origin. It includes the various idioms, patois, argots, idiolects, and social dialects of black people" especially those who have adapted to colonial circumstances. Ebonics derives its form from ebony (black) and phonics (sound, the study of sound) and refers to the study of the language of black people in all its cultural uniqueness.

Other writers have since emphasized how the term represents a view of the language of Black people as African rather than European. The term was not obviously popular, even among those who agreed with the reason for coining it. Even within Williams' book, the term Black English is far more commonly used than the term Ebonics.

Ebonics remained a little-known term until 1996. It does not appear in the 1989 second edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, nor was it adopted by linguists. 

The term became widely known in the United States due to a controversy over a decision by the Oakland School Board to denote and recognize the primary language (or sociolect or ethnolect) of African American youths attending school, and to thereby acquire budgeted funds to facilitate the teaching of standard English. Thereafter, the term Ebonics became popularized, though as little more than a synonym for African American English, perhaps differing in the emphasis on its claimed African roots and independence from English. The term is linked with the nationally discussed controversy over the decision by the Oakland School Board, which adopted a resolution to teach children "standard American English" through a specific program of respect for students' home language and tutoring in the "code switching" required to use both standard English and Ebonics.

While the term Ebonics is generally avoided by most linguists, it is used elsewhere (such as on Internet message boards), often for ridiculing African American English, particularly when this is parodied as drastically differing from Standard American English. 

2024: 1930 Chronology: Appendix 33: Goree Carter, The Forefather of Rock and Roll

 

Appendix 33

Goree Carter

The Forefather of Rock and Roll

Goree Chester Carter or Christer Carter (b. December 31, 1930, Houston, Texas – d. December 29, 1990), was an American singer, guitarist, drummer, and songwriter. He was also credited with the stage names Little T-Bone, Rocky Thompson and Gory Carter, and recorded music in blues genres such as electric blues, jump blues and Texas blues, as well as rock and roll. 

Carter is best known for his 1949 single, "Rock Awhile," which has been cited by several sources as the first rock and roll record, featuring an over-driven electric guitar style similar to that of Chuck Berry years later. Carter recorded "Rock Awhile" at the age of 18, and its rediscovery has posthumously brought him recognition as a forefather of rock and roll. As a soldier, he was drafted into military service at the age of 19 and was a veteran of the Korean War. 

Goree Carter was born in Houston, Texas. He was born in the Fifth Ward and lived at 1310 Bayou Street. He began playing blues music at the age of 12 and learned to play on a cousin's guitar.  Because there were very few guitarists in his area back then, he had no one to teach him how to play the guitar, so he taught himself how to play it by listening to some of his favorite records on a Victrola machine and picking string-by-string on the guitar. He learned a few chords from listening and then learned more about them from a chord book. When he became a teenager, he began earning a living by hoisting sacks at the local Comet Rice Mill. He had a Gibson guitar and began fronting bands in his early teenage years.

In 1949, Carter and his jump blues band, The Hepcats, also known as Goree Carter and His Hepcats or Goree Carter & His Hepcats, signed with Freedom Records, a local record label set up by Sol Kahal, and recorded the label's first release, "Sweet Ole Woman Blues." Kahal discovered him in either late 1948 or early 1949. As well as Carter's guitar, the band featured two saxophones, a trumpet, piano, bass, and drums.  Carter's electric guitar style was influenced by Aaron "T-Bone" Walker but was over-driven and had a rougher edge which presaged the sound of rock and roll a few years later. His single-string runs and two-string "blue note" chords preceded, and may have influenced, Chuck Berry. 

At the age of 18, Carter recorded his best-known single "Rock Awhile" in April 1949. It has been cited as a strong contender for the title of "first rock and roll record" and a "much more appropriate candidate" than the more frequently cited "Rocket 88" (1951) by Jackie Brenston. The intro to "Rock Awhile" resembles those in several later Chuck Berry records from 1955 onwards.

The music historian Robert Palmer regards "Rock Awhile" to be a more appropriate candidate for the "first rock and roll record" title, because it was recorded two years earlier, and because of Carter's guitar work bearing a striking resemblance to Chuck Berry's later guitar work, while making use of an over-driven amplifier, along with the backing of boogie-based rhythms, and the appropriate title and lyrical subject matter. Roger Wood and John Nova Lomax have also cited "Rock Awhile" as the first rock & roll record. Carter wrote and recorded the song at Bill Holford's Audio Company of America. However, "Rock Awhile" was not as commercially successful as later rock & roll records. Nevertheless, Carter had some moderate success, touring and recording for a while.

In 1950, at the age of 19, he was drafted into military service. He served as a private first-class infantry soldier in the Korean War for over a year. He was in Korea when many of the country's most vicious battles took place. After returning from Korea to Houston around 1951, his musical career began declining. Carter recorded for several labels in the early 1950s, including Imperial, Coral, and Modern, but last recorded in 1954. He wrote a number of songs during this time but said he "tore them up" because record labels wouldn't let him record them, saying he "was ahead of" himself.

After leaving the music industry, Carter continued working at the local Comet Rice Mill until its closure decades later. Carter continued to play occasional local gigs in Houston and sat-in with visiting artist B. B. King.  Carter's last live performance was in 1970. 

Carter developed arthritis later in his life, and was not heard from again until 1982, when he was visited at his Fifth Ward home by members of the band Juke Jumpers. He died in Houston, at the age of 59, in 1990. He died at the same house where he was born and is buried at the Houston National Cemetery. 

Neither his old house at 1310 Bayou nor the Audiophile Custom Associates Studio at 612 Westheimer still exist. In fact, Carter is barely remembered even in Houston and The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame has not recognized his contributions. "It’s as if he never lived, never thrilled audiences with his behind-the-back guitar playing, never invented rock and roll", according to a 2014 article.

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"Rock Awhile" is a song by American singer-songwriter Goree Carter, recorded in April 1949 for the Freedom Recording Company in Houston, Texas. 

The song was released as the 18-year-old Carter's debut single (with "Back Home Blues" as the B-side) shortly after recording. The track is considered by many sources to be the first rock and roll song and has been called a better candidate than the more commonly cited "Rocket 88", which was released two years later. The song features an over-driven electric guitar style similar to that associated with Chuck Berry who came years later.

The former New York Times pop critic, Robert Palmer, made this comment about the recording in 1995:

"The clarion guitar intro differs hardly at all from some of the intros Chuck Berry would unleash on his own records after 1955; the guitar solo crackles through an overdriven amplifier; and the boogie-based rhythm charges right along. The subject matter, too, is appropriate -- the record announces that it's time to 'rock awhile,' and then proceeds to show how it's done." 

2024: 1930 Chronology: Appendix 32: Benjamin Leroy Wigfall, An Abstract Expressionist Artist

Appendix 32

Benjamin Leroy Wigfall

An Abstract-Expressionist Artist

Benjamin Leroy Wigfall (b. November 17, 1930, Richmond, Virginia – d. February 9, 2017, New Paltz, New York) was an American abstract-expressionist painter, printmaker, teacher, gallery owner, and collector of African art. He was the founder of a community art space called Communications Village as a hub for residents in a Black neighborhood in Kingston, New York. At the age of 20, he was the youngest artist ever to have a painting purchased by the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. 

Benjamin Leroy Wigfall was born on November 17, 1930, to James Andrews Wigfall and Willie Cozenia Johnson Wigfall. He grew up in the working-class Black neighborhood of Church Hill in Richmond, Virginia. His mother worked in a tobacco factory, cleaned houses, and was a beautician. His father was a firefighter for the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway. Benjamin was the youngest of three children.

Wigfall started drawing while a student at George Mason Elementary School, first creating cartoons and later becoming observant of his neighborhood, including a house on 30th Street that he drew in pen and ink. When he was a teenager, his father found a nude drawing he had made. Wigfall was worried that his father would be upset, but he was happy to see the talent in his son.

At Armstrong High School, over several years, Wigfall persuaded the principal to hire an art teacher, who did not arrive until the spring of his senior year. Teacher Stafford W. Evans took him to the Virginia Museum, and then signed him up for classes. Wigfall's interest was portraiture until he saw Lyonel Feininger's abstract painting “Moonwake.” Riding a bus one day, he noticed on the window some reflections of windows from a building. He then understood Feininger's painting and discovered abstraction. By the time he was 30, he completely gave up figurative art.

An assistant state art supervisor whom he met at the museum encouraged him to apply for a museum fellowship. He submitted an application along with the drawing of the house in Church Hill, titled “The House on 30th Street.” In 1949, he received the first of three fellowships. When he arrived to pick up the fellowship, museum workers thought he was part of the service staff and sent him to another entrance.

Wigfall received fellowships in 1949–50, 1951–52 and 1952–53, the third routed through the museum from an anonymous donor. He enrolled at Hampton Institute (now Hampton University) and was president of the Art Club for two years. He was surrounded by a faculty of established artists. His instructors included abstract artist Albert Kresch and Leo Katz, chair of the art department who was a noted artist and president of the Virginia Art Alliance, ceramicist Joseph W. Gilliard, and sculptor Louis Rosenfeld.

He studied art education and graduated in 1953. He met his wife Mary Carter, an art student at the school, when he and friend L. Douglas Wilder (who later became Virginia's governor) crashed a party. He and Carter got married in 1955 and had two children.

Wigfall received a Rockefeller Foundation fellowship to attend the University of Iowa after graduation. In 1954, he was awarded fellowships to Yale University - and found a mentor in abstract artist/teacher Gabor Peterchi – and the Yale-Norfolk Summer School in Norfolk, Connecticut. With another fellowship in hand in 1958, he returned to Yale and earned a Master of Fine Arts degree in 1959.

Wigfall was an abstract artist who's forte was printmaking. He was a regional artist whose heyday was in the 1950s, when he won awards, fellowships, news coverage and accolades.

Considered a “gifted young artist,” he had a long history with the Virginia Museum. When he was a sophomore at Hampton in 1951, the museum bought his abstract oil painting “Chimneys” during its biennial exhibition “Virginia Artists 1951.” At age 20, Wigfall was the youngest of the five artists whose works were chosen. The painting, purchased for $90, was part of the museum's national traveling show.

The painting was inspired by smokestacks atop industrial buildings that Wigfall saw at dusk as he often crossed the Marshall Street viaduct over Shockoe Valley. Usually, the stacks were busily billowing smoke but at that time of day, they were quiet and serene, he told an interviewer in 2003. “Things are abstract but at the same time quite real,” he explained once, noting that there was “nobility in something very common.”

Being a talented young artist did not shield Wigfall from the racial discrimination of the time. In 1957, while teaching at Hampton, he and student Paul Dusenburg went shopping at two department stores in Richmond, according to an article in the college newspaper Hampton Spirit. After they left the second store, Miller & Rhoads, Wigfall was accosted by police officers, grabbed by the collar, and accused of trying to steal a handbag and wallet the day before. He denied the accusation. He was arrested on a vagrancy charge and taken to jail. Insisting on going to trial, Wigfall enlisted local civil rights attorney Oliver W. Hill. At trial, the charge was shoplifting and not vagrancy, and it was dropped. When the incident occurred, Wigfall's “Chimneys” was on display in the Miller & Rhoads store window.

A year later, the Virginia Museum purchased his tempera painting “Corrosion and Blue” during “American Painting 1958,” its quadrennial exhibition of the best talents in contemporary American art. Wigfall mixed mud in the paint to give it non-color, he told an interviewer in 2003. Wigfall “achieves a strange effect of a different sort … in which streaks of orange and blue glow like live coals in a thick enveloping web of brown ashes,” a reviewer stated.

In 1951, Langley Air Force Base in Hampton chose Wigfall's painting “Kites” to hang in a room in its library. It was the first painting picked by Langley in a program to provide space for works by local artists and authors. The work was on loan from Hampton.

In 1953, Wigfall created sketches for a mural depicting Christ and Judas. It consisted of five full-size panels titled “Disturbance of Temptation,” “The Decision,” “The Kiss,” “Remorse,” and “Consequence and Self-Punishment.” That same year, the Norfolk Museum of Arts and Sciences (now the Chrysler Museum of Art) held a one-man show of his works, with Wigfall described by one writer as “Tidewater's national ‘find.’” Among his entries were drawings and plans for the mural.

During the 1950s, Wigfall participated in several other exhibitions, including faculty art shows, and activities. Among them:

1951 & 1953 - Annual art exhibitions at Hampton’s commencements. In 1951, when Mary McLeod Bethune was speaker, he was big news: One article noted that the exhibition “has received added interest” because of the recent purchase of Wigfall's “Chimneys.” In 1953, his submission to the commencement show was the mural project.

1951 – Wigfall was the only Virginia artist represented in the Contemporary American Art Exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

1951 – “Chimneys” was mounted in an exhibit at the Virginia Museum. Works by three of Hampton's faculty were also shown: Joseph W. Gilliard, Louis Rosenfeld and painter Helen Kendall.

1952-1959 – At Norfolk Museum in 1952, among Hampton students and staff - including Albert Kresch, Joseph W. Gilliard, Louis Rosenfeld - who submitted paintings, ceramics, creative photography and sculptures. Wigfall submitted what were described as semi-abstracts: “Wounded Beasts,” Carnivorous Symbols,” “Boats” and “Urban.” In 1953, he had a one-man show at the museum. In 1954, three of his works – “Mourners,” “Crucifixion” and “The Beast” – were shown. In 1955, “Mourners” was one of 30 pieces chosen for the Tidewater Artists Open Annual. In 1956, the museum hung a Wigfall abstract in a furnished room in an exhibit titled “March for Moderns,” which combined architecture, interior decorations and art in a contemporary home design. In 1959, he was among art faculty at Virginia colleges who splattered paint on canvases in a show titled "Fresh Paint Exhibit."

1952 – One of 20 students picked by Hampton Student Council to represent the college in the 1952-1953 edition of Who's Who Among Students in American Universities and Colleges. He was included in a newspaper photo of the students, standing in the second row.

1953 – Recipient of a Purchase Prize at Hampton - an award given for purchase of his artwork by the college.

1955 - One of 85 artists selected for the Brooklyn Museum (of Art) National Print Annual. His woodcut appeared on the cover of the annual.

1955 - Named one of the 35 best painters in America by directors of 10 of the country's leading museums. The announcement appeared in the February issue of "Art in America" magazine under the title “New Talent in America.” Works by the artists were exhibited at Jackson Gallery in New York and were part of the American Federation of Artists traveling exhibit in 1956. Wigfall described his work as abstract expressionism. 

1956 – Included in a group show of Hampton faculty members, including painters Peter Kahn and John Koos, at the Norfolk Division of Virginia State College. (The division is now Norfolk State University and Virginia State is now a university.) 

1958 - Among 50 artists from the South Atlantic states in a show at Gibbs Art Gallery in Charleston, South Carolina. His entry was an oil painting.

1958 – Chosen to participate in the first Provincetown, Massachusetts, arts festival titled “American Art of Our Time,” with 33 works by artists from Ohio, Kentucky, Virginia and West Virginia.  

1958 - Loaned to the Virginia Museum's “American Artists 1958” exhibition a painting titled “Without Black” by Ulfert Wilke of the Allen R. Hite Art Institute at the University of Louisville.

1958 - Commissioned to design the 10th annual Christmas card for the Virginia Museum. The design is part of the museum's permanent collection. It was included in a display titled “Designs for Christmas” in the museum lobby in 1964.

Wigfall's works could be found sporadically in exhibits during the 1960s and 1970s. In 1963, he was among four faculty members, including painter Lorraine Bolton, in a show at Hampton. In 1976, he was shown at Gallery One in Poughkeepsie, New York, owned by a fellow instructor at SUNY New Paltz, New York. 

In 1988, Wigfall opened Watermark/Cargo Gallery in Kingston, which featured African art from his own collection, and exhibitions of works by national and international contemporary artists. He held solo and group exhibits in the 1990s and into the 2000s, and sold African art. The gallery reopened in 2006 after having closed three years earlier. It was in operation for about 20 years.

Wigfall the teacher supplanted him as an artist. He was described as a "gifted" teacher and mentor who was generous with his time for both students and other artists. Wigfall returned to Hampton as an assistant professor of art in 1955. He taught painting, basic design, graphics and introduction to art. He worked alongside some notable local and national artists, including Louis Rosenfeld, Joseph Gilliard, and painters John Koos and Friedrich Gronstedt.

Wigfall remained at Hampton until 1963, when he took a position at the State University of New York (SUNY) New Paltz. He was the school's first Black professor of art, teaching classes in printmaking, and one of the first Black professors. He attended Black Student Union meetings and was among the faculty and students involved in creating the Black Studies Department in 1969, one of the earliest in the country. He remained at the school for nearly 30 years, retiring in 1991 and devoting his time to his gallery. The school set up an MFA printmaking scholarship in his name.

In 1972, Wigfall took a teaching job as an associate professor of fine arts at the University of South Florida in Tampa so he could work with a federal Model Cities funded community arts center. Called the New Place, it was described as a “media exploration and communications center” that offered music, photography, art, dance, theater and other programs for children and adults. Wigfall, the co-director, came up with the idea for "audiographic prints," which were created by transferring interviews with community people to tapes and "typographical prints" for viewing simultaneously.

After arriving to teach in New Paltz, Wigfall began looking around for a space for his studio away from the college and his home. He found an abandoned livery stable in Ponckhockie, a Black working-class neighborhood in Kingston. He bought the building with a plan to convert it into his print shop. When he started working on it, young people kept stopping by to help. So, he expanded his idea to instead turn the building into a community print shop. He chose the name Communications Village as a way for artists to communicate with the world in which they lived.

Wigfall opened Communications Village in 1973 as a place where community people took classes, absorbed lectures from major national artists, and learned and executed printmaking. They also participated in photography, poetry, oral history, driving lessons, fence-building and cooking. He taught them how to use the printing press and the darkroom. He gave them money so they could shoot photos with a Polaroid camera.

In a visiting-artists program, professional artists – many of whom were colleagues and friends from New Paltz to New York, as well as his students – came to print their own works with the assistance of local printer assistants. Among the artists were Benny Andrews, Romare Bearden, Robert Blackburn, Mel Edwards and Mavis Pusey.  

A gallery was added several years later. In a 1977 exhibit at the site, Wigfall showed his works as well as those of such artists as Benny Andrews, Betty Blayton, Jayne Cortez, Mel Edwards, Charles Gaines, Diane Hunt, Pat Jow, Mary Lou Morgan and Joe Ramos. That same year, he held a show of drawings, paintings, prints and photographs from a six-week Children's Workshop. It was headed by his wife Mary, a retired public school art teacher who was employed in a migrant child-care program, and photographer Rose Tripoli.

Communications Village received funding from New York State Council on the Arts, IBM and the America the Beautiful Fund to train printer assistants to produce a portfolio of works featuring local people. The first edition was produced in 1976 and shown in an exhibit there. The portfolio included works by professional artists assisted by the printer assistants.

Wigfall also amassed a collection of tape recordings on his life, the life experiences of Black people he met, along with the progress of the village. He made collages based on those interviews. They were part of his “audiographic” practice of interviewing ordinary people as a way to preserve history and build community. His series “Things My Father Told Me” consisted of transcribed text on the effects of slavery on family histories. He was tapped to speak on "cultural excavation" during a festival by the Urban Center for Africana Affairs in Poughkeepsie, New York, in 1981.

"Communications Village was in fact Wigfall’s real art," noted one writer. The art space closed in 1983.

In 1977, Wigfall took his community involvement one step farther. He was among a group of Black protesters who confronted the Kingston police chief about what they considered the department's slow pace in finding the murderer of a 12-year-old boy. Wigfall, spokesman for the group, noted that the community wasn't looking for trouble but for a change in the city's attitude.

Wigfall did not often exhibit or promote his own works. He included some pieces occasionally in shows at Communications Village, including a 1977 exhibit of prints. As a result of his choice of teaching over exhibiting, he became an overlooked artist. In 1971, when Hampton presented a one-man show of his etchings, a newspaper writer noted that this “first-rate printmaker” had been teaching in New York for a long time and few people in Richmond were familiar with his works.

Wigfall was known for his extensive African art collection, which he exhibited at Watermark/Cargo Gallery. In 1975, he organized an art show of textiles by the Design Works of Bedford-Stuyvesant in Brooklyn, New York, at the New Paltz College Art Gallery. Since 1970, the company had used African motifs in its fabrics and costumes.

Wigfall's work was featured in a group show of 20 Black artists in 1978 at Spectrum IV Gallery in New Rochelle, New York. He was listed among the country's top African American artists.

In 1979, he was one of 21 printmakers from Mid-Hudson Valley, Connecticut, and Westchester and Long Island, New York, to participate in the first professional invitational printmakers show sponsored by the Dutchess County Art Association in Poughkeepsie. In 1990, he was a judge in the Dutchess County Arts Council second annual armory exhibit.

In 1987, Hampton University Museum held an exhibit of 31 nationally known artists, nine of whom had graduated or taught at the college. Titled “Hampton’s Collections and Connections: Part One, Returning Home to Hampton,” it included Wigfall; Reuben V. Burrell, the school's photographer for 40 years; Joseph Gilliard; sculptor Persis Jennings, and painters John Biggers and Samella Lewis, both of whom studied under Gilliard.

In 2003, the Virginia Museum mounted an exhibit of 33 of the 60 works in its collection by African American artists, including Wigfall. Titled “Generations,” his “Chimneys” was among the group. The curator did not recognize his name, conducted some research, and discovered that he was local and African American.

Wigfall died on February 9, 2017, a week after the Virginia Museum hosted the first of two lectures on his life and work.

In 2018, Wired Gallery in High Falls, NY, mounted an exhibit titled "The Golden Age of New Paltz," celebrating artists from the 1960s and beyond. Wigfall was one of them.

In 2019, the Midtown Arts District in Kingston held an exhibit focused on Wigfall's Watermark/Cargo Gallery. Titled “Ben Wigfall: the Artist Revealed,” the show featured artifacts from his African art collection, and his prints and paintings.

In 2021, he was in a group show focused on Cinque Gallery, founded in 1969 in New York by Romare Bearden, Ernest Crichlow and Norman Lewis as a place for Black artists to exhibit and feed off each other's talent. Titled “Creating Community, Cinque Gallery Artists,” Wigfall was named along with the country's foremost artists associated with the gallery.

Wigfall was featured in his first retrospective in a collaborative exhibit by the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts and the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art at SUNY New Paltz. Titled "Ben Wigfall and Communications Village,” its first stop was in New Paltz in 2022, followed by Virginia in 2023. The exhibit consisted of his early paintings, assemblages, collages and prints, as well as his audiographic works. There were also prints created by artists and students/community people at Communications Village, and artworks by various artists.

In 2023, the Ogden Museum of Southern Art in New Orleans included him in a group show titled “Knowing Who We Are.” The pieces were pulled largely from the museum's collection. Wigfall was among a category of artists whose works showed a sense of place.

2024: 1930 Chronology: Appendix 31: Gladys Mae West, The African American Mathematician Who Is the Mother of the Global Positioning System (GPS)

Appendix 31

Gladys Mae West

The African American Mathematician

Who Is 

The Mother of the Global Positioning System (GPS)

Gladys Mae West (née Brown; b. October 27, 1930, Sutherland, Virginia). An American mathematician. She is known for her contributions to the mathematical modeling of the shape of the Earth, and her work on the development of satellite geodesy models, that were later incorporated into the Global Positioning System (GPS).  West was inducted into the United States Air Force Hall of Fame in 2018. West was also awarded the Webby Lifetime Achievement Award for the development of satellite geodesy models.

Gladys Mae Brown was born in Sutherland, Virginia, in Dinwiddie County, a rural county south of Richmond. Her family was an African American farming family in a community of sharecroppers. She spent much of her childhood working on her family's small farm. As well as working on the farm, her mother worked in a tobacco factory and her father worked for the railroad. West saw education as her way to a different life.

At West's high school, the top two students from each graduating class received full scholarships to Virginia State College (now Virginia State University), a historically black public university. West graduated as valedictorian in 1948 and received the scholarship. At Virginia State University (VSU), West chose to study mathematics, a subject that was mostly studied at her college by men. She also joined the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority. West graduated in 1952 with a Bachelor of Science degree in mathematics, and then taught math and science for two years in Waverly, Virginia. West returned to VSU to complete a Master of Mathematics degree, graduating in 1955. Afterward, she began another teaching position in Martinsville, Virginia. 

In 1956, West was hired to work at the Naval Proving Ground in Dahlgren, Virginia, (now the Naval Surface Warfare Center). Here, she was the second black woman ever hired and one of only four black employees. West was a computer programmer in the Dahlgren division, and a project manager for processing systems for satellite data analysis. Concurrently, West earned a master's degree in Public Administration from the University of Oklahoma. 

In the early 1960s, West participated in an award-winning study that proved the regularity of Pluto's motion relative to Neptune. Subsequently, West began to analyze analyze satellite altimeter data from NASA's Geodetic Earth Orbiting program, to create models of the Earth's shape. Wes t became project manager for the Seasat radar altimetry project, the first satellite that could remotely sense oceans. West's work cut her team's processing time in half, and she was recommended for a commendation.

From the mid-1970s through the 1980s, West programmed an IBM 7030 Stretch computer to deliver increasingly precise calculations for the shape of the Earth; an ellipsoid with additional undulations known as the geoid. To generate an accurate geopotential model West needed to use complex algorithms to account for variations in the gravitational, tidal, and other forces that distort Earth's shape.

In 1986, West published Data Processing System Specifications for the Geosat Satellite Radar Altimeter, a 51-page technical report from The Naval Surface Weapons Center (NSWC). This explained how to improve the accuracy of geoid heights and vertical deflection, important components of satellite geodesy. This was achieved by processing data from the radio altimeter on the Geosat satellite, which went into orbit on March 12, 1984.

West worked at Dahlgren for 42 years and retired in 1998. She later completed a PhD in Public Administration at Virginia Tech by distance-learning.

West's vital contributions to GPS technology were recognized when a member of her sorority Alpha Kappa Alpha read a short biography West had submitted for an alumni function.

West was inducted into the United States Air Force Hall of Fame in 2018, one of the highest honors bestowed by Air Force Space Command (AFSPC).  The AFSPC press release hailed her as one of "the 'Hidden Figures' part of the team who did computing for the US military in the era before electronic systems", a reference to the 2016 book by Margot Lee Shetterly, which was adapted into the film Hidden Figures. Captain Godfrey Weekes, commanding officer at the Naval Surface Warfare Center Dahlgren Division, described the role played by West in the development of Global Positioning System: "She rose through the ranks, worked on the satellite geodesy, and contributed to the accuracy of GPS and the measurement of satellite data. As Gladys West started her career ... in 1956, she likely had no idea that her work would impact the world for decades to come." West agreed, saying "When you’re working every day, you’re not thinking, 'What impact is this going to have on the world?' You're thinking, 'I've got to get this right.'"

As an alumna of Virginia State University, West won the award for "Female Alumna of the Year" at the Historically Black Colleges and Universities Awards in 2018.

West was selected by the BBC as part of their 100 Women of 2018.  In 2021, she was awarded the Prince Philip Medal by the United Kingdom's Royal Academy of Engineering.

West met her husband, Ira, at the Naval Surface Warfare Center Dahlgren Division, where he also worked as a mathematician. They were two of only four black employees at the time. They were married in 1957. They had three children (Carolyn, David and Michael), and seven grandchildren. The West family went to Chapel on the Proving Ground every Sunday. 

Before being hired at Dahlgren, West initially turned down the job due to its location and the requirement to interview. West did not have a car and could not find Dahlgren on a map, and she believed that they would reject her after the interview because of her race, so she decided to wait to hear back from other applications. However, Dahlgren contacted her again, offering her the job without the need to interview. The job offered twice the salary of her teaching position. Being hired solely on her qualifications, with a salary that would eventually help her support her family, was a rare find for a black woman at that time.

In 1954, the Supreme Court issued the landmark decision of Brown vs. Board of Education, a ruling that American state laws that established racial segregation in public schools were unconstitutional. However, the Virginia of the late 1950s was still segregated since the Supreme Court had not specified which states were required to reestablish institutions in accordance with the new ruling. Groups such as the Ku Klux Klan were still at large, and the prospect of moving to a rural neighborhood in a southern state was daunting for an unmarried black woman.

The Civil Rights movement was fully underway during her time at the base. Though she supported the movement, she could not participate in protests because she was a government employee. In Boomtown, where married people lived on base, she was part of a club of black women who discussed civil rights topics.

During her career, West encountered many hardships because of racism against African Americans. A prime example was the lack of recognition she received while working, while her white coworkers received praise and added privileges. Her biography makes clear her disappointment at not being granted projects that included travel and exposure.

Despite her role in creating GPS, West continued to prefer using paper maps over Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS)-based navigation systems, saying, "I'm a doer, hands-on kind of person. If I can see the road and see where it turns and see where it went, I am more sure."