Pleasant Hill AME Church Joan

05/25/2026

Francois Dominique Toussaint Louverture, was the leader of the Haitian independence movement during the French Revolution (1787-1799). He emancipated the enslaved people and negotiated for the French colony on Hispaniola, Saint-Dominigue (later Haiti), to be governed, briefly by formerly enslaved people as a French protectorate.
Toissaint Louverture was born on Monday, May 20, 1743 in Cap-Francais, Saint-Domingue. He was born a slave and was a devout Catholic, and was manumitted as affranchi (ex-slave) before the French Revolution, identifying as a Creole for the greater part of his life.
Toissant Louverture was the eldest son of Hyppolite, an Allada slave from the slave coast of West Africa, and his second wife, Pauline, a slave from the Aja ethnic group, and given the name Toussaint at birth.
Touissant Louverture acquired through Jesuit contacts some knowledge of French, though he wrote and spoke it poorly, usually employing Haitian Creole and African tribal language. Winning the favor of the plantation manager, he became a livestock handler, healer, coachman, and finally steward. Legally freed in 1776, he married and had 2 sons. Toussaint Louverture was homely, short, and small framed. He was a fervent Roman Catholic, opposed to Voudou (Voodoo). He dressed simply and was abstemious and a vegetarian. His energy and capacity for work were astonighing, and asa leader he inspired awe and adulation.
When a sudden revolt by enslaved peoples began in the northern province (August 1791) and soon spread to encompass thousands of slaves across the colony, Toussaint Louverture was at first uncommitted. After hesitating a few weeks, he helped his former master escape and then joined the Black forces who were burning plantations and killing many Europeans and mulattoes (people of mixed African and European ancestry). He soon discerned the ineptitude of the rebel leaders and scorned their willingness to compromise with European radicals. Collecting an army of his own, Toussaint Louverture trained his followers in the tactics of guerrilla warfare. In 1793, he added to his original name the name of Louverture; the name's exact significance is unknown, but its meaning in French, "opening," may have referred to his tactical ability as a military commander.
When France and Spain went to war in 1793, the Black commanders joined the Spaniards of Santo Domingo, the eastern two-thirds of Hispaniola (now the Dominican Republic). Knighted and recognized as a general, Toussaint Louverture demonstrated extraordinary military ability and attracted such renowned warriors as his nephew Moise and 2 future monarchs of Haiti, Jean-Jacques Dessalines and Henry Christophe. His victories in the north, together with mulatto successes in the south and British occupation of the coasts, brought the French close to disaster. Yet in May 1794, Toussaint Louvurture went over to the French, giving as his reasons that the French National Convention had recently freed all slaves, while Spain and Britain refused, and that he had become a republican. He has been criticized for the duplicity of his dealings with his onetime allies and for a slaughter of Spaniards at a mass. His switch was decisive: the governor of Saint-Domingue, Etienne Laveaux, made Toussaint lieutenant governor; the British suffered severe reverses; and the Spaniards were expelled.
By 1795, Toussaint Louverture was widely renowned. He was adored by Blacks and appreciated by most Europeans and mulattoes, for he died much to restore the economy. Defying French Revolutionary laws, he allowed many emigre planters to return, and he used military discipline to force the former slaves to work. Convinced that people were naturally corrupt, he felt that compulsion was needed to prevent idleness. Yet the laborers were no longer whipped: they were legally free and equal, and they shared the profits of the restored plantations. Racial tensions were erased because Toussaint Louverture preached reconciliation and believed that Blacks, a majority of whom were African born, had to learn from Europeans and Europeanized mulattoes.
Though he worked well with Laveaux, Toussaint Louverture eased him out in 1796. Leger-Felicite Sonthonax, a terrorist French commissioner, allowed Toussaint Louverture to rule and made him governor-general. But the ascetic Black general repelled by the proposals of the European radical to exterminate the Europeans, and he was offended by Sonthonax's atheism, coarseness, and immorality. After some devious maneuvers, Toussaint Louverture forced Sonthonax out in 1797.
Next to go where the British, whose losses cause them to negotiate secretly with Toussaint Louverture, notwithstanding the war with France. Treaties in 1798 and 1799 secured their complete withdrawal. Lucrative trade was begun with British and with the United States. In return for arms and goods, Toussaint Louverture sold sugar and promised not to invade Jamaica or the American South. The British offered to recognize him as king of an independent Haiti, but scornful of pompous titles and distrustful of the British because they maintained slavery, he refused.
Toussaint Louverture died in captivity on Thursday, April 7, 1803 at age of 59 in Ford de Joux, La Cluse-et-Mijoux, France.

05/24/2026

05/22/2026

Happy Birthday to all our family and friends born in the month of May. We love you! 🎂❤️🎁😇

05/08/2026

Florence Beatrice Smith Price, was an African American composer and pianist whose work spans 3 decades, during which she wrote more than 300 musical compositions. In 1933, she became the first African American woman to have a symphony performed by a major American orchestra. In 2009, the discovery of unpublished scores and manuscripts by Florence Price sparked renewed interest in her work.
Florence was born on Saturday, April 9, 1887 in Little Rock, Arkansas, to James and Florence Gulliver Smith. Her father was a dentist, his office building was destroyed in the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, moved to southern Arkansas and eventually relocated to Little Rock, where he established a new practice. At the time, he was one of only a handful of African American dentists in the United States.
Her mother was a businesswoman, school teacher, and piano tutor who guided Florence to her first piano recital at age 4. The Smiths were part of an elite African American community in Little Rock, and they lived in a lavish home, complete with a library, carpeted floors, and an Ivers & Pond piano. The family hosted notable guests, such as concert pianist John (Blind) Boone, who also served as a mentor to Smith.
Smith graduated from high school at age of 14 as the valedictorian of her class. In 1903, she enrolled at New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, Massachusetts, where she majored in organ performance and piano teaching.
During this time she also studied, privately, under composer George Whitefield Chadwick and started to experiment with incorporating the sounds of African American folk music into her developing musical oeuvre. At the behest of her mother, Florence Smith kept her African American heritage hidden from her peers. She graduated in 1906 and soon returned to Arkansas, where she taught at Cotton Plant Academy in Cotton Plant, Arkansas, for a year before moving to Shorter College in North Little Rock, Arkansas, where she taught until 1910.
The year of 1910 was a difficult one for Florence. Her father died, and after his death her mother abandoned the family and never contacted Florence again. That same year, Florence Smith was appointed chair of the music department at Clark College (now part of Clark Atlanta University) in Atlanta, Georgia.
In 1912, she married a lawyer name Thomas Price and moved back to Little Rock. The couple had a son, who died during infancy, and 2 daughters. Growing racial tensions, including a lynching near her husband's office, eventually pushed the Price family out of Little Rock and settled in Chicago in 1927.
Florence Price was quickly accepted into a vibrant community of American musicians and composers amid the Chicago Black Renaissance movement. Her home was the site of constant creative activity. She set up a private piano studio and offered lessons to children. She was able to resume studying music, this time at the American Conservatory of Music and Chicago Musical College (now part of Roosevelt University's Chicago College of Performing Arts), and she began to make contact with local music publishers. In 1928, four of her pieces were published, including At the Cotton Gin: A Southern Sketch for Piano. She established a successful commercial relationship with McKinley Music Company, which published her compositions for children, such as Playful Rondo (1928) and Mellow Twilight (1930). She also wrote popular music and radio advertisement jingles under the pseudonym VeeJay. Florence Price and her husband divorced in 1931, and later that year she married insurance agent Pusey Dell Arnett.
In 1932, the Rodman Wanamaker Foundation sponsored composing competitions in Chicago, and Florence Price won awards for her Symphony No. 1 in E Minor and Piano Sonata in E. Minor. Symphony No. 1 in E Minor was performed by Chicago Symphony Orchestra on June 15, 1933, making Florence Price the first African American woman composer to have a symphony premiered by a major American orchestra. The Chicago Daily News praised the composition as "a faultless work,...a work that speaks its own message with restraint and yet with passion. Florence Price's symphony is worthy of a place in the regular symphonic repertory." Recognition for Symphony No. 1 in E Minor established Florence Price's reputation as a composer and arranger. In 1934, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra performed her composition Piano Concerto in One Movement, and in 1939 contralto singer Marian Anderson delivered a stirring performance of Florence Price's arrangement of "My Soul's Been Anchored in the Lord" at Lincoln Memorial Concert in Washington, D.C., which was attended by more than 75,000 people. Florence Price's Symphony No. 3 was premiered by the Detroit Civic Orchestra in 1940.
Florence Price died from a stroke on Wednesday, June 3, 1953 at age of 66 in Chicago, Illinois. She was buried at Lincoln Cemetery in Blue Island, Illinois.

05/07/2026

Patricia (Pat) Jo Washington-McGraw, was an African American scholar, professor, and author who made a significant impact throughout the country and the world as an educator and African American cultural preservationist.
Patricia Washington was born on Monday, May 6, 1935 in Little Rock, Arkansas, to William and Ruth Washington, natives of Danville (Yale County), Arkansas. Pat grew up in a time of school segregation and Jim Crow laws, her parents instilled in her the value of education and the importance of embracing her African American heritage. In 1953, she graduated from all-Black Dunbar High School in Little Rock.
Pat McGraw graduated from San Francisco State in California in 1957 and earned a master's degree in American literature from the college in 1967. She was the first Black member of the Phi Beta Kappa honors society there. She taught at Philander Smith College in Little Rock in the late 1960s and was the first Black faculty member at the University of Arkansas Little Rock (ULAR).
She married Tyrone Power McGraw (1943-2015), who was a professor and coach at Philander Smith College; together they had 3 children.
In 1982, she received a PhD in sociolinguistics and Black studies from Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. Pat McGraw joined the faculty of the University of Central Arkansas (UCA) in Conway, Arkansas, in 1987, where she served as a professor of English and African-African American Studies.
From 1983 to 1994, she owned and operated the McGraw Learning Institute: Abilities Unlimited in Little Rock. The private school, which was state certified to teach through 6th grade, emphasized the importance of African and African American history.
Dr. Pat McGraw traveled throughout Africa numerous times performing humanitarian work and educational training. In 1999, on Lake Kivu, between the East African countries of Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, members of the Rwandese Parliament presented an island to her due to her ongoing humanitarian work in the country; she was also granted the name mPata (meaning "one of noble birth"). She served as Queen Mother of Imani Temple, her spiritual affiliation.
Dr. Pat McGraw retired from UCA in 2000 and remained active in her community and abroad. She published several books, including the novel Hush! Hush! Somebody's Calling My Name (2000), and more than 500 articles and poems.
She also received more than 300 teaching excellence and community service awards on the local, state, and national levels. In 2004, she was inducted into Arkansas Black Hall of Fame. She was a longtime member of National Association of Black Storytellers, a founding member of the Afro-American Genealogical and Historical Society in Arkansas, and a member of the Rufus K. Young Christian Church. She co-hosted television shows and created a one-woman show, A Profile of Four Black Women: Look Upon Them and Be Renewed, which was performed more than 400 times in Africa, the West Indies, and Canada.
For years, she continued to pass on the legacy of cultural pride and academic excellence at Washington Heritage House, the former residence of her parents, located across the street from the historic Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. She later moved to Dallas, Texas, to live with her daughter.
She died on Wednesday, June 25, 2025 at age of 90 in Dallas, Texas. She was buried at Roselawn Memorial Park in Little Rock, Arkansas.

04/28/2026

Osvaldo Dorticos Torrado, was a Cuban politician who served as the president of Cuba from 1959 to 1976. He was a close ally of Cuban revolutionary and longtime leader Fidel Castro.
Dorticos was born on Thursday, April 17, 1919 to a family in Cienfuegos, Las Villas Province. His father was both a lawyer and a physician, and one of his ancestors was Tomas Terry, a Venezuelan-born entrepreneur of paternal Irish descent who amassed one of the largest fortunes in the Western Hemisphere ($25 million at the time of his death in 1886), who established the Thomas Terry Theatre in Cienfuegos. After working briefly as a teacher, Dorticos studied law and philosophy at the University of Havana, graduating with a law degree in 1941. He joined the Communist-controlled Popular Socialist Party, and acted for a time as secretary to Juan Marinello, the party's leader.
In the 1950s, Dorticos established a prosperous law practice in Cienfuegos, and served as Commodore of the Cienfuegos Yacht Club. He strongly opposed the government of Fulgencio Batista, and participated in the Civil Resistance Movement, supplying the rebel forces with arms and supplies. Dorticos was elected dean of the Havana Bar Association in 1958 prior to being arrested by the Batista regime in the same year and being briefly exiled to Mexico.
After the success of the Revolution on January 1, 1959, Dorticos returned to Cuba and was appointed Minister of Revolutionary Laws in the cabinet headed by Fidel Castro. In that capacity, he played an important role in drafting revolutionary legislation such as the Agrarian Reform Act and the Fundamental Organic Law that supplanted the Constitution of 1940. After the resignation of President Manuel Urrutia, Dorticos was appointed President of Cuba by the Council of Ministers on July 17, 1959.
As President, Dorticos represented Cuba at the 1st Summit of the Non-Aligned Movement in Belgrade, SFT Yugoslavia (1961), and the Summit of the Organization of American States in Punta del Este, Uruguay (1962). During the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, Dorticos gave a speech as the United Nations in which he announced that Cuba possessed nuclear weapons, which it hoped would never be used. In 1964, he participated in the 2nd Summit of the Non-Aligned Movement in Cairo. He was present at the inauguration of Personist President Hector Campora on May 25, 1973, in Buenos Aires, along with Chilean President Salvador Allende.
In addition to being Cuba's President, Dorticos served as a member of the Secretariat of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba (from 1965); and as president of the Central Planning Council (from 1964). For the most part, Dorticos was figurehead, with most of the real power held by Prime Minister Fidel Castro.
A new constitution enacted in 1976 merged the posts of president and prime minister. Castro became president, and Dorticos named President of the National Bank and a member of the Council of State.
Dorticos show himself on Thursday, June 23, 1983 at age of 64 in Havana, Cuba. His su***de was apparently brought on by the death of his wife, as well as chronic spinal disease.