September, 2015 - Ella Baker - Capri

Ella Baker (1903 - 1986)

Baker was born in Norfolk Virginia and grew up in North Carolina.  She studied at Shaw University in Raleigh, and graduated as valedictorian.  She moved to NYC to join social activist organizations.  In 1930, she joined the Young Negroes Cooperative League, whose purpose was to develop black economic power through collective planning.  She began to work with the NAACP in 1940 as a field secretary and then served as a director of branches from 1943-6.  In 1957, she moved to Atlanta to help organize the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.  In 1960, she left to assist the new student activists from North Carolina A&T University who refused to leave a Woolworth's lunch counter in Greensboro, NC.  Under her mentorship, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee was born.  SNCC joined with the Congress of Racial Equality to organize the 1961 Freedom Rides.  She was highly respected civil rights leader who mostly worked "behind the scenes" advising, supporting, and mentoring greats like WEB Dubois, Thurgood Marshall, Martin Luther King Jr., and Rosa Parks.  Baker's reputation as a leader and movement builder earned her the nickname "Fundi," Swahili for a person who teaches craft to the next generation.

The Drink:

Capri Cocktail:

1.5 oz gin
.5 oz limoncello
.25 oz peach schnapps
1 oz grapefruit juice
1 oz mango juice
dash of orgeat syrup

Drinkability:  4
Drunkability:  3
Taxic Diversity:  3
Accessibility:  2
Priority for Conservation:  3

Comments:

From "Women of the Civil Rights Movement" hosted by BallBuster

September, 2015 - Viola Gregg Liuzzo - Mamie Taylor

Viola Gregg Liuzzo (1925-1965)

"We're going to change the world.  One day they'll write about us.  You'll see."

Liuzzo was born in Pennsylvania and lived in Detroit with her second husband and five children.  Politically and socially active, Liuzzo was a member of the Detriot chapter of the NAACP.  After "Bloody Sunday," when civil rights supporters were attacked by police in Selma, Liuzzo traveled to Alabama. On march 21, 1965, more than 3,000 marched from Selma to Montgomery to campaign for voting rights for African Americans in the South.  During the march, Liuzzo drove supporters between Selma and Montgomery.  That night, Liuzzo was driving another civil rigths worker with the SCLC - an African-American teenager named Leroy Moton -- back to Selma on Highway 80, when another car pulled alongside her vehicle.  One of the passengers in the neighboring car shot at Liuzzo, striking her in the face and killing her.  Moton survived the attack by pretending to be dead.  The police arrested four members of the Ku Klux Klah for the killing, one of which was revealed to be an FBI informant.  They were acquitted by an all-white jury on state charges related to the crime, but were later convicted on federal charges.  Despite efforts to discredit Liuzzo driven by J. Edgar Hoover, Director of the FBI, her murder led President Lyndon B. Johnson to order an investigation into the Ku Klux Klan.  It is also believed that her death helped encourage legislators to pass the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

The Drink:

Mamie Taylor

2 oz blended scotch
.5 oz fresh lime juice
2-5 oz chilled ginger ale
lemon slice
on the rocks

Drinkability:  4
Drunkability:  3
Taxic Diversity:  2
Accessibility:  4
Priority for Conservation:  4

Comments:  

From "Women of the Civil Rights Movement" hosted by BallBuster

September, 2015 - Fannie Lou Hamer - Brainstorm

Fannie Lou Hamer (1917 - 1977)

"Nobody's free until everybody's free"

Hamer was born in Montgomery County, Mississippi.  She was the youngest of 20 children.  Her parents were sharecroppers and she began working the fields when she was only 6 years old.  She continued to be a share cropper after her 1944 marriage to Perry "Pap" Hamer.  In 1962, she attended a protest meeting and met civil rights activists who encouraged blacks and register to vote, and soon became active in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, which fought racial segregation and injustice in the South.  During the course of her activist career, Hamer was threatened, arrested, beaten, and shot at.  She was severely injured in 1963 in Winona, Mississippi jail when she and two other activists were taken in by police after attending a training workshop.  Hamer was beaten so badly that she suffered permanent kidney damage.  In 1964, she helped found the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, and ran for Congress in Mississippi in 1965.  Fannie also helped to establish the National Women's Political Caucus in 1971.  Hamer died in 1977 from breast cancer.

The Drink:

Brainstorm:

1.5 oz Irish whiskey
1.5 oz dry vermouth
.25 oz benedictine
lemon twist

Drinkability:  2
Drunkability:  4.5
Taxic Diversity:  3
Accessibility:  3
Priority for Conservation:  3

Comments:  PoC is a 3 if you dial down the vermouth just a bit.

From "Women of the Civil Rights Movement" hosted by BallBuster

September, 2015 - Dorothy Height - Antibes

Dorothy Height (1912-2010)

Born in Richmond, Virginia, the daughter of a building contractor and a nurse, Height moved with her family to Pennsylvania in her youth.  She was awarded a college scholarship after winning a national oratory competition, and attended NYU, where she would ear a bachelor's degree in education and a master's degree in psychology.  Height joined the staff of the Harlem YWCA in 1937 where she met educator and founder of the National Council of Negro Women, Mary McLeod Bethune.  Height soon volunteered with the NCNW.  One of Height's major accomplishments at the YWCA was directing the integration of all of its centers in 1946.  She also established its Center for Racial Justice in 1965.  In 1957, Height became the president of the NCNW and helped to organize the March on Washington.  But she was not invited to speak that day despite her oratory skills.  Height later wrote that the event had been an eye-opening experience for her.  Her male counterparts "were happy to include women in the human family, but there was no question as to who headed the household."  In 1971, she helped found the National Women's Political Caucus.  Height was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom (1994) and the Congressional Gold Medal (2004) and died on April 20, 2010, in Washington, D.C.

The Drink:

Antibes

1.5 oz gin
.5 oz benedictine
2 oz grapefruit juice
orange slice
on the rocks

Drinkability:  3
Drunkability:  3
Taxic Diversity:  4
Accessibility:  4
Priority for Conservation:  3.5

Comments:  split vote depending on how you feel about grapefruit juice

From "Women of the Civil Rights Movement" hosted by BallBuster