Black History Month Segments

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Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, Opal Tometi

Alam Mohamed

WMPG celebrates the lives of Black men and women throughout the month of February. Alicia Garza, Opal Tometi, and Patrisse Cullors are co-founders of the non-violent protest group Black Lives Matter in 2013. Since then, the group has held thousands of protests/demonstrations in support of African Americans.
Angela Davis

90.9 WMPG FM

WMPG celebrates the lives of Black men and women throughout the month of February. Angela Davis is an African American Professor who participated in the Civil Rights Movement, the Black Panthers, and fought against prison inequality. She retired in 2008 and continues to lecture on intersectional feminism and social issues.

Hosted by Lexi, a student at USM.

Produced in 2019/2020
Audre Lorde

Floyd Woods

WMPG celebrates the lives of Black men and women throughout the month of February. Born in 1939, Audre Lorde’s many accomplishments include her work with Freedom of the Press (in support of American non-profit publishing) and co-founding Women of the Coalition of St. Croix in 1981 (assisting female survivors of sexual abuse).
Barack Obama

Sam Well

WMPG celebrates the lives of Black men and women throughout the month of February. Barack Obama, the first African American President of the United States of America, has also won the Nobel Peace Prize and the Profile in Courage Award.
Barack Obama (2019)

Ashton May

WMPG celebrates the lives of Black men and women throughout the month of February. On November 4, 2008, Barack Obama was elected the first African American President of the United States. Under his leadership, America expanded health care, reformed criminal justice and welfare, and scaled back military involvement.
Billie Holliday

Rodney Mondor

WMPG celebrates the lives of Black men and women throughout the month of February. Born in Philadelphia in 1915, was a renowned jazz singer known for her unique vocal style and improvisational skills.
Claudette Colvin

Caleb Richardson

WMPG celebrates the lives of Black men and women throughout the month of February. Claudette Colvin, a fifteen-year-old African American girl in 1955 Montgomery, AL, who was one of the first to challenge Alabama’s segregation laws via bus boycotts. Because of her age, economic status, and illegitimate pregnancy, she was deemed an inappropriate symbol for the movement, losing the position to Rosa Parks.
Cornel West

Jam Lewis

WMPG celebrates the lives of Black men and women throughout the month of February. Doctor Cornel West, born in 1953 Tulsa, OK, is an author, professor, Ivy League scholar, philosopher, political activist, actor, and political commentator. He has written twenty books and focuses on race, gender, and class in American society.
Duke Ellington

DJ Daddy G

WMPG celebrates the lives of Black men and women throughout the month of February. Born Edward Kennedy in Washington, DC, Duke Ellington had a 50-year career in jazz music. He elevated jazz to an art form. In 1999, he received a special posthumous Pulitzer Prize for Music.
Emmett Till

Jim Rand

WMPG celebrates the lives of Black men and women throughout the month of February. Emmett Till was a 14-year-old African American boy who was murdered in a brutal hate crime that occurred in 1955 Mississippi. His death, and the subsequent lack of justice against the killers, served as major catalysts for the American Civil Rights Movements.
Gerald E. Talbot

Lorenzo Raffa

WMPG celebrates the lives of Black men and women throughout the month of February. Bangor, Maine native, Gerald Talbot is a passionate advocate of civil and human rights on the local, state, and national level. Among other accomplishments, he was responsible for reviving the NAACP in Portland, Maine in 1964. In 1972, Talbot became the first African American member of the Maine House of Representatives. For more information on Mr. Talbot, please see the Gerald E. Talbot Collection finding aid. To view items from the Gerald E. Talbot Collection, please visit this link.
Gordon Parks

90.9 WMPG FM

WMPG celebrates the lives of Black men and women throughout the month of February. Born in 1912 Kansas, Gordon Parks used the camera as his weapon of choice to fight against poverty, racism, violence, and inequality. He worked with all economic and social levels.

Presented by student DJ Lexi.
Hank Aaron

Azari Ahmad

WMPG celebrates the lives of Black men and women throughout the month of February. Hank Aaron is one of the greatest hitters in Major League Baseball history. He played more than 23 seasons and broke many records, including Babe Ruth’s home run record.
Harriet Tubman

Bettina Blanchard

WMPG celebrates the lives of Black men and women throughout the month of February. Born into slavery in 1822, Harriet Tubman, called Moses, is best known for her efforts to free other enslaved people via the Underground Railroad. After the Civil War, she was an activist for women’s suffrage.
Herbie Hancock

90.9 WMPG FM

WMPG celebrates the lives of Black men and women throughout the month of February. Influential jazz artist Herbie Hancock got his start as a piano prodigy. He performed with Miles Davis for five years. Hancock’s 1973 funk/jazz album became the biggest-selling jazz album to that date.. He is currently mentoring the next wave of jazz musicians.
Jackie Robinson

90.9 WMPG FM

WMPG celebrates the lives of Black men and women throughout the month of February. Jackie Robinson was the first African American signed to Major League Baseball, breaking the baseball color line and ending the Negro League. He was Rookie of the Year, MLB All-Star for six years, and played in the World Series six times. He was the first in any sport to have his number retired. Posthumously, he received the Congressional Gold Medal and the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
John Brown Russwurm

90.9 WMPG FM

WMPG celebrates the lives of Black men and women throughout the month of February. Born in Jamaica to an English father and an enslaved mother, John Brown Russwurm was an American abolitionist. He moved to Portland, ME in 1812 where he attended Hebron Academy. In 1826, he became the first African American to graduate from Bowdoin College and only the third African American to graduate from college in the United States. In New York City, Russwurm became a co-founder of the first abolitionist newspaper to be owned by African Americans.
Josephine Baker

Eddie May

WMPG celebrates the lives of Black men and women throughout the month of February. Born in 1905 St. Louis, MO, Josephine Baker was bullied and witnessed a race riot as a child. She left home at age fifteen, started dancing on the streets, and by the age of nineteen had become the highest-paid chorus dancer in vaudeville. In 1925, on a tour of Europe, Baker discovered that France was free of racial tensions and she decided to make it her home.
Katherine Johnson

Linda Adams

WMPG celebrates the lives of Black men and women throughout the month of February. Katherine Johnson was born in West Virginia in 1918. Her talent for math helped her graduate summa cum laude from West Virginia State College with a degree in Math and French. In 1953, NASA hired her as a “computer” and in 1958 she was employed as an Aerospace Technologist. She won the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2015.
Laverne Cox

90.9 WMPG FM

WMPG celebrates the lives of Black men and women throughout the month of February. Laverne Cox is an openly transgender, trailblazing actress and activist who has been nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award.
Leonard W. Cummings Sr.

Rachel Spiegel

WMPG celebrates the lives of Black men and women throughout the month of February. Born and raised on Munjoy Hill in Portland, ME, activist Leonard W. Cummings Sr., former president of the NAACP of Maine, was pivotal in the restoration of the Abyssinian Meeting House in Portland, ME. This is the third oldest African American meeting house in America.
Lewis Latimer

David Pence

WMPG celebrates the lives of Black men and women throughout the month of February. Lewis Latimer was a great inventor whose breakthrough in light bulbs led to his hire by Thomas Edison as “Chief Draftsman and Patent Specialist”. He wrote the comprehensive book on electric lighting.
Lizzo

MAdeline Perry

WMPG celebrates the lives of Black men and women throughout the month of February. Lizzo, born Melissa Viviane Jefferson, majored in classical flute at the University of Houston before switching to her very successful hip-hop music career. She is a plus-sized African American woman known for her work in support of body image and self-love.
Macon Bolling Allen

Bobby Carroll

WMPG celebrates the lives of Black men and women throughout the month of February. Born in Indiana in 1816, Macon Bolling Allen moved to Portland, ME early in the 1840’s where he passed the state bar to become the first licensed African American attorney in the United States. He later moved to Boston, MA, passed the bar there. In 1848 when he was appointed Justice of the Peace for Middlesex County, MA, he became the first black man in the nation to hold a judiciary position.
Mae Jemison

90.9 WMPG FM

WMPG celebrates the lives of Black men and women throughout the month of February. In 1992, Mae Jemison became the first African American in space. She is a strong advocate for African American involvement in space exploration. Jemison now teaches at Cornell University.