Tag Page GoneButNotForgotten

REMEMBERING HELEN MARTIN

Helen Martin was born in 1909… before the Harlem Renaissance, before the Great Migration, and before Black entertainment truly existed. She lived through almost every major shift of the twentieth century and still showed up on our screens like she had energy to spare. Most of us know her as Ms. Pearl from 227, the neighbor with the unforgettable attitude. But her career stretched far beyond that. She appeared in Hollywood Shuffle, Boomerang, House Party 2, and Don’t Be a Menace, turning small roles into scenes people still laugh about today. Helen Martin worked well into her seventies and eighties, proving age never dimmed her talent. She passed in 2000 at ninety years old, leaving behind a legacy that reached across generations. Gone, but never forgotten. A legend whose life stretched across nearly a century. Remembering Helen Martin and the history she carried into every role. #HelenMartin #BlackEntertainmentHistory #227 #MsPearl #ClassicTV #IconicRoles #GoneButNotForgotten #NewsBreakCommunity #LataraSpeaksTruth

Septima Poinsette Clark (1898–1987) was a quiet force who shaped the soul of the Civil Rights Movement through something radical: teaching. Born in Charleston, South Carolina, she believed literacy and education were tools for liberation. Her greatest legacy came through the creation of Citizenship Schools, grassroots classrooms that taught African Americans to read, write, and understand their rights so they could register to vote and become leaders. Fired from her teaching job in 1956 for being a member of the NAACP, Clark didn’t back down. Instead, she expanded her work with the Highlander Folk School and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, training thousands of teachers and activists throughout the South. Many of her students went on to become civil rights leaders in their own right. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. called her work “the key to the movement.” Yet because she was a Black woman in a male-dominated movement, Clark’s contributions were often overlooked. Still, she remained committed to justice through knowledge, saying, “I believe unconditionally in the ability of people to respond when they are told the truth.” In 1979, she received the Living Legacy Award from President Jimmy Carter. But her true legacy lives on in the power of informed people standing up for their rights, not just in courtrooms or marches, but in classrooms, living rooms, and voting booths. Gone but not forgotten. Her life reminds us: freedom begins with learning. #GoneButNotForgotten #SeptimaClark #BlackHistory #CivilRights #EducationAsResistance #CitizenshipSchools #LegacyOfLiteracy

Some names don’t fade because the ground they broke still hasn’t fully healed. Thurgood Marshall was one of those men. Long before he ever sat on the Supreme Court, he stood in courtrooms where the law was never meant to protect him, arguing cases that reshaped the country whether it was ready or not. As lead attorney for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, Marshall won 29 of the 32 cases he argued before the Supreme Court. His most famous victory, Brown v. Board of Education, dismantled the legal foundation of school segregation. Not with noise. Not with spectacle. With precision. With receipts. With an understanding of the Constitution sharper than those who claimed to own it. In 1967, Thurgood Marshall became the first Black Justice of the United States Supreme Court. He didn’t arrive to blend in. He arrived to dissent, to question, to remind the Court who the law had excluded and who it continued to fail. His opinions often stood alone at the time…but history keeps proving he was early, not wrong. Marshall believed the Constitution was unfinished. He rejected the fantasy that America was born just and instead told the truth…it was born flawed, and justice requires work, not worship of the past. That honesty made people uncomfortable. It still does. He died on January 24, 1993, but his voice never left the room. Every argument for equal protection, every challenge to discriminatory systems, every reminder that rights are defended, not gifted…that’s his echo. Gone, yes. Forgotten…never. #GoneButNotForgotten #ThurgoodMarshall #OnThisDay #January24 #SupremeCourtHistory #LegalHistory #AmericanHistory #CivilRightsLegacy #JusticeMatters

Elizabeth Taylor Greenfield: The Black Swan Who Sang Against the Odds

Elizabeth Taylor Greenfield came into this world in 1824, born enslaved in Mississippi. Fate pulled her north as a child, and in Philadelphia she found something no chain could hold back: a voice built to shake ceilings. Stages in her era were not just closed to Black women; they were practically walled off. Yet Greenfield stepped up anyway. People said her range stretched from velvet-deep contralto to bright soprano, like she carried two singers inside one body. In 1851, she made her public debut in Buffalo, New York, and from that moment the road called her forward. Everywhere she traveled, she met resistance. Racist policies. Barred doors. Crowds that could not see past her skin. But she kept singing, and her voice kept winning rooms over. By 1853, she crossed the Atlantic to London, performing at Exeter Hall and earning the respect of Britain’s elite. She did not need a queen in the audience to stand on one of the grandest stages of her time. She was a Black woman refusing to dim her light. Greenfield did not just sing; she carved out space where none existed. Her legacy stands as proof that Black artistry has never waited for permission. She broke ground that generations of performers would later walk with pride. #GoneButNotForgotten #TheBlackSwan #ElizabethTaylorGreenfield #LataraSpeaksTruth #BlackHistory #MusicLegends

Happy Heavenly Birthday to XXXTENTACION. Born January 23, 1998, Jahseh Onfroy arrived like a storm and left like an echo that still hasn’t stopped bouncing around inside people. He was never meant to be background noise. His music was raw nerve, cracked glass, a diary left open on the floor. He spoke for kids who didn’t have the language yet, for pain that didn’t know how to sit quietly. From the chaos of Look at Me to the aching honesty of Jocelyn Flores, from the quiet devastation of Changes to the numb sadness of SAD! and the floating melancholy of Moonlight, X made feeling unavoidable. He was complicated. Unfinished. Reckoning with himself in public while the world watched, judged, argued, and consumed. He showed growth in real time, sometimes clumsy, sometimes sincere, sometimes painfully human. That mattered. Because it reminded people that healing isn’t pretty, and redemption doesn’t come wrapped in a bow. It comes with bruises, apologies, and effort. If he were here today, he’d be 28. That number hits different. Older. Wiser. Maybe calmer, maybe still wrestling demons, maybe mentoring younger artists who feel lost the way he once did. You can almost imagine him evolving sonically, spiritually, personally, pushing past the box people tried to lock him in. He was already shifting before his life was cut short. His absence is loud. His influence louder. You hear him in today’s artists, in the emotional honesty that’s no longer considered weak, in the permission people now give themselves to say “I’m not okay” out loud. X didn’t just make songs, he cracked something open. And once that door opened, it never fully closed again. Rest in power. Rest in complexity. Rest knowing you were heard. Happy Heavenly Birthday. #XXXTENTACION #JahsehOnfroy #HeavenlyBirthday #MusicLegacy #HipHopHistory #EmotionalHonesty #GoneButNotForgotten #RestInPower