Happy Holidays From The HistoryMakers!!
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At The HistoryMakers, we would like to wish everyone a safe and happy holiday season and we thank you for your continued support. For our special Holiday Edition of
The HistoryMakers Newsletter
, we would like to share with you some of our favorite holiday memories from The HistoryMakers Digital Archive!
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Mary Wilson
, original member of The Supremes, recalled the famous Motown Christmas parties, “
They always had huge Christmas parties and we got gifts and we were all there singing and celebrating together. That was one of the best times of my life outside of the family, was being able to celebrate with the Motown family.’
"
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Legendary comedian
George Wallace
recalled a memorable Christmas, “
I opened that one and I opened that one and, “Oh my God.” And that was the radio…And I dropped. And I went, ‘Oh mom. Mom I got the radio.’ Of course she knew she got the--I can feel it today… Getting that transistor radio. It was the biggest thing ever happened to me in my life.
”
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Fashion designer
Etu Evans
remembered singing holiday carols with his family, “
Well, on my grandmother's side, they're very excellent singers, so everyone sings. I mean, you're gonna get the best 'Jingle Bells.' I mean, your 'Jingle Bells' is really gonna jingle. LL Cool J said, "They're jingling baby." Well, they are wonderful singers from the old school of music…where they're actually singing notes instead of words to their classic twists on traditionals...just great food, a lot of jokes and a lot of games.
”
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Clayola Brown
, vice president of the AFL-CIO, recalled her grandfather’s stories around the holidays, “
Well my grandfather was the story teller. Christmas was his birthday...He talked about the relatives that he could remember and the legacy that came with being proud and being a Jenkins. Each of us as children would mouth the story as he told it because it was the same story every Christmas and as a child it seemed a bit mundane to us, hearing the same thing but as we became teenagers and then adults the wealth of the stories became something very precious to us
.”
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Harry Robinson, Jr
., director of the Dallas African American Museum, shared his family’s New Orleans meal traditions, “
You always had gumbo on Christmas…you had chicken and some of them even had wild food, like coons…the turkey always stuffed with rice and oysters and that was good eating. And I never cared much about oysters, but I liked the taste, the flavor of the oyster and the rice and even this day I like the taste of the oyster and rice…but gumbo was a staple...and it was stocked with shrimp, chicken, sausage, everything was in there.
”
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Andrew Ingraham
, president and co-founder of the National Association of Black Hotel Owners, described Christmas traditions growing up in the Bahamas, “
A typical Christmas for us was huge because we have what we call Junkanoo…To us, Junkanoo is where groups got together and compete for the best costume, best music and, to us, that was Christmas. That's what everybody waited for…You went from house, to house, to relative’s house, to relative’s house, to friend's house. You had food, you had drinks, and that was growing up as a young kid
.”
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Librarian
Henrietta Smith
, remembered Christmas in the 1930s, “W
e got a box of candy and we got a stocking that had a piece of fruit and some nuts…We had a big dinner…my father loved rice. Well, South Carolina people eat rice, so those particular meal we had sweet potatoes. We had white potatoes. We had baked macaroni and my father said, he called all of us bum, "Bum, where's the rice? I need a filler for my dinner." I mean you had all these other things, but he had to have his filler for his dinner, but the meals were big meals at the holiday time
.”
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