the history we found in the Temple area!!!

It was hot but worthwhile. Yesterday we walked around North Philly and looked at four important landmarks: The Church of the Advocate, The Opportunities Industrialization Center (OIC), Jessie Redmon Fauset's Philadelphia Home, and the Universal Negro Improvement Association. Some information about each landmark is listed below.

The Church Of The Advocate was the first Episcopal Church in the world to ordain women. It was built as a memorial for civil rights leader George W. South. It was the site of several significant events of the Civil Rights movement, including the National Conference of Black Power (1968), the Black Panther Conference (1970), and the first ordination of women in the Episcopal Church (1974).

OIC, or OICA (OIC of America), was founded by Reverend Doctor Leon H. Sullivan. It is a national non-profit organization focused on helping poor and unemployed citizens realize their true potential through employment and training centers. The first OIC training center was located in an abandoned jailhouse in North Philadelphia, which was later renovated thanks to generous donations from the community and anonymous contributors.

Jessie Redmon Fauset went to Philadephia High School for Girls and graduated as the only African-American in her class. After graduating from Cornell University, Fauset went to work for the NAACP's journal The Crisis, as the literary editor under W.E.B. DuBois. At the end of her editing career, 58 of her 77 published works appeared first in The Crisis. Eventually Fauset came back to Philadelphia and lived out the rest of her life here until she died from a heart attack in 1961.

Marcus Garvey, founder of the UNIA, was born in St. Ann's Bay, Jamaica on August 17, 1887. He founded the first UNIA in Jamaica in 1911, and the first branch in the United States in New York 1917. He believed that all races should live in their native countries. (Asians live in Asia, Africans live in Africa, and so on.)