by Justin Juozapavicius

TAHLEQUAH, Okla. (AP)—Charlene White didn’t learn the whole story about her grandfather’s secret number until she was 12.

Prior to that time, she knew only that he had scrawled the mysterious digits—3489—on a crumpled piece of paper and hidden it in a drawer

FIGHTING TO BE EMBRACED—Rena Logan, a member of a Cherokee Freedmen family, shows her identification card as a member of the Cherokee tribe at her home in Muskogee, Okla., Oct. 6. (AP Photo/Dave Crenshaw)

The number was assigned to him as a boy to indicate that members of his family had once been slaves to the Cherokee Nation. It seemed to be a piece of personal history best left in the past.

“I feel like he felt it was shameful being known as a slave, especially a slave of the Indians,” White said. “It was an embarrassment.”

Week of October 15-21

October 15

1859—White minister and mystic John Brown leads a violent uprising in Harper’s Ferry, Va., in a bid to spark a Black uprising against slavery. Dozens of Whites are killed but the revolt is eventually put down. President Abraham Lincoln once referred to him as a “misguided fanatic” but Brown actually had a fanatical hatred of slavery and wanted it ended at all costs.

1887—The U.S. Supreme Court declares Civil Rights Act of 1885 unconstitutional. Decision was spurred by the end of Reconstruction and helped to usher in the Jim Crow period in the South whereby Black rights won during Reconstruction were taken away.

by Jim Fitzgerald

NEW YORK (AP)—Derrick Bell, a civil rights scholar and writer who was the first tenured Black professor at Harvard Law School, has died. He was 80.

Bell, a native of Pittsburgh’s Hill District, died Oct. 5 of carcinoid cancer at a Manhattan hospital, his wife, Janet Dewart Bell, said Oct 7. He’d been diagnosed with the disease a decade ago, she said, but was still teaching at New York University Law School as recently as last week.

CIVIL RIGHTS SCHOLAR—Professor Derrick Bell testifies in Ward Churchill’s civil suit against the University of Colorado at the City and County Building in Denver, Colo., in this March 13, 2009 photo. (AP Photo/Mark Leffingwell, File)

The dean at NYU, Richard Revesz, said, “For more than 20 years, the law school community has been profoundly shaped by Derrick’s unwavering passion for civil rights and community justice, and his leadership as a scholar, teacher, and activist.”

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (AP)—Rev. Fred L. Shuttlesworth, who was bombed, beaten and repeatedly arrested in the fight for civil rights and hailed by Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. for his courage and tenacity, has died. He was 89.

Relatives and hospital officials said Shuttlesworth died Oct. 5 at Princeton Baptist Medical Center in Birmingham. A former truck driver who studied religion at night, Shuttlesworth became pastor of Bethel Baptist Church in Birmingham in 1953 and soon emerged as an outspoken leader in the struggle for racial equality.

SOLDIERS—In a May 8, 1963 file photo, civil rights leaders, Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., left, Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth, center, and Rev. Ralph Abernathy hold a news conference in Birmingham, Ala. (AP Photo, File)