KRLemmons African American History

October 2 African American Historical Events

Today in Black History – October 2           *

1800 – Nat Turner is born in Southampton, Virginia. Believing
himself called by God to free his fellow bondsmen,
Turner will become a freedom fighter leader of one of
the most famous slave revolts, resulting in the death
of scores of whites and involving 60 to 80 slaves. He
will join the ancestors on November 11, 1831 after being
executed for his part in the rebellion.

1833 – The New York Anti-Slavery Society is organized.

1898 – Otis J. Rene’ is born in New Orleans, Louisiana. With
his younger brother Leon, he will move to Los Angeles,
California, and establish Exclusive and Excelsior
Records in the 1930’s. By the mid-1940’s, the brothers
will be leading independent record producers whose
artists will include Nat King Cole, Herb Jeffries, and
Johnny Otis. He will join the ancestors on April 5, 1970.

1929 – Moses Gunn is born in St. Louis, Missouri. He will become
an Obie Award-winning stage player, and co-found the Negro
Ensemble Company in the 1960s. His 1962 Broadway debut was
in Jean Genet’s “The Blacks.” He will be nominated for a
1976 Tony Award as Best Actor (Play) for “The Poison Tree”
and will play Othello on Broadway in 1970. He will also
appear in “Amityville II,” “Shaft,” and “Good Times.” He
will join the ancestors on December 17, 1993 after
succumbing to complications from asthma,

1932 – Maurice Morning ‘Maury’ Wills is born is Washington, DC.
He will become a professional baseball player and
shortstop for the Dodger organization.  He will become
the National League Most Valuable Player in 1962.

1936 – Johnnie Cochran is born in Shreveport, Louisiana.  He
will become a criminal defense attorney and will be
best known for his defense of Black Panther Party
member Geronimo Pratt and ex-NFL superstar O.J.
Simpson. He will join the ancestors on March 29, 2005.

1958 – The Republic of Guinea gains independence under the
leadership of Sekou Toure.

1965 – Bishop Harold Robert Perry of Lake Charles, Louisiana,
is named auxiliary bishop of New Orleans by Pope Paul
IV.

1967 – Thurgood Marshall becomes the first African American
member of the United States Supreme Court when he is
sworn in by Chief Justice Earl Warren. As chief
counsel for the National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in the 1940s
and ’50s, Marshall was the architect and executor of
the legal strategy that ended the era of official
racial segregation. The great-grandson of a slave,
Marshall was born in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1908.
After being rejected from the University of Maryland
Law School on account of his race, he was accepted at
all-black Howard University in Washington, DC. At
Howard, he studied under the tutelage of civil
liberties lawyer Charles H. Houston and in 1933
graduated first in his class. In 1936, he joined the
legal division of the NAACP, of which Houston was
director, and two years later succeeded his mentor
in the organization’s top legal post.

1967 – Robert H. Lawrence, who was named the first African
American astronaut, joins the ancestors after being
killed in a plane crash before his first mission.

1968 – Bob Gibson, of the St. Louis Cardinals, sets a world
series record of 17 strikeouts.

1980 – Larry Holmes retains the WBC heavyweight boxing title
defeating Muhammad Ali.

1981 – Hazel Scott, renown jazz singer and pianist, joins
the ancestors at the age of 61 (succumbed to pancreatic
cancer).

1986 – The United States Senate overrides President Ronald
Reagan’s veto of legislation imposing economic
sanctions against South Africa. The override is seen
as the culmination of efforts by Trans-Africa’s
Randall Robinson, Rep. Mickey Leland, and others
begun almost two years earlier with Robinson’s
arrest before the South African Embassy in
Washington, DC.

1989 – “Jump Start” premiers in 40 newspapers in the United
States. The comic strip is the creation of 26-year-
old Robb Armstrong, the youngest African American to
have a syndicated comic strip. He follows in the
footsteps of Morrie Turner, the creator of “Wee Pals,”
the first African American syndicated comic strip.

Information retrieved from the Munirah Chronicle and is edited by Rene’ A. Perry.MBi

KRLemmons African American History

October 1 African American Historical Events

Today in Black History – October 1             *

1851 – William “Jerry” Henry, a runaway slave and craftsman who had
settled in Syracuse, New York, is arrested by a United
States Marshal and scheduled to be returned to slavery.
Ten thousand citizens of the city will storm the sheriff’s
office and courthouse, free Henry, and aid his escape to
Canada via the underground railroad.

1872 – Morgan State College (now University) is founded in
Baltimore, Maryland.

1886 – Kentucky State College (now University) is founded in
Frankfort, Kentucky.

1897 – Virginia Proctor Powell, first female African American
librarian is born in Wilkinsburg, Pennsylvania. She will
follow in her mother’s footsteps and continue her education
at Oberlin College in Oberlin, Ohio. In 1919, She will earn
her Bachelor of Arts degree in English literature from Oberlin.
She will move back to Pittsburgh where, although having
adequate training and experience, she was unable to pursue her
desired goal of teaching and spent some time working at her
aunt’s salon as a beautician. Aware of her passion for children
and books, Charles Wilbur Florence, her future husband, will
encourage her to pursue a career in librarianship. During a
time when African Americans were rarely considered for
admission into predominantly white universities, she will be
considered for admission into the Pittsburgh Carnegie Library
School (now the University of Pittsburgh School of Information
Sciences). There is much debate about allowing a Black person
into the program. School officials were concerned with how
white students might react to having a Black peer and the
likelihood that she would not find work upon completion of the
program. She will finish the program in 1923. OVer time she
would work as a librarian in Richmond, Virginia and Washington,
D.C. She will join the ancestors in Richmond, Virginia in 1991.

1937 – The Pullman Company formally recognizes the Brotherhood of
Sleeping Car Porters.

1937 – The Spingarn Medal is awarded to Walter White, NAACP
secretary, for his leadership and work in the anti-
lynching movement.

1945 – Donny Hathaway is born in Chicago, Illinois.  He will be
an influential pop and Rhythm & Blues singer of the 1970s
whose hit songs will include “The Ghetto” and “The Closer
I Get to You” (with Roberta Flack). His collaborations with
Roberta Flack will score high on the charts and win him the
Grammy Award for “Best Pop Performance by a Duo or Group with
Vocal” for the duet, “Where Is the Love” in 1973. He will join
the ancestors, after commiting suicide, on January 13, 1979.

1945 – Rodney Cline “Rod” Carew, baseball Hall of Famer, is born in Gatún,
Panama, (formally Panama Canal Zone). He will win the American
League’s Rookie of the Year award in 1967 and be elected to the
first of 18 consecutive All-Star game appearances. He will steal
home seven times in the 1969 season to lead the majors, just
missing Ty Cobb’s Major League record of eight and the most in the
major leagues since Pete Reiser stole seven for the Brooklyn
Dodgers in 1946. His career total of 17 steals of home currently
puts him tied for 17th on the list with former New York Giant MVP
Larry Doyle and fellow Hall of Famer Eddie Collins. In 1972, He
will lead the American League in batting, hitting .318, and
remarkably, without hitting a single home run for the only time in
his career. He is, to date, the only player in the American League
or in the modern era to win the batting title with no home runs.
In 1975, he will join Ty Cobb as the only players to lead both the
American and National Leagues in batting average for three
consecutive seasons. In the 1977 season, he will bat .388, which is
the highest since Boston’s Ted Williams hit .406 in 1941, and win
the American League’s Most Valuable Player award. He will be
inducted into MLB Hall of Fame in 1991. He will also be inducted
into the Hispanic Heritage Baseball Museum Hall of Fame.

1945 – Heavyweight champion,  Joe Louis, is discharged from the
army.

1947 – United States’ control of Haitian Custom Service and
governmental revenue ends.

1948 – The California Supreme Court voids state statute banning
interracial marriages.

1948 – Edward Dudley is named Ambassador to Liberia.

1951 – The 24th Infantry Regiment, last of the all African
American military units authorized by Congress in 1866,
is deactivated in Korea.

1954 – The British colony of Nigeria becomes a federation.

1955 – Howard Hewitt is born in Akron, Ohio. He will move to Los
Angeles where he would eventually meet Soul Train dancer
and future first wife Rainey Riley-Cunningham, then a
secretary of the show’s creator and original host Don
Cornelius. It was Cornelius who introduced him to fellow
Soul Train dancers Jody Watley and Jeffrey Daniel, and
their group, Shalamar, was born. The trio is best known
for songs such as “Second Time Around”, “A Night to
Remember”, “Dancing in the Sheets” and the ballad “This Is
For The Lover In You”. He will be the group’s lead singer
from 1979 until 1985. When Shalamar breaks up in the mid
1980s, he will go on to pursue a solo career. In 1986 he
will be arrested and indicted in Miami with his fiance Mori
Molina for possession with an intent to distribute cocaine.
He subsequently married Molina who will be convicted and
serve prison time. He will then be acquitted of the charges.
He will sign with Elektra Records and record 1986’s I Commit
To Love (R&B #12), a relatively solid urban album that will
yielded two R&B hits, “I’m For Real” (R&B #2) and “Stay”
(R&B #8). The album will also include “Say Amen”, a gospel
tune that became a surprise hit on the Gospel charts and is
his signature song. He will contribute vocals to La Toya
Jackson’s Hot 100 hit single “Heart Don’t Lie” in 1984.

1960 – Nigeria proclaims its independence from Great Britain.

1961 – East & West Cameroon merge and become the Federal
Republic of Cameroon.

1963 – Nigeria becomes a republic within the British
Commonwealth.

1966 – The Black Panther party is founded in Oakland, California
by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale.

1977 – Brazilian soccer great, Pele’, retires with 1,281 goals
in 1,363 games.

1989 – Dallas Cowboy, Ed “Too Tall” Jones records his 1,000th
NFL tackle.

1991 – Dr. Mary Schmidt Campbell assumes her duties as dean of
New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. A noted
art historian, Schmidt had previously served as
commissioner of cultural affairs, director of the
Studio of Harlem, and chair of the Smithsonian
Institution’s Advisory Committee that recommended
creation of a national African American museum.

Information retrieved from the Munirah Chronicle andE is edited by Rene’ A. Perry

KRLemmons African American History

September 30 African American Historical Events

Today in Black History – September 30          *

1935 – John Royce “Johnny” Mathis is born in San Francisco,
California. He will become a romantic pop singer who will
amass more than 50 gold and platinum records for such hits
as “Misty”.  He will also have the distinction of having
an album on the Billboard pop charts for the longest
period, 560 weeks.

1935 – “Porgy and Bess,” a folk opera by composer George Gershwin,
has its premiere in Boston at the Colonial Theatre.  It
was a flop! It was revived in 1942 and ran longer than any
revival in the history of American musical theater.

1942 – Franklin Joseph “Frankie” Lymon is born in New York City.
He will become the lead singer of Frankie Lymon and the
Teenagers and will record his signature song, “Why Do Fools
Fall in Love?,” at age fourteen. He will develop a serious
drug problem before he turns twenty and will join the
ancestors after succumbing to a drug overdose on the
bathroom floor of his grandmother’s apartment at age 25,
on February 27, 1968.

1943 – Marilyn McCoo (Davis) is born in Jersey City, New Jersey.
She will become a singer with the group, “The Fifth
Dimensions”. Some of the hits with the group will be “Up,
Up and Away,” and “Aquarius.” She will have a solo hit,
“One Less Bell to Answer,” and will record “You Don’t
Have to be a Star” with her husband, Billy Davis, Jr. She
will later become a TV hostess for “Solid Gold” from
1981-1984, and from 1986-88.  She will also be a TV music
reporter for “Preview.”

1962 – A large force of federal marshals escorts James H. Meredith
to the campus of the University of Mississippi.  President
Kennedy federalizes the Mississippi National Guard.
University of Mississippi students and adults from Oxford,
Mississippi, and other southern communities riot on the
university campus.  Two persons are killed and one hundred
or more are wounded.

1966 – Bechuanaland becomes the independent Republic of Botswana
with Sir Seretse Khama as its first President.

1975 – Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier square off in a fight billed
as “The Thrilla in Manila”.  Ali will win the fight and
retain his world heavyweight title when, after 14 rounds,
Frazier’s trainer refuses to let him continue.

1976 – Two Centuries of Black American Art opens at the Los Angeles
County Museum of Art.  The exhibit features over 60
lithographers, painters, and sculptors including 19th
century masters Joshua Johnston, Edward Bannister, and
Henry O. Tanner as well as modern artists Charles White,
Romare Bearden, and Elizabeth Catlett.  The introduction
to the exhibit’s catalogue asserts that the assembled
artists’ work proves that the human creative impulse can
triumph in the face of impossible odds, and at times even
because of them.

1991 – President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, Haiti’s first freely
elected president, is overthrown by a military junta.
The three-member junta that takes over begins a campaign
of terror and violence that in a three-year period will
cause the deaths of over 5000 Haitians and force tens of
thousands to flee the island by boat. Jean-Bertrand
Aristide sat in the presidency for only seven months.

Information retrieved from the Munirah Chronicle and is edited by Rene’ A. Perry

KRLemmons African American History

September 29 African American Historical Events

Today in Black History – September 29         *

1864 – At the Battle of New Market Heights, Sergeant Major
Christian Fleetwood and 12 other African Americans
fight valiantly for the Union’s cause. They will
receive the Congressional Medal of Honor for their
action the following year.

1916 – Henry Green Parks, Jr. is born in Atlanta, Georgia.
He will be raised in Dayton, Ohio, attend public
schools, and enroll in Ohio State University in
Columbus, graduating with honors from the University
College of Commerce in 1939 with a B.S. degree in
Marketing.  He will also become the first African
American on Ohio State University’s swim team. After
graduation, he will begin working with Pabst Brewing
Company as a sales representative, targeting the
African American market.  He will become one of their
leading salesmen, but in 1942 will be given the
opportunity to join W.B. Graham and Associates, a New
York City public relations firm.  He will explore the
ideas of many different enterprises and work at W.B.
Graham and Associates for seven years. In 1949, he will
leave W.B. Graham and Associates for Crayton’s Southern
Sausage Company, which creates sausages appealing to
the southern taste.  He will be unsuccessful with
Crayton’s Sausage Company, but after learning from his
experiences and coming across southern recipes, 35-year
-old Henry Parks will found Parks Sausage Company in
1951 in Baltimore, Maryland.  Parks Sausage Company will
start with only two employees, but rapidly grow to 240
employees with annual sales in the mid-1960s exceeding
$14 million. He will use his marketing and public
relations background to craft a radio commercial which
features a little boy saying, “More Parks Sausage, Mom,
please.” The radio ad will be enormously popular and
helps spur the company’s growth.  By 1955 it will be the
largest Black-owned business in Baltimore and later will
become a publicly traded company.  Parks Sausage will
also become the first African American firm to advertise
in a World Series, when its ads appear at one of the
seven games between the Brooklyn Dodgers and the New
York Yankees in 1955.  His company will also have the
distinction of being the first publicly traded Black-
owned firm on the NASDAQ stock exchange. In 1977, he will
sell the company to a conglomerate for $1.5 million
dollars, but will stay on the board until 1980.  He will
serve on the corporate boards of Magnavox, Warner Lambert,
and W.R. Grace.  He will be a trustee of Goucher College
in Baltimore. He will suffer from Parkinson’s disease in
the last years of his life, and will join the ancestors in
Towson, Maryland on April 14, 1989.

1918 – Edward Thomas Demby is elected suffragan bishop of the
Protestant Episcopal diocese of Arkansas.

1931 – Dr. Lenora Moragne is born in Evanston, Illinois. She will
become one of the leading nutrition scientist in the United
States. She will become head of nutrition education and
training for the Food and Nutrition Service of the U.S.
Department of Agriculture. She will also co-author a junior
high school textbook on nutrition for McGraw-Hill Publishing
Company in New York named “Focus on Food.” She will also be
appointed to the Future Development Committee of the
American Home Economics Association. She will also be elected
to the Board of Directors of the Chicago-based American
Dietetic Association. She will also become the founding editor
and publisher of the Black Congressional Monitor.

1940 – The first United States merchant ship to be commanded
by an African American captain (Hugh Mulzac), is
launched at Wilmington, Delaware.

1947 – Dizzy Gillespie presented his first Carnegie Hall
concert in New York City, adding a sophisticated jazz
touch to the famous concert emporium.  Dizzy will
become one of the jazz greats of all time.  His
trademark: Two cheeks pushed out until it looked like
his face would explode.

1948 – Bryant Gumbel is born in New Orleans, Louisiana.  He
will become the editor of Black Sports magazine and a
successful sportscaster before joining NBC’s Today Show
as the first African American anchor of a national
network morning news entertainment program.

1954 – Willie Mays makes his famous “over-the-shoulder catch”
of Vic Wertz’ 460′ drive.

1962 – President John F. Kennedy sends federal troops to
enforce integration of the University of Mississippi.

1962 – Lt. Governor Paul Johnson of Mississippi is found guilty
of civil contempt for blocking the entrance of James
Meredith to the University of Mississippi.

1965 – Ralph Boston of the United States, sets the long jump
record at 27′ 4 3/4″.

1975 – The first African American owned television station in
the United States, WGPR-TV in Detroit, begins
broadcasting.

1977 – In the most-watched prize fight in history to date,
Muhammad Ali beats Ernie Shavers (in a fifteen round
decision) to claim the heavyweight championship boxing
crown.  The bout was televised from New York City’s
Madison Square Garden and was officiated by the first
woman official of a heavyweight title boxing match
before an estimated 70 million viewers.

1979 – Sir William Arthur Lewis, Professor of Economics at
Princeton University, becomes the first person of
African descent to receive the Nobel Prize in Economics.

1988 – Florence Griffith Joyner of the United States, sets the
200 meter woman’s record in 21.34 seconds.

1998 – Former Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley joins the ancestors
at the age of 80.

Information retrieved from the Munirah Chronicle and is edited by Rene’ A. Perry