KRLemmons African American History

July 31 African American Historical Events

Today in Black History – July 31 *

1874 – Patrick Francis Healy, a Jesuit priest, is inaugurated as
president of Georgetown University in Washington, DC.
Healy is the first African American to head a
predominantly white university and is credited with the
modernization of the university’s curriculum and the
expansion of its campus.

1921 – Whitney Young, Jr. is born in Lincoln Ridge, Kentucky. He
will become dean of Atlanta University’s School of Social
Work before becoming executive director of the National
Urban League. As its leader during the 1960’s, he will
guide the organization through one of the most socially
and politically active decades in America’s history. A
1969 recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom,
Young will speak out against government and business’ lack
f commitment to African Americans. During a visit to
Nigeria in 1971, he will join the ancestors on March 11,
1971 after a swimming accident in Lagos.

1931 – Kenny Burrell is born in Detroit, Michigan. He will become
a prolific composer and professional musician specializing
in the guitar. For over forty years, he will be a jazz
professional. Kenny, who will credit Charlie Christian,
Oscar Moore, and Django Reinhardt as influences, as well
as such bluesmen as T-Bone Walker and Muddy Waters, will
play on his first major recording session in Detroit in
1951 with a Dizzy Gillespie combo that will include John
Coltrane, Milt Jackson, and Percy Heath. Even though the
young guitarist will keep heavy company, including that of
such other up-and-coming Detroiters as Tommy Flanagan,
Yusef Lateef, Pepper Adams, and Elvin Jones, he will
remain in Detroit to study at Wayne State University, from
which he will earn a B.A. in music composition and theory
in 1955. He will also study classical guitar with Joseph
Fava during that period and continue to employ finger-
style and other techniques. After the mid-Sixties, he will
lead his own group plus work in “All-Star” settings and
will perform with college bands and orchestras. He will
also perform with professional orchestras such as the
Detroit Symphony and the Buffalo Philharmonic.

1938 – New York Yankees suspend Jake Powell, after he says on
Chicago radio that he would “hit every colored person in
Chicago over the head with a club.”

1960 – At a New York City meeting of the Nation of Islam, the
Honorable Elijah Muhammad calls for the creation of a
Black state in America.

1962 – Wesley Snipes is born in Orlando, Florida. After growing
up in the Bronx, New York City, he will become a film
actor starring in films such as “New Jack City,” “Jungle
Fever,” “Passenger 57,” “Demolition Man,” “Money Train,”
“Rising Sun,” “Major League,” “Sugar Hill,” “White Men
Can’t Jump,” and “King of New York.”

1969 – Racially motivated disturbances in Baton Rouge cause the
governor of Louisiana to mobilize the National Guard.

1981 – Attorney Arnette R. Hubbard is installed as the first
woman president of the National Bar Association, the
largest national group of African American attorneys,
legal scholars, and jurists. Hubbard is a graduate of
John Marshall Law School in Chicago and past president
of the Cook County Bar Association.

1985 – Prince is big at the box-office with the autobiographical
story of the Minneapolis rock star — “Purple Rain.” The
ilm grosses $7.7 million in its first three days of
release on 917 movie screens. The album of the same name
is, at the time, the top LP in the United States, as well.

1988 – Willie Stargell, formerly of the Pittsburgh Pirates, becomes
the 200th man inducted into Baseball’s Hall of Fame at
Cooperstown, New York.

1990 – Shoal Creek, a private club in Birmingham, Alabama, that
drew criticism for being all-white, announces it had
accepted a Black businessman as an honorary member.

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

KRLemmons African American History

July 30 African American Historical Events

Today in Black History – July 30 *

1822 – James Varick is consecrated as the first bishop of the
African Methodist Episcopal Church Zion (AMEZ). Varick
had formed the first African American church in New York
City in 1796 when forced to sit in segregated seating in
the white John Street Methodist Episcopal Church and had
established the first AMEZ church in New Haven,
Connecticut.

1839 – Slave rebels, led by Joseph Cinque, kill the captain and
take over the slave ship Amistad in the most celebrated
of American slave mutinies. The rebels were captured off
Long Island on August 26.

1863 – President Lincoln gave an order to shoot a Confederate
prisoner for every African American prisoner that was shot;
it became known as the “eye-for-eye” order. A rebel
prisoner would also be condemned to life in prison doing
hard labor, for every African American prisoner sold into
slavery. The order had restraining influence on the
Confederate government, though individual commanders and
soldiers continued to murder captured African American
soldiers.

1864 – The Union Army explodes a mine under rebel lines near
Petersburg, Virginia, commits three white and one African
American divisions and is soundly defeated. The African
American division of the Ninth Corps sustains heavy
casualties in an ill-planned attack. The only Union success
of the day is scored by the Forty-third U.S. Colored Troops
which captures two hundred rebel prisoners and two stands
of colors. Decatur Dorsey of the Thirty-ninth U.S. Colored
Troops wins a Congressional Medal of Honor.

1866 – Edward G. Walker, son of abolitionist David Walker, and
Charles L. Mitchell are elected to the Massachusetts
Assembly from Boston and become the first African Americans
to sit in the legislature of an American state in the
post-Civil War period.

1866 – White Democrats, led by police, attack a convention of
African American and white Republicans in New Orleans,
Louisiana. More than 40 persons are killed, and at least
150 persons are wounded. Gen. Philip H. Sheridan, Military
commander of the state, says “It was not riot; it was an
absolute massacre…which the mayor and the police of the
city perpetrated without the shadow of a necessity.”

1885 – Eugene Kinckle Jones is born in Richmond, Virginia. He will
attend Cornell University where he will become one of the
seven founders of the Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity. After
completing his education, he will become a social worker
and first executive secretary of the National Urban League.
During his 20-year tenure with the league, he will be
instrumental in its expansion to 58 affiliates and a budget
of $2.5 million as well as expanding its fellowship program
to train social workers. The League, under his direction,
will significantly expand its multifaceted campaign to crack
the barriers to black employment, spurred first by the boom
years of the 1920s, and then, by the desperate years of the
Great Depression. He will implement boycotts against firms
that refused to employ blacks, pressure schools to expand
vocational opportunities for young people, constantly
prod Washington officials to include blacks in New Deal
recovery programs, and drive to get blacks into previously
segregated labor unions. He will be a member of President
Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Black Cabinet, an informal group of
African American public policy advisors to the President.
He will join the ancestors on January 11, 1954.

1945 – Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., activist and politician, is elected
to the U.S. House of Representatives representing Harlem.

1956 – Anita Hill is born in Morris, Oklahoma. She will become an
attorney, educator, author and activist. She will receive
her law degree from Yale University, and after a stint at
the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), she will
teach law at the University of Oklahoma. In 1991 she will be
catapulted into the public spotlight when she brings
allegations of sexual harassment against Supreme Court
nominee Clarence Thomas. At Thomas’s Senate confirmation
hearings, she will testify that Thomas had made unwelcome
sexual advances while he was her supervisor at the EEOC in
the 1980s. Although Thomas’s appointment will be
subsequently confirmed, her testimony will bring the issue
of sexual harassment to public attention, forever changing
relations between men and women in the workplace. In 1997,
she will publish “Speaking Truth to Power,” a personal
memoir and study of her involvement in the Thomas hearings.
She will resume her teaching career at Brandeis University.

1959 – Willie McCovey steps to the plate for the first time in his
major-league baseball career. McCovey, of the San Francisco
Giants bats 4-for-4 in his debut against Robin Roberts of
the Philadelphia Phillies. He hits two singles and two
triples, driving in two runs. It is the start of an All-Star
career that will land McCovey in baseball’s Hall of Fame in
Cooperstown, New York.

1961 – Lawrence Fishburne is born in Augusta, Georgia. He will start
his acting career at the age of 12, getting his big break
portraying Joshua Hall on the ABC soap opera, “One Life to
Live in 1973.” He will be originally cast in the hit tv show
“Good Times,” but the role will eventually go to Ralph
Carter. He will later earn a supporting role in Francis Ford
Coppola’s “Apocalypse Now,” as well as a recurring role as
“Cowboy Curtis” alongside Pee Wee Herman (Paul Reubens) in
the CBS children’s television show, “Pee-Wee’s Playhouse.”
However, it will be his 1991 role in “Boyz N The Hood” that
gains him lasting recognition as an outstanding actor. The
next year, he will win a Tony Award for his stage
performance in August Wilson’s “Two Trains Running,” which
is followed by an Oscar nomination one year later for his
portrayal of Ike Turner in “What’s Love Got to Do With It?.”
Also in 1992, he will receive an Emmy Award for an episode
of the short-lived TV series “Tribeca.” He will be known for
his role as Morpheus, the hacker-mentor of Neo (Keanu
Reeves) in the blockbuster science fiction movie series “The
Matrix.” He will also appear alongside Tom Cruise as his IMF
superior in Mission: Impossible III.

1967 – Eight days of racially motivated disturbances end in Detroit,
Michigan. The uprising, the worst of its kind in the 20th
century, kills 43 people, injures 2,000, and results in over
5,000 arrests and over 1,400 fires.

1967 – A racially motivated disturbance occurs in Milwaukee,
Wisconsin. Four persons are killed.

1970 – Author, television columnist, and Hofstra University
professor Louis Lomax, joins the ancestors after being
fatally injured in a car accident near Santa Rosa, New
Mexico.

1984 – Reggie Jackson hits the 494th home run of his career,
passing the Yankees’ Lou Gehrig and taking over 13th place
on the all-time home run list. Larry Sorenson is the
victim who gave up Reggie’s milestone homer.

1988 – The first National Black Arts Festival opens in Atlanta,
Georgia. The biennial festival includes over 50
architectural and art exhibits including the works of
Romare Bearden, Edwin Harleston, Camille Billops, David
Driskell, and over 140 others.

1994 – The first U.S. troops land in the Rwandan capital of Kigali
to secure the airport for an expanded international aid
effort.

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

KRLemmons African American History

July 29 African American Historical Events

Today in Black History – July 29 *

1895 – The First National Convention of Black Women is held in
Boston, Massachusetts.

1909 – Chester Himes is born in Jefferson City, Missouri. He will
become a noted crime novelist whose books will reflect his
encounters with racism. The domination of his dark-skinned
father by his light-skinned mother was a source of deep
resentment that will shape his racial outlook. The family’s
frequent relocations, as well as the accidental blinding of
his brother, will further disrupt his childhood. He will
attend Ohio State University. From 1929 to 1936 he will be
jailed at the Ohio State Penitentiary for armed robbery,
and while there, he will begin to write fiction. A number
of his stories will appear in Esquire and other American
magazines. After his release from prison, he will work at
numerous odd jobs and join the Works Progress
Administration, eventually serving as a writer with the
Ohio Writers’ Project. His first novel, “If He Hollers Let
Him Go” (1945), will detail the fear, anger, and humiliation
of a black employee of a racist defense plant during World
War II. “Lonely Crusade” (1947) will concern racism in the
labor movement. “Cast the First Stone” (1952) will portray
prison life, and “The Third Generation” (1954) will examine
family life. In the mid-1950s, he will move to Paris. There
he will write chiefly murder mysteries set in New York
City’s village of Harlem. These will include “The Crazy Kill
(1959), “Cotton Comes to Harlem,” which describe the
underbelly of the American dream and introduce “Gravedigger
Jones” and “Coffin Ed Johnson” to the reading public (1965;
will be made into a film in 1970), and “Blind Man with a
Pistol” (1969; that will later be retitled “Hot Day, Hot
Night”). Among his other works will be “Run Man, Run” (1966),
a thriller; “Pinktoes” (1961), a satirical work of
interracial erotica; “Come Back Charleston Blue”; and “Black
on Black” (1973), a collection of stories. He will also
publish two volumes of autobiography, “The Quality of Hurt”
(1972) and “My Life As Absurdity” (1976). He will join the
ancestors on November 12, 1984 in Moraira, Spain.

1919 – The first convention of the National Association of Negro
Musicians is held in Chicago. Illinois. NANM’s charter
members include Clarence Cameron White, who will call for
the formation of the association, and R. Nathaniel Dett,
Nora Holt, and Florence Cole Talbert among others. NANM
will be active in furthering African American music and
performers, and will award its first scholarship to a
young Marian Anderson. NANM continues to exist, with
chapters all over the country. Its headquarters will be
located in Chicago, Illinois.

1942 – William Dean, Jr., plans a boycott unless African Americans
are permitted to play on major league baseball teams.

1970 – Six days of racially motivated disturbances start in
Hartford, Connecticut, leaving one person dead.

1974 – Lou Brock of the St. Louis Cardinals steals his 700th base.

1988 – The South African government bans the anti-apartheid film
“Cry Freedom”.

1991 – Physician Bernard A. Harris, Jr. becomes a full-fledged
astronaut. Harris, who will join NASA’s Johnson Space
Center in 1987 as a clinical scientist and flight surgeon,
is now eligible for future flight assignments.

1996 – At the Atlanta Olympics, Carl Lewis wins the gold medal in
the long jump, becoming only the fifth Olympian to win
gold medals in four straight games.

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