KRLemmons African American History

October 26 African American Historical Events

Today in Black History – October 26 *

1868 – White terrorists kill several African Americans in St.
Bernard Parish, near New Orleans, Louisiana.

1868 – B.F. Randolph, state senator and chairman of the state
Republican party, is assassinated in broad daylight at
Hodges Depot in Abbeville, South Carolina.

1911 – Mahalia Jackson is born in New Orleans, Louisiana. Known
as the “Gospel Queen,” Jackson will become instrumental
in the popularization of gospel music and songs.
Jackson’s traditional gospel audiences transcended
beyond African American churchgoers through her
recordings, radio performances and concert tours in
America and abroad. Her recordings will sell millions of
copies. She will join the ancestors on January 27, 1972.

1919 – Edward William Brooke III is born in Washington, DC.
After serving in World War II and obtaining a law degree
from Boston University, he will be elected attorney
general of the State of Massachusetts and serve a term
of four years before being elected to the United States
Senate as a Republican in 1966, the first African
American Senator elected since Reconstruction. In the
Senate, Brooke will oppose President Nixon’s policies in
Southeast Asia, advocate low-income housing, and oppose
quotas to meet affirmative action goals. Among his
awards will be the NAACP’s Spingarn Medal in 1967.

1921 – Solomon Porter Hood is named minister to Liberia.

1934 – At a New York City conference, representatives of the
NAACP and the American Fund for Public Service plan a
coordinated legal campaign against segregation and
discrimination. Charles H. Houston, Vice-dean of the
Howard University Law School, is named director of the
NAACP legal campaign.

1950 – Walter E. “Chuck” Foreman is born in Frederick, Maryland.
He will become a star running back for the Minnesota
Vikings. He will be NFC Rookie of the Year in 1973 and
NFC Player of the Year in 1974 and 1976. He will also
play in losing efforts in Super Bowls VIII, IX, and XI.

1951 – William Collins is born in Cincinnati, Ohio. He will
become a rhythm and blues performer and bandleader known
as “Bootsy” Collins. He will form his first group, the
Pacesetters, in 1968. From 1969 to 1971, the group will
function as James Brown’s backup band and will be dubbed
the JB’s. In 1972, Bootsy will join George Clinton’s
Parliament/Funkadelic. He will launch Bootsy’s Rubber
Band as a spin-off of P-Funk in 1976. He will record
with Warner Brothers from 1976 through 1982. After a
six year hiatus, he will sign with Columbia Records in
1988 and actively record into the 1990s.

1951 – Joe Louis is defeated by Rocky Marciano in the eighth
round in a bout at Madison Square Garden.

1962 – Louise Beavers, who starred in more than 100 films,
including “Imitation of Life”, “The Jackie Robinson
Story”, and “Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House”,
joins the ancestors in Los Angeles, California.

1970 – Following 3 1/2 years of forced isolation from boxing,
Muhammad Ali returns to the ring and beats Jerry Quarry
in Atlanta, Georgia.

1976 – Trinidad & Tobago becomes a republic.

1977 – Dr. Clifford R. Wharton Jr. is named chancellor of the
State University of New York.

1980 – Ten African American Roman Catholic bishops issue a
pastoral letter asserting that “the Church must seize
the initiative to ‘share the gift of our blackness with
the Church in the United States.'”

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

KRLemmons African American History

October 25 African American Historical Events

 

* Today in Black History – October 25 *

1806 – Benjamin Banneker joins the ancestors at the age of 74
in Ellicott Mills, Maryland. Banneker was a self-
taught mathematician and builder (at age 21) of the
first striking clock built in the United States. An
amateur astronomer, Banneker’s calculations for solar
and lunar eclipses appeared in 29 editions of his
almanacs, published from 1792 to 1797.

1915 – Attorney James L. Curtis is named minister to Liberia.

1926 – Crisis magazine, led by editor W.E.B. DuBois, awards its
first prizes in literature and art. Among the winners
will be Arna Bontemps’ poem “Nocturne at Bethesda,”
Countee Cullen’s poem “Thoughts in a Zoo,” Aaron
Douglas’ painting “African Chief” and a portrait by
Hale Woodruff.

1940 – The Committee on the Participation of Negroes in the
National Defense Program met with President Roosevelt.

1940 – The National Newspaper Publishers Association is
founded.

1940 – The Spingarn Medal is presented to Dr. Louis T. Wright
for his civil rights leadership and his contributions
as a surgeon.

1940 – Benjamin Oliver Davis, Sr. is promoted to Brigadier
General, the first African American to attain that rank
in the United States Army or any other branch of the
Armed Forces.

1958 – Ten thousand students, led by Jackie Robinson, Harry
Belfonte and A. Phillip Randolph, participate in the
Youth March for integrated schools in Washington, DC.

1958 – Daisy Bates, head of the Arkansas chapter of the NAACP,
and the nine students who integrated Little Rocks’s
Central High School are awarded the Spingarn Medal for
their courage and leadership in the civil rights
struggle.

1962 – Uganda is admitted as the 110th member of the United
Nations.

1968 – The city of Chicago officially recognizes Jean Baptiste
Pointe du Sable as its first settler.

1973 – Abebe Bikila, Ethiopian marathoner who won the Olympic
Gold Medal in 1960 and 1964, joins the ancestors at
the age of 46.

1976 – Clarence “Willie” Norris, the last surviving member of
the nine Scottsboro Boys, who were convicted in 1931
of the alleged rape of two white women on a freight
train, is pardoned by Governor George Wallace. Norris
had spent 15 years in prison and had been a fugitive
fleeing parole in Alabama in 1946.

1983 – Mary Francis Berry, professor of history and law at
Howard University, and two other members of the Civil
Rights Commission are fired by President Ronald Reagan.
Considered a champion of minority concerns on the
Commission, Berry will charge the administration with
attempting to “shut up” criticism. She will later sue
and be reinstated.

1983 – The United States and six other Caribbean nations
invade the island nation of Grenada.

1988 – Two units of the Ku Klux Klan and eleven individuals
are ordered to pay $1 million to African Americans who
were attacked during a brotherhood rally in
predominately white Forsythe County, Georgia.

1990 – Evander Holyfield knocks out James “Buster” Douglas in
the third round of their twelve-round fight to become
the undisputed world heavyweight champion.
Holyfield’s record stood at 25-0, with 21 knockouts.

1997 – The Million Woman March, organized by grass root sisters,
led by Sister Phile Chionesu and Sister Asia Coney,
takes place in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The event
is attended by 1.3 million attendees (300,000 to 1
million according to Philadelphia officials). The MWM
had been promoted by word of mouth and avoided
traditional media and mainstream groups, such as
sororities and many civil rights groups. Sis. Chionesu
calls the march “a declaration of independence from
ignorance, poverty, enslavement, and all the things
that have happened to us that has helped to bring about
the confusion and disharmony that we experience with
one another.”

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

KRLemmons African American History

October 24 African American Historical Events

Today in Black History – October 24 *

1892 – 25,000 African American workers strike in New Orleans,
Louisiana. This is the first major job stoppage in U.S.
labor history by African Americans.

1923 – The U.S. Department of Labor issues a report stating that
approximately 500,000 African Americans had left the South
in the preceding twelve months.

1935 – Langston Hughes’s play “Mulatto” opens on Broadway. It will
have the longest run of any play by an African American
until Lorraine Hansberry’s “A Raisin in the Sun.”

1935 – Italy invades Ethiopia. African Americans hold mass meetings
of protest and raise funds for the Ethiopian defenders.

1936 – The Boston Chronicle blasts the soon-to-be-released movie
“The Big Broadcast” of 1937 for featuring a white pianist
who appears in the movie while Teddy Wilson actually plays
the music: “The form of racial discrimination and
falsification of acts…is frequently duplicated by many
whites in their daily dealings with Negroes…Negro farm
hands and laborers in other fields of industry produce
billions of dollars of wealth, but the white landowners and
sweat shop operators get all the profit.”

1942 – In recognition of the influence of so-called race music,
Billboard magazine creates its first ratings chart devoted
to African American music, The Harlem Hit Parade. The
number-one record is “Take It & Git” by Andy Kirk and His
Twelve Clouds of Joy, featuring Mary Lou Williams on piano.

1948 – Frizzel Gray is born in Baltimore, Maryland. Better known as
Kweisi Mfume, an adopted African name that means “Conquering
Son of Kings,” he will be elected a congressman from
Maryland’s 7th District in 1986. He will later leave the
Congress to become the head of the NAACP.

1964 – Kenneth David Kuanda becomes President of Zambia as Zambia
(Northern Rhodesia) gains independence from Great Britain.

1972 – Jack Roosevelt “Jackie” Robinson joins the ancestors at the
age of 53 in Stamford, Connecticut.

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

KRLemmons African American History

October 23 African American Historical Events

Today in Black History – October 23 *

1775 – The Continental Congress approves resolution prohibiting
the enlistment of African Americans in the Army.

1783 – Virginia emancipates slaves who fought for independence
during the Revolutionary War.

1790 – A major slave revolt occurs in Haiti, which is later
suppressed.

1847 – William Leidesdorff brings his ship Sitka from Sitka,
Alaska, to San Francisco, California. Earlier in the
year, the Danish West Indies Native had launched the
first steamboat ever to sail in San Francisco Bay. The
ventures were one of many activities for Leidesdorff,
which included appointment as United States vice-counsel
for property acquisition in San Francisco.

1886 – Wiley Jones operates the first streetcar system in Pine
Bluff, Arkansas.

1911 – Three organizations, The Committee for Improving the
Industrial Conditions of Negroes in New York, The
Committee on Urban Conditions and The National League
for the Protection of Colored Women merge, under the
leadership of Dr. George E. Hayne and Eugene Kinckle
Jones, to form the National Urban League. Eugene
Kinckle Jones is named executive secretary.

1940 – Edson Arantes do Nascimento is born in a small village
in Brasil called Três Corações in the Brasilian state
of Minas Gerais. He will become a soccer player and at
the age of sixteen will join the Brasilian National
team. He will be known world-wide as Pele’, seen as
the greatest player in history of soccer. After
retiring from his team, the Santos, he will be
recruited to play for the New York Cosmos in 1971,
playing an additional three years. He will score
1,281 goals in his career.

1945 – Branch Rickey of the Brooklyn Dodgers signs Jackie
Robinson to the club’s Triple A farm team, the Montreal
Royals. In a little under 18 months, Robinson will be
called up to the majors, the first African American to
play major league baseball in the twentieth century.

1947 – The NAACP petition on racism and racial injustice, “An
Appeal to the World,” is presented to the United
Nations at Lake Success, New York.

1951 – The NAACP pickets the Stork Club in support of Josephine
Baker, who had been refused admission to the club a
week earlier. After a city-convened special committee
calls Baker’s charges unfounded, Thurgood Marshall will
call the findings a “complete and shameless whitewash
of the long-established and well-known discriminatory
policies of the Stork Club.”

1966 – “Supremes” Album Tops U.S. Charts. The record “Supremes
A Go Go” becomes the top-selling LP album in the U.S.
It is the first album by an all-female group to reach
that position. One of the most successful groups of
its kind, the Supremes, fronted by Diana Ross, will
have seven albums reach the top 10 during the 1960s.

1968 – Kip Keino of Kenya wins an Olympic Gold Medal for the
1,500 meter run (3 min 34.9 sec).

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

KRLemmons African American History

October 22 African American Historical Events

Today in Black History – October 22 *

1854 – James Bland is born in Flushing, New York. He will
write over 700 songs including “Oh, Dem Golden
Slippers” and “Carry Me Back to Old Virginny.” The
latter song will be selected in 1940 as the state
song of Virginia, the state’s legislators little
knowing the identity and race of its composer.
Virginia will decide to change their state song in
the late 1990s due to protest from civil rights
activists who say that the song glorifies slavery and
is inappropriate. He will join the ancestors on May
5, 1911 after succumbing to tuberculosis.

1906 – Three thousand African Americans demonstrated and
rioted in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to protest a
theatrical presentation of Thomas Dixon’s “The
Clansman”.

1936 – Bobby Seal is born in Dallas, Texas. He will become a
Black political activist and co-founder, with Huey
Newton, of the Black Panther Party.

1950 – Charles Cooper and Nat “Sweetwater” Clifton become two
of the first three African Americans to play in an
NBA game. Cooper had been drafted by the Boston
Celtics on April 25, 1950, becoming the first African
American ever drafted by a NBA team.

1952 – Frank E. Peterson, Jr. is commissioned as the first
African American marine aviation officer.

1963 – 225,000 students boycott Chicago public schools in a
Freedom Day protest against de facto segregation.

1986 – In an interview with the Washington Post, Spike Lee
says, “Movies are the most powerful medium in the world
and we just can’t sit back and let other people define
our existence, especially when they’re putting lies out
there on the screens.”

1990 – President Bush vetos major civil rights legislation,
arguing that the measure would force employers to adopt
hiring quotas. The veto is later upheld.

1991 – Thirty African American delegates conclude a three-day
visit to the Republic of South Africa at the invitation
of the African National Congress. While there,
TransAfrica’s Randall Robinson charges President Bush
with failing to exert his influence to end Black
township strife and Congresswoman Maxine Waters vows
to press United States’ cities and states to maintain
sanctions against the republic.

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

KRLemmons African American History

October 21 African American Historical Events

Today in Black History – October 21 *

1832 – Maria W. Stewart, an African American women’s rights and
abolitionist speaker, says in her farewell address
“…for it’s not the color of the skin that makes the
man or woman, but the principle formed in the soul.”

1865 – Jamaican National Hero, George William Gordon, is
unfairly arrested and charged for complicity in what is
now called the Morant Bay Rebellion. George William
Gordon was a free colored land owner. Born to a slave
mother and a planter father, who was attorney to several
sugar estates in Jamaica, he was self-educated and
became a landowner in St. Thomas. Gordon had urged the
people to protest against and to resist the oppressive
and unjust conditions under which they were forced to
live. He is illegally tried by court martial and, in
spite of a lack of evidence, convicted and sentenced to
death.

1872 – John H. Conyers, Sr. becomes the first African American
admitted to the United States Naval Academy.

1917 – John Birks (“Dizzy”) Gillespie is born in Cheraw, South
Carolina. He will, with Charlie Parker and Theolonious
Monk, be the founder of the revolutionary bebop movement
in the very early 1940’s. His music accomplishments
will include formation of the Dee Gee and Verve labels.
He will perform in clubs and concert halls in Harlem,
Canada and Europe. His music will earn him a Grammy
Award in 1974 and 1980. He will join the ancestors on
January 6, 1993 in Englewood, New Jersey.

1950 – Ronald E. McNair is born in Lake City, South Carolina.
He will become an astronaut and the first African
American astronaut to perish during a mission (Challenger
– STS 41B, 51L disaster).

1950 – Earl Lloyd, becomes the first African American person to
play in an NBA game (beating out Charles Cooper and Nat
Clifton by one day). He will later become the first
African American NBA Assistant Coach and first African
American NBA chief scout.

1969 – A bloodless coup occurs in Somalia (National Day).

1977 – The United States recalls William Bowdler, ambassador to
South Africa, due to the country’s apartheid policies.

1979 – The Black Fashion Museum is opened in Harlem by Lois
Alexander to highlight the achievements and
contributions of African Americans to fashion.

1980 – Valerie Thomas invents the illusion transmitter.

1989 – Bertram M. Lee and Peter C.B. Bynoe sign an agreement to
purchase the National Basketball Association’s Denver
Nuggets for $54 million. They become the first African
American owners of a professional basketball team.

1999 – Gaston T. Neal, a community activist and influential
performance poet, who was best known for his work in the
genre of the Black power movement and social change,
joins the ancestors after a bout with lymphatic cancer,
at his home in Washington, DC.

2003 – Fred Berry, actor, joins the ancestors at the age of 52
after succumbing to a stroke. He played the character
“Rerun” on the TV sitcom “What’s Happening!!”

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