KRLemmons African American History

July 24 African American Historical Events

* Today in Black History – July 24 *

1651 – Anthony Johnson, a free African American, receives a grant
of 250 acres in Virginia.

1807 – Ira Frederick Aldridge is born in New York City. He will
become an American stage actor making his career largely
on the London stage. He will be the only actor of African
American descent among the 33 actors of the English stage
with bronze plaques at the Shakespeare Memorial Theater at
Stratford-upon-Avon. As a youth, he will attend the African
Free School in New York City. His early “education” in
theater will include viewing plays from the high balcony of
the Park Theatre, New York’s leading theater of the time.
His first professional acting experience will be in the
early 1820s with the company associated with the African
Grove, where he will debut as Rolla in Pizzaro. He will go
on to play Shakespeare’s Romeo and later become a rather
famous Hamlet. Confronted with the persistent disparagement
and harassment that Black actors had to endure in the
antebellum United States, he will emigrate to England, where
he will become a dresser to the British actor Henry Wallack.
When he starts appearing on the stage at the Royalty Theater,
he will be just called a gentleman of color. But when he
moves over to the Royal Coburg, he will be advertised in the
first playbill as the American Tragedian from the African
Theater New York City. The 2nd playbill refers to him as
‘The African Tragedian.’ He will perform scenes from Othello
that will stun reviewers. One critic will write, “In Othello
(Aldridge) delivers the most difficult passages with a degree
of correctness that surprises the beholder.” He will
gradually progress to increasingly larger roles. By 1825, he
will have top billing at London’s Coburg Theatre as Oronoko
in “A Slave’s Revenge,” soon to be followed by the role of
Gambia in “The Slave” and the title role of Shakespeare’s
“Othello.” He will also play major roles in plays such as
“The Castle” Spectre” and “The Padlock” and will play
several roles of specifically white characters, including
Captain Dirk Hatteraick and Bertram in Rev. R. C. Maturin’s
“Bertram,” the title role in Shakespeare’s “Richard III,”
and Shylock in “The Merchant of Venice.” He will first tour
to continental Europe in 1852, with successes in Germany
(where he will be presented to the Duchess Saxe-Coburg-Gotha
and perform for Frederick William IV of Prussia) and in
Budapest. An 1858 tour will take him to Serbia and to
Imperial Russia, where he becomes acquainted with Leo
Tolstoy. He will master enough Russian to perform roles in
that language. After advancing in years, he will play (in
England) the title role of King Lear for the first time. He
will apply for British citizenship in 1863. He will spend
most of his final years in Russia and continental Europe,
interspersed with occasional visits to England. A planned
return to the post-Civil-War United States will be prevented
when he joins the ancestors on August 7, 1867 while visiting
Lódz, Poland. His remains will be buried in the city’s
Evangelical Cemetery. Twenty three years will pass before a
proper tombstone is erected. His grave will be tended by the
Society of Polish Artists of Film and Theatre.

1893 – Charles Spurgeon Johnson is born in Bristol, Virginia. He
will attend Wayland Academy and receive his undergraduate
degree from Virginia Union University. He will complete the
doctoral degree in Sociology in 1917 at the University of
Chicago. While a student in Chicago, he will assume
responsibility as director of research and investigation for
the Chicago Urban League. During World War I, he will enlist
in the army and serve in France. He will return to Chicago
after the war, one week before the race riot of 1919. He
will complete a study and analysis of the race riot and
present a plan to study its causes. The governor will accept
his plan and appoint him as associate executive secretary of
Chicago’s Commission on Race Relations. The commission will
publish a report entitled, “The Negro in Chicago.” In 1921,
he will become the director of research for the National
Urban League in New York, where he will found and edit
“Opportunity: A Journal of Negro Life,” a periodical
designed to stimulate pride in past racial achievements and
to show there was hope for the Black future. He will come to
Fisk University in 1927 to head the department of social
research, which will be established by a gift from
the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial. As head, he will
create a first-class department and receive large grants
from foundations. He will devote his life, research,
writing, and teaching to explaining Blacks to whites, whites
to Blacks, southerners to northerners, and urban and rural
dwellers to one another. His scholarly ability will be
recognized by awards and appointments, including the 1930
William E. Harmon Gold Medal for distinguished achievement
among Blacks in the field of science and service on the
National Housing Commission under President Herbert Hoover
and on the U. S. Committee on Farm Tenancy under President
Franklin D. Roosevelt. In 1934, he will be elected the
first Black trustee of the Julius Rosenwald Fund and become
the first Black accorded the honor of being elected
vice-president in 1937 of the American Sociological Society.
He will help Fisk become a center for research in race
relations. When the university creates the Institute of
Race Relations in 1944, he will be chosen to head the unit.
He will gather distinguished scholars at Fisk, including E.
Franklin Frazier, Horace Mann Bond, Bertram Doyle, Paul K.
Edwards, and Robert E. Park. In October 1946, the board of
trustees will choose him as the university’s first Black
president. Their selection will be inspired by his
capabilities, not his race. Under his presidency, the
university will enlarge its student body and the endowment.
He will join the ancestors in 1956. He will live long enough
to celebrate the landmark Supreme Court decision, Brown v.
Board of Education, which will declare racial segregation in
the public schools unconstitutional. He played a key role in
the effort to implement the decision the face of “massive
resistance.” His work and that of his peers helped pave the
way for the civil rights legislation of the Sixties.

1898 – Katherine Yarborough is born in Wilmington, North Carolina.
She will be educated in Wilmington’s Catholic schools and
will go to New York at age 13 to study music. During the
1920’s, she will study under the singing masters in Paris
and Milan and will debut in the role of Aida at the Puccini
Theatre in Milan, Italy in 1930 as Caterina Jarboro. She
will make her triumphant American debut in 1933 with the
Chicago Opera Company’s production of Aida at the Hippodrome
in New York City. Her distinguished career will include
appearances in Paris, Madrid, Vienna, Warsaw, Moscow and
many of the great opera houses throughout the world. On two
separate occasions, she will graciously perform before a
Wilmington audience at the Academy of Music (Thalian Hall)
in 1933 and at the Williston Industrial High School
Auditorium in 1951. She will be a special guest of honor at
the first St. Thomas Celebration of the Arts in 1982. She
will join the ancestors on August 23, 1986 in Manhattan at
the age of 88. She will be posthumously inducted into the
Arts Council of the Lower Cape Fear – Walk of Fame on
December 11, 1999.

1900 – A race riot occurs in New Orleans, Louisiana. Two white
policemen are killed.

1908 – Charles Melvin “Cootie” Williams is born in Mobile, Alabama.
He will become an American jazz and Rhythm and Blues
trumpeter. He will be known for his renditions of “Echoes
of Harlem,” “Concerto for Cootie,” and “Carelessly.” He
also will lead his own group, The Cootie Williams Sextet
and Orchestra, performing “Tess’ Torch Song” and “Cherry
Red Blues.” He will rise to prominence as a member of Duke
Ellington’s orchestra, with which he will perform from 1929
to 1940. He will also record his own sessions during this
time, both freelance and with other Ellington sidemen.
In 1940 he will join Benny Goodman’s orchestra and in 1941
will form his own orchestra. Over the years he will employ
Charlie Parker, Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis, Bud Powell, Eddie
Vinson, and other important young players. He will begin to
play more Rhythm and Blues in the late 1940s. In the 1950s
he will tour with small groups and fall into obscurity. In
1962 he will rejoin Duke Ellington and stay with the
orchestra until 1974, after Ellington’s death. He will be
renown for his use of the plunger mute, and is reputed to
have inspired Wynton Marsalis’s use of it. He will join the
ancestors on September 15, 1985 in New York City.

1919 – A race riot occurs in Washington, DC. Six persons are
killed and one hundred are wounded.

1921 – Billy Taylor is born in Greenville, North Carolina. He will
become a jazz pianist. His recording career will span nearly
six decades. He will also compose over three hundred and
fifty songs, including “I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel To
Be Free,” as well as works for theatre, dance and symphony
orchestras. Playing the piano professionally since 1944, he
will get his start with Ben Webster’s Quartet on New York’s
famed 52nd Street. He will then serve as the house pianist
at Birdland, the legendary jazz club where he will perform
with such celebrated masters as Charlie Parker, Dizzy
Gillespie and Miles Davis. Since the 1950s, he will be
leading his own Trio, as well as performing with the most
influential jazz musicians of the twentieth century. He
will not only be an influential musician, but a highly
regarded teacher as well, receiving his Masters and
Doctorate in Music Education from the University of
Massachusetts at Amherst and serving as a Duke Ellington
Fellow at Yale University. He will also host and program
such radio stations as WLIB and WNEW in New York, and award
winning series for National Public Radio. In the early
1980s, Taylor became the arts correspondent for CBS Sunday
Morning. He will be one of only three jazz musicians
appointed to the National Council of the Arts, and also
serve as the Artistic Advisor for Jazz to the Kennedy
Center for the Performing Arts, where he will develop one
acclaimed concert series after another including the Louis
Armstrong Legacy series, and the annual Mary Lou Williams
Women in Jazz Festival. With over twenty three honorary
doctoral degrees, he will also be the recipient of two
Peabody Awards, an Emmy, a Grammy and a host of prestigious
and highly coveted prizes, such as the National Medal of
Arts, the Tiffany Award, a Lifetime achievement Award from
Downbeat Magazine, and, election to the Hall of Fame for
the International Association for Jazz Education.

1924 – Townsend “Sonny” Brewster, playwright and activist, is born.
He will compose many plays including “Amator, Amator,”
“Ananlas, Jr.,” “Andromeda,” “The Anonymous Lover,”
“Arrangement in Rose and Silver,” “Arthur Ashe and I,”
“Black-Belt Bertram,” “Chief Rathebe,” “Chocolat Volatil,”
“The Choreography of Love,” “The Cocktail Sip,” “The
Complete Works of Kalkbrenner,” “Ebur and Ebony,” “The
Ecologists,” “The Girl Beneath The Tulip Tree,”
“Hariequinades For Mourners,” “How The West Was Fun,”
“Idomeneus,” “The Jade Funerary Suit,” “Johnny Renaissance,”
“Lady Plum Blossom,” “Little Girl, Big Town,” “Look
Eastward,” “The Main-Chance Rag,” “Mascara and Confetti,”
“Mood Indigo,” “Mowgli,” “No Place For A Lady,” “O My
Pretty Quintroon,” “Oh, What a Beautiful City!,” “The Palm-
Leaf Boogie,” “Pinter’s Revue Sketches,” “Please Don’t Cry
and Say ‘No’,” “Praise Song,” “Rough and Ready,” “Sight
Unseen,” “Singapore Sling,” “Thirteen Ways of Looking at
Merle,” “Though It’s Been Said Many Times, Many Ways,” “A
Threnody for the Newly Born,” “To See the World in a Drop
of Brine,” “The Tower,” “Waiting for Godzilla,” “The
Washerwoman,” and “What Are Friends For?”

1929 – Cornelius H. Charlton, Korean War Hero, is born in East
Gulf, West Virginia. Sergeant Charlton will be killed in
action, from wounds received during his daring exploits,
on June 2, 1951 near Chipo-ri, Korea. He will be
posthumously awarded The Congressional Medal of Honor on
March 19, 1952. His Medal of Honor citation will read:
“Sgt. Charlton, a member of Company C, distinguished
himself by conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity above and
beyond the call of duty in action against the enemy. His
platoon was attacking heavily defended hostile positions
on commanding ground when the leader was wounded and
evacuated. Sgt. Charlton assumed command, rallied the men,
and spearheaded the assault against the hill. Personally
eliminating 2 hostile positions and killing 6 of the enemy
with his rifle fire and grenades, he continued up the
slope until the unit suffered heavy casualties and became
pinned down. Regrouping the men he led them forward only to
be again hurled back by a shower of grenades. Despite a
severe chest wound, Sgt. Charlton refused medical attention
and led a third daring charge which carried to the crest of
the ridge. Observing that the remaining emplacement which
had retarded the advance was situated on the reverse slope,
he charged it alone, was again hit by a grenade but raked
the position with a devastating fire which eliminated it
and routed the defenders. The wounds received during his
daring exploits resulted in his death but his indomitable
courage, superb leadership, and gallant self-sacrifice
reflect the highest credit upon himself the infantry, and
the military service.”

1939 – Walter Jones Bellamy is born in New Bern, North Carolina.
After becoming an Olympic athlete and winning a gold medal
in 1960, he will become a professional basketball player.
He will be the NBA first overall draft pick in 1962. He
will be the NBA Rookie of the Year in 1962, and his 31.6
point per game average that season will be second all-time
for a rookie to Wilt Chamberlain’s 37.6. He will also grab
19.0 rebounds per game that year — third best all-time for
a rookie (to Chamberlain and Bill Russell). He will have a
stellar 14 year career in the NBA. Due to trade scheduling
skews during the 1968-69 season, he will set the still-
standing record for NBA games played in a single season
with 88. He will be elected to the Naismith Memorial
Basketball Hall of Fame in 1993.

1954 – Mary Church Terrell, civil rights leader/educator and first
African American to serve on the District of Columbia
board of education, joins the ancestors at the age of 90
in Washington, DC.

1961 – Grace Ann Bumbry makes her debut in Richard Wagner’s
“Tannhauser” at the Bayreuth Festival in Bavaria.
Surrounded by controversy that saw the German press protest
the role of Venus being sung by an African American,
Bumbry’s performance dispels all doubts as she receives 42
curtain calls during a 30-minute ovation.

1963 – Karl “The Mailman” Malone is born in Bernice, Louisiana.
He will become a professional basketball player with the
Utah Jazz. He will be selected at least six times to the
All-NBA first team during his career. He will be nicknamed
in college as “The Mailman” for his consistency (“the
mailman always delivers”), and will be arguably the
greatest power forward ever in the NBA. He will spend his
first 18 seasons (1985–2003) as the star player for the
Utah Jazz. He will then play one season (2003-04) for the
Los Angeles Lakers before retiring from the game. He will
be famous for his extremely well-defined physique, which
resembled that of a bodybuilder. Along with Patrick Ewing,
Charles Barkley, Reggie Miller, Dominique Wilkins, Elgin
Baylor, and his longtime Jazz teammate John Stockton, he
is considered to be one of the best players, perhaps even
the best, never to have won a championship ring. His
jersey will be retired on March 23, 2006, when the Jazz
host the Washington Wizards. He will also be honored with
the unveiling of a bronze statue outside the Delta Center
next to one of teammate John Stockton, and the renaming of
a portion of 100 South St. in Salt Lake City in his honor.
The intersection where the Stockton and Malone statues
stand is now the intersection of Stockton and Malone.

1964 – Barry Bonds is born in Riverside, California. He will
become a professional baseball player,playing left field
for the San Francisco Giants. He will be a six-time All-
Star, six-time Gold Glove winner, and three-time National
League Most Valuable Player. He will hold many Major
League Baseball records, including most home runs in a
single season (73) and is second on the all-time career
home runs list at 753, trailing only Hank Aaron’s career
total of 755. He will be generally thought of as being
one of the top 3 greatest hitters of all time along
with legends Ted Williams and Babe Ruth. He is also
considered by many to be one of the best all around
players in the history of baseball.

1965 – Kadeem Hardison is born in Brooklyn, New York. He will
become interested in acting in his early teens, and will
begin studying theater at New York’s Eubie Blake Theater.
One of his instructors will be Earle Hyman, who will
later portray Grandpa Huxtable on “The Cosby Show.” His
work with Hyman will help win the young actor a guest spot
on a 1984 episode of “The Cosby Show,” playing opposite
Lisa Bonet. The same year, He will make his big-screen
debut with a small role in the hip-hop musical “Beat
Street.” He will make a handful of appearances in movies
and television projects over the next two years, but his
debut appearance on “The Cosby Show” will earn him a
major dividend in 1987, when Denise Huxtable, Lisa
Bonet’s character on “The Cosby Show,” is spun-off into
her own series, “A Different World,” and he is cast as
fellow student Dwayne Wayne. While Bonet will leave the
show after its first season, he will remain in the cast
for its entire seven-season run, and direct several
during the show’s final two seasons. During his down time
from “A Different World,” he will continue to work in
motion pictures, with supporting roles in “I’m Gonna Git
You Sucka” and “School Daze” and a leading role in the
independent horror film “Def By Temptation.” After “A
Different World” goes off the air in 1993, he will
concentrate on film work, with roles ranging from the
horror/comedy “Vampire in Brooklyn” to the political
drama “Panther.” In 1997, he will take another stab at
series television on the short-lived sitcom “Between
Brothers,” and begin adding more TV guests spots to his
resumé, appearing on “Touched By an Angel,” “Just Shoot
Me,” and the revived “Fantasy Island,” while still
maintaining a busy schedule of film work.

1967 – Three days of racially motivated disturbances begin in
Cambridge, Maryland, the site of a 1963 confrontation
between civil rights demonstrators and white
segregationists.

1969 – Muhammad Ali’s conviction for refusing induction in U.S.
Army is upheld on appeal.

______________________________________________________________
Munirah Chronicle is edited by Rene’ A. Perry

KRLemmons African American History

July 23 African American Historical Events

Today in Black History – July 23 *

1891 – Louis Tompkins Wright is born in LaGrange, Georgia. He
will graduate from Harvard Medical School in 1915, and
subsequently serve in World War I as an officer in the
United States Army Medical Corps. He will become the
first African American doctor to be appointed to the
staff of a New York City municipal hospital in 1919 when
he begins seeing patients at the Harlem Hospital out-
patient clinic. He will be, at one point, the only
African American member of the American College of
Surgeons. He will be a brilliant medical doctor and
specialist in fractures and head injuries and will make
strides in multiple directions in the field of medicine.
His greatest accomplishments will include the perfection
of an intradermal smallpox vaccination, the use of
Aureomycin for lymphogranuloma venereum (a viral venereal
disease), the treatment of humans with antibiotic
chlortetracycline, the invention of a brace to cushion
head and neck injuries, a blade plate for the treatment
of knee fractures, and drug therapy for cancer. From 1948
to 1952, he will have eighty-nine scientific publications
to his credit. With grants from the National Cancer
Institute and Damon Runyon Fund, he will found the Harlem
Hospital Cancer Research Foundation where he will deal
with the effectiveness of chemotherapeutic agents. He will
publish fifteen papers dealing with his investigation of
the effects of cancer-fighting drugs. Dr. Wright will also
be an active civil rights advocate and leading member of
the NAACP which will recognize him as a champion of human
rights with the Spingarn Medal in 1940. Harlem Hospital
will rename its library after him shortly before he joins
the ancestors in 1952 after succumbing to a heart attack.

1892 – Lij Tafari Makonnen is born in Ejarsa Goro, Ethiopia. When
Menilek II’s daughter becomes empress in 1917, Ras (Prince)
Tafari will be named regent and heir apparent to the throne.
In 1923 he will have a conspicuous success in the admission
of Ethiopia to the League of Nations. In the following year
he will visit Rome, Paris, and London, becoming the first
Ethiopian ruler ever to go abroad. In 1928 he will assume
the title of negus (“king”), and two years later, when
Zauditu joins the ancestors, he will be crowned emperor
(Nov. 2, 1930) and take the name of Haile Selassie I
(“Might of the Trinity”). In 1931 he will promulgate a new
constitution, which strictly limits the powers of
Parliament. From the late 1920s on, Haile Selassie in
effect will be the Ethiopian government, and, by
establishing provincial schools, strengthening the police
forces, and progressively outlawing feudal taxation, he
will seek to both help his people and increase the
authority of the central government. When Italy invades
Ethiopia in 1935, he will lead the resistance, but in May
1936 he will be forced into exile. He will appeal for help
from the League of Nations in a memorable speech that he
delivers to that body in Geneva on June 30, 1936. With the
advent of World War II, he will secure British assistance
in forming an army of Ethiopian exiles in the Sudan.
British and Ethiopian forces will invade Ethiopia in
January 1941 and recapture Addis Ababa several months
later. Although he will be reinstated as emperor, he will
have to recreate the authority he had previously exercised.
He will again implement social, economic, and educational
reforms in an attempt to modernize Ethiopian government
and society on a slow and gradual basis. The Ethiopian
government will continue to be largely the expression of
his personal authority. In 1955 he will grant a new
constitution giving him as much power as the previous one.
Overt opposition to his rule will surface in December 1960,
when a dissident wing of the army secures control of Addis
Ababa and is dislodged only after a sharp engagement with
loyalist elements. He will play a very important role in
the establishment of the Organization of African Unity in
1963. His rule in Ethiopia will continue until 1974, at
which time famine, worsening unemployment, and the
political stagnation of his government prompts segments of
the army to mutiny. They will depose him and establish a
provisional military government that espouses Marxist
ideologies. He will be kept under house arrest in his own
palace, where he will spend the remainder of his life.
Official sources at the time will attribute his death to
natural causes, but evidence will later emerge suggesting
that he had been strangled on the orders of the military
government. He will be regarded as the Messiah of the
African ace by the Rastafarian movement. He will join the
ancestors on August 26, 1975.

1900 – The Pan-African Congress meets in London, England. Among
the leaders of the Congress are H. Sylvester Williams, a
West Indian Lawyer with a London practice, W.E.B. Du Bois,
and Bishop Alexander Walters.

1920 – British East Africa is renamed Kenya.

1947 – Spencer Christian is born in Charles City, Virginia. He
will graduate with a Bachelor of Arts Degree in English
and a minor in journalism from Hampton University. He will
teach English at the Stony Brook School in Long Island,
New York, for one year before launching his television
career. He will begin a broadcasting career in 1971 in
Richmond, Virginia, as a news reporter, covering state and
local politics, the public school system, and landmark
cases in the Fourth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. He will
become a weathercaster in Baltimore, Maryland from 1975-
1977, where he will also host “Spencer’s World,” a weekly
half-hour talk show. He will go on to become weather
forecaster for “Good Morning America” for thirteen years
and sportscaster and weatherman for WABC-TV in New York
for nine years. He will then join the ABC7 News team in
San Francisco as weather anchor in 1999. He is the author
of a series of children’s books under the general heading
“Spencer Christian’s World of Wonders.” The first four
books are titled: “Can It Really Rain Frogs?,” “Shake,
Rattle, and Roll,” “What Makes the Grand Canyon Grand?,”
and “Is There a Dinosaur in Your Backyard?.” He will be
inducted into the Virginia Communications Hall of Fame in
April 1993, and named Virginian of the Year by the
Virginia Press Association in July, 1993.

1948 – Progressive party convention, meeting in Philadelphia,
nominates Henry Wallace for President. The New Party
makes a major effort to attract African Americans.
Approximately 150 African American delegates and
alternates attend the convention. The keynote speaker is
Charles P. Howard, and attorney, publisher and former
Republican from Des Moines, Iowa. Thirty-seven African
Americans will run for state and local offices on the
party ticket. Ten Blacks will run for Congress. The
party attracts few Black voters, but forces the
Democratic party to make serious gestures to hold the
African American vote.

1967 – Forty-three persons are killed in a racially motivated
disturbance in Detroit, Michigan. Federal troops are
called out for the first time since the Detroit riot of
1943, to quell the largest racial rebellion in a U.S.
city in the twentieth century. More than two thousand
persons are injured and some five thousand are arrested.
Police report 1,442 fires. Disturbances will spread to
other Michigan cities.

1968 – An alleged black radical ambush of a Cleveland police
detail sparks two days of disturbances that will result
in 11 deaths, including three policemen. The Ohio
National Guard will be mobilized to control the
situation.

1984 – Vanessa Williams, the first African American Miss America,
relinquishes her crown after publication of nude
photographs taken before her entry in the pageant.
Replacing her is Suzette Charles, first runner-up in the
contest.

1987 – Billy Williams is inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame
in Cooperstown, New York.

______________________________________________________________
Munirah Chronicle is edited by Rene’ A. Perry

KRLemmons African American History

July 22 African American Historical Events

Today in Black History – July 22 *

1848 – Lester Walton is appointed minister to Liberia.

1861 – Abraham Lincoln reads the first draft of the Emancipation
Proclamation to his cabinet.

1933 – Caterina Jarboro becomes the first African American prima
donna of an United States opera company. She will
perform “Aida” with the Chicago Opera Company at the
Hippodrome in New York City. The New York Times music
editor will report: “The young soprano brought a vivid
dramatic sense that kept her impersonation vital without
overacting, and an Italian diction remarkably pure and
distinct.” Her fame, however, will be short­lived. Once
the American opera establishment realizes that she is not
Italian but African American, her career will come to an
end. The newly founded New York Metropolitan Opera
Association will refuse to accept her as a member.
Nonetheless, her contribution to opera will be powerful
and far­reaching.

1937 – Chuck Jackson is born in Latta, South Carolina. He will
be raised in Pittsburgh and will become a Rhythm & Blues
singer. He will be discovered when he opens for soul
legend Jackie Wilson at the Apollo Theater. He will sign a
recording contract with Scepter. His first single,”I Don’t
Want to Cry”, which he co-wrote, will be his first hit
(1961). The song will chart on both Rhythm & Blues and pop
charts. In 1962, His recording of “Any Day Now”, the Burt
Bacharach-Bob Hilliard classic, will become a huge hit. In
1967, he will move from Scepter to Motown Records, where
he will record a number of successful singles, including
“Are You Lonely for Me” and “Honey Come Back.”

1939 – Jane Matilda Bolin is appointed to the New York City Court
of Domestic Relations by Mayor Fiorello Laguardia, becoming
the first African American woman judge.

1939 – Quincy Thomas Troupe, Jr. is born in New York City. He will
become a poet, editor, journalist, and college professor.
He will grow up in East St. Louis, Illinois. He will attend
Grambling State University on a baseball scholarship and
will subsequently join the United States Army. In his free
time as a soldier, he will develop the passion for writing
that would define his career. Upon his return to civilian
life, he will move to Los Angeles, where he will encounter
the Watts Writers Workshop and begin working in a more
African American, jazz-based style. It will be on a tour
with the Watts group that he first begin his academic life.
In 1969, he will visit Ohio University with the poetry tour
and will soon be offered a position as writer-in-residence.
In 1971, he will move to Richmond College on Staten Island
in New York City, where he will be a lecturer. In 1976,
Richmond College will undergo a merger and become the
College of Staten Island of the City University of New York.
It will be during this transition, he will later reveal,
that he adjusts his curriculum vitae to include a
(fictitious) bachelor’s degree he claims to have earned in
1963 from Grambling. He will make the addition in order to
possibly attain tenure, which he likely could not have done
without an academic degree. This fiction will go
unchallenged for nearly three decades. The next few years
will see him become a celebrity in the academic world,
winning an American Book Award for 1989’s “Miles, the
Autobiography” (written with Miles Davis) and earning
numerous other accolades. In 1990, he will move to the
University of California, San Diego (UCSD) as a professor
of literature, where he will continue to gain acclaim. In
early 2002, he will be named California’s first Poet
Laureate, taking office on June 11, 2002. A background
check related to the new position will reveal that he had,
in fact, never possessed a degree from Grambling.
Confronted with the information, he will resign the post.
After UCSD considers suspending him without pay, he retires
from his academic position as well. His other notable works
include “James Baldwin: The Legacy” (1989) and “Miles and
Me: A Memoir of Miles Davis” (2000). He will also edit
“Giant Talk: An Anthology of Third World Writing” (1975)
and is a founding editor of “Confrontation: A Journal of
Third World Literature and American Rag.” He will teach
creative writing for the Watts Writers’ Movement from 1966
to 1968 and serve as director of the Malcolm X Center in
Los Angeles during the summers of 1969 and 1970. Among his
honors and awards will be fellowships from the National
Foundation for the Arts, the New York Foundation for the
Arts, and a grant from the New York State Council on the
Arts.

1941 – George Clinton is born in Kannapolis, North Carolina. He
will grow up in Plainfield, New Jersey. In Plainfield, he
will run a barber salon, where he straightens hair, and
will soon formed a doo wop group, inspired by Frankie Lymon
& the Teenagers, called The Parliaments. The Parliaments
will eventually find success under the names Parliament and
Funkadelic in the seventies. Parliament Funkadelic will
record “Testify”, “Mothership Connection”, “First Thangs”,
“Up For The Down Stroke”, “Chocolate City”, “The Clones of
Dr. Funkenstein,” “Atomic Dog,” and many others. The
popularity of Clinton and his group will last over thirty
years. He will be widely considered one of the forefathers
of funk. Usually recording under the name George Clinton &
the P.Funk All-Stars, he will record several solo albums. In
1982, he will sign to Capitol Records as a solo artist and
as the P.Funk All-Stars, releasing Computer Games that same
year. “Loopzilla” hit the Top 20 R&B charts, followed by
“Atomic Dog,” which reached #1 R&B, but peaked at #101 on
the pop chart. In the next four years, he will release
three more studio albums (You Shouldn’t-Nuf Bit Fish, Some
of My Best Jokes Are Friends and R&B Skeletons in the
Closet) as well as a live album, Mothership Connection
(Live from the Summit, Houston, Texas) and charting three
singles in the R&B Top 30, “Nubian Nut,” “Last Dance,” and
“Do Fries Go with that Shake.” His popularity will wane in
the mid 1980s, but revive by the rise of rap music
(particularly, in the 1990s, G Funk), as many rappers cited
him as an influence and began sampling his songs. Alongside
James Brown, George Clinton will be considered to be one
of the most sampled musicians ever. In 1989, he will release
The Cinderella Theory on Paisley Park, Prince’s record
label. This will be followed by Hey Man, Smell My Finger.
He will then sign with Sony 550 and release T.A.P.O.A.F.O.M.
(The Awesome Power Of A Fully Operational Mothership) in
1996, having reunited with several old members of Parliament
and Funkadelic. He will be known for his flamboyant style.
In the 1990s, he will appear in films such as Graffiti
Bridge (1990), Good Burger (1997) and PCU (1994). He will
also appear as the voice of The Funktipus, the DJ of the
Bounce FM station in the 2004 video game, Grand Theft Auto:
San Andreas. Rapper Dr. Dre will sample most of his beats to
create his G-Funk music era.

1947 – Daniel Lebern “Danny” Glover is born in San Francisco,
California. He will become an actor and will star in the
“Lethal Weapon” movies, “Operation Dumbo Drop”, “Silverado”,
“Escape from Alcatraz”, “Chiefs”, “The Color Purple”,
“Angels in the Outfield”, and “Places in the Heart”. He will
serve as board chair of the TransAfrica Forum, “a non-profit
organization dedicated to educating the general public —
particularly African Americans — on the economic, political
and moral ramifications of U.S. foreign policy as it affects
Africa and the Diaspora in the Caribbean and Latin America.”
In March 1998, he will be appointed ambassador to the United
Nations Development Program. He will also serve on the
Advisory Council for TeleSUR, “Television of the South”, a
pan-Latin American television network based in Caracas,
Venezuela. It will begin broadcasting on July 24, 2005.
He is probably best known for his role as Los Angeles police
Sgt. Roger Murtaugh in the Lethal Weapon movie series, and
his role as the abusive husband to Whoopi Goldberg’s
character Celie in The Color Purple. Among many awards, he
will win five NAACP Image Awards, for his achievements as a
Black actor. He will join the ranks of actors, such as
Humphrey Bogart, Elliott Gould, and Robert Mitchum, who will
portray Raymond Chandler’s private eye detective Philip
Marlowe in the episode ‘Red Wind’ of the Showtime network’s
1995 series Fallen Angels. He will make his directorial
debut with the Showtime channel short film Override in 1994.

1961 – Milton A. Francis, the first African American specialist in
genitourinary diseases, joins the ancestors.

1963 – World Heavyweight Champion, Sonny Liston, hangs on to his
boxing title, by knocking out challenger, Floyd Patterson,
in the first round of a bout in Las Vegas, Nevada.

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

KRLemmons African American History

July 21 African American Historical Events

Today in Black History – July 21 *

1864 – The New Orleans Tribune, first daily African American
newspaper, is published in English and French.

1896 – Mary Church Terrell organizes the National Association of
Colored Women in Washington, DC. The association is a
merger of the National Federation of Afro-American Women
and The Colored Women’s League. It is one of many
achievements for Terrell, which include being the first
African American woman to serve on a school’s board of
education, the first to hold membership in the American
Association of University Women, and at age 90, will lead
the desegregation of Washington, DC restaurants in 1953.

1934 – Edolphus Towns is born in Chadbourn, North Carolina. He
will graduate with a bachelor’s degree from North Carolina
A & T State University and a master’s degree in social
work from Adelphi University. He will become a longtime
local civic leader and congressman from New York’s 11th
District starting in 1983, and chairman of the
Congressional Black Caucus in 1990. He will have the
distinction of being the first African American to serve
as Deputy Brooklyn Borough President. Additionally, he and
his son, New York State Assemblyman Darryl Towns, will
become the first African American father/son tandem to
serve simultaneously in public office in New York State.
His varied professional background includes assignments as
an administrator at Beth Israel Medical Center, a
professor at New York’s Medgar Evers College and Fordham
University and a teacher in the New York City Public
School System. He is also a veteran of the United States
Army and an ordained Baptist minister.

1943 – Captain Charles B, Hall, of Brazil, Indiana, becomes the
first African American pilot in World War II to shoot down
a Nazi plane. He is a member of the 99th Fighter Squadron
which is part of the 33rd Fighter Group. During his eighth
mission, while escorting B-25 bombers over Italy, Captain
Hall spots two Focke-Wulf FW 190s. He fires a long burst
at one as it turns left. After several hits the aircraft
will crash into the ground.

1943 – “Stormy Weather” premieres in New York City with Lena
Horne, Bill Robinson, Fats Waller, Cab Calloway, the
Nicholas Brothers, and Katherine Dunham. A week before
the premiere, Horne said of African American actors, “All
we ask is that the Negro be portrayed as a normal person.
A worker in a union meeting, a voter in the polls…or an
elected official. Perhaps I’m being naive. Perhaps these
things will never be straightened out on the screen itself,
but will have to wait until..[they’re] solved in real
life.”

1945 – Alton H. Maddox, Jr. is born. He will become a New York
African American civil rights activist and attorney. He
will be best known for his representation of Tawana
Brawley (a black teenager who accused a group of white men
of abducting and sexually molesting her in Dutchess
County). He will be disbarred following his involvement in
the Tawana Brawley alleged hoax in 1990.

1950 – The first victory of the Korean War is won by African
American troops of the 24th Infantry Regiment, who
recapture Yechon after waging a 16-hour battle. The North
Koreans will launch a surprise invasion of South Korea on
25 June 1950. U.S. Army divisions stationed in Japan are
rushed to the defense of South Korea. The 25th Division is
ordered to South Korea on 5 July 1950. By mid July the
Division is fully deployed and ready to engage North
Korean forces. On 20 July 1950 the 3rd Battalion 24th
Infantry conducts the first combat action of the Division
when it attacks and destroys a well-dug-in North Korean
force which had seized the critical road hub of Yechon.
The recapture of Yechon is considered the first sizable
American ground victory of the war.

1957 – Althea Gibson becomes the first African American woman to
win a major U.S. tennis title. She won the Women’s
National clay court singles competition.

1960 – The country of Katanga forms in Africa.

1962 – 160 civil right activists jailed after demonstration in
Albany, Georgia.

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

KRLemmons African American History

July 20 African American Historical Events

* Today in Black History – July 20 *

1934 – Henry Dumas is born in Sweet Home, Arkansas. He will move
to the village of Harlem in New York City at the age of
ten. He will attend City College and then join the Air
Force. While in the Air Force he will spend a year on
the Arabian Peninsula, where he will develop an interest
in the Arabic language, mythology, and culture. He will
be active in civil rights and humanitarian activities,
including transporting food and clothing to protesters
living in Mississippi and Tennessee. In 1967, he will
work at Southern Illinois University as a teacher,
counselor, and director of language workshops in its
“Experiment in Higher Education” program. It is there
where he meets Eugene Redmond, a fellow teacher in that
program. He and Redmond will read their poetry at common
gatherings; Redmond especially remembers him reading “Our
King Is Dead,” his elegy for Martin Luther King, Jr. He
will also frequent the offices of the East St. Louis
Monitor, which Redmond edits. He will inspire interest
for his unique vision of black people in the diaspora.
In many ways he will become a cultural icon in African
American literary circles. He will claim Moms Mabley and
gospel music as particular influences upon him. He will
join the ancestors on May 23, 1968 at the age of 33 after
being mistakenly shot and killed by a New York City
Transit policeman. Over the course of the ten months that
he lives in East St. Louis, he and Redmond will forge the
collaborative relationship that would prove so fruitful
to his posthumous Career. His literary legacy is kept
alive almost single-handedly by Redmond. His first
collection of short fiction is entitled “Arks of Bones
and Other Stories” (edited by Redmond in 1974), which
includes nine stories and in which his largely mythic
vision of African American existence is apparent.
Redmond’s commitment to making his work readily available
to scholarly communities will continue in the publication
of “Goodbye, Sweetwater” (1988) and “Knees of a Natural
Man: The Selected Poetry of Henry Dumas” (1989). The
first volume contains eight of the stories that first
appeared in “Ark of Bones,” along with excerpts from
Dumas’s unfinished novel, “Jonoah and the Green Stone”
(1976), stories from “Rope of Wind” (1979), and three
selections from “Goodbye Sweetwater.” One of the stories
in the final section is “Rain God,” which develops the
African American folk belief that, when it is raining and
the sun is shining, the devil is beating his wife. Three
young black boys literally witness this phenomenon as
they are on their way home one rainy-sunny day. The
second volume contains previously published as well as
unpublished poems, including several poems with the title
“Kef” and an accompanying number, and “Saba,” with the
same pattern. Some of the poems in “Knees” had appeared
in “Play Ebony: Play Ivory” (1974), a collection of his
poetry, which Redmond will edit singly in 1974 and which
he co-edits in 1970. His poetry is inspired by African
American music, particularly blues and jazz (he studied
with Sun Ra), and he develops themes consistent with the
Black Aesthetic of the 1960s. His poetry also focuses,
in keeping with his fiction, on themes of nature and the
natural world.

1954 – Freeman Bosley, Jr., St. Louis’ first African American
mayor, is born in St. Louis, Missouri. He will attend
Saint Louis University and Saint Louis University Law
School. He will graduate from Saint Louis University in
1976 with two undergraduate degrees, a B.A. in Urban
Affairs and a B.A. in Political Science. He will receive
his Juris Doctorate from Saint Louis University Law
School in 1979. His public service career will begin
when he becomes the first African American St. Louis
Circuit Clerk for the 22nd Judicial Circuit – a position
he will hold for ten years. He will serve as the 3rd
Ward Democratic Committeeman, chairman of the St. Louis
City Democratic Central Association, and the first
African American chairman of the Democratic Party in St.
Louis City. After winning the April 6, 1993 election
with 66.5% of the vote, he will become the first African
American Mayor of St. Louis. He will oversee the battle
against the Flood of 1993, help to orchestrate the $70
million bailout of Trans World Airlines and help to move
the Los Angeles Rams football team to St. Louis from
Anaheim, California. He will be defeated in his bid for
re-election.

1967 – The first National Conference of Black Power opens in
Newark, New Jersey. The four-day meeting is attended
by 1,100 African Americans.

1967 – A night of racially motivated disturbances occurs in
Memphis, Tennessee.

1973 – The National Black Network begins operations. It is the
first African American owned and operated radio news
network.

1974 – Baseball great, Hank Aaron, breaks Ty Cobb’s record, as
he appears in game number 3,034 of his career. Aaron,
age 40, is playing in his 20th season of major-league
baseball.

1988 – In the most formidable attempt ever by an African
American to become President of the United States.
Jesse Jackson receives 1218 delegates votes of the
2,082 needed for the Democratic party’s nomination,
finishing second to Michael Dukakis. In his second bid
for the nomination, Jackson garners wide popular
support and captures 92% of African American and 12%
of white votes in primary elections and caucuses. The
previous night, Jackson electrifies the delegates with
a ringing speech encouraging them to “keep hope alive.”

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

KRLemmons African American History

July 19 African American Historical Events

* Today in Black History – July 19 *

1848 – The first Women’s Rights Convention is held in Seneca Falls,
New York. The convention is supported by Frederick Douglass
of nearby Rochester, New York, who attends the meeting and
speaks in defense of its organizer, Elizabeth Cady Stanton.

1866 – Tennessee becomes the first state to ratify the 14th
Amendment, supposedly guaranteeing civil rights to all
United States citizens.

1867 – Congress passes the third Reconstruction Act over President
Andrew Johnson’s veto.

1913 – The Tri-State Dental Association is formed in Buckroe Beach
(now part of Hampton), Virginia. It will be the forerunner
to the National Dental Association, an organization
dedicated to developing a national forum for African
American dentists in the United States.

1925 – Josephine Baker, entertainer and singer, makes her Paris
debut.

1940 – Surgeon Louis T. Wright is presented the Spingarn Medal for
his “contribution to the healing of mankind and for his
courageous, uncompromising position, often in the face of
bitter attack.” Among Wright’s many accomplishments was
being the first African American surgeon to be admitted to
the staff of Harlem Hospital and chairmanship of the board
of directors of the NAACP, a position he will hold for 17
years.

1941 – The first Army flying school for African Americans is
dedicated in Tuskegee, Alabama.

1941 – President Franklin D. Roosevelt appoints a Fair Employment
Practices Committee which includes two African Americans,
Earl B. Dickerson, a Chicago attorney, and Milton P.
Webster, vice-president of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car
Porters.

1966 – The Hough district of Cleveland, Ohio, experiences racially
motivated disturbances that result in the mobilization of
the National Guard by Governor James A. Rhodes, who
declares a state of emergency in the city.

1967 – A racially motivated disturbance occurs in Durham, North
Carolina. The governor calls out the National Guard to
quell the disturbance.

1973 – Willie Mays is named to the National League all star team
for the 24th time, tying Stan Musial for the record number
of appearances.

1979 – Patricia R. Harris is named Secretary of Health and Human
Services. It is her second Cabinet-level appointment.
She had been Secretary of Housing and Urban Development.

1991 – The South African government acknowledges that it had been
giving money to the Inkatha Freedom Party, the main rival
of the African National Congress.

______________________________________________________________
Munirah Chronicle is edited by Rene’ A. Perry

KRLemmons African American History

July 18 African American Historical Events

* Today in Black History – July 18 *

1753 – Lemuel Haynes, colonial American Congregational clergyman,
is born in West Hartford, Connecticut. He will be
abandoned at five months old by his African father and
Anglo mother. He will be indentured to a white family in
Massachusetts. When he becomes a free man at age 21 in
1774, one of his first choices is to join freedom’s cause
and serve in a military unit from Connecticut. He will
not only fight on the battlefield, but will write about
freedom in poems and essays. He will be inspired by the
Declaration of Independence, and in 1776 will write an
essay about the need to extend freedom to Africans. His
essay is called, “Liberty Further Extended.” After the
American Revolutionary War, he will study Latin, Greek
and theology, and will be licensed to preach in 1780. In
1785, he will be ordained to a church in Torrington,
Connecticut, making him the first African American to
pastor a white congregation. He also will become the
first African American to receive an honorary degree
(M.A.) from a White college (Middlebury College), in 1804
at its second commencement. He will serve as pastor in
Bennington, Manchester, and Granville, New York, until he
joins the ancestors on September 28, 1833 at the age of
eighty.

1863 – The 54th Massachusetts Volunteers charge Fort Wagner in
Charleston, South Carolina. Although the Union forces
suffer great losses, Sergeant William H. Carney of Company
C exhibits bravery in battle by maintaining the colors
high despite three bullet wounds. Although cited for
bravery, it will take 37 years for Carney to receive the
Congressional Medal of Honor for his actions.

1899 – Patent number 629,286 is issued to L.C. Bailey for a
folding bed.

1905 – Granville T. Woods patents railway brakes.

1918 – Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela is born near Umtata in Transkei,
South Africa in the Eastern Cape, into the royal family
of the Tembu, a Xhosa-speaking tribe. His father is Chief
Henry Mandela. He will be educated at University College
of Fort Hare and the University of Witwatersrand and
qualifies to practice law in 1942. He will join the
African National Congress in 1944 and engage in resistance
against the ruling National Party’s apartheid policies
after 1948. He will go on trial for treason in 1956-1961
and be acquitted in 1961. After the banning of the ANC in
1960, he will argue for the setting up of a military wing
within the ANC. In June 1961, the ANC executive will
consider his proposal on the use of violent tactics and
agree that those members who wished to involve themselves
in his campaign would not be stopped from doing so by the
ANC. This will lead to the formation of Umkhonto we Sizwe.
He will be arrested in 1962 and sentenced to five years’
imprisonment with hard labor. In 1963, when many fellow
leaders of the ANC and the Umkhonto we Sizwe are arrested,
he will be brought to stand trial with them for plotting
to overthrow the government by violence. His statement
from the dock will receive considerable international
publicity. On June 12, 1964, he is among eight accused,
that will be sentenced to life imprisonment. From 1964 to
1982, he will be incarcerated at Robben Island Prison, off
the shore from Cape Town; thereafter, he will be at
Pollsmoor Prison, nearby on the mainland. He will be
released on February 11, 1990. After his release, he will
plunge himself wholeheartedly into his life’s work,
striving to attain the goals he and others had set out
almost four decades earlier. In 1991, at the first
national conference of the ANC held inside South Africa
after the organization had been banned in 1960, Mandela
will be elected President of the ANC while his lifelong
friend and colleague, Oliver Tambo, will become the
organization’s National Chairperson. He will become the
first Black African President of South Africa on May 10,
1994 (Inauguration Date). Happy 95th birthday, President
Mandela.

1941 – Martha Reeves is born in Eufaula, Alabama. Her family will
move to Detroit, Michigan before her first birthday. As a
child, she will sing in her grandfather’s church and in
school, and continue her vocal training through high school.
After graduating in 1959, she will join a girl group called
the Fascinations, and the following year co-founds the
Del-Phis, whose membership will include the future
Vandellas. In 1961, she will win a talent contest as a solo
act and get a nightclub engagement performing as Martha
LaVaille. There she will be noticed by Motown executive
William “Mickey” Stevenson, who will invite her to stop by
the label’s offices. She will not land an audition right
away, but will parlay her visit into a secretarial job in
the A&R department. She will catch a lucky break when backup
singers are needed for a recording session, and the Del-Phis
will wind up supporting Marvin Gaye on his first hit, 1962’s
“Stubborn Kind of Fellow.” Stevenson will be impressed
enough to record a Del-Phis (renamed the Vels) single,
“You’ll Never Cherish a Love So True (‘Til You Lose It),”
and release it on Motown’s Mel-O-Dy subsidiary. One day,
Mary Wells fails to show up for a recording session, and
musicians’ union rules demand that a lead vocalist be
present on the microphone — so she will be hastily tapped
to sing “I’ll Have to Let Him Go.” That song will become
the first single credited to the newly renamed Martha & the
Vandellas in 1963. Their second single, the ballad “Come
and Get These Memories,” will reach the Rhythm & Blues Top
Five. Martha & the Vandellas will rack up an impressive
slate of Motown classics that will include the Top Five
smashes “(Love Is Like A) Heat Wave” and “Dancing in the
Street,” plus “Nowhere to Run,” “I’m Ready for Love,”
“Jimmy Mack,” and “Honey Chile,” all of which will make the
Rhythm & Blues Top Five. Martha & the Vandellas’ run of
success will continue through 1967. They will continue to
perform and record for several more years, but will never
match their past success and will disband in December 1972
after a farewell concert in Detroit. She will eventually
leave Motown and record for other labels with minimal
success. In 1989, she will reunite with original Vandellas
Annette Sterling and Rosalind Holmes and cut the single
“Step Into My Shoes” for British producer Ian Levine’s
Motor City label. However, she will continue to make her
primary living on the nostalgia circuit. She will be
inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1995.

1951 – Jersey Joe Walcott, at age 37, becomes oldest boxer to date,
to win the World Heavyweight Championship knocking out
Ezzard Charles in five rounds.

1959 – William Wright becomes the first African American to win a
a USGA title, the U.S. Amateur Public Links Championship.
He is 23 and a senior at Western Washington University.

1964 – Racially motivated disturbances occur in Harlem in New York
City. The civil unrest will last until July 22 and will
spread into the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn.

1970 – Willie Mays gets his 3,000th base hit.

1998 – The “Spirit of Freedom Memorial” and “Theme Park” is
unveiled in Washington, DC to honor the U. S. Colored
Troops, who fought in the U.S. Civil War.

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

KRLemmons African American History

July 17 African American Historical Events

Today in Black History – July 17 *

1794 – Richard Allen organizes Philadelphia’s Bethel African
Methodist Episcopal Church.

1794 – Absalom Jones and his followers dedicate The African Church
of St. Thomas in Philadelphia. On August 12, 1794, the St.
Thomas parishioners will affiliate with the Protestant
Episcopal Church.

1862 – Congress approves the rights of African Americans to bear
arms to fight in the Civil War and enlist in the Union Army
by passing two laws, the Confiscation and Militia acts.
Over 208,000 African Americans and their white officers
will serve in the Union Army, with 38,000 losing their
lives.

1863 – Unions troops, with First Kansas volunteers playing a
leading role, route rebels at Honey Springs, Indian
Territory. African American troops capture the colors of a
Texas regiment.

1911 – Frank Snowden is born in York County, Virginia. He will
become the foremost scholar on Blacks in ancient history,
notably for his books “Blacks in Antiquity: Ethiopians in
the Greco-Roman Experience” and “Before Color Prejudice:
The Ancient View of Blacks”. He will document that in ancient
Rome and Greece, racial prejudice was not an issue. Much of
this, according to his research, is because most of the
Blacks they encountered were not slaves. Most slaves in the
Roman Empire were white. Most of the Blacks they met were
warriors, statesmen, and mercenaries. Therefore, Blacks were
not subjected to the racism of modern civilization. He will
study ancient art and literature, and find evidence that
Blacks were able to co-exist with the Greeks and Romans. He
will join the ancestors on February 18, 2007.

1935 – Carol Diann Johnson (Diahann Carroll) is born in the Bronx,
New York. She will be better known as Diahann Carroll,
star of Broadway (“House of Flowers”), television (“Julia”),
and films including “Carmen Jones” and “Claudine”, the
latter earning her an Academy Award nomination as Best
Actress. Beginning her music career at an early age, she
will be the recipient of a Metropolitan Opera scholarship
for studies at New York’s High School of Music and Art at a
mere ten years of age. While still a teenager, she will
begin working part-time as a model, a TV actress, and as a
nightclub singer, leading to her Broadway debut (the Harold
Arlen/Truman Capote production “House of Flowers”) and her
film debut (the modern version of Bizet’s opera “Carmen”
with an all-black cast “Carmen Jones”) both in 1954. More
movie work will come her way (including the 1959 film
version of “Porgy & Bess”), as well as a Tony Award in 1962
for her work on the Broadway production “No Strings.”
Beginning in the late ’50s, she will launch a successful
recording career, issuing albums on a regular basis
throughout the next two decades (including such titles as
1957’s “Diahann Carroll Sings Harold Arlen,” 1960’s
“Diahann Carroll and Andre Previn,” and 1962’s “The
Fabulous “Diahann Carroll,” among many others). In the late
’60s, she will star in the TV sitcom “Julia,” for which she
will be nominated for an Emmy Award and the recipient of a
Golden Globe Award for Best Actress. The ’70s will see her
give arguably the finest acting performance of her career
in 1974’s “Claudine,” for which she was nominated for an
Academy Award. She will return to TV work in the mid-’80s
with her portrayal of businesswoman Dominique Devereaux on
the hit nighttime soap opera “Dynasty,” while she earns her
second Emmy nomination for a guest appearance on the comedy
series “A Different World” (also during the same decade, she
will publish an autobiography, 1986’s “Diahann”). In the
’90s, she will star in a production of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s
“Sunset Boulevard” and tour the U.S. performing classic
Broadway standards in “Almost Like Being in Love: The Lerner
and Loewe Songbook.” 2001 will see the release of the
16-track compilation “Nobody Sees Me Cry: The Best of the
Columbia Years.”

1944 – An ammunitions depot at Port Chicago, California explodes
killing 320 men including 202 African Americans assigned by
the Navy to handle explosives. The resulting refusal of 258
African Americans to return to the dangerous work formed the
basis of the trial and conviction of 50 of the men in what
will become known as the Port Chicago Mutiny.

1959 – Billie Holiday, blues singer, joins the ancestors after
succumbing to liver failure at the age of 44 in Metropolitan
Hospital, New York City.

1967 – A racially motivated disturbance occurs in Cairo, Illinois
(within 100 miles of the Mississippi border. The Illinois
National Guard is mobilized during the three day civil
disturbance.

1967 – Innovative and famed jazz musician, John Coltrane joins the
ancestors after succumbing to cirrhosis of the liver at the
age of 40 in Huntington Hospital, Long Island, New York.

1981 – The Fulton County (Atlanta) grand jury indicts Wayne B.
Williams, a twenty-three-year-old photographer, for the
murder of two of the twenty-eight Black youths killed in a
series of slayings and disappearances in Atlanta. He will
deny the charges and be convicted in February, 1982.

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

KRLemmons African American History

July 16 African American Historical Events

* Today in Black History – July 16 *

1829 – A poem in tribute to the late Philadelphia caterer Robert
Bogle is published. Bogle is the first known
professional African American caterer. Among his
descendants will be Robert W. Bogle, publisher of the
Philadelphia “Tribune”, and Donald Bogle, noted film
critic and author of “Black Americans in Film and
Television”.

1862 – Ida B. Wells (later Barnett) is born in Holly Springs,
Mississippi. She will complete her studies at Rust College
and in 1888 will become a teacher in Memphis, Tennessee.
While living in Memphis, she will become an editor and co-
owner of a local Black newspaper called “The Free Speech
and Headlight.” She will write her editorials under the
pen-name “Iola.” When a respected black store owner and
friend of hers is lynched in 1892, she will use her paper
to attack the evils of lynching and encourage the Black
townsmen of Memphis to go west. While attending an editor’s
convention in New York, she will receive word not to return
to Memphis because her life would be in danger. She will
take her cause to England to gain support and earn a
reputation as a fiery orator and courageous leader of her
people. Upon returning to the United States, she will
settle in Chicago and form the Women’s Era Club, the first
civic organization for African American women. The name
will be later changed to the Ida B. Wells Club in honor of
its founder. She will never forget her crusade against
lynching, and, in 1895 will publish “A Red Record,” which
will record race lynching in America. She will keep active
until the birth of her second son, Herman. She will resign
as president of the Ida B. Wells Club and devote her time
to raising her two young sons and subsequently her two
daughters. However, by the start of the 20th century, the
racial strife in the country will be disturbing. Lynching
and race riots will abound across the nation. In 1909, she
will be asked to be a member of the “Committee of 40.”
This committee will establish the groundwork for the
organization now known as the NAACP, the oldest civil
rights organization in the country. She will continue her
tireless crusade for equal rights for African Americans
until she joins the ancestors on March 25, 1931.

1894 – A group of African-American miners in Alabama is killed by
striking white miners.

1904 – Harold Dadford West is born in Flemington, New Jersey. He
will attend the University of Illinois, where he will
receive a bachelor of arts degree in 1925. He will be an
associate professor and head of the science department at
Morris Brown College in Atlanta from 1925 to 1927. In 1927,
he will join the faculty of Meharry Medical College in
Nashville, Tennessee, as an associate professor of
physiological chemistry. During his early years on the
faculty of Meharry Medical College, he will complete a
master of arts degree and a doctorate. He will be a
recipient of a fellowship from the Julius Rosenwald Fund
at the University of Illinois while he earns a master of
arts degree in 1930. Following that he will be a
Rockefeller Foundation Fellow, receiving a doctorate
degree from the same university in 1937. The title of his
dissertation will be “The Chemistry and Nutritive Value of
Essential Amino Acids.” In 1938, he will become professor
of biochemistry and chairperson of the department. His work
in biochemical research will be vast, including studies of
tuberculosis and other bacilli, the antibiotic biocerin,
and aromatic hydrocarbons. He will work with amino acids,
becoming the first to synthesize threonine. As noted in the
Journal of the National Medical Association, among his
other investigations will be “the role of sulfur in
biological detoxification mechanisms; blood serum calcium
levels in the Negro in relation to possible significance in
tuberculosis; relation of B-vitamins, especially
pantothenic acid, to detoxification of sulfa-drugs and
susceptibility to bacillary disease.” In 1952, he will be
named the fifth president of Meharry Medical College, its
first African American president. In 1963, he will be the
first Black American to serve on the State Board of
Education. He will retire as president in 1965, returning
to the position of professor of biochemistry. When he
retires from Meharry in 1973, he will become a trustee of
the college. In his final years he will work on a complete
history of the college. He will join the ancestors on March
5, 1974.

1923 – Mari Evans is born in Toledo, Ohio. She will become an author
and be best known for her poetry collections. She will
attend the University of Toledo and later teach at several
schools in the Midwest and East, including Purdue and
Indiana universities. She will begin five years of writing,
producing, and directing for an Indianapolis television
program, “The Black Experience,” in 1968, the same year her
first poetry collection, “Where Is All the Music?”, is
published. With her second collection, “I Am a Black Woman”
(1970), she will gain acclaim as an important new poet. Her
poem “Who Can Be Born Black” is often anthologized. Her
later collections will include “Nightstar: 1973–1978” (1981),
whose poems will praise blues artists and community heroes
and heroines, and “A Dark and Splendid Mass” (1992). She
will also write works for juvenile readers and several plays,
including “River of My Song” (produced 1977) and the musical
“Eyes” (produced 1979), an adaptation of Zora Neale Hurston’s
“Their Eyes Were Watching God.” She will edit the anthology
“Black Women Writers (1950–1980): A Critical Evaluation”
(1984).

1934 – Donald Payne is born in Newark, New Jersey. He will graduate
from Seton Hall University in 1957. He will be president of
the Young Men’s Christian Association of the United States
from 1970 to 1973. In 1988 he will be elected to the U.S.
Congress becoming the first African American elected to
Congress from the state of New Jersey. He will join the
ancestors on March 6, 2012.

1936 – The movie “The Green Pastures” premieres in New York’s Radio
City Music Hall, featuring Eddie “Rochester” Anderson, the
Hall Johnson Choir, and Rex Ingram as “De Lawd.” The film,
a Warner Brothers production, is William Keighley’s
adaptation of Marc Connelly’s Pulitzer Prize winning
Broadway musical.

1961 – Ralph Boston of the United States, sets what is then the long
jump record at 27′ 2″.

1977 – Janelle Penny Commissiong of Trinidad and Tabago is crowned
Miss Universe. She is the first person of African descent
to win the title.

1988 – Carl Lewis runs 100 meters in 9.78 seconds. Florence Joyner
runs 100 meters in women’s world record time of 10.49
seconds. Jackie Joyner-Kersee sets women’s heptathlete
record of 7,215 points.

1990 – Dr. Gwendolyn Baker was elected President of the New York
Board of Education, the first African American woman to
hold such an office.

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

KRLemmons African American History

July 15 African American Historical Events

* Today in Black History – July 15 *

1822 – The city of Philadelphia opens its public schools for
African Americans.

1864 – General A. J. Smith, with fourteen thousand men, including
a brigade of African American troops, defeats Nathan B.
Forrest at Harrisburg, near Tupelo, Mississippi.

1869 – A.J. Hayne, an African-American captain of the Arkansas
militia, is assassinated.

1929 – Francis Bebey is born in Douala, Cameroon. He will become
a self-taught master guitarist, composer, and sanza player.
During his childhood, his family and teachers will attempt
to alienate him from the roots culture around him. As he
will relate to the press in France in 1984, “I was schooled
to ignore, and even to detest, traditional African styles.”
His musical family will surround him with a variety of
Western instruments, accordion, violin, piano, mandolin,
and–the instrument he will settle on at age nine–guitar.
Despite the efforts of his colonial-era instructors, he
will ‘discover’ Africa. A traditional doctor and musician,
Eya Mouéssé, will lead him to his first African music love
affair: the local harp and mouth-bow, which he will seek out
at all night celebrations in order to hear. As a teenager in
Douala, the capital, he will play guitar and drums in an
ashiko–Cameroonean highlife–band. The experience will lead
inevitably to his discovery of international dance styles of
the era, especially Afro-Cuban music and American swing
jazz. He will go to Paris to study at the Sorbonne in the
mid ’50s, and there his musical path will be altered yet
again when he discovers the classical guitar of Andre
Segovia and will begin to study the instrument. Upon
graduation, he will lead a jazz band in the city, and will
have the distinction of giving future Afropop superstar and
saxophonist Manu Dibangu his first professional gig. He will
come to the United States in 1958 to continue his studies at
New York University. As he travels in Africa and learns more
about its traditions, he will begin to create original
works, including socially aware and sometimes satirical
poems set to the music of traditional instruments like the
West African kora. In 1967, he will win the Grand Literary
Prize of Black Africa for his novel “Le Fils d’Agatha
Moudio.” In the 1980s, when he will be widely renowned as a
novelist, poet, composer and performer, he will begin to
play traditional African instruments himself. He will
record “African Sanza” in 1982, a set of original
compositions for the central African lamellophone (sometimes
called hand piano or thumb piano). His forays into sanza and
also ndewhoo (Pygmee flute) paralleled dramatic changes in
his approach to guitar. Inspired by his explorations in
African music, he will develop distinctive new techniques:
tapping the guitar to produce the sound of a talking drum,
and wrapping one bass string around the next to produce a
percussive snare drum effect. During the years when Afropop
will rise to international attention, he will be often cited
as a guiding force, a kind of father figure in the global
spread of African music. He will continue to tour, as much
as six months a year, with sons Patrick Jr. (Toops) and
Patrick, and also to record new works right to the end. He
will join the ancestors on May 28, 2001 after succumbing to
a sudden heart attack. He is sometimes referred to as the
father of world music.

1951 – Mary White Ovington, one of the white founders of the NAACP
and author of “The Walls Come Tumbling Down,” a history of
the NAACP, dies at the age of 86.

1961 – Forest Whitaker is born in Longview, Texas. He will attend
the Music Conservatory at the University of Southern
California in Los Angeles, as well as the Drama Studio
London. He will debut as a screen actor in 1982’s “Fast
Times at Ridgemont High.” He will follow with notable roles
in “Platoon,” “Good Morning, Vietnam,” and “The Color of
Money.” In 1988, he will play the role of musician Charlie
Parker in the film, “Bird,” for which he will win Best
Actor at the Cannes Film Festival. He will also appear in
the films “The Crying Game,” “Bloodsport,” “Phenomenon” and
direct “Waiting to Exhale.” He will be originally called
upon to write and direct a live-action movie adaptation of
Bill Cosby’s cartoon, “Fat Albert,” but differences between
the two will lead to him leaving production. He will be
considered for the role of Dr. Jonathon Crane (The
Scarecrow) in “Batman Triumphant.” The film will progress
as far as pre-production when Warner Brothers decides to
pull the plug. In 2002, he will be the host and narrator of
“The Twilight Zone,” which will last one season. In 2006,
he will join the cast of FX’s cop serial “The Shield,” as
Lieutenant John Kavanaugh. His performance as the tormented
internal affairs cop will help continue the show’s
popularity among viewers. He will be nominated for, and
win the Academy Award for Best Actor for his portrayal of
Idi Amin, the Ugandan dictator, in 2006 film, “The Last King
of Scotland.”

1968 – Ellen Holly integrates daytime television when she appears
on ABC’s “One Life To Live” as Carla, an African American
“passing” for white. The role is a marked departure for
the New York City-born African American, whose first
professional role was with Joseph Papp’s New York
Shakespeare Festival as the white Desdemona to William
Marshall’s Othello in 1958. Holly had been a featured
player in Papp’s company and had played several
Shakespearean roles, including Lady Macbeth opposite James
Earl Jones in “Macbeth” and Princess Katherine opposite
Robert Hooks in “Henry V,” before being signed to the soap
opera.

1969 – Rod Carew ties the major league record with his 7th steal of
home in a season.

1970 – James McGhee is sworn in as the first African American mayor
of Dayton, Ohio.

1973 – Willie McCovey becomes 15th major league player to hit 400
Home Runs.

1980 – Benjamin Hooks addresses the GOP convention after a lobbying
effort and threatens a walkout by 121 African American
delegates. Hooks speaks before the convention despite
leading candidate Ronald Reagan’s refusal to appear at the
NAACP convention earlier in the month.

1980 – New violence erupts in the riot-torn Liberty City section of
Miami, Florida. Two months after riots that killed 18 and
resulted in $ 100 million in property damage, the violence
will leave 40 injured and result in 40 arrests.

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