KRLemmons African American History

July 5 African American Historical Events

* Today in Black History – July 5 *

1852 – At a meeting sponsored by the Rochester Ladies’ Anti-
Slavery Society, in Rochester Hall, Rochester, New
York, Frederick Douglass illustrates the full shame
of slavery, delivering a speech that takes aim at
the pieties of the nation — the cherished memories
of its revolution, its principles of liberty, and its
moral and religious foundation. The Fourth of July,
a day celebrating freedom, is used by Douglass to
remind his audience of liberty’s unfinished business.
“What to the American Slave is Your Fourth of July?”:
“To him your celebration is a sham…to cover up
crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages.
There is not a nation of the earth guilty of practices
more shocking and bloody than are the people of the
United States at this very hour.” The text of this
speech can be seen on the Information Man’s web site
http://www.informationman.com/douglass.htm .

1892 – Andrew Beard is issued patent number 478,271 for his
rotary engine.

1899 – Anna Arnold (later Hedgeman) is born in Marshalltown,
Iowa. She will become the first African American
woman to serve in the cabinet of a New York City mayor
(1954), a special projects coordinator for the
Commission on Religion and Race of the National Council
of Churches, and recruiter of 40,000 Protestant
churchmen to participate in the 1963 March on Washington.
She will serve as teacher, lecturer, and consultant to
numerous educational centers, boards, and colleges and
universities, particularly in the area of African American
studies. She will travel to Africa and lecture throughout
the United States, especially in black schools and
colleges, as an example of a black hero. She will stress
to students the importance of understanding history as a
basis to achieve equality. She will hold memberships in
numerous organizations, such as the Child Study
Association, Community Council of the City of New York,
National Urban League, NAACP, United Nations Association,
Advisory Committee on Alcoholism, Advisory Committee on
Drug Addiction, and the National Conference of Christians
and Jews. She will author “The Trumpet Sounds” (1964),
“The Gift of Chaos” (1977), and articles in numerous
organizational publications, newspapers, and journals.
She will join the ancestors on January 17, 1990.
1913 – Overton Amos Lemons is born in Dequincy, Louisiana. He will
become a rhythm and blues vocalist better known as Smiley
Lewis. He will be best rememberd for his song, “I Hear You
Knockin’.” He will join the ancestors on October 7, 1966
after succumbing to stomach cancer.

1947 – The first African American baseball player in the American
League joins the lineup of the Cleveland Indians. Larry
Doby plays his first game against the Chicago White Sox.
He will play for both the Indians and the White Sox
during his 13-year, major-league career.

1949 – The New York Giants purchase the contracts of Monty Irvin
& Henry Thompson, their first African American players.

1966 – Three nights of race rioting in Omaha, Nebraska, result
in the calling out of the National Guard.

1969 – Tom Mboya, Economics Minister, joins the ancestors after
being assassinated in Narobi, Kenya.

1975 – Arthur Ashe becomes the first African American to win the
Wimbledon Men’s Singles Championship when he defeats
Jimmy Conners.

1975 – The Cape Verde Islands gain independence after 500 years
of Portuguese rule.

1975 – Forty persons are injured in racial disturbances in Miami,
Florida.

1989 – Barry Bond’s home run sets father-son (Bobby) HR record at
408.

1990 – Zina Garrison upsets Steffi Graf in the Wimbledon semi-
finals.

1994 – In an attempt to halt a surge of Haitian refugees, the
Clinton administration announces it is refusing entry to
new Haitian boat people.

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

KRLemmons African American History

July 4 African American Historical Events

* Today in Black History – July 4 *

1776 – The Declaration of Independence is adopted. A section
written by Thomas Jefferson denouncing slavery is deleted.

1779 – Colonel Arent Schuyler De Puyster notes the presence of
“Jean Baptiste Point DuSable, a handsome Negro, well-
educated and settled at Eschikagou.” It is the first
recorded mention of “DuSable, who settled the area that
will become known as Chicago.

1827 – New York State abolishes slavery.

1845 – Edmonia “Wildfire” Lewis is born in Greenwich, New York. After
living with Chippewa relatives, she will enroll in Oberlin
College’s preparatory and college program. Changing her
name to Mary Edmonia Lewis, she will travel to Boston and
abroad where she will become one of the most outstanding
sculptors of her day. Among her most famous works will be
“Forever Free,” “Hagar in Her Despair in the Wilderness”
and “Death of Cleopatra.” She will join the ancestors on
September 17, 1907 in London, England.

1875 – White Democrats kill several African Americans in terrorist
attacks in Vicksburg, Mississippi.

1881 – Tuskegee Institute opens in Tuskegee, Alabama, with Booker
T. Washington as its first president.

1892 – Arthur George Gaston is born in a log cabin, built by his
grandparents, former slaves, in Marengo County, Alabama,
near Demopolis. He will drop out of school after the
tenth grade and will become one of the most successful
proponents of Booker T. Washington’s brand of capitalism.
A Washington disciple as a child, Gaston became a self-made
millionaire and one of the richest African American men in
America in the 1950s. His many businesses thrived on the
social separateness legislated by the Jim Crow laws in
segregated Alabama. Gaston will make it his personal
mission to urge African Americans to seek “green power,” a
term he remembered Washington using. His quiet role in the
civil right movement was also noted, saying once that
African Americans needed a Martin Luther King, Jr. of
economics to fire them up the way King had about
integration. Gaston made the following statement that
summed up his position on economic empowerment for people
of color — “It doesn’t do any good to arrive at first-
class citizenship, if you arrive broke.” He will live to
the age of 103, when he joins the ancestors on January 19,
1996.

1910 – Jack Johnson KOs James Jeffries in 15 rounds, ending
Jeffries’ come-back try.

1938 – William Harrison “Bill” Withers, Jr. is born the youngest
of nine children in the coal mining town of in Slab Fork,
West Virginia. He will become a Rhythm and Blues singer
and songwriter who will perform and record from the late
1960s until the mid 1980s. Some of his best-known songs
will include “Ain’t No Sunshine,” “Use Me,” “Lean on Me”,
“Grandma’s Hands”, and “Just the Two of Us”.

1959 – The Cayman Islands, separated from Jamaica, are made a
British Crown Colony.

1963 – Marian Anderson and Ralph Bunche receive the first Medals
of Freedom from President John F. Kennedy, the creator of
the award.

1970 – 100 persons are injured in racially motivated disturbances
in Asbury Park, New Jersey.

1990 – “2 Live Crew” release “Banned in the USA”; the lyrics quote
“The Star Spangled Banner” & “The Gettysburg Address.”

1991 – The National Civil Rights Museum officially opens at the
Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, the site of the
assassination of civil rights leader Martin Luther King,
Jr.

1994 – Rwandan Tutsi rebels seize control of most of their
country’s capital, Kigali, and continue advancing on areas
held by the Hutu-led government.

2003 – Barry White, Rhythm & Blues balladeer, joins the ancestors
at the age of 58 after succumbing to complications of high
blood pressure, kidney disease and a mild stroke. His
hits included “Can’t Get Enough of Your Love,” “Babe” and
“I’ve Got So Much to Give.”

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

KRLemmons African American Authors, Resources

2014 Arbuthnot Lecture: Andrea Davis Pinkney

The 2014 Arbuthnot Lecturer was Andrea Davis Pinkney,  vice president and editor at large of Scholastic’s Trade Books, will deliver the 2014 May Hill Arbuthnot Honor Lecture. The announcement was made Monday, January 28, 2013 by the Association for Library Service to Children (ALSC), a division of the American Library Association (ALA), during the ALA Midwinter Meeting held Jan. 25 – 29, in Seattle.

“We are honored to recognize Andrea Pinkney for her significant contributions to literature for young people provided through a body of work that brings a deeper understanding of African American heritage,” stated 2014 Arbuthnot Committee Chair Susan Moore.

Andrea Davis Pinkney is a New York Times best-selling writer of more than 20 books for children and young adults including picture books, novels and nonfiction. During the course of her career, Pinkney has launched many high-profile publishing and entertainment entities, including Hyperion Books for Children/Disney Publishing’s Jump at the Sun imprint, the first African American children’s book imprint at a major publishing company.

Pinkney’s work includes such award winning titles as “Sit-In: How Four Friends Stood Up by Sitting Down,” illustrated by Brian Pinkney, published by Little, Brown and Company; “Sojourner Truth’s Step-Stomp Stride,” illustrated by Brian Pinkney, published by Disney/Jump at the Sun Books; “Let it Shine: Stories of Black Women Freedom Fighters,” illustrated by Stephen Alcorn, published by Harcourt,a Coretta Scott King Author Honor Book;and “Duke Ellington: The Piano Prince and His Orchestra,” illustrated by Brian Pinkney, published by Hyperion Books for Children, a Caldecott Honor and Coretta Scott King Honor Book.

The University of Minnesota was selected as the host site for the 2014 Arbuthnot Lecture. The press release on the host selection can be read here.  A digital exhibit, in conjunction with the 2014 Arbuthnot Lecture, can be accessed here.

The lecture can be viewed on Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LC5y1RTGEZQ

KRLemmons African American Authors

R.I.P. Walter Dean Myers

I learned that Walter Dean Myers passed away yesterday, July 2nd.  A prolific author of children’s and young adult books, an award winning author, Myers was the voice for the young African American male.  He will surely be missed by many.

Thanks to Chery Hudson, who posted an excerpt from his 2009 Arbuthnot Lecture at the Children’s Defense Fund’s Alex Haley Farm.  He wrote about the “Geography of the Heart.”

I want my readers to come to me, but I am willing to make the journey to where they are. I will appreciate the valleys of their lives, and the mountains. I will swim the rivers of their doubts and traverse the deserts of frustration they must traverse. It is not a fixed place that we must reach, but rather the common geography of the human heart.
What I am trying to do with my books is to bring familiar cultural elements into my stories while at the same time challenging my readers to expand their horizons.
I want to humanize the people I depict. I want to show them struggling, yes. To show them living within their own cultural heritage, yes. But even more I want to show them in the universal striving for love and meaning that we all experience.
I write about young men testing the boundaries of manhood and young women trying to build relationships. I write about young people abandoned as being excessive to the global economy and who have become within the United States not strangers in a strange land, but strangers in the familiar garden they should be calling home.
I need, we need to bring our young people into the fullness of America’s promise and to do that we must rediscover who they are and who we are and be prepared to make the journey with them whatever it takes. We must convince our leaders that it is easier to build strong children than to repair broken adults and, once we convince them of that great truth, we must make them care about it. My conceit is that literature can be a small path along that journey.

Thank you Walter Dean Myers for sharing your literature with the world.

KRLemmons African American History

July 3 African American Historical Events

* Today in Black History – July 3 *

1848 – Slaves are freed in the Danish West Indies (now the U.S.
Virgin Islands).

1871 – Joseph H. Douglass, grandson of Frederick Douglass, is
born in Washington, DC. A student of the New England
Conservatory of Music in Boston, Douglass will become a
noted violinist.

1915 – U.S. military forces occupy Haiti, and remain until 1934.

1917 – Three days of racial riots end in East St. Louis, Illinois.
At least 40 and as many as 200 African Americans are
killed and hundreds more are wounded.

1928 – Charles Waddell Chestnutt, author of “The Conjure Woman”
and other works, is awarded the NAACP’s Spingarn Medal
for his “work as a literary artist depicting the life and
struggle of Americans of Negro descent.”

1940 – Fontella Bass is born in St. Louis, Missouri. Her mother is
Martha Bass (of the Clara Ward Singers) who exposed her to
music at an early age. She was singing in her church’s
choir at six years old, but as a teenager, she will be
attracted by more secular music. Throughout high school she
will be singing R&B songs at local contests and fairs. She
will eventually move to Chicago and sign with Chess Records.
She will record the song, “Rescue Me,” which will shoot up
the charts in the fall and winter of 1965. After a month at
the top of the Rhythm & Blues charts, the song will reach
#4 at the pop charts. Her only album with Chess Records,
“The New Look,” will sell reasonably well, but she will
decide to leave the label after only two years, in 1967. In
1970 she will record two albums with the Art Ensemble of
Chicago, “The Art Ensemble of Chicago with Fontella Bass”
and “Les Stances A Sophie.” The latter is the soundtrack
from the French movie of the same title. Her vocals, backed
by the powerful, pulsating push of the band has allowed the
“Theme De YoYo” to remain an underground cult classic ever
since. The next few years will find her at a number of
different labels, but with no notable successes. After her
second album, “Free,” flopped in 1972, she will retire from
music. She will return occasionally, being featured as a
background vocalist on several recordings, including those
of her husband, Lester Bowie, a jazz trumpeter and member
of the Art Ensemble of Chicago. In the 1990s she will host
a short-lived Chicago radio talk show, and will release
several gospel records on independent labels. She will be
inducted into the St. Louis Walk of Fame in the Loop in
May 2000. She will join the ancestors on December 26, 2012.

1947 – The Cleveland Indians purchase the contract of Larry Doby,
the first African American to play in the American League.

1962 – Jackie Robinson, who broke the color line in professional
baseball, is the first African American inducted into the
National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum, in Cooperstown,
New York.

1966 – NAACP officially disassociates itself from the “Black Power”
doctrine.

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

KRLemmons African American Music

June 30 Artist of the Day: Carmen McRae

Carmen McRae is June 30 Artist of the day.  She was a legendary jazz singer that spanned over five decades.  Read about this fascinating vocalist here:

NPR: http://www.npr.org/artists/16892612/carmen-mcrae

Black Past: http://www.blackpast.org/aah/mcrae-carmen-1920-1994

Youtube videos: “I’m Glad There is You” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJaD09M5Iko “I Won’t Last a Day” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4h8TaOLsHDY

KRLemmons African American Music

June 29 Artist of the Day: Reverend Thomas Andrew Dorsey

June 29 Artist of the Day is Reverend Thomas Andrew Dorsey.  He became known as the “Father of Gospel Music”.  Read about this fascinating artist here:

NPR: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5152069

PBS: http://www.pbs.org/thisfarbyfaith/people/thomas_dorsey.html

Georgia Music Magazine: http://georgiamusicmag.com/the-life-and-legacy-of-the-rev-thomas-andrew-dorsey/

Youtubevideo: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJsV495hYhE, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nEosw5GUCzQ, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4d7foVat8xk

KRLemmons African American Music

June 28 Artist of the Day: Betty Carter

Betty Carter is June 28 Artist of the day.  She is a jazz and blues singer and founder of Jazz Ahead Program.  Read about this multitalented vocalist here:

AllMusic: http://www.allmusic.com/artist/betty-carter-mn0000048908

NPR: http://www.npr.org/artists/93579473/betty-carter, http://www.npr.org/2008/08/14/93572181/betty-carter-fiercely-individual

Kennedy Center: https://www.kennedy-center.org/programs/jazz/jazzahead/, http://www.kennedy-center.org/explorer/artists/?entity_id=9799&source_type=B

Youtube videos: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D6yvktTx2Ug: , “Giant Steps” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P4AyCqCHCK0, “How High the Moon” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yFywEM5tGOY, Medley http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iemkYXz8UNs

KRLemmons African American Music, Resources

June 27 Artist of the Day: Max Roach

Max Roach is June 27 Artist of the day. He was a jazz drummer, and married to Abbey Lincoln.  Read about this influential artist here:

AllMusic: http://www.allmusic.com/artist/max-roach-mn0000396372

NPR: http://www.npr.org/artists/15622859/max-roach, http://www.npr.org/blogs/ablogsupreme/2012/01/10/144900022/max-roach-drums-front-and-center, http://www.npr.org/2007/08/16/12862395/remembering-max-roach-rhythmic-innovator

Youtube videos: “Cherokee” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W9cUWqkHCQ8, “Freedom Now” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5Dj7HQEasQ