Day: September 5, 2015

* 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 Mr. Rene’ A. Perry.

* 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.

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

* 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 Mr. Rene’ A. Perry.

* 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 Mr. Rene’ A. Perry.

* 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 Mr. Rene’ A. Perry.