Day: September 6, 2015

* 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 Mr. Rene’ A. Perry.

* 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. He will serve in the
United States House of Representatives from 1983 to 2013.

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 Henry Maddox, Jr. is born in Newnan, Georgia. 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 Mr. Rene’ A. Perry.