Author: KRLemmons

* Today in Black History – May 17 *

1875 – The first Kentucky Derby is won by African American jockey
Oliver Lewis riding a horse named Aristides. Fourteen of
the 15 jockeys in the race are African Americans. The
winning purse for the race is $ 2,850. Lewis won the one
and a half mile “Run for the Roses” in a time of 2
minutes, 37-3/4 seconds.

1881 – Frederick Douglass is appointed Recorder of Deeds for the
District of Columbia.

1909 – White firemen on Georgia Railroad strike in protest of the
employment of African American firemen.

1915 – The National Baptist Convention is chartered.

1937 – Hazel Rollins O’Leary is born in Newport News, Virginia. She
will graduate from Fisk University and will receive a law
degree from Rutgers University in 1966. She will gain
experience in the energy regulatory field working for the
Federal Energy Administration. After working for a few years
heading her own energy consulting firm and becoming
president of the Northern States Power Company, she will be
appointed Secretary of Energy in 1993 by President Bill
Clinton.

1942 – Henry St. Claire Fredericks is born in New York City. He
will become an entertainer and songwriter for film. He also
will be a singer of urban folk-blues, better known as Taj
Mahal. He will be one of the first American artists to
blend blues and world music. For over three decades, Taj
Mahal will teach generations the wonders of Robert Johnson,
Sleepy John Estes, Muddy Waters and Jimmy Reed. With a
catalogue of almost thirty albums (including some for
children!), one can find film soundtracks (“Sounder,”
“Brothers”), music for television dramas (“The Tuskegee
Project,” “The Man Who Broke A Thousand Chains”) as well as
his best-loved classics like “Natch’l Blues.”

1944 – Felix Eboue’ joins the ancestors in Cairo, Egypt at the age
of 59 after succumbing to pneumonia. He had been the
highest ranking French colonial administrator of African
descent in the first half of the twentieth century. He had
been a successful administrator for the French government in
the Caribbean and in Africa. During World War II, he had been
a staunch ally of the exiled French government headed by
General Charles de Gaulle.

1954 – The Supreme Court outlaws school segregation in Brown v.
Board of Education. The ruling is a major victory for the
NAACP, led by Thurgood Marshall of the Legal Defense Fund,
and other civil rights groups. The rulings declares that
racially segregated schools were inherently unequal.

1956 – “Sugar” Ray Charles Leonard is born in Wilmington, North
Carolina. Leonard will win the National Golden Gloves
championship at 16, an Olympic gold medal in 1976, and have
a successful professional boxing career. He will be named
Fighter of the Decade for the 1980s. He will enter the
decade a champion and will leave the decade a champion.
In between, he will win an unprecedented five world titles
in five weight classes and compete in some of the era’s
most memorable contests. His career boxing record will be 36
wins (25 by knockout), 3 losses, and 1 tie. After retiring
from the ring, he will become a successful boxing analyst.
He will be enshrined in the International Boxing Hall of
Fame in 1997.

1957 – The Prayer Pilgrimage, attracting a crowd of over 30,000, is
held on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC.
Timed to coincide with the third anniversary of Brown v.
Board of Education, the pilgrimage is organized by Martin
Luther King, Jr., the NAACP, and others to advocate greater
voting and civil rights for African Americans.

1962 – Marshall Logan Scott is elected the first African American
moderator of the Presbyterian Church.

1962 – E. Franklin Frazier joins the ancestors in Washington, DC at
the age of 67. Dr. Franklin had been a leading sociologist
who retired from Howard University and had been the first
African American president of the American Sociological
Association.

1969 – A commemorative stamp of W.C. Handy, “Father of the Blues,”
is issued by the U.S. Postal Service, making Handy the
first African American blues musician honored on a postage
stamp.

1969 – Rev. Thomas Kilgore, a Los Angeles pastor, is elected
president of the predominantly white American Baptist
Convention.

1970 – Hank Aaron becomes the ninth baseball player to get 3,000
hits.

1980 – A major racially motivated civil disturbance occurs in
Miami, Florida after a Tampa, Florida jury acquitted four
former Miami police officers of fatally beating African
American insurance executive Arthur McDuffie. The
disturbance in that city’s Liberty City neighborhood
results in eighteen persons being killed and more than
three hundred persons injured.

1987 – The work of four contemporary African American artists –
Sam Gilliam, Keith Morrison, William T. Williams, and
Martha Jackson-Jarvis – is shown in the inaugural
exhibition of the new Anacostia Museum in Washington, DC.

1987 – Eric “Sleepy” Floyd of the Golden State Warriors sets a
playoff record for points in a single quarter. He pours
in 29 points in the fourth period in a game this night
against Pat Riley’s Los Angeles Lakers.

1994 – The U.N. Security Council approves a peacekeeping force and
an arms embargo for violence-racked Rwanda.

1997 – Laurent Kabila declares himself the new President of Zaire
and renames it the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The
country had been previously under the 37 year rule of
dictator Mobutu Sese Seko.

2012 – Donna Summer (born LaDonna Adrian Gaines), the “Queen of
Disco” whose hits included “Hot Stuff,” “Bad Girls,” “Love
to Love You Baby” and “She Works Hard for the Money,” joins
the ancestors in Naples, Florida, after succumbing to lung
cancer at the age of 63.

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

* Today in Black History – May 16 *

1792 – Denmark abolishes the importation of slaves.

1857 – Juan Morel Campos is born in Ponce, Puerto Rico. He will
become a musician and composer who will be one of the
first to integrate Afro-Caribbean styles and folk rhythms
into the classical European musical model. He will be
considered the father of the “danza.” He will join the
ancestors on May 12, 1896.

1917 – Harry T. Burleigh, composer, pianist, and singer, is
awarded the NAACP’s Spingarn Medal for excellence in the
field of creative music.

1929 – John Conyers, Jr. is born in Detroit, Michigan. He will
be elected to the House of Representatives from Michigan’s
1st District in 1964, where he will advocate home rule and
Congressional representation for the District of Columbia.
He will be the principal sponsor of the 1965 Voting Rights
Act and the 1983 Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday bill, as
well as a founder of the Congressional Black Caucus.

1930 – Lillie Mae Jones is born in Flint, Michigan. She will
become an uncompromising jazz singer using the stage name,
Betty Carter, who will earn the nickname “Betty Bebop” for
her bop improvisational style. She will tour with Lionel
Hampton and Miles Davis during her career. In 1997, she
will receive the National Medal of Arts award from
President Bill Clinton. She will join the ancestors on
September 26, 1998.

1966 – Stokely Carmichael (later named Kwame Ture) is elected
chairman of SNCC, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating
Committee, a group formed during the Freedom Marches and
dedicated to voter registration in the South.

1966 – Janet Damita Jackson is born in Gary, Indiana. Sister of
the famous Jacksons of the Jackson 5 singing group, she
will have her own successful career, first in acting
(“Good Times,” “Diff’rent Strokes,” and “Fame”), then as
a solo recording artist. Her albums “Control” and
“Rhythm Nation 1814” will earn her five American Music
Awards and a Grammy award.

1966 – The National Welfare Rights Organization is organized.

1977 – Modibo Keita joins the ancestors in Bamako, Mali. He was
the first president of Mali, serving from 1960 to 1968.

1979 – Asa Philip Randolph, labor leader and civil rights pioneer,
joins the ancestors in New York at the age of 90.

1985 – Michael Jordan is named Rookie of the Year in the National
Basketball Association. Jordan, of the Chicago Bulls, was
the number three draft choice. At the time, Michael was
third in the league scoring a 28.2 average and fourth in
steals with 2.39 per game.

1990 – Sammy Davis Jr., actor, dancer, singer and world class
entertainer, joins the ancestors in Beverly Hills,
California at the age of 64 from throat cancer. Davis,
born in Harlem, was a member of the Hollywood “Rat Pack.”
He also had starring roles in a host of Broadway musicals
and motion pictures and had been an entertainer for over
sixty years.

1997 – In Zaire, President Mobutu Sese Seko ends 32 years of
autocratic rule, ceding control of the country to rebel
forces.

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

* Today in Black History – May 15 *

1795 – John Morront, the first African American missionary to work
with Indians, is ordained as a Methodist minister in
London, England.

1802 – Jean Ignace joins the ancestors in Baimbridge, Guadeloupe
in the revolt against the Napoleonic troops sent to the
Caribbean island to reimpose slavery.

1891 – The British Central African Protectorate (now Malawi) is
established.

1918 – In a World War I incident that will later be known as “The
Battle of Henry Johnson,” the African American attacks
advancing Germans, frees sentry Needham Roberts, and forces
the retreat of the enemy troops. Johnson and Roberts will
be awarded the Croix de Guerre, France’s highest military
award. They are the first Americans ever to win the award.

1923 – “The Chip Woman’s Fortune” by Willis Richardson opens at the
Frazee Theatre on Broadway. The play, staged by the
Ethiopian Art Theatre of Chicago, is the first dramatic work
by an African American playwright to be presented on
Broadway.

1934 – Alvin Francis Poussaint is born in the village of East Harlem
in New York City. After being educated at Columbia College,
Cornell University Medical School, and the University of
California’s Neuropsychiatric Institute, he will become a
psychiatrist and educator specializing in African American
psychological and social issues. He will begin his career
teaching at Tufts Medical School and Harvard Medical School.
He will then join Operation Push. He will be a consultant
for the television series, “The Cosby Show” and “A Different
World, hired to ensure that the story lines present positive
images of African Americans. He will later become Associate
Dean and professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School
(1993).

1938 – Diane Nash is born in Chicago, Illinois. She will become an
civil rights activist and one of the founders of the Student
Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in 1960. She will be part
of the first group of civil rights activists who will refuse
to pay bail for protesting under the “Jail, No Bail”
strategy employed in the South. She will later marry fellow
civil rights activist James Bevel and take his last name as
her middle name. She and her husband will receive the Rosa
Parks award from the Southern Christian Leadership
Conference in 1965.

1942 – The 93rd Infantry is activated at Fort Huachuca, Arizona. It
is the first African American division formed during World
War II and is assigned to combat duty in the South Pacific.

1946 – Camilla Williams appears in the title role of Madama
Butterfly with the New York City Opera. She is the first
African American female concert singer to sign a contract
with a major American opera company.

1953 – Former Heavyweight Champion, Jersey Joe Walcott, is knocked
out by Rocky Marciano at Chicago Stadium at two minutes, 25
seconds of the first round.

1970 – Two African American students (Phillip Lafayette Gibbs and
James Earl Green) at Jackson State University in
Mississippi are killed when police open fire during student
protests.

1983 – James VanDerZee joins the ancestors in Washington, DC at the
age of 96. He had been a prominent photographer who
recorded and contributed to the Harlem Renaissance. Over
his long career, which extended into his 90s, he captured
the images of many famous African Americans.

1992 – Mary M. Monteith (later Simpkins) joins the ancestors in
Columbia, South Carolina. She was a civil right activist
who had been a state secretary of the NAACP and
instrumental in the fight to desegregate South Carolina
public schools.

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

* Today in Black History – May 14 *

1867 – A riot occurs in Mobile, Alabama, after an African American
mass meeting. One African American and one white are
killed.

1885 – Erskine Henderson wins the Kentucky Derby riding Joe Cotton.
The horse’s trainer is another African American, Alex
Perry.

1897 – Sidney Joseph Bechet is born in New Orleans, Louisiana. A
member of both Duke Ellington’s and Noble Sissle’s
orchestras, he will move to France and there will achieve
the greatest success of his career. He will be perhaps the
first notable jazz saxophonist. He will be the greatest
jazz soloist of the 1920s along with Louis Armstrong. He
will join the ancestors on May 14, 1959 after succumbing to
lung cancer. In 1968, he will be inducted into Down Beat
magazine’s Jazz Hall of Fame.

1898 – Arthur James ‘Zutty’ Singleton is born in Bunkie, Louisiana.
He will become a percussion musician and bandleader. He
will start as a drummer at the age of 15 and will work in
a variety of bands until he forms his own in 1920. He will
eventually make his way to Chicago and will become part of
the “Chicago School of Jazz.” He will be primarily
remembered for introducing sock cymbals and wire brushes
as percussion accessories. These innovations will place
him in demand as an accompanist for jazz greats like Louis
Armstrong, Fats Waller, Dizzy Gillespie, Jelly Roll Morton,
and Charlie Parker. He will perform primarily in New York
City from 1953 until 1970. He will join the ancestors on
July 14, 1975.

1906 – Ngwazi Hastings Kamuzu Banda is born near Kasungu, British
Central African Protectorate. Even though his official
birthdate is cited as 1906, many sources show his birth
date as 1898. He will become Malawi’s first prime minister
after independence in 1963. In 1966, he will elected
Malawi’s president in 1966. He will lead Malawi until
1994. He will join the ancestors in Johannesburg, South
Africa on November 25, 1997.

1913 – Clara Stanton Jones is born in St. Louis, Missouri. She
will become the first African American director of the
Detroit Public Library and the first African American
president of the American Library Association. She will
join the ancestors on September 30, 2012.

1943 – Tania Justina Leon is born in Havana, Cuba. She will become a
pianist, composer, and orchestral conductor. Her music
style will encompass Afro-Cuban rhythm and elements of
jazz and gospel. She will emigrate to the United States
in 1967 and in 1969 will join the Dance Theater of Harlem
as a pianist. She will later become the artistic director
of the troupe. Some her compositions for the Dance
Theater of Harlem will include “Tones,” “Beloved,” and
“Dougla.” She will debut as a conductor in 1971 and
starting in 1980 when she leaves the Dance Theater of
Harlem, will serve as guest conductor and composer with
orchestras in the United States and Europe. In 1993, she
will become an advisor to the New York Philharmonic
conductor, Kurt Masur on contemporary music.

1959 – Soprano saxophonist Sidney Joseph Bechet joins the
ancestors in Paris, France on his sixty second birthday
after succumbing to cancer.

1961 – A bus, with the first group of Freedom Riders, is bombed
and burned by segregationists outside Anniston, Alabama.
The group is attacked in Anniston and Birmingham.

1963 – Twenty-year-old Arthur Ashe becomes the first African
American to make the U.S. Davis Cup tennis team.

1966 – Georgia Douglas Johnson joins the ancestors in Washington,
DC at the age of 88. She was a poet and playwright. While
she never lived in Harlem, she is associated with the
Harlem Renaissance because her home was a regular oasis
for many of the writers of that literary movement. Her
home hosted writer workshops and discussion groups while
also being a place of lodging for those writers when they
visited Washington, DC. Her own poetry and plays were
very popular with African American audiences during the
1920s.

1969 – John B. McLendon becomes the first African American coach
in the ABA when he signs a two-year contract with the
Denver Nuggets.

1970 – Two students are killed by police officers in a major
racial disturbance at Jackson State University in
Jackson, Mississippi.

1986 – Reggie Jackson hits his 537th home run passing Mickey
Mantle into 6th place of all time home run hitters.

1989 – Kirby Puckett becomes the first professional baseball
player since 1948 to hit 6 consecutive doubles.

1995 – Myrlie Evers-Williams (widow of Medgar Evers) is sworn in
to head the NAACP, pledging to lead the civil rights group
away from its recent troubles and restore it as a
political and social force.

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

* Today in Black History – May 13 *

1865 – Two white regiments and an African American regiment, the
Sixty-second U.S. Colored Troops, fight in the last action
of the civil war at White’s Ranch, Texas.

1871 – Alcorn A&M College (now Alcorn A&M University) opens in
Lorman, Mississippi.

1888 – Princess Isabel of Brazil signs the “Lei Aurea” (Golden
Law) which abolishes slavery. Slavery is ended in part to
appease the efforts of abolitionists, but mostly because
it is less expensive for employers to hire wageworkers
than to keep slaves. Plantation owners oppose the law
because they are not compensated for releasing their
slaves. The passage of the law hastens the fall of the
Brazilian monarchy.

1891 – Isaac Murphy becomes the first jockey to win three Kentucky
Derbys as he wins the fabled race astride Kingman.
Kingman was trained by Dud Allen, an African American
trainer.

1914 – Joseph Louis Barrow is born in Lexington, Alabama. He will
be better known as Joe Louis. “The Brown Bomber” will
hold the heavyweight crown from his 1937 title match with
James J. Braddock until his first retirement in 1949. In
his 71 professional fights, he will amass a record of 68
victories, 54 by knockouts. He will join the ancestors on
April 12, 1981.

1933 – John Junior “Johnny” Roseboro is born in Ashland, Ohio. He
will become a professional baseball player in 1957 and will
play as a catcher for the Dodgers from 1957-1967, Minnesota
Twins from 1968 to 1969, and the Washington Senators in
1970. He will join the ancestors on August 16, 2002.

1938 – Louis Armstrong and his Orchestra record the New Orleans’
jazz standard, “When The Saints Go Marching In”, on Decca
Records making it extremely popular.

1943 – Mary Wells is born in Detroit, Michigan. She will become a
singer for the Motown label and record the hits, “My Guy,”
“Two Lovers,” “You Beat Me to the Punch,” and “The One Who
Really Loves You.” She will join the ancestors on July 26,
1992 after succumbing to pneumonia and complications of
larynx cancer.

1949 – Franklin Ajaye is born in Brooklyn, New York. He will
become a comedy writer, comedian and actor. He will appear
in the movies “The Jazz Singer,” “Car Wash,” “Hysterical,”
“The Wrong Guys,” and “Jock Jokes.”

1950 – Steveland Judkins Morris is born in Saginaw, Michigan. As
12-year-old Little Stevie Wonder, he will become a singing
and musical sensation notable for “Fingertips, Part 2.”
He will continue to record through-out adulthood, with
the albums “Talking Book,” “Songs in the Key of Life,” “The
Woman in Red,” and the soundtrack to the movie “Jungle
Fever.” Among other awards, he will win more than 16 Grammys
and a 1984 best song Oscar for “I Just Called to Say I Love
You.” He will be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of
Fame in 1989.

1961 – Dennis Keith Rodman is born in Trenton, New Jersey. He will
become a professional basketball player. He will play at the
small forward position in his early years before becoming a
power forward. He will earn NBA All-Defensive First Team honors
seven times and win the NBA Defensive Player of the Year Award
twice. He will also lead the NBA in rebounds per game for a
record seven consecutive years and win five NBA championships.
His biography at NBA.com will state that he is “arguably the
best rebounding forward in NBA history”. On April 1, 2011, the
Detroit Pistons will retire his No. 10 jersey, and he will be
inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame
later that year.

1966 – Federal education funding is denied to 12 school districts
in the South because of violations of the 1964 Civil Rights
Act.

1971 – (James) Charles Evers becomes the first African American
mayor of Fayette, Mississippi.

1971 – Aretha Franklin, the Queen of Soul, receives a gold record
for her version of “Bridge Over Troubled Water”, originally
a Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel tune.

1978 – Henry Rono of Kenya sets the record for the 3,000 meter
steeplechase (8:05.4). The record will stand for eleven
years.

1979 – Max Robinson becomes the first African American network news
anchor when he anchors ABC’s World News Tonight.

1983 – Reggie Jackson becomes the first major leaguer to strike out
2,000 times.

1985 – Philadelphia Police bomb a house held by the group “Move”,
killing eleven persons. Ramona Africa and a 13-year-old
boy are the only people to escape the inferno that the
blast caused inside 6221 Osage Street. The heat from the
blast also ignites a fire that destroys 60 other homes and
leaves 250 people homeless, angry and heartbroken in a
working-class section of West Philadelphia.

1990 – George Stallings is ordained as the first bishop of the
newly established African American Catholic Church.
Stallings broke from the Roman Catholic Church in 1989,
citing the church’s failure to meet the needs of African
American Catholics.

1995 – Army Captain Lawrence Rockwood is convicted at his court-
martial in Fort Drum, New York, of conducting an
unauthorized investigation of reported human rights abuses
at a Haitian prison (the next day, Rockwood is dismissed
from the military, but receives no prison time).

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