Category: African American History

* 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.

* Today in Black History – July 1 *

1863 – The Dutch West Indies abolishes slavery.

1870 – James W. Smith is the first African American to enter
the U.S. Military Academy (West Point).

1873 – Henry O. Flipper of Georgia is the second African
American to enter West Point .

1889 – Frederick Douglass is named minister to Haiti.

1893 – Walter Francis White, NAACP leader, is born in Atlanta,
Georgia. After graduating from Atlanta University in 1916,
he will become an official with the Standard Life Insurance
Company, one of the largest Black-owned businesses of its
day. He will also take part in civic affairs, helping to
found the Atlanta branch of the NAACP that same year. With
White as secretary, the branch will quickly score a victory
for educational equality by preventing the school board
from eliminating seventh grade in the Black public schools.
In 1917, James Weldon Johnson, field secretary for the
NAACP will visit Atlanta. He will be impressed with White’s
enthusiasm and political skills and will persuaded the
national board of directors to appoint him the assistant
secretary. In January, 1918 he will move to New York and
join the NAACP staff. For the next ten years his primary
responsibility will be conducting undercover investigations
of lynchings and race riots. Using his fair complexion to
his advantage, he will approach members of lynch mobs and
other whites who had witnessed or were involved in racial
violence. He will trick them into giving him candid
accounts that the NAACP would then publicize. During these
years he will investigate forty-one lynchings and eight
race riots, including the riots in Elaine, Arkansas, and
Chicago, Illinois, during the Red Summer of 1919. On more
than one occasion he will narrowly escape vigilantes who
discover his true identity. He will become the Executive
Director of the NAACP from 1931 until he joins the ancestors
on March 21, 1955.

1898 – The African American 10th Calvary charges Spanish
Forces at El Caney, Cuba, and relieves Teddy
Roosevelt’s “Rough Riders.”

1899 – Rev. Thomas Andrew Dorsey, “Father of Gospel Music” is
born in Villa Rica, Georgia. Although he will begin
touring with Ma Rainey, he will leave the blues in
1932 to work as a choir director for Pilgrim Baptist
Church. A gospel legend, among his most popular songs
will be “A Little Talk with Jesus.” His father was a minister
and his mother a piano teacher. He will learn to play blues
piano as a young man. After studying music formally in
Chicago, he will become an agent for Paramount Records. He
put together a band for Ma Rainey called the “Wild Cats Jazz
Band” in 1924. He will be credited with more than 400 blues
and jazz songs. Personal tragedy will lead Dorsey to leave
secular music behind and begin writing and recording what he
called “gospel” music. He was the first to use that term. His
first wife, Nettie, who had been Rainey’s wardrobe mistress,
died in childbirth in 1932 along with his first son. In his
grief, he wrote his most famous song, one of the most famous
of all gospel songs, “Take My Hand, Precious Lord”.
Unhappy with the treatment he received at the hands of
established publishers, he will open the first Black gospel
music publishing company, Dorsey House of Music. He will also
found his own gospel choir and will be a founder and first
president of the National Convention of Gospel Choirs and
Choruses. His influence will not be limited to African
American music, as white musicians also follow his lead.
“Precious Lord” will be recorded by Elvis Presley, Mahalia
Jackson, Aretha Franklin, Clara Ward, Roy Rogers, and
Tennessee Ernie Ford, among hundreds of others. It will be a
favorite gospel song of the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. and
be sung at the rally the night before his assassination, and
at his funeral by Mahalia Jackson, per his request. It will
also be a favorite of President Lyndon B. Johnson, who will
requested it to be sung at his funeral. He wrote “Peace in
the Valley” for Mahalia Jackson in 1937, which will also
become a gospel standard. He will be the first African
American elected to the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame and
also the first in the Gospel Music Association’s Living Hall
of Fame. His papers will be preserved at Fisk University,
along with those of W.C. Handy, George Gershwin, and the Fisk
Jubilee Singers. He will join the ancestors in Chicago,
Illinois on January 23, 1993.

1915 – William James ‘Willie’ Dixon is born in Vickburg, Mississippi.
He will be a producer for Chess and Checker Records in
Chicago and considered one of the key figures in the creation
of Chicago blues. He worked with Chuck Berry, Muddy Waters,
Howlin’ Wolf, Led Zeppelin, Otis Rush, Bo Diddley, Little
Walter, Sonny Boy Williamson, Koko Taylor, Little Milton,
Eddie Boyd, Jimmy Witherspoon, Lowell Fulson, Willie Mabon,
Memphis Slim, Washboard Sam, Jimmy Rogers, and others.
His genius as a songwriter lay in refurbishing archaic
Southern motifs, in contemporary arrangements. This produced
songs with the backbone of the blues, and the agility of pop
music. British R&B bands of the 1960s will constantly draw
on the Dixon songbook for inspiration. In addition, as his
songwriting and production work started to take a backseat,
his organizational ability will be utilized, putting together
all-star, Chicago based blues ensembles for work in Europe.
His health will deteriorate in the 1970s and 1980s, due to
long-term diabetes, and eventually his leg will have to be
amputated. He will join the ancestors in Burbank,
California on January 29, 1992 and will be posthumously
inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1994.

1917 – A three day race riot starts in East St. Louis, Illinois.
Estimates of the number killed ranges from forty to two
hundred. There had been an earlier race riot that
occurred on May 27, 1917. Martial law is declared. A
congressional investigating committee will say, “It is
not possible to give accurately the number of dead. At
least thirty-nine Negroes and eight white people were
killed outright, and hundreds of Negroes were wounded
and maimed. ‘The bodies of the dead Negroes,’ testified
an eye witness, ‘were thrown into a morgue like so many
dead hogs.’ There were three hundred and twelve
buildings and forty-four railroad freight cars and their
contents destroyed by fire.”

1942 – Andrae Crouch, African American sacred music artist, is
born in Los Angeles, California. He will become a gospel
musician, recording artist, songwriter, arranger, and
producer. He will be a key figure in the Jesus Music
movement of the 1960s and 1970s. He will work as a
producer or arranger with Michael Jackson, Madonna (Like
A Prayer), Quincy Jones, Diana Ross, Elton John and Rick
Astley (Cry For Help). His film credits will include “Once
Upon A Forest,” “The Color Purple,” “The Lion King,” and
“Free Willy.” He will also appear as the television voice
of Dr. Seuss’s Yertle the Turtle. He will eventually serve
as Senior Pastor at the New Christ Memorial Church of God
in Christ in San Fernando, California, the church founded
by his parents. In 2004, he will be honored with a star on
the Hollywood Walk of Fame. He will be the third gospel
musician to appear on the walk. His most enduring gospel
songs will be “Soon and Very Soon,” “My Tribute”, “The
Blood” and “Through It All.”

1960 – Ghana becomes a republic. Italian Somalia gains
independence, and unites with the Somali Republic.

1960 – Evelyn “Champagne” King is born in the Bronx, New York City,
New York. In her teens, she will relocate to Philadelphia
with her mother, and begin singing in several groups. To
make ends meet, she and her mother will become cleaning
women. For a teenager, King’s voice will be quite mature.
Many, at first thought will think she is a grown woman.
While working at Gamble & Huff’s recording studio as a
cleaner, she will be “discovered” by producer T. Life, and
will go on to become one of the most popular Rhythm & Blues
and disco singers of the late seventies and early eighties.
She will be best known for the disco classic “Shame”, her
Top 10 1978 Gold record. She will score an additional Top 40
hit and Gold record, with “I Don’t Know If It’s Right” in
1979. “Shame” and “I Don’t Know If It’s Right” will both be
tracks released from her 1977 debut album Smooth Talk. On
September 20, 2004, her signature song “Shame” will become
among the first records to be inducted into the newly formed
Dance Music Hall of Fame at a ceremony held in New York’s
Spirit club.

1961 – Frederick Carlton “Carl” Lewis is born in Birmingham, Alabama.
He will be raised in Willingboro, New Jersey. He will become
an athlete who will win 10 Olympic medals (9 golds) during
his career (1984 to 1996), and 8 World Championship gold
medals, and 1 bronze (1983 to 1993). He will become only the
third Olympian to win four consecutive titles in an individual
event.

1962 – Burundi & Rwanda gain independence from Belgium (National Days).

1976 – Newark mayor Kenneth Gibson is elected as the first African
American president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors.

1991 – Former chairman of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission
and judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals, Clarence Thomas is
nominated by President George H. Bush as associate justice of
the Supreme Court to replace retiring justice Thurgood
Marshall. Thomas’ Senate confirmation hearings will be the
most controversial in history and will include charges of
sexual harassment by a former employee, Professor Anita Hill.

1997 – Audrey F. Manley begins her appointment as president of Spelman
College. She is the first alumna of Spelman to be named
president in the college’s 116-year history. Formerly acting
surgeon general of the United States, Manley had served in key
leadership positions in the U.S. Public Health Service for the
previous 20 years.

2005 – Grammy award winner Luther Vandross joins the ancestors at John
F. Kennedy Medical Center in Edison, New Jersey at the age of
54. He never really recovered from a stroke suffered in his
Manhattan home on April 16, 2003. He amazingly managed to
continue his recording career, and in 2004, captured four
Grammys as a sentimental favorite, including best song for the
bittersweet “Dance With My Father.” He had battled weight
problems for years while suffering from diabetes and
hypertension. He was arguably the most celebrated Rhythm &
Blues balladeer of his generation. He made women swoon with
his silky yet forceful tenor, which he often revved up like a
motor engine before reaching his beautiful crescendos. He was
a four-time Grammy winner in the best male R&B performance
category, taking home the trophy in 1990 for the single “Here
and Now,” in 1991 for his album “Power of Love,” in 1996 for
the track “Your Secret Love” and a last time for “Dance With
My Father.”

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