KRLemmons African American History

April 15 African American Historical Events

* Today in Black History – April 15 *

1861 – President Lincoln calls for 75,000 troops to put down
the rebellion. The Lincoln administration rejects
African American volunteers. For almost two years
straight African Americans fight for the right, as one
humorist puts it, “to be kilt”.

1889 – Asa Philip Randolph is born in Crescent Way, Florida.
He will become a labor leader and a tireless fighter for
civil rights. He will organize and lead the Brotherhood
of Sleeping Car Porters, the first predominantly African
American labor union (organized in 1925). In the early
Civil Rights Movement, he will lead the March on
Washington Movement, which will convince President
Franklin D. Roosevelt to issue Executive Order 8802 in
1941, banning discrimination in the defense industries
during World War II. The group will then successfully
pressure President Harry S. Truman to issue Executive
Order 9981 in 1948, ending segregation in the armed
services. In 1963, he will be the head of the March on
Washington, organized by Bayard Rustin, at which Reverend
Martin Luther King, Jr. delivers his “I Have A Dream”
speech. He will inspire the Freedom budget, sometimes
called the “Randolph Freedom budget”, which will aim to
deal with the economic problems facing the black community.
In 1942, he will receive the NAACP Spingarn Medal. On
September 14, 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson will
present him with the Presidential Medal of Freedom. He will
join the ancestors on May 16, 1979. He will be named
posthumously to the Florida Civil Rights Hall of Fame in
January, 2014.

1919 – Elizabeth Catlett (later Mora) is born in Washington, DC.
In 1940, she will become the first student to receive an
M.F.A. in sculpture at the University of Iowa School of
Art and Art History. While there, she will be influenced
by American landscape painter Grant Wood, who will urge
students to work with the subjects they knew best. For
her, this will mean black people, and especially black
women, and it will be at this point that her work begins
to focus on African Americans. Her piece ‘Mother and
Child,’ done in limestone in 1939 for her thesis, will
win first prize in sculpture at the American Negro
Exposition in Chicago in 1940. In 1946, she will receive
a Rosenwald Fund Fellowship that allows her to travel to
Mexico where she will study wood carving with Jose L.
Ruiz and ceramic sculpture with Francisco Zúñiga, at the
Escuela de Pintura y Escultura, Esmeralda, Mexico. She
will later emigrate to Mexico, marry, and become a
Mexican citizen. She will become an internationally
known printmaker and sculptor and embrace both African
and Mexican influences in her art. She will be best
known for the black, expressionistic sculptures and
prints she produced during the 1960s and 1970s, which
will be seen as politically charged. She will join the
ancestors on April 2, 2012 in Cuernavaca, Mexico.

1922 – Harold Washington is born in Chicago, Illinois. He will
serve in the Illinois House of Representatives and
Senate as well as two terms in Congress before becoming
the first African American mayor of Chicago. He will
join the ancestors after suffering a massive heart
attack on November 25, 1987 after being re-elected to a
second term as mayor.

1928 – Pioneering architect Norma Merrick (later Sklarek) is
born in New York City. She become one of the first black
women to be licensed as an architect in the United States,
and the first to be licensed in the states of New York
(1954) and California (1962). She will also become the
first African American woman to become a fellow in the
American Institute of Architects (1980). In 1985, she will
become the first African American female architect to form
her own architectural firm: Siegel, Sklarek, Diamond,
which will be the largest woman-owned and mostly woman-
staffed architectural firm in the United States. Among her
designs will be the San Bernardino City Hall in San
Bernardino, California, the Fox Plaza in San Francisco,
Terminal One at the Los Angeles International Airport and
the Embassy of the United States in Tokyo, Japan. Howard
University will offer the Norma Merrick Sklarek
Architectural Scholarship Award in her honor. She will join
the ancestors on February 6, 2012.

1947 – Baseball player Jackie Robinson plays his first major-
league baseball game (he had played exhibition games
previously) for the Brooklyn Dodgers, becoming the
first African American in the major leagues since Moses
Fleetwood Walker played in 1885. The Brooklyn Dodgers
promoted him to the majors from the Montreal Royals.

1957 – Evelyn Ashford is born in Shreveport, Louisiana. She
will grow up in Roseville, California becoming a track
star specializing in sprinting. She will be a four-
time winner of Olympic gold medals and one silver in
1976, 1984, 1988, and 1992. In 1979, she will set a
world record in the 200-meter dash. In 1989 she will
receive the Flo Hyman Award from the Woman’s Sports
Foundation. In 1992, the U.S. Olympic team will ask her
to carry the flag during the opening ceremonies in the
Barcelona Olympics. She will retire from track and
field in 1993 at the age of 36.

1958 – African Freedom Day is declared at the All-African
People’s Conference in Accra, Ghana.

1960 – The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) is
formed on the campus of Shaw University in Raleigh,
North Carolina.

1985 – Thomas “Hit Man” Hearns wins the World Middleweight
title. This is one of five weight classes in which he
will win a boxing title making him the first African
American to win boxing titles in five different weight
classes.

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

KRLemmons African American History

April 14 African American Historical Events

* Today in Black History – April 14 *

1775 – The first U.S. abolitionist society, the Pennsylvania
Society for the Abolition of Slavery, is formed in
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, by Quakers. Benjamin
Franklin serves as its first president.

1868 – South Carolina voters approve a new constitution, 70,758
to 27,228, and elect state officers, including the
first African American cabinet officer, Francis L.
Cardozo, secretary of state. The new constitution
requires integrated education and contains a strong
bill of rights section: “Distinctions on account of
race or color, in any case whatever, shall be
prohibited, and all classes of citizens shall enjoy
equally all common, public, legal and political
privileges.”

1873 – The U.S. Supreme Court decision in Slaughterhouse cases
begins process of diluting the Fourteenth Amendment.
The court says the Fourteenth Amendment protects
federal civil rights, not “civil rights heretofore
belonging exclusively to the states.”

1906 – The Azusa Street Revival — proto-mission out of which
the modern Pentecostal movement will spread world-wide
— officially begins when the services led by African
American evangelist William J. Seymour, 36, moves into
the building at 312 Azusa Street in Los Angeles,
California.

1915 – James Hutton Brew, “Pioneer of West African Journalism,”
joins the ancestors.

1943 – Howardena Pindell is born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
She will become an accomplished artist. A student at
Boston and Yale universities, she will receive several
art fellowships and travel the world to create art that
reflects a clear artistic vision and an intense
commitment to issues of racial and social injustice.

1969 – The student Afro-American Society seizes the Columbia
College admissions office and demands a special
admissions board and staff.

1991 – A major retrospective of the late Romare Bearden’s
career and work opens at the Studio Museum of Harlem.
Entitled Memory and Metaphor: The Art of Romare Bearden
1940-1987, the exhibit includes 140 oil and watercolor
paintings as well as numerous collages that chronicle
his exploration of abstract expressionism, social
realism, and reinterpretation of classical themes in
art and literature.

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

KRLemmons African American History

April 13 African American Historical Events

* Today in Black History – April 13 *

1723 – The governor of Massachusetts issues a proclamation on
the “fires which have been designedly and
industriously kindled by some villainous and desperate
Negroes or other dissolute people as appears by the
confession of some of them.”

1873 – The Colfax Massacre occurs on Easter Sunday morning, in
Grant Parish, Louisiana. More than sixty African
Americans are killed.

1891 – Nellallitea “Nella” Walker is born in Chicago, Illinois
to an African American father and Danish mother. She
will become a writer known as Nella Larsen and one of
the most celebrated novelists of the Harlem Renaissance.
She will receive many awards for her writings, including
the Harmon Foundation’s bronze medal for literature in
1929, and the Guggenheim Fellowship in 1930. When she
receives the Guggenheim award, she becomes the first
African American woman recipient. She will best known
for her novels, “Quicksand” and “Passing.” She will
join the ancestors on March 30, 1964.

1906 – Riots occur in Brownsville, Texas, when African American
soldiers retaliate against white citizens for racial
slurs.

1907 – Harlem Hospital opens in New York with 150 beds. It will
become one of the early leading African American
hospitals.

1946 – Albert “Al” Green is born in Forrest City, Arkansas. He
will become one of the most popular soul and pop singers
of the 1970’s, known for his recordings “Tired of Being
Alone,” “Let’s Stay Together,” “Here I Am (Come and Take
Me)” and “I’m Still in Love with You.” Green will later
become a minister and return to performing as a gospel
singer, where he will win numerous Grammy awards.

1963 – Sidney Poitier receives an Oscar for best actor for his
performance in “Lilies of the Field.” He is the first
African American male to receive the Academy Award. He
will later become a director and make 1980’s “Stir
Crazy,” the largest-grossing movie by an African
American director ever.

1997 – Eldrick “Tiger” Woods wins the 61st Masters Tournament
in Augusta, Georgia at the age of 21, becoming the
youngest person and first person of Black African descent
to ever win this tournament.

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

KRLemmons African American History

April 12 African American Historical Events

* Today in Black History – April 12 *

1787 – Richard Allen and Absalom Jones organize Philadelphia’s
Free African Society which W.E.B. Du Bois refers to,
over a century later, “the first wavering step of a
people toward a more organized social life.”

1825 – Richard Harvey Cain is born in Greenbrier County,
Virginia (now part of West Virginia). He will become
an AME minister, an AME bishop, publisher, a member of
the South Carolina Senate, member of the U.S. House of
Representatives, and a founder of Paul Quinn College
in Waco, Texas. He will join the ancestors on January
18, 1887.

1861 – The Civil War begins as Confederate troops attack Fort
Sumter, South Carolina.

1864 – Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest captures Fort
Pillow, Tennessee, and massacres the inhabitants,
sparing, the official report says, neither soldier nor
civilian, African American nor white, male or female.
The fort is defended by a predominantly African
American force.

1869 – The North Carolina legislature passes anti-Klan
legislation.

1940 – Herbert Jeffrey “Herbie” Hancock is born in Chicago,
Illinois. After graduating from college at age 20, he
will go to New York with Donald Byrd, who had heard him
perform in Chicago. While in New York, Byrd will
introduce Hancock to Blue Note Records executives. This
will lead to work with various established jazz
artists and later Hancock’s first solo album, “Taking
Off,” which includes appearances by Freddie Hubbard and
Dexter Gordon. Contained on this album is Hancock’s
first top 10 hit, “Watermelon Man.” It will not be long
before Hancock gets the attention of the legendary
Miles Davis, who will extend an invitation to Hancock
to join his new group. After working with Davis for
several years Herbie will decide to form his own band,
a sextet which will include Julian Priester, Buster
Williams, and Eddie Henderson. He will become one of
the most popular jazz artists, known for his
compositions “Watermelon Man” and “Chameleon,” as well
as his musical score for the movie “‘Round Midnight,”
for which he will win an Oscar in 1986.

1960 – Martin Luther King, Jr. denounces the Vietnam War which
he says is “rapidly degenerating into a sordid military
adventure.”

1968 – African American students occupy the administration
building at Boston University and demand Afro-American
history courses and additional African American
students.

1980 – Liberian President William R. Tolbert Jr. and twenty-
seven others join the ancestors after being killed in
a coup d’etat by army enlisted men led by Master
Sergeant Samuel K. Doe.

1983 – The people of Chicago, Illinois elect Harold Washington
as the city’s first African American mayor.

1989 – Former middleweight boxing champion Sugar Ray Robinson
joins the ancestors in Culver City, California, at age
67.

1990 – August Wilson’s “The Piano Lesson” wins the Pulitzer
Prize for drama. It is the second Pulitzer Prize for
Wilson, who also won one for “Fences” in 1987 and was
awarded the New York Drama Critics’ Award for “Fences,”
“Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom,” and “Joe Turner’s Come and
Gone.”

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

KRLemmons African American History

April 11 African American Historical Events

* Today in Black History – April 11 *

1865 – President Lincoln recommends suffrage for African American veterans
and African Americans who are “very intelligent.”

1881 – Spelman College is founded with $100 and eleven former slaves
determined to learn to read and write. It is opened as the Atlanta
Baptist Female Seminary. The two female founders, Sophia B. Packard
and Harriet E. Giles are appalled by the lack of educational
opportunities for African American women at the time. They will
return to Boston determined to get support to change that and earned
what will prove to be the lifelong support of John D. Rockefeller,
who considers Spelman to be one of his family’s finest investments.
The name Spelman is adopted later in honor of Mrs. Rockefeller’s
parents.

1933 – William Anthony “Tony” Brown is born in Charleston, West Virginia.
He will become well known as executive producer, host, and moderator
of the Emmy-winning television series “Black Journal.” In 1971 he
will establish and become the first dean of Howard University’s School
of Communications, a post he will hold until 1974. In 2002, he will
be inducted into the National Academy of Television Arts and
Sciences’ Silver Circle. He will become the dean of Hampton
University’s Scripps Howard School of Journalism and Communications
in 2004 and hold that position until 2009, when he will step down.

1955 – Roy Wilkins is elected the NAACP’s executive secretary following
the ancestral ascension of Walter White.

1956 – Singer Nat “King” Cole is attacked on the stage of a Birmingham
theater by white supremacists.

1966 – Emmett Ashford becomes the first African American major league
umpire, working in the American League. He had been the first
African American professional umpire in the minor leagues in
1951.

1967 – Harlem voters defy Congress and re-elect Congressman Adam Clayton
Powell Jr. after he had been expelled by the legislative body.

1968 – President Lyndon B. Johnson signs what will become known as the
1968 Housing Act, which outlaws discrimination in the sale,
rental, or leasing of 80% of the housing in the United States.
Passed by the Senate and submitted by the House to Johnson in
the aftermath of the King assassination, the bill also protects
civil rights workers and makes it a federal crime to cross state
lines for the purpose of inciting a riot.

1972 – Benjamin L. Hooks, a Memphis lawyer and Baptist minister, becomes
the first African American to be named to the Federal Communications
Commission.

1979 – Idi Amin is deposed as president of Uganda. A combined force of
Tanzanian and Ugandan soldiers overthrew the dictator. Amin, who
attained power in 1971 after a coup against socialist-leaning
President Milton Obote, oversaw the killing of at least 100,000
people. It is believed that Idi Amin left Uganda to live in Saudi
Arabia.

1988 – Willie D. Burton becomes the first African American to win the
Oscar for sound when he receives the award for the movie “Bird.”

1997 – The Museum of African American History opens in Detroit. It will
become the largest of its kind in the world.

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

KRLemmons African American History

April 10 African American Historical Events

* Today in Black History – April 10 *

1816 – Richard Allen is elected Bishop of the A.M.E. Church, one day
after the church is organized at its first general convention.

1872 – The first National Black Convention meets in New Orleans,
Louisiana. Frederick Douglass will be elected president.

1877 – Federal troops withdraw from Columbia, South Carolina. This
action will allow the white South Carolina Democrats to take
over the state government.

1926 – Johnnie Tillmon (later Blackston) is born in Scott, Arkansas. A
welfare rights champion, Tillmon will become the founding
chairperson and director of the National Welfare Rights
Organization. She will join the ancestors on November 22, 1995.

1932 – The James Weldon Johnson Literary Guild announces the winners of
its first annual nationwide poetry contest for children. The
judges – Jessie Fauset and Countee Cullen, among others – select
in the teen category a 16-year-old Liberian youth and Margaret
Walker of New Orleans, who receives an honorable mention for her
poem “When Night Comes.”

1938 – Nana Annor Adjaye, Pan-Africanist, joins the ancestors in West
Nzima, Ghana.

1943 – Arthur Robert Ashe, Jr. is born in Richmond, Virginia. He will
become a professional tennis player and will be one of the first
African American male tennis stars. He will be the first African
American to win a spot on the American Davis Cup tennis team,
the first to win the U.S. Open and the men’s singles title at
Wimbledon, in 1975. Over his 11-year career he will play in 304
tournaments, winning 51, including the 1970 Australian Open and
Wimbledon in 1975. He will be the number one ranked player in the
world in 1975. A life-threatening heart condition will force him
to retire in 1980 and he will continue to serve as the non-playing
captain of that year’s U.S. Davis Cup team. In 1985 he will become
the second African American inducted into the International Tennis
Hall of Fame. The first was Althea Gibson in 1971. After his career
in tennis, he will become an eloquent spokesperson against racial
intolerance and a critic of South Africa’s racist system of
apartheid. In the United States, he will create tennis programs to
benefit inner-city youth. He will write a three-volume history of
the African American athlete entitled “A Hard Road To Glory” (1988).
Suffering complications from AIDS, contracted from a blood
transfusion during a heart bypass operation, he will join the
ancestors in New York on February 6, 1993.

1958 – W.C. Handy, composer and musician, joins the ancestors at the
age of 84 in New York City.

1959 – Kenneth Edmonds is born in Indianapolis, Indiana. He will
become a professional musician known as “Babyface” and will
begin work in the business producing music, with his friend
Antonio Reid, for Carrie Lucas, The Whispers, and Dynasty.
Since then, they’ve produced hits for many others. During the
1990s, his dominance will extend beyond the production arena
and into the performing circle. His hit “Tender Lover” crossed
him over into pop territory and eventually sold more than two
million copies. The singles “Whip Appeal” and “It’s No Crime”
were Top Ten R&B and pop hits. He will hit his peak in 1995,
producing hits for artists like Boyz II Men, Madonna and
Whitney Houston and coordinated the “Waiting to Exhale”
soundtrack. In the fall of 1996, he will released “Day,” his
first solo album since 1993 to strong reviews. He will
successfully produce the film “Soul Food” in 1997.

1968 – U.S. Congress passes a Civil Rights Bill banning racial
discrimination in the sale or rental of approximately 80 per cent
of the nation’s housing. The bill also made it a crime to
interfere with civil rights workers and to cross state lines to
incite a riot.

1975 – Lee Elder becomes the first African American to tee off as an
entrant in the Masters’ Tournament in Augusta, Georgia.

2003 – Eva “Little Eva” Boyd, singer, joins the ancestors at age 59
after succumbing to cancer. She recorded the 1960s pop hit “The
Locomotion.”

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

KRLemmons African American History

April 9 African American Historical Events

* Today in Black History – April 9 *

1816 – The African Methodist Episcopal Church is organized at a
general convention in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

1865 – Nine African American regiments of Gen. John Hawkins’s
division help to smash the Confederate defenses at Fort
Blakely, Alabama. Capture of the fort will lead to the
fall of Mobile. The 68th U.S. Colored Troops will have
the highest number of casualties in the engagement.

1865 – Robert E. Lee surrenders Army of Northern Virginia to
Grant at Appomattox Court House, Virginia, ending the
Civil War.
AFRICAN AMERICANS IN THE CONFEDERACY: The Confederacy is
the first to recognize that African Americans are major
factors in the war. The South impresses slaves to work
in mines, repair railroads and build fortifications,
thereby releasing a disproportionately large percentage
of able-bodied whites for direct war service. A handful
of African Americans enlisted in the rebel army, but few,
if any, fired guns in anger. A regiment of fourteen
hundred free African Americans received official
recognition in New Orleans, but was not called into
service. It later became, by a strange mutation of
history, the first African American regiment officially
recognized by the Union army.
AFRICAN AMERICANS IN THE UNION NAVY: One out of every
four Union sailors was an African American. Of the
118,044 sailors in the Union Navy, 29,511 were African
Americans. At least four African American sailors won
Congressional Medals of Honor.
AFRICAN AMERICANS IN THE UNION ARMY: The 185,000 Black
soldiers in the Union army were organized into 166 all
Black regiments (145 infantry, 7 cavalry, 12 heavy
artillery, 1 light artillery, 1 engineer). The largest
number of African American soldiers came from Louisiana
(24,052), followed by Kentucky (23,703) and Tennessee
(20,133). Pennsylvania contributed more African
American soldiers than any other Northern state (8,612).
African American soldiers participated in 449 battles,
39 of them major engagements. Sixteen Black soldiers
received Congressional Medals of Honor for gallantry in
action. Some 37,638 African American soldiers lost
their lives during the war. African American soldiers
generally received poor equipment and were forced to do
a large amount of fatigue duty. Until 1864, African
American soldiers (from private to chaplain) received
seven dollars a month whereas white soldiers received
from thirteen to one hundred dollars a month. In 1863
African American units, with four exceptions (Fifth
Massachusetts Cavalry, Fifty-fourth and Fifty-fifth
Massachusetts Volunteers and Twenty-ninth Connecticut
Volunteers), were officially designated United States
Colored Troops (USCT). Since the War Department
discouraged applications from African Americans, there
were few commissioned officers. The highest ranking of
the seventy-five to one hundred African American
officers was Lt. Col. Alexander T. Augustana, a surgeon.
Some 200,000 African American civilians were employed
by the Union army as laborers, cooks, teamsters and
servants.

1866 – The Civil Rights Bill of 1866 is passed over the
president’s veto. The bill will confer citizenship on
African Americans and give them “the same right, in
every State and Territory… as is enjoyed by white
citizens.”

1870 – The American Anti-Slavery Society is dissolved.

1898 – Paul Leroy Robeson is born in Princeton, New Jersey. The
son of an ex-slave turned Methodist minister, Robeson
will attend Rutgers University on a full scholarship,
where he will excel and obtain 12 letters in four sports,
be named to the All-American football team twice, be a
member of the debate team, and earn a Phi Beta Kappa key.
He will study law at Columbia University in New York and
receive his degree in 1923. There he will meet and marry
Eslanda Cardozo Goode, who will be the first African
American woman to head a pathology laboratory. He will
work as a law clerk in New York, but once again will
face discrimination and leave the practice when a white
secretary refuses to take dictation from him. He will
later become one of America’s foremost actors and singers.
He will make 14 films including “The Emperor Jones,”
“King Solomon’s Mines,” and “Showboat.” During the 1940’s
he will continue to have success on the stage, in film,
and in concert halls, but will remain face to face with
prejudice and racism. After finding the Soviet Union
to be a tolerant and friendly nation, he will begin to
protest the growing Cold War hostilities between the
United States and the USSR. He will question why
African Americans should support a government that did
not treat them as equals. At a time when dissent was
hardly tolerated, Robeson will be looked upon as an
enemy by his government. In 1947, he will be named by
the House Committee on Un-American Activities, and the
State Department will deny him a passport until 1958.
Events such as these, along with a negative public
response, will lead to the demise of his public career.
He will be an inspiration to millions around the world.
His courageous stance against oppression and inequality
in part will lead to the civil rights movement of the
1960s. He will join the ancestors on January 23, 1976,
in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania after living in seclusion
for ten years.

1929 – Valenza Pauline Burke is born in Brooklyn, New York to
parents who had immigrated to the United States from
Barbados. She will become a novelist known as Paule
Marshall. She will author “Browngirl, Brownstones,”
“Praisesong for the Widow,” “The Chosen Place, The
Timeless People,” “Soul Clap Hands and Sing,” and
Daughters.” She will also write a collection of short
stories, “Reena and Other Stories.”

1939 – When she is refused admission to the Daughters of the
American Revolution’s Constitution Hall to give a
planned concert, Marian Anderson performs for 75,000 on
the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. Two months later, she
will be honored with the NAACP’s Spingarn Medal for her
talents as “one of the greatest singers of our time”
and for “her magnificent dignity as a human being.”

1950 – Juanita Hall becomes the first African American to win a
Tony award for her role as Bloody Mary in the musical
“South Pacific.”

1968 – Martin Luther King Jr. is buried after funeral services
at Ebenezer Baptist Church and memorial services at
Morehouse College, in Atlanta, Georgia. More than
300,000 persons march behind the coffin of the slain
leader which is carried through the streets of Atlanta
on a farm wagon pulled by two Georgia mules. Scores of
national dignitaries, including Vice-President Hubert
Humphrey, attend the funeral. CORE and the Fellowship of
Reconciliation send twenty-three dignitaries. Ralph
David Abernathy is elected to succeed King as head of
the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

1993 – The Reverend Benjamin Chavis is chosen to head the NAACP,
succeeding Benjamin Hooks.

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

KRLemmons African American History

April 8 African American Historical Events

* Today in Black History – April 8 *

1922 – Carmen McRae is born in the village of Harlem in New York
City. She will study classical piano in her youth, even
though singing was her first love. She will win an
amateur contest at the Apollo Theater and begin her
singing career. She will be influenced by Billie
Holiday, who will become a lifelong friend and mentor.
She will devote her albums and the majority of her
nightclub acts to Lady Day’s memory. Her association
with jazz accordionist Matt Mathews will lead to her
first solo recordings in 1953-1954. In her later years,
McRae’s original style will influence singers Betty
Carter and Carol Sloane. Her best known recordings will
be “Skyliner” (1956) and “Take Five” with Dave Brubeck
(1961). She will also work in films and will appear in
“Hotel” (1967) and “Jo Jo Dancer Your Life is Calling”
(1986). She will receive six Grammy award nominations
and the National Endowment for the Arts’ National Jazz
Masters Fellowship Award in 1994. She will join the
ancestors on November 10, 1994.

1938 – Cornetist and bandleader Joe “King” Oliver joins the
ancestors in Savannah, Georgia. He was considered one
of the leading musicians of New Orleans-style jazz and
served as a mentor to Louis Armstrong, who played with
him in 1922 and 1923.

1953 – Louis “Sweet Lou” Dunbar is born in Houston, Texas. He will
become a professional basketball player (for 27 years) with
the Harlem Globetrotters. After his playing days, he will
become the Director of Player Personnel. He will be the 25th
person to receive the Globetrotter “Legends” Distinction,
awarded on February 9, 2007 at Houston’s Toyota Center. He
will also become a member of the National Basketball Retired
Players Association (Legends of Basketball).

1974 – Hank Aaron of the Atlanta Braves hits his 715th home run
against a pitch thrown by Los Angeles Dodger Al Downing
at a home game in Fulton County Stadium. Aaron’s home
run breaks the long-standing home run record of Babe
Ruth.

1975 – Frank Robinson, major league baseball’s first African
American manager, gets off to a winning start as his
team, the Cleveland Indians, defeat the New York
Yankees, 5-3.

1980 – State troopers are mobilized to stop racially motivated
civil disturbances in Wrightsville, Georgia. Racial
incidents are also reported in Chattanooga, Tennessee,
Oceanside, California, Kokomo, Indiana, Wichita, Kansas,
and Johnston County, North Carolina.

1987 – Los Angeles Dodgers general manager Al Campanis is fired
for alleged racially biased comments about the
managerial potential of African Americans.

1990 – Percy Julian, who helped create drugs to combat glaucoma
and methods to mass produce cortisone, and agricultural
scientist George Washington Carver are the first African
American inventors admitted into the National Inventors
Hall of Fame in the hall’s 17-year history.

1992 – Tennis great Arthur Ashe announces at a New York news
conference that he has AIDS. He contracted the virus
from a transfusion needed for an earlier heart surgery.
He will join the ancestors on February 6, 1993 of
AIDS-related pneumonia at age 49.

2001 – Tiger Woods becomes the first golfer to hold all four
major professional golf titles at one time when he wins
the 2001 Masters tournament.

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

KRLemmons African American History

April 7 African American Historical Events

* Today in Black History – April 7 *

1712 – A slave uprising in New York City results in the death of
nine whites. This is one of the first major revolt of
African slaves in the American colonies. After the
militia arrives, the uprising will be suppressed. As a
result of the action, twenty one slaves will be executed
and six others will commit suicide.

1867 – Johnson C. Smith University is founded in Charlotte, North
Carolina.

1872 – William Monroe Trotter is born near Chillicothe, Ohio. He will
become a newspaper editor and real estate businessman based
in Boston, Massachusetts, and an activist for African
American civil rights. He will be an early opponent of the
accommodationist race policies of Booker T. Washington, and
in 1901, will found the Boston Guardian, an independent
African American newspaper, as a vehicle to express that
opposition. Active in protest movements for civil rights
throughout the 1900s and 1910s, he will also reveal some of
the differences within the African American community. He
will contribute to the formation of the National Association
for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). He will earn
his undergraduate and graduate degrees at Harvard University,
and will become the first man of color to earn a Phi Beta
Kappa key there. Seeing an increase in segregation in northern
facilities, he will begin to engage in a life of activism, to
which he will devote his assets. He will join with W.E.B. Du
Bois in founding the Niagara Movement in 1905, a forerunner of
the NAACP. His style will be often divisive, and he will end
up leaving that organization and founding the National Equal
Rights League. His protest activities will sometimes seen to
be at odds with the goals of the NAACP. In 1914, he will have
a highly publicized meeting with President Woodrow Wilson, in
which he will protest Wilson’s introduction of segregation
into the federal workplace. In Boston, he will succeed in 1910,
in shutting down productions of The Clansman, but will be
unsuccessful in 1915 with preventing screenings of the movie
“Birth of a Nation,” which also portrayed the Ku Klux Klan in
favorable terms. He will not be able to influence the peace
talks at the end of World War I, and in later years become a
marginalized voice of protest. In an alliance with Roman
Catholics in 1921, he will get a revival screening of “Birth
of a Nation” banned. He will join the ancestors died on his
62nd birthday, April 7, 1934.

1915 – Eleanora Fagan is born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She will
become a jazz singer who will influence the course of
American popular singing, better known as Billie Holiday or
“Lady Day.” She will be best known for her songs, “Strange
Fruit,” “Lover Man,” and “God Bless the Child.” Although she
will enjoy limited popular appeal during her lifetime, her
impact on other singers will be profound. Troubled in life
by addiction, She will join the ancestors as a result of
drug and alcohol abuse on July 17,1959.

1922 – Ramon “Mongo” Santamaria is born in Havana, Cuba. He will
drop out of school to become a professional musician,
playing gigs at the legendary Tropicana Club in Havana. In
1950 Santamaria will move to New York, where he will hook
up with such Latin jazz greats as Perez Prado, Tito Puente
and Cal Tjader. In 1963 Santamaria will score his first Top
10 hit with the single “Watermelon Man,” written by then
bandmate Herbie Hancock. Santamaria will perform and record
steadily throughout the ’60s, ’70s, ’80s and ’90s. In 1977,
he will be awarded a Grammy for his album “Amancer.” In
1999 Rhino Records will release a double-CD retrospective
of Santamaria’s music, The Mongo Santamaria Anthology
1958-1995, culling his greatest work during those five
decades. He will be considered one of the most influential
percussionists of his generation. He will join the ancestors
in Miami, Florida on February 1, 2003.

1934 – William Monroe Trotter joins the ancestors in Boston,
Massachusetts at the age of sixty-two.

1938 – Trumpeter Frederick Dewayne “Freddie” Hubbard is born in
Indianapolis, Indiana. From a musical family, he will play
four instruments in his youth and will later play with “Slide”
Hampton, Quincy Jones, and Art Blakey. A leader of his own
band starting in the 1960’s, he will record the noteworthy
albums “Red Clay,” “First Light,” and the Grammy Award-winning
“Straight Life.” He will join the ancestors on
December 29, 2008.

1940 – The first U.S. stamp ever to honor an African American is
issued bearing the likeness of Booker T. Washington. His
likeness is on a 10-cent stamp.

1954 – Tony Dorsett is born in Rochester, Pennsylvania. He will
become a star football player at the University of
Pittsburgh, where he will win the Heisman Trophy in 1976.
He will then become the number one pick in the 1977 NFL
draft by the Dallas Cowboys. He will play in two Super Bowls,
five NFC championship games, four Pro Bowls, will be All-NFL
in 1981, and NFC rushing champion in 1982. His career totals
include 12,739 yards rushing, 398 receptions for 3,544 yards,
16,326 combined net yards, 90 touchdowns, and a record 99
yard run for a touchdown against the Minnesota Vikings in
1983. He will end his career with the 1988 Denver Broncos.
He will be enshrined in the NFL Hall of Fame in 1994.

1994 – Civil war erupts in Rwanda, a day after a mysterious plane
crash claims the lives of the presidents of Rwanda and
Burundi. In the months that follow, hundreds of thousands of
minority Tutsi and Hutu intellectuals will be slaughtered.

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

KRLemmons African American History

April 6 African American Historical Events

* Today in Black History – April 6 *

1798 – James P. Beckwourth is born in Fredericksburg, Virginia. He
will become a noted scout in the western United States and
will discover a pass in the Sierra Nevada mountains between
the Feather and Truckee rivers that will bear his name. He
will join the ancestors on October 29, 1866.

1830 – James Augustine Healy is born to an Irish planter and a slave
on a plantation near Macon, Georgia. He will become the
first African American Roman Catholic priest and the first
African American Roman Catholic bishop in America. He
will join the ancestors on August 5, 1900.

1865 – Writing in the “Philadelphia Press” under the pen name
“Rollin,” Thomas Morris Chester describes the Union Army’s
triumphant entry into the city of Richmond, Virginia, during
the closing days of the Civil War. Rollin is the only
African American newspaperman writing for a mainstream
daily. There will be no others for almost 70 years.

1869 – Ebenezer Don Carlos Bassett, the principal of the Institute for
Colored Youth in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, is named Minister
to Haiti and becomes the first major African American diplomat
and the first African American to receive a major appointment
from the United States government.

1909 – Matthew Henson, accompanying Commander Robert Peary’s
expedition, is the first, in the party of six, to discover the
North Pole. The claim, disputed by scientific skeptics, was
upheld in 1989 by the Navigation Foundation. Although in
later years Henson will be called Peary’s servant or merely
“one Negro” on the expedition, Henson is a valuable colleague
and co-discoverer of the pole. Peary says, “I couldn’t get
along without him.”

1917 – America enters World War I. President Wilson, who has just
inaugurated a policy of segregation in government agencies,
tells Congress that “the world must be made safe for
democracy.”

1931 – The first trial of the Scottsboro Boys begins in Scottsboro,
Alabama. This trial of nine African American youths accused
of raping two white women on a freight train become a cause
celebre.

1931 – Ivan Dixon is born in New York City. He will become an actor
and director and will be best known for his comedic role on
the TV series “Hogan’s Heroes.” One of his first acting
credits will be for the celebrated television anthology show
“The Dupont Show of the Month” in the 1960 production of
“Arrowsmith.” He will go on to act in the film version of the
theatrical drama “A Raisin in the Sun” with Ruby Dee and
Sidney Poitier in 1961, in which he plays Asagai, the African
boyfriend of Beneatha. He will also portray Jim in the 1959
film version of “Porgy and Bess.” His other pre-“Hogan’s
Heroes” film work includes: “Something of Value” (1957), “The
Murder Men” (1961), and “The Battle at Bloody Beach” (1961).
After leaving Hogan’s heroes he will appear in more films
including “A Patch of Blue” and “Car Wash.” Ivan will begin
directing films in the early 1970s, such as the 1972 gang
warfare flick “Trouble Man” and the 1973 action movie “The
Spook Who Sat by the Door” (which he will also produce). For
television, he will direct “Love Is Not Enough” (1978), the
series “Palmerstown, U.S.A.” (1980), the detective series
“Hawaiian Heat” (1984), and the telemovie “Percy & Thunder”
(1993). He will join the ancestors on March 16, 2008.

1937 – William December is born in the village of Harlem in New York
City. He will become one of the most romantic leading men of
film and television, better known as ‘Billy Dee Williams.’
Among his best known roles will be football great Gale Sayers
in the TV movie “Brian’s Song” as well as leading parts in
the movies “Lady Sings the Blues,” “Mahogany” and two “Star
Wars” films.

1971 – “Contemporary Black Artists in America” opens at the Whitney
Museum of American Art in New York City. The exhibit includes
the work of 58 master painters and sculptors such as Jacob
Lawrence, Charles White, Alma Thomas, Betye Saar, David
Driskell, Richard Hunt, and others.

1994 – The presidents of Rwanda and Burundi are killed in a mysterious
plane crash near Rwanda’s capital. Widespread violence erupts
in Rwanda over claims the plane had been shot down.

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