KRLemmons African American History

June 29 African American Historical Events

Today in Black History – June 29 *

1868 – The Louisiana legislature meets in New Orleans. The
temporary chairman of the house is an African American
representative, R.H. Isabelle. Oscar J. Dunn presides
over the senate. Seven of the thirty-six senators are
African American. Thirty-five of the 101
representatives are African American.

1886 – James Van Der Zee is born in Lenox, Massachusetts. He
will become one of America’s foremost photographers and
a major chronicler of the visual history of the Harlem
Renaissance. His photographic subjects will include
Marcus Garvey, Madame C.J. Walker, Bill “Bojangles”
Robinson, Countee Cullen, Daddy Grace and many others.
He will obtain national recognition at age 82 when his
collection of 75,000 photographs, spanning a period of
six decades of African American life, is discovered by
the Metropolitan Museum of Art. His photos will be
featured in 1969 as part of the “Harlem on my Mind”
exhibition. From the 1970s until he joins the ancestors
on May 15, 1983, Van Der Zee will photograph many
celebrities who had come across his work and promoted
him throughout the country.

1919 – Lloyd Richards is born in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. His
family will move to Detroit, Michigan soon after he is
born. After graduating from Wayne State University, he
will start a theater group in Detroit with a handful of
friends and classmates. At that time, the American theater
will be entirely centered in New York City. Richards will
move there in 1947 to pursue an acting career. Roles for
African American actors will be hard to come by, but he
will work on Broadway in “Freight and The Egghead” and on
radio throughout the 1950s. He will also teach acting and
direct off-Broadway productions. In 1958, he will become
the first person of African descent to direct a Broadway
play in modern times when he galvanizes Broadway with his
production of Lorraine Hansberry’s “A Raisin in the Sun.”
This production, a realistic portrayal of a contemporary
Black working class family in Chicago, will begin a new era
in the representation of African Americans on the American
stage. In the 1960s, he will direct the Broadway productions
“The Long Dream,” “The Moon Besieged,” “I Had a Ball” and
“The Yearling.” In 1966, he will become head of the actor
training program at New York University’s School of the Arts.
He will be Professor of Theater and Cinema at Hunter College
in New York City when he is tapped to become dean of the
prestigious Yale University School of Drama in 1979. At the
same time he will become Artistic Director of the highly
influential Yale Repertory theater. Throughout his career,
he will seek to discover and develop new plays and
playwrights, as Artistic Director of the National Playwrights
Conference at the Eugene O’Neill Memorial Theatre Center, as
a member of the Playwrights’ selection committee of the
Rockefeller Foundation and of the New American Plays program
of the Ford Foundation. His long search for a major new
American playwright will bear fruit with the 1984 production
of “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” by August Wilson. Throughout
the 1980s and into the ’90s, he will direct the Yale Rep and
New York productions of the successive installments of August
Wilson’s multi-part chronicle of African American life. The
plays in this cycle will include “Fences,” “Joe Turner’s Come
and Gone,” “The Piano Lesson,” “Two Trains Running” and “Seven
Guitars.” His productions for television include segments of
“Roots: The Next Generation,” “Bill Moyers’ Journal” and
“Robeson,” a presentation on the life of the African American
actor and activist Paul Robeson, who will be an early
inspiration for the young Lloyd Richards. He will also deal
with Robeson’s life and legacy in the 1977 theatrical
production “Paul Robeson.” He will be the recipient of the
Pioneer Award of AUDELCO, the Frederick Douglass Award and,
in 1993, will be awarded the National Medal of the Arts. He
will also serve as President of the Society of Stage Directors
and Choreographers. In 1991, he will retire from his posts as
Dean of the Yale University School of Drama and as Artistic
Director of Yale Rep, but he will remain Professor Emeritus at
Yale University, and continue to teach, direct, and search for
new plays and playwrights. He will be inducted into the Academy
of Achievement in 1987. He will join the ancestors on June 29,
2006.

1943 – Eva Narcissus Boyd is born in Belhaven, North Carolina. She will
move to Brighton Beach, New York at a young age. As a teenager,
she will work as a babysitter for songwriters Carole King and
Gerry Goffin. Amused by Eva’s individual dancing style they
wrote “The Loco-Motion” with Dee Dee Sharp in mind. She
will record it as a demo and music producer Don Kirshner will
be impressed by the song and Eva’s voice and will release it
as is. This will be the birth of “Little Eva”. The song will
become an instant hit after Little Eva demonstrates the song
and dance steps on American Bandstand. It will reach #1 in the
U.S. in 1962. After the success of “The Loco-Motion”, Eva will
be unfortunately stereotyped as a dance-craze singer and will
be given limited material. The notorious 1962 single “He Hit Me
(And It Felt Like a Kiss)” was inspired by the abuse Eva
suffered from her then-boyfriend. She will continued to tour and
record throughout the sixties, but her commercial potential
will plummet after 1964. Little Eva’s other hits will be “Keep
Your Hands Of My Baby”, “Somekind Of Wonderful” and “Let’s
Turkey Trot”. She will retire from the music business in 1971.
She will return to live performing with other artists of her era
on the cabaret and oldies circuits in the 1990’s. She will
continue performing until cervical cancer stops her in October
of 2001. She will join the ancestors after succumbing to the
illness on April 10, 2003 in Kinston, North Carolina.

1949 – South Africa begins its apartheid policy of racial segregation.
This includes a ban against racially-mixed marriages.

1950 – Mabel Keaton Staupers of the National Association of Colored
Graduate Nurses receives the Spingarn Medal in honor of her
advocacy of integration of African American graduate nurses
into the American workplace.

1964 – The Civil Rights Act of 1964 is passed.

1968 – Marlin Briscoe becomes the first African American quarterback
to play professional football in the modern NFL.

1970 – NAACP chairman Stephen Gill Spottswood tells the NAACP annual
convention that the Nixon administration is “anti-Negro” and
is pressing “a calculated Policy” inimical to “the needs and
aspirations of the large majority” of citizens.

1972 – U.S. Supreme Court rules, in a five to four decision, that the
death penalty is cruel and unusual punishment which violates
the Eighth Amendment. African Americans and members of other
minority groups constitute 483 of the 600 persons awaiting
execution.

1972 – The NAACP Annual Report states the unemployment of “urban Blacks
in 1971 was worse than at anytime since the great depression
of the thirties.” The report also says that more school
desegregation occurred in 1971 than in any other year since
the 1954 school decision.

1983 – The Apollo Theatre, in Harlem, New York, is declared a cultural
landmark.

1988 – Motown Records is sold for $ 61 million to an investment group
that includes a venture-capital firm, record executive Jheryl
Busby, and others. The company, which was founded by Berry
Gordy in 1959, produced some of the biggest rhythm and blues
performers of all time including the Supremes, the Temptations,
the Four Tops and Marvin Gaye.

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

KRLemmons African American History

June 28 African American Historical Events

Today in Black History – June 28 *

1770 – Anthony Benezet and other Quakers open a non-segregated
school for African American and white children in
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

1839 – Cinque, originally Sengbe, the son of a Mende king,
along with several other Africans, is kidnapped and sold
into slavery in Cuba. Cinque and his companions will
later carry out the famous successful revolt upon the
slave ship Amistad. The rebels were captured off Long
Island on August 26.

1874 – The Freedmen’s Savings & Trust Company, because of
mismanagement, closes its doors causing over 60,000
African American depositors to lose their $ 3 million in
deposits.

1927 – Anthony Overton, president of Victory Life Insurance
Company, receives the NAACP’s Spingarn Medal for “his
successful business career climaxed by admission of his
company as the first Negro organization permitted to do
business under the rigid requirements of the State of
New York.”

1935 – Mary McLeod Bethune, founder and president of Bethune-
Cookman College, receives the Spingarn Medal from the
NAACP. Bethune is honored for speaking out against
racism and injustice “in the South as well as in the
North, without compromise or fear.”

1936 – Major Owens, who will succeed Shirley Chisholm as
Congressional representative from New York, is born in
Memphis, Tennessee.

1946 – Thurgood Marshall receives the Spingarn Medal for his
“distinguished service as a lawyer before the Supreme
Court of the United States and inferior courts.”

1951 – The Amos ‘n’ Andy Show premieres on television. While
criticized for racial stereotyping, it is the first show
with an all African American cast to be successful on
the small screen.

1964 – Malcolm X founds the Organization for Afro-American Unity
in New York.

1978 – The Supreme Court hands down its “Bakke” decision, ruling
that the University of California at Davis Medical
College’s special admissions program for minority students
is illegal. As a result, Allan P. Bakke, a white student,
is ordered admitted to the college to prevent what the
Court considers reverse discrimination.

1990 – Jurors in the drug and perjury trial of Washington, DC,
Mayor Marion S. Barry Jr. view a videotape showing Barry
smoking crack cocaine during an FBI hotel-room sting
operation. Barry will be later convicted of a single
count of misdemeanor drug possession.

1997 – Mike Tyson “sets a new standard for bizarre behavior” in
the heavyweight boxing championship bout with Evander
Holyfield at the MGM Grand Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada,
when he bites off a one-inch chunk of Holyfield’s ear in
the third round. Tyson is disqualified, and Holyfield is
spirited away to a local hospital, where the piece of his
ear is re-attached after being located on the canvas of
the ring.

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

KRLemmons African American History

June 27 African American Historical Events

Today in Black History – June 27 *

1833 – The operator of an academy for African American females
in Canterbury, Connecticut, Prudence Crandall – a white
woman, is arrested for providing this service.

1872 – Paul Laurence Dunbar, short story writer, is born in
Dayton, Ohio. He will be so talented and versatile that he
will succeed in two worlds. He will be so adept at
writing verse in Black English that he will become known
as the “poet of his people,” while also cultivating a white
audience that appreciated the brilliance and value of his
work. “Majors and Minors” (1895), Dunbar’s second
collection of verse, will be a remarkable work containing
some of his best poems in both Black and standard English.
When the country’s reigning literary critic, William Dean
Howells reviews “Majors and Minors” favorably, Dunbar
becomes famous. And Howells’ introduction in “Lyric of
Lowly Life” (1896) will help make Dunbar the most popular
African American writer in America at the time. Dunbar will
join the ancestors after succumbing to tuberculosis on
February 9, 1906. The U.S. Postal Service will issue a
commemorative stamp in his honor on May 1, 1975.

1890 – George Dixon, a Canadian, becomes the first person of
African descent to win a world boxing championship. He
defeats Nunc Wallace to win the bantamweight title. He will
also become the first person of African descent to win an
American title in any sport, when he knocks out Cal McCarthy
in 1891.

1914 – The United States signs a treaty of commerce with Ethiopia.

1919 – Archibald H. Grimke’, noted lawyer and civil rights advocate
who had served as U.S. Consul in Santo Domingo, Dominican
Republic and president of the American Negro Academy among
his accomplishments, receives the NAACP’s Spingarn Medal.
An original member of the “Committee of Forty” that helped
establish the NAACP, Grimke’ is honored for his “years of
distinguished service to his race and country.”

1941 – Richard Wright is awarded the Spingarn Medal. He is cited
for the power of his books “Uncle Tom’s Children” and
“Native Son” in depicting “the effects of proscription,
segregation and denial of opportunities on the American
Negro.”

1960 – British Somaliland becomes part of Somalia.

1967 – A racially motivated disturbance occurs in Buffalo, New York.
200 persons are arrested. The disturbance will last four
days.

1970 – The Jackson Five: Marlon, Tito, Jackie, Jermaine and Michael,
jump to number one on the music charts with “The Love You
Save”. The song will stay at the top of the charts for a
two week run. It will be the third of four number-one hits
in a row for the group. The other three are: “I Want You
Back”, “ABC” and “I’ll Be There”. In 15 years, from 1969
to 1984, The Jackson Five/Jacksons will have 23 hits, score
two platinum singles (“Enjoy Yourself” and “Shake Your Body
[Down To The Ground]”) and one gold record (“State of
Shock”).

1972 – Patricia Roberts Harris, the first African American U.S.
Ambassador, is named permanent chairman of the Democratic
National Convention. The Mattoon, Illinois native will
later break new ground as Secretary of Health and Human
Services and Secretary of Housing and Urban Development.

1977 – Djibouti gains independence from France. Djibouti is located
in East Africa, bordered by Eritrea, Ethiopia, Somalia, and
the Gulf of Aden.

1978 – Henry Rono of Kenya sets a world record for 3,000 meters,
running in 7 minutes 32 and 1/10 seconds.

1979 – The U.S. Supreme Court rules, in Weber v. Kaiser Aluminum
and Chemical Corporation, that employers and unions can
establish voluntary programs, including the use of quotas,
to aid minorities in employment.

1988 – Mike Tyson knocks out Michael Spinks in 91 seconds of the
first round, in Atlantic City, New Jersey.

1989 – The Baltimore Orioles beat the Toronto Blue Jays 16-6. Each
team is coached by an African American, Frank Robinson of
the Orioles and Cito Gaston of the Blue Jays. Robinson,
who will direct his team to an 87-75 season, will be named
manager of the year by both the Associated Press and the
United Press International.

1991 – Justice Thurgood Marshall, 82, the first African American on
the U.S. Supreme Court, announces his retirement after 24
years service, citing “advancing age and medical condition.”
As chief counsel for the NAACP, Marshall had played a major
role in the legal fight that led to the Brown v. Board of
Education decision, overturning legal segregation. In his
final dissent on the court on June 27, Marshall says that
the court’s conservative majority was recklessly overturning
decisions protecting the right of African Americans and
minorities.

1994 – U.S. Coast Guard cutters intercept 1,330 Haitian boat people
on the high seas in one of the busiest days since refugees
began leaving Haiti following a 1991 military coup.

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

KRLemmons African American History

June 26 African American Historical Events

Today in Black History – June 26 *

1893 – William Lee Conley “Big Bill” Broonzy, blues singer,
is born in Scott, Mississippi.

1894 – The American Railway Union, led by Eugene Debs, calls
a general strike in sympathy with Pullman workers.

1934 – W.E.B. Du Bois resigns from the NAACP over the
association’s policies and strategies. Du Bois had
been editor of the association’s “Crisis” magazine and
director of publicity and research. The resignation
brings control of the magazine under the leadership of
chief executive Walter White and its new editor and
NAACP assistant secretary, Roy Wilkins.

1938 – James Weldon Johnson, joins the ancestors after
succumbing to injuries received in an automobile
accident near his summer home in Wiscosset, Maine.

1940 – Billy Davis Jr., singer with the 5th Dimension, is
born in St. Louis, Missouri. He will later leave the
group with his wife, Marilyn McCoo, with whom he will
enjoy continued success as a duo.

1950 – The American Medical Association seats the first
African American delegates at its convention.

1952 – The African National Congress begins its Defiance of
Unjust Laws campaign in South Africa.

1956 – Jazz trumpeter Clifford Brown joins the ancestors
after being killed in an auto accident on the
Pennsylvania Turnpike. Founder of the Brown-Roach
Quintet with Max Roach two years earlier, Brown had
built a reputation as one of the finest jazz
trumpeters of his day as a major proponent of hard bop.

1959 – Prince Edward County, Virginia, abandons (closes) the
public school system in an attempt to prevent school
desegregation.

1959 – Floyd Paterson loses the Heavyweight Boxing
Championship to Ingemar Johansson of Sweden.

1966 – The 220-mile voter registration march from Memphis,
Tennessee to Jackson, Mississippi ends with a rally of
some thirty thousand at the Mississippi state capitol.

1970 – Frank Robinson hits 2 grand slams as Baltimore Orioles
beat the Washington Senators 12-2.

1960 – Madagascar becomes independent from France.

1978 – “Girl,” a single-sentence two page short story of a
mother’s preachy advice to her daughter, appears in the
“New Yorker” magazine. Written by Jamaica Kincaid, the
story will make her a literary celebrity and will be
followed by short story collections and the novels
“Annie John” and “Lucy”.

1979 – Muhammad Ali announces that he was retiring as world
heavyweight boxing champion. The 37-year-old fighter
said, “Everything gets old, and you can’t go on like
years ago.” The “Float like a butterfly, sting like a
bee” act was no more.

1990 – African National Congress leader Nelson Mandela
addresses the U.S. Congress, asking for “material
resources” to hasten the end of white-led rule in South
Africa.

1995 – During a state visit to Ethiopia, Egyptian President
Hosni Mubarak escapes an attempt on his life.

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

KRLemmons African American History

June 25 African American Historical Events

Today in Black History – June 25 *

1876 – The most famous Native American uprising, at Little
Big Horn, begins in the Dakota territories (present-
day Montana). General George Armstrong Custer leads
three U.S. Army battalions to their deaths, including
Isaiah Dorman, an African American cavalryman, scout,
and intermediary between the Sioux and the United
States government, who had warned Custer of the
hostile Native American presence.

1933 – James Howard Meredith, the first African American
student at the University of Mississippi, is born in
Kosciusko, Mississippi.

1935 – Eddie Lee Floyd, rhythm and blues recording artist
(“California Girl,” “Knock on Wood”) and songwriter is
born in Montgomery, Alabama. His recording career did
not keep him from being one of his label’s most
productive writers. Virtually every Stax artist will
record his material, often co-written with either
Steve Cropper or Booker T. Jones, including Sam & Dave’s
“You Don’t Know What You Mean to Me”, Rufus Thomas’ “The
Breakdown”, Otis Redding’s “I Love You More Than Words
Can Say”, and Johnnie Taylor’s “Just the One (I’ve Been
Looking For)”. The latter will play during the opening
credits of director Harold Ramis’s film “Bedazzled.”
In 1980, he will also release material on the UK record
label I-Spy Records, owned and created by the UK band,
Secret Affair. He will join old Stax collaborators
Cropper and Dunn, and front The Blues Brothers Band on
a series of world tours, and in 1998, he and Wilson
Pickett will appear on screen dueting on “634-5789” in
Blues Brothers 2000. As well as singing with The Blues
Brothers Band, he will be the special guest with former
Rolling Stone Bill Wyman’s Rhythm Kings on several
dates in the US and the UK. In 2008, he will return to
Stax Records. His first new album in six years, “Eddie
Loves You So,” will be released in July 2008.

1935 – Joe Louis defeats Primo Carnera at Yankee Stadium.

1941 – President Franklin D. Roosevelt issues Executive Order
8802 forbidding racial discrimination in war industries
and government service and creating the Federal
Employment Practices Committee.

1942 – Willis Reed is born in Hico, Louisiana. He will become
a professional basketball player for the New York Knicks
after an All-American career at Grambling State University.
An All-Star in his first seven professional years
(1964-71), he will lead the New York Knicks to their
first-ever title in 1970 before injuries began slowing
him down. For years, He will bang against NBA greats Wilt
Chamberlain, Wes Unseld and Kareem Abdul Jabbar, and it
will gradually take its toll. Tendinitis in his knees will
obliterate the 1971 and 1972 seasons, but his unrelenting
will and spirit will enable him to overcome the
frustration and anguish and return in 1973. The left-
handed Reed will contribute athletically and spiritually
to another Knick NBA title in 1973. Torn cartilage in his
right knee will force him to retire in 1974, cutting short
a marvelous career. A physical inside player with a soft
outside jump shot, he will be the only player named MVP of
the All-Star Game, regular season and playoffs in the same
year (1970). A five-time All-NBA selection, he will tally
12,183 points (18.7 ppg) and grab 8,414 rebounds (12.9 rpg).
Playing with a Hall of Fame cast of Dave DeBusschere, Bill
Bradley, Walt Frazier, Earl Monroe and Jerry Lucas, He will
lead the Knicks in scoring five seasons and in rebounding
six seasons. His number 19 jersey will be retired by the
Knicks. He will be enshired in the Hall of Fame in 1982.
He will named to the NBA 50th Anniversary All-Time Team in
1996.

1947 – James Carter “Jimmie” Walker, comedian (“JJ” on “Good Times,”
“At Ease”) is born in the Bronx, New York City. In 2012,
his autobiography, “Dyn-o-mite! Good Times, Bad Times, Our
Times – A Memoir,” will be published by Da Capo Press.

1948 – Joe Louis KOs Jersey Joe Walcott in 11 rounds to retain the
heavyweight championship of the world.

1950 – Charles H. Houston is posthumously awarded the NAACP’s
Spingarn Medal for his legal work with the association
Legal Committee. He is cited as a “stalwart defender of
democracy, inspired teacher of youth, and leader in the
legal profession.”

1964 – Racially motivated disturbances erupt in Saint Augustine,
Florida, when a mob of 800 whites attacks part of a parade
of several hundred African Americans participating in an
integration parade.

1968 – Lincoln Alexander of Hamilton West in Ontario, Canada, is
the first Canadian of African descent to become a member
of the Canadian Parliament.

1968 – Bobby Bonds hits a grand slam in his first major league
game playing for the San Francisco Giants.

1975 – Mozambique gains its independence from Portugal. Samora M.
Machel, leader of the Mozambique Liberation Front, becomes
the republic’s first president.

2005 – The NAACP selects retired Verizon executive Bruce S. Gordon
to be its new president.

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

KRLemmons African American History

June 24 African American Historical Events

Today in Black History – June 24 *

1844 – Boston African Americans hold the first of a series
of meetings protesting Jim Crow schools.

1884 – John Lynch is the first African American to preside
over a major political party convention when he is
elected temporary Chairman of the Republican National
Convention.

1885 – Samuel David Ferguson is consecrated bishop of the
Protestant Episcopal Church and named bishop of
Liberia. He is the first African American with full
membership in the House of Bishops.

1896 – Booker T. Washington is the first African American to
receive an honorary Master of Arts degree from
Harvard University.

1898 – United States troops, including the African American
Tenth Cavalry, drive Spanish forces from their
entrenched positions at La Guasimas, Cuba.

1933 – Dramatic soprano Matilda Sissieretta Jones joins the
ancestors after succumbing to cancer in Providence,
Rhode Island. Called the “the first Negro prima
donna,” Jones toured with the Tennessee Jubilee
Singers and performed at Carnegie Hall, Madison
Square Garden and at the White House in 1892. She
will be dubbed “Black Patti,” a name she reportedly
disliked for its allusion to white contemporary,
Adelina Patti.

1933 – Samuel ‘Sam’ Jones II is born in Laurinburg, North
Carolina. He will become a professional basketball
player with the Boston Celtics after graduating from
North Carolina Central College. He will be a five time
NBA All Star, and will be enshrined into the Basketball
Hall of fame in 1984. He will be named as one of the 50
greatest players in NBA history in 1996.

1936 – Mary McLeod Bethune, founder-president of Bethune-
Cookman College in Daytona, Beach, Florida, is named
director of Negro Affairs of the National Youth
Administration. She is the first African American
woman to receive a major appointment from the federal
government. The educator will hold the post until
January 1, 1944.

1943 – Georg Stanford Brown is born in Havana, Cuba. He will
become an actor and director. He will star in the TV
series, “The Rookies,” and the mini-series “Roots.”
He will direct “The Jesse Owens Story,” “In Defense of
Kids,” “Ava’s Magical Adventure” and many others.

1949 – “Billboard Magazine” replaces the term ‘Race Record’ on
its record charts with ‘Rhythm & Blues’.

1968 – Joe Frazier TKOs Manda Ramos for the world heavyweight
boxing title.

1968 – Resurrection City is Washington, DC is closed. More than
one hundred residents are arrested when they refuse to
leave the site. Other residents, including Ralph
Abernathy, were arrested during demonstration at the
U.S. Capitol. National Guard troops were mobilized later
in the day to stop the disturbances.

1972 – The rules committee of the Democratic National Convention
approves the nomination of Yvonne Brathwaite Burke as
co-chairperson of the convention. She becomes the first
African American woman to serve in that position in any
major political party in the United States.

1974 – Boston’s National Center for Afro-American Artists becomes
the first African American cultural center to be awarded
a Ford Foundation grant.

1996 – A jury orders the city of Philadelphia to pay $1.5 million
in damages for the bombing of MOVE headquarters in 1985
that killed 11 people.

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

KRLemmons African American History

June 23 African American Historical Events

Today in Black History – June 23 *

1824 – The Reverend William Levington, Deacon, establishes St.
James’ First African Protestant Episcopal Church in the
“Upper Room” at Park Avenue and Marion Street. The St.
James Episcopal Church, in Baltimore, Maryland, becomes
the oldest African American Episcopal Church established
south of the Mason-Dixon line.

1888 – Abolitionist Frederick Douglass receives one vote from
the Kentucky delegation at the Republican convention
in Chicago, effectively making him the first African
American candidate nominated for U.S. president.

1893 – Willie Sims, the wealthiest jockey of his time, rides
winning horses in five of six races at Sheepshead Bay
in Brooklyn, New York. Sims will repeat the feat two
years later in addition to winning two Kentucky Derbys
and two Belmont Stakes.

1904 – Willie Mae Ford (later Smith) is born in Rolling Fork,
Mississippi. She will become a leading gospel singer
and will be known as “the mother of gospel music.” She
will join the ancestors in 1994.

1919 – The Black Star Line of Marcus Garvey’s Universal Negro
Improvement Association (UNIA) is incorporated.

1926 – Langston Hughes’ articles “The Negro Artist and the
Racial Mountain” appears in “Nation “magazine. In it,
Hughes expresses African Americans’ bold new confidence
to create a new art during the Harlem Renaissance. “We
younger Negro artists who create now intend to express
our individual dark skinned selves without fear or
shame.”

1940 – Wilma Rudolph is born in Clarksville, Tennessee. A
polio victim as a child, she will overcome her illness
and win three gold medals at the Summer Games in Rome
(1960), the first American woman to achieve this feat
in a single Olympiad. She will be inducted into the
Olympic Hall of Fame. She will join the ancestors in
November, 1994.

1944 – Rosetta Hightower is born. She will become a singer with
the group, The Orlons. Some of their hits will be “The
Wah Watusi,” “Don’t Hang Up,” and “South Street.”

1948 – Clarence Thomas is born in the Pinpoint community, near
Savannah, Georgia. He will become a U.S. Supreme Court
Justice in 1991, replacing Thurgood Marshall as the only
African American among the nine jurists. He is
appointed by the conservative Republican administration
to satisfy the need to have an African American on the
court, while at the same time have a justice that is very
conservative. This will serve to increase the court’s
decisions that negatively affect African Americans and
other minorities and weaken affirmative action.

1956 – Steven Randall “Randy” Jackson in born in Baton Rouge,
Louisiana. He will become an American musician and
record producer. He will be best known to the general
public for being a judge on the television show American
Idol. As a musician Randy Jackson will play the electric
bass. He will be the bass player for the band Journey
for a period in the 1980s. He will also record, produce,
or tour with many well-known artists and bands, ranging
from Mariah Carey (whom he knew when she was still a
teenager; he will be in her band at Live 8 in London in
2005) to *NSYNC, Céline Dion, Bruce Springsteen and
Madonna. He will also work as an executive with Columbia
Records and MCA Records. He will be a judge with American
Idol since its inception in 2002. On the show he will be
known for taking a middle road of criticism between the
supportiveness of Paula Abdul and the nastiness of Simon
Cowell. He will popularize “pitchy” as the way to describe
off-key singing. He will also be renowned for his heavy
use of slang terms and gestures, most notably the word
“dawg”. When Randy says “you can blow,” it means “you can
sing well.” Jackson will sometimes wear outrageous outfits
and supplies an endless inspirational resource for those
looking for eye glasses.

1958 – A federal judge ruled racial segregation in Little Rock,
Arkansas, must end in 30 months.

1966 – Jonathan “Chico” DeBarge is born in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
He will launch a promising solo career on Motown in the
late ’80s. Despite a hit single and a hit debut album, his
career will be sidelined by imprisonment on a drug charge.
After he completes his sentence, DeBarge will launch a
comeback in November 1997 with the release of “Long Time
No See”. “The Game” will follow in 1999.

1969 – Joe Frazier defeats Jerry Quarry for the heavyweight boxing
title.

1970 – Charles Rangel defeats Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. in the New
York Democratic primary in Harlem. This will end the
political career of one of the major political symbols of
the post-World War II period.

1975 – Virgo Williams is born. He will become a Rhythm and Blues
singer with the Ghostowns DJs.

1982 – The House of Representatives approves the extension of the
Voting Rights Act of 1965, despite North Carolina Senator
Jesse Helms’ attempt to block the House vote. The Senate
had approved the extension of the bill five days before the
historic House vote.

1990 – TV Guide selects Arsenio Hall as Television Personality of
the Year.

1994 – After decades as an international outcast, South Africa
reclaims its seat in the United Nations.

1994 – French marines and Foreign Legionnaires head into Rwanda to
try to stem the country’s ethnic slaughter.

1997 – Dr. Betty Shabazz, widow of Malcolm X, joins the ancestors
in New York City at the age of 61, 3 weeks after receiving
burns over 80% of her body. Her burns were the result of a
fire set by her grandson, Malcolm.

2003 – Maynard Jackson Jr., who was elected the first African
American mayor of Atlanta in 1973 and transformed urban
politics in America by forcing the city’s white business
elite to open doors to minorities, joins the ancestors at
the age of 65. Thirty years earlier, Jackson survived a
racially charged primary to become the first African
American mayor of a major Southern city. The victory, the
same year that African American mayors were elected in
Detroit and Los Angeles, helped solidify the political
power of urban African Americans.

2003 – Max Manning, star pitcher in the Negro Leagues, joins the
ancestors at the age of 84 after a long illness. His 1937
tryout offer from the Detroit Tigers was rescinded when
they learned that he was African American.

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

KRLemmons African American History

June 22 African American Historical Events

Today in Black History – June 22 *

1772 – Slavery is outlawed in England.

1868 – Congress readmits the state of Arkansas on the
condition that it would never change its constitution
to disenfranchise African Americans.

1909 – Katherine Dunham is born in Joliet, Illinois. She
will become one of the revolutionary forces in modern
dance through her introduction and use of African and
Caribbean styles. Successful on the stage and in
movies, including “Stormy Weather”, in the late 1960’s,
she will form the Katherine Dunham Center for the
Performing Arts and in 1983 will be awarded Kennedy
Center honors. She will spend her later years residing
in East St. Louis, Illinois. She will join the
ancestors on May 21, 2006.

1937 – Joe Louis knocks out James Braddock to become the
heavyweight boxing champion of the world. The fight
is won in eight rounds before 45,000 fans, the largest
audience, to date, to witness a fight.

1938 – Joe Louis defeats German boxer Max Schmeling in a
rematch of their 1936 fight and retains his world
heavyweight crown. Because of the Nazi persecution of
Jews in Europe and Hitler’s disdain for people of
African descent, the fight will take on mythic
proportion, with Louis seen by many as fighting to
uphold democracy and the race. He succeeds
convincingly, ending the fight in 2:04 of the first
round at Yankee Stadium.

1941 – Ed Bradley is born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. A
CBS correspondent covering the Vietnam conflict,
Bradley will become co-anchor of CBS’ “60 Minutes” and
win at least six Emmy awards. He will join the ancestors
on November 9, 2006 after succumbing to leukemia at the
age of 65.

1947 – Octavia Butler is born in Pasadena, California. She
will become a science fiction writer and winner of the
Hugo Award for excellence in science fiction writing in
1984.

1949 – Ezzard Charles defeats Jersey Joe Walcott to win the
heavyweight championship of the world.

1962 – Clyde ‘The Glide’ Drexler is born in Houston, Texas.
He will become a basketball star at the University of
Houston and will lead Houston’s “Phi Slamma Jamma” team
to the NCAA Final Four two years in a row, 1983 and 1984.
He will be drafted by the NBA Portland Trailblazers,
where he will play twelve seasons, and will lead them to
the NBA FInals twice. In 1992, he will be selected to the
U.S. Olympics basketball team, nicknamed “The Dream Team”,
which will win the gold medal in Barcelona. After being
traded to the Houston Rockets, he will join his teammate
from the University of Houston, Hakeem Olajuwon and help
the Rockets win the NBA championship in 1995. After
retiring from the NBA, he will become the head coach at
his alma mater, the University of Houston. He will later
become the color commentator for the Houston Rockets. He
will be inducted into the Naismth Memorial Basketball Hall
of Fame on September 10, 2004, in his first year of
eligibility. He will be named one of basketball’s fifty
greatest players by the NBA.

1963 – “Fingertips – Pt 2” by Little Stevie Wonder is released.
It becomes Wonder’s first number one single on August 10th.
Stevie Wonder will have 46 hits on the pop and Rhythm &
Blues music charts between 1963 and 1987. Eight of those
hits will make it to number one.

1989 – The government of Angola and the anti-Communist rebels of
the UNITA movement agree to a formal truce in their
14-year-old civil war.

1990 – African National Congress leader Nelson Mandela, speaking
before the United Nations, states that a democratic,
nonracial South Africa is “within our grasp.”

1991 – “Kaleidoscope”, an exhibit of the work of over 30 African
American photographers, opens at the Anacostia Museum in
Washington, DC. Among those exhibited are masters Addison
Scurlock and Robert Scurlock as well as contemporary
photographers Matthew Lewis, Sam Yette, Sharon Farmer, and
Brian Jones.

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

KRLemmons African American History

June 21 African American Historical Events

Today in Black History – June 21 *

1821 – The African Methodist Episcopal Zion (AMEZ) Church is
formally constituted in New York City at its first annual
conference. Nineteen clergymen were present, representing
six African American churches from New York City,
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, New Haven, Connecticut and
Newark, New Jersey. They voted to separate from the
white-controlled Methodist Episcopal Church, which had
insisted on ultimate control of the church’s leadership and
property. To distinguish between the two African Methodist
Episcopal organizations, as well as to honor their original
congregation, in 1848 they will vote to add Zion to their
name.

1832 – Joseph Haynes Rainey is born in Georgetown, South Carolina.
He will become the first African American elected to the
U.S. House of Representatives, where he will serve five
terms.

1859 – Henry Ossawa Tanner is born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Son
of AME bishop Benjamin Tanner, young Tanner will forgo the
ministry to take up painting. Constantly facing the tension
between racial stereotypes and his art, Tanner will
eventually emigrate to France to pursue his art, considered
by many the finest produced by an African American. He will
be known for his commanding use of light and color in his
seascapes, scenes of everyday life, and religious paintings.
He will join the ancestors in Paris, France on May 25, 1937.

1868 – John Hope is born in Augusta, Georgia. He will become the
first African American president of Atlanta Baptist (later
Morehouse) College in 1906. He will be a pioneer in the
field of education. A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Brown
University, He will encourage an intellectual climate
comparable to what he had known at his alma mater and will
openly challenge Booker T. Washington’s view that education
for African Americans should emphasize vocational and
agricultural skills. He will join the ancestors in 1936.

1923 – Marcus Garvey is sentenced by the U.S. government to 5 years
in prison for using the U.S. mail to defraud. He is
railroaded by a government that is terrified by the control
that one magnificent orator had over African Americans.
They did not want their major source of cheap labor in
America to leave for Africa.

1927 – Carl B. Stokes, the first African American elected mayor of
a major American city is born. Stokes will be elected to
two terms as mayor of Cleveland, Ohio at a time of urban
riots and racial unrest in many major U.S. cities. Civil
rights leaders said his election was an advance, both
symbolic and genuine, for the cause of black political
empowerment. He is instrumental in getting through a law
requiring city contractors to have minority employment
programs. President Clinton will appoint him, in 1994, as
ambassador to the Seychelles, an island nation in the
Indian Ocean. He will join the ancestors on April 3, 1996.

1945 – Colonel Benjamin O. Davis, Jr. becomes the first African
American to command a U.S. Army Air Force base when he
takes command of the 477th Composite Group of Godman Field
in Kentucky.

1951 – PFC William H. Thompson is posthumously awarded the
Congressional Medal of Honor. He is the first African
American recipient since the Spanish-American War.

1964 – In Neshoba County in central Mississippi, three civil rights
field workers disappear after investigating the burning of
an African American church by the Ku Klux Klan. Michael
Schwerner and Andrew Goodman, both white New Yorkers, had
traveled to heavily segregated Mississippi in 1964 to help
organize civil rights efforts on behalf of the Congress of
Racial Equality (CORE). The third man, James Chaney, was a
local African American man who had joined CORE in 1963. The
disappearance of the three young men garnered national
attention and led to a massive FBI investigation that was
code-named MIBURN, for “Mississippi Burning.” They are later
found murdered.

1965 – Arthur Ashe leads UCLA to the NCAA tennis championship.

1990 – Little Richard gets a star on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame.

1997 – Patrice Rushen receives an NAACP Lifetime Achievement Award
for her contributions in the field of music.

2001 – Famed blues man John Lee Hooker joins the ancestors at the
age of 83 of natural causes in Los Altos, California. The
veteran blues singer from the Mississippi Delta estimated
that he recorded more than 100 albums over nearly seven
decades. He won a Grammy Award for a version of “I’m In The
Mood,” was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in
1991 and received a Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2000
Grammys. Through it all, Hooker’s music remained hypnotic
and unchanged — his rich and sonorous voice, full of
ancient hurt, coupled with a brooding, rhythmic guitar. He
sang of loneliness and confusion. Neither polished nor
urbane, his music was raw, primal emotion.

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