A lifelong quest to learn, curate and share information
Sjohnna McCray, Walt Whitman award winner poet, is Day 2 Poet of the Day. Read more about this poet below:
Poem: “Agnostic Front”: http://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/agnostic-front
Poets.org: http://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poet/sjohnna-mccray
Poets&Writers: http://www.pw.org/content/sjohnna_mccray_wins_walt_whitman_award?cmnt_all=1
* Today in Black History – April 4 *
1915 – McKinley Morganfield is born in Rolling Fork, Mississippi. He
will be discovered in 1941 by two music archivists from the
Library of Congress, traveling the back roads of Mississippi
looking for the legendary Robert Johnson. They recorded two
of Morganfield’s songs and lit a fire in the ambitious young
man. He will leave Mississippi for Chicago two years later
to become a blues singer better known as “Muddy Waters.” He
will join the ancestors on April 30, 1983 in Chicago,
Illinois.
1928 – Marguerite Ann Johnson is born in St. Louis, Missouri. She
will become the first African American streetcar conductor
in San Francisco, a dancer, nightclub singer, editor, and
teacher of music and drama in Ghana and professor of
American Studies at Wake Forest University, better known as
Dr. Maya Angelou. She will also become noted as the author of
a multi-volume autobiographical series, as well as several
volumes of poetry. She will join the ancestors on May 28, 2014.
1938 – Vertamae (Vera Mae) Smart-Grosvenor is born in Hampton County,
South Carolina. She will become a culinary anthropologist/griot,
food writer, and broadcaster on public media. She will be known
for her cookbook-memoir, Vibration Cooking: or, The Travel
Notes of a Geechee Girl (1970). She will also appear in several
films, including “Daughters of the Dust” (1992), about a Gullah
family in 1902, at a time of transition on the Sea Islands; and
“Beloved” (1998), based on the Toni Morrison novel.
1939 – Hugh Masekela is born in Kwa-Guqa Township, Witbank, South Africa.
He will become a musician and band leader. He will be a major
force in South African Jazz, and will become known throughout
the world.
1948 – Richard Dean ‘Dick’ Parsons is born in Brooklyn, New York. In 1988,
he will be recruited to serve as chief operating officer of the
Dime Savings Bank of New York, becoming the first African American
CEO of a large, non-minority U.S. savings institution. In 1990, he
will become Chairman and CEO and will oversee a merger with Anchor
Savings Bank, gaining a substantial sum when the Dime Bank was
demutualized. In 1991, on the recommendation of Nelson Rockefeller’s
brother Laurance to the then CEO Steven Ross, he will be invited to
join Time Warner’s board. He will subsequently become president of
the company in 1995, recruited by Gerald Levin. He will help
negotiate the company’s merger with America Online in 2000, creating
a $165-billion media conglomerate. In December, 2001, it will be
announced that chief executive Gerald Levin would retire and he will
be selected as his successor. The announcement will surprise many
media watchers who expected chief operating officer Robert Pittman
to take the helm. In 2003, he will announce the name change from
AOL-Time Warner to simply Time Warner. He will become chairman
of Citigroup on February 23, 2009.
1959 – The Federation of Mali is formed, consisting of Senegal & the
territory of Mali in the French Sudan. It will dissolve in
1960.
1960 – Senegal and Mali gain separate independence.
1968 – Acknowledged leader of the U.S. civil rights movement, Martin
Luther King, Jr. joins the ancestors after being assassinated
in Memphis, Tennessee. His death will result in a national day
of mourning and the postponement of the beginning of the baseball
season. Over 30,000 people will form a funeral procession behind
his coffin, pulled by two Georgia mules. King’s death will also
set off racially motivated civil disturbances in 160 cities
leaving 82 people dead and causing $ 69 million in property
damage. President Lyndon B. Johnson declares Sunday, April 6, a
national day of mourning and orders all U.S. flags on government
buildings in all U.S. territories and possessions to fly at
half-mast.
1972 – Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., former congressman and civil rights
leader, joins the ancestors in Miami, Florida at the age of
63.
1974 – Hank Aaron ties the baseball career home run record set by
Babe Ruth, when he hits his 714th home run in Cincinnati,
Ohio.
Information retrieved from the Munirah Chronicle and is edited by Mr. Rene’ A. Perry.
* Today in Black History – April 3 *
1865 – The Fifth Massachusetts Colored Cavalry and units of the
Twenty-fifth Corps are in the vanguard of Union troops
entering Richmond. The Second Division of the Twenty-Fifth
Corps help to chase Robert E. Lee’s army from Petersburg to
Appomattox Court House, April 3-10. The African American
division and white Union soldiers are advancing on General
Lee’s trapped army with fixed bayonets when the Confederate
troops surrender.
1889 – The Savings Bank of the Order of True Reformers opens in
Richmond, Virginia.
1934 – Richard Mayhew is born in Amityville, New York. A student
at the Art Students League, Brooklyn Museum Art School, and
Columbia University, as well as the Academia in Florence,
Italy, Mayhew will be one of the most respected and
revolutionary landscape artists of the 20th century. He
will also form “Spiral,” a forum for artistic innovation
and exploration of African American artists’ relationships
to the civil rights movement, with fellow artists Romare
Bearden, Charles Alston, Hale Woodruff, and others.
1936 – James Harrell McGriff is born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
He will be surrounded by music as a child, with both parents
playing piano and cousins Benny Golson and Harold Melvin,
who were pursuing their own musical talents. He will be
influenced to play the organ by neighbor Richard “Groove”
Holmes, with whom he will study privately. He will also
study organ at Philadelphia’s Combe College of Music and at
Julliard. In addition, he will study with Milt Buckner and
with classical organist Sonny Gatewood. His first hit will
be with his arrangement of “I Got A Woman”, on the Sue
label, which made it to the top five on both Billboard’s
Rhythm and Blues and Pop charts. There will be close to 100
albums with Jimmy McGriff’s name at the top as leader. He
will record for Sue, Solid State, United Artists, Blue Note,
Groove Merchant, Milestone, Headfirst and Telarc. Over his
prolific career, he will record with George Benson, Kenny
Burrell, Frank Foster, J.J. Johnson and a two-organ jam
affair with the late “Groove” Holmes. He will join the
ancestors on May 24, 2008, succumbing to complications of
multiple sclerosis.
1944 – The U.S. Supreme Court (Smith v. Allwright) said that “white
primaries” that exclude African Americans are unconstitutional.
1950 – Carter G. Woodson, “the father of black history,” joins the
ancestors in Washington, DC at the age of 74.
1961 – Edward “Eddie” Regan Murphy is born in Brooklyn, New York. A
stand-up comedian and star of “Saturday Night Live” before
pursuing a movie career, Murphy will become one of the
largest African American box office draws. Among his most
successful movies will be “48 Hours,” “Trading Places,”
“Beverly Hills Cop,” “Coming to America,” and “Harlem
Nights.”
1963 – Led by Martin Luther King, Jr., the Birmingham anti-
segregation campaign begins. Before it is over, more than
2,000 demonstrators, including King, will be arrested. The
Birmingham Manifesto, issued by Fred Shuttlesworth of the
Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights the morning of
the campaign, summarizes the frustration and hopes of the
protesters: “The patience of an oppressed people cannot
endure forever…. This is Birmingham’s moment of truth in
which every citizen can play his part in her larger
destiny.”
1964 – Malcolm X speaks at a CORE-sponsored meeting on “The Negro
Revolt What Comes Next?” In his speech “The Ballot or
Bullet,” Malcolm warns of a growing black nationalism that
will no longer tolerate patronizing white political action.
1968 – Less than 24 hours before he is assassinated in Memphis,
Tennessee, civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.
delivers his famous “mountaintop” speech to a rally of
striking sanitation workers.
1990 – Jazz singer Sarah Vaughan joins the ancestors in suburban
Los Angeles, California, at the age of 66.
1996 – Ron Brown will join the ancestors when an Air Force jetliner
carrying the Commerce Secretary and American business
executives crashes in Croatia, killing all 35 people aboard.
2007 – Eddie Robinson, the longtime Grambling University coach who
transformed a small, Black college into a football power
that sent hundreds of players to the NFL, joins the
ancestors at the age of 88. The soft-spoken coach spent 57
years at Grambling State University, where he set a
standard for victories with 408 and nearly every season
relished seeing his top players drafted by NFL teams.
Information retrieved from the Munirah Chronicle and is edited by Mr. Rene’ A. Perry.
* Today in Black History – April 2 *
1855 – John Mercer Langston is elected clerk of Brownhelm, Ohio,
township. He will be considered the first African American
elected to public office.
1918 – Charles Wilbert White is born in Chicago, Illinois. An artist
who will work with traditional materials (pen, ink, oil on
canvas and lithography), White will transform the image of
African Americans and earn praise from critics and artists
alike. White will receive dozens of awards and his work will
be collected by museums on three continents and major
corporations. He will be known for his WPA-era murals. He will
be briefly married to famed sculptor and printmaker Elizabeth
Catlett. His best known work will be “The Contribution of
the Negro to American Democracy,” a mural at Hampton University
depicting a number of notable blacks including Denmark Vesey,
Nat Turner, Peter Salem, George Washington Carver, Harriet
Tubman, Frederick Douglass, and Marian Anderson. He will teach
at the Otis Art Institute from 1965 until he joins the ancestors
on October 3, 1979.
1932 – Bill Pickett, a well-known cowboy who was acclaimed by
President Theodore Roosevelt as “one of the best trained
ropers and riders the West has produced,” joins the
ancestors. Pickett performed as a bulldogger in Europe,
Mexico, and the United States, where he was often assisted
by two relatively unknown white cowboys, Tom Mix and Will
Rogers.
1939 – Marvin Gaye, Jr. is born in Washington, DC. He will sign
with Motown in 1962 and begin a 22-year career that includes
hits “Pride and Joy,” duets with Mary Wells and Tammi
Terrell, as well as best-selling albums exploring his social
consciousness (“What’s Going On”) and sexuality (“Let’s Get
It On,” “Midnight Love, and “Sexual Healing”). He will join
the ancestors on April 1, 1984, succumbing to a gun shot
wound inflicted by his father.
1969 – The Milwaukee Bucks of the National Basketball Association
signs Lew Alcindor for a reported $1,400,000 five-year
contract. Alcindor will later change his name to Kareem
Abdul-Jabar and his team to the Los Angeles Lakers.
1984 – Coach John Thompson of Georgetown University becomes the
first African American coach to win the NCAA Division I
basketball championship. The team, led by Patrick Ewing,
wins over the University of Houston, 84-75.
2003 – Edwin Starr, Rhythm & Blues singer, joins the ancestors at
age 61 after succumbing to a heart attack. He recorded the
hits “War” and “Agent Double-O Soul.”
Information retrieved from the Munirah Chronicle and is edited by Mr. Rene’ A. Perry.
Illustration by Don Tate
We didn’t want to let the day end without wishing our brother Don Tate congratulations on his new picture book with Chris Barton, The Amazing Age of John Roy Lynch (Eerdmans). What makes this collaboration even more special? Chris and Don are friends.
Chris suggested Don, his critique partner, as the illustrator of his story that had been years in the making. “I don’t know that I could articulate then why he would be a great artistic choice,” Chris said in this interview, ” but his style turned out to be just right both for making John Roy Lynch accessible as a person and for conveying acts of violence and terrorism in a vivid but not overwhelming way.”
The collaboration is paying off. Their book earned starred reviews from Booklistand Publishers Weekly. We’re proud of Don and Chris and look forward to seeing many more accolades. Learn more about The Amazing…
View original post 197 more words
Brian O. Jordan
On March 21, 2015, I had the pleasure to share the gift of reading with the “Birdy Book Club.” What a wonderful group of young men. I am proud of their parents and grandparents for beginning to instill the love of reading at such a young age. My parents did the same with me.
I read them my book titled, I Told You I Can Play (illustrated by Cornelius Van Wright and Ying-Hwa Hu, published by Just Us Books). This was the first time I ever did a children’s reading leveraging FaceTime on my computer and it turned out to be a good experience for the young men. This book captures a story about my own youth and speaks to being a small child who was always told I was too young to play. The book goes on and shows how I proved to my family and others that…
View original post 525 more words
By Cecilia Cackley
DESCRIPTION (from Goodreads): Music, magic, and a real-life miracle meld in this genre-defying masterpiece from storytelling maestro Pam Muñoz Ryan.
Lost and alone in a forbidden forest, Otto meets three mysterious sisters and suddenly finds himself entwined in a puzzling quest involving a prophecy, a promise, and a harmonica.
Decades later, Friedrich in Germany, Mike in Pennsylvania, and Ivy in California each, in turn, become interwoven when the very same harmonica lands in their lives. All the children face daunting challenges: rescuing a father, protecting a brother, holding a family together. And ultimately, pulled by the invisible thread of destiny, their suspenseful solo stories converge in an orchestral crescendo.
Richly imagined and masterfully crafted, Echo pushes the boundaries of genre and form, and shows us what is possible in how we tell stories. The result is an impassioned, uplifting, and virtuosic tour de force that will…
View original post 458 more words
April is Poetry Month! Each day this month I will post a poem written by a person of color. Today’s poem, by Lucille Clifton, comes from the Poetry Foundation. This link also includes educator’s resources: discussion questions, writing ideas, and teacher tips.
Won’t You Celebrate With Me by Lucille Clifton: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/learning/poem/181377
* Today in Black History – April 1 *
1867 – African Americans vote in a municipal election in Tuscumbia,
Alabama. Military officials set aside the election pending
clarification on electoral procedures.
1868 – Hampton Institute is founded in Hampton, Virginia, by General
Samuel Chapman Armstrong.
1895 – Alberta Hunter is born in Memphis, Tennessee. She will run
away from home at the age of twelve and go to Chicago,
Illinois to become a Blues singer. She will work in a
variety of clubs until the violence in the Chicago club
scene prompts her to move to New York City. There she will
record for a variety of blues labels. She will write a lot
of her own songs and songs for other performers. Her song
“Down Hearted Blues,” will become Bessie Smith’s first
record in 1923. She will perform in Europe and America
until 1956, when she will retire from performing. She will
work for more than twenty years as a nurse in a New York
hospital and in 1977, at the age of 82, surprisingly return
to the stage. She will perform until she joins the
ancestors on October 17, 1984.
1905 – The British East African Protectorate becomes the colony of
Kenya.
1917 – Scott Joplin joins the ancestors in New York City. One of
the early developers of ragtime and the author of “Maple
Leaf Rag,” Joplin also created several rag-time and grand
operas, the most noteworthy of which, “Treemonisha,”
consumed his later years in an attempt to have it published
and performed.
1924 – The British Crown takes over Northern Rhodesia from the
British South Africa Company.
1929 – Morehouse College, Spelman College and Atlanta University
are merged, creating a ‘new’ Atlanta University. Dr. John
Hope of Morehouse College, is named president.
1930 – Zawditu, the first reigning female monarch of Ethiopia,
joins the ancestors. She was the second daughter of Emperor
Menelik II. She had been Empress of Ethiopia since 1916.
1939 – Rudolph Bernard “Rudy” Isley is born in Cincinnati, Ohio.
He will become a singer at the age of six with his brothers
O’Kelly, Ronald and Vernon Isley and form the group, The
Isley Brothers. They will leave Cincinnati in 1956 and go
to New York City to pursue their musical career. Rudolph
and his brothers will obtain fame and success nationally
and internationally earning numerous platinum and gold
albums which contain such classic hits as “Shout,” “Twist
and Shout,” “It’s Your Thing,” “Who’s That Lady,” “Fight
the Power,” “For the Love of You,” “Harvest For The World,”
“Live It Up,” “Footsteps in the Dark,” “Work to Do,” “Don’t
Say Good Night” and many others.
1950 – Charles R. Drew, surgeon and developer of the blood bank
concept, joins the ancestors after an automobile accident
near Burlington, North Carolina at the age of 45.
1951 – Oscar Micheaux joins the ancestors in Charlotte, North
Carolina. Micheaux formed his own film production company,
Oscar Micheaux Corporation, to produce his novel “The
Homesteader” and over 30 other movies, notably “Birthright,”
which was adapted from a novel by Pulitzer Prize-winning
author T.S. Stribling, and “Body and Soul,” which marked the
film debut of Paul Robeson.
1966 – The first World Festival of Negro Arts opens in Dakar,
Senegal, with the U.S. African American delegation having
one of the largest number of representatives. First prizes
are won by poet Robert Hayden, engraver William Majors,
actors Ivan Dixon and Abbey Lincoln, gospel singer Mahalia
Jackson, jazz trumpeter Louis Armstrong, and sociologist
Kenneth Clark.
1984 – Marvin Gaye joins the ancestors after being shot to death by
his father, Marvin Gaye, Sr. in Los Angeles, California,
one day before his forty-fifth birthday. The elder Gaye
will plead guilty to voluntary manslaughter, and receive
probation. Marvin Gaye was one of the most talented soul
singers of all time. Unlike most soul greats, Gaye’s
artistic inclinations evolved over the course of three
decades, moving from hard-driving soul-pop to funk and
dance grooves.
Information retrieved from the Munirah Chronicle and is edited by Mr. Rene’ A. Perry.
Fannie M. Richards, the first African American teacher who taught in Detroit, is Day 31 Woman of the Day. Read more about this pioneer woman below:
Library Point: http://www.librarypoint.org/fannie_Richards
Story of Fannie Richards: http://archive.org/stream/jstor-2713513/2713513_djvu.txt
Michigan Women’s Hall of Fame: hall.michiganwomen.org/honoree.php?C=220&A..
Detroit African American History Project: http://www.daahp.wayne.edu/biographiesDisplay.php?id=21
Research Article on Richards and Teaching: http://teqjournal.org/Back%20Issues/Volume%2035/VOL35%20PDFS/35_3/06florioruane&williams-35_3.pdf
The CamaraIfe Maktaba 