KRLemmons African American History

April 4 African American Historical Events

 

* 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
Maya Angelou. She will also become noted as the author of a
multi-volume autobiographical series, as well as several
volumes of poetry.

1938 – Vera Mae Smart Grosvenor, who will become the author of the
popular and influential cookbook “Vibration Cooking”(1970),
is born in Fairfax, South Carolina.

1939 – Hugh Masekela is born in 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.

1942 – Richard Parsons is born in New York City. In 1990, he will
be named chief executive officer of Dime Savings Bank, the
first African American CEO of a large, non-minority U.S.
savings institution.

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 Rene’ A. Perry.

KRLemmons African American History

January 3 African American Historical Events

Today in Black History – January 3 *

1621 – William Tucker is born in Jamestown, Virginia. He is the first
African American child, on record, born in the American
colonies.

1945 – The Albany Institute of History and Art in New York State opens
its exhibit “The Negro Artist Comes of Age: A National Survey of
Contemporary American Artists.” The show includes works by
Aaron Douglas, William H. Johnson, Palmer Hayden, Eldzier
Cortor, Lois Mailou Jones, and others and will run for five weeks.

1947 – The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People’s
annual report calls 1946 “one of the grimmest years in the
history of the NAACP.” The report details violence and
atrocities heaped on “Negro veterans freshly returned from a
war to end torture and racial extermination,” and said “Negroes
in America have been disillusioned over the wave of lynchings,
brutality and official recession from all of the flamboyant
promises of post war democracy and decency.”

1947 – William Dawson becomes the first African American to head a
congressional committee; Congressional proceedings are televised
for the first time as viewers in Washington, Philadelphia and
New York got to see some of the opening ceremonies of the 80th
Congress.

1956 – The Colored Methodist Episcopal Church, established in 1870,
officially changes its name to the Christian Methodist Episcopal
Church. The denomination is headquartered today in Memphis,
Tennessee, and comprises a membership of nearly 500,000.

1961 – Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. is elected Chairman of The House
Education and Labor Committee.

1966 – Floyd B. McKissick, a North Carolina attorney, is named national
director of The Congress of Racial Equality (CORE).

1969 – Louis Stokes is sworn in as the first African American
congressman from the state of Ohio. He will serve more that ten
terms in Congress and be distinguished by his leadership of the
1977 Select Committee on Assassinations and chairmanship of the
House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct (Ethics
Committee).

1969 – Representative Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. is seated by Congress
after being expelled by Congress in 1967, and re-elected by the
voters in his Harlem district.

1983 – Tony Dorsett sets an NFL record with a 99-yd rush, in a game
between the Dallas Cowboys and the Minnesota Vikings.

1984 – Syria frees captured U.S. pilot Robert Goodman, shot down over
Damascus, after a personal appeal from Rev. Jesse Jackson.

1985 – Soprano, Leontyne Price bids adieu to the Metropolitan Opera in
New York. She sings the title role of “Aida”. Price had been
part of the Metropolitan Opera since 1961.

1985 – The Israeli government confirms the resettlement of 10,000
Ethiopian Jews.

1987 – The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inducts its first female artist –
“Lady Soul,” Aretha Franklin.

1989 – “The Arsenio Hall Show” premieres. It is the first regularly
scheduled nightly talk show to star an African American.

1997 – Bryant Gumbel co-hosts his final “Today” show on NBC.

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

KRLemmons African American History

November 29 African American Historical Events

Today in Black History – November 29 *

1905 – The Chicago Defender, an African American newspaper,
begins publication.

1907 – Thomas C. Fleming is born in Jacksonville, Florida. He
will become the co-founder of the San Francisco Sun
Reporter, an African American weekly newspaper. Mr.
Fleming will be active, as a writer for the paper,
from its inception in 1944 through the end of the
century. He will chronicle his life as an African in
America through his series, “Reflections on Black
History,” published in his 90’s, while still active as
a journalist with his beloved Sun Reporter. He will join
the ancestors on November 21, 2006.

1908 – Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. is born in New Haven,
Connecticut. Son of the famed minister of Harlem’s
Abyssinian Baptist Church, the younger Powell will be
a civil rights activist, using mass meetings and
strikes to force employment reforms. In 1944, Powell
will be elected to Congress and begin what will be
considered a controversial congressional career. Among
his early actions will be the desegregation of eating
facilities in the House and an unrelenting fight to end
discrimination in the armed forces, employment, housing,
and transportation. Later in his career, his
questionable activities while chairman of the Committee
on Education and Labor will result in his expulsion
from Congress, re-election and eventual return to his
seat. He will join the ancestors on April 4, 1972.

1915 – William Thomas “Billy” Strayhorn is born in Miami Valley
Hospital in Dayton, Ohio. He will write his first
song, “Lush Life,” when he is 16 while working as a
soda jerk in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He will join
Duke Ellington as a co-composer, assistant arranger,
and pianist, where he will collaborate with Ellington
for 29 years on some of the band’s greatest hits.
Among Strayhorn’s compositions will be “Satin Doll,”
and “Take the ‘A’ Train.” He will join the ancestors
on May 31, 1967 of esophageal cancer at the age of 51.

1935 – Two-term congressman from North Carolina, Henry Plummer
Cheatham joins the ancestors in Oxford, North Carolina.
Cheatham was the only African American member of
Congress during the 1890 term.

1943 – David Bing is born in Washington, DC. He will be
selected No. 2 in the 1966 NBA draft by the Detroit
Pistons, and play 12 years in the NBA. He will be
inducted into the NBA Hall of Fame in 1990, and named
one of the top 50 basketball players of all time.

1961 – Freedom Riders are attacked by white mob at bus station
in McComb, Mississippi.

1964 – Don Cheadle is born in Kansas City, Missouri. He will
become an actor and star in movies such as “Boogie
Nights”, “Rebound”, “Hamburger Hill”, and “Devil in a
Blue Dress”. He will also be successful on the small
screen in “Picket Fences”, “Golden Palace” and a
variety of guest appearances.

1989 – The space shuttle Discovery lands after completing a
secret military mission. The mission was led by Air
Force Colonel Frederick D. Gregory, the first African
American commander of a space shuttle mission.

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