Tag: African American History

* Today in Black History – June 30 *

1881 – Henry Highland Garnet, former abolitionist leader and
Presbyterian minister, is named Minister to Liberia.
He will join the ancestors in Monrovia shortly after
his arrival.

1906 – John Hope becomes the first African American president
of Morehouse College.

1917 – Lena Horne is born in Brooklyn, New York. She will
begin her career at 16 as a chorus girl at the Cotton
Club in Harlem, appear in the movies “Cabin in the Sky”
and “Stormy Weather” and have a successful Broadway
career culminating in her one-woman show. Horne will
also be a strong civil rights advocate, refusing to
perform in clubs where African Americans are not
admitted and marching during the civil rights movement
in the 1960s. She will join the ancestors on May 9, 2010.

1921 – Charles S. Gilpin becomes the first actor to receive the
NAACP’s Spingarn Medal for his portrayal of Emperor
Jones in the Eugene O’Neill play of the same name.

1940 – John T. Scott is born in New Orleans, Louisiana. He will
attend Xavier University of Louisiana in New Orleans and
receive a Bachelor of Arts degree. He will receive his
Master of Fine Arts degree from Michigan State University
in East Lansing, Michigan in 1965, after which he will
return to Xavier to become a professor of art. In 1995,
he will receive an honorary Doctor of Humanities from
Michigan State University and a Doctor of Humanities from
Tulane University in 1997. In 1992, he will be awarded
the exclusive MacArthur Grant (also known as the “Genius
Grant”) from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur
Foundation. He will also become a sculptor whose works
will be exhibited widely in the United States and at the
exhibit of “Art of Black America in Japan, Afro-American
Modernism: 1937-1987.” He will be best known for creating
large woodcut prints and for his African-Caribbean-New
Orleans-inspired kinetic sculptures. In 2005, he will be
the subject of a major retrospective exhibit at the New
Orleans Museum of Art entitled “Circle Dance: The Art of
John T. Scott.” He will also be commissioned to create
several pieces that will be placed throughout the City of
New Orleans. These public works in New Orleans include
Spirit Gates at the DeSaix Boulevard traffic circle (at
St. Bernard and Gentilly Boulevards) in the Seventh Ward
and River Spirit at Woldenberg Park along the Mississippi
River near the Port of New Orleans. He will join the
ancestors on September 1, 2007.

1958 – Alabama courts fined the NAACP $ 100,000 for contempt, for
refusing to divulge membership. The U.S. Supreme Court
will reverse the decision.

1960 – Zaire proclaims its independence from Belgium.

1966 – Michael Gerard “Mike” Tyson is born in Brooklyn, New York.
He will become the undisputed heavyweight champion of the
world and hold the record as the youngest boxer to win the
WBC, WBA and IBF heavyweight titles at 20 years, 4 months,
and 22 days old. He will win his first 19 professional
bouts by knockout, 12 of them in the first round. He will
win the WBC title in 1986 after defeating Trevor Berbick
by a TKO in the second round. In 1987, he will add the
WBA and IBF titles after defeating James Smith and Tony
Tucker. He will be the first heavyweight boxer to
simultaneously hold the WBA, WBC and IBF titles, and the
only heavyweight to successively unify them.

1967 – Maj. Robert H. Lawrence Jr. becomes the first African
American astronaut. He will join the ancestors after
being killed during a training flight accident on December
8, 1967.

1969 – Jacob Lawrence receives the NAACP’s Spingarn Medal “in
testimony to his eminence among American painters.”

1974 – Alberta King, mother of the late Martin Luther King Jr.,
joins the ancestors after being assassinated during a
church service in Atlanta, Georgia. The assailant, Marcus
Chennault of Dayton, Ohio, is later convicted and sentenced
to death.

1978 – Larry Doby becomes the manager of the Chicago White Sox
baseball team. He will have a win-loss record of 37-50 and
will be fired at the end of the season (October 19).

1980 – Coleman A. Young is awarded the Spingarn Medal for his
“singular accomplishment as Mayor of the City of Detroit,”a
position he had held since 1973.

2001 – Saxophonist Joe Henderson joins the ancestors in San
Francisco. His improvisational style and compositions have
influenced jazz musicians everywhere. He had been suffering
from emphysema, and became ill at his home in San Francisco,
but did not go to the hospital until the following day, where
he died of heart failure.

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

* 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 continue 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 Mr. Rene’ A. Perry.

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.

2014 – Bobby Womack, the legendary soul singer whose career spanned
seven decades, joins the ancestors at age 70. He was in the
first rank of songwriters, penning classics such as “It’s All
Over Now,” which became the Rolling Stones’ first Number One
single in the UK. He was a top-notch guitarist, backing up
everyone from Ray Charles to Aretha Franklin. And when he sang
on his own records, he could compel you to get on your feet
(“Looking for a Love”), reinvent standards as Rhythm & Blues
anthems (“Fly Me to the Moon”) or express yearning like nobody
else (“Across 110th Street”). In 2009, he was inducted into the
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame by his old friend and collaborator
Ron Wood, who described him as “a great inspiration to my band
and all of the musicians that I know.” In his acceptance speech,
he remembered playing guitar for Sam Cooke, cited Cooke’s civil
rights anthem “A Change Is Gonna Come,” and astonished by how
society had changed, addressed his dead friend: “Sam, we have
our first black president.”

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

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