KRLemmons African American History

April 28 African American Historical Events

* Today in Black History – April 28 *

1898 – Sir Grantley H. Adams is born in Colliston Government Hill,
St. Michael Parish, Barbados. He will become an attorney and
political leader and will found the Barbados Progressive
League. The league will later become the Barbados Labour
Party on March 31, 1938. The Governor-General, in 1954,
will appoint him, the First Premier of Barbados, heading a
full ministerial government. In recognition of his
meritorious contribution to Barbados and the wider
Caribbean region, Her Majesty, the Queen of England, will
knight him in 1957. He will surrender his Premiership of
Barbados to assume the position of the first (and only)
Premier of the West Indies Federation from 1958-1962. The
federation will dissolve in 1962. In 1966, he will become
the first Leader of the Opposition in a newly independent
Barbados after being re-elected to the House of Assembly.
He will retire from politics in 1970 and will join the
ancestors. on November 28, 1971.

1910 – Martin Morua Delgado joins the ancestors in Havana, Cuba.
He had been a labor and political activist, statesman,
journalist and author. He had been a leading opponent of
slavery in Cuba and after emancipation, a leading proponent
for racial equality. He also was active in the struggle for
Cuban independence from Spain. Cuba will celebrate the
centennial of his birth in 1956.

1911 – Mario Bauza is born in Havana, Cuba. He will become a
professional trumpet player, bandleader and arranger. He
will be a leading player in the creation of Afro-Cuban
jazz. While in Cuba, he will be primarily a classical
musician, playing for the Havana Philharmonic Orchestra.
He will leave Cuba for New York City in 1930 and find
himself working in mostly jazz venues. He will play with
Noble Sissle, Chick Webb (musical director), Don Redman,
and Cab Calloway. While working with Chick Webb, he will
convince Webb to hire the young Ella Fitzgerald as a
vocalist for the band. While collaborating with these
talents, he will integrate Afro-Latin influence into the
music whenever possible. He will be active in the jazz
musical scene until the last year of his life. He will
join the ancestors on July 11, 1993.

1924 – Kenneth David Kuanda is born in Lubwe, Northern Rhodesia
(Northern Rhodesia will eventually become the country of
Zambia). He will begin his political career with the
Northern Rhodesia African Congress, which will become the
African National Congress. Like most African politicians
who called for independence from colonial rule, he will be
imprisoned multiple times. After his release from prison
in 1960, he will continue to be active and will promote
many activities of civil disobedience. Under his
leadership, the colonial administration will relent and
the British will grant Zambia its independence on October
24, 1964. He will become president of Zambia from its day
of independence until November 2, 1991.

1934 – Charles Patton joins the ancestors in Indianola, Mississippi.
He was a bluesman who is considered to be the creator of the
Delta variation of the blues. His recordings between 1929
and 1934 will contribute to the national influence of the
Mississippi Delta style on the blues.

1935 – Akin Euba is born in Lagos, Nigeria. He will become a
classical composer whose work will integrate European and
Yoruba influences into his compositions. His music will be
introduced to the world at the 1972 Olympics in Munich,
Germany. After receiving his Ph.D. in 1974, he will become
a music educator and continue to create his unique African
musical art form. He will eventually become a professor of
African music at the University of Pittsburgh.

1941 – In a famous Jim Crow railroad case brought by congressman
Arthur W. Mitchell, the Supreme Court rules that separate
facilities must be substantially equal.

1950 – William Anthony Colon in born in the Bronx in New York City.
He will begin his musical career, while a teenager, creating
recordings that will emphasize his Afro-Puerto Rican
heritage in the form of salsa music. His music will
integrate the influence of Puerto Rican life in New York
City with the African influence on the Puerto Rican
experience. He will create and produce over thirty
recordings and be nominated for at least five Grammy awards
in Latin music.

1957 – W. Robert Ming, a Chicago lawyer, is elected chairman of the
American Veterans Committee. He is the first African
American to head a major national veterans organization.

1967 – Muhammad Ali refuses induction into the U.S. Army and is
stripped of his boxing titles by the World Boxing
Association and the New York Athletic Association.

1983 – Two African American women, Alice Walker and Gloria Naylor,
win prestigious American Book Awards for fiction. Alice
Walker’s novel “The Color Purple” will be dramatized as a
theatrical movie starring Whoopi Goldberg, Danny Glover,
and Oprah Winfrey. Naylor’s first novel, “The Women of
Brewster Place,” will be made into a made-for-television
movie and series starring Oprah Winfrey, Jackee’, and
Paula Kelly.

1990 – Clifton Reginald Wharton, Sr. joins the ancestors in
Phoenix, Arizona. He was an attorney and was the first
African American to enter the U.S. Foreign Service and the
first African American to become a United States Ambassador
to a European country (Norway-1961).

1991 – Former CORE director and North Carolina judge Floyd Bixley
McKissick joins the ancestors in North Carolina at the age
of 69. He led CORE from 1963 to 1966 during its
transformation to a more militant civil rights organization.

1997 – Ann Lane Petry joins the ancestors in Old Saybrook,
Connecticut. She was a leading African American novelist
and was known for her works, “The Street,” “Country Place,”
“The Narrows,” “Harriet Tubman: Conductor on the
Underground Railroad,” “Tituba of Salem Village,” “The
Drugstore Cat,” and “Legends of the Saints.”

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

KRLemmons African American History

October 12 African American Historical Events

* Today in Black History – October 12 *

1904 – William Montague Cobb is born in Washington, DC. He will
become the only Black physical anthropologist with a
Ph.D. before the Korean War, He will hold the only Black
perspective on physical anthropology for many years.
He will serve as the Chairman of the Anthropology
Section of the American Association for Advancement of
Science and be the first African American President of
the American Association of Physical Anthropologists.
He will be not only a famous physical anthropologist
because of his race, but also because of the great
contributions he made to the field of anthropology. He
grew up pondering the question of race, which ultimately
led him to his studies of anthropology. After graduating
from Dunbar High School, he will continue his studies at
Amherst College, where he will study a wide variety of
subjects and graduate with a Bachelor of Arts degree.
After his graduation from Amherst, he will research
embryology at the prestigious Woods Hole Marine Biology
Laboratory in Massachusetts. He will then attend Howard
University Medical School, where he will earn an Masters
Degree in 1929 and will later spend much of his
professional career. The next few years, he will spend
his time at Case Western Reserve University, where he will
earn a Ph.D. and work on the Hamann-Todd Skeletal
Collection. He will return to Howard University in 1932
and begin working on a laboratory of his own to conduct
skeletal research. He will also continue his research on
human cranio-facial union at the Hamann-Todd Collection
and the Smithsonian Institute during the summers. In his
mind, his two best papers on this subject were “The
Cranio-Facial Union and the Maxillary Tuber in Mammals”
(1943), and “Cranio-Facial Union in Man” (1940). These
publications will establish him as a functional anatomist.
He will also make significant contributions in the issue
of race in athletics, where he will claim race was
insignificant to athletics and also profile the biology
and demography of the African American race during the
1930’s. He will leave his legacy of skeletal research with
the Laboratory of Anatomy and Physical Anthropology at
Howard University. This collection of over 600 skeletons
will be considered one of the premiere collections of its
kind. He will also be the editor of the Journal of the
National Medical Association from 1949 to 1977. He will
join the ancestors on November 20, 1990.

1908 – Ann Lane Petry is born in Old Saybrook, Connecticut. She
will become the author of “The Street and the Juvenile
Work”, and “Harriet Tubman, Conductor of the
Underground Railroad.” She will join the ancestors on
April 28, 1997.

1925 – Xavier University, America’s only African American
Catholic college, becomes a reality, when the College
of Liberal Arts and Sciences is established. The
first degrees were awarded three years later. (The
Normal School was founded in 1915.)

1929 – Napoleon Brown Goodson Culp is born in Charlotte, North
Carolina. He will become a blues singer better known as
“Nappy” Brown. He will begin his career as the lead singer
for the gospel group, The Heavenly Lights, recording for
Savoy Records. In 1954, Savoy will convince Brown to
cross over to secular music. For the next few years,
he will ride the first wave of rock and roll until his
records stop selling. After years away from the
limelight, he will resurface in 1984 with an album for
Landslide Records. He will then regularly perform and
record for the New Moon Blues independent label. He will
join the ancestors on September 20, 2008.

1932 – Richard Claxton Gregory is born in St. Louis, Missouri.
He will be better known as “Dick” Gregory and in the
1960’s will become a comedic pioneer, bringing a new
perspective to comedy and opening many doors for Black
entertainers. Once he achieves success in the
entertainment world, he will shift gears and use his
talents to help causes in which he believes. He will
serve the community for over forty years as a comedian,
civil and human rights activist and health/nutrition
advocate. On October 9, 2000, his friends and
supporters will honor him at a Kennedy Center gala,
showing him their “appreciation for his uncommon
character, unconditional love, and generous service.”

1935 – Samuel David Moore is born in Winchester, Georgia. He
will become a rhythm and blues singer and one half of
the group: Sam & Dave (Dave Prater). The two singers
will be brought together onstage at Miami’s King of Hearts
nightclub during an amateur night venue. Sam and Dave
will record for the Alston and Roulette labels before
being discovered by Atlantic Records’ Jerry Wexler,
who caught their act at the King of Hearts in 1964 and
then sent them to Memphis-based Stax to record the
next year. They will be best know for their hits,
“Hold On! I’m a Comin'”, “Soul Man”, “I Thank You”,
and “You Got Me Hummin'”. Sam and Dave will finally
call it quits after a performance in San Francisco on
New Year’s Eve in 1981. Samuel Moore will live to see
the induction of Sam and Dave into the Rock and Roll
Hall of Fame in 1992 (Dave Prater will be killed in an
automobile accident on April 9, 1988).

1968 – Equatorial Guinea gains independence from Spain.

1972 – Forty-six African American and white sailors are
injured in a racially motivated insurrection aboard
the aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk, off the coast of
North Vietnam.

1989 – George Beavers, Jr., the last surviving founder of
Golden State Life Insurance Company of Los Angeles,
California, joins the ancestors. He co-founded this
company in 1925, which is the third largest African
American life insurance company, with $120 million in
assets and $5 billion of insurance in force.

1989 – Herschel Walker is traded from the Dallas Cowboys to
the Minnesota Vikings for 12 players. The trade will
turn out a lot better for Dallas than for Minnesota.

1999 – Wilt Chamberlain joins the ancestors. He succumbs to
a heart attack at the age of 63 in his Bel Air home
in Los Angeles, California. Chamberlain was a center
so big, agile and dominant that he forced basketball
to change its rules and is the only player to score
100 points in an NBA game.

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

KRLemmons African American History

April 28 African American Historical Events

* Today in Black History – April 28 *

1898 – Sir Grantley H. Adams is born in Colliston Government Hill,
St. Michael Parish, Barbados. He will become an attorney and
political leader and will found the Barbados Progressive
League. The league will later become the Barbados Labour
Party on March 31, 1938. The Governor-General, in 1954,
will appoint him, the First Premier of Barbados, heading a
full ministerial government. In recognition of his
meritorious contribution to Barbados and the wider
Caribbean region, Her Majesty, the Queen of England, will
knight him in 1957. He will surrender his Premiership of
Barbados to assume the position of the first (and only)
Premier of the West Indies Federation from 1958-1962. The
federation will dissolve in 1962. In 1966, he will become
the first Leader of the Opposition in a newly independent
Barbados after being re-elected to the House of Assembly.
He will retire from politics in 1970 and will join the
ancestors. on November 28, 1971.

1910 – Martin Morua Delgado joins the ancestors in Havana, Cuba.
He had been a labor and political activist, statesman,
journalist and author. He had been a leading opponent of
slavery in Cuba and after emancipation, a leading proponent
for racial equality. He also was active in the struggle for
Cuban independence from Spain. Cuba will celebrate the
centennial of his birth in 1956.

1911 – Mario Bauza is born in Havana, Cuba. He will become a
professional trumpet player, bandleader and arranger. He
will be a leading player in the creation of Afro-Cuban
jazz. While in Cuba, he will be primarily a classical
musician, playing for the Havana Philharmonic Orchestra.
He will leave Cuba for New York City in 1930 and find
himself working in mostly jazz venues. He will play with
Noble Sissle, Chick Webb (musical director), Don Redman,
and Cab Calloway. While working with Chick Webb, he will
convince Webb to hire the young Ella Fitzgerald as a
vocalist for the band. While collaborating with these
talents, he will integrate Afro-Latin influence into the
music whenever possible. He will be active in the jazz
musical scene until the last year of his life. He will
join the ancestors on July 11, 1993.

1924 – Kenneth David Kuanda is born in Lubwe, Northern Rhodesia
(Northern Rhodesia will eventually become the country of
Zambia). He will begin his political career with the
Northern Rhodesia African Congress, which will become the
African National Congress. Like most African politicians
who called for independence from colonial rule, he will be
imprisoned multiple times. After his release from prison
in 1960, he will continue to be active and will promote
many activities of civil disobedience. Under his
leadership, the colonial administration will relent and
the British will grant Zambia its independence on October
24, 1964. He will become president of Zambia from its day
of independence until November 2, 1991.

1934 – Charles Patton joins the ancestors in Indianola, Mississippi.
He was a bluesman who is considered to be the creator of the
Delta variation of the blues. His recordings between 1929
and 1934 will contribute to the national influence of the
Mississippi Delta style on the blues.

1935 – Akin Euba is born in Lagos, Nigeria. He will become a
classical composer whose work will integrate European and
Yoruba influences into his compositions. His music will be
introduced to the world at the 1972 Olympics in Munich,
Germany. After receiving his Ph.D. in 1974, he will become
a music educator and continue to create his unique African
musical art form. He will eventually become a professor of
African music at the University of Pittsburgh.

1941 – In a famous Jim Crow railroad case brought by congressman
Arthur W. Mitchell, the Supreme Court rules that separate
facilities must be substantially equal.

1950 – William Anthony Colon in born in the Bronx in New York City.
He will begin his musical career, while a teenager, creating
recordings that will emphasize his Afro-Puerto Rican
heritage in the form of salsa music. His music will
integrate the influence of Puerto Rican life in New York
City with the African influence on the Puerto Rican
experience. He will create and produce over thirty
recordings and be nominated for at least five Grammy awards
in Latin music.

1957 – W. Robert Ming, a Chicago lawyer, is elected chairman of the
American Veterans Committee. He is the first African
American to head a major national veterans organization.

1967 – Muhammad Ali refuses induction into the U.S. Army and is
stripped of his boxing titles by the World Boxing
Association and the New York Athletic Association.

1983 – Two African American women, Alice Walker and Gloria Naylor,
win prestigious American Book Awards for fiction. Alice
Walker’s novel “The Color Purple” will be dramatized as a
theatrical movie starring Whoopi Goldberg, Danny Glover,
and Oprah Winfrey. Naylor’s first novel, “The Women of
Brewster Place,” will be made into a made-for-television
movie and series starring Oprah Winfrey, Jackee’, and
Paula Kelly.

1990 – Clifton Reginald Wharton, Sr. joins the ancestors in
Phoenix, Arizona. He was an attorney and was the first
African American to enter the U.S. Foreign Service and the
first African American to become a United States Ambassador
to a European country (Norway-1961).

1991 – Former CORE director and North Carolina judge Floyd Bixley
McKissick joins the ancestors in North Carolina at the age
of 69. He led CORE from 1963 to 1966 during its
transformation to a more militant civil rights organization.

1997 – Ann Lane Petry joins the ancestors in Old Saybrook,
Connecticut. She was a leading African American novelist
and was known for her works, “The Street,” “Country Place,”
“The Narrows,” “Harriet Tubman: Conductor on the
Underground Railroad,” “Tituba of Salem Village,” “The
Drugstore Cat,” and “Legends of the Saints.”

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

KRLemmons African American History

October 12 African American Historical Events

Today in Black History – October 12 *

1904 – William Montague Cobb is born in Washington, DC. He will
become the only Black physical anthropologist with a
Ph.D. before the Korean War, He will hold the only Black
perspective on physical anthropology for many years.
He will serve as the Chairman of the Anthropology
Section of the American Association for Advancement of
Science and be the first African American President of
the American Association of Physical Anthropologists.
He will be not only a famous physical anthropologist
because of his race, but also because of the great
contributions he made to the field of anthropology. He
grew up pondering the question of race, which ultimately
led him to his studies of anthropology. After graduating
from Dunbar High School, he will continue his studies at
Amherst College, where he will study a wide variety of
subjects and graduate with a Bachelor of Arts degree.
After his graduation from Amherst, he will research
embryology at the prestigious Woods Hole Marine Biology
Laboratory in Massachusetts. He will then attend Howard
University Medical School, where he will earn an Masters
Degree in 1929 and will later spend much of his
professional career. The next few years, he will spend
his time at Case Western Reserve University, where he will
earn a Ph.D. and work on the Hamann-Todd Skeletal
Collection. He will return to Howard University in 1932
and begin working on a laboratory of his own to conduct
skeletal research. He will also continue his research on
human cranio-facial union at the Hamann-Todd Collection
and the Smithsonian Institute during the summers. In his
mind, his two best papers on this subject were “The
Cranio-Facial Union and the Maxillary Tuber in Mammals”
(1943), and “Cranio-Facial Union in Man” (1940). These
publications will establish him as a functional anatomist.
He will also make significant contributions in the issue
of race in athletics, where he will claim race was
insignificant to athletics and also profile the biology
and demography of the African American race during the
1930’s. He will leave his legacy of skeletal research with
the Laboratory of Anatomy and Physical Anthropology at
Howard University. This collection of over 600 skeletons
will be considered one of the premiere collections of its
kind. He will also be the editor of the Journal of the
National Medical Association from 1949 to 1977. He will
join the ancestors on November 20, 1990.

1908 – Ann Lane Petry is born in Old Saybrook, Connecticut. She
will become the author of “The Street and the Juvenile
Work”, and “Harriet Tubman, Conductor of the
Underground Railroad.” She will join the ancestors on
April 28, 1997.

1925 – Xavier University, America’s only African American
Catholic college, becomes a reality, when the College
of Liberal Arts and Sciences is established. The
first degrees were awarded three years later. (The
Normal School was founded in 1915.)

1929 – Napoleon Brown Goodson Culp is born in Charlotte, North
Carolina. He will become a blues singer better known as
“Nappy” Brown. He will begin his career as the lead singer
for the gospel group, The Heavenly Lights, recording for
Savoy Records. In 1954, Savoy will convince Brown to
cross over to secular music. For the next few years,
he will ride the first wave of rock and roll until his
records stop selling. After years away from the
limelight, he will resurface in 1984 with an album for
Landslide Records. He will then regularly perform and
record for the New Moon Blues independent label. He will
join the ancestors on September 20, 2008.

1932 – Richard Claxton Gregory is born in St. Louis, Missouri.
He will be better known as “Dick” Gregory and in the
1960’s will become a comedic pioneer, bringing a new
perspective to comedy and opening many doors for Black
entertainers. Once he achieves success in the
entertainment world, he will shift gears and use his
talents to help causes in which he believes. He will
serve the community for over forty years as a comedian,
civil and human rights activist and health/nutrition
advocate. On October 9, 2000, his friends and
supporters will honor him at a Kennedy Center gala,
showing him their “appreciation for his uncommon
character, unconditional love, and generous service.”

1935 – Samuel David Moore is born in Winchester, Georgia. He
will become a rhythm and blues singer and one half of
the group: Sam & Dave (Dave Prater). The two singers
will be brought together onstage at Miami’s King of Hearts
nightclub during an amateur night venue. Sam and Dave
will record for the Alston and Roulette labels before
being discovered by Atlantic Records’ Jerry Wexler,
who caught their act at the King of Hearts in 1964 and
then sent them to Memphis-based Stax to record the
next year. They will be best know for their hits,
“Hold On! I’m a Comin'”, “Soul Man”, “I Thank You”,
and “You Got Me Hummin'”. Sam and Dave will finally
call it quits after a performance in San Francisco on
New Year’s Eve in 1981. Samuel Moore will live to see
the induction of Sam and Dave into the Rock and Roll
Hall of Fame in 1992 (Dave Prater will be killed in an
automobile accident on April 9, 1988).

1968 – Equatorial Guinea gains independence from Spain.

1972 – Forty-six African American and white sailors are
injured in a racially motivated insurrection aboard
the aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk, off the coast of
North Vietnam.

1989 – George Beavers, Jr., the last surviving founder of
Golden State Life Insurance Company of Los Angeles,
California, joins the ancestors. He co-founded this
company in 1925, which is the third largest African
American life insurance company, with $120 million in
assets and $5 billion of insurance in force.

1989 – Herschel Walker is traded from the Dallas Cowboys to
the Minnesota Vikings for 12 players. The trade will
turn out a lot better for Dallas than for Minnesota.

1999 – Wilt Chamberlain joins the ancestors. He succumbs to
a heart attack at the age of 63 in his Bel Air home
in Los Angeles, California. Chamberlain was a center
so big, agile and dominant that he forced basketball
to change its rules and is the only player to score
100 points in an NBA game.

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

KRLemmons African American History

April 28 African American Historical Events

Today in Black History – April 28 *

1910 – Martin Morua Delgado joins the ancestors in Havana, Cuba.
He had been a labor and political activist, statesman,
journalist and author. He had been a leading opponent of
slavery in Cuba and after emancipation, a leading proponent
for racial equality. He also was active in the struggle for
Cuban independence from Spain. Cuba will celebrate the
centennial of his birth in 1956.

1911 – Mario Bauza is born in Havana, Cuba. He will become a
professional trumpet player, bandleader and arranger. He
will be a leading player in the creation of Afro-Cuban
jazz. While in Cuba, he will be primarily a classical
musician, playing for the Havana Philharmonic Orchestra.
He will leave Cuba for New York City in 1930 and find
himself working in mostly jazz venues. He will play with
Noble Sissle, Chick Webb (musical director), Don Redman,
and Cab Calloway. While working with Chick Webb, he will
convince Webb to hire the young Ella Fitzgerald as a
vocalist for the band. While collaborating with these
talents, he will integrate Afro-Latin influence into the
music whenever possible. He will be active in the jazz
musical scene until the last year of his life. He will
join the ancestors on July 11, 1993.

1924 – Kenneth David Kuanda is born in Lubwe, Northern Rhodesia
(Northern Rhodesia will eventually become the country of
Zambia). He will become president of Zambia from its day of
independence until 1991. He will begin his political career
with the Northern Rhodesia African Congress, which will
become the African National Congress. Like most African
politicians who called for independence from colonial rule,
he will be imprisoned multiple times. After his release
from prison in 1960, he will continue to be active and will
promote many activities of civil disobedience. Under his
leadership, the colonial administration will relent and the
British will grant Zambia its independence on October 24,
1964.

1934 – Charles Patton joins the ancestors in Indianola, Mississippi.
He was a bluesman who is considered to be the creator of the
Delta variation of the blues. His recordings between 1929
and 1934 will contribute to the national influence of the
Mississippi Delta style on the blues.

1935 – Akin Euba is born in Lagos, Nigeria. He will become a
classical composer whose work will integrate European and
Yoruba influences into his compositions. His music will be
introduced to the world at the 1972 Olympics in Munich,
Germany. After receiving his Ph.D. in 1974, he will become
a music educator and continue to create his unique African
musical art form. He will eventually become a professor of
African music at the University of Pittsburgh.

1941 – In a famous Jim Crow railroad case brought by congressman
Arthur W. Mitchell, the Supreme Court rules that separate
facilities must be substantially equal.

1950 – William Anthony Colon in born in the Bronx in New York City.
He will begin his musical career, while a teenager, creating
recordings that will emphasize his Afro-Puerto Rican
heritage in the form of salsa music. His music will
integrate the influence of Puerto Rican life in New York
City with the African influence on the Puerto Rican
experience. He will create and produce over thirty
recordings and be nominated for at least five Grammy awards
in Latin music.

1957 – W. Robert Ming, a Chicago lawyer, is elected chairman of the
American Veterans Committee. He is the first African
American to head a major national veterans organization.

1967 – Muhammad Ali refuses induction into the U.S. Army and is
stripped of his boxing titles by the World Boxing
Association and the New York Athletic Association.

1983 – Two African American women, Alice Walker and Gloria Naylor,
win prestigious American Book Awards for fiction. Alice
Walker’s novel “The Color Purple” will be dramatized as a
theatrical movie starring Whoopi Goldberg, Danny Glover,
and Oprah Winfrey. Naylor’s first novel, “The Women of
Brewster Place,” will be made into a made-for-television
movie and series starring Oprah Winfrey, Jackee’, and
Paula Kelly.

1990 – Clifton Reginald Wharton, Sr. joins the ancestors in
Phoenix, Arizona. He was an attorney and was the first
African American to enter the U.S. Foreign Service and the
first African American to become a United States Ambassador
to a European country (Norway-1961).

1991 – Former CORE director and North Carolina judge Floyd Bixley
McKissick joins the ancestors in North Carolina at the age
of 69. He led CORE from 1963 to 1966 during its
transformation to a more militant civil rights organization.

1997 – Ann Lane Petry joins the ancestors in Old Saybrook,
Connecticut. She was a leading African American novelist
and was known for her works, “The Street,” “Country Place,”
“The Narrows,” “Harriet Tubman: Conductor on the
Underground Railroad,” “Tituba of Salem Village,” “The
Drugstore Cat,” and “Legends of the Saints.”

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

KRLemmons African American History

October 12 African American Historical Events

Today in Black History – October 12          *

1904 – William Montague Cobb is born in Washington, DC. He will
become the only Black physical anthropologist with a
Ph.D. before the Korean War, He will hold the only Black
perspective on physical anthropology for many years.
He will serve as the Chairman of the Anthropology
Section of the American Association for Advancement of
Science and be the first African American President of
the American Association of Physical Anthropologists.
He will be not only a famous physical anthropologist
because of his race, but also because of the great
contributions he made to the field of anthropology. He
grew up pondering the question of race, which ultimately
led him to his studies of anthropology. After graduating
from Dunbar High School, he will continue his studies at
Amherst College, where he will study a wide variety of
subjects and graduate with a Bachelor of Arts degree.
After his graduation from Amherst, he will research
embryology at the prestigious Woods Hole Marine Biology
Laboratory in Massachusetts. He will then attend Howard
University Medical School, where he will earn an Masters
Degree in 1929 and will later spend much of his
professional career. The next few years, he will spend
his time at Case Western Reserve University, where he will
earn a Ph.D. and work on the Hamann-Todd Skeletal
Collection. He will return to Howard University in 1932
and begin working on a laboratory of his own to conduct
skeletal research. He will also continue his research on
human cranio-facial union at the Hamann-Todd Collection
and the Smithsonian Institute during the summers. In his
mind, his two best papers on this subject were “The
Cranio-Facial Union and the Maxillary Tuber in Mammals”
(1943), and “Cranio-Facial Union in Man” (1940). These
publications will establish him as a functional anatomist.
He will also make significant contributions in the issue
of race in athletics, where he will claim race was
insignificant to athletics and also profile the biology
and demography of the African American race during the
1930’s. He will leave his legacy of skeletal research with
the Laboratory of Anatomy and Physical Anthropology at
Howard University. This collection of over 600 skeletons
will be considered one of the premiere collections of its
kind. He will also be the editor of the Journal of the
National Medical Association from 1949 to 1977. He will
join the ancestors on November 20, 1990.

1908 – Ann Lane Petry is born in Old Saybrook, Connecticut.  She
will become the author of “The Street and the Juvenile
Work”, and “Harriet Tubman, Conductor of the
Underground Railroad.” She will join the ancestors on
April 28, 1997.

1925 – Xavier University, America’s only African American
Catholic college, becomes a reality, when the College
of Liberal Arts and Sciences is established.  The
first degrees were awarded three years later. (The
Normal School was founded in 1915.)

1929 – Napoleon Brown Goodson Culp is born in Charlotte, North
Carolina.  He will become a blues singer better known as
“Nappy” Brown.  He will begin his career as the lead singer
for the gospel group, The Heavenly Lights, recording for
Savoy Records.  In 1954, Savoy will convince Brown to
cross over to secular music.  For the next few years,
he will ride the first wave of rock and roll until his
records stop selling.  After years away from the
limelight, he will resurface in 1984 with an album for
Landslide Records.  He will then regularly perform and
record for the New Moon Blues independent label. He will
join the ancestors on September 20, 2008.

1932 – Richard Claxton Gregory is born in St. Louis, Missouri.
He will be better known as “Dick” Gregory and in the
1960’s will become a comedic pioneer, bringing a new
perspective to comedy and opening many doors for Black
entertainers. Once he achieves success in the
entertainment world, he will shift gears and use his
talents to help causes in which he believes.  He will
serve the community for over forty years as a comedian,
civil and human rights activist and health/nutrition
advocate. On October 9, 2000, his friends and
supporters will honor him at a Kennedy Center gala,
showing him their “appreciation for his uncommon
character, unconditional love, and generous service.”

1935 – Samuel David Moore is born in Winchester, Georgia.  He
will become a rhythm and blues singer and one half of
the group: Sam & Dave (Dave Prater).  The two singers
will be brought together onstage at Miami’s King of Hearts
nightclub during an amateur night venue. Sam and Dave
will record for the Alston and Roulette labels before
being discovered by Atlantic Records’ Jerry Wexler,
who caught their act at the King of Hearts in 1964 and
then sent them to Memphis-based Stax to record the
next year.  They will be best know for their hits,
“Hold On! I’m a Comin'”, “Soul Man”, “I Thank You”,
and “You Got Me Hummin'”.  Sam and Dave will finally
call it quits after a performance in San Francisco on
New Year’s Eve in 1981.  Samuel Moore will live to see
the induction of Sam and Dave into the Rock and Roll
Hall of Fame in 1992 (Dave Prater will be killed in an
automobile accident on April 9, 1988).

1968 – Equatorial Guinea gains independence from Spain.

1972 – Forty-six African American and white sailors are
injured in a racially motivated insurrection aboard
the aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk, off the coast of
North Vietnam.

1989 – George Beavers, Jr., the last surviving founder of
Golden State Life Insurance Company of Los Angeles,
California, joins the ancestors. He co-founded this
company in 1925, which is the third largest African
American life insurance company, with $120 million in
assets and $5 billion of insurance in force.

1989 – Herschel Walker is traded from the Dallas Cowboys to
the Minnesota Vikings for 12 players.  The trade will
turn out a lot better for Dallas than for Minnesota.

1999 – Wilt Chamberlain joins the ancestors.  He succumbs to
a heart attack at the age of 63 in his Bel Air home
in Los Angeles, California. Chamberlain was a center
so big, agile and dominant that he forced basketball
to change its rules and is the only player to score
100 points in an NBA game.

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