KRLemmons African American History

April 18 African American Historical Events

* Today in Black History – April 18 *

1818 – Andrew Jackson defeats a force of Indians and African
Americans at the Battle of Suwanee, ending the First
Seminole War.

1861 – Nicholas Biddle becomes the first African American in
uniform to be wounded in the Civil War.

1864 – The First Kansas Colored Volunteers break through
Confederate lines at Poison Spring, Arkansas. The
unit will sustain heavy losses when captured African
American soldiers are murdered by Confederate troops
as opposed to being taken as POWs, which is the
standard treatment for captured whites.

1877 – The American Nicodemus Town Company is founded by six
African American settlers in northwestern Kansas. The
town will be settled later in the year.

1924 – Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown is born in Vinton, Louisiana.
He will become a blues musician and will be inspired by
the sounds of T-Bone Walker, Count Basie and Duke
Ellington. He will become a Grammy winner and be
nominated six times. He will be unrivaled in his
ability to seamlessly combine blues, country, soul and
jazzy Rhythm & Blues. He will be best known for his
hits, “Okie Dokie Stomp,” “Boogie Rambler,” “Just
Before Dawn,” “Dirty Work At The Crossroads,” and
“Gatemouth Boogie.” He will join the ancestors on
September 10, 2005,

1941 – Bus companies in New York City agree to hire African
American drivers and mechanics. This agreement ends a
four-week boycott.

1941 – Dr. Robert Weaver is named director of Office of
Production Management section, charged with integrating
African Americans into the National Defense Program.

1955 – The Bandung Conference of leaders of “colored” nations
of Africa and Asia opens in Indonesia. Hosted by
Indonesian President Sukarno, the conference is
attended by representatives of 29 African and Asian
countries. Its main objective was to express their
opposition to the colonialist and imperialist policies
of First World nations.

1961 – James Benton Parsons is the first African American judge
of a U.S. district court in the continental United
States. Chicago attorney Parsons is appointed judge of
the U.S. District Court of Northern Illinois.

1983 – Alice Walker is awarded the Pulitzer Prize for “The
Color Purple.” Ten days later, the novel will also win
the American Book Award for fiction.

2013 – Donna Summer, born LaDonna Adrian Gaines, will be
posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hame of Fame.

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

KRLemmons African American History

May 17 African American Historical Events

* Today in Black History – May 17 *

1875 – The first Kentucky Derby is won by African American jockey
Oliver Lewis riding a horse named Aristides. Fourteen of
the 15 jockeys in the race are African Americans. The
winning purse for the race is $ 2,850. Lewis won the one
and a half mile “Run for the Roses” in a time of 2
minutes, 37-3/4 seconds.

1881 – Frederick Douglass is appointed Recorder of Deeds for the
District of Columbia.

1909 – White firemen on Georgia Railroad strike in protest of the
employment of African American firemen.

1915 – The National Baptist Convention is chartered.

1937 – Hazel Rollins O’Leary is born in Newport News, Virginia. She
will graduate from Fisk University and will receive a law
degree from Rutgers University in 1966. She will gain
experience in the energy regulatory field working for the
Federal Energy Administration. After working for a few years
heading her own energy consulting firm and becoming
president of the Northern States Power Company, she will be
appointed Secretary of Energy in 1993 by President Bill
Clinton.

1942 – Henry St. Claire Fredericks is born in New York City. He
will become an entertainer and songwriter for film. He also
will be a singer of urban folk-blues, better known as Taj
Mahal. He will be one of the first American artists to
blend blues and world music. For over three decades, Taj
Mahal will teach generations the wonders of Robert Johnson,
Sleepy John Estes, Muddy Waters and Jimmy Reed. With a
catalogue of almost thirty albums (including some for
children!), one can find film soundtracks (“Sounder,”
“Brothers”), music for television dramas (“The Tuskegee
Project,” “The Man Who Broke A Thousand Chains”) as well as
his best-loved classics like “Natch’l Blues.”

1944 – Felix Eboue’ joins the ancestors in Cairo, Egypt at the age
of 59 after succumbing to pneumonia. He had been the
highest ranking French colonial administrator of African
descent in the first half of the twentieth century. He had
been a successful administrator for the French government in
the Caribbean and in Africa. During World War II, he had been
a staunch ally of the exiled French government headed by
General Charles de Gaulle.

1954 – The Supreme Court outlaws school segregation in Brown v.
Board of Education. The ruling is a major victory for the
NAACP, led by Thurgood Marshall of the Legal Defense Fund,
and other civil rights groups. The rulings declares that
racially segregated schools were inherently unequal.

1956 – “Sugar” Ray Charles Leonard is born in Wilmington, North
Carolina. Leonard will win the National Golden Gloves
championship at 16, an Olympic gold medal in 1976, and have
a successful professional boxing career. He will be named
Fighter of the Decade for the 1980s. He will enter the
decade a champion and will leave the decade a champion.
In between, he will win an unprecedented five world titles
in five weight classes and compete in some of the era’s
most memorable contests. His career boxing record will be 36
wins (25 by knockout), 3 losses, and 1 tie. After retiring
from the ring, he will become a successful boxing analyst.
He will be enshrined in the International Boxing Hall of
Fame in 1997.

1957 – The Prayer Pilgrimage, attracting a crowd of over 30,000, is
held on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC.
Timed to coincide with the third anniversary of Brown v.
Board of Education, the pilgrimage is organized by Martin
Luther King, Jr., the NAACP, and others to advocate greater
voting and civil rights for African Americans.

1962 – Marshall Logan Scott is elected the first African American
moderator of the Presbyterian Church.

1962 – E. Franklin Frazier joins the ancestors in Washington, DC at
the age of 67. Dr. Franklin had been a leading sociologist
who retired from Howard University and had been the first
African American president of the American Sociological
Association.

1969 – A commemorative stamp of W.C. Handy, “Father of the Blues,”
is issued by the U.S. Postal Service, making Handy the
first African American blues musician honored on a postage
stamp.

1969 – Rev. Thomas Kilgore, a Los Angeles pastor, is elected
president of the predominantly white American Baptist
Convention.

1970 – Hank Aaron becomes the ninth baseball player to get 3,000
hits.

1980 – A major racially motivated civil disturbance occurs in
Miami, Florida after a Tampa, Florida jury acquitted four
former Miami police officers of fatally beating African
American insurance executive Arthur McDuffie. The
disturbance in that city’s Liberty City neighborhood
results in eighteen persons being killed and more than
three hundred persons injured.

1987 – The work of four contemporary African American artists –
Sam Gilliam, Keith Morrison, William T. Williams, and
Martha Jackson-Jarvis – is shown in the inaugural
exhibition of the new Anacostia Museum in Washington, DC.

1987 – Eric “Sleepy” Floyd of the Golden State Warriors sets a
playoff record for points in a single quarter. He pours
in 29 points in the fourth period in a game this night
against Pat Riley’s Los Angeles Lakers.

1994 – The U.N. Security Council approves a peacekeeping force and
an arms embargo for violence-racked Rwanda.

1997 – Laurent Kabila declares himself the new President of Zaire
and renames it the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The
country had been previously under the 37 year rule of
dictator Mobutu Sese Seko.

2012 – Donna Summer (born LaDonna Adrian Gaines), the “Queen of
Disco” whose hits included “Hot Stuff,” “Bad Girls,” “Love
to Love You Baby” and “She Works Hard for the Money,” joins
the ancestors in Naples, Florida, after succumbing to lung
cancer at the age of 63.

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

KRLemmons African American History

December 31 African American Historical Events

Today in Black History – December 31 *

***********************************************************************
* The Nguzo Saba – The seven principles of Kwanzaa – Principle for *
* Day #6 – Kuumba (koo-OOM-bah) Creativity: To do always as much as *
* we can, in the way that we can, in order to leave our community *
* more beautiful than when we inherited it. *
* http://www.endarkenment.com/kwanzaa/ *
***********************************************************************

1775 – Alarmed by the impact of the British Dunmore proclamation, that
would give freedom to slaves who would fight on their side,
Gen. George Washington reverses himself and authorizes the
enlistment of free Blacks.

1783 – The importation of African slaves is banned by all of the
northern states in the United States.

1862 – The Ebenezer African Methodist Episcopal Church holds a Watch
Night service in Suburban Maryland. It begins a tradition when
African Americans pray and worship in anticipation of the next
day, New Year’s Day 1863, when President Lincoln’s Emancipation
Proclamation is to take effect.

1871 – Annie Welthy Daughtry (later Holland) is born in Isle of Wight
County, Virginia. In 1921, she will be appointed North Carolina
Supervisor of Negro Elementary Education, a position she will
hold until she joins the ancestors. In 1927, she will found
North Carolina’s Colored Parent Teachers’ Association. She will
join the ancestors suddenly on January 6, 1934, while
addressing a county-wide meeting of Black teachers in
Louisburg, North Carolina.

1900 – Sculptor and educator Selma Burke is born in Mooresville, North
Carolina. She will be commissioned to create a profile of
President Franklin D. Roosevelt after a national competition
sponsored by the Fine Arts Commission in Washington, DC. The
completed project, a plaque, is unveiled and installed at the
Record of Deeds Building in Washington DC.

1930 – Odetta Felious Gordon Holmes is born in Birmingham, Alabama.
She will become a famous folksinger, known simply as “Odetta”,
who will sing all over the world and at major peace and civil
rights meetings, including the 1963 March on Washington. Among
the many musicians who cite Odetta as a major musical influence
have been Janis Joplin, Bob Dylan and Joan Baez.

1948 – Donna Summer is born in Boston, Massachusetts. She will be the
reigning “Queen of Disco” music in the 1970’s, known for her
renditions of “Bad Girls” and “Last Dance.”

1953 – Hulan Jack is inaugurated as Manhattan borough president, the
first African American to hold the post.

1953 – The NAACP’s Spingarn Medal is presented to Paul R. Williams for
his achievements as an architect.

1962 – Katanga becomes part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

1964 – In a speech before a group of young people, Malcolm X urges them
“to see for yourself and listen for yourself and think for
yourself. This generation, especially of our people, have a
burden, more so than at any other time in history. The most
important thing we can learn to do today is think for
ourselves.”

1972 – Roberto Clemente, Pittsburgh Pirate slugger, joins the ancestors
after a plane crash on his way to a humanitarian mission to
Nicaragua.

1976 – Roland Hayes joins the ancestors in Boston, Massachusetts at the
age of 89. He had been an acclaimed tenor whose pioneering
recitals of German lieder and other classical music opened the
concert stage for African American singers

1984 – The first nationally broadcast telethon for the United Negro
College Fund raises $14.1 million. The telethon will become an
annual fundraising drive that will support more than 40
historically African American institutions of higher learning
and draw widespread individual and corporate support.

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

KRLemmons African American History

May 17 African American Historical Events

Today in Black History – May 17 *

1875 – The first Kentucky Derby is won by African American jockey
Oliver Lewis riding a horse named Aristides. Fourteen of
the 15 jockeys in the race are African Americans. The
winning purse for the race is $ 2,850. Lewis won the one
and a half mile “Run for the Roses” in a time of 2
minutes, 37-3/4 seconds.

1881 – Frederick Douglass is appointed Recorder of Deeds for the
District of Columbia.

1909 – White firemen on Georgia Railroad strike in protest of the
employment of African American firemen.

1915 – The National Baptist Convention is chartered.

1937 – Hazel Rollins O’Leary is born in Newport News, Virginia. She
will graduate from Fisk University and will receive a law
degree from Rutgers University in 1966. She will gain
experience in the energy regulatory field working for the
Federal Energy Administration. After working for a few years
heading her own energy consulting firm and becoming
president of the Northern States Power Company, she will be
appointed Secretary of Energy in 1993 by President Bill
Clinton.

1942 – Henry St. Claire Fredericks is born in New York City. He
will become an entertainer and songwriter for film. He also
will be a singer of urban folk-blues, better known as Taj
Mahal. He will be one of the first American artists to
blend blues and world music. For over three decades, Taj
Mahal will teach generations the wonders of Robert Johnson,
Sleepy John Estes, Muddy Waters and Jimmy Reed. With a
catalogue of almost thirty albums (including some for
children!), one can find film soundtracks (“Sounder,”
“Brothers”), music for television dramas (“The Tuskegee
Project,” “The Man Who Broke A Thousand Chains”) as well as
his best-loved classics like “Natch’l Blues.”

1944 – Felix Eboue’ joins the ancestors in Cairo, Egypt at the age
of 59 after succumbing to pneumonia. He had been the
highest ranking French colonial administrator of African
descent in the first half of the twentieth century. He had
been a successful administrator for the French government in
the Caribbean and in Africa. During World War II, he had been
a staunch ally of the exiled French government headed by
General Charles de Gaulle.

1954 – The Supreme Court outlaws school segregation in Brown v.
Board of Education. The ruling is a major victory for the
NAACP, led by Thurgood Marshall of the Legal Defense Fund,
and other civil rights groups. The rulings declares that
racially segregated schools were inherently unequal.

1956 – “Sugar” Ray Charles Leonard is born in Wilmington, North
Carolina. Leonard will win the National Golden Gloves
championship at 16, an Olympic gold medal in 1976, and have
a successful professional boxing career. He will be named
Fighter of the Decade for the 1980s. He will enter the
decade a champion and will leave the decade a champion.
In between, he will win an unprecedented five world titles
in five weight classes and compete in some of the era’s
most memorable contests. His career boxing record will be 36
wins (25 by knockout), 3 losses, and 1 tie. After retiring
from the ring, he will become a successful boxing analyst.
He will be enshrined in the International Boxing Hall of
Fame in 1997.

1957 – The Prayer Pilgrimage, attracting a crowd of over 30,000, is
held on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC.
Timed to coincide with the third anniversary of Brown v.
Board of Education, the pilgrimage is organized by Martin
Luther King, Jr., the NAACP, and others to advocate greater
voting and civil rights for African Americans.

1962 – Marshall Logan Scott is elected the first African American
moderator of the Presbyterian Church.

1962 – E. Franklin Frazier joins the ancestors in Washington, DC at
the age of 67. Dr. Franklin had been a leading sociologist
who retired from Howard University and had been the first
African American president of the American Sociological
Association.

1969 – A commemorative stamp of W.C. Handy, “Father of the Blues,”
is issued by the U.S. Postal Service, making Handy the
first African American blues musician honored on a postage
stamp.

1969 – Rev. Thomas Kilgore, a Los Angeles pastor, is elected
president of the predominantly white American Baptist
Convention.

1970 – Hank Aaron becomes the ninth baseball player to get 3,000
hits.

1980 – A major racially motivated civil disturbance occurs in
Miami, Florida after a Tampa, Florida jury acquitted four
former Miami police officers of fatally beating African
American insurance executive Arthur McDuffie. The
disturbance in that city’s Liberty City neighborhood
results in eighteen persons being killed and more than
three hundred persons injured.

1987 – The work of four contemporary African American artists –
Sam Gilliam, Keith Morrison, William T. Williams, and
Martha Jackson-Jarvis – is shown in the inaugural
exhibition of the new Anacostia Museum in Washington, DC.

1987 – Eric “Sleepy” Floyd of the Golden State Warriors sets a
playoff record for points in a single quarter. He pours
in 29 points in the fourth period in a game this night
against Pat Riley’s Los Angeles Lakers.

1994 – The U.N. Security Council approves a peacekeeping force and
an arms embargo for violence-racked Rwanda.

1997 – Laurent Kabila declares himself the new President of Zaire
and renames it the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The
country had been previously under the 37 year rule of
dictator Mobutu Sese Seko.

2012 – Donna Summer, the “Queen of Disco” whose hits included “Hot
Stuff,” “Bad Girls,” “Love to Love You Baby” and “She Works
Hard for the Money,” joins the ancestors at the age of 63.

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

KRLemmons African American History

March 18 African American Historical Events

Today in Black History – March 18 *

1895 – 200 African Americans leave Savannah, Georgia for Liberia.

1901 – William Henry Johnson is born. The Florence, South Carolina
native will leave his home for New York and Europe, where
he will develop a deliberate and controversial primitive
painting style. Among his more famous works will be “Chain
Gang,” “Calvary,” and “Descent from the Cross.”

1939 – Charley Pride is born in Sledge, Mississippi. Intent on a
career in baseball, he will begin his country music career
in 1960, singing between innings at a company-sponsored
baseball game where he is a player. A recording contract
will follow in 1964 and a debut with the “Grand Ole Opry”
in 1967. Pride will become the first African American to
become a successful country music star. His awards will
include a 1972 Grammy.

1941 – Wilson Pickett is born in Prattville, Alabama. He will become
Rhythm & Blues singer and will begin his career as the lead
tenor with The Falcons (“I Found a Love” – 1962). He will
become a solo artist and release the hits, “Funky Broadway,”
“In the Midnight Hour,” “Land of 1000 Dances,” “Mustang
Sally,” “It’s Too Late,” and “Don’t Knock My Love.” He will
be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1991. He
will join the ancestors on January 19, 2006.

1943 – William Hastie wins the NAACP’s Spingarn Medal. A former
federal judge and law school dean, Hastie, a civilian aide
to Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson, had resigned his
position earlier in the year over the armed forces’
discriminatory practices.

1959 – Irene Cara is born in New York City. She will become an
actress, singer, and songwriter. She will receive an Academy
Award, two Grammy Awards, a Golden Globe Award, plus numerous
other awards emanating from every aspect of the industry. Her
performance in the ground breaking 1980’s picture Fame (1980)
will catapult her into world wide stardom and motivate a
generation of young people to become involved in the
performing arts.

1963 – Vanessa L. Williams is born in Millwood, New York (Westchester
County). She will become the first African American Miss
America. She will later become a popular singer, major
recording star, and movie actress. She will star in the
Tony Award-winning musical “Kiss of the Spider Woman,” the
mini-series “Odyssey,” and the movies “Eraser,” “Hoodlum,”
“Soul Food,” and “Shut Up and Dance.”

1972 – The USS Jesse L. Brown, the first U.S. naval ship to be named
after an African American naval officer, is launched at
Westwego, Louisiana. Brown was the first African American
pilot in the U.S. Naval Reserve and was the first African
American pilot killed in the Korean War (1950). Editor’s
Note: This was not the first naval vessel named after an
African American. The USS Harmon was named after an enlisted
man, Leonard Roy Harmon, during World War II (1944).

1982 – Singer Teddy Pendergrass is paralyzed as a result of an
automobile accident.

1991 – The Philadelphia ’76ers retire Wilt Chamberlain’s #13 jersey.

1991 – Reggie Miller, of the Indiana Pacers ends his NBA free throw
streak of 52 games.

1992 – Donna Summers gets a star on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame.

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

KRLemmons African American History

December 31 African American Historical Events

* Today in Black History – December 31 *

***********************************************************************
* The Nguzo Saba – The seven principles of Kwanzaa – Principle for *
* Day #6 – Kuumba (koo-OOM-bah) Creativity: To do always as much as *
* we can, in the way that we can, in order to leave our community *
* more beautiful than when we inherited it. *
* http://www.endarkenment.com/kwanzaa/ *
***********************************************************************

1775 – Alarmed by the impact of the British Dunmore proclamation, that
would give freedom to slaves who would fight on their side,
Gen. George Washington reverses himself and authorizes the
enlistment of free Blacks.

1783 – The importation of African slaves is banned by all of the
northern states in the United States.

1862 – The Ebenezer African Methodist Episcopal Church holds a Watch
Night service in Suburban Maryland. It begins a tradition when
African Americans pray and worship in anticipation of the next
day, New Year’s Day 1863, when President Lincoln’s Emancipation
Proclamation is to take effect.

1871 – Annie Welthy Daughtry (later Holland) is born in Isle of Wight
County, Virginia. In 1921, she will be appointed North Carolina
Supervisor of Negro Elementary Education, a position she will
hold until she joins the ancestors. In 1927, she will found
North Carolina’s Colored Parent Teachers’ Association. She will
join the ancestors suddenly on January 6, 1934, while
addressing a county-wide meeting of Black teachers in
Louisburg, North Carolina.

1900 – Sculptor and educator Selma Burke is born in Mooresville, North
Carolina. She will be commissioned to create a profile of
President Franklin D. Roosevelt after a national competition
sponsored by the Fine Arts Commission in Washington, DC. The
completed project, a plaque, is unveiled and installed at the
Record of Deeds Building in Washington DC.

1930 – Odetta Felious Gordon Holmes is born in Birmingham, Alabama.
She will become a famous folksinger, known simply as “Odetta”,
who will sing all over the world and at major peace and civil
rights meetings, including the 1963 March on Washington. Among
the many musicians who cite Odetta as a major musical influence
have been Janis Joplin, Bob Dylan and Joan Baez.

1948 – Donna Summer is born in Boston, Massachusetts. She will be the
reigning “Queen of Disco” music in the 1970’s, known for her
renditions of “Bad Girls” and “Last Dance.”

1953 – Hulan Jack is inaugurated as Manhattan borough president, the
first African American to hold the post.

1953 – The NAACP’s Spingarn Medal is presented to Paul R. Williams for
his achievements as an architect.

1962 – Katanga becomes part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

1964 – In a speech before a group of young people, Malcolm X urges them
“to see for yourself and listen for yourself and think for
yourself. This generation, especially of our people, have a
burden, more so than at any other time in history. The most
important thing we can learn to do today is think for
ourselves.”

1972 – Roberto Clemente, Pittsburgh Pirate slugger, joins the ancestors
after a plane crash on his way to a humanitarian mission to
Nicaragua.

1976 – Roland Hayes joins the ancestors in Boston, Massachusetts at the
age of 89. He had been an acclaimed tenor whose pioneering
recitals of German lieder and other classical music opened the
concert stage for African American singers

1984 – The first nationally broadcast telethon for the United Negro
College Fund raises $14.1 million. The telethon will become an
annual fundraising drive that will support more than 40
historically African American institutions of higher learning
and draw widespread individual and corporate support.

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