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

March 11 African American Historical Events

Today in Black History – March 11 *

1861 – The Confederate Congress, meeting in Montgomery, Alabama,
adopts a constitution which declares that the passage of any
“law denying or impairing the right of property in Negro
slaves is prohibited.”

1870 – Moshweshwe, King of Basutoland (Lesotho) joins the ancestors.
Moshweshwe was the founder of Lesotho in the 1820’s. Lesotho
was landlocked by the Cape Colony (now South Africa). He was
able to develop a strong tribal organization from his mix of
peoples. He appeased the Zulu and Ndebele, led cattle raids
on surrounding people, defeated the British in 1852 and
conducted frequent wars with the Orange Free State. Because
of repeated attacks by the Cape Colony, Moshweshwe asked the
British for protection and Lesotho will become a protectorate
in 1868. Upon his death, the country was annexed to Cape
Colony, but was returned to the status of British protectorate
in 1884. When the Union of South Africa was formed in 1910,
the British honored the desire of Lesotho (“Basutoland”) to
remain independent. A protectorate continued until 1968,
protecting Lesotho from incursions from South Africa.

1874 – Frederick Douglass is named president of the failing Freedmen’s
Bank.

1884 – William Edouard Scott is born in Indianapolis, Indiana. He will
study with Henry O. Tanner at the Art Institute of Chicago.
He later will go to Paris, France and study at the Julien and
Colarossi academies. He will also study under Tanner again in
Paris (Tanner had emigrated there) and become best known for
his portrait studies of Haitians, rural life, and landscapes.
Many of his murals are on the walls of public buildings in
Indiana, Illinois, West Virginia, and New York (135th Street
YMCA).

1919 – Mercer Ellington is born in Washington, DC, the only child of
Edward “Duke” Ellington and his wife, Edna. He will become
“the keeper of the flame,” the charge his father will give him
and one he will readily accept. In doing so, he will lead the
Duke Ellington Orchestra for over twenty years after replacing
his father.

1926 – Ralph David Abernathy is born in Linden, Alabama. He will
become a famed minister, civil rights advocate, and confidant
of Martin Luther King, Jr. After King’s assassination, he
will become the president of the Southern Christian Leadership
Conference and write an autobiography that will attract
widespread criticism for his comments on King’s alleged
womanizing.

1935 – “The Conjure Man Dies,” a play by Rudolph Fisher, premieres on
Broadway at the Lafayette Theatre. Fisher, who had joined the
ancestors over a year before the play’s premiere, had adapted
the play from his 1932 short story “The Conjure-Man Dies: A
Mystery Tale of Dark Harlem,” considered the first detective
fiction by an African American.

1948 – Reginald Weir becomes the first African American to play in the
U.S. Indoor Lawn Tennis Association Championship. He will win
his first match, but will be eliminated on March 13.

1950 – Robert “Bobby” McFerrin is born in New York City. He will be
known for his versatile and innovative a cappella jazz vocals
and for his hit song “Don’t Worry Be Happy,” which will sell
over ten million copies and earn him three Grammy awards in
1989 in addition to a Grammy for best jazz vocalist.

1956 – A manifesto denouncing the Supreme Court ruling on segregation
in public schools, is issued by one hundred southern senators
and representatives.

1959 – “A Raisin in the Sun” becomes the first play written by an
African American woman, Lorraine Hansberry, to open on
Broadway. The play will run for 19 months at the Ethel
Barrymore Theatre, and be named “Best Play” by the New York
Drama Critics Circle, and bring Lloyd Richards to Broadway as
the first African American director in modern times.

1965 – After civil rights demonstrations in Selma, Alabama, the
Reverend James J. Reeb, a white minister from Boston, dies,
succumbing to his beating by segregationist whites.

1968 – Otis Redding posthumously receives a gold record for the single
“(Sittin’ On) The Dock of the Bay.”

1971 – Whitney M. Young, Jr., executive director of the National Urban
League, joins the ancestors after drowning while swimming
during a visit to Lagos, Nigeria.

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

KRLemmons African American History

February 20 African American Historical Events

Today in Black History – February 20 *

1864 – Confederate troops defeat three African American and six white
regiments at the Battle of Olustee, about fifty miles from
Jacksonville, Florida. The African-American units are the
8th U.S. Colored Troops, the 35th U.S. Colored Infantry, and
the famous 54th Massachusetts Colored Infantry. It is the
54th Massachusetts’ fighting that allowed General Truman
Seymour’s Union forces to retreat. One white veteran of the
battle states: ” The colored troops went in grandly, and they
fought like devils.” A regrettable episode in the aftermath
of the battle is the apparent mistreatment of Union African
American soldiers by the Confederates.

1895 – Frederick Douglass, famous African American abolitionist and
diplomat, joins the ancestors in Washington, DC at the age of
78. His home in Washington will be later turned into a
national monument under the auspices of the National Park
Service.

1911 – Frances Ellen Watkins Harper joins the ancestors in
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania at the age of 85. She had been a
writer and antislavery, women’s rights, and temperance
activist.

1925 – Alex La Guma is born in Cape Town, South Africa. He will
become a novelist whose writings reflect the lives of the
ghetto dwellers in the ‘Coloured’ sections of Capetown,
portrayed best in his novel, “A Walk in the Night.” The
ghettos and shanties of the Cape were his milieu, and he will
never depict the lives of the impoverished with either
rancor or self-pity. The powerful strokes of his pen will
paint a picture of the starkness and reality of their lives.
He allowed the tin and hessian fabrics of the rat-infested,
leaking hovels to spell it out. He will become involved
with the South African Coloured People’s Organisation,
playing a very active part in its affairs. He will be
exiled in 1966 and move with his family to London. At the
time he joins the ancestors in 1985, he was the Chief
Representative of the African National Congress in Cuba.

1927 – Sidney Poitier is born prematurely in Miami, Florida, weighing
only three pounds. His parents are on a regular trip to the
U.S. to sell tomatoes and other produce. He will be raised
in the Bahamas and return to the United States as a teenager
to live with his older brother in Miami. He will move to New
York City in 1945 to study acting. He will become one of the
modern movies’ leading men, making his screen debut in 1950
and earning praise in such films as “Cry the Beloved Country,”
“Blackboard Jungle,” “Porgy and Bess,” “A Raisin in the Sun,”
“To Sir With Love,” “In the Heat of the Night,” and “Guess
Who’s Coming to Dinner.” His 1965 role in “Lilies of the
Field” will earn him an Oscar, the first for an African
American in a leading role.

1929 – Writer Wallace Thurman’s play “Harlem” opens in New York City.
It is the first successful play by an African American
playwright.

1936 – John Hope, president of Atlanta University, joins the ancestors
at the age of sixty seven.

1937 – Nancy Wilson is born in Chillicothe, Ohio. She will become a
well-known jazz and pop singer, singing with Cannonball
Adderly, George Shearing, Art Farmer and Chick Corea, among
others. She will make more than 50 albums, including “With My
Lover Beside Me,” featuring the lyrics of Johnny Mercer and
the music of Barry Manilow.

1951 – Emmett L. Ashford, one of baseball’s most popular figures,
becomes the first African American umpire in organized
baseball. Ashford is certified to be a substitute in the
Southwestern International League. He will later (1966)
become the first African American major league umpire, working
in the American League.

1963 – Baseball great, Willie “The Say Hey Kid” Mays, signs with the
San Francisco Giants as baseball’s highest paid player (at
that time). He will earn $100,000 a year.

1963 – Charles Barkley is born in Leeds, Alabama. He will forego his
senior year at Auburn University to enter the NBA as a forward
for the Philadelphia 76ers. Barkley will post averages of 20
or more points and at least 10 rebounds per game for 11
seasons. His achievements during that span will be remarkable.
He will be an All-NBA First Team selection in 1988, 1989,
1990, 1991 and 1993, an All-NBA Second Team pick in 1986,
1987, 1992, 1994 and 1995 and an All-NBA Third Team choice in
1996. He will be selected to 10 consecutive All-Star Games,
and receive more All Star votes than any other player in 1994,
and will be MVP in the 1991 All-Star classic.

1968 – State troopers use tear gas to stop civil rights demonstrations
at Alcorn A&M College in Mississippi.

1991 – African Americans win Grammys including Mariah Carey for
Best New Artist and female pop vocal, Anita Baker for female
R&B vocal, Luther Vandross for male R&B vocal, Living Colour
for best hard rock performance, M.C. Hammer for best rap solo
and best R&B song for “U Can’t Touch This,” and Chaka Khan and
Ray Charles for best R&B vocal by a duo or group. Quincy
Jones becomes the all-time non-classical Grammy winner when he
wins six awards at these 33rd annual Grammy Awards, including
album of the year, “Back on the Block.”

1997 – T. Uriah Butler joins the ancestors in Fyzabad, Trinidad at the
age of 100. Born in Grenada, he had been a major labor
organizer and politician in Trinidad. In 1975, he was awarded
Trinidad’s highest honor, The Trinity Cross.

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

KRLemmons African American History

February 16 African American Historical Events

Today in Black History – February 16 *

1801 – The African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Zion Church officially
separates from its parent, the Methodist Episcopal Church.
The Zion church will be incorporated as the African Episcopal
Church of the City of New York. James Varick will be its first
pastor and will later become the first black African Methodist
Episcopal Zion (AMEZ) bishop. It will hold its first national
conference in 1821. The name Zion will not be added to the
church’s name until 1848.

1874 – Frederick Douglass is elected President of Freedman’s Bank and
Trust Company.

1923 – Bessie Smith makes her first recording for Columbia Records.
The record, “Down Hearted Blues,” written by Alberta Hunter
and Lovie Austin, will sell an incredible 800,000 copies and
be Columbia’s first popular hit.

1944 – The U.S. Navy starts its first officer training class of
African Americans at Camp Robert Smalls, Great Lakes, Illinois.
In March, 1944,

1951 – James Ingram is born in Akron, Ohio. He will be raised there
on Kelly Avenue. He will later become a rhythm and blues
singer and will earn at least three Grammy Awards and
seventeen Grammy nominations.

1951 – The New York City Council passes a bill prohibiting racial
discrimination in city-assisted housing developments.

1957 – LeVar Burton is born in Landstuhl, Germany. He will become an
actor, winning a landmark role in the award-winning mini-
series, “Roots,” as the enslaved African youth Kunta Kinte,
while attending USC. He will go on to become a producer,
director and writer for numerous television series and films.

1970 – Joe Frazier knocks outs Jimmy Ellis in the second round to
become the undisputed world heavyweight boxing champion.

1972 – Wilt Chamberlain scores his 30,000th point in his 940th game,
a basketball game between the Los Angeles Lakers and the
Phoenix Suns. He is the first player in the NBA to score
30,000 points.

1992 – The Los Angeles Lakers retire Magic Johnson’s uniform, # 32.

1999 – Mary Elizabeth Roche, best known as Betty Roche, joins the
ancestors at the age of 81 in Pleasantville, New Jersey. She
was a singer who performed with Duke Ellington in the 1940s
and 1950s. She sang with the Savoy Sultans from 1941 to
1943, when she joined Ellington’s group. She scored high
marks from critics for the suite “Black, Brown and Beige,” at
Ellington’s first Carnegie Hall concert. She also performed
Ellington’s signature song “Take the A Train” in the 1943
film. “Reveille With Beverly.”

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

KRLemmons African American History

February 14 African American Historical Events

* Today in Black History – February 14 *

1760 – Richard Allen, is born into slavery in Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania. He will purchase his freedom in 1786 and will
become a preacher the same year. He will become the first
African American ordained in the Methodist Episcopal Church
(1799), and founder of the African Methodist Episcopal (AME)
Church in 1816, and first bishop of the AME Church. He will
join the ancestors on March 26, 1831.

1818 – The birth of Frederick Douglass in Tuckahoe (Talbot County),
Maryland, is attributed to this date. He will state, “I have
no accurate knowledge of my age, never having seen any
authentic record containing it… and it is the wish of most
masters within my knowledge to keep their slaves thus
ignorant.” He will be a great African American leader and
“one of the giants of nineteenth century America. He was
born Frederick Bailey and will change his name to Douglass
after he escapes slavery in 1838. He will join the ancestors
on February 20, 1895 in Washington, DC.

1867 – Morehouse College is organized in Augusta, Georgia. The
school will be moved later to Atlanta.

1867 – New registration law in Tennessee abolishes racial
distinctions in voting.

1936 – The National Negro Congress is organized at a Chicago meeting
attended by eight hundred seventeen delegates representing
more than five hundred organizations. Asa Phillip Randolph
of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters is elected
president of the new organization.

1946 – Gregory Hines is born in New York City. A child tap-dancing
star in the group Hines, Hines, and Dad, Hines will lead a
new generation of tap dancers that will benefit from the
advice and teaching of such tap legends as Henry Le Tang,
“Honi” Coles, Sandman Sims, the Nicholas Brothers, and Sammy
Davis, Jr. He will also become a successful actor in movies
including “White Knights,” “Tap,” and “A Rage in Harlem.” He
will join the ancestors on August 9, 2003.

1951 – Sugar Ray Robinson defeats Jake LaMotta and wins the
middleweight boxing title.

1957 – Lionel Hampton’s only major musical work, “King David”, makes
its debut at New York’s Town Hall. The four-part symphony
jazz suite was conducted by Dimitri Mitropoulos.

1966 – Wilt Chamberlain breaks the NBA career scoring record at
20,884 points after only seven seasons as a pro basketball
player.

1978 – Maxima Corporation, a computer systems and management company,
is incorporated. Headquartered in Lanham, Maryland, it will
become one of the largest African American-owned companies
and earn its founder, chairman and CEO, Joshua I. Smith,
chairmanship of the U.S. Commission on Minority Business
Development.

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

KRLemmons African American History

December 3 African American Historical Events

Today in Black History – December 3 *

1841 – Abolitionist Charles Lenox Remond returns to the United
States after a year and a half in Great Britain. He
had been serving as a delegate to the world Anti-
Slavery Convention in London. He brings with him an
“Address from the People of Ireland” including 60,000
signatures urging Irish-Americans to “oppose slavery by
peaceful means and to insist upon liberty for all
regardless of color, creed, or country.”

1843 – The Society of Colored People in Baltimore, is the first
African American Catholic association whose
documentation has been preserved. Their notebook will
begin today and continue until September 7, 1845.

1847 – Frederick Douglass and Martin R. Delaney begin the
publication of “The North Star” newspaper, one of the
leading abolitionist newspapers of its day.

1864 – The Twenty-Fifth Corps, the largest all African American
unit in the history of the U.S. Army, is established by
General Order # 297 of the War Department, Adjutant
General’s Office. The Colored Troops of the Department
of Virginia and North Carolina were organized into the
Twenty-Fifth Corps under the command of Major General G.
Weitzel.

1866 – John Swett Rock, a Massachusetts lawyer and dentist joins
the ancestors. He had become the first African American
certified to practice before the U.S. Supreme Court.
Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase appointed Dr. Rock to
present cases before the Supreme Court on December 31,
1865.

1868 – The trial of ex-Confederacy president, Jefferson Davis
starts, marking the first United States trial with
African Americans included in the jury.

1883 – The Forty-Eighth Congress (1883-85) convenes. Only Two
African Americans are included as representatives. They
are James E. O’Hara of North Carolina and Robert Smalls
of South Carolina.

1883 – George L. Ruffin is appointed a city judge in Boston,
Massachusetts.

1922 – Ralph Alexander Gardner-Chavis is born in Cleveland, Ohio.
He will become a pioneer chemist whose research into
plastics leads to the development of so-called “hard
plastics.” His innovations in the manipulation of
catalytic chemicals will lead to the products for the
petrochemical and pharmaceutical industries as well as
plastics.

1951 – President Truman names a committee to monitor compliance
with anti-discrimination provisions in U.S. government
contracts and sub-contracts.

1956 – Wilt Chamberlain plays in his first collegiate basketball
game and scores 52 points.

1962 – Edith Spurlock Sampson is sworn in as the first African
American woman judge.

1964 – The Spingarn Medal is presented to NAACP executive
secretary Roy Wilkins for his contribution to “the
advancement of the American people and the national
purpose.”

1964 – The Independence Bank of Chicago is organized.

1964 – J. Raymond Jones is elected leader of the New York
Democratic organization (Tammany Hall).

1970 – Jennifer Josephine Hosten become the first African
American Miss World.

1979 – An University of Southern California running back,
Charles White, is named the Heisman Trophy winner for
1979. White, who gained a career regular season total
of 5,598 yards, will play professionally for the Los
Angeles Rams.

1982 – Thomas Hearns unifies the world boxing titles in the
junior middleweight division by capturing the WBC title
over Wilfredo Benitez.

1988 – Barry Sanders wins the Heisman Trophy.

1988 – In South Africa, 11 black funeral mourners are slain in
Natal Province in an attack blamed on security forces.

1990 – “Black Art – Ancestral Legacy: The African Impulse in
African American Art” opens at the Dallas Museum of Art.
United States and Caribbean artists represented among
the more than 150 works include Richmond Barthe’, John
Biggers, Aaron Douglas, Malvin Gray Johnson, Sargent
Johnson, and Houston Conwill.

1997 – President Clinton hosts his first town hall meeting on
America’s race relations in Akron, Ohio.

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

KRLemmons African American History

September 6 African American Historical Events

Today in Black History – September 6 *

1826 – John Brown Russwurm graduates from Bowdoin College. While
many sources consider him to be the first African American
in America to graduate from college, he was preceded by
Edward Jones (B.A. Amherst College – August 23, 1826) and
Alexander Lucius Twilight (B.A. Middlebury College –
1823).

1848 – National Black Convention meets in Cleveland, Ohio with
some seventy delegates. Frederick Douglass is elected
president of the convention.

1865 – Thaddeus Stevens, powerful U.S. congressman, urges
confiscation of estates of Confederate leaders and the
distribution of land to adult freedmen in forty-acre
lots.

1866 – Frederick Douglass becomes the first African American
delegate to a national political convention.

1876 – A race riot occurs in Charleston, South Carolina.

1892 – George “Little Chocolate” Dixon beats Jack Skelly in New
Orleans to win the world featherweight title. While some
African American citizens celebrate for two days, the New
Orleans Times-Democrat says, “It was a mistake to match a
Negro and a white man, to bring the races together on any
terms of equality even in the prize ring.”

1905 – The Atlanta Life Insurance Company is established by A.F.
Herndon.

1930 – Leander Jay Shaw, Jr. is born in Salem, Virginia. He will
become a justice of the Florida State Supreme Court in
1983 and, in 1990, the chief justice, a first in Florida
and the second African American chief justice in any
state supreme court.

1966 – A racially motivated civil disturbance occurs in Atlanta,
Georgia.

1967 – President Lyndon B. Johnson names Walter E. Washington,
commissioner and “unofficial” mayor of Washington, DC.

1968 – The Kingdom of Swaziland achieves full independence from
Great Britain as a constitutional monarchy.

1982 – Willie Stargell, of the Pittsburgh Pirates, sees his
uniform, number 8, retired by the Bucs. It is the fourth
Pirate player’s uniform to be so honored. The other
three belonged to Roberto Clemente (#21), Honus Wagner
(#33) and Pie Traynor (#20).

1988 – Lee Roy Young becomes the first African American Texas
Ranger in the police force’s 165-year history. Young is
a 14-year veteran of the Texas Department of Public
Safety.

1989 – The International Amateur Athletic Federation bans Ben
Johnson of Canada from competition, after he tests
positive for steroids. He is also stripped of all of his
track records.

1989 – The National Party, the governing party of South Africa,
loses nearly a quarter of its parliamentary seats to
far-right and anti-apartheid rivals, its worst setback
in four decades.

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

KRLemmons African American History

August 11 African American Historical Events

Today in Black History – August 11 *

1841 – African American abolitionist Frederick Douglass delivers
his first public speech before the Massachusetts Anti-
Slavery Society in Nantucket. Having escaped from
slavery only three years earlier, Douglass is legally a
fugitive when he delivers his speech about his life as a
slave. The Massachusetts Society immediately hires
Douglass as a full-time lecturer.

1873 – John Rosamond Johnson is born in Jacksonville, Florida.
He will, with Bob Cole, be part of the famous vaudeville
team Cole & Johnson. He will best be remembered as a
composer who, with his brother James Weldon Johnson
providing the lyrics, will write “Lift Every Voice and
Sing.” He will join the ancestors on November 11, 1954.

1921 – Alexander Murray Palmer Haley is born in Ithaca, New York.
He will become an award-winning author, most notably for his
authorship with Malcolm X of the latter’s autobiography and
for “Roots”, which will win a special Pulitzer Prize.
“Roots” will be his most successful work, selling over 1
million copies and contributing to a new interest in
African American history. He will join the ancestors on
February 10, 1992 in Seattle, Washington.

1925 – Carl T. Rowan is born in Ravencroft, Tennessee. He will
become one of America’s most outspoken journalist with
NBC News and The Chicago Daily News. As an author, he
will write “Dream Makers, Dream Breakers:The World of
Justice Thurgood Marshall,” “Breaking Barriers,” “Wait
Till Next Year,” “Go South in Sorrow,” and “South of
Freedom.” He will be appointed to the positions of
Director: U.S. Information Agency and U.S. Ambassador to
Finland. He will join the ancestors on September 23, 2000.

1942 – Otis Taylor is born in Houston, Texas. He will become a
professional football player with the Kansas City Chiefs,
playing wide receiver. He will be the UPI AFC Player of
the Year in 1971, and will help lead his team to Super
Bowl I and a victory in Super Bowl IV.

1948 – Amanda Randolph appears on the television series “The
Laytons” on the Dumont Network. She and Bob Howard of
CBS’ “The Bob Howard Show”, which premiered earlier in
the summer, are the first African Americans to be
featured in a national network television series.

1949 – Peter Murray Marshall of New York is appointed to the
American Medical Association’s House of Delegates.

1960 – The African country of Chad declares independence from
France.

1962 – After integrated groups try to use the facilities, police
close the Municipal parks and library in Albany, Georgia.

1964 – A racially motivated disturbance occurs in Paterson, New
Jersey.

1965 – Racially motivated disturbances start in the Watts section
of Los Angeles, California. In six days, the death toll
will stand at 34, 1,032 persons will be injured, 3952 will
be arrested and $ 35 million in property will be lost.

1965 – The U.S. Senate confirms the nomination of Thurgood
Marshall as U.S. Solicitor General.

1980 – Reggie Jackson hits his 400th homer.

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

KRLemmons African American History

August 7 African American Historical Events

Today in Black History – August 7 *

1846 – Frederick Douglass is speaker at the World’s Temperance
convention in London, England.

1904 – Ralph Johnson Bunche is born in Detroit, Michigan. A
political social scientist, he will achieve fame as the
first African American Nobel Prize winner (1950) for his
role as U.N. mediator of the armistice agreements between
Israel and her Arab neighbors in the Middle East wars of
1948, for which he will be awarded the NAACP’s Spingarn
Medal (1949). He will serve as the undersecretary of the
United Nations from 1955 until he joins the ancestors on
December 9, 1971.

1932 – Abebe Bikila of Ethiopia becomes the first man to win the
Olympic marathon twice (running barefoot).

1936 – Rahsaan Ronald Kirk is born in Columbus, Ohio. Blind from
the age of two, he will begin playing the tenor saxophone
professionally in Rhythm & Blues bands before turning to
jazz. He will be compelled by a dream to transpose two
letters in his first name to make Roland. After another
dream in 1970, he will add Rahsaan to his name. Rahsaan
Roland Kirk will be best known for his ability to play more
than one instrument at once, his self-made jazz instruments,
and for his creative improvisational skills. Rahsaan will
also become an activist in getting support for what he will
term “Black Classical Music.” He will participate in
several takeovers of television talk shows during which he
would demand more exposure for black jazz artists. He will
join the ancestors on December 5, 1977.

1945 – Alan Cedric Page is born in Canton, Ohio. He will become a
6-time NFL All Pro and 1971 NFL Player of the Year while
playing for the Minnesota Vikings. In 1988, he will be
inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame and become the
first native of the Hall’s home city of Canton to have been
inducted. He will obtain his law degree from the University
of Minnesota while playing pro football full-time. After a
few years in private practice, he will become an Assistant
Attorney General. In 1992, he will be elected as an
associate justice on the Minnesota State Supreme Court. He
will be re-elected in 1998 and 2004.

1946 – First coin bearing portrait of an African American (Booker T.
Washington) is authorized.

1948 – Alice Coachman becomes the first African American woman to
win an Olympic gold medal. She will win her medal in Track
and Field competition (the high jump) during the Summer
Games in London. She also will be the only American woman
to win an Olympic gold medal that year. She will later
become inducted into the National Track and Field Hall of
Fame.

1954 – Charles H. Mahoney is confirmed by the Senate and becomes the
first African American to serve as a full-time delegate to
the United Nations.

1960 – African American and white students stage kneel-in
demonstrations in Atlanta churches.

1966 – A racially motivated disturbance starts in Lansing, Michigan.

1970 – Four persons, including the presiding judge, are killed in
courthouse shoot-out in San Rafael, Marin County, California.
Police charge that activist Angela Davis helped provide the
weapons used by the convicts and will be sought for arrest
and become one of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s
“most wanted criminals.” She will be arrested in New York
City in October 1970, returned to California to face charges
of kidnapping, murder, and conspiracy and will be acquitted
of all charges by an all-white jury.

1989 – Congressman George Thomas “Mickey” Leland, members of his
staff and State Department officials die in a plane crash in
the mountains near Gambela, Ethiopia. Leland, the
Democratic successor to Barbara Jordan, had established the
Select Committee on Hunger in 1984 and was chairman of the
Congressional Black Caucus during the 99th Congress. A
successful campaigner for stronger sanctions against South
Africa, Leland was on a visit to a United Nations refugee
camp at the time he joins the ancestors.

2005 – Frederick Douglas “Fritz” Pollard is inducted posthumously
into the Football Hall of Fame in Canton, OH. He was the
first African American player and coach in the NFL. He was
also a two-time All-American at Brown University and was the
first African American to play in the Rose Bowl (1916).

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

KRLemmons African American History

July 1 African American Historical Events

Today in Black History – July 1 *

1863 – The Dutch West Indies abolishes slavery.

1870 – James W. Smith is the first African American to enter
the U.S. Military Academy (West Point).

1873 – Henry O. Flipper of Georgia is the second African
American to enter West Point .

1889 – Frederick Douglass is named minister to Haiti.

1893 – Walter Francis White, NAACP leader, is born in Atlanta,
Georgia. After graduating from Atlanta University in 1916,
he will become an official with the Standard Life Insurance
Company, one of the largest Black-owned businesses of its
day. He will also take part in civic affairs, helping to
found the Atlanta branch of the NAACP that same year. With
White as secretary, the branch will quickly score a victory
for educational equality by preventing the school board
from eliminating seventh grade in the Black public schools.
In 1917, James Weldon Johnson, field secretary for the
NAACP will visit Atlanta. He will be impressed with White’s
enthusiasm and political skills and will persuaded the
national board of directors to appoint him the assistant
secretary. In January, 1918 White will move to New York and
join the NAACP staff. For the next ten years his primary
responsibility will be conducting undercover investigations
of lynchings and race riots. Using his fair complexion to
his advantage, he will approach members of lynch mobs and
other whites who had witnessed or were involved in racial
violence. He will trick them into giving him candid
accounts that the NAACP would then publicize. During these
years he will investigate forty-one lynchings and eight
race riots, including the riots in Elaine, Arkansas, and
Chicago, Illinois, during the Red Summer of 1919. On more
than one occasion he will narrowly escape vigilantes who
discover his true identity. He will become the Executive
Director of the NAACP from 1931 until he joins the ancestors
on March 21, 1955.

1898 – The African American 10th Calvary charges Spanish
Forces at El Caney, Cuba, and relieves Teddy
Roosevelt’s “Rough Riders.”

1899 – Rev. Thomas Andrew Dorsey, “Father of Gospel Music” is
born in Villa Rica, Georgia. Although he will begin
touring with Ma Rainey, he will leave the blues in
1932 to work as a choir director for Pilgrim Baptist
Church. A gospel legend, among his most popular songs
will be “A Little Talk with Jesus.” His father was a minister
and his mother a piano teacher. He will learn to play blues
piano as a young man. After studying music formally in
Chicago, he will become an agent for Paramount Records. He
put together a band for Ma Rainey called the “Wild Cats Jazz
Band” in 1924. He will be credited with more than 400 blues
and jazz songs. Personal tragedy will lead Dorsey to leave
secular music behind and begin writing and recording what he
called “gospel” music. He was the first to use that term. His
first wife, Nettie, who had been Rainey’s wardrobe mistress,
died in childbirth in 1932 along with his first son. In his
grief, he wrote his most famous song, one of the most famous
of all gospel songs, “Take My Hand, Precious Lord”.
Unhappy with the treatment he received at the hands of
established publishers, he will open the first Black gospel
music publishing company, Dorsey House of Music. He will also
found his own gospel choir and will be a founder and first
president of the National Convention of Gospel Choirs and
Choruses. His influence will not be limited to African
American music, as white musicians also follow his lead.
“Precious Lord” will be recorded by Elvis Presley, Mahalia
Jackson, Aretha Franklin, Clara Ward, Roy Rogers, and
Tennessee Ernie Ford, among hundreds of others. It will be a
favorite gospel song of the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. and
be sung at the rally the night before his assassination, and
at his funeral by Mahalia Jackson, per his request. It will
also be a favorite of President Lyndon B. Johnson, who will
requested it to be sung at his funeral. He wrote “Peace in
the Valley” for Mahalia Jackson in 1937, which will also
become a gospel standard. He will be the first African
American elected to the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame and
also the first in the Gospel Music Association’s Living Hall
of Fame. His papers will be preserved at Fisk University,
along with those of W.C. Handy, George Gershwin, and the Fisk
Jubilee Singers. He will join the ancestors in Chicago,
Illinois on January 23, 1993.
1915 – William James ‘Willie’ Dixon is born in Vickburg, Mississippi.
He will be a producer for Chess and Checker Records in
Chicago and considered one of the key figures in the creation
of Chicago blues. He worked with Chuck Berry, Muddy Waters,
Howlin’ Wolf, Led Zeppelin, Otis Rush, Bo Diddley, Little
Walter, Sonny Boy Williamson, Koko Taylor, Little Milton,
Eddie Boyd, Jimmy Witherspoon, Lowell Fulson, Willie Mabon,
Memphis Slim, Washboard Sam, Jimmy Rogers, and others.
His genius as a songwriter lay in refurbishing archaic
Southern motifs, in contemporary arrangements. This produced
songs with the backbone of the blues, and the agility of pop
music. British R&B bands of the 1960s will constantly draw
on the Dixon songbook for inspiration. In addition, as his
songwriting and production work started to take a backseat,
his organizational ability will be utilized, putting together
all-star, Chicago based blues ensembles for work in Europe.
His health will deteriorate in the 1970s and 1980s, due to
long-term diabetes, and eventually his leg will have to be
amputated. He will join the ancestors in Burbank,
California on January 29, 1992 and will be posthumously
inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1994.

1917 – A three day race riot starts in East St. Louis, Illinois.
Estimates of the number killed ranges from forty to two
hundred. There had been an earlier race riot that
occurred on May 27, 1917. Martial law is declared. A
congressional investigating committee will say, “It is
not possible to give accurately the number of dead. At
least thirty-nine Negroes and eight white people were
killed outright, and hundreds of Negroes were wounded
and maimed. ‘The bodies of the dead Negroes,’ testified
an eye witness, ‘were thrown into a morgue like so many
dead hogs.’ There were three hundred and twelve
buildings and forty-four railroad freight cars and their
contents destroyed by fire.”

1942 – Andrae Crouch, African American sacred music artist, is
born in Los Angeles, California. He will become a gospel
musician, recording artist, songwriter, arranger, and
producer. He will be a key figure in the Jesus Music
movement of the 1960s and 1970s. He will work as a
producer or arranger with Michael Jackson, Madonna (Like
A Prayer), Quincy Jones, Diana Ross, Elton John and Rick
Astley (Cry For Help). His film credits will include “Once
Upon A Forest,” “The Color Purple,” “The Lion King,” and
“Free Willy.” He will also appear as the television voice
of Dr. Seuss’s Yertle the Turtle. He will eventually serve
as Senior Pastor at the New Christ Memorial Church of God
in Christ in San Fernando, California, the church founded
by his parents. In 2004, he will be honored with a star on
the Hollywood Walk of Fame. He will be the third gospel
musician to appear on the walk. His most enduring gospel
songs will be “Soon and Very Soon,” “My Tribute”, “The
Blood” and “Through It All.”

1960 – Ghana becomes a republic. Italian Somalia gains
independence, and unites with the Somali Republic.

1960 – Evelyn “Champagne” King is born in the Bronx, New York City,
New York. In her teens, she will relocate to Philadelphia
with her mother, and begin singing in several groups. To
make ends meet, she and her mother will become cleaning
women. For a teenager, King’s voice will be quite mature.
Many, at first thought will think she is a grown woman.
While working at Gamble & Huff’s recording studio as a
cleaner, she will be “discovered” by producer T. Life, and
will go on to become one of the most popular Rhythm & Blues
and disco singers of the late seventies and early eighties.
She will be best known for the disco classic “Shame”, her
Top 10 1978 Gold record. She will score an additional Top 40
hit and Gold record, with “I Don’t Know If It’s Right” in
1979. “Shame” and “I Don’t Know If It’s Right” will both be
tracks released from her 1977 debut album Smooth Talk. On
September 20, 2004, her signature song “Shame” will become
among the first records to be inducted into the newly formed
Dance Music Hall of Fame at a ceremony held in New York’s
Spirit club.

1961 – Frederick Carlton “Carl” Lewis is born in Birmingham, Alabama.
He will be raised in Willingboro, New Jersey. He will become
an athlete who will win 10 Olympic medals (9 golds) during
his career (1984 to 1996), and 8 World Championship gold
medals, and 1 bronze (1983 to 1993). He will become only the
third Olympian to win four consecutive titles in an individual
event.

1962 – Burundi & Rwanda gain independence from Belgium (National Days).

1976 – Newark mayor Kenneth Gibson is elected as the first African
American president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors.

1991 – Former chairman of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission
and judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals, Clarence Thomas is
nominated by President George H. Bush as associate justice of
the Supreme Court to replace retiring justice Thurgood
Marshall. Thomas’ Senate confirmation hearings will be the
most controversial in history and will include charges of
sexual harassment by a former employee, Professor Anita Hill.

1997 – Audrey F. Manley begins her appointment as president of Spelman
College. She is the first alumna of Spelman to be named
president in the college’s 116-year history. Formerly acting
surgeon general of the United States, Manley had served in key
leadership positions in the U.S. Public Health Service for the
previous 20 years.

2005 – Grammy award winner Luther Vandross joins the ancestors at John
F. Kennedy Medical Center in Edison, New Jersey at the age of
54. He never really recovered from a stroke suffered in his
Manhattan home on April 16, 2003. He amazingly managed to
continue his recording career, and in 2004, captured four
Grammys as a sentimental favorite, including best song for the
bittersweet “Dance With My Father.” He had battled weight
problems for years while suffering from diabetes and
hypertension. He was arguably the most celebrated Rhythm &
Blues balladeer of his generation. He made women swoon with
his silky yet forceful tenor, which he often revved up like a
motor engine before reaching his beautiful crescendos. He was
a four-time Grammy winner in the best male R&B performance
category, taking home the trophy in 1990 for the single “Here
and Now,” in 1991 for his album “Power of Love,” in 1996 for
the track “Your Secret Love” and a last time for “Dance With
My Father.”

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