Harold Washington – The CamaraIfe Maktaba

May 3, 2015 KRLemmons African American History

April 29 African American Historical Events

* Today in Black History – April 29 *

1854 – Ashmun Institute, later Lincoln University, is founded in
Oxford, Pennsylvania. It will be “the first institution
founded anywhere in the world to provide a higher
education in the arts and sciences for youth of African
descent.” (This applies to the modern era).

1899 – Edward “Duke” Kennedy Ellington is born in Washington, DC.
He will form his first band in 1919, and move to New York
City in 1922. His five-year tenure at the famed Cotton
Club will garner him wide acclaim. Scoring both his first
musical and making his recording debut in 1924, Ellington
will be known as the first conventional jazz composer,
although he will also become renowned for his Sacred
Concerts in the mid-1960’s. His most notable works
include “Take the A Train,” “Mood Indigo,” “Sophisticated
Ladies,” and “I Got It Bad and That Ain’t Good.” He will
join the ancestors on May 24, 1974.

1915 – Donald Mills is born in Piqua, Ohio. With his brothers,
Herbert, Harry and John, the Mills Brothers will begin
performing in 1922 in their hometown and over time will
sell an estimated 50 million records. The group will break
racial barriers in the era of Jim Crow and sing before
royalty in London. From the early 1930s onward, the Mills
Brothers will be a nationwide hit on radio and in record
sales. In 1931, the song “Tiger Rag” will sell 1 million
copies. Some of their other hit songs will include “You
Always Hurt the One You Love,” “Glow Worm,” “Yellow Bird,”
and “Paper Doll.” The brothers will also appear in several
movies, including “The Big Broadcast” in 1932, and “Twenty
Million Sweethearts” in 1934. Donald will be the last
surviving member of the group and will tour in his later
years with his youngest son, John, after his brothers
retire in 1982. He will accept a Grammy Award for Life
Achievement for the Mills Brothers in 1998. With 2,246
recordings made by 1981, their last year performing
together, the Mills Brothers may have recorded more songs
than anyone else. They will be awarded 36 gold records. He
will join the ancestors on November 13, 1999.

1922 – Parren James Mitchell is born in Baltimore, Maryland. In
1971, he will become the first African American elected to
Congress from the State of Maryland. He will represent the
7th congressional district of Maryland from January 3, 1971
to January 3, 1987. During his 16 year career, he will fight
for affirmative action legislation. As Chairman of the Small
Business Committee, he will attach an amendment to a $4
billion public works bill that compels state and local
governments, seeking federal grants, to set aside 10% of the
funds to retain minority firms as contractors and
subcontractors. He will also mentor several dozen young up
and coming leaders. Maryland House of Delegates majority
whip Talmadge Branch will be an early aide, Delegate
Nathaniel Oaks will volunteer in Mitchell’s early campaigns,
as will Delegates Sandy Rosenberg and Curt Anderson. He will
initiate a congressional investigation into Wedtech where
bribes were alleged to have been offered in return for no
bid military contracts. In 1986, he will retire from
Congress, but will run unsuccessfully for Lieutenant
Governor of Maryland as the running mate of Attorney General
Stephen H. Sachs. He will join the ancestors on May 28,2007.

1928 – Carl Edward Gardner is born in Tyler, Texas. He will become
a singer, best known as the foremost member and founder of
The Coasters. The Coasters will go on to produce several
enduring classics of 1950s rock and roll music including
“Yakety Yak”, “Charlie Brown”, and “Poison Ivy”. Together
with the other members of the Coasters – Cornell Gunter,
Billy Guy and Will “Dub” Jones, he will be inducted into the
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1987. He will join the
ancestors on June 12, 2011.

1934 – Otis Rush is born in Philadelphia, Mississippi. He will move
to Chicago, Illinois in 1948 and become a blues musician,
singer and guitarist who will help to shape Chicago’s West
Side blues sound. His distinctive guitar style will feature
a slow burning sound and long bent notes. With similar
qualities to Magic Sam and Buddy Guy, his sound will become
known as West Side Chicago blues and be an influence on many
musicians including Michael Bloomfield and Eric Clapton. He
is left-handed and, unlike many other left-handed guitarists,
will play a left-handed instrument strung upside-down with
the low E string at the bottom. He will play often with the
little finger of his pick hand curled under the low E for
positioning. It is widely believed that this contributes to
his distinctive sound. He will also be known for his wide-
ranging, powerful tenor voice.

1967 – Mrs. Robert W. Clayton is elected president of the YWCA, the
first African American president of the organization.

1983 – Harold Washington is sworn in as the first African American
mayor of Chicago.

1992 – Rioting erupts in Los Angeles after a jury acquits four
white policemen of charges related to the videotaped
beating of African American motorist Rodney King. The
National Guard and federal troops are mobilized to deal
with the civil disturbance, which will last several days
and cost the lives of 58 persons. There are demonstrations
and riots in other American cities.

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

May 3, 2015 KRLemmons African American History

April 15 African American Historical Events

* Today in Black History – April 15 *

1861 – President Lincoln calls for 75,000 troops to put down
the rebellion. The Lincoln administration rejects
African American volunteers. For almost two years
straight African Americans fight for the right, as one
humorist puts it, “to be kilt”.

1889 – Asa Philip Randolph is born in Crescent Way, Florida.
He will become a labor leader and a tireless fighter for
civil rights. He will organize and lead the Brotherhood
of Sleeping Car Porters, the first predominantly African
American labor union (organized in 1925). In the early
Civil Rights Movement, he will lead the March on
Washington Movement, which will convince President
Franklin D. Roosevelt to issue Executive Order 8802 in
1941, banning discrimination in the defense industries
during World War II. The group will then successfully
pressure President Harry S. Truman to issue Executive
Order 9981 in 1948, ending segregation in the armed
services. In 1963, he will be the head of the March on
Washington, organized by Bayard Rustin, at which Reverend
Martin Luther King, Jr. delivers his “I Have A Dream”
speech. He will inspire the Freedom budget, sometimes
called the “Randolph Freedom budget”, which will aim to
deal with the economic problems facing the black community.
In 1942, he will receive the NAACP Spingarn Medal. On
September 14, 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson will
present him with the Presidential Medal of Freedom. He will
join the ancestors on May 16, 1979. He will be named
posthumously to the Florida Civil Rights Hall of Fame in
January, 2014.

1919 – Elizabeth Catlett (later Mora) is born in Washington, DC.
In 1940, she will become the first student to receive an
M.F.A. in sculpture at the University of Iowa School of
Art and Art History. While there, she will be influenced
by American landscape painter Grant Wood, who will urge
students to work with the subjects they knew best. For
her, this will mean black people, and especially black
women, and it will be at this point that her work begins
to focus on African Americans. Her piece ‘Mother and
Child,’ done in limestone in 1939 for her thesis, will
win first prize in sculpture at the American Negro
Exposition in Chicago in 1940. In 1946, she will receive
a Rosenwald Fund Fellowship that allows her to travel to
Mexico where she will study wood carving with Jose L.
Ruiz and ceramic sculpture with Francisco Zúñiga, at the
Escuela de Pintura y Escultura, Esmeralda, Mexico. She
will later emigrate to Mexico, marry, and become a
Mexican citizen. She will become an internationally
known printmaker and sculptor and embrace both African
and Mexican influences in her art. She will be best
known for the black, expressionistic sculptures and
prints she produced during the 1960s and 1970s, which
will be seen as politically charged. She will join the
ancestors on April 2, 2012 in Cuernavaca, Mexico.

1922 – Harold Washington is born in Chicago, Illinois. He will
serve in the Illinois House of Representatives and
Senate as well as two terms in Congress before becoming
the first African American mayor of Chicago. He will
join the ancestors after suffering a massive heart
attack on November 25, 1987 after being re-elected to a
second term as mayor.

1928 – Pioneering architect Norma Merrick (later Sklarek) is
born in New York City. She become one of the first black
women to be licensed as an architect in the United States,
and the first to be licensed in the states of New York
(1954) and California (1962). She will also become the
first African American woman to become a fellow in the
American Institute of Architects (1980). In 1985, she will
become the first African American female architect to form
her own architectural firm: Siegel, Sklarek, Diamond,
which will be the largest woman-owned and mostly woman-
staffed architectural firm in the United States. Among her
designs will be the San Bernardino City Hall in San
Bernardino, California, the Fox Plaza in San Francisco,
Terminal One at the Los Angeles International Airport and
the Embassy of the United States in Tokyo, Japan. Howard
University will offer the Norma Merrick Sklarek
Architectural Scholarship Award in her honor. She will join
the ancestors on February 6, 2012.

1947 – Baseball player Jackie Robinson plays his first major-
league baseball game (he had played exhibition games
previously) for the Brooklyn Dodgers, becoming the
first African American in the major leagues since Moses
Fleetwood Walker played in 1885. The Brooklyn Dodgers
promoted him to the majors from the Montreal Royals.

1957 – Evelyn Ashford is born in Shreveport, Louisiana. She
will grow up in Roseville, California becoming a track
star specializing in sprinting. She will be a four-
time winner of Olympic gold medals and one silver in
1976, 1984, 1988, and 1992. In 1979, she will set a
world record in the 200-meter dash. In 1989 she will
receive the Flo Hyman Award from the Woman’s Sports
Foundation. In 1992, the U.S. Olympic team will ask her
to carry the flag during the opening ceremonies in the
Barcelona Olympics. She will retire from track and
field in 1993 at the age of 36.

1958 – African Freedom Day is declared at the All-African
People’s Conference in Accra, Ghana.

1960 – The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) is
formed on the campus of Shaw University in Raleigh,
North Carolina.

1985 – Thomas “Hit Man” Hearns wins the World Middleweight
title. This is one of five weight classes in which he
will win a boxing title making him the first African
American to win boxing titles in five different weight
classes.

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

May 3, 2015 KRLemmons African American History

April 12 African American Historical Events

* Today in Black History – April 12 *

1787 – Richard Allen and Absalom Jones organize Philadelphia’s
Free African Society which W.E.B. Du Bois refers to,
over a century later, “the first wavering step of a
people toward a more organized social life.”

1825 – Richard Harvey Cain is born in Greenbrier County,
Virginia (now part of West Virginia). He will become
an AME minister, an AME bishop, publisher, a member of
the South Carolina Senate, member of the U.S. House of
Representatives, and a founder of Paul Quinn College
in Waco, Texas. He will join the ancestors on January
18, 1887.

1861 – The Civil War begins as Confederate troops attack Fort
Sumter, South Carolina.

1864 – Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest captures Fort
Pillow, Tennessee, and massacres the inhabitants,
sparing, the official report says, neither soldier nor
civilian, African American nor white, male or female.
The fort is defended by a predominantly African
American force.

1869 – The North Carolina legislature passes anti-Klan
legislation.

1940 – Herbert Jeffrey “Herbie” Hancock is born in Chicago,
Illinois. After graduating from college at age 20, he
will go to New York with Donald Byrd, who had heard him
perform in Chicago. While in New York, Byrd will
introduce Hancock to Blue Note Records executives. This
will lead to work with various established jazz
artists and later Hancock’s first solo album, “Taking
Off,” which includes appearances by Freddie Hubbard and
Dexter Gordon. Contained on this album is Hancock’s
first top 10 hit, “Watermelon Man.” It will not be long
before Hancock gets the attention of the legendary
Miles Davis, who will extend an invitation to Hancock
to join his new group. After working with Davis for
several years Herbie will decide to form his own band,
a sextet which will include Julian Priester, Buster
Williams, and Eddie Henderson. He will become one of
the most popular jazz artists, known for his
compositions “Watermelon Man” and “Chameleon,” as well
as his musical score for the movie “‘Round Midnight,”
for which he will win an Oscar in 1986.

1960 – Martin Luther King, Jr. denounces the Vietnam War which
he says is “rapidly degenerating into a sordid military
adventure.”

1968 – African American students occupy the administration
building at Boston University and demand Afro-American
history courses and additional African American
students.

1980 – Liberian President William R. Tolbert Jr. and twenty-
seven others join the ancestors after being killed in
a coup d’etat by army enlisted men led by Master
Sergeant Samuel K. Doe.

1983 – The people of Chicago, Illinois elect Harold Washington
as the city’s first African American mayor.

1989 – Former middleweight boxing champion Sugar Ray Robinson
joins the ancestors in Culver City, California, at age
67.

1990 – August Wilson’s “The Piano Lesson” wins the Pulitzer
Prize for drama. It is the second Pulitzer Prize for
Wilson, who also won one for “Fences” in 1987 and was
awarded the New York Drama Critics’ Award for “Fences,”
“Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom,” and “Joe Turner’s Come and
Gone.”

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

November 27, 2014 KRLemmons African American History

November 25 African American Historical Events

* Today in Black History – November 25 *

1841 – Thirty-five survivors of the “Amistad” return home to
Africa.

1935 – Namahyoke Sokum Curtis, who led a team of 32 African
Americans to nurse yellow fever victims during the
Spanish-American War, joins the ancestors. She will
be buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

1941 – Annie Mae Bullock is born in Nutbush, Tennessee. She
will meet Ike Turner in the early 1950’s at a St.
Louis, Missouri club. Soon after, she will begin
singing with his band on occasional engagements, and
in 1959, form the Ike and Tina Turner Revue. After
separating from Ike and the band, she will build an
even more successful career on her own, which will
include the multi-platinum album, “Private Dancer”
and five Grammy awards.

1949 – Dr. Ralph J. Bunche receives the Spingarn Medal for
his contributions to the Myrdal study and his
achievements as UN mediator in the Palestine
conflict.

1949 – The St. Louis chapter of CORE presses a sit-in
campaign designed to end segregation in downtown St.
Louis facilities.

1955 – The Interstate Commerce Commission bans segregation
in interstate travel. The law affects buses and
trains as well as terminals and waiting rooms.

1987 – Harold Washington, the first African American mayor
of Chicago, Illinois, joins the ancestors, in office
at the age of 65.

1997 – Legendary Eddie Robinson, of Grambling State University,
coaches his last game as head coach. This will close
out a career spanning 57 years. He has the NCAA record
for wins at 402. The closest to Eddie Robinson’s record
is ‘Bear’ Bryant of the University of Alabama at 323
wins.

1998 – Comedian Flip Wilson joins the ancestors in Malibu,
California, at the age of 64.

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

April 29, 2014 KRLemmons African American History

April 29 African American Historical Events

* Today in Black History – April 29 *

1854 – Ashmun lnstitute, later Lincoln University, is founded in
Oxford, Pennsylvania. It will be “the first institution
founded anywhere in the world to provide a higher
education in the arts and sciences for youth of African
descent.” (This applies to the modern era).

1934 – Otis Rush is born in Philadelphia, Mississippi. He will move
to Chicago, Illinois in 1948 and become a blues musician,
singer and guitarist who will help to shape Chicago’s West
Side blues sound. His distinctive guitar style will feature
a slow burning sound and long bent notes. With similar
qualities to Magic Sam and Buddy Guy, his sound will become
known as West Side Chicago blues and be an influence on many
musicians including Michael Bloomfield and Eric Clapton. He
is left-handed and, unlike many other left-handed guitarists,
will play a left-handed instrument strung upside-down with
the low E string at the bottom. He will play often with the
little finger of his pick hand curled under the low E for
positioning. It is widely believed that this contributes to
his distinctive sound. He is alos known for his wide-ranging,
powerful tenor voice.

1967 – Mrs. Robert W. Clayton is elected president of the YWCA, the
first African American president of the organization.

1983 – Harold Washington is sworn in as the first African American
mayor of Chicago.

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

April 15, 2014 KRLemmons African American History

April 15 African American Historical Events

* Today in Black History – April 15 *

1889 – Asa Philip Randolph is born in Crescent Way, Florida.
He will become a labor leader, the organizer of the
Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters in 1925, and a
tireless fighter for civil rights. He will join the
ancestors in 1979.

1919 – Elizabeth Catlett (later Mora) is born in Washington,
        DC. In 1940, she will become the first student to receive
        an M.F.A. in sculpture at the University of Iowa School of
        Art and Art History. While there, she will be influenced by
American landscape painter Grant Wood, who will urge
students to work with the subjects they knew best. For
her, this will mean black people, and especially black
women, and it will be at this point that her work begins
to focus on African Americans. Her piece ‘Mother and
Child,’ done in limestone in 1939 for her thesis, will
win first prize in sculpture at the American Negro
Exposition in Chicago in 1940. In 1946, she will receive
a Rosenwald Fund Fellowship that allows her to travel to
Mexico where she will study wood carving with Jose L.
Ruiz and ceramic sculpture with Francisco Zúñiga, at the
Escuela de Pintura y Escultura, Esmeralda, Mexico. She
will later emigrate to Mexico, marry, and become a
Mexican citizen. She will become an internationally
known printmaker and sculptor and embrace both African
and Mexican influences in her art. She will be best
known for the black, expressionistic sculptures and
prints she produced during the 1960s and 1970s, which
will be seen as politically charged. She will join the
ancestors on April 2, 2012 in Cuernavaca, Mexico.

1958 – African Freedom Day is declared at the All-African
People’s Conference in Accra, Ghana.

1960 – The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) is
formed on the campus of Shaw University in Raleigh,
North Carolina.

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

April 13, 2014 KRLemmons African American History