John Hope – The CamaraIfe Maktaba

February 20, 2015 KRLemmons African American Authors

February 20 African American Historical Events

* Today in Black History – February 20 *

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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 on October 11, 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 Mr. Rene’ A. Perry.

December 10, 2014December 10, 2014 KRLemmons African American History

December 8 African American Historical Events

Today in Black History – December 8 *

1850 – The first African American woman to graduate from
college is Lucy Ann Stanton. She completes the two-year
ladies’ course and receives the Bachelor of Literature
degree from Oberlin College in Ohio.

1863 – President Abraham Lincoln issues his Proclamation on
Amnesty and Reconstruction for the restoration of the
Confederate states into the Union. He offers them a full
pardon and restoration of their rights if they are
willing to take an oath of loyalty to the Union and
accept the end of slavery.

1868 – Henry Hugh Proctor is born near Fayetteville,
Tennessee. He will receive his degree from Fisk University,
graduating in 1891. In 1894, he will receive a Bachelor of
Divinity degree from Yale University and be ordained into
the Congregational ministry. He will become pastor of the
First Congregational Church in Atlanta. In 1903, He will
join George Washington Henderson, president of Straight
University, a black college in New Orleans, Louisiana, to
found the National Convention of Congregational Workers
Among Colored People, and he will become its first president.
In 1904, Clark University will award him a Doctor of Divinity
degree. After the Atlanta Race Riot in 1906, he and a white
attorney will work together to quell remaining tensions and
form the Interracial Committee of Atlanta. In the church,
he will provide amenities lacking to blacks such as a
library, a kindergarten, an employment bureau, a gymnasium, a
ladies’ reading parlor, a music room, counseling services and
a model kitchen and sewing room for girls. He will also help
open the first housing facility for young employed black
women. He will be a strong believer in self-improvement. He
will also found the Atlanta Colored Music Festival
Association, with concerts attended by both races, segregated
but under one roof, believing that music could quell racial
animosity. This festival continues to the present day as the
Atlanta Music Festival. In 1919, he will minister to the
black American troops remaining in Europe. Afterwards he will
lead the Nazarene Congregational Church in Brooklyn, New York,
the place where he will live the rest of his life. He will
join the ancestors on May 12, 1933 New York City, after
succumbing to blood poisoning.

1873 – The National Equal Rights Convention adopts a resolution
to include African Americans.

1896 – J.T. White patents the lemon squeezer.

1925 – Entertainer, Sammy Davis Jr. is born in New York City.
He will begin his career at the age of four in
vaudeville, performing with his father. Sammy will star
on Broadway in “Mr. Wonderful” and in movies with “Porgy
and Bess”, Ocean’s Eleven, and “Robin and the Seven
Hoods.” He will release over 40 albums and will win many
gold records. He will join the ancestors on May 16, 1990.

1925 – James Oscar “Jimmy” Smith is born in Norristown,
Pennsylvania. He will become a modern jazz organist with
hits such as “Walk on the Wild Side.” He will rule the
Hammond organ in the ’50s and ’60s. He will revolutionize
the instrument, showing it could be creatively used in a
jazz context and popularized in the process. His Blue
Note sessions from 1956 to 1963 were extremely
influential. He toured extensively through the ’60s and
’70s. His Blue Note recordings will include superb
collaborations with Kenny Burrell, Lee Morgan, Lou
Donaldson, Tina Brooks, Jackie McLean, Ike Quebec and
Stanley Turrentine among others. He will join the
ancestors on February 8, 2005.

1933 – Clerow Wilson is born in Jersey City, New Jersey. “Flip”
Wilson is the tenth in a family of twenty-four children,
eighteen of whom survived. He will become a popular
comedian and will star in his own prime time comedy show
on television, “The Flip Wilson Show.” He will join the
ancestors on November 25, 1998.

1936 – “Gibbs vs The Board of Education” in Montgomery County,
Maryland is the first of a succession of suits initiated
by the NAACP, that eliminated wage differentials between
African American and white teachers.

1936 – “The Michigan Chronicle” is founded by Louis E. Martin.

1936 – The Spingarn Medal is presented to John Hope, posthumously,
for his achievement as president of Morehouse College and
for his creative leadership in the founding of the Atlanta
University Center.

1939 – Jerry Butler is born in Sunflower, Mississippi. He will
become a rhythm and blues singer with his group, The
Impressions and will be best known for his songs, “Never
Give You Up”, “For Your Precious Love,” “He Will Break
Your Heart,” and “Only the Strong Survive.” He will
become involved in the election of Chicago’s first
African American mayor, Harold Washington, work as Cook
County Commissioner and will serve as a Chicago City
Alderman.

1962 – The Reverend John Melville Burgess is consecrated as
suffragan Bishop of Massachusetts — the first African
American bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church to
serve a predominantly white diocese.

1967 – Major Robert H. Lawrence, Jr., the first African American
astronaut, joins the ancestors when his F-104 Starfighter
crashes at Edwards Air Force Base in California’s Mojave
Desert.

1972 – Representative George Collins joins the ancestors in an
airplane crash, near Midway Airport in Chicago, Illinois,
at the age of 47.

1972 – Attorney Jewel Lafontant is named Deputy Solicitor General
of the United States.

1977 – Earl Campbell, a running back with the University of Texas,
is awarded the Heisman Trophy. Campbell will play for
the Houston Oilers and be elected to the Football Hall of
Fame in 1990.

1983 – Mike Rozier, of the University of Nebraska, is awarded the
Heisman Trophy.

1987 – Kurt Lidell Schmoke is inaugurated as the first African
American mayor of Baltimore, Maryland.

1988 – Barry Sanders, a running back with Oklahoma State
University, is awarded the Heisman Trophy.

1991 – Tap dancing legends Fayard and Harold Nicholas and six
others receive Kennedy Center Honors in Washington, DC.

1998 – Nkem Chukwu, a Nigerian American, delivers Ebuka, the
first of eight children at Texas Children’s Hospital in
Houston, Texas. In what doctors consider a medical first,
the other seven siblings will be delivered on December 20.
Only seven will survive.

1999 – A Memphis, Tennessee jury hearing a lawsuit filed by the
Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s family, finds that the civil
rights leader had been the victim of a vast murder
conspiracy, not a lone assassin.

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

July 2, 2014 KRLemmons African American History

June 30 African American Historical Events

* Today in Black History – June 30 *

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

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

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

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

1940 – John T. Scott is born in New Orleans, Louisiana. He will
become a professor of art and a sculptor whose works will
be exhibited widely in the U.S. and at the exhibit of
“Art of Black America in Japan, Afro-American Modernism:
1937-1987.”

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

1960 – Zaire proclaims its independence from Belgium.

1966 – Michael Gerard “Mike” Tyson, former heavyweight champion of
the world and youngest (at age 19) to win that title (WBC
in 1986), is born in Brooklyn, New York.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

June 23, 2014 KRLemmons African American History

June 21 African American Historical Events

* Today in Black History – June 21 *

1821 – The African Methodist Episcopal Zion (AMEZ) Church is
formally constituted in New York City at its first annual
conference. Nineteen clergymen were present, representing
six African American churches from New York City,
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, New Haven, Connecticut and
Newark, New Jersey. They voted to separate from the
white-controlled Methodist Episcopal Church, which had
insisted on ultimate control of the church’s leadership and
property. To distinguish between the two African Methodist
Episcopal organizations, as well as to honor their original
congregation, in 1848 they will vote to add Zion to their
name.

1832 – Joseph Haynes Rainey is born in Georgetown, South Carolina.
He will become the first African American elected to the
U.S. House of Representatives, where he will serve five
terms. He will join the ancestors on August 1, 1887.

1859 – Henry Ossawa Tanner is born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Son
of AME bishop Benjamin Tanner, young Tanner will forgo the
ministry to take up painting. Constantly facing the tension
between racial stereotypes and his art, Tanner will
eventually emigrate to France to pursue his art, considered
by many the finest produced by an African American. He will
be known for his commanding use of light and color in his
seascapes, scenes of everyday life, and religious paintings.
He will join the ancestors in Paris, France on May 25, 1937.

1868 – John Hope is born in Augusta, Georgia. He will become the
first African American president of Atlanta Baptist (later
Morehouse) College in 1906. He will be a pioneer in the
field of education. A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Brown
University, He will encourage an intellectual climate
comparable to what he had known at his alma mater and will
openly challenge Booker T. Washington’s view that education
for African Americans should emphasize vocational and
agricultural skills. He will join the ancestors on February
22, 1936.

1923 – Marcus Garvey is sentenced by the U.S. government to 5 years
in prison for using the U.S. mail to defraud. He is
railroaded by a government that is terrified by the control
that one magnificent orator had over African Americans.
They did not want their major source of cheap labor in
America to leave for Africa.

1927 – Carl B. Stokes, the first African American elected mayor of
a major American city is born. Stokes will be elected to
two terms as mayor of Cleveland, Ohio at a time of urban
riots and racial unrest in many major U.S. cities. Civil
rights leaders said his election was an advance, both
symbolic and genuine, for the cause of black political
empowerment. He is instrumental in getting through a law
requiring city contractors to have minority employment
programs. President Clinton will appoint him, in 1994, as
ambassador to the Seychelles, an island nation in the
Indian Ocean. He will join the ancestors on April 3, 1996.

1945 – Colonel Benjamin O. Davis, Jr. becomes the first African
American to command a U.S. Army Air Force base when he
takes command of the 477th Composite Group of Godman Field
in Kentucky.

1951 – PFC William H. Thompson is posthumously awarded the
Congressional Medal of Honor. He is the first African
American recipient since the Spanish-American War.

1964 – In Neshoba County in central Mississippi, three civil rights
field workers disappear after investigating the burning of
an African American church by the Ku Klux Klan. Michael
Schwerner and Andrew Goodman, both white New Yorkers, had
traveled to heavily segregated Mississippi in 1964 to help
organize civil rights efforts on behalf of the Congress of
Racial Equality (CORE). The third man, James Chaney, was a
local African American man who had joined CORE in 1963. The
disappearance of the three young men garnered national
attention and led to a massive FBI investigation that was
code-named MIBURN, for “Mississippi Burning.” They are later
found murdered.

1965 – Arthur Ashe leads UCLA to the NCAA tennis championship.

1990 – Little Richard gets a star on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame.

1997 – Patrice Rushen receives an NAACP Lifetime Achievement Award
for her contributions in the field of music.

2001 – Famed blues man John Lee Hooker joins the ancestors at the
age of 83 of natural causes in Los Altos, California. The
veteran blues singer from the Mississippi Delta estimated
that he recorded more than 100 albums over nearly seven
decades. He won a Grammy Award for a version of “I’m In The
Mood,” was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in
1991 and received a Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2000
Grammys. Through it all, Hooker’s music remained hypnotic
and unchanged — his rich and sonorous voice, full of
ancient hurt, coupled with a brooding, rhythmic guitar. He
sang of loneliness and confusion. Neither polished nor
urbane, his music was raw, primal emotion.

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

February 22, 2014 KRLemmons African American History

February 20 African American Historical Events

Today in Black History – February 20 *

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.

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.

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.

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

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

December 8, 2013 KRLemmons African American History

December 8 African American Historical Events

Today in Black History – December 8 *

1868 – Writer, Henry Hugh Proctor is born. He will be best
known for his book, “Between Black and White:
Autobiographical Sketches.” He will join the ancestors
in 1933.