KRLemmons African American History

March 19 African American Historical Events

* Today in Black History – March 19 *

1867 – Congressman Thaddeus Stevens calls up resolution providing
for the enforcement of the Second Confiscation Act of July,
1862. The measure, which provides for the distribution of
public and confiscated land to the freedmen, is defeated.

1870 – “O Guarani,” the most celebrated opera by Afro-Brazilian
composer Antonio Carlos Gomes, premiers at the Scala Theater
in Milan, Italy. His enormous musical talent opened the
doors of the Milan Conservatory where he studied under the
guidance of the greatest opera directors of the time. Among
other operas, Gomes produces “Fosca,” “Condor,” and
“O Escravo” (The Slave).

1872 – T.J. Boyd, inventor, awarded patent for apparatus for
detaching horses from carriages.

1937 – The Count Basie Orchestra, with vocalists Billie Holiday and
Jimmy Rushing, opens at the Apollo Theatre in Harlem.

1939 – The New Negro Theater is founded in Los Angeles, California,
by Langston Hughes. The company stages as its first
performance Hughes’s play, “Don’t You Want to be Free?”

1952 – Sergeant Cornelius H. Charlton is posthumously awarded the
Congressional Medal of Honor for bravery during the Korean
War. He joins the ancestors after being killed in action on
June 2, 1951.

1967 – French Somaliland (Djibouti) votes to continue association
with France.

1968 – Students take over the Administration Building at Howard
University demanding resignation of university officials
and a stronger orientation to Black culture in the
curriculum. It is the first of many college protests over
Black Studies programs on African American and white college
campuses across the nation.

1995 – Twenty one months after retiring from basketball, Michael
Jordan returns to professional basketball with his former
team, the Chicago Bulls.

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

KRLemmons African American History

February 1 African American Historical Events

* Today in Black History – February 1 *

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1810 – Charles Lenox Remond is born in Salem, Massachusetts to free
parents. He will become one of the most prominent of the
African American abolitionist crusaders. Charles Remond will
begin his activism in opposition to slavery while in his
twenties as an orator speaking at public gatherings and
conferences in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Maine, New York
and Pennsylvania. In 1838 the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery
Society, will choose him as one of its agents. As a delegate
from the American Anti-Slavery Society, he will go with William
Lloyd Garrison to the World’s Anti-Slavery Convention in London
in 1840. He will have a reputation as an eloquent lecturer and
reported to be the first Black public speaker on abolition.
He will recruit Black soldiers in Massachusetts for the Union
Army during the Civil War, particularly for the famed 54th and
55th Massachusetts Infantry. He will also be active in recruiting
for the U.S. Colored Troops. After the Civil War ends, he will
work as a clerk in the Boston Customs House, and as a street lamp
inspector. He will later purchase a farm in South Reading (now
Wakefield), Massachusetts. He will join the ancestors on December
22, 1873.

1810 – The first insurance company managed by African Americans, the
American Insurance Company of Philadelphia, is established.

1833 – Henry McNeal Turner is born in Newberry Courthouse, South Carolina.
He will become one of the first Bishops in the African American
Episcopal Church. He will also be an army chaplain, political
organizer, magazine editor, and college chancellor. He will be
inspired by a Methodist revival and swear to become a pastor. In
1858, he will transfer his membership to the African Methodist
Church and study the classics, Hebrew and divinity at Trinity
College. In 1880, he will become a bishop in the African Methodist
Episcopal Church. During the American Civil War, he will be
appointed a Chaplain to one of the first Federal regiments of Black
troops (Company B of the First United States Colored Troops). He
will be the first of only 14 Black Chaplains to be appointed during
the Civil War. This appointment will come directly from President
Abraham Lincoln in 1863. He will also be appointed by President
Andrew Johnson to work with the Freedman’s Bureau in Georgia during
Reconstruction. Following the Civil War, he will become steadily
more disenchanted with the lack of progress in the status of the
country’s African Americans. During this time, he will move to the
state of Georgia. It is here that he will become involved in Radical
Republican politics. He will help found the Republican Party of
Georgia. After attempts to overcome certain Supreme Court decisions,
he will become disgusted and end his attempts to bring equality to
the United States. Instead, he will become a proponent of the “back
to Africa” and “African American colonization” movements. He will
travel to Africa and be impressed by the differences in the attitude
of Africans who have never known the degradation of slavery. He will
organize four annual conferences in Africa. He will write extensively
about the Civil war and about the condition of his parishioners. He
will join the ancestors while visiting Windsor, Ontario on May 15, 1915.
He will be highly regarded in the Afro-American and the Afro-Canadian
community and a large number of churches will be named in his honor.
He will join the ancestors on May 8, 1915 while visiting Windsor,
Ontario, Canada.

1865 – John S. Rock becomes the first African American attorney
allowed to practice before the United States Supreme Court.
Due to his poor health, he never actually argued a case
before the court, succumbing to tuberculosis at the age of
41.

1870 – Jonathan Jasper Wright is elected to the South Carolina
Supreme Court. He is the first African American to hold a
major judicial position.

1871 – Jefferson Franklin Long, Republican congressman from Georgia,
makes the first speech by an African American on the floor
of Congress. His text is to oppose leniency to former
Confederates.

1902 – Langston Hughes is born in Joplin, Missouri. He will be
known as one of the most prolific American poets of the
20th century and a leading voice of the Harlem Renaissance.
In addition to his poetry, Hughes will achieve success as
an anthologist and juvenile author, write plays and
librettos, found theater groups, and be a widely read
columnist and humorist. Among his honors will be the
NAACP’s Spingarn Medal in 1960. He will join the ancestors
on May 22, 1967.

1938 – Sherman Hemsley is born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He
will become an actor and will known for his roles in the TV
shows “All in the Family,” “The Jeffersons,” and “Amen.” He
will join the ancestors on July 24, 2012.

1948 – James Ambrose Johnson, Jr. is born in Buffalo, New York. He
will become a singer, songwriter, producer, and musician
working under the name “Rick James.” He will be best known
for his recording of “Super Freak” and produce Teena Marie,
the gold-certified Mary Jane Girls, Eddie Murphy, and others.
He will join the ancestors on August 6, 2004.

1957 – P.H. Young becomes the first African American pilot, flying on
an United States scheduled passenger airline.

1960 – Four African American college students from North Carolina A&T
College in Greensboro, North Carolina sit at a “whites-only”
Woolworth’s lunch counter and refuse to leave when denied
service, beginning a sit-in protest.

1963 – Nyasaland (now Malawi) becomes a self-governing nation.

1965 – More than seven hundred demonstrators, including Dr. Martin
Luther King Jr., are arrested in Selma, Alabama.

1965 – Ruby Dee becomes the first African American thespian to play a
major role at the American Shakespeare Festival in Stratford,
Connecticut.

1978 – The first stamp of the United States Postal Service’s Black
Heritage USA series honors Harriet Tubman, famed abolitionist
and “conductor” on the Underground Railroad.

1982 – The nations of Senegal & Gambia form a loose confederation
named Senegambia.

1991 – President F.W. de Klerk of South Africa, states that he will
repeal all apartheid laws.

1992 – Barry Bonds signs baseball’s highest single year contract to
date ($4.7 million).

1997 – BET Holdings and Encore Media Corp. launch BET Movie/Starz,
the first 24 hour African American movie channel.

2003 – Lt. Colonel Michael P. Anderson, NASA astronaut, joins the
ancestors at the age of 43, when the Space Shuttle Columbia
explodes during re-entry.

2003 – Ramon “Mongo” Santamaria, joins the ancestors in Miami,
Florida from stroke complications at the age of 85. He had
been considered one of the most influential percussionists of
his generation.

2012 – Don Cornelius, the founder of the “Soul Train” television show,
joins the ancestors, succumbing to an apparent self-inflicted
gunshot wound to his head, at the age of 75.

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

KRLemmons African American History

December 30 African American Historical Events

* Today in Black History – December 30 *

***********************************************************************
* The Nguzo Saba – The seven principles of Kwanzaa – Principle for *
* Day #5 – Nia (nee-AH) Purpose: To make as our collective vocation *
* the building and developing of our community in order to restore *
* our people to their traditional greatness. *
***********************************************************************

1842 – Josiah T. Walls is born near Winchester, Virginia. He will
become, in 1871, Florida’s first African American congressman.

1892 – Physician, Dr. Miles V. Lynk, publishes the first African
American medical journal.

1916 – Frederick Douglass “Fritz” Pollard, of Brown University, becomes
the first African American running back named to the All-
American team.

1928 – Ellas Otha Bates McDaniel is born in Magnolia, Mississippi. Better
known as Bo Diddley, he will influence a generation of musicians
including such groups as the Rolling Stones and the Doors. A
favorite of President John F. Kennedy, who invited Diddley to
play in the White House in 1962, he will be inducted into the
Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame in 1987. He will join the ancestors
on June 2, 2008.

1929 – The Sigma Gamma Rho Sorority is incorporated.

1929 – The “Don’t Buy Where You Can’t Work” campaign begins in Chicago
with picketing of Chain stores on the South Side. The campaign
spread to New York, Cleveland, Los Angeles and other cities and
continued throughout the Depression.

1929 – Mordecai W. Johnson receives the NAACP’s Spingarn Medal for his
work as the first African American president of Howard
University.

1935 – Marian Anderson makes a historic appearance in New York City’s
Town Hall. Fresh from a triumphant tour in Europe, Anderson
will be hailed by New York critics as one of the “great singers
of our time.” Her performance will mark a new era in the
Philadelphian’s long and successful career. Her performance is
described by Howard Taubman, the New York Times reviewer, as
“music-making that probed too deep for words.”

1952 – Tuskegee Institute reports there were no lynchings during the
year for the first time in the 71 years it has been keeping such
records.

1960 – Poet Langston Hughes is presented the NAACP’s Spingarn Medal and
cited as “the poet laureate of the Negro race.”

1960 – Two U.S. courts issues temporary injunctions to prevent eviction
of about seven hundred African American sharecroppers in Haywood
and Fayette counties, Tennessee.

1961 – Ben Johnson is born in Falmouth, Jamaica. He will become a world
class 100 meter runner. He win the Olympic gold medal in 1988
and will be later disqualified for using steroids.

1975 – The constitution of the Democratic Republic of Madagascar comes
into effect.

1975 – Eldrick ‘Tiger’ Woods is born in Cypress, California. He will
become the first African American or Asian American to win the
Masters Golf tournament. He will accomplish this feat in his
first year on the PGA tour at the age of 21 also making him the
youngest person to win the Masters tournament.

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

KRLemmons African American History

December 11 African American Historical Events

Today in Black History – December 11 *

1872 – America’s first African American governor takes office as 
Pinckney Benton Stewart Pinchback became acting governor 
of Louisiana. 

1916 – John E. Bush, former slave and teacher, joins the 
ancestors. He had been appointed receiver of the United 
States Land Office in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1898. 

1917 – 13 African American soldiers are hanged for alleged 
participation in a Houston riot.

1917 – The Great Jazz migration begins as Joe Oliver leaves New 
Orleans and settles in Chicago, to be joined later by 
other stars.

1917 – The NAACP’s Spingarn Medal is presented to Harry T. 
Burleigh, composer and accomplished opera singer, for 
excellence in the field of music.

1926 – Willie Mae Thornton is born in Montgomery, Alabama. She 
will be better known as “Big Mama” Thornton, a blues 
singer whose recording of “Hound Dog” in 1952 will be 
mimicked by Elvis Presley, much to his success. She 
also recorded the hits “Ball & Chain,” and “Stronger 
than Dirt.” She will join the ancestors on July 25, 1984.

1928 – Lewis Latimore joins the ancestors in Flushing, New York. 
Employed as a chief draftsman, Mr. Latimore created the 
drawings for Alexander Graham Bell’s telephone in 1870.

1931 – The British Statute of Westminster gives complete 
legislative independence to South Africa.

1940 – Lev T. Mills, who will become an artist and chairman of 
the art department at Spelman College, is born in 
Tallahassee, Florida. His prints and mixed-media works 
will be collected by the Victoria & Albert and British 
Museums in London and the High Museum in Atlanta and 
include glass mosaic murals for an Atlanta subway station 
and the atrium floor of Atlanta’s City Hall.

1954 – Jermaine Jackson is born in Gary, Indiana. He will become 
a singer and musician with his brothers and perform with 
their group, The Jackson Five.

1961 – U.S. Supreme Court reverses the conviction of sixteen 
sit-in students who had been arrested in Baton Rouge, 
Louisiana.

1961 – Langston Hughes’ musical, “Black Nativity,” opens on 
Broadway.

1964 – Sam Cooke joins the ancestors after being killed. Bertha 
Franklin, Manager of the Hacienda Motel in Los Angeles, 
claimed she killed the singer in self-defense after he’d 
tried to rape a 22-year-woman and then turned on Franklin. 

1980 – George Rogers, a running back for the University of South 
Carolina, is awarded the Heisman Trophy. He achieved 21
consecutive 100-yard games with the gamecocks and led the 
nation in rushing.

1981 – Muhammad Ali’s boxes in his 61st & last fight, losing to 
Trevor Berbick.

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

KRLemmons African American History

December 5 African American Historical Events

Today in Black History – December 5 *

1784 – African American poet Phyllis Wheatley joins the
ancestors in Boston at the age of 31. Born in Africa
and brought to the American Colonies at the age of
eight in 1761, Wheatley was quick to learn both English
and Latin. Her first poem was published in 1770 and
she continued to write poems and eulogies. A 1773
trip to England secured her success there, where she
was introduced to English society. Her book, “Poems on
Various Subjects, Religious and Moral”, was published
late that year. Married for six years to John Peters,
Wheatley and her infant daughter died hours apart in a
Boston boarding house, where she worked.

1832 – Sarah Gorham, the first woman appointed by the African
Methodist Episcopal Church to serve as a foreign
missionary in 1881, is born.

1881 – The Forty-Seventh Congress (1881-83) convenes. Only two
African American congressmen have been elected, Robert
Smalls of South Carolina and John Roy Lynch of
Mississippi.

1895 – Elbert Frank Cox is born in Evansville, Indiana. He will
become the first African American to earn a doctorate
degree in mathematics (Cornell University – 1925). He
will spend most of his life as a professor at Howard
University in Washington, D.C., where he will be known
as an excellent teacher. During his life, he will
overcome various difficulties which will arise because
of his race. In his honor, the National Association of
Mathematicians will establish the Cox-Talbot Address,
which will be annually delivered at the NAM’s national
meetings. The Elbert F. Cox Scholarship Fund, which will
be used to help black students pursue studies, is named
in his honor as well. He will continue teaching until
his retirement in 1966 – three years before he joins the
ancestors on November 28, 1969, at age 73 in Washington, DC.

1917 – Charity Adams (later Earley) is born in Kittrell, North
Carolina. She will become the first African American
commissioned officer in the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps
in 1942. She will serve as the commanding officer and
battalion commander of the first battalion of African
American women (6888th Central Postal Direction) to serve
overseas during WWII, in England. She will serve in the
Army for four years and hold the rank of Lt. Colonel
at the time of her release from active duty. She will
join the ancestors on January 13, 2002.

1931 – James Cleveland is born in Chicago, Illinois. He will
sing his first gospel solo at the age of eight in a
choir directed by famed gospel pioneer Thomas Dorsey.
He will later sing with Mahalia Jackson, The Caravans,
and other groups before forming his own group, The
Gospel Chimes, in 1959. His recording of “Peace Be
Still” with the James Cleveland Singers and the 300-
voice Angelic Choir of Nutley, New Jersey, will earn him
the title “King of Gospel.” He will join the ancestors
on February 9, 1991.

1932 – Richard Wayne Penniman is born in Macon, Georgia. He will
become a Rhythm and Blues singer and composer. He will be
known for his flamboyant singing style, which will be
influential to many Rhythm and Blues and British artists.
His songs will include “Good Golly Miss Molly”, “Tutti
Frutti”, and “Lucille.” He will be honored by many
institutions, including inductions into the Rock and Roll
Hall of Fame and the Songwriters Hall of Fame. He will be
the recipient of Lifetime Achievement Awards from The
Recording Academy and the Rhythm and Blues Foundation. His
“Tutti Frutti” (1955) will be included in the Library of
Congress’ National Recording Registry in 2010, claiming
the “unique vocalizing over the irresistible beat
announced a new era in music.”

1935 – The National Council of Negro Women is established by Mary
McLeod Bethune.

1935 – Langston Hughes’s play, “The Mulatto”, begins a long run
on Broadway.

1935 – Mary McLeod Bethune is awarded the NAACP’s Spingarn Medal
for her work as founder-president of Bethune Cookman
College and her national leadership.

1946 – The NAACP’s Spingarn Medal is awarded to Thurgood Marshall,
director of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund,
“for his distinguished service as a lawyer before the
Supreme Court.”

1946 – President Truman created The Committee on Civil Rights by
Executive Order No. 9808. Sadie M. Alexander and Channing
H. Tobias were two African Americans who will serve as
members of the committee.

1947 – Jersey Joe Wolcott defeats Joe Louis for the heavyweight
boxing title. It is also the first time a heavyweight
championship boxing match is televised.

1949 – Ezzard Charles defeats Jersey Joe Walcott for the
heavyweight boxing title.

1955 – The Montgomery bus boycott begins as a result of Rosa
Parks’ refusal to ride in the back of a city bus four
days earlier. At a mass meeting at the Holt Street
Baptist Church, Martin Luther King Jr. is elected
president of the boycott organization. The boycott will
last a little over a year and be the initial victory in
the civil rights struggle of African Americans in the
United States.

1955 – Asa Philip Randolph and Willard S. Townsend are elected
vice-presidents of the AFL-CIO.

1955 – Carl Murphy, publisher of the Baltimore Afro-American, is
awarded the NAACP’s Spingarn Medal for his contributions
as a publisher and civil rights leader.

1957 – New York City becomes the first city to legislate against
racial or religious discrimination in housing market
(Fair Housing Practices Law).

1957 – Martin Luther King Jr. is awarded the NAACP’s Spingarn
Medal for his leadership of the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

1981 – Marcus Allen, tailback for the University of Southern
California, wins the Heisman Trophy. Six years later,
Tim Brown of the Notre Dame “Fightin’ Irish” will win
the award.

1984 – Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, at age 37, is the oldest player in
the National Basketball Association. He decides to push
those weary bones one more year by signing with the Los
Angeles Lakers – for $2 million.

2013 – Nelson Mandela, a South African anti-apartheid
revolutionary who was imprisoned and then became a
politician and philanthropist who served as President of
South Africa from 1994 to 1999, joins the ancestors at
the age of 95. He was the first black South African to
hold the office, and the first elected in a fully
representative, multiracial election.

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

KRLemmons African American History

October 24 African American Historical Events

* Today in Black History – October 24 *

1892 – 25,000 African American workers strike in New Orleans,
Louisiana. This is the first major job stoppage in U.S.
labor history by African Americans.

1923 – The U.S. Department of Labor issues a report stating that
approximately 500,000 African Americans had left the South
in the preceding twelve months.

1935 – Langston Hughes’s play “Mulatto” opens on Broadway. It will
have the longest run of any play by an African American
until Lorraine Hansberry’s “A Raisin in the Sun.”

1935 – Italy invades Ethiopia. African Americans hold mass meetings
of protest and raise funds for the Ethiopian defenders.

1936 – The Boston Chronicle blasts the soon-to-be-released movie
“The Big Broadcast” of 1937 for featuring a white pianist
who appears in the movie while Teddy Wilson actually plays
the music: “The form of racial discrimination and
falsification of acts…is frequently duplicated by many
whites in their daily dealings with Negroes…Negro farm
hands and laborers in other fields of industry produce
billions of dollars of wealth, but the white landowners and
sweat shop operators get all the profit.”

1942 – In recognition of the influence of so-called race music,
Billboard magazine creates its first ratings chart devoted
to African American music, The Harlem Hit Parade. The
number-one record is “Take It & Git” by Andy Kirk and His
Twelve Clouds of Joy, featuring Mary Lou Williams on piano.

1948 – Frizzel Gray is born in Baltimore, Maryland. Better known as
Kweisi Mfume, an adopted African name that means “Conquering
Son of Kings,” he will be elected a congressman from
Maryland’s 7th District in 1986. He will later leave the
Congress to become the head of the NAACP.

1964 – Kenneth David Kuanda becomes President of Zambia as Zambia
(Northern Rhodesia) gains independence from Great Britain.

1972 – Jack Roosevelt “Jackie” Robinson joins the ancestors at the
age of 53 in Stamford, Connecticut.

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

KRLemmons African American History

September 25 African American Historical Events

* Today in Black History – September 25 *

1861 – The Secretary of the Navy authorizes the enlistment of
African Americans in the Union Navy. The enlistees could
achieve no rank higher than “boys” and receive pay of
one ration per day and $10 per month.

1886 – Peter “The Black Prince” Jackson wins the Australian
heavyweight title, becoming the very first man of
African descent to win a national boxing crown.

1911 – Dr. Eric Williams, former prime minister of Trinidad and
Tobago, is born.

1924 – In a letter to his friend Alain Locke, Langston Hughes
writes “I’ve done a couple of new poems. I have no more
paper, so I’m sending you one on the back of this
letter.” The poem, “I, Too”, will be published two years
later and be among his most famous.

1951 – Robert Allen “Bob” McAdoo, Jr. is born in Greensboro, North
Carolina. He will become a one of the best-shooting big
men of all time in professional basketball. He will win
Rookie of the Year, a Most Valuable Player Award and three
consecutive scoring championships, all in his first four
years in the NBA. Over fourteen seasons, He will score
18,787 points and average 22.1 point per game. A five-time
NBA All Star, he will shoot .503 from the field and .754
from the line, scoring in double figures in all but one
season.

1957 – With 300 U.S. Army troops standing guard, nine African
American children forced to withdraw the previous day
from Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas,
because of unruly white crowds, are escorted to back to
class.

1962 – Sonny Liston knocks out Floyd Patterson in the first round
to become the world heavyweight boxing champion.

1962 – An African American church is destroyed by fire in Macon,
Georgia. This is the eighth African American church
burned in Georgia in one month.

1962 – Governor Ross Barnett again defies court orders and
personally denies James Meredith admission to the
University of Mississippi.

1965 – Willie Mays hits his fiftieth home run of the baseball
season, making him the oldest player to accomplish this.
He was 34 years old. Ten years before this, at the age
of 24, he was the youngest man to accomplish the same
feat.

1965 – Scottie Maurice Pippen is born in Hamburg, Arkansas. He
will become a professional basketball player and will be
traded to the Houston Rockets in 1998 after 11
distinguished seasons with the Chicago Bulls, for whom he
averaged 18.0 points, 6.8 rebounds and 5.3 assists in 833
NBA games. He will earn All-NBA First Team honors three
times in his career and All-Defensive First Team honors in
each of seven seasons (1992-1999. In addition, he will
earn NBA World Championships in six of the eight years and
Olympic gold medals in 1992 and 1996. He will be selected
as one of the 50 Greatest Players in NBA History in 1996.
He will be inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball
Hall of Fame on August 13, 2010.

1968 – Will Smith is born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He
will become a rapper at the age of 12 and will be known
for his hits “Nightmare on My Street” and “Parents Just
Don’t Understand.” In 1990 he will start his acting
career with a six-year run as the “Fresh Prince of Bel
Air.” He will go to become a major motion picture box
office attraction, starring in “Six Degrees of
Separation,” “Made in America,” “Independence Day,”
“Men In Black,” and “Wild, Wild West.”

1974 – Barbara W. Hancock is the first African American woman
to be named a White House Fellow.

1988 – Florence Griffith Joyner runs 100 meters in record
Olympic time of 10.54 seconds.

1991 – Pioneer filmmaker Spencer Williams’s 1942 movie “Blood
of Jesus”, a story of the African American religious
experience, is among the third group of twenty-five
films added to the Library of Congress’s National Film
Registry. Williams, best known for his role of Andy in
the television series “Amos ‘n’ Andy”, was more
importantly, an innovative film director and a
contemporary of Oscar Micheaux. Williams’s film joins
other classics like “Lawrence of Arabia” and “2001: A
Space Odyssey”.

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

KRLemmons African American History

May 22 African American Historical Events

* Today in Black History – May 22 *

1848 – Slavery is abolished on the French island of Martinique.
Abolition will create a shortage of labor in Martinique given
many former slaves preferred not to work in the sugar cane
plantations. To solve the problem, indentured servants will
be brought from China and India.

1863 – The War Department establishes the Bureau of Colored Troops and
launches an aggressive campaign for the recruitment of African
American soldiers.

1940 – Bernard Shaw is born in Chicago, Illinois. He will become a
journalist and the principal Washington anchor for Cable News
Network, where he will be widely respected for his coverage of
world summit meetings, the historic student demonstrations in
Beijing, Presidential primaries and elections, and the Gulf
War.

1941 – Paul Winfield is born in Los Angeles, California. He will
become an actor and will star in the movies “Tyson,” “Breathing
Lessons,” “Carbon Copy,” “Cliffhanger,” “Dennis the Menace,”
“Presumed Innocent,” “Sounder,” “The Terminator,” and “Star
Trek 2.” He will join the ancestors on March 7, 2004 after
succumbing to a heart attack.

1948 – Harlem Renaissance poet and author Claude McKay joins the
ancestors in Chicago, Illinois at the age of 58. His novel
“Home to Harlem” (1928) became the first best-seller written
by an American of African descent.

1959 – Benjamin O. Davis, Jr. becomes the first African American major
general in the U.S. Air Force. In doing so, he improves upon
the accomplishment of his father, Davis Sr., who was the first
African American general in the U.S. Army.

1961 – The Attorney General orders two hundred additional U.S. Marshals
to Montgomery, Alabama. This is in addition to the four
hundred U.S. marshals already dispatched to Montgomery to keep
order in the Freedom Rider controversy.

1961 – Ernie K-Doe, Ernest Kador Jr., joins the growing list of “One
Hit Wonders” — recording artists who had only one hit. The
song, “Mother-In-Law”, is Ernie’s one hit — and a number one
tune on the nation’s pop music charts.

1966 – Bill Cosby, star of “I Spy,” receives an Emmy for best actor in
a dramatic series, the first African American in the category.
He will earn more than four Emmys.

1967 – Langston Hughes, noted poet, joins the ancestors in New York
City. He was the author of the poetry collections “The Weary
Blues,” “Not Without Laughter,” “The Way of White Folks,” the
autobiographies “The Big Sea” and “I Wonder as I Wander, and
plays and newspaper series. Hughes’s ashes will be buried at
the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem.

1970 – Naomi Campbell is born in London, England. She will be
discovered in a shopping mall when she is 15 years old. She
will become a super model and will open a chain of “Fashion
Cafe'” establishments along with models Claudia Schiffer, Elle
MacPherson, and Christy Turlington.

1994 – A worldwide trade embargo against Haiti, led by the United
States, goes into effect to punish Haiti’s military rulers for
not reinstating the country’s ousted elected leader,
Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

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

KRLemmons African American History

February 1 African American Historical Events

Today in Black History – February 1*

1810 – Charles Lenox Remond is born in Salem, Massachusetts to free
parents. He will become one of the most prominent of the
African American abolitionist crusaders. Charles Remond will
begin his activism in opposition to slavery while in his
twenties as an orator speaking at public gatherings and
conferences in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Maine, New York
and Pennsylvania. In 1838 the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery
Society, will choose him as one of its agents. As a delegate
from the American Anti-Slavery Society, he will go with William
Lloyd Garrison to the World’s Anti-Slavery Convention in London
in 1840. He will have a reputation as an eloquent lecturer and
reported to be the first Black public speaker on abolition.
He will recruit Black soldiers in Massachusetts for the Union
Army during the Civil War, particularly for the famed 54th and
55th Massachusetts Infantry. He will also be active in recruiting
for the U.S. Colored Troops. After the Civil War ends, he will
work as a clerk in the Boston Customs House, and as a street lamp
inspector. He will later purchase a farm in South Reading (now
Wakefield), Massachusetts. He will join the ancestors on December
22, 1873.

1810 – The first insurance company managed by African Americans, the
American Insurance Company of Philadelphia, is established.

1833 – Henry McNeal Turner is born in Newberry Courthouse, South Carolina.
He will become one of the first Bishops in the African American
Episcopal Church. He will also be an army chaplain, political
organizer, magazine editor, and college chancellor. He will be
inspired by a Methodist revival and swear to become a pastor. In
1858, he will transfer his membership to the African Methodist
Church and study the classics, Hebrew and divinity at Trinity
College. In 1880, he will become a bishop in the African Methodist
Episcopal Church. During the American Civil War, he will be
appointed a Chaplain to one of the first Federal regiments of Black
troops (Company B of the First United States Colored Troops). He
will be the first of only 14 Black Chaplains to be appointed during
the Civil War. This appointment will come directly from President
Abraham Lincoln in 1863. He will also be appointed by President
Andrew Johnson to work with the Freedman’s Bureau in Georgia during
Reconstruction. Following the Civil War, he will become steadily
more disenchanted with the lack of progress in the status of the
country’s African Americans. During this time, he will move to the
state of Georgia. It is here that he will become involved in Radical
Republican politics. He will help found the Republican Party of
Georgia. After attempts to overcome certain Supreme Court decisions,
he will become disgusted and end his attempts to bring equality to
the United States. Instead, he will become a proponent of the “back
to Africa” and “African American colonization” movements. He will
travel to Africa and be impressed by the differences in the attitude
of Africans who have never known the degradation of slavery. He will
organize four annual conferences in Africa. He will write extensively
about the Civil war and about the condition of his parishioners. He
will join the ancestors while visiting Windsor, Ontario on May 15, 1915.
He will be highly regarded in the Afro-American and the Afro-Canadian
community and a large number of churches will be named in his honor.

1865 – John S. Rock becomes the first African American attorney
allowed to practice before the United States Supreme Court.
Due to his poor health, he never actually argued a case
before the court, succumbing to tuberculosis at the age of
41.

1870 – Jonathan Jasper Wright is elected to the South Carolina
Supreme Court. He is the first African American to hold a
major judicial position.

1871 – Jefferson Franklin Long, Republican congressman from Georgia,
makes the first speech by an African American on the floor
of Congress. His text is to oppose leniency to former
Confederates.

1902 – Langston Hughes is born in Joplin, Missouri. He will be
known as one of the most prolific American poets of the
20th century and a leading voice of the Harlem Renaissance.
In addition to his poetry, Hughes will achieve success as
an anthologist and juvenile author, write plays and
librettos, found theater groups, and be a widely read
columnist and humorist. Among his honors will be the NAACP’s
Spingarn Medal in 1960. He will join the ancestors on May 22, 1967.

1938 – Sherman Hemsley is born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He
will become an actor and will known for his roles in the TV
shows “All in the Family,” “The Jeffersons,” and “Amen.”

1948 – James Ambrose Johnson, Jr. is born in Buffalo, New York. He
will become a singer, songwriter, producer, and musician
working under the name “Rick James.” He will be best known
for his recording of “Super Freak” and produce Teena Marie,
the gold-certified Mary Jane Girls, Eddie Murphy, and others.
He will join the ancestors on August 6, 2004.

1957 – P.H. Young becomes the first African American pilot, flying on
an United States scheduled passenger airline.

1960 – Four African American college students from North Carolina A&T
College in Greensboro, North Carolina sit at a “whites-only”
Woolworth’s lunch counter and refuse to leave when denied
service, beginning a sit-in protest.

1963 – Nyasaland (now Malawi) becomes a self-governing nation.

1965 – More than seven hundred demonstrators, including Dr. Martin
Luther King Jr., are arrested in Selma, Alabama.

1965 – Ruby Dee becomes the first African American thespian to play a
major role at the American Shakespeare Festival in Stratford,
Connecticut.

1978 – The first stamp of the United States Postal Service’s Black
Heritage USA series honors Harriet Tubman, famed abolitionist
and “conductor” on the Underground Railroad.

1982 – The nations of Senegal & Gambia form a loose confederation
named Senegambia.

1991 – President F.W. de Klerk of South Africa, states that he will
repeal all apartheid laws.

1992 – Barry Bonds signs baseball’s highest single year contract to
date ($4.7 million).

1997 – BET Holdings and Encore Media Corp. launch BET Movie/Starz,
the first 24 hour African American movie channel.

2003 – Lt. Colonel Michael P. Anderson, NASA astronaut, joins the
ancestors at the age of 43, when the Space Shuttle Columbia
explodes during re-entry.

2003 – Ramon “Mongo” Santamaria, joins the ancestors in Miami,
Florida from stroke complications at the age of 85. He had
been considered one of the most influential percussionists of
his generation.

2012 – Don Cornelius, the founder of the “Soul Train” television show,
joins the ancestors, succumbing to an apparent self-inflicted
gunshot wound to his head, at the age of 75.

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