KRLemmons African American History

January 23 African American Historical Events

* Today in Black History – January 23 *

1837 – Amanda Berry Smith is born into slavery in Long Green,
Maryland. She will be widowed twice, after which she will
attempt to minister to her people. Unable to preach in the
AME Church, which did not ordain women ministers, Smith
will become an independent missionary and travel throughout
the United States and three continents. She will publish
her autobiography, “Amanda Smith’s Story – The Story of the
Lord’s Dealings with Mrs. Amanda Smith, The Colored
Evangelist,” in 1893. She will join the ancestors on
February 24, 1915.

1891 – Provident Hospital in Chicago, Illinois, the first African
American hospital, is founded by Dr. Daniel Hale Williams.
He also establishes the Provident Hospital School of Nursing
around the same time, because Emma Reynolds, an African
American, had been denied admission to every school of
nursing in the city of Chicago.

1941 – Richard Wright is awarded the NAACP’s Spingarn Medal for his
book, “Native Son.”

1943 – Duke Ellington’s band plays for a black-tie crowd at Carnegie
Hall in New York City. It is the first of what will become
an annual series of concerts for ‘The Duke’.

1945 – The Army Nurse Corps discontinues its color barrier and
starts admitting nurses without regard to race. This is due
primarily to the pressure applied by the National
Association of Colored Nursing Graduates (NACGN) and other
groups.

1962 – Demonstrations against discrimination in off-campus housing
are staged by students at the University of Chicago for
fourteen days. The Congress of Racial Equality (CORE)
charges that the university operates segregated apartment
houses.

1964 – The 24th amendment to the United States’ Constitution,
abolishing the poll tax in federal elections, is ratified.
The poll tax had been used extensively in the South as a
means of preventing African Americans from voting.

1976 – Paul Robeson joins the ancestors, as the result of a stroke,
in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He had been a world-renown
actor and singer. He was perhaps the best known and most
widely respected African American of the 1930s and 1940s.
Robeson was also a staunch supporter of the Soviet Union,
and a man, later in his life, widely vilified and censored
for his frankness and unyielding views on issues to which
public opinion ran contrary. As a young man, Robeson was
virile, charismatic, eloquent, and powerful. He learned to
speak more than 20 languages in order to break down the
barriers of race and ignorance throughout the world, and
yet, as Sterling Stuckey pointed out in the “New York Times
Book Review,” for the last 25 years of his life, his was “a
great whisper and a greater silence in Black America.”

1977 – The first episode of “Roots,” adapted from the “New York
Times” bestseller by Alex Haley, is aired on ABC. Over the
next several nights, 130 million Americans will be
transfixed before their televisions as the story of Kunta
Kinte is told.

1985 – O.J. Simpson becomes the first Heisman Trophy winner to be
inducted into pro football’s Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio.
Roger Staubach of the Dallas Cowboys, another Heisman
winner, is also elected, but is after O.J. in the sequence
of induction.

1986 – The first annual induction ceremony for the Rock ‘N’ Roll
Hall of Fame is held in New York City. Among those inducted
were Chuck Berry, James Brown, Ray Charles, and Fats Domino.

1989 – In “City of Richmond vs. J.A. Croson Co.,” the United States
Supreme Court invalidates the city’s minority set-aside
program, a major setback for the concept’s proponents.

2003 – Nell Carter, Tony Award winner and television star, joins the
ancestors at the age of 54. She had suffered from diabetes
for years and underwent brain surgery in 1992 to remove an
aneurysm. She recovered and continued to perform, mostly on
stage.

2015 – Ernie Banks, an American professional baseball player nicknamed “Mr. Cub” and “Mr. Sunshine”, joins the ancestors at the age of 83. He died of a heart attack at a Chicago hospital on January 23, 2015, shortly before his 84th birthday.

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

KRLemmons African American History

November 26 African American Historical Events

* Today in Black History – November 26 *

1866 – Rust College is founded in Holly Springs, Mississippi.

1872 – Macon B. Allen is elected judge of the Lower Court of
Charleston, South Carolina. Allen, the first African
American lawyer, becomes the second African American
to hold a major judicial position and the first
African American with a major judicial position on
the municipal level.

1878 – Marshall Walter “Major” Taylor is born in Indianapolis,
Indiana. He will become an American cyclist and win the
world 1 mile (1.6 km) track cycling championship in 1899
after setting numerous world records and overcoming
racial discrimination. He will be the first African
American athlete to achieve the level of world champion
and only the second black man to win a world championship,
after Canadian boxer George Dixon. He will hold the title
of “the world’s fastest bicycle racer” for 12 years. He
will join the ancestors on June 28, 1932 in Chicago,
Illinois.

1883 – Sojourner Truth, women’s rights advocate, poet, and
freedom fighter, joins the ancestors in Battle Creek,
Michigan.

1890 – Savannah State College is founded in Savannah, Georgia.

1968 – O.J. Simpson is named Heisman Trophy winner for 1968.
A running back for the University of Southern
California, Simpson amassed a total of 3,187 yards in
18 games and scored 33 touchdowns in two seasons. He
will play professional football with the Buffalo Bills
and the San Francisco 49ers and be equally well known
as a sportscaster and actor.

1970 – Benjamin O. Davis, Sr. the first African American
general in the U.S. military, joins the ancestors at
the age of 93 in Chicago, Illinois.

1970 – Charles Gordone is awarded the Pulitzer Prize for his
play, “No Place To Be Somebody.”

1970 – Painter, Jacob Lawrence is awarded the Spingarn Medal
“in tribute to the compelling power of his work which
has opened to the world…a window on the Negro’s
condition in the United States” and “in salute to his
unswerving commitment” to the Black struggle.

1986 – Scatman Crothers, actor, who is best known for his role
as “Louie” on TV’s “Chico & the Man”, joins the
ancestors at the age of 76.

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

KRLemmons African American History

September 5 African American Historical Events

* Today in Black History – September 5 *

1804 – Absalom Jones is ordained a priest in the Protestant
Episcopal Church.

1846 – John Wesley Cromwell is born into slavery in Portsmouth,
Virginia. After receiving freedom, he and his family
will move to Philadelphia. In 1865, he will return to
Portsmouth to open a private school, which will fail due
to racial harassment. He will enter Howard University in
Washington, DC in 1871. He will receive a law degree and
be admitted to the bar in 1874. He will be the first
African American to practice law for the Interstate
Commerce Commission. He will found the weekly paper, “The
People’s Advocate” in 1876. In 1881, he will be elected
President of Bethel Library and Historical Association in
Washington, DC. He will use this position to generate
interest in African American history. He will inspire the
foundation of the Association for the Study of Negro Life
and History in 1915. He will also be the Secretary of the
American Negro Academy. He will join the ancestors on
April 14, 1927.

1859 – “Our Nig” by Harriet E. Wilson is published. It is the
first novel published in the United States by an African
American woman and will be lost to readers for years
until reprinted with a critical essay by noted African
American scholar Henry Louis Gates, Jr. in 1983.

1877 – African Americans from the Post-Civil-War South, led by
Benjamin ‘Pap’ Singleton, settle in Kansas and establish
towns like Nicodemus, to take advantage of free land
offered by the United States government through the
Homestead Act of 1860.

1895 – George Washington Murray is elected to Congress from South
Carolina.

1916 – Novelist Frank Yerby is born in Augusta, Georgia. A student
at Fisk University and the University of Chicago, Yerby’s
early short story “Health Card” will win the O. Henry
short story award. He will later turn to adventure novels
and become a best-selling author in the 1940’s and 1950’s
with “The Foxes of Harrow”, “The Vixens” and many others.
His later novels will include “Goat Song”, “The Darkness
at Ingraham’s Crest-A Tale of the Slaveholding South”,
and “Devil Seed”. In total, Yerby will publish over 30
novels that sell over 20 million copies. He will leave
the United States in 1955 in protest against racial
discrimination, moving to Spain where he will remain for
the rest of his life. He will join the ancestors on
November 29, 1991, after succumbing to congestive heart
failure in Madrid. He will be interred there in the
Cementerio de la Almudena.

1960 – Cassius Clay of Louisville, Kentucky, wins the gold medal
in light heavyweight boxing at the Olympic Games in Rome,
Italy. Clay will later change his name to Muhammad Ali
and become one of the great boxing champions in the world.
In 1996, at the Olympic Games in Atlanta, Georgia,
Muhammad Ali will have the honor of lighting the Olympic
flame.

1960 – Leopold Sedar Senghor, poet, politician, is elected
President of Senegal.

1972 – Roberta Flack and Donny Hathaway win a gold record — for
their duet, “Where is the Love”. The song gets to number
five on the pop music charts and is one of two songs for
the duo to earn gold. The other will be “The Closer I Get
To You” (1978).

1995 – O.J. Simpson jurors hear testimony that police detective
Mark Fuhrman had uttered a racist slur, and advocated the
killing of Blacks.
Information retrieved from the  Munirah Chronicle and is edited by Rene’ A. Perry.

KRLemmons African American History

November 26 African American Historical Events

Today in Black History – November 26 *

1866 – Rust College is founded in Holly Springs, Mississippi.

1872 – Macon B. Allen is elected judge of the Lower Court of
Charleston, South Carolina. Allen, the first African
American lawyer, becomes the second African American
to hold a major judicial position and the first
African American with a major judicial position on
the municipal level.

1883 – Sojourner Truth, women’s rights advocate, poet, and
freedom fighter, joins the ancestors in Battle Creek,
Michigan.

1890 – Savannah State College is founded in Savannah, Georgia.

1968 – O.J. Simpson is named Heisman Trophy winner for 1968.
A running back for the University of Southern
California, Simpson amassed a total of 3,187 yards in
18 games and scored 33 touchdowns in two seasons. He
will play professional football with the Buffalo Bills
and the San Francisco 49ers and be equally well known
as a sportscaster and actor.

1970 – Benjamin O. Davis, Sr. the first African American
general in the U.S. military, joins the ancestors at
the age of 93 in Chicago, Illinois.

1970 – Charles Gordone is awarded the Pulitzer Prize for his
play, “No Place To Be Somebody.”

1970 – Painter, Jacob Lawrence is awarded the Spingarn Medal
“in tribute to the compelling power of his work which
has opened to the world…a window on the Negro’s
condition in the United States” and “in salute to his
unswerving commitment” to the Black struggle.

1986 – Scatman Crothers, actor, who is best known for his role
as “Louie” on TV’s “Chico & the Man”, joins the
ancestors at the age of 76.

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

KRLemmons African American History

February 4 African American Historical Events

Today in Black History – February 4 *

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1794 – Slavery is abolished by France. France will have a very lukewarm
commitment to abolition and will, under Napoleon, reestablish
slavery in 1802, along with the reinstitution of the “Code
Noir,” prohibiting blacks, mulattos and other people of color
from entering French colonial territory or intermarrying with
whites.

1822 – The American Colonization Society founds the African colony for
free African Americans that will become the country of Liberia,
West Africa.

1913 – Rosa Louise McCauley is born in Tuskegee, Alabama. In 1932,
she will marry Raymond Parks. She will work at a number of
jobs, ranging from domestic worker to hospital aide. At her
husband’s urging, she will finish high school studies in 1933,
at a time when less than 7% of African Americans had a high
school diploma. Despite the Jim Crow laws that made political
participation by Black people difficult, she will succeed in
registering to vote on her third try. In December 1943, she
will become active in the Civil Rights Movement, joining the
Montgomery chapter of the NAACP. When the seamstress and
NAACP member refuses to yield her seat to a white man on a
Montgomery, Alabama bus on December 1, 1955, her actions will
spark a 382-day boycott of the buses in Montgomery, halting
business and services in the city and become the initial act
of non-violent disobedience of the American Civil Rights
movement. She will be honored with the NAACP’s Spingarn Medal
for her heroism and later work with Detroit youth(1979) and
be called the “Mother of the Civil Rights Movement.” She will
join the ancestors on October 24, 2005. The United States
Senate will pass a resolution on October 27, 2005 to honor
Mother Parks by allowing her body to lie in honor in the U.S.
Capitol Rotunda. The House of Representatives approved the
resolution on October 28. Since the founding of the practice
of lying in state in the Rotunda in 1852, She will be the
31st person, the first woman, the first American who had not
been a U.S. government official, and the second non-
government official (after Frenchman Pierre L’Enfant). On
October 30, 2005 President George W. Bush will issue a
Proclamation ordering that all flags on U.S. public areas
both within the country and abroad be flown at half-staff on
the day of her funeral. On February 5, 2006, at Super Bowl XL,
played at Detroit’s Ford Field, the late Coretta Scott King
and Mother Parks, who had been a long-time resident of “The
Motor City”, will be remembered and honored by a moment of
silence.

1947 – Sanford Bishop is born in Mobile, Alabama. He will graduate
from Morehouse College and Emory University Law School. He
will specialize in civil rights law and will become a member
of the Georgia Legislature from 1977 to 1993 (House and
Senate). In 1993, he will be elected a member of the United
States House of Representatives from Georgia.

1952 – Jackie Robinson is named Director of Communication for WNBC in
New York City, becoming the first African American executive
of a major radio-TV network.

1965 – Joseph Danquah joins the ancestors in Nsawam Prison in Ghana at
the age of 69. He had been a Ghanaian scholar, lawyer and
nationalist. He had led the opposition against Kwame Nkrumah
who had him imprisoned.

1969 – The Popular Liberation Movement Of Angola begins an armed
struggle against Portugal.

1971 – The National Guard is mobilized to quell civil disobedience
events in Wilmington, North Carolina. Two persons are killed.

1971 – Major League Baseball announces a special Hall of Fame wing for
special displays about the Negro Leagues. These exhibits will
provide information on these most deserving but rarely
recognized contributors to Baseball.

1974 – The Symbionese Liberation Army kidnaps nineteen-year-old
newspaper heiress Patricia Hearst from her apartment in
Berkeley, California.

1980 – Camara Laye joins the ancestors in Senegal at the age of 52.
He was a Guinean novelist considered a pioneer of West African
literature.

1986 – A stamp of Sojourner Truth is issued by the United States
Postal Service as part of its Black Heritage USA commemorative
series. Truth was an abolitionist, woman’s rights activist and
a famous “conductor” on the Underground Railroad.

1996 – Congressman J.C. Watts (R-Oklahoma) becomes the first African
American selected to respond to a State of the Union address.

1997 – Sixteen months after O.J. Simpson was cleared of murder charges,
a civil trial jury blames him for the killings of his ex-wife
and her friend and orders him to pay millions in compensatory
damages.

2003 – Charlie Biddle, a leader of Montreal’s jazz scene in the 1950s
and ’60s who played bass with Thelonious Monk and Charlie
Parker, joins the ancestors after a battle with cancer at the
age of 76. Biddle was a native of Philadelphia who moved to
Canada in 1948. Over the next five decades, the World War II
veteran and former car salesman became synonymous with jazz in
Montreal. Biddle opened his own club, Uncle Charlie’s Jazz
Joint, in suburban Ste-Therese in 1958. He later performed in
such legendary Montreal nightspots as The Black Bottom and the
Penthouse, where he worked with the likes of Oscar Peterson,
Art Tatum, Charlie Parker and Lionel Hampton. When there were
no jobs in Montreal, he played smaller Quebec cities with a
group called Three Jacks and a Jill. Until the time of his
passing, he played four nights a week at Biddle’s Jazz and
Ribs, a Montreal landmark for nearly 25 years. In 1979, he
organized the three-day festival that some say paved the way
for the renowned Montreal International Jazz Festival.

2005 – Ossie Davis, renown actor and civil rights advocate, joins the
ancestors in Miami, FL, while on location for yet another
acting project at the age of 87.

2007 – For the first time in Super Bowl history, two African American
coaches will lead their teams in the NFL Championship game.
The Chicago Bears will be coached by Lovie Lee Smith and the
Indianapolis Colts will be coached by Tony Dungee. The
Indianapolis Colts and the Chicago Bears will be set to face
off in South Florida during Super Bowl XLI in a historic
meeting where both African American coaches will vie for the
Vince Lombardi Trophy. The winner will be the first African
American coach to win the Super Bowl.

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

KRLemmons African American History

January 23 African American Historical Events

Today in Black History – January 23 *

1837 – Amanda Berry Smith is born into slavery in Long Green,
Maryland. She will be widowed twice, after which she will
attempt to minister to her people. Unable to preach in the
AME Church, which did not ordain women ministers, Smith
will become an independent missionary and travel throughout
the United States and three continents. She will publish
her autobiography, “Amanda Smith’s Story – The Story of the
Lord’s Dealings with Mrs. Amanda Smith, The Colored
Evangelist,” in 1893. She will join the ancestors on
February 24, 1915.

1891 – Provident Hospital in Chicago, Illinois, the first African
American hospital, is founded by Dr. Daniel Hale Williams.
He also establishes the Provident Hospital School of Nursing
around the same time, because Emma Reynolds, an African
American, had been denied admission to every school of
nursing in the city of Chicago.

1941 – Richard Wright is awarded the NAACP’s Spingarn Medal for his
book, “Native Son.”

1943 – Duke Ellington’s band plays for a black-tie crowd at Carnegie
Hall in New York City. It is the first of what will become
an annual series of concerts for ‘The Duke’.

1945 – The Army Nurse Corps discontinues its color barrier and
starts admitting nurses without regard to race. This is due
primarily to the pressure applied by the National
Association of Colored Nursing Graduates (NACGN) and other
groups.

1962 – Demonstrations against discrimination in off-campus housing
are staged by students at the University of Chicago for
fourteen days. The Congress of Racial Equality (CORE)
charges that the university operates segregated apartment
houses.

1964 – The 24th amendment to the United States’ Constitution,
abolishing the poll tax in federal elections, is ratified.
The poll tax had been used extensively in the South as a
means of preventing African Americans from voting.

1976 – Paul Robeson joins the ancestors, as the result of a stroke,
in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He had been a world-renown
actor and singer. He was perhaps the best known and most
widely respected African American of the 1930s and 1940s.
Robeson was also a staunch supporter of the Soviet Union,
and a man, later in his life, widely vilified and censored
for his frankness and unyielding views on issues to which
public opinion ran contrary. As a young man, Robeson was
virile, charismatic, eloquent, and powerful. He learned to
speak more than 20 languages in order to break down the
barriers of race and ignorance throughout the world, and
yet, as Sterling Stuckey pointed out in the “New York Times
Book Review,” for the last 25 years of his life, his was “a
great whisper and a greater silence in Black America.”

1977 – The first episode of “Roots,” adapted from the “New York
Times” bestseller by Alex Haley, is aired on ABC. Over the
next several nights, 130 million Americans will be
transfixed before their televisions as the story of Kunta
Kinte is told.

1985 – O.J. Simpson becomes the first Heisman Trophy winner to be
inducted into pro football’s Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio.
Roger Staubach of the Dallas Cowboys, another Heisman
winner, is also elected, but is after O.J. in the sequence
of induction.

1986 – The first annual induction ceremony for the Rock ‘N’ Roll
Hall of Fame is held in New York City. Among those inducted
were Chuck Berry, James Brown, Ray Charles, and Fats Domino.

1989 – In “City of Richmond vs. J.A. Croson Co.,” the United States
Supreme Court invalidates the city’s minority set-aside
program, a major setback for the concept’s proponents.

2003 – Nell Carter, Tony Award winner and television star, joins the
ancestors at the age of 54. She had suffered from diabetes
for years and underwent brain surgery in 1992 to remove an
aneurysm. She recovered and continued to perform, mostly on
stage.

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

KRLemmons African American History

November 26 African American Historical Events

Today in Black History – November 26 *

1866 – Rust College is founded in Holly Springs, Mississippi.

1872 – Macon B. Allen is elected judge of the Lower Court of
Charleston, South Carolina. Allen, the first African
American lawyer, becomes the second African American
to hold a major judicial position and the first
African American with a major judicial position on
the municipal level.

1883 – Sojourner Truth, women’s rights advocate, poet, and
freedom fighter, joins the ancestors in Battle Creek,
Michigan.

1890 – Savannah State College is founded in Savannah, Georgia.

1968 – O.J. Simpson is named Heisman Trophy winner for 1968.
A running back for the University of Southern
California, Simpson amassed a total of 3,187 yards in
18 games and scored 33 touchdowns in two seasons. He
will play professional football with the Buffalo Bills
and the San Francisco 49ers and be equally well known
as a sportscaster and actor.

1970 – Benjamin O. Davis, Sr. the first African American
general in the U.S. military, joins the ancestors at
the age of 93 in Chicago, Illinois.

1970 – Charles Gordone is awarded the Pulitzer Prize for his
play, “No Place To Be Somebody.”

1970 – Painter, Jacob Lawrence is awarded the Spingarn Medal
“in tribute to the compelling power of his work which
has opened to the world…a window on the Negro’s
condition in the United States” and “in salute to his
unswerving commitment” to the Black struggle.

1986 – Scatman Crothers, actor, who is best known for his role
as “Louie” on TV’s “Chico & the Man”, joins the
ancestors at the age of 76.

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