Richard Allen – Page 2 – The CamaraIfe Maktaba

March 29, 2014April 2, 2014 KRLemmons African American History

March 26 African American Historical Events

* Today in Black History – March 26 *

1831 – Richard Allen joins the ancestors at the age of 71. He had been
nominated by author Vernon Loggins for the title, “Father of
the Negro.”

1872 – Thomas J. Martin is awarded a patent for the fire extinguisher.

1910 – William H. Lewis is appointed assistant attorney general of the
United States.

1937 – William Hastie is appointed to a federal judgeship in the Virgin
Islands. With the appointment, Hastie becomes the first African
American to serve on the federal bench in the U.S. or its
territories. Judge Hastie will serve on the bench for two years
then become dean and professor of law at Howard University in
Washington DC.

1944 – Diana Ross is born in Detroit, Michigan. Ross, with Mary Wilson
and Florence Ballard, will form the Supremes in 1961 and have
15 consecutive smash-hit singles with the group. Ross will
also pursue an acting career in such movies as “Lady Sings the
Blues” and receive a Tony Award for her Broadway show, “An
Evening with Diana Ross.” Both with the Supremes and as a solo
artist, she will have more number-one records than any other
artist in the history of the charts.

1950 – Theodore Pendergrass is born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He
will become a lead singer for Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes
in 1970 and will pursue an active solo career in 1976. His solo
career will later be temporarily interrupted by an auto
accident that will leave him paralyzed from the chest down. His
debut album, “Teddy Pendergrass (1977),” struck Platinum, as
did the next four albums – “Life Is A Song Worth Singing,”
“Teddy,” “Teddy Live” and “T.P.” Other releases include “Love
Language,” “Working It Back” and “Joy.” He will be nominated
for a Grammy more than three times and be the holder of a 1980
“Best Rhythm & Blues Artist” award from Billboard Magazine. The
Philadelphia Music Foundation will honor him with a
Philadelphia Music Award for “Best Urban Album” in 1989. He will
join the ancestors on January 13, 2010 after succumbing to colon
cancer.

1984 – Ahmed Sekou Toure’ joins the ancestors in a hospital in
Cleveland, Ohio. He was the country of Guinea’s first
president and a well-known political figure throughout Africa.

1991 – The Reverend Emanuel Cleaver becomes the first African American
mayor of Kansas City, Missouri. At this time, Kansas City is
seventy percent white, but he will win the election with 53
percent of the vote, while his opponent receives forty-seven
percent.

1992 – A judge in Indianapolis sentences former heavyweight boxing
champion Mike Tyson to six years in prison for raping a Miss
Black America contestant.

1995 – Former diplomat-turned-radio talk show host Alan Keyes enters the
race for the Republican presidential nomination.

1998 – President Clinton stands with President Nelson Mandela in a
racially integrated South African parliament to salute a country
that was “truly free and democratic at last.”

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

February 16, 2014 KRLemmons African American History

February 14 African American Historical Events

* Today in Black History – February 14 *

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

September 8, 2013 KRLemmons African American History

September 3 African American Historical Events

Today in Black History – September 3 *

1783 – Richard Allen, founder of the African Methodist Episcopal
Church, purchases his freedom with his earnings as a
self-employed teamster.

1838 – Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey, disguised as a
sailor, escapes from slavery in Baltimore, Maryland to
New Bedford, Massachusetts via New York City. He will
take the name Douglass, after the hero of Sir Walter
Scott’s poem “Lady of the Lake”.

1865 – The Union Army commander in South Carolina orders the
Freedmen’s Bureau personnel to stop seizing land.

1868 – Henry McNeal Turner delivers a speech before the Georgia
legislature defending African Americans’ rights to hold
state office. The lower house of the Georgia
legislature, rules that African Americans were ineligible
to hold office, and expels twenty-eight representatives.
Ten days later the senate expels three African Americans.
Congress will refuse to re-admit the state to the Union
until the legislature seats the African American
representatives.

1891 – John Stephens Durham, assistant editor of the Philadelphia
Evening Bulletin, is named minister to Haiti.

1891 – Cotton pickers organize a union and stage a strike for
higher wages in Texas.

1895 – Charles Houston is born. He will become a leader of the
NAACP.

1910 – Dorothy Leigh Mainor (later Maynor) is born in Norfolk,
Virginia. She will become a renown soprano and will sing
with all of the major American and European orchestras.
She will found the Harlem School of the Arts in 1963, after
ending her performing career. She will retire as executive
director of the school in 1979. She will join the ancestors
on February 19, 1996 in West Chester, Pennsylvania.

1918 – Five African American soldiers are hanged for alleged
participation in the Houston riot of 1917.

1919 – The Lincoln Motion Picture Company, owned by African
Americans Noble Johnson and Clarence Brooks, releases its
first feature-length film, “A Man’s Duty”.

1970 – Representatives from 27 African nations, Caribbean nations,
four South American countries, Australia, and the United
States meet in Atlanta, Georgia, for the first Congress of
African People.

1970 – Billy Williams ends the longest National League consecutive
streak at 1,117 games.

1974 – NBA guard, Oscar Robinson, retires from professional
basketball.

1984 – A new South African constitution comes into effect, setting
up a three-chamber, racially divided parliament – White,
Indian and Colored (mixed race) people.

1990 – Jonathan A. Rodgers becomes president of CBS’s Television
Stations Division, the highest-ranking African American to
date in network television. Rodgers had been general
manager of WBBM-TV, CBS’s Chicago station.

2012 – Michael Clarke Duncan, nominated for an Academy Award for his
role in the 1999 film “The Green Mile,” joins the ancestors
at the age of 54. He suffered a myocardial infarction on
July 13 and never fully recovered.

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

July 27, 2013 KRLemmons African American History

July 17 African American Historical Events

Today in Black History – July 17 *

1794 – Richard Allen organizes Philadelphia’s Bethel African
Methodist Episcopal Church.

1794 – Absalom Jones and his followers dedicate The African Church
of St. Thomas in Philadelphia. On August 12, 1794, the St.
Thomas parishioners will affiliate with the Protestant
Episcopal Church.

1862 – Congress approves the rights of African Americans to bear
arms to fight in the Civil War and enlist in the Union Army
by passing two laws, the Confiscation and Militia acts.
Over 208,000 African Americans and their white officers
will serve in the Union Army, with 38,000 losing their
lives.

1863 – Unions troops, with First Kansas volunteers playing a
leading role, route rebels at Honey Springs, Indian
Territory. African American troops capture the colors of a
Texas regiment.

1911 – Frank Snowden is born in York County, Virginia. He will
become the foremost scholar on Blacks in ancient history,
notably for his books “Blacks in Antiquity: Ethiopians in
the Greco-Roman Experience” and “Before Color Prejudice:
The Ancient View of Blacks”. He will document that in ancient
Rome and Greece, racial prejudice was not an issue. Much of
this, according to his research, is because most of the
Blacks they encountered were not slaves. Most slaves in the
Roman Empire were white. Most of the Blacks they met were
warriors, statesmen, and mercenaries. Therefore, Blacks were
not subjected to the racism of modern civilization. He will
study ancient art and literature, and find evidence that
Blacks were able to co-exist with the Greeks and Romans. He
will join the ancestors on February 18, 2007.

1935 – Carol Diann Johnson (Diahann Carroll) is born in the Bronx,
New York. She will be better known as Diahann Carroll,
star of Broadway (“House of Flowers”), television (“Julia”),
and films including “Carmen Jones” and “Claudine”, the
latter earning her an Academy Award nomination as Best
Actress. Beginning her music career at an early age, she
will be the recipient of a Metropolitan Opera scholarship
for studies at New York’s High School of Music and Art at a
mere ten years of age. While still a teenager, she will
begin working part-time as a model, a TV actress, and as a
nightclub singer, leading to her Broadway debut (the Harold
Arlen/Truman Capote production “House of Flowers”) and her
film debut (the modern version of Bizet’s opera “Carmen”
with an all-black cast “Carmen Jones”) both in 1954. More
movie work will come her way (including the 1959 film
version of “Porgy & Bess”), as well as a Tony Award in 1962
for her work on the Broadway production “No Strings.”
Beginning in the late ’50s, she will launch a successful
recording career, issuing albums on a regular basis
throughout the next two decades (including such titles as
1957’s “Diahann Carroll Sings Harold Arlen,” 1960’s
“Diahann Carroll and Andre Previn,” and 1962’s “The
Fabulous “Diahann Carroll,” among many others). In the late
’60s, she will star in the TV sitcom “Julia,” for which she
will be nominated for an Emmy Award and the recipient of a
Golden Globe Award for Best Actress. The ’70s will see her
give arguably the finest acting performance of her career
in 1974’s “Claudine,” for which she was nominated for an
Academy Award. She will return to TV work in the mid-’80s
with her portrayal of businesswoman Dominique Devereaux on
the hit nighttime soap opera “Dynasty,” while she earns her
second Emmy nomination for a guest appearance on the comedy
series “A Different World” (also during the same decade, she
will publish an autobiography, 1986’s “Diahann”). In the
’90s, she will star in a production of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s
“Sunset Boulevard” and tour the U.S. performing classic
Broadway standards in “Almost Like Being in Love: The Lerner
and Loewe Songbook.” 2001 will see the release of the
16-track compilation “Nobody Sees Me Cry: The Best of the
Columbia Years.”

1944 – An ammunitions depot at Port Chicago, California explodes
killing 320 men including 202 African Americans assigned by
the Navy to handle explosives. The resulting refusal of 258
African Americans to return to the dangerous work formed the
basis of the trial and conviction of 50 of the men in what
will become known as the Port Chicago Mutiny.

1959 – Billie Holiday, blues singer, joins the ancestors after
succumbing to liver failure at the age of 44 in Metropolitan
Hospital, New York City.

1967 – A racially motivated disturbance occurs in Cairo, Illinois
(within 100 miles of the Mississippi border. The Illinois
National Guard is mobilized during the three day civil
disturbance.

1967 – Innovative and famed jazz musician, John Coltrane joins the
ancestors after succumbing to cirrhosis of the liver at the
age of 40 in Huntington Hospital, Long Island, New York.

1981 – The Fulton County (Atlanta) grand jury indicts Wayne B.
Williams, a twenty-three-year-old photographer, for the
murder of two of the twenty-eight Black youths killed in a
series of slayings and disappearances in Atlanta. He will
deny the charges and be convicted in February, 1982.

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

June 15, 2013 KRLemmons African American History

June 11 African American Historical Events

Today in Black History – June 11 *

1799 – Richard Allen, the first African American bishop in
the United States, is ordained a deacon of the
Methodist Episcopal Church in Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania by Bishop Francis Asbury.

1915 – Mifflin Wistar Gibbs, the first African American in
the United States to be named a judge, joins the
ancestors in Little Rock, Arkansas at the age of 87.

1920 – Hazel Dorothy Scott is born in Port-of-Spain,
Trinidad and raised in New York City from the age of
four. A child prodigy, she will enroll at New York
City’s Juilliard School of Music and star in
nightclubs, Broadway shows, and films. A fixture in
jazz society uptown and downtown in New York, most
notably for her jazz improvisations on familiar
classical works, she will be credited with putting
the “swing in European classical music.” She will be
the first African American woman to have her own
television show, “The Hazel Scott Show”. The show will
be short-lived because she will publicly oppose
McCarthyism and racial segregation, and the show will be
cancelled in 1950 when she is accused of being a
Communist sympathizer. She will be married to Adam
Clayton Powell, Jr. from 1945 to 1956, with whom she will
have one child before their divorce. She will join the
ancestors after succumbing to cancer at the age of 61 on
October 2, 1981 in New York City.
1930 – Charles Rangel is born in New York City. He will defeat
Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. for the latter’s Congressional
seat in the 16th District and serve on the House Judiciary
Committee hearings on the impeachment of President Richard
M. Nixon. He will also chair the Congressional Black
Caucus and be a strong advocate in the war on drugs and
drug crime as chairman of the House Select Committee on
Narcotics Abuse and Control.

1937 – Amalya L. Kearse is born in Vaux Hall, New Jersey. She
will become the first African American woman judge on the
U.S. Court of Appeals, Second District of New York. She
will earn her undergraduate degree at Wellesley College
and her law degree at University of Michigan Law School.
She will be active in legal circles, the National Urban
League, and the NAACP Legal Defense Fund.

1937 – Johnny Brown is born in St. Petersburg, Florida. He will
become a comedian and will be known for his roles on “Good
Times,” and “The Jeffersons,” “Family Matters,” and
“Martin.”

1951 – Mozambique becomes an oversea province of Portugal.

1963 – Vivian Malone and James Hood, accompanied by U.S. Deputy
Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach, attempt to register at
the University of Alabama. They are met by Governor George
Wallace, who bodily blocks their entrance to a campus
building. When National Guardsmen return later in the day
with Malone and Hood to enter the building, Wallace steps
aside.

1964 – In South Africa, Nelson Mandela is sentenced to life
imprisonment for allegedly attempting to sabotage the white
South African government.

1967 – A race riot occurs in Tampa, Florida. The Florida National
Guard is mobilized to suppress the violence.

1972 – Hank Aaron, of the Atlanta Braves, ties Gil Hodges of the
Dodgers for the National League record for the most grand-
slam home runs in a career, with 14. The Braves will beat
the Philadelphia Phillies 15-3.

1978 – Joseph Freeman Jr. becomes the first African American
priest in the Church Of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints
(Mormons).

1982 – Larry Holmes defeats Gerry Cooney to retain the WBC
heavyweight crown.

2003 – William Marshall, actor, joins the ancestors at the age of
78 after succumbing to complications from Alzheimer’s
disease. His roles ranged from Othello and Frederick
Douglas to a vampire in the 1972 movie “Blacula.”

2006 – Dr. James Cameron, who survived an attempted lynching by a
white mob in 1930 and went on to found America’s Black
Holocaust Museum in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, joins the
ancestors at the age of 92.

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

April 14, 2013 KRLemmons African American History

April 10 African American Historical Events

Today in Black History – April 10 *

1816 – Richard Allen is elected Bishop of the A.M.E. Church, one day
after the church is organized at its first general convention.

1872 – The first National Black Convention meets in New Orleans,
Louisiana. Frederick Douglass will be elected president.

1877 – Federal troops withdraw from Columbia, South Carolina. This
action will allow the white South Carolina Democrats to take
over the state government.

1926 – Johnnie Tillmon (later Blackston) is born in Scott, Arkansas. A
welfare rights champion, Tillmon will become the founding
chairperson and director of the National Welfare Rights
Organization.

1932 – The James Weldon Johnson Literary Guild announces the winners of
its first annual nationwide poetry contest for children. The
judges – Jessie Fauset and Countee Cullen, among others – select
in the teen category a 16-year-old Liberian youth and Margaret
Walker of New Orleans, who receives an honorable mention for her
poem “When Night Comes.”

1938 – Nana Annor Adjaye, Pan-Africanist, joins the ancestors in West
Nzima, Ghana.

1943 – Arthur Robert Ashe, Jr. is born in Richmond, Virginia. He will
become a professional tennis player and will be one of the first
African American male tennis stars. He will be the first African
American to win a spot on the American Davis Cup tennis team,
the first to win the U.S. Open and the men’s singles title at
Wimbledon, in 1975. Over his 11-year career he will play in 304
tournaments, winning 51, including the 1970 Australian Open and
Wimbledon in 1975. He will be the number one ranked player in the
world in 1975. A life-threatening heart condition will force him
to retire in 1980 and he will continue to serve as the non-playing
captain of that year’s U.S. Davis Cup team. In 1985 he will become
the second African American inducted into the International Tennis
Hall of Fame. The first was Althea Gibson in 1971. After his career
in tennis, he will become an eloquent spokesperson against racial
intolerance and a critic of South Africa’s racist system of
apartheid. In the United States, he will create tennis programs to
benefit inner-city youth. He will write a three-volume history of
the African American athlete entitled “A Hard Road To Glory” (1988).
Suffering complications from AIDS, contracted from a blood
transfusion during a heart bypass operation, he will join the
ancestors in New York on February 6, 1993.

1958 – W.C. Handy, composer and musician, joins the ancestors at the
age of 84 in New York City.

1959 – Kenneth Edmonds is born in Indianapolis, Indiana. He will
become a professional musician and will begin work in the business
producing music, with his friend Antonio Reid, for Carrie Lucas,
The Whispers, and Dynasty. Since then, they’ve produced hits for
many others. During the 1990s, his dominance will extend beyond
the production arena and into the performing circle. His hit
“Tender Lover” crossed him over into pop territory and eventually
sold more than two million copies. The singles “Whip Appeal” and
“It’s No Crime” were Top Ten R&B and pop hits. He will hit his
peak in 1995, producing hits for artists like Boyz II Men, Madonna
and Whitney Houston and coordinated the “Waiting to Exhale”
soundtrack. In the fall of 1996, he will released “Day,” his first
solo album since 1993 to strong reviews. He will successfully
produce the film “Soul Food” in 1997.

1968 – U.S. Congress passes a Civil Rights Bill banning racial
discrimination in the sale or rental of approximately 80 per cent
of the nation’s housing. The bill also made it a crime to
interfere with civil rights workers and to cross state lines to
incite a riot.

1975 – Lee Elder becomes the first African American to tee off as an
entrant in the Masters’ Tournament in Augusta, Georgia.

2003 – Eva “Little Eva” Boyd, singer, joins the ancestors at age 59
after succumbing to cancer. She recorded the 1960s pop hit “The
Locomotion.”

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

March 27, 2013 KRLemmons African American History

March 26 African American Historical Events

Today in Black History – March 26 *