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

February 10 African American Historical Events

Today in Black History – February 10 *

1868 – Republican conservatives draft new constitution which
concentrates political power in the hands of the governor and
limits the impact of the Black vote. This is made possible by
Conservatives, aided by military forces, who seize the
convention hall and establish control over the reconstruction
process in Florida.

1927 – Mary Leontyne Violet Price, who will be acclaimed as one of the
world’s greatest operatic talents, is born in Laurel,
Mississippi. She will amass many operatic firsts, being the
first African American to sing opera on network television and
the first African American to receive the Presidential Medal
of Freedom. Among her honors will be the NAACP’s Spingarn
Medal, three Emmys, and Kennedy Center Honors.

1937 – Roberta Flack is born in Black Mountain (Asheville), North
Carolina. She will begin her professional singing career in
Washington, DC. She will go on to win Grammys for “The First
Time Ever I Saw Your Face,” “Where Is the Love,” and “Killing
Me Softly with His Song.”

1942 – Mary Lovelace O’Neal is born in Jackson, Mississippi. Educated
at Howard and Columbia universities, she will become a
professor of fine arts and head of the Art Department at
University of California at Berkeley. Academia will allow her
the freedom to become a painter who will exhibit her work
in museums in the United States, Morocco, and Chile.

1943 – Eta Phi Beta, the national business and professional sorority,
is incorporated in Detroit, Michigan. It will have chapters
throughout the United States and number among its members
civil rights activist Daisy Bates and artist Margaret T.
Burroughs.

1945 – The United States, Russia, Great Britain, and France approve a
peace treaty with Italy, under which Italy renounces all
rights and claims to Ethiopia and Eritrea.

1945 – The Chicago Defender reports that over a quarter of a million
African Americans migrated to California during the years 1942
and 1943. As the percentage of African Americans in
California increases from 1 1/2% to more than 10% of the
total population, so does the practice of racial segregation.

1971 – Bill White becomes the first African American major league
baseball announcer when he begins announcing for the New
York Yankees.

1989 – Ronald H. Brown, who had served as Jesse Jackson’s campaign
manager, becomes chairman of the Democratic National
Committee, the first African American to hold the position
in either party.

1990 – South African President, Frederik Willem de Klerk announces
that Nelson Mandela will be set free on February 11th after
27 years in prison.

1992 – Alex Haley, author of “Roots,” and “Autobiography of Malcolm
X,” joins the ancestors while on a lecture tour in Seattle,
Washington at the age of 70.

1992 – Mike Tyson is convicted in Indianapolis, Indiana of raping a
contestant in the Miss Black America competition and
sentenced to six years in an Indiana prison.

1998 – Dr. David Satcher is confirmed by the U.S. Senate to become
Surgeon General.

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

August 8 African American Historical Events

Today in Black History – August 8 *

1796 – Boston African Society is established with 44 charter
members.

1805 – The First African Baptist Church is organized in Boston,
Massachusetts, under the leadership of Thomas Paul. It
will be the first congregation to worship at the
African Meeting House, which will be established on
December 6, 1806 (It is the oldest church building in
the United States built for and by African Americans).

1843 – Natal (in South Africa) is made a British colony.

1866 – Matthew Alexander Henson is born in Nanjemoy, Maryland. He
will become an explorer and associate of Robert Peary
during various expeditions. The most famous will be the
1909 expedition on which he will become the first person
to reach the Geographic North Pole. In 1912, he will write
the book, “A Negro Explorer at the North Pole”, about his
arctic exploration. He will be largely ignored afterward
and will spend most of the next thirty years working as a
clerk in a federal customs house in New York. In 1944,
Congress will award him a duplicate of the silver medal
given to Admiral Peary in 1911. In 1947 he will collaborate
with Bradley Robinson on his biography, “Dark Companion.”
Presidents Harry S Truman and Dwight D. Eisenhower, will
both honor him prior to his death. He will join the
ancestors in the Bronx, New York, on March 9, 1955, at the
age of 88. He will be buried at Woodlawn Cemetery. In 1961,
a plaque will be installed to mark his Maryland birthplace.
In 1988, he and his wife’s remains will be exhumed and
reburied at Arlington National Cemetery, near the grave of
Admiral Peary and his wife.

1907 – Saxophonist Bennett Lester “Benny” Carter is born in New
York City. He will play initially at age 23 and form his
own big band in 1940. Carter will either play with,
conduct or write arrangements for Dizzy Gillespie, Duke
Ellington, Quincy Jones, and many others. He will be a
major figure in jazz from the 1930s to the 1990s, and
recognized as such by other jazz musicians who called him
King. In 1958, he will perform with Billie Holiday at the
legendary Monterey Jazz Festival. The National Endowment
for the Arts willhonor him with its highest honor in jazz,
the NEA Jazz Masters Award for 1986. He will be awarded
the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1987, win the
Grammy Award in 1994 for his solo “Prelude to a Kiss”,
and also the same year, receive a star on the Hollywood
Walk of Fame. In 2000 he will receive the National
Endowment for the Arts’, “National Medal of Arts,”
presented by President Bill Clinton. He will join the
ancestors on July 12, 2003.

1921 – James John “Jimmy” Witherspoon is born in Gurdon, Arkansas.
He will become a blues singer and will be featured on over
200 albums and be best known for songs such as “Ain’t
Nobody’s Business If I Do,” “Some Of My Best Friends Are
the Blues” and “Blue Spoon.” He will join the ancestors on
September 18, 1997 after succumbing to throat cancer..

1933 – Joseph “Joe Tex” Arrington, Jr. is born in Baytown, Texas.
He will become a singer/songwriter. He will be known for
his recordings of “I Gotcha”, “Hold What You’ve Got”,
“Skinny Legs and All”, and “Ain’t Gonna Bump No More”(With
No Big Fat Woman.” After converting to the Muslim faith in
1966 and changing his name to Yusuf Hazziez, he will tour
as a spiritual lecturer. He will join the ancestors (at
home in Navasota, Texas) on August 13, 1982, succumbing to
a heart attack.

1934 – Julian Carey Dixon is born in Washington, D.C. He will be
elected to the California State Assembly as a Democrat in
1972, and serve in that body for three terms. He will be
elected to the House of Representatives, representing
California’s 28th District, in 1978. He will chair the
rules committee at the 1984 Democratic National Convention
and the ethics probe into House Speaker Jim Wright. Dixon
will win re-election to the 107th United States Congress,
will join the ancestors, after succumbing to a heart attack,
on Decmber 8, 2000.

1960 – Ivory Coast declares independence from France.

1968 – A racially motivated disturbance breaks out in Miami,
Florida.

1974 – Roberta Flack receives a gold record for the single, “Feel
Like Makin’ Love”. Flack, born in Asheville, North
Carolina and raised in Arlington, Virginia, had been
awarded a music scholarship to Howard University in
Washington, D.C., at the age of 15. One of her
classmates, Donny Hathaway, became a singing partner on
several hit songs. He joined her on “You’ve Got a Friend”,
“Where is the Love” and “The Closer I Get to You”. She will
have 10 hits on the pop charts in the 1970s and ’80s.

1975 – Julian “Cannonball” Adderley joins the ancestors at the age
of 47 in Gary, Indiana.

1984 – Carl Lewis wins the 3rd (200 meter sprint) of 4 gold medals
at the Los Angeles Summer Olympics.

2005 – Publisher John H. Johnson, whose Ebony and Jet magazines
countered stereotypical coverage of African Americans
after World War II and turned him into one of the most
influential African American leaders in America, joins the
ancestors at the age of 87.

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

KRLemmons African American History

February 10 African American Historical Events

Today in Black History – February 10 *

************************************************************
“Once a year we go through the charade of February being
‘Black History Month.’ Black History Month needs to be a
12-MONTH THING. When we all learn about our history, about
how much we’ve accomplished while being handicapped with
RACISM, it can only inspire us to greater heights, knowing
we’re on the giant shoulders of our ANCESTORS.” Subscribe
to the Munirah Chronicle and receive Black Facts every day
of the year.
To SUBSCRIBE send E-mail to: <[log in to unmask]>
In the E-mail body place: Subscribe Munirah Your FULL Name
************************************************************

1868 – Republican conservatives draft new constitution which
concentrates political power in the hands of the governor and
limits the impact of the Black vote. This is made possible by
Conservatives, aided by military forces, who seize the
convention hall and establish control over the reconstruction
process in Florida.

1927 – Mary Leontyne Violet Price, who will be acclaimed as one of the
world’s greatest operatic talents, is born in Laurel,
Mississippi. She will amass many operatic firsts, being the
first African American to sing opera on network television and
the first African American to receive the Presidential Medal
of Freedom. Among her honors will be the NAACP’s Spingarn
Medal, three Emmys, and Kennedy Center Honors.

1937 – Roberta Flack is born in Black Mountain (Asheville), North
Carolina. She will begin her professional singing career in
Washington, DC. She will go on to win Grammys for “The First
Time Ever I Saw Your Face,” “Where Is the Love,” and “Killing
Me Softly with His Song.”

1942 – Mary Lovelace O’Neal is born in Jackson, Mississippi. Educated
at Howard and Columbia universities, she will become a
professor of fine arts and head of the Art Department at
University of California at Berkeley. Academia will allow her
the freedom to become a painter who will exhibit her work
in museums in the United States, Morocco, and Chile.

1943 – Eta Phi Beta, the national business and professional sorority,
is incorporated in Detroit, Michigan. It will have chapters
throughout the United States and number among its members
civil rights activist Daisy Bates and artist Margaret T.
Burroughs.

1945 – The United States, Russia, Great Britain, and France approve a
peace treaty with Italy, under which Italy renounces all
rights and claims to Ethiopia and Eritrea.

1945 – The Chicago Defender reports that over a quarter of a million
African Americans migrated to California during the years 1942
and 1943. As the percentage of African Americans in
California increases from 1 1/2% to more than 10% of the
total population, so does the practice of racial segregation.

1971 – Bill White becomes the first African American major league
baseball announcer when he begins announcing for the New
York Yankees.

1989 – Ronald H. Brown, who had served as Jesse Jackson’s campaign
manager, becomes chairman of the Democratic National
Committee, the first African American to hold the position
in either party.

1990 – South African President, Frederik Willem de Klerk announces
that Nelson Mandela will be set free on February 11th after
27 years in prison.

1992 – Alex Haley, author of “Roots,” and “Autobiography of Malcolm
X,” joins the ancestors while on a lecture tour in Seattle,
Washington at the age of 70.

1992 – Mike Tyson is convicted in Indianapolis, Indiana of raping a
contestant in the Miss Black America competition and
sentenced to six years in an Indiana prison.

1998 – Dr. David Satcher is confirmed by the U.S. Senate to become
Surgeon General.

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