KRLemmons African American History

March 20 African American Historical Events

* Today in Black History – March 20 *

1852 – Uncle Tom’s Cabin, by white abolitionist Harriet Beecher
Stowe, is published. The controversial novel will be
credited by many, including Abraham Lincoln, with sparking
the Civil War. Mr. Lincoln will later tell Mrs. Stowe,
that she was “the little woman who wrote the book that
started this great war”.

1852 – Martin R. Delany publishes “The Condition, Elevation,
Emigration and Destiny of the Colored People of the United
States,” the first major statement of the African American
nationalist position. Delany says, “The claims of no people,
according to established policy and usage, are respected by
any nation, until they are presented in a national capacity.”
He adds: “We are a nation within a nation; as the Poles in
Russia, the Hungarians in Austria, the Welsh, Irish, and
Scotch in the British dominions.”

1883 – Jan Matzeliger receives patent #274,207 for his shoe lasting
machine. His invention will revolutionize the shoe industry,
allowing for the first mass production of shoes.

1890 – The Blair Bill, which provides federal support for education
and allocates funds to reduce illiteracy among the freedmen
is defeated in the U.S. Senate, 37-31.

1950 – Dr. Ralph Bunche receives the Nobel Peace Prize for his work
as a mediator in the Palestine crisis. He is the first
African American to be so honored.

1957 – Shelton “Spike” Lee is born in Atlanta, Georgia. He will
grow up in the Fort Greene section of Brooklyn, New York,
the son of an accomplished jazz bassist and art teacher,
Bill Lee. He will become a motion picture director,
producing many of his own films. His films, among them
“She’s Gotta Have It,” “Do the Right Thing” and “Jungle
Fever” explore the social, political, and interpersonal
relationships between African Americans and whites similar
to the early work of director Oscar Micheaux.

1970 – Students strike at the University of Michigan and demand
increased African American enrollment. The strike ends on
April 2, after the administration agrees to meet their
demands.

1973 – Roberto Clemente is elected to Baseball’s Hall of Fame, 11
weeks after he joins the ancestors. He becomes the first
person of African descent to be elected to the Hall of Fame
in a special election (before the five-year waiting period).
He also is the first person of Hispanic descent to enter the
Hall of Fame.

1987 – “Hollywood Shuffle” premieres. The film is directed by,
produced by, and stars Robert Townsend. Townsend also used
his own money to bring his comedic vision to the screen.

2000 – Former Black Panther Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin, once known as H.
Rap Brown, is captured in Alabama. He is wanted in the fatal
shooting of a sheriff’s deputy in Atlanta, Georgia. Al-Amin
will maintain his innocence. On March 9, 2002, he will be
convicted of 13 criminal charges, including the murder of
sheriif’s deputy Kinchen. Four days later, he will be
sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
He will then be assigned to Georgia State Prison, the state’s
maximum security facility near Reidsville, Georgia. In August,
2007, he will be transferred from state custody to Federal
custody, as Georgia officials decide that he is too high-
profile an inmate for the Georgia prison system to handle.
He will be subsequently moved to a Federal transfer facility
in Oklahoma pending assignment to a Federal penitentiary. On
October 21, 2007, he will be transferred to the ADX Florence
supermax prison in Florence, Colorado. After being diagnosed
with multiple myeloma, he will be transferred again, on July
18, 2014, to Butner (FMC) Federal Medical Center in North
Carolina.

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

KRLemmons African American History

August 18 African American Historical Events

Today in Black History – August 18 *

1791 – Benjamin Banneker publishes his first Almanac.

1909 – Howard Swanson is born in Atlanta, Georgia. He will become
a classical composer who will study in the United States
and Paris, France, and will write music for orchestra,
solo voice, piano, and chamber ensembles. His initial
training will be at the Cleveland Institute of Music. After
studying with Nadia Boulanger in Paris, France (1938), He
will spend two intensive periods studying and traveling in
New York. He will finally settle in New York City in 1966.
Thanks to Marian Anderson’s 1949 performance of his song
“The Negro Speaks of Rivers,” his music will begin to gain
national attention. He will win several awards, including
the Guggenheim Fellowship and a National Academy of Arts
and Letters grant. His neo-classical compositional method
will be appealing to a wide range of listeners, with
graceful melodies and a touch of jazz and idioms of black
American folk music. He will join the ancestors on November
12, 1978.

1934 – Roberto Clemente is born in Carolina, Puerto Rico. He will
win the Gold Glove award TWELVE consecutive years and play
in twelve All-Star games. He will be the National League’s
Most Valuable Player (MVP) in 1966, the MVP in the 1971
World Series, win four separate National League batting
titles, post a .317 career batting average, and play
eighteen seasons, amassing 3,000 hits and hammering 240
home runs. He will join the ancestors at the age of 38, on
a mercy mission to deliver relief supplies to the victims
of a Nicaraguan earthquake. Tragically, his plane,
carrying food, clothing and medical supplies, will crash
moments after takeoff from San Juan, Puerto Rico on
December 31, 1972.

1935 – Rafer Lewis Johnson is born in Hillsboro, Texas. He will
become a decathlete, winning gold in the 1955 Pan-American
Games, a silver medal in the 1956 Olympics and a gold medal
in the in the 1960 Summer Games in Rome. He will light the
torch in the 1984 Games in Los Angeles.

1941 – Matt Snell is born in Garfield, Georgia. He will become a
professional football player (running back for the New York
Jets). He will be one of the key players in the Jets
victory in Super Bowl III over the Baltimore Colts.

1954 – James E. Wilkins becomes the first African American to
attend a U.S. presidential cabinet meeting. He is
Assistant Secretary of Labor and attends because the
Secretary and Under-Secretary are away.

1963 – James Meredith becomes the first African American to
graduate from the University of Mississippi.

1964 – South Africa is banned from the Olympic Games because of
its apartheid policies.

1970 – Malcolm-Jamal Warner is born in Jersey City, New Jersey.
He will become an child actor and will star on the “The
Cosby Show” as Theodore “Theo” Huxtable. He will also star
as “Here and Now’s” Alexander James and “Malcolm and
Eddie’s” Malcolm.

1976 – Vice Admiral Samuel L. Gravely Jr. assumes command of the
U.S. Third Fleet.

1977 – Stephen Biko, one of the most influential Black student
leaders in South Africa, is arrested in Port Elizabeth
on charges of fomenting unrest among blacks in the city
through his writings. Biko will join the ancestors in
police detention less than a month later, as a result of
a beating by the police.

1981 – Football running back, Herschel Walker, of the University
of Georgia, takes out an insurance policy with Lloyd’s of
London. The All-American is insured for one million
dollars.

1986 – Earl Campbell, the ‘Tyler Rose’, announces his retirement
from professional football. Campbell, the 1977 Heisman
Trophy winner, played eight seasons in the National
Football League — and was a star for the Houston Oilers.
He will be inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame on
July 27, 1991.

______________________________________________________________
Munirah Chronicle is edited by Rene’ A. Perry

KRLemmons African American History

August 17 African American Historical Events

* Today in Black History – August 17 *

1847 – Archibald Henry Grimke’ is born into slavery on a
plantation near Charleston, South Carolina. His white
father, Henry Grimke’, was of the famous Grimke’ family
which included abolitionist sisters Sarah and Angelina.
After being freed in 1852, Archibald will have a
distinguished career as a lawyer (Harvard Law, 1874),
political delegate, newspaper publisher (“The Hub” in
Boston), and author.

1887 – Marcus Mosiah Garvey is born in St. Ann’s Bay, Jamaica.
He will become a charismatic black nationalist and
founder of the UNIA, an organization dedicated to
education, racial pride, and African development. He
will also found the Black Star Line, an African American
owned steamship company established to link new-world
Blacks with their African motherland. Garvey and several
associates will be railroaded by the U.S. government for
“mail fraud” in connection with the sale of Black Star
stock. Garvey will be convicted and serve five years in
federal prison. The U.S. government trumps up these
charges against Marcus Garvey because he was a threat to
the status quo of the “Negro people” of America. That is
why he is deported instead of being forced to serve his
complete sentence here. The U.S. government simply wanted
to get rid of him. He will join the ancestors on June 10,
1940 in London, England.

1920 – Isaiah Boyd Perry is born in Money Point (Norfolk), Virginia.
He will grow up in Hampton, Virginia and will become the
first faculty member of Hampton Institute to graduate from
the Hampton Institute Laboratory High School (George P.
Phenix), graduate from the Hampton Institute Trade School,
graduate with a Bachelor of Science Degree, and a Master of
Science Degree and join the “Quarter of the Century Club”
as a faculty member with twenty five years of service. He
will join the ancestors in 1971.

1931 – A’Lelia Walker Robinson joins the ancestors and residents of
Harlem and New York City mourn her death. The daughter of
Madame C.J. Walker, she had distinguished herself as hostess
of the “Dark Tower” on Harlem’s West 136th Street, a meeting
place for Harlem Renaissance poets, philosophers, and
artists such as W.E.B. DuBois, Langston Hughes, and Aaron
Douglas, as well as European nobility and members of New
York’s social register.

1939 – Luther Allison is born in Widener, Arkansas. He will become
a blues guitarist. Allison will spend his formative musical
years in Chicago jamming with the West Side’s best,
including Magic Sam, Otis Rush, and Freddie King. His first
recording, “Love Me Mama” (Delmark, 1969), is considered a
blues classic. Allison will come to national prominence
with blistering performances at the 1969 and 1970 Ann Arbor
Blues Festivals, wowing young rock fans with his scorching
guitar solos and soulful vocals. He will become the first
blues act to sign with Motown Records in 1971, subsequently
releasing three records for the label. He will tour
nationally throughout the 1970s before relocating to Paris
in the early 1980s where he will continue to release albums
(many issued only in Europe) and tour incessantly,
eventually becoming a European blues superstar. He will join
the ancestors on August 12, 1997.

1960 – Gabon declares its independence from France.

1984 – Roberto Clemente becomes the second baseball player to be
featured on a U.S. postage stamp.

1988 – Butch Reynolds of the United States sets the 400 meter
record (43.29) in Zurich, Switzerland.

1990 – Pearl Bailey, Broadway actress and singer, joins the
ancestors at the age of 72 after succumbing to a heart
attack in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

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

KRLemmons African American History

March 20 African American Historical Events

Today in Black History – March 20 *

1852 – Uncle Tom’s Cabin, by white abolitionist Harriet Beecher
Stowe, is published. The controversial novel will be
credited by many, including Abraham Lincoln, with sparking
the Civil War. Mr. Lincoln will later tell Mrs. Stowe,
that she was “the little woman who wrote the book that
started this great war”.

1852 – Martin R. Delany publishes “The Condition, Elevation,
Emigration and Destiny of the Colored People of the United
States,” the first major statement of the African American
nationalist position. Delany says, “The claims of no people,
according to established policy and usage, are respected by
any nation, until they are presented in a national capacity.”
He adds: “We are a nation within a nation; as the Poles in
Russia, the Hungarians in Austria, the Welsh, Irish, and
Scotch in the British dominions.”

1883 – Jan Matzeliger receives patent #274,207 for his shoe lasting
machine. His invention will revolutionize the shoe industry,
allowing for the first mass production of shoes.

1890 – The Blair Bill, which provides federal support for education
and allocates funds to reduce illiteracy among the freedmen
is defeated in the U.S. Senate, 37-31.

1950 – Dr. Ralph Bunche receives the Nobel Peace Prize for his work
as a mediator in the Palestine crisis. He is the first
African American to be so honored.

1957 – Shelton “Spike” Lee is born in Atlanta, Georgia. He will
grow up in the Fort Greene section of Brooklyn, New York,
the son of an accomplished jazz bassist and art teacher,
Bill Lee. He will become a motion picture director,
producing many of his own films. His films, among them
“She’s Gotta Have It,” “Do the Right Thing” and “Jungle
Fever” explore the social, political, and interpersonal
relationships between African Americans and whites similar
to the early work of director Oscar Micheaux.

1970 – Students strike at the University of Michigan and demand
increased African American enrollment. The strike ends on
April 2, after the administration agrees to meet their
demands.

1973 – Roberto Clemente is elected to Baseball’s Hall of Fame, 11
weeks after he joins the ancestors. He becomes the first
person of African descent to be elected to the Hall of Fame
in a special election (before the five-year waiting period).
He also is the first Hispanic to enter the Hall of Fame.

1987 – “Hollywood Shuffle” premieres. The film is directed by,
produced by, and stars Robert Townsend. Townsend also used
his own money to bring his comedic vision to the screen.

2000 – Former Black Panther Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin, once known as H.
Rap Brown, is captured in Alabama. He is wanted in the fatal
shooting of a sheriff’s deputy in Atlanta, Georgia. Al-Amin
will maintain his innocence.

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

KRLemmons African American History

December 31 African American Historical Events

Today in Black History – December 31 *

***********************************************************************
* The Nguzo Saba – The seven principles of Kwanzaa – Principle for *
* Day #6 – Kuumba (koo-OOM-bah) Creativity: To do always as much as *
* we can, in the way that we can, in order to leave our community *
* more beautiful than when we inherited it. *
* http://www.endarkenment.com/kwanzaa/ *
***********************************************************************

1775 – Alarmed by the impact of the British Dunmore proclamation, that
would give freedom to slaves who would fight on their side,
Gen. George Washington reverses himself and authorizes the
enlistment of free Blacks.

1783 – The importation of African slaves is banned by all of the
northern states in the United States.

1862 – The Ebenezer African Methodist Episcopal Church holds a Watch
Night service in Suburban Maryland. It begins a tradition when
African Americans pray and worship in anticipation of the next
day, New Year’s Day 1863, when President Lincoln’s Emancipation
Proclamation is to take effect.

1871 – Annie Welthy Daughtry (later Holland) is born in Isle of Wight
County, Virginia. In 1921, she will be appointed North Carolina
Supervisor of Negro Elementary Education, a position she will
hold until she joins the ancestors. In 1927, she will found
North Carolina’s Colored Parent Teachers’ Association. She will
join the ancestors suddenly on January 6, 1934, while
addressing a county-wide meeting of Black teachers in
Louisburg, North Carolina.

1900 – Sculptor and educator Selma Burke is born in Mooresville, North
Carolina. She will be commissioned to create a profile of
President Franklin D. Roosevelt after a national competition
sponsored by the Fine Arts Commission in Washington, DC. The
completed project, a plaque, is unveiled and installed at the
Record of Deeds Building in Washington DC.

1930 – Odetta Felious Gordon Holmes is born in Birmingham, Alabama.
She will become a famous folksinger, known simply as “Odetta”,
who will sing all over the world and at major peace and civil
rights meetings, including the 1963 March on Washington. Among
the many musicians who cite Odetta as a major musical influence
have been Janis Joplin, Bob Dylan and Joan Baez.

1948 – Donna Summer is born in Boston, Massachusetts. She will be the
reigning “Queen of Disco” music in the 1970’s, known for her
renditions of “Bad Girls” and “Last Dance.”

1953 – Hulan Jack is inaugurated as Manhattan borough president, the
first African American to hold the post.

1953 – The NAACP’s Spingarn Medal is presented to Paul R. Williams for
his achievements as an architect.

1962 – Katanga becomes part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

1964 – In a speech before a group of young people, Malcolm X urges them
“to see for yourself and listen for yourself and think for
yourself. This generation, especially of our people, have a
burden, more so than at any other time in history. The most
important thing we can learn to do today is think for
ourselves.”

1972 – Roberto Clemente, Pittsburgh Pirate slugger, joins the ancestors
after a plane crash on his way to a humanitarian mission to
Nicaragua.

1976 – Roland Hayes joins the ancestors in Boston, Massachusetts at the
age of 89. He had been an acclaimed tenor whose pioneering
recitals of German lieder and other classical music opened the
concert stage for African American singers

1984 – The first nationally broadcast telethon for the United Negro
College Fund raises $14.1 million. The telethon will become an
annual fundraising drive that will support more than 40
historically African American institutions of higher learning
and draw widespread individual and corporate support.

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

KRLemmons African American History

August 18 African American Historical Events

Today in Black History – August 18 *

1791 – Benjamin Banneker publishes his first Almanac.

1909 – Howard Swanson is born in Atlanta, Georgia. He will become
a classical composer who will study in the United States
and Paris, France, and will write music for orchestra,
solo voice, piano, and chamber ensembles. His initial
training will be at the Cleveland Institute of Music. After
studying with Nadia Boulanger in Paris, France (1938), He
will spend two intensive periods studying and traveling in
New York. He will finally settle in New York City in 1966.
Thanks to Marian Anderson’s 1949 performance of his song
“The Negro Speaks of Rivers,” his music will begin to gain
national attention. He will win several awards, including
the Guggenheim Fellowship and a National Academy of Arts
and Letters grant. His neo-classical compositional method
will be appealing to a wide range of listeners, with
graceful melodies and a touch of jazz and idioms of black
American folk music. He will join the ancestors on November
12, 1978.
1934 – Roberto Clemente is born in Carolina, Puerto Rico. He will
win the Gold Glove award TWELVE consecutive years and play
in twelve All-Star games. He will be the National League’s
Most Valuable Player (MVP) in 1966, the MVP in the 1971
World Series, win four separate National League batting
titles, post a .317 career batting average, and play
eighteen seasons, amassing 3,000 hits and hammering 240
home runs. He will join the ancestors at the age of 38, on
a mercy mission to deliver relief supplies to the victims
of a Nicaraguan earthquake. Tragically, his plane,
carrying food, clothing and medical supplies, will crash
moments after takeoff from San Juan, Puerto Rico on
December 31, 1972.

1935 – Rafer Lewis Johnson is born in Hillsboro, Texas. He will
become a decathlete, winning gold in the 1955 Pan-American
Games, a silver medal in the 1956 Olympics and a gold medal
in the in the 1960 Summer Games in Rome. He will light the
torch in the 1984 Games in Los Angeles.

1941 – Matt Snell is born in Garfield, Georgia. He will become a
professional football player (running back for the New York
Jets). He will be one of the key players in the Jets
victory in Super Bowl III over the Baltimore Colts.

1954 – James E. Wilkins becomes the first African American to
attend a U.S. presidential cabinet meeting. He is
Assistant Secretary of Labor and attends because the
Secretary and Under-Secretary are away.

1963 – James Meredith becomes the first African American to
graduate from the University of Mississippi.

1964 – South Africa is banned from the Olympic Games because of
its apartheid policies.

1970 – Malcolm-Jamal Warner is born in Jersey City, New Jersey.
He will become an child actor and will star on the “The
Cosby Show” as Theodore “Theo” Huxtable. He will also star
as “Here and Now’s” Alexander James and “Malcolm and
Eddie’s” Malcolm.

1976 – Vice Admiral Samuel L. Gravely Jr. assumes command of the
U.S. Third Fleet.

1977 – Steven Biko, one of the most influential Black student
leaders in South Africa, is arrested in Port Elizabeth
on charges of fomenting unrest among blacks in the city
through his writings. Biko will join the ancestors in
police detention less than a month later, as a result of
a beating by the police.

1981 – Football running back, Herschel Walker, of the University
of Georgia, takes out an insurance policy with Lloyd’s of
London. The All-American is insured for one million
dollars.

1986 – Earl Campbell, the ‘Tyler Rose’, announces his retirement
from professional football. Campbell, the 1977 Heisman
Trophy winner, played eight seasons in the National
Football League — and was a star for the Houston Oilers.
He will be inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame on
July 27, 1991.

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

KRLemmons African American History

August 17 African American Historical Events

Today in Black History – August 17 *

1847 – Archibald Henry Grimke’ is born into slavery on a
plantation near Charleston, South Carolina. His white
father, Henry Grimke’, was of the famous Grimke’ family
which included abolitionist sisters Sarah and Angelina.
After being freed in 1852, Archibald will have a
distinguished career as a lawyer (Harvard Law, 1874),
political delegate, newspaper publisher (“The Hub” in
Boston), and author.

1887 – Marcus Mosiah Garvey is born in St. Ann’s Bay, Jamaica.
He will become a charismatic black nationalist and
founder of the UNIA, an organization dedicated to
education, racial pride, and African development. He
will also found the Black Star Line, an African American
owned steamship company established to link new-world
Blacks with their African motherland. Garvey and several
associates will be railroaded by the U.S. government for
“mail fraud” in connection with the sale of Black Star
stock. Garvey will be convicted and serve five years in
federal prison. The U.S. government trumps up these
charges against Marcus Garvey because he was a threat to
the status quo of the “Negro people” of America. That is
why he is deported instead of being forced to serve his
complete sentence here. The U.S. government simply wanted
to get rid of him. He will join the ancestors on June 10,
1940 in London, England.

1920 – Isaiah Boyd Perry is born in Money Point (Norfolk), Virginia.
He will grow up in Hampton, Virginia and will become the
first faculty member of Hampton Institute to graduate from
the Hampton Institute Laboratory High School (George P.
Phenix), graduate from the Hampton Institute Trade School,
graduate with a Bachelor of Science Degree, and a Master of
Science Degree and join the “Quarter of the Century Club”
as a faculty member with twenty five years of service. He
will join the ancestors in 1971.

1931 – A’Lelia Walker Robinson joins the ancestors and residents of
Harlem and New York City mourn her death. The daughter of
Madame C.J. Walker, she had distinguished herself as hostess
of the “Dark Tower” on Harlem’s West 136th Street, a meeting
place for Harlem Renaissance poets, philosophers, and
artists such as W.E.B. DuBois, Langston Hughes, and Aaron
Douglas, as well as European nobility and members of New
York’s social register.

1939 – Luther Allison is born in Widener, Arkansas. He will become
a blues guitarist. Allison will spend his formative musical
years in Chicago jamming with the West Side’s best,
including Magic Sam, Otis Rush, and Freddie King. His first
recording, “Love Me Mama” (Delmark, 1969), is considered a
blues classic. Allison will come to national prominence
with blistering performances at the 1969 and 1970 Ann Arbor
Blues Festivals, wowing young rock fans with his scorching
guitar solos and soulful vocals. He will become the first
blues act to sign with Motown Records in 1971, subsequently
releasing three records for the label. He will tour
nationally throughout the 1970s before relocating to Paris
in the early 1980s where he will continue to release albums
(many issued only in Europe) and tour incessantly,
eventually becoming a European blues superstar. He will join
the ancestors on August 12, 1997.

1960 – Gabon declares its independence from France.

1984 – Roberto Clemente becomes the second baseball player to be
featured on a U.S. postage stamp.

1988 – Butch Reynolds of the United States sets the 400 meter
record (43.29) in Zurich, Switzerland.

1990 – Pearl Bailey, Broadway actress and singer, joins the
ancestors at the age of 72 after succumbing to a heart
attack in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

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

KRLemmons African American History

March 20 African American Historical Events

Today in Black History – March 20 *

1852 – Uncle Tom’s Cabin, by white abolitionist Harriet Beecher
Stowe, is published. The controversial novel will be
credited by many, including Abraham Lincoln, with sparking
the Civil War. Mr. Lincoln will later tell Mrs. Stowe,
that she was “the little woman who wrote the book that
started this great war”.

1852 – Martin R. Delany publishes “The Condition, Elevation,
Emigration and Destiny of the Colored People of the United
States,” the first major statement of the African American
nationalist position. Delany says, “The claims of no people,
according to established policy and usage, are respected by
any nation, until they are presented in a national capacity.”
He adds: “We are a nation within a nation; as the Poles in
Russia, the Hungarians in Austria, the Welsh, Irish, and
Scotch in the British dominions.”

1883 – Jan Matzeliger receives patent #274,207 for his shoe lasting
machine. His invention will revolutionize the shoe industry,
allowing for the first mass production of shoes.

1890 – The Blair Bill, which provides federal support for education
and allocates funds to reduce illiteracy among the freedmen
is defeated in the U.S. Senate, 37-31.

1950 – Dr. Ralph Bunche receives the Nobel Peace Prize for his work
as a mediator in the Palestine crisis. He is the first
African American to be so honored.

1957 – Shelton “Spike” Lee is born in Atlanta, Georgia. He will
grow up in the Fort Greene section of Brooklyn, New York,
the son of an accomplished jazz bassist and art teacher,
Bill Lee. He will become a motion picture director,
producing many of his own films. His films, among them
“She’s Gotta Have It,” “Do the Right Thing” and “Jungle
Fever” explore the social, political, and interpersonal
relationships between African Americans and whites similar
to the early work of director Oscar Micheaux.

1970 – Students strike at the University of Michigan and demand
increased African American enrollment. The strike ends on
April 2, after the administration agrees to meet their
demands.

1973 – Roberto Clemente is elected to Baseball’s Hall of Fame, 11
weeks after he joins the ancestors. He becomes the first
person of African descent to be elected to the Hall of Fame
in a special election (before the five-year waiting period).
He also is the first Hispanic to enter the Hall of Fame.

1987 – “Hollywood Shuffle” premieres. The film is directed by,
produced by, and stars Robert Townsend. Townsend also used
his own money to bring his comedic vision to the screen.

2000 – Former Black Panther Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin, once known as H.
Rap Brown, is captured in Alabama. He is wanted in the fatal
shooting of a sheriff’s deputy in Atlanta, Georgia. Al-Amin
will maintain his innocence.

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

KRLemmons African American History

December 31 African American Historical Events

* Today in Black History – December 31 *

***********************************************************************
* The Nguzo Saba – The seven principles of Kwanzaa – Principle for *
* Day #6 – Kuumba (koo-OOM-bah) Creativity: To do always as much as *
* we can, in the way that we can, in order to leave our community *
* more beautiful than when we inherited it. *
* http://www.endarkenment.com/kwanzaa/ *
***********************************************************************

1775 – Alarmed by the impact of the British Dunmore proclamation, that
would give freedom to slaves who would fight on their side,
Gen. George Washington reverses himself and authorizes the
enlistment of free Blacks.

1783 – The importation of African slaves is banned by all of the
northern states in the United States.

1862 – The Ebenezer African Methodist Episcopal Church holds a Watch
Night service in Suburban Maryland. It begins a tradition when
African Americans pray and worship in anticipation of the next
day, New Year’s Day 1863, when President Lincoln’s Emancipation
Proclamation is to take effect.

1871 – Annie Welthy Daughtry (later Holland) is born in Isle of Wight
County, Virginia. In 1921, she will be appointed North Carolina
Supervisor of Negro Elementary Education, a position she will
hold until she joins the ancestors. In 1927, she will found
North Carolina’s Colored Parent Teachers’ Association. She will
join the ancestors suddenly on January 6, 1934, while
addressing a county-wide meeting of Black teachers in
Louisburg, North Carolina.

1900 – Sculptor and educator Selma Burke is born in Mooresville, North
Carolina. She will be commissioned to create a profile of
President Franklin D. Roosevelt after a national competition
sponsored by the Fine Arts Commission in Washington, DC. The
completed project, a plaque, is unveiled and installed at the
Record of Deeds Building in Washington DC.

1930 – Odetta Felious Gordon Holmes is born in Birmingham, Alabama.
She will become a famous folksinger, known simply as “Odetta”,
who will sing all over the world and at major peace and civil
rights meetings, including the 1963 March on Washington. Among
the many musicians who cite Odetta as a major musical influence
have been Janis Joplin, Bob Dylan and Joan Baez.

1948 – Donna Summer is born in Boston, Massachusetts. She will be the
reigning “Queen of Disco” music in the 1970’s, known for her
renditions of “Bad Girls” and “Last Dance.”

1953 – Hulan Jack is inaugurated as Manhattan borough president, the
first African American to hold the post.

1953 – The NAACP’s Spingarn Medal is presented to Paul R. Williams for
his achievements as an architect.

1962 – Katanga becomes part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

1964 – In a speech before a group of young people, Malcolm X urges them
“to see for yourself and listen for yourself and think for
yourself. This generation, especially of our people, have a
burden, more so than at any other time in history. The most
important thing we can learn to do today is think for
ourselves.”

1972 – Roberto Clemente, Pittsburgh Pirate slugger, joins the ancestors
after a plane crash on his way to a humanitarian mission to
Nicaragua.

1976 – Roland Hayes joins the ancestors in Boston, Massachusetts at the
age of 89. He had been an acclaimed tenor whose pioneering
recitals of German lieder and other classical music opened the
concert stage for African American singers

1984 – The first nationally broadcast telethon for the United Negro
College Fund raises $14.1 million. The telethon will become an
annual fundraising drive that will support more than 40
historically African American institutions of higher learning
and draw widespread individual and corporate support.

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