KRLemmons African American History

August 4 African American Historical Events

Today in Black History – August 4 *

1810 – Robert Purvis is born in Charleston, South Carolina to a
wealthy white cotton merchant father, William Purvis and
a mulatto mother, Harriet Judah. After graduating from
Amherst College in Massachusetts, he will move to
Pennsylvania. In 1833, he will help William Lloyd
Garrison establish the American Anti-Slavery Society,
sign its Declaration of Sentiments and will be on the
first board of managers. In the same year, he will help
establish the Library Company of Colored People. In 1838,
he will draft “Appeal of Forty Thousand Citizens
Threatened with Disfranchisement,” which supports the
repeal of a new state statute barring African Americans
from voting. As a supporter of the Underground Railroad,
he will serve as chairman of the General Vigilance
Committee from 1852 until 1857. According to records that
he will keep, from 1831 until 1861, he estimates that he
helped one slave achieve freedom per day. According to
these figures, he helped 9,000 slaves achieve freedom.
He will join the ancestors on April 15, 1898.

1870 – White conservatives suppress the African American vote and
capture the Tennessee legislature in an election marred
by assassinations and widespread violence. The campaign
effectively ends Radical Reconstruction in North Carolina.
The conservative legislature will impeach Governor Holden
on December 14.

1875 – The Convention of Colored Newspapermen is held in
Cincinnati, Ohio. The meeting is attended by J. Sella
Martin of the “True Republican”, Mifflin W. Gibbs, former
publisher of California’s “Mirror of the Times”
representing the “Pacific Appeal”, Henry McNeal Turner of
Philadelphia’s “Christian Recorder”, the San Francisco
“Elevator’s” L. H. Douglass, and Henry Scroggins of the
“American Citizen” (Lexington, Kentucky). Chairman P.B.S.
Pinchback states the aim of the national organization: “to
make colored people’s newspapers self-sustaining.” At the
time of the convention, Martin’s “New Era” and Frederick
Douglass’ “North Star” are among eight African American
newspaper failures.

1885 – W.C. Carter invents the umbrella stand.

1890 – Sam T. Jack’s play “Creoles” opens in Haverhill,
Massachusetts. It is the first time African American women
are featured as performers on the stage.

1891 – George Washington Williams joins the ancestors in Blackpool,
England at the age of 41. He was the first major African
American historian and published his major work, “History
of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880” in 1883.

1896 – W.S. Grant patents a curtain rod support.

1897 – Henry Rucker is appointed collector of Internal Revenue for
Georgia.

1901 – Daniel Louis Armstrong is born in New Orleans, Louisiana.
He will become a jazz musician specializing in the cornet
and trumpet. He will win a Grammy Award for his rendition
of “Hello, Dolly!” in 1964. He will be awarded the
Lifetime Achievement Award in 1971. Some of his other hits
will be “It’s a Wonderful World,” “Mack the Knife,” and
“Blueberry Hill.” He will also be featured in films: “The
Five Pennies,” “The Glenn Miller Story,” “Hello Dolly!,”
and “High Society.” He will be referred to as the American
ambassador of good will and will be inducted into the Rock
and Roll Hall of Fame in 1990. Throughout his life, he will
resent the nickname “Satchmo”, short for satchel mouth. He
will join the ancestors on July 6, 1971.

1916 – The United States purchases the Danish Virgin Islands for
$25 million.

1931 – Dr. Daniel Hale Williams, heart surgeon, founder of
Chicago’s Provident Hospital, joins the ancestors.

1936 – “Long” John Woodruff, of the University of Pittsburgh, wins
a gold medal in the 800-meter run at the Olympic Summer
Games in Berlin, Germany. He, like Jesse Owens (who had won
his second medal earlier in the day), will be snubbed by
Adolph Hitler, who believes that blacks are incapable of
athletic achievement.

1936 – Jesse Owens sets a new Olympic running broad jump record by
leaping 26′ 5 5/16″.

1953 – The movement of African American families into the Trumbull
Park housing project in Chicago, Illinois, triggers
virtually continuous riot conditions which will last more
than three years and require the assignment of more than
one thousand policemen to keep order.

1962 – Nelson Mandela is captured and jailed by South African
police.

1964 – James E. Chaney and two other civil rights workers’ bodies
are found in an earthen dam on a farm in Philadelphia,
Mississippi. They had been missing since June 21. The FBI
says that they had been murdered on the night of their
disappearance by segregationists. Eighteen whites,
including several police officers, were charged with
conspiracy to deprive the victims of their civil rights.

1969 – Willie Stargell is the first to hit a home run out of Dodger
Stadium.

1980 – Maury Wills is named manager of the Seattle Mariners. He is
the third African American to be named a major league
manager.

1985 – California Angel Rod Carew gets his 3,000th base hit.

1996 – On the final day of the Atlanta Olympics, Josia Thugwane
became the first Black South African to win a gold medal as
he finished first in the marathon.

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

KRLemmons African American History

July 15 African American Historical Events

* Today in Black History – July 15 *

1822 – The city of Philadelphia opens its public schools for
African Americans.

1864 – General A. J. Smith, with fourteen thousand men, including
a brigade of African American troops, defeats Nathan B.
Forrest at Harrisburg, near Tupelo, Mississippi.

1869 – A.J. Hayne, an African-American captain of the Arkansas
militia, is assassinated.

1929 – Francis Bebey is born in Douala, Cameroon. He will become
a self-taught master guitarist, composer, and sanza player.
During his childhood, his family and teachers will attempt
to alienate him from the roots culture around him. As he
will relate to the press in France in 1984, “I was schooled
to ignore, and even to detest, traditional African styles.”
His musical family will surround him with a variety of
Western instruments, accordion, violin, piano, mandolin,
and–the instrument he will settle on at age nine–guitar.
Despite the efforts of his colonial-era instructors, he
will ‘discover’ Africa. A traditional doctor and musician,
Eya Mouéssé, will lead him to his first African music love
affair: the local harp and mouth-bow, which he will seek out
at all night celebrations in order to hear. As a teenager in
Douala, the capital, he will play guitar and drums in an
ashiko–Cameroonean highlife–band. The experience will lead
inevitably to his discovery of international dance styles of
the era, especially Afro-Cuban music and American swing
jazz. He will go to Paris to study at the Sorbonne in the
mid ’50s, and there his musical path will be altered yet
again when he discovers the classical guitar of Andre
Segovia and will begin to study the instrument. Upon
graduation, he will lead a jazz band in the city, and will
have the distinction of giving future Afropop superstar and
saxophonist Manu Dibangu his first professional gig. He will
come to the United States in 1958 to continue his studies at
New York University. As he travels in Africa and learns more
about its traditions, he will begin to create original
works, including socially aware and sometimes satirical
poems set to the music of traditional instruments like the
West African kora. In 1967, he will win the Grand Literary
Prize of Black Africa for his novel “Le Fils d’Agatha
Moudio.” In the 1980s, when he will be widely renowned as a
novelist, poet, composer and performer, he will begin to
play traditional African instruments himself. He will
record “African Sanza” in 1982, a set of original
compositions for the central African lamellophone (sometimes
called hand piano or thumb piano). His forays into sanza and
also ndewhoo (Pygmee flute) paralleled dramatic changes in
his approach to guitar. Inspired by his explorations in
African music, he will develop distinctive new techniques:
tapping the guitar to produce the sound of a talking drum,
and wrapping one bass string around the next to produce a
percussive snare drum effect. During the years when Afropop
will rise to international attention, he will be often cited
as a guiding force, a kind of father figure in the global
spread of African music. He will continue to tour, as much
as six months a year, with sons Patrick Jr. (Toops) and
Patrick, and also to record new works right to the end. He
will join the ancestors on May 28, 2001 after succumbing to
a sudden heart attack. He is sometimes referred to as the
father of world music.

1951 – Mary White Ovington, one of the white founders of the NAACP
and author of “The Walls Come Tumbling Down,” a history of
the NAACP, dies at the age of 86.

1961 – Forest Whitaker is born in Longview, Texas. He will attend
the Music Conservatory at the University of Southern
California in Los Angeles, as well as the Drama Studio
London. He will debut as a screen actor in 1982’s “Fast
Times at Ridgemont High.” He will follow with notable roles
in “Platoon,” “Good Morning, Vietnam,” and “The Color of
Money.” In 1988, he will play the role of musician Charlie
Parker in the film, “Bird,” for which he will win Best
Actor at the Cannes Film Festival. He will also appear in
the films “The Crying Game,” “Bloodsport,” “Phenomenon” and
direct “Waiting to Exhale.” He will be originally called
upon to write and direct a live-action movie adaptation of
Bill Cosby’s cartoon, “Fat Albert,” but differences between
the two will lead to him leaving production. He will be
considered for the role of Dr. Jonathon Crane (The
Scarecrow) in “Batman Triumphant.” The film will progress
as far as pre-production when Warner Brothers decides to
pull the plug. In 2002, he will be the host and narrator of
“The Twilight Zone,” which will last one season. In 2006,
he will join the cast of FX’s cop serial “The Shield,” as
Lieutenant John Kavanaugh. His performance as the tormented
internal affairs cop will help continue the show’s
popularity among viewers. He will be nominated for, and
win the Academy Award for Best Actor for his portrayal of
Idi Amin, the Ugandan dictator, in 2006 film, “The Last King
of Scotland.”

1968 – Ellen Holly integrates daytime television when she appears
on ABC’s “One Life To Live” as Carla, an African American
“passing” for white. The role is a marked departure for
the New York City-born African American, whose first
professional role was with Joseph Papp’s New York
Shakespeare Festival as the white Desdemona to William
Marshall’s Othello in 1958. Holly had been a featured
player in Papp’s company and had played several
Shakespearean roles, including Lady Macbeth opposite James
Earl Jones in “Macbeth” and Princess Katherine opposite
Robert Hooks in “Henry V,” before being signed to the soap
opera.

1969 – Rod Carew ties the major league record with his 7th steal of
home in a season.

1970 – James McGhee is sworn in as the first African American mayor
of Dayton, Ohio.

1973 – Willie McCovey becomes 15th major league player to hit 400
Home Runs.

1980 – Benjamin Hooks addresses the GOP convention after a lobbying
effort and threatens a walkout by 121 African American
delegates. Hooks speaks before the convention despite
leading candidate Ronald Reagan’s refusal to appear at the
NAACP convention earlier in the month.

1980 – New violence erupts in the riot-torn Liberty City section of
Miami, Florida. Two months after riots that killed 18 and
resulted in $ 100 million in property damage, the violence
will leave 40 injured and result in 40 arrests.

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

KRLemmons African American History

August 4 African American Historical Events

Today in Black History – August 4 *

1810 – Robert Purvis is born in Charleston, South Carolina to a
wealthy white cotton merchant father, William Purvis and
a mulatto mother, Harriet Judah. After graduating from
Amherst College in Massachusetts, he will move to
Pennsylvania. In 1833, he will help William Lloyd
Garrison establish the American Anti-Slavery Society,
sign its Declaration of Sentiments and will be on the
first board of managers. In the same year, he will help
establish the Library Company of Colored People. In 1838,
he will draft “Appeal of Forty Thousand Citizens
Threatened with Disfranchisement,” which supports the
repeal of a new state statute barring African Americans
from voting. As a supporter of the Underground Railroad,
he will serve as chairman of the General Vigilance
Committee from 1852 until 1857. According to records that
he will keep, from 1831 until 1861, he estimates that he
helped one slave achieve freedom per day. According to
these figures, he helped 9,000 slaves achieve freedom.
He will join the ancestors on April 15, 1898.

1870 – White conservatives suppress the African American vote and
capture the Tennessee legislature in an election marred
by assassinations and widespread violence. The campaign
effectively ends Radical Reconstruction in North Carolina.
The conservative legislature will impeach Governor Holden
on December 14.

1875 – The Convention of Colored Newspapermen is held in
Cincinnati, Ohio. The meeting is attended by J. Sella
Martin of the “True Republican”, Mifflin W. Gibbs, former
publisher of California’s “Mirror of the Times”
representing the “Pacific Appeal”, Henry McNeal Turner of
Philadelphia’s “Christian Recorder”, the San Francisco
“Elevator’s” L. H. Douglass, and Henry Scroggins of the
“American Citizen” (Lexington, Kentucky). Chairman P.B.S.
Pinchback states the aim of the national organization: “to
make colored people’s newspapers self-sustaining.” At the
time of the convention, Martin’s “New Era” and Frederick
Douglass’ “North Star” are among eight African American
newspaper failures.

1885 – W.C. Carter invents the umbrella stand.

1890 – Sam T. Jack’s play “Creoles” opens in Haverhill,
Massachusetts. It is the first time African American women
are featured as performers on the stage.

1891 – George Washington Williams joins the ancestors in Blackpool,
England at the age of 41. He was the first major African
American historian and published his major work, “History
of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880” in 1883.

1896 – W.S. Grant patents a curtain rod support.

1897 – Henry Rucker is appointed collector of Internal Revenue for
Georgia.

1901 – Daniel Louis Armstrong is born in New Orleans, Louisiana.
He will become a jazz musician specializing in the cornet
and trumpet. He will win a Grammy Award for his rendition
of “Hello, Dolly!” in 1964. He will be awarded the
Lifetime Achievement Award in 1971. Some of his other hits
will be “It’s a Wonderful World,” “Mack the Knife,” and
“Blueberry Hill.” He will also be featured in films: “The
Five Pennies,” “The Glenn Miller Story,” “Hello Dolly!,”
and “High Society.” He will be referred to as the American
ambassador of good will and will be inducted into the Rock
and Roll Hall of Fame in 1990. Throughout his life, he will
resent the nickname “Satchmo”, short for satchel mouth. He
will join the ancestors on July 6, 1971.

1916 – The United States purchases the Danish Virgin Islands for
$25 million.

1931 – Dr. Daniel Hale Williams, heart surgeon, founder of
Chicago’s Provident Hospital, joins the ancestors.

1936 – “Long” John Woodruff, of the University of Pittsburgh, wins
a gold medal in the 800-meter run at the Olympic Summer
Games in Berlin, Germany. He, like Jesse Owens (who had won
his second medal earlier in the day), will be snubbed by
Adolph Hitler, who believes that blacks are incapable of
athletic achievement.

1936 – Jesse Owens sets a new Olympic running broad jump record by
leaping 26′ 5 5/16″.

1953 – The movement of African American families into the Trumbull
Park housing project in Chicago, Illinois, triggers
virtually continuous riot conditions which will last more
than three years and require the assignment of more than
one thousand policemen to keep order.

1962 – Nelson Mandela is captured and jailed by South African
police.

1964 – James E. Chaney and two other civil rights workers’ bodies
are found in an earthen dam on a farm in Philadelphia,
Mississippi. They had been missing since June 21. The FBI
says that they had been murdered on the night of their
disappearance by segregationists. Eighteen whites,
including several police officers, were charged with
conspiracy to deprive the victims of their civil rights.

1969 – Willie Stargell is the first to hit a home run out of Dodger
Stadium.

1980 – Maury Wills is named manager of the Seattle Mariners. He is
the third African American to be named a major league
manager.

1985 – California Angel Rod Carew gets his 3,000th base hit.

1996 – On the final day of the Atlanta Olympics, Josia Thugwane
became the first Black South African to win a gold medal as
he finished first in the marathon.

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

KRLemmons African American History

July 15 African American Historical Events

Today in Black History – July 15 *

1822 – The city of Philadelphia opens its public schools for
African Americans.

1864 – General A. J. Smith, with fourteen thousand men, including
a brigade of African American troops, defeats Nathan B.
Forrest at Harrisburg, near Tupelo, Mississippi.

1869 – A.J. Hayne, an African-American captain of the Arkansas
militia, is assassinated.

1929 – Francis Bebey is born in Douala, Cameroon. He will become
a self-taught master guitarist, composer, and sanza player.
During his childhood, his family and teachers will attempt
to alienate him from the roots culture around him. As he
will relate to the press in France in 1984, “I was schooled
to ignore, and even to detest, traditional African styles.”
His musical family will surround him with a variety of
Western instruments, accordion, violin, piano, mandolin,
and–the instrument he will settle on at age nine–guitar.
Despite the efforts of his colonial-era instructors, he
will ‘discover’ Africa. A traditional doctor and musician,
Eya Mouéssé, will lead him to his first African music love
affair: the local harp and mouth-bow, which he will seek out
at all night celebrations in order to hear. As a teenager in
Douala, the capital, he will play guitar and drums in an
ashiko–Cameroonean highlife–band. The experience will lead
inevitably to his discovery of international dance styles of
the era, especially Afro-Cuban music and American swing
jazz. He will go to Paris to study at the Sorbonne in the
mid ’50s, and there his musical path will be altered yet
again when he discovers the classical guitar of Andre
Segovia and will begin to study the instrument. Upon
graduation, he will lead a jazz band in the city, and will
have the distinction of giving future Afropop superstar and
saxophonist Manu Dibangu his first professional gig. He will
come to the United States in 1958 to continue his studies at
New York University. As he travels in Africa and learns more
about its traditions, he will begin to create original
works, including socially aware and sometimes satirical
poems set to the music of traditional instruments like the
West African kora. In 1967, he will win the Grand Literary
Prize of Black Africa for his novel “Le Fils d’Agatha
Moudio.” In the 1980s, when he will be widely renowned as a
novelist, poet, composer and performer, he will begin to
play traditional African instruments himself. He will
record “African Sanza” in 1982, a set of original
compositions for the central African lamellophone (sometimes
called hand piano or thumb piano). His forays into sanza and
also ndewhoo (Pygmee flute) paralleled dramatic changes in
his approach to guitar. Inspired by his explorations in
African music, he will develop distinctive new techniques:
tapping the guitar to produce the sound of a talking drum,
and wrapping one bass string around the next to produce a
percussive snare drum effect. During the years when Afropop
will rise to international attention, he will be often cited
as a guiding force, a kind of father figure in the global
spread of African music. He will continue to tour, as much
as six months a year, with sons Patrick Jr. (Toops) and
Patrick, and also to record new works right to the end. He
will join the ancestors on May 28, 2001 after succumbing to
a sudden heart attack. He is sometimes referred to as the
father of world music.

1951 – Mary White Ovington, one of the white founders of the NAACP
and author of “The Walls Come Tumbling Down,” a history of
the NAACP, dies at the age of 86.

1961 – Forest Whitaker is born in Longview, Texas. He will attend
the Music Conservatory at the University of Southern
California in Los Angeles, as well as the Drama Studio
London. He will debut as a screen actor in 1982’s “Fast
Times at Ridgemont High.” He will follow with notable roles
in “Platoon,” “Good Morning, Vietnam,” and “The Color of
Money.” In 1988, he will play the role of musician Charlie
Parker in the film, “Bird,” for which he will win Best
Actor at the Cannes Film Festival. He will also appear in
the films “The Crying Game,” “Bloodsport,” “Phenomenon” and
direct “Waiting to Exhale.” He will be originally called
upon to write and direct a live-action movie adaptation of
Bill Cosby’s cartoon, “Fat Albert,” but differences between
the two will lead to him leaving production. He will be
considered for the role of Dr. Jonathon Crane (The
Scarecrow) in “Batman Triumphant.” The film will progress
as far as pre-production when Warner Brothers decides to
pull the plug. In 2002, he will be the host and narrator of
“The Twilight Zone,” which will last one season. In 2006,
he will join the cast of FX’s cop serial “The Shield,” as
Lieutenant John Kavanaugh. His performance as the tormented
internal affairs cop will help continue the show’s
popularity among viewers. He will be nominated for, and
win the Academy Award for Best Actor for his portrayal of
Idi Amin, the Ugandan dictator, in 2006 film, “The Last King
of Scotland.”

1968 – Ellen Holly integrates daytime television when she appears
on ABC’s “One Life To Live” as Carla, an African American
“passing” for white. The role is a marked departure for
the New York City-born African American, whose first
professional role was with Joseph Papp’s New York
Shakespeare Festival as the white Desdemona to William
Marshall’s Othello in 1958. Holly had been a featured
player in Papp’s company and had played several
Shakespearean roles, including Lady Macbeth opposite James
Earl Jones in “Macbeth” and Princess Katherine opposite
Robert Hooks in “Henry V,” before being signed to the soap
opera.

1969 – Rod Carew ties the major league record with his 7th steal of
home in a season.

1970 – James McGhee is sworn in as the first African American mayor
of Dayton, Ohio.

1973 – Willie McCovey becomes 15th major league player to hit 400
Home Runs.

1980 – Benjamin Hooks addresses the GOP convention after a lobbying
effort and threatens a walkout by 121 African American
delegates. Hooks speaks before the convention despite
leading candidate Ronald Reagan’s refusal to appear at the
NAACP convention earlier in the month.

1980 – New violence erupts in the riot-torn Liberty City section of
Miami, Florida. Two months after riots that killed 18 and
resulted in $ 100 million in property damage, the violence
will leave 40 injured and result in 40 arrests.

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