Ourstory

8/27

WEB du Bois, Alice Coltrane and Robert Lee Vann
http://on.fb.me/oB5tTt

more Ourstory for 8/27

1909 - Lester Young is born into a musical family in Woodville,
Mississippi. Young was taught several instruments by
his father. As a child he played drums in the family's
band, but around 1928 he quit the group and switched to
tenor saxophone. His first engagements on this
instrument were with Art Bronson, in Phoenix, Arizona
He stayed with Bronson until 1930, with a brief side
trip to play again with the family, then worked in and
around Minneapolis, Minnesota, with various bands. In
the spring of 1932 he joined the Original Blue Devils,
under the leadership of Walter Page, and was one of
several members of the band who joined Bennie Moten in
Kansas City towards the end of 1933. During the next
few years Young played in the bands of Moten, George E.
Lee, King Oliver, Count Basie, Fletcher Henderson, Andy
Kirk and others. He will join the ancestors on March 15,
1959.

1918 - Dr. Joseph L. Johnson is named minister to Liberia.

1963 - Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivers his "I Have A Dream"
speech in Washington, DC during the 1963 March on
Washington.

1966 - A racially motivated civil disobedience riot occurs in
Waukegan, Illinois.

1975 - Haile Selassie, "Lion of Judah" and deposed Ethiopian
emperor, joins the ancestors at age 83 in Addis Ababa.

1983 - The second "March on Washington for Jobs, Peace, and
Freedom" is held.

1989 - 'Johnny B Goode' is performed by Chuck Berry for NASA
engineers and scientists in celebration of Voyager II's
encounter with the planet Neptune.

1991 - Central Life Insurance Company, the last surviving
African American owned insurance company in the state of
Florida, is ordered liquidated by a Florida circuit
court judge.

Today in Ourstory 8/28

1818 - Jean Baptiste Pointe du Sable, trader and founder of
Chicago, joins the ancestors.

1921 - Second Pan-African Congress meets in London, Brussels and
Paris, from August 28 to September 6. Of the 113
delegates, 39 are from Africa and 36 were from the United
States.

1949 - Paul Robeson's scheduled singing appearance at the
Lakeland picnic grounds near Peekskill in Westchester
County, New York, is disrupted by a riot instigated and
provoked by whites angry at Robeson's political stands.

1945 - Brooklyn Dodgers' owner Branch Rickey and future baseball
great Jackie Robinson meet. They will discuss the
difficulties Robinson, an African American athlete, would
face in major-league baseball. Robinson will receive
$600 a month and a $3,500 signing bonus to play for
Montreal of the International League. He would quickly
move up and enjoy a brilliant career with the Brooklyn
Dodgers.

1955 - Fourteen-year-old Chicago youngster Emmett Till is
kidnapped in Money, Mississippi. Four days later he is
found brutally mutilated and murdered, allegedly for
whistling at a white woman. Two whites will be acquitted
of the crime by an all-white jury. The incident will
receive national publicity and highlight racism and
brutality toward African Americans. This incident is
chronicled on tape # 1 in the "Eyes on the Prize" series.

1962 - Seventy-five ministers and laymen--African American and
whites--primarily from the North, are arrested after
prayer demonstration in downtown Albany, Georgia.

1963 - Over 250,000 African-Americans and whites converge on the
Lincoln Memorial during the March on Washington, the
largest single protest demonstration in United States
history. The march, organized to support sweeping civil
rights measures, will also be the occasion of Martin
Luther King, Jr.'s most famous speech, "I have a Dream."

1964 - A racially motivated civil disobedience riot occurs in
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

1966 - The National Guard is mobilized to protect Milwaukee,
Wisconsin marchers protesting a judge's membership in
lily-white club.

1968 - Rev. Channing E. Philips of Washington, DC, becomes the
first African American to have his/her name placed in
nomination for president by a major national party.
Philips' name is placed in nomination as the favorite
son candidate by the District of Columbia delegation at
the Democratic convention in Chicago and will receive 67
1/2 votes.

1984 - The Jacksons' Victory Tour broke the record for concert
ticket sales. The group surpasses the 1.1 million mark
in only two months.

1988 - Beah Richards wins an Emmy for outstanding guest
performance in the comedy series "Frank's Place." It is
one of the many acting distinctions for the Vicksburg,
Mississippi native, including her Academy Award
nomination for best supporting actress in "Guess Who's
Coming to Dinner."

nice

1917 - Eloise Gwendolyn Sanford is born in New York City. She
will become an actress better known as Isabel Sanford and
will star as Louise on the long-running sitcom "The
Jeffersons", "All in the Family", and will star in many
movies including "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner", "Original
Gangstas", "South Beach", "Love at First Bite", "The
Photographer", "The New Centurions", "Pendulum", and
"Buffalo Soldiers". She will be the first African American
actress to win a Lead Actress Emmy (for Outstanding Lead
Actress in a Comedy Series in 1981), and will receive a
star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. She will join the
ancestors on July 9, 2004, succumbing to cardiac arrest
and heart disease at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los
Angeles at the age of 86.

1920 - Charlie "Bird" (Charles Christopher) Parker is born in
Kansas City, Kansas. The jazz saxophonist will become one
of the leaders of the bebop movement and be noted for his
works "Ko Ko" and "In the Still of the Night," among
others. He will receive numerous awards from Downbeat
magazine and have the famous jazz club, Birdland, in New
York City named in his honor. He will be commonly
considered one of the greatest jazz musicians, ranked with
such players as Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington. Jazz
critic Scott Yanow speaks for many jazz fans and musicians
when he states that "Parker was arguably the greatest
saxophonist of all time." A founding father of bebop, his
innovative approaches to melody, rhythm, and harmony were
enormously influential on his contemporaries, and his
music remains an inspiration and resource for musicians in
jazz as well as in other genres. Several of Parker's songs
have become standards, such as "Billie's Bounce,"
"Anthropology," "Ornithology," and "Confirmation". He will
join the ancestors on March 12, 1955.

1924 - Ruth Lee Jones is born in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. She will be
better known as "Dinah Washington." She will perform with
Lionel Hampton from 1943 to 1946 and become one of the
most popular Rhythm & Blues singers of the 1950's and
early 1960's. Her family will move to Chicago while she
is still a child. As a child in Chicago she will play
piano and direct her church choir. She will later study
in Walter Dyett's renowned music program at DuSable High
School. There will be a period when she both performed in
clubs as Dinah Washington, while singing and playing piano
in Sallie Martin's gospel choir as Ruth Jones. Her
penetrating voice, excellent timing, and crystal-clear
enunciation added her own distinctive style to every piece
she undertook. While making extraordinary recordings in
jazz, blues, R&B and light pop contexts, she will refuse
to record gospel music despite her obvious talent in
singing it. She believed it wrong to mix the secular and
spiritual, and after she enters the non-religious
professional music world, she will refuse to include
gospel in her repertoire. She will begin performing in
1942 and soon join Lionel Hampton's band. There is some
dispute about the origin of her name. Some sources say
the manager of the Garrick Stage Bar gave her the name
Dinah Washington, while others say Hampton selected it.
In 1943, she will begin recording for Keynote Records and
release "Evil Gal Blues", her first hit. By 1955, she will
release numerous hit songs on the R&B charts, including
"Baby, Get Lost", "Trouble in Mind", "You Don't Know What
Love Is" (arranged by Quincy Jones), and a cover of "Cold,
Cold Heart" by Hank Williams. In March of 1957, she
marry tenor saxophonist Eddie Chamblee, (formerly on tour
with Lionel Hampton) who led the band behind her. In 1958,
she will make a well-received appearance at the Newport
Jazz Festival. With "What a Diff'rence a Day Makes" in
1959, she will win a Grammy Award for Best Rhythm and
Blues Performance. The song will be her biggest hit,
reaching #8 on the Billboard Hot 100. She will join the
ancestors on December 13, 1963.

1945 - Wyomia Tyus, Olympic runner, who will become the first
woman sprinter to win consecutive Olympic gold medals in
the 100 meters (three total), is born in Griffin, Georgia.
She will also become a 10-time AAU National Champion and
an All-American Athlete in both the indoor and outdoor
competition. Tyus will compete in amateur and
professional track and field meets from 1960 - 1975. In
addition to her athletic achievements, Tyus will hold a
special place in Olympic history. At the XXIIIrd Olympic
Games in Los Angeles, Tyus will become the first woman
ever, in the history of the Olympic Games, to bear the
Olympic Flag.

1946 - Robert "Bob" Beamon is born in Jamaica, New York. He
will become a star in track and field, He will specialize
in the long jump and will win the 1968 Olympic gold medal
in the long jump and set the world record of 29 feet, 2
1/2 inches. His record will stand for twenty three years
until it is broken by Mike Powell at the World
Championships in Tokyo in 1991. His jump is still the
Olympic record to date.

1957 - The Civil Rights Act of 1957 is passed by Congress. It is
the first civil rights legislation since 1875. The bill
establishes a civil rights commission and a civil rights
division in the Justice Department. It also gave the
Justice Department authority to seek injunctions against
voting rights infractions.

1958 - Michael Joseph Jackson is born in Gary, Indiana. First
with the family group the Jackson Five and later as a
solo artist, Jackson will be one of pop and Rhythm &
Blues' foremost stars. His solo album "Off the Wall"
(1979) will sell 7 million copies worldwide, surpassed
only by "Thriller", his largest-selling album (also the
biggest selling album of all time). He will be commonly
known as "MJ" as well as the "King of Pop". His successful
career and controversial personal life will be a part of
pop culture for at least 40 years. He will be widely
regarded as one of the greatest entertainers and most
popular recording artists in history, displaying
complicated physical techniques, such as the robot and the
moonwalk, that have redefined mainstream dance and
entertainment. His achievements in the music industry will
include a revolutionary transformation of music videos,
establishing high-profile album releases and sales as a
new trend for record companies to generate profits,
dominating pop music during the 1980s, and becoming the
first Black entertainer to amass a strong following on MTV
while leading the relatively young channel out of
obscurity. His distinctive style, moves, and vocals will
inspire, influence, and spawn a whole generation of hip
hop, pop, and Rhythm & Blues artists. He will join the
ancestors on June 25, 2009.

1962 - Mal Goode becomes the first African American television
news commentator when he begins broadcasting on ABC.

1962 - Carl E. Banks, Jr. is born in Flint, Michigan. He will
become a star NFL linebacker with the New York Giants. He
will play for three teams from 1984 to 1995, the New York
Giants, the Washington Redskins and the Cleveland Browns.
He will make the Pro Bowl in 1987, have 39.5 career
quarterback sacks, and be a member of the NFL's 1980's
All-Decade Team. He will attend Michigan State University
and be the 3rd overall pick in the 1984 NFL draft. He will
be a member of the Giants teams that win Super Bowls XXI
and XXV. Banks will be a standout in their Super Bowl XXI
victory in which he records 14 total tackles, including 10
solo tackles.

1970 - Black Panthers confront the police in Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania. One policeman is killed and six are wounded
in a racial confrontation.

1971 - Hank Aaron becomes the first baseball player in the
National League to drive in 100 or more runs in each of
11 seasons.

1977 - St. Louis Cardinal Lou Brock eclipses Ty Cobb's 49-year-
old career stolen base record at 893.

1979 - The first completely Black-owned radio network in the
world, "Mutual Black Network" is purchased by the
Sheridan Broadcasting Corporation.

1984 - Edwin Moses wins the 400-meter hurdles in track competition
in Europe. It is the track star's 108th consecutive
victory. 2009 – DJ Unk was rushed to the hospital today in 2009, after having trouble breathing. Doctors examined him and told the Atlanta rapper that he’d suffered a mild heart attack. He was only 26 years old.

is this from the afro-american almanac?

This is a very noble yet mitigated quasonic llabioligicoal process.

1800 - Jack Bowler and Coachman Gabriel Prosser's plans for a
slave revolt in Richmond, Virginia, are betrayed by a
pair of house slaves attempting to save their master.
Prosser's plan, which involved over 1,100 slaves, would
have resulted in the death of all slave-owning whites,
but would have spared Quakers, Frenchmen, elderly women,
and children.

1838 - The first African American magazine "Mirror of Freedom",
begins publication in New York City by abolitionist
David Ruggles.

1843 - The Liberty Party has the first African American
participation in a national political convention.
Samuel R. Ward leads the convention in prayer -- Henry
Highland Garnet, a twenty-seven-year-old Presbyterian
pastor who calls for a slave revolt and a general slave
strike. Amos G. Beman of New Haven, Connecticut is
elected president of the convention.

1856 - Wilberforce University is established in Xenia, Ohio under
the auspices of the Methodist Episcopal Church. In 1863,
the university was transferred to the African Methodist
Episcopal (AME) Church.

1861 - General John C. Fremont issues an order confiscating the
property of Confederates and emancipating their slaves.
The order causes wide-spread protest and is revoked by
President Lincoln.

1892 - S. R. Scottron patents a curtain rod.

1901 - Roy Wilkins is born in St. Louis, Missouri. He will become
a civil rights leader, assistant executive secretary of
the NAACP under Walter White and editor of the Crisis
Magazine for 15 years. He will become Executive Secretary
of the NAACP in 1955, a post he will hold for 22 years.
During his tenure, he will be a champion of civil rights
committed to using constitutional arguments to help obtain
full citizenship rights for all African Americans.

1931 - Carrie Saxon Perry is born in Hartford, Connecticut. In
1987, she will be elected mayor of Hartford, becoming the
first African American mayor of a major eastern United
States city.



1956 - A white mob prevents the enrollment of blacks at Mansfield
High School in Texas.

1961 - James Benton Parsons is confirmed as the first African
American judge of a United States District Court in the
continental United States (Northern Illinois). He had
been appointed by President John F. Kennedy on April 18,
1961.

1967 - Thurgood Marshall is confirmed as the first African
American justice on the U.S. Supreme Court. He had been
appointed by President Lyndon Johnson on June 13, 1967.

1969 - Racially motivated civil disturbances occur in Fort
Lauderdale, Florida.

1983 - Lt. Colonel Guion S. Bluford is the first African American
in space when he serves as a mission specialist on the
Challenger space shuttle. The space shuttle, launched
from Kennedy Space Center in Florida, stayed in orbit
almost six days. This was the Challenger's third flight
into space.

2005 – Lena Baker who faced death by electrocution in GA had her case reviewed 60 years after her conviction

Godfatha, ??? In the words of Ali, I don't understand all those big words you using? I'm not familiar with this Afro American Almanac referenced though

1935 - Eldridge Cleaver is born in Wabaseka, Arkansas. He will join
the Black Panther Party in 1967, becoming its Minister of
Information and putting together The Black Panther
newspaper. He will be the 1968 Presidential candidate for
the Peace and Freedom Party. He and another Panther member,
will be assaulted by police in 1968 (Cleaver is arrested).
He and Kathleen Cleaver, his wife and a Panther leader in
her own right, flee the country, eventually founding the
Panther's international branch in Algeria before moving to
France. Cleaver split from the Party in 1971, forming his
own version of the organization with several Party chapters
switching from Bobby Seale to him. Cleaver will return to
the United States in the late 1970's as a born-again
Christian and a republican. He will spend his later years
as a conservative idealist concerned with the environment,
and will join the ancestors on May 1, 1998 at the age of
62.

1935 - Frank Robinson is born in Beaufort, Texas. He will become
a professional baseball player and will become Most
Valuable Player in the National League in 1961 and Most
Valuable Player in the American League in 1966. Later, he
will become the first African American manager in major
league baseball.

1936 - Marva Collins is born in Monroeville, Alabama. She will
become an innovative educator who uses her pension funds
to open Westside Preparatory School in Chicago, dedicated
to reverse the educational decline in the city's African
American neighborhoods. Collins' motto for the school is
"entrance to learn, exit to serve."

1943 - The USS Harmon, a destroyer escort, is launched. It is
named after Mess Attendant 1st Class Leonard H. Harmon, a
1942 Navy Cross recipient. It is the first United States
warship named for an African American.

1958 - Edwin Corley Moses, track star (hurdler, Olympic-gold-
1984), is born in Dayton, Ohio. He will be referred to as
"the greatest hurdler in the history of track and field"
for his 122 consecutive wins in the 400 meter hurdles
(spanned eleven years and 22 countries).

1962 - Joint independence is granted to Trinidad and Tobago by
Great Britain.

1983 - Brigadier General Hazel W. Johnson retires from the Army
Nurse Corps. She is the first African American woman to
achieve the rank of Brigadier General and the first
African American to be chief of the Army Nurse Corps.

1983 - Edwin Moses of the United States sets the 400 meter hurdle
record (47.02) in Koblenz, Germany.

1984 - Pinklin Thomas defeats Tim Witherspoon for the WBC
heavyweight boxing title.

1990 - Nat (Sweetwater) Clifton, former New York Knickerbocker
star, joins the ancestors after succumbing to a heart
attack at the age of 65.

1991 - KQEC-TV of San Francisco begins broadcasting under new
owners, the Minority Television Project. It is the
second minority-owned public television station.

Ourstory 9/1 Heroes Day in Tanzania
1867 - Robert T. Freeman becomes the first African American
to graduate from Harvard Dental School.

1875 - White Democrats attacked Republicans at Yazoo City,
Mississippi. One white and three African-Americans were
killed.

1904 – George Coleman became the first African American to win an Olympic Medal in Modern Olympics
1912 - Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, English-born composer of Hiawatha's
Wedding Feast and professor of music at Trinity College of
Music in London, joins the ancestors in Croyden, England.
Coleridge-Taylor was the most important Black composer of
his day and toured the United States three times, where he
played with Will Marion Cook, Clarence Cameron White, and
collaborated with Paul Laurence Dunbar in setting several
of his poems to music.

1925 - Rosa Cuthbert (later Guy) is born in Trinidad. She will leave
Trinidad with her parents for America in 1932. During World
War II she will join the American Negro Theatre. She will
study theatre and writing at the University of New York. Most
of her books are about the dependability of family members
that care and love each other. She will be one of the founders
of The Harlem Writers guild (1950). Her works will include: "Bird
at My Window" (1966), "Children of Longing" (1971), "The Friends"
(1973), "Ruby" (1976), "Edith Jackson" (1978), "The Disappearance"
(1979), "Mirror of Her Own" (1981), "A Measure of Time (1983),
and "New Guys Around the Block" (1983), "Paris, Pee Wee and Big
Dog (1984), "My Love, My Love, or the Peasant Girl" (1985), and
"I Heard a Bird Sing" (1987).

1937 - Ron O'Neal is born in Utica, New York. He will become an
actor and will star in movies during the 1970's and be
best known for his role in "Superfly."

1948 - William T. Coleman is appointed by Justice Frankfurter as a
clerk to the U.S. Supreme Court, the first African
American to hold the position. A Harvard Law School
graduate and Army Air Corps veteran, Coleman will again
enter public service, first as president of the NAACP
Legal Defense and Education Fund and, in 1975, as
Secretary of Transportation under President Gerald Ford.

1970 - Dr. Hugh S. Scott of Washington, DC, becomes the first
African American superintendent of schools in a major US.
city.

1971 - The Pittsburgh Pirates field an all African American team
in a baseball game against the Philadelphia Phillies.

1973 - George Foreman knocks out Jose Roman in the first round to
retain his heavyweight title.

1975 - General Daniel ("Chappie") James Jr. is promoted to the
rank of four-star general and named commander-in-chief of
the North American Air Defense Command. He is the first
African American to achieve this rank.

1977 - Ethel Waters, singer and actress, joins the ancestors in
Chatsworth, California at the age of 80. She was the
first African American entertainer to move from vaudeville
to 'white' entertainment. She starred in many movies such
as "Something Special" (1971), "Carib Gold" (1955), "The
Member of the Wedding" (1952), "Pinky" (1949), "Cabin in
the Sky" (1943), "Cairo" (1942), "Tales of Manhattan"
(1942), "Black Musical Featurettes, V. 1" (1929), Short
Subjects V. 1" (1929), and "On With the Show" (1929).
She also was in the first network show to feature an
African American actress as the star (The Beulah Show-
1950).

1979 - Hazel W. Johnson becomes the first African American woman
to attain general officer rank in American military
history. Under her tenure as Chief, the Army Nurse Corps
continued to improve standards of education and training.
The Army Nurse Corps Standards of Nursing Practice were
published as an official Department of the Army Pamphlet
(DA PAM 40-5). She received the Distinguished Service
Medal, Legion Of Merit, Meritorious Service Medal, and
the Army Commendation Medal with Oak Leaf Cluster among
her awards and honors.

1766 - Abolitionist, inventor, and entrepreneur, James Forten is
born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

1833 - Oberlin College, one of the first colleges to admit
African Americans, is founded in Oberlin, Ohio.

1864 - In series of battles around Chaffin's Farm in the suburbs
of Richmond, Virginia, African American troops capture
entrenchments at New Market Heights, make a gallant but
unsuccessful assault on Fort Gilmer and help repulse a
Confederate counterattack on Fort Harrison. The Thirty-
Ninth U.S. Colored Troops will win a Congressional Medal
of Honor in the engagements.

1902 - "In Dahomey" premieres at the Old Globe Theater in Boston,
Massachusetts. With music by Will Marion Cook and lyrics
by poet Paul Laurence Dunbar, it is the most successful
musical of its day.

1911 - Romare Bearden is born in Charlotte, North Carolina. His
family will move to the village of Harlem in New York
City in 1914. He will call New York his home for the
rest of his life. A student at New York University, the
American Artists School, Columbia University, and the
Sorbonne, Bearden's depiction of the rituals and social
customs of African American life will be imbued with an
eloquence and power that will earn him accolades as one
of the finest artists of the 20th century and a master
of collage. Among his honors will be election to the
American Academy of Arts and Letters and the National
Institute of Arts and Letters, and receiving the
President's National Medal of Arts in 1987. He will join
the ancestors in 1988.

1928 - Horace Ward Martin Tavares Silver is born in Norwalk,
Connecticut. He will become a jazz pianist, bandleader,
and composer who will initially lead the Jazz Messengers
with drummer Art Blakey before forming his own band in
1956. A pioneer of the hard bop style, he will attract
to his band the talents of Art Farmer, Donald Byrd, and
Blue Mitchell, among others.

1945 - The end of World War II (V-J Day). A total of 1,154,720
African Americans have been inducted or drafted into the
armed forces. Official records list 7,768 African
American commissioned officers on August 31, 1945. At
the height of the conflict, 3,902 African American women
(115 officers) were enrolled in the Women's Army
Auxiliary Corps (WACS) and 68 were in the Navy auxiliary,
the WAVES. The highest ranking African American women
were Major Harriet M. West and Major Charity E. Adams.
Distinguished Unit Citations were awarded to the 969th
Field Artillery Battalion, the 614th Tank Destroyer
Battalion, and the 332nd Fighter Group (Tuskegee Airmen).

1946 - William Everett "Billy" Preston is born in Houston, Texas.
He will become a musician songwriter and singer. His hits
will include "Will It Go Round in Circles", "Nothing from
Nothing", "Outa-Space", "Get Back" (with The Beatles),
and "With You I'm Born Again"(with Syreeta). He also will
appear in film: "St. Louis Blues" and play with Little
Richard's Band. He will collaborate with some of the
greatest names in the music industry, including the
Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Little Richard, Ray Charles,
George Harrison, Elton John, Eric Clapton, Bob Dylan, Sam
Cooke, King Curtis, Sammy Davis Jr., Sly Stone, Aretha
Franklin, the Jackson 5, Quincy Jones, Richie Sambora,
and the Red Hot Chili Peppers. He will play the electric
piano on the Get Back sessions in 1969 and is one of
several people sometimes credited as the "Fifth Beatle".
He is one of only two non-Beatles to receive label
performance credit on any Beatles record. He will join
the ancestors on June 6, 2006 in Scottsdale, Arizona.

1956 - The Tennessee National Guard is sent to Clinton, Tennessee,
to quell white mobs demonstrating against school
integration.

1963 - Alabama Governor George Wallace blocks the integration of
Tuskegee High School in Tuskegee, Alabama.

1975 - Joseph W. Hatchett sworn in as first African American
state supreme court justice in the South (Florida) in
the twentieth century.

1989 - Rev. Al Sharpton leads a civil rights march through the
Bensonhurst section of Brooklyn, New York. This march is
protesting the killing of Yusuf K. Hawkins, a Black youth
slain there by a white mob.

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 in Washington, DC. He will graduate
as valedictorian from Amherst College and be elected to
the Phi Beta Kappa honor society in 1915. He will return
to DC to teach at Howard University. During World War I,
He will join the then racially segregated U. S. Army as an
officer and be sent to France. He will return to the U.S.
in 1919, and begin attending Harvard Law School. He will
become a member of the Harvard Law Review and graduate cum
laude. He will become known as "The Man Who Killed Jim
Crow," playing a role in nearly every civil rights case
before the Supreme Court between 1930 and Brown v. Board of
Education (1954). Houston's plan to attack and defeat Jim
Crow segregation by demonstrating the inequality in the
"separate but equal" doctrine from the Supreme Court's
Plessy v. Ferguson decision as it pertained to public
education in the United States was the master stroke that
brought about the landmark Brown decision. As the NAACP
Litigation Director, he trained future Supreme Court
Justice Thurgood Marshall. He will join the ancestors on
April 22, 1950.

1910 - Dorothy Leigh Mainor (later Maynor) is born in Norfolk,
Virginia. She will become a reknown 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 their 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.

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.

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1781 - California's second pueblo near San Gabriel, Nuestra Senora
la Reina de Los Angeles de Porciuncula (Los Angeles,
California) is founded by forty-four settlers, of whom at
least twenty-six were descendants of Africans. Among the
settlers of African descent, according to H.H. Bancroft's
authoritative "History of California," were "Joseph Moreno,
Mulatto, 22 years old, wife a Mulattress, five children;
Manuel Cameron, Mulatto, 30 years old, wife Mulattress;
Antonio Mesa, Negro, 38 years old, wife Mulattress, six
children; Jose Antonio Navarro, Mestizo, 42 years old,
wife, Mulattress, three children; Basil Rosas, Indian, 68
years old, wife, Mulattress, six children."

1848 - Louis H. Latimer is born in Chelsea, Massachusetts. A one-
time draftsman and preparer of patents for Alexander
Graham Bell, he will later join the United States Electric
Company, where he will patent a carbon filament for the
incandescent lamp. When he joins the ancestors on December
11, 1928, he will be eulogized by his co-workers as a
valuable member of the "Edison Pioneers," a group of men
and women who advanced electrical light usage in the
United States.

1865 - Bowie State College (now University) is established in
Bowie, Maryland.

1875 - The Clinton Massacre occurs in Clinton, Mississippi. Twenty
to thirty African Americans are killed over a two-day
period.

1908 - Richard Wright, who will become the author of the best-
selling "Native Son," "Uncle Tom's Children," and "Black
Boy," is born near Natchez, Mississippi. Wright will be
among the first African American writers to protest white
treatment of African Americans. He will join the ancestors
on November 28, 1960.

1942 - Merald 'Bubba' Knight is born in Atlanta, Georgia. He will
become a singer with his sister Gladys Knight as part of
her background group, The Pips. They will record many
songs including "Midnight Train to Georgia," "Best Thing
That Ever Happened to Me," "I Heard It Through the
Grapevine," "Every Beat of My Heart," "Letter Full of
Tears," and "The Way We Were/Try to Remember" medley.

1953 - Lawrence-Hilton Jacobs is born in New York City. He will
become an actor and will star in "Alien Nation,"
"Rituals," "Roots," "Welcome Back, Kotter," "Quiet Fire,"
"L.A. Heat," and "L.A. Vice."

1957 - The governor of Arkansas, Orval Faubus, calls out the
National Guard to stop nine African American students
from entering Central High School in Little Rock,
Arkansas. Three weeks later, President Dwight Eisenhower
sends a force of 1,000 U.S. Army paratroopers (The 101st
Airborne) to Little Rock to guarantee the peaceful
desegregation of the public school.

1960 - Damon Kyle Wayans is born in New York City, New york. He
will become an actor/comedian and will star in "In Living
Color," "Major Payne," "Blankman," "Celtic Pride,"
"The Great White Hype" and many others.

First off shouts out to Supreme Understanding author of all those books you know and love put out by Supreme Design Publishing, today was his born day.

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, Spain. 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.