November in Black History

Each month we'll list daily black history notes for the month.  Here's what happened in November in Black History.

On November 30 in Black History...
In 1912 Gordon Parks was born.

In 1924 Shirley Chisolm was born.   Politician, educator, author and congresswoman, representing New York's 12th Congressional District for seven terms from 1969 to 1983. In 1968, she became the first black woman elected to Congress. On January 25, 1972, she became the first major-party black candidate for President of the United States and the first woman to run for the Democratic presidential nomination (Margaret Chase Smith had previously run for the Republican presidential nomination) She received 152 first-ballot votes at the 1972 Democratic National Convention. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shirley_Chisholm

On November 29 in Black History...
In 1919, Dancer Pearl Primus is born.
In 1908, Civil Rights Activist, Adam Clayton Powell is born.

On November 28 in Black History...
In 1929 Berry Gordy is born.

On November 21 in Black History...
In 1851, Shaw University was founded.

On November 15 in Black History...
In 1979, Rosa Parks was awarded the Spingarn medal.

On November 12 in Black History...
In 1941, Opera singer, Madame Lillian Evanti, founds the National Negro Opera Company.In 1968, Sammy Sosa was born.
In 1977, Alex Haley was awarded the Spiingarn medal.

On November 6 in Black History...
In 1901, actress and singer Juanita Hall was born in Keyport, New Jersey.
In 1900, James Weldon Johnson and J. Rosamond Johnson composed "Lift Ev'ry Voice and Sing."
In 1746, Absalom Jones was born.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absalom_Jones


On November 3 in Black History...
In 1949, boxer Larry Holmes was born.
In 1992, Carol Mosely Braun, became the 1st African American woman elected to the United States Senate.
In 1964, A.W. Willis, Jr., was elected to the General Assembly making him the first black to hold this position.
In 1896, Hunter, J. H Portable Weighing Scales Nov. 03, 1896 Patent No. 570,533

On November 2 in Black History...
In 1983, the third Monday in January was designated as Martin Luther King, Jr. day.  It was signed into law by President Ronald Reagan.
In 1903, Maggie walker opens the St. Luke Penny Savings Bank in Richmond,  VA.
In 1992, Carol Mosely Braun, became the 1st African American woman elected to the United States Senate.

On November 1 in Black History...
In 1951, Jet magazine was founded.
In 1945 Ebony magazine was founded.
In 1910, the first issue of "Crisis", the NAACP monthly magazine was published by WEB DuBois.
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Check out these sites are where I get many of the daily black history info: http://www.blackfacts.com/ http://www.dayinblackhistory.com/
http://www.wikipedia.org

A Filmmaker is Born

On this day in Black History...

In 1912, filmmaker Gordon Parks was born. Parks was a photographer, musician, poet, novelist, journalist, activist and film director. He is best remembered for his photo essays for Life magazine and as the director of the 1971 film Shaft.

He was the first African American to work at Life magazine, and the first to write, direct, and score a Hollywood film. He was profiled in the 1967 documentary "Weapons of Gordon Parks" by American filmmaker Warren Forma.

Parks was a co-founder of Essence magazine and one of the early contributors to the blaxploitation genre.

Parks himself said that freedom was the theme of all of his work, Not allowing anyone to set boundaries, cutting loose the imagination and then making the new horizons.

Parks' son, Gordon Parks, Jr. (1934–1979), directed blaxploitation films, including Super Fly.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordon_Parks

October in Black History

Each month we'll list daily black history notes for the month.  Here's what happened in October in Black History.


On October 31 in Black History...
In 1945, Educator, Booker T Washington was inducted into the Hall of Fame for Great Americans.
In 1899, W.F. Burr patented the railway-switching device, Patent # 636,197
In 1893, football player, William Henry Lewis was named All-American.

In 1896, actor and singer, Ethel Waters was born in Chester, Pennsylvania.  Waters was a blues, jazz and gospel vocalist and actress. She frequently performed jazz, big band, and pop music, on the Broadway stage and in concerts, although she began her career in the 1920s singing blues.
Her best-known recordings includes, "Dinah", "Birmingham Bertha", "Stormy Weather", "Hottentot Potentate", "Am I Blue?", and "Cabin in the Sky", as well as her version of the spiritual "His Eye Is on the Sparrow". Waters was the second African American to be nominated for an Academy Award.
Her recordings, "Am I Blue", "Stormy Weather" and "Dinah", were inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame, which is a special Grammy award established in 1973 to honor recordings that are at least twenty-five yrs old, and that have "qualitative or historical significance."

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethel_Waters


On October 27 in Black History...
In 1924, Ruby Dee was born, Ruby Ann Wallace in Cleveland, Ohio. http://experiencinghistory.blogspot.com/2011/10/happy-birthday-ruby-dee.html

On October 25 in Black History...

In 1892, L.F. Brown patented the bridle bit.  1892 Patent No. 484,994

In 1925, biochemist Emmett W. Chappelle was born. From 1950 to 1955 Chapelle served as an instructor of biochemistry at Meharry Medical College in Nashville, Tennessee. From 1955 to 1959, he was a research associate at Stanford University.

In 1958 Chappelle joined the Research Institute in Baltimore, a division of the Martin Marietta Corporation which was famous for designing airplanes and spacecraft. There, Chappelle discovered that even one-celled plants such as algae, which are lightweight and can be transported easily, can convert carbon dioxide to oxygen. This discovery helped to create a safe food supply for astronauts.

Chappelle went to work at Hazelton Laboratories in 1963 as a biochemist. In 1966, he joined the National Aeronautics and Space Administration at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, as a research chemist, and later became a remote sensing scientist, studying natural systems to improve environmental management. Chappelle retired from NASA in 2001. . Some of Chappelle's most interesting work was in the area of luminescence, which is light without heat. While designing instruments for the Mars Viking spacecraft, he became interested in bioluminescence, which is warm light produced by living organisms. Chappelle used two chemicals from fireflies which give off light when mixed with ATP (adenosine triphosphate), an energy storage compound found in all living cells. This could provide a method of detecting life on Mars.

Chappelle proved that the number of bacteria in semen can be measured by the amount of light given off by that bacteria. He also showed how satellites can monitor luminescence levels to monitor crops (growth rates, water conditions and harvest timing).  Chappelle has been honored as one of the 100 most distinguished African American scientists of the 20th Century.

On October 24 in Black History...
In 1994, Dorothy Porter Wesley was presented with the Charles Frankel Award from the National Endowment for the Humanities
In 1948,  - Activist Kweisi Mfume was born.  In 1996 Mfume became president of the NAACP.
In 1935, "Mulatto", the first Black-authored (Langston Hughes) play to become a long-run Broadway hit, opens.  http://experiencinghistory.blogspot.com/p/today-in-black-history.html
In 1964, Zambia proclaimed independence.  The territory of what is now Zambia was known as Northern Rhodesia from 1911. It was renamed to Zambia on the occasion of its independence, in 1964. The new name of Zambia was derived from the Zambezi river (Zambezi may mean "God's river") which flows through the western region of the country.
Zambia ( /ˈzæmbiə/), officially the Republic of Zambia, is a landlocked country in Southern Africa. The neighbouring countries are the Democratic Republic of the Congo to the north,Tanzania to the north-east, Malawi to the east, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Botswana and Namibia to the south, and Angola to the west. The capital city is Lusaka, located in the south-central part of the country. The population is concentrated mainly around the capital Lusaka in the south and the Copperbelt to the northwest.

Originally inhabited by Khoisan peoples, the region of what is now Zambia was reached by the Bantu expansion by ca. the 12th century. After visits by European explorers starting in the 18th century, Zambia became the British colony of Northern Rhodesia towards the end of the nineteenth century. For most of the colonial period, the country was governed by an administration appointed from London with the advice of the British South Africa Company.
On 24 October 1964, the country declared independence from the United Kingdom and prime minister Kenneth Kaunda became the first head of state. Zambia was governed by Kenneth Kaunda of the socialist United National Independence Party (UNIP) from 1964 until 1991. From 1972 to 1991 Zambia was a one-party state with UNIP the sole legal political party. From 1991 to 2002, Zambia was governed by president Frederick Chiluba of the social-democraticMovement for Multi-Party Democracy during which the country saw a rise in social-economic growth and increased decentralisation of government. Levy Mwanawasa was the third President of Zambia. He presided over the country from January 2002 until his death in August 2008. He is credited with having initiated a campaign to rid the country of corruption, and increasing standards of living from the levels left by Frederick T.J. Chiluba.
The World Bank in 2010 named Zambia as one of the world's fastest economically reforming countries. The headquarters of COMESA are in the capital Lusaka.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zambia


On October 23 in Black History...

Pele

In 1940, Edison "Edson" Arantes do Nascimento, best known by his nickname Pelé was born in Três Corações, Minas Gerais, Brazil,. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest players of all time. In 1999, he was voted as the Football Player of the Century by the IFFHS International Federation of Football History and Statistics. In the same year French weekly magazine France-Football consulted their former "Ballon D'Or" winners to elect the Football Player of the Century. Pelé came in first position. In 1999 the International Olympic Committee named Pelé the "Athlete of the Century". In his career he scored 760 official goals, 541 in league championships, making him the top scorer of all time. In total Pelé scored 1281 goals in 1363 games.

In his native Brazil, Pelé is hailed as a national hero.He is known for his accomplishments and contributions to the game of football. He is also acknowledged for his vocal support of policies to improve the social conditions of the poor (when he scored his 1,000th goal he dedicated it to the poor children of Brazil). During his career, he became known as "The King of Football" (O Rei do Futebol), "The King Pelé" (O Rei Pelé) or simply "The King" (O Rei).

Spotted by football star Waldemar de Brito, Pelé began playing for Santos at 15 and his national team at 16, and won his first World Cup at 17. Despite numerous offers from European clubs, the economic conditions and Brazilian football regulations at the time benefited Santos, thus enabling them to keep Pelé for almost two decades until 1974. With Pelé within their ranks, Santos reach their zenith by winning the 1962 and 1963 Copa Libertadores, the most prestigious club competition in South American football. Pelé played most of his career as a centre forward. Pelé's technique and natural athleticism have been universally praised and during his playing years he was renowned for his excellent dribbling and passing, his pace, powerful shot, exceptional heading ability, and prolific goalscoring.Since his retirement in 1977, Pelé has been a worldwide ambassador for football and has undertaken various acting roles and commercial ventures. He is currently the Honorary President of the New York Cosmos. He is the all-time leading scorer of the Brazil national football team and is the only footballer to be a part of three World Cup-winning squads.

On October 15 in Black History...
In 1984, Bishop Desmond Tutu, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.


On October 6 in Black History...
In 1895, W.D. Davis patented an improved riding saddle.

In 1917, Fannie Lou Hamer was born. Hamer was an American voting rights activist and civil rights leader.
She was instrumental in organizing Mississippi Freedom Summer for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), and later became the Vice-Chair of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, attending the 1964 Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City, New Jersey, in that capacity. Her plain-spoken manner and fervent belief in the Biblical righteousness of her cause gained her a reputation as an electrifying speaker and constant activist of civil

On October 3 in Black History...

In 1956, Nat King Cole became the first black performer (of his star power, that is) to host his own tv show. "For 13 months, I was the Jackie Robinson of television," wrote Nat King Cole in a revealing 1958 article for Ebony magazine. "After a trail-blazing year that shattered all the old bug-a-boos about Negroes on TV, I found myself standing there with the bat on my shoulder. The men who dictate what Americans see and hear didn't want to play ball."  Black hosts had been tried before. Hazel Scott (in 1950) and Billy Daniels (in 1952) had each starred in a short-lived and variety show.  http://www.classictvinfo.com/TheNatKingColeShow/
In 1949 - WERD, the first Black-owned radio station, opened in Atlanta. Jesse B. Blayton, Sr., was a pioneer African American radio station entrepreneur. Blayton founded WERD-AM in Atlanta, Georgia on October 3, 1949 making him the first African American to own and operate a radio station in the United States.  http://neosoulcafe.com/news/african-american-first-first-black-owned-radio-station-werd-am-in-atlanta-ga/
In 1941 - Chubby Checker, singer, was born as Ernest Evans, in Philadelphia. Checker was best known for "The Twist" a hit song that soon became a style of dance.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chubby_Checker

On October 2 in Black History...

Justice Thurgood Marshall

In 1967, Thurgood Marshall was sworn in, and becomes the first Black Supreme Court Justice.
In 1942, Bernice Johnson Reagon was born in Albany, Georgia. She became a vocalist, composer and historian. As an historian, she founded "Sweet Honey in the Rock."
In 1937, Johnny L. Cochran, Jr. was born in Shreveport, Louisiana.
In 1935, Robert H. Lawrence, Jr., was born. He became an astronaut and pilot. He was the first African American selected for space travel.
In 1898 - Otis J. Rene was born.  Otis and his brother Leon established Exclusive and Excelsior Records in the 1930's. By the mid-1940's the brothers will be leading independent record producers whose artists will include Nat "King" Cole, Herb Jeffries, and Johnny Otis.
In 1865, North Carolina amends constitution forbidding slavery.
In 1800, Nat Turner, leader of major slave rebellion, born in Southampton County, Virginia.

On October 1 in Black History...

In 1952, Juanita James was born. She is a writer, who has been coined, "the gatekeeper of prose."
In 1960 - Nigeria was proclaimed independent
In 1962 - James Meredith started school, the first Black student at University of Mississippi... after 3000 federal troops quelled riots over his admission.

In 1991, Dr. Mary Schmidt Campbell, art historian, becomes dean of New York University's Tisch School of the Arts.
In 1966 - Black Panther party founded in Oakland, California by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale.

Check out these sites are where I get many of the daily black history info: http://www.blackfacts.com/ http://www.dayinblackhistory.com/
http://www.wikipedia.org

Happy Birthday Ruby Dee!

"The kind of beauty I want most is the hard-to-get kind that comes from within - strength, courage, dignity."

Ruby Dee

On October 27 in Black History...

In 1924, Ruby Dee was born, Ruby Ann Wallace in Cleveland, Ohio. Dee, actress, poet, playwright, screenwriter,journalist, and activist, is perhaps best known for co-starring in the film A Raisin in the Sun (1961) and the film American Gangster (2007) for which she was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress.

Dee's love of English and poetry motivated her to study the arts. She attended Hunter High School, one of New York's first-rate schools that drew the brightest girls. While in high school, Dee decided to pursue acting.  After graduation Dee entered Hunter College. There she joined the American Negro Theater (ANT) and adopted the stage name Ruby Dee. While still at Hunter College, Dee took a class in radio training offered through the American Theater Wing. This training led to a part in the radio serial Nora Drake. After college Dee worked as a French and Spanish translator. She knew, however, that the theater was to be her destiny.

In 1946 Dee got her first Broadway role in Jeb, a drama about a returning African American war hero. There she met Ossie Davis, the actor in the title role. They became close friends and were married on December 9, 1948.  Dee made several appearances on Broadway before receiving national recognition for her role in the 1950 film The Jackie Robinson Story. Her career in acting has crossed all major forms of media over a span of eight decades, including the films A Raisin in the Sun, in which she recreated her stage role as a suffering housewife in the projects, and Edge of the City. She played both roles opposite Sidney Poitier. During the 1960s, Dee appeared in such politically charged films as Gone Are the Days and The Incident, which is recognized as helping pave the way for young African-American actors and filmmakers.

In 2007 the winner of the Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album was tied between Dee and Ossie Davis for With Ossie And Ruby: In This Life Together, and former President Jimmy Carter. In 2003, Ruby Dee also narrated a series of WPA slave narratives in the HBO film Unchained Memories, according to IMDB. She was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress in 2007 for her portrayal of Mama Lucas in American Gangster. She won the SAG award for the same performance.   Dee was also inducted into the Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame and the Theatre Hall of Fame.

"God, make me so uncomfortable that I will do the very thing I fear."  
Ruby Dee

In 1953 she became well known for denouncing the government's decision to execute Julius and Ethel Rosenberg for wartime spying. This experience helped Dee realize that racism and discrimination (treating people differently based on race, gender, or nationality) were not exclusively black experiences. Dee and Davis were involved in and supported several other civil rights protests and causes, including Martin Luther King Jr.'s 1963 March on Washington.

Ruby and her husband, Ossie Davis collaborated on several projects designed to promote black heritage in general and other black artists in particular. In 1974, they produced The Ruby Dee/Ossie Davis Story Hour for the National Black Network. In 1981, they produced the series With Ossie and Ruby for the Public Broadcasting System (PBS). Dee found this work particularly satisfying because she got to travel the country talking to authors and others who could put the black experience in perspective. She believes that the series made black people look at themselves outside of the problems of racism. 

In 1970 the National Urban League honored them with the Frederick Douglass Award for distinguished leadership toward equal opportunity. In 1999 Dee and Davis were arrested for protesting the fatal shooting of an unarmed West African immigrant, Amadou Diallo, by white police officers of the New York City Police Department.

With over 50 years of collaborative works with her husband, the never-acquiescent civil rights activist has shown her willingness to work for the benefit of others. From her arrest during the Amadou Diallo protest to celebrating her wedding anniversary by raising funds for small playhouse theaters, her battle for equal rights has clearly not reached its end.



http://www.ossieandruby.com/index.html

http://www.visionaryproject.org/deeruby/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruby_Dee

http://experiencinghistory.blogspot.com/2011/03/raisin-in-sun-hits-broadway.html
http://www.notablebiographies.com/De-Du/Dee-Ruby.html

Langston Hughes' "Mulatto" Hits Broadway!

On October 24 in Black History...

In 1935, "Mulatto", the first Black-authored (Langston Hughes) play to become a long-run Broadway hit, opens.

Written during the summer of 1930, Mulatto is Langston Hughes's first full-length play. It appears to have come to him quickly; its painful and melodramatic depictions of father-son conflict, the power of class and whiteness, the legacy of slavery, and the vicious oppression of African Americans in the South were all preoccupations taken up in his earlier work. Many commentators have noted Hughes's personal investment in his narratives of father-son conflict, and the metaphorical relation of miscegenated family and nation.

The play also seeks to correct the dramatic representation of lynching in such plays as the 1927 Pulitzer Prize-winning In Abraham's Bosom, by Paul Green, in which lynching is the inevitable and unchallenged-although not thereby justified-fate of Abe McCranie, the impetuous and irascible central character. The plots of the two works are similar in many ways, but in Hughes's play the black characters are articulate, rational, and courageous. Not usually understood as an antilynching play, Mulatto is set in Georgia and was written in a year when that state led the nation in lynchings. Cora's accusations that the Colonel is in themob seeking the son who murdered him speak eloquently to the horrifying internecine dimensions of Southern brutality. (In 1961, Hughes wrote regarding some revisions his editor, Webster Smalley, had proposed: "Mulatto might be left timeless, since they still behave like that in the backwoods of Georgia. In the big towns, of course, individual sitins like Bert's have grown to mass-sit-ins. Otherwise, no difference.")

Opening on October 24, 1935, at the Vanderbilt Theatre, Mulatto ran on Broadway for more than a year and toured for two seasons. The Broadway Mulatto was, however, greatly altered by the producer, Martin Jones, who sensationalized an already shocking story. Among other changes, in his version Sallie misses the train and is raped by Talbot in the final scene. No text for the Broadway Mulatto has surfaced.

The version of Mulatto printed here is dated by Hughes's covering remarks as 1942, although the copyright is given as 1932. The cover sheet reads: "from the short story 'Father and Son' in The Ways of White Folks. Original first version of 'Mulatto,' written at Hedgerow Theatre, Maryland Rose Valley, in which no girl is raped. That was added by Mr. Martin Jones for the Broadway production. Langston Hughes, Dec. 28, 1942." On the title page he adds, "This play might also be called 'The Colonel's Son.'" The comment about the short story is puzzling because "Father and Son" was most certainly written later than the play; however, Hughes did, at one point, recommend the short story to Martin Jones, to give him a better sense of the play. The manuscript is actually a photocopy of a typescript on which Hughes pasted minor revisions. The photocopy on which the changes are made is dated 1945 by the Beinecke Library. Internal evidence places the original as having been written between 1934 and 1938. This version differs from the version published in Five Plays by Langston Hughes in several ways, most notably in the last lines of the final scene. It is this version, probably minus the changes on this photocopy, that was the basis for several of the play's translations.
http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Plays-to-1942/Langston-Hughes/e/9780826213693

James Mercer Langston Hughes was an American poet, social activist, novelist, playwright, and columnist. He was one of the earliest innovators of the then-new literary art form jazz poetry. Hughes is best known for his work during the Harlem Renaissance.