November 26

Sarah Moore Grimké (November 26, 1792 – December 23, 1873) was born into a slaveholding family in Charleston, South Carolina, where she defied state slave code and taught her maid, Hetty, to read at night. She accompanied her father to Philadelphia and stayed after his death, joining the Quaker faith and sending for her sister, Angelina. The women became active in the American Anti-Slavery Society, lecturing on abolition and women's rights. Sarah continued the speaking appearances after Angelina's marriage to Rev. Theodore Weld. In 1836, Sarah published Epistle to the Clergy of the Southern States. In 1837, Letters on the Equality of the Sexes and the Condition of Women was published serially in a Massachusetts newspaper, The Spectator, and immediately reprinted by William Lloyd Garrison in The Liberator. The letters were published in book form in 1838. It was Sarah who discovered the existence of their brother's mixed-race family, and the sisters provided for the education of their nephews,  Archibald Grimké and Francis James Grimké.

Birthdays

Marshall Walter "Major" Taylor (November 26, 1878 – June 21, 1932) won the world one-mile track cycling championship, becoming the first African American athlete to achieve the level of world champion and only the second black man to win a world championship, after Canadian boxer George Dixon. In 1896, he had moved from Indianapolis to Worcester, Mass., then a center of the United States bicycle industry with half a dozen factories and 30 bicycle shops, to work as a bicycle mechanic in the Worcester Cycle Manufacturing Company factory, owned by Louis D. "Birdie" Munger where he raced for Munger's team.

Rudolph Dunbar (November 26, 1907 - June 10, 1988) was a Guyanese conductor, clarinetist, and composer, as well as being a jazz musician of note in the 1920s. Leaving British Guiana at the age of 20, he had settled in England by 1931, and subsequently worked in other parts of Europe but lived most of his later years in London. Among numerous "firsts", he was the first black man to conduct the London Philharmonic Orchestra (1942), the first black man to conduct the Berlin Philharmonic (1945) and the first black man to conduct orchestras in Poland (1959) and Russia (1964). He also worked as a journalist and a war correspondent.

Tina Turner (born Anna Mae Bullock, November 26, 1939) began her musical career in the mid-1950s as a featured singer with Ike Turner's Kings of Rhythm and later as a member of the Ike & Tina Turner Revue with hits including "A Fool in Love", "River Deep – Mountain High" (1966), "Proud Mary" (1971) and "Nutbush City Limits" (1973), a song which she herself wrote. After a tumultuous divorce in 1978 she established a successful solo career, with her 1984 album Private Dancer becoming a worldwide success. "What's Love Got to Do with It", the lead single, won three Grammy Awards including Record of the Year.

Arthur Lee (Art) Shell, Jr. (born November 26, 1946) is a former collegiate and professional football player in the American Football League and later in the NFL, a Hall of Fame offensive tackle, and a two-time former head coach of the Oakland Raiders. He is the second-ever African American head coach in the history of professional football, and the first in the sport's modern era.

Events

On November 26, 1883, Sojourner Truth, Civil War heroine, women’s rights advocate, poet, freedom fighter, and abolitionist, died in Battle Creek, Michigan on this date  at the age of 86. Born a slave in Hurley, NY, she acquired her freedom when slavery was outlawed there in 1827. In June of 1843, she changed her name from Isabella to Sojourner Truth and became a prominent anti-slavery speaker and an advocate for women’s suffrage. During the Civil War, she helped care for wounded soldiers and newly emancipated slaves. In an audience with President Abraham Lincoln, she urged him to call to arms the free Blacks of the North to fight for the Union. After that was done, she urged the freedmen to develop land ownership and to obtain an education. She also advocated rehabilitating former slaves on public lands.

On November 26, 1895, the National Negro Medical Association (NNMA) was founded. Consisting of three major Black medical professions, they were originally called the National Negro Medical Association of Physicians, Dentists and Pharmacists. At the turn of the 20th century they became the National Medical Association, The NMA’s manifesto was written by C. V. Roman and adopted in 1908.

Photo Gallery

PFC Frank Williams, Combat Engineer, 173rd ENGR BN, 173rd ABN BDE, plays his harmonica during a lull in the operations at Dak To, 26 November 1967. U. S. Army photograph, National Archives.

On November 26, 1970 Charles Gordone was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for his play, “No Place To Be Somebody.”

NOVEMBER 26: U.S. President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama watch the Oregon State Beavers play the Towson Tigers at the Towson Center on November 26, 2011 in Baltimore, Maryland. The first lady's brother, Craig Robinson, is head coach of the Oregon State team.

Ferguson Protest Held Outside US Embassy In London - 26 November 2014 . Demonstrators gathered outside the US Embassy in London before marching to condemn the decision not to prosecute a police officer for shooting dead black teenager Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. 

Publications

Quick Magazine, November 26, 1951 issue, Lena Horne cover

Jet Magazine Cover -- November 26 1953 -- Eloise McCallum

The Life of Langston Hughes: Volume I: 1902-1941, I, Too, Sing America (Life of Langston Hughes, 1902-1941) by Arnold Rampersad. $20.80. 521 pages. Author: Arnold Rampersad. Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA; 2 edition (November 26, 2001)

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