October 27

Ruby Dee (October 27, 1924 - June 11, 2014) is perhaps best know for her roles as Ruth Younger in the film A Raisin in the Sun (1961) and as Mahalee Lucas in American Gangster (2007), for which she was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. She has won a Grammy, Emmy, Obie, Drama Desk, Screen Actors Guild Award, Screen Actors Guild Lifetime Achievement Award, and is a recipient of the National Medal of Arts. She and her husband, Ossie Davis, whom she married in 1948, were long-time civil rights and political activists. After her death, she was cremated, and her ashes are held in the same urn as that of Davis, with the inscription "In this thing together".

Birthdays

Dr. Charles H. Garvin (October 27, 1890 - July 17, 1968) was a Howard Medical School graduate (1915) and the first African American physician commissioned during World War I, serving in France as commander of the 92nd Division. He spent his entire career in Cleveland where he founded the Dunbar Life Insurance Company and was active in NAACP and National Urban League. Dr. Garvin's interest in medicine extended beyond his practice to research and writing, especially tracing the history of Africans and African Americans in medicine, completed an unpublished manuscript on the topic. He was also the fourth National President of Alpha Phi Alpha.

Oliver Tambo (October 27, 1917 - April 24, 1993) was a South African anti-apartheid politician and a central figure in the African National Congress (ANC). Tambo, along with Mandela and Walter Sisulu, was a founding member of the ANC Youth League in 1943, becoming its first National Secretary. The Youth League advocated more confrontational tactics against apartheid, such as boycotts, civil disobedience, strikes and non-collaboration, than did the ANC's older membership. In 1955, Tambo became Secretary General of the ANC after Walter Sisulu was banned by the South African government under the Suppression of Communism Act. In 1967 he became Acting President of the ANC after the death of Albert Lutuli, and served as President until 1991.
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Anna Langford (October 27, 1917 – September 17, 2008) worked as a typist in several government offices for 18 years while attending John Marshall Law School part-time. She received her J.D. degree in February 1956 and began an extensive career as a civil rights and criminal lawyer. She practiced law throughout the State of Illinois, defended civil rights workers in the 1960s and joined Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Chicago civil rights marches.   Langford became the first African American woman elected to the Chicago City Council in 1971.  She ultimately served three nonconsecutive terms on the council.

Elijah "Pumpsie" Green (born October 27, 1933) was the first African American to play for the Boston Red Sox, the last major league team to integrate. He was used mostly as a pinch runner or day-off replacement for infielders Pete Runnels and Don Buddin and made his debut on July 21, 1959, pinch-running in a 2-1 loss against the White Sox. He was later traded to the Mets, and after retiring from baseball in 1965 he coached and taught math in Berkeley, California. Mr. Green now lives in El Cerrito, California.He is the older brother of Cornell Green, who was a defensive back for the Dallas Cowboys from 1962 to 1974.

Jayne Kennedy (October 27, 1951) won national acclaim as one of the first women to infiltrate the male-dominated world of sports announcing with a place on The NFL Today. She went on to be the only female to ever host the syndicated TV series Greatest Sports Legends. She received an Emmy Award for her coverage of the Rose Parade and was nominated for an Emmy for her coverage of the news feature on soldiers on the DMZ in South Korea for NBC’s Speak Up America in 1980. As an actress she won a 1982 NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Actress in a Motion Picture award for her performance as Julie Winters in the 1981 film Body and Soul co-starring alongside her then–husband Leon Isaac Kennedy.

Events

On October 27, 1951, The National Negro Labor Council was formed in Cincinnati, Ohio. Delegates from around the country gathered to denounce racial discrimination in the workplace, segregation, and the slow pace at which the labor movement as a whole addressed these problems. The NNLC was branded a communist front by the U.S. Attorney General, investigated by the House Un-American Activities Committee, and dissolved in 1956 under mounting legal defense costs.


Photo Gallery

On October 27, 1891, the street letter drop mailbox with a hinged door that
closed to protect the mail was patented by Philip B. Downing.  (US Patent # 462,096).

Group photograph of African American school teacher with her
 students in front of their school building, 27 October 1904.

Dr. Martin Luther King is given a welcome home kiss by his wife Coretta, upon his return to Atlanta
 following his release from Reidsville State Prison on bond, on October 27, 1960. King's children,
Yolanda, 5, and Martin Luther III, 3, join the welcome celebration. (AP Photo) / Beaumont

October 27, 2010 James Wall passed away at age 92. He was a former vaudevillian who played Captain
Kangaroo’s neighbor “Mr. Baxter” on the children’s show and was a longtime stage manager for CBS News.

On October 27, 2012, Dr. John Carlos was inducted in the Texas A&M-Commerce
 Hall of Fame (formerly East Texas State University)

U.S. President Barack Obama talks with his daughter Malia Obama (L) as they
 walk from St John's Church to the White House after service October 27, 2013.

Publications

Floyd Patterson - Say Magazine October 27, 1955

Emmett Till Case - Jackson Mississippi Paper "Reports" Emmett Till's
Father Was Executed for Rape - Jet Magazine, October 27, 1955

October 27, 1986 - Newsweek Magazine: "A Day in The Life of America" - KKK Grandmother in Georgia.

Malcolm X, African American Revolutionary by Dennis D. Wainstock.
$35.00. Publisher: McFarland (October 27, 2008).

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