September 5

Larry Neal (September 5, 1937 - January 6, 1981) was an essayist, poet and playwright. He was a leader of the 1960's Black Arts Movement, and with Amiri Baraka founded the Black Arts Repertory Theater and School. He taught at CUNY, Howard and Yale. His poetry appeared in two volumes, Black Boogaloo (1969) which addressed the African roots of the Black Arts Movement, and Hoodoo Hollerin Bebop Ghosts (1971) concentrating on the experience of the American South.




Birthdays

John Wesley Cromwell (September 5, 1846 - April 14, 1927) was a civil servant, attorney (Howard Law School 1873), teacher and principal in the Washington DC schools, and historian. He was a founder of the National Colored Press Association and the prestigious American Negro Academy. His 1914 book The Negro in American History influenced Carter G. Woodson to found the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History, and Cromwell was a regular contributor to its journal.

Albert "Sunnyland Slim" Luandrew (September 5, 1906 – March 17, 1995) developed his piano style as a child from listening to the earliest Mississippi Delta bluesmen. He moved to Memphis at the age of 18 where he acquired his stage name from the song "Sunnyland Train", about a railroad line between Memphis and St. Louis, Missouri. Relocating to Chicago in 1942 he performed with such legends as Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf. He also played piano with Canned Heat on the track "Turpentine Moan" from their album Boogie with Canned Heat.

Historical novelist Frank Yerby (September 5, 1916 - November 29, 1981) was the first African American to have a best-selling novel, to have a book purchased by a Hollywood studio to be made into a Movie (The Foxes of Harrow), and to become a millionaire through his writing. He left the United States in 1955 because of racial discrimination and lived in Spain the rest of his life.

Bruce Davidson (born September 5, 1933) is an American photographer best known for his photographs of the civil rights movement. He has been a member of the Magnum Photos agency since 1958 and is best known for his 1961-1965 photographs of the Civil Rights Movement. In support of his project, Davidson received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1962, and the project was displayed at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. He was awarded the first NEA grant for photography for his work in Harlem, published as East 100th Street (1970).

A New York City Diner by Bruce Davidson, 1962

Selma March by Bruce Davidson, 1965

Claudette Colvin (born September 5, 1939) is a pioneer of the African-American civil rights movement. In 1955, she was the first person arrested for resisting bus segregation in Montgomery, Alabama, preceding the better known Rosa Parks incident by nine months. Montgomery's black leaders did not publicize Colvin's effort for long because she was a teenager and became an unmarried mother. Given the social norms of the time, the NAACP leaders worried about using her to represent their movement.

Joe "Speedo" Frazier (September 5, 1946 - April 1, 2014) was lead singer for The Impalas, a Brooklyn doo-wop group best known for their 1958 hit, "Sorry (I Ran All the Way Home)". The group was one of the few racially integrated group of the era, with Frazier as the only African American member. He later sang with Love's Own and reunited The Impalas as a touring group in the 1980s.

Jerry LeVias (born September 5, 1946) became the first African American scholarship athlete in the SWC when Coach Hayden Fry signed him to play wide receiver for SMU in 1965. He was a 3-time all-SWC pick as well as being both an athletic and academic all-American his senior year. After graduation he played five years in the NFL with the Houston Oilers and San Diego Chargers, followed by a successful business career in the Houston area.

George Allen (Buddy) Miles, Jr. (September 5, 1947 -- February 26, 2008) was a rock/funk drummer, best known as a founding member of The Electric Flag in 1967 along with Mike Bloomfield and Nick Gravenites, then as a member of Jimi Hendrix's Band of Gypsys from 1969 through January 1970. He had several bands known as the Buddy Miles Express throughout his career, and did the vocals for the California Raisins claymation commercials in 1986.



Events

On September 5, 1804 Absalom Jones became the first African American ordained a priest in the Episcopal Church. Rev. Jones was founder and pastor of Philadelphia's St. Thomas African Episcopal Church and had formerly been a member of St. George's Methodist Episcopal Church, leaving in 1784 along with Richard Allen and others because of the treatment of African Americans in the congregation. He is listed on the Episcopal calendar of saints and remembered liturgically on the date of his death, February 13.

On September 5, 1859 Our Nig, a book written by Harriet E. Wilson, became the first novel published in the United States by an African American. Our Nig, or Sketches from the Life of a Free Black, was published anonymously in Boston and was not widely known or read. The novel was lost for over 100 years until reprinted with a critical essay by Henry Louis Gates, Jr., in 1983.

On September 5, 1902, Anna Julia Cooper delivered an address entitled “The Ethics of the Negro Question” to the General Conference of the Society of Friends at Asbury Park in New Jersey. Dr. Cooper was principal of M Street High School in Washington D.C. at the time.

On September 5, 1960, Muhammad Ali (then Cassius Clay) was awarded the gold medal for his first place in the light heavyweight boxing competition at the Olympic Games in Rome, defeating Zbigniew Pietrzykowski of Poland.

This iconic photo by Todd Robertson taken on September 5, 1992 was forgotten for years until it appeared in a Southern Poverty Law Center brochure. A small boy, about 3 years old, dressed in a child-sized Ku Klux Klan robe and pointed hat, reaches out to touch his reflection in a riot shield as the African-American trooper holding the shield looks down at him. It was a fleeting moment away from the main action during a Barrow County Ku Klux Klan group rally in downtown Gainesville, Georgia and just before the little boy’s mother pulled him away.



Photo Gallery

Winners of the September 5, 1946 jitterbug contest at the Naumburg
Bandshell sponsored by NYC Parks and Recreation Department.

Sammy Davis Jr. celebrating his new album on Frank Sinatra’s
record label, Reprise, in London on September 5, 1961.

Huey P. Newton, national defense minister of the Black Panther Party, raises his
clenched fist behind the podium as he speaks at a convention sponsored
by the Black Panthers in Philadelphia, Saturday, September 5, 1970.

Bob Ingram passed away on September 5, 2007. He was the first African
American in the Miami Police Department's elite motorcycle unit.

Olympic gymnast Gabby Douglas during day two of the Democratic
National Convention on September 5, 2012 in Charlotte, North Carolina.

South Sudanese model Nikhor Paul at the Desigual Spring 2014 fashion show at The Theatre
at Lincoln Center (Photo by Frazer Harrison/Getty Images)

Publications

Debate between James Baldwin and Malcolm X, September 5, 1963

"This is a White Man's Government," Harper's Weekly, September 5, 1868, by Thomas Nast.

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