December 28

Denzel Hayes Washington, Jr. (born December 28, 1954) has been nominated for six Academy Awards, winning Best Supporting Actor for the historical war drama film Glory (1989) and Best Actor for his role as a corrupt cop in the crime thriller Training Day (2001). He is a graduate of Fordham University where he first appeared on stage in the title roles of Eugene O'Neill's The Emperor Jones and Shakespeare's Othello. He was a regular cast member of the TV drama St. Elsewhere from 1982 through 1988, and his first film appearance was in Carbon Copy (1981). Washington has been married to the former Pauletta Pearson since 1983 and is known for his philanthropy, donating $1 million to revitalize the Wiley College debate team and $2 million to the Fordham University theater department.

Birthdays

Thomy Lafon (December 28, 1810 - December 22, 1893) donated $250,000 to the American Anti-Slavery Society, the Underground Railroad, the Catholic School for Indigent Orphans, the Louisiana Association for the Benefit of Colored Orphans, and other charities for both blacks and whites during his lifetime, and left another $500,000 in his will. He was a free-born creole who made his fortune from real estate and other investments, which he started with savings from a bakery he opened after selling cakes on the street.

Thomas McCants Stewart (December 28, 1853 – January 7, 1923) was one of the first African Americans to attend the University of South Carolina during Reconstruction, before Jim Crow laws kept the institution segregated until the civil rights movement. He graduated in 1875 with both BS and LLD degrees and taught mathematics at the Agricultural and Mechanical College in Orangeburg, South Carolina, before being ordained an elder in the A.M.E. Church and serving in New York. In 1883 he moved to Liberia to teach at Liberia College for two years before returning to New York City where he wrote about his African experience in Liberia: The Americo-African Republic (1886). Rev. Stewart later lived in Hawaii, London, and the Virgin Islands.

Edward Lee Baker Jr. (December 28, 1865 - August 26, 1913) served in the 9th and 10th Cavalry Regiments from 1882 to 1898 as a trumpeter and quartermaster, achieving the rank of Sergeant Major. He fought with the 10th Cavalry at the Battle of San Juan Hill in July 1898, winning the Medal of Honor, and was commissioned as a First Lieutenant of the 10th Volunteer Infantry in 1898.  He later attained the rank of Captain, serving with the 49th Volunteer Infantry and the Philippine Scouts. He resigned from the Army after 27 years of service in 1909. He is the grandfather of jazz saxophonist and Oscar nominee Dexter Gordon.

Ollie Louise Bryan (December 28, 1871 - November 23, 1932) was the first African American woman to become a practicing dentist in the South. She was the first woman to graduate from Meharry Medical College (1902) and in 1906 she married Dr. Felix A. Bryan. The couple moved to Dallas, Texas, where she began practicing as a dentist no later than 1909. In 1916 she retired from dentistry.

Theodore Sylvester Boone (December 28, 1896 - May 23, 1973) wrote 15 books during his lifetime on the African American experience including Paramount Facts in Race Development, The Philosophy of Booker T. Washington, and Feet Like Polished Brass. He attended the University of Chicago Law School and practiced law in Indiana before attending Arkansas Baptist College and spending the rest of his career in ministry. He was editor-in-chief of the Western Star, a black Baptist church publication, and  secretary of the Texas delegation to the National Baptist Convention in 1924 and 1925. In 1941 he relocated to Detroit, Michigan, where he lived until his death.

Earl "Fatha" Hines (December 28, 1903 - April 22, 1983) was an innovative pianist and bandleader known for introducing the bebop style with trumpet-like vibrato and right-hand octaves. He played with many jazz greats including Louis Armstrong, Dizzy Gillespie and Billy Eckstine, and mentored Nat "King" Cole, Art Tatum and Charlie Parker. In 1931 his band was the first all-Black group to tour the south. He held solo performances at the White House and at the Vatican.

Roebuck "Pops" Staples (December 28, 1914 - December 19, 2000) was born near Winona MS and as a teenager began playing with local blues guitarists Robert Johnson and Son House. He and his wife Oceola moved to Chicago in 1935, where they founded the gospel group The Staple Singers with son Pervis and daughters Mavis, Yvonne and Cleotha. Mr. Staples appeared in the Band's movie The Last Waltz and in 1995 he won a Best Contemporary Blues Album Grammy for Father, Father.

Nichelle Nichols (born December 28, 1932) appeared in the plays Carmen and Porgy and Bess, and sang with the Duke Ellington and Lionel Hampton orchestras before being cast as Lt. Uhuru in Star Trek. When she wanted to leave the series, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. urged her to stay because she was a vital role model for black children and young women, with two of whom later citing her influence being Mae Jemison and Whoopi Goldberg.

Frank Isaac Robinson (born December 28, 1938), known in his early career as a musician as Sugar Chile Robinson, is an American blues and boogie-woogie pianist, singer, and later psychologist, whose career began as a child prodigy.  He won a talent show at the Paradise Theatre in Detroit at the age of three, and in 1945 played guest spots at the theatre with Lionel Hampton, who was prevented by child protection legislation from taking Robinson on tour with him. In 1946, he played for President Harry S. Truman at the White House Correspondents' Association Dinner and in 2016, he attended the WHCA Dinner on the 70th anniversary of his appearance at the 1946 dinner.

Denzel Hayes Washington, Jr. (born December 28, 1954) has been nominated for six Academy Awards, winning Best Supporting Actor for the historical war drama film Glory (1989) and Best Actor for his role as a corrupt cop in the crime thriller Training Day (2001). He is a graduate of Fordham University where he first appeared on stage in the title roles of Eugene O'Neill's The Emperor Jones and Shakespeare's Othello. He was a regular cast member of the TV drama St. Elsewhere from 1982 through 1988, and his first film appearance was in Carbon Copy (1981). Washington has been married to the former Pauletta Pearson since 1983 and is known for his philanthropy, donating $1 million to revitalize the Wiley College debate team and $2 million to the Fordham University theater department.

John Legend (born John Roger Stephens December 28, 1978) has won ten Grammy Awards, one Golden Globe Award, and one Academy Award. In 2007, Legend received the Hal David Starlight Award from the Songwriters Hall of Fame. He began his career while attending the University of Pennsylvania as president and musical director of a co-ed jazz and pop a cappella group called Counterparts. While in college, Legend was introduced to Lauryn Hill by a friend. Hill hired him to play piano on "Everything Is Everything", a song from her album The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill.

Events

December 28 is the third day of Kwanzaa, represented by the principle of Ujima (oo-JEE-mah), or Collective Work & Responsibility. "To build and maintain our community together and to make our Brother's and sister's problems, our problems and to solve them together."

Elizabeth Freeman (c.1742 – December 28, 1829), in early life known as Bett and later Mum Bett, was among the first black slaves in Massachusetts to file a "freedom suit" and win in court under the 1780 constitution, with a ruling that slavery was illegal. The ruling was considered to have informally ended slavery in the state. After winning her freedom, she worked for her attorney, Theodore Sedgwick, whose daughter Catharine wrote an account of her life.  "Any time, any time while I was a slave, if one minute's freedom had been offered to me, and I had been told I must die at the end of that minute, I would have taken it—just to stand one minute on God's airth a free woman— I would."

On December 28, 1847 Big Bethel AME Church was founded in Atlanta. First known as Union Church, it allied with the AME denomination after the Civil War. It housed the first public school in Atlanta for African American children, and the first classes of Morris Brown University were held in its basement. Nelson Mandela spoke there in 1988.






Publications

People Doing the Lindy Hop - Life Magazine, December 28, 1936

Jet Magazine -- Mike Tyson and Robin Givens -- December 28 1988

Moving the Rock: Poverty and Faith in a Black Storefront Church by Mary E. Abrums. $17.27. Publisher: AltaMira Press (December 28, 2010).

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