December 12

On December 12, 1910, W. E. B. DuBois was made a Prince Hall Freemason when initiated into Widow Son Lodge #1                                                                                                                                                                                                                            

Cleveland Robinson (December 12, 1914 - August 23, 1995)was the administrative chairman of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, and served as a labor advisor to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. He was born in Jamaica and had been a constable and elementary teacher before emigrating to New York City in 1944 where he worked in in a dry good store and became active in the local union, which was affiliated with the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Workers Union until it broke off as the National Council of Distributive Workers of America, with Robinson as founding president,  In September 1972, he helped to found the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists (CBTU), successor organization to the Negro American Labor Council (NALC), and served as its first vice-president. (Robinson is shown here with fellow organizer Bayard Rustin.)

Birthdays

Lillian Smith (December 12, 1897 – September 28, 1966) was one of the first prominent southern authors to speak out against racism, calling the 1954 Brown decision "every child's Magna Carta". She is best known for the 1944 novel Strange Fruit, addressing interracial romance, and her collection of autobiographical essays Killers of the Dream, which analyzes the feudal and patriarchal beginnings of racism and its unintended impact on white women and children.

Henry Armstrong (born Henry Jackson Jr., December 12, 1912 - October 22, 1988) was one of the few bpxerss to win in three or more different divisions: featherweight, lightweight and welterweight. He defended his welterweight title a total of nineteen times. In 2007, The Ring ranked him as the second-greatest fighter of the last 80 years. Bert Sugar also ranked him as the second-greatest fighter of all time. After retiring from boxing in 1946, Armstrong briefly opened a Harlem nightclub, the Melody Room and coached young fighters.

Joe Williams (born Joseph Goreed; December 12, 1918 – March 29, 1999) began singing professionally as a soloist in 1937, primarily in bands such as those of Coleman Hawkins and Lionel Hampton.
From 1954 to 1961 he was the singer for the Count Basie Orchestra and rose to national prominence with Basie, who nicknamed him "The Number One Son" "Every Day I Have the Blues", recorded in 1955, was one of his many hit recordings. After leaving the Basie band, Williams had a successful career as a soloist at festivals, in clubs and on television.

Amos Lee Parker (Born December 12, 1936. Died August, 20 2013) was an American aikido teacher. He is ranked 9th dan in Yoshinkan Aikido. Amos Parker received his Shihan in 1986, making him the first non-Japanese instructor to receive such an honor. In 1995, he received the rank of hachidan (8th dan) and in January 2010 he was awarded the rank of 9th dan by the Aikido Yoshinkai Foundation making him the highest ranking non-Japanese Yoshinkan Aikido instructor in the world.

Dionne Warwick (born Marie Dionne Warrick; December 12, 1940) ranks among the 40 biggest hit makers of the entire rock era, based on the Billboard Hot 100 Pop Singles Charts. She is second only to Aretha Franklin as the most-charted female vocalist of all time, with 69 of Warwick's singles making the Billboard Hot 100 between 1962 and 1998.





Events

On December 12, 1870, Joseph Hayne Rainey of Charleston was seated as the first African American to serve in the United States House of Representatives. (Hiram Revels had preceded him in the U.S. Senate in February of that year, with U.S. Senators being chosen at that time by the state legislature instead of popular vote.) He served a total of  four terms, the most of any African American congressman until William Dawson of Chicago in the 1950s. In May 1874, he became the first African American to preside over the House of Representatives as Speaker pro tempore.

On December 12, 1938 the U.S. Supreme Court decided 6-2 in favor of Lloyd Gaines (shown above) in Gaines v. Canada, in which Gaines was suing for admittance to the University of Missouri Law School. However, he disappeared the following spring before the case could be retried in state court. Opinion was divided whether he was murdered or wished to avoid the publicity the case had received. In 2006 the school awarded him an honorary law degree.




Photo Gallery

Ethel Ayler, Leslie Scott (left) and LeVern Hutcherson (right) arrive in Berlin for a second tour of concert performances of music from “Porgy and Bess” on December 12, 1955.

From left to right: Barbara Jordan, Vernon Jordan, and President Lyndon B. Johnson, December 12, 1972. LBJ Library photo by Frank Wolfe.

Michelle Obama chose a custom-made forest green dress by Cushnie et Ochs for the taping of "Christmas in Washington" at the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C. December 12, 2011.

Publications

Jet magazine, December 12, 1957 — Florette Townsend, Teen-age Fashion Designer

“If You Had Any Initiative, You’d Go Out and Inherit a Department Store”, by Herb Block, Washington Post, December 12, 1961. - The cartoon shows Barry Goldwater (1909–1998), heir of a chain of department stores and Rep. senator from Arizona. Herb Block mocks Goldwater’s hard-line conservatism, which he felt was unrelenting toward the poor, particularly the African American community.

Al Green on the cover of Jet Magazine, December 12, 1974

Brown v. Board of Education: A Civil Rights Milestone and Its Troubled Legacy (Pivotal Moments in American History) by James T. Patterson. $12.67. Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (December 12, 2002). 

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