January 30

On January 30, 1965, Leroy “Satchel” Paige, baseball legend, was named the all-time outstanding player by the National Baseball Congress. He was also the first player from the Negro League to be elected into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1971.

Richard Theodore Greener (January 30, 1844 – May 2, 1922) was the first African American graduate of Harvard College (1870). He then served as principal of the male department of the Institute for Colored Youth in Philadelphia and professor of mental and moral philosophy at the University of South Carolina before attending the South Carolina University Law School, graduating in 1876. He joined the faculty of Howard University Law School, becoming dean in 1878. In 1880 he became a law clerk of the first comptroller of the United States Treasury and from 1885 to 1890 he was chief examiner of the civil service board for New York City and County. In the 1896 election, he served as the head of the Colored Bureau of the National Republican Party in Chicago. He was appointed as the United States Commercial Agent in Vladivostok, Russia om 1898.

Birthdays

Roy Eldridge (January 30, 1911 – February 26, 1989) was a jazz trumpet player with a variety of traveling bands before playing primarily for Harlem dance bands in the 1930s. He joined Gene Krupa's Orchestra in 1941, becoming one of the first African Americans to play with an all-white group. His sophisticated use of harmony and his strong impact on Dizzy Gillespie mark him as one of the most influential musicians of the swing era and a precursor of bebop. In 1971, he was inducted into the Down Beat Jazz Hall of Fame.

Sterling Dominic Plumpp (born January 30, 1940) is an American poet, educator, editor, and critic. He has written numerous books, including Hornman (1996), Harriet Tubman (1996), Ornate With Smoke (1997), Half Black, Half Blacker (1970), and The Mojo Hands Call, I Must Go (1982). Some of his work was included in The Best American Poetry 1996. He taught Afro-American studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago from 1971 to 2001 and was an advisor for the television production of the documentary The Promised Land.

Sharon Pratt Kelly (born January 30, 1944), formerly Sharon Pratt Dixon and now known as Sharon Pratt, was the third mayor of the District of Columbia from 1991 to 1995. She was the first African American woman to serve as mayor of a major American city. She is also to date the only woman to have served as mayor of Washington D.C. She holds a B.A. in political science from Howard University (1965) and a J.D. degree from the Howard University School of Law (1968) and was a member of the Democratic National Committee from the District of Columbia (1977–1990), the first woman to hold that position.


Events

On January 30, 1858, the first play written by an African American,  Leap of Freedom, was published. The author, William Wells Brown, had escaped slavery in 1834 and chose to remain in England where he was on a lecture tour when the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 was passed. Following the Civil War, in 1867 he published what is considered the first history of African Americans in the Revolutionary War.

On January 30, 1965, Leroy “Satchel” Paige, baseball legend, was named the all-time outstanding player by the National Baseball Congress. He was a legend in both the Negro League and Major League Baseball and was the first player from the Negro League to be elected into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1971.






Photo Gallery

1959 Breakfast Dance — 9 PM to 5 AM! — with James Brown & The Flames, Harvey & The Moonglows, Baby Washington & Nappy Brown

Obama meets with former President George H.W. Bush on January 30, 2010 in the Oval Office.

Publications

The National Freedman's Association launched a propaganda campaign, in order to raise funds for Louisiana black schools. Five children and three adults, all former slaves from New Orleans, were sent to the North on a publicity tour. A drawing of them was printed in the 30 January 1864 issue of Harper's Weekly, bearing the intriguing caption: "EMANCIPATED SLAVES, WHITE AND COLORED."

Photo of emancipated slaves taken in 1864 Louisiana. Every person in the photo was a slave…Black and White. Here is a description of one of those “white” slaves; REBECCA HUGER is eleven years old, and was a slave in her father's house, the special attendant of a girl a little older than herself. To all appearance she is perfectly white. Her complexion, hair, and features show not the slightest trace of negro blood. Harper’s Weekly, January 30 1864

On January 30, 1864, to fan the anti-slavery cause and promote the sale of abolitionist photographs, Harper’s Weekly published this carte de visite and three others as wood engravings. The newspaper also included stirring bibliographies of the emancipated slaves. Wilson Chinn was about sixty years old. His former master, Volsey B. Marmillion, a sugar planter near New Orleans, “was accustomed to brand his negroes, and Wilson has on his forehead the letters ‘V.B.M.’”

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