October 29

Harriet Powers (October 29, 1837 – January 1, 1910) used traditional appliqué techniques to make quilts recording local legends, Bible stories, and astronomical events. She lived most of her life in Clarke  County, Georgia, and first exhibited a quilt at the 1886 Athens Cotton Fair. Known as the Bible Quilt, it contains 11 panels illustrating Bible stories. It is one of only two examples of her work known to survive today, but her correspondence and diary indicate that there were others. Bible Quilt is on display at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, and the other (Pictorial Quilt) is in the National Museum of American History collection at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.

Harriet Powers, Bible Quilt, 1885-1886

Birthdays

Josephine Beall Willson Bruce (October 29, 1853 - February 24, 1923) was born in Philadelphia and educated at Oberlin College in Ohio, where she met and married U.S. Senator Blanche K. Bruce in 1878, the first African American U.S. Senator to carry out a full term. When his term expired two years later he remained in Washington through political appointments, and Mrs. Bruce was one of the charter members of the Colored Woman's League of Washington, D.C. and the first vice president of the National Association of Colored Women (NACW). After her husband's death, she joined the staff at Tuskegee Institute, becoming Dean of Women. She is the mother of controversial educator Roscoe Conkling Bruce, named after his father's political mentor.

Martha Minerva Franklin (October 29, 1870 - September 26, 1968) graduated from Philadelphia's Women's Hospital Training School for Nurses in 1897 and was working in New Haven ten years later when she began organizing African American nurses and founded the  National Association of Colored Graduate Nurses (NACGN) since those in segregated states were unable to join the American Nurses Association. The goals of the NACGN were to improve training for black nurses, reduce racial inequality in the nursing profession, and cultivate leaders from within the black nursing community. It received early support from the National Medical Association, a black physicians' group. and was invited to hold their meetings in tandem with the NMA.

Leigh Whipper (October 29, 1876 - July 26, 1975) was a film, television and stage actor. He was the first African American to join the Actors’ Equity Association, and one of the founders of the Negro Actors Guild of America. He is best known for his role as Crooks in the film of Of Mice and Men, a role he reprised on Broadway. Without any dramatic training, he made his first Broadway appearance in Georgia Minstrels. His first film role was in the 1920 silent film Symbol of the Unconquered.

Hadda Brooks (born Hattie L. Hapgood, October 29, 1916 – November 21, 2002) usually played the small part of a lounge piano player in films, and often sang the title song, with "Out of the Blue" became a top hit for Brooks in 1947, followed by"Boogie Woogie Blues" the next year. In 1957 he was the second African American woman to host a TV show, which ran for 26 weeks on KCOP-TV and aired in Los Angeles and San Francisco. She sang at Hawaii's official statehood ceremony in 1959 and later lived there. In 1993, she was presented with the prestigious Pioneer Award by the Smithsonian-based Rhythm and Blues Foundation, and returned to movies with a cameo in the Jack Nicholson film, The Crossing Guard (1995). She resumed recording the next year.

Richard Perry Loving (October 29, 1933 – June 29, 1975), shown here with his wife, Mildred, and their children. After the Lovings married in Washington D.C. in 1958, they returned to Caroline County, Virginia and were arrested and given a one year suspended sentence under the condition that they leave Virginia and not return for 25 years. In 1963 they challenged the law, ultimately leading to the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruling the law unconstitutional in 1967. Because of this ruling, (Loving v. Virginia) the 16 states which still had anti-miscegenation laws on their books were forced to repeal them. Richard Loving was killed by a drunk driver in 1975 and Mildred Loving lost her right eye in the same accident.

Ellen Johnson Sirleaf (born October 29, 1938) is the 24th and current President of Liberia. She won the 2005 presidential election and took office in January 2006, and she was a successful candidate for re-election in 2011. She is the first elected female head of state in Africa and in June 2016 she was elected as the Chair of the Economic Community of West African States, making her the first female to occupy that position since it was formed. She was jointly awarded the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize with Leymah Gbowee of Liberia and Tawakkol Karman of Yemen. The women were recognized "for their non-violent struggle for the safety of women and for women's rights to full participation in peace-building work."

Melba Moore (born Beatrice Melba Smith, October 29, 1945) is an R & B singer and actress. She is the daughter of saxophonist Teddy Hill and R & B singer Bonnie Davis. She began her performing career in 1967 in the original cast of the musical Hair. In 1970, Moore won a Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical for her role in Purlie. She co-starred with Clifton Davis in the then-couple's TV variety series in 1972. Her successful recording career includes hits like "This Is It" and "Lean On Me". She returned to Broadway in 1995 landing a part in Les Misérables. A year later, she started her long-running one-woman show, Sweet Songs of the Soul, later renamed I'm Still Standing.

Tracee Ellis Ross (born October 29, 1972) began her career acting in independent films, variety series and hosted the pop-culture magazine The Dish on Lifetime. From 2000 to 2008, she played the leading role as Joan Clayton on the UPN/CW comedy series Girlfriends, for which she received two NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Actress in a Comedy Series. She also has appeared in films Hanging Up (2000), I-See-You.Com (2006), and Daddy's Little Girls (2007), before returning to television playing Dr. Carla Reed on the BET sitcom Reed Between the Lines, for which she received her third NAACP Image Award. She is the daughter of actress/singer Diana Ross.

Vonetta Flowers (born October 29, 1973) was a star sprinter and long jumper at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, and originally aspired to make the U.S. Summer Olympic Team. After several failed attempts, Flowers turned to bobsledding, and found success as a brakewoman almost immediately. At the 2002 Winter Olympics, she, along with driver Jill Bakken, won the gold medal in the two-woman event, becoming the first African American to win a gold medal in the Winter Olympics. She retired from competition after the 2006 Winter Olympics.



Events

On October 29, 1931 William Grant Still’s “Afro-American Symphony” was first presented by the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra. It was the first symphony composed by a Black composer to be performed by a major orchestra.  It combines a fairly traditional symphonic form with blues progressions and rhythms that were characteristic of popular African-American music at the time.

On October 29, 1969, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Alexander v. Holmes, ordering immediate desegregation of public schools in the South after 15 years of delays by many school boards after the Court's 1954 ruling in Brown v. Board of Education that segregated public schools were unconstitutional. It did away with the "with all deliberate speed" clause of the 1955 Brown II ruling.

On October 29, 1997, William E, Kennard was confirmed by the U.S. Senate as the first African American chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). The FCC regulates the nation’s radio, wire, satellite, and cable communications. Kennard, who began working at the FCC in in 1993 as general counsel, was named a member of the five-member panel by President Bill Clinton in 1997 before becoming chairman.




Photo Gallery

Sojourner Truth and President Lincoln in the White House, October 29, 1864. They met early in the morning,
and though the meeting was more of a courtesy call than a substantive discussion, Truth remembered it fondly.

Gordon Parks and Lena Horne. The tickets in Ms. Horne’s hand read: “Cosmopolitan Tennis Club, Inc.
 presents their Annual Fall Dance at The Renaissance Ballroom. The date: Saturday, October 29, 1949.

First Lady Michelle Obama works in the garden on the South Lawn of the White House on October 29, 2009
 in Washington, DC. First Lady Michelle Obama invited local school children to help with the fall vegetable
harvest in the garden at the White House.Photo Credit: Mark Wilson, Getty Images via StyleList

Models take a selfie backstage during Lagos fashion and design week October 29, 2014.
(REUTERS/Akintunde Akinleye)

Publications

Jet Magazine -- October 29, 1964

Jet Magazine -- October 29, 1970

One Blood: The Death and Resurrection of Charles R. Drew by Spencie Love. $28.95.
 Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press (October 29, 1997).

A Fire You Can't Put Out: The Civil Rights Life of Birmingham's Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth
by Andrew M Manis. $29.95. Publisher: University Alabama Press (October 29, 2001).

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October 7

William Still (October 7, 1821 - July 14, 1902) was a Philadelphia abolitionist known as the Father of the Underground Railroad, helping over 800 people escape to freedom. He kept extensive notes on each one so that families could be reunited, which were published in 1872 as The Underground Railroad Records. This book has been integral to the history of these years, as he carefully recorded many details of the workings of the Underground Railroad. Still was also a businessman and activist, successfully working on the campaign to integrate Philadelphia street cars, and he helped to establish an orphanage and the first YMCA for African Americans in Philadelphia.

Birthdays

Moses Fleetwood ″Fleet″ Walker (October 7, 1856 – May 11, 1924) played one season as the catcher of the Toledo Blue Stockings, a club in the American Association. He then played in the minor leagues until 1889, when professional baseball erected a color barrier that stood for nearly 60 years. He later purchased the Union Hotel in his home town of Steubenville, Ohio, as well as a theater in nearby Cadiz. He applied for patents on several inventions for moving-picture equipment in the early 1900s.

Sargent Claude Johnson (October 7, 1888 – October 10, 1967) was one of the first African American artists working in California to achieve a national reputation. He was known for Abstract Figurative and Early Modern styles. He was a painter, potter, ceramist, printmaker, graphic artist, sculptor, and carver. He worked with a variety of media, including ceramic, clay, oil, stone, terra-cotta, watercolor, and wood. As a member of the bohemian San Francisco Bay community and influenced by the New Negro Movement, his early work focused on racial identity. Later in his career he often visited Oaxaca and Southern Mexico and started incorporating the people and culture, particularly archeology, into his work.

Sargent Claude Johnson,"Chester", 1930

Sargent Claude Johnson, Lenox Avenue, 1938

Archibald John Motley, Jr (October 7, 1891 - January 16, 1981) studied painting at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago during the 1910s, graduating in 1918. He is most famous for his colorful chronicling of the African-American experience during the 1920s and 1930s, and is considered one of the major contributors to the Harlem Renaissance, or the New Negro Movement, a time in which African-American art reached new heights not just in New York but across America - its local expression is referred to as the Chicago Black Renaissance.

Archibald Motley, Black Belt, 1934

Archibald Motley, Hot Rhythm, 1961

Elijah Muhammad (born Elijah Robert Poole; October 7, 1897 – February 25, 1975) was an African American religious leader, and led a movement called Nation of Islam from 1934 until his death in 1975. Muhammad was a mentor to Malcolm X, Louis Farrakhan, and Muhammad Ali. He preached his own version of Islam to his followers in the Nation. According to him, blacks were known as the 'original' human being, with 'evil' whites being an offshoot race that would go on to oppress black people for 6,000 years. He preached that the Nation of Islam's goal was to return the stolen hegemony of the inferior whites back to blacks across America.

Desmond Mpilo Tutu (born October 7, 1931) is a South African activist and retired Anglican bishop who rose to worldwide fame during the 1980s as an opponent of apartheid. He was the first black South African Archbishop of Cape Town, South Africa, and bishop of the Church of the Province of Southern Africa (now the Anglican Church of Southern Africa). He was awarded the Nobel Peace Price in 1984 and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2009.

Amiri Baraka (born Everett LeRoi Jones; October 7, 1934 – January 9, 2014) earned a degree in English from Howard University and served in the Air Force before settling in Greenwich Village where he was part of the Beat literary scene. In 1963 he published Blues People: Negro Music in White America, his account of the development of black music from slavery to contemporary jazz, and in 1964 his controversial play Dutchman premiered.  After the assassination of Malcolm X he left the predominantly white Beat movement, changing his name and founding The Black Arts Repertory/Theater School in Harlem. He is the father of  Newark mayor Ras Baraka.

Keith Duncan Mallett (born October 7, 1948) began began his art career working for in music industry painting record covers for Virgin Records and designing T-shirts for recording groups. He has worked as a freelance artist and for fifteen years was the in-house artist for Frontline Art Publishers. He was commissioned to design the official limited edition print commemorating the 50th anniversary of Jackie Robinson’s historic breakthrough into major league baseball, and his work was chosen for the cover of Chicken Soup for The African American Soul. His work also includes etchings and ceramics.

Celebration by Keith Mallett

Cats in Hats by Keith Mallett

Events

"SNCC had declared October 7, 1963, as Freedom Day. The idea was to bring hundreds of people to register to vote, hoping that their numbers would decrease fear. And there was much to fear. John Lewis and seven others were still in jail. Sheriff Jim Clark, huge and bullying, had deputized a force that was armed and on the prowl. To build up courage, people gathered in churches night after night before Freedom Day. The churches were packed as people listened to speeches, prayed, sang." ~ Howard Zinn

On October 7, 1993, Toni Morrison was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. Her citation reads: Toni Morrison, "who in novels characterized by visionary force and poetic import, gives life to an essential aspect of American reality." She accepted the award in December of the same year. Ms. Morrison is currently the last American to have been awarded the honor.

On October 7, 2011, Tawakkul Karman, Leymah Gbowee, and Ellen Johnson Sirleaf received the Nobel Peace Prize "for their non-violent struggle for the safety of women and for women's rights to full participation in peace-building work." Mrs. Sirleaf has been president of Liberia since 2006.

Photo Gallery

A and T College, Greensboro, NC, October 7, 1939 - A group of 4-H Club boys working
 their way through college - seen working on the campus. From NCSU Libraries

Demonstrators make a dash through police lines for school buses in an attempt to get on the buses with white children in Crawfordville, Georgia, on October 7, 1965. The state patrolmen grabbed them and held them in custody until the buses drove away. The protesters were demanding to ride the buses and school integration.

On October 7, 1995, Coach Eddie Robinson of
Grambling State University won his 400th game.

Barack and Michelle Obama share a laugh at the end of the presidential debate
 at Belmont University in Nashville, Tennessee on October 7, 2008.

Frederick D. Jones Mother and Child, watercolor with pen and ink, 1940-45.
Sold October 7, 2010 for $4,320. Courtesy of Swann Auction Galleries.

Publications

Runaway Slave Notices in the South Carolina Gazette on October 7, 1756.

Little Gregory Hines, His Brother Maurice Hines and Dizzy Gillespie - Jet Magazine October 7, 1954

Charles V Bush, 14, is First Negro Selected As A Page Boy by the US Supreme Court - Jet Magazine, October 7, 1954

Death of Innocence: The Story of the Hate Crime That Changed America by Mamie
Till-Mobley. $3.99. Publisher: Random House; 1 edition (October 7, 2003). 320 pages. 

Published October 7, 2004 by Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc. Recipes, menus, and entertaining
 tips from one of the largest, most respected African-American women's organizations in the world.