November 2

Jessie Daniel Ames (November 2, 1883 - February 21, 1972) founded the Association of Southern Women for the Prevention of Lynching as part of the Atlanta-based Council on Interracial Cooperation (CIC), an organization for which she was National Director of the Women's Committee. She had previously served as the State Director of CIC in Texas before relocating to Atlanta from Georgetown, Texas. While still in Texas, she organized a local women's suffrage association and helped the state become the first in the South to ratify the Nineteenth Amendment. In 1919, she was the founding president of the Texas League of Women Voters. She was a delegate to the Democratic National Conventions of 1920, 1924, and 1928. She also was president of the Texas branch of the American Association of University Women and an officer of the Women's Joint Legislative Council, the Board of Education (Women's Division) of the Methodist Church, the Texas Committee on Prisons and Prison Labor, and the Texas Federation of Women's Clubs.

Birthdays

James Lesesne Wells (November 2, 1902 - 1993) won prizes at the Florida State Fair as a young teenager before attending Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, later transferring to Columbia University in New York, where he majored in art.  After graduation, Wells created block prints to illustrate articles and publications such as Willis Richardson’s Core CollectionPlays and Pageants of Negro Life. In 1929, he was invited to join the faculty at Howard University, teacing clay modeling, ceramics, sculpture, metal and blockprinting.  After World War II, he spent a sabbatical year working in Stanley Hayter’s Atelier 17, the most innovative center for etching and printmaking in the country. During the 1950s and 1960s, he continued to teach and won many art prizes.

The Farmer by James Lesesne Wells, c. 1929

African Nude by James Lesesne Wells, 1980

Taiye Selasi (born November 2, 1979, London, England) is a writer and photographer of Nigerian and Ghanaian origin. She was raised in Brookline, Massachusetts, the elder of twin daughters in a family of physicians. She graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa with a BA in American Studies from Yale, and earned her MPhil in International Relations from Nuffield College, Oxford. Selasi's twin sister, Dr. Yetsa Kehinde Tuakli is a psychiatrist in the US.

Events

On November 2, 1787, the African Free School was founded by members of the New York Manumission Society to provide education to enslaved children and free people of color. The first school was a one-room school house that held about 40 students. By 1815 enrollment was approaching 700 and the schools were gaining a wide reputation for success. By 1835, when the schools ended their run as privately supported institutions, the African Free School had seven buildings in different neighborhoods, and it had educated thousands of girls and boys. At that time the African Free Schools and their facilities were integrated into the public school system. Alumni of the school include physician James McCune Smith, actor Ira Aldridge, and abolitionist Henry Highland Garnet.

On November 2, 1979, Assata Shakur (née Joanne Chesimard), a former member of Black Panther Party and Black Liberation Army, escaped from a New York prison to Cuba, where she remains under political asylum. Since May 2, 2005, the FBI has classified her as a domestic terrorist and offered a $1 million reward for assistance in her capture. On May 2, 2013, the FBI added her to the Most Wanted Terrorist List; the first woman to be listed. New York City Councilman Charles Barron, a former Black Panther, has called for the bounty to be rescinded.


Photo Gallery

November 2, 1964- Lena Horne and Queen Elizabeth II at the London Palladium

University of Southern California running back O. J. Simpson rushing the ball against Oregon at
Autzen Stadium on November 2, 1968 during a game which the Ducks lost to the Trojans
20-13. ©University of Oregon Libraries - Special Collections and University Archives

Yale cheerleaders Greg Parker (L) and Bill Brown give the Black Power salute during the National
Anthem starting the Yale-Dartmouth football game in the Yale Bowl on November 2, 1968.

Malia at age six with Barack Obama in November 2, 2004, in the
first Senate race with two African American candidates

Publications

Jet Magazine November 2, 1961 Terri Springer

Hidden Gems Volume II: Contemporary Black British Plays: 2 by Kwame Kwei-Armah.
$14.29. Publisher: Oberon Books (November 2, 2012). 260 pages

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