January 7

Zora Neale Hurston (January 7, 1891 – January 28, 1960) left home at the age of 17, finished high school in Baltimore, and went on to study at Howard University, Barnard College, and Columbia University before becoming one of the most prolific writers in the Harlem Renaissance. Her works included novels, essays, plays, and studies in folklore and anthropology. She is most remembered for her novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, published in 1937. She did graduate work in anthropology from Columbia University where she studied under Franz Boaz and was a classmate of Margaret Mead.


Birthdays

Rayford W. Logan (January 7, 1897 - November 4, 1982) taught history at Howard University from 1938 to 1965. During World War I he was a first lieutenant in the all-black 93rd infantry Division, and stayed in Europe after the war where he helped to co-ordinate the 2nd Pan-African Congress in Paris in 1921. In 1932, President Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed him to his Black Cabinet where Logan drafted Roosevelt's executive order prohibiting the exclusion of blacks from the military in World War II. In 1950 he became Director of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH), and was known for his study of post-Reconstruction America, a period he termed "the nadir of American race relations".

Henry James "Red" Allen (January 7, 1908 – April 17, 1967) began playing trumpet in New Orleans jazz bands and he went to Chicago in 1927 to join King Oliver's band. Around this time he made recordings on the side in the band of Clarence Williams He later played with Luis Russell, Fletcher Henderson, and Lucky Millinder. He also recorded under his own name and also with Fats Waller and Jelly Roll Morton and accompanied such vocalists as Victoria Spivey and Billie Holiday.

Butterfly McQueen (January 7, 1911 - December 22, 1995) was an actress best know for her role as Prissy in Gone With the Wind. She began her career as a dancer with Katherine Dunham, Geoffrey Holder, and Janet Collins. She retired from acting in 1952 because of the lack of roles for African Americans,living in relative obscurity and earning a degree in political science at the age of 65. She died in a house fire started by a kerosene heater.

Ulysses Kay (January 7, 1917 - May 20, 1995) attended the University of Arizona, where he was encouraged by the African-American composer William Grant Still. He went for graduate work to the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York, and there worked under Howard Hanson and Bernard Rogers. As a composer Kay was known primarily for his symphonic and choral compositions. He also wrote five operas. His final opera, Frederick Douglass, was mounted in April 1991 at the New Jersey State Opera with Kevin Maynor in the title role and Klara Barlow as Helen Pitts Douglass. He taught at  Lehman College of the City University of New York for 20 years and was the nephew of jazz musician King Oliver.

Dorothy Lavinia Brown (January 7, 1919 – June 13, 2004 ) was the chief surgeon at the now-defunct Riverside Hospital in Nashville from 1957 to 1983, and the first African American woman in the south to be a surgeon. She was a graduate of Meharry Medical School where she later served on the faculty. Dr. Brown was also elected to the Tennessee General Assembly in 1966 where she served a two-year term. Before beginning her medical career she was a domestic and did defense work during World War II, and graduated from Bennett College in Greensboro, North Carolina.

Frederick Drew Gregory (born January 7, 1941), (Col, USAF, Ret.), is a former United States Air Force pilot, military engineer, test pilot, and NASA astronaut as well as former NASA Deputy Administrator. He also served briefly as NASA Acting Administrator in early 2005, covering the period between the departure of Sean O'Keefe and the swearing in of Michael Griffin. He was the first African American to command a space mission, and is the nephew of Dr. Charles Drew and the great-grandson of James Monroe Gregory, dean of Howard University.



Events

On January 7, 1927, the Harlem Globetrotters played their first game in Hinckley, Illinois before a crowd of 300 people, and made a profit of $75. Over the years they have played more than 26,000 exhibition games in 122 countries and territories, including a nine-game series in Moscow in 1959.

Marian Anderson debuted at the Metropolitan Opera as Ulrica in "Un Ballo in Maschera," by Giuseppe Verdi on January 7, 1955, marking the first vocal performance by an African American on that stage. Although she never appeared with the company again after this production, Anderson was named a permanent member of the Metropolitan Opera company. The following year she published her autobiography, My Lord, What a Morning, which became a bestseller.

On January 7, 2005, Edgar Ray Killen was arrested for the 1964 murder of voting rights workers James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner. On June 21, 2005, a jury convicted Killen on three counts of manslaughter; he was described as the man who planned and directed the killing of the civil rights workers. Killen, then 80 years old, was sentenced to three consecutive terms of 20 years in prison.

Photo Gallery

Sammy Davis Jr & Nancy Wilson (January 7, 1966)

7 January 2009: US President George W Bush stands with President-elect Barack Obama, former President George HW Bush, former President Bill Clinton and former President Jimmy Carter in the Oval Office of the White House. Bush, acting on a suggestion by Obama, invited the former Presidents and President-elect for lunch, the first time since 1981 that all living presidents have been together at the White House

Publications

Jet Magazine, January 7, 1954

Brown University Alumni Club Bans Fritz Pollard (Brown Football Star) - Jet Magazine, January 7, 1954

The Scurlock Studio and Black Washington: Picturing The Promise by National Museum African American History. $25.29. 224 pages. Publisher: Smithsonian Books (January 7, 2009).

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