February 10

Leontyne Price (born February 10, 1927) was a was a choir member and accompanist at St. Mark Methodist Church in Laurel, Mississippi as a child, and was inspired at the age of nine by seeing Marian Anderson perform. She prepared for a career in music at Wilberforce College and Julliard, and her first starring role was in an international tour of Porgy and Bess in 1952. She sang in the title role of NBC's presentation of Tosca (1955) and soon became the first internationally acclaimed African American opera performer, appearing in Aida at La Scala in Milan and as Cleopatra in Antony and Cleopatra at the dedication of the New York Metropolitan Opera's new building in 1961. She sang at both Lyndon Johnson's inauguration and at his funeral. During her career she earned over twenty Grammy Awards and was one of the most widely recorded opera singers. She retired from opera in 1985 but continued to sing in concerts and recitals until 1997.

Birthdays

Sylvia L. Hill Williams (February 10, 1936 - February 28, 1996), A.B. Oberlin 1957, was the first woman to hold the position of Director of the National Museum of African Art at the Smithsonian Institution, in Washington, D.C. She served as a member of the Allen Memorial Art Museum Visiting Committee (1989-96), and a member of the Board of Trustees, Oberlin College (1990-96).

Roberta Cleopatra Flack (born February 10, 1939) is best known for her classic #1 singles "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face", "Killing Me Softly with His Song" and "Feel Like Makin' Love", and for "Where Is the Love" and "The Closer I Get to You", two of her many duets with Donny Hathaway. She was the first, and remains the only, solo artist to win the Grammy Award for Record of the Year on two consecutive years: "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" won at the 1973 Grammys as did "Killing Me Softly with His Song" at the 1974 Grammys.


Events

On February 10, 1881, the Alabama legislature established Tuskegee Institute as a "normal school for the education of colored teachers." The law stipulated that no tuition be charged and that graduates agree to teach for two years in Alabama schools. Booker T. Washington was chosen as the first superintendent and arrived in Alabama in June 1881.

On February 10, 1966, Andrew Brimmer was the first African American to be appointed to the Federal Reserve Board. Dr. Brimmer served in the Army during World War II and then completed a BA and MA in economics at the University of Washington. He studied at the University of Bombay for a year before earning his PhD at Harvard while working as an economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York helping the newly established Sudanese government establish a central bank.

On February 10, 2007, Sen. Barack Obama announced his presidential candidacy in Springfield, Illinois.





Photo Gallery

February 10, 1919 -- Officers of the 369th Infantry Regiment (Harlem Hellfighters)

Jennie Jacobs (l), 96, and Phyllis Pollitt, 99, prepare to celebrate the birthday of Abraham Lincoln at an old folks' home in Philadelphia.Both are former slaves. Mrs. Pollitt is a native of North Carolina, where she was born in slavery; Mrs. Jacobs was freed from the state of Delaware. Photo taken February 10, 1940. Photo Credit: Corbis Images.

"Capt. Ezekia Smith, 370th Inf. Regt., 92nd Div., receives treatment at the 317th Collecting Station, for shell fragments in face and shoulders suffered near Querceta, Italy. Here, surgeon stitches the wound. Fifth Army, Pietrasanta Area, Italy." February 10, 1945.

Photo from February 10, 1950 promoting Ruby Dee, who had just been signed to play Jackie Robinson's wife Rachel in the biopic 'The Jackie Robinson Story'. Photo by FPG/Archive Photos/Getty Images).

Dorothy I. Height (national president of National Council of Negro Women), Press conference, 10 February 1958. Photographer: Snow University of Southern California, Los Angeles Examiner Collection

Lunch counter protest Raleigh, North Carolina, February 10, 1960 Unidentified photographer From "Freedom Now! Forgotten Photographs of the Civil Rights Movement" by Martin A. Berger

Bob Marley married Alpharita Constantia Anderson, better known as Rita Marley on February 10, 1966.

Publications

Jet Magazine, February 10, 1955

The White Image in the Black Mind:African-American Ideas about White People, 1830-1925 by Mia Bay. $17.61. Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (February 10, 2000)

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February 6

Melvin Beaunorus Tolson (February 6, 1898 - August 29, 1966) is best known for teaching English and drama at Wiley College where he led the debate team to a 1935 national win over USC. (This was the basis for the film The Great Debaters, with Tolson portrayed by Denzel Washington.) Tolson held a BA from Lincoln University and an MA from Columbia, where his thesis was on "The Harlem Group of Negro Writers", The Harlem Renaissance had a great impact on his poetry and other writing, although he spent most of his career in Texas and Oklahoma, later teaching at Langston University. He wrote three major, book-length works of poetry, Rendezvous with America (1944), Libretto for the Republic of Liberia (1953), and Harlem Gallery (1965) and a weekly column for the Washington Tribune, "Cabbage and Caviar".

Birthdays

Anne Spencer (born Annie Bethel Bannister, February 6, 1882 – July 27, 1975) was an American poet and active participant in the New Negro Movement and Harlem Renaissance period. While a librarian at Washington D.C.'s Dunbar High School, a position she held for 20 years, she supplemented the original three books by bringing others from her own collection at home. Though she lived outside New York City, the recognized center of the Harlem Renaissance, also known as the New Negro Movement, she was an important member of this group of intellectuals. She was the first Virginian and first African American to have her poetry included in the Norton Anthology of American Poetry.

Merze Tate (February 6, 1905 – June 27, 1996) was a professor, scholar and expert on United States diplomacy. She was the first African American graduate of Western Michigan Teachers College, first African American woman to attend the University of Oxford, and first African American woman to earn a Ph.D. in government and international relations from Harvard University (then Radcliffe College), as well as one of the first two female members to join the Department of History at Howard University.

Robert Nesta (Bob) Marley (February 6, 1945 - May 11, 1981) was a Jamaican singer-songwriter, musician and guitarist who achieved international fame and acclaim, blending mostly reggae, ska and rocksteady in his compositions. He is considered one of the most influential musicians of all time and credited with popularising reggae music around the world, as well as serving as a symbol of Jamaican culture and identity. Marley has also evolved into a global symbol and inspired numerous items of merchandise.

Natalie Maria Cole (February 6, 1950 – December 31, 2015) was an American singer, songwriter, and actress. The daughter of Nat King Cole, she rose to musical success in the mid-1970s as an R&B artist with the hits "This Will Be", "Inseparable" (1975), and "Our Love" (1977). She re-emerged as a pop artist with the 1987 album Everlasting and her cover of Bruce Springsteen's "Pink Cadillac". In the 1990s, she re-recorded standards by her father, resulting in her biggest success, Unforgettable... with Love, which sold over seven million copies and also won Cole seven Grammy Awards. She sold over 30 million records worldwide.


Events

Maria W. Stewart (born Maria Miller, 1803 – February 6, 1880) was an African-American domestic servant who became a teacher, journalist, lecturer, abolitionist, and women's rights activist. The first known American woman to speak to a mixed audience of men and women, whites and black, she was also the first African-American woman to make public lectures, as well as to lecture about women’s rights and make a public anti-slavery speech.

On Feb. 6, 1820, a group of 88 free Black men and women set sail for the British colony of Sierra Leone aboard a ship called the Mayflower of Liberia. The voyage marked the first organized immigration of Blacks to Africa. The group’s travel was funded by the U.S. Congress and organized by a Quaker organization called the American Colonization Society.

On February 6, 1993, Arthur Ashe -- the legendary tennis player, humanitarian and social activist for causes such as bringing an end to South African apartheid and AIDS research -- died at the age of 49 yrs. Ashe was a trailblazer and the impact of his life and work transcended his athleticism.


Photo Gallery

"A U.S. Army soldier and a Chinese soldier place the flag of their ally on the front of their jeep just before the first truck convoy in almost three years crossed the China border en route from Ledo, India, to Kunming, China, over the Stilwell road." February 6, 1945.

Gordon Parks, February 6, 1968

Olympian Gabrielle Douglas poses backstage at the Heart Truth 2013 Fashion Show at Hammerstein Ballroom on February 6, 2013 in New York City. (Photo by Theo Wargo/Getty Images for Heart Truth)

US President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama attend the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, DC, on February 6, 2014.

Publications

Ruth Taylor, From Nurse to First US Hired Airline Hostess - Jet Magazine, February 6, 1958

Yvonne DeLavallade, Sister of Carmen DeLavallade, Marries Football Star Milton Davis - Jet Magazine, February 6, 1958

Emmett Till's Mother Sues Look Magazine and Reveals Marriage - Jet Magazine, February 6, 1958

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December 3

Eddie Bernice Johnson (born December 3, 1935) has represented the Texas 30th Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives since 1993.

On December 3, 1965 Klan members Collie Wilkins, William Eaton, and Eugene Thomas were found guilty in Federal Court of the murder of Viola Liuzzo, who was shot on March 25 of that year at the end of the Selma to Montgomery voting rights march. They were arrested immediately after the shoot due to the presence of a fourth man, FBI informant Gary Rowe. A state trial in May ended in a hung jury, and a second trial in October with former Birmingham mayor Art Hanes as defense counsel led to their acquittal. The federal trial charged the defendants with conspiracy to intimidate African Americans under the 1871 Ku Klux Klan Act, a Reconstruction civil rights statute. The charges did not specifically refer to Liuzzo's murder. On December 3, the three men were found guilty by an all-white, all-male jury, and were sentenced to ten years in prison, a landmark in southern legal history.

Birthdays

Gussie Lord Davis (December 3, 1863 – October 18, 1899) began his songwriting career with the self-published "We Sat Beneath the Maple on the Hill" in 1880 and then entered into collaboration with Cincinnati publisher George Propheter. The two relocated to New York City where by 1886 Davis was well-known enough to be selected to compete in a contest sponsored by the New York World to find the ten best songwriters in the nation; he placed second with his song, "Send Back the Picture and the Ring" and won a prize of $500 in gold. He was best known for sad, sentimental ballads such as "In the Baggage Coach Ahead", his most commercially successful composition, selling over a million copies.

Helen Grey Edmonds (December 3, 1911 - May 9, 1995) was a history professor and administrator at Virginia Theological Seminary, St. Paul's College, and North Carolina State College. During her tenure at NCCU, Edmonds taught U.S. and European diplomatic history, served as chair of the department of history, Dean of the Graduate School, and University Distinguished Professor. She researched and wrote about politics in the south, and was the first African American woman to second the nomination for a candidate for President of the United States when Eisenhower was nominated n 1956.

Ralph Gardner Chaves (born December 3, 1922) graduated from the University of Illinois with a degree in Chemistry in 1943and began work at the University of Chicago's Argonne National laboratory in plutonium research on the Manhattan project.  From 1947 to 1949 he worked as a waiter before finding work as a chemist for Standard Oil Company in Cleveland.  He returned to graduate school at Case Western Reserve in Cleveland, Ohio, earning a master's degree in 1952 and a Ph.D. in 1959. In 1968 he began teaching at Cleveland State University where he worked full-time until 1985. Ralph Gardner added "Chavis" to his surname later in life to honor John Chavis who in 1792 became the first African American to enroll in Princeton University.

Eddie Bernice Johnson (born December 3, 1935) has represented the Texas 30th Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives since 1993. She was president of the Congressional Black Caucus for the 2001-2002 term. She has served on the  House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee since being elected and in December 2010 was elected as the first African American and the first female Ranking Member of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology. She is the first registered nurse elected to the U.S. Congress, and before entering politics was Chief Psychiatric Nurse at the Dallas Veterans Administration Hospital. She was elected to the Texas House of Representatives in 1973 and to the Texas Senate in 1987.

Events

On December 3, 1820, Omar Ibn Said, one of the best documented practicing Muslim slaves in America, joined the First Presbyterian Church, in Fayetteville, North Carolina. He is believed to have arrived in Charleston in 1807, shortly before the foreign slave trade was terminated. He lived with some degree of privilege at the James Owen plantation. Omar actively practiced his Islamic faith for many years, and Owen procured a copy of the Qu’ran in English for him in order to facilitate his learning English. As Omar learned English, the Owens hoped that he might convert to Christianity and to that end, Owen procured a Bible in Arabic in 1819.

On December 3, 1847, Frederick Douglass published the first edition of the North Star, a four-page weekly anti-slavery newspaper. It was sold by subscription at the cost of $2 per year to more than 4,000 readers in the United States, Europe, and the West Indies. In June 1851 it merged with Gerrit Smith's Liberty Party Paper to form Frederick Douglass' Paper.

On December 3, 1976,  Bob Marley, his wife, and manager Don Taylor were wounded in an assault by unknown gunmen inside Marley's home. This came two days before a free concert planned by Jamaican Prime Minister Michael Manley in an attempt to ease tension between two warring political groups. Taylor and Marley's wife sustained serious injuries, but later made full recoveries. Bob Marley received minor wounds in the chest and arm. The attempt on his life was thought to have been politically motivated, as many felt the concert was really a support rally for Manley. Nonetheless, the concert proceeded, and an injured Marley performed as scheduled, two days after the attempt.

 Photo Gallery

President Barack Obama visits with a platoon of U.S. troops at Bagram Air Field, December 3, 2010.

Publications

Jet Magazine, December 3, 1953

Places of the Underground Railroad by Tom Calarco Publication Date: December 3, 2010

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October 14

(William) Allison Davis (October 14, 1902 - November 21, 1983) was a Harvard-trained cultural anthropologist whose research was used in both the Brown decision and as a basis for the Head Start program. He was the first black faculty member of a primarily white college, and to be hired at the University of Chicago his salary had to be guaranteed by Julius Rosenwald.  He is best remembered for his pioneering anthropology research on southern race and class during the 1930s, producing the books Children of Bondage (1940) and Deep South (1941), notable not only for their use of anthropological field methods but for their sobering portrait of the economic and racial order in America. He followed these with research done within the Chicago schools, writing Intelligence and Cultural Differences (1951), a detailed analysis of class-based student responses to culturally weighted questions found on ten mass intelligence tests.

Birthdays

Clarence Muse (October 14, 1889 - October 13, 1979) first appeared in Hearts in Dixie (1929), the first all-black movie, and his film career spanned the next 50 years. He appeared in over 150 movies, including Broken Earth (1936), Sweet Youth (1938), Way Down South (1939, which he co-wrote with Langston Hughes), and Broken Strings (1940). Muse co-wrote the song Sleepytime Down South which was sung by Nina Mae McKinney in the movie Safe in Hell (1931) and later a signature song of Louis Armstrong.  In 1943, he became the first African American Broadway director with Run Little Chillun. Prior to his acting career he earned a degree in international law from  Dickinson College and was a founder of Harlem's Lafayette Theater.

Although Clarence Muse was an accomplished actor, director, and screenwriter, he was often typecast in
mainstream films as a railway porter. He is shown here in Alfred Hitchcock's Shadow of a Doubt (1943).

Oscar McKinley Charleston (October 14, 1896 - October 5, 1954) joined the U. S. Army at the age of 15 and served in the Philippines before he began his professional baseball career in 1915 with the Indianapolis ABC’s. Over his career he had a .348 batting average and regularly finished among the leaders in home runs and stolen bases. In 1932, he became player/manager of the Pittsburgh Crawfords and presided over what many consider the best Negro League team ever.  His roster included Hall of Famers Josh Gibson, Satchel Paige, and Judy Johnson. The team went 99-36, and Charleston himself batted .363. He was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1976.

David Showell (October 14, 1924 - December 23, 1955) was a fighter pilot in the Tuskegee Airmen squadron. After the war he was a prominent player for Lafayette College during the 1948 and 1949 football seasons. At the end of the 1948 season, Showell was excluded from an invitation the team received to play in the Sun Bowl in El Paso, Texas on January 1, 1949. This discriminatory event sparked much controversy, not only within Lafayette College, but across the country. Lafayette decided not to send its team to the Sun Bowl in response to the Sun Bowl Committee's decision to exclude Showell from the game due to the segregation laws in Texas, which led to large student protests at the college against racial discrimination.

James "Son" Thomas (October 14, 1926 – June 26, 1993) was an Delta blues musician, gravedigger and sculptor from Leland, Mississippi. He was known as a  folk artist for his sculptures made from unfired clay, which he dug out of the banks of the Yazoo River. His most famous sculpted images were skulls (often featuring actual human teeth), which mirrored his job as a gravedigger and his often stated philosophy that "we all end up in the clay". In 1985, his work was featured in the prestigious Corcoran Gallery in Washington, D.C. Thomas's skulls are on display in the Delta Blues Museum, in Clarksdale, Mississippi, and the Highway 61 Blues Museum, in Leland, Mississippi.

Joyce Bryant (born October 14, 1928) defied Klan threats and became the first black performer in a Miami Beach Hotel Nightclub in 1952. Her silver hair and tight, backless, cleavage-revealing mermaid dresses became her trademark look and, combined with her four octave voice, further elevated her status into one of the major headlining stars of the early 1950s, becoming known as "the Bronze Blond Bombshell" and "the black Marilyn Monroe". She left the industry in 1955 at the height of her popularity to devote herself to the Seventh-day Adventist Church. A decade later, she returned to show business as a trained classical vocalist and later became a vocal coach.

Events

On October 14, 1916 Paul Robeson missed the only football game of his college career when the team from Washington and Lee College in Virginia refused to take the field against an African American. Rutgers coach George Sanford excluded Robeson from this game but later refused to give in to similar requests. Robeson was a two-time All-American and Walter Camp considered him to be the greatest defensive end ever.

On October 14, 1964 Martin Luther King won the Nobel Peace Prize for his contributions to the American civil rights movement. The award came a year after the historic March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, and months after the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. At the age of 35 he was youngest winner of the prize since its inception in 1901.He donated the prize money, valued at $54,600, to the civil rights movement.

Photo Gallery

"Arnold R. Fesser, oiler, 17 years at sea: `We got a big job to do until this war is won. We will keep them
sailing until the end. Then we have got time for holidays." October 14, 1944. 357-G-203-4690.

Bishop Willis J. King, Resident Bishop of Liberia in NYC, noted teacher and author, is shown on Pier 8
 bidding farewell to Lt. Joseph G. Burgess,New Rochelle, New York, of 371st Infantry, 92nd Division,
 who was about to sail overseas. Ltr. Burgess, who was six feet four inches tall, received
 his commission at Fort Benning, Georgia, 14 October 1942. USA Signals Corps photo.

October 14, 1969 [during UCSB Black Student Union takeover of North Hall]
two children of concerned parents hang out at campus during action

First black homecoming queen at Northeastern University, Linda Brown and her escort: October 14, 1972

 October 14, 1980 Bob Marley performs in his last concert before
 he untimely joins the ancestors succumbing to cancer.

Actors Chiwetel Ejiofor and Lupita Nyong'o at the premiere of '12 Years A Slave'
at the Directors Guild on October 14, 2013 in Los Angeles, California.

October 14, 2014 "The President lifts the daughter of a departing staff member
 in the Oval Office." (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

Publications

Delores De Vega and Other Models Veto Contract - Jet Magazine, October 14, 1954

"Only in Defense of Life Should Life Be Taken"
The Black Panther, October 14, 1972

On October 14, 1995, Eddie Robinson became the first coach from a historically black college to be on the
 cover of Sports Illustrated. He had achieved his 400th win with the Grambling Tigers earlier in the week.

A Shining Thread of Hope by Darlene Clark Hine. $11.32. 368 pages.
Publisher: Broadway (October 14, 2009). Author: Darlene Clark Hine

October 14, 2010, Rolling Stone -- President Obama

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