Celebrate the Day!: Daisy Bates

November 11, 2011 -- President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama
watch the retiring of the colors aboard the USS Carl Vinson, docked at North Island
Naval Station in San Diego, California. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

Daisy Bates (November 11, 1914 – November 4, 1999) mentored the students known as the Little Rock Nine, beginning with the the federal court case, Aaron v. Cooper, which set the stage for the 1957 desegregation of Central High School. Although Wiley Branton of Pine Bluff was the local attorney for the NAACP, Bates, in her capacity as president of the Arkansas Conference of Branches, was recognized as the principal spokesperson and leader for the forces behind school desegregation. For much of the school year, she was in daily contact with the national office of the NAACP in New York as segregationists battled to destroy the NAACP in Arkansas as well as to intimidate her, her husband, and the Little Rock Nine and their families into giving up the struggle. In recognition of her leadership, the national Associated Press chose her in 1957 as the Woman of the Year in Education and one of the top ten newsmakers in the world, and her prominence as one of the few recognized female civil rights leaders of the period led to her selection as the only woman to speak at the Lincoln Memorial at the 1963 March on Washington. Beginning in 1941, she and her husband, L. C. Bates, had published the Arkansas State Press, a weekly newspaper covering civil rights issues and prominent African Americans in the state. The paper folded in 1959 after an advertising boycott by white businesses, and Bates moved to New York City where she wrote a memoir of her experiences, The Long Shadow of Little Rock. In 1968, she returned to Arkansas and became the executive director of the Mitchellville Economic Opportunity Agency, a federal anti-poverty program.

Birthdays

Shirley Graham Du Bois (November 11, 1896 – March 27, 1977) studied at the Sorbonne before enrolling in Oberlin College, earning a BA in 1934 and a master's degree in music in 1935. She was then appointed director of the Chicago Negro Unit of the Federal Theater Project, part of WPA, she wrote musical scores, directed, and did additional associated work. In addition to musicals and drama, she wrote a number of award-winning biographies of African Americans for young readers. She married W.E.B. Du Bois in 1951, the second marriage for both. She was 54 years old and he was 83.

Claude Clark (November 11, 1915 - April 21, 2001) grew up in Philadelphia after relocating there from Georgia with his parents at the age of seven. He studied at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Barnes Foundation in Merion, Pennsylvania. While at the Barnes Foundation he also taught art in the Philadelphia public schools and worked through the Federal Arts Project of the WPA. He taught at Talladega College in Alabama from 1948 to 1955 before moving to California where he studied and taught Merritt College, and earned an MFA from the University of California at Berkeley. He helped curate the first national African American exhibition at the Oakland Museum in 1967. His work focused on African American culture, including dance scenes, street urchins, marine life, landscapes, and religious and political satire images executed primarily with a palette knife.

Freedom Morning by Claude Clark, 1941

Men With Machetes by Claude Clark

LaVern Baker (November 11, 1929 – March 10, 1997) had several hit records on the pop chart in the 1950s and early 1960s. Her most successful records were "Tweedlee Dee" (1955), "Jim Dandy" (1956), and "I Cried a Tear" (1958). She was married to comedian Slappy White from 1959 to 1969. After the couple divorced, she became entertainment director at the Marine Corps Staff NCO club at Subic Bay in the Philippines where she remained after a USO tour appearance until the base closed in 1988. In 1991 she became the second female solo artist inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, following Aretha Franklin in 1987.

Fred Luter Jr. (born on November 11, 1956) became the first African American president of the Southern Baptist Convention in 2012. He has been senior minister of the Franklin Avenue Baptist Church in New Orleans since 1986, increasing the size of the congregation from 65 to over 7000 during that time. He began his career as a "street preacher" in 1977 in New Orleans' Lower Ninth Ward following his conversion after a motorcycle accident.

Barrington Irving (born November 11, 1983) is best known as the youngest person and the first African American pilot to circumnavigate the globe. After high school he turned down football scholarships, instead accepting a Florida Bright Future Scholarship, which helped him to pursue aviation. As a result of volunteer work teaching youth about aviation opportunities, he was awarded the $100,000 Florida Memorial University/ U.S. Air Force Flight Awareness Scholarship in 2003. In 2005, Irving founded the non-profit Experience Aviation, Inc. The corporation was intended to educate and inspire youth about aviation-related careers.

Events

On November 11, 1901, Alabama's Constitution was ratified by statewide vote in an election fraught with corruption. Following the trend of other southern states in this period, Alabama used the constitution to effectively disfranchise blacks and poor whites. Many of the votes in favor had come from African Americans who were unaware of the provisions that would ultimately remove their power to cast ballots. During the years from 1901 to 1908, the number of registered African-American voters in Alabama would decline from 79,000 to fewer than 4,000. With hundreds of amendments, the 1901 Constitution carried the distinction of being twice as long as the constitution of any other state.

On November 11, 1951 Janet Collins made her debut in Giuseppe Verdi’s Aida as the first African American ballerina at the Metropolitan Opera. Following her historic hiring she had a three-year run at the Met, with Aida followed by Carmen and La Gioconda in 1952 and Samson and Delilah in 1953.

On November 11, 1979 the Mary McLeod Bethune Council House in Washtington, D.C. was opened to the public. It was the home of Mrs. Bethune from 1943 to 1955, as well as the headquarters of the National Council of Negro Women. It now contains the National Archives of Black Women's History, and passed to the National Park Service in 1995.

Photo Gallery

On November 11, 1984 Reverend Martin Luther King, Sr. died of a heart attack in Atlanta,
Georgia. Better known as “Daddy King,” he was the father of famed civil rights
leader Martin Luther King, Jr. and was himself, an early civil rights leader.

November 11, 2012 - Top Fuel driver Antron Brown started Sunday with a losing effort and burned hands. He ended
the day as the NHRA Top Fuel champion, the first African American driver in history to win a major auto racing title

Publications

"The First Vote," Harper' Weekly, November 11, 1867, by A.R. Waud

Jet Magazine. November 11, 1976.

Before We Were Black by Eric A. McMiller by Eric A. McMiller.
$9.95. 53 pages. Publisher: XLibris (November 11, 2008)

Elizabeth Van Lew (October 25, 1818 – September 25, 1900) became an abolitionist after attending a Quaker school in Philadelphia despite being the daughter of a prosperous Richmond, Virginia merchant. After her father passed away in 1843 she insisted that the family slaves be freed, and she used much of her inheritance to buy families at the local slave auction and free them. During the Civil War she took food and clothing to captured Union soldiers at nearby Libby Prison, helped them to escape, and forwarded any information they had about Confederate troops to Union commanders through an elaborate spy network she devised, which included her former household servant Mary Bowser who managed to find employment with Jefferson Davis's family in the Confederate White House and pass information along to Van Lew.

Birthdays

Władysław Franciszek Jabłonowski (October 25, 1769 - September 29 1802) was a general in the Polish Army of English, French, and African ancestry who took the surname of his Polish stepfather. He attended the French military academy at Brienne-le-Château where he was a classmate of Napoleon and Davout. After graduation he joined the Régiment de Royal-Allemand where he attained the rank of lieutenant. In 1799 he was made General of Brigade of the Polish legions. He was sent on his own request to Haiti in May 1802 (before the decision to send the rest of the Polish legions) and died there from yellow fever.

Irene McCoy Gaines (October 25, 1892 - April 7, 1964) was the first African American woman to run for a state legislative seat and was the first African American woman to run for the county commissioner’s office in 1950. Her husband, Harris B. Gaines, was a Republican Illinois State Representative (1928-1935), as was her son, Charles Gaines (1975-1981). She also served as President of the National Association of Colored Women (1952-1958). During her presidency of the NACWC, she led the organization into more assertive civil rights positions. Her office issued press releases in support of the Birmingham bus boycott and in behalf of Authurine Lucy’s efforts to gain admission as the first African American to attend the University of Alabama.

Louis L. Redding (October 25, 1901 - September 28, 1998) was vice principal of Fessenden Academy in Ocala, Florida and taught at Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia. before attending Harvard Law School and becoming the first African American attorney in Delaware in 1929. He specialized in civil rights work, including a suit to integrate the state universities (1950) and Gebhart v Belton (1952) which became part of Brown v Board of Education. Redding also successfully argued Burton v. Wilmington Parking Authority before the US Supreme Court in 1961 which held that segregation in public accommodations was not permissible.

Bill Spiller (October 25, 1913 - 1988) was a Jim Crow-era golfer who helped to change PGA rules. Through his attempts to play in this lucrative circuit, in 1952 the previously all-white PGA began allowing a limited number of African Americans in each tournament although they were still not granted PGA membership.

Emmett W. Chappelle (born October 25, 1925) taught biochemistry at Meharry Medical College in Nashville, Tennessee, was a research associate at Stanford University, and worked at the Research Institute in Baltimore (a division of the Martin Marietta Corporation) before joining NASA at the Goddard Space Flight Center as a research chemist, and later a remote sensing scientist, studying natural systems to improve environmental management. He primarily studied the use of naturally occurring luminescent enzymes as a way of detecting extraterrestrial life. This technology also has applications in medicine and in environmental science.

Events

On October 25, 1940, Benjamin O. Davis, Sr. was promoted to Brigadier General, becoming the first African American general in the United States Army. He began his military career in the Spanish-American War and then as a member of the 9th Cavalry Regiment (Buffalo Soldiers) where he was mentored by West Point grad Charles Young. His first command was the 4th Brigade, 2nd Cavalry Division at Fort Riley, Kansas. His son, Benjamin O. Davis, Jr. became the first African American general officer of the United States Air Force in October 1954. The senior Davis is shown here after passing tests to enter Officer Candidate School in 1901, and below in France on August 8, 1944.

On October 25, 1968 The state of Illinois recognized Jean Baptiste Pointe Du Sable as the true founder of Chicago. Du Sable, a historic African American pioneer, was the first known settler to build a house and open a trading post in what is now the city of Chicago.

On October 25, 1976, Alabama Governor, George Wallace, pardoned Clarence Norris, the only one of the Scottsboro Boys sentenced to death in a 1937 retrial after the original 1931 death sentence for all but one of the defendants. Governor Bibb Graves of Alabama in 1938 commuted his death sentence to life. Given parole in 1946, he "jumped" and went into hiding. In 1976 he was found in Brooklyn, New York. Governor George Wallace pardoned him that year, declaring him not guilty. Norris published an autobiography, The Last of the Scottsboro Boys (1979). He died of Alzheimer's disease on January 23, 1989.

Photo Gallery

On October 25, 1958, Daisy Bates, head of the Arkansas chapter of the NAACP, and the nine
students (The Little Rock Nine) who integrated Little Rock’s Central High School ware awarded
the Spingarn Medal for their courage and leadership in the civil rights struggle.

On October 25, 1969, the Malcolm X Liberation University opened in Durham. Founded by black activist Howard Fuller and named for then recently-slain civil rights leader Malcolm X, the school was founded in response to protests by students at Duke University over the lack of an African American studies program there.

On October 18, 1974, Al Green's girlfriend, Mary Woodson White, assaulted him before committing suicide at his Memphis home by dousing Green with a pan of boiling grits while he was bathing, causing severe burns on his back, stomach and arms. She then found his .38 and killed herself. In her purse, police found a note declaring her intentions and her reasons.

Maya Angelou at Ohio State University, October 25, 1976

Morgan Fairchild (left) and Cicely Tyson, for the Dallas Fashion Awards, October 25, 1987.

Publications

Jet Magazine, October 25, 2010 -- Michelle Obama