January 31

Jack Roosevelt (Jackie) Robinson (January 31, 1919 - October 24, 1972) was the first African American to play in Major League Baseball since color lines were drawn in the 1880s. He had been an all-sport athlete at UCLA, an Army officer, athletic director at Huston College (now Huston-Tillotson University), and a member of the Negro League Kansas City Monarchs before being signed by Dodgers' General Manager Branch Rickey in 1945. He was with the the AAA affiliate Montreal Royals for two seasons before his major league debut on April 15, 1947. He was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1962. After his playing career, he was the first black television analyst in MLB, and the first black vice president of a major American corporation, Chock Full o'Nuts.

Birthdays

Jersey Joe Walcott (born Arnold Raymond Cream, January 31, 1914 - February 25, 1994) won the World Heavyweight Championship from Ezzard Charles, whom he knocked out in the 7th round of their 1951 title bout in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Walcott had 69 professional fights. He won 30 of them by knock-out and was elected to the Boxing Hall of Fame in 1969. He held the world heavyweight title from 1951 to 1952, and broke the record for the oldest man to win the title, at the age of 37. That record would eventually be broken in 1994 by 45-year-old George Foreman.

Carol Elaine Channing (born January 31, 1921) began her acting career as a Broadway musical actress, starring in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes in 1949, and Hello, Dolly! in 1964, when she won the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical. She revived both roles several times throughout her career, most recently playing Dolly in 1995. During her career, she had won or been nominated for a Tony Award for every Broadway show she ever played. She grew up in a German-American household in San Francisco and did not know until just before she left for college that her paternal grandmother was African American.

Benjamin Lawson Hooks (January 31, 1925 – April 15, 2010) was an American civil rights leader. A Baptist minister and practicing attorney, he served as executive director of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) from 1977 to 1992, and throughout his career was a vocal campaigner for civil rights in the United States.

Ernest "Ernie" Banks (January 31, 1931 – January 23, 2015), nicknamed "Mr. Cub" and "Mr. Sunshine", was an American professional baseball player who played in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a shortstop and first baseman for the Chicago Cubs between 1953 and 1971. He was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1977, and was named to the Major League Baseball All-Century Team in 1999. He began playing professional baseball in 1950 with the Kansas City Monarchs in the Negro leagues. He served in the U.S. military for two years, played for the Monarchs again, and began his major league career in September 1953. The following year, Banks was the National League Rookie of the Year runner-up.

Kerry Washington (born January 31, 1977) is an African American actress. She is known for her roles as Ray Charles's wife, Della Bea Robinson, in the film Ray (2004), as Idi Amin's wife Kay in The Last King of Scotland, and as Alicia Masters, love interest of Ben Grimm/The Thing in the live-action Fantastic Four films. She has also starred in the critically acclaimed independent film as the lead actress in the 2012 ABC drama Scandal playing Olivia Pope and as Broomhilda von Shaft in the movie Django Unchained.



Events

On January 31, 1865, Congress passed the 13th Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery in the United States. The amendment was ratified by the required number of states on December 6, 1865. On December 18, 1865, Secretary of State William H. Seward proclaimed its adoption. It was the first of the three Reconstruction Amendments adopted following the American Civil War.

On January 31, 1934, Etta Moten sang for President and Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt at a White House Dinner, the first time an African American actress performed at the White House.

On January 31, 1964, Herbert Lee was shot and killed by E.H. Hurst, a white member of the Mississippi Legislature. Lee worked with civil rights leader Bob Moses to help register black voters. Louis Allen, who witnessed the murder of civil rights worker Herbert Lee, endured years of threats, jailings and harassment. Allen was among a dozen witnesses of the murder of Herbert Lee by E.H. Hurst, a white state legislator, in September 1961. Civil rights activists had come to Liberty that summer to organize for voter registration; essentially no black had been allowed to vote since 1890, when the state disfranchising constitution was passed.

Photo Gallery

The Ashanti Golden Stool with its immediate caretaker January 31, 1935

Sammy Davis, Jr. laughing with Senator Robert F. Kennedy backstage at a benefit for the senator at Ford's Theater. Date Photographed:31 January 1968

Shirley Verrett (left), Marian Anderson, Grace Bumbry (right) January 31, 1982 Photographer: Henry Grossman

W.E.B. Du Bois Issued: January 31, 1992

Publications

An arrival in Camp–under the Proclamation of Emancipation. --- Alfred Waud worked up this sketch from a photograph, probably made in his presence by David B. Woodbury on January 1, 1863. It was published in Harper’s Weekly, January 31, 1863, p. 6. Library of Congress image. .. When compared with the photograph, it shows that the photo is actually an reversed stereograph.

Jet Magazine, January 31, 1952

Are Black Women Getting Sexier - The Full Story - Jet Magazine, January 31, 1952

The Black Panther (January 31, 1970)

Time magazine, January 31, 1973 — Flip Wilson

All-White Jury in Fred Hampton Murder Case? The Black Panther (January 31, 1976)

Black Exodus: The Great Migration from the American South by Alferdteen Harrison. $14.93. 128 pages. Publisher: University Press of Mississippi (January 31, 1991)

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January 4

Grace Bumbry (born January 4, 1937), an American opera singer, is considered one of the leading mezzo-sopranos of her generation, as well as a major soprano for many years.

Benjamin Lundy (January 4, 1789 – August 22, 1839) was a Quaker abolitionist who established several anti-slavery newspapers and traveled extensively to campaign against slavery. Born in New Jersey, he first worked in Wheeling, Virginia (now West Virginia) where he saw the abuses of slavery firsthand as captives were transported down the Ohio River. He settled in Ohio where he founded the Union Humane Society and first began publishing, later working in Tennessee, Maryland, and Pennsylvania. He traveled to St. Louis to campaign against Missouri being admitted as a free state in 1820, and also visited Texas in the early 1830 to speak against slavery before the Texas War for Independence, but was unsuccessful in both places. He supported establishing colonies outside the United States, and visited a settlement for freedmen in Canada and escorted 20 emancipated slaves to Haiti,

Birthdays

Reverdy C. Ransom (January 4, 1861 – April 22, 1959) was an early proponent of the Social Gospel and 48th Bishop of the A.M.E. Church (1924). Ordained in 1886, he served pastorates in Chicago, Boston, and New York City, often establishing outreach programs for African Americans newly arrived from the South, and was editor of the denomination's main publication, the A.M. E. Review. He was a member of the Niagara Movement and a founding member of the NAACP. A noted orator, he was the first African American to speak at Boston's Faneuil Hall when he gave the keynote address on the centennial of the birth of abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison.

Floyd Patterson (January 4, 1935 – May 11, 2006) was an American professional boxer who competed from 1952 to 1972, and twice reigned as the world heavyweight champion from 1956 to 1962. At the age of 21, he became the youngest boxer in history to win the title, and was also the first heavyweight to regain the title after losing it. As an amateur he won a gold medal in the middleweight division at the 1952 Summer Olympics. Although Mike Tyson later became the youngest boxer to win a world heavyweight title at the age of 20, Patterson remains the youngest to hold the undisputed heavyweight title.

Grace Bumbry (born January 4, 1937), an American opera singer, is considered one of the leading mezzo-sopranos of her generation, as well as a major soprano for many years. She was a member of a pioneering generation of singers who followed Marian Anderson (including Leontyne Price, Martina Arroyo, Shirley Verrett and Reri Grist) in the world of classical music and paved the way for future African American opera and classical singers.

Michele Wallace (born January 4, 1952) is a feminist author and daughter of artist Faith Ringgold. She became famous in 1979 when, at age 27, she published Black Macho and The Myth of The Superwoman, a book in which she criticized black nationalism and sexism. Her writings on literature, art, film, and popular culture have been widely published and have made her a "leader of a [new] generation of African-American intellectuals."




Events

On January 4, 1853, Solomon Northup regained his freedom after having been kidnapped and sold into slavery to work in the cane fields of Avoyelles Parish, Louisiana. Northup, a freeborn New York farmer and musician, was able to send word to his home, and friends and family enlisted the aid of New York Governor Washington Hunt. In his first year of freedom, Northup wrote and published a memoir, Twelve Years a Slave (1853). The book was adapted and produced as the 1984 PBS television movie Solomon Northup's Odyssey, and the 2013 feature film 12 Years a Slave. The latter won an Academy Award in 2014 for Best Picture.


Photo Gallery

January 4 1967 during the recording of the extremely rowdy album Super Blues and is one of very few known images showing Little Walter and Muddy Waters play together and it is likely the one single known showing Walter use a specific mic type recording in the studio

January 4 2014 President Barack Obama with his First Lady Michelle Obama and First Daughters Sasha & Malia.

Publications

This article, published in the January 4, 1890, issue of the Planet provides a listing of African Americans lynched in the South.

"1969: Year of the Panther" The Black Panther, January 4, 1969

Caption: Grier in repose, but still animated. Publication: Los Angeles Times Publication date: January 4, 1976 North Carolina-born actress Pam Grier photographed for a Los Angeles Times interview.

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