January 29

Dr. Sarah Loguen Fraser (January 29, 1850 - April 1933)  was the first woman to gain an M.D. from Syracuse University School of Medicine and is believed to be only the fourth African American woman to become a licensed physician in the United States, the second in New York, and the first to graduate from a coeducational medical school. She went on to intern in pediatrics and obstetrics in Philadelphia and Boston before opening her own practice in Washington, DC. While she was in Washington, she met, and then in 1882 married, Dr. Charles Fraser, a chemist. She moved to his home in the Puerto Plata in the Dominican Republic where she became the country's first female doctor, although she was allowed to treat only women and children because of her gender. After his death, she ran a pediatric practice from her home in Syracuse, New York and mentored black midwives. She was the daughter of Rev. Jermain Wesley Loguen, an abolitionist and A.M.E. Zion bishop, and initially became interested in medicine as a child when she would help in treating the illnesses and injuries of the people who passed through their home, a major location of the Underground Railroad in Syracuse, New York.

Birthdays

Eddie Taylor (January 29, 1923 – December 25, 1985) was a electric blues guitarist. As a boy Taylor taught himself to play the guitar. He spent his early years playing at venues around Leland, Mississippi, where he taught his friend Jimmy Reed to play guitar. In 1949 Taylor moved to Chicago. While he never achieved the stardom of some of his compatriots in the Chicago blues scene, he nevertheless was an integral part of that era. He is especially noted as a main accompanist for Jimmy Reed.

Arnaldo Tamayo Méndez (born January 29, 1942) was the first Latin American and the first person of African ancestry in space; he was proclaimed at the time as the first black cosmonaut.  As a member of the crew of Soyuz 38, he became the first Cuban citizen and the first person from a country in the Western Hemisphere other than the United States to travel into earth orbit.

Oprah Gail Winfrey (born January 29, 1954) is best known for her multi-award-winning talk show The Oprah Winfrey Show which was the highest-rated program of its kind in history and was nationally syndicated from 1986 to 2011. She is a graduate of Tennessee State University and anchored news shows in Nashville and Baltimore, and a morning talk show in Chicago before her own show premiered. She is the founder and CEO of Harpo Productions and O, The Oprah Magazine, and was nominated for an Academy Award for her role as Sofia in the 1986 film The Color Purple.


Events

On January 29, 1850, Whig Senator Henry Clay gave a speech which called for compromise on the issues dividing the Union. However, Clay's specific proposals for achieving a compromise, including his idea for Texas' boundary, were not adopted in a single bill. The Compromise came to coalesce around a plan dividing Texas at its present-day boundaries, creating territorial governments with "popular sovereignty" (without the Wilmot Proviso) for New Mexico and Utah, admitting California as a free state, abolishing the slave trade in the District of Columbia, and enacting a new fugitive slave law. It was enacted in September 1850.


Photo Gallery

Historic Nebraska Mug Shots, Goldie Williams. Goldie Williams defiantly crossed her arms for her Omaha Police Court Mug Shot. Arrested on January 29, 1898.

Save Our Sister Day -- January 29, 1972. Angela Davis spent 18 months in prison, facing two capital charges, before she was acquitted.

Percy LaVon Julian Issued: January 29, 1993 Percy LaVon Julian won fame for his work as a research chemist. He synthesized a glaucoma drug, and his research led to large-scale production of cortisone drugs and the hormones progesterone and testosterone.

Hattie McDaniel was featured as the 29th inductee on the Black Heritage Series by the United States Postal Service. The 39-cent stamp was released on January 29, 2006.

President Obama Signs the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act: January 29, 2009

Publications

Rosalind Russell and Hazel Washington - Jet Magazine, January 29, 1953

Covergirl New Yorker Lillian Gore - Jet Magazine, January 29, 1959

Year Old Marguerite Wright Has Rhythm In Her Feet - Jet Magazine, January 29, 1959

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December 15

December 15, 2013 marked the close of the exhibit "Unenslaved: Rice Culture Paintings" by Jonathan Green at the Avery Research Center for African American History in Charleston, South Carolina.

William Augustus Hinton (December 15, 1883 - August 8, 1959) was the first African American professor at Harvard Medical School, where he earned his medical degree in 1912. He began his teaching career in 1918 as an instructor in preventive medicine and hygiene, and in 1921 began teaching bacteriology and immunology, which he continued to teach until his retirement in 1950. He also directed Harvard's Wassermann Laboratory, the official lab for the Massachusetts State Department of Public Health, and developed a test for diagnosing syphilis which was easier, less expensive, and more accurate than previous methods, and was adopted by the U. S. Public Health Service. Dr. Hinton also published the first medical textbook by an African American: Syphilis and Its Treatment (1936). He noted the role of socioeconomics in health and called syphilis "a disease of the underprivileged." He was also a consultant to the U. S. Public Health Service,

Birthdays

Kathryn Magnolia Johnson (December 15, 1878 - 1955) was a teacher and early NAACP member. She traveled selling Crisis Magazine and organizing NAACP branches throughout the south. Critical of all-white leadership, she left the NAACP in 1916, and began working for the YMCA. She and Addie Wailes Hunton were sent to Europe during World War I to report on conditions for African American soliders, which were reported in their book Two Colored Women with the American Expeditionary Forces.

Eslanda Cardozo Goode Robeson (December 15, 1896 – December 13, 1965) had a varied and remarkable career both within and outside motion picture filmmaking, working initially as the first African American hired at New York City’s Presbyterian Hospital in the surgical pathology department. After her marriage to Paul Robeson, whose biography she wrote in 1930, she joined him in several independent film projects.

Jesse Lorenzo Belvin (December 15, 1932 - February 6, 1960) was a singer, pianist and songwriter popular in the 1950s whose success was cut short by his death in a car crash at age 27. In 1950 he joined saxophonist Big Jay McNeely's backing vocal quartet, Three Dots and a Dash, and was featured prominently on their record releases. In 1952 he joined Specialty Records. He is best known as the writer of "Earth Angel," a million-selling record by the Penguins.

Donna Brazile (born December 15, 1959) briefly served as the interim chairperson for the Democratic National Committee in the spring of 2011 and assumed that role again in the summer of 2016. She was the first African American to direct a major presidential campaign, acting as campaign manager for Al Gore in 2000. She has also worked on several presidential campaigns for Democratic candidates, including Jesse Jackson and Walter Mondale/ Geraldine Ferraro in 1984, and for Dick Gephardt in the 1988 Democratic primary.



Events

On December 15 and 16, 1864, eight regiments of the 13th U.S. Colored Troops fought at the Battle of Nashville, one of the most decisive victories of the Civil War and the last battle outside states along the east coast. On the first day of battle three brigades of the First Colored Brigade under Col.Thomas Morgan were part of a diversion to the southeast of the city, and on the next day the Second Brigade under Col. Charles R. Thompson fought to the southwest, capturing a parapet atop Overton Hill.

On December 15, 1939, Gone With the Wind premiered at Loew's Grand Theater, on Peachtree Street in Atlanta, Georgia. Hattie McDaniel, winner of a Best Supporting Actress Academy Award for her role in the film, and other African American cast members were not allowed to attend the premiere. Studio head David Selznick had asked that McDaniel be permitted to attend, but MGM advised him not to, because of Georgia's segregation laws. Clark Gable threatened to boycott the Atlanta premiere unless she could attend, but McDaniel convinced him to attend despite his objjections.


Photo Gallery

Jermaine LaJuane Jackson weds Hazel Joy Gordy, December 15, 1973.

When Marvin Gaye divorced his first wife, Anna Gordy, he was running low on money thanks to an extravagant lifestyle and was unable to pay Anna alimony or child support. Marvin's attorney came up with a solution for Marvin to give half the royalties he would earn from his next project to Anna. That project, Here, My Dear is a double studio album, released on December 15, 1978.

December 15, 2013: Nelson Mandela's funeral. Actor Idris Elba, who plays Mandela in the film Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom, leaves at the end of Mandela's funeral in Qunu, South Africa.  

Michelle Obama was appropriately festive for the holidays in this bedazzled white J Mendel dress at TNT's Christmas In Washington event on December 15, 2013 in Washington, D.C

Publications

Heavyweight champ Joe Louis lies on the canvas at (the old, original) Madison Square Garden in New York after being floored by contender Jersey Joe Walcott in a December 1947 title match. Louis came back to win by a controversial decision. Originally published in the December 15, 1947 issue of LIFE.

Dancing Dorothy Dandridge - Jet Magazine - December 15, 1955

I've Got to Make My Livin': Black Women's Sex Work in Turn-of-the-Century Chicago (Historical Studies of Urban America) by Cynthia M. Blair. $23.31. 337 pages. Publisher: University Of Chicago Press (December 15, 2010)

Joan Myers Brown & the Audacious Hope of the Black Ballerina: A Biohistory of American Performance by Brenda Dixon Gottschild. $26.72. Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan (December 15, 2011)

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November 13

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Augustine of Hippo (November 13, 354 – August 28, 430), also known as Saint Augustine or Saint Austin, was an early Christian theologian and philosopher whose writings influenced the development of Western Christianity and Western philosophy. He was the bishop of Hippo Regius (present-day Annaba, Algeria) located in the Roman province of Africa. He is the patron saint of brewers, printers, theologians, the alleviation of sore eyes, and a number of cities and dioceses. Many Protestants, especially Calvinists, consider him to be one of the theological fathers of the Protestant Reformation due to his teachings on salvation and divine grace. In his writings, Augustine leaves some information as to the consciousness of his African heritage. For example, he refers to Apuleius as "the most notorious of us Africans," to Ponticianus as "a country man of ours, insofar as being African," and to Faustus of Mileve as "an African Gentleman."

Birthdays

John Jordan "Buck" O'Neil (November 13, 1911 – October 6, 2006) was a first baseman and manager in the Negro American League, mostly with the Kansas City Monarchs. After his playing days, he worked as a scout, and became the first African American coach in Major League Baseball with the Chicago Cubs. In 1990, O'Neil led the effort to establish the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum (NLBM) in Kansas City, and served as its honorary board chairman until his death and was featured in Ken Burns' 1994 documentary, Baseball. In 2007 he was posthumously given a Lifetime Achievement Award named after him. He had fallen short in the Hall of Fame vote in 2006; however, he was honored in 2007 with a new award given by the Hall of Fame, to be named after him.

Georg Olden (born George Elliott Olden, November 13, 1920 - February 25, 1975) worked during World War II as a graphic designer for the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), forerunner of the CIA. After the war his supervisor in the OSS, Col. Lawrence W. Lowman, became Vice President of CBS's television division and recommended Olden to the agency's Director of Communications. In 1960 he left CBS to work for BBDO and other advertising agencies. He designed the Clio award as well as willing seven himself. In 1963, he designed a postage stamp for the United States Postal Service commemorating the centennial of the declaration of the Emancipation Proclamation, the first African-American to do so.

Benny Andrews (November 13, 1930 - November 10, 2006) served as a Staff Sergeant in the U.S. Air Force during the Korean war and later earned a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He had his first New York City solo art show in 1962. In 1969, he co-founded the Black Emergency Cultural Coalition to protest the fact that no African Americans were involved in organizing the Metropolitan Museum of Art exhibit “Harlem on My Mind.”
From 1982 to 1984, he was director of visual arts for the National Endowment for the Arts and in 1983 he was instrumental in forming the National Arts Program which is the largest coordinated visual arts program in the nation’s history. From 1968 to 1997, Andrews taught at Queens College, City University of New York and created a prison art program that became a model for the nation. In 2006, he went to the Gulf Coast to work on an art project with children displaced by Hurricane Katrina.

John Hill Westbrook (November 13, 1947 - December 17, 1983) was the first African American to play varsity football for the SWC, entering a game for the Baylor Bears on September 10, 1966, one week ahead of SMU's Jerry LeVias. Due to early injuries, Westbrook didn't have the outstanding college career that LeVias had and was not as well known. After graduating with a degree in English, Westbrook taught at Southwest Missouri State and Wiley College, and pastored Baptist churches in Tyler and Houston. He ran for Lieutenant Governor of Texas in 1978, placing second in the Democratic primary. He died at the age of 36 due to a pulmonary embolism.

Whoopi Goldberg (born Caryn Elaine Johnson, November 13, 1949) has been nominated for 13 Emmy Awards for her work in television, and is one of the few entertainers who have won an Emmy Award, a Grammy Award, an Oscar, and a Tony Award. Her first major film role was as Celie in The Color Purple (1985), for which she was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress. She won the Best Supporting Actress Award five years later in Ghost, becoming the second African American to do so after Hattie McDaniel in 1940.


Events

On November 13, 1940, the U.S. Supreme Court in Hansberry v. Lee invalidated a racial covenant, ruling in favor of an African American man, Carl Hansberry, who bought a house in a formerly whites-only neighborhood. the justices reversed the Supreme Court of Illinois’ decision on the basis of the Fourteenth Amendment’s due process rights, arguing that it was unfair to allow the 54 percent of the neighborhood landowners who had signed the covenant to represent the 46 percent who had not. Carl Hansberry was the father of author Lorraine Hanberry.

On June 4, 1956 the federal district court ruled that Alabama's racial segregation laws for buses were unconstitutional. However, an appeal kept the segregation intact, and the Montgomery boycott continued. On November 13, 1956, the Supreme Court upheld the district court's ruling, leading to a city ordinance that allowed black bus passengers to sit virtually anywhere they wanted. The boycott officially ended December 20, 1956, after 381 days.

Photo Gallery

Walter White to James Weldon Johnson concerning the Ossian Sweet case, November 13, 1925. Typed letter. NAACP Records, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress (063.00.00) Courtesy of the NAACP [Digital ID # na0063]

President Obama and the U.S. delegation toast with Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama
 and the Japanese delegation at a dinner at the prime minister's official residence
following their bilateral meeting and joint press conference in Tokyo, November 13, 2009.

Publications

Jet Magazine, November 13, 1952

Thousands Attend Funeral for Hattie McDaniel - Jet Magazine, November 13, 1952

Blue Rage, Black Redemption: A Memoir by Stanley Tookie Williams.
$16.00. Publisher: Touchstone (November 13, 2007). 

The Beatitudes: From Slavery to Civil Rights by Carole Boston Weatherford. $11.56. Author:
Carole Boston Weatherford. Publisher: Eerdmans Books for Young Readers (November 13, 2009).
36 pages. Publication: November 13, 2009. With the text of the biblical Beatitudes as an
undercurrent, the story of the civil rights movement is told in lyrical text and stirring illustrations. 

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October 26

Mahalia Jackson (October 26, 1911 – January 27, 1972) first sang publicly at Mount Moriah Baptist Church in New Orleans and Greater Salem Baptist Church in Chicago. She began touring with Thomas A Dorsey in 1931, and his song "Take My Hand, Precious Lord" became a standard of hers. Her 1956 recording of it received a Grammy Hall of Fame Award as did "His Eye is On the Sparrow" (1958) and "Move On Up a Little Higher" (1947). She was the first gospel singer to appear at Carnegie Hall (1950) and at the Newport Jazz Festival (1957). She contributed several songs to the 1958 film St. Louis Blues, sang at an inaugural ball for John F. Kennedy in 1961, and appeared on an episode of Sesame Street singing "He's Got the Whole World In His Hands." Her involvement with the Civil Rights Movement began with a request from Rev. Ralph Abernathy to sing at a benefit concert for the Montgomery bus boycott in 1956. She became friends with Rev. Abernathy and Dr. King, often singing at SCLC fundraisers. She was one of the few women the stage at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, singing "How I Got Over" and "I Been 'Buked and I Been Scorned", and she sang "Take My Hand" at King's funeral.

Birthdays

James H. Young (October 26, 1858 - 1921) was the son of an enslaved mother and prominent white father. Educated at Shaw University, Young was hired to work in the office of Colonel J. J. Young, an internal revenue collector, in 1877, and became involved with the Republican Party. He was editor of the Raleigh N.C. Gazette and served two terms in the State House of Representatives as a Fusion Candidate (uniting the Republicans and the Populists). During the Spanish-American war he was appointed Colonel of the Third North Carolina Volunteer Infantry, perhaps the first African American Colonel in the Army.

William Julius "Judy" Johnson (October 26, 1899 – June 15, 1989) was a third baseman in Negro league baseball. He played for the Hilldale Club, Homestead Grays, and Pittsburgh Crawfords from 1921 to 1936. After his playing career ended, Johnson was a coach and scout for several Major League Baseball teams; he signed Dick Allen. Johnson became the first black spring training coach in the majors, for the Philadelphia Phillies in 1954. Considered one of the greatest third basemen in the Negro leagues, he was elected into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1975.

Claude A. Jeter (October 26, 1914 – January 6, 2009) formed the group that would eventually become one of the most popular gospel quartets of the post-war era, the Swan Silvertones. Elements of his performances in songs such as "Careless Soul" and "Saviour Pass Me Not" were picked up by later singers such as Al Green and Eddie Kendricks of The Temptations. "I'll be a bridge over deep water if you trust in my name", a line from his 1959 rendition of "Mary Don't You Weep", served as Paul Simon's inspiration to write his 1970 song "Bridge over Troubled Water". Simon hired Jeter to sing on the 1973 studio album There Goes Rhymin' Simon ( specifically the falsetto background vocal on "Take Me to the Mardi Gras")

Edward William Brooke III (born October 26, 1919) was the first African American senator elected by popular vote, and the only one to serve multiple terms. He was born in Washington DC, attended Dunbar High School and Howard University, served in the U S. Army during World War II as an officer in the segregated 366th Regiment, and attended Boston University Law School. While in the Senate, he was the first Republican to call for Nixon's resignation.

Débria Brown (October 26, 1936 - December 17, 2001) was an operatic mezzo soprano who had an active international career that spanned five decades. She was part of the first generation of black opera singers to achieve wide success and broke down barriers of racial prejudice in the world of opera. She received a Bachelor of Music degree from Xavier University of Lousiana in 1958 and later studied with Katherine Dunham in New York City through a scholarship provided by the John Hay Whitney Foundation..In 1992, Brown became a Professor of Voice and Artist in Residence at the University of Houston, remaining in that position until her death nine years later. (Photograph, by Carl Van Vechten, of Débria Brown as Carmen, at the New York City Opera, in 1958.)

Emanuel Cleaver II (born October 26, 1944) is currently a U.S. Representative from Missouri's 5th District and has been chair of the Congressional Black Caucus. He was the first African American mayor of Kansas City, Missouri (1991 to 1999) and served as pastor of the St. James United Methodist Church from 1972 to 2009. He is a graduate of Prairie View A & M University and holds a. MDiv degree from St. Paul School of Theology.

Florastine (Flo) Magee Creed-Jacobson (October 26, 1946 - October 16, 2005) was the highest-ranking African American woman in the history of the Boston Police Department. She worked her way  through the ranks from patrol officer, detective, and sergeant until 1994, when then-Police Commissioner Paul Evans appointed her a deputy superintendent in charge of the department's Office of Labor Relations. She was promoted to superintendent on July 1, 1998. As Mrs. Creed-Jacobson was promoted to detective and sergeant, she took night classes at New England School of Law, passing the bar exam on her first attempt.

William Earl "Bootsy" Collins (born October 26, 1951 in Cincinnati, Ohio, USA) is an American funk bassist, singer, and songwriter. Rising to prominence with James Brown in the late 1960s, and with Parliament-Funkadelic in the '70s, Collins's driving bass guitar and humorous vocals established him as one of the leading names in funk. Collins is a member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, inducted in 1997 with fifteen other members of Parliament-Funkadelic.

Regina Marcia Benjamin (born October 26, 1956) served as the 18th Surgeon General of the United States from 2009 to 2013. She is founder of the Bayou La Batre Rural Health Clinic in Bayou La Batre, Alabama, which she supported in its early years by working weekend shifts as an emergency room physician. The clinic gained national attention in 2006 when it was rebuilt a second time after burning the day before it was scheduled to be reopened after being destroyed by Hurricane Katrina. Dr. Benjamin is on a number of professional boards, and is the first physician under 40 and the first African American woman to be on the Board of Directors of the American Medical Association. In 2008 she received a MacArthur Fellowship "Genius" grant.

Events

On October 26, 1934, at a New York City conference, representatives of the NAACP and the American Fund for Public Service planned a coordinated legal campaign against segregation and discrimination. Charles H. Houston, Vice-dean of the Howard University Law School, is named director of the NAACP legal campaign, which became the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund.

On October 26, 1952, Hattie McDaniel died of breast cancer at age 57. She had asked to be buried in the Hollywood Cemetery where many other actors are buried, but her request was refused because of segregation. Her second choice was Angelus-Rosedale Cemetery, where she lies today. In 1999, Tyler Cassidy, the new owner of the Hollywood Cemetery (renamed the Hollywood Forever Cemetery), offered to have McDaniel re-interred there. Her family did not wish to disturb her remains and declined the offer. Instead, Hollywood Forever Cemetery built a large cenotaph on the lawn overlooking its lake.

On October 26, 1994, Beverly Harvard became the first Black woman to run a major police department when she was appointed Atlanta’s police chief on this date. Harvard began her distinguished career in 1973 as a patrol officer and worked her way through the ranks, serving in a number of posts within the department. She stayed in the position until 2002, then began working as the Security Director for the U.S. Transportation Security Administration and is now a U.S. Marshal for the Northern District of Georgia. She is a 1972 graduate of Morris Brown College with a B.A. degree in sociology and also earned an M.S. degree in 1980 from Georgia State University.

Photo Gallery

Portrait photograph of Nora Holt, by Carl Van Vechten.. [New York, October 26, 1934]

Muhammad Ali vs. Jerry Quarry October 26, 1970 LeRoy Neiman Design

Zinzi Mandela (l), daughter of South African National Congress (ANC) President Nelson Mandela,
wearing Xhosa traditional outfit, and her father Nelson, smile, 26 October 1992 in Soweto, after
 Zinzi married Zweli Hlongwane, a black businessman. Photo: Getty Images

A White House photo by Pete Souza released for the Time Magazine Person of the Year Issue shows
President Obama playing with the son of a staffer outside the Oval Office on October 26, 2012

October 26, 2012 - Jonathan West, a World War II veteran who was among the first
African Americans to serve in the Marines, died in Bend, Oregon, at 91.

Darrell Wallace Jr. celebrates winning the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series Kroger 200 on Saturday, October 26.2013

Publications

Jet Magazine October 26, 1961 -- Cathy Young

A History of African-American Artists: From 1792 to the Present by Romare Bearden.
$46.85. Publisher: Pantheon; 1st edition (October 26, 1993).

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