December 30

Beauford Delaney (December 30, 1901 – March 26, 1979) began painting as a child in Knoxville where he was mentored by local artist Lloyd Branson and completed his first commissioned work at age 14....

On December 30, 1882, nineteen convicts drowned in the Tuckasegee River near Dillsboro, North Carolina when the ferry they were riding capsized in freezing water. The men, ranging in age from 15 to 55, had been leased from the state penitentiary to work on the Cowee tunnel and were buried in a mass, unmarked grave nearby. Eleven prisoners and one guard were pulled from the river and survived.

Birthdays

Inez Beverly Prosser (December 30, 1897 - September 1934) is often credited with being the first African American woman to earn a PhD in psychology. Although her degree was from the University of Cincinnati School of Education in 1933, her research was in the field of psychology and her advisors were psychologists. Dr. Prosser's dissertation, The Non-Academic Development of Negro Children in Mixed and Segregated Schools, was used over the next twenty years in research leading to the Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954.She died in a car accident one year after she received her PhD.

Beauford Delaney (December 30, 1901 – March 26, 1979) began painting as a child in Knoxville where he was mentored by local artist Lloyd Branson and completed his first commissioned work at age 14. He studied art in Boston and New York, receiving critical acclaim and gallery exposure but little commercial success. One of his works from this period, Can Fire in the Park (1946), is described by the Smithsonian American Art Museum as a "disturbingly contemporary vignette [which] conveys a legacy of deprivation linked not only to the Depression years after 1929 but also to the longstanding disenfranchisement of black Americans, portrayed here as social outcasts. Delaney moved to Paris in 1952 where he spent the remainder of his life.

Can Fire in the Park, 1946

Rock innovator Bo Diddley (December 30, 1928 - June 2, 2008) was born Ellas Otha Bates in McComb, Mississippi, taking the surname McDaniel when he moved to Chicago with the family of his mother's cousin, Gussie McDaniel. He began recording with Chess Records in 1954 and was one of the first American male musicians to include women in his band. In 1987 he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Joseph F. Beam (December 30, 1954 – December 27, 1988, was an African-American gay rights activist and author who worked to foster greater acceptance of gay life in the black community by relating the gay experience with the struggle for civil rights in the United States. His books In the Life and Brother to Brother were featured in the 1991 television documentary, Tongues Untied.

Eldrick Tont "Tiger" Woods (born December 30, 1957)  was  PGA Player of the Year a record eleven times and the leading money winner ten times. He is the youngest player to achieve the career Grand Slam, and the youngest and fastest to win 50 tournaments on tour. He first reached the number one position in the world rankings in June 1997, and remained consistently at or near the top until 2010.

LeBron James (born December 30, 1964)  has won three NBA championships (2012, 2013, 2016), four NBA Most Valuable Player Awards (2009, 2010, 2012, 2013), three NBA Finals MVP Awards (2012, 2013, 2016), two Olympic gold medals (2008, 2012), an NBA scoring title (2008), and the NBA Rookie of the Year Award (2004). He has also been selected to 12 NBA All-Star teams, 12 All-NBA teams, and six All-Defensive teams.

Events

December 30 is the fifth day of Kwanzaa, symbolized by the principle of Nia or Purpose; to make our collective vocation the building and developing of our community in order to restore our people to their traditional greatness.

On December 30, 1929, a charter was granted to the Alpha chapter of Sigma Gamma Rho Sorority Inc. at Butler University. In spite of campus racism, the organization was organized on November 12, 1922, in Indianapolis, Indiana, by seven educators.



Photo Gallery

Thornhill Plantation, Greene County, Alabama, Old Slave Cabin - December 30, 1934. (Photographer Alex Bush)

Marian Anderson and Paul Robeson, December 30, 1945, New York City

Publications

Jet Magazine, December 30, 1954

Jet Magazine December 30, 1976 -- Marvin Gaye

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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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