November 8

Horace Mann Bond (November 8, 1904 - December 21, 1972) graduated with honors from Lincoln University in Pennsylvania at age 19. He also held MA and PhD degrees from the University of Chicago, where his dissertation on black education in Alabama won the Rosenberger Prize in 1936. He taught at Langston, Fisk, and Dillard Universities before being named president of Fort Valley State College in Georgia. He was the first African American president of Lincoln University (1945-1957) and finished his career as dean of the Atlanta University School of Education. As early as 1924, Dr. Bond began writing rebuttals to findings that African Americans were intellectually inferior to whites, noting that IQ scores for white southerners were equally low in comparison to national averages, and he collaborated with historians John Hope Franklin and C. Vann Woodward on research for the NAACP's landmark U.S. Supreme Court case in Brown v. Board of Education (1954). After a group of white southern congressmen signed the Southern Manifesto in opposition to school integration, he wrote a widely-read parody of his 1924 article questioning the intellect of the southern politicians and their constituents. Dr. Bond was the father of Congressman and NAACP Chairman Julian Bond.

Birthdays

Gen. Oliver Otis Howard (November 8, 1830 – October 26, 1909) was head of the Freedmen's Bureau from 1865 to 1874, devising programs and guidelines including social welfare in the form of rations, schooling, courts, and medical care. The Bureau was also instrumental in gaining the vote for African Americans during this time. Howard was a strong proponent of education, becoming the founding president and namesake of Howard University in 1869. During the Civil War he served as a major general comnanding the the XI Corps, which fought at Antietam, Chancellorsville, and Gettysburg. He was wounded at Seven Pines, losing his right arm.

Maria Louisa Bustill Robeson (November 8,1853 - January 20, 1904) was from a prominent Quaker family in Philadelphia where her great-grandfather, Cyrus Bustill, was a wealthy businessman and a founder of the Free Africa Society. She attended Lincoln University where she met and married William Drew Robeson. Her family disapproved of the marriage because Robeson had escaped from slavery in North Carolina and was very dark-skinned. Their youngest son, Paul, was born only six years before Mrs. Robeson died as the result of a kitchen fire. Her sister Gertrude also married a Lincoln graduate, Nathan Francis Mossell, who became a Philadalephia physician and was the brother of attorney Aaron Mossell.

Eartha White (November 8, 1876 - January 18, 1974) was a Jacksonville, businesswoman and real estate broker who used most of her substantial income to create organizations serving the African American community in the area. She founded the first public school in Bayard for African American children and taught there sixteen years, as well as at her her alma mater, the Stanton School.  She and her mother started the Clara White Mission providing meals and shelter to the homeless, which as one time was the largest employer of African Americans in Jacksonville. They also founded the "Colored Old Folks Home", which became the "Eartha White Nursing Home", and is now called "Eartha M. M. White Health Care, Inc.", a 125-bed, $780,000 facility, begun when Eartha was 89. Her other endeavors included establishing Mercy (tuberculosis) Hospital, the Boy's Improvement Club (to reduce delinquency), establishing Oakland Park (the first public park in Jacksonville for African Americans), a halfway house for alcoholics in recovery, a program for released prisoners to help re-enter society, a comprehensive maternity program with a home for unwed mothers, an orphanage and an adoption agency, and a child care center. She never married, saying "I was too busy -- and what man would put up with me?"

Esther Rolle (November 8, 1920 - November 17, 1998) was best known as Florida Evans on the TV sitcom Good Times (1974-79), a character originally introduced on another Norman Lear show, Maude. She insisted that the character be married, later saying, "I told them (the producers) I couldn't compound the lie that Black fathers don`t care about their children. I was proud of the family life I was able to introduce to television." She was a founding member of the Negro Ensemble Company and appeared in the 1973 Melvin Van Peebles play, Don't Play Us Cheap and as Lady Macbeth in Orson Welles' Haitian-influenced version of Macbeth. She was in a number of made-for-TV movies and won the first Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Limited Series or a Special in 1979 for Summer of My German Soldier.

Minnie Riperton (November 8, 1947 – July 12, 1979) sang backup for Chess Records stars such as Etta James, Fontella Bass, Ramsey Lewis, Bo Diddley, Chuck Berry, and Muddy Waters before her 1975 hit Lovin' You. The next year she was one of the first celebrities to go public with a breast cancer diagnosis and in 1978 received the American Cancer Society's Courage Award which was presented to her at the White House by President Jimmy Carter. She is shown here with daughter Maya Rudolph, who created this tribute to her mother's original cover art on the Perfect Angel album.

Alfre Woodard (born November 8, 1952) began her acting career in theater. After her breakthrough role in the Off-Broadway play For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf (1977), she made her film debut in Remember My Name (1978). She has appeared extensively on television beginning with an Emmy-winning guest appearance in the premiere of L.A. Law (1983) and ina recurring role on St. Elsewhere (1986) opposite Denzel Washington. To date she has been nominated once for an Academy Award and Grammy Award, 18 times for an Emmy Award (winning four), and has also won a Golden Globe Award and three Screen Actors Guild Awards. She is a founder of Artists for a New South Africa, a nonprofit organization dedicated to combating the African AIDS pandemic and advancing democracy and equality in South Africa.

Events

On November 8, 1966, Edward Brooke was elected from Massachusetts as the first African American Senator since Reconstruction, and the first elected by popular vote. He served two terms and had previously been the state's Attorney General. Upon the death of Harry F. Byrd Jr. on July 30, 2013, he became the oldest living former Senator, and remained so until his death on January 3, 2015.

Photo Gallery

Miles Davis in the recording studios of Fontana Records. Photographed by Hulton Deutsch on 8 November 1963.

Martin Luther King, Jr. and his son Marty November 8, 1964 Atlanta, Georgia Photo by Flip Schulke/Corbis

Publications

Slaves being driven to Lower South from Virginia, 1862. Harper's Weekly (November 8, 1862), p.713.

Will Katherine Dunham Win Aly Khan From Rita? - Jet Magazine, November 8, 1951

Eddie Anderson "Rochester" of the Jack Benny Show - Jet Magazine, November 8, 1951

Black US Air Force Artillerymen with Their “Adopted” Korean Orphans - Jet Magazine, November 8, 1951

Dr. Ralph Bunche and Eleanor Roosevelt Observe The First True Colored Doll
Jet Magazine, November 8, 1951

Black Panther, November 8, 1969 Offset lithograph 20 1/3 x 14 in (51.5 x 35.6 cm) Collection Alden
and Mary Kimbrough © 2009 Emory Douglas / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York 

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October 1

John Brown Russwurm (October 1, 1799 - June 17, 1851) was born to an enslaved Jamaican mother and British father, with whom he emigrated to Maine in 1812. He graduated from Bowdoin College in 1826, the third known African American college graduate. He co-founded the abolitionist newspaper Freedom's Journal, the first paper owned and operated by African Americans, before emigrating to Liberia where he governed the Maryland Colony and edited the Liberia Herald.

Birthdays

Fannie M. Richards (October 1, 1840 - February 13, 1922) studied in Germany with Professor Wilhelm Forebel who developed the idea of kindergarten and taught in the Detroit public schools for 50 years. She was the first kindergarten teacher and the first African American teacher. She led the successful protest to integrate Michigan schools in 1871. She also founded the Phyllis Wheatley Home for elderly African American women and was its first president.

Theophile T. Allain (October 1, 1846 - February 2, 1917) was a member of the Louisiana State Legislature in the 1870s and 1880s. His politics focused on education and development and he was instrumental in the updating of Mississippi River levees in the 1880s. Later in his life he moved to Chicago and he remained active in civil rights. He was, for a time, the wealthiest black person in Louisiana. He was frequently associated with educational causes and with Booker T. Washington. In 1886, he secured $14,000 in a bill for the foundation of Southern University, and along with P. B. S. Pinchback and Henry Demas is considered a founder of that University. He was the first person after the US Civil War to organize integrated public schools in Baton Rouge.

Virginia Proctor Powell Florence (October 1, 1897 - 1991) was the first African American woman with a formal education in library science (Pitt, 1923) and to pass the New York high school librarian's examination. She worked in New York City and Washington DC schools, interrupting her career when her husband, Charles W. Florence (shown here at their wedding) was named president of Lincoln University in St. Louis.

James Earl (Jimmy) Carter (born October 1, 1924) followed Lester Maddox as Governor of Georgia, saying in his inaugural speech, "I say to you quite frankly that the time for racial discrimination is over." During his 1976 campaign for the presidency his backers included Andrew Young and Barbara Jordan, the first black members of Congress from the South since Reconstruction. Young helped nominate Carter and Martin Luther King Sr. delivered the closing benediction.

George Carruthers (born October 1, 1939) attended the University of Illinois where he earned his BS in aeronautical engineering (1961), MS in nuclear engineering (1962), and PhD. in aeronautical and astronomical engineering (1964). He then began his career with the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington DC as a research physicist where his research has resulted in a number of patents in aerospace technology. He has also taught science education at Howard University and worked on STEM outreach to children in the DC area.

Donny Hathaway (October 1, 1945–January 13, 1979) was an American soul singer-songwriter and musician. Hathaway contracted with Atlantic Records in 1969 and with his first single for the Atco label, "The Ghetto, Part I" in early 1970, Rolling Stone magazine "marked him as a major new force in soul music." His collaborations with Roberta Flack scored high on the charts and won him the Grammy Award for Best Pop Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal for the duet, "Where Is the Love" in 1973.

Rod Carew (born October 1, 1945) lined, chopped and bunted his way to 3,053 career hits. He played from 1967 to 1985 for the Minnesota Twins and the California Angels and was elected to the All-Star game every season except his last, winning seven batting titles. He used a variety of relaxed, crouched batting stances to hit over .300 in 15 consecutive seasons with the Twins and Angels, achieving a .328 lifetime average. He was honored as American League Rookie of the Year in 1967, won the league MVP 10 years later and was named to 18 straight All-Star teams.

Events

On October 1, 1851, William Henry (known as "Jerry") was arrested in Syracuse under the Fugitive Slave Law. The anti-slavery Liberty Party was holding its state convention in the city, and when word of the arrest spread, several hundred abolitionists including Charles Augustus Wheaton broke into the city jail and freed Jerry. The event came to be widely known as the Jerry Rescue. A total of 26 of the rescuers were tried for their actions, but only one was convicted. The suspects were bailed out by a number of people, including U.S. Senator and former governor of New York William H. Seward. Nine others, including Reverend Jermain Wesley Loguen, himself a fugitive slave, were charged, but fled to Canada.

Between October 1 and 4, 1867, for the first time in Alabama history African Americans vote in a statewide election. About 70,000 black men, the majority of voters in the election, called for a constitutional convention and elected an overwhelmingly Republican set of convention delegates, including 18 blacks. That convention produced Alabama's fourth constitution.

On October 1, 2000, the Catholic Church was enriched with another Saint. Saint Josephine Bakhita, born in Darfur (Sudan) in 1869, died in Schio (Italy) February 8, 1947, was canonized by the Pope in the Vatican, calling her Our Universal Sister. This amazingly strong women made it from an ill-treated slave to a unifying symbol for Catholics and women.

Photo Gallery

New York, Negro Theatre. James Hewlett in Richard III. Playbill, October 1, 1821.

Martin Luther King arriving at London Airport on October 1, 1961. He was in England to be the chief speaker at a public meeting about color prejudice and to appear on the BBC television programme Face To Face.

Miles Davis at the funeral of Jimi Hendrix, 1 October 1970, Renton, Washington

The Thrilla in Manila was the third and final famous boxing match between Muhammad Ali
 and Joe Frazier for the Heavyweight Boxing Championship of the World, fought at the
 Araneta Coliseum in Quezon City, Metro Manila, Philippines on October 1, 1975.

Astronaut Michael P. Anderson, STS-107 payload commander shown on October 1, 2001. He perished
 in flight on February 1, 2003, when Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrated over northern Texas

Publications

Jet Magazine, October  1, 1953

Jet Magazine, October  1, 1953

Jet Magazine, October 1, 1981

A True Likeness: The Black South of Richard Samuel Roberts, 1920-1936 Paperback – October 1, 1994 by Richard Samuel Roberts (Author), Thomas L. Johnson (Editor), Phillip C. Dunn (Editor).

Remembering Slavery: African Americans Talk About Their Personal Experiences of
Slavery and Freedom by Ira Berlin. $39.96. Publisher: New Press, The; Har/Cas
edition (October 1, 1998). 355 pages. Publication: October 1, 1998.