November 14

On November 14, 1960, Ruby Bridges and three other children began attending previously all-white elementary schools in New Orleans after passing a rigorous admissions test. Leona Tate, Tessie Prevost, and Gail Etienne attended  McDonogh No. 19 Elementary School, where they became the only students as white parents withdrew their children. Classroom windows were covered with brown paper, and the girls had to have recess in the school theater because the school yard was too dangerous. Bridges was also alone at William Frantz Elementary but other children began returning the next day when 34-year-old Methodist minister, Lloyd Anderson Foreman, walked his 5-year-old daughter Pam through the angry mob, saying, "I simply want the privilege of taking my child to school....". Ruby remained alone in her classrrom, however, and Barbara Henry, who had moved to New Orleans recently from Boston, was the only faculty member willing to teach her. Federal Marshals remained throughout the school year to protect the girls from protesters. By the next year more white children had returned so she was in a class with 20 others, and by 1964, 809 African Americans had entered formerly white schools.

Birthdays 

Matilda Beasley (November 14, 1832 - December 20, 1903) was born in New Orleans to an enslaved Creole mother and Native American father. Possibly orphaned at an early age, she later moved to Savannah where she married and worked as a dressmaker. Upon the death of her husband she entered the novitiate in York, England, returning to Savannah to found the first community of African American nuns in Georgia and open an orphanage for African American children.

Mabel Fairbanks (November 14, 1915 - September 29, 2001)     worked as a domestic in a home overlooking Central Parkduring the late 1920s when she began figure skating after observing children at the park's ice rink. She performed in shows in New York until she relocated to Los Angeles and toured internationally, skating with Ice Capades in Mexico and later with Ice Follies. After retiring as a performer, she coached the children of celebrities and successful skaters such as Scott Hamilton, Kristi Yamaguchi, Tai Babilonia, and Debi Thomas. In 1997, she became the first African American inducted into the US Figure Skating Hall of Fame, and was inducted into the International Women's Sports Hall of Fame in October 2001.

Ellis Marsalis (born November 14, 1934) began his performing career as a pianist with fellow modernists including Cannonball Adderley, Nat Adderley, and Al Hirt, the few New Orleans musicians who did not specialize in Dixieland or rhythm and blues. He holds a BA in music from Dillard University and is one of the leading jazz educators in the country. Through his work at the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts, the University of New Orleans, and Xavier University of Louisiana, Ellis has influenced the careers of countless musicians, including Terence Blanchard, Harry Connick Jr., Nicholas Payton; as well as his four musician sons: Wynton, Branford, Delfeayo and Jason.

Condoleezza Rice (born November 14, 1954)  served as the 66th United States Secretary of State, the second person to hold that office in the administration of President George W. Bush. She was the first female African American Secretary of State, as well as the second African American Secretary of State (after Colin Powell), and the second female Secretary of State (after Madeleine Albright). Rice was President Bush's National Security Advisor during his first term, making her the first woman to serve in that position. Before joining the Bush administration, she was a professor of political science at Stanford University where she served as Provost from 1993 to 1999.

Events

On November 14, 1900, in Washington, DC, about 200 dentists met to form the Washington Society of Colored Dentists, the first society of African American dentists in the United States. The name was changed in 1907 to the Robert T. Freeman Dental Society after a merging with a similar group founded in 1901 at Howard University by Dr. Freeman. It affiliated with other local organizations around the country and became the National Dental Association in 1932, a part of the National Medical Association until it broke apart from the NMA in 1940. It still exists today to encourage dental careers among minority populations and to provide dental treatment and education to minority populations in the U.S. and abroad.

On November 14, 1934 William Levi Dawson's Symphony No. 1, Negro Folk Symphony, was presented by the Philadelphia Orchestra led by Leopold Stokowski. It was the first symphony on black folk themes by a black composer to be performed by a major orchestra. The symphony was later revised in 1952 with greater African rhythms inspired by the composer's trip to West Africa. Dawson said that the composition was an attempt to convey the missing elements that were lost when Africans came into bondage outside their homeland.

On November 14, 2009 the African American Library at the Gregory School in Houston opened. Located in the historic Freeman’s Town, the library is housed in the Gregory School, the city's first public school for African Americans. The first library of its kind in the city and one of few in the U.S., it serves as a resource to preserve, promote, and celebrate the rich history and culture of African Americans in Houston and the surrounding area.

Photo Gallery

On November 14, 1927, Fats Waller recorded "Bye Bye Florence as a tribute to
vocalist Florence Mills who had passed away earlier that month at the age of 31.

The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., right, and Rep. Adam Clayton Powell at a news conference
at the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem, November 14, 1965. AP Photo David Pickoff

On November 14, 1984, Rosa Parks was presented the first “Eleanor
Roosevelt Woman of Courage Award” by the Wonder Woman Foundation.

November 14, 2014 "The President walks with Aung San Suu Kyi back into her residence following their
joint press conference in Yangon, Burma." (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza) 2014: Year in Photos

Publications

Jet Magazine, November 14, 1957

Jet Magazine, November 14, 1968

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October 21

George Stinney Jr. (October 21, 1929 - June 16, 1944) was the youngest person legally executed in 20th century America. He was convicted of the rape and murder of Betty June Binnicker, age 11, and Mary Emma Thames, age 8, in Alcolu, South Carolina, during a trial that lasted less than three hours, with jury deliberation of 10 minutes. There was no written record of his confession apart from notes provided by an investigating deputy, and no transcript of the brief trial. He was denied appeal and executed by electric chair. The 14-year-old Stinney, who stood 5'1" tall and weighed 90 pounds, was too small for the chair to be effective, so a Bible was used as a booster seat. In 2014, circuit court judge Carmen Mullen vacated the conviction, writing, "No one can justify a 14-year-old child charged, tried, convicted and executed in some 80 days," and concluding that "In essence, not much was done for this child when his life lay in the balance."

Birthdays

Carlos Wesley "Don" Byas (October 21, 1912 – August 24, 1972) founded and led his own college band, Don Carlos and His Collegiate Ramblers, during 1931 and 1932 at Langston College. After college, he played in Los Angeles jazz clubs, working in Lionel Hampton's band at the Paradise Club in 1935. He then joined the Eddie Mallory band, accompanying Mallory's wife, the singer Ethel Waters, on tour, and at the Cotton Club. In 1941 Count Basie chose him to succeed the post of Lester Young in his big band. He went on tour with Don Redmon's band in Europe in 1946, and remained there, settling in The Netherlands.

John Birks "Dizzy" Gillespie (October 21, 1917 – January 6, 1993) was an American jazz trumpeter, bandleader, composer and occasional singer. Gillespie was a trumpet virtuoso and improviser, building on the virtuoso style of Roy Eldridge but adding layers of harmonic complexity previously unknown in jazz. His beret and horn-rimmed spectacles, his scat singing, his bent horn, pouched cheeks and his light-hearted personality were essential in popularizing bebop.

Ronald Ervin McNair (October 21, 1950 - January 28, 1986) was a physicist and NASA astronaut. In 1971, he received a bachelor's degree in engineering physics, magna cum laude, from North Carolina A & T State University in Greensboro, North Carolina.  In 1976, he received his Ph.D. in physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and became a staff physicist at the Hughes Research Lab. He was chosen for the space program in 1978 and had flown one mission before losing his life in the Challenger disaster.



Events

On October 21, 1835, a mob of pro-slavery businessmen stormed a meeting of the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Association held at the office of William Lloyd Garrison's The Liberator where British abolitionist George Thompson (left) was a speaker. The rioters were unable to find Thompson but destroyed the sign announcing the meeting and captured Garrison, who was rescued and taken to the Leverett Street Jail for his own safety. Thompson later remarked, "Such a mob--30 ladies routed and a 6x2 board demolished by 4,000 men."

On October 21, 1955, 18-year-old Mary Louise Smith was arrested for not giving up her seat to a white passenger on a Montgomery bus, about six weeks before Rosa Parks was arrested on the same charge. Her father bailed her out of jail and paid the $9 fine. Smith was one of five women named as plaintiffs in the federal civil suit, Browder v. Gayle, challenging the constitutionality of the state and local bus segregation laws.




Photo Gallery

Dr Martin Luther King at the Ritz Hotel, in London on a one-day visit to launch
 the British publication of his book 'Why We Can't Wait' - 21 October 1964

Coretta Scott King gives a speech in Washington, D.C. in hopes of having the government agree to a moratorium
 on peace in Vietman on October 21, 1969. (Photo by Keystone-France/Gamma-Keystone via Getty Images)

Sylvester Magee - reported to be the Last Union Veteran died on 21 October 1971 in Marion County, Mississippi at the
age of 130 (born 29 May 1841). He was present at the fall of Vicksburg and pressed into service in the Union Army.

Maya Angelou at a visit to Wheelock College on October 21, 1988

October 21, 2012     Pete Souza/The White House Mr. Obama and Ruby Bridges Hall, the first black child to integrate an elementary school in the South, admiring the Norman Rockwell painting of her marching into school, which he hung outside the Oval Office. Copyright 2012 The New York Times Company

Publications

Charleston Courier, October 21, 1820

Jeanna Limyou on the cover of Jet Magazine October 21, 1954

Dr Mary McLeod Bethune Named Mother of the Century - Jet Magazine, October 21, 1954.

Bound for Glory: Celebrating the Gift of African American Spirituals through Expressive Calligraphy by Timothy R. Botts. $16.00. Publication: October 21, 2011. Author: Timothy R. Botts. 128 pages. Publisher: Tyndale House 

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