November 27

James Marshall (Jimi) Hendrix (November 27, 1942 – September 18, 1970)  achieved fame in the United States after three top-ten British hits with his 1967 performance at the Monterey Pop Festival.

J. Ernest Wilkins, Jr. (November 27, 1923 - May 1, 2011) enrolled in the University of Chicago as its youngest student ever at the age of 13, eventually earning a PhD in mathematics at the age of 19. He taught at Howard University and Clark Atlanta University as well as working on the Manhattan Project. Throughout his years of research Wilkins published more than 100 papers on a variety of subjects, including differential geometry, linear differential equations, integrals, nuclear engineering, gamma radiation shielding and optics, garnering numerous professional and scientific awards along the way. His father, J. Ernest Wilkins, Sr., was appointed Assistant Secretary of Labor by President Eisenhower in 1954, the first African American to hold a sub-cabinet position.



Birthdays

Robert H. Terrell (November 27, 1857 - December 1925), was one of seven Magna Cum Laude scholars to graduate from Harvard University in 1884. He later went on to attend Howard University School of Law and was the first African American judge appointed in Washington DC (1915). He was also principal of M Street High School (later Dunbar High) and a founding member of Sigma Pi Phi. His wife, Mary Church Terrell, was also an educator, activist, and founder of the National Association of Colored Women.

Rev. John Hurst Adams (born November 27, 1927) was a seminary classmate of Martin Luther King, Jr., graduating from Boston University in 1956 with a Master of Sacred Theology. He was then named president of Paul Quinn College in Waco, Texas at the age of 29, becoming the youngest college president in the country. He later pastored First. A.M.E. Church in Seattle, where he was a community civil rights leader, and then served as pastor of Grant A.M.E. Church in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles, California before being named a bishop in the denomination, serving in Texas, South Carolina, and other areas before his retirement in 2004.

James Marshall (Jimi) Hendrix (November 27, 1942 – September 18, 1970)  achieved fame in the United States after three top-ten British hits with his 1967 performance at the Monterey Pop Festival. Later, he headlined the Woodstock Festival in 1969 and the Isle of Wight Festival in 1970. Although his mainstream career spanned only four years, he is widely regarded as one of the most influential electric guitarists in the history of popular music, and one of the most celebrated musicians of the 20th century. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame describes him as "arguably the greatest instrumentalist in the history of rock music"

George Thomas "Mickey" Leland (November 27, 1944 – August 7, 1989) served six terms in the U/S. House of Representatives from the Texas 18th District before his death on a plane crash in Gambela, Ethiopia at the age of 45. He had also served a term as chair of the Congessional Black Caucus and on the Democratic National Committee. He was best know for his anti-poverty and anti-hunger activist, as well as work to provide medical care for the underserved.

Janes Avery (November 27, 1945 - December 31, 2013) played Philip Banks in the sitcom The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air (1990−96). This character was ranked #34 in TV Guide's "50 Greatest TV Dads of All Time." He also provided the voice of Shredder in the 1987 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles television series, as well as War Machine in the animated series Iron Man (1994−95) and Junkyard Dog in Hulk Hogan's Rock 'n' Wrestling (1985).

Events

On November 27, 1897 Andrew Beard received a patent for a device he called the Jenny Coupler. Andrew Beard’s Jenny Coupler. The Jenny Coupler automatically joined cars by simply allowing them to bump into each other, or as Beard described it the “horizontal jaws engage each other to connect the cars.” Beard sold the rights to his invention for $50,000.00 and the railroad industry was revolutionized.

On November 27,1928, Dr. Marjorie Joyner received the Patent for a permanent wave machine which could wave the hair of both white and Black people. Marjorie Joyner was employed by the Madame C.J. Walker Cosmetic Company and assigned her patent rights to that company. Madame C.J. Walker, born Sarah Breedlove, invented hair creams to soften the hair and a hair styling hot comb. She also developed other lotions and creams for which she acquired trademarks.



Photo Gallery

November 27, 1962: Martin Luther King, Jr. tested parts of his famed " I Have A Dream" speech in a speech in Rocky Mount, North Carolina.

November 27, 1965 the March on Washington for Peace in Vietnam

American activist Angela Davis (1944 - ), shortly after she was fired from her post as philosophy professor at UCLA due to her membership of the Communist Party of America, November 27, 1969. Photo credit: Lucas Mendes / Getty Images

Ike & Tina Turner opening for The Rolling Stones at Madison Square Garden, New York City, November 27, 1969

November 27, 1990 Charles Johnson wins the National Book Award for his novel “Middle Passage,” a novel about the adventures of a freed slave.

Publications

Rosalee Takella, Oriental Shake Dancer (Exotic Dancer) - Jet Magazine, November 27, 1952

500 Attend W.C. Handy's 79th Birthday Celebration - Jet Magazine, November 27, 1952

Brooklyn Dodger Joe Black Crowns Miss Capitol Classic of 1952, Anna Harris - Jet Magazine, November 27, 1952

.

November 26

Sarah Moore Grimké (November 26, 1792 – December 23, 1873) was born into a slaveholding family in Charleston, South Carolina, where she defied state slave code and taught her maid, Hetty, to read at night. She accompanied her father to Philadelphia and stayed after his death, joining the Quaker faith and sending for her sister, Angelina. The women became active in the American Anti-Slavery Society, lecturing on abolition and women's rights. Sarah continued the speaking appearances after Angelina's marriage to Rev. Theodore Weld. In 1836, Sarah published Epistle to the Clergy of the Southern States. In 1837, Letters on the Equality of the Sexes and the Condition of Women was published serially in a Massachusetts newspaper, The Spectator, and immediately reprinted by William Lloyd Garrison in The Liberator. The letters were published in book form in 1838. It was Sarah who discovered the existence of their brother's mixed-race family, and the sisters provided for the education of their nephews,  Archibald Grimké and Francis James Grimké.

Birthdays

Marshall Walter "Major" Taylor (November 26, 1878 – June 21, 1932) won the world one-mile track cycling championship, becoming the first African American athlete to achieve the level of world champion and only the second black man to win a world championship, after Canadian boxer George Dixon. In 1896, he had moved from Indianapolis to Worcester, Mass., then a center of the United States bicycle industry with half a dozen factories and 30 bicycle shops, to work as a bicycle mechanic in the Worcester Cycle Manufacturing Company factory, owned by Louis D. "Birdie" Munger where he raced for Munger's team.

Rudolph Dunbar (November 26, 1907 - June 10, 1988) was a Guyanese conductor, clarinetist, and composer, as well as being a jazz musician of note in the 1920s. Leaving British Guiana at the age of 20, he had settled in England by 1931, and subsequently worked in other parts of Europe but lived most of his later years in London. Among numerous "firsts", he was the first black man to conduct the London Philharmonic Orchestra (1942), the first black man to conduct the Berlin Philharmonic (1945) and the first black man to conduct orchestras in Poland (1959) and Russia (1964). He also worked as a journalist and a war correspondent.

Tina Turner (born Anna Mae Bullock, November 26, 1939) began her musical career in the mid-1950s as a featured singer with Ike Turner's Kings of Rhythm and later as a member of the Ike & Tina Turner Revue with hits including "A Fool in Love", "River Deep – Mountain High" (1966), "Proud Mary" (1971) and "Nutbush City Limits" (1973), a song which she herself wrote. After a tumultuous divorce in 1978 she established a successful solo career, with her 1984 album Private Dancer becoming a worldwide success. "What's Love Got to Do with It", the lead single, won three Grammy Awards including Record of the Year.

Arthur Lee (Art) Shell, Jr. (born November 26, 1946) is a former collegiate and professional football player in the American Football League and later in the NFL, a Hall of Fame offensive tackle, and a two-time former head coach of the Oakland Raiders. He is the second-ever African American head coach in the history of professional football, and the first in the sport's modern era.

Events

On November 26, 1883, Sojourner Truth, Civil War heroine, women’s rights advocate, poet, freedom fighter, and abolitionist, died in Battle Creek, Michigan on this date  at the age of 86. Born a slave in Hurley, NY, she acquired her freedom when slavery was outlawed there in 1827. In June of 1843, she changed her name from Isabella to Sojourner Truth and became a prominent anti-slavery speaker and an advocate for women’s suffrage. During the Civil War, she helped care for wounded soldiers and newly emancipated slaves. In an audience with President Abraham Lincoln, she urged him to call to arms the free Blacks of the North to fight for the Union. After that was done, she urged the freedmen to develop land ownership and to obtain an education. She also advocated rehabilitating former slaves on public lands.

On November 26, 1895, the National Negro Medical Association (NNMA) was founded. Consisting of three major Black medical professions, they were originally called the National Negro Medical Association of Physicians, Dentists and Pharmacists. At the turn of the 20th century they became the National Medical Association, The NMA’s manifesto was written by C. V. Roman and adopted in 1908.

Photo Gallery

PFC Frank Williams, Combat Engineer, 173rd ENGR BN, 173rd ABN BDE, plays his harmonica during a lull in the operations at Dak To, 26 November 1967. U. S. Army photograph, National Archives.

On November 26, 1970 Charles Gordone was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for his play, “No Place To Be Somebody.”

NOVEMBER 26: U.S. President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama watch the Oregon State Beavers play the Towson Tigers at the Towson Center on November 26, 2011 in Baltimore, Maryland. The first lady's brother, Craig Robinson, is head coach of the Oregon State team.

Ferguson Protest Held Outside US Embassy In London - 26 November 2014 . Demonstrators gathered outside the US Embassy in London before marching to condemn the decision not to prosecute a police officer for shooting dead black teenager Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. 

Publications

Quick Magazine, November 26, 1951 issue, Lena Horne cover

Jet Magazine Cover -- November 26 1953 -- Eloise McCallum

The Life of Langston Hughes: Volume I: 1902-1941, I, Too, Sing America (Life of Langston Hughes, 1902-1941) by Arnold Rampersad. $20.80. 521 pages. Author: Arnold Rampersad. Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA; 2 edition (November 26, 2001)

.

November 25

Percy Sledge (November 25, 1940 – April 14, 2015) was an American R&B, soul and gospel singer best known for the song "When a Man Loves a Woman".

John Herman Henry Sengstacke (November 25, 1912 – May 28, 1997) was an African-American newspaper publisher and owner of the largest chain of black newspapers in the country. He was also a civil rights activist and worked for a strong black press, founding the National Newspaper Publishers Association in 1940, to unify and strengthen African-American owned papers. The nephew of Robert Sengstacke Abbott, Sengstacke was his designated heir to take over his Chicago Defender, which he did after his uncle's death in 1940. He worked with President Franklin D. Roosevelt to have African-American reporters in the White House and to create jobs in the United States Postal Service for African Americans.




Birthdays

David Abner, Jr. (November 25, 1860 - July 21, 1928) became the first African American to graduate from a Texas institution of higher learning when he received his degree from Bishop College in 1881. His father, politician and businessman David Abner Sr, had been a founding trustee of the college. Abner served as president of Guadeloupe College and Conroe College and was president of the Colored Teachers State Association of Texas before being named director of the National Baptist Convention Theological Seminary in Nashville.

Joe Gans (born Joseph Gant, November 25, 1874 - August 10, 1910) was rated as the greatest lightweight boxer of all time by boxing historian and Ring Magazine founder, Nat Fleischer and was known as the "Old Master." He fought from 1891 to 1909. He was the first African-American World Boxing Champion, reigning continuously as World Lightweight Champion from 1902 to 1908. Gans died of tuberculosis at age 36.

William DeHart Hubbard (November 25, 1903 - June 23, 1976) was the first African American to win Olympic gold in an individual event, the running long jump in 1924. He also held NCAA titles in the long jump (1923, 1925) & 100 meters (1925) before graduating with honors from the University of Michigan. He spent his career in government work, retiring as race relations adviser of the Federal Housing Authority in Cleveland. He was a member of Omega Psi Phi fraternity.

Nathaniel "Nat" Adderley (November 25, 1931 – January 2, 2000) was an American jazz cornet and trumpet player who played in the hard bop and soul jazz genres. He was the brother of saxophonist Julian "Cannonball" Adderley, whom he remained very close to in his career but under whose shadow he lived for most of his life. Nat Adderly's "Work Song" is a jazz standard which also became a success on the pop charts after singer Oscar Brown, Jr. wrote lyrics for the tune.

Percy Sledge (November 25, 1940 – April 14, 2015) was an American R&B, soul and gospel singer best known for the song "When a Man Loves a Woman", a No. 1 hit on both the Billboard Hot 100 and R&B singles charts in 1966. It was awarded a million-selling, Gold-certified disc from the RIAA. Having previously worked as a hospital orderly in the early 1960s, Sledge achieved his strongest success in the late 1960s and early 1970s with a series of emotional soul songs. In later years, Sledge received the Rhythm and Blues Foundation's Career Achievement Award. He was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2005.


Events

On November 25, 1922, Marcus Garvey spoke to a crowd of 50,00 at Madison Square Garden on the objectives of the Universal Negro Improvement Association, the organization he believed would lead the worldwide movement toward black liberation. "We represent peace, harmony, love, human sympathy, human rights and human justice, and that is why we fight so much. Wheresoever human rights are denied to any group, wheresoever justice is denied to any group, there the U. N. I. A. finds a cause."

On November 25, 1955, the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) banned racial segregation on interstate buses, train lines, and in waiting rooms. The ICC ruled that “the disadvantages to a traveler who is assigned accommodations or facilities so designated as to imply his inferiority solely because of his race must be regarded under present conditions as unreasonable.”

On November 25, 1997, the legendary Eddie Robinson of Grambling State University coached his last game as head coach. This closed out a career spanning 57 years. He has the NCAA record for wins at 402. The closest to Eddie Robinson’s record is ‘Bear’ Bryant of the University of Alabama at 323 wins.







Photo Gallery

Portrait photograph of Peter Abrahams by Carl Van Vechten.. New York, November 25, 1955

After leaving the ‘Club Americana’, a Saturday night jazz club open from midnight until 7 a.m., American troops and their girlfriends wait at Piccadilly Circus Station for the first train home, London, 25th November 1955. Via Hulton Archive / Getty

Tina Turner in motion, captured by the legendary photographer Jack Robinson on November 25, 1969 in New York City.

Sasha and the pardoned turkey, November 25, 2009

Publications

Front page of the November 25, 1899 edition of the Washington, D.C.-based paper. It was initially published under the name The Weekly Advocate, New York's Colored American was a weekly newspaper whose length was four to six pages. It circulated in free black communities up and down the northern seaboard.

Harlem-born Audrey Smaltz, Miss Transit of 1954 in Jet, November 25, 1954.

Marian Anderson and Husband Orpheus H. Fisher at Metropolitan Opera Company Opening - Jet Magazine, November 25, 1954

This Our Dark Country: The American Settlers of Liberia by Catherine Reef. $15.30. Reading level: Ages 10 and up. Author: Catherine Reef. 144 pages. Publisher: Clarion Books. Publication: November 25, 2002.

.