1795
This date marks the birth of Alexander Lucius Twilight. He, to all relevant information was the first African-American
college graduate.
Alexander Twilight was born in Corinth, Vt., to a free Black family, graduated from Middlebury College in 1823, with his baccalaureate
degree making him, thus far, the first African American to receive a degree
from an American college. He was licensed to preach by the Presbyterian Church
and served several Congregational churches.
Twilight became principal of the Orleans
County Grammar
School in Brownington, Vermont, and in 1836 built a massive three-story granite
building, Athenian Hall, which became Brownington Academy.
In 1836, Twilight also served in the Vermont
state legislature, the first African American to do so.
1867
Maggie
L. Walker, business and civic leader, first Black in US, is born. She
dies in 1934.
1893
Freda Kirchwey was born on this date. She was an American civil rights activist and
peace advocate.
From Lake Placid, N. Y., her father, George Washington Kirchwey, was a
professor at the Columbia
University Law
School and helped
establish the New York Peace Society in 1906, supported women’s suffrage and
the development of trade unions. In 1915, Young Kirchwey graduated from Barnard College where she became politically as
a member of the Woman’s Peace Party. She became a reporter for the New York
Morning Telegraph and married Evans Clark, a research director for the
Socialist members of the New York City Board of Aldermen.
Kirchwey also worked for Every Week Magazine, the New York Tribune and The
Nation. In her articles she argued against American support for the forces
fighting the Bolshevik government in Russia and for the dissemination of
birth control information. She and her husband worked closely with Charles
Garland, who inherited a considerable fortune in 1922. A socialist, Garland decided to
provide financial help to the National Association for the Advancement of
Colored People (NAACP) in its campaign against lynching, and other causes.
In September 1955 Kirchwey retired as editor of The Nation. Over the next few
years she was active in the National Association for the Advancement of Colored
People. Freda Kirchwey died at St.
Petersburg, Florida
on January 3rd 1976.
1894
Bessie
Smith, blues singer, was born in Chattanooga, TN. Raised in poverty, she was
discovered at the age of 13 by Ma Rainy, the first nationally famous Black
blues, singer, who persuaded Ms. Smith to go on tour with her minstrel show. At
age 17, she was singing in Selma,
AL, where Frank Walker, head of
Columbia Records, heard her. Back in New York,
Walker sent an associate to fine Ms. Smith and
convince her to record for Columbia.
In February of 1923, she cut her first disc, “Downhearted Blues,” which sold
over 2 million copies during its first year of release and skyrocketed Bessie
Smith to fame. She became the highest-paid Black entertainer during her first
year with Columbia
earning as much as $1,500 a week. She recorded her most famous song “Nobody
Know You When You’re Down and Out” in 1929. She bled to death outside a
segregated Mississippi
hospital that refused to treat injuries she sustained in an automobile accident
in 1937.
1899
William Levi Dawson was born on this date. He was an African-American vocalist, composer
and conductor.
From Anniston, Alabama at the age of thirteen ran away from
home to enter Tuskegee Institute. Supporting himself by manual labor, he
completed his education there in 1921. In 1931, he organized the School of Music
at Tuskegee,
and for twenty-five years conducted the one hundred voice “Tuskegee Choir.” In
1932-33, this choir was a main attraction at the grand opening of the Radio City Music Hall in New
York. Under the direction of Dr. Dawson, they
performed for Presidents Herbert Hoover and Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Dawson made guest appearances throughout the United States
and abroad. He was a recognized authority on the religious folk music of the
American Negro, and his choral and orchestral arrangements were extensively
performed. He composed the “Negro Folk Symphony” which premiered in 1934 by the
Philadelphia Orchestra under the direction of Leopold Stokowski. In this work
the composer used melodic and rhythmic language borrowed from Negro spirituals,
along with original material in the same idiom. The symphony was imaginative,
dramatic, and colorfully orchestrated. Dawson
was a director and consultant to many festival groups.
In 1956 Tuskegee Institute gave him the honorary degree of doctor of music,
that same year he was sent by the U. S. State Department to conduct various
choral groups in Spain.
In 1952 Dawson visited seven countries in West Africa to study indigenous African music. He later
revised the Negro Folk Symphony with a rhythmic foundation inspired by African
influences. Dawson was guest conductor with the
Kansas City Philharmonic Orchestra and the Nashville Symphony Orchestra (1966),
the Wayne State
University (Michigan) Glee Club (1970), and the
Baltimore Symphony Orchestra (1975).
He held degrees in theory and composition from Horner Institute of Fine Arts in
Kansas City, MO, and the American Conservatory of Music.
He holds honorary doctorates from Tuskegee Institute, Lincoln
University and Ithaca College.
He was named to the Alabama Arts Hall of Fame in 1975, and received the Alumni
Merit Award from Tuskegee Institute in 1983. He died on May 4, 1990.
1907
The People’s Savings Bank is incorporated in Philadelphia by
former African American congressman George H. White of North Carolina. The bank
will help hundreds of African Americans buy homes and start businesses until
the illness of its founder forces its closure in 1918.
1929
Dr. Ida Stephens Owens was born on this day in Newark,
NJ. She is an African-American
Biochemist. She received a Ph.D. in Biology-Physiology
from Duke University in 1967. At the National
Institutes of Health (NIH), she conducted studies in the genetics of
detoxification enzymes, research that are aimed at shedding light on how the
human body defends itself against poison. (Source: Ebony) Dr. Owens is
currently with the Section of Genetic Disorders of Drug Metabolism, National
Institute of Child Health and Human Development, Bethesda, MD.
1929
Meredith C. Gourdine was born on this date. He was an African-American Physicist, and
Engineer.
From Newark, New Jersey,
he received a B. S. in Engineering Physics from Cornell University
in 1953 and a Ph.D. in Engineering Physics from the California Institute of
Technology in 1960. While at Cornell he ran track and won a silver medal in the
long jump at the Olympic Games in 1952. Gourdine pioneered the research of
electrogasdynamics. He was responsible for the engineering technique termed
Incineraid for aiding in the removal of smoke from buildings. His work on gas
dispersion developed techniques for dispersing fog from airport runways.
Gourdine served on the Technical Staff of the Ramo-Woolridge Corporation from
1957 to 1958, followed by Senior Research Scientist at the Caltech Jet
Propulsion Laboratory from until 1960. He became a Lab Director of the
Plasmodyne Corporation from 1960-62 and Chief Scientist of the Curtiss-Wright
Corporation from 1962 to 1964.
Gourdine established a research laboratory, Gourdine Laboratories, in Livingston, New
Jersey, with a staff of over 150 and has been issued
several patents on gas dynamic products as a result of his work. Gourdine
served as president of Energy Innovation, Inc. of Houston, Texas.
He died in November, 1998.
1937
Renowned blues singer Bessie Smith died on this
day of injuries sustained in an automobile accident near Clarksdale, Mississippi.
She, along with Scott Joplin and Duke Ellington, is credited with bringing jazz
and blues to major Northern cities in the 1920’s.
1962
Mississippi barred James Meredith from the University
of Mississippi for the
third time. Lt.
Gov. Paul Johnson and a blockade of state patrolmen turned
Meredith and federal marshals back about four hundred yards from the gate of
the school.
1962
A. Leon Higginbotham, Jr., becomes the first African American member of the Federal Trade
Commission. He was also appointed a federal district judge and U.S. Circuit
Judge of the Third Circuit.
1968
The Studio
Museum of Harlem opened in New
York City.
1981
Serena Jameka Williams was born in Saginaw,
Michigan on this date. She is an
African-American tennis player and entrepreneur. She is also the younger sister
of tennis player Venus Williams.
When she and her four sisters were young, their parents, Richard and Oracene
lived in Compton CA. About that time she won her first
tournament, and eventually entered 49 tournaments before the age of 10, winning
46 of them. At one point, she replaced her sister Venus as the number one
ranked tennis player aged 12 or under in California.
She never bragged about all her winnings.
Her carrier singles wins are over 300, doubles record is 94-15 and she has
amassed almost 40 titles between the two events. She has won eight Grand Slam
singles titles and an Olympic gold medal in women’s doubles. In 2005, Tennis
magazine ranked her as the 17th-best player of the preceding forty years. She
currently resides in Palm Beach
Gardens, Florida, United States with her sister
Venus.
Williams has her own line of designer clothing called Aneres her first name
spelled backward that she plans to sell in boutiques in Miami
and Los Angeles.
Venus also appeared as one of her models, showing her latest designs.
2001
On this date, a
white police officer in Cincinnati,
OH was acquitted in the killing of an unarmed black man. The killing
sparked that city’s worst racial unrest in three decades.
Officer Stephen Roach had been charged with negligent homicide and obstructing official
business after he shot 19-year-old Timothy Thomas in a dark alley early April
7. Hamilton County Municipal Judge Ralph Winkler pronounced sentence after
hearing the trial without a jury, at Roach’s request. Roach did not testify.
The Judge said: “This shooting was a split-second reaction to a very dangerous
situation created by Timothy Thomas, Police officer Roach’s action was
reasonable on his part, based on the information he had at the time in that dark
Cincinnati alley.” He said Roach’s record was unblemished, while Thomas’ was
not.
He noted that Thomas who was wanted on a variety of warrants, but mostly for
traffic offenses failed to respond to an order to show his hands. The Rev.
Damon Lynch, a black leader and minister in Cincinnati’s Over-the-Rhine neighborhood
where Thomas was shot, called the verdict ‘an atrocity’ but said, “We’ll urge
people to be peaceful, as we have been doing for 10 weeks.” Roach, 27, a city
officer since 1997, still faces departmental administrative proceedings. Roach
was believed to be the first Cincinnati
officer to go to trial on charges of killing a suspect.
In three nights of rioting that followed the shooting, dozens of people were
injured and more than 800 were arrested before a temporary citywide curfew
ended the disturbance. The city had not seen such racial unrest since the Rev.
Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination in 1968. As a precaution, additional
police officers were on duty when the verdict was announced. There were no
disturbances. A crowd of about 40 blacks gathered outside the courthouse and
one yelled, “How is that justified?” Activist Kabaka Oba said the verdict shows
“that the city is not willing to put a police officer in jail for killing a man
unjustifiably.”
After the verdict was read, Roach said: “Unfortunately, this is a tragedy for
everybody involved… I would give anything to change the outcome of what
happened that night.” Thomas’ mother, Angela Leisure, said the verdict was
unfair. “Why is it that officers are not responsible for their acts when other
citizens are? My son... won’t be the last... Until serious changes are made in
our police department, this will happen again.”
Thomas was the 15th black male killed by Cincinnati
police since 1995. The police union has noted that 10 of those men had fired or
pointed guns at police officers, and two of the victims drove at officers or
dragged them from cars.
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