Monday, April 12, 2010

Today in Black History 04/12/2010

*               Today in Black History - April 12            *

1787 - Richard Allen and Absalom Jones organize Philadelphia's
    Free African Society which W.E.B. Du Bois refers to,
    over a century later, "the first wavering step of a
    people toward a more organized social life."

1825 - Richard Harvey Cain is born in Greenbrier, Virginia. He
    will become an AME minister, an AME bishop, publisher,
    member of the House of Representatives, and a founder
    of Paul Quinn College in Waco, Texas.

1861 - The Civil War begins as Confederate troops attack Fort
    Sumter, South Carolina.

1864 - Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest captures Fort
    Pillow, Tennessee, and massacres the inhabitants,
    sparing, the official report says, neither soldier nor
    civilian, African American nor white, male or female. 
    The fort is defended by a predominantly African
    American force.

1869 - The North Carolina legislature passes anti-Klan
    legislation.

1898 - Sir Grantley H. Adams is born in Barbados. He will become
    a political leader and will found the Barbados
    Progressive League. The league will later become the
    Barbados Labour Party. The B.L.P. will win the general
    election of 1947 and Adams will be elected the first
    premier of Barbados.

1940 - Herbert Jeffrey "Herbie" Hancock is born in Chicago,
    Illinois. After graduating from college at age 20, he
    will go to New York with Donald Byrd, who had heard him
    perform in Chicago.  While in New York, Byrd will
    introduce Hancock to Blue Note Records executives. This
    will lead to work with various established jazz
    artists and later Hancock's first solo album, "Taking
    Off," which includes appearances by Freddie Hubbard and
    Dexter Gordon.  Contained on this album is Hancock's
    first top 10 hit, "Watermelon Man." It will not be long
    before Hancock gets the attention of the legendary
    Miles Davis, who will extend an invitation to Hancock
    to join his new group.  After working with Davis for
    several years Herbie will decide to form his own band,
    a sextet which will include Julian Priester, Buster
    Williams, and Eddie Henderson.  He will become one of
    the most popular jazz artists, known for his
    compositions "Watermelon Man" and "Chameleon," as well
    as his musical score for the movie "'Round Midnight,"
    for which he will win an Oscar in 1986.

1960 - Martin Luther King, Jr. denounces the Vietnam War which
    he says is "rapidly degenerating into a sordid military
    adventure."

1968 - African American students occupy the administration
    building at Boston University and demand Afro-American
    history courses and additional African American
    students.

1980 - Liberian President William R. Tolbert Jr. and twenty-
    seven others join the ancestors after being killed in
    a coup d'etat by army enlisted men led by Master
    Sergeant Samuel K. Doe.

1983 - The people of Chicago, Illinois elect Harold Washington
    as the city's first African American mayor.

1989 - Former middleweight boxing champion Sugar Ray Robinson
    joins the ancestors in Culver City, California, at age
    67.

1990 - August Wilson's "The Piano Lesson" wins the Pulitzer
    Prize for drama.  It is the second Pulitzer Prize for
    Wilson, who also won one for "Fences" in 1987 and was
    awarded the New York Drama Critics' Award for "Fences,"
    "Ma Rainey's Black Bottom," and "Joe Turner's Come and
    Gone."

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