Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Today in Black History 04/25/2010

*               Today in Black History - April 25               *

1905 - Doxey Alphonso Wilkerson is born in Excelsior Springs, Missouri.
    He will become an educator at Howard University in Washington, DC
    and Yeshiva University in New York City. In 1944, he will publish
    an essay in the anthology, "What The Negro Wants," which will
    illustrate comparisons between the Allied struggle in Europe
    during World War II and the civil rights struggle of African
    Americans in the United States. As a member of the American
    Communist Party, he will work as a civil rights activist.  This
    affiliation will cause him to be repeatedly investigated by
    the U.S. House Committee on Un-American Activities.  After
    resigning from the Communist Party in 1957, he will continue to
    be active in civil right activities and educational pursuits
    until his retirement in 1984.  He will join the ancestors on
    June 17, 1993 in Norwalk, Connecticut.

1916 - Madeline M. Turner receives a patent for the fruit press.

1918 - Ella Fitzgerald is born in Newport News, Virginia.  Discovered
    at an amateur contest at the Apollo Theatre in 1934, she will
    be a leading jazz vocalist of the swing era.  Known for her
    renditions of such songs as "A Tisket, A Tasket" (her first
    million-seller), her unique scat styling and series of recordings
    of great American songwriters will make her an enduring favorite
    of jazz lovers. She will join the ancestors on June 15, 1996 in
    Beverly Hills, California.

1942 - Ruby Doris Smith Robinson is born in Atlanta, Georgia. She will
    become a civil rights activist and a founding member of The
    Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC).  She will be
    one of the original "Freedom Riders," and will assist in creating
    the policy of "jail, no bail," employed by activists to fill
    southern jails and bring national attention to the civil rights
    struggle. After becoming SNCC's first and only female executive
    secretary, she will become ill with leukemia and joins the
    ancestors on October 7, 1967 in Atlanta, Georgia.

1944 - The United Negro College Fund (UNCF) is founded by Dr. Frederick
    Douglass Patterson, then president of Tuskegee Institute, with 27
    charter colleges and universities and a combined enrollment of
    14,000 students.

1944 - George Herriman joins the ancestors in Los Angeles, California
    at the age of 63. He had been a successful cartoonist who was
    the author of the comic strip "Krazy Kat."  The comic strip ran
    successfully from 1913 until Herriman's death.

1945 - The United Nations is founded at a San Francisco meeting
    attended by African American consultants, most notably W.E.B.
    Du Bois, Mary McLeod Bethune, Ralph J. Bunche and Walter White.

1950 - At the NBA's annual players draft, the Boston Celtics select
    Charles "Chuck" Cooper.  He is the first African American ever
    drafted by an NBA team.

1960 - A consent judgment in a Memphis federal court ended restrictions
    barring voters in Fayette County, Tennessee.  This was the first
    voting rights case under the Civil Rights Act.

1972 - Major General Frederick E. Davidson becomes the first African
    American to lead an Army division when he is assigned command of
    the 8th Infantry Division in Europe.

1979 - Olodum, an internationally recognized Afro-Brazilian Carnival
    association, is founded in Bahia, Brazil.  The music of this
    group celebrates Black history and protests racial discrimination.
    The name Olodum is derived from the name of the supreme Yoruba
    deity, Olodumare'.

1990 - Tenor saxophonist Dexter Gordon joins the ancestors in
    Philadelphia, Pennsylvania at the age of 67. A leading influence
    in the bop movement along with Billy Eckstine and Dizzy Gillespie,
    Gordon played in London in the early 1960's and stayed until the
    mid-1970's.  Elected to the Jazz Hall of Fame in 1980, his role in
    the 1986 movie "'Round Midnight" will revive interest in his music
    and earn him an Academy Award nomination for best actor.

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