1800
Nat Turner was born in Southampton, Virginia. Believing himself called by God to free his fellow bondsmen, Turner became a freedom fighter leader of one of the most famous slave revolts, resulting in the death of scores of whites and involving 60 to 80 slaves. He joined the ancestors on November 11, 1831, after being executed for his part in the rebellion.
1833
The New York Anti-Slavery Society is organized.
1898
Otis J. Rene’ was born in New Orleans, Louisiana. With his younger brother Leon, he moved to Los Angeles, California, and established Exclusive and Excelsior Records in the 1930s. By the mid-1940s, the brothers will be leading independent record producers whose artists will include Nat King Cole, Herb Jeffries, and Johnny Otis. He will join the ancestors on April 5, 1970.
1929 – Moses Gunn is born in St. Louis, Missouri. He will become an Obie Award-winning stage player and co-founded the Negro Ensemble Company in the 1960s. His 1962 Broadway debut was in Jean Genet’s “The Blacks.” He will be nominated for a 1976 Tony Award as Best Actor (Play) for “The Poison Tree”
and will play Othello on Broadway in 1970. He will also appear in “Amityville II,” “Shaft,” and “Good Times.” He joined the ancestors on December 17, 1993, after succumbing to complications from asthma.
1932 – Maurice Morning ‘Maury’ Wills is born in Washington, DC. He will become a professional baseball player and shortstop for the Dodger organization. He was an All-Star for five seasons and seven All-Star Games and will be the first MLB All-Star Game Most Valuable Player in 1962. He will also be the National League Most Valuable Player (MVP) in 1962, and a Gold Glove winner in 1961 and 1962. In a fourteen-year career, he will bat .281 with 20 home runs, 458 runs batted in, 2,134 hits, 1,067 runs,
177 doubles, 71 triples, and 586 stolen bases in 1,942 games. Since 2009, he has been a member of the Los Angeles Dodgers organization serving as a representative of the Dodgers Legend Bureau. In 2014, he will appear for the first time as a candidate on the National Baseball Hall of Fame’s Golden Era Committee election ballot for possible Hall of Fame consideration in 2015 which requires 12 votes. He will miss getting elected by 3 votes. All the other candidates on the ballot will also miss being elected. The
The committee meets and votes on ten selected candidates from the 1947 to 1972 era every three years.
1936 – Johnnie Cochran is born in Shreveport, Louisiana. He will become a criminal defense attorney and will be best known for his defense of Black Panther Party member Geronimo Pratt and ex-NFL superstar O.J. Simpson. He will join the ancestors on March 29, 2005.
1958 – The Republic of Guinea gains independence under the leadership of Sekou Toure.
1965 – Bishop Harold Robert Perry of Lake Charles, Louisiana, is named auxiliary bishop of New Orleans by Pope Paul IV.
1967 – Thurgood Marshall becomes the first African American member of the United States Supreme Court when he is sworn in by Chief Justice Earl Warren. As chief counsel for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in the 1940s and ’50s, Marshall was the architect and executor of the legal strategy that ended the era of official racial segregation. The great-grandson of a slave, he was born in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1908. After being rejected from the University of Maryland Law School on account of his race, he was accepted at the all-black Howard University in Washington, DC. At Howard, he studied under the tutelage of civil liberties lawyer Charles H. Houston and in 1933 graduated first in his class. In 1936, he joined the legal division of the NAACP, of which Houston was director, and two years later succeeded his mentor in the organization’s top legal post.
1967 – Robert H. Lawrence, who was named the first African-American astronaut, joins the ancestors after being killed in a plane crash before his first mission.
1968 – Bob Gibson, of the St. Louis Cardinals, sets a world series record of 17 strikeouts.
1980 – Larry Holmes retains the WBC heavyweight boxing title defeating Muhammad Ali.
1981 – Hazel Scott, renowned jazz singer and pianist, joins the ancestors at the age of 61 after succumbing to pancreatic cancer.
1986 – The United States Senate overrides President Ronald Reagan’s veto of legislation imposing economic sanctions against South Africa. The override is seen as the culmination of efforts by Trans-Africa’s Randall Robinson, Rep. Mickey Leland, and others begun almost two years earlier with Robinson’s
arrest before the South African Embassy in Washington, DC.
1989 – “Jump Start” premiers in 40 newspapers in the United States. The comic strip is the creation of 26-year-old Robb Armstrong, the youngest African American to have a syndicated comic strip. He follows in the footsteps of Morrie Turner, the creator of “Wee Pals,” the first African-American syndicated comic strip.