1864
The National Black Convention meets in Syracuse, New York.
1864
The New Orleans Tribune, the first African-American daily newspaper, was founded by Dr. Louis C. Roudanez. The newspaper, published in both English and French, started as a tri-weekly but soon became an influential daily.
1934
Malvin Gray Johnson joins his ancestors in New York City. His deceptively simple paintings, with their warm colors and serene, sensuous charm, had earned him a large and loyal group of admirers during the Harlem Renaissance.
1935 – Joe Walcott, World Welterweight Boxing Champion during the early 1900s, joins the ancestors after being struck and killed by a car. He is perhaps the only West Indian (from Barbados), universally recognized as a boxing legend. Walcott stood at five feet, one and a half inches, his fighting weight at 142 pounds, basically a midget version of Mike Tyson. His short powerful physique enabled him to bob and weave, catching his opponent’s punches on his powerful shoulders and his granite-like head.
1937 – Lee Patrick Brown was born in Wewoka, Oklahoma. He will become one of the top-ranking law-enforcement executives in the United States, first as Public Safety Commissioner in Atlanta, Georgia, the second African-American police commissioner for New York City, and the first African-American mayor of Houston. He was reelected twice to serve a maximum of three terms from 1998 to 2004.
1943 – Hubert Gerold Brown was born in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. He, better known as H. Rap Brown, became a Black nationalist and chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in the 1960s, and later the Justice Minister of the Black Panther Party. He will be most famous for his proclamation during that period that “violence is as American as cherry pie”, as well as once stating that “If America doesn’t come around, we’re gonna burn it down”. He is also known for his autobiography “Die
Nigger Die!”. He spent five years (1971-1976) in New York’s Attica Prison after a robbery conviction. While in prison, he will convert to Islam and change his name to Jamil Abdullah al-Amin. After his release, he will open a grocery store in Atlanta, Georgia, and become a Muslim spiritual leader and community activist, preaching against drugs and gambling in Atlanta’s West End neighborhood. He will be sentenced to life in prison, without the possibility of parole, for the 2000 shooting of two Fulton County Sheriff’s
deputies, one of whom joins the ancestors.
1944 – Dancer Pearl Primus makes her Broadway debut at the Belasco Theater. She will become widely known for blending the African and American dance traditions.
1944 – Patricia Holt was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She will become a singer known as Patti LaBelle and will be a lead with the Ordettes, the Bluebells, and LaBelle. She will eventually debut a solo career performing over 90 concerts a year. She will publish her life story, “Don’t Block The Blessings: Revelations of a Lifetime.”
1945 – Clifton Davis was born in Chicago, Illinois. He will become an actor and singer, performing in “That’s My Mama,” and “Amen” on television. He will also become a minister in the Seventh-Day Adventist Church.
1966 – Lesotho (Basutoland) gains its independence from Great Britain.
1976 – Secretary of Agriculture Earl Butz resigns in the wake of a controversy over a joke he had made about Blacks.
1991 – The Harold Washington Library in Chicago, Illinois is dedicated in the memory of its beloved former mayor.
1994 – Exiled Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide vows in an address to the U.N. General Assembly, to return to Haiti in 11 days.
1994 – President Clinton welcomes South African President Nelson Mandela to the White House.
2019 – Diahann Carroll, the Oscar-nominated actress and singer who won critical acclaim as the first black woman to star in a non-servant role in a TV series as “Julia,” joins the ancestors, succumbing to breast cancer at the age of 84. Not shy when it came to confronting racial barriers, she won her Tony portraying a high-fashion American model in Paris who has a love affair with a white American author in the 1959 Richard Rodgers musical “No Strings.” Critic Walter Kerr described her as “a girl with a sweet smile, brilliant dark eyes, and a profile regal enough to belong on a coin.” She appeared often in plays previously considered exclusive territory for white actresses: “Same Time, Next Year,”?, Agnes of God” and “Sunset Boulevard” (as faded star Norma Desmond, the role played by Gloria Swanson in the 1950 film.) “I like to think that I opened doors for other women, although that wasn’t my original intention,” she said in 2002.