1934
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Pan-African Chronology
January
*Yaba Higher College officially opened in Yaba, Nigeria.
*Yaba Higher College officially opened in Yaba, Nigeria.
January 15
*Hemsley Winfield, the first African American dancer to be involved in ballet, died.
January 26
*Harlem's Apollo Theatre staged its first live show.
February 5
*Baseball player Henry "Hank" Aaron, who would break Babe Ruth's career home-run record, was born in Mobile, Alabama.
February 12
*Basketball player and coach William Felton "Bill" Russell, who would be named Most Valuable Player of the Year five times, was born in Monroe, Louisiana.
February 18
*Poet and essayist Audre Lorde was born in New York City.
February 22
*Four Saints in Three Acts, the first African American performed opera on Broadway, opened.
March 12
*Virginia Hamilton, author of juvenile fiction such as M. C. Higgins the Great and Sweet Whispers, Brother Rush, was born in Yellow Springs, Ohio.
March 27
*Arthur Mitchell, a dancer and choreographer who created a training school and the first African-American classical ballet company, Dance Theatre of Harlem, was born in Harlem, New York.
May 28
*Activist Betty Shabazz, the wife of Malcolm X, was born in Pinehurst, Georgia.
June
*The Citizens' League for Fair Play organized a boycott against Blumstein's Department Store in Harlem.
July 16
*Donald Payne, the first African American elected to the United States House of Representatives from New Jersey, was born in Newark, New Jersey.
July 20
*Henry Dumas, author of Ark of Bones and Other Stories, was born in Sweet Home, Arkansas.
July 21
*Politician Edolphus Towns was born in Chadbourn, North Carolina. He would become Brooklyn borough president, United States representative from New York, and chair of the Congressional Black Caucus.
August 16
*Wallace Thurman, the author of the novel The Blacker the Berry: A Novel of Negro Life, was born in Salt Lake City, Utah.
August 18
*Track star Rafer Johnson was born in Hillsboro, Texas. He would win a gold medal in the decathlon at the 1960 Rome Olympics.
September 19
*Sonia Sanchez, poet, playwright, and short-story writer, was born in Birmingham, Alabama.
September 27
*Actor Greg Morris was born in Cleveland, Ohio. He would have a role in the popular television series Mission Impossible.
September 29
September 29
*Italy and Ethiopia released a joint statement refuting any aggression between each other.
October
*Disgruntled former South African Party Members of Parliament formed the Dominion Party.
October 4
*Painter Malvin Gray Johnson died in New York City. The Harmon Foundation would mount a memorial retrospective of his work in 1935.
October 7
*Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones), a poet and playwright who wrote the play Dutchman, was born in Newark, New Jersey. He would become a leader of the Black Arts Movement in the 1960s.
October 9
*Abdullah Ibrahim, a South African pianist and composer, was born in Cape Town, South Africa.
October 9
*Abdullah Ibrahim, a South African pianist and composer, was born in Cape Town, South Africa.
November
*Elijah Muhammad succeeded W. D. Fard as leader of the Nation of Islam.
November 7
*Arthur L. Mitchell, a Democrat, defeated Republican Congressman Oscar de Priest of Chicago, becoming the pioneer African American member of the Democratic party in Congress.
November 10
*George Alexander McGuire, the founding bishop of the African Orthodox church, died in New York City.
November 14
November 23
December 5
*Tensions result in a border clash at Walwal. Italy invaded Ethiopia at Walwal, Ogaden Province (December 5),
December 6
*Abyssinia protested against Italian aggression at Walwal.
December 8
November 14
*William Levi Dawson's Negro Folk Symphony, the first symphony on black folk themes by an African American composer to be performed by a major orchestra, was performed at Carnegie Hall by the Philadelphia Symphony Orchestra.
November 23
*An Anglo–Ethiopian boundary commission discovered the Italian force at Walwal. British members of the delegation soon retire to avoid an international incident.
December 5
*Tensions result in a border clash at Walwal. Italy invaded Ethiopia at Walwal, Ogaden Province (December 5),
December 6
*Abyssinia protested against Italian aggression at Walwal.
December 8
*Italy demanded an apology for the Walwal incident.
December 11
*Italy demanded financial and strategic compensation for the Walwal incident.
The United States
*****
Father Divine
By 1934, branches had opened in Los Angeles, California, and Seattle, Washington, and gatherings occurred in France, Switzerland, Canada, and Australia, but the membership totals were drastically overstated in the press. Time Magazine estimated nearly two million followers, but the true figure of adherents was probably a few tens of thousands and a larger body of sympathizers who attended his gatherings. Nonetheless, Father Divine was increasingly called upon to offer political endorsements, which he initially did not grant. For example, New York mayoral candidates John P. O'Brien and Fiorello H. LaGuardia each sought his endorsement in 1933, but Father Divine was apparently uninterested.
An odd alliance between Father Divine and the Communist Party of America began in early 1934. Although Father Divine was outspokenly capitalist, he was impressed with the party's commitment to civil rights. The party relished the endorsement, although contemporary FBI records indicate some critics of the perceived huckster were expelled from the party for protesting the alliance.
*****
W. E. B. DuBois
*W. E. B. DuBois resigned from the NAACP, where he had edited the Crisis magazine, in a conflict over the value of voluntary segregation, which DuBois supported. Roy Wilkins, assistant secretary of the NAACP, became the new editor of the Crisis.
Du Bois did not have a good working relationship with Walter Francis White, president of the NAACP since 1931. That conflict, combined with the financial stresses of the Great Depression, precipitated a power struggle over The Crisis. Du Bois, concerned that his position as editor would be eliminated, resigned his job at The Crisis and accepted an academic position at Atlanta University in early 1933. The rift with the NAACP grew larger in 1934 when Du Bois reversed his stance on segregation, stating that "separate but equal" was an acceptable goal for African Americans. The NAACP leadership was stunned, and asked Du Bois to retract his statement, but he refused, and the dispute led to Du Bois' resignation from the NAACP.
*****
*****
Nelson Mandela
*Nelson Mandela and several other boys travelled to Tyhalarha to undergo the circumcision ritual that symbolically marked their transition from boys to men. The rite over, Mandela was given the name Dalibunga.
Awards
*William T. B. Williams, dean of Tuskegee Institute, received the Spingarn Medal for his achievements in education.
*****
Civil Rights
Civil Rights
*The Citizens' League for Fair Play organized a boycott against Blumstein's Department Store in Harlem (June).
The earliest activism by blacks to change the situation in Harlem itself grew out of the Great Depression, with the "Don't Buy Where You Can't Work" movement. This was the ultimately successful campaign to force retail shops on 125th Street to hire black employees. Boycotts were originally organized by the Citizens' League for Fair Play in June 1934 against Blumstein's Department Store on 125th Street. The store soon agreed to integrate its staff more fully. This success emboldened Harlem residents, and protests continued under other leadership, including that of preacher and later congressman Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., seeking to change hiring practices at other stores, to effect the hiring of more black workers, or the hiring of members of particular protesting groups.
The Communist Party
*Probably not more than 2,500 of the 24,536 claimed members of the American Communist Party were African Americans.
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Educational Institutions
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*Alain Leroy Locke founded the Associated in Negro Folk Education.
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The Labor Movement
*****
*The American Federation of Labor rejected a resolution to end discrimination within its ranks and said that no discrimination existed.
A. Philip Randolph's resolution at the AFL National Convention to end union discrimination was rejected by the delegates. The AFL organization committee argued that no such discrimination existed, and supported the concept of separate unions for African Americans and European Americans. In 1935, after much debate the National Convention rejected a special investigation committe's suggestions to end discrimination.
The AFL and, in particular, the railroad brotherhoods discriminated against African Americans in the following ways: by constitutional, ritual and tacit agreement; through creation of segregated and auxiliary locals; by collusion with employers; by negotiating separate seniority and promotion agreements in contracts that kept African Americans in menial jobs; by controlling the craft licensing boards; by negotiating for African Americans without African American representation or votes on the final contracts; by excluding African Americans from union hiring halls when the halls represented the only job source.
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Legislation
*****
*An anti-lynching bill failed in Congress due to lack of support from the Roosevelt administration.
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Literature
*Zora Neale Hurston's novel Jonah's Gourd Vine was published. In this novel, the author utilized rural African American folklore in a style modeled upon preacher of Holy Roller rhetoric to achieve a very original effect.
*The Ways of White Folks, an anthology of short stories by Langston Hughes, dealt with race relations in rural Southern towns. Miscegenation was the common theme of approximately half the stories.
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Movies
*The Hollywood movie Imitation of Life opened. It starred African American actress Louise Beavers and European American Claudette Colbert as two women who went into business together.
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Music
*William Levi Dawson's Negro Folk Symphony was performed at Carnegie Hall by the Philadelphia Symphony Orchestra (November 14).
Symphony No. 1, Negro Folk Symphony, by William Levi Dawson (1899-1990), was the first symphony on black folk themes by an African American composer to be performed by a major orchestra. The symphony was substantially revised in 1952, after a visit to West Africa. Born in Anniston, Alabama, Dawson began to compose when he was sixteen years old. Under his leadership, the Tuskegee Choir became internationally renowned.
Symphony No. 1, Negro Folk Symphony, by William Levi Dawson (1899-1990), was the first symphony on black folk themes by an African American composer to be performed by a major orchestra. The symphony was substantially revised in 1952, after a visit to West Africa. Born in Anniston, Alabama, Dawson began to compose when he was sixteen years old. Under his leadership, the Tuskegee Choir became internationally renowned.
*****
The NAACP
*W. E. B. DuBois resigned from the NAACP, where he had edited the Crisis magazine, in a conflict over the value of voluntary segregation, which DuBois supported. DuBois would not return to the NAACP until 1944. Roy Wilkins, the assistant secretary of the NAACP, became the new editor of the Crisis.
*The NAACP began formulating a plan for a "systematic coordinated legal assault on discrimination in the schools."
*An anti-lynching bill written by Senator Costigan of Colorado and Senator Wagner of New York was proposed. The NAACP sponsored the bill and placed large banners outside its New York office every day a man was lynched. The NAACP was unsuccessful in its attempt to have President Roosevelt endorse the bill and it did not pass.
*The culmination of the NAACP's 14-year campaign for the liberation of Haiti occurred when President Roosevelt finally withdrew the United States troops from Haiti.
*****
The Nation of Islam
*By 1934, the Black Muslim leader, Fard, had about 8,000 adherents. Membership would decline after Fard's disappearance later in the year. Elijah Muhammad would then move his headquarters to Chicago. He would soon be called "The Prophet," and Fard was identified with Allah.
Elijah Muhammad succeeded W. D. Fard as leader of the Nation of Islam. Muhammad was born Elijah Poole in Sandersville, Georgia, in 1897. His father was a Baptist preacher, sawmill worker, and tenant farmer. Muhammad was a deeply religious and race conscious youth. While he was employed as a laborer in Georgia in 1923, a European American employer cursed him and he decided to move North. While living on relief in Detroit during the Depression, Muhammad came under the influence of W. D. Fard or Wallace Fard Muhammad, a mysterious silk peddler who had been teaching African Americans that they were members of a superior race, descendants of Muslims from Afro-Asia.
Fard claimed to be a messenger from Allah sent to reclaim his lost people, to save them from the inferior race of "white devils" who had made their lives so miserable. Christianity, Fard asserted, was a false religion used by European American people to keep African Americans in subjugation. Elijah Poole soon became Fard's closest associate and when Fard mysteriously disappeared in 1934, Poole, now known as Elijah Muhammad, took control of the group as "The Messenger of Allah to the Lost-Found Nation of Islam in the Wilderness of North America." Muhammad and his followers refused to bear arms for the United States during World War II. Muhammad himself was convicted of encouraging resistance to the draft and served three and a half years of a five-year sentence in a federal prison.
Elijah Muhammad was released from prison in 1946. During the time of his incarceration, membership in the Nation of Islam dropped from a high of about 8,000 under Fard's leadership leadership to 1,000 under the incarcerated Elijah Muhammad.
*****
The New Deal
*The Federal Emergency Relief Administration inaugurated a program to help the rural poor grow their own food. Between this year and 1941, $1,121,000,000 was allocated to this program, and $5.3 billion to the discriminatory AAA.
*The National Recovery Administration (NRA) proved unsatisfactory to most African Americans. They were rarely represented at code hearings, and cost-of-living differentials were discriminatory. Under the steel, laundry and tobacco codes, among others, African American workers received lower wages than European American workers.
*The minimum wage regulations of the National Recovery Act contributed to the number of African Americans on relief. The NRA increased competition for jobs and thus encouraged discrimination. The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 setting minimum wages had a similar effect.
*Clark Foreman of the Interior Department and E. K. Jones of the Commerce Department, both African Americans, set up interdepartmental committees to consider the problems of African Americans under the NRA and the AAA. An NRA representative admitted that there was discrimination against African Americans in its operations. An AAA representative explained, "It may be said that the smaller the administrative unit, and the greater the degree of local control, the worse the conditions to which Negroes are subjected."
*John P. Davis criticized the NRA for putting African Americans out of work and for raising prices.
*African American enrollment in the CCC was only 5.3% of the total enrollment, although African Americans represented 10% of the population. Enrollment was done by local officials, which led to discrimination.
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Notable Births
*Baseball player Henry "Hank" Aaron, who would break Babe Ruth's career home-run record, was born in Mobile, Alabama (February 5).
Hank Aaron, byname of Henry Louis Aaron (b. February 5, 1934, Mobile, Alabama), American professional baseball player who, during 23 seasons in the major leagues (1954–76), surpassed batting records set by some of the greatest hitters in the game, including Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb, and Stan Musial.
Aaron, a right-hander, began his professional career in 1952, playing shortstop for a few months with the Indianapolis Clowns of the Negro American League. His contract was bought by the Boston Braves of the National League, who assigned him to minor league teams. In 1954 he moved up to the majors, playing mostly as an outfielder for the Braves (who had moved to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in 1953). In 1956, he won the league batting championship with an average of .328, and in 1957, having led his team to victory in the World Series, he was named the league’s Most Valuable Player. By the time the Braves moved to Atlanta, Georgia, at the end of 1965, Aaron had hit 398 home runs. In Atlanta on April 8, 1974, he hit his 715th, breaking Babe Ruth’s record, which had stood since 1935. After the 1974 season, Aaron was traded to the Milwaukee Brewers, who were at that time in the American League. Aaron retired after the 1976 season and rejoined the Braves as an executive. He was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame on January 13, 1982. In 2010 the Hank Aaron Childhood Home and Museum opened on the grounds of Hank Aaron Stadium, the home of Mobile, Alabama’s minor league baseball team.
Aaron’s batting records include totals of 1,477 extra-base hits and 2,297 runs batted in. His home run record of 755 was broken by Barry Bonds in 2007. Aaron’s other notable career statistics include 2,174 runs scored (second to Ty Cobb) and 12,364 times at bat (second to Pete Rose). His hit total (3,771) was exceeded only by those of Cobb and Rose. Aaron’s lifetime batting average was .305.
*****
*Amiri Baraka, a poet and playwright who wrote the play Dutchman, was born in Newark, New Jersey (October 7). He would become a leader of the Black Arts Movement in the 1960s.
Amiri Baraka, also called Imamu Amiri Baraka, original name (until 1968) (Everett) LeRoi Jones (b. October 7, 1934, Newark, New Jersey — d. January 9, 2014, Newark, New Jersey), was an African American writer who presented the experiences and anger of black Americans with an affirmation of black life.
Jones graduated from Howard University (B.A., 1953) and served in the United States Air Force. After military duty, he joined the Beat movement, attended graduate school, and, in 1961, published his first major collection of poetry, Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note, a collection of Jones' early poetry with little regard to race.
Jones was the editor of Yugen, a prominent Beat poetry magazine, from 1960 to 1965. He organized and ran the Black Arts Theater in Harlem from 1964 to 1965 as part of HARYOUAct. In 1966, he moved to Newark, New Jersey, to run Spirit House, an African American workshop in the arts. In 1967, he was arrested in connection with the Newark riots in July of that year; convicted in a very controversial trial the following March, he was sentenced to two and half years. He later organized the United Brotherhood Party and became very active in local politics.
In 1963, Jones published The Moderns, an anthology of contemporary short stories edited by Jones. Also in 1963, Jones published Blues People, a long prose socio-historical study tracing the development of African American blues music and how it reflects the African American experience in the United States.
In 1964, his play Dutchman appeared off-Broadway to critical acclaim. In its depiction of an encounter between a European American woman and an African American intellectual, it exposes the suppressed anger and hostility of African Americans toward the dominant European American culture. Jones followed this with several other one-act plays. The Slave, The Toilet, The Baptism, all of which became increasingly vitriolic in their anti-white feelings. The Dead Lecturer, Jones' second collection of poems, was also published in 1964. The poetry of this volume and subsequent ones reflect the development of Jones' increasingly anti-white, anti-Semitic philosophy.
After the assassination of Malcolm X in 1965, Jones left his wife (who was Jewish) and their two children began to espouse black nationalism.
In 1965, Baraka founded the Black Arts Repertory Theatre in Harlem. He published much during this period, including Black Art (1966) and Black Magic (1969). In addition to poetry and drama, Baraka wrote several collections of essays, an autobiographical novel (The System of Dante’s Hell [1965]), and short stories.
In 1967, Baraka (still Leroi Jones) visited Maulana Karenga in Los Angeles and became an advocate of his philosophy of Kawaida, a multifaceted, categorized activist philosophy that produced the "Nguzo Saba," Kwanzaa, and an emphasis on African names. It was at this time that he adopted the name Imamu Amear Baraka. Imamu is a Swahili title for "spiritual leader", derived from the Arabic word Imam (إمام). Baraka later dropped the honorific Imamu and eventually changed Amear (which means "Prince") to Amiri. Baraka means "blessing, in the sense of divine favor."
In the mid-1970s Baraka became a Marxist, though his goals remained similar. “I [still] see art as a weapon and a weapon of revolution,” he said. “It’s just now that I define revolution in Marxist terms.” In addition to writing, Baraka taught at several American universities. The Autobiography of LeRoi Jones/Amiri Baraka was published in 1984.
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*Henry Dumas, author of Ark of Bones and Other Stories, was born in Sweet Home, Arkansas (July 20).
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*Virginia Hamilton, author of juvenile fiction such as M. C. Higgins the Great and Sweet Whispers, Brother Rush, was born in Yellow Springs, Ohio (March 12).
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*Track star Rafer Johnson was born in Hillsboro, Texas (August 18). he would win a gold medal in the decathlon at the 1960 Rome Olympics.
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*Poet and essayist Audre Lorde was born in New York City (February 18).
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*Arthur Mitchell, a dancer and choreographer who created a training school and the first African-American classical ballet company, Dance Theatre of Harlem, was born in Harlem, New York (March 27).
Arthur Mitchell, (b. March 27, 1934, New York, New York), American dancer, choreographer, and director of the Dance Theatre of Harlem.
Mitchell attended the High School for the Performing Arts in New York City and began performing in Broadway musicals and with the companies of Donald McKayle and John Butler. In 1956 Mitchell became the only black dancer in the New York City Ballet. He soon became a principal with the company, and George Balanchine created several roles for him, notably those in A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1962) and Agon (1967).
Mitchell was sensitive to the prejudice against African Americans in the world of ballet and determined to form an all-black ballet company. In 1968 he and Karel Shook founded an integrated school, whose associated company made its debut in 1971 in New York City and at the Spoleto Festival in Italy. Mitchell choreographed a number of ballets for the Dance Theatre of Harlem.
*Actor Greg Morris was born in Cleveland, Ohio (September 27). He would have a role in the popular television series Mission Impossible.
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*Donald Payne, the first African American elected to the United States House of Representatives from New Jersey, was born in Newark, New Jersey (July 16).
*****
*Basketball player and coach William Felton "Bill" Russell, who would be named Most Valuable Player of the Year five times, was born in Monroe, Louisiana (February 12).
Russell became in 1966 the first African American coach of a professional sports team, the Boston Celtics of the National Basketball Association. An All-American at the University of San Francisco, Russell led the Don to two NCAA titles (1955 and 1956) and also led the United States Olympic basketball team to the gold medal in 1956. Entering the NBA after the Olympics, Russell was five times named the Most Valuable Player. The Boston Celtics, with Russell as both player and player-coach, dominated the NBA, winning eleven championships during Russell's thirteen year career.
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*Sonia Sanchez, poet, playwright, and short-story writer, was born in Birmingham, Alabama (September 19).
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*Activist Betty Shabazz, the wife of Malcolm X, was born in Pinehurst, Georgia (May 28).
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*Politician Edolphus Towns was born in Chadbourn, North Carolina (July 21). He would become Brooklyn borough president, United States representative from New York, and chair of the Congressional Black Caucus.
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Notable Deaths
*There were 15 recorded lynchings of African Americans in 1934.
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*Painter Malvin Gray Johnson died in New York City (October 4). The Harmon Foundation would mount a memorial retrospective of his work in 1935.
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*George Alexander McGuire, the founding bishop of the African Orthodox church, died in New York City (November 10).
*****
*Wallace Thurman, the author of the novel The Blacker the Berry: A Novel of Negro Life, was born in Salt Lake City, Utah (August 16).
Wallace Henry Thurman (b. August 16, 1902, Salt Lake City, Utah, U.S. - d. December 22, 1934, New York, New York), was an American novelist active during the Harlem Renaissance. He also wrote essays, worked as an editor, and was a publisher of short-lived newspapers and literary journals. He is best known for his novel The Blacker the Berry: A Novel of Negro Life (1929), which explores discrimination within the black community based on skin color, with lighter skin being more highly valued.
Thurman was born in Salt Lake City to Beulah and Oscar Thurman. When Thurman was less than a month old, his father abandoned his wife and son. It was not until Wallace was 30 years old that he met his father. Between his mother's many marriages, Wallace and his mother lived in Salt Lake City with Emma Jackson, his maternal grandmother. Jackson ran a saloon from her home, selling alcohol without a license.
Thurman's early life was marked by loneliness, family instability and illness. He began grade school at age six in Boise, Idaho, but his poor health eventually led to a two-year absence from school, during which he returned to his grandmother Emma in Salt Lake City. From 1910 to 1914, Thurman lived in Chicago. Moving with his mother, he finished grammar school in Omaha, Nebraska. During this time, he suffered from persistent heart attacks. While living in Pasadena, California, in the winter of 1918, Thurman caught influenza during the worldwide Influenza Pandemic. He recovered and returned to Salt Lake City, where he finished high school.
Thurman was a voracious reader. He enjoyed the works of Plato, Aristotle, Shakespeare, Havelock Ellis, Flaubert, Charles Baudelaire and many others. He wrote his first novel at the age of 10. He attended the University of Utah from 1919 to 1920 as a pre-medical student. In 1922 he transferred to the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, but left without earning a degree.
While in Los Angeles, he met and befriended the writer Arna Bontemps, and became a reporter and columnist for a black-owned newspaper. He started a magazine, Outlet, intended to be a West Coast equivalent to The Crisis, operated by the NAACP.
In 1925, Thurman moved to Harlem. During the next decade, he worked as a ghostwriter, a publisher, and editor, as well as writing novels, plays, and articles. In 1926, he became the editor of The Messenger, a socialist journal addressed to blacks. There he was the first to publish the adult-themed stories of Langston Hughes. Thurman left the journal in October 1926 to become the editor of World Tomorrow, which was owned by whites. The following month, he collaborated in founding the literary magazine Fire!! Devoted to the Younger Negro Artists. Among its contributors were Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Richard Bruce Nugent, Aaron Douglas, and Gwendolyn B. Bennett.
He was able to publish only one issue of Fire!!. It challenged such figures as W. E. B. Du Bois and African Americans who had been working for social equality and racial integration. Thurman criticized them for believing that black art should serve as propaganda for those ends. He said that the New Negro movement spent too much energy trying to show white Americans that blacks were respectable and not inferior.
Thurman and others of the "Niggerati" (the deliberately ironic name he used for the young African American artists and intellectuals of the Harlem Renaissance) wanted to show the real lives of African Americans, both the good and the bad. Thurman believed that black artists should fully acknowledge and celebrate the arduous conditions of African American lives.
During this time, Thurman's flat in a rooming house, at 267 West 136th Street in Harlem, became the central meeting place of African-American literary avant-garde and visual artists. Thurman and Hurston mockingly called the room "Niggerati Manor." He had painted the walls red and black, which were the colors he used on the cover of Fire!! Nugent painted murals on the walls, some of which contained homoerotic content.
In 1928, Thurman was asked to edit a magazine called Harlem: A Forum of Negro Life; its contributors included Alain Locke, George Schuyler, and Alice Dunbar-Nelson. He put out only two issues. Afterward, Thurman became a reader for a major New York publishing company, the first African American to work in such a position.
Thurman married Louise Thompson on August 22, 1928. The marriage lasted only six months. Thompson said that Wallace was a homosexual and refused to admit it. They had one child together.
Thurman died in 1934 at the age of 32 from tuberculosis, which many suspect was exacerbated by his long fight with alcoholism.
Thurman's dark skin color attracted comment, including negative reactions from both black and white Americans. He used such colorism in his writings, attacking the black community's preference for its lighter-skinned members.
Thurman wrote a play, Harlem, which debuted on Broadway in 1929 to mixed reviews. The same year his first novel The Blacker the Berry: A Novel of Negro Life (1929) was published. The novel is now recognized as a groundbreaking work of fiction because of its focus on intra-racial prejudice and colorism within the black community, where lighter skin has historically been favored.
Three years later Thurman published Infants of the Spring (1932), a satire of the themes and the individuals of the Harlem Renaissance. He co-authored The Interne (1932), a final novel written with Abraham L. Furman, a white man.
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*****
*Maggie Lena Walker, the first African American female bank president, died in Richmond, Virginia (December 15).
*Hemsley Winfield, the first African American dancer to be involved in ballet, died (January 15).
Hemsley Winfield (April 20, 1907 – January 15, 1934) was an African-American dancer who created the New Negro Art Theater Dance Group.
He was born Osborne Hemsley Winfield to a middle-class, African-American family in Yonkers, New York. Winfield struggled in Yonkers as jobs available to African-Americans remained menial. Contrary to the natural inclination of the residents of Yonkers at that time, Winfield pursued a career in the Arts, developing a strong background as an actor, director, stage technician, dancer and eventually a choreographer. With combination of Winfield's middle-class ambition as well as the growing cultural movement of the African-Americans at that time, Winfield was able to achieve acclaim by the Art world. Winfield first won his fame in the leading role of Oscar Wilde's Salome, which he won acclaim to in 1929. Winfield came upon the role as Salome when the female lead of the company fell ill, causing Winfield to dress in drag as the show was staged at the Cherry Lane Theater in Greenwich Village, New York. Winfield, during this time, continued to attend concerts by the great trailblazers of modern dance, who later served as an influence and sponsor for his choreographic work.
As part of the “Little Theater movement” Winfield started and directed the Sekondi Players of Yonkers in 1925. Taking words from the Negro’s African heritage Sekondi is the name of a city that is located on the south west coast of Ghana. In November of 1927 Winfield and the Sekondi Players were performing a children’s play, The Princess and the Cat, written by his mother, Jeroline Hemsley Winfield. This inaugural opening of children’s plays was under his direction of The New Negro Art Theater. This is the first reference to the New Negro Art Theater group that Winfield directed during the rest of his acting and dance career. On March 6, 1931, at the Saunders Trade School the dance company gave its first performance. Winfield served as the head organizer and director of the company. The first name of the dance company was The Bronze Ballet Plastique, which lasted only one performance. Edna Guy was trained by Ruth St. Denis of the Denis-Shawn School of Dance, and performed as a guest in at least two of Winfield's concerts which soon grew to draw massive crowds. Edna Guy was never a member of the New Negro Art Theater Dance Group, the leading female dancers of the company were Ollie Burgoyne, Drusela Drew, and Midgie Lane. Winfield's choreographic work during this time fused uniquely German Expressionism with African-American themes and spirituals.
In 1933, the company appeared in the premier of Louis Gruenberg's opera The Emperor Jones at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City. Winfield took on the role of the Congo witch doctor in the piece. His first performance as the Witch Doctor was listed as January 7, 1933 and his last performance was March 18, 1933 Winfield also danced the role of the Witch Doctor in the performances in Philadelphia and Baltimore that year. Controversy around the work resulted from the Met's original request to blacken White dancers' faces rather than use Black dancers, but Tibbett threatened to quit, and the Met relented. His final performance of the 1933 season was reviewed as “a thrilling exhibition of savage dancing” and “his sinister and frantic caperings as the Witch Doctor made even the most sluggish, opera-infected blood run cold.”
On January 15, 1934, Hemsley Winfield died of pneumonia shortly before his 27th birthday, leaving with the final words, "We're building a foundation that will make people take black dance seriously". Hemsley Winfield was considered “the pioneer in Negro concert dancing."
Winfield choreographed and performed with his own company in the Metropolitan Opera's production of Louis Gruenberg's The Emperor Jones. This was a one-time exception to the rules - management did not list the dancers in the program. The next African American dancer would not appear with the company until 1951. Winfield's mother was a playwright, and he made his debut in one of her plays, Wade in the Water (1926). He became a dancer and a pioneer in African American concert dance, organizing the Negro Art Theater Dance Group. This group gave its first concert on April 29, 1931, and appeared in Hall Johnson's Run Little Chillun in 1933.
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Performing Arts
*Band leader Cab Calloway coined the term "jitterbug" which became associated with a widely popular dance of the era.
The jitterbug is a kind of dance popularized in the United States in the early twentieth century and is associated with various types of swing dances such as the Lindy Hop, jive, and East Coast Swing.
According to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) the word jitterbug is a combination of the words jitter and bug. The word jitter is of unknown origin, as is the word bug. However, the first quote containing the word jitterbug recorded by the OED is from 1934 from the Cab Calloway song titled "Jitter Bug". The lyrics for the 1934 song were printed in Song Hits Magazine on November 19, 1939 as: "They're four little jitter bugs. He has the jitters ev'ry morn, That's why jitter sauce was born."
Cab Calloway's 1934 recording of "Call of the Jitter Bug" (Jitterbug) and the film "Cab Calloway's Jitterbug Party" popularized use of the word "jitterbug" and created a strong association between Calloway and jitterbug. Lyrics to "Call of the Jitter Bug" clearly demonstrate the association between the word jitterbug and the consumption of alcohol:
*Legal Murder by Dennis Donague ran only 7 nights on Broadway, but was the first of a protest-play cycle. It was based on the Scottsboro case.
*William Levi Dawson's Negro Folk Symphony was performed at Carnegie Hall by the Philadelphia Symphony Orchestra (November 14).
Negro Folk Symphony No. 1 by William L. Dawson (1899-1990), an African American composer, was performed by the Philadelphia Symphony Orchestra at Carnegie Hall, under the direction of Leopold Stokowski. Dawson was born in 1898 in Anniston, Alabama. He ran away to Tuskegee Institute, where Booker T. Washington accepted him as a student. There he learned to play many musical instruments. He attended Horner Institute of Fine Arts in Kansas City and the American Conservatory of Music in Chicago. Dawson became director of music at Tuskegee Institute, remaining there until 1955.
*At a White House dinner hosted by President and Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt, Etta Moten Barnett sang songs from her roles in the movies Golddiggers of 1933 and Swing Low Sweet Chariot.
*Harlem's Apollo Theatre staged its first live show (January 26).
*Four Saints in Three Acts, the first African American performed opera on Broadway, opened (February 22).
Four Saints in Three Acts, an opera by Vergil Thompson, had nothing to do with black folk life. It was a non-logical presentation of European saints.
*Arthur Mitchell, a dancer and choreographer who created a training school and the first African-American classical ballet company, Dance Theatre of Harlem, was born in Harlem, New York (March 27).
The first African American dancer in the country to become a member of a classical ballet company, the New York City Ballet, was Arthur Mitchell. Born in New York City, Mitchell studied at the city's High School for the Performing Arts and at the School of American Ballet. He founded the Dance Theatre of Harlem as a school of dance -- especially classical ballet -- for children, regardless of race. The first African American classical ballet company in the United States, it made its debut at the Guggenheim Museum of Art in New York City. In 1988, the company became the first African American cultural group to tour the Soviet Union under the renewed cultural exchange program.
*William Levi Dawson's Negro Folk Symphony, the first symphony on black folk themes by an African American composer to be performed by a major orchestra, was performed at Carnegie Hall by the Philadelphia Symphony Orchestra (November 14).
Negro Folk Symphony No. 1 by William L. Dawson (1899-1990), an African American composer, was performed by the Philadelphia Symphony Orchestra at Carnegie Hall, under the direction of Leopold Stokowski. Dawson was born in 1898 in Anniston, Alabama. He ran away to Tuskegee Institute, where Booker T. Washington accepted him as a student. There he learned to play many musical instruments and even began to compose when he was sixteen years old. He attended Horner Institute of Fine Arts in Kansas City and the American Conservatory of Music in Chicago. Dawson became director of music at Tuskegee Institute, remaining there until 1955. Under his leadership, the Tuskegee Choir became internationally renowned.
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Politics
*Arthur W. Mitchell of Chicago became the first African American Democrat elected to the United States House of Representatives (November 7).
The popularity President Franklin Roosevelt gained for the Democratic Party among African Americans was manifested in 1934 when Arthur Mitchell, an African American Democrat was elected to Congress from Chicago. Mitchell replaced Oscar De Priest, an African American Republican who had been one of the most popular African Americans in the nation, by virtue of having been the only African American in Congress.
Mitchell, like his predecessor, was born in Alabama to former slaves. He received his education at Tuskegee Institute, where he was Booker T. Washington's office boy, and at Talladega College in Alabama. Mitchell taught school in rural Alabama and served as an assistant law clerk in Washington. When he moved to Chicago, he became involved in Republican ward politics, but joined the Democrats with the shifting African American party preference in the Depression years. In Congress, Mitchell professed to be a "moderate," thus drawing the ire of the African American press and the NAACP. He did, however, sponsor the long and costly suit that led to an end of segregation in Pullman railroad cars. Mitchell served four terms in Congress.
*The Louisiana Legislature repealed the poll tax. However, by 1936, only approximately 2,000 African Americans were registered to vote in Louisiana.
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Publications
*The magazine Challenge, edited by Dorothy West, debuted. It was designed to stimulate interest among African Americans in their African heritage.
A new African American magazine, Challenge, edited by Dorothy West, began publication. Writers such as James Weldon Johnson and Langston Hughes contributed articles. The main intent of the magazine was to revive the spirit of 1926, i.e., to revive an interest in African and Afro-America. William Attaway, Owen Dodson and Frank Yerby were also published in Challenge. The editor was under constant attack for not being politically radical and for being totally involved with esthetic matters. Three years later the magazine was reorganized and retitled New Challenge.
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*George W. Lee published Beale Street: Where the Blues Began.
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Statistics
*The percentage of the population on relief in major urban areas was 52% among African Americans and 13% among European Americans in northern cities. 52% among African Americans and 10% among European Americans in border-state cities; and 34% among African Americans and 11% among European Americans in southern cities.
In a study of 30 cities (10 Northern, 7 border and 13 Southern), the proportion of African American and European American families on relief was shown to be: North - African American, 52.2%, European American, 13.3%; border - 51.8%, 10.4% and South - 33.7%, 11.4%. The study found that in three cities - Washington, D. C.; Norfolk, Virginia; and Charlotte, North Carolina - between 70 and 80 % of all household receiving relief were African American.
*The average annual income for African American tenant and wage laborers in the South was $278; the average for European Americans was $452. The average annual income for African American cash renters and share tenants was about $300; European Americans $417.
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Visual Arts
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*Aaron Douglas completed his murals Aspects of Negro Life for the 135th Street branch of the New York Public Library.
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Europe
France
*Josephine Baker appeared in the movie ZouZou.
*Josephine Baker was the lead in a revival of Jacques Offenbach's opera La creole, which premiered in December of 1934 for a six-month run at the Théâtre Marigny on the Champs-Elysees of Paris.
Africa
France
*Josephine Baker appeared in the movie ZouZou.
*Josephine Baker was the lead in a revival of Jacques Offenbach's opera La creole, which premiered in December of 1934 for a six-month run at the Théâtre Marigny on the Champs-Elysees of Paris.
Africa
Nnamdi Azikiwe
Nelson Mandela
Nnamdi Azikiwe received a master's degree in Anthropology from the University of Pennsylvania. He also worked as an instructor at Lincoln University before returning to Nigeria.
In November, Azikiwe took the position of editor for the African Morning Post, a daily newspaper in Accra, Ghana. In that position he promoted a pro-African nationalist agenda. In his passionately denunciatory articles and public statements, Azikiwe censured the existing colonial order: the restrictions on the Africans' right to express their opinions, and racial discrimination. He also criticized those Africans who belonged to the "elite" of colonial society and favored retaining the existing order, as they regarded it as the basis of their well being.
Nelson Mandela
Nelson Mandela and several other boys travelled to Tyhalarha to undergo the circumcision ritual that symbolically marked their transition from boys to men. The rite over, Mandela was given the name Dalibunga.
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Ethiopia
(Abyssinia)
*In 1934 Benito Mussolini, the dictator of Fascist Italy, moved against Ethiopia in a border incident. His pretense, that of bringing civilization to a backward country, concealed Italian imperial ambitions for an African colony to supplement Italian Somaliland and Eritrea. In the diplomatic footwork that followed the border clash, the Emperor Haile Selassie referred the dispute to the League of Nations for mediation; but Britain and France gave Mussolini to understand that he could expect a free hand in Ethiopia.
Ethiopia became the target of renewed Italian imperialist designs in the 1930s. Benito Mussolini's Fascist regime was keen to avenge the military defeats Italy had suffered to Ethiopia in the First Italo-Abyssinian War (1895-1896), and to efface the failed attempt by "liberal" Italy to conquer the country, as epitomised by the defeat at Adowa (March 1, 1896). A conquest of Ethiopia could also empower the cause of fascism and embolden its rhetoric of empire. Additionally, the conquest of Ethiopia would provide a bridge between Italy's Eritrean and Italian Somaliland possessions. Ethiopia's position in the League of Nations did not dissuade the Italians from invading in 1935. The "collective security" envisaged by the League proved useless, and a scandal erupted when the Hoare-Laval Pact (December 1935) revealed that Ethiopia's League allies were scheming to appease Italy.
*Italy and Ethiopia released a joint statement refuting any aggression between each other (September 29).
*An Anglo–Ethiopian boundary commission discovered the Italian force at Walwal. British members of the delegation soon retired to avoid an international incident (November 23).
*Tensions resulted in a border clash at Walwal. Italy invaded Ethiopia at Walwal, Ogaden Province (December 5), *Italy and Ethiopia released a joint statement refuting any aggression between each other (September 29).
*An Anglo–Ethiopian boundary commission discovered the Italian force at Walwal. British members of the delegation soon retired to avoid an international incident (November 23).
The Italo–Ethiopian Treaty of 1928 stated that the border between Italian Somaliland and Ethiopia was twenty-one leagues parallel to the Benadir coast (approximately 118.3 km [73.5 mi]). In 1930, Italy built a fort at the Walwal oasis (also Welwel, Italian: Ual-Ual) in the Ogaden, well beyond the twenty-one league limit.
On November 22, 1934, a force of 1,000 Ethiopian militia with three fitaurari (Ethiopian military-political commanders) arrived near Walwal and formally asked the Dubats garrison (Somali irregulars) stationed there (comprising about 60 soldiers) to withdraw from the area. The Somali NCO leading the garrison refused to withdraw and alerted Captain Cimmaruta, commander of the garrison of Uarder, 20 km away, to what had happened.
The next day, November 23, 1934, in the course of surveying the border between British Somaliland and Ethiopia, an Anglo–Ethiopian boundary commission arrived at Walwal. The commission was confronted by a newly arrived Italian force. The British members of the boundary commission protested, but withdrew to avoid an international incident. The Ethiopian members of the boundary commission, however, stayed at Walwal.
In November 1934, Ethiopian territorial troops, escorting the Anglo-Ethiopian boundary commission, protested against Italy's incursion at Walwal. The British members of the commission soon withdrew to avoid embarrassing Italy. Italian and Ethiopian troops remained encamped in close proximity.
In early December 1934, the tensions on both sides erupted into what was known as the "Wal Wal incident." For reasons which have never been clearly determined, there was a skirmish between the garrison of Somalis, who were in Italian service, and a force of armed Ethiopians. According to the Italians, the Ethiopians attacked the Somalis with rifle and machine-gun fire. According to the Ethiopians, the Italians attacked them, supported by two tanks and three aircraft. In the end, approximately 107 Ethiopians and 50 Italians and Somalis were killed.
Neither side did anything to avoid confrontation. The Ethiopians repeatedly menaced the Italian garrison with the threat of an armed attack, and the Italians sent two planes over the Ethiopian camp and one of them even shot a short machine gun burst, that no one on the ground noticed, after the pilot, seeing Captain Cimmaruta in the midst of the Ethiopians, thought that he was taken prisoner by them.
*Abyssinia protested Italian aggression at Walwal (December 6).
*Italy demanded an apology for the Walwal incident (December 8).
*Italy demanded an apology for the Walwal incident (December 8).
*Italy demanded financial and strategic compensation for the Walwal incident (December 11).
*Yaba Higher College officially opened (January).
*Hertzog and Smuts formed the United South African National Party.
The United Party was South Africa's ruling political party between 1934 and 1948.
The United Party was formed by a merger of most of Prime Minister Barry Hertzog's National Party with the rival South African Party of Jan Smuts, plus the remnants of the Unionist Party. Its full name was the United National South African Party, but it was generally called the "United Party". The party drew support from several different parts of South African society, including English-speakers, Afrikaners and Coloureds.
Hertzog led the party until 1939. In that year, Hertzog refused to commit South Africa to Great Britain's war effort against Nazi Germany. Many Afrikaners who had fought in the Second Boer War were still alive, and the atrocities committed by the British during that conflict were fresh in their memory. Hertzog felt that siding with the former enemy would be unacceptable to Afrikaners. Furthermore, he could see little benefit for South Africa in taking part in a war that he saw as an essentially European affair.
The majority of the United Party caucus were of a different mind, however, and Hertzog resigned. Jan Smuts succeeded him and led the party and the country throughout World War II and the immediate post-war years.
Smuts and the United Party lost the 1948 election to the National Party. It was never to hold power again.
The Dominion Party was a South African political party establish in late October 1934 by dissatisfied members of the South African Party when that party merged with the National Party to form the United South African Party, commonly referred to as the "United Party". Its formation was mainly due to distrust of the motives of then-Prime Minister J. B. M. Hertzog and the new Afrikaner nationalist faction he brought into the now-united Party. The Party was established principally to maintain South Africa's "British connection" (it campaigned to keep the Union Jack and God Save the Queen in 1938 and to enter the Second World War in 1939 on the side of Great Britain) and particularly the Natal's distinct British culture. The Party won 8 seats in the 1938 general election and lost one in 1943. It acquired no seats in the 1948 election, and disappeared from national politics. The Dominion Party leader was Colonel C. F. Stallard, who later served as Minister of Mines during the second Ministry of Jan Smuts.
From the 1860s onward, more and more whites in the Cape and the Transvaal were forced off the land to join a burgeoning working class while the landed entrepreneur became wealthier at the expense of less efficient farmers. Reacting to the poverty which resulted, the mainly Afrikaans-speaking poor whites nurtured a nationalism that sought to unite wealthy and impoverished Afrikaners -- first under organizations such as the Afrikaner Broederbond (Afrikaner Brotherhood), and then in financial establishments to rival those of English-speaking capitalism -- such as the insurance giant, SANLAM, and the financial institution, Volkskas Beperk -- the People's Bank.
The Volkskas Beperk (Afrikaans: Peoples' Bank) was a South African bank founded in 1934 as a cooperative loan bank, becoming a commercial bank in 1941. In 1991, by which time it had become South Africa's largest Afrikaner bank, Volkskas merged with United Bank, Allied Bank and Trust Bank to form Amalgamated Banks of South Africa.
The bank issued banknotes for circulation in South West Africa between 1949 and 1959 from its Windhoek branch.
*Abdullah Ibrahim, a South African pianist and composer, was born in Cape Town, South Africa (October 9).
Abdullah Ibrahim (b. Adolph Johannes Brand on October 9, 1934 and formerly known as Dollar Brand) is a South African pianist and composer. His music reflects many of the musical influences of his childhood in the multi-cultural port areas of Cape Town, ranging from traditional African songs to the gospel of the AME (African Methodist Episcopal) Church and ragas, to more modern jazz and other Western styles. Ibrahim is considered the leading figure in the subgenre Cape jazz. Within jazz, his music particularly reflects the influence of Theolonious Monk and Duke Ellington. With his wife, the jazz singer Sathima Bea Benjamin, he is father to the New York underground rapper Jean Grae, as well as to a son, Tsakwe.
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General Historical Events
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January 3
*France plunged close to civil war as the Russian born promoter Serge Stavisky, accused of issuing fraudulent bonds, committed suicide at Chamonix amid rumors that many in the French establishment are involved in corruption.
February
*In Austria, Dollfuss banned all political parties except his own, the Fatherland Front.
*In Nicaragua, General Somoza, who commanded the National Guard, invited the guerrilla leader General Sandino to a meeting at which Sandino was killed in cold blood.
February 6-9
*The Stavisky affair led to riots in Paris, a general strike followed. The French Republic was saved by the formation of a coalition government made of politicians untouched by any connection with the Stavisky affair.
February 17
*Albert (age 58), King of the Belgians, died in a mountaineering accident was succeeded by his 32 year old son Leopold III.
June 30
*Adolf Hitler ordered a purge of the Nazi Party. Over seventy (700 party members were killed, including Ernst Rohm and Gregor Stresser and their supporters.
July 13
*Heinrich Himmler (age 33) was put in charge of German concentration camps.
July 25
*The Vienna radio station was seized by Austrian Nazis. The staff are forced to announce that Dolfuss had resigned. The Nazis then entered the chancellery and killed Dollfuss.
August 2
*Hindenburg (age 87), the President of Germany, died, leaving the way clear for Hitler to become head of state.
August 19
*A plebiscite of the German people gave Hitler eighty-eight percent (88%) of the votes needed to assume the presidency. He retained the title of Fuhrer.
September 18
*The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (U.S.S.R.) joined the League of Nations.
October 9
*Arriving in Marseilles, King Alexander of Yugoslavia was assassinated along with Louis Barthou, the French Foreign Minister. The assassin represented Croat revolutionaries based in Hungary, and the French are tempted to declare war on Hungary, but this was averted by League of Nations intervention. Alexander was succeeded by his eleven year old son, Peter II.
*In China, Mao Tse Tung (Mao Zedong) led his Communist force out of Kiangsi with Nationalist troops in hot pursuit. In the Long March that would last a year and take them 9,600 kilometers (6,000 miles), the Communists fight a continual rearguard action against the Nationalists. At the end of the Long March, Mao would only have 20,000 men left out of his original army of 90,000.
November 25
*Mustapha Kemal issued a decree that all Turks must adopt surnames. His own would be Ataturk -- "Father of the Turks".
December 1
Sergeo Mironovich, Stalin's close associate, was assassinated in Leningrad.
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*The most popular musical on Broadway was Cole Porter's Anything Goes.
*FBI agents shot John Dillinger -- "Public Enemy Number 1".
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