1937
*****
Pan-African Chronology
On January 5, 1937 the party was recognized by the Electoral Court. In March 1937 a new manifesto was issued, following similar lines as the original party manifesto.
On July 5, 1937 a local committee of the party was established in Rivera. On December 4, 1937 a General Assembly of the party was organized. On December 18, 1937 a local committee was set up in the town of Melo.
The party published the journal Pan ('Bread') as its organ. The first issue was published on April 15, 1937. Nine issues were published until December 1937. Sandalio del Puerto was the editor of Pan, until being replaced by Carmelo Gentile in October 1937.
February 2
*Martina Arroyo, an operatic soprano and Kennedy Center honoree, was born.
February 20
*Nancy Wilson, a jazz and pop singer, was born in Chillicothe, Ohio.
March 26
*William H. Hastie was confirmed as the first African American federal judge. He serve for two years on the District Court of the Virgin Islands.
March 28
April 5
*Colin L. Powell was born in New York City, New York. He would become the first African American to serve as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the first African American to serve as Secretary of State.
April 6
*Television and film actor Billy Dee Williams was born in New York City, New York. He would star in the movie Lady Sings the Blues and in two Star Wars films.
May 4
*Sculptor Melvin Edwards in Houston, Texas.
*Nancy Wilson, a jazz and pop singer, was born in Chillicothe, Ohio.
March 26
*William H. Hastie was confirmed as the first African American federal judge. He serve for two years on the District Court of the Virgin Islands.
March 28
*Eddie "Rochester" Anderson made his first appearance on Jack Benny's radio show.
April 5
*Colin L. Powell was born in New York City, New York. He would become the first African American to serve as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the first African American to serve as Secretary of State.
April 6
*Television and film actor Billy Dee Williams was born in New York City, New York. He would star in the movie Lady Sings the Blues and in two Star Wars films.
*Sculptor Melvin Edwards in Houston, Texas.
May 6
*Rubin "Hurricane" Carter, a middleweight boxer who was wrongly convicted of murder and was later freed, was born in Clifton, New Jersey.
May 24
*Jazz saxophonist Archie Shepp was born in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
May 25
June 1
*Actor Morgan Freeman was born in Memphis, Tennessee. He would receive a Best Supporting Actor Academy Award for his role in Million Dollar Baby.
June 13
*Eleanor Holmes Norton was born in Washington, D. C. She would chair the United States Equal Opportunity Commission and serve as delegate to Congress from the District of Columbia.
May 24
*Jazz saxophonist Archie Shepp was born in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
May 25
*Painter Henry Ossawa Tanner died in Paris, France.
*Actor Morgan Freeman was born in Memphis, Tennessee. He would receive a Best Supporting Actor Academy Award for his role in Million Dollar Baby.
June 13
*Eleanor Holmes Norton was born in Washington, D. C. She would chair the United States Equal Opportunity Commission and serve as delegate to Congress from the District of Columbia.
June 14
*Willie Reed, a witness to the murder of Emmett Till, was born in Greenwood, Mississippi.
June 22
*African Americans rejoiced as Joe Louis defeated James J. Braddock for the heavyweight championship of the world.
July 2
*Walter F. White, the Executive Secretary of the NAACP, was honored in New York City for his investigations of lynchings, and his lobbying for a federal anti-lynching law.
*Isaac Lane, Bishop and patriarch of the Colored Methodist Episcopal Church, and founder of Lane College in Tennessee, died. Lane was born on a Tennessee plantation in 1834. While a slave, he was licensed to preach, but even after Emancipation, he had to supplement his income by raising cotton and selling firewood. Lane founded Lane College in 1882.
July 10
*Oliver Law, the first African American to lead an integrated military force in the history of the United States, was killed on July 10 leading his men in an attack on Mosquito Crest (Mosquito Hill) in the Spanish Civil War.
July 27
*Woodie King, Jr., dramatist, critic, and producer, was born in Detroit, Michigan. As artistic director of the New Federal Theater, he would adapt Langston Hughes' Weary Blues for the stage.
July 2
*Isaac Lane, a bishop of the Colored Methodist Episcopal Church and the founder of Lane College in Tennessee, died.
July 12
*Entertainer William "Bill" Cosby was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
September 26
*Bessie Smith, "Empress of the Blues", died in Clarksville, Mississippi, from injuries suffered in an automobile accident. She is considered to be not only the greatest of the urban blues singers, but also one of the great voices of the 20th century.
September 7
*Olly Wilson, a classical composer, was born in St. Louis, Missouri.
November 1
*William Melvin Kelley, a novelist and short-story writer, was born in New York City.
December 26
*La Julia Rhea (1908-1992) became the first African American to sing with the Chicago Civic Opera Company during the regular season when she opened on December 26, 1937, in the title role of Verdi's Aida.
June 22
*African Americans rejoiced as Joe Louis defeated James J. Braddock for the heavyweight championship of the world.
July 2
*Walter F. White, the Executive Secretary of the NAACP, was honored in New York City for his investigations of lynchings, and his lobbying for a federal anti-lynching law.
*Isaac Lane, Bishop and patriarch of the Colored Methodist Episcopal Church, and founder of Lane College in Tennessee, died. Lane was born on a Tennessee plantation in 1834. While a slave, he was licensed to preach, but even after Emancipation, he had to supplement his income by raising cotton and selling firewood. Lane founded Lane College in 1882.
July 10
*Oliver Law, the first African American to lead an integrated military force in the history of the United States, was killed on July 10 leading his men in an attack on Mosquito Crest (Mosquito Hill) in the Spanish Civil War.
July 27
*Woodie King, Jr., dramatist, critic, and producer, was born in Detroit, Michigan. As artistic director of the New Federal Theater, he would adapt Langston Hughes' Weary Blues for the stage.
July 2
*Isaac Lane, a bishop of the Colored Methodist Episcopal Church and the founder of Lane College in Tennessee, died.
July 12
*Entertainer William "Bill" Cosby was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
September 26
*Bessie Smith, "Empress of the Blues", died in Clarksville, Mississippi, from injuries suffered in an automobile accident. She is considered to be not only the greatest of the urban blues singers, but also one of the great voices of the 20th century.
September 7
*Olly Wilson, a classical composer, was born in St. Louis, Missouri.
*William Melvin Kelley, a novelist and short-story writer, was born in New York City.
December 26
*La Julia Rhea (1908-1992) became the first African American to sing with the Chicago Civic Opera Company during the regular season when she opened on December 26, 1937, in the title role of Verdi's Aida.
The United States
*****
George Washington Carver
In 1937, Carver attended two chemurgy conferences, an emerging field in the 1930s, during the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl, concerned with developing new products from crops. He was invited by Henry Ford to speak at the conference held in Dearborn, Michigan, and they developed a friendship. That year Carver's health declined, and Ford later installed an elevator at the Tuskegee dormitory where Carver lived, so that the elderly man would not have to climb stairs.
*****
George Washington Carver
In 1937, Carver attended two chemurgy conferences, an emerging field in the 1930s, during the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl, concerned with developing new products from crops. He was invited by Henry Ford to speak at the conference held in Dearborn, Michigan, and they developed a friendship. That year Carver's health declined, and Ford later installed an elevator at the Tuskegee dormitory where Carver lived, so that the elderly man would not have to climb stairs.
*****
Father Divine
In March 1937, Penninah, Father Divine's wife, fell ill in Kingston, New York. Father Divine rarely comforted her on what was widely believed to be her deathbed. He kept running the church, only visiting her once in Kingston, again causing bad publicity. Penninah, however, claimed that she was not seriously ill or in pain.
On April 20, 1937, a violent outburst occurred in a meeting when two men tried to deliver Father Divine a summons. One of the men, Harry Green, was stabbed as Father Divine fled. Father Divine went into hiding to evade authorities.
During this time, one of Father Divine's most prominent followers, called Faithful Mary, defected and took control of a large commune, which was technically in her name. Of the Father she said, "he's just a damned man." She furthermore alleged that he defrauded his followers to maintain a rich lifestyle for himself. Faithful Mary also made a number of sexual allegations, including a charge that Father Divine coerced females to have sex with key disciples.
In early May, Father Divine was located in and extradited from Connecticut and faced criminal charges in New York. That summer, Hearst's Metronone newsreel distributed mocking footage of Father Divine's followers singing outside police headquarters, "Glory, glory, hallelujah! Our God is in our land!"
Later in May 1937, an ex-follower called Verinda Brown filed a lawsuit for $4,476 against Father Divine. The Browns had entrusted their savings with Father Divine in Sayville back in 1931. They left the movement in 1935 wishing to live as husband and wife again, but were unable to get their money back. In light of their evidence and testimony from Faithful Mary and others critical of the movement, the court ordered repayment of the money. However, this opened up an enormous potential liability from all ex-devotees, so Father Divine resisted and appealed the judgment.
In 1938, Father Divine was cleared of criminal charges and Mother Divine (Penninah) recovered. Faithful Mary, impoverished and broken, returned to the movement. Father Divine made her grovel for forgiveness, which she did. By the late 1930s, the movement stabilized, although it had clearly passed its zenith.
In 1938, Father Divine was cleared of criminal charges and Mother Divine (Penninah) recovered. Faithful Mary, impoverished and broken, returned to the movement. Father Divine made her grovel for forgiveness, which she did. By the late 1930s, the movement stabilized, although it had clearly passed its zenith.
*****
Marcus Garvey
In 1937, Marcus Garvey wrote the poem Ras Nasibu Of Ogaden in honor of Ethiopian Army Commander (Ras) Nasibu Emmanual.
*****
Agriculture
*****
Awards
The Communist Party
*****
The Labor Movement
*****
Law
*William H. Hastie was confirmed as the first African American federal judge (March 26). He served for two years on the District Court of the Virgin Islands.
Hastie entered governmental service as an assistant solicitor in the Department of the Interior in the early part of the New Deal. His judicial appointment was supported by the NAACP and influential European Americans at the Harvard Law School. His nomination was approved over the vigorous opposition of Southern senators who labelled him a "leftist," primarily because of his support of civil rights activities. After his service in the Virgin Islands, Hastie returned to the Howard University Law School as its Dean, but was soon appointed to the "Black Cabinet" as a civilian aide to the Secretary of War by President Roosevelt. In 1941, Hastie resigned in protest against segregation in the armed services.
*****
Literature
Their Eyes Were Watching God, by Zora Neale Hurston, was her second and most successful novel. It deals not with race as such, but with personal relations. Race prejudice appears as a subject intermittently.
*I Am the American Negro, a collection of verse by Frank M. Davis, was published.
*****
Marcus Garvey
In 1937, Marcus Garvey wrote the poem Ras Nasibu Of Ogaden in honor of Ethiopian Army Commander (Ras) Nasibu Emmanual.
*In 1937, a group of Garvey's rivals called the Peace Movement of Ethiopia openly collaborated with the United States Senator from Mississippi, Theodore Bilbo, and Earnest Sevier Cox in the promotion of a repatriation scheme introduced in the United States Senate as the Greater Liberia Act.
*Attracted by the ideas of black separatists such as Marcus Garvey, United States Senator from Mississippi, Theodore Bilbo, proposed an amendment to the federal work-relief bill on June 6, 1938, which would have deported 12 million African Americans to Liberia at federal expense to relieve unemployment. He wrote a book advocating the idea. Garvey praised him in return, saying that Bilbo had "done wonderfully well for the Negro." But Thomas W. Harvey, a senior Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League leader in the US, distanced himself from Bilbo because of his racist speeches.
While imprisoned Garvey had corresponded with segregationist Earnest Sevier Cox who was lobbying for legislation to "repatriate" African Americans to Africa. Garvey's philosophy of Black racial self-reliance, could be combined with Cox's White Nationalism - at least in sharing the common goal of an African Homeland. Cox dedicated his short pamphlet "Let My People Go" to Garvey, and Garvey in return advertised Cox's book White America in UNIA publications.
In 1937, a group of Garvey's rivals called the Peace Movement of Ethiopia openly collaborated with the United States Senator from Mississippi, Theodore Bilbo, and Earnest Sevier Cox in the promotion of a repatriation scheme introduced in the United States Senate as the Greater Liberia Act.
*Attracted by the ideas of black separatists such as Marcus Garvey, United States Senator from Mississippi, Theodore Bilbo, proposed an amendment to the federal work-relief bill on June 6, 1938, which would have deported 12 million African Americans to Liberia at federal expense to relieve unemployment. He wrote a book advocating the idea. Garvey praised him in return, saying that Bilbo had "done wonderfully well for the Negro." But Thomas W. Harvey, a senior Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League leader in the US, distanced himself from Bilbo because of his racist speeches.
While imprisoned Garvey had corresponded with segregationist Earnest Sevier Cox who was lobbying for legislation to "repatriate" African Americans to Africa. Garvey's philosophy of Black racial self-reliance, could be combined with Cox's White Nationalism - at least in sharing the common goal of an African Homeland. Cox dedicated his short pamphlet "Let My People Go" to Garvey, and Garvey in return advertised Cox's book White America in UNIA publications.
In 1937, a group of Garvey's rivals called the Peace Movement of Ethiopia openly collaborated with the United States Senator from Mississippi, Theodore Bilbo, and Earnest Sevier Cox in the promotion of a repatriation scheme introduced in the United States Senate as the Greater Liberia Act.
In the Senate, Bilbo was a supporter of Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal. Bilbo, an outspoken supporter of segregation and white supremacy and, attracted by the ideas of black separatists like Garvey, proposed an amendment to the federal work-relief bill on June 6, 1938, proposing to deport 12 million African Americans to Liberia at federal expense to relieve unemployment. He took the time to write a book entitled Take Your Choice, Separation or Mongrelization, advocating the idea. Garvey praised him in return, saying that Bilbo had "done wonderfully well for the Negro".
*****
Agriculture
*Large landowners could receive as much as $10,000 a year in AAA benefits. Statistics for 276 Southern plantations showed that owners' net income per plantation rose from $2,528 in 1934 to $3,590 in 1937; with the AAA now making direct payments to tenants on these plantations, the tenants' benefits increased from $11 a year in 1934 to $27 in 1937. This 427 represented 10% of teh net cash income of the average tenant family. The AAA continued to give landlords reason for reducing the number of tenants and for replacing them with wage laborers so as to receive all of the acreage benefits. In spite of the Farm Security Administration (FSA), investigations by the director, William W. Alexander, and efforts to end discrimination in granting of loans, by and large the local administration of FSA funds remained in the hands of local farmers' committees on which African Americans were not represented. By 1942, the FSA program was cut back, partly because of antagonism toward its more enlightened racial policies.
*****
Awards
*Walter F. White, the Executive Secretary of the NAACP, was honored in New York City for his investigations of lynchings, and his lobbying for a federal anti-lynching law (July 2).
In his anti-lynching lobbying efforts, Walter F. White continued the notable work of his predecessor, James Weldon Johnson, who actually persuaded Representative L. C. Dyer of Missouri to introduce an anti-lynching bill in the House of Representatives in 1921. The bill passed in the House but was killed by a Southern-backed filibuster in the Senate. White was successful in getting anti-lynching measures introduced in 1935 and 1940, but both died in the Senate. Although White, an African American, had blond hair and blue eyes, he totally identified himself with African Americans after the 1906 Atlanta race riot. His pale complexion enabled him (with no threat of danger) to investigate atrocities against African Americans in the South and later expose the perpetrators.
The Communist Party
*James W. Ford, the African American Communist, said, "We Communists desire to do everything possible in building and broadening the movement of the Negro people in cooperation with the NAACP, the National Congress, the Urban League, and other organizations." This "united front" attitude contrasted sharply with earlier Communist castigation of African American organizations as reactionary.
*****
The Labor Movement
*The International Brotherhood of Red Caps, a union of African American railway workers, was established in Chicago. It would evolve into the United Transport Service Employees of America. Willard S. Townsend (later the first vice president of the newly combined AFL-CIO) was elected president.
Organized groups of red caps met in Chicago to form the International Brotherhood of Red Caps, later to become the United Transport Service Employees of America. Willard S. Townsend, a graduate of the Canadian Royal Academy of Science, and red cap union official, became its first president. After affiliation with the CIO Townsend, still the union's president, became a vice president of the AFL-CIO.
*The Pennsylvania Labor Relations Act denied state protection to unions which discriminated against African Americans.
Organized groups of red caps met in Chicago to form the International Brotherhood of Red Caps, later to become the United Transport Service Employees of America. Willard S. Townsend, a graduate of the Canadian Royal Academy of Science, and red cap union official, became its first president. After affiliation with the CIO Townsend, still the union's president, became a vice president of the AFL-CIO.
*The Pennsylvania Labor Relations Act denied state protection to unions which discriminated against African Americans.
Law
*William H. Hastie was confirmed as the first African American federal judge (March 26). He served for two years on the District Court of the Virgin Islands.
Hastie entered governmental service as an assistant solicitor in the Department of the Interior in the early part of the New Deal. His judicial appointment was supported by the NAACP and influential European Americans at the Harvard Law School. His nomination was approved over the vigorous opposition of Southern senators who labelled him a "leftist," primarily because of his support of civil rights activities. After his service in the Virgin Islands, Hastie returned to the Howard University Law School as its Dean, but was soon appointed to the "Black Cabinet" as a civilian aide to the Secretary of War by President Roosevelt. In 1941, Hastie resigned in protest against segregation in the armed services.
*The United States Supreme Court ruled that picketing was a legal means for African Americans to protest on express grievances.
The Supreme Court declared that the picketing of firms which refused to hire African Americans was a legal technique for securing redress.
The Supreme Court declared that the picketing of firms which refused to hire African Americans was a legal technique for securing redress.
*A breakthrough law in Pennsylvania denied certain state services to any union that discriminated against African Americans.
*An anti-lynching bill passed in the United States House of Representatives but was killed by a southern filibuster in the Senate.
Literature
*Zora Neale Hurston published her novel Their Eyes Were Watching God.
Their Eyes Were Watching God, by Zora Neale Hurston, was her second and most successful novel. It deals not with race as such, but with personal relations. Race prejudice appears as a subject intermittently.
*Waters Turpin's These Low Grounds, a fictional version of an African-American family chronicle, was published.
Waters Edward Turpin published These Low Grounds, the first African American attempt at a family chronicle novel. These Low Grounds deals with four generations of an Eastern Shore Maryland family, beginning prior to the Civil War and extending all the way to the Depression.
Waters Edward Turpin published These Low Grounds, the first African American attempt at a family chronicle novel. These Low Grounds deals with four generations of an Eastern Shore Maryland family, beginning prior to the Civil War and extending all the way to the Depression.
*Sterling A. Brown's studies The Negro in American Fiction and Negro Poetry and Drama were published.
*George W. Lee published his novel River George.
River George, by George W. Lee, was principally concerned with sharecropping. A protest novel about organizing sharecroppers, it exposes the tenant-farm system as little more than a perpetuation of slavery.
River George, by George W. Lee, was principally concerned with sharecropping. A protest novel about organizing sharecroppers, it exposes the tenant-farm system as little more than a perpetuation of slavery.
*I Am the American Negro, a collection of verse by Frank M. Davis, was published.
The Media
*Richard Wright assumed editorship of Challenge magazine, changed its title to New Challenge, and issued a manifesto calling for articles and fiction with more "social realism."
*Jackie Ormes' comic strip, Torchy Brown, debuted in the Pittsburgh Courier.
Jackie Ormes (August 1, 1911 – December 26, 1985) is known as the first African-American woman cartoonist, known for her strips Torchy Brown and Patty-Jo 'n' Ginger.
Jackie Ormes was born Zelda Mavin Jackson in the Pittsburgh area town of Monongahela, Pennsylvania. Ormes started in journalism as a proofreader for the Pittsburgh Courier, a weekly African American newspaper that came out every Saturday. Her 1937-38 Courier comic strip, Torchy Brown in Dixie to Harlem, starring Torchy Brown, was a humorous depiction of a Mississippi teen who found fame and fortune singing and dancing in the Cotton Club.
Ormes moved to Chicago in 1942, and soon began writing occasional articles and, briefly, a social column for the Chicago Defender, one of the nation's leading black newspapers, a weekly at that time. For a few months at the end of the war, her single panel cartoon, Candy, about an attractive and wisecracking housemaid, appeared in the Defender.
By August 1945, Ormes's work was back in the Courier, with the advent of Patty-Jo 'n' Ginger, a single-panel cartoon which ran for 11 years. It featured a big sister-little sister set-up, with the precocious, insightful and socially/politically-aware child as the only speaker and the beautiful adult woman as a sometime pin-up figure and fashion mannequin.
Ormes contracted with the Terri Lee doll company in 1947 to produce a play doll based on her little girl cartoon character. The Patty-Jo doll was on the shelves in time for Christmas and was the first American black doll to have an extensive upscale wardrobe. As in the cartoon, the doll represented a real child, in contrast to the majority of dolls that were mammy and Topsy-type dolls. In December 1949, Ormes's contract with the Terri Lee company was not renewed, and production ended. Patty-Jo dolls are now highly sought collectors' items.
In 1950, the Courier began an eight-page color comics insert, where Ormes re-invented her Torchy character in a new comic strip, Torchy in Heartbeats. This Torchy was a beautiful, independent woman who finds adventure while seeking true love. Ormes expressed her talent for fashion design as well as her vision of a beautiful black female body in the accompanying Torchy Togs paper doll cut outs. The strip is probably best known for its last episode in 1954, when Torchy and her doctor boyfriend confront racism and environmental pollution. Torchy presented an image of a black woman who, in contrast to the contemporary stereotypical media portrayals, was confident, intelligent, and brave.
Jackie Ormes enjoyed a happy, 45-year marriage to Earl Clark Ormes. She retired from cartooning in 1956, although she continued to create art, including murals, still lifes and portraits. She contributed to her South Side Chicago community by volunteering to produce fundraiser fashion shows and entertainments. She was also on the founding board of directors for the DuSable Museum of African American History.
Ormes was a passionate doll collector, with 150 antique and modern dolls in her collection, and she was active in Guys and Gals Funtastique Doll Club, a United Federation of Doll Clubs chapter in Chicago.
*****
The Military
Movies
*****
Music
*Bessie Smith, "Empress of the Blues", died in Clarksville, Mississippi, from injuries suffered in an automobile accident (September 26). She is considered to be not only the greatest of the urban blues singers, but also one of the great voices of the 20th century.
Smith's recording of "Downhearted Blues/Gulf Coast Blues" in 1923 was the first by an African American to sell over a million copies. After this debut, Smith became one of the most important women in the history of American music, both as a stage performer and recording star. From 1923 to 1933, she gave us such works as "Backwater Blues" and "Do Your Duty", which became twentieth-century landmarks. Born in Chattanooga, Tennessee, Smith first performed on city streets. She eventually performed with Ma (Gertrude) Rainey, the first professional to sing the blues, in the Rabbit Foot Minstrels. Smith's only movie appearance was in the first film short featuring African American musicians, Saint Louis Blues (later retitled Best of the Blues) in 1929.
*****
The NAACP
*NAACP leaders such as Oswald Garrison Villard and Walter White opposed Roosevelt's Supreme Court bill, fearing that it could eventually be used against African Americans.
*****
The Nation of Islam
*****
The New Deal
*****
The Military
*Approximately 80 African Americans joined voluntary American forces fighting on the Republican side of the Spanish Civil War. Oliver Law from Chicago gained fame as commander of the "Lincoln Brigade."
The first group of 550 Americans to fight in the Spanish Civil War (on the Republican side, against the Fascists) formed the Lincoln Brigade. Only 10 were African American, but one became the brigade's leader in 1937. Oliver Law of Chicago, a career man in the United States Army. As far as military historians can establish, it was the first time an African American commanded a mostly European American military unit. Law was killed in action on July 13, 1937. A total of about 80 African Americans joined the war effort, including Henry Heywood, who served as assistant commissar of the 15th Brigade; Milton Herndon of the United States Young Communist League, who was killed heading a machine gun crew in 1937; and Solaria Kee, a nurse.
*****Movies
*Jack and David Goldberg founded a company called Negro Marches On, which made movies exclusively for African Americans. Jack Goldberg had begun in 1925 putting on all-African American theatrical revues. In 1937, he organized the first all-African American newsreel company, which was still functioning in 1948. Throughout the late 1930's and the early 1940's, the Goldbergs continued to produce successful African American films in Hollywood. Most of the stories were imitations of contemporaneous Hollywood hits. The Goldbergs' production of these films tended to be much more polished technically than those of other African American companies.
*Warner Bros. released the movie version of The Green Pastures, with an all-African American cast.
*****
Music
*New Symphony in G Minor, by William G. Still, was performed by the Philadelphia Symphony Orchestra.
*Bessie Smith, "Empress of the Blues", died in Clarksville, Mississippi, from injuries suffered in an automobile accident (September 26). She is considered to be not only the greatest of the urban blues singers, but also one of the great voices of the 20th century.
Smith's recording of "Downhearted Blues/Gulf Coast Blues" in 1923 was the first by an African American to sell over a million copies. After this debut, Smith became one of the most important women in the history of American music, both as a stage performer and recording star. From 1923 to 1933, she gave us such works as "Backwater Blues" and "Do Your Duty", which became twentieth-century landmarks. Born in Chattanooga, Tennessee, Smith first performed on city streets. She eventually performed with Ma (Gertrude) Rainey, the first professional to sing the blues, in the Rabbit Foot Minstrels. Smith's only movie appearance was in the first film short featuring African American musicians, Saint Louis Blues (later retitled Best of the Blues) in 1929.
*****
The NAACP
*The NAACP successfully pressured the Boy Scouts of America to allow African American scouts to join the national Scout Jamboree in Washington, D. C.
*NAACP leaders such as Oswald Garrison Villard and Walter White opposed Roosevelt's Supreme Court bill, fearing that it could eventually be used against African Americans.
*The NAACP honored Walter F. White, writer and civil rights leader, for his work in lobbying for federal anti-lynching legislation (July 2).
*Thurgood Marshall argued for equalization of public school teachers' salaries before the Maryland Board of Education. In Maryland, European American teachers were paid almost twice as much as African American teachers of the same grade. The NAACP took similar action in Kentucky and other states. In the Maryland case, Marshall argued on behalf of William Gibbs, an African American teacher of Montgomery County, who was an acting principal at $612 per year. If he had been European American, he would have received a salary of $1,475 per year. The board ordered salaries equalized throughout the county.
*The Harrison-Black-Fletcher Education Bill introduced in Congress failed to provide for equitable distribution of funds to African Americans. The NAACP began a major campaign against the bill in alliance with 24 other national organizations. The bill was amended somewhat, to the satisfaction of the NAACP; but although it passed the Senate, it was reported unfavorably in the House.
*The NAACP, in its continuing fight for anti-lynching legislation, persuaded Representative Joseph Gavagan of New York to introduce such a bill. It passed the House on April 15. The Senate version (Wagner-Van Nuys Anti-lynching Bill) was killed by filibuster.
*Thurgood Marshall argued for equalization of public school teachers' salaries before the Maryland Board of Education. In Maryland, European American teachers were paid almost twice as much as African American teachers of the same grade. The NAACP took similar action in Kentucky and other states. In the Maryland case, Marshall argued on behalf of William Gibbs, an African American teacher of Montgomery County, who was an acting principal at $612 per year. If he had been European American, he would have received a salary of $1,475 per year. The board ordered salaries equalized throughout the county.
*The Harrison-Black-Fletcher Education Bill introduced in Congress failed to provide for equitable distribution of funds to African Americans. The NAACP began a major campaign against the bill in alliance with 24 other national organizations. The bill was amended somewhat, to the satisfaction of the NAACP; but although it passed the Senate, it was reported unfavorably in the House.
*The NAACP, in its continuing fight for anti-lynching legislation, persuaded Representative Joseph Gavagan of New York to introduce such a bill. It passed the House on April 15. The Senate version (Wagner-Van Nuys Anti-lynching Bill) was killed by filibuster.
*****
The Nation of Islam
*According to Erdmann D. Benyon in "The Voodoo Cult Among Negro Migrants in Detroit," in the American Journal of Sociology, there was in that year "no known case of unemployment" among the Black Muslims. He said they "no longer live in the slum section, but rent homes in some of the best economic areas in which Negroes have settled."
The New Deal
*In the South, only three-fifths of the African Americans 65 and over qualified for old-age insurance because of their former occupations. In both the North and South, African Americans covered often did not fully qualify because of restrictive stipulations. For example, if they had worked for the specific time but at a salary of $50 or less, they received lower benefits because of low previous income. However, under provisions of the amended Social Security Act for state matching-aid programs, the aged, the blind and children of broken homes fared better between 1937 and 1940. Discrimination in all categories continued to exist in some Southern states.
*The median period of enrollment in the CCC for European Americans was 8 to 9 months, for African Americans it was 11 to 16 months.
*By this year, the Housing Division of the Public Works Administration had built 21,319 units in 49 projects. Of these, 14 projects were for African Americans only, 17 were integrated. African Americans occupied 7,507 units, about a third of the total. Rents, however, were high, shutting out the African American who could not pay $24 per month for three rooms.
*****
Notable Births
*Martina Arroyo, an operatic soprano and Kennedy Center honoree, was born in New York City (February 2).
Martina Arroyo, (b. February 2, 1937, New York City), is an African American operatic soprano who had a major international opera career from the 1960s through the 1980s. She was part of the first generation of African American opera singers to achieve wide success, and is viewed as part of an instrumental group of performers who helped break down the barriers of racial prejudice in the opera world.
Arroyo first rose to prominence at the Zurich Opera between 1963–1965, after which she was one of the Metropolitan Opera's leading sopranos between 1965 and 1978. During her years at the Metropolitan Opera, she was also a regular presence at the world's best opera houses, performing on the stages of La Scala, Covent Garden, the Opera National de Paris, the Teatro Colon, the Deutsche Opera Berlin, the Vienna State Opera, the Lyric Opera of Chicago and the San Francisco Opera, to name just a few. She is best known for her performances of the Italian spinto repertoire, and in particular, her portrayals of Verdi and Puccini heroines. Her last opera performance was in 1991, after which she has devoted her time to teaching singing on the faculties of various universities in the United States and Europe.
On December 8, 2013, Arroyo received a Kennedy Center Honor.
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*Rubin "Hurricane" Carter, a middleweight boxer who was wrongly convicted of murder and was later freed, was born in Clifton, New Jersey (May 6).
Rubin "Hurricane" Carter (b. May 6, 1937, Clifton, New Jersey – d. April 20, 2014, Toronto, Ontario, Canada) was an American middleweight boxer who was wrongly convicted of murder and later freed via a petition of habeas corpus after spending almost 20 years in prison.
In 1966, police arrested both Carter and friend John Artis for a triple-homicide committed in the Lafayette Bar and Grill in Paterson, New Jersey. Police stopped Carter's car and brought him and Artis, also in the car, to the scene of the crime. On searching the car, the police found ammunition that fit the weapons used in the murder. Police took no fingerprints at the crime scene and lacked the facilities to conduct a paraffin test for gunshot residue. Carter and Artis were tried and convicted twice (1967 and 1976) for the murders, but after the second conviction was overturned in 1985, prosecutors chose not to try the case for a third time.
After his conviction was overturned, Carter lived in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, where he became a Canadian citizen. In Toronto, Carter became the executive director of the Association in Defence of the Wrongly Convicted (AIDWYC) and served in that capacity from 1993 until 2005. Carter resigned when the AIDWYC declined to support Carter's protest of the appointment (to a judgeship) of Susan MacLean, who was the prosecutor of Canadian Guy Paul Morin, who served over eighteen months in prison for rape and murder until exonerated by DNA evidence.
Carter's autobiography, titled The Sixteenth Round, was published in 1975 by Warner Books. The story inspired the 1975 Bob Dylan song "Hurricane" and the 1999 film The Hurricane (with Denzel Washington playing Carter).
Carter's autobiography, titled The Sixteenth Round, was published in 1975 by Warner Books. The story inspired the 1975 Bob Dylan song "Hurricane" and the 1999 film The Hurricane (with Denzel Washington playing Carter).
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*Entertainer William "Bill" Cosby was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (July 12).
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*Sculptor Melvin Edwards in Houston, Texas (May 4).
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*Actor Morgan Freeman was born in Memphis, Tennessee (June 1). He would receive a Best Supporting Actor Academy Award for his role in Million Dollar Baby.
*William Melvin Kelley, a novelist and short-story writer, was born in New York City (November 1).
William Kelley was born in New York City and was educated at Harvard University where he studied writing under Archibald MacLeish. His works include: A Different Drum, 1962, Kelley's first novel; Dancers on the Shore, 1964, a collection of 16 short stories; A Drop of Patience, 1965, a novel; and in 1967, Dem, a third novel.
William Kelley was born in New York City and was educated at Harvard University where he studied writing under Archibald MacLeish. His works include: A Different Drum, 1962, Kelley's first novel; Dancers on the Shore, 1964, a collection of 16 short stories; A Drop of Patience, 1965, a novel; and in 1967, Dem, a third novel.
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*Woodie King, Jr., dramatist, critic, and producer, was born in Detroit, Michigan (July 27). As artistic director of the New Federal Theater, he would adapt Langston Hughes' Weary Blues for the stage.
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*Eleanor Holmes Norton was born in Washington, D. C. (June 13). She would chair the United States Equal Opportunity Commission and serve as delegate to Congress from the District of Columbia.
*Colin L. Powell was born in New York City, New York (April 5). He would become the first African American to serve as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the first African American to serve as Secretary of State.
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*Willie Reed, a witness to the murder of Emmett Till, was born in Greenwood, Mississippi (June 14).
Willie Louis, previously Willie Reed (b. June 14, 1937, Greenwood, Mississippi – d. July 18, 2013, Oaklawn, Illinois) was a witness to the murder of 14-year-old Emmett Till. Till was an African-American teenager from Chicago who was murdered in 1955 after reportedly whistling at a white woman in a Money, Mississippi grocery store. Till's murder was a watershed moment in the African-American Civil Rights Movement. Louis testified in court about what he had seen, but an all-white jury found the men not guilty. Fearing for his life, Louis moved to Chicago after the trial and changed his name from Willie Reed to Willie Louis. He was interviewed in 2003 for the PBS documentary The Murder of Emmett Till and was interviewed the next year on the CBS News television program 60 Minutes.
Willie Reed, as Willie Louis was then known, was born in 1937 in Greenwood, Mississippi at the eastern edge of the Mississippi Delta. He was raised in Drew, Mississippi, by his grandparents who worked as sharecroppers. Reed received little formal education and worked in the cotton fields.
Emmett Till was murdered in Mississippi in August 1955. He was a 14-year-old African-American from Chicago who was reportedly murdered for having reportedly flirted with and whistled at a 21-year-old white woman in a grocery store. The case and subsequent trial were "watershed moments in the civil rights movement, galvanizing public attention on the deep perils of being black in the Jim Crow South."
On the morning of Sunday, August 28, 1955, Reed, who was then 18 years old, was walking on a dirt road near Drew, Mississippi, when he saw a green-and-white Chevrolet pick-up drive past him with four white men in the front and three African-American men and an African-American youth seated with his back to the cab. Reed recognized two of the men in the front seat as Roy Bryant, the husband of the woman who Till had reportedly whistled at, and J.W. Milam, Bryant's half-brother.
Reed saw the truck pull into a plantation owned by Milam's brother and park in front of a barn. As he walked closer, he heard a boy inside the barn yelling, "Mama, save me!" He also heard the sounds of blows landing on a body and voices cursing and yelling, "Get down, you black bastard." Reed ran to the nearby house of Amanda Bradley and told her what he had seen and heard. Reed and another individual were sent to get water from a well near the barn. As they did, they heard the continuing sound of the beating until the cries became fainter and then stopped.
As Reed walked back toward the Bradley house, Milam emerged from the barn with a pistol at his side. Milam confronted Reed and asked if he had seen or heard anything. Reed told Milam that he had not. Reed returned to the Bradley house and watched from a window as the men in the barn loaded what appeared to be a body into the pick-up truck.
On August 31, 1955, Till's lynched body was discovered in the Tallahatchie River. The body showed signs that Till had been brutally beaten and shot in the head. Reed saw a photograph of Till in the newspaper and recognized him as the youth who he had seen hunkered down in the truck. Bryant and Milam were arrested for the murder, but Reed's grandfather warned Reed that he would be risking his safety if he spoke up. Louis was later approached by civil rights workers who persuaded him to testify in court. To ensure his safety, Reed went into hiding until the trial.
When Reed arrived at the courthouse to testify in the middle of September 1955, he was met by a "thicket of Klansmen massed outside the courthouse." Reed testified at the trial. He was shown a picture of Till and testified that it looked like the boy he had seen in the back of the truck. He also identified Milam and testified that he saw Milam come out of the barn to get a drink of water and then return to the barn. In his closing argument, the prosecutor reviewed Reed's testimony, noting that if Willie had been lying, the defense would have had needed 50 lawyers to discredit him. The prosecutor argued they couldn't do that "because Willie Reed was telling the truth." He finished by saying, "I don't know but what Willie Reed has more nerve than I have." Despite Reed's testimony and other evidence, Bryant and Milam were found not guilty after an hour of deliberation by an all-white jury.
In the aftermath of the trial, some suggested that Reed had not been a good witness, noting that he had given inconsistent accounts as to how far he was from Milam and whether he really recognized him. Even Till's mother later said that "Little Willie Reed" was "not a good witness." She added, "Willie Reed had a story, but he couldn't tell it. It was locked inside him. It would have taken education to put the key in the lock and turn it loose. Every word that was gotten from Willie had to be pulled out word by word. That's because Willie is 18 years old and has probably been to school only 3 years."
Others had a more positive reaction to Reed's testimony. The Jackson Daily News described his testimony as "the most damaging introduced thus far" and as having "electrified the court." The New York Times later wrote that Reed's testimony "made him a hero" of the African-American Civil Rights Movement. The Daily Worker published an article titled "The Shame of Our Nation" expressing outrage at the result but praising Reed and other witnesses as "heroes of the Negro people ... who stood up in court and in defiance of a white supremacist code fearlessly gave their testimony."
Historian David T. Beito said of Reed: "He was really the best eyewitness that they found. . . . [H]is act in some sense was the bravest act of them all. He had nothing to gain: he had no family ties to Emmett Till; he didn't know him. He was this 18-year-old kid who goes into this very hostile atmosphere."
After testifying in the Till case, Reed moved to Chicago and changed his name from Willie Reed to Willie Louis. He was employed as an orderly at Woodlawn Hospital and later at Jackson Park Hospital. In 1976, he was married to Juliet Louis, who was a nursing aide at Jackson Park. Louis remained silent about his role in the Emmett Till case. His wife did not even learn of his connection to the case until 1984.
In 2003, Louis was located and interviewed by Stanley Nelson, who later wrote a book and produced a documentary on the case. Nelson's documentary, The Murder of Emmett Till, was broadcast on PBS television in the United States and included an interview with Louis.
Thereafter, Louis met Till's mother and began speaking in public about the case. In 2004, he was interviewed on the CBS News television show 60 Minutes. During the interview on 60 Minutes, Louis explained his reasoning in deciding to testify: "I couldn't have walked away from that. Emmett was 14, probably had never been to Mississippi in his life, and he come to visit his grandfather and they killed him. I mean, that's not right."
In July 2013, Louis died of intestinal bleeding at age 76 in Oak Lawn, Illinois.
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Performing Arts
On Easter Sunday, Eddie Anderson first appeared on the Jack Benny radio show. As Rochester, he became a regular member of Benny's group, appearing with him also in the subsequent television series. Anderson's movies included Star-Spangled Rhythm and Cabin in the Sky.
*La Julia Rhea (1908-1992) became the first African American to sing with the Chicago Civic Opera Company during the regular season when she opened on December 26, 1937, in the title role of Verdi's Aida.
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Publications
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Sports
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Statistics
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Visual Arts
Thirty-two years after the death of Henry Ossawa Tanner, the Frederick Douglass Institute and the National Collection of Fine Arts co-sponsored the first American exhibition of Tanner's work. Opening in Washington, D. C., at the National Collection of Fine Arts, the 90-piece exhibit traveled to seven American museums. The Tanner exhibit was the first one-man show by an African Americn artist to tour the country's major museums.
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The Americas
British Guiana
Uruguay
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Europe
France
*Josephine Baker married a Jewish Frenchman, Jean Lion, and became a French citizen.
Germany
*In the years of 1937–1938, Eugen Fischer and his colleagues analyzed 600 children in Nazi Germany who were descended from French-African soldiers who occupied western areas of Germany after World War I. The children derogatorily called the "Rhineland Bastards" were subsequently subjected to sterilization afterwards.
Eugen Fischer (b. July 5, 1874 – d. July 9, 1967) was a German professor of medicine, anthropology and eugenics. He was director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Anthropology, Human Heredity, and Eugenics between 1927 and 1942. He was appointed rector of the Frederick William University of Berlin by Adolf Hitler in 1933, and later joined the Nazi Party.
In 1908, Fischer conducted field research in German Southwest Africa (now Namibia). He studied the Basters, offspring of German or Boer men who had fathered children by the native women (the Khoi) in that area. His study concluded with a call to prevent a "mixed race" by the prohibition of "mixed marriage" such as those he had studied. His study was based unethical medical practices on the Herero and Namaqua people. He argued that while the existing Mischling -- mixed race -- descendants of the mixed marriages might be useful for Germany, he recommended that they should not continue to reproduce. His recommendations were followed and by 1912 interracial marriage was prohibited throughout the German colonies. As a precursor to his experiments on Jews in Nazi Germany, Fischer collected bones and skulls for his studies, in part from medical experimentation on African prisoners of war in Namibia during the Herero and Namaqua Genocide.
The ideas expressed in Fischer's study, related to maintaining the purity of races, influenced future German legislation on race, including the Nuremberg laws.
In 1933, Adolf Hitler appointed Fischer rector of the Frederick William University of Berlin (now Humboldt University). Fischer retired from the university in 1942.
Eugen Fischer did not officially join the Nazi Party until 1940. However, he was influential with National Socialists early on. A two-volume work, Foundations of Human Hereditary Teaching and Racial Hygiene published 1921 and 1932, and in 1936 published under Human Heredity Theory and Racial Hygiene, co-written by Erwin Baur and Fritz Lenz, served as the scientific basis for the Nazis' eugenic (race purification) policies. Fischer also authored The Rehoboth Bastards and the Problem of Miscegenation among Humans (1913) (German: Die Rehobother Bastards und das Bastardierungsproblem beim Menschen), a field study which provided context for later racial debates, which influenced German colonial legislation, and which provided scientific support for the Nuremberg laws.
Under the Nazi regime, Fischer developed the physiological specifications used to determine racial origins and developed the so-called Fischer-Saller scale, a scale used to determine shades of hair color. He and his team experimented on Gypsies and African Germans, taking blood and measuring skulls to find scientific validation for his eugenic theories.
Efforts to return the Namibian skulls taken by Fischer were started with an investigation by the University of Freiburg in 2011 and completed with the return of the skulls in March 2014. Additionally, in 1985, the United Nations' Whitaker Report classified the aftermath of the Herero rebellion as an attempt to exterminate the Herero and Nama peoples of South-West Africa, and therefore being one of the earliest attempts at genocide in the 20th century. In 2004 the German government recognized and apologized for the events, but ruled out financial compensation for the victims' descendants. Finally, in July 2015, the German government and parliament officially called the events a "genocide" and "part of a race war".
Soviet Union
*From 1937 to 1938, Jack Chen organized an international art exhibition in the Soviet Union, European countries and the United States, bringing the works of the Chinese artists who were opposed to the Japanese aggression in China. It was the first time that the revolutionary art of China was introduced to the world.
Africa
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Nnamdi Azikiwe
Nnamdi Azikiwe returned to Lagos, Nigeria, in 1937 and founded the West African Pilot, which he used as a vehicle to foster Nigerian nationalism. He also founded the Zik Group of Newspapers, publishing multiple newspapers in cities across the country.
Democratic Republic of the Congo
*Jazz saxophonist Archie Shepp was born in Fort Lauderdale, Florida (May 24).
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*Television and film actor Billy Dee Williams was born in New York City, New York (April 6). He would star in the movie Lady Sings the Blues and in two Star Wars films.
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*Nancy Wilson, a jazz and pop singer, was born in Chillicothe, Ohio (February 20).
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*Olly Wilson, a classical composer, was born in St. Louis, Missouri (September 7).
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Notable Deaths
*In this year, eight African Americans were lynched.
*Isaac Lane, a bishop of the Colored Methodist Episcopal Church and the founder of Lane College in Tennessee, died (July 2).
*Oliver Law, the first African American to lead an integrated military force in the history of the United States, was killed on July 10 leading his men in an attack on Mosquito Crest (Mosquito Hill) in the Spanish Civil War.
*Bessie Smith, "Empress of the Blues", died in Clarksville, Mississippi, from injuries suffered in an automobile accident (September 26). She is considered to be not only the greatest of the urban blues singers, but also one of the great voices of the 20th century.
Bessie Smith, in full Elizabeth Smith (b. April 15, 1894 (1898?), Chattanooga, Tennessee —d. September 26, 1937, Clarksdale, Mississippi) was an American singer and one of the greatest of blues vocalists.
Smith grew up in poverty and obscurity. She may have made a first public appearance at the age of eight or nine at the Ivory Theatre in her hometown. About 1919 she was discovered by Gertrude "Ma" Rainey, one of the first of the great blues singers, from whom she received some training. For several years Smith traveled through the South singing in tent shows and bars and theaters in small towns and in such cities as Birmingham, Alabama; Memphis, Tennessee; and Atlanta and Savannah, Georgia. After 1920 she made her home in Philadelphia, and it was there that she was first heard by Clarence Williams, a representative of Columbia Records. In February 1923 she made her first recordings, including the classic “Down Hearted Blues,” which became an enormous success, selling more than two million copies. She made 160 recordings in all, in many of which she was accompanied by some of the great jazz musicians of the time, including Fletcher Henderson, Benny Goodman, and Louis Armstrong.
Bessie Smith’s subject matter was the classic material of the blues: poverty and oppression, love—betrayed or unrequited—and stoic acceptance of defeat at the hands of a cruel and indifferent world. The great tragedy of her career was that she outlived the topicality of her idiom. In the late 1920s her record sales and her fame diminished as social forces changed the face of popular music and passed over the earthy realism of the sentiments she expressed in her music. Her gradually increasing alcoholism caused managements to become wary of engaging her, but there is no evidence that her actual singing ability ever declined.
Known in her lifetime as the “Empress of the Blues,” Smith was a bold, supremely confident artist who often disdained the use of a microphone and whose art expressed the frustrations and hopes of a whole generation of African Americans. Her tall figure and upright stance, and above all her handsome features, are preserved in a short motion picture, St. Louis Blues (1929), banned for its realism and now preserved in the Museum of Modern Art, New York City. She died from injuries sustained in a road accident. It was said that, had she been white, she would have received earlier medical treatment, thus saving her life, and Edward Albee made this the subject of his play The Death of Bessie Smith (1960).
*Painter Henry Ossawa Tanner died in Paris, France (May 25).
Born in Pittsburgh in 1859, Tanner has been called the leading talent of the "journeyman period" of African American art. Only a handful of African American artists preceded Tanner, including Joshua Johnston, a Maryland portrait painter, Robert Duncanson, a Cincinnati landscape painter; Edward Bannister of Rhode Island; and sculptor Edmonia Lewis.
The first of seven children born to Benjamin Tucker Tanner, a minister in the African Methodist Episcopal Church, and Sarah Miller Tanner, he was raised in Philadelphia. At about the age of twelve Tanner saw a landscape painter at work in Fairmount Park in Philadelphia. He later wrote, "It set me on fire." Borrowing 15 cents from his mother to buy supplies, he assiduously applied himself until the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia accepted him in 1880. There, he studied with Thomas Eakins, the celebrated realist who taught him to manipulate light and shadow to express mood. An artist who depicted African Americans in his art as individuals, not as caricatures, Eakins would prove to be an important role model for Tanner.
In 1890, after an exhibit of his works in Cincinnati that was organized by Bishop Joseph Hartzell of the Methodist Episcopal Church, Tanner raised the money to fulfill his longtime dream to travel to Europe. Hartzell, who had purchased Tanner's entire exhibit, became the artist's first patron and was the subject of a 1902 portrait. On January 4, 1891, Tanner set off for Paris, where he enrolled in the Academie Julien. The following summer he painted The Bagpipe Lesson, a humorous study of Breton peasansts, his first (albeit unsuccessful) entry into the Parisian Salon.
After contracting typhoid fever during his second year in France, Tanner returned to Philadelphia to convalesce, and he entered into what is generally called his black genre period.
Influenced by a French tradition established by Jean-Francois Millet -- whose studies of mundane peasant life often included teaching themes -- Tanner addressed African American themes, often incorporating teaching themes. The Banjo Lesson, The Knitting Lesson, The Reading Lesson, and The Sewing Lesson were all produced during Tanner's black genre period.
In the summer of 1893, Tanner delivered a paper on "The American Negro in Art" before the World's Congress on Africa in conjunction with the World's Columbia Exposition in Chicago. Although the text of this paper has been lost, Tanner's later autobiography, The World at Work (1909), expressed his views on black genre painting. His genre period concluded the following year with The Thankful Poor, which, lost for years, was rediscovered in 1970, exhibited for eleven years at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and purchased in 1981 by actor Bill Cosby and his wife, Camille, for $250,000.
Biblical themes dominated the rest of Tanner's professional life, which he spent primarily in his adoptive French home. His Daniel in the Lion's Den received an honorable mention from the Salon in 1896, and The Raising of Lazarus was awarded a medal at the 1896 exhibition. Purchased by the French government for the Luxembourg Gallery, the painting joined tableaux of John Singer Sargent and James A. McNeil Whistler, the only the American artist whose works had been purchased by the French government. In 1923, the French government further honored the artist, electing him a Chevalier of the Legion of Honor.
Tanner, whose Pittsburgh homesite was designated a historical landmark by the Department of Interior on May 11, 1976, was the first African American to be elected to the National Academy of Design. And, in 1991, the Philadelphia Museum of Art sponsored a major retrospective containing more than 100 Tanner paintings, drawings, photographs and memorabilia.
*Isaac Lane, a bishop of the Colored Methodist Episcopal Church and the founder of Lane College in Tennessee, died (July 2).
*Oliver Law, the first African American to lead an integrated military force in the history of the United States, was killed on July 10 leading his men in an attack on Mosquito Crest (Mosquito Hill) in the Spanish Civil War.
*Bessie Smith, "Empress of the Blues", died in Clarksville, Mississippi, from injuries suffered in an automobile accident (September 26). She is considered to be not only the greatest of the urban blues singers, but also one of the great voices of the 20th century.
Bessie Smith, in full Elizabeth Smith (b. April 15, 1894 (1898?), Chattanooga, Tennessee —d. September 26, 1937, Clarksdale, Mississippi) was an American singer and one of the greatest of blues vocalists.
Smith grew up in poverty and obscurity. She may have made a first public appearance at the age of eight or nine at the Ivory Theatre in her hometown. About 1919 she was discovered by Gertrude "Ma" Rainey, one of the first of the great blues singers, from whom she received some training. For several years Smith traveled through the South singing in tent shows and bars and theaters in small towns and in such cities as Birmingham, Alabama; Memphis, Tennessee; and Atlanta and Savannah, Georgia. After 1920 she made her home in Philadelphia, and it was there that she was first heard by Clarence Williams, a representative of Columbia Records. In February 1923 she made her first recordings, including the classic “Down Hearted Blues,” which became an enormous success, selling more than two million copies. She made 160 recordings in all, in many of which she was accompanied by some of the great jazz musicians of the time, including Fletcher Henderson, Benny Goodman, and Louis Armstrong.
Bessie Smith’s subject matter was the classic material of the blues: poverty and oppression, love—betrayed or unrequited—and stoic acceptance of defeat at the hands of a cruel and indifferent world. The great tragedy of her career was that she outlived the topicality of her idiom. In the late 1920s her record sales and her fame diminished as social forces changed the face of popular music and passed over the earthy realism of the sentiments she expressed in her music. Her gradually increasing alcoholism caused managements to become wary of engaging her, but there is no evidence that her actual singing ability ever declined.
Known in her lifetime as the “Empress of the Blues,” Smith was a bold, supremely confident artist who often disdained the use of a microphone and whose art expressed the frustrations and hopes of a whole generation of African Americans. Her tall figure and upright stance, and above all her handsome features, are preserved in a short motion picture, St. Louis Blues (1929), banned for its realism and now preserved in the Museum of Modern Art, New York City. She died from injuries sustained in a road accident. It was said that, had she been white, she would have received earlier medical treatment, thus saving her life, and Edward Albee made this the subject of his play The Death of Bessie Smith (1960).
*Painter Henry Ossawa Tanner died in Paris, France (May 25).
Born in Pittsburgh in 1859, Tanner has been called the leading talent of the "journeyman period" of African American art. Only a handful of African American artists preceded Tanner, including Joshua Johnston, a Maryland portrait painter, Robert Duncanson, a Cincinnati landscape painter; Edward Bannister of Rhode Island; and sculptor Edmonia Lewis.
The first of seven children born to Benjamin Tucker Tanner, a minister in the African Methodist Episcopal Church, and Sarah Miller Tanner, he was raised in Philadelphia. At about the age of twelve Tanner saw a landscape painter at work in Fairmount Park in Philadelphia. He later wrote, "It set me on fire." Borrowing 15 cents from his mother to buy supplies, he assiduously applied himself until the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia accepted him in 1880. There, he studied with Thomas Eakins, the celebrated realist who taught him to manipulate light and shadow to express mood. An artist who depicted African Americans in his art as individuals, not as caricatures, Eakins would prove to be an important role model for Tanner.
In 1890, after an exhibit of his works in Cincinnati that was organized by Bishop Joseph Hartzell of the Methodist Episcopal Church, Tanner raised the money to fulfill his longtime dream to travel to Europe. Hartzell, who had purchased Tanner's entire exhibit, became the artist's first patron and was the subject of a 1902 portrait. On January 4, 1891, Tanner set off for Paris, where he enrolled in the Academie Julien. The following summer he painted The Bagpipe Lesson, a humorous study of Breton peasansts, his first (albeit unsuccessful) entry into the Parisian Salon.
After contracting typhoid fever during his second year in France, Tanner returned to Philadelphia to convalesce, and he entered into what is generally called his black genre period.
Influenced by a French tradition established by Jean-Francois Millet -- whose studies of mundane peasant life often included teaching themes -- Tanner addressed African American themes, often incorporating teaching themes. The Banjo Lesson, The Knitting Lesson, The Reading Lesson, and The Sewing Lesson were all produced during Tanner's black genre period.
In the summer of 1893, Tanner delivered a paper on "The American Negro in Art" before the World's Congress on Africa in conjunction with the World's Columbia Exposition in Chicago. Although the text of this paper has been lost, Tanner's later autobiography, The World at Work (1909), expressed his views on black genre painting. His genre period concluded the following year with The Thankful Poor, which, lost for years, was rediscovered in 1970, exhibited for eleven years at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and purchased in 1981 by actor Bill Cosby and his wife, Camille, for $250,000.
Biblical themes dominated the rest of Tanner's professional life, which he spent primarily in his adoptive French home. His Daniel in the Lion's Den received an honorable mention from the Salon in 1896, and The Raising of Lazarus was awarded a medal at the 1896 exhibition. Purchased by the French government for the Luxembourg Gallery, the painting joined tableaux of John Singer Sargent and James A. McNeil Whistler, the only the American artist whose works had been purchased by the French government. In 1923, the French government further honored the artist, electing him a Chevalier of the Legion of Honor.
Tanner, whose Pittsburgh homesite was designated a historical landmark by the Department of Interior on May 11, 1976, was the first African American to be elected to the National Academy of Design. And, in 1991, the Philadelphia Museum of Art sponsored a major retrospective containing more than 100 Tanner paintings, drawings, photographs and memorabilia.
Performing Arts
*The film company Negro Marches On was founded by Jack and David Goldberg to make movies for African American audiences. It would have imitators over the next 15 years, but would remain the largest and highest-quality production company of its kind.
*Eddie "Rochester" Anderson made his first appearance on Jack Benny's radio show (March 28).
On Easter Sunday, Eddie Anderson first appeared on the Jack Benny radio show. As Rochester, he became a regular member of Benny's group, appearing with him also in the subsequent television series. Anderson's movies included Star-Spangled Rhythm and Cabin in the Sky.
*La Julia Rhea (1908-1992) became the first African American to sing with the Chicago Civic Opera Company during the regular season when she opened on December 26, 1937, in the title role of Verdi's Aida.
Publications
*Challenge, a magazine, was reorganized and published as New Challenge. Richard Wright replaced Dorothy West as the principal editor. The first issue contained an editorial manifesto, stating the magazine's intention to concentrate on social realism in fiction. Wright, in one article, even advocated a Stalinist party line on literature for young African American writers.
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Sports
*Joe Louis defeated James J. Braddock and became heavyweight boxing champion of the world.
*Henry Armstrong became featherweight boxing champion.
*Henry Armstrong became featherweight boxing champion.
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Statistics
*Among African Americans, 26% of men and 33% of women were unemployed. Among European Americans, 18% of men and 24% of women were unemployed. Of the male non-white labor force in Northern states 39% was unemployed.
*In southern states, 40% of African Americans over the age of 65 did not qualify for social security payments due to their low-paying employment history.
Visual Arts
*Augusta Savage opened the Harlem Community Arts Center.
*Self-taught sculptor William Edmondson became the first African American to have a solo show at New York's Museum of Modern Art.
*The artist, Henry Ossawa Tanner, died.
Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in 1859, Tanner has been called the leading talent of the "journeyman period" of African American art. Only a handful of African-American artists preceded Tanner, including Joshua Johnston, a Maryland portrait painter; Robert Duncanson, a Cincinnati landscape painter; Edward Bannister, of Rhode Island; and sculptor Edmonia Lewis.
*The artist, Henry Ossawa Tanner, died.
Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in 1859, Tanner has been called the leading talent of the "journeyman period" of African American art. Only a handful of African-American artists preceded Tanner, including Joshua Johnston, a Maryland portrait painter; Robert Duncanson, a Cincinnati landscape painter; Edward Bannister, of Rhode Island; and sculptor Edmonia Lewis.
Thirty-two years after the death of Henry Ossawa Tanner, the Frederick Douglass Institute and the National Collection of Fine Arts co-sponsored the first American exhibition of Tanner's work. Opening in Washington, D. C., at the National Collection of Fine Arts, the 90-piece exhibit traveled to seven American museums. The Tanner exhibit was the first one-man show by an African Americn artist to tour the country's major museums.
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The Americas
British Guiana
*A. J. Seymour, published the first of five collections of his poetry, Verse.
Canada
Zanana L. Akande (b. 1937), a former politician in Ontario, Canada, was a New Democratic member of the Legislative Assembly of Ontario from 1990 to 1994 who represented the downtown Toronto riding (electoral district) of St. Andrew - St. Patrick. She served as a cabinet minister in the government of Bob Rae. She was the first woman of African descent elected to the Legislative Assembly of Ontario, and the first woman of African descent to serve as a cabinet minister in Canada.
A daughter of immigrants from the Caribbean, she became a teacher and school principal in the Toronto public school system. After her election in 1990, she was appointed to cabinet as Minister of Community and Social Services but resigned because her private financial arrangements appeared to violate cabinet guidelines. A subsequent review cleared her of any wrongdoing. In 1992, she was named parliamentary assistant to Premier Bob Rae. In 1994 she quit politics after a dispute over the handling of an investigation and firing of Ontario civil servant Carlton Masters.
After retirement, Akande continued to be involved in the community, serving as a volunteer on boards and committees of local organizations including the YWCA and Centennial College.
Akande was born in downtown Toronto in the Kensington Market district. Her parents came from St. Lucia and Barbados, where they had worked as teachers. They were prevented from continuing their careers in Canada because, at the time, people of African descent were not allowed to hold teaching positions. She attended Harbord Collegiate before studying at the University of Toronto. There she received Bachelor of Arts and Master of Education degrees. She also attended the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education. She was a longtime member of the Federation of Women Teachers' Associations of Ontario. Following in her parents footsteps, she worked as a teacher and a school principal for the Toronto District School Board. During her educational career she designed programs for students with special needs.
Akande was a co-founder of Tiger Lily, a newspaper for visible minority women, and once co-hosted a Toronto Arts Against Apartheid Festival. She was a member of the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation in her youth and was friends with future New Democratic Party (NDP) leader Stephen Lewis and his siblings, and was a longtime member of its successor, the New Democratic Party.
Akande was married to Isaac who died of cancer in 1991. She has a daughter, Aderonke.
Akande was elected for the NDP in the Toronto riding of St. Andrew—St. Patrick in the 1990 election. Akande won the riding in a tight three-way race between incumbent Liberal Ron Kanter and Conservative candidate Nancy Jackman. The NDP won a majority government and Akande was named Minister of Community and Social Services in Bob Rae's first cabinet on October 1, 1990. As minister, Akande presided over an increase in welfare benefits to Ontarians at the lowest income level. She raised the social assistance rate from 5% to 7% and increased the shelter allowance from 5% to 10%. She also announced $1 million in funding for food banks in an apparent contradiction to NDP policy against supporting such agencies. She recognized that the realities of the time meant the food banks were a necessity.
In 1991, Akande was caught in an apparent conflict of interest situation. In December 1990, Rae announced strict guidelines which prohibited cabinet ministers from owning rental properties which included Akande. However, in February 1991, Rae wrote a private memo which softened the guidelines because he felt that a sell-off of these properties during tough economic times may cause undue hardship to ministers.
On October 10, 1991, Akande resigned as minister due to an accusation of rent-gouging in properties she owned in Toronto. The charges were eventually dismissed in 1993.
On May 4, 1992, the so-called "Yonge Street Riot" occurred in Toronto due to media reports surrounding a celebrated court case in the United States about the beating of Rodney King by police and the ensuing riots in Los Angeles. While the damage along Yonge Street was relatively minor, it was a major event for Toronto. In order to manage the fallout from this episode, Rae appointed Akande as his parliamentary assistant. One of her accomplishments was the creation of the Jobs Ontario Youth Program which created summer employment for youth from 1991 to 1994.
Akande continued as a parliamentary assistant until August 31, 1994, when she resigned from the Legislature in protest against Rae's handling of the Carlton Masters controversy. After resigning from the government she returned to her former job as school principal.
Uruguay
On January 5, 1937 the party was recognized by the Electoral Court. In March 1937 a new manifesto was issued, following similar lines as the original party manifesto.
On July 5, 1937 a local committee of the party was established in Rivera. On December 4, 1937 a General Assembly of the party was organized. On December 18, 1937 a local committee was set up in the town of Melo.
The party published the journal Pan ('Bread') as its organ. The first issue was published on April 15, 1937. Nine issues were published until December 1937. Sandalio del Puerto was the editor of Pan, until being replaced by Carmelo Gentile in October 1937.
Europe
France
*Josephine Baker married a Jewish Frenchman, Jean Lion, and became a French citizen.
Germany
*In the years of 1937–1938, Eugen Fischer and his colleagues analyzed 600 children in Nazi Germany who were descended from French-African soldiers who occupied western areas of Germany after World War I. The children derogatorily called the "Rhineland Bastards" were subsequently subjected to sterilization afterwards.
Eugen Fischer (b. July 5, 1874 – d. July 9, 1967) was a German professor of medicine, anthropology and eugenics. He was director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Anthropology, Human Heredity, and Eugenics between 1927 and 1942. He was appointed rector of the Frederick William University of Berlin by Adolf Hitler in 1933, and later joined the Nazi Party.
In 1908, Fischer conducted field research in German Southwest Africa (now Namibia). He studied the Basters, offspring of German or Boer men who had fathered children by the native women (the Khoi) in that area. His study concluded with a call to prevent a "mixed race" by the prohibition of "mixed marriage" such as those he had studied. His study was based unethical medical practices on the Herero and Namaqua people. He argued that while the existing Mischling -- mixed race -- descendants of the mixed marriages might be useful for Germany, he recommended that they should not continue to reproduce. His recommendations were followed and by 1912 interracial marriage was prohibited throughout the German colonies. As a precursor to his experiments on Jews in Nazi Germany, Fischer collected bones and skulls for his studies, in part from medical experimentation on African prisoners of war in Namibia during the Herero and Namaqua Genocide.
The ideas expressed in Fischer's study, related to maintaining the purity of races, influenced future German legislation on race, including the Nuremberg laws.
In 1933, Adolf Hitler appointed Fischer rector of the Frederick William University of Berlin (now Humboldt University). Fischer retired from the university in 1942.
Eugen Fischer did not officially join the Nazi Party until 1940. However, he was influential with National Socialists early on. A two-volume work, Foundations of Human Hereditary Teaching and Racial Hygiene published 1921 and 1932, and in 1936 published under Human Heredity Theory and Racial Hygiene, co-written by Erwin Baur and Fritz Lenz, served as the scientific basis for the Nazis' eugenic (race purification) policies. Fischer also authored The Rehoboth Bastards and the Problem of Miscegenation among Humans (1913) (German: Die Rehobother Bastards und das Bastardierungsproblem beim Menschen), a field study which provided context for later racial debates, which influenced German colonial legislation, and which provided scientific support for the Nuremberg laws.
Under the Nazi regime, Fischer developed the physiological specifications used to determine racial origins and developed the so-called Fischer-Saller scale, a scale used to determine shades of hair color. He and his team experimented on Gypsies and African Germans, taking blood and measuring skulls to find scientific validation for his eugenic theories.
Efforts to return the Namibian skulls taken by Fischer were started with an investigation by the University of Freiburg in 2011 and completed with the return of the skulls in March 2014. Additionally, in 1985, the United Nations' Whitaker Report classified the aftermath of the Herero rebellion as an attempt to exterminate the Herero and Nama peoples of South-West Africa, and therefore being one of the earliest attempts at genocide in the 20th century. In 2004 the German government recognized and apologized for the events, but ruled out financial compensation for the victims' descendants. Finally, in July 2015, the German government and parliament officially called the events a "genocide" and "part of a race war".
*From 1937 to 1938, Jack Chen organized an international art exhibition in the Soviet Union, European countries and the United States, bringing the works of the Chinese artists who were opposed to the Japanese aggression in China. It was the first time that the revolutionary art of China was introduced to the world.
Africa
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November 13
*Tabu Ley Rochereau, a rumba singer-songwriter dubbed the "African Elvis", was born in Bagata, in what was then the Belgian Congo .
November 22
November 22
*Nnamdi Azikiwe launched the West African Pilot, a newspaper dedicated to fighting for independence from British rule.
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Nnamdi Azikiwe
Nnamdi Azikiwe returned to Lagos, Nigeria, in 1937 and founded the West African Pilot, which he used as a vehicle to foster Nigerian nationalism. He also founded the Zik Group of Newspapers, publishing multiple newspapers in cities across the country.
Democratic Republic of the Congo
*Tabu Ley Rochereau, a rumba singer-songwriter dubbed the "African Elvis", was born in Bagata, in what was then the Belgian Congo (November 13).
Pascal-Emmanuel Sinamoyi Tabu (b. November 13, 1937, Bagata, Bandundu, Belgian Congo – d. November 30, 2013, Brussels, Belgium), better known as Tabu Ley Rochereau, was a leading African rumba singer-songwriter from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. He was the leader of Orchestre Afrisa International, as well as one of Africa's most influential vocalists and prolific songwriters. Along with guitarist Dr. Nico Kasanda, Tabu Ley pioneered soukous (African rumba) and internationalized his music by fusing elements of Congolese folk music with Cuban, Caribbean and Latin American rumba. He has been described as "the Congolese personality who, along with [the dictator] Mobutu, [most] marked Africa's 20th century history." He was dubbed the "African Elvis" by the Los Angeles Times. After the fall of the Mobutu regime, Tabu Ley also pursued a political career.
During his career, Tabu Ley composed up to 3,000 songs and produced 250 albums.
Pascal-Emmanuel Sinamoyi Tabu was born in Bagata, in the then Belgian Congo. His musical career took off in 1956 when he sung with Joseph "Le Grand Kallé" Kabasele, and his band L'African Jazz. After finishing high school he joined the band as a full-time musician. Tabu Ley sang in the pan-African hit Indépendance Cha Cha which was composed by Grand Kallé for Congolese independence from Belgium in 1960, propelling Tabu Ley to instant fame. He remained with African Jazz until 1963 when he and Dr. Nico Kasanda formed their own group, African Fiesta. Two years later, Tabu Ley and Dr. Nico split and Tabu Ley formed African Fiesta National, also known as African Fiesta Flash. The group became one of the most successful bands in African history, recording African classics like Afrika Mokili Mobimba, and surpassing record sales of one million copies by 1970. Papa Wemba and Sam Mangwana were among the many influential musicians that were part of the group. He adopted the stage name "Rochereau" after the French General Pierre
Denfert-Rochereau, whose name he liked and whom he had studied in school.
Denfert-Rochereau, whose name he liked and whom he had studied in school.
In 1970, Tabu Ley formed Orchestre Afrisa International, Afrisa being a combination of Africa and Éditions Isa, his record label. Along with Franco Luambo's TPOK Jazz, Afrisa was now one of Africa's greatest bands. They recorded hits such as "Sorozo", "Kaful Mayay", "Aon Aon", and "Mose Konzo".
In the mid 1980s, Tabu Ley discovered a young talented singer and dancer, M'bilia Bel, who helped popularize his band further. M'bilia Bel became the first female soukous singer to gain acclaim throughout Africa. Tabu Ley and M'bilia Bel later married and had one child together. In 1988, Tabu Ley introduced another female vocalist known as Faya Tess, and M'bilia Bel left and continued to be successful on her own. After M'bilia Bel's departure, Afrisa's influence along with that of their rivals TPOK Jazz continued to wane as fans gravitated toward the faster version of soukous.
After the establishment of the Mobutu Sese Seko regime in the Congo, Tabu Ley adopted the name "Tabu Ley" as part of Mobutu's "Zairization" of the country, but later went into exile in France in 1988. In 1985, the Government of Kenya banned all foreign music from the National Radio service. After Tabu Ley composed the song "Twende Nairobi" ("Let's go to Nairobi"), sung by M'bilia Bel, in praise of Kenyan president Daniel arap Moi, the ban was promptly lifted. In the early 1990s, Tabu Ley briefly settled in Southern California. He began to tailor his music towards an international audience by including more English lyrics and by increasing more international dance styles such as Samba. He found success with the release of albums such as Muzina, Exil Ley, Africa worldwide and Babeti soukous. The Mobutu regime banned his 1990 album "Trop, C'est Trop" as subversive. In 1996, Tabu Ley participated in the album Gombo Salsa by the salsa music project Africando. The song "Paquita" from that album is a remake of a song that he recorded in the late 1960s with African Fiesta.
When President Mobutu Sese Seko was deposed in 1997, Tabu Ley returned to Kinshasa and took up a position as a cabinet minister in the government of new President Laurent Kabila. Following Kabila's death, Tabu Ley then joined the appointed transitional parliament created by Joseph Kabila, until it was dissolved following the establishment of the inclusive transitional institutions. In November 2005 Tabu Ley was appointed Vice-Governor of Kinshasa, a position devolved to his party, the Congolese Rally for Democracy by the 2002 peace agreements. He also served as provincial minister of culture. He was said to have fathered up to 68 children, including the French rapper Youssoupha, with different women.
Tabu Ley Rochereau died on November 30, 2013, aged 76, at Saint-Luc hospital in Brussels, Belgium where he had been undergoing treatment for a stroke he suffered in 2008.
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Nigeria
When Nnamdi Azikiwe ("Zik") launched his West African Pilot in 1937, dedicated to fighting for independence from British colonial rule, the newspaper was an immediate success. Azikiwe, an Ibo, found a ready-audience in the non-Yobura people of Nigeria, including many in Lagos. He introduced Pan-African consciousness to the Nigerian Youth Movement, and expanded its membership with large numbers of people who had previously been excluded.
South Africa
*The Department of Social Welfare was set up.
By 1927, the number of destitute white South Africans had increased so rapidly that the Carnegie Corporation of New York, on the recommendation of its president and secretary who had recently visited South Africa, decided to fund a commission of investigation into the problem of poor whites. The Union Government and the Dutch Reformed Church each matched the Carnegie Corporation's grant, and five commissioners were appointed.
Between 1929 and 1932, the five commissioners travelled around the country, interviewing a cross-section of poor white society, including nomadic trek farmers in the Cape, bywoners (tenants) and laborers in the Karoo, pioneering bushveld farmers in the Transvaal, woodcutters in the Knysna and George areas, diamond diggers, reef miners and others. The commissioners concluded their investigatory work with a five-volume report on economic conditions, the psychology of the poor whites, education, health and sociological aspects.
The commission calculated that out of a white population of 1.8 million in 1931 (a million being Afrikaners), more than 300,000 were extremely poor, living as paupers. A poor white was defined as "a person who had become dependent to such an extent, whether from mental, moral, economic or physical causes, that he is unfit, without help from others, to find proper means of livelihood for himself or to procure it directly or indirectly for his children".
The report stressed that "laziness" was not to blame (as had been suggested by the Transvaal Indigency Commission in 1906-8) but that poverty was in itself a demoralizing influence which often caused loss of self-respect and a feeling of inferiority. The commission felt that the bywoner, who roamed the country making a precarious existence as a fencer, transport rider or woodseller, seemed to embody the poor white problem.
The commission reported on the high birthrate -- the white population more than doubled between 1904 and 1936 -- and on overcrowding and insanitary conditions which led to disease and death. In the schools, thousands of children were classified as retarded. Most children did not even complete primary school.
The report also contained a study of urban Afrikaners who were finding it hard to adjust to life in the city. They had to compete for employment with the more skilled uitlanders (foreigners) and could not compete with the cheap African labor favored by the mainly English-speaking mine owners and industrialists. Afrikaners also suffered psychologically because of their inbred prejudice against doing a job traditionally reserved for Africans. Even the most poverty-striken bywoner considered himself a master and would not stoop to do "kaffir work".
The commission reported that attempts by the Dutch Reformed Church and the Arme Blanke Verbond (Poor White Alliance) of 1917 to help poor whites seek jobs and obtain suitable training had been insufficient. For example, the indignation expressed by Daniel Malan, a future South African Prime Minister, that "the children of Afrikaner families were running around as naked as kaffirs in Congoland" was never followed up.
The commission did not favor state hand-outs, relief work or charity because the commissioners opined that such measures weakened the Afrikaner's sense of initiative and encouraged dependency. Instead, it suggested that the government concentrate on setting up a department of social welfare, which it did in 1937. Additionally, in response to the commission's findings, the state tried to protect white workers by introducing what it termed a "civilised labour" policy -- in other words, a system that guaranteed work for whites at the expense of blacks. Thus, between 1924 and 1933, the percentage of unskilled white workers on the railways rose from 9.5 to 39.3 percent while it dropped for blacks from 75 to 48.9 percent.
*****
Nigeria
*Nnamdi Azikiwe launched the West African Pilot (November 22).
When Nnamdi Azikiwe ("Zik") launched his West African Pilot in 1937, dedicated to fighting for independence from British colonial rule, the newspaper was an immediate success. Azikiwe, an Ibo, found a ready-audience in the non-Yobura people of Nigeria, including many in Lagos. He introduced Pan-African consciousness to the Nigerian Youth Movement, and expanded its membership with large numbers of people who had previously been excluded.
When the paper, West African Pilot, was launched its quality and professionalism put it atop other newspapers of the period which generally pandered to colonial authorities or ethnocentric interests. The most prominent newspaper that lost circulation as a result was the Nigerian Daily Times originally owned by the Mirror Group of London. West African Pilot's lively mix of radical politics and gossip, plus a woman's page, was highly popular. The newspaper played a key role in the spread of racial consciousness and nationalistic ideas in the interior of Nigeria. Its motto was "Show the light and the people will find the way". Azikiwe personally edited the West African Pilot from 1937 to 1947.
The West African Pilot gave birth to a chain of newspapers that were positioned as city newspapers in such places as Port Harcourt, Warri, Enugu, Ibadan, and Kano. All the titles were then owned by "Zik's Press Limited". Titles included the Eastern Nigerian Guardian launched in 1940 in Port Harcourt, the Nigerian Spokesman in Onitsha (1943) and the Southern Defender in Warri. In 1945, Azikiwe's group bought Mohammed Ali's Comet, four years later converting it into a daily newspaper and then transferring it to Kano, where it was the first daily in the north. The Northern Advocate was also launched in 1949, in Jos. On July 8, 1945, the government banned the West African Pilot and the Daily Comet for misrepresenting facts about the general strike. This did not silence Azikiwe, who continued to print articles and editorials on the strike in his Port Harcourt Guardian.
*Shell Oil Company started oil exploration in Nigeria.
*Shell Oil Company started oil exploration in Nigeria.
South Africa
*The Department of Social Welfare was set up.
By 1927, the number of destitute white South Africans had increased so rapidly that the Carnegie Corporation of New York, on the recommendation of its president and secretary who had recently visited South Africa, decided to fund a commission of investigation into the problem of poor whites. The Union Government and the Dutch Reformed Church each matched the Carnegie Corporation's grant, and five commissioners were appointed.
Between 1929 and 1932, the five commissioners travelled around the country, interviewing a cross-section of poor white society, including nomadic trek farmers in the Cape, bywoners (tenants) and laborers in the Karoo, pioneering bushveld farmers in the Transvaal, woodcutters in the Knysna and George areas, diamond diggers, reef miners and others. The commissioners concluded their investigatory work with a five-volume report on economic conditions, the psychology of the poor whites, education, health and sociological aspects.
The commission calculated that out of a white population of 1.8 million in 1931 (a million being Afrikaners), more than 300,000 were extremely poor, living as paupers. A poor white was defined as "a person who had become dependent to such an extent, whether from mental, moral, economic or physical causes, that he is unfit, without help from others, to find proper means of livelihood for himself or to procure it directly or indirectly for his children".
The report stressed that "laziness" was not to blame (as had been suggested by the Transvaal Indigency Commission in 1906-8) but that poverty was in itself a demoralizing influence which often caused loss of self-respect and a feeling of inferiority. The commission felt that the bywoner, who roamed the country making a precarious existence as a fencer, transport rider or woodseller, seemed to embody the poor white problem.
The commission reported on the high birthrate -- the white population more than doubled between 1904 and 1936 -- and on overcrowding and insanitary conditions which led to disease and death. In the schools, thousands of children were classified as retarded. Most children did not even complete primary school.
The report also contained a study of urban Afrikaners who were finding it hard to adjust to life in the city. They had to compete for employment with the more skilled uitlanders (foreigners) and could not compete with the cheap African labor favored by the mainly English-speaking mine owners and industrialists. Afrikaners also suffered psychologically because of their inbred prejudice against doing a job traditionally reserved for Africans. Even the most poverty-striken bywoner considered himself a master and would not stoop to do "kaffir work".
The commission reported that attempts by the Dutch Reformed Church and the Arme Blanke Verbond (Poor White Alliance) of 1917 to help poor whites seek jobs and obtain suitable training had been insufficient. For example, the indignation expressed by Daniel Malan, a future South African Prime Minister, that "the children of Afrikaner families were running around as naked as kaffirs in Congoland" was never followed up.
The commission did not favor state hand-outs, relief work or charity because the commissioners opined that such measures weakened the Afrikaner's sense of initiative and encouraged dependency. Instead, it suggested that the government concentrate on setting up a department of social welfare, which it did in 1937. Additionally, in response to the commission's findings, the state tried to protect white workers by introducing what it termed a "civilised labour" policy -- in other words, a system that guaranteed work for whites at the expense of blacks. Thus, between 1924 and 1933, the percentage of unskilled white workers on the railways rose from 9.5 to 39.3 percent while it dropped for blacks from 75 to 48.9 percent.
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General Historical Events
*****
January 23
*The Moscow show trials began as Stalin made examples of disloyal and prominent party members.
February 8
*In Spain, Franco captured Malaga.
April 26
*The unarmed Basque town of Guernica was destroyed by German bombers, which dropped explosives and incendiaries for three hours while Heinkel fighter planes strafed the surrounding fields, killing civilians trying to escape.
June 3
*The Spanish Civil War continued, in spite of the death of General Mola's in a plane crash.
June 12
*In Moscow, Marshal Tukhachevski and seven generals were shot for treason.
July 2
*The aviatrix Amelia Earhart disappeared on a flight from New Guinea to Howland Island.
July 16
*The Buchenwald concentration camp was opened near Weimar. Over the next eight years, 56,500 people would die in its gas chambers.
August 11
*General Bake Sidqi, Dictator of Iraq, was assassinated by a Kurd.
October 11
*In the Spanish Civil War, Gijon fell to Franco.
October 28
*The Spanish government moved from Valencia to Barcelona.
*The Moscow show trials began as Stalin made examples of disloyal and prominent party members.
February 8
*In Spain, Franco captured Malaga.
April 26
*The unarmed Basque town of Guernica was destroyed by German bombers, which dropped explosives and incendiaries for three hours while Heinkel fighter planes strafed the surrounding fields, killing civilians trying to escape.
June 3
*The Spanish Civil War continued, in spite of the death of General Mola's in a plane crash.
June 12
*In Moscow, Marshal Tukhachevski and seven generals were shot for treason.
July 2
*The aviatrix Amelia Earhart disappeared on a flight from New Guinea to Howland Island.
July 16
*The Buchenwald concentration camp was opened near Weimar. Over the next eight years, 56,500 people would die in its gas chambers.
August 11
*General Bake Sidqi, Dictator of Iraq, was assassinated by a Kurd.
October 11
*In the Spanish Civil War, Gijon fell to Franco.
October 28
*The Spanish government moved from Valencia to Barcelona.
*****
*Walt Disney's animated feature Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs premiered.
*The Hindenburg dirigible exploded while attempting to land in Lakehurst, New Jersey.
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