1930 Pan-African Chronology

1930

Pan-African Chronology

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January

*In South Africa, an African National Congress executive resigned in protest against President Josiah Gumede's close ties with communists.

January 23

*Derek Walcott, the 1992 recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature, was born in Castries, Saint Lucia.

January 27

*Bobby "Blue" Bland, a legendary blues singer, was born in Rosemark, Tennessee.

February 21

*Richard B. Harrison starred as "De Lawd" in The Green Pastures, which opened on Broadway.

February 26

*The President of the Dominican Republic Horacio Vasquez fled Santo Domingo as rebel forces led by General Rafael Trujillo, a person of African descent, toppled his government.

March 9

*Jazz saxophonist Ornette Coleman, the principal initiator and leading exponent of free jazz, was born in Fort Worth, Texas.

March 13

*Jazz trumpeter Richard "Blue" Mitchell was born in Miami, Florida.

March 22

*Willie Thrower, the first African American to appear at the quarterback position in the National Football League, was born New Kensington, Pennsylvania.

March 24

*David Dacko, the first President of the Central African Republic, was born the village of Bouchia, near Mbaiki in the Lobaye region, which was then a part of the French Equatorial African territory of Moyen Congo (Middle Congo) (March 24).

March 31

*President Hoover appointed Judge John J. Parker of North Carolina, a known racist, to the Supreme Court.  The NAACP launched a successful campaign against Parker's confirmation.

*Gugsa Welle, the husband of the Ethiopian Empress Zewditu and the Shum (Governor) of Begemder Province, was met by forces loyal to Negus Tafari (the future Haile Selassie) and was defeated at the Battle of Anchem.  Gugsa Welle was killed in action. 

April

*In South Africa, Pixley Seme replaced Josiah Gumede as President of the African National Congress.

April 2

*Zewditu (also spelled Zawditu or Zauditu; April 29, 1876 – April 2, 1930), the Empress of Ethiopia from 1916 to 1930, died.  

May 4

*Katherine Esther Jackson (nee Scruse; born Kattie B. Screws), the matriarch of the Jackson musical family, was born in Clayton, Alabama. 

May 6

*Charles Gilpin, a noted stage actor, died in Eldridge Park, New Jersey.

May 7

*The U.S. Senate rejected President Hoover's Supreme Court Justice nominee John J. Parker by a vote of 41–39. The NAACP successfully campaigned to defeat confirmation of Supreme Court nominee John H. Parker, who was on record in opposition to voting rights for African Americans.

May 9

*A mob in Sherman, Texas, burned down a courthouse during the trial of George Hughes, an African-American man who was accused of assaulting his boss' wife, a white woman. The mob attacked the courthouse vault, retrieved the dead body of Hughes, dragged it behind an automobile and hanged it from a tree. National Guard troops were sent to Sherman to restore order as the mob looted stores in the African American business district.

May 10

*Texas Governor Dan Moody placed the city of Sherman under martial law. 14 rioters were placed under arrest.

*The National Pan-Hellenic Council was formed on the campus of Howard University in Washington, D. C.

May 16

*General elections were held in the Dominican Republic.  Rafael Trujillo was elected president unopposed when opposition candidates withdrew their names in protest, accusing members of the body overseeing the election of being appointed illegally.

*Jazz singer Betty Carter, popularly known as "Betty Bebop" was born in Flint, Michigan.

May 19

*Playwright Lorraine Hansberry, who would write A Raisin in the Sun, was born in Chicago,

June 7

*In a gesture meant to convey respect, the New York Times began capitalizing the word "Negro" in its pages.

June 11

*Charles Rangel, a New York Congressman, was born in New York City.

June 22

*Mary McLeod Bethune, a Florida African American educator, feminist leader, and civil rights spokesperson, was named one of America's fifty leading women by the historian Ida Tarbell. Bethune was born in Maysville, South Carolina in 1875.  She studied at Scotia Seminary in North Carolina and at the Moody Bible Institute in Chicago.  In 1904, Bethune founded the Bethune-Cookman College at Daytona Beach, Florida.  A recipient of the Medal of Merit from the Republic of Haiti and the NAACP Spingarn Award, Bethune was president of the National Council of Negro Women and the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History.  She was a principal advisor as well as a friend to President and Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt.

July 2

*Ahmad Jamal,  (b. Frederick Russell Jones), an American jazz pianist known for his rendition of But Not ForMe, was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. 

July 24

Charles Decatur Brooks, also known as C. D. Brooks (b. July 24, 1930, Greensboro, North Carolina - d. June 5, 2016, Laurel, Maryland) was a Seventh-day Adventist evangelist best known for his Breath of Life television ministry.

Charles Decatur (C.D.) Brooks was born in Greensboro, North Carolina, on July 24, 1930, the tenth child of Marvin and Mattie Brooks. Although Methodists at the time, shortly after C.D.’s birth the Brooks family began observing the seventh-day Sabbath in honor of a pledge Mattie Brooks made to God while in a hospital bed suffering from a near-fatal illness. Learning more truth years later from reading Ellen G. White's The Great Controversy, C.D., along with his mother and six sisters, was baptized into the Seventh-day Adventist Church on a Sabbath in 1940. In 1947 after attending an evangelistic tent meeting, C.D. remained under the tent long after the last person had departed. “Charles, I want you to make truth clear,” C.D. distinctly heard a voice say, and then had a vision of himself standing behind the pulpit at the front of the tent, proclaiming the truth with power and clarity. Brooks immediately jettisoned his career plans for dentistry for the ministry, setting his sights on Oakwood.

At Oakwood, Brooks met the love of his life, Walterene Wagner, daughter of John H. Wagner, Sr., a stalwart of 20thcentury black Adventism. Along with other roles, Wagner was the first president of Allegheny Conference, one of the five inaugural leaders of regional conferences in 1945.

In 1951, Brooks graduated from Oakwood College (now Oakwood University) in Huntsville, Alabama, with a degree in theology.
 
Brooks and Walterene were united in marriage on September 14, 1952, at the Ebenezer Seventh-day Adventist Church in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Brooks would go on to serve the Columbia Union as a pastor, evangelist and administrator until 1971, working mostly in Pennsylvania, Delaware, New Jersey, and Ohio.

In 1971 C.D. Brooks was asked by General Conference (GC) president Robert Pierson to serve as a field secretary for the Seventh-day Adventist world church, a role he held until 1995, making him the longest tenured field secretary in church history. While serving at the GC, Brooks took on the dual role as speaker/director for the Breath of Life Ministry, a new television ministry of the GC that was produced at the Adventist Media Center in Thousand Oaks, California. Brooks partnered with Walter Arties, Louis B. Reynolds, and the Breath of Life Quartet to produce television programming that reached out to audiences all around the world. As speaker-director of Breath of Life, Brooks took his place among legendary Adventist media revolutionaries such as H.M.S. Richards, George Vandeman, and William Fagal. In 1989 the ministry was broadcast on Black Entertainment Television (BET), and reached a potential audience of more than 90 million people a week.

Brooks was speaker-director of Breath of Life Ministries for 23 years, from 1974 to 1997. In his time at the helm, the ministry brought approximately 15,000 people to Christ, established 15 Breath of Life congregations, and was viewed by untold millions. In 1994 Brooks was inducted into the Martin Luther King, Jr. Board of Preachers and Collegium of Scholars at Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia.

In 1996 health challenges forced Brooks to retire from the General Conference and in 1997 he stepped down as speaker-director for Breath of Life. Brooks had a long and productive retirement and in 2007, in honor of E.E. Cleveland, Charles Bradford, and C.D. Brooks, the Bradford-Cleveland-Brooks Leadership Center (BCBLC) was established. The center is housed on the campus of Oakwood University in a 10,000-square-foot, $2.5 million state-of-the-art edifice.

On December 1, 2010, the Ellen G. White Estate elected Brooks a lifetime member of the Ellen G. White Estate Board. The North American Division invited Brooks to be its chaplain in residence in 2013, a position he held until his death.

August 2

*Eddie Locke (August 2, 1930 – September 7, 2009, Ramsey, New Jersey), a jazz drummer who became a member of the Coleman Hawkins Quartet in the 1960s, was born.

August 6

*Abbey Lincoln (b. Anna Marie Woolridge), an American jazz vocalist, songwriter, and actress, who wrote and performed her own compositions, was born in Chicago, Illinois. She was a civil rights advocate during the 1960s.  

August 7

*Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith were lynched in Marion, Indiana.  There were beaten and hanged.  James Cameron survived. This would be the last recorded lynching of African Americans in the Northern United States. 

September 3

*A hurricane struck the Dominican Republic, killing over 8,000 people and doing as estimated $15 million in damage.

September 7

*Sonny Rollins (b. Theodore Walter Rollins), an American jazz tenor saxophonist, widely recognized as one of the most important and influential jazz musicians, was born in New York, New York.  A number of his compositions, including "St. Thomas", "Oleo", "Doxy", "Pent-Up House", and "Airegin", became jazz standards. 

September 9

*Frank Lucas, a former heroin dealer, who operated in Harlem during the late 1960s and early 1970s, was born in La Grange, North Carolina.

September 13

*Bola Ige (b. James Ajibola Idowu Ige), a Nigerian lawyer and politician, was born in Zaria, Kaduna. 

September 19

*Muhal Abrams, the founder of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, was born in Chicago, Illinois.

September 20

*Kenneth Mopeli, the Chief Minister of the South African bantustan of QwaQwa from 1975 to 1994, was born in Namahadi.

September 23

*Ray Charles, a jazz, soul, and pop singer, was born in Albany, Georgia.  Blind by the age of six, he would become one of  America's most-beloved performing artists.

September 24

*Cardiss Robertson Collins was born in St. Louis, Missouri.  In 1973, she would be elected to the United States House of Representatives.

September 29

*National Guardsmen in Huntsville, Alabama, attacked a crowd around the Madison County jail with tear gas bombs. The mob was trying to storm the jail where an African-American man was being held in connection with the murder of a businessman.

September 30

*Students at the University of Havana held a demonstration against president Gerardo Machado.  Police blocked the streets and during the ensuing clashes, a student leader by the name of Rafael Trejo was killed. Trejo was later held up to be a martyr and a hero in Cuban history.

October 3

*Revolution broke out in Brazil against the rule of President Washington Luis.

October 4


*The Cuban congress granted the request of President Gerardo Machado to suspend the constitution in and around Havana until after general elections on November 1.

October 8

*The artist Faith Ringgold was born in New York.

October 14

*Mobutu Sese Seko, a President of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, was born in Lisala, Belgian Congo.

October 22

*Lew Leslie's Blackbirds of 1930 premiered at New York's Royal Theater with Ethel Waters and Cecil Mack's Choir.  Songs in the musical include "Memories of You" by Eubie Blake with lyrics by Andy Razaf.  The musical would have 57 performances.

October 24

*Brazil's three-week civil war ended in rebel victory as President Washington Luis resigned.

October 29

*Omara Portuondo Peláez, a singer and dancer whose career spanned over half a century was born in Havana, Cuba. She was one of the original members of the Cuarteto d'Aida, and performed with Ignacio Pineiro, Orquesta Anacaona, Orquesta Aragon, Nat King Cole, Adalberto Alvarez, Los Van Van, the Buena Vista ensemble, Pupy Pedroso, Chucho Valdes and Juan Formell. 

November 2

*Ras Tafari, who took the name Haile Selassie when he was proclaimed Negus (King) in 1928, was crowned King of Kings at Addis Adaba.  He would reign until 1974 and be regarded by Jamaican Rastafarians as the living God.  He was seen as fulfilling a prophecy of Marcus Garvey, "Look to Africa, where a black king shall be crowned, for the day of deliverance is near."

November 3

*Getulio Vargas became President of Brazil.

November 6

*Derrick Albert Bell, Jr. (November 6, 1930 – October 5, 2011), the first tenured African American Professor of Law at Harvard Law School who is largely credited as one of the originators of critical race theory (CRT), was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He was a visiting professor at New York University School of Law from 1991 until his death. He was also a dean of the University of Oregon School of Law.  

*Leslie Lee, a Tony Award-nominated playwright, was born in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania.

November 8

*The United States and Britain extended formal recognition to the new Brazilian government.

November 10

*Clarence Pendleton, Jr. was born in Louisville, Kentucky.  Pendleton would become the first African American chairperson of the United States Civil Rights Commission in 1981.

November 13

*Cuban President Gerardo Machado suspended the Constitution for 25 days as rioting in Havana killed 7.

November 16

*Chinua Achebe, a Nigerian novelist whose first novel, Things Fall Apart, became the most widely read book in modern African literature, was born in Ogidi, Nigeria Protectorate.

November 18

*Stenio Vincent was elected President of Haiti by the National Assembly.
 
December

*In South Africa, African National Congress "radicals" in the Western Cape formed an independent African National Congress.

December 6

*Daniel Muchiwa Lisulo, the Prime Minister of Zambia from June 1978 until February 1981, was born in Mongu, Zambia.

December 9 

*Andrew "Rube" Foster, a baseball player, manager, and pioneer executive in the Negro Leagues, died in Kankakee, Illinois. Known as the "Father of Black Baseball", Foster was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1981.

December 16

*In South Africa, Communist leader Johannes Nkosi was killed during a protest in Durban (December 16-17). 

December 20

*Pat Hare, a blues guitarist and singer, was born in Cherry Valley, Arkansas.

December 21

*Adebayo Adedeji (b. Ijebu-Ode, December 21, 1930), a Nigerian politician who was an Executive Secretary to the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa from 1975 to 1978, and the United Nations Under-Secretary-General from 1978 until 1991, was born. He became the founding Executive Director of the African Centre for Development and Strategic Studies (ACDESS) in 1991.

December 24

*Mel Triplett, a star running back for the New York Giants football team, was born in Indianola, Mississippi.

December 29

*Walter Cohen, a Republican politician and businessman, died in New Orleans, Louisiana.

December 31

*Odetta, the folksinger and activist known as "The Voice of the Civil Rights Movement" was born in Birmingham, Alabama.