1932
Pan-African Chronology
Pan-African Chronology
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March 12
*Civil rights leader Andrew Young was born in New Orleans, Louisiana. Young became the first African American United Nations ambassador and Mayor of Atlanta.
April 2
*Bill Pickett, one of the most famous performing cowboys of his day, died (April 2). Publicly acclaimed by President Theodore Roosevelt, Pickett performed throughout Europe and the United States, where he was often assisted by two young European American cowboys, Tom Mix and Will Rogers.
April 4
*Charles Powell, a professional football player, was born.
April 17
*Haile Selassie announced an anti-slavery law in Abyssinia.
April 17
*Haile Selassie announced an anti-slavery law in Abyssinia.
July 16
*Poet Mari Evans was born in Toledo, Ohio. Her most famous works would include I Am a Black Woman and Nightstar: 1973-78.
August 21
*Melvin Van Peebles, a motion picture producer and director, was born in Chicago. His films include Watermelon Man, Sweet Sweetback's Baadasss Song, and Putney Swope.
October 5
*Yvonne Brathwaite Burke, the first African-American congresswoman from California and the first woman to chair the Congressional Black Caucus, was born in Los Angeles, California.
October 12
*Comedian and civil rights activist Richard "Dick" Gregory was born in Saint Louis, Missouri.
November 8
*Franklin Delano Roosevelt was elected President of the United States, promising a "New Deal" to all in the Depression-ridden nation.
November 9
A hurricane and huge waves killed about 2,500 in Santa Cruz del Sur in the worst natural disaster in Cuban history.
December 5
*Rhythm and blues singer "Little Richard" Penniman, a formative figure in rock 'n' roll music, was born in Macon, Georgia.
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Faced with agricultural distress and racial oppression in the South, a new wave of African American migration began into the major industrial centers of the North in search of economic and social opportunities.
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George Washington Carver
In 1932, the writer James Saxon Childers wrote that Carver and his peanut products were almost solely responsible for the rise in United States peanut production after the boll weevil devastated the American cotton crop beginning about 1892. His article, "A Boy Who Was Traded for a Horse" (1932), in The American Magazine, and its 1937 reprint in Reader's Digest, contributed to this legend about Carver's influence.
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The United States
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Prior to 1932, African Americans had traditionally voted Republican, the party of Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass. Franklin Delano Roosevelt's 1932 promise of a "New Deal for all Americans" caused only a slight shift toward the Democratic Party. Some African Americans voted instead for the Communist Party, whose vice-presidential candidate was an African American, James W. Ford. By 1936, the voting picture had changed dramatically.
In the Presidential election, Franklin Delano Roosevelt did not receive much of the African American vote. To a certain extent the African American still identified with the Republican Party. Also, Roosevelt's running mate, John Nance Garner was a Texan. In Chicago, for example, Roosevelt received only 23% of the African American vote. Another factor in the low African American vote for Roosevelt may have been that James W. Ford, an African American, was the Vice Presidential candidate of the Communist Party.
However, Roosevelt soon became extremely popular, due to the ties which he and Mrs. Roosevelt established with prominent African Americans. Roosevelt employed African American advisors in numbers much greater than previous Administrations. The "Black Cabinet" included: Robert Vann, assistant to the Attorney General; William Hastie, Assistant Solicitor, in the Department of Interior; Eugene Kinckle Jones, adviser on Negro Affairs in the Department of Commerce; Lawrence Oxley, in the Division of Negro Labor in the Department of Labor; Mary McLeod Bethune, director of the Division of Negro Affairs of the National Youth Administration; Edgar Brown, adviser on Negro Affairs in the Civilian Conservation Corps; Frank Horne, in several capacities with Federal housing programs; and William Trent as a race relations adviser in the Department of the Interior and in the Public Works Agency.
Four years later, in 1936, grateful for President Roosevelt's relief programs and record number of African American appointments to high offices, as well as for First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt's advocacy of civil rights, African Americans voted overwhelmingly Democratic -- setting a pattern that continued into the future.
In the Presidential election, Franklin Delano Roosevelt did not receive much of the African American vote. To a certain extent the African American still identified with the Republican Party. Also, Roosevelt's running mate, John Nance Garner was a Texan. In Chicago, for example, Roosevelt received only 23% of the African American vote. Another factor in the low African American vote for Roosevelt may have been that James W. Ford, an African American, was the Vice Presidential candidate of the Communist Party.
However, Roosevelt soon became extremely popular, due to the ties which he and Mrs. Roosevelt established with prominent African Americans. Roosevelt employed African American advisors in numbers much greater than previous Administrations. The "Black Cabinet" included: Robert Vann, assistant to the Attorney General; William Hastie, Assistant Solicitor, in the Department of Interior; Eugene Kinckle Jones, adviser on Negro Affairs in the Department of Commerce; Lawrence Oxley, in the Division of Negro Labor in the Department of Labor; Mary McLeod Bethune, director of the Division of Negro Affairs of the National Youth Administration; Edgar Brown, adviser on Negro Affairs in the Civilian Conservation Corps; Frank Horne, in several capacities with Federal housing programs; and William Trent as a race relations adviser in the Department of the Interior and in the Public Works Agency.
Four years later, in 1936, grateful for President Roosevelt's relief programs and record number of African American appointments to high offices, as well as for First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt's advocacy of civil rights, African Americans voted overwhelmingly Democratic -- setting a pattern that continued into the future.
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*The Tuskegee syphilis experiment began.
The Tuskegee syphilis experiment was a clinical study conducted between 1932 and 1972 in Tuskegee, Alabama, by the United States Public Health Service. In the experiment, 400 impoverished black males who had syphilis were offered "treatment" by the researchers, who did not tell the test subjects that they had syphilis and did not give them treatment for the disease, but rather just studied them to chart the progress of the disease. By 1947, penicillin became available as treatment, but those running the study prevented study participants from receiving treatment elsewhere, lying to them about their true condition, so that they could observe the effects of syphilis on the human body. By the end of the study in 1972, only 74 of the test subjects were alive. 28 of the original 399 men had died of syphilis, 100 were dead of related complications, 40 of their wives had been infected, and 19 of their children were born with congenital syphilis. The study was not shut down until 1972, when its existence was leaked to the press, forcing the researchers to stop in the face of a public outcry.
Faced with agricultural distress and racial oppression in the South, a new wave of African American migration began into the major industrial centers of the North in search of economic and social opportunities.
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George Washington Carver
In 1932, the writer James Saxon Childers wrote that Carver and his peanut products were almost solely responsible for the rise in United States peanut production after the boll weevil devastated the American cotton crop beginning about 1892. His article, "A Boy Who Was Traded for a Horse" (1932), in The American Magazine, and its 1937 reprint in Reader's Digest, contributed to this legend about Carver's influence.
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Father Divine
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By May 1932, meetings were regularly held of Father Divine's followers at Rockland and throughout New York and New Jersey. Father Divine had supporters in Washington state, California and throughout the world thanks to New Thought devotees like Eugene Del Mar, an early convert and former Harlem journalist, and Henry Joerns, the publisher of a New Thought magazine in Seattle. Curiously, although the movement was predominantly black, followers outside the Northeast were mostly middle class whites.
In this period of expansions, several branch communes were opened in New York and New Jersey. Father Divine's followers finally named the movement: the International Peace Mission Peace Mission movement.
Father Divine's trial was finally held on May 24, 1932. His lawyer, Ellee J. Lovelace, a prominent Harlem African American and former United States Attorney had requested the trial be moved outside of Suffolk County, due to potential jury bias. The court acquiesced, and the trial took place at the Nassau County Supreme Court before Justice Lewis J. Smith. The jury found him guilty on June 5 but asked for leniency on behalf of Father Divine. Ignoring this request, Justice Smith lectured on how Father Divine was a fraud and "menace to society" before issuing the maximum sentence for disturbing the peace, one year in prison and a $500 fine.
Smith, 55, died of a heart attack days later on June 9, 1932. Father Divine was widely reported to have commented on the death, "I hated to do it." In fact, he wrote to his followers, "I did not desire Judge Smith to die.… I did desire that MY spirit would touch his heart and change his mind that he might repent and believe and be saved from the grave."
The impression that Justice Smith's death was divine retribution was perpetuated by the press, which failed to report Smith's prior heart problems and implied the death to be more sudden and unexpected than it was.
During his brief prison stay, Father Divine read prodigiously, notably on the Scottsboro Nine. After his attorneys secured release through an appeal on June 25, 1932, he declared that the foundational documents of the United States of America, such as the Constitution and Declaration of Independence, were inspired. Father Divine also taught that contemporary leaders strayed from these ideals, but he would become increasingly patriotic through his life.
Father Divine moved to Harlem, New York, where he had accumulated significant following in the black community. Members, rather than Father Divine himself, held most deeds for the movement, but they contributed toward Father Divine's comfortable lifestyle. Purchasing several hotels, which they called "Heavens", members could live and seek jobs inexpensively. The movement also opened several budget enterprises, including restaurants and clothing shops, that sold cheaply by cutting overheads. These proved very successful in the depression. Economical, cash-only businesses were actually part of Father Divine's doctrine.
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W. E. B. DuBois
In 1932, Du Bois was selected by several philanthropies – including the Phelps-Stokes Fund, the Carnegie Corporation, and the General Education Board – to be the managing editor for a proposed Encyclopedia of the Negro, a work Du Bois had been contemplating for 30 years. After several years of planning and organizing, the philanthropies cancelled the project in 1938, because some board members believed that Du Bois was too biased to produce an objective encyclopedia.
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W. E. B. DuBois
In 1932, Du Bois was selected by several philanthropies – including the Phelps-Stokes Fund, the Carnegie Corporation, and the General Education Board – to be the managing editor for a proposed Encyclopedia of the Negro, a work Du Bois had been contemplating for 30 years. After several years of planning and organizing, the philanthropies cancelled the project in 1938, because some board members believed that Du Bois was too biased to produce an objective encyclopedia.
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The Communist Party
*The Communist Party selected an African American, James W. Ford, as its vice-presidential candidate.
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Educational Institutions
*Among the 117 African American institutions of higher education, 36 were public, 81 were private (74 of which were church-affiliated), and 5 offered graduate-level instruction. Before 1937, only five offered graduate level education.
*Between 1913 and 1932, the Rosenwald Fund had aided in the construction of more than 5,000 school buildings for the education of African Americans in 15 Southern states. African Americans contributed 17% of the money disbursed by the Fund.
*Howard University began publishing the Journal of Negro Education.
The Labor Movement
*Ten African Americans were killed when European American employees of the Illinois Central Railroad tried to prevent African Americans from working there.
Literature and Journalism
*Countee Cullen published his only novel, One Way to Harlem.
*Wallace Thurman's novel Infants of the Spring was published. It is considered to be one of the last novels of the Harlem Renaissance.
*Rudolph Fisher published The Conjure Man Dies, the first African American detective novel.
*Victor Daly's novel, Not Only War, an attack on racism within the United States Army during World War I, was published. The novel concerns the racial tensions over French women.
*The James Weldon Johnson Literary Guild conducted a nationwide poetry contest for African American children. One winner was Margaret Walker of New Orleans with her poem "When Night Comes."
Medicine
*Aliene Carrington Ewell founded a society for African American nurses, Chi Eta Phi, in Washington, D. C. It would expand to 72 chapters in 22 states.
Music
*Thomas Dorsey, the "Father of Gospel", established the first music publishing firm dedicated only to gospel music.
*The NAACP published "Mississippi River Slavery - 1932" after investigating the conditions of African-American workers on federal flood-control projects. It would lead to a United States Senate investigation and to the setting of federal standards for minimum conditions and wages.
The NAACP published 10,000 copies of a leaflet, Mississippi River Slavery - 1932. It was the result of an investigation made by Roy Wilkins and George Schuyler into conditions on Federal flood-control projects. Wilkins and Schuyler carried out their investigations by working on some projects. In 1933, Senate investigations began and resulted in the government setting minimum standards for conditions and for wages for all workers.
The Nation of Islam
*Communist attempts at infiltration of the Black Muslim movement proved unsuccessful.
Notable Births
*Yvonne Brathwaite Burke, the first African-American congresswoman from California and the first woman to chair the Congressional Black Caucus, was born in Los Angeles, California (October 5).
Yvonne Brathwaite Burke (b. October 5, 1932) was a politician from Los Angeles, California, United States. She was the first African-American woman to represent the West Coast in Congress. She served in congress from 1973 until the end of 1978. She was the Los Angeles County Supervisor representing the 2nd District (1992–2008). She served as the Chair of the Board of Supervisors three times (1993–94, 1997–98, 2002–03).
Yvonne Brathwaite Burke (b. October 5, 1932) was a politician from Los Angeles, California, United States. She was the first African-American woman to represent the West Coast in Congress. She served in congress from 1973 until the end of 1978. She was the Los Angeles County Supervisor representing the 2nd District (1992–2008). She served as the Chair of the Board of Supervisors three times (1993–94, 1997–98, 2002–03).
Born Perle Yvonne Watson on October 5, 1932, in Los Angeles to James A. Watson and the former Lola Moore. She married William A. Burke in Los Angeles on June 14, 1972. To this union was born a daughter, Autumn Roxanne on November 23, 1973.
Burke attended the University of California at Berkeley from 1949 to 1951; and the University of California at Los Angeles from 1951 to 1953 where she received a bachelor's degree; She then attended the University of Southern California Law School and received a juris doctor degree in 1956
*Poet Mari Evans was born in Toledo, Ohio (July 16). Her most famous works would include I Am a Black Woman and Nightstar: 1973-78.
Mari Evans (b. July 16, 1923) grew up in Toledo, Ohio. She attended the University of Toledo.
Born in Toledo, Ohio, Evans was 10 years old when her mother died, and she was subsequently encouraged in her writing by her father, as she recalls in her essay "My Father's Passage" (1984). She attended local public schools before going on to the University of Toledo, where she majored in fashion design in 1939, though left without a degree. She began a series of teaching appointments in American universities in 1969. During 1969–70, she served as writer in residence at Indiana University-Purdue, where she taught courses in African-American Literature. The next year, she accepted a position as writer in residence at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana. From 1968 to 1973, Mari Evans produced, wrote and directed the television program The Black Experience for WTTV in Indianapolis. She received an honorary degree from Marian College in 1975. Evans continued her teaching career at Purdue (1978–80), at Washington University in Saint Louis (1980), at Cornell University (1981–85), and the State University of New York at Albany (1985–86).
Among her books of poetry are A Dark and Splendid Mass (1992), Nightstar: 1973-1978 (1981), I Am a Black Woman (1970), and Where Is All the Music? (1968). Her books for children include Dear Corinne, Tell Somebody! Love, Annie: A Book about Secrets (1999), Singing Black: Alternative Nursery Rhymes for Children (1998, illustrated by Ramon Price) Jim Flying High (1979, illustrated by Ashley Bryan), Rap Stories (1974), and J.D. (1973, illustrated by Jerry Pinkney).
She is also the author of the plays Eye (a 1979 adaptation of Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God) and River of My Song (first produced in 1977).
She is a contributor to and an editor of the volume Black Women Writers (1950-1980): A Critical Evaluation (1984), and has taught at colleges and universities including Spelman College, Purdue University, and Cornell University.
Among her honors are fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the John Hay Whitney Fellowship. In 1997, she was celebrated with her photo on a Ugandan postage stamp.
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*Comedian and civil rights activist Richard "Dick" Gregory was born in Saint Louis, Missouri (October 12).
Gregory wrote many books, including Nigger: An Autobiography (1964) and No More Lies: The Myth and the Reality of American History (1971). He made a brief return to the comedy circuit in the mid-1990s.
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Dick Gregory, byname of Richard Claxton Gregory (b. October 12, 1932, St. Louis, Missouri), African-American comedian, civil rights activist, and spokesman for health issues, who became nationally recognized in the 1960s for a biting brand of comedy that attacked racial prejudice. By addressing his hard-hitting satire to white audiences, he gave a comedic voice to the rising Civil Rights Movement. In the 1980s his nutrition business venture targeted unhealthy diets of black Americans.
Reared in poverty in St. Louis, Gregory began working at an early age to help support his family. He was involved in sports and social causes in high school, and he entered Southern Illinois University on an athletic scholarship in 1951, excelling as a middle-distance runner. He was named the university’s outstanding student athlete in 1953, the same year he left college to join the U.S. Army, where he hosted and performed comedy routines in military shows.
After a brief return to his alma mater in 1955-56, Gregory sought entrance to the national comedy circuit in Chicago. His breakthrough came in 1961, when a one-nighter at the Chicago Playboy Club turned into a six-week stint that earned him a profile in Time magazine and a television appearance on “The Jack Paar Show.” In his numerous subsequent television, nightclub, and concert routines, he targeted poverty, segregation, and racial discrimination. Active in the Civil Rights Movement, he participated in numerous demonstrations and was arrested for civil disobedience several times. In 1963 he was jailed in Birmingham, Alabama. His activism spurred him to run for mayor of Chicago in 1966 and for president of the United States in 1968.
In the early 1970s Gregory abandoned comedy to focus on his political interests, which widened from race relations to include such issues as violence, world hunger, capital punishment, drug abuse, and poor health care. He generated particular attention for his many hunger fasts. At this time he became a vegetarian, a marathon runner, and an expert on nutrition. He soon began a successful business venture with his nutritional product, the “Bahamian Diet,” around which he built Dick Gregory Health Enterprises, Inc. Through his company, he targeted the lower life expectancy of African Americans, which he attributed to poor nutrition and drug and alcohol abuse.
Gregory wrote many books, including Nigger: An Autobiography (1964) and No More Lies: The Myth and the Reality of American History (1971). He made a brief return to the comedy circuit in the mid-1990s.
*Rhythm and blues singer "Little Richard" Penniman, a formative figure in rock 'n' roll music, was born in Macon, Georgia (December 5).
As his success grew, Little Richard appeared in some of the earliest rock-and-roll movies: Don’t Knock the Rock and The Girl Can’t Help It (both 1956) and Mr. Rock and Roll (1957). In the latter he stands at the piano belting out songs with a dark intensity that, in the bland Eisenhower years, seemed excessive, an impression amplified by his bizarre six-inch pompadour, eyeliner, and pancake makeup. At the very peak of his fame, however, he concluded that rock and roll was the Devil’s work; he abandoned the music business, enrolled in Bible college, and became a traveling Evangelical preacher. When the Beatles skyrocketed onto the music scene in 1964, they sang several of his classic songs and openly acknowledged their debt to their great forebear. This renewed attention inspired Little Richard to return to the stage and the recording studio for another shot at stardom. Although a new song, “Bama Lama Bama Loo” (1964), invoked the fun and vitality of his heyday, record-buying youngsters were not impressed. A major recording contract in the early 1970s produced three albums for Reprise Records — The Rill Thing, King of Rock ’n’ Roll, and Second Coming—collections that showed Little Richard in fine voice but somewhat out of his element in the hard rock styles of the period.
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Little Richard, original name Richard Wayne Penniman (b. December 5, 1932, Macon, Georgia), flamboyant American singer and pianist whose hit songs of the mid-1950s were defining moments in the development of rock and roll.
Born into a family of 12 children, Penniman learned gospel music in Pentecostal churches churches of the Deep South. As a teenager he left home to perform rhythm and blues in medicine shows and nightclubs, where he took the name “Little Richard,” achieving notoriety for high-energy onstage antics. His first recordings in the early 1950s, produced in the soothing jump-blues style of Roy Brown, showed none of the soaring vocal reach that would mark his later singing. His breakthrough came in September 1955 at a recording session at J&M Studio in New Orleans, Louisiana, where Little Richard, backed by a solid rhythm-and-blues band, howled “Tutti Frutti,” with its unforgettable exhortation, “A wop bop a loo bop, a lop bam boom!” In the year and a half that followed, he released a string of songs on Specialty Records that sold well among both African American and European American audiences: “Rip It Up,” “Long Tall Sally,” “Ready Teddy,” “Good Golly, Miss Molly,” and “Send Me Some Lovin’,” among others. Blessed with a phenomenal voice able to generate croons, wails, and screams unprecedented in popular music, Little Richard scored hits that combined childishly amusing lyrics with sexually suggestive undertones. Along with Elvis Presley's records for the Sun label in the mid-1950s, Little Richard’s sessions from the same period offer models of singing and musicianship that have inspired rock musicians ever since.
As his success grew, Little Richard appeared in some of the earliest rock-and-roll movies: Don’t Knock the Rock and The Girl Can’t Help It (both 1956) and Mr. Rock and Roll (1957). In the latter he stands at the piano belting out songs with a dark intensity that, in the bland Eisenhower years, seemed excessive, an impression amplified by his bizarre six-inch pompadour, eyeliner, and pancake makeup. At the very peak of his fame, however, he concluded that rock and roll was the Devil’s work; he abandoned the music business, enrolled in Bible college, and became a traveling Evangelical preacher. When the Beatles skyrocketed onto the music scene in 1964, they sang several of his classic songs and openly acknowledged their debt to their great forebear. This renewed attention inspired Little Richard to return to the stage and the recording studio for another shot at stardom. Although a new song, “Bama Lama Bama Loo” (1964), invoked the fun and vitality of his heyday, record-buying youngsters were not impressed. A major recording contract in the early 1970s produced three albums for Reprise Records — The Rill Thing, King of Rock ’n’ Roll, and Second Coming—collections that showed Little Richard in fine voice but somewhat out of his element in the hard rock styles of the period.
In the late 1990s Little Richard continued to appear at concerts and festivals, performing songs that had become cherished international standards. He remained a frequent guest on television talk shows and children’s programs, but his madcap mannerisms, so threatening to parents in the 1950s, had come to seem amusingly safe. Having weathered a career marked by extraordinary changes in direction, Little Richard survived not only as the self-proclaimed “architect of rock and roll” but also as a living treasure of 20th-century American culture.
*Charles Powell, a professional football player, was born (April 4).
Charles Elvin Powell (April 4, 1932 – September 1, 2014) was an American professional football player.
Powell was born in Texas. He and his younger brother Art Powell, a great NFL wide receiver for the Oakland Raiders in the 1960s, grew up in the Logan Heights area of San Diego, California.
Powell played professional baseball and football as well as boxed. His greatest success was as an NFL player and a boxer, even fighting Muhammad Ali.
Charlie starred in football, basketball, track and baseball at San Diego High School. In 1950, as a 6'-3", 230-pound defensive end and offensive end, with tremendous power and speed, he was named the California high school football player of the year. In track, he ran 100 yards in 9.6 seconds and threw the shot put 57 feet 9¼ inches. In basketball, he was a second-team all-league center. As a high school baseball player, he hit balls out of San Diego Balboa Stadium. He turned a down an offer of a tryout by the Harlem Globetrotters.
After High School, Charlie was recruited by Notre Dame and UCLA to play football, St. Louis Browns baseball owner Bill Veeck, who had acquired the legendary pitcher Satchel Paige from the Cleveland Indians, signed the power-hitting outfielder to a professional baseball contract. He was sent to the Stockton Ports, a Class B minor league team.
After playing pro baseball in the summer of 1952, Charlie suddenly abandoned his pro baseball career and signed a pro football contract with the San Francisco 49ers. At 19, he became the youngest player in NFL history. In his first game, he started against the NFL champion Detroit Lions and had multiple sacks against QB Bobby Layne totaling 67 yards in losses.
Powell played five seasons in the NFL for the 49ers (1952–53 and 1955–57) and two for the Oakland Raiders (1960–61).
Powell was also a professional boxer. In March 1959, on television, he knocked out Nino Valdes of Cuba who was the number 2 ranked heavyweight fighter in the world at the time. Powell fought Muhammad Ali (who was then known as Cassius Clay) at the Civic Arena in Pittsburgh on January 24, 1963. He was knocked out in the third round. He finished his pro boxing career with a record of 25-11-3. In his career, Charlie also fought Floyd Patterson, losing to him in 6 rounds.
Powell was a member of the Breitbard San Diego Hall of Fame. Powell died on September 1, 2014, at age of 82 after living with dementia for several years.
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*Melvin Van Peebles, a motion picture producer and director, was born in Chicago (August 21). His films include Watermelon Man, Sweet Sweetback's Baadasss Song, and Putney Swope.
Melvin Van Peebles, original name Melvin Peebles (b. August 21, 1932, Chicago, Illinois), American filmmaker who wrote, directed, and starred in Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song (1971), a groundbreaking film that spearheaded the rush of African American action films known as "blaxploitation" in the 1970s. He also served as the film’s composer and editor.
After graduating from Ohio Wesleyan University (B.A., 1953), Van Peebles traveled extensively in Europe, Mexico, and the United States, working a variety of jobs that included painter, postal worker, and street performer along with a stint in the air force. While living in Paris, he wrote several French-language novels, including La Permission (1967), which he turned into his first feature film. The romantic drama was released in France in 1967 and in the United States (as The Story of a Three-Day Pass) the following year. Van Peebles made his Hollywood directorial debut with Watermelon Man (1970), a comedy about racial bigotry. He then turned to his pet project, Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song. Using mostly his own money and relying largely on non-professional actors and technicians, Van Peebles told the story of one African American man’s battle against European American authority. Violent, sexy, and angry, the film scored a huge success with African American audiences (it was one of the top box-office earners that year) while angering many European American critics.
Van Peebles had begun a musical career with the album Brer Soul (1969), which featured a mostly spoken vocal style that prefigured rap. He subsequently moved into Broadway musical theatre, adapting some of his recorded songs for the production Ain’t Supposed to Die a Natural Death (1971) and one of his novels for Don’t Play Us Cheap! (1972; film 1973). Thereafter he continued to write, act, compose, and direct for films, television, and the stage. Subsequent films in which he appeared include O.C. and Stiggs (1985), Boomerang (1992), The Hebrew Hammer (2003), and Peeples (2013). With the comedy Identity Crisis (1989), he ended a 16-year hiatus from screen directing, and he later wrote and directed Le Conte du ventre plein (2000; Bellyful) and Confessions of a Ex-Doofus-Itchy Footed Mutha (2008); none of these efforts, however, were widely seen. In addition to his entertainment career, Van Peebles became involved in commodities trading in the 1980s and was the first African American to hold a seat on the American Stock Exchange.
Van Peebles’s son Mario, who played the character Sweetback as a boy in the 1971 film, became a noted film actor and director in his own right. Besides directing his father in such films as the western Posse (1993), Mario co-wrote, directed, and starred in the feature Baadasssss! (2003), about the making of Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song.
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*Civil rights leader Andrew Young was born in New Orleans, Louisiana (March 12). Young became the first African American United Nations ambassador and Mayor of Atlanta.
Andrew Young, in full Andrew Jackson Young, Jr. (b. March 12, 1932, New Orleans, Louisiana), American politician, civil-rights leader, and clergyman.
Young was reared in a middle-class African American family, attended segregated Southern schools, and later entered Howard University (Washington, D.C.) as a premed student. But he turned to the ministry and graduated in 1955 from the Hartford Theological Seminary (Hartford, Conn.) with a divinity degree.
A pastor at several African American churches in the South, Young became active in the civil-rights movement—especially in voter registration drives. His work brought him in contact with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Young joined with King in leading the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). Following King’s assassination in 1968, Young worked with Ralph Abernathy until he resigned from the SCLC in 1970.
Defeated that year in his first bid for a seat in Congress, Young ran again in 1972 and won. He was re-elected in 1974 and 1976. In the House he opposed cuts in funds for social programs while trying to block additional funding for the war in Vietnam. He was an early supporter of Jimmy Carter, and, after Carter’s victory in the 1976 presidential elections, Andrew Young was made the United States’ Ambassador to the United Nations. His apparent sympathy with the Third World made him very controversial, and he was finally forced to resign in 1979 after it became known that he had met with a representative of the Palestine Liberation Organization. In 1981 Young was elected mayor of Atlanta, and he was re-elected to that post in 1985, serving through 1989.
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Notable Deaths
*There were six recorded lynchings in the United States.
*Ten African Americans were killed when European American employees of the Illinois Central Railroad tried to prevent African Americans from working there.
*Bill Pickett, one of the most famous performing cowboys of his day, died (April 2). Publicly acclaimed by President Theodore Roosevelt, Pickett performed throughout Europe and the United States, where he was often assisted by two young European American cowboys, Tom Mix and Will Rogers.
Bill Pickett, (b. December 5, 1870?, Williamson County, Texas — d. April 2, 1932, Tulsa, Oklahoma), American rodeo cowboy who introduced bulldogging, a modern rodeo event that involves wrestling a running steer to the ground.
Pickett was descended from American Indians (Cherokees) and African American slaves in the Southwest. He grew up in West Texas, learning to ride and rope as a boy, and became a ranch hand; he performed simple trick rides in town on the weekends. In 1900, he became a showman, sponsored by Lee Moore, a Texas rodeo entrepreneur. In 1907, Pickett signed with the 101 Ranch Wild West Show, becoming one of its star performers and assuming the status of a legendary figure for his masterful handling of both wild and domestic animals. For bulldogging, or steer wrestling, he perfected a technique of jumping from his horse, grabbing the steer around the neck or horns, sinking his teeth into the animal’s lip, and pulling it to the ground. Pickett’s most-grueling performance came in 1908 in a bullring in Mexico City. He there wrestled and rode a Mexican fighting bull for seven minutes before a riotous audience enraged at this original interpretation of the Mexican national pastime of bullfighting.
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The Peace Movement
*The peace movement of Ethiopia was organized in Chicago and petitioned President Roosevelt to use relief funds to settle African Americans in Africa.
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Performing Arts
*Florence B. Price played her piano concerto with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, which would do her Symphony in E Minor in 1933.
*Buddy (Clarence) Bradley became the first African American to choreograph a show of white dancers. He was hired to prepare the London production of Evergreen for which he was in charge of sixty-four dancers. Bradley received full-credit in the program. His career from this time on was mainly in Europe, where he was an important figure in popular dance.
*Buddy (Clarence) Bradley became the first African American to choreograph a show of white dancers. He was hired to prepare the London production of Evergreen for which he was in charge of sixty-four dancers. Bradley received full-credit in the program. His career from this time on was mainly in Europe, where he was an important figure in popular dance.
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Politics
*No mention of African Americans was made in the platforms of the Democratic, Farmer-Labor, Prohibition or Socialist Labor parties.
*The Republican Party platform stated: "For 70 years the Republican Party has been the friend of the American Negro. Vindication of the rights of the Negro citizen to enjoy the full benefits of life, liberty and pursuit of happiness is traditional in the Republican Party, and our party stands pledged to maintain equal opportunity and rights for Negro citizens. We do not propose to depart from that tradition nor to alter the spirit or letter of that pledge."
*The Socialist Party platform called for "the enforcement of Constitutional guarantees of economic, political and legal equality for the Negro." It also called for "the enactment and enforcement of drastic anti-lynching laws."
*The Communist Party platform read: "The Communist Party is the political party of the oppressed masses of the people -- the industrial workers, the persecuted Negroes, the toiling farmers. The Communist Party enters this election campaign explicitly to rally the toilers of the city and country, Negro and white, in a united struggle for jobs and bread, for the fight against imperialist war. ... The Negro people, always hounded, persecuted, disfranchised, and discriminated against in capitalist America, are, during this period of crisis, oppressed as never before. They are the first to be fired when layoffs take place. They are discriminated against when charity rations are handed out to the unemployed. They are cheated and robbed by the Southern white landlords and evicted from their lands and homes when their miserable income does not enable them to pay rent. When they protest against this unbearable oppression and persecution they are singled out for police attacks in the North and for lynch victims in the South. Over 150 Negroes have been barbarously lynched at the instigation of the white ruling class ... " In this platform the Negro reform leaders were attacked as "shamelessly aiding the white master class in these vicious attacks." James W. Ford, an African American, was the Vice Presidential candidate on the Communist ticket.
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Publications
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*Howard University began publishing the Journal of Negro Education.
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Radio
*Don Redman became the first African American orchestra leader to have a sponsored radio series.
Don (Donald Matthew) Redman (1900-1964), a jazz saxophonist, bandleader, and arranger, was the first African American orchestra leader to have a sponsored radio series. He was a pioneer jazz arranger-composer and contributed significantly to the development of the big-band sound of the 1920s and 1930s. A child prodigy, Redman was born in Piedmont, West Virginia, and studied at music conservatories in Boston and Detroit.
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Sports
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*The New York Rens, an African American professional basketball team, won the first world championship in any sport by beating the Boston Celtics.
*At the Olympics, Eddie Tolan won a gold medal in a record 100 meter dash, setting a new world record. Ralph Metcalfe was a close second. Tolan also won a gold medal in the 200 meter run, and Ed Gordon earned a gold in the long jump.
*George "Kid Chocolate" Dixon won the featherweight boxing championship, which he would hold through 1934.
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Statistics
*In 1932, the trend of immigration of people of African descent continued to be away from the United States, reaching its peak in 1933, when the total number of people of African descent to the United States was 84, while departures amounted to 1,058. Almost all immigration of people of African descent to the United States came from the Crown Colonies and the dependencies of Great Britain and France in the West Indies.
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The Americas
Cuba
A hurricane and huge waves killed about 2,500 in Santa Cruz del Sur in the worst natural disaster in Cuban history (November 9).
*The town of San Lorenzo was renamed Yanga for the African slave leader who led a slave resistance against the Spanish.
Yanga Municipality is a municipality located in the southern area of the State of Veracruz, Mexico, about 80 km from the state capital of Xalapa. It was formerly known as San Lorenzo de los Negros (after a colony of cimarrones in the early 17th century) or San Lorenzo de Cerralvo (after a 17th-century Spanish colonial priest). In 1932 it was renamed after Yanga, the cimarron leader who in 1609 resisted an attack by Spanish forces trying to regain control of the area. Captured in the area of present-day Guinea in West Africa before 1570, he was a chief of the Yang-Bara tribe before being sold into slavery.
Gaspar Yanga had been in the highlands since leading escape by a band of slaves in 1570. After fighting off the Spanish forces in 1609, and having a series of bloody skirmishers over nearly a decade, in 1618, he finally obtained an agreement with Spanish officials to grant freedom to the fugitive slaves and independence to their village, a few kilometers from the city of Cordoba, Veracruz. It became known as San Lorenzo de los Negros (named after the cimarrones) or San Lorenzo de Cerralvo (named after Juan Laurencio, a Jesuit friar who had accompanied the 1609 expedition sent by the Viceroy).
The inhabitants of African descent of San Lorenzo proclaimed their loyalty to the Church and the King of Spain, but refused to pay tribute to the Spanish government. They also agreed to capture fugitive slaves and return them to their masters in return for a fee. They were among the many free blacks of Mexico, which had the second-highest slave population of the Americas after Brazil.
Europe
France
*The manifesto "Murderous Humanitarianism" was signed by prominent Surrealists including the Martiniquans Pierre Yovotte and J. M. Monnerot.
Great Britain
Europe
France
*The manifesto "Murderous Humanitarianism" was signed by prominent Surrealists including the Martiniquans Pierre Yovotte and J. M. Monnerot.
Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for its visual artworks and writings. The aim was to "resolve the previously contradictory conditions of dream and reality." Artists painted unnerving, illogical scenes with photographic precision, created strange creatures from everyday objects and developed painting techniques that allowed the unconscious to express itself.
Surrealist works feature the element of surprise, unexpected juxtapositions and non sequitur. However, many Surrealist artists and writers regard their work as an expression of the philosophical movement first and foremost, with the works being an artifact. Leader Andre Breton was explicit in his assertion that Surrealism was, above all, a revolutionary movement.
Surrealism developed largely out of the Dada activities during World War I and the most important center of the movement was Paris. From the 1920s onward, the movement spread around the globe, eventually affecting the visual arts, literature, film, and music of many countries and languages, as well as political thought and practice, philosophy, and social theory.The anti-colonial revolutionary and proletarian politics of "Murderous Humanitarianism" (1932) which was drafted mainly by Rene Crevel, signed by Andre Breton, Paul Eluard, Benjamin Peret, Yves Tanguy, and the Martiniquan Surrealists Pierre Yoyotte and J. M. Monnerot perhaps makes it the original document of what is later called 'black Surrealism', although it is the contact between Aime Cesaire and Breton in the 1940s in Martinique that really lead to the communication of what is known as 'black Surrealism'.Great Britain
*Buddy (Clarence) Bradley became the first African American to choreograph a show of white dancers. He was hired to prepare the London production of Evergreen for which he was in charge of sixty-four dancers. Bradley received full-credit in the program. His career from this time on was mainly in Europe, where he was an important figure in popular dance.
Africa
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Nnamdi Azikiwe
*Nnamdi Azikiwe, the future first president of Nigeria, received a master's degree in religion from Lincoln University, a historically black university located in Chester County, Pennsylvania.
Ethiopia
(Abyssinia)
*In 1932, the Sultanate of Jimma was formally absorbed into Ethiopia following the death of Sultan Abba Jifar II of Jimma.
*Haile Selassie announced an anti-slavery law in Abyssinia (April 17).
Nigeria
*Yaba Higher College was established.
Nnamdi Azikiwe
*Nnamdi Azikiwe, the future first president of Nigeria, received a master's degree in religion from Lincoln University, a historically black university located in Chester County, Pennsylvania.
Ethiopia
(Abyssinia)
*In 1932, the Sultanate of Jimma was formally absorbed into Ethiopia following the death of Sultan Abba Jifar II of Jimma.
*Haile Selassie announced an anti-slavery law in Abyssinia (April 17).
Nigeria
*Yaba Higher College was established.
Yaba Higher College the brainchild of E.R.J. Hussey, who became Director of Education in Nigeria in 1929. Soon after arriving, he proposed a higher college at Yaba similar to the Makerere College in Uganda, his previous posting. The goal was at first to train assistants for government departments and private firms, with a gradual increase in standards until eventually the college would reach the level of a British university. Hussey gained acceptance of the plan, starting with a special medical school at King's College. By 1932 the school had its own building - a temporary hut - and other courses were added.
The college at Yaba was an all-male residential institute. It was officially opened in January 1934. It provided vocational training in subjects that included agriculture, forestry, medicine, veterinary science, surveying and civil and mechanical engineering. It also provided training for secondary school teachers, mainly science teachers. Yaba was affiliated with the University of London. The college offered limited diplomas, so Nigerians who wanted higher education either had to go abroad or earn external degrees from the University of London through correspondence courses.
Educated Nigerians were vocally critical of Yaba College. Four days after the college opening, the Nigerian Daily Times described it as "a grand idea, and imposing structure, resting on rather weak foundations". Noting the low standards of the Middle Schools, whose graduates would enter Yaba, the Daily Times said "..we wish to declare emphatically that this country will not be satisfied with an inferior brand [of education] such as the present scheme seems to threaten". The Nigerian Youth Movement, formed by members of the Lagos intelligentsia who were protesting the plan for Yaba College, soon became an important nationalist organization.
Sierra Leone
*Alhaji Ahmad Kabbah, the President of Sierra Leone from 1996 to 1997 and from 1998 to 2007, was born.
Ahmad Tejan Kabbah, (b. February 16, 1932, Pendembu, Kailahun district, British Protectorate of Sierra Leone - d. March 13, 2014, Freetown, Sierra Leone), was a Sierra Leonean politician who served twice as his country’s president (March 29, 1996–May 25, 1997, and Feb. 13, 1998–Sept. 17, 2007). He was ultimately compelled to call on foreign military assistance to quash Sierra Leone’s decadelong civil war (1991–2002) and bring peace to the country. Kabbah was born into a Muslim family but attended a Christian school in Freetown before matriculating in economics at the University College of Wales, Aberystwyth (B.Sc., 1959), and being called to the bar (1969) at Gray’s Inn, London. He joined the civil service in Sierra Leone, but a military coup in 1967 prompted him to work for the United Nations Development Programme in other African countries for more than two decades. He returned home in the early 1990s, became leader of the Sierra Leone People’s Party, and was elected president in March 1996. After a coup toppled his administration the following year, Kabbah called on the United Nations, troops from the Economic Community of West African States Monitoring Group, and eventually (in 2000) British forces to restore him to office. He was overwhelmingly re-elected in 2002 to another five-year term. Although he failed to build a strong national economy, Kabbah maintained political stability, and in 2007 he oversaw a peaceful transfer of power to his elected successor from the opposition All People’s Congress.
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South Africa
*South Africa abandoned the gold standard.
Although the use of gold as currency is as old as recorded history, the modern gold standard began in 1816 when Britain passed the Gold Standards Act, which ensured that gold coins became the only real measure of value. Five years later, in 1821, Britain adopted the gold bullion standard, making it possible for Britons to convert their money into gold on demand. It was very much a measure of the wealth of Britain and its growing dominance at the center of the world trade. The United States, for example, did not join the growing number of nations on the gold standard until 1879.
The gold standard remained more or less intact throughout the first quarter of the 20th century, except for a few years during World War I when the normal flow of international trade was interrupted by warfare. South Africa, however, did not re-adopt the gold standard -- this time based on gold coin rather than bullion -- until 1925.
During the days of the gold standard, the price of gold was generally fixed by international agreement -- so that gold could be used as an international currency for the settling of debts. Consequently, the gold standard among major trading countries until after World War I provided an automatic mechanism for adjusting a nation's balance of payments (the difference between the amount of goods, imported and exported, either surplus or deficit) and regulating its internal economy. A balance of payments surplus naturally led to an inflow of gold, which allowed interest rates to fall and economic activity to accelerate, including employment. However, over time, more money led to increased prices and imports from other countries -- and so the opposite began to happen and the balance of payments deteriorated. Once a deficit appeared, the outflow of gold slowed down the economy and unemployment rose.
As history shows, the gold standard proved to be particularly harsh on nations -- and people -- with a continuing balance of payments deficit, being more concerned with the debits between nations than the internal economy. The terrible unemployment that flowed from the Wall Street crash in the 1930s made governments (including the government of South Africa) realize that sticking to the gold standard was too costly when measured against the misery of unemployment it caused at home.
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Uganda
*Bernard Bourdillon was appointed Governor and Commander-in-Chief of Uganda. {See 1935.}
South Africa
*South Africa abandoned the gold standard.
Although the use of gold as currency is as old as recorded history, the modern gold standard began in 1816 when Britain passed the Gold Standards Act, which ensured that gold coins became the only real measure of value. Five years later, in 1821, Britain adopted the gold bullion standard, making it possible for Britons to convert their money into gold on demand. It was very much a measure of the wealth of Britain and its growing dominance at the center of the world trade. The United States, for example, did not join the growing number of nations on the gold standard until 1879.
The gold standard remained more or less intact throughout the first quarter of the 20th century, except for a few years during World War I when the normal flow of international trade was interrupted by warfare. South Africa, however, did not re-adopt the gold standard -- this time based on gold coin rather than bullion -- until 1925.
During the days of the gold standard, the price of gold was generally fixed by international agreement -- so that gold could be used as an international currency for the settling of debts. Consequently, the gold standard among major trading countries until after World War I provided an automatic mechanism for adjusting a nation's balance of payments (the difference between the amount of goods, imported and exported, either surplus or deficit) and regulating its internal economy. A balance of payments surplus naturally led to an inflow of gold, which allowed interest rates to fall and economic activity to accelerate, including employment. However, over time, more money led to increased prices and imports from other countries -- and so the opposite began to happen and the balance of payments deteriorated. Once a deficit appeared, the outflow of gold slowed down the economy and unemployment rose.
As history shows, the gold standard proved to be particularly harsh on nations -- and people -- with a continuing balance of payments deficit, being more concerned with the debits between nations than the internal economy. The terrible unemployment that flowed from the Wall Street crash in the 1930s made governments (including the government of South Africa) realize that sticking to the gold standard was too costly when measured against the misery of unemployment it caused at home.
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Uganda
*Bernard Bourdillon was appointed Governor and Commander-in-Chief of Uganda. {See 1935.}
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