1938 The United States: Notable Deaths

Notable Deaths

*There were six recorded lynchings of African Americans in 1938.

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*Papa Charlie Jackson, the first successful blues guitarist, died in Chicago, Illinois (May 7).

Papa Charlie Jackson (November 10, 1887 – May 7, 1938) was an early American bluesman and songster who accompanied himself with a banjo guitar, a guitar, or a ukulele. His recording career began in 1924. Much of his life remains a mystery, but his draft card lists his birthplace as New Orleans, Louisiana, and his death certificate states that he died in Chicago, Illinois on May 7, 1938.

Born William Henry Jackson, he originally performed in minstrel and medicine shows.  From the early 1920s into the 1930s, Jackson played frequent club dates in Chicago, and was noted for busking at Chicago's Maxwell Street Market.  In August 1924, he recorded the commercially-successful "Airy Man Blues" and "Papa's Lawdy Lawdy Blues" for Paramount Records.  One of his following tracks, "Salty Dog Blues",  became his most famous song. Among his recordings are several in which he accompanied classic female blues singers singers such as Ida Cox, Hattie McDaniel, and Ma Rainey.

Jackson achieved a musical peak of sorts in September of 1929 when he got to record with his longtime idol, Blind (Arthur) Blake, often known as the king of ragtime guitar during this period. 'Papa Charlie and Blind Blake Talk About It' parts one and two are among the most unusual sides of the late '20s, containing elements of blues jam session, hokum recording, and ragtime. A few more recordings for the Paramount label followed in 1929 and 1930.  In 1934, Jackson recorded for Okeh Records, and the following year he recorded with Big Bill Broonzy.  Altogether, Jackson recorded 66 sides during his career.

Jackson was an influential figure in blues music, the first self-accompanied blues musician to make records.  He was one of the first musicians of the "Hokum" genre, which uses comic, often sexually suggestive lyrics and lively, danceable rhythms.  He wrote or was the first to record several songs that became blues standards, including "Spoonful" and "Salty Dog". 

Jackson's "Shake That Thing" was covered by Mother McCree's Uptown Jug Champions in 1964. "Loan Me Your Heart" appeared on The Wildparty Sheiks eponymous album in 2002. The Carolina Chocolate Drops recorded "Your Baby Ain't Sweet Like Mine" on their Grammy Award winning 2010 album, Genuine Negro Jig, and often played the song in interviews after its release.

In 1973, Jackson's song "Shake That Thing" was briefly featured in the Sanford and Son episode, "The Blind Mellow Jelly Collection". Fred, played by Redd Foxx, could be seen dancing and singing to it at the beginning of the episode.

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*James Weldon Johnson, a writer, composer, diplomat and civil rights leader best known as the composer of the anthem "Lift Every Voice and Sing", died in Wiscasset, Maine.

James Weldon Johnson, (b. June 17, 1871, Jacksonville, Florida — d. June 26, 1938, Wiscasset, Maine) was a poet, diplomat, and anthologist of black culture.

Trained in music and other subjects by his mother, a schoolteacher, Johnson graduated from Atlanta University with an A.B. (1894) and M.A. (1904) degrees and later studied at Columbia University. For several years he was principal of the black high school in Jacksonville, Fla. He read law at the same time, was admitted to the Florida bar in 1897, and began practicing there. During this period, he and his brother, John Rosamond Johnson (1873–1954), a composer, began writing songs, including “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” based on James' 1900 poem of the same name, which became something of a national anthem for many African Americans. In 1901 the two went to New York, where they wrote some 200 songs for the Broadway musical stage.
In 1906, President Theodore Roosevelt appointed him United States Consul to Puerto Cabello, Venezuela, and in 1909 he became consul in Corinto, Nicaragua, where he served until 1914. He later taught at Fisk University. Meanwhile, he began writing a novel, The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man (published anonymously, 1912), which attracted little attention until it was reissued under his own name in 1927. From 1916 Johnson was a leader in the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). 
Fifty Years and Other Poems (1917) was followed by his pioneering anthology Book of American Negro Poetry (1922) and books of American Negro Spirituals (1925, 1926), collaborations with his brother. His best-known work, God's Trombones (1927), a group of black dialect sermons in verse, includes “The Creation” and “Go Down Death.” Johnson’s introductions to his anthologies contain some of the most perceptive assessments ever made of black contributions to American culture. Along This Way (1933) is his autobiography.

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*Robert Johnson, a blues singer-songwriter who is considered to be one of the top five guitarist of all time, died in Greenwood, Mississippi.

Robert Johnson, (b. May 8, 1911, Hazlehurst, Mississippi,  — d. August 16, 1938, near Greenwood, Mississippi) was a blues composer, guitarist, and singer whose eerie falsetto singing voice and masterful, rhythmic slide guitar influenced both his contemporaries and many later blues and rock musicians.

Johnson was the product of a confusing childhood, with three men serving as his father before he reached age seven. Little is known about his biological father (Noah Johnson, whom his mother never married), and the boy and his mother lived on various plantations in the Mississippi Delta region before settling briefly in Memphis, Tennessee, with her first husband (Robert Dodds, who had changed his surname to Spencer). The bulk of Johnson’s youth, however, was spent in Robinsonville, Mississippi, with his mother and her second husband (Dusty Willis). There Johnson learned to play the jew's harp and harmonica before taking up the guitar. In 1929, he married 16-year-old Virginia Travis, whose death in childbirth (along with that of their baby) in April 1930 devastated Johnson.

In Robinsonville, Johnson came in contact with masters of the Mississippi Delta blues Willie Brown, Charley Patton, and Son House -- all of whom influenced his playing and none of whom was particularly impressed by his talent. They were dazzled by his musical ability, however, when he returned to town after spending as much as a year away. That time away is central to Johnson’s mythic status. According to legend, during that period Johnson made a deal with Satan at a crossroads, acquiring his prodigious talent as a guitarist, singer, and songwriter in exchange for the stipulation that he would have only eight more years to live. (A similar story circulated in regard to another Mississippi bluesman, Tommy Johnson.) Music historian Robert Palmer, in his highly regarded book Deep Blues (1981), instead ascribes Robert Johnson’s remarkable musical attainments to the time he had to hone his skills as a guitarist under the instruction of Ike Zinneman as a result of the financial support he received from the older woman he married near Hazlehurst, Mississippi (Johnson’s birthplace), and to the wide variety of music to which he was exposed during his hiatus from Robinsonville, including the single-string picking styles of Lonnie Johnson and Scrapper Blackwell.

After returning briefly to Robinsonville, Johnson settled in Helena, Arkansas, where he played with Elmore James, Robert Nighthawk, and Howlin' Wolf, among others. He also became involved with Estella Coleman and informally adopted her son, Robert Lockwood, Jr., who later also became a notable blues musician. Johnson traveled widely throughout Mississippi, Arkansas, Texas, and Tennessee and as far north as Chicago and New York, playing at house parties, juke joints, and lumber camps and on the street. In 1936–37 he made a series of recordings in a hotel room in San Antonio, Texas, and a warehouse in Dallas. His repertoire included several blues songs by House and others, but Johnson’s original numbers, such as “Me and the Devil Blues,” “Hellhound on My Trail,” “Sweet Home Chicago,” “I Believe I’ll Dust My Broom,” “Ramblin’ on My Mind,” and “Love in Vain” are his most compelling pieces. Unlike the songs of many of his contemporaries—which tended to unspool loosely, employing combinations of traditional and improvised lyrics—Johnson’s songs were tightly composed, and his song structure and lyrics were praised by Bob Dylan. Despite the limited number of his recordings, Johnson had a major impact on other musicians, including Muddy Waters, Elmore James, Eric Clapton and the Rolling Stones. Johnson died of poisoning after drinking strychnine-laced whiskey in a juke joint.

Johnson's landmark recordings in 1936 and 1937 display a combination of singing, guitar skills, and songwriting talent that has influenced later generations of musicians. As an itinerant performer who played mostly on street corners, in juke joints, and at Saturday night dances, Johnson had little commercial success or public recognition in his lifetime.

It was only after the reissue of his recordings in 1961, on the LP King of the Delta Blues Singers, that his work reached a wider audience. Johnson is now recognized as a master of the blues, particularly of the Mississippi Delta blues style. He is credited by many rock musicians as an important influence.  Johnson was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as an early influence in its first induction ceremony, in 1986.  In 2010, Johnson ranked fifth in Rolling Stone magazine's "100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time".

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*Ernest Lyon, a Consul General to Liberia, died.

Ernest Lyon (1860–1938) was a minister, educator and diplomat.

Ernest Lyon (b. 1860 - d. 1938) was a minister, educator and diplomat. While there are few accounts that Lyon was born in Honduras, most sources have him being born in Belize City, British Honduras. Lyon immigrated to the United States in the 1870s. He received an A.B. degree from New Orleans University and became a Methodist Episcopal in Baltimore, Maryland. In 1901, he became professor of church history at Morgan College and was among the founders of Maryland Industrial and Agricultural Institute, a school for African-American youth. The civil rights leader Booker T. Washington recommended Lyon to President Theodore Roosevelt, who appointed him United States Minister and Consul General to Liberia in 1903. He served in this capacity until 1910. Following his diplomatic service, he returned to Baltimore to become the minister of Ames Methodist Episcopal Church.

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*Joe "King" Oliver, a pioneer jazz cornetist and bandleader who became a mentor to Louis Armstrong, died in Savannah, Georgia (April 8). 

King Oliver, byname of Joseph Oliver (b. May 11, 1885, Abend, Louisiana — d. April 8, 1938, Savannah, Georgia) was a cornetist who was a vital link between the semi-mythical prehistory of jazz and the firmly documented history of jazz proper.  He is also remembered for choosing as his protégé the man generally considered to have been the greatest of all New Orleans musicians, Louis Armstrong. 

Born on a plantation, Oliver went to New Orleans as a boy and began playing the cornet in 1907. By 1915, he was an established bandleader and two years later was being billed as “King.” In the following year, after the closing down of Storyville, the city’s red-light district, Oliver moved to Chicago. Four years later he sent for Armstrong to join him as second cornetist, thus indirectly ensuring the spread of jazz across the continent and eventually the world. In 1928 he went to New York City, and from this point his fortunes declined. Plagued by dental trouble and outflanked by rapidly evolving jazz styles, he died in obscurity while working as a poolroom marker.

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*Arthur Schomburg, a historian whose collection of works formed the foundation for the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, died in Brooklyn, New York (June 8).

Arturo Alfonso Schomburg, also Arthur Schomburg (b. January 24, 1874, Santurce, Puerto Rico – d. June 8, 1938, Brooklyn, New York), was a Puerto Rican historian, writer, and activist in the United States who researched and raised awareness of the great contributions that Afro-Latin Americans and African Americans have made to society. He was an important intellectual figure in the Harlem Renaissance. Over the years, he collected literature, art, slave narratives, and other materials of African history, which was purchased to become the basis of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, named in his honor, at the New York Public Library (NYPL) branch in Harlem.

Schomburg was born in the town of Santurce, Puerto Rico (now part of San Juan), to María Josefa, a freeborn black midwife from St. Croix, and Carlos Federico Schomburg, a German merchant living in Puerto Rico.

While Schomburg was in grade school, one of his teachers claimed that blacks had no history, heroes or accomplishments. Inspired to prove the teacher wrong, Schomburg determined that he would find and document the accomplishments of Africans on their own continent and in the diaspora. Schomburg was educated at San Juan's Instituto Popular, where he learned commercial printing. At St. Thomas College in the Danish-ruled Virgin Islands, he studied Negro Literature.

Schomburg immigrated to New York  on April 17, 1891, and settled in the Harlem section of Manhattan. He continued his studies to untangle the African thread of history in the fabric of the Americas. After experiencing racial discrimination in the United States, he began calling himself "Afroborinqueño" which means "Afro-Puerto Rican". He became a member of the "Revolutionary Committee of Puerto Rico" and became an active advocate of Puerto Rico's and Cuba's independence from Spain.

On June 30, 1895, Schomburg married Elizabeth Hatcher of Staunton, Virginia. She had come to New York as part of a wave of migration from the South that would increase in the 20th century and be known as the Great Migration. They had three sons: Maximo Gomez; Arthur Alfonso, Jr.; and Kingsley Guarionex Schomburg.

After Elizabeth died in 1900, Schomburg married Elizabeth Morrow Taylor of Williamsburg, a village in Rockingham County, North Carolina. They were married on March 17, 1902, and had two sons: Reginald Stanton and Nathaniel José Schomburg.

In 1896, Schomburg began teaching Spanish in New York. From 1901 to 1906 Schomburg was employed as messenger and clerk in the law firm of Pryor, Mellis and Harris, New York City. In 1906, he began working for the Bankers Trust Company. Later, he became a supervisor of the Caribbean and Latin American Mail Section, and held that until he left in 1929.

While supporting himself and his family, Schomburg began his intellectual work of writing about Caribbean and African-American history. His first known article, "Is Hayti Decadent?", was published in 1904 in The Unique Advertiser. In 1909, he wrote Placido, a Cuban Martyr, a short pamphlet about the poet and independence fighter Gabriel de la Concepcion Valdes.

In 1911, Schomburg co-founded with John Edward Bruce the Negro Society for Historical Research, to create an institute to support scholarly efforts. For the first time it brought together African, West Indian and Afro-American scholars. Schomburg was later to become the President of the American Negro Academy, founded in Washington, D.C. in 1874, which championed black history and literature.

It should be noted that this was a period of the founding of societies to encourage scholarship in African American history. In 1915, Dr. Carter G. Woodson co-founded the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History (now called the Association for the Study of African American Life and History) and began publishing the Journal of Negro History.

Schomburg became involved in the Harlem Renaissance movement, which spread to other African-American communities in the United States. The concentration of blacks in Harlem from across the United States and Caribbean led to a flowering of arts and intellectual and political movements. 
Schomburg was the co-editor of the 1912 edition of Daniel Alexander Payne Murray's Encyclopedia of the Colored Race.  In 1916, Schomburg published what was the first notable bibliography of African-American poetry, A Bibliographical Checklist of American Negro Poetry.

In March 1925, Schomburg published his essay "The Negro Digs Up His Past" in an issue of Survey Graphic devoted to the intellectual life of Harlem. It had widespread distribution and influence. The historian John Henrik Clarke told of being so inspired by the essay that at the age of 17 he left home in Columbus, Georgia, to seek out Mr. Schomburg to further his studies in African history. Alain Locke included the essay in his edited collection The New Negro.

The NYPL and the librarian of the 135th Street Branch, Ernestine Rose, the NYPL purchased his extensive collection of literature, art and other materials in 1926. They appointed Schomburg curator of the Schomburg Collection of Negro Literature and Art, named in his honor, at the 135th Street Branch (Harlem) of the Library. It was later renamed the Arthur Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.

Between 1931 and 1932 Schomburg served as Curator of the Negro Collection at the library of Fisk University, Nashville, Tennessee, helping direct their acquisition of materials. During 1932 he traveled to Cuba. While there he met various Cuban artists and writers, and acquired more material for his studies.

Schomburg was granted an honorary membership of the Men's Business Club in Yonkers, New York. He also held the position of treasurer for the Loyal Sons of Africa in New York and was elevated being the past master of Prince Hall Lodge Number 38, Free and Accepted Masons (F.A.M.) and Rising Sun Chapter Number 4, R.A.M.

Following dental surgery, Schomburg became ill and died in Madison Park Hospital, Brooklyn, New York, on June 8, 1938. 

By the 1920s, Schomburg had amassed a collection which consisted of artworks, manuscripts, rare books, slave narratives and other artifacts of Black history.  In 1926 the New York Public Library purchased his collection for $10,000 with the help of a grant from the Carnegie Corporation. The collection formed the cornerstone of the Library's Division of Negro History at its 135th Street Branch in Harlem. The library appointed Schomburg curator of the collection, which was named in his honor: the Schomburg Collection of Negro Literature and Art, and later renamed the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.
Schomburg used his proceeds from the sale to fund travel to Spain, France, Germany and England, to seek out more pieces of black history to add to the collection. In 2002, scholar Molefi Kete Asante named Schomburg to his list of 100 Greatest African Americans. 

To honor Schomburg, Hampshire College awards a $30,000 merit-based scholarship in his name for students who "demonstrate promise in the areas of strong academic performance and leadership at Hampshire College and in the community."

Arturo Alfonso Schomburg's work served as an inspiration to Puerto Ricans, Latinos and African Americans alike. The power of knowing about the great contributions that Afro-Latinos and African Americans have made to society helped with the work or the Civil Rights movement and continues to inform each succeeding generation. 

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*James Scott, a ragtime composer best known for his "Frog Legs Rag", died in Kansas City, Kansas (August 30).

James Sylvester Scott (b. February 12, 1885, Neosho, Missouri – d. August 30, 1938, Kansas City, Kansas) was a ragtime composer, regarded as one of the three most important composers of classic ragtime, along with Scott Joplin and Joseph Lamb. 

He was born in Neosho, Missouri to James Scott, Sr. and Molly Thomas Scott, both former slaves. In 1901, his family moved to Carthage, Missouri, where he attended Lincoln High School. In 1902 he began working at the music store of Charles L. Dumars, first washing windows, then demonstrating music at the piano as a song plugger, including his own pieces. Demand for his music convinced Dumars to print the first of Scott's published compositions, "A Summer Breeze - March and Two Step", in 1903. By 1904, two more compositions by Scott, "Fascinator March" and "On the Pike March" were published and sold well, but not enough to keep Dumars in business and soon the company ceased publishing.

In 1905, Scott went to St. Louis, Missouri in search of his idol Scott Joplin. He located Joplin and asked if he would listen to one of his ragtime compositions. Upon hearing the rag, Joplin introduced him to his own publisher, John Stillwell Stark, and recommended he publish the work. Stark published the rag a year later as "Frog Legs Rag". It quickly became a hit and was second in sales in the Stark catalogue only to that of Joplin's own "Maple Leaf Rag". Scott became a regular contributor to the Stark catalogue until 1922.

In 1914 Scott moved to Kansas City, Missouri, where he married Nora Johnson, taught music, and accompanied silent movies as an organist and arranger at the Panama Theater. Those that knew him recall that theater work was a large part of his activity. 

In the last years of his life, Scott busied himself with teaching, composing and leading an eight-piece band that played for various beer parks and movie theaters in the area. With the arrival of sound movies, however, his fortunes declined. He lost his theater work, his wife died without child, and his health deteriorated. He moved in with his cousin Ruth Callahan in Kansas City, and even though he was suffering from chronic dropsy, he continued to compose and play piano. Scott died at Douglas Hospital on August 30, 1938 at age 52 and was laid beside his wife in Westlawn Cemetery.

Scott's best-known compositions include "Climax Rag", "Frog Legs Rag", "Grace and Beauty", "Ophelia Rag" and "The Ragtime Oriole".

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*William Singleton, the author of the slave narrative Recollections of My Slavery Days, died (September 7). 

William Henry Singleton (b. August 10, 1835 [1843?], Craven County, North Carolina – d. September 7, 1938) was a slave from North Carolina who became a Union soldier during the American Civil War.  As a freedman, he moved to New England, where he became a minister in the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church (AME Zion Church) in Portland, Maine. He wrote and published his autobiography, Recollections of My Slavery Days, in 1922, an account of his rise from slavery of the genre known as slave narratives. 

During the Civil War, Singleton escaped to Union forces and gained his freedom. In the summer of 1863, he recruited and helped lead the First North Carolina Colored Volunteers, which became part of the 35th United States Colored Troops.  After being wounded in the Battle of Olustee, Florida, in February 1864, he was assigned to garrison duty.

Following the war and his honorable discharge, in 1866 Singleton moved to Connecticut, where he worked and taught himself to read and write. He joined the AME Zion Church, an independent black denomination, and became a missionary and minister, serving in Portland, Maine. Later he lived and worked in Peekskill, New York. Always proud of his military service, at the age of 95, Singleton marched in a parade of Civil War veterans in Des Moines, Iowa, shortly before his death.

Singleton married his first wife Maria Wanton in New Haven, and they had a child together. After joining the AME Zion Church in the city, Singleton also worked at getting educated. He studied and saved to buy books, teaching himself to read and write. 

After Singleton's first wife Maria died in 1898, he moved to New York. There he married Charlotte Hinman. They had children, and eventually eight grandchildren.

Singleton wrote his autobiography, Recollections of My Slavery Days (1922), which was one of the later slave narratives to be published. It appeared in serial form in the Peekskill newspaper. 

Always proud of his service, Singleton attended a Grand Army of the Republic (GAR) reunion at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania in 1937. In September 1938, he attended another GAR reunion in Des Moines, Iowa, where he marched 15 blocks in the heat with 118 other veterans. He died soon after of a heart attack.

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Performing Arts

 *Benny Goodman and his orchestra became the first jazz musicians to headline a concert at Carnegie Hall in New York City (January 16).

For a performance of jazz at Carnegie Hall, European American bandleader Benny Goodman overrode management's reservations and insisted on having two African American musicians in his group, Teddy Wilson (piano) and Lionel Hampton (vibraphone).

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*Charley Pride, a trailblazing country music artist, was born in Sledge, Mississippi (March 18).

Charley Pride became the first African American singer with the Grand Ole Opry.  His interest at first was in baseball.  At the age of sixteen, he left his home state of Mississippi to seek employment with the now-defunct Negro American Baseball League.  He was a pitcher/outfielder with the Memphis Red Sox, and later played with the Birmingham Black Barons, and in 1961 played in the majors with the Los Angeles Angels.  Opry star Red Foley heard Pride sing country music in 1963, and encouraged him to go to Nashville, where he charmed RCA Records and entered him to go to Nashville, where he charmed RCA Records and entered the country music field.  The European American audience at his first major concert in 1967 did not know his race until he appeared at his first major concert in 1967 did not know his race until he appeared on stage.  His recording "Just Between Me and You" launched him into super-stardom and made him a number one country music attraction.  In 1971 Pride was the African American named Entertainer of the Year and Male Vocalist of the Year in the field of country music. 

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*The musicians Meade Lux Lewis, Albert Ammons, and Pete Johnson performed at Carnegie Hall, starting a "Boogie-Woogie" craze (December 23).

With a Carnegie Hall concert by the African American musicians Meade Lux Lewis, Albert Ammons, and Pete Johnson, boogie-woogie became an overnight craze, and began to be applied to almost all songs.  Boogie-woogie developed from house-rent parties in the 1920's especially in Chicago.  The style originated with African American pianists such as "Cat-Eye," "Jack the Bear", and "Tippling Tom."

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*Jazz singer Billie Holiday made her first appearance with Artie Shaw's band.

Artie Shaw hired Billie Holiday to sing with his European American band.  One of the greatest of jazz singers, and the daughter of an accomplished guitarist, Holiday has been one of the great jazz influences, not only on other singers, but instrumentalists as well.  She published an autobiography in 1956, three years before her death.

*Contralto Marian Anderson was awarded an honorary doctorate by Harvard University.

*The Harlem Suitcase Theatre launched its first season with Langston Hughes' Don't You Want to be Free?, starring Robert Earl Jones, the father of actor James Earl Jones.

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Politics

*Crystal Bird Fauset became the first African American woman elected to serve in a state legislature, the Pennsylvania House of Representatives.

Crystal Bird Fauset (b. June 11, 1893, Princess Anne, Maryland – d. March 27, 1965, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) was born in Princess Anne, Maryland, to parents Benjamin Oliver Bird and Portia E. (Lovett) Bird. She was raised by her aunt, Lucy Groves, in Boston. She attended integrated public schools there and, in 1914, graduated from Boston Normal School.  She received a bachelor of science degree from Teachers College, Columbia University in 1931, the same year she married educator Arthur Huff Fauset.

Fauset was a New York City public school teacher from 1914 to 1918 before taking the position as a field secretary for the Young Women's Christian Association (YWCA) where she began to speak out about the concerns of the black community and about race relations in general.  She later became actively involved in several different organizations geared towards the advancement of African Americans rights.

After an Interracial Section was formed of the American Friends Service in 1925, Bird was offered a staffing position in September 1927. As an active member of the American Friends Service Committee, she made 210 public appearances between September 1927 and September 1928 to nearly 40,000 people addressing "having people of other racial groups understand the humanness of the Negro wherever he is found." In her speeches, she aimed to "lift the curtain that separates the white people and the colored people, to lift the curtain of misunderstanding that is so dividing us." The majority of Bird's appearances occurred with white groups in major cities such as Philadelphia, New York City, Boston, Baltimore, Washington, D. C. and Indiana.  Her appearances in Philadelphia introduced her to the public and left them with a favorable impression of her. In 1933, Fauset was named the executive secretary of the Institute of Race Relations at Swartmore College.

In 1938, Fauset was elected to the Pennsylvania House of Representatives to represent the 18th District of Philadelphia, which was a primarily white neighborhood at the time. Despite the fact that she represented an area that was 66% White, Fauset overcame challenges and was able to introduce nine bills and three amendments. Most issues that Fauset dealt with concerned public health, housing for those in poverty, and women's workplace rights.

Through her years as a state legislator, Fauset developed a friendship with First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt which helped her in securing the position as Assistant Director and Race Relations Director of The Office of Civil Defense. She advised both the First Lady and the mayor of New York City, Fiorello LaGuardia, on race relations.

Fauset was a member of President Franklin Roosevelt's "Black Cabinet" that promoted civil rights for African Americans. Despite her involvement with the Democratic Party, Fauset became a member of the Republican National Committee's division on Negro Affairs in 1944.

Fauset continued her work after World War II and turned her attention to more global issues. During the 1950s, she made many trips to Africa, India and the Middle East.

Fauset's influential accomplishments for African American people earned her a Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission Marker which can be found outside her old home on 5402 Vine Street in Philadelphia. The memorial reads "The first Black woman elected to a state legislature in the U.S., Fauset, who lived here, won her seat in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, 1938. She later served as a Civil Defense race relations advisor under Franklin D. Roosevelt."

Fauset died in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on March 27, 1965.

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*Fortune magazine reported that 84.7% of African Americans supported President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

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Social Organizations

*In Philadelphia, Marion Turner Stubbs founded Jack and Jill of America, Inc., an organization offering educational and cultural programs to African American children.  It would expand to 180 chapters across the country.

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Sports

*Joe Louis knocked out Nathan Mann in the third round at Madison Square Garden in New York City to retain the world heavyweight boxing title (February 23).

*Joe Louis knocked out Harry Thomas in the fifth round at Chicago Stadium to retain the world heavyweight boxing title (April 1).

*Henry Armstrong defeated Barney Ross by judges' decision at Madison Square Garden Bowl in Queens, New York to win the world welterweight boxing title (May 31).

*Joe Louis knocked out Max Schmeling in the first round of their big rematch at Yankee Stadium to retain the world heavyweight boxing title (June 22).

Joe Louis retained his title as world heavyweight boxing champion by defeating German boxer Max Schmeling, a Nazi hero and the proclaimed exemplar of Aryan superiority.  African Americans and European Americans hailed the match as victory for democracy as well as for the black race.

More than any other individual during the 1930s, Joe Louis was regarded by African Americans as a symbol of black power and achievement.  He was born Joseph Louis Barrow on May 13, 1914, in rural Alabama, where his parents were tenant farmers.  When he was still a boy, he and his family moved to Detroit.  He dropped out of school to start boxing and, after winning the national amateur light heavyweight championship in 1934, turned professional.  In a 1936 match, he was knocked out by Max Schmeling, a German boxer who symbolized Aryan supremacy.  It was a crushing defeat in the eyes of all Americans, black and white.  A year later, however, Louis defeated James J. Braddock (the "Cinderella Man") to become world heavyweight champion.  In 1938, he fought Schmeling again and, this time, Louis knocked him out in the first round, causing celebration across the country.  Called the "Brown Bomber" by some of his fans, Louis successfully defended his title 24 times and retired, undefeated as champion, in 1949.  He fought 71 matches between 1934 and 1949 and won every match, except for his 1936 loss to Schmeling.

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*Henry Armstrong won both the welterweight and the lightweight boxing championship.  Having already won the featherweight championship, he held all three titles concurrently.

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Statistics

*While 9.8% of Federal employees were African American, with few exceptions they held jobs as postal clerks, mailmen, unskilled laborers and janitors.

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Visual Arts

*Jacob Lawrence completed his Toussaint L'Ouverture series, which would be exhibited in its own room at the 1939 Baltimore Museum show.

*Horace Pippin's work was included in the show "Masters of Popular Painting -- Artists of the People" at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.

*Jack Chen organized an international art exhibition in the Soviet Union, European countries and the United States, bringing the works of the Chinese artists, against the Japanese aggression in China. It was the first time for the revolutionary art of China to be introduced to the world.

*The New York Times used one of the Jack Chen's prints for a cover of its magazine (January).

*Life magazine published a four page spread of Jack Chen's politcal cartoons (January 17). The article was entitled "Young Chinese Artists Cartoon Their Country's Conquest in Modern Manner".

*The New York Journal American published an article on the artwork of Jack Chen (January 18),

The New York Journal American article was generous in its praise of Jack Chen's being a son worthy of his father, the former Chinese foreign minister Eugene Chen.  "Jack Chen is known to both Chinese and Japanese as "Bitter Brush," because he has visually portrayed the fiery anti-Japanese sentiments his father portrayed in words before the ascendancy of General Chiang Kaishek's nationalist government in China.  Chen, in one of his drawings, pictures the Rising Sun of Japan as a huge skull, coming up over the horizon of China."