1939 General Historical Events

General Historical Events

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March 3

*In Durban, South Africa, the Timeless Test between England and South Africa began, the longest game of cricket ever played. It is abandoned twelve days later when the English team has to catch the last ferry home.

March 28 

*The Spanish Civil War ended as Madrid fell to Franco's troops.  Spain would remain neutral in the European war (World War II), having lost 410,000 men in fighting or by execution and further 200,000 by starvation and disease. 

April 1

*James Martin, an American photographer known for his work documenting the American Civil Rights Movement in 1965, specifically Bloody Sunday and other incidents from the Selma to Montgomery marches.

James "Spider" Martin (b. April 1, 1939, Fairfield, Alabama – d. April 8, 2003, Blount Springs, Alabama) was born in Fairfield, Alabama.  Whilst working as a photographer for The Birmingham News he created a notable photograph of the civil rights era, known as Two Minute Warning, during the 1965 Selma Voting Rights Movement. His photograph showed Alabama state troopers about to attack the first peaceful Selma to Montgomery March with batons and tear gas whilst it attempted to cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge on March 7, 1965.  Hosea Williams and John Lewis were leading the 54 mile march to the Alabama State Capitol in protest at unfair treatment of African Americans and discriminatory voting rights practices. The incident, known as Bloody Sunday, the media coverage of it and the national outcry that ensued, were influential in the course of civil rights in the United States.

His photographs were published in Life, Saturday Evening Post, Time, Der Spiegel, Stern, Paris Match, Birmingham Weekly, and The Birmingham News.

April 4

*King Ghazi of Iraq was killed in a car accident and was succeeded by his three year old son Faisal II.  The British Consul was killed by rioters who suspect that the British may have arranged the car accident.

May 29

*The United States Supreme Court decided the case of Perkins v. Elg. 

Perkins v. Elg, 307 U.S. 325 (1939), was a decision by the Supreme Court of the United States that a child born in the United States to naturalized parents on U.S. soil is a natural born citizen and that the child's natural born citizenship is not lost if the child is taken to and raised in the country of the parents' origin, provided that upon attaining the age of majority,  
the child elects to retain United States citizenship and to return to the United States to assume its duties.

Marie Elizabeth Elg was born in the Brooklyn section of New York City in 1907 to two Swedish parents who had arrived in the United States some time prior to 1906.  Her father was naturalized in 1906. In 1911, her mother took the four-year-old to Sweden. Her father went to Sweden in 1922, and in 1934 made a statement before an American consul in Sweden that he had "voluntarily expatriated himself for the reason that he did not desire to retain the status of an American citizen and wished to preserve his allegiance to Sweden."

In 1929, within eight months of attaining the age of majority, Marie Elg obtained an American passport through the American consul in Sweden, and returned to the United States. In 1935 she was notified by the United States Department of Labor that she was an illegal alien and was threatened with deportation.  

Elg sued to establish that she was a citizen of the United States and not subject to deportation. Frances Perkins was listed as the nominal plaintiff in the case, being the Secretary of Labor during the administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt, when the case was appealed to the Supreme Court.

Chief Justice Hughes wrote for the Court noting that

(1) Elg became a citizen of the United States upon her birth in New York since the Civil Rights Act of 1866  had specifically addressed the issue of a child born in the United States to alien parents;
(2) When a citizen of the United States who is a minor has parents who renounce their American citizenship, the minor does not lose his American citizenship as a result, "provided that, on attaining majority he elects to retain that citizenship and to return to the United States to assume its duties";
(3) Some provisions of the Naturalization and Convention Protocol of 1869 between the United States and Sweden, which provided for the loss of United States citizenship by any United States citizen who chose to "expatriate" — to become a naturalized citizen of another country, live there, and lose their United States citizenship — did not apply to minors, as the minor's move out of the United States was not to be considered a voluntary act; and
(4) The acquisition of "derivative Swedish citizenship" by a minor likewise does not force the minor to lose his American citizenship.

The Court's first holding, that Elg was a citizen upon birth within the United States, was a reaffirmation of United States v. Wong Kim Ark (1898).

The case was argued for the United States by Robert H. Jackson, who later became a Supreme Court justice. This was the only Supreme Court case that Jackson lost in his two years as Solicitor General.

The case is a landmark decision on expatriation.

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July 26

*Joel Spingarn, the president of the NAACP, died in New York City, New York.  He was succeeded by his brother Arthur.

Joel Elias Spingarn (b. May 17, 1875, New York City, New York – d. July 26, 1939, New York City, New York ) was born in New York City to an upper middle-class Jewish family. He graduated from Columbia College in 1895. He grew committed to the importance of the study of comparative literature as a discipline distinct from the study of English or any other language-based literary studies.

Politics was one of his lifetime passions. In 1908, as a Republican he ran unsuccessfully for a seat in the United States House of Representatives.  In 1912 and 1916, he was a delegate to the national convention of the Progressive Party.  At the first of those conventions, he failed in his attempts to add a statement condemning racial discrimination to the party platform.

Spingarn served as professor of comparative literature at Columbia University from 1899 to 1911. His academic publishing established him as one of America's foremost comparativists. It included two editions of A History of Literary Criticism in the Renaissance in 1899 and 1908 as well as edited works like Critical Essays of the Seventeenth-Century in 3 volumes. He summarized his philosophy in The New Criticism: A Lecture Delivered at Columbia University, March 9, 1910. There he argued against the constraints of such traditional categories as genre, theme, and historical setting in favor of viewing each work of art afresh and on its own terms.

From 1904, his role in academic politics marked him as an independent spirit — too independent for the university's autocratic president Nicholas Murray Butler.  His differences with the administration ranged from personality conflicts to educational philosophy. Things came to a head in 1910, when he offered a resolution at a university faculty meeting in support of Harry Thurston Peck, a Columbia professor who had been summarily dismissed by Butler because of a public scandal involving a breach-of-promise suit. That precipitated Spingarn's dismissal just five weeks later. He became part of a distinguished series of prominent academics who resigned or were dismissed during Butler's tenure as president, including George Edward Woodberry, Charles Beard, and James Harvey Robinson.

Without an academic appointment but of independent means, Spingarn continued to publish in his field much as he had before, writing, editing, and contributing to collections of essays. He was commissioned in the United States Army and served as a major during World War I. In 1919, he was a co-founder of the publishing firm of Harcourt, Brace and Company. 

He also took up the other cause of his life, racial justice. An influential liberal Republican, he helped realize the concept of a unified black movement by joining the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) shortly after its founding and was one of the first Jewish leaders of that organization, serving as chairman of its board from 1913 to 1919, its treasurer from 1919 to 1930, and its second president from 1930 until his death in 1939. In 1914 he established the Spingarn Medal awarded annually by the NAACP for outstanding achievement by an African American. During World War I, he was instrumental in seeing that a training camp for African American officers was established at Des Moines, Iowa, where about 1,000 African American officers were ultimately commissioned.

Always interested in gardening, in the years following 1920 he amassed the world's largest collection of clematis (buttercup flowers) — 250 species — and published the results of his research on the early history of landscape gardening and horticulture in Dutchess County, New York.  He served as a member of the Board of Managers for the New York Botanical Garden.

He lived with his wife, Amy Einstein Spingarn, in Manhattan and at their country estate which later became the Troutbeck Inn and Conference Center in Amenia, New York. They had two sons and two daughters. He died after a long illness on July 26, 1939. His will included a bequest to fund the Spingarn Medal in perpetuity.

August 8

*The historical adventure film Stanley and Livingstone starring Spencer Tracy and Cedric Hardwicke premiered at Grauman's Chinese Theatre in Hollywood.

August 15

• The musical fantasy film The Wizard of Oz had its official premiere at Grauman's Chinese Theatre in Hollywood.^[27]

September 1

*German troops and aircraft invade Poland.

September 3

*Britain and France declared war on Germany.

September 17

*Soviet troops invaded Poland from the east.  Charles Lindbergh made a speech on United States radio arguing that Stalin was as much to be feared as Hitler.

September 21

*Armand Calinescu, Premier of Romania, was murdered by members of the pro-fascist Iron Guard.

September 27

*Warsaw fell to the Germans.

September 28

*Poland was partitioned between the U.S.S.R. and Germany.

October 1

*Churchill said in a radio broadcast, "I cannot forecast t you the action of Russia."

December 13

*The Battle of the River Plate occurred in the South Atlantic.  The British cruiser Exeter was badly damaged by the German pocket battleship Graf Spee, which was then driven into Montevideo Harbor by the Ajax and the Achilles.

December 18

*The Graf Spee was scuttled in Montevideo Harbor.

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*The World's Fair opened in New York City.

*The United States declared ist neutrality when war broke out in Europe.

*John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath won a Pulitzer Prize.

*Pan-American Airways began regularly scheduled commercial flights to Europe.

1939 Africa

Africa

Democratic Republic of the Congo

(Zaire)

(Belgian Congo)

At the start of the World War II, the population of the Congo numbered approximately 12 million black people and 30,000 whites. The colonial government segregated the population along racial lines and there was very little mixing between the races. The white population was highly urbanized and, in Leopoldville, the capital, lived in a quarter of the city separated from the black majority. All blacks in the city had to adhere to a curfew. 

Education was overwhelmingly controlled by Protestant and Catholic missions, which were also responsible for providing limited medical and welfare support to the rural Congolese. Food remained unrationed during the war, with only the sales of tires and automobiles restricted by the government. One of the consequences of the Congo's economic mobilization during the war, particularly for the black population, was significant urbanization. Just nine percent (9%) of the indigenous population lived in cities in 1938; by 1950, the figure stood at close to twenty percent (20%). 

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*Laurent Kabila, the leader of a rebellion that overthrew President Mobutu Sese Seko and the subsequent President of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, was born in Jadotville, Belgian Congo (November 27).

Laurent Kabila, in full Laurent Desire Kabila (b. November 27, 1939, Jadotville, Belgian Congo [now Likasi, Democratic Republic of the Congo] —  d. January 18, 2001, Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo) was born into the Luba tribe in the southern province of Katanga. He studied political philosophy at a French university and attended the University of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania, where he met and formed a friendship with Yoweri Museveni, the future president of Uganda. In 1960, Kabila became a youth leader in a political party allied to Congo’s first post-independence prime minister, Patrice Lumumba. In 1961, Lumumba was deposed by Mobutu and later killed. Assisted for a time in 1964 by guerrilla leader Che Guevara, Kabila helped Lumumba supporters lead a revolt that was eventually suppressed in 1965 by the Congolese army led by Mobutu, who seized power later that year. In 1971, Mobutu renamed the country Zaire. In 1967, Kabila founded the People’s Revolutionary Party, which established a Marxist territory in the Kivu region of eastern Zaire and managed to sustain itself through gold mining and ivory trading. When the enterprise came to an end during the 1980s, he ran a business selling gold in Dar es Salaam.

In the mid-1990s Kabila returned to Zaire and became leader of the newly formed Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo-Zaire. As opposition to the dictatorial leadership of Mobutu grew, he rallied forces consisting mostly of Tutsi from eastern Zaire and marched west toward the capital city of Kinshasa, forcing Mobutu to flee the country. On May 17, 1997, Kabila installed himself as head of state and reverted the country’s name to the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

As president, Kabila initially banned political activity but in May 1998 promulgated a decree that established a national constituent and legislative assembly. The subsequent arrest of oppositionists, however, undermined the apparent move toward democracy, and allegations of human-rights abuses against Kabila’s forces continued. In August 1998 the Banyamulenge, people of Tutsi origin who had helped bring Kabila to power, launched an open rebellion in the eastern part of the country. Resentful of Kabila’s seeming favoritism to members of his own ethnic group and fearful of reprisals from rival factions, they were supported by the governments of Uganda and Rwanda, which had been angered by Kabila’s failure to prevent raiders from threatening their borders. Though a cease-fire was reached in July 1999, sporadic fighting continued.

On January 16, 2001, Kabila was shot by a bodyguard at his presidential palace in Kinshasa. Initial accounts stated that he was killed during the attack, but Congolese officials denied the reports. On the 18th, however, it was announced that Kabila had died while on an airplane en route to Harare, Zimbabwe. On January 26, 2001, his son, Joseph Kabila, was inaugurated as Congo’s president.

Ethiopia

In 1939, the Polizia Coloniale became the "Polizia dell'Africa Italiana" (Police of Italian Africa), or PAI, and received armored cars, light tanks (tankettes), motorcycles, motor-tricycles and cars, in total they were about 1,000 vehicles and as many motorcycles.

At the outbreak of World War II the PAI had 7,672 men, of which 6,345 were in AOI (Eritrea, Ethiopia and Italian Somalia) and 1,327 were in ASI (Italian Libya). The bulk of the force consisted of indigenous personnel who were trained and equipped to the same standard as Italian personnel. There were 5,142 indigenous personnel, 4,414 from AOI and 732 from ASI.

The PAI fought bravely during World War II in the Italian colonies and in Italy.

During World War II, the PAI fought as a combat unit alongside the Italian Army. For the garrison of the Libyan littoral way, at the outbreak of the conflict, two companies on motorcycles and an armored car were assigned to the Exploring Unit of the CAM (Corpo armato di manovra) Battalion "Romolo Gessi".  They had little good fortune, however, since, after a sudden enemy attack, numerous soldiers were hit by friendly fire from German aircraft. The battalion retired to Tripolitania and was converted into a mixed company. Several units participated in war actions, at Tripoli, Benghazi, Barce, but the details regarding effective employment are insufficient.

Guinea-Bissau
(Portuguese Guinea)

*Joao Vieira, the President of Guinea-Bissau from 1980 to 1984, was born in Bissau, Portuguese Guinea.

João Bernardo Vieira (“Nino”), (b. April 27, 1939, Bissau, Portuguese Guinea [now Guinea-Bissau]—died March 2, 2009, Bissau, Guinea-Bissau) a Guinean politician who was president (1980–99 and 2005–09) of his country, but ethnic tensions, rivalries within the ruling African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde (PAIGC), and ongoing conflict between Vieira and the military led to his temporary exile in 1999–2005 and to his eventual assassination. Vieira, a member of the minority Papel ethnic community, trained as an electrician before joining (in 1960) PAIGC and fighting in the liberation war against the colonial power, Portugal. After independence in 1974, he served as Guinea-Bissau’s minister of defense (1974–78) and prime minister (1978–80), and in 1980 he took control in a bloodless coup against President Luís Cabral. Having achieved a modicum of economic and political stability, Vieira won the country’s first multi-party presidential vote in 1994 and was re-elected four years later. He was overthrown in 1999, but another coup in 2003 expedited his return from exile in Portugal. Running as an independent, Vieira was unexpectedly returned to power in the 2005 presidential poll. He survived an assassination attempt in November 2008, but on March 2, 2009, one day after the army chief of staff died in a bomb attack, Vieira was shot dead by government soldiers.

Mozambique

(Portuguese East Africa)

*Joaquim Chissano, a Mozambican politician who became the second President of Mozambique, was born in Malehice, Portuguese East Africa (October 22).

Joaquim Alberto Chissano (b. October 22, 1939, Malehice, Portuguese East Africa [Mozambique]) was the second President of Mozambique, serving from 1986 to 2005. He is credited with transforming the war-torn country of Mozambique into one of the most successful African democracies. After his presidency, Chissano became an elder statesman, envoy and diplomat for both his home country and the United Nations. Chissano also served as Chairperson of the African Union from 2003 to 2004.

Joaquim Chissano was born in the remote village of Malehice, Chibuto district, Gaza Province of the Portuguese colony of Mozambique (then called Portuguese East Africa). Chissano was the first black student to attend the only high school in the colony, Liceu Salazar in Lourenço Marques (present-day Maputo). After leaving secondary school, he went to Portugal to study medicine at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Lisbon. However, his political leanings caused him problems and he moved to Tanzania.

Chissano became "one of the founding members" of the Mozambique Liberation Front (Frelimo), which demanded autonomy from Portugal.  Later, Chissano played a fundamental role in the negotiation of the Lusaka Accord of 1974, which paved the way for the country's independence in 1975. The new President of Mozambique, Samora Machel, appointed him  to be Minister of Foreign Affairs.

Chissano succeeded to the presidency and became Frelimo party leader in 1986 when Samora Machel's presidential aircraft crashed in mountainous terrain in South Africa. Chissano ended the Mozambican Civil War in 1992 by negotiating a peace treaty with the rebel forces that "promised no prosecutions or punishments" and gave them fifty percent (50%) of the positions in the Mozambican army. The Renamo rebels later established their own political party.

In 1992, Chissano learned the Transcendental Meditation technique and introduced it to other government officials and their families. Two years later, Chissano and his generals ordered all police and military to "meditate twice a day for 20 minutes." In addition, 16,000 soldiers and 30,000 civilians were taught Transcendental Meditation and its advanced technique of Yogic Flying. According to Transcendental Meditation literature, Chissano said the result was "political peace and balance in nature in my country." According to Tobias Dai, the 2001 defence minister, "the effect was overwhelming" and included reduced crime, drought aversion and three times the expected level of economic growth. In 1993 Chissano received an honorary degree from Maharishi Vedic University in MERU, Holland and in 1994 negotiated an agreement with Maharishi Heaven on Earth Development for the agricultural development of 20 million hectares (49,000,000 acres) of "unused land" beginning with 2.5 million acres of timber, cotton and fruit. The 50-year contract promised twenty percent (20%) to forty percent (40%) of the profits for the Mozambique government but other government officials refused the deal. Chissanno was re-elected to the presidency in 1994 and again in 1999, when he defeated the former rebel leader, Afonso Dhlakama. After winning re-election Chissano's priority became poverty eradication but his efforts were complicated by a severe flood in 2001. However, Chissano had a fundamental role in convincing the G8 to write off £22 billion of Mozambique debt in 2005. Chissano chose not to run for a third term in the elections of 2004, although the constitution would have allowed him to do so. During Chissano's presidency, almost 3 million people, about fifteen percent (15%) of the country's citizens were removed from "extreme poverty" and the country achieved an economic growth rate of eight percent. In addition, child mortality rates for children under age five decreased by thirty-five percent (35%) and there was a sixty-five percent (65%) increase in primary school attendance.

After leaving the presidency, Chissano has assumed the role of elder statesman and has campaigned for peace through his work as an envoy and peace negotiator for the United Nations. Chissano served as Chairperson of the African Union from July 2003 to July 2004. On December 4, 2006, the United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan appointed Chissano the Special Envoy of the Secretary-General to Northern Uganda and Southern Sudan, to resolve the conflict with the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA). On Chissano's 68th birthday in 2007, he was awarded the inaugural  $5 million Prize for Achievement in African Leadership awarded by the Mo Ibrahim Foundation.  Chissano was absent from the award ceremony because he was still working on his United Nations mission in southern Sudan. According to the award's judges "Mr. Chissano's decision not to seek a third presidential term reinforced Mozambique's democratic maturity and demonstrated that institutions and the democratic process were more important than the person".

In 2010, Chissano wrote an article for The Huffington Post about water scarcity in Africa.  Chissano is a member of the Fondation Chirac's honor committee. He also became an independent non-executive director at Harmony Gold Mining, a South African underground and surface gold mining company, as well as an Eminent Member of the Sergio Vieira de Mello Foundation.

In 2014, Chissano spoke out in favor of LGBT rights in Africa.

Nigeria 

*Governor Bourdillon divided Southern Nigeria into the Eastern and Western provinces, each of which later became a region.

Bourdillon divided the south of Nigeria into Eastern and Western provinces in 1939. In the early days in Nigeria the British had governed the north of Nigeria indirectly, through the traditional rulers of the Muslim emirates, and had kept the region somewhat isolated from the outside world. There was perhaps a subconscious view that the feudal society was not ready for the full impact of modern civilization. Bernard Bourdillon decided that this was not a viable policy. In February 1942 he visited the leading Emirs and gave his opinion that they should not say "We will not have the southerners interfering in our affairs" but instead should say "we ought to have at least an equal say with the southerners in advising the Governor as the affairs of the whole country". The emirs accepted this advice.

Bourdillon recognized that the northerners were handicapped in comparison to the southerners by their lack of education and lack of English. Rather than simply expand the Legislative Council to include more northerners, he explored the idea of Regional Councils with a Central Council in Lagos that would review their findings. However, he saw these councils as strictly advisory in nature, saying "a benevolent autocracy is the form of government best suited to a people who are educationally backward and whose religion inculcates a blind obedience to authority". This view of the non-political nature of the regional councils helped alleviate concerns that the proposed federal system would cause antagonism between state and federal authorities. Bourdillon raised the question of whether Nigeria should be further subdivided into more than three regions. Some officials thought that the Tiv and Idoma divisions and most of Kabba province should be detached from the north. Some were in favor of more regions, each more homogenous ethnically, in a similar arrangement to that followed in East Africa. However, no further changes were made before Bourdillon retired in 1943.

South Africa

*The Ossewabrandwag (Ox-Wagon Sentinel) was launched (February 4).

The Ossewabrandwag (OB) (English: Ox-wagon Sentinel) was an anti-British and pro-German organization in South Africa during World War II, which opposed South African participation in the war. It was formed in Bloemfontein on February 4, 1939 by pro-German Afrikaners.

During the 19th century, most of the Boers of the northeastern Cape frontier migrated to the interior, and established the Orange Free State and South African Republic, which were independent of Great Britain. In the Second Boer War (1899–1902), Britain conquered the Boer Republics.  The Netherlands and Germany supported the Boer cause.

After the war, there was a general reconciliation between Afrikaners and Great Britain, culminating in the formation of the Union of South Africa in 1910, under the leadership of former Boer fighters such as Louis Botha and Jan Smuts (who was of Cape Dutch origin fighting on the side of the Boers). South African troops, including thousands of Afrikaners, served in the British forces during World War I. 

Nonetheless, many Boers remembered the extremely brutal tactics used by Britain in the Boer War and remained resentful of British rule, even loose association with Great Britain as a Dominion.

The chief vehicle of Afrikaner nationalism at this time was the "Purified National Party" of D. F. Malan, which broke away from the National Party when the latter merged with Smuts' South African Party in 1934. Another important element was the Afrikaner Broederbond, a quasi-secret society founded in 1918, and dedicated to the proposition that "the Afrikanervolk has been planted in this country by the Hand of God..."

1938 was the centennial anniversary of the Great Trek (the migration of Boers to the interior). The Ossewabrandwag was established in commemoration of the Trek. Most of the migrants traveled in ox-drawn wagons, hence the group's name. The group's leader was Johannes Van Rensburg, a lawyer who had served as Secretary of Justice under Smuts (as Minister), and was an admirer of Nazi Germany. 

The Boer militants of the Ossebrandwag (OB) were hostile to Britain and sympathetic to Germany. Thus, the OB opposed South African participation in the war, even after the Union declared war in support of Britain in September 1939.

The OB was based on the Fuhrer-principle, fighting against the Empire, the capitalists, the communists, Jews, the party and the system of parliamentarism on the base of national-socialism.

Members of the OB refused to enlist in the South African forces, and sometimes harassed servicemen in uniform. This erupted into open rioting in Johannesburg on February 1, 1941, wherein 140 soldiers were seriously hurt.

More dangerous than this was the formation of the Stormjaers (English: Assault troops), a paramilitary wing of the OB. The nature of the Stormjaers was evidenced by the oath sworn by new recruits: "If I retreat, kill me. If I die, avenge me. If I advance, follow me" (Afrikaans: As ek omdraai, skiet my. As ek val, wreek my. As ek storm, volg my).

The Stormjaers engaged in sabotage against the Union government. They dynamited electrical power lines and railroads, and cut telegraph and telephone lines. These types of acts were going too far for most Afrikaners, and Malan ordered the National Party to break with the OB in 1942.

The Union government cracked down on the OB and the Stormjaers, placing thousands of them in internment camps for the duration of the war. Among the internees was future prime minister B. J. Vorster. 

At the end of the war, the OB was absorbed into the National Party and ceased to exist as a separate body.

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*Hugh Masekela, a South African trumpeter best known for his number one hit Grazing in the Grass, was born in Witbank, South Africa (April 4).

Hugh Masekela (b. April 4, 1939, Witbank, South Africa) South African trumpeter who was one of his country’s most popular instrumentalists. An outspoken opponent of apartheid, he lived in the United States, Europe, and Africa while bringing his own country’s unique rhythms and harmonies to international stages.

Masekela was the son of the chief health inspector of Sharpeville township, who was also a sculptor in wood and owned an extensive jazz record collection. Records by the American trumpeters Dizzy Gillespie and Clifford Brown inspired Masekela to play bebop with the Jazz Epistles in 1959, a group that included the noted pianist Dollar Brand (later known as Abdullah Ibrahim) and which was the first black band in the country to record an album. When the grip of apartheid tightened the following year, Masekela immigrated to the United States, where he attended the Manhattan School of Music in New York City and began forming his own bands. In the 1960s he arranged for and accompanied his then wife, the singer Miriam Makeba.  He also wrote and played songs in the kwela style, the pop-folk music of the South African townships.

In 1964, Makeba and Masekela were married, divorcing two years later.

He had hits in the United States with the pop jazz tunes "Up, Up and Away" (1967) and the number-one smash "Grazing in the Grass" (1968), which sold four million copies. He also appeared at the Monterey Pop Festival  in 1967, and was subsequently featured in the film Monterey Pop by D. A. Pennebaker.  In 1974, Masekela and friend Stewart Levine organized the Zaire 74 music festival in Kinshasa set around the Rumble in the Jungle boxing match. He also participated as guest artist playing on the song "So you wanna be a rock'n roll star" on the Byrds "Younger than Yesterday" album.

Masekela traveled throughout Africa in the 1970s, becoming involved in the continent’s varieties of music, teaching for a year in Guinea, playing in the band of popular Nigerian performer Fela Ransome-Kuti, recording five albums, and touring with the highlife band Hedzoleh Soundz. In the 1980s, after starring in outdoor concerts in Lesotho and Botswana that drew throngs of both black and white South Africans, he settled in Botswana and set up a mobile recording studio near the South African border in order to record that country’s musicians. He also played on Paul Simon's “Graceland” world tour.  In 1990 he received a telephone call from his sister Barbara, in Johannesburg, reporting that the South African government had declared amnesty for political exiles.  Barbara, herself an exile, had returned home to become Nelson Mandela's chief of staff.

At home in South Africa, Masekela released Hope (1994), his South African band’s revival of his biggest hits over the decades. He followed that with Johannesburg (1995), a departure from his previous work because it featured American-sounding rap, hip-hop, and contemporary urban pop selections. Masekela’s own contribution was limited to jazzy trumpet introductions and backgrounds, when he played at all. His later albums included The Lasting Impressions of Ooga Booga (1996), Revival (2005), and Phola (2009).

In 2004 Masekela published his autobiography, Still Grazing: The Musical Journey of Hugh Masekela, which was co-written with D. Michael Cheers.

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*Barry Hertzog resigned as Prime Minister (September 5).

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*Jan Smuts replaced J. B. M. Hertzog as Prime Minister of South Africa after Parliament rejected Hertzog's legislation advocating neutrality in the European conflict (September 5).

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*The new Prime Minister, Jan Smuts, led South Africa into the Second World War (September 6).

In the early hours of Friday, September 1, 1939, German troops stormed across the Polish border.  Great Britain and France, bound to the defense of Poland, immediately demanded a German withdrawal from Polish territory.  By Saturday, it was clear that no such withdrawal would occur and that another world war was imminent.

By a fateful coincidence, the South African Parliament, normally in recess, had been summoned for a special session to prolong the life of the Senate that was due to expire on September 5.  The government was aware that at this session it would have to decide finally on South Africa's position in the war, an issue of critical importance to national unity.

With this is mind, Prime Minister Barry Hertzog summoned the twelve members of his cabinet to a meeting at his Groote Schuur residence on the Saturday afternoon of September 2 to discuss the crisis.  At stake were the Fusion Government (a government by the melded South African and National Parties) and five years of work by Jan Smuts and Barry Hertzog to bring about unity between English- and Afrikaans speakers.

Smuts, supported by six ministers, was adamant that while South Africa could refuse to fight, it would be in the country's interest to enter the war as Britain's ally.  Hertzog, backed by the remaining five ministers, was equally determined that the country should remain neutral.  The meeting ended with Hertzog quietly confident that he would command a majority in the house the following Monday. 

A grim atmosphere of crisis hung over the house of Assembly as it opened its proceedings on the morning of September 4, 1939.  Hertzog moved that the house accept that "existing relations between the Union of South Africa and the various belligerent countries [would], in so far as the Union is concerned, persist unchanged and continue as if no war is being waged".  Smuts moved an amendment to the statement in terms of which the Union would declare war on Germany.

As the debate swung back and forth, there seemed reason for Hertzog to feel confident -- but then, unintentionally, he overplayed his hand by moving from a defense of neutrality to an apparent defense of Adolf Hitler.  His opponents were outraged.  Hertzog's gaffe was enought to persuade those who were wavering to throw their support behind Smuts.  The debate finally ended at 9 p.m. when a division (a vote) was called.  By the time the tally was complete, Smuts' amendment had been carried by 80 votes to 67.

The next day (September 5, 1939), Hertzog resigned the premiership and requested that the Governor-General, Patrick Duncan, dissolve Parliament and call a general election.  However, Duncan refused, noting that it was clear that Smuts could form a government from what remained of the Labour and Dominion parties.  Thus, on Wednesday, September 6, 1939, Duncan asked Smuts to form a new government... and South Africa went to war.

*****

*Breyten Breytenbach, a South African writer considered to be the national poet laureate by Afrikaans-speaking South Africans, was born in Bonnievale, Western Cape, South Africa (September 16).

Breyten Breytenbach (b. September 16, 1939, Bonnievale, Western Cape, South Africa) was born in Bonnievale, Western Cape,  approximately 180 kilometers (111 miles) from Cape Town and 100 kilometers (62 miles) from the southernmost tip of Africa at Cape Agulhas. His early education was at Hoërskool Hugenoot and he later studied fine arts at the Michaelis School of Fine Art at the University of Cape Town. His committed opposition to apartheid policy compelled him to leave South Africa for Paris, France, in the early 1960s, where he married a French woman of Vietnamese ancestry, Yolande, due to which he was not allowed to return: The Prohibition of Mixed Marriages (1949) and The Immorality Act (1950) made it a criminal offence for a white person to have any sexual relations with a person of a different race. 

On an illegal clandestine trip to South Africa in 1975, Breytenbach was arrested and sentenced to seven years' imprisonment for high treason. His work The True Confessions of an Albino Terrorist describes aspects of his imprisonment. 

In June 1977 Breytenbach was brought to court again by the South African government on a new series of terrorism charges. It was alleged that he had planned a Russian submarine attack on the prison at Robben Island through the "Okhela Organization",  which he had allegedly founded as a resistance group fighting apartheid in exile. After a successful defense, the judge found a total lack of evidence for the very existence of Okhela – which had been the main charge at the first trial – and so Breytenbach was found not guilty on all serious charges. He was found guilty only on the technical counts of having smuggled out letters and poems, for which a nominal fine of some 50 dollars was imposed.

Released in 1982, he returned to Paris and obtained French citizenship.

He became a visiting professor at the University of Cape Town in the Graduate School of Humanities in January 2000 and also became involved with the Goree Institute in Dakar (Senegal) and with New York University,  where he teaches in the Graduate Creative Writing Program.

Breytenbach's work includes numerous volumes of novels, poetry and essays, many of which are in Afrikaans. Many have been translated from Afrikaans to English, and many were originally published in English. He is also known for his works of pictorial arts. Exhibitions of his paintings and prints have been shown in cities around the world, including Johannesburg, Cape Town, Hong Kong, Amsterdam, Stockholm, Paris, Brussels, Edinburgh and New York City.

He is the brother of Jan Breytenbach, co-founder of the 1st Reconnaissance Commando of the South African Special Forces, and Cloete Breytenbach, a widely published war correspondent. He is the father of the French journalist Daphnee Breytenbach.

*****
*Hertzog returned to the Herenigde (Reunited) National Party.

1939 The Americas

The Americas

Canada

Little more than 20 years after the end of the “War to End all Wars,” the Second World War (1939–1945) erupted and soon spread across Europe and around the globe. The Second World War saw considerable growth in how Black Canadians served in the military. While some Black recruits would encounter resistance when trying to enlist in the army, in contrast to the First World War no segregated battalions were created. Indeed, several thousand Black men and women served during the bloodiest war the world has ever seen. Black Canadians joined regular units and served alongside their white fellow soldiers here at home, in England, and on the battlefields of Europe. Together they shared the same harsh experiences of war while fighting in places like Italy, France, Belgium and the Netherlands.

In the early years of the war, however, the Royal Canadian Navy and Royal Canadian Air Force were not as inclusive in their policies. This did not mean that trail-blazing Black Canadians did not find a way to persevere and serve. Some Black sailors served in the Navy, and Black airmen served in the Air Force as ground crew and aircrew here at home and overseas in Europe.

The contributions of Black servicemen was second to none and several earned decorations for their bravery. Some Black women joined the military as well, serving in support roles so that more men were available for the front lines.

And back on the home front, Black Canadians again made important contributions by working in factories that produced vehicles, weapons, ammunition and other materials for the war effort, and taking part in other patriotic efforts like war bond drives. For example, Black women in Nova Scotia worked in vital jobs in the shipbuilding industry, filling the shoes of the men who would usually do that work but who were away fighting in the war.

Many Black Veterans returned home after the war with a heightened awareness of the value of freedom and their right to be treated as equals after all they had done for Canada in their country’s time of need. The service of Black Canadians in the Second World War remains a point of pride and was a measure of how Black Canadians were becoming increasingly integrated into wider Canadian society.

Cuba

*The German ocean liner MS St. Louis departed Hamburg, Germany for Cuba with 936 passengers, mostly Jewish (May 13). The Cuban government had already canceled their landing certificates, but many passengers boarded the ship anyway hoping the Cubans would honor the certificates they had already obtained.

*The MS St. Louis reached Havana, Cuba, but only 22 passengers were allowed to disembark (May 27).

The MS St. Louis was a German ocean liner most notable for a single voyage in 1939, in which its captain, Gustav Schroder, tried to find homes for 908 Jewish refugees from Germany.  After they were denied entry to Cuba, Canada, and the United States, the refugees were finally accepted in various European countries, and historians have estimated that approximately a quarter of them died in death camps during World War II. The event was the subject of a 1974 book, Voyage of the Damned,  by Gordon Thomas and Max Morgan-Witts.  It was adapted for a 1976 United States film of the same title and a 1994 opera titled "St. Louis Blues" by Chiel Meijering.

The St. Louis set sail from Hamburg to Cuba on May 13, 1939. The vessel under command of Captain Gustav Schroder was carrying 937 refugees seeking asylum from Nazi persecution. Captain Schröder, was a non-Jewish German who went to great lengths to ensure dignified treatment for his passengers.

The journey to Cuba was a joyous affair. The passengers aboard the St. Louis were treated with contempt before they boarded, but once on the ship they were treated like privileged tourists. Crew members treated the passengers well. Captain Schröder insisted on this. Elegantly clad stewards served foods that by 1939 were rationed in Germany. There was a full-time nursemaid to care for small children when their parents sat to eat. There were dances and concerts, and the captain allowed passengers to hold Friday evening religious services in the dining room and even permitted them to throw a tablecloth over a plaster bust of Hitler that sat there. Children were given swimming lessons in the on-deck pool. Passengers felt that they were on a vacation cruise to freedom.

The ship dropped anchor at 04:00 on May 27 at the far end of the Havana harbor and was denied entry to the usual docking areas. The next six days on the harbor were tumultuous times. The Cuban government, headed by President Federico Laredo Bru, refused to accept the foreign refugees. Although passengers had previously purchased legal visas, they could not enter Cuba either as tourists (laws related to tourist visas had recently been changed) or as refugees seeking political asylum. On May 5, 1939, four months before World War II began, Havana abandoned its former pragmatic immigration policy and instead issued Decree 937, which restricted entry of all foreigners except United States citizens possessing a bond of $500 and authorization by the Cuban secretaries of state and labor. Permits and visas issued before May 5 were invalidated retroactively." None of the passengers were aware that the Cuban government had retroactively invalidated their landing permits.

In the end, only 29 passengers were allowed to disembark in Cuba. Twenty-two of them were Jewish and had valid United States visas, the remaining six—four Spanish citizens and two Cuban nationals—had valid entry documents. Another passenger, after attempting to commit suicide, was evacuated to a hospital in Havana.

American officials Cordell Hull, Secretary of State, and Henry Morgenthau, Secretary of the Treasury had made some efforts to persuade Cuba to accept the refugees. Their actions, together with efforts of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, were not successful.

Prohibited from landing in Cuba, Captain Schröder circled off the coast of Florida, hoping for permission to enter the United States.  Cordell Hull, Secretary of State, advised Roosevelt not to accept the Jews, however. Captain Schroder considered running aground along the coast to allow the refugees to escape, but, acting on Cordell Hull's instructions, United States Coast Guard vessels shadowed the ship and prevented such a move.

After the St. Louis was turned away from the United States, a group of academics and clergy in Canada tried to persuade Canada's Prime Minister, William Lyon Mackenzie King, to provide sanctuary to the ship's passengers, as it was only two days from Halifax, Nova Scotia. But Canadian immigration official Frederick Blair, hostile to Jewish immigration, persuaded the Prime Minister on June 9 not to intervene. In 2000, Blair's nephew apologized to the Jewish people for his uncle's action.  

After the war, Captain Gustav Schröder was awarded the Order of Merit by the Federal Republic of Germany.  In 1993, Schröder was posthumously named as one of the Righteous among the Nations at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial in Israel. A display at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum tells the story of the voyage of the MS St. Louis. The Hamburg Museum features a display and a video about the St. Louis in its exhibits about the history of shipping in the city. In 2009, a special exhibit at the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic in Halifax, Nova Scotia entitled "Ship of Fate" explored the Canadian connection to the tragic voyage. 

In 2011, a memorial monument called the Wheel of Conscience, was produced by the Canadian Jewish Congress, designed by Daniel Libeskind with graphic design by David Berman and Trevor Johnston. The memorial is a polished stainless steel wheel. Symbolizing the policies that turned away more than 900 Jewish refugees, the wheel incorporates four inter-meshing gears each showing a word to represent factors of exclusion: anti-semitism, xenophobia, racism, and hatred.
 The back of the memorial is inscribed with the passenger list. It was first exhibited in 2011 at Pier 21, Canada's national immigration museum in Halifax.

The MS St. Louis was adapted as a German naval accommodation ship from 1940 to 1944. She was heavily damaged by the Allied bombings at Kiel on August 30, 1944, but was repaired and used as a hotel ship in Hamburg in 1946. She was later sold and was scrapped in 1952.

*****

*Cuban President Federico Laredo Bru ordered the Ms St. Louis to leave Cuban waters and threatened to use gunboats if it did not do so (June 1).

*The MS St. Louis left Havana (June 2).

*The Cuban Baseball Hall of Fame was inaugurated, six weeks after its American counterpart (July 26).

The Cuban Baseball Hall of Fame (Salón de la Fama del Béisbol Cubano) is a hall of fame that honors eminent baseball players from Cuban baseball. Established in 1939 to honor players, managers, and umpires in the pre-revolution Cuban League.  By 1961 it had honored 68 players, managers, and umpires whose names are shown on a marble plaque at Havana's Estadio Latinoamericano. After the revolution, however, the Hall of Fame languished for more than 50 years, seldom mentioned or acknowledged and with no new inductees. Following a campaign led by Cuban filmmaker Ian Padron,  a meeting was held on November 7–8, 2014 to reformulate the Hall of Fame and to propose a museum in which it would be housed. The reformulated Hall recognized the original 68 members, and a jury of 25 people selected 10 new inductees — five from the pre-revolution period and five representing for the first time the post-revolution Cuban National Series. The planned site for the new museum is in the José Antonio Echeverría Workers' Social Club (also known as the Vedado Tennis Club).

The Cuban Baseball Hall of Fame was established by the DGND (Dirección General Nacional de Deportes), a government agency supervising sports activities in Cuba. The hall was inaugurated on July 26, 1939 — about six weeks after the June 12 dedication and opening of the United States National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown — by placing a bronze plaque at Havana's La Tropical Stadium.  The first ten inductees were selected by former and current baseball writers and the DGND's baseball advisers (asesores de baseball). The inaugural class included 19th-century Cuban stars (Antonio Maria Garcia, Valentin Gonzalez, Adolfo Lujan, and Carlos Royer), black players who had achieved success in the United States Negro leagues (Luis Bustamante, Jose de la Caridad Mendez, Gervasio Gonzalez, and Cristobal Torriente), and white players who had played Major League Baseball (Rafael Almeida and Armando Marsans).  Méndez and Torriente, along with later inductee Martin Dihigo, subsequently were also recognized by the United States Hall of Fame.

The bronze plaque was subsequently replaced by a marble plaque that hangs on a wall "in a poorly lit corner" of Havana's Estadio Latinoamericano. Before listing the names of the inductees, the introductory section of the plaque reads,

Cuban Professional Baseball Hall of Fame

List of players that have been selected as

BASEBALL IMMORTALS

And have deserved this just recognition for their distinguished work

maintaining an undying memory of what they were in this

sport

While all of the inductees were recognized as baseball players, in several cases their distinction reflected, at least in part, accomplishments achieved after their playing careers. For example, Emilio Sabourín, Agustin Molina, and Jose Rodriguez were long-time managers who won championships, as also were more celebrated players such as Dihigo, Miguel Angel Gonzalez, Adolfo Luque, and Armando Marsans. Francisco A. Poyo and Eustaquio Gutiérrez served as umpires. Carlos Zaldo, Eugenio Jiménez, and Molina entered the business side of baseball as stadium developer, promoter, and league administrator. Wenceslao Gálvez wrote a history of baseball in Cuba, published in 1889, which may very well be the first history of the game ever written anywhere.

Other inductees achieved distinction outside of baseball. For example, Juan Antiga, who played in the Cuban League for just two seasons prior to completing medical school, became a notable intellectual, homeopath, government official, and diplomat, serving as ambassador to Switzerland and a delegate to the League of Nations. The type of post-playing distinction most often recognized by the hall, however, is military service, especially during the Cuban War of Independence that was fought from 1895 to 1898. Alfredo Arango, Eduardo Machado, and Carlos Maciá served as officers in the Cuban revolutionary army and Sabourín, Juan Manuel Pastoriza, and Ricardo Cabaleiro died in the conflict.

In the 20th century, opportunities to play in the United States became increasingly important to Cuban players. Some of the earliest opportunities to play in the United States came in nearby Key West beginning about 1890. Key West had an independent baseball league with considerable participation by Cuban emigrants, and Cuban League players were recruited to play there during the off season. Cuban Baseball Hall of Fame inductees Molina and Poyo began their baseball careers in Key West before moving on to the Cuban League. In 1899, a Cuban all-star team, the All Cubans, undertook their first barnstorming tour of the United States. The team, which was racially integrated (reflecting the racial integration of the Cuban League) played against professional and semi-professional teams, white and black, until 1905.

However, the United States color line soon affected Cuban players. By 1904, white Cubans, such as Juan Viola, were playing in the minor leagues, and 1911 Rafael Almeida and Armando Marsans broke into the majors with the Cincinnati Reds.  Meanwhile, Cubans with darker complexions played in the Negro leagues for teams such as the Cuban Stars (West), the Cuban Stars (East), and the New York Cubans.  Some Cuban players moved on to success with United States teams, such as Jose Mendez with the Kansas City Monarchs and Cristobal Torriente with the Chicago American Giants. 

After the closing of the Cuban League in 1961, inductions to the Cuban Baseball Hall of Fame ceased in Havana for more than five decades. The players who had migrated to the United States, however, formed an organization, the Federation of Professional Cuban Baseball Players in Exile (Federación de Peloteros Profesionales Cubanos en el Exilio) which held elections in Miami to add new members to the hall. These additional members are not universally recognized and they are not recognized in Cuba, nor are they included in lists of Hall of Fame inductees shown in reference books by historians. The Miami elections continued in three phases—1962 through 1986, 1997 through 1998, and 2007—ultimately declaring more than 200 additional individuals as inductees.

In August 2014, Cuban filmmaker and baseball fan Ian Padrón brought together a group of 12 prominent fans to create a group called Enthusiasts for the Refoundation of the Cuban Baseball Hall of Fame. The group developed a set of rules to govern a reformulated hall which would recognize the 68 original members, provide for regular elections of additional professional and amateur players from both the pre-revolution and post-revolution periods, and would help arrange for the hall to be part of a Cuban baseball museum. With support from the National Institute of Sport, Physical Education, and Recreation (INDER), a meeting of sports commentators was held on November 7–8, 2014. The meeting approved the draft rules, selected a jury of 25 people to select the inductees, and planned for subsequent annual elections. Four players and an umpire were honored from the pre-revolution era — Conrado (Connie) Marrero, Orestes (Minnie) Minoso, Camilo Pascual, Esteban (Steve) Bellan, and umpire Amado Maestri.  Five players were also honored from the post-revolution era, the first players from that period to be recognized -- Omar Linares, Orestes Kindelan, Antonio Munoz, Luis Casanova, and Braudilio Vinent.

Mexico

*Leonel Maciel, an African Mexican artist, was born in La Soledad de Maciel, Guerrero, Mexico (March 21).

Leonel Maciel, an African Mexican artist and member of the Salon de la Plastica Mexicana, from the coast of the state of Guerrero, was born on March 21, 1939. Although from a rural area and farming family, he studied art at the Escuela Nacional de Pintura, Escultura y Grabaco "La Esmeralda" and has traveled extensively in Europe and Asia, which has influenced his work. His art has changed styles from generally contains multiple elements and saturated colors.

Maciel was born in the small village of La Soledad de Maciel, located in the municipality of Petatlan, Guerrero on Mexico’s Pacific coast.  He was born to a farm working family, in a palapa near the ocean. His family is of mixed African, Asian and indigenous roots, not uncommon for that region, the Costa Grande of Guerrero. He is a tall thin man, from family of tall people, stating that his great-grandparents were two meters tall or taller. One of these was Margarita Romero, called Negra Margarita who was African-indigenous ethnicity.

Maciel spent his early childhood on beaches and among mangroves. He began to draw and paint early, with his father encouraging him even though the region does not have a strong artistic tradition. His father also taught him to appreciate literature and he became fond of Hispanic-American literature and authors such as Alejo Carpentier, Pablo Neruda and Miguel Angel Asturias, which affected his artistry.

Maciel attended primary school for four years and at age ten went to Mexico City where he attended more classes up to high school but he did not study art although he had been drawing since he was a young child. Instead he worked odd jobs and sold some works that he drew or painted. These came to the attention of the Escuela Nacional de Pintura, Escultura y Grabado "La Esmeralda". He received a scholarship, studying there from 1958 to 1962.

Maciel believed that it is necessary for artists to see as much of the world as possible and be exposed to the work of other artists. His first journeys outside of Mexico included New York and Iceland, where he experienced an aurora borealis. He also spent three years in Europe, but did not use the time to visit museums and other artists. In 1995, he made an eight month journey through Asia in countries such as India, Bali, Thailand, China and Malaysia as well as the various Pacific islands. Elements of what he saw during this trip were then included into his work.

In 2007 Maciel worked on a project to document the cuisine of his native region which inspired a number of paintings.

Maciel lived in Tepoztlan from the 1980s into the 1990s when he began living in his native Guerrero state.

Maciel has had over forty individual and collective exhibitions of his work in countries such as Brazil, France, the United States and Portugal as well as Mexico. His first individual exhibition was as the Galería Excélsior in 1964.  His important collective exhibitions include “Art-Expo” in New York, Erótica ’82 at the Galería José Clemente Orozco and Contemporary Mexican Painters at the Picasso Museum in Antibes, France. He participated in the Myth and Magic of Latin America Biennal in Rio de Janeiro in 1979. Recognitions for Maciel's work include membership in the Salón de la Plástica Mexicana, retrospectives at the Museo del Carmen in Mexico City (2001) and the Museo de la Ciudad de México (2003) . In 2007 his home municipality had a ceremony to honor him.

Trinidad

*Rudolph Walker, a Trinidadian actor best known for his roles on British television, was born in San Juan, Trinidad (September 28).

Rudolph Walker,  (b. September 28, 1939, San Juan, Trinidad) was the first black actor to appear in a major British television series, his breakthrough role as Bill in the 1970s sitcom Love Thy Neighbour (co-starring fellow Trinidadian Nina Baden-Semper) leading to a long and varied acting career. 

Rudolph Malcolm Walker was born in San Juan, Trinidad, and began acting as an eight-year-old in primary school, going on to join Derek Walcott's Trinidad Theatre Workshop as its youngest member. With the aim of furthering his career he left the island at the age of 20 in 1960. He had been planning to go the United States, where he had connections, but actor Errol John — who had already migrated to Britain but was in Trinidad doing a play — convinced him to go to the United Kingdom, where the training was superior.

Walker's first major television role was as a policeman in the British drama The Wednesday Play, in the episode entitled "Fable" (aired 27 January 1965). He is known for his comedic roles in Love Thy Neighbour (Thames Television),  The Thin Blue Line, which starred Rowan Atkinson, and in Ali G Indahouse.  He also appeared in Doctor Who, in the 1969 serial The War Games.  He was one of the first black actors to be seen regularly on British television, in his role on the controversial Love Thy Neighbour, which ran for seven series, from 1972 to 1976.

Walker also appeared in the first episode of On the Buses, "The Early Shift" (1969), and the first episode of Mr. Bean as "The Examiner" (1990). His other notable roles included as barrister Larry Scott in the 1985 BBC series Black Silk, by Mustapha Matura and Rudy Narayan.  

Beginning in 2001, he  played Patrick Trueman in the BBC One television soap opera EastEnders and in 2010 he appeared in the Internet spin-off series EastEnders: E20.  He also starred in a BBC One sitcom called The Crouches, about a family from Walworth, in South East London. He played the grandfather for all seasons (2003–05).

Although most of his work was on television, he also appeared in several movies, including 10 Rillington Place, King Ralph (along with his Love Thy Neighbour co-star, Jack Smethurst), and Let Him Have It.  On the stage, he appeared in the first production of Mustapha Matura's Play Mas at the Royal Court Theatre in 1974, and has played the titular character in stage productions of Shakespeare's Othello,  directed by David Thacker and Charles Marowitz, and also Caliban in a production of The Tempest directed by Jonathan Miller.  He was also  Gower in Thacker's 1989 production of Pericles, Prince of Tyre.

He also played opposite Diane Parish in Lovejoy (starring Ian McShane) where they played Father and Daughter.

Walker also lent his voice to the American dubbed version of the popular British children's television series Teletubbies, in which he re-narrated the opening and closing sequences.

Walker was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in 2006 for his services to drama. A biography for children about him, written by Verna Wilkins, was published by Tamarind Books on September 4, 2008.

On Walker's 70th birthday, he launched a new foundation, The Rudolph Walker Foundation, whose aims include helping to provide opportunities and incentives for disadvantaged youth starting out on an entertainment career. The Foundation administers Rudolph Walker's inter-School Drama Award (RWiSDA), competed for by schools across London. In addition, Rudolph Walker's Role Model Award (RWRMA) is presented to outstanding students who have contributed something special like demonstrating positive leadership, a good influence to their peers and others, and a role model within the school.

Europe

England

*Peter Abrahams left South Africa and went to London.

Peter Abrahams, in full Peter Henry Abrahams (b. March 3, 1919, Vrededorp, near Johannesburg, South Africa — d. January 18, 2017, Kingston, Jamaica), was one of the most prolific of South Africa’s black prose writers. His early novel Mine Boy (1946) was the first to depict the dehumanizing effect of racism upon South African blacks.

Abrahams was born in 1919 in Vrededorp, a suburb of Johannesburg, his father was from Ethiopia and his mother was Coloured. In 1939, Abrahams left South Africa, and worked first as a sailor, and then as a journalist in London.

While working in London, Abrahams lived with his wife Daphne in Loughton. He met several important black leaders and writers, including George Padmore, a leading figure in the Pan-African community there, Kwame Nkrumah of the Gold Coast (Ghana) and Jomo Kenyatta of Kenya, both later heads of state of their respective nations. In 1956, Abrahams published a roman a clef about the political community of which he had been a part in London: A Wreath for Udomo. His main character, Michael Udomo, who returns from London to his African country to preside over its transformation into an independent, industrial nation, appeared to be modelled chiefly on Nkrumah with a hint of Kenyatta. Other identifiable fictionalized figures included George Padmore, a Pan-Africanist author. The novel concluded with Udomo's murder. Published the year before Nkrumah took the reins of independent Ghana, A Wreath for Udomo was not an optimistic forecast of Africa's future.

Abrahams left South Africa at the age of 20, settling first in Britain and then in Jamaica; nevertheless, most of his novels and short stories are based on his early life in South Africa. Mine Boy, for example, tells of a country youth thrown into the alien and oppressive culture of a large South African industrial city. Abrahams’ semi-autobiographical Tell Freedom: Memories of Africa (1954; new ed. 1970) deals with the related theme of his struggles as a youth in the slums of Johannesburg. The Path of Thunder (1948) depicts a young “mixed” couple who love under the menacing shadow of enforced segregation. Wild Conquest (1950) follows the great northern trek of the Boers, and A Night of Their Own (1965) sets forth the plight of the Indian in South Africa. The novel A Wreath for Udomo (1956; new ed. 1971) and the travel book This Island Now (1966; new ed. 1971) are set in western Africa and the Caribbean, respectively. Abrahams' The View from Coyaba (1985) chronicles four generations of a Jamaican family and their experiences with racism. He also wrote the memoir The Coyaba Chronicles: Reflections on the Black Experience in the 20th Century (2000).

In the late 1950s, inspired by a visit to Jamaica, Abrahams moved his family to the island. There he became editor of the West Indian Economist and took charge of the daily radio news network, West Indian News, until 1964, when he gave up most of his duties so that he could devote himself full-time to writing. Many of his earlier works were reissued or translated into other languages in the 1960s and early ’70s, as his reading public steadily widened.

France

In September 1939, when France declared war on Germany in response to the invasion of Poland, Josephine Baker was recruited by Deuxieme Bureau, French military intelligence, as an "honorable correspondent". Baker collected what information she could about German troop locations from officials she met at parties. She specialized in gatherings at embassies and ministries, charming people as she had always done, while gathering information. Her café-society fame enabled her to rub shoulders with those in the know, from high-ranking Japanese officials to Italian bureaucrats, and to report back what she heard. She attended parties at the Italian embassy without raising suspicions and gathered information.