1930
Pan-African Chronology
Pan-African Chronology
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May
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May 1
*Ethel Ayler, a veteran African American character actress with a career spanning over five decades most notably in the role as Carrie Hanks, the mother of Claire Huxtable of the The Cosby Show, was born in Whistler, Alabama.
May 4
*Ethel Ayler, a veteran African American character actress with a career spanning over five decades most notably in the role as Carrie Hanks, the mother of Claire Huxtable of the The Cosby Show, was born in Whistler, Alabama.
Ethel Spraggins Ayler (b. May 1, 1930, Whistler, Alabama – d. November 18, 2018, Loma Linda, California) was an African-American character actress with a career spanning over five decades.
Ayler was born in Whistler, Alabama and graduated from Fisk University. In 1957, she made her off-Broadway debut in the Langston Hughes musical, Simply Heavenly. Later that year, she debuted on Broadway in the multiple Tony Award-nominated musical, Jamaica, as an understudy for Lena Horne (who was also making her Broadway debut).
Another notable early performance was in Jean Genet's play, The Blacks: A Clown Show, which ran off-Broadway for 1,408 performances and received three Obie Awards, including Best New Play. The impressive cast of African American actors included three future Academy Award nominees: James Earl Jones, Cicely Tyson and Louis Gossett, Jr.
Throughout her career, Ayler appeared frequently with the Negro Ensemble Company. This included notable performances in The First Breeze of Summer, Eden and Nevis Mountain Dew.
On television, Ayler had a recurring role as Carrie Hanks, Claire Huxtable's mother on The Cosby Show. She also made memorable performances in the films To Sleep with Anger (1990) and Eve's Bayou (1997).
For her work in To Sleep with Anger, Ayler received a nomination for the Independent Spirit Award for Best Supporting Female.
Ayler's last Broadway appearance was in another Tony-nominated production, The Little Foxes, in 1997. On November 18, 2018, she died in Loma Linda, California, at the age of 88.
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*Katherine Esther Jackson, the matriarch of the Jackson musical family, was born in Clayton, Alabama.
Katherine Esther Jackson (née Scruse, born Kattie B. Screws; May 4, 1930, Clayton, Alabama) is the matriarch of the famous Jackson musical family.
Katherine Jackson was born as Kattie B. Screws on May 4, 1930 in Clayton, Alabama, to Prince Albert (October 16, 1907 – January 21, 1995) and Martha Screws (née Upshaw; December 14, 1902 – April 25, 1990). The elder of two daughters, Katherine contracted polio at the age of two, which left her with a noticeable permanent limp. In 1934, her father changed his surname to "Scruse", and renamed his daughter "Katherine Esther." That year, the Scruse family moved to East Chicago, Indiana, an industrial city in northwest Indiana near Chicago.
As a child, Jackson aspired to become an actress or a country singer, but was dismayed to find no notable black country stars. Jackson's parents divorced when she was still a child. While attending Washington High School, Jackson joined the local high school band. In 1947, Katherine met Joseph Jackson, who was also living in East Chicago. Joseph obtained an annulment of an earlier marriage and began dating Katherine. After a year-long courtship, they married on November 5, 1949. In January 1950, they purchased a two-bedroom house in Gary, Indiana. During the couple's early years in Gary, they sang together, with Joe playing guitar. After Joe's dream of a boxing career was dashed, he continued working at nearby East Chicago's Inland Steel Company. From 1950 until 1966, Katherine gave birth to 10 children, including twins Marlon and Brandon, the latter of whom died a few hours after birth.
In the late 1950s, Jackson began working part-time as a store clerk in a local Sears store in Gary, Indiana. In 1963, Jackson, who was raised a Baptist, became a Jehovah's Witness. In 1965, all of her children followed her into the faith. While Joe, who was brought up in the Lutheran faith, also practiced the religion. As Jackson's children grew, Katherine quit her position at Sears and worked as a housewife, keeping her children closer to home. By the early 1960s, several of Jackson's sons began to show off their musical talents. In 1964, Joe formed The Jackson Brothers with three of their eldest sons, Jackie, Tito, and Jermaine. Around the same time, Jackson's younger son Michael also began to display his talent. Michael's talent was discovered first by Katherine, who noticed Michael, at the age of five, singing along to the radio while dancing to the rhythm. When she tried to tell Joe of Michael's talent, Joe, at first, brushed her aside, but she persisted.
Joe eventually enlisted Michael and older brother Marlon into the group not as vocalists, but as backing instrumentalists, playing percussion. In 1966, Joe began to see seven-year-old Michael's overall talents two years after Jackson's discovery. Beforehand, Michael had performed onstage without his father's knowledge at several school recitals starting at age five. By the end of 1966, Michael was positioned as the second frontman of the group after Jermaine. Acting on advice from a schoolteacher in 1965, Joe changed the group's name to The Jackson Five. In 1967, after winning several talent shows in Gary, Joe Jackson decided to make the group a professional act.
On November 21, 1967, Gordon Keith, an owner and vocalist at Gary's Steeltown Records, discovered and signed The Jackson Five to their first contract. Their first single, "Big Boy", produced by Keith, was released on January 31, 1968. "Big Boy" became a local hit, playing on radio stations in the Chicago-Gary area. Jackson began designing the group's costumes, which she continued until the group found national fame months after signing with Motown Records in March 1969.
During The Jackson Five's 1970–71 heyday, Katherine – along with her three daughters and youngest son – was barely mentioned in the press. This changed in 1974 when Joe began building careers around his three younger children and eldest daughter. Michael often mentioned Katherine lovingly. Katherine started to become part of her husband's management team when the grown-up members of the group (which renamed themselves The Jacksons after splitting from Motown in 1975) reunited for the Victory Tour in 1984. Michael dedicated his 1982 album Thriller -- the best selling album of all time -- to Katherine.
Janet Jackson, Katherine's youngest child, did the same following the release of her 1989 album Rhythm Nation 1814. Rhythm Nation 1814 was the first album where Janet was not under the watchful eye of her father following the success of Control, as Janet had fired him months after Control's release. In 1985, acknowledging what was then a positive impact on her children's successful music careers, national urban magazine Essence honored Katherine Jackson as "Mother of the Year".
On November 21, 1967, Gordon Keith, an owner and vocalist at Gary's Steeltown Records, discovered and signed The Jackson Five to their first contract. Their first single, "Big Boy", produced by Keith, was released on January 31, 1968. "Big Boy" became a local hit, playing on radio stations in the Chicago-Gary area. Jackson began designing the group's costumes, which she continued until the group found national fame months after signing with Motown Records in March 1969.
During The Jackson Five's 1970–71 heyday, Katherine – along with her three daughters and youngest son – was barely mentioned in the press. This changed in 1974 when Joe began building careers around his three younger children and eldest daughter. Michael often mentioned Katherine lovingly. Katherine started to become part of her husband's management team when the grown-up members of the group (which renamed themselves The Jacksons after splitting from Motown in 1975) reunited for the Victory Tour in 1984. Michael dedicated his 1982 album Thriller -- the best selling album of all time -- to Katherine.
Janet Jackson, Katherine's youngest child, did the same following the release of her 1989 album Rhythm Nation 1814. Rhythm Nation 1814 was the first album where Janet was not under the watchful eye of her father following the success of Control, as Janet had fired him months after Control's release. In 1985, acknowledging what was then a positive impact on her children's successful music careers, national urban magazine Essence honored Katherine Jackson as "Mother of the Year".
In 1990, Jackson released her autobiography My Family, The Jacksons, which documented her early years and her relationship with her husband and their children, eight of whom wrote salutes to their mother in the book's foreword. She detailed that her husband on more than a few occasions had committed adultery. She decided to file for divorce on March 9, 1973 at the Los Angeles County Clerk's Office, but chose to rescind the divorce papers. The following year, on August 30, 1974, Joh'Vonnie Jackson, Joe's daughter with another woman named Cheryl Terrell, was born. The birth of Joh'Vonnie was the offspring of a 25 year affair between Joe and Cheryl that continued while Joe and Cheryl raised their daughter Joh'Vonnie.
Katherine attempted once again to divorce her husband in or around 1982, but again was persuaded to drop the action. As a result, Katherine and Joe remained officially married.
Katherine attempted once again to divorce her husband in or around 1982, but again was persuaded to drop the action. As a result, Katherine and Joe remained officially married.
On June 25, 2009, Michael Jackson died from an overdose of propofol, a strong sedative+. On July 30, 2009, Katherine Jackson and Debbie Rowe reached a settlement pertaining to the care of Michael's two oldest children (with Rowe), Prince and Paris, in which the children would be raised by Katherine, and Rowe would have visitation rights and continue to receive the yearly payments to which Michael had agreed. On August 3, 2009, a judge named Katherine as the children's permanent guardian. On July 25, 2012, Katherine's guardianship of the children was suspended by the court amid allegations that she may have been held against her will by several Jackson family members as a result of a financial dispute between those family members and Michael's estate. Guardianship of the children was temporarily given to Michael's nephew, T. J., one of Tito's sons. Katherine Jackson's guardianship resumed with T.J. Jackson added as a co-guardian. On November 1, 2017, Jackson resigned as co-guardian of Michael's youngest son, Blanket. Jackson stated her reasons for resigning included her own advanced age, the fact that Michael's oldest children Prince and Paris were now adults, and that Blanket was now 15 years old. T.J. Jackson was, without objection, awarded sole custody of Blanket.
Katherine's husband, Joe Jackson, died from pancreatic cancer on June 27, 2018, two days after the 9th anniversary of Michael Jackson's death. He was 89 years old...and he was still legally married to Katherine.
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May 6Katherine's husband, Joe Jackson, died from pancreatic cancer on June 27, 2018, two days after the 9th anniversary of Michael Jackson's death. He was 89 years old...and he was still legally married to Katherine.
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*Charles Gilpin, a noted stage actor, died in Eldridge Park, New Jersey.
May 7
Charles Sidney Gilpin (b. November 20, 1878, Richmond, Virginia – d. May 6, 1930, Eldridge Park, New Jersey) was one of the most highly regarded stage actors of the 1920s. He played in critical debuts in New York City: the 1919 premier of John Drinkwater's Abraham Lincoln and the lead role of Brutus Jones in the 1920 premiere of Eugene O'Neill's The Emperor Jones, also touring with the play. In 1920, he was the first black American to receive The Drama League's annual award as one of the 10 people who had done the most that year for American theater.
Gilpin was born in Richmond, Virginia, to Peter Gilpin (a factory worker) and Caroline White (a nurse). He attended St. Francis RC School in that city. He started work as an apprentice in the Richmond Planet print shop before finding his career in theater. Gilpin first performed on stage as a singer at the age of 12. Prior to becoming a stage actor full-time, he worked as a printer and a pressman at several black newspapers during the late 1880s and into the 1890s, while getting some part-time work in vaudeville. He married Florence Howard in 1897, and they had one son.
In 1896 at the age of 18, Gilpin joined a minstrel show, leaving Richmond and beginning a life on the road that lasted for many years. When between performances on stage, like many performers, he worked odd jobs to earn money: as a printer, barber, boxing trainer, and railroad porter. In 1903, he joined Hamilton, Ontario's Canadian Jubilee Singers.
In 1905, Gilpin started performing with traveling musical troupes of the Red Cross and the Candy Shop of America. He also played his first dramatic roles and honed his character acting in Chicago. He performed with Robert Mott's Pekin Theater in Chicago for four years until 1911. Soon after, he toured the United States with the Pan-American Octetts. Gilpin worked with Rogers and Creamer's Old Man's Boy Company in New York. In 1915, Gilpin joined the Anita Bush Players as they moved from the Lincoln Theater in Harlem to the Lafayette Theatre. As New York theater was expanding, this was a time when the theatrical careers of many famous black actors were launched.
In 1916, Gilpin made a memorable appearance in whiteface as Jacob McCloskey, a slave owner and villain of Dion Boucicault's The Octoroon. Though Gilpin left Bush's company over a salary dispute, his reputation allowed him to get the role of Reverend William Curtis in the 1919 premier of John Drinkwater's Abraham Lincoln.
Gilpin's Broadway debut led to his being cast in the premier of Eugene O'Neill's The Emperor Jones. He played the lead role of Brutus Jones to great critical acclaim, including a lauded review by writer Hubert Harrison in Negro World. Gilpin's achievement resulted in The Drama League's naming him as one of the 10 people in 1920 who had done the most for American theater. He was the first African American so honored.
When The Drama League invited Gilpin to their presentation dinner, some people found it controversial. Nevertheless, at the dinner, Gilpin was given a standing ovation of unusual length when he accepted his award. Although Gilpin continued to perform the role of Brutus Jones in the United States tour that followed the Broadway closing of the play, he had a falling out with O'Neill. Gilpin wanted O'Neill to remove the word "nigger", which occurred frequently in the play. The playwright refused, asserting its use was consistent with his dramatic intentions.
In 1921, Gilpin was awarded the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People's (NAACP's) Spingarn Medal. He was also honored at the White House by President Warren G. Harding. A year later, the Dumas Dramatic Club (now the Karamu Players) of Cleveland renamed itself the Gilpin Players in his honor.
In early April 1922, Gilpin became one of the first African American performers to give a dramatic presentation on radio. He gave readings from The Emperor Jones over greater Boston station WGI, from their Medford Hillside studios.
When they could not come to a reconciliation, O'Neill replaced Gilpin with Paul Robeson as Brutus Jones in the 1924 London production of The Emperor Jones. After the extended controversy and the disappointment of losing his signature role, Gilpin started drinking heavily. He never again performed on Broadway. He died in 1930 in Eldridge Park, New Jersey, his career in shambles. He was buried in an unmarked grave in Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx, his funeral arranged by friends shortly after his death.
In 1991, 61 years after his death, Charles Gilpin was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame.
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*The U.S. Senate rejected President Hoover's Supreme Court Justice nominee John J. Parker by a vote of 41–39. The NAACP successfully campaigned to defeat confirmation of Supreme Court nominee John H. Parker, who was on record in opposition to voting rights for African Americans.
{See March 21.}
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May 9
*A mob in Sherman, Texas, burned down a courthouse during the trial of George Hughes, an African-American man who was accused of assaulting his boss' wife, a white woman. The mob attacked the courthouse vault, retrieved the dead body of Hughes, dragged it behind an automobile and hanged it from a tree. National Guard troops were sent to Sherman to restore order as the mob looted stores in the African American business district.
After the Civil War, race riots occasionally occurred across the country. The race riots often stemmed from precarious economic conditions. One particular riot took place during the onset of the Great Depression, when lynching and other unjustifiable acts increased as economic troubles throughout the land worsened.
The Sherman Riot of 1930 was a major incident of racial violence in the United States that had an undercurrent of economic hardship. All over the country, white tenant farmers were demonstrating hostility and hatred toward black people. The town of Sherman was the county seat of Grayson County located in the Texoma region of North Texas and Southern Oklahoma. As the county seat, Sherman was Grayson County's banking, industrial, and educational center. The Southern Commission on the Study of Lynching reported in 1931 that Sherman, a town of some 15,731 people, felt the onset of the depression more keenly than other communities similar in size in Texas.
The Sherman Riot of 1930 was a major incident of racial violence in the United States that had an undercurrent of economic hardship. All over the country, white tenant farmers were demonstrating hostility and hatred toward black people. The town of Sherman was the county seat of Grayson County located in the Texoma region of North Texas and Southern Oklahoma. As the county seat, Sherman was Grayson County's banking, industrial, and educational center. The Southern Commission on the Study of Lynching reported in 1931 that Sherman, a town of some 15,731 people, felt the onset of the depression more keenly than other communities similar in size in Texas.
The incident occurred because an African American man, George Hughes, was accused of raping a young white woman. However, the white woman was never identified. Many people described Hughes as being “crazy” and just not in his right mind. However, Hughes did admit that he had been at the farm five miles southeast of Sherman on May 3, 1930, looking for the white woman’s husband, who owed him money for work. Hughes left when the woman told him that her husband was in the town of Sherman and would return later. But, later that day Hughes returned with a shotgun, demanded his wages again, and supposedly raped the woman. Crazy or not, although Hughes admitted to being at the home, he never admitted to rape.
After the incident occurred, the police were called and alarmed citizens were mobilized. Hughes shot at unarmed pursuers and police patrol cars who arrived to investigate what supposedly had taken place. However, with no where for Hughes to run, he eventually surrendered.
After the incident occurred, the police were called and alarmed citizens were mobilized. Hughes shot at unarmed pursuers and police patrol cars who arrived to investigate what supposedly had taken place. However, with no where for Hughes to run, he eventually surrendered.
Hughes was later indicted for criminal assault by a special meeting of the grand jury in the Fifteenth District Court. Days before the trial, rumors about the case began to spread. People were gossiping to neighbors telling their version of what had taken place. Some told that the white woman’s throat and breast had been mutilated, and she was not expected to live. It was later confirmed that the rumors being told were false. Hughes was removed from the jail to an undisclosed location as protection. Angry whites were gathering and wanted to get their hands on Hughes. Some angry mob members were allowed to walk through the jail to see for themselves that Hughes had been taken elsewhere. But the crowd knew that sooner or later Hughes would show up back in the courtroom.
On May 9, Hughes was escorted to the county courthouse. Only a few people were allowed in the courtroom. However, a crowd from all over Texas had gathered outside the building, and filled the courthouse hallways and corridors, wherever they could find a spot. During the late morning, the crowd began to stone the courthouse, and the American flag was carried around to get the crowd going. The judge ruled that the case could not be tried in Sherman because there would be bloodshed. Two youths thew open cans of gasoline into the county tax collector’s office through a broken window, and a fire quickly spread throughout the building. The officials managed to escape, but when the deputies guarding Hughes offered to escort him out, Hughes chose to remain locked in the vault. Rangers attempted to rescue him but were cut off by flames. The mob held the firemen back and cut their hoses. By that evening only the walls of the building and the fireproof vault remained.
The angry mob tried to tear the walls of the vault. Guardsmen were injured by gunshots, but it did not stop leaders of the mob from working to get the vault open. By midnight the mob had opened the vault and had Hughes body. More than 5,000 people filled the courthouse yard and street. Hughes’s body was thrown from the vault, and dragged behind a car to the front of a drugstore in the black business section of town. The mob then took the body and hung it from a tree. The mob used whatever they could get their hands on to fuel the fire under Hughes hanging body. During the process the mob burned down many businesses in the area, all the businesses that were burned were owned by African Americans, and some of their homes were burned as well. Many of the black townsfolk fled.
Because the mob burned down two African American owned undertaking businesses, Hughes's body had to be turned over to a white undertaker. Hughes was buried on May 10 in Grayson County.
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(See also Appendix 5: Chronological Listing of Lynchings in the United States.)
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May 10
Texas Ranger Frank Hamer was in Sherman during this riot and reported the situation to Texas Governor Dan Moody. Governor Moody sent National Guard troops to Sherman on May 9 and martial law was declared in Sherman for ten days.
Fourteen men were later indicted and two were convicted of arson and rioting.
No charges for the lynching was brought against fourteen suspects who were arrested for rioting. Out of the fourteen men indicted in connection with the riot, only two were convicted, both received only two year sentences. Hughes’s lynching was the first of many more to come during the next months and years.*****
(See also Appendix 5: Chronological Listing of Lynchings in the United States.)
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*Texas Governor Dan Moody placed the city of Sherman, Texas, under martial law. Fourteen rioters were placed under arrest.
{See May 9.}
*The National Pan-Hellenic Council was formed on the campus of Howard University in Washington, D. C.
The National Pan-Hellenic Council (NPHC) is a collaborative organization of historically African American, international Greek lettered fraternities and sororities. The nine NPHC organizations are sometimes collectively referred to as the "Divine Nine". The member/partner organizations have not formally adopted nor recommended the use of this term to describe their collaborative grouping. The NPHC was formed as a permanent organization on May 10, 1930 on the campus of Howard University, in Washington, D. C. with Matthew W. Bullock as the active Chairman and B. Beatrix Scott as Vice-Chairman. NPHC was incorporated under the laws of the State of Illinois in 1937 and headquartered in Decatur, Georgia.
The council promotes interaction through forums, meetings and other mediums for the exchange of information and engages in cooperative programming and initiatives through various activities and functions.
Each constituent member organization determines its own strategic direction and program agenda. Today, the primary purpose and focus of member organizations remains camaraderie and academic excellence for its members and service to the communities they serve. Each promotes community awareness and action through educational, economic, and cultural service activities.
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May 11
*Edward Brathwaite, a Barbadian poet and academic widely considered one of the major voices in the Caribbean literary canon, was born in Bridgetown, Barbados.
*Paul Panda Farnana M'Fumu, the first Congolese intellectual and a Pan-Africanist, died in Matadi, Belgian Congo.
Paul Panda Farnana M'Fumu (b. 1888, Zemba-lez-Moanda, Bas-Congo Province, Congo Free State – d. May 12, 1930, Matadi, Belgian Congo) was a Congolese agronomist and expatriate who lived in Europe in the first decades of the 1900s. He has been considered to be the first Congolese intellectual.
Paul Panda Farnana was born in Zemba-lez-Moanda, Bas-Congo Province, Congo Free State in 1888. He was the son of Luizi Fernando, a government-appointed chief, and a woman named N'sengo. A Belgian official, Lieutenant Jules Derscheid, offered to bring Farnana to Belgium to receive an education. He accepted, and they arrived in Brussels on April 25, 1900. Once there, Dersheid turned custody of Farnana over to his sister, Louise. Farnana was brought up in an upper-class setting. Louise educated him in music and drawing and sent him to the Athénée Royal d'Ixelles for a secondary education. In 1904, he passed an entrance exam and was enrolled in a horticultural and agricultural school in Vilvoorde, graduating three years later with distinction. In 1908, Farnana studied at an institute for tropical agriculture in Nogent-sur-Marne, Paris, France. That same year he studied English in Mons. This education made him the first Congolese to ever receive a diploma of higher education in Belgium.
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May 13
*Radhames Aracena, a Dominican radio host, music producer and businessman who helped give birth to bachata music and thereby changed the musical landscape of the Dominican Republic during and after Rafael Trujillo's dictatorship, was born in Santiago, Dominican Republic.
Radhames Aracena (b. May 13, 1930, Santiago, Dominican Republic – d. December 11, 1997, Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic), was a Dominican radio host, music producer and businessman who helped change the musical landscape of the Caribbean island during and after Rafael Trujillo's dictatorship. Aracena was able to bring the traditional Dominican bachata from the brothels and saloons to every radio set in the country. Aracena created Radio Guarachita, one of the first radio stations to cater to bachata music, and subsequently began recording, producing and promoting bachata artists.
When he was in his early 20s, Radhames Aracena was already making a name for himself as a popular radio personality. By 1955, while still working as a radio host, Radhames opened a record store called Discos La Guarachita (diminutive of guaracha, a popular type of Cuban music) near one of the most popular streets of Santo Domingo. He had been able to get local distribution rights for Pedro Infante's Mexican record company, Peerless, as well as some other Latin American record labels such as Panamerica de Discos, which controlled the catalog of the famous bolero singer Lucho Gatica. A few years later, he got distribution rights for RCA and CBS.
After Trujillo's assassination in 1961, Radhames purchased recording equipment and licenses to launch a new radio station, and in 1964 he created Radio Guarachita. Radhames, along with DJs Cuco Valoy (who later became an internationally famous salsa and merengue singer) on Radio Tropical, and Jose Tabar Asilis (popularly known as Charlie-Charlie) on La Voz del Tropico, was amongst the first to give bachata any air time.
Striving to create the same sound quality for bachata as the records he was importing from overseas, Radhames began recording local musicians, and soon became one of the most important names in the bachata business. Radio Guarachita gave many legendary Dominican artists their first break. Fefita La Grande, also recorded important works with Guarachita.
Radhames Aracena died on December 11, 1999, at the age of 69, and his Radio Guarachita was closed after its heirs sold it to Dominican businessman Juan Lopez. Today, when a person in the Dominican Republic turns the dial to 690 AM, they tune into ESPN radio.
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May 14
*Chris de Broglio, a Mauritian-born South African weightlifter and anti-Apartheid activist, was born in Mauritius.
*Grace Ogot, the first Anglophone female Kenyan writer to be published, was born in Asembo , in the district of Nyanza, Kenya.
Grace Emily Ogot (née Akinyi; b. May 15, 1930, Asembo, in the district of Nyanza, Kenya – d. March 18, 2015, Nairobi, Kenya), a Kenyan author, nurse, journalist, politician and diplomat, was born in Asembo, in the district of Nyanza, Kenya. Together with Charity Waciuma, Ogot was the first Anglophone female Kenyan writer to be published. She was one of the first Kenyan members of parliament and she became an assistant minister in the government of President Daniel arap Moi.
Ogot's first novel The Promised Land, set in the 1930s, was published in 1966 and focused on Luo emigration and the problems that arise through migration. Her main protagonists emigrate from Nyanza to northern Tanzania, in search of fertile land and wealth. The story also focused on themes of tribal hatred, materialism, and traditional notions of femininity and wifely duties. 1968 saw the publishing of Land Without Thunder, a collection of short stories set in ancient Luoland. Ogot's descriptions, literary tools, and storylines in Land Without Thunder offer a valuable insight into Luo culture in pre-colonial East Africa. Her other works include The Strange Bride, The Graduate, The Other Woman and The Island of Tears.
May 16
*Edward Brathwaite, a Barbadian poet and academic widely considered one of the major voices in the Caribbean literary canon, was born in Bridgetown, Barbados.
Lawson Edward Brathwaite, also Edward Kamau Brathwaite, (b. May 11, 1930, Bridgetown, Barbados – d. February 4, 2020, Bridgetown, Barbados) was born in the capital city of Bridgetown, Barbados, to Hilton and Beryl (Gill) Brathwaite. He began his secondary education in 1945 at Harrison College in Bridgetown, and while there wrote essays on jazz for a school newspaper that he started, as well as contributing articles to the literary magazine Bim. In 1949 he won the Barbados Island Scholarship to attend the University of Cambridge, where he studied English and History. In 1953, Brathwaite received a B.A. honors degree in History from Pembroke College, Cambridge, and he also began his association with the BBC's Caribbean Voices program in London. In 1954, he received a Diploma of Education from Pembroke College, Cambridge.
The year 1955 found Brathwaite working as an education officer in the Gold Coast with the Ministry of Education. This saw him witness Kwame Nkrumah coming to power and Ghana becoming the first African state to gain independence, which profoundly affected his sense of Caribbean culture and identity, and he was also able to study with the musicologist J. H. Kwabena Nketia.
In 1960, while he was on home leave from Ghana, Brathwaite married Doris Monica Wellcome, a Guyanese graduate in Home Economics and Tropical Nutrition from the University of Leicester, with whom he would have a son, Michael.
During his years in Ghana, Brathwaite's writing flowered, with Odale's Choice (a play) premiering at the Mfantsiman Secondary School in Cape Coast, in June 1962. A full production of the play was later taken to Accra.
In 1962–63, Brathwaite crossed the waters again and found himself as resident tutor in the Department of Extra-Mural Studies in Saint Lucia. Later in 1963, he made his journey to the University of the West Indies (UWI), Mona Campus in Kingston, Jamaica, to teach in the History Department.
In 1966, Brathwaite spearheaded, as co-founder and secretary, the organization of the Caribbean Artists Movement (CAM) from London, other key figures involved being John La Rose and Andrew Salkey.
Brathwaite received a Ph.D. from the University of Sussex in 1968.
Brathwaite received a Ph.D. from the University of Sussex in 1968.
Brathwaite's doctoral thesis from Sussex University on The Development of Creole Society in Jamaica was published in 1971 by Oxford University Press, and in 1973 he published what is generally considered his best work, The Arrivants: A New World Trilogy, comprising three earlier volumes: Rights of Passage (1967), Masks (1968) and Islands (1969). An exhaustive bibliography of his work, entitled EKB: His Published Prose & Poetry, 1948–1986 was produced by his wife, Doris Monica Brathwaite, in 1986. In response to her death later that year, Brathwaite wrote The Zea Mexican Diary: 7 September 1926 – 7 September 1986.
In 1971, he launched Savacou, a journal of CAM, at the University of the West Indies (UWI), Mona Campus in Kingston, Jamaica. That same year, Brathwaite received the name Kamau from Ngugi wa Thiong'o's grandmother at Limuru, Kenya, while on a City of Nairobi Fellowship to the University of Nairobi.
In 1971, he launched Savacou, a journal of CAM, at the University of the West Indies (UWI), Mona Campus in Kingston, Jamaica. That same year, Brathwaite received the name Kamau from Ngugi wa Thiong'o's grandmother at Limuru, Kenya, while on a City of Nairobi Fellowship to the University of Nairobi.
He received both the Guggenheim and Fulbright Fellowships in 1983, and was a winner of the 1994 Neustadt International Prize for Literature, the Bussa Award, the Casa de las Americas Prize for poetry, and the 1999 Charity Randall Citation for Performance and Written Poetry from the International Poetry Forum.
Brathwaite was noted for his studies of Black cultural life both in Africa and throughout the African diasporas of the world in works such as Folk Culture of the Slaves in Jamaica (1970); The Development of Creole Society in Jamaica, 1770–1820 (1971); Contradictory Omens (1974); Afternoon of the Status Crow (1982); and History of the Voice (1984), the publication of which established him as the authority of note on nation language.
Brathwaite's doctoral thesis from Sussex University on The Development of Creole Society in Jamaica was published in 1971 by Oxford University Press, and in 1973 he published what is generally considered his best work, The Arrivants: A New World Trilogy, comprising three earlier volumes: Rights of Passage (1967), Masks (1968) and Islands (1969). An exhaustive bibliography of his work, entitled EKB: His Published Prose & Poetry, 1948–1986 was produced by his wife, Doris Monica Brathwaite, in 1986. In response to her death later that year, Brathwaite wrote The Zea Mexican Diary: 7 September 1926 – 7 September 1986.
Kamau Brathwaite spent three self-financed "Maroon Years", 1997 to 2000, at "Cow Pasture", his now famous and, then, "post-hurricane" home in Barbados. In 1998, he married Beverly Reid, a Jamaican.
In 1992 Brathwaite took up the position of Professor of Comparative Literature at New York University, subsequently dividing his residence between Barbados and New York.
In 1994, Brathwaite was awarded the Neustadt International Prize for Literature for his body of work, nominated by Ghanaian poet and author Kofi Awoonor, edging out other nominees including Toni Morrison, Norman Mailer, and Chinua Achebe.
In 2002, the University of Sussex presented Kamau Brathwaite with an Honorary Doctorate.
Brathwaite was the 2006 International Winner of the Griffin Poetry Prize, for his volume of poetry Born to Slow Horses.
Brathwaite was the 2006 International Winner of the Griffin Poetry Prize, for his volume of poetry Born to Slow Horses.
In 2006, he was the sole person that year to be awarded a Musgrave gold medal by the Institute of Jamaica, with eight silver and bronze medals going to other recipients. In 2010, Brathwaite reported the theft of the medal, as well as other items from his New York City home in the previous four years.
Brathwaite died on February 4, 2020, at the age of 89. He was accorded an official funeral on February, 21, 2020.
*****
May 12*****
*Paul Panda Farnana M'Fumu, the first Congolese intellectual and a Pan-Africanist, died in Matadi, Belgian Congo.
Paul Panda Farnana M'Fumu (b. 1888, Zemba-lez-Moanda, Bas-Congo Province, Congo Free State – d. May 12, 1930, Matadi, Belgian Congo) was a Congolese agronomist and expatriate who lived in Europe in the first decades of the 1900s. He has been considered to be the first Congolese intellectual.
Paul Panda Farnana was born in Zemba-lez-Moanda, Bas-Congo Province, Congo Free State in 1888. He was the son of Luizi Fernando, a government-appointed chief, and a woman named N'sengo. A Belgian official, Lieutenant Jules Derscheid, offered to bring Farnana to Belgium to receive an education. He accepted, and they arrived in Brussels on April 25, 1900. Once there, Dersheid turned custody of Farnana over to his sister, Louise. Farnana was brought up in an upper-class setting. Louise educated him in music and drawing and sent him to the Athénée Royal d'Ixelles for a secondary education. In 1904, he passed an entrance exam and was enrolled in a horticultural and agricultural school in Vilvoorde, graduating three years later with distinction. In 1908, Farnana studied at an institute for tropical agriculture in Nogent-sur-Marne, Paris, France. That same year he studied English in Mons. This education made him the first Congolese to ever receive a diploma of higher education in Belgium.
In 1909, Farnana was hired as an agricultural specialist by the Belgian colonial government which had since transformed the Congo Free State into the Belgian Congo. In June, he was assigned to the Botanic Garden of Eala, near Coquilhatville.
Shortly before the outbreak of World War I, Farnana was living in Belgium. When Belgium was invaded by Germany in 1914, Farnana enlisted in the Belgian Army. He served with the Korps der Congolese Vrijwilligers (Congolese Volunteers Corps) during the Siege of Namur. On August 23, 1914, he was taken prisoner in Liege and deported to Germany where he spent the remainder of the war. After his release, he founded an association known as the Union Congolaise to advocate for the interests of other Congolese veterans of the war.
Farnana participated in the first and second Pan-African Congresses in 1919 and 1921, respectively. He also attended the First National Belgian Colonial Congress in 1920. He actively criticized Belgian colonial practices, arguing that the ban on forced labor in the Congo was not being consistently applied and education for the native population was inadequate. He also called for the Congolese to be granted political rights.
In 1929, Farnana went to Matadi to manage an oil mill. He died there nine months later.
Farnana is considered by historians to be the first Congolese intellectual. Following his death, Belgium forbade any further Congolese from studying in Belgium.
Farnana's work was largely forgotten by the public until Congolese historians began uncovering details about his life in the 1970s and 1980s. A Belgian documentary was made about him in 2008.
May 13
*Radhames Aracena, a Dominican radio host, music producer and businessman who helped give birth to bachata music and thereby changed the musical landscape of the Dominican Republic during and after Rafael Trujillo's dictatorship, was born in Santiago, Dominican Republic.
Radhames Aracena (b. May 13, 1930, Santiago, Dominican Republic – d. December 11, 1997, Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic), was a Dominican radio host, music producer and businessman who helped change the musical landscape of the Caribbean island during and after Rafael Trujillo's dictatorship. Aracena was able to bring the traditional Dominican bachata from the brothels and saloons to every radio set in the country. Aracena created Radio Guarachita, one of the first radio stations to cater to bachata music, and subsequently began recording, producing and promoting bachata artists.
When he was in his early 20s, Radhames Aracena was already making a name for himself as a popular radio personality. By 1955, while still working as a radio host, Radhames opened a record store called Discos La Guarachita (diminutive of guaracha, a popular type of Cuban music) near one of the most popular streets of Santo Domingo. He had been able to get local distribution rights for Pedro Infante's Mexican record company, Peerless, as well as some other Latin American record labels such as Panamerica de Discos, which controlled the catalog of the famous bolero singer Lucho Gatica. A few years later, he got distribution rights for RCA and CBS.
After Trujillo's assassination in 1961, Radhames purchased recording equipment and licenses to launch a new radio station, and in 1964 he created Radio Guarachita. Radhames, along with DJs Cuco Valoy (who later became an internationally famous salsa and merengue singer) on Radio Tropical, and Jose Tabar Asilis (popularly known as Charlie-Charlie) on La Voz del Tropico, was amongst the first to give bachata any air time.
Striving to create the same sound quality for bachata as the records he was importing from overseas, Radhames began recording local musicians, and soon became one of the most important names in the bachata business. Radio Guarachita gave many legendary Dominican artists their first break. Fefita La Grande, also recorded important works with Guarachita.
Radhames Aracena died on December 11, 1999, at the age of 69, and his Radio Guarachita was closed after its heirs sold it to Dominican businessman Juan Lopez. Today, when a person in the Dominican Republic turns the dial to 690 AM, they tune into ESPN radio.
*****
May 14
*Chris de Broglio, a Mauritian-born South African weightlifter and anti-Apartheid activist, was born in Mauritius.
Marie Christian Dubruel de Broglio (b. May 14, 1930 - d. July 12, 2014) weightlifter and anti-apartheid activist, was born in Mauritius.
Chris de Broglio contributed substantially to South Africa's expulsion from the Olympic movement in 1970, a pivotal moment in the demise of apartheid.
A champion weightlifter, De Broglio was dedicated to fighting racism in sport and was, with Dennis Brutus, a founder member of the South African Non-Racial Olympic Committee (San-Roc). The success of the sports boycott campaign was vital. It boosted the freedom struggle at a critical time in the early 1970s when internal resistance had been crushed.
De Broglio was born in Mauritius, to Maurice, a civil servant, and his wife Suzanne. He got into weightlifting as a teenager, having been seriously ill as a child. His parents never found out what was wrong with him, and after a year in bed he recovered, but he remained smaller and shorter than a brother who was only 18 months older than him. He took up weightlifting as a way to build his strength and physique.
Migrating to South Africa to study accountancy, he came into contact with institutionalized discrimination in sport for the first time. South Africa was the only country in the world that excluded "non-white" sportsmen from selection for national teams. He met other weightlifters, including Precious McKenzie, who were being discriminated against. He found it unjust that black and white weightlifters could not train or compete with each other, and decided that needed to be challenged.
From 1950 to 1962 he was South African weightlifting champion and he competed in the World Championships in Sweden in 1958 and Vienna in 1961. He became secretary and then chairman of the Natal and Transvaal Weightlifting Associations, where, in defiance of fellow white sports officials, he helped multi-racial weightlifting organizations. When, in 1954, he organized a multi-racial championship in Durban, the whites-only federation threatened him with expulsion.
By the early 60s, De Broglio was working as southern Africa manager for Air France, and he arranged for the chairman of San-Roc, John Harris, to leave the country without the knowledge of the security police to lobby a meeting of the International Olympic Committee (IOC). This resulted in South Africa's exclusion from the 1964 Tokyo Olympics. In 1965, Harris became the only white anti-apartheid campaigner to be executed after he participated in the bombing of a whites-only area of Park station in Johannesburg, which killed one person and injured many others.
In 1963, San-Roc had achieved South Africa's suspension from world football. The security police put De Broglio under surveillance and threatened his employers, forcing him into exile in London, where in 1966 San-Roc was recreated, operating out of the basement of a hotel leased by De Broglio, the Portman Court in Marble Arch.
The IOC old guard were prevented from reversing South Africa's suspension from the 1968 Mexico Olympics, when De Broglio organized a mass boycott by most African and Asian countries. By now San-Roc's leaders – mainly De Broglio and the charismatic Brutus – were regular attendees at meetings of international sports organizations, from football to athletics.
Soon San-Roc's non-violent direct action, including hotel protests and pitch invasions, laid siege to the 1969-70 Springbok rugby tour. The De Broglio family home in Twickenham, not far from the rugby group, was a distribution point for tickets for demonstrators to invade the pitch.
Threats to wreck the summer 1970 cricket tour, coupled with a San-Roc-initiated boycott by African, Asian and Caribbean countries of the Edinburgh Commonwealth Games, forced the tour's cancellation. Within months, white South Africa was expelled from most international sport, but San-Roc's work continued to hold and extend the boycott. By the late 1970s white rugby and cricket officials were trying desperately to get it lifted. In 1987, that desperation led De Broglio to help organize the historic meeting between ANC officials and leading Afrikaners, held at Dakar, which helped pave the way for the final defeat of apartheid and the creation of the new South Africa. He was awarded the Olympic Order in 1997 in recognition of his action against racism in sport and in defense of the Olympic Charter.
De Broglio spent his final years in Corsica, giving up the gym only at the age of 80.
He married June Von Solms in 1954; she died in 1982. He married his second wife, Renee, in 1988; by the six children of his first marriage; and by 11 grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.
*****
May 15*Grace Ogot, the first Anglophone female Kenyan writer to be published, was born in Asembo , in the district of Nyanza, Kenya.
Grace Emily Ogot (née Akinyi; b. May 15, 1930, Asembo, in the district of Nyanza, Kenya – d. March 18, 2015, Nairobi, Kenya), a Kenyan author, nurse, journalist, politician and diplomat, was born in Asembo, in the district of Nyanza, Kenya. Together with Charity Waciuma, Ogot was the first Anglophone female Kenyan writer to be published. She was one of the first Kenyan members of parliament and she became an assistant minister in the government of President Daniel arap Moi.
Ogot was born Grace Emily Akinyi to a Christian family on May 15, 1930 in Asembo, in the district of Nyanza, Kenya – a village highly populated by the predominantly Christian Luo ethnic group. Her father, Joseph Nyanduga, was one of the first men in the village of Asembo to obtain a Western education. He converted early on to the Anglican Church, and taught at the Church Missionary Society’s Ng'iya Girls’ School. From her father, she learned the stories of the Old Testament and it was from her grandmother that Ogot learned the traditional folk tales of the area from which she would later draw inspiration.
Ogot attended the Ng'iya Girls' School and Butere High School throughout her youth. From 1949 to 1953, she trained as a nurse at the Nursing Training Hospital in Uganda. She later worked in London, England, at St. Thomas Hospital for Mothers and Babies. She returned to the African nursing profession in 1958, working at Maseno Hospital, run by the Church Missionary Society in Kisumu County, Kenya. Following this, Ogot worked at Makerere University College in Student Health Services. She was the very first female from Kenya to be published in English.
In addition to her experience in healthcare, Ogot gained experience in multiple different areas, working for the BBC Overseas Service as a script-writer and announcer on the program London Calling East and Central Africa, operating a prominent radio program in the Luo language, working as an officer of community development in Kisumu County and as a public relations officer for the Air India Corporation of East Africa.
In 1975, Ogot worked as a Kenyan delegate to the general assembly of the United Nations. Subsequently, in 1976, she became a member of the Kenyan delegation to UNESCO. That year, she chaired and helped found the Writers' Association of Kenya. In 1983, she became one of only a handful of women to serve as a member of parliament and the only woman assistant minister in the cabinet of then President Daniel arap Moi.
In 1959, Grace Ogot married history professor Bethwell Allan Ogot, a Luo from Gem Location, and later became the mother of four children. Her proclivity for storytelling and her husband's interest in the oral tradition and history of the Luo peoples would later be combined in her writing career. Ogot died on March 18, 2015, in Nairobi, Kenya.
In 1962, Grace Ogot read her short story "A Year of Sacrifice" at a conference on African Literature at Makerere University in Uganda. After discovering that there was no other work presented or displayed from East African writers, Ogot became motivated to publish her works, which she subsequently did both in the Luo language and in English. "A Year of Sacrifice" appeared in print as Ogot's first published work in the African journal Black Orpheus in 1963. In 1964, her short story "The Rain Came" was published as part of the collection Modern African Stories, co-edited by Es'kia Mphahlele, who had organized the earlier mentioned conference on African Literature at Makerere University in Uganda in 1962. "The Rain Came" was a reworked version of "A Year of Sacrifice" but considerably shortened and with a different beginning and ending. Also in 1964, the short story "Ward Nine" was published in the journal Transition.
Ogot's first novel The Promised Land, set in the 1930s, was published in 1966 and focused on Luo emigration and the problems that arise through migration. Her main protagonists emigrate from Nyanza to northern Tanzania, in search of fertile land and wealth. The story also focused on themes of tribal hatred, materialism, and traditional notions of femininity and wifely duties. 1968 saw the publishing of Land Without Thunder, a collection of short stories set in ancient Luoland. Ogot's descriptions, literary tools, and storylines in Land Without Thunder offer a valuable insight into Luo culture in pre-colonial East Africa. Her other works include The Strange Bride, The Graduate, The Other Woman and The Island of Tears.
*****
The Luo (also called Joluo or Jonagi/Onagi, singular Jaluo, Jaonagi or Joramogi/Nyikwaramogi, meaning "Ramogi's heirs") are an ethnic group in western Kenya, northern Uganda, and in Mara Region in northern Tanzania. They are part of a larger group of ethno-linguistically related Luo peoples who inhabit an area ranging from South Sudan, South-Western Ethiopia, Northern and Eastern Uganda, South-Western Kenya and North-Eastern Tanzania. The main Luo livelihoods are fishing, farming and pastoral herding. Outside Luoland, the Luo comprise a significant fraction of East Africa's intellectual and skilled labor force in various professions. Other members work in eastern Africa as tenant fishermen, small-scale farmers, and urban workers.
*****The Luo (also called Joluo or Jonagi/Onagi, singular Jaluo, Jaonagi or Joramogi/Nyikwaramogi, meaning "Ramogi's heirs") are an ethnic group in western Kenya, northern Uganda, and in Mara Region in northern Tanzania. They are part of a larger group of ethno-linguistically related Luo peoples who inhabit an area ranging from South Sudan, South-Western Ethiopia, Northern and Eastern Uganda, South-Western Kenya and North-Eastern Tanzania. The main Luo livelihoods are fishing, farming and pastoral herding. Outside Luoland, the Luo comprise a significant fraction of East Africa's intellectual and skilled labor force in various professions. Other members work in eastern Africa as tenant fishermen, small-scale farmers, and urban workers.
May 16
*General elections were held in the Dominican Republic. Rafael Trujillo was elected president unopposed when opposition candidates withdrew their names in protest, accusing members of the body overseeing the election of being appointed illegally.
(See also February 26.)
*****
*Jazz singer Betty Carter, popularly known as "Betty Bebop" was born in Flint, Michigan.
Betty Carter (b. Lillie Mae Jones; May 19, 1929, Flint, Michigan – d. September 26, 1998, Brooklyn, New York) was an American jazz singer known for her improvisational technique, scatting and other complex musical abilities that demonstrated her vocal talent and imaginative interpretation of lyrics and melodies.
Carter was born in Flint, Michigan, and grew up in Detroit, where her father, James Jones, was the musical director of a Detroit church and her mother, Bessie, was a housewife. As a child, Carter was raised to be extremely independent and to not expect nurturing from her family.
While the lack of support from Carter's family caused her to feel isolated, it may also have instilled self-reliance and determination to succeed. She studied piano at the Detroit Conservatory at the age of 15, but only attained a modest level of expertise.
At the age of 16, Carter began singing. As her parents were not big proponents of her pursuing a singing career, she would sneak out at night to audition for amateur shows. After winning first place at her first amateur competition, Carter felt as though she was being accepted into the music world and decided that she must pursue it tirelessly. When she began performing live, she was too young to be admitted into bars, so she obtained a forged birth certificate to gain entry in order to perform.
Even at a young age, Carter was able to bring a new vocal style to jazz. The breathiness of her voice was a characteristic seldom heard before her appearance on the music scene. She also was well known for her passion for scat singing and her strong belief that the throwaway attitude that most jazz musicians approached it with was inappropriate and wasteful due to its spontaneity and basic inventiveness, seldom seen elsewhere.
Detroit, where Carter grew up, was a hotbed of jazz growth. After signing with a talent agent after her win at amateur night, Carter had opportunities to perform with famous jazz artists such as Dizzy Gillespie, who visited Detroit for an extensive amount of time. Gillespie is often considered responsible for her strong passion for scatting. In earlier recordings, it is apparent that her scatting had similarities to the qualities of Gillespie's.
At the time of Gillespie's visit, Charlie Parker was receiving treatment in a psychiatric hospital, delaying Carter's encounter with him. However, Carter eventually performed with Parker, as well as with his band consisting of Tommy Potter, Max Roach, and Miles Davis. After receiving praise from both Gillespie and Parker for her vocal prowess, Carter felt an upsurge in confidence and knew that she could make it in the business.
Carter's confidence was well founded. In 1948, she was asked by Lionel Hampton to join his band. She finally had her big break. Working with Hampton's group gave her the chance to be bandmates with artists such as Charles Mingus and Wes Montgomery, as well as with Ernest Harold "Benny" Bailey, who had recently vacated Gillespie's band and Albert Thornton "Al" Grey who would later go on to join Gillespie's band. Hampton obviously had an ear for talent and a love for bebop. Carter too had a deep love for bebop as well as a talent for it. Hampton's wife Gladys gave her the nickname "Betty Bebop", a nickname she reportedly detested. Despite her good ear and charming personality, Carter was fiercely independent and had a tendency to attempt to resist Hampton's direction, while Hampton had a temper and was quick to anger. Hampton expected a lot from his players and did not want them to forget that he was the band's leader. She openly hated his swing style, refused to sing in a swinging way, and she was far too outspoken for his tastes. Carter honed her scat singing ability while on tour, which was not well received by Hampton as he did not enjoy her penchant for improvisation. Over the course of two and a half years, Hampton fired Carter a total of seven times.
Carter was part of the Lionel Hampton Orchestra that played at the famed Cavalcade of Jazz in Los Angeles at Wrigley Field which was produced by Leon Hefflin, Sr., on July 10, 1949. They did a second concert at Lane Field in San Diego on September 3, 1949. They also performed at the sixth famed Cavalcade of Jazz concert on June 25, 1950. Also featured on the same day were Roy Milton & His Solid Senders, Pee Wee Crayton's Orchestra, Dinah Washington, Tiny Davis & Her Hell Divers, and other artists. 16,000 people were reported to be in attendance and the concert ended early because of a fracas while Hampton's band played "Flying High".
Being a part of Hampton's band provided a few things for "The Kid" (a nickname bestowed upon Carter that stuck for the rest of her life): connections, and a new approach to music, making it so that all future musical attitudes that came from Carter bore the mark of Hampton's guidance. Because of Hampton's hiring of Carter, she also goes down in history as one of the last big band era jazz singers in history. However, by 1951, Carter left the band. After a short recuperation back home, Carter was in New York, working all over the city for the better part of the early 1950s, as well as participating in an extensive tour of the south, playing for camp shows. This work made little to no money, but Carter believed it was necessary in order to develop as an artist, and was a way to pay her dues.
Very soon after Carter's arrival in New York City, she was given the opportunity to record with King Pleasure and the Ray Bryant Trio, becoming more recognizable and well-known and subsequently being granted the chance to sing at the Apollo Theatre. This theater was known for giving up-and-coming artists the final shove into becoming household names. Carter was propelled into prominence, recording with Epic label by 1955 and was a well-known artist by the late 1950s. Her first solo LP, Out There, was released on the Peacock label in 1958.
Miles Davis can be credited for Carter's bump in popularity, as he was the person who recommended to Ray Charles that he take Carter under his wing. Carter began touring with Charles in 1960, then making a recording of duets with him in 1961 (Ray Charles and Betty Carter), including the R&B-chart-topping "Baby, It's Cold Outside", which brought her a measure of popular recognition. In 1963, she toured in Japan with Sonny Rollins. She recorded for various labels during this period, including ABC-Paramount, Atco and United Artists, but was rarely satisfied with the resulting product. After three years of touring with Charles and a total of two recordings together, Carter took a hiatus from recording to marry. She and her husband had two children. However, she continued performing, not wanting to be dependent upon her husband for financial support.
The 1960s became an increasingly difficult time for Carter as she began to slip in fame, refusing to sing contemporary pop music, and her youth fading. Carter was nearly forty years old, which at the time was not conducive to a career in the public eye. Rock and roll, like pop, was steadily becoming more popular and provided cash flow for labels and recording companies. Carter had to work extremely hard to continue to book gigs because of the jazz decline. Her marriage also was beginning to crumble. By 1971, Carter was single and mainly performing live with a small group consisting of merely a piano, drums, and a bass. The Betty Carter trio was one of very few jazz groups to continue to book gigs in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
Carter created her own record label, Bet-Car Records, in 1969, the sole recording source of Carter's music for the next eighteen years.
Some of her most famous recordings were originally issued on Bet-Car, including the double album The Audience with Betty Carter (1980). In 1980, she was the subject of a documentary film by Michelle Parkerson, But Then, She's Betty Carter. Carter's approach to music did not concern solely her method of recording and distribution, but also her choice in venues. Carter began performing at colleges and universities, starting in 1972 at Goddard College in Vermont. Carter was excited at this opportunity, as it was since the mid-1960s that Carter had been wanting to visit schools and provide some sort of education for students. She began lecturing along with her musical performances, informing students of the history of jazz and its roots.
By 1975, Carter's life and work prospects began to improve, and Carter was beginning to be able to pick her own jobs once again, touring in Europe, South America, and the United States. In 1976, Carter was a guest live performer on Saturday Night Live's first season on the air, and was also a performer at the Newport Jazz Festival in 1977 and 1978, carving out a permanent place for herself in the music business as well as in the world of jazz.
In 1977, Carter enjoyed a new peak in critical and popular estimation, and taught a master class with her past mentor, Dizzy Gillespie, at Harvard University. In the last decade of her life, Carter began to receive even wider acclaim and recognition. In 1987, she signed Verve Records, who reissued most of her Bet-Car albums on CD for the first time and made them available to wider audiences. In 1988, she won a Grammy for her album Look What I Got! and sang in a guest appearance on The Cosby Show (episode "How Do You Get to Carnegie Hall?"). In 1994, she performed at the White House and was a headliner at Verve's 50th anniversary celebration in Carnegie Hall. She was the subject of a 1994 short film by Dick Fontaine, Betty Carter: New All the Time.
In 1997, she was awarded a National Medal of Arts by President Bill Clinton. This award was one of thousands, but Carter considered this medal to be her most important that she received in her lifetime.
Carter continued to perform, tour, and record, as well as search for new talent until she was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in the summer of 1998. She died on September 26, 1998, at the age of 69, and was later cremated. She was survived by her two sons.
1993 was Carter's biggest year of innovation, creating a program called Jazz Ahead, which took 20 students who were given the opportunity to spend an entire week training and composing with Carter, a program that still exists to this day and is hosted in The Kennedy Center.
*****
May 19
*Playwright Lorraine Hansberry, who would write A Raisin in the Sun, was born in Chicago, Illinois.
*****
Lorraine Vivian Hansberry (b. May 19, 1930, Chicago, Illinois – d. January 12, 1965, New York City, New York) was an American playwright and writer. Hansberry inspired Nina Simone's song "To Be Young, Gifted and Black".
She was the first black woman to write a play performed on Broadway. Her best known work, the play A Raisin in the Sun, highlights the lives of African Americans living under racial segregation in Chicago. Hansberry's family had struggled against segregation, challenging a restrictive covenant and eventually provoking the Supreme Court case Hansberry v. Lee. The title of her most famous play was taken from the poem "Harlem" by Langston Hughes: "What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?"
After she moved to New York City, Hansberry worked at the Pan-Africanist newspaper Freedom, where she dealt with intellectuals such as Paul Robeson and W. E. B. Du Bois. Much of her work during this time concerned the African struggle for liberation and their impact on the world. Hansberry has been identified as a lesbian, and sexual freedom is an important topic in several of her works. She died of cancer at the age of 34.
Lorraine Hansberry was born in a comfortable, middle-class family in Chicago, and was educated at the University of Wisconsisn and Roosevelt University. She first appeared in print in Paul Robeson's Freedom, a monthly newspaper, during the early 1950's. In 1959, A Raisin in the Sun, her first play, was produced on Broadway. It was among the first full-length African American plays to be taken seriously by a European American audience.
The success of A Raisin in the Sun catapulted Hansberry to an early fame. She was expected to be a spokesperson for the African American poor, when in fact she was more attuned to the aspirations of the African American bourgeoisie. Hansberry was very militant about integration and not supportive of black nationalist or separatist movements.
Lorraine Vivian Hansberry was the first black woman to write a play performed on Broadway. Her best known work, the play A Raisin in the Sun, highlights the lives of Black Americans living under racial segregation in Chicago. Hansberry's family had struggled against segregation, challenging a restrictive covenant and eventually provoking the Supreme Court case Hansberry v. Lee. The title of the play was taken from the poem "Harlem" by Langston Hughes: "What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?"
At the young age of 29, Hansberry won the New York's Drama Critic's Circle Award — making her the first black dramatist, the fifth woman, and the youngest playwright to do so.
After she moved to New York City, Hansberry worked at the Pan-Africanist newspaper Freedom, where she dealt with intellectuals such as Paul Robeson and W. E. B. DuBois. Much of her work during this time concerned the African struggle for liberation and their impact on the world. Hansberry has been identified as a lesbian, and sexual freedom is an important topic in several of her works. She died of cancer at the age of 34. Hansberry inspired Nina Simone's song "To Be Young, Gifted and Black".
Lorraine Hansberry was the youngest of four children born to Carl Augustus Hansberry, a successful real-estate broker, and Nannie Louise (born Perry) a driving school teacher and ward committeewoman. In 1938, her father bought a house in the Washington Park Subdivision of the South Side of Chicago, incurring the wrath of their white neighbors. The latter's legal efforts to force the Hansberry family out culminated in the United States Supreme Court's decision in Hansberry v. Lee. The restrictive covenant was ruled contestable, though not inherently invalid. Carl Hansberry was also a supporter of the Urban League and NAACP in Chicago. Both Hansberrys were active in the Chicago Republican Party. Carl died in 1946, when Lorraine was fifteen years old; "American racism helped kill him," she later said.
The Hansberrys were routinely visited by prominent Black intellectuals, including W. E. B. DuBois and Paul Robeson. Carl Hansberry's brother, William Leo Hansberry, founded the African Civilization section of the history department at Howard University. Lorraine was taught: ‘‘Above all, there were two things which were never to be betrayed: the family and the race.’’
Hansberry became the godmother to Nina Simone's daughter Lisa—now Simone.
Hansberry graduated from Betsy Ross Elementary in 1944 and from Englewood High School in 1948. She attended the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she immediately became politically active and integrated a dormitory.
She worked on Henry A. Wallace's presidential campaign in 1948, despite her mother's disapproval. She spent the summer of 1949 in Mexico, studying painting at the University of Guadalajara.
She decided in 1950 to leave Madison and pursue her career as a writer in New York City, where she attended The New School. She moved to Harlem in 1951 and became involved in activist struggles such as the fight against evictions.
In 1951, she joined the staff of the black newspaper Freedom, edited by Louis E. Burnham and published by Paul Robeson. At Freedom, she worked with W. E. B. Du Bois, whose office was in the same building, and other Black Pan-Africanists. At the newspaper, she worked as subscription clerk, receptionist, typist and editorial assistant in addition to writing news articles and editorials.
One of her first reports covered the Sojourners for Truth and Justice convened in Washington, D.C., by Mary Church Terrell. She traveled to Georgia to cover the case of Willie McGee, and was inspired to write the poem "Lynchsong" about his case.
She worked not only on the United States civil rights movement, but also on global struggles against colonialism and imperialism. Hansberry wrote in support of the Mau Mau Uprising in Kenya, criticizing the mainstream press for its biased coverage.
Hansberry often clarified these global struggles by explaining them in terms of female participants. She was particularly interested in the situation of Egypt, "the traditional Islamic 'cradle of civilization,' where women had led one of the most important fights anywhere for the equality of their sex."
In 1952, Hansberry attended a peace conference in Montevideo, Uruguay, in place of Paul Robeson, who had been denied travel rights by the State Department.
On June 20, 1953, Hansberry married Robert Nemiroff, a Jewish publisher, songwriter and political activist. Hansberry and Nemiroff moved to Greenwich Village, the setting of The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window. Success of the song "Cindy, Oh Cindy", co-authored by Nemiroff, enabled Hansberry to start writing full-time. On the night before their wedding in 1953, Nemiroff and Hansberry protested the execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg in NYC.
It is widely believed that Hansberry was a closeted lesbian, a theory supported by her secret writings in letters and personal notebooks. She was an activist for gay rights and wrote about feminism and homophobia, joining the Daughters of Bilitis and contributing two letters to their magazine, The Ladder, in 1957 under her initials "LHN." She separated from her husband at this time, but they continued to work together.
A Raisin in the Sun was written at this time and completed in 1957.
Opening on March 11, 1959, A Raisin in the Sun became the first play written by an African American woman to be produced on Broadway. The 29-year-old author became the youngest American playwright and only the fifth woman to receive the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Play. Over the next two years, Raisin was translated into 35 languages and was being performed all over the world.
Hansberry wrote two screenplays of Raisin, both of which were rejected as controversial by Columbia Pictures. Commissioned by NBC in 1960 to create a television program about slavery, Hansberry wrote The Drinking Gourd. This script was also rejected.
In 1960, during Delta Sigma Theta's 26th national convention in Chicago, Hansberry was made an honorary member.
In 1961, Hansberry was set to replace Vinnette Carroll as the director of the musical Kicks and Co, after its try-out at Chicago's McCormick Place. It was written by Oscar Brown, Jr. and featured an interracial cast including Lonnie Sattin, Nichelle Nichols, Vi Velasco, Al Freeman, Jr., Zabeth Wilde and Burgess Meredith in the title role of Mr. Kicks. A satire involving miscegenation, the $400,000 production was co-produced by her husband Robert Nemiroff. Despite a warm reception in Chicago, the show never made it to Broadway.
In 1963, Hansberry participated in a meeting with Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, set up by James Baldwin.
Also in 1963, Hansberry was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. She underwent two operations, on June 24 and August 2. Neither was successful in removing the cancer.
On March 10, 1964, Hansberry and Nemiroff divorced but continued to work together.
While many of her other writings were published in her lifetime—essays, articles, and the text for the SNCC book The Movement — the only other play given a contemporary production was The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window. The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window ran for 101 performances on Broadway and closed the night she died.
Hansberry was an atheist.
Hansberry believed that gaining civil rights in the United States and obtaining independence in colonial Africa were two sides of the same coin that presented similar challenges for Africans on both sides of the Atlantic. In response to the independence of Ghana, led by Kwame Nkrumah, Hansberry wrote: "The promise of the future of Ghana is that of all the colored peoples of the world; it is the promise of freedom."
Regarding tactics, Hansberry said Blacks "must concern themselves with every single means of struggle: legal, illegal, passive, active, violent and non-violent.... They must harass, debate, petition, give money to court struggles, sit-in, lie-down, strike, boycott, sing hymns, pray on steps—and shoot from their windows when the racists come cruising through their communities."
In a Town Hall debate on June 15, 1964, Hansberry criticized white liberals who could not accept civil disobedience, expressing a need "to encourage the white liberal to stop being a liberal and become an American radical." At the same time, she said, "some of the first people who have died so far in this struggle have been white men."
The Federal Bureau of Investigation began surveillance of Hansberry when she prepared to go to the Montevideo peace conference. The Washington, D.C. office searched her passport files "in an effort to obtain all available background material on the subject, any derogatory information contained therein, and a photograph and complete description," while officers in Milwaukee and Chicago examined her life history. Later, an FBI reviewer of Raisin in the Sun highlighted its Pan-Africanist themes as dangerous.
Hansberry, a heavy smoker her whole life, died of pancreatic cancer on January 12, 1965, aged 34. James Baldwin believed "it is not at all farfetched to suspect that what she saw contributed to the strain which killed her, for the effort to which Lorraine was dedicated is more than enough to kill a man."
Hansberry's funeral was held in Harlem on January 15, 1965. Paul Robeson and SNCC organizer James Forman gave eulogies. The presiding minister, Eugene Callender, recited messages from Baldwin and the Martin Luther King, Jr. which read: "Her creative ability and her profound grasp of the deep social issues confronting the world today will remain an inspiration to generations yet unborn." The 15th was also Dr. King's birthday. Hansberry was buried at Asbury United Methodist Church Cemetery in Croton-on-Hudson, New York.
Hansberry's ex-husband, Robert Nemiroff, became the executor for several unfinished manuscripts. He added minor changes to complete the play Les Blancs, and he adapted many of her writings into the play To Be Young, Gifted and Black, which was the longest-running Off Broadway play of the 1968–69 season. It appeared in book form the following year under the title To Be Young, Gifted and Black: Lorraine Hansberry in Her Own Words. She left behind an unfinished novel and several other plays, including The Drinking Gourd and What Use Are Flowers?, with a range of content, from slavery to a post-apocalyptic future.
Raisin, a musical based on A Raisin in the Sun, opened in New York in 1973, winning the Tony Award for Best Musical, with the book by Nemiroff, music by Judd Woldin, and lyrics by Robert Britten. A Raisin in the Sun was revived on Broadway in 2004 and received a Tony Award nomination for Best Revival of a Play. The cast included Sean Combs ("P Diddy") as Walter Lee Younger Jr., Phylicia Rashad (Tony Award-winner for Best Actress) and Audra McDonald (Tony Award-winner for Best Featured Actress). It was produced for television in 2008 with the same cast, garnering two NAACP Image Awards.
Nina Simone first released a song about Hansberry in 1969 called "To Be Young, Gifted and Black". The title of the song refers to the title of Hansberry's autobiography, which Hansberry first coined when speaking to the winners of a creative writing conference on May 1, 1964, "though it be a thrilling and marvelous thing to be merely young and gifted in such times, it is doubly so, doubly dynamic — to be young, gifted and black." Simone wrote the song with a poet named Weldon Irvine and told him that she wanted lyrics that would "make black children all over the world feel good about themselves forever." When Irvine read the lyrics after it was finished, he thought, "I didn't write this. God wrote it through me." In a recorded introduction to the song, Simone explained the difficulty of losing a close friend and talented artist.
Patricia and Frederick McKissack wrote a children's biography of Hansberry, Young, Black, and Determined, in 1998.
In 1999, Hansberry was posthumously inducted into the Chicago Gay and Lesbian Hall of Fame.
In 2002, scholar Molefi Kete Asante listed Hansberry as one of his 100 Greatest African Americans.
The Lorraine Hansberry Theatre of San Francisco, which specializes in original stagings and revivals of African-American theatre, is named in her honor. Singer and pianist Nina Simone, who was a close friend of Hansberry, used the title of her unfinished play to write a civil rights-themed song "To Be Young, Gifted and Black" together with Weldon Irvine. The single reached the top 10 on the R&B charts. A studio recording by Simone was released as a single and the first live recording on October 26, 1969, was captured on Black Gold (1970).
In 2013 Hansberry was inducted into the Legacy Walk, an outdoor public display which celebrates LGBT history and people.
In 2013, Lorraine Hansberry was posthumously inducted into the American Theatre Hall of Fame.
May 20
*James McEachin, an American character actor and award winning author, was born in Rennert, North Carolina.
James McEachin (b. May 20, 1930, Rennert, North Carolina) is an actor, award-winning author, and known for his many character roles such as portraying police Lieutenant Brock in several Perry Mason television movies.
Before, and then during, the Korean War, McEachin served in the United States Army. Serving in King Company, 9th Infantry Regiment 2nd Infantry Division, McEachin was wounded (nearly fatally) in an ambush and nearly left for dead. McEachin was one of only two soldiers to survive the ambush.
For his heroic service during the Korean War, McEachin was eligible for both a Purple Heart and the Silver Star. However, he did not receive either award until some fifty years after the Korean War ended. In 2005, McEachin was awarded both the Purple Heart and the Silver Star after California Congressman David Dreier intervened. Congressman Dreier became aware of McEachin's service after McEachin participated in a Veterans History Project interview given by Dreier's office and in which they discovered McEachin had no copies of his own military records. Dreier's office quickly traced the records and notified McEachin of the Silver Star commendation and succeeded in obtaining all seven of McEachin's medals of valor shortly thereafter, fifty years after his service.
For his heroic service during the Korean War, McEachin was eligible for both a Purple Heart and the Silver Star. However, he did not receive either award until some fifty years after the Korean War ended. In 2005, McEachin was awarded both the Purple Heart and the Silver Star after California Congressman David Dreier intervened. Congressman Dreier became aware of McEachin's service after McEachin participated in a Veterans History Project interview given by Dreier's office and in which they discovered McEachin had no copies of his own military records. Dreier's office quickly traced the records and notified McEachin of the Silver Star commendation and succeeded in obtaining all seven of McEachin's medals of valor shortly thereafter, fifty years after his service.
Following his military career, McEachin dabbled in civil service, first as a fireman and then a policeman in Hackensack, New Jersey, before he moved to California and became a record producer. Known as "Jimmy Mack" in the industry, he worked with young artists such as Otis Redding and went on to produce The Furys. McEachin began his acting career shortly after, and was signed by Universal as a contract actor in the 1960s.
McEachin was regularly cast in professional, "solid citizen" occupational roles, such as a lawyer or a police commander, guesting on numerous series such as Hawaii Five-O, Rockford Files, Mannix, The Feather and Father Gang, The Eddie Capra Mysteries, Matlock, Jake and the Fatman, Diagnosis Murder, Dragnet, It Takes a Thief, and Adam-12. He also in television movies including Welcome Home, Johnny Bristol (1972), The Alpha Caper (1973), and The Dead Don't Die (1975). He appeared in such feature films as Uptight (1968), If He Hollers, Let Him Go! (1968), The Undefeated (1969), The Lawyer (1970), Buck and the Preacher (1972), The Groundstar Conspiracy (1972) and Fuzz (1972).
McEachin played Mr. Turner, a tax collector for the Internal Revenue Service, and later a character called Solomon Jackson, a co-worker that Archie Bunker tries to recruit for his social club, on the television show All in the Family. He played the deejay, Sweet Al Monte in Play Misty for Me (1971) with Clint Eastwood. In 1973, he starred as Harry Tenafly, the title character in Tenafly, a short-lived detective series about a police officer turned private detective who relied on his wits and hard work rather than guns and fistfights. He also appeared occasionally as Lieutenant Ron Crockett on Emergency!. In 1978, he played a police officer in Every Which Way But Loose. In 1979, he played the role of a jaded ex-marine high school baseball coach in an episode ("Out at Home") of The White Shadow.
McEachin made his third film with Eastwood in 1983 when he starred as Detective Barnes in the fourth Dirty Harry movie, Sudden Impact. He also appeared as Dr. Victor Millson, chairman of the fictitious National Council of Astronautics in the 1984 movie, 2010.
While continuing to guest star in many television series and appearing in several feature-length films, McEachin landed his most memorable role, that of police lieutenant Brock in the 1986 television movie Perry Mason: The Case of the Notorious Nun. He would reprise this role in more than a dozen Perry Mason telemovies from 1986 until 1995, starring opposite Raymond Burr, and appeared in the 1994 crime thriller Double Exposure.
While continuing to guest star in many television series and appearing in several feature-length films, McEachin landed his most memorable role, that of police lieutenant Brock in the 1986 television movie Perry Mason: The Case of the Notorious Nun. He would reprise this role in more than a dozen Perry Mason telemovies from 1986 until 1995, starring opposite Raymond Burr, and appeared in the 1994 crime thriller Double Exposure.
In the 1990s, McEachin semi-retired from acting to pursue a writing career. His first work was a military history of the court-martial of 63 African American soldiers during the First World War, titled Farewell to the Mockingbirds (1995), which won the 1998 Benjamin Franklin Award. His next works, mainly fiction novels, included The Heroin Factor (1999), Say Goodnight to the Boys in Blue (2000), The Great Canis Lupus (2001), and Tell me a Tale: A Novel of the Old South (2003). He published Pebbles in the Roadway in (2003), a collection of short stories and essays. In 2005, McEachin produced the award-winning audio book Voices: A Tribute to the American Veteran.
In early 2006, the film short Reveille, in which McEachin starred with David Huddleston, began to play to troops in Afghanistan and Iraq, and people began to request copies of the film.
In 2001, McEachin received the Distinguished Achievement Award from Morgan State University. In 2005, he became an Army Reserve Ambassador; this distinction carries the protocol of a two-star general. As part of his work on behalf of the military and veterans, McEachin participated in ceremonies for Purple Hearts Reunited, a charitable organization that works to return lost and stolen military awards to the recipients or their families.
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May 22
*Edward Melvin Porter, the first African American elected to the Oklahoma state senate and the co-owner and publisher of Black Voices magazine, was born in Okmulgee, Oklahoma.
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Edward Melvin Porter, or E. Melvin Porter, (b. May 22, 1930, Okmulgee, Oklahoma – d. July 26, 2016, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma) was an American lawyer, politician, and civil rights activist in the state of Oklahoma. Porter became the first African American to attain an Oklahoma Senate seat. Born in Okmulgee on May 22, 1930, he served in the United States Army before attending Tennessee State University. In 1959, he graduated from the Vanderbilt University School of Law. In 1960, he passed the Oklahoma Bar Association examination and established an office in Oklahoma City.
In 1961, the Oklahoma City National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) elected him president. During his tenure Clara Luper and other NAACP members were staging sit-ins and boycotts, protesting Oklahoma City's segregated accommodations. Porter not only provided legal services but also marched and on a few occasions was arrested. By July 1962 the City's NAACP chapter claimed that 171 restaurants had opened their doors to African Americans, and that the demonstrations would continue until all establishments had no restrictions.
Deciding to enter politics, in 1962, Porter unsuccessfully campaigned for the Oklahoma House of Representatives as a Republican. In April 1964, he ran for the Senate in District 18 as a Democrat and lost in the primary. Later that year the legislative districts were redrawn, giving Oklahoma City's black population a statistical chance at electing one of their own for a Senate seat in the newly redrawn District 48. Porter ran and defeated F. D. Moon and two other Democratic challengers, as well as Republican candidate Jim Duke, for the two-year position. In 1966, facing another strong black leader, John B. White, for the Senate, Porter was reelected for a full four-year term. He held the office for twenty-two years, prevailing over tough challengers, including Archibald Hill, Dr. A. L. Dowell, and A. Visanio Johnson.
While holding office, Porter introduced Oklahoma's Anti-Discrimination Act, similar to the federal 1964 Civil Rights Act. He was also instrumental in developing legislation that represented his constituents, including a law that required the inclusion of black history in the state's textbooks and another that ended miscegenation prohibitions. Often deemed controversial inside and outside the black community, Porter held his Senate seat until 1987 following his loss in the 1986 election when Vicki Miles-LaGrange defeated him in a heated campaign. In 1993 the Oklahoma County Commissioners appointed Porter the county's assessor. Later that month he changed his party affiliation from Democrat to Republican. In 1994 he left the position after eighteen months of controversy. Porter continued to reside in Oklahoma City, where he died on July 26, 2016.
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