1933

1933

Pan-African Chronology

February 21

*Singer Nina Simone, "High Priestess of Soul," was born in Tryon, North Carolina.

February 24

*Ali Mazrui, author of The Africans, was born in Mombasa, Kenya.

March 14

*Trumpeter and record  producer Quincy Delight Jones, winner of 20 Grammys, was born in Chicago.

March 15

*The NAACP opened its attack on segregation and discrimination in American schools and colleges.  On behalf of Thomas Hocutt, the NAACP sued the University of North Carolina.  An African American educator responsible for certifying the academic record of the applicant refused to do so, and the case was lost.

April 11

*Tony Brown, producer and host of the Emmy-winning TV series Black Journal, was born in Charles Town, West Virginia.

May 11

*Louis Farrakhan (Louis Eugene Walcott) was born in New York City.  As Louis Farrakhan, he would become national representative of Elijah Muhammad's Nation of Islam, and upon Muhammad's death, he would lead a faction of the movement.

June 24

*Soprano Sissieretta Jones, known as "Black Patti", died in Providence, Rhode Island.  She sang at Carnegie Hall, the Madison Square Garden, and the White House.

August 12

*Camille Billops, painter, sculptor, and filmmaker, was born in Los Angeles.

September 2

*Mathieu Kerekou, a President of Benin known as "The Chameleon", was born Kouarfa, in north-west French Dahomey (Benin).

November 3

*Louis Wade Sullivan, founder of the Morehouse School of Medicine and President George H. W. Bush's Secretary of Health and Human Services, was born in Atlanta, Georgia.

November 30

*Artist Sam Gilliam was born in Tupelo, Mississippi.

December 1

*Lou Rawls, a jazz and blues singer, was born in Chicago, Illinois.  Rawls would record over 30 albums.

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*****

The United States

The impact of President Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal, of the new Labor Union movement (CIO) and of the democratization processes during and after the Second World War upon African Americans was at best peripheral.  Whatever African Americans achieved was much less than the economical, social and educational possibilities afforded.  

Such New Deal measures as the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), the National Youth Administration (NYA), and the Works Progress Administration (WPA) lifted African Americans as well as European Americans out of the depths of the Depression, but some African Americans felt that they did not receive their fare share of the benefits.  Since many of the recovery and reform programs were administered by the state and local governments, this meant all-European American control, especially in the South.

Discriminatory handling of the measures for relief, in many instances, would not be difficult to imagine.  In any case, the New Deal Administration was a segregated one.  Nonetheless, President Franklin D. Roosevelt established his so-called "Black Cabinet," African American advisers on African-American affairs.  These individuals included an educator, Mary McLeod Bethune; a political scientist, Ralph J. Bunche; an attorney, William H. Hastie, and an economist, Robert Weaver.  In the end, the New Deal, despite its imperfections, was viewed by African Americans as well as European Americans as an era of progress -- certainly a marked advance over the Depression years.  

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One noticeable change that is also attributed to the New Deal was with regards to immigration.  An interesting and positive factor was the influx of people of African descent from the West Indies during the 1930's (and of Puerto Ricans after World War II) -- somewhat similar to the great ethnic immigrations and their meaning for the American melting pot.

*President Franklin D. Roosevelt brought several prominent African Americans into government to serve in the "Black Cabinet," an advisory group.  The most famous member was Mary McLeod Bethune.

*The United States Housing Authority began building low-cost housing, and African Americans occupied about a third of the units.  The housing was segregated in the South and only partially integrated in the North.

Low-cost housing during the Depression was built largely with funds supplied by the United States Housing Authority, later the Federal Public Housing Authority.  About one-third of the units constructed were occupied by African American families.  In the South, separate projects were built for African Americans and European Americans.  Some Northern projects were integrated and others were not.

*The Federal Housing Administration sponsored restrictive covenants in building and rental programs.

The fact that the Home Owners Loan Corporation, the Federal Home Loan Banks and the Federal Housing Administration followed conventional practices in granting loans eliminated most African Americans.

*The Tennessee Valley Authority hired African Americans as unskilled laborers but did not admit them to training programs.  African Americans could not live in the Government communities of Norris and Arthurdale.

*In August, African Americans in Atlanta, Georgia, said "that in some cases competent and satisfactory Negro workers are beginning to be displaced by white men as a result of the higher wage scales provided by the NRA [National Industrial Recovery Act]."

*Although the law creating the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) stated that "no person shall be excluded on account of race, color or creed," in fact, the CCC generally maintained a policy of strict segregation.  Between 1933 and 1942, approximately 200,000 African American boys worked in CCC camps.  In New England, and in the Western States, approximately 30,000 African Americans lived in integrated camps.

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George Washington Carver

* From 1923 to 1933, Carver toured white Southern colleges for the Commission on Interracial Cooperation.


*From 1933 to 1935, Carver worked to develop peanut oil massages to treat infantile paralysis (polio). Ultimately researchers found that the massages, not the peanut oil, provided the benefits of maintaining some mobility to paralyzed limbs.

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W. E. B. DuBois

After arriving at his new professorship in Atlanta, Du Bois wrote a series of articles generally supportive of Marxism. He was not a strong proponent of labor unions or the Communist Party, but he felt that Marx's scientific explanation of society and the economy were useful for explaining the situation of African Americans in the United States. Marx's atheism also struck a chord with Du Bois, who routinely criticized African American churches for dulling African Americans' sensitivity to racism. In his 1933 writings, Du Bois embraced socialism, but asserted that "[c]olored labor has no common ground with white labor", a controversial position that was rooted in Du Bois's dislike of American labor unions, which had systematically excluded African Americans for decades. Du Bois did not support the Communist Party in the United States and did not vote for their candidate in the 1932 presidential election, in spite of an African American on their ticket.



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Agriculture

*Between 1933 and 1934, Federal studies indicated that one-third of Southern land, and more than one-half of the land in Virginia, Georgia, Tennessee, Texas, Oklahoma and Kentucky, was eroded to some extent.  Cotton prices fell to half the pre-1914 level.  Foreign countries bought cotton from their dominions, because of the Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA) curtailment of production and destruction of surplus.  The world price was also influenced by the introduction of synthetic materials, especially rayon.

The Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA) production curtailment program was directly responsible for a decline in the number of African American sharecroppers and tenants in the South.  Its policies inadvertently forced out the poorest farmers, of whom many more were African American than European American.  Due to the reduction of crop acreage, many African American tenant farmers and sharecroppers lost their livelihood.  In addition, under the AAA, benefit checks for curtailment of production were made out to landlords, who often failed to pass them on to their African American tenants.  AAA cash benefits made mechanization possible and European American landowners mechanized production to eliminate tenants and thus to increase their own percentage of profits.  For example, a 1939 study showed that with mechanization a reduction from 40 to 24 families was possible in the Mississippi Delta area.  Jobs created by mechanization went to European American labor.

Although vast numbers of Southern African Americans voted in AAA crop referendums, large landowners were over-represented on local AAA administration committees.  African Americans were rarely allowed to vote for these committees, even if established in primarily African American areas.  All benefit and acreage decisions were made by these local committees, without adequate, if any, African American voice.  Complaints were heard by European American boards. 

Southern lien laws made it difficult for African American share tenants and sharecroppers to borrow from government agencies and credit cooperatives such as the Federal Land Bank, the Farm Credit Administration and the Federal Farm Mortgage Corporation, because the African Americans had nothing to offer as security.  Even owners and cash tenants who had some resources had less valuable land than European Americans to offer as security, and thus had to apply for smaller loans.

Competition between poor African Americans and poor European Americans and local government racial attitudes impeded cooperation and development of agricultural unions to combat the ill effects of Federal legislation.  Interracial organizations were concentrated in the Southwest.  Not until 1940 did they appear in the South.  The Socialist Party organized with other groups the Southern Tenant Farmers Union.  It was composed of small farmers, sharecroppers and laborers, both African American and European American, in Tennessee, Arkansas, and later Texas and Oklahoma.  About half African American, it held interracial meetings in violation of state and county laws, and thus encountered frequent violence. Membership probably never exceeded 30,000.  There was little conflict between European Americans and African Americans within the organization.  However, the Southern Tenants Farmers Union accomplished relatively little in its efforts to acquire Federal benefits and to fight displacements resulting from AAA policies.

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Awards

*YMCA secretary Max Yergan received the Spingarn Medal for his work as a missionary in South Africa.

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Civil Rights

*In New York, an African American minister, the Reverend John Johnson, organized the Citizens League for Fair Play, which attempted to persuade European American merchants to hire African Americans.  Eventually seven hundred jobs were opened to African Americans, but the bad feelings between European American merchants and African American residents continued, culminating in a riot in Harlem in 1935. 

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The Communist Party

*Angelo Herndon, a 19-year-old Cincinnati native and member of the Communist Party, led hunger marches in the South in an attempt to secure relief support due African Americans  He was arrested, convicted, and sentenced to twenty (20) years on a chain gang.

Angelo Herndon, a 19-year-old African American from Cincinnati, who said he had come to the South with the message of Communism, led a hunger march to petition county commissioners for relief due to African Americans.  He was arrested and convicted of attempting to incite insurrection.  The state based its case on Herndon's possession of literature distributed by the United States Communist Party.  Some of the literature advocated self-determination for Black Belt African Americans.  Herndon's attorney, Benjamin J. Davis, Jr., said, "The only offense Herndon committed was that he asked for bread for children -- his only crime is his color."  Herndon was sentenced to 20 years on a chain gang. 

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Educational Institutions

*The Works Projects Administration initiated adult education programs that taught 400,000 African Americans to read and write.  Student aid programs by the National Youth Administration, the Agricultural Extension Service and the Farm Security Administration also helped many African Americans.

*The New Deal increased African American educational facilities.  The Public Works Administration was especially successful in school building projects in the North.  Less than 10% of the funds were used for African American schools in the South.

*There were 38,000 African Americans attending colleges, 97% in colleges in the South.

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The Labor Movement

*To encourage European American employers in New York to hire blacks, John Johnson organized the Citizens League for Fair Play.  African Americans quickly gained several hundred jobs, but tensions aggravated by league activities would lead to a riot in Harlem in 1935.

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Literature

*Princess Malah, by John H. Hill, was published.  An "Uncle Tom" historical novel, it gives an exaggerated, bucolic view of the relations between Virginia aristocrats and their slaves.  Hill made the poor European Americans the only real racists. 

*Banana Bottom, a poem by Claude McKay, expressed the fullest development of McKay's cultural dualism theme.  The story, set in Jamaica, concerns the tensions and contrasts between a young African American and a European American missionary couple, who had raised her.

*Run Little Chillun by Hall Johnson was a successful African American folk drama written by an African American.  It ran 126 performances on Broadway.

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Media

*Elmer Simms Campbell (1906-1971) became the first African American cartoonist to work for a national publication.  The St. Louis-born artist contributed cartoons and other art work to Esquire (he was in nearly every issue from 1933 to 1958), Cosmopolitan, Redbook, the New Yorker, Opportunity, and syndicated features in 145 newspapers.  Campbell created the character "Esky," the pop-eyed mascot who appeared on the cover of Esquire.

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Music

*Florence Price became the first African American woman to compose a symphony that was performed by a major symphony orchestra.

The Chicago Symphony, under the direction of Frederick Stock, first played Symphony in E minor by Florence Price (1888 - 1953) at the Chicago World Fair.  The first African American woman to achieve distinction as a composer, Price was a graduate of the New England Conservatory of Music in 1906, and won her first Harmon prize for composition in 1925. 

*Benny Goodman, a European American bandleader, began using African American musicians in recording sessions.  In 1936, he would be the first major bandleader to have African Americans and European Americans playing together for the public.

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The NAACP

*The NAACP began a widespread campaign against segregation by filing a suit on behalf of Thomas Hocutt against the University of North Carolina.  The suit was lost.

*The NAACP again challenged Texas' white-only primary.  Dr. Nixon was again the plaintiff, as in 1924.  Nixon was awarded damages by the United States District Court for having been denied the right to vote, but the law was not changed.  The following year, however, Dr. Nixon was permitted to vote.

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Notable Births

*Camille Billops, painter, sculptor, and filmmaker, was born in Los Angeles (August 12).

Camille Billops (b. August 12, 1933, Los Angeles, California), an African American sculptor, filmmaker, archivist, and printmaker. 

Billops was born in Los Angeles on August 12, 1933. Her parents, Alma Gilmore and Lucius Billops, worked "in service" for a Beverly Hills family, enabling them to provide her with a private secondary education.

Billops graduated in 1960 from Los Angeles State College, where she majored in education for physically handicapped children. She obtained her B.A. degree from California State University and her M.F.A. degree from City College of New York in 1975.

Billops’s primary visual art medium is sculpture and her works are in the permanent collections of the Jersey City Museum and the Museum of Drawers, Bern, Switzerland. Billops has exhibited in one-woman and group exhibitions worldwide including: Gallerie Akhenaton, Cairo, Egypt; Hamburg, Germany; Kaohsiung, Taiwan; Gimpel and Weitzenhoffer Gallery, and El Museo de Arte Moderno La Tertulia, Cali, Colombia. 

In 1982, Billops began her filmmaking career with Suzanne, Suzanne. She followed this by directing five more films, including Finding Christa in 1991, a highly autobiographical work that garnered the Grand Jury Prize for documentaries at the 1992 Sundance Film Festival. Finding Christa has also been aired as part of the Public Broadcasting Service's P. O. V. television series. Her other film credits include Older Women and Love in 1987, The KKK Boutique Ain’t Just Rednecks in 1994, Take Your Bags in 1998, and A String of Pearls in 2002. Billops produced all of her films with her husband and their film company, Mom and Pop Productions.

Billops's film projects have been collaborations with, and stories about, members of her family. For instance, they were co-produced with her husband James Hatch and credit Hatch's son as director of photography.Suzanne, Suzanne studies the relationship between Billop's sister Billie and Billie's daughter Suzanne. Finding Christa deals with Billops's daughter whom she gave up for adoption. Older Women and Love is based on a love affair of Billops's aunt.

In 1961 the seeds of Hatch-Billops Collection were sown when Billops met James Hatch, a professor of theater at UCLA, through Billops's stepsister, Josie Mae Dotson, who was Hatch's student. A 40-year artistic collaboration followed. The Hatch-Billops Collection is an archive of African American memorabilia including thousands of books and other printed materials, more than 1,200 interviews, and scripts of nearly 1,000 plays. Once housed in a 120-foot-long (37 m) loft in lower Manhattan, the Collection is now largely located at the Camille Billops and James V. Hatch archives at Emory University.

Hatch and Billops also hosted a salon in their Manhattan loft, which led to the publication of Artist and Influence, an annual journal featuring interviews with noted American "marginalized artists" across a wide range of genres. 

Billops collaborated with photographer James Van Der Zee and poet, scholar, and playwright Owen Dodson on The Harle Book of the Dead, which was published in 1978 with an introduction by Toni Morrison. 

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*Tony Brown, producer and host of the Emmy-winning TV series Black Journal, was born in Charles Town, West Virginia (April 11).

Tony Brown, in full William Anthony Brown   (b. April 11, 1933, Charleston, West Virginia), American activist, television producer, writer, educator, and filmmaker who hosted Tony Brown’s Journal (1968–2008; original name Black Journal until 1977), the longest-running black news program in television history.

Brown was the son of Royal Brown and Catherine Davis Brown. Segregation and poverty were a part of Brown’s upbringing and influenced his view that freedom can be achieved only through economic means. Brown attended public schools in Charleston, West Virginia, where he joined the track team and excelled in academics, especially English and drama. He performed in school plays and, shortly before graduating in 1951, performed segments of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar on WGKV radio in Charleston.

After serving in the army from 1953 to 1955, Brown enrolled in Wayne State University in Detroit where he studied sociology and psychology, graduating with a bachelor’s degree in 1959. Primarily concerned with the suffering caused by poverty that plagued the African American community, Brown continued his studies at Wayne State, focusing on psychiatric social work. He earned a master’s degree in 1961 and began a career as a social worker but quickly discovered that he did not like the work. Changing careers, Brown became a drama critic for the Detroit Courier in 1962. He soon rose to the position of editor at the newspaper, but in 1968 he decided to move on to a job in public-affairs programming at WTVS, Detroit’s public television station.

Over the next 30 years, Brown hosted and produced programming that concerned the black community. While at WTVS, he produced Colored People’s Time, the station’s first show aimed at a black audience, and Free Play, another community-oriented program. In 1970 Brown became executive producer and host of Black Journal, a New York-based program that aired nationally and had begun in 1968. The program consisted of commentaries, documentaries, and surveys. Brown’s approach to Black Journal garnered much criticism. His view of the United States government and its effect on African American life, as well as his seeming arrogance when focusing on the struggles of black people, caused a stir in both the broadcasting and black communities. As a result, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which funded the program, announced that it would not fund the 1973–74 season of Black Journal. The national black community protested the decision, however, and the show was aired, although on a limited basis. In 1977 Brown negotiated a contract with the Pepsi-Cola Company to sponsor the show, changing its name to Tony Brown’s Journal and moving it to commercial television. The show was later moved back to public television after Brown experienced trouble getting desirable viewing times on commercial television stations.

Activism was important to Brown. He maintained a strong presence in community-oriented programs as well as launching initiatives of his own. His belief that education was the key to success prompted him to initiate Black College Day to highlight black colleges and the need for African American youth to pursue a college education. He also formed the Council for the Economic Development of Black Americans; the organization’s Buy Freedom campaign encouraged African Americans to patronize black businesses. To address the problem of drug addiction, he wrote and produced a film about the issue, The White Girl (1990).

Brown held academic positions throughout his career. He founded the School of Communications at Howard University in Washington, D. C., in 1971 and served as the school’s dean until 1974. He later served as dean of the Scripps Howard School of Journalism and Communications at Hampton University in Virginia from 2004 to 2009.

In addition to writing a syndicated column for many years, Brown also wrote the books Black Lies, White Lies: The Truth According to Tony Brown (1995), Empower the People: A 7-Step Plan to Overthrow the Conspiracy That Is Stealing Your Money and Freedom (1998), and What Mama Taught Me: The Seven Core Values of Life (2003).

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*Louis Farrakhan (Louis Eugene Walcott) was born in New York City (May 11).  As Louis Farrakhan, he would become national representative of Elijah Muhammad's Nation of Islam, and upon Muhammad's death, he would lead a faction of the movement.

Louis Farrakhan, in full Louis Abdul Farrakhan, original name Louis Eugene Walcott (b. May 11, 1933, Bronx, New York), African American leader (from 1978) of the Nation of Islam, an African American movement that combined elements of Islam and black nationalism. Walcott, as he was then known, was raised in Boston by his mother, Sarah Mae Manning, an immigrant from St. Kitts and Nevis. Deeply religious as a boy, he became active in the St. Cyprian’s Episcopal Church in his Roxbury neighborhood. He graduated with honors from the prestigious Boston English High School, where he also played the violin and was a member of the track team. He attended the Winston-Salem Teachers College from 1951 to 1953 but dropped out to pursue a career in music. Known as “The Charmer,” he performed professionally on the Boston nightclub circuit as a singer of calypso and country songs. In 1953 he married Khadijah, with whom he would have nine children.

In 1955 Walcott joined the Nation of Islam. Following the custom of the Nation, he replaced his surname with an “X,” a custom among Nation of Islam followers who considered their family names to have originated with white slaveholders. Louis X first proved himself at Temple No. 7 in Harlem, where he emerged as the protégé of Malcolm X, the minister of the temple and one of the most prominent members of the Nation of Islam. Louis X was given his Muslim name, Abdul Haleem Farrakhan, by Elijah Muhammad, the leader of the Nation of Islam. Farrakhan was appointed head minister of Boston Temple No. 11, which Malcolm had established earlier.

After Malcolm X’s break with the Nation in 1964 over political and personal differences with Elijah Muhammad,  Farrakhan replaced Malcolm as head minister of Harlem’s Temple No. 7 and as the National Representative of the Nation, the second in command of the organization. Like his predecessor, Farrakhan was a dynamic, charismatic leader and a powerful speaker with the ability to appeal to the African American masses.

When Elijah Muhammad died in February 1975, the Nation of Islam fragmented. Surprisingly, the Nation’s leadership chose Wallace Muhammad (now known as Warith Deen Mohammed), the fifth of Elijah’s six sons, as the new Supreme Minister. Disappointed that he was not named Elijah’s successor, Farrakhan led a breakaway group in 1978, which he also called the Nation of Islam and which preserved the original teachings of Elijah Muhammad. Farrakhan disagreed with Wallace Muhammad’s attempts to move the Nation to orthodox Sunni Islam and to rid it of Elijah Muhammad’s radical black nationalism and separatist teachings, which stressed the inherent wickedness of whites.

Farrakhan became known to the American public through a series of controversies that began during the 1984 presidential campaign of Jesse Jackson, whom Farrakhan supported. Farrakhan withdrew his support after Jewish voters protested his praise of Adolf Hitler, and he has been embroiled in a continuing conflict with the American Jewish community because of his making allegedly anti-Semitic statements; Farrakhan has denied being anti-Semitic. In later speeches he blamed the United States government for what he claimed was a conspiracy to destroy black people with AIDS and addictive drugs.

In 1995 the Nation sponsored the Million Man March in Washington, D.C., to promote African American unity and family values. Estimates of the number of marchers, most of whom were men, ranged from 400,000 to nearly 1.1 million, making it the largest gathering of its kind in American history. Under Farrakhan’s leadership, the Nation of Islam established a clinic for AIDS patients in Washington, D.C., and helped to force drug dealers out of public housing projects and private apartment buildings in the city. It also worked with gang members in Los Angeles. Meanwhile, the Nation continued to promote social reform in African American communities in accordance with its traditional goals of self-reliance and economic independence.

In the early 21st century, the core membership of Farrakhan’s Nation of Islam was estimated at between 10,000 and 50,000—though in the same period Farrakhan was delivering speeches in large cities across the United States that regularly attracted crowds of more than 30,000. Under Farrakhan’s leadership, the Nation was one of the fastest growing of the various Muslim movements in the country. Foreign branches of the Nation were formed in Ghana, London, Paris, and the Caribbean islands. In order to strengthen the international influence of the Nation, Farrakhan established relations with Muslim countries, and in the late 1980s he cultivated a relationship with the Libyan dictator Muammar al-Qaddafi.  After a near-death experience in 2000 resulting from complications from prostate cancer (he was diagnosed with cancer in 1991), Farrakhan toned down his racial rhetoric and attempted to strengthen relations with other minority communities, including Native Americans, Hispanics, and Asians. Farrakhan also moved his group closer to orthodox Sunni Islam in 2000, when he and Imam Warith Deen Mohmmed, the leading American orthodox Muslim, recognized each other as fellow Muslims.

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*Artist Sam Gilliam was born in Tupelo, Mississippi (November 30).  

Sam Gilliam (b. November 30, 1933, Tupelo, Mississippi) is a Color Field Painter and Lyrical Abstractionist artist. Gilliam is associated with the Washington Color School. and is broadly considered a Color  He works on stretched, draped, and wrapped canvas, and adds sculptural 3D elements. He is recognized as the first artist to introduce the idea of a painted canvas hanging without stretcher bars c.1965, a major contribution to the Color Field School.  

Sam Gilliam was born in Tupelo, Mississippi and was the seventh of eight children born to Sam and Estery Gilliam. The Gilliams moved to Louisville, Kentucky, shortly after Sam was born. His father worked on the railroad, and his mother cared for the large family. Gilliam began painting in elementary school and received much encouragement from teachers. In 1951, Gilliam graduated from Central High School in Louisville. Gilliam served in the United States Army from 1956 to 1958. He received his bachelor's and master's degree of Fine Arts from the University of Louisville. In 1955, Gilliam had his first solo exhibition at the University of Louisville. He initially taught art for a year in the Louisville public schools. In 1962, he married Dorothy Butler, a Louisville native and a well-known journalist. That same year, Gilliam moved to Washington, D.C.

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*Trumpeter and record  producer Quincy Delight Jones, winner of 20 Grammys, was born in Chicago (March 14).

Quincy Jones, in full Quincy Delight Jones, Jr., byname “Q”   (b. March 14, 1933, Chicago, Illinois), American musical performer, producer, arranger, and composer whose work encompasses virtually all forms of popular music.

Jones was born in Chicago and reared in Bremerton, Washington, where he studied the trumpet and worked locally with the then-unknown pianist-singer Ray Charles. In the early 1950s, Jones studied briefly at the prestigious Schillinger House (now Berklee College of Music) in Boston before touring with Lionel Hampton as a trumpeter and arranger. He soon became a prolific freelance arranger, working with Clifford Brown, Gigi Gryce, Oscar Pettiford, Cannonball Adderley, Count Basie, Dinah Washington, and many others. He toured with Dizzy Gillespie's big band in 1956, recorded his first album as a leader in the same year, worked in Paris for the Barclay label as an arranger and producer in the late 1950s, and continued to compose. Some of his more successful compositions from this period include “Stockholm Sweetnin’,” “For Lena and Lennie,” and “Jessica’s Day.”

Back in the United States in 1961, Jones became an artists-and-repertoire (or “A&R” in trade jargon) director for Mercury Records. In 1964, he was named a vice president at Mercury, thereby becoming one of the first African Americans to hold a top executive position at a major American record label. In the 1960s, Jones recorded occasional jazz dates, arranged albums for many singers (including Frank Sinatra, Peggy Lee, and Billy Eckstine), and composed music for several films, including The Pawnbroker (1964), In the Heat of the Night (1967), and In Cold Blood (1967). Jones next worked for the A&M label from 1969 to 1981 (with a brief hiatus as he recovered from a brain aneurysm in 1974) and moved increasingly away from jazz toward pop music. During this time he became one of the most famous producers in the world, his success enabling him to start his own record label, Qwest, in 1980.

Jones’s best-known work includes producing an all-time best-selling album, Michael Jackson's Thriller(1982), organizing the all-star charity recording “We Are the World” (1985), and producing the film The Color Purple (1985) and the television series The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air (1990–96). In 1993, he founded the magazine Vibe, which he sold in 2006. Throughout the years, Jones has worked with a “who’s who” of figures from all fields of popular music. He was nominated for more than 75 Grammy Awards (winning more than 25) and seven Academy Awards and received an Emmy Award for the theme music he wrote for the television miniseries Roots (1977). Q: The Autobiography of Quincy Jones was published in 2001. In 2013 Jones was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. 

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*Lou Rawls, a jazz and blues singer, was born in Chicago, Illinois (December 1).  Rawls would record over 30 albums.

Lou Rawls,  (b. December 1, 1933, Chicago, Illinois — d. January 6, 2006, Los Angeles, California), American singer whose smooth baritone adapted easily to jazz, soul, gospel, and rhythm and blues. 

As a child, Rawls sang in a Baptist church choir, and he later performed with Sam Cooke in the 1950s gospel group Teenage Kings of Harmony. In 1956 he stepped back from his burgeoning career to enlist in the army. After his discharge in 1958, he briefly performed with another gospel group, the Pilgrim Travelers, again with Cooke. However, after recovering from a 1958 car crash that sidelined him for a year, Rawls began to perform secular music. 

Rawls’s debut album, Stormy Monday (1962), was a collection of jazz songs, but he did not have a hit single until the soulful “Love Is a Hurtin’ Thing” (1966), off his first rhythm and blues album, Soulin’. Rawls won three Grammy Awards: for the single “Dead End Street” (1967), for the track “A Natural Man” (1971), and for the album Unmistakably Lou (1977). His biggest hit single, however, was the 1976 chart topper “You’ll Never Find (Another Love like Mine).” In addition, Rawls ushered in the pre-rap era with spoken monologues in his songs, notably in “Tobacco Road.” Rawls released more than 50 albums, and in later years he appeared in films and television commercials, lent his voice to children’s television shows, and helped raise more than $200 million for the United Negro College fund as the host of its annual telethon.

*****

*Singer Nina Simone, "High Priestess of Soul," was born in Tryon, North Carolina (February 21).

Nina Simone (b. Eunice Waymon, February 21, 1933, Tryon, North Carolina.— d. April 21, 2003, Carry-le-Rouet, France), was an American singer who created urgent emotional intensity by singing songs of love, protest, and black empowerment in a dramatic style, with a rough-edged voice. Originally noted as a jazz singer, she became a prominent voice of the 1960s civil rights movement with recordings such as “Mississippi Goddam” and “Old Jim Crow”; her best-known composition was “To Be Young, Gifted and Black.” She also recorded songs by rock and pop songwriters. A precocious child, she played piano and organ in girlhood. She became sensitive to racism when at age 12 she gave a piano recital in a library where her parents had to stand in back because they were black. A student of classical music at the Juilliard School of Music in New York City, she began performing as a pianist. Her vocal career began in 1954 in an Atlantic City, N.J., nightclub when the club owner threatened to fire her unless she sang too. Her first album featured her distinctive versions of jazz and cabaret standards, including “I Loves You, Porgy,” which became a 1959 hit. In the 1960s she added protest songs, became a friend of Martin Luther King, Jr., and Malcolm X, and performed at civil rights demonstrations. Her popularity grew as she added folk and gospel selections as well as songs by the Bee Gees, Bob Dylan, and Screaming Jay Hawkins (“I Put a Spell on You”), to her repertoire. Angered by American racism, she left the United States in 1973 and lived in Barbados, Africa, and Europe for the rest of her life. Like her private life, her career was turbulent, and she gained a reputation for throwing onstage tantrums, insulting inattentive audiences, and abruptly canceling concerts. A 1980s Chanel television commercial that included her vocal “My Baby Just Cares for Me” helped introduce her to many new, younger listeners. Despite ill health, she continued to tour and perform, and she maintained a devoted international following to the end.

*****

*Louis Wade Sullivan, founder of the Morehouse School of Medicine and President George H. W. Bush's Secretary of Health and Human Services, was born in Atlanta, Georgia (November 3).

Louis Wade Sullivan was born on November 3, 1933, in Atlanta, Georgia, to Lubirda Priester and Walter Wade Sullivan. Sullivan served as the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, in addition to founding Morehouse School of Medicine in Atlanta, Georgia.

Sullivan graduated from Morehouse College in 1954 with a B.S. in biology. He earned an M.D. from the Boston University School of Medicine in 1958 and completed an internship and residency at New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center. Sullivan focused on hematology. He began a career in education, teaching at Harvard Medical School and the New Jersey College of Medicine, while researching at the Thorndike Memorial Laboratory. In 1966, he began serving his alma mater as the Co-director of Hematology at Boston University Medical Center. The next year, he founded the Boston University Hematology Service at Boston City Hospital. He continued as a faculty member at the Boston University School of Medicine until 1975, when he moved back to Atlanta to work for Morehouse College. There, he taught biology and medicine, founding the Medical Education Program at Morehouse College.

The Morehouse School of Medicine became independent from Morehouse College in 1981, with Sullivan as president and dean. He continued as president through 1989, when he took a leave of absence after being appointed to serve as Secretary of Health and Human Services. As head of HHS, Sullivan's responsibility extended to the health and welfare of the country. He battled the tobacco industry and championed victims of AIDS. In 1993, he left his government post and returned to Morehouse School of Medicine as president.

Sullivan hosted the public television show "Frontiers of Medicine." 

*****

Notable Deaths

*There were 24 recorded lynchings of African Americans in the United States.

*Soprano Sissieretta Jones, known as "Black Patti", died in Providence, Rhode Island (June 24).  She sang at Carnegie Hall, the Madison Square Garden, and the White House.

Matilda Sissieretta Jones, née Joyner, byname Black Patti, or Madame Jones  (b. January 5, 1869, Portsmouth, Virginia — d. June 24, 1933, Providence, Rhode Island), was an opera singer who was considered the greatest black American in her field in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Jones early revealed her talent as a singer, and for a time she studied at the Providence (Rhode Island) Academy of Music. She may have undertaken further studies at the New England Conservatory of Music in 1886 or 1887, but that information, like much of her early and late life, is obscure. In 1888 she made her singing debut in New York City and toured the West Indies as a featured artist with the Jubilee Singers of Fisk University. Her rich, powerful soprano voice led one critic to dub her “the Black Patti” (after Adelina Patti, the foremost opera diva of the day). Jones disliked the epithet.

Until 1896 Jones sang in concert, opera, and vaudeville halls in solo recitals or with such groups as the Patrick Gilmore band. She appeared at a “Grand African Jubilee” at Madison Square Garden in April 1892, sang for President Benjamin Harrison at the White House in that year, and appeared at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893. Her tours took her to Canada, England, and continental Europe. She included much spiritual and ballad material in her repertoire, but she preferred selections from grand and light opera.

From 1896 to 1916 Jones toured continually with a troupe called, to her distaste, the Black Patti Troubadors, a motley group whose performances included blackface minstrel songs and “coon” songs and featured acrobats and comedians. Madame Jones, as she preferred to be known, restricted herself to operatic selections, which over the years grew to include costumes and scenery. Performing almost exclusively for white audiences who saw her as an oddity, she was nonetheless widely acclaimed the premier African-American singer of her time. After the breakup of the Black Patti Troubadors in 1916, she lived in obscurity until her death.

*****

Performing Arts

*Hall Johnson's folk drama Run Little Chillun opened on Broadway.

*United Artists released the movie Emperor Jones, starring Paul Robeson in his first leading role.  It was also the first Hollywood movie to star an African American with European American actors in supporting roles.

The Emperor Jones directed by Dudley Murphy and independently produced by John Krimsky and Gifford Cochran was to be the first of a series of film adaptations of Eugene O'Neill's plays.  The film starred Paul Robeson.  This movie employed an all-African American cast and was faithful to the play.  It had a considerable success among critics and audiences.  In creating an African American role of tragic grandeur, Robeson proved that African Americans need not be used only for light comedy or slapstick.  In the context of the history of the African American in the cinema, this movie is a landmark in that it encouraged African American movie companies to make serious films.

*Benny Goodman, a European American bandleader, began using African American musicians in recording sessions.  In 1936, he would be the first major bandleader to have African Americans and European Americans playing together for the public.

Benny Goodman began to use African American musicians for recordings.  He later broke the convention against African Americans and European Americans playing together in public when Teddy Wilson, an African American, appeared with the Goodman band at the Hotel Congress in Chicago in 1936.

*Katherine Dunham starred in Ruth Page's ballet La Guiablesse.

*Choreographer Hemsley Winfield and his dance company appeared in the Metropolitan Opera's production of Emperor Jones, although they were not listed in the program.

*Run Little Chillun by Hall Johnson was a successful African American folk drama written by an African American.  It ran 126 performances on Broadway.

*Caterina Jarboro became the first African American to sing with the Chicago Opera Company.

Caterina Jarboro (1903-1986) sang the title role in Aida with the Chicago Opera Company in New York City.  Born Catherine Yarboro in Wilmington, North Carolina, she began her career in Broadway musicals, including Shuffle Along (1921) and Running Wild (1923).

*****
Publications

*Carter G. Woodson published The Miseducation of the Negro.

*Leon H. Washington founded the Los Angeles Sentinel.

*****

Religious Institutions

*Solomon Lightfoot Michaux, a religious leader, founded the Good Neighbor League in Washington, D. C., an organization that fed 250,000 homeless and unemployed African Americans and later worked to organize the African American vote for Roosevelt.

The Good Neighbor League, founded in 1933 by Solomon Lightfoot (Elder) Michaux, a religious leader, fed 250,000 indigent persons at its Happy News Cafe in Washington, D. C.   In 1932, Michaux had supported the Presidential candidacy of Franklin D.  Roosevelt instead of the Republican Herbert Hoover.  He later used the league as part of the Roosevelt political machine and organized the vote among African Americans.

*****
Statistics

*More than 25% of urban African Americans were on relief, compared with about 12% of urban European Americans.

According to the October report of the Federal Emergency Relief Administration, the percentages of African Americans and European Americans on relief were: United States total: African Americans  17.8%, European Americans 9.5%; urban African Americans 26.7%, European Americans 9.6%; rural African Americans 10.9%, European Americans 9.6%; urban Northern African Americans 25.4%, European Americans 9.8%; urban Southern African Americans 26.5%, European Americans 13.6%; and rural Southern African Americans 3%, European Americans 3.8%.

*53,000 African Americans, or 9.8% of the total employees, worked for the Federal government.  The figure rose to 82,000 in 1938, or 9.9% of all Federal employees.

*****
Visual Arts

*E. Simms Campbell began contributing cartoons and artwork to Esquire magazine.

*****

The Americas

Canada

*Archie Alleyne, an African Canadian jazz musician, was born in Toronto, Ontario (January 7).

Archie Alleyne (January 7, 1933 – June 8, 2015) was a Canadian jazz drummer. Best known as a drummer for influential jazz musicians such as Billie Holiday, Lester Young, Stan Getz, Coleman Hawkins and Ben Webster, he was also prominent as a recording artist on his own and with Canadian jazz musicians such as Oliver Jones, Cy McLean and Brian Browne. 

Born and raised in Toronto, Ontario, Alleyne became the house drummer at the Town Tavern jazz club in his 20s.

Involved in a serious car accident in 1967, he stepped away from music for a number of years, becoming a partner in a soul food restaurant in Toronto. He returned to music in the early 1980s with Jones' band.

In later life,, he was named an Officer of the Order of Canada, established the Archie Alleyne Scholarship Fund to provide bursaries to music students, and wrote Colour Me Jazz: The Archie Alleyne Story, an autobiography.

Haiti

*Charles Ferdinand Pressoir, president of the Creole Academy, wrote a collection of poems, Au Rhythme de Coumbites.

Jamaica

*Winston Garvey, the son of Marcus Garvey and Amy Jacques Garvey, was born.

At the age of 32 in 1919, Garvey married his first wife, Amy Ashwood Garvey. Amy Ashwood Garvey was also a founder of The UNIA-ACL. She had saved Garvey in the Tyler assassination by quickly getting medical help. After four months of marriage, Garvey separated from her.

In 1922, he married again, to Amy Jacques Garvey, who was working as his secretary general. They had two sons together: Marcus Mosiah Garvey, III (born September 17, 1930) and Julius Winston (born 1933). Amy Jacques Garvey played an important role in his career, and would become a lead worker in Garvey's movement.

*Tom Redcam (Thomas MacDermot), a journalist, died (October 8).  He wrote numerous popular ballads and songs which have become part of the island's folk culture.

*****

Europe

Germany

*Germany adopted the Law for the Prevention of Genetically Diseased Offspring (July 14).

The Law for the Prevention of Genetically Diseased Offspring (German: Gesetz zur Verhütung erbkranken Nachwuchses) or "Sterilisation Law" was a statute in Nazi Germany enacted on July 14, 1933, (and made active in January 1934) which allowed the compulsory sterilization of any citizen who in the opinion of a "Genetic Health Court" (German: Erbgesundheitsgericht) suffered from a list of alleged genetic disorders - many of which were not, in fact, genetic. The elaborate interpretive commentary on the law was written by three dominant figures in the racial hygiene racial movement: Ernst Rudin, Arthur Gutt and the lawyer Falk Ruttke.  The law itself was based on a 'model' American law developed by Harry H. Laughlin.  

The law applied to anyone in the general population, making its scope significantly larger than the compulsory sterilization laws in the United States, which generally were only applicable on people in psychiatric hospitals or prisons.

The 1933 law created a large number of "Genetic Health Courts", consisting of a judge, a medical officer, and medical practitioner, which "shall decide at its own discretion after considering the results of the whole proceedings and the evidence tendered”. If the court decided that the person in question was to be sterilized, the decision could be appealed to "Higher Genetic Health Court". If the appeal failed, the sterilization was to be carried out, with the law specifying that "the use of force is permissible". The law also required that people seeking voluntary sterilizations also go through the courts.

There were three amendments by 1935, most making minor adjustments to how the statute operated or clarifying bureaucratic aspects (such as who paid for the operations). The most significant changes allowed the Higher Court to renounce a patient's right to appeal, and to fine physicians who did not report patients who they knew would qualify for sterilization under the law. The law also enforced sterilization on the so-called "Rhineland bastards". 

Africa

*****

Benin

*Mathieu Kerekou, a President of Benin known as "The Chameleon", was born Kouarfa, in north-west French Dahomey (September 2).

Mathieu Kérékou (September 2, 1933 – October 14, 2015) was a Beninese politician who was President of Benin from 1972 to 1991 and again from 1996 to 2006. After seizing power in a military coup, he ruled the country for 17 years, for most of that time under an officially Marxist-Leninist ideology, before he was stripped of his powers by the National Conference of 1990. He was defeated in the 1991 presidential election, but was returned to the presidency in the 1996 election and controversially re-elected in 2001. 

Kérékou was born in 1933 in Kouarfa. in north-west French Dahomey.  After having studied at military schools in modern-day Mali and Senegal, Kérékou served in the military. Following independence, from 1961 to 1963 he was an aide-de-camp to Dahomeyan President Hubert Maga, following Maurice Kouandete's seizure of power in December 1967, Kérékou, who was his cousin, was made chairman of the Military Revolutionary Council. After Kérékou attended French military schools from 1968 to 1970, Maga made him a major, deputy chief of staff, and commander of the Ouidah paratroop unit.

Kerekou seized power in Dahomey in a military coup on October 26, 1972, ending a system of government in which three members of a presidential council were to rotate power (earlier in the year MagKérékou a had handed over power to Justin Ahomadegbe). 

During his first two years in power, Kérékou expressed only nationalism and said that the country's revolution would not "burden itself by copying foreign ideology ... We do not want communism or capitalism or socialism. We have our own Dahomean social and cultural system." On November 30, 1974, however, he announced the adoption of Marxism-Leninism by the state. The country was renamed from the Republic of Dahomey to the People's Republic of Benin a year later; the banks and petroleum industry were nationalized. The People's Revolutionary Party of Benin (Parti de la révolution populaire du Bénin, PRPB) was established as the sole ruling party. In 1980, Kérékou was elected president by the Revolutionary National Assembly; he retired from the army in 1987.

It has been suggested that Kérékou's move to Marxism-Leninism was motivated mainly by pragmatic considerations, and that Kérékou himself was not actually a leftist radical; the new ideology offered a means of legitimization, a way of distinguishing the new regime from those that had preceded it, and was based on broader unifying principles than the politics of ethnicity. Kérékou's regime initially included officers from both the north and south of the country, but as the years passed the northerners (like Kérékou himself) became clearly dominant, undermining the idea that the regime was not based in ethnicity. By officially adopting Marxism-Leninism, Kérékou may also have wanted to win the support of the country's leftists.

Kérékou's regime was rigid and vigorous in pursuing its newly adopted ideological goals from the mid-1970s to the late 1970s. Beginning in the late 1970s, the regime jettisoned much of its radicalism and settled onto a more moderately socialist course as Kérékou consolidated his personal control.

Kérékou survived numerous attempts to oust him, including an invasion of the port city of Cotonou by mercenaries contracted by a group of exiled Beninese political rivals in January 1977, as well as two coup attempts in 1988.

It was hoped that the nationalizations of the 1970s would help develop the economy, but it remained in a very poor condition, with the state sector being plagued by inefficiency and corruption. Kérékou began reversing course in the early 1980s, closing down numerous state-run companies and attempting to attract foreign investment. He also accepted an International Monetary Fund (IMF) structural readjustment program in 1989, agreeing to austerity measures that severely cut state expenditures. The economic situation continued to worsen during the 1980s, provoking widespread unrest in 1989. A student strike began in January of that year. Subsequently, strikes among various elements of society increased in frequency and the nature of their demands grew broader: whereas initially they had focused on economic issues such as salary arrears, this progressed to include demands for political reform.

In the period of reforms towards multi-party democracy in Africa at the beginning of the 1990s, Benin moved onto this path early, with Kérékou being forced to make concessions to popular discontent. Benin's early and relatively smooth transition may be attributed to the particularly dismal economic situation in the country, which seemed to preclude any alternative. In the midst of increasing unrest, Kérékou was re-elected as president by the National Assembly in August 1989, but in December 1989 Marxism-Leninism was dropped as the state ideology, and a national conference was held in February 1990. The conference turned out to be hostile to Kérékou and declared its own sovereignty; despite the objections of some of his officers to this turn of events, Kérékou did not act against the conference, although he did label the conference's declaration of sovereignty a "civilian coup". During the transition that followed, Kérékou remained president but lost most of his power.

During the 1990 National Conference, which was nationally televised, Kérékou spoke to the Archbishop of Cotonou, Isidor de Souza, confessing guilt and begging forgiveness for the flaws of his regime. An observer described it as a "remarkable piece of political theater", full of cultural symbolism and significance. In effect, Kérékou was seeking forgiveness from his people. Such a gesture, so unusual for the African autocrats of the time, could have fatally weakened Kérékou's political standing, but he performed the gesture in such a way that, far from ending his political career, it instead served to symbolically redeem him and facilitate his political rehabilitation, while also "securing him immunity from prosecution". Kérékou shrewdly utilized the timing and setting.  Culturally as well as theologically it would prove impossible to refuse forgiveness on these terms.

World Bank economist Nicephore Soglo, chosen as prime minister by the conference, took office in March, and a new constitution was approved in a December 1990 referendum. Multi-party elections were held in March 1991, which Kérékou lost, obtaining only about 32% of the vote in the second round against Prime Minister Soglo; while he won very large vote percentages in the north, in the rest of the country he found little support. Kérékou was thus the first mainland African president to lose power through a popular election. He apologized for "deplorable and regrettable incidents" that occurred during his rule.

After losing the election in March 1991, Kérékou left the political scene and "withdrew to total silence", another move that was interpreted as penitential.

Kérékou reclaimed the presidency in the March 1996 election. Soglo's economic reforms and his alleged dictatorial tendencies had caused his popularity to suffer. Although Kérékou received fewer votes than Soglo in the first round, he then defeated Soglo in the second round, taking 52.5% of the vote. Kérékou was backed in the second round by third place candidate Adrien Houngbedji and fourth place candidate Bruno Amoussou, as in 1991, Kérékou received very strong support from northern voters, but he also improved his performance in the south. Soglo alleged fraud, but this was rejected by the Constitutional Court, which confirmed Kérékou's victory. When taking the oath of office, Kérékou left out a portion that referred to the "spirits of the ancestors" because he had become a born-again Christian after his defeat by Soglo. He was subsequently forced to retake the oath including the reference to spirits.

Kérékou was re-elected for a second five-year term in the March 2001 presidential election under controversial circumstances. In the first round he took 45.4% of the vote; Soglo, who took second place, and parliament speaker Houngbédji, who took third, both refused to participate in the second round, alleging fraud and saying that they did not want to legitimize the vote by participating in it. This left the fourth place finisher, Amoussou, to face Kérékou in the run-off, and Kérékou easily won with 83.6% of the vote. It was subsequently discovered that the American corporation Titan gave more than two million dollars to Kérékou's re-election campaign as a bribe.

During Kérékou's second period in office his government followed a liberal economic path. The period also saw Benin take part in international peacekeeping missions in other African states.

Kérékou was barred from running again in 2006 on two counts. The constitution not only limited the president to two terms, but also required that presidential candidates be younger than 70 (he turned 70 in 2003, through his second term). Kérékou said in July 2005 that he would not attempt to amend the constitution to allow him to run for a third term. "If you don't leave power," he said, "power will leave you." There was, however, speculation that he had wanted it to be changed, but faced too much opposition.

On March 5, 2006, voters went to the polls to decide who would succeed Kérékou as President of Benin. Yayi Boni defeated Adrien Houngbédji in a run-off vote on March 19, and Kérékou left office at the end of his term, at midnight on April 6, 2006.

Kérékou allegedly converted to Islam in 1980 while on a visit to Libya, and changed his first name to Ahmed, but he later returned to the use of the name Mathieu. This alleged conversion may have been designed to please the Libyan leader, Muammar Gaddafi, in order to obtain financial and military support. Alternatively, the conversion story may have been a rumor planted by some of his opponents in order to destabilize his regime. In any event, Kerekou subsequently became a born-again Christian. Some Vodun believers in Benin regarded him as having magical powers, explaining his ability to survive repeated coup attempts during his military rule.

Nicknamed "the chameleon" from an early point in his career, Kérékou's motto was "the branch will not break in the arms of the chameleon". The nickname and motto he adopted were full of cultural symbolism, articulating and projecting his power and ability. Unlike some past rulers who had adopted animal symbolism intending to project a violent, warlike sense of power, Kérékou's symbolic animal suggested skill and cleverness; his motto suggested that he would keep the branch from breaking, but implicitly warned of what could happen to "the branch" if it was not "in the arms of the chameleon"—political chaos. To some, his nickname seemed particularly apt as he successfully adapted himself to a new political climate and neo-liberal economic policies in the 1990s.

Kerekou used the campaign slogan, "Experience in the service of youth."

After leaving office in 2006, Kérékou stayed out of politics and spent time at his homes in Cotonou and Natitingou in northwestern Benin, his native region. He suffered a health crisis in 2014 and was taken to Paris for treatment. Although he recovered, he continued to suffer health problems, and he died in Benin on October 14, 2015 at the age of 82. 

Kenya

*Ali Mazrui, author of The Africans, was born in Mombasa, Kenya (February 24).

Ali Al Amin Mazrui,  (b. February 24, 1933, Mombasa, Kenya - d. October 12/13, 2014, Binghamton, New York, United States), Kenyan American political scientist. After receiving a doctorate from the University of Oxford, he taught at Uganda’s Makerere University (1963–73) and later at the University of Michigan (1974–91). At SUNY–Binghamton (now Binghamton University) he founded and directed the Institute of Global Cultural Studies. He also taught at many other universities worldwide, was a consultant to numerous international organizations, and wrote more than 30 books on African politics and society as well as post-colonial patterns of development and underdevelopment, including The African Predicament and the American Experience: A Tale of Two Edens (2004). For television he wrote the nine-hour BBC-PBS co-production The Africans (1986) and was featured in the documentary film Motherland (2009). Mazrui received numerous honors and awards, including the Association of Muslim Social Scientists UK (AMSS UK) Academic Achievement Award (2000).

*****

Nigeria

*The Nigerian Youth Movement was formed in Lagos.

The Nigerian Youth Movement (NYM) was Nigeria's first genuine nationalist organization, founded in Lagos in 1933 with Professor Eyo Ita  as the founding father and many others including Samuel Akisanya.  Ernest Ikoli, the first editor of the Daily Times of Nigeria, which was launched in June 1926, was another founding member.  Immediate concerns included the supposedly inferior status of Yaba College, appointments of Africans to senior positions in the civil service and discrimination against African truck drivers. However, the Lagos-based organization at first had generally moderate views and pledged to support and cooperate with the governor. The president was Dr. Kofo Abayomi.  Ernest Ikoli was vice president and H. O. Davies was the secretary. It was the first multi-ethnic organization in Nigeria and its program was to foster political advancement of the country and enhance the socio-economic status of the Nigerian citizens.  

The movement acquired national outlook and became a strong national movement when Nnamdi Azikiwe and H. O. Davies returned to Nigeria in 1937 and 1938 respectively and consequently joined the movement. N.Y.M. became the first authentic Nigerian nationalist organization to be formed, Obafemi Awolowo and Samuel Akintola were other prominent members of the movement which membership was open to all Nigerians especially those resident in Lagos.

General Historical Events

*****

January 30

*Hitler became Chancellor as German nationalist feeling swelled and economic unrest intensified.

February 27

*The Reichstag in Berlin was destroyed by fire.  The Nazis accused the Communists of arson and fabricated a case against Dutch Communist Marinus van der Lubbe.  Marinus van der Lubbe was found guilty and was executed in 1934.  However, there are suspicions that Goering, Hitler's second-in-command, may have started the fire himself.

March 7 

*Austrian Chancellor Dollfuss proclaimed a dictatorship and banned political parades and demonstrations.

March 20

*The Nazis opened the first concentration camp in Germany at Dachau near Munich.  

March 29 

*Austrian Nazis staged a huge demonstration and riot in deliberate defiance of Dollfuss.  Hitler imposed a tourist tax of a thousand marks on any German visiting Austria, wrecking the Austrian tourist industry.  

April 30

*President Cerro of Peru was assassinated.  He was succeeded by Oscar Benevides.

September 8

*King Faysal of Iraq died at Berne in Switzerland.  He was succeeded by his son, Ghazi.

October 14

*After Japan announced that it would withdraw from the League of Nations in two years' time, Hitler announced that Germany, too, would withdraw.

November 8

*Nadir Shah, King of Afghanistan, was assassinated at Kabul and was succeeded by his son, Mohammed Zahir Shah. 

November 16

*The United States established diplomatic relations with the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (U.S.S.R.) for the first time since the Russian Revolution.

*****

*The 21st Amendment to the United States Constitution repealed Prohibition.

*The United States recognized the Soviet Union and resumed trade.

*The Tennessee Valley Authority was created.

*As Secretary of Labor, Frances Perkins became the first female cabinet member.