1940
*****
Pan-African Chronology
January 2
*The NAACP announced that it would not support John Nance Garner for political office.
January 6
January 8
*The NAACP announced that it would not support John Nance Garner for political office.
January 6
*Colonel Fulgencio Batista, a Cuban presidential candidate and a person of African descent, urged his nation to maintain strict neutrality in international affairs.
*Singer "Little" Anthony Gourdine of "Little Anthony and the Imperials" fame was born in Brooklyn, New York.
January 10
*The House passed and sent to the Senate the Gavagan anti-lynching bill.
*Negotiation between government and opposition parties failed to decide when new elections should be held in Cuba.
*The House passed and sent to the Senate the Gavagan anti-lynching bill.
January 14
*Julian Bond, a charismatic civil rights leader, was born in Nashville, Tennessee.
January 15
*Cuban President Federico Laredo Bru signed a bill to postpone Cuban elections until March 28.
February
*Native Son, the deeply moving novel reciting the effects of racial oppression on African Americans, was published by Richard Wright and became a best-seller.
February 10
*Robert Sengstacke Abbott, a newspaper editor and publisher of the Chicago Defender, died in Chicago, Illinois (February 29). His nephew, John Sengstacke, helped found the National Newspaper Publishers Association in Washington, D. C.
February 19
*William "Smokey" Robinson was born in Detroit, Michigan. He would become lead singer for the R&B and pop group "The Miracles."
February 24
*Jimmy Ellis, the WBA World Heavyweight Champion from 1968 to 1970, was born in Louisville, Kentucky.
March
*African American actress Hattie McDaniel received an Academy Award for Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role for her performance as Mammy in Gone with the Wind, becoming the first African American ever to win an Oscar. McDaniel also appeared in such films as The Little Colonel and Showboat.
March 10
*Jean Alfred, a Haitian Canadian politician, was born in Ouanaminthe, Haiti.
April
*The Virginia Legislature adopted African American composer James A. Bland's "Carry Me Back to Ole Virginny" as the state song.
April 12
*Jazz composer and bandleader Herbie Hancock was born in Chicago, Illinois (April 12).
April 30
*Jesse E. Moorland, who worked on behalf of African American YMCAs and donated his African American library to Howard University died in Washington, D. C.
May22
*Bernard Shaw was born in Chicago, Illinois. Shaw would become one of the main anchors for Cable News Network (CNN).
June
*Three brigades of the Force Publique, a colonial army from the Belgian Congo largely comprised of black African Congolese troops, were sent to Abyssinia (Ethiopia) alongside British forces to fight the Italians. This was done, in spite of the Belgian government in exile's reservations, to demonstrate its allegiance to the Allied cause and in retaliation for the deployment of Italian bombers in bases on the channel coast within occupied Belgium.
June 10
*Pan-Africanist Marcus Garvey died in London, England.
June 23
*Runner Wilma Rudolph was born in Clarksville, Tennessee. At the Rome Olympics, she would become the first American woman to win three gold medals in a single Olympics.
June 30
*Sculptor John T. Scott was born in New Orleans, Louisiana.
July
*A mass meeting of more than 500 West Indians living in New York adopted a Declaration of Rights and Self-Determination for the Caribbeans. The meeting was sponsored by the West Indies National Emergency Committee which protested against any transfer of West Indian Islands to the United States. The committee was empowered to send a representative to the Pan-American Conference in Havana to present its declaration.
September
*The Selective Service Act of September contained an amendment introduced by Representative Hamilton Fish of New York providing that, in the selection and training of men under the act, there should be no discrimination on account of race or color.
September 15
*Anne Moody, a civil rights activist and the author of Coming of Age in Mississippi, was born in Centerville, Mississippi.
October 16
*Benjamin O. Davis, Sr. was appointed brigadier general in the United States Army, becoming the highest ranking African American officer in the armed services.
October 23
December 1
Pelé, byname of Edson Arantes do Nascimento (born October 23, 1940, Três Corações,Brazil) football (soccer) player, in his time probably the most famous and possibly the best-paid athlete in the world. He was part of the Brazilian national teams that won three World Cup championships (1958, 1962, and 1970).
After playing for a minor league club at Bauru, São Paulo state, Pelé (whose nickname apparently is without significance) was rejected by major club teams in the city of São Paulo. In 1956, however, he joined the Santos Football Club, which, with Pelé at inside left forward, won nine São Paulo league championships and, in 1962 and 1963, both the Libertadores Cup and the Intercontinental Club Cup. Sometimes called “Pérola Negra” (“Black Pearl”), he became a Brazilian national hero. He combined kicking power and accuracy with a remarkable ability to anticipate other players’ moves. After the 1958 World Cup, Pelé was declared a national treasure by the Brazilian government in order to ward off large offers from European clubs and ensure that he would remain in Brazil. On November 20, 1969, in his 909th first-class match, he scored his 1,000th goal.
Pelé made his international debut in 1957 at age 16 and the following year played his first game in the World Cup finals in Sweden. The Brazilian manager was initially hesitant to play his young star. When Pelé finally reached the field, he had an immediate impact, rattling the post with one shot and collecting an assist. He had a hat trick in the semifinal against France and two goals in the championship game, where Brazil defeated Sweden 5–2. At the 1962 World Cup finals, Pelé tore a thigh muscle in the second match and had to sit out the remainder of the tournament. Nonetheless, Brazil went on to claim its second World Cup title. Rough play and injuries turned the 1966 World Cup into a disaster for both Brazil and Pelé, as the team went out in the first round, and he contemplated retiring from World Cup play. Returning in 1970 for one more World Cup tournament, he teamed with young stars Jairzinho and Rivelino to claim Brazil’s third title and permanent ownership of the Jules Rimet Trophy. Pelé finished his World Cup career having scored 12 goals in 14 games.
Pelé’s electrifying play and penchant for spectacular goals made him a star around the world. His team Santos toured internationally in order to take full advantage of his popularity. In 1967 he and his team traveled to Nigeria, where a 48-hour cease-fire in that nation’s civil war was called to allow all to watch the great player.
Pelé announced his retirement in 1974 but in 1975 agreed to a three-year, $7-million contract with the New York Cosmos of the North American Soccer League and to promote the game in the United States. He retired after leading the Cosmos to the league championship in 1977.
Pelé was the recipient of the International Peace Award in 1978. In 1980 he was named Athlete of the Century by the French sports publicationL’Equipe, and he received the same honour in 1999 from theInternational Olympic Committee. In addition to his accomplishments in sports, he published several best-selling autobiographies and starred in several successful documentary and semi-documentary films. He also composed numerous musical pieces, including the soundtrack for the film Pelé (1977).
December 1
*Richard Pryor, a trailblazing comedian, recording artist, and movie star, was born in Peoria, Illinois.
December 11
*Multimedia artist Lev T. Mills was born in Tallahassee, Florida. His work would include mosaics for the Atlanta subway system and the floor of Atlanta's City Hall.
December 12
*Dionne Warwick, a popular singer of Burt Bacharach and Hal David songs, was born in East Orange, New Jersey.
The United States
W. E. B. Du Bois
Du Bois opposed the U.S. intervention in World War II, particularly in the Pacific, because he believed that China and Japan were emerging from the clutches of white imperialists. Du Bois felt that the European Allies waging war against Japan was an opportunity for whites to re-establish their influence in Asia. He was deeply disappointed by the United States government's plan for African Americans in the armed forces: African Americans were limited to 5.8 percent of the force, and there were to be no African-American combat units – virtually the same restrictions as in World War I. With African Americans threatening to shift their support to President Franklin D. Roosevelt's Republican opponent in the 1940 election, Roosevelt appointed a few African Americans to leadership posts in the military. Dusk of Dawn, Du Bois's second autobiography, was published in 1940. The title refers to Du Bois' hope that African Americans were passing out of the darkness of racism into an era of greater equality. The work is part autobiography, part history, and part sociological treatise. Du Bois described the book as "the autobiography of a concept of race ... elucidated and magnified and doubtless distorted in the thoughts and deeds which were mine ... Thus for all time my life is significant for all lives of men."
*****
Father Divine
*Father Divine's political focus on anti-lynching measures became more ardent. By 1940, his followers had gathered 250,000 signatures in favor of an anti-lynching bill he wrote. However, passage of such statutes came slowly in New York and elsewhere.
*****
Marcus Garvey
Marcus Garvey died in London on June 10, 1940, at the age of 52, having suffered two strokes. Due to travel restrictions during World War II, his body was interred (no burial mentioned but preserved in a lead-lined coffin) within the lower crypt in St. Mary's Catholic cemetery in London near Kensal Green Cemetery. Twenty years later, his body was removed from the shelves of the lower crypt and taken to Jamaica, where the government proclaimed him Jamaica's first national hero and re-interred him at a shrine in the National Heroes Park.
*****
Marcus Garvey
Marcus Garvey died in London on June 10, 1940, at the age of 52, having suffered two strokes. Due to travel restrictions during World War II, his body was interred (no burial mentioned but preserved in a lead-lined coffin) within the lower crypt in St. Mary's Catholic cemetery in London near Kensal Green Cemetery. Twenty years later, his body was removed from the shelves of the lower crypt and taken to Jamaica, where the government proclaimed him Jamaica's first national hero and re-interred him at a shrine in the National Heroes Park.
*****
Booker T. Washington
*The Booker T. Washington postage stamp was issued, the first stamp to honor an African American.
*****
Awards
*Louis T. Wright was awarded the Spingarn Medal for his "contribution to the healing of mankind." He was the first African American surgeon at Harlem Hospital and chairman of the board of directors of the NAACP.
*Hattie McDaniel became the first African American to win an Academy Award for her role as "Mammy" in Gone with the Wind (March).
Hattie McDaniel was criticized by many African Americans and liberal European Americans for playing a stereotypical black maid, "Mammy," in the 1939 movie Gone with the Wind. When she won an Academy Award for that role in 1940, the criticism escalated. A commentator in the African American newspaper Louisville Defender said, "This award tells all Negro Americans, "You just be Uncle Tom, and we'll be nice to you.""
McDaniel's supporters countered that "Mammy" was not a stereotype but a strong, intelligent woman with an independent spirit. McDaniel herself had the final word, indicating, "I'd sure rather play a maid than be one."
*****
Black Enterprise
*The National Negro Bankers Association had 14 members.
*****
The Census
*There were 12,866,000 African Americans in the United States representing 9.8% of the population. Of the total, 84,000 were foreign-born, primarily West Indians.
*The life expectancy of European American males in the United States was 62.1 years, and for non-European American males, 51.5 years; for European American females 66.6 years, and for non-European American females, 54.9 years.
*The infant mortality rate per 1,000 live births was 73.8 for African Americans and 43.2 for European Americans.
*23.8% of African Americans lived in Northern and Western states. Net immigration from the South since 1910 was 1,750,000, of whom 90% lived in urban areas. Only 37.3% of Southern African Americans lived in cities. The majority of African Americans still lived in Southern rural areas.
*In the Southern cities, Atlanta and New Orleans, there were three and five areas, respectively, in which 905 of the residents were African American. In Atlanta, about half of the city had under 10% African American residency. The African American areas in Memphis and Birmingham were widely scattered and relatively integrated.
*In the border cities of St. Louis, Baltimore and Washington, D. C., African Americans were virtually excluded from the major part of the city. Most lived in areas which were 75-90% African American.
*****
Civil Rights
*In Brownsville, Tennessee, several prominent African Americans were run out of town and Elbert Williams, an NAACP leader, was murdered. The African Americans had been leading a voting drive.
*Mass meetings, sponsored by African Americans of West Indian descent, were held in New York City to protest the transfer of the West Indian islands to the United States.
*****
The Communist Party
*When the Communists openly seized control of the National Negro Congress, most other groups and leaders left the organization.
*****
The Law and Legislation
*The United States Supreme Court, in Hansberry v. Lee, ruled that African Americans cannot be restricted from buying homes in European American neighborhoods.
*The United States Supreme Court upheld a New York law forbidding union discrimination and providing damages, fines and imprisonment for violation of the act. In Railway Mail Association v. Corsi (326 U. S. 88), the Supreme declared the law to be constitutional.
*In Alston v. School Board of the City of Norfolk (Virginia), a federal court ruled that African American and European American teachers must receive equal pay.
*The House passed and sent to the Senate the Gavagan anti-lynching bill.
*An Atlanta, Georgia, ordinance segregated public parks except for "so much of Grant Park as is occupied by the zoo.
*Atlanta also passed a city ordinance requiring Jim Crow taxis, with different colored signs to indicate the race they served. It required that European American drivers carry European American passengers, and African American drivers carry African American passengers.
*A survey made by the Southern Regional Council indicated that only about two percent (2%) of the African Americans of voting age in 12 Southern states qualified to vote under the state election laws.
*****
Literature
*Richard Wright's novel Native Son was published (February).
*Langston Hughes published The Big Sea.
*Heart Shape in the Dusk, the first collection of poetry by Robert Hayden, was published. This first collection of verse brought Hayden immediate renown.
*Cultural critic Alain Locke published The Negro in Art.
*****
Media
*There were 210 African American newspapers, mostly with local circulation, and 129 magazines. The Pittsburgh Courier had the largest circulation, 141,500 copies a week. The Chicago Defender was second with 83,500.
*African American publishers formed the National Newspaper Publishers Association.
*****
Military
*The Selective Service Act of September contained an amendment introduced by Representative Hamilton Fish of New York providing that, in the selection and training of men under the act, there should be no discrimination on account of race or color.
*The NAACP launched a campaign to desegregate the United States Armed Forces, sending a seven-point manifesto to President Roosevelt. Roosevelt promised to create more job opportunities for African Americans in the Army, but insisted that troops will not be integrated because that would "produce situations destructive to morale."
In October, President Roosevelt announced that African American strength in the Army would be in proportion to the African American percentage of the total population. The African American groups would be organized in every major branch of the service, combatant as well as noncombatant; that African Americans would have the opportunity to become officers and attend Officers Training Schools; that African Americans would be trained as pilots, mechanics and technical aviation specialists. However, African Americans and European Americans would not be mingled in the same regiments because that would "produce situations destructive to morale and detrimental to the preparation for national defense."
*Benjamin O. Davis, Sr., became a brigadier general in the United States Army, the highest rank held to that date by an African American (October 16).
Davis was born in Washington, D. C. in 1877 and studied at Howard University. He entered the Army as a first lieutenant in 1898 and served with the 8th Infantry during the Spanish-American War. Prior to the Second World War, Davis saw service in the Philippines, Liberia, and in Wyoming. He also taught military science at Wilberforce University in Ohio and Tuskegee Institute. In World War II, he served in the European Theater of Operations as an advisor on problems of African American servicemen. He helped to implement the desegregation of armed forces facilities in Europe. At the time of his retirement in 1948, Davis was an assistant to the inspector general in Washington, D. C. His awards and decorations include the Distinguished Service Medal, the Bronze Star, the Croix de Guerre with Palm, and an honorary doctorate from Atlanta University. Davis' son, Benjamin, Jr., would also have a distinguished military career.
*Judge William H. Hastie was made civilian aide to the Secretary of War.
*Among the 230,000 men in the United States Army, fewer than 5,000 were African American.
*There were two African American combat officers, and 500 out of 100,000 Army Reserve officers were African Americans.
*****
Movies
*Henwar Rodakiewiecz directed "One Tenth of Our Nation," a documentary about the inadequacies of Southern education for Negroes.
*Jed Buell produced an African American composite, Mr. Washington Goes to Town, of two of Frank Capra's successful films.
*****
Music
*The Virginia Legislature adopted African American composer James A. Bland's "Carry Me Back to Ole Virginny" as the state song.
*Musicians like Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk, and Charlie Parker began playing "bop" music at Minton's Play House in Harlem.
At Minton's Play House, on West 118th Street, Teddy Hill, Charlie Christian, Dizzy Gillespie, Dusty Young, Kenny Clarke, Theolonius Monk and Charlie Parker began playing bop. Their music was largely improvised, but used advanced harmonic and rhythmic ideas.
*****
The NAACP
*The NAACP announced that it would not support John Nance Garner for political office (January 2).
The NAACP began a coordinated drive for desegregation of the Armed Forces. Walter White of the NAACP, T. Arnold Hill of the Urban League, A. Philip Randolph and other African American leaders submitted a 7-point program to President Roosevelt. The NAACP also petitioned the Senators for Selective Service Reforms so that African Americans would be freely inducted. It also threatened lawsuits against local boards of education that provided vocational defense training for European Americans but not for African Americans.
*****
The New Deal
*In the previous decade, approximately 300,000 African American youth were employed in the CCC program. In 1940, 30,000 African Americans were enrolled. The American Youth Commission stated that the CCC was not using a sufficient number of African American supervisory and administrative personnel for African American camps. Only two CCC companies were entirely staffed by African Americans.
*Of those employed by the National Youth Administration, 13% were African Americans. This represented a fair proportion of the total African American population, but the need for local sponsors for projects meant that African Americans were underrepresented in the South.
*A low proportion of African Americans were in supervisory or administrative jobs in the WPA. In 14 Southern states, there were 11 African American and 10,333 European American supervisors.
*The Underwriting Manual of the Federal Housing Administration advocated exclusion of African Americans and other minorities, and required adoption of racially restrictive covenants for new construction. These conditions were deleted in 1949. However, the FHA still refused to require builders to sell to African Americans.
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Notable Births
*****
*Julian Bond, a charismatic civil rights leader, was born in Nashville, Tennessee (January 14).
Julian Bond, in full Horace Julian Bond (b. January 14, 1940, Nashville, Tennessee - August 15, 2015, Fort Walton Beach, Florida), legislator and civil rights leader, best known for his fight to take his duly elected seat in the Georgia House of Representatives.
The son of prominent educators, Bond attended Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia, where he helped found a civil rights group and led a sit-in movement intended to desegregate Atlanta lunch counters. In 1960 he joined in creating the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), and he later served as communications director for the group. In 1965 he won a seat in the Georgia state legislature, but his endorsement of a SNCC statement accusing the United States of violating international law in Vietnam prompted the legislature to refuse to admit him. The voters in his district twice re-elected him, but the legislature barred him each time. Finally, in December 1966, the United States Supreme Court ruled the exclusion unconstitutional, and Bond was sworn in on January 9, 1967.
At the Democratic National Convention in 1968, Bond led an insurgent group of delegates that won half of Georgia’s seats. He seconded the nomination of Eugene McCarthy and became the first African American man to have his name placed in nomination for the vice presidential candidacy of a major party. Younger than the minimum age required for the position under the Constitution, however, Bond withdrew his name.
Bond served in the Georgia House of Representatives from 1967 to 1975 and in the Georgia Senate from 1975 to 1987. In 1986 he ran unsuccessfully for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives against his fellow civil rights activist, John Lewis.
In addition to his legislative activities, Bond served as president of the Southern Poverty Law Center and as executive chairman of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Bond became the first president of the Southern Poverty Law Center in 1971. He served until 1979, remaining a board member and president emeritus for the rest of his life.
In 1998, Bond was selected as chairman of the NAACP. In November 2008, he announced that he would not seek another term as chairman. Bond agreed to stay on in the position through 2009, as the organization celebrated its 100th anniversary. Roslyn M. Brock was chosen as Bond's successor on February 20, 2010.
*Jimmy Ellis, the WBA World Heavyweight Champion from 1968 to 1970, was born in Louisville, Kentucky (February 24).
James Albert "Jimmy" Ellis (b. February 24, 1940, Louisville, Kentucky – d. May 6, 2014, Louisville, Kentucky) was an American boxer from Louisville, Kentucky in what many call boxing's golden era. Fellow top heavyweights included Muhammad Ali, Joe Frazier, George Foreman, Ken Norton, Floyd Patterson, Jerry Quarry, Oscar Bonavena, George Chuvalo, Jimmy Young, Ron Lyle, Buster Mathis, Cleveland Williams, and Earnie Shavers, among others.
Ellis was the World Boxing Association world heavyweight champion, which he won with his victory over Jerry Quarry in 1968. He made one successful title defense over Floyd Patterson, before losing by fifth-round stoppage to Joe Frazier in 1970.
Ellis held the WBA World Heavyweight Championship from 1968 to 1970. He was a skilled boxer with a good chin and much better punching power than many expected.
Ellis is also known for his fights with George Chuvalo, Muhammad Ali, Earnie Shavers, Ron Lyle and Joe Bugner. He retired from boxing at the age of 35 in 1975, with a record of 40-12-1 (24 KOs).
He died of dementia complications on May 6, 2014 at the age of 74 in Louisville, Kentucky.
*****
*****
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*****
*Singer "Little" Anthony Gourdine of "Little Anthony and the Imperials" fame was born in Brooklyn, New York (January 8).
*****
*Jazz composer and bandleader Herbie Hancock was born in Chicago, Illinois (April 12).
*****
*Multimedia artist Lev T. Mills was born in Tallahassee, Florida (December 11). His work would include mosaics for the Atlanta subway system and the floor of Atlanta's City Hall.
*****
*Anne Moody, a civil rights activist and the author of Coming of Age in Mississippi, was born in Centerville, Mississippi.
Anne Moody (aka Essie Mae Moody) (b. September 15, 1940, near Centerville, Mississippi - d. February 5, 2015, Gloster, Mississippi), was an American civil rights activist and writer whose autobiographical account of her personal and political struggles against racism in the South became a classic.
Moody, the daughter of poor African American sharecroppers, received her early education in the segregated school system of the South. In 1959, she was awarded a basketball scholarship and attended Natchez Junior College, later transferring to Tougaloo (Mississippi) College. While a student at Tougaloo, Moody became active in the Civil Rights Movement. She helped organize the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and in 1963 participated in a widely publicized sit-in demonstration at a segregated Woolworth's lunch counter.
After graduating from Tougaloo in 1964, Moody worked as the civil rights project coordinator for Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, until 1965. Eventually, she became disenchanted with certain aspects of the Civil Rights Movement and moved to New York City, where she began to write her autobiography, Coming of Age in Mississippi. Published in 1968, the book provides an eloquent and poignant account of Moody's impoverished childhood, her struggle against the pervasive racism of the Deep South, and her work as a civil rights activist. It received high praise as both a historical and a personal document and is considered of major importance in the study of the Civil Rights Movement. Her only other published work is Mr. Death: Four Stories (1975).
*****
*Richard Pryor, a trailblazing comedian, recording artist, and movie star, was born in Peoria, Illinois (December 1).
*****
*William "Smokey" Robinson was born in Detroit, Michigan (February 19). He would become lead singer for the R&B and pop group "The Miracles."
*****
*Runner Wilma Rudolph was born in Clarksville, Tennessee (June 23). At the Rome Olympics, she would become the first American woman to win three gold medals in a single Olympics.
*****
*Sculptor John T. Scott was born in New Orleans, Louisiana (June 30).
*****
*Bernard Shaw was born in Chicago, Illinois (May 22). Shaw would become one of the main anchors for Cable News Network (CNN).
*****
*Dionne Warwick, a popular singer of Burt Bacharach and Hal David songs, was born in East Orange, New Jersey (December 12).
*****
Notable Deaths
*There were four recorded lynchings of African Americans.
*Robert Sengstacke Abbott, a newspaper editor and publisher of the Chicago Defender, died in Chicago, Illinois (February 29). His nephew, John Sengstacke, helped found the National Newspaper Publishers Association in Washington, D. C.
*Pan-Africanist Marcus Garvey died in London, England (June 10).
*Jesse E. Moorland, who worked on behalf of African American YMCAs and donated his African American library to Howard University died in Washington, D. C. (April 30).
*Elbert Williams, a civil rights activist, was killed in Brownsville, Tennessee (June 20).
Elbert Williams is the first known member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) to be murdered for his civil rights activities. Williams was born on October 15, 1908 in rural Haywood County, Tennessee, the son of farmer Albert Williams and wife Mary Green Williams.
In 1929, Williams married Annie Mitchell. After trying farming, the couple moved in the early 1930s to Brownsville, the county seat, where they worked for a laundry until Williams’ murder in 1940.
In 1939, the Williamses became charter members of Brownsville’s NAACP Branch.
On May 6, 1940, five members of Brownsville’s NAACP Branch unsuccessfully attempted to register to vote. No African American had been allowed to register to vote in Haywood County during the 20th Century. The next day, the threats began.
Early on the morning of June 16, would-be registrant Elisha Davis was abducted from home by a white mob led by Brownsville policemen Tip Hunter and Charles Read, taken to a nearby swamp, surrounded, and threatened with death unless he named members of the Brownsville NAACP. After naming some, Davis was forced to immediately leave the county, under threat of death should he ever return. Many African American families fled. The Williamses did not.
Late on the night of June 20, policemen Hunter and Read, and a third man, Ed Lee, manager of the local Coca-Cola bottling company, took Williams from his home and jailed him. There they questioned him about an NAACP meeting he was suspected of planning. Hunter claimed that he released Williams who never returned home, and was never again seen alive.
Three days later, Williams’ corpse was found floating in the nearby Hatchie River. Annie Williams identified her husband’s body, and saw two bullet-like holes in his chest. The Coroner ordered no medical examination, and held his inquest on the riverbank that same morning. The Coroner’s jury’s verdict was "Cause of death: unknown." The Coroner ordered an immediate burial and Williams was buried the same day in an unmarked grave.
A local grand jury found that Williams’ death was caused by “foul violence at the hands of parties unknown.”
Under pressure from the NAACP National Office, the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) ordered the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to investigate, and promised a broad inquiry.
NAACP Special Counsel Thurgood Marshall, later a United States Supreme Court Justice, monitored the DOJ/FBI investigation, and travelled to Brownsville to collect evidence.
The DOJ ordered the United States Attorney in Memphis to present the case to a Federal Grand Jury, but then reversed its decision and closed the case, citing insufficient evidence. Thurgood Marshall was livid, but unable to get the case reopened.
Elbert Williams’ murderer was never prosecuted.
*****
Performing Arts
*Frederick O'Neal, Abram Hill, and the Rose McClendon Players established the American Negro Theatre in Harlem.
*Theodore Ward's play The Big White Fog was written for the Federal Project in Chicago but was produced at the Lincoln Theater in Harlem. New York Times critic Brooks Atkinson called it "the best serious play by Negro authorship about race problems."
*Ethel Waters and Todd Duncan starred in Cabin in the Sky on Broadway.
*The Cotton Club, a Harlem nightspot famous for classic jazz shows, closed.
*In 1940, Bricktop, the famous Paris Noir Cabaret Queen, helped open the Brittwood Cafe on 140th Street in Harlem. At first it was a success, drawing such celebrities and entertainers as Earl "Fatha" Hines, Anna Jones, Willie Grant, Minnie Hilton, and Robert Taylor.
Politics
*The Democratic platform stated: "Our Negro citizens have participated actively in the economic and social advances launched by this Administration, including fair labor standards, social security benefits, ... work relief prospects, ... decent housing, ... We have aided more than half a million Negro youths in vocational training, education and employment." It further stated: "We shall continue to strive for complete legislative safeguards against discrimination in Government service and benefits, and in national defense forces. We pledge to uphold due process and the equal protection of laws for every citizen regardless of race, creed or color." This was the first time in the 20th century that the Negro was mentioned by name in a Democratic National platform.
*The Republican Party platform said: "We pledge that our American citizens of Negro descent shall be given a square deal in the economic and political life of this nation. Discrimination must cease. To enjoy the full benefits of life, liberty and pursuit of happiness, universal suffrage must be made effective for the Negro citizen. Mob violence shocks the conscience of the nation and legislation to curb this evil should be enacted."
*The Socialist Party platform favored Federal aid to education "on terms which eliminated discrimination against Negroes and other minority groups." It also declared: "We renew our pledge for the maintenance and increase of civil liberty for all groups regardles of race, color, or creed. We support everywhere the fight against poll taxes, undemocratic laws, and all limitations of suffrage. ... Discrimination against Negroes must be abolished."
*The Communist Party platform read: "The Negro people, most exploited of the toilers, suffering from lynching and Jim Crowism, robbed of their constitutional rights, are being prepared to fight another war for 'democracy' in order to further enslaved them." The Communist platform advocated the "Geyer Anti-Poll Tax Bill to give the vote to Negroes and white masses in the South," a guarantee for Negroes of "complete equality, equal rights to jobs, equal pay for equal work, the full right to organize, serve on juries and hold public offices," "death penalty for lynchers," and enforcement of the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments. James W. Ford, an African American, was vice presidential candidate on the Communist Party ticket for the third time.
*The African American Democratic vote in 1940 was estimated at 40% of the total African American vote, compared to an estimate of 90% for the 1964 election. In the 1940 election, President Roosevelt lost much of the Negro vote he had built up since 1932. African Americans felt that the Administration had discriminated in some of the relief agencies and excluded African Americans from the preliminary defense preparations. The phrase "The Dirty Deal" became popular among African Americans at this time.
*Only five percent (5%) of eligible African Americans in the South were registered to vote.
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Publications
*W. E. B. DuBois founded his journal Phylon at Atlanta University.
*****
Sports
*George Pace became bantamweight boxing champion in this year.
*****
Statistics
*Unemployment among United States African Americans was 19.4% for men and 35.9% for women. For European Americans, it was 12.4% for men and 23.8% for women.
*The African American population of the United States reached 12,866,000, representing 9.8% of the total.
*Life expectancy for United States men was 62.1 years for European Americans, 51.5 years for African Americans. For United States women, 66.6 years for European Americans and 54.9 for African Americans.
*In the school year 1939-40, in 9 Southern states, per capita expenditure for public education for African Americans was $18.82; for European Americans $58.69. In Mississippi, 5 times as much was spent per European American child as per African American child. In Louisiana, Alabama and Georgia, somewhat over 3 times as much was spent for European American children as for African American children.
*Percentages of distribution for African American male employment in the South were: professional, technical, etc., 1.6%; managers, officials, proprietors, 0.9%; clerical workers, 1.2%; craftsmen and foremen, 3.6%; operators, 10.9%; service workers, 11.2%; non-farm laborers, 20.6%; total non-farm, 50%; farmers and farm workers, 50%. The percentages for African American females in Southern states were: professional and technical, 4.4%; managers, officials, proprietors, 0.6%; clerical and sales, 0.9%; craftsmen and foremen, 0.1%; operatives, 5%; service workers 58%; service workers othe than household, 8.9%; non-farm laborers, 0.9%; total non-farm, 79.6%; farm and farm workers, 20.4%.
*Distribution of African American workers among various types of occupations in the United States exclusive of the South was: professional and technical: male 3.1%, female 3.7%; managers, officials, proprietors: male 2.8%, female 1.1%; clerical and sales: male 5.6%, female 3%; craftsmen and foremen: male 7.7%, female 0.3%; operatives: male 19.6%, female 10.6%; service workers, private household: male 32.6%, female 64.6%; non-farm laborers: male 24.5%, female 0.8%; total non-farm: male 95.9%, female 99.8%; farm and farm workers; male 4.1%, female 0.2%.
*The number of farm operators in the South by tenure and color was: Owners and managers, non-European American, 174,000; European American, 1,384,000. Tenants, non-European American, 208,000; European American, 700,000. Sharecroppers, non-European American, 299,000; European American, 242,000.
*Of southern farmland, 8% was operated by African Americans, who represented 25% of the farm population.
*Per capita average value of land and building in the South was $596. The national average was $1,116. The average acreage value was $23.89 for African Americans and $27.27 for European Americans. African American owned farms averaged 60.4 acres, which approximated the average 58.9 acres worked by a European American sharecropper. The value of farm implements of African American owners was $90; for European Americans, $322.
*In Chicago, New York, Detroit and Philadelphia African Americans were virtually excluded from living in 80-95% of these Northern cities. Most lived in concentrated or contiguous areas which had over 90% African American residency.
*In this year, over 30% of United States longshoremen were African Americans. They made up 3.8% of automobile workers.
*Only 5.4% of all workers in 20 major defense industries were African American.
*There were 3,939 African American physicians and surgeons, an increase of only 740 since 1910. There were 1,175 African American lawyers, an increase of 396 since 1910.
*Of African American males 19.4% were unemployed compared to 12.4% for European Americans; 35.9% of African Americans were unemployed, compared to 23.8% for European Americans.
*In New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Detroit, Cleveland, Los Angeles, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Indianapolis (the Northern cities with the largest African American populations), 45-56% of African American males were employed, compared to 63-73% of European Americans. In the large cities of the upper and lower South, two-thirds of African American males were employed, compared to three-quarters of European American males.
*From 1940 to 1949, the total executions under civil authorities in the United States was 1,284; of whom European Americans accounted for 490 and African Americans, 781. In the two major categories of murder and rape,the figures were, respectively, (murder) European American, 458, African American 595; and (rape) European American 19, African American 179.
*Only 5% of Southern African Americans of voting age were registered to vote. Of a population of 3,651,256 African Americans, 80,000 to 90,000 voted in the 1940 election in Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, Louisiana, Florida, Texas, South Carolina and Arkansas.
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Visual Arts
*Sargent Johnson created his popular lithograph Singing Saints.
*Elizabeth Catlett's Mother and Child won first prize at the American Negro Exposition in Chicago.
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The Americas
*The percentages of people of African descent in the population of Central and South American countries were: Mexico, 0.4%; the Antilles, 39.3%; Guatemala, 0.1%; British Honduras, 25.6%; Honduras, 5.0%; El Salvador, 0.0001%; Nicaragua, 6.5%; Costa Rica, 4.1%; Panama, 13.1%; Colombia, 4.5%; Venezuela, 2.8%; English Guiana, 29.3%; Dutch Guiana, 9.6%; French Guiana, 0.3%; Ecuador, 2.0%; Peru, 0.4%; Bolivia, 0.3%; Brazil, 14%; Paraguay, 0.5%; Uruguay, 0.5%; Chile, 0.02%; Argentina, 0.04%. The average percentage of population of people of African descent in Central and South America was 13.8% and 7.3% respectively.
*In Martinique, of a total population of 244,908, only 5,000 were of European descent. This proportion was similar to Guadeloupe, while in French Guiana, people of European descent outnumbered people of African descent.
Cuba
*Colonel Fulgencio Batista, a Cuban presidential candidate, urged his nation to maintain strict neutrality in international affairs (January 6).
*Negotiation between government and opposition parties failed to decide when new elections should be held in Cuba (January 8).
*Cuban President Federico Laredo Bru signed a bill to postpone Cuban elections until March 28 (January 15).
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Haiti
Haiti
*Jean Alfred, a Haitian Canadian politician, was born in Ouanaminthe, Haiti (March 10).
Jean Alfred (March 10, 1940–July 20, 2015) was a politician in Quebec, Canada. He was a member of the National Assembly of Quebec as a member of the Parti Quebecois from 1976 to 1981.
Alfred was born in Ouanaminthe, Haiti, to Oracius Alfred and Prunelie Occean. He completed his college studies and some university courses at Port-au-Prince before moving to Ottawa where he obtained a degree in philosophy from the University of Ottawa. He also received a master's degree in psycho-pedagogy as well as a doctorate in education.
Prior to his entry into politics, he taught for several years in Haiti and in the Outaouais region. He taught again after his political career and was a school board commissioner for the Commission Scolaire des Draveurs.
In 1975, he was elected as a councillor for the city of Gatineau and later entered provincial politics where he was elected in Papineau as a Parti Québécois candidate, becoming the first Black person to be elected to the National Assembly o Quebec. He served a full term as a PQ and Independent member but was defeated in the newly formed riding of Chapleau which portions were split from Gatineau and Papineau. He was a candidate again in 1989, but lost to the Liberal, John Kehoe. He made a brief attempt at federal politics but failed to become a Bloc Quebecois prior to the 1997 elections.
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Jamaica
*Mass meetings, sponsored by African Americans of West Indian descent, were held in New York City to protest the transfer of the West Indian islands to the United States.
In July, a mass meeting of more than 500 West Indians living in New York adopted a Declaration of Rights and Self-Determination for the Caribbeans. The meeting was sponsored by the West Indies National Emergency Committee which protested against any transfer of West Indian Islands to the United States. The committee was empowered to send a representative to the Pan-American Conference in Havana to present its declaration.
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*Marcus Garvey died in London on June 10, 1940, at the age of 52, having suffered two strokes. Due to travel restrictions during World War II, his body was interred (no burial mentioned but preserved in a lead-lined coffin) within the lower crypt in St. Mary's Catholic cemetery in London near Kensal Green Cemetery. Twenty years later, his body was removed from the shelves of the lower crypt and taken to Jamaica, where the government proclaimed him Jamaica's first national hero and re-interred him at a shrine in the National Heroes Park.
Marcus Garvey, in full Marcus Moziah Garvey (b. August 17, 1887, St. Ann’s Bay, Jamaica —d. June 10, 1940, London, England), was a charismatic African Jamaican leader who organized the first important American black nationalist movement (1919–26), based in New York City’s Harlem.
Largely self-taught, Garvey attended school in Jamaica until he was 14. After traveling in Central America and living in London from 1912 to 1914, he returned to Jamaica, where, with a group of friends, he founded, on August 1, 1914, the Universal Negro Improvement and Conservation Association and African Communities League, usually called the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), which sought, among other things, to build in Africa a black-governed nation.
Failing to attract a following in Jamaica, Garvey went to the United States in 1916 and soon established branches of the UNIA in Harlem and the other principal urban areas of the North. By 1919, the rising “Black Moses” claimed a following of about 2,000,000, although the exact number of association members was never clear. From the platform of the Association’s Liberty Hall in Harlem, Garvey spoke of a “new Negro,” proud of being black. His newspaper, Negro World, told of the exploits of heroes of the race and of the splendors of African culture. Garvey taught that blacks would be respected only when they were economically strong, and he preached an independent black economy within the framework of white capitalism. To forward these ends, he established the Negro Factories Corporation and the Black Star Line (1919), as well as a chain of restaurants and grocery stores, laundries, a hotel, and a printing press.
Garvey reached the height of his power in 1920, when he presided at an international convention in Liberty Hall, with delegates present from 25 countries. The affair was climaxed by a parade of 50,000 through the streets of Harlem, led by Garvey in flamboyant array. His slipshod business methods, however, and his doctrine of racial purity and separatism (he even approved of the white racist Ku Klux Klan because it sought to separate the races) brought him bitter enemies among established African American leaders, including labor leader A. Philip Randolph and W. E. B. Du Bois, head of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Garvey’s influence declined rapidly when he and other UNIA members were indicted for mail fraud in 1922 in connection with the sale of stock for the Black Star Line. He served two years of a five-year prison term, but in 1927 his sentence was commuted by President Calvin Coolidge, and he was deported as an undesirable alien. He was never able to revive the movement abroad, and he died in virtual obscurity.
Europe
France
*When the Germans invaded France, Josephine Baker left Paris and went to the Chateau des Milandes, her home in the south of France. She housed friends who were eager to help the Free French effort led by Charles de Gaulle and supplied them with visas. As an entertainer, Baker had an excuse for moving around Europe, visiting neutral nations such as Portugal, as well as some in South America. She carried information for transmission to England, about airfields, harbors, and German troop concentrations in the West of France. Notes were written in invisible ink on Josephine's sheet music.
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Great Britain
*In Great Britain, Charles Drew, an African American doctor, was hired to lead a mass volume "plasma project" that would become a model for blood banks throughout Europe.
Charles Richard Drew's innovative work to develop systems for mass blood donations saved tens of thousands of lives during World War II. Prior to the war, he had established the first successful blood plasma bank at Presbyterian Hospital in New York. In 1940, Great Britain already embroiled in the war, hired him to lead a mass volume "plasma project" that became a model for blood banks throughout Europe. A year later, he was assigned to create a similar system for American GIs. Unfortunately, he had no control over segregation policies in the United States Armed Services, where blood collected from African Americans -- even his own blood -- could not be transfused to European Americans.
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Africa
Democratic Republic of Congo
The involvement of the Belgian Congo (the modern-day Democratic Republic of Congo) in World War II began with the German invasion of Belgium in May 1940. Despite Belgium's surrender, the Congo remained in the conflict on the Allied side, administered by the Belgian government in exile, and provided much-needed raw materials, most notably gold and uranium, to Britain and the United States.
Congolese troops of the Force Publique fought alongside British forces in the East African Campaign, and a Congolese medical unit served in Madagascar and in the Burma Campaign. Congolese formations also acted as garrisons in Egypt, Nigeria and Palestine.
The increasing demands placed on the Congolese population by the colonial authorities during the war, however, provoked strikes, riots and other forms of resistance, particularly from the indigenous Congolese. These were repressed, often violently, by the Belgian colonial authorities. The Congo's comparative prosperity during the conflict led to a wave of post-war immigration from Belgium, bringing the white population to 100,000 by 1950, as well as a period of industrialization that continued throughout the 1950s. The role played by Congolese uranium during the hostilities caused the country to be of interest to the Soviet Union during the Cold War.
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*The director of Union Miniere du Haut Katanga (UMHK), Edgar Sengier, secretly dispatched half of its uranium ore to New York.
The Congo possessed major uranium deposits and was one of the few sources of the material available to the Allies. Uranium extracted from the disused Shinkolobwe uranium mine, owned by the UMHK in Katanga in the southern Congo, was instrumental in the development of an atomic bomb during the American Manhattan Project. The director of UMHK, Edgar Sengier, secretly dispatched half of its uranium ore to New York in 1940. In September 1942, he sold it to the United States Army.
Sengier himself moved to New York, from where he directed the UMHK's operations for the rest of the war. The United States government sent soldiers from the Army Corps of Engineers to Shinkolobwe in 1942 to restore the mine and improve its transport links by renovating the local aerodromes and port facilities. In 1944, the Americans acquired a further 1,720 long tons (1,750 t) of Uranium ore from the newly reopened mine.
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*Three brigades of the Force Publique were sent to Abyssinia (Ethiopia) alongside British forces to fight the Italians in June 1940. This was done, in spite of the Belgian government in exile's reservations, to demonstrate its allegiance to the Allied cause and in retaliation for the deployment of Italian bombers in bases on the channel coast within occupied Belgium.
The Force Publique (or "Public Force") was the combined police and military force of both the Congo and Ruanda-Urundi (Rwanda and Burundi). During World War II, it constituted the bulk of the Free Belgian Forces, numbering some 40,000 men. Like other colonial armies of the time, the Force Publique was racially segregated. It was led by 280 white officers and NCOs (non-commissioned officers), but otherwise was comprised of indigenous black Africans. The Force Publique had never received the more modern equipment supplied to the Belgian Armed Forces before the war, and so had to use outdated weapons and equipment.
Nigeria *****
*Three brigades of the Force Publique were sent to Abyssinia (Ethiopia) alongside British forces to fight the Italians in June 1940. This was done, in spite of the Belgian government in exile's reservations, to demonstrate its allegiance to the Allied cause and in retaliation for the deployment of Italian bombers in bases on the channel coast within occupied Belgium.
The Force Publique (or "Public Force") was the combined police and military force of both the Congo and Ruanda-Urundi (Rwanda and Burundi). During World War II, it constituted the bulk of the Free Belgian Forces, numbering some 40,000 men. Like other colonial armies of the time, the Force Publique was racially segregated. It was led by 280 white officers and NCOs (non-commissioned officers), but otherwise was comprised of indigenous black Africans. The Force Publique had never received the more modern equipment supplied to the Belgian Armed Forces before the war, and so had to use outdated weapons and equipment.
The Belgian 1st Colonial Brigade operated in the Galla-Sidamo area in the South-West sector. In May 1941, around 8,000 men of the Force Publique, under Major-General August-Edouard Gilliaert, successfully cut off the retreat of General Pietro Gazzera's Italians at Saio, in the Ethiopian Highlands after marching over 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) from their bases in western Congo. The troops suffered from malaria and other tropical diseases, but successfully defeated the Italians in a number of engagements. Gilliaert subsequently accepted the surrender of Gazzera and 7,000 Italian troops after a number of small engagements. Over the course of the campaign in Abyssinia, the Force Publique received the surrender of nine Italian generals, 370 high-ranking officers and 15,000 Italian colonial troops before the end of 1941. The Congolese forces in Abyssinia suffered about 500 fatalities.
After the Allied victory in Abyssinia the Force Publique moved to the British colony of Nigeria, which was being used as a staging ground for a planned invasion of Vichy-controlled Dahomey (Benin) which did not occur. In Nigeria, the Force Publique was garrisoned by 13,000 Congolese troops. Later, a part of the Force Publique went to Egypt and British Palestine, and was re-designated the 1st Belgian Congo Brigade Group during 1943 and 1944.
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*The Eastern Nigerian Guardian, a newspaper, was launched in 1940 in Port Harcourt.
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South Africa
*South Africa's House of Assembly defeated a motion by General T. B. M. Hertzog to halt war with Germany (January 27).
When South Africa declared war on Germany, the Permanent Force was made up of 3,350 officers and men. There were 14,600 part-time soldiers in the Active Citizen Force, while the Seaward Defence Force had a meager 70 officers and 900 men. However, by the end of 1939, 137,000 South African men were under arms and volunteers were still pouring in.
The first task of South Africa's largely volunteer army was to help drive Italy (which had sided with Germany) out of Africa. Within hours of South Africa having formally declared war on the Italians (on June 11, 194), South African Air Force bombers began strafing Italian positions in Abyssinia (Ethiopia) and Italian Somaliland.
In general, the wave of patriotism that swept South Africa was supported by blacks, who were quick to grasp the ideological dangers of nazism and were only too well aware that supporters of the German cause -- led by many members of the Opposition National Party -- were also the most vociferous advocates of segregation in South Africa. The African National Congress (ANC) declared that the government was correct in going to war, and that it was time to consider the expediency of admitting African and other non-European races into full citizenship, with the duties that went with it -- including taking part in the defense system on equal terms with whites.
Africans were certainly welcome in the Defence Force -- but not as armed fighting troops. Instead, they were used in a variety of non-combatant roles such as driving, digging trenches, cooking and carrying the wounded. During severe fighting at Sidi Rezegh in North Africa, a number of African stretcher-bearers were killed and buried in a common grave with whites. According to subsequent reports, South African Army Headquarters ordered that the bodies be disinterred and re-buried in separate black and white graves.
Africans from Bechuanaland and Basutoland were promised arms, but when they arrived at the front in North Africa they were handed knobkerries and assegais so as not to upset South African blacks.
Nevertheless, many black servicemen earned the respect of their white colleagues-in-arms -- and earned distinctions for bravery under fire while rescuing wounded troops.
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*Alfred Xuma became President of the African National Congress.
Alfred Bitini Xuma, commonly referred to by his initials as AB Xuma (b. March 8, 1893, Transkei - January 27, 1962), was a South African leader and activist and president-general of the African National Congress (ANC) from 1940 to 1949. He was also a member of the African American founded Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity.
Although on the left wing of the ANC, Xuma was seen during his leadership as too conservative by an increasingly impatient and activist youth, which he regarded in turn with suspicion. (His letters to colleagues are understood to be full of hostile references to communists.) As such, he was widely regarded as out of touch with the needs and demands of the grassroots.
Nevertheless, it was under his leadership, albeit after having been very cannily lobbied, and in spite of warnings from his colleagues that it would lead to his downfall, that the ANC in 1942 established its Youth League.
A young Nelson Mandela was among the callow buttonholers (including Walter Sisulu, Congress Mbata and William Nkomo) who in 1944 visited his home in Sophiatown to agitate for his acceptance of the league's manifesto and draft constitution. Mandela recalls having been impressed at how "grand" was Dr Xuma's house, as well as by his revitalization of the ANC. Xuma had succeeded in regularizing membership and subscriptions, and had greatly improved the movement's finances. To Mandela, however, and many other young Africans of the time,
Xuma responded angrily and sarcastically after reading what he called their "high-learned" manifesto, which explicitly criticized the ANC's failure to advance the national cause, as well as its deficiencies in organization and constitution, and its "erratic policy of yielding to oppression, regarding itself as a body of gentlemen with clean hands." Xuma rounded on the deputation for usurping the authority of the ANC national executive, but refrained from criticizing publicly a cause he had publicly championed. Thus outmaneuvered, he gave the ANC Youth League his blessing, having secured an agreement that the ANC itself would remain the dominant body.
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Around 1930, rural South Africans were dragging along at the very lowest level of bare subsistence. They lived in "poverty, congestion and chaos". They were blighted by poor health and starvation, endemic typhus and almost chronic scurvy. The rural South Africans suffered an often appalling mortality rate amongst infants. They lived in heavily over-populated and grossly neglected areas where they were utterly dependent on wage-earning outside to relieve a dead level of poverty inside.
But then, around 1936, when conditions had deteriorated even further, the flight of rural South Africans to the cities began in earnest. The flight was powered by the rural South Africans' need to either trek (fly) or starve to death. Once the exodus began, it continued week after week, month after month, year after year, until, by 1946, Johannesburg's African population stood at 400,000 -- a rise of almost 100 percent in just one decade.
Although the Natives (Urban Areas) Act of 1923 made provision for the construction of African housing, the Johannesburg municipality reacted to calls for more accommodation by claiming that it did not have the cash to cope with the needs of the spiraling black population. Local industry, on the other hand, had the money but not the will to assist African employees. And, thus, a belt of slums sprang up from east to west across central Johannesburg.
For the majority, life in these urban ghettos was tough -- and as equally degrading as it had been in the Reserves. However, in many ways, the slumyards bred more than merely squalor, prostitution, drunkenness, disease and an infant mortality rate between five and ten times higher than that for whites. Ironically, out of the mire of these slumyards of misery rose a spirit of proud survival. Africans called it Marabi and although it did not develop into a coherent expression of political resistance, it represented, nevertheless, a way of life that enabled residents of the slumyards to pull together in the face of adversity.
The strong sense of unity which was forged in these urban ghettos occasionally encouraged African working class communities to embark on determined, innovative -- sometimes successful -- political campaigns to protect their precarious interests. Their two most important struggles involved the Alexandra bus boycotts (between 1940 and 1945) and the squatters' movement (from 1944 to 1947).
Because Alexandra, a black freehold suburb situated about fifteen kilometers to the north of Johannesburg, did not have a rail link, a cheap bus service to the center of town was of vital importance to thousands of its commuters. However, in 1940, shortly after the price of mealie-meal -- a staple food -- had shot up by twenty percent (20%), bus operators decided to increase their fares from four to five pence. It led to nine months of unsuccessful negotiation, a bus boycott and, finally, a reduction of fares to the old level.
The 1940 successful bus boycott did not end the fight. In 1942, bus fares were again raised to 5 pence, and again passengers refused to pay the extra penny. When the bus owners retaliated by moving the terminus to the edge of the township, clashes broke out between employees of the companies and protesters. Later, following more negotiations, the old fare was restored and an official investigation promised.
In August 1943, the official investigation ruled in favor of the bus companies and 20,000 people decided to walk to work and back. The protest lasted ten days, and in that time communists, white left-wingers and liberals, led by Senator Hyman Basner, organized lift-clubs to help some of the people to get to work on time. Police and traffic department officials also assisted, and the Department of Native Affairs appealed to companies not to sack latecomers. On August 10, 1943, the government appointed a commission of inquiry and, for the time being, the four pence fare was restored.
In November 1944, the government gave the go-ahead for the fare increase -- and this time the protest which followed was marked by increasingly tough action by police and Transportation Board officials. Lift-givers were harassed, workers were arrested in Pass raids and meetings of more than twenty people were banned. Finally, after seven weeks of deadlock, a compromise was reached when a coupon scheme, which allowed passengers to buy tickets in advance at the old price and companies to claim the deficit from the city council, was started.
*Hertzog was forced out of the National Party.
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General Historical Events
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March
*The Katyn Forest Massacre occurred. The Red Army imprisoned 4,143 Polish officers near Smolensk, tied them up, shot them, and buried them in a mass grave.
April
*Germand troops seized Norway and Denmark.
May 7
*British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain resigned.
May 10
*A British national government was formed under Churchill's leadership.
May 13
*The Dutch Queen and her court arrived in Britain as German troops, armored divisions and aircraft poured into Belgium and the Netherlands.
May 14
*Rotterdam was virtually destroyed by air raids.
May 21
*Amiens and Arras fell to the Germans.
May 28
*Belgium surrendered.
May 29
*The evacuation of French and British troops from Dunkirk began.
June 4
*Dunkirk was evacuated after five days of frantic activity. 340,000 French and British troops were successfully ferried across to Britain before they could be captured by the advancing German army.
June 10
*Italy declared war on France.
June 14
*German troops entered Paris. The French made a desperate appeal to the United States for help.
June 15
*The United States declined to help.
June 16
*French Premier Reynaud resigned and was replaced by Marshal Petain, who was 83.
June 17
*Petain asked Germany for an armistice. France was occupied by the Germans for the remainder of the war.
June 27
*Soviet troops invaded Romania.
July 3
*The British navy sank French warships at Oran in North Africa.
July 5
*The French Vichy government broke off diplomatic relations with Britain. General Charles de Gaulle formed a Free French government in exile in Britain.
August 15
*The Battle of Britain reached its height, with British Spitfires fighting off German Stukas. On this day, 180 German planes were shot down.
August 21
*Stalin settled an old score in Mexico. His agent Ramon Mercader succeeded in gaining Trotsky's trust and friendship, then murdered him with an ice-pick.
September 15
*Hitler prepared an all-out air attack on Britain in readiness for an invasion by sea.
September 27
*The Axis was created, an alliance joining the economic and political destinies of Italy, Germany and Japan for ten years.
October 2
*U-boats sank the Empress of Britain, a ship carrying children to Canada for safety.
December 15
*The Italians in North Africa were driven back across the Libyan border by British troops under General Wavell.
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*Franklin Delano Roosevelt was re-elected to an unprecedented third term as President of the United States.
*Ernest Hemingway's novel For Whom the Bell Tolls was published.
*Hollywood released Alfred Hitchcock's Rebecca.
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