1934 Pan-African Chronology

1934

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Pan-African Chronology

January

*Yaba Higher College officially opened in Yaba, Nigeria.

January 7

*Charles Jenkins, the 1956 Olympic 400 meter champion, was born in New York City, New York.

January 15

*Hemsley Winfield, the first African American dancer to be involved in ballet, died.

January 16

*Hurtig & Seamon's New Burlesque Theater in Harlem re-opened as a venue for black clientele under a new name, the Apollo Theater.  

*Marilyn Horne, a mezzo-soprano opera singer, was born in Bradford, Pennsylvania.

January 17

*Cedar Walton, a hard bop jazz pianist, was born in Dallas, Texas.

January 22

*Nolan Strong, a doo wop singer, was born in Scottsboro, Alabama.

January 23

*The United States formally recognized Cuba.

January 26

*Harlem's Apollo Theatre staged its first live show.

January 28

*Bill White, a baseball player who served as President of the National League from 1989 to 1994, was born in Lakewood, Florida.

February 5

*Baseball player Henry "Hank" Aaron, who would break Babe Ruth's career home-run record, was born in Mobile, Alabama.

February 7

*Franklin Clarke, a football wide receiver who played in the National Football League (NFL) for the Cleveland Browns and the Dallas Cowboys, was born in Beloit, Wisconsin.

*Earl King, a singer, guitarist and songwriter known for composiing the blues standard "I Hear You Knocking", was born in New Orleans, Louisiana. 

February 12

*Basketball player and coach William Felton "Bill" Russell, who would be named Most Valuable Player of the Year five times, was born in Monroe, Louisiana.

February 18

*Poet and essayist Audre Lorde was born in New York City.

February 20

*Four Saints in Three Acts, the first African American performed opera on Broadway, opened.

February 24

*Bingu wa Muthanka, the President of Malawi from 2004 to 2012, was born in Thyolo, Nyasaland (Malawi).

March 4

*Barbara Jean McNair, a model and actress, was born in Chicago, Illinois.

March 12

*Virginia Hamilton, author of juvenile fiction such as M. C. Higgins the Great  and Sweet Whispers, Brother Rush, was born in Yellow Springs, Ohio.

March 18

*Benito Mussolini made a speech in Rome outlining a 60-year plan that would give Italy the "primacy of the world" in the 21st century and would make that century a "blackshirt era".  Mussolini proclaimed that Italy's future lay to the "east and south in Asia and Africa.  The vast resources of Africa must be valorized and Africa brought within the civilized circle.  I do not refer to conquest of territory but to natural expansion.  We demand that nations which have already arrived in Africa do not block at every step Italian expansion."

March 19

*Willie Brown, the 41st Mayor of San Francisco, California, was born in Mineola, Texas.

March 24

*An editorial in Mussolini's newspaper Il Popolo d'Italia wrote that "The diminution of births in the United States is assuming alarming proportions"  The editorial concluded:  "When we reflect there are in the United States 11,500,000 Negroes, people of extraordinary fecundity, it is necessary to conclude with a real cry of alarm. The Yellow Peril is nothing.  We will encounter an Africanized America in which the white race, by the inexorable law of numbers, will end by being suffocated by the fertile grandsons of Uncle Tom.  Are we to see within a century a Negro in the White House?"

March 27 

*Arthur Mitchell, a dancer and choreographer who created a training school and the first African-American classical ballet company, Dance Theatre of Harlem, was born in Harlem, New York.

April 29

*Pedro Pires, the third President of Cape Verde (2001-2011), was born in Fogo, Overseas Province of Cabo Verde, Portugal.

May 13

*Leon Wagner, a baseball left fielder who played for the San Francisco Giants, St. Louis Cardinals, Los Angeles Angels, Cleveland Indians, and Chicago White Sox, was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

May 28

*Activist Betty Shabazz, the wife of Malcolm X, was born in Pinehurst, Georgia.

June 

*The Citizens' League for Fair Play organized a boycott against Blumstein's Department Store in Harlem.

June 18

*France introduced air service between Algiers and Brazzaville in the French Congo.

June 22

*The Status of the Union Act, declaring the Union of South Africa to be a "sovereign independent state", received royal assent.

July 5

*President Roosevelt arrived at Cap-Haitien, Haiti to a 21-gun salute, the first president to visit Haiti while in office. Roosevelt delivered a speech, partly in French, announcing the withdrawal of United States Marines from the country by October.

July 7

*President Roosevelt visited Saint Thomas, United States Virgin Islands.

July 10

*In the French Congo, a railway line connecting Pointe-Noire with Brazzaville opened.

July 15

*Bill Gunn, a film director known for directing the cult classic horror film Ganja and Hess, was born in Philadelphia. Pennsylvania.

July 16

*Donald Payne, the first African American elected to the United States House of Representatives from New Jersey, was born in Newark, New Jersey.

July 20

*Henry Dumas, author of Ark of Bones and Other Stories, was born in Sweet Home, Arkansas.

July 21

*Politician Edolphus Towns was born in Chadbourn, North Carolina.  He would become Brooklyn borough president, United States representative from New York, and chair of the Congressional Black Caucus.

July 26

*Austin Clarke, a novelist, essayist and short story writer best known for his book The Polished Hoe, was born in St. James, Barbados.

August 3

*Jonas Savimbi, the founder and leader of the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA), was born in Munhango, Moxico Province, Angola.

August 15

*The United States occupation of Haiti ended after 19 years in accordance with President Roosevelt's Good Neighbor policy towards Latin America, as the last contingent of American troops departed.

August 16

*Wallace Thurman, the author of the novel The Blacker the Berry: A Novel of Negro Life, was born in Salt Lake City, Utah.

August 18

*Roberto Clemente, the first Latin American and Caribbean baseball player to be enshrined in the National Baseball Hall of Fame, was born in Barrio San Anton, Carolina, Puerto Rico.

*Track star Rafer Johnson was born in Hillsboro, Texas.  He would win a gold medal in the decathlon at the 1960 Rome Olympics.

September 7

*James Milton Campbell, Jr., better known as Little Milton, a blues singer and guitarist, known for his hit records "Grits Ain't Groceries," "Walking the Back Streets and Crying," and "We're Gonna Make It", was born in Inverness, Mississippi.

September 16

*Elgin Baylor, one of the 50 greatest players in the history of the National Basketball Association, was born in Washington, D. C. 

September 19

*Sonia Sanchez, poet, playwright, and short-story writer, was born in Birmingham, Alabama.

September 27

*Actor Greg Morris was born in Cleveland, Ohio.  He would have a role in the popular television series Mission Impossible.

September 29

*Italy and Ethiopia released a joint statement refuting any aggression between each other.

October

*Disgruntled former South African Party Members of Parliament formed the Dominion Party.

October 2

*Robert Wilson, the first African American to pitch an American League no-hitter, was born in Ponchatoula, Louisiana.

October 4

*Painter Malvin Gray Johnson died in New York City.  The Harmon Foundation would mount a memorial retrospective of his work in 1935.

Bill Jones, one of the first black photographers working the celebrity beat in Hollywood and a photographer who brought attention to Halle Berry, Denzel Washington and other black stars early in their careers, was born in Mansfield, Ohio.

William Benjamin Jones was born on Oct. 4, 1934, in Mansfield, Ohio. He was given up for adoption by his birth parents and reared by Willy and Bertha Jones. After graduating from Mansfield Senior High School in 1954, he enrolled in Howard University in Washington, but he left during his freshman year to enlist in the Air Force.

He stayed for the next two decades, attaining the rank of sergeant. He was trained as an accountant but became fascinated by photography.

While stationed on Okinawa, he staged fashion shows on the base and took runway photographs. Later, when he was stationed in England, he took courses at the London School of Photography.

He took his first celebrity photo when Muhammad Ali came to London in 1966 for a return match with the English heavyweight Henry Cooper.

In 1956 he married Reva Ochier. She died in 2011. He is survived by two daughters, Michelle Jones and Natalie Jones; three sisters, Ruth Foster, Betty Jordan and Dorothy Sanders; a brother, Booker Jordan; seven grandchildren; and seven great-grandchildren.

After leaving the Air Force, Mr. Jones moved to Los Angeles, where he earned a master’s degree in business from California State University, Los Angeles, in 1976. While making his early red-carpet forays — he started with a photograph of the comedian Redd Foxx leaving a restaurant on Venice Boulevard — he worked at the accounting firm Swinerton & Walberg.

The disc jockey and entrepreneur Hal Jackson hired Mr. Jones as the photographer for his Talented Teens International Competition.

Mr. Jones photographed the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. when he visited Los Angeles in 1964, and in 1990 he traveled to South Africa, paying his own way, to photograph Nelson Mandela as he was released from prison. At the 2002 Academy Awards, he photographed Ms. Berry and Mr. Washington, winners of the best actress and best actor Oscars, holding their gold statuettes aloft. It was one of his favorite images.

In 1997, washing his car in front of his house in South Los Angeles, Mr. Jones was attacked by a neighbor with a baseball bat. No motive was ever determined. He lay in a coma for a month, with multiple skull fractures. Many of the celebrities he had photographed over the years raised money to help with his medical treatment.

After a long period of rehabilitation, he resumed his photographic work, using his left hand to take pictures. His most memorable images were collected in “Hollywood in Black: 40 Years of Photography by Bill Jones,” published in 2006. That year the annual Hollywood Black Film Festival honored him with a retrospective exhibition. 

October 7

*Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones), a poet and playwright who wrote the play Dutchman, was born in Newark, New Jersey.  He would become a leader of the Black Arts Movement in the 1960s.

October 9
*Abdullah Ibrahim, a South African pianist and composer, was born in Cape Town, South Africa.

October 17

*Rico Rodriguez, a Cuban-born Jamaican ska artist, was born in Havana, Cuba.

October 20

*Eddie Harris, a jazz musician best known for playing tenor saxophone and for introducing the electrically amplified saxophone, was born in Chicago, Illinois.

November

*Elijah Muhammad succeeded W. D. Fard as leader of the Nation of Islam.

November 7

*Arthur L. Mitchell, a Democrat, defeated Republican Congressman Oscar de Priest of Chicago, becoming the pioneer African American member of the Democratic party in Congress. 

November 10

*George Alexander McGuire, the founding bishop of the African Orthodox church, died in New York City.

November 14

*William Levi Dawson's Negro Folk Symphony, the first symphony on black folk themes by an African American composer to be performed by a major orchestra, was performed at Carnegie Hall by the Philadelphia Symphony Orchestra.

November 21

*Seventeen-year-old Ella Fitzgerald made her singing debut at Harlem's Apollo Theater, winning first prize in the venue's famous amateur contest.

November 23

*An Anglo–Ethiopian boundary commission discovered the Italian force at Walwal. British members of the delegation soon retire to avoid an international incident.

November 30

*Lansana Conté, the second President of Guinea, serving from April 3, 1984 until his death in December 2008, was born in Dubreka, French Guinea.

December 1

*Billy Paul, a singer known for the soul ballad "Me and Mrs. Jones", was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Billy Paul (b. Paul Williams, December 1, 1934, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania – d. April 24, 2016, Blackwood, New Jersey) was a Grammy Award-winning soul singer, known for his 1972 number-one single, "Me and Mrs. Jones", as well as the 1973 album and single "War of the Gods"  which blends his more conventional pop, soul and funk styles with electronic and psychedelic influences.

Paul was one of the many artists associated with the Philadelphia soul sound created by Kenny Gamble, Leon Huff, and Thom Bell.  Paul was identified by his diverse vocal style which ranged from mellow and soulful to low and raspy.

December 2

*Andre Rodgers, the first Bahamian to play Major League baseball, was born in Nassau, Bahamas.

December 5

*Tensions result in a border clash at Walwal.  Italy invaded Ethiopia at Walwal, Ogaden Province.

December 6

*Abyssinia protested against Italian aggression at Walwal.

December 8

*Italy demanded an apology for the Walwal incident.

December 9

*Junior Wells, a Chicago blues vocalist, harmonica player, and recording artist, was born in either Memphis, Tennessee or West Memphis, Arkansas. 

December 11

*Italy demanded financial and strategic compensation for the Walwal incident.

December 19

*A lynch mob burned down a courthouse in Shelbyville, Tennessee, after learning that the young African-American man they wanted to hang had been transported to another county for his protection.  National Guardsmen protecting the man killed 2 during a battle around the courthouse.

December 21

*Hank Crawford, an R&B, hard bop, jazz-funk, soul jazz alto saxophonist who became the musical director for Ray Charles, was born in Memphis, Tennessee.

December 24

*Mussolini ordered General Emilio De Bono to Eritrea to take command of the Italian forces there.

December 26

*Wallace Henry Thurman, a novelist active during the Harlem Renaissance, was born in Salt Lake City, Utah.

December 30

*Mussolini wrote a memorandum for Marshal Pietro Badoglio titled "Directive and Plan of Action to Solve the Abyssinian question." "I decide on this war, the object of which is nothing more than the complete destruction of the Abyssinian army and the total conquest of Abyssinia", Mussolini wrote. "In no other way can we build the empire."