The United States
Academic Achievements
Awards
*The NAACP presented the Spingarn Medal posthumously to John Hope, president and founder of the Atlanta University system (July 3).
Hope was a founder of the Atlanta University Center, which comprises Morehouse College, an undergraduate school for men; Spelman College, an undergraduate school for women; and Atlanta University, a co-educational graduate school which was founded in 1929. In later years, three other African American colleges in Atlanta -- Clark, Morris Brown, and a theological seminary (all co-educational) -- joined the complex, making it the largest educational center for people of African descent in the world.
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Black Enterprise
*The National Negro Congress was organized in Chicago to work for better business and economic opportunities for African Americans. The 817 delegates from more than 500 organizations elected A. Philip Randolph of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters as president.
The National Negro Congress (NNC) was founded by intellectuals at Howard University. They organized a coalition of religious, labor, fraternal and civic groups to work for a better economic situation for African Americans. The first meeting of the NNC took place in Chicago. 817 delegates representing states and organizations attended. A. Philip Randolph was elected president and John P. Davis, executive secretary. Local branches were established. The organization: (1) condemned any form of discrimination practiced against foreign-born African Americans; (2) opposed any attempt at deporting foreign-born African Americans or dropping them from relief; (3) sought to bring about a better relationship between foreign-born African Americans and native born African Americans; (4) supported foreign-born African Americans in their struggle for economic and political freedom in their respective homes; (5) tried to bring about an international congress to establish better relations among African Americans throughout the world.
Members of the Communist Party such as James W. Ford, helped to found the National Negro Congress, but Communist influence was not dominant at its inception in Chicago. At the first meeting, the executive secretary of the NNC, John P. Davis, suggested acceptance of the Communist program, especially in foreign affairs. In the following year, the NNC showed a moderate labor-oriented stance. By the 1940 meeting in Washington, however, Communists were in complete control. The meeting passed several anti-war and anti-Roosevelt resolutions. Membership dwindled rapidly. A. Philip Randolph, president of the NNC, refused to stand for re-election because of the Communist influence in the organization. Ralph Bunche also became disillusioned at the 1940 meeting.
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The Communist Party
*The American Communist Party established the Negro People's Committee to Aid Spanish Democracy when the Spanish Civil War broke out. The Committee had several branches, one headed by Lester P. Granger of the Urban League, until he determined that he had not control over the committee.
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Crime and Punishment
*In Wayne County, Michigan, 25 members of the Black Legion were charged with murder and kidnapping in connection with the death of a WPA worker the night of May 12–13 (May 25).
The Black Legion was a secret vigilante organization in the Midwest of the United States that splintered from the Ku Klux Klan and operated during the Great Depression of the 1930s. The white paramilitary group was founded in the 1920s by William Shepard in east central Ohio in the Appalachian region, as a security force known as the Black Guard to protect Ku Klux Klan officers. The Legion became active in chapters throughout Ohio. One of its self-described leaders, Virgil "Bert" Effinger, lived and worked in Lima.
In 1931, a chapter was formed in Highland Park, Michigan, expanding to an estimated total membership in the state estimated between 20,000 and 30,000 by the mid-1930s during the Great Depression. Its members were generally native-born Protestant men, many who had migrated from the South. One third of the members lived in Detroit, which had also been a strong center of KKK activity in the 1920s. In May 1936 Charles A. Poole, a Works Progress Administration organizer, was kidnapped from home by a gang of the Black Legion and murdered in southwest Detroit. Authorities arrested and prosecuted a gang of twelve men affiliated with the Legion. Dayton Dean pleaded guilty and testified against numerous other members; ten others were convicted of the murder. Dean and the others were all sentenced to life in prison. One man was acquitted.
Dean's testimony and other evidence stimulated investigations and indictments into a series of other murders and attempted murders during the previous three years. Another 37 men of the Legion were prosecuted for related crimes, convicted and sentenced to prison terms. The trials revealed the wide network of Black Legion members in local governments, particularly in Highland Park, Michigan. Members included a former mayor, chief of police, and city councilman, in addition to persons in civil service jobs. Following the convictions, membership in the Legion dropped quickly and its reign of terror ended in the Detroit area.
The Michigan Legion was organized along military lines, with 5 brigades, 16 regiments, 64 battalions, and 256 companies. Its members boasted of one million Legionnaires in Michigan, but observers estimated it had between 20,000 and 30,000 members in the state in the 1930s. One third were located in Detroit, with many in Highland Park.
Like the KKK, the Black Legion was made up largely of native-born white men in the Midwest, many originally from the South, who had few skills to deal with the industrial society and felt dispossessed. They resented having to compete with white immigrants and black migrants for jobs and housing in major cities such as Detroit. Their enemies list "included all immigrants, Catholics, Jews and blacks, nontraditional Protestant faiths, labor unions, farm cooperatives and various fraternal groups." Membership was concentrated in Michigan and Ohio. In the early 20th century, the Ku Klux Klan had undergone revival, with extensive membership in the Midwest urban areas by the 1920s, including Detroit, Cleveland and Indianapolis.
Black Legion members created a network for jobs and influence. In addition, as a secret vigilante group, the Black Legion members operated in gangs to enforce their view of society, sometimes attacking immigrants to intimidate them at work, for instance, or to enforce their idea of moral behavior. They generally opposed socialism and union organizing, and had a reputation for frequent violence against alleged enemies, whether political or social. From 1933 to 1936, they were rumored to be responsible for some unsolved deaths attributed to suicide or unknown perpetrators.
On May 12, 1936, Charles A. Poole, a Works Progress Administration organizer, was kidnapped by a gang of the Black Legion, to be punished as an alleged wife beater. An ethnic French Catholic married to a Protestant woman, he was shot and killed that night by Dayton Dean. Wayne County Prosecutor Duncan McRae vowed to bring the killers of Poole to justice.
McRae prosecuted twelve men on charges of murdering Poole; Dean pleaded guilty and testified against his comrades. Ten other men were convicted, nine by a jury and one in a bench trial. One man was acquitted. Dean and the others convicted were sentenced to life in prison. Dean provided considerable testimony to authorities about other activities of the Black Legion. Ironically, Dean and the others never learned that Becky Poole, a blue-eyed blonde, had a great-grandfather who was African American.
Dean's testimony led the Prosecutor's Office to additional investigations, revealing numerous incidents of murder, violence and intimidation over a three-year period, and the far-reaching network of Black Legion members in local governments (for instance, N. Ray Markland was a former mayor of Highland Park), businesses and public organizations, including law enforcement. The Prosecutor indicted Black Legion members for the murder of Silas Coleman of Detroit, a black man killed outside Putnam Township, Michigan on May 26, 1935, before Poole.
Members were also indicted for a conspiracy to murder Arthur Kingsley, a Highland Park publisher of a community paper and candidate for mayor of the suburb in 1934. They planned to shoot him in 1933 because he ran against Markland, a legionnaire politician. Sixteen Black Legion members were indicted in his case, including two factory policemen, a police officer, and several Highland Park city employees. At the time of his arrest Markland was employed as an investigator in the office of Wayne County Prosecutor McCrea. Nine members were convicted in this case, including Markland and Arthur F. Lupp, Sr., then a milk inspector for the Detroit Board of Health, and founder of the Legion in Michigan. According to testimony, the extensive network of Black Legion members in Highland Park included the chief of police and a city councilman.
Similarly Mayor William Voisine of Ecorse, Michigan was a target. He angered the organization by hiring blacks for city jobs. McRae prosecuted and gained convictions of 37 Legion members on these and related charges, beyond those charged in the Poole case. All received prison terms, markedly reducing the power of the Black Legion in Detroit and Michigan.
Other murders linked to the Black Legion were of labor organizers:
- George Marchuk, Secretary of the Auto Workers Union in Lincoln Park, was found dead on December 22, 1933, with a bullet in his head.
- John Bielak, an A. F. of L. organizer in the Hudson Motor Car Company plant who had led a drive for a wage increase, was found riddled with bullets on March 15, 1934, on a road about ten miles from Monroe, Michigan.
The "arson squad" of the Black Legion confessed to the burning of the farm of William Mollenhauer, a labor sympathizer, in Oakland County (Pontiac) in August 1934. Members also described numerous plans for disruption of political meetings and similar activities.
In more contemporary times, Malcolm X and Alex Haley who collaborated on The Autobiography of Malcolm X (1965) noted the Legion as being active in Lansing, Michigan where the family of Malcolm X lived. Malcolm X was six when his father died in 1931. Malcolm believed that his father was killed by the Black Legion.
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Father Divine
On December 16, John Hunt, a white millionaire and disciple from California calling himself John the Revelator, met the Jewett family of Denver, Colorado. He kidnapped their 17-year-old daughter Delight and took her back to California without her parents' consent. Renaming her "Virgin Mary", John the Revelator began sexual relations with her. He announced that she would give birth to a "New Redeemer" by "immaculate conception" in Hawaii. Father Divine summoned Hunt to New York, separated the couple and chastised his eccentric follower. The Jewetts, finding their daughter apparently brainwashed into believing she was literally the Virgin Mary, demanded compensation. After the movement's attorneys conducted an internal investigation, they refused. Outraged, the Jewetts offered their story to William Randolph Hearst's New York Evening Journal, an established critic of the movement. After a manhunt and trial, John Hunt was sentenced to three years and adopted a new name, the "Prodigal Son". Father Divine publicly endorsed the conviction of John the Revelator, contrary to some expectations (some followers expected him to once again "smite" the judge). However, the scandal brought bad publicity to Father Divine. News coverage implied his followers were gullible and dangerous.
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Du Bois took a trip around the world in 1936, which included visits to Nazi Germany, China and Japan. While in Germany, Du Bois remarked that he was treated with warmth and respect. After his return to the United States, he expressed his ambivalence about the Nazi regime. He admired how the Nazis had improved the German economy, but he was horrified by their treatment of the Jewish people, which he described as "an attack on civilization, comparable only to such horrors as the Spanish Inquisition and the African slave trade."
Following the 1905 Japanese victory in the Russo-Japanese War, Du Bois became impressed by the growing strength of Imperial Japan. He considered the victory of Japan over Tsarist Russia as an example of colored peoples defeating white peoples. A representative of Japan's "Negro Propaganda Operations" traveled to the United States during the 1920s and 1930s, meeting with Du Bois and giving him a positive impression of Imperial Japan's racial policies. In 1936, the Japanese ambassador arranged a trip to Japan for Du Bois and a small group of academics.
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*The National Negro Congress, the first attempt at a united front organization to try to better the conditions of black workers, convened (February 14).
A. Philip Randolph was its first president. It supported the unionization efforts of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO). The National Negro Congress ran into trouble as a Communist front in 1940, and ceased to exist around 1950.
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The Law
*The United States Supreme Court decided the case of Brown v. Mississippi (February 17).
In the 1934 case of Brown, Ellington, Shields v. State of Mississippi, three African American farm laborers had been sentenced to death for murder. The only evidence was a confession by Ellington made under torture. When asked how severely he had whipped Ellington, the deputy sheriff stated, "Not too much for a Negro; not as much as I would have done if it were left to me." The convictions were upheld by the Mississippi Supreme Court, the NAACP brought the case to the United States Supreme Court, where the conviction was reversed.
Brown v. Mississippi, 297 U.S. 278, (February 17, 1936), was a United States Supreme Court case that ruled that a defendant's involuntary confession that is extracted by police violence cannot be entered as evidence and violates the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
Raymond Stuart, a white planter, was murdered in Kemper County, Mississippi on March 30, 1934. Arthur Ellington, Ed Brown and Henry Shields, three black tenant farmers, were arrested for his murder. At the trial, the prosecution's principal evidence was the defendants' confessions to police officers. During the trial, however, prosecution witnesses freely admitted that the defendants confessed only after being subjected to brutal whippings by the officers.
One defendant had also been subjected to being strung up by his neck from a tree in addition to the whippings. The confessions were nevertheless admitted into evidence, and were the only evidence used in the subsequent one-day trial. The defendants were convicted by a jury and sentenced to be hanged. The convictions were affirmed by the Mississippi Supreme Court on appeal.
In a unanimous decision, the Court reversed the convictions of the defendants. The opinion was delivered by Chief Justice Hughes who wrote that "the transcript reads more like pages torn from some medieval account than a record made within the confines of a modern civilization." It held that a defendant's confession that was extracted by police violence cannot be entered as evidence and violates the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
Upon remand from the United States Supreme Court, the three defendants pleaded nolo contendere to manslaughter rather than risk a retrial. They were however sentenced to six months, two and one-half years, and seven and one-half years in prison, respectively.
The prosecutor at the trial level, John Stennis, later served forty-two years as a United States senator. He ran for office in Mississippi thirteen times and never lost.
*The NAACP represented Donald Murray in his attempt to be admitted to the University of Maryland Law School. The Supreme Court in Pearson v. Murray ruled that Murray should be admitted. He graduated in 1938.
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Literature
*Arna Bontemp's novel Black Thunder, based on the 1800 slave revolt led by Gabriel Prosser, was published and hailed by the Crisis as "the best historical novel written by an American Negro."
Black Thunder, by Arna Bontemps, is based on the slave insurrection of Gabriel Prosser (1800) and is notable for its accuracy and the objectivity with which it handles the slavery issue. A. B. Spingarn in Crisis called it "the best historical novel written by an American Negro."
*The African American novelist, O'Wendell Shaw, published Greater Need Below, the first novel to deal with African American college life. Shaw exposed the appalling education given African Americans at the tax-supported African American colleges in the South. Their curricula were oriented to debase the African American and their administrators were liaison men between African American coeds and European American businessmen in the community. African American colleges and their African American faculty and student bodies were humiliated by their European American benefactors.
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Movies
*The musical drama film Show Boat starring Irene Dunne, Allan Jones, Charles Winninger, Hattie McDaniel, and Paul Robeson (singing Old Man River) premiered at Radio City Music Hall in New York (May 14).
Show Boat is a 1936 film. Directed by James Whale, it is based on the musical Show Boat by Jerome Kern (music) and Oscar Hammerstein II (script and lyrics), which the team adapted from the Show Boat by Edna Ferber.
In 1929 Universal Pictures had filmed the part-talkie Show Boat. Carl Laemmle, head of Universal, had been deeply dissatisfied with that film, and had long wanted to make an all-sound version of the hit musical. It was originally scheduled to be made in 1934, but plans to make this version with Russ Columbo as the gambler Gaylord Ravenal fell through when Columbo was killed that year in a shotgun accident, and shooting of the film was rescheduled. The film, with several members of the original Broadway cast, was begun in late 1935 and released in 1936.
In addition to the songs retained from the stage production, Kern and Hammerstein wrote three additional songs for the film. Two of them were performed in spots previously reserved for songs from the stage production.
The musical's story spans about forty years, from the late 1880s to the late 1920s. Magnolia Hawks is an eighteen-year-old on her family's show boat, the Cotton Palace, which travels the Mississippi Riveer putting on shows. She meets Gaylord Ravenal, a charming gambler, falls in love with him, and eventually marries him. Together with their baby daughter, the couple leaves the boat and moves to Chicago, where they live off Gaylord's gambling winnings. After about ten years, he experiences an especially bad losing streak and leaves Magnolia, out of a sense of guilt that he is ruining her life because of his losses. Magnolia is forced to bring up her young daughter alone. In a parallel plot, Julie LaVerne (the show boat's leading actress, who is part African-American, but "passing" as white) is forced to leave the boat because of her background, taking Steve Baker (her white husband, to whom, under the state's law, she is illegally married) with her. Julie is eventually also abandoned by her husband, and she becomes an alcoholic. Magnolia becomes a success on the stage in Chicago. Twenty-three years later Magnolia and Ravenal are reunited at the theater in which Kim, their daughter, is appearing in her first Broadway starring role.
Show Boat is considered by some critics to be one of the classic film musicals of all time, and one of the best stage-to-film adaptations ever made. Frank S. Nugent of theNew York Times called it "one of the finest musical films we have seen".
*The movie version of The Green Pastures was released, featuring Eddie "Rochester" Anderson and Rex Ingram as "De Lawd."
*The movie The Big Broadcast of 1937 was widely criticized for showing a European American pianist on screen while Teddy Wilson, a black pianist, played the music off screen. Critics felt Wilson's talent as being exploited.
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The NAACP
*The NAACP prompted the case of Gibbs v. Board of Education of Montgomery County, Maryland, which set a precedent for offering equal salaries to black and white schoolteachers.
*The NAACP presented the Spingarn Medal posthumously to John Hope, president and founder of the Atlanta University system.
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Notable Births
*Wally Amos, the founder of the "Famous Amos" chocolate chip cookie brand, was born in Tallahassee, Florida (July 1).
Wallace "Wally" Amos, Jr. (b. July 1, 1936, Tallahassee, Florida - d. August 13, 2024, Honolulu, Hawaii) lived in Tallahassee, Florida, until he was twelve. When his parents divorced, he moved to Manhattan, New York with his aunt, where he enrolled at the Food Trades Vocational High School. He showed his interest in cooking at a very young age, and it was from his aunt, who would bake cookies for him, that Amos would develop his chocolate chip cookie recipe. Amos would improve on his aunt's recipe, which was already uncommon because it included several ingredients not generally associated with chocolate chip cookies.
Shortly before graduation, Amos dropped out of high school to join the United States Air Force. He earned his high school equivalency diploma before being honorably discharged from the military, where he had a distinguished career.
Returning to New York City, Amos went to college to become a secretary, and following graduation, took a clerical job with the William Morris Agency. Eventually, he became the agency's first African American talent agent. Amos attracted clients by sending them chocolate chip cookies along with an invitation to visit him. He represented superstars, such as Diana Ross & the Supremes and Simon & Garfunkel.
In 1975, a friend suggested to Amos that he set up a store to sell his cookies, and in March of that year, the first "Famous Amos" cookie store opened in Los Angeles, California. He started the business with the help of a $25,000 loan from Marvin Gaye and Helen Reddy. The new company began to expand, and, eventually, "Famous Amos" chocolate chip cookies could be found on supermarket shelves across the United States. He became a well enough known figure culturally that he appeared as himself in the Taxi episode "Latka's Cookies" in 1981. Thanks in part to the success of his cookie company, he was hired to deliver speeches. He also wrote ten books, many of which have a self-help theme, including The Cookie Never Crumbles and The Power in You.
Due to financial troubles, Amos was forced to sell the Famous Amos Company, and because the name "Famous Amos" was trademarked by his former company, he had to use "The Uncle Noname's Cookie Company" as his new company's name. A Famous Amos distributor at the time, Lou Avignone, heard Amos on a local radio talk show and, inspired by Amos' story of his early business success with Famous Amos and his indomitable spirit, contacted Amos with the idea for starting a new business. In 1994, the two became partners and subsequently launched "Uncle Noname Gourmet Muffins." The company focused on fat-free, nutritious muffins at that time. Uncle Noname ultimately became Uncle Wally's Muffin Company in 1999. The muffins were sold in more than 3,500 stores nationwide.
In 1979, Amos' long-time friend and publicist John Rosica introduced him to Literacy Volunteers of America. After that time, Amos advocated literacy and helped thousands of adults learn to read. In 1987, he also hosted a television series designed to teach others how to read, entitled Learn to Read, produced by Kentucky Educational Television and WXYZ-TV.
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Wally Amos, Enterprising Creator of Famous Amos Cookies, Dies at 88
With a background as a talent agent, his aunt’s recipe and a winning personality, he built one of the world’s best-known brands of baked goods.
Listen to this article · 7:41 min Learn more
Wally Amos, an indefatigable entrepreneur who in 1975 took a $25,000 loan from a few friends in Hollywood to start Famous Amos, one of the first brands to push high-quality cookies in its own stores and one of the world’s best-known names in baked goods, died on Tuesday at his home in Honolulu. He was 88.
His children Shawn and Sarah Amos said the cause was complications of dementia.
At a time when flavorless, preservative-packed cookies were about the only thing available to consumers not blessed with a baker in the family, Mr. Amos’s confections stood out. Derived from a recipe he had learned from his aunt, they used real ingredients, no coloring or chemicals added, and he kept them as close to handmade as possible, even as his company exploded into national distribution through the early 1980s.
What began with a single store in Los Angeles that made $300,000 in revenue its first year became by 1981 a $12 million company (about $42 million in today’s currency), with dozens of Famous Amos stores across the country and packaged products sold in supermarkets and department stores like Bloomingdale’s as well.
His cookies were small — bite-size, for most mouths — and came in three varieties: chocolate chip with peanut butter, chocolate chip with pecans, and butterscotch chips with pecan. All were handmade, at the store.
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“You can’t compare a machine-made cookie with a handmade cookie,” Mr. Amos told MSNBC in 2007. “It’s like comparing a Rolls-Royce with a Volkswagen.”
The cookies were widely proclaimed delicious, but a big draw was Mr. Amos himself. An energetic, ever-smiling pitchman, known for his Panama hat and colorful Indian gauze shirts, he loved the hustle of building a brand, going on the road to promote it for weeks at a time. (Today both his hat and one of his shirts are held by the Smithsonian Institution.)
His first store, on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood, became an attraction in itself. The opening day drew thousands, and he would frequently get the city to shut down the block out front for a street party, which he made sure was stocked with celebrities.
Mr. Amos, a former talent agent, treated his cookies like another client — the door to the shop’s kitchen had a star on it, just like an actor’s trailer — and he understood the importance of building a personal brand decades before it became practically a requirement.
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Within a few years he was a household name across much of the United States, appearing on the cover of Time and as a guest on the TV sitcoms “The Jeffersons” and “Taxi.” Much later, he would also appear on “The Office.”
But, as was the case with many entrepreneurs, his passionate creativity was not matched by business acumen, and he struggled to keep up profits as the company expanded. He sold off equity stakes through the 1980s, and in 1988 he sold the remainder to a private equity firm, the Shansby Group, for $3 million (about $8 million today).
Mr. Amos stayed with the company for a year as a paid spokesman before leaving in frustration. By then he had developed a second career of sorts as an author and speaker, regaling readers and audiences with his rags-to-riches story and tips for entrepreneurial success.
He also became an advocate for childhood literacy. His mother had never learned to read, and neither had he until late in his childhood. He worked closely with the group Literacy Volunteers of America, and in 1987 he hosted his own public-access cable TV program, “Learn to Read.”
Years later, after he had gotten back into the cookie trade with a small shop near his home in Honolulu, he set aside an adjacent room stocked with children’s books. Every Saturday, he would take a seat in a rocking chair, surrounded by children, and read to them for hours.
Wallace Amos Jr. was born on July 1, 1936, in Tallahassee, Fla. His father worked for the local electric utility, and his mother, Ruby (Hall) Amos, was a domestic worker who later helped run Mr. Amos’s first store.
After his parents divorced when he was 12, Wally moved to Harlem to live with his aunt, a baking wiz named Della Bryant. Entranced by her skill with an oven, he set his mind on a culinary career. He attended the Food Trades Vocational High School in Manhattan and got an apprenticeship in the kitchen at the fashionable Essex House hotel.
But after finding himself repeatedly passed over for promotion in favor of white students, he dropped out of school and joined the Air Force. He spent most of a four-year stint in Hawaii.
Mr. Amos then returned to New York, took secretarial classes and eventually went to work in the mailroom at the William Morris talent agency. By 1961 he had worked his way up to the title of junior agent — the first Black person to hold that position at the agency and one of the first in the country.
In that job he arranged package tours for Motown acts, including Marvin Gaye and the Temptations. But again he found his career stymied by racism, and when the opportunity arose to move to Los Angeles to open his own agency, he took it.
For nearly a decade he scratched by, representing second-tier actors and musicians. To relieve stress, he found himself baking cookies at night, then sharing them at pitch meetings and film shoots.
Eventually, a friend suggested that he go into the baking business himself. With a $25,000 investment from Mr. Gaye, the singer Helen Reddy and a few others, he leased a building on Sunset Boulevard. Famous Amos was born.
Mr. Amos was always forthcoming about his struggles in growing his brand and about the decisions that led him to lose control of it.
“I’d lost the company really because I didn’t use to listen to people a lot because I was Famous Amos,” he told The Times in 1999. “The first couple of years after I left Famous Amos, I didn’t even make cookies anymore, and I used to always make cookies at home. I didn’t even want to talk about chocolate chip cookies, really. I shaved my beard and stopped wearing hats.”
In 1991, he launched a new cookie venture, Wally Amos Presents, but the owners of Famous Amos sued him for trademark infringement. Frustrated, he changed the company name to Uncle Noname. After two years of litigation, they agreed that he could use the name Uncle Wally as long as he didn’t sell cookies — so he sold muffins instead.
The Uncle Wally brand was successful, if not quite the home run Famous Amos had been; it ended up appearing in some 5,000 retail outlets, though Mr. Amos eventually sold his portion.
He was married five times, most recently to Carol Williams, who survives him. Along with his son Shawn and his daughter Sarah, he is also survived by two other sons, Michael and Gregory; seven grandchildren; and six great-grandchildren.
Mr. Amos developed more brands over the last two decades, including the Cookie Kahuna and Aunt Della’s, but none caught fire. In 2016, he appeared on the business reality TV series “Shark Tank,” offering a 20 percent stake in the Cookie Kahuna for $50,000 investment, but the panel of investors — the “sharks” — all passed.
Mr. Amos never seemed to mind that he had built and lost a famous brand. In the end, he was happy just making cookies.
“Being famous is highly — very, very, very highly — overrated,” he told Honolulu magazine in 2014. “I am fortunate that, through all the tribulations, all the ups and downs that I’ve experienced, I still make a cookie that tastes good.”
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*Marion Barry, a civil rights activist and four term mayor of Washington, D. C., was born in Itta Bena, Mississippi (March 6).
Marion Barry, in full Marion Shepilov Barry, Jr. (b. March 6, 1936, Itta Bena, Mississippi — d. November 23, 2014, Washington, D.C.), American civil rights activist and politician who served four terms as mayor of Washington, D.C. Barry received a bachelor’s degree from LeMoyne College (1958) and a master’s degree from Fisk University (1960). He was a founding member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and was selected as its first national chairman. In 1971 Barry was elected to the Washington, D.C., city school board and in 1974 won a seat on the city council. He was elected mayor in 1978 and twice won reelection, in 1982 and 1986, serving as a strong advocate of statehood for the District of Columbia. In 1990 Barry was convicted of a misdemeanor drug charge and sentenced to six months in prison. Following his release from prison, Barry reentered politics in Washington, D.C., winning a seat on the city council in 1992. In 1994 he was once again elected mayor; he left office after his term expired. In 2004 he was elected to the Washington, D.C., city council, and he was reelected in 2008 and 2012. He wrote (with Omar Tyree) the autobiography Mayor for Life (2014).
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*James Bevel, a civil rights leader, was born in Itta Bena, Mississippi.
James Luther Bevel (b. October 19, 1936, Itta Bena, Mississippi – d. December 19, 2008, Springfield, Virginia) was a minister and leader of the Civil Rights Movement in the United States. As the Director of Direct Action and of Nonviolent Education of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), he initiated, strategized, directed, and developed SCLC's three major successes of the era: the 1963 Birmingham Children's Crusade, the 1965 Selma Voting Rights Movement, and the 1966 Chicago Open Housing Movement. He suggested that SCLC call for and join a March on Washington in 1963. Bevel later strategized the 1965 Selma to Montgomery marches, which contributed to Congressional passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
Prior to his time with SCLC, Bevel worked in the Nashville Student Movement, which conducted the 1960 Nashville Lunch-Counter Sit-Ins, the 1961 Open Theater Movement, and recruited students to continue the 1961 Freedom Rides after they were severely attacked. He initiated and directed some of the 1961 and 1962 voting rights movement in Mississippi. In 1967, Bevel was chair of the Spring Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam. He initiated the 1967 March on the United Nations as part of the anti-war movement. His last major action was as co-initiator of the 1995 Day of Atonement/ Million Man March in Washington, D.C. For his work Bevel has been called a father of voting rights, the strategist and architect of the 1960s Civil Rights Movement, and half of the first-tier team that formulated many of the strategies and actions to gain federal legislation and social changes during the 1960s civil rights era.
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*Football player Jim Brown was born on Saint Simons Island, Georgia (February 17). A record-breaking offensive back for the Cleveland Browns, he would later star in films and founded the Negro Industrial and Economic Union.
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*Viola Davis Brown, a pioneer in the field of public health and medical education in Kentucky, was born in Lexington, Kentucky (April 8).
Viola Davis Brown (b. April 8, 1936, Lexington, Kentucky) became a valuable pioneer in the local civil rights movement local for her accomplishments and contributions to public health and medical education in Kentucky.
Viola Davis is the daughter of Donnie and Mable (Bryan) Davis. Davis married Percy Brown on June 29, 1957. Percy and Viola have five children together: Clarence, Michael, Bonnie, Donna, and Linda. In 1959, Brown became the first African American to attend the Nazareth School of Nursing affiliated with St. Joseph Hospital in Lexington, Kentucky. Viola Brown graduated in 1959 and was soon appointed to the position of Supervisor of Nursing. In 1960, this was the first promotion of its kind for an African American in Kentucky.
In 1972, Brown received a degree from the University of Kentucky to become a certified primary care nurse practitioner as part of a pilot program at the university associated with the College of Medicine and the Hunter Foundation for Health Care. She was one of two African Americans in Lexington to become the first registered nurses. Brown's certification includes that of a registered nurse of Kentucky and an advanced nurse practitioner.
Concluding her education at the University of Kentucky, Viola Brown worked as an office nurse, at Holloway, Playforth and Archer, P.S.C., of Lexington from 1966-1972. Shortly thereafter, Brown became a Primary Care and Family Nurse Practitioner for Hunter Health Care, Inc. of Lexington as well.
Brown was appointed by Kentucky Governor John Y. Brown, Jr..,as Executive Director of the Office of Public Health Nursing. for the Kentucky Department of Health Services, in Frankfort, Kentucky, In 1980, Brown became the first African American nurse to lead a state office of public health nursing in the United States. Brown also became the Principal Assistant to the Kentucky Commissioner of Health in 1982, as the Chief Nurse Representative to all branches of state government, local health departments, health professions and the community located in Frankfort.
Governor Wallace Wilkinson appointed Brown to be the Project Coordinator of the Governor's Interdisciplinary Task Force on Nursing Shortages in 1988. The number of public health nurses in Kentucky grew from 350 to 1400 during Brown's time as Principal Assistant. Her tenure in the position of Principal Assistant to the Commissioner extended through the administration of five governors and three State Commissioners.
From 1981 to 1982, Viola Brown was a member of the Dean Search Committee at the University of Louisville School of Nursing. Beginning in 1984, Brown became a preceptor to nursing students at the University of Kentucky College of Nursing and at the College of Allied Health at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Brown was also selected as a nurse consultant to the Office of the Secretary of the Community Human Resources. In 1991, Brown became a recipient of the Recognition Award from Jefferson Community College of Louisville, Kentucky. That same year, Brown was appointed to be the State Minority Liaison to the Office of Minority Health and Kentucky Minority Health Advanced Council. Brown also became a member of the Alzheimer's Committee of Community Human Resources and served on the Minority Elderly Report Committee in 1992. Brown participated in the Steering Committee of the Mississippi Delta Environmental Health Project in 1994.
Viola Davis Brown retired on August 31, 1999, as the Director of Public Health Nursing. She served as part of the Kentucky Department for Public Health from 1980 to 1999. Brown was influential in assisting Advanced Registered Nurse Practitioners in obtaining prescriptive authority. The Kentucky Association for Advanced Registered Nurse Practitioners recognized Brown in 1998 with their Nurse Practitioners Award. She promoted public health throughout the United States with an active role in the Association of State and Territorial Directors of Nursing (now the Association of Public Health Nurses). At the 1999 annual convention of the Association of State and Territorial Directors of Nursing, the Kentucky Nurses Association honored Viola Davis Brown as "Distinguished Nurse of the Year". Having held the post of Executive Director of the Office of Public Health Nursing for 19 years, Viola Brown was inducted into the University of Kentucky College of Public Health Hall of Fame in 2004.
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*Basketball player and coach Wilt Chamberlain was born in Philadelphia (August 21). He would be widely regarded as the best offensive player in basketball history.
Wilt Chamberlain was born in Philadelphia and attended the University of Kansas. Twice voted All-American, he left college to play with the Harlem Globetrotters. In 1959, he signed with the Philadelphia Warriors of the NBA, and in his first season with the team broke the league scoring record.
Wilton Norman "Wilt" Chamberlain (b. August 21, 1936, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania – d. October 12, 1999, Bel Air, California) played for the Philadelphia/San Francisco Warriors, the Philadelphia 76ers, and the Los Angeles Lakers of the National Basketball Association (NBA). He played for the University of Kansas and also for the Harlem Globetrotters before playing in the NBA. The 7 foot 1 inch Chamberlain weighed 250 pounds as a rookie before bulking up to 275 and eventually to over 300 pounds with the Lakers. He played the center position and is widely considered one of the greatest and most dominant players in NBA history.
Chamberlain holds numerous NBA records in scoring, rebounding and durability categories. He is the only player to score 100 points in a single NBA game or average more than 40 and 50 points in a season. He also won seven scoring, nine field goal percentage, and eleven rebounding titles, and led the league in assists once. Chamberlain is the only player in NBA history to average at least 30 points and 20 rebounds per game in a season, a feat he accomplished seven times. He is also the only player to average at least 30 points and 20 rebounds per game over the entire course of his NBA career.
Although he suffered a long string of professional losses, Chamberlain had a successful career, winning two NBA championships, earning four regular-season Most Valuable Player awards, the Rookie of the Year award, one NBA Finals MVP award, and being selected to 13 All-Star Games and ten All-NBA First and Second teams. Chamberlain was subsequently enshrined in the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 1978, elected into the NBA's 35th Anniversary Team of 1980, and chosen as one of the 50 Greatest Players in NBA History of 1996.
Chamberlain was known by various nicknames during his basketball playing career. He hated the ones that called attention to his height such as "Goliath" and "Wilt the Stilt", which was coined during his high school days by a Philadelphia sportswriter. He preferred "The Big Dipper", which was inspired by his friends who saw him dip his head as he walked through doorways.
After his basketball career ended, Chamberlain played volleyball in the short-lived International Volleyball Association, was president of this organization, and is enshrined in the IVA Hall of Fame for his contributions. Chamberlain was also a successful businessman, authored several books, and appeared in the movie Conan the Destroyer. He was a lifelong bachelor, and became notorious for his claim to have had sexual intercourse with over 20,000 women.
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*Educator Johnnetta Betsch Cole was born in Jacksonville, Florida (October 19). She would become the first African American female president of Spelman College.
Johnnetta Cole, née Johnnetta Betsch (b. October 19, 1936, Jacksonville, Florida), an anthropologist and educator, became the first African American woman president of Spelman College and served in that capacity from 1987 to 1997.
Among Cole’s early influences in education were her mother, who taught college English, pioneering educator Mary MacLeod Bethune, and writer Arna Bontemps, who was the school librarian at Fisk University when Cole matriculated at age 15. She left Fisk to study sociology at Oberlin College (B.A., 1957) and anthropology at Northwestern University (M.A., 1959; Ph.D., 1967).
After teaching at the University of California, Los Angeles (1964), and directing the black studies program at Washington State University at Pullman (1969–70), Cole taught in the anthropology department at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst (1970–83), where from 1981 to 1983 she was provost of undergraduate education. A pivotal figure in the development of the school’s African American Studies program, she became closely associated with the academic journal Black Scholar. In 1983 she moved to Hunter College, where she directed the Latin American and Caribbean Studies program.
In 1987, Cole became the seventh president of Spelman College, the oldest African American women’s college in the United States. She was committed to making the school a center for scholarship about African American women. Calling herself “Sister President,” she became known as a strong advocate for the liberal arts curriculum in a changing society. She retired as president emerita in 1997.
In 1998, Cole returned to teaching as Presidential Distinguished Professor of Anthropology, Women’s Studies, and African American Studies at Emory University, retiring in 2001. From 2002 to 2007 she was president of Bennett College for Women, where she chaired the Johnnetta B. Cole Global Diversity & Inclusion Institute. She also served as member (2004– ) and chair (2004–06) of the board of trustees of the United Way of America, a nationwide network of charitable and community organizations. In February 2009 Cole was named director of the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of African Art.
Cole’s writings focus on race, gender, and class in the pan-African world. In addition to many scholarly articles and a regular column in McCall’s magazine, she wrote Anthropology for the Eighties: Introductory Readings (1982), All American Women: Lines That Divide, Ties That Bind (1986), Anthropology for the Nineties (1988), Conversations: Straight Talk with America’s Sister President (1993), and Dream the Boldest Dreams: And Other Lessons of Life (1997).
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*Educator Marva Collins was born in Monroeville, Alabama (August 31). She would start Westside Preparatory School in one of Chicago's poorest neighborhoods.
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*Educator Johnnetta Betsch Cole was born in Jacksonville, Florida (October 19). She would become the first African American female president of Spelman College.
Johnnetta Cole, née Johnnetta Betsch (b. October 19, 1936, Jacksonville, Florida), an anthropologist and educator, became the first African American woman president of Spelman College and served in that capacity from 1987 to 1997.
Among Cole’s early influences in education were her mother, who taught college English, pioneering educator Mary MacLeod Bethune, and writer Arna Bontemps, who was the school librarian at Fisk University when Cole matriculated at age 15. She left Fisk to study sociology at Oberlin College (B.A., 1957) and anthropology at Northwestern University (M.A., 1959; Ph.D., 1967).
After teaching at the University of California, Los Angeles (1964), and directing the black studies program at Washington State University at Pullman (1969–70), Cole taught in the anthropology department at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst (1970–83), where from 1981 to 1983 she was provost of undergraduate education. A pivotal figure in the development of the school’s African American Studies program, she became closely associated with the academic journal Black Scholar. In 1983 she moved to Hunter College, where she directed the Latin American and Caribbean Studies program.
In 1987, Cole became the seventh president of Spelman College, the oldest African American women’s college in the United States. She was committed to making the school a center for scholarship about African American women. Calling herself “Sister President,” she became known as a strong advocate for the liberal arts curriculum in a changing society. She retired as president emerita in 1997.
In 1998, Cole returned to teaching as Presidential Distinguished Professor of Anthropology, Women’s Studies, and African American Studies at Emory University, retiring in 2001. From 2002 to 2007 she was president of Bennett College for Women, where she chaired the Johnnetta B. Cole Global Diversity & Inclusion Institute. She also served as member (2004– ) and chair (2004–06) of the board of trustees of the United Way of America, a nationwide network of charitable and community organizations. In February 2009 Cole was named director of the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of African Art.
Cole’s writings focus on race, gender, and class in the pan-African world. In addition to many scholarly articles and a regular column in McCall’s magazine, she wrote Anthropology for the Eighties: Introductory Readings (1982), All American Women: Lines That Divide, Ties That Bind (1986), Anthropology for the Nineties (1988), Conversations: Straight Talk with America’s Sister President (1993), and Dream the Boldest Dreams: And Other Lessons of Life (1997).
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*Educator Marva Collins was born in Monroeville, Alabama (August 31). She would start Westside Preparatory School in one of Chicago's poorest neighborhoods.
Marva Collins, née Marva Delores Knight (b. August 31, 1936, Monroeville, Alabama —d. June 24, 2015, Bluffton, South Carolina), was an educator who broke with a public school system she found to be failing inner-city children and established her own rigorous system and practice to cultivate her students’ independence and accomplishment.
Marva Knight attended the Bethlehem Academy, a strict school that proved to have an influence on the development of her later educational methods. She studied secretarial sciences at Clark College in Atlanta but was unable to work as a secretary because of her race. From 1957 she taught bookkeeping, typing, shorthand, and business law at Monroe County Training School. She moved to Chicago in 1959 and married Clarence Collins.
Marva Knight attended the Bethlehem Academy, a strict school that proved to have an influence on the development of her later educational methods. She studied secretarial sciences at Clark College in Atlanta but was unable to work as a secretary because of her race. From 1957 she taught bookkeeping, typing, shorthand, and business law at Monroe County Training School. She moved to Chicago in 1959 and married Clarence Collins.
In 1961 Marva Collins began working for the Chicago school system. Dissatisfied with its apathy, neglect, and hostility toward inner-city students, most of whom were poor and black, Collins set high standards for her pupils and adopted unorthodox teaching methods. She relied on such traditional methods as memorization, and to inspire her students to read she assigned them classic texts that others considered too challenging.
In 1975 Collins left the Chicago school system to found the private Daniel Hale Williams Westside Preparatory School. With financial assistance from the government-funded Alternative Schools Network, she began with four students. Within a year enrollment had increased to 20 students, most of whom were considered uneducable by the standards of Chicago public schools.
In 1979 Westside Prep gained national prominence following a story and interview with Collins on the television news show 60 Minutes. Highly laudatory coverage followed in such magazines as Time, Jet, Newsweek, and Black Enterprise. In 1981, CBS aired The Marva Collins Story. Collins refused several offers for powerful positions, including United States Secretary of Education and superintendent of the Los Angeles school system, choosing to remain with her school,.
In 1982 an educational magazine accused Collins of inflating test scores; she was also charged with plagiarism, harassing parents about tuition payments, and fueling right-wing attacks on public education. Despite the controversy, she retained many supporters and began a teacher-training program to impart her methods to other inner-city teachers. Collins later resigned her position at the school but continued working with the Westside Prep staff and traveled widely to promote her ideas. The school was closed in 2008 owing to a shortage of funds.
In 2004 President George W. Bush awarded Collins the prestigious National Humanities Medal. Collins recounted her career in Marva Collins’ Way (1982, reissued 1990), written with Civia Tamarkin.
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Don Cornelius, a television show host and producer, was born in Chicago, Illinois (September 27).
Donald Cortez "Don" Cornelius (b. September 27, 1936, Chicago, Illinois – d. February 1, 2012, Los Angeles, California) was an American television show host and producer who was best known as the creator of the nationally syndicated dance and music show Soul Train, which he hosted from 1971 until 1993. Eventually Cornelius sold the show to MadVision Entertainment in 2008.
Don Cornelius created, produced, and hosted the groundbreaking and iconic music and dance television show Soul Train (1970–2006), which introduced to audiences throughout the country not only up-and-coming black musicians, many of whom gained their first national exposure on the show, but also youthful African American fashions, hairstyles, and dance moves. Cornelius began his broadcasting career in 1966 working in the news department and as a substitute deejay for a Chicago radio station, and in 1968 he became sports anchor for A Black’s View of the News on a local television channel. He used his own funds to create a pilot for a show patterned on the popular teenage TV program American Bandstand, and he featured young people dancing to hit soul and rhythm-and-blues songs and performances by spotlighted musicians. Soul Train debuted on August 17, 1970, in Chicago and went into syndication the following year. Cornelius then moved the show to Los Angeles. He retired as host in 1993 but continued to produce new installments until 2006. The show was commemorated in a 2010 cable TV documentary, Soul Train: The Hippest Trip in America.
Cornelius was born on Chicago's South Side on September 27, 1936, and raised in the Bronzeville neighborhood. After graduating from DuSable High School in 1954, he joined the United States Marine Corps and served 18 months in Korea. He worked at various jobs following his stint in the military, including selling tires, automobiles, and insurance, and as an officer with the Chicago Police Department. He quit his day job to take a three-month broadcasting course in 1966, despite being married with two sons and having only $400 in his bank account. In 1966, he landed a job as an announcer, news reporter and disc jockey on Chicago radio station WVON.
Cornelius joined Chicago television station WCIU-TV in 1967 and hosted a news program called A Black's View of the News. In 1970, he launched Soul Train on WCIU-TV as a daily local show. The program entered national syndication and moved to Los Angeles the following year. Eddie Kendricks, Gladys Knight & the Pips, Bobby Hutton and Honey Cone were featured on the national debut episode.
Originally a journalist and inspired by the civil rights movement, Cornelius recognized that in the late 1960s there was no television venue in the United States for soul music. He introduced many African-American musicians to a larger audience as a result of their appearances on Soul Train, a program that was both influential among African-Americans and popular with a wider audience. As writer, producer, and host of Soul Train, Cornelius was instrumental in offering wider exposure to black musicians such as James Brown, Aretha Franklin, and Michael Jackson, as well as creating opportunities for talented dancers, setting a precedent for popular television dance programs.
With the creation of Soul Train, Don was able to keep the movement going well past Martin Luther King's death. He kept the momentum going well on through the 1970s and 1980s. He gave African Americans their own show, the first of its kind. In this show he was able to show African Americans in a new light, creating a Black is Beautiful Campaign. Before he did this, African Americans were seldom seen on television. Soul Train showcased their culture and brought African American musicians and dancers to television. Cornelius' show even appealed to white audiences and it got huge attention. It was one of the most groundbreaking television shows ever.
Besides his smooth and deep voice and afro (which slowly shrunk over the years as hairstyle tastes changed), the 6 ft. 4 in. (1.93 meters) Cornelius was best known for the catchphrase that he used to close the show: "... and you can bet your last money, it's all gonna be a stone gas, honey! I'm Don Cornelius, and as always in parting, we wish you love, peace and soul!" After Cornelius's departure, it was shortened to "...and as always, we wish you love, peace and soul!" and was used through the most recent new episodes in 2006.
Cornelius last appeared on the episode of the television series Unsung featuring Full Force, which was aired two days before his death.
In the early morning hours of February 1, 2012, officers responded to a report of a shooting at 12685 Mulholland Drive, Los Angeles, California, and found Cornelius with an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. He was taken to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center where he was pronounced dead by the Los Angeles County Assistant Chief Coroner.
An autopsy found that Cornelius had been suffering from seizures during the last 15 years of his life, a complication of a 21-hour brain operation he underwent in 1982 to correct a congenital deformity in his cerebral arteries. He admitted that he was never quite the same after that surgery and it was a factor in his decision to retire from hosting Soul Train in 1993.
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*Don Covay, a singer and songwriter who composed "Chain of Fools" (March 24).
Donald James Randolph (March 24, 1936 – January 31, 2015), better known by his stage name Don Covay, was an American R&B, rock and roll and soul singer and songwriter most active from the 1950s to the 1970s. His most successful recordings included "Mercy, Mercy" (1964), "See-Saw" (1965), and "It's Better To Have (And Don't Need)" (1974). Other songs written by Covay included "Pony Time", a United States #1 hit for Chubby Checker, and "Chain of Fools", a Grammy-winning song for Aretha Franklin. He received a Pioneer Award from the Rhythm and Blues Foundation in 1994.
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*Donald Goines, a novelist, was born in Detroit, Michigan (December 15).
Donald Goines (pseudonym: Al C. Clark) (b. December 15, 1936, Detroit, Michigan – d. October 21, 1974, Detroit, Michigan) was a writer of urban fiction. His novels were deeply influenced by the work of Iceberg Slim.
Goines was born in Detroit, Michigan, on December 15, 1936. His parents were a middle-class black couple that ran a laundry business, with his mother Myrtle Goines telling Goines that her family was descended from Jefferson Davis and a slave. At the age of 15, Goines lied about his age to join the Air Force, and to fight in the Korean War. During his stint in the armed forces, Goines developed an addiction to heroin that continued after his honorable discharge from the military in the mid-1950s. In order to support his addiction, Goines committed multiple crimes, including pimping and theft, and was sent to prison several times. He began writing while serving a sentence in Michigan's Jackson Penitentiary. Goines initially attempted to write westerns, but decided to write urban fiction after reading Iceberg Slim's autobiography Pimp: The Story of My Life.
Goines continued to write novels at an accelerated pace in order to support his drug addictions, with some books taking only a month to complete. His sister Joan Goines Coney later said that Goines wrote at such an accelerated pace in order to avoid committing more crimes and based many of the characters in his books on people he knew in real life.
In 1974 Goines published Crime Partners, the first book in the Kenyatta series under the name "Al C. Clark". Holloway House's chief executive Bentley Morriss requested that Goines publish the book under a pseudonym in order to avoid having the sales of Goines' work suffer due to too many books releasing at once. The book Crime Partners dealt with an anti-hero character named after Jomo Kenyatta that ran a Black Panther-esque organization to clear the ghetto of crime. The series was a departure from some of Goines's other works, with the character of Kenyatta symbolizing a sense of liberation for Goines.
Inner City Hoodlum, which Goines had finished before his death, was published posthumously in 1975. The story, set in Los Angeles, was about "smack", money and murder.
On October 21, 1974 Goines and his common-law wife were discovered dead in their Detroit apartment. The police had received an anonymous phone call earlier that evening and responded, discovering Goines in the living room of the apartment and his common-law wife Shirley Sailor's body in the kitchen. Both Goines and Sailor had sustained multiple gunshot wounds to the chest and head. The identity of the killer or killers is still unknown, as is the reason behind the murders. Popular theories involve Goines being murdered due to his basing several of his characters on real life criminals as well as the theory that Goines was killed due to his being in debt over drugs.
Goines was later buried with his mother placing several of his books in his coffin.
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*Louis Gossett, Jr., an Academy Award winning actor, was born in Brooklyn, New York.
Louis Cameron Gossett, Jr. (b. May 27, 1936, Brooklyn, New York), an actor who is perhaps best known for his Academy Award-winning role as Gunnery Sergeant Emil Foley in the 1982 filmAn Officer and a Gentleman, and his Emmy Award-winning role as Fiddler in the 1977 ABC television miniseries Roots. Gossett has also starred in numerous film productions including A Raisin in the Sun, Skin Game, Travels with My Aunt, The Laughing Policeman, The Deep, Jaws 3-D (1983), Wolfgang Petersen's Enemy Mine, the Iron Eagle series, Toy Soldiers and The Punisheri, in a five decade long acting career.
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*Hal Greer, a Hall of Fame basketball player, was born in Huntington, West Virginia.
Harold Everett Greer (b. June 26, 1936, Huntington, West Virginia) attended Douglass Junior and Senior High School in Huntington, West Virginia. He played college basketball at Marshall University and was drafted by the Syracuse Nationals of the National Basketball Association (NBA) in 1958. Greer played for Syracuse for five seasons, raising his scoring average to 22.8 points a game in 1961. He was selected for the NBA All-Star team that year. In 1963, the Syracuse Nationals moved to Philadelphia to become the Philadelphia 76ers. There, Greer became well known as a teammate of Wilt Chamberlain, and starred on the powerful 1966-67 team that ended the eight-year championship reign of the Bill Russell-led Boston Celtics. In the 76ers' 15 playoff games that season, Greer averaged a team-best 27.7 points. Greer had an unusual but highly effective free throw technique, shooting a jump shot from the charity stripe. He is usually considered the third-best guard of the 1960s, behind Oscar Robertson and Jerry West.
Greer played in 10 NBA All-Star Games and was the MVP of the 1968 game when he went 8-for-8 from the field and scored 21 points, a record-breaking 19 in one quarter. He also was chosen to the All-NBA Team seven times, and scored more than 20,000 points during his NBA career. His hometown honored his success by renaming 16th Street, which carries West Virginia Route 10 as the main artery between the campus/downtown area and Interstate 64, as "Hal Greer Boulevard."
Hal Greer is recognized as the only African-American athlete enshrined in a major sports hall of fame from West Virginia. In 1982, Hal Greer was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame along with Slater Martin, Frank Ramsey, Willis Reed, coach Clarence Gaines, and contributor Alva Duer.
Hal Greer is recognized as the only African-American athlete enshrined in a major sports hall of fame from West Virginia. In 1982, Hal Greer was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame along with Slater Martin, Frank Ramsey, Willis Reed, coach Clarence Gaines, and contributor Alva Duer.
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Buddy Guy, a blues guitarist and singer named one of the 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time, was born in Lettsworth, Louisiana (July 30).
George "Buddy" Guy (b. July 30, 1936, Lettsworth, Louisiana), an exponent of Chicago blues, influenced guitarists including Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page, Keith Richards, Jeff Beck, John Mayer and Stevie Ray Vaughan. In the 1960s, Guy played with Muddy Waters as a house guitarist at Chess Records and began a musical partnership with harmonica player Junior Wells.
Guy was ranked 30th in Rolling Stone magazine's 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time. His song "Stone Crazy" was ranked 78th in Rolling Stone's list of the 100 Greatest Guitar Songs of All Time. Clapton once described him as "the best guitar player alive".
Guy's autobiography, When I Left Home: My Story, was published in 2012.
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*Tommy Hawkins, the first African American basketball star at the University of Notre Dame, was born in Chicago, Illinois (December 22).
Thomas Jerome Hawkins (b. December 22, 1936, Chicago, Illinois – d. August 16, 2017, Malibu, California) was a 6'5" (1.96 m) forward who starred at Chicago's Parker (now Robeson) High School before playing at the University of Notre Dame, where he became the school's first African American basketball star. He was then selected by the Minneapolis (later Los Angeles) Lakers in the first round of the 1959 NBA draft, and he would have a productive ten-year career in the league, playing for the Lakers as well as the Cincinnati Royals as he registered 6,672 career points and 4,607 career rebounds.
Hawkins later worked in radio and television broadcasting in Los Angeles and served as vice president of communications for the Los Angeles Dodgers baseball team.
Hawkins died in his home in Malibu, California, on August 16, 2017.
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*Charles Hobson, a television producer who wrote what may have been the nation's first African American produced community program on television, "Inside Bedford-Stuyvesant", was born in Brooklyn, New York (June 23).
Television producer Charles Hobson was born on June 23, 1936 in Brooklyn, New York to Charles Samuel and Cordelia Victoria Hobson. He grew up in the Bedford-Stuyvesant and Crown Heights neighborhoods in Brooklyn, and, in 1960, he graduated from Brooklyn College. From 1962 to 1963, Hobson served in the United States Army as a private first class.
In 1963, Hobson was hired to host a radio show at WBAI, New York’s Pacifica station. He went on to be promoted to production director at WBAI, where he produced a variety of programs until 1967. Hobson was then hired as a producer for ABC-TV, WABC-TV in New York, and WETA-TV in Washington D.C. In 1968, he produced the television programs Inside Bedford-Stuyvesant and Like It Is, which won seven New York-area Emmy Awards. After attending Emory University from 1974 to 1976, Hobson was promoted to senior vice president of WETA and became a consultant for the National Endowment for the Arts. In 1980, he produced the PBS series From Jumpstreet: A Story of Black Music, and, in 1986, he was the producer of the nine-part series The Africans. In 1988, Hobson was hired as a consultant for the Jamaica Broadcasting Corporation. The following year, in 1989, he was hired as the director of market planning for WNET-TV. Hobson also worked on the six-part series Global Links, and the science series Spaces.
In the 1980s, Hobson launched the production company Vanguard Documentaries, where he served as executive producer and artistic head. Vanguard has produced a number of documentaries and shows since its inception, including Porgy and Bess: An American Voice, Model U.N. For Everyone, Global Classrooms, Negroes with Guns, and Harlem in Montmartre: Paris Jazz. Hobson also lectured at several schools including Harvard University, Yale University, Vassar College, the State University of New York, and New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. In 1996, he became a Fulbright Scholar and taught film in Munich, Germany.
Hobson received multiple awards for his work in film. He was awarded an Emmy, the Japan Prize ‘Special Citation,’ and the Golden Eagle Award from the Council on International Nontheatrical Events. Millimeter magazine has ranked Hobson as one of the fifty top producers in the film and television industry, and, in 2010, he was named a Black Media Legend by the McDonald’s Corporation. Hobson has served on the boards of the America the Beautiful Fund, the National Black Programming Consortium, and the Museum of Modern Art.
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*James Jamerson, a bass player who played on most of the Motown hit records of the 1960s and early 1970s, was born in Edisto, South Carolina (January 29).
James Lee Jamerson (b. January 29, 1936, Edisto, South Carolina – d. August 2, 1983, Los Angeles, California) was an American bass player. He was the uncredited bassist on most of the Motown Records hits in the 1960s and early 1970s (Motown did not list session musician credits on their releases until 1971) and is now regarded as one of the most influential bass players in modern music history. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2000. As a session musician he played on 30 Billboard #1 hits, as well as over 70 R&B #1 hits, more than any other bass player in both categories.
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*Barbara Jordan, a three-term United States representative, was born in Houston, Texas (February 21). She would become the first African American to the Texas senate since 1883 and the first African American to make the keynote speech at the Democratic National Convention.
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*Kalaparusha McIntyre, a free jazz tenor saxophonist was born in Clarksville, Arkansas (March 24).
Kalaparusha Maurice McIntyre (March 24, 1936 – November 9, 2013) was an American free jazz tenor saxophonist.
McIntyre, who was born in Clarksville, Arkansas but raised in Chicago, studied at the Chicago College of Music, and during the 1960s began playing with musicians such as Malachi Favors, Muhal Richard Abrams, and Roscoe Mitchell. Along with them he became a member of the ensemble Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians in the mid-1960s. His first solo record appeared in 1969. During this time he also recorded as a session musician for Delmark Records, playing with George Freeman, J.B. Hutto, and Little Milton, among others.
McIntyre moved to New York City in the 1970s, playing at Sam Rivers' Riveba Studios and teaching at Karl Berger's Creative Studio. He and Muhal Richard Abrams toured Europe several times. After his 1981 live album, McIntyre recorded very little, playing on the streets and in the subways of New York. His next major appearance on record was not until 1998, with Pheeroan akLaff and Michael Logan. The following year, he played with many AACM ensemble members on the album Bright Moments. He continued to release as a leader into the 2000s.
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Sam Myers (b. February 19, 1936, Laurel, Mississippi – d. July 17, 2006, ) was a blues musician and songwriter. He appeared as an accompanist on dozens of recordings for blues artists over five decades. He began his career as a drummer for Elmore James, but was most famous as a blues vocalist and blues harp player. For nearly two decades he was the featured vocalist for Anson Funderburgh & The Rockets.
Bernard Paul Parrish (b. April 29, 1936, Long Beach, California). a professional football player who was a cornerback in the National Football League (NFL) and American Football League (AFL) for eight seasons during the 1950s and 1960s. Parrish played college football for the University of Florida, and thereafter, he played professionally for the Cleveland Browns of the NFL and the Houston Oilers of the AFL. Parrish's football memoirs later stirred controversy.
*Sam Myers, a blues musician, was born in Laurel, Mississippi (February 19).
Sam Myers (b. February 19, 1936, Laurel, Mississippi – d. July 17, 2006, ) was a blues musician and songwriter. He appeared as an accompanist on dozens of recordings for blues artists over five decades. He began his career as a drummer for Elmore James, but was most famous as a blues vocalist and blues harp player. For nearly two decades he was the featured vocalist for Anson Funderburgh & The Rockets.
*Bernie Parrish, a professional football player who was a member of the champion Cleveland Browns, was born in Long Beach, California (April 29).
Bernard Paul Parrish (b. April 29, 1936, Long Beach, California). a professional football player who was a cornerback in the National Football League (NFL) and American Football League (AFL) for eight seasons during the 1950s and 1960s. Parrish played college football for the University of Florida, and thereafter, he played professionally for the Cleveland Browns of the NFL and the Houston Oilers of the AFL. Parrish's football memoirs later stirred controversy.
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*Jimmy Ruffin, a soul singer best known for his hit "What Becomes of the Brokenhearted", was born in Collinsville, Mississippi (May 7).
*Jimmy Ruffin, a soul singer best known for his hit "What Becomes of the Brokenhearted", was born in Collinsville, Mississippi (May 7).
Jimmy Ruffin (b. Jimmy Lee Ruffin, May 7, 1936, Collinsville, Mississippi – d. November 17, 2014, Las Vegas, Nevada) was the elder brother of David Ruffin one of the leader of the Hall of Fame rhythm and blues group, the Temptations.
He had several hit records between the 1960s and 1980s, the most successful being the Top 10 hits "What Becomes of the Brokenhearted" and "Hold On (To My Love)".
Jimmy Ruffin was born in 1936 in Collinsville, Mississippi, to Eli, a sharecropper, and Ophelia Ruffin. He was approaching his fifth birthday when his younger brother David was born. As children, the brothers began singing with a gospel group, the Dixie Nightingales.
In 1961, Jimmy became a singer as part of the Motown stable, mostly on sessions but also recording singles for its subsidiary Miracle label, but was then drafted for national service. After leaving the Army in 1964, Ruffin returned to Motown, where he was offered the opportunity to join the Temptations to replace Elbridge Bryant. However, after hearing his brother David, the Temptations hired David for the job instead so Jimmy decided to resume his solo career. Ruffin recorded for Motown's subsidiary Soul label, but with little success.
In 1966, Ruffin heard a song about unrequited love written for The Spinners, and persuaded the writers that he should record it himself. His recording of "What Becomes of the Brokenhearted" became a major success. The song reached No. 7 on the Billboard Hot 100 and No. 6 on the R&B Chart. It also initially reached No. 10 on the United Kingdom singles chart, rising to No. 4 when it was reissued in the United Kingdom in 1974. "What Becomes of the Brokenhearted" remained Ruffin's best-known song.
Jimmy Ruffin died on November 17, 2014, in Las Vegas, Nevada.
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*Political activist Bobby Seale was born in Dallas, Texas (October 20). He would co-found the Black Panther Party with Huey P. Newton.
Smith was the group's main lead singer since its inception, having sung lead vocals on The Spinners first hit record in 1961, "That's What Girls Are Made For" (which has been inaccurately credited to the group's mentor and former Moonglows lead singer, the late Harvey Fuqua). Smith also sang lead on most of their Motown material during the 1960s, such as the charting singles like "Truly Yours" (1966) and "I'll Always Love You" (1965); almost all of the group's pre-Motown material on Fuqua's Tri-Phi Records label, and also on The Spinners' biggest Atlantic Records hits. These included "I'll Be Around", "Could It Be I'm Falling in Love", "They Just Can't Stop It (The Games People Play)". In 1974, The Spinners scored their only #1 Pop hit with "Then Came You" (sung by Smith, in a collaboration with superstar Dionne Warwick). Despite the fact that Smith led on many of the group's biggest hits, many have erroneously credited most of the group's success to only one of its three lead singers, the late Philippe Wynne. (Henry Fambrough also sang lead on many of the Spinners' songs.) The confusion between Smith and Wynne may be due to the similarities in their voices, and the fact that they frequently shared lead vocals on many of those hits.
*Political activist Bobby Seale was born in Dallas, Texas (October 20). He would co-found the Black Panther Party with Huey P. Newton.
*Bobby Smith, a rhythm and blues singer known for being the principal lead singer of The Spinners, was born in Detroit, Michigan (April 10).
Robert "Bobby" Smith (sometimes spelled Bobbie; b. April 10, 1936, Detroit, Michigan – d. March 16, 2013, Orlando, Florida) was an American R&B singer, the principal lead singer of the classic Motown/Philly group, The Spinners, also known as the Detroit Spinners or the Motown Spinners, throughout its history. The group was formed circa 1954 at Ferndale High School in Ferndale, Michigan, just north of the Detroit border. The group had their first record deal when they signed with Tri-Phi Records in early 1961.
Smith was the group's main lead singer since its inception, having sung lead vocals on The Spinners first hit record in 1961, "That's What Girls Are Made For" (which has been inaccurately credited to the group's mentor and former Moonglows lead singer, the late Harvey Fuqua). Smith also sang lead on most of their Motown material during the 1960s, such as the charting singles like "Truly Yours" (1966) and "I'll Always Love You" (1965); almost all of the group's pre-Motown material on Fuqua's Tri-Phi Records label, and also on The Spinners' biggest Atlantic Records hits. These included "I'll Be Around", "Could It Be I'm Falling in Love", "They Just Can't Stop It (The Games People Play)". In 1974, The Spinners scored their only #1 Pop hit with "Then Came You" (sung by Smith, in a collaboration with superstar Dionne Warwick). Despite the fact that Smith led on many of the group's biggest hits, many have erroneously credited most of the group's success to only one of its three lead singers, the late Philippe Wynne. (Henry Fambrough also sang lead on many of the Spinners' songs.) The confusion between Smith and Wynne may be due to the similarities in their voices, and the fact that they frequently shared lead vocals on many of those hits.
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