1937 The United States: Notable Deaths

Notable Deaths

*In this year, eight African Americans were lynched.

*Isaac Lane, Bishop and patriarch of the Colored Methodist Episcopal Church, and founder of Lane College in Tennessee, died (July 2).

Isaac Lane (b. March 4, 1834, Madison County, Tennessee – d. July 2, 1937) was the fourth bishop of the Colored Methodist Episcopal Church in America, which established Lane College in 1882. The Jackson, Tennessee college college was named after Lane.

Isaac Lane was born March 4, 1834, in Madison County, Tennessee.  Lane was born a slave on the plantation of Cullen Lane, and at age nineteen Lane married Frances Ann Boyce, also a slave, but from Haywood County. The Lanes had twelve children and several became ministers, educators, and physicians. In 1870 after freed slaves founded the Colored Methodist Episcopal Church (CME), Lane quickly became a popular minister of the denomination, and in 1872 he was chosen as a bishop. In 1882 Lane founded a Colored Methodist Episcopal Church (CME) school in Jackson, and Lane's daughter, Jennie Lane, served as the first teacher and principal of the institution. In preparation for petitioning for the school to gain college status, Lane selected a white Methodist pastor, Thomas F. Saunders, as the first president of the college to ease the process of peer recognition of the school. In 1907 Lane's son, James Franklin Lane, Ph.D., was chosen as president of Lane College.  James Franklin Lane would serve as the Lane College president for thirty-seven years. 
On July 2, 1937, Bishop Isaac Lane died at the age of 102.

In addition to Lane College, a Merchant Marine Victory ship, the SS Lane Victory, was named in Lane's honor during World War II.

*Oliver Law, the first African American to lead an integrated military force in the history of the United States, was killed on July 10 leading his men in an attack on Mosquito Crest (Mosquito Hill) in the Spanish Civil War.

Oliver Law (b. October 23, 1900, Texas – d. July 10, 1937, Mosquito Hill, Spain) was a communist and labor organizer, who fought for the Republic in the Spanish Civil War.  He was the commander of the entire Abraham Lincoln Brigade for several days and commander of its Machine Gun regiment for much longer.  As such, Oliver Law was the first African American to lead an integrated military force in the history of the United States.

Born in west Texas, Law joined the United States Army in 1919. He stayed on until 1925. He served as a private in the 24th Infantry Regiment, an African American outfit on the Mexican border. After leaving the army, he went to Bluffton, Indiana, where he worked in a cement plant. He moved on to Chicago, where he drove a taxi with the Yellow Cab Company.   In the Great Depression he found work as a stevedore and joined the International Longshoremen's Association. He then tried his luck with a small restaurant, but failed and got a job with the Works Project Administration.  Law was a member of the International Labor Defense and joined the Communist Party (CP) in 1932. In 1930 he was very active in the unemployment movement.

Law worked with Harry Haywood to organize mass protests against Italy's occupation of Ethiopia at the Second Italo-Abyssinian War.  He was arrested speaking at a demonstration in Chicago on August 31, 1935.

Law was married to Corrine Lightfoot, sister of regional CP leader Claude Lightfoot.  

In 1936 Law joined the Abraham Lincoln Brigade.  He arrived in Spain on January 16, 1937 to fight for the Popular Front against Francisco Franco and the Nationalists.  Having met the International Brigades at Albacete.  Law first served as a group leaders of a machine-gun company engaged on the Jarama front. There were three group leaders, under the two section leaders and the company officers.

After failing to take Madrid by frontal assault, General Francisco Franco gave orders for the road that linked the city to the rest of Republican Spain to be cut. A Nationalist force of 40,000 men, including men from the Army of Africa, crossed the Jarama River on February 11, 1937. General Jose Miaja sent three International Brigades to the Jarama Valley to block the advance. Law first saw action on February 17. After disastrous setbacks on February 27, Law had performed well on the day and was soon promoted to section leader. Two weeks later he was made commander of the machine-gun company, when his superior officer was killed. The battalion leadership was annihilated at Jarama and Law advance fast in rank, even though there was some criticism of his performance at the attack on Villanueva de la Canada. 

The experienced battalion commander Martin Hourihan recognized Law's abilities and wanted to send him to officer's training school. And when Hourihan became ill, Law was chosen to replace him temporarily. After Hourihan transferred permanently to the regimental staff, the choice of battalion commander was between Law and Walter Garland, who was still recovering from wounds, and Law was chosen and led the Abraham Lincoln Battalion in the first days of the Battle of Brunete.  At the beginning of July 1937 the Popular Front government launched a major attack to relieve the threat to Madrid. General Vicente Rojo Lluch sent the Republican Army to Brunete, challenging Nationalist control of the western approaches to the capital. The 80,000 Republican soldiers made good early progress but they were brought to a halt when General Francisco Franco brought up his reserves.

The Internationals also suffered heavy losses. Oliver Law was killed on July 10 leading his men in an attack on Mosquito Crest (Mosquito Hill).

*Bessie Smith, "Empress of the Blues", died in Clarksville, Mississippi, from injuries suffered in an automobile accident (September 26).  She is considered to be not only the greatest of the urban blues singers, but also one of the great voices of the 20th century.

Bessie Smith, in full Elizabeth Smith   (b. April 15, 1894 (1898?), Chattanooga, Tennessee —d. September 26, 1937, Clarksdale, Mississippi) was an American singer and one of the greatest of blues vocalists.

Smith grew up in poverty and obscurity. She may have made a first public appearance at the age of eight or nine at the Ivory Theatre in her hometown. About 1919 she was discovered by Gertrude "Ma" Rainey, one of the first of the great blues singers, from whom she received some training. For several years Smith traveled through the South singing in tent shows and bars and theaters in small towns and in such cities as Birmingham, Alabama; Memphis, Tennessee; and Atlanta and Savannah, Georgia. After 1920 she made her home in Philadelphia, and it was there that she was first heard by Clarence Williams, a representative of Columbia Records. In February 1923 she made her first recordings, including the classic “Down Hearted Blues,” which became an enormous success, selling more than two million copies. She made 160 recordings in all, in many of which she was accompanied by some of the great jazz musicians of the time, including Fletcher Henderson, Benny Goodman, and Louis Armstrong.

Bessie Smith’s subject matter was the classic material of the blues: poverty and oppression, love—betrayed or unrequited—and stoic acceptance of defeat at the hands of a cruel and indifferent world. The great tragedy of her career was that she outlived the topicality of her idiom. In the late 1920s her record sales and her fame diminished as social forces changed the face of popular music and passed over the earthy realism of the sentiments she expressed in her music. Her gradually increasing alcoholism caused managements to become wary of engaging her, but there is no evidence that her actual singing ability ever declined.

Known in her lifetime as the “Empress of the Blues,” Smith was a bold, supremely confident artist who often disdained the use of a microphone and whose art expressed the frustrations and hopes of a whole generation of African Americans. Her tall figure and upright stance, and above all her handsome features, are preserved in a short motion picture, St. Louis Blues (1929), banned for its realism and now preserved in the Museum of Modern Art, New York City. She died from injuries sustained in a road accident. It was said that, had she been white, she would have received earlier medical treatment, thus saving her life, and Edward Albee made this the subject of his play The Death of Bessie Smith (1960).

*Painter Henry Ossawa Tanner died in Paris, France (May 25).

Born in Pittsburgh in 1859, Tanner has been called the leading talent of the "journeyman period" of African American art.  Only a handful of African American artists preceded Tanner, including Joshua Johnston, a Maryland portrait painter, Robert Duncanson, a Cincinnati landscape painter; Edward Bannister of Rhode Island; and sculptor Edmonia Lewis.

The first of seven children born to Benjamin Tucker Tanner, a minister in the African Methodist Episcopal Church, and Sarah Miller Tanner, he was raised in Philadelphia.  At about the age of twelve Tanner saw a landscape painter at work in Fairmount Park in Philadelphia.  He later wrote, "It set me on fire."  Borrowing 15 cents from his mother to buy supplies, he assiduously applied himself until the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia accepted him in 1880.  There, he studied with Thomas Eakins, the celebrated realist who taught him to manipulate light and shadow to express mood.  An artist who depicted African Americans in his art as individuals, not as caricatures, Eakins would prove to be an important role model for Tanner.

In 1890, after an exhibit of his works in Cincinnati that was organized by Bishop Joseph Hartzell of the Methodist Episcopal Church, Tanner raised the money to fulfill his longtime dream to travel to Europe.  Hartzell, who had purchased Tanner's entire exhibit, became the artist's first patron and was the subject of a 1902 portrait.  On January 4, 1891, Tanner set off for Paris, where he enrolled in the Academie Julien.  The following summer he painted The Bagpipe Lesson, a humorous study of Breton peasansts, his first (albeit unsuccessful) entry into the Parisian Salon.

After contracting typhoid fever during his second year in France, Tanner returned to Philadelphia to convalesce, and he entered into what is generally called his black genre period. 

Influenced by a French tradition established by Jean-Francois Millet -- whose studies of mundane peasant life often included teaching themes -- Tanner addressed African American themes, often incorporating teaching themes.   The Banjo Lesson, The Knitting Lesson, The Reading Lesson, and The Sewing Lesson were all produced during Tanner's black genre period.

In the summer of 1893, Tanner delivered a paper on "The American Negro in Art" before the World's Congress on Africa in conjunction with the World's Columbia Exposition in Chicago.  Although the text of this paper has been lost, Tanner's later autobiography, The World at Work (1909), expressed his views on black genre painting.  His genre period concluded the following year with The Thankful Poor, which, lost for years, was rediscovered in 1970, exhibited for eleven years at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and purchased in 1981 by actor Bill Cosby and his wife, Camille, for $250,000.

Biblical themes dominated the rest of Tanner's professional life, which he spent primarily in his adoptive French home.  His Daniel in the Lion's Den received an honorable mention from the Salon in 1896, and The Raising of Lazarus was awarded a medal at the 1896 exhibition.  Purchased by the French government for the Luxembourg Gallery, the painting joined tableaux of John Singer Sargent and James A. McNeil Whistler, the only the American artist whose works had been purchased by the French government.  In 1923, the French government further honored the artist, electing him a Chevalier of the Legion of Honor.

Tanner, whose Pittsburgh homesite was designated a historical landmark by the Department of Interior on May 11, 1976, was the first African American to be elected to the National Academy of Design.  And, in 1991, the Philadelphia Museum of Art sponsored a major retrospective containing more than 100 Tanner paintings, drawings, photographs and memorabilia. 

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Performing Arts

*The film company Negro Marches On was founded by Jack and David Goldberg to make movies for African American audiences.  It would have imitators over the next 15 years, but would remain the largest and highest-quality production company of its kind. 

*Eddie "Rochester" Anderson made his first appearance on Jack Benny's radio show (March 28).

On Easter Sunday, Eddie Anderson first appeared on the Jack Benny radio show.  As Rochester, he became a regular member of Benny's group, appearing with him also in the subsequent television series.  Anderson's movies included Star-Spangled Rhythm and Cabin in the Sky.

*La Julia Rhea (1908-1992) became the first African American to sing with the Chicago Civic Opera Company during the regular season when she opened on December 26, 1937, in the title role of Verdi's Aida.

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Publications

*Challenge, a magazine, was reorganized and published as New Challenge.  Richard Wright replaced Dorothy West as the principal editor.  The first issue contained an editorial manifesto, stating the magazine's intention to concentrate on social realism in fiction.  Wright, in one article, even advocated a Stalinist party line on literature for young African American writers.

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Sports

*Joe Louis defeated James J. Braddock and became heavyweight boxing champion of the world (June 22).

African Americans rejoiced as Joe Louis defeated James J. Braddock for the heavyweight championship of the world.  Joe Louis won boxing's World Heavyweight Championship with an eighth round knockout of James J. Braddock at Comiskey Park in Chicago.

*Joe Louis retained boxing's World Heavyweight Championship with a 15-round decision over Tommy Farr at Yankee Stadium (August 30). 

*Henry Armstrong became featherweight boxing champion (October 29).

Henry Armstrong knocked out Petey Sarron in the sixth round at Madison Square Garden to win the World Featherweight Championship of boxing.

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Statistics

*Among African Americans, 26% of men and 33% of women were unemployed.  Among European Americans, 18% of men and 24% of women were unemployed.  Of the male non-white labor force in Northern states 39% was unemployed.

*In southern states, 40% of African Americans over the age of 65 did not qualify for social security payments due to their low-paying employment history.

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Visual Arts

*Augusta Savage opened the Harlem Community Arts Center.

*Self-taught sculptor William Edmondson became the first African American to have a solo show at New York's Museum of Modern Art.

*The artist, Henry Ossawa Tanner, died.

Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in 1859, Tanner has been called the leading talent of the "journeyman period" of African American art.  Only a handful of African-American artists preceded Tanner, including Joshua Johnston, a Maryland portrait painter; Robert Duncanson, a Cincinnati landscape painter; Edward Bannister, of Rhode Island; and sculptor Edmonia Lewis.

Thirty-two years after the death of Henry Ossawa Tanner, the Frederick Douglass Institute and the National Collection of Fine Arts co-sponsored the first American exhibition of Tanner's work.  Opening in Washington, D. C., at the National Collection of Fine Arts, the 90-piece exhibit traveled to seven American museums.  The Tanner exhibit was the first one-man show by an African Americn artist to tour the country's major museums.

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