1937 The United States

The United States

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Academic Achievements

*Anna Johnson Julian received a Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

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Agriculture

*Large landowners could receive as much as $10,000 a year in AAA benefits.  Statistics for 276 Southern plantations showed that owners' net income per plantation rose from $2,528 in 1934 to $3,590 in 1937; with the AAA now making direct payments to tenants on these plantations, the tenants' benefits increased from $11 a year in 1934 to $27 in 1937.  This 427 represented 10% of teh net cash income of the average tenant family.  The AAA continued to give landlords reason for reducing the number of tenants and for replacing them with wage laborers so as to receive all of the acreage benefits.  In spite of the Farm Security Administration (FSA), investigations by the director, William W. Alexander, and efforts to end discrimination in granting of loans, by and large the local administration of FSA funds remained in the hands of local farmers' committees on which African Americans were not represented.  By 1942, the FSA program was cut back, partly because of antagonism toward its more enlightened racial policies. 

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Awards

*Walter F. White, the Executive Secretary of the NAACP, was honored in New York City for his investigations of lynchings, and his lobbying for a federal anti-lynching law (July 2).

In his anti-lynching lobbying efforts, Walter F. White continued the notable work of his predecessor, James Weldon Johnson, who actually persuaded Representative L. C. Dyer of Missouri to introduce an anti-lynching bill in the House of Representatives in 1921.  The bill passed in the House but was killed by a Southern-backed filibuster in the Senate.  White was successful in getting anti-lynching measures introduced in 1935 and 1940, but both died in the Senate.  Although White, an African American, had blond hair and blue eyes, he totally identified himself with African Americans after the 1906 Atlanta race riot.  His pale complexion enabled him (with no threat of danger) to investigate atrocities against African Americans in the South and later expose the perpetrators.

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George Washington Carver

In 1937, Carver attended two chemurgy conferences, an emerging field in the 1930s, during the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl, concerned with developing new products from crops. He was invited by Henry Ford to speak at the conference held in Dearborn, Michigan, and they developed a friendship. That year Carver's health declined, and Ford later installed an elevator at the Tuskegee dormitory where Carver lived, so that the elderly man would not have to climb stairs.

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The Communist Party

*James W. Ford, the African American Communist, said, "We Communists desire to do everything possible in building and broadening the movement of the Negro people in cooperation with the NAACP, the National Congress, the Urban League, and other organizations."  This "united front" attitude contrasted sharply with earlier Communist castigation of African American organizations as reactionary.

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Educational Institutions

*Dwight Oliver Wendell Holmes (1877-1963) became the first African American president of Morgan State College (now University).

During his tenure, Holmes guided the transition of the school from Methodist control to state control.  He served as president until 1948, when he retired.  He is known also for his book Evolution of the Negro College, published in 1934.  Through his career and his writings, he significantly influenced African American higher education.

*****

Father Divine

In March 1937, Penninah, Father Divine's wife, fell ill in Kingston, New York. Father Divine rarely comforted her on what was widely believed to be her deathbed. He kept running the church, only visiting her once in Kingston, again causing bad publicity. Penninah, however, claimed that she was not seriously ill or in pain.

On April 20, 1937, a violent outburst occurred in a meeting when two men tried to deliver Father Divine a summons. One of the men, Harry Green, was stabbed as Father Divine fled. Father Divine went into hiding to evade authorities.

During this time, one of Father Divine's most prominent followers, called Faithful Mary, defected and took control of a large commune, which was technically in her name. Of the Father she said, "he's just a damned man." She furthermore alleged that he defrauded his followers to maintain a rich lifestyle for himself. Faithful Mary also made a number of sexual allegations, including a charge that Father Divine coerced females to have sex with key disciples.

In early May, Father Divine was located in and extradited from Connecticut and faced criminal charges in New York. That summer, Hearst's Metronone newsreel distributed mocking footage of Father Divine's followers singing outside police headquarters, "Glory, glory, hallelujah! Our God is in our land!"

Later in May 1937, an ex-follower called Verinda Brown filed a lawsuit for $4,476 against Father Divine. The Browns had entrusted their savings with Father Divine in Sayville back in 1931. They left the movement in 1935 wishing to live as husband and wife again, but were unable to get their money back. In light of their evidence and testimony from Faithful Mary and others critical of the movement, the court ordered repayment of the money. However, this opened up an enormous potential liability from all ex-devotees, so Father Divine resisted and appealed the judgment.

In 1938, Father Divine was cleared of criminal charges and Mother Divine (Penninah) recovered. Faithful Mary, impoverished and broken, returned to the movement. Father Divine made her grovel for forgiveness, which she did. By the late 1930s, the movement stabilized, although it had clearly passed its zenith.

*****

The Labor Movement

*The International Brotherhood of Red Caps, a union of African American railway workers, was established in Chicago. It would evolve into the United Transport Service Employees of America. Willard S. Townsend (later the first vice president of the newly combined AFL-CIO) was elected president.

Organized groups of red caps met in Chicago to form the International Brotherhood of Red Caps, later to become the United Transport Service Employees of America.  Willard S. Townsend, a graduate of the Canadian Royal Academy of Science, and red cap union official, became its first president.  After affiliation with the CIO Townsend, still the union's president, became a vice president of the AFL-CIO. 

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*The Pennsylvania Labor Relations Act denied state protection to unions which discriminated against African Americans.

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*Ferdinand Smith became the Secretary Treasurer for the National Maritime Union. 

Jamaican-born Ferdinand Christopher Smith (1894-1961) became a prominent twentieth century international labor activist and leader.  At an early age, Smith left Jamaica’s poor economic conditions in search of work as a migrant laborer.  He spent five years in Panama, where he worked as a hotel steward and a salesman.  After World War I he moved to Cuba and by 1920 was working as a ship’s steward.

In the 1920s, impressed by their commitment to racial issues, Smith joined the Communist-led Marine Workers Industrial Union.  Although maritime workers faced oppressive working conditions including high rates of disease, low wages, poor rations, and unventilated quarters, they had virtually no union representation aboard ships.  This began to change as part of the New Deal’s support of labor unions. In 1936, Smith supported the strike against West Coast shippers.  When maritime strikes spread to the Atlantic and Gulf Coasts, Smith became one of the nine members of the national strike Strategy Committee.

Smith was a founding member of the communist-backed National Maritime Union (NMU) and was elected to the position of Secretary Treasurer at its first convention held in 1937.  This was the second highest position in the union and the highest union office held by any African American labor leader at the time.  The NMU grew quickly in the late 1930s, and by 1944 represented approximately 90,000 maritime workers.

The NMU was a Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) union, and like many leaders involved in the CIO, Smith wanted a union that welcomed all maritime workers regardless of race, class, craft, or ethnicity.  As NMU’s Secretary Treasurer, he promoted labor rights and civil rights.  Smith guided the passage of a non-discrimination plank in the union’s constitution.  The NMU’s 1944 contract, accepted by over 100 ship companies, contained a pledge of non-discrimination.  He furthered the cause of civil rights by participating in the National Negro Congress and the Negro Labor Victory Committee.

The Red Scare that swept the country after 1945 soon led to Smith’s expulsion from the NMU.  After World War II, Smith critiqued the United States government’s crackdown on labor unions.  Since Smith had never become a citizen he was easily labeled an “Alien Red.”   Joseph Curran, president of the NMU, under pressure from the federal government, expelled a number of communists from the NMU, including Smith in 1948.  Smith’s expulsion is a stark example of the decline of union power in the face of anti-communism. Smith, who had been under government surveillance for years, was detained by the federal government beginning in February 1948 and was deported in 1951.

Thereafter, Smith briefly worked for the World Federation of Trade Unions in Vienna before returning to Jamaica in 1952. In Jamaica, Smith organized sugar workers and led a union federation.  These efforts failed to bear fruit when the government refused to recognize the union.

Ferdinand Christopher Smith died in August 1961 in Jamaica.

*****
Law

*William H. Hastie was confirmed as the first African American federal judge (March 26).  He served for two years on the District Court of the Virgin Islands.

Hastie entered governmental service as an assistant solicitor in the Department of the Interior in the early part of the New Deal.  His judicial appointment was supported by the NAACP and influential European Americans at the Harvard Law School.  His nomination was approved over the vigorous opposition of Southern senators who labelled him a "leftist," primarily because of his support of civil rights activities.  After his service in the Virgin Islands, Hastie returned to the Howard University Law School as its Dean, but was soon appointed to the "Black Cabinet" as a civilian aide to the Secretary of War by President Roosevelt.  In 1941, Hastie resigned in protest against segregation in the armed services.

*Alabama dropped rape charges against the so-called Scottsboro Boys (July 24).

*The United States Senate confirmed Hugo Black for the United States Supreme Court by a 63-16 vote despite his controversial past involvement with the Ku Klux Klan (August 17).

*The NAACP sent a telegram to President Roosevelt urging that he call upon Hugo Black to resign from the Supreme Court or "take other appropriate action in the absence of repudiation and disproof of the charges by Senator Black to relieve himself and the nation of the embarrassment of having upon the highest court a man pledged to uphold principles inimical to true Americanism"  (September 16).

*United States Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black gave a radio address admitting that he had once been a member of the Ku Klux Klan, but had resigned and never rejoined (October 1). Black repudiated the Klan and pointed out that his voting record in the Senate demonstrated that he was "of that group of liberal senators who have consistently fought for the civil, economic and religious rights of all Americans, without regard to race or creed."

*The United States Supreme Court ruled that picketing was a legal means for African Americans to protest on express grievances.

The Supreme Court declared that the picketing of firms which refused to hire African Americans was a legal technique for securing redress.

*A breakthrough law in Pennsylvania denied certain state services to any union that discriminated against African Americans.

*An anti-lynching bill passed in the United States House of Representatives but was killed by a southern filibuster in the Senate.

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Literature

*Zora Neale Hurston published her novel Their Eyes Were Watching God.

Their Eyes Were Watching God, by Zora Neale Hurston, was her second and most successful novel.  It deals not with race as such, but with personal relations.  Race prejudice appears as a subject intermittently.

*Waters Turpin's These Low Grounds, a fictional version of an African-American family chronicle, was published.

Waters Edward Turpin published These Low Grounds, the first African American attempt at a family chronicle novel.  These Low Grounds deals with four generations of an Eastern Shore Maryland family, beginning prior to the Civil War and extending all the way to the Depression.

*Sterling A. Brown's studies The Negro in American Fiction and Negro Poetry and Drama were published.

*George W. Lee published his novel River George.

River George, by George W. Lee, was principally concerned with sharecropping.  A protest novel about organizing sharecroppers, it exposes the tenant-farm system as little more than a perpetuation of slavery.

*I Am the American Negro, a collection of verse by Frank M. Davis, was published.

*****

Marcus Garvey

 *In 1937, Marcus Garvey wrote the poem Ras Nasibu Of Ogaden in honor of Ethiopian Army Commander (Ras) Nasibu Emmanual.  

*In 1937, a group of Garvey's rivals called the Peace Movement of Ethiopia openly collaborated with the United States Senator from Mississippi, Theodore Bilbo, and Earnest Sevier Cox in the promotion of a repatriation scheme introduced in the United States Senate as the Greater Liberia Act. 

*Attracted by the ideas of black separatists such as Marcus Garvey, United States Senator from Mississippi, Theodore Bilbo, proposed an amendment to the federal work-relief bill on June 6, 1938, which would have deported 12 million African Americans to Liberia at federal expense to relieve unemployment. He wrote a book advocating the idea. Garvey praised him in return, saying that Bilbo had "done wonderfully well for the Negro." But Thomas W. Harvey, a senior Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League leader in the US, distanced himself from Bilbo because of his racist speeches.

While imprisoned Garvey had corresponded with segregationist Earnest Sevier Cox who was lobbying for legislation to "repatriate" African Americans to Africa. Garvey's philosophy of Black racial self-reliance, could be combined with Cox's White Nationalism - at least in sharing the common goal of an African Homeland. Cox dedicated his short pamphlet "Let My People Go" to Garvey, and Garvey in return advertised Cox's book White America in UNIA publications.

In 1937, a group of Garvey's rivals called the Peace Movement of Ethiopia openly collaborated with the United States Senator from Mississippi, Theodore Bilbo, and Earnest Sevier Cox in the promotion of a repatriation scheme introduced in the United States Senate as the Greater Liberia Act. 

In the Senate, Bilbo was a supporter of Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal.  Bilbo, an outspoken supporter of segregation and white supremacy and, attracted by the ideas of black separatists like Garvey, proposed an amendment to the federal work-relief bill on June 6, 1938, proposing to deport 12 million African Americans to Liberia at federal expense to relieve unemployment. He took the time to write a book entitled Take Your Choice, Separation or Mongrelization, advocating the idea. Garvey praised him in return, saying that Bilbo had "done wonderfully well for the Negro". 

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The Media

*Richard Wright assumed editorship of Challenge magazine, changed its title to New Challenge, and issued a manifesto calling for articles and fiction with more "social realism."

*Jackie Ormes' comic strip, Torchy Brown, debuted in the Pittsburgh Courier.

Jackie Ormes (August 1, 1911 – December 26, 1985) is known as the first African-American woman cartoonist, known for her strips Torchy Brown and Patty-Jo 'n' Ginger.

Jackie Ormes was born Zelda Mavin Jackson in the Pittsburgh area town of Monongahela, Pennsylvania. Ormes started in journalism as a proofreader for the Pittsburgh Courier, a weekly African American newspaper that came out every Saturday. Her 1937-38 Courier comic strip, Torchy Brown in Dixie to Harlem, starring Torchy Brown, was a humorous depiction of a Mississippi teen who found fame and fortune singing and dancing in the Cotton Club.

Ormes moved to Chicago in 1942, and soon began writing occasional articles and, briefly, a social column for the Chicago Defender, one of the nation's leading black newspapers, a weekly at that time. For a few months at the end of the war, her single panel cartoon, Candy, about an attractive and wisecracking housemaid, appeared in the Defender.

By August 1945, Ormes's work was back in the Courier, with the advent of Patty-Jo 'n' Ginger, a single-panel cartoon which ran for 11 years. It featured a big sister-little sister set-up, with the precocious, insightful and socially/politically-aware child as the only speaker and the beautiful adult woman as a sometime pin-up figure and fashion mannequin.

Ormes contracted with the Terri Lee doll company in 1947 to produce a play doll based on her little girl cartoon character. The Patty-Jo doll was on the shelves in time for Christmas and was the first American black doll to have an extensive upscale wardrobe. As in the cartoon, the doll represented a real child, in contrast to the majority of dolls that were mammy and Topsy-type dolls. In December 1949, Ormes's contract with the Terri Lee company was not renewed, and production ended. Patty-Jo dolls are now highly sought collectors' items.

In 1950, the Courier began an eight-page color comics insert, where Ormes re-invented her Torchy character in a new comic strip, Torchy in Heartbeats. This Torchy was a beautiful, independent woman who finds adventure while seeking true love. Ormes expressed her talent for fashion design as well as her vision of a beautiful black female body in the accompanying Torchy Togs paper doll cut outs. The strip is probably best known for its last episode in 1954, when Torchy and her doctor boyfriend confront racism and environmental pollution. Torchy presented an image of a black woman who, in contrast to the contemporary stereotypical media portrayals, was confident, intelligent, and brave.

Jackie Ormes enjoyed a happy, 45-year marriage to Earl Clark Ormes. She retired from cartooning in 1956, although she continued to create art, including murals, still lifes and portraits. She contributed to her South Side Chicago community by volunteering to produce fundraiser fashion shows and entertainments. She was also on the founding board of directors for the DuSable Museum of African American History.

Ormes was a passionate doll collector, with 150 antique and modern dolls in her collection, and she was active in Guys and Gals Funtastique Doll Club, a United Federation of Doll Clubs chapter in Chicago.

*****

The Military

*Approximately 80 African Americans joined voluntary American forces fighting on the Republican side of the Spanish Civil War.  Oliver Law from Chicago gained fame as commander of the "Lincoln Brigade."

The first group of 550 Americans to fight in the Spanish Civil War (on the Republican side, against the Fascists) formed the Lincoln Brigade.  Only 10 were African American, but one became the brigade's leader in 1937.  Oliver Law of Chicago, a career man in the United States Army.  As far as military historians can establish, it was the first time an African American commanded a mostly European American military unit.  Law was killed in action on July 13, 1937.  A total of about 80 African Americans joined the war effort, including Henry Heywood, who served as assistant commissar of the 15th Brigade; Milton Herndon of the United States Young Communist League, who was killed heading a machine gun crew in 1937; and Solaria Kee, a nurse.
  

*****

Movies

*The melodrama film Black Legion starring Humphrey Bogart premiered in New York City (January 17).

Black Legion is a 1937 American crime drama film, directed by Archie Mayo, with a script by Abem Finkel andWilliam Wister Haines based on an original story by producer Robert Lord.  The film stars Humphrey Bogart, Dick Foran, Erin O'Brien-Moore and Ann Sheridan.  It is a fictionalized treatment of the historic Black Legion organization of the 1930s in Michigan, a white vigilante group. A third of its members lived in Detroit, which had also been a center of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s.

The plot is based on the May 1935 kidnapping and murder in Detroit of Charles A. Poole, a Works Progress Administration organizer. Twelve men were tried and 11 convicted of his murder; all were sentenced to life. Authorities prosecuted another 37 men for related crimes; they were also convicted and sentenced to prison, breaking up the Legion. Columbia Pictures had made Legion of Terror (1936) based on the same case.

Black Legion was praised by critics for its dramatization of a dark social phenomenon. It was one of several films of this period relating anti-fascism to opposition to fascist and racist organizations.  A number of reviewers commented that Bogart's performance should lead to his becoming a major star. However, Warners did not give the film any special treatment, promoting it and Bogart in their standard fashion. Bogart's breakthrough would not come until High Sierra in 1941.

*Jack and David Goldberg founded a company called Negro Marches On, which made movies exclusively for African Americans.  Jack Goldberg had begun in 1925 putting on all-African American theatrical revues.  In 1937, he organized the first all-African American newsreel company, which was still functioning in 1948.  Throughout the late 1930's and the early 1940's, the Goldbergs continued to produce successful African American films in Hollywood.  Most of the stories were imitations of contemporaneous Hollywood hits.  The Goldbergs' production of these films tended to be much more polished technically than those of other African American companies.

*Warner Bros. released the movie version of The Green Pastures, with an all-African American cast.

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Music

*New Symphony in G Minor, by William G. Still, was performed by the Philadelphia Symphony Orchestra.

*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.

Smith's recording of "Downhearted Blues/Gulf Coast Blues" in 1923 was the first by an African American to sell over a million copies.  After this debut, Smith became one of the most important women in the history of American music, both as a stage performer and recording star.  From 1923 to 1933, she gave us such works as "Backwater Blues" and "Do Your Duty", which became twentieth-century landmarks.  Born in Chattanooga, Tennessee, Smith first performed on city streets.  She eventually performed with Ma (Gertrude) Rainey, the first professional to sing the blues, in the Rabbit Foot Minstrels.  Smith's only movie appearance was in the first film short featuring African American musicians, Saint Louis Blues (later retitled Best of the Blues) in 1929. 

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The NAACP

*The NAACP honored Walter F. White, writer and civil rights leader, for his work in lobbying for federal anti-lynching legislation (July 2).

*The NAACP successfully pressured the Boy Scouts of America to allow African American scouts to join the national Scout Jamboree in Washington, D. C.

*NAACP leaders such as Oswald Garrison Villard and Walter White opposed Roosevelt's Supreme Court bill, fearing that it could eventually be used against African Americans.

*Thurgood Marshall argued for equalization of public school teachers' salaries before the Maryland Board of Education.  In Maryland, European American teachers were paid almost twice as much as African American teachers of the same grade.  The NAACP took similar action in Kentucky and other states.  In the Maryland case, Marshall argued on behalf of William Gibbs, an African American teacher of Montgomery County, who was an acting principal at $612 per year.  If he had been European American, he would have received a salary of $1,475 per year.  The board ordered salaries equalized throughout the county.

*The Harrison-Black-Fletcher Education Bill introduced in Congress failed to provide for equitable distribution of funds to African Americans.  The NAACP began a major campaign against the bill in alliance with 24 other national organizations.  The bill was amended somewhat, to the satisfaction of the NAACP; but although it passed the Senate, it was reported unfavorably in the House.

*The NAACP, in its continuing fight for anti-lynching legislation, persuaded Representative Joseph Gavagan of New York to introduce such a bill. It passed the House on April 15.  The Senate version (Wagner-Van Nuys Anti-lynching Bill) was killed by filibuster.

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The Nation of Islam

*According to Erdmann D. Benyon in "The Voodoo Cult Among Negro Migrants in Detroit," in the American Journal of Sociology, there was in that year "no known case of unemployment" among the Black Muslims.  He said they "no longer live in the slum section, but rent homes in some of the best economic areas in which Negroes have settled."

*****

The New Deal

*In the South, only three-fifths of the African Americans 65 and over qualified for old-age insurance because of their former occupations.  In both the North and South, African Americans covered often did not fully qualify because of restrictive stipulations.  For example, if they had worked for the specific time but at a salary of $50 or less, they received lower benefits because of low previous income.  However, under provisions of the amended Social Security Act for state matching-aid programs, the aged, the blind and children of broken homes fared better between 1937 and 1940.  Discrimination in all categories continued to exist in some Southern states. 

*The median period of enrollment in the CCC for European Americans was 8 to 9 months, for African Americans it was 11 to 16 months.

*By this year, the Housing Division of the Public Works Administration had built 21,319 units in 49 projects.  Of these, 14 projects were for African Americans only, 17 were integrated.  African Americans occupied 7,507 units, about a third of the total.  Rents, however, were high, shutting out the African American who could not pay $24 per month for three rooms.

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Notable Births

*Martina Arroyo, an operatic soprano and Kennedy Center honoree, was born in New York City (February 2).

Martina Arroyo, (b. February 2, 1937, New York City), is an African American operatic soprano who had a major international opera career from the 1960s through the 1980s. She was part of the first generation of African American opera singers to achieve wide success, and is viewed as part of an instrumental group of performers who helped break down the barriers of racial prejudice in the opera world.

Arroyo first rose to prominence at the Zurich Opera between 1963–1965, after which she was one of the Metropolitan Opera's leading sopranos between 1965 and 1978. During her years at the Metropolitan Opera, she was also a regular presence at the world's best opera houses, performing on the stages of La Scala, Covent Garden, the Opera National de Paris, the Teatro Colon, the Deutsche Opera Berlin, the Vienna State Opera, the Lyric Opera of Chicago and the San Francisco Opera, to name just a few. She is best known for her performances of the Italian spinto repertoire, and in particular, her portrayals of Verdi and Puccini heroines. Her last opera performance was in 1991, after which she has devoted her time to teaching singing on the faculties of various universities in the United States and Europe.

On December 8, 2013, Arroyo received a Kennedy Center Honor. 

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*DeLawrence Beard, the first African American superior court judge in Montgomery County, Maryland, was born in Okalona, Arkansas (December 26).

After receiving an Honorable Discharge from the United States Navy in 1959, DeLawrence Beard (b. December 26, 1937, Okalona, Arkansas) earned a bachelor of arts in political science from University of Missouri in 1964.

After attending the University of Baltimore School of Law (1967-1970), and earning a juris doctor degree, Beard graduated from the Georgetown University Law Center with an LL.M  (Master of Law) degree in 1977.

DeLawrence Beard spent three years as head of the Public Defender's Offic before his appointment, in 1982, as the first African American to serve as a superior court judge in Montgomery County, Maryland.  In 1996, Beard was appointed to serve as Chief Judge for the Sixth Judicial Circuit Court in Montgomery County, Maryland, the highest common law and equity court of record exercising original jurisdiction.

One of Beard's more memorable rulings was one in which he approved a petition by a gay man to adopt his same-sex partner of 32 years in order to establish a legal family relationship, mainly for purposes of inheritance and being able to make legally enforceable decisions about each other's medical care. The attorney for the two men, who wished to remain anonymous, stated that they were a middle-aged couple, and that the younger man had adopted the older one, whose parents were deceased and thus could not object.

The 2001 order approving the adoption required that a new birth certificate be issued to the older man, listing the younger man as his parent.

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Gail Lumet Buckley, Chronicler of Black Family History, Dies at 86

She wrote two books about multiple generations of her forebears, including her mother, Lena Horne.

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Gail Lumet Buckley in 1973. In her book “The Hornes” (1986), she wrote of her family’s history from after the Revolutionary War to the Civil War, Reconstruction and the 20th century, when her mother, Lena Horne, began her show business career.Credit...Fairchild Archive/Penske Media, via Getty Images

By Richard Sandomir

July 26, 2024

Gail Lumet Buckley, who rather than follow her mother, Lena Horne, into show business, wrote two multigenerational books about their ambitious Black middle-class family, died on July 18 at her home in Santa Monica, Calif. She was 86.

Her daughter Jenny Lumet, a screenwriter and film and television producer, said the cause was heart failure.

Mrs. Buckley was inspired to chronicle her family history in the early 1980s, when her mother asked her to store an old trunk in her basement. It had belonged to Ms. Horne’s father, Edwin Jr., known as Teddy, and contained hundreds of artifacts that had belonged to relatives dating back six generations, to Sinai Reynolds, who had been born into slavery around 1777 and who in 1859 bought her freedom and that of members of her family.

“There were photographs, letters, bills, notes,” Mrs. Buckley told The New York Times in a joint interview with her mother in 1986, as well as “speakeasy tickets, gambling receipts, college diplomas.”

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Those disparate paper fragments of history helped her structure “The Hornes: An American Family” (1986).

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Mrs. Buckley was inspired to chronicle her family history when she discovered, in an old trunk, hundreds of artifacts that had belonged to relatives dating back six generations.Credit...Alfred A. Knopf

“It all unfolded like a detective story — here is what was happening in 1875, there’s what went on in 1895,” she told The Los Angeles Times when the book was published. “And then to read Black American history, as I did extensively, and put that on top of it; that’s an exciting experience.”

She opened her story after the Revolutionary War and carried it through the Civil War, Reconstruction and the 20th century, when her mother became a star, beginning an incandescent career in the Cotton Club chorus in Harlem as a teenager in the 1930s.

The book’s main characters, in addition to Ms. Horne, include Moses Calhoun, a house slave owned by the Calhoun family, who, after being freed, became a wealthy businessman in Atlanta; and his daughter Cora, a feminist, suffragist and college graduate, who was a grandmother of Lena Horne and who helped raise her.

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Cora’s husband, Edwin Horne Sr., a journalist in Indiana, moved with Cora to New York City to escape racism and became active in politics and worked as a fire inspector.

“What is most significant about ‘The Hornes,’” Christopher Lehmann-Haupt wrote in his review in The New York Times, “is that it is a history of the Black bourgeoisie, or that elite class of people that, according to Mrs. Buckley, originated with what were slaves of the house (as opposed to slaves of the field) and came to be made up of a set of leading families who mirrored as best it could the elite of white society.”

In 2016, 30 years after “The Hornes,” Mrs. Buckley revisited her past with “The Black Calhouns: From Civil War to Civil Rights With One African American Family.” The book focused on historical events and political movements as they affected two branches of the family: one (whose patriarch was Moses) that remained in Atlanta and lived through Reconstruction and the rise of Jim Crow, and one that settled in New York City and experienced the Harlem Renaissance.

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Mrs. Buckley wrote of the historical events and political movements that shaped her family in “The Black Calhouns” (2016).Credit...Atlantic Monthly Press

Mrs. Buckley wrote in her introduction that the book was part history — about “an atypical African American family that is also typically American” — and part memoir, starting with her birth in 1937.

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“Today, however, it is important to let people know ‘what’ I am,” she wrote. “I identify myself as African American to let others know that I am one of America’s historical stepchildren. The quality of African American life, like that of all stepchildren, depends on the spiritual, philosophical and political character of the stepparent and stepsiblings.”

Gail Horne Jones was born on Dec. 21, 1937, in Pittsburgh and grew up in Brooklyn and Los Angeles. Her mother was briefly married to Gail’s father, Louis Jordan Jones, who owned funeral homes and published a magazine for the United States Post Office. They divorced when Gail was a baby. In 1947, Ms. Horne married Lennie Hayton, a white composer, conductor and arranger.

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Mrs. Buckley (who was Gail Jones at the time) with Ms. Horne in 1960. “I loved finding the little girl in you,” she said to Ms. Horne decades later.Credit...Everett Collection

Mrs. Buckley earned a bachelor’s degree from Radcliffe College in Massachusetts in 1959. After working in Paris as an intern at Marie Claire magazine, she returned to the United States and became a counselor with the National Scholarship Service and Fund for Negro Students, advising high school students about available scholarships. In 1962, she was hired at Life magazine, where she clipped newspaper and wire service articles.

In 1963, she was introduced to the film and television director Sidney Lumet through James Lipton, a friend of her mother and stepfather’s. (Mr. Lipton was later known as the ultra-inquisitive host of the TV series “Inside the Actors Studio.”) She and Mr. Lumet married that year.

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They divorced after 14 years. “Sidney and I were not on the same wavelength, religiously or politically,” she told The Los Angeles Times in 1986.

After a long break during her marriage to raise her daughters, Mrs. Buckley turned to freelance writing, contributing articles to The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Daily News of New York and Vogue.

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Among the people Mrs. Buckley wrote about in her award-winning “American Patriots” (2001) was a great-uncle who served in World War I.Credit...Random House

In 2001, she published “American Patriots: The Story of Blacks in the Military From the Revolution to Desert Storm,” for which she spent more than a decade doing research, which included interviewing Black veterans. One of those who inspired her was a great-uncle, Errol Horne, whose photograph, in his World War I lieutenant’s uniform, had fascinated her when she was a child.

“I had always been told he chased Pancho Villa into Mexico,” she told The Daily News in 2001. “And he did.”

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She also wrote about the all-Black 369th Infantry Regiment — known as the Harlem Hellfighters — which fought with the French during World War I.

President Woodrow Wilson “gave the 369th to the desperate French because he did not want Blacks fighting for America,” Mrs. Buckley wrote. The president, she added, “did not want the world to learn about Black heroism — even though the first American soldiers to receive the Croix de Guerre, Sergeant Henry Johnson and Private Needham Roberts, belonged to the 369th.”

In 2002, Mrs. Buckley received the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award for “American Patriots.”

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Mrs. Buckley in 2020. Her last book, “Radical Sanctity: Race and Radical Women in the American Catholic Church,” was published in 2023.Credit...Rebecca Smeyne for The New York Times

Mrs. Buckley’s most recent book, “Radical Sanctity: Race and Radical Women in the American Catholic Church” (2023), is about Katharine Drexel, the heiress canonized by Pope John Paul II, and three others, Dorothy Day, Catherine de Hueck Doherty and Sister Thea Bowman, who were declared servants of God by the Catholic Church, a step on the road to possible canonization.

In addition to her daughter Jenny, Mrs. Buckley is survived by another daughter, Amy Lumet, a film producer who also works in animal rescue, and two grandchildren. Her 38-year marriage to the journalist Kevin Buckley ended with his death in 2021. Her brother, known as Teddy, died in 1970.

Ms. Horne, who died in 2010, wept when she read “The Hornes.”

“I loved finding the little girl in you,” Mrs. Buckley told her mother during their joint New York Times interview. She added that she loved learning “about the things you had never talked about before — for example, that all our favorite books were about orphans.”

*****

*Grace Bumbry, an opera singer, was born in St. Louis, Missouri (January 4).  Bumbry was the first African American to perform at the Wagner Bayreuth Festival as Venus in Tannhauser on July 23, 1961.  Her selection by Wieland Wagner, the composer's grandson, caused an international stir.  Greatly influenced by Marian Anderson, Bumbry won critical acclaim for her lieder and other art songs.  She studied at Northwestern University, where she became a protege of Lotte Lehmann.

Grace Melzia Bumbry (b. January 4, 1937, St. Louis, Missouri), an American opera singer who is considered one of the leading mezzo-sopranos of her generation, as well as a major soprano for many years. She was a member of a pioneering generation of singers who followed Marian Anderson (including Leontyne Price, Martina Arroyo, Shirley Verrett and Reri Grist) in the world of classical music and paved the way for future African American opera and classical singers. Bumbry's voice was rich and sizable, possessing a wide range, and was capable of producing a very distinctive plangent tone. In her prime, she also possessed good agility and bel canto technique (see for example her renditions of the 'Veil Song' from Verdi's Don Carlo in the 1970s and 1980s, as well as her Ernani from the Chicago Lyric Opera in 1984). She was particularly noted for her fiery temperament and dramatic intensity on stage. She also became known as a recitalist and interpreter of lieder, and as a teacher. From the late 1980s on, she concentrated her career in Europe, rather than in the United States.  A long-time resident of Switzerland, she now makes her home in Salzburg, Austria.

*****

*Roland Burris, the first African American elected to statewide office in Illinois, was born in Centralia, Illinois (August 3).

Roland Burris, in full Roland Wallace Burris (b. August 3, 1937, Centralia, Illinois), was the first African American elected to statewide office in Illinois. His appointment as a United States senator (2009–10) to fill the seat vacated by President Barack Obama made him the fourth African American to serve in the Senate since Reconstruction.

Burris grew up in downstate Illinois, and he earned a bachelor’s degree in political science from Southern Illinois University in 1959. He received a law degree from Howard University in 1963, and, after moving to Chicago, became a bank examiner for the United States Department of the Treasury. He left the job a year later to work in the tax division of Continental Illinois, then one of the 10 largest banks in the United States. While there, he made his first foray into politics, with a failed bid for the Illinois House of Representatives in 1968. Having risen to the rank of vice president, Burris left the bank in 1973 to join the cabinet of Illinois Governor Dan Walker. After an unsuccessful campaign for state comptroller in 1976, Burris worked as director of Jesse Jackson's Operation PUSH in 1977. A Democrat, in 1978, Burris ran again for state comptroller, this time winning and, thereby, becoming the first African American to be elected to statewide office in Illinois.

Burris easily won re-election in 1982 and 1986, and in 1990 he campaigned for the office of Illinois attorney general.  That November he narrowly defeated the Republican candidate, Jim Ryan. While in office (1991–95), Burris established himself as a quietly effective administrator. His electoral fortunes waned in succeeding years, though, with three unsuccessful bids for governor (1994, 1998, 2002) and a crushing defeat in the 1995 race for mayor of Chicago—in which Burris ran as an independent—that pitted him against popular incumbent Richard M. Daley.

The election of Barack Obama as president in November 2008 left open one of Illinois’ seats in the United States Senate, and the power to appoint Obama’s successor fell to Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich.  Before the appointment could be made, United States Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald filed criminal charges against Blagojevich, alleging, among other things, that he had solicited donations from potential candidates in a “pay for play” scheme. Nevertheless, on December 30, 2008, Blagojevich appointed Burris to serve as Illinois’ newest senator. Burris’ appointment met with controversy at both the state and federal level. Illinois Secretary of State Jesse White refused to sign the paperwork that would certify Burris, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid stated that anyone appointed by Blagojevich would not be seated.

On Janurary 6, 2009, Burris arrived at the Capitol for the opening of the 111th Congress. He was refused entry on the grounds that his credentials had not been properly authorized by state officials (specifically, they lacked the signature of the secretary of state). Burris evoked sympathy in a rain-soaked press conference outside the Capitol, and public opinion shifted to his support. Over the following days, Senate leaders met with Burris and his legal team, and Burris was officially sworn in on January 15, 2009. In February, however, he faced more controversy after revealing that, prior to his appointment as senator, he had been in contact with several of Blagojevich’s associates and had tried unsuccessfully to raise money for the governor (Blagojevich was impeached in January). Burris had failed to mention these dealings during his testimony before the state’s House Special Investigative Committee in early January. 

In November 2009, Burris was admonished by the Senate ethics committee for “providing incorrect, inconsistent, misleading, or incomplete information” concerning his appointment. The committee also found that a November 2008 phone call between Burris and Robert Blagojevich, the governor’s brother, was inappropriate. Burris’ difficulties continued in 2010 as a federal appeals court ruled that, in accordance with the Seventeenth Amendment,  Illinois was required to hold a special election to fill Obama’s seat. It was subsequently decided that the special election would take place concurrently with the general election on November 2, 2010. The winner would hold the seat until the new Congress convened in January 2011. Burris, who earlier had announced that he would not seek a second term, sought to have his name included on the special-election ballot. A court, however, ruled that only candidates seeking the full six-year term were eligible. Burris’s attempts to appeal the decision were unsuccessful. He left the Senate on November 29, 2010, when Republican Mark Kirk was sworn into office.

*****

 *Earl Carroll, the lead vocalist for the doo-wop singing group, The Cadillacs, was born (November 2).

Earl "Speedo" Carroll (November 2, 1937 – November 25, 2012, New York City, New York) was the lead vocalist for the doo-wop group The Cadillacs. The group's biggest hit was "Speedoo", Carroll's subsequent nickname.  It was released in 1955. Carroll joined The Coasters in 1961, leaving the group in the early 1990s to permanently reform The Cadillacs.

In 1982, Earl took a job as a custodian at the PS 87 elementary school in New York City and worked there until retiring in 2005. A popular figure with the students, he was chosen to be the subject of a children's book, That's Our Custodian, by Ann Morris. The publicity helped him to revive his career. He became a mainstay PBS series honoring doo wop, hosted by Jerry Butler and continued performing until the early 2010s when deteriorating health forced him to retire.

^{Carroll died on November 25, 2012 of complications from a stroke and diabetes.}

*****

*Ron Carter, a jazz double-bassist, was born in Ferndale, Michigan (May 4).

Ron Carter (b. Ronald Levin Carter, May 4, 1937, Ferndale, Michigan) has appeared on over 1100 recording sessions making him the second most-recorded jazz bassist in history, after Milt Hinton. Carter is also a cellist who has recorded numerous times on that instrument. Some of his studio albums as a leader include: Blues Farm (1973); All Blues (1973); Spanish Blue (1974); Anything Goes (1975); Yellow & Green (1976); Pastels (1976); Piccolo (1977); Third Plane (1977); Peg Leg (1978); and A Song for You (1978).

He was a member of the Miles Davis Quintet in the early 1960s, which also included Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter and drummer Tony Williams.  Carter joined Davis's group in 1963, appearing on the album Seven Steps to Heaven and the follow-up E.S.P.. Carter also performed on some of Hancock, Williams and Shorter's recordings during the sixties for Blue Note Records. He was a sideman on many Blue Note recordings of the era, playing with Sam Rivers, Freddie Hubbard, Duke Pearson, Lee Morgan, McCoy Tyner, Andrew Hill, Horace Silver and many others. He was elected to the Down Beat Jazz Hall of Fame in 2012. In 1993, he won a Grammy Award  for Best Jazz Instrumental Group and another Grammy in 1998 for an instrumental composition for the film Round Midnight. 

*****

*Rubin "Hurricane" Carter, a middleweight boxer who was wrongly convicted of murder and was later freed, was born in Clifton, New Jersey (May 6).

Rubin "Hurricane" Carter (b. May 6, 1937, Clifton, New Jersey –  d. April 20, 2014, Toronto, Ontario, Canada) was an American middleweight boxer who was wrongly convicted of murder and later freed via a petition of habeas corpus after spending almost 20 years in prison.

In 1966, police arrested both Carter and friend John Artis for a triple-homicide committed in the Lafayette Bar and Grill in Paterson, New Jersey.  Police stopped Carter's car and brought him and Artis, also in the car, to the scene of the crime. On searching the car, the police found ammunition that fit the weapons used in the murder.  Police took no fingerprints at the crime scene and lacked the facilities to conduct a paraffin test for gunshot residue. Carter and Artis were tried and convicted twice (1967 and 1976) for the murders, but after the second conviction was overturned in 1985, prosecutors chose not to try the case for a third time.

After his conviction was overturned, Carter lived in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, where he became a Canadian citizen.  In Toronto, Carter became the executive director of the Association in Defence of the Wrongly Convicted (AIDWYC) and served in that capacity from 1993 until 2005. Carter resigned when the AIDWYC declined to support Carter's protest of the appointment (to a judgeship) of Susan MacLean, who was the prosecutor of Canadian Guy Paul Morin, who served over eighteen months in prison for rape and murder until exonerated by DNA evidence.

Carter's autobiography, titled The Sixteenth Round, was published in 1975 by Warner Books. The story inspired the 1975 Bob Dylan song "Hurricane" and the 1999 film The Hurricane (with Denzel Washington playing Carter). 

*****

*Johnnie Cochran, a lawyer best know for his defense of O. J. Simpson, was born in Shreveport, Louisiana (October 2). 

Johnnie L. Cochran, Jr. (b. October 2, 1937, Shreveport, Louisiana – d. March 29, 2005, Los Feliz, Los Angeles, California) was a lawyer best known for his leadership role in the defense and criminal acquittal of O. J. Simpson for the murder of his former wife, Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend, Ronald Goldman.

Cochran also represented Sean Combs during his trial on gun and bribery charges, Michael Jackson, Tupac Shakur, Todd Bridges, football player Jim Brown, Snoop Dogg, former heavyweight champion Riddick Bowe, 1992 Los Angeles riot beating victim Reginald Oliver Denny, and inmate and activist Geronimo Pratt.  He represented athlete Marion Jones when she faced charges of doping during her high school track career. Cochran was known for his skill in the courtroom and his prominence as an early advocate for victims of police brutality.

*****

*Alice Coltrane, a jazz musician, was born in Detroit, Michigan (August 27). 

Alice Coltrane, née McLeod (b. August 27, 1937, Detroit, Michigan – January 12, 2007, Los Angeles, California) was a jazz pianist, organist, harpist, and composer, and the second wife of jazz saxophonist and composer John Coltrane. One of the few harpists in the history of jazz, she recorded many albums as a bandleader, beginning in the late 1960s and early 1970s for Impulse! Records and Universal Distribution.

Born in Detroit, Michigan, Alice McLeod studied classical music, and also jazz with Bud Powell in Paris, where she worked as the intermission pianist at the Blue Note Jazz Club in 1960. It was there that she was broadcast on French television in a performance with Lucky Thompson, Pierre Michelot and Kenny Clarke.  She began playing jazz as a professional in Detroit, with her own trio and as a duo with vibist Terry Pollard. She married Kenny "Pancho" Hagood in 1960 and had a daughter with him. In 1962-63 she played with Terry Gibbs' quartet, during which time she met John Coltrane. In 1965, they were married in Juarez, Mexico. John Coltrane became stepfather to Alice's daughter Michele and the couple had three children: John Jr. (1964–1982), a drummer; Oranyan (b. 1967), a DJ who played saxophone with Santana for a period of time; and Ravi (born 1965), a saxophonist.

In January 1966 Alice replaced McCoy Tyner as pianist with John Coltrane's group. She subsequently recorded with Coltrane and continued playing with the band until Coltrane's death on July 17, 1967. After her husband's death, Alice continued to play with her own groups, later including her children, moving into progressively more meditative music.

Alice was a devotee of the Indian guru Sathya Sai Baba.  In 1972, she moved to California, where she established the Vedantic Center in 1975. By the late 1970s, Alice had changed her name to Turiyasangitananda. Alice was the spiritual director, or swamini, of Shanti Anantam Ashram (later renamed Sai Anantam Ashram in Chumash Pradesh) which the Vedantic Center established in 1983 near Malibu, California.  Only on rare occasions did Alice continue to perform publicly under the name Alice Coltrane.

The 1990s saw renewed interest in her work, which led to the release of the compilation Astral Meditations, and in 2004 she released her comeback album Translinear Light.  Following a 25-year break from major public performances, she returned to the stage for three United States appearances in the fall of 2006, culminating on November 4 with a concert for the San Francisco Jazz Festival with her son Ravi, drummer Roy Haynes, and bassist Charlie Haden. 

Alice Coltrane died of respiratory failure on January 12, 2007, at West Hills Hospital and Medical Center in suburban Los Angeles. She was buried alongside John Coltrane in Pinelawn Memorial Park, Farmingdale, Suffolk County, New York. 

Paul Weller dedicated his song "Song For Alice (Dedicated to the Beautiful Legacy of Mrs. Coltrane)", from his 2008 album 22 Dreams, to Alice Coltrane; the track entitled "Alice" on Sunn O)))'s  2009 album Monoliths & Dimensions was similarly inspired. Additionally, the song "That Alice" on Laura Veir's album Warp and Weft  is about Alice Coltrane.

*****

*Barbara Conrad, an African American operatic mezzo-soprano known for having been the focus of a racial controversy in 1957 revolving around her role in a student opera at the University of Texas at Austin, was born in Atlanta, Texas (August 11). 

Barbara Smith Conrad (b. Barbara Smith, August 11, 1937, Atlanta, Texas - d. May 22, 2017, Edison, New Jersey) was raised in Center Point, near Pittsburg, Texas. The youngest of five children, Smith displayed an early love and aptitude for music. As early as age six, Smith performed with her brother the complicated music of Mozart. Her musical roots can be traced to her family's home in the east Texas community of Center Point. It was here that she and her siblings explored a variety of musical genres on the family piano and in their local Baptist church.

Smith was admitted into the University of Texas at Austin in 1956. She was part of the first class of African American undergraduate students to attend the university. In 1957, Smith auditioned for, and was awarded, the leading role in the university's production of the opera Dido and Aeneas. Her role of Dido, the Queen of Carthage, placed her opposite a white student as Aeneas, her lover.

The casting of Smith incited a campus-wide controversy that escalated to the Texas legislature. The president of the university was advised to remove her from the cast.  Pressure from the Texas Legislature ultimately forced her removal from the cast, and her story received national media coverage. Her story was covered by national news media, prompting a carte blanche offer from Harry Belafonte to underwrite her studies at the institution of her choice. However, she chose to remain at the University of Texas at Austin.

She was one of the early pioneers in the movement to create a more open and diverse university community, and her accomplishments and fortitude as a student represent an important chapter in the university's history. She earned her Bachelor of Music degree from the University of Texas in 1959. After graduation, she joined Equity, the entertainment labor union. Equity already had a Barbara Smith registered. It was at this time that she began using her father's first name, Conrad, as her last name.

As Barbara Smith Conrad, Conrad went on to perform with the Metropolitan Opera Company, Vienna State Opera, Teatro Nacional in Venezuela, and many others. She complemented her performing activities with artist residencies and master classes, establishing herself as one of the foremost builders of voice both in the United States and abroad. She was the co-director and co-founder of the Wagner Theater Program, and maintained a private vocal studio in Manhattan. Conrad worked closely with the Dolph Briscoe Center for American History at the University of Texas at Austin, which is the home of the university's Endowment for the Study of American Spirituals. She was the subject of the film When I Rise, produced by the Briscoe Center and directed by Mat Hames.

Conrad performed leading operatic roles with the Vienna State Opera, Teatro Nacional in Venezuela, Houston Grand Opera, New York City Opera, Pittsburgh Opera, and many other opera companies throughout the U.S., Canada, Europe, and South America. She performed with the Metropolitan Opera for eight years, from 1982 to 1989, under the direction of some of the world's leading conductors, including Maazel, Bernstein, and Levine. She performed much of the mezzo-soprano concert repertoire with the world's greatest orchestras, including the New York Philharmonic and the London, Boston, Cleveland, and Detroit symphonies.

In addition to her operatic stage roles, Conrad played Marian Anderson in the 1977 ABC movie Eleanor and Franklin: The White House Years, and in 1994 followed that performance with a European concert/recital tour commemorating the renowned contralto. In 1987, Conrad was invited by President Reagan to sing at the White House in honor of Lady Bird Johnson's seventy-fifth birthday. A personal highlight for her was an invitation to perform for Pope John Paul II during his 1995 visit to New York City. Among her many other accomplishments was her recording of a collection of Negro spirituals with the choir of the Convent Avenue Baptist Church, released on the Naxos label to critical acclaim.

Conrad complemented her performing activities with artist residencies and master classes, establishing herself as one of the foremost builders of voice both in the United States and abroad. She was the co-director and co-founder of the Wagner Theater Program at the Manhattan School of Music, and maintained a private vocal studio in Manhattan.

When I Rise is a feature-length documentary directed by Mat Hames and produced by award-winning producers James Moll and Michael Rosen about Conrad, a gifted University of Texas music student who finds herself at the epicenter of racial controversy, struggling against the odds and ultimately ascending to the heights of international opera.

Conrad died on May 22, 2017, in Edison, New Jersey.

*****

*Johnny Copeland, a blues musician, was born in Haynesville, Louisiana (March 27).

Johnny Copeland (b. March 27, 1937, Haynesville, Louisiana – d. July 3, 1997, Harlem, New York) was an American Texas blues guitarist and singer.  In 1983 he was named Blues Entertainer of the Year by the Blues Foundation. Copeland was born in Haynesville, Louisiana, United States. Influenced by T-Bone Walker, he formed the 'Dukes of Rhythm' in Houston, Texas, and made his recording debut in 1956, signing with Duke Records the following year. Although his early records met with little commercial success, he became a popular touring act over the next two decades.

His early recording career embraced blues, soul and rock and roll. He cut singles for Mercury, Golden Eagle and All Boy, amongst others. His first single was "Rock 'n' Roll Lily", and he later cut successes such as "Down On Bending Knees" and "Please Let Me Know". For the most part, his singles featured Copeland as a vocalist more than a guitar player.

Driven by disco to rethink his future, he moved to New York in 1979, and played extensively in the eastern cities. In 1981, he was signed by Rounder Records, releasing albums including Copeland Special (1981) and Bringing It All Back Home (1985), and touring widely. Copeland appeared at the 1983 Long Beach Blues Festival,  and the 1988 San Francisco Blues Festival. 
He won a W. C. Handy Award in 1981 for the album Copeland Special and a Grammy in 1987 for best traditional blues album for the album Showdown!, recorded with Albert Collins and Robert Cray.

Copeland also played at the 1985 Montreux Jazz Festival,  as a guest with Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble. Vaughan and Copeland performed the Bob Geddins song, "Tin Pan Alley" together on Vaughan's Blues At Sunrise compilation album.  He also played on the first edition of BRBF (Blues Peer Festival) later that year.

His later years were dogged by ill health due to a congenital heart defect. He died, aged 60, in Harlem, New York, from complications of heart surgery for a heart transplanted six months earlier.

*****

*Comedian and entertainer William "Bill" Cosby was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (July 12).

William Henry "Bill" Cosby, Jr. (b. July 12, 1937, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) began his stand-up comedy career at the hungry i in San Francisco, which was followed by his landing a starring role in the 1960s television show I Spy.  During the show's first two seasons, he was also a regular on the children's television series The Electric Company. 

Using the Fat Albert  character developed during his stand-up routines, Cosby created, produced, and hosted the animated comedy television series Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids, a show that ran from 1972 to 1985, centering on a group of young friends growing up in an urban area. Throughout the 1970s, Cosby starred in a number of films, occasionally returning to film later in his career. After attending Temple University in the 1960s, he received his bachelor's degree there in 1971. In 1973 he received a master's degree from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and in 1976 he earned his Doctor of Education degree, also from the University of Massachusetts. His dissertation discussed the use of Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids as a teaching tool in elementary schools.

Beginning in the 1980s, Cosby produced and starred in a television sitcom, The Cosby Show,  which aired from 1984 to 1992 and was rated as the number one show in America for five years, 1984 through 1989. The sitcom highlighted the experiences and growth of an affluent African-American family. Cosby produced the Cosby Show spin-off sitcom A Different World, which aired from 1987 to 1993; starred in the sitcom Cosby from 1996 to 2000; and hosted Kids Say the Darndest Things for two seasons, from 1998 to 2000.

Beginning around 2000, Cosby became the subject of publicized sexual assault allegations. Over 50 women accused Cosby of rape, drug facilitated sexual assault, sexual battery, child sexual abuse, and sexual misconduct, with the earliest alleged incidents taking place in the mid-1960s. Cosby denied the allegations.

*****

*Chuck Davis, an African American dancer and choreographer who brought traditional African dance to America, was born in Raleigh, North Carolina (January 1).

Charles Rudolph Davis, also known as Baba Chuck Davis, (b. January 1, 1937, Raleigh, North Carolina – d. May 14, 2017, Durham, North Carolina) was the founder of DanceAfrica, the Chuck Davis Dance Company and the African American Dance Ensemble.

Charles Rudolph Davis was born on January 1, 1937, in Raleigh, North Carolina to Tony and Anne Davis. He graduated from John W. Ligon High School in 1954 and went on to serve in the United States Navy for two years, also serving as a hospital corpsman at Bethesda Naval Hospital in Maryland. He received nursing training at George Washington University Hospital. Davis became inspired by African dance while working at the Naval Hospital, dancing to live Afro-Cuban mambo and salsa music at the Dunbar Hotel while he was off-duty. The hotel's booking manager asked him to join the hotel's nightclub revue, leading to him joining an African dance troop. He went on to attend Howard University to study theater and dance; training in ballet, jazz, and tap. He also studied Caribbean dance technique with Geoffrey Holder and Lorna Hodges-Mafata. In 1963, he took part in the March on Washington.

Davis founded the Chuck Davis Dance Company in New York City in 1968, DanceAfrica in 1977, and the African American Dance Ensemble in Durham, North Carolina in 1983. While living in New York, he was an instructor at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. In 1974, he joined the faculty of the American Dance Festival. He traveled to Africa over fifty times to study African dance techniques. He served as a panelist for the National Endowment of the Arts and was a recipient of the AARP Certificate of Excellence, the North Carolina Dance Alliance Award, the North Carolina Artist Award, the North Carolina Award in Fine Arts, and was inducted into the North Carolina Order of the Long Leaf Pine. He served on the board of the North Carolina Arts Council from 1991 until his death in 2017. In 1996, he received a $100,000 grant from the National Dance Residency Program for the African American Dance Ensemble. In 1998, he was awarded an honorary doctorate from Medgar Evers College.  He was an adjunct professor at North Carolina Central University in the Department of Theatre and Duke University. Davis was awarded two Bessie Awards including a Lifetime Achievement Award in 2014. 

Chuck Davis died of cancer on May 14, 2017.  

*****

*Charles Dumas, an Olympic champion high jumper who was the first to clear seven feet, was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma (February 12).

Charles ("Charlie") Everett Dumas (b. February 12, 1937, Tulsa, Oklahoma –  d. January 5, 2004, Inglewood, California), was a high jumper who became the 1956 Olympic champion, and the first person to clear 7 feet.

Dumas started his jumping career as a student first at Thomas Jefferson High School in South Central Los Angeles for 2 years. As a Jefferson High sophomore he finished tied for 4th place at the 1953 California Interscholastic Federation (CIF) California State Meet.  As a junior and senior he jumped for Centennial High School in Compton finishing second in 1954 and winning the state championship by four and a half inches in 1955.  Track and Field News named Dumas the "High School Athlete of the Year" in 1955.

On June 29, 1956, while attending Compton College, near Los Angeles, Dumas, originally from Tulsa, Oklahoma, made his memorable 7 foot high jump on June 29, 1956, in the United States Olympic Trials in Los Angeles,  breaking a barrier previously thought unbreakable.

This jump not only ensured him of a place nn the American Olympic team, but also made him the favorite for the gold medal at the 1956 Summer Olympics.  In Melbourne, he did not disappoint, and grabbed the title in a new Olympic Record.

Next, Dumas enrolled at the University of Southern California,  and went on to win the NCAA track and field title with the university team in 1958. In 1960, Dumas competed in his second Olympics, but a knee injury during the competition prevented him from winning a second medal, finishing 6th.

After his career, in which he won five consecutive national high jump titles, Dumas became a teacher, working at several schools in the Los Angeles area (including Jordan High School in Watts). He died of cancer at age 66 in Inglewood, California. 

*****

*Sculptor Melvin Edwards was born in Houston, Texas (May 4).

Melvin Edwards (b. May 4, 1937, Houston, Texas) was based in New York City. He had more than a dozen one-person show exhibits and was in over four dozen group shows. He had solo exhibitions at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the New Jersey State Museum, Trenton, New Jersey.  His works, characterized by the use of straight-edged triangular and rectilinear forms, often have a political content.

Melvin Eugene Edwards, Jr., was born in Houston, Texas, the eldest of his parents' four children. Edwards graduated from the University of Southern California and also studied at Los Angeles City College, and the Los Angeles County Art Institute.

In 1964, he began teaching at San Bernardino Valley College.  He went on to teach at the Chouinard Art Institute (now the California Institute of the Arts), the Orange County Community College in New York, and the University of Connecticut.  His first one-person exhibition was held at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Santa Barbara, California, in 1965. In 1972, he began teaching at Rutgers University, where he taught classes in sculpture, drawing and Third World artists until his retirement from the school in 2002. In 1975 he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship.

In 1976, Edwards married the poet Jayne Cortez.

Edwards' research into Third World visual culture took him to Morocco, Brazil, China, Cuba, and Nigeria.  Inspiration for Edwards came from his ancestral home, Africa, where he spent several months each year working as a sculptor in Senegal. 

*****

*Wayne Embry, a basketball player and executive, was born in Springfield, Ohio (March 26).

Wayne Richard Embry (b. March 26, 1937, Springfield, Ohio) was a basketball center/forward whose 11-year career spanned from 1958 to 1969. He played for the Cincinnati Royals, Boston Celtics and Milwaukee Bucks, all of the NBA.

After graduating from Tecumseh High School, Embry attended Miami University and graduated in 1958 with his B.S. degree in education. While there, he was a star basketball player in the National Collegiate Athletic Association.

In 1958, Embry was drafted by the St. Louis Hawks in the third round of the National Basketball Association (NBA) player draft. Embry went on to play in the NBA from 1958 to 1969 for several successful franchises including the Cincinnati Royals and the Milwaukee Bucks. He played with NBA Hall of Fame inductee Bill Russell and contributed significantly to the Boston Celtics team that won the 1968 NBA Championship. In 1972, Embry was named general manager of the Milwaukee Bucks and became the first African American general manager in NBA league history and the first black general manager of a major United States team sport.

From 1985 to 1992, Embry served as vice president and general manager of the Cleveland Cavaliers. He went on to become the first African American NBA team president with the Cavaliers in 1994. Under the guidance of Embry, the Cleveland Cavaliers averaged forty-five wins and had nine playoff appearances over twelve seasons. Embry was appointed senior basketball advisor to the general manager for the Toronto Raptors in 2004, and then became the senior advisor to the president one year later. On January 26, 2006, Embry was named interim general manager for the Raptors.

Embry was selected to play on the National Basketball Association’s All-Pro team in five consecutive seasons between 1961 and 1965. He was chosen as “NBA Executive of the Year” by Sporting News magazine in 1992 and 1998.  In 1999, Embry was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame as a contributor, and he was inducted into the Ohio Basketball Hall of Fame as a member of the charter class. He is the 2013 recipient of the “Ohio Heritage Award,” which recognizes an Ohio Basketball Hall of Fame inductee for their contributions to the State of Ohio off the court.

*****

*Roberta Flack, a Grammy winning singer, was born in Black Mountain, North Carolina (February 10).

Roberta Cleopatra Flack (b. February 10, 1937, Black Mountain, North Carolina), a singer and musician who is best known for her classic #1 singles "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face", "Killing Me Softly with His Song" and "Feel Like Makin' Love", and for "Where Is the Love" and "The Closer I Get to You", two of her many duets with Donny Hathaway.

Flack was the first to win the Grammy Award for Record of the Year two consecutive times. "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" won at the 1973 Grammys and "Killing Me Softly with His Song" won at the 1974 Grammys.

*****

*Actor Morgan Freeman was born in Memphis, Tennessee (June 1).  He would receive a Best Supporting Actor Academy Award for his role in Million Dollar Baby.

Morgan Freeman (b. June 1, 1937) was born in Memphis, Tennessee.  Freeman won an Academy Award in 2005 for Best Supporting Actor with Million Dollar Baby (2004), and he received Oscar nominations for his performances in Street Smart (1987), Driving Miss Daisy (1989), The Shawshank Redemption (1994) and Invictus (2009). He also won a Golden Globe and a Screen Actors Guild Award.  Freeman appeared in many other box office hits, including Glory (1989), Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991), Seven (1995), Deep Impact (1998), The Sum of All Fears (2002), Bruce Almighty (2003), The Dark Knight Trilogy, The Lego Movie (2014), and Lucy (2014). He is known for his distinctively smooth, deep voice. He got his break as part of the cast of the 1970s children's program The Electric Company. 

*****

*Toni Harper, a child singer known for the hit "Candy Store Blues", was born in Los Angeles, California (June  8).

Toni Harper (aka Toni Dunlap, b. June 8, 1937, Los Angeles, California) retired from performing at the age of 29.

After learning dance under Maceo Anderson, Harper was cast by the choreographer Nick Castle in Christmas Follies, at the Wilshire Ebell Theatre in 1945. She later went on to perform on stage with Herb Jeffries and Cab Calloway.

Harper recorded "Candy Store Blues" in 1946, which became a platinum record, appeared twice on Toast of the Town (later known as The Ed Sullivan Show) in 1949, and made her third and final appearance on the show in 1950.

After success as a child singer, Harper recorded her first album, Toni, for Verve Records in 1955, with the Oscar Peterson trio.  She made two further albums, arranged by Marty Paich, Lady Lonely (1959) and Night Mood (1960), for RCA Victor.

Harper toured Japan with Cannonball Adderley in 1963,  and appeared in the 1965 film How to Stuff a Wild Bikini, before retiring from performing in 1966.

*****

*Louis Hayes, a jazz drummer, was born in Detroit, Michigan.  


 The father of Louis Hayes (b. May 31, 1937, Detroit, Michigan) played drums and piano and his mother the piano.  Hayes early on was  influenced by hearing jazz, especially that of big bands, on the radio. His main influence was Philly Joe Jones and he was mentored by Papa Jo Jones.

Hayes led a band in Detroit as a teenager and worked with Yusef Lateef and Curtis Fuller from 1955 to 1956. His three most notable associations are Horace Silver's Quintet (1956–1959), the Cannonball Adderley Quintet (1959–1965), and the Oscar Peterson Trio (1965–1967). Hayes often teamed up with Sam Jones, both with Adderley and Peterson, and in freelance settings.

Hayes led a group at clubs in Detroit before he was 16. He moved to New York in August 1956 to replace Art Taylor in the Horace Silver Quintet and in 1959 joined the Cannonball Adderley Quintet, with which he remained until mid-1965, when he succeeded Ed Thigpen in the Oscar Peterson Trio. He left Peterson in 1967 and formed a series of groups, which he led alone or with others; among his sidemen were Freddie Hubbard, Joe Henderson, Kenny Barron, and James Spaulding.  He returned to Peterson in 1971.

The Louis Hayes Sextet, which he formed in 1972, became in 1975 the Louis Hayes-Junior Cook Quintet and the Woody Shaw-Louis Hayes Quintet (Cook remained as a sideman until Rene McLean joined); in its last form the quintet played successful engagements throughout Europe and (without McLean) acted as the host group when, in 1976, Dexter Gordon visited the United States for the first time in many years. After Shaw left the group in 1977, Hayes continued to lead it as a hard-bop quintet.

From the 1970s onward, Hayes led a variety of groups including a quintet co-led by Junior Cook and Woody Shaw.  Hayes appeared on many records throughout the years, and played with John Coltrane, Kenny Burrell, Freddie Hubbard, Bobby Timmons, Hank Mobley, Booker Little, Tommy Flanagan, Cecil Taylor, McCoy Tyner, Ray Brown, Joe Henderson, Gary Bartz, and Tony Wlliams. He also led sessions for Vee-Jay (1960), Timeless (1976), Muse (1977), Candid (1989), Steeplechase (1989–1994), and TCB (2000–2002).

*****

*Abner Haynes, an American Football League running back, was born in Denton, Texas.

Abner Haynes (b. September 19, 1937, Denton, Texas) graduated from Lincoln High School in Dallas in 1956. He played college football at North Texas State College (now the University of North Texas) in Denton where he and his then teammate Leon King integrated college football in the state of Texas in 1956.

Although selected in the fifth round (55th overall) of the 1960 NFL (National Football League) draft by the Pittsburgh Steelers. Haynes chose to play for the AFL's Dallas Texans.  Haynes led the league in rushing attempts, yards, and touchdowns in the league's first year. Haynes helped popularize the AFL in 1960, when he was the fledgling league's first Player of the Year, and its Rookie of the Year.   He captured the AFL's first rushing crown with 875 yards, and also led the Texans in receiving, punt returns, and kickoff returns. Haynes spent three years in Dallas and two with the same franchise when it became the Kansas City Chiefs in 1963. The Chiefs and the North Texas Eagles both retired his number 28 in honor of his many achievements.

Haynes still owns 10 franchise records, including most points in a game (30), most touchdowns in a game (5), and most career combined yards (8,442). Over his career he was regularly among the American Football League's top ten rushers, ranking third all-time, and is the all-time leader in touchdowns with 46. He was Hall of Fame head coach Hank Stram's most versatile and dangerous weapon from 1960–62, amassing 43 touchdowns and 4,472 yards on rushes and receptions. In 1962, he helped the Texans win the AFL championship game in the classic double-overtime victory over the two-time defending champion Houston Oilers. At the time, it was the longest professional football championship game ever played. In that game, Haynes scored touchdowns on a 28-yard pass reception from quarterback Len Dawson, and on a 2-yard run.

The 6-foot (1.83 m), 190-pound (86 kg) Haynes, who had great speed and dazzling moves in the open field, set AFL records with 5 touchdowns in a game and 19 touchdowns in a season in 1961, and with 46 career rushing touchdowns. He also played for the Denver Broncos, the Miami Dolphins, and the New York Jets.  A notable game for Haynes was on September 30, 1962 against the Buffalo Bills at the Cotton Bowl.  On that day, Haynes ran for 164 yards on just 16 attempts (10+ yards per carry), with two touchdown runs, one of 71 yards and one of 13 yards, in the Texans' 41–21 victory.

During his 8 professional seasons, Haynes carried the ball 1,036 times for 4,630 yards, a 4.5 average; caught 287 passes for 3,535 yards, a 12.3 average, and 20 touchdowns; returned 85 punts for 875 yards, a 10.3 average, and 1 touchdown; and ran back 121 kickoffs for 3,025 yards, a 25.0 average, and 1 touchdown. His 12,065 combined yards is the American Football League record. Haynes had three games in which he gained 100 or more yards on 14 or fewer carries, and was selected to the All-Time All-AFL second team.

*****
*Cain James Kennedy, the first African American appointed circuit judge in Alabama in the 20th century, was born in Thomaston, Alabama.

Cain James Kennedy (b. 1937, Thomaston, Alabama - d. 2005, Mobile, Alabama) served in the Mobile County circuit court from his appointment in 1979 until his retirement in 1998. He received degrees from Los Angeles City College and California State University in Los Angeles. He earned his law degree from George Washington University in 1971, and he was a retired captain in the United States Navy Reserve. Kennedy was elected to the Alabama House in 1974.

*****

*Little Willie John, an R&B singer who is best known for his song "Fever", was born Cullendale, Arkansas.

William Edward John (b. November 15, 1937, Cullendale, Arkansas - d. May 26, 1968, Walla Walla, Washington), better known by his stage name Little Willie John (sometimes abbreviated LWJ), was a Rock and Roll, and R&B singer who performed in the 1950s and early 1960s. He is best known for his popular music chart successes with songs such as, "All Around the World" (1955), "Need Your Love So Bad" (1956) and "Fever" the same year, the latter covered in 1958 by Peggy Lee. An important figure in early R&B music, Little Willie John was a 1996 Inductee into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

*****

*William Melvin Kelley, a novelist and short-story writer, was born in New York City (November 1).

William Melvin Kelley (b. November 1, 1937, Bronx, New York City, New York  -  d. February 1, 2017, Manhattan, New York City, New York) was a renowned African American author known for his experimental style and his exploration of African American cultural identity.  Born on November 1, 1937 in the Bronx, New York, to Narcissa Agatha Kelley and William Kelley, an editor, he attended the elite Fieldston School and was accepted to Harvard University in 1957.  It was at Harvard, studying under novelist John Hawkes and poet Archibald MacLeish, that Kelley published his first short story.   Kelley’s professional career blossomed in the 1960s and his writing appeared in a host of periodicals such as the Saturday Evening Post, Mademoiselle, Negro Digest, and Esquire. The author’s principal works were also published during this prolific decade, including a collection of short stories, Dancers on the Shore (1964), and the novels A Different Drummer (1962), A Drop of Patience (1965), Dem (1967), and Dunfords Travels Everywheres (1970).   Critics noted the influence of James Joyce and William Faulkner on Kelley’s style.  Distinctive elements of Faulkner, for example, can be seen in the interrelated cast of characters which appear in Kelley’s novels, as well as his use of a fictional Southern state for the setting of his texts.  The author’s application of language on the other hand has drawn comparisons to Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake.   Kelley’s prose frequently employs postmodern literary tropes in its scrutinizing examination of American society and his exploration of African American cultural identity.  Humor is nonetheless prominent as Kelley highlights the glaring irrationalities of American racial attitudes.  The progression of his work deliberately parallels transitions in the civil rights movement and Kelley’s own political evolution.  Whereas A Different Drummer evokes themes of nonviolent integration, his later work expresses the more militant ideological tenor of separatism and Black Nationalism.  This has led many critics to contend that Kelley’s writing mirrors the African American experience of the sixties. 

For many years, Kelley was, in his own words, an "assimilated student." He was educated at Fieldston, a private school in New York City, and, later, he attended Harvard University. In 1963, he published the well-known Esquire article "The Ivy League Negro." Of this type of black student, he said that the Ivy League Negro and, in general, most educated or upper-class Negroes, have an ambiguous attitude toward the uneducated, lower-class Negro; these Ivy League types are torn by a disdain and a deep love for the "diddy-bop" and the "jungle bunny" — that is, the lower-class black man and woman. "With one breath," Kelley said, "the Ivy League Negro will ridicule him [the lower-class black] for his lack of taste, the flashing and revealing clothes, and his 'dese, deys, dems, and doses,' and with his next breath, he will envy him for his apparent love of life, his woman's Africanesque or exotic beauty, and, believe it or not, his rough-and-ready sexuality." In short, Kelley was saying that in an unconscious effort to become completely integrated into American life, the Ivy League Negro adopts and accepts the stereotypes and prejudices of mainstream America — including color prejudice.

However, later, Kelley changed. His tone became more fierce, and, as a result, he was regarded as one of the so-called militant black writers. He has remarked, "I think of myself, at least formerly, as one of the most integrated people that society produced. And because I was one of the most integrated, I was one of the most messed up, mentally, and one of the most brainwashed." He became very much concerned with the development of a separate literature for black people, a literature based on African traditions, including black music and folk culture.

Kelley received numerous awards during the course of his career, including Harvard’s Dana Reed Literary Prize (1960).  In addition, Kelley was granted the Rosenthal Foundation Award and the John Hay Whitney Foundation Award (1963) for A Different Drummer.  His short story collection, Dancers on the Shore, won the Transatlantic Review Award (1964) and his last novel received honors from the Black Academy of Arts and Letters.  As a culmination he was the recipient of the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for Lifetime Achievement in 2008.   Kelley experienced corresponding academic success and was presented fellowships to the New York Writer’s Conference and the Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference.  In 1965, he began teaching at the New School for Social Research at the State University of New York at Geneseo.  Two years later he traveled to France as a lecturer in American literature at the Nanterre University in Paris.  He eventually settled in New York where, from 1989 until his death, he taught at Sarah Lawrence College. 

*****

*Woodie King, Jr., dramatist, critic, and producer, was born in Baldwin Springs, Alabama (July 27).  As artistic director of the New Federal Theater, he would adapt Langston Hughes' Weary Blues for the stage.

Woodie King, Jr. (b. 27 July 27, 1937, Baldwin Springs, Alabama), a director and producer of stage and screen, as well as the founding director of the New Federal Theater in New York, New York,
graduated high school in 1956 in Detroit, Michigan, and worked at the Ford Motor Company there for three years. He then worked for the City of Detroit as a draftsman. He founded the New Federal Theater in 1970, and he earned an M.F.A. (Master of Fine Arts) at Brooklyn College in 1999.
King has a long list of credits in film and stage direction and production, including A Raisin in the Sun (by Lorraine Hansberry), Eyes (based on Zora Neale Hurston's There Eyes were Watching God), and The Piano Lesson (by August Wilson).


*****

*James Marshall, a football player who held the career record for most consecutive starts, was born Wilsonville, in Boyle County, Kentucky (December 30).

James Lawrence Marshall (b. December 30, 1937, Wilsonville, Kentucky) played defensive end for the Cleveland Browns (1960) and the Minnesota Vikings (1961–1979).  At the time of his retirement, he owned the career records for most consecutive starts (270) and games played (282).

He was born in Wilsonville, in Boyle County, Kentucky, near Parksville. Marshall lived there until he was 5, moving to Columbus, Ohio.  However,  he came back to Wilsonville every summer until he was 15, when his grandfather died. His aunt, Ella Mae Marshall, was the first special education teacher in Boyle County, and she worked to preserve the black school where she and Marshall's mother had taught.

Marshall played college football at Ohio State University.  He left school before his senior year, and played for the Saskatchewan Roughriders of the Canadian Football League.  He was then drafted in the 4th round of the 1960 NFL Draft by the Cleveland Browns. Marshall played the 1960 season with the Browns before being traded along with five other players (including fellow defensive lineman Paul Dickson) to the Minnesota Vikings in exchange for two draft picks in the 1961 NFL Draft. He then played from 1961 to 1979 with the Vikings and finished with a then-record 282 consecutive games (since surpassed by Jeff Feagles). He started 270 consecutive games while playing for the Vikings, a record since surpassed by Brett Favre. 

He played in Pro Bowls after the 1968 and 1969 NFL seasons. He recovered 30 fumbles, an NFL record. He was a member of the Vikings' famous "Purple People Eaters" (which consisted of Marshall (DE), Alan Page (DT), Gary Larsen (DT), and Carl Eller (DE), and was the final player from Minnesota's initial expansion team of 1961 to retire. The Vikings credit Marshall with 127 career quarterback sacks, second most in Viking History behind Eller.  He is one of 11 players to have played in all four of the Vikings Super Bowl appearances in the 1970s.

Jim Marshall is also a member of The Pigskin Club of Washington, D. C. National Intercollegiate All-American Football Players Honor Roll.

During his time with the Minnesota Vikings, Marshall was involved in what is considered by many to be one of the most embarrassing moments in NFL history. On October 25, 1964, in a game against the San Francisco 49ers,  Marshall recovered a fumble and ran 66 yards with it the wrong way into his own end zone.  Thinking that he had scored a touchdown for the Vikings, Marshall then threw the ball away in celebration. The ball landed out of bounds, resulting in a safety for the 49ers. Despite the gaffe, the Vikings won the game 27–22, with the final margin of victory provided by a Carl Eller touchdown return of a fumble caused by a Marshall sack. Marshall later received a letter from Roy Riegels, infamous for a wrong-way run in the 1929 Rose Bowl, stating, "Welcome to the club".

*****

*Jesse J. McCrary, Jr., a lawyer and civil rights activist who became the first African American of the Florida State Cabinet, was born in Blitchton, Florida (September 16).

Jesse James McCrary, Jr. (b. September 16, 1937, Blitchton, Nation County, Florida – d. October 29, 2007, Miami, Florida) was a lawyer from the State of Florida.  A civil rights activist, he entered state politics and served as Secretary of State for the State of Florida, becoming the first African American member of the Florida Cabinet since the end of Reconstruction. 

*****

 *Garrett Morris, comedian and actor, in New Orleans, Louisiana (February 1).

Garrett Morris (b. February 1, 1937, New Orleans, Louisiana) is an American comedian and actor.  He was part of the original cast of the sketch comedy program Saturday Night Live, appearing from 1975 to 1980. Morris also had a long-running role as Junior "Uncle Junior" King on the comedy sitcom The Jamie Foxx Show, which aired from 1996–2001, and a recurring role as Earl on the CBS sitcom 2 Broke Girls. 

*****

*Eleanor Holmes Norton was born in Washington, D. C. (June 13).  She would chair the United States Equal Opportunity Commission and serve as delegate to Congress from the District of Columbia.

Eleanor Holmes Norton (b. June 13, 1937, Washington, D. C.), a civil rights activist and politician, graduated from Antioch College, Yale University and Yale University Law School, Norton worked in private practice before becoming assistant director of the American Civil Liberties Union (1965–70) where she defended both Julian Bond's and George Wallace's freedom-of-speech rights.

As Chairman of the New York Human Rights Commission (1970–7), Norton championed women's rights and anti-block-busting legislation. She then went to Washington to chair the Equal Employment Opportunities Commission (1977–83), and in 1982 became a law professor at Georgetown University.

In 1990, Norton was elected as a Democratic non-voting delegate to the House from the District of Columbia. Currently under scrutiny, the DC Fair and Equal House Voting Rights Act (or DC Vote) would give one vote to the District of Columbia in the House of Representatives, but not the Senate. 

*****

*Bobby Parker, a blues-rock guitarist best known for his song "Watch Your Step", was born in Lafayette, Louisiana (August 31).

Robert Lee "Bobby" Parker (b. August 31, 1937, Lafayette, Louisiana – d. October 31, 2013, Bowie, Maryland), was a blues-rock guitarist, singer and songwriter. He is best known for his 1961 song "Watch Your Step", a single for the V-Tone record label which reached the Billboard Hot 100.  The song was performed by, and influenced, the Beatles among others.

Born in Lafayette, Louisiana, but raised in Los Angeles, California, Parker first aspired to a career in entertainment at a young age. By the 1950s, Parker had started working on electric guitar with several blues and R&B bands of the time, with his first stint being with Otis Williams and the Charms.  Over the next few years, he also played lead guitar with Bo Diddley (including an appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show) and toured with Paul Williams, Sam Cooke, Jackie Wilson, LaVern Baker, Clyde McPhatter and the Everly Brothers.  He first recorded as Bobby Parks with the Paul Williams band in 1956.
Parker's first solo single, "Blues Get Off My Shoulder", was recorded in 1958, while he was still working primarily with Williams' band. The B-side, "You Got What It Takes",  also written by Parker, was later recorded for Motown by Marv Johnson, but with the songwriting credited to Berry Gordy, Gwen Fuqua and Roquel Davis. 

Parker also performed frequently at the Apollo Theater in Harlem, and in the late 1950s toured with Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly and Little Richard.  By the early 1960s, he had settled into living in the Washington, D. C. area and played at blues clubs there after having left Williams' band.

He recorded the single "Watch Your Step" for the V-Tone label in 1961. The song was written by Parker, inspired by Dizzy Gillespie's "Manteca" and Ray Charles' "What'd I Say".  "Watch Your Step" reached no.51 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1961, but it did not make the national R&B chart.  The song was later covered by the Spencer Davis Group, Dr. Feelgood, Steve Marriott, Adam Faith, and Carlos Santana, and was performed by the Beatles in concerts during 1961 and 1962. The song's guitar riff inspired the introduction to the Beatles' 1964 hit single "I Feel Fine", and, according to John Lennon, also provided the basis for "Day Tripper".  Led Zeppelin also used the riff as the basis for their instrumental "Moby Dick".

With the success of the song, both in the United States and overseas, Parker toured the United Kingdom in 1968 and recorded his next record, "It's Hard But It's Fair" produced by Mike Vernon and released on Blue Horizon.  Jimmy Page was a fan of Parker's and wanted to sign up Parker with Swan Song Records.  Page offered an advance of $2,000 to fund the recording of a demo tape, but Parker never completed the recording, and an opportunity for Parker to be exposed to an even wider international audience was lost.

For the next two decades, Parker played almost exclusively in the Washington, D.C. area. By the 1990s, he started to record again for a broader audience. He recorded his first official album, Bent Out of Shape, for the Black Top Records label in 1993, with a follow-up in 1995, Shine Me Up. In 1993, he also was the headliner for the Jersey Shore Jazz and Blues Festival. Parker continued to perform as a regular act at Madam's Organ Blues Bar in Washington.

Bobby Parker died of a heart attack on October 31, 2013, in Bowie, Maryland. He was 76 years old.

*****

*Colin L. Powell was born in New York City, New York (April 5).  He would become the first African American to serve as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the first African American to serve as Secretary of State.

Colin Luther Powell (b. April 5, 1937, New York City, New York), a statesman and a four-star general in the United States Army, was the 65th United States Secretary of State, serving under United States President George W. Bush from 2001 to 2005, the first  African American to serve in that position. During his military career, Powell also served as National Security Advisor (1987–1989), as Commander of the United States Army Forces Command (1989) and as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (1989–1993), holding the latter position during the Persian Gulf War. Born in Harlem as the son of Jamaican immigrants, Powell was the first, and so far the only, African American to serve on the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the first of two consecutive black office-holders to serve as United States Secretary of State.

*****

*Willie Reed, a witness to the murder of Emmett Till, was born in Greenwood, Mississippi (June 14).

Willie Louis, previously Willie Reed (b. June 14, 1937, Greenwood, Mississippi  – d. July 18, 2013, Oaklawn, Illinois) was a witness to the murder of 14-year-old Emmett Till. Till was an African-American teenager from Chicago who was murdered in 1955 after reportedly whistling at a white woman in a Money, Mississippi grocery store. Till's murder was a watershed moment in the African-American Civil Rights Movement. Louis testified in court about what he had seen, but an all-white jury found the men not guilty. Fearing for his life, Louis moved to Chicago after the trial and changed his name from Willie Reed to Willie Louis. He was interviewed in 2003 for the PBS documentary The Murder of Emmett Till and was interviewed the next year on the CBS News television program 60 Minutes.

Willie Reed, as Willie Louis was then known, was born in 1937 in Greenwood, Mississippi at the eastern edge of the Mississippi Delta. He was raised in Drew, Mississippi, by his grandparents who worked as sharecroppers. Reed received little formal education and worked in the cotton fields.

Emmett Till was murdered in Mississippi in August 1955. He was a 14-year-old African-American from Chicago who was reportedly murdered for having reportedly flirted with and whistled at a 21-year-old white woman in a grocery store. The case and subsequent trial were "watershed moments in the civil rights movement, galvanizing public attention on the deep perils of being black in the Jim Crow South."

On the morning of Sunday, August 28, 1955, Reed, who was then 18 years old, was walking on a dirt road near Drew, Mississippi, when he saw a green-and-white Chevrolet pick-up drive past him with four white men in the front and three African-American men and an African-American youth seated with his back to the cab. Reed recognized two of the men in the front seat as Roy Bryant, the husband of the woman who Till had reportedly whistled at, and J.W. Milam, Bryant's half-brother.

Reed saw the truck pull into a plantation owned by Milam's brother and park in front of a barn. As he walked closer, he heard a boy inside the barn yelling, "Mama, save me!" He also heard the sounds of blows landing on a body and voices cursing and yelling, "Get down, you black bastard." Reed ran to the nearby house of Amanda Bradley and told her what he had seen and heard. Reed and another individual were sent to get water from a well near the barn. As they did, they heard the continuing sound of the beating until the cries became fainter and then stopped.

As Reed walked back toward the Bradley house, Milam emerged from the barn with a pistol at his side. Milam confronted Reed and asked if he had seen or heard anything. Reed told Milam that he had not. Reed returned to the Bradley house and watched from a window as the men in the barn loaded what appeared to be a body into the pick-up truck.

On August 31, 1955, Till's lynched body was discovered in the Tallahatchie River. The body showed signs that Till had been brutally beaten and shot in the head. Reed saw a photograph of Till in the newspaper and recognized him as the youth who he had seen hunkered down in the truck. Bryant and Milam were arrested for the murder, but Reed's grandfather warned Reed that he would be risking his safety if he spoke up. Louis was later approached by civil rights workers who persuaded him to testify in court. To ensure his safety, Reed went into hiding until the trial.

When Reed arrived at the courthouse to testify in the middle of September 1955, he was met by a "thicket of Klansmen massed outside the courthouse." Reed testified at the trial. He was shown a picture of Till and testified that it looked like the boy he had seen in the back of the truck. He also identified Milam and testified that he saw Milam come out of the barn to get a drink of water and then return to the barn. In his closing argument, the prosecutor reviewed Reed's testimony, noting that if Willie had been lying, the defense would have had needed 50 lawyers to discredit him. The prosecutor argued they couldn't do that "because Willie Reed was telling the truth." He finished by saying, "I don't know but what Willie Reed has more nerve than I have." Despite Reed's testimony and other evidence, Bryant and Milam were found not guilty after an hour of deliberation by an all-white jury.

In the aftermath of the trial, some suggested that Reed had not been a good witness, noting that he had given inconsistent accounts as to how far he was from Milam and whether he really recognized him. Even Till's mother later said that "Little Willie Reed" was "not a good witness." She added, "Willie Reed had a story, but he couldn't tell it. It was locked inside him. It would have taken education to put the key in the lock and turn it loose. Every word that was gotten from Willie had to be pulled out word by word. That's because Willie is 18 years old and has probably been to school only 3 years."

Others had a more positive reaction to Reed's testimony. The Jackson Daily News described his testimony as "the most damaging introduced thus far" and as having "electrified the court."The New York Times later wrote that Reed's testimony "made him a hero" of the African-American Civil Rights Movement. The Daily Worker published an article titled "The Shame of Our Nation" expressing outrage at the result but praising Reed and other witnesses as "heroes of the Negro people ... who stood up in court and in defiance of a white supremacist code fearlessly gave their testimony."

Historian David T. Beito said of Reed: "He was really the best eyewitness that they found. . . . [H]is act in some sense was the bravest act of them all. He had nothing to gain: he had no family ties to Emmett Till; he didn't know him. He was this 18-year-old kid who goes into this very hostile atmosphere."

After testifying in the Till case, Reed moved to Chicago and changed his name from Willie Reed to Willie Louis. He was employed as an orderly at Woodlawn Hospital and later at Jackson Park Hospital. In 1976, he was married to Juliet Louis, who was a nursing aide at Jackson Park. Louis remained silent about his role in the Emmett Till case. His wife did not even learn of his connection to the case until 1984.

In 2003, Louis was located and interviewed by Stanley Nelson, who later wrote a book and produced a documentary on the case. Nelson's documentary, The Murder of Emmett Till, was broadcast on PBS television in the United States and included an interview with Louis.

Thereafter, Louis met Till's mother and began speaking in public about the case. In 2004, he was interviewed on the CBS News television show 60 Minutes. During the interview on 60 Minutes, Louis explained his reasoning in deciding to testify: "I couldn't have walked away from that. Emmett was 14, probably had never been to Mississippi in his life, and he come to visit his grandfather and they killed him. I mean, that's not right."

In July 2013, Louis died of intestinal bleeding at age 76 in Oak Lawn, Illinois.

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*Marian Robinson, the mother of Michele Obama, was born in Chicago, Illinois.

Marian Lois Robinson (b. Marian Lois Shields; July 30, 1937, Chicago, Illinois – d. May 31, 2024, Chicago, Illinois) was the mother of Michelle Obama, former first lady of the United States, and Craig Robinson, a basketball executive. She was the mother-in-law of Barack Obama, the former president of the United States.

Marian Shields was born in Chicago, Illinois, on July 30, 1937, the fourth of seven siblings; five sisters, followed by two brothers, born to Purnell Nathaniel Shields, a house painter and carpenter, and his wife Rebecca Jumper, a licensed practical nurse. Her parents later separated. Both parents had multi-racial ancestry. Her mother's grandfather, Dolphus T. Shields (c. 1860–1950), was a descendant of slavery, with his mother a slave and his white father the heir of the slaveowner. He had moved from rural Georgia to Birmingham, Alabama, where he established his own carpentry and tool sharpening business. His descendants moved to Chicago during the Great Migration. 

Marian Shields married Fraser Robinson III on October 27, 1960, in Chicago. They had two children together, Craig Malcolm and Michelle LaVaughn, named after Fraser's mother. Fraser died from multiple sclerosis in 1991.

Robinson worked as a secretary for mail-order retailer Spiegel, the University of Chicago, and a bank. In the late 1960s, Shields lived with her family in a rented second floor apartment of a brick bungalow on the South Side of Chicago that belonged to her aunt Robbie and her husband Terry. This is where she raised her two children, Michelle and Craig, and continued to live until she moved to the White House with the Obamas. Michelle Obama, in her book Becoming, describes her mother's strong attachment to her Chicago home and her commitment to raising her children as a stay-at-home mother. Shields resumed work as an executive assistant at a bank when her daughter Michelle started high school.

Robinson died in Chicago on May 31, 2024, at the age of 86. In a joint statement, Michelle and Barack said that Shields "had a way of summing up the truths about life in a word or two, maybe a quick phrase that made everyone around her stop and think" and that "In our sadness, we are lifted up by the extraordinary gift of her life. And we will spend the rest of ours trying to live up to her example."

Michelle described her mother as forthright and honest and spoke of her implacability and her silent support as a child and beyond. Shields used to take her daughter Michelle to the library long before she started school and used to sit beside her as she learned to read and write. Usually, the kind of mother who expected her children to settle their own disputes, Shields was quick to see real distress and stepped in to help when needed. For example, when Michelle was in second grade and was distressed because of being devalued by a teacher, Shields advocated for her and was instrumental in getting her daughter better learning opportunities at school. Shields encouraged her children to communicate with her about all subjects by being available when needed and giving practical advice. She entertained Michelle's school friends when they visited and enabled her to make her own choices in important matters.

While Michelle and Barack Obama campaigned for his candidacy for president in 2008, Robinson helped them by providing support to her granddaughters, Malia and Sasha Obama.  During former President Barack Obama's two-term presidency, Robinson lived at the White House with the First Family. 

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*Magic Sam, a blues musician, was born in Grenada, Mississippi.

Samuel "Magic Sam" Gene Maghett (b. February 14, 1937, Grenada, Mississippi – December 1, 1969, Chicago, Illinois) was a Chicago blues musician. He was born in Grenada, Mississippi, and learned to play the blues from listening to records by Muddy Waters and Little Walter.  After moving to Chicago at the age of 19, he was signed by Cobra Records and became well known as a bluesman after the release of his first record, "All Your Love", in 1957. He was known for his distinctive tremolo guitar playing

Maghett moved to Chicago in 1956, where his guitar playing earned him bookings at blues clubs on the West Side. He recorded singles for Cobra Records from 1957 to 1959, including "All Your Love" and "Easy Baby". They did not reach the record charts but had a profound influence, far beyond Chicago's guitarists and singers. Together with recordings by Otis Rush and Buddy (also Cobra artists), they were a manifesto for a new kind of blues. Around this time, Magic Sam worked briefly with Homesick James Williamson. 

Magic Sam gained a following before being drafted into the United States Army. He served six months in prison for desertion and received a dishonorable discharge. 

In 1963, his single "Feelin' Good (We're Gonna Boogie)" gained national attention. He successfully toured the United States, Britain and Germany. He was signed to Delmark Records in 1967, for which he recorded West Side Soul and Black Magic.  He continued performing live and toured with blues harp player Charlie Musselwhite and Sam Lay. 

Magic Sam's breakthrough performance was at the Ann Arbor Blues Festival in 1969, which won him many bookings in the United States and Europe.

Magic Sam's career was cut short when he suddenly died of a heart attack in December 1969. He was 32 years old. He is buried in the Restvale Cemetery in Alsip, Illinois. In February 1970, the Butterfield Blues Band played at a benefit concert for Magic Sam at Fillmore West in San Francisco.  Also on the bill were Mike Bloomfield, Elvin Bishop, Charlie Musselwhite and Nick Gravenites.

Magic Sam's guitar style, vocals, and songwriting have inspired and influenced many blues musicians. In the film The Blues Brothers, Jake Blues (John Belushi) dedicates the band's performance of  "Sweet Home Chicago" to the "late, great Magic Sam".

The stage name Magic Sam was devised by Sam's bass player and childhood friend Mack Thompson at Sam's first recording session for Cobra as an approximation of "Maghett Sam". The name Sam was using at the time, Good Rocking Sam, was already being used by another artist.

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*Magic Slim, a blues singer and guitarist, was born in Torrance, Mississippi.

Morris Holt (b. August 7, 1937, Torrance, Mississippi – d. February 21, 2013, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania), known as Magic Slim, was a blues singer and guitarist. Born in Torrance (near Grenada), Mississippi, the son of sharecroppers, Holt followed blues greats such as Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf to Chicago, developing his own place in the Chicago blues scene.

Holt first came to Chicago in 1955 with his friend and mentor Magic Sam. The elder (by six months) Magic Sam let the younger Holt play bass with his band and gave him his nickname, Magic Slim.

At first Slim was not rated very highly by his peers. He returned to Mississippi to work and got his younger brother Nick interested in playing bass. By 1965, he was back in Chicago and in 1970 Nick joined him in his group, the Teardrops. They played in the dim, smoke-filled juke joints popular in Chicago in the 1970s on bandstands barely large enough to hold the band.

Slim's recording career began in 1966 with the song "Scufflin'", followed by a number of singles into the mid-1970s. He recorded his first album in 1977, Born Under A Bad Sign, for the French MCM label. During the 1980s, Slim released titles on Alligator, Rooster Blues and Wolf Records and won his first  W. C. Handy Award.  In 1980, he recorded his cover version of "Mustang Sally". 

In 1982, the guitarist John Primer joined the Teardrops and stayed and played for him for 13 years. Releases include Spider in My Stew on Wolf Records, and a 1996 Blind Pig release called Scufflin', which presented the post-Primer line-up with the new addition of the guitarist and singer Jake Dawson.

In 1994, Slim moved to Lincoln, Nebraska, where the Zoo Bar had been booking him for years. Slim was frequently accompanied by his son Shawn Holt, an accomplished guitarist and singer.

In 2003, Magic Slim and the Teardrops won the W.C. Handy Award as 'Blues Band Of The Year' for the sixth time. They released a live performance on CD and DVD in August 2005 entitled Anything Can Happen.

Magic Slim died in a hospital in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on February 21, 2013 at the age of 75. He had health problems that had worsened while he was on tour several weeks earlier. His manager had stated bleeding ulcers had sent Slim to the hospital, but that he also suffered from heart, lung and kidney problems.

In May 2013, Magic Slim was posthumously awarded another Blues Music Award in the 'Traditional Blues Male Artist' category.

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*Colin L. Powell was born in New York City, New York.  He would become the first African American to serve as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the first African American to serve as Secretary of State.

Colin Luther Powell (b. April 5, 1937, New York City, New York) was the 65th United States Secretary of State, serving under United States President George W. Bush from 2001 to 2005, the first African American to serve in that position.  During his military career, Powell also served as National Security Advisor (1987–1989), as Commander of the United States Army Forces Command (1989) and as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (1989–1993), holding the latter position during the Persian Gulf War.  Born in Harlem as the son of Jamaican immigrants, Powell was the first African American to serve on the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the first of two consecutive African American office-holders to serve as United States Secretary of State.  

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*Jazz saxophonist Archie Shepp was born in Fort Lauderdale, Florida (May 24).

Archie Shepp (b. May 24, 1937, Fort Lauderdale, Florida) is best known for his passionately Afro-centric music of the late 1960s, which focused on highlighting the injustices faced by African Americans, as well as for his work with the New York Contemporary Five, Horace Parlan,  and his collaborations with his "New Thing" contemporaries, most notably Cecil Taylor and John Coltrane. 

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*Raynoma Singleton, one of the founders of Motown and the second wife of Berry Gordy, was born in Detroit, Michigan (March 8).

Raynoma "Ray" Mayberry Liles Gordy Singleton (b. March 8, 1937, Detroit, Michigan – d. November 11, 2016, Woodland Hills, California) was a producer, songwriter and vocalist perhaps best known for her association with ex-husband, Berry Gordy during the early days of Motown when she was often known as Miss Ray.

Raynoma Mayberry was born on March 8, 1937, in Detroit, Michigan.  She was her mother Lucille’s eighth child, but her first by her marriage to Ashby Mayberry. Although Raynoma's father worked as a janitor for Cadillac, he did well enough to purchase a house on Detroit’s Blaine Street in a predominantly Jewish neighborhood.

In the mid 1950s, Raynoma met and married Charles Liles, an aspiring musician. They had one son, Cliff Liles, born in December 1955.  Burdened by financial pressures, the marriage soon folded.

In 1958, Raynoma and her younger sister, Alice, auditioned as a duo for a young songwriter named Berry Gordy.  Sensing that Gordy was not excited about their singing, Raynoma told him that she could also write and arrange music. Before long, she was doing just that, becoming a vital part of his budding operation.

Later, Gordy had her put together a backup vocal group, which was composed of singers who had been hanging around the studio. Gordy, who loved contractions, decided to call the group the Rayber Voices after their given names, Raynoma and Berry. In addition to Raynoma, the singers in the group were Brian Holland, Robert Bateman, Sonny Sanders and later, Gwendolyn Murray and Louvain Demps.  Together, Ray and Berry also formed a music producing and publishing firm, Rayber Music Writing Company.

Tired of the paltry royalty checks that he was receiving, Gordy was encouraged by Raynoma and Smokey Robinson to start his own record company.  Raynoma located a two-story house at 2648 West Grand Boulevard as the headquarters for the new enterprise. Gordy placed her in charge of the company's publishing operations (now known as Jobete) with the assistance of her brother, Mike Ossman, and Janie Bradford, the company's first receptionist.

After the birth of their child, Kerry, and his divorce from his previous wife was final, Raynoma and Berry Gordy were married. Not long after the marriage, Gordy began having an affair.  By the time he finally decided to end the affair, his marriage with Raynoma was over.

As the details of their separation were being worked out, Raynoma indicated that she still wanted to work for Motown. Gordy accepted her proposal to establish an office of Jobete in New York City.

However, with the cost of living being much higher in New York than Detroit, Raynoma struggled to get proper funding to maintain her office. After repeated attempts to obtain additional funding had failed, Raynoma decided to take desperate measures. Against the advice of Eddie Singleton (her partner and future husband) she arranged to bootleg five thousand copies of the Motown single, "My Guy" by Mary Wells to keep the office open.

When Berry Gordy found out what happened, he was furious. He did not however, press charges. After their divorce was finalized, they remained on amicable terms. So much so that after Raynoma married Eddie Singleton, Gordy loaned the couple money so that they could start their own record label in the nation's capital, Washington, D. C. 

Raynoma and Eddie Singleton formed a record label, Shrine, which was based in Washington, D. C. When the label proved unsuccessful, Raynoma returned to Motown in 1968.

Raynoma formed a partnership with Motown under the Super Three banner. One of the most successful projects under that arrangement was Rockwell's Top 10 album, Somebody's Watching Me, in which she served as executive producer.

Ray Singleton was married three times and had three sons and one daughter from her various marriages.

Raynoma Gordy Singleton died on November 11, 2016 of brain cancer in Woodland Hills, California. 

*****

*Willie Stokes, a reputed Chicago mobster, was born in Chicago, Illinois (December 12).

Willie Morris "Flukey" Stokes (b. December 12, 1937, Chicago, Illinois – d. November 19, 1986, Chicago, Illinois) was from the South Side of Chicago and, during his career in crime, was well known for his silk suits, diamond rings, and flamboyant lifestyle as a drug trafficking kingpin and pool hall owner.  Stokes immortalized himself in Chicago by throwing a $200,000 party on his 30th wedding anniversary in 1985 and for the decadent funeral he arranged for his murdered 28-year-old son, Willie "the Wimp" Stokes, Jr. in February 1984. The elder Stokes had his son buried in a Cadillac-style coffin with $100 bills stuffed between his diamond ring laden fingers. Two years later, Flukey would also be murdered, along with his chauffeur, while sitting inside a 1986 Cadillac limousine and talking on his wireless telephone.

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*Robert Walker, a blues musician, was born near Clarksdale, Mississippi (February 19).
 

Robert "Bilbo" Walker Jr. (b. February 19, 1937, Clarksdale, Mississippi),  known in the blues music world due to his "rock 'n' roll showmanship" and "flamboyant Chuck Berry imitations", was born near Clarksdale, Mississippi.   Robert Walker, Sr. was often referred to by his nickname, "Bilbo", which was then passed onto to Walker Jr., who was also sometimes called "Little Junior Bilbo". Walker began to explore music after his sister's boyfriend introduced him to Ike Turner.  After spending 17 years in Chicago, Illinois, with his friend David Porter,  Walker moved to the area around Bakersfield, California, and started a farm growing such commodities as watermelon and cotton.  During this time, Walker continued to perform at local bars in California, as well as in Chicago and Clarksdale when on visits. 

In 1997, Walker released his first album, Promised Land,  and followed it with two more records, 1998's Rompin' & Stompin' and 2001's Rock the Night. 

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*****

*Television and film actor Billy Dee Williams was born in New York City, New York (April 6).  He would star in the movie Lady Sings the Blues and in two Star Wars films.

Billy Dee Williams (b. William December Williams Jr., April 6, 1937, New York City, New York) is an actor, artist, singer, and writer who is best known for his role as Lando Calrissian in the Star Wars film franchise,  as well as acting in the movies Brian's Song, Nighthawks, The Last Angry Man, Carter's Army, and for playing Harvey Dent in Tim Burton's Batman (1989).
Williams was born in New York, the son of Loretta Anne (1915-2016), a West Indian-born elevator operator from Montserrat,  and William December Williams, Sr. (b. 1910), an African-American caretaker from Texas. He has a twin sister, Loretta, and grew up in Harlem, where he was raised by his maternal grandmother while his parents worked at several jobs. Williams graduated from The High School of Music & Art (later merged with the High School of Performing Arts to become the Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art) in Manhattan, where he was a classmate of Diahann Carroll, who would later play the wife of his character Brady Lloyd on the 1980s prime-time soap opera Dynasty.

His first big break was in the acclaimed Brian's Song in which he played Gale Sayers. His next hit came in 1973 when he played Louis McKay in Lady Sings the Blues. In 1976, he auditioned for the role of Han Solo during the casting of Star Wars. Although he didn't get the role, he was eventually cast as Lando Calrissian in the two follow-up films The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. Williams also appeared in numerous films, including 1989's Batman as district attorney Harvey Dent. Williams originally took the role with the agreement that it would land him in a sequel playing the villain Two Face, but the studio did not use him when the time came for the third installment, Batman Forever. In between, Williams appeared in supporting roles in a number of films.

Williams was well-known for his appearance in advertisements for Colt 45, a low-cost brand of malt liquor. Williams is also an accomplished painter and owns his own art gallery, where much of his artwork has sold for thousands of dollars. In 1961, he recorded a jazz LP for Prestige Records entitled Let's Misbehave, featuring Williams singing swing standards.

Williams guest starred on That '70s Show as a pastor. He also guest starred on Scrubs as the godfather of J.D.'s love interest in the episode. In 2014, he appeared on two episodes of Dancing with the Stars, in which he and a partner danced to Meco's version of the Star Wars theme.

*****
*Lenny Wilkens, a Hall of Fame basketball player and coach, in Brooklyn, New York (October 28). 

Leonard Randolph "Lenny" Wilkens (b. October 28, 1937, Brooklyn, New York) was inducted three times into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, first in 1989 as a player, as a coach in 1998, and in 2010 as part of the 1992 United States Olympic "Dream Team",  for which he was an assistant coach. He is also a 2006 inductee into the College Basketball Hall of Fame.  Wilkens was a combined 13-time NBA All-Star as a player (nine times) and as a head coach (four times). He was the 1993 NBA Coach of the Year,  won the 1979 NBA Championship as the head coach of the Seattle SuperSonics, and as an Olympic gold medal as the head coach of the 1996 U.S. men's basketball team.  From the 1994–95 season until the 2009–10 season, Wilkens was the winningest coach in NBA history and retired still holding the record at 1,332 victories. 

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*Nancy Wilson, a jazz and pop singer, was born in Chillicothe, Ohio (February 20).

Nancy Wilson (b. February 20, 1937, Chillicothe, Ohio), a singer with more than 70 albums, and three Grammy Awards, has been labeled a singer of blues, jazz, cabaret, pop and soul.   She has also been called a consummate actress and the complete entertainer. "the complete entertainer". The title she prefers, however, is "song stylist". Over the years, she received many nicknames including "Sweet Nancy", "The Baby", "Fancy Miss Nancy" and "The Girl With the Honey-Coated Voice".

Born on February 20, 1937, in Chillicothe, Ohio, Nancy Wilson established a singing career as a youth, going on to record her debut Like in Love and working with the likes of jazz great Cannonball Adderley. The Grammy-winning vocalist released scores of albums over the decades in the worlds of pop, jazz and soul, scoring hits like "Guess Who I Saw Today" and also establishing a TV career.

Nancy Wilson was born on February 20, 1937, in Chillicothe, Ohio, though she grew up not far from Columbus. She was the oldest of six siblings and began singing at the age of 4, receiving great encouragement from her family and influenced by the sounds of "Little" Jimmy Scott, Dinah Washington, Lavern Baker and Nat King Cole, among others. Having gained experience singing in church, Wilson landed a gig performing twice a week as a teen on her own local television show, Skyline Melody.

She later studied at Central State College, thinking of becoming an educator, but opted instead to follow her passion for song. As a North American touring artist, Wilson met famed jazz saxophonist Cannonball Adderley, who gave her advice on the shaping of her career. She moved to New York in 1959 and quickly was able to secure a recording deal with Capitol Records, with Adderley's manager John Levy taking Wilson on as a client as well.

Wilson made her album debut with Like in Love (1959), followed bySomething Wonderful the following year. She became one of the biggest selling acts of the time with songs that included the string-laden, testifiyin' "(You Don't Know) How Glad I Am," which was a Top 20 pop and No. 2 adult contemporary hit. After working with the George Shearing Quintet and conductor/composer Billy May, she and Adderley joined forces for a 1962 album which featured the R&B gem "Save Your Love for Me."

Cultivating the image of a poised yet passionate sophisticate, Wilson was known for her distinct, nuanced vocals. She presented tunes that have pointed spoken sections as seen with "Guess Who I Saw Today" and "I'll Get Along Somehow." The stylist recorded dozens of albums over the years, eventually switching from Capitol to Columbia, and making an impact on classic pop, soul, jazz and adult contemporary audiences with a captivating stage presence. Her work in the first decade of the 2000s saw her collaborate on two-full length recordings with pianist Ramsey Lewis along with a bevy of other artists on later outings.

Wilson had her own variety series in the '60s, the Emmy-winning The Nancy Wilson Show, and also made appearances on a variety of other programs, including The Ed Sullivan Show, Hawaii Five-O, The Carol Burnett Show, Sinbad and The Arsenio Hall Show. (Indeed, Arsenio Hall had gotten his first break opening for Wilson during one of her tours.)

By early 2014, Wilson had received multiple Grammy Award nominations and won three, including trophies for best rhythm & blues recording for "How Glad I Am" and best jazz vocal album prizes for R.S.V.P. (Rare Songs, Very Personal) (2004) and Turned to Blue (2006). Wilson also won the 2002 George Foster Peabody Award for her NPR radio show, Jazz Profiles, a series that ran from the mid-1990s to 2005.

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*Olly Wilson, a classical composer, was born in St. Louis, Missouri (September 7).

Olly Woodrow Wilson, Jr. (b. September 7, 1937, St. Louis, Missouri), a prominent composer of contemporary classical music, pianist, double bassist, and musicologist is considered to be one of the preeminent composers of African American descent. He is also known for establishing the TIMARA (Technology in Music and Related Arts) program at Oberlin Conservatory,  the first-ever conservatory program in electronic music.

He was born in St. Louis, Missouri, to Alma Grace Peoples Wilson, a seamstress, and Olly Woodrow Wilson, Sr., an insurance salesman and butler. He graduated with a B.M. degree from Washington University in St. Louis in 1959, and earned an M.M. degree in music composition in 1960 from the University of Illinois.  His composition instructors included Robert Wykes, Robert Kelley, and Philip Bezanson.  He earned a Ph.D. from the University of Iowa in 1964.

Wilson taught at Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University and the Oberlin Conservatory of Music (1965-1970). He was a profess of music at the University of California, Berkeley, where he taught from 1970 to 2002. He also served as the chairman of that university's music department between 1993 and 1997.

Wilson was commissioned by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and New York Philharmonic.  In 1995, he was elected to The American Academy of Arts and Letters.

In 1971, Wilson received a Guggenheim Fellowship, which he used to live in West Africa, where he studied African music and languages. In 2008, he received a Rome Prize.

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