1939 The United States: Notable Deaths

Notable Deaths

*There were two recorded lynchings of African Americans in 1939.

*Lloyd L. Gaines, the plaintiff in Missouri ex rel. Gaines v. Canada, mysteriously disappeared and was never found (March 19).

Lloyd Lionel Gaines (b. 1911, Water Valley, Mississippi  – disappeared March 19, 1939, Chicago, Illinois) was the plaintiff in the case of Missouri ex rel. Gaines v. Canada  (1938), one of the most important court cases in the United States civil rights movement in the 1930s. After being denied admission to the University of Missouri School of Law because he was an African American, and refusing the university's offer to pay for him to attend another neighboring state's law school with no racial restriction, he filed suit. The United States Supreme Court ultimately ruled in his favor, holding that the separate but equal doctrine required that Missouri either admit him or set up a separate law school for African American students.

The Missouri General Assembly chose the latter option, converting a former cosmetology school in St. Louis to the Lincoln University School of Law and other mostly African-American students were admitted to it. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), which had supported Gaines' suit, planned to file another suit challenging the adequacy of the new law school. While he waited for classes to begin, Gaines traveled between St. Louis, Kansas City and Chicago looking for work, doing odd jobs and giving speeches before local NAACP chapters. One night in Chicago he left the fraternity house where he was staying to buy stamps and never returned.

His disappearance was not noted immediately, since he would frequently travel on his own for long periods of time without informing anyone. Only in the autumn of that year, when the NAACP's lawyers were unable to locate him to take depositions for a rehearing in state court, did a serious search begin. It failed, and the suit was dismissed. While most of his family believed at the time that he had been murdered in retaliation for his legal victory, there has been some speculation that he had tired of his role in the civil rights movement and simply went elsewhere, either New York or Mexico City, to start a new life. In 2007, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agreed to look into the case, among many other unsolved missing persons cases related to the civil rights era.

Despite his unknown fate, Gaines has been honored by the University of Missouri School of Law and the State of Missouri. The Black Culture Center at the University of Missouri and a law scholarship at the law school are named for him and another African American student initially denied admission, and in 2006 he was granted an honorary law degree. The state bar association followed with a posthumous law license. A portrait of Gaines hangs in the University of Missouri law school building.

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*Thomas Ladnier, a jazz trumpeter who was a contemporary of, and peer to, Louis Armstrong, died in New York City, New York (June 4). 

Thomas James "Tommy" Ladnier (b. May 28, 1900, Mandieville, Louisiana – d. June 4, 1939, New York City, New York) was born in Mandeville, Louisian across Lake Pontchartrain from New Orleans.  He played in the local Independence Band led by clarinetist Isidore Fritz (a.k.a. Frick) from c. 1914. Trumpeter Bunk Johnson sometimes also played with this band and gave young Ladnier tuition. In 1917, he moved with his mother to Chicago. At first he, like many Southerners coming to Chicago, worked at the Chicago Stock Yards. He married Hazel B. “Daisy” Mathews in 1920 and became a professional musician around 1921. He played for some time in St. Louis with Charlie Creath.

From 1923, he played in Chicago and made numerous recordings for Paramount Records with pianist Lovie Austin, accompanying blues singers like Ma Rainey, Ida Cox, and Alberta Hunter. In 1923, his beloved mother was accidentally shot during a party quarrel. This affected Ladnier deeply and the incident is generally considered as the cause of his alcoholic abuse. For some time, Ladnier played with his great inspiration King Oliver.

In 1925, Ladnier joined pianist Sam Wooding for an extensive European tour (Germany, Sweden, Denmark, Spain, and Russia). This orchestra recorded in Berlin. He then, in 1926, returned to New York, for a while playing with dance band leader Billy Fowler, subsequently joining Fletcher Henderson from October 1926 to November 1927. During this year, the Henderson orchestra was at its prime and Ladnier was one of the main soloists along with trumpeter Joe Smith and saxophonist Coleman Hawkins. This orchestra made some of the most cherished Henderson recordings. Ladnier then rejoined the Sam Wooding Orchestra for another European tour (Germany, Austria, Turkey, Switzerland, Italy, and France) but left Wooding in January 1929 to work as a free-lancer in Paris. A short tour with dancer Harry Fleming brought him to Spain. In Spain, Ladnier also met dancer Louis Douglas and joined him shortly in November 1929 in Paris, acting as orchestra leader. He then again free-lanced in Paris until summer 1930, when he joined the Noble Sissle dance band, performing in Paris and London. He subsequently went back to the States at the end of 1930 and stayed with Sissle until January 1932, including a United States tour and an ill-planned short visit to Paris. The Sissle orchestra made some recordings in London and New York.

Back in United States in 1932, Ladnier teamed up with Sidney Bechet, forming the New Orleans Feetwarmers. This sextet made some now classical recordings in 1932. During the depression, Ladnier and Bechet tried to run a tailor shop in Harlem, but neither of them was really business-oriented. Ladnier then left New York and played in the Eastern States, sometimes giving trumpet lessons. For a year, he lived in Stamford, Connecticut.

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*Kelly Miller, dean of Howard University, died in Washington, D. C. (December 29).

Kelly Miller (b. July 18, 1863 – d. December 29, 1939) was a mathematician, sociologist, essayist, newspaper columnist, author, and an important figure in the intellectual life of black America for close to half a century.  He was known as "The Bard of the Potomac" in his day.

Kelly Miller came from a big family. He was the sixth of ten children born to Elizabeth Miller and Kelly Miller Sr. His mother was a former slave and his father was a freed black man who was conscripted into the Winnsboro Regiment of the Confederacy. Miller was born in Winnsboro, South Carolina where he attended local primary and grade school.

From 1878-1880 Miller attended the Fairfield Institute where his hard work paid off and he was offered a scholarship to the historically black college, Howard University. Miller finished the preparatory department's three-year curriculum in Latin and Greek, then mathematics in two years. After finishing one department he quickly moved on to the next one. Miller attended the College Department at Howard from 1882 to 1886.

In 1886, Kelly Miller was given the opportunity to study advanced mathematics with Captain Edgar Frisby. Frisby was an English mathematician working at the United States Naval Observatory. Frisby's attendant, Simon Newcomb, noticed Miller's intellectual talent and recommended him to Johns Hopkins University.  Miller spent the following two years at Johns Hopkins University (1887-1889) and became the first African American student to attend the university. Kelly Miller spent his time at the university studying mathematics, physics, and astronomy.

Unfortunately, Miller was not able to keep attending Johns Hopkins University due to financial limitations. From 1889 to 1890 Miller taught mathematics at the M Street High School in Washington, D.C. Appointed professor of mathematics at Howard in 1890, Miller introduced sociology into the curriculum in 1895, serving as professor of sociology from 1895 to 1934. Miller graduated from Howard University School of Law in 1903. In 1907, Miller was appointed dean of the College of Arts and Sciences.

His deanship lasted twelve years and in that time, the college changed significantly. The old classical curriculum was modernized and new courses in the natural sciences and the social sciences were added. Miller was an avid supporter of Howard University and actively recruited students to the school. In 1914 he planned a Negro-American Museum and Library. He persuaded Jesse. E Moorland to donate his large private library on blacks in Africa and the United States to Howard University and it became the foundation for his Negro-Americana Museum and Library center.

Miller was a prolific writer of articles and essays which were published in major newspapers and magazines, and several books, including Out of the House of Bondage. Miller assisted W. E. B. Du Bois in editing The Crisis, the official journal of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Miller started off publishing his articles anonymously in the Boston Transcript. He wrote about both radical and conservative groups. Miller also shared his views in the Educational Review, Dial, Education, and the Journal of Social Science. His anonymous articles later became his lead essay in his book Race Adjustment published in 1908. Miller suggested that African Americans had the right to protest against the unjust circumstances that came with the rise of white supremacy in the South. Miller supported racial harmony, thrift, and institution building.

Miller gained his well-known national importance from his involvement in a movement led by W.E.B. Du Bois. He showed intellectual leadership during the conflict between the "accommodations" of Booker T. Washington and the "radicalism" of the growing civil rights movement.  On African-American education policy, Miller aligned himself with neither the "radicals" — Du Bois and the Niagara Movement — nor the "conservatives" — the followers of Booker T. Washington. Miller sought a middle way, a comprehensive education system that would provide for "symmetrical development" of African-American citizens by offering both vocational and intellectual instruction.

After World War I, Miller’s life became difficult. He was demoted in 1919 to dean of a new junior college after J. Stanley Durkee was appointed as president of Howard in 1918 and built a new central administration. However, Miller continued to publish articles and weekly columns in black presses. His views were published in more than 100 newspapers. Additionally, in February 1924, Miller was elected chairman of the Negro Sanhedrin, a civil rights conference held in Chicago that brought together representatives of 61 African-American organizations to forge closer ties and to attempt to craft a common program for social and political reform.

Miller died in 1939 on Howard’s campus.

A 160-unit housing development in LeDroit Park constructed in 1941 was named in his honor, as was Kelly Miller Middle School in Washington, DC.

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*Rufus "Tee Tot" Payne, an early 20th blues musician best known for being a mentor to the legendary country singer Hank Williams, Sr. (March 17).  

Rufus "Tee Tot" Payne (b. February 4, 1883, Sandy Ridge, Lowndes County, Alabama - d. March 17, 1939, Montgomery, Alabama) was an early 20th-century blues musician from Greenville, Alabama, who was more widely known by his nickname Tee Tot. 

Payne's nickname of "Tee Tot" is a pun for "teetotaler".  It is said that Payne received his nickname because he usually carried a homemade mixture of alcohol and tea wherever he went.

Payne was born in 1883 on the Payne Plantation in Sandy Ridge, Lowndes County, Alabama. 

Some say Tee Tot played the blues alone, others say that he led a little combo that played pop songs and hokum numbers and was a street musician. 

Tee Tot is best known for being a mentor to Hank Williams, Sr.  Rufus Payne met Hank Williams Sr. when Hank was eight years old and legend has it he would come around and play Hank's guitar, showing Hank how to improvise chords. His influence in exposing Williams to blues and other African American influences helped Williams successfully fuse hillbilly, folk and blues into his own unique style, which in turn expanded and exposed both white and black audiences to the differing sounds.

Payne died at a charity hospital in Montgomery, Alabama, on March 17, 1939 at the age of 56. Payne is buried at Lincoln Cemetery in Montgomery. His gravesite is unknown, but a memorial stands near the entrance to the cemetery, paid for by Hank Williams Jr. and other members of the Grand Ole Opry. 

Hank Williams, Jr. paid tribute to Tee Tot's influence on his father through "The Tee Tot Song" on his Almeria Club album. 

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*"Ma" Rainey, the "Mother of the Blues", died in Rome, Georgia (December 22).

"Ma" Rainey (b. Gertrude Malissa Nix Pridgett, c. April 26, 1886, Columbus, Georgia – d. December 22, 1939, Rome, Georgia) was one of the earliest known American professional blues singers and one of the first generation of such singers to record. Ma Rainey, of the Rabbit Foot Minstrels, was the first African American to sing the blues in a professional show.  She learned a blues song from a local woman in Missouri, and audience response was such that she began to specialize in the blues.

Gertrude Pridgett made her first public appearance about the age of 14 in a local talent show called “Bunch of Blackberries” at the Springer Opera House in her native Columbus, Georgia. Little else is known of her early years. In February 1904 she married William Rainey, a vaudeville performer known as Pa Rainey, and for several years they toured with African American minstrel groups as a song-and-dance team. In 1902, in a small Missouri town, she first heard the sort of music that was to become known as the blues.

Ma Rainey, as she was known, began singing blues songs and contributed greatly to the evolution of the form and to the growth of its popularity. In her travels she appeared with jazz and jug bands throughout the South. While with the Tolliver’s Circus and Musical Extravaganza troupe, she exerted a direct influence on young Bessie Smith.  Her deep contralto voice, sometimes verging on harshness, was a powerful instrument by which to convey the pathos of her simple songs of everyday life and emotion.

In 1923 Ma Rainey made her first phonograph recordings for the Paramount company. Over a five-year span she recorded some 92 songs for Paramount—such titles as “See See Rider,” “Prove It on Me,” “Blues Oh Blues,” “Sleep Talking,” “Oh Papa Blues,” “Trust No Man,” “Slave to the Blues,” “New Boweavil Blues,” and “Slow Driving Moan”—that later became the only permanent record of one of the most influential popular musical artists of her time. She continued to sing in public into the 1930s. In 2008 a small museum opened in a house she had built in Columbus for her mother. She lived there herself from 1935 until her death.

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*Joel Spingarn, the president of the NAACP, died in New York City, New York (July 26).  He was succeeded by his brother Arthur.

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Performing Arts

*Denied permission to sing in Washington, D. C.'s Constitution Hall by the Daughters of the American Revolution, contralto Marian Anderson performed on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial for 75,000 people (April 9).

Marian Anderson, whose voice Italian conductor Arturo Toscanini described as appearing once in a century, was refused permission to sing in Constitution Hall in Washington, D. C. by the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR).  Anderson, an African American contralto from Philadelphia, had just completed a successful European tour.  Eleanor Roosevelt, the nation's First Lady, resigned from the DAR in protest.  The Secretary of Interior then provided the Lincoln Memorial for the Anderson concert, which drew an audience of 75,000 on Easter Sunday, 1939. 

Marion Anderson debuted with the New York Philharmonic in 1925.  From 1930 to 1935, she performed in Europe, where concert opportunities were greater and racial discrimination less severe.  Returning in triumph to the United States, she was signed by Sol Hurok to sing at Town Hall in New York on December 30, 1935.  She was soon performing some 70 recitals annually across the United States.  When Hurok tired to book her into Washington, D. C.'s Constitution Hall in 1939, the Daughters of the American Revolution, who owned the hall, told him all requested dates were taken.  Later, posing as a European American's agent, he was told those same dates were available.  

Hurok publicly charged the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) with prejudice.  First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt resigned from the DAR in protest, and United States Secretary of the Interior Harold L. Ickes arranged for Anderson to sing on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on Easter Sunday.  Some 75,000 people attended the historic outdoor concert and millions more listened on national radio.  Photographs and films of the event became potent symbols for the soon-to-emerge modern Civil Rights Movement.

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*The Dixie Hummingbirds, a male gospel quartet, recorded for the first time (September 19).

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*Ethel Waters starred as "Hagar" in the Mamba's Daughters on Broadway.

As Hagar, Ethel Waters (1896-1977) became the first African American woman to perform the leading role in a dramatic play on Broadway.  She made her first public appearance when she was five years old as a singer in a church program.  Waters appeared in nightclubs and vaudeville, and in 1927 made her Broadway debut in Africana.  When she toured in As Thousands Cheer (1934), she became the first African American person to to co-star with European American players below the Mason-Dixon line.  Her greatest role came in 1940 when she appeared on stage in Cabin in the Sky.  She also appeared in the movie version in 1943.  From 1957 to 1976, she toured with evangelist Billy Graham and achieved wide recognition for the gospel hymn "His Eye is on the Sparrow."  In 1950, Waters was the first African American to star in a scheduled comedy program on television.  She appeared in Beulah on ABC on October 3, taking over the role played by Hattie McDaniel (1895-1952) on the radio.  Waters' health only allowed her to film a few episodes. 

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*The concert singer Dorothy Maynor, world famous through her concerts and appearances as a soloist in North and South America and Europe, made her debut in Town Hall in NewYork City.

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Politics

*In April,  back-to-Africa bill was introduced in the United States Senate by segregationist Senator Theodore C. Bilbo from Mississippi.

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Sports

*Joe Louis retained the world heavyweight boxing title, defeating John Henry Lewis in the first round at Madison Square Garden (January 25). The referee stopped the bout after 2 minutes and 29 seconds once Lewis had been knocked down three times. It was Lewis' last fight.

*Joe Louis retained the world heavyweight boxing title by knocking out Tony Galento in the fourth round at Yankee Stadium (June 28).


*The Cuban Baseball Hall of Fame was inaugurated, six weeks after its American counterpart (July 26).



*Joe Louis retained the world heavyweight boxing title with an 11th round knockout of Bob Pastor at Briggs Stadium in Detroit (September 20).

*Jackie Robinson led the UCLA football team to an undefeated season and, in the same year, was the top scorer in the Pacific Coast Conference for basketball.

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Statistics

*The median income of white and non-white wage and salary workers, respectively, were: Male: white $1,112,  non-white $460; female: white $676, non-white $246.

In 13 Southern states, only 99 of the 774 public libraries were open to African Americas.

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Visual Arts

*The Baltimore Museum of Art mounted a major exhibition, "Contemporary Negro Art," featuring the works of Richmond Barthe, Aaron Douglas, Jacob Lawrence, and others.

*Painter Hale Woodruff created murals of the Amistad mutiny for Talladega College in Alabama and was named professor of art at Atlanta University.

Hale Woodruff, a painter famous for his abstract modernist landscapes, was commissioned to do the Amistad murals showing scenes of the slave revolt for Talladega College.  In the same year, Woodruff became professor of art at Atlanta University, and in 1941 began sponsoring annual art shows there.

*Augusta Savage completed her sculpture Lift Every Voice and Sing, commissioned by the New York World's Fair.

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