James Edward Cleveland (b. December 5, 1931, Chicago, Illinois - d. February 9, 1991, Culver City, California) was a gospel singer, musician, and composer. Known as the King of Gospel music, Cleveland was a driving force behind the creation of the modern gospel sound by incorporating traditional black gospel, modern soul, pop, and jazz in arrangements for mass choirs. Throughout his career, Cleveland appeared on hundreds of recordings, won 4 Grammy Awards, and received a star along the Hollywood Walk of Fame. 

Born in Chicago, Illinois, Cleveland began singing as a boy soprano at Pilgrim Baptist Church where Thomas A. Dorsey was minister of music and Roberta Martin was pianist for the choir. He strained his vocal cords as a teenager while part of a local gospel group, leaving the distinctive gravelly voice that was his hallmark in his later years. The change in his voice led him to focus on his skills as a pianist and later as a composer and arranger. For his pioneering accomplishments and contributions, he is regarded by many to be one of the greatest gospel singers that ever lived.

In 1950, Cleveland joined The Gospelaires, a trio led by Norsalus McKissick and Bessie Folk. His arrangements modernized such traditional standards as "(Give Me That) Old Time Religion" and "It's Me O Lord". After the trio disbanded, an associate of the group, Roberta Martin, hired him as a composer and arranger.

Cleveland subsequently went to work for Albertina Walker, popularly referred to as the "Queen of Gospel" and The Caravans as a composer, arranger, pianist, and occasional singer/narrator. In November 1954, Albertina Walker provided him the opportunity to do his very first recording. By staying out of the studio for a while, she convinced States Records to allow him to record with her group. He continued to record with The Caravans until States closed down in 1957.

Throughout this period, Cleveland recorded with other groups like The Gospel All-Stars and The Gospel Chimes, mixing pop ballad influences with traditional shouting.

In 1959, he recorded a version of Ray Charles' hit, "Hallelujah I Love Her So", as a solo artist.

Cleveland signed with Savoy Records in 1962, going on to release a huge catalog of black gospel recordings, many of which were recorded in a live concert setting.

He became known by more than just the professionals within gospel music with his version of the Soul Stirrers' song, "The Love of God", backed by the Voices of Tabernacle from Detroit, Michigan.  Cleveland moved to Los Angeles, California, to become Minister of Music at Grace Memorial Church of God in Christ where he attained even greater popularity working with keyboardist  Billy Preston and the Angelic Choir of Nutley, New Jersey. His 1963 recording of "Peace Be Still", an obscure 18th-century piece, sold hundreds of thousands of copies. He would then return to touring with the newly organized James Cleveland Singers which included Odessa McCastle, Georgia White, Eugene Bryant, and Billy Preston, among others.

In 1964, Cleveland re-organized The James Cleveland Singers which included Odessa McCastle, Roger Roberts, and Gene Viale.

In 1965, Cleveland added Clyde Brown and Charles Barnett to his group which by then was traveling extensively throughout the United States and abroad into the late 1960s, performing in all major venues. This collaboration produced such recordings as "Heaven That Will Be Good Enough For Me", "Two Wings", and "The Lord Is Blessing Me Right Now".

From the 1970s until 1990, Cleveland would bring together a number of artists to back him on appearances and records. Additionally, he himself backed other acts, contributing to the recordings of such well known artists as Aretha Franklin and Elton John. He also continued to appear and record with some of the most notable gospel choirs of the time.

The documentary film "Gospel" (1983) features James Cleveland and the Southern California Community Choir, Walter Hawkins and the Mighty Clouds of Joy, Shirley Caesar, Twinkie Clark and the Clark Sisters. The film was directed by David Leivick and Frederick A. Ritzenberg.

Cleveland capitalized on his success by founding his own choir, the Southern California Community Choir, as well as Cornerstone Institutional Baptist Church which grew from ten to thousands of members throughout the remainder of his life. During this time, he taught others how to achieve the modern gospel sound through his annual Gospel Singers Workshop Convention put on by the Gospel Music Workshop of America (or, the GMWA), an organization that Cleveland co-founded with Albertina Walker. The GMWA produced, among others, John P. Kee, Kirk Franklin, and Yolanda Adams.  

On February 9, 1991, James Cleveland died in Culver City, California.

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*Lionel Frederick "Freddy" Cole (b. October 15, 1931, Chicago, Illinois), a jazz singer and pianist, whose recording career has spanned over fifty years, was born in Chicago, Illinois. He was leader of the Freddy Cole Quartet, which regularly toured the United States, Europe, the Far East and South America. He was also the brother of musicians Nat King Cole and Ike Cole, father of Lionel Cole and uncle of Natalie Cole, Timolin Cole and Casey Cole.

Freddy Cole was born to Edward and Paulina Cole, and grew up in Chicago with siblings Eddie, Ike and Nat King Cole. He began playing piano at the age of six, and continued his musical education at the Roosevelt Institute in Chicago. He moved to New York in 1951, where he studied at the Juilliard School of Music, before completing a master's degree at the New England Conservatory of Music.
Following the moderate success of Whispering Grass in 1953, Cole spent several months on the road with Johnny Coles and Benny Golson as the Earl Bostic band.  He went on to work with Grover Washington, Jr. and to record jingles for various companies, including Turner Classic Movies.
During the 1970s, Cole recorded several albums for European and English based labels. He was the subject of the 2006 documentary The Cole Nobody Knows.  In June of that year, Cole was added to the Steinway Artist roster.
Cole was inducted into the Georgia Music Hall of Fame in 2007. In July 2009, he released a recording featuring his own quartet (guitarist Randy Napoleon, drummer Curtis Boyd, and bassist Elias Bailey), along with alto saxophonist Jerry Weldon and pianist John DiMartino, playing live at Dizzy's jazz club in Lincoln Center. His 2010 album, Freddy Cole Sings Mr. B, was nominated for the Grammy in the category Best Vocal Jazz Album. The album features tenor Houston Person, pianist John DiMartino, guitarist/arranger Randy Napoleon, drummer Curtis Boyd, and bassist Elias Bailey.
Cole's influences included John Lewis, Oscar Peterson, Teddy Wilson and Billy Eckstine.

 *****
*Cardiss Collins, the first African American woman to represent Illinois in Congress, was born in St. Louis, Missouri (September 24).

Cardiss Hortense Collins, (née Robertson) (b. September 24, 1931, St. Louis, Missouri – d. February 3, 2013, Arlington, Virginia), was a Democratic politician from Illinois who served in the United States House of Representatives from 1973 to 1997. She was the first African American woman to represent the Midwest in Congress. Collins was elected to Congress in the June 5, 1973 special election to replace her husband, George, who had died in the December 8, 1972 United Airlines Flight 553 plane crash. The seat had been renumbered from the 6th district to the 7th when she took the seat. She had previously worked as an accountant in various state government positions.

Throughout her political career, she was a champion for women’s health and welfare issues. In 1975, she was instrumental in prompting the Social Security Administration to revise Medicare regulations to cover the cost of post-mastectomy breast prosthesis, which before then had been considered cosmetic.  In 1979, she was elected as president of the Congressional Black Caucus, a position she used to become an occasional critic of President Jimmy Carter. She later became the caucus vice chairman. In the 1980s, Collins warded off two primary challenges from Alderman Danny K. Davis, who would finally be elected to replace her in 1996. In 1990, Collins, along with 15 other African-American women and men, formed the African-American Women for Reproductive Freedom. In 1991, Collins was named chair of the Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations. Her legislative interests were focused on establishing universal health insurance, providing for gender equity in college sports, reforming federal child care facilities. Collins gained a brief national prominence in 1993 as the chairwoman of a congressional committee investigating college sports and as a critic of the NCAA. During her last term (1995–1997), she served as ranking member of the Government Reform and Oversight Committee. She also engaged in an intense debate with Representative Henry Hyde over Medicaid funding of abortion that year. 

Collins did not seek re-election in 1996, citing her age and the Republican majority in the House. In 2004, she was selected by Nielsen Media Research to head a task force examining the representation of African Americans in TV rating samples. Collins lived in Alexandria, Virginia, until her death on February 3, 2013, at the age of 81. 

*****

 *Sam Cooke, a trailblazing singer best known for the civil rights anthem "A Change Is Gonna Come", was born in Clarksdale, Mississippi (January 22).

 Sam Cooke, byname of Samuel Cook (b. January 22, 1931, Clarksdale, Mississippi — d. December 11, 1964, Los Angeles, California) was a singer, songwriter, producer, and entrepreneur. Cooke was a major figure in the history of popular music and, along with Ray Charles, one of the most influential black vocalists of the post-World War II period. If Charles represented raw soul,  Cooke symbolized sweet soul. To his many celebrated disciples — Smokey Robinson, James Taylor, and Michael Jackson among them — he was an icon of unrivaled stature.

Cooke’s career came in two phases. As a member of the groundbreaking Soul Stirrers, a premier gospel group of the 1950s, he electrified the African American church community nationwide with a light, lilting vocal style that soared rather than thundered. “Nearer to Thee” (1955), “Touch the Hem of His Garment” (1956), and “Jesus, Wash Away My Troubles” (1956) were major gospel hits.
Cooke’s decision to turn his attention to pop music in 1957 had tremendous implications in the black musical community. There long had been a taboo against such a move, but Cooke broke the mold. He reinvented himself as a romantic crooner in the manner of Nat King Cole.  His strength was in his smoothness. He wrote many of his best songs himself, including his first hit, the ethereal "You Send Me," which shot to number one on all charts in 1957 and established Cooke as a superstar.
While other rhythm-and-blues artists stressed visceral sexuality, Cooke was essentially a spiritualist, even in the domain of romantic love. When he did sing dance songs—“Twistin’ the Night Away” (1962), “Shake” (1965)—he did so with a delicacy theretofore unknown in rock music. Cooke also distinguished himself as an independent businessman, heading his own publishing, recording, and management firms. He broke new ground by playing nightclubs, such as the Copacabana in New York City, previously off-limits to rhythm-and-blues acts.
The tragedy of his demise in 1964—he was shot to death at age 33 by a motel manager—is shrouded in mystery. But the mystery has done nothing to damage the strength of his legacy. “A Change Is Gonna Come” (1965) remains his signature song, an anthem of hope and boundless optimism that expresses the genius of his poetry and sweetness of his soul. Sam Cooke was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1986.
*****

*Comer Cottrell, the founder of Pro Line Corporation and a co-owner of the Texas Rangers, was born in Mobile, Alabama (December 7). 

Comer Joseph Cottrell (b. December 7, 1931, Mobile, Alabama - d. October 3, 2014, Dallas, Texas) was the founder of Pro-Line Corporationand philanthropist Comer Joseph Cottrell was born December 7, 1931 in Mobile, Alabama. His parents, Comer J., Sr. and Helen Smith Cottrell were Catholics. As a youngster, Cottrell and his brother, Jimmy, turned a pair of bunnies into a business, including selling their progeny as Easter bunnies, meat and fur. Cottrell attended Heart of Mary Elementary and Secondary Schools. At age seventeen, Cottrell joined the United States Air Force where he attained the rank of First Sergeant and managed an Air Force PX in Okinawa. Cottrell attended the University of Detroit before leaving the service in 1954. He joined Sears Roebuck in 1964 and rose to the position of division manager in Los Angeles, California.

In 1968, with an initial investment of $600.00, Cottrell and a friend got into the black hair care business. Then, with his brother, Jimmy, Cottrell manufactured strawberry scented oil sheen for Afro hairstyles and founded Pro-Line Corporation in 1970. By 1973, he made his first million dollars in sales. In 1979, Cottrell took the $200.00 “Jerry Curl” out of the beauty shop and into black homes with his $8.00 Pro-Line “Curly Kit”, which increased his sales from one million dollars a year to ten million dollars in the first six months. Shortly thereafter Cottrell moved Pro-Line to Dallas, Texas. At the top of the ethnic hair care business, Cottrell became a part owner, with George W. Bush of the Texas Rangers professional baseball team in 1989; turning a $3 million dollar profit on a $500,000.00 investment. He recently founded FCC Investment Corporation.

In 1990, he purchased and restored the 131-acre, HBCU, Bishop College campus for $1.5 million and transferred it to A.M.E. Paul Quinn College. Cottrell is a trustee of Northwood University and a member of the Dallas Chamber of Commerce, the North Texas Commission, and the Dallas Citizens Council. He is the former chairman of the Texas Cosmetology Commission and vice chair of the Texas Youth Commission. He has been a board member or officer of NAACP, National Urban League, YMCA, Dallas Family Hospital, Better Business Bureau, Compton College Foundation, Paul Quinn College and Baylor University Foundation. Cottrell was former vice chair of the Dallas Black Chamber of Commerce. Recipient of scores of awards, Cottrell hosted a yearly “Taste of Cottrell” event in Dallas.

*****

*Dancer Carmen de Lavallade was born in Los Angeles (March 5).

Carmen de Lavallade (born March 6, 1931), American actress, dancer and choreographer,
was born in Los Angeles, California, on March 6, 1931, to Creole parents from New Orleans, Louisiana. She was raised by her aunt, Adele, who owned one of the first African American history bookshops on Central Avenue. De Lavallade's cousin, Janet Collins, was the first African-American prima ballerina at the Metropolitan Opera. 
De Lavallade began studying ballet with Melissa Blake at the age of 16. After graduation from Thomas Jefferson High School in Los Angeles was awarded a scholarship to study dance with Lester Horton. 

De Lavallade became a member of the Lester Horton Dance Theater in 1949 where she danced as a lead dancer until her departure for New York City with Alvin Ailey in 1954. Like all of Horton's students, de Lavallade studied other art forms, including painting, acting, music, set design and costuming, as well as ballet and other forms of modern and ethnic dance. She studied dancing with ballerina Carmelita Maracci and acting with Stella Adler.  In 1954, de Lavallade made her Broadway debut partnered with Alvin Ailey in Truman Capote's musical House of Flowers (starring Pearl Bailey).

In 1955, de Lavallade married dancer/actor Geoffrey Holder, whom she had met while working on House of Flowers.  It was with Holder that de Lavallade choreographed her signature solo Come Sunday, to a black spiritual sung by Odetta.  The following year, de Lavallade danced as the prima ballerina in Samson and Delilah, and Aida at the Metropolitan Opera. 

She made her television debut in John Butler's ballet Flight, and in 1957, she appeared in the television production of Duke Ellington's A Drum Is a Woman.  She appeared in several off-Broadway productions including Othello and Death of a Salesman.  An introduction to 20th Century Fox executives by Lena Horne led to more acting roles between 1952 and 1955.  She appeared in several films including Carmen Jones (1954) with Dorothy Dandridge and Odds Against Tomorrow (1959) with Harry Belafonte.


De Lavallade was a principal guest performer with the Alvin Ailey Dance Company on the company's tour of Asia and in some countries the company was billed as de Lavallade-Ailey American Dance Company.  Other performances included dancing with Donald McKayle and appearing in Agnes de Mille's American Ballet Theatre productions of The Four Marys and The Frail Quarry in 1965.  She joined the Yale School of Drama as a choreographer and performer-in-residence in 1970.  She staged musicals, plays and operas, and eventually became a professor and member of the Yale Repertory Theater.  Between 1990 and 1993, de Lavallade returned to the Metropolitan Opera as choreographer for Porgy and Bess and Die Meistersinger.

In 2003, de Lavallade appeared in the rotating cast of the off-Broadway staged reading of Wit & Wisdom.  In 2010, she appeared in a one-night-only concert semi-staged reading of Evening Primrose by Stephen Sondheim. 

De Lavallade had resided in New York City with her husband Geoffrey Holder until his death on October 5, 2014. Their lives were the subject of the 2005 Linda Atkinson and Nick Doob documentary Carmen and Geoffrey. The couple had one son, Léo. De Lavallade's brother-in-law was Boscoe Holder.  

In 2004 de Lavallade received the Black History Month Lifetime Achievement Award and the Rosie Award (named for Rosetta LeNoire and "given to individuals who demonstrate extraordinary accomplishment and dedication in the theatrical arts and to corporations that work to promote opportunity and diversity"), the Bessie Award in 2006, and the Capezio Dance Award in 2007,as well as an honorary Doctor of Fine Arts degree from the Julliard School in 2008.

*****

 *David C. Driskell, an artist and art historian, was born in Eatonton, Georgia (June 7).

David C. Driskell (b. June 7, 1931, Eatonton, Georgia) was a scholar in the field of African-American art and an emeritus professor at the University of Maryland, College Park. 
Driskell earned a Master of Fine Arts degree from Catholic University and received nine Honorary Doctorate degrees. In 2000, Driskell was honored by President Bill Clinton as one of 12 recipients of the National Humanities Medal. 

*****
*Ermest Adolphus Finney, Jr., the first African American Supreme Court Justice appointed to the South Carolina Supreme Court since the Reconstruction Era, was born in Smithfield, Virginia (March 23).
Ernest Adolphus Finney, Jr. (b. March 23, 1931, Smithfield, Virginia) was born in Smithfield, Virginia. His mother died when he was ten days old, so he was raised by his father, Dr. Ernest A. Finney, Sr.  Finney earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from Claflin College in 1952. He then enrolled in South Carolina State College's School of Law, from which he graduated in 1954. In the beginning, he was unable to find work as a lawyer, so he followed in his father's footsteps and worked as a teacher. In 1960, he moved to Sumter and began a full-time law practice.
In 1961, Finney represented the Friendship 9, a group of black junior college students arrested and charged when trying to desegregate McCrory’s lunch counter in Rock Hill, South Carolina.  In 1963, he served as chairman of the South Carolina Commission on Civil Rights. Finney was elected to the South Carolina House of Representatives in 1972. He was subsequently appointed a member of the House Judiciary Committee, making him the first African-American to serve on that key committee in modern times. Finney was one of the founders of the Legislative Black Caucus and served as charter Chairperson from 1973 to 1975. Among Finney's other accomplishments are  a position on the National College of State Trial Judges, 1977; Honorary Doctor of Laws Degree, The Citadel & Johnson C. Smith University, 1995; Doctor of Humane Letters, South Carolina State University, 1996; Doctor of Laws, Morris College, 1996; Doctorate, Claflin University; Honoree, South Carolina Trial Lawyers Association, 1993; elected and qualified Judge of the Third Judicial Circuit, 1976; and elected and qualified Associate Justice, 1985.
In May 1994, the state's general assembly elected Ernest Finney to the position of Chief Justice of the State Supreme Court, effective December 1994, making him the first African-American Chief Justice of South Carolina since Reconstruction. In 1976, he won an election to become South Carolina's first black circuit judge. He was on the state Supreme Court from1985 to 2000.
Finney retired from the state Supreme Court in 2000 and was named interim president of South Carolina State University in 2002.

In 2015, Finney represented the surviving eight members of the Friendship Nine at the court hearing where their convictions were overturned.
*****
*Marla Gibbs, an actress, singer, writer and producer, was born in Chicago, Illinois (June 14).

Marla Gibbs (b. Margaret Theresa Bradley, June 14, 1931, Chicago, Illinois) is best known for her role as Louise and George Jefferson's feisty maid, Florence Johnston, in the long-running CBS sitcom, The Jeffersons (1975–85), for which she received five nominations (1981-85) for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstancing Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series.  She also starred in the show's spin-off Checking In (1981). From 1985 to 1990, Gibbs had the leading role as Mary Jenkins in the NBC sitcom, 227, which she also co-produced and sang on the theme song. Gibbs won a total of seven NAACP Image Awards.  
In later years, Gibbs played supporting roles in films The Meteor Man (1993), Lost & Found (1999), The Visit (2000), The Brothers (2001), and Madea's Witness Protection (2012).
Gibbs was born Margaret Theresa Bradley on June 14, 1931, at Cook County Hospital in Chicago, Illinois, to Ophelia Birdie (née Kemp) and Douglas Bradley. She attended Wendell Phillips Academy High School in the Bronzeville neighborhood on Chicago's south side graduating in 1949. Shortly after high school, Gibbs moved to Detroit, Michigan,  where she attended Peters Business School. She worked as a reservations agent for United Airlines before relocating with her children from Detroit to Los Angeles.
Gibbs got her first acting job in the early 1970s, in the blaxploitation films Sweet Jesus, Preacher Man and Black Belt Jones. In 1975, she was cast as Florence Johnston,  the family's maid, in the CBS comedy series The Jeffersons. For her performance on the series, Gibbs was nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series five times, and once for a Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress - Series, Miniseries or Television Film.  In 1981, she starred in the short-lived spin-off of The Jeffersons, titled Checking In. 
In 1985, after The Jeffersons was cancelled after 11 seasons, Gibbs became the lead actress in the NBC sitcom, 227. The series aired until 1990, producing 116 episodes. Two decades later, Gibbs teamed again with former 227 co-star and long-time friend Jackee Harry in The First Family, where Gibbs had a recurring role as Harry's on-screen mother Grandma Eddy. Then, she again worked with Harry in the independent film Forbidden Woman.
Gibbs had a number of supporting film roles, and guest starred on The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Touched by an Angel (with longtime friend Della Reese), Judging Amy, ER, and Southland.  From 1998 to 2002, she had a recurring role on The Hughleys. In 2012, Gibbs appeared in the Tyler Perry film Madea's Witness Protection, and in 2014 she starred in the independent film, Grantham & Rose. In 2015, Gibbs made a cameo appearance in an episode of Shonda Rhimes' drama series, Scandal.  
Gibbs owned a jazz club in South Central Los Angeles called Marla's Memory Lane Jazz and Supper Club from 1981 to 1999.

 *****
*John Gilmore, an avant-garde jazz saxophonist known for his tenure with keyboardist/bandleader Sun Ra from the 1950s to the 1990s, was born in Summit, Mississippi. 


John Gilmore (b. September 28, 1931, Summit, Mississippi  – d. August 19, 1995, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) grew up in Chicago and played clarinet from the age of 14. He took up the tenor saxophone while serving in the United States Air Force from 1948 to 1952, then pursued a musical career, playing briefly with pianist Earl Hines before encountering Sun Ra in 1953.
For the next four decades, Gilmore recorded and performed almost exclusively with Sun Ra. This was puzzling to some, who noted Gilmore's talent, and thought he could be a major star like John Coltrane or Sonny Rollins.  Despite being five years older than Gilmore, Coltrane was impressed with his playing, and took informal lessons from Gilmore in the late 1950s. Coltrane's epochal, proto–free jazz "Chasin' the Trane" was inspired partly by Gilmore's sound.
In 1957, Gilmore co-led with Clifford Jordan a Blue Note date that is regarded as a hard bop classic: Blowing In from Chicago.  Horace Silver, Curly Russell, and Art Blakey provided the rhythm section. In the mid-1960s, Gilmore toured with the Jazz Messengers and he participated in recording sessions with Paul Bley, Andrew Hill (Andrew! and Compulsion), Pete La Roca (Turkish Women at the Bath), McCoy Tyner (Today and Tomorrow) and a handful of others. In 1970, Gilmore co-led a recording with Jamaican trumpeter Dizzy Reece. His main focus throughout, however, remained with the Sun Ra Arkestra.
Gilmore's devotion to Sun Ra was due, in part, to the latter's use of harmony, which Gilmore considered both unique and a logical extension of bebop.
Gilmore occasionally doubled on drums and also played bass clarinet until Sun Ra hired Robert Cummings as a specialist on the latter instrument in the mid-1950s. However, tenor sax was his main instrument and Gilmore himself made a huge contribution to Sun Ra's recordings and was the Arkestra's leading sideman, being given solos on almost every track on which he appeared.
Many fans of jazz saxophone consider John Gilmore to be among the greatest ever, his fame shrouded in the relative anonymity of being a member of Sun Ra's Arkestra.
After Sun Ra's 1993 death, Gilmore led Ra's Arkestra for a few years before his own death from emphysema.

*****

*Vincent Harding, a historian and scholar, was born in Harlem, New York (July 25). 

Vincent Gordon Harding (July 25, 1931 – May 19, 2014) was an African-American historian and a scholar of various topics with a focus on American religion and society.  A social activist as well, he was perhaps best known for his work with and writings about Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., whom Harding knew personally. Besides having authored numerous books such as There Is A River and Wade in the Water: The Wisdom of the Spirituals, he served as co-chairperson of the social unity group Veterans of Hope Project and as Professor of Religion and Social Transformation at Illiff School of Theology in Denver, Colorado. 

Harding was born in Harlem, New York, and attended New York public schools, graduating from Morris High School in the Bronx in 1948. After finishing high school, he enrolled in the City College of New York, where he received a B.A. in History in 1952. The following year he graduated from Columbia University, where he earned an M.S. in Journalism. Harding served in the United States Army from 1953-1955. In 1956 he received an M.A. in History at the University of Chicago. In 1965 he received his Ph.D. in History from the University of Chicago, where he was advised by Martin E. Marty. 
In 1960, Harding and his wife, Rosemarie Freeney Harding, moved to Atlanta, Georgia to participate in the Southern Freedom Movement (also known as the American civil rights movement) as representatives of the Mennonite Church. The Hardings co-founded Mennonite House, an interracial voluntary service center and Movement gathering place in Atlanta. The couple traveled throughout the South in the early 1960s working as reconcilers, counselors and participants in the Movement, assisting the anti-segregation campaigns of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). Vincent Harding occasionally drafted speeches for Martin Luther King, including King's famous anti-Vietnam speech, "A Time to Break Silence" which King delivered on April 4, 1967 at Riverside Church in New York City, exactly a year before he was assassinated.
Harding taught at the University of Pennsylvania, Spelman College, Temple University, Swarthmore College, and Pendle Hill Quaker Center for Study and Contemplation. He was the first director of the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Center and of the Institute of the Black World, both located at Atlanta. He also became senior academic consultant for the PBS television series Eyes on the Prize.
Harding served as Chairperson of the Veterans of Hope Project: A Center for the Study of Religion and Democratic Renewal, located at the Iliff School of Theology in Denver, Colorado. Harding taught at Iliff as Professor of Religion and Social Transformation from 1981 to 2004.

*****

*Jean Louise Harris, the first African American to be named to the Virginia state Cabinet as Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Resources, was born in this year.

When Jean Louise Harris (b. 1931 - d. December 2001, Eden Prairie, Minnesota) was a child growing up in segregated Richmond, Virginia, her mother, Jean Pace Harris, took her and her sister shopping one day at Charles Department Store, which like many public places had separate “colored” and “white” water fountains. Harris grew thirsty inside, and her mother directed her to the white water fountain. Before Harris could get a sip, a white woman rushed toward them and said, “You can’t drink there.”
Without hesitating, Harris’ mother calmly but firmly told her daughter, “Drink.”
Then she turned to the white woman, looked her in the eye, and asked, “Why?”
It was a challenge more than a question.
The woman retreated without saying another word.
The moment was not an isolated one in Harris’ childhood. Years before the integration of lunch counters in the South, Harris’ mother would take her children to the lunch counter at Woolworth's, sit them at the counter and wait to be served. The first time Jean Pace Harris did this, the clerk behind the counter was so taken aback she did not really know what to do. She did not know how to handle this brown woman and two brown children sitting there and the white customers on either side looked and then in embarrassment looked straight ahead. No one wanted to deal with this. The brown people were served. And Jean Pace Harris would do this repeatedly.  She would repeatedly challenge the segregation rules and the businesses never knew what to do. So rather than create a great brouhaha, the Harrises would be served.
One store that did not sell clothes to blacks always sold clothes to Jean Pace Harris, She simply walked inside and bought them as if she belonged, because she believed she did. Once, as Jean Pace Harris inspected a hat at Thalhimer’s, a saleswoman sternly warned her that blacks could not try on the hats. Jean Pace Harris responded by giving the saleswoman a tongue-lashing. Then she modeled the hat, returned it to its place and said she guessed she did not need it and left.
When Harris’ segregated elementary school supplied its students with battered, torn books handed down from the white schools – books that were covered in the scrawls and notes of the students who had previously owned them – Jean Pace Harris erupted in righteous outrage, raising an uproar at a school board meeting and declaring, “I will not accept this.” The books were replaced with new ones.
Inspired in part by her “quiet fireball” of a mother, who refused to bend to unjust rules, and her physician father, Vernon Joseph Jackson Harris, a family practitioner who would routinely take her on rounds and house calls, Jean Louise Harris may have been the ideal candidate to integrate the Medical College of Virginia (now the Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine), which she did in 1951 when she became the first-ever black student at the venerable medical school. Harris thrived as a student at the Medical College of Virginia (MCV) and then throughout a rich and varied career that followed. 
Among her many accomplishments, Jean Louise Harris was both the first black and the first woman to ever serve in a Virginia governor’s cabinet, holding the post of secretary of health and human resources from 1978 to 1982. Also, in the realm of public policy, Harris served as a consultant on health issues to the United States Agency for International Development, the National Institutes of Health, the United States Department of Health and Human Services, and the United States Congress. She held advisory positions on health commissions for multiple presidents. In 1990, she ran unsuccessfully for lieutenant governor in Minnesota, becoming that state’s first black candidate for statewide office.
Jean Louise Harris also served stints on the faculty of MCV (where she was the school’s first full-time black faculty member), Howard University in Washington, D.C., Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and the Drew Postgraduate School of Medicine in Los Angeles. In addition, she held posts as director of medical affairs for the University of Minnesota Hospital and Clinic, as vice president with Control Data Corp. and as president and CEO of the Ramsey Foundation.
At the time of her death (in December 2001) following a three-year battle with lung cancer, Harris was the mayor of Eden Prairie, Minnesota, a city near Minneapolis. In a life filled with firsts, she was that municipality’s first black mayor.
Jean Louise Harris grew up in the Church Hill neighborhood of Richmond, not far from the MCV campus. Her neighbors included L. Douglas Wilder, the future governor of Virginia, who she remembered as being like “Peck’s Bad Boy” – an infamously mischievous child who starred in a series of newspaper stories and books – while a classmate of hers at George Mason Elementary School. She later graduated from Armstrong High School, before attending Virginia Union University, where she was a standout student.
Harris knew she wanted to be a doctor like her father, whom she described as her “idol,” but she and her parents believed attending MCV was a long shot, assuming she had little chance of being accepted at a school that had yet to enroll a black student. However, it appears that MCV ultimately saw “the handwriting on the wall” ... that school desegregation was in motion. The school accepted her, and she joined the 1951 incoming class. Instead of leaving the state for her medical education, as would have been necessary, Harris would be staying close to home.
The initial adjustment to medical school was a difficult one for Harris – not as much academically as socially. She had never before been in the presence of more than a few whites at a time and never in such isolation. Years later, she would laugh with her classmates about the confusion she had felt among them her first days on campus. In fact, she said, she had not been able to tell one white person from another for the first six to eight weeks of class. They had all blended together. Her classmates, meanwhile, “did not know what to expect of me either. The only blacks they had seen had been principally in their kitchens.”
One early incident poignantly illustrated her circumstances. She was grouped with other new students for their first dissection of a human body. They were assigned a cadaver, but it was too rotten and they had to get a new one. In anticipation, one of her classmates remarked offhandedly, “Gee, I hope we get us a big fat nigger mammy.”
The student immediately “went absolutely red and everything went quiet,” Harris remembered. Harris was astonished but determined not to show it. She searched for a response and replied – with what she remembered as equanimity – “Do you think that one will be easier to dissect than the one we have now?” The class, noticeably and collectively embarrassed, proceeded with the dissection.
Afterward, the student who had made the remark approached Harris at her locker and said, “I hope you will forgive me. I wasn’t thinking.”
Soon, Harris felt a bond develop with her classmates and understood there was a level of acceptance. “They began to feel I was a part of that community,” she said. When she joined some fellow students for a study session at the Skull and Bones, a campus restaurant, the manager refused to serve her. Her classmates, however, responded that they would not be served there either, providing her with a jolt of encouragement, and then left with her to study elsewhere.

Harris’ presence at MCV was influential not just for the many aspiring black physicians who would follow Harris to MCV after she broke the school’s color barrier. It also was critical for white students, who needed to have their world expanded and their assumptions and prejudices confronted head on. It helped that Harris was such a likable person and impressive student.
Harris would later recall the satisfaction she felt proving herself in the classroom among the overwhelmingly white and male student body and faculty. She served notice with her first neuroanatomy examination – she scored a 96 – that she was more than proficient enough to belong.
However, Harris’ status as a woman made her attempt to "belong" doubly difficult, forcing her to overcome twice the doubts about her ability to succeed. She had just six fellow women in her class, and the teachers, as well as the boys in the class, let it be known that they considered the women to be intruders. We were taking up a slot that should have rightfully have gone to another man.
In that climate, Harris was comforted by the friendships she formed with some of her fellow women students. Still, when a new sorority was formed to provide support for the small band of female students, Harris was the only one not invited. Two of her classmates refused to join in protest. 
Faculty and fellow students were not the only ones who had to adjust to Harris’ presence. There were also the patients. During her clinical rotations, Harris would often care for patients who could not believe she was black. They openly wondered if she was Spanish or Puerto Rican or just deeply tanned from a trip down South. 
Her race, however, never affected her training, she said – not during her time in medical school nor during her residency at MCV. She was relieved that discrimination never kept her from learning and practicing what she needed to know, and she appreciated that MCV ensured her experience fell in line with her peers.
Harris graduated in the spring of 1955 in the top five of her class. The magnitude of Harris’ accomplishment became apparent soon after her graduation when Ebony magazine featured her on the cover of their July 1955 issue. Less conspicuously, but perhaps even more powerfully to Harris, the same faculty members she had fought to convince of her worthiness made an effort to advocate for her in her professional pursuits. Several of them wrote letters of recommendation to colleagues, and two worked to get her admitted to study at the Octagon Institute in Paris.
She did not opt for that path, instead choosing a medical career in the United States and building a family with her husband Leslie Ellis, with whom she had three daughters.
In her own way, Harris spent her life perpetually in her mother’s footsteps, refusing to bow to indignities and determined to push through apparent obstacles. She marveled at the influence she had, and she reveled in the rewarding opportunity to observe – and participate in – steady, if ever-incomplete progress.

*****

*Tony Award winning actor James Earl Jones, best known as being the voice of Darth Vader in the original Star Wars trilogy, was born in Arkabutla, Mississippi (January 17).

James Earl Jones, (b. January 17, 1931, Arkabutla, Mississippi) made his name in leading stage roles in Shakespeare's Othello and in The Great White Hope,  a play about the tragic career of the first African American heavyweight boxing champion, loosely based on the life of Jack Johnson.  Beginning in the 1970s, he appeared frequently on television and in film.
His father, the actor Robert Earl Jones, left his family before James Earl Jones was born, and the youth was raised largely by his grandparents in Michigan. He attended the University of Michigan (B.A., 1953), majoring in drama and, after a brief stint in the United States Army, went to New York City, studying at the American Theatre Wing with Lee Strasberg. He acted in his first Off-Broadway production in 1957 and subsequently with the New York Shakespeare Festival in 1961–73. He won a Tony Award for his boxer role in Howard Sackler’s The Great White Hope (1968) and later starred in the film version (1970). He received critical acclaim for the two-character stage play Paul Robeson (1978) and in the title role of Othello (1981), opposite opposite Christopher Plummer's Iago.  In 1987 Jones starred in the Broadway premiere of August Wilson's Fences. His later Broadway credits include a 2008 production of Tennessee Williams' Cat on a Hot Tin Roof that featured an all-black cast, as well as productions of Driving Miss Daisy (2010), Gore Vidal's The Best Man (2012), and George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart's You Can’t Take It with You(2014).
A part in the film Dr. Strangelove (1964) began a prolific career in pictures for Jones, whose roles included an evil ruler in the fantasy film Conan the Barbarian (1982), a coal miner fighting for the right to form a union in John Sayles' Matewan (1987), and an African king who lets his son (played by Eddie Murphy) travel to the United States in the comedy Coming to America (1988). He appeared as Admiral James Greer in the film adaptations of Tom Clancy's novels about CIA agent Jack Ryan: The Hunt for Red October (1990), Patriot Games (1992), and Clear and Present Danger (1994). In 1995 he portrayed the Reverend Stephen Kumalo in the film version of Alan Paton's classic novel Cry, the Beloved Country.  Jones next starred opposite Robert Duvall in A Family Thing (1996). His big-screen appearances diminished in the 21st century, although he did take occasional supporting roles. He received an honorary Academy Award in 2011.
Known for his deep, resonant voice, Jones was cast in many voice-over roles in television advertising and in films, both as a narrator and for animated characters. He is perhaps best known for giving voice to the villain Darth Vader in the Star Wars series of movies, which began in 1977. In 1994 he provided the voice of the wise Mufasa in Disney’s The Lion King. Jones’s television work also includes a role as a private detective in Gabriel’s Fire (1990–91; retitled Pros and Cons, 1991–92), for which he won an Emmy Award for outstanding lead actor in a drama series.
*****
*Donald "Don" King, a boxing promoter whose career highlights include promoting "The Rumble in the Jungle" and the "Thrilla in Manila", was born in Cleveland, Ohio (August 20). King promoted some of the most prominent names in boxing, including Muhammad Ali, Joe Frazier, George Foreman, Larry Holmes, Mike Tyson, Evander Holyfield, Julio Cesar Chavez, Ricardo Mayorga, Andrew Golota, Bernard Hopkins, Felix Trinidad, Roy Jones, Jr., and Marco Antonio Barrera.
Don King, in full Donald King (b. August 20, 1931, Cleveland, Ohio), a boxing promoter known for his flamboyant manner and outrageous hair styled to stand straight up, first came to prominence with his promotion of the 1974 "Rumble in the Jungle" bout between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman in Kinshasa, Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo).

While growing up in Cleveland, Ohio, King considered becoming a lawyer. To finance his college education, he became a numbers runner (i.e., a courier of illegal betting slips), and in a short time he was one of the leading racketeers in Cleveland. King attended Western Reserve University (now Case Western Reserve University) in Cleveland for a year but quit to concentrate on his numbers business.
After being cleared of a 1954 murder charge, which a judge found to be justifiable homicide, King was sentenced to prison in 1967 on a manslaughter charge for beating a man to death. Paroled in 1971, King entered the business of boxing. The next year he persuaded Muhammad Ali to compete in a benefit exhibition to raise money for a Cleveland hospital. Buoyed by this success, and with Ali’s encouragement, King became a full-time promoter with the 1974 Ali-Foreman fight. King promised the boxers $5 million each for the fight. When financial backers proved difficult to enlist, King sought out Zaire’s dictator, Mobutu Sese Seko, who agreed to put up the money from his country’s treasury. Mobutu saw the match as a way of generating positive publicity about Zaire. The televised bout was a huge ratings success, and King’s career was launched.
King staged seven of Ali’s title bouts, including the legendary “Thrilla in Manila” — the 1975 fight between Ali and Joe Frazier that was viewed by more than a million people worldwide and earned Ali $6 million. He also promoted the fights of such pugilists as Sugar Ray Leonard, Leon Spinks, Roberto Duran, Julio Cesar Chavez, Mike Tyson, Evander Holyfield, and Felix Trinidad. Trinidad, however, sued King and was released from his contract. A number of boxers, including Tyson, felt defrauded by King and also filed suits against him.
King’s financial success continued into the 1980s and ’90s. In 1983 he promoted 12 world championship bouts and in 1994 he promoted 47 such bouts. King was heavily criticized, however, for a business strategy that resulted in his control over many of the top boxers, especially in the lucrative heavyweight division. King used a contractual clause that required a boxer who wished to challenge a fighter belonging to King to agree to be promoted by King in the future should he win. Thus, no matter which boxer won, King represented the winner. Those who were unwilling to sign contracts with this obligatory clause found it very difficult to obtain fights, especially title fights, with boxers who were promoted by King.
King was the focus of a myriad of criminal investigations and was indicted numerous times. In 1999 the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (the FBI) seized thousands of records from King’s offices that concerned alleged payoffs by King to the president of the International Boxing Federation for the purpose of procuring more favorable rankings for King’s boxers.
King is deemed to have been a mixed blessing to the sport of boxing. On the one hand, he organized some of the largest purses in the history of the sport and creatively promoted boxing and his bouts. On the other hand, King’s legal problems and controversial tactics reinforced the public perception of boxing as a corrupt sport.
*****

*Johnny Littlejohn, an electric blues slide guitarist active on the Chicago blues circuit from the 1950s to the 1980s, was born in Lake, Mississippi.

John Wesley Funchess (b. April 16, 1931, Lake, Mississippi – d. February 1, 1994, Chicago, Illinois) known professionally as John (or Johnny) Littlejohn, first learned to play the blues from Henry Martin, a friend of his father's. In 1946, he left home and traveled widely, spending time in Jackson, Mississippi; Arkansas; Rochester, New York; and Gary, Indiana.  He settled in Gary in 1951, playing whenever possible in the nearby Chicago area. Through his connections in Gary, he was acquainted with Joe Jackson, the patriarch of the musical Jackson family, and Littlejohn and his band reputedly served as an occasional rehearsal band for the Jackson 5 in the mid- to late 1960s.
Littlejohn played regularly in Chicago clubs (he was filmed by drummer Sam Lay playing with Howlin' Wolf's band about 1961) but did not make any studio recordings until 1968, when he cut singles for several record labels. Later that year he recorded an album for Arhoolie Records and four songs for Chess Records. The Chess tracks were not issued at the time.
Littlejohn recorded a few singles for small local labels but did not record another album until 1985, when Rooster Blues issued So-Called Friends. Soon after, he fell into ill health. He died of renal failure in Chicago, on February 1, 1994, at the age of 62.
*****

*Jimmy Lyons, an alto saxophone player best known for his long tenure in the Cecil Taylor Unit, was born in Jersey City, New Jersey. 

Jimmy Lyons (December 1, 1931 – May 19, 1986) was brought up firstly Jersey City for his first 9 years, before his mother moved the family to Harlem and then the Bronx.  He obtained his first saxophone in the mid-1940s and had lessons from Buster Bailey.
After high school, Lyons was drafted into the United States Army and spent 21 months on infantry duty in Korea, before spending around a year playing in army bands. On discharge, he attended New York University. By the end of the 1950s, he was supporting his interest in music with day jobs in the Postal Service.
In 1961, Lyons followed Archie Shepp into the saxophone role in the Cecil Taylor Unit. His post-Parker sound and strong melodic sense became a defining part of the sound of that group, from the classic 1962 Cafe Montmartre sessions onwards.
Lyons became best known for his long tenure in the Cecil Taylor Unit, being the only constant member of the pianist's group from the mid-1960s to his death, after which Taylor never worked with another musician as frequently. Lyons's playing, which usually retained a strong influence from bebop pioneer Charlie Parker, helped keep Taylor's often wildly avant garde music tethered to the jazz tradition.
During the 1970s, Lyons also ran his own group with bassoonist Karen Borca and percussionist Paul Murphy,  taking performance opportunities at the loft jazz movement around Studio Rivbea.  His group and the Unit continued a parallel development through the 1970s and 1980s, often involving the same musicians, such as trumpeter Raphe Malik, bassist William Parker and percussionist Paul Murphy. 
Lyons died from lung cancer in 1986.

*****
*Willie Howard Mays, Jr., nicknamed "The Say Hey Kid", a Major League Baseball (MLB) center fielder who spent almost all of his 22 season career playing for the New York and San Francisco Giants before finishing with the New York Mets was born in Westfield, Alabama (May 6). He was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1979, his first year of eligibility.
Willie Howard Mays, Jr. (b. May 6, 1931, Westfield, Alabama) won two National League (NL) Most Valuable Player (MVP) awards and shares with Hank Aaron and Stan Musial the record of most All-Star Games played (24). Ted Williams said, "They invented the All-Star Game for Willie Mays." Mays ended his career with 660 homeruns, third at the time of his retirement, and currently fifth all-time. He also won a record-tying 12 Gold Glove awards beginning in 1957 when the award was introduced.
Mays' career statistics and longevity in the pre-PED (pre-Performance Enhancing Drugs) era, recent acknowledgements of Mays as perhaps the finest five-tool player ever, and the overwhelming consensus of many surveys and other expert analyses carefully examining Mays' relative performance have led to a growing opinion that Mays was possibly the greatest all-around baseball player of all time. In 1999, Mays placed second on The Sporting News' "List of the 100 Greatest Baseball Players", making him the highest-ranking living player. Later that year, he was also elected to the Major League Baseball All-Century Team. Mays is one of five National League players to have had eight consecutive 100-RBI seasons, along with Mel Ott, Sammy Sosa, Chipper Jones and Albert Pujols.  Mays hit over 50 home runs in 1955 and 1965, representing the longest time span between 50-plus home run seasons for any player in Major League Baseball history. His final Major League Baseball appearance came on October 16 during game 3 of the 1973 World Series. 

Both Mays’s father and his grandfather had been baseball players. Mays, who batted and fielded right-handed, played semi-professional baseball when he was 16 years old and joined the Birmingham Black Barons of the Negro National League in 1948, playing only on Sunday during the school year. The National League New York Giants paid the Barons for his contract when he graduated from Fairfield Industrial High School in 1950. After two seasons in the minor leagues, Mays went to the Giants in 1951 and was named Rookie of the Year at the end of that season—one legendary in baseball. The Giants were far behind the Brooklyn Dodgers in the pennant race. With the great play of Mays and others, the Giants tied the Dodgers in the standings on the last day of the season, and a three-game play-off for the National League championship was won with a home run, known as “the shot heard ’round the world,” hit by the Giants’ Bobby Thomson.
Mays became known first for his spectacular leaping and diving catches before he established himself as a hitter. He served in the army (1952–54), and upon his return to baseball in the 1954 season, when the Giants won the National League pennant and the World Series, Mays led the league in hitting (.345) and had 41 home runs. In 1966 his two-year contract with the Giants (who had moved to San Francisco in 1958) gave him the highest salary of any baseball player of that time. He was traded to the New York Mets midseason in 1972 and retired after the 1973 season. Late in his career he played in the infield, mainly at first base. His career home run total was 660 and his batting average .302. Mays had 3,283 hits during his career, which made him one of the small group of players with more than 3,000 career hits. He led the league in home runs in 1955, 1962, and 1964–65, won 12 consecutive Gold Gloves (1957–68), and was named an All-Star in 20 of his 22 seasons.
After retiring as a player, Mays was a part-time coach and did public relations work for the Mets. In 1979 Mays took a public relations job with a company that was involved in gambling concerns, with the result that he was banned from baseball-related activities just three months after being elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York. In 1985 the ban was lifted, and in 1986 Mays became a full-time special assistant to the Giants. His autobiography, Say Hey (1988), was written with Lou Sahadi. In 2015 Mays was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. 
*****

Willie Mays, Baseball’s Electrifying Player of Power and Grace, Is Dead at 93

Mays, the Say Hey Kid, was the game’s exuberant embodiment of the complete player. Some say he was the greatest of them all.

By Richard Goldstein

Willie Mays, the spirited center fielder whose brilliance at the plate, in the field and on the basepaths for the Giants led many to call him the greatest all-around player in baseball history, died on Tuesday in Palo Alto, Calif. He was 93.

Larry Baer, the president and chief executive of the Giants, said Mays, the oldest living member of the Baseball Hall of Fame, died in an assisted living facility.

Mays compiled extraordinary statistics in 22 National League seasons with the Giants in New York and San Francisco and a brief return to New York with the Mets, preceded by a time in the Negro leagues, from 1948-50. He hit 660 career home runs and had 3,293 hits and a .301 career batting average.

But he did more than personify the complete ballplayer. An exuberant style of play and an effervescent personality made Mays one of the game’s, and America’s, most charismatic figures, a name that even people far afield from the baseball world recognized instantly as a national treasure.

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Charles M. Schulz was such a fan that Mays often came up by name in Schulz’s “Peanuts” comic strip. (Asked to spell “maze” in a spelling bee, Charlie Brown ventured, “M ... A ... Y... S.”) Woody Allen’s alter ego in “Manhattan” ranked Mays No. 2 on his list of joys that made life worthwhile. (Groucho Marx was No. 1.) In 1954, the R&B group the Treniers recorded “Say Hey (the Willie Mays Song).”

“When I broke in, I didn’t know many people by name,” Mays once explained, “so I would just say, ‘Say, hey,’ and the writers picked that up.”

Mays propelled himself into the Hall of Fame with thrilling flair, his cap flying off as he chased down a drive or ran the bases.

“He had an open manner, friendly, vivacious, irrepressible,” the baseball writer Leonard Koppett said of the young Mays. “Whatever his private insecurities, he projected a feeling that playing ball, for its own sake, was the most wonderful thing in the world.”

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And New York embraced this son of Alabama, putting him on a pedestal with two others who ruled the city’s center fields in an era when its teams dominated baseball. The Yankees had Mickey Mantle, the Brooklyn Dodgers had Duke Snider, and the Giants had No. 24, and a city not known for equanimity loved to argue about which team’s slugger reigned supreme.

ImageWillie Mays stands over a dugout and accepts a ball from a young fan seeking an autograph.
Mays signing autographs at the Polo Grounds on Sept. 29, 1957, the day of the Giants’ last game before leaving New York for San Francisco.Credit...The New York Times

Mays captured the ardor of baseball fans at a time when Black players were still emerging in the major leagues and segregation remained untrammeled in his native South. He was revered in Black neighborhoods, especially in Harlem, where he played stickball with youngsters outside his apartment on St. Nicholas Place — not far from the Polo Grounds, where the Giants played — and he was treated like visiting royalty at the original Red Rooster, one of Harlem’s most popular restaurants in his day.

President Barack Obama took Mays with him on his flight to the 2009 All-Star Game in St. Louis, telling him that if it hadn’t been for the changes in attitude that African-American figures like Mays and Jackie Robinson fostered, “I’m not sure that I would get elected to the White House.”

Mays and Yogi Berra, who was cited posthumously, were among 17 Americans whom Mr. Obama honored with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian award, at a White House ceremony in November 2015.

Mays played center field with daring and grace, his basket catches made at the hip, his throws embodying power and precision. His over-the-shoulder snare of a drive to deepest center field in the Polo Grounds during the 1954 World Series against the Cleveland Indians (now the Guardians) — followed by a sensational throw to second base — is remembered simply as “The Catch.”

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His frame seemed ordinary at first glance — 5 feet 11 inches and 180 pounds or so — but he had unusually large hands and outstanding peripheral vision that complemented his speed in running down balls. And he was all steel, his back exceptionally muscular.

Branch Rickey, the executive who helped break the modern major leagues’ color barrier by signing Robinson to the Dodgers, evoked the young Mays in his book “The American Diamond” (1965), recalling him “propelling the ball in one electric flash off the Polo Grounds scoreboard on the face of the upper deck in left field for a home run.”

“The ball got up there so fast, it was incredible,” Rickey wrote. “Like a pistol shot, it would crash off the tin and fall to the grass below.”

Image
Willie Mays leaps to catch a ball.
Mays in 1956 during the Giants’ spring training in Phoenix. His 7,112 putouts as an outfielder rank No. 1 in major league history.Credit...The New York Times

Mays became a hero out west as well after the Giants and the Dodgers decamped for California in 1958. Though he received a tepid reception from San Francisco fans at first, he flourished playing for them despite the high winds and cold nights at Candlestick Park. When the Giants moved to their current home, Oracle Park, in 2000, they unveiled a nine-foot-high bronze statue of Mays. The ballpark’s address: 24 Willie Mays Plaza.

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Mays’s electrifying play, and the immensity of his talents, made statistics seem lifeless. Nonetheless, his achievements in the record books were extraordinary.

He drove in more than 100 runs in 10 different seasons and scored more than 100 runs in 12 consecutive years.

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His 7,112 putouts as an outfielder rank No. 1 in major league history (he had 657 more playing first base), and he won 12 Gold Glove awards beginning in 1957, the year the honors were first bestowed.

His 660 home runs are sixth all time, behind Barry Bonds’s 762, Hank Aaron’s 755, Babe Ruth’s 714, Albert Pujols’s 703 and Alex Rodriguez’s 696.

His 2,068 runs scored put him seventh on the career list, and his 1,909 runs batted in are 12th.

His 3,293 hits put him listed as No. 13.

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He stole 338 bases at a time when the running game was not especially favored.

And he played in 150 or more games in 13 consecutive seasons.

In December 2020, Major League Baseball announced that the seven Negro leagues that operated between 1920 and 1948 would gain major league status. In accord with that, Mays’s statistical totals with the 1948 Birmingham Black Barons of the Negro American League have been added to his major league totals.

Mays was the National League rookie of the year in 1951 and was named Most Valuable Player in 1954 and 1965. He played on four pennant-winning teams (the Giants in 1951, ’54 and ’62 and the Mets in 1973), but only one World Series champion, the 1954 Giants, who swept Cleveland. He was selected for 24 All-Star Games and was the M.V.P. of the game in 1963 and 1968.

Image
A young Willie Mays in uniform, wearing a cap with an M on it.
Mays was batting .477 for the Minneapolis Millers of the American Association when he was called up by the Giants in May 1951.Credit...TRB, via Associated Press

An Associated Press poll of athletes, writers and historians in 1999 voted Mays baseball’s second-greatest figure, behind Babe Ruth.

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“Willie could do everything from the day he joined the Giants,” Leo Durocher, his manager during most of his years at the Polo Grounds, said when Mays was elected to the Hall of Fame in 1979, his first year of eligibility. “He never had to be taught a thing. The only other player who could do it all was Joe DiMaggio.”

But even DiMaggio bowed to Mays.

“Willie Mays is the closest to being perfect I’ve ever seen,” he said.

Willie Howard Mays Jr. was born on May 6, 1931, in Westfield, Ala., near Birmingham. His parents were unmarried teenagers.

His father was said to have been named for President William Howard Taft at a time when Taft’s Republican Party was considered more sympathetic to the needs of Black people than the Democrats. A steelworker and later a Pullman porter, Willie Sr. was known as Cat, for his graceful play in semipro baseball.

Willie’s mother, Annie Satterwhite, a former standout high school athlete in track and basketball, left the family when he was a baby and settled in Birmingham. She married there and had 10 children, but Mays kept in touch with her into his major league playing days.

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His father moved with him to Fairfield, another Birmingham suburb, when Willie was still young and, with his mother’s two sisters, helped raise him.

Mays became an all-around athlete at Fairfield Industrial High School, where he was taught by Angelena Rice, the mother of Condoleezza Rice, the future secretary of state. In her memoir “Extraordinary, Ordinary People” (2010), Ms. Rice wrote that Mays had remembered her mother telling him: “You’re going to be a ballplayer. If you need to leave a little early for practice, you let me know.”

When Mays joined the Birmingham Black Barons of the Negro American League in 1948, DiMaggio was his idol.

“When we were kids in the South, we would always pick one guy to emulate,” Mays told Bob Herbert of The New York Times in 2000. “Ted Williams was the best hitter, but I picked Joe to pattern myself after because he was such a great all-around player.”

(Mays’s death came as Major League Baseball was paying tribute to the Negro leagues with a series of games at the ballpark where Mays began his career, the venerable Rickwood Field in Birmingham. Mays had been invited to attend but said in a statement on Monday that he wouldn’t be able to make the trip. “I’d like to be there, but I don’t move as well as I used to,” he wrote. His death was announced to the crowd during a game.)

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Mays was signed in 1950 by a New York Giants scout, Ed Montague, who spotted him while scouting another player on the Black Barons. Mays hit .353 for the Giants’ Trenton team that year.

At the time, he was the only Black player in the Interstate League, and he endured taunts. In his Hall of Fame induction speech at Cooperstown, N.Y., he recalled one episode in Hagerstown, Md.

“The first night, I hit two home runs and a triple,” he said. “Next night, I hit two home runs and a double. On the loudspeaker, now, they say, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, we know you don’t like that kid playing center field, but please do not bother him again because he’s killing us.’”

He continued: “I went there on a Friday, they were calling me all kinds of names. By Sunday, they were cheering. And to me, I had won them over.”

Mays was batting .477 for the Minneapolis Millers of the American Association when he was called up by the Giants in May 1951. It was only four years after Robinson had become a Dodger, and there were few Black players in the majors, although the Giants had four when Mays joined them: Monte Irvin, the star outfielder; Hank Thompson, their third baseman; Ray Noble, a backup catcher; and Artie Wilson, an infielder, who was sent to the minors to make room for Mays.

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Black and white teammates remained apart early in Mays’s career. “For a while we couldn’t stay in the same hotels,” he said. “We’d get to Chicago, we’d get off on the South Side, they’d get off on the North Side.”

Image
Willie Mays holds a sack of baseball bats with his name on them.
Mays in 1951.Credit...Harry Harris/Associated Press

Mays made his debut on May 25, 1951, going without a hit in five at-bats against the Phillies in Philadelphia. He was 0 for 12 in a three-game series before the Giants returned home. But on Monday night, May 28, at the Polo Grounds, he connected off the future Hall of Fame left-hander Warren Spahn of the Boston Braves for his first major league hit, a towering home run to left field in the first inning.

From the start, Durocher saw greatness in Mays.

“The word is magnetism,” Durocher said in his autobiography “Nice Guys Finish Last” (1975, with Ed Linn). “A personal magnetism which infects everybody around them with the feeling that this is the man who will carry them to victory.”

But Mays struggled at the plate through the spring of 1951, and at one point he tearfully told Durocher that he couldn’t hit big league pitching. Durocher told him that he was the best center fielder he had ever seen and assured him that he would remain in the lineup.

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The Giants staged a storied revival that season, coming from 13½ games behind the Dodgers in mid-August to force the playoff series that they won in Game 3 on Bobby Thomson’s three-run homer off Ralph Branca in the ninth inning — the “shot heard ’round the world.” Thomson’s drive at the Polo Grounds came with runners on second and third and one out. When he connected, Mays was in the on-deck circle.

When the Giants faced the Yankees in the World Series, DiMaggio was playing center field for the last time, and Mantle, Mays’s fellow rookie, was in right field. The Yankees won the Series in six games, but Mays was on his way to stardom. In winning the N.L. rookie of the year honors, he batted .274 and hit 20 home runs.

After playing in 34 games in the 1952 season, Mays entered the Army and played baseball at Fort Eustis, Va. But in 1954 he was back in the Giants’ lineup and captured the batting title with a .345 average, hit 41 home runs and drove in 110 runs, all while leading the team to another pennant and a World Series date with the Indians, who had set an American League record by winning 111 games that year.

In the opening game, on the afternoon of Sept. 29, the score was tied 2-2 with nobody out in the eighth inning and two Cleveland players on base, Larry Doby on second and Al Rosen on first. Durocher had brought in the left-handed Don Liddle to relieve Sal Maglie, and Liddle was facing the lefty-batting Vic Wertz.

Wertz drove the first pitch just to the right of dead center field. Racing toward the high green boarding with his back to home plate, Mays caught the ball over his left shoulder some 450 feet away. He cupped it like a football player catching a pass, then whirled and fired to second base, his cap flying off. The throw, as spectacular as the catch, kept Rosen on first while Doby tagged and went to third.

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Willie Mays makes an over the shoulder catch near the outfield wall.
Mays making “The Catch” at the Polo Grounds in Game 1 of the 1954 World Series.Credit...New York Daily News Archive, via Getty Images

Cleveland never scored in the inning, and the little-known outfielder Dusty Rhodes hit a three-run pinch-hit homer in the 10th to give the Giants a 5-2 triumph. They went on to win the Series in four straight games.

“The Catch” was only one spectacular play by Mays. Another came at Forbes Field in Pittsburgh in his rookie season, off a deep drive hit by the Pirates’ Rocky Nelson.

Irvin, the Giants’ future Hall of Fame left fielder, told of the moment in “Mays, Mantle, and Snider: A Celebration” (1987), by Donald Honig.

“Willie whirled around and took off,” Irvin said. “At the last second he saw he couldn’t get his glove across his body in time to make the catch, so he caught it in his bare hand. Leo was flabbergasted. We all were. Nobody had ever seen anything like it.”

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Mays hit 51 home runs in 1955, Durocher’s last season as the Giants’ manager. In 1956, playing under Bill Rigney, Mays led the league in stolen bases with 40, the first of his four consecutive stolen-base titles.

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Willie Mays slides into third base, dust flies.
Mays stealing third base during the first inning of the 1960 All-Star game at Yankee Stadium. Credit...The New York Times

Despite Mays’s heroics, the Giants were a fading team by then, and after the 1957 season they moved to San Francisco as the Dodgers went to Los Angeles.

In his first year in San Francisco, Mays batted .347 with 29 home runs, having been asked by Rigney, his manager, to hit for average rather than go for homers. Moreover, the shallow center field at Seals Stadium kept Mays from turning the kind of spectacular plays he had fashioned at the cavernous Polo Grounds. Giants fans voted Orlando Cepeda, the slugging rookie first baseman, the team’s most valuable player.

Mays even had trouble purchasing a home in a fashionable San Francisco neighborhood, when neighbors complained that property values would decline if a Black family moved in. The San Francisco Chronicle ran a front-page article on the issue, and Mayor George Christopher offered to let Mays and his wife live at his home temporarily if they continued to be rebuffed. With the city facing embarrassment, the owner of the home finally went ahead with the deal.

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Willie Mays holds a pen, surrounded by a woman and two men.
Mays, left, signing the papers that concluded the contentious purchase of a home in San Francisco. Looking on are his wife, Margherite; Walter A. Gnesdiloff, who sold the home; and Terry A. Francois, right, Mays’s lawyer.Credit...Associate Press

After two years at Seals Stadium, the Giants moved to the newly built and ever windy Candlestick Park. Mays found that he had to spread hot oil on his body to combat the wind chill. Those winds kept many a drive in the park.

“Playing in Candlestick cost me 10, 12 homers a year,” Mays once said. “I’ve always thought it cost me the opportunity to break Babe Ruth’s record.”

But Mays thrived in San Francisco. In 1959, he began eight straight seasons in which he drove in at least 100 runs. On April 30, 1961, he hit four home runs against the Braves at Milwaukee’s County Stadium. The following June 29, he hit three in a game at Philadelphia.

On July 24, Mays returned to play in New York for the first time since the Giants had moved to San Francisco, in an exhibition game at Yankee Stadium. A crowd of some 50,000 reserved its biggest cheers for Mays.

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The Giants were regaining their New York swagger. In 1962, with Mays slugging 49 home runs, they won the pennant in a three-game playoff against the Dodgers, then lost to the Yankees in seven games in the World Series.

Mays hit 52 home runs in 1965, joining Ruth, Jimmie Foxx, Ralph Kiner and Mantle as the only players at that time to have hit at least 50 in a single season more than once. On May 4, 1966, Mays surpassed the National League record for home runs, 511, set by the former Giant outfielder and manager Mel Ott.

As he approached age 40, Mays was still capable of outstanding play, but he had changed.

“Willie, as he grew older, became more withdrawn and suspicious, more cautious, more vulnerable and with plenty of reason,” Leonard Koppett wrote in “A Thinking Man’s Guide to Baseball” (1967). “Life, both personally and professionally, became more complicated for him, and he had his share of sorrow.” After marrying and adopting a child, Mays “went through a painful divorce,” Koppett wrote.

On May 11, 1972, with the Giants’ attendance in decline, Horace Stoneham, the team’s longtime owner, wanting to provide Mays with longtime financial security, sent him to the Mets in a trade for a minor league pitcher, Charlie Williams.

Mays was in the next to last year of a two-year contract paying him $165,000 a season (the equivalent of a about $1.25 million today). When the deal was made, Joan Payson, the Mets’ president, who had been a stockholder in the New York Giants and was a fan of Mays, guaranteed him a 10-year, $50,000 annual payment apart from his baseball salary. He was to be a good-will ambassador and part-time instructor after his playing days ended.

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Mays was hitting .167 when he joined the Mets, but on May 14, in his first game with them, before a Sunday crowd of some 35,000 at Shea Stadium, he beat the Giants with a home run. Yet he was 41, and his skills had eroded. The next year he was hampered by swollen knees, an inflamed shoulder and bruised ribs, and on Sept. 20, 1973, he announced his retirement.

Mays was honored at Shea five days later, but there was still a finale in the spotlight. The Mets won the pennant, and Mays played in the World Series against the Oakland A’s. His last appearance was in Game 3, when he grounded to shortstop as a pinch-hitter for the relief pitcher Tug McGraw.

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Willie Mays batting for the Mets, wearing 24.
The last hit of Mays’s career, driving in a 12th-inning run for the Mets with a single against Oakland in Game 2 of the 1973 Series. Credit...Associated Press

But what was envisioned as a long-term association with the Mets soured. Mays had little interest in instructional or promotional work. “Not playing was eating me up,” he said. “I couldn’t watch the games.”

Mays’s ties to the Mets ended in October 1979, after he signed a 10-year deal at an annual salary of $100,000 to represent Bally, the Atlantic City hotel and casino company. Bowie Kuhn, the baseball commissioner, told Mays that he could not hold a job with a company that promoted gambling and also retain a salaried position in baseball. Mays decided to keep the Bally job and forgo the remainder of his $50,000 yearly payments from the Mets, which were to have continued through 1981. Kuhn suspended him from baseball.

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Kuhn imposed a similar ban on Mantle in 1983 when he took a post with the Claridge casino and hotel in Atlantic City. But in March 1985, Peter Ueberroth, Kuhn’s successor, revoked both bans, and Mays continued to work for Bally while becoming a part-time hitting coach for the Giants. In the late 1980s, the Giants gave Mays a lifetime contract as a front-office consultant.

He remained the Say Hey Kid, his vanity license plates proclaiming “Say Hey.”

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Willie Mays in his later years, wearing a sweater, a white shirt and a Giants cap.
Mays in 2010.Credit...Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times

In 2004, the Giants star Barry Bonds tied Mays’s career home run mark of 660 on April 12 at San Francisco against the Milwaukee Brewers. Bonds was Mays’s godson and the son of his former teammate Bobby Bonds. Mays met Barry Bonds near the Giants’ dugout and presented him with a torch he had received when he jogged a leg in the 2002 Olympic torch run. It was embellished with diamonds forming the numbers 660 and 661.

When the Mets held an old-timers’ event at CitiField in August, 2022, they retired Mays’s No. 24 jersey number and presented a tribute video to him along with a message from Mays, who could not attend, having undergone a hip replacement a few months earlier. Joan Payson, who wanted Mays to finish his career in New York City, had promised that the Mets would retire his number. But when she died in 1975, the promise had been unfulfilled.

Mays, who lived in Atherton, Calif., before moving to Palo Alto, is survived by his son, Michael, from his first marriage, to Margherite Chapman, which ended in divorce. His second wife, Mae Louise (Allen) Mays, with whom he had no children, died in 2013.

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When the San Francisco Giants won the 1962 National League pennant, Mays was in the lead car of their victory parade. He also rode in the Giants’ parades following their 2010, 2012 and 2014 World Series victories and accompanied the players to White House receptions hosted by President Obama after each of those victories. At his death, he was listed by the Giants as a special assistant to the president and chief executive.

Mays largely stayed away from controversy and seldom spoke about racial issues, although he went on the radio in 1966 to help quell a riot in San Francisco after a Black teenager had been shot by a white police officer. During the civil rights struggles of the 1960s, Jackie Robinson criticized him for not drawing on his stature to confront the issues of the day. In the spring of 1968, Mays called a news conference to respond.

“People do things in different ways,” he was quoted as saying by James S. Hirsch in “Willie Mays: The Life, the Legend” (2010). “I can’t, for instance, go out and picket. I can’t stand on a soapbox and preach. I believe understanding is the important thing. In my talks to kids, I’ve tried to get that message across. It makes no difference whether you are Black or white because we are all God’s children fighting for the same cause.”

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Willie Mays waves his cap while riding in a car on a baseball field.
Mays waving to a San Francisco crowd in 2021 as the Giants honored him on the day after his 90th birthday.Credit...D. Ross Cameron/Associated Press

Mays evoked the image of a “natural,” a superb athlete who needed to do little to hone his skills. But that was not the case.

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“I studied the pitchers,” Mays told the baseball writer Roger Kahn in “Memories of Summer.” (2004). “I knew what every single pitcher’s best pitch was. You wonder why? Because in a tight spot, with the game on the line, what’s the pitcher going to throw? His best pitch. Curve, slider, fastball, whatever. His best pitch. Because I’d studied and memorized that, I’d be ready.”

When he was selected for the Hall of Fame, Mays was asked to name the best ballplayer he had ever seen.

“I think I was the best ballplayer I’ve ever seen,” he replied. “I feel nobody in the world could do what I could do on a baseball field.”

*****
*Toni Morrison, the first African American to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature, was born in Lorain, Ohio (February 18).

Toni Morrison, original name Chloe Anthony Wofford (b. February 18, 1931, Lorain, Ohio), was a writer noted for her examination of African American experience (particularly the African American female experience) within the African American community.  She received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993.

Morrison grew up in the American Midwest in a family that possessed an intense love of and appreciation for black culture.  Storytelling, songs, and folktales were a deeply formative part of her childhood.  She attended Howard University (B.A., 1953) and Cornell University (M.A., 1955).  After teaching at Texas Southern University for two years, she taught at Howard from 1957 to 1964.  In 1965, she became a fiction editor.  From 1984, she taught writing at the State University of New York at Albany, leaving in 1989 to join the faculty of Princeton University.

Morrison's first book, The Bluest Eye (1970), is a novel of initiation concerning a victimized adolescent black girl who is obsessed by white standards of beauty and longs to have blue eyes.  In 1973, a second novel, Sula, was published.  It examines (among other issues) the dynamics of friendship and the expectations for conformity within the community.  Song of Solomon (1977) is told by a male narrator in search of his identity; its publication brought Morrison to national attention. Tar Baby (1981), set on a Caribbean island, explores conflicts of race, class, and sex. The critically acclaimed Beloved (1987), which won a Pulitzer Prize for fiction, is based on the true story of a runaway slave who, at the point of recapture, kills her infant daughter in order to spare her a life of slavery.  Jazz (1992) is a story of violence and passion set in New York City’s Harlem during the 1920s. Subsequent novels are Paradise (1998), a richly detailed portrait of a black utopian community in Oklahoma, and Love (2003), an intricate family story that reveals the myriad facets of love and its ostensible opposite. A Mercy (2008) deals with slavery in 17th-century America. In the redemptive Home (2012), a traumatized Korean War veteran encounters racism after returning home and later overcomes apathy to rescue his sister.

A work of criticism, Playing in the Dark, Whiteness and the Literary Imagination, was published in 1992.  Many of her essays and speeches were collected in What Moves at the Margin: Selected Nonfiction (edited by Carolyn C. Denard), published in 2008.  Additionally, Morrison released several children's books, including Who's Got Game?: The Ant or the Grasshopper? and Who's Got Game?: The Lion or the Mouse?, both written with her son and published in 2003.  Remember (2004) chronicles the hardships of black students during the integration of the American public school system; aimed at children, it uses archival photographs juxtaposed with captions speculating on the thoughts of their subjects.  She also wrote the libretto for Margaret Garner (2005), an opera about the same story that inspired Beloved.

The central them of Morrison's novels is the African American experience.  In an unjust society, her characters struggle to find themselves and their cultural identity.  Her use of fantasy, her sinuous poetic style, and her rich interweaving of the mythic gave her stories great strength and texture. 

 In 2010, Morrison was made an office of the French Legion of Honour. Two years later, in 2012, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

*****

*Bubba Morton, a baseball player who became the first African American to serve as head coach at the University of Washington in any sport, was born in Washington, D. C. (December 13).

Wycliffe Nathaniel "Bubba" Morton (b. December 13, 1931, Washington, D. C. – d. January 14, 2006, Seattle, Washington) was a right fielder in Major League Baseball who played for the Detroit Tigers (1961-1963), Milwaukee Braves (1963) and the California Angels (1966-1969). In 1972, Morton was hired by athletics director Joe Kearney as head coach of the baseball program at the University of Washington from 1972 to 1976. He is distinguished as being the University of Washington's first African American head coach in any sport.
A native of Washington, D.C., Morton graduated from Armstrong High School in 1950 and, after a stint in the Coast Guard, attended Howard University from 1954 to 1957, earning two varsity letters each in baseball and football.
In 1955, Morton became the third African American player signed by the Detroit Tigers, one of the first African American men to play for the post-war Terre Haute Huts of the Three-I League in 1956, and one of the first African American men to play for the Durham Bulls. With the Bulls in 1957, he batted .310 with 18 home runs and 82 runs batted in to lead the club to their first championship.
A light-hitting, strong-armed outfielder, Morton played with the Tigers as a reserve in parts of three seasons. He was purchased by the Milwaukee Braves from Detroit in the 1963 mid-season. During his brief tenure with the Braves, he was the roommate of Hank Aaron. The next two years Morton played at Triple-A for the Milwaukee Braves and Cleveland Indians organizations, until he was acquired by the California Angels at the end of the 1965 season.
Morton saw considerable action with the Angels between 1966 and 1969. A prime pinch-hitter, his best season was 1967, when he hit .313 in 80 games. During the same period he committed only one error in 251 chances in the outfield.
In a seven-season career, Morton was a .267 hitter with 14 home runs and 128 RBI in 451 games.
In the middle of his major league career, Morton was a member of the Seattle Angels team that won the Pacific Coast League pennant in 1966. He played with the Angels through 1969, then moved to Japan to play the 1970 season with the Toei Flyers.
In 1972, Morton was hired by athletics director Joe Kearney as head coach of the baseball program at the University of Washington from 1972 to 1976. He is distinguished as the University of Washington's first African American head coach in any sport.
After his retirement from baseball, Morton worked for Boeing and was a retired Coast Guard reservist.
Morton died in Seattle, Washington, at the age of 74.

*****

*John O'Bryant, the first African American to be elected to the Boston's School Committee in 1977, was born in Boston, Massachusetts (July 15).

John Donaldson O'Bryant (b. July 15, 1931, Boston, Massachusetts – d. July 3, 1992, Boston, Massachusetts) spent most of his adult life working in the school systems, first as a school teacher and ending with work at Northeastern University until his death in 1992. O'Bryant was born in Boston, Massachusetts. He also served in the United States Army before he began his teaching career. The John D. O'Bryant School of Mathematics & Science in Boston is named for him, as is the John D. O'Bryant Center for African American Studies at Northeastern University.
O'Bryant was born to David D. O'Bryant and Elsie (Donaldson) O'Bryant Joseph. He was the youngest of five children. His father David died when he was young and so David was raised by his mother, Elsie, and stepfather George E. Joseph. O'Bryant attended the Boston Public Schools and graduated from The English High School in 1948.
After high school, he attended Boston University, in Boston, Massachusetts, where he also played basketball. He played basketball throughout his undergraduate years and captained the team at Boston University and received a bachelor's degree in Education in 1952. He continued his education and received a master's degree in health education in 1955. While obtaining his masters, O'Bryant served in the United States Army from 1952 until 1954, where he worked as an information and education instructor.
After exiting the Army, O'Bryant continued working in education and became a teacher in 1955 for the Boston Public Schools. In the Boston Public Schools, he was also a guidance counselor at Boston Technical High School until 1969. 
O'Bryant left his position as a guidance counselor in 1969 to transition into a director role for the Health Vocational Training Program at the Dimock Community Health Center based in Roxbury, Massachusetts. He directed paramedical training programs for students in all areas of Boston. He held this position from 1969 to 1978 before taking on his role at Northeastern University. In O'Bryant's first year at Northeastern in 1978, he was the Associate Dean of Administration before becoming the vice president of student affairs. In 1979, Kenneth G. Ryder, president of Northeastern, appointed O'Bryant as Vice President of Student Affairs. The two had met while serving on the Citywide Coordinating Council. O'Bryant helped welcome more African Americans to the Northeastern community.
In 1977, O'Bryant became the first African American to be elected to the Boston School Committee. While he was the president of the school committee he was also serving as the national chairman of the Council of Urban School Boards of Education of the National School Boards Association. Before running for the school committee, he helped run the campaign for in 1959 and 1961. King suggested O'Bryant run for the committee in upcoming races because of his ideas and opinions. Even though King did not win those elections he helped pave the way for another African American to earn a place on the committee.
John O'Bryant died at Carney Hospital in Boston on July 3, 1992 after a heart attack at his home. He was 60 years old.

*****

*Horace Parlan, a jazz pianist, was born in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania (January 19).
Horace Parlan (b. January 19, 1931, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania – d. February 23, 2017, Korsør, Denmark) was an American hard bop and post-bop piano player. He was known for his contributions to the Charles Mingus recordings Mingus Ah Um and Blues & Roots.  
In his birth year, Parlan was stricken with polio, resulting in the partial crippling of his right hand. The handicap, though, contributed to his development of a distinctive left-hand chord voicing style, while comping with highly rhythmic phrases with the right.
Between 1952 and 1957, Parlan worked in Washington, D. C. with Sonny Stitt and then spent two years with Mingus' Jazz Workshop. In 1973, Parlan moved to Copenhagen, Denmark. He later settled in the small village of Rude in southern Zealand. In 1974, he completed a State Department tour of Africa with Hal Singer.
His later work, such as a series of duos with the tenor saxophonist Archie Shepp, included the album Goin' Home, was steeped in gospel music.

Parlan received the 2000 Ben Webster Prize. 

 *****

*Carrie Saxon Perry was born in Hartford, Connecticut (August 30).  In 1987, she would become the first African American female mayor of a major city in the Northeast.
Carrie Saxon Perry (b. August 30, 1931, Hartford, Connecticut) was the first black woman to be elected mayor of a major New England city – Hartford, Connecticut – in 1987. She served three terms before being defeated in 1993. She had previously served as a state representative, and was known for her distinctive broad-rimmed hats.
Perry was elected the mayor of Hartford at the age of 56. She is credited for helping reduce racial tension in the city.  Most notably, Perry visited black neighborhoods after the Rodney King verdict, which was credited with preventing rioting in Hartford as had happened in other large cities. She also focused on reducing burgeoning gang activity and drug trafficking, which was on the rise at the time.
After three terms as mayor, she was defeated by first-time Democratic challenger Michael Peters, a city firefighter. He had run on a campaign capitalizing on Hartford's declining economy and a sense that street crime was on the rise.
A Hartford native, Perry had been a social worker in her early life. In 1949 she enrolled as a political science major at Howard University, leaving after two years to raise a child.  Her first run for state representative ended in defeat in 1976. She was elected in 1980, and served on posts as assistant majority leader, chair of the bonding subcommittee, and a committee member for education, finance and housing.
She was known for donning unique hats, of which she owned about two dozen. She started the habit because she did not have time to take care of her hair.

*****
*Arnold Pinkney, a political strategist and civil rights activist, was born in Youngstown, Ohio (January 6).

Arnold Pinkney (b. January 6, 1931, Youngstown, Ohio - d. January 13, 2014, Cleveland, Ohio) was a political strategist and civil rights activist who helped elect Ohio's first black congressman and managed Jesse Jackson's unsuccessful 1984 presidential campaign.  

Pinkney was born in Youngstown, Ohio, on January 6, 1931. His father died three months before he finished high school, so he worked in steel mills to help his family make ends meet. 

Pinkney graduated from Albion College in Michigan, where he won letters in football, track, baseball and basketball. During a stint in the Army, he played baseball with major leaguers. Paul O’Dea, a scout for the Cleveland Indians, told him that he had a shot at making the big leagues by his late 20s, but advised him to go to law school instead. “Your race needs more lawyers than baseball players,” Mr. Pinkney recalled Mr. O’Dea saying.  

Pinkney took the advice and attended what is now Case Western Reserve University School of Law, but he dropped out for financial reasons. He then became one of the first black agents hired by the Prudential Insurance Company of America and later opened a successful insurance agency. As a civil rights activist, he led a membership drive for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (N.A.A.C.P.) and joined the picketing of a Cleveland supermarket that had refused to hire blacks.

Pinkney began his political career by helping out on local campaigns for judges, then volunteered for Carl Stokes’s mayoral campaign. Louis Stokes tapped him to be his paid campaign manager in 1968.  Pinkney was later president of the Cleveland Board of Education and twice sought the city’s mayoralty, losing in a three-man race in 1971 and again in 1975. After the second defeat, he moved to Shaker Heights, a Cleveland suburb.  

Mr. Jackson said he had chosen Mr. Pinkney to run his 1984 campaign because he was experienced in national campaigns as a “voice of pragmatism.” 

Arnold Pinkney had a long career in Democratic political campaigns including the 1968 campaign of Louis Stokes, who became Ohio's first black member of Congress. He also advised Jackson, Cleveland Mayor Carl Stokes and Gov. Richard Celeste.

He was special adviser to the Ohio Legislative Black Caucus and was co-founder of Pinkney-Perry Insurance Agency, Ohio's oldest and largest minority-owned insurance company.

*****

*John W. Porter, the first African American appointed to be superintendent of public instruction since Reconstruction, was born in Fort Wayne, Indiana (August 31).  Porter was appointed to the position by Michigan Governor William G. Millikin in 1969.
John W. Porter (b. August 13, 1931, Fort Wayne, Indiana - d. June 27, 2012, Ann Arbor, Michigan) received his undergraduate degree from Albion College and earned his master’s degree in counseling and guidance and a doctorate in higher education administration from Michigan State University.
Porter served as president from Eastern Michigan University (EMU) from 1979 to 1989 and was known for the significant achievements made during his tenure as president.
They include: establishment of the College of Technology, creation of the Olds Student Recreation Center and construction of the College of Business in downtown Ypsilanti.
Porter also was credited for leading the university when EMU’s football team won the Mid American Conference Championship and the California Bowl in 1987.
During his tenure, Porter also created the university’s first doctorate, which was offered in educational leadership.
The John W. Porter College of Education building at EMU is named after Porter because of the many contributions he made to the university community.
Before coming to EMU, Porter served as the state superintendent of public instruction for Michigan’s schools. He was the youngest chief state school officer in the nation and the first African American to serve as a state’s head of schools.
United States Presidents Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton all appointed Porter to commissions and councils, ranging from higher education to employment and mental health.
*****
*Jewel Limar Prestage, the first African American woman to receive doctorate in political science, was born in Hutton, Louisiana (August 12).

Jewel Limar Prestage (b. Jewel Limar, August 12, 1931, Hutton, Louisiana - d. August 1, 2014, Houston, Texas) was born in Hutton Louisiana to Brudis Leroy Limar, Sr. and Sallie Bell Johnson Limar. She was one of sixteen children born to that union, ten of whom lived to adulthood. At a young age, her family relocated to Alexandria, Louisiana, where she received the majority of her education, graduating as valedictorian from Peabody High School at the age of 16.

In the fall of 1948, Jewel entered Southern University, where she studied political science and graduated summa cum laude in 1951 at the age of 19. It was at Southern where she was initiated into Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc., through the Beta Psi Chapter in 1950 and also where she met the man that would become her life partner, James Jordan Prestage. After completion of her bachelor's degree, Jewel went on to graduate school at the University of Iowa, earning her master's degree in 1952 and at the age of 22, her Ph.D. in 1954. During her graduate education, Jewel married James in 1953 upon his return from military service in Korea.

Upon completion of her doctorate, Jewel accepted a teaching position at Prairie View A&M University. After two years at Prairie View, Jewel returned to her Southern University as a faculty member, subsequently becoming department chair and then dean of the School of Public Policy and Urban Affairs, a position she held until her retirement in 1989. In recognition of her contributions, Southern conferred upon her the status of Distinguished Professor Emeritus. Under her leadership and mentoring, a generation of students received academic preparation that led them to graduate and professional schools. Those students represent 45 PhDs and over 200 lawyers, judges, elected officials, administrators, commissioned military officers, and business executives. After retiring from Southern, Jewel returned to Prairie View A&M University as professor of political science and subsequently, dean of the Benjamin Banneker Honors College until her retirement in 2002.

Jewel was also actively involved in the political activities of the community surrounding Southern University. She was instrumental in the establishment of the Louisiana Center to Assist Black Elected Officials and served as its director. Jewel also directed her citizen activism toward the critical issue of the poor quality of civic education in elementary and secondary schools of Louisiana. Through programs that she implemented, over 500 Louisiana teachers improved their teaching methodology in civic education.

Jewel focused her academic research on the involvement of black women in the political process and gave visibility to their invaluable contributions. She was the first person to pursue research that focused on African-American women legislators and her book A Portrait of Marginality (co-authored with Dr. Marianne Githens) has been described as a classic study in the area of women and politics.

Recognized for her outstanding service and publications on women and higher education issues, Jewel was appointed by President Jimmy Carter and confirmed by the United States Senate to serve on the National Advisory Council on Women's Educational Programs, United States Department of Education. She later was named chair of the Council, becoming the first minority woman to hold the position.

Throughout her academic career, Jewel presented her research findings at the premier professional organizations of the discipline of political science and also served as an officer and leader of many of these organizations. In recognition of her service and achievements, these organizations honored Jewel with their highest awards. She was honored as a founder of the National Conference of Black Political Scientists (NCOBPS) at their 2002 national meeting, and for her dedication and service at historically black colleges and universities through the establishment of the Jewel Limar Prestage Faculty Mentorship Award. In September 2003, Jewel was honored during a session of the U.S. House of Representatives as her former student, Congressman William Jefferson (D-LA), read her contributions to the discipline of political science into the Congressional Record.

On August 1, 2014, Jewel Limar Prestage died in Houston, Texas. 

*****

*Singer and actress Della Reese was born in Detroit, Michigan (July 6).

Della Reese (b. Delloreese [Deloreese] Patricia Early, July 6, 1931, Detroit, Michigan), a singer, actress, game show panelist of the 1970s, one-time talk-show hostess and ordained minister. She started her career in the 1950s as a gospel, pop and jazz singer, scoring a hit with her 1959 single "Don't You Know?". In the late 1960s, she hosted her own talk show, Della, which ran for 197 episodes. Through four decades of acting, she is best known for playing Tess, the lead role on the 1994–2003 television show Touched by an Angel. In later years, she became an ordained  New Thought minister in the Understanding Principles for Better Living Church in Los Angeles, California.

 Reese began on the path that would lead her to show business by singing in church at the age of 6. Her talents eventually landed her an opportunity to work with gospel great Mahalia Jackson when Reese was only 13 years old.


















 Reese went to Wayne State University in Detroit, where she majored in psychology. While in college, Reese formed the Meditation Singers, an all-female gospel group who would become known for being one of the first acts to take gospel music to the nightclubs of Las Vegas, Nevada. Unfortunately, a series of family tragedies put her studies and music on hold for a time. With her mother's death and her father's illness, Reese went to work to help her family financially.
Reese's musical career finally took off in the 1950s as she began making records with the Erskine Hawkins Orchestra. In 1954, Reese signed with Jubilee Records. Her biggest hit for the label was the 1957 song "And That Reminds Me."
Switching to RCA, Reese scored her biggest pop hit to date with "Don't You Know." The song climbed to the No. 2 spot on the Billboard charts and earned her a Grammy Award nomination. The gifted vocalist also became a popular act on television variety shows, appearing on The Ed Sullivan Show, among other programs.
In 1969, Reese began hosting a TV talk/variety show called Della—becoming the first black woman to host her own variety show. The show was canceled in 1970, after 197 episodes. Around this time, she also became the first woman to serve as guest host of The Tonight Show and branched out into acting, making guest appearances on shows like The Mod Squad and Police Woman.
Later in the 1970s, Reese landed a recurring role on the sitcom Chico and the Man, starring Freddie Prinze. She appeared in more comedy series during the 1980s and 1990s, including Charlie & Co. with Flip Wilson and The Royal Family opposite Redd Foxx.  Despite all of her acting, Reese never abandoned music. In 1987, she was nominated for a Grammy Award for best female soloist in the gospel music category.
Reese took on one of her most famous roles beginning in 1994. She played an angel named Tess on the popular TV drama Touched by An Angel, alongside Roma Downey and John Dye. The three actors portrayed angels who try to help the living overcome their challenges and hardships. Reese was even able to showcase her singing talents on the program occasionally. During the show's nine-season run, she received two Emmy Award nominations as well as Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild nods.
After Touched by An Angel ended in 2003, Reese continued to act while performing live on concert stages and releasing albums like 2006's Give it to God. She appeared in the big-screen film Beauty Shop (2005) with Queen Latifah and in several television movies as well, including 2011's Hallelujah and 2013's Dear Secret Santa. Outside of the entertainment world, Reese became an ordained minister and wrote books on spirituality, including Metaphysically Speaking (2013).

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*Child prodigy pianist Philippa Schuyler was born (August 2).

Philippa Duke Schuyler (b. August 2, 1931, New York City, New York – d. May 9, 1967, Vietnam) was a noted American child prodigy and pianist who became famous in the 1930s and 1940s as a result of her talent, mixed-race parentage, and the eccentric methods employed by her mother to bring her up.
Schuyler was the daughter of George S. Schuyler, a prominent African American essayist and journalist Josephine Cogdell, a European American Texan and one-time Mack Sennett bathing beauty, from a former slave-owning.  Her parents believed that inter-racial marriage could "invigorate" both races and produce extraordinary offspring. They also advocated that mixed-race marriage could help to solve many of the United States' social problems.

Cogdell further believed that genius could best be developed by a diet consisting exclusively of raw foods. As a result, Philippa grew up in her New York City apartment eating a diet predominantly comprised of raw carrots, peas and yams and raw steak. She was given a daily ration of cod liver oil and lemon slices in place of sweets.
Recognized as a prodigy at an early age, Schuyler was reportedly able to read and write at the age of two and a half, and composed music from the age of five. At nine, she became the subject of "Evening With A Gifted Child", a profile written by Joseph Mitchell, correspondent for The New Yorker, who heard several of her early compositions and noted that she addressed both her parents by their first names.
Schuyler began giving piano recitals and radio broadcasts while still a child and attracted significant press coverage. New York mayor Fiorello La Guardia was one of her admirers and visited her at her home on more than one occasion. By the time she reached adolescence, Schuyler was touring constantly, both in the US and overseas.
Her talent as a pianist was widely acknowledged, although many critics believed that her forte lay in playing vigorous pieces and criticized her style when tackling more nuanced works. Acclaim for her performances led to her becoming a role model for many children in the United States of the 1930s and 1940s, but Schuyler's own childhood was blighted when, during her teenage years, her parents showed her the scrapbooks they had compiled recording her life and career. The books contained numerous newspaper clippings in which both George and Josephine Schuyler commented on their beliefs and ambitions for their daughter. Realization that she had been conceived and raised, in a sense, as an experiment, robbed the pianist of many of the illusions of her youth.
In later life, Schuyler grew disillusioned with the racial and gender prejudice she encountered, particularly when performing in the United States, and much of her musical career was spent playing overseas. In her thirties, she abandoned the piano to follow her father into journalism.
Schuyler's personal life was frequently unhappy. She rejected many of her parents' values, increasingly becoming a vocal feminist, and made many attempts to pass herself off as a woman of Iberian (Spanish) descent named Felipa Monterro. Although she engaged in a number of affairs, and on one occasion endured a dangerous late-term abortion after a relationship with a Ghanaian diplomat, she never married.
Philippa Schuyler and her father, George Schuyler, were members of the John Birch Society.

In 1967, Schuyler traveled to Vietnam as a war correspondent. During a helicopter mission near Da Nang to evacuate a number of Vietnamese orphans, the helicopter crashed into the sea. While she initially survived the crash, her inability to swim caused her to drown. A court of inquiry found that the pilot had deliberately cut his motor and descended in an uncontrolled glide – possibly in an attempt to give his civilian passengers an insight into the dangers of flying in a combat zone – eventually losing control of the aircraft.
Her mother was profoundly affected by her daughter's death and committed suicide on its second anniversary.

*****
*Ashton Springer, a Broadway producer, was born.

 Ashton Springer (b. 1931 - d. July 15, 2013, Mamaroneck, New York).  Broadway producer who produced plays ranging from “No Place to Be Somebody” to the Tony-nominated “Bubbling Brown Sugar.”
Springer was one of the first African-Americans to bring plays and musicals by black artists to Broadway, and his 1977 all-black revival of “Guys and Dolls” was also Tony-nominated.
“Bubbling Brown Sugar” ran for just 12 performances at its first in 1975, featuring the music of Harlem Renaissance artists like Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington and Billie Holiday. In 1976 it moved to the ANTA Theater for a nearly two year run.
Among other productions he shepherded were the 1978 revue “Eubie!” about the music of Eubie Blake; the musical “Going Up,” the comedy “Unexpected Guests” and the Ronald Ribman play “Cold Storage.”  His other Broadway productions included “Whoopee!,” Athol Fugard’s “A Lesson From Aloes” and “Inacent Black.”
Off-Broadway, he staged “Rollin’ on the TBS” and general managed a 2000 revival of “For Colored Girls…”
Springer began his career as a musician with the Four Aces before starting out on Broadway with a revival of “No Place to Be Somebody,” which led him to become interested in the audience potential for black-oriented plays.
Springer died of pneumonia on July 15, 2013, in Mamaroneck, N.Y.  He was 82.

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*Hubert Sumlin, a Chicago blues guitarist and singer, best known for his "wrenched, shattering bursts of notes, sudden cliff-hanger silences and daring rhythmic suspensions" as a member of Howlin' Wolf's band, was born in Greenwood, Mississippi (November 16). Sumlin was listed as number 65 in the 2010 compilation of Rolling Stone's 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time.

Hubert Charles Sumlin  (b. November 16, 1931, Greenwood, Mississippi – d. December 4, 2011, Wayne, New Jersey) was born in Greenwood, Mississippi, and raised in Hughes, Arkansas. He got his first guitar when he was eight years old. As a boy, he met Howlin' Wolf by sneaking into a performance.
Wolf relocated from Memphis to Chicago in 1953, but his longtime guitarist Willie Johnson chose not to join him. In Chicago, Wolf hired the guitarist Jody Williams, but in 1954 he invited Sumlin to move to Chicago to play second guitar in his band. Williams left the band in 1955, leaving Sumlin as the primary guitarist, a position he held almost continuously (except for a brief spell playing with Muddy Waters around 1956) for the remainder of Wolf's career. According to Sumlin, Howlin' Wolf sent him to a classical guitar instructor at the Chicago Conservatory of Music to learn keyboards and scales. Sumlin played on the album Howlin' Wolf (called the "rocking chair album", with reference to its cover illustration), which was named the third greatest guitar album of all time by Mojo magazine in 2004.
Upon Wolf's death in 1976, Sumlin continued playing with several other members of Wolf's band, as the Wolf Pack, until about 1980. He also recorded under his own name, beginning with a session from a tour of Europe with Wolf in 1964. His last solo album was About Them Shoes, released in 2004 by Tone-Cool Records. He underwent lung removal surgery the same year, but he continued performing until just before his death. His final recording, just days before his death, was tracks for an album by Stephen Dale Petit, "Cracking the Code" (333 Records).
Sumlin was inducted into the Blues Foundation Hall of Fame in 2008.  He was nominated for four Grammy Awards: in 1999, for the album Tribute to Howlin' Wolf, with Henry Gray, Calvin Jones, Sam Lay, and Colin Linden; in 2000, for Legends, with Pinetop Perkins; in 2006, for his solo project About Them Shoes (which features performances by Keith Richards, Eric Clapton, Levon Helm, David Johansen and James Cotton) and in 2010 for his contribution to Kenny Wayne Shepherd's Live! in Chicago. He won multiple Blues Music Awards.  He was a judge for the fifth annual Independent Music Awards,  given to support the careers of independent artists.
Sumlin lived in Totowa, New Jersey, for 10 years before his death.  He died of heart failure on December 4, 2011, at the age of 80, in a hospital in Wayne, New Jersey.   Mick Jagger and Keith Richards paid Sumlin's funeral expenses.

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*Gerald Talbot, the first African American member of the Maine legislature, was born in Bangor, Maine.  Talbot introduced into Congress legislation for a Martin Luther King, Jr., holiday.  At the time of his election this Maine native was a newspaper compositor.  Among his numerous other achievements, he served as chair of the Maine Board of Education in 1983-1984.

Gerald Edgerton Talbot (b, 1931, Bangor, Maine) became the first African American member of the Maine House of Representatives when he was elected to represent part of Portland, Maine, as a Democrat in 1972. He was a member of the legislature until 1978. In 1980, Governor Joseph Brennan appointed him to the Maine Board of Education. He also helped reorganize the NAACP in Maine. In 2006, a 240-seat auditorium at the University of Southern Maine was named in honor of him.

 Much of Talbot's family came from Harlem, Maine, which was incorporated in 1818 as the town of China. Talbot was born and grew up in Bangor, Maine, where he attended Bangor High School. Talbot’s father was chef for 35 years at the Bangor House Hotel, and his mother and grandmother ran a catering service. He served in the United States Army from 1953 to 1956, and was then a printer at the Portland Press Herald for 11 years. He participated in the 1963 March on Washington along with other African American activists as part of the Civil Rights Movement. In 1972, in a crowded field, Talbot won a democratic primary and eventually won the election for the House of Representatives. Talbot went to court three times in housing discrimination suits. He also sponsored a bill to remove the word “nigger” from 12 Maine place-names.

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*Geraldine Travis, the first African American elected to the Montana State Legislature, was born in Albany, Georgia (September 3).

Geraldine Washington Travis was born in Albany, Georgia on September 3, 1931, the daughter of Joseph and Dorothy Washington.  She married Airman William Alexander Travis in Americus, Georgia in 1949 when he was stationed at nearby Turner Air Force Base, Georgia.  William and Geraldine became parents of five children, three sons and two daughters, as they moved to various Air Force bases around the world. Geraldine Travis attended Xavier University in New Orleans, Louisiana.

In 1967, Master Sergeant William Travis arrived with his family at Malmstrom Air Force Base, near Great Falls, Montana. While stationed there, Geraldine Travis became active in local civil rights and Democratic Party political activities.  In 1968, she was one of the founding members of the Great Falls branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and served as its secretary-treasurer.  She was also a founder of the Montana Chapter of National Council of Negro Women and the Montana Women’s Political Caucus.  She served as president of the Cascade County Women’s Political Caucus in the late 1960s.  In 1972, she became active in the Shirley Chisholm presidential campaign and served as president of the Great Falls Shirley Chisholm for President Club.  Later that year, she was one of twenty Montana delegates at the Democratic National Convention in Miami.  Travis was also one of the fifteen-member Montana Advisory Committee to the United States Civil Rights Commission.

In 1974, Geraldine Travis was elected to the Montana House of Representatives from House District 43, which represented the Malmstrom community of some 5,500 people. With her election, Travis became the first African American to serve in the Montana Legislature. Since most Air Force personnel maintained voting residency in other states, only 138 voters registered for this election. The Base Commander prohibited campaigning in base housing areas so voter turn out was light, and Geraldine Travis was elected with just twenty votes.

Nonetheless, during the 1975 legislative session, Representative Travis sponsored five bills, all of which passed through the House, and two of the five passed in the Senate to be signed into law by Governor Thomas L. Judge.  Travis was defeated for re-election in 1976.

Geraldine Travis remained active in Montana state and local affairs until moving to Arizona in 1989.

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*Darwin Turner, a literary critic, was born in Cincinnati, Ohio (May 7).

 Darwin Theodore Troy Turner (b. May 7, 1931, Cincinnati, Ohio - d. February 11, 1991, Iowa City, Iowa) was an African American literature critic, a poet, and an English professor who was born in Cincinnati, Ohio on May 7, 1931.  His grandfather, Charles H. Turner, was the first African American psychologist; his father, Darwin Romanes Turner, was a pharmacist; and his mother, Laura Knight, was a school teacher.  Considered a boy genius, Turner enrolled into the University of Cincinnati at the age of 13 and received his undergraduate degree within three years with Phi Beta Kappa honors as the youngest student ever to graduate from the school.  In 1949, at the age of 18, he received his Masters degree in English and American Drama from the University of Cincinnati.  By the time he was twenty-five years old, he received his PhD degree from the University of Chicago. 
In 1949, the same year Turner earned his Master's degree, he married Edna Bonner and started his teaching career at Clark College in Atlanta, Georgia teaching English.  He then accepted an assistant professorship position at Morgan State College in Baltimore, Maryland in 1952, balancing both a teaching career and earning his doctorate degree.  A year after receiving his PhD, he held various administration positions at various colleges.  From 1957 to 1959 he was the chair of the English department at Florida A&M.  From 1959 to 1966 he worked at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University and then accepted the Dean position at their Graduate School from 1966 to 1970 until he left for a position at the University of Michigan. During that time, he divorced Bonner in 1961 and remarried in 1968. His new wife was Maggie Jean Lewis, a school teacher. Turner became the chair of the Afro-American Studies Department at the University of Iowa in 1972 and was a professor there for nearly two decades.  In 1981, he was made the University of Iowa Foundation Distinguished Professor of English. 
Turner edited more than a dozen works of African American literature and published his own writing, including a collection of his poems in Katharsis in 1964, a book on American writer Nathaniel Hawthorne's novel The Scarlet Letter in 1967, and a literary critique, In a Minor Chord: Three Afro-American Writers and Their Search for Identity in 1971.  In a Minor Chord was an analysis on the writings of Jean Toomer, Countee Cullen, and Zora Neale Hurston.  Turner edited The Wayward and the Seeking: A Collection of Writings by Jean Toomer in 1980, co-edited The Art of the Slave Narrative: Original Essays in Criticism and Theory in 1982, and wrote for Haki R Madhubuti's Earthquakes and Sun Rise Missions in 1982.  His other major edited anthologies include Black Dramas in America and Black American Literature. Turner wrote dozens of articles for academic journals and anthologies as a literary critic of African American literature.
Darwin Turner died from a heart attack at the age of 59 on February 11, 1991 at Mercy Hospital in Iowa City, Iowa.

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 *Izear Luster "Ike" Turner, Jr., a musician, bandleader, songwriter, arranger, talent scout, and record producer, was born in Clarksdale, Mississippi (November 5). An early pioneer of fifties rock and roll, he is most popularly known for his work in the 1960s and 1970s with his then-wife Tina Turner in the Ike & Tina Turner Revue.  

 Izear Luster "Ike" Turner, Jr. (b. November 5, 1931, Clarksdale, Mississippi – d. December 12, 2007, San Marcos, California) began playing piano and guitar when he was eight, forming his group, the Kings of Rhythm, as a teenager. He employed the group as his backing band for the rest of his life. His first recording, "Rocket 88", credited to "Jackie Brenston and His Delta Cats", in 1951 is considered a contender for "first rock and roll song".  Relocating to St. Louis, Missouri, in 1954, he built the Kings into one of the most renowned acts on the local club circuit. There he met singer Anna Mae Bullock, whom he renamed Tina Turner, forming The Ike & Tina Turner Revue, which over the course of the sixties became a soul/rock crossover success.
Turner recorded for many of the key R&B record labels of the 1950s and 1960s, including Chess, Modern, Trumpet, Flair and Sue. With the Ike & Tina Turner Revue, he graduated to larger labels Blue Thumb and United Artists. Throughout his career, Turner won two Grammy Awards and was nominated for three others. With his former wife, Turner was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1991 and in 2001 was inducted into the St. Louis Walk of Fame. 
Allegations by Tina Turner of abuse by Ike, published in her autobiography I, Tina and included in the film adaptation of the book, coupled with his cocaine addiction, damaged Ike Turner's career in the 1980s and 1990s. Addicted to cocaine and crack for at least 15 years, Turner was convicted of drug offenses, serving seventeen months in prison between July 1989 and 1991. He spent the rest of the 1990s free of his addiction but relapsed in 2004. Near the end of his life, he returned to live performance as a front man and, returning to his blues roots, produced two albums that were critically well received and award-winning. Turner has frequently been referred to as a 'great innovator' of Rock and Roll by contemporaries such as Little Richard and Johnny Otis. 

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 *Soprano and mezzo-soprano Shirley Verrett, who would become known for her performance in the title role of Bizet's Carmen, was born in New Orleans (May 31).

 Shirley Verrett, (b. May 31, 1931, New Orleans, Louisiana - d. November 5, 2010, Ann Arbor, Michigan), was an opera singer who had a regal onstage presence and a colorful vocal range.  She was best known in the United States and Europe for her roles as Georges Bizet's fiery Carmen, as both Dido and Cassandra in Hector Berlioz's Les Troyens, and as Azucena in Giuseppe Verdi's Il trovatore.  
Verrett studied  (1955) singing in Los Angeles before continuing her education at the Juilliard School, New York City.  She made her operatic debut in Ohio in 1957 in Benjamin Brittens The Rape of Lucretia.  Two years later she made her European debut in Cologne, Germany, where she portrayed the gypsy in Nicolas Nabokov's Rasputin's End.  Her first appearance at La Scala, in Milan, came in 1966, and she continued to perform there until 1984.  Italians dubbed her "La Nera Callas" ("The Black Callas").  By the late 1980s, however, her vocal quality was becoming inconsistent.  From 1996 to 2010, Verrett taught at the University of Michigan School of Music.  Her autobiography, I Never Walked Alone (written with Christopher Brooks), was published in 2003.

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 *Junior Walker (b. Autry DeWalt Mixon, Jr.), a musician known for the song "Shotgun" was born in Blytheville, Arkansas (June 14). 

 Born Autry DeWalt Mixon, Jr., Mixon was known by the stage name Junior Walker, styled as Jr. Walker.  His group, Jr. Walker & the All Stars, were signed to Motown's Soul label in the 1960s, and became one of the company's signature acts. Their first and signature hit was "Shotgun", written and composed by Walker and produced by Berry Gordy, which featured the Funk Brothers'  James Jamerson on bass and Benny Benjamin on drums. "Shotgun" reached No. 4 on the Billboard Hot 100 and No. 1 on the R&B chart in 1965. Walker's "Shotgun" was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2002.

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*Douglas Wilder, the first African American to be elected governor of a state (Virginia) in the United States, was born in Richmond, Virginia (January 17).
Douglas Wilder, in full Lawrence Douglas Wilder (b. January 17, 1931, Richmond, Virginia), was born on January 17, 1931 in the segregated Church Hill neighborhood of Richmond, Virginia, the son of Beulah Olive (Richards) and Robert Judson Wilder, and  the grandson of slaves, his paternal grandparents having been enslaved in Goochland County.  The seventh of eight brothers and sisters, Wilder was named for the African American writers Paul Laurence Dunbar and Frederick Douglass.
Wilder’s father sold insurance, his mother worked as a maid, and while never completely destitute, Wilder recalled his early years during the Great Depression as a childhood of "gentle poverty."
Wilder worked his way through Virginia Union University by waiting tables at hotels and shining shoes, graduating in 1951 with a degree in chemistry.  Drafted into the United States Army during the Korean War, he volunteered for combat duty. At the Battle of Pork Chop Hill,  he and two other men found themselves cut off from their unit, but they bluffed nineteen Chinese soldiers into surrendering, for which Wilder was awarded the Bronze Star Medal.  He was a Sergeant at the time of his discharge in 1953.
Following the war, Wilder worked in the state medical examiner's office and pursued a master's degree in chemistry. In 1956, he changed his career plans and entered Howard University Law School.  After graduating in 1959 he established a law practice in Richmond.
Wilder pursued a legal and political career in Richmond, Virginia, and served as a director of the Richmond chapter of the National Urban League.  In 1969, he became the first African American since Reconstruction (1865–77) to win a seat in the Virginia Senate. Wilder, a Democrat, acquired a reputation as a moderate, and in 1985 he was elected state lieutenant governor, the first African American to win statewide office in Virginia. Nominated by the Democratic Party for governor in 1989, he narrowly defeated the Republican candidate with 50.2 percent of the vote. He declared his candidacy for the 1992 Democratic Party nomination for the presidency of the United States, but he withdrew before the primaries began. Constitutionally barred from running for a second consecutive term as governor, Wilder left office in 1994. In 2004 he was elected mayor of Richmond, Virginia. Wilder decided not to seek re-election in 2008, and he was succeeded by Dwight C. Jones later that year.
Wilder married Eunice Montgomery in 1958. The couple had three children before divorcing in 1978: Lynn Diana; Lawrence Douglas, Jr.; and Loren Deane.
*****

 *Richard Williams, a jazz trumpeter, was born in Galveston, Texas (May 4).

 Richard Gene Williams (b. May 4, 1931, Galveston, Texas – d. November 4, 1985, Jamaica, New York) was an American jazz trumpeter.
Williams was born in Galveston, Texas, and played tenor saxophone early in his life before picking up trumpet as a teenager. He played in local Texas bands and attended Wiley College, where he majored in music. After serving in the Air Force from 1952–56, he toured Europe with Lionel Hampton, and upon his return took a master's degree at the Manhattan School of Music. 
Williams played with Charles Mingus at the Newport Jazz Festival in 1959, and recorded with Mingus starting in that year. He recorded his only session as a leader, New Horn in Town (1960) for Candid Records, and featuring Reggie Workman, Leo Wright, Richard Wyands and Bobby Thomas. Williams was a sideman on many releases for Blue Note, Impulse!, New Jazz, Riverside, and Atlantic in the 1960s. Among the musicians he worked with, apart from Mingus, were Oliver Nelson, Grant Green, Lou Donaldson, Yusef Lateef, Gigi Gryce, and Duke Jordan and the big bands of Duke Ellington, Gil Evans, Thad Jones and Mel Lewis, Sam Rivers and Clark Terry.  
He also found work on Broadway in pit orchestras, in particular the premiere productions of The Me Nobody Knows and The Wiz.  He appears on the original Broadway cast recordings of both musicals. Williams also led bands under his own leadership, playing in New York jazz clubs such as Sweet Basil's, the Village Vanguard, and Gerald's. In addition to jazz trumpet, Williams also performed with classical orchestras, playing piccolo trumpet and fluglehorn.
Richard Williams died on November 4, 1985 from kidney cancer in his Jamaica, New York home.