1932 The United States: Notable Deaths

Notable Deaths

*There were six recorded lynchings of in the United States.

*Ten African Americans were killed when European American employees of the Illinois Central Railroad tried to prevent African Americans from working there.

*Charles Chesnutt, an author best known for his novels and stories exploring complex issues of racial and social identity in the post-Civil War South, died in Cleveland, Ohio (November 15).

Charles Waddell Chesnutt (b. June 20, 1858, Cleveland, Ohio – d. November 15, 1932, Cleveland, Ohio) was an African American author, essayist, political activist and lawyer, best known for his novels and short stories exploring complex issues of racial and social identity in the post-Civil War South.  Many families of free people of color were formed in the colonial and early Federal period.  Some attained education and property.  In addition, there were many mixed-race slaves, who as freedmen after the war were part of the complex society of the South. Two of his books were adapted as silent films in 1926 and 1927 by the African-American director and producer Oscar Micheaux.  Following the civil rights movement of the 20th century, interest in Chesnutt's works was revived. Several of his books were published in new editions, and he received formal recognition. A commemorative stamp was printed in 2008.

During the early 20th century in Cleveland, Chesnutt established what became a highly successful court reporting business, which provided his main income. He became active in the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, writing articles supporting education as well as legal challenges to discriminatory laws.

Chesnutt was the son of free blacks who had left their native city of Fayetteville, North Carolina, prior to the American Civil War.  Following the war his parents moved back to Fayetteville, where Chesnutt completed his education and began teaching. He was named assistant principal (1877–80) and then principal (1880–83) of State Colored Normal School (now Fayetteville State University), but he became so distressed about the treatment of blacks in the South that he moved his wife and children to Cleveland. He worked as a clerk-stenographer while becoming a practicing attorney and establishing a profitable legal stenography firm. In his spare moments he wrote stories.

Between 1885 and 1905 Chesnutt published more than 50 tales, short stories, and essays, as well as two collections of short stories, a biography of the anti-slavery leader Frederick Douglass, and three novels. His “The Goophered Grapevine,” the first work by an African American accepted by The Atlantic Monthly  (August 1887), was so subtle in its refutation of the plantation school of Thomas Nelson Page that most readers missed the irony. This and similarly authentic stories of folk life among the North Carolina African Americans were collected in The Conjure Woman (1899). The Wife of His Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line (1899) examines color prejudice among blacks as well as between the races in a manner reminiscent of George W. Cable. The Colonel’s Dream (1905) dealt trenchantly with problems of the freed slave. A psychological realist, Chesnutt made use of familiar scenes of North Carolina folk life to protest social injustice.

Chestnutt's works outranked any fiction written by African Americans until the 1930s. Chesnutt’s thematic use of the humanity of African Americans and the contemporary inhumanity of man to man, black and white alike, anticipates the work of later writers as diverse as William Faulkner, Richard Wright, and James Baldwin.

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*James Miley, an early jazz trumpet and cornet player who was a collaborator of the young Duke Ellington, died on Welfare Island, New York (May 20).

James Wesley "Bubber" Miley (b. April 3, 1903, Aiken, South Carolina – d. May 20, 1932, Welfare Island, New York) was an early jazz trumpet and cornet player, specializing in the use of the plunger mute.    
Miley was born in Aiken, South Carolina, into a musical family. At the age of six, he and his family moved to New York City where, as a child, he occasionally sang for money on the streets, and later, at the age of fourteen, studied to play the trombone and cornet.

In 1920, after having served in the Navy for eighteen months, he joined a jazz formation named the Carolina Five, and remained a member for the next three years, playing small clubs and boat rides all around New York City. After leaving the band at the age of nineteen, Miley briefly toured the Southern States with a show titled The Sunny South, and then joined Mamie Smith's Jazz Hounds, replacing trumpeter Johnny Dunn. They regularly performed in famous clubs around New York City and Chicago. While touring in Chicago, he heard King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band playing and was captivated by Oliver's use of mutes. Soon Miley found his own voice by combining the straight and plunger mute with a growling sound.

Miley's talent and unique style were soon noticed in New York's jazz scene - among others by Duke Ellington who wanted him to jump in for trumpeter Arthur Whetsol. According to saxophonist Otto Hardwick,  Ellington's band members had to shanghai Miley into joining them for his first performance, at the Hollywood on Broadway in 1923, At the time, Ellington's Washingtonians were formally led by Elmer Snowden, but Ellington, who factually had already been running the formation, also took over its official leadership a few months later.

Miley's collaboration with Ellington in what later became The Duke Ellington Orchestra has secured his place in jazz history. Early Ellington hits, such as Blac and Tan Fantasy, Doin' the Voom Voom, East Saint Louis Toodle-oo (covered by Steely Dan in 1974 on their album Pretzel Logic), The Mooche, and Creole Love Call  prominently feature Miley's solo work and were thematically inspired by his melodic ideas, which he, in turn, often borrowed from Baptist hymns sung in his church, such as Stephen Adams' Holy City. He and fellow band member, trombonist Joe "Tricky Sam" Nanton, created the "Wah-wah" sound that characterized Ellington's early Jungle Music style. Many jazz critics consider Miley's musical contributions to be integral to Ellington's early success during the time they performed in the Kentucky Club and the Cotton Club.

In 1924, while working with Ellington, Miley also recorded Down In The Mouth Blues and Lenox Avenue Shuffle as a duo named The Texas Blue Destroyers, with Alvin Ray on reed organ. They managed to trick three different record companies into recording the same two songs, both composed by Ray.

In interviews, former co-musicians such as Ellington, Nanton, Hardwick, and Harry Carney spoke fondly of Bubber Miley's carefree character and joie de vivre, exemplified in numerous anecdotes. On the other hand, they also mention his notorious unreliability, and problems with alcohol abuse. Miley's lifestyle eventually led to his breaking up with Ellington's band in 1929, but his influence on the Duke Ellington Orchestra lasted far longer. His legacy lived on in trumpeters such as Cootie Williams and later Ray Nance, who both were able to adopt Miley's style in their own way when needed.

After leaving Ellington's orchestra in 1929, Miley joined Noble Sissle's Orchestra for a one-month tour to Paris. After returning to New York, he recorded with a wide variety of recording groups led by King Oliver, Jelly Roll Morton, Hoagy Carmichael, Zutty Singleton and with Leo Reisman's  society dance band. Miley also performed live with Reisman, albeit being the only African American in Reisman's all-white formation, either dressed in an usher's uniform and off the bandstand, or hidden from view by a screen. In 1930, he recorded six songs for Victor Records under the name Bubber Miley and his Mileage Makers, a formation of thirteen musicians including clarinetist Buster Bailey.

Miley's health suffered from his problems with alcoholism. On May 20, 1932, at the age of 29, he died of tuberculosis on Welfare Island,  now Roosevelt Island, in New York City.

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*Frederick Douglas Patterson, the first African American to manufacture automobiles, died.  Between 1916 and 1919 Patterson built some thirty Greenfield-Patterson cars in Greenfield, Ohio.

  

Frederick Douglas Patterson (b. 1871 - d. 1932) was an American entrepreneur and the first African American to manufacture cars best known for the Greenfield-Patterson automobile of 1915, built in Ohio. He later converted his business to the Greenfield Bus Body Company.

While in college at Ohio State University, he was the first African American to play on its football team. He returned to Greenfield to join his father in his carriage business, which became C.R. Patterson and Sons. The younger man saw opportunity in the new horseless carriages, and converted the company in the early 1900s to manufacture automobiles, making 150 of them. Later he shifted to making buses and trucks, and renamed his company as Greenfield Bus Body Company. After Patterson's death in 1932, his son kept the business going through much of the Great Depression, finally closing it in 1939.

Named after the noted abolitionist, Frederick Douglas Patterson was born in 1871 as the youngest of four children of Josephine Utz (aka Outz) and Charles Richard Patterson. He had an older brother Samuel. Their father was an ex-slave who had escaped to Greenfield, Ohio, from Virginia shortly before the Civil War.

After getting established as a blacksmith in town, Charles had married Josephine Utz, a young local European American woman. By the time Frederick was born, his father had a successful carriage business with a partner. The Pattersons encouraged the education of their children: Samuel, two daughters, and Frederick.

Frederick graduated from the old Greenfield High School in 1888 and went on to Ohio State University.  While at the university, he played on the football team in his junior year in 1891, the first African American to do so. He withdrew from college in his senior year before graduating, taking a job as a high school history teacher in Louisville, Kentucky. It was a different career than his father's business, where his older brother was already working.

Patterson married and had a family, including a son Postell Patterson.

Frederick's brother Samuel entered the family business with their father. In 1893, Charles bought out his 20-year partner, J. P. Lowe, and renamed the carriage business C. R. Patterson & Son Company.

In 1897, Charles became ill. By this time, Samuel had died. Frederick resigned his teaching position to return and help operate the family business. His father renamed it C.R. Patterson and Sons, and the younger man took on an increasing role.

After his father died in 1910, Frederick D. Patterson took over the business. Seeing the rise of "horseless carriages", he started development of the first Patterson-Greenfield car, completed in 1915. His two styles competed with Henry Ford's model T and sold for about $850. He was the first African American to own and operate a car manufacturing company.

After producing about 150 vehicles, and having difficulty getting financing for expansion, Patterson decided to change his business rather than compete head on with the major Detroit industry. He built bodies for trucks and buses set upon a chassis made by Ford or General Motors. In 1920, he changed the name of his company to Greenfield Bus Body Company. He built strong business relationships with numerous school districts, which became steady customers.

The Crash and the Great Depression had a devastating effect on Patterson's company, as widespread financial problems caused his customers to cut back on bus orders. Patterson died in 1932. His son Postell Patterson, who had worked with him, closed the business in 1939.

No Patterson-Greenfield autos are known to exist, but some of his father's C.R. Patterson & Sons Company carriages have survived.

Patterson was a Methodist. At a time of a rise in fraternal organizations, he joined the Freemasons, where he rose to the level of Worshipful Master of the Greenfield Cedar Grove Masonic Lodge #17.  Patterson also joined The Third Wind Foraker Club.  He became 2nd vice-president of the National Negro Business League during Booker T. Washington's term as leader.

Patterson joined the Republican Party and served as a Greenfield's annual delegate to the Ohio Republican Party caucus. As a delegate and an African-American businessman, he was important to the Warren G. Harding 1920 campaign in turning out the Ohio black vote. For his work in the 1920 election, he was rewarded with a position as alternate delegate to the 1924 Republican National Convention.

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*Bill Pickett, one of the most famous performing cowboys of his day, died (April 2).  Publicly acclaimed by President Theodore Roosevelt, Pickett performed throughout Europe and the United States, where he was often assisted by two young European American cowboys, Tom Mix and Will Rogers.

Bill Pickett,  (b. December 5, 1870?, Williamson County, Texas — d. April 2, 1932, Tulsa, Oklahoma), American rodeo cowboy who introduced bulldogging, a modern rodeo event that involves wrestling a running steer to the ground.

Pickett was descended from American Indians (Cherokees) and African American slaves in the Southwest. He grew up in West Texas, learning to ride and rope as a boy, and became a ranch hand; he performed simple trick rides in town on the weekends.

Bill Pickett was born in the Jenks-Branch community of Williamson County, Texas, in 1870, according to family records.  He was the second of 13 children born to Thomas Jefferson Pickett, a former slave, and Mary "Janie" Gilbert. Pickett had four brothers and eight sisters. The family's ancestry was African-American and Cherokee. By 1888, the family had moved to Taylor, Texas.

In 1890, Pickett married Maggie Turner, a former slave and daughter of a white southern plantation owner. The couple had nine children.

Pickett left school in the 5th grade to become a ranch hand.  He soon began to ride horses and watch the longhorn steers of his native Texas.

He invented the technique of bulldogging, the skill of grabbing cattle by the horns and wrestling them to the ground. It was known among cattlemen that, with the help of a trained bulldog, a stray steer could be caught. Bill Pickett had seen this happen on many occasions. He also thought that if a bulldog could do this feat, so could he. Pickett practiced his stunt by riding hard, springing from his horse, and wrestling the steer to the ground. Pickett's method for bulldogging was biting a cow on the lip and then falling backwards. He also helped cowboys with bulldogging. This method eventually lost popularity as the sport morphed into the steer wrestling that is practiced in rodeos.

Pickett soon became known for his tricks and stunts at local country fairs. With his four brothers, he established The Pickett Brothers Bronco Busters and Rough Riders Association. The name Bill Pickett soon became synonymous with successful rodeos. He did his bulldogging act, traveling about in Texas, Arizona, Wyoming, and Oklahoma.

 In 1900, he became a showman, sponsored by Lee Moore, a Texas rodeo entrepreneur. In 1905, Pickett joined the 101 Ranch Wild West Show that featured the likes of Buffalo Bill, Will Rogers, Tom Mix, Bee Ho Gray, and Zach and Lucille Mulhall.  Pickett was soon a popular performer who toured around the world and appeared in early motion pictures. Pickett's ethnicity resulted in his not being able to appear at many rodeos, so he often was forced to claim that he was of Comanche heritage in order to perform. 
Pickett performed until about 1916, working as a cowhand and rancher thereafter. He later appeared in the silent films The Bull-Dogger (1921) and The Crimson Skull (1922). 

In 1932, after having retired from Wild West shows, Bill Pickett was kicked in the head by a bronco and died after a multi-day coma.

In 1971, he was inducted into the National Rodeo Cowboy Hall of Fame.

The United States Postal Service chose to include Bill Pickett in the Legends of the West commemorative sheet unveiled in December 1993. One month later, the Pickett family informed the Postal Service that the likeness was incorrect. Its source material was a misidentified photograph of Bill Pickett's brother and fellow cowboy star, Ben Pickett. In October 1994, the United States Postal Service released corrected stamps based on the poster for The Bull-Dogger.

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*Major Taylor, a champion cyclist, died in Chicago, Illinois (June 21).

Marshall Walter "Major" Taylor (b. November 26, 1878, Indianapolis, Indiana  – d. June 21, 1932, Chicago, Illinois) was a cyclist who won the world 1 mile (1.6 km) track cycling championship in 1899 after setting numerous world records and overcoming racial discrimination. Taylor was the first African-American cyclist to achieve the level of world champion and only the second man of African descent to win a world championship in any sport — after Canadian boxer George Dixon.

Taylor was the son of Gilbert Taylor, a Civil War veteran, and Saphronia Kelter.  The Taylors had migrated from Louisville, Kentucky, with their large family to a farm in rural Indiana.  Major was one of eight children: five girls and three boys. Taylor's father was employed in the household of a wealthy Indianapolis family, the Southards, as a coachman, where Taylor was also raised and educated. When Taylor was a child, his father would bring him to work. The employer had a son, Dan Southard, who was the same age and the two boys became close friends. Taylor later moved in with the family and was able to live a more advantaged life than his parents could provide.

This period of living and learning at the Southard house lasted from the time he was eight until he was 12, when the Southards moved to Chicago and Taylor "was soon thrust into the real world."

At 12, Taylor received his first bicycle from the Southards and became such an expert trick rider that a local bike shop owner, Tom Hay, hired him to stage exhibitions and perform cycling stunts outside his bicycle shop. The name of the shop was Hay and Willits. The compensation was $6 a week, plus a free bike worth $35. Taylor performed the stunts wearing a soldier's uniform, hence the nickname "Major."

When he was 13 in 1891, Taylor won his first race, an amateur event in Indianapolis. Two years later, in 1893 at age 15, Taylor beat the 1 mile (1.6 km) amateur track record where he was "hooted" and then barred from the track because of his color.

Major Taylor won his first significant race in 1895 at age 16. The 75 miles (121 km) road race, near his hometown of Indianapolis, Indiana, came amid the racial threats of his white competitors.

Because he was an African American, Taylor was banned from bicycle racing in Indiana once he started winning and made a reputation as "The Black Cyclone." In 1896, he moved from Indianapolis to Worcester, Massachusetts, a more racially tolerant area of the country and an area that was at that time a center of the United States bicycle industry with half a dozen factories and 30 bicycle shops. Taylor went there to work as a bicycle mechanic in the Worcester Cycle Manufacturing Company factory, owned by Louis D. "Birdie" Munger, Taylor's benefactor who was to become Taylor's lifelong friend and mentor.  In addition to working as a bicycle mechanic, Taylor was also a racer for Munger's team. Taylor had first worked for Munger in Indianapolis and during that time, Munger made up his mind to make Taylor a champion.

Taylor's first east coast race was in a League of American Wheelman 1 mile (1.6 km) race in New Haven, where he started in last place but won.

The first time his name is mentioned in The New York Times occurred on September 26, 1895, He participated in a 10 miles (16 km) event in Brooklyn, New York, on Ocean Parkway.  The race was called the Citizen Handicap. Major Taylor listed his address as Worcester, Massachusetts,  and rode with a 1:30 handicap in a field of 200. There were nine scratch riders.

Taylor turned professional in 1896 at the age of 18 and soon emerged as the "most formidable racer in America." One of his biggest supporters was President Theodore Roosevelt who kept track of Taylor throughout his 17-year racing career.

Beginning on December 5, 1896, and ending on December 12, Taylor participated in a six-day cycle race in Madison Square Garden where 5,000 people attended. The event was an indoor cycle meet and Taylor had achieved enough notoriety to be listed among the "American contestants" which included A. A. Hansen, the Minneapolis "rainmaker", and Teddy Goodman. Many "experts from abroad" participated such as Albert Schock of Switzerland, Frank J. Waller, Frank Forster and Ed von Hoeg of Germany, and B. W. Pierce of Canada. Several countries were represented including Scotland, Wales, France, England and Denmark.

The main feature of the meet was the six-day race, however, several other events were of "full interest" such as the .5 miles (0.80 km) race between Jay Eaton and Teddy Goodman. Also, of interest, the .5 miles (0.80 km) scratch and the .5 miles (0.80 km) handicap for professionals. Additionally, there were .5 miles (0.80 km) scratch and handicap for amateurs.

Taylor entered the race and listed his address as South Brooklyn, New York.  It was his Taylor's professional race and he won the final heat by 105 feet (32 m) over A. C. Meixwell of Philadelphia and E. C. Bald, a scratch rider representing Syracuse, New York. Taylor lapped the entire field during the .5 miles (0.80 km) handicap race.

At the Blue Ribbon Meet of the Bostonian Cycle Club hosted on May 19, 1897, Taylor won first place in the 1 mile (1.6 km) open professional on a Comet bicycle.

Although he is listed in the Middletown town directory in 1896, it is not known how long he still resided there after he became a professional racer. He eventually settled in Worcester, Massachusetts, (where the newspapers called him "The Worcester Whirlwind"), marrying there and having a daughter, although his career required him to spend a large amount of time traveling in America, Australia, and Europe.

By 1898, Taylor held seven world records at distances from .25 miles (0.40 km) to 2 miles (3.2 km) and he placed first in 29 of 49 races in which he competed. No one else came close to that record. Taylor was entitled to recognition as national champion but formation of a new cycling league that year "clouded" his claim to the title.

However, during 1899 he won the world championship, preceded only by boxing bantamweight George Dixon as a black world champion in any sport.  In one six-week period in 1899, Taylor established seven world records. These included the .25 miles (0.40 km), .33 miles (0.53 km), .5 miles (0.80 km), .66 miles (1.06 km), .75 miles (1.21 km), 1 mile (1.6 km) and the 2 miles (3.2 km). He did the mile from a standing start in 1:41, a record that stood for 28 years.

Taylor went to Syracuse, New York, for the 1899 season with his friend, mentor and manager, Louis "Birdie" Munger to sign a contract with E. C. Stearns Company.  Taylor, Munger and sponsor, Harry Sager had arrived in the city to enter into negotiations with the Olive Wheel Company, however, they were able to work out a more lucrative contract with Stearns who agreed to build Taylor's bicycles using the Sager gear chainless mechanism designed by Harry Sager. The bikes only weighed about 20 pounds (9.1 kg) and had an 88-inch (2,200 mm) gear for sprinting and a 120-inch (3,000 mm) gear for longer, paced runs.

Stearns also agreed to build Taylor a revolutionary steam-powered pacing tandem behind which he could attack world records and challenge the leading exponents of paced racing. Although the pacing tandem was temperamental, Taylor easily broke the world record of 1 mile (1.6 km) in 01:19 at a speed of 45.56 miles per hour (73.32 km/h) and beat his competitor, Eddie McDuffie on November 15, 1899.

After the 1899 world championship, many claims were made that the whole thing was a farce because Taylor had not competed with the strongest riders. The world records, however, showed Taylor's championship was legitimate and that his claims were impossible to dismiss. No other rider that year had come close to his fast performances and the "range and variety" of his victories which included 22 first places in major championship races around the country, the League of American Wheelmen Championship which he won on points, the world championship race in the one mile sprint in Montreal, and the defense of his own world record in two strenuous record-breaking campaigns.

Taylor participated in a European tour in 1902 where he entered 57 races and won 40 of them, defeating the champions of Germany, England, and France.

Besides racing in Europe, Taylor also competed in Australia and New Zealand, although because he was very religious, never on Sunday. He always carried a catechism and began each race with a silent prayer and refused to compete on the Sabbath.

During February 1903, Taylor was competing in the Sydney (New South Wales) handicap for a $5,000 prize and the headline flashed worldwide was "Rich Cycle Race."

Although he was greatly celebrated abroad, particularly in France, Taylor's career was still held back by racism, particularly in the Southern states where he was not permitted to compete against whites. The League of American Wheelmen for a time excluded blacks from membership. Other prominent bicycle racers of the era, such as Tom Cooper and Eddie Bald, often cooperated to ensure Taylor's defeat. During his career, Taylor had ice water thrown at him during races, and nails scattered in front of his wheels, and was often boxed in by other riders, preventing the sprints to the front of the pack at which he was so successful.

In his autobiography, he reports actually being tackled on the race track by another rider, who choked him into unconsciousness but received only a $50 fine as punishment. Nevertheless, Taylor does not dwell on such events in the book. Rather it is evident that he means it to serve as an inspiration to other African-Americans trying to overcome similar treatment. Taylor retired at age 32 in 1910, saying he was tired of the racism. His advice to African-American youths wishing to emulate him was that while bicycle racing was the appropriate route to success for him, he would not recommend it in general; and that individuals must find their own best talent.

Taylor married Daisy V. Morris in Ansonia, Connecticut, on March 21, 1902. While in Australia in 1904, Taylor and his wife had a daughter whom they named Sydney, in honor of the city in which she was born.

While Taylor was reported to have earned between $25,000 and $30,000 a year, when he returned to Worcester at the end of his career, by the time of his death he had lost everything to bad investments (including self-publishing his autobiography), persistent illness, and the stock market crash. His marriage over, he died at age 53 on June 21, 1932—a pauper in Chicago's Bronzeville neighborhood, in the charity ward of Cook County Hospital—to be buried in an unmarked grave. He was survived by his daughter.

In 1948, a group of former pro bike racers, with money donated by the Schwinn Bicycle Company's (then) owner, Frank W. Schwinn, organized the exhumation and relocation of Taylor's remains to a more prominent part of Mount Glenwood Cemetery in Thornton Township, Illinois, near Chicago. 

As part of his legacy, a monument to his memory stands in front of the Worcester Public Library in Worcester, and Indianapolis named the city's bicycle track after Taylor. Worcester has also named a street after Taylor.

Taylor's daughter, Sydney Taylor Brown, died in 2005 at age 101. In 1984, Ms. Brown donated an extensive scrapbook collection on her father to the University of Pittsburgh Archives.

In 1989, Marshall "Major" Taylor was posthumously inducted into the United States Bicycling Hall of Fame.

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The Peace Movement

*The peace movement of Ethiopia was organized in Chicago and petitioned President Roosevelt to use relief funds to settle African Americans in Africa.

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Performing Arts

*Florence B. Price played her piano concerto with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, which would do her Symphony in E Minor in 1933.

*Buddy (Clarence) Bradley became the first African American to choreograph a show of white dancers.  He was hired to prepare the London production of Evergreen for which he was in charge of sixty-four dancers. Bradley received full-credit in the program.  His career from this time on was mainly in Europe, where he was an important figure in popular dance.

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Politics

*No mention of African Americans was made in the platforms of the Democratic, Farmer-Labor, Prohibition or Socialist Labor parties.

*The Republican Party platform stated:  "For 70 years the Republican Party has been the friend of the American Negro.  Vindication of the rights of the Negro citizen to enjoy the full benefits of life, liberty and pursuit of happiness is traditional in the Republican Party, and our party stands pledged to maintain equal opportunity and rights for Negro citizens.  We do not propose to depart from that tradition nor to alter the spirit or letter of that pledge."

*The Socialist Party platform called for "the enforcement of Constitutional guarantees of economic, political and legal equality for the Negro." It also called for "the enactment and enforcement of drastic anti-lynching laws."

*The Communist Party platform read: "The Communist Party is the political party of the oppressed masses of the people -- the industrial workers, the persecuted Negroes, the toiling farmers.  The Communist Party enters this election campaign explicitly to rally the toilers of the city and country, Negro and white, in a united struggle for jobs and bread, for the fight against imperialist war. ... The Negro people, always hounded, persecuted, disfranchised, and discriminated against in capitalist America, are, during this period of crisis, oppressed as never before.  They are the first to be fired when layoffs take place.  They are discriminated against when charity rations are handed out to the unemployed.  They are cheated and robbed by the Southern white landlords and evicted from their lands and homes when their miserable income does not enable them to pay rent.  When they protest against this unbearable oppression and persecution they are singled out for police attacks in the North and for lynch victims in the South.  Over 150 Negroes have been barbarously lynched at the instigation of the white ruling class ... "  In this platform the Negro reform leaders were attacked as "shamelessly aiding the white master class in these vicious attacks."  James W. Ford, an African American, was the Vice Presidential candidate on the Communist ticket.

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Publications

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*Howard University began publishing the Journal of Negro Education.

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Radio

*Don Redman became the first African American orchestra leader to have a sponsored radio series.

Don (Donald Matthew) Redman (1900-1964), a jazz saxophonist, bandleader, and arranger, was the first African American orchestra leader to have a sponsored radio series.  He was a pioneer jazz arranger-composer and contributed significantly to the development of the big-band sound of the 1920s and 1930s.  A child prodigy, Redman was born in Piedmont, West Virginia, and studied at music conservatories in Boston and Detroit.

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Sports

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*The New York Rens, an African American professional basketball team, won the first world championship in any sport by beating the Boston Celtics.

*At the Olympics, Eddie Tolan won a gold medal in a record 100 meter dash, setting a new world record.  Ralph Metcalfe was a close second.  Tolan also won a gold medal in the 200 meter run, and Ed Gordon earned a gold in the long jump.

*George "Kid Chocolate" Dixon won the featherweight boxing championship, which he would hold through 1934.

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Statistics

*In 1932, the trend of immigration of people of African descent continued to be away from the United States, reaching its peak in 1933, when the total number of people of African descent to the United States was 84, while departures amounted to 1,058.  Almost all immigration of people of African descent to the United States came from the Crown Colonies and the dependencies of Great Britain and France in the West Indies.