1933 The Americas

The Americas

Brazil

*Manuel Francisco dos Santos, an Afro-Brazilian soccer star known by the nickname Garrincha ("Little Bird") was born (October 28).

Manuel Francisco dos Santos, also known as Manoel Francisco dos Santos (b. October [18?] 28, 1933, Pau Grande, Brazil  – b. January 20, 1983, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil), and best known by the nickname Garrincha  ("little bird"), was a Brazilian footballer (soccer player) who played right winger and forward. He is regarded by many in the sport to be the best dribbler in football history.

The word garrincha itself means wren. Garrincha was also known as Mané (short for Manuel) by his friends. The combined Mané Garrincha is also commonly used by fans in Brazil. Due to his immense popularity in Brazil, he was also called Alegria do Povo ("People's Joy") and Anjo de Pernas Tortas (Bent-Legged Angel).

In 1958 and 1962, Garrincha won the FIFA World Cup with the Brazil national team.  At the 1962 tournament, with Pele out injured, he led the team to victory, received the World Cup Golden Ball for player of the tournament, the Golden Boot as leading goalscorer, and was named in the World Cup All-Star Team.  In 1994, he was named in the FIFA World Cup All-Time Team.  Brazil never lost a match while fielding both Garrincha and Pelé.

At club level, Garrincha played the majority of his professional career for the Brazilian team Botafogo.  In the Maracana, the home team room is known as "Garrincha". In the capital Brasilia, the Estadio Nacional Mane Garrincha is named after him. He is credited with inspiring the first bullfighting chants of ole to be used at football (soccer) grounds.

In 1999, Garrincha came in seventh in the FIFA Player of the Century grand jury vote. He is a member of the World Team of the 20th Century, and was inducted into the Brazilian Football Hall of Fame.

Garrincha is considered by many to be the best right winger in the history of the sport. An imaginative and skillful dribbler, he starred along with Pele and Didí on the Brazilian national teams that won two World Cup Championships (1958, 1962).

His brother gave him the name Garrincha (“Little Bird”) because of his misshapen legs, the result of childhood polio. He made his professional debut in 1947 with Pau Grande and later played with Serrano, Corinthians, Flamengo, Bangu, Portuguesa Santista, Sao Cristovao, and Olaria and with Colombia’s Atletico Junior. His best years were with Botafogo (1957–62), when he led the team to three Brazilian league championships. He played 60 times for Brazil and in three World Cups (1958, 1962, and 1966). He starred in the 1962 tournament, scoring two goals against England in the quarterfinals and two more in the semifinals against Chile.

An undisciplined yet brilliant forward, Garrincha often frustrated coaches and opponents but was always a favorite with fans, who were spellbound by his artistry. His career ended when his legs began to deteriorate. Away from football, he had several marriages (including one to the famous Brazilian singer Elsa Soares) and struggled with alcoholism and poverty.

After a series of financial and marital problems, Garrincha died of cirrhosis of the liver on January 20, 1983, in an alcoholic coma in Rio de Janeiro. His last years were unhappy and obscure – he seemed to have become a forgotten hero – but his funeral procession, from the Maracana to Pau Grande, drew millions of fans, friends and former players to pay their respects. His epitaph reads "Here rests in peace the one who was the Joy of the People – Mané Garrincha." People had painted on the wall: Obrigado, Garrincha, por você ter vivido (Thank you, Garrincha, for having lived).

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Canada

*Archie Alleyne, an African Canadian jazz musician, was born in Toronto, Ontario (January 7).

Archie Alleyne (b. January 7, 1933, Toronto, Ontario – d. June 8, 2015) was a Canadian jazz drummer. Best known as a drummer for influential jazz musicians such as Billie Holiday, Lester Young, Stan Getz, Coleman Hawkins and Ben Webster, he was also prominent as a recording artist on his own and with Canadian jazz musicians such as Oliver Jones, Cy McLean and Brian Browne. 

Born and raised in Toronto, Ontario, Alleyne became the house drummer at the Town Tavern jazz club in his 20s.

Involved in a serious car accident in 1967, he stepped away from music for a number of years, becoming a partner in a soul food restaurant in Toronto. He returned to music in the early 1980s with Jones' band.

In later life,, he was named an Officer of the Order of Canada, established the Archie Alleyne Scholarship Fund to provide bursaries to music students, and wrote Colour Me Jazz: The Archie Alleyne Story, an autobiography.

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Cuba

*Labor unrest, that would ultimately topple the government of Cuban President Gerardo Machado, started with "a relatively innoucuous strike" by the drivers for the Havana bus system over the threat of wage cuts (July 25). Four days later, Havana's streetcars and taxis were shut down by strikes, then ships and railroads. Machado would declare martial law on August 5, but would be overthrown a week later.

*Police in Havana killed 21 people and wounded another 150 after Cuba's President Gerardo Machado ordered law enforcement to disperse crowds (August 7).

*United States envoy Sumner Welles arrived in Havana to offer President Machado safe passage out of the country if he would resign his office (August 8).

*President Machado of Cuba decreed that "a state of war" existed throughout the island nation, and ordered troops to report to Havana to defend the capital city (August 9). Machado had been granted dictatorial power two days earlier by a vote of the Cuban congress.

*Gerardo Machado, the dictator of Cuba, fled from Havana by airplane with three aides, as mobs raged through the city (August 12). He was replaced by former Ambassador to the United States Carlos Manuel de Cespedes. Hours earlier, a mob had broken into the presidential palace and sacked it.

*Dr. Orestes Ferrara, former State Secretary of Cuba, was able to fly to safety on a Pan American seaplane, with machine guns being fired at him (August 12).

*Two U.S. Navy ships were ordered to sail to Cuba to protect American life and property in the aftermath of the revolution there (August 13). The destroyer USS Claxton sailed the next day, and the USS Taylor the day afterward.

*Antonio Aincairt, Chief of Havana police, hanged himself as an angry mob closed in on him (August 19). Aincairt, who had overseen the torture and murder of citizens, had been unable to flee the country and had been in hiding for a week.

*On September 4, at Camp Columbia, the Cuban Army base at Marianao, near Havana, Sergeant Fulgencio Batista, a person of African descent, led an uprising of non-commissioned officers against their Army superiors, seized control of the base, then incited a revolt that would topple the national government the next day.

*As the Revolt of the Sergeants continued, Cuba's President Carlos Cespedes, in office for only a few weeks after the overthrow of Gerardo Machado, stepped aside in favor of a five-member junta allied with Sergeant Batista (September 5). The Pentarquia was led by law professor Guillermo Portela, accompanied by Jose Irizarri, Porfirio Franco, Sergio Carbo, and Ramon Grau San Martin. Within a week, Grau would become President, and Batista would be promoted to Army Chief of Staff. Batista would later become dictator of Cuba until being overthrown in an uprising by Fidel Castro.

*As the uprising in Cuba continued, the United States dispatched 16 destroyers to the island nation, bringing to 30 the number of United States Navy ships prepared to bring an invading force (September 7).

*Ramon Grau became the fourth President of Cuba in less than a month, after the Revolutionary Council elected him to take over from the junta that had overthrown President de Cespedes (September 10). He would serve for a few months, but would serve a four-year term later from 1944 to 1948.

*Cuban President Ramon Grau narrowly escaped assassination (October 3).

*Kid Chocolate (Eligio Montalvo) lost his title as the world junior lightweight champion, after being knocked out in the seventh round by Frankie Klick in Philadelphia (December 25).

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Haiti

*The United States and Haiti signed a treaty of friendship (November 3).

*Charles Ferdinand Pressoir, president of the Creole Academy, wrote a collection of poems, Au Rhythme de Coumbites.

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Jamaica

*Winston Garvey, the son of Marcus Garvey and Amy Jacques Garvey, was born.

At the age of 32 in 1919, Garvey married his first wife, Amy Ashwood Garvey. Amy Ashwood Garvey was also a founder of The UNIA-ACL. She had saved Garvey in the Tyler assassination by quickly getting medical help. After four months of marriage, Garvey separated from her.

In 1922, he married again, to Amy Jacques Garvey, who was working as his secretary general. They had two sons together: Marcus Mosiah Garvey, III (born September 17, 1930) and Julius Winston (born 1933). Amy Jacques Garvey played an important role in his career, and would become a lead worker in Garvey's movement.

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*Tom Redcam (Thomas MacDermot), a journalist, died (October 8).  He wrote numerous popular ballads and songs which have become part of the island's folk culture.

Thomas MacDermot (b. June 26, 1870 – d. October 8, 1933) was a Jamaican poet, novelist, and editor, editing the Jamaica Times for more than 20 years. He was probably the first Jamaican writer to assert the claim of the West Indies to a distinctive place within English-speaking culture. He also published under the pseudonym Tom Redcam (derived from his surname spelled in reverse).  He was Jamaica's first Poet Laureate.

Thomas Henry MacDermot was born in Clarendon Parish, Jamaica, and spent much of his childhood in Trelawny.  He was educated at the Falmouth Academy and at the Church of England Grammar School in Kingston, Jamaica.  He was a teacher before taking up journalism, at The Jamaica Post, The Daily Gleaner and the Jamaica Times, of which he was editor for 20 years. He worked to promote Jamaican literature through all of his writing, starting a weekly short story contest in the Jamaica Times in 1899. Notable among the young writers he helped and encouraged are Claude McKay and H. G. de Lisser.

In 1903, MacDermot started the All Jamaica Library, a series of novellas and short stories written by Jamaicans about Jamaica that were reasonably priced to encourage local readers. Alongside his work as a journalist, he wrote two novels. The first, Becka’s Buckra Baby, is said to mark the beginning of modern Caribbean writing. MacDermot's poems were not collected into a single volume until 1951. He was posthumously proclaimed Jamaica's first Poet Laureate for the period 1910-33 by the Jamaican branch of the Poetry League.

MacDermot retired because of illness in 1922. He died in an English nursing home in 1933 at the age of 63.

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Puerto Rico

*The first black hero to be heard on network radio was Juano Hernandez's depiction of "John Henry: Black River Giant," which he performed in a series broadcast on CBS.

Juano Hernández (b. July 19, 1896, San Juan, Puerto Rico – d. July 17, 1970, San Juan, Puerto Rico) was an Afro-Puerto Rican stage and film actor who was a pioneer in the African American film industry. He made his silent film debut in The Life of General Villa, and his talking picture debut in an Oscar Micheaux film, The Girl from Chicago, which was directed at black audiences. Hernández also performed in a series of dramatic roles in mainstream Hollywood movies. His participation in the film Intruder in the Dust (1949) earned him a Golden Globe Award nomination nomination for "New Star of the Year." Later in life he returned to Puerto Rico, where he intended to make a film based on the life of Sixto Escobar.

Hernández (birth name: Juan G. Hernández) was born in San Juan, Puerto Rico to a Puerto Rican father and a Brazilian mother.  With no formal education, he worked as a sailor and settled in Rio de Janeiro. He was hired by a circus and became an entertainer, making his first appearance as an acrobat in Rio de Janeiro in 1922. He later lived in the Caribbean and made his living as a professional boxer, fighting under the name Kid Curley.

In New York City, Hernandez worked in vaudeville and minstrel shows, sang in a church choir and was a radio script writer. During his spare time he perfected his diction by studying Shakespeare thus enabling himself to work in radio. He co-starred in radio's first all-black soap opera We Love and Learn. He also participated in the following radio shows: Mandrake the Magician (opposite Raymond Edward Johnson and Jessica Tandy), The Shadow, Tennessee Jed, and Against the Storm. He became a household name after his participation in The Cavalcade of America, a series which promoted American history and inventiveness. He appeared in the Broadway shows Strange Fruit and Set My People Free. His Broadway debut was in the chorus of the 1927 musical production Showboat.

Hernández appeared in 26 films throughout his career. He portrayed a revolutionary soldier in the silent film The Life of General Villa, and his first "talkie" films were small roles in films produced by Oscar Micheaux, who made race films for black audiences. His talking film debut was Micheaux's The Girl from Chicago (1932), in which he was cast as a Cuban racketeer.

In 1949, he acted in his first mainstream film, based on William Faulkner's novel, Intruder in the Dust, in which he played the role of Lucas Beauchamp, a poor Mississippi farmer unjustly accused of the murder of a white man. The film earned him a Golden Globe nomination for "New Star of the Year". The film was listed as one of the ten best of the year by the New York Times.

In the 1950 western Stars In My Crown, directed by Jacques Tourneur, starring Joel McCrea, Hernández plays a freed slave who refuses to sell his land and faces an angry lynch mob.

He was singled out for praise for his performance in the 1950 film The Breaking Point with John Garfield. The New York Times called his performance "quietly magnificent."

He also received favorable notices for his performances in Trial (1955), about a politically charged court case, in which he played the judge, and Sidney Lumet's The Pawnbroker Sidney Lumet's (1965).

Over the years, Hernández made guest appearances on a dozen United States network television programs, appearing three times in 1960 and 1961 on the ABC series, Adventures in Paradise, starring Gardner McKay. In 1959, he starred in the Alfred Hitchcock Presents production of the Ambrose Bierce short story An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge.

Other television shows in which Hernandez appeared were Naked City, The Defenders, The Dick Powell Show and Studio One.  Hernández returned to Puerto Rico late in his life. Together with Julio Torregrosa he wrote a script for a movie about the life of Puerto Rico's first boxing champion, Sixto Escobar. He was unable to get funding in Puerto Rico and, therefore, he translated the script into English.  He sent it to several companies in Hollywood and had it almost sold at the time of his death. In the last two years of his life he appeared in three films, The Extraordinary Seaman (1969) with David Niven, The Reivers (1969) with Steve McQueen, and They Call Me Mister Tibbs! (1970) with Sidney Poitier.

He died in San Juan, Puerto Rico, on July 17, 1970 of a cerebral hemorrhage and was interred at Cementerio Buxeda Memorial Park, Trujillo Alto, Puerto Rico.

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Europe

Germany

*Hilarius Gilges, an Afro-German tap dancer, actor and communist, was murdered by the Nazis in Dusseldorf, Germany (June 20).

Hilarius Gilges, (b. April 28, 1909, Dusseldorf, Germany - d. June 20, 1933, Dusseldorf, Germany), known as "Lari" Gilges, was an Afro-German tap dancer, actor and communist. He was murdered at the age of 24 by the Nazis.

Hilarius Gilges was one of the few Afro-Germans born in the country before the First World War.  His mother Maria Stüttgen was a textile worker in Dusseldorf.  The origin of his biological father is not known for certain, but he was probably an African boatman working on a Rhine tugboat. Maria married Franz Peter Gilges in 1915, giving the boy the family name Gilges.

Gilges grew up in the working class milieu of Düsseldorf and joined German Communist Youth in about 1925 or 1926. He became an amateur actor with the communist agitprop theatre group "Nordwest ran" directed by Wolfgang Langhoff.  His radical politics led in 1931 to his arrest and sentencing to one year in prison. After his release in 1932 he continued as an active communist agitator.

Gilges married Katharina Hubertine Laatsch (born Vogels) and fathered two children.

In early 1933, after the Nazis seized power, he attempted to go into hiding, but his visibility due to his skin color made this difficult. In June 1933, he was kidnapped from his apartment in the city's Altstadt district (Old Town) district of Düsseldorf. He was then brutally tortured and killed. The perpetrators are believed to have been six members of the Gestapo and SS, but even after the end of Nazi rule, were not tried in court.

His widow and two children survived the Nazi period, probably because they were helped by neighbors in the Altstadt. In 1949 they were given a lump sum compensation of 12,000 Deutschmark as restitution.

On December 23, 2003, the city of Düsseldorf named a plaza after Hilarius Gilges, in the vicinity of the Düsseldorf Academy of Arts. In 1988, a plaque had been already placed at the approximate site of the murder. The plaque was commissioned by the Düsseldorf city museum and designed by the local artist Hannelore Köhler. It shows a relief profile of Gilges.

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*Germany adopted the Law for the Prevention of Genetically Diseased Offspring (July 14). The Law for the Prevention of Genetically Diseased Offspring (Gesetz zur Verhütung erbkranken Nachwuchses) was decreed in Nazi Germany, initially providing for the compulsory sterilization of persons with mental retardation ("hereditary feeblemindedness"), bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, epilepsy, and persons born with handicaps. To review cases, a network of "hereditary health courts" (Erbgesundheitsgericht) was created when the law took effect in 1934. Between 1933 and 1945, 400,000 Aryan Germans were rendered unable to have children, as the definition of mental illness was expanded to include homeless people, prostitutes, petty criminals and juvenile delinquents. Between 1939 and 1945, at least 5,000 mentally or physically disabled children were committed to "special pediatric wards", where they were euthanized, usually by a lethal overdose of medicine. The official numbers did not include handicapped Jews, Gypsies and other non-Aryan people, who did not fall under the jurisdiction of the "health courts", and who were put to death in concentration camps.

The Law for the Prevention of Genetically Diseased Offspring (German: Gesetz zur Verhütung erbkranken Nachwuchses) or "Sterilization Law" was a statute in Nazi Germany enacted on July 14, 1933, (and made active in January 1934) which allowed the compulsory sterilization of any citizen who in the opinion of a "Genetic Health Court" (German: Erbgesundheitsgericht) suffered from a list of alleged genetic disorders - many of which were not, in fact, genetic. The elaborate interpretive commentary on the law was written by three dominant figures in the racial hygiene racial movement: Ernst Rudin, Arthur Gutt and the lawyer Falk Ruttke.  The law itself was based on a 'model' American law developed by Harry H. Laughlin.  

The law applied to anyone in the general population, making its scope significantly larger than the compulsory sterilization laws in the United States, which generally were only applicable on people in psychiatric hospitals or prisons.

The 1933 law created a large number of "Genetic Health Courts", consisting of a judge, a medical officer, and medical practitioner, which "shall decide at its own discretion after considering the results of the whole proceedings and the evidence tendered”. If the court decided that the person in question was to be sterilized, the decision could be appealed to "Higher Genetic Health Court". If the appeal failed, the sterilization was to be carried out, with the law specifying that "the use of force is permissible". The law also required that people seeking voluntary sterilizations also go through the courts.

There were three amendments by 1935, most making minor adjustments to how the statute operated or clarifying bureaucratic aspects (such as who paid for the operations). The most significant changes allowed the Higher Court to renounce a patient's right to appeal, and to fine physicians who did not report patients who they knew would qualify for sterilization under the law. The law also enforced sterilization on the so-called "Rhineland bastards"  --  Afro-German children who were fathered by Africans serving as French colonial troops occupying the Rhineland after World War I.

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