Notable Deaths
*There were 18 recorded lynchings in 1935.
*****
*****
*Richard B. Harrison, who starred as "De Lawd" in The Green Pastures on Broadway, died in New York City, New York (March 14)..
Stage performer Richard Berry Harrison (b. September 28, 1864, London, Ontario, Canada - d. March 14, 1935, New York City, New York) found his passion for acting as a child. He devoted his life to pursuing this passion despite the barriers imposed by the era of Jim Crow. He finally achieved acclaim in the last years of his life for his portrayal of "De Lawd" in the Broadway production of The Green Pastures.
Harrison was born on September 28, 1864 in London, Ontario, Canada, to Thomas L. Harrison and Ysobel Benton. His parents had escaped slavery through the Underground Railroad.
Growing up in Ontario, Harrison loved to recite poetry and attend the local theater. He also performed his own plays for this neighbors. When his father died in 1881, Harrison became the main provider for his family at age seventeen. He moved to Detroit to work at the Russell House hotel. While in Detroit, Harrison met Chambless Hull, a theater manager, who arranged for him to study at the Detroit Training School of Art.
After graduating from the Detroit Training School of Art in 1887, Harrison sought work as an actor but was rejected because of his race. In response to this discrimination in the white theater industry, Harrison began touring the United States and Canada putting on one-man shows and reciting poetry in tents, churches, and schools.
In 1893, Harrison travelled to Chicago for the World's Columbian Exposition. In Chicago, he met the noted African American poet, Paul Laurence Dunbar. The two became good friends. Indeed, Dunbar was Harrison's best man when he married Gertrude Janet Washington in 1895 in Chicago.
Harrison continued his tours into the early twentieth century, which now included theaters in Mexico as well as the United States and Canada, under the sponsorship of the Great Western Lyceum Bureau of California. By 1913, Harrison performed at the first black-owned theater, the Pekin, in Chicago. Theatrical performances, however, never completely supported his family, so he intermittently worked as a porter and a waiter.
Constantly on the move and under pressure to learn scripts, Harrison suffered a nervous breakdown in 1922. Afterward James B. Dudley, President of North Carolina Agricultural and Technical (North Carolina A&T) College at Greensboro, offered Harrison the position of Chair of the Department of Dramatics. Harrison, interested in improving the theatrical training of African Americans, remained at the college for seven years and led the effort to strengthen its programs.
Harrison left North Carolina A&T College in 1929 when he was offered the role of "De Lawd" in Marc Connelly's play The Green Pastures. The play told the story of the Old Testament with one of the first all-black casts on Broadway. Although this was by far the most important theatrical opportunity of his career, Harrison was initially reluctant to accept the role fearing to play the stereotypical dumb and lazy black person. Despite these concerns, Harrison accepted the role. The Green Pastures became extraordinarily popular as audiences were impressed by the dignity and passion of Harrison's character.
Harrison never missed a show. He went on to perform his role in more than 1,650 shows in some 203 different cities and towns. The play and its leading actor won multiple awards and were featured on the cover of Time magazine on March 4, 1935. However, only ten days after Time lauded the play, Richard Harrison died of heart failure. He died on March 14, 1935 at the age of 71.
Two funeral services were held for Harrison. The first was at St. Philip's Church in Harlem and the second was the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in Chicago where he was buried. Thousands of people came to his funerals in order to honor the man who had enchanted the country with his protrayal of "De Lawd".
*****
*An African-American man (Reuben Stacey) accused of attacking a white woman was lynched by a white mob in Fort Lauderdale, Florida (July 19).
Friday, July 19, 1935, was a typically hot, muggy summer day in South Florida. It had started out like most other days during the Depression, with people just struggling to get by. But as the afternoon grew long, there seemed to be an unusual tension in the air. The young woman noticed that cars were streaming past her home on West Las Olas Boulevard, all headed in the same direction. In one of the cars, the young woman recognized Sheriff`s Chief Deputy Bob Clark, sitting with several other white men and one black man.
Police Officer Bob McDonald pulled up at the house on his three-wheeled motorcycle. The young woman's husband was cutting the lawn. ``They`ve got him!`` McDonald shouted.
Puzzled, the girl and her husband got into their car and joined the parade, not quite sure where they were headed. Soon, they found themselves on Davie Boulevard, then called Old Davie Road, just west of Southwest 31st Avenue (now Martin Luther King Boulevard).
In 1935, there were no paved roads that far west, so the caravan kicked up a hot, dusty cloud. As the cars pulled off the road, the cloud settled over the pine scrub.
It was a weird feeling. Excitement was building to a fever pitch, with faces young and old locked in a kind of perverse expectation.
A hush settled over the crowd as Deputy Clark led a slender black man in his late 30s from the car. Reuben Stacey wore overalls and a long-sleeved white shirt. Handcuffs were clamped to his wrists. His expression turned to terror as they stood him beneath a tall pine tree.
Clark walked to a nearby house where a woman had reported she had been attacked by a black man. Clark yanked down the woman`s wire clothesline and brought it back to the tree.
As Clark approached the expectant crowd, he yelled, "You black son of a bitch," then threw the wire over a limb of the pine tree. One end was tightened around Reuben Stacey`s neck and his body was raised slowly from the ground. In moments, his neck was broken.
But Deputy Clark still was not satisfied. If the onlookers wanted to witness the lynching, he said, they must become part of it. So he told the 15 or 20 white people present to shoot the black man as he swayed from the tree limb. Clark began passing around his handgun.
Many people missed with their shots, the bullets slamming into the pine tree. But 17 bullets hit their mark. And thereafter the lips of everyone who witnessed the lynching were sealed.
About the time this was happening, a flatbed truck arrived, loaded with people. Someone had driven the truck to the South Side Ball Park near Andrews Avenue and Southwest 9th Street, where a baseball game was being played. A man leaned out of the truck and yelled, "They`re gonna lynch a nigger!"
With that, the game broke up and half the teams piled onto the truck and left. Three hours later the truck returned to the park. Some of the people from the park had cut off pieces of the black man`s pants for souvenirs. Some had cut pieces of the wire and pieces of the tree.
Those in attendance witnessed seeing blood dripping from the end of Reuben Stacey`s toes as he hung from the tree for almost eight hours.
Early that evening, when George Benton, a black undertaker, came to take the body down, Deputy Clark made sure the wire was cut so that Stacey`s body had to fall to the ground, and not be taken down gently.
The man who died on that hot summer day, Reuben Stacey, was 37 years old and lived on "Short Third," an area located between Northwest 7th and 9th avenues on Northwest 3rd Street in the black section of Fort Lauderdale. Newspaper accounts indicate that Stacey was a field hand, as were many black men in those days.
His troubles began, unwittingly or not, on Tuesday, July 16. On that day, Marion Jones, a white Sunday school teacher and a graduate of Fort Lauderdale High School, Class of `23, reported to police that a black man had come to her door and asked for a drink of water. Jones lived near her family`s orange groves off Old Davie Road, just east of State Road 7.
Jones told police that as she went to get the water, the black man followed her into the house and attacked her. He had a knife and they struggled. Jones suffered cuts on her arms and hands, but managed to run to the yard, where they struggled again. Newspaper accounts indicate that Jones` mother lived nearby and heard the commotion. When the black man saw the mother, he panicked and ran.
In his haste, the man apparently ran into Marion Jones` clothesline -- the same wire Deputy Bob Clark used to hang Reuben Stacey three days later.
Within hours of receiving the woman`s report, Clark had men and tracking dogs hunting for the suspect. And soon, rumors -- false rumors, as it turned out -- circulated that Marion Jones had been raped. Tension began running high.
Three days after Marion Jones` reported attack, a trucker in Deerfield Beach told Special Deputy W. D. McDougal that he had seen a black man ducking behind some bushes as his truck approached.
McDougal, with two other special deputies, went after the man. When they caught up with their suspect, shots were fired and an arrest was made.
The black man was Reuben Stacey. He denied he had done anything wrong. He had been arrested 25 miles from the crime, he pointed out, not in the swamp where Marion Jones had been attacked.
Nevertheless, he was taken to Jones` home, where Deputy Bob Clark was waiting. According to Clark, Jones identified Stacey immediately. Clark also said that Marion`s young son ran screaming from the house when he saw Stacey.
The three arresting special deputies were each paid $25 by Bob Clark for the capture.
Stacey was confined to the Broward County Jail, but stayed there less than three hours. There is nothing in the archives of the State Attorney`s Office that indicates he was ever officially arraigned or formally charged.
However, Sheriff Walter Clark, Bob Clark`s brother, convinced State Attorney Louis Maire and Circuit Court Judge George Tedder that the townspeople were ready to storm the jail. There is no known evidence that any such attack was about to take place. But the judge, believing the threat to be real, told Clark to have his men take Stacey to Miami for safe keeping.
Reuben Stacey never made it to Miami. Instead, he was taken by Bob Clark to the tree on Old Davie Road and hanged.
At the coroner`s inquest, the cause of death was listed as being by hanging or by bullets, with a comment that it was uncertain which had been the actual cause of death.
Florida Governor Dave Sholtz directed State Attorney Maire to convene a Grand Jury investigation into the hanging. Sholtz had been petitioned to have an "honest investigation" into the lynching by Mrs. W. P. Cornell of Jacksonville, who headed an organization called Southern Women for the Prevention of Lynching.
When the Clarks appeared before the Grand Jury, they testified that they were run off the road and into a ditch by 100 "unknown" masked men in about 50 cars. According to the statements, the masked men were armed and took Stacey with them.
Thinking that these unknown men might take Stacey to a tree near the Jones` home, the Clarks headed in that direction and found Stacey hanging from the pine tree near Old Davie Road.
The Grand Jury accepted the testimony and the inquiry was closed.
Was Stacey guilty of attacking Marion Jones? He was never tried in a court of law, his name does not exist on any court docket, and there is no trace of his family. So, only one thing about that black day in Broward is certain: When Reuben Stacey died, the truth died with him.
For a time, Stacey’s murder galvanized anti-lynching activists, However, President Franklin D. Roosevelt was not in support of the proposed federal anti-lynching bill. Roosevelt feared that his support for the bill would cost him Southern votes in the 1936 election. He believed that he could accomplish more for more people by getting re-elected.
Roosevelt was re-elected in 1936 and, in 1939, he created the Civil Rights Section of the Justice Department. Although it established prosecutions to combat lynching, it failed to win any convictions until 1946.
*****
*A 700-person lynch mob in Columbus, Texas hanged two African-American youths accused of raping and murdering a young white woman (November 12). The county attorney said he did not consider the citizens who committed the lynching a mob, and called their act "the expression of the will of the people."
*A 700-person lynch mob in Columbus, Texas hanged two African-American youths accused of raping and murdering a young white woman (November 12). The county attorney said he did not consider the citizens who committed the lynching a mob, and called their act "the expression of the will of the people."
*****
*Namahyoke Sokum Curtis, leader of 32 African American nurses who aided yellow-fever victims in the Spanish-American War, died (November 25) and was interred with honors in Arlington National Cemetery.
During the Spanish American War, black women continued to serve as nurses. The yellow fever and typhoid epidemics led Surgeon General Sternberg and Dr. Anita Newcomb McGee, Acting Assistant Surgeon in charge of nurses to seek female "immunes" -- women who had survived the disease. On July 13, 1898, Namahyoke Curtis (wife of Dr. Austin Curtis, Superintendent of the Freeman's Hospital in Washington, D. C.) was asked to recruit immune nurses. She was also under contract as an immune nurse. Curtis hired 32 African American women who were allegedly immune to typhoid fever. They were told that they were immune to the diseases because of their dark skin.
Most of Curtis' recruits went to Santiago, Cuba in July and August to serve in the worst epidemics. Records indicate that nurses T. R. Bradford and Minerva Trumbull died from typhoid fever. Other African American nurses received direct contracts from the Surgeon General. Tuskegee Institute records revealed five nursing graduates served in Army camps. African American women nurses were recruited from Washington, D. C.'s Freedman's Hospital; Provident Hospital in Chicago; Massachusetts General; Charity Hospital in New Orleans; and the Phyllish Wheatley Training School As many as 80 African American nurses may have served during the war.
*****
*Writer Alice Moore Dunbar-Nelson died in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (September 18).
*Namahyoke Sokum Curtis, leader of 32 African American nurses who aided yellow-fever victims in the Spanish-American War, died (November 25) and was interred with honors in Arlington National Cemetery.
During the Spanish American War, black women continued to serve as nurses. The yellow fever and typhoid epidemics led Surgeon General Sternberg and Dr. Anita Newcomb McGee, Acting Assistant Surgeon in charge of nurses to seek female "immunes" -- women who had survived the disease. On July 13, 1898, Namahyoke Curtis (wife of Dr. Austin Curtis, Superintendent of the Freeman's Hospital in Washington, D. C.) was asked to recruit immune nurses. She was also under contract as an immune nurse. Curtis hired 32 African American women who were allegedly immune to typhoid fever. They were told that they were immune to the diseases because of their dark skin.
Most of Curtis' recruits went to Santiago, Cuba in July and August to serve in the worst epidemics. Records indicate that nurses T. R. Bradford and Minerva Trumbull died from typhoid fever. Other African American nurses received direct contracts from the Surgeon General. Tuskegee Institute records revealed five nursing graduates served in Army camps. African American women nurses were recruited from Washington, D. C.'s Freedman's Hospital; Provident Hospital in Chicago; Massachusetts General; Charity Hospital in New Orleans; and the Phyllish Wheatley Training School As many as 80 African American nurses may have served during the war.
*****
*Writer Alice Moore Dunbar-Nelson died in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (September 18).
Alice Ruth Moore Dunbar Nelson (b. July 19, 1875, New Orleans, Louisiana – d. September 18, 1935, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) was a poet, journalist and political activist. Among the first generation born free in the South after the Civil War, she was one of the prominent African Americans involved in the artistic flourishing of the Harlem Renaissance. Her first husband was the poet Paul Laurence Dunbar. She then married physician Henry A. Callis and was last married to Robert J. Nelson, a poet and civil rights activist.
Alice Ruth Moore was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, on July 19, 1875. Her parents, Patricia Wright and Joseph Moore, were middle-class people of color and part of the traditional multi-racial Creole community of the city. At a time when fewer than one percent (1%) of Americans went to college, Moore graduated from Straight University (later merged into Dillard University) in 1892 and started work as a teacher in the public school system of New Orleans.
In 1895, her first collection of short stories and poems, Violets and Other Tales, was published by The Monthly Review. About that time, Moore moved to Boston and then New York City. She co-founded and taught at the White Rose Mission (White Rose Home for Girls) in Manhattan's San Juan Hill neighborhood.
Moore's writing and photo in a literary magazine captured the attention of the poet Paul Laurence Dunbar, and in 1898, after corresponding for two years, they married. Moore ended up moving to Washington, D. C., to join him when they married in 1898. But the relationship proved stormy, exacerbated by Dunbar's alcoholism and depression. Dunbar was also reported to have been disturbed by Moore's lesbian affairs. In 1902, after Dunbar beat Moore nearly to death, she left him, and moved to Delaware. Moore and Paul Dunbar separated but were never divorced. Paul Dunbar died in 1906.
Alice Dunbar moved to Wilmington, Delaware, and taught at Howard High School for more than a decade. During this period, she also taught summer sessions at State College for Colored Students (the predecessor of Delaware State University) and at the Hampton Institute. In 1907, she took a leave of absence from her teaching position in Wilmington and enrolled as a student at Cornell University, returning to Wilmington in 1908. In 1910, she married Henry A. Callis, a prominent physician and professor at Howard University, but this marriage ended in divorce.
From 1913 to 1914, Dunbar was co-editor and writer for the A.M.E. Review, an influential church publication produced by the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME Church). In 1916, she married the poet and civil rights activist Robert J. Nelson. She joined him in becoming active in politics in Wilmington and the region. They stayed together for the rest of their lives. From 1920, she co-edited the Wilmington Advocate, a progressive black newspaper. She also published The Dunbar Speaker and Entertainer, a literary anthology for a black audience.
Alice Dunbar Nelson was an activist for African American and women's rights, especially during the 1920s and 1930s. While she continued to write stories and poetry, she became more politically active in Wilmington, and put more effort into numerous articles and journalism on leading topics. In 1915, she was field organizer for the Middle Atlantic states for the woman's suffrage movement. In 1918, she was field representative for the Woman's Committee of the Council of Defense. In 1924, Dunbar-Nelson campaigned for the passage of the Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill, but the Southern Democratic block in Congress defeated it.
From about 1920 on, Dunbar-Nelson made a commitment to journalism and was a highly successful columnist, with articles, essays and reviews appearing as well in newspapers, magazines, and academic journals. She was a popular speaker and had an active schedule of lectures through these years. Her journalism career originally began with a rocky start. During the late 19th century, it was still unusual for women to work outside of the home, let alone an African-American woman, and the journalism business was a hostile, male-dominated field. In her diary, she spoke about the tribulations associated with the profession of journalism – "Damn bad luck I have with my pen. Some fate has decreed I shall never make money by it" (Diary 366). She discusses being denied pay for her articles and issues she had with receiving proper recognition for her work.
She moved from Delaware to Philadelphia in 1932, when her husband joined the Pennsylvania Athletic Commission. During this time, her health was in decline and she died from a heart ailment on September 18, 1935, at the age of sixty. She was cremated in Philadelphia.
She was made an honorary member of Delta Sigma Theta sorority. Her papers were collected by the University of Delaware.
Her diary was published in 1984 and detailed her life during the years 1921 and 1926 to 1931 ("Alice Dunbar-Nelson"). As one of only two journals of 19th-century African-American women, Dunbar-Nelson's diary provided useful insight into the lives of black women during this time. It "summarizes her position in an era during which law and custom limited access, expectations, and opportunities for black women" ("Alice Dunbar-Nelson"). Her diary addressed issues such as family, friendship, sexuality, health, professional problems, travels, and often financial difficulties.
*****
*Bennie Moten, a jazz pianist and band leader who recruited Count Basie for his band, died in Kansas City, Missouri (April 2).
Bennie Moten (b. November 13, 1894, Kansas City, Missouri – d. April 2, 1935, Kansas City, Missouri) was an American jazz pianist and band leader born in Kansas City, Missouri.
Moten led the Kansas City Orchestra, the most important of the regional, blues-based orchestras active in the Midwest in the 1920s, and helped to develop the riffing style that would come to define many of the 1930s Big Bands.
Moten's first recordings were made (for OKeh Records) in 1923, and were rather typical interpretations of the New Orleans style of King Oliver and others. They also showed the influence of the ragtime that was still popular in the area, as well as the stomping beat that the band was famous for. These OKeh sides (recorded 1923–1925) are some of the more valuable acoustic jazz 78s of the era and continue to be treasured records in many serious jazz collections.
Moten signed with Victor Records in 1926, and were influenced by the more sophisticated style of Fletcher Henderson, but more often than not featured a hard stomp beat that was extremely popular in Kansas City. Moten remained one of Victor's most popular orchestras through 1930. The song "Kansas City Shuffle" was recorded during this time. (The band recorded prolifically and many of their records were issued in Victor's regular series, therefore, not specifically marketed to the Black community.)
By 1928 Moten's piano was showing some boogie woogie influences, but the real revolution came in 1929 when he recruited Count Basie, Walter Page and Oran "Hot Lips" Page. Walter Page's walking bass lines gave the music an entirely new feel compared to the 2/4 tuba of his predecessor Vernon Page, colored by Basie's understated, syncopated piano fills. Another boon to the band was adding Jimmy Rushing as their primary vocalist.
Their final session (10 recordings made at Victor's Camden, New Jersey, studios on December 13, 1932, during a time when the band was suffering significant financial hardship) showed the early stages of what became known as the "Basie sound", four years before Basie recorded under his own name. By this time, Ben Webster and Rushing had joined Moten's band, but Moten himself did not play on these sessions. These sides (mostly arranged by Eddie Durham) include a number of tunes that later became swing classics:
Moten died at Kansas City's Wheatley-Provident Hospital on April 2, 1935 following a failed tonsillectomy operation. Basie, subsequently, took many of the leading musicians from the band to form his own orchestra.
*****Performing Arts
*The George Gershwin opera Porgy and Bess was performed for the first time at the Colonial Theatre in Boston (September 30).
*In Chicago, Big Joe Williams and the Washboard Blues Singers made the first recording of the classic blues song "Baby, Please Don't Go" (October 31).
*Following a triumphal tour of Europe, contralto Marian Anderson performed at Town Hall in New York, prompting the New York Times music critic to call her "one of the great singers of our time."
*****
*Todd Duncan starred as "Porgy," Ann Brown as "Bess," and John Bubbles as "Sportin' Life" in Porgy and Bess, George Gershwin's 'folk opera, at the Alvin Theater on Broadway.
Todd Duncan, an African American operatic singer, played the role of Porgy in George Gershwin's African American folk opera, Porgy and Bess. John Bubbles, a long-time African American vaudeville star, appeared in the role of Sportin' Life.
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*Eva Jessye became choral director of the premier of George Gershwin's Porgy and Bess.
*Eva Jessye became choral director of the premier of George Gershwin's Porgy and Bess.
Eva Jessye (1895-1992) was a composer, musician, choral director, educator, writer, and actress, became the first African American woman to achieve acclaim as director of a professional choral group. The Eva Jessye Choir performed regularly at the Capital Theater in New York City, from 1926 to 1929. Jessye directed the choir in Hollywood's first African American musical, Hallelujah, in 1929. She was born in Coffeyville, Kansas, graduated from Western University (Quindaro, Kansas), and later attended Langston University in Oklahoma.
*****
*Langston Hughes' long-running play Mulatto, with Rose McClendon and Morris McKinney, opened on Broadway. Another play by Hughes, Little Ham, was also staged on Broadway.
Mulatto, by Langston Hughes (1902-1967), was the first play by an African American author to be a long-run Broadway hit. It opened at the Vanderbilt Theatre on October 24, 1935, and played continuously until December 9, 1937. The poet and author was born James Mercer Langston Hughes in Joplin, Missouri, and graduated from Lincoln University, Pennsylvania. He published ten volumes of poetry; more than sixty short stories; a number of dramas, operas, and anthologies; as well as two autobiographies, The Big Sea (1940) and I Wonder as I Wander (1956). Hughes created the African American folk character Jesse B. Simple, and wrote about him in Simple Speaks His Mind (1950), and Simple Stakes a Claim (1957).
Mulatto, by Langston Hughes (1902-1967), was the first play by an African American author to be a long-run Broadway hit. It opened at the Vanderbilt Theatre on October 24, 1935, and played continuously until December 9, 1937. The poet and author was born James Mercer Langston Hughes in Joplin, Missouri, and graduated from Lincoln University, Pennsylvania. He published ten volumes of poetry; more than sixty short stories; a number of dramas, operas, and anthologies; as well as two autobiographies, The Big Sea (1940) and I Wonder as I Wander (1956). Hughes created the African American folk character Jesse B. Simple, and wrote about him in Simple Speaks His Mind (1950), and Simple Stakes a Claim (1957).
*****
*The WPA launched the Federal Theater Project in Harlem, which produced such works as J. Augustus Smith's Turpentine and W. E. B. DuBois' Haiti.
*The WPA launched the Federal Theater Project in Harlem, which produced such works as J. Augustus Smith's Turpentine and W. E. B. DuBois' Haiti.
The Federal Theater, which existed from this year through 1940 as part of the WPA, became the most successful Harlem group. The Federal Theater Project in Harlem produced such works as J. Augustus Smith's Turpentine and W. E. B. DuBois' Haiti. The project also performed such standards as Shaw and Shakespeare.
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*William G. Still's Afro-American Symphony was performed at the International Music Festival by the New York Philharmonic.
*William G. Still's Afro-American Symphony was performed at the International Music Festival by the New York Philharmonic.
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*Count Basie formed his own band.
Count (William) Basie (1904-84) was the first African American man to win a Grammy. He was also the first African American from the United States to have a band give a command performance before Queen Elizabeth. Born in Red Bank, New Jersey, Basie began playing the piano while a young teenager and studied with Fats Waller. Basie's own band, formed in Kansas City, Missouri, took the flowering of that city's style to Chicago and New York City. The band established itself as one of the leaders in jazz.
*****
Politics
*A. Philip Randolph was appointed a member of New York Mayor LaGuardia's Commission on Race.
*****
Science and Technology
*Chemist Percy Julian developed physostigmine, a drug for the treatment of the eye disease glaucoma.
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Social Organizations
*The National Council of Negro Women was established in New York City. Mary McLeod Bethune served as its first president. Later in the year, she would receive the Spingarn Medal.
*The International Council of Friends of Ethiopia was founded in New York to protest Italy's invasion of that country. Willis N. Huggins, an African American, was named the council president (executive secretary). In this role, Huggins would go to the League of Nations to plead Ethiopia's cause.
*The National Association of Negro Business and Professional Women's Clubs was founded.
*****
Sports
*Jesse Owens broke five world records and matched a sixth in a single afternoon of track and field events during the Big Ten championships at Ann Arbor, Michigan (May 25).
Louis (born Joe Louis Barrow) was born in Lafayette, Alabama in 1914. Shortly thereafter, his family moved to Detroit, Michigan where Louis attended the Duffield Elementary School for a short time. After leaving school, he worked in an automobile plant and, in his leisure time, boxed. Louis became the heavyweight champion of the world in 1937 and held the title until 1949, interrupting his career to serve in World War II. A series of unsuccessful marriages and business ventures left Louis nearly penniless after his retirement from the ring.
African Americans received an emotional boost when the boxer Joe Louis defeated Primo Carnera, at Yankee Stadium in New York. 57,000 boxing fans packed Yankee Stadium to watch Joe Louis defeat Primo Carnera by technical knockout in the sixth round.
*Joe Louis established himself as the number one challenger for boxing's world heavyweight title by knocking out Max Baer in the fourth round of a bout at Yankee Stadium in New York (September 24).
*John Henry Lewis defeated Bob Olin in St. Louis for the World Light Heavyweight Championship of boxing (October 31).
*****
Statistics
*Median incomes of African Americans and European Americans in selected cities were: New York City, African Americans $980, European Americans $1930, Differential 49.2%; Chicago, African Americans $726, European Americans $1687, Differential 56.9%; Columbus, Ohio, African Americans $831, European Americans $1622, Differential 48.7%; Atlanta, Georgia, African Americans $632, European Americans $1876, Differential 66.3%; Columbia, Georgia, African Americans $576, European Americans $1876, Differential 69.3%; and Mobile, Alabama, African Americans $481, European Americans $1419, Differential 66.1%.
*The 3,500,000 African American families receiving relief represented 21.5% of the total African American population. Of the European American population 12.8% were on relief.
*Georgia, West Virginia, South Carolina, Florida, Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas and Louisiana had higher European American rural relief rates than African Americans. Southern relief administrators disbursed funds more easily to European Americans than African Americans. In addition, Southern African Americans on relief in rural areas received from $2 to $6 less per month than European Americans.
*In the urban North approximately 50% of African American families were on relief (3 to 4 times more than European Americans). In nine cities in the urban South, 25% of African American families and 11% of European American families were on relief. More European Americans with an income below $500 were on relief than African Americans.
*In urban areas, African American relief grants were smaller than European American relief grants. The average for African Americans was $24.18, and for European Americans $29.05.
*Of relief recipients who found employment, 8.8% of the African Americans received less in wages than they did on relief, while only 2.7% of the European Americans did.
*****
Visual Arts
*The Harlem Artists Guild was formed to voice African American artists' concerns.
*Sargent Johnson created his sculpture Forever Free, which won the San Francisco Art Association medal.
*The Whitney Museum of American Art purchased African Dancer and two other sculptures by Richmond Barthe.
*Under the WPA program, Charles Alston and other African-American artists painted the Harlem Hospital murals.
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