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*Albert Gardner, a jazz and R&B drummer best known as June Gardner, was born in New Orleans, Louisiana (December 31).
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*Josh Gibson, Jr., a baseball player in the Negro Leagues who was the son of Josh Gibson, Sr., one of the greatest power hitters in baseball history, was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (August 11).
Joshua Gibson, Jr. (b. August 11, 1930, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania – d. September 10, 2003, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania) was a baseball infielder in the Negro Leagues. He played in 1949 and 1950 for the Homestead Grays. He also played with the Farnham Pirates in the Provincial League in 1951.
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*William Gorden, a football player who served as the head coach at Jackson State University, was born in Nashville, Tennessee (June 30).
William C. Gorden (b. June 30, 1930, Nashville, Tennessee) served as the head coach at Jackson State University from 1977 to 1991, compiling a record of 118–47–5. Gorden was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame as a coach in 2008. He was an alumnus of Tennessee State University.
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*Joanne Grant, a journalist and Communist activist who, as a reporter for the National Guardian, covered the American Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s, was born in Utica, New York (March 30).
*Albert Gardner, a jazz and R&B drummer best known as June Gardner, was born in New Orleans, Louisiana (December 31).
Albert Gardner (b. December 31, 1930, New Orleans, Louisiana – d. November 19, 2010, New Orleans, Louisiana), known as June Gardner or Gentleman June Gardner, started his professional career after leaving school, and toured with Lil Green before joining Edgar Blanchard's band. In the early 1950s he joined Roy Brown's band and played with Brown throughout the decade before linking up with Sam Cooke in 1960. He worked as a studio musician in New Orleans, playing on Lee Dorsey's 1966 hit "Working in the Coal Mine" among many others, and in 1968 released an album under his own name, Bustin' Out. He joined Lionel Hampton's orchestra, before forming his own band, June Gardner and the Fellas. He also performed at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival.
He died in New Orleans on November 19, 2010.
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*Josh Gibson, Jr., a baseball player in the Negro Leagues who was the son of Josh Gibson, Sr., one of the greatest power hitters in baseball history, was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (August 11).
Joshua Gibson, Jr. (b. August 11, 1930, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania – d. September 10, 2003, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania) was a baseball infielder in the Negro Leagues. He played in 1949 and 1950 for the Homestead Grays. He also played with the Farnham Pirates in the Provincial League in 1951.
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*William Gorden, a football player who served as the head coach at Jackson State University, was born in Nashville, Tennessee (June 30).
William C. Gorden (b. June 30, 1930, Nashville, Tennessee) served as the head coach at Jackson State University from 1977 to 1991, compiling a record of 118–47–5. Gorden was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame as a coach in 2008. He was an alumnus of Tennessee State University.
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*Joanne Grant, a journalist and Communist activist who, as a reporter for the National Guardian, covered the American Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s, was born in Utica, New York (March 30).
Joanne Grant (b. March 30, 1930, Utica, New York – d. January 9, 2005, Manhattan, New York) was the author of three books about the era of the Civil Rights Movement and the director of a documentary about Ella Baker.
Joanne Grant was born on March 30, 1930, in Utica, New York. Her father was white and her mother was mixed race. As a result, she was light-skinned, though African-American.
Grant graduated from Syracuse University, with a bachelor's degree in journalism.
Grant began her career in public relations in New York City. Meanwhile, she attended the 6th World Festival of Youth and Students in Moscow, Soviet Union, in 1957, alongside 140 other Americans. She also visited China alongside 56 other Americans, even though United States citizens were not allowed to visit the communist nation at the time. Grant also visited India, Africa and Cuba. Upon her return to New York City, she served as an assistant to civil rights leader W. E. B. Du Bois. On February 3, 1960, Grant was exposed by the House Un-American Activities Committee as a member of the Communist Party USA.
Grant became a reporter for the National Guardian, a radical leftist newspaper, in the 1960s. She covered the American Civil Rights movement, and she wrote about her encounters with blacks in small towns across Alabama, Mississippi and Georgia. She wrote about lynching in the American South. Meanwhile, she became a member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.
Grant served as the news director of WBAI, a left-wing radio station, in 1965. She directed and produced Fundi: The Story of Ella Baker, a documentary about civil rights leader Ella Baker, in 1981. Actor Harry Belafonte was the narrator. The film was shown on PBS and at the London Film Festival.
Grant was the author of three books about the Civil Rights Movement. The first book, Black Protest, was published in 1968. Her second book, Confrontation on Campus, was published in 1969. It was about the Columbia University protests of 1968. Her third book was a biography of Ella Baker.
Grant married Victor Rabinowitz, the son of businessman and philanthropist Louis M. Rabinowitz. They had a son, Mark, and a daughter, Abby.
Grant died on January 9, 2005, in Manhattan, New York City. She was 74 years old. Her papers are held at the Columbia University Library.
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*Lottie Graves, a burlesque dancer, was born in South Carolina.
*Fred Gray, a civil rights attorney, preacher and activist who became the first African American President of the Alabama State Bar, was born in Montgomery, Alabama (December 14).
Fred David Gray (b. December 14, 1930, Montgomery, Alabama) litigated several major civil rights cases in Alabama, including some that reached the United States Supreme Court for rulings. He served as the President of the National Bar Association in 1985 and in 2001 was elected as the first African-American President of the Alabama State Bar.
*Bill Greene, an American politician who served as a Democratic member of the California State Assembly and the California State Senate, was born in Kansas City, Missouri (November 30).
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*Sam Greenlee, a writer best known for his controversial novel The Spook Who Sat by the Door, was born in Chicago, Illinois (July 13).
*Audrey Grevious, one of the central leaders in the local civil rights movement in Lexington, Kentucky and in the Commonwealth of Kentucky, was born in Lexington, Kentucky (September 30).
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*Lynn Hamilton, an actress who is best known for her role as Fred Sanford's girlfriend on the sitcom Sanford and Son, was born in Yazoo City, Mississippi (April 25).
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*Lottie Graves, a burlesque dancer, was born in South Carolina.
Lottie 'The Body' Tatum-Graves (b. 1930, South Carolina) was born in South Carolina but her parents came from Barbados. Her parents migrated to Syracuse, New York, when Lottie was only one years old. She graduated high school in 1947. Lottie "The Body" Graves was classically trained in New York. She began her dance career at only seventeen years old.
She began dancing with Alan White and several theater troupes. Lottie traveled as a performing dancer all throughout the United States before she settled into Detroit, in what used to be recalled as Paradise Valley. After she moved to Detroit, Lottie began dancing at the Twenty Grand nightclub.
Lottie was just as well known for her classical moves spiced with an Afro-Cuban essence as she was for her eye catching costumes. Lottie's costumes were always known for their flare, and how much attention they drew to her. Lottie was skilled in the SoCal, Chi-Chi, Calypso and various Cuban styles. Her first marriage was to Harlem Globetrotter Goose Tatum for six years. While married, Lottie "The Body" Graves, and Goose Tatum visited Cuba. Lottie was also known for her connections with the big names like: Aretha Franklin, Louis Armstrong, T- Bone Walker, B.B. King, Maurice Taylor, Solomon Burke, Dinah Washington, Billie Holiday and Fidel Castro. Lottie "The Body" Graves was one of the most notable black burlesque and vaudeville dancers. Her talents were displayed in white clubs during the segregation. Lottie is known as a famed black burlesque dancer alongside Aida Overton Walker, Josephine Baker and Toni Elling.
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*Fred Gray, a civil rights attorney, preacher and activist who became the first African American President of the Alabama State Bar, was born in Montgomery, Alabama (December 14).
Fred David Gray (b. December 14, 1930, Montgomery, Alabama) litigated several major civil rights cases in Alabama, including some that reached the United States Supreme Court for rulings. He served as the President of the National Bar Association in 1985 and in 2001 was elected as the first African-American President of the Alabama State Bar.
Born in Montgomery, Alabama, Gray attended the Loveless School, where his aunt taught, until the seventh grade. He attended the Nashville Christian Institute (NCI), a boarding school operated by the Churches of Christ, where he assisted NCI president and noted preacher Marshall Keeble in visiting other churches of the largely white denomination. After graduation, Gray matriculated at Alabama State College for Negroes, and received a baccalaureate degree in 1951. Encouraged by a teacher to apply to law school despite his earlier plans to become a historian and preacher, Gray moved to Cleveland, Ohio, and received a juris doctor degree from Case Western Reserve University School of Law in 1954. At the time, there was no law school in Alabama that would accept African Americans.
After passing the bar examination, Gray returned to his home town and established a law office. He also began preaching at the Holt Street Church of Christ, where his parents had long been devout members.
In 1957, Gray fulfilled his mother's dream by becoming a licensed preacher of the Churches of Christ. In 1974, he helped merge the denomination's white and black churches in Tuskegee, Alabama, where he had moved. Gray also served on the board of trustees for Southwestern Christian College, a historically black college near Dallas, Texas affiliated with the Churches of Christ. In 2012, Lipscomb University in Nashville, Tennessee, also affiliated with the Churches of Christ bestowed a doctorate of humane letters honoris causa upon Gray in 2012. Gray once challenged Lipscomb's segregation practices.
During the Civil Rights Movement, Gray came to prominence working with Martin Luther King, Jr. and E. D. Nixon, among others. In some of his first cases as a young Alabama attorney (and solo practitioner), Gray defended Claudette Colvin and later Rosa Parks, who were charged with disorderly conduct for refusing to seat themselves in the rear of segregated city buses. Gray represented the Montgomery Improvement Association during the more than year-long Montgomery Bus Boycott of 1955, which ultimately led the United States Supreme Court to condemn bus segregation practices in the case which started with Colvin's action, researched and filed by Gray, Browder v. Gayle.
After Alabama Attorney General John Malcolm Patterson effectively prohibited the NAACP from operating in Alabama in 1956, Gray provided legal counsel for eight years (including three trips through the state court system and two through federal courts) until the organization was permitted to operate in the state. He also successfully defended Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. from charges of tax evasion in 1960, winning an acquittal from an all-white jury.
Other notable civil rights cases brought and argued by Gray included Dixon v. Alabama (1961, which established due process rights for students at public universities), Gomillion v. Lightfoot (1962, which overturned state redistricting of Tuskegee that excluded most of the majority-black resident; this contributed to laying a foundation for "one man, one vote") and Williams v. Wallace (1963, which protected the Selma to Montgomery marchers). In another Supreme Court case, Gray was driven in his efforts to have the NAACP organize in Alabama after the group was forbidden in the state.
Alabama resisted integration of public schools following the United States Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Board of Education (1954) that ruled segregation of public schools was unconstitutional. Gray successfully represented Vivian Malone and James Hood, who had been denied admission to the University of Alabama, and they entered the university despite Governor George Wallace's Stand in the Schoolhouse Door incident. In 1963, Gray successfully sued Florence State University (now University of North Alabama) on behalf of Wendell Wilkie Gunn, who had been denied admission based on race. Gray also led the successful effort to desegregate Auburn University. In 1963, Gray filed the Lee v. Macon County Board of Education case, which in 1967 led a three-judge panel of United States District Judges to order all Alabama public schools not already subject to court orders to desegregate. Lawsuits filed by Gray helped desegregate more than 100 local school systems, as well as all public colleges and universities in his home state.
In 1970, Gray, along with Thomas J. Reed, became the first African Americans elected as legislators in Alabama since Reconstruction. Gray's district included Tuskegee and parts of Barbour, Bullock, and Macon counties.
Gray's autobiography, Bus Ride to Justice, was published in 1994, and a revised edition in 2012.
Gray also represented plaintiffs in the class-action lawsuit about the controversial federal Tuskegee Syphilis Study (1932-1972). During the Great Depression, the study was changed to review untreated syphilis in rural African-American male subjects, who thought they were receiving free health care and funeral benefits. Gray filed the case, Pollard v. U.S. Public Health Service, in 1972, after a whistleblower reported the abuses to the Washington Star and New York Times, which investigated further and published stories. In 1975, Gray achieved a successful settlement for $10 million and medical treatment for those 72 subjects still living out of the original 399. (Penicillin had become a standard treatment by 1947, although research subjects were specifically denied that treatment as well as their true diagnosis.) In addition, 40 subsequently infected spouses and 19 congenitally infected children were compensated.
As a result of the lawsuit and settlement, the 1979 Belmont Report was prepared and Congress passed federal laws. These were implemented by establishing Institutional Review Boards for the protection of human research subjects and the National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research within the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, now the Office for Human Research Protections (OHRP) in the Department of Health and Human Services.
In 1997, Gray founded (and subsequently served as president and board member of) the Tuskegee History Center. This nonprofit corporation operates a museum and offers educational resources concerning the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, as well as contributions made by various ethnic groups in the fields of human and civil rights.
On January 10, 1980, President Carter nominated Gray to be a judge on the United States District Court for the Middle District of Alabama, to fill a vacancy created by Judge Frank Minis Johnson's elevation to what then was the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. Gray later asked his nomination be withdrawn, as happened on September 17, 1980; President Carter instead nominated Myron Herbert Thompson to that seat.
Gray married the former Bernice Hill in 1955, and they had four children. He was also a member of Omega Psi Phi and Sigma Pi Phi.
In 1980, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference awarded Gray its Drum Major Award. In 1996, the American Bar Association awarded Gray its Spirit of Excellence Award (having awarded him its Equal Justice Award in 1977). The National Bar Association awarded him its C. Frances Stradford Award. In 2002, Gray became the first African-American president of the Alabama Bar Association. In 2006, the NAACP recognized Gray's accomplishments with the William Robert Ming Advocacy Award, citing the spirit of financial and personal sacrifice displayed in his legal work.
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*Bill Greene, an American politician who served as a Democratic member of the California State Assembly and the California State Senate, was born in Kansas City, Missouri (November 30).
Bill Greene (b. November 30, 1930, Kansas City, Missouri - d. December 2, 2002, Sacramento, California) served as a Democratic member of the California State Assembly and the California State Senate, representing South Central Los Angeles, Watts, Bell, Compton, Cudahy, Huntington Park and South Gate for twenty-five years.
William Bradshaw Greene, Jr., attended the University of Michigan. During the Civil Rights Movement, he demonstrated alongside Julian Bond, Stokely Carmichael and James Farmer, and he was jailed in Mississippi and Louisiana for his activism.
Greene started his career as an assistant to Jesse M. Unruh. He was the first African American to work as an assistant in the California State Assembly. He was also a lobbyist for the Service Employees International Union.
Greene served as a Democratic member of the California State Assembly from 1967 to 1975. He served as a member of the California State Senate from 1975 to 1992. He succeeded Mervyn M. Dymally, another African-American politician, in both houses. In the California State Senate, he represented South-Central Los Angeles, Watts, Bell, Compton, Cudahy, Huntington Park and South Gate. He served as the chairman of the Senate Industrial Relations Committee. However, in 1989-1991, he "missed more than 50% of Senate votes" due to poor health, which led to his retirement.
The Bill Greene Sports Complex in Cudahy was named in his honor in 1991.
Greene married Yvonne LaFargue. They had two daughters, Alisa Rochelle and Jan Andrea.
Greene died on December 2, 2002 in Sacramento, California.
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*Sam Greenlee, a writer best known for his controversial novel The Spook Who Sat by the Door, was born in Chicago, Illinois (July 13).
Samuel Eldred Greenlee, Jr. (b. July 13, 1930, Chicago, Illinois – d. May 19, 2014, Chicago, Illinois) was best known for his controversial novel The Spook Who Sat by the Door, which was first published in London by Allison & Busby in March 1969 (having been rejected by dozens of mainstream publishers), and went on to be chosen as The Sunday Times Book of the Year. The novel was subsequently made into the 1973 movie of the same name, directed by Ivan Dixon and co-produced and written by Greenlee, that is now considered a "cult classic".
Born in Chicago, Greenlee attended the University of Wisconsin (bachelor's degree in political science, 1952) and the University of Chicago (1954-7). He was a member of Kappa Alpha Psi fraternity (Beta Omicron 1950). He served in the military (1952-4), earning the rank of first lieutenant, and subsequently worked for the United States Information Agency, serving in Iraq (in 1958, he was awarded the Meritorious Service Medal for bravery during the Baghdad revolution), Pakistan, Indonesia, and Greece between 1957 and 1965. Leaving the United States foreign service after eight years, he stayed on in Greece. He undertook further study (1963-4) at the University of Thessaloniki, and lived for three years on the island of Mykonos, where he began to write his first novel. That was eventually published in 1969 as The Spook Who Sat by the Door, the story of a black man who is recruited as a CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) agent and having mastered the skills of a spy then uses them to lead a black guerrilla movement in the United States.
Greenlee co-wrote (with Mel Clay) the screenplay for the 1973 film The Spook Who Sat by the Door, which he also co-produced with director Ivan Dixon and which is considered one of the more memorable and impassioned films that came out during what became known as the blaxploitation era. In 2011, an independent documentary entitled Infiltrating Hollywood: The Rise and Fall of the Spook Who Sat by the Door was filmed by Christine Acham and Clifford Ward, about the making and reception of the Spook film, in which Greenlee spoke out about the suppression of the film soon after its release.
Other works by Greenlee include Baghdad Blues, a 1976 novel based on his experiences traveling in Iraq in the 1950s and witnessing the 1958 Iraqi revolution, Blues for an African Princess, a 1971 collection of poems, and Ammunition (poetry, 1975). In 1990 Greenlee won the Illinois poet laureate award. He also wrote short stories, plays (although he found no producer for any of them), and the screenplay for a film short called Lisa Trotter (2010), a story adapted from Aristophanes' Lysistrata.
On May 19, 2014, Greenlee died in Chicago at the age of 83. On June 6, 2014, Chicago's DuSable Museum of African American History sponsored an evening of celebration in his honor, attended by his daughter Natiki Montano.
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*Audrey Grevious, one of the central leaders in the local civil rights movement in Lexington, Kentucky and in the Commonwealth of Kentucky, was born in Lexington, Kentucky (September 30).
As a young child, Audrey Louise Grevious (b. Audrey Louise Ross, September 30, 1930, Lexington, Kentucky – d. January 6, 2017, ) lived in a one parent home which she shared with her mother, Martha Ross from Monticello, Kentucky, and younger brother, Robert Jefferson.
Her father was from Lexington but did not live with them and she described her upbringing as being raised not only by her mother, but the entire African American community. "When I hear people talk bad about what happens to children who are raised by one parent, you know, I look at them like they're crazy ... I can look at myself and at my brother and say that our mother did an excellent job of raising us, as many of the other mothers did in our neighborhood during that time."
Grevious spent most of her youth helping her mother and trying to stay out of trouble. Her mother was a domestic servant. Grevious attended Constitution Elementary School and then Dunbar Junior and High School, both segregaged schools, almost always bringing home good grades. She credited her mother with giving her the drive and self-confidence to succeed.
Grevious participated in the Girl Scouts and was involved in many social functions at the Charles Young Community Center, including dances, arts and crafts activities and talent shows. From an early age, she was inspired to become a teacher, citing her math teachers at Dunbar, Claire Winda Taylor and Ada Taylor as her role models for a future career in teaching. Grevious graduated in 1948 and remained active in fundraising efforts of the Dunbar Alumni Association which offers scholarships to promising students.
After graduating from Dunbar, she enrolled in Kentucky State University in Frankfort, Kentucky in the fall of 1948. She would travel home every weekend, and seeing how tired her mother was from trying to support her, she quit school the following year to get a job. She worked as a secretary in the printing shop for the Town Crier, a Black newspaper in Lexington. It was during this time that Grevious began to realize the depth of racism and everyday discrimination in Kentucky.
In 1955, after her brother returned from military service he had enough money to send himself, his wife and his sister to Kentucky State. Grevious graduated in 1957 with a degree in elementary education. During her college years, she had become a member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) branch chapter in Lexington, elected as secretary, and she was forced to give up her job at the Town Crier as well as another job she had at a department store.
When she graduated from college, she became president of the Lexington NAACP. She attended the NAACP national convention in New York, and with some members from Ohio, agreed to participate in an experiment that would test White America's racism. She agreed that she would travel with some male NAACP members by car from New York to Lexington through Virginia and Maryland—and back again to New York. On the way to Kentucky, they drove "a fairly good little old car, not fancy or anything, just a good, old running car" and were dressed in their regular business professional clothes. Grevious described the reactions from White business owners when they stopped: "We weren't served any place. Now a couple of places said they would fix us some food in a box, in a sack if we came around to the back door to get it. Of course, naturally you were not going to do this. Then the plan was to get back to Lexington, the NAACP rented a limousine for us, furs for me, jewelry -- not African dress like they do now so much, but different. And I was to sit in the back, one young man was to be dressed up in a suit all the time and the other was to be the chauffeur. And we were to head back and stop at the very same places all the way back to New York. And we were served at every place that we stopped except one. And the conclusion that we came to was that they weren't quite sure who I was. Same people, we were still clean when we went before only this time I had some furs in the hot summertime wrapped around me and jewelry... so they were quite sure whether this was a foreigner coming through and they served us. ... this is what really got me into the serious part of making a change ... got me into the Movement one hundred and ten percent."
Grevious started teaching at a school for delinquent youths, Kentucky Village Reform School — later called Greendale Reformatory (now the Blackburn Correctional Complex). While teaching grade school there she noticed how segregated the institution was and challenged the "separate but equal" policy by going with her students to eat lunch in the Whites-only cafeteria. Although she met with the superintendent many times, she was never fired, and eventually earned the position of head principal.
While working at Kentucky Village, Grevious remained an active member of the NAACP and led many "picket line" protests against Lexington businesses that refused to hire or serve Blacks. In doing this she spurred a movement that led African Americans to positions they never held before. She was able to do all of this free of any crowd violence. Grevious worked closely with Julia Lewis, president of the local Congress on Racial Equality (CORE) chapter, and eventually became the vice-president of CORE also, bringing the two organizations together in order to establish social and economic justice.
After leading many protests that displayed the inequality of African Americans in Lexington, Grevious was able to accomplish what had not been possible in most areas across the south. She retired from teaching after she became principal at Maxwell Elementary School, and she remained an active NAACP member. Audrey Grevious recalled her legacy in several oral history interviews conducted by the Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral History at the University of Kentucky Libraries.
She died on January 6, 2017 at the age of 86.
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*Robert Guthrie, a psychologist and educator best known for his influential book Even the Rat was White: A Historical View of Psychology, was born in Chicago, Illinois (February 14).
Robert Val Guthrie (b. February 14, 1930, Chicago, Illinois – d. November 6, 2005) moved to Lexington, Kentucky, when his father became the principal at Dunbar High School. Living in segregated Kentucky, Guthrie went to Black schools, Black churches, and had friends only in the Black community. In this environment, Guthrie was exposed to limited number of career paths, and intended to be a public school teacher, as other options seemed out of reach.
While stationed at Sampson Air Force Base during his military service in the 1950s, Guthrie met his wife, Elodia Sexton, a nursing student from Guatemala. They married, and went on to have one daughter and five sons together. Guthrie died on November 6, 2005 from brain cancer.
To pursue his undergraduate studies, Guthrie attended Florida A&M on a scholarship to play clarinet in the school's band. He was introduced to Psychology for the first time in his early undergraduate courses and he grew passionate about the discipline. Professor Joseph Awkard, an African American faculty member, exposed Guthrie and his peers to the racial inequities espoused in much of the psychological research of the time. Awkard inspired Guthrie to broaden his horizons and consider becoming a psychologist.
From 1950-1953, Guthrie’s schooling was interrupted when he was drafted and served in the Korean War. In the military, he was exposed to a semblance of racial equality for the first time in his life, as the military was desegregated and had many policies discouraging racism.
After the war, Guthrie returned to school to earn a master’s degree from University of Kentucky, which had been newly desegregated in 1954. He was the only black student in the program, and felt unwelcome in the environment, lacking support from the faculty and fellow students. After receiving his master’s, he served in the Air Force until the early 1960s, at which point he moved to San Diego and taught in high schools before becoming the first Black professor at San Diego Mesa College.
In 1968, at an American Psychological Association conference in San Francisco, Guthrie and his colleagues founded the Association of Black Psychologists, a major step for the Black psychology movement. Guthrie then earned his PhD in 1970 at the United States International University in San Diego. The following year, he was hired as an associate professor at the University of Pittsburgh, where he taught until 1973, when he was hired as a Research Psychologist at the National Institute of Education in Washington, D.C., where he studied multicultural issues. In 1976, he returned to San Diego to work at the Navy Personnel Research and Development Center, improving working conditions and personnel interactions in the Navy. He left this post in the 1980s, starting a private practice called Psychiatric Associates of South Bay, which focused on the needs of minorities in San Diego.
He served as a tenured professor at Southern Illinois University from 1990 to 1998, drawn by the opportunity to mentor students and expand their horizons the same way he had been inspired by his professors early in his career. After retiring from this post, he taught psychology of the black experience at San Diego State University for one class per semester, and spent time putting his stories and milestones in his life together for a memoir.
In 1976, Guthrie published his most famous work, Even the Rat Was White: A Historical View of Psychology, which exposed a long history of racist work in psychology used to legitimize oppression of African Americans and promote the idea of black inferiority. The 2nd Edition of the book was published in 1998, with responses to new developments in the field, such as The Bell Curve which suggested racial differences in IQ and intelligence between races.
Guthrie is most well known for his influential book Even the Rat was White: A Historical View of Psychology, which refuted prior academic work that drew racially biased and inaccurate conclusions about Black people, and profiled often overlooked Black psychologists who made significant contributions to the field of psychology.
Even more crucial than the examination of racist academic work was the book's work cataloging the work and triumphs of early Black psychologists. While he studied for his master's at the University of Kentucky, one of Guthrie’s professors expressed doubts about the importance of contributions by Black psychologists such as Kenneth and Mamie Clark, which inspired Guthrie to begin researching the work of Black psychologists that preceded him. In Even the Rat Was White, Guthrie profiled pioneering Black psychologists and social scientists such as Francis Cecil Sumner, Kenneth and Mamie Clark, Allison Davis, Inez Beverly Prosser, Herman George Canady, Oran Wendle Eagleson, and Ruth Winifred Howard, as well as mentors of Black psychologists like G. Stanley Hall at Clark University who helped create a pipeline for African Americans to earn Ph.D.s in psychology and join university faculties.
In the spring of 2001, Guthrie became the first African-American to have his papers included in the National Archives of American Psychology in Akron, Ohio.
In a tribute written after his passing, the American Psychological Association credited him as a valuable mentor in academia and a caring clinician, going on to say that through his work, "the possibility of a truly inclusive psychology was brought closer to realization," and that his work was key to "helping psychology to recognize its shortcomings, and in moving it toward becoming a more open, diverse, and relevant discipline for all."
*Lynn Hamilton, an actress who is best known for her role as Fred Sanford's girlfriend on the sitcom Sanford and Son, was born in Yazoo City, Mississippi (April 25).
Lynn Hamilton (b. April 25, 1930, Yazoo City, Mississippi) made her film debut in John Cassavetes' Shadows (1959).
She is known for her recurring role as Donna Harris, a role she played on the sitcom Sanford and Son, from 1972 to 1977 as Fred Sanford's girlfriend and fiancee. Donna was a nurse and sometimes took care of Fred. Hamilton was the younger sister of actress, LaWanda Page, who portrayed Esther Anderson on Sanford and Son.
In addition to Hamilton's work on Sanford and Son, she also had a recurring role as "Verdie" on The Waltons, and made numerous appearances in such television sitcoms, soap operas and miniseries as Good Times, 227, Dangerous Women, Port Charles, The Golden Girls, Gunsmoke, and Roots: The Next Generations. Hamilton also had a recurring role as Judge Fulton on The Practice.
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*Playwright Lorraine Hansberry, the author of A Raisin in the Sun, was born in Chicago, Illinois (May 19),
Lorraine Vivian Hansberry (b. May 19, 1930, Chicago, Illinois – d. January 12, 1965, New York City, New York) was an American playwright and writer. Hansberry inspired Nina Simone's song "To Be Young, Gifted and Black".
She was the first black woman to write a play performed on Broadway. Her best known work, the play A Raisin in the Sun, highlights the lives of African Americans living under racial segregation in Chicago. Hansberry's family had struggled against segregation, challenging a restrictive covenant and eventually provoking the Supreme Court case Hansberry v. Lee. The title of her most famous play was taken from the poem "Harlem" by Langston Hughes: "What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?"
After she moved to New York City, Hansberry worked at the Pan-Africanist newspaper Freedom, where she dealt with intellectuals such as Paul Robeson and W. E. B. Du Bois. Much of her work during this time concerned the African struggle for liberation and their impact on the world. Hansberry has been identified as a lesbian, and sexual freedom is an important topic in several of her works. She died of cancer at the age of 34.
Lorraine Hansberry was born in a comfortable, middle-class family in Chicago, and was educated at the University of Wisconsisn and Roosevelt University. She first appeared in print in Paul Robeson's Freedom, a monthly newspaper, during the early 1950's. In 1959, A Raisin in the Sun, her first play, was produced on Broadway. It was among the first full-length African American plays to be taken seriously by a European American audience.
The success of A Raisin in the Sun catapulted Hansberry to an early fame. She was expected to be a spokesperson for the African American poor, when in fact she was more attuned to the aspirations of the African American bourgeoisie. Hansberry was very militant about integration and not supportive of black nationalist or separatist movements.
Lorraine Vivian Hansberry was the first black woman to write a play performed on Broadway. Her best known work, the play A Raisin in the Sun, highlights the lives of Black Americans living under racial segregation in Chicago. Hansberry's family had struggled against segregation, challenging a restrictive covenant and eventually provoking the Supreme Court case Hansberry v. Lee. The title of the play was taken from the poem "Harlem" by Langston Hughes: "What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?"
At the young age of 29, Hansberry won the New York's Drama Critic's Circle Award — making her the first black dramatist, the fifth woman, and the youngest playwright to do so.
After she moved to New York City, Hansberry worked at the Pan-Africanist newspaper Freedom, where she dealt with intellectuals such as Paul Robeson and W. E. B. DuBois. Much of her work during this time concerned the African struggle for liberation and their impact on the world. Hansberry has been identified as a lesbian, and sexual freedom is an important topic in several of her works. She died of cancer at the age of 34. Hansberry inspired Nina Simone's song "To Be Young, Gifted and Black".
Lorraine Hansberry was the youngest of four children born to Carl Augustus Hansberry, a successful real-estate broker, and Nannie Louise (born Perry) a driving school teacher and ward committeewoman. In 1938, her father bought a house in the Washington Park Subdivision of the South Side of Chicago, incurring the wrath of their white neighbors. The latter's legal efforts to force the Hansberry family out culminated in the United States Supreme Court's decision in Hansberry v. Lee. The restrictive covenant was ruled contestable, though not inherently invalid. Carl Hansberry was also a supporter of the Urban League and NAACP in Chicago. Both Hansberrys were active in the Chicago Republican Party. Carl died in 1946, when Lorraine was fifteen years old; "American racism helped kill him," she later said.
The Hansberrys were routinely visited by prominent Black intellectuals, including W. E. B. DuBois and Paul Robeson. Carl Hansberry's brother, William Leo Hansberry, founded the African Civilization section of the history department at Howard University. Lorraine was taught: ‘‘Above all, there were two things which were never to be betrayed: the family and the race.’’
Hansberry became the godmother to Nina Simone's daughter Lisa—now Simone.
Hansberry graduated from Betsy Ross Elementary in 1944 and from Englewood High School in 1948. She attended the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she immediately became politically active and integrated a dormitory.
She worked on Henry A. Wallace's presidential campaign in 1948, despite her mother's disapproval. She spent the summer of 1949 in Mexico, studying painting at the University of Guadalajara.
She decided in 1950 to leave Madison and pursue her career as a writer in New York City, where she attended The New School. She moved to Harlem in 1951 and became involved in activist struggles such as the fight against evictions.
In 1951, she joined the staff of the black newspaper Freedom, edited by Louis E. Burnham and published by Paul Robeson. At Freedom, she worked with W. E. B. Du Bois, whose office was in the same building, and other Black Pan-Africanists. At the newspaper, she worked as subscription clerk, receptionist, typist and editorial assistant in addition to writing news articles and editorials.
One of her first reports covered the Sojourners for Truth and Justice convened in Washington, D.C., by Mary Church Terrell. She traveled to Georgia to cover the case of Willie McGee, and was inspired to write the poem "Lynchsong" about his case.
She worked not only on the United States civil rights movement, but also on global struggles against colonialism and imperialism. Hansberry wrote in support of the Mau Mau Uprising in Kenya, criticizing the mainstream press for its biased coverage.
Hansberry often clarified these global struggles by explaining them in terms of female participants. She was particularly interested in the situation of Egypt, "the traditional Islamic 'cradle of civilization,' where women had led one of the most important fights anywhere for the equality of their sex."
In 1952, Hansberry attended a peace conference in Montevideo, Uruguay, in place of Paul Robeson, who had been denied travel rights by the State Department.
On June 20, 1953, Hansberry married Robert Nemiroff, a Jewish publisher, songwriter and political activist. Hansberry and Nemiroff moved to Greenwich Village, the setting of The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window. Success of the song "Cindy, Oh Cindy", co-authored by Nemiroff, enabled Hansberry to start writing full-time. On the night before their wedding in 1953, Nemiroff and Hansberry protested the execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg in NYC.
It is widely believed that Hansberry was a closeted lesbian, a theory supported by her secret writings in letters and personal notebooks. She was an activist for gay rights and wrote about feminism and homophobia, joining the Daughters of Bilitis and contributing two letters to their magazine, The Ladder, in 1957 under her initials "LHN." She separated from her husband at this time, but they continued to work together.
A Raisin in the Sun was written at this time and completed in 1957.
Opening on March 11, 1959, A Raisin in the Sun became the first play written by an African American woman to be produced on Broadway. The 29-year-old author became the youngest American playwright and only the fifth woman to receive the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Play. Over the next two years, Raisin was translated into 35 languages and was being performed all over the world.
Hansberry wrote two screenplays of Raisin, both of which were rejected as controversial by Columbia Pictures. Commissioned by NBC in 1960 to create a television program about slavery, Hansberry wrote The Drinking Gourd. This script was also rejected.
In 1960, during Delta Sigma Theta's 26th national convention in Chicago, Hansberry was made an honorary member.
In 1961, Hansberry was set to replace Vinnette Carroll as the director of the musical Kicks and Co, after its try-out at Chicago's McCormick Place. It was written by Oscar Brown, Jr. and featured an interracial cast including Lonnie Sattin, Nichelle Nichols, Vi Velasco, Al Freeman, Jr., Zabeth Wilde and Burgess Meredith in the title role of Mr. Kicks. A satire involving miscegenation, the $400,000 production was co-produced by her husband Robert Nemiroff. Despite a warm reception in Chicago, the show never made it to Broadway.
In 1963, Hansberry participated in a meeting with Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, set up by James Baldwin.
Also in 1963, Hansberry was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. She underwent two operations, on June 24 and August 2. Neither was successful in removing the cancer.
On March 10, 1964, Hansberry and Nemiroff divorced but continued to work together.
While many of her other writings were published in her lifetime—essays, articles, and the text for the SNCC book The Movement — the only other play given a contemporary production was The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window. The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window ran for 101 performances on Broadway and closed the night she died.
Hansberry was an atheist.
Hansberry believed that gaining civil rights in the United States and obtaining independence in colonial Africa were two sides of the same coin that presented similar challenges for Africans on both sides of the Atlantic. In response to the independence of Ghana, led by Kwame Nkrumah, Hansberry wrote: "The promise of the future of Ghana is that of all the colored peoples of the world; it is the promise of freedom."
Regarding tactics, Hansberry said Blacks "must concern themselves with every single means of struggle: legal, illegal, passive, active, violent and non-violent.... They must harass, debate, petition, give money to court struggles, sit-in, lie-down, strike, boycott, sing hymns, pray on steps—and shoot from their windows when the racists come cruising through their communities."
In a Town Hall debate on June 15, 1964, Hansberry criticized white liberals who could not accept civil disobedience, expressing a need "to encourage the white liberal to stop being a liberal and become an American radical." At the same time, she said, "some of the first people who have died so far in this struggle have been white men."
The Federal Bureau of Investigation began surveillance of Hansberry when she prepared to go to the Montevideo peace conference. The Washington, D.C. office searched her passport files "in an effort to obtain all available background material on the subject, any derogatory information contained therein, and a photograph and complete description," while officers in Milwaukee and Chicago examined her life history. Later, an FBI reviewer of Raisin in the Sun highlighted its Pan-Africanist themes as dangerous.
Hansberry, a heavy smoker her whole life, died of pancreatic cancer on January 12, 1965, aged 34. James Baldwin believed "it is not at all farfetched to suspect that what she saw contributed to the strain which killed her, for the effort to which Lorraine was dedicated is more than enough to kill a man."
Hansberry's funeral was held in Harlem on January 15, 1965. Paul Robeson and SNCC organizer James Forman gave eulogies. The presiding minister, Eugene Callender, recited messages from Baldwin and the Martin Luther King, Jr. which read: "Her creative ability and her profound grasp of the deep social issues confronting the world today will remain an inspiration to generations yet unborn." The 15th was also Dr. King's birthday. Hansberry was buried at Asbury United Methodist Church Cemetery in Croton-on-Hudson, New York.
Hansberry's ex-husband, Robert Nemiroff, became the executor for several unfinished manuscripts. He added minor changes to complete the play Les Blancs, and he adapted many of her writings into the play To Be Young, Gifted and Black, which was the longest-running Off Broadway play of the 1968–69 season. It appeared in book form the following year under the title To Be Young, Gifted and Black: Lorraine Hansberry in Her Own Words. She left behind an unfinished novel and several other plays, including The Drinking Gourd and What Use Are Flowers?, with a range of content, from slavery to a post-apocalyptic future.
Raisin, a musical based on A Raisin in the Sun, opened in New York in 1973, winning the Tony Award for Best Musical, with the book by Nemiroff, music by Judd Woldin, and lyrics by Robert Britten. A Raisin in the Sun was revived on Broadway in 2004 and received a Tony Award nomination for Best Revival of a Play. The cast included Sean Combs ("P Diddy") as Walter Lee Younger Jr., Phylicia Rashad (Tony Award-winner for Best Actress) and Audra McDonald (Tony Award-winner for Best Featured Actress). It was produced for television in 2008 with the same cast, garnering two NAACP Image Awards.
Nina Simone first released a song about Hansberry in 1969 called "To Be Young, Gifted and Black". The title of the song refers to the title of Hansberry's autobiography, which Hansberry first coined when speaking to the winners of a creative writing conference on May 1, 1964, "though it be a thrilling and marvelous thing to be merely young and gifted in such times, it is doubly so, doubly dynamic — to be young, gifted and black." Simone wrote the song with a poet named Weldon Irvine and told him that she wanted lyrics that would "make black children all over the world feel good about themselves forever." When Irvine read the lyrics after it was finished, he thought, "I didn't write this. God wrote it through me." In a recorded introduction to the song, Simone explained the difficulty of losing a close friend and talented artist.
Patricia and Frederick McKissack wrote a children's biography of Hansberry, Young, Black, and Determined, in 1998.
In 1999, Hansberry was posthumously inducted into the Chicago Gay and Lesbian Hall of Fame.
In 2002, scholar Molefi Kete Asante listed Hansberry as one of his 100 Greatest African Americans.
The Lorraine Hansberry Theatre of San Francisco, which specializes in original stagings and revivals of African-American theatre, is named in her honor. Singer and pianist Nina Simone, who was a close friend of Hansberry, used the title of her unfinished play to write a civil rights-themed song "To Be Young, Gifted and Black" together with Weldon Irvine. The single reached the top 10 on the R&B charts. A studio recording by Simone was released as a single and the first live recording on October 26, 1969, was captured on Black Gold (1970).
In 2013 Hansberry was inducted into the Legacy Walk, an outdoor public display which celebrates LGBT history and people.
In 2013, Lorraine Hansberry was posthumously inducted into the American Theatre Hall of Fame.
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*Lula Mae Hardaway, a songwriter and the mother of the music legend Stevie Wonder, was born in Eufania, Alabama (January 11).
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*Catherine Hardy, a track and field athlete who won a gold medal at the 1952 Olympic Games in the 4x100 meter relay race, was born in Carroll County, Georgia (February 8).
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*Bernard Harleston, a college administrator who became the first African American president of City College of New York, was born in New York City, New York (January 22).
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*Barbara Harris, a bishop of the Episcopal Church who was the first woman ordained a bishop in the Anglican Communion, was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (June 12).
Barbara Clementine Harris (b. June 12, 1930, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) attended the Philadelphia High School for Girls (Class of 1948). There, she excelled in music and wrote a weekly column for the Philadelphia version of the Pittsburgh Courier called "High School Notes by Bobbi". The Alumnae Association Philadelphia High School for Girls recognized her as an Outstanding Alumna for her professional work. She was installed in the Court of Honor.
*Kent Harris, an American songwriter and record producer who is best known as the writer of novelty tunes such as "Shoppin' for Clothes" (a hit for The Coasters) and "Cops and Robbers" (a hit for Bo Diddley), was born in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma (October 15).
Kent Levaughn Harris (b. October 15, 1930, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma) was raised in San Diego, California. He first recorded in 1954 as Ducky Drake for Trend Records, singing the B-side of his sister Dimples Harris' record "Hey Mr. Jelly." The B-side was called "1992." He would then change his stage name to Boogaloo. Harris originally recorded the song later known as "Shoppin' For Clothes" for Crest Records, as "Clothes Line (Wrap It Up)." It was released in 1956 as by Boogaloo and His Gallant Crew. Following the relative failure of his two Crest singles, Harris abandoned his recording ambitions in favor of a career behind the scenes. He is listed with 97 songs in the BMI songwriters' database. Harris saw a number of his songs recorded by artists on Atlantic, Capitol, RCA and Columbia. The Coasters' hit version, produced by and co-credited to Leiber and Stoller, was released in 1960. The B-side of this record, "Cops And Robbers," later became a hit for Bo Diddley in 1957.
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*Joe Henry, a baseball player who played in the Negro Leagues, was born in Brooklyn, Illinois (October 4).
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*Geoffrey Holder, a Trinidadian-American actor, voice actor, dancer, choreographer, singer, director, and painter best known for his role as the villain Baron Samedi in the 1973 Bond--movie Live and Let Die and for his 7-Up television commercials of the 1970s and 1980s, was born in Port of Spain, Trinidad (August 1).
Geoffrey Lamont Holder (b. August 1, 1930, Port of Spain, Trinidad – d. October 5, 2014, Manhattan, New York City, New York) was known for his height (6 ft 6 in, 1.98 m), "hearty laugh", and heavily accented bass voice combined with precise diction.
*Benjamin Holman, a pioneering newspaper and television reporter, was born in Columbia, South Carolina.
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*Earl Hooker, a Chicago blues guitarist whose innovative slide guitar playing earned his enshrinement into the Blues Hall of Fame, was born in Quitman County, Mississippi (January 15).
*Bill Hughes, a jazz trombonist and bandleader best known for the years he spent with the Count Basie Orchestra, was born in Dallas, Texas (March 28).
The family of William Henry "Bill" Hughes (b. March 28, 1930, Dallas, Texas) moved to Washington, D.C., when he was nine years old. His father worked at the Bureau of Engraving and played trombone in the Elks Club marching band. Hughes began playing the trombone at age twelve or thirteen and was performing at Washington jazz venues by the age of sixteen. One of these venues was the 7T Club, where he performed with saxophonist and flautist Frank Wess. While students at Howard University, Hughes and Wess played in the Howard Swingmasters, along with bassist Eddie Jones. The Swingmasters were one of several early groups that helped promote the study and performance of jazz at Historically Black Colleges and Universities. Although interested in playing music, Hughes originally wanted to pursue a career as a pharmacist. He graduated from the Howard University School of Pharmacy in 1952 and began working at the National Institutes of Health.
Hughes' career plans changed the following year when Wess, a member of the Count Basie Orchestra, suggested that Count Basie invite Hughes to join the band. Hughes was also asked to join the Duke Ellington Orchestra. However, in September 1953, he joined the Basie band where he already knew members Frank Wess, Eddie Jones, and Benny Powell. Hughes played in a three-piece tenor trombone section with Powell and Henry Coker until September 1957, when he decided to take a break from touring in order to help raise his family. During this hiatus, Hughes worked for the United States Postal Service and played trombone at the Howard Theater as well as with some small groups in Washington. A few years after returning to the band in July 1963, Hughes switched from the tenor to the bass trombone. Hughes took over leadership of the band in 2003 following the death of Grover Mitchell. He retired from the band in September 2010, stating he wanted to spend more time with his wife Dolores, whom he married on July 6, 1952.
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*Willie Irvin, a football defensive back who played in the National Football League for the Philadelphia Eagles, was born in St. Augustine, Florida (January 3).
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*Katherine Jackson, the matriarch of the Jackson musical family, was born in Clayton, Alabama.
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*Wharlest Jackson, a civil rights activist who was the treasurer of the Natchez, Mississippi branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People until his assassination by a car bomb, was born.
*Ahmad Jamal, (b. Frederick Russell Jones), an American jazz pianist known for his rendition of But Not ForMe, was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (July 2).
Ahmad Jamal began playing piano at the age of three, when his uncle Lawrence challenged him to duplicate what he was doing on the piano. Jamal began formal piano training at the age of seven with Mary Cardwell Dawson, whom he describes as greatly influencing him. His Pittsburgh roots remained an important part of his identity ("Pittsburgh meant everything to me and it still does," he said in 2001) and it was there that he was immersed in the influence of jazz artists such as Earl Hines, Billy Strayhorn, Mary Lou Williams, and Erroll Garner. Jamal also studied with pianist James Miller and began playing piano professionally at the age of fourteen, at which point he was recognized as a "coming great" by the pianist Art Tatum.
After the recording of the best-selling album But Not For Me, Jamal's music grew in popularity throughout the 1950s. In 1959, he took a tour of North Africa to explore investment options in Africa. Jamal, who was twenty-nine at the time, said he had a curiosity about the homeland of his ancestors, highly influenced by his conversion to the Muslim faith. He also said his religion had brought him peace of mind about his race, which accounted for his "growth in the field of music that has proved very lucrative for me."
In 1964, Jamal resumed touring and recording, this time with the bassist Jamil Nasser and recorded a new album, Extensions, in 1965. Jamal and Nasser continued to play and record together from 1964 to 1972. He also joined forces with Vernel Fournier (again, but only for about a year) and drummer Frank Gant (1966–76), among others. He continued to play throughout the 1970s and 1980s, mostly in trios with piano, bass and drums, but he occasionally expanded the group to include guitar. One of his most long-standing gigs was as the band for the New Year's Eve celebrations at Blues Alley in Washington, D. C., from 1979 through the 1990s. Until 1970, he played acoustic piano exclusively. The final album on which he played acoustic piano in the regular sequence was The Awakening. In the 1970s, Jamal played electric piano as well. It was rumored that the Rhodes piano was a gift from someone in Switzerland.
In 1994, Mr. Jamal received the American Jazz Masters fellowship award from the National Endowment for the Arts. The same year he was named a Duke Ellington Fellow at Yale University, where he performed commissioned works with the Assai String Quartet.
In 2007 the French Government inducted Mr. Jamal into the prestigious Order of the Arts and Letters by French Culture Minister Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres, naming him Officier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.
Mr. Jamal’s previous recording A Quiet Time (Dreyfus Records), released in January 2010, was the number No. 1 CD on jazz radio for the year 2010. Also this year the French Jazz Academy has voted "The Complete Ahmad Jamal Trio Argo Sessions 1956-1962" released by Mosaïc "Best reissue of the year with outstanding research work". His music remains, youthful, fresh, imaginative and always influential.
In December of 2011, Mr. Jamal was awarded with DownBeat’s 76th Reader’s Poll Hall of Fame.
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*Jerry Donal Jewell, the first African American to serve as governor of Arkansas, was born in Chatfield, Arkansas (September 16). A dentist who was the president pro tem of the state senate, Jewell held the post of Governor of Arkansas for three days, as Governor Jim Guy Tucker attended the Presidential inauguration of former Governor Bill Clinton.
Jerry Donal Jewell (b. September 16, 1930, Chatfield, Arkansas - d. August 17, 2002, Little Rock, Arkansas) was the first African American to serve in the Arkansas Senate in the twentieth century. He was also Arkansas' first ever African American acting governor, albeit for only a temporary four day period during Bill Clinton's presidential inauguration in 1993. Jewell moved his dental practice from North Little Rock (Pulaski County) to Little Rock (Pulaski County) in 1978, where he continued to work during his political career and up until his death in 2002.
Jewell was born on September 16, 1930, in Chatfield (Crittenden County). His parents, James M. Jewell and Ruth Lee Taylor Jewell, who were both sharecroppers, came from Mississippi. He had four sisters, only two of who survived past infancy. Around 1936, Jewell and his family moved to West Memphis (Crittenden County), where his father worked for a while for the Works Progress Administration (WPA) and then an oil company.
While growing up in West Memphis, Jewell attended segregated schools in two different districts. He then attended a boarding school in west Tennessee, where he completed his high school education. He made the honor roll at all of the schools and was active in sports teams.
In 1949, Jewell attended the Agricultural, Mechanical, and Normal College (AM&N) in Pine Bluff (Jefferson County), now the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff (UAPB). He majored in pre-medical and pre-dental. Jewell then studied dentistry at Meharry Medical College in Nashville, Tennessee, graduating in 1957. He then joined the Army Dental Corps and served in Texas and Missouri for two years. Jewell married Ometa Payne. They had five children.
In 1959, Jewell moved to North Little Rock, where he set up a dental practice. The practice was later relocated to Little Rock. The same year, Jewell became a member of the Little Rock branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). In 1963, he became branch president, taking over from the Reverend J. C. Crenchaw. Jewell held the office until 1967. In 1965, Jewell became president of the NAACP Arkansas State Conference of branches.
Jewell was elected to the Arkansas Senate in 1972, making him the first African American state senator in the twentieth century. He was a member of the Senate until 1994. During his Senate career, Jewell served as chair and vice chair of the Legislative Affairs Committee, chair of the Agricultural Economic Development Committee, chair of the Retirement Committee, chair of the Education Committee, and vice chair of the Insurance and Commerce Committee. He also served on the Energy Committee. In 1992, Jewel was elected president pro tempore of the Arkansas Senate. In that capacity, when Governor Jim Guy Tucker went to Washington, D. C. to attend President Bill Clinton's inauguration in January 1993, Jewell became acting governor of Arkansas from Sunday, January 17, at 7:00 a.m. until Wednesday, January 21, at 4:00 p.m. (there being no lieutenant governor since Tucker assumed the office of governor upon Clinton's election to the presidency). He was the first African American ever to hold that position.
However, the four days were not without controversy. Jewell pardoned two convicts and extended clemency to three others. The most notable of those pardons was that of Tommy McIntosh, the son of Robert "Say" McIntosh, who was convicted in 1987 of cocaine possession and intent to distribute, and sentenced to fifty years in prison and a fine of $250,000. Upon release, Tommy McIntosh failed to make his monthly payments, paying less than $4,000 of his fine before it was canceled in 2003. Many believe that Jewell lost his Senate seat in the 1994 Democratic primary elections to Bill Walker in part because of these pardons.
Jerry Jewell died on August 17, 2002.
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*Lula Mae Hardaway, a songwriter and the mother of the music legend Stevie Wonder, was born in Eufania, Alabama (January 11).
Lula Mae Hardaway (b. January 11, 1930, Eufania, Alabama – d. May 31, 2006, Los Angeles, California) spent her early adult life in Saginaw, Michigan, but from 1975 lived in Los Angeles where she died at the age of 76.
Hardaway co-wrote many of her son's songs during his teenage years, including the hit singles "I Was Made to Love Her", "Signed, Sealed, Delivered I'm Yours", "You Met Your Match" and "I Don't Know Why I Love You", co-writing four songs on the 1968 album For Once in My Life. For co-writing "Signed, Sealed, Delivered I'm Yours", Hardaway was co-nominated for the 1970 Grammy Award for Best R&B Song.
In 1974, Hardaway was with her then 23-year-old son at the Hollywood Palladium when he received his first Grammy, one of several he received that night.
Wonder purchased a house for his mother in the San Fernando Valley, where she enjoyed a life of churchgoing, fishing, horse racing and cooking, including what family members called a "legendary peach cobbler."
Hardaway was the subject of a 2002 authorized biography entitled Blind Faith: The Miraculous Journey of Lula Hardaway, Stevie Wonder's Mother by Dennis Love and Stacy Brown.
Lula Mae Hardaway died in 2006. She had 20 grandchildren and great-grandchildren. A service for her was held at West Angeles Church of God in Christ. There were remarks by Motown founder Berry Gordy and songs by gospel singer Yolanda Adams and others.
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*Catherine Hardy, a track and field athlete who won a gold medal at the 1952 Olympic Games in the 4x100 meter relay race, was born in Carroll County, Georgia (February 8).
Catherine Hardy Lavender (nee Catherine Hardy) (b. February 8, 1930, Carroll County, Georgia - d. September 8, 2017, Atlanta, Georgia) was a track and field athlete who competed mainly in the 100 meter dash. She won an Olympic gold medal in the 4x100 meter relay at the 1952 Olympic Summer Games in Helsinki, Finland. Later Hardy married, had children, and had a 30-year teaching career in Atlanta schools.
Hardy Lavender was born in Carroll County, Georgia, the third of eight children born to Ernest and Emma (Echols) Hardy. After graduating from Carroll County Training School at age 16, she wanted to attend Tuskegee Institute. Her family was a farming family of limited means, however; so she attended Fort Valley State College (now Fort Valley State University) instead. Though West Georgia College (now University of West Georgia) was only a few miles from Hardy's home in Carrollton, schools were still segregated and as an African American, Hardy had to look elsewhere to attend college.
In college, Hardy continued playing basketball and enjoyed it. Raymond Pitts, the track coach at Fort Valley, encouraged her to look into track. She agreed, and in 1949, she ran and won her first race at the Tuskegee Relays. Two years later, she won the Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) indoor meet in New York City, winning the 50 yard dash and setting a new American record. From 1951 to 1952, Hardy was an All-American.
Hardy received a lot of support at Fort Valley for her athletic pursuits. She worked very hard with her track coaches, Catherine and Richard Craig. Bill Burroughs of Fort Valley also had a great impact on her track life, serving as her student trainer.
In 1952, Hardy received her B.S. degree in Business Education. After graduation, Hardy trained hard in preparation for AAU events and the Olympic tryouts. At the AAU, Hardy was a triple winner, winning the 50-yard dash, as well as the 100- and 200-meter races.
At the United States Olympic tryouts in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, Hardy set an American record in the 200-meter run, thus securing a position on the 1952 United States Olympic Women's Track Team. She was the only representative of the state of Georgia that year in the Olympics, held in Helsinki, Finland. There, she anchored the 4x100 meter relay. She won the gold medal with her teammates Mae Faggs, Barbara Jones and Janet Morgan. This particular race was an upset because the Australians and their star, Marjorie Jackson, whom they called "Jet", were heavily favored to win. A poor baton transfer, however, beat the Australians' chances.
Originally, Janet Moreau was to serve as the anchor for the team, but when the coach realized that Hardy was the fastest runner on the team, the order was changed. Photographs and video of the race show that the race was quite close, but Hardy was the one who broke the tape at the finish, edging out Germany, who took the silver medal, and Great Britain, who won the bronze medal.
Noteworthy is the fact that Hardy's time in the 100 meters she ran in the 4x100 meter race was faster than the winning time in the 100-meter race at this Olympics. Though Hardy had been slated to compete in that event as well, a poor showing in one of the heats killed her chances at advancement. Despite this fact, Hardy and her teammates set a new world record, and brought home the gold in this event.
Upon returning to the States, Hardy was greeted with a ticker tape parade in her hometown, but further recognition was rather muted. In 1999 she was inducted into the Georgia Sports Hall of Fame.
Hardy was offered coaching positions in the northern United States, but chose to enter her field of study—education—in Atlanta, Georgia. There she settled, marrying the late Edward Wright Lavender, Sr. in 1956, and bearing two children—a son Edward Lavender, Jr. in 1957, and a daughter Stephanie in 1960.
Hardy Lavender continued teaching, having a career that lasted over 30 years. She retired in 1986 to care for her aged mother who had Alzheimer's disease. After her mother died in 1987, Hardy Lavender returned to education by substitute teaching in the Atlanta Public Schools system.
Catherine Hardy Lavender died on September 8, 2017, in Atlanta, Georgia.
*Pat Hare, a blues guitarist and singer whose heavily distorted power chords on "Cotton Crop Blues" anticipated elements of heavy metal music, was born in Cherry Valley, Arkansas (December 20).
Auburn "Pat" Hare (b. December 20, 1930, Cherry Valley, Arkansas - d. September 26, 1980, St. Paul, Minnesota), was a Memphis electric blues guitarist and singer. His heavily distorted, power chord-driven electric guitar music in the early 1950s is considered an important precursor to heavy metal music. His guitar work with Little Junior's Blue Flames had a major influence on the rockabilly style, while his guitar playing on blues records by artists such as Muddy Waters was influential among 1960s British Invasion blues rock bands such as The Rolling Stones and The Yardbirds.
Hare was born in Cherry Valley, Arkansas. He recorded at the Sun Studio in Memphis, Tennessee, serving as a sideman for Howlin' Wolf, James Cotton, Muddy Waters, Bobby Bland and other artists. Hare was one of the first guitarists to purposely use the effects of distortion in his playing.
In 1951, he joined a blues band formed by Junior Parker, called Little Junior's Blue Flames. He played the electric guitar solo on "Love My Baby" (1953), which later inspired the rockabilly style. One of their biggest hits was "Next Time You See Me," which in 1957 reached #5 on the Billboard R&B charts and #74 on the Billboard Hot 100 pop chart.
His guitar solo on James Cotton's electric blues record "Cotton Crop Blues" (1954) was the first record to use heavily distorted power chords, anticipating elements of heavy metal music.
Reported to have been an unassuming man in private (once married to Dorothy Mae Good, with whom he had three children — a son and two daughters), Hare had serious, and ultimately fatal, drinking problems. In December 1963, Hare shot his girlfriend dead and also shot a policeman who came to investigate. At the time of his arrest, he was playing in the blues band of Muddy Waters. He was replaced in the band by guitarist James "Pee Wee" Madison. Hare spent the last 16 years of his life in prison, where he formed a band named Sounds Incarcerated. Hare succumbed to lung cancer in prison, and died on September 26, 1980 in Saint Paul, Minnesota.
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*Bernard Harleston, a college administrator who became the first African American president of City College of New York, was born in New York City, New York (January 22).
Bernard Warren Harleston (b. January 22, 1930, New York City, New York ) was born in New York City and raised in Hempstead. He received his bachelor's degree at Howard University in 1951 and his psychology doctorate at University of Rochester in 1955. A year after receiving his doctorate, he was appointed as an assistant professor of psychology at Tufts University, working there for the next 35 years and rising to the position of dean in 1970. From 1968 to 1970, he briefly served as provost and acting president of Lincoln University.
In 1981, Harleston was selected as president of City College of New York, beating out finalists Shirley Chisholm and Homer Neal. During his administration of the college, the policy of open admissions resulted in its status as having an engineering school with the largest number of black and Hispanic students. At the same time, the reputation of the college declined in this period. The school was also disrupted by student takeovers of facilities in 1989 and 1991, an incident where nine students were crushed to death in the gymnasium stairwell outside a celebrity basketball game, and racially divisive statements issued by professors. Amid the uproar of such controversies, Harleston resigned.
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*Barbara Harris, a bishop of the Episcopal Church who was the first woman ordained a bishop in the Anglican Communion, was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (June 12).
Barbara Clementine Harris (b. June 12, 1930, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) attended the Philadelphia High School for Girls (Class of 1948). There, she excelled in music and wrote a weekly column for the Philadelphia version of the Pittsburgh Courier called "High School Notes by Bobbi". The Alumnae Association Philadelphia High School for Girls recognized her as an Outstanding Alumna for her professional work. She was installed in the Court of Honor.
After graduation from Girls High, Harris attended the Charles Morris Price School of Advertising and Journalism in Philadelphia, where she earned a certificate in 1950.
She later attended Villanova University, the Urban Theology Unit in Sheffield, England, and also graduated from the Pennsylvania Foundation for Pastoral Counseling.
Prior to her ordination to the priesthood, Harris served as head of public relations for the Sun Oil Company.
Harris was active in civil rights issues, participating in freedom rides and marches in the 1960s, including the march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, led by Martin Luther King, Jr. She spent summer vacations registering black voters in Greenville, Mississippi.
Throughout her various careers, Harris was noted for her liberal views and her outspokenness. As early as 1989 she was reported as arguing for gay rights and lambasting the Episcopal Church for racism and sexism.
Her rector at the Church of the Advocate on the north side of Philadelphia, Paul Washington, became convinced of Harris's serious interest in seeking holy orders, and recommended her to Lyman C. Ogilby of Pennsylvania. Ogilby ordained Harris as a deacon deaconin 1979 and a priest in 1980. She served as an acolyte in the service in which the first eleven women were ordained priests in the Episcopal Church on July 29, 1974. She was the priest-in-charge of St. Augustine of Hippo Church in Norristown, Pennsylvania, from 1980 to 1984, served as chaplain to the Philadelphia County prisons, and also as counsel to industrial corporations for public policy issues and social concerns. She was named executive director of the Episcopal Church Publishing Company in 1984, and publisher of The Witness magazine. In 1988 she served as interim rector of the Church of the Advocate.
Harris was ordained Bishop Suffragan of the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts on February 11, 1989. As the first woman ordained as a bishop and as an African American, Harris received death threats and obscene messages. Though urged to wear a bullet-proof to her ordination, she refused. A contingent of the Boston police were assigned to her consecration. The Episcopal Synod of America (as known as Forward in Faith North America) was formed in response to her consecration.
Harris retired from this position in Boston in 2003. She was succeeded as bishop suffragan by another African-American woman, Gayle Elizabeth Harris.
Harris served as Assisting Bishop in the Episcopal Diocese of Washington, D. C. until 2007, and as president of the Episcopal Church Publishing Company, publishers of The Witness magazine.
The Barbara C. Harris Camp & Conference Center is a ministry of the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts located in Greenfield, New Hampshire. The center is named in honor of Harris. A task force was convened in 1997 to explore the potential of the center and their recommendation to proceed with the development of the center was approved by the diocesan council in 1998. From 1999 to 2002, the development of the center was under the direction of diocesan staff. In addition, over 200 lay and clergy volunteers lent their time, energy, and expertise to the project, working in a variety of roles. An extensive fund-raising campaign also took place in order to finance the construction and to fund a scholarship endowment and an operating endowment. The center welcomed its first summer campers in July 2003.
******Kent Harris, an American songwriter and record producer who is best known as the writer of novelty tunes such as "Shoppin' for Clothes" (a hit for The Coasters) and "Cops and Robbers" (a hit for Bo Diddley), was born in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma (October 15).
Kent Levaughn Harris (b. October 15, 1930, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma) was raised in San Diego, California. He first recorded in 1954 as Ducky Drake for Trend Records, singing the B-side of his sister Dimples Harris' record "Hey Mr. Jelly." The B-side was called "1992." He would then change his stage name to Boogaloo. Harris originally recorded the song later known as "Shoppin' For Clothes" for Crest Records, as "Clothes Line (Wrap It Up)." It was released in 1956 as by Boogaloo and His Gallant Crew. Following the relative failure of his two Crest singles, Harris abandoned his recording ambitions in favor of a career behind the scenes. He is listed with 97 songs in the BMI songwriters' database. Harris saw a number of his songs recorded by artists on Atlantic, Capitol, RCA and Columbia. The Coasters' hit version, produced by and co-credited to Leiber and Stoller, was released in 1960. The B-side of this record, "Cops And Robbers," later became a hit for Bo Diddley in 1957.
His sisters Marcene, Beverly, and Betty Harris recorded together as The Harris Sisters. Marcene "Dimples" Harris (April 18, 1933 – July 22, 1976) also had a single released in 1956 on Crest Records called "This I Do Believe" b/w "If You'll Be True" under the name Dimples Harris. Dimples also recorded for Savoy Records in 1951 as the Dimples Harris Trio. In 1960, Harris formed his own label, Romark Records, and eventually went into record retailing, running the Target record store in Los Angeles. One record "Che Bongo Blues" b/w "Call Me Daddy" was released on Regent. Two other recordings "I Do Believe" and "Good Timing Papa" were not released. Dimples also released some records as Marcene Harris such as "A Song To You" b/w "I Know How It Feels" (Romark), "Work It Out" b/w "Children Of Georgia" (Romark), "Hang On To What You Got" (Octave), and "I Just Don't Understand" b/w "Guess Who" (Valiant, released in 1965). Dimples married Harold "Hack" Jackson. Betty was married to comedian Redd Foxx. Beverly also filled in for Zola Taylor singing with The Platters.
Harris produced records for several artists in the 1960s and 1970s. He produced "Stick Shift" b/w "Cruising" by The Duals in 1961 and "So Far Away" b/w "Monkey Hips And Rice" by Hank Jacobs in 1963, both records were released on Sue Records. Harris also wrote "Monkey Hips And Rice." He also produced records for Adolph Jacobs, Jimmy Ellis, and The Mighty Hannibal on his own label, Romark Records. He produced some jazz recordings for Adolph Jacobs in the 1970s. Jacobs was a former member of The Coasters in the 1950s. Harris co-produced a record with Obie Jessie (better known as Young Jessie) in 1972 on Stone Dogg Records called "Who's The Blame" b/w "Beautiful Day My Brother" by Obie Jessie and The Seeds Of Freedom.
Other songs written by Harris include "Fat Sally" by The Sevilles (from 1961), "Lover Supreme" by Prentice Moreland, "I'll Come Back To You" by Dorothy Berry, "Tell Her For Me" by Jimmy Norman, "Oh! My Aching Back" by H. B. Barnum (all from 1962), and "The Big Rip Off" by The Coasters (from 1976).
Harris managed soul singer Ty Karim and produced many of her records. Ty Karim died in 1983 from breast cancer. Their daughter Karime Harris became a singer with the funk group the Killer Meters. The United Kingdom's Kent Records (a subsidiary of Ace Records) released Ty Karim's complete known recordings entitled "The Complete Ty Karim: Los Angeles' Soul Goddess" in 2008.
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*Joe Henry, a baseball player who played in the Negro Leagues, was born in Brooklyn, Illinois (October 4).
"Prince" Joe Henry (b. October 4, 1930, Brooklyn, Illinois – d. January 2, 2009, Brooklyn, Illinois) played for several Negro League teams in the 1950s.
Henry was born and raised in Brooklyn, Illinois, where he played softball as a youngster. He was discovered by catcher Josh Johnson, who encouraged him to try baseball. Goose Curry scouted him to play in the Negro Leagues, starting him off in a Mississippi baseball school. He played for three years with the Memphis Red Sox, then signed a minor league contract, playing in 1952 in the Mississippi-Ohio Valley League for Canton and in 1953 for Mount Vernon. During these years, he sustained injuries that prevented him from playing further in the minors. He returned to the Negro Leagues in 1955-56 with the Indianapolis Clowns, but did not play for most of 1957 until he was convinced to return and play with the Detroit Stars. In 1958, he was selected as an All-Star for the East-West All Star Game. His last year in the Negro Leagues was 1959.
Late in his life, Henry fought a long battle with Major League Baseball to secure pension benefits that the league promised Negro League players in the 1990s. In the 2000s (decade), Henry began authoring a newspaper column for the St. Louis, Missouri, Riverfront Times (with the help of his grandson, Sean R. Muhammad) called "Ask a Negro Leaguer". He died January 2, 2009 after a sustained illness.
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*Geoffrey Holder, a Trinidadian-American actor, voice actor, dancer, choreographer, singer, director, and painter best known for his role as the villain Baron Samedi in the 1973 Bond--movie Live and Let Die and for his 7-Up television commercials of the 1970s and 1980s, was born in Port of Spain, Trinidad (August 1).
Geoffrey Lamont Holder (b. August 1, 1930, Port of Spain, Trinidad – d. October 5, 2014, Manhattan, New York City, New York) was known for his height (6 ft 6 in, 1.98 m), "hearty laugh", and heavily accented bass voice combined with precise diction.
Holder was born in Port of Spain, Trinidad. One of four children, of parents who had emigrated to Trinidad from Barbados. Holder attended Tranquillity School and then secondary school at Queen's Royal College in Port of Spain. At the age of seven, he made his debut in the dance company of his elder brother Boscoe Holder, from whom he had been receiving lessons in dancing and painting.
In 1952, choreographer Agnes de Mille saw Geoffrey Holder dance in St. Thomas. She invited him to New York. He would teach at the Katherine Dunham School of Dance for two years.
Holder was a principal dancer with the Metropolitan Opera Ballet in New York City from 1955 to 1956. He made his Broadway debut in House of Flowers, a musical by Harold Arlen (music and lyrics) and Truman Capote (lyrics and book). He also starred in an all-black production of Waiting for Godot in 1957.
Holder began his movie career in the 1962 British film All Night Long, a modern remake of Shakespeare's Othello. He followed that with Doctor Dolittle (1967) as Willie Shakespeare, leader of the natives of Sea-Star Island. In 1972, he was cast as the Sorcerer in Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex*. The following year he was a henchman – Baron Samedi – in the Bond-movie Live and Let Die. He also contributed to the film's choreography.
In addition to his movie appearances, Holder became a spokesman for the 1970s and 1980s 7-Up soft drink "uncola" and 1980s "crisp and clean, and no caffeine" and "never had it, never will" advertising campaigns.
In 1975, Holder won two Tony Awards for direction and costume design of The Wiz, the all-black musical version of The Wizard of Oz. Holder was the first black man to be nominated in either category. He won the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Costume Design. The show ran for 1672 performances.
As a choreographer, Holder created dance pieces for many companies, including the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, for which he provided choreography, music, and costumes for Prodigal Prince (1967), and the Dance Theatre of Harlem, for which he provided choreography, music, and costumes for Dougla (1974), and designed costumes for Firebird (1982). In 1978, Holder directed and choreographed the Broadway musical Timbuktu! Holder's 1957 piece "Bele" is part of the Dance Theater of Harlem repertory.
In the 1982 film Annie, Holder played the role of Punjab. He was in the 1992 film Boomerang with Eddie Murphy. He was also the voice of Ray in Bear in the Big Blue House and provided narration for Tim Burton's version of Roald Dahl's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. He reprised his role as the 7-Up Spokesman in the 2011 season finale of The Celebrity Apprentice, where he appeared as himself in a commercial for "7-Up Retro" for Marlee Matlin's team.
Holder was a prolific painter (patrons of his art included Lena Horne and William F. Buckley, Jr.), ardent art collector, book author, and music composer. As a painter, he won a Guggenheim Fellowship in fine arts in 1956. A book of his photography, Adam, was published by Viking Press in 1986.
In 1955, Holder married dancer Carmen de Lavallade, whom he met when both were in the cast of the musical House of Flowers. They lived in New York City and had one son, Léo. They were the subject of a 2004 film, Carmen & Geoffrey.
Geoffrey Holder died in Manhattan of complications from pneumonia on October 5, 2014.
******Benjamin Holman, a pioneering newspaper and television reporter, was born in Columbia, South Carolina.
Benjamin F. Holman (b. 1930, Columbia, South Carolina – d. January 20, 2007, Washington, D. C.) was born in Columbia, South Carolina. His father died when he was four years old, and his mother moved with him and his sister to Bloomfield, New Jersey. As a young man, he hoped to combine his love for writing, music, and engineering by creating musical theater. Before he graduated from high school, however, he had decided to become a journalist.
Holman attended Lincoln University in Pennsylvania before transferring to the University of Kansas. There, he graduated first in his class with a degree in journalism. Afterward, he pursued graduate studies at the University of Chicago.
Holman worked for the Chicago Daily News and CBS News. He was one of the nation's few prominent black journalists. Afterward, Holman spent eight years working for the administrations of Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford as director of community relations, during which he helped mediate racial disputes. He was also the assistant attorney general for the Justice Department. As such, he was the highest-ranking African American.
In 1979, Holman began teaching in the journalism department of the University of Maryland, College Park. Holman helped shape the university's Philip Merrill College of Journalism, and retired in 2004. He died on January 20, 2007 of complications from emphysema and congestive heart failure at George Washington University Hospital.
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*Odetta, the folksinger and activist known as the "Voice of the Civil Rights Movement" was born in Birmingham, Alabama (December 31).
Odetta (also known as Odetta Holmes) (b. December 31, 1930, Birmingham, Alabama - d. December 2, 2008, New York, New York) was a folk singer who was noted especially for her versions of spirituals and who became for many the voice of the civil rights movement of the early 1960s.
After her father's death in 1937, Odetta moved with her mother to Los Angeles. She began classical voice training at age 13, and she earned a degree in classicl music from Los Angeles City College. Though she had heard the music of the Deep South as a child. It was not until 1950, on a trip to San Francisco, that she began to appreciate and participate in the emergent folk scene. She soon learned to play, the guitar and began to perform traditional songs. Her distinctive blend of folk, blues, ballads, and spirituals was powered by her rich vocal style, wide range, and deep passion. Within a few years her career took off. In the early 1950s, she moved to New York City, where she met singers Pete Seeger and Harry Belafonte, who became loyal supporters. Her debut solo recording, Odetta Sings Ballads and Blues (1956), was soon followed by At the Gate of Horn (1957). Singer-songwriter Bob Dylan later said that hear Odetta on record "turned me on to folk singing." She performed at the Newport (Rhode Island) Folk Festival four times during 1959-65, and she subsequently appeared on television and in several films.
In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Odetta continued to record as a leading folk musician -- although recordings did not do her performances justice. Her music and her politics suited the growing civil rights movement, and in 1963, she sang at the historic March on Washington led by the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. Inevitably, as the movement waned and interest in folk music declined, Odetta's following shrank, although she continued to perform. In 1999, President Bill Clinton awarded her the National Medal of Arts, the highest award given in the arts in the United States, and in 2003 she was named a Living Legend by the Library of Congress.
*Earl Hooker, a Chicago blues guitarist whose innovative slide guitar playing earned his enshrinement into the Blues Hall of Fame, was born in Quitman County, Mississippi (January 15).
Earl Hooker (b. January 15, 1930, Quitman County, Mississippi – d. April 21, 1970, Chicago, Illinois) was considered a "musician's musician", he performed with blues artists such as Sonny Boy Williamson II, Junior Wells, and John Lee Hooker and fronted his own bands. An early player of the electric guitar, Hooker was influenced by the modern urban styles of T-Bone Walker and Robert Nighthawk. He recorded several singles and albums as a bandleader and with other well-known artists. His "Blue Guitar", a slide guitar instrumental single, was popular in the Chicago area and was later overdubbed with vocals by Muddy Waters as "You Shook Me".
In the late 1960s, Hooker began performing on the college and concert circuit and had several recording contracts. Just as his career was on an upswing, he died in 1970, at age 40, after a lifelong struggle with tuberculosis.
Earl Zebedee Hooker was born in rural Quitman County, Mississippi, outside of Clarksdale. In 1930, his parents moved the family to Chicago, during the Great Migration of African Americans out of the rural South in the early 20th century.
His family was musically inclined (John Lee Hooker was a cousin), and Earl heard music played at home at an early age. About age ten, he started playing the guitar. He was self-taught and picked up what he could from those around him. He developed proficiency on the guitar but showed no interest in singing. He had pronounced stuttering, which afflicted him all his life. Hooker contracted tuberculosis when he was young. The disease did not become critical until the mid-1950s, but it required periodic hospitalizations, beginning at an early age.
By 1942, when he was 12, Hooker was performing on Chicago street corners with childhood friends, including Bo Diddley. From the beginning, the blues was Hooker's favorite music. In this period, country-influenced blues was giving way to swing-influenced and jump blues styles, which often featured the electric guitar. In 1942, the popular guitarist T-Bone Walker began a three-month stint at the Rhumboogie Club in Chicago. He had considerable impact on Hooker, with both his playing and his showmanship. Walker's swing-influenced blues guitar, including "the jazzy way he would sometimes run the blues scales" and intricate chording, appealed to Hooker. Walker's stage dynamics, which included playing the guitar behind his neck and with his teeth, influenced Hooker's later stage act.
Around this time, Hooker became friends with Robert Nighthawk, one of the first guitarists in Chicago to play the electric guitar. Nighthawk taught Hooker slide guitar techniques, including various tunings and his highly articulated approach, and was a lasting influence on Hooker's playing. Also around this time, Hooker met Junior Wells, another important figure in his career. The two were frequent street performers, and sometimes, to avoid foul weather (or truancy officers), they played in streetcars, riding from one line to another across Chicago.
Around 1946, Hooker traveled to Helena, Arkansas, where he performed with Robert Nighthawk. When he was not booked with Nighthawk, he performed with Sonny Boy Williamson II, sometimes on Williamson's popular radio program, King Biscuit Time, on station KFFA, in Helena. Hooker toured the South as a member of Nighthawk's band for the next couple of years. This was his introduction to life as an itinerant blues musician (although he had earlier run away from home and spent time in the Mississippi Delta). In 1949, Hooker tried to establish himself in the music scene in Memphis, Tennessee, but was soon back on the road, fronting his own band. By the early 1950s, Hooker had returned to Chicago and was performing regularly in clubs. This set the pattern that he repeated for most of his life: extensive touring with various musicians interspersed with establishing himself in various cities before returning to the Chicago club scene. During this time, he formed a band with the blues drummer and vocalist Kansas City Red.
In 1952, Hooker began recording for several independent record companies. His early singles were often credited to the vocalist he recorded with, although some instrumentals (and his occasional vocal) were issued in Hooker's name. Songs by Hooker and blues and R&B artists, including Johnny O'Neal, Little Sam Davis, Boyd Gilmore, Pinetop Perkins, the Dells, Arbee Stidham, Lorenzo Smith, and Harold Tidwell, were recorded for King, Rockin', Sun, Argo, Vee-Jay, States, United, and C.J. (several of these recordings, including all of the Sun sessions, were unissued at the time). The harmonica player Little Arthur Duncan often accompanied Hooker during this period.
Among these early singles was Hooker's first recorded vocal performance, an interpretation of the blues classic "Black Angel Blues". His vocals were more than adequate but lacked the power usually associated with blues singers. One of Hooker's most successful singles during this period was "Frog Hop", recorded in 1956, an upbeat instrumental in which the influence of T-Bone Walker's swing blues and chording techniques can be heard, but Hooker's own style is also apparent.
Among these early singles was Hooker's first recorded vocal performance, an interpretation of the blues classic "Black Angel Blues". His vocals were more than adequate but lacked the power usually associated with blues singers. One of Hooker's most successful singles during this period was "Frog Hop", recorded in 1956, an upbeat instrumental in which the influence of T-Bone Walker's swing blues and chording techniques can be heard, but Hooker's own style is also apparent.
Despite a major attack of tuberculosis in 1956, which required hospitalization, Hooker returned to performing in Chicago clubs and touring the South. By late 1959, Junior Wells had brought Hooker to the Chief-Profile-Age group of labels, with which he began one of the most fruitful periods of his recording career. Their first recording together, "Little by Little", was a hit the following year, reaching number 23 on the Billboard Hot R&B Sides chart. With this success and his rapport with Chief owner and producer Mel London, Hooker became Chief's house guitarist. From 1959 to 1963, he appeared on about forty Chief recordings, including singles for Wells, Lillian Offitt, Magic Sam, A. C. Reed, Ricky Allen, Reggie "Guitar" Boyd, Johnny "Big Moose" Walker, and Jackie Brenston, as well as singles on which Hooker was the featured artist. He performed for nearly all of Wells' releases, including "Come On in This House", "Messin' with the Kid", and "It Hurts Me Too", which remained in Wells' repertoire for the rest of his career. Hooker regularly performed with Wells for the latter part of 1960 and most of 1961.
Hooker released several instrumentals for the Chief labels, including the slow blues "Calling All Blues" in 1960, which featured his slide guitar playing, and "Blues in D Natural", also in 1960, in which he switched between fretted and slide guitar. A chance taping before a recording session captured perhaps Hooker's best-known composition (although by a different title). During the warm-up preceding a session in May 1961, Hooker and his band played an impromptu slow blues featuring his slide guitar. The tune was played once, and Hooker was apparently not aware that it was being recorded. Producer Mel London saved the tape and, when looking for material to release the following spring, issued it as "Blue Guitar". Hooker's song sold unusually well for an instrumental blues side, and Chicago-area bluesmen included it in their sets.
Sensing greater commercial potential for Hooker's "Blue Guitar", Leonard Chess approached London about using it for the next Muddy Waters record. An agreement was reached, and in July 1962 Waters overdubbed a vocal (with lyrics by Willie Dixon) on Hooker's single. The song, renamed "You Shook Me", was successful, and Chess hired Hooker to record three more instrumentals for Waters to overdub. One of the songs, "You Need Love", again with lyrics by Dixon, was also a success and sold better than Muddy's early sixties recordings. The rock band Led Zeppelin later achieved greater success with their adaptations of Hooker's and Waters' "You Shook Me" and "You Need Love".
During his time with Chief, Hooker recorded singles as a sideman for Bobby Saxton and Betty Everett and in his own name for the Bea & Baby, C.J., and Checker labels. By 1964, the last of the Chief labels went out of business, ending Hooker's longest association with a record label.
Hooker continued touring and began recording for Cuca Records, Jim-Ko, C.J., Duplex, and Globe. Several songs recorded for Cuca between 1964 and 1967 were released on his first album, The Genius of Earl Hooker. The album was composed of instrumentals, including the slow blues "The End of the Blues" and some tunes incorporating recent popular music trends, such as the early funk-influenced "Two Bugs in a Rug" (an allusion to his tuberculosis, or TB). Hooker experienced a major tuberculosis attack in late summer 1967 and was hospitalized for nearly a year.
When Hooker was released from the hospital in 1968, he assembled a new band and began performing in Chicago clubs and touring, against his doctor's advice. The band, with the pianist Pinetop Perkins, the harmonica player Carey Bell, the bassist Geno Skaggs, the vocalist Andrew Odom, and the steel guitar player Freddie Roulette, was widely acclaimed. On the basis of a recommendation from Buddy Guy, Arhoolie Records recorded an album, Two Bugs and a Roach, by Hooker and his new band. The album, released in the spring of 1969, included a mix of instrumentals and songs with vocals by Odom, Bell, and Hooker. For one of his vocals, Hooker chose "Anna Lee", a song based on Robert Nighthawk's "Annie Lee Blues" (1949). As he had done earlier with "Sweet Angel", Hooker acknowledged his mentor's influence but went beyond Nighthawk's version to create his own interpretation. The bebop-influenced instrumental "Off the Hook" showed his jazz leanings.
The year 1969 was an important one in Hooker's career. He again teamed with Junior Wells, performing at higher-paying college dates and concerts, including Chicago's Kinetic Playground. This pairing did not last long, and in May 1969, after assembling new players, Hooker recorded material that was later released as Funk: Last of the Late Great Earl Hooker. Also in May, after being recommended by Ike Turner (with whom he first toured in 1952), Hooker went to Los Angeles to record the album Sweet Black Angel for Blue Thumb Records, with arrangements and piano accompaniment by Turner. The album included Hooker's interpretations of several blues standards, such as "Sweet Home Chicago" (with Hooker on vocal), "Drivin' Wheel", "Cross Cut Saw", "Catfish Blues", and the title track. While in Los Angeles, Hooker visited clubs and sat in with Albert Collins at the Ash Grove several times and jammed with others, including Jimi Hendrix.
After the Blue Thumb recording session, Hooker and his band backed his cousin John Lee Hooker on a series of club dates in California, after which John Lee used them for a recording session for Bluesway Records. The resulting album, John Lee Hooker Featuring Earl Hooker – If You Miss 'Im ... I Got 'Im, was Earl Hooker's introduction to the Bluesway label, a subsidiary of ABC and home to B.B. King. He recorded six more albums for Bluesway in 1969: his own Don't Have to Worry and albums by Andrew Odom, Johnny "Big Moose" Walker, Charles Brown, Jimmy Witherspoon, and Brownie McGhee and Sonny Terry.
Hooker's Don't Have to Worry included vocal performances by Hooker and by Walker and Odom, along with instrumental selections. Touring with his band in California took Hooker to the San Francisco Bay area in July 1969, where he played club and college dates and rock venues, such as The Matrix and the Fillmore West. In Berkeley, Hooker and his band, billed as Earl Hooker and His Chicago Blues Band, performed at a club, Mandrake's, for two weeks as he recorded a second album for Arhoolie. The album, Hooker and Steve, was recorded with Louis Myers on harmonica, Steve Miller on keyboards, Geno Skaggs on bass, and Bobby Robinson on drums. Hooker shared the vocals with Miller and Skaggs.
After his California sojourn, Hooker returned to Chicago and performed regularly around the city. He appeared at the first Chicago Blues Festival on August 30, 1969, which attracted about 10,000 people. In October 1969, Hooker toured Europe as part of the American Folk Blues Festival, playing twenty concerts in twenty-three days in nine countries. His sets were well received and garnered favorable reviews. The journey overseas was a sort of apotheosis for Hooker, who regarded it, along with his recording trips to California, as the climax of his career. However, the tour exhausted him, and precipitated a severe deterioration of his health upon his return. Hooker played a few dates around Chicago (including some with Junior Wells) from November to early December 1969, after which he was hospitalized.
Hooker died on April 21, 1970, at age 40, of complications due to tuberculosis. He is interred in Restvale Cemetery, in the Chicago suburb of Alsip.
During his lifetime, Hooker did not receive as much public recognition as some of his contemporaries, but he was highly regarded by musicians. Many consider him to be one of the greatest modern blues guitarists. In 2013, Hooker was inducted to the Blues Hall of Fame.
******Bill Hughes, a jazz trombonist and bandleader best known for the years he spent with the Count Basie Orchestra, was born in Dallas, Texas (March 28).
The family of William Henry "Bill" Hughes (b. March 28, 1930, Dallas, Texas) moved to Washington, D.C., when he was nine years old. His father worked at the Bureau of Engraving and played trombone in the Elks Club marching band. Hughes began playing the trombone at age twelve or thirteen and was performing at Washington jazz venues by the age of sixteen. One of these venues was the 7T Club, where he performed with saxophonist and flautist Frank Wess. While students at Howard University, Hughes and Wess played in the Howard Swingmasters, along with bassist Eddie Jones. The Swingmasters were one of several early groups that helped promote the study and performance of jazz at Historically Black Colleges and Universities. Although interested in playing music, Hughes originally wanted to pursue a career as a pharmacist. He graduated from the Howard University School of Pharmacy in 1952 and began working at the National Institutes of Health.
Hughes' career plans changed the following year when Wess, a member of the Count Basie Orchestra, suggested that Count Basie invite Hughes to join the band. Hughes was also asked to join the Duke Ellington Orchestra. However, in September 1953, he joined the Basie band where he already knew members Frank Wess, Eddie Jones, and Benny Powell. Hughes played in a three-piece tenor trombone section with Powell and Henry Coker until September 1957, when he decided to take a break from touring in order to help raise his family. During this hiatus, Hughes worked for the United States Postal Service and played trombone at the Howard Theater as well as with some small groups in Washington. A few years after returning to the band in July 1963, Hughes switched from the tenor to the bass trombone. Hughes took over leadership of the band in 2003 following the death of Grover Mitchell. He retired from the band in September 2010, stating he wanted to spend more time with his wife Dolores, whom he married on July 6, 1952.
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*Willie Irvin, a football defensive back who played in the National Football League for the Philadelphia Eagles, was born in St. Augustine, Florida (January 3).
Prior to the National Football League (NFL), in 1949, Willie James Irvin (b. January 3, 1930, St. Augustine, Florida) attended Florida A& M University (FAMU, then known as Florida A & M College) on a football scholarship where he was coached by the legendary Jake "The Snake" Gaither, one of the most winning coaches in the history of college football.
Coach Gaither was known for not playing freshmen, however, during his freshman year Willie Irvin was sent into a game to replace an injured end by Assistant Coach Hansel "Tootie" Tookes. Known by the nickname "Big Train", on his first play, Willie Irvin made an interception, ran 55 yards to score a touchdown and was a starter from that time on. In 1995, Willie Irvin was inducted into FAMU's Sports Hall of Fame for football.
Although he attended FAMU on a football scholarship, Willie Irvin also played on the basketball team. He and three teammates Thomas "Butch" Hogan, Charles "Trick Shot" White, and John "Turk" Culyer made FAMU history by defeating Alabama State in the 1952 Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (SIAC) Tournament. Due to FAMU players having fouled out, Willie Irvin (who had four personal fouls himself) and his three teammates played for more than 13 minutes with only four men on the court. After playing into double overtime, the four-man team defeated Alabama State 71-67. Willie Irvin and his three teammates were inducted into FAMU's Sports Hall of Fame in 2001 as the "Famed Final Four of 1952," at which time Jake Gaither stated that "this was the greatest display of determination by any Rattlers squad."
For his athletic achievements, Willie Irvin was also inducted into the Palm Beach County, Florida Sports Hall of Fame.
Upon graduating from FAMU in 1953, Willie Irvin was drafted by the Philadelphia Eagles where he played as a defensive back until he was drafted by the Army.
After being honorably discharged from the Army, Willie Irvin got his master's degree and became a coach, teacher and eventually a career school administrator, retiring from the school system after 34 years.
*****
*Katherine Jackson, the matriarch of the Jackson musical family, was born in Clayton, Alabama.
Katherine Esther Jackson (nee Scruse; b. Kattie B. Screws, May 4, 1930, Clayton, Alabama) was born Kattie B. Screws in Clayton, Alabama, to Martha (n̩e Upshaw; December 14, 1907 РApril 25, 1990) and Prince Albert Screws (October 16, 1907 РJanuary 21, 1997). When Jackson was four, her father changed his surname to "Scruse", and renamed his daughter to Katherine Esther. The eldest of two daughters, Katherine contracted polio at two but survived the disease. Effects of the disease left her with a noticeable permanent limp.
At four, Katherine's family moved to East Chicago, Indiana, an industrial city in northwest Indiana near Chicago. As a child, Katherine aspired to become an actress or country singer, but was dismayed to find that there were no notable black country stars. Katherine's parents divorced when she was still a youngster. While attending Washington High School, Katherine joined the local high school band. In 1947, Katherine met Joseph Jackson also living in East Chicago. Joseph obtained an annulment of an earlier marriage and began dating Katherine. After a year-long courtship, they married on November 5, 1949. In January 1950, they purchased a two-bedroom house in Gary, Indiana. During the couple's early years, they sang together, with Joe playing guitar. After Joe's dream of a boxing career was dashed, he continued working at nearby East Chicago's Inland Steel Company. During the 1950s, until 1966, Katherine gave birth to ten children, including a pair of twins, Marlon and Brandon, the latter of whom died a few hours after birth.
In the late 1950s, Katherine began working part-time as a store clerk in a local Sears in Gary. In 1963, Katherine, who was raised a Baptist, joined the Jehovah's Witness faith. After her conversion in 1965, all of her children followed her into the faith. While Joe, who was brought up in the Lutheran faith, also practiced the religion, he decided not to convert. As Katherine's brood grew, she quit her position at Sears and settled primarily as a housewife, keeping her children closer to home. By the early 1960s, several of Katherine's sons began to show off their musical talents. In 1963, Joe formed The Jackson Brothers with three of their eldest sons, namely Jackie, Tito, and Jermaine. Around the same time, Katherine's younger son Michael began showing off his talent, which was discovered first by Katherine, who noticed Michael, at the age of four, singing along to the radio while dancing to the rhythm. But when she tried to tell Joe of Michael's talent, he brushed her aside. But Katherine persisted.
A year later, Joe enlisted Michael and older brother Marlon Jackson into the group not as vocalists, but as backing instrumentalists, playing percussion. It would not be until 1966 that Joe began to see seven-year-old Michael's overall talents. By the end of 1966, Michael was positioned as the second front man of the group after Jermaine. Acting on advice from a schoolteacher, Joe changed the group's name to The Jackson Five. In 1967, after winning several talent shows in Gary, Joe Jackson decided to make the group a professional act when Gordon Keith an owner and producer at Gary's Steeltown Records, discovered and signed them to their first contract on November 21. Their first single, "Big Boy", produced by Keith, was released on January 31, 1968 and became a local hit. Katherine began designing the group's costumes, which she continued until the group found national fame months after signing with Motown Records in March 1969. During the Jackson 5's 1970-71 heyday, Katherine - along with her three daughters and youngest son - was barely mentioned in the press. This changed in 1974 when Joe began building careers around his three younger children and eldest daughter. Michael often mentioned Katherine lovingly. Katherine started to become part of her husband's management team when the grown-up members of the group (which renamed themselves The Jacksons after splitting from Motown in 1975) reunited for the Victory Tour in 1984. On his 1982 album, Thriller, Michael dedicated the album to her. Janet Jackson would do the same following the release of her 1989 album, Rhythm Nation 1814, the first album where she wasn't under the watchful eye of her father following the success of Control, and after Janet had fired Joe months after its release. In 1985, acknowledging what was then a positive impact on her children's successful music careers, national urban magazine Essence honored her as "Mother of the Year".
In 1990, Jackson released her autobiography, My Family, which documented her early years and her relationship with her husband and their children, eight of whom wrote salutes to their mother in the book's foreword. She detailed that her husband on more than a few occasions had committed adultery. These infidelities prompted Katherine to file for divorce on March 9, 1973, although she was finally convinced to rescind the divorce papers at the urging of elders at her Jehovah's Witnesses Kingdom Hall.
The following year, Joh'Vonnie Jackson, Joe's daughter with another woman named Cheryl Terrell was born on August 30, 1974. The birth of Joh'Vonnie, led Joe and Cheryl to a 25-year affair. Jackson attempted once again to divorce her husband in or around 1979, but again was persuaded to drop the action. Consequently, Katherine and Joe remained officially married.
In an unauthorized biography of Janet Jackson, a confrontational family incident was described. This biography claims that, in 1979, Katherine and her two youngest children, Randy and Janet, confronted a woman who worked for Joseph's company, whom Katherine had often reportedly accused of cheating with Joseph. That incident was re-dramatized for the 1992 miniseries The Jacksons: An American Dream. However, in the miniseries, Katherine was shown confronting Joseph instead of the woman about the alleged incident.
In the late 1980s, Katherine began experiencing an estrangement with her daughter La Toya after she was being managed by Jack Gordon. In her 1991 memoirs, La Toya: Growing Up in the Jackson Family, La Toya alleged that Katherine was emotionally abusive, charges Katherine denied to the press and blamed Gordon, who married La Toya in 1989, for "brainwashing" her. In 1997, La Toya and Katherine reconciled after she filed for divorce from Gordon.
Katherine was portrayed by Angela Bassett in the 1992 miniseries The Jacksons: An American Dream. Patricia Idlette portrayed her in the 2004 film Man in the Mirror: The Michael Jackson Story.
On June 25, 2009, Michael Jackson died from an overdose of propofol at the hands of his personal physician, Dr. Conrad Murray. Katherine, along with the rest of her family, attended his memorial on July 7, 2009. On June 29, 2009, Jackson was granted temporary guardianship of Michael's three children: Prince, Paris, and Blanket. Court documents indicated that she was also seeking control over the three children's interests in their late father's estate. Although Debbie Rowe, the biological mother of Michael's two oldest children, had not seen or interacted with the children for years; on July 4, 2009, she petitioned the courts for custody of her children. On July 30, 2009, Jackson and Debbie Rowe reached a settlement pertaining to the care of Michael's children allowing Prince, Paris, and Blanket to be raised by Katherine with Rowe having visitation rights and continuing to receive the yearly payments to which Michael had agreed.
On August 3, 2009, the judge named Jackson as the children's permanent guardian. On July 25, 2012, Jackson's guardianship of the children was suspended by the court amid allegations that she may have been held against her will by several Jackson family members as a result of a financial dispute between those family members and the Michael Jackson Estate. Guardianship of the children was temporarily given to Michael's nephew TJ Jackson, one of Tito's sons. The guardianship resumed with TJ Jackson added as a co-guardian.
10 children, 7 sons and 3 daughters were born to Katherine and Joe Jackson:
Maureen Reillette "Rebbie" Jackson (born May 29, 1950)
Sigmund Esco "Jackie" Jackson (born May 4, 1951)
Toriano Adaryll "Tito" Jackson(born October 15, 1953)
Jermaine La Jaune Jackson (born December 11, 1954)
La Toya Yvonne Jackson (born May 29, 1956)
Marlon David Jackson (born March 12, 1957)
Brandon Jackson (March 12, 1957 - March 13, 1957)
Michael Joseph Jackson (August 29, 1958 – June 25, 2009)
Steven Randall "Randy" Jackson (born October 29, 1961)
Janet Damita Jo Jackson (born May 16, 1966)
Maureen Reillette "Rebbie" Jackson (born May 29, 1950)
Sigmund Esco "Jackie" Jackson (born May 4, 1951)
Toriano Adaryll "Tito" Jackson(born October 15, 1953)
Jermaine La Jaune Jackson (born December 11, 1954)
La Toya Yvonne Jackson (born May 29, 1956)
Marlon David Jackson (born March 12, 1957)
Brandon Jackson (March 12, 1957 - March 13, 1957)
Michael Joseph Jackson (August 29, 1958 – June 25, 2009)
Steven Randall "Randy" Jackson (born October 29, 1961)
Janet Damita Jo Jackson (born May 16, 1966)
*Wharlest Jackson, a civil rights activist who was the treasurer of the Natchez, Mississippi branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People until his assassination by a car bomb, was born.
Wharlest Jackson (b. 1930 – d. February 27, 1967, Natchez, Mississippi) was the treasurer of the Natchez, Mississippi branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) until his assassination by a car bomb. The culprit was never found, though the FBI suspected the involvement of the Silver Dollar Group, an offshoot of the Ku Klux Klan.
Jackson was a Korean War veteran, married with five children, who worked at the Armstrong Rubber and Tire Company. The company had a number of white employees affiliated with the Klan, and under pressure from civil rights activists the company management had opened more positions to African Americans, and promoted Jackson to a more advanced explosives-mixing position that had previously only been held by whites.
Exerlena Jackson was proud of the job promotion her husband was offered in early 1967. Wharlest had worked twelve hard years at the Armstrong Rubber and Tire plant in Natchez, and now was being offered a position in the chemical mixing plant.
Wharlest Jackson, her husband of 13 years, told her he would be making 17 cents an hour, enough that she could quit her job as a cook at the black school and spend more time with their five children.
Exerlena felt Wharlest deserved a step up the short, elusive ladder available only occasionally to black employees. But she was not happy about the offer. The position had previously only been held by white men, and Jackson had won it over two white co-workers.
Exerlena reminded Wharlest that two years earlier, their good friend, George Metcalfe, had taken a promotion at Armstrong. It happened about the time Metcalfe had become president of the local NAACP and Jackson had been named treasurer.
In late August 1965, at about noon, Metcalfe crossed the parking lot at Armstrong Tire, got in his 1955 Chevrolet and turned the ignition switch. Instantly, an explosion shattered the calm.
He suffered broken limbs, facial lacerations and burns. Pieces of skin were torn from his body and his right eye was damaged. The Jacksons had nursed Metcalfe back to health and he was able to go back to work at Armstrong a year later. No one was ever charged.
Was Wharlest Jackson next? There was good reason to worry.
Scores of black men in the post-war civil rights era had been abducted, tortured, maimed and killed by Klansmen, some of them in law enforcement, with near impunity. Investigations, most by the FBI, were piling up, unsolved and unresolved. Many of those were in Southwest Mississippi and eastern Louisiana.
In Natchez and, across the Mississippi River, in Ferriday and Vidalia, Louisiana, and in many small towns around them, the close-knit black communities knew the victims, or their families or friends, and they knew the stories.
So Exerlena Jackson knew that Metcalfe had been fortunate. He had survived. She knew that many, like arson-murder victim Frank Morris in nearby Ferriday, had not. And she likely knew that some, such as Joe Edwards, whose parents lived in Natchez, had simply disappeared.
Edwards was a 25-year-old porter and handyman who had been working at the Shamrock Motel in Ferriday for about two years when the motel’s restaurant became the meeting ground for the Silver Dollar Group in 1964.
The Silver Dollar Group were Klansmen who—as the 1964 Civil Rights Act was being passed in early July—believed the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, the Original Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, and the United Klans of America were not aggressive enough against civil rights. They signaled their oath by carrying silver dollars minted in the year of their birth; several were in law enforcement.
Near midnight on July 12, 1964, Edwards was stopped by a police car while driving his 1958 Buick. He had spent the day shuttling his mother and siblings to and from a family barbeque, and was headed to the Shamrock. The motel had a reputation for housing prostitutes who worked at a legendary brothel in Natchez; some of Edwards’ relatives said he had been enlisted to transport the women and had crossed the racial barrier in his own sexual liaisons.
Edwards never made it to the Shamrock that night. His car was found where police had stopped it; a banker who was driving by told the FBI he had seen the law enforcement vehicle and a group of men surrounding Edwards’ car. Where Edwards went, or was taken, and by whom, was never discovered.
Three years later, the FBI was still gathering evidence that pointed to top brass inside the sheriff’s office — evidence that came from inside the sheriff’s office, from a white pastor, from the white banker. One FBI agent who worked the case recalled that his office received a report that Klansmen had taken Edwards to a remote barn, “hung him up and skinned him alive,” before they “disposed of his body.”
By 1967 when Wharlest Jackson was offered a promotion, the Southwide resistance to civil rights had become less violent. Jackson sought the opinion of the NAACP field secretary Charles Evers (who had replaced his brother Medgar, who had been murdered in 1963), and received encouragement to take the job.
A month after taking the promotion, on February 27, 1967, Jackson worked his new dayside shift plus four hours of overtime. Soon after 8 p.m., he got in his pickup truck and headed toward home in a cold rain.
As he got near home, he put on his turn signal, triggering a massive explosion from a bomb planted below the truck frame beneath the driver’s seat.
The FBI investigation into Jackson’s murder generated 10,000 pages of documents that pointed to suspects, including the Silver Dollar Group. But Jackson’s killers — like those who caused Metcalfe’s injuries and Edwards’ disappearance — escaped prosecution.
******Ahmad Jamal, (b. Frederick Russell Jones), an American jazz pianist known for his rendition of But Not ForMe, was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (July 2).
Ahmad Jamal began playing piano at the age of three, when his uncle Lawrence challenged him to duplicate what he was doing on the piano. Jamal began formal piano training at the age of seven with Mary Cardwell Dawson, whom he describes as greatly influencing him. His Pittsburgh roots remained an important part of his identity ("Pittsburgh meant everything to me and it still does," he said in 2001) and it was there that he was immersed in the influence of jazz artists such as Earl Hines, Billy Strayhorn, Mary Lou Williams, and Erroll Garner. Jamal also studied with pianist James Miller and began playing piano professionally at the age of fourteen, at which point he was recognized as a "coming great" by the pianist Art Tatum.
Born to Baptist parents in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Jamal did not discover Islam until his early 20s. While touring in Detroit (where there was a sizable Muslim community in the 1940s and 1950s), Jamal became interested in Islam and Islamic culture. He converted to Islam and changed his name to Ahmad Jamal in 1950. In an interview with The New York Times a few years later, Jamal said his decision to change his name stemmed from a desire to "re-establish my original name." In 1986, Jamal sued critic Leonard Feather for using his former name in a publication.
After the recording of the best-selling album But Not For Me, Jamal's music grew in popularity throughout the 1950s. In 1959, he took a tour of North Africa to explore investment options in Africa. Jamal, who was twenty-nine at the time, said he had a curiosity about the homeland of his ancestors, highly influenced by his conversion to the Muslim faith. He also said his religion had brought him peace of mind about his race, which accounted for his "growth in the field of music that has proved very lucrative for me."
Upon his return to the United States after a tour of North Africa, the financial success of Live at the Pershing: But Not For Me allowed Jamal to open a restaurant and club called The Alhambra in Chicago. In 1962, The Three Strings disbanded and Jamal moved to New York City, where, at the age of 32, he took a three-year hiatus from his musical career.
In 1964, Jamal resumed touring and recording, this time with the bassist Jamil Nasser and recorded a new album, Extensions, in 1965. Jamal and Nasser continued to play and record together from 1964 to 1972. He also joined forces with Vernel Fournier (again, but only for about a year) and drummer Frank Gant (1966–76), among others. He continued to play throughout the 1970s and 1980s, mostly in trios with piano, bass and drums, but he occasionally expanded the group to include guitar. One of his most long-standing gigs was as the band for the New Year's Eve celebrations at Blues Alley in Washington, D. C., from 1979 through the 1990s. Until 1970, he played acoustic piano exclusively. The final album on which he played acoustic piano in the regular sequence was The Awakening. In the 1970s, Jamal played electric piano as well. It was rumored that the Rhodes piano was a gift from someone in Switzerland.
In 1985, Jamal agreed to do an interview and recording session with his fellow jazz pianist, Marian McPartland on her NPR show Piano Jazz. Jamal, who said he rarely plays "But Not For Me" due to its popularity since his 1958 recording, played an improvised version of the tune – though only after noting that he has moved on to making ninety percent of his repertoire his own compositions. He said that when he grew in popularity from the Live at the Pershing album, he was severely criticized afterwards for not playing any of his own compositions.
In 1994, Mr. Jamal received the American Jazz Masters fellowship award from the National Endowment for the Arts. The same year he was named a Duke Ellington Fellow at Yale University, where he performed commissioned works with the Assai String Quartet.
In 2007 the French Government inducted Mr. Jamal into the prestigious Order of the Arts and Letters by French Culture Minister Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres, naming him Officier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.
Mr. Jamal’s previous recording A Quiet Time (Dreyfus Records), released in January 2010, was the number No. 1 CD on jazz radio for the year 2010. Also this year the French Jazz Academy has voted "The Complete Ahmad Jamal Trio Argo Sessions 1956-1962" released by Mosaïc "Best reissue of the year with outstanding research work". His music remains, youthful, fresh, imaginative and always influential.
In December of 2011, Mr. Jamal was awarded with DownBeat’s 76th Reader’s Poll Hall of Fame.
*****
*Jerry Donal Jewell, the first African American to serve as governor of Arkansas, was born in Chatfield, Arkansas (September 16). A dentist who was the president pro tem of the state senate, Jewell held the post of Governor of Arkansas for three days, as Governor Jim Guy Tucker attended the Presidential inauguration of former Governor Bill Clinton.
Jerry Donal Jewell (b. September 16, 1930, Chatfield, Arkansas - d. August 17, 2002, Little Rock, Arkansas) was the first African American to serve in the Arkansas Senate in the twentieth century. He was also Arkansas' first ever African American acting governor, albeit for only a temporary four day period during Bill Clinton's presidential inauguration in 1993. Jewell moved his dental practice from North Little Rock (Pulaski County) to Little Rock (Pulaski County) in 1978, where he continued to work during his political career and up until his death in 2002.
Jewell was born on September 16, 1930, in Chatfield (Crittenden County). His parents, James M. Jewell and Ruth Lee Taylor Jewell, who were both sharecroppers, came from Mississippi. He had four sisters, only two of who survived past infancy. Around 1936, Jewell and his family moved to West Memphis (Crittenden County), where his father worked for a while for the Works Progress Administration (WPA) and then an oil company.
While growing up in West Memphis, Jewell attended segregated schools in two different districts. He then attended a boarding school in west Tennessee, where he completed his high school education. He made the honor roll at all of the schools and was active in sports teams.
In 1949, Jewell attended the Agricultural, Mechanical, and Normal College (AM&N) in Pine Bluff (Jefferson County), now the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff (UAPB). He majored in pre-medical and pre-dental. Jewell then studied dentistry at Meharry Medical College in Nashville, Tennessee, graduating in 1957. He then joined the Army Dental Corps and served in Texas and Missouri for two years. Jewell married Ometa Payne. They had five children.
In 1959, Jewell moved to North Little Rock, where he set up a dental practice. The practice was later relocated to Little Rock. The same year, Jewell became a member of the Little Rock branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). In 1963, he became branch president, taking over from the Reverend J. C. Crenchaw. Jewell held the office until 1967. In 1965, Jewell became president of the NAACP Arkansas State Conference of branches.
Jewell was elected to the Arkansas Senate in 1972, making him the first African American state senator in the twentieth century. He was a member of the Senate until 1994. During his Senate career, Jewell served as chair and vice chair of the Legislative Affairs Committee, chair of the Agricultural Economic Development Committee, chair of the Retirement Committee, chair of the Education Committee, and vice chair of the Insurance and Commerce Committee. He also served on the Energy Committee. In 1992, Jewel was elected president pro tempore of the Arkansas Senate. In that capacity, when Governor Jim Guy Tucker went to Washington, D. C. to attend President Bill Clinton's inauguration in January 1993, Jewell became acting governor of Arkansas from Sunday, January 17, at 7:00 a.m. until Wednesday, January 21, at 4:00 p.m. (there being no lieutenant governor since Tucker assumed the office of governor upon Clinton's election to the presidency). He was the first African American ever to hold that position.
However, the four days were not without controversy. Jewell pardoned two convicts and extended clemency to three others. The most notable of those pardons was that of Tommy McIntosh, the son of Robert "Say" McIntosh, who was convicted in 1987 of cocaine possession and intent to distribute, and sentenced to fifty years in prison and a fine of $250,000. Upon release, Tommy McIntosh failed to make his monthly payments, paying less than $4,000 of his fine before it was canceled in 2003. Many believe that Jewell lost his Senate seat in the 1994 Democratic primary elections to Bill Walker in part because of these pardons.
Jerry Jewell died on August 17, 2002.
*****
*Leslie Lee, a Tony Award-nominated playwright, was born in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania (November 6).
Leslie Lee (b. November 6, 1930, Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania - d. January 20, 2014, New York City)was a Tony Award-nominated playwright.
Leslie Lee was born in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania on November 6, 1930. He was Executive Director of the Negro Ensemble Company and a founding artist of La Mama E.T.C. He was also Signature Theatre's Playwright-in-Residence during the 2008-2009 Season celebrating the Historic Negro Ensemble Company. His plays have been produced both on and off Broadway, and he wrote extensively for film and television.
After receiving his Bachelor of Arts degree in Biology and English from The University of Pennsylvania, Lee worked for several years in cancer research at Wyeth Laboratories in Villanova, Pennsylvania. He earned his Master of Arts degree in Theatre from Villanova University.
Lee taught for The Goldberg Department of Dramatic Writing Program at the NYU Tisch School of the Arts, MiddleSex Community College, Hunter College, Wesleyan College, Rutgers University, The New School University, Goddard College, The Negro Ensemble Company, and The Frederick Douglas Playwriting Workshop. In 2008, the U.S. Department of State sent Lee as a Cultural Envoy to Bulawayo, Zimbabwe to teach Playwriting at the Intwasa Arts Festival.
Lee's acclaimed play The First Breeze of Summer, directed by Ruben Santiago-Hudson and starring Leslie Uggams, enjoyed a successful revival in 2008 at Signature Theatre, winning nine Audelco Awards. The First Breeze of Summer was originally produced by the Negro Ensemble Company and went on to win an Obie Award for Best New American Play as well as an Outer Critics Circle Award. Subsequently, the play moved to the Palace Theatre on Broadway, where it received a Tony Award nomination for Best Play. Many of his plays have been produced by the Negro Ensemble Company, the Black Rep in St. Louis, and Crossroads Theatre Company in New Jersey. His plays include The War Party, Colored People's Time, Blues in a Broken Tongue, The Rabbit's Foot, Black Eagles, Elegy to a Down Queen, Cops and Robbers, Hannah Davis, The Ninth Wave, The Book of Lambert, Mina, Sundown Names and Night-Gone Things and the musicals Golden Boy with songs by Charles Strouse and Lee Adams, and Phillis with Micki Grant. His new musical Before The Dream, written with Charles Strouse, had a recent reading in New York.
Lee's television and film work includes The Vernon Johns Story, with James Earl Jones and Mary Alice; Two Mothers, Two Sons; The Killing Floor, with Alfre Woodard and Moses Gunn; and adaptations of Richard Wright's short story Almos' A Man, with LeVar Burton, and The First Breeze of Summer. His documentary work includes Langston Hughes, the Dreamkeeper; The Massachusetts Fifty-Fourth Regiment; Ralph Bunche: An American Odyssey; and Culture Shock: Huckleberry Finn.
Leslie Lee passed away at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital in New York City due to complications from congestive heart failure on January 20, 2014, Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, as he was making final revisions to his musical about King (written in collaboration with Charles Strouse).
*****
*Abbey Lincoln (b. Anna Marie Wooldridge, August 6, 1930, Chicago, Illinois – d, August 14, 2010, New York City, New York), was an American jazz vocalist, songwriter, and actress, who wrote and performed her own compositions. She was a civil rights advocate during the 1960s.
Anna Marie Wooldridge (b. August 6, 1930, Chicago, Illinois – d. August 14, 2010, New York City, New York), known by her stage name Abbey Lincoln, was born in Chicago but raised in Calvin Center, Cass County, Michigan, Lincoln was one of many singers influenced by Billie Holiday. She often visited the Blue Note jazz club in New York City. Her debut album, Abbey Lincoln's Affair – A Story of a Girl in Love, was followed by a series of albums for Riverside Records. In 1960 she sang on Max Roach's landmark civil rights-themed recording, We Insist! Lincoln’s lyrics were often connected to the civil rights movement in America.
During the 1980s, Lincoln’s creative output was smaller and she released only a few albums during that decade. Her song "For All We Know" is featured in the 1989 film Drugstore Cowboy. During the 1990s and until her death, however, she fulfilled a 10-album contract with Verve Records. After a tour of Africa in the mid-1970s, she adopted the name Aminata Moseka.
The Verve Records albums are highly regarded and represent a crowning achievement in Lincoln’s career. Devil’s Got Your Tongue (1992) featured Rodney Kendrick, Grady Tate, J. J. Johnson, Stanley Turrentine, Babatunde Olatunji and The Staple Singers, among others. In 2003, Lincoln received a National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master Award. In 1956 Lincoln appeared in The Girl Can't Help It, for which she wore a dress that had been worn by Marilyn Monroe in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953), and interpreted the theme song, working with Benny Carter. She also played a dancing housekeeper in the film.
With Ivan Dixon, she co-starred in Nothing But a Man (1964), an independent film written and directed by Michael Roemer. In 1968 she also co-starred with Sidney Poitier and Beau Bridges in For Love of Ivy, and received a 1969 Golden Globe nomination for her appearance in the film.
Television appearances began in 1968 with The Name of the Game. In March 1969 for WGBH-TV Boston, in one episode of a 10-episode series of individual dramas written, produced and performed by blacks, "On Being Black," was her work in Alice Childess' Wine in the Wilderness. She later appeared in Mission: Impossible (1971), the telemovie Short Walk to Daylight (1972), Marcus Welby, M. D. (1974), and All in the Family (1978).
In the 1990 Spike Lee movie Mo' Better Blues, Lincoln played the young Bleek's mother, Lillian. Lincoln was married from 1962 to 1970 to drummer Max Roach, whose daughter from a previous marriage, Maxine, appeared on several of Lincoln’s albums.
Lincoln died on August 14, 2010 in Manhattan, eight days after her 80th birthday.
*****
*Eddie Locke (b. .August 2, 1930 – d. September 7, 2009, Ramsey, New Jersey), a jazz drummer who became a member of the Coleman Hawkins Quartet in the 1960s, was born.
Eddie Locke was a part of the fertile and vibrant Detroit jazz scene during the 1940s and 1950s, which brought forth many great musicians including the Jones brothers (Hank, Thad, and Elvin), Kenny Burrell, Lucky Thompson, Tommy Flanagan, Barry Harris, and so many others. Locke eventually formed a variety act with drummer Oliver Jackson called Bop & Locke which played the Apollo Theater. He moved to New York City in 1954, and worked there with Dick Wellstood, Tony Parenti, Red Allen, Willie "The Lion" Smith, and Teddy Wilson amongst others. During this time he came under the tutelage of the great Jo Jones, and eventually became known as a driving and swinging drummer who kept solid time and supported the soloist. During the late 1950s he formed two of his most fruitful musical relationships, one with Roy Eldridge, and the other with Coleman Hawkins. His recording debut came with Eldridge in 1959 on "On The Town". He later became a member of the Coleman Hawkins Quartet in the 1960s along with pianist Tommy Flanagan and bassist Major Holley. That group made many fine records including the exquisite album "Today and Now", in 1963. Throughout the 1970s, he played with Roy Eldridge at Jimmy Ryan's in Manhattan, and wound out his career freelancing, as well as teaching youngsters at the Trevor Day School on Manhattan's upper west side.
Eddie died on Monday morning, September 7, 2009, in Ramsey, New Jersey.
*****
*Frank Lucas, a former heroin dealer, who operated in Harlem during the late 1960s and early 1970s, was born in La Grange, North Carolina (September 9). He was particularly known for cutting out middlemen in the drug trade and buying heroin directly from his source in the Golden Triangle. Rather than hide the drugs in the coffins, Lucas hid drugs in the pallets underneath the coffins of dead American servicemen as depicted in the 2007 feature film American Gangster in which Lucas was played by Denzel Washington, although the film fictionalized elements of Lucas' life for dramatic effect.
Frank Lucas (b. September 9, 1930, La Grange, North Carolina) raised in Greensboro, North Carolina. He was the son of Mahalee (nee Jones 1909-2003) and Fred Lucas. He drifted through a life of petty crime until one particular occasion when, after a fight with a former employer, he fled to New York on the advice of his mother. In Harlem, he indulged in petty crime and pool hustling before he was taken under the wing of gangster Bumpy Johnson.
Atkinson, nicknamed "Sergeant Smack" by the Drug Enforcement Administration, shipped drugs in furniture, not caskets. Whatever method he used, Lucas smuggled the drugs into the country with this direct link from Asia.
Lucas only trusted relatives and close friends from North Carolina to handle his various heroin operations. Lucas thought relatives and close friends were less likely to steal from him and be tempted by various vices in the big city. His product -- his heroin -- "Blue Magic", was 98–100% pure when shipped from Thailand and, by selling it, enabled Lucas to accumulate over $50 million.
The huge profit margin from his drug trade allowed Lucas to buy property all over the country, including office buildings in Detroit, and apartments in Los Angeles and Miami. He also bought a several-thousand-acre ranch in North Carolina on which he ranged 300 head of Black Angus cattle, including a breeding bull worth $125,000.
Lucas rubbed shoulders with the elite of the entertainment, politics, and crime worlds. Though he owned several mink and chinchilla coats and other accessories, Lucas much preferred to dress casually and corporately so as not to attract attention to himself. When he was arrested in the mid-1970s, all of Lucas' assets were seized.
In January 1975, Lucas' house in Teaneck, New Jersey, was raided by a task force consisting of 10 agents from Group 22 of the United States Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and 10 New York Police Department detectives attached to the Organized Crime Control Bureau (OCCB). In his house authorities found $584,683 in cash. He was later convicted of both federal and New Jersey state drug violations. The following year he was sentenced to 70 years in prison. Once convicted, Lucas provided evidence that led to more than 100 further drug-related convictions. For his safety, in 1977, Lucas and his family were placed in the witness protection program. In 1981, after 5 years in custody, his 40-year Federal term and 30-year state term were reduced to time served plus lifetime parole. In 1984, he was caught and convicted of trying to exchange one ounce of heroin and $13,000 for one kilogram of cocaine. He was defended by his former prosecutor Richie Roberts and received a sentence of seven years. He was released from prison in 1991.
Lucas married Julianna Farrait, a homecoming queen from Puerto Rico. The two often bought each other expensive gifts, including a coat for which she paid $125,000 and a matching hat for which she paid $40,000 cash.
Farrait was also jailed for her role in her husband's criminal enterprise, and spent five years behind bars. After she came out of prison they lived separately for some years, and Farrait moved back to Puerto Rico. However, they reconciled in 2006 and were married for more than 40 years.
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*James McEachin, an American character actor and award winning author, was born in Rennert, North Carolina.
James McEachin (b. May 20, 1930, Rennert, North Carolina) is an actor, award-winning author, and known for his many character roles such as portraying police Lieutenant Brock in several Perry Mason television movies.
Before, and then during, the Korean War, McEachin served in the United States Army. Serving in King Company, 9th Infantry Regiment 2nd Infantry Division, McEachin was wounded (nearly fatally) in an ambush and nearly left for dead. McEachin was one of only two soldiers to survive the ambush.
For his heroic service during the Korean War, McEachin was eligible for both a Purple Heart and the Silver Star. However, he did not receive either award until some fifty years after the Korean War ended. In 2005, McEachin was awarded both the Purple Heart and the Silver Star after California Congressman David Dreier intervened. Congressman Dreier became aware of McEachin's service after McEachin participated in a Veterans History Project interview given by Dreier's office and in which they discovered McEachin had no copies of his own military records. Dreier's office quickly traced the records and notified McEachin of the Silver Star commendation and succeeded in obtaining all seven of McEachin's medals of valor shortly thereafter, fifty years after his service.
For his heroic service during the Korean War, McEachin was eligible for both a Purple Heart and the Silver Star. However, he did not receive either award until some fifty years after the Korean War ended. In 2005, McEachin was awarded both the Purple Heart and the Silver Star after California Congressman David Dreier intervened. Congressman Dreier became aware of McEachin's service after McEachin participated in a Veterans History Project interview given by Dreier's office and in which they discovered McEachin had no copies of his own military records. Dreier's office quickly traced the records and notified McEachin of the Silver Star commendation and succeeded in obtaining all seven of McEachin's medals of valor shortly thereafter, fifty years after his service.
Following his military career, McEachin dabbled in civil service, first as a fireman and then a policeman in Hackensack, New Jersey, before he moved to California and became a record producer. Known as "Jimmy Mack" in the industry, he worked with young artists such as Otis Redding and went on to produce The Furys. McEachin began his acting career shortly after, and was signed by Universal as a contract actor in the 1960s.
McEachin was regularly cast in professional, "solid citizen" occupational roles, such as a lawyer or a police commander, guesting on numerous series such as Hawaii Five-O, Rockford Files, Mannix, The Feather and Father Gang, The Eddie Capra Mysteries, Matlock, Jake and the Fatman, Diagnosis Murder, Dragnet, It Takes a Thief, and Adam-12. He also in television movies including Welcome Home, Johnny Bristol (1972), The Alpha Caper (1973), and The Dead Don't Die (1975). He appeared in such feature films as Uptight (1968), If He Hollers, Let Him Go! (1968), The Undefeated (1969), The Lawyer (1970), Buck and the Preacher (1972), The Groundstar Conspiracy (1972) and Fuzz (1972).
McEachin played Mr. Turner, a tax collector for the Internal Revenue Service, and later a character called Solomon Jackson, a co-worker that Archie Bunker tries to recruit for his social club, on the television show All in the Family. He played the deejay, Sweet Al Monte in Play Misty for Me (1971) with Clint Eastwood. In 1973, he starred as Harry Tenafly, the title character in Tenafly, a short-lived detective series about a police officer turned private detective who relied on his wits and hard work rather than guns and fistfights. He also appeared occasionally as Lieutenant Ron Crockett on Emergency!. In 1978, he played a police officer in Every Which Way But Loose. In 1979, he played the role of a jaded ex-marine high school baseball coach in an episode ("Out at Home") of The White Shadow.
McEachin made his third film with Eastwood in 1983 when he starred as Detective Barnes in the fourth Dirty Harry movie, Sudden Impact. He also appeared as Dr. Victor Millson, chairman of the fictitious National Council of Astronautics in the 1984 movie, 2010.
While continuing to guest star in many television series and appearing in several feature-length films, McEachin landed his most memorable role, that of police lieutenant Brock in the 1986 television movie Perry Mason: The Case of the Notorious Nun. He would reprise this role in more than a dozen Perry Mason telemovies from 1986 until 1995, starring opposite Raymond Burr, and appeared in the 1994 crime thriller Double Exposure.
While continuing to guest star in many television series and appearing in several feature-length films, McEachin landed his most memorable role, that of police lieutenant Brock in the 1986 television movie Perry Mason: The Case of the Notorious Nun. He would reprise this role in more than a dozen Perry Mason telemovies from 1986 until 1995, starring opposite Raymond Burr, and appeared in the 1994 crime thriller Double Exposure.
In the 1990s, McEachin semi-retired from acting to pursue a writing career. His first work was a military history of the court-martial of 63 African American soldiers during the First World War, titled Farewell to the Mockingbirds (1995), which won the 1998 Benjamin Franklin Award. His next works, mainly fiction novels, included The Heroin Factor (1999), Say Goodnight to the Boys in Blue (2000), The Great Canis Lupus (2001), and Tell me a Tale: A Novel of the Old South (2003). He published Pebbles in the Roadway in (2003), a collection of short stories and essays. In 2005, McEachin produced the award-winning audio book Voices: A Tribute to the American Veteran.
In early 2006, the film short Reveille, in which McEachin starred with David Huddleston, began to play to troops in Afghanistan and Iraq, and people began to request copies of the film.
In 2001, McEachin received the Distinguished Achievement Award from Morgan State University. In 2005, he became an Army Reserve Ambassador; this distinction carries the protocol of a two-star general. As part of his work on behalf of the military and veterans, McEachin participated in ceremonies for Purple Hearts Reunited, a charitable organization that works to return lost and stolen military awards to the recipients or their families.
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*Jazz trumpeter Richard "Blue" Mitchell was born in Miami, Florida (March 13).
Richard Allen (Blue) Mitchell (b. March 13, 1930, Miami, Florida – d. May 21, 1979, Los Angeles, California) was an American jazz, rhythm and blues, soul, rock, and funk trumpeter, known for many albums recorded as leader and sideman on Blue Note Records.
Mitchell was born and raised in Miami, Florida. He began playing trumpet in high school where he acquired his nickname, Blue.
After high school he played in the rhythm and blues ensembles of Paul Williams, Earl Bostic, and Chuck Willis. After returning to Miami he was noticed by Cannonball Adderley, with whom he recorded for Riverside Records in New York in 1958. He then joined the Horace Silver Quintet playing with tenor Junior Cook, bassist Gene Taylor and drummer Roy Brooks. Mitchell stayed with Silver’s group until the band’s break-up in 1964. After the Silver quintet disbanded, Mitchell formed a group employing members from the Silver quintet substituting the young pianist Chick Corea for Silver and replacing a then sick Brooks with drummer Al Foster. This group produced a number of records for Blue Note disbanding in 1969, after which Mitchell joined and toured with Ray Charles until 1971. From 1971 to 1973 Mitchell performed with John Mayall on Jazz Blues Fusion.
From the mid-1970s, Mitchell recorded, and worked, as a session man; performed with the big band leaders Louie Bellson, Bill Holman and Bill Berry; and was principal soloist for Tony Bennett and Lena Horne. Other band leaders Mitchell recorded with include Lou Donaldson, Grant Green, Philly Joe Jones, Jackie McLean, Hank Mobley, Johnny Griffin, Al Cohn, Dexter Gordon and Jimmy Smith. Blue Mitchell kept his hard-bop playing going with the Harold Land quintet up until his death from cancer on May 21, 1979, in Los Angeles, at the age of 49.
From the mid-1970s, Mitchell recorded, and worked, as a session man; performed with the big band leaders Louie Bellson, Bill Holman and Bill Berry; and was principal soloist for Tony Bennett and Lena Horne. Other band leaders Mitchell recorded with include Lou Donaldson, Grant Green, Philly Joe Jones, Jackie McLean, Hank Mobley, Johnny Griffin, Al Cohn, Dexter Gordon and Jimmy Smith. Blue Mitchell kept his hard-bop playing going with the Harold Land quintet up until his death from cancer on May 21, 1979, in Los Angeles, at the age of 49.
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