1930 - The United States: Notable Births: N-S

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*Clarence Pendleton, Jr. was born in Louisville, Kentucky (November 10).  Pendleton would become the first African American chairperson of the United States Civil Rights Commission in 1981.

Clarence McClane Pendleton, Jr. (November 10, 1930 - June 5, 1988), was the politically conservative African American chairman of the United States Commission on Civil Rights, a position that he held from 1981 until his death during the administration of United States President Ronald W. Reagan. 

Born in Louisville, Kentucky, Pendleton was raised in Washington, D. C., where he graduated from historically black Dunbar High School and then Howard University, where his father was the first swimming coach at the institution. After high school, Pendleton like his grandfather and father before him, enrolled at Howard, where in 1954 he earned a Bachelor of Science degree. After a three-year tour of duty in the United States Army during the Cold War, Pendleton returned to Howard, where he was on the physical education faculty and pursued his master's degree in education. Pendleton succeeded his father as the Howard swimming coach, and his teams procured ten championships in eleven years. He also coached rowing, football, and baseball at Howard.

From 1968 to 1970, Pendleton was the recreation coordinator under the Model Cities Program in Baltimore, Maryland.  In 1970, he was named director of the urban affairs department of the National Recreation and Park Association.  In 1972, then San Diego Mayor Pete Wilson, later a United States Senator and Governor California, recruited Pendleton to head the Model Cities program in San Diego, California.  In 1975, Pendleton was named director of the San Diego branch of the National Urban League. 

A former liberal Democrat, Pendleton switched to the Republican Party in 1980 and supported Reagan for President. Pendleton claimed that minorities had become dependent on government social programs which create a cycle of dependence. African Americans, he said, should build strong relations with the private sector and end ties to liberal bureaucrats and philosophies.

In his first year in office (on November 16, 1981), President Reagan named Pendleton to replace the liberal Republican commission chairman, Arthur Sherwood Flemming, who had been the United States Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare during the final years of the Eisenhower administration. The Republican-majority U.S. Senate approved the nomination, and Pendleton became the first black chairman of the commission. He supported the Reagan social agenda and hence came into conflict with long-established civil rights positions.  He opposed the use of cross-town school busing to bring about racial balance among pupils. He challenged the need for affirmative action policies because he claimed that African Americans could succeed without special consideration being written into law. Pendleton was as outspoken on the political right as was the later Democratic chairman Mary Frances Berry on the left. Pendleton made headlines for saying black civil rights leaders were "the new racists" because they advocated affirmative action, racial quotas, and set-asides. He likened the feminist issue of equal pay for equal work, written into law in the Equal Pay Act of 1963, to be "like reparations for white women."

Pendleton denounced the feminist concept of comparable worth in the establishment of male and female pay scales as "probably the looniest idea since Looney Tunes came on the screen." The headlines from his remarks dominated and distorted the debate over the issue.

Under the Pendleton chairmanship, congressional funding for the agency was reduced. This prompted some staff members either to lose their positions or to leave the agency in discouragement. Pendleton was considered ascerbic by his liberal critics. William Bradford Reynolds, Reagan's Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights, described his friend Pendleton as "a man of candor who felt very deeply that the individuals in America should deal with one another as brothers and sisters totally without regard to race and background."

On December 23, 1983, with two Democratic members named by the House dissenting, Pendleton was re-elected to a second term as commission chairman. 

Under Pendleton's tenure, the commission was split by an internal debate over fundamental principles of equality under the law. The commission narrowed the description of legal and political rights at the expense of social and economic claims. The debate centered principally between Pendleton and Mary Frances Berry, an original appointee of President Jimmy Carter. Democrat Morris B. Abram, also a Reagan appointee, was vice chairman under Pendleton. He described "an intellectual sea change" at the agency with the conservative view dominant at that time. Authorized under the Civil Rights Act of 1957, the commission was reconstituted by a 1983 law of Congress after Reagan dismissed three commissioners critical of his policies.

On June 5, 1988, Pendleton collapsed while working out at the San Diego Hilton Tennis Club. He died an hour later of a heart attack at a hospital.  A memorial bench dedicated in Pendleton's honor is located in the De Anza Cove section of Mission Bay Park in San Diego.

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*Edward Melvin Porter, the first African American elected to the Oklahoma state senate and the co-owner and publisher of Black Voices magazine, was born in Okmulgee, Oklahoma (May 22).

Edward Melvin Porter (b. May 22, 1930, Okmulgee, Oklahoma – d. July 26, 2016, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma) was an American lawyer, politician, and civil rights activist in the state of Oklahoma.  Porter attended Tennessee State University, Vanderbilt University, and Shorter College. He passed the Oklahoma Bar examination in 1960. A lawyer, Porter was married twice and had seven children. In 1961, Porter served as president of the Oklahoma City National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

After an unsuccessful campaign for a seat in the State House in 1962, Porter was elected to the Oklahoma State Senate in 1964 to serve the newly redrawn district 48. He was the first African American to sit in the Oklahoma State Senate. He served until 1987. Porter died on July 26, 2016 at his home in Oklahoma City.

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*Charles Rangel, a New York Congressman, was born in New York City (June 11).

Charles Bernard "Charlie" Rangel (b. June 11, 1930), the United States Representative for New York's 13th Congressional District. Rangel was the first African American Chair of the influential House Ways and Means Committee.  He was also a founding member of the Congressional Black Caucus. 

Rangel was born in Harlem in New York City. He earned a Purple Heart and a Bronze Star for his service in the United States Army during the Korean War, where he led a group of soldiers out of a deadly Chinese army encirclement during the Battle of Kunu-ri in 1950. Rangel graduated from New York University in 1957 and St. John's University School of Law in 1960. He then worked as a private lawyer, Assistant United States Attorney, and legal counsel during the early-mid-1960s. He served two terms in the New York State Assembly, from 1967 to 1971, and then defeated long-time incumbent Congressman Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. in a primary challenge on his way to being elected to the House of Representatives.  

Once there, Rangel rose rapidly in the Democratic ranks, combining solidly liberal views with a pragmatic approach towards finding political and legislative compromises. His long-time concerns with battling the importation and effects of illegal drugs led to his becoming chair of the House Select Committee on Narcotics, where he helped define national policy on the issue during the 1980s. As one of Harlem's "Gang of Four", he also became a leader in New York City and State politics. He played a significant role in the creation of the 1995 Upper Manhattan Empowerment Zone Development Corporation and the national Empowerment Zone Act, which helped change the economic face of Harlem and other inner-city areas. Rangel was known both for his genial manner, with an ability to win over fellow legislators, and for his blunt speaking; he has long been outspoken about his views and has been arrested several times as part of political demonstrations. He was a strong opponent of the George W. Bush administration and the Iraq War, and he put forth proposals to reinstate the draft during the 2000s. 

Beginning in 2008, Rangel faced a series of allegations of ethics violations and failures to comply with tax laws. The House Ethics Committee focused on whether Rangel improperly rented multiple rent-stabilized New York apartments, improperly used his office in raising money for the Rangel Center at the City College of New York, and failed to disclose rental income from his villa in the Dominican Republic. In March 2010, Rangel stepped aside as Ways and Means Chair. In November 2010, the Ethics Committee found Rangel guilty of 11 counts of violating House ethics rules, and on December 2, 2010, the full House approved a sanction of censure against him. 

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*The artist Faith Ringgold was born in New York (October 8).

Faith Ringgold (b. October 8, 1930, New York, New York), was an artist and author who became famous for innovative, quilted marrations that communicate her political beliefs.

Ringgold grew up in New York City's Harlem, and while still in high school she decided to be an artist.  She attended City College of New York, where she received B. S. (1955) and M. A. (1959) degrees.  In the mid-1950s she began teaching art in New York public schools.  By the 1960s, her work had matured, reflecting her burgeoning political consciousness, study of African arts and history, and appreciation for the freedom of form used by her young students.

In 1963 Ringgold began a body of paintings called the American People series, which portrays the civil rights movement from a female perspective. In the 1970s she created African-style masks, painted political posters, lectured frequently at feminist art conferences, and actively sought the racial integration of the New York art world. She originated a demonstration against the Whitney Museum of American Art and helped win admission for black artists to the exhibit schedule at the Museum of Modern Art. In 1970 she cofounded, with one of her daughters, the advocacy group Women Students and Artists for Black Art Liberation.
Among Ringgold’s most renowned works, her “story quilts” were inspired by the Tibetan tankas (paintings framed in cloth) that she viewed on a visit to museums in Amsterdam. She painted these quilts with narrative images and original stories set in the context of African American history. Her mother frequently collaborated with her on these. Examples of this work includes Who’s Afraid of Aunt Jemima?(1984), Sonny’s Quilt (1986), and Tar Beach (1988), which Ringgold adapted into a children’s book in 1991. The latter book, which was named Caldecott Honor Book in 1992, tells of a young black girl in New York City who dreams about flying. Ringgold’s later books for children include Aunt Harriet’s Underground Railroad in the Sky (1992) and My Dream of Martin Luther King (1995). Her memoirs, We Flew over the Bridge, were published in 1995.

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*Sonny Rollins (b. Theodore Walter Rollins, September 7, 1930), an American jazz tenor saxophonist, widely recognized as one of the most important and influential jazz musicians, was born in New York, New York.  A number of his compositions, including "St. Thomas", "Oleo", "Doxy", "Pent-Up House", and "Airegin", became jazz standards. 

Sonny Rollins, byname Newk, original name Theodore Walter Rollins (b. September 7, 1930, New York City,  New York) was a tenor saxophonist who was among the finest improvisers on the instrument to have ever been.
Rollins grew up in a neighborhood where Thelonious Monk, Coleman Hawkins (his early idol), and Bud Powell were playing. After recording with the latter in 1949, Rollins began recording with Miles Davis in 1951. During the next three years, he composed three of his best-known tunes, “Oleo,” “Doxy,” and “Airegin,” and continued to work with Davis, Charlie Parker,  and others. Following his withdrawal from music in 1954 to overcome a heroin addiction, Rollins re-emerged with the Clifford Brown-Max Roach quintet in 1955, and the next four years proved to be his most fertile.
Beginning with a style drawn primarily from Parker, Rollins became a master of intelligent and provocative spontaneity that was combined with an excellent command of the tenor sax. The clarity of thought evident in his improvisations stands out in jazz history. Rollins displayed an interest in unaccompanied saxophone improvisation and gross manipulations of tone color long before such techniques became common in modern jazz. He was also one of the first to successfully improvise when alternately ignoring tempo and swinging within a single solo while his accompanists adhered to a preset tempo and chord progression. In these respects he was particularly influential with avant-garde saxophonists of the 1960s and ’70s.
Rollins was the recipient of numerous honors, including several Grammy Awards. In 2010 he was awarded the National Medal of Arts. The following year Rollins received a Kennedy Center Honor.

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*Leander Shaw, a jurist who served on the Florida Supreme Court from 1983 until 2003 and was Chief Justice from 1990 to 1992, was born in Salem, Virginia (September 6).

Leander Jerry Shaw, Jr. (b. September 6, 1930, Salem, Virginia – d. December 14, 2015, Tallahassee, Florida) went to Lylburn Downing School in Lexington, Virginia. He graduated from West Virginia State University in 1952. He then served in the United States Army during the Korean War. In 1957, Shaw received his law degree from Howard University School of Law. In 1957, Shaw moved to Tallahassee, Florida, and was a law professor at Florida A&M University.  He was admitted to the Florida bar in 1960 and practiced law in Jacksonville, Florida. Shaw served on the Florida State Attorney staff in 1969. In 1972, Shaw was appointed to the Florida Industrial Relations Commission. From 1979 to 1983, Shaw served on the Florida District Courts of Appeal.  Shaw served on the Florida Supreme Court from 1983 until 2003 and was Chief Justice of that court from 1990 to 1992. He also served as judge in residence at Washington and Lee University School of Law in Lexington, Virginia. Shaw died on December 14, 2015 in Tallahassee, Florida.

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Herbert Simmons (born 1930 or 1931^[1][2] in St. Louis, Missouri) is an American writer.

Simmons attended Lincoln University in Missouri where he studied journalism. He interrupted his studies to do military service, and afterwards went to St. Louis' Washington University where he graduated with a B.A. in English Composition.

In 1957, his first novel Corner Boy was published and Simmons was awarded a Houghton Mifflin Literary Fellowship. In 1958 the novel saw a British edition. The paperback edition, which appeared in 1958, made the book popular for a number of years, resulting in very respectable sales figures.^[3] His second novel, Man Walking on Eggshells appeared in 1962, supposedely as part one of a trilogy titled Destined to Free. However, parts two and three, tentatively titled Tough Country and The Land of Nod never appeared and it is not known whether Simmons ever completed them.^[4][5]

Following the 1965 Watts riots in Los Angeles the Watts Writers Workshop was established with Simmons one of the key participants. Later, he became a lecturer at California State University, Northridge, retiring in the mid-1990s. Little is known about him, and he hasn't published new material since 1962, however his two novels have seen a number of new editions.

In 1979 Corner Boy was adapted for the stage.^[6]

Simmons' two novels paint a vivid picture of life in the black ghetto prior to the civil rights movement. The protagonists are young black men drifting between a career in music and street life. Simmons's plots contain elements of naturalism as well as of hardboiled crime fiction. The language and rhythms of Simmons' novels has been compared to Bebop and Cool Jazz, and especially in Man Walking on Eggshells the prose is very rhythmical, following the forms and improvisational patterns of jazz.