1930
Pan-African Chronology
Pan-African Chronology
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October
October
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October 2
*Ivy Dumont, the first woman to serve as Governor-General of the Bahamas, was born at Roses on Long Island in the Bahamas.
October 3
*Revolution broke out in Brazil against the rule of President Washington Luis.
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APPENDIX 10
THE OLD REPUBLIC
From 1889 to 1930, the government was a constitutional democracy, but democracy was nominal.
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*Austin Amissah, a Ghanaian lawyer, judge and academic who became a judge of the Court of Appeal in Botswana, was born in Accra, Ghana.
Austin Neeabeohe Evans Amissah (b. October 3, 1930, Accra, Ghana – d. January 20, 2001, London, England) studied at Jesus College, Oxford and was called to the bar as a member of Lincoln's Inn in 1955. He was Director of Public Prosecutions for Ghana from 1962 to 1966, then became a judge of the Court of Appeal from 1966 to 1976; he was seconded from this position to become a professor and Dean of the Law Faculty at the University of Ghana from 1969 to 1974 and chairman of the Ghana Law Reform Commission from 1969 to 1975. He was appointed Attorney General and Minister of Justice in 1979, and later became a judge of the Court of Appeal in Botswana from 1981 to 2001, including a period as President of the Court of Appeal. His writings included Criminal Procedure in Ghana, The Contribution of Courts to Government: a West African view (1981) and Arbitration in Africa (1996).
An eminent jurist, academic and author, Justice Amissah's career spanned Africa, Asia, the Caribbean and Europe. Born in Ghana in 1930, Justice Amissah became that country's Attorney General and served on Commissions and Enquiries across the Commonwealth. As President of Botswana's Court of Appeal, he made a landmark ruling in favor of Unity Dow's right to confer nationality on her children. He found that the Botswana constitution's guarantee of equal treatment of men and women overrode an immigration regulation stipulating that nationality rights could be conferred only by a man.
He died in London on January 20, 2001.
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Unity Dow (b. April 23, 1959, Botswana) was a Motswana judge, human rights activist and writer currently serving as Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation. She came from a rural background that tended toward traditional values. She successfully challenged the law that argued that citizenship was inherited by children from the fathers and not from their mothers. She also went to court to argue that a gay rights group was legal and not unconstitutional in the law of Botswana.
October 4
*The Cuban congress granted the request of President Gerardo Machado to suspend the constitution in and around Havana until after general elections on November 1.
October 2
*Ivy Dumont, the first woman to serve as Governor-General of the Bahamas, was born at Roses on Long Island in the Bahamas.
Ivy Leona Dumont (b. October 2, 1930, Roses on Long Island, Bahamas) was the sixth Governor-General of the Bahamas. She was the first woman in the Bahamas to hold this office serving from January 1, 2002 until November 30, 2005. She previously served as Education Minister from 1995 to 2000.
Ivy Leona Turnquest was born on October 2, 1930, at Roses on Long Island in the Bahamas to Cecelia Elizabeth (née Darville) and Alphonso Tennyton Turnquest. After completing her elementary education in Roses and Buckleys settlements on Long Island, Turnquest continued her schooling at the Government High School on New Providence. Attaining her Cambridge Junior Certificate in 1946 and her Cambridge Senior Certificate in 1947, Turnquest graduated in 1948. She furthered her studies at the Bahamas Teachers' Training College earning her training teaching certificate in 1951. On August 24, 1951, Turnquest married Reginald Dumont, a Guyanese immigrant who was working for the Bahamas Police Force. She began working for the Ministry of Education and Culture as a student teacher and earned her full teaching certificate in 1954.
Upon receipt of her credentials, Dumont started her career as a classroom teacher. In 1962 and 1963, she studied in the United States as a Fulbright scholar and then in 1965, earned a General Certificate of Education from the Teacher's Union Institute. From 1968 to 1970, Dumont attended the University of Miami, graduating with her bachelor's degree in education. Appointed as head teacher at that time, Dumont then moved into administration, serving as education officer and as deputy director of education, before completing her education career after 21 years in 1975.
Dumont then began working as the deputy permanent secretary of the Ministry of Works and Utilities in 1975. She continued her own education and enrolled at Nova University in 1976. Dumont graduated with a doctorate in public administration in 1978 and that same year left the Ministry of Works and began working for Roywest Trust Corporation/Nat West International Trust Holdings Limited as a training officer. She remained with Nat West for the next thirteen years, serving as an assistant manager, then personnel manager and group relations manager, before retiring in 1991.
In 1992, Dumont was appointed to the Senate as a representative of the Free National Movement (FNM). Simultaneously, she was promoted to the cabinet by Prime Minister Hubert Ingraham, to serve as Minister of Health and Environment. She held this post until 1995, when she was moved to the Ministry of Education and Training. That ministry and Dumont's post transitioned to the Ministry of Education in 1997. She retired from the cabinet in 2000, but retained her Senate seat. In 2001, when Orville Turnquest resigned as Governor-General to facilitate his son Tommy Turnquest's run for party leadership the following year, Dumont was selected as his interim replacement on November 13, 2001. She was confirmed as the permanent Governor-General on January 1, 2002, becoming the first woman to hold the post. She resigned from the post on November 30, 2005 and the following day was feted with a farewell ceremony commemorating her fifty-eight years in public service.
In 2007, the University of the West Indies conferred an honorary doctor of laws degree upon Dumont. After leaving public service, Dumont wrote her autobiography, Roses to Mount Fitzwilliam and remained active, speaking to public schools and encouraging youth to further their education.
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October 3
*Revolution broke out in Brazil against the rule of President Washington Luis.
***
The Revolution of 1930 (Portuguese: Revolução de 1930), was an armed movement in Brazil led by the states of Minas Gerais, Paraiba and Rio Grande do Sul, culminating in a coup. The revolution ousted President Washington Luis on October 24, 1930, prevented the inauguration of President-elect Julio Prestes, and ended the Old Republic.
In 1929, leaders of Sao Paulo broke the alliance with the mineiros (i.e. people from Minas Gerais state), known as the "coffee with milk policy" ("política do café-com-leite" in Portuguese), and supported the paulista Júlio Prestes as a candidate for the presidency. In response, the President of Minas Gerais, Antônio Carlos Ribeiro de Andrada, supported the opposition candidate from the south, Getulio Vargas.
On March 1, 1930, elections for President were held and victory was won by the government's candidate, Júlio Prestes, who was the president of São Paulo state. However, he did not take office because the coup was triggered on October 3, 1930. He was instead exiled.
Getúlio Vargas assumed the leadership of the provisional government on November 3, 1930, a date that marks the end of the Old Republic.
(See also Appendix 10: The Old Republic.)
APPENDIX 10
THE OLD REPUBLIC
The First Brazilian Republic or República Velha ("Old Republic") is the period of Brazilian history from 1889 to 1930. The República Velha ended with the Brazilian Revolution of 1930 that installed Getulio Vargas as a new president. During this time, the official name of the country in English was the Republic of the United States of Brazil.
On November 15, 1889 Marshal Deodoro da Fonseca deposed Emperor Dom Pedro II, declared Brazil a republic, and reorganized the government.
From 1889 to 1930, the government was a constitutional democracy, but democracy was nominal.
In reality, the elections were rigged, voters in rural areas were pressured or induced to vote for the chosen candidates of their bosses and, if all those methods did not work, the election results could still be changed by one sided decisions of Congress' verification of powers commission (election authorities in the República Velha were not independent from the executive and the Legislature, dominated by the ruling oligarchs). This system resulted in the presidency of Brazil alternating between the oligarchies of the dominant states of Sao Paulo and Minas Gerais. This regime is often referred to as "café com leite", 'coffee with milk', after the respective agricultural products of the two states.
This period ended with a military coup that placed Getulio Vargas, a civilian, in the presidency. Vargas remained as dictator until 1945.
The Brazilian republic was not an ideological offspring of the republics born of the French or American Revolutions, although the Brazilian regime would attempt to associate itself with both. The republic did not have enough popular support to risk open elections. It was a regime born of a coup d'état that maintained itself by force. The republicans made Deodoro president (1889–91) and, after a financial crisis, appointed Field Marshal Floriano Vieira Peixoto Minister of War to ensure the allegiance of the military.
The officers who joined Field Marshal Deodoro da Fonseca in ending the Empire had made an oath to uphold it. The officer corps would eventually resolve the contradiction by linking its duty to Brazil itself, rather than to transitory governments. The Republic was born rather accidentally: Deodoro had intended only to replace the cabinet, but the republicans manipulated him into founding a republic.
The history of the Old Republic was dominated by a quest for a viable form of government to replace the monarchy. This quest lurched back and forth between state autonomy and centralization. The constitution of 1891, establishing the United States of Brazil (Estados Unidos do Brasil), granted extensive autonomy to the provinces, now called States. The Federal system was adopted, and all powers not granted in the Constitution to the Federal Government belonged to the States. It recognized that the central government did not rule at the local level. The Empire of Brazil had not absorbed fully the regional pátrias, and now they reasserted themselves. Into the 1920s, the federal government in Rio de Janeiro was dominated and managed by a combination of the more powerful states of Sao Paulo, Minas Gerais, Rio Grande do Sul and to a lesser extent Pernambuco and Bahia.
As a result, the history of the outset of republic in Brazil is also the story of the development of the Brazilian Army as a national regulatory and interventionist institution. The sudden elimination of the monarchy reduced the number of masterful national institutions to one, the Army. Although the Roman Catholic Church continued its presence throughout the country, it was not national but rather international in its personnel, doctrine, liturgy, and purposes. The Army assumed this new position not haphazardly, occupying in the conservative national economical elites' heart, part of the vacuum left by the monarchy with slavery abolition, and gradually acquiring support for its de facto role, eclipsing even other military institutions, like the Navy and the National Guard. The Navy attempts to prevent such hegemony were defeated militarily during the early 1890s. Although it had more units and men in Rio de Janeiro and Rio Grande do Sul than elsewhere, the Army's presence was felt throughout the country. Its personnel, its interests, its ideology, and its commitments were national in scope.
In the last decades of the 19th century, the United States, much of Europe, and neighboring Argentina expanded the right to vote. Brazil, however, moved to restrict access to the polls. In 1874, in a population of about 10 million, the franchise was held by about one million, but in 1881 this had been cut to less than two hundred thousand. This reduction was one reason the Empire's legitimacy foundered, but the Republic did not move to correct the situation. By 1910 there were only 627,000 voters in a population of 22 million. Throughout the 1920s, only between 2.3% and 3.4% of the total population could vote.
The instability and violence of the 1890s were related to the absence of consensus among the elites regarding a governmental model; and the armed forces were divided over their status, relationship to the political regime, and institutional goals. The lack of military unity and the disagreement among civilian elites about the military's role in society explain partially why a long-term military dictatorship was not established, as some officers advocating positivism wanted. However, military men were very active in politics; early in the decade, ten of the twenty state governors were officers.
The Constituent Assembly that drew up the constitution of 1891 was a battleground between those seeking to limit executive power, which was dictatorial in scope under President Deodoro da Fonseca, and the Jacobins, radical authoritarians who opposed the paulista coffee oligarchy and who wanted to preserve and intensify presidential authority. The new charter established a federation governed supposedly by a president, a bicameral National Congress (Congresso Nacional; hereafter, Congress), and a judiciary. However, real power was in the regional pátrias and in the hands of local potentates, called "colonels."
There was the constitutional system, and there was the real system of unwritten agreements (coronelismo) among local bosses, the colonels. Coronelismo, which supported state autonomy, was called the "politics of the governors". Under it, the local oligarchies chose the state governors, who in turn selected the president.
This informal but real distribution of power emerged, the so-called politics of the governors, to take shape as the result of armed struggles and bargaining. The populous and prosperous states of Minas Gerais and Sao Paulo dominated the system and swapped the presidency between them for many years. The system consolidated the state oligarchies around families that had been members of the old monarchical elite. And to check the nationalizing tendencies of the army, this oligarchic republic and its state components strengthened the navy and the state police. In the larger states, the state police were soon turned into small armies. The Head of the Brazilian army ordered that it would be doubled so they could defend them.
Around the start of the 20th century, the vast majority of the population lived in communities, though accumulating capitalist surpluses for overseas export, that were essentially semi-feudal in structure. Because of the legacy of Ibero-American slavery, abolished as late as 1888 in Brazil, there was an extreme concentration of such landownership reminiscent of feudal aristocracies: 464 great landowners held more than 270,000 km² of land (latifundios), while 464,000 small and medium-sized farms occupied only 157,000 km².
After the Second Industrial Revolution (circa 1870 to 1914) in the advanced countries, Latin America responded to mounting European and North American demand for primary products and foodstuffs by focusing on producing the products most in demand. A few key export products— coffee, sugar, and cotton —thus dominated agriculture. Because of this specialization, Brazilian producers neglected domestic consumption, forcing the country to import four-fifths of its grain needs. Like most of Latin America, the economy around the start of the 20th century, as a result, rested on certain cash crops produced by the fazendeiros, the large estate owners who exported primary products overseas and who headed their own patriarchal communities. Each typical fazenda (estate) included the owner's chaplain and overseers, his indigent peasants, his sharecroppers, and his indentured servants.
Brazil's dependence on factory-made goods and loans from the technologically, economically, and politically superior North Atlantic retarded its domestic industrial base. Farm equipment was primitive and largely non-mechanized; peasants tilled the land with hoes and cleared the soil through the inefficient slash-and-burn method. Meanwhile, living standards were generally squalid. Malnutrition, parasitic diseases, and a lack of medical facilities limited the average life span in 1920 to twenty-eight years. Without an open market, Brazilian industry could not compete, within a comparative advantage system, against the technologically superior Anglo-American economies. In this context the Encilhamento (a Boom & Bust process that first intensified, and then crashed, in the years between 1889 and 1891) occurred, the consequences of which were felt in all areas of the Brazilian economy throughout the subsequent decades.
The middle class was not yet active in political life. The patron-client political machines of the countryside enabled the coffee oligarchs to dominate state structures to their advantage, particularly the weak central state structures that effectively devolved power to local agrarian oligarchies. Known as coronelismo, this was a classic boss system under which the control of patronage was centralized in the hands of a locally dominant oligarch known as a coronel, who would dispense favors in return for loyalty.
Under this system, high illiteracy rates went hand in hand with the absence of universal suffrage by secret ballot and an almost non-existent demand for a free press, independent from the then dominant economic influence. In regions where there was not even the telegraph, far from major centers, the news could take 4 to 6 weeks longer to arrive. In those circumstances, for lack of alternatives, along the last decade of the 19th century and the first of the 20th, a free press created by European immigrant anarchists started to develop, and, due to non-segregated conformation (ethnically speaking) of Brazilian society, spread widely, particularly in large cities.
During this period, Brazil did not have a significantly integrated national economy. Rather, Brazil had a grouping of regional economies that exported their own specialty products to European and North American markets. The absence of a big internal market with overland transportation, except for the mule trains, impeded internal economic integration, political cohesion and military efficiency. The regions, "the Brazils" as the British called them, moved to their own rhythms. The Northeast exported its surplus cheap labor and saw its political influence decline as its sugar lost foreign markets to Caribbean producers. The wild rubber boom in Amazonia lost its world primacy to efficient Southeast Asian colonial plantations after 1912. The national-oriented market economies of the South were not dramatic, but their growth was steady and by the 1920s allowed Rio Grande do Sul to exercise considerable political leverage. Real power resided in the coffee-growing states of the Southeast— Sao Paulo, Minas Gerais, and Rio de Janeiro —which produced the most export revenue. Those three and Rio Grande do Sul harvested sixty percent (60%) of Brazil's crops, turned out seventy-five percent (75%) of its industrial and meat products, and held eighty percent (80%) of its banking resources.
Following the Declaration of the Republic in 1889, there were many political and social rebellions that had to be subdued by the regime, such as the Two Naval Revolts (1891 & 1893–94), the Federalist Rebellion(1893–95), the War of Canudos (1896–97), the Vaccine Revolt (1904), the Revolt of the Whip (1910) and the Revolt of Juazeiro ("Sedição de Juazeiro", 1914). Therefore, with the onset of World War I, Brazilian elites were interested in studying the events of the Mexican Revolution with more attention than those related to the War in Europe.
By 1915, it was also clear that the Brazilian elites were dedicated to making sure Brazil followed a conservative political path, meaning they were unwilling to embark upon courses of action, whether domestically (i.e. adopting the secret ballot and universal suffrage) or in foreign affairs (making alliances or long-term commitments), that could have unpredictable consequences and potentially risk the social, economic and political positions held by the Brazilian elite. This course of conduct would extend throughout the 20th century, an isolationist foreign policy interspersed with sporadic automatic alignments against "disturbing elements of peace and international trade".
In August 1916, after almost four years, another rebellion, the Contestado War ended.
Since the end of the 19th century, many immigrants from Europe had arrived, and with them came communist and anarchist ideas, which created problems for the very conservative regime of large estate owners (aka the "Café com Leite" republic). With the growth, masses of industrial workers became unhappy with the system and began engaging in massive protests, mostly in Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. After a General Strike in 1917, the government attempted to brutally repress the labor movement in order to prevent new movements from beginning. This repression, supported by legislation, was very effective in preventing the formation of real free labor unions.
Ruy Barbosa was the main opposition leader, campaigning for internal political changes. He also stated that due to the natural conflict between Brazilian commercial interests and the Central Powers's strategic ones (demonstrated for example in the German submarine campaign as well as in the Ottoman control over the Middle East), Brazilian involvement in the war would be inevitable. So he advised that the most logical way to proceed would be to follow the United States, which was working for a peace agreement but as the same time since the sinking of the RMS Lusitania was also preparing for war.
There were two main lines of thought regarding Brazil's joining of the war: One, led by Ruy Barbosa called for joining the Entente;[8] another side worried about the notices of bloody and unfruitful fighting in trenches, nurturing critical and pacifist feelings in the urban worker classes. Therefore, Brazil remained neutral in World War I until 1917. But internal problems, aggravated by denunciations of corruption created the need for then president Venceslau Brás to deviate attention, something that could be accomplished by focusing on an external enemy to eventually take advantage of a sense of patriotism.
During 1917, the sinking of Brazilian civilian ships by the German Navy off the French coast created such opportunity. On October 26 the government declared war on the Central Powers; Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Ottoman Empire. Soon after, the capture of ships from those countries that were on Brazilian coast was ordered and three small military groups were dispatched to the western front. The first one consisted of medical staff from the Army, the second consisted of sergeants and officers, also from the Army, and the third group consisted of military aviators, both of Army and Navy.[9][10] These groups were attached respectively: the Army's members to French Army and the Navy's aviators to British Royal Air Force. By 1918 all three groups were already in action in France.
By that time Brazil had also sent a Naval fleet, the DNOG (acronym in Portuguese for Naval Division in War Operations),[7][11] commanded by Pedro Max Frontin to join the Allies' Naval Forces in the Mediterranean.
However, during 1918, the turbulent social situation that generated in protests against the military recruitment plus the repercussion of then events in Russia only strengthened the provision of the Brazilian elites to remain obstinate with its doctrine of minimal involvement in international conflicts. In addition, the devastating advent of Spanish flu, amongst other reasons, meant that Venceslau Brás' administration in the end of its Term of office, refrained from getting involved more deeply in the war. Finally, the end of the war in November 1918, prevented even the government that succeeded the Venceslas Bras, could carry out its plan for war. Despite its modest participation, Brazil gained the right to partake in the Versailles conference.
From 1875 until 1960, about 3 million Europeans emigrated to Brazil, settling mainly in the four southern states of São Paulo, Paraná, Santa Catarina, and Rio Grande do Sul. Immigrants came mainly from Portugal, Italy, Germany, Spain, Japan, Poland, and the Middle East. The world's largest Japanese community outside Japan is in São Paulo. Indigenous full-blooded Indians, located mainly in the northern and western border regions and in the upper Amazon Basin, constitute less than 1% of the population. Their numbers are declining as contact with the outside world and commercial expansion into the interior increase. Brazilian Government programs to establish reservations and to provide other forms of assistance have existed for years but are controversial and often ineffective. The plurality of Brazilians are of mixed African, European, and Indian lineage. Immigration increased industrialization and urbanization in Brazil.
Demographic changes and structural shifts in the economy, however, threatened the primacy of the agrarian oligarchies. Under the Old Republic (1889–1930), the growth of the urban middle sectors, though retarded by dependency and entrenched oligarchy, was eventually strong enough to propel itself to the forefront of Brazilian political life. In time, growing trade, commerce, and industry in São Paulo undermined the domination of the republic's politics by the landed gentries of that state (dominated by the coffee industry) and Minas Gerais, dominated by dairy interests, known then by observers as the politics of café com leite; 'coffee with milk'.
Long before the first revolts of the urban middle classes to seize power from the coffee oligarchs in the 1920s, however, Brazil's intelligentsia, influenced by the tenets of European positivism, and farsighted agro-capitalists, dreamed of forging a modern, industrialized society—the "world power of the future". This sentiment was later nurtured throughout the Vargas years and under successive populist governments before the 1964 military junta repudiated Brazilian populism. Although such lofty visionaries were somewhat ineffectual under the Old Republic (1889–1930), the structural changes in the Brazilian economy opened up by the Great War strengthened these demands.
The outbreak of World War I in August 1914 was the turning point for the dynamic urban sectors. Temporarily abating Britain's overseas economic connections with Brazil, the war was an impetus for domestic manufacturing because of the unavailability of British imports. These structural shifts in the Brazilian economy helped to increase the ranks of the new urban middle classes. Meanwhile, Brazil's manufacturers and those employed by them enjoyed these gains at the expense of the agrarian oligarchies. Coffee being a nonessential though habit-forming product which affords it a measure of stability and resilience, world demand declined sharply. The central government, dominated by rural gentries, responded to falling world coffee demand by bailing out the oligarchs, reinstating the soon-to-be disastrous valorization program. Sixteen years later, world coffee demand plunged even more precipitously with the Great Depression. Valorization, government intervention to maintain coffee prices by withholding stocks from the market or restricting plantings, then proved to be unsustainable, incapable of curbing insurmountable decline in coffee prices in world markets. By World War I, the reinstatement of government price supports foreshadowed the vulnerability of Brazil's coffee oligarchy to the Great Depression.
Paradoxically, economic crisis spurred industrialization and a resultant boost to the urban middle and working classes. The depressed coffee sector freed up the capital and labor needed for manufacturing finished goods. A chronically adverse balance of trade and declining rate of exchange against foreign currencies was also helpful; Brazilian goods were simply cheaper in the Brazilian market. The state of São Paulo, with its relatively large capital-base, large immigrant population from Southern and Eastern Europe, and wealth of natural resources, led the trend, eclipsing Rio de Janeiro as center of Brazilian industry. Industrial production, though concentrated in light industry (food processing, small shops, and textiles) doubled during the war, and the number of enterprises (which stood at about 3,000 in 1908) grew by 5,940 between 1915 and 1918. The war was also a stimulus for the diversification of agriculture. Growing wartime demand of the Allies for staple products, sugar, beans, and raw materials sparked a new boom for products other than sugar or coffee. Foreign interests, however, continued to control the more capital-intensive industries, distinguishing Brazil's industrial revolution from that of the rest of the West.
With manufacturing on the rise and the coffee oligarchs imperiled, the old order of café com leite and coronelismo eventually gave way to the political aspirations of the new urban groups: professionals, government and white-collar workers, merchants, bankers, and industrialists. Increasing support for industrial protectionism marked 1920s Brazilian politics with little support from a central government dominated by the coffee interests. Under considerable middle class pressure, a more activist, centralized state adapted to represent the interests that the new bourgeoisie had been demanded for years — one that could utilize a state interventionist policy consisting of tax breaks, lowered duties, and import quotas to expand the domestic capital base. Manufacturers, white-collar workers, and the urban proletariat alike had earlier enjoyed the respite of world trade associated with World War I. However, the coffee oligarchs, relying on a devolved power structure relegating power to their own patrimonial ruling oligarchies, were certainly not interested in regularizing Brazil's personalistic politics or centralizing power. Getúlio Vargas, leader from 1930 to 1945 and later for a brief period in the 1950s, would later respond to these demands.
During this time period, the state of São Paulo was at the forefront of Brazil's economic, political, and cultural life. Known colloquially as "locomotive pulling the 20 empty boxcars" (a reference to the 20 other states) and still today Brazil's industrial and commercial center, São Paulo led this trend toward industrialization due to the foreign revenues flowing into the coffee industry.
Prosperity contributed to a rapid rise in the population of recent working class Southern and Eastern European immigrants, a population that contributed to the growth of trade unionism, anarchism, and socialism. In the post-World War I period, Brazil was hit by its first wave of general strikes and the establishment of the Communist Party in 1922.
Meanwhile, the divergence of interests between the coffee oligarchs—devastated by the Depression—and the burgeoning, dynamic urban sectors was intensifying. According to prominent Latin American historian Benjamin Keen, the task of transforming society "fell to the rapidly growing urban bourgeois groups, and especially to the middle class, which began to voice even more strongly its discontent with the rule of the corrupt rural oligarchies". In contrast, the labor movement remained small and weak (despite a wave of general strikes in the postwar years), lacking ties to the peasantry, who constituted the overwhelming majority of the Brazilian population. As a result, disparate social reform movements would crop up in the 1920s, ultimately culminating in the Revolution of 1930. The 1920s revolt against the seating of Artur da Silva Bernardes as president signaled the beginning of a struggle by the urban bourgeoisie to seize power from the coffee-producing oligarchy.
This era sparked the failed but famed tenente (lieutenant) rebellion as well. Junior military officers, who had long been active against the ruling coffee oligarchy, staged their own failed revolt in 1922 amid demands for various forms of social modernization, calling for agrarian reform, the formation of cooperatives, and the nationalization of mines. In this historical setting, Getúlio Vargas emerged as president about a decade later.
The crisis of the Old Republic extended throughout the 1920s. The political leaders of the Old Republic had been losing strength due to the mobilization of the industrial workers, influenced by the Nazi and Fascist revolts and political schisms that weakened other major oligarchies. These events threatened the stability of the traditional rural alliance between the states of São Paulo and Minas Gerais – i.e. the "coffee with milk policy".
In 1926, the fourth and final dissent arose within the Paulista Republican Party (PRP). The dissidents were led by Dr. José Adriano de Marrey Junior. He founded the Democratic Party (PD), which, among other reforms, advocated a program of higher education as well as the overthrow of PRP power. This political crisis originated within the Freemasons, chaired by Dr. José Adriano de Marrey Junior. As such, São Paulo was divided during the elections of 1930.
However, the greatest sign of wear of the Old Republic was overproduction of coffee during the crisis of 1929, fueled by the government through constant price increases.
In Juiz de Fora, Minas Gerais, the Mineiro Republican Party (PRM) was in opposition, and formed the Liberal Alliance with progressive political parties of other states. They supported Gaucho Getúlio Vargas for the presidency with the politician João Pessoa Cavalcanti de Albuquerque as a candidate for vice president. Minas Gerais was also divided, unable to generate a consensus for the presidential nominee. Part of the PRM supported the candidacy of Getúlio Vargas. But the "Conservative Concentration" of the PRM, headed by Vice President of the Republic, Fernando de Melo Viana and Justice Minister Augusto Viana do Castelo, supported Dr. Júlio Prestes for the official candidacy of the presidential elections held on 1 March 1930.
During the Old Republic (1889–1930), the "coffee with milk policy" was enforced, which was supported by politicians in São Paulo and Minas Gerais. They alternated in the presidency but were not necessarily Paulistas or Mineiros or their nominees. However, in early 1929, Washington Luís indicated Júlio Prestes to be his successor in a move to be supported by presidents of 17 states. Only three states denied supporting Prestes: Minas Gerais, Rio Grande do Sul, and Paraíba. Politicians from Minas Gerais expected Antonio Carlos Ribeiro de Andrada, then the governor of the state, to be named by Washington Luís as presidential candidate.
Thus the "coffee with milk policy" came to an end and the opposition began articulating a position against the 17 states to elect Júlio Prestes as President. Minas Gerais, Rio Grande do Sul, and Paraíba joined the political opposition from several states, including the Democratic Party of São Paulo, to oppose the candidacy of Júlio Prestes, forming the Liberal Alliance in August 1929.
On September 20 of the same year, the Liberal Alliance launched their candidates for the presidential elections: Getulio Vargas as candidate for President and João Pessoa Cavalcanti de Albuquerque as candidate for Vice President. Intellectuals supported the Liberal Alliance, such as José Américo de Almeida and Lindolfo Collor, members of the urban middle classes and the political & military movement called Tenentism they organized the Paulista Revolt of 1924, punctuated by Cordeiro de Farias, Eduardo Gomes, Siqueira Campos, João Alberto Lins de Barros, Juarez Távora, Miguel Costa, Juraci Magalhães and three future presidents of the Republic, Geisel, Médici and Castelo Branco.
In September 1929 in São Paulo, there was a perception that the Liberal Alliance and the eventual revolution were aimed at São Paulo. As the state senator from São Paulo, Cândido Nanzianzeno Nogueira da Motta, denounced in the tribune of the State Legislature of São Paulo on September 24, 1929, that:
Cândido Mota also cited the Rio Senator Irenaeus Machado, who predicted the reaction from São Paulo:
The response from São Paulo to the revolution of 1930 came a year and a half later with the Revolution of 1932. The president of Minas Gerais, Antônio Carlos Ribeiro de Andrada said in speech (also in 1929):
This phrase was considered as the expression of the survival instinct of a seasoned politician as well as an omen: Minas Gerais, allied with Rio Grande do Sul and its lieutenants, could preserve their oligarchies. A revolution that was made only by lieutenants also toppled the PRM (Minas Gerais Republican Party) from power in Minas Gerais and the PRR (Rio Grande do Sul Republican Party) from power in the Rio Grande do Sul
The elections were held on March 1, 1930 and gave victory to Júlio Prestes, who received 1,091,709 votes against 742,794 given to Getúlio Vargas. Notoriously, Vargas had almost 100% of the votes in Rio Grande do Sul.
The Liberal Alliances refused to accept the validity of the elections, claiming that Prestes' victory was due to fraud. Moreover, representatives elected in states where the Liberal Alliance led the vote failed to obtain recognition of their mandates. This led to a conspiracy, based in Rio Grande do Sul and Minas Gerais.
The conspiracy suffered a setback in June with Luís Carlos Prestes. A former member of the "Tenentismo" movement, Prestes adopted the ideas of Karl Marx and began to support communism. After some time, this led to the failed attempt at a communist overthrow by the Liberal Alliance.
Soon thereafter, another setback to the conspiracy occurred as Siqueira Campos died in a plane crash.
On July 26, 1930, João Pessoa was assassinated by João Dantas in Recife for political and personal reasons. This became the flashpoint for armed mobilization. João Dantas and his brother-in-law & accomplice, Moreira Caldas, were found beheaded in their cell at the House of Detention (today the House of Culture) in 1930.
Accusations of fraud and arbitrary throat-slashing of Mineiran representatives and the bench of the Liberal Alliance of Paraíba, popular discontent due to the economic crisis caused by the Great Depression of 1929, the murder of João Pessoa, and the disruption of the "coffee with milk policy" were all factors in creating a favorable climate for revolution.
The 1930 revolution began in Rio Grande do Sul on October 3 at 5:25pm. Osvaldo Aranha telegraphed Juarez Távora to communicate the beginning of the Revolution. It spread quickly through the country. Eight state governments in the northeast of Brazil were deposed by revolutionaries.
On the 10th of October, Vargas launched the manifesto, "Rio Grande standing by Brazil" and left, by rail, towards Rio de Janeiro, the national capital at the time.
It was expected that a major battle would occur in Itararé (on the border with Paraná), where the federal troops were stationed to halt the advance of the revolutionary forces. These revolutionary forces were led by Colonel Góis Monteiro. However, on October 12 and 13, the Battle of Quatiguá took place (possibly the biggest fight of the revolution), although it has been little studied. Quatiguá is located to the east of Jaguariaíva, near the border between São Paulo state and Paraná. The battle did not occur in Itararé since the generals Tasso Fragoso and Mena Barreto and Admiral Isaiah de Noronha ousted Washington Luís on October 24 and formed a joint government.
At 3pm on November 3rd, 1930, the junta handed power and the presidential palace to Getulio Vargas, ending the Old Republic and knocking down all state oligarchies except from Minas Gerais and those from Rio Grande do Sul. At the same time, in downtown Rio de Janeiro, the gaúcho soldiers fulfilled the promise of tethering horses to the obelisk on Rio Branco Avenue, symbolically marking the triumph of the Revolution of 1930.
Vargas became head of the provisional government with broad powers. The constitution of 1891 was repealed and Vargas came to rule by decree. Vargas named intervenors to all state governments with the exception of Minas Gerais. These stakeholders were mostly lieutenants who participated in the revolution.
In turn, the president-elect and non-sworn Júlio Prestes harshly criticized the Revolution of 1930 when he proclaimed in 1931, in exile in Portugal:
One of the biggest mistakes of the 1930 revolution was delivering the states to inexperienced administrative lieutenants. This, in turn, was one reason for the 1932 revolution. The unpreparedness of the lieutenants to govern was terminated early in 1932 by one of the top lieutenants, Lieutenant John Cabanas, who had participated in the 1924 revolution, and he used the example of Lieutenant John Alberto Lins de Barros who ruled São Paulo. John Cabanas, in his February 1932 book "Revolution of the Pharisees", especially criticized the debacle of the government's lieutenants in the states, drawing attention to the plight of São Paulo shortly before the outbreak of the Revolution of 1932:
The effects of the revolution were slow to appear. The new constitution was approved only in 1934, called the 1934 Constitution, after strong social pressure from the Constitutionalist Revolution of 1932. But the structure of the Brazilian State was profoundly modified after 1930, making it more suited to the economic and social needs of the country.
Getúlio disliked the 1934 Constitution, and three and a half years later he enacted a new constitution, the 1937 Constitution. As such, speaking about the 1934 Constitution on the 10th anniversary of the 1930 Revolution (November 11, 1940), Vargas said that it was:
From the 1937 Constitution, the authoritarian centralized regime (known as the Vargas Era) stimulated the expansion of urban activities and shifted the axis of productivity from agriculture to industry, laying the foundations of modern Brazil's economy.
Vargas summarized the Revolution of 1930 and its 15 years of governance, on Labor Day in 1945, in a speech in Rio de Janeiro, by saying:
Three former ministers of Getúlio Vargas were later elected to the Presidency: Eurico Dutra, João Goulart and Tancredo Neves. The last did not actually assume office, because on the eve of his scheduled inauguration, he suffered severe abdominal pain during a religious ceremony at the Don Bosco Shrine; later diagnosed as a diverticulitis, it ultimately led to his death on April 21, 1985, in São Paulo.
Three of Vargas' 1930 lieutenants also were later elected to the Presidency: Humberto de Alencar Castelo Branco, Emílio Garrastazu Médici and Ernesto Geisel.
Former lieutenant Juarez Távora was runner-up in the presidential elections of 1955. Also, former lieutenant Eduardo Gomes was runner-up in the 1945 and 1950 elections. Both were candidates for the UDN (Democrat National Union) party, which also shows the influence of Vargas' policies in the UDN party. The UDN party also had ex-lieutenant Juraci Magalhães, who was almost its presidential candidate in 1960.
Political parties founded by Getúlio Vargas, the PSD (Social Democratic Party – who were ex-party members of the "New State" and interventionists in the economy) and former PTB (Brazilian Workers Party), dominated the political scene from 1946 to 1964.
The PSD, UDN and PTB were the major political parties of that period, and were led by Mineiros (PSD and UDN) and Gauchos (PTB).
Despite the fact that fifteen years (1930–1945) are not a long time in the context of many political careers, few politicians of the Old Republic managed to resume their political careers after the fall of Vargas in 1945. Post-1945, the policy framework was almost complete revised, both in terms of people as well as politics.
Writing about the decline in the quality of political representation after 1930, Gilberto Amado explains in his 1960 book, Presence in Politics:
The 1930 deal made by politicians from São Paulo was bleak: they complained that, after Julio Prestes in 1930, no citizen born in São Paulo was elected and held the Presidency except, and only for a few days, Ranieri Mazzilli, Dr. Ulysses Guimaraes and Michel Temer. The Paulistas also complained that only João Figueiredo reached the presidency (in 1979) as someone committed to the ideals of the 1932 revolution. Figueiredo was the son of General Euclides Figueiredo, the commander of the constitutional revolution of 1932 and who had been exiled to Argentina between 1932 and 1934. João Figueiredo created the "opening policy" of the military regime.
Vargas was the first in Brazil to use personal advertisements touting himself and his political accomplishments on a large scale – the so-called cult of personality, amplified with the Voice of Brazil national radio, typical of fascism, but also predecessor to modern political marketing.
The elite-proletariat alliance created by Vargas became standard in Brazilian politics, such as the PSD-PTB Alliance backed by the clandestine PCB (Brazilian Communist Party).
***
Coffee with milk politics or café com leite politics was a term that referred to the domination of Brazilian politics under the Old Republic (1889–1930) by the landed gentries of Sao Paulo (dominated by the coffee industry) and Minas Gerais (dominated by dairy interests), being represented by the Paulista Republican Party (PRP) and the Minas Republican Party (PRM). São Paulo's coffee interests were by far the stronger of the pair.
Under Brazil's Old Republic, the patron-client political machines of the countryside enabled agrarian oligarchs, especially coffee planters in the dominant state of São Paulo, to dominate state structures to their advantage, particularly the weak central state structures that effectively devolved power to local agrarian oligarchies.
Under the Old , the coffee with milk politics rested on the domination of the republic's politics by the states of São Paulo and Minas Gerais — the largest in terms of population and wealth. One can illustrate the extent of that domination by noting that the first presidents of the republic were from São Paulo and thereafter succeeded by an alternation between the outgoing governors of the two leading states in the presidency.
The coffee with milk politics rested on an oligarchic system known as coronelism. Known as the "rule of the colonels", this term referred to the classic boss system under which the control of patronage was centralized in the hands of a locally dominant oligarch known as a "colonel", particularly under Brazil's Old Republic, who would dispense favors in return for loyalty.
Meanwhile, other states resented this grip on the central state by São Paulo and Minas Gerais. The severe drought of 1877 in the Northeast and the ensuing economic collapse — along with the abolition of slavery in the 1880s — propelled the mass labor migration of emancipated slaves and other peasants from Northeast to Southeast, precipitating the decay of established sugar oligarchies of the North. With the concurrent growth of coffee in the Southeast, São Paulo, now emerging as the central state, began to increase in power under the Old Republic. Northeastern landowners bitterly opposed rival oligarchs in São Paulo, explaining their role in the Revolution of 1930.
There were more cases of organized political opposition to the coffee with milk politics before the Revolution of 1930, such as the 1910 presidential election, disputed by Hermes da Fonseca (PRC), supported by Minas Gerais, and Ruy Barbosa (PRP), endorsed by São Paulo by means of the Civilist Campaign; the election of Epitácio Pessoa (PRM) in 1919; and the creation of the Liberator Party (PL) in 1928, in Rio Grande do Sul.[2]
In time, growing trade, commerce, and industry in São Paulo would serve to undermine the domination of the republic's politics by the landed gentries of the same state (dominated by the coffee industry) and Minas Gerais (dominated by dairy interests) — known then by observers as the politics of café com leite. Under Getúlio Vargas, ushered into power by the middle class and agrarian oligarchies of peripheral states resentful of the coffee oligarchs, Brazil moved toward a more centralized state structure that has served to regularize and modernize state governments, moving toward more universal suffrage and secret ballots, gradually freeing Brazilian politics from the grips of coronelismo.
However, the legacy of café com leite is still strongly visible. Brazilian politics is still known for being highly patrimonial, oligarchic, and personalistic and São Paulo and Minas Gerais remain the country's dominant states.
This nomination was given in the mid 20th century by History teachers to memorize the two states more easily, but the oligarchs from Minas Gerais were also coffee farmers, and dairy was not significant to the economical landscape.
*Austin Amissah, a Ghanaian lawyer, judge and academic who became a judge of the Court of Appeal in Botswana, was born in Accra, Ghana.
Austin Neeabeohe Evans Amissah (b. October 3, 1930, Accra, Ghana – d. January 20, 2001, London, England) studied at Jesus College, Oxford and was called to the bar as a member of Lincoln's Inn in 1955. He was Director of Public Prosecutions for Ghana from 1962 to 1966, then became a judge of the Court of Appeal from 1966 to 1976; he was seconded from this position to become a professor and Dean of the Law Faculty at the University of Ghana from 1969 to 1974 and chairman of the Ghana Law Reform Commission from 1969 to 1975. He was appointed Attorney General and Minister of Justice in 1979, and later became a judge of the Court of Appeal in Botswana from 1981 to 2001, including a period as President of the Court of Appeal. His writings included Criminal Procedure in Ghana, The Contribution of Courts to Government: a West African view (1981) and Arbitration in Africa (1996).
An eminent jurist, academic and author, Justice Amissah's career spanned Africa, Asia, the Caribbean and Europe. Born in Ghana in 1930, Justice Amissah became that country's Attorney General and served on Commissions and Enquiries across the Commonwealth. As President of Botswana's Court of Appeal, he made a landmark ruling in favor of Unity Dow's right to confer nationality on her children. He found that the Botswana constitution's guarantee of equal treatment of men and women overrode an immigration regulation stipulating that nationality rights could be conferred only by a man.
He died in London on January 20, 2001.
***
Unity Dow (b. April 23, 1959, Botswana) was a Motswana judge, human rights activist and writer currently serving as Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation. She came from a rural background that tended toward traditional values. She successfully challenged the law that argued that citizenship was inherited by children from the fathers and not from their mothers. She also went to court to argue that a gay rights group was legal and not unconstitutional in the law of Botswana.
Dow studied law at the University of Botswana and Swaziland (LLB 1983), which included two years spent studying at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. Her Western education caused a mixture of respect and suspicion.
In 1991, Unity Dow co-founded the private Baobab Primary School in Gaborone and she co-founded the first AIDS-specific NGO in the country, "AIDS ACTION TRUST."
Dow earned her acclaim as a lawyer particularly through her stances on women's rights. She was the plaintiff in a case that allowed the children of women with Botswana citizenship by foreign national fathers to be considered citizens of Botswana (Attorney General of Botswana v. Unity Dow (1992). Before this case, according to tradition and prior precedent, nationality only descended from the father. She later became Botswana's first female High Court judge. She was also co-founder of the first all-female law practice Dow, Malakaila, and was one of the founding members of the women's organization Emang Basadi.
As a novelist, Dow published five books. These books often deal with issues concerning the struggle between Western and traditional values and also involve her interest in gender issues and her nation's poverty. Dow contributed to the book Schicksal Afrika (Destiny Africa) by the former German President Horst Koehler in 2009. In May 2010, she published her book, Saturday is for Funerals, which describes the AIDS problem in Africa.
In 2005, Unity Dow became a member of a United Nations mission to Sierra Leone to review the domestic application of international women's human rights. On December 13, 2006, she was one of three judges who ruled on the acclaimed Kgalagadi (San, Bushmen or Basarwa) court decision, concerning the rights of the San to return to their ancestral lands.
In 2007, Unity Dow became a Member of a special mission at the invitation of the Rwandan Government and United Nations special court for Rwanda. The purpose of this mission was to review the Rwandan Judiciaries preparedness to take over the hearing of the 1994 genocide cases.
Dow was a visiting professor of Law at the Columbia University School of Law in New York, during the fall semester 2009, and at Washington and Lee University, Lexington, Virginia, 2009, and University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, Ohio, 2009.
After retiring from the High Court Botswana in 2009, after 11 years of service, she opened the legal firm "Dow & Associates" in Botswana in February 2010. Dow was also sworn in as Justice of the IICDRC (Interim Independent Constitutional Dispute Resolution Court) of Kenya by the Kenyan President to help implement the new constitution of Kenya.
On July 14, 2010, Dow was awarded the Medal of the Legion d'honneur de France by representatives of the French President Nicolas Sarkozy for her human rights activities.
At the Women of the World Summit in March 2011 and 2012 in New York, Unity Dow was mentioned as one of 150 women who shake the world.
Unity Dow also served as Commissioner of the International Commission of Jurists. She was first elected in 2004 and re-elected in 2009. In 2006 she was also elected to the Executive Committee and subsequently re-elected in 2008. In March 2011 she was elected the Chairperson of the Executive Committee, succeeding Dr. Rajeev Dhayan, of India, effective from June 2011 to June 2012.
Unity Dow is the only motswana listed under the world recognized feminists for her advocacy for women rights from the period of 1940 to present.
On 6 July 2012 Dow was appointed by the United Nations Human Rights Council as one of three independent experts to conduct a fact-finding mission on how Israel's West Bank settlements affect Palestinians. A preliminary version of the report was published on January 31, 2013.
In 2013, Dow decided to enter politics. On October 28, 2014. Dow was nominated by former President Ian Khama of Botswana as "special elected member of parliament" and confirmed by the new 11th Parliament of Botswana. Dow was also appointed Assistant Minister of Education in the Government of Botswana, responsible for Higher / Tertiary Education and Skills Development.
On November 14, 2014, Dow was successful in representing LEGABIBO, the Lesbians, Gays, and Bisexuals of Botswana in a trial versus the State of Botswana to register LEGABIBO as an organization in Botswana. Previously the State had refused the registration on arguments it would be unconstitutional. On March 1, 2015, Dow was appointed Minister of Education and Skills Development in the Government of Botswana.
After the inauguration of the fifth President of Botswana Mokgweetsi E. Masisi on April 1, 2018, Unity Dow took over as Minister of Infrastructure and Housing Development in the Government of Botswana. On June 20, 2018, in a cabinet reshuffle, she was named Minister of International Affairs and Cooperation. After re-election of Dr. Mokgweetsi E. Masisi on November 1, 2019 as President of Botswana, Unity Dow was reconfirmed as Minister of International Affairs and Cooperation by the 12th parliament of Botswana.
October 4
*The Cuban congress granted the request of President Gerardo Machado to suspend the constitution in and around Havana until after general elections on November 1.
October 8
*The artist Faith Ringgold was born in New York.
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.
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.
October 13
*Rufus Herve Bacote, a prominent physician in Kentucky and Tennessee who served as a First Lieutenant and an army doctor in the 370th Infantry Regiment of the 93rd Division during World War I, died in Earlington, Kentucky (October 13).
October 14
*Henry Creamer, the song lyricist best known for composing the lyrics for "Way Down Yonder in New Orleans", died in New York City, New York.
*Mobutu Sese Seko, a President of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, was born in Lisala, Belgian Congo.
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.
Faith Ringgold was born the youngest of three children on October 8, 1930, in Harlem Hospital, New York City. Her parents, Andrew Louis Jones and Willi Posey Jones, were descendants of working-class families displaced by the Great Migration. Ringgold's mother, a fashion designer, and her father, an avid storyteller, raised their daughter in an environment that encouraged her creativity. After the Harlem Renaissance, Ringgold's childhood home in Harlem became surrounded by a thriving arts scene - where figures such as Duke Ellington and Langston Hughes lived just around the corner. Her childhood friend, Sonny Rollins, who would grow up to be a prominent jazz musician, often visited her family and practiced saxophone at their parties. Because of her chronic asthma, Ringgold explored visual art as a major pastime through the support of her mother, often experimenting with crayons as a young girl. She also learned how to sew and work creatively with fabric from her mother. Ringgold's future artwork was greatly affected by the people, poetry, and music she experienced in her childhood, as well as by the racism, sexism, and segregation she dealt with in her everyday life.
In 1950, due to pressure from her family, Ringgold enrolled at the City College of New York to major in art, but was forced to major in art education instead, as City College only allowed women to be enrolled in certain majors. The same year, she also married a jazz pianist named Robert Earl Wallace and had two children, Michele and Barbara Faith Wallace. Ringgold and Wallace separated four years later due to his heroin addiction. In the meantime, she studied with artists Robert Gwathmey and Yasuo Kuniyoshi. She was also introduced to printmaker Robert Blackburn, with whom she would collaborate on a series of prints 30 years later.
In 1955, Ringgold received her bachelor's degree from City College and soon afterward taught in the New York City public school system. In 1959, she received her master's degree from City College and left with her mother and daughters on her first trip to Europe. While travelling abroad in Paris, Florence, and Rome, Ringgold visited many museums, including the Louvre. This museum in particular inspired her future series of quilt paintings known as the French Collection. This trip was abruptly cut short, however, due to the untimely death of her brother in 1961. Faith Ringgold, her mother, and her daughters all returned to the United States for his funeral. She subsequently married Burdette Ringgold on May 19, 1962.
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 co-founded, with one of her daughters, the advocacy group Women Students and Artists for Black Art Liberation.
Ringgold visited West Africa twice: once in 1976 and again in 1977. These travels would deeply influence her mask making, doll painting and sculptures.
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.
Ringgold visited West Africa twice: once in 1976 and again in 1977. These travels would deeply influence her mask making, doll painting and sculptures.
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.
October 13
*Rufus Herve Bacote, a prominent physician in Kentucky and Tennessee who served as a First Lieutenant and an army doctor in the 370th Infantry Regiment of the 93rd Division during World War I, died in Earlington, Kentucky (October 13).
October 14
*Henry Creamer, the song lyricist best known for composing the lyrics for "Way Down Yonder in New Orleans", died in New York City, New York.
*Mobutu Sese Seko, a President of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, was born in Lisala, Belgian Congo.
October 22
*Lew Leslie's Blackbirds of 1930 premiered at New York's Royal Theater with Ethel Waters and Cecil Mack's Choir. Songs in the musical include "Memories of You" by Eubie Blake with lyrics by Andy Razaf. The musical would have 57 performances.
October 24
*Brazil's three-week civil war ended in rebel victory as President Washington Luis resigned.
October 29
Emmanuel Noi Omaboe, (aka Oyeeman Wereko Ampem II) (b. October 29, 1930 – d. November 26, 2005), a Ghanaian traditional ruler, a public servant and economist, was born in Amanokrom, in the Akuapim North District of Ghana. He was Gyaasehene of Akuapem and Omanhene of Amanokrom from 1975 till his death in 2005. He became Commissioner of Economic Affairs of Ghana, from 1967 to 1969. He served as the Ghanaian Government Statistician from 1960 to 1966 in Nkrumah's Government.
November 1
*James C. Matthews, the first African American law school graduate in New York, died in Albany, New York.
November 2
October 24
*Brazil's three-week civil war ended in rebel victory as President Washington Luis resigned.
October 29
Emmanuel Noi Omaboe, (aka Oyeeman Wereko Ampem II) (b. October 29, 1930 – d. November 26, 2005), a Ghanaian traditional ruler, a public servant and economist, was born in Amanokrom, in the Akuapim North District of Ghana. He was Gyaasehene of Akuapem and Omanhene of Amanokrom from 1975 till his death in 2005. He became Commissioner of Economic Affairs of Ghana, from 1967 to 1969. He served as the Ghanaian Government Statistician from 1960 to 1966 in Nkrumah's Government.
*Omara Portuondo Peláez, a singer and dancer whose career spanned over half a century was born in Havana, Cuba. She was one of the original members of the Cuarteto d'Aida, and performed with Ignacio Pineiro, Orquesta Anacaona, Orquesta Aragon, Nat King Cole, Adalberto Alvarez, Los Van Van, the Buena Vista ensemble, Pupy Pedroso, Chucho Valdes and Juan Formell.
November 1
*James C. Matthews, the first African American law school graduate in New York, died in Albany, New York.
*Ras Tafari, who took the name Haile Selassie when he was proclaimed Negus (King) in 1928, was crowned King of Kings at Addis Adaba. He would reign until 1974 and be regarded by Jamaican Rastafarians as the living God. He was seen as fulfilling a prophecy of Marcus Garvey, "Look to Africa, where a black king shall be crowned, for the day of deliverance is near."
November 3
November 3
*Getulio Vargas became President of Brazil.
November 6
*Derrick Albert Bell, Jr., the first tenured African American Professor of Law at Harvard Law School who is largely credited as one of the originators of critical race theory (CRT), was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He was a visiting professor at New York University School of Law from 1991 until his death. He was also a dean of the University of Oregon School of Law.
*Leslie Lee, a Tony Award-nominated playwright, was born in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania.
November 7
*Greg Bell, a long jumper who won the gold medal in the long jump at the 1956 Summer Olympics in Melbourne, Australia, was born in Terre Haute, Indiana.
November 8
*The United States and Britain extended formal recognition to the new Brazilian government.
November 10
*Clarence Pendleton, Jr. was born in Louisville, Kentucky. Pendleton would become the first African American chairperson of the United States Civil Rights Commission in 1981.
*Guillermo Erazo, an Afro-Ecuadorian musician, singer, and marimba player better known as Papa Roncon, was born in Borbon, Esmeraldas, Ecuador.
November 13
*Cuban President Gerardo Machado suspended the Constitution for 25 days as rioting in Havana killed seven.
November 16
*Guillermo Erazo, an Afro-Ecuadorian musician, singer, and marimba player better known as Papa Roncon, was born in Borbon, Esmeraldas, Ecuador.
*Cuban President Gerardo Machado suspended the Constitution for 25 days as rioting in Havana killed seven.
*Benny Andrews, a painter, printmaker, creator of collages and an educator, was born in Plainview, Georgia.
November 16
*Chinua Achebe, a Nigerian novelist whose first novel, Things Fall Apart, became the most widely read book in modern African literature, was born in Ogidi, Nigeria Protectorate.
November 18
*Thomas Barnes, the first African American Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force, was born.
*Stenio Vincent was elected President of Haiti by the National Assembly.
November 20
*Bertin Borna, a Beninese politician who served as Benin's minister of finance, was born in Tanguieta, Benin.
November 28
*John Oladipo Oladitan (b. November 28, 1930 – d. June 17, 2002), a Nigerian track athlete who competed in the men's long jump at the 1960 Summer Olympics, was born.
November 30
*Jim Boyd, the winner of an Olympic boxing gold medal in the Light Heavyweight (173 pound) Division at the 1956 Melbourne Olympic Games, was born in Rocky Mount, North Carolina.
December
November 20
*Bertin Borna, a Beninese politician who served as Benin's minister of finance, was born in Tanguieta, Benin.
November 28
*John Oladipo Oladitan (b. November 28, 1930 – d. June 17, 2002), a Nigerian track athlete who competed in the men's long jump at the 1960 Summer Olympics, was born.
November 30
*Jim Boyd, the winner of an Olympic boxing gold medal in the Light Heavyweight (173 pound) Division at the 1956 Melbourne Olympic Games, was born in Rocky Mount, North Carolina.
December
*In South Africa, African National Congress "radicals" in the Western Cape formed an independent African National Congress.
December 3
December 4
*Alexander Bada, the second Pastor of the Celestial Church of Christ (CCC), was born in Abeokuta, Nigeria.
December 6
December 3
*Art Bragg, a sprinter who competed in the 1952 Helsinki Summer Olympics in the 100 meter dash, was born in Baltimore, Maryland.
*Alexander Bada, the second Pastor of the Celestial Church of Christ (CCC), was born in Abeokuta, Nigeria.
December 6
*Daniel Muchiwa Lisulo, the Prime Minister of Zambia from June 1978 until February 1981, was born in Mongu, Zambia.
December 7
December 9
December 7
*Frank Bernasko, a Ghanaian soldier, lawyer, and politician who was a founder and leader of Ghana's Action Congress Party, was born in Ghana.
*Andrew "Rube" Foster, a baseball player, manager, and pioneer executive in the Negro Leagues, died in Kankakee, Illinois. Known as the "Father of Black Baseball", Foster was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1981.
December 16
*In South Africa, Communist leader Johannes Nkosi was killed during a protest in Durban (December 16-17).
December 20
*Pat Hare, a blues guitarist and singer, was born in Cherry Valley, Arkansas.
December 21
*Adebayo Adedeji, a Nigerian politician who was an Executive Secretary to the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa from 1975 to 1978, and the United Nations Under-Secretary-General from 1978 until 1991, was born. He became the founding Executive Director of the African Centre for Development and Strategic Studies (ACDESS) in 1991.
December 24
*Mel Triplett, a star running back for the New York Giants football team, was born in Indianola, Mississippi.
December 28
December 29
*Walter Cohen, a Republican politician and businessman, died in New Orleans, Louisiana.
December 20
*Pat Hare, a blues guitarist and singer, was born in Cherry Valley, Arkansas.
December 21
*Adebayo Adedeji, a Nigerian politician who was an Executive Secretary to the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa from 1975 to 1978, and the United Nations Under-Secretary-General from 1978 until 1991, was born. He became the founding Executive Director of the African Centre for Development and Strategic Studies (ACDESS) in 1991.
December 24
*Mel Triplett, a star running back for the New York Giants football team, was born in Indianola, Mississippi.
December 28
*Mary Tate, the first American woman to serve as a Bishop in a nationally recognized denomination, died in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
*Walter Cohen, a Republican politician and businessman, died in New Orleans, Louisiana.
December 31
*Odetta, the folksinger and activist known as "The Voice of the Civil Rights Movement" was born in Birmingham, Alabama.
*Victor Abimbola Olaiya (b. December 31, 1930 - d. February 12, 2020), also known as "Dr. Victor Olaiya", a Nigerian trumpeter who played in the highlife style, was born in Calabar, Cross River State, Nigeria. Though extremely famous in Nigeria during the 1950s and early 1960s, Olaiya received little recognition outside his native country. Alhaji Alade Odunewu of the Daily Times described him as "The Evil Genius of Highlife."
Date Unknown
*'Abd Allah II ibn 'Ali 'Abd ash-Shakur, the last Emir of Harar, died.
*Cloves Campbell, the first African American elected to the Arizona State Senate, was born in Elizabeth, Louisiana.
*Nicolas Geffrard, a Haitian musician best known for composing La Dessalinienne, the Haitian national anthem, died. The piece was adopted in 1904 to celebrate one hundred years of Haitian independence. He spent part of his career working in Europe.
David Oluwale (b.1930 - May 4, 1969), a British Nigerian who drowned in 1969 in the River Aire in Leeds, West Riding of Yorkshire, England was born in Lagos, Nigeria. Oluwale's drowning was attributed to police harassment. His death resulted in the first successful prosecution of British police officers for involvement in the death of a black person.
*Victor Abimbola Olaiya (b. December 31, 1930 - d. February 12, 2020), also known as "Dr. Victor Olaiya", a Nigerian trumpeter who played in the highlife style, was born in Calabar, Cross River State, Nigeria. Though extremely famous in Nigeria during the 1950s and early 1960s, Olaiya received little recognition outside his native country. Alhaji Alade Odunewu of the Daily Times described him as "The Evil Genius of Highlife."
*'Abd Allah II ibn 'Ali 'Abd ash-Shakur, the last Emir of Harar, died.
*Cloves Campbell, the first African American elected to the Arizona State Senate, was born in Elizabeth, Louisiana.
David Oluwale (b.1930 - May 4, 1969), a British Nigerian who drowned in 1969 in the River Aire in Leeds, West Riding of Yorkshire, England was born in Lagos, Nigeria. Oluwale's drowning was attributed to police harassment. His death resulted in the first successful prosecution of British police officers for involvement in the death of a black person.
