1930
Pan-African Chronology
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February 1
*Horatio Strother, the author of an influential book on the Underground Railroad in Connecticut, was born in Harlem, New York.
Horatio Theodore Strother (b. February 1, 1930, Harlem, New York – d. September 14, 1974, Higganum, Connecticut) was an American historian and educator who wrote an influential 1962 book on the Underground Railroad in Connecticut. His teaching career culminated in a professorship at the University of New Haven from the 1960s.
Strother was born on February 1, 1930, in Harlem to Helen and Theodore Strother. The family was African American. They moved to Middletown, Connecticut, soon after his birth. After moving with his father back to New York City a year later, Strother returned to Middletown in 1943, where he attended Woodrow Wilson High School and participated in football and track and field. A track star, he achieved second place in a statewide running broad jump competition. Strother enlisted in the United States Air Force on December 8, 1950, and served four years on active duty in the Korean War.
Strother earned his Bachelor of Arts (1956) and Master of Arts (1957) degrees in history from the University of Connecticut. His thesis, studying the Underground Railroad in Connecticut, was supervised by Albert E. Van Dusen. He was a member of the Phi Alpha Theta history honors society.
After a short stint teaching at Killingworth Elementary School, Strother taught history at the Nathan Hale-Ray High School in Moodus starting in 1959. He quickly became head of the social studies department. He also taught history at South Central Community College in New Haven. By 1963, he was teaching part-time at the University of New Haven, where he received a promotion to assistant professor of history by 1966.
After years of research, Stother published a rewrite of his thesis. He drew on manuscripts and published sources, notably the work of Wilbur Henry Siebert, while also conducting oral history interviews with descendants of Underground Railroad agents and passengers. The Underground Railroad in Connecticut was published by Wesleyan University Press in 1962. Critics tempered praise of Strother's unique take on a long-neglected topic with criticism of his reliance on reminiscences. However, the book's reputation has grown since its publication. It was reissued in 2012 and is still in print. It is held by more than 1370 libraries worldwide. Strother's book continues to be regarded as the definitive text on the Underground Railroad in Connecticut.
Strother married Joanne Horner in June 1951. The couple lived in Higganum and had five children, one of whom died in infancy in 1961.
Horatio Strother drowned on September 14, 1974, while swimming in Hidden Lake in the town of Haddam, Connecticut, near his home in Higganum. He was survived by his wife and four children.
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February 14
*Roy Reed, an American journalist who wrote about the Civil Rights Movement for The New York Times, was born.
Roy Reed (b. February 14, 1930, Hot Springs, Arkansas – d. December 10, 2017, Fayetteville, Arkansas) was an American journalist. He wrote about the Civil Rights Movement for The New York Times. He was the author of several books, including Looking for Hogeye (1986); a biography of Governor Orval Faubus, Faubus: The Life and Times of an American Prodigal (1997); and a memoir Beware of Limbo Dancers: A Correspondent's Adventures with the New York Times (2012). He also edited Looking Back at the Arkansas Gazette: An Oral History (2009).
Roy Earl Reed was born on February 14, 1930, in Hot Springs, Arkansas, and grew up in Piney, in the state’s western Hill Country. His parents were Roy Edward Reed, a grocer, and Ella Meredith Reed. A younger sister, Hattie, died in 1964. In his memoir, he said that working in the store as a boy and talking to a black customer, Leroy Samuels, about the injustice of segregation helped awaken him from “generations of family prejudice lying not quite dormant in my young mind.”
In 1952, he married the former Norma Pendleton. They had two children.
Reed studied journalism at the University of Missouri, earning bachelor’s and master’s degrees, and worked at The Globe in Joplin, Mo., from 1954 to 1956. From there, he made his way to The Arkansas Gazette in Little Rock, taking time off to continue his journalism studies with a Nieman fellowship at Harvard as a member of its class of 1964.
The New York Times hired Reed six months after he returned to The Gazette and assigned him to cover the Southern United States. He did his first Southern reporting for the newspaper from a base in Atlanta.
In his new post with The New York Times, Reed seemed to have an uncanny knack for being in the right place. He was there on February 5, 1965, when the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was released from jail in Selma, Alabama, after spending several days behind bars for trying to lead a voting-rights protest march. Mr. Reed not only wrote the front-page article; he also ended up inadvertently in the photograph that ran with it.
Reed was at the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma on Bloody Sunday, March 7, 1965, when troopers, as he wrote, “tore through a column of Negro demonstrators with tear gas, nightsticks and whips.” Choking from his own exposure to tear gas, Reed filed a vivid front page article that reported “the wedge moved with such force that it seemed almost to pass over the waiting column instead of through it.” As the protesters went down under the swinging billy clubs, he wrote, “a cheer went up from the white spectators lining the south side of the highway.”
Remembering the scene years later, Reed wrote, “I hope never again to see such hatred in the eyes of men, women and, yes, children.”
A month after Bloody Sunday, Reed was dining in Montgomery with other reporters at the city’s Elite Restaurant. John Doar, the assistant attorney general for civil rights, was at a nearby table when he was called away to the restaurant’s phone. Mr. Doar came back “grim-faced,” Reed later recalled, and moved from table to table to tell the reporters what he had just learned: A white woman affiliated with the civil rights movement, Viola Liuzzo, had been murdered by a carload of Ku Klux Klansmen. The restaurant cleared as reporters ran to file their stories.
Each of these incidents, and the reporting by Mr. Reed and many others, helped tip the balance in the nation’s racial conflict and propel civil rights legislation through Congress.
Reed moved to The New York Times Washington bureau in 1966, covering national politics and the White House. He returned to the South in 1969 to work from New Orleans, and ended his Times career as a correspondent based in London. He said that he had loved the life of adventure and travel until he didn’t, waking up one morning and not knowing where he was. “I got out of bed and found the hotel stationery and learned that I was in a hotel in Ireland,” he wrote.
After leaving The New York Times in 1979, Reed taught in the Journalism Department of the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, serving as chairman from 1981 to 1982. After his retirement, the Journalism Department established the Roy Reed Lecture Series in his honor. Reed died of a stroke on December 10, 2017, in Fayetteville, Arkansas.
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February 20
*Robert Williams, an African American psychologist who coined the term "Ebonics", was born in Biscoe Arkansas.
Robert Lee Williams II (b. February 20, 1930, Biscoe, Arkansas – d. August 12, 2020, St. Louis, Missouri) was a professor emeritus of psychology and African and Afro-American studies at Washington University in St. Louis and a prominent figure in the history of African American Psychology. He founded the department of Black Studies at Washington University and served as its first director, developing a curriculum that would serve as a model throughout the country. Williams was well known as a stalwart critic of racial and cultural biases in standard IQ testing, coining the word "Ebonics" in 1973 and developing the Black Intelligence Test of Cultural Homogeneity. He published more than sixty professional articles and several books. He was a founding member of the Association of Black Psychologists and served as its second president.
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See also Appendix 34: Robert Williams and the Birth of Ebonics
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February 21
*Richard B. Harrison starred as "De Lawd" in The Green Pastures, which opened on Broadway.
Stage performer Richard Berry Harrison (b. September 28, 1864, London, Ontario, Canada - d. March 14, 1935, New York City, New York) found his passion for acting as a child. He devoted his life to pursuing this passion despite the barriers imposed by the era of Jim Crow. He finally achieved acclaim in the last years of his life for his portrayal of "De Lawd" in the Broadway production of The Green Pastures.
Harrison was born on September 28, 1864, in London, Ontario, Canada, to Thomas L. Harrison and Ysobel Benton. His parents had escaped slavery through the Underground Railroad.
Growing up in Ontario, Harrison loved to recite poetry and attend the local theater. He also performed his own plays for his neighbors. When his father died in 1881, Harrison became the main provider for his family at age seventeen. He moved to Detroit to work at the Russell House hotel. While in Detroit, Harrison met Chambless Hull, a theater manager, who arranged for him to study at the Detroit Training School of Art.
After graduating from the Detroit Training School of Art in 1887, Harrison sought work as an actor but was rejected because of his race. In response to this discrimination in the white theater industry, Harrison began touring the United States and Canada putting on one-man shows and reciting poetry in tents, churches, and schools.
In 1893, Harrison travelled to Chicago for the World's Columbian Exposition. In Chicago, he met the noted African American poet, Paul Laurence Dunbar. The two became good friends. Indeed, Dunbar was Harrison's best man when he married Gertrude Janet Washington in 1895 in Chicago.
Harrison continued his tours into the early twentieth century, which now included theaters in Mexico as well as the United States and Canada, under the sponsorship of the Great Western Lyceum Bureau of California. By 1913, Harrison performed at the first black-owned theater, the Pekin, in Chicago. Theatrical performances, however, never completely supported his family, so he intermittently worked as a porter and a waiter.
Constantly on the move and under pressure to learn scripts, Harrison suffered a nervous breakdown in 1922. Afterward James B. Dudley, President of North Carolina Agricultural and Technical (North Carolina A&T) College at Greensboro, offered Harrison the position of Chair of the Department of Dramatics. Harrison, interested in improving the theatrical training of African Americans, remained at the college for seven years and led the effort to strengthen its programs.
Harrison left North Carolina A&T College in 1929 when he was offered the role of "De Lawd" in Marc Connelly's play The Green Pastures. The play told the story of the Old Testament with one of the first all-black casts on Broadway. Although this was by far the most important theatrical opportunity of his career, Harrison was initially reluctant to accept the role fearing to play the stereotypical dumb and lazy black person. Despite these concerns, Harrison accepted the role. The Green Pastures became extraordinarily popular as audiences were impressed by the dignity and passion of Harrison's character.
Harrison never missed a show. He went on to perform his role in more than 1,650 shows in some 203 different cities and towns. The play and its leading actor won multiple awards and were featured on the cover of Time magazine on March 4, 1935. However, only ten days after Time lauded the play, Richard Harrison died of heart failure. He died on March 14, 1935, at the age of 71.
Two funeral services were held for Harrison. The first was at St. Philip's Church in Harlem and the second was the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in Chicago where he was buried. Thousands of people came to his funerals in order to honor the man who had enchanted the country with his portrayal of "De Lawd".
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Stage performer Richard Berry Harrison (b. September 28, 1864, London, Ontario, Canada - d. March 14, 1935, New York City, New York) found his passion for acting as a child. He devoted his life to pursuing this passion despite the barriers imposed by the era of Jim Crow. He finally achieved acclaim in the last years of his life for his portrayal of "De Lawd" in the Broadway production of The Green Pastures.
Harrison was born on September 28, 1864, in London, Ontario, Canada, to Thomas L. Harrison and Ysobel Benton. His parents had escaped slavery through the Underground Railroad.
Growing up in Ontario, Harrison loved to recite poetry and attend the local theater. He also performed his own plays for his neighbors. When his father died in 1881, Harrison became the main provider for his family at age seventeen. He moved to Detroit to work at the Russell House hotel. While in Detroit, Harrison met Chambless Hull, a theater manager, who arranged for him to study at the Detroit Training School of Art.
After graduating from the Detroit Training School of Art in 1887, Harrison sought work as an actor but was rejected because of his race. In response to this discrimination in the white theater industry, Harrison began touring the United States and Canada putting on one-man shows and reciting poetry in tents, churches, and schools.
In 1893, Harrison travelled to Chicago for the World's Columbian Exposition. In Chicago, he met the noted African American poet, Paul Laurence Dunbar. The two became good friends. Indeed, Dunbar was Harrison's best man when he married Gertrude Janet Washington in 1895 in Chicago.
Harrison continued his tours into the early twentieth century, which now included theaters in Mexico as well as the United States and Canada, under the sponsorship of the Great Western Lyceum Bureau of California. By 1913, Harrison performed at the first black-owned theater, the Pekin, in Chicago. Theatrical performances, however, never completely supported his family, so he intermittently worked as a porter and a waiter.
Constantly on the move and under pressure to learn scripts, Harrison suffered a nervous breakdown in 1922. Afterward James B. Dudley, President of North Carolina Agricultural and Technical (North Carolina A&T) College at Greensboro, offered Harrison the position of Chair of the Department of Dramatics. Harrison, interested in improving the theatrical training of African Americans, remained at the college for seven years and led the effort to strengthen its programs.
Harrison left North Carolina A&T College in 1929 when he was offered the role of "De Lawd" in Marc Connelly's play The Green Pastures. The play told the story of the Old Testament with one of the first all-black casts on Broadway. Although this was by far the most important theatrical opportunity of his career, Harrison was initially reluctant to accept the role fearing to play the stereotypical dumb and lazy black person. Despite these concerns, Harrison accepted the role. The Green Pastures became extraordinarily popular as audiences were impressed by the dignity and passion of Harrison's character.
Harrison never missed a show. He went on to perform his role in more than 1,650 shows in some 203 different cities and towns. The play and its leading actor won multiple awards and were featured on the cover of Time magazine on March 4, 1935. However, only ten days after Time lauded the play, Richard Harrison died of heart failure. He died on March 14, 1935, at the age of 71.
Two funeral services were held for Harrison. The first was at St. Philip's Church in Harlem and the second was the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in Chicago where he was buried. Thousands of people came to his funerals in order to honor the man who had enchanted the country with his portrayal of "De Lawd".
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See also Appendix 38: The Green Pastures.
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February 24
*Richard Boone, a jazz musician and scat singer who became a resident of Denmark, was born in Little Rock, Arkansas.
Richard Bently Boone (b. February 24, 1930, Little Rock, Arkansas – d. February 8, 1999, Copenhagen, Denmark) was an American jazz trombonist and scat singer. Born in Little Rock, Arkansas, Boone sang in a Baptist church choir as a boy, then began playing the trombone at the age of twelve. By the time he was 15, Boone had learned enough to go out on the road with Grover Lofton's band. The following year he won a talent contest as a singer with his version of "Embraceable You". His singing was influenced by Nat "King" Cole and his prize was to tour with the eminent Lucky Millinder Orchestra for a month.
When he was 18, Boone volunteered for the army and for six years played trombone in Special Service Orchestras. He travelled to Europe with one of these orchestras.
Out of the Army in 1953, he returned to Little Rock to study music at Philander Smith College.
With no musical outlet in Little Rock, he moved to Los Angeles in 1958 and worked as a postal clerk. It took him a year to become established as a musician, and eventually he began to get recording dates and studio work. He played with jazz legends like Dexter Gordon and Sonny Criss and toured with the singer Della Reese from 1961 until 1966.
While in Los Angeles, he got to know Count Basie's tenor player and band manager Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis. Davis called him the next time Basie's band needed a trombone player, and Boone joined and stayed for three years. One night in a California club, after Boone had been in the band a couple of months, Basie began improvising a blues number that the rest of the band did not recognize. Egged on by Davis, Boone went to the microphone and began singing a few words. Running out of lyrics he mumbled wordless syllables. Basie was impressed and called for the same routine the following night. It soon became a showcase for Boone and was so successful that Basie called for it every night. The band featured the number for the next 18 months, and Boone expanded his repertoire to include standards like "I Got Rhythm", "Some of These Days" and "Bye Bye Blackbird".
After he left Basie in 1968, Boone recorded an album, The Singer, under his own name with a big band in Los Angeles. However, his time in Europe with the army band and work there with Basie had given Boone a taste for what he felt was a more relaxed way of life. He returned there often and like many black jazz musicians he was particularly attracted to Denmark.
Boone settled in Copenhagen, Denmark in 1970. Two years later, he joined the Danish Radio Band, an outstanding orchestra that was to become one of the finest in the world under its resident leader Bob Brookmeyer. Boone stayed with the band until 1985.
Boone's lucrative job in the trombone section still left him plenty of time to tour Europe, and he played and recorded in many countries, often with American colleagues like Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis and Benny Carter. Another expatriate in Denmark was the ex-Basie arranger Ernie Wilkins. Boone joined him when Wilkins formed his Almost Big Band in 1986.
In 1998, Boone recorded his last album, Tribute To Love, under his own name, with a band of Danish musicians.
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February 25
*Archibald Grimke, a lawyer, intellectual, journalist, diplomat and community leader who was the recipient of the Spingarn Medal in 1919, died in Washington, D. C.
Archibald Henry Grimke (b. August 17, 1849, Charleston, South Carolina - d. February 25, 1930, Washington, D. C.) was an American lawyer, intellectual, journalist, diplomat and community leader in the 19th and early 20th centuries. A graduate of freedmen's schools, Lincoln University (Pennsylvania), and Harvard Law School, Grimke later served as American Consul to the Dominican Republic from 1894 to 1898. Working principally in Boston and Washington, D. C., Grimke was an activist for rights for African Americans. He was a national vice-president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (the NAACP), as well as president of its Washington, D. C. branch.
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(See also Appendix 37: Archibald Grimke, The 1919 Spingarn Medal Recipient.)
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*The President of the Dominican Republic Horacio Vasquez fled Santo Domingo as rebel forces controlled by General Rafael Trujillo, a person of African descent, toppled his government.
Rafael Trujillo, in full Rafael Leónidas Trujillo Molina, (b. October 24, 1891, San Cristobal, Dominican Republic - d. May 30, 1961, Ciudad Trujillo, near San Cristóbal, Dominican Republic) was the dictator of the Dominican Republic from 1930 until his assassination in 1961.
Rafael Leonidas Trujillo Molina was born on October 24, 1891, in San Cristobal, Dominican Republic, into a lower middle class family. His father was José Trujillo Valdez, the son of Silveria Valdez Méndez of colonial Dominican origin and José Trujillo Monagas, a Spanish sergeant who arrived in Santo Domingo as a member of the Spanish reinforcement troops during the annexation era. Trujillo's mother was Altagracia Julia Molina Chevalier, later known as Mama Julia, the daughter of Pedro Molina Peña, also of colonial Dominican origin, and the teacher Luisa Erciná Chevalier, whose parents were part of the remaining French descendants in Haiti. Luisa's father (Trujillo's great grandfather), Justin Alexis Víctor Turenne Carrié Blaise, was of French descent, while Luisa's mother (Trujillo's great grandmother), Eleonore Juliette Chevallier Moreau, was part of Haiti's mulatto class. Trujillo was the third of eleven children.
Rafael Leonidas Trujillo Molina was born on October 24, 1891, in San Cristobal, Dominican Republic, into a lower middle class family. His father was José Trujillo Valdez, the son of Silveria Valdez Méndez of colonial Dominican origin and José Trujillo Monagas, a Spanish sergeant who arrived in Santo Domingo as a member of the Spanish reinforcement troops during the annexation era. Trujillo's mother was Altagracia Julia Molina Chevalier, later known as Mama Julia, the daughter of Pedro Molina Peña, also of colonial Dominican origin, and the teacher Luisa Erciná Chevalier, whose parents were part of the remaining French descendants in Haiti. Luisa's father (Trujillo's great grandfather), Justin Alexis Víctor Turenne Carrié Blaise, was of French descent, while Luisa's mother (Trujillo's great grandmother), Eleonore Juliette Chevallier Moreau, was part of Haiti's mulatto class. Trujillo was the third of eleven children.
In 1897, at age six, Trujillo was registered in the school of Juan Hilario Meriño. One year later he transferred to the school of Broughton, where he became a pupil of Eugenio Maria de Hostos and remained there for the rest of his primary schooling. At the age of 16, Trujillo got a job as a telegraph operator, which he held for about three years. Shortly afterwards, Trujillo turned to crime—cattle stealing, check counterfeiting, and postal robbery. He spent several months in prison. Nevertheless, his time in prison did not deter Trujillo, as he later formed a violent gang of robbers called the 42.
Trujillo entered the Dominican army in 1918 and was trained by United States Marines during the United States occupation (1916–24) of the country. He rose from lieutenant to commanding colonel of the national police between 1919 and 1925, becoming a general in 1927. Trujillo seized power in the military revolt against President Horacio Vásquez in 1930. From that time until his assassination 31 years later, Trujillo remained in absolute control of the Dominican Republic through his command of the army, by placing family members in office, and by having many of his political opponents murdered. He served officially as president from 1930 to 1938 and again from 1942 to 1952.
Trujillo entered the Dominican army in 1918 and was trained by United States Marines during the United States occupation (1916–24) of the country. He rose from lieutenant to commanding colonel of the national police between 1919 and 1925, becoming a general in 1927. Trujillo seized power in the military revolt against President Horacio Vásquez in 1930. From that time until his assassination 31 years later, Trujillo remained in absolute control of the Dominican Republic through his command of the army, by placing family members in office, and by having many of his political opponents murdered. He served officially as president from 1930 to 1938 and again from 1942 to 1952.
In 1916, the United States occupied the Dominican Republic due to threats of defaulting on foreign debts. The occupying force soon established a Dominican army constabulary to impose order. Trujillo joined the National Guard in 1918 and trained with the United States Marines. Seeing opportunity, Trujillo impressed the recruiters and won promotion from cadet to general and commander-in-chief of the Army in only nine years.
A rebellion (or coup d'etat) against President Horacio Vasquez broke out in February 1930 in Santiago. Trujillo secretly cut a deal with rebel leader Rafael Estrella Urena. In return for Trujillo letting Estrella take power, Estrella would allow Trujillo to run for president in new elections. As the rebels marched toward Santo Domingo, Vásquez ordered Trujillo to suppress them. However, feigning "neutrality", Trujillo kept his men in their barracks, allowing Estrella's rebels to take the capital virtually unopposed.
On March 3, 1930, Estrella was proclaimed acting president, with Trujillo confirmed as head of the police and of the army. As per their agreement, Trujillo became the presidential nominee of the Patriotic Coalition of Citizens (Spanish: Coalición patriotica de los ciudadanos), with Estrella as his running mate. The other candidates became targets of harassment by the army. When it became apparent that the army would only allow Trujillo to campaign unhindered, the other candidates pulled out. Ultimately, the Trujillo–Estrella ticket was proclaimed victorious with an implausible 99 percent of the vote. In a note to the State Department, American ambassador Charles Boyd Curtis wrote that Trujillo received far more votes than actual voters.
Competent in business, capable in administration, and ruthless in politics, Trujillo brought a degree of peace and prosperity to the republic that it had not previously enjoyed. However, the benefits of economic modernization were inequitably distributed in favor of Trujillo and his favorites and supporters. Moreover, the people of the country paid for the prosperity with the loss of their civil and political liberties. Haitians living in the Dominican Republic suffered acutely. Trujillo encouraged anti-Haitian prejudice among Dominicans, and in 1937 he ordered the massacre of thousands of Haitian migrants.
In spite of the harsh measures that Trujillo took to protect his power, domestic opposition continued to grow during the later years of his regime, and he also came under considerable foreign pressure to liberalize his rule. He began to lose support in the army, and this led to his assassination by machine-gun fire as he was driving to his San Cristóbal farm. Many of the supposed assassins, including General J.T. Díaz, were subsequently captured and executed.
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(See also Appendix 2: Colonial Racial Categories.)
(See also Appendix 3: Race and Ethnicity in Contemporary Latin America.)
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(See also Appendix 2: Colonial Racial Categories.)
(See also Appendix 3: Race and Ethnicity in Contemporary Latin America.)
(See also Appendix 39: Caribbean Racial Categories and Composition.)
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