* Today in Black History - December 31 *
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* The Nguzo Saba - The seven principles of Kwanzaa - Principle for *
* Day #6 - Kuumba (koo-OOM-bah) Creativity: To do always as much as *
* we can, in the way that we can, in order to leave our community *
* more beautiful than when we inherited it. *
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kwanzaa *
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1775 - Alarmed by the impact of the British Dunmore proclamation, that
would give freedom to slaves who would fight on their side,
Gen. George Washington reverses himself and authorizes the
enlistment of free Blacks.
1783 - The importation of African slaves is banned by all of the
northern states in the United States.
1862 - The Ebenezer African Methodist Episcopal Church holds a Watch
Night service in Suburban Maryland. It begins a tradition when
African Americans pray and worship in anticipation of the next
day, New Year's Day 1863, when President Lincoln's Emancipation
Proclamation is to take effect.
1871 - Annie Welthy Daughtry (later Holland) is born in Isle of Wight
County, Virginia. In October of 1911, she will join the Jeanes
Fund, which trains teachers in the south and gives funds to
African American supervisors of teachers dedicated to vocational
training of black students. She will work in Gates County, North
Carolina as well as Chesapeake and Reynoldson County, Virginia
as supervisor of twenty-two schools. Her task as teaching
supervisor will be to ensure that African American students in
Gates County receive a sufficient education. By 1914, she will be
one of 118 Jeanes teachers in 119 southern counties. In 1921, she
will be appointed North Carolina Supervisor of Negro Elementary
Education, a position she will hold until 1934. In 1927, she will
found North Carolina's Colored Parent Teachers' Association. She
will join the ancestors suddenly on January 6, 1934, while
addressing a county-wide meeting of Black teachers in Louisburg,
North Carolina.
1900 - Sculptor and educator Selma Hortense Burke is born in Mooresville,
North Carolina. She will be caught up in the Harlem Renaissance
with Claude McKay and, influenced by the Harlem Community Art
Center, will begin to chase her dream of being an artist. She will
continue sculpting in her free time. The Rosenwald (1935) and the
Boehler (1936) Foundation Grants in the late 1930s will enable her
to study sculpture in Vienna and with Aristide Maillol in Paris,
culminating in her Master of Fine Arts degree from Columbia
University in 1941. She will be chosen to sculpt a portrait of
then-President Franklin D. Roosevelt honoring the Four Freedoms.
Completed in 1944, the 3.5-by-2.5-foot plaque will be unveiled in
September 1945 at the Recorder of Deeds Building in Washington,
D.C., where it still hangs today. She will be committed to
teaching art to others. To that end, she will establish the Selma
Burke Art School in New York City and open the Selma Burke Art
Center in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Open from 1968 to 1981, the
center "was an original art center that played an integral role in
the Pittsburgh art community," offering courses ranging from
studio workshops to puppetry classes. She will also teach art in
the Pittsburgh Public Schools for 17 years. She will join the
ancestors on August 29, 1995.
1930 - Odetta Felious Gordon Holmes is born in Birmingham, Alabama.
She will become a famous folksinger, known simply as "Odetta."
Her first professional experience will be in musical theater in
1944, as an ensemble member for four years with the Hollywood
Turnabout Puppet Theatre, working alongside Elsa Lanchester. She
later will join the national touring company of the musical
"Finian's Rainbow" in 1949. While on tour with "Finian's Rainbow,"
she "fell in with an enthusiastic group of young balladeers in San
Francisco", and after 1950 will concentrate on folksinging. She
will make her name by playing around the United States at the Blue
Angel nightclub (New York City), the hungry i (San Francisco), and
Tin Angel (San Francisco), where she and Larry Mohr will record
"Odetta and Larry" in 1954, for Fantasy Records. A solo career will
follow, with "Odetta Sings Ballads and Blues" (1956) and "At the
Gate of Horn" (1957). "Odetta Sings Folk Songs" will be one of
1963's best-selling folk albums. In 1959, she will appear on
"Tonight With Belafonte," a nationally televised special. She will
sing "Water Boy" and a duet with Belafonte, "There's a Hole in My
Bucket." In 1961, Martin Luther King, Jr. will anoint her "The
Queen of American folk music". Also in 1961, the duo Harry
Belafonte and Odetta will make #32 in the United Kingdom Singles
Chart with the song "There's a Hole in the Bucket." Many Americans
will remember her performance at the 1963 civil rights movement's
March on Washington where she will sing "O Freedom." She will
consider her involvement in the Civil Rights movement as being
"one of the privates in a very big army." Among the many musicians
who will cite her as a major musical influence will be Janis
Joplin, Bob Dylan and Joan Baez. She will join the ancestors on
December 2, 2008.
1948 - LaDonna Adrian Gaines is born in Boston, Massachusetts. She will
be best known by her stage name, Donna Summer. She will become
a singer and songwriter, gaining prominence during the disco era
of the late 1970s. A five-time Grammy Award winner, she will be
the first artist to have three consecutive double albums reach #1
on the United States Billboard album chart and chart four number
one singles in the United States within a 13-month period. She will
reportedly sell over 100 million records, making her one of the
world's best-selling artists of all time. She will first become
involved with singing through church choir groups before joining a
number of bands influenced by the Motown Sound. Also influenced by
the counterculture of the 1960s, she will become the front singer
of a psychedelic rock band named Crow and move to New York City.
Joining a touring version of the musical "Hair," she will leave New
York and spend several years living, acting, and singing in West
Germany, where she will meet music producer Giorgio Moroder. Also
while in Europe, she will marry Helmut Sommer. After their divorce,
she will keep his surname for her stage name; dropping the "o" and
replacing it with a "u" for "Summer". After returning to the United
States, she will co-write the song "Love to Love You Baby" with Pete
Bellotte. The song will be released in 1975 to mass commercial
success. Over the following years She will follow this success with
a string of other hits, such as "I Feel Love", "Last Dance",
"MacArthur Park", "Hot Stuff", "Bad Girls", "Dim All the Lights",
"No More Tears (Enough Is Enough)", and "On the Radio". She will
become known as the "Queen of Disco" and regularly appear at the
Studio 54 nightclub in New York City, while her music gains a global
following. She will continue to perform until 2011. She will join
the ancestors on May 17, 2012 in Naples, Florida, after succumbing to
lung cancer at the age of 63. On December 11, 2012, after four prior
nominations, she will be posthumously announced to be one of the 2013
inductees to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame,and will be inducted on
April 18, 2013, at Los Angeles' Nokia Theater.
1953 - Hulan Jack is inaugurated as Manhattan borough president, the
first African American to hold the post.
1953 - The NAACP's Spingarn Medal is presented to Paul R. Williams for
his achievements as an architect.
1962 - Katanga becomes part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
1964 - In a speech before a group of young people, Malcolm X urges them
"to see for yourself and listen for yourself and think for
yourself. This generation, especially of our people, have a
burden, more so than at any other time in history. The most
important thing we can learn to do today is think for
ourselves."
1972 - Roberto Clemente, Pittsburgh Pirate slugger, joins the ancestors
after a plane crash on his way to a humanitarian mission to
Nicaragua.
1976 - Roland Hayes joins the ancestors in Boston, Massachusetts at the
age of 89. He had been an acclaimed tenor whose pioneering
recitals of German lieder and other classical music opened the
concert stage for African American singers.
1984 - The first nationally broadcast telethon for the United Negro
College Fund raises $14.1 million. The telethon will become an
annual fundraising drive that will support more than 40
historically African American institutions of higher learning
and draw widespread individual and corporate support.
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