* Today in Black History - September 20 *
1664 - Maryland enacts the first anti-amalgamation law to prevent widespread
intermarriage of English women and African American men. Other
colonies passed similar laws: Virginia, 1691; Massachusetts 1705;
North Carolina, 1715; South Carolina, 1717; Delaware, 1721;
Pennsylvania, 1725.
1830 - The National Negro Convention, a group of 38 free African Americans
from eight states, meets in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, at the
Bethel A.M.E. Church, with the express purpose of abolishing slavery
and improving the social status of African Americans. They will
elect Richard Allen president and agree to boycott slave-produced
goods.
1847 - William A. Leidesdorff is elected to San Francisco town council
receiving the third highest vote. Leidesdorff, who was one of the
first African American elected officials, becomes the town treasurer
in 1848.
1850 - Slave trade is abolished in Washington, DC, but slavery will be
allowed to continue until 1862.
1885 - Ferdinand Joseph La Menthe ("Jelly Roll" Morton) is born in Gulfport
(New Orleans), Louisiana. He will become a renown jazz pianist
and composer. Morton, whose fabulous series of 1938 recordings for
the Library of Congress are a gold mine of information about early
jazz, was a complex man. Vain, ambitious, and given to exaggeration,
he was a pool shark, hustler and gambler, as well as a brilliant
pianist and composer. His greatest talent, perhaps was for
organizing and arranging. The series of records he made with his
"Red Hot Peppers" between 1926 and 1928 stands, alongside King
Oliver's as the crowning glory of the New Orleans tradition and one
of the great achievements in Jazz.
1915 - Hughie Lee-Smith is born in Eustis, Florida. He will become a
painter
known for such surrealistic landscapes as "Man with Balloons", "Man
Standing on His Head" and "Big Brother".
1943 - Sani Abacha is born in Kano, Nigeria. After being educated in his
home state, will become a soldier and go to England for advanced
military education. He will achieve many promotions as a soldier and
by the mid-1980s, will enter Nigeria's military elite. In 1983 he will
be among those who will overthrow Shehu Shagari, leader of the Second
Republic, in a coup which led to the military rule of Muhammadu Buhari.
In 1985, Abacha will participate in a second coup, which will replace
Buhari with General Ibrahim Babangida. As head of state, Babangida will
announce that free elections will be held in the early 1990s. In 1993,
however, after Babangida nullifies the results of these belated free
elections, Abacha will stage a third coup and oust his former ally.
His regime will be characterized by a concern with security that verges
on paranoia. Abacha will schedule elections for August, 1998, but
months beforehand, all five legal parties nominate him as their
"consensus candidate." In June, 1998, Abacha will join the ancestors
when he dies unexpectedly of a heart attack.
1958 - Martin Luther King Jr. is stabbed in the chest by a deranged African
American woman while he is autographing books in a Harlem department
store. The woman is placed under mental observation.
1962 - Mississippi's governor, Ross Barnett, personally refuses to admit
James
Meredith to University of Mississippi as its first African American
student. (Meredith is later admitted.)
1962 - The Zimbabwe African People's Union (ZAPU) is banned in an order
issued
by Sir Edgar Whitehead, the prime minister of Southern Rhodesia.
1973 - Willie Mays announces his retirement from major league baseball at
the
end of the 1973 baseball season.
1979 - A bloodless coup overthrows Jean-Bedel Bokassa, self-styled head of
the
Central African Empire, in a French-supported coup while he is visiting
Libya.
1984 - NBC-TV debuts "The Cosby Show". Bill Cosby plays Dr. Heathcliff
(Cliff) Huxtable. His lovely wife, Clair, is played by Phylicia
Rashad. The Huxtable kids were Sondra, age 20 (Sabrina Le Beauf),
Denise, age 16 (Lisa Bonet), Theodore, age 14 (Malcom-Jamal Warner),
Vanessa, age 8 (Tempestt Bledsoe) and Rudy, age 5 (Keshia Knight
Pulliam). The premiere is the most watched show of the week and the
show goes on to become an Emmy Award-winner and one of the most
popular on television for eight years. The series, which had been
rejected by other network television executives, will become one of
the most popular in television history.
1987 - Alfre Woodard wins an Emmy for outstanding guest performance in the
dramatic series "L.A. Law". It is her second Emmy award, her first
having been for a supporting role in "Hill Street Blues" in 1984.
1987 - Walter Payton scores the NFL record 107th rushing touchdown.
1999 - Lawrence Russell Brewer becomes the second white supremacist to be
convicted in the dragging death of James Byrd Jr. in Jasper, Texas.
He will be later sentenced to death.
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