* Today in Black History - December 15 *
1644 - A Dutch land grant is issued to Lucas Santomee, son of Peter
Santomee, one of the first 11 Africans brought to Manhattan.
Among the land granted to Santomee and the original Africans is
property in Brooklyn and Greenwich Village.
1706 - A slave named Onesimus arrives in the home of Cotton Mather.
The slave's experience and explanation of African inoculation
will result in Mather's encouragement of Dr. Zabdiel Boylston
to inoculate for smallpox in 1721.
1864 - In one of the decisive battles of the Civil War, two brigades of
African American troops help crush one of the South's finest
armies at the Battle of Nashville. African American troops
open the battle on the first day and successfully engage the
right flank of the rebel line. On the second day Col. Charles
R. Thompson's African American brigade makes a brilliant charge
up Overton Hill. The Thirteenth U.S.Colored Troops will sustain
more casualties than any other regiment involved in the battle.
1870 - The Colored Methodist Episcopalian Church is established.
1896 - Julia Terry Hammonds receives a patent for the apparatus for
holding yarn skeins.
1934 - Maggie Lena Walker, the first woman to head a bank, dies at the
age of 69.
1934 - The NAACP's Spingarn Award is awarded to William Taylor Burwell
Williams, Tuskegee dean and agent of the Jeanes and Slater funds,
for his achievements as an educator.
1939 - Cindy Birdsong is born. She will become a singer with Patti
LaBelle and the Bluebells and Diana Ross and the Supremes.
1941 - Lena Horne records the torch classic for Victor Records, that will
become her signature song: "Stormy Weather."
1943 - Thomas W. "Fats" Waller dies outside Kansas City, Missouri at the
age of 39 from pneumonia. The self-taught piano player began
recording as a teenager and becomes one of a small group of
African American pianists to make piano rolls for the growing
player piano industry. Waller's first solo recording in 1926
led to his own radio show and three tours of France. Waller was
known for such popular songs as "Ain't Misbehavin'," "I'm Gonna
Sit Right Down and Write Myself a Letter," and "Honeysuckle Rose."
He also wrote music for the stage and the movies, most notably
"Stormy Weather."
1943 - The San Francisco Sun-Reporter is established. Its co-founder,
Thomas Fleming will be its editor and a working journalist into
his nineties.
1943 - The NAACP's Spingarn Medal is presented to William H. Hastie "for
his distinguished career as a jurist and as an uncompromising
champion of equal justice."
1950 - Ezzard Charles knocks out Nick Barone to retain his heavyweight
boxing title.
1954 - The Netherlands Antilles become a co-equal part of the Kingdom of
the Netherlands.
1961 - Dr. Kenneth B. Clark, psychologist and educator, is awarded the
NAACP's Spingarn Medal for pioneering studies that influenced the
Supreme Court decision on school desegregation.
1961 - Police use tear gas and leashed dogs to stop a mass demonstration
by fifteen hundred African Americans in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
1980 - Dave Winfield signs a ten-year contract with the New York Yankees,
for somewhere between $1.3 and $1.5 million. He will become the
wealthiest player in the history of U.S. team sports. The total
package for the outfielder is said to be worth over $22 million
dollars.
1985 - Businessman J. Bruce Llewellyn and former basketball star Julius
Erving become owners of Philadelphia Coca-Cola Bottling, the
fourth-largest African American business in the United States.
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