* Today in Black History - September 7 *
1800 - The African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church is dedicated in New
York City.
1859 - John Merrick, co-organizer of The North Carolina Mutual Life
Insurance Company, is born.
1914 - Jean Blackwell Hutson is born in Summerfield, Florida. She will
be the longtime curator and chief of the Schomburg Center for
Research in Black Culture in New York City, the largest
collection on the culture and literature of people of African
descent.
1917 - Jacob Lawrence is born in Atlantic City, New Jersey. He will
become one of the leading painters in chronicling African American
history and urban life. Among his most celebrated works will be
the historical panels "The Life of Toussaint L'ouverture" and "The
Life of Harriet Tubman."
1930 - Theodore Walter "Sonny" Rollins, jazz saxophonist, is born in
New York City. Rollins will grow up in a neighborhood where
Thelonious Monk, Coleman Hawkins (his early idol), and Bud Powell
were playing. After recording with the latter in 1949, Rollins
begins recording with Miles Davis in 1951. During the next three
years he composes three of his best-known tunes, "Oleo," "Doxy,"
and "Airegin," and continues to work with Davis, Charlie Parker,
and others. Following his withdrawal from music in 1954 to cure a
heroin addiction, Rollins re-emerges with the Clifford Brown-Max
Roach quintet in 1955, and the next four years prove to be his most
fertile. He will be awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1972.
1934 - James Milton Campbell, Jr. is born in Inverness, Mississippi. He
will becomes a blues guitar artist better known as "Little Milton."
He started his career playing in blues bands when he was a teenager.
His first recording was accompanying pianist Willie Love in the
early 50s. He then appeared under his own name on three singles
issued on Sam Phillips' Sun label under the guidance of Ike Turner.
His vocal style will be in the mould of Bobby "Blues" Bland and
"T-Bone" Walker. His hits will include "We're Gonna Make It,"
"Who's Cheating Who," "Grits Ain't Groceries," and "That's What
Love Will Do."
1937 - Olly Wilson is born in St. Louis, Missouri. He will become a
classical composer whose works will be played by the Boston
Symphony Orchestra, Oakland City Philharmonic, San Francisco
Symphony Orchestra, and many others.
1942 - Richard Roundtree is born in New Rochelle, New York. He will attend
college on a football scholarship but will later give up athletics
to pursue an acting career. After touring as a model with the
Ebony Fashion Fair, he will join the Negro Ensemble Company's
acting workshop program in 1967. He will make his film debut in
1970's What Do You Say to a Naked Lady?, but is still an unknown
when filmmaker Gordon Parks, Sr. cast him as Shaft. The role will
shoot Roundtree to instant fame, launching the blaxploitation
genre and proving so successful at the box office that it helped
save MGM from the brink of bankruptcy. Thanks to the film's
popularity -- as well as its two sequels, 1972's "Shaft's Big
Score!" and the following year's "Shaft in Africa," and even a
short-lived television series. He will also appear in films
including the 1974 disaster epic "Earthquake," 1975's "Man Friday"
and the blockbuster 1977 TV miniseries "Roots."
1949 - Gloria Gaynor is born in Newark New Jersey. She will become a
singer and will be best known for her 1979 hit, "I Will Survive".
The hit tops the charts in both the United Kingdom and the United
States.
1954 - Integration of public schools begins in Washington, DC and
Baltimore, Maryland.
1972 - Curtis Mayfield earns a gold record for his album, "Superfly", from
the movie of the same name. The LP contained the hits, "Freddie's
Dead" and "Superfly" -- both songs were also million record sellers.
1980 - Bessie A. Buchanan, the first African American woman to be elected
to the New York State legislature, joins the ancestors in New York
City. Before her political career, she was a Broadway star who had
leading roles in "Shuffle Along" and "Showboat."
1986 - Bishop Desmond Tutu becomes the archbishop of Cape Town, two years
after winning the Nobel Peace Prize for his nonviolent opposition
to apartheid in South Africa. As archbishop, he was the first black
to head South Africa's Anglican church. In 1948, South Africa's
white minority government institutionalized its policy of racial
segregation and white supremacy known as apartheid--Afrikaans for
"apartness." Eighty percent of the country's land was set aside for
white use, and black Africans entering this territory required
special passes. Blacks, who had no representation in the
government, were subjected to different labor laws and educational
standards than whites and lived in extreme poverty while white
South Africans prospered.
1987 - Dr. Benjamin S. Carson, a pediatric neurosurgeon at Johns Hopkins
University Hospital, leads a surgical team that successfully
separates Siamese twins who had been joined at the head.
1994 - U.S. Marines begin training on a Puerto Rican island amid talk in
Washington of a U.S.-led intervention in Haiti.
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