*                Today in Black History - November 20           *

1865 - African Americans hold a protest convention in Zion Church in
        Charleston, South Carolina and demand equal rights and repeal
        of the "Black Codes."

1878 - Charles Sidney Gilpin, is born in Richmond, Virginia.  In the
        early 1920s, Gilpin will secure his place in American theater
        history by creating the title --and only major -- role in
        Eugene O'Neill's' "The Emperor Jones." Gilpin's portrayal in
        the long one-act play becomes a box-office sensation in New
        York's Greenwich Village.  The play and its principal actor
        transferred to Broadway and later went on tour.   After the
        post-Broadway tour, which played Richmond to great acclaim,
        Gilpin's insistence on eliminating racial epithets from the
        play angered O'Neill.  O'Neill, who at one time was said to be
        writing a play especially for Gilpin, will cast budding actor
        Paul Robeson in the London production of Emperor Jones.
        Robeson will also play Jones on film.  Except for Ira Aldridge,
        who lived and performed mostly in Europe before the Civil War,
        Gilpin was the first African American to be widely lauded as a
        serious actor on America's mainstream stage.  He will lose his
        voice in 1929 and join the ancestors at his home in Eldridge,
        New Jersey in 1930.

1910 - Pauli Murray is born.  A lawyer and author of "Song in a Weary
        Throat," "Proud Shoes," and "Dark Testament and Other Poems,"
        she will also be a powerful theologian and the first African
        American woman priest to be ordained in the Episcopal Church.

1922 - The NAACP's Spingarn Medal is awarded to Mary B. Talbert, the
        former president of the National Association of Colored Women,
        for service to African American women and for the restoration
        of the Frederick Douglas home in Southeast Washington, DC.

1923 - Garrett A. Morgan receives a patent for his three-way traffic
        signal.  The device, which will revolutionize traffic control,
        is one of many inventions for the Paris, Kentucky, native,
        which include a hair-straightening process and the gas mask.

1939 - Morgan State College is established in Baltimore, Maryland,
        succeeding Morgan State Biblical College, founded in 1857.

1962 - President John F. Kennedy issues an executive order barring
        racial discrimination in federally financed housing.

1962 - The NAACP's Spingarn Medal is awarded to Robert C. Weaver,
        economist and government official, for his leadership in the
        movement for open housing.

1969 - Pele', the Brazilian soccer star, scores his 1,000th soccer
        goal.

1973 - The gravesite of Mary Seacole, a Jamaican nurse who served in
        the Crimean War, is restored in England.  Traveling to the
        battlefield at her own expense, when her expert services are
        rejected by English authorities and Florence Nightingale,
        Seacole opens her own nursing hotel, which she operates by day,
        serving as a volunteer with Nightingale at night.  Seacole's
        skills saved the lives of many soldiers wounded during the war
        or infected with malaria, cholera, yellow fever, and other
        illnesses.

1977 - Walter Payton, of the Chicago Bears, rushes for NFL-record 275
        yards in one game.

1981 - The Negro Ensemble Company's production of Charles Fuller's "A
        Soldier's Play" opens the Theatre Four.  The play will win a
        New York Drama Critics Award for best American play and the
        Pulitzer Prize.

1997 - A.C. Green sets the NBA "Iron Man" record for consecutive games
        played at 907 games.  The previous record had stood for fifteen
        years.  Iron Men from professional baseball and professional
        hockey were present at courtside to observe the record-breaking
        performance.

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