*                  Today in Black History - April 25                 *

1905 - Doxey Alphonso Wilkerson is born in Excelsior Springs, Missouri.
        He will become an educator at Howard University in Washington, DC
        and Yeshiva University in New York City. In 1944, he will publish
        an essay in the anthology, "What The Negro Wants," which will
        illustrate comparisons between the Allied struggle in Europe
        during World War II and the civil rights struggle of African
        Americans in the United States. As a member of the American
        Communist Party, he will work as a civil rights activist.  This
        affiliation will cause him to be repeatedly investigated by
        the U.S. House Committee on Un-American Activities.  After
        resigning from the Communist Party in 1957, he will continue to
        be active in civil right activities and educational pursuits
        until his retirement in 1984.  He will join the ancestors on
        June 17, 1993 in Norwalk, Connecticut.

1916 - Madeline M. Turner receives a patent for the fruit press.

1918 - Ella Fitzgerald is born in Newport News, Virginia.  Discovered at
        an amateur contest at the Apollo Theatre in 1934, Fitzgerald will
        be a leading jazz vocalist of the swing era.  Known for her
        renditions of such songs as "A Tisket, A Tasket" (her first
        million-seller), her unique scat styling and series of recordings
        of great American songwriters will make her an enduring favorite
        of jazz lovers. She will join the ancestors on June 15, 1996 in
        Beverly Hills, California.

1942 - Ruby Doris Smith Robinson is born in Atlanta, Georgia. She will
        become a civil rights activist and a founding member of The
        Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC).  She will be
        one of the original "Freedom Riders," and will assist in creating
        the policy of "jail, no bail," employed by activists to fill
        southern jails and bring national attention to the civil rights
        struggle. After becoming SNCC's first and only female executive
        secretary, she will become ill with leukemia and joins the
        ancestors on October 7, 1967 in Atlanta, Georgia.

1944 - The United Negro College Fund (UNCF) is founded by Dr. Frederick
        Douglass Patterson, then president of Tuskegee Institute, with 27
        charter colleges and universities and a combined enrollment of
        14,000 students.

1945 - The United Nations is founded at a San Francisco meeting attended
        by African American consultants, most notably W.E.B. Du Bois, Mary
        McLeod Bethune, Ralph J. Bunche and Walter White.

1950 - At the NBA's annual players draft, the Boston Celtics select Charles
        "Chuck" Cooper.  He is the first African American ever drafted by
        an NBA team.

1960 - A consent judgment in a Memphis federal court ended restrictions
        barring voters in Fayette County, Tennessee.  This was the first
        voting rights case under the Civil Rights Act.

1972 - Major General Frederick E. Davidson becomes the first African
        American to lead an Army division when he is assigned command of
        the 8th Infantry Division in Europe.

1979 - Olodum, an internationally recognized Afro-Brazilian Carnival
        association, is founded in Bahia, Brazil.  The music of this
        group celebrates Black history and protests racial discrimination.
        The name Olodum is derived from the name of the supreme Yoruba
        deity, Olodumare'.

1990 - Tenor saxophonist Dexter Gordon joins the ancestors in Philadelphia,
        Pennsylvania. A leading influence in the bop movement along with
        Billy Eckstine and Dizzy Gillespie, Gordon played in London in the
        early 1960's and stayed until the mid-1970's.  Elected to the Jazz
        Hall of Fame in 1980, his role in the 1986 movie "'Round Midnight"
        will revive interest in his music and earn him an Academy Award
        nomination for best actor.

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