* Today in Black History - August 21 *
1831 - Responding to a vision commanding him to lead his people
to freedom, Nat Turner and a group of seven freedom-
fighting slaves kill five members of the Travis family
in Southampton County, Virginia. Turner's revolt will
last two days, involve 60 to 80 freedom-fighting slaves
and result in the deaths of at least 57 whites before
they go into hiding. Nat Turner manages to escape
capture for over six weeks. After his capture, he
confesses to his actions, is tried, and executed. This
revolt is significant because it will make the problem
of slavery visible to the Northerners, who within the
next 30 years will fight and die to end America's
"peculiar institution."
1906 - William "Count" Basie is born in Red Bank, New Jersey. He
will become a jazz pianist, organist, bandleader, and
composer. His mother will teach him to play the piano and
he will start performing in his teens. Dropping out of
school, he will learn to operate lights for vaudeville and
to improvise accompaniment for silent films at a local movie
theater in his home town of Red Bank. By age 16, he will
increasingly play jazz piano at parties, resorts and other
venues. In 1924, he will go to Harlem, where his performing
career will expand. He will tour with groups to the major
jazz cities of Chicago, St. Louis and Kansas City. In 1929,
he will join Bennie Moten's band in Kansas City, and play
with them until Moten's death in 1935. In 1935, he will form
his own jazz orchestra, the Count Basie Orchestra, and in
1936 will take them to Chicago for a long engagement and their
first recording. He will lead the group for almost 50 years,
creating innovations like the use of two "split" tenor
saxophones, emphasizing the rhythm section, riffing with a big
band, using arrangers to broaden their sound, and others. Many
musicians came to prominence under his direction, including the
tenor saxophonists Lester Young and Herschel Evans, the
guitarist Freddie Green, trumpeters Buck Clayton and Harry
"Sweets" Edison and singers Jimmy Rushing and Joe Williams. One
of the most influential forces in jazz, he will amass numerous
awards, including three Grammys and Kennedy Center Honors in
1981. He will join the ancestors on April 26, 1984. NOTE: Many
sources will have 1904 for Count Basie's birth year. Our source
for his birth and death is the Kennedy Center Archives documenting
"The Honors" bestowed on him in 1981.
1927 - The Fourth Pan-African Congress meets in New York City.
1932 - Melvin Van Pebbles is born in Chicago, Illinois. A writer and
dramatist, he will produce some of the more important African
American feature films of the 1960's and 1970's, including "Story
of a Three Day Pass," "Watermelon Man," "Sweet Sweetback's Baadass
Song" and the classic, "Putney Swope."
1936 - Wilton Norman Chamberlain is born in Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania. Achieving a height of 6'11" in high school, he will
be recruited to play basketball for Kansas University. He will
leave Kansas University in his third year to play with the Harlem
Globetrotters and join the Philadelphia Warriors (later 76ers) in
1959. He will join the Los Angeles Lakers in 1969 and become a
player-coach in 1968 for the San Diego Conquistadors of the
American Basketball Association. He will lead the NBA in scoring
seven times, accumulate a 4,029 season point record and become a
seven-time all-NBA first teamer. He will join the ancestors on
October 12, 1999.
1938 - The classic recording, "Ain't Misbehavin" is made by Fats Waller.
1939 - Clarence Williams III is born in New York City. He will become an
actor best known for his starring role in the television series,
"The Mod Squad" as Lincoln.
1943 - Harriet M. West becomes the first African American major in the Women's
Army Corps (WAC). She becomes chief of planning in the Bureau Control
Division at the WAC in headquarters in Washington, DC.
1945 - Willie Edward Lanier is born in Clover, Virginia. He will become an
American professional football middle-linebacker, playing for the Kansas
City Chiefs from 1967 through 1977. He will win postseason honors for
eight consecutive years, making the American Football League All-Star
team in 1968 and 1969 before being selected to the Pro Bowl from 1970
through 1975. He will be inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in
1986.
1954 - Archie Mason Griffin is born in Columbus, Ohio. He will become an American
professional football running back. He will play seven seasons in the NFL
with the Cincinnati Bengals. He is college football's only two-time
Heisman Trophy winner. He will win four Big Ten Conference titles with
the Ohio State Buckeyes and become the first player ever to start in four
Rose Bowls.
1968 - Marine James Anderson Jr. becomes the first African American to be awarded
the Congressional Medal of Honor for his service in the Vietnam War.
1972 - The Republican National Convention convenes in Miami Beach, Florida, with
fifty-six African American delegates, 4.2 per cent of the total.
1986 - More than 1,700 people die when toxic gas erupts from a volcanic lake in
the West African nation of Cameroon.
1998 - Juanita Kidd Stout, the first African American woman to serve on the supreme
court in any state (January, 1988), joins the ancestors in Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania. Stout loses a battle against leukemia at Thomas Jefferson
Hospital.
2000 - Julian Richardson, the owner of a San Francisco book store that served as a
meeting place for black artists and activists in the city, joins the
ancestors after succumbing to heart failure at the age of 84. He established
the Marcus Bookstore in 1960, naming it after Black nationalist writer and
activist Marcus Garvey. The store was a staple of black culture and was a
gathering place for Black Panthers supporters during the civil rights era.
Through the years, writers such as Alice Walker, Ishmael Reed, Terry
MacMillan and Cornel West came to the bookstore. He studied lithography in
college and opened his own printing business. He used his skills to print
books, pamphlets and manuscripts on black culture that otherwise would have
to have been ordered from the East Coast.
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