* Today in Black History - June 21 *
1821 - The African Methodist Episcopal Zion (AMEZ) Church
is formally constituted in New York City at its
first annual conference. Nineteen clergymen were
present, representing six African American churches
from New York City, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, New
Haven, Connecticut and Newark, New Jersey. They
voted to separate from the white-controlled Methodist
Episcopal Church, which had insisted on ultimate
control of the church's leadership and property. To
distinguish between the two African Methodist
Episcopal organizations, as well as to honor their
original congregation, in 1848 they will vote to add
Zion to their name.
1832 - Joseph Haynes Rainey is born in Georgetown, South
Carolina. He will become the first African American
elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, where
he will serve five terms.
1859 - Henry Ossawa Tanner is born in Pittsburgh,
Pennsylvania. Son of AME bishop Benjamin Tanner,
young Tanner will forgo the ministry to take up
painting. Constantly facing the tension between
racial stereotypes and his art, Tanner will eventually
emigrate to France to pursue his art, considered by
many the finest produced by an African American. He
will be known for his commanding use of light and color
in his seascapes, scenes of everyday life, and
religious paintings.
1868 - John Hope is born in Augusta, Georgia. A pioneer in the
field of education, he will become the first African
American president of Atlanta Baptist (later Morehouse)
College in 1906. Hope, a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Brown
University, encourages an intellectual climate comparable
to what he had known at his alma mater and openly
challenges Booker T. Washington's view that education for
African Americans should emphasize vocational and
agricultural skills. He will join the ancestors in 1936.
1923 - Marcus Garvey is sentenced by the U.S. government to 5
years in prison for using the U.S. mail to defraud. He is
railroaded by a government that is terrified by the control
that one magnificent orator had over African Americans.
They did not want their major source of cheap labor in
America to leave for Africa.
1927 - Carl B. Stokes, the first African American elected mayor
of a major American city is born. Stokes will be elected
to two terms as mayor of Cleveland, Ohio at a time of urban
riots and racial unrest in many major U.S. cities. Civil
rights leaders said his election was an advance, both
symbolic and genuine, for the cause of black political
empowerment. He is instrumental in getting through a law
requiring city contractors to have minority employment
programs. President Clinton will appoint him, in 1994, as
ambassador to the Seychelles, an island nation in the Indian
Ocean. He will join the ancestors in 1996.
1945 - Colonel Benjamin O. Davis, Jr. becomes the first African
American to command a U.S. Army Air Force base when he takes
command of the 477th Composite Group of Godman Field in
Kentucky.
1951 - PFC William H. Thompson is posthumously awarded the
Congressional Medal of Honor. He is the first African
American recipient since the Spanish-American War.
1964 - In Neshoba County in central Mississippi, three civil rights
field workers disappear after investigating the burning of an
African American church by the Ku Klux Klan. Michael
Schwerner and Andrew Goodman, both white New Yorkers, had
traveled to heavily segregated Mississippi in 1964 to help
organize civil rights efforts on behalf of the Congress of
Racial Equality (CORE). The third man, James Chaney, was a
local African American man who had joined CORE in 1963. The
disappearance of the three young men garnered national
attention and led to a massive FBI investigation that was
code-named MIBURN, for "Mississippi Burning." They are later
found murdered.
1965 - Arthur Ashe leads UCLA to the NCAA tennis championship.
1990 - Little Richard gets a star on Hollywood's Walk of Fame.
1997 - Patrice Rushen receives an NAACP Lifetime Achievement Award
for her contributions in the field of music.
2001 - Famed blues man John Lee Hooker joins the ancestors at the
age of 83 of natural causes in Los Altos, California. The
veteran blues singer from the Mississippi Delta estimated
that he recorded more than 100 albums over nearly seven
decades. He won a Grammy Award for a version of "I'm In The
Mood," was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in
1991 and received a Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2000
Grammys. Through it all, Hooker's music remained hypnotic
and unchanged -- his rich and sonorous voice, full of
ancient hurt, coupled with a brooding, rhythmic guitar. He
sang of loneliness and confusion. Neither polished nor
urbane, his music was raw, primal emotion.
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