*                       Today in Black History - May 14                 *

1867 - A riot occurs in Mobile, Alabama, after an African American mass 
        meeting.  One African American and one white are killed. 

1885 - Erskine Henderson wins the Kentucky Derby riding Joe Cotton. The
        horse's trainer is another African-American, Alex Perry.

1897 - Sidney Joseph Bechet is born in New Orleans, Louisiana. A member of 
        both Duke Ellington's and Noble Sissle's orchestras, Bechet moved to

        France and there achieved the greatest success of his career. He had

        been the greatest jazz soloist of the 1920s along with Louis 
        Armstrong. 

1898 - Arthur James 'Zutty' Singleton is born in Bunkie, Louisiana. He will
        become a percussion musician and bandleader. He will start as a 
        drummer at the age of 15 and will work in a variety of bands until
he 
        forms his own in 1920. He will eventually make his way to Chicago
and 
        will become part of the "Chicago School of Jazz." He will be
primarily 
        remembered for introducing sock cymbals and wire brushes as
percussion
        accessories.  These innovations will place him in demand as an 
        accompanist for jazz greats like Louis Armstrong, Fats Waller, Dizzy
        Gillespie, Jelly Roll Morton, and Charlie Parker. He will perform
        primarily in New York City from 1953 until 1970.  He will join the
        ancestors in 1975.

1906 - Ngwazi Hastings Kamuzu Banda is born near Kasungu, British Central 
        African Protectorate.  Even though his official birthdate is cited
        as 1906, many sources show his birth date as 1898. He will become
        Malawi's first prime minister after independence in 1963.  In 1966,
        he will elected Malawi's president in 1966.  He will lead Malawi 
        until 1994.  He will join the ancestors in Johannesburg, South 
        Africa in 1997.

1913 - Clara Stanton Jones is born in St. Louis, Missouri.  She will become 
        the first African American director of the Detroit Public Library 
        and the first African American president of the American Library 
        Association.

1943 - Tania J. Leon is born in Havana, Cuba. She will become a pianist, 
        composer, and orchestral conductor. Her music style will encompass
        Afro-Cuban rhythm and elements of jazz and gospel. She will emigrate
        to the United States in 1967 and in 1969 will join the Dance Theater
        of Harlem as a pianist. She will later become the artistic director
of 
        the troupe. Some her compositions for the Dance Theater of Harlem
will
        include "Tones," "Beloved," and "Dougla." She will debut as a 
        conductor in 1971 and starting in 1980 when she leaves the Dance 
        Theater of Harlem, will serve as guest conductor and composer with 
        orchestras in the United States and Europe. In 1993, she will become

        an advisor to the New York Philharmonic conductor, Kurt Masur on 
        contemporary music.

1959 - Soprano saxophonist Sidney Joseph Bechet joins the ancestors in 
        Paris, France on his sixty second birthday after succumbing to
cancer.  

1961 - A bus, with the first group of Freedom Riders, is bombed and burned 
        by segregationists outside Anniston, Alabama.  The group is attacked
        in Anniston and Birmingham.

1963 - Twenty-year-old Arthur Ashe becomes the first African American to 
        make the U.S. Davis Cup tennis team.

1966 - Georgia Douglas Johnson joins the ancestors in Washington, DC at the 
        age of 88. She was a poet and playwright. While she never lived in 
        Harlem, she is associated with the Harlem Renaissance because her
home 
        was a 
        regular oasis for many of the writers of that literary movement.
Her 
        home hosted writer workshops and discussion groups while also being
a 
        place of lodging for those writers when they visited Washington, DC.
Her own poetry and plays were very popular with African American 
        audiences during the 1920s.

1969 - John B. McLendon becomes the first African American coach in the ABA
        when he signs a two-year contract with the Denver Nuggets.

1970 - Two students are killed by police officers in a major racial 
        disturbance at Jackson State University in Jackson, Mississippi.

1986 - Reggie Jackson hits his 537th home run passing Mickey Mantle into 6th
        place of all time home run hitters.

1989 - Kirby Puckett becomes the first professional baseball player since 
        1948 to hit 6 consecutive doubles.

1995 - Myrlie Evers-Williams (widow of Medgar Evers) is sworn in to head the
        NAACP, pledging to lead the civil rights group away from its recent 
        troubles and restore it as a political and social force.

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