* 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." After Watermelon Man, Van
Peebles will become determined to have complete control over his
next production, which will become the groundbreaking "Sweet
Sweetback's Baadasssss Song" (1971), privately funded with his own
money, and in part by a $50,000 loan from Bill Cosby. Van Peebles
will not only direct, script, and edit the film, but write the score
and direct the marketing campaign. The film, which in the end grosses
$10 million, is, among many others, acclaimed by the Black Panthers
for its political resonance with the black struggle. His son Mario's
2003 film "BAADASSSSS!" tells the story behind the making of "Sweet
Sweetback's Baadasssss Song"; father and son will present the film
together as the Closing Night selection for Maryland Film Festival
2004. In the 1980s, Van Peebles will become an options trader on the
American Stock Exchange while continuing to work in theater and film.
In 2005, Van Peebles will be the subject of a documentary entitled
"How to Eat Your Watermelon in White Company (and Enjoy It)". Also in
2005, Van Peebles will be the subject of the documentary "Unstoppable,"
which also features Ossie Davis and Gordon Parks in the same room. It
will be moderated by Warrington Hudlin. In 2005, it is announced that
Van Peebles would collaborate with Madlib for a proposed double album
titled "Brer Soul Meets Quasimoto." However, nothing has been said
about this project since it was announced. In 2008, Van Peebles will
complete the film "Confessionsofa Ex-Doofus-ItchyFooted Mutha," which
will be the Closing Night selection for Maryland Film Festival 2008,
and appear on "All My Children" as Melvin Woods, the father of Samuel
Woods, a character portrayed by his son, Mario. In 2009 Van Peebles
will become involved with a project to adapt Sweet Sweetback into a
musical. A preliminary version of this will be staged at the Apollo on
April 25–26, 2009. As well, he will write and perform in a stage musical,
"Unmitigated Truth: Life, a Lavatory, Loves, and Ladies," which features
some of his previous songs as well as some new material. In 2011, Van
Peebles will start doing shows in New York City with members of Burnt
Sugar, under the name Melvin Van Peebles wid Laxative. Van Peebles says
that the band is called Laxative because they "make shit happen". At
least one of their shows have been listed as "must-sees" by a blogger
from "Time Out New York." In November, 2011, Melvin Van Peebles wid
Laxative performs his song "Love, that's America" at Zebulon Cafe
Concert, two weeks after the venue shows the original video for this
song involving Occupy Wall Street footage, which is uploaded to YouTube
in October 2011. On August 21, 2012, he will distribute a new album, on
vinyl only, called "Nahh... Nahh Mofo." This album will be distributed
at his birthday celebration at Film Forum. On November 10, 2012, he will
release a video for the song "Lilly Done The Zampoughi Every Time I Pulled
Her Coattail" to go with the album, which is announced on his Facebook
page.On May 5, 2013 he will return to the Film Forum for a screening of
"The Kid" (1921) and be a judge at the Charlie Chaplin Dress-Alike Contest
that is after the screening. He will wear a bowler hat and baggy pants in
honor of Chaplin. In September 2013, Van Peebles will make his public debut
as a visual artist, as a part of a gallery feature called "eMerge 2.0:
Melvin Van Peebles & Artists on the Cusp". It will feature "Ex-Voto
Monochrome (A Ghetto Mother's Prayer)", one of many pieces of art he will
create to be on display in his home. In 2017, a short film directed by Alain
Rimbert entitled Methane Momma features Van Peeples and his narration of
poetic work with accompaniment of music by The Heliocentrics.
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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