*                Today in Black History - December 15                *

1644 - A Dutch land grant is issued to Lucas Santomee, son of Peter
        Santomee, one of the first 11 Africans brought to Manhattan.
        Among the land granted to Santomee and the original Africans is
        property in Brooklyn and Greenwich Village.

1706 - A slave named Onesimus arrives in the home of Cotton Mather.
        The slave's experience and explanation of African inoculation
        will result in Mather's encouragement of Dr. Zabdiel Boylston
        to inoculate for smallpox in 1721.

1864 - In one of the decisive battles of the Civil War, two brigades of
        African American troops help crush one of the South's finest
        armies at the Battle of Nashville.  African American troops
        open the battle on the first day and successfully engage the
        right flank of the rebel line.  On the second day Col. Charles
        R. Thompson's African American brigade makes a brilliant charge
        up Overton Hill.  The Thirteenth U.S. Colored Troops will sustain
        more casualties than any other regiment involved in the battle.

1896 - Julia Terry Hammonds receives a patent for the apparatus for
        holding yarn skeins.

1934 - Maggie Lena Walker, the first woman to head a bank, joins the
        ancestors at the age of 69.

1934 - The NAACP's Spingarn Award is awarded to William Taylor Burwell
        Williams, Tuskegee dean and agent of the Jeanes and Slater funds,
        for his achievements as an educator.

1939 - Cindy Birdsong is born.  She will become a singer with Patti
        LaBelle and the Bluebells and Diana Ross and the Supremes.

1941 - Lena Horne records the torch classic for Victor Records, that will
        become her signature song: "Stormy Weather."

1943 - Thomas W. "Fats" Waller joins the ancestors, outside Kansas City,
        Missouri at the age of 39, from pneumonia.  The self-taught piano
        player began recording as a teenager and became one of a small
        group of African American pianists to make piano rolls for the
        growing player piano industry.  Waller's first solo recording in
        1926 led to his own radio show and three tours of France.  Waller
        was known for such popular songs as "Ain't Misbehavin'," "I'm Gonna
        Sit Right Down and Write Myself a Letter," and "Honeysuckle Rose."
        He also wrote music for the stage and the movies, most notably
        "Stormy Weather."

1943 - The San Francisco Sun-Reporter is established.  Its co-founder,
        Thomas Fleming will be its editor and a working journalist into
        his nineties.

1943 - The NAACP's Spingarn Medal is presented to William H. Hastie "for
        his distinguished career as a jurist and as an uncompromising
        champion of equal justice."

1950 - Ezzard Charles knocks out Nick Barone to retain his heavyweight
        boxing title.

1954 - The Netherlands Antilles become a co-equal part of the Kingdom of
        the Netherlands.

1961 - Dr. Kenneth B. Clark, psychologist and educator, is awarded the
        NAACP's Spingarn Medal for pioneering studies that influenced the
        Supreme Court decision on school desegregation.

1961 - Police use tear gas and leashed dogs to stop a mass demonstration
        by fifteen hundred African Americans in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

1980 - Dave Winfield signs a ten-year contract with the New York Yankees,
        for somewhere between $1.3 and $1.5 million.  He will become the
        wealthiest player in the history of U.S. team sports.  The total
        package for the outfielder is said to be worth over $22 million
        dollars.

1985 - Businessman J. Bruce Llewellyn and former basketball star Julius
        Erving become owners of Philadelphia Coca-Cola Bottling, the
        fourth-largest African American business in the United States.

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