*		    Today in Black History - July 11	       *

1836 - Antônio Carlos Gomes is born in Campinas, Brazil. He will
	become the most distinguished nineteenth-century 
	Brazilian opera composer, who will also achieve 
	considerable success in Europe. Gomes will be the second
	son of Fabiana Maria J. Cardoso and Manuel José Gomes, a
	composer and bandleader born to a black freedwoman and 
	an unknown father. Manuel José also taught piano and 
	violin in Campinas and will introduce his two young sons
	to the rudiments of music. Antônio Carlos will debut 
	publicly at the age of 11, playing the triangle in his 
	father's orchestra in a ceremony honoring Emperor Pedro 
	II. He will study clarinet, violin, and piano, for which 
	he will compose his first pieces. His brother José Pedro
	de Santana Gomes will study violin and viola and later 
	became Brazil's most important late-nineteenth-century 
	violinist. In 1859 Antônio Carlos Gomes will enroll in 
	the Rio de Janeiro Conservatory of Music. He had already 
	composed his first mass (1854) and will soon be 
	commissioned to write a cantata by the conservatory's 
	director, Francisco Manuel da Silva.The reigning master of
	Brazilian opera, Antônio Carlos Gomes will achieve world 
	renown in 1870 when his opera Il Guarany premiers at La 
	Scala in Milan, Italy. Although he will adhere to the
	conventions of mid-nineteenth-century Italian opera, he 
	will look to Afro-Brazilian themes for some of his operas
	and instrumental works. Following the premiere of his 
	cantata The Last Hour at Calvary (1859), Gomes will be 
	appointed conductor at the Imperial Academy of Music and 
	National Opera. Gomes will write two operas Il Guarany 
	(1870) and Lo Schiavo (1889) which drew on Brazilian 
	subjects. In 1893 Gomes will tour the United States, where
	he will conduct some of his works at Chicago's Columbia 
	Universal Exhibition. Appointed to head the Conservatory 
	of Music in Belém, he will return to Brazil in 1895, but 
	will succumb to cancer three months after assuming the 
	directorship on September 16, 1896 in Belém, Brazil.

1905 - Niagara Movement meetings begin in Buffalo, New York.  
	Started by 29 intellectuals including W.E.B. Du Bois, the
	Niagara Movement will renounce Booker T. Washington's 
	accommodation policies set forth in his famed "Atlanta 
	Compromise" speech ten years earlier.  The Niagara 
	Movement's manifesto is, in the words of Du Bois, "We want
	full manhood suffrage and we want it now....We are men!  
	We want to be treated as men. And we shall win."  The 
	movement will be a forerunner of the NAACP.

1915 - Mifflin Wistar Gibbs, a multitalented lawyer, politician, 
	and entrepreneur, joins the ancestors in Little Rock, 
	Arkansas.  Active in the Underground Railroad, he worked 
	with Frederick Douglass and after success as a clothing 
	retailer, became the publisher and editor of "Mirror of 
	the Times," the first African American newspaper in 
	California.  The first African American elected a 
	municipal judge, Gibbs was also active in Republican 
	politics, serving as a delegate to national conventions 
	and as U.S. consul to Madagascar.

1925 - Mattiwilda Dobbs is born in Atlanta, Georgia.  She will 
	become a coloratura (a soprano specializing in florid 
	ornamental trills & runs) in the 1950's, making her 
	operatic debut at La Scala in Milan in 1953 and her U.S.
	debut with the San Francisco Opera in 1955. She will
	become the first African American to sing at La Scala and
	the second African American woman to sing at the 
	Metropolitan Opera House in New York. Although Marian 
	Anderson, a Black opera singer from Pennsylvania, will
	precede her to that stage in 1955, Dobbs will be the first
	African American woman to be offered a long-term contract 
	by the Met. She will sing twenty-nine performances, in 
	six roles, over eight seasons. Following the example set 
	by African American performer and activist Paul Robeson,
	she will refuse to perform for segregated audiences. In 
	Atlanta, she could perform in African American churches or 
	colleges, but she will not be able to perform for a large 
	integrated audience until the Atlanta City Auditorium is 
	desegregated in 1962, when she will be joined onstage and 
	given a key to the city by Mayor Ivan Allen Jr. It will be 
	the first of many performances in her home city. Before 
	the organization of the Atlanta Opera in 1985, she will 
	perform in operas produced and directed by the acclaimed 
	opera singer Blanche Thebom, and in 1974, she will sing at 
	the gala marking the inauguration of her nephew, Maynard 
	Jackson, as mayor of Atlanta. After retiring from the 
	stage, she will begin a teaching career at the University 
	of Texas, where she will be the first African American 
	artist on the faculty. She will spend the 1974-75 school 
	year as artist-in-residence at Spelman College, giving 
	recitals and teaching master classes. In 1979, Spelman 
	will award honorary doctorate degrees to both Dobbs and 
	Marian Anderson. She will continue her teaching career as 
	professor of voice at Howard University, in Washington, 
	D.C. She will serve on the board of the Metropolitan Opera
	and on the National Endowment of the Arts Solo Recital 
	Panel. She will continue to give recitals until as late as
	1990 before retiring to Arlington, Virginia.

1931 - Thurston Theodore Harris is born in Indianapolis, Indiana.  
	He will become a rhythm and blues vocalist.  He will be 
	best known for his recordings of "Little Bitty Pretty One," 
	and "Over and Over." He will join the ancestors in Pomona, 
	California after succumbing to a heart attack on April 14, 
	1990.

1948 - Earnest Lee "Ernie" Holmes is born in Jamestown, Texas. He 
	will become a professional football player and will be a 
	defensive tackle for the Pittsburgh Steelers. He will be 
	part of the "Steel Curtain" front four and help Pittsburgh 
	in winning Super Bowls IX and X.

1951 - Patricia "Bonnie" Pointer is born in Oakland, California.  
	She will become a singer and member of the vocal group, 
	The Pointer Sisters. The four sisters will begin their 
	career singing gospel music and will eventually debut in 
	1973 as a secular group recording for ABC/Blue Thumb 
	Records. In 1974, the Pointer Sisters will perform at the 
	Grand Ole Opry, becoming the first African American female 
	group to do so. They also will become the first African 
	American female group to be number one on Billboard's 
	country and western chart. They will change to a trio in 
	1977 when sister Bonnie signs as a solo act with Motown 
	Records. The group will be best known for their hits 
	"Slow Hand" (1981), "What a Surprise" (1981), "Excited" 
	(1982), "I Need You" (1983), and the Grammy Award-winning 
	"Jump" (1983) and "Automatic" (1984).

1953 - Leon Spinks is born in St. Louis, Missouri.  He will win the
	Olympic Light Heavyweight Gold Medal in 1976 and go on to 
	become a professional boxer. He will win his first nine 
	professional bouts, becoming the World Heavyweight Champion,
	defeating Muhammad Ali.  After losing to Ali in a rematch, 
	his career will	decline and he will not be able to duplicate
	his earlier successes. 

1954 - The first White Citizens Council organizes in Indianola, 
	Mississippi. Reminiscent of the end of Reconstruction, the
	Klan, the White Citizens' Council, and other White 
	supremacist groups will attempt to prevent any further 
	progress in the civil rights movement.

1958 - Daisy Bates and the Little Rock Nine, African-American youths 
	who desegregated Central High School in Little Rock, 
	Arkansas, receive the Spingarn Medal for their "heroism and
	pioneering roles in upholding the basic ideals of American 
	democracy in the face of continuing harassment and constant 
	threats of bodily injury."

1960 - Ivory Coast, Dahomey, Upper Volta & Niger declare 
	independence from their European colonial rulers.

1977 - The Medal of Freedom is awarded posthumously to Rev. Martin 
	Luther King, Jr. in a White House ceremony.

1987 - Bo Jackson signs a $7.4 million contract to play football 
	for the Los Angeles Raiders for five years. Jackson becomes 
	a two-sport player as he continues to play baseball with 
	the Kansas City Royals. 

1992 - Undeclared presidential hopeful Ross Perot, addressing the 
	NAACP convention in Nashville, Tennessee, startles and 
	offends his listeners by referring to the predominantly 
	African American audience as "you people."

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