* 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 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. He will become the first
African American president of Atlanta Baptist (later Morehouse)
College. president in 1906. A pioneer in the field of education, he
was the College's first African-American president. 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 bluesman 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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