*		Today in Black History - March 4	      *

1837 - The second major African American newspaper, the "Weekly 
	Advocate" changes its name to the "Colored American."

1869 - The forty-second Congress convenes (1871-73) with five 
	African American congressmen: Joseph H. Rainey, Robert 
	Carlos Delarge, and Robert Brown Elliott from South Carolina; 
	Benjamin S. Turner, of Alabama; Josiah T. Walls of Florida.
	Walls is elected in an at-large election and is the first 
	African American congressman to represent an entire state.

1889 - The fifty-first Congress convenes. Three Black congressmen: 
	Henry P. Cheatham of North Carolina; Thomas E. Miller of 
	South Carolina; and John Mercer Langston of Virginia.

1897 - William McKinley (Willie) Covan is born in Savannah, Georgia.  
	When he was 8 and living in Chicago he will meet Harry 
	Yancey, who had been in an act of very young black dancers 
	who shared bills with major white performers. Yancey will 
	captivate him with tales of touring the West, riding horses 
	and picking oranges and lemons from trees in California. He 
	will be so smitten by the idea that he will hustle part-time 
	jobs and begin paying Yancey to teach him to dance. He will 
	build a	practice floor in his basement and eventually dance
	his way into a troupe that will toured the West. When 
	returning from California, he could dance a lot better than 
	Harry. He will partner with Leonard Ruffin and become one of 
	the first black dance acts to be booked into New York City's 
	Palace Theater, and will also appear in a long series of hit 
	musicals.  He will appear in the original production of 
	"Shuffle Along" as well as with the Four Covans. Eleanor 
	Powell will bring him to MGM to teach dancing to pupils, 
	ranging from Debbie Reynolds to Mae West to Gregory Peck. 
	Encouraged by West, he will open the Willie Covan Dance 
	Studio in Los Angeles in the mid-1930s and train students 
	there for 35 years. He will join the ancestors on May 10, 
	1989, in Los Angeles, California.

1901 - The congressional term of George H. White, last of the post
	Reconstruction congressmen, ends.

1922 - Theater legend Bert Williams joins the ancestors at the age of 
	46 in New York City.  He was considered the foremost African 
	American vaudeville performer, teaming first with George 
	Walker in 1895, most notably in "In Dahomey," and later as a 
	soloist with the Ziegfeld Follies.

1932 - Miriam Zenzi Makeba, "Empress of African Song," is born in 
	Prospect Township, South Africa.  Although exiled from her 
	homeland, Makeba will become an internationally known 
	singer and critic of apartheid. Throughout her life and 
	singing career, She will use her voice to to draw the attention 
	of the world to the music of South Africa and to its oppressive 
	system of racial separation.  After appearing in the 
	semi-documentary antiapartheid film, "Come Back, Africa," she
	will attract international attention.  This will include 
	meeting Harry Belafonte, who will become her sponsor and 
	promoter in the United States.  Because her music always 
	contained a political component - the denunciation of 
	apartheid, her South African passport will be revoked in 1960.
	Her career in the United States will be crippled by her 
	marriage to Stokely Carmichael (later Kwame Ture'), who was 
	active in the Black Panther Party. Her career will continue 
	to flourish in Europe.  She will later become a United Nations
	delegate from Guinea and will continue to record and perform.
	She will return to her homeland, South Africa, in 1990 and in
	1991, will make her first performance there in over thirty 
	years. She will join the ancestors on November 9, 2008 after
	succumbing to a heart attack suffered after singing her hit
	song "Pata Pata" during a concert organized to support writer
	Robert Saviano in his stand against the Camorra, a mafia-like
	organization in the Campania region of Italy.

1934 - Barbara McNair is born in Chicago, Illinois and raised in 
	Racine, Wisconsin. She will become a singer and actress, and 
	will host her own television program (The Barbara McNair Show).  
	The glamorous actress will moonlight as a pop singer between 
	TV and film roles during the 1960s. She will be a classy 
	addition to Berry Gordy's talent roster when his firm attempts 
	to diversify its appeal. She will cut a pair of albums for 
	Motown in 1966 and 1969. She will join the ancestors on 
	February 4, 2007 after succumbing to throat cancer.

1944 - Robert Dwayne "Bobby" Womack is born in Cleveland, Ohio.  He 
	will become a Rhythm and Blues performer, guitarist and
	songwriter. He will be an active recording artist, starting in
	the early 1960s, as the lead singer of his family musical group, 
	the Valentinos and as Sam Cooke's backup guitarist. His career 
	will span more than 50 years, during which he will play in the 
	styles of Rhythm & Blues, soul, rock and roll, doo-wop, gospel, 
	and country. He will write and originally record the Rolling 
	Stones' first UK No. 1 hit, "It's All Over Now" and New Birth's 
	"I Can Understand It" among other songs. As a singer, he will be
	most notable for the hits "Lookin' For a Love", "That's The Way 
	I Feel About Cha", "Woman's Gotta Have It", "Harry Hippie", 
	"Across 110th Street" and his 1980s hit "If You Think You're 
	Lonely Now". He will join the ancestors on June 27, 2014 after
	suffering from prostate and colon cancer, pneumonia and 
	Alzeimer's disease.

1954 - The first African American sub-cabinet member is appointed. 
	President Eisenhower names J. Earnest Wilkins of Chicago as 
	the U.S. Assistant Secretary of Labor.

1968 - Joe Frazier defeats Buster Mathis for the world heavyweight 
	boxing championship by knockout in the eleventh round.

1968 - Martin Luther King, Jr. announces plans for the Poor People's 
	Campaign in Washington, DC. He says that he will lead a 
	massive civil disobedience campaign in the capital to pressure
	the government to provide jobs and income for all Americans.  
	He tells a press conference that an army of poor white, poor 
	African Americans and Hispanics will converge on Washington 
	on April 20 and will demonstrate until their demands were met.

1981 - A jury in Salt Lake City convicts Joseph Paul Franklin, an 
	avowed racist, of violating the civil rights of two black men 
	who were shot to death.

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