*		    Today in Black History - July 27	         *

1816 - "Negro Fort", a former British fort built during the War of
	1812 in Spanish-held Florida, is attacked by U.S. troops. 
	This battle will help to precipitate the First Seminole War.
	The British will evacuate Florida in the spring of 1815, 
	leaving the well-constructed and fully-armed fort on the 
	Apalachicola River in the hands of their allies, about 300 
	fugitive slaves, including members of the disbanded Corps 
	of Colonial Marines, and 30 Seminole and Choctaw Indians. 
	News of "Negro Fort" (as it will come to be called) will 
	attract as many as 800 fugitive slaves, from as far away 
	as Tennessee and the Mississippi Territory, to seek refuge
	at the fort. They will eventually settle in the surrounding
	area. Under the command of a Black man named Garson and a 
	Choctaw chief (whose name is unknown), the inhabitants of 
	"Negro Fort" will launch raids across the Georgia border. 
	In March of 1816, under mounting pressure from Georgia 
	slaveholders, General Andrew Jackson will petition the 
	Spanish Governor of Florida to destroy the settlement. At 
	the same time, he will instruct Major General Edmund P. 
	Gaines, commander of U.S. military forces "in the Creek 
	nation," to destroy the fort and "restore the stolen 
	negroes and property to their rightful owners." On this 
	date, following a series of skirmishes in which they will 
	be routed by "Negro Fort" defenders, the American forces 
	and their 500 Lower Creek allies will launch an all-out 
	attack under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Duncan 
	Clinch, with support from a naval convoy commanded by 
	Sailing Master Jairus Loomis. A plaque will mark the 
	location of the fort's powder magazine. The two sides will
	exchange cannon fire, but the shots of the inexperienced 
	Black gunners will fail to hit their targets. A cannon 
	ball from the American forces will enter the opening to 
	the fort's powder magazine, igniting an explosion that 
	will destroy the fort and kill all but 30 of 300 occupants.
	Garson and the Choctaw chief, among the few who will 
	survive the carnage, are handed over to the Creeks, who 
	will shoot Garson and scalp the chief. Other survivors will
	be returned to slavery. The U.S. Army will build 
	Fort Gadsden on this site in 1818 and occupy it until 1821,
	when Spain cedes Florida to the United States. Fort Gadsden
	is a National Historic Landmark, maintained by the National
	Park Service, located six miles southwest of Sumatra, 
	Florida and is National Register Number: 72000318.

1880 - Inventor, Alexander P. Ashbourne, is awarded a patent for 
	refining coconut oil.

1919 - Chicago race riots kill 23 African Americans, 15 whites, and 
	injure more than 500, despite the warnings of Ida B. 
	Wells-Barnett to city officials to improve conditions for 
	African Americans in the city.

1937 - Woodie King, Jr. is born in Baldwin Springs, Alabama. He 
	will attend high school in Detroit and go on to attend 
	Leman College in New York and earn his M.F.A. from Brooklyn 
	College. In 1965, he will join Mobilization for Youth, 
	where he will spend the next five years working as the 
	cultural director. In 1970, he will found the New Federal 
	Theatre and the National Black Touring Circuit in New York 
	City, where he will be producing director. He will produce 
	shows both on and off Broadway, and will directed 
	performances across the country in venues like the New York 
	Shakespeare Festival, Cleveland Playhouse, Center Stage of 
	Baltimore and the Pittsburgh Public Theatre. His work will 
	earn him numerous nominations and awards, including a 1988 
	NAACP Image Award for his direction of "Checkmates" 
	(featuring Denzel Washington and 1993 Audelco Awards for 
	Best Director and Best Play for his production of "Robert 
	Johnson: Trick The Devil." He will also receive an Obie 
	Award for Sustained Achievement. He will have an honorary 
	doctorate in humane letters conferred by Wayne State 
	University and a doctorate of fine arts by the College of 
	Wooster. In addition to his directing and producing of 
	theater, he will find time to write extensively about it. 
	He will contribute to numerous magazines, such as "Black 
	World," "Variety" and "The Tulane Drama Review," and will
	also write a number of books. 

1950 - Albert L. Hinton joins the ancestors, becoming the first 
	African American reporter to lose his life in a theater of 
	military operation, when an Army transport plane carrying 
	him crashes into the Sea of Japan while enroute to Korea.

1962 - Martin Luther King, Jr., is jailed in Albany, Georgia for 
	participating in a civil rights demonstration.

1967 - In the wake of urban rioting, President Johnson appoints 
	the Kerner Commission to assess the causes of the violence,
	the same day Black militant H. Rap Brown said in Washington
	that violence was "as American as cherry pie."

1968  - A racially motivated disturbance occurs in Gary, Indiana.

1984 - Reverend C.L. Franklin joins the ancestors in Detroit, 
	Michigan, after a long coma sustained after being shot by 
	a burglar in his home.  He was the founder of the New 
	Bethel Baptist Church, where his radio sermons drew a 
	nationwide audience and where the singing career of his 
	daughter, Aretha, began.

1999 - Harry "Sweets" Edison, a master of the jazz trumpet who was 
	a mainstay of the Count Basie band, joins the ancestors in 
	Columbus, Ohio at the age of 83. In a career spanning more 
	than 60 years, Edison had that rarest of qualities, an 
	utterly individual style. Although his sound was not 
	especially unique, his articulation, his ability to invest 
	each note with a driving sense of swing, was completely 
	his own. It didn't matter whether he was playing with 
	Basie, with Frank Sinatra or Oscar Peterson, or on any of 
	his innumerable recording sessions; his solos, stamped with 
	his singular phrasing, always popped out of the mix. 

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