*               Today in Black History - April 8                *

1922 - Carmen McRae is born in the village of Harlem in New York City.
        She will study classical piano in her youth, even though singing
        was her first love. She will win an amateur contest at the Apollo
        Theater and begin her singing career.  She will be influenced by
        Billie Holiday, who will become a lifelong friend and mentor. She
        will devote her albums and the majority of her nightclub acts to
        Lady Day's memory. Her association with jazz accordionist Matt
        Mathews will lead to her first solo recordings in 1953-1954. In
        her later years, McRae's original style will influence singers
        Betty Carter and Carol Sloane.  Her best known recordings will be
        "Skyliner" (1956) and "Take Five" with Dave Brubeck (1961). She
        will also work in films and will appear in "Hotel" (1967) and "Jo
        Jo Dancer Your Life is Calling" (1986).  She will receive six
        Grammy award nominations and the National Endowment for the Arts'
        National Jazz Masters Fellowship Award in 1994. She will join the
        ancestors in 1994.

1938 - Cornetist and bandleader Joe "King" Oliver joins the ancestors
        in Savannah, Georgia.  He was considered one of the leading
        musicians of New Orleans-style jazz and served as a mentor to
        Louis Armstrong, who played with him in 1922 and 1923.

1974 - Hank Aaron of the Atlanta Braves hits his 715th home run against
        a pitch thrown by Los Angeles Dodger Al Downing at a home game
        in Fulton County Stadium. Aaron's home run breaks the long-
        standing home run record of Babe Ruth.

1975 - Frank Robinson, major league baseball's first African American
        manager, gets off to a winning start as his team, the Cleveland
        Indians, defeat the New York Yankees, 5-3.

1980 - State troopers are mobilized to stop racially motivated civil
        disturbances in Wrightsville, Georgia.  Racial incidents are
        also reported in Chattanooga, Tennessee, Oceanside, California,
        Kokomo, Indiana, Wichita, Kansas, and Johnston County, North
        Carolina.

1987 - Los Angeles Dodgers general manager Al Campanis is fired for
        alleged racially biased comments about the managerial potential
        of African Americans.

1990 - Percy Julian, who helped create drugs to combat glaucoma and
        methods to mass produce cortisone, and agricultural scientist
        George Washington Carver are the first African American
        inventors admitted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in
        the hall's 17-year history.

1992 - Tennis great Arthur Ashe announces at a New York news conference
        that he had AIDS.  He contracted the virus from a transfusion
        needed for an earlier heart surgery.  Ashe will join the
        ancestors in February 1993 of AIDS-related pneumonia at age 49.

2001 - Tiger Woods becomes the first golfer to hold all four major
        professional golf titles at one time when he wins the 2001 Masters
        tournament.

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