* Today in Black History - December 15 * 1644 - A Dutch land grant is issued to Lucas Santomee, son of Peter Santomee, one of the first 11 Africans brought to Manhattan. Among the land granted to Santomee and the original Africans is property in Brooklyn and Greenwich Village. 1706 - A slave named Onesimus arrives in the home of Cotton Mather. The slave's experience and explanation of African inoculation will result in Mather's encouragement of Dr. Zabdiel Boylston to inoculate for smallpox in 1721. 1864 - In one of the decisive battles of the Civil War, two brigades of African American troops help crush one of the South's finest armies at the Battle of Nashville. African American troops open the battle on the first day and successfully engage the right flank of the rebel line. On the second day Col. Charles R. Thompson's African American brigade makes a brilliant charge up Overton Hill. The Thirteenth U.S. Colored Troops will sustain more casualties than any other regiment involved in the battle. 1896 - Julia Terry Hammonds receives a patent for the apparatus for holding yarn skeins. 1934 - Maggie Lena Walker, the first woman to head a bank, joins the ancestors at the age of 69. 1934 - The NAACP's Spingarn Award is awarded to William Taylor Burwell Williams, Tuskegee dean and agent of the Jeanes and Slater funds, for his achievements as an educator. 1939 - Cindy Birdsong is born. She will become a singer with Patti LaBelle and the Bluebells and Diana Ross and the Supremes. 1941 - Lena Horne records the torch classic for Victor Records, that will become her signature song: "Stormy Weather." 1943 - Thomas W. "Fats" Waller joins the ancestors, outside Kansas City, Missouri at the age of 39, from pneumonia. The self-taught piano player began recording as a teenager and became one of a small group of African American pianists to make piano rolls for the growing player piano industry. Waller's first solo recording in 1926 led to his own radio show and three tours of France. Waller was known for such popular songs as "Ain't Misbehavin'," "I'm Gonna Sit Right Down and Write Myself a Letter," and "Honeysuckle Rose." He also wrote music for the stage and the movies, most notably "Stormy Weather." 1943 - The San Francisco Sun-Reporter is established. Its co-founder, Thomas Fleming will be its editor and a working journalist into his nineties. 1943 - The NAACP's Spingarn Medal is presented to William H. Hastie "for his distinguished career as a jurist and as an uncompromising champion of equal justice." 1950 - Ezzard Charles knocks out Nick Barone to retain his heavyweight boxing title. 1954 - The Netherlands Antilles become a co-equal part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. 1961 - Dr. Kenneth B. Clark, psychologist and educator, is awarded the NAACP's Spingarn Medal for pioneering studies that influenced the Supreme Court decision on school desegregation. 1961 - Police use tear gas and leashed dogs to stop a mass demonstration by fifteen hundred African Americans in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. 1980 - Dave Winfield signs a ten-year contract with the New York Yankees, for somewhere between $1.3 and $1.5 million. He will become the wealthiest player in the history of U.S. team sports. The total package for the outfielder is said to be worth over $22 million dollars. 1985 - Businessman J. Bruce Llewellyn and former basketball star Julius Erving become owners of Philadelphia Coca-Cola Bottling, the fourth-largest African American business in the United States. ______________________________________________________________ Munirah Chronicle is edited by Brother Mosi Hoj "The TRUTH shall make you free" E-mail: <[log in to unmask]> Archives: <http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/archives/Munirah.html> ______________________________________________________________ To SUBSCRIBE send E-mail to: <[log in to unmask]> In the E-mail body place: Subscribe Munirah Your FULL Name ______________________________________________________________ Munirah(TM) is a trademark of Information Man. Copyright 2001, All Rights Reserved by the Information Man in association with CODE One Communications.