* Today in Black History - September 7 * 1800 - The African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church is dedicated in New York City. 1859 - John Merrick, co-organizer of The North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Company, is born. 1914 - Jean Blackwell Hutson is born in Summerfield, Florida. She will be the longtime curator and chief of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in New York City, the largest collection on the culture and literature of people of African descent. 1917 - Jacob Lawrence is born in Atlantic City, New Jersey. He will become one of the leading painters in chronicling African American history and urban life. Among his most celebrated works will be the historical panels "The Life of Toussaint L'ouverture" and "The Life of Harriet Tubman." 1930 - Theodore Walter "Sonny" Rollins, jazz saxophonist, is born in New York City. Rollins will grow up in a neighborhood where Thelonious Monk, Coleman Hawkins (his early idol), and Bud Powell were playing. After recording with the latter in 1949, Rollins begins recording with Miles Davis in 1951. During the next three years he composes three of his best-known tunes, "Oleo," "Doxy," and "Airegin," and continues to work with Davis, Charlie Parker, and others. Following his withdrawal from music in 1954 to cure a heroin addiction, Rollins re-emerges with the Clifford Brown-Max Roach quintet in 1955, and the next four years prove to be his most fertile. He will be awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1972. 1934 - James Milton Campbell, Jr. is born in Inverness, Mississippi. He will becomes a blues guitar artist better known as "Little Milton." He started his career playing in blues bands when he was a teenager. His first recording was accompanying pianist Willie Love in the early 50s. He then appeared under his own name on three singles issued on Sam Phillips' Sun label under the guidance of Ike Turner. His vocal style will be in the mould of Bobby "Blues" Bland and "T-Bone" Walker. His hits will include "We're Gonna Make It," "Who's Cheating Who," "Grits Ain't Groceries," and "That's What Love Will Do." 1937 - Olly Wilson is born in St. Louis, Missouri. He will become a classical composer whose works will be played by the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Oakland City Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony Orchestra, and many others. 1942 - Richard Roundtree is born in New Rochelle, New York. He will attend college on a football scholarship but will later give up athletics to pursue an acting career. After touring as a model with the Ebony Fashion Fair, he will join the Negro Ensemble Company's acting workshop program in 1967. He will make his film debut in 1970's What Do You Say to a Naked Lady?, but is still an unknown when filmmaker Gordon Parks, Sr. cast him as Shaft. The role will shoot Roundtree to instant fame, launching the blaxploitation genre and proving so successful at the box office that it helped save MGM from the brink of bankruptcy. Thanks to the film's popularity -- as well as its two sequels, 1972's "Shaft's Big Score!" and the following year's "Shaft in Africa," and even a short-lived television series. He will also appear in films including the 1974 disaster epic "Earthquake," 1975's "Man Friday" and the blockbuster 1977 TV miniseries "Roots." 1949 - Gloria Gaynor is born in Newark New Jersey. She will become a singer and will be best known for her 1979 hit, "I Will Survive". The hit tops the charts in both the United Kingdom and the United States. 1954 - Integration of public schools begins in Washington, DC and Baltimore, Maryland. 1972 - Curtis Mayfield earns a gold record for his album, "Superfly", from the movie of the same name. The LP contained the hits, "Freddie's Dead" and "Superfly" -- both songs were also million record sellers. 1980 - Bessie A. Buchanan, the first African American woman to be elected to the New York State legislature, joins the ancestors in New York City. Before her political career, she was a Broadway star who had leading roles in "Shuffle Along" and "Showboat." 1986 - Bishop Desmond Tutu becomes the archbishop of Cape Town, two years after winning the Nobel Peace Prize for his nonviolent opposition to apartheid in South Africa. As archbishop, he was the first black to head South Africa's Anglican church. In 1948, South Africa's white minority government institutionalized its policy of racial segregation and white supremacy known as apartheid--Afrikaans for "apartness." Eighty percent of the country's land was set aside for white use, and black Africans entering this territory required special passes. Blacks, who had no representation in the government, were subjected to different labor laws and educational standards than whites and lived in extreme poverty while white South Africans prospered. 1987 - Dr. Benjamin S. Carson, a pediatric neurosurgeon at Johns Hopkins University Hospital, leads a surgical team that successfully separates Siamese twins who had been joined at the head. 1994 - U.S. Marines begin training on a Puerto Rican island amid talk in Washington of a U.S.-led intervention in Haiti. ______________________________________________________________ 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 2002, All Rights Reserved by the Information Man in association with CODE One Communications.