* Today in Black History - January 28 * 1858 - John Brown organizes the raid on the federal arsenal at Harper's Ferry, West Virginia. The raid was an attempt to obtain arms and ammunition to free African Americans from slavery by force. 1901 - James Richmond Barthe' is born in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi. Educated at the Art Institute of Chicago, he will begin to attain critical acclaim as a sculptor at 26. He will drop the use of his first name when producing his works of art and will be best known as Richmond Barthe. His first commissions will be of Henry O. Tanner and Toussaint L'Ouverture. He will also become the first African American commissioned to produce a bust for the NYU Hall of Fame (of Booker T. Washington). He will join the ancestors on March 5, 1989. 1938 - Crystal Byrd Fauset is elected to the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, becoming the first African American woman to be elected to a state legislature. 1944 - Matthew Henson is a recipient of a joint medal by Congress for his role as co-discoverer of the North Pole. It is the U.S. government's first official recognition of the explorer who accompanied Commander Robert Peary on his 1909 expedition. 1958 - Brooklyn Dodger catcher Roy Campanella's career ends when he loses control of his car on a slick highway. He will become a paraplegic and be confined to a wheelchair the remainder of his life. The accident ends his ten-year playing career with the Dodgers, where he had been named the National League's MVP three times, but he will remain a part of the Dodgers organization for many years. In 1969, he will be inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame, the second player of African American heritage so honored, after Jackie Robinson. That same year, he will receive the Bronze Medallion from the City of New York. He will be elected to the Mexican Professional Baseball Hall Of Fame in 1971. On June 4, 1972, the Dodgers will retire his uniform number 39 alongside Jackie Robinson's number 42 and Sandy Koufax's number 32. He will join the ancestors on June 26, 1993, after succumbing to heart failure. 1960 - Zora Neale Hurston joins the ancestors in Fort Pierce, Florida at the age of 71. She had been a prominent figure during the Harlem Renaissance. 1970 - Arthur Ashe is denied entry to compete on the U.S. Team for the South African Open Tennis Championships due to Ashe's sentiments on South Africa's racial policies. 1972 - Scott Joplin's Opera "Treemonisha," published 61 years earlier, has its world premiere with Robert Shaw and Katherine Dunham directing. 1986 - The space shuttle "Challenger" explodes 73 seconds after lift-off at Cape Canaveral, Florida. One of the seven crew members killed is physicist Dr. Ronald McNair, the only African American aboard. 1997 - The Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa announces that as part of their petition for amnesty, five Afrikaner police had admitted to killing Steve Biko. The announcement confirms what his admirers and followers had never doubted: Steve Biko was a martyr to the struggle against the apartheid government. Steve Biko was one of the major figures in the struggle against South Africa's system of apartheid. Founder and leader of the Black Consciousness Movement, the charismatic Biko was the first president of the all-black South African Students Organization before organizing the Black People's Convention, a coalition of over 70 black organizations committed to ending apartheid. In 1977, Biko was arrested. While in custody in Port Elizabeth, on the Indian Ocean coast, he was apparently severely beaten. He was denied medical attention and driven in the back of a police van nearly 700 miles to Pretoria, where he died, naked and shackled in a police hospital at the age of 29. The police first claimed that Biko starved himself to death, then that he died of self-inflicted injuries. ______________________________________________________________ Munirah Chronicle is edited by Mr. Rene' A. Perry "The TRUTH shall make you free" E-mail: <[log in to unmask]> Archives: http://listserv.icors.org/archives/Munirah.html http://blackagenda.com/cybercolonies/index.htm _____________________________________________________________ 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 1997 - 2016, All Rights Reserved by the Information Man in association with The Black Agenda.