MUNIRAH CHRONICLE
******* Today in Black History – May
25, 2013 *******
1878 - Tapdancing legend Bill "Bojangles" (Luther)
Robinson is born in
Richmond,
Virginia. He will star in vaudeville
and in many movies
such as "The
Littliest Rebel," "In Old Kentucky," "Rebecca of
Sunnybrook
Farm," and "The Little Colonel". He will join the
ancestors on
November 25, 1949.
1905 - Dorothy Burnett (later Porter) is born in Warrenton,
Virginia. She
will become a
member of Phi Beta Kappa, the first African American
woman to receive a
Masters of Library Science degree from Columbia
University, and
will author several African American historical
works. She will be
a long-time librarian at the Howard University
Moorland-Spingarn
Research Center and will be responsible for
developing it into
one of the world's largest collections of material
authored by and
about people of African descent. She will join the
ancestors on
December 17, 1995.
1906 - Martin Dihigo is born in Havana, Cuba. He will become a baseball
player in the Negro
Leagues and will be considered by some to be the
greatest all-around
player of all-time of African descent.
He will be
elected to the
Cuban and Mexican Halls of Fame during his lifetime, and
will be
posthumously elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame in
1977. He will join
the ancestors on May 20, 1971.
1919 - Millionaire Madame C.J. Walker joins the ancestors at the
age of 52 at
Irvington-on-the-Hudson,
New York. She was the founder of the
Madame
C.J. Walker
Manufacturing Company, the largest African American
haircare company of
its time. After her death, a
substantial portion
of her business's
proceeds will be donated to African American
organizations and
scholarships.
1932 - K.C. Jones is born in San Francisco, California. He will
become a member
of the Olympic
basketball team and help win the 1956 Olympic Gold Medal.
He will then become
a professional basketball player with the Boston
Celtics, where he
will help win eight NBA titles. He will
then win two
championships as
the coach of the Celtics. He will also be the head
coach of the
Washington Bullets and the Seattle Supersonics. He will
have 522 wins as a
NBA coach and in 1997 will become the coach of
American Basketball
League women's team, the New England Blizzard.
After the league
disbands, he will join the coaching staff of the
women's basketball
team at the University of Rhode Island, at the age of
67.
1935 - This is "the greatest day in the history of
track," according to "The
New York
Times." Jesse Owens of Ohio State
University breaks two
world sprint
records, ties a third, and breaks a long jump world
record in a meet at
the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, all in
one hour.
1936 - David Levering Lewis is born in Little Rock,
Arkansas. He will become
a historian and
biographer. Professor Lewis will receive his Ph.D. in
modern European
history from the London School of Economics and
Political Science
in 1962. His research and publications
will focus
on African American
history, conceptions of race and racism, and the
dynamics of
European colonialism, especially in Africa. He will author
a biography of Du
Bois entitled "W.E.B. Du Bois: Biography of a Race,"
which will win a
Pulitzer prize in 1994. His other works include "King:
A Biography"
(1970), "Prisoners of Honor: The Dreyfus Affair" (1975),
"When Harlem
Was in Vogue" (1982), "The Race to Fashoda: European
Colonialism and the
African Resistance to the Scramble for Africa"
(1987), and
"W.E.B. Du Bois: A Reader" (1995).
1943 - Leslie Uggams is born in Washington Heights, New
York. She will make
her acting debut on
television's "Beulah" and be a regular on The
Mitch Miller Show
before achieving acclaim in Broadway's "Hallelujah
Baby" and TV's
"Roots."
1943 - A riot, started by white workers, occurs in a Mobile,
Alabama shipyard
over the job
upgrading of twelve African American workers.
1959 - The U.S. Supreme Court declares a Louisiana law enforcing
a ban on
bouts between
African American and white boxers to be unconstitutional.
1963 - The first observance of African Liberation Day
occurs. It begins at
the founding
conference of the Organization of African Unity in Addis
Ababa, Ethiopia.
1964 - The closing of schools to avoid desegregation is ruled
unconstitutional
by the U.S. Supreme
Court. Prince Edward County, Virginia
will have to
reopen and
desegregate its schools.
1965 - A very short heavyweight title fight occurs in Lewiston,
Maine. Cassius
Clay (later
Muhammad Ali) knocks out challenger, Sonny Liston, in one
minute and 56
seconds of the first round. Liston
never sees the punch
coming. Neither did an unbelieving crowd at ringside,
nor those in
theatres all over
the world watching the fight on closed-circuit TV.
1971 - A young African American woman, Jo Etha Collier, joins
the ancestors
after being killed
in Drew, Mississippi by a bullet fired from a passing
car. Three whites
are arrested on May 26 and charged with the unprovoked
attack.
1994 - The United Nations Security Council lifts a 10-year-old
ban on weapons
exports from South
Africa, ending the last of its apartheid-era
embargos.
*********************************************************
The source for these facts are "Encyclopedia Britannica,
"InfoBeat,"
"I, Too, Sing
Book of Days," "Before the Mayflower", "Black Firsts" and
independent research by Rene’ A. Perry.
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Last Updated Saturday, May
25, 2013