THE MUNIRAH CHRONICLE
******* Today in Black History – January 19, 2020 *******
1871 - Alpha Lodge of New
Jersey, Number 116, Free and Accepted
Masons becomes the first Black Masonic lodge recognized by
white Masonry in the United States.
1918 - John Harold Johnson
is born in Arkansas City, Arkansas.
He will become the founder and president of Johnson
Publishing Company, Inc., the most prosperous African
American publishing company in America. His company will
publish the "Negro Digest"(his first),
"Ebony," "Jet,"
"Black Star," "Black World" and
"Ebony Jr." magazines. He
will receive numerous awards, including the Horatio Alger
Award, the NAACP Spingarn Medal and the National Newspaper
Publishers Association's Henry Johnson Fisher Award for
outstanding contributions to publishing. He will be the
first Black person to appear on the Forbes 400 Rich List,
and have a fortune estimated at close to $500 million. He
will join the ancestors on August 8, 2005.
1952 - The PGA Tournament
Committee votes to allow African American
golfers to compete in sanctioned golf tournaments.
1953 - Jesse Owens is named
Illinois Athletic Commission secretary.
1957 - Ottis Jerome
"O.J." Anderson is born in West Palm Beach, Florida.
He will be a football and track star at Forest Hill High
School
in West Palm Beach, Florida before graduating in 1975. He
will
go on to attend the University of Miami on a full athletic
scholarship and earn a degree in Physical Education. During
his
college career, he will break Chuck Foreman's career rushing
records at the University of Miami, becoming the first player
to
rush for more than 1,000 yards in the school's history his
senior
year with 1,266 yards. He will be selected in the first round
of
the 1979 NFL Draft, the 8th overall pick, by the St. Louis
Cardinals. He will have what is probably the greatest debut
game
in NFL history when he rushes for 193 yards. His single
season
1,605 rushing yard performance will be one of the few bright
spots in the Cardinals' 1979 season, when they finished 5-11.
He
will earn the first of back-to-back Pro Bowl selections that
year.
In his first six seasons, he will rush for over 1,000 yards
in
five seasons. The lone exception will be in the 1982 strike-
shortened season, when he rushes for 587 yards in eight
games, and
will be as on pace for well over 1,000 yards, if 1982 were a
full
16 game season. The Cardinals will make the playoffs in 1982,
thanks
to an expanded field due to the brevity of the season. It
will be
the franchise's first postseason appearance since 1975 and
last
until 1998. He will rush for 58 yards on eight carries
against the
Green Bay Packers in the team's lone playoff game. Injuries
will
drastically decrease the number of games he will play each
season,
and his explosiveness as a tailback. After a year and a half,
Stump
Mitchell will emerge as the Cards' top running back, and the
expendable Anderson will be traded to the New York Giants in
the
middle of the 1986 season. By this time in his career, it is
clear
that he was better used in goal line or short yardage
situations.
He will rush for only six yards on seven carries in the 1986
playoffs,
but will score a rushing touchdown in the Giants' victory
over the
Denver Broncos in Super Bowl XXI. His last season will be
1992. When
he retires, he will rank seventh in rushing TDs and eighth in
rushing
yards. At the 2014 season, he will be ranked 18th in career
rushing
touchdowns and is one of 29 running backs in the history of
the NFL
to rush for more than 10,000 yards (currently ranked 26th in
career
rushing yards).
1959 - In a letter to her
mother shortly before the opening of her
first play, "A Raisin in the Sun," Lorraine
Hansberry says
"Mama, it is a play that tells the truth about people,
Negroes, and life and I think it will help a lot of people
to understand how we are just as complicated as they are--
and just as mixed up--but above all, that we have among our
miserable and downtrodden ranks--people who are the very
essence of human dignity. That is what, after all the
laughter and tears, the play is supposed to say."
1970 - The California state
board of regents fires Angela Davis
from her teaching position at the University of California
at Los Angeles for being a Communist. This will be done at
the urging of then Governor Ronald Reagan. Her dismissal
will be overturned later by the courts, but the board of
regents will refuse to renew her contract at the end of the
1969-1970 academic year.
1977 - Ernie Banks is
elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame.
1983 - In its "State of
Black America" annual report, the National
Urban League warns that the recession had disproportionately
hurt African Americans: "A major question facing the
nation
in 1983 is whether the inevitable restructuring of the
American economy will include Black people."
1990 - Police break up
protests in Johannesburg against the cricket
players defying a boycott on playing in apartheid South
Africa.
*********************************************************
The source for these facts are "Encyclopedia Britannica,
"Before the
Mayflower", "Black Firsts" and independent
research by Mr. Rene’ A. Perry, Sr.
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Schomburg Center for Research in
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Black History - Black History Links from the Information Man
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in Memphis, Tennessee
Charles H. Wright Museum of African American
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Michigan
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African American History & Culture - located in Baltimore, Maryland
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Last Updated Sunday, January 19, 2020