AROUND THE REGION
WEEK OF NOV 13 TO NOV 19
Black Facts NOV. 13 1951 - Janet Collins becomes the first Black ballerina to perform with the Metropolitan Opera Company in New York. In 1951, she won the Donaldson Award for best dancer on Broadway. She also performed in Aida and Carmen. Although, she couldn’t tour parts in the South because of her race, she later taught dance. 1955 - Whoopi Goldberg, (Caryn Elaine Johnson) the Black comedienne, actress, singer-songwriter, political and talk show host was born in Manhattan, New York City, New York. 1956 – The Supreme Court upheld a lower court decision banning segregation on city buses in Montgomery, Alabama. Federal injunctions prohibiting segregation on the buses were served on city, state and bus company officials, December 20. 1985 - New York Mets pitcher, Dwight Gooden wins the National League Cy Young Award and the Triple Crown of pitching making him the youngest pitcher ever to hold these prestigious awards.
BUYING RECORDS
NOV. 14 1934 - William Levi Dawson’s Negro Folk Symphony is performed by the Philadelphia Orchestra. This marked the first time choral arrangements composed by an African-American were performed by a prominent white symphony orchestra. Dawson also gained recognition as the choral director at Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. He died in 1990 at the age of 91. 1960 - U.S. Marshals escorted four Black girls to two New Orleans schools in the midst of racial tension and violence. Leona Tate, Gaile Etienne, Tessie Prevost and Ruby Bridges had the benefit of U.S. Marshals by their side. They were the first children to enter allwhite schools in the history of the American South. 1984 - Rosa Parks honored by the Wonder Women Foundation with the first “Eleanor Roosevelt Women of Courage Award.”
NOV. 15 1897 - John Mercer Langston dies. Langston was born to a white slave-owner and an emancipated Black woman and went on to become an accomplished lawyer. He helped organize the National Black Convention in Cleveland, Ohio in 1848, mobilized Blacks to fight in the Civil War, worked in the Freedman’s Bureau; and became the first Black elected to Congress from Virginia. 1950 - Arthur Dorrington becomes the first Black American to sign a professional hockey contract. NOV. 16 1780 - Paul Cuffee organizes a demonstration by free Blacks protesting their being taxed but prohibited from voting. Cuffee was a prominent whaling captain and businessman who organized the first integrated school in Massachusetts. In his later years he became frustrated with American racism and advocated on behalf of the establishment of a free Black colony in the West African nation of Sierra Leone, which was then controlled by the British. 2001 - Agbani Darego is crowned Miss World becoming the first African to win the coveted beauty pageant. She’s from the oilrich West African nation of Nigeria.
Smith Award” for her novel Mama Day. NOV. 18 1797 - Abolitionist and orator Sojourner Truth is born Isabella Baumfree in Ulster County, New York. She struggled for an end to slavery and for a woman’s right to vote. She became so well known that she consulted with President Abraham Lincoln. 1977 - White supremacist and terrorist Robert Edward Chambliss is convicted of first degree murder in connection with the 1963 bombing of Birmingham, Alabama’s 16th Street Baptist Church. The bombing killed four little Black girls, shocked the nation and helped mobilize the civil rights movement. 1978 - The Jonestown Massacre occurs in Guyana. Nearly 1,000 followers of Jim Jones, the majority of whom were Black, commit suicide or are murdered. NOV. 19 1953 - Roy Campanella named the most valuable player of the National Baseball League for the second time. 1985 - Actor Lincoln T. Perry, known as Stepin Fetchit, the first major Black movie star, dies of pneumonia in Woodlawn Hills, California at the age of 83. Perry was harshly criticized by most major Black organizations because he made his money playing an uneducated, slow-witted, and easily frightened Black character during the 1940s and 1950s. However, the roles, which appealed to many Americans, made him a millionaire.
NOV. 17 1911 - Omega Psi Phi fraternity was founded on the campus of Howard University. 1972 - Despite massive Black voter support for the Democrat George McGovern, Republican Richard M. Nixon is elected president carrying all states except Massachusetts and the District of Columbia. The Black view of Nixon would later be vindicated when he is forced from office because of the Watergate scandal. 1989 - Writer Gloria Naylor Agbani Darego wins the “Lillian
Buying Vinyl Records from 1950 to 1986, Jazz, Rock-n-Roll, R&B, Disco, Soul, Reggae, Blues, Gospel, and record format 33 1/3, 45s, and some of the older 78s. Prefer larger collections of at least 100.
CALL JOHN @ 301-596-6201 6 Nov 13 - Nov 19, 2014
The Washington Informer
www.washingtoninformer.com