The James Logan Courier

From wikipedia:
Willi Donnell Smith (February 29, 1948 – April 17, 1987) was an American fashion designer, regarded at the time of his death as one of the most successful young African-American designers in the industry. His company Williwear Ltd. sold $25 million worth of clothing a year.

Smith was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and studied commercial art at Mastbaum Technical High School and attended Philadelphia College of Art for fashion illustration. He then moved to New York to go to Parsons The New School for Design, the highly competitive art and design college of The New School university. For a short time Smith freelanced with Arnold Scaasi and Bobbie Brooks's sportswear company.


Read more about Willi Smith, free from Big Bend Cares' Virtual AIDS Quilt memorial.

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Eddie Anderson (September 18, 1905 - February 28, 1977), often known as Eddie "Rochester" Anderson, was an African American comic actor who became famous playing "Rochester van Jones" (usually known simply as "Rochester"), the valet to Jack Benny's eponymous title character on the long-running radio and television series The Jack Benny Program.

Born in Oakland, California into a family of performers, Anderson began his show business career at age 14 in a song-and-dance act with his brother Cornelius and another performer. They billed themselves as the Three Black Aces. At a young age, Anderson permanently damaged his vocal cords (he had to yell loudly for his job selling newspapers), leading to his trademark "raspy" voice.


Listen to Eddie Anderson with his comedy partner Jack Benny perform on a classic radio show, free from radiohhof.org

Mabel Keaton Staupers (February 27, 1890 - November 29, 1989) was a pioneer in the American nursing profession. Faced with racial discrimination after graduating from nursing school, Staupers became an advocate for racial equality in the nursing profession.

Read more about Mabel Staupers, free from the Journal of the National Medical Association,and the U.S. National Library of Medicine.

From wikipedia:
James Edward O'Hara was an African American Republican member of the United States House of Representatives from 1883 to 1887, representing North Carolina during part of the Reconstruction era.

O'Hara was born in New York City on February 26, 1844 to an Irish merchant and a West Indian woman. He studied law in North Carolina and at Howard University. After serving as clerk for the 1868 state convention that drafted a new state constitution, he served in a similar role in the North Carolina House of Representatives in 1868-1869. Later, he was elected chairman of the board of commissioners for Halifax County, North Carolina (1872–1876). He was admitted to the bar in 1873 and practiced law. O'Hara was also a member of the state constitutional convention of 1875 representing Halifax County.

Read more about James Edward O'Hara, free from Black Americans in Congress.

From wikipedia:
William Leo Hansberry (February 25, 1894—November 3, 1965) was an American scholar and lecturer. His was the older brother of real estate broker Carl Augustus Hansberry, uncle of award-winning playwright Lorraine Hansberry and great-granduncle of actress Taye Hansberry.

Hansberry was born on February 25, 1894 in Gloster, Amite County, Mississippi. He was the son of Elden Hayes and Pauline (Bailey) Hansberry. His father taught history at Alcorn A&M in Lorman, Mississippi, but died when the younger Hansberry was only three years old. He and his younger brother, Carl Augustus Hansberry, where raised by their stepfather, Elijah Washington.

Read a letter written by William Leo Hansberry, free from the Internet Archive.

From wikipedia:
Daniel Alexander Payne (February 24, 1811 – November 2, 1893) was an American bishop, educator, college administrator and author. He became a bishop in the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME) and was a major shaper of it in the 19th century. He was one of the founders of Wilberforce University in Ohio. In 1863 he became its first president, and the first African-American president of a college in the United States. By quickly organizing missionary support of freedmen in the South after the Civil War, he gained 250,000 new members for the AME Church during the Reconstruction era, with congregations down the East Coast to Florida and west to Texas.

Read Recollections of Seventy Years, by By Bishop Daniel Payne, free from the University of North Carolina.

From wikipedia:
Claude Brown (February 23, 1937 - February 2, 2002) is the author of Manchild in the Promised Land, published to critical acclaim in 1965, which tells the story of his coming of age during the 1940s and 1950s in Harlem. He also published Children of Ham (1976).

Autobiographical in nature, Manchild in the Promised Land describes the cultural, economic, and religious conditions that suffused Harlem during Brown's early childhood and adolescence while constructing a narrative of Brown's tumultuous early life. Starting at age six, his life involved stealing, alcohol consumption, truancy, and gang wars. These were the harsh realities of life in 1950s Harlem that shaped his childhood. At the age of 11, he was placed in a reform school, which he cycled in and out of more than three times.

Read a New York Time's review of Claude Brown's Manchild in the Promised Land, free from racematters.org.

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From wikipedia:
Horace Pippin (February 22, 1888 – July 6, 1946) was a self-taught African-American painter. The injustice of slavery and American segregation figure prominently in many of his works.

He was born in West Chester, Pennsylvania, and grew up in Goshen, New York. There he attended segregated schools until he was 15, when he went to work to support his ailing mother. As a boy, Horace responded to an art supply company's advertising contest and won his first set of crayons and a box of watercolors. As a youngster, Pippin made drawings of racehorses and jockeys from Goshen's celebrated racetrack. Prior to 1917, Pippin variously toiled in a coal yard, in an iron foundry, as a hotel porter and as a used-clothing peddler. He was a member of St. John's African Union Methodist Protestant Church.

See examples of Horace Pippin's art, free from the Museum Syndicate.

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From wikipedia:
Eunice Kathleen Waymon (February 21, 1933 – April 21, 2003), better known by her stage name Nina Simone (/ˈniːnə sɨˈmoʊn/), was an American singer, songwriter, pianist, arranger, and civil rights activist widely associated with jazz music. Simone aspired to become a classical pianist while working in a broad range of styles including classical, jazz, blues, folk, R&B, gospel, and pop.

Listen to Nina Simone: The 'Princess Noire', by Michele Norris, free from National Public Radio.

From wikipedia:
John Wesley Donaldson (February 20, 1891 – April 12, 1970) was an American baseball pitcher in Pre-Negro league and Negro league baseball. He was born in Glasgow, Missouri.

Researchers have documented only portions of his career. Published totals from local newspaper accounts covering his 30-plus year career provide a glimpse at his prowess on the diamond. A record of 381 wins and 141 losses with 4,445 strikeouts have been discovered, as research teams continue looking through data. Over 150 games that Donaldson pitched in state no strikeout game totals, consequently his overall totals are under-reported.

Printed box scores reveal 378 wins and 84 losses and a winning percentage of .737. He also notched 4,409 strikeouts, an ERA of 1.37, and 86 shutouts against all levels of competition. He completed 296 of 322 starts (92%).

Read more about John Donaldson, free from the Negro League Baseball Players Association.

Lugenia Burns Hope, née Burns (February 19, 1871, St. Louis, Missouri – August 14, 1947, Nashville, Tennessee) was a social reformer whose Neighborhood Union and other community service organizations improved the quality of life for blacks in Atlanta, Georgia, and served as a model for the future Civil Rights Movement.

Throughout her youth, Lugenia Hope worked for various charitable organizations, inspiring a life-long interest in social outreach work. Between 1890 and 1893 she studied at the Chicago Art Institute, the Chicago School of Design (now also part of the Art Institute of Chicago), and the Chicago Business College. Lugenia Hope married John Hope in 1897 and moved with him to Atlanta when he joined the faculty of the Atlanta Baptist College (now Morehouse College); he was later appointed the institution's president in 1906. With the help of Morehouse students, she surveyed local area residents about their needs for community development projects, which eventually led to the college providing day care, kindergarten, and recreational programs.

Learn more about Lugenia Burns Hope, free from the New Georgia Encyclopedia.

From wikipedia:
Audre Lorde (born Audrey Geraldine Lorde February 18, 1934 – November 17, 1992) was a Caribbean-American writer, poet and activist.

Life
Lorde was born in New York City to Caribbean immigrants from Grenada, Frederick Byron Lorde (called Byron) and Linda Gertrude Belmar Lorde, who settled in Harlem.

Nearsighted to the point of being legally blind, and the youngest of three daughters (her sisters named Phyllis and Helen), Lorde grew up hearing her mother's stories about the West Indies. She learned to talk while she learned to read, at the age of four, and her mother taught her to write at around the same time. She wrote her first poem when she was in eighth grade.

Read ore about Audre Lorde, free from The Poetry Foundation.

From wikipedia:
Maud Cuney Hare (née Cuney, 1874–1936) was an American musician, author, and African American activist in New England in the United States. She was born in Galveston, the daughter of famed civil rights leader Norris Wright Cuney who led the Texas Republican Party.

Among her many literary and musical contributions she is most remembered for her final work Negro Musicians and Their Music, which helped document the development of African American arts.

She was a close friend and confidant (and former fiancé) of noted author and activist W. E. B. Du Bois.

Read Norris Wright Cuney: a tribune of the black people, by Maud Cuney-Hare, free from Google Books.

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From wikipedia:

William Sanders Scarborough (February 16, 1852 - September 9, 1926) is generally thought to be the first African American classical scholar. Scarborough served as president of Wilberforce University between 1908 and 1920 after having been born into slavery. He wrote a popular university textbook in Classical Greek which was widely used in the 19th century.


Read "Professor William S. Scarborough, Classics Scholar and First Black Member of the MLA," by Ajuan Mance, free from Black on Campus.

Adapted from the African-American Registry:
Fay Jackson (February 15, 1902-1979) was an African-American journalist and movie publicist.

Jackson was born in Dallas, Texas, as the youngest of three children to Charles T. and Lulu Beatrice Jackson. Her father was a concrete mason and chemical scientist and her mother a seamstress and actress. At the age of 16, her family moved to Los Angeles. In 1922, Jackson graduated from Los Angeles Polytechnic High School, attended USC, majored in journalism and philosophy and was the first president of the Epsilon Chapter of Delta Sigma Theta.


Read "Fay M. Jackson and the Color Line: The First African American Foreign Correspondent for the Associated Negro Press" by Lae’l Hughes-Watkins, M.A, free from the Journal of Pan-African Studies.

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By Billy O'Keefe
McClatchy-Tribune (MCT)


Role-playing games aren't expected to play as crisply as pure action games do, and action games need not run as deep in the storytelling and character-building departments as role-playing games do. These are the compromises we've come to accept and expect.

So when something like "Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning" comes along and shoots for the moon in both areas, it's hard not to pay attention.

And when it hits the moon flush, it's impossible.

Frederick Douglass (February 14, 1818 – February 20, 1895) was an American abolitionist, editor, orator, author, statesman and reformer. Called "The Sage of Anacostia" and "The Lion of Anacostia," Douglass was one of the most prominent figures of African American history during his time, and one of the most influential lecturers and authors in American history. Douglass was a firm believer in the equality of all people, whether black, female, or recent immigrant. He spent his life advocating the brotherhood of all humankind. One of his favorite quotations is: "I would unite with anybody to do right and with nobody to do wrong."

Read Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass by Frederick Douglass, one of three of his books available free from Project Gutenberg.

From wikipedia:
Malvin (Mal) Russell Goode (February 13, 1908 – September 12, 1995) was an African-American television journalist and news correspondent.
Education and early work

Goode was born in White Plains, Virginia, educated in the public school system of Homestead, Pennsylvania, and graduated from the University of Pittsburgh in 1931. Starting in high school, he was employed for twelve years as a laborer in steel mills, until five years after his graduation. Appointed to a position in the Juvenile Court as a boys work director at the Centre Avenue YMCA, he spearheaded the fight against discrimination in the Pittsburgh branches of the YMCA. Goode worked with the Pittsburgh Housing Authority for six years and joined the Pittsburgh Courier in 1948, where he remained for 14 years.

Read an interview with Mal Goode, free from the Teaneck Public Library.

Fannie Barrier Williams (February 12, 1855 – March 4, 1944) was an African American educator and political and women's rights activist. She became well known for her efforts to have blacks officially represented on the Board of Control of the World's Columbian Exposition in 1893.

Frances (Fannie) Barrier was the youngest of three children born to Anthony and Harriet Barrier. Her father, born in Pennsylvania, came to Brockport, New York as a child. He claimed to be partially of French descent. He worked as a barber and later became a coal dealer. Her mother Harriet was born in Chenango, New York and the couple married in Brockport. The family attended the First Baptist Church in Brockport, and was the only black family in the congregation. Fannie recalled her Brockport youth as a time of innocence, but her personal experience and growing awareness of the unfair treatment received by women of color led her to pursue a lifetime of activism.

Learn more about Fannie Barrier Williams, free from WinningtheVote.org.

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From the African-American Registry:
Dorsie Willis was born on this date in 1886. He was an African-American soldier, and activist.

From Meridian Mississippi, he was the oldest of nine children born to Dochia and Cousie Willis. At the age of four Dorsie and his family moved to Guthrie, Oklahoma. In 1904, he enlisted in the Army, and during the summer of 1906 his unit the first battalion of the 25th infantry regiment was transferred from Fort Niobrara in Nebraska to Fort Brown; this was during the Spanish American War. This was a post near Brownsville, Texas at the mouth of the Rio Grande River, to protect against Mexican revolutionaries.

Read more about Dorsie Willis and the Brownsville Massacre, free from Time magazine.

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From wikipedia:
William Henry Webb, usually known as Chick Webb (February 10, 1905 – June 16, 1939) was an American jazz and swing music drummer as well as a band leader.

Webb was born in Baltimore, Maryland to William H. and Marie Johnson Webb. From childhood, he suffered from tuberculosis of the spine, leaving him with short stature and a badly deformed spine. He supported himself as a newspaper boy to save enough money to buy drums, and first played professionally at age 11.

At the age of 17 he moved to New York City and by 1926, he was leading his own band in Harlem. Jazz drummer Tommy Benford said he gave Webb drum lessons when he first reached New York.

Learn more about Chick Webb at drummer world.com.

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From the African-American Registry:
Charles Anderson was born this date in 1907. He was an African-American aviator.

From Bridgeport, Pennsylvania, he was the son of Janie and Iverson Anderson of Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania. Young Anderson was enamored with airplanes and flying from the age of six. Because most flight instructors during that time would not take Black students, he taught himself to fly at the age of 22 in a used plane purchased with his savings and funds borrowed from friends and relatives. He earned a private pilot's license in 1929 and a commercial pilot's license in 1932.

Read more about Charles Anderson, free from BlackWingsOnline.com

From wikipedia:
Joseph Black (February 8, 1924 - May 17, 2002) was an American right-handed pitcher in Negro League and Major League Baseball for the Brooklyn Dodgers, Cincinnati Redlegs, and Washington Senators who became the first black pitcher to win a World Series game, in 1952. Black died of prostate cancer at age 78.

A native of Plainfield, New Jersey, he starred at Plainfield High School.[1][2] Black attended on a baseball scholarship and graduated from Morgan State University in 1950 and later received an honorary doctorate from Shaw University. He was a member of Omega Psi Phi fraternity, inc. He appears prominently in Roger Kahn's classic book, The Boys of Summer.


Read Joe Black's obituary in Jet Magazine, free from googlebooks.com.

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James Hubert "Eubie" Blake (February 7, 1887 - February 12, 1983) was a composer and pianist of ragtime, jazz, and popular music, as well as a lyricist. With his long time collaborator Noble Sissle, Blake wrote the Broadway musical Shuffle Along in 1921; this was the first Broadway musical ever to be written and directed by African Americans. Blake's hit compositions included "Bandana Days", "Charleston Rag", "Love Will Find A Way", "Memories of You", and "I'm Just Wild About Harry". In 1978, the musical Eubie! opened on Broadway.

Hear Eubie Blake talk about his career in an interview taken from the CD Rom Who Built America, by Roy Rosenzweig and the American Social History Project, free from the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University.

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From wikipedia:
Annie Bethel Spencer (better known as Anne Spencer) (February 6, 1882, Henry County, Virginia – July 27, 1975, Lynchburg, Virginia) was an American Black poet and active participant in the New Negro Movement and Harlem Renaissance period.

Anne was the first Virginian and first African-American to have her poetry included in the Norton Anthology of American Poetry. Also an activist for equality and educational opportunities for all, she hosted such dignitaries as Langston Hughes, Marian Anderson, George Washington Carver, Thurgood Marshall, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., James Weldon Johnson, and W. E. B. Du Bois.

Read more about Anne Spencer and her poetry, free from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

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From wikipedia:
Jefferson Franklin Long (1836–1901) was an American politician from Georgia. He was the first African American from Georgia to be elected to the United States House of Representatives.

Long was born a slave near the city of Knoxville and Crawford County, Georgia on March 3, 1836. He was self-educated. He became a merchant tailor in Macon, Georgia. Long was elected as a Republican to the Forty-first Congress to fill the vacancy caused when the U.S. House declared Samuel F. Gove not entitled to the seat and served from December 22, 1870, to March 3, 1871. Long was not a candidate for renomination in 1870, but did serve as a delegate to the Republican National Convention in 1880. He resumed business in Macon, Georgia, and died there on February 4, 1901. He was interred in Lynwood Cemetery.

Jefferson Long's 1871 “Speech On Disorders In The South,” free from Blackpast.org.

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From wikipedia:
Frank Wills (February 4, 1948 – September 27, 2000) was the security guard who alerted police to a possible break-in at the Watergate complex in Washington, D.C., which eventually led to the uncovering of the truth about the Watergate Scandal that led to the resignation of President Richard Nixon.

Frank Wills was born in North Augusta, South Carolina.

In June 1972, Wills was working as a private security guard at the Watergate office building, the location of the Democratic National Committee headquarters. On the night of June 17, he noticed a piece of duct tape on one of the door locks when he was making his rounds. He removed it, and continued on his patrol. One of the five burglars — Frank Sturgis, Virgilio González, Eugenio Martínez, Bernard Barker and James W. McCord, Jr. — noticed that the tape had been removed, and replaced it with another piece of tape on the door (the tape was placed over the latch bolt to prevent the door from latching). When Mr. Wills returned, he saw that the tape had been replaced and called in the police. The five men were found in the DNC offices and arrested. This triggered the chain of events which exposed the Watergate scandal and eventually led to the resignation of President Richard Nixon.

Read more about Frank Wills, free from the Los Angeles Times.

Robert Earl Jones (February 3, 1910 - September 7, 2006) was an American actor and the father of actor James Earl Jones. While born in Mississippi, the actual location of Jones' birth is unclear as some sources indicate Senatobia, while others suggest nearby Coldwater.

Roots in the Harlem Renaissance
Jones was a grade-school dropout and a sharecropper before making his way, via Chicago, to New York City and a career on stage and in film. Altogether Jones appeared in more that twenty films, including The Cotton Club (1984) and The Sting (1973). Jones was a living link with the Harlem renaissance of the 1920s and 1930s, having worked with Langston Hughes early in his career. After moving to New York in the 1930's (after a short career as a prize fighter in Chicago where champion Joe Louis used him as a sparring partner), Jones worked with young people on the Works Progress Administration, the largest New Deal agency, through which he met Langston Hughes, who cast him in his 1938 play, Don't You Want to Be Free?

Visit the Earl Jones Institute website.

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From wikipedia:
Edward "Sonny" Stitt (February 2, 1924 – July 22, 1982) was an American jazz saxophonist. He was a quintessential saxophonist of the bebop idiom. He was also one of the most prolific saxophonists, recording over 100 records in his lifetime. He was nicknamed the "Lone Wolf" by jazz critic Dan Morgenstern, due to his relentless touring and his devotion to jazz.

Life and works
Stitt was born in Boston, Massachusetts, and grew up in Saginaw, Michigan. Stitt had a musical background; his father taught music, his brother was a classically trained pianist, and his mother was a piano teacher. His earliest recordings were from 1945, with Stan Getz and Dizzy Gillespie. He had also experienced playing in some swing bands, though he mainly played in bop bands. Stitt featured in Tiny Bradshaw's big band in the early forties.

Listen to samples of Stitt's music, free from amazon.com.


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Langston Hughes (February 1, 1902 – May 22, 1967) was an American poet, novelist, playwright, short story writer, and newspaper columnist. Hughes is best known for his work during the Harlem Renaissance.

Life
Langston Hughes was born James Mercer Langston Hughes in Joplin, Missouri, the son of Carrie Langston Hughes, a teacher, and her husband, James Nathaniel Hughes. After abandoning his family and the resulting legal dissolution of the marriage later, James Hughes left for Cuba first, then Mexico due to enduring racism in the United States. After the separation of his parents, young Langston was left to be raised mainly by his grandmother, Mary Langston, as his mother sought
employment. Through the black American oral tradition of storytelling, she would instill in the young Langston Hughes a sense of indelible racial pride. He spent most of childhood in Lawrence, Kansas.

Read the some of the poems of Langston Hughes, free from the poetryfoundation.org.

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