NorthStar’s Week in Black History

January 19 through January 25

January 19

1907 ----- The Pittsburgh Courier was founded by Edwin Nathaniel Harlston, a security guard with an avid interest in literature.  By the 1930s, The Courier was one of the most circulated and most influential publications of the day for African Americans along with The Chicago Defender and The Afro-American, published in Baltimore.

The Courier was a strong voice for the African-American community, calling attention to the challenges and injustices facing black Americans.  From its earliest days, The Courier advocated for improvements in education, health care and housing.  The paper was also instrumental in persuading its readers to consider joining the Democratic Party and to abandon the Republican Party, the party blacks had often supported because it was the party of Abraham Lincoln.

Today The Pittsburgh Courier is published as The New Pittsburgh Courier and is issued daily in both print and online editions.

1918 ----- John H. Johnson, entrepreneur, publisher and philanthropist, was born in Arkansas City.

Moved to Chicago by his widowed mother during the 1933 Great Migration, Johnson enrolled in DuSable High School, something he could not have done in Arkansas because there were no public high schools there that admitted black students in the 1930s.  During high school, Johnson was president of his class and editor of the school’s newspaper. 
Following graduation, he attended the University of Chicago on a full scholarship.

Johnson’s first job was with Supreme Liberty Life Insurance Company.  While working there, he collected information about African Americans and compiled it into a weekly digest for the company.  This assignment inspired him to found his first magazine, Negro Digest, which he published in 1942.  

In 1945, Johnson launched his second magazine, Ebony, that depicted African Americans in a positive light.  His third publication, Jet, first issued in 1951, offered brief features and photographs of African American notables in business, entertainment and sports. In 1985, he published a third feature magazine, Ebony Man or EM.

Johnson was the first African American to be listed in Forbes’ “400 Richest Americans” in 1982.  Seven years later, he published his best-selling autobiography, Succeeding Against the Odds (Lerone Bennett, Jr.,-Warner Books).

Throughout his career, Johnson donated to many causes and contributed generously to Howard University to help develop and expand their communications department.  He was also a sponsor of the American Black Achievement Awards television program and the annual touring fashion show that raised money for various causes, the Ebony Fashion Fair.

Johnson died in Chicago on August 8, 2005.  He was 87.

January 20

1838 ----- Slavery was abolished in New York State in 1827. In 1838, eleven years later, Weeksville, a section of Brooklyn, New York, was founded by freed black man, James Weeks, who had purchased the land that comprised the section of the borough from another freed black man, Henry C.  Thompson.  

The area became known as Weeksville and was the site of an intentional, self-sufficient black community, created by blacks for blacks, well before the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863.  Weeksville was also a safe haven for blacks fleeing slavery in the South and freed blacks from the North seeking refuge from the Civil War draft riots rampant at the time in lower Manhattan.

By 1850, Weeksville was thriving, having become the second largest black community in pre-Civil War America, distinctive because it had been established in an urban rather than a rural setting.  Weeksville boasted a large number of property owners and offered an abundance of employment opportunities in black-owned businesses and small institutions.

Weeksville maintained its identity and status through the 1930s but had mostly disappeared by the 1950s.  Its historical importance is celebrated by the Weeksville Society, which publishes a newsletter and offers black history lectures and workshops throughout the year.

1895 ----- The daughter of a chicken plucker, Eva Jessye, singer, choral director, composer, actress and poet, was born in Coffeyville, Kan.

A college graduate with a degree in choral music, Jessye taught school for several years in Oklahoma before moving to New York City in 1926 to pursue a career in musical theater.  She had the good fortune of working with Major Bowles and then meeting and working with Will Marion Cook, an African-American classical composer.

An expert in harmonics, Jessye was also a poet and a composer.  In 1935, she served as the original choral director for George Gershwin’s Broadway production, Porgy and Bess, becoming the first black woman to win not just recognition but distinction as a choral director.  She was also an influential participant in the Harlem Renaissance

Jessye established her own choral group, The Eva Jessye Choir, which performed throughout America, often on college campuses, for four decades.  In 1963, Jessye directed the official choir for the historic March on Washington.

Eva Jessye died in 1992.  She was 97.

1900 ----- An anti-lynching bill was introduced to Congress by African-American Congressman George H. White (R, NC).  The proposed bill would have made lynching a federal crime.  The bill died in the House Judiciary Committee. That same year, 105 African Americans were lynched in the United States.

1997 ----- Curt Flood, who challenged Major League Baseball’s Reserve Rule, which opened the door to today’s staggering salaries, died at age 59 in Los Angeles.

Flood, who spent most of his career as a center fielder for the St. Louis Cardinals, became one of the pivotal figures in the sport’s labor history when he refused to accept a trade to the Philadelphia Phillies, following the 1969 season.  He brought his case on appeal to the U. S. Supreme Court.  

Although Flood’s legal challenge was unsuccessful, it drew attention to the issue of player trading and reinforced solidarity among players as they fought against baseball’s reserve clause and sought free agency.

January 21

1932 ----- The American Bridge Association was founded by black tennis players at Buckroe Beach, Va.  At the time, blacks were excluded from most bridge events.  In 1967, the American Contract Bridge League removed the final obstacle to black membership.  The ABA remains a predominantly, but not exclusively, black organization.  It sponsors two national tournaments annually and maintains its own master points system.  Their points system is similar to but different from the ACBL master points system.

1933 ----- Carl T. Rowan, journalist, controversial commentator and writer, was named director of the United States Information Agency by President Lyndon B. Johnson.  

Rowan also became the first African American to hold a seat on the National Security Council.  He was the highest level African American to serve in the United States government.

January 22

1906 ----- Willa Brown-Chappell was born in Glasgow, Ky.  Inspired early in her life by predecessor Bessie Coleman, Brown-Chappell became an aviator, who conquered racial barriers to achieve success in her chosen field.  She was also an educator, activist and politician.

A graduate of Indiana Teachers College, who later earned an MBA from Northwestern University, Brown-Chappell enrolled in the Aeronautical University in Chicago and received a certificate as a master mechanic.  Shortly thereafter, she was awarded a private pilot’s license.  Much later, in 1943, she became the first woman to earn a commercial pilot’s license.

The love of flying determined much of the course of Brown-Chappell’s work and life.   With her first husband, Cornelius Coffey, and others, Brown-Chappell established the Coffey School of Aeronautics, a black-owned enterprise, dedicated to educating and training black pilots.

The Coffey School was selected by the government to provide black trainees for the Air Corps pilot training program at Tuskegee Institute.  As director of the school, Brown-Chappell helped train more than 200 students, all of whom became the legendary Tuskegee Airmen.

Brown-Chappell also served as president of the National Airmen’s Association of America.  From this post, she worked tirelessly to make it possible for African Americans to serve as pilots in the military. She also served as the first African-American officer of the Civil Air Patrol.  In 1946, Brown-Chappell made an unsuccessful bid for Congress on the Republican ticket, the first black woman to seek a seat in Congress.

In 1955, she married Reverend H. J. Chappell, taught school until 1971 and was appointed in 1972 to serve on the Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) Women’s Advisory Board.

Willa Brown-Chappell died in Chicago in 1992.  She was 86.  In 2002, she was named one of Women in Aviation’s 100 Most Influential Women in Aviation and Aerospace.

1920 ----- William Warfield, internationally renowned bass-baritone vocalist, was born in West Helene, Ark.

Warfield’s debut recital at New York’s Town Hall on March 19, 1950, placed him in the front ranks of concert artists of the day.  He was quickly invited by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation to tour Australia and give 35 concerts.  In 1952, Warfield performed in Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess as part of a production company touring Europe.  He made six separate tours for the U. S. Department of State, more than any other American solo artist.

While touring with the company, he played opposite opera star Leontyne Price, whom he married, but the demands of two separate successful careers left them little opportunity to be together.  They divorced in 1972 but were featured together in a 1963 studio recording of excerpts from Porgy and Bess.

January 23

1964 ----- States ratify the Twenty-fourth Amendment to the U. S. Constitution.  The amendment prohibits Congress and the sates from conditioning the right to vote in national elections on payment of a poll tax or any other type of tax.  The amendment was proposed by Congress to the states on August 27, 1962.

1977 ----- “Roots,” one of television’s landmark productions, began broadcasting on this date. It aired on ABC from January 23 to January 30.  The twelve-hour mini-series, starring LeVar Burton as Kunta Kinte, was based on author Alex Haley’s best-selling novel of the same title about his African ancestors.  The series featured generations of an enslaved family and used this family, beginning with Kunta Kinte being captured in West Africa by American slave traders, as a way to offer in narrative form African-American history.

According to data collected and reported by Nielsen, 80 million people on average viewed the last seven of the twelve episodes in the mini-series.  Over 100 million viewers saw the program’s final episode.  Over 250 colleges and universities offered courses based on the series, and more than 30 cities declared “Roots” weeks to celebrate African-American history.

January 24

1874 ----- Historian Arthur Schomburg was born in San Juan, Puerto Rico.

Educated in San Juan and in the Danish West Indies, Schomburg became a teacher.  Keenly interested in African-American history and literature, he researched these subjects independently.  In 1891, Schomburg moved to the United States.  A decade later, he relocated to New York City, where he worked as a researcher at a law firm.  Politically active, he joined with others and lent time and effort to the cause of Cuban and Puerto Rican independence.

Yet committed to the study of African-American history, Schomburg traveled through Europe to investigate various historical questions.  While in Seville, he researched the records there of the history of the Indies and was able to gather valuable information about black history.  

In 1929, Schomburg, who had been working at the Bankers Trust Company, retired his position and accepted a post a Fisk University in Nashville to curate their vast collection of papers on African-American history.  The collection is perhaps the finest of its kind in the world and includes invaluable pieces---newspapers, maps, manuscripts, pamphlets, art prints, magazine clippings and more.  This collection has since been named for Schomburg.

Perhaps the world’s most renowned African-American historian, Schomburg died in 1938.  He was 64.   Two years after his death, the New York Public Library renamed its division of black history, literature and print art in his honor.

1938 ----- Jack and Jill of America, a nonprofit philanthropic organization, was founded in Philadelphia.  

Marion Stubbs Thomas and 20 mothers organized the groups to bring together children in a social and cultural environment.  Jack and Jill now boasts over 220 chapters nationwide, representing more than 30,000 family members.  Through service projects, Jack and Jill of America creates a medium of contact for children to stimulate their growth and development.  Jack and Jill of America is headquartered in Washington, DC.

January 25

1890 ----- A predecessor to the NAACP, the National Afro-American League was formed, organized primarily by Timothy Thomas Fortune.

Fortune, a crusader-activist and editor of the New York Age, the most-respected African-American journal of the time, established the organization to promote racial solidarity, self-help and self-reliance.  The organization collapsed in 1893 because there weren’t sufficient funds to maintain it.

The Douglas Hotel of San Diego

1924 ----- The Douglas Hotel of San Diego was founded as a place for entertainment and as a place for African Americans to stay since rooms in white hotels were not available to blacks.  Named in honor of scholar and activist, Frederick Douglass, but spelled with a single “s,” the Douglas Hotel was owned by Robert and Mabel Rowe and George Ramsey.  The hotel boasted 45 rooms, a bar, a restaurant, and the Creole Palace nightclub with a 500-person capacity ballroom.

The hotel, dubbed “Harlem of the West,” was the most important entertainment venue in San Diego for African Americans.  During the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s, celebrities entertained there and stayed there.  Performers like Billie Holiday, Duke Ellington and the Mills Brothers were featured in the nightclub.

Demolished more than 20 years ago, the city of San Diego installed a bronze plaque at the corner of Second Avenue and Main Street, commemorating the hotel as a place of historical significance and according to the plaque, “the only major downtown hotel to provide accommodations to black visitors in San Diego during the era of segregation.”

NorthStar's Week in Black History is compiled by Susan M. Miller.