NorthStar’s Week in Black History

January 5 through January 11

January 5

1943 ----- George Washington Carver died.  Born into slavery in an unknown location in Missouri and on a date that was never recorded (the year of his birth was likely 1864 or 1865), Carver rose from impoverished circumstances to become a scientist, botanist, inventor and educator.  

Carver was reared from infancy by a couple who raised him as their own when his mother and one of his brothers were abducted by night raiders and sold into slavery in Kentucky.  His adoptive parents encouraged him to study and learn and they taught him to read and write, as slave children were not permitted to enter public schools.  He entered an academic academy in Fort Scott, Kan., and was fostered by another family while he was there, but he left school and the area when he witnessed a black man being murdered by a group of white men.

Though he experienced difficulties gaining a higher education because of his race, Carver persisted and attended Simpson College in Indianola, Iowa (1890), where he studied art and music.  He was then admitted to Iowa State Agricultural College in Ames, Iowa (1891), where he studied botany.  He was the school’s first black student, and following graduation, the school’s first black instructor.

Booker T. Washington, then president of Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, recruited Carver in 1896 to chair the Agricultural Department.  Carver accepted the offer and taught there for 47 years.

At Tuskegee Institute, Carver conducted agricultural research, taught crop rotation, introduced new cash crops to farmers that would also improve soil quality after the depletion caused by decades of growing only cotton.  He is also reported to have found 300 different uses for peanuts.  Patents for three products—paints and stains—were issued to Carver.  None of these products were successful commercially.

In 1916, Carver was made a member of the Royal Society of Arts in England, and in 1923, he was awarded the NAACP Springarn Medal for outstanding achievements.  In 1941, the George Washington Carver Museum was established at the Tuskegee Institute.

Carver died as a result of a fall he suffered in his home.  He was 78.

1943 ----- William H. Hastie, Jr., resigned from his post as civilian aide to U. S. Secretary of War Henry Stimson to protest racially segregated training facilities used by the Army Air Force, substandard training for African-American military pilots and the unequal distribution of assignments between black and white soldiers.  That same year, Hastie was given the NAACP Springarn Medal for lifetime achievement and for his efforts to desegregate the military.

A graduate of Harvard Law School and a professor at Howard University School of Law in Washington, D. C.—future Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall was one of his students—Hastie was appointed by President Roosevelt in 1937 to the United States District Court for the Virgin Islands, becoming the first African-American federal judge.

In 1946, President Truman appointed Hastie territorial governor of the U. S. Virgin Islands, and Hastie served in this post until 1949.

In 1968, Hastie served for three years as Chief Judge of the Third Court.  He retired in 1971 and died in 1976.  He was 71.  The Third Circuit Court Library in Philadelphia is named in his honor.

January 6

1993 ----- John Birks “Dizzy” Gillespie died, having been a major influence in the development of bebop and modern jazz.  Gillespie, known as one of the most gifted trumpet players of all time, was also a singer, composer and bandleader.

Born in Cheraw, S. C., Gillespie played piano at four, taught himself to play the trombone at 12 and was awarded a scholarship to study music at the Laurinburg Institute in Laurinburg, N. C.  In 1935, he played with the Frank Fairfax Orchestra, having landed his first real job in music.  He also played for the orchestras of Eddie Hayes and Teddy Hill, the group with which he recorded his first album, King Porter Stomp.

For a year, beginning in 1940, Gillespie played for Cab Calloway, but left the band after a serious breach occurred between Gillespie and Calloway. No longer with Calloway’s band, Gillespie wrote big band music for the legendary bandleaders of the day, including Woody Herman and Jimmy Dorsey.

Freelancing for a while, Gillespie played with a few bands and then joined Ed Hines’ orchestra, but he also jammed in nightclubs with younger musicians, most notably, Charlie Parker.  The two of them and others discovered and developed bebop jazz, a style of phrasing that was initially unpopular.

Gillespie’s popularity soared, and he played with several smaller groups, developing his musical style and eventually moving into Afro-Cuban rhythms.  In 1956, Gillespie was instrumental in organizing a band to play internationally, primarily in the Middle East. From that time, Gillespie was often referred to as the “Ambassador of Jazz.” He traveled and performed often internationally and became an international phenomenon.

Gillespie recorded nearly 60 albums during his career.  In 1960, he was inducted into the Jazz Hall of Fame.  He published his autobiography, To Be or Not to Bop in 1979. He was crowned a chief in Nigeria, received France’s highest cultural award, the Ordre des Arts et Lettres, was the recipient of a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award and the Duke Ellington Award.

The cause of Gillespie’s death was pancreatic cancer.  He was 75.

January 7

1891 ----- Zora Neale Hurston was born in Notsasuiga, Ala., and raised in Eatonville, Fla., the first town in the United States founded by blacks for blacks.  She was an anthropologist, folklorist and writer who played an instrumental part in the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s and 1930s.

Educated at Howard University and Barnard College, where she was the sole black student and met famed anthropologist Franz Boas, who mentored her, she earned an undergraduate degree in 1927 at 36.

Though she conducted ethnographic studies, particularly in the Caribbean and in South America and was married for a brief period, Hurston is best known as a writer, though much of her writing did not receive rightful recognition until after her death. Her anthropological work figures largely in many of her stories and novels. Her best-known work is her novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, published in 1937.

Though her writings did slip into obscurity, they were resurrected during the 1970s, largely because author Alice Walker wrote about Hurston and her work.  Walker also found Hurston’s unmarked grave in Fort Pierce, Fla., and ordered a proper headstone for it.

Hurston died in 1960.  She was 69.

1950 ----- The James Weldon Johnson Collection was established at Yale.  The papers of Langston Hughes, W. E. B. Du Bois, Richard Wright, Zora Neale Hurston and others are a part of this historically significant collection.

James Weldon Johnson (1871 – 1938) was an American author, diplomat, critic, attorney, educator and civil rights activist.  He was also an active figure in the Harlem Renaissance.

1955 ----- Marian Anderson debuted at the Metropolitan Opera House, singing the part of Alrica in Verdi’s opera, “Masked Ball.”  Anderson was the first black person to perform in the company’s history.

January 8

1912 ----- The African National Congress (ANC), now South Africa’s governing Africanist political party, was founded on this date to protest and redress the injustices experienced by blacks subject to oppressive white rule.

January 9

1866 ------ Three historically black institutions of higher learning were founded on this date:
Fisk University in Nashville, Tenn., Rust College in Holly Springs, Miss., and Lincoln University in Jefferson City, Missouri.

1967 ----- In response to the pressure exerted by a national outcry over Georgia’s legislators’ refusal to seat newly elected Representative Julian Bond. Bond was finally granted his rightful place in the state legislature.  

Bond was controversial because he had served as director of communications for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and was a strident critic of U. S. involvement in the war in Vietnam.

January 10

1915 ----- Dean Dixon, classical music conductor, was born in Harlem.

Recognized early for his musical gifts, Dixon served as the conductor of the New York Chamber Orchestra at 25, while he was still a student at the prestigious Julliard School of Music.

Dixon left the United States in 1949 for the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, conducting during the 1950 and 1951 seasons.  He later became one of Europe’s most accomplished and admired classical conductors.  Fluent in German, French and Swedish, Dixon conducted the Goteburg Symphony of Sweden from 1953 to 1960, the Sydney Symphony Orchestra in Australia from 1964 to 1967 and then served as the conductor for the Hessian Radio Symphony in Frankfurt from 1961 to 1974.

Dixon returned to the United States and worked as a guest conductor with the major orchestras in Chicago, Philadelphia and San Francisco.  He also introduced the orchestral works of African-American composer William Grant Still to European audiences.

He died in Zurich in 1976.  He was 61.

1957 ----- The Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) was founded on this date in New Orleans.  Its founders were Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Reverend Ralph Abernathy, Reverend Joseph Lowery, Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth and Reverend C. K. Steele.  Representative Walter Fauntroy (D., District of Columbia) served as the chairman of the board of directors.

January 11

1988 ----- The Mitochondrial Mother, “Eve,” is discovered on this date.  “Eve” is considered in the field of human genetics to be the maternal ancestor of all living humans.  She may have lived as many as 200,000 years ago in East Africa.

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