The NorthStar Week in Black History

July 5 through July 11

Wimbledon's Grass Courts Have Grown Black Tennis Champions

Wimbledon, the oldest and most prestigious tennis tournament in the world, which began June 25, has been the scene of major triumphs by African-American players.

Althea Gibson led the way when on July 6, 1957, she became the first African American to win the Women's Singles championship at Wimbledon, which is held at The All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club in Wimbledon, England.

Gibson defeated American Darlene Hard to win the title. A year later, she won her second Women's Singles title, defeating Angela Mortimer Barrett of the United Kingdom.

On July 5, 1975, Arthur Robert Ashe, Jr., became the first African-American man to win the Men's Singles title at Wimbledon by defeating fellow American Jimmy Connors.

And on July 6, 2002, Serena Williams defeated her sister, Venus, to win the Women's Singles title at Wimbledon.


July 5

1899 ---- Anna Arnold Hedgeman, the first black woman to serve in the cabinet of a New York City Mayor, was born on this day in Marshalltown, Iowa to William James Arnold and Marie Ellen Parker Arnold. 

In 1954, following the election of Robert F. Wagner, Jr., as mayor, Hedgeman was given responsibility for corresponding with eight city departments and she served as a liaison for international guests visiting New York.


July 6

1971 ---- Louis Armstrong, one of the world's most-influential and famous jazz musicians, died on this day in Corona, Queens, N.Y. 

As a masterful cornet and trumpet player, Armstrong influenced jazz, shifting the music's focus from collective improvisation to solo performance. Armstrong also was an influential singer because of his distinctive, gravelly voice (see this week's video).


July 7

1915 ---- Margaret Walker, poet and and writer, was born on this day in Birmingham, Ala. Walker's best-known poem, For My People, won the Yale Series of Younger Poets Competition in 1942.

Her 1966 novel Jubilee also received critical acclaim. The book was based on her own great-grandmother's life as a slave.  Walker received a Bachelor of Arts Degree in 1935 from Northwestern University. She also received her Master's and a Ph.D. from the University of Iowa.  Walker died of breast cancer in 1998 in Chicago. She was 83.


July 8

1805 ---- Bill Richmond, the son of a slave, became the first African American to distinguish himself as a prizefighter, by knocking out Jack Holmes in Kilburn Wells, England.

Born a slave in Cuckold's Town, N.Y., Richmond's nickname was "The Black Terror."  Richmond was the servant of Lord Percy, the Duke of Northumberland, during the American Revolutionary War, who took him to England in 1777. On September 26, 1776, Richmond was the hangman who executed Nathan Hale.

Later, Richmond was sent to school in Yorkshire and apprenticed to a cabinet maker in York. However, he made his career as a boxer, narrowly losing to later British and world champion Tom Cribb. After his retirement from boxing, he bought the Horse and Dolphin pub in Leicester Square and also set up a successful boxing academy (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ov6i5hDAMtc). Note: this is just one of several extremely well-done videos about Richmond that YouTube offers on its website.


July 9

1955 ----- E. Frederic Morrow was the first African American to hold a position at the White House.  His appointment to serve President Dwight D. Eisenhower began on this date.  Until 1961, Morrow was the Administrative Officer for Special Projects.  He also wrote speeches for Eisenhower.

As the first black man to hold an executive position in the White House, Morrow paved the way for other African Americans who followed.  He detailed his experiences in his memoir, Black Man in the White House (Macfadden-Bartell Corp., 1969).  Morrow made it clear that his years at the White House were difficult years and that he was treated with ‘cold correctness,’ but was never fully accepted, treated as though he belonged.

During his years of service to President Eisenhower, race relations in the United States were in turmoil.  The Eisenhower administration did not forward a strong civil rights platform even though the U. S. Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. The Board of Education, the Montgomery bus boycott took place and the school desegregation crisis in Little Rock riveted the nation.

Born in Hackensack, N.J., Morrow earned a law degree from Rutgers, worked as an NAACP field secretary and served in the U. S. Army, where he was promoted from a private to major in four years’ time.  He worked as a public-affairs writer for CBS before joining Eisenhower’s Republican presidential campaign.

Following his years in Washington, Morrow served as a vice-president of the African-American Institute in New York City and then as the first black senior vice-president of the Bank of America. He left the bank in 1975 and became an executive associate at the Educational Testing Service in Princeton, N.J.

Morrow died in 1994 at the age of 88.


July 10

1927 ----- Born on this date in Trenton, NJ, and raised by his father from the age of six, David N. Dinkins became the first black mayor of New York City.

Dinkins was elected to the New York state assembly in 1965.  He later served as president of elections for New York City, then as city clerk and later still as Manhattan borough president.  In 1989, he ran for mayor.  He served one four-year term, leaving office in 1993.

A moderate Democrat who promised to ease racial tensions in the city, Dinkins was perceived as indifferent to the plight of the Jewish community following the 1991 Crown Heights riot.  Though violent crime had in fact declined during his tenure, Dinkins chances for re-election were hurt by the public’s persistent perception that he and his administration could not control crime.

Republican mayoral candidate Rudy Giuliani defeated Dinkins in his 1993 bid for re-election.

Following his loss in the mayoral election, Dinkins accepted an academic post and became a professor at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs.


July 11

1863 ----- John Mitchell, Jr., born into slavery on this date in Richmond, Va., was a businessman, civil rights activist and editor of the Richmond Planet, an African-American newspaper with a strong anti-lynching record.

A civic leader who was elected to the Richmond City Council in 1890, Mitchell advocated for black economic development and was a prominent figure in the Jackson Ward of Richmond, an area populated by freed men that at the time was known as the "Black Wall Street of America."

Mitchell also served as editor of the Richmond Planet, which later changed its name to the Richmond Afro-American, writing fiery anti-lynching articles and editorials.  In May 1886, when Mitchell reported in his paper the lynching of Robert Walker in Charlotte County, Mitchell was threatened by an angry mob of whites.  He was sent anonymously a length of rope and a note warning him not to enter Charlotte County and not to report further on the lynching incident.  

Mitchell responded in print to these threats, quoting from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, “There are no terrors, Cassius, in your threats, for I am so strong in honesty that they pass by me like the idle wind, which I respect not.”  Armed with two handguns, Mitchell traveled to Charlotte County, visited the site of Walker's lynching and returned unmolested to Richmond, where he reported on the crime.

Mitchell founded and chartered the Mechanics Savings Bank in Richmond in 1901 as part of his plan to strengthen the economic base of African Americans.  Mitchell was also the first black man to address the American Bankers’ Association. The Mechanics Savings Bank thrived for some years but went into receivership in 1923.

In 1904, Mitchell organized a boycott of Richmond’s segregated trolley cars.  The boycott was so effective that the trolley company was forced into bankruptcy and African Americans were free to ride on any trolley car thereafter.

John Mitchell died in 1929 at the age of 66.  Until earlier this year, he was buried in an unmarked grave in Richmond’s Evergreen Cemetery.  Through the efforts of the Richmond Black History Project, Mitchell’s grave site was finally marked with an appropriate headstone.  The headstone bears a quote from Isaiah 55:4, “Behold, I have given him for a witness to the people, a leader and a commander to the people.”  Above the Biblical quote and below Mitchell's name on the headstone, a phrase is inscribed, “A man who would walk into the jaws of death to serve his race.”

The Library of Virginia houses a special collection of Mitchell’s writings, personal papers and mementos.


The NorthStar Week in Black History is compiled and written
by Frederick H. Lowe and Susan M. Miller.