The NorthStar’s Week in Black History

July 26 through August 1

July 26

1916 ----- Born on this date in Richmond, Va., Spottiswood W. Robinson, III was an educator, civil-rights attorney, judge and the first black person to be appointed to the United States District Court for the District of Columbia.

A core attorney for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund (1948-1960) and while there a special advisor to Thurgood Marshall, Robinson was instrumental in arguing landmark cases, notably Chance v Lambeth (1951), which established the invalidity of carrier-enforced racial segregation in interstate transportation and Brown v Board of Education (1954), heard by the U.S. Supreme Court, which integrated public schools in America.

From 1960 to 1964, Robinson served as dean of the Howard University School of Law.  He was also a member of the United States Commission on Civil Rights for two years (1961 to 1963).  

In 1964, Robinson was the first African American to be appointed to the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.  Two years later, President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed Robinson to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.

In 1981, Robinson served as chief judge of the court, the first African American to hold that post.

Robinson retired from the court in 1989.  He died in Richmond, Va., in 1998.  He was 82.


July 27

1816 ----- The first of three Seminole Wars, also known as the Florida Wars, began on this date.  These conflicts were carried out between African American militia and their Native American allies against the U. S. Army.  This conflict marked the beginning of Andrew Jackson’s conquest of what was then Spanish Florida.

Georgia slaveholders pressured the government to attack and destroy the so-called Negro Fort on the banks of Florida’s Apalachicola River. The fort, which was under the command of an African-American leader named Gracon (some historians give his name as Garcia), housed more than 500 fugitive slaves.

Jackson, then a major general in the U.S. Army, requested permission to attack the fort. Permission was granted by Secretary of State John Quincy Adams, who dispatched gunboats, justifying the attack as a national self-defense campaign. Jackson commanded 3,500 soldiers, recruited primarily from Tennessee.

A government gunboat destroyed the fort with cannon fire, killing 300 black men, women and children.

This act of destruction represented the U. S. government’s earliest organized attempt to recapture the fugitives, destroy Native American villages and set the stage for the Florida territory to be ceded to the United States in 1819.

The second Seminole War took place from 1835 to 1842, and the third and final Seminole War was waged between 1855 and 1858.


1958 ----- Rafer Johnson, U.S. decathlon champion, set a world record in competition by scoring 8,302 points on this date.  He defeated Soviet Vasily Kuznetsov, the “Man of Steel.”  Sports Illustrated named Johnson the 1958 “Sportsman of the Year.”

Johnson was awarded the James E. Sullivan Award as the top amateur athlete in the United States in 1960.  That same year, Johnson competed in the Summer Olympics in Rome, serving as captain of the U.S. team.  Competing in the decathlon, he amassed a stunning 8,392 points, winning a gold medal and setting an Olympic record for the decathlon.

Though Johnson appeared in several films, he was primarily interested in athletics and charitable causes involving athletic events. In 1984, Johnson was selected to light the Olympic flame during the opening ceremonies of the Summer Olympics in Los Angeles.

In 1969, Johnson and a group of committed volunteers founded the Southern California Special Olympics in Los Angeles.  Johnson and his wife, Betsy, remain committed to the organization.


July 28

1903 ----- Maggie Lena Walker, the daughter of former slaves, became an educator, businesswoman and civic leader.  She opened the St. Luke Penny Savings Bank in Richmond, Va., on this date, becoming the first woman in American history to charter a bank.

The bank eventually absorbed all of the other black-owned banks in Richmond and was renamed the Consolidated Bank and Trust Company in 1929.  Through the auspices of her bank, Walker forwarded policies to create economic opportunities for women and for African Americans.

During the last years of her life, Walker was paralyzed and using a wheelchair as a result of injuries suffered in a fall.  In addition to increasing economic opportunities for women and blacks, Walker became an early advocate for the disabled.  

Maggie Walker died in 1934 of complications associated with diabetes.  She was 67.  The Richmond home in which she lived with her family has been designated the Maggie L. Walker Historical Site.  


July 29

1909 ----- The African-American novelist Chester Himes, who wove themes associated with racism in America in his novels, was born on this date in Jefferson City, Mo.  An original literary voice, largely unheard in the United States, Himes lived as an expatriate in Paris where he wrote and published a series of black detective novels.

Born to educated parents in a middle-class family, Himes developed an early interest in reading and writing, but he was troubled as a child by his parents’ volatile marriage, his family’s frequent relocations and the accidental blinding of his brother.

When he was dismissed from Ohio State University at the age of 19, the victim of harsh penalization for a prank, he became angry and engaged in destructive behaviors.  From 1929 to 1936, he was imprisoned at Ohio State Penitentiary, serving a 25-year sentence for armed robbery. While he was in prison, a fire in the institution killed 300 inmates.

In response to these personal crises and inspired by the novels of Dashiell Hammett, Himes began writing short stories.  His earliest work was published in the Pittsburgh Courier, Bronzeman, the Atlanta Daily World and Esquire.  During the 1940s, he also spent some time in Los Angeles, working as a screenwriter.

Himes’ first novel, If He Hollers, Let Him Go, published in 1945, details the humiliation of a black employee working in a racist defense plant during World War II.  In 1952, he published his second novel, Cast the First Stone, a grim depiction of life in prison. Himes published two more novels and in the 1950s, moved to Europe for good, initially settling in Paris and making the acquaintance of James Baldwin, Ralph Ellison and Richard Wright. Himes wrote many more novels while living in Europe.

Himes’ early novels were translated into French and published in France. His European audience grew, and Himes, short on money, was convinced to write quality crime fiction. He wrote hard-boiled detective novels set in Harlem in the 1950s and 1960s. The novels featured black New York City police detectives Coffin Ed Johnson and Gravedigger Jones.

Himes wrote the detective series from 1957 to 1969.  The series included A Rage in Harlem (1957), The Real Cool Killers (1959), The Crazy Kill (1959) and All Shot Up (1960). Himes was awarded France’s Grand Prix de Litterature Policiere in 1958.

Gradually, Himes’ novels have gained some deserved recognition in the United States. Two of his novels were made into feature films, Cotton Comes to Harlem (1970), directed by Ossie Davis, and A Rage in Harlem (1991), which starred Gregory Hines and Danny Glover.

In May 2011, Penguin Modern Classics in London republished five of Chester Himes’ detective novels from the Harlem series.  The publication was spurred in part by Himes’ widow, Lesley Himes, honoring her husband’s last wish that his works be “kept alive.”

Chester Himes died of Parkinson’s disease in 1984 in Moraira, Spain.  He was 75.


July 30

1809 ----- Benjamin “Pap” Singleton, an African-American former slave, businessman and abolitionist, was born in Nashville, Tennessee, on this date.  He led hundreds of slaves out of the South and into the West, particularly into Kansas, during the Reconstruction Era (1865-1877).

Born into slavery and sold to different owners over time, Singleton escaped one plantation after another.  He finally fled to Canada, lived there briefly and then resettled in Detroit, where he ran a boardinghouse for others who escaped slavery.

Singleton made several failed attempts to purchase land to resell to former slaves so that they could establish their own lives and a viable economic base.  Finally, he and a business partner formed a company that helped hundreds of black people from Tennessee relocate to Kansas from 1877 to 1879.

Those who relocated were known as “Exodusters,” and Singleton was dubbed the “Father of the Exodus.” In 1879, some 50,000 blacks had fled to freedom in Kansas, Missouri, Indiana and Illinois. As Reconstruction had ended and more oppressive social policies prevailed, thousands more blacks were turned away on their journey westward by armed whites patrolling the roads and highways.

Singleton sought other ways to expand African-American economic development.  His efforts failed because blacks as a group lacked sufficient capital.  In 1883, Singleton founded the Chief League, which encouraged blacks to emigrate to the island of Cyprus. When few responded to this opportunity, Singleton formed the Trans-Atlantic Society in 1885 to help blacks return to Africa. Few, if any, were helped to return to Africa through the organization, but black nationalism was on the rise.

A visionary whose ideas too often fell short of realization, Singleton retired in poor health and died in 1900 in Kansas City, Mo.  He was 83.  In 2002, American black history scholar Molefi Kete Assante included “Pap” Singleton on his list of 100 Greatest African Americans.


July 31

1874 ----- Patrick Francis Healy, a former slave, on this day became the first African-American president of Georgetown University, the nation's largest Catholic University. 

Healy was named the Washington, D.C.-based school's acting president in 1873 and within a year, school officials named him president.  He was the first African American to head a predominately white university.

Healy's father, Michael, was an Irish slave owner, and Healy's mother, Eliza, was a slave. Although it was illegal for blacks and whites to marry at the time, Michael and Eliza lived together as a married couple.

Patrick Francis Healy could pass for white and he did. He graduated from Holy Cross College in Worchester, Mass. Healy entered the Jesuit order in 1850 and in 1866, he was sent to Georgetown to teach philosophy. 

Healy is credited with transforming Georgetown from a small college into a major university. He retired in 1881. In the 1960s, Healy's race was revealed. Patrick Francis Healy Hall is named in his honor.


August 1

1920 ----- The National Convention of Marcus Garvey's Universal Negro Improvement Association opened on this day in Liberty Hall in Harlem. 

The next night, Garvey addressed 25,000 blacks in Madison Square Garden. For the entire month of August 1920, the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League held their first international convention at Madison Square Garden in New York City.

The 20,000 members in attendance promulgated The Declaration of Rights of the Negro Peoples of the World on August 13, 1920, and elected the leaders of the UNIA as "leaders for the Negro people of the world."


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