The NorthStar’s Week in Black History

October 19 through October 25


October 19

1949 ----- Peter Tosh, given name Winston Hubert McIntosh, reggae singer-songwriter, musician and founding member of The Wailers, was born in Grange Hill, Jamaica.  As both a member of a band and as a solo performer, he brought international attention to reggae music.  A political activist as well as a performer, Tosh was dubbed "the Malcolm X of reggae music."

Tosh was raised by an aunt and learned to play guitar at an early age, imitating perfectly guitarists he saw perform. He also listened with keen interest to American radio stations and taught himself to play the popular songs he heard, building a musical repertoire.

At 15, Tosh, alone after his aunt’s death, moved to Kingston and began playing with musicians he met there. In 1961, he met Robert Nesta Marley (Bob Marley) and Neville Livingston (Bunny Wailer). The three young men started singing on street corners together, eventually attracting repeat audiences.

In 1964, Tosh and Marley, along with Junior Braithwaite, Beverly Kelso and Cherry Smith, established The Wailing Wailers and started landing gigs in modest venues. Tosh, who at the time was the only member of the group who could play musical instruments, taught Marley to play guitar.

The band recorded their first single record that year, “Simmer Down,” and it was a major hit. Several other hit recordings followed rapidly.

As success seemed within reach, Tosh and Bunny Wailer joined the Rastafarian faith, and Marley soon followed their lead. The Wailers’ music changed from a strictly fast, upbeat sound to a steadier beat. The subjects for their songs became increasingly political.

The Wailers negotiated a recording contract with Island Records and released back-to-back hit albums in 1973, Catch a Fire and Burnin’.  Tosh wrote several of the band’s strongest hit singles, including “Get Up, Stand Up,” “No Sympathy" and “400 Years.”

Amidst contract disputes with Island Records, Tosh and Bunny Wailer left The Wailers in 1976. Tosh performed and recorded as a solo artist. CBS Records produced Tosh’s debut solo album, Legalize It in 1976 and another album a year later. He also formed a new band, Word, Sound and Power. This new band backed him in his performances for several years.

Always politically aware and engaged, Tosh advocated for the legalization of marijuana, and throughout the 1980s, he appeared in anti-apartheid concerts. His album Mama Africa pays homage to those struggling and suffering under apartheid in South Africa.

In 1987, Tosh was murdered by a gang of three men asking for money in his home in Jamaica.  When Tosh said he had no money in his house, the men, convinced otherwise, tortured him and eventually killed him.

Peter Tosh was awarded posthumously Jamaica’s prestigious Order of Merit on October 15.


October 20

1924 ----- The first Colored World Series, organized by Andrew “Rube” Foster, pioneering Negro League baseball player and an executive officer of the League, concluded its 10-game series on this date.

The Kansas City Monarchs narrowly defeated the Eastern Colored League champions, the Hilldale Giants of Darby, Pa., five games to four, with one tie game.

Five men who played during the first Colored World Series were later inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame.  These players were Jose Mendez and Bullet Rogan of the Monarchs and Judy Johnson, Biz Mackey and Larry Santop of the Hilldale Giants. J. L. Wilkinson, who owned the Monarchs, was also inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame.


October 21

1979 ----- Founded by Lois K. Alexander-Lane, the Black Fashion Museum first opened its doors in Harlem on this date.  Alexander’s efforts and the museum itself challenged the notion that African Americans had made no significant contribution to fashion in America before present day.

Alexander-Lane knew otherwise, having watched her grandmother, enslaved until she was 13, create and sew clothing for every member of her family. Alexander-Lane had studied fashion design and collected antique clothing from the attics and basements of countless African-American homes.  She opened the museum in an unprepossessing brownstone in Harlem, became its curator and ran it on a shoestring budget, passionate about celebrating African-American history through clothing design.

The museum’s collection included garments and bonnets designed and sewn by enslaved women whose names have been lost, clothing designed or worn by African Americans of historical importance, costumes designed for African-American Broadway shows and garments created by prominent designers like Geoffrey Holder, Stephen Burrows and others.

In 1994, fifteen years after opening, the Black Fashion Museum moved to Washington, D. C., where it filled a two-story row house in the northwest area of the city.

When Alexander-Lane died at 91, the care of the museum fell to her daughter and only child, Joyce Bailey, who recognized that the museum’s location and space were inadequate and that the collections were subject to Washington’s damaging summertime humidity.  Bailey sought a new location for the museum that would exhibit, store and protect properly the collected garments.

In 2005, Joyce Bailey donated the Black Museum of Fashion’s collections in their entirety to the Smithsonian Institution with the intention that the collections would be preserved carefully until they could be moved into the yet-to-be-constructed National Museum of African-American History and Culture, the Institution’s 19th museum. Lonnie Branch, who had worked in many museums throughout the country, had just been named director of the planned museum.

Lois Alexander-Lane published her own book in 1992 about blacks in fashion, Blacks in the History of Fashion (Harlem Institute of Fashion).

The National Museum of African-American History and Culture is scheduled to open in 2015.  Until then, the museum occupies a gallery on the second floor of the National Museum of American History.


October 22

1800 ----- African-American businessman, abolitionist and inventor Lewis Temple, born enslaved on this date in Richmond, Va., created a whaling harpoon, known as “Temple’s Toggle” or “Temple’s Iron;” it was recognized as the single most important contribution to the whaling industry in America.

Once freed, Temple, a skilled blacksmith, relocated in 1829 to New Bedford, Mass., where he opened and operated a whale craft shop on the city’s waterfront. Whalers who frequented Temple’s shop and purchased needed equipment from him, told him that whales were escaping their harpoons and that they were challenged in earning consistent incomes.

In 1848, Temple designed a whale harpoon with a moveable head, one that would move with a struggling whale and one that could not be removed from a whale’s flesh until it was cut from the whale once it had died. Though skeptical, some whalers eventually tried the new harpoon and found that it worked exceptionally well. Though Temple never patented his design, his harpoons sold well and became the standard in the whaling industry. As his business boomed, Temple bought a larger building for his business and installed a blacksmith’s shop next to the whalers’ shop.

In 1854, Temple suffered an accidental fall that left him largely disabled. Unable to work, he lost his businesses and his property, lived in poverty and died destitute. He was 54.


October 23

1810 ----- William Alexander Leidesdorff, Jr., a black man who was one of California’s earliest settlers, and the nation’s first black millionaire, was born on this day in St. Croix,Virgin Islands.

At 15, Leidesdorff moved to Denmark to attend school. After leaving school, he moved first to New Orleans and then to Yerba Buena, Calif., in 1841.  In 1846, during the Mexican-American War, the United States seized Yerba Buena and changed its name to San Francisco.

Leidesdorff operated a steamboat on the San Francisco Bay and the Sacramento River. He also built San Francisco’s first hotel and warehouse. In 1844, he became a naturalized Mexican citizen, receiving in return a land grant of 35,521 acres. He set up businesses in Hawaii, Alaska and Mexican California. He was one of the first three members of the San Francisco School Board. In addition, he served as school board president. He donated his home for the city’s first public school.

Voters also elected Leidesdorff San Francisco’s first treasurer. In 1845, President James Polk named him as United States Vice Consul to Mexico at the Port of San Francisco.

Leidesdorff died on May 18, 1848. When his estate was auctioned off in 1856, it was worth more than $1.44 million.

In 2011, the California legislature recognized Leidesdorff as the African-founding father of California. Streets are named in his honor in San Francisco and Sacramento. In 2011, St. Croix honored Leidesdorff with a celebration.

His biography, William Alexander Leidesdorff: First Black Millionaire, American Consul and California Pioneer, was published in 2005.


October 24

1896 ----- Marjorie Stewart Joyner, who received patents for a scalp protector and a permanent-waving machine, was born on his day in Monterey, Va., according to the book Black Inventors: Crafting Over 200 Years of Success. Joyner was the first African-American graduate of the A.B. Molar Beauty School in Chicago.

After graduating, she went to work for Madam C. J. Walker, overseeing more than 200 of her beauty schools as a national advisor.  In 1928, Joyner received a patent for a permanent wave machine, which allowed hairstyles to last several days.

She also received a patent for a scalp protector. Both patents were assigned to Walker’s company. The permanent wave machine was in demand by customers, but Joyner, who later became a member of Walker’s board of directors, never received any financial benefit from her innovations, according to the book, The Inventive Spirit of African Americans: Patented Ingenuity.


October 25

1973 ----- Abebe Bikila, an Ethiopian runner who won the 1960 Olympic Marathon in Rome by running the entire 26.2 mile course in his bare feet, died on this day from injuries suffered in a car accident, which left him a paraplegic.

Bikila was a last-minute replacement for the Ethiopian Olympic Team. When he arrived in Rome, Adidas, the Olympics shoe sponsor, did not have any shoes that fit him. Bikila decided to run marathon in his bare feet, the way he had trained. He won the race in 2:15:16.2, becoming the first person from Sub-Saharan Africa, to win an Olympic Gold Medal.

His victory occurred 24 years after Italy’s  fascist  government conquered Ethiopia’s capital Addis Ababa, which caused strong protests among blacks in the United States.

Last April, the Guardian, a United Kingdom-based newspaper, listed Bikila’s 1960’s win as one of the 50 stunning moments in Olympic history.

Bikila was not scheduled to run in the 1964 Summer Olympics in Tokyo. However, he entered the marathon. This time he wore running shoes. He set a world record of 2:12:11; 2, which was four minutes and 8 seconds ahead of Basil Heatley of Great Britain, who won the silver medal.

After the race, Bikila stretched and said he wasn’t tired. “I could have run another 10 kilometers,” he told gawking reporters. Ten kilometers is more than six miles.


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