NorthStar’s Week in Black History

October 4 to October 10


October 4

1864 ----- The New Orleans Tribune, America’s first daily African-American newspaper, published its first edition on this date. Louis Charles Roudanez, MD, founded the paper, which was published originally in both French and English. The Tribune was dedicated to social justice and civil rights for all citizens of Louisiana.

Born free in New Orleans’ St. James parish in 1823, Roudanez was the son of a French businessman and a black woman. As a young man, Roudanez earned a medical degree in Paris and a second medical degree at Dartmouth College.

In 1862, when Union troops gained control of New Orleans during the Civil War, Roudanez decided to work in earnest for equal rights for free black men. He founded and published a political journal, L’Union, which was written entirely in French. The paper was the first black paper published in Louisiana.

Though L’Union folded in two years for a lack of funding, Roudanez was undaunted and founded The New Orleans Tribune almost immediately following L’Union’s demise. The Tribune was the first bilingual newspaper published in the United States. Roudanez funded the paper with his own money.

The paper took strong civil rights stands, including demanding full citizenship and equality for free people of color, weekly wages for recently emancipated slaves and free universal public education.

The Tribune ceased publication in 1870, and Roudanez devoted his time to his medical practice and to his family. He died at 67 in 1890.

In 1985, The New Orleans Tribune was resurrected and continues to inform the city’s African-American community. The paper is published by McKenna Publishing Co., which also publishes The Black Book, a community directory of African-American businesses, and Welcome, a tourist guide to New Orleans, geared to African-Americans visitors.


October 5

1957 ----- Stand-up comedian and actor, Bernard Jeffrey “Bernie Mac” McCullough, was born and raised in Chicago. He would become one of America’s most popular entertainers and was the creator of a multiple award-winning television sit-com.

At the age of eight, Bernie Mac performed his first comedy sketch in a church talent show, imitating his grandparents at the dinner table.

After his mother, brother, father and grandmother died in rapid succession, Mac dealt with the loss by telling jokes and making people laugh. He earned spare change by working the subway stations of Chicago, performing impromptu comedy routines. He also took on a variety of odd jobs, making money any way he could. Eventually, he created several routines that he performed during a weekly variety show he was offered at Chicago’s Regal Theatre. From the Regal, Mac joined in comedy club circuit in 1977.

Bernie Mac also pulled down acting jobs. He appeared in the role of a doorman in the 1992 comedy Mo’ Money and as a pastor in Friday in 1995. At the same time he was landing film roles, he was a frequent guest on HBO’s Def Comedy. His popularity grew rapidly and he was more in demand. Spike Lee offered Mac a starring role in his film, The Original Kings of Comedy (2000).

In 2001, Bernie Mac appeared in Oceans 11. That same year, his semi-autobiographical situation comedy show debuted on Fox Television. The Bernie Mac Show ran until 2006. In 2002, the show won an Emmy for outstanding writing and a Peabody Award for excellence in broadcasting. And in 2002 and 2003, Mac was nominated for the Emmy for outstanding lead actor in a comedy series. He won the Emmy in that category in both 2005 and 2006.

In 2003, Mac starred in the film Mr. 3000, and in 2008, he starred in Soul Man, a film he completed just before his death. Two more of his films, Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa and Old Dogs, were released posthumously. Earlier this year, a section of 69th Street at Sangamon Street in Chicago's Englewood neighborhood was named for Mac. The street sign commemorates his life and the location of the house where he grew up.

Bernie Mac died of sarcoidosis, complicated by pneumonia on August 8, 2008. He was 50.


October 6

1871 ----- The nine-member a cappella group, the Fisk Jubilee Singers, began their first national tour on this date to raise funds for Fisk University, Nashville, Tenn.

The group, formed and directed by George L. White, music professor and treasurer at Fisk, performed traditional spirituals and songs by Stephen Foster, tunes popular at the time. The group was soon in great demand. In 1872, they sang in Boston at the World’s Peace Jubilee and International Music Festival, and later that year, they were invited by President Ulysses S. Grant to perform at the White House and before the U. S. Congress in a special concert.

A year later, the Jubilee Singers added two members to their group and toured throughout Europe, performing and raising money for the construction of Fisk University’s first permanent building, Jubilee Hall. In 1975, the United States Department of the Interior designated the building a National Historic Landmark.

The original Jubilee Singers disbanded in 1978 because the demands of touring exhausted the singers. A new choir was formed in 1879.

Now a 14-member ensemble, the Jubilee Singers continue to perform and tour. In 2000, the group was inducted into the Gospel Music Hall of Fame, and in 2002, the Library of Congress honored their 1909 recording of “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” by including it in the United States National Recording Registry. In 2008, the Jubilee Singers were awarded the National Medal of the Arts.


October 7

1897 ----- Elijah Poole, who later became leader of the National of Islam, was born on this day in Sandersville, Ga.

Poole dropped out of school in the fourth grade to work in the fields and later in factories. In 1923, Poole and his family moved to Hamtramck, Mich. Eight years later, he converted to Islam and changed his name to Muhammad and was named a minister of Islam. In 1934, he was sentenced to four years in prison for instructing his followers not to sign up for Selective Service to serve in the military.
After his release from prison, the Nation of Islam experienced significant growth. The Honorable Elijah Muhammad died on February 24,1975.


October 8

1999 ----- John B. McLendon, Jr., who became the first black basketball coach of a predominantly white university, died on this day. In 1966, McLendon was named coach of Cleveland State University, which was considered a breakthrough in sports.

McLendon's teams were credited with increasing the pace of basketball from the slow tempo of the early years. In 1969, he retired from coaching. He was inducted into the Naismith Hall of Fame in 1979, and he was posthumously inducted into the College Basketball Hall of Fame in 2007. His biography, "Breaking Through: John B. McLendon, Basketball Legend and Civil Rights Pioneer," was published in 2007.


October 9

1894 ----- Eugene Jacques Bullard, the only black pilot in World War 1, was born on this day in Columbus, Ga.

While on a trip to Paris in 1914, World War 1 started and Bullard joined the French Foreign Legion. Two years later, he was wounded in battle and was awarded Croix de Guerre. He then joined the French Air Force, flying 20 missions and shooting down enemy aircraft. Bullard’s life story is told in The Black Swallow of Death and Eugene Bullard: Black Expatriate in Jazz Age Paris.


October 10

1901 ----- Frederick Douglass Patterson, founder of the United Negro College Fund, was born on this day in Washington, D.C.

Patterson was president of Tuskegee Institute, when in 1943, he proposed a consortium of black colleges that would raise money for their mutual benefit. The next year, 27 colleges came together to form the United Negro College Fund.


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