Dates:  June 3, 1906 -- April 12, 1975

Also Known As: Tumpie, Black Venus, Black Pearl, Freda Josephine McDonald (born as)

Dancing and Dreaming

On June 3, 1906, Freda Josephine McDonald was born illegitimately to Carrie McDonald (a laundress) and Eddie Carson (a vaudeville drummer), on Gratiot Street in St.

Liberian President William R. Tolbert Jr. and twenty-seven others were killed in coup detat by army enlisted men led by master Sergeant Samuel Doe.

Richard Allen and Absalom Jones organized Philadelphias Free African Society which Du Bois called the first wavering step of a people toward a more organized social life.

Martin Luther King, Jr. denounced Vietnam War which he said was rapidly degenerating into a sordid military adventure.

North Carolina legislature passed anti-Klan Law.

Emmet Ashford becomes the first African American major league umpire when he is named to the American League

Lying on the Atlantic in the southern part of West Africa, Liberia is bordered by Sierra Leone, Guinea, and Côte dIvoire. It is comparable in size to Tennessee. Most of the country is a plateau covered by dense tropical forests, which thrive under an annual rainfall of about 160 in. a year.

Republic.

Africas first republic, Liberia was founded in 1822 as a result of the efforts of the American Colonization Society to settle freed American slaves in West Africa. The society contended that the emigration of blacks to Africa was an answer to the problem of slavery and the incompatibility of the races. Over the course of forty years, about 12,000 slaves were voluntarily relocated. Originally called Monrovia, the colony became the Free and Independent Republic of Liberia in 1847.

The English-speaking Americo-Liberians, descendants of former American slaves, make up only 5% of the population, but have historically dominated the intellectual and ruling class. Liberias indigenous population is composed of 16 different ethnic groups.

The government of Africas first republic was modeled after that of the United States, and Joseph Jenkins Roberts of Virginia was elected the first president. Ironically, Liberias constitution denied indigenous Liberians equal to the lighter-skinned American immigrants and their descendants.

After 1920, considerable progress was made toward opening up the interior of the country, a process that facilitated by the 1951 establishment of a 43-mile (69-km) railroad to the Bomi Hills from Monrovia. In July 1971, while serving his sixth term as president, William V. S. Tubman died following surgery and was succeeded by his longtime associate, Vice President William R. Tolbert, Jr.

Tolbert was ousted in a military coup on April 12, 1980, by Master Sgt. Samuel K. Doe, backed by the U.S. government. Does rule was characterized by corruption and brutality. A rebellion led by Charles Taylor, a former Doe aide, and the National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL), started in Dec. 1989; the following

Louis, Missouri

June 3, 1906-April 12, 1975

At the age of sixteen, she starred in the musical Shuffle Along.

Robinson died after a long battle with Alzheimer’s disease and diabetes on April 12, 1989, in Los Angeles, California.

Alan Paton , in full Alan Stewart Paton (born January 11, 1903, Pietermaritzburg, Natal, South Africa—died April 12, 1988, near Durban, Natal), South African writer, best known for his first novel, Cry, the Beloved Country (1948), a passionate tale of racial injustice that brought international attention to the problem of apartheid in South Africa.

Paton studied at the University of Natal (later incorporated into the University of KwaZulu-Natal) and then taught school from 1925 to 1935. In 1935 Paton left his teaching position to direct Diepkloof Reformatory for delinquent urban African boys, near Johannesburg. The success of Cry, the Beloved Country, which he wrote during his tenure at the reformatory, led him to resign his post for full-time writing. The book vividly portrays the anguish suffered by an elderly black minister who must come to terms with his faith when his son is convicted of murdering a white man. Paton wrote the screenplay for the 1951 film adaptation.

Both Cry, the Beloved Country and Paton’s next novel, Too Late the Phalarope (1953), exhibit a characteristic balanced, economical, rhythmic prose, which has, especially in dialogue, a singing psalmodic tone. The Diepkloof period provided additional material for some short stories. During that period of his life, Paton became involved in South African politics. In 1953 he helped found the Liberal Party of South Africa to offer a nonracial alternative to apartheid; Paton was its national president until its enforced dissolution in 1968. His active opposition to the policy of apartheid led to confiscation of his passport from 1960 to 1970.

Paton wrote a notable biography, Hofmeyr (1964), a massive study of the parliamentarian and cabinet minister Jan Hofmeyr. Towards the Mountain (1980) is an autobiography of Paton’s first 45 years. In Ah, But Your Land Is Beautiful (1981), Paton returned to a fictional account of events in South Africa. The second volume of his autobiography, Journey Continued, was published in 1988 shortly after his death.

Tolbert was ousted in a military coup on April 12, 1980, by Master Sgt. Samuel K. Doe, backed by the U.S. government. Does rule was characterized by corruption and brutality. A rebellion led by Charles Taylor, a former Doe aide, and the National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL), started in Dec. 1989; the following year, Doe was assassinated. The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) negotiated with the government and the rebel factions and attempted to restore order, but the civil war raged on. By April 1996, factional fighting by the countrys warlords had destroyed any last vestige of normalcy and civil society. The civil war finally ended in 1997.

In what was considered by international observers to be a free election, Charles Taylor won 75% of the presidential vote in July 1997. The country had next to no health care system, and the capital was without electricity and running water. Taylor supported Sierra Leones brutal Revolutionary United Front (RUF) in the hopes of toppling his neighbors government and in exchange for diamonds, which enriched his personal coffers. As a consequence, the UN issued sanctions against Liberia.

In 2002, rebels—Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD)—intensified their attacks on Taylors government. By June 2003, LURD and other rebel groups controlled two-thirds of the country. Finally, on Aug. 11, Taylor stepped down and went into exile in Nigeria. By the time he was exiled, Taylor had bankrupted his own country, siphoning off $100 million and leaving Liberia the worlds poorest nation. Gyude Bryant, a businessman seen as a coalition builder, was selected by the various factions as the new president.

Richard Harvey Cain, founder of Paul Quinn College in Waco, Texas, born

Joe Louis, heavywieght boxing champion, dies at the age of 66. He held the world title for a record 12 years and won 68 of his 71 professional fights.

In 1810 The African Insurance Company was created with offices located at 159 Lombard Street in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.  It was the first African American-owned insurance company in the United States. The first president was Joseph Randolph while Cyrus Porter was treasurer and William Coleman was its secretary. The establishment of an insurance company by African Americans was a natural progression from beneficial societies that had emerged just after the American Revolution.

Beneficial societies were social and economic safety nets for an impoverished community; in Philadelphia the Free African Society established on April 12, 1787 charged members monthly dues in order to create a pool of money from which to draw if women were widowed, a member fell sick, or to provide a Christian burial for a member who died.  This assurance that one would be taken care of by an organization if any misfortune were to befall them was a powerful motivator to convince people to contribute to the Free African Society.  The Free African Society, however, was far from a non-profit; in 1790 it deposited a sum of $100 into Philadelphias Bank of North America. If members stayed healthy and deaths were minimal the Society hoped to accumulate a substantial amount of money that could be used for future payouts and that could reassure existing members that their needs would be properly addressed.

The African Insurance Company was established in 1810 as a for profit business built on the model of the Free African Society.  The company sought to capitalize on the rapidly growing free African American community in Philadelphia which included newcomers who either were not allowed in or did not choose to join the Free African Society but who nonetheless sought the security the society provided its members.  

The company, however, lasted only until 1813.  It failed to attract a significant customer base and its three officers were forced to relinquish their Lombard Street office and move the business into the home of William Coleman.  No

Herbie Hancock was born on April 12, 1940, in Chicago Illinois into a musical family.

Richard Harvey Cain was born a free black in Greenbrier County, Virginia on April 12, 1825.

Confederate soldiers attacked Fort Sumter, in the Charleston, S.C., harbor.

Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest captured Fort Pillow, Tenn., and massacred the inhabitants, sparing, the official report said, neither soldier nor civilian, Black nor white, male or female.

Lionel Hampton, musician and bandleader, Born April 12, 1913. He recorded with Louis Armstrong and worked with Benny Goodman and was also responsible for introducing the vibraphone into jazz.

Sugar Ray Robinson, five-time winner of the world middleweight boxing championship and unbeaten welterweight champion, dies.

On April 12, 1864, some 3,000 rebels under the command of Nathan Bedford Forrest overran Fort Pillow, a former Confederate stronghold situated on a bluff on the Tennessee bank of the Mississippi, some 40 miles north of Memphis. The garrison consisted of about 600 Union soldiers, roughly evenly divided between runaway slaves-turned-artillerists from nearby Tennessee communities and white Southern Unionist cavalry mostly from East Tennessee. Under a flag of truce which his men violated by creeping up on the fort, Forrest demanded the garrison’s surrender, threatening that if it refused he would not be responsible for the actions of his men. Believing Forrest was bluffing, Bradford refused, whereupon the Confederates swarmed over the parapet.

The overwhelmed garrison fled down the bluff to the river, where they were caught in a deadly crossfire. Forrest’s men continued to shoot well after the Federals had thrown down their weapons, and many men were killed in hospital tents or as they begged for mercy. By the next morning only about 65 blacks had survived a massacre that had continued intermittently through the night. More than seventy percent of the white survivors would perish in rebel prisons. The Confederates lost about 18 killed.

Northern Radicals seized on the massacre to inflame a wavering Northern public. Though Forrest initially described the river as “dyed with the blood of the slaughtered for 200 yards,” and his field commander bragged that his men had taught “the mongrel garrison” a memorable lesson, Forrest and his staff later either denied there was a massacre or blamed it on the garrison itself.

The Fort Pillow affair became a target of Southern revisionists, and many reference works balk at deeming the battle a massacre. But recent accounts drawn from primary sources conclude emphatically that a massacre did indeed transpire, and that Forrest’s field officers did little to stop it, for which Forrest himself bears the ultimate responsibility.

Copyright 2007-2017 - BlackPast.org v3.0 NDCHost -

Dates:  May 13, 1914 -- April 12, 1981

Also Known As: Joe Louis Barrow (born as), Joe Louis, the Brown Bomber 

Humble Beginnings

Joe Louis Barrow, the seventh of eight children, was born on May 13, 1914, to rural Lafayette, Alabama sharecroppers Munroe and Lillie Barrow.

Jacob Zuma , in full Jacob Gedleyihlekisa Zuma (born April 12, 1942, Nkandla, South Africa), politician who became president of South Africa in 2009.

Leontyne

Price, opera

singer, is

awarded The

Order of

Merit of the

Italian

Republic.

Born Freda Josephine McDonald in St. Louis, Missouri, she later took the name Baker from her stepfather. Surviving the 1917 riots in East St. Louis, Illinois, where the family was living, she ran away a few years alter at age thirteen and began dancing in vaudeville and on Broadway. In 1925, she went to Paris where, after the jazz revue La Revue Nègre failed, her comic ability and jazz dancing drew attention of the director of the Folies Bergère.She died of a stroke.

Sir Grantley H. Adams, political leader, president of Barbados, born on this day.

Jimmy Winkfield, born on April 12, 1882, became famous as an early 20th Century horse jockey.

Josephine Baker died in Paris on April 12, 1975 soon after a party given in her honor.

Josephine Baker is best remembered for dancing topless and wearing a banana skirt. Baker’s popularity rose during the 1920s for dancing in Paris. Yet until her death in 1975, Baker was devoted to fighting against injustice and racism throughout the world.

Early Life

Josephine Baker was born Freda Josephine McDonald on June 3, 1906. Her mother, Carrie McDonald, was a washerwoman and her father, Eddie Carson was a vaudeville durmmer.

The family lived in St. Louis before Carson left to pursue his dreams as a performer.

By the age of eight, Baker was working as a domestic for rich white families. At the age of 13, she ran away and worked as a waitress.

Timeline of Baker’s Work as a Performer

1919: Baker begins touring with the Jones Family Band as well as the Dixie Steppers. Baker performed comedic skits and danced.

1923: Baker lands a role in the Broadway musical Shuffle Along. Performing as a member of the chorus, Baker added her comedic persona, making her popular with audiences.

Baker moves to New York City. She is soon performing in Chocolate Dandies. She also performs with Ethel Waters at the Plantation Club.

1925 to 1930: Baker travels to Paris and performs in La Revue Nègre at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées. French audiences were impressed with Baker’s performance—especially Danse Sauvage, in which she wore only a feather skirt.

1926: Baker’s career hits its peak. Performing at Folies Bergère music hall, in a set called La Folie du Jour, Baker danced topless, wearing a skirt made of bananas. The show was successful and Baker became one of the most popular and highest-paid performers in Europe. Writers and artists such as Pablo Picasso, Ernest Hemingway and E.

E. Cummings were fans. Baker also was nicknamed “Black Venus” and “Black Pearl.”

1930s: Baker begins singing and recording professional. She also plays the lead in several films including Zou-Zou andPrincesse Tam-Tam.

1936: Baker returned to the United States and performed. She was met with hostility and racism by audiences. She returned to France

Contemporary jazz composer and musician Herbie Hancock was born in Chicago, Illinois.