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Black Facts for February 6th

1990 - Martin Luther King Press Conference

CREATED BY

U.S. Information Agency.

USE RESTRICTIONS SPECIFIC RESTRICTIONS: Public Law 101-246

USE RESTRICTIONS NOTE: Issued February 6, 1990, this law provides for the domestic release and distribution of USIA motion pictures, films, videotapes, and other materials 12 years after initial dissemination overseas, or, if not disseminated, 12 years from the preparation of the material.

ONLINE RESOURCES:

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B001G5ZLH0

NOTE: A DVD of this film can be ordered from our partner, Amazon.com/NATIONALARCHIVES. A DVD of this film is ALSO available for viewing and copying free of charge in the NARA Research Room in the Motion Picture, Sound, and Video Records Section, National Archives at College Park, 8601 Adelphi Road, College Park, MD.

FOR MORE INFORMATION: http://arcweb.archives.gov/arc/action...

The March (1963, restored) - Duration: 33:12. US National Archives 20,813 views

A Day in the Death of Donny B., 1969 - Duration: 14:18. US National Archives 4,831 views

Scenes From American History, No. 5- A House Divided, 1960 - Duration: 2:00. US National Archives 1,752 views

We Are Afghanistan, 1984 - Duration: 2:09. US National Archives 3,378 views

President Kennedys News Conference No. 10, 1961 - Duration: 2:09. US National Archives 580 views

Television Journal Volume 2, Number 6, 1970 - Duration: 29:59. US National Archives 976 views

The March on Washington in Photographs - Duration: 3:05. US National Archives 25,031 views

Struggle for a Border: Canadas Relations With the U.S. - Duration: 2:09. US National Archives 243 views

Big Bethel Methodist Episcopal Church of Atlanta Petition to Congress - Duration: 4:43. US National Archives 3,831 views

Online Public Access to the National Archives - Duration: 1:55. US National Archives 3,758 views

Civil

1990 - A History of the Negro in America: The Civil War and Reconstruction

1950 - Natalie Cole

Natalie Maria Cole, the daughter of R&B legend Nat King Cole, was born on February 6, 1950, in Los Angeles, California. She has followed in her father’s footsteps to become one of the most heard-of R&B, soul and pop musicians of all time. An acclaimed, singer, songwriter and pianist, Cole has been active as an accomplished musician since the mid-1950s. Given all the necessary provisions a child can ask for, Cole has an Undergraduate Degree in Child Psychology after graduating from the University of Massachusetts. Having been recognized for a reformed voice in the R&B scheme of music, Cole has been awarded 9 Grammy Awards since 1976, including awards for Best R&B Vocal Performance, Album of the Year and Best Traditional Vocal Pop Album.

Cole began singing as early as the age of 6, when she performed as a backing vocalist on her father’s Christmas album. After graduation, she would perform in various clubs, most of whom would let her perform due to her affiliation with Nat King Cole. It was in one of the Chicago clubs where producers, Chuck Jackson and Marvin Yancy noticed Cole perform and were impressed by her soulful voice. In the next few months, Cole would work on several tracks with Jackson and Yancy in Los Angeles, furnishing the compositions which came out in 1975 in the form of Cole’s first album, Inseperable. Two tracks on the album, namely “This Will Be” and “Inseparable” became instant hits, topping the billboard charts at number 1. Cole also won Grammy awards for both songs. Cole was now reaching new heights in her career, and only a year later, released her second album, Natalie (1976). Like the album preceding it, Natalie became a top charter with songs like “Sophisticated Lady” and “Mr. Melody” becoming very popular with the fans. Cole’s decision to include Jazz and Funk elements in to the groovy context of the album worked out well, and was appreciated by her audience. This did not even come close to what Cole had imagined to be her career, as she next released her first platinum album,

1998 - Dellums, Ronald Vernie (1935- )

Ronald Vernie Dellums was born on November 24, 1935 in Oakland, California to Willa Terry Dellums and Vernie Dellums. His father Vernie Dellums was a longshoreman, and his mother was a labor organizer.  As a child, Ron attended St. Patrick Catholic School in Oakland.  

After high school Ron Dellums served in the United States Marine Corps from 1954 to 1956 after he was denied the college scholarship he had sought.  After service in the Marines Dellums, with the help of the G.I Bill and an outside job, attended San Francisco State College where he received a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1960.  This was followed by an M.A. in Social Welfare from the University of California at Berkeley in 1962.

In the same year Dellums began his career as a psychiatric social worker in the California Department of Mental Hygiene in Berkeley.  Dellums also taught at San Francisco State University and the University of California, Berkeley.  His work soon led him to become involved in community politics.  In 1967 at 32, Dellums was elected to the Berkeley City Council.  He quickly became known as the spokesperson for African American community affairs and for his radical political beliefs.  

After only three years on the Berkeley City Council, Dellums decided to run for Congress.  With high name recognition -- partly because his uncle, C.L. Dellums was a well known East Bay political activist and founding member of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters -- and with crucial campaign assistance from Coretta Scott King, the widow of slain civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., as well as from Berkeley’s powerful anti-Vietnam War organizations, 35-year-old Dellums was elected to Congress.  

Dellums quickly emerged as one of the most radical and outspoken Congressmen in Washington.  Within weeks of his election, Dellums called for Congressional investigations into alleged war crimes in Vietnam and co-founded the Congressional Black Caucus.  Two years later he began a long campaign to end the apartheid policies of South Africa

2015 - André Philippus Brink

André Philippus Brink , (born May 29, 1935, Vrede, South Africa—died February 6, 2015, in an airplane traveling from the Netherlands to South Africa), South African writer whose novels, which he wrote in Afrikaans and English versions, often criticized the South African government.

Brink was educated in South Africa and France. He later became professor of Afrikaans and Dutch literature at Rhodes University in Grahamstown, South Africa. He was one of a new generation of Afrikaans writers known as Die Sestigers (“the Sixtyers,” or writers of the 1960s), whose declared aim was “to broaden the rather too parochial limits of Afrikaner fiction.” In essence, this meant depicting sexual and moral matters and examining the political system in a way that rapidly antagonized the traditional Afrikaner reader.

Brink’s early novels Lobola vir die lewe (1962; “The Price of Living”) and Die ambassadeur (1963; The Ambassador) were essentially apolitical, but his later work presented increasingly bleak and bitter evidence of the disintegration of human values that occurs under apartheid. Kennis van die aand (1973; Looking on Darkness), ’N oomblik in die wind (1975; An Instant in the Wind), and Gerugte van reën (1978; Rumours of Rain) used the sexual relationship between a black man and a white woman to show the destructiveness of racial hatred. Brink was perhaps best known outside his homeland for the antiapartheid novel ’N droë wit seisoen (1979; A Dry White Season; film 1989), in which a white liberal investigates the death of a black activist in police custody. His later works include Houd-den-bek (1982; A Chain of Voices), which recounts through many points of view a slave revolt in 1825; Die kreef raak gewoond daaraan (1991; An Act of Terror); Anderkant die stilte (2002; The Other Side of Silence); Bidsprinkaan (2005; Praying Mantis); and Philida (2012). He also wrote plays and travel books and translated foreign literature into Afrikaans. Brink’s memoir, A Fork in the Road (2009), is a meditation on the evolution of his

2012 - About African-American Architect Norma Merrick Sklarek

Architect Norma Merrick Sklarek (born April 15, 1926 in Harlem, New York) worked behind the scenes on some of the largest architectural projects in America. Notable in architectural history as the first African-American woman registered architect in New York and California, Sklarek was also the first Black woman to be elected to the prestigious Fellow of the American Institute of Architects (FAIA).

In addition to being the production architect for many high-profile Gruen and Associates projects, Sklarek became a role model to many young women entering the male-dominated architecture profession.

Sklareks legacy as a mentor is profound. Because of the disparities she faced in her life and career, Norma Merrick Sklarek could be sympathetic to the struggles of others. She led with her charm, grace, wisdom, and hard work. She never excused racism and sexism but gave others the strength to deal with adversities. Architect Roberta Washington has called Sklarek the reigning mother hen to us all.

Norma Merrick was born to West Indian parents who had moved to Harlem, New York. Sklareks father, a doctor, encouraged her to excel in school and to seek a career in a field not normally open to females or to African-Americans. She attended Hunter High School, an all-girls magnate school, and Barnard College, a womans college associated with Columbia University, which did not accept women students.

In 1950 she earned a Bachelor of Architecture degree.

After receiving her degree, Norma Merrick was unable to find work at an architecture firm. She took a job at the New York Department of Public Works, and while working there from 1950 to 1954 she passed all of the tests to become a licensed architect in 1954.

She was then able to join the New York office of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM), working there from 1955 until 1960. Ten years after earning her architecture degree, she decided to move to the West coast.

It was Sklareks long association with Gruen and Associates in Los Angeles, California where she made her name

1919 - Haynes, Inez Maxine Pitter (1919-2004)

Inez Maxine Pitter Haynes, the middle sibling of the Pitter sisters, was born February 06, 1919 to Edward A. Pitter and Marjorie Allen Pitter, in Seattle, Washington.  In 1936 she graduated from Garfield High School and entered the University of Washington as a pre-nursing major, later changing to sociology.  As with her sisters, she had struggled in the University of Washington both because of the Great Depression and racial discrimination.  

While both of her sisters experienced similar challenges, Inez Pitter suffered the added component of skin color. She was brown-skinned, while they were both fair-skinned.   The College of Nursing refused to admit her because of her race.  The Dean of Nursing insisted that as an African American she could not stay in the same room as white nurses in Harborview Hall, the required dormitory for nursing students, and thus could not complete the program.  

Undaunted, Inez switched majors in her junior year and graduated from the University of Washington with a degree in sociology in 1941.  She left Seattle to attend the Lincoln School of Nursing in New York, where she received her nursing degree.  Years later in 1971, with two nursing degrees and extensive professional experience, Inez Maxine Pitter Haynes became an assistant professor of nursing at the University of Washington, the same school that denied her access to its nursing school.  In 1976 she left to teach at Seattle Pacific University, where she remained until she retired in 1981.  Inez Maxine Pitter Haynes died in 2004.  

Her only child, Edward C. Davis, III, was born during her marriage to her first husband, Mr. Edward C. Davis, Jr., who died in 1967.  Later she married Mr. Lionel B. Haynes, who preceded her in death.  During this union until her death, Mrs. Haynes enjoyed two stepdaughters, Phyllis and Lerna Haynes.

Juana R. Royster Horn, “The Academic and Extracurricular Undergraduate Experiences of Three Black Women At The University of Washington 1935 To 1941,” (Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Washington,