Twenty-three killed in Newark rebellion. The racial uprising spread to ten of the citys twenty-three square miles. More than 1,500 persons were injured and 1,300 were arrested. Police reported 300 fires. The Newark rebellion, the worst outbreak of racial violence since Watts, spread to other New Jersey communities, including New Brunswick, Englewood, Paterson, Elizabeth, Palmyra, Passaic, and plainfield. The National Guard was mobilized.

Death of John W. Davis (92), civil rights activists and former president of West Virginia State College, in Englewood, New Jersey.

Emmy Award winning actress Beah Richards was born this day in Vicksbury, Mississippi.

William (Bill) Henry Cosby was born on this day.

Brazilian political activist Beatriz Nascimento was born on July 12, 1942, to Rubina Pereira do Nascimento and Francisco Xavier de Nascimento in Aracaju, capital of the Northeast Brazilian state of Sergipe.

Actress and founder of the Negro Peoples Theater, Rose McClendon dies

Race riot, Chicago. National Guard mobilized.

Susie Sumner Revels, a daughter of Hiram Revels, the first U.S. Senator of African descent, arrived in Seattle, Washington from Mississippi in 1896. Her reason, she stated, during a 1936 Washington Pioneers Project interview, was the man she was going to marry was here. He was Horace Roscoe Cayton, publisher of The Seattle Republican. The two were married on July 12, 1896.

Susie Revels Cayton soon became a leader in Seattle’s black community. She was named associate editor of The Seattle Republican and, later, contributing editor of Cayton’s Weekly. She was an active member of cultural and social organizations designed to improve the conditions of African Americans, including the Sunday Forum, a group of black Seattleites that met on a regular basis. Along with three other black women, Susie Cayton founded the Dorcus Charity Club in response to an urgent plea to help a set of abandoned twins. The club continued its charitable work for years.

Even with her family, newspaper and civic responsibilities, Susie Cayton managed to write short stories. Many appeared in The Seattle Republican and Cayton’s Weekly, and at least one, Sally the Egg-Woman, appeared in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer (June 3, 1900). Horace Cayton wrote, in 1917 . . .[S]he is a splendid short story writer and were she able to devote her time and talent to . . . writing, she would soon rank among the best short story writers in the country.  Shortly after her husband’s death in 1940, Susie Cayton moved to Chicago where she died in 1943.

Association for African American Historical Research and Preservation (AAAHRP)

Jones, F. M.

Air Conditioning Unit

July 12, 1949

Patent No. 2475841

National Guard troops imposed limited martial law in Cambridge, Md., after open confrontations between demonstrators and white segregationists.

Governor Adlai Stevenson, called out National Guard to stop rioting in Cicero, Illinois. Mob of 3,500 tried to keep Black family from moving into all-white city.

Jones, F. M.

Starter Generator

July 12, 1949

Patent No. 2475842

Mound Bayou, an all African American town in Mississippi is founded by Isaiah Montgomery

Chenjerai Hove, (born Feb. 9, 1956, Mazvihwa, near Zvishavane, Southern Rhodesia [now in Zimbabwe]—died July 12, 2015, Stavanger, Nor.), Zimbabwean novelist, poet, and essayist who explored the lives of ordinary people in his homeland under British colonial rule and during Pres. Robert Mugabe’s postindependence regime. Hove was the son of a polygamous local chieftain. He was educated at Roman Catholic missionary schools, Gwelo Teachers’ College (1975–77), the University of South Africa (1980–83; through its external learning program), and the University of Zimbabwe (1984–85). Hove taught at rural schools in Zimbabwe and later at several universities abroad. He also served as an editor at Mambo Press and Zimbabwe Publishing House and was the inaugural president (1984–92) of the Zimbabwe Writers’ Union. After enduring several years of surveillance and harassment, Hove, a fierce public critic of Mugabe, fled Zimbabwe into exile in 2001. He eventually settled in Norway under the auspices of the International Cities of Refuge Network. Hove’s best-known work, the novel Bones (1988), followed a rural woman in colonial Rhodesia seeking to learn the fate of her son, who left the farm to join a band of liberation fighters. The novel won both the Zimbabwe Book Publishers Association Award for Literature (1988) and the Noma Award for Publishing in Africa (1989). His other novels include Shadows (1991), Ancestors (1996), and the Shona-language Masimba avanhu? (1986; “Is This the People’s Power?”). Among his poetry collections are Up in Arms (1982), Red Hills of Home (1985), Rainbows in the Dust (1998), and Blind Moon (2003). Hove also wrote a radio play, Sister, Sing Again Someday (1988), essay collections, and a memoir, Homeless Sweet Home (2011).

Melinda C. Shepherd