Jack Johnson, heavyweight boxing champion

Died: June 10, 1946

Howlin’ Wolf, a nickname for Chester Arthur Burnett, was an American Blues musician, born on June 10, 1910, in White Station, Mississippi.

Ann’s Bay, Jamaica—died June 10, 1940, London, England), charismatic black leader who organized the first important American black nationalist movement (1919–26), based in New York City’s Harlem.

Joseph de Bologne was born December 25, 1745 on a plantation near Basse-Terre, on the French Caribbean island of Guadeloupe. His mother was Anne Nanon, slave-mistress of his father, the nobleman George de Bologne de Saint-Georges. He was educated in France, where his father became Gentleman of the Kings Chamber. At 13, he began 6 years at the fencing academy of Nicolas Texier de La Böessière. He excelled at fencing and sports. Joseph was 17 when he became Le Chevalier de Saint-Georges. He was also an Officer of the Kings Guard.

By age 19, Saint-Georges was called the god of arms. He suffered only one known defeat in a serious fencing match. His skill on the harpsichord and violin earned him dedications from major composers, beginning with Antonio Lolli in 1764. He studied with the French composers François-Joseph Gossec and Jean-Marie Leclair, and became first violin, or concertmaster, of Le Concert des amateurs. His string quartets were among the first in France and were performed from 1772 and published from 1773, when he was became conductor of Le Concert des amateurs.

His bid to manage the Paris Opera failed when 3 women objected to working for a mulatto, but he then directed the prestigious musical theater of the Marquise de Montesson. He published two symphony concertantes in 1776 and two more in 1778. In 1777 he wrote three violin concertos and six string quartets. Early in 1779, Saint-Georges began performing music with Queen Marie-Antoinette. He was an early Black Mason in France. When his orchestra closed, Masons organized the Concert de la Loge Olympique. During the French Revolution, Saint-Georges was Colonel of 1,000 volunteers of color and heroically halted The Treason of Dumouriez. He was imprisoned for 11 months on false charges, then acquitted. He took control of Le Cercle de LHarmonie in 1797, and died on June 10, 1799. Dozens of CDs of his music are available, as is a DVD, Le Mozart Noir.

Joseph Sylvester Jackson became the first executive secretary of the newly founded Seattle Urban League when it received its charter from the national headquarters in New York in 1930.  Little is known about Jackson before 1928.  That year he graduated from Livingston College in Salisbury, North Carolina.  In September, 1928 he entered the New York School of Social Work as a Fellow of the National Urban League.  He also worked  briefly at the Brooklyn Urban League.  

After arriving in Seattle from New York, Jackson quickly became a “one man professional staff,” and plunged the organization into working on a number of problems facing the city’s small black community at the beginning of the Great Depression.  In his first year Jackson initiated community health and recreation programs such as Negro Health Week, the Vocational Opportunity Program, and presentations to white and Asian groups about the League and black Seattle.  In 1931 Jackson organized a black branch of the Unemployed Citizen’s League and two years later, a secretarial school.

Despite his busy schedule of Urban League activities, Jackson also took time to play the lead actor in the Seattle Negro Repertory Theater’s 1933 production of In Abraham’s Bosom at the Seattle Repertory Playhouse. Throughout the 1930s, Joseph S. Jackson accumulated statistics on the education, health and employment of black Seattle. In 1938 Jackson lead a public campaign to remove three Seattle police officers who were accused of causing the death of Berry Lawson, a hotel waiter.  Jackson’s investigation of the Lawson incident and his public challenge to officials to act in the matter led to the prosecution of the three officers.   On June 10, 1938, the three officers were convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to twenty years in prison. In 1939, Jackson left Seattle.

President, Seattle Urban League

In 2005, John Tucker Mugabi Sentamu was installed as the Anglican Church’s Archbishop of York.  Sentamu was born on June 10, 1949, the sixth of 13 children of Rev. John and Ruth Walakira in a village outside Kampala, Uganda. Taught by British missionaries and expatriates who encouraged his intellectual development and ambitions, in 1971 he earned his law degree at Makerere University in Kampala. His practice of law in Uganda ceased when he was jailed and nearly beaten to death for having opposed President Idi Amin’s dictatorship. He fled to England in 1974 and began studying theology at Cambridge University where, after being ordained an Anglican priest in 1979, he was awarded the doctorate in theology in 1984.  

Having served as assistant chaplain at Selwyn College at Cambridge University and several stints as an Anglican parish priest, in 1996 Sentamu, a popular figure known for his “lively sermons” and allowing “music and dancing in the aisles,” was elevated to Bishop of Stepney in the Diocese of London.

In 1997, partly because of his brief experience as a judge in Uganda and because of his respected position of Bishop of Stepney, Sentamu was asked and agreed to serve as an advisor to a judicial inquiry into the racially motivated killing of black college student Stephen Lawrence which had occurred three years prior. His role in the investigation prompted threatening hate mail. In 2002, he again received national attention for his role in chairing the investigation of another controversial murder, that of 10-year-old Nigerian immigrant Damilola Taylor. Sentamu himself became the victim of a brutal racist assault which sent him to the hospital. Also during the period of the investigation in 2002 he was named Bishop of Birmingham, and within a few years was selected President of Youth for Christ and named President of YMCA England.

Since becoming the 97th Archbishop of York in 2005--which includes a seat in the House of Lords and admission to the Privy Council of the United Kingdom--Sentamu has been

Harlems Cotton Club closes.

Improved Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks founded in Cincinnati.

Johnson died in an automobile accident on June 10, 1946, in Raleigh, North Carolina.

Hattie McDaniel, Oscar winning actress, born

Ferdinand Léopold Oyono , (born September 14, 1929, Ngoulemakong, Cameroon—died June 10, 2010, Yaoundé), African statesman, actor, and comic writer whose two best-known works—Une Vie de boy (1956; Houseboy) and Le Vieux Nègre et la médaille (1956; The Old Man and the Medal), written while he was studying law and administration in Paris—reflect the growing sentiment of anticolonialism of the 1950s.

During the 1950s, while writing his first two books, Oyono worked in Paris as an actor on stage and on television. In 1960, however, he returned to Cameroon and entered the diplomatic corps, becoming special envoy in 1961–62 to Guinea, Mali, Senegal, and Morocco. Between 1963 to 1975 he was ambassador to Liberia, the Benelux countries, the European Common Market, France, Italy, Tunisia, Morocco, and Algeria. He then served the United Nations (UN) as chairman of the Security Council, of the UNICEF Board, of the Security Council’s Political Committee, and of the Council on Namibia. After serving as ambassador to the United Kingdom (1984–85), Oyono returned to Cameroon to take various posts in the cabinet.

Oyono’s first book, Houseboy, is written in the form of a diary. It depicts honestly but with humour the often brutal life of a houseboy in the service of a French commandant. The Old Man and the Medal satirizes colonialism through the eyes of a God-fearing and loyal old villager who completely reverses his opinion of the white man on the same day that he is to receive a medal for his “service” (sacrifices of his sons and land) to France. In both novels Oyono’s indictment of paternalistic missionaries and administrators is clear. He perfected an ironic tone that conveys the full tragedy and pain of the lives of the common people, usually illiterate peasant farmers, who naively accept the doctrines of French colonialism. In mocking the foibles of the self-deluded colonial masters as well as the simple villagers, Oyono often painted hilarious portraits, putting his early experience as an actor in theatrical farce to

James Augustine Healy, first Black American Roman Catholic bishop, ordained a priest in Notre Dame Cathedral, Paris.

Ray Charles , original name Ray Charles Robinson (born September 23, 1930, Albany, Georgia, U.S.—died June 10, 2004, Beverly Hills, California), American pianist, singer, composer, and bandleader, a leading black entertainer billed as “the Genius.” Charles was credited with the early development of soul music, a style based on a melding of gospel, rhythm and blues, and jazz music.

When Charles was an infant his family moved to Greenville, Florida, and he began his musical career at age five on a piano in a neighbourhood café. He began to go blind at six, possibly from glaucoma, and had completely lost his sight by age seven. He attended the St. Augustine School for the Deaf and Blind, where he concentrated on musical studies, but left school at age 15 to play the piano professionally after his mother died from cancer (his father had died when the boy was 10).

Charles built a remarkable career based on the immediacy of emotion in his performances. After emerging as a blues and jazz pianist indebted to Nat King Cole’s style in the late 1940s, Charles recorded the boogie-woogie classic “Mess Around” and the novelty song “It Should’ve Been Me” in 1952–53. His arrangement for Guitar Slim’s “The Things That I Used to Do” became a blues million-seller in 1953. By 1954 Charles had created a successful combination of blues and gospel influences and signed on with Atlantic Records. Propelled by Charles’s distinctive raspy voice, “I’ve Got a Woman” and “Hallelujah I Love You So” became hit records. “What’d I Say” led the rhythm and blues sales charts in 1959 and was Charles’s own first million-seller.

Charles’s rhythmic piano playing and band arranging revived the “funky” quality of jazz, but he also recorded in many other musical genres. He entered the pop market with the best-sellers “Georgia on My Mind” (1960) and “Hit the Road, Jack” (1961). His album Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music (1962) sold more than a million copies, as did its single “I Can’t Stop Loving You.” Thereafter his music emphasized jazz

Hattie McDaniel was a renowned actress, entertainer and radio performer. She was the youngest of thirteen children born to Henry and Susan Holbert on June 10, 1895 in Wichita, Kansas. Her father was a Baptist minister and minstrel performer, and her mother was a gospel singer. The family moved to Denver when Hattie was a child where she attended both elementary and high school. At school, she was one of the only two black children. Before finishing high school, however, she quit in order to train as an entertainer in her father’s minstrel troupe. She was very fond of singing and dancing, and performed at school, church and in the troupe. In 1920, she joined Professor George Morrison’s orchestra and toured with them for 5 years. During this time, she was invited to perform on radio, making her the first African American woman to sing on the radio in the U.S. She also recorded many of her songs with Okeh Records and Paramount Records.

After the stock market crash in 1929, everyone was desperate for work. In order to supplement her income, Hattie McDaniel often took on all types of work such as washroom attendant, waitress and other odd jobs. She found work as a singer at a club in Milwaukee, where she became a regular performer. A couple of years later, she moved to Los Angeles where two of her siblings Sam and Etta were working in films. Sam managed to get Hattie a part in a radio show called The Optimistic Do-Nut Hour. She also found work in films, her roles ranging from very minor ones to leading roles. Some of her films include The Golden West, I’m No Angel, The Little Colonel, Judge Priest, China Seas, Murder By Television, Vivacious Lady, Show Boat, Saratoga, The Shopworn Angel and Alice Adams.

Her most well known role is that of “Mammy” in the film “Gone With The Wind” starring Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh. Her character was that of a sassy maid to the film’s heroine. The competition for the role was quite intense, and even Eleanor Roosevelt wrote to the film’s producer, asking for her own maid to be cast

Jack Johnson died on June 10, 1946 in an automobile accident in Raleigh, North Carolina and was elected to the Boxing Hall of Fame in 1954.

Death of Marcus Garvey (52), London, England.

U.S. Senate imposed cloture for first time on a civil rights measure, ending Southern Filibuster by a vote of 71-29. Civil rights bill, with public accommodation and fair employment sections, was signed by President Johnson on July 2.

Rhythm & blues singer Howlin Wolf is born Chester Arthur Burnett in West Point, MS, USA. His most popular and influential songs include Smokestack Lightning and Killing Floor.

Birthday of Richard Allen who was born a slave near Philadelphia. He would later found the African Methodist Episcopal Church.

The Hotel Robinson, built in 1897, was one of the first businesses in San Diego County, California to be owned and operated by an African American, and the oldest continuously operated hotel in Southern California. The hotel is now a part of the National Register of Historic Places and is a Point of Historic Interest for the state of California, thanks to the present owners’ efforts.

Albert Robinson and his wife, Margaret Tull Robinson, originally ran the hotel. Margaret Tull’s father was the first African American man to be a juror in San Diego County. Her mother, Susan Tull, owned property and was possibly the financial backer of the building of the hotel.

Albert Robinson was born a slave in 1845 in Missouri, but the exact location is not known. During the Civil War, he befriended a military officer and came to San Diego with the officer after the war. The officer may have been Major Levi Chase, who came to San Diego in 1868, but this cannot be confirmed. In 1886 Robinson was living in Julian and was a cook for a ranch. He met Margaret Tull, a San Diego native, and married her that year. As a wedding gift from Margaret’s parents, the couple received a piece of land in Julian, which would become the site of the hotel.

Soon after their marriage, the Robinsons opened a restaurant and bakery, named the Robinson Restaurant and Bakery. Margaret served a Sunday night chicken dinner every night that quickly made their restaurant popular within the community. For almost a decade, the restaurant enjoyed success.

In 1897 the Robinson Restaurant and Bakery was demolished to begin construction on the Hotel Robinson. Margaret’s mother, Susan, was most likely involved in financing the construction. Local community members, C. R. Wellington and F.L. Blanc, oversaw the construction. It was completed and opened in the same year. The hotel was built with fourteen guest rooms, a full kitchen, dining room, and a parlor room.

The hotel became a social center of the community, famous for its hospitality and cooking. Many settlers