(Photo By Flickr User Canadian Film Centre)
Do you want to see what’s happening in Black History?
Let’s do a fly-by and take a look at who is being saluted on this day in Black History Scope Weekend……..…
Black History Scope for February 18th:
2013- R&B singer (and former member of The Temptations) Damon Harris, passed away at aged 62.
2010- President Barack Obama met with the Dalai Lama on this day at the White House.
2009- Rhythm and blues singer and guitarist Fird “Snooks” Eaglin, Jr., a local New Orleans legend who played and recorded with a host of other well known musicians, passed away on this day of a heart attack. He was 70 years old.
2007- Frank M. Snowden Jr., a Howard University classicist whose research into blacks in ancient Greece and Rome opened a new field of study. Much of Snowden’s scholarship centered on one point: that blacks in the ancient world seemed to have been spared the virulent racism common to later Western civilization. He died of congestive heart failure on this day in Washington, DC. He was 95 years old.
1986- San Antonio’s Alvin Robertson scored NBA’s 2nd quadruple double- 20 points, 11 rebounds, 10 assists, & 10 steals against Phoenix.
1985- Lee Boyd Malvo was born on this day in Kingston, Jamaica. He, along with John Allen Muhammad, went on a killing spree in 2002. He is currently serving multiple sentences of life imprisonment without parole.
1984- Cameo hit the charts for the 21st time in seven years with what would become their biggest hit “She’s Strange” on this day.
1982- Gold medalist and the first African-American to win an individual Gold Medal at the 2006 Winter Olympics, Shani Davis, was born on this day. Also, rapper, producer and actor Juelz Santana (LaRon Louis James) was born on this day in New York City, NY.
1973- Palmer Hayden, Harlem Renaissance artist, died on this day.
1967- Tracey Edmonds (Tracey Elaine McQuarn) was born on this day in Los Angeles, CA. She is the CEO of Edmonds Entertainment Group Inc and COO of Our Stories Films. She currently sits on the National Board of Directors for the Producers Guild of America.
1965- Integration leader, C.T. Vivian, reached a tragic climax when black civil rights protester 26-year-old Jimmie Lee Jackson was shot by a state trooper while defending his mother and grandfather from white state troopers in Marion, AL on this day. Eight days later, he would be pronounced dead. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., visited Jackson in the hospital before he died, and delivered a moving eulogy at his funeral. Four decades passed before any charges were filed: 40+ years after the shooting, state trooper James Bonard Fowler was finally indicted of the murder. He pleaded guilty to a lesser charge, second-degree manslaughter, and was finally sentenced to jail in 2010 (only for six months). Also on this day, Grammy Award winning Record producer, rapper entrepreneur, and actor Dr. Dre (Andre Romelle Young), was born on this day in Los Angeles, CA.
1956- “The Great Pretender” by the Platters, was the number one song on this day and had a two week run at the top of the charts. Also, Frankie Lymon & the Teenagers’ “Why Do Fools Fall in Love” charted on this day reaching #1 on the R&B charts and #6 on the Pop charts.
1941- Grammy Award winning R&B/Soul singer Irma Thomas “The Soul Queen of New Orleans,” was born on this day in Ponchatoula, LA.
1934- Activist, feminist and Caribbean poet, Andre Lorde, was born on this day. She passed away in 1992.
1931- Toni Morrison (born Chloe Anthony Wofford) who will win the Pulitzer Prize for her novel Beloved, is born in Lorain, OH.
1896- H. Grenon patents razor stropping device on this day.
1894- Paul Revere Williams, renowned architect, born on this day.
1867- An institution was founded at Augusta, GA which was later to become Morehouse College, following its relocation to Atlanta, GA.
1865- Rebels abandoned Charleston. First Union troops to enter the city included Twenty-First U.S.C.T., followed by two companies of the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts Volunteers.
1688- First formal protest against slavery by organized white body in English America made by Germantown (PA) Quakers at monthly meeting. The historic “Germantown Protest” denounced slavery and the slave trade.
Black History Scope for February 19th:
1864-Knights of Pythias established. Confederate troops defeated three Black and six white regiments at Battle of Olustee, about fifty miles from Jacksonville, FL.
1919-Pan-African Congress, organized by W.E.B. Du Bois, met a Grand Hotel, Paris. There were fifty-seven delegates sixteen from the United States and fourteen from Africa form sixteen countries and colonies. Blaise Diagne of Senegal was elected president and Du Bois was named secretary.
1940-Soul singer William “Smokey” Robinson born in Detroit, MI. Robinson’s first singing group was the Miracles which he formed in 1955 while still in high school. The group’s first success came in 1960 with the hit, “Shop Around.”
1942-The Army Air Corps’ all African American 100th Pursuit Squadron, later designated a fighter squadron, was activated at Tuskegee Institute. The squadron served honorably in England and in other regions of the European continent during World War II.
1992-John Singleton,the first African-American director to be nominated for the Academy Award, is nominated for best director and best screenplay for his first film Boyz N the Hood
1996-Concert singer Dorothy Maynor dies on this day (1910-1996).
2002-Vonetta Flowers, became the first black gold medalist in the history of the Winter Olympic Games. She and partner Jill Brakken won the inagural women’s two-person bobsled event.
(Information courtesy of blackfacts.com)
