1965
The United States
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January 12
Playwright Lorraine Hansberry, the author of
A Raisin in the Sun, died in New York.
*Playwright Lorraine Hansberry, the author of A Raisin in the Sun, was born in Chicago (May 19),
Lorraine Vivian Hansberry (b. May 19, 1930, Chicago, Illinois – d. January 12, 1965, New York City, New York) was an American playwright and writer. Hansberry inspired Nina Simone's song "To Be Young, Gifted and Black".
She was the first black woman to write a play performed on Broadway. Her best known work, the play A Raisin in the Sun, highlights the lives of African Americans living under racial segregation in Chicago. Hansberry's family had struggled against segregation, challenging a restrictive covenant and eventually provoking the Supreme Court case Hansberry v. Lee. The title of her most famous play was taken from the poem "Harlem" by Langston Hughes: "What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?"
After she moved to New York City, Hansberry worked at the Pan-Africanist newspaper Freedom, where she dealt with intellectuals such as Paul Robeson and W. E. B. Du Bois. Much of her work during this time concerned the African struggle for liberation and their impact on the world. Hansberry has been identified as a lesbian, and sexual freedom is an important topic in several of her works. She died of cancer at the age of 34.
Lorraine Hansberry was born in a comfortable, middle-class family in Chicago, and was educated at the University of Wisconsisn and Roosevelt University. She first appeared in print in Paul Robeson's Freedom, a monthly newspaper, during the early 1950's. In 1959, A Raisin in the Sun, her first play, was produced on Broadway. It was among the first full-length African American plays to be taken seriously by a European American audience.
The success of A Raisin in the Sun catapulted Hansberry to an early fame. She was expected to be a spokesperson for the African American poor, when in fact she was more attuned to the aspirations of the African American bourgeoisie. Hansberry was very militant about integration and not supportive of black nationalist or separatist movements.
Lorraine Vivian Hansberry was the first black woman to write a play performed on Broadway. Her best known work, the play A Raisin in the Sun, highlights the lives of Black Americans living under racial segregation in Chicago. Hansberry's family had struggled against segregation, challenging a restrictive covenant and eventually provoking the Supreme Court case Hansberry v. Lee. The title of the play was taken from the poem "Harlem" by Langston Hughes: "What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?"
At the young age of 29, Hansberry won the New York's Drama Critic's Circle Award — making her the first black dramatist, the fifth woman, and the youngest playwright to do so.
After she moved to New York City, Hansberry worked at the Pan-Africanist newspaper Freedom, where she dealt with intellectuals such as Paul Robeson and W. E. B. DuBois. Much of her work during this time concerned the African struggle for liberation and their impact on the world. Hansberry has been identified as a lesbian, and sexual freedom is an important topic in several of her works. She died of cancer at the age of 34. Hansberry inspired Nina Simone's song "To Be Young, Gifted and Black".
Lorraine Hansberry was the youngest of four children born to Carl Augustus Hansberry, a successful real-estate broker, and Nannie Louise (born Perry) a driving school teacher and ward committeewoman. In 1938, her father bought a house in the Washington Park Subdivision of the South Side of Chicago, incurring the wrath of their white neighbors. The latter's legal efforts to force the Hansberry family out culminated in the United States Supreme Court's decision in Hansberry v. Lee. The restrictive covenant was ruled contestable, though not inherently invalid. Carl Hansberry was also a supporter of the Urban League and NAACP in Chicago. Both Hansberrys were active in the Chicago Republican Party. Carl died in 1946, when Lorraine was fifteen years old; "American racism helped kill him," she later said.
The Hansberrys were routinely visited by prominent Black intellectuals, including W. E. B. DuBois and Paul Robeson. Carl Hansberry's brother, William Leo Hansberry, founded the African Civilization section of the history department at Howard University. Lorraine was taught: ‘‘Above all, there were two things which were never to be betrayed: the family and the race.’’
Hansberry became the godmother to Nina Simone's daughter Lisa—now Simone.
Hansberry graduated from Betsy Ross Elementary in 1944 and from Englewood High School in 1948. She attended the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she immediately became politically active and integrated a dormitory.
She worked on Henry A. Wallace's presidential campaign in 1948, despite her mother's disapproval. She spent the summer of 1949 in Mexico, studying painting at the University of Guadalajara.
She decided in 1950 to leave Madison and pursue her career as a writer in New York City, where she attended The New School. She moved to Harlem in 1951 and became involved in activist struggles such as the fight against evictions.
In 1951, she joined the staff of the black newspaper Freedom, edited by Louis E. Burnham and published by Paul Robeson. At Freedom, she worked with W. E. B. Du Bois, whose office was in the same building, and other Black Pan-Africanists. At the newspaper, she worked as subscription clerk, receptionist, typist and editorial assistant in addition to writing news articles and editorials.
One of her first reports covered the Sojourners for Truth and Justice convened in Washington, D.C., by Mary Church Terrell. She traveled to Georgia to cover the case of Willie McGee, and was inspired to write the poem "Lynchsong" about his case.
She worked not only on the United States civil rights movement, but also on global struggles against colonialism and imperialism. Hansberry wrote in support of the Mau Mau Uprising in Kenya, criticizing the mainstream press for its biased coverage.
Hansberry often clarified these global struggles by explaining them in terms of female participants. She was particularly interested in the situation of Egypt, "the traditional Islamic 'cradle of civilization,' where women had led one of the most important fights anywhere for the equality of their sex."
In 1952, Hansberry attended a peace conference in Montevideo, Uruguay, in place of Paul Robeson, who had been denied travel rights by the State Department.
On June 20, 1953, Hansberry married Robert Nemiroff, a Jewish publisher, songwriter and political activist. Hansberry and Nemiroff moved to Greenwich Village, the setting of The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window. Success of the song "Cindy, Oh Cindy", co-authored by Nemiroff, enabled Hansberry to start writing full-time. On the night before their wedding in 1953, Nemiroff and Hansberry protested the execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg in NYC.
It is widely believed that Hansberry was a closeted lesbian, a theory supported by her secret writings in letters and personal notebooks. She was an activist for gay rights and wrote about feminism and homophobia, joining the Daughters of Bilitis and contributing two letters to their magazine, The Ladder, in 1957 under her initials "LHN." She separated from her husband at this time, but they continued to work together.
A Raisin in the Sun was written at this time and completed in 1957.
Opening on March 11, 1959, A Raisin in the Sun became the first play written by an African American woman to be produced on Broadway. The 29-year-old author became the youngest American playwright and only the fifth woman to receive the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Play. Over the next two years, Raisin was translated into 35 languages and was being performed all over the world.
Hansberry wrote two screenplays of Raisin, both of which were rejected as controversial by Columbia Pictures. Commissioned by NBC in 1960 to create a television program about slavery, Hansberry wrote The Drinking Gourd. This script was also rejected.
In 1960, during Delta Sigma Theta's 26th national convention in Chicago, Hansberry was made an honorary member.
In 1961, Hansberry was set to replace Vinnette Carroll as the director of the musical Kicks and Co, after its try-out at Chicago's McCormick Place. It was written by Oscar Brown, Jr. and featured an interracial cast including Lonnie Sattin, Nichelle Nichols, Vi Velasco, Al Freeman, Jr., Zabeth Wilde and Burgess Meredith in the title role of Mr. Kicks. A satire involving miscegenation, the $400,000 production was co-produced by her husband Robert Nemiroff. Despite a warm reception in Chicago, the show never made it to Broadway.
In 1963, Hansberry participated in a meeting with Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, set up by James Baldwin.
Also in 1963, Hansberry was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. She underwent two operations, on June 24 and August 2. Neither was successful in removing the cancer.
On March 10, 1964, Hansberry and Nemiroff divorced but continued to work together.
While many of her other writings were published in her lifetime—essays, articles, and the text for the SNCC book The Movement — the only other play given a contemporary production was The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window. The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window ran for 101 performances on Broadway and closed the night she died.
Hansberry was an atheist.
Hansberry believed that gaining civil rights in the United States and obtaining independence in colonial Africa were two sides of the same coin that presented similar challenges for Africans on both sides of the Atlantic. In response to the independence of Ghana, led by Kwame Nkrumah, Hansberry wrote: "The promise of the future of Ghana is that of all the colored peoples of the world; it is the promise of freedom."
Regarding tactics, Hansberry said Blacks "must concern themselves with every single means of struggle: legal, illegal, passive, active, violent and non-violent.... They must harass, debate, petition, give money to court struggles, sit-in, lie-down, strike, boycott, sing hymns, pray on steps—and shoot from their windows when the racists come cruising through their communities."
In a Town Hall debate on June 15, 1964, Hansberry criticized white liberals who could not accept civil disobedience, expressing a need "to encourage the white liberal to stop being a liberal and become an American radical." At the same time, she said, "some of the first people who have died so far in this struggle have been white men."
The Federal Bureau of Investigation began surveillance of Hansberry when she prepared to go to the Montevideo peace conference. The Washington, D.C. office searched her passport files "in an effort to obtain all available background material on the subject, any derogatory information contained therein, and a photograph and complete description," while officers in Milwaukee and Chicago examined her life history. Later, an FBI reviewer of Raisin in the Sun highlighted its Pan-Africanist themes as dangerous.
Hansberry, a heavy smoker her whole life, died of pancreatic cancer on January 12, 1965, aged 34. James Baldwin believed "it is not at all farfetched to suspect that what she saw contributed to the strain which killed her, for the effort to which Lorraine was dedicated is more than enough to kill a man."
Hansberry's funeral was held in Harlem on January 15, 1965. Paul Robeson and SNCC organizer James Forman gave eulogies. The presiding minister, Eugene Callender, recited messages from Baldwin and the Martin Luther King, Jr. which read: "Her creative ability and her profound grasp of the deep social issues confronting the world today will remain an inspiration to generations yet unborn." The 15th was also Dr. King's birthday. Hansberry was buried at Asbury United Methodist Church Cemetery in Croton-on-Hudson, New York.
Hansberry's ex-husband, Robert Nemiroff, became the executor for several unfinished manuscripts. He added minor changes to complete the play Les Blancs, and he adapted many of her writings into the play To Be Young, Gifted and Black, which was the longest-running Off Broadway play of the 1968–69 season. It appeared in book form the following year under the title To Be Young, Gifted and Black: Lorraine Hansberry in Her Own Words. She left behind an unfinished novel and several other plays, including The Drinking Gourd and What Use Are Flowers?, with a range of content, from slavery to a post-apocalyptic future.
Raisin, a musical based on A Raisin in the Sun, opened in New York in 1973, winning the Tony Award for Best Musical, with the book by Nemiroff, music by Judd Woldin, and lyrics by Robert Britten. A Raisin in the Sun was revived on Broadway in 2004 and received a Tony Award nomination for Best Revival of a Play. The cast included Sean Combs ("P Diddy") as Walter Lee Younger Jr., Phylicia Rashad (Tony Award-winner for Best Actress) and Audra McDonald (Tony Award-winner for Best Featured Actress). It was produced for television in 2008 with the same cast, garnering two NAACP Image Awards.
Nina Simone first released a song about Hansberry in 1969 called "To Be Young, Gifted and Black". The title of the song refers to the title of Hansberry's autobiography, which Hansberry first coined when speaking to the winners of a creative writing conference on May 1, 1964, "though it be a thrilling and marvelous thing to be merely young and gifted in such times, it is doubly so, doubly dynamic — to be young, gifted and black." Simone wrote the song with a poet named Weldon Irvine and told him that she wanted lyrics that would "make black children all over the world feel good about themselves forever." When Irvine read the lyrics after it was finished, he thought, "I didn't write this. God wrote it through me." In a recorded introduction to the song, Simone explained the difficulty of losing a close friend and talented artist.
Patricia and Frederick McKissack wrote a children's biography of Hansberry, Young, Black, and Determined, in 1998.
In 1999, Hansberry was posthumously inducted into the Chicago Gay and Lesbian Hall of Fame.
In 2002, scholar Molefi Kete Asante listed Hansberry as one of his 100 Greatest African Americans.
The Lorraine Hansberry Theatre of San Francisco, which specializes in original stagings and revivals of African-American theatre, is named in her honor. Singer and pianist Nina Simone, who was a close friend of Hansberry, used the title of her unfinished play to write a civil rights-themed song "To Be Young, Gifted and Black" together with Weldon Irvine. The single reached the top 10 on the R&B charts. A studio recording by Simone was released as a single and the first live recording on October 26, 1969, was captured on Black Gold (1970).
In 2013 Hansberry was inducted into the Legacy Walk, an outdoor public display which celebrates LGBT history and people.
In 2013, Lorraine Hansberry was posthumously inducted into the American Theatre Hall of Fame.
January 19
Sixty-two voting rights protestors were arrested at the Dallas County Courthouse in Selma, Alabama.
January 30
The National Baseball Congress named Satchel Paige the all-time outstanding player.
February 1
Martin Luther King was arrested in Selma, Alabama, during a voting rights demonstration. King and 770 other protestors were jailed after the voting rights march in Selma.
*****
The 1965 march to Selma to protest the denial of black voting rights exposed the depth of discrimination in the South and inspired a generation of college students to take action against it. Martin Luther King, Jr., and 500 followers first attempted the march on March 7, but were attacked and repulsed by 200 state troopers acting under direct orders from Governor George Wallace. On March 9, President Lyndon Johnson condemned the police action, stating that he was sure all Americans "joined in deploring the brutality with which a number of black citizens in Alabama were treated when they sought to dramatize their deep and sincere interest in attaining the precious right to vote." That same day 1,500 demonstrators tried to march again but were restrained by federal order until the ruling could be made. Finally, on March 21, about 3,000 civil rights demonstrators completed the march and forced Governor Wallace to provide them with police protection. On March 25, some 40,000 civil rights supporters gathered at a mass protest rally.
*****
February 9
Martin Luther King met with President Johnson regarding voting rights.
February 15
Singer Nat "King" Cole died in Santa Monica, California.
February 21
Malcolm X was assassinated in Harlem.
February 26
Jimmie Lee Jackson, a civil rights activist, died from injuries incurred from a beating in Selma, Alabama.
March 5
Martin Luther King and President Johnson met again to discuss the voting rights act.
March 7
In an event that would become known as "Bloody Sunday," voting rights marchers were beaten at the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, as they attempted to march to Montgomery. Marching demonstrators were beaten at the Edmund Pettus Bridge by 200 state highway patrolmen and sheriff's deputies. In reaction to the brutal beatings, President Johnson addressed the nation, described the voting rights act he would submit to Congress, and used the slogan made famous by the civil rights movement: "We Shall Overcome."
March 9
Martin Luther King led a second attempt to march from Selma to Montgomery for voting rights. A
fter eating dinner at an integrated restaurant March 9, the Unitarian minister James Reeb and two other Unitarian ministers Rev. Clark Olsen and Rev. Orloff Miller, were attacked and beaten by white men armed with clubs.
March 11
The Unitarian minister James Reeb died from head injuries sustained from a beating by segregationists armed with clubs.
March 13
President Johnson met with Alabama Governor George Wallace and denounced the violent brutality used against the protestors in Selma.
March 15
President Johnson addressed Congress in support of a Voting Rights Bill.
March 17-25
Martin Luther King, James Forman, and John Lewis led civil rights marchers from Selma to Montgomery after a United States District judge upheld the right of demonstrators to conduct an orderly march.
March 20
President Johnson federalized the Alabama National Guard to oversee the Selma to Montgomery march.
March 21-25
Federal troops were mobilized to protect more than three thousand protestors marching from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama. Martin Luther King, who led the march, addressed a crowd of more than twenty-five thousand supporters in front of the Cradle of Confederacy, the Alabama State Capitol.
March 25
Mrs. Viola Liuzzo was killed driving some of the black marchers back to Selma by four Ku Klux Klansmen outside Montgomery..
April 23
Dr. Martin Luther King led 50,000 people in a March on Boston to protest segregated housing conditions and racially imbalanced schools.
April 25
Segregationist Lester Maddox led two thousand marchers against expanded voting rights.
June
In Bogalusa, Louisiana, protest marchers were subjected to police brutality and gunfire attacks from segregationists. The United States Department of Justice intervened to set up peace negotiations.
*****
In 1965, the Ku Klux Klan constantly clashed with blacks in Bogalusa and elsewhere in Washington Parish. Klansmen threw a tear gas canister at a group of blacks in Bogalusa, beat up black marchers in the city's downtown and chased blacks out of a city park with clubs, belts and other weapons.
A chapter of an armed black self-defense group called Deacons for Defense and Justice patrolled parts of Bogalusa and confronted the Klan. Members of the civil rights organization Congress of Racial Equality, or CORE, marched in Bogalusa and were assaulted, including its co-founder and national director, James Farmer. The Klan at one point reportedly planned to kill Farmer the next time he came to town. Scores of FBI agents were assigned to the town. President Lyndon Johnson dispatched an assistant attorney general to investigate.
In June of that year, the first two black deputy sheriffs hired in Washington Parish, Oneal Moore and Creed Rogers, were riding together in a village near Bogalusa. Men in a pickup truck pulled alongside them and opened fire, killing Moore and blinding Rogers in one eye. The crime was never solved.
Black members of the Bogalusa Civic and Voters League sued to have their rights protected. A federal court in New Orleans issued an injunction ordering Bogalusa and Washington Parish law enforcement officers and elected officials to use all reasonable means to protect blacks from being intimidated and assaulted. The next day, a pair of Klansmen responded by passing out more than two dozen clubs to young white men in downtown Bogalusa as blacks marched.
J.B. Stoner, an Atlanta lawyer and founder of the virulently white supremacist and anti-Semitic National States Rights Party, soon came to Bogalusa and addressed a crowd of 1,500 people. "The nigger is not a human being," he said. "He is somewhere between the white man and the ape. We don't believe in getting along with our enemy, and the nigger is our enemy." Two nights later, Stoner and a cohort spoke to 2,000 whites in Bogalusa. Later that month, black demonstrators were attacked at a shopping center and, in another incident, showered with stones, fruit and firecrackers.
Finally, the U.S. Department of Justice filed suit against a group called the Original Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, a front organization called the Anti-Communist Christian Association, and 38 individual Klansmen. Still, the violence continued. In December 1965, shots were fired into the home of a black leader of the Bogalusa Civic and Voters League. The following March, a black soldier was shot and critically wounded while using a public telephone booth. In July, Clarence Triggs, a black participant in several demonstrations, was killed outside of town. Two white men were arrested. After a jury acquitted one of them, charges were dropped against the second man.
June 11-15
Chicago police arrested 526 anti-segregation demonstrators after rehiring of a school superintendent. Mass anti-discrimination demonstrations and marches in Chicago led to the arrest of hundreds of civil rights advocates, including comedian Dick Gregory and CORE leader James Farmer.
July 4
Martin Luther King preached the "American Dream".
July 17
Martin Luther King arrived in Los Angeles at the invitation of local groups.
July 19
Stuart Scott, a sportscaster and anchor on ESPN, most notably on the network's
SportsCenter, was born.
July 26
Martin Luther King led a march of 20,000 to Chicago City Hall and addressed a rally.
July 30
The Golden Brown and the Green Apple by Duke Ellington premiered at New York's Philharmonic Hall,
August 10
The Voting Rights Act became the law. Federal examiners began registering black voters in Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi.
August 11
Massive rioting began in Watts in Los Angeles. Upwards of 10,000 African Americans burned and looted an area of 500 square blocks and destroyed an estimated $40 million worth of property. Some 15,000 police and National Guardsmen were called in. 34 persons were killed (28 of them blacks). 4,000 were arrested and more than 200 business establishments were totally destroyed.
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On August 11, 1965, Rena Price rushed from her home to a nearby traffic stop involving her son. An ensuing scuffle with officers ignited six days of deadly rioting in South Los Angeles.
On a hot August evening nearly 48 years ago, Rena Price was at home in South Los Angeles when she was summoned with alarming news: A few blocks away, one of her sons, Marquette Frye, had been stopped by California Highway Patrol officers after driving erratically down Avalon Boulevard, near 116th Street. Price hurried to the scene.
Her son, according to the arresting officer, had failed a series of sobriety tests but had been good-humored and cooperative until she arrived. Accounts vary on what set off the ensuing scuffle, but a patrolman hit Frye on the head with a baton and his mother jumped on another officer, tearing his shirt.
With a growing crowd bearing unhappy witness, Price, Frye and his brother Ronald, a passenger in the car, were handcuffed and taken to jail.
Their arrests on August 11, 1965, ignited the Watts riots – six turbulent days that left 34 dead, thousands injured and millions of dollars in property damaged or destroyed.
"I didn't know about any of the rioting until my daughter came and got me out of jail at 7 the next morning," Price told The Times on the 40th anniversary of the riots in 2005. "I was surprised. I had never heard of a riot. There were never any riots before. I went back to my house. Where else was I going to go?"
Born in Oklahoma on May 13, 1916, Price had moved with her family to Los Angeles in 1956 and found work cleaning houses and baby sitting. The neighborhood children she looked after nicknamed her "the Lady."
When Price reached the intersection of Avalon and 116th on the fateful night in 1965, she scolded Frye about drinking and driving, he recalled in a 1985 interview later published in the Orlando Sentinel. The situation quickly escalated: Someone shoved her, Frye was struck, she jumped an officer, another officer pulled out a shotgun.
After rumors spread that the police had roughed her up and kicked a pregnant woman, angry mobs formed, turning a 46-square-mile swath of the city into a combat zone.
After the Fryes' names appeared in news accounts about the riot's inception, most of the family began using the last name of Price, which belonged to the father of one of her children. "When people heard the name Frye, all kinds of red flags went up. We all got hassled," son Wendell recalled in an interview last week.
The post-riot period was especially hard on Marquette, described in news accounts as "the man who started the riots."
A folk hero to some and a pariah to others, he drifted from job to job, struggled with excessive drinking and was arrested dozens of times. After the death of an infant son with heart problems, he tried to kill himself. On Christmas Eve 1986, he died of pneumonia at age 41.
Price also struggled. Found guilty of interfering with police officers, a misdemeanor, she was fined $250 and given a 30-day jail term, later reduced to two years' probation. In 1966 an appellate panel reversed her conviction, citing prejudicial remarks the prosecution had made to the jury blaming Price and her sons for causing the deadly riots.
Still, she told The Times decades later, "nobody would hire me after the arrest. … We survived because my husband worked at a paper factory."
As time caused the sharp emotions of that period to fade, Price eventually was able to find work. In her free time she enjoyed visiting friends and family in Oklahoma and Wyoming and found luck was usually on her side when she patronized her favorite casinos in Las Vegas. "She was very blessed," Wendell Price said, "despite everything."
Price never reclaimed her 1955 Buick, the car her son had been driving the day the riots erupted. By the time she located it at an impound lot, the storage fees had exceeded its value.
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August 12
Martin Luther King publicly opposed the Vietnam War at a mass rally at the Ninth Annual Convention of SCLC in Birmingham.
September 8
Actress Dorothy Dandridge, who was nominated for an Oscar for her role in
Carmen Jones, died in Hollywood.
September 10
Father Divine, a prominent religious leader and founder of the Peace Mission, died.
October 28
Jazz saxophonist Earl Bostic died in Rochester, New York.
December 4
President Johnson prohibited discrimination in federal aid.
*****
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Malcolm X
"During these final days, many of Malcolm's closest associates detected disturbing changes in his behavior and physical appearances. For years, Malcolm had come to public meetings and lectures impeccably dressed, always wearing a clean white shirt and tie. But now, he always seemed to be tired, even exhausted and depressed. His shoes weren't shined; his clothing was frequently wrinkled. There was even "a kind of fatalism" in his conversations, observes Malcolm X researcher Abdur-Rahman Muhammad. In his personal exchanges with Anas Luqman during this time, Malcolm ruminated that "the males in his family didn't die a natural death." To Luqman, just before the assassination, the leader seemed to resign himself to his fate: "Whatever's going to happen, is going to happen." The disenchantment of Malcolm loyalists in their leader was also directly related to the confusion and alienation they felt about the new political directions they had been given. In practical terms, as Abdur-Rahman Muhammad explains, the ex-Black Muslims who had followed Malcolm into the MMI "didn't sign up for orthodox Islam. They didn't sign up for this OAAU thing. And they positively resented the fact that the OAAU seemed to be where Malcolm was putting all of his energy." (Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention, pgs. 410-411)
February 3
"Despite his growing uncertainty and bouts with depression, Malcolm steeled himself to press forward. On February 3 he took an early morning flight from New York City arriving in Montgomery, Alabama, around noon. An hour and a half later he was addressing three thousand students at Tuskegee Institute's Logan Hall. The auditorium was so crowded that even before the formal program began hundreds had to be turned away. Malcolm's title for the lecture, "Spectrum on Political Ideologies," did not reflect its content, which covered much of the same ground as his other recent addresses. He condemned the Tshombe regime, the Johnson administration's links to it, and the growing U.S. involvement in Vietnam, suggesting the United States was "trapped" there. When asked about his disputes with Elijah Muhammad, he responded with a soft, theological argument: "Elijah believes that God is going to come and straighten things out ... I'm not willing to sit and wait on God to come .... I believe in religion, but a religion that includes political, economic, and social action designed to eliminate some of these things, and make a paradise here on earth while we're waiting for the other." (Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention, pgs. 411)
February 4
"The students affiliated with SNCC who attended his lecture invited him to visit Selma, then the headquarters of the national campaign for black voting rights, and only one hundred miles west in the heart of the Black Belt. Malcolm could not refuse. The beauty of the Selma struggle was its brutal simplicity: hundreds of local blacks lined up at Selma's Dallas County building daily, demanding the right to register to vote; white county and city police beat and arrested them. By the first week in February thirty-four hundred people had been jailed, including Dr. King. Under cover of darkness, terrorist groups like the Ku Klux Klan harassed civil rights workers, black families, and households. On February 4, Malcolm addressed an audience of three hundred at the Brown's Chapel African Methodist Episcopal Church. Significantly, while the event had been arranged through SNCC, after some negotiations it was formally cosponsored by King's SCLC. Malcolm's sermon praised King's dedication to nonviolence, but he advised that should white America refuse to accept the nonviolent model of social change, his own example of armed "self-defense" was an alternative. After the talk he met with Coretta Scott King, stating that in the future he would work in concert with her husband. Before leaving, he informed SNCC workers that he planned to start an OAAU recruitment drive in the South within a few weeks. In this one visit, he had significantly expanded the OAAU's purpose and mission, from lobbying the UN to playing an activist role in the grassroots trenches of voting rights and community organizing." (Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention, pgs. 411-412)
February 6-8
"Back in New York, he purchased air tickets for London, with stops in Paris and Geneva, for what would be his final trip out of the country. He planned to attend the first Congress of the Council of African Organizations held in London on February 6-8, and then to move on to Paris to work with Carlos Moore in consolidating the OAAU's presence there. Arriving in London, he gave interviews to the New China news agency and the Ghanaian Times. As had happened so many times before, the good rapport he had developed with movement activists in Selma and Tuskegee quickly disappeared in favor of more radical sentiments. He told the Chinese media that "the greatest event in 1964 was China's explosion of an atom bomb, because this is a great contribution to the struggle of the oppressed people in the world." He deplored the 1964 Civil Rights Act as "nothing but a device to deceive the African people," and characterized U.S. racism as being "an inseparable part of the entire political and social system." And his opposition to the Vietnam War was escalating: the basic choice America had was "to die there or pull out. ... Time is against the U.S., and the American people do not support the U.S. war." (Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention, pg. 412).
"In his interview with the Ghanaian Times, he promoted the call by Nkrumah for the establishment of an African union government. Those leaders who reject the creation of a union, he declared, "will be doing a greater service to the imperialists that Moise Tshombe." Once again Malcolm the visionary anticipated the future contours of history, with the creation of the African Union a half century later. Addressing the conference on February 8, he encouraged the African press to challenge the racist stereotypes and distortions of Africans in the Western media. In the Western press, he noted, the African freedom fighter was made to look "like a criminal." (Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention, pg. 412)
February 9
"On February 9 he flew to Paris, yet at customs the authorities detained him and refused to allow him to enter the country. During a subsequent two-hour delay, he learned that the government of Charles de Gaulle had determined that his presence was "undesirable," and that a talk he had scheduled with the Federation of African Students might "provoke demonstrations." Returning to London, he quickly organized a press conference, challenging the French decision. "I did not even get as far as immigration control," he complained. "I might as well have been locked up."
"A telephone interview was arranged in London that was audiotaped and later played on speakers for a crowd of three hundred in Paris. The incident seemed to have pulled him back for the moment, and he once again returned to the language of unity and racial harmony. "I do not advocate violence," he explained. "In fact, the violence that exists in the United States is the violence that the Negro in America has been a victim of.." On the issues of black nationalism and the Southern civil rights movement, he once again channeled King. "I believe in taking an uncompromising stand against any forms of segregation and discrimination that are based on race. I myself do not judge a man by the color of his skin." (Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention, pg. 413)
February 10
"Already he suspected that the restriction on his travel went deeper than mere concern on the part of the French government, and the next day he forwarded a letter of protest to U.S. secretary of state Dean Rusk. "While in possession of an American passport, I was denied entry to France with no explanation." He called for "an investigation being made to determine why this incident took place."
The enforced change of schedule allowed Malcolm to explore the racial politics of Great Britain for several additional days, and during this time he was interviewed by Flamingo magazine, a London-based publication read primarily by blacks in Great Britain. What is surprising is the harshness Malcolm displayed to distinguish himself from civil rights moderates in the States. "King and his kind believe in turning the other cheek," he stated, almost in contempt, "Their freedom fighters follow the rules of the game laid down by the big bosses in Washington, D.C., the citadel of imperialism." He once more disavowed any identification as a "racialist": "I adopt a judgment of deeds, not of color.' He appeared to call not for voting rights and electoral change, but Guevara-inspired insurrection. "Mau Mau I love," he stated, applauding the Kenyan guerrilla struggle of the 1950s. "When you put a fire under a pot, you learn what's in it." He added, "Anger produces action." When asked about his reasons for leaving the Nation, he focused on politics, not personalities or religion. "The original brotherhood [of the NOI] became too lax and conservative." He accused some NOI leaders of greed, in response to which "I formed the Muslim Mosque, which is not limited by civil rights in America, but rather worldwide human rights for the black man." (Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention, pg. 413)
February 11
"On February 11 he delivered a lecture at the London School of Economics, a frank and lively assessment of the politics of race in the United States. Racial stigmatization, he explained, projects negative images of nonwhites as criminals; as a consequence, "it makes it possible for the power structure to set up a police state." He then drew parallels between the U.S. treatment of African Americans with the conditions of the West Indian and Asian populations in Great Britain, where racist stereotypes promoted political apathy among minorities, making them believe that change was impossible. "Police state methods are used .... to suppress the people's honest and just struggle against discrimination and other forms of segregation," he insisted." (Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention, pgs. 413-414)
February 12
"Before leaving the UK, Malcolm was interviewed by a correspondent for the liberal South African newspaper Sunday Express. His rhetoric grew even more heated, as he urged blacks in Angola and South Africa to employ violence "all the way .... I don't give the [South African] blacks credit in any way ... for restraining themselves or confining themselves to ground rules that limit the scope of their activity." He dismissed the Nobel Peace Prize recipient Chief Albert Luthuli as "just another Martin Luther King, used to keep the oppressed people in check." To Malcolm, South Africa's "real leaders" were Nelson Mandela of the African National Congress and Robert Sobukwe, founder of the Pan-African Congress. He then entertained the possibility of the OAAU taking up the cause of Australian aborigines. "Just as racism has become an international thing, the fight against it is also becoming international. ... [Racism's] victims were kept apart from each other." The larger point for him was to make the case for Pan-Africanism -- that blacks regardless of nationality and language had a common destiny. "We believe," he explained, "that it is one struggle in South Africa, Angola, Mozambique, and Alabama. They are all the same." (Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention, pg. 415)
February 13
"Malcolm arrived back at John F. Kennedy airport on February 13 to grim news. Several weeks before, he had submitted to the Queens court a request for a "show cause" order aimed at staying his family's scheduled eviction. It was now obvious, however, that his family would lose their home and would have to begin looking for temporary housing. Malcolm had also just learned that Betty was again pregnant, this time with twins. What had been an extremely difficult financial situation -- supporting four children -- would soon be even more challenging with six.
"But his thoughts soon returned to politics. He had not been able to shake off the larger implication of his incident at French customs. As he entered his Hotel Theresa office, he admitted to his associates that he had been making a "serious mistake" by focusing attention on the NOI Chicago headquarters, "thinking all of my problems were coming from Chicago, and they're not." Colleagues asked where the "trouble" was coming from. "From Washington," Malcolm replied. (Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention, pgs. 415-416)
February 14
"At two forty-five a.m., the Shabazz family's sleep was shattered by the crack of a window downstairs, and seconds later a Molotov cocktail exploded, quickly filling the entire house with black smoke. As Malcolm raced downstairs to the children's room, a seocnd bomb landed. A third struck a rear window but glanced off, without combusting. Malcolm helped Betty escape through the rear door, then gathered the children together and led them into the backyard. A few seconds later he dashed back into the now blazing house to retrieve important property and clothing. "I was almost frightened by his courage and efficiency in a time of terror," Betty would later reflect. "I always knew he was strong. But at that hour I learned how great his strength was." By the time firefighters arrived to put out the blaze, the house was engulfed in flames." ( Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention, pg. 416)
"Malcolm's supporters had quickly gathered outside the burning house, where it was decided that Betty and the four girls would be taken to the home of Tom Wallace, who also lived in Queens. Standing outside in the freezing cold, Betty learned that Malcolm still intended to travel to Detroit that day, and she erupted into an almost uncontrollable rage. But his mind was made up The firebombing would not frighten him into canceling his speaking commitments. Death had missed him and his family that night; he would not run from it tomorrow." ( Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention, pg. 417)
February 15
"He arrived back in New York on February 15, and spent part of the day checking on damage to the house and conducting interviews. The OAAU had planned to unveil its program that evening, but the firebombing had changed the agenda, bringing out a large crowd of seven hundred to hear what Malcolm had to say about it. Benjamin 2X opened up the evening meeting with a short talk, Malcolm's speech, "There's a Worldwide Revolution Going On," was not his final public lecture, but it was certainly the most significant of those he gave in the last two weeks of his life. He began by mentioning the firebombing, and how stunned he was to see the Nation "using the same tactic that's used by the Ku Klux Klan." After bouncing through a few other topics, he circled back to offer his interpretations about how the Nation of Islam had lost its way. Before 1960, he explained, "there was not a better organization among black people in this country than the Muslim movement. It was militant. It made the whole strength of the black man in this country pick up momentum." But after Muhammad's return from Mecca in early 1960, things changed. Muhammad began to be "more interested in wealth. And, yes, more interested in girls." The audience erupted in laughter. According to Malcolm, a conspiracy existed to "suppress news that would open the eyes" of NOI members about their leader. As long as Elijah Muhammad ran the Nation of Islam, "it will not do anything in the struggle that the black man is confronted with in this country." One proof of this was the Nation's failure to challenge the terrorist activities of the Ku Klux Klan. "They know how to do it. Only to another brother." As the audience applauded, Malcolm added soberly, "I am well aware of what I'm setting into motion. ... But I have never said or done anything in my life that I wasn't prepared to suffer the consequences for." (Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention, pgs. 419-420)
_________________________________________________________________________________
Black Enterprise
Seaway National Bank of Chicago was founded.
_________________________________________________________________________________
Education
The Johnson administration set a deadline of Fall 1967 for the integration of all grade levels of public schools seeking federal funds.
In Brooklyn, African American students rioted and staged a one day boycott of public schools.
Vivian Malone became the first African American to graduate from the University of Alabama.
______________________________________________________
Ku Klux Klan
The House Un-American Activities Committee began investigating the Ku Klux Klan.
_________________________________________________________________________________
Legal
The Voting Rights Act became the law. Federal examiners began registering black voters in Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi (August 10).
North Carolina judge James B. McMillan ordered busing of schoolchildren to achieve racial desegregatn as required by the 1954 Supreme Court decision. His order for crosstown busing in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg County school system started a pattern that would be followed in much of the country. Although the United States Supreme Court would uphold McMillan's ruling in 1971 the use of busing created a storm of controversy.
Thurgood Marshall became solicitor general of the United States, the first African American to receive such an appointment.
_________________________________________________________________________________
Literary
The Autobiography of Malcolm X by the late Organization of Afro-American Unity leader, El Hajj Malik Shabazz (Malcolm X), and the writer Alex Haley was published.
Manchild in the Promised Land, an autobiography by United States reform school veteran Claude Brown, was published.
John Oliver Killens' account of the Civil Rights Movement,
The Black Man's Burden, was published.
John A. Williams' travelogue,
This Is My Country, Too, was published.
Chester Himes published his novel
Cotton Comes to Harlem.
Novelist William Melvin Kelley published
A Drop of Patience.
_________________________________________________________________________________
Media
Amos 'n Andy was withdrawn from syndication following protests against its stereotyped images of blacks. Started as a radio show in 1928,
Amos 'n Andy had been a leading television program since 1949 with African Americans playing the roles originally created by European Americans.
_________________________________________________________________________________
Military
Major General Benjamin O. Davis, Jr., of the United States Air Force, was promoted to lieutenant general, the highest rank then achieved by an African American.
_________________________________________________________________________________
Music
The Golden Brown and the Green Apple by Duke Ellington premiered at New York's Philharmonic Hall (July 30),
_________________________________________________________________________________
Notable Births
8888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888
Shabazz, Malikah
Malikah Shabazz (b. 1965 - d. November 21, 2021, Brooklyn, New York). One of the youngest daughters of Malcolm X and his wife Betty Shabazz. Malikah and her twin sister Malaak were born a few months after the assassination of their father, Malcolm X, on February 21, 1965. Malikah and Malaak were in the womb of the pregnant Betty Shabazz who was present during the assassination of her husband. Ironically, Malikah was found dead four days after a judge exonerated two men who were convicted in 1966 of assassinating Malcolm X the year before. Malikah's mother, Betty Shabazz, died from injuries sustained in a fire (caused my her grandson) at her home in Yonkers in 1997. Malikah Shabazz left New York in 1999 and moved first to North Carolina and then to Maryland, before returning to New York. She had a complicated relationship with her sisters, with whom she fought for more than a decade over her mother’s estate. In 2011, she pleaded guilty to running up credit-card debt in the name of a 70-year-old widow whose husband had been one of Malcolm X’s bodyguards. She was sentenced to five years probation.
8888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888*Stuart Scott, a sportscaster and anchor on ESPN, most notably on the network's
SportsCenter, was born (July 19).
Stuart Orlando Scott (July 19, 1965 – January 4, 2015) was an American sportscaster and anchor on ESPN, most notably on the network's SportsCenter. Well known for his hip-hop style and use of catchphrases, Scott was also a regular for the network in its National Basketball Association (NBA) and the National Football League (NFL) coverage.
Scott grew up in North Carolina, and graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He began his career with various local television stations before joining ESPN in 1993. Although there were already accomplished African-American sportscasters, his blending of hip hop with sportscasting was unique for television. By 2008, he was a staple in ESPN's programming, and also began on ABC as lead host for their coverage of the NBA.
In 2007, Scott had an appendectomy and learned that his appendix was cancerous. After going into remission, he was again diagnosed with cancer in 2011 and 2013. Scott was honored at the ESPY Awards in 2014 with the Jimmy V Award for his fight against cancer, shortly before his death in 2015 at the age of 49.
88888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888 _________________________________________________________________________________
Shabazz, Malikah
Malikah Shabazz (b. 1965 - d. November 21, 2021, Brooklyn, New York). One of the youngest daughters of Malcolm X and his wife Betty Shabazz. Malikah and her twin sister Malaak were born a few months after the assassination of their father, Malcolm X, on February 21, 1965. Malikah and Malaak were in the womb of the pregnant Betty Shabazz who was present during the assassination of her husband. Ironically, Malikah was found dead four days after a judge exonerated two men who were convicted in 1966 of assassinating Malcolm X the year before. Malikah's mother, Betty Shabazz, died from injuries sustained in a fire (caused my her grandson) at her home in Yonkers in 1997. Malikah Shabazz left New York in 1999 and moved first to North Carolina and then to Maryland, before returning to New York. She had a complicated relationship with her sisters, with whom she fought for more than a decade over her mother’s estate. In 2011, she pleaded guilty to running up credit-card debt in the name of a 70-year-old widow whose husband had been one of Malcolm X’s bodyguards. She was sentenced to five years probation. |
Notable Deaths
*Jazz saxophonist Earl Bostic died in Rochester, New York (October 28).
Earl Bostic (April 25, 1912 – October 28, 1965) was an American jazz alto saxophonist and a pioneer of the post-war American rhythm and blues style. He had a number of popular hits such as "Flamingo", "Harlem Nocturne", "Temptation", "Sleep", "Special Delivery Stomp" and "Where or When" which all showed off his characteristic growl on the horn. He was a major influence on John Coltrane.
Bostic was born April 25, 1912 in Tulsa, Oklahoma. He turned professional at age 18 when he joined Terence Holder's 'Twelve Clouds of Joy'. He made his first recording with Lionel Hampton in October 1939, with Charlie Christian, Clyde Hart and Big Sid Catlett. Before that he performed with Fate Marable on New Orleans riverboats. Bostic graduated from Xavier University in New Orleans. He worked with territory bands as well as Arnett Cobb, Hot Lips Page, Rex Stewart, Don Byas, Charlie Christian, Thelonious Monk, Edgar Hayes, Cab Calloway, an other jazz luminaries. In 1938, and in 1944, Bostic led the house band at Small's Paradise. While playing at Small's Paradise, he doubled on guitar and trumpet. During the early 1940s, he was a well-respected regular at the famous jam sessions held at Minton's Playhouse. He formed his own band in 1945 and made the first recordings under his own name for the Majestic label. He turned to rhythm and blues in the late 1940s. His biggest hits were "Temptation", "Sleep", "Flamingo", "You Go to My Head" and "Cherokee". At various times his band included Keter Betts, Jaki Byard, Benny Carter, John Coltrane, Teddy Edwards, Benny Golson, Blue Mitchell, Tony Scott, Cliff Smalls, Charles Thompson, Stanley Turrentine, Tommy Turrentine and other musicians who rose to prominence, especially in jazz.
Bostic's King album entitled Jazz As I Feel It featured Shelly Manne on drums, Joe Pass on guitar and Richard "Groove" Holmes on organ. Bostic recorded A New Sound about one month later, again featuring Holmes and Pass. These recordings allowed Bostic to stretch out beyond the three-minute limit imposed by the 45 RPM format. Bostic was pleased with the sessions, which highlight his total mastery of the blues but they also foreshadowed musical advances that were later evident in the work of John Coltrane and Eric Dolphy.
He wrote arrangements for Paul Whiteman, Louis Prima, Lionel Hampton, Gene Krupa, Artie Shaw, Hot Lips Page, Jack Teagarden, Ina Ray Hutton and Alvino Rey.
His songwriting hits include "Let Me Off Uptown", performed by Anita O'Day and Roy Eldridge, and "Brooklyn Boogie", which featured Louis Prima and members of the Brooklyn Dodgers.
Bostic's signature hit, "Flamingo" was recorded in 1951 and remains a favorite among followers of Carolina Beach Music in South Carolina, North Carolina and Virginia.
During the early 1950s Bostic lived with his wife in Addisleigh Park in St. Albans, Queens, in New York City, where many other jazz stars made their home. After that he moved to Los Angeles, where he concentrated on writing arrangements after suffering a heart attack. He opened his own R&B club in Los Angeles, known as the Flying Fox.
Bostic died October 28, 1965 from a heart attack in Rochester, New York, while performing with his band. He was buried in Southern California's Inglewood Park Cemetery on November 2, 1965. Honorary pallbearers at the funeral included Slappy White and Louis Prima.
Earl Bostic was inducted into the Oklahoma Jazz Hall of Fame in 1993.
*****
*Singer Nat "King" Cole died in Santa Monica, California (February 15).
Nat King Cole, byname of Nathaniel Adams Cole, family name originally Coles (b. March 17, 1919, Montgomery, Alabama — d. February 15, 1965, Santa Monica, California), was an American musician hailed as one of the best and most influential pianists and small-group leaders of the swing era. Cole attained his greatest commercial success, however, as a vocalist specializing in warm ballads and light siwng.
Cole grew up in Chicago, where, by age 12, he sang and played organ in the church where his father was pastor. He formed his first jazz group, the Royal Dukes, five years later. In 1937, after touring with a black musical revue, he began playing in jazz clubs in Los Angeles. There he formed the King Cole Trio (originally King Cole and His Swingsters), with guitarist Oscar Moore (later replaced by Irving Ashby) and bassist Wesley Prince (later replaced by Johnny Miller). The trio specialized in swing music with a delicate touch in that they did not employ a drummer; also unique were the voicings of piano and guitar, often juxtaposed to sound like a single instrument. An influence on jazz pianists such as Oscar Peterson, Cole was known for a compact, syncopated piano style with clean, spare, melodic phrases.
During the late 1930s and early ’40s the trio made several instrumental recordings, as well as others that featured their harmonizing vocals. They found their greatest success, however, when Cole began doubling as a solo singer. Their first chart success, “Straighten Up and Fly Right
” (1943), was followed by hits such as “Sweet Lorraine,
” “It’s Only a Paper Moon,
” “(I Love You) For Sentimental Reasons,
” and “Route 66.
” Eventually, Cole’s piano playing took a backseat to his singing career. Noted for his warm tone and flawless phrasing, Cole was regarded among the top male vocalists, although jazz critics tended to regret his near-abandonment of the piano. He first recorded with a full orchestra (the trio serving as rhythm section) in 1946 for "The Christmas Song," a holiday standard and one of Cole’s biggest-selling recordings. By the 1950s, he worked almost exclusively as a singer, with such notable arrangers as Nelson Riddle and Billy May providing lush orchestral accompaniment. “Nature Boy,
” “Mona Lisa,
” “Too Young,
” “A Blossom Fell,
” and “Unforgettable
” were among his major hits of the period. He occasionally revisited his jazz roots, as on the outstanding album After Midnight(1956), which proved that Cole’s piano skills had not diminished.
Cole’s popularity allowed him to become the first African American to host a network variety program, The Nat King Cole Show, which debuted on NBC television in 1956. The show fell victim to the bigotry of the times, however, and was canceled after one season. Few sponsors were willing to be associated with a black entertainer. Cole had greater success with concert performances during the late 1950s and early ’60s and twice toured with his own vaudeville-style reviews,The Merry World of Nat King Cole (1961) and Sights and Sounds (1963). His hits of the early ’60s—“Ramblin’ Rose,
” “Those Lazy, Hazy, Crazy Days of Summer,
” and “L-O-V-E
”—indicate that he was moving even farther away from his jazz roots and concentrating almost exclusively on mainstream pop. Adapting his style, however, was one factor that kept Cole popular up to his early death from lung cancer in 1965.
The prejudices of the era in which Cole lived hindered his potential for even greater stardom. His talents extended beyond singing and piano playing: he excelled as a relaxed and humorous stage personality, and he was also a capable actor, evidenced by his performances in the films Istanbul (1957), China Gate(1957), Night of the Quarter Moon (1959), and Cat Ballou (1965); he also played himself in The Nat “King” Cole Musical Story (1955) and portrayed blues legend W. C. Handy in St. Louis Blues (1958). His daughter Natalie is also a popular singer who achieved her greatest chart success in 1991 with “Unforgettable,
” an electronically created duet with her father.
*****
*Frank Crosswaith, a longtime socialist politician, activist, trade union organizer, and founder of the Negro Labor Committee, died.
Frank Rudolph Crosswaith (1892-1965) was a longtime socialist politician and activist and trade union organizer in New York City. Crosswaith is best remembered as the founder and chairman of the Negro Labor Committee, which was established on July 20, 1935, by the Negro Labor Conference.
Frank Crosswaith was born on July 16, 1892, in Frederiksted, St. Croix, Danish West Indies (the island was sold to the United States in 1917 and became part of the United States Virgin Islands), and emigrated to the United States in his teens. While finishing high school, he worked as an elevator operator, porter and garment worker. He joined the elevator operators' union and when he finished high school, he won a scholarship from the socialist Jewish Daily Forward to attend the Rand School of Social Science, an educational institute in New York City associated with the Socialist Party of America.
Crosswaith founded an organization called the Trade Union Committee for Organizing Negro Workers in 1925, but this work went by the wayside when Crosswaith accepted a position as an organizer for the fledgling Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters. Crosswaith maintained a long association with union head A. Phillip Randolph, serving with him as officers of the Negro Labor Committee in the 1930s and 1940s.
In the early 1930s Crosswaith worked as an organizer for the International Ladies Garment Workers Union, which became one of the major supporters of the Negro Labor Committee.
In 1924, he ran on the Socialist ticket for Secretary of State of New York, and in 1936 for Congressman-at-large. He ran also for the New York City Council in 1939 on the American Labor ticket.
Crosswaith was elected to the governing executive committee of the American Labor Party in New York in 1924, and later ran for Governor of New York on the ALP ticket.
Crosswaith was an anti-communist and believed that the best hope for black workers in the United States was to join bona fide labor unions just as the best hope for the American labor movement was to welcome black workers into unions in order to promote solidarity and eliminate the use of black workers as strike breakers. He believed strongly that "separation of workers by race would only work to undermine the strength of the entire labor movement." Crosswaith spent much of his energy in the late 1930s and early 1940s battling a rival labor organization called the Harlem Labor Union, Inc., which was run by Ira Kemp and had a black nationalist philosophy. He accused Kemp of undermining the interests of black workers by signing agreements with employers that offered them labor at wages below union rates.
Crosswaith also worked with A. Philip Randolph during World War II in organizing the March on Washington Movement, which was called off when President Franklin D. Roosevelt agreed to sign Executive Order 8802, which prohibited racial discrimination in defense industries.
*****
*Actress Dorothy Dandridge, who was nominated for an Oscar for her role in Carmen Jones, died in Hollywood (September 8).
Dorothy Dandridge, in full Dorothy Jean Dandridge (b. November 9, 1922, Cleveland, Ohio - d. September 8, 1965, West Hollywood, California), was a singer and film actress who was the first African American woman to be nominated for an Academy Award for best actress.
Dandridge's mother was an entertainer and comedic actress who, after settling in Los Angeles, had some success in radio and. later, television. The young Dorothy and her sister Vivian began performing publicly as children and in the 1930s joined a third (unrelated) girl as the Dandridge Sisters, singing and dancing. In the 1940s and early '50s Dorothy secured a few bit roles in films and developed a highly successful career as a solo nightclub singer, eventually appearing in such popular clubs as the Waldorf Astoria's Empire Room in New York City.
Dandridge then won the title role in Otto Preminger's all-black Carmen Jones (1954), earning an Oscar nomination for best actress. (Dandridge did not sing in Carmen Jones, however, the singing was dubbed by mezzo-soprano Marilyn Horne.) Because she was an African American woman in a racially tense era, film offers did not come readily, though she did appear in Island in the Sun (1957), which dealt with miscegenation and costarred Harry Belafonte, as well as in The Decks Ran Red (1958), Tamango 1959), and Moment of Danger (1960). One of her most important roles was Bess in Preminger's handsomely produced Porgy and Bess (1959), starring opposite Sidney Poitier.
In the 1960's, Dandridge's life and career were wracked by divorce, personal bankruptcy, and the absence of offers of work. At age 42, she was found dead in her West Hollywood apartment, either the victim of an accidental drug overdose or a brain embolism.
*****
*Father Divine, a prominent religious leader and founder of the Peace Mission, died (September 10).
Father Divine, in full Father Major Jealous Divine, original name George Baker (b. 1880?, Georgia - d. September 10, 1965, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania), was a prominent African American religious leader most notably during the 1930s. The Depression era movement he founded, the Peace Mission, was originally dismissed as a cult. However, it still exists and is now generally hailed as an important precursor of the Civil Rights Movement.
Believed to have been born on a plantation in Georgia, Baker began his career in 1899 as an assistant to Father Jehovia (Samuel Morris), the founder of an independent religious group. During his early adult years, Baker was influenced by Christian Science and New Thought. In 1912, Baker left Father Jehovia and emerged several years later as the leader of what would become the Peace Mission movement.
Baker settled first in the New York City borough of Brooklyn and then in Sayville, New York, a mostly white community on Long Island, where he lived quietly during the 1920s. His following grew, and in 1931, when his Sayville neighbors complained about the growing attendance at meetings in his home, Father Divine was arrested and incarcerated for thirty (30) days. When the judge who sentenced him died two days after the sentencing, Father Divine attributed the event to a supernatural intervention. His movement commemorates this event by annually publishing accounts of "divine retribution" visited on wrongdoers.
In 1933, Father Divine and his followers left Sayville for Harlem, where he became one of the most flamboyant leaders of the Depression era. There he opened the first of his Heavens, the residential hotels where his teachings were practiced and where his followers could obtain food, shelter, and job opportunities, as well as spiritual and physical healing. The movement, whose membership numbered in the tens of thousands at its height during the Great Depression, built on the principles of Americanism, brotherhood, Christianity, democracy, and Judaism, with the understanding that all "true" religions teach the same basic truths. Members were taught not to discriminate by race, religion or color, and they lived communally as brothers and sisters. Father Divine's teachings were codified in 1936 in the "Righteous Government Platform," which called for an end to segregation, lynching, and capital punishment. Movement members refrained from using tobacco, alcohol, narcotics, and vulgar language, and they were celibate. Moreover, members attempted to embody, virtue, honesty, and truth. The movement's teachings also demanded "a righteous wage in exchange for a full day's work." Members refused to accumulate debt, and they possessed neither credit nor life insurance.
During the Depression residents of the Heavens paid the minimal fee of fifteen cents for meals and a dollar per week for sleeping quarters, a practice that allowed them to maintain their sense of dignity. In the opinion of many, Father Divine affirmed, amid the poverty of the Depression, the abundance of God with the free lavish banquets he held daily.
Heavens were opened across North America as well as in Europe, and, although most of its adherents were African Americans, the movement also attracted many European Americans (approximately one-fourth of its membership). The Heavens and related businesses brought in millions of dollars in revenue for the Peace Mission. Their success, however, also brought accusations of racketeering against Father Divine that, like the allegations of child abuse that were made against the movement, proved to be unfounded.
In 1942, Father Divine moved to suburban Philadelphia, in part to avoid paying a financial judgment in a suit brought by a former movement member. Four years later (in 1946), he married Edna Rose Ritchings, a Canadian member who, as Mother Divine, succeeded her husband as the movement's leader in 1965. The movement's membership declined dramatically, however, not least because of the movement's strict dedication to celibacy.
Once dismissed as just another cult leader, Father Divine today is recognized in the late 20th century as an important social reformer. In the 1930s, he was a champion of racial equality and an advocate of the economic self-sufficiency for African Americans that found broad acceptance only with the advent of the Civil Rights Movement.
*****
*Playwright Lorraine Hansberry, the author of
A Raisin in the Sun, died in New York (January 12).
Lorraine Vivian Hansberry (b. May 19, 1930, Chicago, Illinois – d. January 12, 1965, New York City, New York) was an American playwright and writer. Hansberry inspired Nina Simone's song "To Be Young, Gifted and Black".
She was the first black woman to write a play performed on Broadway. Her best known work, the play A Raisin in the Sun, highlights the lives of African Americans living under racial segregation in Chicago. Hansberry's family had struggled against segregation, challenging a restrictive covenant and eventually provoking the Supreme Court case Hansberry v. Lee. The title of her most famous play was taken from the poem "Harlem" by Langston Hughes: "What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?"
After she moved to New York City, Hansberry worked at the Pan-Africanist newspaper Freedom, where she dealt with intellectuals such as Paul Robeson and W. E. B. Du Bois. Much of her work during this time concerned the African struggle for liberation and their impact on the world. Hansberry has been identified as a lesbian, and sexual freedom is an important topic in several of her works. She died of cancer at the age of 34.
*****
*Jimmie Lee Jackson, a civil rights activist, died from injuries incurred from a beating in Selma, Alabama (February 26).
Jimmie Lee Jackson (December 16, 1938 - February 26, 1965) was a civil rights activist in Marion, Alabama, and a deacon in the Baptist church. On February 18, 1965, he was beaten by troopers and shot by Alabama State Trooper James Bonard Fowler while participating in a peaceful voting rights march in his city. Jackson was unarmed; he died several days later in the hospital.
His death inspired the Selma to Montgomery marches in March 1965, a major event in the American Civil Rights Movement that helped gain Congressional passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. This opened the door to millions of African Americans being able to vote again in Alabama and across the South, regaining participation as citizens in the political system for the first time since the turn of the 20th century, when they were disenfranchised by state constitutions and discriminatory practices.
In 2007 former trooper Fowler was indicted in Jackson's death, and in 2010 he pleaded guilty to manslaughter. He was sentenced to six months in prison.
Jimmie Lee Jackson was a deacon of the St. James Baptist Church in Marion, Alabama, ordained in the summer of 1964. Jackson had tried to register to vote for four years, without success under the discriminatory system maintained by Alabama officials. Jackson was inspired by Martin Luther King, Jr., who had come with other SCLC staff to Selma, Alabama, to help local activists in their voter registration campaign. Jackson attended meetings several nights a week at Zion's Chapel Methodist Church. His desire to vote led to his death at the hands of an Alabama State Trooper. It inspired SCLC leader James Bevel to initiate and organize the dramatic Selma to Montgomery marches, which directly contributed to President Lyndon Johnson calling for, and Congress passing, the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
On the night of February 18, 1965, about 500 people organized by Southern Christian Leadership Conference activist C. T. Vivian, left Zion United Methodist Church in Marion and attempted a peaceful walk to the Perry County jail, about a half a block away, where young civil-rights worker James Orange was being held. The marchers planned to sing hymns and return to the church. Police later said that they believed the crowd was planning a jailbreak.
They were met at the Post Office by a line of Marion City police officers, sheriff's deputies, and Alabama State Troopers During the standoff, streetlights were abruptly turned off (some sources say they were shot out by the police), and the police began to beat the protesters. Among those beaten were two United Press International photographers, whose cameras were smashed, and NBC News correspondent Richard Valeriani who was beaten so badly that he was hospitalized. The marchers turned and scattered back towards the church.
Jackson, his mother Viola Jackson, and his 82-year-old grandfather, Cager Lee, ran into Mack's Café behind the church, pursued by Alabama State Troopers. Police clubbed Lee to the floor in the kitchen; when Viola attempted to pull the police off, she was also beaten. When Jackson tried to protect his mother, one trooper threw him against a cigarette machine. A second trooper shot Jackson twice in the abdomen. James Bonard Fowler later admitted to pulling the trigger, saying he thought Jackson was going for his gun. The wounded Jackson fled the café, suffering additional blows by the police, and collapsed in front of the bus station.
In the presence of FBI officials, Jackson told a lawyer, Oscar Adams of Birmingham, that he was "clubbed down" by State Troopers after he was shot and had run away from the café. Jackson died of his wounds at Good Samaritan Hospital in Selma, on February 26, 1965.
Jackson was buried in Heard Cemetery, an old slave burial ground, next to his father, with a headstone paid for by the Perry County Civic League.
Jackson's death led James Bevel, SCLC Director of Direct Action and the director of SCLC's Selma Voting Rights Movement, to initiate and organize the first Selma to Montgomery march to publicize the effort to gain registration and voting. Held a few days later, on March 7, 1965, the event became known as "Bloody Sunday" for the violent response of state troopers and posse, who attacked and beat the protesters after they came over the Edmund Pettus Bridge and left the city. The events captured national attention, raising widespread support for the voting rights campaign. In the third march to Montgomery, protesters traveled the entire way, and a total of 25,000 people peacefully entered the city, protected by federal troops and Alabama National Guard under federal command.
In March 1965, President Lyndon Johnson announced his federal bill to authorize oversight of local practices and enforcement by the federal government; it was passed by Congress as the Voting Rights Act of 1965. After the act was passed, Jimmie Lee Jackson's grandfather Cager Lee, who had marched with him in February 1965 in Marion, voted for the first time at the age of 84.
A grand jury declined to indict Fowler in September 1965, identifying him only by his surname.
On May 10, 2007, 42 years after the crime, Fowler was charged with first degree and second-degree murder for Jackson's death, and surrendered to authorities. On November 15, 2010, Fowler pled guilty to manslaughter and apologized publicly for killing Jackson. He said he had acted in self-defense. He was sentenced to six months in jail, but served five months due to health problems which required medical surgery.
*****
*James Reeb, a Unitarian Universalist minister, pastor, and civil rights activist, died from head injuries suffered .from being severely beaten while participating in the Selma Voting Rights Movement (March 11).
James Reeb (January 1, 1927 – March 11, 1965) was an American Unitarian Universalist minister and a pastor and civil rights activist in Washington, D.C. While participating in the Selma Voting Rights marches in Selma, Alabama, in 1965, he was beaten severely by white segregationists and died of head injuries two days later in the hospital. He was 38 years old.
Reeb was born on January 1, 1927 in Wichita, Kansas, to Mae (Fox) and Harry Reeb. He was raised in Kansas and Casper, Wyoming. He graduated from St. Olaf College and attended Princeton Theological Seminary in Princeton, New Jersey and ordained a Presbyterian ministers after graduation.
A member of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), Reeb came to Selma to join protests for African American voting rights following the attack by state troopers and sheriff's deputies on nonviolent demonstrators on March 7, 1965. After eating dinner at an integrated restaurant March 9, Reeb and two other Unitarian ministers Reverend Clark Olsen and Reverend Orloff Miller, were attacked and beaten by white men armed with clubs. Several hours elapsed before Reeb was admitted to a Birmingham hospital where doctors performed brain surgery. While Reeb was on his way to the hospital in Birmingham, Martin Luther King, Jr. addressed a press conference lamenting the ‘‘cowardly’’ attack and asking all to pray for his protection. Reeb died two days later. His death resulted in a national outcry against the activities of white racists in the Deep South.
Reeb’s death provoked mourning throughout the country, and tens of thousands held vigils in his honor. President Johnson called Reeb’s widow and father to express his condolences, and on March 15 he invoked Reeb’s memory when he delivered a draft of the Voting Rights Act to Congress.
In April 1965, three white men were indicted for Reeb’s murder; they were acquitted that December.
*****
*Viola Liuzzo, a Unitarian Universalist civil rights activist who participated in the Selma to Montgomery marches, was killed (March 25).
Viola Fauver Gregg Liuzzo (April 11, 1925 – March 25, 1965) was a Unitarian Universalist civil rights activist from Michigan. In March 1965, Liuzzo, then a housewife and mother of five with a history of local activism, heeded the call of Martin Luther King, Jr. and traveled from Detroit, Michigan to Selma, Alabama, in the wake of the Bloody Sunday attempt at marching across the Edmund Pettus Bridge. Liuzzo participated in the successful Selma to Montgomery marches and helped with coordination and logistics. Driving back from a trip shuttling fellow activists to the Montgomery airport, she was shot by members of the Ku Klux Klan. She was 39 years old.
One of the four Klansmen in the car from which the shots were fired was Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) informant Gary Rowe. Rowe testified against the shooters and was moved and given an assumed name by the FBI. The FBI later leaked what were purported to be salacious details about Liuzzo which were never proved or substantiated in any way.
Liuzzo's name is today inscribed on the Civil Rights Memorial in Montgomery, Alabama.
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Performing Arts
The Amen Corner by James Baldwin opened at New York's Ethel Barrymore Theater with Bea Richards, Juanita Hall, and Frank Silvera.
The Toilet and The Slave, plays by LeRoi Jones (Amiri Baraka), opened Off Broadway.
Sidney Lumet's The Hill opened with Sean Connery, Michael Redgrave, and Ossie Davis.
In Stratford, Connecticut, Ruby Dee became the first African American to play major roles at the American Shakespeare Theater.
Martina Arroyo debuted as "Aida" at the Metropolitan Opera House.
Dancer Judith Jamison debuted with the Alvin Ailey dance troupe.
Muhal Richard Abrams founded the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians.
On the pop music charts, the Supremes had their fourth consecutive number-one hit with "Stop! In the Name of Love". The Temptations had their first number-one hit with "My Girl", written by William "Smokey" Robinson. The Four Tops also had their first number-one hit with "I Can't Help Myself (Sugar Pie, Honey Bunch)"
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Politics
Patricia R. Harris was appointed ambassador to Luxembourg, the first African American woman named an ambassador.
Constance Baker Motley was elected Manhattan borough president, the highest elective office held at that time by an African American woman in a major United States city.
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Religion
The pope appointed Harold R. Perry as the first African American Roman Catholic bishop in the United States in the 20th century. Perry replaced John Patrick Cody as bishop of New Orleans when Cody, a European American civil rights advocate, was named archbishop of Chicago, the nation's most populous Roman Catholic see.
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Sports
The National Baseball Congress named Satchel Paige the all-time outstanding player (January 30).
Gale Sayers of the Chicago Bears broke the National Football League's touchdown record and was named Rookie of the Year.
Mike Garrett, running back for the University of Southern California, won the Heisman Trophy. He would later play for the Kansas City Chiefs and the San Diego Chargers.
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Statistics
According to the Social Security Administration, nonwhites represent thirty-four percent (34%) of the population living below the poverty level.
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Africa
February 18
The Gambia gained independence after nearly 122 years of British colonial rule. The kingdom would become a republic in 1970.
October
Rhodesia's Prime Minister Ian Smith visited London and demanded immediate independence. Britain refused unless the Salisbury government first agreed to expand representation of native Africans in the government with a view to eventual majority rule.
November 11
Ian Smith declared Rhodesian independence unilaterally while reaffirming loyalty to the queen, the British governor at Salisbury declared Smith and his government deposed. London called the declaration illegal and treasonable and proclaimed economic sanctions against Rhodesia.
November 12
The United Nations Security Council called on all nations to withhold recognition of the new Rhodesian regime and refuse it aid.
November 15
Guinea severed diplomatic relations with France after discovering a plot to assassinate Sekou Toure and overthrow his regime.
November 24-25
The Independent Congo Republic had a bloodless coup, 6 weeks after President Kasavuba dismissed Moise Tshombe as premier. General Joseph Mobutu deposed President Kasavuba, made himself president and proceeded to rule by decree.
December 5
The Organization of African Unity threatened to break relations with Britain unless London applied force to suppress Ian Smith's rebellion by December 15.
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General Historical Events
January 2
Indonesia withdrew from the United Nations (becoming the first nation to do so).
January 4
President Johnson outlined programs for a "Great Society" that would eliminate poverty in America in his State of the Union message, but United States military involvement in Southeast Asia escalated draining the United States economy.
February 7-8
United States bombers pounded North Vietnamese targets, retaliating against a National Liberation Front (NLF) attack on United States ground forces in South Vietnam.
February 11
Washington announced a general policy of bombing North Vietnam. President Johnson stated, "The people of South Vietnam have chosen to resist [North Vietnamese aggression]. At their request the United States has taken its place beside them in this struggle."
March
Romania's Premier Gheorghe Gheorghin-Dej died after nearly 13 years and was succeeded as head of state by Nicolae Ceausescu, who would rule despotically until late 1989.
March 2
Some 160 United States planes bombed North Vietnam.
March 8-9
3,500 United States Marines landed at Da Nang in the first deployment of United States combat troops in Vietnam.
March 9
President Johnson signed a $1.4 billion program of federal-state economic aid to Appalachia into law.
March 19
Jakarta seized United States oil company properties and those of Goodyear Tire & Rubber.
March 30
A bomb exploded in the United States embassy at Saigon.
April 4
North Vietnamese MIG fighter planes shot down United States jets.
April 17
A student demonstration in Washington, D. C. protested the United States bombing of North Vietnam,
April 23
United States planes raided North Vietnam in force.
April 24
Indonesia seized all remaining foreign owned properties.
April 28
United States Marines landed in the Dominican Republic to protect American citizens and prevent an allegedly imminent Communist takeover of the Santo Domingo government.
April 29
Australia decided to send troops to aid South Vietnam.
May 15
A "teach-in" broadcast to more than 100 United States colleges opposed the war in Vietnam.
May 23
An Inter-American Peace Force from the Organization of American States (OAS) took over peacekeeping operations but 20,000 United States Marines remained for several months.
June 8
Congress authorized the use of ground troops in direct combat if the South Vietnamese army so requests.
June 28
The first full scale combat offensive by U.S. troops began.
July 16
The Maldives in the Indian Ocean became independent after 78 years of British colonial rule.
July 28
Some 125,000 United States troops were in Vietnam by July 28. President Johnson announced a doubling of draft calls.
August 1
Great Britain banned cigarette advertising from commercial television.
August 19
While President Johnson asked the United Nations to help negotiate a peace, United States troops engaged in their first major battle as an independent force in mid-August and destroyed a Viet Cong stronghold near Van Tuong.
Late September
The Indonesian army defeated a Communist takeover attempt in late September. Communists had kidnapped the army chief of staff and five generals at the end of September, but other generals escaped capture and thwarted the attempted coup.
October 8
A general massacre of Communists began. An estimate of the dead ranged up to 400,000, but many of those killed were ethnic Chinese who dominated the Indonesian economy and were slain because they were landlords or creditors.
"The Vietcong are going to collapse within weeks," says President Johnson's National Security Adviser
Walt Whitman Rostow, "Not months, but weeks."
October 3
A new United States immigration act was signed into law by President Johnson at the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor. The act abolished the national origins quota system of 1952. The new law permitted entry by any alien who met qualifications of education and skill provided such entry would not jeopardize the job of an American. The new immigration act imposed an overall limit of 120,000 visas per year for Western Hemisphere countries and 170,000 per year for the rest of the world, but immediate relatives of United States citizens could enter without regard to these limits.
October 15
Anti-war rallies attracted crowds in four United States cities. In Berkeley, California, poet Allen Ginsberg introduced the term "flower power" to describe a strategy of friendly cooperation. Oakland police blocked the Berkeley peace marchers from entering the city and the Hell's Angels motorcycle gang attacked the marchers, calling them "un-American."
November
Look magazine revealed that Washington rejected secret peace talks with North Vietnam arranged in
September of 1964 by United Nations Secretary General U Thant.
November 9
The worst power failure in history blacked out most of seven states and Ontario, affecting 30 million people in an 80,000-square-mile area. New York's power failed at 5:27 p.m. Brooklyn regained it at 2:00 a.m., Queens at 4:20 a.m., and Manhattan at 6:58 a.m. Telephone companies maintained service and New York had a record 62 million phone calls in one day, nearly double the city's weekly average. Con Edison assured the public that no blackouts would recur.
December 15
The AFL-CIO pledged "unstinting support" for the Vietnamese war effort.
*****
New York City's welfare roll grew to 480,000. The number of welfare recipients would be 1.2 million by 1975 and the city's welfare agency would account for more than a quarter of the city's $12 billion budget with half the welfare aid reimbursed by the federal government.
Unsafe at Any Speed by consumer advocate Ralph Nader noted that more than 51,000 Americans were killed each year by automobiles, a figure the Department of Commerce had projected for 1975. Nader quit his job with the Department of Labor to crusade for consumer protection and he wrote, "For more thn half a century, the automobile has brought death, injury and the most inestimable sorrow and deprivation to millions of people."
Congress established a National Clearinghouse for Smoking and Health and ordered that cigarette packages be labeled "Caution: cigarette smoking may be hazardous to your health."
The $2 million appropriated by Congress for the National Clearinghouse was less than one percent of the amount spent on television advertising by the tobacco industry, and the legislation frees the industry from Federal Trade Commission regulations for the next four years. The major tobacco companies continued to diversify by acquiring food companies.
*Playwright Lorraine Hansberry, the author of A Raisin in the Sun, was born in Chicago (May 19),
Lorraine Vivian Hansberry (b. May 19, 1930, Chicago, Illinois – d. January 12, 1965, New York City, New York) was an American playwright and writer. Hansberry inspired Nina Simone's song "To Be Young, Gifted and Black".
She was the first black woman to write a play performed on Broadway. Her best known work, the play A Raisin in the Sun, highlights the lives of African Americans living under racial segregation in Chicago. Hansberry's family had struggled against segregation, challenging a restrictive covenant and eventually provoking the Supreme Court case Hansberry v. Lee. The title of her most famous play was taken from the poem "Harlem" by Langston Hughes: "What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?"
After she moved to New York City, Hansberry worked at the Pan-Africanist newspaper Freedom, where she dealt with intellectuals such as Paul Robeson and W. E. B. Du Bois. Much of her work during this time concerned the African struggle for liberation and their impact on the world. Hansberry has been identified as a lesbian, and sexual freedom is an important topic in several of her works. She died of cancer at the age of 34.
Lorraine Hansberry was born in a comfortable, middle-class family in Chicago, and was educated at the University of Wisconsisn and Roosevelt University. She first appeared in print in Paul Robeson's Freedom, a monthly newspaper, during the early 1950's. In 1959, A Raisin in the Sun, her first play, was produced on Broadway. It was among the first full-length African American plays to be taken seriously by a European American audience.
The success of A Raisin in the Sun catapulted Hansberry to an early fame. She was expected to be a spokesperson for the African American poor, when in fact she was more attuned to the aspirations of the African American bourgeoisie. Hansberry was very militant about integration and not supportive of black nationalist or separatist movements.
Lorraine Vivian Hansberry was the first black woman to write a play performed on Broadway. Her best known work, the play A Raisin in the Sun, highlights the lives of Black Americans living under racial segregation in Chicago. Hansberry's family had struggled against segregation, challenging a restrictive covenant and eventually provoking the Supreme Court case Hansberry v. Lee. The title of the play was taken from the poem "Harlem" by Langston Hughes: "What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?"
At the young age of 29, Hansberry won the New York's Drama Critic's Circle Award — making her the first black dramatist, the fifth woman, and the youngest playwright to do so.
After she moved to New York City, Hansberry worked at the Pan-Africanist newspaper Freedom, where she dealt with intellectuals such as Paul Robeson and W. E. B. DuBois. Much of her work during this time concerned the African struggle for liberation and their impact on the world. Hansberry has been identified as a lesbian, and sexual freedom is an important topic in several of her works. She died of cancer at the age of 34. Hansberry inspired Nina Simone's song "To Be Young, Gifted and Black".
Lorraine Hansberry was the youngest of four children born to Carl Augustus Hansberry, a successful real-estate broker, and Nannie Louise (born Perry) a driving school teacher and ward committeewoman. In 1938, her father bought a house in the Washington Park Subdivision of the South Side of Chicago, incurring the wrath of their white neighbors. The latter's legal efforts to force the Hansberry family out culminated in the United States Supreme Court's decision in Hansberry v. Lee. The restrictive covenant was ruled contestable, though not inherently invalid. Carl Hansberry was also a supporter of the Urban League and NAACP in Chicago. Both Hansberrys were active in the Chicago Republican Party. Carl died in 1946, when Lorraine was fifteen years old; "American racism helped kill him," she later said.
The Hansberrys were routinely visited by prominent Black intellectuals, including W. E. B. DuBois and Paul Robeson. Carl Hansberry's brother, William Leo Hansberry, founded the African Civilization section of the history department at Howard University. Lorraine was taught: ‘‘Above all, there were two things which were never to be betrayed: the family and the race.’’
Hansberry became the godmother to Nina Simone's daughter Lisa—now Simone.
Hansberry graduated from Betsy Ross Elementary in 1944 and from Englewood High School in 1948. She attended the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she immediately became politically active and integrated a dormitory.
She worked on Henry A. Wallace's presidential campaign in 1948, despite her mother's disapproval. She spent the summer of 1949 in Mexico, studying painting at the University of Guadalajara.
She decided in 1950 to leave Madison and pursue her career as a writer in New York City, where she attended The New School. She moved to Harlem in 1951 and became involved in activist struggles such as the fight against evictions.
In 1951, she joined the staff of the black newspaper Freedom, edited by Louis E. Burnham and published by Paul Robeson. At Freedom, she worked with W. E. B. Du Bois, whose office was in the same building, and other Black Pan-Africanists. At the newspaper, she worked as subscription clerk, receptionist, typist and editorial assistant in addition to writing news articles and editorials.
One of her first reports covered the Sojourners for Truth and Justice convened in Washington, D.C., by Mary Church Terrell. She traveled to Georgia to cover the case of Willie McGee, and was inspired to write the poem "Lynchsong" about his case.
She worked not only on the United States civil rights movement, but also on global struggles against colonialism and imperialism. Hansberry wrote in support of the Mau Mau Uprising in Kenya, criticizing the mainstream press for its biased coverage.
Hansberry often clarified these global struggles by explaining them in terms of female participants. She was particularly interested in the situation of Egypt, "the traditional Islamic 'cradle of civilization,' where women had led one of the most important fights anywhere for the equality of their sex."
In 1952, Hansberry attended a peace conference in Montevideo, Uruguay, in place of Paul Robeson, who had been denied travel rights by the State Department.
On June 20, 1953, Hansberry married Robert Nemiroff, a Jewish publisher, songwriter and political activist. Hansberry and Nemiroff moved to Greenwich Village, the setting of The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window. Success of the song "Cindy, Oh Cindy", co-authored by Nemiroff, enabled Hansberry to start writing full-time. On the night before their wedding in 1953, Nemiroff and Hansberry protested the execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg in NYC.
It is widely believed that Hansberry was a closeted lesbian, a theory supported by her secret writings in letters and personal notebooks. She was an activist for gay rights and wrote about feminism and homophobia, joining the Daughters of Bilitis and contributing two letters to their magazine, The Ladder, in 1957 under her initials "LHN." She separated from her husband at this time, but they continued to work together.
A Raisin in the Sun was written at this time and completed in 1957.
Opening on March 11, 1959, A Raisin in the Sun became the first play written by an African American woman to be produced on Broadway. The 29-year-old author became the youngest American playwright and only the fifth woman to receive the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Play. Over the next two years, Raisin was translated into 35 languages and was being performed all over the world.
Hansberry wrote two screenplays of Raisin, both of which were rejected as controversial by Columbia Pictures. Commissioned by NBC in 1960 to create a television program about slavery, Hansberry wrote The Drinking Gourd. This script was also rejected.
In 1960, during Delta Sigma Theta's 26th national convention in Chicago, Hansberry was made an honorary member.
In 1961, Hansberry was set to replace Vinnette Carroll as the director of the musical Kicks and Co, after its try-out at Chicago's McCormick Place. It was written by Oscar Brown, Jr. and featured an interracial cast including Lonnie Sattin, Nichelle Nichols, Vi Velasco, Al Freeman, Jr., Zabeth Wilde and Burgess Meredith in the title role of Mr. Kicks. A satire involving miscegenation, the $400,000 production was co-produced by her husband Robert Nemiroff. Despite a warm reception in Chicago, the show never made it to Broadway.
In 1963, Hansberry participated in a meeting with Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, set up by James Baldwin.
Also in 1963, Hansberry was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. She underwent two operations, on June 24 and August 2. Neither was successful in removing the cancer.
On March 10, 1964, Hansberry and Nemiroff divorced but continued to work together.
While many of her other writings were published in her lifetime—essays, articles, and the text for the SNCC book The Movement — the only other play given a contemporary production was The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window. The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window ran for 101 performances on Broadway and closed the night she died.
Hansberry was an atheist.
Hansberry believed that gaining civil rights in the United States and obtaining independence in colonial Africa were two sides of the same coin that presented similar challenges for Africans on both sides of the Atlantic. In response to the independence of Ghana, led by Kwame Nkrumah, Hansberry wrote: "The promise of the future of Ghana is that of all the colored peoples of the world; it is the promise of freedom."
Regarding tactics, Hansberry said Blacks "must concern themselves with every single means of struggle: legal, illegal, passive, active, violent and non-violent.... They must harass, debate, petition, give money to court struggles, sit-in, lie-down, strike, boycott, sing hymns, pray on steps—and shoot from their windows when the racists come cruising through their communities."
In a Town Hall debate on June 15, 1964, Hansberry criticized white liberals who could not accept civil disobedience, expressing a need "to encourage the white liberal to stop being a liberal and become an American radical." At the same time, she said, "some of the first people who have died so far in this struggle have been white men."
The Federal Bureau of Investigation began surveillance of Hansberry when she prepared to go to the Montevideo peace conference. The Washington, D.C. office searched her passport files "in an effort to obtain all available background material on the subject, any derogatory information contained therein, and a photograph and complete description," while officers in Milwaukee and Chicago examined her life history. Later, an FBI reviewer of Raisin in the Sun highlighted its Pan-Africanist themes as dangerous.
Hansberry, a heavy smoker her whole life, died of pancreatic cancer on January 12, 1965, aged 34. James Baldwin believed "it is not at all farfetched to suspect that what she saw contributed to the strain which killed her, for the effort to which Lorraine was dedicated is more than enough to kill a man."
Hansberry's funeral was held in Harlem on January 15, 1965. Paul Robeson and SNCC organizer James Forman gave eulogies. The presiding minister, Eugene Callender, recited messages from Baldwin and the Martin Luther King, Jr. which read: "Her creative ability and her profound grasp of the deep social issues confronting the world today will remain an inspiration to generations yet unborn." The 15th was also Dr. King's birthday. Hansberry was buried at Asbury United Methodist Church Cemetery in Croton-on-Hudson, New York.
Hansberry's ex-husband, Robert Nemiroff, became the executor for several unfinished manuscripts. He added minor changes to complete the play Les Blancs, and he adapted many of her writings into the play To Be Young, Gifted and Black, which was the longest-running Off Broadway play of the 1968–69 season. It appeared in book form the following year under the title To Be Young, Gifted and Black: Lorraine Hansberry in Her Own Words. She left behind an unfinished novel and several other plays, including The Drinking Gourd and What Use Are Flowers?, with a range of content, from slavery to a post-apocalyptic future.
Raisin, a musical based on A Raisin in the Sun, opened in New York in 1973, winning the Tony Award for Best Musical, with the book by Nemiroff, music by Judd Woldin, and lyrics by Robert Britten. A Raisin in the Sun was revived on Broadway in 2004 and received a Tony Award nomination for Best Revival of a Play. The cast included Sean Combs ("P Diddy") as Walter Lee Younger Jr., Phylicia Rashad (Tony Award-winner for Best Actress) and Audra McDonald (Tony Award-winner for Best Featured Actress). It was produced for television in 2008 with the same cast, garnering two NAACP Image Awards.
Nina Simone first released a song about Hansberry in 1969 called "To Be Young, Gifted and Black". The title of the song refers to the title of Hansberry's autobiography, which Hansberry first coined when speaking to the winners of a creative writing conference on May 1, 1964, "though it be a thrilling and marvelous thing to be merely young and gifted in such times, it is doubly so, doubly dynamic — to be young, gifted and black." Simone wrote the song with a poet named Weldon Irvine and told him that she wanted lyrics that would "make black children all over the world feel good about themselves forever." When Irvine read the lyrics after it was finished, he thought, "I didn't write this. God wrote it through me." In a recorded introduction to the song, Simone explained the difficulty of losing a close friend and talented artist.
Patricia and Frederick McKissack wrote a children's biography of Hansberry, Young, Black, and Determined, in 1998.
In 1999, Hansberry was posthumously inducted into the Chicago Gay and Lesbian Hall of Fame.
In 2002, scholar Molefi Kete Asante listed Hansberry as one of his 100 Greatest African Americans.
The Lorraine Hansberry Theatre of San Francisco, which specializes in original stagings and revivals of African-American theatre, is named in her honor. Singer and pianist Nina Simone, who was a close friend of Hansberry, used the title of her unfinished play to write a civil rights-themed song "To Be Young, Gifted and Black" together with Weldon Irvine. The single reached the top 10 on the R&B charts. A studio recording by Simone was released as a single and the first live recording on October 26, 1969, was captured on Black Gold (1970).
In 2013 Hansberry was inducted into the Legacy Walk, an outdoor public display which celebrates LGBT history and people.
In 2013, Lorraine Hansberry was posthumously inducted into the American Theatre Hall of Fame.
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