December 20, 2001 Leopold Sedar Senghor, poet and the first President of Senegal, died. Senghor was born October 9, 1906 in Joal, Senegal. His father was a successful businessman and this allowed him to attend the best schools in Senegal and earn a scholarship to study in France where he graduated from the University of […]
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December 19th in African American History – Milton John Hinton
December 19, 2000 Milton John Hinton, the dean of jazz bass players, died. Hinton was born June 23, 1910 in Vicksburg, Mississippi. While attending high school, he learned to play the bass horn, tuba, cello, and the double bass. In the late 1920s and early 1930s, he worked as a freelance musician in Chicago, Illinois, […]
December 19th in African American History – Roebuck “Pops” Staples
December 19, 2000 Roebuck “Pops” Staples, gospel and R&B musician, died. Staples was born December 28, 1914 on a cotton plantation near Winona, Mississippi. He dropped out of school after the eighth grade. In 1935, he moved to Chicago, Illinois where he sang with the Trumpet Jubilees. In 1948, he formed The Staple Singers with […]
December 18th in African American History – Raiford Chatman “Ossie” Davis
December 18, 1917 Raiford Chatman “Ossie” Davis, actor, director, playwright and social activist, was born in Cogdell, Georgia. Davis began his acting career in 1939 with the Rose McClendon Players in Harlem and made his film debut in 1950 in “No Way Out.” Over the next 55 years, he appeared in almost 50 movies, including […]
December 18th in African American History – Stephen Bantu Biko
December 18, 1946 Stephen Bantu Biko, anti-apartheid activist, was born in King William’s Town in the Eastern Cape province of South Africa. In 1968, Biko helped found the South African Students’ Organization, which evolved into the Black Consciousness Movement, and was elected its first president. In March, 1973, he was banned by the government which […]
December 17th in African American History – Moses Gunn
December 17, 1993 Moses Gunn, stage, film, and television actor, died. Gunn was born October 2, 1929 in St. Louis, Missouri and earned his Bachelor of Arts degree from Tennessee State University in 1959. He then studied at the University of Kansas from 1959 to 1961 in their graduate program for speech and drama. Gunn […]
December 17th in African American History – Dorothy Porter Wesley
December 17, 1995 Dorothy Porter Wesley, librarian and curator, died. Wesley was born May 25, 1905 in Warrenton, Virginia. She earned her A.B. degree from Howard University in 1928 and bachelor and master’s degrees in library science from Columbia University in 1931 and 1932, respectively. From 1928 to her retirement in 1973, Wesley assembled and […]