Black History on May 14th

1867 - A riot occurs in Mobile, Alabama, after an African American mass meeting. One African American and one white are killed.

1885 - Erskine Henderson wins the Kentucky Derby riding Joe Cotton. The horse's trainer is another African-American, Alex Perry.

1897 - Sidney Joseph Bechet is born in New Orleans, Louisiana. A member of both Duke Ellington's and Noble Sissle's orchestras, Bechet moved to France and there achieved the greatest success of his career. He had been the greatest jazz soloist of the 1920s along with Louis Armstrong.

1898 - Arthur James 'Zutty' Singleton is born in Bunkie, Louisiana. He will become a percussion musician and bandleader. He will start as a drummer at the age of 15 and will work in a variety of bands until he forms his own in 1920. He will eventually make his way to Chicago and will become part of the "Chicago School of Jazz." He will be primarily remembered for introducing sock cymbals and wire brushes as percussion accessories. These innovations will place him in demand as an accompanist for jazz greats like Louis Armstrong, Fats Waller, Dizzy Gillespie, Jelly Roll Morton, and Charlie Parker. He will Perform primarily in New York City from 1953 until 1970. He will join the ancestors in 1975.

1906 - Ngwazi Hastings Kamuzu Banda is born near Kasungu, British Central African Protectorate. Even though his official birth date is cited as 1906, many sources show his birth date as 1898. He will become Malawi's first prime minister after independence in 1963. In 1966, he will elected Malawi's president in 1966. He will lead Malawi until 1994. He will join the ancestors in Johannesburg, South Africa in 1997.

1913 - Clara Stanton Jones is born in St. Louis, Missouri. She will become the first African American director of the Detroit Public Library and the first African American president of the American Library Association.

1943 - Tania J. Leon is born in Havana, Cuba. She will become a pianist, composer, and orchestral conductor. Her music style will encompass Afro-Cuban rhythm and elements of jazz and gospel. She will emigrate to the United States in 1967 and in 1969 will join the Dance Theater of Harlem as a pianist. She will later become the artistic director of the troupe. Some her compositions for the Dance Theater of Harlem will include "Tones," "Beloved," and "Dougla." She will debut as a conductor in 1971 and starting in 1980 when she leaves the Dance Theater of Harlem, will serve as guest conductor and composer with orchestras in the United States and Europe. In 1993, she will become an advisor to the New York Philharmonic conductor, Kurt Masur on contemporary music.

1959 - Soprano saxophonist Sidney Joseph Bechet joins the ancestors in Paris, France on his sixty second birthday after succumbing to cancer.

1961 - A bus, with the first group of Freedom Riders, is bombed and burned by segregationists outside Anniston, Alabama. The group is attacked in Anniston and Birmingham.

1963 - Twenty-year-old Arthur Ashe becomes the first African American to make the U.S. Davis Cup tennis team.

1966 - Georgia Douglas Johnson joins the ancestors in Washington, DC at the age of 88. She was a poet and playwright. While she never lived in Harlem, she is associated with the Harlem Renaissance because her home was a regular oasis for many of the writers of that literary movement. Her home hosted writer workshops and discussion groups while also being a place of lodging for those writers when they visited Washington, DC. Her own poetry and plays were very popular with African American audiences during the 1920s.

1969 - John B. McLendon becomes the first African American coach in the ABA when he signs a two-year contract with the Denver Nuggets.

1970 - Two students are killed by police officers in a major racial disturbance at Jackson State University in Jackson, Mississippi.

1986 - Reggie Jackson hits his 537th home run passing Mickey Mantle into 6th place of all time home run hitters.

1989 - Kirby Puckett becomes the first professional baseball player since 1948 to hit 6 consecutive doubles.

1995 - Myrlie Evers-Williams (widow of Medgar Evers) is sworn in to head the NAACP, pledging to lead the civil rights group away from its recent troubles and restore it as a political and social force.

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