*               Today in Black History - December 31                  *

***********************************************************************
* The Nguzo Saba - The seven principles of Kwanzaa - Principle for    *
* Day #6 -  Kuumba (koo-OOM-bah) Creativity: To do always as much as  *
* we can, in the way that we can, in order to leave our community     *
* more beautiful than when we inherited it.                           *
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kwanzaa                                *
***********************************************************************

1775 - Alarmed by the impact of the British Dunmore proclamation, that
	would give freedom to slaves who would fight on their side, 
	Gen. George Washington reverses himself and authorizes the 
	enlistment of free Blacks.

1783 - The importation of African slaves is banned by all of the 
	northern states in the United States.

1862 - The Ebenezer African Methodist Episcopal Church holds a Watch 
	Night service in Suburban Maryland.  It begins a tradition when 
	African Americans pray and worship in anticipation of the next 
	day, New Year's Day 1863, when President Lincoln's Emancipation
	Proclamation is to take effect. 

1871 - Annie Welthy Daughtry (later Holland) is born in Isle of Wight
	County, Virginia. In 1921, she will be appointed North Carolina
	Supervisor of Negro Elementary Education, a position she will 
	hold until she joins the ancestors. In 1927, she will found 
	North Carolina's Colored Parent Teachers' Association. She will 
	join the ancestors suddenly on January 6, 1934, while 
	addressing a county-wide meeting of Black teachers in
	Louisburg, North Carolina.

1900 - Sculptor and educator Selma Burke is born in Mooresville, North
	Carolina.  She will be commissioned to create a profile of 
	President Franklin D. Roosevelt after a national competition 
	sponsored by the Fine Arts Commission in Washington, DC.  The 
	completed project, a plaque, is unveiled and installed at the 
	Record of Deeds Building in Washington DC. She will join the
	ancestors on August 29, 1995.

1930 - Odetta Felious Gordon Holmes is born in Birmingham, Alabama.  
	She will become a famous folksinger, known simply as "Odetta", 
	who will sing all over the world and at major peace and civil 
	rights meetings, including the 1963 March on Washington. Among 
	the many musicians who cite Odetta as a major musical influence 
	have been Janis Joplin, Bob Dylan and Joan Baez. She will join 
	the ancestors on December 2, 2008.

1948 - LaDonna Adrian Gaines is born in Boston, Massachusetts. She will
	be best known by her stage name, Donna Summer. She will become
	a singer and songwriter, gaining prominence during the disco era 
	of the late 1970s. A five-time Grammy Award winner, she will be 
	the first artist to have three consecutive double albums reach #1 
	on the United States Billboard album chart and chart four number
	one singles in the United States within a 13-month period. She will
	reportedly sell over 100 million records, making her one of the 
	world's best-selling artists of all time. She will first become 
	involved with singing through church choir groups before joining a 
	number of bands influenced by the Motown Sound. Also influenced by 
	the counterculture of the 1960s, she will become the front singer 
	of a psychedelic rock band named Crow and move to New York City. 
	Joining a touring version of the musical "Hair," she will leave New 
	York and spend several years living, acting, and singing in West 
	Germany, where she will meet music producer Giorgio Moroder. Also 
	while in Europe, she will marry Helmut Sommer. After their divorce, 
	she will keep his surname for her stage name; dropping the "o" and 
	replacing it with a "u" for "Summer". After returning to the United 
	States, she will co-write the song "Love to Love You Baby" with Pete 
	Bellotte. The song will be released in 1975 to mass commercial 
	success. Over the following years She will follow this success with 
	a string of other hits, such as "I Feel Love", "Last Dance", 
	"MacArthur Park", "Hot Stuff", "Bad Girls", "Dim All the Lights", 
	"No More Tears (Enough Is Enough)", and "On the Radio". She will 
	become known as the "Queen of Disco" and regularly appear at the 
	Studio 54 nightclub in New York City, while her music gains a global 
	following. She will continue to perform until 2011. She will join
	the ancestors on May 17,2912 in Naples, Florida, after succumbing to 
	lung cancer at the age of 63. On December 11, 2012, after four prior 
	nominations, she will be posthumously announced to be one of the 2013 
	inductees to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame,and will be inducted on 
	April 18, 2013, at Los Angeles' Nokia Theater.

1953 - Hulan Jack is inaugurated as Manhattan borough president, the 
	first African American to hold the post.

1953 - The NAACP's Spingarn Medal is presented to Paul R. Williams for 
	his achievements as an architect.

1962 - Katanga becomes part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. 

1964 - In a speech before a group of young people, Malcolm X urges them
	"to see for yourself and listen for yourself and think for
	yourself.  This generation, especially of our people, have a
	burden, more so than at any other time in history.  The most
	important thing we can learn to do today is think for
	ourselves."

1972 - Roberto Clemente, Pittsburgh Pirate slugger, joins the ancestors
	after a plane crash on his way to a humanitarian mission to 
	Nicaragua.

1976 - Roland Hayes joins the ancestors in Boston, Massachusetts at the
	age of 89. He had been an acclaimed tenor whose pioneering 
	recitals of German lieder and other classical music opened the 
	concert stage for African American singers

1984 - The first nationally broadcast telethon for the United Negro
	College Fund raises $14.1 million.  The telethon will become an
	annual fundraising drive that will support more than 40
	historically African American institutions of higher learning 
	and draw widespread individual and corporate support.

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