*               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                                *
***********************************************************************


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 October of 1911, she will join the Jeanes 
	Fund, which trains teachers in the south and gives funds to 
	African American supervisors of teachers dedicated to vocational 
	training of black students. She will work in Gates County, North
	Carolina as well as Chesapeake and Reynoldson County, Virginia 
	as supervisor of twenty-two schools. Her task as teaching 
	supervisor will be to ensure that African American students in 
	Gates County receive a sufficient education. By 1914, she will be
	one of 118 Jeanes teachers in 119 southern counties. In 1921, she 
	will be appointed North Carolina Supervisor of Negro Elementary 
	Education, a position she will hold until 1934. 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 Hortense Burke is born in Mooresville, 
	North Carolina. She will be caught up in the Harlem Renaissance 
	with Claude McKay and, influenced by the Harlem Community Art 
	Center, will begin to chase her dream of being an artist. She will
	continue sculpting in her free time. The Rosenwald (1935) and the 
	Boehler (1936) Foundation Grants in the late 1930s will enable her 
	to study sculpture in Vienna and with Aristide Maillol in Paris, 
	culminating in her Master of Fine Arts degree from Columbia 
	University in 1941. She will be chosen to sculpt a portrait of 
	then-President Franklin D. Roosevelt honoring the Four Freedoms. 
	Completed in 1944, the 3.5-by-2.5-foot plaque will be unveiled in 
	September 1945 at the Recorder of Deeds Building in Washington, 
	D.C., where it still hangs today. She will be committed to 
	teaching art to others. To that end, she will establish the Selma 
	Burke Art School in New York City and open the Selma Burke Art 
	Center in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Open from 1968 to 1981, the 
	center "was an original art center that played an integral role in 
	the Pittsburgh art community," offering courses ranging from 
	studio workshops to puppetry classes. She will also teach art in 
	the Pittsburgh Public Schools for 17 years. 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." 
	Her first professional experience will be in musical theater in 
	1944, as an ensemble member for four years with the Hollywood 
	Turnabout Puppet Theatre, working alongside Elsa Lanchester. She 
	later will join the national touring company of the musical 
	"Finian's Rainbow" in 1949. While on tour with "Finian's Rainbow," 
	she "fell in with an enthusiastic group of young balladeers in San 
	Francisco", and after 1950 will concentrate on folksinging. She 
	will make her name by playing around the United States at the Blue 
	Angel nightclub (New York City), the hungry i (San Francisco), and 
	Tin Angel (San Francisco), where she and Larry Mohr will record 
	"Odetta and Larry" in 1954, for Fantasy Records. A solo career will
	follow, with "Odetta Sings Ballads and Blues" (1956) and "At the 
	Gate of Horn" (1957). "Odetta Sings Folk Songs" will be one of 
	1963's best-selling folk albums. In 1959, she will appear on 
	"Tonight With Belafonte," a nationally televised special. She will
	sing "Water Boy" and a duet with Belafonte, "There's a Hole in My 
	Bucket." In 1961, Martin Luther King, Jr. will anoint her "The 
	Queen of American folk music". Also in 1961, the duo Harry 
	Belafonte and Odetta will make #32 in the United Kingdom Singles 
	Chart with the song "There's a Hole in the Bucket." Many Americans 
	will remember her performance at the 1963 civil rights movement's 
	March on Washington where she will sing "O Freedom." She will 
	consider her involvement in the Civil Rights movement as being 
	"one of the privates in a very big army." Among the many musicians 
	who will cite her as a major musical influence will be 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, 2012 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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