The James Logan Courier

From wikipedia:
José María Teclo Morelos y Pavón (September 30, 1765, Valladolid, now Morelia, Michoacán – December 22, 1815, San Cristóbal Ecatepec, State of México) was a Mexican Roman Catholic priest and revolutionary rebel leader who led the Mexican War of Independence movement, assuming its leadership after the execution of Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla in 1811. He was later captured by the Spanish colonial authorities and executed for treason in 1815.

Read more about Jose Morelos and other heroes of the Mexican independence movement, free from Texas A&M University

From wikipedia:
Charles Harrison Cooper (September 29, 1926 - February 5, 1984), better known as Chuck Cooper, was one of three players with legitimate claims to be the first African American basketball player in the NBA. Each satisfied a different condition of being "first":

* Cooper was the first black player to be drafted by an NBA team, in 1950.
* Shortly afterwards, Nat "Sweetwater" Clifton was the first black player to sign a contract with an NBA team.
* Finally, at the start of the 1950-51 season, Earl Lloyd was the first black to play in an NBA game, as his team started its season one day before Cooper's and four days before Clifton's.


Read more about Chuck Cooper, free from jrank.org.

From wikipedia:
Richard Berry Harrison (September 28, 1864 - March 14, 1935) was a renowned actor, teacher, dramatic reader and lecturer. He was featured on the cover of TIME magazine on March 4, 1935. The son of fugitive slaves, Harrison was born in London, Ontario, Canada, on September 28, 1864, the eldest of five siblings.

Harrison's parents had escaped slavery through the Underground Railroad. His mother named him Richard after seeing a performance of Shakespeare's Richard III. Her interest in theatre placed Harrison on the way to becoming an actor. In his youth, he worked selling newspapers, and managed to work near a local London theatre where he would try to get to know the actors. Whenever he saved enough money he would attend the plays. His talents were recognized early in recitations that he would give at school and in church.

Read "When the Lord was a Black Man, a Fresh Look at the Life of Richard Berry Harrison, by Andrea J. Nouryeh, free from the Mollie Huston Lee Collection of the Richard B. Harrison Library in Wake County.

From wikipedia:
Earl Rudolph "Bud" Powell (September 27, 1924 – July 31, 1966 in New York City) was an American Jazz pianist, usually considered one of the most influential in the history of the music. Along with Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie he was instrumental in the development of bebop, and his virtuosity as a pianist led many to call him "the Charlie Parker of the piano".

Powell's grandfather was a flamenco guitarist, and his father was a stride pianist. The family lived in New York City. His older brother William played the trumpet, and by the age of fifteen Powell was playing in his brother's band. Powell had learned classical piano from an early age, but by the age of eight was interested in jazz, playing his own transcriptions of Art Tatum and stride pianists Fats Waller and James P. Johnson. His younger brother Richie and schoolfriend Elmo Hope were also accomplished pianists who had significant careers. Thelonious Monk was an important early teacher and mentor, and a close friend throughout Powell's life, dedicating the composition "In Walked Bud" to him.

Watch Bud Powell play in Paris in 1959, free from YouTube.

From wikipedia:
Meredith Charles "Flash" Gourdine (Sept. 26, 1929, Newark, New Jersey - Nov. 20, 1998, Houston) was an American athlete, engineer and physicist.

Gourdine studied at Cornell University, where he competed in the sprints, hurdles and long jump, and was selected for membership in the Quill and Dagger society. At the 1952 Summer Olympics in Helsinki he won a silver medal in the long jump, one and a half inch short of Jerome Biffle's golden medal jump.

Learn more about Meredith Gourdine, free from the University at Buffalo Mathematics Department.

From wikipedia:
Eric Eustace Williams (September 25, 1911 – March 29, 1981) was the first Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago. He served from 1956 until his death in 1981. He was also a noted Caribbean historian.

Williams was born the son of minor civil servant, but his mother was a descendant of the French Creole elite. He was educated at Queen's Royal College in Port of Spain, where he excelled at academics and football. He won an island scholarship in 1932 which allowed him to attend Oxford University where he received his doctorate in 1938. Williams was in part inspired by C.L.R. James and his doctoral thesis, titled The Economic Aspect of the West Indian Slave Trade and Slavery, owed much to the influence of James's The Black Jacobins (1938)

Visit the Eric Eustace Williams Collection, free from the University of the West Indies.

From wikipedia:
Edward Franklin Frazier (September 24, 1894 - May 17, 1962), was an American sociologist. His 1932 Ph.D. dissertation The Negro Family in Chicago, later released as a book The Negro Family in the United States in 1939, analyzed the cultural and historical forces that influenced the development of the African American family from the time of slavery. The book was awarded the 1939 Anisfield Award for the most significant work in the field of race relations. This book was among the first sociological works on blacks researched and written by a black person. He helped draft the UNESCO statement The Race Question in 1950.

Read excerpts of E. Franklin Frazier and the Black Bourgeoisie, by James Teele, free from googlebooks.com.

From wikipedia:
George Jackson (September 23, 1941 – August 21, 1971) was a Black American militant who became a member of the Black Panther Party while in prison, where he spent the last 12 years of his life. He was one of the Soledad Brothers and achieved fame due to a book of published letters.

Born in Chicago Illinois, Jackson spent time in the Youth Authority Corrections facility in Paso Robles because of several convictions. He was convicted of armed robbery, a felony, for robbing a gas station at gunpoint and at age 18 was sentenced to serve one year to life in prison.

Read excerpts from George Jackson's book, Blood in My Eye, free from googlebooks.com.

From the Smithsonian Institution:
Alma Woodsey Thomas was born in Columbus, Georgia on September 22, 1894, the eldest of the four daughters of John Harris Thomas and Amelia Cantey Thomas. The family moved to Washington, D.C. in 1906. Alma Thomas graduated in 1911 from Armstrong Technical High School where she was first introduced to art classes. From 1911 to 1913, she took a course in kindergarten teaching at the Miner Normal School, Washington, D.C. Because of the lack of permanent positions in the D.C. public school system, she accepted substitute work until early 1914 when she received a teaching position on the Eastern shore of Maryland. Then, from 1916 to 1923, she taught kindergarten at Thomas Garrett Settlement House in Wilmington, Delaware.

See examples of Alma Thomas' art, free from artcyclopedia.com.

From wikipedia:
Sanford Emory Stephens II (September 21, 1940 - June 6, 2000) was an African-American football player and civic leader. Stephens was born and raised in the Pittsburgh area city of Uniontown, Pennsylvania and is best known for his career as a college football quarterback at the University of Minnesota. He was a member of Alpha Phi Alpha, the first intercollegiate Greek-letter fraternity established for African Americans.

Stephens was the first black man to play quarterback at the University of Minnesota and remains the only quarterback to take the Gophers to the Rose Bowl (1960 and 1961). In 1960, he led the University of Minnesota to an 8-2 record and the national championship. Stephens became the first African-American major-college All-American quarterback and finished fourth in the Heisman Trophy balloting. In 1961, Stephens received the Chicago Tribune Silver Football as the Most Valuable Player of the Big Ten Conference.


Learn more about Sandy Stephens, free from thinkwebworks.com.

Adapted from wikipedia:
Hughie Lee-Smith was born in Eustis, Florida on Sept. 20, 1915. He went to school in Cleveland, Ohion and graduated from the Cleveland School of Arts in 1938. He went to work for the Ohio Works Progress Administration, and the Ford factory in River Rouge, and taught art at the Karamu House in Cleveland during the 1930s and 1940s. He served in the Navy during World War II. At the Great Lakes Naval Station in Illinois, he completed a series of paintings called “The History of the Negro in the United States Navy.”

He began exhibited his works in 1945 in Chicago. Soon after he began winning awards for his art such as, Detroit Institute Founders Prize (1953), National Academy of Design (four times), the Emily Lowe Award (1957), and the award from the American Society of African Culture (1960). In 1967, he was elected as a member of the National Academy of Design.

Learn more about Hughie Lee-Smith, free from answers.com.

From wikipedia:
Mary Burnett Talbert (September 17, 1866 – October 15, 1923) was an American orator, activist, suffragist and reformer. Called "The best known Colored Woman in the United States," Talbert was among the most prominent African Americans of her time.

Mary Burnett Talbert was born and raised in Oberlin, Ohio in 1866. As the only African-American woman in her graduating class from Oberlin College in 1886, Burnett received a Bachelor of Arts degree, then called an S.P. degree. She entered the field of education, becoming assistant principal of the Union High School in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1887, the highest position held by an African-American woman in the state. In 1891 she married William H. Talbert, moved to Buffalo, New York, and joined Buffalo's historic Michigan Avenue Baptist Church.

Learn more about Mary Burnett Talbert, free from "Uncrowned Queens: African American Community Builders," from the University of Buffalo.

From wikipedia:
Francis Parkman (September 16, 1823 – November 8, 1893) was an American historian, best known as author of The Oregon Trail: Sketches of Prairie and Rocky-Mountain Life and his monumental seven volume France and England in North America. These works are still valued as history and especially as literature, although the biases of his work have met with criticism. He was also a leading horticulturist, briefly a Professor of Horticulture at Harvard University and the first leader of the Arnold Arboretum, and author of several books on the topic.

Read The Oregon Trail: Sketches of Prairie and Rocky-Mountain Life, by Francis Parkman, free from the University of Virginia.

From wikipedia:
Constance Baker Motley (14 September 1921–28 September 2005) was an African American civil rights activist, lawyer, judge, and state senator.

She was born in New Haven, Connecticut, the ninth of twelve children. Her parents had immigrated from Nevis, in the Caribbean; her mother was the founder of the New Haven chapter of the NAACP. With financial help from a local philanthropist, Clarence Blakeslee, she initially attended Fisk University, a historically black college in Tennessee, before deciding to move to an integrated university. Motley graduated from New York University in 1943, then received her law degree from Columbia Law School in 1946. Her legal career began as a law clerk in the fledgling NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund (LDF), where she worked with Thurgood Marshall, Jack Greenberg, and others. The LDF's first female attorney, she became Associate Counsel to the LDF, making her the NAACP's lead trial attorney.

Read a speech to the NAACP by Constance Baker Motley, part of The Agents of Social Change exhibit of the Sophia Smith Collection online at the Smith College library.

From wikipedia:
Maria Louise Baldwin (September 13, 1856 – January 9, 1922) was an African American educator and civic leader born in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Baldwin was born to Peter L. and Mary E. Baldwin, and received all of her education in Cambridge’s schools. In 1874, Baldwin graduated from Cambridge High School, and a year later she graduated from the Cambridge training school for teachers.

Learn more about Maria L. Baldwin, at the website of the Maria L. Baldwin School.

Florence Kelley (September 12, 1859 – February 17, 1932) was a social and political reformer from Philadelphia. Her work with children's rights is widely regarded today.

She was the daughter of Congressman William Darrah "Pig Iron" Kelley, a self-made man who renounced his business activities to become an abolitionist, a founder of the Republican party and a judge, and worked for numerous political and social reforms, including the NAACP.

Read "Women in the Trade Unions, by Florence Kelley, free from Harvard University.

From wikipedia:
The Hon. Jessica Lucy Freeman-Mitford (September 11, 1917 – July 22, 1996), British-born writer long resident in the United States, was one of the noted Mitford sisters, a member of the Communist Party for some years, and best-known for her book attacking the funeral industry, The American Way of Death.

Mitford, one of seven children, was the daughter of David Freeman-Mitford, 2nd Baron Redesdale and his wife Sydney (daughter of politician and publisher Thomas Bowles), and grew up in a series of her father's country houses. She had little formal education, since her mother did not believe in sending girls to school, but was nevertheless widely read. Though her sisters Unity and Diana were well-known British supporters of Hitler and her father was described as being "one of nature's fascists," Jessica (always known as "Decca") renounced her privileged background at an early age and became an adherent of communism. She was known as the "red sheep" of the family.

Learn more about Jessica Mitford, free from www.mitford.org.

From wikipedia:
Jesse Edward Moorland (September 10, 1863 - 1939) was a black minister, community executive, and civic leader.

Born in Coldwater, Ohio, he was the only child of a farming family. Moorland attended Northwestern Normal University in Ada, Ohio. Then he moved to Washington, DC, where he attended the Theological department of Howard University and earned his masters degree in 1891. He was ordained a Congressional minister. That same year he was hired as secretary of the Washington D. C. branch of the YMCA.

Read more about Jesse Moorland, in Light in the Darkness, by Nina Mjagkij, free from googlebooks.com.

From wikipedia:
Marjorie Lee Browne (9 Sept 1914-19 Oct 1979) was a notable mathematics educator, the second African-American woman to receive a doctoral degree in the U.S., and one of the first black women to receive a doctorate in mathematics in the U.S.

Browne was born in Tennessee in 1914. Her mother died when she was only two years old, and she was raised by her stepmother, Mary Taylor Lee, and her father, Lawrence Johnson Lee. Her father, a railway postal clerk, was also a "math whiz" who shared his passion for mathematics with his children. She attended LeMoyne High School, a private Methodist school started after the Civil War to offer education for African-Americans.

Read more about Marjorie Lee Browne in Notable Women of Mathematics by By Charlene Morrow and Teri Perl , free from Googlebooks.com.

From wikipedia:
Walter Fenner "Buck" Leonard (September 8, 1907 – November 27, 1997) was an American first baseman in Negro League baseball.

Born in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, Leonard left school at the age of 14 because no high school education was available for blacks in his hometown. He worked in a textile mill and as a shoeshine boy at a railroad station, the latter being typical of the economic situation for many African Americans at that time.

He began his Negro League career in 1933 with the Brooklyn Royal Giants, then moved to the legendary Homestead Grays in 1934, the team he played for until his retirement in 1950. The Grays of the late 1930s through the mid-1940s are considered one of the greatest teams of any race ever assembled. Leonard batted fourth in their lineup behind Josh Gibson. Since Gibson was known as the "Black Babe Ruth" and Leonard was a first baseman, Buck Leonard was inevitably called the "Black Lou Gehrig", an apt comparison in terms of their hitting numbers, although some consider Leonard superior to Gehrig as a fielder. From 1937 to 1945 the Grays won 9 consecutive Negro National League championships. Leonard led the Negro Leagues in batting average in 1948 with a mark of .395, and usually either led the league in home runs or finished second in homers to teammate Gibson.

Learn more about Buck Leonard. Visit the Buck Leonard Association For Sports & Human Enrichment, Inc. at buckleonard.org.

From wikipedia:
Jacob Lawrence (September 7, 1917 - June 9, 2000) was an African American painter; he was married to fellow artist Gwendolyn Knight. Lawrence referred to his style as "dynamic cubism", though by his own account the primary influence was not so much French art as the shapes and colors of Harlem.

Lawrence is among the best-known twentieth century African American painters, a distinction shared with Romare Bearden. Lawrence was only in his twenties when his "Migration Series" made him nationally famous. The series of paintings was featured in a 1941 issue of Fortune Magazine. The series depicted the epic Great Migration of African Americans from the rural South to the urban North.

Visit the Jacob and Gwen Knight Lawrence Visual Resource Center for more information and to see examples of their work.

From wikipedia:
Joel Augustus Rogers (September 6, 1880 (some sources say 1883) — March 26, 1966) author, journalist, historian was born in Negril, Jamaica.

Although Rogers was the son of a minister and a schoolteacher, his parents were not able to afford to give Rogers, or his ten siblings, more than a rudimentary education. Rogers immigrated to the United States in 1906. Rogers lived most of his life in Harlem, but also lived in Chicago for some time. While Rogers was in Chicago he worked as a Pullman porter. The job of Pullman Porter allowed Rogers to travel and observe people. Through this travel Rogers was able to increase his appetite for knowledge, utilizing various libraries in the cities that he visited. This appetite for knowledge would eventually be expressed in Rogers' numerous self-published writings.

Learn more about Joel Augustus Rogers, free from africawithin.com

From wikipedia:
Larry Neal or Lawerence Neal (September 5, 1937 – January 1981) was a scholar of African-American theatre. He is well known for his contributions to the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s and 1970s.

Neal was born in Atlanta, Georgia. He graduated from Lincoln University in 1961 and received a master's degree in 1963 from the University of Pennsylvania. From 1968 to 1969, Neal taught at the City College of New York. The following year he taught at Wesleyan University. He taught at Yale University from 1970 to 1975. Neal is known for working with Amiri Baraka to open the Black Arts Repertory Theatre/School. His early writings—including "The Negro in the Theatre" (1964), "Cultural Front" (1965), and "The Black Arts Movement" (1968)—were influential in defining and describing the role of the arts in the Black Power era. His essays and poems appeared in publications such as Liberator, Drama Critque, Black Theatre, Negro Digest, Performance, and Black World. He also uncovered Ed Bullins's plagiarism of Albert Camus's play The Just Assassins. Neal died from a heart attack in 1981.

Learn more about Larry Neal and his work, free from the African American Literature Book Club.

From wikipedia:
Gerald Stanley Wilson is an American jazz trumpeter, big band bandleader, composer/arranger, and educator. He has been based in Los Angeles since the early 1940s.

Wilson was born in Shelby, Mississippi on September 4, 1918. He graduated from Cass Technical High School in Detroit. Wilson joined the Jimmie Lunceford orchestra in 1939, replacing its star trumpeter and arranger Sy Oliver. While with Lunceford, he contributed numbers to the band's book, including "Hi Spook" and "Yard-dog Mazurka," the latter being a big influence on Stan Kenton's recording "Intermission Riff."

The Dozens: Essential Gerald Wilson, by Jeff Sultanof, free from jazz.com.

From wikipedia:
Prudence Crandall, (Sept. 3, 1803-Jan. 28, 1890) a schoolteacher raised as a Quaker, stirred controversy with her education of black girls in Canterbury, Connecticut. Her private school opened in January 1832, was boycotted when she admitted a 20-year old black female student in the autumn of 1833, creating what is generally regarded as the first integrated classroom in the United States. Parents of the white children mostly withdrew their daughters, leading Crandall to found a school for "Young ladies and Misses of colour".

Read Report of the Arguments of Counsel in the Case of Prudence Crandall, free from googlebooks.com.

From wikipedia:
Adolph Frederick Rupp (September 2, 1901 – December 10, 1977) was one of the most successful coaches in the history of American college basketball. Rupp ranks third (behind Bobby Knight and Dean Smith), in total victories by a men's NCAA Division I college coach, winning 876 games in 41 years of coaching. He set a remarkable standard of excellence at Kentucky that exists to this day. Rupp is also second among all coaches in all-time winning percentage (.822), trailing only Clair Bee. Adolph F. Rupp was enshrined in the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame on April 13, 1969.

Read more about Adolph Rupp, free from bigbluehistory.net.