• October 11, 1778 George Augustus Polgreen Bridgetower, violinist and composer, was born in Biala, Poland. A child prodigy, Bridgetower made his debut as a soloist in 1789 to rave reviews. In 1791, the Prince of Wales took an interest in him and made Bridgetower first violinist of his private orchestra, a position Bridgetower held for 14 years. In 1802, Bridgetower met and performed with Ludwig von Beethoven who described Bridgetower as “an absolute master of his instrument.” Their relationship is dramatized in Rita Dove’s book “Sonata Mulattica” (2009). Bridgetower was elected to the Royal Society of Musicians in 1807 and earned his Bachelor of Music degree from the University of Cambridge in 1811. Bridgetower’s compositions include “Diatonica armonica” and “Henry: A Ballad.” He taught piano and performed throughout Europe. Bridgetower died February 29, 1860. A jazz opera, “Bridgetower – A Fable of 1807,” was commissioned for the 2007 City of London Festival to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the first parliamentary bill to abolish slavery in England. • October 11, 1882 Robert Nathaniel Dett, pianist, composer and educator, was born in Drummondville, Ontario, Canada but raised in Niagara Falls, New York. Dett started piano lessons at five and studied at the Oliver Willis Halstead Conservatory of Music from 1901 to 1903. He earned his Bachelor of Music degree from the Oberlin Conservatory of Music in 1908. Dett taught at Lane College and Lincoln Institute (now University) before joining Hampton Institute (now University) as the first Black director of music in 1913. He remained at Hampton until 1932 and during that time founded the School of Music and the Hampton Institute Choir. Dett served as president of the National Association of Negro Musicians from 1924 to 1926 and earned his Master of Music degree from the Eastman School of Music in 1932. His compositions include “Magnolia” (1912), “In The Bottoms” (1913), “Enchantment” (1922), and “The Cinnamon Grove” (1928). In 1936, he published “The Dett Collection of Negro Spirituals.” Dett served as visiting director of music at Bennett College from 1937 to 1942. He received honorary doctorate degrees from Howard University in 1924 and Oberlin in 1926. Dett died October 2, 1943. The Chapel of the British Methodist Episcopal Church in Niagara Falls, Ontario is named in his honor and Canada’s Nathaniel Dett Choral is dedicated to Afrocentric music of all styles. • October 11, 1887 Alexander Miles received patent number 371,207 for his invention of an improved automatic elevator door mechanism. Prior to his invention, the opening and closing of the doors of both the shaft and elevator had to be done manually. Sometimes people would neglect to close the door and people would fall down the elevator shaft. This potential danger led to Miles’ invention which is still used around the world today. Miles was born in Ohio May 18, 1838. By 1900, he had moved to Chicago, Illinois where he started an insurance agency for Black people. He later moved to Seattle, Washington where he was considered “the wealthiest colored man in the Northwest.” Miles died May 7, 1918. In 2007, he was posthumously inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame. • October 11, 1919 Arthur William “Art” Blakey, hall of fame jazz drummer and bandleader, was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. By the time he was a teenager, Blakey was playing the piano full-time and leading a commercial band. Shortly afterwards, he taught himself to play the drums. In 1947, Blakey recorded with a group led by Horace Silver called the Jazz Messengers. When Silver left the group in 1956, leadership passed to Blakey and the group was renamed Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers. Over the years, the group served as a springboard for many young jazz musicians, including Donald Byrd, Wayne Shorter, Wynton Marsalis, Terrence Blanchard, and Kenny Garrett. Blakey had a policy of encouraging young musicians and was quoted as saying “I’m gonna stay with the youngsters. When these get too old I’ll get some younger ones. Keeps the mind active.” In 1984, the Jazz Messengers won the Grammy Award for Best Jazz Instrumental Performance, Group for the album “New York Scene.” Blakey was inducted into the Down Beat Jazz Hall of Fame in 1981 and designated a NEA Jazz Master, the highest honor the nation bestows on a jazz artist, by the National Endowment for the Arts in 1988. Blakey died October 16, 1990, “leaving a vast legacy and approach to jazz which is still the model for countless hard-bop players.” In 2001, Blakey’s album “Moanin’” (1958) was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame as a recording of “qualitative or historical significance” and in 2005 he was posthumously awarded a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. • October 11, 1924 Malvin Greston “Mal” Whitfield, hall of fame track athlete and diplomat, was born in Bay City, Texas. In 1943, Whitfield joined the United States Army Air Force and became a member of the Tuskegee Airmen. After World War II, he enrolled at Ohio State University where he won the National Collegiate Athletic Association 800 meters championship in 1948 and 1949. At the 1948 London Olympic Games, he won Gold medals in the 800 meters and the 4 by 400 meters relay and the Bronze medal in the 400 meters. At the 1952 Helsinki Olympic Games, he won the Gold medal in the 800 meters and the Silver medal in the 4 by 400 meters relay. Between the 1948 and 1952 games, he completed his military service which included 27 combat missions as an aerial gunner during the Korean War. In 1954, Whitfield became the first Black athlete to win the John E. Sullivan Award as the outstanding amateur athlete in the country. After graduating from California State University, Whitfield worked for 47 years for the United States State Department conducting sports clinics in Africa. During that time, he trained dozens of athletes who represented their countries in the Olympic Games and arranged sports scholarships for more than 5,000 African athletes to study in the United States. In 1974, Whitfield was inducted into the USA Track & Field Hall of Fame. In 1989, The Whitfield Foundation was established to “continue the work and programs orchestrated and implemented by Mal Whitfield during his 47 years of service as a professor, diplomat and sports program organizer in the U. S., Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Caribbean.” • October 11, 1928 Roscoe Robinson, Jr., the first African American four-star general in the United States Army, was born in St. Louis, Missouri. Robinson attended St. Louis University for a year before transferring to the United States Military Academy at West Point where he earned his bachelor’s degree in military engineering in 1951. After graduating, he served as a platoon leader and rifle company commander during the Korean War and earned a Bronze Star. In 1964, Robinson earned his master’s degree in international affairs from the University of Pittsburgh. During the Vietnam War, Robinson served as a battalion commander and earned the Legion of Merit, the Distinguished Flying Cross, 11 Air Medals, and 2 Silver Stars. After Vietnam, he served as the executive officer to the Chief of Staff at the National War College for three years and in 1975 became the commanding general of the U. S. Army Garrison. In 1976, he was promoted to major general and commander of the 82nd Airborne Division, the first African American to command that division. In 1982, Robinson was promoted to four-star general and assigned U. S. Military Representative to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization Military Committee, a post he held until his retirement in 1985. After retiring, he served on the boards of Northwest Airlines and the McDonnell-Douglas Corporation. He also helped develop the minority studies program at West Point. Robinson died July 22, 1993. The General Roscoe Robinson, Jr. Auditorium at West Point and Roscoe Robinson Health Clinic at Womack Army Medical Center at Fort Bragg are named in his honor. • October 11, 1936 Billy Higgins, jazz drummer, was born in Los Angeles, California. Higgins began playing drums at five. He was one of the co-founders of the free jazz movement and beginning in 1958 played on Ornette Coleman’s first recordings. During the 1960s, he was one of the house drummers for Blue Note Records and played on dozens of their albums. In total, Higgins played on more than 700 recordings, including those of Donald Byrd, Dexter Gordon, Milt Jackson, Sonny Rollins, and many others. In 1989, Higgins co-founded The World Stage to encourage and promote young jazz musicians. He also taught in the jazz studies program at the University of California. In 1997, Higgins was designated a NEA Jazz Master, the highest honor the nation bestows on a jazz artist, by the National Endowment for the Arts. Higgins died May 3, 2001. • October 11, 1941 Lester Bowie, hall of fame jazz trumpeter and composer, was born in Frederick, Maryland but raised in St. Louis, Missouri. At five, Bowie began studying the trumpet with his father who was a professional musician. In 1966, he moved to Chicago, Illinois where he worked as a studio musician before forming the Art Ensemble of Chicago in 1968. They recorded 40 albums, including “Tutankhamun” (1969), “Urban Bushman” (1980), and “Urban Magic” (1997). In 1984, he formed Lester Bowie’s Brass Fantasy whose recordings include “I Only Have Eyes For You” (1985) and “The Fire This Time” (1992). He lived and worked in Jamaica and Africa and recorded with Fela Kuti. Bowie died November 8, 1999. The following year, he was posthumously inducted into the Down Beat Jazz Hall of Fame. • October 11, 1956 Debra Martin Chase, lawyer and movie producer, was born in Great Lakes, Illinois but raised in Pasadena, California. Chase earned her Bachelor of Arts degree from Mount Holyoke College in 1977 and her Juris Doctor degree from Harvard Law School in 1981. Chase practiced law during the 1980s before joining the legal department at Columbia Studios. She ran Denzel Washington’s Mundy Lane Entertainment from 1992 to 1995 and Whitney Houston’s Brown House Productions from 1995 to 2000 before starting her own company, Martin Chase Productions. Chase has produced a number of films, including “The Pelican Brief” (1993), “The Princess Diaries” (2001), “The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants” (2005), “Just Wright” (2010), and “Sparkle” (2012). Chase serves on the boards of Mount Holyoke College and United Friends of Children. • October 11, 1991 Redd Foxx, comedian and actor, died. Foxx was born John Elroy Sanford December 9, 1922 in St. Louis, Missouri. He moved to New York City in the early 1940s where he was an associate of Malcolm X. In Malcolm’s autobiography, Foxx is referred to as “Chicago Red , the funniest dishwasher on this earth.” Foxx gained notoriety with his nightclub act and was one of the first Black comics to play to White audiences on the Las Vegas strip. From 1972 to 1977, he starred in the highly successful television series “Sanford and Son” and in 1972 won the Golden Globe Award for Best Television Actor in a Musical or Comedy. He was also nominated for the Emmy Award for Best Actor in a Comedy Series in 1971, 1973, and 1974. From 1980 to 1981, he starred in the television series “Sanford.” Foxx died while rehearsing for another television series called “The Royal Family.” Jamie Foxx chose the surname Foxx as part of his stage name in tribute to Redd Foxx. Foxx’s biography, “Black and Blue: The Redd Foxx Story,” was published in 2011. • October 11, 1991 The building that housed the Miner Normal School in Washington, D. C. was listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The former Normal School for Colored Girls was established in 1851 as an institution of learning and training for young African American women to become teachers. Within two months of opening, school enrollment grew from six to forty. The school continued to grow but in 1860 was forced to close. In 1863, it was reopened as the Institution for the Education of Colored Youth. In 1879, it was renamed Miner Normal School and became part of the District of Columbia public school system. In 1955, the school merged with Wilson Teachers College to form the District of Columbia Teachers College and in 1976 it was incorporated into the University of the District of Columbia. • October 11, 1998 Spottswood William Robinson, III, educator, civil rights attorney and judge, died. Robinson was born July 26, 1916 in Richmond, Virginia. He earned his bachelor’s degree from Virginia Union University in 1936 and his Bachelor of Laws degree from Howard University in 1939, graduating first in his class and achieving the highest scholastic average in the history of the university. From 1939 to 1947, Robinson was on the faculty of Howard’s School of Law and from 1948 to 1960 worked with the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund. In 1951, Robinson litigated the lawsuit Davis v. County School Board of Prince Edward County which was one of the cases consolidated and decided under Brown v. Board of Education in 1954. From 1960 to 1964, Robinson was dean of Howard’s School of Law. He became the first African American appointed to the United States District Court for the District of Columbia in 1964, the first African American appointed to the U. S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in 1966, the first African American to serve as chief judge of the District of Columbia Circuit Court in 1981. Robinson took senior status in 1989.
Posted on: Sat, 11 Oct 2014 14:22:07 +0000