African American History aka Black History & History of Afrikans World Wide
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Nearly 60 years ago, Calvin Tyler couldn't afford college and dropped out of Morgan State University, an HBCU, to become a UPS driver. He went on to become a top executive at the company. This week, he donated $20 million to help other students go to that same school.
NASA names DC headquarters after Mary W. Jackson
NASA held a ceremony on Friday to rename its headquarters in Washington, D.C., after Mary W. Jackson, the agency's first Black woman engineer.
Barack Obama • SEP 1995
22-CityView presents Barack Obama speaking at the Cambridge Public Library. Recorded on September 20,1995, this originally aired on Channel 37 Cambridge Municipal Television as an episode of the show "The Author Series." In this episode Obama discusses his book "Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance," which at the time had just been released a few months previously.
A young Lawrence Tureaud, later known as “Mr. T.”
In January of 1982, a young man perched himself on the roof of a building in Los Angeles. As he prepared to jump from the building, Muhammad Ali’s public relations manager spotted him. He saw the officers trying to talk him down. He got straight on the phone to the heavyweight champion who rushed to the scene and climbed up the stairs to the suicidal man.
The young man told Ali that he was a “nobody.” He relayed that he couldn’t find a job, that he was depressed, and that his mother and father didn’t love him and that nobody loves him. Ali responded by telling him that he wasn’t a nobody that that “I love him or I wouldn’t be there.” Ali told the young man that if he came down, he would help him go to school, find him a job and meet his parents and convince them that their son wasn’t a nobody. “You’re my brother, I love you and I wouldn’t lie to you,” Ali said, before offering him to come home with him and meet his friends.
The young man agreed and climbed down from the ledge with the assistance of Ali. “Everyday I’m going to visit him in the hospital. I told him I’d stay close to him,” said Ali.
A Peruvian elongated skull with metal surgically implanted after returning from battle, estimated to be from about 2000 years ago. The broken bone surrounding the repair is tightly fused together indicating it was a successful surgery.
Code:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Damnthatsinteresting/comments/zpbomh/a_peruvian_elongated_skull_with_metal_surgically/
Bolaji Badejo, who actually played the Alien, on the set of "Alien" in 1978.
Code:
https://www.reddit.com/r/OldSchoolCool/comments/zp1mp1/bolaji_badejo_who_actually_played_the_alien_on/
Happy birthday to one of the most important figures in Louis Armstrong’s life, King Oliver.
“He was the best,” Louis said in 1967. “Laid a new horn on me when mine was so beat I didn’t know what sounds might come out of it. Advised me…took me home for red beans and rice feasts. Taught me about blowing trumpet, too. Lotta claims been made that Bunk Johnson put me wise to trumpet—Bunk hisself helped that story along. No such thing. Joe Oliver was the man.” It was hard for Armstrong to leave Oliver’s band in 1924 and harder for him to start competing with his mentor a few years later in Chicago. “I felt real bad when I took most of Joe Oliver’s crowds away,” Armstrong reflected. “Wasn’t much I could do about it, though. I went to Joe and asked him was there anything I could do for him. ‘Just keep on blowing,’ he told me. Bless him.”
Joseph "King" Oliver - Know Louisiana
Pioneering jazz trumpet and cornet player and band leader "King"; Oliver played an instrumental role in popularizing jazz outside of New Orleans and was an important mentor in the life of Louis Armstrong.
Joseph “King” Oliver
Pioneering jazz trumpet and cornet player and band leader "King"; Oliver played an instrumental role in popularizing jazz outside of New Orleans and was an important mentor in the life of Louis Armstrong.
BY KEVIN FONTENOT
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COURTESY OF THE HISTORIC NEW ORLEANS COLLECTION
Joseph "King" Oliver. Unidentified
A pioneering jazz trumpet and cornet player, bandleader Joseph “King” Oliver played an instrumental role in the popularization of jazz outside of New Orleans. Though born in Louisiana, Oliver spent much of his career in Chicago, where he established his legendary King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band. Initially, the band included Louis Armstrong, formerly Oliver’s student in New Orleans. Ironically, Armstrong’s success ultimately overshadowed his mentor’s reputation as a jazz pioneer. As both a teacher and a musician, however, Oliver played an important role in the early history of jazz.
Early Life and Influences
Joseph Nathan Oliver was born in Edgard, in St. John the Baptist Parish. Though the exact date has been in dispute, current evidence indicates that he was born on December 19, 1885. While Oliver was still young, his family moved to New Orleans. Orphaned in his early teens, he went to live with his half-sister, Victoria Davis. As a teenager and young adult, Oliver worked as a butler, but his passion was always music. He began playing as a child in a neighborhood brass band. As his musicianship progressed, Oliver performed in some of the most influential brass bands in turn-of-the-century New Orleans, including the Onward Brass Band, the Eagle Band (which included ex-members of Buddy Bolden’s group), and A. J. Piron’s Olympia Band.
Oliver’s musical skills placed him in a lineage of New Orleans trumpeters that included Buddy Bolden and Freddie Keppard. He developed a reputation as a strong player particularly adept at “freak” music, which involved using mutes to make the trumpet “talk” or imitate animals (creating, for example a “wah wah” sound). He was also well known for playing the blues in the “gut bucket” or “low down” style.
Oliver was a stern man, often quick to anger. But he also took a sincere interest in young musicians and always took the time to teach them proper technique. In was in this capacity that Oliver met Louis Armstrong. The two began a long musical relationship, with Oliver acting as a father figure to Armstrong. For the rest of his life, Armstrong spoke with deep admiration for Oliver. Oliver also taught Armstrong how to be a band leader, largely through example.
King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band
In 1918 Oliver moved to Chicago to work in bassist William Manual “Bill” Johnson’s band. Oliver played with Johnson at the Royal Gardens Café. He performed with Lawrence Duhe at the Dreamland Café and in the White Sox Booster Band, which entertained audiences in the stands at baseball games. By 1920, Oliver was leading his own band at Dreamland. After performing briefly with Edward “Kid” Ory in California during 1921, he returned to Chicago to form his famous King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band in 1922. The band opened that year at Lincoln Gardens.
During the summer of 1922 Oliver sent for Armstrong to play second cornet. The band quickly gained a local reputation and made its first recordings on April 5 and 6, 1923, for Gennett Records. These recordings represented Oliver at his best and have attained legendary status in the history of jazz. The 1923 Creole Jazz Band included Oliver, Armstrong, Baby Dodds on drums, Honore Dutrey on trombone, Bill Johnson on bass, Johnny Dodds on clarinet, and Lillian Hardin on piano. Their first session produced nine tracks, including “Just Gone,” “Canal Street Blues,” “Weather Bird Rag,” “Snake Rag,” and “Dipper Mouth Blues.” Later that year, Johnny St. Cyr played banjo during a session that produced the lovely “Mabel’s Dream.” The hallmark of the Creole band sessions was the complex intertwining duets between Oliver and Armstrong, in which the student slowly surpassed the teacher. The band fell apart in late 1923, largely due to interpersonal problems among the members and financial issues. Armstrong’s increasing status led to some strain between the two, but Armstrong always deferred to Oliver on issues regarding the band. Lillian “Lil” Hardin, who had married Armstrong, pushed her husband to go to New York for better wages.
Later Career
Throughout the 1920s, Oliver frequently worked as a sideman on recording sessions for blues and popular singers. Some of these included Sara Martin, Victoria Spiver, Sippie Wallace, Texas Alexander, and the vaudeville duo Butterbeans and Susie. Oliver’s talent was particularly apparent when backing singers like Martin; his cornet performed a nearly perfect call-and-response pattern behind the singer. He also recorded duets with fellow New Orleanian Jelly Roll Morton.
In 1925 Oliver reorganized his band into a slightly larger group titled the Dixie Syncopators. This band attempted to conform to the growing demand for dance music rather than “hot” jazz. Oliver added a saxophone to his lineup and recorded popular tunes suggested by record executives. The recordings are uneven, though stellar solos and inspired segments can be found even in the poorer performances. Oliver struggled with the emerging big band sound and, in some ways, was eclipsed by Armstrong’s popularity. In 1927 he relocated to New York City. He took on more work as a sideman and appeared with various groups led by Clarence Williams. Oliver continued to front his own band, but his reputation was slowly slipping. He spent most of the 1930s touring the South and the Southwest.
By 1936 Oliver was headquartered in Savannah, Georgia. His health declined, and he experienced financial difficulties that began with the onset of the Great Depression. Though he remained optimistic about his future in music, by 1938 he was running a fruit stand and working as a janitor. He died on April 10, 1938, in Savannah and was buried in New York City.
Oliver’s reputation suffered over time, and jazz historians have often relegated him to the role of Armstrong’s mentor. Bad business decisions and difficulty adapting to changing tastes haunted him in later years. He was, however, a powerful player whose Creole Jazz Band recordings captured him at his best. He was also a hero to Louis Armstrong. In his autobiography Armstrong said, “It was my ambition to play as he did. I still think that if it had not been for Joe Oliver, Jazz would not be what it is today.”
Author
Kevin Fontenot
“There are many Indian traditions about blacks living in America before Columbus. Carlos C. Marquez (1956), states that the: “Negro figure frequently in most remote traditions of some American people.”
“Marquez (1956) believed that the Otomi of Mexico, the Caracoles of Haiti, the Arguaos of Cutara, the Arayos of the Orinoco, the Porcijis, the Matayas of Brazil, the Manabis of Quito, and the Chuanas of Darien were descendants of African people. R. B. Dixon (1923) a physical anthropologist claimed that the Negroid strain was most visible in the Otomi, Tarahumare, and Pima.”
“Alphonso de Quatrefages, in the Human Species, claimed that the black tribes of Latin America include the Choco, Manabis, Yaruras, Guarani, Charrus, Yamassi, and Tzendal Chontal, in addition to numerous ethnic groups along the Orinoco river in Venezuela, and the Isthmus of Darien.”—Dr. Clyde Winters
Youngsters from Washington D.C. in the early 1940s.
Benny Carter, Barney Kessell, Flip Phillips, Charlie Shavers, Ray Brown, Charlie Parker, Oscar Peterson, J.C. Heard, Ben Webster and Johnny Hodges at a Clef recording session, Hollywood (1952).
1940's face paint.
Formerly enslaved African-Americans would place ads in newspapers around the country in their quest to find the loved ones taken away from them—or who they were stolen from. This is something that began in the 1830s. The ads usually started with "Information Wanted."
Mary Talbert (b. 1866) Oberlin alum, educator, organizer, anti-lynching activist; she championed civil rights, voting rights & international human rights through the many organizations in which she served. National Women’s Hall of Fame Inductee.
John Hope Franklin - historian and former president of Phi Beta Kappa. Franklin is best known for his work ‘From Slavery to Freedom’, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Franklin is also a Brother of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc.
Happy Birthday Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King Junior.
