1935
Egas Moniz of Lisbon, Portugal, introduces the ultimate answer to “mental illness”: the pre- frontal lobotomy, a surgical incision into the brain. In 1949 Moniz is awarded the Nobel Prize for having pioneered this horror. In contempoary times lobotomy is touted as the key to “cur- ing” African radicalism, crime and other anti–social acts, and to “engineering” the modification of their behavior. 

Mary McLeod Bethune is presented the NAACP’s Spingarn Medal for her dedicated service as founder and President of Bethune–Cookman College in Daytona Beach, Florida. 

New Orleans University and Straight College merge to form Dillard University, which is control- led by the American Missionary Society and the Methodist Episcopal Church. 

The Arkansas Baptist Flashlight, a semi–monthly, is edited by the Reverend J.F. Neal in Fort Smith. 

A race riot erupts in Harlem because of “resentments against racial discrimination and poverty in the midst of plenty.” 

Twentieth Century–Fox releases "Judge Priest" with Stepin Fetchit and Hattie McDaniel. 

The Federal Arts Project of the Work Progress Administration, is established and gives work to black and white creative artists and performers who are unemployed. Richard Wright, who is a member of this Project at the time, writes . . .  “The Federal Negro Theater, for which I was doing publicity, had run a series of ordinary plays, all of which had been revamped to ‘Negro style,’ with jungle scenes, spirituals, and all. For example, the skinny white woman who directed it, an elderly missionary type, would take a play whose characters were white, whose theme dealt with the Middle Ages, and recast it in terms of Southern Negro life with overtones of African backgrounds. Contemporary plays dealing realistically with Negro life were spurned as being controversial. There were about forty Negro actors and actresses in the theater, lolling about, yearning, disgruntled. What a waste of talent, I thought. Here was an opportunity for the production of a worth–while Negro drama and no one was aware of it. I studied the situation, then laid the matter before white friends of mine who held influential positions in the Works Progress Administration [sic]. I asked them to replace the white woman — including her quaint aesthetic notions — with someone who knew the Negro and the theater. . . . Within a month the white woman director had been transferred. We moved from the South Side to the Loop and were housed in a first-rate theater” (“Richard Wright” in Richard Crossman, ed., The God that Failed, 1950). 

Italy, under the leadership of Benito Mussolini, “il Duce,” invades Ethiopia. The League of Nations fails to come to Ethiopia’s defense. American African groups protest and raise funds to aid Emperor Haile Selassie and his people. When Russia aids the Italian campaign against Ethiopia, many American Africans bolt the Communist Party. 

Nina Simone, world–famous versatile composer, singer, and pianist, is born in Tryon, North Carolina. She is named the Most Promising Singer of the Year in 1960; Woman of the Year by the New York Jazz at Home Club in 1966; and Female Jazz Singer of the year in 1967. 

The average expenditure on Southern black school children is $17.04; the average for white children is $49.30. 

At the All–African National Convention, 400 delegates gather in Bloemfontein, South Africa, to oppose the Hertzog bills, first formulated in 1925, which propose to remove the limited fran- chise the Cape Africans enjoy and define once and for all time the land area to be allocated to the Africans in the Natives Land and Trust Bill. 

"Helldorado," with Stepin Fetchit, is released by Twentieth Century–Fox. 

The annual Berkshire Music Festivals are inaugurated in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. 

Universal Studios releases "Kentucky Minstrels," a Gaumont–British Films production in blackface. 

Joe Louis defeats Primo Carnera at Yankee Stadium. 

The National Liberation League for Equality, Land and Freedom is launched in South Africa with Mrs. Zaibunissa (Cissy) as president and James Laguma as General Secretary. Its foundation conference adopts a program and constitution pledged to “unite all individuals, organizations and other bodies in agreement with the [League’s program] to struggle for com- plete social, political and economic equality of non-Europeans in South Africa,” thus reflecting the need for unity against the racist white minority. 

Oscar Micheaux produces "Lem Hawkins’ Confession." 

The Maryland Court of Appeals orders the University of Maryland Law School to admit Donald Murray, an African American. 

The late thirties are heydays for African big bands of Chuck Webb, Andy Kirk, Cab Calloway, Count Basie, Jimmie Lunceford and Duke Ellington. 

The National Association of Negro Business and Professional Women’s Clubs is established.

Langston Hughes’ play, The Mulatto, begins its long run (373 performances) at New York City’s Vanderbilt Theatre. 

"Ouanga" is released by Paramount Films with Fredi Washington. 

Percy Julian, an African chemist at Howard University, develops physotigmine, a drug used to treat glaucoma. 

1936
Civil War breaks out in Spain between the fascists and Republicans. The military adventurer Francisco Franco invades Spain from Morocco with Moorish troops and sets up a totalitarian government like that of his supporters in Italy and Germany, who test their weaponry and military air tactics in Spain. More than 3,200 Americans fight in this civil war; of this number 60–80 are African Americans. Notable among them are Oliver Law, Harry Heywood and Milton Herndon, the brother of Angelo Herndon. Salaria Kea O'Reilly, a nurse from Akron, Ohio, also serves with the American battalions. 

Jesse Owens wins four gold medals, much to the consternation of Adolf Hitler, at the Berlin Olympics — an Olympic record breaking long jump, the 100- and 200-meter dash, and the 400–meter relay. 

Rex Ingram appears in Warner Brothers’ Captian Blood.

In a non-title heavyweight bout, Joe Louis is knocked out in the 12th round by Max Schmeling, a 30-year-old German, who, after studying Louis’s fight films, capitalizes on the fact that Louis is unprepared for a straight right. 

The Sepia Socialite (changed to The Negro South, a monthly magazine, in 1946) begins publishing in New Orleans. 

Forty–nine percent of the African vote in Chicago goes to FDR. In 1932 it was only 23%. 

The  NAACP files its first suit to eliminate pay differentials between African and white teachers. 

Twentieth Century–Fox releases "The Littlest Rebel," a Shirley Temple epic with Willie Best and Bill “Bojangles” Robinson. 

Twentieth Century–Fox releases "The Prisoner of Shark Island" with Hattie McDaniel and Ernest Whitman. 

Africans are removed from the common voters’ roll in South Africa’s Cape Province. 

Arna Bontemps’ Black Thunder, an accurate and objective historical account of Gabriel Pros- ser’s slave revolt in 1800, is published. It has been called by some “the best historical novel written about slavery and slave revolts from an African point of view.” 

The National Negro Congress, which consists of more than 500 black organizations, is founded. 

Warner Brothers releases "The Petrified Forest" with Slim Johnson and John Alexander. 

Attorney Charles W. Anderson enters the Kentucky House of Representatives. 

1937
Henry Ossawa Tanner, world renowned religious artist, dies in Paris; he was born in 1859 in Pennsylvania. 

Twenty–six percent of all African males are unemployed; 60% of  African females are out of work. 

Bessie Smith dies in Clarksdale, Mississippi, when she is allegedly refused admittance to a white hospital after a serious automobile accident. See Chris Albertson, Bessie (1972) and Edward Albee’s The Death of Bessie Smith (1969). 

The Columbia, South Carolina, Lighthouse and Informer is edited and published by John H. McCray. 

Lee Whipper and Mantan Moreland appear in "King of the Zombies" released by Monogram Films. 

Riots break out in the oil fields of Trinidad under the leadership of Uriah Butler, a fiery orator.  The trouble starts with a sit–down strike on the property of Trinidad Lease Holds, Ltd., operated on South African capital. The riots spread from the oil fields to sugar estates and to the towns of San Fernando and Port–of–Spain. 

Black men remain in the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) on the average of 3 to 7 months longer than white men. 

Z.R. Mahabane, the sixth ANC President–General, is elected to his second term. 

Eddie Anderson appears for the first time on radio as “Rochester” with a white comedian, Jack Benny. 

A leading figure in the Jamaican labor riots is Alexander Bustamante, a money lender and dynamic speaker. 

Germany, Italy and Japan form an “axis.”  Fascistic Franco–Spain joins later. 

Joe Louis wins  the heavyweight championship from James J. Braddock. 

"Jericho" (or "Dark Sands"), starring Paul and Eslanda Robeson, Orlando Martins and Prin- cess Kouka, is released in England by Buckingham Pictures.

William H. Hastie is appointed the first African federal judge. 

Japan invades China. 

"Pennies from Heaven" is released by Columbia Pictures with Louis Armstrong and Charles Wilson. 

The Southern Youth Negro Congress is organized. 

Eight  people of African descent are lynched this year. 

Zora Neale Hurston publishes her novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God.

Paul Robeson and Robert Adams appear in "King Solomon’s Mines" produced by Gaumont– British Films. 

Henry Armstrong, “Hammering Hank” (also called "Hurricane Hank"), wins three of boxing’s seven championship titles in less than 10 months: Featherweight, lightweight, and welter- weight. Six fighters have held three different titles, but Armstrong is the only one to hold them at the same time. He had three managers, Al Jolson, George Raft and Edith Mead. He makes millions as a champion, but he becomes the victim of his own high living and his managers’ creative bookkeeping. He loses his fortune, comes upon some hard times, and retires from boxing at 33 years of age.  Armstrong says of those years: “I used to go out to a lot of parties and have a few drinks, and soon I began to like the stuff . . . when I was fighting, with all the money I was making, nothing was out of reach for me. Then, all of a sudden, it fell off, down to nothing. You see friends, and they don’t have time for you anymore, and you wonder why. You try to find a way out, and then you go to liquor because it makes you happy. It felt good drinkin’.”  In 1976, Henry “Hammering Hank” Armstrong  was, at age 69, a teacher and preacher in St. Louis, Missouri. 

1938 
Hitler takes Austria. The Munich Pact is signed by Germany, Italy, Great Britain and France.  It permits the immediate occupation by Germany of large parts of Czechoslovakia. This pact marks the height of Western appeasement policy toward Hitler and forestalls World War II by one year. 

The eighth (and last) International UNIA Convention is held in Canada. 

Joe Louis destroys Max Schmeling after 1:25 minutes of the first round of their rematch. The 24–year–old champion, derisively referred to as “the Chocolate Dropper,” “the Big Negro” or “Shufflin’ Joe,” soundly punishes Schmeling by literally breaking his back with a body blow, which, Schmeling confesses, temporarily blinded him. From the first telling right landed by Louis on Schmeling’s jaw, it is clear that Louis will get revenge for his ignominious defeat two years earlier. Eighteen of Louis’ last 19 punches tear into his opponent’s body. After the fight Schmeling is taken to New York’s Polyclinic Hospital, where X–rays show that the vicious punch to his kidney area not only blinded him but also broke the “left transverse process of the third lumbar vertebra,” which injury keeps Schmeling in the hospital for two weeks. After Joe Louis’ less than one round defeat of Schmeling, victory celebrations are held in Harlem and in African communities throughout African America. The Louis–Schmeling rematch is fought in Yankee Stadium with 66,227 fight fans in attendance and has a gross gate of $1,015,096. Louis’ share is $321,245. Schmeling earns $160,622. The movie and radio rights to the bout are sold for $75,000. Tickets for the first 38 rows of seats sell for $30, a price that “took your breath away” in the late 1930s. Louis defends his championship 20 more times before he retires undefeated in 1949 with a 25 and 0 record in title defenses. In 1951, after making a short comeback, he retires for good, and dies at the age of 66 in 1981. 

Lion–Hammer Films, an English film company, releases "Big Fella," starring Paul Robeson and Elizabeth Welch. 

The U.S. Supreme Court rules that a state must provide equal educational facilities for Africans within the state. 

Twentieth Century–Fox releases "One Mile from Heaven" with Fredi Washington, Bill Robin- son and Eddie Anderson. 

Crystal Bird Fauset of Philadelphia is elected a State Representative, becoming the first Afri- can woman legislator. 

Richard Wright publishes his Uncle Tom’s Children.

Ferdinand “Jelly Roll” Morton records the History of Jazz Series for the Archives of American Folksong at the Library of Congress (116 record sides) in Washington, DC. 

Billie Holiday is hired to sing with Artie Shaw’s all–white band. She dies in 1959. 

Warner Brothers releases "Jezebel" with Eddie Anderson and Theresa Harris. 

The Southern Conference of Human Welfare is founded. 

The Buckeye Review begins publishing in Youngstown, Ohio. Margaret Linton is its editor and publisher until 1982. 

W. Alexander Bustamante forms in Jamaica the important Bustamante Industrial Trade Union. 

Another six African Americans are lynched this year. 

Sterling Brown publishes The Negro in American Fiction and Negro Poetry and Drama.

Columbia Pictures releases "On Velvet" with Nina Mae McKinney. 

The first of the “From Spirituals to Swing” concerts is held at Carnegie Hall in New York. 

The Negro Marches On Films releases "Double Deal" with Florence O’Brien, Shelton Brooks, Edward Thompson, Maceo Sheffield, F.E. Miller, Edgar Washington, Freddie Jackson, Jeni Le Gon, Monte Hawley and Charles Hawkins. 

Joe “King” Oliver, pioneer African jazz star, dies in Savannah, Georgia. 

The University of Toledo is chartered as a municipal institution; it becomes a state–supported university in 1967. 

James H. Cone, editor, theologian, author of The Spirituals and the Blues and A Black Theo- logy of Liberation, is born. 

1939
The second World War starts in Europe. The scenario leading up to U.S. involvement is:  Germany annexes Czechoslovakia; Italy annexes Albania; the Spanish Civil War ends; Soviet–Nazi peace pact is signed; Germany attacks Poland; Russia and Germany partition Poland; Germany overruns Denmark, Norway, Holland and Belgium. Chamberlain is replaced by a coalition government headed by Churchill; France is occupied by the Germans. The Battle of Britain begins. In 1941, the British, with the help of the U.S. Air Force, beat off German air attacks; Ethiopia regains its independence; Germany conquers Yugoslavia and Greece and invades Russia. Japan attacks the U.S. fleet at Pearl Harbor. 

Many continental African troops serve in North Africa and overseas during World War II. At an ANC conference in Bloemfontein, South Africa, the following resolution is passed: “Unless and until the Government [of South Africa] grants the Africans full democratic and citizenship rights, the ANC is not prepared to advise Africans to participate in the present war in any capacity.” 

Two Africans in America are brutally lynched. 

The Negro Marches On Films releases the all–black "Paradise in Harlem" with Mamie Smith, Frank Wilson, Edna Mae Harris, Sidney Easton, Alex Lovejoy, George Williams, Merrit Smith and Norman Astwood. The screenplay is written by Frank Wilson. 

The notorious Mississippi Senator Theodore G. Bilbo establishes links with Garveyism and Garvey when he introduces in the U.S. Senate the proposed Greater Liberia Act, calling for the voluntary repatriation of American Africans to West Africa with the aid of the U.S. Govern- ment. 

Rex Ingram appears in MGM’s Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

Edgar G. Harris edits and publishes the Illinois Times in Champaign. 

The NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund is incorporated as a separate organization.

There are 17 African American insurance companies in the U.S. with combined incomes of more than $13 million. 

Jane M. Bolin is appointed judge of New York City’s Court of Domestic Relations, becoming the first African woman judge in the U.S.

"Green Pastures" is released by Warner Brothers with Rex Ingram, Eddie Anderson, Clinton Rosemond, Edna Mae Harris, Frank Wilson and George Reed. 

E. Franklin Frazier publishes The Negro Family in the United States in which he erroneously concludes that . . . 

“as a result of the manner in which the Negro was enslaved, the Negro’s African cultural heritage has had practically no effect on the evolution of his family life in the U.S. . . . The manner in which men and women were packed . . . in slave ships during the Middle Passage tended to destroy social bonds and tribal dis- tinctions. Then the process of ‘breaking’ the Negroes into the slave system in the West Indies . . . tended to efface the memories of their traditional culture     . . . in the Southern United States . . . There was little opportunity to reknit social bonds or regenerate the African culture.” 

Hattie McDaniel wins an Academy Award for her performance in MGM’s "Gone with the Wind." Oscar Polk, Ben Carter, Eddie Anderson and Butterfly McQueen are also in the film. 

The Golden Gate International Exposition is held in San Francisco. 

Buell Films releases "Harlem on the Prairie," which claims to be the first African American western. 

The New York World’s Fair opens. 

1940 
In the U.S., there are 12,865,518 American Africans, 9.8 percent of the total population.  Eighty–four thousand are foreign–born, primarily West Indians. 

Lena Horne and Ralph Cooper star in Herald Pictures’ all–black "Blond Venus." 

Russia annexes the Baltic states and attacks Finland. 

Dr. A.B. Xuma is elected as the seventh President–General of the ANC in South Africa. 

Paramount releases "Ghost Breakers" with Willie Best and Noble Johnson. 

Winston Churchill becomes the Prime Minister of Great Britain. 

Mantan Moreland and Franie Darro appear in Monogram Film’s "Chasing Trouble." 

Roosevelt is re–elected for an unprecedented third term, bringing the U.S. close to a dictatorship. 

Paramount Studios produces "Safari" with Clinton Rosemond and Ben Carter. 

Dr. Charles Drew contributes to the world the Blood Plasma Bank, which saves the lives of thousands, particularly military personnel during World War II. 

Paul Robeson stars in "The Proud Valley," produced in England by Ealing Pictures. 

The National Negro Bankers Association has 14 members. 

Julian Bond, Georgia state legislator, former member of SNCC and civil rights leader, is born in Tennessee. 

The American Negro Theatre is formed in New York City. 

Richard Wright publishes Native Son. 

Racist mobs lynch four black Americans. 

The average African population of Central America is 13.8%; in South America it is 7.3%.  Only 2.0% of the 244,908 inhabitants of the French colony of Martinique are white. The same situation exists on the island of Guadeloupe. In French Guiana, there are more whites than Africans. Santo Domingo’s population is 19% African, 68% Mestizo (mixed bloods), 13% white. In Cuba, 27% of four million people are of African descent. In Puerto Rico, 25.7% of the population is African. 

The Arkansas World is published and edited by A.G. Shields, Jr., in Little Rock. 

Phylon, a scholarly journal, is founded at Atlanta University with W.E.B. DuBois as editor. 

American African publishers organize the National Newspaper Publishers Association. 

Benjamin O. Davis, Sr., is appointed brigadier general, becoming the first African general in the U.S. armed forces. 

The American Film Centre distributes "One Tenth of Our Nation," a documentary about the  education of Africans in the South. 

The Los Angeles Tribune is published by Lucius W. Lomax, Jr., and edited by Almena Davis.

Only 40% of the total African votes cast is Democratic because of Roosevelt’s failure to remove discriminatory practices from federal agencies. African people refer to FDR’s “New Deal” and its programs as the “Dirty Deal”! 

The Virginia legislature chooses “Carry Me Back to Ole Virginny” as the state song. The song is written by African composer, James A. Bland (1854–1910). 

Clinton Rosemond appears in Columbia’s "Golden Boy." 

Marcus Garvey dies in London. James Stewart, a native of Ohio, succeeds him as President General. Stewart later emigrates to Liberia where he dies.

1941
Haile Selassie returns to the Ethiopian throne after the defeat of Mussolini’s forces in Ethiopia.

Henry Armstrong appears in the all-African "Keep Punching." 

The Council for Non-European Trade Unions is established in South Africa with Gana Maka- beni as president and D. Gosani as secretary. 

Warner Brothers releases "The Great Life" with Hattie McDaniel. 

President Roosevelt issues Executive Order 8802 creating the Fair Employment Practices Commission (FEPC) in order to stave off A. Phillip Randolph’s threatened March on Washing- ton, DC, by African people and their supporters. (This threat is finally carried out in 1963 to demand much broader Civil Rights under the leadership of the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.) The President’s Executive Order forbids racial and religious discrimination in war plants, government training programs and industries. 

The Little Rock, Arkansas State Press is published and edited by L.C. Bates. 

Under the Lend–Lease Agreement, the United States receives from Britain the right to esta- blish military bases in Guyana, Trinidad, St. Lucia, Antigua, the Bahamas, Jamaica and Bermuda. Britain receives from the U.S. military arms and supplies to support their war effort against the Germans. 

Butterfly McQueen and Hattie McDaniel appear in MGM’s "Affectionately Yours." 

The Daily Bulletin in published in Dayton, Ohio. 

Yancy Williams, a Howard University student, files suit against the Secretary of War and other government officials. He asks the court to order them to consider his application for enlistment in the Army Air Corps as a flying Cadet. On the very next day the first Army Air Corps squadron for African cadets is formed by the War Department at Tuskegee Institute, Alabama on an experimental basis, for it is believed that even highly educated American Africans are too unintelligent to fly fighter aircraft. (See 1942, 1943, 1944.) 

Jesse Jackson, national director of Operation PUSH (People United to Save Humanity), is born. 

While African Americans are struggling for the right to help defend the nation of their birth, four more of their brothers are robbed of their right to live by white mobs. 

The Policy and Platform Statement of the ANC is issued by Dr. Xuma in Inkululeko. The statement calls, among other things, for racial unity. The ANC is the unqualified mouthpiece of the African people throughout South Africa. 

Melville J. Herskovits, a white anthropologist, publishes his The Myth of the Negro Past, which serves to refute E. Franklin Frazier’s contention that the slave system “tended to efface the memories of . . . traditional [African] culture.” Further refutations are found in John W. Blassin- game's The Slave Community: Plantation Life in the Antebellum South (1972), and Herbert G. Gutman's The Black Family in Slavery and Freedom, 1750-1925 (1976).

The Philadelphia Housing Association produces A Place to Live, a documentary on African housing. 

New York bus companies agree to hire African drivers and mechanics after a four-week bus boycott. 

Sterling Brown publishes his Negro Caravan, an anthology of African authors. 

Mass meetings are held by African people in 24 states to protest discrimination in the national defense effort. 

One hundred African army officers are locked up at Freeman Field, Indiana for entering a “whites-only” officers’ club. 

The U.S. Supreme Court rules separate facilities on railroads must be equal. 

Dorie Miller of Texas, a messman on the U.S.S. Arizona, earns the Navy Cross for downing four Japanese planes during their attack on Pearl Harbor. The U.S., as a consequence of this “day of infamy,” declares war against axis powers — Germany, Italy and Japan. 

Before the end of the year there are 97,725 American Africans in the regular army. This is a remarkable number since the War Department admitted whites to service with a score of 15 or better on the Army Intelligence Test; Blacks needed a score of at least 39 on the same test.  From 1941–1945, approximately 892,678 African men and women serve in the United States Armed Forces . . . 
 

Approximately 110,000 Japanese Americans are herded into detention camps located throughout the U.S. See Allen R. Bosworth, America’s Concentration Camps (1968), Bill Hosokawa, Nisei, The Quiet Americans (1969), Michi Weglyn, Years of Infamy, The Untold Story of America’s Concentration Camps (1978), Peter Iron, Justice at War (1983) and Michael Masaoka, They Called Me Moses Masaoka (1987). In 1988, the U.S. Congress finally indemnifies the losses suffered by these outraged American citizens. 

Minton’s Playhouse Jazz sessions begin in Harlem. The bop style emerges in New York City.

1942
Warner Brothers releases "The Body Disappears" with Willie Best. 

The Los Angeles Criterion is edited by Jeanne Steverns and published by Arnold Scott. 

"This is Our Life," a Warner Brothers Film with Hattie McDaniel and Ernest Anderson, is a sympathetic treatment of an African falsely accused of murder. 

The Honorable Elijah Muhammad is indicted for pro–Japanese sympathies. 

Huey P. Newton, leader and co–founder of the Black Panther Party in Oakland, California, is born in Monroe, Louisiana. His goals are equitable black housing, true education, full employment, an end to police brutality and “power to the people to determine their destiny.” 

A race riot erupts in the Sojourner Truth Homes in Detroit. One of several racial incidents to occur in Michigan during World War II. 

The Reverend L.V. Bolton edits and publishes the Texas Examiner in Houston. 

The first cadets, who form the 99th Pursuit Squadron, grad- uate from advanced flying school at Tuskegee Institute, Alabama. 

The U.S. Department of Agriculture produces Henry Brown, Farmer, which is narrated by Canada Lee. 

Robert L. Allen, author of Black Awakening in Capitalist America (1969), is born. 

William L. Dawson is elected to Congress from Chicago. 

Stokely Carmichael (aka Kwame Toure), former Chairman of SNCC, is born in Trinidad. He comes to the U.S. when he is eleven years old. 

The Dayton, Ohio, Daily Express is first published. 

Six more Africans in America are lynched this year. 

The U.S. Navy gives the first commission to an African, Bernard W. Robinson, who is enrolled in Harvard’s medical school. 

Margaret Walker, author of the novel, Jubilee (1966), and educator, wins the Yale University Younger Poet’s Award with her collection of poems, For My People.

The Ohio State News is published in Columbus. 

The Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) is organized in Chicago by James Farmer and a group of students from the University of Chicago. CORE stages its first sit–in in a local restaurant. 

The People’s Voice is published in New York City. 

MGM releases "Cairo" with Ethel Waters, Reginald Owen and Dooley Wilson. 

Hugh Mulzac is first American African captain to command a U.S. merchant ship, the USS Booker T. Washington. 

Thelonius Monk begins playing with Lucky Millinder’s band.  Monk dies in 1983. 

The National Negro Opera Company, directed by Mary Caldwell Dawson, debuts in Chicago. 

Republic Pictures releases "The Pittsburgh Kid" with Ernest Witman, Henry Armstrong and Etta McDaniel. 

1943 
The Allies — Britain, France and the United States — invade Italy bringing World War II closer to an end. 

Twentieth Century–Fox releases "The Ox–Bow Incident" with Leigh Whipper. 

Milton G. Williams edits the Twin City Observer in Minneapolis, Minnesota. 

Three more Africans are lynched this year. 

The Slaughter: An American Atrocity by Carroll Case.* ISBN: 0966649907. Publisher: First Biltmore Corporation. Publication Date: August 1998. Hardcover. 310pp. Price: $25.95. Click on image to listen to an expanded (1:23:31.4) interview of Carroll Case by Eliot Stein on STEIN ONLINE hosted by www.broadcast.com in Los Angeles on December 11, 1998. In a 1998 review of Carroll Case's fact-based bombshell, the renowned writer Mr. Luther Brown of Atlanta, Georgia writes: 

"Truth is stranger than fiction. Truth is also often better to read than some fiction, that sometimes, in spite of the best intentions and creativity of the author fails to do what it intends. Some writers resort to fiction because of some failure of their factual information, some gaps or loopholes in the logic of the facts, or leaps of faith that require some buttressing or gilding for the reader. In this case, the author has decided to have the best of both worlds: he has written a factual, journalistic expose and fashioned that expose into an intriguing, though less satisfying novel. While he may be right to give us both, the strongest part of the book is the first, factual, part.

With The Slaughter: An American Atrocity by Carroll Case, the truth is better from a number of standpoints. Case has given the reader a two-fer with his story: he first part — it's called "The Slaughter" — is the factual account of what is surely an American atrocity. The second part is the novelization of those facts, and he entitles it "The Evangeline File." [. . . The Evangeline File, a fact-based novel set in present-day south Mississippi. As Case poignantly writes, "It is such a terrible, ugly tragedy, and there is an innate human hesitance to admit what actually happened. By putting it in a vehicle of fiction, it somehow makes it easier to face the truth."

The Evangeline File effectively communicates the essential elements of the historical incident while creating compelling characters — Clay Brady, the reporter who uncovers the story; Parker, his investigative partner; and Khaki, the woman Clay cannot resist, but should. It is riveting and suspenseful, as Clay unravels the secret and discovers it reaches to the highest levels of the government. While unearthing what is perhaps the worst racial crime in the country's history, he must battle the racism which, to this day, still poisons American society.]

Case calls Part II his "tribute to the soldiers who are buried in the red clay hills of Mississippi." While I can admire anyone's ability to create a novel, — and I certainly can't quibble with Case's novelization — I am partial here to the facts. It is so riveting, so appalling, in part because the soldiers are all Americans, all black, all killed at the hands of their country's military. Given those hot-button elements, it's hard to see how a novel could ever do justice to the truth that was to be told.

The bare facts, as reported by Case are these: In 1943, during World War II, some 3000 African American soldiers were sent to a U.S. Army base, Camp Van Dorn in Mississippi. These soldiers had been brought together from other parts of the country and were presumably unfamiliar with and unwilling to endure the racial confines of the horribly segregated deep South. (One early sign of trouble was the common rule that blacks were not allowed to use the same sidewalk as whites. Blacks contended they didn't even know that kind of segregation existed.) Transferred from a camp in Phoenix, Arizona where they were branded "mutinous", they almost immediately rubbed the townsfolk of Centerville, Mississippi the wrong way. It was clear that trouble would come. Within a matter of months, the townspeople were so upset that they threatened to take matters into their own hands to teach the "niggers" their place. Of course, the "niggers" were not buying it. But the Army had fair warning of the possibility of this kind of confrontation. The 364th Infantry was an all-black unit that had already run up against the military's attitude in Phoenix where they were considered riotous and mutinous, appellations that seem to stem from their refusal to endure blatant racism and discrimination at the same time they were being trained to fight for their country. Numerous race riots were reported during WWII, usually growing out of black soldiers' refusal to fight for the right to be second-class citizens.

According to Case, in spite of warnings from the Army's own experts who "had recommended that black troops not be located away from their own geographic areas, the Army decided that the 364th Infantry, (most of whom were natives of northern or midwestern states with a decidedly different attitude toward race than the Southern states), would intentionally be sent to the very heart of Dixie. If the 364th made the miraculous recovery, they would be retrained at Van Dorn and shipped overseas. Those that did not knuckle under would never leave alive, and the Army could use the racially scarred state of Mississippi as a scapegoat."

In the end, the Army itself ordered and carried out the shooting of at least 1200 of these men. The rest of the black soldiers, according to Case, were shipped to a remote island off the coast of Alaska until after the war was over.

Carroll Case, a white man, discovered the initial facts by happenstance. As a banker in McComb, Mississippi during the early l980's, he came to know a retired janitor (also white) who had been a military policeman who revealed the basic outlines of the story. "[A] man can carry a heavy burden for just so long," Bill Martzall, the janitor, told Case, "then he has to put it down. I need to put it down if you will listen." Case listened and took notes and the tale was spun out before him. It is interesting to note the race of the author and his subjects. On a cynical note, even though blacks have spoken of such atrocities during WWII for years, it is rare that the reports were given any credence or publicity, and even rarer that anyone paid them much attention.

Martzall's statements formed the basis for the rest of both books. "The 364th was all niggers, close to 3000 of them. Two months before they shipped out to Van Dorn, they had been in a lot of trouble in Phoenix, Arizona — racial problems, they told us. They had killed some MPs. We're talking about some mean sons of bitches. Even before the train bringing them in crossed over the state line, they were bragging about how they were going to take over the base and all of Centreville, for that matter."

Ultimately, things got so bad in the late fall of 1943, that the Army ordered the MPs — armed with 45 caliber machine guns and riding weapons carriers — onto the base at the same time that it ordered the MPs to make sure that the black soldiers had no firing pins in their guns. Martzall's description is
bone-chilling. "We were told to wait until dark and to report to the black camp. We pulled up to the black camp and ordered the 364th out into this area. I remember that one of the nigger soldiers threw a brick and hit one of the MPs in the eye. I don't know if he lost his eye or not because all hell broke loose. We were ordered to let them have it. We had the whole area sealed off — it was like shooting fish in a barrel. We opened fire on everything that moved, shot into the barracks, shot them out of trees where some of them were climbing, trying to hide we shot every nigger we could find. The screaming, yelling and begging was horrible." Still later, he tells Case, "I was a soldier in the United States Army and I was following orders."

From that beginning, and for the next thirteen years, Case followed every thread he could find that was connected to the story and he was hugely successful.

He not only got many eyewitness accounts. He was also able to ascertain that the NAACP had heard about the situation in Centreville, had written the War Department seeking help in the situation. In his research, Case found that the Army never responded to those early letters, which were sent a good four months before the massacre occurred. Still further research showed that some of the routine records — such as muster strength, discipline charts, etc. — which would have corroborated Case's findings were missing from the Army's files. Using the Freedom of Information Act and other ploys, Case also obtained letters that were written by black soldiers to a Philadelphia newspaper, letters which clearly foreshadowed the events of the fall of l943. In one letter, a corporal Anthony J. Smirely, Jr. wrote the editor of the Philadelphia Tribune: "Now, the regiment has been moved down here in the deep South. The land of the white man. The place where the colored man, soldier or civilian, hasn't the slightest chance for an even break. Hardly had this Regiment been here 47 hrs before the "White Supremacy" took its first toe-hold. The men here, some having homes and families in a close vicinity were rounded up by white M.P.'s and civilian authorities and sent back to camp. When duty hours are over, other soldiers are allowed anywhere, but not the colored ones. How do the so-called white over-lords expect us to win a war for them? If some of these malfunctions of the people could be corrected, I believe that it would be better off all-around. "

The book contains these affidavits, as well as some declassified confidential memoranda from the deputy Chief of Staff, written "by none other than the Inspector General of the United States Army" Case analyzed this latter report and writes, " I understood why it had been kept secret and hidden from the public for almost 50 years. Even though I had heard countless grisly eyewitness accounts of the incident itself. something about reading this report's cold, dispassionate military language gave me chills. This situation taking place on one base in south Mississippi had the attention of the highest levels in the military. No wonder an event of this magnitude could have been so effectively covered up."

It was also effectively covered up, Case contends, because the evidence was destroyed. Here's Case's report again: "Their final riot took place on a night in the late fall of 1943. For the first time, white MPs were called in, and a special riot squad armed with 45 caliber pistols and machine guns took charge. They shot everything that moved, until nothing did; not one defenseless soldier got away. When the shooting stopped, over 1,200 members of the 364th were slaughtered. Their bodies were loaded on boxcars and stacked inside like pulpwood. They were hauled off by train to the south gate of the base where they were buried and limed in long trenches dug by bulldozers.

"Following this bloodbath, records were not only altered but destroyed. The Army notified next-of-kin of the victims, saying that the soldiers were killed in the line of duty. It was easy to explain that the bodies were not recoverable, and no further explanation was necessary. Foul play was never suspected during wartime."

Other stories also had the Army's attention. New York's Amsterdam News, a leading newspaper for black citizens, reported stories of groups of black soldiers being executed for various crimes while similarly charged whites went free. In one case, a white doctor, Walter Luszki, wrote a factual account, A Rape of Justice: MacArthur and the New Guinea Hangings, of the hanging of six black men in the Pacific for the alleged rape of two white nurses. Luszki had served as their caretaker before they faced the hangman's noose, and his book is brutally critical of the racism of the time and Gen. MacArthur's attitude which Luszki felt made the executions inevitable. Add to those facts the reality that the massacre at Centreville occurred just about six months before the rape case began, and the whole thing gets more bizarre. But Luszki's book, published in 1991, has not stirred quite the storm that Case's has.

The story is now out in the open, and the tumult has begun. The NAACP has weighed in with renewed requests for a full investigation from the Army, the defense department and the White House. Mississippi Congressman Benny Thompson has also demanded an investigation. Other stories about atrocities during the Great War against African American soldiers are getting renewed attention as a result. These long buried abominations, often noted within the black community, but most often dismissed in white communities as black conspiracy theory hogwash, deserve a time in the sun, however painful and ugly they may be. Carroll Case, perhaps because he is white, perhaps because his facts are the most egregious ever discovered against the U.S. military, has at least opened the door for a consideration of the wounds that have been inflicted upon our African American citizens.

Carroll Case's version of the events is compelling. Indeed, it is billed as "an important news story," and CBS, ABC and BET are all reported to be researching and preparing news stories about this "shocking expose of a racial crime of unprecedented proportions in American history." While some readers (such as one reviewer on Amazon.com) may be willing to dismiss it as unsubstantiated and by inference, just another conspiracy theory coming out of the black community, the facts as presented require much more scrutiny. And while "The Evangeline File" accurately covers all the ground, and contains believable characters and dialogue, the reader is left with the nagging feeling that nothing created by the author could be as nauseating, as compelling, as Book I: "The Slaughter." For that — if these awful facts are
confirmed — "The Slaughter" by itself is a triumph of the truth, a truth that is indeed stranger (and more horrific because it is true) than fiction.

*Carroll Case, an award winning visual artist, bank president and freelance writer, lives with his wife, Suzanne, in McComb, Mississippi. 

The poet, Nikki Giovanni, is born in Knoxville, Tennessee. She grows up in Lincoln Hts., Ohio. As the author of Re: Creation, Spin a Soft Black Song, and Poems for Children, she is named one of the ten most admired African women by the Amsterdam News in 1969. 

The St. Louis Recorder begins publishing. 

Race riots erupt in Mobile, Alabama; Beaumont, Texas; Detroit, Michigan and Harlem, New York. 

William H. Hastie, civilian aid to the Secretary of War, resigns in protest against Army’s policy of segregation and discrimination. 

H. Rap Brown, former chairman of SNCC (Student Non–Violent Coordinating Committee), is born in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. He changes his name to Jamiel Abdullah Al-Amin and resides currently in Atlanta where he is working and teaching the Principles of Islam to men, women and children who are committed to the Islamic way of life.. 

George Washington Carver dies at Tuskegee Institute. 

"Porgy and Bess" opens on Broadway with Anne Brown and Todd Duncan in starring roles. 

The 99th Pursuit Squadron flies first combat mission when it attacks Pantelleria in the Mediterranean Theatre. Lt. Charles Hall of Brazil, Indiana becomes first black U.S. flier to shoot down a Nazi plane. 

Liberian President, Edwin Barclay, first president of an independent African nation to pay an official visit to an American president, arrives at the White House. 

The ANC Women’s League is formed in South Africa. 

Benito Mussolini’s fascist government falls. 

Lena Horne appears in MGM’s "Panama Hattie." 

“Mexican Zoot Suit Riots” take place in Los Angeles. For more information on this historical event, click on http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/zoot/eng_timeline/
  
An ANC annual conference presents the African Claims in South Africa. 

Legality of trade unionism is established in all British West Indian colonies. St. Lucia, the lone exception, legalizes trade unions in 1948. 

MGM releases "Cabin in the Sky" with Lena Horne, Ethel Waters, Eddie Anderson, Rex Ingram, Kenneth Spencer, Ernest Whitman, Mantan Moreland, Oscar Polk, Louis Armstrong, Buck and Bubbles, Willie Best, Duke Ellington and John Sublett. 

Color, an African American newsjournal(?), is published in Charleston, West Virginia. 

MGM releases Bataan with Kenneth Spencer. This World War II action drama receives an award from the NAACP for its non-stereotyped handling of an African soldier fighting along- side his white comrades. 

Joyce Ladner, author of Tomorrow’s Tomorrow: The Black Woman (1971), is born in Waynesboro, Mississippi. 

Sam B. Soloman edits and publishes the Miami Whip. 
 

Dooley Wilson appears in Casablanca, released by Warner Bro- thers. 

The Detroit, Michigan Chronicle is edited by L.E. Martin. 

Rex Ingram appears in Columbia’s "Sahara," for which he receives the Best Black Actor Award for his portrayal of a Sudanese soldier. 

Thomas “Fats” Waller dies in Kansas City, Missouri. 

The ANC Youth League is organized. The League is spearheaded by Anton Lembede, Nelson Mandela, O.R. Tambo, Walter Sisulu, A.O. Mda and others. 

1944
At the Brazzaville Conference, France rejects the idea of autonomy for its colonies and stresses the traditional policy of assimilation, i.e., getting Africans to "évoluer" (to become good "Frenchmen!"). The French Union of 1946 gives the colonies local representative bodies and also the right to elect members to the National Assembly in Paris. 

The United Negro College Fund (UNCF) is first chartered with the financing through the Julius Rosenwald Fund and the General Education Board. William Trent, Jr., is its first chief execu- tive officer. The UNCF is established to provide financial assistance to 40 black private colle- ges and universities. 

African Americans in South Carolina organize the Progressive Democratic Party. Thirty–nine of the state’s 46 counties send delegates to the founding convention. In 1948 and 1956 the party mounts seating challenges at the National Democratic Conventions. A similar challenge at a National Democratic Convention is staged by African members of the Mississippi Free- dom Democratic Party (MFDP) in 1964 in Atlantic City.

"Boogie Woogie Dream," with Lena Horne, Teddy Wilson, Albert Ammons and Pete Johnson, is produced by Jack and Dave Goldberg. 

The Germans are expelled from Russia, France and Belgium. 

The U.S. Supreme Court rules black people cannot be denied the right to vote in a primary election in the East. 

White mobs lynch two more American Africans during the year. 

Anna Lucasta, starring Hilda Simms and Frederick O’Neal, opens on Broadway. 

Pearl Primus makes her debut on Broadway with an American African dance troop. 

Universal Studios releases "Follow the Boys" with Louis Jordan, Louise Beavers and Nicode- mus Stewart. 

President Franklin D. Roosevelt approves a plan submitted by the U.S. Navy for the accep- tance of Blacks in the Women’s Reserve of the Navy. 

Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. of New York is the first black Congressman to be elected in the Northeast. 

Katherin Dunham’s dance troupe appears in Warner Brothers’ "Carnival of Rhythm." 

The 99th Pursuit Squadron flies its 500th combat mission. General H.A. “Hap” Arnold commends the “Red Tails” for their air combat performance over the Anzio beachhead. In June the squadron becomes the 332nd P-51 Mustang Fighter Group with Colonel Benjamin O. Davis, Jr., as its commanding officer. In all, its officers and men receive 95 Distinguished Flying Crosses, one Silver Star, one Legion of Merit, 14 Bronze Stars, 744 Air Medals and Clusters and eight Purple Hearts. 

Canada Lee appears in "Lifeboat," released by Twentieth Century–Fox. 

1944–1945
Anti–Pass Law campaigns in South Africa carry the struggle forward for complete liberation of the South African people in the land of their birth. 

1945
World War II ends with 1,154,720 African men and women having served in the armed forces.  Some 497,566 American Africans serve overseas in Europe, Asia, and Africa. 

Associated British Films releases "It Happened One Sunday" with Robert Adams. 

Franklin D. Roosevelt dies one year after being elected to an unprecedented fourth term.  Harry S. Truman, a Missouri Democrat, succeeds him as the 33rd U.S. President. 

The San Francisco Conference drafts and approves the charter of the United Nations. At this Conference Walter White and W.E.B. DuBois propose the abolition of colonialism in Africa and the rest of the non–white world, but to no avail. See W.E.B. DuBois, Color and Demo- cracy (1945). 

New York state’s FEPC law is signed by the governor. 

J. Robert Smith edits the Tri–County Bulletin in San Bernardino, California. 

Seven more Africans are lynched. 

Universal Adult Suffrage is introduced in Trinidad. 

Colonel B.O. Davis, Jr., is named commander of Godman Field, Kentucky. 

One thousand white students walk out of three Gary, Indiana schools to protest school integration. 

Two atom bombs devastate Hiroshima and Nagasaki, forcing Japan to surrender uncondition- ally. 

Thomas C. Jervay begins editing the Wilmington Journal in North Carolina. 

Universal releases "Bowery to Broadway" with Ben Carter and Mantan Moreland. 

The NAACP presents Paul Robeson with the Spingarn Medal in recognition of his outstanding achievements in the theatre and on the concert stage. 

Richard Wright publishes his Black Boy, which is largely autobiographical. 

MGM produces "Dr. George Washington Carver," a documentary, with Clinton Rosemond. 

Colonialist troops kill thousands of Algerians during demonstrations against French rule. 

Chester Himes publishes If He Hollers Let Him Go. 

Universal Adult Suffrage is introduced in Guyana without any property or language qualifica- tions. 

Louise Beavers and Ben Carter appear in "Dixie Jamboree." 

Irving C. Mollison, a Chicago Republican, is sworn in as U.S. Customs Court Judge in New York City. 

The fifth Pan–African Congress is held in Manchester, England. Unlike the previous congres- ses which had been organized by African Americans and West Indians, this one is dominated by continental Africans who include Jomo Kenyatta and Kwame Nkrumah. The Congress, called by W.E.B. DuBois and George Padmore, states: “We demand for black Africa autono- my and independence. . . . We are determined to be free.” See V.B. Thompson, African Unity: The Evolution of Pan–Africanism (l969) and Kwame Nkrumah, Africa Must Unite (1963). 

1946
There are 200,000 American Africans on the U.S. payroll; in 1933 only 50,000 were on the federal payroll. 

William H. Hastie is appointed Governor of the U.S. Virgin Islands. 

In South Africa, the Indian Passive Resistance Campaign is led by Y.M. Dadoo and Dr. G.M. Naicker against the Asiatic Land Tenure and Indian Representation Acts (Ghetto Acts) enac- ted by the Smuts government. 

After repeated aggressions throughout Viet Nam, including the cities of Haiphong and Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh calls on the Vietnamese people to rise up and launch a war of resistance against French colonialism. 

The U.S. Supreme Court bans segregation in interstate bus travel. 

President Truman issues Executive Order 9808 establishing the Commission on Civil Rights. 

Steve Biko, leader of the Black Consciousness Movement in South Africa, is born in King William’s Town. Biko is killed in 1977 while in the custody of South African Security Police.  See Donald Woods, Biko (1978) and Steve Biko — I Write What I Like, A Selection of His Writings (1978) in which he states in a paper written for a SASO (South African Student Organization) training course that . . . 

“We have in our policy manifesto defined blacks as those who are by law or tradition politically, economically and socially discriminated against as a group in the South African society and identifying themselves as a unit in the struggle towards the realisation of their aspirations. This definition illustrates to us a number of things: Being black is not a matter of pigmentation — being black is a reflection of a mental attitude. Merely by describing yourself as black you have started on a road towards emancipation, you have committed yourself to fight against all forces that seek to use your blackness as a stamp that marks you out as a subservient being. From the above observations therefore, we can see that the term black is not necessarily all–inclusive; i.e. the fact we are all not white does not necessarily mean that we are all black. Non–whites do exist and will continue to exist and will continue to exist for quite a long time. If one’s aspiration is whiteness but his pigmentation makes attainment of this impos- sible, then that person is a non–white. Any man who calls a white man “Baas,” any man who serves in the police force or Security Branch is ipso facto a non–white. Black people — real black people — are those who can manage to hold their heads high in defiance rather than willingly surrender their souls to the white man.” 

                                          What is Africa to me?
                                          Copper sun or scarlet sea,
                                          Jungle star or jungle track,
                                          Strong bronzed men, or regal black
                                          Women from whose loins I sprang
                                          When the birds of Eden sang?
                                          One three centuries removed
                                          From the scenes his fathers loved,
                                          Spicy grove, cinnamon tree,
                                          What is Africa to me?

A race riot breaks out in Columbia, Tennessee. Two are killed. Ten are wounded. 

One hundred thousand African miners go out on strike in the East and West Rand, South Africa. The police, with bayonets drawn, charge and open fire, forcing the miners back under- ground. Hundreds of workers are killed and injured. No official figures of the dead are released and the strike is broken by the lawlessness and ruthlessness of the state. Fifty–two people, including Moses Kotane, Dadoo, Bunting, Fischer, J.B. Marks and Harmel, are accused of “conspiracy” to bring about the strike. 

Colonel B.O. Davis, Jr. assumes the command of Lockbourne Air Base. 

Mrs. Emma Clarissa Clement of Louisville, Kentucky, is named “American Mother of the Year” by the Golden Rule Foundation. Her son, Rufus, is a former President of Atlanta University. 

Jack Johnson dies in an automobile accident in Raleigh, North Carolina. 

A race riot erupts in Athens, Alabama. Fifty to 100 Africans are injured. 

A race riot occurs in Philadelphia. 

1947
CORE sends the first bus load of “Freedom Riders” through the South. 

The “Truman Doctrine” stipulates that the United States is willing to help free peoples every- where to combat communist terrorism, specifically in Greece and Turkey, and to maintain their free institutions in the interest of preserving international peace and national security.  The “Doctrine” has a particularly negative impact on liberation struggles in the Caribbean and Africa, for these struggles are usually described by the oppressive white-settler régimes against whom the struggles are waged as being communist inspired. 

Jimmie Lunceford dies in Seaside, Oregon. 

Texas Southern University opens in Houston. 

Xuma–Naicker–Dadoo Pact is signed on behalf of the ANC, the NIC and the TIC, and lays a firm foundation for the fighting Congress Alliance, the national liberation front of South Africa. 

Archbishop Joseph E. Ritter says he will excommunicate St. Louis Catholics who continue to protest the integration of parochial schools. 

The NAACP’s petition on racial injustices in America, “An Appeal to the World,” is formally presented to the United Nations at Lake Success. 

Jackie Robinson plays first base for the Brooklyn Dodgers, breaking the racial barriers in major league baseball when everything, including the ball, was white. 

“To Secure These Rights,” a report attacking racial injustice in the U.S., is issued by the Pre- sident’s Commission on Civil Rights. 

A nationalist revolt against French rule in Madagascar is ruthlessly repressed.  An estimated 20,000 people are killed. 

1948
The Nationalist Party is in power in South Africa and introduces their formalized racist policy of apartheid, entrenching white minority fascist domination over the African majority. 

First Lieutenant Nancy C. Leftenant becomes the first African woman accepted into the regular U.S. Army Nurse Corps. 

Herald Pictures releases "Gangsters on the Loose" with Ralph Cooper and Teresa Thompson.

A. Phillip Randolph tells a Senate Committee that unless segregation and discrimination are banned in universal military training and draft programs, he will urge African youth to resist induction by civil disobedience. 

The University College of the West Indies is established in Mona, Jamaica. The institution is at first an adjunct of the University of London. It becomes a full–fledged university in 1962.  Shortly afterwards campuses of the university are opened in Trinidad and Barbados. 

The Jamaican poet, Claude McKay, dies in Chicago. 

Oliver W. Hill is elected to the Richmond, Virginia City Council. 

Alabama and Mississippi Democrats (commonly referred to as Dixiecrats) bolt the Democratic convention after the adoption of a “strong” civil–rights plank. 

A. Phillip Randolph withdraws from a civil disobedience group opposing Jim Crow in the Armed Forces. 

Ralph J. Bunche is confirmed by the United Nations Security Council as Acting UN Mediator in Palestine. 

Under the pseudonym of “J. Meyer,” Cyril Lionel Robert James publishes his essay “The Revolutionary Answer to the Negro Problem in the USA,” which he had placed before Leon Trotsky, the Russian revolutionary and anti-Stalinist, in 1938. In this piece, he argues that . . .

“The real leadership of the Negro struggle must rest in the hands of organised labour and of the marxist [sic] party. Without that the Negro struggle is not only weak, but is likely to cause difficulties for the Negroes and dangers to organised labour. . . . Some great socialists in the United States have been associated with this attitude. We, on the other hand, say something entire- ly different. We say, number one, that the Negro strug- gle, the independent Negro struggle, has a vitality and a validity of its own; that it has deep historic roots in the past of America and in present struggles; it has an organic political perspective, along which it is traveling . . . We say, number two, that this independent Negro movement is able to intervene with terrific force upon the general social and political life of the nation, despite the fact that it is waged under the banner of democratic rights, and is not led necessarily either by the organised labour movement or the marxist [sic] party. We say, number three, and this is the most important, that it is able to exercise a powerful influence upon the revolutionary proletariat, . . . and that it is in itself a constituent part of the struggle for socialism. . . . On the question of what is called the democratic process, the Negroes do not believe that grievances, difficulties of sections of the population, are solved by discussions, by voting, by telegrams to Congress, by what is known as the ‘American Way’” (C.L.R. James, The Future in the Present (1977). Other books written by James are Facing Reality (1958), The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L'Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution (1963) and Nkrumah and the Ghana Revolution (1977). 

The U.S. Supreme Court rules that a state must provide equal education for Blacks at the same time it provides it for whites, and that federal and state courts may not enforce restric- tive covenants in housing in Shelly vs. Kraemer. 

President Truman issues Executive Order 9981 requiring equality of treatment and opportunity in the Armed Forces. 

1949
The first production by a major opera company of an opera written by an African composer, “Troubled Island” by William Grant Still, is staged at the New York City Opera. 

Congressman William L. Dawson is approved as chairman of the House Expenditures Com- mittee. He is the first American African to chair a standing committee of Congress. 

James Edwards appears in United Artists’ "Home of the Brave." 

Paul Robeson, speaking at a Paris peace conference, says African Americans will not fight against the Soviet Union. Jackie Robinson ill–advisedly, but understandably, repudiates Robeson’s statement when he appears before the House Un–American Activities Committee. 

MGM releases "Intruder in the Dust" with Juano Hernandez and Elzie Emmanuel. 

Wesley A. Brown becomes the first African to graduate from Annapolis Naval Academy. 

Peter Murray Marshall of New York City is appointed to the American Medical Association’s policy–making House of Delegates. 

Huddie “Lead Belly” Leadbetter (born Walter Boyd), a master at playing the 12–string guitar, dies. 

WERD,  the first African–owned radio station, opens in Atlanta. 

An ANC conference adopts a Program of Action — strikes, boycotts and resistance. Dr. Moroka (president) and Walter Sisulu (secretary) are elected to implement this plan which outlines the methods to be used to achieve the right of self–determination of the Azanian (i.e., South African) people. 

William Hastie is nominated for the United States Circuit Court of Appeals. 

Dancer Bill Robinson dies in New York City. 

W.E.B. DuBois is elected the vice chairman of the Council on African Affairs. Paul Robeson was instrumental in establishing the Council in 1937 and remains intimately associated with its activities until 1955, having served for most of that time as the Council’s chairman. The Council is of inestimable importance in forwarding efforts toward rallying Americans, black and white, in support of Africa’s liberation from imperialist bondage. 

rom 1909 onward, with the birth of the NAACP, the National Urban League and other major organizations everywhere in the Third World, and particularly in the United States, Africans come to rely on the courts for relief from the “mark of oppression.” After World War II, the world economy strengthens. The belief in the efficacy of the free enterprise system and its institutions becomes more pronounced.  The courts are used as a stratagem. This strategy, however, proves to be effective only to the degree that the protest, strident and protracted, is tactically employed. During the 1950s this reliance on the courts produces a quickened social and political pace. The four sections into which this chapter is divided — “Taking It to the Courts,” “Taking It to the People,” “Neo–Colonialism at Home and Abroad” and “The Struggle Continues” — demonstrate how African people are called upon to take great “Strides towards Freedom.”  In Africa, the Caribbean, South and Central America, indeed, throughout the Third World, non–white peoples gain their independence from European domination only to learn that this independence is ephemeral. Before long their economies become the special preserve of multi–national corporations. Pre–independence colonial linkages are difficult to sever. The people respond. In the U.S. African people, recognizing that they are being controlled by unjust laws and a racist political economy declare themselves, at least psychologically, independent of a system designed to maintain their inferior status. The years between 1960–1975 bear witness to American Africans’ taking their protest literally to the streets. SNCC, the Black Panther Party, US, the Nation of Islam, the Congress of African Peoples and numerous other grassroots organizations join with the NAACP, the National Urban League, and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and take direct social action to the rural and urban South and Northern central cties. Undisciplined rebellions and occasional armed violence erupt in the urban West and North. SCLC attacks the urban establishment in the South. The outcomes of the ‘60s and ‘early 70s are, perhaps, best described as having allowed a people on the rise  to become  more aware of their heritage and to engage in a second rebirth of Soul, of Art, of Music and Song, of Poetry, of Industry and Commerce.  Between 1975–1980, the African American liberation struggle’s stridency tempers. It is believed, however, that this is the lull before the storm. South Africa becomes an international pariah, the symbol of racist oppression. Its dispossessed peoples increase the intensity of their struggle to create a just society. The ANC’s Freedom Charter attests to the goals and aspirations of the Azanian people. In the face of all this activity, African and black peoples around the world inch their way through a neo–colonial maze, refusing to become satisfied with the “illusion of progress” and recognizing the protracted nature of their struggle. 

1950 
In the U.S. there are 15,042,286 American Africans, 10 percent of the total population. This is the last census to show a percentage decrease in the African population. From this point onward, the African percentage of total U.S. population begins to show a steady increase.  See Reynolds Farley, Growth of the Black Population (1970), for an analysis of black fertility and population growth patterns. See also Figures 3 and 4 below. 

Ralph J. Bunche wins the Nobel Prize for his work in “settling” the Palestinian–Israeli dispute. Needless to say, his efforts were not long lasting. The dispute erupts into two wars in 1956 and 1967 between the Islamic nations in the region and Israeli Zionists, who dispossess the Palestinians of their homelands. This confrontation will continue until the Palestinian people are afforded their human rights, allowed to establish their own homeland and become a self-determining nation. 

The People’s Progressive Party (PPP), the most dynamic political party in Guyana is formed by Cheddi Jagan and Forbes Burnham. In 1955 Burnham breaks away to form the People’s National Congress (PNC). Henceforth, Guyanese politics is to be dominated by the PPP and the PNC, since they appeal to the major races in Guyana: East Indians and Blacks respectively. The Parties merge in 1976. 

The U.S. Supreme Court rules that equality in education involves more than physical facilities. The Court also rules that students admitted to a white school cannot be segregated and bans Jim Crow in railroad dining cars. 

The number of institutions of higher education in the U.S. is 1,852. In 1965 there are 2,230. In 1980, the number increases to 3,231. It is anticipated that there will be more than 3,331 in 1988. 

Charles R. Drew dies in Burlington, North Carolina. 

Carter G. Woodson dies in Washington, DC. 

Gwendolyn Brooks, the Topeka-born writer, publishes her first book of poetry, A Street in Bronzeville in 1945. Her second book of poetry, Annie Allen, is published in 1950, and with this book she becomes the first African American writer to win the coveted Pulitzer Prize for Literature. In 1968, she succeeds Carl Sandburg as poet laureate of Illinois. Brooks describes the writing process as a "delicious agony." She has published many books of poetry, fiction and nonfiction. Much of her work presents strong social commentary and reflects her longstanding commitment to youth. She has tackled tough issues such as poverty, child abuse and racism in her books. Her other poetry collections include The Bean Eaters, Selected Poems, In the Mecca, and Gottschalk and the Grand Tarantell. She also has published two autobiographical works: Report from Part One, in 1972, and Report from Part Two, released in February 1996. Her many awards and honors include becoming a writer-in-residence at Chicago State University, where a distinguished chair in black culture and literature was named iln her honor. She is named a Jefferson Lecturer by the National Endowment for the Humanities in 1994. In 1995, she is a recipient of the National Medal of Arts.