October 6, 2021

Jamaican ska singer Millie Small born Millicent Small in Clarendon, Jamaica, in 1946. She was brought to England in late 1963 by Chris Blackwell who would later discover Bob Marley. Her fourth recording, "My Boy Lollipop," became of the few international ska hits reaching number two in the U.S. and number one in the U.K. in 1964. It remains one of the biggest-selling reggae and ska records of all time.

Fannie Lou Hamer, a giant of the Civil and human rights struggles, was born on this day in 1917. They christened her ‘spirit of the civil rights movement.’ She rose from working as a sharecropper on a cotton plantation to leader of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. Later, she worked for the field secretary for the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). 

On this day in 1871, the Fisk Jubilee Singers was created to travel and tour to raise money for Fisk University. Their repertoire included spirituals and other songs steeped in Black culture in the South.