Playwright, poet, novelist essayist and university professor Imamu Amiri Baraka, also known as Leroi Jones, was born on this day in 1934 in Newark, New Jersey.
Nobel Laureate Archbishop Desmond Mpilo Tutu was born on this day in 1931 in apartheid South Africa. He was ordained a priest in 1960, and progressively rose to become the Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town in 1986. For most of the time, he used his church positions to campaign against apartheid, becoming one of the giants in the struggle. After elections in 1994, Mandela appointed Archbishop Tutu to Chair the South Africa Truth and Reconciliation Commission. A decade later, in 1984, he won the Noble Prize for Peace. He passed away in December, 2021.
On this day in 1821 William Grant Still was born. He is known popularly as the Chronicler of the Underground Railroad.
The Honorable Elijah Muhammad was born on this day in 1897 as Elijah Poole. He was the founder of the Nation of Islam in 1934, and the spiritual father of Malcolm X until the latter broke off in 1964.
On this day in 1993, the Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to Toni Morrison, the Committee saying her novels “…characterized by visionary force and poetic import, gives life to an essential aspect of American reality”.
Moses Walker Fleetwood nicknamed ‘Fleet’, perhaps the first Black player in professional baseball, was born on this day in 1857. After attending Oberlin College, he played for a professional baseball team in 1884.
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