GM – FBF – Today’s American Champion like many during the late nineteenth and the early twentieth century, he successfully filed at least five patents with the United States Patent Office. Among his most significant inventions were a street letter box (U.S. Patent numbers 462,092 and 462,093) and a mechanical device for operating street railway switches (U.S. Patent number 430,118). He also enjoyed a long career as a clerk with the Custom House in Boston, Massachusetts, retiring in 1927 after more than thirty years of service.Today in our History – October 27, 1891 – Black inventor Philip B. Downing receives patent for the street letter box, a precursor of the modern-day mailbox.Born in Providence, Rhode Island on March 22, 1857, Downing came from a prominent background. His father, George T. Downing, was a well-known abolitionist and business owner, while his mother, Serena L. deGrasse, had family roots in New York City, New York dating back to the mid-1600s. Philip Downing’s grandfather, Thomas Downing, had been born to emancipated parents in Virginia. He also had success in business, establishing Downing’s Oyster House in the financial district of Manhattan in 1825. It quickly became one of the city’s best-known dining and catering establishments. In addition, Thomas Downing played an important role in founding the United Anti-Slavery Society of the City of New York in the mid-1830s.One of six children, Philip Downing spent his childhood in Providence and Newport, Rhode Island, as well as in Washington, D.C., where his father was manager of the U.S. House of Representatives’ dining room. Census records indicate that Downing moved to Boston around 1880. Shortly thereafter, he married Evangeline Howard, and had two children, Antonia Downing and Philip Downing Jr.On June 17, 1890, the U.S. Patent Office approved Downing’s application for “new and useful Improvements in Street-Railway Switches.” His invention allowed the switches to be opened or closed by using a brass arm located next to the brake handle on the platform of the car. It also allowed the switches to be changed automatically in some cases.A little over a year later, on October 27, 1891, his two patents for a street letter box also gained approval. Downing’s design resembled the mailboxes that are now ubiquitous, a tall metal box with a secure, hinged door to drop letters. Until this point, those wishing to send mail usually had to travel to the post office. Downing’s invention would instead allow for drop off near one’s home and easy pick-up by a letter carrier. His idea for the hinged opening prevented rain or snow from entering the box and damaging the mail.More than twenty-five years later, on January 26, 1917, Downing would receive another patent (U.S. Patent number 1243,595), for an envelope moistener, which utilized a roller and a small, attached water tank, to quickly moisten envelopes. The following year saw another successful application (U.S. Patent number 126,9584) for an easily accessible desktop notepad.Philip Downing died in Boston on June 8, 1934. He was 77. Research more about this great American Champion and share it with your babies. Make it a champion day!

GM – FBF – Today’s American Champion event happened On a chilly Louisiana afternoon in October 1868, Louis Wilson left the courthouse, where he’d testified in an ongoing case. Wilson was a freedman living in St. Bernard Parish, a rural community outside the city of New Orleans. The Civil War had been over for three years, and the 14th Amendment, which gave Wilson full citizenship, had passed just three months before. Across the South, tensions were high because of the upcoming presidential election that would decide the fate of Reconstruction.Today in our History – October 26, 1868 – UNRAVELING A FORGOTTEN MASSACRE IN MY LOUISIANA HOMETOWNToday in Our History – October 26, 1868 – White Terrorists Killed Several Blacks in St. Bernard Parish, near New Orleans.Wilson rode home alongside the winding Mississippi River, where he was confronted by a group of armed white men on horseback. He was aware that freed people had been killed the day before, but wrongly assumed that the carnage had ended. The men ordered him to dismount, and one of them struck his jaw with the butt of a shotgun. Wilson was thrown into a wagon with other captive freedmen and transported to a makeshift prison.Later that evening, Wilson and a few others were dragged out of their cells, lined up, and blasted with shotguns. Everyone was killed except Wilson, who somehow crawled into a nearby cane field and waited for three days until he felt safe. Over the next few days, white men tore through the parish, attempting to eliminate any further threats, leaving behind them a trail of black corpses. Estimates of the massacre range from 35 to more than 100 murdered.Historically, this event has usually been labeled “the St. Bernard riots.” It should be termed the 1868 St. Bernard Parish Massacre—one of the most brutal episodes of racist violence in U.S. history, as well as one of the most forgotten. I first came across it while working as a Louisiana history teacher in St. Bernard Parish, looking for events that my students would be able to relate to their own lives.What I discovered was that a murderous rampage had occurred in my hometown, and almost no one knew. The perpetrators never discussed their atrocities. Local records were lost due to numerous floods, including Hurricane Katrina in 2005.I researched these events for years, driving to and from work, down roads and past former cane fields that were once the bloody battleground of Reconstruction.Not only did I live in the very parish where the massacre took place, but the surnames of the assailants and the victims matched those of some of my students, both black and white, who worked together, played sports together, and shared lunches. As I delved deeper into U.S. Congressional archives, I uncovered investigations commissioned by the Freedmen’s Bureau and the Louisiana State Legislature, and correspondence with then-President Andrew Johnson.But my most startling discovery was that several of my students were the descendants of those involved, victims and perpetrators alike.The racial tension that sparked the massacre was not unique to St. Bernard Parish. By 1868, the South had lost the Civil War and was struggling to rebuild its battered economy, which had depended heavily on an enslaved population. Louisiana was under federal military occupation during Reconstruction, and black males had obtained the right to vote.The stakes were high for Southern elites in the presidential election, the first since the end of the war. If they could solidify a win for Horatio Seymour, a “Copperhead” Democrat who had promised to roll back Reconstruction policies, they might regain some of the power they had lost. Seymour railed against “Negro supremacy” and proudly painted himself as the “White Man’s” candidate. Whites believed that a victory by Seymour’s Republican opponent, Ulysses S. Grant, former commander of the Union Army, would pave the way for racial equality, leading to the collapse of economic and political systems that favored whites in the South.After the Civil War ended, many impoverished whites faced increased economic hardship. Wealthier whites exploited their fears and blamed freed blacks as the cause of their ills. Newspapers owned by these elites were full of anti-Republican and racialized propaganda. Many poor whites perceived Reconstruction as a form of government occupation that disadvantaged them while favoring freed people. Conditions were ripe for dangerous rhetoric to turn lethal.Violence in St. Bernard Parish started a pre-election pro-Seymour rally on Sunday, October 25, 1868. As white marchers passed by Eugene Lock, a freedman, they yelled for him to “hurrah” for Seymour. Lock refused. Someone grabbed Lock to intimidate him into submission, but as Lock remained steadfast, the crowd grew increasingly agitated. One white man tried to stab Lock with a knife, while another shot at him, narrowly missing his target. Lock drew his own pistol and fired back, hitting the shoulder of the man who had fired at him. Outnumbered, Lock tried to escape, but was shot in the head and mortally wounded before finally being stabbed. As news of the altercation sped through the small community, men grabbed their arms and prepared for battle.Yet there was no battle, only a one-sided rampage by marauding whites. Throughout the week, armed white militias hunted freed people like Louis Wilson, as if for sport. In his testimony to an agent of the Freedmen’s Bureau shortly after the tragedy, Wilson said of the parish that he once called home: “This is such a cold place, I am afraid I will die here.”According to an 1868 report by the Freedmen’s Bureau and an 1869 report by the Louisiana General Assembly, white mobs broke into homes and shot residents at close range, conducted executions in the streets, and killed those who tried to intervene. They plundered former slave quarters and stole items they found useful, most notably registration papers. A black pregnant woman was hacked to death by men with bowie-knives next to the courthouse. A white police officer was murdered by mobs for trying to keep the peace. It was 19th-century terrorism.And it succeeded. While countless numbers of freed people fell victim to the violence, one white man, Pablo San Feliu, was killed by freed blacks in retaliation. Any legitimate supervisor of the presidential election was jailed, executed, or fled. Grant received only one vote in St. Bernard Parish as Seymour swept the state. According to historian John C. Rodrigue, “Republicans captured the presidency in 1868, but white terror carried the day in Louisiana.”Despite the federal investigation, no one was arrested for the killing of the freed people. Black survivors identified white neighbors as their assailants, but no justice was sought. Instead, more than 100 freed people were arrested by local authorities and vigilantes for the killing of Pablo San Feliu. Over time, the massacre faded into obscurity. To this day, its only physical reminder is the tombstone of Pablo San Feliu, located in St. Bernard Cemetery.The inaccuracies on San Feliu’s tombstone misrepresent the circumstances surrounding his death. The incorrect date suggests that it was erected a significant amount of time after the massacre, perhaps memorializing his death as if he were a martyr. The engraver referred to the freed people as “slaves.” Most importantly, by placing blame on carpetbaggers, the derogatory term applied to Northerners and other outsiders who had migrated to the South during Reconstruction, the inscription implies that San Feliu was an innocent murder victim.Nearly a decade after the massacre, Reconstruction officially ended. By 1877 Louisiana had returned to “home rule,” which meant that the black population was no longer protected by federal occupation. The new state government focused on suppression of black voters. The new state constitution allowed for arbitrary literacy tests and issued poll taxes, while also granting grandfather clauses that allowed white people to circumvent these obstacles to voting. By 1898, the black voting bloc had declined from 164,000 to a mere 1,342. By 1910, that number dropped to 730, less than a half-percent of eligible black men. Their political voice was silenced throughout Louisiana.A massacre of this magnitude deserves a place in history. In researching a book on the incident, I sought the assistance of locals who were aware of the ordeal, some from oral histories. Subsequently, I incorporated the story of the St. Bernard Parish Massacre into my teaching curriculum, so that students could be made aware of their community’s history and its relevance today. Other teachers also have the book in their classroom and discuss it with their students, examining how dangerous rhetoric can lead to deadly actions and the dire consequences of racist scapegoating.My students are often shocked when they learn about this chapter of their community’s history. But it provides opportunities to have open dialogue with one another about their roots, and to bring these conversations into their own homes.I have been criticized by some in the community for unearthing buried history. Some have claimed that the timing was inappropriate, that it would worsen existing racial tensions. However, the overwhelming majority of people in the community have been supportive and eager to know more.The progress that has brought my students closer together in the classroom can only be honored through a deeper understanding of history. These relationships epitomize how far race relations in Louisiana have advanced due to people pushing against barriers, from that lone man who voted for Grant in St. Bernard Parish to those who waged the nation’s first major bus boycott in Baton Rouge nearly a century later.However, the reversal of many gains made by black Louisianans after Reconstruction reminds us that these advances are not inherently linear or permanent. The continuing problems of mass incarceration, police brutality, and educational inequity underscore the effects of the disenfranchisement of huge swaths of the black population.Understanding complex historical events like the St. Bernard Parish Massacre shows how we can continue to bridge racial divides today. Communities should not hide from such history, but embrace it. Research more about this great American Tragedy and share it with your babies. Make it a champion day!

GM – FBF – Today’s American Champion event was The U.S. and a coalition of six Caribbean nations invaded the island nation of Grenada, 100 miles (160 km) north of Venezuela. Codenamed Operation Urgent Fury by the U.S. military, it resulted in military occupation within a few days. It was triggered by the strife within the People’s Revolutionary Government which resulted in the house arrest and execution of the previous leader and second Prime Minister of Grenada Maurice Bishop, and the establishment of the Revolutionary Military Council with Hudson Austin as Chairman. The invasion resulted in the appointment of an interim government, followed by democratic elections in 1984.Today in our History – October 25, 1983, The United States invasion of Grenada began at dawn on 25 October 1983Grenada had gained independence from the United Kingdom in 1974. The communist New Jewel Movement seized power in a coup in 1979 under Maurice Bishop, suspending the constitution and detaining several political prisoners. In September 1983, an internal power struggle began over Bishop’s leadership performance.Bishop was pressured at a party meeting to share power with Deputy Prime Minister Bernard Coard. Bishop initially agreed, but later balked. He was put under house arrest by his own party’s Central Committee until he relented. When his secret detention became widely known, Bishop was freed by an aroused crowd of his supporters. A confrontation then ensued at military headquarters between Grenadian soldiers loyal to Coard and civilians supporting Bishop. Shooting started under still-disputed circumstances. At least 19 soldiers and civilians were killed on 19 October 1983 including Bishop, his partner Jacqueline Creft, two other cabinet ministers and two union leaders.The Reagan administration in the U.S. launched a military intervention following receipt of a formal appeal for help from the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States. In addition, the Governor-General of Grenada Paul Scoon secretly signaled he would also support outside intervention, but he put off signing a letter of invitation until 26 October. Reagan also acted due to “concerns over the 600 U.S. medical students on the island” and fears of a repeat of the Iran hostage crisis.The invasion began on the morning of 25 October 1983, just two days after the bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut. The invading force consisted of the US Army’s 1st and 2nd battalions of the 75th Ranger Regiment, the 82nd Airborne and the Army’s rapid deployment force, Marines, Army Delta Force, Navy SEALs, and ancillary forces totaling 7,600 troops, together with Jamaican forces and troops of the Regional Security System (RSS).The force defeated Grenadian resistance after a low-altitude airborne assault by Rangers and the 82nd Airborne on Point Salines Airport at the south end of the island, and a Marine helicopter and amphibious landing on the north end at Pearls Airport. Austin’s military government was deposed and replaced, with Scoon as Governor-General, by an interim advisory council until the 1984 elections.The invasion was criticized by many countries, including Canada. British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher privately disapproved of the mission and the lack of notice that she received, but she publicly supported it. The United Nations General Assembly condemned it as “a flagrant violation of international law” on 2 November 1983 with a vote of 108 to 9.The date of the invasion is now a national holiday in Grenada called Thanksgiving Day, commemorating the freeing of several political prisoners who were subsequently elected to office. A truth and reconciliation commission was launched in 2000 to re-examine some of the controversies of the era; in particular, the commission made an unsuccessful attempt to find Bishop’s body, which had been disposed of at Austin’s order and never found. The invasion also highlighted issues with communication and coordination between the different branches of the American military when operating together as a joint force, contributing to investigations and sweeping changes in the form of the Goldwater-Nichols Act and other reorganizations. Research more about this great American Champion liberation effort. Share it with your babies and make it a champion day!

GM – FBF – Today’s American Champion was an American pianist and singer-songwriter. One of the pioneers of rock and roll music, Domino sold more than 65 million records. Between 1955 and 1960, he had eleven Top 10 US pop hits. By 1955 five of his records had sold more than a million copies, being certified gold. The Associated Press estimates that during his career, the artist “sold more than 110 million records and the Grammy organization states that Domino landed 37 songs in the Top 40 on the Billboard Hot 100 throughout his career, including 11 that peaked inside the Top 10”.His humility and shyness may be one reason his contribution to the genre has been overlooked. The significance of his work was great however; Elvis Presley declared Domino to be “the real king of rock ‘n’ roll” and once announced that Domino “was a huge influence on me when I started out”.Four of Domino’s records were named to the Grammy Hall of Fame for their significance: “Blueberry Hill”, “Ain’t It A Shame”, “Walking to New Orleans” and “The Fat Man”. “The Fat Man” “is cited by some historians as the first rock and roll single and the first to sell more than 1 million copies” Today in our History – October 24, 2017 – Antoine Dominique Domino Jr. (February 26, 1928 – October 24, 2017), known as Fats Domino died.Antoine Domino Jr. was born and raised in New Orleans, Louisiana, the youngest of eight children born to Antoine Caliste Domino (1879–1964) and Marie-Donatille Gros (1886–1971). The Domino family was of French Creole background, and Louisiana Creole was his first language. Antoine was born at home with the assistance of his grandmother, a midwife. His name was initially misspelled as Anthony on his birth certificate. His family had recently arrived in the Lower Ninth Ward from Vacherie, Louisiana. His father was a part-time violin player who worked at a racetrack. He attended Howard University, leaving to start work as a helper to an ice delivery man. Domino learned to play the piano in about 1938 from his brother-in-law, the jazz guitarist Harrison Verrett. The musician was married to Rosemary Domino (née Hall) from 1947 until her death in 2008; the couple had eight children: Antoine III (1950-2015), Anatole, Andre (1952-1997), Antonio, Antoinette, Andrea, Anola, and Adonica. Even after his success he continued to live in his old neighborhood, the Lower Ninth Ward, until after Hurricane Katrina, when he moved to a suburb of New Orleans. By age 14, Domino was performing in New Orleans bars. In 1947, Billy Diamond, a New Orleans bandleader, accepted an invitation to hear the young pianist perform at a backyard barbecue. Domino played well enough that Diamond asked him to join his band, the Solid Senders, at the Hideaway Club in New Orleans, where he would earn $3 a week playing the piano. Diamond nicknamed him “Fats”, because Domino reminded him of the renowned pianists Fats Waller and Fats Pichon, but also because of his large appetite. Domino was signed to the Imperial Records label in 1949 by owner Lew Chudd, to be paid royalties based on sales instead of a fee for each song. He and producer Dave Bartholomew wrote “The Fat Man”, a toned down version of a song about drug addicts called “Junker Blues”; the record had sold a million copies by 1951. Featuring a rolling piano and Domino vocalizing “wah-wah” over a strong backbeat, “The Fat Man” is widely considered the first rock-and-roll record to achieve this level of sales. In 2015, the song would enter the Grammy Hall of Fame. Domino released a series of hit songs with Bartholomew (also the co-writer of many of the songs), the saxophonists Herbert Hardesty and Alvin “Red” Tyler, the bassist Billy Diamond and later Frank Fields, and the drummers Earl Palmer and Smokey Johnson. Other notable and long-standing musicians in Domino’s band were the saxophonists Reggie Houston, Lee Allen, and Fred Kemp, Domino’s trusted bandleader. While Domino’s own recordings were done for Imperial, he sometimes sat in during that time as a session musician on recordings by other artists for other record labels. Domino’s rolling piano triplets provided the memorable instrumental introduction for Lloyd Price’s first hit, “Lawdy Miss Clawdy”, recorded for Specialty Records on March 13, 1952 at Cosimo Matassa’s J&M Studios in New Orleans (where Domino himself had earlier recorded “The Fat Man” and other songs). Dave Bartholomew was producing Price’s record, which also featured familiar Domino collaborators Hardesty, Fields and Palmer as sidemen, and he asked Domino to play the piano part, replacing the original session pianist. Domino crossed into the pop mainstream with “Ain’t That a Shame” (mislabeled as “Ain’t It a Shame”) which reached the Top Ten. This was the first of his records to appear on the Billboard pop singles chart (on July 16, 1955), with the debut at number 14.A milder cover version by Pat Boone reached number 1, having received wider radio airplay in an era of racial segregation. In 1955, Domino was said to be earning $10,000 a week while touring, according to a report in the memoir of artist Chuck Berry. Domino eventually had 37 Top 40 singles, but none made it to number 1 on the Pop chart. Domino’s debut album contained several of his recent hits and earlier blues tracks that had not been released as singles, and was issued on the Imperial label (catalogue number 9009) in November 1955, and was reissued as Rock and Rollin’ with Fats Domino. The reissue reached number 17 on the Billboard Pop Albums chart. His 1956 recording of “Blueberry Hill”, a 1940 song by Vincent Rose, Al Lewis and Larry Stock (which had previously been recorded by Gene Autry, Louis Armstrong and others), reached number 2 on the Billboard Juke Box chart for two weeks and was number 1 on the R&B chart for 11 weeks. It was his biggest hit, selling more than 5 million copies worldwide in 1956 and 1957. The song was subsequently recorded by Elvis Presley, Little Richard, and Led Zeppelin. Some 32 years later, the song would enter the Grammy Hall of Fame. Domino had further hit singles between 1956 and 1959, including “When My Dreamboat Comes Home” (Pop number 14), “I’m Walkin'” (Pop number 4), “Valley of Tears” (Pop number , “It’s You I Love” (Pop number 6), “Whole Lotta Lovin'” (Pop number 6), “I Want to Walk You Home” (Pop number , and “Be My Guest” (Pop number . In 1957, Domino made an insightful comment: “What they call rock ‘n’ roll now is rhythm and blues. I’ve been playing it for 15 years in New Orleans”.Domino appeared in two films released in 1956: Shake, Rattle & Rock! and The Girl Can’t Help It. On December 18, 1957, his hit recording of “The Big Beat” was featured on Dick Clark’s American Bandstand. He was also featured in a movie of the same name. On November 2, 1956, a riot broke out at a Domino concert in Fayetteville, North Carolina. The police used tear gas to break up the unruly crowd. Domino jumped out a window to avoid the melee; he and two members of his band were slightly injured. During his career, four major riots occurred at his concerts, “partly because of integration”, according to his biographer Rick Coleman.”But also the fact they had alcohol at these shows. So they were mixing alcohol, plus dancing, plus the races together for the first time in a lot of these places.” In November 1957, Domino appeared on the Ed Sullivan TV program; no disturbance accompanied this performance. In the same year, the article “King of Rock ‘n’ Roll” in Ebony magazine featured Domino who said he was on the road 340 days a year, up to $2,500 per evening, and grossing over $500,000; Domino also told readers that he owned 50 suits, 100 pairs of shoes and a $1,500 diamond horseshoe stick pin. Domino had a steady series of hits for Imperial through early 1962, including “Walking’ to New Orleans” (1960, Pop number 6), co-written by Bobby Charles, and “My Girl Josephine” (Pop number 14) in the same year. He toured Europe in 1962 and met the Beatles who would later cite Domino as an inspiration. After returning, he played the first of his many stands in Las Vegas. Imperial Records was sold in early 1963, and Domino left the label. “I stuck with them until they sold out,” he said in 1979. In all, he recorded over 60 singles for Imperial, placing 40 songs in the top 10 on the R&B chart and 11 in the top 10 on the Pop chart, twenty-seven of which were double-sided hits. Research more about this great American Champion and share it with your babies. Make it a champion day!

GM – FBF – Today’s American Champion was an early 20th Century Seattle civil rights activist who was born in 1863 in Illinois to Martha Murphy and George Dennie. Very little is known about Graves’s early life other than the fact that she and her husband, John Henry Graves, a Kansas stonemason, migrated to Seattle, Washington shortly after 1884. She first appears in the Seattle public record in 1906 when along with Susie Revels Cayton, Alice S. Presto, and Hester Ray, she organizes the Dorcus Charity Club, one of the most successful of the black philanthropic organizations established in pre-World War II Seattle.The Club began in response to an urgent request from the Seattle Children’s Home officials for assistance in placing abandoned twin black girls in a private home. Because the girls had rickets, no adoptive parents would care for them. The Club assumed responsibility for the twins and placed them in a foster home. For the next three years Club members supported the children until they were finally adopted.Today in our History – October 23, 1913 – Letitia Ann Dennie Graves founded the Seattle branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).Graves emerges again in 1913 when she became involved in the protest that initiated the founding of the Seattle branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). The Seattle NAACP was established on October 23, 1913 with 22 members. The Seattle branch was created only four years after the NAACP was formed in New York and thus became one of the first branches west of the Mississippi River. Letitia Graves was the first president of the Seattle NAACP branch and the vice president was Horace Cayton. Graves was a beautician who was determined to protest the new policy of segregating black federal employees introduced by President Woodrow Wilson.In 1915 Letitia Graves got involved in the controversy over the showing of the film The Birth of a Nation. Graves led the NAACP campaign to stop the showing of the film. The branch, however, was not successful in its efforts and Graves was forced to write an open letter to black Seattle saying the film would be shown. Six years later, Graves and other NAACP members prevailed in blocking the film when it returned to Seattle. This time she persuaded Robert B. Hesketh, President of the Seattle City Council, to stop the film. Hesketh ordered the Seattle chief of police to block its showing. Letitia Graves died on September 16, 1952 in Seattle. She was 89. Research more about this great American Champion and share it with your babies. Make it a champion day!

GM – FBF – Today’s American Champion is an American film director, writer and producer. Dash received her MFA in 1985 at the UCLA Film School and is one of the graduates and filmmakers known as the L.A. Rebellion. After she had written and directed several shorts, her 1991 feature Daughters of the Dust became the first full-length film directed by an African-American woman to obtain general theatrical release in the United States.Daughters of the Dust is a fictionalized telling of her father’s Gullah family who lived off the coast of the Southeastern United States. The film features black women’s stories, striking visuals shot on location and a non-linear narrative. It’s included in the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress for its cultural, historical and aesthetic significance.” Dash has written two books on Daughters of the Dust—a “making of” history co-written with Toni Cade Bambara and bell hooks, and a sequel, set 20 years after the film’s story.Daughters of the Dust was named one of the most significant films of the last 30 years, by IndieWire.Dash has worked in television since the late 1990s. Her television movies include Funny Valentines (1999), Incognito (1999), Love Song (2000), and The Rosa Parks Story (2002), starring Angela Bassett. The National Underground Railroad Freedom Center commissioned Dash to direct Brothers of the Borderland in 2004, as an immersive film exhibit narrated by Oprah Winfrey following the path of women gaining freedom on the Underground Railroad. In 2017, Dash directed episodes of Queen Sugar on the Oprah Winfrey Network.At the 2019 Sundance Film Festival, it was announced Dash’s next project will be a biopic of civil rights icon Angela Davis, to be produced by Lionsgate. Today in our History – October 22, 1952 – Julie Ethel Dash (born October 22, 1952) was born.Dash was born on October 22, 1952 in Queens, New York, to Rhudine Henderson and Charles Edward Dash. She was raised in the Queensbridge Housing Project in Long Island City, Queens. She studied in 1969 at the Studio Museum of Harlem. As an undergraduate, she studied psychology until she was accepted into the film school at the Leonard Davis Center for the Performing Arts at City Colleges of New York, CCNY. In 1974, she earned her Bachelor of Arts degree in Film Production. As a student, Dash wrote the script for a documentary for the New York Urban Coalition, entitled Working Models of Success.After graduating from CCNY, she moved to Los Angeles for graduate studies. She completed a 2-year Conservatory Fellowship in Producing/Writing at AFI Conservatory. There she studied under filmmakers including Jan Kadar, William Friedkin, and Slavko Vorkapich. She attended graduate school at the UCLA Film School and became one of a new generation of African and African-American filmmakers known as the “Black insurgents” or L.A. Rebellion.She directed Working Models of Success (1976), and the next year, produced Four Women (1975), a short dance film based on a song by Nina Simone. It won a Gold Medal for Women in Film in the 1978 Miami International Film Festival. As a graduate student at UCLA, she received an MFA in Film and Television Production. She directed the film Diary of an African Nun (1977). Screened at the Los Angeles Film Exposition, it earned a Director’s Guild Award for a Student Film.During film school, Dash was influenced by avant-garde, Latin American, African, and Russian cinema. Dash’s film work began to take on a new direction after film school. Dash said in a 1991 interview with the Village Voice, “I stopped making documentaries after discovering Toni Morrison, Toni Cade Bambara, and Alice Walker. I wondered, why can’t we see movies like this? I realized I needed to learn how to make narrative movies.” Being inspired by the novels of these black women authors led to her decision to direct dramatic films.Her 1975 short film Four Women is based on the ballad “Four Women” by Nina Simone. In the song, four women are portrayed (all by the dancer Linda Martina Young): Aunt Sarah, a slave, Saffronia, a mixed race woman, Sweet Thing, a prostitute, and Peaches, as a representation of black women overcoming racial and gender-specific forms of oppression. Stereotypes of black women are directly addressed, asking the audience to address their own biases and stereotypes.From 1978 to 1980, Dash worked as member of the Classifications and Ratings Administrations for the Motion Picture Association of America. She had a special assignment screening at the Cannes International Film Festival to review a screening of short films in the Marché du Cinema.[citation needed] She wrote and directed the short film Illusions (34 minutes), which explores racial and sexual discrimination in Hollywood and American society. Released in 1982, it was her first to earn more widespread success and attention. Set in 1942 in the fictional National Studios, it follows a black woman executive, Mignon Duprée, who has “passed” for white to achieve her position. Also featured is Ester Jeeter, a black woman who dubs the singing voice in musicals for a white Hollywood star. They work in an industry based on creating images and alternative realities. The film explores Mignon’s dilemma, Ester’s struggle to get roles as an actress and singer rather than dub for others, and the uses of cinema in wartime: three illusions in conflict with reality.Illusions received the 1985 Black American Cinema Society Award and the Black Filmmaker Foundation’s Jury Prize in 1989 as best film of the decade. Kevin Thomas of the LA Times described it as “a gripping critique of the power of the movies to shape perception,” while exploring the illusions created by Hollywood, as well as the illusion of racial identity. The success of this film and other shorts enabled Dash to move to feature films. In 2020, the film was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.”Dash began work on a story in 1975 that was inspired by her father’s Gullah family background and immigration from the Sea Islands of Georgia. This would become the screenplay Daughters of the Dust, which went into production after she received $800,000 in financing from PBS in 1988. The film, set in 1902, revolves around three generations of Gullah women in the Peazant family on St. Helena Island off the coasts of Georgia and South Carolina. Innovative with its use of Gullah dialogue and interwoven story-lines among the predominately female cast, the film focuses on ancestral and matriarchal story lines as well as the history of former slaves who settled on the island and formed an independent community there. The screenplay was written in the dialect of the island settlers with no subtitles, resulting in an immersive language experience.Dash’s experimental approach to narrative structure was something rarely seen in U.S. feature-filmmaking. Upon the film’s re-release, she explained, “I…wanted to do a film that was so deeply embedded in the culture, was so authentic to the culture that it felt like a foreign film.”Daughters of the Dust premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 1991, where it was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize and won a cinematography award. It became the first feature film by an African-American woman to be distributed in the United States in theatrical release and gained critical praise for its use of dialect and music composed by John Barnes, as well for its cinematography and visual imagery.The New York Times called Dash a “strikingly original film maker,” noting that “for all its harsh allusions to slavery and hardship, the film is an extended, wildly lyrical meditation on the power of African cultural iconography and the spiritual resilience of the generations of women who have been its custodians.”Despite the critical acclaim, Dash wasn’t able to get the financing to release another feature film, going on to work in television. Daughters of the Dust would continue to gain accolades for more than two decades. It was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress in 2004 as being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.” Its visuals would influence Beyoncé’s acclaimed 2016 video album Lemonade, featuring young women on the beach, dressed in white gowns as in the movie, and gathering in front of an island cabin.On its 25th anniversary, the Cohen Media Group restored and distributed Daughters of the Dust for theatrical release, beginning at the 2016 Toronto Film Festival. Other screenings in celebration of the Daughters of the Dust 25th anniversary included Honolulu Museum of Art, AFI Silver Theater, and ARRAY @ The Broad held in Los Angeles at Theater at Ace Hotel.Dash directed videos for musicians including Raphael Saadiq with Tony, Toni, Tone, Keb ‘Mo, Peabo Bryson, Adriana Evans, and Sweet Honey in the Rock. Her video for Tracy Chapman’s “Give Me One Reason” was nominated for MTV’s Best Female Vocalist in 1996.In 1997, Dash wrote and directed an episode of Women: Stories of Passion for the Showtime Cable Network, as well as Sax Cantor Riff, one of HBO’s Subway Stories: Tales from the Underground for producers Jonathan Demme and Rosie Perez.Dash directed the television film Funny Valentines in 1999, an account of a well-to-do black woman’s retreat from a troubled New York marriage to the Deep South and her childhood past. Alfre Woodard, and executive producer on the film, asked Dash to get involved. Dash wrote the screenplays and directed the television movies Incognito (1999), a romantic thriller made by BET Arabesque Films; and Love Song (2000), an MTV movie starring the Grammy award-winning singer Monica.Actress and executive producer Angela Bassett asked Dash to direct the CBS biopic The Rosa Parks Story in 2002. The film follows Parks and her husband Raymond (Peter Francis James) as they deal with the issues of segregation, Jim Crow laws and second-class status in 1950s Alabama, leading up to Parks’ refusing to relinquish her seat on a city bus, leading to the Montgomery bus boycott. The Rosa Parks Story won several awards, including the NAACP Image Award for Best Television Movie. Dash was nominated for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in the 55th Annual Directors Guild Awards—the first African-American woman nominated in the category of “Primetime Movies Made for Television”.In 2004 Dash made Brothers of the Borderland, a work commissioned by the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center. Narrated by Oprah Winfrey, the film features the character of Alice, an escaped slave whose story represents an amalgamation of historic figures. The film is shown in the Harriet Tubman theater, named for the fugitive slave woman who helped many others escape to freedom.In December 2016, Dash guest hosted on Turner Classic Movies, appearing in wraparounds to discuss dozens of films on the channel.Dash joined the roster of female directors working on the second season of Ava DuVernay’s Queen Sugar on the OWN Network in 2017. Research more about this great American Champion and share it with your babies. Make it a champion day!

GM – FBF – Today’s American Champion is an American scientist and inventor. She invented the illusion transmitter, for which she received a patent in 1980. She was responsible for developing the digital media formats image processing systems used in the early years of the Landsat program.Today in our History – October 21, 1980 – Valerie Thomas invented the Illusion Transmitter.Thomas was interested in science as a child, after observing her father tinkering with the television and seeing the mechanical parts inside the TV. At the age of eight, she read The Boys First Book on Electronics, which sparked her interest in a career in science. Her father would not help her with the projects in the book, despite his own interest in electronics. At the all-girls school she attended, she was not encouraged to pursue science and mathematics courses, though she did manage to take a physics course.Thomas did not have a lot of support as a young child; her parents did not fight for her right to study a STEM curriculum, but she did have a few teachers who fought for her at a young age. She attended Morgan State University, where she was one of two women majoring in physics. Thomas excelled in her mathematics and science courses at Morgan State University. She graduated with highest honors in 1964 with a degree in physics went on to work for NASA.In 1976, she attended a scientific seminar where she viewed an exhibit that demonstrated an illusion. The exhibit used concave mirrors to fool the viewer into believing that a light bulb was glowing even after it had been unscrewed from its socket. She was so amazed by what she saw at this seminar that she wanted to start creating this on her own. Later that year she started to experiment with flat and concave mirrors. The flat mirrors produce a reflection of an object that seems to be behind the glass. The concave mirrors reflect objects so they appear in front of the glass, producing a three-dimensional illusion.In 1964, Thomas began working for NASA as a data analyst. She developed real-time computer data systems to support satellite operations control centers (1964–1970) and oversaw the creation of the Landsat program (1970–1981), becoming an international expert in Landsat data products.Her participation in this program expanded upon the works of other NASA scientists in the pursuit of being able to visualize Earth from space. In 1974, Thomas headed a team of approximately 50 people for the Large Area Crop Inventory Experiment (LACIE), a joint effort with NASA’s Johnson Space Center, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and the U.S. Department of Agriculture. An unprecedented scientific project, LACIE demonstrated the feasibility of using space technology to automate the process of predicting wheat yield on a worldwide basis. In 1976, she attended an exhibition that included an illusion of a light bulb that was lit, even though it had been removed from its socket. The illusion, which involved another light bulb and concave mirrors, inspired Thomas. Curious about how light and concave mirrors could be used in her work at NASA, she began her research in 1977. This involved creating an experiment in which she observed how the position of a concave mirror would affect the real object that is reflected. Using this technology, she would invent the illusion transmitter. On October 21, 1980, she obtained the patent for the illusion transmitter, a device that NASA continues to use today. As a woman and an African American, Thomas worked her way up to associate chief of the Space Science Data Operations Office at NASA.In 1985, she was the NSSDC Computer Facility manager responsible for a major consolidation and reconfiguration of two previously independent computer facilities and infused them with new technology. She then served as the Space Physics Analysis Network (SPAN) project manager from 1986 to 1990 during a period when SPAN underwent a major reconfiguration and grew from a scientific network with about 100 computer nodes to one directly connecting about 2,700 computer nodes worldwide.In 1990, SPAN became a major part of NASA’s science networking and today’s Internet. She also participated in projects related to Halley’s Comet, ozone research, satellite technology and the Voyager spacecraft.At the end of August 1995, she retired from NASA and her positions of associate chief of NASA’s Space Science Data Operations Office, manager of the NASA Automated Systems Incident Response Capability, and as chair of the Space Science Data Operations Office Education Committee.After retiring, Thomas served as an associate at the UMBC Center for Multicore Hybrid Productivity Research. She continued to mentor youth through the Science Mathematics Aerospace Research and Technology, Inc. and the National Technical Association. Thomas’s invention was depicted in a children’s fictional book, television, and video games.Because of her unique career and commitment to giving something back to the community, Thomas had often spoken to groups of students from elementary school through college-/university-age and adult groups. As an role model for potential young black engineers and scientists, she made hundreds of visits to schools and national meetings over the years.She has mentored many students working in the summers at Goddard Space Flight Center and judged at science fairs, working with organizations such as the National Technical Association (NTA) and Women in Science and Engineering (WISE). These latter programs encourage minority and female students to pursue science and technology careers.Throughout her career, Thomas held high-level positions at NASA including heading the Large Area Crop Inventory Experiment (LACIE) collaboration between NASA, NOAA, and USDA in 1974, serving as assistant program manager for Landsat/Nimbus (1975–1976), managing the NSSDC Computer Facility (1985), managing the Space Physics Analysis Network project (1986–1990), and serving as associate chief of the Space Science Data Operations Office. She authored many scientific papers and holds a patent for the illusion transmitter. For her achievements, Thomas has received numerous awards including the Goddard Space Flight Center Award of Merit and NASA’s Equal Opportunity Medal. She mentored countless students Mathematics Aerospace Research and Technology Inc program.In February of 2020, American musician Chance the Rapper posted about Valerie Thomas on his Twitter account, referencing her development of the illusion transmitter and attaching a photograph of Thomas, stating: “This is the NASA physicist who invented 3D Movies and Television. Her name is Valerie Thomas” Research more about this great American Champion and share it with your babies. Make it a champion day!

GM – FBF – Today’s American Champion event was a violent on-field assault against African-American player Johnny Bright by a white opposing player during an American college football game held on October 20, 1951, in Stillwater, Oklahoma. The game was significant in itself as it marked the first time that an African-American athlete with a national profile and of critical importance to the success of his team, the Drake Bulldogs, had played against Oklahoma A&M College (now Oklahoma State University) at Oklahoma A&M’s Lewis Field. Bright’s injury also highlighted the racial tensions of the times and assumed notoriety when it was captured in what was later to become both a widely disseminated and eventually Pulitzer Prize-winning photo sequence.Today in our History – October 20, 1951 – The Johnny Bright incident Johnny Bright’s participation as a halfback/quarterback in the collegiate football game between the Drake Bulldogs and Oklahoma A&M Aggies on October 20, 1951, at Lewis Field was controversial even before it began. Bright had been the first African-American football player to play at Lewis Field two years prior (without incident). In 1951, Bright was a pre-season Heisman Trophy candidate and led the nation in total offense. Bright had never played for a losing team in his college career. Coming into the contest, Drake carried a five-game winning streak, owing much to Bright’s rushing and passing abilities.It was an open secret that Oklahoma A&M players were targeting Bright. Both Oklahoma A&M’s student newspaper, The Daily O’Collegian, and the local newspaper, The News Press, reported that Bright was a marked man, and several A&M students were openly claiming that Bright “would not be around at the end of the game”. Although Oklahoma A&M had integrated in 1949, the Jim Crow spirit was still very much alive on campus.During the first seven minutes of the game, Bright was knocked unconscious three times by blows from Oklahoma A&M defensive tackle Wilbanks Smith. While Smith’s final elbow blow broke Bright’s jaw, he was still able to complete a 61-yard touchdown pass to Drake halfback Jim Pilkington a few plays later. Soon afterward, the injury forced him to leave the game. Bright finished the game with less than 100 yards, the first time in his three-year collegiate career. Oklahoma A&M eventually won 27–14.Bob Spiegel, a reporter with the Des Moines Register, interviewed several spectators after the game, eventually publishing a report on the incident in the October 30, 1951, issue of the newspaper. According to Spiegel’s report, several of the Oklahoma A&M students he interviewed overheard an Oklahoma A&M coach repeatedly say “Get that nigger” whenever the A&M practice squad ran Drake plays against the Oklahoma A&M starting defense prior to the October 20 game. Spiegel also recounted the experiences of a businessman and his wife, who were seated behind a group of Oklahoma A&M practice squad players.At the beginning of the game, one of the players turned around said, “We’re gonna get that nigger.” After the first blow to Bright was delivered by Smith, the same player again turned around and told the businessman, “See that knot on my jaw? That same guy [Smith] gave me that the very same way in practice.”A six photograph sequence of the incident captured by Des Moines Register cameramen John Robinson and Don Ultang clearly showed Smith’s jaw-breaking blow was thrown well after Bright had handed the ball off to Drake fullback Gene Macomber, and was well behind the play. Robinson and Ultang had set up a camera focusing on Bright before the game after the rumors of him being targeted became too loud to ignore. They rushed the film to Des Moines as soon as Bright was knocked out of the game. Ultang said years later that they were very lucky that the incident took place when it did; they had only planned to stay through the first quarter so they could have enough time to develop the pictures before the deadline. The sequence won Robinson and Ultang the 1952 Pulitzer Prize for Photography, and eventually made it into the November 5, 1951, issue of Life.Oklahoma A&M’s president, Oliver Willham, denied anything happened even after evidence of the incident was published nationwide. This began a cover-up that would last over half a century; during that time, whenever the story was discussed, the standard response from A&M/OSU was “no comment”. The determination to gloss over the affair was so strong that when Robert B. Kamm succeeded Willham in 1966, he knew that he could not even discuss the matter even though he had been Drake’s dean of men at the time of the incident.When it became apparent that neither Oklahoma A&M nor the Missouri Valley Conference, to which both Drake and Oklahoma A&M belonged, would take any disciplinary action against Smith, Drake withdrew from the MVC in protest. The Bulldogs would not return to the MVC until 1956 for non-football sports, and would not return for football until 1971. Fellow member Bradley University pulled out of the league in solidarity with Drake and did not return for non-football sports until 1955; its football team never played another down in the MVC (Bradley dropped football in 1970). The incident eventually provoked changes in NCAA football rules regarding illegal blocking, and mandated the use of more protective helmets with face guards.Bright’s broken jaw limited his effectiveness for the remainder of his senior season at Drake, but he earned 70 percent of the yards Drake gained and scored 70 percent of the Bulldogs’ points, despite missing the better part of the final three games of the season. Bright finished fifth in the balloting for the 1951 Heisman Trophy, and played in the post-season East–West Shrine Game and the Hula Bowl.Following his 1952 graduation from Drake, Bright went on to enjoy a 12-year professional football career in the Canadian Football League, retiring in 1964 as the CFL’s all-time leading rusher, and was inducted into the Canadian Football Hall of Fame in 1970.Recalling the incident without apparent bitterness in a 1980 Des Moines Register interview three years before his death, Bright commented: “There’s no way it couldn’t have been racially motivated.” Bright went on to add: “What I like about the whole deal now, and what I’m smug enough to say, is that getting a broken jaw has somehow made college athletics better. It made the NCAA take a hard look and clean up some things that were bad.”When asked about Smith, whom he had not seen since the incident, Bright said he felt “null and void” about Smith, but added: “The thing has been a great influence on my life. My total philosophy of life now is that, whatever a person’s bias and limitation, they deserve respect. Everyone’s entitled to their own beliefs.”Wilbanks Smith received over 1,000 letters regarding the incident. Most of the mail was hate mail or death threats, but some was congratulatory and thankful. Smith maintained that he was not racist, the hit was “not a racial incident,” and that he had landed “the same hit” on a white player earlier in the game. He never apologized for the incident, but said in 2012 that he was glad the incident had helped to integrate college football, saying “It took me a long time before I could smile about it. But now I can. I think it was a tool [Civil Rights’] organizations used, and it was very effective.” Smith died on January 14, 2020 at the age of 89.On September 28, 2005, Oklahoma State University President David J. Schmidly wrote a letter to Drake President David Maxwell formally apologizing for the incident. The apology came 22 years after Bright’s death. Schmidly, reiterating a conversation earlier in the month over the phone, called the team’s behavior that day “an ugly mark on Oklahoma State University and college football”. Research more about this great American tragedy and share it with your babies. Make it a champion day!

GM – LIF – Today’s American Champion is an American anthropologist, educator, museum director, and college president. Cole was the first female African-American president of Spelman College, a historically black college, serving from 1987 to 1997. She was president of Bennett College from 2002 to 2007. During 2009–2017 she was Director of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African Art.Today in our History – October 19, 1936 – Johnnetta Betsch Cole was born 1936.Johnnetta Betsch was born in Jacksonville, Florida, on October 19, 1936. Her family belonged to the African-American upper class; She was a granddaughter of Abraham Lincoln Lewis, Florida’s first black millionaire, entrepreneur and cofounder of the Afro-American Industrial and Benefit Association, and Mary Kingsley Sammis.Sammis’ great-grandparents were Zephaniah Kingsley, a slave trader and slave owner, and his wife and former slave Anna Madgigine Jai, a Wolof princess who was originally from present-day Senegal. Her Fort George Island home is protected as Kingsley Plantation, a National Historic Landmark.Cole enrolled at the age of 15 in Fisk University, a historically black college. She transferred to Oberlin College in Ohio, where she completed a Bachelor of Arts degree in sociology in 1957. She attended graduate school at Northwestern University, earning her Master of Arts (1959) and Doctor of Philosophy (1967) degrees in anthropology.She did her dissertation field research in Liberia, West Africa, in 1960–1961 through Northwestern University as part of their economic survey of the country.Cole served as a professor at Washington State University from 1962 to 1970, where she cofounded one of the US’s first black studies programs. In 1970 Cole began working in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where she served until 1982.While at the University of Massachusetts, she played a pivotal role in the development of the university’s W.E.B. Du Bois Department of African-American Studies. Cole then moved to Hunter College in 1982, and became director of the Latin American and Caribbean Studies program. From 1998 to 2001 Cole was a professor of Anthropology, Women’s Studies, and African American Studies at Emory University in Atlanta.In 1987, Cole was selected as the first black female president of Spelman College, a prestigious historically black college for women. She served until 1997, building up their endowment through a $113 million capital campaign, attracting significantly higher enrollment as students increased, and, overall, the ranking of the school among the best liberal arts schools went up. Bill and Camille Cosby contributed $20 million to the capital campaign.After teaching at Emory University, she was recruited as president of Bennett College for Women, also a historically black college for women. There she led another successful capital campaign. In addition, she founded an art gallery to contribute to the college’s culture. Cole is currently the Chair of the Johnnetta B. Cole Global Diversity & Inclusion Institute founded at Bennett College for Women. She is a member of Delta Sigma Theta sorority.She was Director of the National Museum of African Art, part of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC, during 2009–2017. During her directorship the controversial exhibit, “Conversations: African and African-American Artworks in Dialogue,” featuring dozens of pieces from Bill and Camille Cosby’s private art collection was held in 2015, coinciding with accusations of sexual assault against the comedian.Cole has also served in major corporations and foundations. Cole served for many years as board member at the prestigious Rockefeller Foundation. She has been a director of Merck & Co. since 1994. From 2004 to2006, Cole was the Chair of the Board of Trustees of United Way of America and is on the Board of Directors of the United Way of Greater Greensboro.Since 2013, Cole has been listed on the Advisory Council of the National Center for Science Education.President-elect Bill Clinton appointed Cole to his transition team for education, labor, the arts, and humanities in 1992. He also considered her for the cabinet post of Secretary of Education. However, when The Jewish Daily Forward reported that she had been a member of the national committee of the Venceremos Brigades, which the Federal Bureau of Investigation had tied to Cuban intelligence forces, Clinton did not advance her nomination.· In 2018 she was awarded the Legend in Leadership Award for Higher Education from the Yale Chief Executive Leadership Institute· American Alliance of Museums Honors Dr. Johnnetta Cole with 2017 Award for Distinguished Service to Museums· In 2013, Cole received the highest citation of the International Civil Rights Center & Museum, the Alston-Jones International Civil and Human Rights Award.· Cole has received more than 40 honorary degrees, including those from Williams College and Bates College in 1989, Oberlin College in 1995, Mount Holyoke College in 1998, Mills College in 1999, Howard University and North Carolina A&T State University in 2009, and Gettysburg College in 2017.·She received honorary membership in Phi Beta Kappa from Yale in 1996, and has served as a Phi Beta Kappa Senator.· In 1995, Cole received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement presented by Awards Council member and Morehouse College President Walter E. Massey.· She received a Candace Award from the National Coalition of 100 Black Women in 1988. Research more about this great American Champion and share it with your babies. Make it a champion day!

GM – FBF – Today’s American Champion was an American musician, composer, and Christian evangelist influential in the development of early blues and 20th-century gospel music.He penned 3,000 songs, a third of them gospel, including “Take My Hand, Precious Lord” and “Peace in the Valley”. Recordings of these sold millions of copies in both gospel and secular markets in the 20th century. Born in rural Georgia, Dorsey grew up in a religious family but gained most of his musical experience playing blues at barrelhouses and parties in Atlanta. He moved to Chicago and became a proficient composer and arranger of jazz and vaudeville just as blues was becoming popular. He gained fame accompanying blues belter Ma Rainey on tour and, billed as “Georgia Tom”, joined with guitarist Tampa Red in a successful recording career.After a spiritual awakening, Dorsey began concentrating on writing and arranging religious music. Aside from the lyrics, he saw no real distinction between blues and church music, and viewed songs as a supplement to spoken word preaching. Dorsey served as the music director at Chicago’s Pilgrim Baptist Church for 50 years, introducing musical improvisation and encouraging personal elements of participation such as clapping, stomping, and shouting in churches when these were widely condemned as unrefined and common. In 1932, he co-founded the National Convention of Gospel Choirs and Choruses, an organization dedicated to training musicians and singers from all over the U.S. that remains active.The first generation of gospel singers in the 20th century worked or trained with Dorsey: Sallie Martin, Mahalia Jackson, Roberta Martin, and James Cleveland, among others.Author Anthony Heilbut summarized Dorsey’s influence by saying he “combined the good news of gospel with the bad news of blues”. Called the “Father of Gospel Music” and often credited with creating it, Dorsey more accurately spawned a movement that popularized gospel blues throughout African American churches in the United States, which in turn influenced American music and helped spawned the creation of all major American music forms in the 1900s and 2000s. Today in our History – October 17, 1933 – Thomas Andrew Dorsey (July 1, 1899 – January 23, 1993) directed the Pilgrim Baptist Church choir performance at the 1933 World’s Fair.Gospel historian Horace Boyer writes that gospel music “has no more imposing figure” than Dorsey, and the Cambridge Companion to Blues and Gospel Music states that he “defined” the genre. Folklorist Alan Lomax claims that Dorsey “literally invented gospel”. In Living Blues, Jim O’Neal compares Dorsey in gospel to W. C. Handy, who was the first and most influential blues composer, “with the notable difference that Dorsey developed his tradition from within, rather than ‘discovering’ it from an outsider’s vantage point”. Although he was not the first to join elements of the blues to religious music, he earned the honorific “Father of Gospel Music”, according to gospel singer and historian Bernice Johnson Reagon, for his “aggressive campaign for its use as worship songs in black Protestant churches”.Throughout his career, Dorsey composed more than 1,000 gospel and 2,000 blues songs, an achievement Mahalia Jackson considered equal to Irving Berlin’s body of work. The manager of a gospel quartet active in the 1930s stated that songs written by Dorsey and other songwriters copying him spread so far in such a short time that they were called “dorseys”. Horace Boyer attributes this popularity to “simple but beautiful melodies”, unimposing harmonies, and room for improvisation within the music. Lyrically, according to Boyer, Dorsey was “skilled at writing songs that not only captured the hopes, fears, and aspirations of the poor and disenfranchised African Americans but also spoke to all people”. Anthony Heilbut further explains that “the gospel of [Charles] Tindley and Dorsey talks directly to the poor. In so many words, it’s about rising above poverty while still living humble deserting the ways of the world while retaining its best tunes.” Aside from his prodigious songwriting, Dorsey’s influence in the gospel blues movement brought about change both for individuals in the black community and communities as a whole. He introduced rituals and standards among gospel choirs that are still in use. At the beginning of worship services, Dorsey instructed choruses to march from the rear of the sanctuary to the choir-loft in a specific way, singing all the while. Choir members were encouraged to be physically active while singing, rocking and swaying with the music.He insisted that songs be memorized rather than chorus members reading music or lyrics while performing. This freed the choir members’ hands to clap, and he knew anyway that most of the chorus singers in the early 1930s were unable to read music. Moreover, Dorsey refused to provide musical notation, or use it while directing, because he felt the music was only to be used as a guide, not strictly followed. Including all the embellishments in gospel blues would make the notation prohibitively complicated. Dorsey instead asked his singers to rely on feeling. I think about all these blue-collar people who had to deal with Jim Crow, meager salaries, and yet the maid who cleaned up somebody else’s house all week long, the porter, the chauffeur, the gardener, the cook, were nobody. They had to sit in the back of the bus, they were denied their rights, but when they walked into their church on Sunday morning and put on a robe and went down that aisle and stood on that choir stand, the maid became a coloratura, and when she stood before her church of five hundred to a thousand, two thousand people, she knew she was somebody. And I think the choir meant so much to those people because for a few hours on Sunday, they were royalty.– Gospel singer Donald VailsWhile presiding over rehearsals, Dorsey was strict and businesslike. He demanded that members attend practice regularly and that they should live their lives by the same standards promoted in their songs. For women, that included not wearing make-up.Choruses were stocked primarily with women, often untrained singers with whom Dorsey worked personally, encouraging many women who had little to no participation in church before to become active. Similarly, the NCGCC in 1933 is described by Dorsey biographer Michael W. Harris as “a women’s movement” as nine of the thirteen presiding officer positions were held by women. Due to Dorsey’s influence, the definition of gospel music shifted away from sacred song compositions to religious music that causes a physical release of pain and suffering, particularly in black churches. He infused joy and optimism in his written music as he directed his choirs to do perform with uplifting fervor as they sang.The cathartic nature of gospel music became integral to the black experience in the Great Migration, when hundreds of thousands of black Southerners moved to Northern cities like Detroit, Washington, D.C., and especially Chicago between 1919 and 1970. These migrants were refugees from poverty and the systemic racism endemic throughout the Jim Crow South. They created enclaves within neighborhoods through church choirs, which doubled as social clubs, offering a sense of purpose and belonging. Encountering a “golden age” between 1940 and 1960, gospel music introduced recordings and radio broadcasts featuring singers who had all been trained by Dorsey or one of his protégées. As Dorsey is remembered as the father of gospel music, other honorifics came from his choirs: Sallie Martin, considered the mother of gospel (although Willie Mae Ford Smith, also a Dorsey associate, has also been called this), Mahalia Jackson, the queen of gospel, and James Cleveland, often named the king of gospel.In 1936, members of Dorsey’s junior choir became the Roberta Martin Singers, a successful recording group which set the standard for gospel ensembles, both for groups and individual voice roles within vocal groups. In Dorsey’s wake, R&B artists Dinah Washington, who was a member of the Sallie Martin Singers, Sam Cooke, originally in the gospel band the Soul Stirrers, Ray Charles, Little Richard, James Brown, and the Coasters recorded both R&B and gospel songs, moving effortlessly between the two, as Dorsey did, and bringing elements of gospel to mainstream audiences. Despite racial segregation in churches and the music industry, Dorsey’s music had widespread crossover appeal. Prominent hymnal publishers began including his compositions in the late 1930s, ensuring his music would be sung in white churches. His song “Peace in the Valley”, written in 1937 originally for Mahalia Jackson, was recorded by, among others, Red Foley in 1951, and Elvis Presley in 1957, selling more than a million copies each. Foley’s version has been entered into the National Recording Registry as a culturally significant recording worthy of preservation.Notably, “Take My Hand, Precious Lord” was the favorite song of Martin Luther King Jr., who asked Dorsey to play it for him on the eve of his assassination. Mahalia Jackson sang at his funeral when King did not get to hear it. Anthony Heilbut writes that “the few days following his death, ‘Precious Lord’ seemed the truest song in America, the last poignant cry of nonviolence before a night of storm that shows no sign of ending”. Four years later, Aretha Franklin sang it at Jackson’s funeral. Since its debut it has been translated into 50 languages. Chicago held its first gospel music festival as a tribute to Dorsey in 1985; it has taken place each year since then. Though he never returned to his hometown, efforts to honor Dorsey in Villa Rica, Georgia, began a week after his death. Mount Prospect Baptist Church, where his father preached and Dorsey learned music at his mother’s organ, was declared a historic site by the city, and a historical marker was placed at the location where his family’s house once stood. The Thomas A. Dorsey Birthplace and Gospel Heritage Festival, established in 1994, remains active. As of 2020, the National Convention of Gospel Choirs and Choruses has 50 chapters around the world. Research more about this great American Champion and share it with your babies. Make it a champion day!