Tag: Brandon hardison

GM – FBF – Today’s American Champion was known as one of the best Chicago-based electronic musician, producer and DJ known as a pioneer in the footwork genre and founder of the Teklife crew.

GM – FBF – Today’s American Champion was known as one of the best Chicago-based electronic musician, producer and DJ known as a pioneer in the footwork genre and founder of the Teklife crew. He released his debut studio album Double Cup on Hyperdub in 2013 to critical praise. He died in April 2014 from a drug overdose.Today in our History April 26, 2014 – Rashad Harden (October 9, 1979 – April 26, 2014), known as DJ Rashad, died.Born in Hammond, Indiana on October 9, 1979, Rashad Hanif Harden was the son of Gloria and Anthony Harden. He grew up on 159th Street in the southern part of Calumet City, a suburb of Chicago. He developed an early interest in music and began to DJ in his early teens, influenced by house and juke. In high school, Harden gained further DJ experience at the Kennedy-King College radio station WKKC. He also became a member of local dance troupes, including the HouseOMatics, The Phyrm, and Wolf Pac. In 1992 he made his first public appearance as a DJ at his high school dance party jubilation. While attending Thornwood High School, Harden met Morris Harper (aka DJ Spinn) during homeroom class. The two began to spend time at each other’s houses producing tracks and performing at parties. Harden was one of the founders of the Teklife crew and developed the footwork style around dance battles in the Chicago metropolitan area. His first recording released to vinyl was the track “Child Abuse” on Dance Mania in 1998. He gained further global attention after releasing his single “Itz Not Rite” on Planet Mu and being included on their Bangs and Works album in 2010. In 2013, Harden released the EPs I Don’t Give a Fuck and Rollin’ on Kode9’s Hyperdub label. These were followed by the debut full-length album Double Cup (2013), which featured collaborations with DJ Spinn, Taso, DJ Phil, Manny, Earl and Addison Groove. He was one of the performers at the Pitchfork Music Festival in Chicago in 2013 and completed support-slot on the tour of Chance the Rapper in December 2013. His last performance as a DJ was at Club Vinyl in Denver, CO on April 24, 2014. On Saturday, April 26, 2014, Harden was found dead at an apartment on West 21st Street, Chicago. An autopsy confirmed that the death was drug related, with heroin, cocaine and alprazolam (Xanax) being found in Rashad’s system. A variety of artists paid tribute to Rashad, with Vice writing that “Rashad will undoubtedly be remembered as one of contemporary dance music’s most innovative stylists and most irreplaceable presences.”On June 29, 2015, Hyperdub released the 6613 EP, a four-track EP of previously unheard tracks by DJ Rashad. Afterlife was Harden’s last album. It featured previously unreleased songs in collaboration with other members of the Teklife crew.It was released on April 8, 2016, as the first release of the new Teklife Records label. Research more about this great American Champion and share it with your babies. Make it a champion day!

/ In Brandon Hardison / Tags: / By Herry Chouhan / Comments Off on GM – FBF – Today’s American Champion was known as one of the best Chicago-based electronic musician, producer and DJ known as a pioneer in the footwork genre and founder of the Teklife crew.

GM – FBF – Today’s American Champion, if not for injustice, he would likely not be a figure in history.

GM – FBF – Today’s American Champion, if not for injustice, he would likely not be a figure in history. But after being wrongfully convicted of killing his seven children and spending 21 years in prison, the Florida fruit picker was exonerated by special prosecutor Janet Reno on April 25, 1989.On Oct. 25, 1967, his wife, Annie, had asked neighbor Bessie Reece to serve the children their lunch while she and her husband were at work. Reece laced the beans and rice with an insecticide called parathion that left the children, aged 2 to 11, foaming at the mouth and dead within minutes.Today in our History – April 25, 1989 – James Joseph Richardson is exonerated after 21 years in Prison.The police suspected Richardson of killing his children after learning that he had met with a life insurance agent with whom he’d discussed getting policies for the entire family. During trial, the jury was not told that it was the salesman who had initiated the meeting or that Richardson could not afford to buy life insurance at all.The day after the incident, Reece, who babysat the children periodically, told the police that she had seen a bag of the poison in the Richardsons’ shed. The jurors also weren’t told that she was on parole for the shooting death of her second husband and had been suspected of killing her first with poisoning.Making matters worse, in exchange for a reduction in their own sentences, three convicts claimed that Richardson, in a jail-house confession to them, claimed that he’d killed the children because his wife had engaged in an affair with Reece.Richardson was convicted after less than two hours of deliberation and sentenced to the electric chair. Four years later, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the death penalty to be unconstitutional, so Richardson was given a sentence of 25 years to life.In 1988, lawyers for Richardson, armed with affidavits stating that Reece had confessed her crime to a nursing home employee as well as evidence that prosecutors had suppressed evidence during the trial, Reno was assigned to investigate the case, which led to Richardson’s exoneration. He was released from prison on May 5, 1989.Forty-six years after James Richardson was wrongfully convicted and sentenced to death for the poisoning deaths of his seven children, and 21 years after he was freed, he is finally eligible for compensation from Florida for his time behind bars.Gov. Rick Scott on Friday signed a bill (HB 227) into law that makes inmates in Richardson’s situation eligible for state compensation. The group is so narrowly defined by the law that Richardson may be the only former inmate affected.Now 78 and living in Wichita, Kan., Richardson is expected to be eligible for $1.2 million.“Today the restoration of James Jones Richardson’s rights begins,” said Richard Pinsky, the public policy manager for the Akerman law firm, which volunteered to represent Richardson. Pinsky said he has been trying to reach Richardson with the news. “I know he is going to be very happy.”Passed in the closing hours of this spring’s legislative session, the law provides compensation to a wrongfully incarcerated person who was convicted and sentenced before Dec. 31, 1979, and who is exempt from other state provisions for compensation because his case was reversed by a special prosecutor’s review rather than being overturned by a court.Richardson was a farmworker in the DeSoto County town of Arcadia when he was accused of poisoning his seven children with insecticide after they came home from school for a lunch of rice, beans and cheese. It was just a few days before Halloween in 1967.He was convicted in 1968 and spent 21 years in prison, including four on death row, before Gov. Bob Martinez ordered a special investigation in 1989. Miami-Dade State Attorney Janet Reno, later a U.S. attorney general, concluded Richardson’s conviction was built on perjured testimony, concealed records and a failure to investigate evidence that a neighbor woman who babysat the children had killed them, and Reno issued a no-file, or nolle prosequi, in his case.For years lawyers and some lawmakers have been trying to get restitution for Richardson. Rep. Dave Kerner, D-Lake Worth, took up the cause last year and filed this year’s bill after being contacted by advocates at the Ackerman firm.“It’s pretty emotional, I think, for all the people involved over many years,” said Kerner after learning the governor had signed the bill. “It’s something you can look back on and say you did something.”Exactly how long it will take before Richardson sees any money isn’t known. However, Pinsky said the process of submitting an application to the Department of Legal Affairs for Richardson “will begin immediately.”Although Richardson was freed 25 years ago, he said the pain of his loss lingers. So do the nightmares stemming from his years behind bars.Richardson told The Palm Beach Post in Tallahassee this spring,“There’s not enough money in the whole world that can help me with the situation I’ve been through. Money is no good. Life is better than money.” Research more about this great America tragedy and share it with your babies.Make it a champion day!

GM – FBF – I had the honor of knowing this great, first as a young man in Lawnside, N.J.

GM – FBF – I had the honor of knowing this great, first as a young man in Lawnside, N.J. (The only Black town in New Jersey that Blacks owned and ran during the 30’s, 40’s 50’s 60’s and still today). When I went to college in Wisconsin cable was new and I was the voice to Introduce “The Billie Show”, Hank Arron’s first wife as she did a weekly show for Black women in Milwaukee and the last year that the Braves played in Milwaukee before moving to Atlanta,I was the backup PA Announcer for the team. As of this post the automotive dealer group that I work for as Director of sales training, we purchased the Toyota dealership that Mr. Aaron owned and sold out in McDonough, Georgia.Today’s American Champion was an American professional baseball right fielder who played 23 seasons in Major League Baseball (MLB), from 1954 through 1976. He spent 21 seasons with the Milwaukee/Atlanta Braves in the National League (NL) and two seasons with the Milwaukee Brewers in the American League (AL).Aaron is regarded as one of the greatest baseball players of all time. His 755 career home runs broke the long-standing MLB record set by Babe Ruth and stood as the most for 33 years; Aaron still holds many other MLB batting records.He hit 24 or more home runs every year from 1955 through 1973, and is one of only two players to hit 30 or more home runs in a season at least fifteen times. In 1999, The Sporting News ranked Aaron fifth on its list of the “100 Greatest Baseball Players”. In 1982, he was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in his first year of eligibility.Aaron was born and raised in and around Mobile, Alabama. Aaron had seven siblings, including Tommie Aaron, who played major-league baseball with him. He appeared briefly in the Negro American League and in minor league baseball before starting his major league career. By his final MLB season, Aaron was the last Negro league baseball player on a major league roster. During his time in the MLB, especially during his run for the hitting record, Aaron and his family endured extensive racist threats. Aaron played the vast majority of his MLB games in right field, though he appeared at several other infield and outfield positions. In his last two seasons, he was primarily a designated hitter. Aaron was an NL All-Star for 20 seasons and an AL All-Star for one season, and he holds the record for the most All-Star selections (25), while sharing the record for most All-Star Games played (24) with Willie Mays and Stan Musial. He was a three-time Gold Glove winner, and in 1957, he won the NL Most Valuable Player (MVP) Award when the Milwaukee Braves won the World Series. Aaron holds the MLB records for the most career runs batted in (RBIs) (2,297), extra base hits (1,477), and total bases (6,856).Aaron is also in the top five for career hits (3,771) and runs (2,174). He is one of only four players to have at least 17 seasons with 150 or more hits. Aaron is in second place in home runs (755) and at-bats (12,364), and in third place in games played (3,298). At the time of his retirement, Aaron held most of the game’s key career power hitting records.After his retirement, Aaron held front office roles with the Atlanta Braves, including senior vice president. In 1988, Aaron was inducted into the Wisconsin Athletic Hall of Fame. In 1999, MLB introduced the Hank Aaron Award to recognize the top offensive players in each league. He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2002. He was named a 2010 Georgia Trustee by the Georgia Historical Society in recognition of accomplishments that reflect the ideals of Georgia’s founders. Aaron resided near Atlanta until his death. Today in our History – April 24, 1954 – Henry Louis Aaron (February 5, 1934 – January 22, 2021), nicknamed “Hammer” or “Hammerin’ Hank”, Hit his first Major League Home Run.On April 24, 1954, Hank Aaron knocks out the first home run of his Major League Baseball career. Twenty years later, Aaron becomes baseball’s new home run king when he broke Babe Ruth’s long-standing record of 714 career homers.A native of Mobile, Alabama, Aaron began his professional baseball career in 1952 in the Negro League and joined the Milwaukee Braves of the major leagues in 1954, eight years after Jackie Robinson had integrated baseball. Aaron was the last Negro League player to compete in the majors. He played his first game with the Braves on April 13 and went hitless in his five times at bat. Two days later, he got his first hit, a single, in a game against the St. Louis Cardinals, and on April 23, 1954, pounded out his first major league home run off Cardinals’ pitcher Vic Raschi.Aaron quickly established himself as an important player for the Braves and won the National League batting title in 1956. The following season, he took home the league’s MVP award and helped the Braves beat Mickey Mantle and the heavily favored New York Yankees in the World Series.In 1959, Aaron won his second league batting title. Season after season, he turned in strong batting performances: “Hammerin’ Hank” hit .300 or higher for 14 seasons and slugged at least 40 homers in eight separate seasons. In May 1970, he became the first player in baseball to record 500 homers and 3,000 hits. The achievement Aaron is best known for, though, is reaking Babe Ruth’s record of 714 career home runs, which he did on April 8, 1974, at Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium, when he hit his 715th home run in the fourth inning of a game against the Los Angeles Dodgers.Aaron played for the Milwaukee Braves from 1954 to 1965 and then moved with the team to Atlanta in 1966. On February 29, 1972, the Atlanta Braves signed Aaron to a three-year, $200,000 per year contract that made him baseball’s best-paid player. In November 1974, the Braves traded Aaron to the Milwaukee Brewers, where he spent the final two seasons of his career. Aaron retired from baseball in 1976 with 755 career home runs, a record that stood until August 7, 2007, when it was broken by Barry Bonds of the San Francisco Giants.Aaron died in 2021. 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 The Wake-Robin Golf Club (WRGC) was the first and is the oldest African American women’s golf club in the United States.

GM – FBF – Today’s American Champion event was The Wake-Robin Golf Club (WRGC) was the first and is the oldest African American women’s golf club in the United States.It was founded on April 23, 1937 in Washington, D.C. by Helen Webb Harris, a school teacher. The WRGC is named after the wake-robin wildflower that sprouts in early spring. This flower symbolizes the women of WRGC budding against social norms barred them from the game of golf which was predominately played by white men during the time.The first meeting for the Wake-Robin Golf Club was held in the home of Helen Webb Harris. Thirteen other women attended. Many, like Harris, were the wives of members of the all-Black and all-male Royal Golf Club in Washington. With few leisure activities for middle-class Black women at this time in the Washington D.C. area, they were all drawn to the game of golf. Most of these early meetings were spent going over literature about the rules of golf.When the WRGC was founded in 1937, golf courses were segregated; Black men and women were legally prohibited from both private and public golf courses across the country. In 1938, the WRGC and their brother organization, the Royal Golf Club, petitioned to have public golf courses desegregated in Washington. Since the National Park Service controlled golf courses in the District of Columbia, Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes approved the building of a 9-hole golf course at an old trash dump site. Langston Golf Course was built in 1939.Both the Wake-Robins Golf Club and the Royal Golf Club continued to fight for the desegregation of other public facilities in Washington and in 1941 Secretary Ickes opened public golf courses to all in 1941. This resulted in the Wake-Robin Golf Club’s mission shifting towards the promotion of Black women’s interest in golf and encouraging them to become golfers. The Club also promoted inclusiveness and diversity as well as volunteer service. They encouraged young Black golfers to seek golf scholarships and enroll in associated programs.This club is now a non-profit corporation that provides women with the help and support to allow them to develop the knowledge and skills necessary for amateur competitive golf events. They hold fundraising activities and public functions throughout the year generating proceeds which are then used to provide scholarships to young college-bound Black women. They also provide support for local charitable organizations and causes, including food drives, a family crisis center, and the Adopt-a-Highway program in Maryland. Research more about this great American Champion organization and share it with your babies. Make it a champion day!

GM – FBF – Today’s American Champion was a prominent American author and educator.

GM – FBF – Today’s American Champion was a prominent American author and educator. Several of his books were considered standard college texts, including The Negro in Literature and Art in the United States (1918) and New Survey of English Literature (1925). Today in our History – April 22, 1882 – Benjamin Griffith Brawley (April 22, 1882 – February 1, 1939) was born.Born in 1882 in Columbia, South Carolina, Brawley was the second son of Edward McKnight Brawley and Margaret Dickerson Brawley. He studied at Atlanta Baptist College (renamed Morehouse College), graduating in 1901, earned his second BA in 1906 from the University of Chicago, and received his master’s degree from Harvard University in 1908. Brawley taught in the English departments at Atlanta Baptist College, Howard University, and Shaw University.He served as the first Dean of Morehouse College from 1912 to 1920 before returning to Howard University in 1937 where he served as chair of the English department. He wrote a good deal of poetry, but is best known for his prose work including: History of Morehouse College (1917); The Negro Literature and Art (1918); A Short History of the American Negro (1919); A Short History of the English Drama (1921); A Social History of the American Negro (1921); A New Survey of English Literature (1925). In 1927, Brawley declined Second award and Bronze medal awarded to him by the William E. Harmon Foundation Award for Distinguished Achievement Among Negroes: “… a well-known educator and writer, Brawley declined the second-place award because, he said, he had never done anything but first-class work.As a child, Benjamin Brawley learned that all men come from clay and that none of them should look up or down at each other, which kept him from approaching life with a pretentious attitude despite coming from a well-off family. Brawley started developing a deep concern for people as a result of his interactions with children who were less privileged than he was, and his interest in people’s life conditions is believed to have been consequential in his career as a teacher and a scholar. Brawley’s father was an educated man, and Brawley was one of nine children in the family.Because of his father’s position as a church minister, Brawley’s family has had to relocate on many occasions in when he was a child. Brawley’s education started in his home where his mother served as his teacher until his family moved to Nashville, Tennessee where he was admitted into third grade. During his time in Nashville, despite going to a normal school, Brawley’s mother still read Bible stories and verses with him on Sundays. As the son of a minister, Brawley studied Latin when he was twelve years old at Peabody Public School in Petersburg, Virginia, and he learned Greek when he was 14 years old with his father. Brawley’s father introduced him to the story of The Merchant of Venice, and he moved on to read stories, such as, Sanford and Merton and The pilgrim’s Progress in addition to romantic stories that he read outside his family’s library. In his adolescence, Brawley spent most of his summers earning from different jobs; he spent one summer working on a Connecticut tobacco farm, two summers at a printing office in Boston, and he spent some time as a driver for a white physician; besides his working summers, he spent the other half of his free time studying privately to get ahead at school. Brawley entered the Atlanta Baptist Seminary (Morehouse College), where he became aware of the educational discrepancies in the community, at the age of thirteen — most of his older classmates did not know much about classical literature or languages, such as Greek and Latin, which he knew plenty about. During his time at Morehouse, Brawley not only excelled in his studies but he also assisted his fellow classmates by revising their written assignments before they submitted them to their professors. Besides his academic excellence, Brawley displayed significant leadership qualities; he managed Morehouse’s baseball team; he served as quarterback for the football team and as a foreman for the College Printing Office. Additionally, he and another student founded The Atheneum, a student journal that later became Maroon Tiger, in 1898, and this journal featured A Prayer, which Brawley wrote as a response to a lynching that happened in Georgia. Brawley graduated from The Atlanta Baptist Seminary with honors in 1901, and soon after, he launched his teaching career at Georgetown in a one-room school a few miles from Palatka, Florida where he cared for about fourteen children from first to eighth grade. At that school, the term was limited to five months and his salary to no more than thirty dollars a month. While Brawley received a more lucrative job offer right after signing with Georgetown, because he did not want to break a contract at the start of his career, he decided to honor his contract with Georgetown and turned down a contract that would allow him to work for longer school terms and that would significantly increase his monthly pay. After the end of the school term and a year since he began his contract, Brawley headed to Atlanta for a teaching position at his former school, The Atlanta Baptist Seminary, where he continued to teach English for about eight years. While teaching at The Atlanta Baptist Seminary, Brawley pursued a Bachelor of Arts Degree and a Master of Arts Degree, for which he completed most of the classes during summer sessions. In 1806, he received his Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Chicago, and in 1808, he received his Master of Arts from Harvard University. In 1910, Brawley accepted an invitation to become a part of the faculty at Howard University in Washington D.C. where he met a Jamaican lady from Kingston with the name Hilda Damaris Prowd who would later become his wife. In response to their first meeting, Brawley wrote the sonnet First Sight. Prowd and Brawley shared common interests in travels, operas, reading. and hosting friends. Brawley and Prowd left Washington to move back to Atlanta where Brawley was returning to teach English at The Atlanta Baptist Seminary (Morehouse College) and serve as the first dean of the institution.[5][8] During his first year there since returning, he taught six classes every day in addition to other teaching tasks. Brawley went to the Republic of Liberia in Africa to conduct an educational survey in 1920. Sometime after his trip, Brawley decided to become a minister just like his father in early 1921. Thus, he moved on to serve as a Baptist minister for The Messiah Congregation in Boston, Massachusetts. A year later, he resigned from his position as a minister and returned to teaching because of incompatibility issues with the congregation’s Christianity. After quitting his ministerial position, Brawley went to teach at Shaw University in North Carolina, and a few years later, in 1931, he accepted a teaching position at Howard University in Washington DC where he resided until his death in 1939. 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 politician who served as a member of the United States House of Representatives from 1996 until her death in 2007, representing California’s 37th congressional district, which includes most of South Central Los Angeles and the city of Long Beach, California.

GM – FBF – Today’s American Champion was an American politician who served as a member of the United States House of Representatives from 1996 until her death in 2007, representing California’s 37th congressional district, which includes most of South Central Los Angeles and the city of Long Beach, California. She was a member of the Democratic Party.On December 19, 2006, she was named Chairwoman of the House Committee on House Administration for the 110th Congress. She was the first African-American woman to chair the committee. She was also a member of the Congressional Black Caucus and of the New Democrat Coalition and was considered a front-runner for the job of Secretary of Transportation if John Kerry had been elected President in 2004.Today In Our History – April 21, 2007 – Juanita Millender-McDonald dies.Millender-McDonald was born in Birmingham, Alabama.She was educated at Los Angeles Harbor College; at the University of Redlands, from which she received a business degree; and at California State University, Los Angeles, from which she earned a masters in educational administration; and the University of Southern California, from which she completed her doctorate in public administration.She worked as a teacher, a textbook editor, and later as director of a nonprofit organization working for gender issues. She was a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority. Millender-McDonald served as a member of the City Council of Carson, California and was a member of the California State Assembly (after beating two sitting incumbent Democrats that had been reapportioned into the same Carson based assembly district in 1992) before entering the House.She was first elected to the House in a March 1996 special election to replace Congressman Walter Tucker, who resigned due to corruption charges and was later sentenced to 27 months in prison. While she won a difficult nine-candidate primary in her first election run (fellow assembly member Willard Murray came in a close second) she did not face any serious opposition in any of her reelection campaigns.In Congress, she was known for her commitment to protecting international human rights. Millender-McDonald worked to aid victims of genocide and human trafficking. In 1996, she also led an inquiry into allegations that the CIA was working with cocaine traffickers to fund Contra rebels in Nicaragua. Within a week of her requesting a leave of absence to deal with her illness, on April 22, 2007, Millender-McDonald died in hospice care,[5][6] succumbing to colon cancer at the age of 68 at her home in Carson. She left a husband, James McDonald, Jr., and five adult children. Congresswoman Millender-McDonald’s seat was vacant until Laura Richardson won the August 21, 2007, special election. Under California law, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger announced a special election date of June 26, and because no candidate received more than 50% of the total vote, the candidates with the most votes in their respective parties participated in an August 21 runoff. In the June Primary, State Senator Jenny Oropeza lost to State Assemblywoman Laura Richardson, with Richardson continuing to the August special election, when she defeated Republican John M. Kanaley, Libertarian Herb Peters, and Green Daniel Brezenoff. Research more about this great American Champion and share it with your babies. Make it a champion day!

/ In Brandon Hardison / Tags: / By Herry Chouhan / Comments Off on GM – FBF – Today’s American Champion was an American politician who served as a member of the United States House of Representatives from 1996 until her death in 2007, representing California’s 37th congressional district, which includes most of South Central Los Angeles and the city of Long Beach, California.

GM – FBF – Today’s American Champion was a Tuskegee Airman, he was born on April 20, 1920 in Lovelady, Texas to parents Johnnie C. Morris Wooten and Howard L. Wooten.

GM – FBF – Today’s American Champion was a Tuskegee Airman, he was born on April 20, 1920 in Lovelady, Texas to parents Johnnie C. Morris Wooten and Howard L. Wooten. His father was the principal of the “colored school” in Lovelady, a town 100 miles north of Houston, and his mother also was a teacher there.Today in our History – Howard A. Wooten is born.Howard A. Wooten grew up on a farm near Lovelady and in 1937, at age 17, he entered Prairie View College on a football scholarship. His main interest, however, was in aviation and he attempted to enroll in flight training programs. His father objected because he didn’t think airplanes were safe and because he wanted his son to finish college.Wooten dropped out of Prairie View College in 1940 and enlisted in the U.S. Army as a private assigned to a Field Artillery unit. He rose through the ranks, becoming a Staff Sergeant in the 46th Field Artillery Brigade by January 1942.Now 24, and no longer needing his parent’s permission to enter flight training programs, he applied to the Army Flight School at Tuskegee, Alabama in 1944 and graduated in December of that year. After graduation he was assigned to the 15th USAAF Brigade as a fighter pilot, in the 332nd Fighter Group.In January 1945 he was reassigned to the 477th Bombardment Group, where he was one of a select group of Tuskegee pilots who would train to fly North American B-25 Mitchell bombers. Wooten was transferred to Mather Field, California for additional training. Yet Wooten and the other men training on bombers would never see combat, as the war ended before they were sent overseas.Wooten was mustered out of the U.S. Army Air Corps in 1946. He then decided to become an attorney and moved to Seattle, Washington with four brothers and a sister, so as to get as far away as possible from “Jim Crow” Texas. Soon after he arrived, he was hired as a production worker at the Boeing Airplane Company and joined the Aeronautical Machinists Union. While working on the assembly line he met Josephine A. Stratman, another Boeing production worker. They were married in 1947.In 1948 the Machinists Union went on strike at Boeing. Because he and his wife had an infant, Wooten joined the Painters Union and took work painting bridges around Seattle. He died on August 20, 1948, at the age of 28, after he fell 70 feet from a scaffold while painting the 12th Avenue Bridge at the base of Beacon Hill.Long after his death, Howard A. Wooten was memorialized by the U.S. Air Force when his World War II pilot’s photograph was chosen by an advertising agency to represent the famed Tuskegee Airmen. His photo was first seen on Air Force recruiting posters in the 1990s and was later adopted as the official image of the Tuskegee Airmen Foundation. The photograph from the National Archives has also been seen in public media including ESPN, Flight, Ebony, Sports Illustrated, and other periodicals. 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 broadcast journalist, most notably serving as co-anchor on ABC World News Tonight alongside Frank Reynolds and Peter Jennings from 1978 until 1983.

GM – FBF – Today’s American Champion was an American broadcast journalist, most notably serving as co-anchor on ABC World News Tonight alongside Frank Reynolds and Peter Jennings from 1978 until 1983. Robinson is noted as the first African-American broadcast network news anchor in the United States. Robinson was a founder of the National Association of Black Journalists.Today in our History – April 19, 1978 – Max Robinson is the first African American to anchor a network news broadcast for ABC.Robinson was born the second of four children (his siblings were his sister Jewell, who became a teacher; his brother Randall, a Harvard-educated lawyer; and his sister Jean, a publicist) to Maxie, a teacher and Doris Robinson in Richmond, Virginia.The schools in Richmond were still segregated when he attended them; after graduating from Armstrong High School, Robinson attended Oberlin College, where he was freshman class president; however, he only stayed there for a year and a half and did not graduate.Robinson briefly served in the United States Air Force and was assigned to the Russian Language School at Indiana University before receiving a medical discharge. He began working in radio early on, including a short time at WSSV-AM in Petersburg, Virginia, where he called himself “Max the Player,” and later at WANT-AM, Richmond.Robinson began his television career in 1959 when he was hired for a news job at WTOV-TV in Portsmouth, Virginia. Robinson had to read the news while hidden behind a slide of the station’s logo. One night, Robinson had the slide removed, and was fired the next day.He later went to WRC-TV in Washington, DC, and stayed for three years, winning six journalism awards for coverage of civil-rights events such as the riots that followed the 1968 assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. It was during this time that Robinson won two regional Emmys for a documentary he made on black life in Anacostia entitled The Other Washington. In 1969, Robinson joined the Eyewitness News team at WTOP-TV (now WUSA-TV) in Washington, D.C.Robinson was teamed with anchor Gordon Peterson, becoming the first African-American anchor on a local television news program, and the newscast took off. During that time, he was so well-liked by viewers that when Hanafi Muslims took hostages at the B’nai B’rith building in Washington they would speak only with Robinson.In 1978, when Roone Arledge was looking to revamp ABC News’ nightly news broadcast into World News Tonight, he remembered Robinson from a 60 Minutes interview and hired him to be a part of his new three-anchor format. Robinson would anchor national news from Chicago, while Peter Jennings would anchor international news in London and Frank Reynolds would be the main anchor from Washington. Robinson thus became the first black man to anchor a nightly network news broadcast. The three-man co-anchor team was a ratings success, and launched spoofs regarding how the three would pitch stories to each other during the telecast by saying the other’s name: “Frank”…”Max”….”Peter,” etc.Robinson’s ABC tenure was marked by conflicts between himself and the management of ABC News over viewpoints and the portrayal of Black America in the news. In addition, he was known by his co-workers to show up late for work or sometimes not show up at all, along with his moods, and his use of alcohol escalated. In addition, Robinson was known to fight racism at any turn and often felt unworthy of the admiration he received and was not pleased with what he had accomplished. Together with Bob Strickland, Robinson established a program for mentoring young black broadcast journalists.During most of Robinson’s tenure, ABC News used the Westar satellite to feed Robinson’s segment of WNT from Chicago to New York. TVRO receiver earth stations were also coming into use at the time, and anyone who knew where to find the satellite feeds could view the feed. On the live feed, Robinson could be seen to have a drink or two, but never during the actual aired segment, which led some bars around the country to even have drink specials during the nearly 90 minutes and invited patrons to come in and see the “Max ‘R'” feed. ABC eventually caught on to what was happening and even resorted to hide what was going on by supering a slide with the words “ABC News Chicago” on the screen during the live feed during times that Robinson was not live over the actual WNT broadcast. In addition, Robinson could often be seen being harsh towards those who worked around him during the live feed. Reynolds died in 1983, and shortly afterward Jennings was named sole anchor of World News Tonight. Robinson was relegated to the weekend anchor post, as well as reading hourly news briefs. He left ABC in 1983, and joined WMAQ-TV in Chicago in March 1984; he was the station’s first black anchor. But his tenure with the station was rocky, and he had conflicts with some of his colleagues. He was also frequently absent Robinson retired in 1985.Robinson was married three times. Two ended in divorce, one in annulment. His first marriage was to Eleanor Booker from 1963 to 1968 and they had three children: Mark, Maureen, and Michael. His second marriage was to Hazel O’Leary from 1974 to 1975. Robinson’s final marriage was to Beverly Hamilton from 1977 to 1986, with whom he had another son, Malik. Robinson was the older brother of Randall Robinson.Robinson was found to have AIDS while he was hospitalized for pneumonia in Illinois; but he kept it a secret, refusing to discuss it, despite widespread rumors about why his health was deteriorating. In the fall of 1988, Robinson was in Washington to deliver a speech at Howard University’s School of Communications when he became increasingly ill. Robinson checked himself into Howard University Hospital or a hospital in Blue Island, Illinois (sources differ) where he died of complications due to AIDS on December 20, 1988. He had asked that his family reveal that he had AIDS so that, according to the news reports, “Others in the black community would be alerted to the dangers and the need for treatment and education.” Research more about this great American Champion and share it with your babies. Make it a champion day!

/ In Brandon Hardison / Tags: / By Herry Chouhan / Comments Off on GM – FBF – Today’s American Champion was an American broadcast journalist, most notably serving as co-anchor on ABC World News Tonight alongside Frank Reynolds and Peter Jennings from 1978 until 1983.

GM – FBF – Today’s American Champion event was in 1931, twelve-year-old Thomas J.

GM – FBF – Today’s American Champion event was in 1931, twelve-year-old Thomas J. Pressly witnessed the lynching of George Smith in Union City, the county seat of Obion County, Tennessee. He was a University of Washington historian and Professor Emeritus, Dr. Pressley describes that lynching in the article below. Professor Pressly passed away on April 3, 2012 in Seattle, Washington.Today in our History – On the morning of April 18, 1931, a friend of mine in Troy, Hal Bennet, five or six years older than I, told me that he had to drive his car to Union City to purchase some parts for the car.When I was twelve years old, I saw the body of a young black man hanging from the limb of a tree where he had been hung several hours earlier. The lynching had taken place in April, 1931, in Union City, the county seat, of Obion County, in Northwestern Tennessee, not too far from the Kentucky line to the north, and from the Mississippi River to the west.I lived in Troy, Tennessee, a town of five hundred inhabitants, ten miles. south of Union City. On the morning of April 18, 1931, a friend of mine in Troy, Hal Bennet, five or six years older than I, told me that he had to drive his car to Union City to purchase some parts for the car, and he asked if I wanted to go along for the ride. I was not old enough to drive, and I was happy to accept his invitation. Neither Hal not I had heard anything about a lynching in Union City, but when we entered town, we soon passed the Court House and saw that the grounds were filled with people and that the black man’s body was hanging from the tree.We were told by people in the crowd that the lynched man was in his early twenties, and that on the previous night, he had entered the bedroom and clutched the neck of a young lady prominent as a singer and pianist, the main entertainer at the new radio station recently established in Union City as the first station in Obion County. The young lady said she had fought off her attacker and severely scratched his face before he fled from her house. Within hours the sheriff and his deputy, using bloodhounds, had tracked down a black man who had scratches on his face. They then brought him before the young woman who identified him as her assailant. Convinced he had the attacker, the sheriff put him in the jail, which occupied the top floor of the Court House. Before long, however, a mob of whites gathered, broke into the jail, overpowered the sheriff and deputy, and hung the victim from the limb of the tree near the jail. I did not know the name of the black man who died that day. I was later told that he was a high school graduate which was unusual for blacks or whites in my county in that period, and that he knew the family of the woman attacked.When my friend Hal and I drove back to Troy later that day, we carried another boy from Troy named Denton who was about the same age as Hal, although neither Hal nor I knew him very well. As we left Union City, headed for Troy, we passed a black man who was waking by the side of the highway. Denton, riding in the back seat, rolled down his window and shouted at the black man, “You better watch out, you black son-of-a-bitch, they will get you next.” Hal immediately stopped the car and said to Denton “If you say one more word like that, you will be out of this car, and will be walking the ten miles to Troy.”Even though I was only a twelve-year-old, I well understood the difference between Hal and Denton, because it reflected to me the primary difference between the whites in Troy. All the adults in Hal’s family and in my family were college graduates, as were the adults in the Moffat family, the Grier family, and in several other Troy families. They were all Scotch Irish Presbyterians. As I learned later when I went to college, these Scotch Irish Presbyterians were equivalent to the 17th century Puritans who settled in Massachusetts and then immediately founded a college, so that the ministers would be educated.The college founded by the early Scotch Irish Presbyterians, the ancestors of those in Troy, was Erskine College and Theological Seminary established in the 1840’s in South Carolina. Erskine College was where most of the college graduates in Troy had gone to school, and the Erskine Theological Seminary was where my grandfather and one of my uncles had received their training for the ministry.I think that there were only thirty or forty blacks in Troy (this was not plantation country), and most of them were maids, cooks, and men who took care of lawns and of pigs, cows, and horses. Clearly, the whites in Troy controlled the blacks, economically and socially, but I had never heard any whites talk to blacks, or refer to blacks, as Denton did on that trip from Union City. There was no church for blacks in the town of Troy, nor was there any school for blacks. I do not know whether Denton had a family, or whether he belonged to any church. If he did attend any church, my guess is that it would have been the Cumberland Church—whose minister was neither a college graduate nor a high school graduate, and who ran Troy’s only butcher shop.Did Troy itself ever have a lynching? So far as I know, it did not, but my mother told me of one occasion (before I was born) when she and my father feared that a lynching would take place. My mother said the occasion was on a Saturday, some time after 1904 (the year in which my father and mother were married). The number of whites in Troy increased greatly on Saturdays, because that was the day on which farmers and their families came into town to buy groceries and clothing, and to see friends and relatives, and to find out local news. On this particular Saturday afternoon, according to my mother, a high-school-age girl (whom my mother did not know and who was probably from one of the farm families), became quite upset and told a great many people that a black man from Troy (I never heard of any black farmers who lived near Troy), when he approached her on the sidewalk in Troy, did not get off the sidewalk and walk in the ditch as she thought he should have done, so that she could have had the entire sidewalk for herself.My mother and father had known the black man she described for some time, and had a favorable opinion of him, and they also thought that the complaint by the young girl was outrageous. When they saw a crowd of whites began to gather around the girl, my father motioned unobtrusively to the black man to slip into my father’s store before the crowd of whites became large. My father and mother then hid the black man under bolts of cloth in their store. As the afternoon wore on, groups of whites searched for the black man in each of the stores, and in some of the surrounding streets. When it began to get dark, many of the farmers left with their families to go back to their farm homes, but there were still a few whites hanging around and searching for the black man.By about ten o’clock, all the stores closed, and my mother made a point of making a lot of noise when she locked the door on their store, and then in leaving their store and walking away toward our home (leaving my father alone in the dark store with the hidden black man).By midnight, there was no one left on the streets. Our store had a back door, not visible from the street, and after an hour or so my father was able to get a horse (the man who ran the livery stable was a friend of my father’s), and bring it to the back door of the store. He gave the horse to the black man telling him that it would probably be unsafe for him to ever return to Troy. The black man got away on the horse without being detected, and about four days later he got word to my father that he was in Kentucky and hoped to make it to Canada.My father and mother never hear from him after that. Research more about this great American Champion and share it with your babies. Make it a champion day!

GM – FBF – Today’s American Champion signed a bill Abolition in the District of Columbia

GM – FBF – Today’s American Champion signed a bill Abolition in the District of ColumbiaOn April 16, 1862, President Lincoln signed an act abolishing slavery in the District of Columbia, an important step in the long road toward full emancipation and enfranchisement for African Americans.Today in our History – April 16, 1862 – President Lincoln ends abolition in the Nation’s capital.“Celebration of the Abolition of Slavery in the District of Columbia by the Colored People, in Washington, April 19, 1866.” Frederick Dielman, artist; Illus. in: Harper’s weekly, v. 10, no. 489 (1866 May 12), p. 300. The Civil War. The African American Odyssey: A Quest for Full Citizenship.This illustration from Harper’s Weekly depicts the fourth anniversary of the District’s Emancipation Act. On April 19, 1866, African American citizens of Washington, D.C., staged a huge celebration.Approximately 5,000 people marched up Pennsylvania Avenue, past 10,000 cheering spectators, to Franklin Square for religious services and speeches by prominent politicians. Two of the black regiments that had gained distinction in the Civil War led the procession.Before 1850, slave pens, slave jails, and auction blocks were a common site in the District of Columbia, a hub of the domestic slave trade. In the words of one slave who worked for a time in the District’s Navy Yard:…I generally went up into the city to see the new and splendid buildings; often walked as far as Georgetown, and made many new acquaintances among the slaves, and frequently saw large numbers of people of my color chained together in long trains, and driven off towards the South.Charles Ball, “Fifty Years in Chains or The Life of an American Slave External,” 18-19, in First-Person Narratives of the American South ExternalAs slavery became less profitable in the border states, many traders purchased slaves and shipped them to the Deep South.In cities such as New Orleans, slaves often were resold at a higher price to cotton, rice, and indigo plantation owners. Abolitionists petitioned Congress in 1828 to abolish the District’s notorious trade. Yet, despite the efforts of John Quincy Adams and others, Congress gagged discussion of the issue for nearly 20 years.In 1849, Illinois Congressman Abraham Lincoln attempted to introduce a bill for gradual emancipation of all slaves in the District. Although the District’s slave trade ended the following year, his emancipation attempt was aborted by Senator John C. Calhoun and others.As president, Lincoln was better able to effect the issue. He saw slavery as morally wrong yet held it to be an institution dying under its own weight, to be abolished by voter consent. But, as commander in chief, Lincoln also realized the military expediency of emancipation. He abolished slavery in the Capital five months prior to issuing his preliminary Emancipation Proclamation. The law he signed eventually provided District slave holders compensation for 2,989 slaves.Twenty-one years later, on April 16, 1883, Frederick Douglass spoke at a commemoration of abolition in the District. He called attention to African Americans’ continued struggle for civil rights:It is easy to break forth in joy and thanksgiving for Emancipation in the District of Columbia, to call up the noble sentiments and the starting events which made that measure possible. It is easy to trace the footsteps of the [N]egro in the past, marked as they are all the way along with blood. But the present occasion calls for something more. How stands the [N]egro to-day?Research more about this great American Champion and shear it with your babies. Make it a champion day!