The Official Black History Month Thread

[Kritish]

What's the problem?

I have been reading this thread and there's been plenty of great articles like Willie Mays and such. But the Ku Klux Klan and Jim Crowe laws seem to just seem to be counter productive.

 

[tzarinna]

It's history.

 

[Memphis Slim]

It's history.

Thank you.

History is both good and bad. Knowing about it isn't the same as dwelling on it.

 

[Memphis Slim]

LENA HORNE

Lena Mary Calhoun Horne (born June 30, 1917 in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, New York City, New York) is an American popular singer. While she has recorded and performed extensively with jazz musicians (notably Artie Shaw, Teddy Wilson), Billy Strayhorn, and Duke Ellington, she is usually not considered a jazz singer because she does not improvise. She currently lives in New York City and still makes public appearances. She might be best-known for her version of the song "Stormy Weather", which was a hit in the 1940s.

Lena Horne was born in Brooklyn, New York, on June 30, 1917. Her father, Edwin "Teddy" Horne, who worked in the gambling trade, left the family when Lena was three. Her mother, Edna Scottron, was the daughter of inventor Samuel R. Scottron; she was an actress with an African American theater troupe and traveled extensively. Both her parents are of Black, White and Native American ancestry. Horne was mainly raised by her grandparents, Cora Calhoun and Edwin Horne.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:The_Bronze_Venus_VHS_cover.jpg
Lena Horne made her film debut starring as "the Bronze Venus" in The Duke is Tops, a 1938 musical.



After a false start headlining a 1938 musical race movie called The Duke is Tops, Horne became the first African American performer to sign a long-term contract with a major Hollywood studio, namely Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. She made her debut with MGM in 1942's Panama Hattie and became famous in 1943 for her rendition of Stormy Weather in the movie of the same name (which she made while on loan to 20th Century Fox from MGM).
She appeared in a number of MGM musicals, most notably Cabin in the Sky (also 1943), but was never featured in a leading role due to her race and the fact that films featuring her had to be reedited for showing in southern states where theatres could not show films with African American performers. As a result, most of Horne's film appearances were standalone sequences that had no bearing on the rest of the film, so editing caused no disruption to the storyline; a notable exception was the all-black musical Cabin in the Sky, though even then one of her numbers had to be cut because it was considered too suggestive by the censors.

Stormy Weather did feature Horne in a major acting role, with a more substantial part than what she had in Cabin in the Sky, but as noted, this was not an MGM musical. She was originally considered for the role of Julie LaVerne in MGM's 1951 version of Show Boat (having already played the role when a segment of Show Boat was performed in Till the Clouds Roll By) but Ava Gardner was given the role instead (the production code office had banned interracial relationships in films). In the documentary That's Entertainment! III Horne stated that MGM executives required Gardner to practice her singing using recordings of Horne performing the songs, which offended both Horne and Gardner (ultimately, Gardner ended up having her singing voice overdubbed by another actress for the threatrical release, though her own voice was heard on the soundtrack album).
Disenchanted with Hollywood by the mid-1950s, and increasingly focused on her nightclub career, she only made two major appearances in MGM films during the decade, 1950's Duchess of Idaho (which was also Eleanor Powell's film swan song), and the 1956 musical Meet Me in Las Vegas. She returned to the screen three more times, playing chanteuse Claire Quintana in the 1969 film Death of a Gunfighter, Glinda the Good Witch in The Wiz (1978), with Diana Ross and Michael Jackson, and co-hosting the aforementioned 1994 MGM retrospective That's Entertainment! III in which she was candid about her treatment by the studio. During the mid 70's, she made an appearance on The Muppet Show where she sang with Kermit the Frog.

Lena Horne photographed by Carl Van Vechten, 1941


She appeared in Broadway musicals several times and in 1958 was nominated for the Tony Award for "Best Actress in a Musical" (for her part in the "Calypso" musical Jamaica) In 1981 she received a Special Tony Award for her show, Lena Horne: "The Lady and Her Music". She also made occasional TV appearances, such as a guest appearance as herself on Sanford and Son in the 70s and a mid-1980s performance on The Cosby Show. In 1989, she received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.
In 1994, she released the album We'll Be Together Again featuring many songs written by her friends Billy Strayhorn and Duke Ellington. Included in this project is Day Follows Day a duet with Johnny Mathis. In general, Horne has been disinclined to record duets.

 

[jaguarr]

Mmmmmm.....Lena Horne. Yummy!

jag

 

[Memphis Slim]

 

[Memphis Slim]

Blackface


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Minstrel_PosterBillyVanWare.jpg
This reproduction of a 1900 minstrel show poster, originally published by the Strobridge Litho Co., shows the transformation from white to "black".


Blackface is a style of theatrical makeup that originated in the United States, used to affect the countenance of an iconic, racist American archetype — that of the darky or coon. Blackface also refers to a genre of musical and comedic theatrical presentation in which blackface makeup is worn. White blackface performers in the past used burnt cork and later greasepaint or shoe polish to blacken their skin and exaggerate their lips, often wearing woolly wigs, gloves, tailcoats, or ragged clothes to complete the transformation. Later, black artists also performed in blackface.
Blackface was an important performance tradition in the American theater for over 100 years and was also popular overseas. Stereotypes embodied in the stock characters of blackface minstrelsy played a significant role in cementing and proliferating racist images, attitudes and perceptions worldwide. In some quarters, the caricatures that were the legacy of blackface persist to the present day and are a cause of ongoing controversy.
By the mid-20th century, changing attitudes about race and racism effectively ended the prominence of blackface performance in the U.S. and elsewhere. However, it remains in relatively limited use as a theatrical device, mostly outside the U.S., and is more commonly used today as edgy social commentary or satire. Perhaps the most enduring effect of blackface is the precedent it established in the introduction of African American culture to an international audience, albeit through a distorted lens. Blackface minstrelsy's groundbreaking appropriation, exploitation, and assimilation of African-American culture — as well as the inter-ethnic artistic collaborations that stemmed from it — were but a prologue to the lucrative packaging, marketing, and dissemination of African-American cultural expression and its myriad derivative forms in today's world popular culture.

History and the shaping of racist archetypes
Lewis Hallam, Jr., a white comedic actor, brought blackface to prominence as a theatrical device when playing the role of an inebriated black man onstage in 1789. The play attracted notice, and other performers adopted the style. White comedian Thomas D. Rice later popularized blackface, introducing the song "Jump Jim Crow" accompanied by a dance in his stage act in 1828. The song had a syncopated rhythm and purportedly recreated the dancing of a crippled black stable hand, Jim Cuff, or "Jim Crow", whom Rice had seen in Cincinnati, Ohio:
First on de heel tap, Den on the toe Every time I wheel about I jump Jim Crow. Wheel about and turn about An' do j's so. And every time I wheel about, I jump Jim Crow. — 1823 sheet music http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:BlackfaceMinstrelsPostcard.jpg
This postcard, published circa 1908, shows a white minstrel team. While both are wearing wigs, the man on the left is in blackface and drag.


Rice traveled the U.S., performing under the pseudonym "Daddy Jim Crow". The name later became attached to statutes that further codified the reinstitution of segregation and discrimination after Reconstruction.
Initially, blackface performers were part of traveling troupes who performed in minstrel shows. In addition to music and dance, minstrel shows featured comical skits in which performers portrayed buffoonish, lazy, superstitious black characters who were cowardly and lascivious, who stole, lied pathologically, and mangled the English language. Such troupes in the early days of minstrelsy were all male, so cross-dressing white men also played black women who often were either unappealingly and grotesquely mannish; in the matronly, mammy mold; or highly sexually provocative. At the time, the stage also featured comic stereotypes of conniving, venal Jews; cheap Scotsmen; drunken Irishmen; ignorant white southerners; gullible rural folk and the like.
Minstrel shows were a very popular show business phenomenon in the U.S. from 1828 through the 1930s, also enjoying some popularity in the UK and in other parts of Europe in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. As a result, the genre played an important role in shaping perceptions of and prejudices about blacks generally and African Americans in particular. Some social commentators have stated that blackface provided an outlet for whites' fear of the unknown and the unfamiliar, and a socially acceptable way of expressing their feelings and fears about race and control. Writes Eric Lott in Love and Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class, "The black mask offered a way to play with the collective fears of a degraded and threatening—and male—Other while at the same time maintaining some symbolic control over them." (Lott, 25)
White minstrel shows featured white performers pretending to be blacks, playing their versions of black music and speaking ersatz black dialects. Reminiscing about such shows he had seen in his youth, American humorist and author Mark Twain commented in dictated notes almost 50 years later:

…I suppose, the real ******-show—the genuine ******-show, the extravagant ******-show—the show which to me had no peer and whose peer has not yet arrived, in my experience. We have the grand opera; and I have witnessed, and greatly enjoyed, the first act of everything which Wagner created, but…the ******-show [is] a standard and a summit to whose rarefied altitude the other forms of musical art may not hope to reach.
​

The songs of northern composer Stephen Foster figured prominently in blackface minstrel shows of the period. Though written in dialect and certainly politically incorrect by today's standards, his later songs were free of the ridicule and blatantly racist caricatures that typified other songs of the genre. Foster's works treated slaves and the South in general with an often cloying sentimentality that appealed to audiences of the day.

By 1840, African-American performers also were performing in blackface makeup. Frederick Douglass wrote in 1849 about one such troupe, Gavitt's Original Ethiopian Serenaders: "It is something to be gained when the colored man in any form can appear before a white audience." Nonetheless, Douglass generally abhorred blackface and was one of the first people to write against the institution of blackface minstrelsy, condemning it as racist in nature, with inauthentic, northern, white origins.
When all-black minstrel shows began to proliferate the 1860s, however, they in turn often were billed as "authentic" and "the real thing". Despite often smaller budgets and smaller venues, their public appeal sometimes rivalled that of white minstrel troupes. In the execution of authentic black music and the percussive, polyrhythmic tradition of "pattin' Juba", when the only instruments performers used were their hands and feet, clapping and slapping their bodies and shuffling and stomping their feet, black troupes particularly excelled. One of the most successful black minstrel companies was Sam Hague's Slave Troupe of Georgia Minstrels, managed by Charles Hicks. This company eventually was taken over by Charles Callendar. The Georgia Minstrels toured the United States and abroad and later became Haverly's Colored Minstrels.
African-American blackface productions also contained buffoonery and comedy, by way of self-parody. In the early days of African-American involvement in theatrical performance, blacks could not perform without blackface makeup, regardless of how dark-skinned they were, but blackface minstrelsy was a practical and often relatively lucrative livelihood when compared to the menial labor to which most blacks were relegated. Owing to the discrimination of the day, "corking (or "blacking") up" provided an often singular opportunity for African-American musicians, actors, and dancers to practice their crafts. Some minstrel shows, particularly when performing outside the South, also managed subtly to poke fun at the racist attitudes and double standards of white society or champion the abolitionist cause. It was through blackface performers, white and black, that the richness and exuberance of African-American music, humor, and dance first reached mainstream, white audiences in the U.S. and abroad.
Blackface remained a popular theatrical device well into the 20th century, crossing over from the minstrel troupe touring circuit to vaudeville, to motion pictures, then to television. In the Theater Owners Booking Association (TOBA), an all-black vaudeville circuit organized in 1909, blackface acts were a popular staple. Called "Toby" for short, performers also nicknamed it "Tough on Black Actors" (or, variously, "Artists" or "Asses"), because earnings were so meager. Still, TOBA headliners could make a very good living, and even for lesser players, TOBA provided fairly steady, more desirable work than generally was available elsewhere. Blackface served as a springboard for hundreds of artists and entertainers—black and white—many of whom later would go on to find work in other performance traditions. In fact, one of the most famous stars of Haverly's European Minstrels was Sam Lucas, who became known as the "Grand Old Man of the Negro Theatre". It was Lucas who later played the title role in the first cinematic production of Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin.
Many well-known entertainers of stage and screen also performed in blackface, including Al Jolson, Eddie Cantor, Bing Crosby and Bob Hope, as well as actor and comedian Bert Williams, who was the first black performer in vaudeville and on Broadway. But apart from cultural references such as those seen in theatrical cartoons, onstage blackface essentially was eliminated in the U.S. post-vaudeville, when public sensibilities regarding race began to change and blackface became increasingly associated with racism and bigotry.

 

[Memphis Slim]

BLACK FACE CON'TD.....

Modern-day manifestations
Over time, blackface and darky iconography became artistic and stylistic devices associated with art deco and the Jazz Age. By the 1950s and '60s, particularly in Europe, where it was more widely tolerated, blackface became a kind of outré, camp convention in some artistic circles. The Black and White Minstrel Show was a popular British musical variety show that featured blackface performers, and remained on British television until 1978. Actors and dancers in blackface appeared in music videos such as Taco Ockerse's "Puttin' on the Ritz" and Grace Jones's "Slave to the Rhythm", which aired regularly on MTV during the 1980s.
<B>Darky iconography, while generally considered taboo in the U.S., still persists around the world. When trade and tourism produce a confluence of cultures, bringing differing sensibilities regarding blackface into contact with one another, the results can be jarring. Darky iconography is still popular in Japan today, but when Japanese toymaker Sanrio Corporation exported a darky-icon character doll in the 1990s, the ensuing controversy prompted Sanrio to halt production. Foreigners visiting the Netherlands in November and December are often shocked at the sight of whites in classic blackface as a character known as Zwarte Piet, whom many Dutch nationals love as a holiday symbol. Travelers to Spain have expressed dismay at seeing "Conguito", a tubby, little brown character with full, red lips, as the trademark for Conguitos, a confection manufactured by the LACASA Group. In Britain, "Golly", a golliwog character, finally fell out of favor in 2001 after almost a century as the trademark of jam producer James Robertson & Sons; but the debate still continues whether the golliwog should be banished in all forms from further commercial production and display, or preserved as a treasured childhood icon. The influence of blackface on branding and advertising, as well as on perceptions and portrayals of blacks, generally, can be found worldwide. Black and brown products, particularly, such as licorice and chocolate, remain commodities most frequently paired with darky iconography.

The Netherlands' Zwarte Piet


A white Dutch woman in blackface costume as Zwarte Piet.


Zwarte Piet, or "Black Peter", is a character in Dutch and Flemish Sinterklaas lore, described variously as a slave liberated by St. Nicholas or a servant of Sinterklaas whose feast, mainly targeted at children, is celebrated December 5. Some sources indicate that Zwarte Piet originally was an enslaved devil, rather than a Moor. Once portrayed realistically, Zwarte Piet became a classic darky icon in the mid-to-late 19th century, contemporaneous with the spread of darky iconography. To this day, holiday revellers in the Netherlands blacken their faces, wear afro wigs and bright red lipstick, and walk the streets throwing candy to passersby. Some of the actors behave dim-wittedly and/or speak mangled Dutch as embodiments of Zwarte Piet.

Accepted in the past without controversy in a once largely ethnically homogeneous nation, today Zwarte Piet is controversial and greeted with mixed reactions. Many see him as a cherished tradition and look forward to his annual appearance. Others detest him—perhaps most notably, some of the country's people of color. The lyrics of traditional Sinterklaas songs and some parents state that Zwarte Piet will leave well-behaved children presents, but that those who have been naughty will be punished. Zwarte Piet will kidnap bad children and carry them off in his sack to Spain, where, legend has it, he and Sinterklaas dwell out of season. As a result, while most Dutch children love him and are fascinated by him, they also may be fearful of encounters with Zwarte Piet impersonators. Some white Dutch children believe their black classmates will grow up to be Zwarte Piet, and still others believe black people they meet in public are Zwarte Piet. Blackfaced, googly-eyed, red-lipped Zwarte Piet dolls, diecuts and displays adorn store windows alongside brightly displayed, smartly packaged holiday merchandise. Foreign tourists, particularly Americans, are often bewildered and mortified. As a result of the allegations of racism, some attempts have been made to replace the blackface makeup worn by Zwarte Piet impersonators with face paint in alternative colors such as green or purple. This practice, however, has not caught on. So, at least once a year in the Netherlands, the debate over the harmlessness, or racism, of Zwarte Piet resurfaces—along with the usual smiling golliwog dolls; strolling Zwarte Pieten tossing sweets to eager children and other passersby; and the sometimes jarring storefront-darky images.

 

[Memphis Slim]

BLACK FACE CONT'D....

In the U.S.

Promotional poster for Spike Lee's movie Bamboozled (2000)


The darky, or coon, archetype that blackface played such a profound role in creating remains a persistent thread in American culture. It continues to resurface. Animation utilizing darky iconography aired on U.S. television routinely as late as the mid-1990s, and still can be seen in specialty time slots on such networks as TCM. In 1993, white actor Ted Danson ignited a firestorm of controversy when he appeared at a Friars Club roast in blackface, delivering a risqué shtick written by his then love interest, African-American comedienne Whoopi Goldberg. Recently, gay white performer Chuck Knipp has used drag, blackface, and broad racial caricature while portraying a character named "Shirley Q. Liquor" in his cabaret act, generally performed for all-white audiences. Knipp's outrageously stereotypical character has drawn criticism and prompted demonstrations from black gay and transgender activists.
In New Orleans in the early 1900s, a group of African American laborers began a marching club in the annual Mardi Gras parade, dressed as hobos and calling themselves "The Tramps". Wanting a flashier look, they later renamed themselves "Zulus" and copied their costumes from a blackface vaudeville skit performed at a local black jazz club and cabaret. The result is one of the best known and most striking krewes of Mardi Gras, the Zulu Social Aid and Pleasure Club. Dressed in grass skirts, top hats and exaggerated blackface, the Zulus of New Orleans are controversial as well as popular.

Former Illinois congressman and House Republican party minority leader Bob Michel caused a minor stir in the early 1990s, when he fondly recalled minstrel shows in which he had participated as a young man and expressed his regret that they had fallen out of fashion.
Blackface and minstrelsy also serve as the theme of Spike Lee's film Bamboozled (2000). It tells of a black television executive who reintroduces the old blackface style and is horrified by its success.

This elaborate, figural, Art deco Ronson tabletop cigarette lighter, manufactured in 1936, is an example of an everyday consumer item rendered in classic darky iconographical style. It sold on eBay in June 2006 for $2,225.


In recent years, there have been several inflammatory blackface "incidents" where white college students donned blackface as part of possibly innocent, but insensitive, gags, or as part of an acknowledged climate of racism and intolerance on campus.
In November 2005, controversy erupted when African American journalist Steve Gilliard posted a photograph on his blog. The image was of black Republican Maryland lieutenant governor Michael S. Steele, then a candidate for U.S. Senate. It had been doctored to include bushy, white eyebrows and big, red lips. The caption read, "I's simple Sambo and I's running for the big house." Steele has been criticized by other African Americans who consider him a "race traitor" due to his conservative politics. Gilliard defended the image, commenting that Steele has "refused to stand up for his people," and explained that he pulled the photograph only because he did not have permission to use the original image.
Further, commodities bearing iconic darky images, from tableware, soap, and toy marbles to home accessories and T-shirts, continue to be manufactured and marketed in the U.S. and elsewhere. Some are reproductions of historical artifacts, while others are so-called "fantasy" items, newly designed and manufactured for the marketplace. There is a thriving niche market for such items in the U.S., particularly, as well as for original artifacts of darky iconography. The value of many vintage pieces has skyrocketed since the 1970s.

Blackface minstrelsy and world popular culture



Despite its racist portrayals, blackface minstrelsy was the conduit through which African-American and African-American-influenced music, comedy, and dance first reached the American mainstream. It played a seminal role in the introduction of African-American culture to world audiences. Wrote jazz historian Gary Giddings in Bing Crosby: A Pocketful of Dreams, The Early Years 1903-1940:

Though antebellum (minstrel) troupes were white, the form developed in a form of racial collaboration, illustrating the axiom that defines&#8212;and continues to define&#8212;American music as it developed over the next century and a half: African-American innovations metamorphose into American popular culture when white performers learn to mimic black ones.​

Virtually every major, new genre of popular music in the United States from the twilight of the 19th century to the dawn of the 21st century&#8212;from the tight harmonies of barbershop quartets to ragtime, to blues, to jazz and swing, to rhythm and blues and rock and roll, to funk and classic rock, to hip hop and neo soul&#8212; is a product or byproduct of African-American innovation. Indeed, the broad spectrum of popular music as it exists today would be unrecognizable absent the influence of African-American culture. Standard early jazz tunes included numbers such as "The Darktown Strutters Ball", a song about the slave cakewalk tradition, and "The Birth of the Blues". Even into the '50s, R&B artists from Louis Jordan (in, for example, "Saturday Night Fish Fry") to the Dominoes (in "The Deacon is Moving In") harkened back to minstrelsy. A lot of vaudeville shtick, and its earliest comedians, musicians and actors as well, were transplants from the blackface minstrel tradition&#8212;among them Laugh-In's Pigmeat Markham. The radio antics of "Amos 'n' Andy", which featured white actors impersonating blacks, were straight from the minstrel stage. The popular radio show lasted more than a decade and then moved to television, utilizing black actors, in 1951. Under fire from critics as being demeaning to blacks, it ran until only 1953.
While commonly associated today with country and bluegrass music, genres not dominated by black performers, African Americans exerted a strong, early influence on the development of both through the introduction of the banjo, as well as through the innovation of musical techniques in the playing of both the banjo and fiddle. According to Dale Cockrell's account in The Encyclopedia of Country Music, many traditional hillbilly fiddle tunes, including "Turkey in the Straw" and Old Dan Tucker came from minstrelsy, Further, in format and content, the still running Grand Ole Opry radio show mirrors blackface minstrel shows, and, notes Cockrell, Hee Haw "in structure, humor, characterization, and, in many ways, music, was a minstrel show in 'rube face'". And as with jazz, many of country&#8217;s earliest stars, such as Jimmie Rodgers and Bob Wills, were veterans of blackface performance.
The immense popularity and profitability of blackface were testaments to the power, appeal, and commercial viability of not only black music and dance, but also of black style. This led to cross-cultural collaborations, as Giddings writes; but, particularly in times past, to the often ruthless exploitation and outright theft of African-American artistic genius, as well&#8212; by other, white performers and composers; agents; promoters; publishers; and record company executives. The precedent set by blackface, of aggressive white exploitation and appropriation of black culture, is alive today in, for example, the anointed, white, so-called "royalty" of essentially African-American music forms: Benny Goodman, widely known as the "King of Swing"; Paul Whiteman, who called himself the "King of Jazz"; Elvis Presley, known as the "King of Rock and Roll"; and Janis Joplin, crowned "Queen of the Blues".
For more than a century, when white performers have wanted to appear sexy, (like Elvis); or streetwise, (like Eminem); or hip, (like Mezz Mezzrow); or cool, (like actors Marlon Brando and James Dean and, more recently, John Travolta and George Clooney); or urbane, (like Frank Sinatra), they often have turned to African-American performance styles, stage presence and personas. Sometimes this has been done out of genuine admiration, as in the case of blues revivalists. Sometimes it is done with a good deal of calculation by, for example, the many white lead performers who use black backup singers and musicians. Author bell hooks argues that Madonna uses black male dancers to give her stage show a transgressive, sexually charged patina. Pop culture referencing and cultural appropriation of African-American performance and stylistic traditions&#8212;often resulting in tremendous profit&#8212;is a tradition with origins in blackface minstrelsy.
The international imprint of African-American culture is pronounced in its depth and breadth, in indigenous expressions, as well as in myriad, blatantly mimetic and subtler, more attenuated forms. This "browning", à la Richard Rodriguez, of American and world popular culture began with blackface minstrelsy. It is a continuum of pervasive African-American influence which has many prominent manifestations today, among them the ubiquity of the cool aesthetic[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Citing_sources] and hip hop culture.

 

[Memphis Slim]

Whew........ I didn't know there was this much history on this subject.

 

[jaguarr]

What? Lena Horne was hot! Not as hot as Dorothy Dandridge, but hot nonetheless.

jag

 

[The_Mystery]

Does anyone else think we are having a heck of a Black History month this year. We've had a Superbowl with TWO black coaches for the first time in history and last night during the Oscars it almost felt natural to have an african american man win Best Actor and a african american woman win Best Supporting Actor. We're all witness history book stuff right now.

 

[Memphis Slim]

http://imagecache2.allposters.com/images/PM/PM_820312.jpg[/IMG


[B][SIZE=3]SAMMY DAVIS JR.[/SIZE][/B]
Davis was born in the [URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harlem"][COLOR=#0000ff]Harlem[/COLOR][/URL] neighborhood of [URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York"][COLOR=#0000ff]New York[/COLOR][/URL] to [URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elvera_Sanchez"][COLOR=#0000ff]Elvera Sanchez[/COLOR][/URL], an [URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States"][COLOR=#0000ff]American[/COLOR][/URL] dancer of [URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuba"][COLOR=#0000ff]Cuban[/COLOR][/URL] ancestry, and [URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sammy_Davis%2C_Sr."][COLOR=#0000ff]Sammy Davis, Sr.[/COLOR][/URL], an [URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African-American"][COLOR=#0000ff]African-American[/COLOR][/URL] entertainer. The couple were both dancers in [URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaudeville"][COLOR=#0000ff]vaudeville[/COLOR][/URL]. As an infant, he was raised by his paternal grandmother. When he was three years old, his parents split up. His father, not wanting to lose custody of his son, took him on tour. Sammy Davis Jr. claimed that his mother was [URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puerto_Rican"][COLOR=#0000ff]Puerto Rican[/COLOR][/URL], however the 2003 biography [I]In Black and White[/I] alleges that he made this claim due to the political sensitivities of the [URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1960s"][COLOR=#0000ff]1960s[/COLOR][/URL] (during the [URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_Missile_Crisis"][COLOR=#0000ff]Cuban Missile Crisis[/COLOR][/URL]), and that his mother was born in New York of [URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuba"][COLOR=#0000ff]Cuban[/COLOR][/URL] descent rather than in [URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Juan%2C_Puerto_Rico"][COLOR=#0000ff]San Juan[/COLOR][/URL], [URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puerto_Rico"][COLOR=#0000ff]Puerto Rico[/COLOR][/URL].
As a child he learned how to dance from his father, [URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sammy_Davis%2C_Sr."][COLOR=#0000ff]Sammy Davis, Sr.[/COLOR][/URL], and his "uncle" [URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will_Mastin"][COLOR=#0000ff]Will Mastin[/COLOR][/URL], who led the dance troupe for which his father worked. Davis joined the act as a young child and they became the [URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will_Mastin_Trio"][COLOR=#0000ff]Will Mastin Trio[/COLOR][/URL]. Throughout his long career, Davis included the Will Mastin Trio in his billing, and long after he became a solo star, he continued to pay his father and Mastin large percentages of his income. It was his way of thanking them both for making his career possible, but the magnanimous gesture contributed to Sam's lifelong financial problems.
[URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Sammy_Davis_1956.jpg"][IMG]http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/7c/Sammy_Davis_1956.jpg/180px-Sammy_Davis_1956.jpg[/URL] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Sammy_Davis_1956.jpg
Sammy Davis, Jr. performing at a National Urban League benefit at Birdland, photo by Carl Van Vechten, June 10, 1956



Mastin and his father had shielded him from racism. Snubs were explained as jealousy. But during World War II, Davis served in the United States Army, where he was first confronted by strong racial prejudice, and was even beaten by white soldiers on several occasions. As he said later, "Overnight the world looked different. It wasn't one color anymore. I could see the protection I'd gotten all my life from my father and Will. I appreciated their loving hope that I'd never need to know about prejudice and hate, but they were wrong. It was as if I'd walked through a swinging door for eighteen years, a door which they had always secretly held open."
While in the service, however, he joined an entertainment unit, and found that the spotlight removed some of the prejudice. "My talent was the weapon, the power, the way for me to fight. It was the one way I might hope to affect a man's thinking," he said.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Davis_Wilkins_Civil_Rights_March_1963.jpg
Sammy Davis, Jr. (left) with Roy Wilkins (right) at the 1963 Civil Rights March on Washington, D.C.



After he was discharged, he rejoined the dance act and began to achieve success on his own as he was singled out for praise by critics. The next year, he released his second album. The next move in his growing career was to appear in the Broadway show Mr. Wonderful in 1956.
In 1959 he became a charter member of the Rat Pack, which was led by his old friend Frank Sinatra, and included such fellow performers as Dean Martin, Joey Bishop, Peter Lawford, and Shirley Maclaine. Initially, Sinatra called the gathering of fast-living friends "the Clan," but Sam voiced his opposition, saying that it invoked thoughts about the Ku Klux Klan, and Sinatra renamed the group "the Summit"...but nevertheless, the media kept on calling it the Rat Pack all along.
Davis was a headliner at The Frontier Casino in Las Vegas for many years, yet was required to accept accommodations in a rooming house on the west side of the city, rather than reside with his peers in the hotels, as were all black performers in the 1950s. For example, no stage dressing rooms were provided for black performers, so they were required to wait outside by the swimming pool between acts.
After he achieved superstar success, Davis refused to work at venues which would practice racial segregation. His demands eventually led to the integration of Miami Beach nightclubs and Las Vegas, Nevada casinos. Davis was particularly proud of this accomplishment; during his early years in Vegas, he and other Negro artists like Nat King Cole and Count Basie could entertain on the stage, but often could not reside at the hotels they performed at, and most definitely could not gamble in the casinos or go to the hotel restaurants and bars.
In Japan, Davis appeared in television commercials for coffee, and in the U.S. he joined Sinatra and Martin in a radio commercial for a Chicago car dealership.
While in the service, however, he joined an entertainment unit, and found that the spotlight removed some of the prejudice. "My talent was the weapon, the power, the way for me to fight. It was the one way I might hope to affect a man's thinking," he said.

Although James Brown would claim the title of "Hardest Working Man in Show Business," the argument could be made that Sammy Davis, Jr. deserved it more. For example, in 1964 he was starring in a Broadway musical at night, shooting his own New York-based afternoon talk show during the day, and when he could get a day off from the theater, he would either be in the studio recording new songs, or else performing live, often at charity benefits as far away as Miami, Chicago and Las Vegas, or doing television variety specials in Los Angeles. Even at the time, Sam knew he was cheating his family of his company, but he couldn't help himself; as he later said, he was incapable of standing still.
But even as his success grew, his vices grew as well. Already a prodigious drinker who would often party until dawn with Sinatra, Davis eventually grew addicted to narcotics as well (for several years, his cocaine abuse was so bad, longtime friend Sinatra, who despised drug users, completely cut Sam out of his life. They reconciled when Davis quit doing drugs). As a celebrity, he found plenty of women anxious to sleep with him, and Davis would often organize orgies in his hotel rooms on tours. He also was a chain smoker (his Rat Pack nickname was "Smokey"), which would lead to the illnesses which ultimately claimed his life.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Davis_Nixon_1973.jpg
Sammy Davis, Jr. in the Oval Office with President Richard Nixon, March 4, 1973



Davis was one of the first male celebrities to admit to watching television soap operas, particularly the shows produced by the American Broadcasting Company. This admission led to him making a cameo appearance on General Hospital and playing the recurring character Chip Warren on One Life to Live for which he received a Daytime Emmy nomination in 1980.
Although Davis was a voting Democrat and a prominent civil rights advocate, he had felt a distinct lack of respect from the John F. Kennedy White House, including being removed from the bill of the inaugural party hosted by Sinatra for the new President because of Davis's recent controversial marriage to Britt. By the early 1970s, Davis (in)famously supported Republican President Richard M. Nixon, and was widely criticized by the black community for his stance (which included giving the startled President a warm hug on live TV).
Although still a huge draw in Las Vegas, Davis's musical career had sputtered out by the latter years of the 1960s. An attempt to update his sound and reconnect with younger people resulted in some embarrassing "hip" musical efforts with the Motown record label. But then, even as his career seemed at its nadir, Sammy had an unexpected worldwide smash hit with "Candy Man". Although he didn't particularly care for the song, and he was chagrined that he was now best known for it, Davis made the most of his new opportunity and revitalized his career. Although he enjoyed no more Top 40 hits, he remained a successful live act beyond Vegas for the remainder of his career, and he would occasionally land television and film parts, including highly successful visits (playing himself) to the "All in the Family" series.
Near the end of his life when accepting a reward from the black community in a televised event, he thanked Jesus for making it possible. The resulting furor was only quelled when Davis later said he was caught up in the moment and was not referring to his personal beliefs.
Davis died in Beverly Hills, California on May 16, 1990 (the same day as Jim Henson) of complications from throat cancer at age 64. Davis is interred in the Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California next to his father and Will Mastin.
He was honored in 2001 with a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.
Because of his past-due federal income taxes, many of his memorabilia were auctioned to pay the Internal Revenue Service.

 

[Memphis Slim]

Does anyone else think we are having a heck of a Black History month this year. We've had a Superbowl with TWO black coaches for the first time in history and last night during the Oscars it almost felt natural to have an african american man win Best Actor and a african american woman win Best Supporting Actor. We're all witness history book stuff right now.

I agree!!

 

[Memphis Slim]

What? Lena Horne was hot! Not as hot as Dorothy Dandridge, but hot nonetheless.

jag

oH NO.....

I definitely agree with you!! t: She was a hottie.

 

[jaguarr]

oH NO.....

I definitely agree with you!! t: She was a hottie.

And let's not forget Josephine Baker (even though she went batsh1t insane towards the end of her life).

jag

 

[Memphis Slim]

THE NEGRO LEAGUES

The Negro Leagues were American professional baseball leagues comprising predominantly African-American teams. The term may be used broadly to include professional black teams outside the leagues and it may be used narrowly for the seven relatively successful leagues beginning 1920 that are sometimes termed "Negro major leagues".
The first professional team, established in 1885, achieved great and lasting success as the Cuban Giants, while the first league, the National Colored Base Ball League, failed in 1887 after only two weeks due to low attendance. The Negro American League of 1951 is considered the last major league season and the last professional club, the Indianapolis Clowns, operated amusingly rather than competitively from the mid-1960s to 1980s.

Amateur Era
The first baseball game between two named black teams was held on September 28, 1860 at Elysian Fields in Hoboken, New Jersey. The Weeksville of New York beat the Colored Union Club 11–0. In 1862, a newspaper reporter looking for a game between two white teams stumbled upon a game between black teams and covered it for his paper. At the time, baseball was commonly deemed recreation around which social gatherings were held.
Immediately after the end of the American Civil War in 1865 and during the Reconstruction period that followed, a black baseball scene formed in the East and Mid-Atlantic states. Comprising mainly ex-soldiers and promoted by some well-known black officers, teams such as the Jamaica Monitor Club, Albany Bachelors, Philadelphia Excelsiors and Chicago Uniques started playing each other and any other team that would play against them.
By the end of the 1860s, the black baseball mecca was Philadelphia. Two former cricket players, James H. Francis and Francis Wood, formed the Pythians, who played in Camden, New Jersey, at the landing of the Federal Street Ferry, because it was difficult to get permits for black baseball games in the city. Octavius Catto, the promoter of the Pythians, decided to apply for membership in the National Association of Base Ball Players, normally a matter of sending delegates to the annual convention; beyond that, a formality. But at the December 1867 convention, the Association passed a resolution that excluded "any club which may be composed of one or more colored players."[1] In some ways Blackball thrived under segregation, with the few black teams of the day playing not only each other but white teams as well.
Catto was murdered by a white man four years later, while leaving the Institute for Colored Youth (October 10, 1871). With his death came the death of the best Negro team of the time.

With the formation of the National Association of Professional Base Ball Players in 1871, the professional game dominated baseball. The first known professional black baseball player was Bud Fowler, who appeared in a handful of games as a pitcher for the Lynn, Massachusetts club in the 1878 International Association. In 1879, William Edward White, a Brown University player, may have become the first African-American to play in the major leagues when he appeared in one game for the Providence Grays of the National League. In 1884, two African-American players, Moses Fleetwood Walker and his brother Welday Walker, attained big league status when their club, the Toledo Blue Stockings, joined the American Association. Fleet Walker lasted until mid-season when an injury gave the team an excuse to release him; his brother only played a few games. Then in 1886 second baseman Frank Grant joined the Buffalo Bisons of the International League, the strongest minor league, and hit .340, third highest in the league. Several other African-American players joined the International League the following season, including pitchers George Stovey and Robert Higgins, but 1888 was the last season in which blacks were allowed in a minor league of that level.
The first black professional baseball team was formed in 1885 when the Babylon Black Panthers, formed by waiters and porters from the Argyle Hotel in Babylon, New York were spotted by a white businessman from Trenton, New Jersey, Walter Cook. Cook renamed them the Cuban Giants so that he could attract more white fans. Shortly after the Giants' formation, the Jacksonville, Florida newspaper, the Leader, assembled the first Negro League, the Southern League of Base Ballists. The Southern League was comprised of ten teams: the Memphis Eclipse, the Georgia Champions of Atlanta, the Savannah Broads, the Memphis Eurekas, the Savannah Lafayettes, the Charleston Fultons, the Jacksonville Athletics, the New Orleans Unions, the Florida Clippers of Jacksonville and the Jacksonville Macedonias. The league played its first game on June 7 between the Eclipse and the Unions in New Orleans, Louisiana. Soon deep in debt, the league lasted only one year.
The success of the Cubans led to the creation of the second Negro League in 1887, the National Colored Base Ball League. It was founded with nine teams: Boston Resolutes; New York Gorham; Philadelphia Pythians; Washington Capital Cities; Pittsburgh Keystones; Norfolk Red Stockings; Cincinnati Crowns; Lord Baltimores and the Louisville Fall Cities. NCBBL President Walter S. Brown, a black Baltimore businessman, applied for and was granted official minor league status and thus "protection" under the major league-led National Agreement. This move prevented any team in organized baseball from signing any of the NCBBL players, which also locked the players to their particular teams within the league. The reserve clause would have tied the players to their clubs from season to season but the NCBBL failed. One month into the season, the Resolutes folded. A week later, only three teams were left.[citation needed]
Because the original Cuban Giants were a popular and business success, many similarly named teams came into existence — including the Genuine Cuban Giants (the renamed Cuban Giants), the Royal Giants of Brooklyn, the Baltimore Giants and the Cuban X-Giants, the latter a powerhouse in the early 1900s. Except for the New York Cuban Stars and the Havana Giants, the "Cuban" teams were all composed of African Americans rather than Cubans; the purpose was to increase their acceptance with white patrons as Cuba was on very friendly terms with the US during those years.
The few players on the white minor league teams were constantly dodging verbal and physical abuse from both competitors and fans. Then President Rutherford B. Hayes signed the Compromise of 1877, and all the legal obstacles were removed from the South's enacting the Jim Crow laws. To make matters worse, on July 14, 1887, Cap Anson's Chicago White Stockings were scheduled to play the Newark Giants of the International League, which had Fleet Walker and George Stovey on its roster. After Anson marched his team onto the field, military style as was his custom, he demanded that the blacks not play. Newark capitulated, and later that same day, league owners voted to refuse future contracts to blacks, citing the "hazards" imposed by such athletes. The American Association and National League quickly followed suit.
In 1888, the Middle States League was formed and it admitted two all-black teams to its otherwise all-white league, the Cuban Giants and their arch-rivals, the New York Gorhams. Despite the animosity between the two clubs, they managed to form a traveling team, the Colored All Americans. This enabled them to make money barnstorming while fulfilling their league obligations. In 1890, the Giants returned to their independent, barnstorming identity, and by 1892, they were the only black team in the East still in operation on a full-time basis.



Octavius Catto, black baseball pioneer



Moses Fleetwood Walker, possibly the first African American major league baseball player

 

[Memphis Slim]

Related?????

 

[Wilhelm-Scream]

Okay, We're comin' up on the end of February.
Come March I don't wanna hear another god damned WORD about BLACK People!

 

[Memphis Slim]

Okay, We're comin' up on the end of February.
Come March I don't wanna hear another god damned WORD about BLACK People!

I don't know.......I'm feeling pretty energized......t:

 

[BRUTAL]

MS is racist

 

[Darthphere]

And a bigot.

 

[Erzengel]

Okay, We're comin' up on the end of February.
Come March I don't wanna hear another god damned WORD about BLACK People!

March is Woman's History Month.

I'm starting a thread.

 

[Memphis Slim]

March is Woman's History Month.

I'm starting a thread.

Great! Can't wait to learn from it.

 

[Tangled Web]

Does anyone else think we are having a heck of a Black History month this year. We've had a Superbowl with TWO black coaches for the first time in history and last night during the Oscars it almost felt natural to have an african american man win Best Actor and a african american woman win Best Supporting Actor. We're all witness history book stuff right now.

That happens like every year now.