The Arts
b. Chicago. She studied anthropology at the Univ. of Chicago, where she began her studies on dances of the Caribbean. In addition to teaching anthropology, from the late 1930s until the 1960s, she directed her own dance company, which toured the United States and Europe. Her choreography combines Caribbean and African movements and rhythms with those of modern dance.
In 1965, she accepted a position as adviser to the cultural ministry of Senegal. In 1967, she became director of the Performing Arts Training Center at the East St. Louis branch of Southern Illinois Univ., where she works with youth groups. Through her choreography, teaching, and appearances in different media, she brought African dance to the attention of the public and exerted tremendous influence on the evolution of modern dance. Her works include Chorus and Bal Negre. She also choreographed the film Cabin in the Sky (1940) and Aida (1963) at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City.
The Arts
Cabell Calloway III (December 25, 1907 – November 18, 1994) was an American jazz singer and bandleader. He was a regular performer at the Cotton Club in Harlem, where he became a popular vocalist of the swing era. His niche of mixing jazz and vaudeville won him acclaim during a career that spanned over 65 years.
Calloway was a master of energetic scat singing and led one of the most popular dance bands in the United States from the early 1930s to the late 1940s. His band included trumpeters Dizzy Gillespie, Jonah Jones, and Adolphus “Doc” Cheatham, saxophonists Ben Webster and Leon “Chu” Berry, guitarist Danny Barker, bassist Milt Hinton, and drummer Cozy Cole.
Calloway had several hit records in the 1930s and 1940s, becoming the first African-American musician to sell one million copies of a record. He became known as the “Hi-de-ho” man of jazz for his most famous song, “Minnie the Moocher”, originally recorded in 1931. He reached the Billboard charts in five consecutive decades (1930s–1970s). Calloway also made several stage, film, and television appearances until his death in 1994 at the age of 86. He had roles in Stormy Weather (1943), Porgy and Bess (1953), The Cincinnati Kid (1965), and Hello Dolly! (1967). His career enjoyed a marked resurgence from his appearance in the 1980 film The Blues Brothers.
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Entertainment
Nathaniel Adams Coles (March 17, 1919 – February 15, 1965), known professionally by his stage name Nat King Cole, was an American singer, jazz pianist, and actor. Cole’s career as a jazz and pop vocalist started in the late 1930s and spanned almost three decades where he found success and recorded over 100 songs that became hits on the pop charts.
Cole started his career as a jazz pianist in the late 1930s, when he formed The King Cole Trio, which became the top-selling group (and the only black act) on Capitol Records in the 1940s. Cole’s trio was the model for small jazz ensembles that followed. Starting in 1950, he transitioned to become a solo singer billed as Nat King Cole. Despite achieving mainstream success, Cole faced intense racial discrimination during his career. While not a major vocal public figure in the civil rights movement, Cole was a member of his local NAACP branch and participated in the 1963 March on Washington. He regularly performed for civil rights organizations. From 1956 to 1957, Cole hosted the NBC variety series The Nat King Cole Show, which became the first nationally broadcast television show hosted by an African American.
Some of Cole’s most notable singles include “Unforgettable”, “Smile”, “L-O-V-E”, “Nature Boy”, “When I Fall in Love”, “Let There Be Love”, “Mona Lisa”, “Autumn Leaves”, “Stardust”, “Straighten Up and Fly Right”, “The Very Thought of You”, “For Sentimental Reasons”, “Embraceable You” and “Almost Like Being in Love”. His 1960 Christmas album The Magic of Christmas (also known as The Christmas Song), is the best-selling Christmas album released in the 1960s; and was ranked as one of the 40 essential Christmas albums (2019) by Rolling Stone. In 2022, Cole’s recording of “The Christmas Song”, broke the record for the longest journey to the top ten on the Billboard Hot 100, when it peaked at number nine, 62 years after it debuted on the chart; and was selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the United States National Recording Registry. NPR named him one of the 50 Great Voices. Cole received numerous accolades including a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame (1960) and a Special Achievement Golden Globe Award. Posthumously, Cole has received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award (1990), along with the Sammy Cahn Lifetime Achievement Award (1992) and has been inducted into the Downbeat Jazz Hall of Fame (1997), Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (2000), and the National Rhythm & Blues Hall of Fame (2020).
Cole was the father of singer Natalie Cole (1950–2015), who covered her father’s songs in the 1991 album Unforgettable… with Love.
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Abolition
Archibald Henry Grimké (August 17, 1849 – February 25, 1930) was an African-American lawyer, intellectual, journalist, diplomat and community leader in the 19th and early 20th centuries. He graduated from freedmen’s schools, Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, and Harvard Law School, and served as American Consul to the Dominican Republic from 1894 to 1898. He was an activist for the rights of Black Americans, working in Boston and Washington, D.C. He was a national vice-president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), as well as president of its Washington, D.C. chapter.
Grimké was born into slavery on his father’s plantation near Charleston, South Carolina, in 1849.[2] He was the eldest of three sons of Henry W. Grimké, a widower, and Nancy Weston, a very intelligent enslaved woman, crippled in one arm, who had been born into slavery as the daughter of an enslaved African or African-American woman; her father is unknown.[3]: 238 Henry acknowledged his sons, although he neither freed them nor told the rest of his family of their existence. Archibald’s brothers were Francis and John. Henry was a member of a prominent, sizeable family of enslavers in Charleston. His father and relatives were planters active in political and social circles.
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Government
Hatcher was elected mayor of Gary, Ind., in 1967, and he remained in office for the next 20 years. A Democrat, he was one of the first blacks to serve as mayor of a major U.S. city. Hatcher was also a longtime friend and advisor to the Rev. Jesse Jackson. He served as Jackson’s campaign chairman in the 1984 presidential race and as an advisor in the 1988 race.
Hatcher attended Indiana University, receiving his BS in 1956. He subsequently earned a law degree at Valparaiso University in 1959. He moved to Gary and began practicing law in East Chicago, Ind. He served as a deputy prosecutor for Lake County, Ind., from 1961 to 1963, when he was elected to Gary’s city council. After having served as mayor of Gary for five terms, he was defeated in a bid for a sixth term in the 1987 Democratic primary. Hatcher started his own consulting firm, R. Gordon Hatcher & Associates, in 1988, and he began teaching law at Valparaiso University in 1989. He ran again for mayor of Gary in 1991 but was defeated in the primary.
