Black History, Entertainment
Redd Foxx
1922-1991. Born John Elroy Sanford in St. Louis, Missouri, Foxx made his mark in the TV smash Sanford and Son (1972?77) after many years of odd jobs and short stretches on the night club circuit, including a kitchen job with Malcolm Little who would later be known as Malcolm X.
Foxx hit it big in Las Vegas in 1968, but didn’t make the celluloid jump until the 1970 film Cotton Comes to Harlem. The role brought him to the attention of producers Bud Yorkin and Norman Lear who decided to cast Foxx in Sanford and Son, his first major success. The show was followed by others, including The Redd Foxx Comedy Hour (1977-78) and the Redd Foxx Show (1986).
He later co-edited The Redd Foxx Encyclopedia of Black Humor (1977).
Black History, Entertainment
Lillian Evans Evanti
Lillian Evans Evanti (1890-1967) was the first African American to sing opera with an organized company in Europe.
In 1941 she founded the National Negro Opera.
She was born in Washington, D.C., and graduated from Armstrong Manual Training School.
She graduated from Howard University with a Bachelor’s Degree in music and studied in France and Italy. Evanti, a soprano, sang at the Belasco Theater in 1926 with Marian Anderson.
She debuted in 1927 in Delibes’s Lakmé at Nice, France. As an opera singer and concert artist, she toured throughout Europe and South America.
- In 1943, she performed with the Watergate Theater barge on the Potomac River. In 1944, she appeared at The Town Hall (New York City). She received acclaim as Violetta in Verdi’s La traviata as produced by the National Negro Opera Company in 1945.
- In 1963, she walked with her friend Alma Thomas in the March on Washington.
Black History, Civil Rights, Entertainment
Ruby Dee
Ruby Dee’s acting career has spanned more than fifty years and has included theater, radio, television, and movies. She has also been active in the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), and the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE).
Ruby Dee was born Ruby Ann Wallace on October 27, 1924, in Cleveland, Ohio. Her parents, Marshall and Emma Wallace, moved the family to Harlem in New York City when Dee was just a baby. In the evening Dee, her two sisters, and her brother read aloud to each other from the poetry of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882), William Wordsworth (1770–1850), and Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872–1906). As a teenager Dee submitted poetry to the New York Amsterdam News, a black weekly newspaper. Later in life, Dee admitted that during those years she was a shy girl but that she always felt a burning desire to express herself. (more…)
Entertainment
Hattie McDaniel (June 10, 1893 – October 26, 1952) was an American actress, singer-songwriter, and comedienne. For her role as Mammy in Gone with the Wind (1939), she won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, becoming the first African American to win an Oscar. She has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, was inducted into the Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame in 1975, and in 2006 became the first black Oscar winner honored with a U.S. postage stamp. In 2010, she was inducted into the Colorado Women’s Hall of Fame.
In addition to acting, McDaniel recorded 16 blues sides between 1926 and 1929 and was a radio performer and television personality; she was the first black woman to sing on radio in the United States. Although she appeared in more than 300 films, she received on-screen credits for only 83. Her best known other major films are Alice Adams, In This Our Life, Since You Went Away, and Song of the South.
McDaniel experienced racism and racial segregation throughout her career, and as a result, she was unable to attend the premiere of Gone with the Wind in Atlanta because it was held in a whites-only theater. At the Oscars ceremony in Los Angeles, she sat at a segregated table at the side of the room. In 1952, McDaniel died of breast cancer. Her final wish, to be buried in Hollywood Cemetery, was denied because at the time of her death, the graveyard was reserved for whites only.
Entertainment
Junior Wells (born Amos Wells Blakemore Jr.; December 9, 1934 – January 15, 1998) was an American singer, harmonica player, and recording artist. He is best known for his signature song “Messin’ with the Kid” and his 1965 album Hoodoo Man Blues, described by the critic Bill Dahl as “one of the truly classic blues albums of the 1960s”. Wells himself categorized his music as rhythm and blues.
Wells performed and recorded with various notable blues musicians, including Muddy Waters, Earl Hooker, and Buddy Guy.[3] He remained a fixture on the blues scene throughout his career and also crossed over to rock audiences while touring with the Rolling Stones.[4] Not long before Wells died, the blues historian Gerard Herzhaft called him “one of the rare active survivors of the ‘golden age of the blues'”.
Read more of this article on Wikipedia.
Entertainment
The Chalk Line Walk as it was originally known became popular around 1850 in the Southern Plantations. It originated in Florida by the African-American slaves who got the basic idea from the Seminole Indians (couples walking solemnly). Many of the special movements of the cake-walk, the bending back of the body, and the dropping of the hands at the wrists, amongst others, were a distinct feature in certain tribes of the African Kaffir dances. The Breakdown and Walk Around a Minstrel parody later to be named the Cakewalk was one of the main sources of the Chalk Line Walk.These “Walkers” as they were called, would walk a straight line and balance buckets of water on their heads. Over time the dance evolved into a exaggerated parody of the white, upper class ballroom figures who would imitate the mannerisms of the “Big House” (masters house) with such dignified walking, bowing low, waving canes, doffing hats, and high kicking grand promenade.
By the 1890’s, the Cakewalk was the hottest thing around and Charles Johnson & Dora Dean are said to have introduced the Cakewalk in 1893. However in 1889 The Creole Show would feature the Cakewalk and in 1892 the first Cakewalk contest was held in a New York ballroom). Williams and Walker Inspired a Cakewalk in the play “Clorindy” origin of the Cakewalk. The Cakewalk sheet music would also list the March and Two-Step as dance options to the song so white audiences would be interested in buying it even if they did not know the Cakewalk. It was first introduced upon the Broadway stage by Dave Genaro.
The Idea of the Cakewalk was that of a couple promenading in a dignified manner, high stepping and kicking, mimicking high society. Some of the better plantation owners would bake a cake on Sundays and invite the neighbors over and have a contest of the slaves, different prizes were given but originally it was a cake and whoever won would get the cake…thus the term “That Takes The Cake!” and the name “Cakewalk” was now set. The Minstrel shows of the time would paint their faces black and at the end of the show would do a “Grand Finale,” which often times was the Cakewalk.
The competition dancers were called “Walkers” and these dance contests grew very big, such as the National Cakewalk Jubilee in New York City as well as others, where the champions would receive gold belts and diamond rings.
There were two categories of contests:
1) the “Grand Straight Cakewalk” ( regular type) and
2) the “Fancy Cakewalk”, (Dressed up type)
the doors would open at 7:00p.m., contest at 11:00p.m., and dancing would continue till 5:00am. These Cakewalk dance contests eventually would be held in big cities as Tin-Pan Alley would make a fortune off of the dance and the Rag- time music they would produce.
The Cakewalk was the first American dance to cross over from black to white society as well as from the stage (Minstrel shows) to ballroom. The Cakewalk would be the window for other African-American dances to enter white society in the future. The Cakewalk eventually died in the 1920’s, but there were still traces of the Cakewalk in the newer, more modern forms of dance, even the Lindy hop had the Apache and the Cakewalk thrown in as can be seen in the “Shorty George” video clip in “At The Jazz Band Ball” Video.
