Dates:  May 13, 1914 -- April 12, 1981

Also Known As: Joe Louis Barrow (born as), Joe Louis, the Brown Bomber 

Humble Beginnings

Joe Louis Barrow, the seventh of eight children, was born on May 13, 1914, to rural Lafayette, Alabama sharecroppers Munroe and Lillie Barrow.

Robert Smalls and 12 fellow Afro-American seamen captured the Planter, a cotton steamer converted into a Confederate battleship. Smalls piloted the gunboat into

Union lines and presented the ship to the U.S. Navy at Charleston Harbor. Smalls was promoted to Captain during the Civil War

In Fayette, Mississippi on May 13,1969; James Charles Evers (1922-) was elected the first black mayor of a racially mixed Mississippi town. In June 1971, he became the first black in this century to seek the governors office.

Songs like Isnt She Lovely, Superstition and You Are the Sunshine of My Life won Stevie Wonder more than 20 Grammy Awards and made him one of the most popular rhythm and blues musicians of the 1960s and 1970s. Wonder grew up in Detroit, singing in church choirs and listening to early Motown music. In 1961 he was discovered and signed by Berry Gordy to a Motown contract himself, taking the stage name of Little Stevie Wonder. (Wonders blindness led to inevitable comparisons with Ray Charles, at the time an R&B superstar.) Wonder went from wunderkind to groovy young man in the late 1960s, turning out cheerful and romantic pop hits along with protest songs about Vietnam and race relations while experimenting with funky, Moog-driven electronic sounds. From 1972-76 he released five albums that are regarded as his masterworks: Music of My Mind (1972), Talking Book (1972), Innervisions (1973), Fulfillingness First Finale (1974) and Songs in the Key of Life (1976). In the 1980s he reached elder statesman status, winning an Oscar for the pop tune I Just Called to Say I Love You (from the Gene Wilder movie The Woman in Red). He also emerged as a steady advocate for making the birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr. a national holiday. (It became one in 1986.) Wonders 2005 album A Time To Love won him six more Grammy nominations, and he win for Best Male Pop Vocal Performance (From the Bottom of My Heart). His other albums include The 12 Year Old Genius (his first album, 1963), For Once In My Life (1968), and the retrospective Original Musiquarium (1982). He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1989.

Stevie Wonder co-wrote the music for the tune “The Tears of a Clown,” a #1 single for Smokey Robinson and The Miracles in 1970… Wonder’s birth name is the source of some confusion. His official site lists his birth name as Steveland Morris, but most sources agree his birth name was Steveland Judkins or Steveland Hardaway Judkins (his parents were Lula Hardaway and Calvin Judkins). Other sources spell

Robertson Payton was born on May 13, 1925, in Norfolk, Virginia, to Bertha M.

Occupation(s)

Stevland Hardaway Morris (born Stevland Hardaway Judkins; May 13, 1950),[1] known by his stage name Stevie Wonder, is an American musician, singer, songwriter, record producer, and multi-instrumentalist.

In the second notable appointment of an Australian Aborigine, the 69-year-old pastor Sir Douglas Nicholls, has been chosen as the Governor of South Australia.

Singer Stevie Wonder born Steveland Judkins in Saginaw,Michigan.

May 13, 1950

April 1, 2011 (aged 60)

(William) Manning Marable, (born May 13, 1950, Dayton, Ohio—died April 1, 2011, New York, N.

Nathaniel Wells, a former slave, plantation owner, and businessman who lived during the 18th and 19th centuries, was also the first person of African ancestry to become a High Sheriff in England. Wells was born on September 10, 1779 on the island of St. Kitts in the Caribbean to William Wells, a wealthy merchant and plantation owner, and one of his lovers, a slave known only as Juggy.  William’s European wife had died shortly after his arrival in the West Indies and although he never married any of his slaves, it is recorded that he had relationships with several. Records show that he treated the women with whom he had relationships and his children well. Nathaniel was the oldest of at least six children all by various different mothers.

In 1783 William Wells freed his son and later sent him to school in England with aspirations that he might attend Oxford University. When his father died however, Wells inherited his lands and property, including the slaves, and chose not to attend university. In 1803 Wells moved to Bath, England and later purchased a plot of land (2,200 acres) near Chepstow.

Wells became active in local society. He became a Church Warden of St. Arvan’s Church and a Justice of the Peace. Most notably Wells became a Deputy Lieutenant of the County of Monmouthshire and was appointed High Sherriff of Monmouthshire in 1818, a position in which he served until 1830.

In 1820 Wells was commissioned as a lieutenant in the Chepstow Troop of the Gloucestershire Yeomanry Cavalry. His commission makes him the second man of African ancestry to hold a commission in the armed forces of the Crown. During his military service Wells took part in the breaking of the picket lines during the coal miner’s strikes in Wales in 1822. At the end of 1822, after the striking miners and iron workers had been broken by force, Wells resigned his commission.

In 1833 when slavery was abolished throughout the British Empire, Wells, along with many other plantation owners, illegally retained his slaves. The slave owners were

Joe Louis , byname of Joseph Louis Barrow, also called the Brown Bomber (born May 13, 1914, Lafayette, Alabama, U.

Robert Smalls was born in Beaufort, South Carolina, on April 5, 1839 and worked as a house slave until the age of 12. At that point his owner, John K. McKee, sent him to Charleston to work as a waiter, ship rigger, and sailor, with all earnings going to McKee. This arrangement continued until Smalls was 18 when he negotiated to keep all but $15 of his monthly pay, a deal which allowed Smalls to begin saving money. The savings that he accumulated were later used to purchase his wife and daughter from their owner for a sum of $800. Their son was born a few years later.

In 1861 Smalls was hired as a deckhand on the Confederate transport steamer Planter captained by General Roswell Ripley, the commander of the Second Military District of South Carolina. The Planter was assigned the job of delivering armaments to the Confederate forts. On May 13, 1862, the crew of the Planter went ashore for the evening, leaving Smalls to guard the ship and its contents. Smalls loaded the ship with his wife, children and 12 other slaves from the city and sailed it to the area of the harbor where Union ships had formed their blockade. This trip led the ship past five forts, all of which required the correct whistle signal to indicate they were a Confederate ship.  Smalls eventually presented the Planter before Onward, a Union blockade ship and raised the white flag of surrender.  He later turned over all charts, a Confederate naval code book, and armaments, as well as the Planter itself, over to the Union Navy.

Smalls’s feat is partly credited with persuading a reluctant President Abraham Lincoln to now consider allowing African Americans into the Union Army.  Smalls went on a speaking tour across the North to describe the episode and to recruit black soldiers for the war effort.  By late 1863 he returned to the war zone to pilot the Planter, now a Union war vessel.  In December 1863 he was promoted to Captain of the vessel, becoming the first African American to hold that rank in the history of the United States Navy.    

After

Cyrus McCormick , in full Cyrus Hall McCormick (born February 15, 1809, Rockbridge county, Virginia, U.S.—died May 13, 1884, Chicago, Illinois), American industrialist and inventor who is generally credited with the development (from 1831) of the mechanical reaper.

McCormick was the eldest son of Robert McCormick—a farmer, blacksmith, and inventor. McCormick’s education, in local schools, was limited. Reserved, determined, and serious-minded, he spent all of his time in his father’s workshop.

The elder McCormick had invented several practical farm implements but, like other inventors in the United States and England, had failed in his attempt to build a successful reaping machine. In 1831 Cyrus, aged 22, tried his hand at building a reaper. Resembling a two-wheeled, horse-drawn chariot, the machine consisted of a vibrating cutting blade, a reel to bring the grain within its reach, and a platform to receive the falling grain. The reaper embodied the principles essential to all subsequent grain-cutting machines.

For farmers in the early 19th century, harvesting required a large number of labourers, and, if they could be found, the cost of hiring them was high. When McCormick’s reaper was tested on a neighbour’s farm in 1831, it offered the hope that the yield of the farmer’s fields would soon not be limited to the amount of labour available. The machine had defects, not the least of which was a clatter so loud that slaves were required to walk alongside to calm the frightened horses.

McCormick took out a patent in 1834, but his chief interest at that time was the family’s iron foundry. When the foundry failed in the wake of the bank panic of 1837, leaving the family deeply in debt, McCormick turned to his still-unexploited reaper and improved it. He sold 2 reapers in 1841, 7 in 1842, 29 in 1843, and 50 the following year.

An 1844 visit to the prairie states in the Midwest convinced McCormick that the future of his reaper and of the world’s wheat production lay in this vast fertile land rather than in the rocky,

An activist, politician, and leader of her community, Sharon Sayles Belton was the first African American and first woman mayor of the city of Minneapolis, Minnesota. A St. Paul native, Belton was born on May 13, 1951.  For most of her life she fought for racial equality, women, family and child care issues, youth development and neighborhood development.

Belton, one of four daughters of Bill and Marian Sayles, moved to Minneapolis to live with her father after her parents’ separation. In Minneapolis, Belton attended Central High School and volunteered at Mt. Sinai Hospital in her spare time but eventually accepted a paid position at the hospital as a nurse’s aide.  Belton received her Bachelor of Science in biology from Macalester College in 1973 and developed plans to become a pediatrician.

Those plans were jettisoned when she began working as a parole officer for sexual assault offenders. Her work prompted her to call for tougher penalties for sexual predators. In 1978 Belton co-founded the Harriet Tubman Shelter for Battered Women in Minneapolis. She also got involved in community crime prevention programs and worked to reduce community-police tensions.  

Belton, by this point an activist in the Minnesota Democratic Farmer-Labor (DFL) Party, was elected in 1983 to the Minneapolis City Council where she represented the 8th Ward.  The following year she was a Minnesota delegate at the Democratic National Convention in San Francisco where she witnessed the nomination of Minnesota Senator Walter Mondale for President of the United States.  In 1990 Belton was elected President of the Minneapolis City Council.  Three years later she announced her candidacy for mayor.  Belton won the election and served two terms as mayor from 1994 to 2000.  Her achievements included a 16% reduction in the city’s crime rate, and a successful campaign to revitalize downtown Minneapolis.  By the end of the 1990s Minneapolis saw its first population increase since the 1940s.  Belton was credited with reversing a fifty year economic

Rucker was born on May 13, 1966 in Charleston, South Carolina.

Dolores Ibárruri , pseudonym La Pasionaria (Spanish: “The Passionflower”) (born Dec. 9, 1895, Gallarta, near Bilbao, Spain—died Nov. 12, 1989, Madrid), Spanish Communist leader, who earned a legendary reputation as an impassioned orator during the Spanish Civil War, coining the Republican battle cry, “No pasarán! ” (“They shall not pass!”).

Born the eighth of 11 children of a Viscayan miner, Ibárruri was compelled by poverty to quit school at age 15 to work as a seamstress and later as a cook. Becoming radicalized, she published in 1918 an article in a newspaper called El Minero Vizcaino, using for the first time the pseudonym La Pasionaria. Two years later she joined the newly formed Spanish Communist Party. After a turbulent career, in which she was jailed several times for political activities, she emerged as one of the Communist deputies in the Republican parliament and, by the outbreak of the Civil War in 1936, had become a national figure. A sometimes violent radio and street orator, she made such famous exhortations as “It is better to die on your feet than to live on your knees” (July 1936).

With Francisco Franco’s victory in 1939 she escaped by plane to the Soviet Union, where over the years she represented her party at Kremlin congresses, until Santiago Carrillo succeeded her as secretary-general in 1960. Though reputed to be an old-line Stalinist, she protested the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. She returned to Spain on May 13, 1977, some 18 months after Franco’s death and 34 days after the Spanish government again legalized the Communist Party. She was reelected to her deputy seat in the Spanish parliament that year but later resigned because of ill heath. She remained honorary president of the Spanish Communist Party until her death. Throughout her career Ibárruri almost always appeared dressed in black.

She married Julián Ruiz in 1915 and separated from him in the 1930s. Only two of her six children survived childhood; a son, Rubén, was killed at Stalingrad as an officer in the Red

Jim Jones , byname of James Warren Jones (born May 13, 1931, Crete, near Lynn, Indiana, U.

Joseph Louis Barrow (Joe Louis) was born on this day.

Elton Clay Fax, a prolific African-American cartoonist, author, and illustrator, was born on October 9, 1909, in Baltimore, Maryland. His parents were Mark Oakland Fax, a clerk, and Willie Estelle Fax, a seamstress. Elton’s younger brother, Mark, was a music prodigy who worked as a composer later in life. Elton attended Claflin College, a historically black college in South Carolina and then transferred to Syracuse University in New York where he earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) degree in 1931. In 1929 he married Grace Elizabeth Turner, with whom he had three children.

In 1935 Fax returned to Claflin College to teach art. After one year, he left Claflin and began teaching with the federal government’s Works Progress Administration (WPA) in New York City until 1940, at which point he became a freelancer. Fax’s work gathered attention at several art showings, including a 1932 solo exhibition in Baltimore where two nude paintings stirred controversy; the Baltimore Art Museum in 1939; and the 1940 American Negro Exposition in Chicago, Illinois.

Several black newspapers ran Susabelle, Fax’s popular newspaper comic strip, starting in 1942. From 1949, Fax spent seven years delivering “chalk-talks,” stories accompanied by live illustrations. Fax and his family frequently traveled, living in Mexico from 1953 to 1956 and later visiting South America. During the following decades, Fax’s travels took him around the world, particularly to Africa. In his visits to African nations, he delivered his famous “chalk-talks,” often on the topic of the American civil rights struggle.

Throughout his career, Fax illustrated over thirty books and numerous magazine articles. He wrote extensively on black culture as well, publishing several books and regularly contributing essays to a variety of magazines and newspapers. West African Vignettes (1960), his first book, detailed his African travels; later, he wrote Through Black Eyes (1974) about his journeys in East Africa and the Soviet Union. Other notable books include Garvey

Stevie Wonder is an internationally renowned singer, song writer and musician. He was born on May 13, 1950, in Saginaw, Michigan. His birth name was Steveland Hardaway Judkins and as a result of being born premature, he was kept in the incubator where an over exposure to oxygen caused him to lose his eyesight. The family moved to Detroit when Stevie was 4 years old. He was interested in music from an early age and taught himself to play several instruments, including the harmonica, piano, drums, keyboards, bass guitar and bongos, a few of them even before the age of 10. He also sang in his local church choir in Detroit.

Stevie was nothing short of a child prodigy, and at the age of 11, he was discovered by a Motown artist named Ronnie White. White arranged for Stevie to audition for Berry Gordy, the founder of Motown Records. Gordy was duly impressed, offered Stevie a recording contract and changed his stage name to “Little Stevie Wonder”. He released his first album titled “12 Year Old Genius” in 1962. The song “Fingertips” was the biggest hit on this album. Over the next few years, Stevie studied classical piano and worked on improving his songwriting skills. He was a dedicated and successful artist, not solely due to his natural musical talent but also because of his dedication to his work.

As Stevie grew older and reached his twenties, he overhauled his music and his image by dropping the “Little” from his name and then re-negotiated his contract with Motown. The new contract gave him a much larger degree of control over his records and also greatly enhanced the royalty rate he received. This was a very unusual move for Gordy but he was sure that Stevie needed this independence in order to work. Sure enough, the 1970s brought him unprecedented success. He released one hit album after the other, including  “Talking Book” in 1972, “Innervisions” in 1973, “Fulfillingness’ First Finale” in 1974 and “Songs in the Key of Life” in 1976. Just this decade alone earned him 15 Grammy Awards.

The 1980s was also a

Two white regiments and a Black regiment, the Sixty-second U.S.C.T., fought the last action of the civil war at Whites Ranch, Texas.