Miles Davis, U.S. jazz trumpeter and composer, born.

Octavia Spencer , in full Octavia Lenora Spencer (born May 25, 1970, Montgomery, Alabama, U.S.), American actress who was known for her numerous small, generally comic roles before she shot to stardom as one of the lead characters in the film The Help (2011). Spencer won an Academy Award, a Golden Globe Award, and a BAFTA award for her performance as an outspoken domestic servant in Mississippi during the early 1960s.

Spencer was one of seven children, and she grew up in Montgomery, Alabama. She had an interest in acting from childhood, but she considered it to be an impractical career choice. She earned (1994) a bachelor’s degree in English from Auburn University and then worked in local casting for films that were shot in Alabama. Spencer auditioned for one of those movies, the thriller A Time to Kill (1996), and she was given a small speaking role that launched her acting career. She was cast in the minor comedies The Sixth Man and Sparkler in 1997 and played guest roles on such television shows as Moesha and ER the following year. Spencer continued in that manner, often playing the part of a nurse, for the next several years, though she did gain some recognition for her appearances in the film comedies Being John Malkovich (1999), Big Momma’s House (2000), and Bad Santa (2003) and for a recurring part in 2007 on the TV show Ugly Betty.

By 2009 Spencer was known primarily as a talented comic actress with a reputation as a scene stealer. However, the director of The Help, Tate Taylor, was a close friend of both Spencer and Kathryn Stockett (who wrote the 2009 novel on which the movie was based), and both felt that Spencer was right for the part of the forthright housemaid Minny Jackson. Spencer shone in the role, and thenceforward her versatility as an actress was no longer in doubt. Her subsequent projects included a well-received performance in the controversial film Fruitvale Station (2013), leading parts in the James Brown biopic Get on Up (2014) and the family dramas Black or White (2014) and The Great

Singer Leslie Uggams, who made her singing debut with the Lawrence Welk Band, was born in New York city.

Riot at Mobile, Ala., shipyard over the upgrading of twelve Black workers.

Thomas Greene Wiggins was born May 25, 1849 to Mungo and Charity Wiggins, slaves on a Georgia plantation.

On this day, while competing for Ohio State University (Columbus) in a Western Conference (Big Ten) track-and-field meet at the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor), JAMES CLEVELAND OWENS equaled the world record for the 100-yard dash (9.4 s) and broke the world records for the 220-yard dash (20.3 s), the 220-yard low hurdles (22.6 s), and the running broad jump (8.13 m [26 feet 8 1/4 inches]).

Tap dancer Luther Robinson, best known as Bill Bojangles Robinson was born in Richmond, Virginia.

Jamaica Kincaid is the name of the criticall acclaimed novelist whose given name is Elaine Potter Richardson and who was born in St, John,s , Antigua in 1949. her novels include Lucy and The Autobiography of My Mother

Young Black woman, Jo Etha Collier, killed in Drew, Miss., by bullet fired from passing car. Three whites were arrested on May 26 and charged with the unprovoked attack.

was born on this date - he is considered by Carter Goodwin Woodson to be the first African American historian - Nell, Garrisons right-hand on The Liberator, published several treatises, the most outstanding of which was Colored Patriots of the American Revolution ... he also is acknowledged to be the first federal employee of the United States, having been employed in the Boston Post Office in 1863. He died May 25, 1874

Novelist and essayist Jamaica Kincaid was born on this day in Antigua. Ms. Kincaid will pen novels such as Annie John and Lucy.

Henry Ossawa Tanner , (born June 21, 1859, Pittsburgh, Pa., U.S.—died May 25, 1937, Paris, France), American painter who gained international acclaim for his depiction of landscapes and biblical themes.

After a childhood spent largely in Philadelphia, Tanner began an art career in earnest in 1876, painting harbour scenes, landscapes, and animals from the Philadelphia Zoo. In 1880 Tanner began two years of formal study under Thomas Eakins at Philadelphia’s prestigious Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA), where he was the only African American. In 1888 he moved to Atlanta to open a photography studio, but the venture failed. With the help of Joseph C. Hartzell, a bishop from Cincinnati, Ohio, Tanner secured a teaching position at Clark University in Atlanta. In 1890 Hartzell arranged an exhibition of Tanner’s works in Cincinnati and, when no paintings sold, Hartzell purchased the entire collection himself.

Through these earnings, Tanner traveled to Paris in 1891 to enroll at the Académie Julian. During this period he lightened his palette, favouring blues and blue-greens, and began to manipulate light and shadow for a dramatic and inspirational effect. He returned to the United States in 1893, in part to deliver a paper on African Americans and art at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. By 1894 his paintings were being exhibited at the annual Paris Salon, at which in 1896 he was awarded an honourable mention for Daniel in the Lions’ Den (1895; this version lost). The Raising of Lazarus (c. 1897), also biblical in theme, won a medal at the Paris Salon of 1897, a rare achievement for an American artist. Later that year the French government purchased the painting.

After touring the Holy Land in 1897–98, Tanner painted Nicodemus Visiting Jesus (c. 1898), which in 1900 won the PAFA’s Lippincott Prize. That same year he received a medal at the Universal Exposition in Paris. He remained an expatriate in France, routinely exhibiting in Paris as well as the United States, and winning several awards.

Winifred Sweet Black , née Winifred Sweet (born Oct. 14, 1863, Chilton, Wis., U.S.—died May 25, 1936, San Francisco, Calif.), American reporter whose sensationalist exposés and journalistic derring-do reflected the spirit of the age of yellow journalism.

Winifred Sweet grew up from 1869 on a farm near Chicago. She attended private schools in Chicago, in Lake Forest, Illinois, and in Northampton, Massachusetts, and after an unsuccessful attempt to establish herself in the theatre she turned to journalism. On a western trip on family business in 1890, she won a position as a reporter for the San Francisco Examiner, William Randolph Hearst’s first newspaper. The era of yellow journalism was just dawning, and the example of Elizabeth Seaman (whose nom de plume was Nellie Bly) had helped set the style for woman reporters. Taking the pseudonym Annie Laurie, Sweet scored a number of exposés, scoops, and circulation-building publicity stunts. A “fainting spell” on a downtown street led to an exposé of San Francisco’s receiving hospital and the purchase of a city ambulance. She secured by a ruse an exclusive interview with President Benjamin Harrison aboard his campaign train in 1892; in the same year, she investigated the leper colony on Molokai, Hawaiian Islands. She was also active in organizing various charities and public benefactions, using her column in the Examiner to mobilize public concern; among these was the California Children’s Excursion to the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893.

In 1892 she married a colleague, Orlow Black, but they were divorced five years later. In 1895 Hearst sent her to New York City to help his newly acquired New York Journal battle Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World, but she found that city uncongenial and in 1897 settled in Denver, Colorado, where she joined the staff of Harry H. Tammen and Frederick G. Bonfils’s boisterous Denver Post. She continued to contribute feature articles to Hearst’s chain as well. When Hearst launched a newspaper campaign against Mormon

Bradberry invented the Bed Rack,

Patent No. 2,320,027 on May 25, 1943, to attach

to the bed frame and allow the bed clothes to hang

on it while allowing the bed to air out.

When she died on May 25, 1919, she was mourned throughout the Black community as a pioneer and a Black industrialist.

Jammeh was born on May 25, 1965, in Kanilai, Gambia, three months after the country gained its independence from Great Britain.

Robert Capa , original name (Hungarian form) Friedmann Endre Ernő (born 1913, Budapest, Hungary—died May 25, 1954, Thai Binh, Vietnam), photographer whose images of war made him one of the greatest photojournalists of the 20th century.

In 1931 and 1932 Capa worked for Dephot, a German picture agency, before establishing himself in Paris, where he assumed the name Robert Capa. He first achieved fame as a war correspondent in the Spanish Civil War. By 1936 his mature style fully emerged in grim, close-up views of death such as Loyalist Soldier, Spain. Such immediate images embodied Capa’s famous saying, “If your pictures aren’t good enough, then you aren’t close enough.” In World War II he covered much of the heaviest fighting in Africa, Sicily, and Italy for Life magazine, and his photographs of the Normandy Invasion became some of the most memorable of the war.

After being sworn in as a United States citizen in 1946, Capa in 1947 joined with the photographers Henri Cartier-Bresson and David (“Chim”) Seymour to found Magnum Photos, the first cooperative agency of international freelance photographers. Although he covered the fighting in Palestine in 1948, most of Capa’s time was spent guiding newer members of Magnum and selling their work. He served as the director of the Magnum office in Paris from 1950 to 1953. In 1954 Capa volunteered to photograph the French Indochina War for Life and was killed by a land mine while on assignment. His untimely death helped establish his posthumous reputation as a quintessentially fearless photojournalist. Publications featuring his photographs include Death in the Making (1937), Slightly Out of Focus (1947), Images of War (1964), Children of War, Children of Peace (1991), and Robert Capa: Photographs (1996).

30 million people worldwide joined in pop singer Bob Geldofs Race Against Time to raise money for the starving in Africa.

On this date Henry Ossawa Tanner was born in

Pittsburgh, PA. His most noteable painting The

Banjo Lesson was painted in 1893.

Died May 25, 1937

Octavia Spencer is a contemporary African American actress. She is recognized for her role in the film, The Help, as an outspoken maid. For her remarkable performance she won the prestigious Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress and the Golden Globe Award among other accolades.

Born on May 25, 1970, Octavia Lenora Spencer grew up in Montgomery, Alabama.  Though her mother was a maid, Spencer managed to lift herself out of poverty and graduated from Jefferson Davis High School. After graduation she went on to study drama at Auburn University and earned a bachelor’s degree in Liberal Arts. When she was nineteen she interned on the set of The Long Walk Home. She finally made her debut as a nurse in the film based on John Grisham’s book, A Time to Kill. Originally she was hired to work on film casting, but later she auditioned for a small role in the film.

Spencer did some minor roles in the movies such as Bad Santa, Never Been Kissed, Win a Date with Tad Hamilton! and Spider-Man.  Moreover she made a numerous guest appearance in television series including Wizards of Waverly Place, The Big Bang Theory, Titus and CSI: Crime Scene Investigation. She is recognized for her role in Halfway Home and Ugly Betty as Serenity Johnson and Constance Grady, respectively. In 2003, Spencer went to theater and did her first stage performance in, The Trials and Tribulations of a Trailer Trash Housewife. In an interview with Back Stage Magazine she told them that it was her first and only stage performance as she suffered from ‘stage fright’.

Subsequently, Octavia Spencer was casted in a critically praised short film of Tate Taylor’s Chicken Party. And then she made a brief appearance in a highly lauded film Seven Pounds, as Rosario Dawson’s home care nurse, Kate. In 2009 she made to the list of 25 Funniest Actresses in Hollywood, complied by Entertainment Weekly. The same year she starred in Halloween II by Rob Zombie and accepted a role offered in the Danish classic Love at First Hiccup’s American remake which also starred