Click to watch the video

BlackFacts Minute: February 15

Stay Updated on BlackFacts!

Thank you for choosing to follow Blackfacts.com on our journey of ‘Putting the Black Community in Control of Our Stories.’

Your subscription to our list has been confirmed.

Please note that our updates are infrequent, so you need not worry about being spammed. 🙂

— The Blackfacts.com Team

Sorry, we ran into this problem when attempting to subscribe you to the BlackFacts.com Newsletter.

Please try again. If you keep having problems, contact us at support@blackfacts.com

BlackFacts T-Shirts

Black History Month Special

Show your Black Pride with original BlackFacts SWAG.
Because Black Facts Matter!
Order Now and Save 20%

Black Facts for February 15th

1965 - Nat King Cole

Nathaniel Adams Cole was a world renowned Jazz musician, born on March 17, 1919 in Montgomery, Alabama. Starting off with an incredible skill with the organ, Cole became a multi-instrumentalist, later learning the piano as well as vocals. He was particularly known for his baritone voice, as is heard on some of the most popular Jazz tunes that Cole composed. Cole mainly focused on the genres specific to vocal Jazz, Swing and Traditional Pop. Beginning what was to be an illustrious career in music at the tender age of 4, Cole had a natural talent to stun and startle audiences with an incredible understanding of music.

Cole began his music career in the 1930s, occasioning bars and casual hang outs. However, it was only by the mid-1930s when along with Oscar Moore on guitar, and Wesley Prince on double bass, Cole formed the King Cole Swingsters or the King Cole Trio. They performed regularly in local bars and clubs throughout the late 1930s, and after gaining significant popularity, were called upon to feature in some of the most acclaimed Radio shows of the time. Some examples include the NBC’s Blue Network and Swing Soiree. In the early 1940s, the trio featured in shows such as Old Gold, Chesterfield Supper Club and Kraft Music Hall, while also being star guests on CBS Radio’s The Orson Welles Almanac in 1944. What is often termed the ‘revolutionary lineup’ of a Pianist, Guitarist and Bassist became an emulated model followed by other artists such as Art Tatum, Oscar Peterson and Ahmad Jamal, among others. Around the same time, the King Cole Trio signed up with Capital Records that remained their longstanding partners throughout the 1940s.

It was only until 1943 when the Trio had their first major hit, a recording by the name of “Straighten Up and Fly Right”, based on a Black folk tale dear to Cole. After the Second World War, the Trio considered having their own 15-minute Radio Show, later named King Cole Trio Time. While the show was meant to be a usual radio broadcast, many songs that later became classics of

1851 - Morris, Robert, Sr. (1823–1882)

Robert Morris became one of the first black lawyers in United States after being admitted to the Massachusetts bar in 1847. Morris was born in Salem, Massachusetts on June 8, 1823.   At an early age, Morris had some formal education at Master Dodge’s School in Salem.  With the agreement of his family, he became the student of Ellis Gray Loring, a well known abolitionist and lawyer. 

Shortly after starting his practice in Boston, Morris became the first black lawyer to file a lawsuit on behalf of a client in the history of the nation.  A jury ruled in favor of Morris’s client, though the details of the trial are unknown.  Morris, however, recorded his feelings and observations about his first jury trial:

There was something in the courtroom that made me feel like a giant.  The courtroom was filled with colored people, and I could see, expressed on the faces of every one of them, a wish that I might win the first case that had ever been tried before a jury by a colored attorney in this county…

Vehemently opposed to slavery, he worked with William Lloyd Garrison, Ellis Loring and Wendell Philips and others to oppose the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850.  On February 15, 1851 with the help of Lewis Hayden, Robert Morris managed to remove from the court house, newly arrested fugitive slave Shadrack and helped him to get to Canada and freedom. Arrests were made but Morris and the others were acquitted of the charges. 

By the early 1850s, Robert Morris was appointed a justice of the peace and was admitted to practice before U.S. district courts.  He occasionally served as a magistrate in courts in Boston and nearby Chelsea, Massachusetts.  Although these were not high judicial offices, his service gave him the distinction of being the first African American to have exercised some judicial power.

With the Civil War began, Morris welcomed President Abraham Lincoln’s call for volunteers but objected to enlistment of African Americans unless they received fair and equal treatment and were offered positions as officers.  He

1965 - Cole, Nat “King” (1919–1965)

Jazz pianist and popular singer Nathaniel Adams Coles was born into a musical family in Montgomery, Alabama on March 17, 1919.  His mother Perlina was a choir director in his father Edward’s Baptist church.  His three brothers, Edward, Ike, and Freddy, became professional musicians.  Cole also had a half-sister, Joyce.  The family moved to Chicago, Illinois in 1923 where Cole started playing the piano at age four; he organized his first jazz group, The Musical Dukes, in his teens.

His unique style of singing has aptly been described as velvet and silk.  Cole applied it to the corniest and to the most sublime of material.  An arranger/ musical director, he formed his instrumental group, The King Trio, in 1939 in Los Angeles.  They attracted wide attention in 1943 with their recording “Straighten Up and Fly Right.”  Interestingly, the sound was reportedly based on an African American folktale that Cole’s father used as a basis for one of his sermons.  Cole began to concentrate more on singing backed by a larger orchestra, and in 1948-1949, had his own radio show.  By 1952, he was singing more than he was playing jazz, and recorded such favorites as “Stardust” and “Ain’t Misbehavin.”  His string of hits in the mid-1950s included “When I Fall in Love,” “Where Can I Go,” “Love Letters,” “Mona Lisa,” and “Unforgettable.”

Despite his success, Cole faced racism in and outside the South.  In 1950, after his family purchased a house in the formerly all-white neighborhood of Hancock Park in Los Angeles, the Ku Klux Klan burned a cross on his lawn.  He was the victim of a vicious racist attack perpetrated by six white men in his native state of Alabama in 1956.  He performed in Cuba that same year and was not allowed to stay at the Hotel Nacional de Cuba because of racism.  He returned to Cuba a year later, sang songs in Spanish, and there is now a bust of him and a jukebox in tribute at the Hotel Nacional.  In 1957 he became the first African American entertainer to have his own television show. It lasted less than a

1996 - Mfume, Kweisi (Frizzel Gray) (1948 - )

Kweisi Mfume was born as Frizzel Gray in Baltimore, Maryland on October 24, 1948, the eldest of four children.  Gray experienced a troubled childhood with the abandonment of his father and death of his mother as well as economic instability, but made a successful return to his academic studies in 1971.

Gray legally changed his name to Kweisi Mfume, “conquering son of kings”, in the early 1970s.  He obtained his GED, and began his studies at the Community College of Baltimore, where he served as the head of its Black Student Union and the editor of the school newspaper. He attended Morgan State University in Baltimore where he graduated magna cum laude in 1976 with a Bachelor of Urban Planning degree. Mfume then received an M.A. degree from Johns Hopkins University in 1984.

In 1979 Mfume was elected to the Baltimore City Council in 1979.  While on the city council, Mfume helped enact legislation which divested Baltimore of investments in companies doing business in South Africa.

In 1985 when Maryland’s Seventh Congressional District Representative Parren J. Mitchell announced his retirement from Congress, Kweisi Mfume ran for the seat the following year and was successful in both the primary and general election.  

Congressman Mfume served on the Banking, Finance and Urban Affairs Committee and three of its subcommittees (Housing and Community Development, Economic Stabilization, and International Development); the Small Business Committee and two of its subcommittees (Minority Enterprise, and Exports, Tourism and Special Problems); and the Select Committee on Hunger. From 1987 to 1989 he was the treasurer of the Congressional Black Caucus and later served as its vice chairman.

Kweisi Mfume retired on February 15, 1996 and focused on his new position as chief executive office of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).  He held that position until 2004.

1965 - Nat King Cole

Nathaniel Adams Coles (March 17, 1919 – February 15, 1965), known professionally as Nat King Cole, was an American singer who first came to prominence as a leading jazz pianist. He was widely noted for his soft baritone voice, performing in big band and jazz genres, and was a major force in popular music for three decades. Cole was one of the first African Americans to host a national television variety show, The Nat King Cole Show. His recordings remained popular worldwide after his death from lung cancer in February 1965.

Nathaniel Adams Coles was born in Montgomery, Alabama, on March 17, 1919.[1] He had three brothers—Eddie (1910–1970),[2] Ike (1927–2001),[3] and Freddy (born 1931)[4]—and a half-sister, Joyce Coles.[5] Each of his brothers pursued careers in music.[5] When Nat was four years old,[6] he and his family moved to Chicago, Illinois, where his father, Edward Coles, became a Baptist minister.[7] Nat learned to play the organ from his mother, Perlina Coles, the church organist.[8] His first performance was of Yes! We Have No Bananas at the age of four.[9] He began formal lessons at 12[10] and eventually learned not only jazz and gospel music but also Western classical music; he performed from Johann Sebastian Bach to Sergei Rachmaninoff.[11]

The family again moved to the Bronzeville neighborhood of Chicago,[12] where he attended Wendel Phillips High School [13] (the same school Sam Cooke attended a few years later).[14] Cole would sneak out of the house and hang around outside clubs, listening to artists such as Louis Armstrong, Earl Hines and Jimmie Noone.[15] He participated in Walter Dyetts renowned music program at DuSable High School.[16]

Inspired by the performances of Hines, Cole began his performing career in the mid-1930s while still a teenager, adopting the name Nat Cole. Cole left Chicago in 1936 to lead a band in a revival of Eubie Blakes revue Shuffle Along. His older brother, Eddie, a bass player, soon joined Coles band, and they made their first recording in 1936, under

1952 - Jones, Bill T. (1952- )

Bill T. Jones, Artistic Director/Co-Founder/Dancer/Choreographer of Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company was born on February 15, 1952 in Bunnell, Florida. Jones’ prolific career as a choreographer has brought him international acclaim. Awards include: 2007 Tony Award for his choreography in Spring Awakening; 2007 USA Eileen Harris Norton Fellowship; 2005 Samuel H. Scripps American Dance Festival Award for Lifetime Achievement; 2003 Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize; and the 1994 MacArthur “Genius” Award, among others.

In 1955, Jones’ family migrated to Wayland, New York, where he grew up and began his dance training at State University of New York, Binghamton in the early 1970s. In 1974, while attending SUNY, Binghamton, Jones co-founded the American Dance Asylum with Lois Welk where he met photographer Arnie Zane, who became his life and dance partner. During this time, Jones and Zane began developing a contact-improvisation choreographic style of dance duets, creating works that addressed controversial social issues such as gender roles, sexuality, racism, inter-racial relationships, and HIV/AIDS. Jones and Zane moved to New York City in 1978 and formed the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company in 1982.

Integral to Jones’ and Zane’s choreographic style, was the use of text, photographs, and postmodern music. Another main component of their choreographic collaboration was the interplay of their contrasting physicality. Jones used his athletic movement impulses to play off Zane’s photograph-like sculptural sensibilities. Using these physical differences as a base, the duo pushed the socially accepted boundaries of traditional male/female dance partnering roles. They were of the first generation of American postmodern choreographers to create and publically perform duets using same-sex couples, women lifting men, nudity, and non-traditional dancer body types on stage. Through their work, Jones and Zane redefined the paradigm of American Postmodern Dance.

Arnie Zane died from AIDS-related lymphoma in 1988. To