Rankin Gandhi Eileen Jackson Southern
Nov 4, 1920, Eileen Jackson Southern, African-American musicologist born in Minneapolis, In 1975 Southern became the first black woman to be appointed as a tenured full professor at Harvard University.
Southern studied piano at Chicago Musical College, giving her first recital at 12 and in Chicago’s Orchestra Hall at the age of 18 she accompanied the symphony orchestra of the Chicago Musical College playing a Mozart concerto. She earned both bachelor’s and master’s degrees at the University of Chicago (1940 and 1941), writing a thesis on “The Use of Negro Folksong in Symphonic Form,” and received her Ph.D from New York University in 1961).
Restricted by the limitations of segregation, she began her teaching career at historically black colleges, including Prairie View A & M in Texas, Southern University in Louisiana, and Claflin College in South Carolina. During the 1940s, she also toured the country as a concert pianist, performing in 1948 at Carnegie Hall after winning a national competition. One of Southern’s greatest contribution to American musical history was her book The Music of Black Americans, published in 1971. Her book arrived at the height of the controversy over Black studies, and it made a very strong case for what the discipline could produce.
Southern went to Harvard as a lecturer in 1974, becoming the first black woman appointed to the rank of full professor with tenure in 1975. She chaired the department of Afro-American Studies from 1976 to 1980, and retired in 1987 as professor emeritus. In 2001, she received a National Humanities Medal as a musicologist who “helped transform the study and understanding of American music.” She also received the Lifetime Achievement Award in 2000 of the Society for American Music. For more information see: Black Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia, edited by Darlene Clark Hine
November 4, 2008, Barrack Hussein Obama became the first black man to be elected president of the United States of America. Obama, the multiracial son of a white mother from Kansas and an African father from Kenya, was elected as the 44th president of the United States, writing a remarkable new chapter in American history with a campaign built on the theme of hope. From www.aaregistry.org/historic_events/view/america-elects-its-first-black-president
November 6, 1913, Mohandas K. Gandhi is arrested as he leads a march of Indian miners in South Africa. In 1875 the colony of Natal in South Africa imposed a £3 tax on ex-indentured Indians, who failed to re-indenture or return to India after completion of their labor contracts. The penalty for non-payment was imprisonment or deportation. After vanquishing the Boers in the Anglo-Boer War of 1899-1902, Britain refused to grant civil rights to non-whites. In 1906 Gandhi launched the Satyagraha (passive resistance) campaign against anti-Asiatic legislation and policies, a campaign of civil disobedience that he would lead for the next eight years. In October of 1913, Gandhi organized a march of over 6,000 Indian workers from the Natal mining area into the Transvaal, although crossing into the Transvaal without a permit was not allowed by law. The protestors were beaten and flogged to force them to go back to work, but without success. Gandhi was arrested. He was released on bail, rejoined the march and was re-arrested.. Finally, under pressure from the British and Indian governments, the government of South Africa accepted a compromise negotiated by Gandhi and General Jan Christian Smuts, which included important concessions such as the recognition of Indian marriages and the abolition of the existing poll tax for Indians. More information is available at South African History Online www.sahistory.org.za/
November 7, 1917, Jeanette Rankin, Republican from Montana, becomes the first woman elected to the U.S. Congress. Rankin served from 1917–1919, and again from1941–1943. Rankin was one of the few suffragists and pacifists elected to Congress and was the only Member of Congress to vote against U.S. participation in both World War I and World War II. “I may be the first woman member of Congress,” she observed upon her election in 1916. “But I won’t be the last.” Rankin ran as a progressive, pledging to work for a constitutional woman suffrage amendment and emphasizing social welfare issues. Rankin did not shy away from letting voters know how she felt about possible U.S. participation in the European war that had been raging for two years: “If they are going to have war, they ought to take the old men and leave the young to propagate the race.”womenincongress.house.gov/member-profiles/profile.html
November 10, 1898, Wilmington Insurrection. In Wilmington, North Carolina Democratic white supremacists illegally seized power from an elected multiracial government. The population of Wilmington North Carolina, at that time the state’s largest metropolis, was majority black. Many blacks were employed gainfully in the community as artisans, policeman, and fireman. Although southern white Democrats had regained political domination of the South after Reconstruction, a political alliance of black and white Republicans; known as Fusionists, had maintained political power in Wilmington. As a result, some black males were elected and appointed to political office. Statewide election returns had recently signaled a shift in power with Democrats taking over the North Carolina State Legislature. Many Democrats in Wilmington alleged black corruption, and a “Secret Nine” plotted to regain control of the port city. On Thursday, November 10, 1898, two days after the election of a Fusionist white mayor and biracial city council, Colonel Alfred Moore Waddell, a Democratic leader in Wilmington, mustered a white mob, ostensibly to retaliate for a controversial editorial written by Alexander Manly, editor of the city’s black newspaper, the Daily Record. The mob burned the newspaper’s office and incited a bloody race riot in the city, running officials out of the city, and killing many blacks in widespread attacks. When the smoke cleared and the gunfire ceased, 22 blacks lay dead, leading black and white Republicans had fled the city, and Democrats had regained power. Among the weapons the white mob used was a Gatling gun mounted on a wagon . Although residents appealed for help to Governor Daniel Lindsay Russell and President William McKinley, they did nothing in response.
Originally labeled a race riot, it is now also termed a coup d’etat, as insurrectionists displaced the elected local government. This event is the only instance of a municipal government’s being overthrown in US history. www.history.ncdcr.gov/1898-wrrc/report/report.htm, core.ecu.edu/umc/wilmington/
Wilmington Insurrection President Obama
