January 1

A stampede following a New Year's Eve fireworks display in Abidjan, Cote d'Ivoire, left more than 60 people dead. The victims were crushed or suffocated when hundreds of people leaving a stadium jammed into a tiny street.

January 31

Cachalia, Amina

Amina Cachalia (b. Amina Asvat; June 28, 1930 Vereeniging, South Africa – d. January 31, 2013, Johannesburg, South Africa) was a longtime friend and ally of Nelson Mandela. Her late husband was political activist Yusuf Cachalia.

Cachalia was born Amina Asvat, the ninth of eleven children in Vereeniging, South Africa, on June 28, 1930. Her parents were political activists Ebrahim and Fatima Asvat. She began campaigning against Apartheid and racial discrimination as a teenager. She became a women's rights activist, often focusing on economic issues, such as financial independence for women.

Amina and Yusuf Cachalia were friends of Nelson Mandela before his imprisonment at Robben Island in 1962. She became a staunch anti-apartheid activist. She spent fifteen years under house arrest throughout the 1960s and 1970s. She was the treasurer of the Federation of South African Women (Fedsaw), a leading supporter of the Federation of Transvaal Women, and a member of both the Transvaal Indian Youth Congress and Transvaal Indian Congress during the Apartheid era.

In 1995, Mandela asked Cachalia to marry him. At the time, he had been separated from his wife, Winnie Madikizela-Mandela. Cachalia turned down Mandela's proposal because she said that "I'm my own person and that I had just recently lost my husband whom I had enormous regard for". Mandela divorced Madikizela-Mandela a year later and married Graca Machel in 1998.

Cachalia was elected to the National Assembly of South Africa in the 1994 South African general election, the country's first with universal adult suffrage. In 2004, she was awarded the Order of Luthuli in Bronze for her contributions to gender and racial equality and democracy.

Cachalia died at Milpark Hospital in Parktown West, Johannesburg, January 31, 2013, aged 82. The cause of death was complications following an emergency operation due to a perforated ulcer.

Her funeral was held in her home in Parkview, Johannesburg, according to traditional Muslim customs. It was attended by South African President Jacob Zuma, former Presidents Thabo Mbeki and Kgalema Motlanthe, ANC Deputy Cyril Ramaphosa, former First Lady Graca Machel, former Finance Minister Trevor Manuel and fellow activisti Ahmed Kathrada, among others.

After her death, in March 2013, her autobiography When Hope and History Rhyme was published.

Bananas thrown at Italy's first black minister Cecile Kyenge

By Holly Yan, Lauren Russell and Boriana Milanova, CNN

updated 6:33 AM EDT, Mon July 29, 2013

Integration Minister Cecile Kyenge -- pictured in June -- is Italy's first black government minister.

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

Cecile Kyenge has been the target of death threats and racist antics

She became Italy's first black government minister in April

Newspaper editor says the bad economy has contributed to racial tensions

(CNN) -- Racist taunts against Italy's first black minister, Cecile Kyenge, took another ugly turn over the weekend when someone hurled bananas at her during a rally.

Kyenge's appointment as Italy's minister of integration three months ago isn't sitting well with right-wing radicals whose racial slurs and antics have overshadowed her tenure.

The banana incident is just the latest.

It took place Friday in Cervia, where Kyenge was speaking to supporters. A man popped up out of the crowd and launched two bananas toward the podium, Kyenge spokesman Cosimo Torlo said.

The bananas fell short of the stage, landing between the first and second row of spectators.

Giancarlo Mazzuca, chief editor of the daily newspaper Il Giorno, was sitting two chairs away from Kyenge.

Italy's 1st black minister faces racism

"I was able to verify which levels can be reached by human stupidity," he wrote in a column.

Police haven't found the person who hurled the bananas. There will be increased security around the minister, Torlo said.

Kyenge shrugged off the episode -- as she has with the other incidents.

In a Twitter post, she called it a sad waste of food when so many people are dying of hunger.

Kyenge, who was born in the Democratic Republic of Congo, moved to Italy in the 1980s to study medicine. She became an Italian citizen and is an ophthalmologist in Modena.

While her ascent to a top government position reflects the success of immigrants, it also has stoked nativism.

Ominous mannequins

Just before Kyenge arrived for Friday's rally, a group smeared blood-red paint and anti-immigrant messages onto mannequins.

"Immigration kills," read signs attached to the dummies.

The far-right political group Forza Nuova ("New Force") claimed responsibility for the mannequins.

The scene was also littered with fliers that said Italy's future growth depends on "protecting the Italian identity," according to the ANSA news agency.

Insults from other politicians

Two weeks ago, Italian Sen. Roberto Calderoli likened Kyenge to an orangutan. Calderoli, a member of the anti-immigration Northern League party, made the remarks at a political rally.

"I love animals -- bears and wolves, as everyone knows -- but when I see the pictures of Kyenge, I cannot but think of, even if I'm not saying she is one, the features of an orangutan," he was quoted as saying.

After his comments were published, Calderoli said "if I've offended her, I apologize."

"It was a joke, a comment in a joking way. There was nothing particularly against her," he said. "It was just my impression. ... It is all very well that she be a minister but in her own country. Given that this government needs to govern Italy, I hope that it is done by Italians."

Kyenge responded diplomatically, saying Calderoli "does not need to ask forgiveness to me, but he should rather reflect on the political and institutional role that he carries. It is on this that he needs to make a profound reflection also to then apologize."

She added, "Also, he must go beyond putting everything on a personal level. I think the time has come for us to study the problem of communication."

Death threats

Kyenge has also received death threats before visiting an area where the Northern League is powerful.

A local politician recently said on Facebook that Kyenge should be raped so she can understand the pain felt by victims of crime, which some politicians blame on immigrants.

She's been called a "Congolese monkey," "Zulu" and "the black anti-Italian." One Northern League official said "she seems like a great housekeeper" but "not a government minister."

Italian Prime Minister Enrico Letta appealed to Northern League leader Roberto Maroni to "close this chapter right away."

Tensions over immigrants

Italy has been experiencing its highest level of unemployment in more than 20 years.

In tough times, some Italians focus their anger on immigrants, Mazzuca, the newspaper editor, told CNN.

"The economic crisis is worsening the situation," he said. "Jobs that until a few years ago wouldn't have even been considered by Italians are now becoming precious."

There have recently been more and more reports of Italians beating foreigners, particularly street vendors, Mazzuca said.

He said doesn't believe that Italians generally are racists and hopes Kyenge will be able to ease racial tensions.

"I really think that Kyenge is the right person in the right place," he said. "As an eye doctor, she is able to see in the distance."

Awards

Josephine "Joe" Obiajulu Okei-Odumakin is a Nigerian women's rights activist. She is the president of the rights groups Women Arise for Change Initiative and the Campaign for Democracy.

Odumakin was born in Zaria, Kaduna, on July 4, 1966. She grew up in a Roman Catholic household. She received a bachelor's degree in English Education in 1987, followed by a master's in Guidance and Counseling and a doctorate in History and Policy of Education from the University of Ilorin. She has frequently been arrested for her activism, especially during the military rule of Ibrahim Babangida, and she met her future husband, Yinak Odumakin, while in prison.

In 2013, Odumakin was presented an International Women of Courage Award from the United States Department of State.

*The United States State Department withdrew its award of an International Women of Courage award to Samira Ibrahim, an Egyptian activist.

Samira Ibrahim (Arabic: سميرة إبراهيم‎) (born c. 1987) is an Egyptian activist who came to prominence during the Egyptian revolution .

On March 9, 2011, she participated in a sit-in at Tahrir Square in Cairo. The military violently dispersed protest participants, and Samira and other women were beaten, given electric shocks, strip searched, and videotaped by the soldiers. They were also subjected to virginity tests. The tests were allegedly carried out to protect the soldiers from claims of rape.

After succeeding in placing the case in front of a civilian court, a court order was issued in December 2011 to stop the practice of “virginity tests”. However in March 2012, a military court exonerated Dr. Adel El Mogy from charges laid in connection with the virginity testing of Ibrahim.

Ibrahim vowed to take her case to the international courts.

In early March 2013, Ibrahim came under criticism after Samuel Tadros, writing in The Weekly Standard, accused her of posting anti-Semitic and anti-American statements on her Twitter account. These statements included quoting Adolf Hitler, writing: "I have discovered with the passage of days, that no act contrary to morality, no crime against society, takes place, except with the Jews having a hand in it. Hitler.” In reaction to a suicide bombing of a bus of Israelis in Bulgaria, she wrote "Today is a very sweet day with a lot of very sweet news.” In 2012, on the anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks, she tweeted "Today is the anniversary of 9/11. May every year come with America burning".

The United States State Department subsequently announced that it would not be giving the International Women of Courage Award to Samira Ibrahim in light of these comments.

Initially, Ibrahim claimed that her Twitter account had been "previously stolen" and that "any tweet on racism and hatred is not me”. However, she later stated "I refuse to apologize to the Zionist lobby in America regarding my previous anti-Zionist statements under pressure from American government therefore they withdrew the award." The United States State Department later stated that Ibrahim had since left the United States to return to Egypt.

On March 8, 2013, a spokeswoman for the United States State Department stated that "Upon further review, the department has decided not to present her with the award" as American officials "didn't consider some of the public statements that she had made appropriate. They didn't comport with our values" while adding that "There were obviously some problems in our review process, and we're going to do some forensics on how that happened."

*****

Martina Arroyo, (born February 2, 1937), is an African American operatic soprano who had a major international opera career from the 1960s through the 1980s. She was part of the first generation of African American opera singers to achieve wide success, and is viewed as part of an instrumental group of performers who helped break down the barriers of racial prejudice in the opera world.

Arroyo first rose to prominence at the Zurich Opera between 1963–1965, after which she was one of the Metropolitan Opera's leading sopranos between 1965 and 1978. During her years at the Metropolitan Opera, she was also a regular presence at the world's best opera houses, performing on the stages of La Scala, Covent Garden, the Opera National de Paris, the Teatro Colon, the Deutsche Opera Berlin, the Vienna State Opera, the Lyric Opera of Chicago and the San Francisco Opera, to name just a few. She is best known for her performances of the Italian spinto repertoire, and in particular, her portrayals of Verdi and Puccini heroines. Her last opera performance was in 1991, after which she has devoted her time to teaching singing on the faculties of various universities in the United States and Europe.

On December 8, 2013, Arroyo received a Kennedy Center Honor.

Notable Deaths

***

Paul Aussaresses (November 7, 1918 – December 4, 2013) was a French Army general, who fought during World War II, the First Indochina War and Algerian War. His actions during the Algerian War, and later defense of those actions, caused considerable controversy.

Aussaresses was a career Army intelligence officer with an excellent military record when he joined the Free French Forces in North Africa during the Second World War. In 1947, he was given command of the 11th Shock Battalion, a commando unit that was part of France's former external intelligence agency, the External Documentation and Counter-Espionage Service, the SDECE (replaced by the Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure (DGSE)).

Aussaresses provoked controversy in 2000, when in an interview with the French newspaper Le Monde, he admitted and defended the use of torture during the Algerian war. He repeated the defense in an interview with CBS's 60 Minutes, further arguing that torture ought to be used in the fight against Al-Qaeda, and again defended his use of torture during the Algerian War in a 2001 book, The Battle of the Casbah. In the aftermath of the controversy, he was stripped of his rank, the right to wear his army uniform and his Légion d'Honneur. Aussaresses remained defiant, he dismissed the latter act as hypocritical.

Aussaresses, recognizable by his eye patch, lost his left eye due to a botched cataract operation, not combat.

Aussaresses was born on November 7, 1918, just four days before the end of World War I, in Saint-Paul-Cap-de-Joux, Tarn department, in Languedoc. His father, Paul Aussaresses senior, was serving in the French military at the time of his son's birth because of the war.

In 1941, Aussaresses served a year as an officer cadet in Cherchell, Algeria. The next year, in 1942, he volunteered for the special services unit in France. He was a member of a Jedburgh team and a member of Team CHRYSLER which parachuted into France behind the German lines in August 1944. The Jedburghs worked clandestinely behind enemy lines to harness the local resistance and coordinate their activities with the wishes of the Allied Commanders. CHRYSLER deployed from Algeria via an American aircraft to work with the local French Resistance in Ariège. On September 1, 1946 he joined the 11th Choc Battalion and commanded the battalion from 1947 until 1948, when he was replaced by Yves Godard. Later, he served in the First Indochina War with the 1st Parachute Chasseur Regiment.

In 1955, he was transferred to Philippeville, Algeria, to be part of the 41st Parachute Demi-Brigade as an intelligence officer. He restarted his demi-brigade's intelligence unit, which had been disbanded during peacetime but was deemed necessary by the French Army who wanted to quell the insurgency of the 'Algerian rebels'. On August 20, 1955, the FLN (Algerian National Liberation Front) staged an attack against the police of Philippeville. Aussaresses states that he had information about this attack well beforehand and therefore he was able to prevent much of the possible bloodshed. The members of the FLN had also forced many of the men, women and children of the countryside to march in front of them, without weapons, as human shields. Aussaresses reports that his battalion killed 134 of these men, women and children, and that hundreds more had been wounded. He reports that two men from his own side also died, and that around one hundred others had been wounded.

In the spring of 1956, Aussaresses attended a top-secret training camp in Salisbury, England for a one-month training to prepare for the battle at Suez Canal. He returned to Bône, Algeria in May 1956 to continue exercises with paratroopers on their way to the Suez Canal. On June 1, 1956, he received a spinal fracture from a parachuting exercise, which prevented him from participating in the Suez operation.

General Jacques Massu, who had noted Aussaresses' work against the insurrections in Philippeville, ordered Aussaresses to work under him in Algiers as an agent to control the FLN in Algiers. Aussaresses reported for duty in Algiers on January 8, 1957. He was the main executioner and intelligence collector under Jacques Massu during the Battle of Algiers. On January 28, he broke a city-wide strike organized by the FLN using repressive measures. Soldiers forcibly dragged all public utilities workers to their jobs. Store fronts were torn open so that the owners had to open the store for fear of being looted. Later in 1957, he ordered his men to hang Larbi Ben M'Hidi, an important member of the FLN, as if he had committed suicide. In a separate incident he ordered that an officer throw Ali Boumendjel, an influential Algerian attorney, from the 6th floor of the building he was held prisoner in, claiming that Boumendjel had committed suicide. France decreed that both deaths were suicides, but Aussaresses admitted both assassinations in 2000.

Aussaresses contends, in his book, that the French government insisted that the military in Algeria "liquidate the FLN as quickly as possible". Subsequently, historians debated whether or not this repression was government-backed or not. The French government has always claimed that it was not, but Aussaresses argues that the government insisted upon the harsh measures he took against Algerians - measures which included summary executions of thousands of people, hours of torture of prisoners, and violent strike-breaking.

Aussaresses was quite candid in his interview in Le Monde forty years later (May 3, 2001):

"Concerning the use of torture, it was tolerated, if not recommended. François Mitterrand, the Minister for Justice, had, indeed, an emissary with Massu in judge Jean Bérard, who covered for us and who had complete knowledge of what went on in the night."

Aussaresses justified the use of torture by saying how shocked he was by the FLN's massacre at the El Halia mine. He suggested that torture was a small but necessary evil that had to be used to defeat a much larger evil of terrorism. Aussaresses also claimed that he used these methods because it was a quick way to obtain information. He also defended its use by saying that the legal system was meant to deal with a peacetime France, not a counter insurgency war that the French army was faced with in Algeria.

In an interview to Marie-Monique Robin, Aussaresses described the methods used, including the creation of death squads (escadrons de la mort), the term being created at this time.

Following Aussaresses' revelations, which suggested that torture had been ordered by the highest levels of the French state hierarchy, Human Rights Watch sent a letter to President Jacques Chirac (RPR) to indict Aussaresses for war crimes, declaring that, despite past amnesties, such crimes, which may also have been crimes against humanity, may not be amnestied. The Ligue des droits de l'homme (LDH, Human Rights League) filed a complaint against him for "apology of war crimes," as Paul Aussaresses justified the use of torture, claiming it had saved lives following the Necessity Defense [AKA: Choice of Evils] and/or the Self-Defense (although he did not explicitly use this expression). He was fined 7,500 Euros by the Tribunal de grande instance court of Paris, while Plon and Perrin, two editing houses who had published his book in which he defended the use of torture, were sentenced each to a 15,000 Euros fine. The judgment was confirmed by the Court of Appeal in April 2003. The Court of Cassation rejected the intercession in December 2004. The Court of Cassation declared in its judgment that "freedom to inform, which is the basis of freedom of expression" does not lead to "accompany the exposure of facts ... with commentaries justifying acts contrary to human dignity and universally reproved," "nor to glorify its author." Aussaresses had written in his book: "torture became necessary when emergency imposed itself."

Aussaresses had a successful military career after the war. Unlike many of his fellow officers, he did not choose to join the OAS militant group to continue the fight in Algeria after the French military began to withdraw their forces. In 1961, he was appointed as a military attaché of the French diplomatic mission in the United States, alongside ten veterans of the Algerian War formerly under his charge. In the United States, he also served at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, alongside the 10th Special Forces Group, a military unit that specialized in tactics of unconventional warfare. There he taught the "lessons" of the Battle of Algiers", which allegedly included counter-insurgency tactics, interrogation, and torture. According to Aussauresses, he specifically taught lessons from Colonel Trinquier's book on "subversive warfare" (Aussaresses had served under Trinquier in Algeria). The Americans' Vietnam era Phoenix Program was inspired by these American students of Aussaresses, after they had sent a copy of Trinquier's book to CIA agent Robert Komer.

Aussaresses relocated to Brazil in 1973 during the military dictatorship, where he maintained very close links with the military. According to General Manuel Contreras, former head of the Chilean DINA, Chilean officers trained in Brazil under Aussaresses' orders and advised the South American juntas on counter-insurrection warfare and the use of torture that was widely used against leftist opponents to the military regimes in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile and Paraguay.

The character of Julien Boisfeuras in the novels The Centurions and The Praetorians by Jean Larteguy was according to Larteguy not based on anyone, but many believe that he was at least partially inspired by Aussaresses and Roger Trinquier.

^*****
James LaRue Avery (November 27, 1945 – December 31, 2013) was an American actor, best known for his portrayal of the patriarch and attorney (later judge) Philip Banks, Will Smith's character's uncle, in the TV sitcom The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. This character was ranked #34 in TV Guide's "50 Greatest TV Dads of All Time." He also provided the voice of Shredder in the 1987 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles television series, as well as War Machine in the animated series Iron Man and Junkyard Dog in Hulk Hogan's Rock 'n' Wrestling. He also played Michael Kelso's commanding officer at the police academy late in the series run of That '70s Show.

Avery was born in 1945 in Pughsville, Hampton Roads, Virginia and raised in Atlantic City, New Jersey. He served in theVietnam War as a member of the United States Navy from 1968–1969, after graduating high school. Later on, he moved to San Diego, California, where he began to write poetry and TV scripts.

In addition to his fame in sitcoms, he did voice acting for many animated series, most notably the 1987 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles series (as the voice of The Shredder) and James Rhodes in the 1990s Iron Man series.

^{He married Barbara in 1988. He had no biological children of his own, but was a stepfather to his wife's son, Kevin Waters. As well as his wife and stepson, he is survived by his mother Florence Avery.}

^{On December 31, 2013, Avery died at the age of 68 from complications following open heart surgery in a Los Angeles suburb hospital, Glendale Adventist Medical Center.}

^*****

Steve Berrios (February 24, 1945 – July 24, 2013) was an American jazz drummer and percussionist born in New York, New York, United States. He started playing trumpet, but he was not best known for that instrument. He often performed in the Afro-Cuban jazz medium, having played with Pucho & His Latin Soul Brothers and Mongo Santamaría. He also worked with artists from other jazz musicians, such as Kenny Kirkland and Art Blakey.

Berrios recorded more than a dozen albums as a member of the Fort Apache Band, including “The River Is Deep,” (1982) “Obatalà,” (1988) “Rumba Para Monk,” (1988) “Earthdance,” (1990) and “Moliendo Café” (1991).

“And Then Some!” (1997), one of the few albums he recorded at the head of his own group, was nominated for a Grammy for Best Latin Jazz Performance.

The discography of Steve Berrios includes the following:

With Michael Brecker

Now You See It… (Now You Don't) (GRP, 1990)

With The Harlem Experiment

The Harlem Experiment (Ropeadope, 2007)

With Alphonse Mouzon

Funky Snakefoot (Blue Note, 1973)

With Randy Weston

Carnival (Freedom, 1974)

*****

Amiri Baraka, also called Imamu Amiri Baraka, original name (until 1968) (Everett) LeRoi Jones (b. October 7, 1934, Newark, New Jersey — d. January 9, 2014, Newark, New Jersey), was an African American writer who presented the experiences and anger of black Americans with an affirmation of black life.

Jones graduated from Howard University (B.A., 1953) and served in the U.S. Air Force. After military duty, he joined the Beat movement, attended graduate school, and published his first major collection of poetry, Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note, in 1961. In 1964, his play Dutchman appeared off-Broadway to critical acclaim. In its depiction of an encounter between a white woman and a black intellectual, it exposes the suppressed anger and hostility of American blacks toward the dominant white culture. After the assassination of Malcolm X, Jones took the name Amiri Baraka and began to espouse black nationalism.

In 1965, Baraka founded the Black Arts Repertory Theatre in Harlem. He published much during this period, including Black Art (1966) and Black Magic (1969). In addition to poetry and drama, Baraka wrote several collections of essays, an autobiographical novel (The System of Dante’s Hell [1965]), and short stories. In the mid-1970s he became a Marxist, though his goals remained similar. “I [still] see art as a weapon and a weapon of revolution,” he said. “It’s just now that I define revolution in Marxist terms.” In addition to writing, Baraka taught at several American universities. The Autobiography of LeRoi Jones/Amiri Baraka was published in 1984.

The works of LeRoi Jones/Amiri Baraka include:

Poetry

1961: Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note
1964: The Dead Lecturer: Poems
1969: Black Magic
1970: It's Nation Time
1970: Slave Ship
1975: Hard Facts
1980: New Music, New Poetry (India Navigation)
1995: Transbluesency: The Selected Poems of Amiri Baraka/LeRoi Jones
1995: Wise, Why’s Y’s
1996: Funk Lore: New Poems
2003: Somebody Blew Up America & Other Poems
2005: The Book of Monk

Drama

1964: Dutchman
1964: The Slave
1967: The Baptism and The Toilet
1966: A Black Mass
1969: Four Black Revolutionary Plays
1978: The Motion of History and Other Plays

Fiction

1965: The System of Dante's Hell
1967: Tales
2006: Tales of the Out & the Gone

Non-fiction

1963: Blues People: Negro Music in White America
1965: Home: Social Essays
1968: Black Music
1971: Raise Race Rays Raize: Essays Since 1965
1979: Poetry for the Advanced
1981: reggae or not!
1984: Daggers and Javelins: Essays 1974–1979
1984: The Autobiography of LeRoi Jones/Amiri Baraka
1987: The Music: Reflections on Jazz and Blues
2003: The Essence of Reparations

Edited works

1968: Black Fire: An Anthology of Afro-American Writing (co-editor, with Larry Neal)
1969: Four Black Revolutionary Plays
1983: Confirmation: An Anthology of African American Women (edited with Amina Baraka)
1999: The LeRoi Jones/Amiri Baraka Reader
2000: The Fiction of LeRoi Jones/Amiri Baraka
2008: Billy Harper: Blueprints of Jazz, Volume 2 (Audio CD)

Filmography

One P.M. (1972)
Fried Shoes Cooked Diamonds (1978) .... Himself
Black Theatre: The Making of a Movement (1978) .... Himself
Poetry in Motion (1982)
Furious Flower: A Video Anthology of African American Poetry 1960–95, Volume II: Warriors (1998) .... Himself
Through Many Dangers: The Story of Gospel Music (1996)
Bulworth (1998) .... Rastaman
Pinero (2001) .... Himself
Strange Fruit (2002) .... Himself
Ralph Ellison: An American Journey (2002) .... Himself
Chisholm '72: Unbought & Unbossed (2004) .... Himself
Keeping Time: The Life, Music & Photography of Milt Hinton (2004) .... Himself
Hubert Selby Jr : It'll Be Better Tomorrow (2005) .... Himself
500 Years Later (2005) (voice) .... Himself
The Ballad of Greenwich Village (2005) .... Himself
The Pact (2006) .... Himself
Retour à Gorée (2007) .... Himself
Polis Is This: Charles Olson and the Persistence of Place (2007)
Revolution '67 (2007) .... Himself
Turn Me On (2007) (TV) .... Himself
Oscene (2007) .... Himself
Corso: The Last Beat (2008)
The Black Candle (2008)
Ferlinghetti: A City Light (2008) .... Himself
W.A.R. Stories: Walter Anthony Rodney (2009) .... Himself
Motherland (2010)

*****

Bobby “Blue” Bland, byname of Robert Calvin Bland (b. January 27, 1930, Rosemark, Tennessee, United States — d. June 23, 2013, Memphis, Tennessee), was an American rhythm-and-blues singer noted for his rich baritone voice, sophisticated style, and sensual delivery.

Bland began his career in Memphis, Tennessee, with bluesman B.B. King and ballad singer Johnny Ace (all three were part of a loose aggregation of musicians known as the Beale Streeters). Influenced by gospel and by pop singers such as Tony Bennett and Andy Williams, as well as by rhythm and blues, Bland became famous with early 1960s hits for Duke Records such as “Cry Cry Cry,” “I Pity the Fool,” “Turn on Your Lovelight,” and “That’s the Way Love Is.” Joe Scott’s arrangements were pivotal to these successes in which Bland alternated between smooth, expertly modulated phrases and fiercely shouted, gospel-style ones. Long a particular favourite of female listeners, Bland for a time sang some disco material along with his blues ballads, and in later years he developed the curious habit of snorting between lines. While his recording output slowed in the early 2000s, Bland maintained an active touring schedule, and he was a guest performer with B.B. King and singer-songwriter Van Morrison. Bland was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1992, and he was awarded a Grammy Award for lifetime achievement in 1997.

The discography of Bobby "Blue" Bland reads as follows:

Studio Albums:

Two Steps from the Blues (Duke 1961/MCA 2002)
Here's the Man! - 1962 (Duke Records)
Call On Me/That's The Way Love Is - 1963 (Duke Records)
Ain't Nothing You Can Do - 1964 (Duke Records)
The Soul of The Man - 1966 (Duke Records)
Touch of The Blues - 1967 (Duke Records)
Spotlighting The Man - 1969 (Duke Records)
His California Album - 1973 (Dunhill Records)
Dreamer - 1974 (Dunhill Records)
Get On Down - 1975 (ABC Records)
Reflections In Blue - 1977 (ABC Records)
Come Fly With Me - 1978 (ABC Records)
I Feel Good, I Feel Fine - 1979 (MCA Records)
Sweet Vibrations - 1980 (MCA 27076) (tribute to Joe Scott)
Try Me, I'm Real - 1981 (MCA 5233)
Here We Go Again - 1982 (MCA 5297)
Tell Mr Bland - 1983 (MCA 5425)
You've Got Me Loving You - 1984 (MCA 52436)
Members Only - 1985 (Malaco Records)
After All - 1986 (Malaco Records)
Blues You Can Use - 1987 (Malaco Records)
Midnight Run - 1989 (Malaco Records)
Portrait of the Blues - 1991 (Malaco Records)
Years of Tears - 1993 (Malaco Records)
Sad Street - 1995 (Malaco Records)
Memphis Monday Morning - 1998 (Malaco Records)
Blues At Midnight - 2003 (Malaco Records)

Live albums:

Together for the First Time (with B.B. King) - 1974 (ABC)
Bobby Bland and B. B. King Together Again...Live - 1976 (ABC)
Live On Beale Street - 1998 (Malaco Records)

Collaborative album:

Blues Consolidated - 1958 (Duke Records) (with Junior Parker)

Compilations:

The Best Of - 1967 (Duke Records)
The Best Of Volume 2 - 1968 (Duke Records)
First Class Blues - 1987 (Malaco Records)
I'll take care of you - Rafael Lechowski - 2010 (Free)
The Anthology - 2001 (MCA Records)

*****

John Walter Vincent Cordice, Jr. (b. June 16, 1919, Aurora, North Carolina - d. December 29, 2013, Sioux City, Iowa) was one of the surgeon's who operated on Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1958 after King had been stabbed in the chest.

On September 20, 1958, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., then emerging as the leader of the civil rights movement, was autographing copies of his new book in a Harlem department store when a woman approached to greet him. He nodded without looking up. Then she stabbed him in the chest with a razor-sharp seven-inch letter opener.

Dr. King, then 29, was taken to Harlem Hospital, where three surgeons went to work. The blade had missed his aorta by millimeters, and doctors said a sneeze could have caused him to bleed to death. After mapping out a strategy, they used a hammer and chisel to crack Dr. King’s sternum, and repaired the wound in two and a half hours.

New York’s governor at the time, W. Averell Harriman, who raced to the hospital to observe the surgery, had requested that black doctors be involved if at all possible, Hugh Pearson reported in his 2002 book, “When Harlem Nearly Killed King.” Dr. Cordice and Dr. Aubré de Lambert Maynard, the hospital’s chief of surgery, were African-American. The third surgeon, Dr. Emil Naclerio, was Italian-American.

Over the years, Dr. Maynard was widely credited with saving Dr. King — and he accepted that credit — but in a 2012 interview with the public radio station WNYC, Dr. Cordice said that he and Dr. Naclerio had performed the surgery.

“We were not going to challenge him, because he was the boss,” Dr. Cordice said of Dr. Maynard.

Alan D. Aviles, the president of the New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation, suggested that Dr. Cordice’s modesty may also have kept him from getting the credit he deserved. “It is entirely consistent with his character that many who knew him may well not have known that he was also part of history,” Mr. Aviles said in a statement.

At the time of the stabbing, Dr. King was promoting his book “Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story,” which recounted the successful boycott he helped lead to desegregate buses in Montgomery, Alabama. His assailant was a mentally disturbed black woman who blamed Dr. King for her woes. Dr. King forgave her and asked that she not be prosecuted. He later learned that she had been committed to a hospital for the criminally insane.

John Walter Vincent Cordice Jr. was born in Aurora, North Carolina, on June 16, 1919. His father, a physician, worked for the United States Public Health Service there, fighting the flu epidemic of 1918. The family moved to Durham, North Carolina, when John was 6. He graduated from high school a year early, and then from New York University and its medical school.

With the outbreak of World War II, he interrupted his internship at Harlem Hospital to serve as a doctor for the Tuskegee Airmen, the famed group of African-American pilots. After the war, and after completing the internship, he held a succession of residencies. In 1955-56 he studied in Paris, where he was part of the team that performed the first open-heart surgery in France.

Dr. Cordice later became chief of thoracic and vascular surgery at Harlem Hospital, the position he held when he treated Dr. King. He went on to hold the same post at Queens Hospital Center. He was president of the Queens Medical Society in 1983-84.

On December 29, the last surviving surgeon from that hospital team, Dr. W. V. Cordice Jr., died at 94 in Sioux City, Iowa.

Dr. Cordice, who lived in Hollis, Queens, for many years before moving to Iowa, was survived by his wife of 65 years, the former Marguerite Smith; his daughters, Michele Boykin, Jocelyn Basnett and Marguerite D. Cordice; his sister, Marion Parhan; six grandchildren; and six great-grandchildren.

*****

Cardiss Hortense Collins, (née Robertson) (September 24, 1931 – February 3, 2013), was a Democratic politician from Illinois who served in the United States House of Representatives from 1973 to 1997. She was the first African American woman to represent the Midwest in Congress. Collins was elected to Congress in the June 5, 1973 special election to replace her husband, George, who had died in the December 8, 1972 United Airlines Flight 553 plane crash. The seat had been renumbered from the 6th district to the 7th when she took the seat. She had previously worked as an accountant in various state government positions.

Throughout her political career, she was a champion for women’s health and welfare issues. In 1975, she was instrumental in prompting the Social Security Administration to revise Medicare regulations to cover the cost of post-mastectomy breast prosthesis, which before then had been considered cosmetic. In 1979, she was elected as president of the Congressional Black Caucus, a position she used to become an occasional critic of President Jimmy Carter. She later became the caucus vice chairman. In the 1980s, Collins warded off two primary challenges from Alderman Danny K. Davis, who would finally be elected to replace her in 1996. In 1990, Collins, along with 15 other African-American women and men, formed the African-American Women for Reproductive Freedom. In 1991, Collins was named chair of the Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations. Her legislative interests were focused on establishing universal health insurance, providing for gender equity in college sports, reforming federal child care facilities. Collins gained a brief national prominence in 1993 as the chairwoman of a congressional committee investigating college sports and as a critic of the NCAA. During her last term (1995–1997), she served as ranking member of the Government Reform and Oversight Committee. She also engaged in an intense debate with Representative Henry Hyde over Medicaid funding of abortion that year.

Collins did not seek re-election in 1996, citing her age and the Republican majority in the House. In 2004, she was selected by Nielsen Media Research to head a task force examining the representation of African Americans in TV rating samples. Collins lived in Alexandria, Virginia until her death on February 3, 2013, at the age of 81.

*****

Harold J. Cromer (June 21, 1920? - June 8, 2013), a hoofer and comedian who as Stumpy, half of the vaudevillian duo Stump and Stumpy, performed antic dance routines in clubs around the country after World War II and later on television, died on June 8, 2013, at his home in Manhattan. He was in his early 90s.

*****

James Lewis Carter Ford (June 24, c. early 1920s – July 16, 2013) was an American blues musician, using the name T-Model Ford. Unable to remember his exact date of birth, he began his musical career in his early 70s, and continuously recorded for the Fat Possum label, then switched to Alive Naturalsound Records. His musical style combined the rawness of Delta blues with Chicago blues and juke joint blues styles.

According to records, Ford's year of birth was between 1921 and 1925, though at the time of his death his record company gave his age as 94, suggesting a birth in 1918 or 1919. Starting with an abusive father who had permanently injured him at eleven, Ford lived his entire life in a distressed and violent environment, towards which he was quite indifferent.

Ford, an illiterate, worked in various blue collar jobs as early as his preteen years, such as plowing fields, working at a sawmill, and later in life becoming a lumber company foreman and then a truck driver. At this time, Ford was sentenced to ten years on a chain gang for murder. Allegedly, Ford was able to reduce his sentence to two years. He spent many of his years following his release in conflicts with law enforcement.

Ford lived in Greenville, Mississippi, and for a time wrote an advice column for Arthur magazine. Reportedly, he had twenty-six children.

According to music writer Will Hodgkinson, who met and interviewed Ford for his book Guitar Man, Ford took up the guitar when his fifth wife left him and gave him a guitar as a leaving present. Ford trained himself without being able to read music or guitar tabs. Hodgkinson observed that Ford could not explain his technique. He simply worked out a way of playing that sounded like the guitarists he admired — Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf.

Ford toured juke joints and other venues, for a while opening for Buddy Guy. In 1995, he was discovered by Matthew Johnson of Fat Possum Records, under which he released five albums from 1997 to 2008.

Since 2008, Ford worked with the Seattle-based band, GravelRoad. The project began as a single event, with Ford needing assistance to play the Deep Blues Festival in Minnesota in July 2008. GravelRoad, longtime fans of Ford and performers already scheduled for the festival, agreed to provide support for a ten-show United States tour for Ford through July.

Ford had a pacemaker inserted at the end of that tour, but appeared on stage again with GravelRoad in 2008, 2009 and 2010. He suffered a stroke in early 2010, but despite difficulty with right-hand mobility, managed to complete a successful tour with GravelRoad. This tour concluded with an appearance at Pickathon Festival. Ford and GravelRoad opened the third day of the All Tomorrow's Parties Festival, in New York over Labor Day weekend, 2010, curated by American independent film-maker Jim Jarmusch.

GravelRoad backed Ford on his 2010 and 2011 albums, The Ladies Man and Taledragger, both released by Alive Naturalsound Records.

Ford suffered a second stroke in the summer of 2012 that limited his public appearances. However, he was able to perform at that year's King Biscuit Blues Festival in October.

On July 16, 2013, Fat Possum announced that Ford died at home in Greenville of respiratory failure after a prolonged illness.

The discography of T-Model Ford includes:

Pee-Wee Get My Gun - 1997 (Fat Possum)
You Better Keep Still - 1999 (Fat Possum)
She Ain't None of Your'n - 2000 (Fat Possum)
Bad Man - 2002 (Fat Possum)
Don't Get Out Talkin' It - 2008 (Fat Possum)
Jack Daniel Time - 2008 (Mudpuppy)
The Ladies Man - 2010 (Alive Naturalsound)
Taledragger - 2011 (Alive Naturalsound)

*****

William Herbert Gray III (August 20, 1941 – July 1, 2013) was an American politician and member of the Democratic Party who represented Pennsylvania's 2nd Congressional District from 1979 to 1991. He also served as Chairman of the House Committee on the Budget from 1985 to 1989 and as House Majority Whip from 1989 to 1991. He resigned from Congress in September of that year to become president and chief executive officer of the United Negro College Fund, a position he held until 2004.

Gray was the fourth highest-ranking member of the House at the time of his resignation. He later was co-founder of the government lobbying and advisory firm, Gray Loeffler LLC, headquartered in Washington D.C.

Gray was born in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, but grew up in St. Augustine, Florida, where his father was president of Florida Normal (later Florida Memorial) College, and in North Philadelphia where he graduated from Simon Gratz High School. He attended Franklin and Marshall College, where he received a bachelor's degree in 1963. He went on to obtain a master's in divinity from Drew Theological Seminary in 1966 and a similar degree from Princeton Theological Seminary in 1970. Gray received a L.H.D. from Bates College in 1994.

In 1972, Gray succeeded his father as the senior minister at Bright Hope Baptist Church in Philadelphia. He was elected as a Democrat to represent Philadelphia in the United States House of Representatives in 1978. He represented Pennsylvania's 2nd Congressional District in the House of Representatives from 1978 until his resignation on September 11, 1991. He was the first African-American to chair the House Budget Committee and also the first to serve as the Majority Whip (1989–1991). As chairman of the Committee on Budget, Gray introduced H.R. 1460, an anti-Apartheid bill that prohibited loans and new investment in South Africa and enforced sanctions on imports and exports with South Africa. This bill was an instrumental precursor to the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act of 1986 (H.R. 4868).

Gray resigned from Congress in 1991 to serve as President of the United Negro College Fund from 1991 to 2004. The move was considered a complete surprise and prompted questions as to why he had done so. There was widespread speculation that he had been the subject of an investigation into alleged campaign finance irregularities and a grand jury investigation into his church's financial dealings. He was reported to have struck a deal with Republican Dick Thornburgh, the United States Attorney General and former Governor of Pennsylvania, that he would not run in the United States Senate special election in Pennsylvania and, in return, Thornburgh would would drop the investigation into him. Thornburgh went on to run in the special election in November 1991 but lost in an upset to Democrat Harris Wofford.

Gray served as a special adviser to President Clinton and the Secretary of State for Haitian affairs in 1994. He was named to the PoliticsPA list of "Pennsylvania's Top Political Activists."

Outside of politics he was also a businessman who has been a Director at Dell from 2000. Gray was a director of J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., Prudential Financial, Inc., Rockwell International Corporation, Visteon Corporation and Pfizer. He retired from Bright Hope Baptist Church in 2007 and was succeeded by Kevin R. Johnson, former Assistant Pastor of Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem, New York.

Gray was married to the former Andrea Dash. They have three sons, William IV, Justin and Andrew. Gray was a member of Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity. Gray died on July 1, 2013 in London, while attending the Wimbledon tennis tournament with his son Andrew. Gray's death came suddenly and no cause of death has been given. He was 71.

*****

Etta Drucille Guyse, known as Sheila Guyse, (July 14, 1925 – December 28, 2013) was a popular African-American singer, actress, and recording artist, performing on stage and screen during the 1940s and 1950s.

Guyse was often compared to Dandridge and it has been said that some critics thought Guyse was a better actress than the more well-known Dandridge. It may be argued that if Sheila had been allowed the opportunity to make an impact in the Hollywood cinema, she would have been stiff competition for the more established actress.

Guyse had a sultry "girl-next-door" appeal which she showcased in three independent all-Black films (so-called "race films") of the late 1940s: Boy! What a Girl! Boy! (1947), Sepia Cinderella (1947, co-starring with Billy Daniels), and Miracle In Harlem (1948) giving impressive performances in all of them. She also appeared in the "Harlem Follies of 1949" and in a 1957 television adaptation of the play The Green Pastures.

Guyse was not an experienced or trained actress but she was a natural talent. She appeared in many Broadway stage productions such as Lost in the Stars and Finian's Rainbow which were both long-running. She contributed to cast recordings for these productions, and her singing voice was said to be as beautiful as she was; divine, sweet, easy on the ears whether singing jazz, pop, or gospel.

She died of Alzheimer's disease on December 28, 2013 in Honolulu, Hawaii.

****

*****

Theodore Judson Jemison (August 1, 1918 – November 15, 2013), better known as T. J. Jemison, was the president of the National Baptist Convention, USA, Inc. from 1982 to 1994. It is the largest African-American religious organization. He oversaw the construction of the Baptist World Center in Nashville, Tennessee, the headquarters of his convention.

In 1953, while minister of a large church in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Jemison helped lead the first civil rights boycott of segregated seating in public bus service. The organization of free rides, coordinated by churches, was a model used later in 1955-1956 by the Montgomery Bus Boycott in Alabama. Jemison was one of the founders of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in 1957.

In 2003, the 50th anniversary of the Baton Rouge bus boycott was honored with three days of events in the city. These were organized by a young resident born two decades after the action

T. J. Jemison was born in 1918 in Selma, Alabama where his father, the Reverend David V. Jemison, was the pastor of the Tabernacle Baptist Church. He came from a family of prominent ministers and strong churchgoing women. He attended local segregated public schools.

Jemison earned a bachelor's degree from Alabama State University, a historically black college in the state capital of Montgomery, where he joined Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity. He earned a divinity degree at Virginia Union University in the capital city of Richmond, Virginia, to prepare for the ministry. He later did graduate study at New York University in New York City.

In 1949, Jemison was first called as a minister by Mt. Zion First Baptist Church in Baton Rouge. There he worked chiefly on internal church matters, overseeing construction and continued fundraising of a new church building. At the time, his father was serving as President of the National Baptist Convention, the association of African-American Baptist churches established in 1895.

Within a few years, Jemison became involved in an early civil rights action. In 1950, the city had ended black-owned buses, requiring all residents to use its monopoly system, which enforced segregated seating. It was racially segregated by law; in practice, black citizens had to sit at the back half of the bus or stand, even if seats in the front "white" section were empty. Jemison said later he was struck by "watching buses pass by his church and seeing black people standing in the aisles, not allowed by law to sit down in seats reserved for whites. 'I thought that was just out of order, that was just cruel'."

Making up 80 percent of the passengers on the system, African Americans were fed up with standing on buses while "white" seats remained empty, particularly after the company had raised fares from ten to fifteen cents in January 1953. Rev. Jemison took up the issue with the Baton Rouge City Council. He testified on February 11, 1953 against the fare increase and asked for an end of the practice of reserving so many seats for whites. The city council met that demand, without abolishing segregation per se. They passed Ordinance 222, which established a first come-first served system: it allowed black passengers to board the bus from the back and take any empty seats available, while white passengers boarded from the front. In actuality though, the white drivers largely ignored the ordinance and continued to pressure blacks to sit in the rear of the buses.

When bus drivers harassed those black passengers who sought to sit in empty seats reserved for whites, Jemison tested the law on June 13, 1953, when he sat in a front seat of a bus. The next day the bus company suspended two bus drivers for not complying with the city ordinance. The drivers' union responded by striking for four days. That strike ended on June 18, 1953 when state Attorney General Fred S. LeBlanc declared the city ordinance unconstitutional on the grounds that it violated the state's compulsory segregation laws.

Reverend Jemison set up a free-ride network, coordinated by the churches, to compensate for the lack of public transit. This was its signature action for the boycott, which was also adopted for later use. "While the Baton Rouge boycott lasted only two weeks, it set protest standards, and is growing in recognition as a precedent-setting event in the history of the modern American civil rights movement."

With most of the black bus riders refusing to ride, by the third day the buses were almost entirely empty. The boycott lasted eight days, as Reverend Jemison called it off after successful negotiations between black leaders and the city council. The following day, the city council passed an ordinance under which the first-come, first-served, seating system of back-to-front and front-to-back was reinstated. In addition, they set aside the first two seats on any bus for white passengers and the back bench for black passengers, while allowing anyone to sit on any of the rows in the middle. To comply with state segregation laws, blacks and whites were prohibited from sitting next to each other within this arrangement. Jemision's model of boycotting in Baton Rouge was adopted in 1955 by organizers of the year-long Montgomery bus boycott. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., wrote, Jemison's "painstaking description of the Baton Rouge experience proved invaluable."

While a number of boycotters wanted to continue the action to attack segregation directly, the majority approved the compromise.

Jemison was elected as president of the National Baptist Convention, USA, Inc., the largest black religious organization, in 1982 and served until 1994. His best-known achievement of his tenure as president of the National Baptist Convention was the construction of the Baptist World Center in Nashville, Tennessee. It is a headquarters for the Convention. He publicly opposed the nomination of Clarence Thomas, a conservative African American as an associate justice of the United States Supreme Court. He also objected to American intervention in the Gulf War.

Toward the end of his term as convention president, Jemison faced criticism because of his support for the boxer Mike Tyson, who was convicted in a rape case against a black woman. He was strongly criticized both by church members and observers.

Approaching the end of his tenure (a result of term limits), Jemison selected Dr. W. Franklyn Richardson as his successor, but Richardson was defeated by Dr. Henry Lyons at the 1994 convention.

Jemison filed a lawsuit to try to overturn the result. Eventually, through the appeals process, the election of Dr. Lyons was upheld. Jemison individually, as well as a co-plaintiff and their counsel, was ordered to pay $150,000 in punitive damages. By a later court order, Jemison and his co-plaintiff were required to pay the other side's attorney fees. The court found that Jemison had concocted evidence to justify the suit.

Jemison died in Baton Rouge at the age of ninety-five. His body lay in repose at the Louisiana State Capitol on November 22, 2013, the 50th anniversary of the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Services were conducted on November 23 by the Reverend Dr. Rene F. Brown, formerly of Topeka, Kansas, and Jemison's successor pastor at Mt. Zion First Baptist Church in Baton Rouge.

Two Jewish Republican officeholders spoke at the funeral. Lieutenant Governor Jay Dardenne said that despite national prominence, Jemison's most important role ... was as shepherd of this flock and this church." Attorney General Buddy Caldwell at the ceremony quoted Psalms 37:27: "the steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord." He likened Jemison's life to the Statue of Liberty: He "gave us a torch to light the way."

United States Representative Cedric Richmond, a Democrat from Louisiana's 2nd congressional district, based in New Orleans, described himself and other African-American legislators as "direct beneficiaries of the hard work, commitment, and courage of Dr. Jemison." Reading a statement of United States President Barack H. Obama, Richmond described Jemison as "part of the generation that challenged the conscience of our nation and moved us toward justice and equality for all."

Interment followed in Green Oaks Memorial Park in Baton Rouge.

From June 19 to June 21, 2003, the 50th anniversary of the bus boycott and its participants were honored with a community forum and three days of events. Organizers were Marc Sternberg, a 30-year-old resident, Southern University, Louisiana State University, and major organizations. Sternberg said, "Before Dr. King had a dream, before Rosa kept her seat, and before Montgomery took a stand, Baton Rouge played its part."

In 2007, Mt. Zion First Baptist Church established the annual T. J. Jemison Race Relations Award in his honor. It was first awarded that year to Jesse Bankston, a long-term Democratic politician in Baton Rouge.

*****

James Milton "Jim" "the Dragon" Kelly (May 5, 1946 – June 29, 2013) was an American athlete, actor, and martial artist who rose to fame in the early 1970s. He was best known from his performance as Williams in the 1973 film Enter the Dragon.

Kelly was born in Paris, Kentucky. He began his athletic career in high school, competing in basketball, football, and track and field. He attended the University of Louisville where he played football, but left during his freshman year to begin studying Shorin-ryu karate. Additionally, he trained in Okinawan karate under the direction of Masters, Parker Shelton and Gordon Doversola. During the early 1970's, Jim Kelly became one of the most decorated world karate champions in the sport. In 1971, Kelly won four prestigious championships that same year, most notably, the World Middleweight Karate title at the 1971 Long Beach International Karate Championships. He opened his own dojo which was frequented by numerous Hollywood celebrities. He taught karate to actor Calvin Lockhart for a role in a thriller feature film Melinda. Kelly ended up playing a martial arts instructor in the movie.

As an actor, Kelly became the first Black martial arts film star. Jim Kelly co-starred alongside Bruce Lee in the block buster, Enter the Dragon. The role was originally supposed to go to actor Rockne Tarkington, who unexpectedly dropped out days before shooting in Hong Kong. Producer Fred Weintraub had heard about Jim Kelly's karate studio in the Crenshaw district of Los Angeles, and went there to see him and was immediately impressed. Kelly's role as Williams, an inner-city karate instructor who is harassed by white police officers, made a good impression upon directors and African-American males with his cool-cat demeanor and formidable physical skills. This appearance led to starring roles in a string of martial arts-themed blaxploitation films, among them Melinda and Black Belt Jones. Most of Kelly's film roles played up the novelty of an African-American martial arts master.

Kelly earned a three-film contract with Warner Brothers and made Three the Hard Way with Jim Brown and Fred Williamson, and Hot Potato, a movie in which he rescues a diplomat's daughter from the jungles of Thailand. After his contract ended with Warner Brothers, he starred in low-budget films Black Samurai, Death Dimension, and Tattoo Connection.

After his appearance in 1982's One Down, Two to Go, Kelly appeared in movies only rarely.

A deleted scene from the film "Undercover Brother", included on the DVD extra features, shows him in a cameo appearance with Eddie Griffin.

Kelly was a professional tennis player on the USTA Senior Men's Circuit. He often played tennis recreationally in the 1970s at Los Angeles' Plummer Park in West Hollwood.

In 2004, Kelly appeared with NBA star LeBron James in the Nike commercial "Chamber of Fear", a similarity of the Bruce Lee film Game of Death.

Kelly resided in Southern California and worked as a professional tennis coach. He was still a popular draw at conventions such as the 2009 San Diego Comic-Con International.

He considered Bruce Lee as "the greatest martial artist, who ever lived".

Jim Kelly died of cancer on June 29 2013, at his home in San Diego, California.

The filmography of, and television credits for, Jim Kelly read as follows:

Filmography

Melinda (1972)
Enter the Dragon (1973) as Williams
Black Belt Jones (1974) as Black Belt Jones
Three the Hard Way (1974) as Mister Keyes
Golden Needles (1974)
Take a Hard Ride (1975) as Kashtok
Hot Potato (1976) as Jones
Black Samurai (1977) as Robert Sand
The Tattoo Connection (a.k.a. E yu tou hei sha xing, Black Belt Jones 2) (1978)
Death Dimension (1978)
The Amazing Mr. No Legs (1981)
One Down, Two To Go (1982)
Stranglehold (1994)
Macked, Hammered, Slaughtered and Shafted (2004)
Afro Ninja Destiny (2009)
Afro Ninja (2009)

Television

Highway To Heaven (1985/1986) (2 episodes)

*****

Yusef Abdul Lateef (born William Emanuel Huddleston, October 9, 1920 – December 23, 2013) was an American jazz multi-instrumentalist, composer and educator. He became a member of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community after his conversion to the Ahmadiyya sect of Islam in 1950.

Although Lateef's main instruments were the tenor saxophone and flute, he also played oboe and bassoon, both rare in jazz, and also used a number of non-western instruments such as the bamboo flute, shanai, shofar, xun, arghul and koto. He is known for having been an innovator in the blending of jazz with "Eastern" music.

Lateef wrote and published a number of books including two novellas entitled A Night in the Garden of Love and Another Avenue, the short story collections Spheres and Rain Shapes, along with his autobiography, The Gentle Giant, written in collaboration with Herb Boyd. Along with his record label YAL Records, Lateef owned Fana Music, a music publishing company. Lateef published his own work through Fana, which includes Yusef Lateef's Flute Book of the Blues and many of his own orchestral compositions.

Lateef was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee. His family moved, in 1923, to Lorain, Ohio and again in 1925, to Detroit, Michigan, where his father changed the family's name to "Evans".

Throughout his early life, Lateef came into contact with many Detroit-based jazz musicians who went on to gain prominence, including vibraphonist Milt Jackson, bassist Paul Chambers, drummer Elvin Jones and guitarist Kenny Burrell. Lateef was a proficient saxophonist by the time of his graduation from high school at the age of 18, when he launched his professional career and began touring with a number of swing bands.

In 1949, he was invited by Dizzy Gillespie to tour with his orchestra. In 1950, Lateef returned to Detroit and began his studies in composition and flute at Wayne State University. It was during this period that he converted to Islam and became a member of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community.

Lateef began recording as a leader in 1957 for Savoy Records, a non-exclusive association which continued until 1959. The earliest of Lateef's album's for the Prestige subsidiary New Jazz overlap with them. Musicians such as Wilbur Harden (trumpet, flugelhorn), bassist Herman Wright, drummer Frank Gant, and pianist Hugh Lawson were among his collaborators during this period.

By 1961, with the recording of Into Something and Eastern Sounds, Lateef's dominant presence within a group context had emerged. His 'Eastern' influences are clearly audible in all of these recordings, with spots for instruments like the rahab, shanai, arghul, koto and a collection of Chinese wooden flutes and bells along with his tenor and flute. Even his use of the western oboe sounds exotic in this context; it is not a standard jazz instrument. Indeed, the tunes themselves are a mixture of jazz standards, blues and film music usually performed with a piano/bass/drums rhythm section in support. Lateef made numerous contributions to other people's albums including his time as a member of saxophonist Cannonball Adderley's Quintet during 1962–64.

Lateef's sound has been claimed to have been a major influence on the saxophonist John Coltrane, whose later period free jazz recordings contain similarly 'Eastern' traits. For a time (1963–66) Lateef was signed to Coltrane's label, Impulse. He had a regular working group during this period, with trumpeter Richard Williams and Mike Nock on piano.

In the late 1960s, Lateef began to incorporate contemporary soul and gospel phrasing into his music, still with a strong blues underlay, on albums such as Detroit and Hush'n'Thunder. Lateef expressed a dislike of the terms "jazz" and "jazz musician" as musical generalizations. As is so often the case with such generalizations, the use of these terms do understate the breadth of his sound. For example, in the 1980s, Lateef experimented with new age and spiritual elements.

In 1960, Lateef again returned to school, studying flute at the Manhattan School of Music in New York City. He received a Bachelor's Degree in Music in 1969 and a Master's Degree in Music Education in 1970. Starting in 1971, he taught courses in autophysiopsychic music at the Manhattan School of Music, and he became an associate professor at the Borough of Manhattan Community College in 1972.

In 1975, Lateef completed his dissertation on Western and Islamic education and earned a Ed.D. in Education from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. In the early 1980s, Lateef was a Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Nigerian Cultural Studies at Ahmadu Bello University in the city of Zaria, Nigeria. Returning to the United States in 1986 he took a joint teaching position at the University of Massachusetts and Hampshire College.

Lateef's 1987 album Yusef Lateef's Little Symphony won the Grammy Award for Best New Age Album. His core influences, however, were clearly rooted in jazz, and in his own words: "My music is jazz."

In 1992, Lateef founded YAL Records. In 1993, Lateef was commissioned by the WDR Radio Orchestra Cologne to composeThe African American Epic Suite, a four-part work for orchestra and quartet based on themes of slavery and disfranchisement in the United States. The piece has since been performed by the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and the Detroit Symphony Orchestra.

In 2010, Lateef received the lifetime Jazz Master Fellowship Award from NEA, the National Endowment for the Arts, an independent federal agency.

The Manhattan School of Music, where Lateef earned a bachelor's and a master's degree, awarded him a Distinguished Alumni Award in 2012.

Lateef's last albums were recorded for Adam Rudolph's "Meta Records". To the end of his life, he continued to teach at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and Hampshire College in western Massachusetts. Lateef died on the morning of December 23, 2013 at the age of 93 after suffering from prostate cancer.

The discography of Yusef Lateef include the following:

Savoy 1957-1959

Jazz for the Thinker (1957)
Jazz Mood (1957)
Jazz and the Sounds of Nature (1957)
Prayer to the East (1957)
The Dreamer (1959)
The Fabric of Jazz (1959)

Impulse! 1963-1966

Jazz 'Round the World (1963)
Live at Pep's (1964)
1984 (1965)
Psychicemotus (1965)
A Flat, G Flat and C (1966)
The Golden Flute (1966)

Atlantic 1967 -1991

The Complete Yusef Lateef (1967)
The Blue Yusef Lateef (1968)
Yusef Lateef's Detroit (1969)
The Diverse Yusef Lateef (1969)
Suite 16 (1970)
The Gentle Giant (1971)
Hush 'N' Thunder (1972)
Part of the Search (1973)
10 Years Hence (1974)
The Doctor is In... and Out (1976)
Yusef Lateef's Little Symphony (1987)
Concerto for Yusef Lateef (1988)
Nocturnes (1989)
Meditations (1990)
Yusef Lateef's Encounters (1991)

YAL Records 1992-2002

Tenors of Yusef Lateef and Von Freeman (1992)
Heart Vision (1992)
Yusef Lateef Plays Ballads (1993)
Tenors of Yusef Lateef and Archie Shepp (1993)
Woodwinds (1993)
Tenors of Yusef Lateef & Ricky Ford (1994)
Yusef Lateef's Fantasia for Flute (1996)
Full Circle (1996)
CHNOPS: Gold & Soul (1997)
Earth and Sky (1997)
9 Bagatelles (1998)
Like the Dust (1998)
Live at Luckman Theater (2001)
Earriptus (2001)
So Peace (2002)
A Tribute Concert for Yusef Lateef: YAL's 10th Anniversary (2002)

Meta Records

The World at Peace (1997)
Beyond the Sky (2000)
Go: Organic Orchestra: In the Garden (2003)
Towards the Unknown (2010)
Voice Prints (2013)

Other labels

Before Dawn: The Music of Yusef Lateef (Verve, 1957)
The Sounds of Yusef (Prestige, 1957)
Other Sounds (New Jazz, 1957)
Lateef at Cranbrook (Argo, 1958)
Cry! - Tender (New Jazz, 1959)
The Three Faces of Yusef Lateef (Riverside, 1960)
The Centaur and the Phoenix (Riverside, 1960)
Lost in Sound (Charlie Parker, 1961)
Eastern Sounds (Moodsville, 1961)
Into Something (New Jazz, 1961)
Autophysiopsychic (1977, CTI Records)
In a Temple Garden (1979, CTI Records)
Yusef Lateef in Nigeria (Landmark, 1983)
Influence with Lionel and Stéphane Belmondo (2005)
Roots Run Deep (Rogue Art, 2012)

With Cannonball Adderley

The Cannonball Adderley Sextet in New York (Riverside, 1962)
Cannonball in Europe! (Riverside, 1962)
Jazz Workshop Revisited (Riverside, 1962)
Autumn Leaves (Riverside, 1963)
Nippon Soul (Riverside, 1963)

With Nat Adderley

That's Right! (Riverside, 1960)

With Ernestine Anderson

My Kinda Swing (1960)

With Art Blakey

The African Beat (1962)

With Donald Byrd

Byrd Jazz (Transition, 1955)
First Flight (1957)

With Paul Chambers

1st Bassman (1961)

With Art Farmer

Something You Got (CTI, 1977)

With Curtis Fuller

Images of Curtis Fuller (Savoy, 1960)
Boss of the Soul-Stream Trombone (Warwick, 1960)
Gettin' It Together (1961)

With Grant Green

Grantstand (Blue Note, 1961)

With Slide Hampton

Drum Suite (1962)

With Louis Hayes

Louis Hayes featuring Yusef Lateef & Nat Adderley (1960)

With Les McCann

Invitation to Openness (1972)

With Don McLean

Homeless Brother (1973)

With Charles Mingus

Pre-Bird (aka, Mingus Revisited, 1960)

With Babatunde Olatunji

Drums of Passion (1960)

With Sonny Red

Breezing (Jazzland, 1960)

With Leon Redbone

Double Time (Warner Bros., 1976)

With Clark Terry

Color Changes (1960)

With Doug Watkins

Soulnik (New Jazz, 1960)

With Randy Weston

Uhuru Afrika (Roulette, 1960)

With Frank Wess

Jazz Is Busting Out All Over (1957)

*****

Willie Louis, previously Willie Reed (June 14, 1937 – July 18, 2013) was a witness to the murder of 14-year-old Emmett Till. Till was an African-American teenager from Chicago who was murdered in 1955 after reportedly whistling at a white woman in a Money, Mississippi grocery store. Till's murder was a watershed moment in the African-American Civil Rights Movement. Louis testified in court about what he had seen, but an all-white jury found the men not guilty. Fearing for his life, Louis moved to Chicago after the trial and changed his name from Willie Reed to Willie Louis. He was interviewed in 2003 for the PBS documentary The Murder of Emmett Till and was interviewed the next year on the CBS News television program 60 Minutes.

Willie Reed, as Willie Louis was then known, was born in 1937 in Greenwood, Mississippi at the eastern edge of the Mississippi Delta. He was raised in Drew, Mississippi, by his grandparents who worked as sharecroppers. Reed received little formal education and worked in the cotton fields.

Emmett Till was murdered in Mississippi in August 1955. He was a 14-year-old African-American from Chicago who was reportedly murdered for having reportedly flirted with and whistled at a 21-year-old white woman in a grocery store. The case and subsequent trial were "watershed moments in the civil rights movement, galvanizing public attention on the deep perils of being black in the Jim Crow South."

On the morning of Sunday, August 28, 1955, Reed, who was then 18 years old, was walking on a dirt road near Drew, Mississippi, when he saw a green-and-white Chevrolet pick-up drive past him with four white men in the front and three African-American men and an African-American youth seated with his back to the cab. Reed recognized two of the men in the front seat as Roy Bryant, the husband of the woman who Till had reportedly whistled at, and J.W. Milam, Bryant's half-brother.

Reed saw the truck pull into a plantation owned by Milam's brother and park in front of a barn. As he walked closer, he heard a boy inside the barn yelling, "Mama, save me!" He also heard the sounds of blows landing on a body and voices cursing and yelling, "Get down, you black bastard." Reed ran to the nearby house of Amanda Bradley and told her what he had seen and heard. Reed and another individual were sent to get water from a well near the barn. As they did, they heard the continuing sound of the beating until the cries became fainter and then stopped.

As Reed walked back toward the Bradley house, Milam emerged from the barn with a pistol at his side. Milam confronted Reed and asked if he had seen or heard anything. Reed told Milam that he had not. Reed returned to the Bradley house and watched from a window as the men in the barn loaded what appeared to be a body into the pick-up truck.

On August 31, 1955, Till's lynched body was discovered in the Tallahatchie River. The body showed signs that Till had been brutally beaten and shot in the head. Reed saw a photograph of Till in the newspaper and recognized him as the youth who he had seen hunkered down in the truck. Bryant and Milam were arrested for the murder, but Reed's grandfather warned Reed that he would be risking his safety if he spoke up. Louis was later approached by civil rights workers who persuaded him to testify in court. To ensure his safety, Reed went into hiding until the trial.

When Reed arrived at the courthouse to testify in the middle of September 1955, he was met by a "thicket of Klansmen massed outside the courthouse." Reed testified at the trial. He was shown a picture of Till and testified that it looked like the boy he had seen in the back of the truck. He also identified Milam and testified that he saw Milam come out of the barn to get a drink of water and then return to the barn. In his closing argument, the prosecutor reviewed Reed's testimony, noting that if Willie had been lying, the defense would have had needed 50 lawyers to discredit him. The prosecutor argued they couldn't do that "because Willie Reed was telling the truth." He finished by saying, "I don't know but what Willie Reed has more nerve than I have." Despite Reed's testimony and other evidence, Bryant and Milam were found not guilty after an hour of deliberation by an all-white jury.

In the aftermath of the trial, some suggested that Reed had not been a good witness, noting that he had given inconsistent accounts as to how far he was from Milam and whether he really recognized him. Even Till's mother later said that "Little Willie Reed" was "not a good witness." She added, "Willie Reed had a story, but he couldn't tell it. It was locked inside him. It would have taken education to put the key in the lock and turn it loose. Every word that was gotten from Willie had to be pulled out word by word. That's because Willie is 18 years old and has probably been to school only 3 years."

Others had a more positive reaction to Reed's testimony. The Jackson Daily News described his testimony as "the most damaging introduced thus far" and as having "electrified the court." The New York Times later wrote that Reed's testimony "made him a hero" of the African-American Civil Rights Movement. The Daily Worker published an article titled "The Shame of Our Nation" expressing outrage at the result but praising Reed and other witnesses as "heroes of the Negro people ... who stood up in court and in defiance of a white supremacist code fearlessly gave their testimony."

Historian David T. Beito said of Reed: "He was really the best eyewitness that they found. . . . [H]is act in some sense was the bravest act of them all. He had nothing to gain: he had no family ties to Emmett Till; he didn't know him. He was this 18-year-old kid who goes into this very hostile atmosphere."

After testifying in the Till case, Reed moved to Chicago and changed his name from Willie Reed to Willie Louis. He was employed as an orderly at Woodlawn Hospital and later at Jackson Park Hospital. In 1976, he was married to Juliet Louis, who was a nursing aide at Jackson Park. Louis remained silent about his role in the Emmett Till case. His wife did not even learn of his connection to the case until 1984.

In 2003, Louis was located and interviewed by Stanley Nelson, who later wrote a book and produced a documentary on the case. Nelson's documentary, The Murder of Emmett Till, was broadcast on PBS television in the United States and included an interview with Louis.

Thereafter, Louis met Till's mother and began speaking in public about the case. In 2004, he was interviewed on the CBS News television show 60 Minutes. During the interview on 60 Minutes, Louis explained his reasoning in deciding to testify: "I couldn't have walked away from that. Emmett was 14, probably had never been to Mississippi in his life, and he come to visit his grandfather and they killed him. I mean, that's not right."

In July 2013, Louis died of intestinal bleeding at age 76 in Oak Lawn, Illinois.

*****

Nelson Mandela, in full Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela, byname Madiba (b. July 18, 1918 - d. December 5, 2013), black nationalist and first black president of South Africa (1994–99). His negotiations in the early 1990s with South African President F.W. de Klerk helped end the country’s apartheid system of racial segregation and ushered in a peaceful transition to majority rule. Mandela and de Klerk were jointly awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1993 for their efforts.

The son of Chief Henry Mandela of the Madiba clan of the Xhosa-speaking Tembu people, Nelson Mandela renounced his claim to the chieftainship to become a lawyer. He attended South African Native College (later the University of Fort Hare) and studied law at the University of the Witwatersrand. He later passed the qualification exam to become a lawyer. In 1944, he joined the African National Congress (ANC), a black-liberation group, and became a leader of its Youth League. That same year he met and married Evelyn Ntoko Mase. Mandela subsequently held other ANC leadership positions, through which he helped revitalize the organization and oppose the apartheid policies of the ruling National Party.

In 1952, in Johannesburg with fellow ANC leader Oliver Tambo, Mandela established South Africa’s first black law practice, specializing in cases resulting from the post-1948 apartheid legislation. Also that year, Mandela played an important role in launching a campaign of defiance against South Africa’s pass laws, which required nonwhites to carry documents (known as passes, pass books, or reference books) authorizing their presence in areas that the government deemed “restricted” (i.e., generally reserved for the white population). He traveled throughout the country as part of the campaign, trying to build support for nonviolent means of protest against the discriminatory laws. In 1955, he was involved in drafting the Freedom Charter, a document calling for nonracial social democracy in South Africa. His anti-apartheid activism made him a frequent target of the authorities. In March 1956, he was banned (severely restricted in travel, association, and speech), and in December he was arrested with more than 100 other people on charges of treason that were designed to harass anti-apartheid activists. Mandela went on trial that same year and eventually was acquitted in 1961. During the extended court proceedings, he divorced his first wife and married Nomzamo Winifred Madikizela (Winnie Madikizela-Mandela).

After the massacre of unarmed black South Africans by police forces at Sharpeville in 1960 and the subsequent banning of the ANC, Mandela abandoned his non-violent stance and began advocating acts of sabotage against the South African regime. He went underground (during which time he became known as the Black Pimpernel for his ability to evade capture) and was one of the founders of Umkhonto we Sizwe (“Spear of the Nation”), the military wing of the ANC. In 1962 he went to Algeria for training in guerrilla warfare and sabotage, returning to South Africa later that year. On August 5, shortly after his return, Mandela was arrested at a road block in Natal. He was subsequently sentenced to five years in prison.

In October 1963, the imprisoned Mandela and several other men were tried for sabotage, treason, and violent conspiracy in the infamous Rivonia Trial, named after a fashionable suburb of Johannesburg where raiding police had discovered quantities of arms and equipment at the headquarters of the underground Umkhonto we Sizwe. Mandela’s speech from the dock, in which he admitted the truth of some of the charges made against him, was a classic defense of liberty and defiance of tyranny. (His speech garnered international attention and acclaim and was published later that year as I Am Prepared to Die.) On June 12, 1964, he was sentenced to life imprisonment, narrowly escaping the death penalty.

From 1964 to 1982 Mandela was incarcerated at Robben Island Prison, off Cape Town. He was subsequently kept at the maximum-security Pollsmoor Prison until 1988, when, after being treated for tuberculosis, he was transferred to Victor Verster Prison near Paarl. The South African government periodically made conditional offers of freedom to Mandela, most notably in 1976, on the condition that he recognize the newly independent—and highly controversial—status of the Transkei Bantustan and agree to reside there. An offer made in 1985 required that he renounce the use of violence. Mandela refused both offers, the second on the premise that only free men were able to engage in such negotiations and, as a prisoner, he was not a free man.

Throughout his incarceration, Mandela retained wide support among South Africa’s black population, and his imprisonment became a cause célèbre among the international community that condemned apartheid. As South Africa’s political situation deteriorated after 1983, and particularly after 1988, he was engaged by ministers of President P.W. Botha’s government in exploratory negotiations. He met with Botha’s successor, de Klerk, in December 1989.

On February 11, 1990, the South African government under President de Klerk released Mandela from prison. Shortly after his release, Mandela was chosen deputy president of the ANC. He became president of the party in July 1991. Mandela led the ANC in negotiations with de Klerk to end apartheid and bring about a peaceful transition to non-racial democracy in South Africa.

In April 1994, the Mandela led ANC won South Africa’s first elections by universal suffrage, and on May 10 Mandela was sworn in as president of the country’s first multi-ethnic government. He established in 1995 the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), which investigated human rights violations under apartheid, and he introduced housing, education, and economic development initiatives designed to improve the living standards of the country’s black population. In 1996, he oversaw the enactment of a new democratic constitution. Mandela resigned his post with the ANC in December 1997, transferring leadership of the party to his designated successor, Thabo Mbeki. Mandela and Madikizela-Mandela had divorced in 1996, and in 1998 Mandela married Graca Machel, the widow of Samora Machel, the former Mozambican president and leader of Frelimo.

Mandela did not seek a second term as South African president and was succeeded by Mbeki in 1999. After leaving office Mandela retired from active politics but maintained a strong international presence as an advocate of peace, reconciliation, and social justice, often through the work of the Nelson Mandela Foundation, established in 1999. He was a founding member of the Elders, a group of international leaders established in 2007 for the promotion of conflict resolution and problem solving throughout the world. In 2008, Mandela was feted with several celebrations in South Africa, Great Britain, and other countries in honor of his 90th birthday. Mandela Day, observed on Mandela’s birthday, was created to honor his legacy by promoting community service around the world. It was first observed on July 18, 2009, and was sponsored primarily by the Nelson Mandela Foundation and the 46664 initiative (the foundation’s HIV/AIDS global awareness and prevention campaign); later that year the United Nations declared that the day would be observed annually as Nelson Mandela International Day.

Mandela’s writings and speeches were collected in I Am Prepared to Die (1964; rev. ed. 1986), No Easy Walk to Freedom (1965; updated ed. 2002), The Struggle Is My Life (1978; rev. ed. 1990), and In His Own Words (2003). His autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom, was published in 1994.

*****

Kalaparusha Maurice McIntyre (March 24, 1936 – November 9, 2013) was an American free jazz tenor saxophonist.

McIntyre, who was born in Clarksville, Arkansas but raised in Chicago, studied at the Chicago College of Music, and during the 1960s began playing with musicians such as Malachi Favors, Muhal Richard Abrams, and Roscoe Mitchell. Along with them he became a member of the ensemble Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians in the mid-1960s. His first solo record appeared in 1969. During this time he also recorded as a session musician for Delmark Records, playing with George Freeman, J.B. Hutto, and Little Milton, among others.

McIntyre moved to New York City in the 1970s, playing at Sam Rivers' Riveba Studios and teaching at Karl Berger's Creative Studio. He and Muhal Richard Abrams toured Europe several times. After his 1981 live album, McIntyre recorded very little, playing on the streets and in the subways of New York. His next major appearance on record was not until 1998, with Pheeroan akLaff and Michael Logan. The following year, he played with many AACM ensemble members on the album Bright Moments. He continued to release as a leader into the 2000s.

The discography of Kalaparusha Maurice McIntyre reads as follows:

As leader

Humility in the Light of the Creator (Delmark Records, 1969)
Forces and Feelings (Delmark, 1970)
Peace and Blessings (Black Saint Records, 1979)
Ram's Run (Cadence Jazz, 1981)
Dream Of... (CIMP, 1998)
South Eastern (CIMP, 2002)
The Moment (Entropy Stereo, 2003)
Morning Song (Delmark, 2004)
Paths to Glory (CIMP, 2004)
Extremes (CIMP, 2007)

As sideman

With Muhal Richard Abrams

Levels and Degrees of Light (Delmark, 1968)

With Roscoe Mitchell

Sound (Delmark, 1966)

With Ethnic Heritage Ensemble

Welcome (Leo Records, 1982)

*****

Ahmed Fouad Negm (Arabic: احمد فؤاد نجم‎) (b. May 22, 1929 – d. December 3, 2013), popularly known as el-Fagommi (الفاجومي), was an Egyptian vernacular poet. Negm is well known for his work with Egyptian composer Sheikh Imam, as well as his patriotic and revolutionary Egyptian Arabic poetry. Negm has been regarded as "a bit of a folk hero in Egypt."

Ahmed Fouad Negm was born in Sharqia, Egypt, to a family of fellahin. His mother, Hanem Morsi Negm, was a housewife, and his father Mohammed Ezat Negm, a police officer. Negm was one of seventeen brothers. Like many poets and writers of his generation, he received his education at the religious Kutaab schools managed by El-Azhar.

When his father died, Ahmed went to live with his uncle Hussein in Zagazig, but was placed in an orphanage in 1936 where he first met the famous singer Abdel Halim Hafez. In 1945, at the age of 17, he left the orphanage and returned to his village to work as a shepherd. Later, he moved to Cairo to live with his brother who eventually kicked him out only to return to his village again to work in one of the English camps while helping with guerilla operations.

After the agreement between Egypt and Britain, the Egyptian National Workers’ Movement asked everyone in the English camps to quit their job. Negm was then appointed by the Egyptian government as a laborer in mechanical workshops. He was imprisoned for 3 years for counterfeiting form, during which he participated and won first place in a writing competition organized by the Supreme Council for the Arts. He then published his first collection “Pictures from Life and Prison” in vernacular Egyptian Arabic and became famous after Suhair El-Alamawi introduced his book while he was still in prison. After he was released, he was appointed as a clerk in the organization for Asian and African peoples. He also became a regular poet on Egyptian radio.

Negm lived in a small room on the rooftop of a house in the Boulaq el-Dakror neighborhood. When he met singer and composer Sheikh Imam in the Khosh Adam neighborhood, they became roommates and formed a famous signing duet. Negm was also imprisoned several times due to his political views, particularly his harsh criticism of Egyptian presidents Gamal Abdel Nasser, Anwar Sadat and Hosni Mubarak.

The residence of Ahmed Fouad Negm in the poorest neighborhoods of Cairo, Egypt, exposed him to the most talented professionals such as Sheikh Imam Issa, and impoverished poets and artists. It was Sheikh Imam in particular who compensated Negm for the earlier rejection by his orphanage-mate Abdel Halim Hafez.

In 1962, Negm was introduced to Sheikh Imam by a friend who believed that the two, poet Negm and composer Imam, could make a perfect duo. On the first occasion, Negm noticed that Imam took over an hour to tweak the strings of the Oud before starting his first demonstration to the new guest. Negm shouted "Allah" upon listening to Imam's singing and playing the Oud. The blind Sheikh was equally longing for inspiring words of the sort Negm had. That was the spark that lasted 30 years of concerted writing by Negm, composing by Imam, and singing by the two combined.

Negm was quick enough to sense that the blind Sheikh was a hidden treasure of Islamic literacy and music talent, and with his physical handicap, he could use the help of Negm's eyes and words. Hence, Negm proposed to stay in Imam's residence. As he recounted, his other rented room had property worth 6 Egyptian pounds, thus if he threw away the key for his other room, the landlord was required to take three months before breaking into the room and possessing its contents. Negm took the risk, abandoned his rented room with its contents and stuck with Sheikh Imam from 1962 throughout 1995.

In the early hours of 3 December 2013, Negm died at the age of 84 in Cairo.

In 2007, Negm was chosen by the United Nations Poverty Action as Ambassador of the poor.

Ahmed Fouad Negm won the 2013 Prince Claus Award for ‘Unwavering Integrity’.

*****

Kenneth Howard Norton Sr. (August 9, 1943 – September 18, 2013) was an American heavyweight boxer and WBC world Heavyweight Champion. He was best known for his 12-round victory over Muhammad Ali, when he famously broke Ali's jaw, on March 31, 1973, becoming only the second man to defeat a peak Ali as a professional (after Joe Frazier, who won a 15-round unanimous decision against Ali on March 8, 1971).

Norton and Ali would fight twice more, with Ali officially winning narrowly both return bouts, although many felt Norton truly deserved their third fight. Norton was awarded the WBC title (by virtue of his win over Jimmy Young in a 1977 title elimination bout) when Leon Spinks declined a mandated title defense against Norton, the number one contender. However, Norton lost it in his first defense on a split decision by 1 point to Larry Holmes in a great contest (Holmes-Norton is ranked as the 10th-greatest heavyweight fight of all time by Monte D. Cox, a member of the International Boxing Research Organization).

*****

Rena Price (b. May 13, 1916, Oklahoma - d. June 10, 2013, Los Angeles, California), a reluctant figure in one of the grimmest chapters in the history of Los Angeles, California, died of natural causes June 10 in Los Angeles, according to a son, Wendell Price. She was 97.

Born in Oklahoma on May 13, 1916, Price had moved with her family to Los Angeles in 1956 and found work cleaning houses and baby sitting. The neighborhood children she looked after nicknamed her "the Lady."

On August 11, 1965, Rena Price rushed from her home to a nearby traffic stop involving her son. An ensuing scuffle with officers resulted in her and her son's arrested, and those arrests ignited six days of deadly rioting that became known as the Watts riots.

*****

Carline Ray, (b. April 21, 1925, New York City, New York - d. July 18, 2013, New York City, New York), was a pioneering jazz instrumentalist and vocalist who joined the all-female International Sweethearts of Rhythm in the 1940s, later performed with Erskine Hawkins and Mary Lou Williams and this year released her first recording as a lead vocalist.

Carline Ray was born on April 21, 1925, in Manhattan. Her father, Elisha Ray, was a horn player who graduated from Juilliard the year she was born. He had played with James Reese Europe and had offers for more musical work but, seeking steady income for his new family, he took a job with the post office not long after he graduated.

Ray entered Juilliard at 16 and stayed five years, after changing her major from piano to composition. In 1956 she received a masters degree from the Manhattan School of Music.

*****

Layhmond Robinson Jr., (b. February 11, 1925, Abbeville, Louisiana - d. June 29, 2013, Queens, New York) was one of the first black reporters at The New York Times, who later became a local television news correspondent.

Robinson became a reporter for The Times in 1950, when black faces in the newsroom were rare. He covered crime in Brooklyn, then the New York State Legislature and the contentious 1961 mayoral race between Robert F. Wagner Jr. and then state attorney general, Louis K. Lefkowitz. In 1964, he became the first black president of the Legislative Correspondents Association, a group of reporters covering New York State government.

In 1965, Mr. Robinson left The Times for WABC-TV in New York.

Layhmond (rhymes with “Raymond”) Mack Robinson Jr. was born on February 11, 1925, in Abbeville, Louisiana. He served in the Navy as a photographer and a writer from 1943 until 1946, then went to Syracuse University. He graduated in 1949 and moved to New York City, where he became a copy boy at The Times and completed a master’s program at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

Mr. Robinson married Elsie Blair in 1955. They had three sons and two daughters.

After leaving WABC-TV, Mr. Robinson worked in public relations for the National Urban League, the New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation and the federal Department of Health, Education and Welfare.

Robinson helped to inspire the next generation of black journalists.

*****

Pascal-Emmanuel Sinamoyi Tabu (b. November 13, 1937 – d. November 30, 2013), better known as Tabu Ley Rochereau, was a leading African rumba singer-songwriter from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. He was the leader of Orchestre Afrisa International, as well as one of Africa's most influential vocalists and prolific songwriters. Along with guitarist Dr. Nico Kasanda, Tabu Ley pioneered soukous (African rumba) and internationalized his music by fusing elements of Congolese folk music with Cuban, Caribbean and Latin American rumba. He has been described as "the Congolese personality who, along with [the dictator] Mobutu, [most] marked Africa's 20th century history." He was dubbed the "African Elvis" by the Los Angeles Times. After the fall of the Mobutu regime, Tabu Ley also pursued a political career.

During his career, Tabu Ley composed up to 3,000 songs and produced 250 albums.

Pascal-Emmanuel Sinamoyi Tabu was born in Bagata, in the then Belgian Congo. His musical career took off in 1956 when he sung with Joseph "Le Grand Kallé" Kabasele, and his band L'African Jazz. After finishing high school he joined the band as a full-time musician. Tabu Ley sang in the pan-African hit Indépendance Cha Cha which was composed by Grand Kallé for Congolese independence from Belgium in 1960, propelling Tabu Ley to instant fame. He remained with African Jazz until 1963 when he and Dr. Nico Kasanda formed their own group, African Fiesta. Two years later, Tabu Ley and Dr. Nico split and Tabu Ley formed African Fiesta National, also known as African Fiesta Flash. The group became one of the most successful bands in African history, recording African classics like Afrika Mokili Mobimba, and surpassing record sales of one million copies by 1970. Papa Wemba and Sam Mangwana were among the many influential musicians that were part of the group. He adopted the stage name "Rochereau" after the French General Pierre Denfert-Rochereau, whose name he liked and whom he had studied in school.

In 1970, Tabu Ley formed Orchestre Afrisa International, Afrisa being a combination of Africa and Éditions Isa, his record label. Along with Franco Luambo's TPOK Jazz, Afrisa was now one of Africa's greatest bands. They recorded hits such as "Sorozo", "Kaful Mayay", "Aon Aon", and "Mose Konzo".

In the mid 1980s, Tabu Ley discovered a young talented singer and dancer, M'bilia Bel, who helped popularize his band further. M'bilia Bel became the first female soukous singer to gain acclaim throughout Africa. Tabu Ley and M'bilia Bel later married and had one child together. In 1988, Tabu Ley introduced another female vocalist known as Faya Tess, and M'bilia Bel left and continued to be successful on her own. After M'bilia Bel's departure, Afrisa's influence along with that of their rivals TPOK Jazz continued to wane as fans gravitated toward the faster version of soukous.

After the establishment of the Mobutu Sese Seko regime in the Congo, Tabu Ley adopted the name "Tabu Ley" as part of Mobutu's "Zairization" of the country, but later went into exile in France in 1988. In 1985, the Government of Kenya banned all foreign music from the National Radio service. After Tabu Ley composed the song "Twende Nairobi" ("Let's go to Nairobi"), sung by M'bilia Bel, in praise of Kenyan president Daniel arap Moi, the ban was promptly lifted. In the early 1990s, Tabu Ley briefly settled in Southern California. He began to tailor his music towards an international audience by including more English lyrics and by increasing more international dance styles such as Samba. He found success with the release of albums such as Muzina, Exil Ley, Africa worldwide and Babeti soukous. The Mobutu regime banned his 1990 album "Trop, C'est Trop" as subversive. In 1996, Tabu Ley participated in the album Gombo Salsa by the salsa music project Africando. The song "Paquita" from that album is a remake of a song that he recorded in the late 1960s with African Fiesta.

When President Mobutu Sese Seko was deposed in 1997, Tabu Ley returned to Kinshasa and took up a position as a cabinet minister in the government of new President Laurent Kabila. Following Kabila's death, Tabu Ley then joined the appointed transitional parliament created by Joseph Kabila, until it was dissolved following the establishment of the inclusive transitional institutions. In November 2005 Tabu Ley was appointed Vice-Governor of Kinshasa, a position devolved to his party, the Congolese Rally for Democracy by the 2002 peace agreements. He also served as provincial minister of culture. He was said to have fathered up to 68 children, including the French rapper Youssoupha, with different women.

Tabu Ley Rochereau died on November 30, 2013, aged 76, at Saint-Luc hospital in Brussels, Belgium where he had been undergoing treatment for a stroke he suffered in 2008.

During his lifetime, Tabu Ley Rochereau received the following awards:

Honorary Knight of Senegal

Officer of the National Order, the Republic of Chad

*****

Ashton Springer (1931- July 15, 2013, Mamaroneck, New York). Broadway producer who produced plays ranging from “No Place to Be Somebody” to the Tony-nominated “Bubbling Brown Sugar.”

Springer was one of the first African-Americans to bring plays and musicals by black artists to Broadway, and his 1977 all-black revival of “Guys and Dolls” was also Tony-nominated.

“Bubbling Brown Sugar” ran for just 12 performances at its first in 1975, featuring the music of Harlem Renaissance artists like Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington and Billie Holiday. In 1976 it moved to the ANTA Theater for a nearly two year run.

Among other productions he shepherded were the 1978 revue “Eubie!” about the music of Eubie Blake; the musical “Going Up,” the comedy “Unexpected Guests” and the Ronald Ribman play “Cold Storage.” His other Broadway productions included “Whoopee!,” Athol Fugard’s “A Lesson From Aloes” and “Inacent Black.”

Off-Broadway, he staged “Rollin’ on the TBS” and general managed a 2000 revival of “For Colored Girls…”

Springer began his career as a musician with the Four Aces before starting out on Broadway with a revival of “No Place to Be Somebody,” which led him to become interested in the audience potential for black-oriented plays.

Springer died of pneumonia on July 15, 2013, in Mamaroneck, N.Y. He was 82. He was survived by a sister and two sons.

*****

Delbert Tibbs (b. June 19, 1939, Shelby, Mississippi - d. November 23, 2013, Chicago, Illinois) was an American man who was wrongfully convicted of murder and rape in 1974 and sentenced to death. He was later exonerated and became a writer and anti-death penalty activist. He died on November 23, 2013.

Tibbs was born in Mississippi and grew up in Chicago. He attended the Chicago Theological Seminary from 1970 to 1972. In 1974, he was hitchhiking in Florida when he was wrongfully implicated in a crime for which he would receive the death penalty. That year, a 27-year-old man and a 17-year-old female were violently attacked near Fort Myers, Florida. The man was murdered and the young woman raped. She reported that they had been picked up while hitchhiking by a black man who shot her boyfriend dead and then beat and raped her, leaving her unconscious by the side of the road. Tibbs was stopped by police some 220 miles north of Fort Meyers and questioned about the crime. The police took his picture, but as he did not fit the victim's description of the perpetrator, did not arrest him. However, the photograph was sent to Fort Meyers and the victim identified him as the attacker. A judge then issued a warrant for Tibbs' arrest. He was picked up in Mississippi two weeks later and sent to Florida.

Though Tibbs had an alibi, he was indicted for the crimes. During the trial, the prosecution supplemented the victim's identification with testimony from a jailhouse informant who claimed Tibbs had confessed to the crime. The all-white jury convicted Tibbs of murder and rape and he was sentenced to death.

After the trial, the informant recanted his testimony, saying he had fabricated his account hoping for leniency in his own rape case. The Florida Supreme Court remanded the case and reversed the decision on the grounds that the verdict was not supported by the evidence. Tibbs was released in January 1977. In 1982, the Lee County State Attorney dismissed all charges, ending the chance of a retrial.

In November 1976,Pete Seeger wrote and recorded the anti-death penalty song "Delbert Tibbs."
A portion of Tibbs' story is featured in the play The Exonerated. On February 14, 2011 Tibbs, along with fellow exonerees and anti-death penalty activists, spoke with Illinois Governor Pat Quinn about repealing the death penalty in their state. A month later, on March 14, 2011, the death penalty was repealed in Illinois.

Tibbs is the author of "Selected Poems and Other Words/Works", Edited by O'Modele Jeanette Rouselle, Copyright 2007, Printed by The Manifestation-Glow Press New York City October 2007. His poetry also appears in the chapbook anthology "Beccaria", edited by poet Aja Beech released on April 22, 2011.

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Frank Wellington Wess (January 4, 1922 – October 30, 2013) was an American jazz saxophonist and flautist.

Wess was born in Kansas City, Missouri, the son of a school principal father and a schoolteacher mother. He began with classical music training and played in Oklahoma in high school. He later switched to jazz upon moving to Washington, D. C., and by nineteen was working with Big Bands. His career was interrupted during World War II although he did play with a military band during the period. After leaving the military, he joined Billy Eckstine's orchestra. He returned to Washington, D. C. a few years afterwards and received a degree in flute at the city's Modern School Of Music. From 1953 on, he joined Count Basie's band, playing flute and tenor sax. He reverted to alto sax in the late 1950s, and left Basie's band in 1964. From 1959 to 1964 he won Down Beat's critic poll for flute.

He was a member of Clark Terry's big band from 1967 into the 1970s and played in the New York Jazz Quartet (with Roland Hanna). He also did a variety of work for TV. In 1968 Wess contributed to the landmark album The Jazz Composer's Orchestra.

In the 1980s and 1990s, Wess worked with Kenny Barron, Rufus Reid, Buck Clayton, Benny Carter, Billy Taylor, Harry Edison, Mel Torme, Ernestine Anderson, Louie Bellson, John Pizzarelli, Howard Alden, Dick Hyman, Jane Jarvis, Frank Vignola and was a featured member of the Toshiko Akiyoshi Jazz Orchestra. In the 2000s, Wess released two albums with Hank Jones. In 2007, Wess was named an NEA Jazz Master by the United States National Endowment for the Arts.

Frank Wess died from a heart attack related to kidney failure on October 30, 2013.

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*****

The Americas

Mexico

Johnny Laboriel (born Juan José Laboriel López, July 9, 1942 – September 18, 2013) was a Mexican rock and roll singer. His career started in 1958, when at 16 years old he joined the rock and roll group "Los Rebeldes del Rock".

Laboriel died on September 18, 2013 from prostate cancer.

Laboriel was the son of actor and composer Juan Jose Laboriel and actress Francisca Lopez de Laboriel. His parents were Honduran immigrants to Mexico from the Garifuna coast. He was the brother of bassist Abraham Laboriel and singer Ela Laboriel.

In 2004, Laboriel was invited by Alex Lora to participate in the 36th anniversary of his band El Tri. The concert was presented at the Auditorio Nacional and was made into a CD and a DVD entitled 35 Años y lo que falta todavía

In 2006, Johnny Laboriel was invited by Luis Álvarez "El Haragán" to participate in the 16th anniversary of his band, El Haragán y Compañía. The concert was presented on November 3, 2006, also at Mexico City's Teatro Metropolitan.

Johnny Laboriel died on 18 September 2013, in Mexico City, from prostate cancer. He was survived by his wife Viviane Thirion, and sons Juan Francisco and Emmanuel.

Pan-African Chronology VII

Saturday, June 15, 2013

2013

Bananas thrown at Italy's first black minister Cecile Kyenge

Poetry

Drama

Fiction

Non-fiction

Edited works

Filmography

Live albums:

Collaborative album:

Compilations: