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B la c k
February 9, 2000
H M
istorv
onth
continued
popularity o f the “Dam N ew s”
outside its home in Harlem.
Pittsburgh Courier. A man who
made his living as a security guard,
Edwin Nathaniel Harleston, started
this paper in January 1910. Before
the year was out, however, he pulled
out o f the enterprise. The Courier’s
new chief was the attorney who had
handled its incorporation, Robert
L. Vann, who made this newspaper
the smart and extremely popular
had been a catcher in the American
Baseball League in 1884, Jackie
R obinson was the first Black
baseball player in modem baseball.
He was an outstanding player and
the first Black player in the white
Baseball Hall o f Fame. Other Black
baseball players and fans followed
Jackie to the white baseball leagues.
Within a few years. Black baseball
leagues and teams disappeared.
Black America had traded away its
baseball leagues, teams, hundreds
o f players, equipm ent, support
staffs, buildings, and hundreds o f
thousands o f fans just to get one
Black onto a white team.
songs o f the day. The presence of a
strong dance rhythm distinguished
the work o f R&B artists from the
styles played by blues and jazz
musicians. Rhythm and blues also
had a d istin c tly u rb an sty le ,
reflecting the desire o f many young
African A m ericans to distance
th e m se lv e s from th e ru ral
associations o f the traditional blues.
Successful performers emerging
from this tradition included the
saxophonist and band leader Louis
Jordan and “blues shouters” such as
Big Joe Turner, La V em Baker,
Ruth Brown, Big Mama Thornton,
and W ynonie Harris.
R.
l^>for Rosewood Massacre
p
-“ S
P a ris in th e R o arin g
Twenties. Life between the wars,
when Black was in and hot, “when
people with money but no talent
helped people with with talent but
no money,” when European nobility
hobnobbed with American royalty
- the Kings and Dukes and Earls o f
jazz - and life was a “beautiful
thing” for the stylishly bored,
rakishly disenchanted, and Blacks
who had known better and lived far
worse in the USA.
When the stock market
crashed, it ushered in the Great
Depression o f the 1930s. It was the
moment that brought the dancing,
glory days o f the Paris Noir Black
chic to an end. It was grand while it
lasted. Before long, Hitler had
invaded Poland, and Paris night life
saw the light o f day. In 1939, a new
play by white playwright William
Saroyan, The Time o f Your Life,
was the toast o f New York. Paris
had been that. For now it was done.
C 'est la vie.
for Scottsboro Boys
B y T onya B olden
On March 25, 1931, a
scruffle broke out among some
young men copping a ride on a
freight train bound for Memphis,
Tennessee. It was a black-white
thing, back o f which was probably
B y C lalp A nderson . E d .D,
for Professional Black
Baseball
Bv C laud A nperson . E p .P ,
On April 10, 1947, Jackie
Robinson broke the color-barrier
when he left the K ansas C ity
Monarchs to join the Brooklyn
Dodgers, an all-w hite National
League team. A lthough Moses
Fleetwood Walker, a Black man.
Rhythm and Blues, also
known as R&B, is a catchall phrase
used to describe several styles of
m u sic p ro d u ced by A frican
American musicians and intended
mainly for an African American
audience. The term came into vogue
during the 1940s as an alternative
to the term race music. At this time,
the main practitioners o f R&B were
small combos that often added jazz
and blues elements to the popular
African Americans were excludedfrom the professional basketball leagues
that sprang up during the 1920s and / 930s, but Black teams were able to
barnstorm against Whites throughout the country. Though Jackie Robinson
(shown above) is properly credited with breaking the color line in modern
major-league baseball by join in g the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947, he was
not the first African A merican to play in the major leagues. That distinction
belongs to M oses Fleetwood "F leet" Walker, a college educated catcher.
Som ething terrible
had happened in the little Black
Florida town o f Rosewood in
1923. A mass murder o f Blacks
took place. The m assacre
started with a lynching and
ended with the entire town
burned to the ground, its
middle-class Black residents
killed or chased into the
swamps.
Nearly a century ago,
Rosewood was a town o f about
200 B lack peo p le. T he
massacre o f Blacks started
when a white woman in a
nearby town claimed to have
been raped by a Black man. A
mob o f arm ed w hite men
headed straight for Rosewood.
T hey knew th at
because o f gun control laws,
most Black communities were
unarmed and defenseless. For
a week the white men ravaged
and burned the Black town of
Rosewood. Newspaper reports
from the time listed eight dead,
six Blacks and two Whites.
But reports o f mass graves
fille d w ith B lack bo d ies
persisted through the years.
Som e
so u rces
charged that more than 100
Blacks were slain. No one will
ever know the true number of
the dead. But the property
records could not be clearer.
Land that had been owned by
Black men and women was
confiscated and sold for taxes
to White buyers. The Black
families o f Rosewood lost all
they had spent their lifetime
earning.
O regon S ïmfhonï
James DcPrcist, Music Director & Conductor
A C O N C E R T FOR LO VERS
R o m a n t ic M u s i c o f V i e n n a ”
Valentines Special
Monday, Feb. 14 at 7:30 pm
Norman Leyden, conductor
Larissa Shahmatova, violin
«
Treat your sweetheart to an
evening o f romantic Viennese
music, including such clas
sics as The Blue Danube
Waltz, Vienna City o f My
Dreams, Tales o f the Vienna
Woods, The Pizzicato Polka
and beautiful violin music.
Tickets $18.75 - $50
Call 5 0 3 -2 2 8 -1 3 5 3
(1-800-228-7343)
Mon.-Sat. 9 am- 5 pm
or order tickets at:
www.orsymphony.org
L a ris s a S h a h m a to v a
Sponsored by the
Andrianoff Family
Supported by KI03
and II ilia mette Week
A H I I \ l S< IIM T Z .L H ( <»\< t H I HALL
S\V M ain & HrinitlwuY • I’ orll.ind t emer lor the I’e rlorm iiig Arts