Jazz legend Duke Ellington died on this day, May 24, 1974
On April 24, 1969, Ellington celebrated his 70th birthday at the White House where he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
The medal was presented by President Richard Nixon, who himself had played the piano since childhood. From the President’s remarks:
“When we think of freedom, we think of many things. But Duke Ellington is one who has carried the message of freedom to all the nations of the world through music, through understanding, understanding that reaches over all national boundaries and over all boundaries of prejudice and over all boundaries of language..
In the royalty of American music, no man swings more or stands higher than the Duke.”
Afterwards, the President played “Happy Birthday” on the piano for the Duke while guests at the White House sang along.
Edward Kennedy “Duke” Ellington
April 29, 1899 - May 24, 1974
Fabricated Crimes
After the Civil War, a form of slavery continued through a system of peonage, a form of involuntary servitude. Thousands of African Americans were arrested for fabricated crimes and forced to work off exorbitant fines. Pat Hill was a victim of this reenslavement––bound, beaten, and forced to work. The affidavit is his formal sworn statement of fact.
Affidavit of Pat Hill, 05/12/1903
Liberia Bound
Liberia was formed as a haven for freed slaves. Beginning in the 1820s, thousands of freed slaves emigrated to Liberia. One of many ships, the Barque Azor carried 260 African American emigrants to Monrovia, Liberia, from Charleston, South Carolina, for resettlement on its maiden voyage.
Master’s Oath and Passenger List from the Barque Azor, 04/20/1878
The District of Columbia Emancipation Act
On April 16, 1862, President Abraham Lincoln signed a bill ending slavery in the District of Columbia. Passage of this act came 9 months before President Lincoln issued his Emancipation Proclamation. The act brought to conclusion decades of agitation aimed at ending what antislavery advocates called “the national shame” of slavery in the nation’s capital.
Two months earlier First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt had resigned in protest from the DAR when they refused to let Marian Anderson perform. She then worked to help arrange this concert on the National Mall:
75,000 People Gather on the National Mall to Hear Marian Anderson Sing
On this day, April 9, 1939, Marian Anderson performs from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.
When Howard University invited her to perform in Washington, they approached the Daughters of the American Revolution about the use of their auditorium, Constitution Hall. The DAR’s rejection on the basis of Ms. Anderson’s skin color prompted First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt to publicly resign from the organization.
More on the story behind this concert, here.
-from the FDR Library
Filed March 29, 1858, this is an affidavit by slaveowner C.A. Stovall in the case of “C.A. Stovall vs. Archy (Lee), a Slave,” the only known federal Fugitive Slave case tried in California, a “free state.” Surviving proceedings documents in the case record, filed mostly by Stovall the slaveholder, give his versions of both his and Archie’s travels and activities, which began in Mississippi and proceeded all the way to Sacramento, California, and then to San Francisco, where Archy was arrested by the U.S. Marshal. The case was finally resolved by the U.S. Commissioner of San Francisco, who concluded on April 14, 1858, that Archie was not a fugitive slave and should be released.
In his final campaign before his death, civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. lent his support to a strike by sanitation workers in Memphis, Tennessee. This flyer was distributed to sanitation workers in Memphis, Tennessee, asking them to “March for Justice and Jobs” on March 22, 1968. Included are directions for the route to be followed and instructions to the marchers to use “soul-force which is peaceful, loving, courageous, yet militant.”
Exhibit 1 in City of Memphis vs. Martin Luther King, Jr, 1968
Born into slavery in Thomasville, Georgia, on March 21, 1856, Henry Ossian Flipper was appointed to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York, in 1873. Over the next four years he overcame harassment, isolation, and insults to become West Point’s first African American graduate and the first African American commissioned officer in the regular U.S. Army.
Photograph of Lt. Henry O. Flipper, Photo by Kennedy, ca. 1877; Center for Legislative Archives; Records of the U.S. House of Representatives; National Archives and Records Administration (Reproduced with the permission of the U.S. House of Representatives)
Fugitive slave arrested…and freed
This March 17, 1858, warrant—from the only known Federal fugitive slave case tried in California—directed the arrest of a fugitive slave named Archy. His owner, Mississippian C. A. Stovall, claimed to be visiting California when Archy became a fugitive. Stovall demanded that Archy be returned to him. Archie was tried in California and Federal courts and eventually freed.
Warrant of Arrest, 03/17/1858
“Cmdr. Thomas A. Gaylord, USN (Ret’d), administers oath to five new Navy nurses commissioned in New York…” Phyllis Mae Dailey, the Navy’s first African-American nurse, is second from the right. March 8, 1945.
Mrs. E. Jackson wrote to the House Judiciary Committee the day after Bloody Sunday, March 7, 1965, in Selma, Alabama. She was reacting to scenes of police brutality during a voting rights march that many Americans witnessed on television news programs. The interlined handwriting in pencil is likely that of House Judiciary Chairman Emanuel Celler, who was Mrs. Jackson’s representative in Congress and an active supporter of voting rights legislation in the House. Interested in teaching or learning more about Voting Rights Act of 1965? Visit our web-lesson, Congress Protects the Right to Vote: the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
Letter from Mrs. E. Jackson, 3/8/1965, Records of the U.S. House of Representatives (ARC 2173239)
Judgment in the U.S. Supreme Court Case Dred Scott v. John F.A. Sanford, March 6, 1857
The 11-year struggle for freedom by the enslaved Dred Scott and his wife culminated in one of the Supreme Court’s most criticized decisions. Chief Justice Roger B. Taney read the majority opinion of the Court, which stated that slaves were not citizens of the United States and, therefore, could not expect any protection from the federal government or the courts; the opinion also stated that Congress had no authority to ban slavery from a federal territory. The decision was overturned by the 13th and 14th amendments to the Constitution, which abolish slavery and declare all persons born in the United States to be citizens.
Cover Sheet Summarizing Disposition of the Dred Scott Case by the U.S. Supreme Court, 03/06/1857
On February 26, 1939, in a dramatic act of conscience, Eleanor Roosevelt resigned from the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) when it barred the world-renowned singer Marian Anderson, an African American, from performing at its Constitution Hall in Washington, DC.
Letter from Eleanor Roosevelt to Mrs. Henry Roberts, 02/26/1939
Members of the Nation’s first Negro Navigation Cadets, who will receive their commissions in the Army Air Forces on February 26th, visited City Hall as guests of Mayor Fiorello H. La Guardia this afternoon. They are shown on the steps of City Hall as the mayor greeted their commanding officer, Maj. Galen B. Price. 02/16/1944
Tag It Tuesday! Tuskegee Airmen
“Pilots of a U.S. Army Air Forces fighter squadron, credited with shooting down 8 of the 28 German planes destroyed in dogfights over the new Allied beachheads south of Rome, on Jan. 27, talk over the day’s exploits at a U.S. base in the Mediterranean theater. Negro members of this squadron, veterans of the North African and Sicilian campaigns, were formerly classmates at a university in the southern U.S.”, 02/1944
via NARAtions » Tag It Tuesday! Tuskegee Airmen:
You’ve probably heard that “Red Tails,” a movie spotlighting the first African American military aviators, is now showing at a theater near you. Widely known as the Tuskegee Airmen, the pilots were part of the U.S. Army Air Corps’ 332nd Fighter and 477th Bombardment Groups. But you don’t have to go to the movies to learn more about their story! Just come to the National Archives!
Interested in the Tuskegee Airmen, the planes they flew, or the missions they were involved in? Then get tagging! »
