Lafcadio Hearn , also called (from 1895) Koizumi Yakumo (born June 27, 1850, Levkás, Ionian Islands, Greece—died Sept. 26, 1904, Ōkubo, Japan), writer, translator, and teacher who introduced the culture and literature of Japan to the West.

Hearn grew up in Dublin. After a brief and spasmodic education in England and France, he immigrated to the United States at 19. He settled in Cincinnati, Ohio, working at various menial jobs and then on the Trade List, a business weekly. Eventually he became a reporter for The Cincinnati Enquirer and later for The Cincinnati Commercial, where he contributed prose poems and scholarly essays on themes unusual for that time, such as life among urban blacks. While in Cincinnati he translated stories from the French writer Théophile Gautier under the title One of Cleopatra’s Nights (1882) and Gustave Flaubert’s Temptation of St. Anthony (published posthumously). In 1877 Hearn went to New Orleans to write a series of articles on Louisiana politics for the Commercial and remained there, writing for the Item (later the Times-Democrat), contributing translations of French authors, original stories and sketches, and adaptations from foreign literature. The latter made up two of his earliest works—Stray Leaves from Strange Literature (1884) and Some Chinese Ghosts (1887). The scope of his articles varied widely; he wrote on Buddhism and Islām and on French and Russian literature. His editorials ranged from scientific topics to articles on anti-Semitism in Russia and France. Chita (1889), an adventure novel about the only survivor of a tidal wave, dates from this time.

From 1887 to 1889, Hearn was in the West Indies on assignment for Harper’s Magazine, which resulted in Two Years in the French West Indies (1890) and his novel Youma (1890), a highly original story of a slave insurrection.

In 1890 Hearn traveled to Japan for Harper’s. He soon broke with the magazine and worked as a schoolteacher in Izumo in northern Japan. There he met Setsuko Koizumi, a Japanese lady of high Samurai

Marion Motley , (born June 5, 1920, Leesburg, Georgia, U.S.—died June 27, 1999, Cleveland, Ohio), African American gridiron football player who helped desegregate professional football in the 1940s during a career that earned him induction into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1968. Motley’s bruising running style and exceptional blocking ability marked him as one of the sport’s greatest players.

Motley was a fullback and linebacker for both South Carolina State University (Orangeburg) and the University of Nevada (Reno) before playing for the Great Lakes Naval Training Station during World War II. His coach there was Paul Brown, who later was named the first coach of the Cleveland Browns in the All-America Football Conference (AAFC). Motley signed with Cleveland as a fullback in 1946, breaking professional football’s 13-year colour barrier along with three other players.

Motley, 6 feet 1 inch (1.85 metres) tall and weighing 238 pounds (108 kg), was the leading rusher in the four-year history of the AAFC, with 3,024 yards. The Cleveland Browns won every AAFC title and compiled a 47–4–3 regular-season record. Motley, who also contributed defensively, was an AAFC linebacker in each of his first three seasons.

When the Browns joined the National Football League (NFL) in 1950, Motley led the league with 810 yards, an average of 5.8 yards per carry, and was named to the All-Pro team. The Browns won the NFL title in 1950 and advanced to the title game in each of the next three seasons. Motley missed the 1954 season because of a knee injury. He finished his career with the Pittsburgh Steelers in 1955. In all, Motley totaled 4,720 rushing yards (a 5.7-yard average) and scored 31 touchdowns.

Motley’s career has been overshadowed by later Browns fullback Jim Brown, who played in an era when the NFL attracted a broad national audience through television. However, Motley, using a similar combination of speed and power, was just as dominant during his career and was considered by many, including Coach Paul Brown, to have

Djibouti City is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Djibouti.  Its contemporary population is estimated at 624,000, which is about 70% of the population of the entire nation. Located on the Horn of Africa, Djibouti was an important trade center for both the Arabian Peninsula and Eastern Africa. It also had links to the East African city states.  About 95% of the city’s population is Muslim.  

Zelia, a port city east of present day Djibouti in what is now Somalia, was the first settlement in the region. Dating back to the first century C.E., it developed as a site of the silver and slave trade and was inhabited by both the indigenous Afar people and by immigrants from Arabia. By the thirteenth through sixteenth centuries there were frequent power struggles between the Christian Abyssinians (Ethiopians) and Muslim sultanates in the region. By the seventeenth century the Afar and Issa people were the majority of residents in the city. Throughout the nineteenth century, Arab traders paid tribute to Afar and Issa chiefs to use the interior for their caravans.

Trade in the Horn of Africa attracted Europeans. In 1881 France established a trading company in the port city of Obock; however, the surrounding mountains of Obock made it difficult for the French to construct a railroad to Ethiopia. In 1885, shortly after the Partition of Africa, the French signed a treaty with Issa chiefs that enabled Léonce Lagarde, the French representative, to establish a permanent presence in the region.  They created the colony of French Somaliland in 1888 and established Djibouti City as the base of operations. Djibouti City became the capital of French Somaliland in 1892.

Djibouti City grew rapidly after Governor Léonce Lagarde signed a treaty with Emperor Menelik II of Ethiopia to establish trade with his nation in 1897.  The French constructed a railroad and a deep-water port, which also drew people to Djibouti City. By 1900 an estimated 15,000 people resided there. An increase in the volume of trade in Djibouti City

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall announces his retirement

Quvenzhané Wallis is a child actress, model and singer. She was born on August 28, 2003 to a teacher named Qulyndreia, and a truck driver named Venjie Wallis, Sr. Her unique name reflects a combination of her parents’ names and the word “zhané” is Swalihi for fairy. She has two sisters and a brother. Wallis auditioned for her first acting job at the age of 5, although her parents lied about her age to make her eligible for the part as the minimum age specified for the role was 6 years. She was selected out of 4000 other candidates to play the part of “Hushpuppy” in the film “Beasts of the Southern Wild”.

The director of the film was Benh Zeitlin was very impressed by Wallis’s audition as well as her outspoken personality, reading ability and clear voice. This was especially impressive, given Wallis’s lack of acting experience. Her role was the main character of the film, that of a child prodigy living with her dying father in Louisiana. Zeitlin said in several interviews how impressed he was by Wallis’s personality and even rewrote some of the dialogue to cater it to her confident, outspoken personality. The film was released on June 27, 2012 and it was immediately a huge success.

The film was featured at the Sundance Festival in January 2012, where it received excellent reviews and also won the Grand Jury Prize. It was also featured at the prestigious Cannes Film Festival, for which Quvenzhané Wallis flew to France. Here it won the Caméra d’Or award for Best first Feature Film and Wallis’s performance received critical acclaim. She received several awards and nominations for her performance, including the African-American Film Critics Association Award for best breakthrough performance, the Alliance of Women Film Journalists Award for best breakthrough performance, the Broadcast Film Critics Association Award for best young performer, and the Hollywood Film Festival New Hollywood Award.

In January 2013, at the age of 9, she was nominated for the Best Actress Oscar, making her the youngest actress in history to

Efua Sutherland , (born June 27, 1924, Cape Coast, Gold Coast [now in Ghana]—died January 22, 1996), Ghanaian playwright, poet, teacher, and children’s author, who founded the Drama Studio in Accra (now the Writers’ Workshop in the Institute of African Studies, University of Ghana, Legon).

George was born in Africville, (Halifax), Nova Scotia.

In 1887 @ 17 years of age he left for Boston to embark on what would end up being the MOST significant careers in Boxing.

George was the first Black to win a World title (June 27, 1890); he was also the first to hold a World title in 2 different weight classes at the same time....Bantamweight & Featherweight.

He was also the first Champion to regain a title lost in the ring.

George Invented the Training Techniques such as the Suspended Punching Bag, Shadowboxing

AND Pioneered Technical or as it was first referred to Scientific Boxing.

Race riot, Buffalo, New York. Two hundred arrested.

Frederick Jones invents the ticket dispensing machine, patent #2163754.

Patricia Roberts Harris, the first African American U.S. Ambassador is named permanent chairman of the Democratic National Convention. She will later be appointed Secretary of Health and Human Services and Secretary of Housing and Urban development

U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Weber v. Kaiser Aluminum and Chemical Corporation that employers and unions can establish voluntary programs, including the use of quotas, to aid minorities in employment.

Crystal Bird Fauset, the first African-American female state legislators in the United States, was born on June 27, 1894 in Princess Anne, Maryland.

Paul Laurence Dunbar , (born June 27, 1872, Dayton, Ohio, U.S.—died Feb. 9, 1906, Dayton), U.S. author whose reputation rests upon his verse and short stories written in black dialect. He was the first black writer in the U.S. to make a concerted attempt to live by his writings and one of the first to attain national prominence.

Both of Dunbar’s parents were former slaves; his father escaped to freedom in Canada and then returned to the U.S. to fight in the Civil War. The young Dunbar was the only black student in his Dayton high school, where he was the popular editor of the school paper. He published his first volume of poetry, Oak and Ivy (1893), at his own expense while working as an elevator operator and sold copies to his passengers to pay for the printing. His second volume, Majors and Minors (1895), attracted the favourable notice of the novelist and critic William Dean Howells, who also introduced Dunbar’s next book, Lyrics of Lowly Life (1896), which contained some of the finest verses of the first two volumes.

A vogue sprang up for Dunbar’s poems; he read them to audiences in the U.S. and England, and when he returned from abroad he was given a job in the reading room of the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. (1897–98). He turned to fiction as well as verse, publishing four collections of short stories and four novels before his early death. Writing for a largely white readership, Dunbar made use of the then current plantation tradition in both his stories and his poems, depicting the pre-Civil War South in pastoral, idyllic tones. Only in a few of his later stories did a suggestion of racial disquiet appear.

His first three novels—including The Uncalled (1898), which reflected his own spiritual problems—were about white characters. His last, sometimes considered his best, was The Sport of the Gods (1902), concerning an uprooted black family in the urban North.

Poet Paul Laurence Dunbar born in Dayton, Ohio. Mr. Paul Laurence Dunbar is one of the most popular African-American poets of all time. His dialect poemsand humor in his works were often under appreciated due to the English standardswhich were set at the time. His book was finally givenattention in The Book of American Negro Poetry in 1921 by James Weldon Johnson. Among his numerous collections of poems are Oak and Ivory (1893) and Majors and Minors (1896). His birth in1872 and his death in 1906 gave him enough time to give impact uponthe poetic world, and an impression of the true art of poetry.

Paul Laurence Dunbar was an African American poet and author born on June 27, 1872.

Prudence Crandall, a liberal white woman, arrested for conducting an academy for Black females in Canterbury, Connecticut. The academy was later closed.

U.S. signed treaty of commerce with Ethiopia.

Winning the Pulitzer Prize for Music is one of the multitude of richly deserved tributes to composer, pianist, and educator George TheophilusWalker. His prolific career continues into his 90s with his commissioned SinfoniaNo. 4 (Strands), premiered in 2012 by the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra.

George Theophilus Walker was born June 27, 1922 in Washington, D.C. to George T.and Rosa Walker. His father emigrated from Jamaica and became a prominent physician.His mother began his obligatory piano lessons at five years old. He grew to lovemusic and entered Oberlin School of Music at 14, receiving a B.M. degree with classhonors in 1941.

Walker entered the Curtis Institute of Music, and in 1945 became its first black student to graduate.  He studied under Serkin, Horszowski, Piatigorsky, and Primrose.That year his New York debut recital in Town Hall was followed with another debutwhere he played 3rd Piano Concerto of Rachmaninoff with the Philadelphia Orchestra.Walker then attended Eastman School of Music where he received a Doctor of MusicalArts Degree in 1956. In 1957 he traveled to study in France including privatelywith Nadea Boulanger.

His academic appointments include professorships at Smith College, the Universityof Colorado, and the University of Delaware where he held the first Minority Chairat that institution.  He was appointed Chairof the Music Department, Rutgers University-Newark in 1975.  He became a Distinguished Professor there in 1976and retired from its faculty in 1992.

Over his career Walker published over 90 works including sonatas for piano, a masscantata, songs, organ pieces, choral works, sonatas for cello, violin and viola,and works for brass and woodwinds. Paul Kapp, at General Music Publishing, was firstto publish the bulk of his work in 1971. Publication with General Music Publishing, a leading classical music publishinghouse, was crucial to his finally gaining critical recognition. In the 1970s AfricanAmerican conductor Paul Freeman began to issue recordings of Walker’s orchestralmusic.