Rapier was born on November 13, 1837 in Florence, Alabama and attended high school in Nashville, Tennessee.

Charles Gordone was born Charles Edward Fleming on October 12, 1925 in Cleveland, Ohio to parents William and Camille Fleming.  He took his stepfather’s surname of Gordon when his mother remarried when he was five years old.  The family moved to Elkhart, Indiana, his mother’s hometown, when Charles was very young.  After graduating from high school in Indiana, Gordon moved to Los Angeles.  In 1942 he enrolled at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) where he spent one semester before joining the U.S. Army Air Corps. Gordon served two years in the Air Corps’ Special Services where he was an organizer of entertainment.

He returned to Los Angeles after his discharge in 1944 and studied music at Los Angeles City College before moving on to California State University, Los Angeles where he earned a B.A. in drama in 1952.  Upon graduation, he moved to New York City to pursue a career in acting.  It was in New York that Gordon added the “e” to his surname because he spotted another Charles Gordon on the Actors’ Equity membership list.  During the late 1950s, Gordone began directing as well as acting. He founded his own theatre, Vantage, in Queens, New York in the late 1950s.  In 1962, Gordone also founded the Committee for the Employment of Negroes, an organization designed to lobby for more employment opportunities for blacks in theatre.  

Charles Gordone won an Obie (an award given to off-Broadway productions) for his performance in an all-black production of John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men in 1964. Between acting and directing jobs, Gordone worked as a waiter in a Greenwich Village tavern.  His experiences there inspired him to write his most famous play No Place to be Somebody.  The play opened off Broadway at the New York Shakespeare Festival Public Theatre in May of 1969 to rave reviews, and made Gordone an instant celebrity.  Over the next two years the play would be performed over 900 times off-Broadway, before moving to the Morosco Theatre on Broadway in 1971. No Place to Be Somebody won the

In Cleveland Ohio on November 13, 1967, Carl Stokes was the first black elected mayor of a major city. "Carl Stokes, grandson of a slave, won the mayoral election over Seth Taft, grandson of President William H. Taft.

Ambassador June Carter Perry was born November 13, 1943 in Texarkana, Arkansas.

Pioneering surgeon, Dr Daniel Hale Williams, becomes a member of the American College of Surgeons,

1913

Prior to this death on November 13, 1908, he returned to live in Philadelphia, where his daughter Charlotte also taught at the ICY.

Around three thousand soldiers and police officers moved into Rocinha, one of the largest slums in Rio de Janeiro, on November 13, 2011. It was part of an operation by the government to gain control over troubled areas in the city before the 2016 Summer Olympics and the 2014 World Cup. The operation, named "Shock of Peace," involved military helicopters, tanks, snipers stationed on rooftops, and police squads patrolling alleys.

Rocinha, a community of more than 80,000, is located near some of Rio"s wealthiest neighborhoods. Occupying the area was an important step in imposing order in the city and cracking down on drug traffickers who control most of the city"s slums. Shock of Peace was made possible by the arrest of Nem, a drug lord whose real name is Antônio Bonfim Lopes, as well as months of gathering intelligence.

Ballerina, Janet Collins, becomes the first Black dancer to appear with the Metropolitan Opera Company,

1951

Whoopi Goldberg , original name Caryn Elaine Johnson (born November 13, 1955, New York, New York, U.

Born Caryn Johnson on November 13, 1955 in New York City, Goldberg began her long career when she was eight years old, performing with New York"s Helena Rubenstein Children"s Theater. By virtue of her distinctive appearance and a persona that is both no-nonsense and empathic, Goldberg has emerged as one of the most recognizable celebrities of the "80s and "90s.

On November 13, 1993, President Bill Clinton traveled to Memphis to address 5,000 African American ministers at the national headquarters of the Church of God in Christ.  Speaking from the pulpit where in 1968 Dr. Martin Luther King delivered his last sermon, Clinton used the occasion to urge the ministers to celebrate the King legacy and to continue to fight for the goals Dr. King had pursued until his untimely death.  The Clinton speech, which specifically addressed the problem of crime and violence in black America, appears below.  

By THE GRACE OF GOD and your help, last year, I was elected President of this great country. I never dreamed that I would ever have a chance to come to this hallowed place where Martin Luther King gave his last sermon. I ask you to think today about the purpose for which I ran and the purpose for which so many of you worked to put me in this great office. I have worked hard to keep faith with our common efforts-to restore the economy, to reverse the politics of helping only those at the top of our totem pole and not the hard-working middle class or the poor, to bring our people together across racial and regional and political lines, to make a strength out of our diversity instead of letting it tear us apart, to reward work and family and community, and try to move us forward into the 21st Century.

I have tried to keep faith. Thirteen percent of all my presidential appointments are African Americans and there are five African Americans in the Cabinet of the United States-two-and-a-half times as many as have ever served in the history of this great land.

I have sought to advance the right to vote with the Motor-Voter Bill supported so strongly by all the churches in our country. And next week, it will be my great honor to sign the Restoration of Religious Freedoms Act-a bill supported widely by people across all religions and political philosophies, to put back the real meaning of the Constitution, to give you and every other American the freedom to do what is most important in

Longtime University of Washington head basketball coach Lorenzo Romar was born November 13, 1958, and grew up in Compton, California, where he went on to play at Cerritos Community College after high school.

A. C. Richardson, a black inventor,

invented the casket lowering device,

patent#529,311

Liberty party, the first antislavery political party, organized at Warsaw, New York. Samuel Ringgold Ward and Henry Highland Garnet were among the earliest supporters of the new political departure.

Supreme Court upheld lower court decision which banned segregation on city buses in Montgomery, Alabama. Federal injunctions prohibiting segregation on the buses were served on city, state and bus company officials, December 20. At two mass meetings Montgomery Blacks called off year-long bus boycott. Buses were integrated on December 21.

Being elected mayor of Cleveland, Ohio made Carl Stokes the first Black to be elected mayor of a major city.

Lecture 14 of Clay Carson"s Introduction to African-American History Course (HIST 166) concentrating on the Modern Freedom Struggle (Fall 2007). This class session is a guest lecture by Elaine Brown on the Black Panther Party. Recorded November 13, 2007 at Stanford University.

This course introduces the viewer to African-American history, with particular emphasis on the political thought and protest movements of the period after 1930, focusing on selected individuals who have shaped and been shaped by modern African-American struggles for freedom and justice. Clayborne Carson is a professor in the History Department at Stanford University; Elaine Brown is the guest lecturer.

Complete playlist for the course:

http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list...

Course syllabus:

http://www.stanford.edu/~ccarson/Hist...

More on Clayborne Carson:

http://www.stanford.edu/~ccarson/

Stanford University channel on YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/stanford

Elaine Brown - Duration: 1:30:39. CSUSonoma 10,040 views

Talk to Al Jazeera S2015 • E3 Talk to Al Jazeera - Akon: "America was never built for black people" - Duration: 25:01. Al Jazeera English 1,159,053 views

Whoopi Goldberg, nee Caryn Johnson, Academy Award winning actor,born

The first Black elected to the American College of Surgeons was Dr. Daniel Hale Williams who was also the first person to perform openheart surgery.

Whoopi Goldberg is a celebrated American actress, comedian and human rights advocate. She was born as Caryn Elaine Johnson on November 13, 1955, in New York City and was raised by a single mother in a housing project of Manhattan. Her father abandoned the family and her mother struggled to raise Whoopi and her younger brother Clyde, working a variety of jobs to keep the family afloat. She dropped out of high school at the age of 17 and got heavily addicted to drugs. She checked into rehab at the age of 17 and cleaned up her act. There she met her first husband with whom she had her only child – a daughter named Alexandria. The marriage didn’t last long, and Whoopi moved to California with her daughter with the intention of pursuing a career in show business. Adopting the stage name of Whoopi Goldberg, she became one of the founders of the San Diego Repertory Theatre.

Whoopi began to write comedic monologues and made a name for herself as a stand-up comedian. She toured America with her act called “The Spook Show” which showcased her natural talent for whacky and dramatic humor. Her act caught the attention of the film director Mike Nichols who converted her one woman act into a Broadway play. The show was so popular that all 156 shows were sold out and Whoopi established herself as one of the most celebrated actresses in New York. This brought her to the notice of the legendary Hollywood director Steven Spielberg who cast her in the leading role of his next movie. The movie was called “The Color Purple” and it was an adaptation of Alice Walker’s Pulitzer Prize winning novel. The film was a huge success, winning 11 Oscar nominations including the nomination for Best Supporting Actress for Whoopi. She did not win the Oscar, but took home a Golden Globe Award.

Her next major Hollywood role was that of Oda Mae Brown in the film “Ghost” – also starring Patrick Swayze and Demi Moore. The film was a phenomenal success and earned Whoopi an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress, making her the second African American to

On this day, the Supreme Court ruled in Hansberry v.Lee that whites can"t

bar African Americans from white neighborhoods

New York Mets pitcher, Dwight Gooden won the Cy Young Award making him the youngest pitcher ever to win this prestigous award.