Ella Fitzgerald was born just as jazz was beginning to develop into a distinct art form. She mastered scat singing, a vocal improvisation using words, syllables and parts of other songs. She won 13 Grammy Awards, sold over 40 million albums, and received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1967.
On September 4, 1952, before Brown v. Board of Education case was issued, Autherine Lucy and friend, Mollie Ann Meyers, sent their applications to the University of Alabama. Realizing that Lucy and Myers were African American, the university rescinded, stating that they were no longer welcomed. Civil rights lawyers, Arthur Shores and Thurgood Marshall brought the case to court. The first case to test the Supreme Court’s decree giving Federal District Court judges the authority to implement the Brown decision, which concludes that separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.
Untutored in classical music but influenced by jazz and blues, Mahalia Jackson would create her own style and establish herself as a gospel singer. During her lifetime, she performed for kings and queens, presidents and prime ministers and kept going back to sing in churches for the people who loved her voice first.
Lorraine Hansberry was born the youngest of four to Carl Hansberry and Nannie Hansberry in Chicago, IL on May 19, 1930. She became the first African American, the youngest playwright, the fifth woman to win the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for the best play of the season on April 7, 1959 for her a play A Raisin in the Sun, which addressed equal rights in work/housing, and freedom.
Considered to be one of the first African American women to become a millionaire, Annie Turnbo developed and manufactured her own line of hair straighteners, special oils, and hair-stimulant products for African-American women. At the time of her death in 1957, Poro beauty colleges still operated in over thirty cities across the nation.
