AROUND THE REGION facts

JULY 6 - 12, 2023

SOURCE: BLACK AMERICA WEB

Williams successfully defended her title, knocking off Justine Henin in the finals.

JULY 9

1901 – Actor and composer Jester Hairston of "Amos 'n' Andy" and "Amen" fame, is born in Belews Creek, North Carolina.

JULY 10

1875 – Civil rights luminary Mary McLeod Bethune is born in Mayesville, South Carolina.

1893 – Dr. Daniel Hale Williams performs the world's first open-heart surgery at Provident Hospital in Chicago on a man stabbed in the chest.

1941 – Iconic ragtime and jazz pianist Jelly Roll Morton dies in Los Angeles at the age of 50.

1943 – Tennis great Arthur Ashe is born in Richmond, Virginia.

1973 – The Bahamas is declared a fully independent nation.

JULY 11

1905 – W. E. B. Du Bois and William Monroe Trotter found the Niagara Movement, a Black civil rights organization.

JULY 12

JULY 6

1957 – Tennis star Althea Gibson became the first Black tennis player to win Wimbledon, defeating fellow American Darlene Hard in straight sets.

1971 – Legendary jazz trumpeter Louis "Satchmo"Armstrong dies of a heart attack in New York City.

1979 – Musician and D.C. native Van McCoy, best known for his 1975 smash "The Hustle," dies in Englewood, New Jersey.

JULY 7

1913 – Negro leagues baseball legend Leroy "Satchel" Paige is born in Mobile, Alabama.

1913 – Blues pianist Pinetop Perkins is born in Belzoni, Mississippi.

1915 – American poet and writer Margaret Walker, author of "Jubilee," is born in Birmingham, Alabama. 1972 – Hall of Fame basketball player Lisa Leslie, the first player to dunk in a WNBA game, is born in Gardena, California.

JULY 8

1908 – Swing-era bandleader and musician Louis Jordan, "The King of the Jukebox," is born in Brinkley, Arkansas.

1914 – Famed jazz singer Billy Eckstine is born in Pittsburgh.

2000 – Tennis legend Venus Williams defeats Lindsay Davenport to win the Wimbledon women's singles championship, the first Black woman to do so since Althea Gibson in 1958. Exactly a year later,

1920 – Emmy-winning actress Beah Richards is born in Vicksburg, Mississippi.

1936 – Rose McClendon, founder of the Negro People's Theatre and a leading Black Broadway actress in the 1920s, dies in New York City at the age of 51.

1937 – Famed actor and comedian Bill Cosby is born in Philadelphia. WI

BY SARAFINA WRIGHT

What are your thoughts?

CHARLOTTE MAYFIELD / MILWAUKEE , MINN

It’s amazing that race as a consideration was struck out, but not legacy points and placements.

TARQUETTA JOHNSON / WASHINGTON, DC

Affirmative action is gone, and that’s horrible, but at some point, we’re going to have to quit constantly trying to kick down the doors of people who don’t like us and secretly despise us. I say that to say HBCUs were created for this very reason.

DEANDRIA JONES / FORT MILL, S.C.

But ending affirmative action is going to hurt white women too. In trying to hurt us, they will no longer benefit. We are in many more corporate spaces and positions of power than in the past. I wish them the luck they deserve.

RHONDA INGRAM /

WASHINGTON, D.C.

We have to be vigilant and strong enough to make and handle new challenges ahead. It takes the young and gifted among us to say we shall not be moved and take the time and effort to say maybe we should go to HBCUs and build our own schools.

AMBER HORTON / WASHINGTON, D.C.

Stay tuned for the discrimination lawsuits. They will be coming back to this decision in the next four years.