1926

Bromley Lloyd Armstrong (b. February 9, 1926, Kingston, Jamaica), a Jamaican Canadian civil rights leader who was active in the nascent civil rights era in Canada, beginning with his arrival in 1947. Armstrong was a committed union activist who worked to improve conditions for workers in industry. He was also active in promoting equal rights for African Canadians and was involved with the National Unity Association (NUA) in sit-ins in Dresden, Ontario restaurants that refused to serve people of African descent. Armstrong travelled to Dresden following the activities of Hugh Burnett and the NUA — the NUA had been urging the local town council (unsuccessfully) to create laws that would put an end to discrimination against people of African descent in the town. In response to delegations to the Ontario Legislature at Queen's Park in the provincial capital of Toronto, in the early 1950s, Ontario Premier Leslie Frost brought two laws into place, the Fair Employment Practices Act and the Fair Accommodation Practices Act. The first outlawed discrimination in the workplace, the second outlawed it in businesses that served the public. Enacted in April 1954, the Fair Accommodation Practices Act stated: "No one can deny to any person or class of persons the accommodation, services or facilities usually available to members of the public." The Act triggered the repeal of the largely ineffective Racial Discrimination Act of 1944, which outlawed "the publication or display, on lands, premises, by newspaper or radio, of any notice, sign, symbol, emblem or other representation indicating racial discrimination."

After local Dresden businesses refused to comply with the Fair Accommodation Practices Act, the same year it was enacted, Armstrong and other activists from the Toronto-based Joint Labour Committee for Human Rights conducted sit-ins in Dresden restaurants, testing the owners' non-compliance with the law, and then using that information to urge Premier Frost to eventually press charges against the restaurant owners. The owners were taken to court and the law held; the legal case was Canada's first successful test of laws making discrimination illegal. Armstrong played a figurative role in the sit-ins, on one occasion calmly demanding service of a bigoted restaurant owner, who was angrily wielding a meat cleaver in his restaurant kitchen.

In 1994, he was made a Member of the Order of Canada. 

Armstrong's story is told in his autobiography: Bromley: Tireless Fighter for Just Causes.

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Basil Alexander Paterson (April 27, 1926 – April 16, 2014), a labor lawyer, was a longtime political leader in New York and Harlem and the father of the 55th Governor of New York, David Paterson. His mother was Jamaican, and his father was Carriacouan (a person from Carriacou, the largest island of the Grenadine archipelago). 

Paterson was born in Harlem on April 27, 1926, the son of Leonard James and Evangeline Alicia (Rondon) Paterson. His father was born on the island of Carriacou in the Grenadines and arrived in the United States aboard the S.S. Vestris on May 16, 1917 in New York City. His mother was born in Kingston, Jamaica, and arrived in the United States on September 9, 1919 aboard the S.S. Vestnorge in Philadelphia with a final destination of New York City.  A stenographer by profession, the former Miss Rondon once served as a secretary for Marcus Garvey. 

In 1942, at the age of 16, Paterson graduated from De Witt Clinton High School in the Bronx. He was shaped by his experiences with racism early on. "I got out of high school when I was 16," Paterson told New York Times columnist Bob Herbert, "and the first real job I had was with a wholesale house in the old Port Authority building, down on 18th Street. We'd pack and load these trucks that went up and down in huge elevators. Every year there would be a Christmas party for the employees at some local hotel. Those of us who worked in the shipping department were black. We got paid not to go to the party." He attended college at St. John's University, but his studies were interrupted by a two-year stint in the U.S. Army during World War II.  After serving honorably, he returned to St. John's to complete his undergraduate studies. While there he was very active in social and community service organizations, including among others the Kappa Alpha Psi fraternity, where he joined the ranks of the Omicron chapter of New York (now at Columbia University) in 1947. Paterson graduated with a Bachelor of Science Degree in biology in 1948. He was later admitted to St. John's Law School, where he received a Juris Doctor degree in 1951.   Paterson became involved in Democratic politics in Harlem in the 1950s and 1960s. A member of the "Gang of Four", along with, former New York Mayor David Dinkins; the late Manhattan Borough President Percy Sutton; and Congressman Charles Rangel, Paterson was a leader of the "Harlem Clubhouse",  which  dominated Harlem politics during and after the 1960s.  In 1965, Paterson was elected to the New York State Senate representing the Upper West Side of New York City and Harlem. He gave up his Senate seat in 1970 to run for Lieutenant Governor of New York, as the running mate of former United States Supreme Court Justice Arthur Goldberg. The Goldberg/Paterson ticket lost to the Republican ticket of incumbent Governor Nelson Rockefeller and Lieutenant Governor Malcolm Wilson. In 1978, Paterson was appointed Deputy Mayor of New York City by then Mayor Ed Koch. He stepped down as deputy mayor in 1979 to become Secretary of State for the State of New York, thereby becoming the first African American person to have held the post.  He served as Secretary of State until the end of the Hugh Carey administration in 1982. Despite having briefly served in the Koch Administration, Paterson made moves to run for Mayor against Koch as the latter sought a third term, but ultimately chose not to run. Paterson became a member of the law firm of Meyer, Suozzi, English & Klein, P. C., where he was co-chair of the firm's labor law practice.  Paterson was the father of former New York Governor David Paterson, who was elected Lieutenant Governor in 2006 on a ticket with Governor Eliot Spitzer. David Paterson succeeded to the governor's office upon Spitzer's resignation on March 17, 2008.  Basil Paterson died April 16, 2014. He was 87.

William Greaves (October 8, 1926 – August 25, 2014) was a documentary filmmaker and one of the pioneers of African-American filmmaking. He produced over two hundred documentary films, having written and directed more than half of them. Greaves garnered many accolades for his work, including four Emmy ominations.

Greaves was born in Harlem in New York City on October 8, 1926. He was one of seven children of taxi driver and minister Garfield Greaves and the former Emily Muir. After graduating from the elite Stuyvesant High School at the age of eighteen, Greaves attended City College of New York  to study science and engineering, but eventually dropped out to pursue a career in theater. Starting as a dancer, he eventually moved into acting, working in the American Negro Theater.  

n 1948, Greaves joined The Actor's Studio and studied alongside the likes of Marlon Brando, Julie Harris, Anthony Quinn, Shelley Winters and others.  During this time, he undertook a number of roles on the stage and in the theater, but eventually grew dissatisfied with the roles in which he was being cast. Realizing that most of the parts he could play were stereotype and derivative due to racism prevalent throughout American culture at the time, Greaves looked into African-American history. Seeing his opportunities limited were he to continue to stay in America and focus on his planned course of acting, Greaves sought and attempted his hand at movie making, electing to move to Canada and study at the National Film Board of Canada.  

After six years working in various stages of production from director to editing, Greaves found himself behind the camera as director and editor of a film called Emergency Ward, which focused on the goings-on of a hospital emergency room on a Sunday evening.

As the 1960s saw the rise of the American Civil Rights Movement, Greaves returned to The United States to participate in the ongoing discourse regarding African-Americans and their place in society. Based on his work on Emergency Ward, Greaves was hired by both the United Nations and the film division of the United States Information Agency (USIA) to make several documentaries, the two most acclaimed of which were Wealth of a Nation, which was an examination of personal freedom as a key boon to America's strength, and The First World Festival of Negro Arts, which documented a celebration of the mixture of both African and African American culture.

In 1969, following soon after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., public broadcasting channel National Educational Television (a direct predecessor to the modern day PBS) began to air a show called Black Journal under the aegis of presenting news by African Americans, for African Americans, and about African Americans. After a tumultuous opening during the first few tapings, the NET network promoted Greaves (a co-host at the time) to executive producer of the show. Greaves ran the show until 1970, winning the show and himself an Emmy award for his work on the program in 1969.

In 1970, after working on Black Journal for three years, Greaves opted to leave television to focus on film making. In 1971, he released a film titled Ali, the Fighter, which focused on Muhammad Ali's first attempt to regain his professional boxing heavyweight title. Greaves then went on to produce and make films for various commissions and government agencies, including NASA and the Civil Service Commission. 

After this, Greaves produced numerous works, including From These Roots; Nationtime: Gary, Where Dreams Come True; Booker T.Washington: Life and Legacy; Frederick Douglass: An American Life; Black Power in America: Myth or Reality?; The Deep North; and Ida B. Wells: An American Odyssey, which was narrated by Nobel Prize in Literature and Pulitzer Prize recipient, Toni Morrison. 

In 2001, Greaves released one of his most ambitious works Ralph Bunche: An American Odyssey. According to Greaves, between attempting to secure funds and researching countless old manuscripts, photos, and newsreel footage, the film took him ten years to make. The final product was edited down from an initial cut of seventeen hours to two hours for the PBS show American Odyssey. The final project, narrated by Sidney Poitier, sought to bring the name of Ralph Bunche back into the public lexicon as Greaves felt he was an important, yet forgotten, political figure; one important to African American history and the Civil Rights movement.

While working on Black Journal, Greaves continued to produce films out of his own production company, William Greaves Productions, which he had founded in 1964. One of the films he produced in this time period was a documentary which blended his fascination with the acting process with documentary film, which he called Symbiopsychotaxiplasm, an experimental, avant-garde film that he shot in the growing-in-popularity cinema verite documentary style.

Symbiopsychotaxiplasm, which was shot in 1968, takes place in Central Park in New York City and follows a documentary titled Over the Cliff, one supposedly directed by Greaves himself and focusing on different pairs of actors who prepare to audition for a dramatic piece. What makes the film complicated are the three sets of camera crews Greaves employs to document this audition process. The first is told to film the actors in an effort to document the audition process. The second is told to document the first film crew. The third is told to document the actors, the remaining two crews, and any other passers-by or spectators who happen to fit into Over the Cliff's overarching theme of "sexuality".

As the film goes on, the various film crews start to grow irritated at what they perceive is an incompetent and sexist (or perhaps even misogynistic) director in Greaves. Torn between whether or not this entire situation is a plot by Greaves or not, the crews find themselves divided against Greaves, at one point even plotting a revolt against their director. All of their doubts, insecurities, complaints, etc. are captured on film, and, when the project is complete, they turn all of their footage over to Greaves (including the incriminating evidence). Greaves, in turn incorporates their footage into his final product.

Through all of this, Greaves creates a giant circular meta-documentary featuring a documentary, a documentary about a documentary, and a documentary documenting a documentary about a documentary and all in the attempt of creating and capturing reality on film. To add to the coherence or incoherence of the piece, the film is also edited untraditionally, with the different cameras' various shots intercut in split screens so that all three sets of simultaneous footage display the same sequence but from three perspectives.

While undeniably unique and special, Symbiopsychotaxiplasm was unable to find mainstream distribution and instead toured various festivals and museum screenings, gaining something of a cult status amongst those film makers who had seen it. It eventually caught the eye of famous actor and filmmaker Steve Buscemi who saw it at a screening at the Sundance Film Festival in 1992. Ten years later, Buscemi and director Stephen Soderbergh teamed up to secure widespread distribution for the film as well as financing for the making of one of the four sequels Greaves had considered once he had finished the initial product in the late Sixties.

Symbiopsychotaxiplasm was finally released theatrically under its new title Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One alongside its sequel, Symbiopsychotaxipasm: Take 2½, in 2003. The sequel focused on two of the actors from the original and picks up the narrative of the original film some thirty five years later.

On August 23, 1959, Greaves married Louise Archambault, who became a frequent collaborator on his projects, going so far as to even produce his documentary on Ralph Bunche. They had three children: David, Taiyi, and Maiya.

Between 1969 and 1982, Greaves taught film and television acting at the Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute in New York.

While not working, Greaves could be found touring various universities and cultural centers around the world presenting his films, conducting workshops, and speaking about his experiences in indie film and the process of creating film as it is to actors, directors, professionals, and more.

Greaves died at the age of 87 at his home in Manhattan on August 25, 2014.

Besides the Emmy Greaves won for his work as executive producer of Black Journal in 1969, Greaves was nominated for an Emmy for his work Still a Brother: Inside the Negro Middle Class which also won the Blue Ribbon Award at the American Film Festival. Beyond these, many of Greaves' films have played at festivals and garnered numerous awards with certain films (such as Ida B. Wells) winning upwards of twenty awards across the many venues at which they have been played.

In 1980, Greaves was honored alongside Robert De Niro, Jane Fonda, Marlon Brando, Arthur Penn, Sally Field, Rod Steiger, Al Pacino, Shelley Winters, Dustin Hoffman, Estelle Parsons and Ellen Burstyn with the Actors Studio in New York's first ever Dusa Award. Also in the same year, Greaves was inducted into the Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame and received a special homage at the first Black American Independent Film Festival in Paris. In 2008, the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival honored him with its Career Award.

*****

William H. Grier (b. February 7, 1926, Birmingham, Alabama - d. September 3, 2015, Carlsbad, California) was a psychiatrist whose 1968 book “Black Rage,” written with his colleague Price M. Cobbs, drew widespread attention to the psychic damage inflicted by racism and the causes of black anger, a topic of intense interest in the aftermath of the assassination of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther. 

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*****

Terence Alphonso Todman (March 13, 1926 – August 13, 2014) was an American diplomat who served as the United States Ambassador to Chad, Guinea, Costa Rica, Spain, Denmark and Argentina.  In 1990, he was awarded the rank of Career Ambassador. 

He was born on Saint Thomas, United States Virgin Islands, on March 13, 1926. He was drafted and served in Japan from 1945 to 1949.

He graduated from the Inter-American University of Puerto Rico summa cum laude, and from Syracuse University.  

Todman was a member of Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity. He was also a director of Exxcel Group.  

On August 13, 2014, Terence Todman died at the age of 88 at a hospital in Saint Thomas.

He married Doris Weston and they had four children.