A00017 - Frank Wess, Basie Band Saxophonist and Flutist

Frank Wellington Wess (January 4, 1922 – October 30, 2013) was an American jazz saxophonist and flautist. 

Wess was born in Kansas City, Missouri, the son of a school principal father and a schoolteacher mother. He began with classical music training and played in Oklahoma in high school. He later switched to jazz upon moving to Washington, D. C., and by nineteen was working with Big Bands. His career was interrupted during World War II although he did play with a military band during the period. After leaving the military, he joined Billy Eckstine's orchestra.  He returned to Washington, D. C. a few years afterwards and received a degree in flute at the city's Modern School Of Music. From 1953 on, he joined Count Basie's band, playing flute and tenor sax. He reverted to alto sax in the late 1950s, and left Basie's band in 1964. From 1959 to 1964 he won Down Beat's critic poll for flute.

He was a member of Clark Terry's big band from 1967 into the 1970s and played in the New York Jazz Quartet (with Roland Hanna).  He also did a variety of work for TV. In 1968 Wess contributed to the landmark album The Jazz Composer's Orchestra. 

In the 1980s and 1990s, Wess worked with Kenny Barron, Rufus Reid, Buck Clayton, Benny Carter, Billy Taylor, Harry Edison, Mel Torme, Ernestine Anderson, Louie Bellson, John Pizzarelli, Howard Alden, Dick Hyman, Jane Jarvis, Frank Vignola and was a featured member of the Toshiko Akiyoshi Jazz Orchestra.   In the 2000s, Wess released two albums with Hank Jones. In 2007, Wess was named an NEA Jazz Master by the United States National Endowment for the Arts.  

Frank Wess died from a heart attack related to kidney failure on October 30, 2013.

A00016 - Ruby Dee, Actress and Activist

Ruby Dee, byname of Ruby Ann Wallace   (b. October 27, 1922, Cleveland, Ohio,  - d. June 11, 2014, New Rochelle, New York), was an American actress and social activist who was known for her pioneering work in African American theatre and film and for her outspoken civil rights activism. Dee’s artistic partnership with her husband, Ossie Davis, was considered one of the theatre and film world’s most distinguished.

After completing her studies at Hunter College in Manhattan, Dee served an apprenticeship with the American Negro Theatre and began appearing on Broadway. She met Davis on the set of the play Jeb and married him in 1948. She often appeared with her husband in plays, films, and television shows over the next 50 years. Among Davis and Dee’s most notable joint stage appearances were those in A Raisin in the Sun (1959; Dee also starred in the film version in 1961) and the satiric Purlie Victorious (1961), which Davis wrote; Davis and Dee also appeared in the film version of the latter (Gone Are the Days, 1963). The couple acted in several movies by director Spike Lee, including Do the Right Thing (1989) and Jungle Fever (1991). Among their television credits are Roots: The Next Generation (1978), Martin Luther King: The Dream and the Drum (1986), and The Stand (1994). The couple’s partnership extended into their activism as well; they served as master and mistress of ceremonies for the 1963 March on Washington, which they had helped organize.

Dee continued to act into the early 21st century, and her later films include The Way Back Home (2006) and American Gangster (2007). Her performance as the mother of a drug kingpin (played by Denzel Washington) in the latter film earned Dee her first Academy Award nomination. She also appeared in numerous television productions, notably Their Eyes Were Watching God (2005), an adaptation of Zora Neale Hurston's novel. In addition to her acting, Dee authored several books. Dee and Davis were jointly awarded the National Medal of Arts in 1995 and a Kennedy Center Honor in 2004.

A00015 - Maya Angelou, Poet and Activist

Maya Angelou, original name Marguerite Annie Johnson   (born April 4, 1928, St. Louis, Missouri, U.S.—died May 28, 2014, Winston-Salem, North Carolina), American poet, memoirist, and actress whose several volumes of autobiography explore the themes of economic, racial, and sexual oppression.

Although born in St. Louis, Angelou spent much of her childhood in the care of her paternal grandmother in rural Stamps, Arkansas.  When she was not yet eight years old, she was raped by her mother’s boyfriend and told of it, after which he was murdered; the traumatic sequence of events left her almost completely mute for several years. This early life is the focus of her first autobiographical work, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969; TV movie 1979), which gained critical acclaim and a National Book Award nomination. Subsequent volumes of autobiography include Gather Together in My Name (1974), Singin’ and Swingin’ and Gettin’ Merry Like Christmas (1976), The Heart of a Woman (1981), All God’s Children Need Traveling Shoes (1986), A Song Flung Up to Heaven (2002), and Mom & Me & Mom (2013).

In 1940, Angelou moved with her mother to San Francisco and worked intermittently as a cocktail waitress, a prostitute and madam, a cook, and a dancer. It was as a dancer that she assumed her professional name. Moving to New York City in the late 1950s, Angelou found encouragement for her literary talents at the Harlem Writers’ Guild. About the same time, Angelou landed a featured role in a State Department-sponsored production of George Gershwin's folk opera Porgy and Bess; with this troupe she toured 22 countries in Europe and Africa. She also studied dance with Martha Graham and Pearl Primus. In 1961, she performed in Jean Genet's play The Blacks. That same year she was persuaded by a South African dissident to whom she was briefly married to move to Cairo, where she worked for the Arab Observer. She later moved to Ghana and worked on The African Review.

Angelou returned to California in 1966 and wrote Black, Blues, Black (aired 1968), a 10-part television series about the role of African culture in American life. As the writer of the movie drama Georgia, Georgia (1972), she became one of the first African American women to have a screenplay produced as a feature film. She also acted in such movies as Poetic Justice (1993) and How to Make an American Quilt (1995) and appeared in several television productions, including the miniseries Roots (1977). Angelou received a Tony Award nomination for her performance in Look Away (1973), despite the fact that the play closed on Broadway after only one performance. In 1998 she made her directorial debut with Down in the Delta (1998).

Angelou’s poetry, collected in such volumes as Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water ’fore I Diiie (1971), And Still I Rise (1978), Now Sheba Sings the Song (1987), and I Shall Not Be Moved (1990), drew heavily on her personal history but employed the points of view of various personae. She also wrote a book of meditations, Wouldn’t Take Nothing for My Journey Now (1993), and children’s books that include My Painted House, My Friendly Chicken and Me (1994), Life Doesn’t Frighten Me (1998), and the Maya’s World series, which was published in 2004–05 and featured stories of children from various parts of the world. Angelou dispensed anecdote-laden advice to women in Letter to My Daughter (2008); her only biological child was male.

In 1981 Angelou, who was often referred to as “Dr. Angelou” despite her lack of a college education, became a professor of American studies at Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Among numerous honors was her invitation to compose and deliver a poem, “On the Pulse of Morning,” for the inauguration of United States President Bill Clinton in 1993. She celebrated the 50th anniversary of the United Nations in the poem “A Brave and Startling Truth” (1995) and elegized Nelson Mandela in the poem “His Day Is Done” (2013), which was commissioned by the United States State Department and released in the wake of the South African leader’s death. In 2011 Angelou was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. 

A00014 - Basil Paterson, Harlem Political Powerbroker

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.

000013 - Morrie Turner, Creator of "Wee Pals" Comic Strip

Morris "Morrie" Turner (December 11, 1923 – January 25, 2014) was an African-American syndicated cartoonist, and the creator of the comic strip Wee Pals. Turner was the first nationally syndicated African-American cartoonist.

Raised in Oakland, California. Turner grew up in West Oakland and attended McClymonds High School. However, in his senior year, he moved to Berkeley to finish his high school years at Berkeley High School. 

Turner received his first training in cartooning via the Art Instruction, Inc. home study correspondence course. During World War II, his illustrations appeared in the newspaper Stars and Stripes.  After the war, while working for the Oakland Police Department, he created the comic strip Baker's Helper.

When Turner began questioning why there were no minorities in cartoons, his mentor, Charles M. Schulz of Peanuts fame, suggested he create one.  In 1965, the strip Wee Pals became the first comic strip syndicated in the United States to have a cast of diverse ethnicity. Although the strip was only originally carried by five newspapers, after Martin Luther King's assassination in 1968, it was picked up by more than 100 papers. By the early 1970s, Turner's "integrated" comic strip "Wee Pals" was followed on a daily basis by nearly 25,000,000 readers.

In 1970 Turner became a co-chairman of the 1970 White House Conference on Youth.

Turner appeared as a guest on the May 14, 1973 episode of Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, where he showed the host pictures he had drawn of several of his neighbors, as well as presented a clip from his Kid Power animated series, which was airing Saturday mornings on ABC at the time.

During the 1972-73 television season, the monolithic and monoethnic nature of American television began to change, and Morrie Turner and his artistic talent were instrumental in this change. Turner's comic strip became televised in two different ways. The show Kid Power became a popular Saturday morning cartoon that aired throughout the United States. All of Turner's characters were featured, and they were united through the coalition the characters themselves dubbed as "Rainbow Power". During the same season, Wee Pals on the Go was aired by ABC's owned and operated station in San Francisco, KGO-TV.  This Sunday morning show featured child actors who portrayed the main characters of Turner's comic strip: Nipper, Randy, Sybil, Connie and Oliver. With and through the kids, Turner explored all kinds of venues and activities that were of interest to child viewers of the time, from a candy factory to a train locomotive. After a successful pilot, this project was filmed and aired for an entire television season (also 1972-73). This exposure helped increase Turner's popularity.

As the Wee Pals comic strip's popularity grew, Turner added characters. He included children of more and more ethnicities, as well as a child with a physical disability. The all-inclusive nature of the comic strip and the relevance to everyday people were part of Turner's formula for success.

During the Vietnam War, Turner and five other members of the National Cartoonist Society traveled to Vietnam, where they spent a month drawing more than 3,000 caricatures of service people.

Turner was impressively knowledgeable about African American history and combined his artistic talent with historical facts to publish books, calendars and other materials that were educational, esthetically pleasing and humorous.

He had the original copy of the book Wee Pals, which was burned in a fire at his home in Berkeley in the late 1980s.  The house was later rebuilt.

Turner preferred being called "Morrie" and contributed his talents to concerts by the Bay Area Little Symphony of Oakland, California. He drew pictures to the music and of the children in the audience.

On May 25, 2009, Turner visited Westlake Middle School in Oakland to give a lesson to the OASES Comic Book Preachers Class of drawing. Turner collaborated with the class's students to create the book Wee the Kids from Oakland, which gave a chance for students to express their challenges, successes, and pride as youth in Oakland.

Turner married Letha Mae Harvey on April 6, 1946.  They collaborated on the strip Soul Corner.  Morrie and Letha had one son, Morrie Jr. Letha died in 1994. Late in life, Turner's companion was Karol Trachtenburg of Sacramento.

Turner was an active member of the Center for Spiritual Awareness, a Science of Mind church in West Sacramento, California. 

The Family Circus character of Morrie, a playmate of Billy — and the only recurring black character in the strip — is based on Turner. Family Circus creator Bil Keane created the character in 1967 as a tribute to his close friend.

In 2003, the National Cartoonists Society recognized Turner for his work on Wee Pals and others with the Milton Caniff Lifetime Achievement Award.

Throughout his career, Turner was showered with awards and community distinctions. For example, he received the Brotherhood Award from the National Conference of Christians and Jews and the Inter-Group Relations Award from the Anti-Defamation League of Bnai Brith. In 1971, he received the Alameda County (California) Education Association Layman's Annual Award.

In 2000, the Cartoon Art Museum presented Turner with the Sparky Award, named in honor of Charles Schulz. 

Turner was honored a number of times at the San Diego Comic-Con.  In 1981, he was given an Inkpot Award.  In 2012, he was given the Bob Clampett Humanitarian Award.

Turner died on January 25, 2014, at age 90.

The works of Morrie Turner include:

Wee Pals collections

• Wee Pals That "Kid Power" Gang in Rainbow Power (Signet Books, 1968) 
• Wee Pals (Signet Books, 1969)  — introduction by Charles M. Schulz
• Kid Power (Signet Books, 1970)
• Nipper (Westminster Press, 1971)
• Nipper's Secret Power (Westminster Press, 1971)
• Wee Pals: Rainbow Power (Signet Books, 1973) 
• Wee Pals: Doing Their Thing (Signet Books, 1973)
• Wee Pals' Nipper and Nipper's Secret Power (Signet Books, 1974)
• Wee Pals: Book of Knowledge (Signet Books, 1974)
• Wee Pals: Staying Cool (Signet Books, 1974)
• Wee Pals: Funky Tales (New American Library, 1975)
• Wee Pals: Welcome to the Club (Rainbow Power Club Books, 1978)
• Choosing a Health Career: Featuring Wee Pals, the Kid Power Gang (Dept. of Health, Education, and Welfare, Public Health Service, Health Resources Administration, 1979)
• Wee Pals: A Full-Length Musical Comedy for Children or Young Teenagers (The Dramatic Publishing Company, 1981)
• Wee Pals Make Friends with Music and Musical Instruments: Coloring Book (Stockton Symphony Association, 1982) 
• Wee Pals, the Kid Power Gang: Thinking Well (Ingham County Health Department, 1983)
• Wee Pals Doing the Right Thing Coloring Book (Oakland Police Department, 1991)
• Explore Black History with Wee Pals (Just us Books, 1998)
• The Kid Power Gang Salutes African-Americans in the Military Past and Present (Conway B. Jones, Jr., 2000)

Willis and his Friends

• Ser un Hombre (Lear Siegler/Fearon Publishers, 1972) 
• Prejudice (Fearon, 1972) 
• The Vandals (Fearon, 1974) 

Other books

• A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Freedom (Ross Simmons, 1967) 
• Black and White Coloring Book (Troubadour Press, 1969) — written with Letha Turner
• Right On (Signet Books, 1969)
• Getting It All Together (Signet Books, 1972)
• Where's Herbie? A Sickle Cell Anemia Story and Coloring Book (Sickle Cell Anemia Workshop, 1972)
• Famous Black Americans (Judson Press, 1973)
• Happy Birthday America (Signet Book, 1975)
• All God's Chillun Got Soul (Judson Press, 1980)
• Thinking Well (Wisconsin Clearing House, 1983)
• Black History Trivia: Quiz and Game Book (News America Syndicate, 1986)
• What About Gangs? Just Say No! (Oakland Police Department, 1994) 
• Babcock (Scholastic, 1996) — by John Cottonwood and Morrie Turner
• Mom Come Quick (Wright Pub Co., 1997) — by Joy Crawford and Morrie Turner
• Super Sistahs: Featuring the Accomplishments of African-American Women Past and Present (Bye Publishing Services, 2005)

000012 - Sheila Guyse, Singer and Actress

Etta Drucille Guyse, known as Sheila Guyse, (July 14, 1925 – December 28, 2013) was a popular African-American singer, actress, and recording artist, performing on stage and screen during the 1940s and 1950s.

Guyse was often compared to Dandridge and it has been said that some critics thought Guyse was a better actress than the more well-known Dandridge. It may be argued that if Sheila had been allowed the opportunity to make an impact in the Hollywood cinema, she would have been stiff competition for the more established actress.

Guyse had a sultry "girl-next-door" appeal which she showcased in three independent all-Black films (so-called "race films") of the late 1940s: Boy! What a Girl! Boy! (1947), Sepia Cinderella (1947, co-starring with Billy Daniels), and Miracle In Harlem (1948) giving impressive performances in all of them. She also appeared in the "Harlem Follies of 1949" and in a 1957 television adaptation of the play The Green Pastures. 

Guyse was not an experienced or trained actress but she was a natural talent. She appeared in many Broadway stage productions such as Lost in the Stars and Finian's Rainbow which were both long-running. She contributed to cast recordings for these productions, and her singing voice was said to be as beautiful as she was; divine, sweet, easy on the ears whether singing jazz, pop, or gospel.

She died of Alzheimer's disease on December 28, 2013 in Honolulu, Hawaii.

****

000011 - W. V. Cordice, Surgeon Who Helped Save Dr. King

John Walter Vincent Cordice, Jr. (b. June 16, 1919, Aurora, North Carolina - d. December 29, 2013, Sioux City, Iowa) was one of the surgeon's who operated on Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1958 after King had been stabbed in the chest. 

On September 20, 1958, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., then emerging as the leader of the civil rights movement, was autographing copies of his new book in a Harlem department store when a woman approached to greet him. He nodded without looking up. Then she stabbed him in the chest with a razor-sharp seven-inch letter opener.

Dr. King, then 29, was taken to Harlem Hospital, where three surgeons went to work. The blade had missed his aorta by millimeters, and doctors said a sneeze could have caused him to bleed to death. After mapping out a strategy, they used a hammer and chisel to crack Dr. King’s sternum, and repaired the wound in two and a half hours.

New York’s governor at the time, W. Averell Harriman, who raced to the hospital to observe the surgery, had requested that black doctors be involved if at all possible, Hugh Pearson reported in his 2002 book, “When Harlem Nearly Killed King.” Dr. Cordice and Dr. Aubré de Lambert Maynard, the hospital’s chief of surgery, were African-American. The third surgeon, Dr. Emil Naclerio, was Italian-American.

Over the years, Dr. Maynard was widely credited with saving Dr. King — and he accepted that credit — but in a 2012 interview with the public radio station WNYC, Dr. Cordice said that he and Dr. Naclerio had performed the surgery.

“We were not going to challenge him, because he was the boss,” Dr. Cordice said of Dr. Maynard.

Alan D. Aviles, the president of the New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation, suggested that Dr. Cordice’s modesty may also have kept him from getting the credit he deserved. “It is entirely consistent with his character that many who knew him may well not have known that he was also part of history,” Mr. Aviles said in a statement.

At the time of the stabbing, Dr. King was promoting his book “Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story,” which recounted the successful boycott he helped lead to desegregate buses in Montgomery, Alabama. His assailant was a mentally disturbed black woman who blamed Dr. King for her woes. Dr. King forgave her and asked that she not be prosecuted. He later learned that she had been committed to a hospital for the criminally insane.

John Walter Vincent Cordice Jr. was born in Aurora, North Carolina, on June 16, 1919. His father, a physician, worked for the United States Public Health Service there, fighting the flu epidemic of 1918. The family moved to Durham, North Carolina, when John was 6. He graduated from high school a year early, and then from New York University and its medical school.

With the outbreak of World War II, he interrupted his internship at Harlem Hospital to serve as a doctor for the Tuskegee Airmen, the famed group of African-American pilots. After the war, and after completing the internship, he held a succession of residencies. In 1955-56 he studied in Paris, where he was part of the team that performed the first open-heart surgery in France.

Dr. Cordice later became chief of thoracic and vascular surgery at Harlem Hospital, the position he held when he treated Dr. King. He went on to hold the same post at Queens Hospital Center. He was president of the Queens Medical Society in 1983-84.

On December 29, the last surviving surgeon from that hospital team, Dr. W. V. Cordice Jr., died at 94 in Sioux City, Iowa.

Dr. Cordice, who lived in Hollis, Queens, for many years before moving to Iowa, was survived by his wife of 65 years, the former Marguerite Smith; his daughters, Michele Boykin, Jocelyn Basnett and Marguerite D. Cordice; his sister, Marion Parhan; six grandchildren; and six great-grandchildren.