A00024 - Dorothy Dandridge, Singer and Actress

Dorothy Dandridge, in full Dorothy Jean Dandridge (b. November 9, 1922, Cleveland, Ohio - d. September 8, 1965, West Hollywood, California), was a singer and film actress who was the first African American woman to be nominated for an Academy Award for best actress.

Dandridge's mother was an entertainer and comedic actress who, after settling in Los Angeles, had some success in radio and. later, television.  The young Dorothy and her sister Vivian began performing publicly as children and in the 1930s joined a third (unrelated) girl as the Dandridge Sisters, singing and dancing.  In the 1940s and early '50s Dorothy secured a few bit roles in films and developed a highly successful career as a solo nightclub singer, eventually appearing in such popular clubs as the Waldorf Astoria's Empire Room in New York City.

Dandridge then won the title role in Otto Preminger's all-black Carmen Jones (1954), earning an Oscar nomination for best actress.  (Dandridge did not sing in Carmen Jones, however, the singing was dubbed by mezzo-soprano Marilyn Horne.)  Because she was an African American woman in a racially tense era, film offers did not come readily, though she did appear in Island in the Sun (1957), which dealt with miscegenation and costarred Harry Belafonte, as well as in The Decks Ran Red (1958), Tamango 1959), and Moment of Danger (1960).  One of her most important roles was Bess  in Preminger's handsomely produced Porgy and Bess (1959), starring opposite Sidney Poitier.  

In the 1960's, Dandridge's life and career were wracked by divorce, personal bankruptcy, and the absence of offers of work.  At age 42, she was found dead in her West Hollywood apartment, either the victim of an accidental drug overdose or a brain embolism. 

A00023 - Nat King Cole, Legendary Singer and Jazz Pianist

Nat King Cole, byname of Nathaniel Adams Cole, family name originally Coles (b. March 17, 1919, Montgomery, Alabama — d. February 15, 1965, Santa Monica, California), was an American musician hailed as one of the best and most influential pianists and small-group leaders of the swing era. Cole attained his greatest commercial success, however, as a vocalist specializing in warm ballads and light siwng.

Cole grew up in Chicago, where, by age 12, he sang and played organ in the church where his father was pastor. He formed his first jazz group, the Royal Dukes, five years later. In 1937, after touring with a black musical revue, he began playing in jazz clubs in Los Angeles. There he formed the King Cole Trio (originally King Cole and His Swingsters), with guitarist Oscar Moore (later replaced by Irving Ashby) and bassist Wesley Prince (later replaced by Johnny Miller). The trio specialized in swing music with a delicate touch in that they did not employ a drummer; also unique were the voicings of piano and guitar, often juxtaposed to sound like a single instrument. An influence on jazz pianists such as Oscar Peterson, Cole was known for a compact, syncopated piano style with clean, spare, melodic phrases.

During the late 1930s and early ’40s the trio made several instrumental recordings, as well as others that featured their harmonizing vocals. They found their greatest success, however, when Cole began doubling as a solo singer. Their first chart success, “Straighten Up and Fly Right” (1943), was followed by hits such as “Sweet Lorraine,” “It’s Only a Paper Moon,” “(I Love You) For Sentimental Reasons,” and “Route 66.” Eventually, Cole’s piano playing took a backseat to his singing career. Noted for his warm tone and flawless phrasing, Cole was regarded among the top male vocalists, although jazz critics tended to regret his near-abandonment of the piano. He first recorded with a full orchestra (the trio serving as rhythm section) in 1946 for "The Christmas Song," a holiday standard and one of Cole’s biggest-selling recordings. By the 1950s, he worked almost exclusively as a singer, with such notable arrangers as Nelson Riddle and Billy May providing lush orchestral accompaniment. “Nature Boy,” “Mona Lisa,” “Too Young,” “A Blossom Fell,” and “Unforgettable” were among his major hits of the period. He occasionally revisited his jazz roots, as on the outstanding album After Midnight(1956), which proved that Cole’s piano skills had not diminished.

Cole’s popularity allowed him to become the first African American to host a network variety program, The Nat King Cole Show, which debuted on NBC television in 1956. The show fell victim to the bigotry of the times, however, and was canceled after one season. Few sponsors were willing to be associated with a black entertainer. Cole had greater success with concert performances during the late 1950s and early ’60s and twice toured with his own vaudeville-style reviews,The Merry World of Nat King Cole (1961) and Sights and Sounds (1963). His hits of the early ’60s—“Ramblin’ Rose,” “Those Lazy, Hazy, Crazy Days of Summer,” and “L-O-V-E”—indicate that he was moving even farther away from his jazz roots and concentrating almost exclusively on mainstream pop. Adapting his style, however, was one factor that kept Cole popular up to his early death from lung cancer in 1965.

The prejudices of the era in which Cole lived hindered his potential for even greater stardom. His talents extended beyond singing and piano playing: he excelled as a relaxed and humorous stage personality, and he was also a capable actor, evidenced by his performances in the films Istanbul (1957), China Gate(1957), Night of the Quarter Moon (1959), and Cat Ballou (1965); he also played himself in The Nat “King” Cole Musical Story (1955) and portrayed blues legend W. C. Handy in St. Louis Blues (1958). His daughter Natalie is also a popular singer who achieved her greatest chart success in 1991 with “Unforgettable,” an electronically created duet with her father.

A00022 - Viola Liuzzo, Slain Civil Rights Activist

*Viola Liuzzo, a Unitarian Universalist civil rights activist, was killed.

Viola Fauver Gregg Liuzzo (April 11, 1925 – March 25, 1965) was a Unitarian Universalist civil rights activist from Michigan. In March 1965, Liuzzo, then a housewife and mother of five with a history of local activism, heeded the call of Martin Luther King, Jr. and traveled from Detroit, Michigan to Selma, Alabama, in the wake of the Bloody Sunday attempt at marching across the Edmund Pettus Bridge. Liuzzo participated in the successful Selma to Montgomery marches and helped with coordination and logistics. Driving back from a trip shuttling fellow activists to the Montgomery airport, she was shot by members of the Ku Klux Klan. She was 39 years old.

One of the four Klansmen in the car from which the shots were fired was Federal Bureau of Investigation  (FBI) informant Gary Rowe. Rowe testified against the shooters and was moved and given an assumed name by the FBI. The FBI later leaked what were purported to be salacious details about Liuzzo which were never proved or substantiated in any way.

Liuzzo's name is today inscribed on the Civil Rights Memorial in Montgomery, Alabama. 

A00021 - James Reeb, Fallen Hero of the Selma Marches

*James Reeb, a Unitarian Universalist minister, pastor, and civil rights activist, died from head injuries suffered .from being severely beaten while participating in the Selma Voting Rights Movement.

James Reeb (January 1, 1927 – March 11, 1965) was an American Unitarian Universalist minister and a pastor and civil rights activist in Washington, D.C. While participating in the Selma Voting Rights marches in Selma, Alabama, in 1965, he was beaten severely by white segregationists and died of head injuries two days later in the hospital. He was 38 years old.

Reeb was born on January 1, 1927 in Wichita, Kansas, to Mae (Fox) and Harry Reeb.  He was raised in Kansas and Casper, Wyoming.  He graduated from St. Olaf College and attended Princeton Theological Seminary in Princeton, New Jersey and ordained a Presbyterian ministers after graduation. 

A member of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), Reeb came to Selma to join protests for African American voting rights following the attack by state troopers and sheriff's deputies on nonviolent demonstrators on March 7, 1965. After eating dinner at an integrated restaurant March 9, Reeb and two other Unitarian ministers Reverend Clark Olsen and Reverend Orloff Miller, were attacked and beaten by white men armed with clubs. Several hours elapsed before Reeb was admitted to a Birmingham hospital where doctors performed brain surgery. While Reeb was on his way to the hospital in Birmingham, Martin Luther King, Jr. addressed a press conference lamenting the ‘‘cowardly’’ attack and asking all to pray for his protection. Reeb died two days later. His death resulted in a national outcry against the activities of white racists in the Deep South.

Reeb’s death provoked mourning throughout the country, and tens of thousands held vigils in his honor. President Johnson called Reeb’s widow and father to express his condolences, and on March 15  he invoked Reeb’s memory when he delivered a draft of the Voting Rights Act to Congress. 

In April 1965, three white men were indicted for Reeb’s murder; they were acquitted that December. The Voting Rights Act was passed on August 6, 1965.

A00020 - Edward Brooke, United States Senator

Edward Brooke, in full Edward William Brooke (b. October 26, 1919, Washington, D.C. - d. January 3, 2015, Coral Gables, Florida), was an American lawyer and politician who was the first African American popularly elected to the United States Senate, where he served two terms (1967–79).

Brooke earned his undergraduate degree at Howard University (Washington, D.C.) in 1941 and served as an infantry officer during World War II, achieving the rank of captain. After being discharged, he earned two law degrees at Boston University and was editor of the Boston University Law Review.

Brooke began practicing law in 1948 and became a successful Boston attorney.  Entering politics, he was defeated in attempts to win a seat in the Massachusetts legislature in 1950 and 1952.  He also failed in his 1960 bid to become the Massachusetts Secretary of State.  From 1961 to 1962, he served as Chairman of the Boston Finance Commission, seeking evidence of corruption in city politics.

In 1962 Brooke, a Republican in an overwhelmingly Democratic state, was elected attorney general of Massachusetts. A vigorous prosecutor of official corruption, he was re-elected in 1964 by a large margin, despite the success of Democrats that year (Democratic President Lyndon Johnson captured more than 75 percent of the vote in Massachusetts against Republican Barry Goldwater).

In 1966 Brooke ran for a seat in the United States Senate and won by nearly half a million votes. That year he also published The Challenge of Change: Crisis in Our Two-Party System, which focused on self-help as a way to address the social issues facing the United States during the 1960s. He established a reputation as a soft-spoken moderate on civil rights and a leader of the progressive wing of his party. In 1972 he was overwhelmingly reelected. In 1978, however, beset by personal problems including accusations of financial misdeeds and a divorce, Brooke lost his bid for a third term. In 2008 journalist Barbara Walters revealed that she and Brooke had engaged in an affair for several years prior to his divorce.

After leaving the Senate in 1979, Brooke became chairman of the National Low-Income Housing Coalition and resumed the practice of law. The recipient of numerous honors, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2004 and the Congressional Gold Medal in 2009. His memoir, Bridging the Divide (2007), explores issues of race and class as viewed from his experiences as an African American Republican politician from a largely Democratic state.

A00019 - William Greaves, Black Journal Host and Filmmaker

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.

A00018 - Terence Todman, Ambassador and Diplomat

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.