Obit of the Day

Otis Clark died just ten days before the 91st anniversary of one of the worst episodes of racial hatred in American history. An event he not only witnessed but managed to escape with his life. On May 30, 1921, a nineteen-year-old black man named Dick Rowland entered a Tulsa elevator to ride to the 3rd floor bathroom - segregated for black use only. Operating the elevator was Sarah Page a white seventeen-year-old. No one knows what happened but not long afterwards, Sarah Page was in tears and Dick Rowland was nowhere to be found. He was later arrested for assault; most presumed rape.

Dick Rowland’s arrest would then ignite a conflagration both literal and figurative. The African American neighborhood Greenwood, located within Tulsa, was called “Black Wall Street” for its affluence - relative to other segregated neighborhoods in the South. But the arrest of Dick Rowland gave Tulsa’s Ku Klux Klan an opportunity to teach the residents of Greenwood a “lesson.” Beginning on May 31 and ending on June 1 Greenwood was razed to the ground. As you can see in the image above a fire set by the KKK leveled the neighborhood, leaving most of the residents homeless. When it was over 300 people were dead, approximately 270 of those were black. Greenwood was in ruins. And Tulsa would remain silent about it for 8- years.*

One of those who survived was Otis Clark. He spent the two days running through Greenwood, ducking down alleys, jumping into cars, racing through buildings to avoid the armed, white mobs. Eventually Mr. Clark jumped onto a freight train and ended up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Mr. Clark would head west not long after and was hired as the butler of Ms. Joan Crawford, the Oscar-winning actress. Through his connection with Ms. Crawford, Mr. Clark met stars of Hollywood’s Golden Age including Clark Gable and Charlie Chaplin. He also developed a personal friendship with Stepin Fetchit - the first African American actor to become a millionaire.

Mr. Clark’s life changed after an arrest for selling liquor during Prohibition. Converting to Christianity while in jail, he would spend the rest of his life as an evangelist. “The rest of his life” ended up being 80 more years. He was able to travel as a missionary to Africa in 2006 - when he was 103. He made his final trip abroad in 2010 to Jamaica at the age of 107.

Otis Clark - riot survivor, butler to the stars, and “world’s oldest evangelist” - died at the age of 109.

(Image of a devastated Greenwood section of Tulsa following the riots is courtesy of sfbayview.com)

* It was not until 2001 that the city of Tulsa undertook a complete investigation of the riots. Following the report issued by the investigating commission, the Oklahoma State Legislature passed a bill offering scholarships to 300 descendants of Greenwood residents, a memorial, and additional economic development for the neighborhood. It was recommended that survivors of the riots and their descendants be given reparations but the legislature did not agree. For more information on the riots, here is the Wikipedia entry.

Obit of the Day: 1st African American Graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy

When Lt. Commander (Ret.) Wesley A. Brown entered the U.S. Naval Academy in 1945, the military was still segregated. It would not be until President Harry Truman issued Executive Order 9981 in July 1948 that every branch of the armed forces were required to treat all members, black and white, equally. That would not prevent Lt. Cmdr. Brown from becoming the first black graduate of the nation’s second oldest military academy.

Lt. Cmdr. Brown was not the first black midshipman at the Academy. Five had preceded him but none had managed to graduate. Fortunately for him, he had served as Cadet Corps Battalion Commander* while at Baltimore’s Dunbar High School as well as in World War II prior to entering the Academy.

While at the USNA, Lt. Cmdr. Brown was a successful athlete on the track and cross-country teams. He would often find himself running with fellow midshipman, and future President of the United States, Jimmy Carter.

Following his graduation from the Academy in 1949, Lt. Commander Brown would serve in the Korean and Vietnam Wars as well as Liberia, Cuba, and the Philippines. He would retire from the Navy in 1969.

In 2007, the Naval Academy dedicated the Wesley A. Brown Field House in his honor. Lt. Commander Wesley Brown died at the age of 85.

(Image is copyright of Simmie Knox, who was also commissioned to paint the official White House portraits of former President Bill Clinton and former First Lady Hillary Clinton, as well as Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.)

*The military-like program was similar to today’s JROTC

Obit of the Day: Radio Pioneer

Hal Jackson was a man of many firsts. As an African American in radio, Mr. Jackson would overcome obstacle after obstacle while continuing to grow his own reputation as one of the legends of the medium.

Attending Howard University in the 1930’s, Jackson became the first African American sports broadcaster as he called not only college games but Negro League contests as well. Not long after graduating Jackson was hired by Washington, D.C.’s WINX, a recognizable achievement since only weeks earlier the station owner had told Jackson, “No nigger will ever be on my radio station.” (Note: I could not find any mention of what changed the owner’s mind. I assume Mr. Jackson’s talent outweighed the color of his skin.)

By the mid-1940’s Jackson was hosting four different radio programs on four different stations in the D.C. area. By the 1950’s Hal Jackson was in New York City where he became the first African American host on WABC.

Mr. Jackson’s next great breakthrough occurred in 1971 when he co-founded Inner City Broadcasting Corporation (ICBC) with Percy Sutton. The two men would become the first African Americans to own stations on AM and FM when they purchased the signals for WLIB. They would change the FM call letters to WBLS (“the Total BLack Experience in Sound”), eventually becoming the number one R&B station in New York.

For his work in the medium, Hal Jackson was the first African American inducted into the National Association of Broadcasters Hall of Fame (1990) and the Radio Hall of Fame (1995). He was also named a “Giant of Broadcasting” by the American Library of Broadcasting (2010).

Hal Jackson, who was hosting his Sunday afternoon radio show on WBLS until a few weeks ago, died at the age of 96.

Note: ICBC declared bankruptcy in 2011 and were forced by a court to sell a majority share to other investors, most famously Magic Johnson Enterprises.

Additional sources: New York Daily News and Wikipedia.org

(Undated image of Hal Jackson is courtesy of BET.com)

Obit of the Day: Inventor of the Wireless Remote Control

The founder of the Zenith Radio Company, Commander Eugene McDonald, Jr. recognized something very early on about the television industry - viewers hate commercials. But owners of Zenith televisions had little control over the ads that would frequently pop-up during shows. Getting up to change the channel? That involved a lot of effort. Commander McDonald wanted to see that changed.

Enter Eugene Polley. In 1955, Polley develop the first weapon in the war on commercials: the Flash-Matic Remote Control. Using photo cells embedded in the television screen (one in each corner) Polley’s hyper-accurate flashlight would be pointed at a corner to turn off the TV, to turn off the sound (especially helpful to “shut off long annoying commercials while the picture remains on the screen”), and, most importantly, to change the channel. It was the first wireless remote control and television would never be the same again.

Eugene Polley worked his way up Zenith’s corporate ladder beginning as a 20-year-old stock boy in 1935 before moving his way up into engineering. During his 47 years with Zenith Mr. Polley would also develop the push button car radio as well as the video disk, ancestor of today’s DVD and Blu-Ray discs. But it was the Flash-Matic that would earn him an Emmy from the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences Hall of Fame in 1997 - and a place in couch potato history.

Mr. Polley passed away at the age of 96.

(Image of a 1955 Zenith ad for the Flash-Matic is courtesy of vintagetvsets.com)

Almost exactly one year ago, in April 2011, Obit of the Day featured another inventor who changed the television industry - Hub Schlafly