A00015 - Earl Bostic, Jazz Alto Saxophonist

Earl Bostic (April 25, 1912 – October 28, 1965) was an American jazz alto saxophonist and a pioneer of the post-war American rhythm and blues style. He had a number of popular hits such as "Flamingo", "Harlem Nocturne", "Temptation", "Sleep", "Special Delivery Stomp" and "Where or When" which all showed off his characteristic growl on the horn. He was a major influence on John Coltrane. 

Bostic was born April 25, 1912 in Tulsa, Oklahoma. He turned professional at age 18 when he joined Terence Holder's 'Twelve Clouds of Joy'. He made his first recording with Lionel Hampton in October 1939, with Charlie Christian, Clyde Hart and Big Sid Catlett.  Before that he performed with Fate Marable on New Orleans riverboats. Bostic graduated from Xavier University in New Orleans. He worked with territory bands as well as Arnett Cobb, Hot Lips Page, Rex Stewart, Don Byas, Charlie Christian, Thelonious Monk, Edgar Hayes, Cab Calloway, an other jazz luminaries.  In 1938, and in 1944, Bostic led the house band at Small's Paradise. While playing at Small's Paradise, he doubled on guitar and trumpet. During the early 1940s, he was a well-respected regular at the famous jam sessions held at Minton's Playhouse. He formed his own band in 1945 and made the first recordings under his own name for the Majestic label. He turned to rhythm and blues in the late 1940s. His biggest hits were "Temptation", "Sleep", "Flamingo", "You Go to My Head" and "Cherokee".  At various times his band included Keter Betts, Jaki Byard, Benny Carter, John Coltrane, Teddy Edwards, Benny Golson, Blue Mitchell, Tony Scott, Cliff Smalls, Charles Thompson, Stanley Turrentine, Tommy Turrentine and other musicians who rose to prominence, especially in jazz.

Bostic's King album entitled Jazz As I Feel It featured Shelly Manne on drums, Joe Pass on guitar and Richard "Groove" Holmes on organ. Bostic recorded A New Sound about one month later, again featuring Holmes and Pass. These recordings allowed Bostic to stretch out beyond the three-minute limit imposed by the 45 RPM format. Bostic was pleased with the sessions, which highlight his total mastery of the blues but they also foreshadowed musical advances that were later evident in the work of John Coltrane and Eric Dolphy. 

He wrote arrangements for Paul Whiteman, Louis Prima, Lionel Hampton, Gene Krupa, Artie Shaw, Hot Lips Page, Jack Teagarden, Ina Ray Hutton and Alvino Rey. 

His songwriting hits include "Let Me Off Uptown", performed by Anita O'Day and Roy Eldridge, and "Brooklyn Boogie", which featured Louis Prima and members of the Brooklyn Dodgers. 

Bostic's signature hit, "Flamingo" was recorded in 1951 and remains a favorite among followers of Carolina Beach Music in South Carolina, North Carolina and Virginia. 

During the early 1950s Bostic lived with his wife in Addisleigh Park in St. Albans, Queens, in New York City, where many other jazz stars made their home. After that he moved to Los Angeles, where he concentrated on writing arrangements after suffering a heart attack. He opened his own R&B club in Los Angeles, known as the Flying Fox.

Bostic died October 28, 1965 from a heart attack in Rochester, New York, while performing with his band. He was buried in Southern California's Inglewood Park Cemetery on November 2, 1965. Honorary pallbearers at the funeral included Slappy White and Louis Prima. 

Earl Bostic was inducted into the Oklahoma Jazz Hall of Fame in 1993.

A00014 - Father Divine, Religious Leader and Founder of the Peace Mission

Father Divine, in full Father Major Jealous Divine, original name George Baker (b. 1880?, Georgia - d. September 10, 1965, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania), was a prominent African American religious leader most notably during the 1930s.  The Depression era movement he founded, the Peace Mission, was originally dismissed as a cult.  However, it still exists and is now generally hailed as an important precursor of the Civil Rights Movement.  

Believed to have been born on a plantation in Georgia, Baker began his career in 1899 as an assistant to Father Jehovia (Samuel Morris), the founder of an independent religious group. During his early adult years, Baker was influenced by Christian Science and New Thought.  In 1912, Baker left Father Jehovia and emerged several years later as the leader of what would become the Peace Mission movement.

Baker settled first in the New York City borough of Brooklyn and then in Sayville, New York, a mostly white community on Long Island, where he lived quietly during the 1920s.  His following grew, and in 1931, when his Sayville neighbors complained about the growing attendance at meetings in his home, Father Divine was arrested and incarcerated for thirty (30) days.  When the judge who sentenced him died two days after the sentencing, Father Divine attributed the event to a supernatural intervention.  His movement commemorates this event by annually publishing accounts of "divine retribution" visited on wrongdoers. 

In 1933, Father Divine and his followers left Sayville for Harlem, where he became one of the most flamboyant leaders of the Depression era.  There he opened the first of his Heavens, the residential hotels where his teachings were practiced and where his followers could obtain food, shelter, and job opportunities, as well as spiritual and physical healing.  The movement, whose membership numbered in the tens of thousands at its height during the Great Depression, built on the principles of Americanism, brotherhood, Christianity, democracy, and Judaism, with the understanding that all "true" religions teach the same basic truths.  Members were taught not to discriminate by race, religion or color, and they lived communally as brothers and sisters.  Father Divine's teachings were codified in 1936 in the "Righteous Government Platform," which called for an end to segregation, lynching, and capital punishment. Movement members refrained from using tobacco, alcohol, narcotics, and vulgar language, and they were celibate.  Moreover, members attempted to embody, virtue, honesty, and truth.  The movement's teachings also demanded "a righteous wage in exchange for a full day's work." Members refused to accumulate debt, and they possessed neither credit nor life insurance. 

During the Depression residents of the Heavens paid the minimal fee of fifteen cents for meals and a dollar per week for sleeping quarters, a practice that allowed them to maintain their sense of dignity.  In the opinion of many, Father Divine affirmed, amid the poverty of the Depression, the abundance of God with the free lavish banquets he held daily.

Heavens were opened across North America as well as in Europe, and, although most of its adherents were African Americans, the movement also attracted many European Americans (approximately one-fourth of its membership).  The Heavens and related businesses brought in millions of dollars in revenue for the Peace Mission.  Their success, however, also brought accusations of racketeering against Father Divine that, like the allegations of child abuse that were made against the movement, proved to be unfounded.

In 1942, Father Divine moved to suburban Philadelphia, in part to avoid paying a financial judgment in a suit brought by a former movement member.  Four years later (in 1946), he married Edna Rose Ritchings, a Canadian member who, as Mother Divine, succeeded her husband as the movement's leader in 1965.  The movement's membership declined dramatically, however, not least because of the movement's strict dedication to celibacy.

Once dismissed as just another cult leader, Father Divine today is recognized in the late 20th century as an important social reformer.  In the 1930s, he was a champion of racial equality and an advocate of the economic self-sufficiency for African Americans that found broad acceptance only with the advent of the Civil Rights Movement.

A00013 - Frank Crosswaith, Founder of the Negro Labor Committee

*Frank Crosswaith, a longtime socialist politician, activist, trade union organizer, and founder of the Negro Labor Committee, died.

Frank Rudolph Crosswaith (1892-1965) was a longtime socialist politician and activist and trade union organizer in New York City. Crosswaith is best remembered as the founder and chairman of the Negro Labor Committee, which was established on July 20, 1935, by the Negro Labor Conference.

Frank Crosswaith was born on July 16, 1892, in Frederiksted, St. Croix, Danish West Indies (the island was sold to the United States in 1917 and became part of the United States Virgin Islands), and emigrated to the United States in his teens. While finishing high school, he worked as an elevator operator, porter and garment worker. He joined the elevator operators' union and when he finished high school, he won a scholarship from the socialist Jewish Daily Forward to attend the Rand School of Social Science, an educational institute in New York City associated with the Socialist Party of America.

Crosswaith founded an organization called the Trade Union Committee for Organizing Negro Workers in 1925, but this work went by the wayside when Crosswaith accepted a position as an organizer for the fledgling Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters. Crosswaith maintained a long association with union head A. Phillip Randolph, serving with him as officers of the Negro Labor Committee in the 1930s and 1940s.

In the early 1930s Crosswaith worked as an organizer for the International Ladies Garment Workers Union, which became one of the major supporters of the Negro Labor Committee.

In 1924, he ran on the Socialist ticket for Secretary of State of New York, and in 1936 for Congressman-at-large. He ran also for the New York City Council in 1939 on the American Labor ticket.

Crosswaith was elected to the governing executive committee of the American Labor Party in New York in 1924, and later ran for Governor of New York on the ALP ticket.

Crosswaith was an anti-communist and believed that the best hope for black workers in the United States was to join bona fide labor unions just as the best hope for the American labor movement was to welcome black workers into unions in order to promote solidarity and eliminate the use of black workers as strike breakers. He believed strongly that "separation of workers by race would only work to undermine the strength of the entire labor movement." Crosswaith spent much of his energy in the late 1930s and early 1940s battling a rival labor organization called the Harlem Labor Union, Inc., which was run by Ira Kemp and had a black nationalist philosophy. He accused Kemp of undermining the interests of black workers by signing agreements with employers that offered them labor at wages below union rates.

Crosswaith also worked with A. Philip Randolph during World War II in organizing the March on Washington Movement, which was called off when President Franklin D. Roosevelt agreed to sign Executive Order 8802, which prohibited racial discrimination in defense industries.