Union troops entered Port Hudson. With the fall of Vicksburg (on July 4) and Port Hudson, Union controlled Mississippi River and Confederacy was cut into two sections. Eight Black regiments played important roles in siege of Port Hudson.

June Meyer Jordan, writer, editor, poet, educator, environmental and social activist, was the only child of Granville Ivanhoe and Mildred Maude Fischer Jordan who were Jamaican immigrants. June was born in Harlem on July 9, 1936.  June’s father worked as a night shift postal clerk and her mother was a part-time private-duty nurse.  The family lived in Harlem until June was six years old, when they moved to the Bedford-Stuyvesant area of Brooklyn.  June’s father subjected her to serious physical abuse that continued throughout her childhood.  It was in this terrifying environment of bullying and severe beatings, that seven year old June found solace in the written word and began writing poetry.  In her memoir, Soldier, a Poet’s Childhood, she credited her father’s treatment with influencing her to write and introducing her to literature.

June Jordan attended Milwood High School in Brooklyn where she was the only African-American out of three-thousand students.  She transferred and attended a religious private high school, Northfield School for Girls in Massachusetts where she graduated in the spring of 1953.  In the fall of the same year, she returned to Brooklyn and enrolled at Barnard College.  In her second year of college, nineteen year old June met and later married Michael Meyer, a white student from Columbia University.  She withdrew from college to follow her new husband to the University of Chicago where he was a graduate student of anthropology. In 1958, June gave birth to their son, Christopher David Meyer.  Her marriage to Michael Meyer ended in divorce after eleven and a half years.  As a single parent, Jordan devoted her life to writing poetry, studying, and doing free-lance journalism to support her son and herself.

In the 1960s Jordan also became a Civil Rights activist, joining busloads of “Freedom Riders” to Baltimore as they traveled demanding enforcement of Supreme Court decisions on desegregation.   In 1963, Jordan worked as a production assistant for “The Cool World,” a documentary film

Juba is one of the newest capitals in the world.  It became the capital of South Sudan when that nation was declared independent on July 9, 2011. Juba, located on the White Nile River, is the largest city in South Sudan and in 2011 it had an estimated population of 372,410 people. Since then however the population has been growing rapidly as people from Europe, Asia, and the rest of Africa flock to the city because it is the commercial hub of South Sudan’s oil industry. It is also attractive as a crossroads for travelers moving between the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Kenya, and Uganda.

Despite its status as a new capital city, Juba has a long history. Archaeological evidence shows the area has been inhabited since 3000 BCE.  In 1862 Egypt established an army post near present-day Juba which served as the southern limits of that nation’s control over Sudan.  Great Britain gained control of the region in 1899. In 1922 a group of Greek traders, who supplied British garrisons in the region, established the city.  Soon afterwards rebels from North and South Sudan met there to declare a unified campaign to resist British rule.  

Even though their numbers never exceeded 2,000 people, from the 1920s through the 1940s Greek merchants controlled much of the commerce of the region, supplying goods for the indigenous people as well as the British. They built and operated the famous Juba Hotel in the early 1930s partly to accommodate air travel passengers since by that point Juba was a base for aircraft flying from Europe to Cape Town, South Africa.  

In 1947 Juba was the site of the Juba Conference which established the single colony and eventual nation of Sudan.  Many in Southern Sudan, however, were opposed to that unification and began a civil war in the colony in 1955, a year before Sudan’s independence from Great Britain. That first Sudanese civil war continued until 1972.  During the second Sudanese civil war (1983-2005) rebel leaders declared Juba the capital of the Autonomous Government of Southern Sudan.

Orenthal James Simpson better known as O. J. Simpson was born on July 9, 1947. He was an American football player and is now incarcerated for numerous felonies. Also known as “The Juice”, Simpson briefly acted in a couple of films and was a football broadcaster as well. One of his accomplishments which got him famous was the fact that he was the first to rush more than 2000 yards as a football player. He set this benchmark back in 1973 and he was elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1985. A major record he set was that of 143.1 yards per game, something to be extremely proud of.

However, a decade later, his life turned around completely. In 1994, he was caught in a spiral that lasted for a long time. His ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman were found murdered in June of 1994.  O. J. Simpson was the prime suspect but was subsequently acquitted of double homicide and all associated criminal charges after a lengthy and publicly followed trial. During this time, he spent his days with Denice Shakarian Halicki and Robert Kardashian in the Kardashian household and spectators saw Robert with a garment bag that supposedly had evidence linking Simpson to the crime. After prosecutors finished examination of the evidence (allegedly his bloody clothes and the murder weapon) in 1997, the findings of a civil court revealed him as liable for the wrongful death Ronald Goldman and the stabbing of Nicole Brown Simpson. O. J. Simpson was then ordered to pay Goldman’s father $33.5 million in damages. What followed was a lengthy and time consuming process of lawsuits filed against him by Goldman’s father to obtain right of property and negative publicity for the retired celebrity. In 2007, he was arrested by the Nevada police and charged with kidnapping, armed robbery and other felonies. He was then found guilty and sentenced to imprisonment for 33 years. He currently serves his sentence in Lovelock, Nevada.

His career before these unfortunate instances was quite eventful. He was awarded a scholarship

Francis L. Cardozo installed as secretary of the state of South Carolina and became the first Black cabinet officer on the state level.

Jester Hairston, known for his roles in televisions Amos n Andy, born

Dr. Walter Massey named director of the Argonne national Laboratory.

E. Frederic Morrow appointed administrative aide to President Eisenhower and became the first Black to hold an executive position on the White House staff.

James Baskett, the first male African American to win an Academy Award, was born in Indianapolis, Indiana on February 16, 1904.  After high school Baskett planned to study pharmacy, but after he was offered a small part in a show in Chicago, Illinois his career path was forever changed.  Baskett continued to take small roles in Chicago plays for a time, but later he went to New York City, New York and joined the Lafayette Players Stock Company, where he stayed for many years.

Baskett first appeared on film in a feature role in Harlem is Heaven, and continued on in such films as Policy Man and Straight to Heaven.  Baskett was not confined to film and theater; he also played Gabby Gibson, a slick-talking lawyer on the popular radio program Amos n Andy.

Baskett is best remembered for his portrayal of Uncle Remus in Disneys 1946 picture Song of the South.  Baskett had actually only tested earlier for a minor role, but Disney remembered him and he was asked play as Uncle Remus.  In 1947, after some lobbying by popular Hollywood columnist Hedda Hopper, Baskett was awarded a special Academy Award for his able and heartwarming characterization of Uncle Remus, friend and storyteller to the children of the world.  Yet, although the film was praised by the academy, Baskett and Disney both met with heavy criticism from many in the African American community who felt that the film was rife with racist undertones and that it encouraged harmful stereotypes.  The debate over Song of the South continues, and due to this Disney has refused to release the film on home video in the United States.  James Baskett passed away on July 9, 1948.

Edward Mapp, Americans and the Oscar (Lanham, Maryland: The Scarecrow Press, Inc, 2003); Henry T. Sampson, Blacks in Black and White: A Source Book on Black Films.  (Metuchen, N.J: The Scarecrow Press, Inc, 1995).

John Smythe died in Thame, Oxfordshire on July 9, 1996 and was buried in St.

Atty. William T. Francis named minister to Liberia.