D.D.Palmer the founder of Chiropractic adjusted Harvey Lillard an African America in Davenport Iowa. Mr. Lilllard was deaf and told Mr. Palmer that he lifted something and heard a cracking sound in his back, (Lillard) stated that his hearing was lost after that happen. Mr. Palmer felt his spine a pushed on what he believed to be a misplaced bone, Lillards hear improved as a direct result of that thus launching Chiropractic.

Pinkney was born on September 15, 1935, in Chicago, Illinois to Marion Henderson Pinkney and William Pinkney, Sr.

Known for her stage presence, vocal range, and her ability to convey emotion, Jessye Norman is one of the worlds most respected opera singers.

Large-scale racial disorders were reported in Hartford, Connecticut. Five hundred were arrested and scores were injured.

On September 15, 1978, Muhammad Ali, was the first black prizefight to gross more than a five-million dollars gate in the bout at the Louisiana Superdome in New Orleans. Muhammad Ali won in a 13-round unanimous decision and became the first to win the heavyweight title three times.

Jan Earnest Matzeliger was born on September 15, 1852 in Paramaribo, Surinam,

a Dutch colony on the northern coast of South America. At the age of 20 he emigrated to

the United States where he settled in Philadelphia. While living in Philadelphia, he worked

in a shoe factory. He later moved to Lynn, Massachusetts which was considered the shoe

capital of the world. It was in Lynn were Matzeliger invented a machine which would

change the entire shoe industry. His invention was the shoe lasting machine.

His shoe lasting machine enabled leather to be stretched over a shoe last, which is

a wooden or metal model of the human foot. Once the leather is stretched it can then be

attached to the inner sole. This process was originally done by hand, which made shoes

expensive because of the large amounts of time and labor involved. With Matzeligers

invention 150 - 750 shoes, depending on the type of leather, could be lasted each day.

Matzeliger was approached by Sydney Winslow who bought the invention and

helped to finance it. Together the two founded the United Shoe Machine Company. The

success of the business caused a 50% decease on the prices of shoes. The lower prices

were a result of the increases in both the number of shoes produced and the ease of

production. The new found ease of production led to better working conditions and higher

wages for those who made their living in shoe factories.

Jean Earnest Matzeliger died in 1889 after contracting tuberculosis. He was 37. He

never received money for his invention. He instead received stock in the United Shoe

Machine Company. Unfortunately this stock did not appreciate until after his death.

Rev. K.L. Buford and Dr. Stanley Smith were elected to Tuskegee City Council and became first Black elected officials in Alabama in twentieth century.

National Afro-American Council founded in Rochester, New York. Bishop Alexander Walters of the AME Zion Church was elected president. The organization proposed a program of assertion and protest.

Combining styles of earlier influences with his own unique twists secured Julian Cannonball Adderley’s place in history as an experienced alto saxophonist who was fearless in exploring fresh musical styles.  Born in Tampa, Florida on September 15, 1928, Adderley was welcomed into a musical family that would play a key part in his success as a performer.  His father, already a jazz cornetist, introduced him to music, contributing to Adderley’s familiarity with band performance by the age of 14.  In high school he continued to study reed and brass instruments and formed his first jazz group with his band director as his advisor.  Upon graduation from high school, Adderley became band director at Dillard High School in Fort Lauderdale where he taught music for several years while also playing with his own jazz group on the side from 1948 to 1950.  After enlisting in the Army in 1950, he led the 36th Army Dance Band and later a second Army band from 1952 to 1953.  During this time he also studied at the U.S. Naval School of Music.

Adderley was persuaded to move to New York in 1955, where he made an instant impact on the jazz scene after joining his brother, Nat, and forming a quintet that toured until 1957.  He then joined Miles Davis and proceeded to make some of the most notable jazz recordings of the 1950s.  He remained with Davis until 1959 when he toured as a featured soloist for George Shearing’s big band.  At the end of that year Adderley rejoined his brother to form a new quintet fostered by the influences of Davis, Charlie Parker, and Benny Carter.  For 15 years, Adderley used the experience he gained with Davis to mold the quintet into a colorful combination of fusion, post-bop, and soul jazz, the latter with which he was most commonly associated.  Although many viewed these transformations as solely for commercial gain, some critics demonstrated their appreciation for the sound by referring to Adderley as the “new bird” and crediting his style to the influence of Parker.

By the 1970s Adderley played

Norman was born on September 15, 1945 in Augusta, Georgia, the child of Silas Norman, an insurance broker, and Janie Norman, a schoolteacher.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie , (born September 15, 1977, Enugu, Nigeria), Nigerian author whose work drew extensively on the Biafran war in Nigeria during the late 1960s.

Early in life Adichie, the fifth of six children, moved with her parents to Nsukka, Nigeria. A voracious reader from a young age, she found Things Fall Apart by novelist and fellow Igbo Chinua Achebe transformative. After studying medicine for a time in Nsukka, in 1997 she left for the United States, where she studied communication and political science at Eastern Connecticut State University (B.A., 2001). Splitting her time between Nigeria and the United States, she received a master’s degree in creative writing from Johns Hopkins University and studied African history at Yale University.

In 1998 Adichie’s play For Love of Biafra was published in Nigeria. She later dismissed it as “an awfully melodramatic play,” but it was among the earliest works in which she explored the war in the late 1960s between Nigeria and its secessionist Biafra republic. She later wrote several short stories about that conflict, which would become the subject of her highly successful novel Half of a Yellow Sun (2006). As a student at Eastern Connecticut State University, she began writing her first novel, Purple Hibiscus (2003). Set in Nigeria, it is the coming-of-age story of Kambili, a 15-year-old whose family is wealthy and well respected but who is terrorized by her fanatically religious father. Purple Hibiscus garnered the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize in 2005 for Best First Book (Africa) and that year’s Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best First Book (overall). It was also short-listed for the 2004 Orange Prize (later called the Orange Broadband Prize and now the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction).

Half of a Yellow Sun (2006; film 2013), Adichie’s second novel, was the result of four years of research and writing. It was built primarily on the experiences of her parents during the Nigeria-Biafra war. The result was an epic novel that vividly depicted the savagery

Inventor Jan E. Matzeliger was born in Dutch Guyana and immigrated to the US in 1878. He patented a shoe lasting machine in 1880.

Born on September 15, 1941 in Boston, Massachusetts, Harriet Elam attended Simmons College in Boston where she received a B.S. degree in International Business. She also received an M.A. degree in Public Diplomacy from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. She speaks fluent French, Greek, and Turkish.

Harriet Elam-Thomas held a number of posts abroad over the course of her career.  She was stationed in Greece, Turkey, Cyprus, France, Belgium, Mali, Senegal, and the Ivory Coast.  or four years (1983-1987) she was the Cultural Attaché at the U.S. Embassy in Athens, which led to her serving as Country Affairs Officer for Greece, Turkey, and Cyprus when she returned to the State Department in 1987.  In 1994, she completed a four-year tour as Director of the American Press and Cultural Center at the American Consulate in Istanbul, Turkey.  In 1995, Elam-Thomas began another four-year tour as Counselor of Public Affairs at the American Embassy in Brussels, Belgium.  However, she only completed two years of this tour, as she was called back to Washington, D.C. to become Counselor of the United Stated Information Agency (USIA), the most senior career position in the Agency.  She also served as Acting Deputy Director of USIA.  

In 1999, Elam-Thomas was nominated by President Bill Clinton to be U.S. Ambassador to the Republic of Senegal.  After confirmation by the U.S. Senate, she arrived in Dakar and held that position until 2002.  While ambassador to Senegal she was also appointed Chief of Mission to Guinea-Bissau in 2001.

From 2003 to 2005, Elam-Thomas served as Diplomat-in-Residence at the University of Central Florida.  In this role, she conducted workshops, provided information on careers, and connected students to internship and scholarship opportunities, and spoke on policy matters as the U.S. State Department’s official liaison in Central Florida.  She currently directs the Diplomacy Program at the University of Central Florida in Orlando, Florida.

Harriet Elam-Thomas has received many

On this date in 1791, Jonathan Edwards Jr. (1745-1801) preached a strong anti-slavery sermon before the Connecticut Society for the Promotion of Freedom and for the Relief of Persons unlawfully holden in Bondage. Edwards was a Congregationalist minister, like his more famous father, and later became president of Union College in Schenectady, N.Y. The sermon became one of the earliest anti-slavery publications in the Library of Congress collections, demonstrating abolition as a social movement in the early days of the republic.

Actor and activist, Paul Robeson, portrays Othello for the 296th time at New York Citys Shubert

Theater, 1943

Edward Alexander Bouchet was born on September 15, 1852 in New Haven, Connecticut to William Francis and Susan Cooley Bouchet.

Harlem Renaissance writer Festus Claudius McKay was born on September 15, 1889, in Sunny Ville, in the Clarendon Hills of Jamaica, to peasant farmers Hannah Ann Elizabeth Edwards  and Thomas Frank McKay.

Governor said Oklahoma was in a state of Virtual rebellion and insurrection because of KKK activities. Martial Law was declared.

White terrorists attacked Republicans in Ellenton, South Carolina. Two whites and thirty-nine Blacks were killed.

Inmates seized Attica State Correctional Facility (N.Y.) and held several guards hostage. They issued a list of demands which included coverage by the state minimum wage law, better food and no reprisals.

Jessye Norman (b. September 15, 1945) is a recitalist as well as a Grammy-award winning opera singer. Norman is known for her powerful voice as well as for being an opera singer. As a child Norman recalls cleaning her room and listening to the radio; she had always been fond of music and credits Leontyne Price and Marian Anderson for being the starring influences in her life.

At the age of 16, Norman entered the Marian Anderson vocal competition and even though she did not win an award, her soulful voice captured the imagination of many, even at this juncture in time and she was awarded a scholarship at Howard University. In 1965, along with other members of her university, Norman became a part of the Delta Nu Chapter of Sigma Alpha Iote. After having won the National Society of Arts Award in 1966, Norman went on to graduate in 1967, with a degree in music and began her graduate level studies at the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore.

So far as Jessye Norman’s career was concerned, it began soon after her graduation in 1967. Like other classical singers of her time, Norman felt that it would be better to establish herself in Europe before returning to America; hence she won the International Music Competition in Munich and managed to win herself a three year contract with the Deutsche Oper Berlin, a opera house in Berlin as a result of her former success.  Fortune favored Norman and she landed a role in Wagnelis Tannhauser as Elizabeth. In 1975, she decided that it was time for a change of scenery and moved to London where she soon became a stage favorite, appearing as she did over the next five years, till 1981. During this time, Norman became a legend where music was concerned; she starred in Mendelssohn’s Elijah. Buoyant with her success in Europe, Norman decided to head back to America where she initially tried and subsequently failed to make the same breakthrough as she had before.

However, luck was with her yet again and she began to frequently appear in the US operas and as she led festivals and opera

Claude McKay , (born September 15, 1889, Nairne Castle, Jamaica, British West Indies—died May 22, 1948, Chicago, Illinois, U.

Claude McKay was born on this day.

In the early months of 1830, a young freed man from Baltimore named Hezekiel Grice was not satisfied with life in the North because of the hopelessness of contending against oppression in the United States.

Grice wrote to a number of African-American leaders asking if freedmen should emigrate to Canada and, if a convention could be held to discuss the issue.

By September 15, 1830 the first National Negro Convention was held in Philadelphia.

An estimated forty African-Americans from nine states attended the convention. Of all the delegates present, only two, Elizabeth Armstrong and Rachel Cliff, were women.

Leaders such as Bishop Richard Allen were also present. During the convention meeting, Allen argued against African colonization but supported emigration to Canada. He also contended that, However great the debt which these United States may owe to injured Africa, and however unjustly her sons have been made to bleed, and her daughters to drink of the cup of affliction, still we who have been born and nurtured on this soil, we whose habits, manners, and customs are the same in common with other Americans, can never consent to take our lives in our hands, and be the bearers of the redress offered by that Society to that much afflicted country.

By the end of the ten-day meeting, Allen was named president of a new organization, the American Society of Free People of Colour for improving their condition in the United States; for purchasing lands; and for the establishment of a settlement in the Province of Canada.

The aim of this organization was two-fold: 

First, it was to encourage African-Americans with children to move to Canada.

Second, the organization wanted  to improve the livelihood of African-Americans remaining in the United States.  As a result of the meeting, African-American leaders from the  Midwest organized to protest not only against slavery, but also racial discrimination.

Historian Emma Lapansky argues that this first convention was quite significant, citing, The 1830 convention was the

The famous boxer Thomas Hit Man Hearns becomes the first Black man to win boxing titles in five different weight classes,

1987

Four Black girls killed in bombing of Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham.

He was born to Charles and Sara Prim in Nashville, Tennessee on September 15, 1898.

Philadelphia held the First National Negro Convention, 1830