People, Locations, Episodes

Ted Ross, Actor born

Ted Ross, an African American entertainer, was born on this date in 1934.

Theodore “Ted” Ross was from Zanesville, Ohio, but his mother, Elizabeth Russell, a nightclub singer in the 1920s and 1930s, moved the family to Dayton when young Ross was seven. He loved the clubs on West Fifth Street–Dayton’s answer to Harlem in the first half of the 20th century. While in junior high, Ross, who was big for his age, would dress up and strut into the Owl Club and The Palace Theater’s Midnight Rambles to see great acts such as Duke Ellington.

Dick Anthony Williams, Actor born

*Dick Anthony Williams was born on this date in 1934. He was an African American actor.

Williams was born on the South Side of Chicago and spent four years of his childhood in a hospital being treated for polio. In an interview with The Chicago Tribune, he said being hospitalized had its advantages. It kept him safe, he said, and he “ate well.” But, he added, “It’s very gratifying now to see an iron lung and not have to get into it.”

Lloyd Haynes, 1960s TV Actor born

Lloyd Haynes was born on this date in 1934. He was an African American actor.

Born Samuel Lloyd Haynes in South Bend, IN, he served in the Marines in Korea and was a commander in the Navy.

As an actor, Haynes starred as a history teacher “Pete Dixon” on TV’s Room 222, one of the most popular TV shows of the 1960s. The series chronicled the lives of the students and teachers at the fictional Walt Whitman High School.

Sylvia Robinson, Music Producer born

*Sylvia Robinson was born on this date in 1935. She was a Black singer and music producer. Born Sylvia Vanderpool in New York City, she made her first record when she was 14, backed by the veteran jazz trumpeter ‘Hot Lips’ Page. By the time she enrolled at Washington Irving High School, she was already […]

Diahann Carroll, Actress born

On this date in 1935, Diahann Carroll was born. She is an African American actress and singer.

Gail Fisher, TV Actress born

*On this date, we celebrate the birth of Gail Fisher in 1935. She was an African American actress best known for portraying widowed secretary Peggy Fair on the CBS detective show Mannix, a part she played from 1968 to 1975.

Lou Myers, Actor born

*Lou Myers was born on this date in 1935. He was an African American actor.

Lou Leabengula Myers was born in Chesapeake, West Virginia, the son of Dorothy Jeffries Brown. Myers guest starred on a variety of TV shows, from “NYPD Blue” to “Touched by an Angel,” but he was best known for his five-season stint on the “Cosby Show” spinoff as Vernon Gaines, owner of The Pit and curmudgeonly father figure to the students of Hillman College where he played restaurant owner Mr. Gaines on “A Different World.”

Louis Gossett, Film/TV Actor born

*Louis Gossett was born on this date in 1936. He was a Black actor. Louis Cameron Gossett Jr. was born in Coney Island, Brooklyn, New York City, to Hellen Rebecca Wray, a nurse, and Louis Gossett Sr., a Pulman porter. He is an alumnus of Mark Twain Intermediate School 239 and Abraham Lincoln High School. […]

Don Cornelius, TV Producer born

*Don Cornelius was born on this date in 1936. He was an African American television show host and producer.

Donald Cortez Cornelius was born in Chicago in 1936. After high school, he sold insurance before becoming one of the early employees of Chicago’s WVON radio. During that time as a radio journalist inspired by the civil rights movement, Cornelius recognized that in the late 1960s there was no television venue in America for soul music.

The Negro Actors Guild Begins

*On this date in 1936, the Negro Actors Guild (NAG) is celebrated.   Formed in 1936, the Negro Actors Guild of America (NAG) wanted to eliminate stereotyping of African Americans in theatrical and cinematic performances.  They began operations in 1937 to create better opportunities for Black actors during a period in America when the country was […]

Billy Dee Williams, Actor born

*Billy Dee Williams was born on this date in 1937.  He is a Black actor, voice actor, and artist.   William December Williams Jr. was born in New York City, the son of Loretta Anne, a West Indian-born elevator operator at the Lyceum Theatre. She was an aspiring performer from Montserrat, and William December Williams, Sr., a Black and Native American caretaker from Texas.  He grew up in Harlem.  He used to go […]

Robert Hooks, Actor, and Theatre Advocate born

*On this date in 1937, Robert Hooks was born.  He is a Black actor, producer, and activist.   The youngest of five children, Hooks was born in Foggy Bottom, Washington, D.C.  His mother was Mae Bertha (Ward), a seamstress, and Edward Hooks, who had moved from Rocky Mount, North Carolina, with their four other children, Bernice, Caroleigh, Charles Edward “Charlie,” and James Walter “Jimmy.” Named […]

Morgan Freeman, Actor born

Morgan Freeman was born on this date in 1937. He is an African American actor, director, and activist.

Bill Cosby, Actor, and Comedian born

Bill Cosby, an African American entertainer, author, educator, and businessperson, was born on this date in 1937.

Ron O’Neal, Actor born

*Ron O’Neal was born on this date in 1937. He was an African American actor.

From Utica, NY he got his big break when he was cast in Charles Gordone’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play No Place to Be Somebody, which began at Off-Broadway’s Public Theater and later went to Broadway in 1969. The producers of “Superfly,” urban crime film were impressed with his work. They cast him as the movie’s lead character, a cool cocaine dealer named Youngblood Priest. “Superfly” became an unexpected hit, one of the defining films of the twentieth century Blaxploitation genre.