September 17, 1968: “Julia” Premieres

September 17, 1968: Julia premieres on NBC. This sitcom was the 1st weekly series to star an African-American woman in a non-stereotypical role. Previous television series featured African-American lead characters, but the characters were usually servants.

It starred actress-singer Diahann Carroll as Julia Baker, a nurse in a doctor's office at a large aerospace company, in a location that was never specified. Her husband, a U.S. Army Captain, had been killed in Vietnam, one of the first nods to that war on a network TV show. She was left a widow and a single mother, to Corey. Played by Mark Copage, the character was 6 years old when the show began.

The doctor, Morton Chegley, was played by Lloyd Nolan. Corey had barely known his father before he died. His best friend was Earl J. Waggedorn, whom Corey almost always addressed and referred to precisely by his full name, though other characters (particularly his mother) would refer to him simply as Earl. Earl was played by Mark Link. The Waggedorns lived downstairs in the same apartment building, with father, police officer Leonard (Hank Brandt), stay-at-home mother Marie (Betty Beaird), and two sons, Earl and an infant whose first name was never revealed.

The show got good ratings for its 1st 2 seasons, then dropped off in its 3rd, and was canceled. Very few people said the show went too far, but some African-American media said it didn't go far enough. One complaint was that, by putting Julia in the suburbs, it ignored the urban black experience. Another had an objection to the lack of a father in the black family, even as other sources, black and white alike, praised the show for admitting that the Vietnam War existed, something that many other shows seemed to ignore.

Having previously starred in film versions of Carmen (Carmen Jones) and Porgy and Bess, Carroll remained a headline singer in Las Vegas, and later had recurring roles on the shows Dynasty, its spinoff The Colbys, A Different World, Lonesome Dove, The Court, Grey's Anatomy, White Collar, and Diary of a Single Mom. She died in 2019.

Nolan died in 1985, Brandt in 2004. As of September 17, 2022, Beaird. Copage and Link are still alive. Copage hasn't acted much since the 1980s, and Link pretty much gave up acting in the 1970s.

*

September 17, 1968 was a Tuesday. Russian hockey player Valeri Zelepukin, Spanish soccer player and manager Tito Vilanova, and American singer Anastacia were born.

And these baseball games were played:

* The New York Yankees lost to the Detroit Tigers, 2-1 at Tiger Stadium in Detroit. The Yankees had tied the game in the top of the 9th inning, but in the bottom of the 9th, Don Wert, the Tigers' good-field-poor-hit 3rd baseman, singled Al Kaline, the face of the team, home with the winning run. This clinched the Tigers' 1st American League Pennant in 23 years.

Joe Sparma went the distance for the win. Kaline had entered the game as a pinch-hitter, and drew a walk before Wert drove him home. In what turned out to be his last 2 weeks as an active player, Mickey Mantle went 1-for-4.

This was only the 3rd time a Pennant had been clinched against the Yankees, following the 1904 Boston Red Sox and the 1944 St. Louis Browns. It has since been done by the 1980 Kansas City Royals, the 2004 Boston Red Sox, the 2010 Texas Rangers, the 2012 Detroit Tigers, and the 2017 and 2019 Houston Astros.

* The New York Mets beat the Chicago Cubs, 3-2 at Shea Stadium. Jim McAndrew outpitched Ken Holtzman. Ed Charles hit a home run. Ernie Banks went 0-for-4.

* The Pittsburgh Pirates beat the Philadelphia Phillies, 4-2 at Connie Mack Stadium in Philadelphia. Roberto Clemente went 1-for-5. Willie Stargell struck out as a pinch-hitter.

* The Boston Red Sox beat the Baltimore Orioles, 2-0 at Fenway Park in Boston. Ray Culp pitched a 5-hit shutout, outpitching Dave McNally. Carl Yastrzemski went 2-for-4 with an RBI. Brooks Robinson went 1-for-4. Frank Robinson went 0-for-2 with 2 RBIs.

* The Washington Senators beat the Cleveland Indians, 4-2 at Cleveland Municipal Stadium.

* A doubleheader was split at Comiskey Park in Chicago. The Chicago White Sox won the opener, 2-1. The Oakland Athletics won the nightcap, 8-2. Reggie Jackson, in his 1st full season, went 2-for-8 with an RBI.

* The Houston Astros beat the Atlanta Braves, 5-1 at the Astrodome in Houston. Hank Aaron went 1-for-4.

* The Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Cincinnati Reds, 7-5 at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles. Pete Rose went 2-for-5. Johnny Bench went 1-for-3 with a walk and an RBI.

* The San Francisco Giants beat the St. Louis Cardinals, 1-0 at Candlestick Park in San Francisco. Gaylord Perry pitched a no-hitter, outdoing Bob Gibson. You want to know why, despite a record-low 1.12 ERA that season, Bob Gibson only won 22 games and lost 9? Games like this, when the Cards didn't hit. The only run of the game came on a 1st-inning home run by Ron Hunt.

The very next day, Ray Washburn of the Cardinals returned the favor, pitching a no-hitter against the Giants, winning 2-0. This was the 1st time in history that back-to-back no hitters were pitched between the same 2 teams on consecutive days.

* And the California Angels and the Minnesota Twins were rained out at Metropolitan Stadium in the Minneapolis suburb of Bloomington, Minnesota. The game was made up as part of a doubleheader the next day. The Twins won the 1st game, 4-3. Rod Carew went 1-for-4, and Harmon Killebrew did not appear. The Angels won the 2nd game, 4-3. Both Carew, with a strikeout, and Killebrew, with a walk, appeared as pinch-hitters.

April 29, 1972: Diahann Carroll's Party for Shirley Chisholm

April 29, 1972: Singer and actress Diahann Carroll hosts a party for Representative Shirley Chisholm of New York, a candidate for the Democratic nomination for President.

Shirley Anita St. Hill was born on November 30, 1924, in Brooklyn, New York City. Her father was from British Guiana, now the South American nation of Guyana. Her mother was from the Caribbean island of Barbados. Both countries received their independence from Great Britain in 1966. Her parents met in Barbados before coming to America, and moved back there, with Shirley living there from ages 5 to 9, before the family returned to Brooklyn.

Shirley earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from Brooklyn College, and a Master of Arts degree from Columbia University, both in New York City. In 1949, she married Conrad Chisholm, a Jamaican immigrant who was working as a private investigator. The marriage produced no children, and lasted until a divorce in 1977.

Shirley worked in child care, and in 1953, she worked on the successful campaign to elect Lewis Flagg Jr. as the 1st black Judge in Brooklyn. She joined the Brooklyn Democratic Club and the League of Women Voters. In 1964, she was elected to the New York Assembly. In 1968, with the campaign slogan, "Unbought and Unbossed," she became the 1st black woman elected to the U.S. House of Representatives. In 1971, she became a founding member of the Congressional Black Caucus and the National Women's Political Caucus.

Chisholm announced her candidacy for the Democratic nomination for President on January 25, 1972. She was the 1st woman, and the 1st black person, to enter a major party's Primaries. Senator Margaret Chase Smith of Maine had her name placed in nomination for President at the 1964 Republican Convention, and she received 27 Delegates, making her the 1st woman to receive such an honor from either major party; but she did not enter any Primaries.

In her announcement speech in Brooklyn, Chisholm declared, "I am not the candidate of Black America, although I am Black and proud. I am not the candidate of the women's movement of this country, although I am a woman, and I am equally proud of that."

She didn't enter the New Hampshire Primary. She thought she could do well in Florida, which had a lot of black voters and a lot of ex-New Yorkers. She got 3 percent of the vote there. She also got 3 percent in Massachusetts. She didn’t top that until May, after several candidates had dropped out.

Enter Diahann Carroll. The Bronx native had starred alongside Dorothy Dandridge and Harry Belafonte in Carmen Jones, the all-black film version of Georges Bizet's opera Carmen; and with Dandridge, Sidney Poitier (with whom Carroll was then having an affair), Sammy Davis Jr. and Pearl Bailey in the 1959 film version of George Gershwin's Porgy and Bess.

In 1962, for starring in No Strings, she became the 1st black woman to win the Tony Award for Best Actress in a musical. From 1968 to 1971, she starred as the titular nurse in the NBC sitcom Julia. She was a black woman and a star, and a widowed single mother, but not a slave or a servant. This was huge. And she'd had hit songs, and had sung them on The Ed Sullivan Show. So she had some pull in show business.

As political analyst Juanita Tolliver put it, in an article for Ms. Magazine to promote her book A More Perfect Party: The Night Shirley Chisholm and Diahann Carroll Reshaped Politics:

She knew what it meant to be a Black woman driving substantive, positive change that resisted social norms and stereotypes. Having carved through the steel of discrimination and structural limitations in the entertainment industry, Carroll saw clear parallels between her career and Chisholm’s political goals.

So she threw the fundraising party for Chisholm at her estate in the Hollywood Hills. But this would be no ordinary party. The usual Los Angeles business lords, including studio executives, were going to have to mix with people of her choosing, including actors like Paul Newman and Goldie Hawn; David Frost, the edgy British journalist who was Carroll's current boyfriend; Berry Gordy Jr., who had just moved the company he founded, Motown Records, from his hometown of Detroit to the new media center of L.A.; and Black Panther Party co-founder Huey P. Newton. As Tolliver put it:

Carroll leveraged her social capital to create an audience of heavy hitters for Chisholm, and Chisholm had them all enthralled as only she could. She knew that by engaging these figures with Carroll’s support, her reach could expand to their fans across music, film, television and media.

Did the fundraising party help? Not much. Chisholm got just 7 percent of the vote in North Carolina. She won the New Jersey Primary on June 6, but only one other candidate entered it, as most remaining candidates chose to focus on California, whose Primary was held on the same day. There, she got 4 percent. It was Senator George McGovern of South Dakota who was building a coalition of old liberals and young activists -- a coalition that would fall apart as the younger ones acted up at the Democratic Convention in Miami Beach.

Later in life, Chisholm said she got more backlash from being a woman running for President than from being a black person who had run. She continued to be re-elected until retiring in 1982, and died in 2005, at age 80. Carroll built a career as a nightclub singer, married singer Vic Damone and toured with him, and died in 2019.

*

April 29, 1972 was a Saturday. These baseball games were played:

* The New York Yankees lost to the Minnesota Twins, 2-0 at Yankee Stadium. Jim Kaat allowed 4 hits over 6 innings, and Dave LaRoche finished the 4-hit shutout, outpitching Fritz Peterson. Harmon Killebrew went 2-for-3 with a walk and 2 RBIs. Rod Carew went 1-for-4. Rusty Torres had 2 of the Yankees' 4 hits, with Bobby Murcer and Gene Michael getting the others.

* The New York Mets lost to the Los Angeles Dodgers, 11-1 at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles. Tommy John went the distance for the win, while Jerry Koosman couldn't get out of the 1st inning. In his lone season with the Dodgers, Frank Robinson went 3-for-4 with a solo home run.

* The Baltimore Orioles beat the California Angels, 6-1 at Memorial Stadium in Baltimore. Mike Cuellar outpitched Andy Messersmith. Brooks Robinson went 2-for-4 with a walk and 3 RBIs. Don Baylor went 3-for-3 with a home run, a walk and 3 RBIs.

* The Atlanta Braves beat the Pittsburgh Pirates, 9-5 at Three Rivers Stadium in Pittsburgh. Hank Aaron went 1-for-5 with a walk and an RBI. Roberto Clemente went 1-for-4 with a walk. Willie Stargell went 2-for-5 with a home run and 2 RBIs.

* The Detroit Tigers beat the Chicago White Sox, 6-1 at Tiger Stadium in Detroit. Mickey Lolich went the distance for the win, while knuckleballer Wilbur Wood didn't get out of the 3rd inning. Al Kaline went 0-for-2, but had a walk and an RBI on a sacrifice fly. Mickey Stanley and Bill Freehan hit home runs.

* The Cincinnati Reds beat the Chicago Cubs, 3-2 at Wrigley Field in Chicago. The normally sure-handed Cub shortstop Don Kessinger mishandled Ted Uhlaender's ground ball in the top of the 9th inning, allowing Cesar Gerónimo to score the winning run. Pete Rose went 0-for-4. Johnny Bench went 2-for-4.

* The Oakland Athletics beat the Milwaukee Brewers, 2-1 at Milwaukee County Stadium. Jim "Catfish" Hunter was the winning pitcher. Reggie Jackson went 1-for-5.

* The Cleveland Indians beat the Kansas City Royals, 3-1 at Kansas City Municipal Stadium.

* The Texas Rangers beat the Boston Red Sox, 7-6 at Arlington Stadium in the Dallas suburb of Arlington, Texas. Ken Suarez singled Dave Nelson home with the winning run in the bottom of the 9th inning.

* The St. Louis Cardinals beat the Houston Astros, 4-2 at the Astrodome in Houston. Pitcher Ken Forsch mishandled a bunt by Joe Hague, allowing Luis Meléndez to score the winning run in the top of the 11th inning. Lou Brock went 0-for-4, but drew a walk and stole a base. Joe Torre went 3-for-5 with a home run and 2 RBIs.

* The San Diego Padres beat the Philadelphia Phillies, 4-0 at San Diego Stadium (later Jack Murphy Stadium and Qualcomm Stadium). Steve Arlin pitched a 5-hit shutout, outpitching Steve Carlton. That season, the Phillies losing was the usual, but Carlton losing wasn't: He went 27-10. He also got 2 of the Phils' 5 hits that day.

* And the Montreal Expos beat the San Francisco Giants, 2-1 at Candlestick Park in San Francisco. Mike Torrez outpitched Steve Stone. Willie Mays went 0-for-3 with a walk. Willie McCovey did not play.

Football was out of season. The NBA Finals were between Games 1 and 2, and the Los Angeles Lakers would beat the New York Knicks in 5 games. The American Basketball Association Playoffs were in progress, and 1 game was played: The Virginia Squires beat the New York Nets, 116-107 at the Hampton Coliseum outside Norfolk in Hampton, Virginia. Ray Scott led the Squires with 26 points, while Rick Barry scored 34 for the Nets.

The Stanley Cup Playoffs were between the Semifinals and the Finals. The Boston Bruins would beat the New York Rangers in 6 games.