October 20, 1977: The Lynyrd Skynyrd Plane Crash

October 20, 1977: Lynyrd Skynyrd, a "Southern rock" band, give a concert at the Greenville Memorial Auditorium in Greenville, South Carolina. Afterward, they board a chartered Convair CV-240, to fly to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, for their concert the next night at Louisiana State University. 

The plane crashes into a forest outside Gillsburg, Mississippi, killing lead singer Ronnie Van Zant, guitarist Steve Gaines, backup singer Cassie Gaines (Steve's sister), assistant road manager Dean Kilpatrick, pilot Walter McCreary, and co-pilot William Gray.

An engine malfunction caused the pilots to dump the plane's extra fuel, instead of transferring it to another engine like they intended. That's right: The plane crashed because it ran out of gas. It wasn't negligence, or even an error: It was just something that happened.

Also on board, surviving but badly hurt, were guitarists Allen Collins and Gary Rossington, bass guitarist Leon Wilkeson, keyboardist Billy Powell, drummer Artimus Pyle, backing vocalist Leslie Hawkins, band security manager Gene Odom, and road crew members Steve Lawler, Ken Peden and Marc Frank. Collins was paralyzed. Odom was badly burned.

To make matters worse, in a case of "Timing is everything," just 3 days earlier, Skynyrd had released a new album, titled Street Survivors. The cover, as shown above, shows them standing in the middle of a fire. One of the more familiar tracks on the album is titled "That Smell." The lyrics include the words, "Tomorrow might not be here for you," and, "The smell of death surrounds you."

The album would be repackaged, showing the band in front of a black background, and the original cover, much like the "Butcher Sleeve" of the 1966 Beatles compilation album Yesterday and Today, and the original cover of Electric Ladyland showing Jimi Hendrix surrounded by naked women, has become a collector's item.

The band would regroup, with Ronnie's brother Johnny Van Zant singing lead. He had previously led the unimaginatively-titled Johnny Van Zant Band. Another brother, Donnie Van Zant, was the lead singer of another "Southern rock" band, .38 Special.

Collins was in another crash, of his car, in 1986, never fully recovered, and died in 1990. Wilkeson died in 2001, from lung and liver diseases. Powell died of natural causes in 2009. With some irony, Leonard Skinner, the high school gym teacher and basketball coach whose no-long-hair policy convinced Van Zant, Rossington and Burns to sort-of name the band after him, outlived some of them, dying in 2010. 

Rossington, Pyle, Hawkins, Odom, Peden, Frank and Lawler are still alive, and all attended a 40th Anniversary memorial service at the crash site in 2017.

UPDATE: Rossington died in 2023. And it took me until 2024 to think of this, but the 1970s were Schrödinger's Decade. There was too much overwrought music, and, at the same time, not enough of it.

*

October 20, 1977 was a Thursday. So while it was during the NFL season, there were no games played that day. The baseball season had ended 2 days earlier, when 3 home runs by Reggie Jackson gave the New York Yankees an 8-4 win over the Los Angeles Dodgers in Game 6 of the World Series, clinching the World Championship.

One game was played in the NBA that night, and it was in the NBA city closest to the crash site. The Cleveland Cavaliers beat the New Orleans Jazz, 107-104 at the Louisiana Superdome. Pete Maravich scored 29 for the Jazz, and Truck Robinson 28, but the Cavs still won, with Campy Russell leading them with 23. Robinson and Russell would both later play for the New York Knicks. Former Knick Walt Frazier scored 19 for the Cavs.

No games were scheduled for the World Hockey Association on that day, but 4 games were played in the NHL. The New York Rangers and the New York Islanders were not in any of them, but the team that would become the New Jersey Devils was:

* The Colorado Rockies, who became the Devils in 1982, lost to the Buffalo Sabres, 7-5 at the Buffalo Memorial Auditorium.

* The Philadelphia Flyers beat the Pittsburgh Penguins, 11-0 at The Spectrum in Philadelphia. No, that's not a typo: The Fly Guys beat the Pens eleven to nothing. The Pens did not have Mario Lemieux, nor Jaromir Jagr, nor Sidney Crosby.

* The Montreal Canadiens and the Detroit Red Wings played to a tie, 2-2 at the Olympia Stadium in Detroit.

* And the Cleveland Barons beat the Minnesota North Stars, 7-4 at the Metropolitan Sports Center in the Minneapolis suburb of Bloomington, Minnesota. Both teams were in dire financial straits, so the NHL approved their agreement for a merger at the end of the season, under the North Stars name. In the "big four" North American sports leagues, the Barons, who had been the Oakland Seals from 1967 to 1970 and the California Golden Seals from then until 1976, remain the last team to outright fail and go out of business. 

September 26, 1937: The Death of Bessie Smith

September 26, 1937: Bessie Smith dies in a car crash in Clarksdale, Mississippi, on U.S. Route 61 -- not far from the crossroads where Robert Johnson allegedly made his deal with the Devil. "The Empress of the Blues" was 43. Johnson would be dead within a year himself.

There are 2 legends surrounding her death. One is that a white ambulance driver refused to pick her up, and she died waiting for an ambulance from a black hospital to arrive. This is not true. The problem was that, given how rural the area was and the time period, it took half an hour for someone -- oddly, a surgeon, who did his best to help though he was white -- to arrive, for his assistant to get to a house with a telephone, and call the black hospital for an ambulance, and for the ambulance to arrive. But even if that ambulance had been right behind her car when the crash happened, she never would have made it.

The other legend is that she lay in an unmarked grave until 1970, when, just before her own death as it turned out, Janis Joplin paid for a proper headstone. That one is true.

While she made many recordings that survive, the only known film of Bessie Smith is this performance in the 1929 film St. Louis Blues.

*

September 26, 1937 was a Sunday. These baseball games were played:

* The New York Yankees lost to the Boston Red Sox, 7-2 at Fenway Park in Boston. Lou Gehrig and Joe DiMaggio each went 1-for-4 with an RBI. Jimmie Foxx and Fabian Gaffke hit home runs for the Sox. Jack Wilson outpitched Bump Hadley.

* The New York Giants beat their arch-rivals, the Brooklyn Dodgers, 4-3 at the Polo Grounds. Lou Chiozza hit a home run in the bottom of the 9th inning. Mel Ott went 0-for-4.

* The Boston Bees (as the Braves were known from 1936 to 1940) beat the Philadelphia Phillies, 17-3 at Baker Bowl in Philadelphia. Tony Cuccinello went 2-for-5 with 2 home runs, a walk, and 4 RBIs. Gil English went 5-for-7. Debs Garms went 4-for-7 with 2 RBIs.

* The Philadelphia Athletics and the Washington Senators were tied 7-7 after 11 innings at Griffith Stadium in Washington, when the game was called due to darkness.

* The Cleveland Indians beat the Detroit Tigers, 9-3 and 4-3 at League Park in Cleveland. Bob Feller was the winning pitcher in the 2nd game. He was only 19 years old. Over the 2 games, Hank Greenberg went 2-for-6 with 2 walks.

* The Pittsburgh Pirates swept the Cincinnati Reds, 5-4 and 2-1 at Crosley Field in Cincinnati. Over the 2 games, Paul Waner went 3-for-9 with an RBI, and Lloyd Waner went 2-for-9 with a walk.

* The Chicago White Sox swept a doubleheader from the St. Louis Browns, 4-3 and 4-1 at Comiskey Park in Chicago.

* The St. Louis Cardinals beat their arch-rivals, the Chicago Cubs, 6-5 at Sportsman's Park in St. Louis. That was the 1st game of a doubleheader. The Cubs led the Cardinals 8-5 in the 8th inning of the 2nd game, which was then called due to darkness. At this point, Cincinnati was the only team that had lights.

And there were 3 games played in the NFL:

* The New York Giants beat the Pittsburgh Pirates, 10-7 at Forbes Field in Pittsburgh. In 1940, the football Pirates became the Pittsburgh Steelers.

* The Brooklyn Dodgers beat the Cleveland Rams, 9-7 at Ebbets Field. The football Dodgers folded after the 1945 season. The Rams moved to Los Angeles in 1946.

* And the Philadelphia Eagles and the Chicago Cardinals played to a tie, 6-6 at Shibe Park in Philadelphia.

September 23, 1955: The Murderers of Emmett Till Are Acquitted

September 23, 1955: Two men are found not guilty of murder. They went on to brag about how they got away with it.

Emmett Louis Till was born on July 25, 1941 in Chicago. His father, Louis, would enter the U.S. Army after his mother, Mamie, kicked him out of the house for being abusive. He would be executed in Italy following a 1945 court-martial for the murder of a local woman.

Mamie was born in Mississippi, and, as a small child, moved north with her family in what has become known as the Great Migration of African-Americans in search of better civil rights and working conditions. They lived on the South Side of Chicago, in a sub-neighborhood called Argo, a.k.a. Little Mississippi. When Emmett was 6 years old, he contracted polio, leaving him with a stutter. He and his mother moved to Detroit, where she married a man named Pink Bradley. The marriage didn't last, and they moved back to Chicago, although she kept the name Mamie Till Bradley.

Statistics on lynchings began to be collected in 1882. Between then and 1955, more than 500 African-Americans had been killed by extrajudicial violence in Mississippi alone, and more than 3,000 across the South. Most of the incidents took place between 1876 and 1930. Though far less common by the mid-1950s, these racially motivated murders still occurred.

Flag flown outside NAACP headquarters in New York,

1936 to 1938. They stopped when the owner of the building

threatened them with eviction.

Throughout the South, interracial relationships were prohibited, as a means to maintain white supremacy and "purity." Even the suggestion of sexual contact between black men and white women could carry severe penalties for black men. 

In 1955, Mamie's uncle, 64-year-old Mose Wright, visited her and Emmett in Chicago during the Summer, and told stories about living in the Mississippi Delta. Emmett wanted to see for himself. Wright planned to accompany Till with a cousin, Wheeler Parker; another cousin, Curtis Jones, would join them soon after.

Wright was a sharecropper and part-time minister who was often called "Preacher." He lived in Money, a small town in the Delta that consisted of three stores, a school, a post office, a cotton gin, and a few hundred residents, 8 miles north of Greenwood. Before Emmett departed for the Delta, his mother cautioned him that Chicago and Mississippi were two different worlds, and he should know how to behave in front of whites in the South. He assured her he understood.

Emmett took the Illinois Central Railroad down, and arrived in Money on August 21, 1955. On August 24, a cousin, Maurice Wright, drove Emmett and some other black boys, relatives and neighbors, to Bryant's Grocery and Meat Market, to buy candy. The Market was owned by Roy Bryant, 24, and his wife, Carolyn, 21. Carolyn was in the front of the store. Her sister-in-law, Juanita Milan, was in the back, watching some white children.

What happened next is in dispute. One witness said that one of the boys dared Emmett to flirt with Carolyn. Another said that this did not happen. Emmett's cousins Simeon Wright and Wheeler Parker both said that Emmett "wolf-whistled" at Carolyn. His mother would later tell a reporter that, because of his stutter, Emmett had trouble pronouncing the letter B, and that whistling sometimes helped. This backs up the suggestion that he had tried to order bubble gum. 

At the trial, Carolyn testified that Emmett grabbed her hand and said, "How about a date, baby?" She said she got away, and that he then grabbed her waist and said, "What's the matter baby, can't you take it?" And then one of the other boys grabbed Emmett and got him out of there.

In 2008, 53 years later, Bryant admitted that she had made this up, and said, "Nothing that boy did could ever justify what happened to him." Supposedly, there was a white man in the store, who confirmed that Emmett said nothing inappropriate to her. There was a checkers game going on out front, and one of the white men involved said that Emmett did whistle, but at an impressive move made in the game, a completely harmless gesture.

Roy Bryant was on a hunting trip, and did not return until August 27. He heard about what happened from one of the checkers players, and was angry at Carolyn for not telling him herself. In the middle of the night on August 28, Roy and his half-brother, John William Milam, broke into Mose Wright's house with a gun, and kidnapped Emmett.

Emmett was found 3 days later, by boys fishing in the Tallahatchie River. Emmett's face had been beaten beyond recognition, and his body had been weighted down with an electric fan whose cord was tied around it. He had just turned 14 years old.

Mamie Till Bradley demanded an open-casket funeral in Chicago: She wanted people to see what was done to him. Gruesome postmortem photos appeared in Jet magazine.

This time, the rednecks had gone too far. Governor Hugh White sent a telegram to the NAACP, saying, "Mississippi does not condone such conduct," and saying that local authorities should pursue a "vigorous prosecution." Leflore County Deputy Sheriff John Cothran stated, "The white people around here feel pretty mad about the way that poor little boy was treated, and they won't stand for this." Letters to the editor appeared in local newspapers, admitting that white actions like these did more damage to the South than any black actions did.

The bigots, naturally, fought back. They falsely reported riots in the funeral home in Chicago. Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam appeared in photos smiling and wearing military uniforms, and Carolyn Bryant's beauty and virtue were extolled.

Bryant and Milan were indicted for murder on September 3. The trial was held at the Tallahatchie County Courthouse in Sumner, Mississippi. District Attorney Gerald Chatham was the prosecutor, and he was pessimistic about getting a conviction from an all-white jury. The jury was all-white because jurors are selected from voter rolls, and black people were not permitted to vote in Mississippi, despite the 15th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States officially guaranteeing them that right.

County Sheriff Clarence Strider served as the defense attorney. He said, "The last thing I wanted to do was to defend those peckerwoods. But I just had no choice about it."

The main defense argument was that the body pulled from the river could not be definitively identified, and that Emmett Till might be still alive and missing, perhaps in hiding, to set up the good white people of Mississippi.

Sheriff Strider was told that there were 2 black witnesses who could back up the prosecution's case. He had them found, and kept them in jail for the duration of the trial, to keep them from testifying. This should have not only produced a mistrial, but gotten Strider disbarred. In contrast, Judge Curtis Swango was hailed for his even-handedness, and no one has ever alleged any misconduct on his part.

Mose Wright did not see the murder, but he did identify Milam as one of the kidnappers. It was said to be the first time in the South that a black man had testified to the guilt of a white man in court and lived.

On September 23, the all-white, all-male jury acquitted both defendants, after a deliberation of 1 hour and 7 minutes. One juror said, "If we hadn't stopped to drink pop, it wouldn't have taken that long." Basically, they took just enough time to make it look like they had to give it some thought, when they didn't: They were never going to vote to convict, no matter what the evidence said.

Protected against double jeopardy, Bryant and Milam struck a deal with Look magazine in 1956, to tell their story to journalist William Bradford Huie for between $3,600 and $4,000. The interview took place in the law firm of the attorneys who had defended Bryant and Milam. Huie did not ask the questions; Bryant and Milam's own attorneys did. Neither attorney had heard their clients' accounts of the murder before.

According to Huie, the older Milam was more articulate and sure of himself than the younger Bryant. Milam admitted to shooting Till, and neither of them believed they were guilty or that they had done anything wrong. Milam said, "What else could I do? He thought he was as good as any white man."

Emmett Till was as good as any white man. Certainly, he was better than the two white men who premeditatedly murdered him in cold blood.

D.A. Chatham's health suffered as a result of the trial, and he died a little over a year later, only 50 years old. His son, Gerald Chatham Jr., who was 11 years old at the time of the trial, would later serve two terms as District Attorney in the same district. Judge Swango died in 1968.

Unrepentant to the end, Clarence Strider died in 1970; J.W. Milam, in 1981; Roy Bryant, in 1994. Carolyn Bryant divorced Roy in 1981, remarried, and became known as Carolyn Bryant Donham. As of September 23, 2022, she is still alive. None of these 4 guilty people ever spent a day in prison. A historical marker now stands outside the remnants of the grocery store, which has yet to be torn down. 

Mose Wright left Mississippi for Chicago, never to return. He lived until 1977. Mamie Till-Mobley, having remarried, lived until January 6, 2003, at the age of 81.

The treatment of Emmett Till by the State of Mississippi, both before and after his death, inspired 2 young black men to become civil rights activists. You might know their birth names: Malcolm Little and Cassius Clay. You surely know the names they chose for themselves, the names by which they became better known: Malcolm X and Muhammad Ali.

One more analogy: Trent Lott was born on October 9, 1941 in Grenada, Mississippi. In 1972, he was elected to Congress. In 1989, he was elected to the Senate. In 1996, he became the U.S. Senate's Majority Leader.

In 2002, Lott spoke at a dinner in celebration of the 100th birthday of Strom Thurmond, the longtime Senator who, in 1948, as Governor of South Carolina, led a 3rd-party campaign for President on an anti-civil rights platform. Lott said, "Let me say something about my home State: When Strom Thurmond ran for President, we voted for him. We're proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn't have had all these problems over the years, either." The backlash was such that Lott had to step down as Majority Leader, although he served in the Senate for another 4 years.

Trent Lott was elected to Congress at age 31, to the Senate at 47, and Majority Leader at 55. As of September 23, 2022, he is approaching his 81st birthday.

Emmett Till would be the same age. It is possible he could have died at any time in the interim. He could have served in Vietnam and been killed there. He could have fallen victim to illness or accident. Or, some other bigot could have taken matters into his own hands. But it would hardly be out of the ordinary for him to still be alive in 2022.

He should have had a full life. Instead, he was murdered as a boy of 14 -- not because he thought he was as good as a white man, but because an evil white man believed he wasn't.

The historical marker marker for Emmett Till's murder is a short walk from a bridge over the Tallahatchee River. But this is not the bridge that country singer Bobbie Gentry would later write about in her 1967 Number 1 hit "Ode to Billie Joe." That bridge, which collapsed in 1972 and was replaced, is 9 miles downstream.

The historical markers marking the locations of the murders of Emmett Till and of civil rights workers Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner and James Chaney, 9 years later, are 117 miles apart.

UPDATE: In 2022, Carolyn Bryant Donham gave a 99-page memoir, titled I Am More Than a Wolf Whistle, to the Southern Historical Collection at the University of North Carolina, with an agreement that UNC would hold it privately until the year 2036. She died on April 25, 2023. As far as is known, she was the last surviving person who knew what really happened.

*

September 23, 1955 was a Friday. These baseball games were played that day:

* The New York Yankees played a doubleheader against their arch-rivals, the Boston Red Sox, at Fenway Park in Boston. The Red Sox won the opener, 8-4. Bob Cerv hit a home run. The Yanks won the nightcap, 3-2. Gil McDougald hit a home run. Mickey Mantle was injured, and did not play in either game. Over the 2 games, Ted Williams went 2-for-7 with a walk. Jackie Jensen homered in both games for the Sox.

* The New York Giants lost to the Philadelphia Phillies, 5-1 at the Polo Grounds. Willie Mays went 0-for-4.

* The Washington Senators swept a doubleheader from the Baltimore Orioles, 6-4 and 7-3 at Griffith Stadium in Washington.

* The Chicago White Sox beat the Kansas City Athletics, 12-4 at Comiskey Park in Chicago.

* The Milwaukee Braves beat the St. Louis Cardinals, 4-2 at the first Busch Stadium (formerly the last Sportsman's Park) in St. Louis. Warren Spahn was the winning pitcher, and hit a home run. So did Eddie Mathews, and George Crowe hit 2. Hank Aaron, however, went 0-for-4. Stan Musial went 1-for-3 with a walk.

* The Brooklyn Dodgers and the Pittsburgh Pirates were rained out at Forbes Field in Pittsburgh. The game was made up as part of a doubleheader the next day. The Pirates swept, 4-3 and 6-1. It didn't matter, as the Dodgers had already clinched the National League Pennant.

In the opener, Dick Hall went the distance for the win. Carl Erskine started for the Brooks, and was shaky. The Dodgers blew a 3-0 lead, and Gene Freese hit what turned out to be a game-winning home run off Don Bessent in the bottom of the 8th inning. Jackie Robinson went 1-for-4, and then did not play in the nightcap.

In that game, Bob Friend went the distance for the win. Billy Loes started for Dem Bums, but it would be a rookie named Sandy Koufax who turned out to be the losing pitcher.

* The Cleveland Indians and the Detroit Tigers were rained out at Briggs Stadium in Detroit. (The ballpark was renamed Tiger Stadium in 1961.) The game was made up as part of a doubleheader the next day. The Indians swept, 8-2 and 7-0. In the 1st game, American League Rookie of the Year Herb Score outpitched Frank Lary. Hank Aguirre had an unusual shutout in the 2nd game: He allowed only 3 hits, but walked 10 batters, and only struck out 3. Al Kaline went 2-for-7 over the 2 games.

* And the Chicago Cubs and the Cincinnati Redlegs (as the Reds were known from 1954 to 1958) were not scheduled.

August 21, 1947: The Death of Senator Theodore Bilbo

August 21, 1947: Senator Theodore Bilbo dies of oral cancer in New Orleans. He was 69, and would be missed only by people who were as racist as he was.

Theodore Gilmore Bilbo was born on October 13, 1877 in Juniper Grove, in the Panhandle of Mississippi, near the State Line with Louisiana. His father was a Confederate veteran and the vice president of a bank. He went to a college that was later absorbed by Vanderbilt University in Nashville, and to Vanderbilt's law school. He was elected to the Mississippi State Senate in 1907.

By 1910, he had already endured 3 things that, given the place and the time, should have ended his career. First, he nearly lost a teaching job when he was accused of "being overly familiar with a female student." Second, he left Vanderbilt Law without graduating because he was accused of cheating. And third, in 1910 -- before the passage of the 17th Amendment, meaning U.S. Senators were still elected by State legislatures -- he told a grand jury that he had accepted a bribe to switch his vote. By one vote, he avoided expulsion.

Nevertheless, he was elected Lieutenant Governor in 1911 and Governor in 1915. By the standards of most States, he was a good Governor, advancing reforms in education, banking and health care. He even passed a law against public hangings. Nevertheless, he admitted he was powerless to enforce this law, and the lynchings of black men for even minor offenses continued.

At the time, Mississippi's State Constitution prohibited Governors from serving a 2nd consecutive term. (It now allows 2 consecutive terms, but not 3.) So Bilbo ran for the U.S. House of Representatives, but lost the Democratic Primary. Given the South's hatred for the Republican Party as "the Party of Lincoln," winning the Democratic Primary, for any office in any Southern State, was then said to be "tantamount to election."

Things got worse for Bilbo. His Lieutenant Governor, Lee M. Russell, had won the 1919 election to succeed him as Governor. Russell's secretary sued him for seducing and impregnating her. She got an abortion that prevented her from having further children.

Russell talked Bilbo into trying to talk the woman into dropping her suit. He failed. The judge ordered Bilbo to submit documents for the case. He refused. He was held for contempt of court, and spent 10 days in jail. Somehow, Russell won the suit, although he never ran for office again, sold real estate and practiced law, and died in 1943. Bilbo ran for Governor again in 1923, and, still tarred by the scandal, lost. At the age of 46, that should have been the end of his political career.

And yet, in 1927, he ran for Governor again, and won. He infuriated people by attempting to move the University of Mississippi, a.k.a. "Ole Miss," from Oxford to the State capital of Jackson. He tried again in 1930, firing the Presidents of Ole Miss, Mississippi A&M (which became Mississippi State in 1932) and the Mississippi State College for Women (which became the Mississippi University for Women in 1974), doing so strictly for political reasons, not for cause. He angered people again later in 1930, introducing a State sales tax, making Mississippi the 1st State to do so. It did help make things a little easier in a State hit very hard by the Great Depression.

For most of the 20th Century, nearly every Southerner elected to the U.S. Senate had been his State's Governor first. In 1934, Bilbo followed this path. But despite a career with enough missteps to make a Louisiana politician blush, he made a national reputation as the most pro-segregation member in the Senate's history.

He also opposed many of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal reforms, even those that seemed designed to help the rural South, and did, because they helped black people as well as white people. He was also anti-labor union and isolationist. Like most pre-civil rights Southern Democrats, he acted a lot more like a modern Republican than like a modern Democrat.

Like some later Senators -- Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Ted Cruz of Texas come to mind -- Bilbo even ticked off people who should have been his allies. In 1936, the other Senator from Mississippi, Pat Harrison, recommended a local Judge to FDR for a federal judgeship. Bilbo had previously feuded with him, and delivered a 5-hour speech against him. He ended up being the only Senator to vote against the Judge. Harrison then faced a primary challenge. Bilbo supported Harrison's opponent, who lost.

The next year, Joseph T. Robinson of Arkansas, who had been the Democratic nominee for Vice President in 1928, died in office, and the Senate thus needed a new Majority Leader. The choice came down to Harrison and another Southerner, Alben Barkley of Kentucky. Harrison's campaign manager asked Bilbo to support Harrison. Bilbo said he would do so only if Harrison asked him personally. The manager reported this back to Harrison, who said, "Tell the son of a bitch I wouldn't speak to him even if it meant the Presidency of the United States!" Bilbo voted for Barkley, who won by 1 vote, 38-37.

Harrison died in office in 1941. Barkley would be elected Vice President with Harry Truman in 1948.

But it is on the issue of race that Bilbo is still remembered. He said that, regardless of the 14th and 15th Amendments to the Constitution, black people should not be allowed to vote anywhere in America, and he supported "Jim Crow" laws that violated those Amendments in Southern States. In 1938, he proposed an amendment to a federal work-relief bill, which, if passed, would have attempted to lower the unemployment rate by deporting 12 million black Americans to the African nation of Liberia.

It wasn't just black people he hated: In 1946, in the wake of World War II, he wrote to General Douglas MacArthur, the military Governor of occupied Japan, saying that the Japanese should "all be sterilized." All 77 million of them. MacArthur did not act on this suggestion.

That year, running for a 3rd term, he appeared on the NBC radio show Meet the Press (which moved to television in 1947 and is still on the air), saying that he was a member of the Ku Klux Klan, saying, "No man can leave the Klan. He takes an oath not to do that." Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black, once a Senator from Alabama, and later Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia, both went on to leave the Klan and build records that became pro-civil rights.

Based on a request by liberal Democratic Senator Glen H. Taylor of Idaho, the newly elected Republican majority in the Senate refused to seat Bilbo for the term to which he was elected, because of his speeches. He was believed to have incited violence against blacks who wanted to vote in the South. In addition, a committee found that he had, yet again, taken bribes. One contractor gave him a Cadillac for Christmas in 1946.

A filibuster by Southerners threatened to delay the seating of all the new Senators. It was resolved when a supporter proposed that Bilbo's credentials remain on the table while he returned to Mississippi to seek medical treatment for cancer.

Bilbo retired to his "Dream House" estate in Poplarville, Mississippi, not far from his birthplace of Juniper Grove. There, figuring he was dying, wrote a book that essentially served as his final testimony: Take Your Choice: Separation or Mongrelization. On August 21, 1947, with his Senate case not yet resolved, he died. The Dream House burned down later in the year, with the fire consuming many copies of the book. Perhaps it was poetic justice.

Later still in 1947, the film Gentleman's Agreement was released. Although it addressed anti-Semitism rather than anti-black racism, Bilbo was mentioned in it, as an exemplar of bigotry.

The special election to fill his seat was won by John C. Stennis. From 1947 until 1978, Mississippi had 2 Senators, Stennis and James O. Eastland, who were officially Democrats, but as conservative as any Republican, including on race, although they weren't dumb enough to "say the quiet part out loud," like Bilbo was. 

Eastland, who had won the special election to fill Harrison's seat, retired before the 1978 election, and lived until 1986. His seat was won by Thad Cochran, a moderate by Mississippi standards. He served 40 years, resigning for health reasons in 2018, and he died the next year. Elected to replace him was Cindy Hyde-Smith, a former Democrat who switched parties over race, and was a member of neo-Confederate groups.

Stennis retired before the 1988 election, and lived until 1995. He was succeeded by Trent Lott, who had previously been in the House, having been chief of staff to Dixiecrat William Colmer, and running after his 1972 retirement, having switched to the Republicans over race. He became Senate Majority Leader in 1996, but got himself in trouble with racist remarks, and retired in 2006. His seat was won by Roger Wicker, a former aide to Lott, who is a moderate by Republican standards.

*

August 21, 1947 was a Thursday. These baseball games were played that day:

* The New York Yankees beat the Cleveland Indians, 9-3 at Cleveland Municipal Stadium. Bill Bevens outpitched Don Black. Billy Johnson went 4-for-5 with a home run and 2 RBIs. Joe DiMaggio went 0-for-5, but had an RBI on a sacrifice fly.

* The New York Giants beat the Pittsburgh Pirates, 4-1 at the Polo Grounds. For the Pirates, Hank Greenberg, in his last few weeks as an active player, went 0-for-4, and Ralph Kiner, something of a protégé to him, went 0-for-3 with a walk.

* The Brooklyn Dodgers beat the Cincinnati Reds, 8-1 at Ebbets Field. Jackie Robinson went 1-for-4.

* The Boston Braves swept a doubleheader from the Chicago Cubs, 8-2 and 6-4 at Braves Field in Boston.

* A doubleheader was split at Shibe Park in Philadelphia. The Philadelphia Phillies won the opener, 9-2. The St. Louis Cardinals won the nightcap, 13-3. Stan Musial went 0-for-3 with a walk, then hit 2 home runs and had 5 RBIs.

* The Washington Senators swept a doubleheader from the Detroit Tigers, 3-2 and 5-3 at Briggs Stadium (later Tiger Stadium) in Detroit.

* The Chicago White Sox beat the Boston Red Sox, 3-2 at Comiskey Park in Chicago. Ted Williams went 1-for-3 with a walk.

* And the Philadelphia Athletics beat the St. Louis Browns, 8-5 at Sportsman's Park in St. Louis.

August 17, 1969: Hurricane Camille

August 17, 1969: Hurricane Camille makes landfall on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico. Its wind speed reached 175 miles per hour, making it a "Category 5 hurricane," the most dangerous kind. As of August 17, 2022, it is 1 of only 4 Category 5s to make an American landfall.

At a time when the American Southeast was not looked upon favorably by the rest of the country, due to its backward feelings on race, the State of Mississippi received more of this scorn than any other State. But it gained some sympathy on this occasion, since it took the worst of Camille's damage.

The storm produced the highest wave surge ever recorded in an American hurricane, 24 feet. It flattened the Mississippi coast; caused grave damage in Louisiana, Alabama and Florida as well; and had enough strength to move inland into the Appalachian Mountains of the Virginia Panhandle, and kill some people there. A total of 259 deaths are attributed to it.

The 1974 film Hurricane was inspired by Camille. It starred Larry Hagman, then known for playing the decent Major Tony Nelson on I Dream of Jeannie, and not yet the indecent J.R. Ewing on Dallas.

*

August 17, 1969 was a Sunday. It was also the 3rd and, officially, final day of Woodstock, and the 1st time New York's football teams, the Giants and the Jets, played each other. I have separate entries for those events. Also, basketball star Christian Laettner and New Kids On The Block singer turned actor Donnie Wahlberg were born on this day.

And these Major League Baseball games played:

* New York Yankees 5, Chicago White Sox 2 at Comiskey Park in Chicago. Jimmie Hall hit a home run for the Bronx Bombers. Stan Bahnsen started, and Mike Kekich won it in relief.

* Another doubleheader at Shea Stadium: The New York Mets beat the San Diego Padres 3-2 in each game. Duffy Dyer hit a home run in support of Jerry Koosman in the opener, and Ed Kranepool and Bud Harrelson each got 2 hits in support of Don Cardwell in the nightcap.

* Houston Astros 3, Philadelphia Phillies 2 at Connie Mack Stadium in Philadelphia.

* Minnesota Twins 4, Washington Senators 3 at Robert F. Kennedy Stadium in Washington. Tony Oliva's RBI single won it in the top of the 13th inning.

* Los Angeles Dodgers 9, Montreal Expos 3 at Jarry Park in Montreal.

* St. Louis Cardinals 5, Atlanta Braves 3 at Atlanta Stadium (later Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium). Hank Aaron, Bob Tillman and Rico Carty hit home runs for the Braves, but all were solo blasts, and Steve Carlton was the winning pitcher for the Cards, as Lou Brock went 2-for-5, and Joe Torre went 1-for-4 with an RBI.

* Pittsburgh Pirates 8, Cincinnati Reds 5 at Crosley Field in Cincinnati. Gene Alley, Al Oliver and Willie Stargell hit home runs. Roberto Clemente went 2-for-5. The Reds got homers from Pete Rose, Bobby Tolan, Johnny Bench and Tony Perez, but it wasn't enough.

* Boston Red Sox 1, Kansas City Royals 0 at Kansas City Municipal Stadium. Carl Yastrzemski went 0-for-4, but Vicente Romo, Sparky Lyle and Sonny Siebert combined for a 4-hit shutout.

* California Angels 7, Cleveland Indians 6 at Anaheim (now Angel) Stadium.

* Detroit Tigers 9, Oakland Athletics 4 at the Oakland Coliseum. Catfish Hunter was knocked out of the box in the 4th inning, as the Tigers got 2 homers from Al Kaline, and 1 each from Jim Northrup, Don Wert, former Yankee Tom Tresh and Mickey Stanley. Denny McLain went the distance, despite giving up a home run to Reggie Jackson.

* Doubleheader at Candlestick Park in San Francisco. 1st game: San Francisco Giants 5, Chicago Cubs 3. 2nd game, Cubs 3, Giants 1. Over the 2 games, Willie Mays went 2-for-4 with a home run and 3 RBIs. Ernie Banks only appeared in this game as a pinch-hitter, and did not reach base.

* Baltimore Orioles 4, Seattle Pilots 1 at Sick's Stadium in Seattle. Dave May (filling in at right field for Frank Robinson, who got the day off), Don Buford and Brooks Robinson homered for the O's, while Don Mincher hit one for the Pilots. Tom Phoebus won it, Fred Talbot lost it. Jim Bouton did not get into the game. A sweep for the Birds over the Pilots.

As Pilot manager Joe Schultz no doubt said, "Ah, shitfuck. Let's get 'em tomorrow, and then go pound some Budweiser." If Jim Bouton and his book Ball Four are to be believed, Joe Schultz would not have fit in well at Woodstock. 

August 16, 1938: The Death of Robert Johnson

August 16, 1938: Robert Johnson dies. As with everything that happened in his life, his death comes under mysterious circumstances.

Robert Leroy Johnson was born on May 8, 1911 in Hazlehurst, Mississippi. At least, that's what his mother said, having lived long enough to be interviewed by music historians. He was not listed among her children in the 1910 Census, which supports her version of events. But in the 1920 Census, he is listed as 7 years old, suggesting a birthdate in late 1912 or early 1913.

His mother moved him around various places in the Mississippi Delta, including Memphis, Tennessee, where the Delta is often said to begin. (Traditionally, it's the part of northwestern Mississippi between the Mississippi and Yazoo Rivers.) He married a 16-year-old girl when he was 18, but she died in childbirth, as did the baby. A 2nd marriage also ended when his wife died quickly. (Foul play has never been suggested in either case.) After this, he figured there was no reason to live out his life as a poor sharecropper, and committed himself to music.

He was described as pleasant and outgoing in public, but reserved in private; descriptions like "well mannered" and "soft spoken" were used. Blues guitarist Son House later told an interviewer that, when he met Johnson, he was a competent harmonica player, but an embarrassingly bad guitarist. He recalled that Johnson left town, came back a few weeks later, and was playing guitar better than anyone had ever seen.

In a 1966 interview with Down Beat, a jazz magazine, House provided an explanation, and it has become the story that everybody thinks they know about Robert Johnson: He made a deal with the Devil. He met the Devil at a rural crossroads, offering his soul in exchange for becoming the world's greatest guitar player.

Several towns have claimed to be the site of the crossroads in question. The one most often accepted is in Clarksdale, Mississippi, at the intersection of U.S. Routes 49 and 61. This may have been a rural area at the time, but it's pretty well developed now, to the point where Route 49 has been diverted around the town, and there is a memorial at the site, now labeled North State Street and DeSoto Avenue. The Delta Blues Museum is a mile to the north.

Route 61, a.k.a. the Blues Highway, runs from Wyoming, Minnesota south to New Orleans. Its run through his hometown of Hibbing, Minnesota, and its connection with Johnson, may be why Bob Dylan wrote a song titled "Highway 61 Revisited," and he even used that as the title for its album. But instead of suggesting a meeting with the Devil, Dylan cites a meeting with God in his song.

It's been suggested that the real reason that Johnson got good at guitar is, as it usually is in cases like these, not a deal with the Devil, but an old trinity: "Practice, practice, practice." Another legend suggests that he practiced in graveyards, so he wouldn't disturb anyone, or be disturbed.

He had 2 recording sessions, both in Texas: In San Antonio in 1936, and in Dallas in 1937, leaving 29 songs. Most were not released during his lifetime.

In 1938, Columbia Records producer John Hammond wanted to bring Johnson to New York, for his "From Spirituals to Swing" concert at Carnegie Hall. In 1941, Alan Lomax, who recorded many singers he'd heard about in the South, white and black alike, including Huddie Ledbetter, a.k.a. Lead Belly, went to Mississippi to record Johnson. Neither knew until it was too late that Johnson had died.

And how did that happen? Again, the stories conflict. In 1966, music historian Gayle Dean Wardlow found his death certificate, which gave the date as August 16, 1938, No one seems to dispute that date. If the May 8, 1911 birthdate is correct, then Johnson was 27 years old -- making him, perhaps, the earliest known member of what became known as rock and roll's "27 Club." (There had been earlier creative artists to die at that age, most notably poet Rupert Brooke.)

But the cause of death, who caused it (if it was anything other than natural causes), and where it happened are in dispute. It seems to have been in, or at least near, Greenwood, Mississippi. The death certificate does not list a cause.

The most common story, although the specifics differ, is that he was murdered by the husband of a woman he was flirting with. Aleck Miller, the 2nd and better-known blues singer to use the name Sonny Boy Williamson, said that the husband gave Johnson a bottle of whiskey he'd poisoned, and that it took Johnson 3 terribly painful days to die.

Music historian Robert "Mack" McCormick claimed that he'd determined the identity of the killer, tracked him down, and interviewed him, getting a confession, on the condition that he not reveal the man's name. He never did. He may have been making it up.

Non-murder suggestions have included syphilis, certainly possible given Johnson's womanizing; and Marfan syndrome, which would explain Johnson's long, thin appearance, including long, thin fingers, which would have aided him in playing guitar, but would also have damaged his heart. To me, this sounds like the most logical explanation for his skill (besides a lot of practice), and for his death.

Presuming the death certificate is correct about the date of death, then Robert Johnson, "the King of the Delta Blues," died on an August 16 -- as would, 10 years later, Babe Ruth, "the Sultan of Swat"; and, 29 years after that, Elvis Presley, "the King of Rock and Roll." But no one has ever suggested that the Babe or Elvis made a deal with the Devil for their great talents.

At its 1st induction ceremony, in 1986, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame made Johnson one of its charter inductees in the "Early Influence" category, calling him "the first ever rock star."

It is not clear if Johnson had any children. In 1998, the Mississippi Supreme Court ruled that Claud Johnson, a retired truck driver who claimed to be the result of a 1931 relationship between Robert Johnson and Vergie Mae Smith, was his son, and thus his legal heir. But Robert's half-sister, Carrie Harris Thompson, and her children disputed this. Claud Johnson died in 2015, leaving his shares of his apparent father's royalties to his 6 children.

*

August 16, 1938 was a Tuesday. These baseball games were played that day:

* The New York Yankees swept a doubleheader from the Washington Senators at Griffith Stadium in Washington, 16-1 and 6-2. Lefty Gomez went the distance in the opener, and Red Ruffing did so in the nightcap. In the 1st game, Lou Gehrig went 4-for-4 with a home run and 5 RBIs, and Joe DiMaggio went 0-for-4, although he drew 2 walks. In the 2nd game, it was the other way around: The Iron Horse went 0-for-5, but the Yankee Clipper went 3-for-5 with a home run and 3 RBIs.

* The Brooklyn Dodgers beat their arch-rivals, the New York Giants, 7-3 at the Polo Grounds. Ernie Koy hit a home run for the Dodgers. Mel Ott went 0-for-2 with 2 walks for the Giants.

* The Philadelphia Athletics beat the Boston Red Sox, 14-11 at Fenway Park in Boston. Yes, that's baseball, not football. For the A's, Clarence "Ace" Parker, a decent baseball player but a Hall of Fame quarterback in the NFL, went 3-for-5 with 4 RBIs; while Wally Moses and Frankie Hayes also had 3 hits, 1 of Hayes' being a home run. For the Red Sox, former A's slugger Jimmie Foxx hit 2 home runs, and Roger "Doc" Cramer went 2-for-6 with 4 RBIs.

* The Philadelphia Phillies beat the Boston Bees (a name the Braves used from 1936 to 1940), 7-6 in 11 innings at Shibe Park in Philadelphia. (It was renamed Connie Mack Stadium in 1953.) Baseball-Reference.com does not have a play-by-play for this game, so I can't tell you how the winning run was scored.

* The Pittsburgh Pirates beat the Cincinnati Reds, 10-0 at Forbes Field in Pittsburgh. Cy Blanton allowed 8 hits, but pitched a shutout.

* The Cleveland Indians beat the St. Louis Browns, 9-6 at League Park in Cleveland.

* A doubleheader between arch-rivals was split at Wrigley Field in Chicago. The Chicago Cubs won the 1st game, 5-4. Frank Demaree tripled home the winning run in the bottom of the 11th. The St. Louis Cardinals won the 2nd game, 5-2.

* And the Chicago White Sox and the Detroit Tigers were rained out at Briggs Stadium in Detroit. (It was renamed Tiger Stadium in 1961.) The game was made up the next day, as part of a doubleheader. The Tigers swept, 4-3 and 3-2. Hank Greenberg would hit 58 home runs that season, but didn't even get a hit that day, going 0-for-8 in the twinbill.

August 2, 1967: "In the Heat of the Night" Premieres

Sidney Poitier (left) and Rod Steiger

August 2, 1967: The film In the Heat of the Night premieres, directed by Norman Jewison, and based on a 1965 novel by John Ball. Quincy Jones wrote the score and the theme song, which was sung by Ray Charles.

Three years earlier, Sidney Poitier had become the 1st black man to receive the Academy Award for Best Actor. Still, born in Miami and raised in The Bahamas -- and thus having both American and British citizenship -- he knew what racism existed in the American South, and did not want to film any of his scenes in the American South. Not wanting to lose him, Jewison shot all of Poitier's scenes in Sparta, Illinois -- in southern Illinois, not exactly a place that welcomed civil rights activists -- while filming scenes without him in Dyersburg and Union City, Tennessee.

Poitier played Virgil Tibbs, who is arrested by Officer Sam Wood (played by Warren Oates) at the train station in Sparta, Mississippi, for the murder of wealthy industrialist Phillip Colbert (an uncredited Jack Teter). The police chief, Bill Gillespie (Rod Steiger), looks through his wallet, and discovers a badge: Tibbs is a homicide detective with the Philadelphia police, and was visiting his mother in Sparta.

A calendar in Gillespie's office reveals the date as September 12, 1966, which suggests the date of filming. There actually is an unincorporated community in northeastern Mississippi named Sparta. The choice of Philly as Tibbs' adopted hometown cannot be a coincidence: In 1964, 3 civil rights workers had been murdered by the Ku Klux Klan in the town of Philadelphia, Mississippi. Gillespie hears the name "Virgil," and says to Tibbs: "That's a funny name for a (N-word) boy that comes from Philadelphia! What do they call you up there?" Tibbs angrily tells him. "They call me Mister Tibbs!"

Tibbs wants to leave town on the next train, but his Chief in Philadelphia suggests he stay in Sparta to help Gillespie with the murder investigation. Though Gillespie, like many of Sparta's white residents, is racist, he and Tibbs reluctantly agree to work together. This leads to Tibbs' detective skills overruling the town doctor as to when and where the murder occurred, and the Sparta police for overlooking the alibi of a suspect, Harvey Oberst (Scott Wilson).

Tibbs initially suspects the murderer is wealthy plantation owner Eric Endicott (Larry Gates), a genteel racist and Sparta's most powerful citizen, who publicly opposed Colbert's new factory. When Tibbs begins interrogating him, Endicott slaps him, to which Tibbs responds by slapping him back. Afterwards, Endicott sends a gang of local thugs after him. Gillespie rescues Tibbs and tells him to leave town to save himself, but Tibbs is determined to stay and solve the case.

The scene of Tibbs slapping Endicott is not present in the novel. According to Poitier, the scene was almost not in the movie, and it was he who had proposed the idea of Tibbs slapping Endicott back. In the textbook Civil Rights and Race Relations in the USA, Poitier stated: "I said, 'I'll tell you what, I'll make this movie for you if you give me your absolute guarantee when he slaps me I slap him right back, and you guarantee that it will play in every version of this movie.' I try not to do things that are against nature."

It turns out that Officer Wood has a 16-year-old girlfriend, Delores Purdy (Quentin Dean). Her brother Lloyd (James Patterson -- not the mystery novelist) wants to press statutory rape charges against Wood for getting her pregnant. Tibbs wants to be present for Delores' questioning. Lloyd is offended, and gathers a lynch mob to go after Tibbs.

Tibbs pressures illegal abortionist Mama Caleba (Beah Richards), who is black, to reveal that she is about to provide an abortion for Delores. (Roe v. Wade was still over 5 years away.) When Delores arrives and sees Tibbs, she runs away. Tibbs follows Delores and confronts her armed boyfriend, Ralph (Anthony James), a cook at a local roadside diner.

Lloyd's mob arrives and holds Tibbs at gunpoint. Tibbs tells Lloyd to check Delores' purse for the $100 that Ralph gave her for an abortion, which he got from killing and robbing Colbert. Lloyd realizes Tibbs is right when he opens the purse and finds the money. After Lloyd confronts Ralph for getting his sister pregnant, Ralph shoots Lloyd, killing him. Tibbs grabs Ralph's gun as Gillespie arrives on the scene.

Ralph is arrested, and confesses to the killing of Colbert. He explains that after hitchhking a ride with Colbert and asking him for a job, Ralph attacked him at the construction site of the new factory, intending only to knock Colbert unconscious and rob him, but accidentally killing him instead.

Tibbs arrives at the station to meet the next train that will return himto Philadelphia, as Gillespie, having carried his suitcase, shakes Tibbs' hand and bids him farewell. In the final interaction between Gillespie and Tibbs, as the detective ascends the stairs onto the train, for one last time Gillespie calls out to him and sincerely tells Tibbs: "You take care, you hear?" After a moment of hesitation, Tibbs turns around to face Gillespie and gives a warm smile in reply. Gillespie smiles back at Tibbs as he boards the train.

The time of this film's release may have been a "Summer of Love" in San Francisco, but, in so many other places, it was "The Long Hot Summer" and "The Year of Living Dangerously." And it was all because of the lingering effects of what America's white aristocracy had done to black people. And to poor white people, too: A few weeks later, the Number 1 song in America would be "Ode to Billie Joe" by Bobbie Gentry, set in rural Mississippi.

Still, the film aimed to both expose and heal. It certainly did the former, and maybe it helped to do the latter, too. After all, the symbolism is undeniable. When the film begins, it's the middle of the night, and everything is dark and foreboding, and nobody feels like smiling, even before they find out there's been a murder. When it ends, it's midday, and the film's formerly antagonistic protagonists, their mission accomplished, are smiling.

The film was nominated for 7 Academy Awards, winning Best Picture, and Best Actor for Steiger. Poitier made 2 sequels, with the character having moved to San Francisco and being married to a woman named Valerie, played by actress and jazz singer Barbara McNair: They Call Me MISTER Tibbs! in 1970 and The Organization in 1971. Both films did well at the box office, but not as well as the original.

Neither of these films was based on Ball's subsequent novels about Tibbs, all of which, like the original, set the action outside Los Angeles in Pasadena, California: The Cool Cottontail (1966), Johnny Get Your Gun (1969), Five Pieces of Jade (1972), The Eyes of Buddha (1976), Then Came Violence (1980) and Singapore (1986).

Jewison seemed to specialize in making films of Broadway plays, including the musical Fiddler on the Roof (1971), the musical Jesus Christ Superstar (1973), A Soldier's Story (1984) and Agnes of God (1985). He also directed The Cincinnati Kid (1965), The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming (1966), the original version of The Thomas Crown Affair (1968), the original version of Rollerball (1975), ...And Justice for All (1979) and The Hurricane (1999).

James Patterson died in 1972, Warren Oates in 1982, John Ball in 1988, Larry Gates in 1996, Beah Richards in 2000, Rod Steiger in 2002, Quentin Dean in 2003, Barbara McNair in 2007, Scott Wilson in 2018, Anthony James in 2020, and Sidney Poitier in 2022. As of August 2, 2022, Norman Jewison is still alive. So is Lee Grant, who played Mrs. Colbert, widow of the murder victim. (UPDATE: Jewison died in 2024.)

In 1988, NBC began a TV version of In the Heat of the Night, but played with the timeline: The show took place in the present day, but the events of the previous meeting between Tibbs and Gillespie are said to have taken place only "a few years ago." Tibbs returns to Sparta for his mother's funeral, and is persuaded by the Mayor to stay and integrate the town's all-white police force as Chief of Detectives.

Tibbs was played by Howard Rollins, and Gillespie by Carroll O'Connor, who had played Archie Bunker on All in the Family. Both Archie and Gillespie had to learn to suppress their bigotry, but, by the time the TV show began, Gillespie had proven better at it than Archie.

The show ran 4 years on NBC, then switched to CBS for 3 years, but Rollins' legal and health issues made it impossible to continue: He died in 1996, only a year and a half after the show aired its last episode. O'Connor's son, Hugh O'Connor, played Officer Lonnie Jamison. Like Rollins, Hugh had drug problems, causing him legal problems, and couldn't take it anymore, and killed himself in 1995, during the show's last days.

*

August 2, 1967 was a Wednesday. These baseball games were played that day:

* The New York Yankees lost to the California Angels, 5-4 at Yankee Stadium. Bill Monbouquette blew a 4-3 lead in the 9th inning. Mickey Mantle went 0-for-2 with 2 walks.

* The New York Mets lost to the Houston Astros, 5-2 at the Astrodome in Houston.

* The Kansas City Athletics beat the Boston Red Sox, 8-6 at Fenway Park in Boston. Carl Yastrzemski went 2-for-4.

* A doubleheader was split at Memorial Stadium in Baltimore. The Detroit Tigers won the opener, 4-2. Al Kaline went 1-for-4 with a home run and 2 RBIs in the 1st game, then sat out the nightcap. The Baltimore Orioles won that, 2-1. Over the 2 games, Brooks Robinson went 4-for-8 with a home run and 2 RBIs, and Frank Robinson went 1-for-5 with 3 walks and an RBI on a bases-loaded walk.

* The Washington Senators beat the Minnesota Twins, 5-4 at District of Columbia Stadium in Washington. (It was renamed Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium in 1969.) Hank Allen singled Ed Stroud home with the winning run in the bottom of the 11th inning.

* The Cleveland Indians beat the Chicago White Sox, 5-1 at Cleveland Municipal Stadium.

* The Cincinnati Reds beat the Atlanta Braves, 7-3 at Crosley Field in Cincinnati. Pete Rose went 3-for-4 with 2 home runs, a walk and 2 RBIs. Hank Aaron went 4-for-5 with an RBI.

* The St. Louis Cardinals swept their arch-rivals, the Chicago Cubs, 4-2 and 7-1 at Wrigley Field in Chicago. Over the 2 games, Lou Brock went 6-for-10 with a stolen base and 2 RBIs. Ernie Banks went 1-for-7 with a home run, a walk and an RBI. Steve Carlton won the 2nd game for the Cardinals, but Bob Gibson did not pitch in either game: This was during his time on the Disabled List with a broken leg.

* The Philadelphia Phillies beat the Los Angeles Dodgers, 3-2 at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles. Dick Allen singled Billy Cowan home with the winning run in the top of the 10th inning.

* And the San Francisco Giants beat the Pittsburgh Pirates, 7-2 at Candlestick Park in San Francisco. Willie Mays and Roberto Clemente both hit home runs.

July 15, 1870: The Reunion of the Union Is Completed

The Flag of the United States, with 37 Stars,

in use from July 4, 1867 to July 4, 1877,

including when most of the former Confederate States

were readmitted to the Union.

July 15, 1870: The last of the States that had seceded from the United States of America to form the Confederate States of America is readmitted, completing the reunion of the Union.

Those States seceded over what they called "States' Rights," but each one's Ordinance of Secession mentioned slavery as one of those "rights." The secessions began after the election of Abraham Lincoln, who opposed the future expansion of slavery, as the President of the United States on November 6, 1860.

This was the order of secession:

1. December 20, 1860: South Carolina.

2. January 9, 1861: Mississippi.

3. January 10, 1861: Florida.

4. January 11, 1861: Alabama.

5. January 19, 1861: Georgia.

6. January 26, 1861: Louisiana.

7. February 23, 1861: Texas.

Lincoln was Inaugurated on March 4. On April 12, Confederate ships fired on Fort Sumter in Charleston, South Carolina, starting the American Civil War. This was followed by more secessions:

8. May 6, 1861: Arkansas.

9. May 20, 1861: North Carolina.

10. May 23, 1861: Virginia.

11. June 1, 1861: Tennessee.

On January 3, 1861, Delaware voted not to secede. On January 29, Kansas was admitted as the 34th State in the Union. On March 19, Missouri overwhelmingly vote to remain in the Union. On April 29, Maryland voted not to secede.

This was key: The District of Columbia, the seat of the Union's government, was between Maryland and Virginia, and Virginia was already considering secession. If both had seceded, the federal government would be trapped. As it was, when Virginia seceded, the U.S.A. literally had its capital on the border with an enemy nation. Fortunately, the C.S.A. didn't have engineers capable of building a bridge across the Potomac River to invade. Nor did they have cannons capable of reaching the U.S. Capitol or the White House.

On May 20, Kentucky declared its neutrality. But on November 18, delegates from 68 of Kentucky’s 110 Counties met, passed an ordinance of secession, adopted a new state seal, and elected a secessionist as Governor. Kentucky was admitted to the Confederacy on December 10. However, the elected State government did not secede, and Kentucky remained in the Union.

Still, the Confederate Flag -- and its variation that is more familiar today, the Confederate Battle Flag -- had 13 stars, one for each State that had seceded, and one each for Kentucky and Missouri, which had not. So the States of Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky and Missouri remained in the Union, despite still keeping slavery legal within their borders.

Several Western Counties in Virginia voted to secede from the rest of the State, and on June 20, 1863, those Counties, collectively, were admitted to the Union as West Virginia, the 35th State. This included Harpers Ferry, home to the federal arsenal that abolitionist John Brown tried and failed to capture in 1859.

The idea that Virginia went to the Confederacy and West Virginia stayed loyal to the Union will seem strange to people whose experience watching those States only goes back far enough to know Virginia as a State regularly voting Democratic and West Virginia as one regularly voting Republican.

Nevada was admitted as the 36th State on October 31, 1864. Because it was admitted during the Civil War, and immediately sent troops to the Union Army, the State’s motto is "Battle Born."

The Confederate States of America surrendered, piece by piece, in the Spring of 1865. This was the order of readmission to the Union, based on acceptance of the Constitution of the United States, including the Reconstruction Amendments: The 13th, prohibiting slavery; the 14th, guaranteeing citizenship and equal protection of the laws to all people born in the United States; and the 15th, guaranteeing the right to vote to all male American citizens age 21 and up:

1. July 24, 1866: Tennessee.

2. June 22, 1868: Arkansas.

3. June 25, 1868: Florida.

4. July 4, 1868: North Carolina.

5. July 9, 1868: Louisiana.

6. July 9, 1868: South Carolina (same day as Louisiana).

7. July 13, 1868: Alabama.

8. January 26, 1870: Virginia.

9. February 23, 1870: Mississippi.

10. March 30, 1870: Texas.

11. July 15, 1870: Georgia.

During this process, another State was admitted to the Union: Nebraska, the 37th State, on March 1, 1867. The 38th wouldn’t come until 1876, Colorado.

Of the 33 States in the Union when South Carolina became the 1st to secede, slavery had been banned in 18. Of the 37 States in the Union when Georgia became the last to rejoin, it had been banned in all 37.

So 1870 marked the final reunion of the Union. On October 12, Robert E. Lee, the leading General of the CSA, died from the effects of a stroke, in Lexington, Virginia. He was 63 years old. Jefferson Davis, the one and only President of the C.S.A., previously a U.S. Senator from Mississippi and Secretary of War under President Franklin Pierce, lived on until 1889.

*

July 15, 1870 was a Friday. By an odd coincidence, this was also the day that Manitoba became a Province of Canada, ending the Red River Rebellion. I have a separate entry for this event.

The only organized team sport in America at this point was baseball, and it was just starting the professional era. The difference between those teams that had turned pro and those that hadn't became stark. The only score I can find for this historic day involves the 1st team to openly turn pro, the Cincinnati Red Stockings, who beat the Eagle Base Ball Club of Louisville, Kentucky, 39-8. That season, against pro teams, the Red Stockings went 27-6; against amateur teams, they went 40-0.