March 1949: Influential Black Americans Roberta Alexander, Joseph Seamon Cotter Sr., Josephine Turpin Washington, Lela Murray & Lillian E. Fishburne

Happy Martin Luther King Jr. Day!

[All entries from Wikipedia]

March 3, 1949 (Pisces) Operatic soprano, Roberta Alexander, born.

She began her career as a lyric soprano in 1975 [the year I was born] and spent the next three decades performing principal roles with opera houses internationally.

Particularly celebrated for her performances of Mozart heroines, she was a leading soprano at the Metropolitan Opera from 1983 to 1991.

In addition to principal Mozart roles like Countess Almaviva, Elettra, Fiordiligi, and Donna Elvira, she had particular success with the parts of Mimì in Puccini's La bohème and the title role in Janáček's Jenůfa.

More recently she has performed secondary character roles on stage, including performances at the Grand Théâtre de Provence in 2013, La Scala in 2014, and La Monnaie in 2015.

She performed the Fifth Maid in Strauss's Elektra at the Met in 2016 and Curra in Verdi's La forza del destino at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, in 2019.

March 14, 1949: Poet, writer, playwright, and community leader, Joseph Seamon Cotter Sr., dies.

Cotter was one of the earliest Black American playwrights to be published.

He was known as “Kentucky's first Negro poet with real creative ability.”

Cotter was born at the start of the American Civil War, and was raised in poverty with no formal education until the age of 22.

He later became an educator and an advocate of Black education.

March 17, 1949: Writer and teacher, Josephine Turpin Washington, dies.

A long-time educator and a frequent contributor, Washington devised articles to magazines and newspapers typically concerning some aspect of racism in America.

Washington was a great-granddaughter of Mary Jefferson Turpin, a paternal aunt of Thomas Jefferson.

March 18, 1949: Businesswoman, community leader, and advocate for civil rights in Los Angeles during the first half of the 20th century, Lela Murray, dies.

She co-founded Murray's Ranch, billed by the press as “the only Negro dude ranch in the world,” in Bell Mountain, California, providing a place of recreation and leisure to people of color during a period of racial segregation and anti-Black sentiment in the United States.

[Fact-checking: there has never been an era in which the United States did not operate with institutionalized misogyny and white supremacy].

March 25, 1949 (Aries): The first Black American woman to hold the rank of Rear Admiral (RDML) in the United States Navy, Lillian E. Fishburne, born.

She was appointed to the rank of Rear Admiral (Lower Half) by President of the United States Bill Clinton and was officially promoted on February 1, 1998 [when I was a graduate student at UMass Amherst].

Fishburne retired from the Navy in February 2001.