Writer, playwright, and activist Lorraine Vivian Hansberry succumbed to pancreatic cancer on this day in 1965 in New York City at the age of 34. Her best-known work was the Broadway hit, A Raisin in the Sun.
Former Heavyweight Boxing Champion Joseph William ‘Smokin’ Joe’ Frazier was born on this day in 1944 in Beaufort, South Carolina. For over two decades, Joe Frazier was a major part of the golden age of boxing that included Mohamed Ali and George Foreman.
“I must confess, my friends, the road ahead will not always be smooth. There will still be rocky places of frustration and meandering points of bewilderment. There will be inevitable setbacks here and there. There will be those moments when the buoyancy of hope will be transformed into the fatigue of despair. Our dreams will sometimes be shattered, and our ethereal hopes blasted. We may again with tear-drenched eyes have to stand before the bier of some courageous civil-rights worker whose life will be snuffed out by the dastardly acts of bloodthirsty mobs. Difficult and painful as it is, we must walk on in the days ahead with an audacious faith in the future. And as we continue our charted course, we may gain consolation in the words so nobly left by that great black bard who was also a great freedom fighter of yesterday, James Weldon Johnson.”
MLK, Jr, 1967
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