Birthday Sextuplets

Hey, folks!

If you didn’t know (and I’m not sure why you would), my 25th birthday was this past Monday, April 11. As far as birthdays go, it was a pretty good one, and the first that I’ve ever spent outside the state of Virginia. I allowed myself the liberty of having ice cream for dinner.

But we’re not here to talk about me; we’re here to talk about the HistoryMakers Digital Archive, no? Well, a feature of the Digital Archive is that, on its homepage, you can see a list of HistoryMakers who were born on the current day—the day you’re accessing the archive.

So, for my blog post this week (which may be my last), I decided to examine the interviews of all of the HistoryMakers with whom I share a birthday. I’m not explicitly looking for any sort of through line or connection between all of the interviews (besides the shared birthday), but I might find one. Without further ado, let’s begin our brief rundown of the HistoryMakers born on April 11. At the end, I’ll provide a link to an interesting, albeit long, playlist of the clips from each interview that I found the most interesting.

(ALSO, if you’re wondering why I called this “sextuplets” instead of “quintuplets,” it’s me. I’m the sixth person.)

John B. Clemmons, Sr.

John Clemmons was born on April 11, 1912 and died in June 2012 at the ripe old age of 100! His career was that of a professor of mathematics, physics, and computer science. He also served as chairman of the Department of Mathematics and Physics at Georgia State College for thirty-seven years. I think perhaps the most interesting part of his interview, for me, was hearing Clemmons talk about his students’ involvement in the civil rights movement.

HistoryMaker John Clemmons

John Levy

John Levy was born exactly the same day as John Clemmons—April 11, 1912. He died a few months before Clemmons at the age of 99. Unlike Clemmons, Levy worked in the entertainment industry as opposed to academia. He was initially a musician, and even played with Billie Holliday at Carnegie Hall. In the early 50s, he switched over to being a music manager, and had some pretty illustrious clients. I enjoyed hearing Levy talk about his family history—his ancestors had actually been enslaved to a Jewish family, which was interesting because it’s rare. In antebellum America, the overwhelming majority of slave owners were white Anglo-Saxon Protestants, and anyone who says differently is probably just a neo-Nazi you shouldn’t pay attention to. I also thought it was interesting to hear Levy’s account of the 1919 race riots in Chicago, which were part of the infamous Red Summer.

HistoryMaker John Levy

Geraldine Johnson

Geraldine Johnson was born on April 11, 1919 and died in 2015. She was a teacher from Bridgeport, Connecticut, who was the first female and the first Black person to serve as the superintendent of Bridgeport Public Schools. I really appreciated her perspective as Black person born and bred in New England, because I feel like most of the HistoryMakers I’ve examined spent most of their lives in either the South or Chicago area. Johnson had a lot of fascinating stories to share about her decades-long career in this single school system.

HistoryMaker Geraldine Johnson

Reatha Clark King

This HistoryMaker is from Minnesota, was born on April 11, 1938 and is still with us! Like Clemmons, Reatha Clark King is an academic focusing on STEM. She was also the vice president of General Mills. In 1999, the Minneapolis Star Tribune as one of the most 100 Influential Minnesotans of the twentieth century.

HistoryMaker Reatha Clark King

Steven Roberts, Sr.

Our last April 11 birthday was Steven Roberts, Sr., who was born in 1952 and is also still alive. Roberts has (had? I can’t be sure) a construction business and also served as an alderman in St. Louis, Missouri. I am not very interested in business, but parts of this interview were fascinating nevertheless. Roberts has led a very interesting life, which led him to becoming a millionaire.

As a genealogist, I also appreciated that Roberts seemed very knowledgable about his own family background. He even says he’s found a possible connection to General Nat Turner, like me. (You might recall that my grandma is a Turner and her folks were enslaved by the same family who enslaved Nat in Southampton County.)

HistoryMaker Steven Roberts, Sr.

Conclusion

As promised, here’s the playlist with the clips that I found most interesting from all five interviews.

Now, were there any through lines that I found in my survey of all five interviews? Well, other than the fact that these are all people born on April 11 who were deemed historically significant by The HistoryMakers organization—not really. The three oldest people on this list—Clemmons, Levy, and Johnson—all said that blue was their favorite color. Mine is red, something that I share with Reatha Clark King. And Roberts said that one of his favorite colors is maroon, which is a type of red. (I had to look that up because, as a straight man, I know about six colors, max.) But that’s about it!

The people with the April 11 birth date appear to have a wide range of personalities, career ambitions, and ways of telling the stories of their lives. I suppose I should finally come clean and admit that my entire motive in working for The HistoryMakers and writing this blog post was to disprove astrology! If all of these people were born April 11, shouldn’t they have similar charts and therefore be more alike one another? Ha! Take that! I’m just kidding. But, overall, I still think that this was a worthwhile little research project. I hope I can make my fellow April 11 birthday people proud some day, wherever my career takes me.