1991

Mutaz Essa Barshim (Arabic: معتز عيسى برشم‎; b. 24 June 1991) is a Qatari track and field athlete who specializes in the high jump.  He is the national record and Asian record holder with a best mark of 2.43 m (7 ft 11¹⁄₂ in). He was the Asian Indoor and World Junior champion in 2010. He won the high jump gold medals at the 2011 Asian Athletics Championships and 2011 Military World Games, and he won the bronze medal at the 2012 Olympic Games held in London, with a height of 2.29 m (7' 6"). He jumps off his left foot, using the Fosbury Flop technique, with a pronounced backwards arch over the bar.

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James Edward Cleveland (December 5, 1931 - February 9, 1991) was a gospel singer, musician, and composer. Known as the King of Gospel music, Cleveland was a driving force behind the creation of the modern gospel sound by incorporating traditional black gospel, modern soul, pop, and jazz in arrangements for mass choirs. Throughout his career, Cleveland appeared on hundreds of recordings, won 4 Grammy Awards, and received a star along the Hollywood Walk of Fame. 

Born in Chicago, Illinois, Cleveland began singing as a boy soprano at Pilgrim Baptist Church where Thomas A. Dorsey was minister of music and Roberta Martin was pianist for the choir. He strained his vocal cords as a teenager while part of a local gospel group, leaving the distinctive gravelly voice that was his hallmark in his later years. The change in his voice led him to focus on his skills as a pianist and later as a composer and arranger. For his pioneering accomplishments and contributions, he is regarded by many to be one of the greatest gospel singers that ever lived.

In 1950, Cleveland joined The Gospelaires, a trio led by Norsalus McKissick and Bessie Folk. His arrangements modernized such traditional standards as "(Give Me That) Old Time Religion" and "It's Me O Lord". After the trio disbanded, an associate of the group, Roberta Martin, hired him as a composer and arranger.

Cleveland subsequently went to work for Albertina Walker, popularly referred to as the "Queen of Gospel" and The Caravans as a composer, arranger, pianist, and occasional singer/narrator. In November 1954, Albertina Walker provided him the opportunity to do his very first recording. By staying out of the studio for a while, she convinced States Records to allow him to record with her group. He continued to record with The Caravans until States closed down in 1957.

Throughout this period, Cleveland recorded with other groups like The Gospel All-Stars and The Gospel Chimes, mixing pop ballad influences with traditional shouting.

In 1959, he recorded a version of Ray Charles' hit, "Hallelujah I Love Her So", as a solo artist.

Cleveland signed with Savoy Records in 1962, going on to release a huge catalog of black gospel recordings, many of which were recorded in a live concert setting.

He became known by more than just the professionals within gospel music with his version of the Soul Stirrers' song, "The Love of God", backed by the Voices of Tabernacle from Detroit, Michigan.  Cleveland moved to Los Angeles, California, to become Minister of Music at Grace Memorial Church of God in Christ where he attained even greater popularity working with keyboardist  Billy Preston and the Angelic Choir of Nutley, New Jersey. His 1963 recording of "Peace Be Still", an obscure 18th-century piece, sold hundreds of thousands of copies. He would then return to the touring with the newly organized James Cleveland Singers which included Odessa McCastle, Georgia White, Eugene Bryant, and Billy Preston, among others.

In 1964, Cleveland re-organized The James Cleveland Singers which included Odessa McCastle, Roger Roberts, and Gene Viale.

In 1965, Cleveland added Clyde Brown and Charles Barnett to his group which by then was traveling extensively throughout the United States and abroad into the late 1960s, performing in all major venues. This collaboration produced such recordings as "Heaven That Will Be Good Enough For Me", "Two Wings", and "The Lord Is Blessing Me Right Now".

From the 1970s until 1990, Cleveland would bring together a number of artists to back him on appearances and records. Additionally, he himself backed other acts, contributing to the recordings of such well known artists as Aretha Franklin and Elton John. He also continued to appear and record with some of the most notable gospel choirs of the time.

The documentary film "Gospel" (1983) features James Cleveland and the Southern California Community Choir, Walter Hawkins and the Mighty Clouds of Joy, Shirley Caesar, Twinkie Clark and the Clark Sisters. The film was directed by David Leivick and Frederick A. Ritzenberg.

Cleveland capitalized on his success by founding his own choir, the Southern California Community Choir, as well as Cornerstone Institutional Baptist Church which grew from ten to thousands of members throughout the remainder of his life. During this time, he taught others how to achieve the modern gospel sound through his annual Gospel Singers Workshop Convention put on by the Gospel Music Workshop of America (or, the GMWA), an organization that Cleveland co-founded with Albertina Walker. The GMWA has produced, among others, John P. Kee, Kirk Franklin, and Yolanda Adams.  

On February 9, 1991, James Cleveland died in Culver City, California.

During his career, James Cleveland won the following Grammy Awards:

Grammy Award won for Best Soul Gospel Performance 1974:
James Cleveland & The Southern California Community Choir: In the Ghetto

Grammy Award won for Best Soul Gospel Performance, Traditional 1977:
James Cleveland: James Cleveland Live at Carnegie Hall

Grammy Award won for Best Soul Gospel Performance, Traditional 1980:
James Cleveland & The Charles Fold Singers: Lord, Let Me Be an Instrument

Grammy Award won for Best Gospel Album by a Choir or Chorus 1990:
The Southern California Community Choir: Having Church

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Darwin Theodore Troy Turner (b. May 7, 1931, Cincinnati, Ohio - d. February 11, 1991, Iowa City, Iowa) was an African American literature critic, a poet, and an English professor who was born in Cincinnati, Ohio on May 7, 1931.  His grandfather, Charles H. Turner, was the first African American psychologist; his father, Darwin Romanes Turner, was a pharmacist; and his mother, Laura Knight, was a school teacher.  Considered a boy genius, Turner enrolled into the University of Cincinnati at the age of 13 and received his undergraduate degree within three years with Phi Beta Kappa honors as the youngest student ever to graduate from the school.  In 1949, at the age of 18, he received his Masters degree in English and American Drama from the University of Cincinnati.  By the time he was twenty-five years old, he received his PhD degree from the University of Chicago. 

In 1949, the same year Turner earned his Master's degree, he married Edna Bonner and started his teaching career at Clark College in Atlanta, Georgia teaching English.  He then accepted an assistant professorship position at Morgan State College in Baltimore, Maryland in 1952, balancing both a teaching career and earning his doctorate degree.  A year after receiving his PhD, he held various administration positions at various colleges.  From 1957 to 1959 he was the chair of the English department at Florida A&M.  From 1959 to 1966 he worked at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University and then accepted the Dean position at their Graduate School from 1966 to 1970 until he left for a position at the University of Michigan. During that time, he divorced Bonner in 1961 and remarried in 1968. His new wife was Maggie Jean Lewis, a school teacher. 

Turner became the chair of the Afro-American Studies Department at the University of Iowa in 1972 and was a professor there for nearly two decades.  In 1981, he was made the University of Iowa Foundation Distinguished Professor of English. 

Turner edited more than a dozen works of African American literature and published his own writing, including a collection of his poems in Katharsis in 1964, a book on American writer Nathaniel Hawthorne's novel The Scarlet Letter in 1967, and a literary critique, In a Minor Chord: Three Afro-American Writers and Their Search for Identity in 1971.  In a Minor Chord was an analysis on the writings of Jean Toomer, Countee Cullen, and Zora Neale Hurston.  Turner edited The Wayward and the Seeking: A Collection of Writings by Jean Toomer in 1980, co-edited The Art of the Slave Narrative: Original Essays in Criticism and Theory in 1982, and wrote for Haki R Madhubuti's Earthquakes and Sun Rise Missions in 1982.  His other major edited anthologies include Black Dramas in America and Black American Literature. Turner wrote dozens of articles for academic journals and anthologies as a literary critic of African American literature.

Darwin Turner died from a heart attack at the age of 59 on February 11, 1991 at Mercy Hospital in Iowa City, Iowa.