On this day in 1933, legendary producer and composer Quincy Jones Jr. was born in Chicago. He is a 27-time Grammy Award-winning musician who first came to fame in the 1950s as a trumpeter with Lionel Hampton’s band. Throughout his career as a composer, he worked with some of music’s biggest stars, including Frank Sinatra, Ray Charles and Ella Fitzgerald; as a producer, he lent his talents to helping Michael Jackson create his groundbreaking albums Off the Wall, Bad and Thriller, three of the top-selling albums of all time.

 
Also on this day, in 1977, voting rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer died from cancer at 59. She is credited for her stirring political rhetoric and community efforts to help the poor in her Mississippi community. She also co-founded the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party in 1964, which was established to challenge Mississippi’s all-white and anti-civil rights delegation, which was present at that year's Democratic National Convention. 

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