en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corona,_Queens Dorie Miller Residential Cooperative, built in 1952, comprises six buildings, containing 300 apartments, with 1,300 rooms in total. The cooperative is named after Doris Dorie Miller, a U.S. Naval hero at Pearl Harbor and the first African American recipient of the Navy Cross.[9] Among its original residents were jazz greats Nat Adderley & Jimmy Heath; Kenneth and Corien Drew, publishers of Queens first African-American newspaper, The Corona East Elmhurst News, Thelma E. Harris founder of Aburi Press and prominent Queens Judge Henry A, Slaughter. Corona was also the childhood home of Marie Maynard Daly. A biochemist, Daly was the first African American woman to earn a Ph.D. in Chemistry. Daly studied the effects of cholesterol on the mechanics of the heart, the effects of sugars and other nutrients on the health of arteries, and the breakdown of the circulatory system as a result of advanced age or hypertension; this scientist subsequently studied how proteins are produced and organized in the cell and the composition and metabolism of components of the cell nucleus. During the second half of the 1940s, 1950s and 60s Corona and its neighbor, East Elmhurst, was home to legendary African American musicians, civil rights leaders and athletes including Malcolm X aka El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, Dr. Ophelia Devore, Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Shavers, Ella Fitzgerald, jazz vocalist, composer and recording artist Norman Mapp, Nat Adderley, Frankie Lymon, famed fashion photographer Rupert Callender[citation needed], Louis Armstrong, Godfrey Cambridge, and George BBQ George Williams[citation needed], a former Harlem night club dancer turned restaurateur who owned the renowned BBQ Georges Supper Club, frequented by the Black elite of Queens and New York politicos including civil rights activist Judge William Bill Booth, Publisher and NYC Human Rights Commissioner and Publisher Ken Drew as well as Mayor John Lindsay and Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller. The Louis Armstrong House attracts visitors to the neighborhood and preserves the legacy of one of its most prominent historical residents. The two communities were often referred to as one Corona/East Elmhurst and is the childhood home of the first African American US Attorney General, Eric Holder, to Rap (Hip Hop) artists Kid n Play, Kwamé, Salt-n-Pepa, and Kool G Rap, and is home to Queens Borough President Helen Marshall, New York State Assemblymember Jeffrion Aubry, and Jimmy Heath, recognized as a prominent instrumentalist, composer, and arranger. Corona/East Elmhurst also houses one of the most extensive collections of African American art and literature in the Langston Hughes Community Library and Cultural Center, which serves Queens County with reference and circulating collections, totaling approximately 30,000 volumes of materials written about or relating to black culture. The Black Heritage Reference Center of Queens County includes books, periodicals, theses and dissertations, VHS videos, cassettes and CDs, photographs, posters, prints, paintings, and sculpture. Cultural arts programs are scheduled through the Center. Meeting space is available to community organizations by application. Special features of the Center include: The Schomburg Clippings File, an extensive microfiche collection of periodicals, magazine clippings, typescripts, broadsides, pamphlets, programs, book reviews, menus and ephemera of all kinds. The UMI Thesis and Dissertation Collection—consists of more than 1,000 volumes of doctoral and master dissertations concerning the African and African-American diasporas. The Adele Cohen Music Collection contains most of Americas foremost black publications on microfilm. The papers cover 15 states beginning in 1893, and are updated each year with current issues. The Black Heritage Video Collection documents the history and culture of Africans and African-Americans on tape, and in all subject areas including literature, biography, social science, fine arts. Demographics According to the 2000 Census, the total population of this ZIP code was 98,609 and its racial/ethnic composition was 64.9% Hispanic/Latino persons of any race, 14.5% Black, 10.0% Asian, 7.9% White, and 2.7% Other.[10] By the 2010 Census, the population had risen to 109,931, which was 73.8% Hispanic/Latino persons of any race, 9.5% Black, 9.9% Asian, 5.3% White, and 1.7% non-Hispanic persons of other races or two or more races.[11] The African American population is declining in Corona, giving way to the rising total Asian and Hispanic populations; concomitantly with the overall trend in Queens.[12]
Posted on: Wed, 29 Jan 2014 19:49:45 +0000
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