Timeline of Black History
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743
Mar 1, Slave export by Christians to heathen areas
was prohibited.
(SC, 3/1/02)
1526 Jul 6, King Afonso of Kongo
(1509-1542) sent a letter of complaint to Portugal regarding the impact
of slave trade in his country.
(www.millersville.edu/~winthrop/Thornton.html)
1526 Nov, The 1st American slave
revolt occurred in SC at the Spanish settlement of San Miguel de
Gualdape near the mouth of the Pee Dee River in South Carolina.
(http://whgbetc.com/mind/slave_revolts_2.html)
1526 The 1st Africans to the US
arrived at a Spanish settlement South Carolina.
(www.inmotionaame.org/timeline.cfm?bhcp=1)
1533 Cartagena de Indias
(Colombia) was founded by Spain and served as a major port for the
trade of slaves, gold and cargo.
(SSFC, 5/18/03, p.C12)
1619 Aug 20, The 1st African
slaves arrived to North America aboard a Dutch privateer. It docked in
Jamestown, Virginia, with twenty human captives among its cargo.
(SFC, 12/18/96, p.A25)(HN, 8/20/98)(PC, 1992, p.224)
1621 Jan 3, William Tucker was
born. He is believed to be first American born African-American. [1624
date also given]
(HN, 1/3/99)(MC, 1/3/02)
1632 Olivier Le Jeune (7), a black
boy born in Madagascar, was sold to a clerk in the future province of
Quebec. He was later considered the first known black enslaved in
Canada.
(SFC, 2/12/10, p.A18)
1641 Dec 1, Massachusetts became
the 1st colony to give statutory recognition to slavery. It was
followed by Connecticut in 1650 and Virginia in 1661.
(MC, 12/1/01)(HNQ, 5/20/02)
1652 May 10, John Johnson, a free
black, was granted 550 acres in Northampton, Va.
(MC, 5/10/02)
1652 May 18, A law was passed in
Rhode Island banning slavery in the colonies but it caused little stir
and was not enforced. More than 1,000 slave voyages were mounted from
Rhode Island, mostly in the 18th century, carrying more than 100,000
Africans into slavery.
(HN, 5/18/99)(Reuters, 3/29/07)
1654 Nov 21, Richard Johnson, a
free black, was granted 550 acres in Virginia.
(MC, 11/21/01)
1660 Mar 13, A statute was passed
limiting the sale of slaves in the colony of Virginia.
(HN, 3/13/99)
1688 Feb 18, At a Quaker meeting
in Germantown, Pa, German Mennonites penned a memorandum stating a
profound opposition to Negro slavery. Quakers in Germantown, Pa.,
adopted the fist formal antislavery resolution in America.
(HN,
2/18/99)(www.germanheritage.com/Publications/cronau/cronau4.html)
1700 May 7, William Penn began
monthly meetings for Blacks advocating emancipation.
(MC, 5/7/02)
1701 The English slave ship
Henrietta Marie sank 35 miles off Key West, Florida, on its way back to
Europe. It had delivered 188 captured Africans to a slave broker in
Jamaica in exchange for sugar and other goods bound for England. The
wreck was found in 1972.
(SFC, 8/12/96, p.C5)(WSJ, 6/2/98, p.A20)(SSFC,
2/8/04, p.C12)
1704 May 20, Elias Neau formed a
school for slaves in NY.
(MC, 5/20/02)
1708 Feb 28, A slave revolt in
Newton, Long Island, NY, left 11 dead.
(MC, 2/28/02)
1712 Apr 7, There was a slave
revolt in New York City. A slave insurrection in New York City was
suppressed by the militia and ended with the execution of 21 blacks.
[see Jul 4]
(HN, 4/7/97)(HNQ, 6/10/98)
1716 Jun 6, The 1st slaves arrived
in Louisiana.
(MC, 6/6/02)
1734 In Canada a black slave named
Marie-Joseph Angelique was hanged for setting fire to the Montreal home
of her master. She became the title character in a 1999 play by Lorena
Gale.
(WSJ, 6/22/99, p.A24)(SFC, 2/12/10, p.A18)
1739 Sep 9, A slave revolt in
Stono, SC, led by an Angolan slave named Jemmy, killed 20-25 whites.
Three slave uprisings occurred in South Carolina in 1739. Whites soon
passed black codes to regulated every aspect of slave life.
(SFC, 12/18/96,
p.A25)(www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part1/1p284.html)(AH, 2/05, p.66)
1741 A slave revolt in New York
caused considerable property damage but left people unharmed. Rumors of
a conspiracy among slaves and poor whites in New York City to seize
control led to a panic that resulted in the conviction of 101 blacks,
the hanging of 18 blacks and four whites, the burning alive of 13
blacks and the banishment from the city of 70. In 2005 Anne Farrow,
Joel Lang and Jennifer Frank authored “Complicity: The North Promoted,
Prolonged and Profited from Slavery,” which included a chapter on the
1941 NYC slave revolt.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_Conspiracy_of_1741)(SFC,
12/18/96, p.A25)(SSFC, 10/2/05, p.F3)
1758 Apr 17, Frances Williams, the
first African-American to graduate for a college in the western
hemisphere, published a collection of Latin poems.
(HN, 4/17/99)
1759 Aug 24, William Wilberforce
(d.1833), was born in Hull, Yorkshire, England. He became best known
for his efforts relating to the abolition of slavery in the British
Empire.
(www.nndb.com/people/824/000049677/)(HNQ, 12/6/02)
1760 Feb 14, Richard Allen
(d.1831), 1st black ordained by a Methodist-Episcopal church, was born
in Philadelphia.
(HN, 2/14/98)
1765 More than 100 Africans
perished on the slave ship Sally in the voyage from Africa. Some hanged
themselves or starved to death. Some rebelled and were shot dead or
drowned. In 2007 the ship's log book, detailing the deaths of slaves
that occurred almost daily aboard the ship, was encased in glass in an
exhibit at Brown University.
(Reuters, 3/29/07)
1767 English slave traders
captured 2 native nobles, Little Ephraim Robin John and Ancona Robin
John on the west coast of Africa and took them in chains to Dominica.
They soon escaped but were resold into slavery in Virginia. Some 4
years later they were taken to England and again resold and returned to
Virginia. They later made it back to their home on the Calabar River
(SE Nigeria) and became slave merchants themselves. In 2004 Randy J.
Sparks authored “The Princes of Calabar.”
(WSJ, 5/21/04, p.W4)
1772 Jun 22, Slavery was in effect
outlawed in England by Chief Justice William Murray, First Earl of
Mansfield, following the trial of James Somersett. In 2005 Steven Wise
authored “Though the Heavens May Fall: The Landmark Trial that Led to
the End of Human Slavery.”
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somersett%27s_Case)(Econ, 2/5/05,
p.76)(ON, 12/08, p.9)
1774 Jun 13, Rhode Island became
the 1st colony to prohibit importation of slaves.
(MC, 6/13/02)
1775 Apr 14, The first American
society for the abolition of slavery was organized by Benjamin Franklin
and Benjamin Rush in Philadelphia.
(AP, 4/14/97)(HN, 4/14/98)
1775 Jul 10, Gen Horatio Gates,
issued an order excluding blacks from Continental Army. [see Oct 8]
(MC, 7/10/02)
1775 Oct 8, Officers decided to
bar slaves and free blacks from Continental Army. [see Jul 10, Oct 23,
Nov 12, Dec 31]
(MC, 10/8/01)
1775 Nov 12, General Washington
forbade the enlistment of blacks.
(MC, 11/12/01)
1775 Lord Dunmore, Royal Governor
of Virginia, called on local slaves to join the British side to
suppress the American Revolution: “When we win we will free you from
your shackles.” The British issued similar proclamations throughout
their North American colonies and enticed thousands of indentured
servants and slaves, known as Black Loyalists, to the British side.
(MT, summer 2003, p.8)
1776 Jan 16, Continental Congress
approved the enlistment of free blacks. This led to the all-black First
Rhode Island Regiment, composed of 33 freedmen and 92 slaves, who were
promised freedom if they served to the end of the war. The regiment
distinguished itself at the Battle of Newport.
(SFEC,11/23/97, Par p.19)(MC, 1/16/02)
1776 The Quakers of Pennsylvania
abolished slavery within the Society of Friends and then took their
crusade to society at large by petitioning the state legislature to
outlaw the practice.
(AH, 10/02, p.50)
1777 Jul 2, Vermont became the 1st
American colony to abolish slavery. [see Mar 1, 1780]
(SC, 7/2/02)
1778 Feb 28, Rhode Island General
Assembly authorized the enlistment of slaves.
(MC, 2/28/02)
1780 Mar 1, Pennsylvania became
the first U.S. state to abolish slavery (for new-borns only). It was
followed by Connecticut and Rhode Island in 1784, New York in 1785, and
New Jersey in 1786. Massachusetts abolished slavery through a judicial
decision in 1783.
(HN, 3/1/98)(SC, 3/1/02)(HNQ, 5/29/02)
1783 Dec 31, Import of African
slaves was banned by all of the Northern American states.
(MC, 12/31/01)
1783 Some 3,000 Blacks, who had
obtained British certificates of freedom for their loyalty in the
American Revolution, arrived in Nova Scotia and spent some miserable
years there. In 1785 a delegation sailed to Britain where they were
offered passage to Africa in return for establishing a British colony
in Sierra Leone.
(MT, summer 2003, p.8)
1786 Sep 9, George Washington
called for the abolition of slavery.
(HN, 9/9/98)
1787 Apr 12, Philadelphia's Free
African Society formed.
(MC, 4/12/02)
1787 Sep 17, The US Constitution
included the Connecticut, or "Great," Compromise in which every state
was conceded an equal vote in the Senate irrespective of its size, but
representation in the House was to be on the basis of the "federal
ratio," an enumeration of the free population plus three fifths of the
slaves.
(SSFC, 11/2/03, p.M6)
1787 Dec, William Wilberforce, on
the suggestion of PM William Pitt, introduced a motion in British
Parliament for the abolition of the slave trade.
(ON, 4/05, p.2)
1787 Rev. Richard Allen and
Absalom Jones decided to form the Free African Society, a
non-denominational religious mutual aid society for the black
community. Eventually this society grew into the African Church of
Philadelphia.
(www.pbs.org)
1787 Granville Sharp, English
abolitionist, formed the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the
Slave Trade.
(ON, 12/08, p.9)
1787 Thomas Clarkson, deacon in
the Church of England, led the formation of the original abolitionist
committee, the interdenominational “Committee to Effect the Abolition
of the Slave Trade.” His committe distributed 1,000 copies of “A Letter
to our Friends in the Country, to inform them of the state of the
Business.” This was later considered as possibly the 1st direct-mail
fund-raising letter. In 2004 Adam Hochschild authored “Bury the Chains:
Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free an Empire’s Slaves.”
(SSFC, 1/23/05, p.F1)(ON, 4/05, p.1)
1787 British settlers bought land
from African tribal leaders in Sierra Leone and used it as a haven for
freed African slaves. The indigenous community, dominated by the Mende,
wiped out the first settlers. A 2nd group followed in 1792. The
settlers intermarried but held themselves aloof, monopolized power and
discriminated against the original population. In 2005 Simon Schama
authored “Rough Crossings: Britain, the Slaves and the American
Revolution.”
(SFC, 3/11/98, p.A10)(SFC, 2/14/98, p.A8)(WSJ,
5/31/00, p.A26)(Econ, 8/27/05, p.66)(MT, summer 2003, p.8)
1788 Jan 1, Quakers in
Pennsylvania emancipated their slaves.
(MC, 1/1/02)
1788 Jan 20, The pioneer African
Baptist church was organized in Savannah, Ga.
(MC, 1/20/02)
1789 May 12, In England William
Wilberforce laid out his case for the abolition of slavery to the House
of Commons. This speech directly led to Britain’s abolition of slavery
in 1807.
(WSJ, 5/12/07, p.P14)
1790 Feb 11, The first petition to
Congress for emancipation of the slaves was made by the Society of
Friends.
(HNQ, 1/11/99)
1791 Aug 22, A Haitian slave
revolution began under voodoo priest Boukman.
(MC, 8/22/02)(SFCM, 5/30/04, p.9)
1791 Apr, William Wilberforce
again introduced a motion in British Parliament for the abolition of
the slave trade, but lost by a vote of 163 to 88.
(ON, 4/05, p.2)
1791 In St. Domingue Toussaint
L’Ouverture joined the slave rebellion against plantation owners and
later led a colonial revolt against France. In 1995 Madison Smart Bell
authored "All Souls Rising," a novel set in this period.
(SFEC, 1/26/97 BR, p.10)(SSFC, 4/8/01, BR p.4)(SFCM,
5/30/04, p.10)
1792 Jan 28, Rebellious slaves in
Santo Domingo launched an attack on the city of Cap.
(HN, 1/28/99)
1792 Apr 4, American abolitionist
Thaddeus Stevens, U.S. Radical Republican congressional leader, was
born in Danville, Vt.
(AP, 4/4/98)(HN, 4/4/98)
1792 May 16, Denmark abolished
slave trade.
(MC, 5/16/02)
1792 William Wilberforce
introduced a new motion in British Parliament for the gradual abolition
of the slave trade. The “gradual” wording, proposed by home office
minister Henry Dundas, led to passage of the bill in the House of
Commons 230 to 85.
(ON, 4/05, p.2)
1792 The British St. George’s Bay
Company transported a 2nd group of settlers to Freetown. This included
1,196 Blacks from Nova Scotia, 500 Jamaicans and dozens of rebellious
slaves from other colonies.
(MT, summer 2003, p.8)
1793 Feb 12, The US federal
government passed its first fugitive slave law. This gave slave holders
the right to reclaim their human property in free states.
(HN, 2/12/97)(WSJ, 1/30/03, p.D8)
1793 Aug 29, Slavery was abolished
in the French colony of Santo Domingo (Haiti).
(HN, 8/29/98)(MC, 8/29/01)
1794 Mar 22, Congress passed laws
prohibiting slave trade with foreign countries, although slavery
remained legal in the United States. Congress banned US vessels from
supplying slaves to other countries.
(HN, 3/22/01)(MC, 3/22/02)
1794 May, Richard Allen purchased
a blacksmith shop in Philadelphia and had it moved near St. Thomas.
There he founded an African Methodist Episcopal (AME) church he called
Bethel, "House of God." The Mother Bethel African Methodist Episcopal
Church in Philadelphia was founded by Richard Allen after he was pulled
from his knees one Sunday by a white usher while praying at St. George
Methodist Episcopal Church. It later stood as the oldest parcel of land
continuously owned by African Americans. The Richard Allen Museum
contains 19th century artifacts from the church. In 1997 it was the
world’s oldest AME church. The church elected its first female bishop
in 2000.
(SFC, 6/24/96, p.A19)(SFC, 7/12/00,
p.A3)(www.pbs.org)
1794 Jul 17, In Philadelphia the
African Episcopal Church of St. Thomas, one of the first black churches
in the country, opened its doors.
(www.pbs.org)
1795 Feb 4, France abolished
slavery in her territories and conferred slaves to citizens.
(HN, 2/4/99)
1797 Mar 4, Vice-President John
Adams, elected President on December 7, to replace George Washington,
was sworn in. Adams soon selected Timothy Pickering as his secretary of
state. Pickering extended aid to Haitian slaves in their ongoing revolt
against French colonists. This policy was reversed under Jefferson.
(HN, 3/4/99)(SSFC, 11/2/03, p.M6)
1798 May 2, The black General
Toussaint L'Ouverture forced British troops to agree to evacuate the
port of Santo Domingo.
(HN, 5/2/99)
1799 Mar 28, NY state abolished
slavery.
(MC, 3/28/02)
1800 Jan 30, US population was
reported at 5,308,483; Black population 1,002,037 (18.9%).
(MC, 1/30/02)
1800 May 9, John Brown, American
abolitionist, was born. His adventures came to an end at Harper's
Ferry, where he tried to start a revolution against slavery.
(HN, 5/9/99)
1800 Oct 2, Nat Turner, slave and
the property of Benjamin Turner, was born in Southampton county, Va. He
was sold in 1831 to Joseph Travis from Jerusalem, Southampton county,
Va.
(www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part3/3p1518.html)
1801 Jan 28, Francis Barber (ca.
1735 – 1801), the Jamaican manservant of Samuel Johnson (1752-1784),
died at the Staffordshire General Infirmary.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Barber)(http://tinyurl.com/2njdfy)
1802 Aug 7, Napoleon ordered the
re-instatement of slavery on St. Domingue (Haiti).
(MC, 8/7/02)
1804 Jan 5, Ohio legislature
passed the 1st laws restricting free blacks movement. [see Mar 28]
(MC, 1/5/02)
1804 Feb 15, New Jersey became the
last northern state to abolish slavery.
(HN, 2/15/98)
1804 Mar 28, Ohio passed law
restricting movement of Blacks. [see Jan 5]
(MC, 3/28/02)
1804 Jul 21, Victor Schoelcher,
abolished French slavery, was born in Guadeloupe.
(MC, 7/21/02)
1804 A motion in British
Parliament for abolition of the slave trade passed in the House of
Commons 124 to 29, but was defeated in the House of Lords.
(ON, 4/05, p.2)
1805 May 1, The state of Virginia
passed a law requiring all freed slaves to leave the state, or risk
either imprisonment or deportation.
(HN, 5/1/99)
1806 Jun 10, James Fox, British
foreign minister, introduced a bill to ban British ships from
transporting slaves to foreign countries. Parliament passed the bill.
(ON, 4/05, p.3)
1807 Jan 2, Lord Grenville
presented to British Parliament a “Bill for the Abolition of the Slave
Trade,” effective May 1. He introduced it directly to the House of
Lords. It passed the House of Lords by 64 votes and cleared the House
of Commons on March 25.
(ON, 4/05, p.3)
1807 Mar 2, Congress banned slave
trade effective January 1, 1808. The further importation of slaves was
abolished but an inter-American slave trade continued.
(V.D.-H.K.p.276)(WSJ, 12/16/97, p.A18)(WSJ,
10/19/98, p.A24)(SC, 3/2/02)
1807 Mar 25, William Wilberforce
(1759-1833), evangelical member of parliament, piloted a slave-trade
abolition bill through the House of Commons. This led to a labor
problem in South Africa. In 1833 Britain abolished slavery throughout
the British Empire when the Slavery Abolition Bill was read a third time
(HN, 3/24/98)(WSJ, 5/26/04,
p.A8)(www.anti-slaverysociety.addr.com/huk-wilberforce.htm)
1807 After Britain outlawed the
slave trade people called “Recaptives,” those freed from slave ships,
were sent to join the settlers in Sierra Leone. The settlers formed a
new tribe called the Kri and created a language called Krio.
(MT, summer 2003, p.8)
1808 Jan 1, A law banning the
import of slaves came into effect, but was widely ignored.
(HN, 1/1/99)
1811 Jan 8, Charles Deslondes led
several hundred poorly armed slaves towards New Orleans in the largest
slave rebellion in US history.
(AH, 2/06, p.14)
1811 Jan 10, An uprising of over
400 slaves was put down in New Orleans. Sixty-six blacks were killed
and their heads were strung up along the roads of the city.
(HN, 1/10/99)
1813 Jul 6, Granville Sharp
(b.1735), biblical scholar and English abolitionist, died.
(ON, 12/08,
p.9)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Granville_Sharp)
1814 Aug 13, Treaty of
London-Netherland was signed to stop the transport of slaves. By
agreement Britain paid the Dutch £6 million in compensation for
the Cape of Good Hope. [see May 30]
(EWH, 4th ed, p.884)(MC, 8/13/02)
1817 Feb 14, Frederick Douglass
(d.1895), "The Great Emancipator," was born in Maryland as Frederick
Augustus Washington Bailey. He was the son of a slave and a white
father who bought his own freedom and published “The Narrative Life of
Frederick Douglass” (1845) a memoir of his life as a slave. "The life
of the nation is secure only while the nation is honest, truthful, and
virtuous."
(AHD, 1971, p.394)(HN, 2/14/99)(AP, 2/20/99)(ON,
12/09, p.12)
1818 Feb 11, In Louisiana sugar
plantation owner Levi Foster sold to his in-laws the slaves named Kit
(28) for $975 and Alick (9) for $400. In 2000 Gwendolyn Midlo Hall and
LSU Press published a CD-ROM database on Louisiana slave transactions:
"Databases for the Study of Afro-Louisiana History and Genealogy,
1699-1860: Computerized Information from Original Manuscript Sources."
(SFEC, 7/30/00, p.)(www.afrigeneas.com)
1820 Feb 6, The American
Colonization Society sent its 1st organized emigration of blacks back
to Africa from NY to Sierra Leone.
(AH, 2/05, p.17)
1820 Feb 6, US population
announced at 9,638,453 including 1,771,656 blacks (18.4%).
(MC, 2/6/02)
1820 Mar 3, The Missouri
Compromise was passed by Congress. It allowed Missouri to enter the
Union as a slave state and Maine to enter as a free state. [see Mar 6]
(PCh, 1992, p.389)(SC, 3/3/02)
1820 May 15, The US Congress
designated the slave trade to a form of piracy.
(HN, 5/15/99)
1821 Mar 14, African Methodist
Episcopal Zion Church founded in NY.
(MC, 3/14/02)
1821 Jun 21, African Methodist
Episcopal Zion (AMEZ) Church was organized in NYC as a national body.
[see Mar 14]
(MC, 6/21/02)
1822 Feb 4, Free American Blacks
settled Liberia, West Africa. The first group of colonists landed in
Liberia and founded Monrovia, the colony's capital city, named in honor
of President James Monroe.
(HNPD, 7/26/98)(MC, 2/4/02)
1822 Jun 16, Denmark Vessy led a
slave rebellion in South Carolina. [see Jul 2]
(MC, 6/16/02)
1822 Jun 18, Slave revolt leaders
Denmark Vesey [Vessey] and Peter Poyas were arrested in SC.
(MC, 6/18/02)
1822 Jul 2, Denmark Vesey was
executed in Charleston, South Carolina, for planning a massive slave
revolt.
(HN, 7/2/01)
1823 John Rankin, Presbyterian
minister, moved to Ripley, Ohio, and soon established the Ripley Line
of the underground railroad. In 2003 Ann Hagedorn authored "Beyond the
River: The Untold Story of the Heroes of the Underground Railroad." In
2005 Fergus M. Bordewich authored “Bound for Canaan,” a look at the
people involved in the UR operations.
(WSJ, 1/30/03, p.D8)(WSJ, 3/29/05, p.D6)
1824 Aug 15, Freed American slaves
formed the country of Liberia.
(MC, 8/15/02)
1827 Jan 15, At Monticello, Va.,
130 slaves and other possessions of Thomas Jefferson were sold at
auction. Sally Hemmings and 5 members of the Hemings family were freed
shortly thereafter.
(SFEC, 5/16/99, p.A9)
1827 Mar 16, The first
Afro-American newspaper edited for and by blacks, Freedom's Journal,
was published in New York City.
(HFA, '96, p.26)(AP, 3/16/97)
1827 Jul 4, New York state law
emancipated adult slaves.
(SFEC, 12/1/96, BR p.5)(Maggio, 98)
1827 Aug 10, There were race riots
in Cincinnati and some 1,000 blacks left for Canada.
(MC, 8/10/02)
1829 Jul 4, In Boston, Mass.,
abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison (1805-1879) gave a passionate
antislavery sermon at the Park Street Church and was attacked by a
white supremacist mob who dragged him from the pulpit and beat him
nearly to death. Garrison published the anti-slavery newspaper, the
Liberator, from 1831-1865.
(www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4p1561.html)(AH, 10/07,
p.72)
1830 Sep 20, The National Negro
Convention convened in Philadelphia with the purpose of abolishing
slavery.
(HN, 9/20/98)
1831 Jan 1, William Lloyd Garrison
(1805-1879), 24-year-old reformer of Massachusetts, began publishing
his newspaper The Liberator, dedicated to the abolition of slavery.
Garrison's stridency and uncompromising position on both the
institution of slavery and slave owners offended many in the North and
South, but he vowed to continue the fight until slavery was abolished.
In the first issue of his newspaper, he wrote, "I am aware that many
object to the severity of my language; but is there not cause for
severity? I will be as harsh as truth, and as uncompromising as
justice. On this subject I do not wish to think, or speak, or write,
with moderation. No! No!" Garrison once burned a copy of the U.S.
Constitution, condemning it as "a covenant with death and an agreement
with hell" because it did not forbid slavery. The Liberator ceased
publication in 1865 after the 13th Amendment was passed, outlawing
slavery. [see 1830]
(HNPD, 12/31/98)
1831 Aug 21-22, Nat Turner led a
rebellion in Southampton county, Va. This became known as "Nat Turner's
Rebellion" or the "Southampton Slave Revolt." Turner and about seven
followers murdered 55 white people, including the entire family of his
owners, the Joseph Travis's. Turner had been taught to read by the
Travis children and his studies of the bible led him to have visions of
insurrection. A 1998 play by Robert O’Hara "Insurrection: Holding
History" centered on the event.
(www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part3/3p1518.html)(SFC,
1/16/98, p.D1)
1831 Oct 31, Nat Turner, rebel
slave, was caught by Mr. Benjamin Phipps and locked up in Jerusalem,
Va. Thomas Gray, his court appointed attorney, spent 3 days talking to
Turner and compiled his notes into "The Confessions of Nat Turner,"
which were published in 1969.
(ON, 10/99, p.10)
1831 Nov 5, Nat Turner, rebel
slave, was tried in Southampton county, Va.
(www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part3/3p1518.html)
1831 Nov 11, Nat Turner was hanged
and skinned in Southampton county, Va. Hysteria surrounded this
rebellion and over 200 slaves, some as far away as North Carolina, were
murdered by whites in fear of a generalized uprising. A martyr to the
anti-slavery cause, Turner's actions had the adverse effect of
virtually ending all abolitionist activities in the south before the
Civil War.
(www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part3/3p1518.html)(HN,
11/11/98)
1833 Jun 16, Lucie (Ruthy)
Blackburn (30), a fugitive slave, escaped from jail in Detroit and made
her way to Canada. The next day a riot erupted, “The Blackburn Riots,”
as her husband, Thornton Blackburn (21), was escorted for return to
slavery. Thornton escaped to Canada to join his wife. The first
extradition case between the US and Canada over the issue of fugitive
slaves soon followed. Canada ruled it could not extradite people to a
jurisdiction that imposed harsher penalties then they would have
received for the same offense in Canada and the Blackburns remained in
Ontario.
(AH, 4/07, p.43)
1833 Jul 29, William Wilberforce
(b.1759), English abolitionist, died. He was best known for his efforts
relating to the abolition of slavery in the British Empire. A
politician and philanthropist, Wilberforce was prominent from 1787 in
the struggle to abolish the slave trade and slavery itself in British
overseas possessions. He was an ardent and eloquent sponsor of
anti-slavery legislation in the House of Commons until his retirement
in 1825. Wilberforce University in Ohio, an African Methodist Episcopal
Church institution (f.1856), was named for William Wilberforce. In 2008
William Hague authored “William Wilberforce: The Life of the Great
Anti-Slave Trade Campaigner.”
(www.nndb.com/people/824/000049677/)(WSJ, 7/25/08,
p.A13)
1833 Aug 23, The British
Parliament ordered the abolition of slavery in its colonies by Aug 1,
1834. This would free some 700,000 slaves, including those in the West
Indies. The Imperial Emancipation Act also allowed blacks to enjoy
greater equality under the law in Canada as opposed to the US.
(V.D.-H.K.p.276)(MT, 3/96, p.14)(PC, 1992,
p.412)(AH, 10/02, p.54)
1833 Oct 2, The NY Anti-Slavery
Society was organized.
(MC, 10/2/01)
1833 Dec 4, American Anti-Slavery
Society was formed by Arthur Tappan in Phila.
(MC, 12/4/01)
1833 Richard Allen (73) published
his autobiography: "The Life, Experience, and Gospel Labors of the Rt.
Rev. Richard Allen."
(www.pbs.org)
1833 John Anderson, a
Kentucky-based slave trader, was one of 10 dealers who, during a
cholera epidemic, petitioned to move the Natchez, Miss., slave market
outside the city limits.
(WSJ, 12/2/04, p.D12)
1834 Jun 2, The 5th national black
convention met in NYC.
(SC, 6/2/02)
1834 Aug 1, England ended slavery
in the West Indies and all its Caribbean holdings effective on this
date. Slavery was abolished throughout the British Empire with
compensation to the owners. Some 35,000 salves were freed in the Cape
Colony. [see 1833]
(NH, 7/98, p.29)(HN, 8/1/98)(EWH, 4th ed, p.885)
1834-1861 The Citizens Bank of Louisiana, a
predecessor of J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., secured loans with
mortgages and thousands of slaves. Bernard de Marigny, plantation owner
and one of the richest men of the epoch, put 62 slaves into the banks
books as collateral for borrowed money to support his gambling habit.
(WSJ, 5/10/05, p.A1)
1835 May 26, A resolution was
passed in the U.S. Congress stating that Congress has no authority over
state slavery laws.
(HN, 5/26/99)
1835 Aug 10, Mob of whites and
oxen pulled a black school to a swamp outside of Canaan, NH.
(MC, 8/10/02)
1835 Aug 31, Angry mob in
Charleston, South Carolina, seized U-S mail containing abolitionist
literature and burned it in public.
(MC, 8/31/01)
1836 Isaac Wade Ross,
Revolutionary war hero, died in Mississippi. His will stipulated that
his slaves should be emancipated upon his death, but only if they
agreed to go to Liberia. The 1st of almost 200 were finally set free in
1848. In 2004 Alan Huffman authored "Mississippi in Africa: The Saga of
the Slaves of Prospect Hill Plantation and Their Legacy in Liberia
Today."
(SSFC, 2/1/04, p.M1)
1837 Mar 24, Canada gave blacks
the right to vote.
(MC, 3/24/02)
1837 May 27, Legendary gunfighter
James Butler "Wild Bill" Hickok was born in Troy Grove, IL. As a youth,
Hickok helped his father operate an Underground Railroad stop for
runaway slaves and during the Civil War became a daring Union scout.
After the war Hickok's fame as a skilled marksman, Indian fighter and
frontier marshal grew, leading to a stint as a featured attraction with
Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West Show. On August 2, 1876, Hickok was shot
from behind and killed while playing poker in Saloon No. 10 in
Deadwood, Dakota Territory. Contrary to his custom, Hickok was sitting
with his back to the door.
(HNPD, 5/28/99)(MesWP)
1837 Nov 7, A mob attack on the
Alton, Illinois, office newspaper editor Elijah P. Lovejoy and the
subsequent killing of Lovejoy was inspired by the editor’s anti-slavery
writings. Several persons were indicted in the killing, but they were
found not guilty. Lovejoy was killed while defending a newly arrived
printing press. People opposed to Lovejoy‘s mission had already
destroyed three previous presses.
(HNQ, 3/18/99)(HNQ, 6/26/00)
1838 Frederick Augustus Washington
Bailey escaped from slavery in Maryland and traveled to new England
where he changed his name to Frederick Douglass.
(AHD, 1971, p.394)(ON, 7/02, p.6)
1839 Apr 5, Robert Smalls, black
congressman from South Carolina, 1875-87, was born.
(HN, 5/5/97)
1839 Jul 30, Slave rebels took
over the slave ship Amistad.
(MC, 7/30/02)
1839 Aug 26, The slave ship
Amistad was captured off Long Island. The U.S.S. Washington, a U.S.
Navy brig, seized the Amistad York, and escorted it to New London,
Connecticut.
(MC, 8/26/02)
1839 Jacob D. Green (b.1813), a
slave in Queen Anne’s County, Md., escaped from the plantation of Judge
Charles Earle after his wife and 2 children were sold in his absence.
In 1842 he was caught and returned to Judge Earle, who sold him to a
new master in Tennessee. Green escaped and was captured a few more
times before he finally reached Canada. In 1851 he emigrated to England
and in 1964 published a 43-page account of his adventures.
(ON, 7/05, p.11)
1841 Mar 9, The rebel slaves who
seized a Spanish slave ship, the Amistad, two years earlier were freed
by the US Supreme Court despite Spanish demands for extradition. John
Quincy Adams (74), former US president, defended "the Mendi people," a
group of Africans who rebelled and killed the crew aboard the slave
ship Amistad, while en route to Cuba. They faced mutiny charges upon
landing in New York but Adams won their acquittal before the Supreme
Court. In thanks they bestowed to him an 1838 English Bible. In 1996
the Bible was stolen from the Adams National Historic Site in Quincy,
Mass.
(WSJ, 1/3/97, p.A7)(HN, 3/9/99)
1841 Apr 3, From Nassau, Bahamas,
a British magistrate wrote that 193 shipwrecked African slaves from the
ship Trouvadore were found naked on the shores of the East Caicos
Island. The slaves were then quarantined in a jail and given food and
clothing. The accident set free the slaves who became ancestors of many
later residents of the islands. In 2004 the wreck was found and in 2008
marine archaeologists identified it as the remains of the slave ship.
(AP, 8/21/04)(AP, 11/26/08)
1841 William A. Leidesdorff,
originally from the Virgin Islands, arrived in San Francisco. He became
a prominent businessman, built the city’s first hotel, became a member
of the first SF City Council and served as the city’s first treasurer.
(SFC, 2/16/09, p.B2)
1842 Nov 17, A grim abolitionist
meeting was held in Marlboro Chapel, Boston, after the imprisonment
under the Fugitive Slave Bill (1793) of a mulatto named George Latimer,
one of the first fugitive slaves to be apprehended in Massachusetts.
Four hundred dollars was collected to buy his freedom, and plans to
storm the jail were prepared as an alternative to secure his release.
(HN, 11/17/98)
1843 Aug 15, A national black
convention met in Buffalo, NY.
(MC, 8/15/02)
1843 Norbert Rillieux (1806-1894)
received US patent # 3,237 for a double-effect evaporator, while
overseeing the building of the device for plantation owner Theodore
Packwood.
(www.answers.com/topic/norbert-rillieux)
1844 May 2, Elijah McCoy, black
inventor, held over 50 patents, was born.
(MC, 5/2/02)
1845 Frederick Douglass,
African-American statesman, published “The Narrative Life of Frederick
Douglass.” He then traveled to Ireland where he received a hero’s
welcome. Irish nationalist Daniel O’Connell saw common cause between
Ireland’s quest for self-rule and the plight of American slaves.
British admirers raised money to buy his freedom and he was officially
manumitted after Hugh Auld, his alleged owner, received a payment of
$711.66.
(WSJ, 3/13/09, p.W2)(ON, 12/09, p.12)
1846 Dec 10, Norbert Rillieux
(1806-1894), African-American engineer, received a patent for the
Rillieux Process for refining sugar. He won several patents for a way
to refine sugar in a process that later came to be called
multiple-effect distillation.
(Econ, 6/7/08, p.24)(www.aalbc.com/books/black7.htm)
1847 Dec 3, Frederick Douglass and
Martin R. Delaney established the North Star, an anti-slavery paper.
(HN, 12/3/98)
1848 Feb 15, Sarah Roberts was
barred from a white school in Boston.
(440 Int’l., 2/15/99)
1848 Apr 27, Slave trade was
abolished in the French colonies.
(AFP, 3/24/10)
1848 Apr 28, The last slaves in
French colonies were freed.
(MC, 4/28/02)
1848 Jul 3, The slaves were freed
in Danish West Indies (now US Virgin Islands).
(MC, 7/3/02)
1849 Feb, Thomas Carlyle
(1795-1881), Scottish essayist, anonymously authored the article:
"Occasional Discourse on the Negro Question," in which he 1st used the
phrase "the dismal science" to describe political economics: It is “not
a gay science… no, a dreary, desolate, and indeed quite abject and
distressing one; what we might call, by way of eminence, the dismal
science." Carlyle himself argued in this essay for the reintroduction
of slavery into the West Indies. In 2001 David M. Levy authored "How
the Dismal Science Got Its Name."
(WSJ, 12/10/01,
p.A15)(http://cepa.newschool.edu/het/texts/carlyle/carlodnq.htm)
1850 Mar 31, The US population hit
23,191,876, with the Black population at 3,638,808 (15.7%).
(MC, 3/31/02)
1850 Sep 18, The US Congress
passed the second Fugitive Slave Bill into law (the first was enacted
in 1793) as part of Compromise of 1850. It allowed slave owners to
reclaim slaves who had escaped to other states. The Fugitive Slave Act
of 1850 set fines up to $1,000 for facilitating a slave’s flight. The
act authorized federal commissioners to receive a $10 fee if they
decided for a slaveholder, but only a $5 fee for deciding for a
fugitive.
(AP, 9/18/97)(HN, 9/18/98)(WSJ, 1/30/03, p.D8)(AH,
10/02, p.53)
1850 Sep 20, The slave trade in
Washington, D.C., was abolished as a provision of Henry Clay’s
Compromise of 1850. Because each state had its own slavery code when
the District of Columbia was founded in 1800, Washington had adopted
Maryland’s laws. Although the 1850 legislation made the slave trade
illegal, slavery itself was still legal. Nevertheless, Washington
became a haven for free blacks. By 1860, free blacks outnumbered slaves
almost four-to-one. President Abraham Lincoln put an end to
Washington’s slavery altogether in 1862, freeing about 2,989 African
Americans who were then slaves according to the slavery code.
(HNPD, 9/20/98)(HN, 9/20/98)
1851 Jan 25, Sojourner Truth
addressed the 1st Black Women's Rights Convention in Akron. [see May,
1851]
(MC, 1/25/02)
1851 Feb 15, Black abolitionists
invaded a Boston courtroom to rescue a fugitive slave.
(440 Int’l., 2/15/99)
1851 May, Freed slave and
abolitionist Sojourner Truth attended a national women's convention in
Akron, Ohio, where the female delegates were heckled by men in the
audience who claimed that men were superior to women. Frances Gage,
president of the convention, recorded Sojourner Truth's words that day.
"Dat man ober dar say dat women needs to be helped into carriages and
lifted ober ditches, and to hab de best place everywhar. Nobody eber
helps me into carriages, or ober mud-puddles, or gibs me any best
place! And ain't I a woman! Look at me! Look at my arm! I have
ploughed, and planted and gathered into barns, and no man could head
me! And ain't I a woman? I could work as much and eat as much as a
man--when I could get it--and bear de lash as well! And ain't I a
woman? I have borne thirteen chilern, and seen 'em mos' all sold into
slavery, and when I cried out with my mother's grief, none but Jesus
heard me! And ain't I a woman?" Sojourner Truth's words, according to
Gage, "turned the sneers and jeers of an excited crowd into notes of
respect and admiration."
(HN, 7/13/99)
1851 Sep 11, Edward Gorsuch, a
wealthy slave owner from Maryland, confronted William Parker and
accused him of harboring 4 runaway slaves near the abolitionist town,
Christiana, Pennsylvania. This was one year after the second fugitive
slave law (first law was on February 12, 1793) was passed by Congress,
requiring the return of all escaped slaves to their owners in the
South. Gorsuch was killed during the skirmish and Parker was forced to
flee to Canada.
(AH, 10/02, p.49)
1851 Dec 11, In Philadelphia 37
men, on trial in federal court for defying the Fugitive Slave Law, were
deemed not guilty by a jury with 15 minutes of deliberation.
(AH, 10/02, p.54)
1852 Mar 20, Harriet Beecher
Stowe's (1811-1896) "Uncle Tom's Cabin" was first published in book
form after being serialized. It was based on the theme that slavery is
incompatible with Christianity.
(SFC, 3/30/97, Z1. p.6)(HN, 3/20/98)(AP, 3/20/08)
1853 Apr 14, Harriet Tubman began
her Underground Railroad, helping slaves to escape.
(MC, 4/14/02)
1853 In Boston Sarah Parker Remond
was thrown out of a theater for refusing to be seated in an area
reserved for blacks. She fell and filed suit and was awarded monetary
compensation. The theater was later desegregated.
(SFEC, 4/5/98, BR p.5)
1855 May 3, Macon B. Allen became
the first African American to be admitted to the Bar in Massachusetts.
(HN, 5/3/99)
1856 Apr 5, Booker T. Washington,
Black American educator, was born in Franklin County, Va. The former
slave later founded the Tuskegee Institute. Booker Taliaferro
Washington later became the 1st black on US stamp.
(AP, 5/5/97)(HN, 4/5/99)(MC, 4/5/02)
1856 May 19, Senator Charles
Sumner spoke out against slavery.
(HN, 5/19/98)
1856 May 21, Lawrence, Kansas, was
captured and sacked by pro-slavery forces.
(HN, 5/21/98)
1856 May 24, The Potawatomi
Massacre took place in Kansas. John Brown, American abolitionist and
horse thief, presided over the hacking to death with machetes of five
unarmed pro-slavery Border Ruffians in Potawatomi, Kansas.
(WSJ, 4/10/95, A-16)(WSJ, 3/16/98, p.A20)(MC,
5/24/02)
1856 James Pierson Beckwourth
(1798-1866, a mountain man born as a slave, authored his autobiography:
“The Life and Adventures of James P. Beckwourth, Mountaineer, Scout,
and Pioneer, and Chief of the Crow Nation of Indians.”
(SSFC, 7/18/04, p.14)(www.beckwourth.org/)
1857 Mar 6, After years in
litigation, the Supreme Court, headed by Chief Justice Roger Taney,
ruled that Dred Scott did not gain his freedom by living in a free
territory. The essence of the decision was that as a slave, Dred Scott
was not a citizen and therefore could not sue in a federal court. The
opinion also stated that Congress could not exclude slavery in the
territories and that blacks could not become citizens. That ruling
further increased the tension already simmering between the North and
the South. Dred Scott was a slave who accompanied his owner, army
surgeon John Emerson, to military posts in Wisconsin and Illinois in
1834-35. In 1846 Scott, backed by abolitionists, sued for his freedom
on the grounds that he became free when he lived in an area where
slavery was outlawed. Montgomery Blair (b.1813) was one of the lawyers
in the Scott vs. Sanford case. In this case the Supreme Court
invalidated the 1820 Missouri Compromise.
(AP, 3/6/98)(HN, 3/6/98)(HNPD, 3/11/99)(HN,
5/10/99)(SFC, 11/30/00, p.A3)
1857 The California Savings and
Land Association at 465 California St. was built. Henry Collins, one of
California’s wealthiest black leaders, served as president of the first
African-American owned bank in the country.
(SFC, 2/16/09,
p.B2)(www.afrigeneas.com/forum-west/index.cgi?md=read;id=43)
1858 May 8, John Brown held an
antislavery convention.
(MC, 5/8/02)
1858 May 19, A pro-slavery band
led by Charles Hameton executed unarmed Free State men near Marais des
Cygnes on the Kansas-Missouri border.
(HN, 5/19/99)
1858 Jun 20, Charles Chesnutt,
African-American novelist, was born in Cleveland. In 2002 Werner
Sollors edited "Chesnutt: Stories, Novels, and Essays."
(HN, 6/20/01)(WSJ, 1/22/02, p.A11)
1858 Aug 24, Richmond "Daily
Dispatch" reported 90 blacks arrested for learning.
(MC, 8/24/02)
1859 Sep 5, Harriot E. Wilson's
“Our Nig,” was published, the first U.S. novel by an African American
woman.
(HN, 9/5/98)
1859 Pres. Buchanan ordered a
blockade of Cuba to intercept American-owned slave ships.
(SSFC, 2/8/04, p.C12)
1860 William Craft authored
“Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom.” He and his wife Ellen had
escaped under disguise from Macon, Georgia, to Philadelphia in 1848.
(ON, 10/04, p.10)
1860 US sailors intercepted 3
American slave ships on their way to Cuba. The Wildfire, the William
and the Bogota carried some 1,432 African slaves from the area of Benin
and Congo to be sold in Cuba. The slaves were taken to Key West for 3
months and then returned to Africa.
(SSFC, 2/8/04, p.C12)
1860 The total value of US slaves
was $3.5 billion, the equivalent of $68.4 billion in 2006. The US gross
national product was only about 20% above the value of the nation’s
slaves.
(WSJ, 3/24/06, p.W4)
1860 The number of slaves in
Mississippi numbered over 400,000.
(Econ, 2/13/10, p.85)
1861 Feb 11, The US House
unanimously passed a resolution guaranteeing noninterference with
slavery in any state.
(MC, 2/11/02)
1861 Mar 13, Jefferson Davis
signed a bill authorizing slaves to be used as soldiers for the
Confederacy.
(HN, 3/13/98)
1861 Mar 27, Black demonstrators
in Charleston staged ride-ins on street cars.
(MC, 3/27/02)
1861 May 24, General Benjamin
Butler declared slaves to be the contraband of war when he declared
them contraband at Fort Monroe, Va.
(HN,
5/24/98)(www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Butler_Benjamin_F_1818-1893)
1861 Dec 5, In the U.S. Congress,
petitions and bills calling for the abolition of slavery were
introduced.
(HN, 12/5/98)
1861 Harriet Jacobs (1813-1897)
authored “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl” under the pseudonym
Linda Brent. Jacobs grew up in North Carolina and later escaped to NY.
In 2004 Jean Fagan Yellin (73) authored “Harriet Jacobs: A Life.”
(SFC, 6/23/04, p.E1)
1861 Samuel F.B. Morse, inventor
of the telegraph, authored a pamphlet titled: "An Argument on the
Ethical Position of Slavery in the Social System."
(WSJ, 10/28/03, p.D10)
1862 Mar 8, Nat Gordon, last
pirate, was hanged in NYC for stealing 1,000 slaves.
(MC, 3/8/02)
1862 Mar 24, Abolitionist Wendell
Phillips spoke to a crowd about emancipation in Cincinnati, Ohio and
was pelted by eggs.
(HN, 3/24/00)
1862 Apr 3, A bill was passed to
abolish slavery in Washington, D.C. [see Apr 16]
(HN, 4/3/98)
1862 Apr 12, Union Gen. David
Hunter (1802-1886) formed the first official African-American regiment
during the Civil War. The First South Carolina Volunteer Infantry was
first organized in the Department of the South by Gen. David Hunter at
Hilton Head, SC, in May of 1862.
(AH, 4/07,
p.14)(http://johnib.wordpress.com/category/abraham-lincoln/)
1862 Apr 16, President Lincoln
signed a bill, passed on April 3, ending slavery in the District of
Columbia.
(HN, 4/16/98)(AP, 4/16/08)
1862 Jul 16, Ida Bell Wells, first
president of the American Negro League, was born.
(HN, 7/16/98)
1862 Jul 16, Two Union soldiers
and their servant ransacked a house and raped a slave in Sperryville,
Virginia.
(HN, 7/16/99)
1862 Jul 17, US army was
authorized to accept blacks as laborers.
(MC, 7/17/02)
1862 Aug 25, US Secretary of War
authorized Gen. Rufus Saxton to arm 5,000 slaves.
(chblue.com, 8/25/01)
1862 Mary Jane Patterson
(1840-1894) received a degree from Oberlin College, Ohio, becoming the
1st black female college graduate in the US.
(SSFC, 2/15/04, p.C6)
1863 Jan 31, The 1st South
Carolina Volunteers, later called the 33rd U.S. Colored Troops was
officially recognized. Components of the regiment had been in training
since early 1962.
(Smith., 4/95, p.14)(MC, 1/31/02)
1863 Mar 26, Voters in West
Virginia approved the gradual emancipation of slaves.
(SS, 3/26/02)
1863 May 1, Confederate congress
passed a resolution to kill black Union soldiers.
(HN, 5/1/98)
1863 May 22, The US War Dept.
established the Bureau of Colored Troops.
(MC, 5/22/02)
1863 May 28, The 54th
Massachusetts, the first black regiment from the North, left Boston
headed for Hilton Head, South Carolina, to fight in the Civil War.
(AP, 5/28/97)(HN, 5/28/99)
1863 Sep 23, Mary Church Terrell,
educator, political activist, and first president of the National
Association of Colored Women, was born in Memphis, Tennessee. An 1884
graduate of Oberlin College, America's first college to admit women and
amongst the first to admit students of all races, Terrell was one of
the first American women of African descent to graduate from college.
She earned her master's degree from Oberlin in 1888.
(http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/today/today.html)
1864 Jan 10, George Washington
Carver (d.1943), American botanist and a former slave who became a
scientist and inventor, gave the world peanut butter, was born.
"Ninety-nine percent of the failures come from people who have the
habit of making excuses."
(AP, 9/20/98)(HN, 1/10/99)
1864 Feb 21, The 1st US Catholic
parish church for blacks was dedicated in Baltimore.
(MC, 2/21/02)
1864 Mar 1, Rebecca Lee
(1831-1895) became the first black woman to receive an American medical
degree, from the New England Female Medical College in Boston.
(AP,
3/1/00)(www.nlm.nih.gov/changingthefaceofmedicine/physicians/biography_73.html)
1864 Missionaries settled in
Zanzibar following a call by David Livingstone for volunteers to fight
the slave trade and help spread Christianity across Africa.
(SSFC, 6/9/02, p.C13)
1865 Jan 31, The House of
Representatives approved a constitutional amendment (121-24) abolishing
slavery. It would become the 13th amendment to the US Constitution. It
was ratified on December 6.
(www.loc.gov/rr/program/bib/ourdocs/13thamendment.html)(WSJ, 7/16/01,
p.A10)
1865 Feb 1, Lincoln's home state
of Illinois became the first to ratify the Thirteenth Amendment
abolishing slavery throughout the United States. President Abraham
Lincoln had issued the Emancipation Proclamation two years earlier, but
it had not effectively abolished slavery in all of the states--it did
not apply to slave-holding border states that had remained with the
Union during the Civil War. After the war, the sentiment about blacks
was mixed even among anti-slavery Americans: some considered Lincoln's
address too conservative and pushed for black suffrage, arguing that
blacks would remain oppressed by their former owners if they did not
have the power to vote. After the amendment was passed, the Freedmen's
Bureau was created to help blacks with the problems they would
encounter while trying to acquire jobs, education and land of their
own.
(HNPD, 2/1/99)
1865 Feb 8, Martin Robinson Delany
became the 1st black major in US army.
(MC, 2/8/02)
1865 Feb 12, Henry Highland
Garnet, became the 1st black to speak in US House of Reps.
(MC, 2/12/02)
1865 Mar 2, Freedman's Bureau was
founded for Black Education.
(SC, 3/2/02)
1865 Mar 3, US Bureau of Refugees,
Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands was established to help destitute free
blacks.
(SC, 3/3/02)
1865 Apr 23, Dedicated
Massachusetts abolitionist Silas Soule (b.1838) was shot and
killed near his home in Colorado by a soldier named Charles
Squires. It is thought that Squires was hired by men loyal to Col. John
Chivington to kill Soule. Soule's testimony against Chivington about
the 1864 massacre at Sand Creek led, in part, the United States
Congress to refuse the Army's request for thousands of men for a
general war against the Native Americans of the Plains States.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silas_Soule)
1865 Jun 19, Emancipation Day,
also known as Juneteenth, was the day that Union General Granger
informed Texas slaves that they were free. Blacks came to celebrate the
day as Juneteenth Freedom Day.
(SFEC, 6/21/98, p.D3)(SFC, 6/18/04, p.B2)
1865 Dec 18 The Thirteenth
Amendment to the US Constitution, abolishing slavery, was declared in
effect.
(V.D.-H.K.p.276)(AP, 12/18/07)
1866 Apr 9, A Civil Rights Bill
passed over Pres Andrew Johnson's veto.
(MC, 4/9/02)
1866 Aug 8, African-American
Matthew Alexander Henson was born in Maryland. He and four Inuits
accompanied U.S. Naval Commander Robert E. Peary when he planted the
U.S. flag at the North Pole on April 6, 1909. Henson became an Arctic
expert during Peary's first two failed expeditions. By the third
attempt, which began in July 1908, Henson's strength, knowledge of the
Eskimo language and dog driving skills made him an essential member of
the team. Whether Peary's party actually reached the North Pole or
missed it by as much as 60 miles due to a navigational miscalculation
remains controversial to this day.
(HNPD, 8//99)(Internet)
1866 Sep 6, Frederick Douglass
became the 1st US black delegate to a national convention.
(MC, 9/6/01)
1866 Mary Ellen Pleasant was
kicked off a streetcar in San Francisco and began arguing against laws
prohibiting black people from riding them.
(SFC, 2/16/09, p.B2)
1867 Jan 8, Legislation gave
suffrage to DC blacks, despite Pres. Johnson's veto.
(MC, 1/8/02)
1867 Apr 1, Blacks voted in
the municipal election in Tuscumbia, Alabama.
(OTD)
1867 Apr 24, Black demonstrators
staged ride-ins on Richmond, Va., streetcars.
(MC, 4/24/02)
1867 May 1, Reconstruction in the
South began with black voter registration.
(HN, 5/1/98)
1867 Sep 13, Gen. E.R.S. Canby
ordered South Carolina courts to impanel blacks as jurors.
(MC, 9/13/01)( www.tsha.utexas.edu)
1868 Jul 28, The 14th Amendment to
the Constitution, guaranteeing due process of law, was certified in
effect by Secretary of State William H. Seward. It gave freed slaves
full citizenship and equal protection under the laws, however it did
not spell out the extent of integration with white America. Framers
expected the amendment’s Privileges or Immunities clause would protect
US citizens’ rights against state infringement..
(www.americaslibrary.gov/cgi-bin/page.cgi/jb/recon/revised_1)(AP,
7/28/08)(WSJ, 3/14/09, p.W3)
1868 Nov 24, Scott Joplin was born
in Texas. By the time he was a teenager, Joplin could play the banjo
and the piano, and had begun to work as a saloon musician. In the late
1890s, he was performing and composing at the Maple Leaf Club in
Sedalia, Missouri, and in 1899 his "Maple Leaf Rag" made ragtime
popular. Ragtime was a mixture of classical European and
African-American styles of music, and it influenced the later
development of jazz. Joplin was not considered a serious composer until
ragtime resurfaced in the 1970s, when his composition "The Entertainer"
was the theme to the movie The Sting. The first grand opera composed by
an African American was Joplin's Treemonisha (1911), which was not very
successful at the time. In 1976, however, more than 50 years after
Joplin died, Treemonisha won the Pulitzer Prize.
(HNPD, 11/24/98)(WSJ, 7/5/00, p.A20)
1868 John Davidson and Franklin
Hargo became the 1st African American students admitted to the Univ. of
Michigan.
(LSA, Spring/04, p.53)
1869 Feb 20, Tenn. Gov. W.C.
Brownlow declared martial law in Ku Klux Klan crisis.
(MC, 2/20/02)
1869 Mar 3, University of South
Carolina opened to all races.
(SC, 3/3/02)
1869 Mar 13, Arkansas legislature
passed anti-Klan law.
(MC, 3/13/02)
1869 Apr 12, North Carolina
legislature passed an anti-Klan Law.
(MC, 4/12/02)
1869 Iowa’s Supreme Court ordered
the state’s schools to be desegregated..
(Econ, 4/11/09, p.31)
1870 Feb 3, 15th Amendment on
Black suffrage was passed. [see Mar 30]
(MC, 2/3/02)
1870 Feb 25, Hiram Revels
(Sen-R-MS) was sworn in as the 1st black member of Congress.
(MC, 2/25/02)
1870 Feb 26, Wyatt Outlaw, black
leader of Union League in North Carolina, was lynched.
(SC, 2/26/02)
1870 Apr 9, The American
Anti-Slavery Society dissolved.
(MC, 4/9/02)
1870 Aug 6, White conservatives
suppressed the black vote and captured Tenn. Legislature.
(MC, 8/6/02)
1870 Dec 12, Joseph H. Rainey
became the first black lawmaker sworn into the U.S. House of
Representatives. Rainey, a Republican from South Carolina, filled the
seat made vacant by the expulsion of Representative Benjamin F.
Whittemore. Rainey served for 10 years.
(AP, 12/12/97)(MC, 12/12/01)
1870 George Grant (d.1910) became
the 1st black graduate from Harvard Dental School. He got the 1st
patent for a golf tee in 1899.
(ST, 2/20/04, p.C1)
1871 May 12, Segregated street
cars were integrated in Louisville, Ky.
(MC, 5/12/02)
1871 Nov 28, Ku Klux Klan trials
began in Federal District Court in SC.
(MC, 11/28/01)
1872 May 10, Victoria Woodhull
became the first woman nominated for U.S. president. Thomas Nast
depicted her as "Mrs. Satan." Woodhull adhered to a diet prescribed by
Sylvester Graham, known for his ginger-colored crackers. Sylvester
preached against demon rum and died at age 57 after administering
himself a medicinal treatment with considerable liquor. Frederick
Douglas, African-American statesman, was nominated as vice president on
the Equal Rights Party ticket.
(SFEC, 3/8/98, Par p.14-16)(SFC, 10/17/98, p.E5)(HN,
5/10/98)(WSJ, 3/13/09, p.W2)
1872 Dec 11, America's first black
governor took office as Pinckney Benton Stewart Pinchback became acting
governor of Louisiana.
(AP, 12/11/97)
1873 Mar 22, Slavery was abolished
in Puerto Rico.
(MC, 3/22/02)
1873 Jun 5, Sultan Bargash closed
the slave market of Zanzibar. Missionaries bought the site and began
building an Anglican cathedral.
(SSFC, 6/9/02, p.C13)(MC, 6/5/02)
1874 Mar 11, Charles Sumner (63),
a white civil rights leader, died.
(MC, 3/12/02)
1874 The California state Supreme
Court in Ward vs. Flood upheld a law authorizing racial segregation in
public schools.
(SSFC, 5/16/04, p.E5)
1875 Mar 1, Congress passed the
Civil Rights Act, which was invalidated by the Supreme Court in 1883.
(HN, 3/1/98)
1875 Jul 4, White Democrats killed
several blacks in terrorist attacks in Vicksburg, Miss.
(Maggio, 98)
1875 Jul 10, Mary McLeod Bethune
(d.1955), American educator, reformer and founder of the
Bethune-Cookman College in Florida and the National Council of Negro
Women, was born. "Invest in the human soul. Who knows, it might be a
diamond in the rough."
(AP, 7/9/97)(HN, 7/10/98)
1875 Aug 4, The first Convention
of Colored Newspapermen was held in Cincinnati, Ohio.
(HN, 8/4/98)
1876 Jul 8, White terrorists
attacked Black Republicans in Hamburg, SC, and killed 5.
(MC, 7/8/02)
1876 Sep 6, A race riot took place
in Charleston, SC.
(MC, 9/6/01)
1877 Aug 2, Sir James Douglas
(b.1803), the first provincial governor of British Columbia
(1858-1864), died. He was the son of a black woman from Barbados and a
Scottish planter.
(SFC, 2/12/10, p.A18)
1878 Jan 14, US Supreme court
ruled that race separation on trains was unconstitutional.
(MC, 1/14/02)
1878 Apr 21, Ship Azor left
Charleston with 206 blacks for Liberia.
(MC, 4/21/02)
1879 Feb 28, In the "Exodus of
1879" southern blacks fled political and economic exploitation.
(MC, 2/28/02)
1879 May 24, William Lloyd
Garrison (73), abolitionist (Liberator), died.
(MC, 5/24/02)
1880 California politicians
integrated the state’s public schools.
(SSFC, 5/16/04, p.E5)
1880 John Ballard, a blacksmith
and former slave, bought land on a mountain in the Santa Monica range
of southern California. In 2010 the 2,031 peak, previously known as
Negrohead Mountain, was renamed to Ballard Mountain.
(SFC, 2/22/10, p.A6)
1880 Richard Etheridge was
promoted to Keeper of the North Carolina Life-Saving Station #17. He
was the 1st black man to be appointed a Station Keeper in the US
Life-Saving Service.
(ON, 1/02, p.1)
1881 May 17, Frederick Douglass
was appointed recorder of deeds for Washington, D.C.
(HN, 5/17/98)
1881 Jul 4, In Alabama Tuskegee
Institute enrolled 30 students. It was founded by former slave Booker
T. Washington as a "normal" school and industrial institute where
"colored" people with little or no formal schooling could be trained as
teachers and skilled workers.
(NH, 2/97, p.82)(WSJ, 2/24/98, p.A22)(IB, Internet,
12/7/98)
1882-1968 According to records at Tuskegee Univ.
4,743 people were killed by lynch mobs in the US during this period.
3,446 of these people were black.
(Econ, 6/18/05, p.29)
1883 Nov 3, Race riots took place
in Danville, Virginia, and 4 blacks were killed.
(MC, 11/3/01)
1883 Nov 26, Sojourner Truth,
former slave and abolitionist, died in Battle Creek, Mich.
(AP, 11/26/08)
1883 Dec 22, Arthur Wergs
Mitchell, first African-American to be elected to the U.S. House of
Representatives, was born.
(HN, 12/22/98)
1883 J.A. Rogers, writer, was born
in Jamaica. He later moved to the US and then Europe and authored the
3-volume work "Sex and Race."
(SSFC, 6/16/02, p.M2)
1886 Mar 17, The Carrollton
Massacre in Mississippi occurred and 20 African Americans were killed.
(HN, 3/17/98)
1886 Sep 13, Alain Locke, writer
and first African-American Rhodes scholar, was born.
(HN, 9/13/98)
1887 Aug 17, Marcus Garvy
(d.1940), Black Nationalist and Jamaican leader who promoted the
departure of African-Americans back Africa, was born. He was active in
the US from 1916-1925 and advocated racial separation and emigration of
American Negroes to Africa. He was deported in 1925. He was the founder
of the Universal Negro Improvement Association. He also founded the
Black Star Line, a steamship company owned and operated by blacks to
link black communities around the world.
(AHD, p.544)(Civilization, July-Aug, 1995, p.
36)(WSJ, 2/7/96, p.A-12)(HN, 8/17/98)
1888 Jan 20, Leadbelly, blues 12
string guitarist (Rock Island Line), was born in Louisiana.
(MC, 1/20/02)
1888 May 13, Slavery was abolished
in Brazil. Some 4 million slaves had been imported, the most of any
nation in the western hemisphere.
(WSJ, 8/6/96, p.A1)(SS, Internet, 5/13/97)(HN,
5/13/98)
1890 The Louisiana state
Legislature passed the Louisiana Separate Car Act, which called for
railroad companies to provide equal but separate accommodations for
white and colored races.
(SFC, 5/12/96, p.A-6)(ON, 11/03, p.5)
1890 William Sheppard (b.1865 in
Virginia) left the US for missionary work in Congo. In 2002 Pagan
Kennedy authored "Black Livingstone: A True Tale of African Adventure."
(SSFC, 2/3/02, p.M1)
1892 Jun 7, Homer Plessy was
arrested in New Orleans for violating the Separate Car Act. His case
went all the way to the US Supreme Court, which upheld the law on May
18, 1896.
(ON, 11/03, p.5)
1892 Aug 5, Harriet Tubman
received a pension from Congress for her work as a nurse, spy and scout
during the Civil War.
(HN, 8/5/98)
1892 Aug 13, The first issue of
the "Afro American" newspaper was published in Baltimore, Maryland.
(HN, 8/13/98)
1892 William Sheppard, US
missionary in Congo, set out to find the hidden kingdom of Kuba and
eventually made contact with King Kot Amweeky.
(SSFC, 2/3/02, p.M1)
1893 Jan 26, Bessie Coleman, first
black airplane pilot, was born.
(HN, 1/26/99)
1893 Jul 7, In Bardwell, Ky., C.J.
Miller, a black man accused of murdering two white girls, was
mutilated, torched and left hanging from a telegraph pole. Ida Wells
(1862-1931) was commissioned to investigate the story by the Chicago
Inter-Ocean newspaper and published her findings under the title
“History Is a Weapon.”
(WSJ, 3/8/08,
p.W8)(www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/wellslynchlaw.html)
1894 Feb 8, The US Enforcement Act
was repealed making it easier to disenfranchise blacks.
(MC, 2/8/02)
1894 Feb 14, Mary Lucinda Cardwell
Dawson, was born. She founded the National Negro Opera Company (NNOC)
and was appointed to President John F. Kennedy's National Committee on
Music.
(HN, 2/14/99)
1894 Jul 16, Many negro miners in
Alabama were killed by striking white miners.
(MC, 7/16/02)
1894 Louisiana extended the
Separate Car Act to include train station waiting rooms. The
Legislature in this year also passed a law prohibiting interracial
marriage.
(ON, 11/03, p.5)
1894 Wheeling Gaunt, a former
slave, bequeathed 9 acres of land to the village of Yellow springs,
Ohio, with the stipulation that the "poor worthy widows" of the town
receive 25 lbs. of flour every Christmas.
(WSJ, 12/4/96, p.B1)
1895 Feb 20, Frederick Douglass
(77), Abolitionist and escaped slave, died in Washington, D.C. In 1881
Douglass authored "The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass."
(AP, 2/19/98)(MC, 2/20/02)(ON, 7/02, p.8)
1895 Feb 21, The NC Legislature
adjourned for the day to mark the death of Frederick Douglass.
(MC, 2/21/02)
1895 Mar 18, Some 200 blacks left
Savannah, Ga., for Liberia.
(MC, 3/18/02)
1895 May 11, William Grant Still
was born. He is considered the Dean of black African composers.
(HN, 5/11/99)
1895 Jun 10, Hattie McDaniel was
born in Wichita, Kansas. She was the first African-American actress to
win an Oscar which she won for her role as a maid in Gone With the
Wind.
(www.imdb.com/name/nm0567408/)
1896 May 16, The US Supreme Court
upheld the State of Louisiana Separate Car Act in Plessy vs. Ferguson.
The Plessy v. Ferguson decision allowed that as long as accommodation
existed, segregation did not constitute discrimination, establishing
the doctrine of "separate but equal." The ruling that was overturned in
the 1954 Brown case, which involved elementary education. The Court
ruled unanimously that segregation in public education was a denial of
the equal protection of the laws. [see May 18]
(SFC, 5/12/96, p.A-6)(HNQ, 1/26/99)
1896 May 18, The US Supreme Court
ruled 7 to 1 to give states the authority to segregate people according
to race. [see May 16]
(AP, 5/18/03)(ON, 11/03, p.6)
1896 Jul 21, Mary Church Terrell
founded the National Association of Colored Women in Washington, D.C.
(HN, 7/21/98)
1897 Feb 27, Miriam Anderson, was
born. She became a world renown opera singer and civil rights pioneer,
and is best remembered for singing "My Country Tis of Thee" in front of
the Lincoln Memorial.
(HN, 2/27/02)
1897 Dec 12, Lillian Smith,
Southern writer and civil rights activist, was born.
(HN, 12/12/00)
1898 Feb 22, A black postmaster
was lynched and his wife and 3 daughters were shot in Lake City, SC.
(MC, 2/22/02)
1898 Apr 9, Paul Robeson (d.1976),
black athlete, actor and singer, was born. He is best remembered for
his role in Othello. Lloyd L. Brown later wrote the biography "The
Young Paul Robeson: On My Journey Now."
(SFC, 3/26/98, p.A26)(HN, 4/9/99)
1898 May 12, Louisiana adopted a
new constitution with a "grandfather clause" designed to eliminate
black voters.
(SC, Internet, 5/12/97)
1898 Nov 9, Some white people in
Wilmington, NC, issued a White Declaration of Independence, proclaiming
"that we will no longer be ruled ... by men of African origin.
(AP, 11/28/09)
1898 Nov
10, A race riot in Wilmington, NC, left many blacks killed. A vigilante
group of armed supremacists forcibly removed the Republican city
leaders (both black and white) from office, and took control, burning
buildings and shooting blacks. Reports vary from a coroner’s total of
14 to unconfirmed eyewitness reports claiming scores of deaths.
(http://statelibrary.dcr.state.nc.us/nc/bio/afro/riot.htm)(WSJ,
1/22/02, p.A11)(AP, 11/28/09)
1899 Apr 23, In Georgia some 2000
people gathered to watch the lynching Sam Hose, a black man
questionably accused of murdering a white planter and raping his wife.
His ears, fingers, and genitals were cut off and his face was skinned
before he was burned in kerosene soaked wood. His and other stories
were later told in the 1998 book: "Trouble in Mind: Black Southerners
in the Age of Jim Crow" by Leon F. Litwack.
(SFEC, 4/19/98, BR p.4)
1899 Jun 2, Black Americans
observed a day of fasting to protest lynchings.
(SC, 6/2/02)
1899 Charles Chesnutt (b.1858),
African-American writer, authored 2 collections of short stories and a
biography of Frederick Douglass.
(WSJ, 1/22/02, p.A11)
1900 May 23, Civil War hero Sgt.
William H. Carney became the first African American to receive the
Medal of Honor, thirty-seven years after the Battle of Fort Wagner.
(HN, 5/23/99)
1900 Aug 23, Booker T. Washington
formed the National Negro Business League in Boston, Massachusetts.
(HN, 8/23/98)
1900 Charles Chesnutt (b.1858),
African-American writer, authored his novel "The House Behind the
Cedars."
(WSJ, 1/22/02, p.A11)
1901 Mar 7, Blacks were found to
be still enslaved in certain parts of South Carolina.
(HN, 3/7/98)
1901 Dec 24, Clarence King
(b.1842), explorer and geologist, died in Arizona. He lived a double
life as James Todd, the husband of a black woman named Ada (d.1964 at
103). In 2009 Roger K. Miller authored “Passing Strange: A Gilded Age
Tale of Love and Deception Across the Color Line.”
(http://encyclopedia.jrank.org/KHA_KRI/KING_CLARENCE_18421901_.html)(SFC,
2/24/09, p.E3)
1901 Charles Chesnutt (b.1858),
African-American writer, authored his novel "The Marrow of Tradition."
(WSJ, 1/22/02, p.A11)
1901 The Alabama state
constitution was enacted to reverse gains made by blacks after the
Civil War. It included a prohibition on marriages between blacks and
whites. In 1999 steps were taken to repeal the ban.
(SFC, 11/7/98, p.A11)(SFC, 4/17/99, p.A4)(WSJ,
4/3/02, p.A1)
1902 Feb 1, Langston Hughes
(d.1967), African-American poet. was born. (author: Way Down South)
(440 Int'l, 2/1/1999)(HN, 2/1/99)
1903 Zora Neale Hurston (d.1960),
black author, was born.
(SFC, 4/5/96, p.D-1)(SFC, 12/13/96, p.C8)
1903 W.E.B. Du Bois published "The
Souls of Black Folk."
(Wired, 10/96, p.134)(WSJ, 4/29/03, A16)
1904 Aug 7, Ralph Bunche, U.S.
diplomat and the first African-American Nobel Prize winner (1950), was
born.
(HN, 8/7/98)(MC, 8/7/02)
1904 Dec 24, German SW Africa
abolished the slavery of young children.
(MC, 12/24/01)
1904 Mary Ellen Pleasant,
abolitionist and SF businesswoman, died and was buried in Napa, Ca. Her
monument reads “Mother of Civil Rights in California.”
(SFC, 6/10/04, p.B4)
1906 Feb 9, Poet Paul Laurence
Dunbar (33), son of former slaves, died of TB in his hometown of
Dayton, Ohio.
(AH, 2/06, p.15)
1906 Aug 13, At Fort Brown, Texas,
some 10-20 armed men engaged an all-Black Army unit in a shooting
rampage that left one townsperson dead and a police officer wounded. A
1910 inquiry placed guilt on the soldiers and Pres. Roosevelt ordered
all 167 discharged without honor. In 1970 John Weaver (d.2002) authored
"The Brownsville Raid," an account of the incident that led the Army to
exonerate all 167 men.
(SFC, 12/7/02, p.A25)
1906 Sep 22, Race riots in
Atlanta, Georgia, killed 21 people. In 2001 Mark Bauerlein authored
“Negrophobia,” an account of the riots.
(HN, 9/22/98)(WSJ, 6/12/01, p.A20)
1906 In SF Purcell’s Negro
dance hall opened at 550 Pacific St. and Sid LeProtti began playing
there. It w3as one of the first buildings erected following the
earthquake and fire.
(SFEC, 4/12/98, p.D7)(SFC, 2/16/09, p.B2)
1906 Gov. James Kimble of
Mississippi denounced black men as fiends and argued that lynching was
the only way to control a barbarous race.
(WSJ, 1/14/02, p.A16)
1907 Dec 29, Robert C. Weaver
(d.1997), the first African American to serve on a president’s cabinet,
was born. He advised Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt on Housing, Education
and Employment. [see Jan 13,18, 1966]
(HN, 12/29/00)
1907 The 1st Black American was
elected a Rhodes scholar.
(WSJ, 7/11/03, p.A1)
1908 Jul 2,
Thurgood Marshall (d.1993), first African-American US Supreme Court
Justice, was born in Baltimore. He served on the US Supreme Court from
1967-1991. As a civil rights lawyer in the 1950s he maintained a
confidential relationship with the FBI.
(SFC, 12/3/96, p.A3)(HN, 7/2/98)(AP, 7/2/08)
1908 Aug 3, Col. Allan Allensworth
(1842-1914) filed the site plan for the first African-American town,
Allensworth, California. Allensworth had purchased 800 acres in Tulare
County along the Sante Fe rail line and planned a settlement to be
governed, financed and operated by black people. The town flourished
for a decade and then began to crumble. In 1976 it was transformed into
a 240-acre state park.
(HN, 8/3/98)(SFC, 1/8/07, p.A1)
1908 Aug 14, A race war broke out
in Springfield, Illinois. Angry over reports that a black man had
sexually assaulted a white woman, a white mob wanted to take a recently
arrested suspect from the city jail and kill him. Most blacks had fled
the city, but as the mob swept through the area, they captured and
lynched a black barber, Scott Burton, who had stayed behind to protect
his home. Rioting continued the next day leaving a total of two blacks
and 5 whites dead and hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of
property destroyed. Some 4,000 state militiamen were required to quell
the riot, which helped inspire the creation of the NAACP the following
year.
(www.lib.niu.edu/1996/iht329622.html)(AP,
8/14/08)(WSJ, 1/20/08, p.A12)
1908 Aug 25, The National
Association of Colored Nurses was formed.
(chblue.com, 8/25/01)
1908 Oct, Georgia’s nearly
all-white electorate voted by a 2 to 1 margin to abolish its system of
peonage as of March 1909.
(WSJ, 3/29/08, p.W8)
1908 Dec 26, Jack Johnson
(1878-1946) of Texas knocked out Tommy Burns in Australia to become the
1st black world heavyweight boxing champion. He was not officially
given the title until 1910 when he beat Jim Jeffries in Las Vegas. In
1913 Johnson fled the US because of trumped up charges of violating the
Mann Act's stipulations against transporting white women across state
lines for prostitution. Johnson held the title until 1915. In 1920 he
returned to the US, was arrested and served a one year sentence in
Leavenworth in Kansas, where he was appointed athletic director of the
prison.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Johnson_(boxer))(ON, 4/09, p.7)
1909 Feb 12, The National
Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was founded
by 60 people gathered in NYC to discuss recent race riots and how to
fight discrimination. They were initially known as the National Negro
committee and signed a proclamation known as “The Call.” It was based
on the Niagara movement of 1905. Mary White Ovington (1865-1951) was
one of the founders.
(SFC, 5/12/96, p.A-6)(SFEC,12/797, BR p.6)(AP,
2/12/98)(SFC, 2/12/09, p.A1)
1909 Feb 23, Shrove Tuesday. The
Zulu Social Aid and Pleasure Society, the 1st African-American Mardi
Gras organization, first marched in the New Orleans Mardi Gras parade.
Members had marched in the Mardi Gras as early as 1901, but their first
appearance as Zulus came in 1909, with William Story as King.
(www.mardigras.org/Calc.html)(http://tinyurl.com/ylqbwbj)
1909 May 17, White firemen on
Georgia RR struck to protest the hiring of blacks.
(MC, 5/17/02)
1909 May 31, The National
Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) held its
first conference at the United Charities Building in NYC.
(HN, 5/31/98)(MC, 5/31/02)
1909 Aug 10, George W. Crockett,
first African-American lawyer with the U.S. Department of Labor, was
born.
(HN, 8/10/98)
1910 Jul 4, African-American Jack
Johnson knocked out Jim Jeffries in the 15th round of a heavyweight
boxing match in Reno, Nevada. As Johnson entered the ring a band played
“All Coons Look Alike to Me.” Johnson’s victory prompted race riots in
major cities across the United States leaving as many as 26 people
dead. Jack London covered the match and coined the phrase "The great
white hope" in his story.
(SFEC, 10/3/99, p.B10)(Econ, 6/21/08, p.104)(ON,
4/09, p.7)
1911 Jan 3, Joseph Rauh
civil rights activist: cofounded Americans for Democratic Action;
member: executive board of NAACP; general counsel: Leadership
Conference on Civil Rights, was born.
(440 Int'l. 1/3/99)
1911 Scott Joplin (1868-1917)
wrote his opera "Treemonisha." The 1st full professional staging was
done in 1975 by the Houston Grand Opera.
(WSJ, 7/5/00, p.A20)(SFC, 6/21/03, p.D1)
1913 Feb 4, Rosa Lee Parks, civil
rights activist, was born. Her refusal to give up her seat on a
segregated bus in Alabama started the Civil Rights Movement.
(HN, 2/4/99)
1913 Mar 10, Harriet Tubman,
abolitionist, conductor on Underground RR, died in NY. In 2004
Catherine Clinton authored "Harriet Tubman: The Road to Freedom."
(MC, 3/10/02)(SSFC, 2/1/04, p.M1)
1914 May 13, Joe Louis, world
heavyweight boxing champion from 1937 to 1949, was born in Lafayette,
Ala. His boxing record was 63-3 with 49 knock-outs.
(AP, 5/13/97)(HN, 5/13/99)
1915 Apr 5, Jack Johnson
(1878-1946), African-American heavyweight champion boxer since 1908,
lost the heavyweight championship in Cuba to Jess Willard in the 26th
round.
(SFC, 1/17/05,
p.D6)(www.hickoksports.com/biograph/johnsonjack.shtml)
1915 Jul 28, 10,000 blacks marched
on 5th Ave in NYC to protest lynchings.
(SC, 7/28/02)
1915 Nov 14, Booker T. Washington
(b.1856), Black American educator, died in Tuskegee, Alabama. The
former slave later founded the Tuskegee Institute (1881). Booker
Taliaferro Washington later became the 1st black on a US postage stamp.
His autobiography "Up From Slavery" was listed in 1999 as the 3rd best
work of non-fiction in the English language in the 20th century by the
Modern Library. In 2009 Robert J. Norrell authored “Up From History:
The Life of Booker T. Washington.”
(AP, 5/5/97)(HN, 4/5/99)(SFC, 4/29/99, p.C5)(WSJ,
1/23/09, p.W10)
1915 Dec 4, Ku Klux Klan received
a charter from Fulton County, Ga.
(MC, 12/4/01)
1916 Jul 25, An explosion at the
Cleveland Waterworks tunnel project trapped 12 men and 18 would-be
rescuers. 8 men were saved and 10 bodies were recovered by a team led
by black inventor Garrett A. Morgan (d.1963) dressed in his new Safety
Hood.
(ON, 3/02, p.12)
1916 Anthony Crawford, black
farmer and father of 13 children, was beaten and lynched In Abbeyville,
South Carolina, following an argument with a white storekeeper.
(Econ, 6/18/05, p.29)
1917 Apr 1, Scott Joplin (b.1868),
ragtime composer (Sting), died of syphilis in a NY mental hospital. His
work included the opera "Treemonisha."
(MC, 4/1/02)(SFC, 6/21/03, p.D3)
1917 May 5, Eugene Jacques Bullard
became the first African-American aviator when he earned a flying
certificate with the French Air Service.
(HN, 5/5/99)
1917 Jul 2, Race riots erupted in
East St. Louis, Illinois. The official death toll was put at 48, but as
many as 200 were believed killed. In 1964 Elliott M. Rudwick authored
Race Riot at East St. Louis, July 2, 1917.” In 2008 Harper Barnes
authored “Never Been a Time: The 1917 Race Riot That Sparked the Civil
Rights Movement.”
(SFC, 7/18/08,
p.E3)(www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=54020510)
1917 Sep 8, Eugene Bullard,
aviator, was born in Columbus, Georgia. He emigrated to France and
became the first African-American combat aviator when he flew a
reconnaissance mission over the city of Metz, France. He was credited
with one confirmed "kill," a German Pfalz he shot down over Verdun.
(MC, 9/8/01)
1917 Nov 5, Supreme Court decision
(Buchanan vs. Warley) struck down a Louisville, Ky., ordnance requiring
blacks and whites to live in separate areas.
(MC, 11/5/01)
1918 Jul 25, A race riot in
Chester, Pennsylvania, left 3 blacks and 2 whites dead.
(SC, 7/25/02)
1919 Jan 19, John H. Johnson
(d.2005), editor and publisher of Ebony and Jet magazines, was born
Arkansas.
(HN, 1/19/99)(SFC, 8/8/05, p.B4)
1919 Jan 31, Jackie
Robinson, first black major league baseball player, was born.
(HN, 1/31/99)
1919 May 25, Madame C.J. Walker
(b.1867 as Sarah Breedlove), black, wealthy cosmetics manufacturer,
died at age 51. In 2003 Beverly Lowry authored "Her Dream of Dreams:
The Rise and Triumph of Madame C.J. Walker."
(WSJ, 4/22/03, D7)(SSFC, 10/24/04, Par p.4)
1919 Jul 24, A race riot in
Washington, DC, left 6 killed and 100 wounded.
(MC, 7/24/02)
1919 Jul 27, In a Chicago race
riot 15 whites and 23 blacks were killed with 500 injured.
(MC, 7/27/02)
1919 Oct 1, Black sharecroppers
gathered at Elaine, Arkansas, to secure a more equitable price for
their products. When a white deputy sheriff and a railroad detective,
arrived at the church, a fight broke out between them and the guards in
which the railroad detective was killed and the deputy sheriff was
wounded. This led to 3 days of fighting and the killing of 5 white men
and close to 200 black men, women and children. The Arkansas state
court later sentenced 12 sharecroppers to death and a 5-year legal
battle ensued. In 2008 Robert Whitaker authored “”On the Laps of Gods:
The Red Summer of 1919 and the Struggle for Justice That Remade a
Nation.”
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elaine_Race_Riot)(SSFC, 7/27/08, Books
p.1)
1920 Jan 4, The Negro National
League, the first black baseball league, was organized by Rube Foster.
(HN, 1/4/99)
1920 Aug 2, Marcus Garvey
presented his "Back To Africa" program in NYC.
(MC, 8/2/02)
1921 May 31, A major race riot
broke out in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Greenwood, the black section of town, was
burned. In 1997 Jewell Parker Rhodes wrote the novel "Magic City" based
on this event. As many as 10,000 white men and boys attacked the black
community and 35 blocks of the black business district were burned with
participation by police officers and a local unit of the National
Guard. Some 200-300 people were believed to have been killed. In 2000
the Tulsa Race Riot Commission recommended that reparations be paid to
survivors of the riots. In 2001 a final state commission recommended
that reparations be paid to survivors and their descendants.
(NPR, 5/31/96)(SFEC, 6/29/97, BR p.3)(SFC, 8/10/99,
p.A2)(SFC, 2/5/00, p.A3)(SFC, 3/1/01, p.A4)
1921 The film “Sport of the Gods”
featured an all-star cast of colored artists. It was based on a book by
Paul Laurence Dunbar.
(SFC, 7/16/08, p.E3)
1922 Mar 4, Bert Williams
(b.1874), Antigua-born black actor, mime and singer, died after
collapsing onstage in Detroit. In 2005 Caryl Phillips authored “Dancing
in the Dark,” a novel based on Bert Williams. His recordings included
“Nobody.”
(www.duboislc.org/ShadesOfBlack/BertWms.html)(SFC,
2/11/08, p.E1)
1922 Nov 13, Black Renaissance
began in Harlem, NY.
(MC, 11/13/01)
1922 Carter G. Woodson
(1875-1950), black historian, authored “The Negro in Our History.”
(WSJ, 5/19/05, p.D8)
1923 Feb 16, Betsy Smith makes her
first recording "Down Hearted Blues," her music reflected the
Depression era.
(HN, 2/16/99)
1923 Jun 21, Marcus Garvey was
sentenced to 5 years for using mail to defraud.
(MC, 6/21/02)
1924 Nov 30, Shirley Chisholm
(d.2004), first African-American congresswoman (1968), was born as
Shirley St. Hill in NYC.
(SFC, 1/3/05, p.A3)
1925 Jan 31, Benjamin
Hooks, civil rights leader, was born.
(HN, 1/31/99)
1925 Feb 8, Marcus Garvey entered
federal prison in Atlanta.
(MC, 2/8/02)
1925 May 19, Malcolm X, (Malcolm
Little) militant black Muslim leader, was born in Omaha, Neb. He spoke
of racial pride and black nationalism and was assassinated in 1965.
"You can't separate peace from freedom because no one can be at peace
unless he has his freedom."
(AP, 2/21/99)(HN, 5/19/99)(SFC, 9/8/99, p.A7)
1925 Aug 8, The first national
congress of the Ku Klux Klan opened. 200,000 members marched in
Washington, DC.
(HN, 8/8/98)(MC, 8/8/02)
1925 Ossian Sweet, a black doctor
who had moved into a white neighborhood of Detroit, was indicted on
murder charges after defending his property and life against a mob
attack. In 2004 Phyllis Vine authored "One Man's Castle: Clarence
Darrow in Defense of the American Dream."
(SSFC, 4/18/04, p.M4)
1925 Golden State Mutual Life
Insurance Co. was founded to give blacks access to life insurance. In
the 1940s architect Paul R. Williams was hired to design its
headquarters in LA.
(WSJ, 5/12/04, p.B10)
1925-1926 Edward Christopher Williams (1871-1929),
black playwright, teacher and librarian, published "When Washington Was
in Vogue," a serialized novel in The Messenger, a socialist magazine.
(WSJ, 1/23/04, p.W5)
1926 Jan 29, Violette Neatley
Anderson became the first African-American woman admitted to practice
before the U.S. Supreme Court.
(HN, 1/29/99)
1926 Feb 7, Negro History Week,
originated by Carter G. Woodson, was observed for the first time. The
2nd week in February was declared Negro History Week.
(USAT, 2/14/97, p.15A)(HN, 2/7/99)
1926 Mar 11, Ralph David
Abernathy, civil rights leader, was born.
(HN, 3/11/98)
1926 Jul 2, Medgar Evers, American
civil rights leader in Mississippi, was born. He was murdered in front
of his house by Byron DeLa Beckwith.
(HN, 7/2/99)
1926 Sep 25, The Convention to
Suppress the Slave Trade and Slavery, an international treaty created
under the auspices of the League of Nations, was first signed in Geneva
to be effective March 9, 1927.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1926_Slavery_Convention)
1927 Mar 1, Harry Belafonte,
calypso singer (Buck and the Preacher), was born in Harlem, NYC.
(SC, 3/1/02)
1927 Mar 7, A Texas law that
banned Negroes from voting was ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme
Court.
(HN, 3/7/98)
1927 Jul 10, David Dinkins, first
African-American mayor of New York City, was born.
(HN, 7/10/98)
1927 Aug 21, The 4th Pan-African
Congress met in NYC.
(SC, 8/21/02)
1927 Aug 25, Althea Gibson
(d.2003), Wimbledon's 1st black tennis champion (1957), was born in
Silver, SC.
(HN, 8/25/98)(WSJ, 9/29/03, p.A1)
1927 Dec, In Nashville, Ten.,
after harmonica wizard DeFord Bailey played his "Pan American Blues,"
WSM Announcer Judge Hay got the idea to change the name of the show
from the "Barn Dance" to the "Grand Ole Opry."
(www.pbs.org/deford/timeline/index.html)
1927 Alonzo Herndon, black Atlanta
businessman, died. In 2002 Carole Merritt authored "The Herndons: An
Atlanta Family."
(WSJ, 8/28/02, p.D8)
1928 Feb 24, In its first show to
feature a Black artist, the New Gallery of New York exhibited works of
Archibald Motley.
(HN, 2/24/98)
1928 Mar 10, James Earl Ray,
alleged assassin of Martin Luther King Jr, was born.
(MC, 3/10/02)
1929 Feb 23, Elston Howard, Yankee
catcher (1st black NY Yankee/1963 AL MVP), was born.
(MC, 2/23/02)
1929 The film “Hallelujah,”
released by MGM, featured an all black cast. It was produced and
directed by King Vidor.
(SFC, 7/16/08, p.E3)
1930 Jun 7, NY Times agrees to
capitalize the n in "Negro."
(SC, 6/7/02)
1930 Aug 7, In Marion, Indiana, a
mob broke into a jail and beat to death 2 young black men and hung them
from a tree in the courthouse square. Tommy Shipp and Abe Smith and a
3rd teenager had just been arrested for a botched robbery that left
Claude Deeter, a white man. dead. James Cameron (16) was saved from
hanging, even as a noose was on his neck. In 2006 Cynthia Carr authored
“Our Town: A Heartland Lynching, a Haunted Town and the Hidden History
of White America.”
(SSFC, 3/26/06, p.M3)
1931 Mar 25, In Alabama 9 young
black men, arrested at Paint Rock after riding a freight train, were
taken to Scottsboro. Victoria Price (21) and Ruby Bates (17), who had
worked as prostitutes in Huntsville, were also found on the train
dressed as boys. The 9 men were soon charged with raping the 2 white
woman, while riding on the freight train.
(WSJ, 6/20/07,
p.A17)(www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/FTrials/scottsboro/SB_chron.html)
1931 Mar 25, Ida Wells-Barnett
(b.1862), black journalist, died. In 1893 she investigated the Kentucky
lynching of a black man accused of murdering 2 white girls. In 2008
Paula J. Giddings authored “Ida: A Sword among Lions.”
(WSJ, 3/8/08,
p.W8)(www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/FWWwells.htm)
1931 Mar 30, In Scottsboro, Ala.,
9 young black men were indicted for rape. By the end of April all were
tried, convicted and sentenced to death, except for one age 13, who was
sentenced to life in prison. The US Supreme Court later overturned the
convictions, but they were convicted at a 2nd trial, even though one of
the accused said no rape had occurred. The sentences were again
overturned.
(WSJ, 6/20/07, p.A17)
1931 Apr 6, The 1st Scottsboro
(Ala) trial began for 9 blacks accused of rape.
(www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/FTrials/scottsboro/SB_chron.html)
1931 Aug 15, Roy Wilkins joined
NAACP as asst. secretary.
(MC, 8/15/02)
1931 Aug 20, Donald King, American
promoter of boxing, was born.
(MC, 8/20/02)
1931 In Detroit, Mich., Wallace D.
Fard started a movement that later became the Nation of Islam. He was
succeeded by Elijah Muhammad, who stressed the evil of white people and
the need for black self-sufficiency.
(WSJ, 10/24/03, p.A8)
1931 Slavery was officially
abolished in Ethiopia (1930 by the Ethiopian calendar).
(www.law.emory.edu/WAL/Advocacy/day1.htm)
1932 The US government began its
40-year Tuskegee Syphilis Study on 623 black men in rural Macon County,
Ala. It ended in 1972 after Health Service investigator Peter Buxton
exposed the study's unethical procedures.
(SSFC, 1/25/04, p.A27)
1933 Mar 15, The NAACP began a
coordinated attack on segregation and discrimination.
(MC, 3/15/02)
1933 Mar 18, Unita Blackwell, 1st
black mayor in Mississippi, was born.
(MC, 3/18/02)
1933 May 11, Louis Farrakhan,
leader of the black Nation of Islam, was born.
(HN, 5/11/98)
1933 Dec 8, Flip Wilson (d.1998),
the fist successful black host of a TV variety show, was born in Jersey
City. He hosted the Flip Wilson Show from 1970-1974.
(SFC, 11/26/98, p.B9)
1933 Dec 19, Cicely Tyson,
actress, best remembered for her role in The Autobiography of Ms. Jane
Pittman, was born.
(HN, 12/19/98)
1933 Arthur Raper (1899-1979),
sociologist, authored “The Tragedy of Lynching.” He was at this time
working for the US federal agency: Commission on Interracial
Cooperation, which had been created after WW I to help black veterans
in the segregated South.
(WSJ, 2/17/07, p.P13)
1934 Feb 2, The SF Police
Commission promulgated a set of regulations regarding dance permits to
Barbary Coast nightclubs. These included a prohibition against colored
and white people dancing together.
(SSFC, 2/1/09, DB p.50)
1934 Mar 17, Thousands of blacks
battled the police in New York in protest of the Scottsboro trial.
(HN, 3/17/98)
1935 May 5, American Jesse Owens
set the long jump record at 26 ft. 8 inch.
(HN, 5/5/98)(MC, 5/5/02)
1935 Aug 31, Eldridge Cleaver,
political activist and author of "Soul on Fire," was born.
(HN, 8/31/98)
1935 Nov 5, Maryland Court of
Appeals ordered the Univ. of Maryland to admit (black) Donald Murray.
(MC, 11/5/01)
1935 Zora Neale Hurston published
her folk tale collection: "Mules and Men." In 2001 the collection was
reprinted as "Every Tongue Got to Confess: negro Folk Tales From the
Gulf States."
(SSFC, 12/23/01, p.M1)
1935 The film “Princess Tam Tam”
starred Josephine Baker.
(SFC, 7/16/08, p.E3)
1936 Mar 6, Marion S. Barry,
(Mayor-D-Wash DC), was born.
(MC, 3/6/02)
1936 Jun 20, Jesse Owens of US set
a 100 meter record at 10.2 sec.
(MC, 6/20/02)
1936 Dec 8, NAACP filed suit to
equalize the salaries of black and white teachers.
(MC, 12/8/01)
1937 Apr 5, Colin Powell, U.S.
Army general, was born in Bronx, New York. He later became the Chairman
of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the Persian Gulf War and first
African American to serve in the position. In 2000 Pres.-elect Bush
appointed him to be Sec. of State.
(HFA, '96, p.28)(HN, 4/5/99)(SSFC, 12/17/00, p.A14)
1937 Jul 24, The state of Alabama
dropped charges against 4 black men accused of raping two white women
in the so-called Scottsboro case.
(AP,
7/24/97)(www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/FTrials/scottsboro/SB_chron.html)
1937 Aug 25, Pullman signed a
contract with the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, one of the first
substantive victories for black workers. [see Oct 10]
(SFC, 12/3/98, p.A3)
1937 Zora Neale Hurston
(1903-1960) wrote her novel: "Their Eyes were Watching God." It is
about a young black woman from Florida who survives a bad marriage and
finds true love with a younger man named Tea Cake. Cassette recordings
were made in 1991. She made some films during research trips on life in
the South in 1928 and 1929.
(SFC, 4/5/96, p.D-1)(SFC, 12/13/96, p.C8)
1937 Able Meeropol authored the
poem "Bitter Fruit," an anti-lynching anthem, under the pen name Lewis
Allan. He later added music. Billie Holiday 1st sang it as "Strange
Fruit" at the Café society nightclub in Greenwich Village.
(SFC, 1/8/03, p.D1)
1938 Nov 8, Crystal Bird Fauset of
Pa., became the first African American woman to be elected to a state
legislature.
(HN, 11/6/98)
1939 Apr 9, On Easter Sunday
Marion Anderson, at the invitation of Secretary of the Interior Harold
L. Ickes, sang a triumphant outdoor concert at the Lincoln Memorial
before a crowd of 75,000 and a radio audience of millions. In early
1939, the Daughters of the American Revolution denied the
internationally famed contralto the opportunity to sing at Constitution
Hall in Washington, D.C., because of her race. First Lady Eleanor
Roosevelt was so dismayed by the injustice that she resigned her own
D.A.R. membership in protest.
(AP, 4/9/97)(WSJ, 7/24/98, p.W11)(HNPD, 4/9/99)
1940 Jun 10, Marcus Garvey
(b.1887), US black leader (Back to Africa Movement), died. In 2008
Colin Grant authored “Negro With a Hat: The Rise and Fall of Marcus
Garvey.”
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcus_Garvey)(SSFC,
5/11/08, Books p.5)
1940 Oct 25, Col. Benjamin O.
Davis Sr. (1877-1970), commander of the 369th Infantry of New York, was
promoted to brigadier general. In 1955 his son became the first black
brigadier general in the Air Force. In 1989 Biographer Marvin Fletcher
authored “America's First Black General, Benjamin O. Davis, Sr.,
1880-1970.” Fletcher presented evidence of Davis’ birth records
indicating that he was born in May 1880 and later lied about his age so
that he could enlist in the Army without the permission of his parents.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_O._Davis,_Sr.)(www.kansaspress.ku.edu/fleame.html)
1940 Nov 13, U.S. Supreme Court
ruled in Hansberry v. Lee that African Americans cannot be barred from
white neighborhoods.
(HN, 11/13/98)
1941 Jan 16, The US War Dept
formed the 1st Army Air Corps squadron for black cadets.
(MC, 1/16/02)
1941 Dec 19, US Attorney General
Francis Biddle issued Circular No. 3591 to all federal prosecutors to
drop references to peonage and label such files as “Involuntary
Servitude and Slavery.” This was in response to Pres. Roosevelt’s fear
that mistreatment of blacks would be used in propaganda by Japan and
Germany.
(WSJ, 3/29/08, p.W8)
1942 Feb 28, There was a race riot
at the Sojourner Truth Homes in Detroit.
(MC, 2/28/02)
1942 May 20, US Navy 1st permitted
black recruits to serve.
(MC, 5/20/02)
1942 Aug 20, Isaac Hayes, composer
(Shaft), was born in Covington, TN.
(MC, 8/20/02)
1943 Jan 5, George Washington
Carver, Educator and scientist, died at age 81 at Tuskegee, Alabama.
Carver was born the son of a slave woman in the early 1860s, went to
college in Iowa and then headed to Alabama in 1896. There, at the
Tuskegee Institute, Carver served as an agricultural chemist,
experimenter, teacher and administrator, working to improve life for
African Americans in the rural South by teaching them better
agricultural skills. One of the farming methods Carver devised, using
peanut and soybean crops to enrich soil depleted by cotton crops,
revolutionized Southern farming. Carver became somewhat of a benevolent
example of the potential of black intellectuals. He was well-respected
by people such as President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Mahatma Gandhi,
Josef Stalin and Thomas Edison, whose offer of a job for more than $100
a year Carver refused. Carver worked at Tuskegee until his death.
(AP, 1/5/98)(HNPD, 1/5/99)
1943 May 25, Leslie Uggams,
singer, actress (Leslie Uggams Show, Roots), was born in NYC.
(SC, 5/25/02)
1943 May 25, There was a riot at
Mobile, Al., shipyard over upgrading 12 black workers.
(SC, 5/25/02)
1943 Jun 4, Race riots took place
in LA.
(MC, 6/4/02)
1943 Jun 20, Race-related rioting
erupted in Detroit; federal troops were sent in two days later to quell
the violence that resulted in 34 deaths and 600 wounded.
(AP, 6/20/97)(SSFC, 12/17/00, Par p.5)
1943 Jun 21, Federal troops put
down a race riot in Detroit that left 30 dead. [see Jun 20]
(MC, 6/21/02)
1943 Jul 2, The U.S. Army Air
Corps 99th Fighter Squadron, the first of the all-black Tuskegee Airmen
to see combat, had been based in Africa for four months when they were
assigned to escort 16 B-25 Mitchell bombers on a routine mission over
Sicilian targets. Lieutenant Charles B. Hall of Brazil, Indiana became
the first Tuskegee Airman to score a confirmed kill when he shot down a
German fighter plane.
(HNPD, 7/5/98)
1943 Jul 10, Arthur Ashe, first
black tennis player to win the U.S. Championship and Wimbledon, was
born.
(HN, 7/10/98)
1943 Aug 1, Race-related rioting
erupted in New York City's Harlem section, resulting in several deaths.
(AP, 8/1/97)
1943 Nov 23, Andrew Goodman
(d.1964), murdered civil rights worker, was born.
(MC, 11/23/01)
1943 The film "Stormy Weather," an
all-black musical, featured the tap dancing of the Nicholas Brothers.
Benny Carter (1907-2003) wrote arrangements and played on the sound
track.
(WSJ, 4/21/98, p.A21)(SFC, 7/5/00, p.A19)(SFC,
7/14/03, p.B4)
1943 Coast Guard Lt. Carlton
Skinner (d.2004) took command of the weather ship Sea Cloud, the 1st
fully integrated US naval warship.
(SSFC, 8/29/04, p.B7)
1943 The American Bar Association
(ABA) opened its ranks to black lawyers
(WSJ, 8/14/02, p.A1)
1944 Jan 26, Angela Davis,
American revolutionary and black militant, was born.
(HN, 1/26/99)
1944 Feb 9, Alice Walker, Pulitzer
prize winning author, was born. Her books include "The Autobiography of
Malcolm X" and "The Color Purple."
(HN, 2/9/99)
1944 Apr 3, The U.S. Supreme Court
ruled that black citizens are eligible to vote in all elections,
including primaries. The Smith vs. Allwright decision ruled "white
primaries" unconstitutional.
(HN, 4/3/01)(MC, 4/3/02)
1944 Apr 13, South Carolina
rejected black suffrage.
(MC, 4/13/02)
1944 Jul 17, An explosion at Port
Chicago, now the Concord Naval Weapons Station in Ca., killed 320
seamen when a pair of ammunition ships exploded. 10,000 tons of
ammunition exploded. 202 of the victims were black enlisted men. The
Navy court-martialed 50 black sailors for refusing to go back to work
after the catastrophe. They were released from prison in 1946 with
dishonorable discharges and reductions in rank. The story was later
described by Robert Allen in his 1989 "The Port Chicago Mutiny." In
1999 Pres. Clinton issued a pardon to Freddie Meeks, one of the last
living convicted African American sailors.
(SFEC, 3/2/97, z1 p.3)(SFC, 2/24/98, p.A15)(SFC,
12/24/99, p.A1)(SSFC, 2/6/05, Par p.6)
1944 Aug 10, Race riots took place
in Athens, Alabama.
(MC, 8/10/02)
1944 Aug 14, In Seattle, Wa., a
riot took place at Fort Lawton, following a scuffle between an
Italian prisoner and a black soldier. POW Guglielmo Olivotto was found
hanged the next day. In an ensuing trial 28 men were convicted. In 2005
Jack Hamann and his wife Leslie authored “On American Soil,“ which
covered the riot and the subsequent events. The convictions of the
soldiers were overturned based largely on shortcomings in the
prosecution described in the book.
{Washington, Black History, USA, Italy}
(SFC, 7/28/08,
p.A4)(www.historylink.org/essays/output.cfm?file_id=7378)
1944 Nov 1, Gen. Patton greeted
the 761st Tank Battalion, an all black unit, near Nancy, France. They
had no day off until linking Russian allies on May 5, 1945.
(SSFC, 5/30/04, p.B4)
1944 Gunnar Myrdal, Swedish
sociologist hired by the Carnegie Foundation, published his work: "An
American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy." This book
shaped intellectual thought over the next four decades. It was later
criticized by authors Roberts and Stratton in their work: "The new
Color Line: How Quotas and Privilege Destroy Democracy."
(WSJ, 10/26/95, p.A-20)
1944 Adam Clayton Powell
(1908-1972) was elected as a Democrat to the US House of
Representatives, representing the 22nd congressional district, which
included Harlem. He was the first black Congressman from New York, and
the first from any Northern state other than Illinois in the
Post-Reconstruction Era.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Clayton_Powell_Jr.)
1944 The NAACP meeting in Detroit
held a symbolic funeral for Jim Crow.
(SFC, 7/10/07, p.A3)
1945 Mar 8, Phyllis Mae Daley
received a commission in the U.S. Navy Nurse Corps. She was the first
African-American nurse to serve duty in World War II.
(HN, 3/8/99)
1945 Mar 12, NY became the 1st
state to prohibit discrimination by race and creed in employment.
(MC, 3/12/02)
1945 Nov 1, John H. Johnson
(1919-2005) published the 1st issue of Ebony magazine. His weekly Jet
magazine was founded in 1951 and Ebony Man began in 1985.
{Black History}
(HN, 11/1/98)(SFC, 8/8/05, p.B4)
1945 The US Navy was officially
desegregated.
(SFC, 5/17/04, p.B4)
1945 Chester Himes authored "If He
Hollers Let Him Go," an exploration of work-place racism.
(SFC, 5/9/03, p.E7)
1946 Feb 26, A race riot in
Columbia, TN, killed 2 people and 10 wounded.
(SC, 2/26/02)
1946 Jun 3, US Supreme court ruled
that race separation on buses is unconstitutional.
(MC, 6/3/02)
1946 Jun 10, Jack Johnson, 1st
black heavyweight champion (1908-1915), died in car accident. In 2004
Geoffrey C. Ward authored “Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of
Jack Johnson.” In 2005 Ken Burns premiered the PBS documentary:
“Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson.”
(SSFC, 11/7/04, p.M1)(SFC, 1/17/05, p.D6)
1946 Jul 25, In Monroe, Georgia, 2
black couples were killed by Ku Klux Klansmen. Pres. Truman ordered an
FBI investigation and 55 suspects were named in the lynching of Roger
and Dorothy Malcolm and George and Mae Murray Dorsey, but no one was
ever charged. Dorothy Malcolm was pregnant.
(SFC, 7/26/05, p.A5)
1946 Jul 26, President Truman
ordered the desegregation of all US forces.
(MC, 7/26/02)
1946 Dec 18, Stephen Biko, South
African anti-apartheid activist, was born.
(MC, 12/18/01)
1946 A US court case ruled that
race-based housing restrictions were illegal. Restrictions after WW I
had confined blacks in LA to the south and east sides creating
near-ghettos in areas such as Watts, Inglewood and Compton.
(Econ, 7/23/05, p.29)
1947 Jan 20, Josh Gibson (35),
Negro League slugger, died of a brain tumor.
(MC, 1/20/02)
1947 Feb 3, Percival Prattis
became the 1st black reporter in Congressional press gallery.
(MC, 2/3/02)
1947 Feb 23, Shakira Caine,
actress (Man Who be King), Miss Guyana (1967), was born in Guyana.
(MC, 2/23/02)
1947 Apr 10, Brooklyn Dodgers
president Branch Rickey announced he had purchased the contract of
Jackie Robinson from the Montreal Royals. John Sengstacke, black
publisher of the Chicago Defender, was instrumental in persuading Mr.
Rickey in his decision. In spite of intense pressure and hostility,
Robinson's athletic abilities earned him the Rookie of the Year Award
in 1947.
(AP, 4/10/97)(SFC, 1/12/98, p.A1)(HN, 4/10/01)
1947 Prof. John Hope Franklin
(1915-2009) authored “From Slavery to Freedom.”
(SSFC, 11/13/05, p.M6)(SFC, 3/26/09, p.B5)
1947 Walter S. Mack, president of
Pepsi-Cola, hired an all-black sales force led by Edward F. Boyd to
sell Pepsi directly to blacks.
(WSJ, 1/9/07, p.B1)
1948 Feb 2, President Truman urged
congress to adopt a civil rights program.
(MC, 2/2/02)
1948 Feb 12, 1st Lt. Nancy
Leftenant became the 1st black in the army nursing corps.
(MC, 2/12/02)
1948 Mar 11, Reginald Weit became
the 1st black to play in the US Tennis Open.
(MC, 3/12/02)
1948 May 1, Glenn Taylor, Idaho
Senator, was arrested in Birmingham Alabama for trying to enter a
meeting through a door marked "for Negroes."
(MC, 5/1/02)
1948 Aug 24, Edith Mae Irby became
the University of Arkansas' first African-American student.
(HN, 8/24/98)
1948 Oct 1, The California Supreme
Court in Perez v. Sharp voided a state statue banning interracial
marriages.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perez_v._Sharp)
1949 Jan 14, There was a
Black-Indian race rebellion in Durban, South Africa; 142 died.
(MC, 1/14/02)
1949 Jan 28, NY Giants signed
their 1st black players, Monte Irvin & Ford Smith.
(MC, 1/28/02)
1949 Mar 1, Joe Louis retired as
heavyweight boxing champion.
(SC, 3/1/02)
1949
Apr 1, "Happy Pappy" premiered on WENR-TV in
Chicago. It was the first televised all-black-cast variety show.
(www.tvacres.com/ethnic_afro_h.htm)
1949 Jun 3, Wesley Anthony Brown
became the 1st negro to graduate from US Naval Academy.
(MC, 6/3/02)
1949 Nov 13, Whoopi Goldberg,
[Caryn Johnson], actress (Color Purple, Burglar, Ghost), was born in
NYC.
(MC, 11/13/01)
1949 The interracial drama film
"Pinky" starred Jeanne Crain and Bert Conway (d.2002 at 87). It was
directed by Elia Kazan. It was banned in Marshall, Texas, but the
censoring ordnance was declared unconstitutional by the US Supreme
Court.
(SFEC, 3/14/99, p.D5)(SFC, 2/18/02, p.B6)(SFC,
12/15/03, p.A24)
1950 Jan 24, Jackie Robinson
signed highest contract ($35,000) in Dodger history.
(MC, 1/24/02)
1950 Feb 6, Natalie Cole, vocalist
(Pink Cadillac, Miss You Like Crazy, Mona Lisa), was born in LA, Calif.
(MC, 2/6/02)
1950 Apr 3, Carter G. Woodson
(b.1875), black historian, died. Woodson is best known for is the
creation of what became "Black History Month," begun in 1926 as "Negro
History Week." The idea of learning more about black history caught on
in schools all over the country. Many scholars recognize him as the
“Father of Black History.” His work included “The Negro in Our History”
(1922).
(WSJ, 5/19/05,
p.D8)(www.biography.com/articles/Carter-G.-Woodson-9536515)
1950 Apr 25, Chuck Cooper became
the 1st black to play in the NBA.
(SS, 4/25/02)
1950 Apr 27, South Africa passed
the Group Areas Act, formally segregating races.
(HN, 4/27/98)(SFEC, 10/15/00, p.T8)
1950 May 1, Gwendolyn Brooks
became the first African American to win the Pulitzer Prize for her
book of poetry called "Annie Allen."
(HN, 5/1/99)
1950 May 13, Steveland Morris
Hardaway (AKA Stevie Wonder) was born prematurely, on this day in
Saginaw, Mi. Too much oxygen in the incubator caused the baby to become
permanently blind. At the age of ten, Little Stevie Wonder, as he
was called by Berry Gordy at Motown, was discovered singing and playing
the harmonica. He had many hits during his teens including "Fingertips"
and as an adult he has earned an Oscar and at least sixteen Grammy
Awards. He has stood up for civil rights, campaigns against cancer,
AIDS, drunk driving and the plight of Ethiopians.
(MC, 5/13/02)
1950 Aug 22, Althea Gibson became
the first black tennis player to be accepted in competition for the
national championship.
(AP, 8/22/00)
1950 Dec 4, University of
Tennessee defied court rulings by rejecting five Negro applicants.
(HN, 12/4/98)
1950 Dec 10, Dr. Ralph J. Bunche
(b.1904) became the first African-American to receive the Nobel Peace
Prize.
(AP, 12/10/97)(HN, 12/10/98)
1951 Feb 16, NYC passed a bill
prohibiting racism in city-assisted housing.
(MC, 2/16/02)
1951 May 24, Racial segregation in
Washington D.C. restaurants was ruled illegal.
(HN, 5/24/98)
1951 Jul 12, A mob tried to keep a
black family from moving into all-white Cicero, Ill.
(MC, 7/12/02)
1951 Jul 14, The George Washington
Carver National Monument in Joplin, Missouri became the first national
park honoring an African American.
(HN, 7/14/98)
1951 Aug 22, Harlem Globetrotters
played in Olympic Stadium at Berlin before 75,052.
(MC, 8/22/02)
1951 Oct 4, Henrietta Lacks, a
black woman, died of cancer in Baltimore. Cells from her body,
later known as HeLa cells, were cultivated for research. In 1974 Dr.
Nelson-Rees (d.2009 at 80), a UC Berkeley geneticist, reported that the
HeLa cells had contaminated other cell cultures in laboratories around
the world. In 1986 Michael Gold authored “A Conspiracy of Cells,” a
chronicle of the Nelson-Rees study. In 2010 Rebecca Skloot authored
“The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks.”
(SFC, 1/28/09, p.B10)(SSFC, 2/14/10,
p.F3)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henrietta_Lacks)
1951 South Carolina passed an
anti-lynching law in response to the mob murder of Willie Earle, who
was dragged from jail and gunned down in retaliation for the death of a
cabbie.
(SSFC, 5/18/03, p.A6)
1951 Oliver W. Hill (1907-2007), a
black lawyer, argued on behalf of students protesting deplorable
conditions at a high school for African Americans in Farmville, Va. The
case became one of 5 that were decided in the 1954 Supreme Court Brown
vs. Board of Education decision.
(SFC, 8/6/07, p.A2)
1952 Mar 24, Great demonstrations
took place against apartheid in South Africa.
(MC, 3/24/02)
1952 Oct 2, Superior Judge Melvyn
I. Cronin ruled that the SF Housing Authority’s policy of barring
blacks from all but one permanent low-rent public housing project was
unconstitutional.
(SFC, 9/27/02, p.E2)
1952 Oct
26, Hattie McDaniel (b.1895) actress (Gone With the Wind), died in
Woodland Hills, Ca., of breast cancer. She was the first black
actor/actress to receive an Academy Award. In 2005 Jill Watts authored
“Hattie McDaniel: Black Ambition, White Hollywood.”
{Black History, Filmstar}
(www.imdb.com/name/nm0567408/)(SSFC, 10/30/05, p.M3)
1952 Dec 30, Tuskegee Institute
reported 1952 as the 1st yr in the last 71 with no US lynchings.
(MC, 12/30/01)
1953 Jun 7, Four civics groups
demanded that the SF Housing Authority give up its insistence on racial
segregation.
(SFC, 6/6/03, p.E2)
1953 Aug 4, Black families moved
into the Trumbull Park housing project in Chicago.
(MC, 8/4/02)
1953 Rev. T.J. Jemison organized a
bus boycott in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. It was the 1st of its kind a
became a model for the 1955 Martin Luther King rebellion in Montgomery,
Ala.
(NW, 6/9/03, p/14)
1954 Jan 29, Oprah Winfrey,
actress, TV host (Color Purple, Oprah), was born in Mississippi.
(MC, 1/29/02)
1954 May 17, The US Supreme Court
unanimously ruled for school integration in the landmark initiative of
Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka. It helped abolish de facto and
de jure segregation that persisted throughout the US. The Supreme Court
ruled that racial segregation in public schools is unconstitutional.
The 12-page historic opinion was written by Chief Justice Earl Warren.
The case was Brown vs. Board of Education and the result overturned the
1896 decision of Plessy vs. Ferguson that proclaimed a doctrine of
separate but equal. The Plessy vs. Ferguson decision had allowed that
as long as accommodation existed, segregation did not constitute
discrimination, establishing the doctrine of "separate but equal." In
the Brown case, which involved elementary education, the Court ruled
unanimously that segregation in public education was a denial of the
equal protection of the laws.
(SFC, 5/12/96, p.A-6)(SFEC, 6/8/97, BR
p.8)(www.nationalcenter.org/brown.html)
1954 May 17, Blacks hailed the
Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka decision. Whites in the Deep
South called the day "Black Monday." A movement called Citizens’
Councils, led by Mississippi Circuit Court Judge Tom P. Brady, grew to
encompass virtually the state's entire white business class. Council
members published a book entitled “Black Monday” which outlined their
simple beliefs: African Americans were inferior to whites and the races
must remain separate. "If in one mighty voice we do not protest this
travesty on justice, we might as well surrender," Brady wrote.
(www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/till/peopleevents/e_councils.html)(MT, summer
2003, p.19)
1954 Jul 17, The 1st major league
baseball game was played where a majority of a team was black (Dodgers).
(MC, 7/17/02)
1954 Aug 23, The small community
of Charleston, Arkansas, became the first in the South to end
segregation in its schools. This was in response to the May 17 US
Supreme Court ruling on Brown vs. Board of Education.
(Econ, 9/22/07,
p.44)(http://ideas.aetn.org/productions/virtualtours/lrcentral/10)
1954 Sep 7-8, Integration of
public schools began in Washington DC and Baltimore, Md.
(HN,
9/7/98)(www.courtinfo.ca.gov/presscenter/timeline.htm)
1954-1963 This period of the civil rights era was
covered in Taylor Branch’s book: "Parting the Waters: American in the
King Years, 1954-1963."
(SFC, 3/26/02, p.A24)
1955 Mar 2, Claudette Colvin
refuses to give up her seat in Montgomery, Alabama, nine months b Rosa
Parks' famous arrest for the same offense.
(HN, 3/2/00)
1955 Mar 21, Walter White
(b.1893), African American leader, died. As executive secretary
(1931-1955) he built the NAACP into America’s most influential civil
rights organization. In 2008 Thomas Dyja authored “Walter White: The
Dilemma of Black Identity in America.”
(WSJ, 10/18/08,
p.W8)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Francis_White)
1955 May 18, Mary McLeod Bethune
(79), educator & civil rights leader, died.
(SC, 5/18/02)
1955 Aug 28, Emmett Till (14), a
black teen-ager from Chicago, was abducted from his uncle's home in
Money, Miss., by white men after he had supposedly whistled at Carolyn
Bryant, a white woman; he was found murdered three days later.
Eyewitnesses linked Carolyn’s husband Roy Bryant and half-brother J.W.
Milam to the murder. Both were acquitted by an all-white jury The area
was a cotton-trading center where the white Citizens Councils
maintained their regional headquarters. In 2004 the US Justice Dept.
opened a criminal investigation into the case. In 2005 the US Senate
acknowledged a share in the boy’s death.
(AP, 8/28/99)(SFC, 6/28/00, p.A7)(SFC, 5/11/04,
p.A4)(SFC, 6/14/05, p.A2)
1955 Nov 20, The Maryland National
Guard was ordered desegregated.
(HN, 11/20/98)
1955 Dec 1, Rosa Parks, a
42-year-old seamstress and secretary of the Montgomery NAACP, was
arrested in Montgomery, Alabama, as she sat in a section of a bus just
behind the area reserved for whites. She refused to move to the back
the bus as ordered by driver James F. Blake (d.2002 at 89) and defied
the South’s segregationist laws. This prompted the Dec. 5 bus boycott,
a year-long boycott of the buses by blacks, and launched the Civil
Rights movement in the United States. Virginia Durr (d.1999 at 95)
helped a black civil rights leader bail Parks out of jail. In 1985 Durr
wrote her memoir: "Outside the Magic Circle." In 1999 Pres. Clinton
authorized a Congressional Gold Medal for Rosa Parks.
(HFA, '96, p.44)(SFC, 5/12/96, p.A-6)(SFEC, 9/15/96,
p.A2)(SFEM, 2/2/97, p.8) (AP, 12/1/97)(HN, 12/1/98)(SFC, 3/10/99,
p.A23)(SFC, 5/5/99, p.A3)(SFC, 3/26/02, p.A24)
1955 Dec 5, The US Montgomery Bus
Boycott began in 1955. In Montgomery, Alabama, Martin Luther King Jr.
organized a bus boycott and began the civil rights movement to end
segregation. Black residents chose Mr. King to head The Montgomery
Improvement Association, formed to sustain the protest against
segregation policies on the municipal buses.
(HFA, '96, p.44)(TMC, 1994, p.1955)(SFEM, 2/2/97,
p.8)
1955 Dec 9, Sugar Ray Robinson won
the middle-weight boxing crown for the third time when he knocked out
Carl "Bobo" Olson.
(SFC, 6/29/96, p.E4)(HN, 12/9/98)
1956 Feb 3, Autherine Lucy
(b.1929) arrived at the Tuscaloosa branch of the Univ. of Alabama and
became the first black person to enroll there. She had been accepted in
1952 and then was denied because of her race.
(http://www.answers.com/topic/autherine-lucy-foster)
1956 Feb 6, The Univ. of Alabama
board of trustees voted to suspend Autherine Lucy, the 1st black
admitted to school, on the grounds that the campus was no longer safe
for her.
(http://www.answers.com/topic/autherine-lucy-foster)
1956 Apr 11, Singer Nat Cole was
attacked on stage of Birmingham theater by whites.
(MC, 4/11/02)
1956 Apr 23, US Supreme court
ended race segregation on buses.
(MC, 4/23/02)
1956 May 2, US Methodist church
disallowed race separation.
(MC, 5/2/02)
1956 Aug 30, A white mob prevented
the enrollment of blacks at Mansfield HS, Texas.
(MC, 8/30/01)
1956 Nov 13, The U.S. Supreme
Court struck down the Alabama bus segregation law. The Supreme Court
struck down laws calling for racial segregation on public buses.
(AP, 11/13/97)(HN, 11/13/98)
1956 Dec 20, The Supreme Court
affirmed the Jun 5 decision against segregation on buses in Montgomery,
Alabama. Montgomery removed race-based seat assignments on its buses.
(SFEM, 1/19/97, BR p.8)(SFEM, 2/2/97, p.12,13)(MC,
12/20/01)
1956 Dec 24, African Americans
defied a city law in Tallahassee, Fla., and occupied front bus seats.
(HN, 12/24/98)
1956 Kenneth Stampp (1913-2009),
US Berkeley historian, authored “The Peculiar Institution: Slavery in
the Antebellum South.”
(SFC, 7/22/09, p.D5)
1957 Jan 23, Willie Edwards (25),
US black, was murdered by KKK.
(MC, 1/23/02)
1957 Feb 10, Southern Christian
Leadership Conference formed.
(MC, 2/10/02)
1957 Feb 14, The Georgia Senate
approved Sen Leon Butts' bill barring blacks from playing baseball with
whites.
(HN, 2/14/98)(MC, 2/14/02)
1957 Feb 14, The “Southern
Leadership Conference” was formed in New Orleans, Louisiana. Officers
were elected which included: Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. as President,
Dr. Ralph David Abernathy as Financial Secretary-Treasurer, Rev. C. K.
Steele of Tallahassee, Florida as Vice President, Rev. T. J. Jemison of
Baton Rouge, Louisiana as Secretary, and Attorney I. M. Augustine of
New Orleans, Louisiana as General Counsel. In August the name was
changed to "Southern Christian Leadership Conference" at its first
convention in Montgomery, Alabama.
(http://sclcnational.org/net/content/item.aspx?s=25461.0.12.2607)
1957 May 22, South Africa
government approved race separation in universities.
(MC, 5/22/02)
1957 Jun 17, The Tuskegee boycott
began as Blacks boycotted city stores.
(MC, 6/17/02)
1957 Aug 29, Congress passed the
Civil Rights Act of 1957. South Carolina Sen. Strom Thurmond (then a
Democrat) ended a filibuster against a civil rights bill after talking
for 24 hours and 18 minutes. Arnold Aronson (d.1998 at 86) help to
lobby for the bill. [see Aug 30]
(AP, 8/29/97)(SFC, 2/20/98, p.A23)(SSFC, 12/17/00,
Par p.15)(MC, 8/29/01)
1957 Aug 30, In an effort to stall
the Civil Rights Act of 1957 from passing, Senator Strom Thurmond
(D-S.C.) filibustered for over 24 hours. The bill passed, but
Thurmond’s filibuster becomes the longest in Senate history. [see Aug
29]
(HN, 8/30/00)
1957 Sep 4, Arkansas National
guardsmen turned away Black students from Central High School in Little
Rock. 9 students made it into the school on September 24 under the
protection of federal troops sent by Pres. Eisenhower. In 2007
Elizabeth Jacoway authored “Turn Away Thy Son: Little Rock, the Crises
That Shocked the Nation.”
(AH, 10/07, p.61)
1957 Sep 23, Nine black students
who had entered Little Rock Central High School in Arkansas were forced
to withdraw because of a white mob outside. Pres. Eisenhower signed
Executive Order 10730 to send Federal troops to maintain order and
peace while the integration of Central High School in Little Rock, AR,
took place.
(AP,
9/23/97)(www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=true&doc=89)
1957 Sep 24, President Dwight D.
Eisenhower sent federal troops into Little Rock, Arkansas, to protect
nine black students entering its newly integrated high school.
(HN, 9/24/98)
1957 Sep 25, With 300 members of
the U.S. Army's 101st Airborne Division standing guard, nine black
children forced to withdraw from Central High School in Little Rock,
Ark., because of unruly white crowds, were escorted to class. Vice
principle Elizabeth Huckaby (d.1999 at 93) escorted the children and in
1980 published "Crisis at Central High."
(SFC, 3/26/99, p.D5)(AP, 9/25/07)
1958 May 27, Ernest Green and 600
whites graduated from Little Rock's Central High School. Green became
the first black Central High graduate.
(http://tinyurl.com/qyjp4)(www.centralhigh57.org/1957-58.htm)
1958 Aug 4, Mary Decker Stanley,
winner of seven track and field records, was born.
(HN, 8/4/98)
1958 Aug 29, Michael Jackson, pop
singer, entertainer, was born.
(HN, 8/29/98)
1958 Sep 20, Rev. Martin Luther
King was stabbed by Izola Curry, a deranged woman, during a book
signing on 125th St. in Harlem. Dr. Aubre De Lambert Maynard (d.1999 at
97) performed a successful operation on King who had a knife embedded
in his sternum. Curry was later found mentally incompetent.
(SFC, 3/25/99, p.C3)(AP, 9/20/08)
1958 Oct 5, Racially desegregated
Clinton High School in Clinton, Tenn., was mostly leveled by an early
morning bombing.
(AP, 10/5/08)
1958 Caryl Phillips, writer, was
born in the West Indies. He later authored "The Atlantic Sound," a look
at 3 major ports of the slave trade.
(SSFC, 6/16/02, p.M2)
1959 Jun, Supervisors of Prince
Edward County, Va., passed a $210,654 budget that provided no money for
public schools and cut the property tax in half rather than comply with
school desegregation. The public schools closed down for 5 years. The
county whites opened a tuition-free, private academy for white children.
(WSJ, 5/17/04, p.A1)
1959-1963 S. Ernest Vandiver served as governor of
Georgia. His campaign motto was "No, not one," meaning not one black
child in a white school.
(SSFC, 12/22/02, p.A3)
1960 Feb 1, Four black North
Carolina A&T students staged a sit-in in a dime store in
Greensboro, NC, lunch counter, where they'd been refused service, to
begin the first of the historic 1960s sit-ins.
(AP, 2/1/97)(AH, 2/05, p.16)
1960 Mar 1, 1,000 Black students
prayed and sang the national anthem on the steps of the old Confederate
Capitol in Montgomery, Ala.
(HN, 3/1/98)
1960 Mar 21, A police massacre in
Sharpeville, South Africa, left 69 black protestors dead as people
gathered to protest the pass books that the apartheid government
required them to carry at all times. The ANC was outlawed.
(SFC, 12/5/96, p.C2)(SFEC, 2/9/97, Z1 p.7)(AP,
3/21/08)
1960 Apr 10, The US Senate passed
a landmark Civil Rights Bill.
(HN, 4/10/98)
1960 Jul 31, Elijah Muhammad,
leader of Nation of Islam, called for a black state.
(MC, 7/31/02)
1960 Aug 7, Students staged
kneel-in demonstrations in Atlanta churches.
(MC, 8/7/02)
1960 Aug 9, There was a race riot
in Jacksonville Florida.
(MC, 8/9/02)
1960 Aug 25, The 17th summer
Olympics opened in Rome. Wilma Rudolph (1940-1994), was the first
African American to win three gold medals in a single Olympiad. Her
athleticism was remarkable since Rudolph contracted polio as a small
child and spent six years in a steel brace. With therapy and hard work,
Rudolph overcame her handicap to excel in basketball and track. As a
celebrity, she worked to break many gender and racial barriers. Rudolph
died of brain cancer.
(WSJ, 7/19/96, p.R6)(HN, 6/23/98)(chblue.com,
8/25/01)
1960 Nov 13, Sammy Davis Jr.
married Swedish actress May Britt.
(MC, 11/13/01)
1960 Nov 14, New Orleans
integrated two all white schools. Ruby Bridges, a 6-year-old black
girl, entered a previously all-white school flanked by 4 federal
marshals before a phalanx of angry racists. A 1998 Disney movie "Ruby
Bridges" portrayed the event, which was captured by Norman Rockwell in
his painting: "The Problem We all Live With."
(WSJ, 1/8/98, p.A7)(HN, 11/14/98)
1960 Zora Neale Hurston (b.1903),
black author, died. Her 1942 autobiography was titled "Dust Tracks on a
Road." In 1977 Robert Hemenway authored a biography of Hurston. In 2002
Cora Kaplan edited "Zora Neale Hurston: A Life in Letters." In 2002
Valerie Boyd authored the biography "Wrapped in Rainbows."
(WSJ, 12/20/02, p.W8)(SSFC, 12/29/02, p.M1)
1961 Jan 11, There was a race riot
at the University of Georgia.
(MC, 1/11/02)
1961 Mar 29, In South Africa
Nelson Mandela was acquitted on a treason charge after a 4 year trial .
(MC, 3/29/02)
1961 May 4, A
group of 13 CORE civil rights activists, dubbed "Freedom Riders" left
Washington, D.C., for New Orleans to challenge racial segregation on
buses and in bus terminals.
(AP, 5/4/97)(HN, 5/4/98)(MC, 5/4/02)
1961 May 13, Dennis Rodman, NBA
forward (Chicago Bulls), was born.
(MC, 5/13/02)
1961 May 14, Bus with 1st group of
Freedom Riders was bombed and burned in Alabama.
(MC, 5/14/02)
1961 May 20, A white mob attacked
a busload of "Freedom Riders" in Montgomery, Ala., prompting the
federal government to send in U.S. marshals to restore order.
(AP, 5/20/97)(HN, 5/20/98)
1961 May 24, The 27 Freedom
Riders, civil rights activists, were arrested in Jackson, Mississippi.
(HN, 5/24/98)(MC, 5/24/02)
1961 May 26, Civil rights activist
group Freedom Ride Coordinating Committee was established in Atlanta.
(HN, 5/26/98)
1961 Aug 16, Martin Luther King
protested for black voting rights in Miami.
(MC, 8/16/02)
1961 Dec 12, Martin Luther King Jr
& 700 demonstrators were arrested in Albany, Ga.
(MC, 12/12/01)
1962 Jan 23, Jackie Robinson
(1919-1972) became the first African-American elected to Baseball Hall
of Fame.
(www.imdb.com/name/nm0732697/bio)
1962 Feb 26, US Supreme court
disallowed race separation on public transportation.
(SC, 2/26/02)
1962 Mar 10, The Phillies baseball
club left the Jack Tar Harrison Hotel due to its no black policy and
moved to Rocky Point Motel, 20 miles outside Clearwater, Florida.
(http://tinyurl.com/mdtvxu)
1962 Jul 10, Martin Luther King
Jr. was arrested during a demonstration in Georgia.
(MC, 7/10/02)
1962 Jul 21, 160 civil right
activists were jailed after demonstration in Albany, Ga.
(MC, 7/21/02)
1962 Jul 27, Martin Luther King
Jr. was jailed in Albany, Georgia.
(MC, 7/27/02)
1962 Aug 4, Nelson Mandela was
captured by South African police.
(MC, 8/4/02)
1962 Aug 15, Shady Grove Baptist
Church was burned in Leesburg, Georgia.
(MC, 8/15/02)
1962 Sep 20, Black student James
Meredith was blocked from enrolling at the University of Mississippi by
Governor Ross R. Barnett. Meredith was later admitted. A Life Magazine
photograph around this time showed 7 sheriffs gathered at Ole Miss to
keep Meredith out. In 2003 Paul Hendrickson authored "Sons of
Mississippi: A Story of Race and Its Legacy," in which he uncovered the
lives of the 7 sheriffs.
(AP, 9/20/97)(SSFC, 4/6/03, p.M1)
1962 Sep 30, Black student James
Meredith succeeded on his fourth try in registering for classes at the
University of Mississippi. He became the first black to enroll at Old
Miss Univ. and 13,500 Federal troops were required to back him up. U.S.
Marshals escorted James H. Meredith into the University of Mississippi;
two died in the mob violence that followed. Meredith was also noted for
starting the "March Against Fear" to encourage voter registration by
Southern African Americans. While on the march he was hit with a
snipers bullet. Other Civil Rights leaders including MLK continued the
march. Meredith was able to complete the march in Jackson, Mississippi.
(TMC, 1994, p.1962)(AP, 9/30/97)(HN, 9/30/98)
1962 Nov 6, Saudi Arabia abolished
slavery.
(www.hrw.org/reports/1992/saudi/INTROTHR.htm)
1962 Ralph Ginzburg (1929-2006),
NYC journalist, authored “100 Years of Lynchings,” a chronicle of
racist hangings in the South.
(SFC, 7/7/06, p.B9)
1962 William Matney Jr. (d.2001 at
76) became the 1st black reporter and writer for the Detroit News. In
1963 he was recruited by NBC News as their 1st black correspondent.
(SSFC, 6/17/01, p.A27)
1962 Augustus F. Hawkins
(1907-2007) of south Los Angeles became the first black person from
California to be elected to the US Congress.
(SFC, 11/13/07, p.D9)
1963 Jan 14, George C. Wallace was
sworn in as governor of Alabama with a pledge of "segregation forever."
(AP, 1/14/98)
1963 Mar 18, Vanessa L. Williams,
1st black Miss America (1983), singer, was born in Millwood, NY.
(MC, 3/18/02)
1963 Apr 2, Reverend Dr. Martin
Luther King began the first non-violent campaign in Birmingham,
Alabama.
(AP, 4/2/99)
1963 Apr 12, Police used dogs and
cattle prods on peaceful civil rights demonstrators in Birmingham,
Alabama.
(HN, 4/12/98)
1963 May 3, In
Birmingham, Alabama, police Commissioner Bull Connor unleashed dogs and
high-powered fire hoses on boycott-bound school children.
(SFEC, 3/16/97, p.T5)
1963 May 11, Racial bomb attacks
took place in Birmingham, Alabama.
(MC, 5/11/02)
1963 May 12, There was a race riot
in Birmingham, Alabama.
(MC, 5/12/02)
1963 Jun 11, JFK said segregation
is morally wrong & that it is "time to act."
(SC, 6/11/02)
1963 Jun 12, Medgar Evers (37),
leader (field director) of the NAACP in Mississippi, was fatally shot
in front of his home in Jackson by the KKK. An informant in the KKK,
Delmar Dennis (1940-1996), later served as a key prosecution witness in
convicting Byron De La Beckwith (d.2001 at 80) for the slaying. A book
by Bill McIlhany titled "Klandestine" recounts the story. In 1996
Whoopi Goldberg starred in the film "Ghosts of Mississippi" as the
widow of Medgar Evers. In 1998 Willie Morris wrote "The Ghosts of
Medgar Evers: A Tale of Race, Murder, Mississippi, and Hollywood."
(SFC, 6/5/96, p.C5)(NYT, 6/7/96, p.B14)(AP,
6/12/97)(SFEC, 2/1/98, BR p.5)(SFC, 1/22/01, p.A22)
1963 Jun 18, 3,000 blacks
boycotted Boston public school.
(MC, 6/18/02)
1963 Aug 19, NAACP Youth Council
began sit-ins at lunch counters in Oklahoma City.
(MC, 8/19/02)
1963 Aug 27, William Edward
Burghardt Du Bois (b.1868), sociologist, influential leader of black
Americans, founder of the National Negro Committee which eventually
became the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People,
died in Accra, Ghana at the age of 95. He coined the phrase "double
consciousness" to describe the black survival skill of moving between
the black and white American culture.
(WUD, 1994, p.439)(SFEC, 3/22/98, BR p.5)(HNPD,
2/23/99)(HNQ, 5/11/99)
1963 Aug 28, The civil rights
March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom drew 200-250,000 demonstrators
and was the occasion for King’s "I Have a Dream" speech in front of the
Lincoln Memorial. It was organized by Bayard Rustin (1912-1987). In
1997 a biography of Rustin by Jervis Anderson was published: "Bayard
Rustin: The Troubles I’ve Seen." The 1997 play "Civil Sex" by Brian
Freeman was based on Rustin’s life. Rev. Thomas Kilgore Jr. (d.1998 at
84) helped organize the march on Washington. Martin Luther King led
marches on Washington and Selma, Alabama. His chief lieutenant was
Andrew Young who in 1996 wrote: "An Easy Burden: The Civil Rights
Movement and the Transformation of America."
(WSJ, 11/6/96, p.A21)(SFEC, 1/26/97 BR, p.4)(WSJ,
1/30/97, p.A14)(AP, 8/28/97)(SFC, 2/7/98, p.21)(HN, 8/28/98)
1963 Sep 2, Alabama Gov. George C.
Wallace prevented the integration of Tuskegee High School by encircling
the building with state troopers.
(AP, 9/2/97)(HN, 9/2/98)
1963 Sep 10, 20 black students
entered public schools in Birmingham, Tuskegee and Mobile, Ala.,
following a standoff between federal authorities and Gov. George C.
Wallace. President John F. Kennedy federalized Alabama's National Guard
to prevent Governor George C. Wallace from using guardsmen to stop
public-school desegregation.
(AP, 9/10/97)(HN, 9/10/98)
1964 Jan 26, Eighty-four people
were arrested in a segregation protest in Atlanta.
(HN, 1/26/99)
1964 Feb 24, Cassius Clay defeated
Sonny Liston for the heavyweight boxing title.
(TMC, 1994, p.1964)(MC, 2/24/02)
1964 Mar 8, Malcolm X left the
Black Muslim Movement. [see Mar 12]
(MC, 3/8/02)
1964 Mar 12, Malcolm X resigned
from Nation of Islam. [see Mar 8]
(MC, 3/12/02)
1964 May 2, In Mississippi Charles
Moore (19) and Henry Dee (19) were beaten and killed by local members
of the Ku Klux Klan. Their mutilated bodies were later found in the
Mississippi River while federal authorities searched for civil rights
workers Goodman, Chaney and Schwerner. Charles Marcus Edwards and James
Ford Seale were arrested for the crime, but neither was tried. In 2007
James Ford Seale (71) was arrested and charged with two counts of
kidnapping and one count of conspiracy to commit kidnapping. In 2008 an
appeals court ruled that the statue of limitations had expired
overturning Seale’s conviction.
(SFC, 7/15/05, p.A5)(AP, 1/25/07)(AP,
1/26/07)(www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26633038/)
1964 Jun 21, Three young civil
rights workers, Andrew Goodman 20, Michael Schwerner 24, and James
Chaney 21, disappeared near Meridian, Mississippi. Their car was found
burning late in the day. 40 days later their bodies were found buried
in an earthen dam near Philadelphia, Miss. 8 Klansman went to prison on
federal conspiracy charges but none served more than 6 years, and
murder charges were never filed. The event inspired the 1988 film
Mississippi Burning. In 2005 Edgar Ray Killen (80) was arrested in
Philadelphia, Miss., and convicted of manslaughter in the abduction and
killing of the 3 voter-registration volunteers. He was sentenced to
three 20-year terms. Billy Wayne Posey (73), a key suspect in the
killings, died in 2009.
(SFEC, 2/16/97, p.A12)(AP, 6/21/97)(HN,
6/21/01)(SFC, 6/22/05, p.A1)(WSJ, 6/24/05, p.A1)(SSFC, 8/16/09, p.A9)
1964 Jun 29, Civil Rights Act of
1964 was passed after 83-day filibuster in Senate. [see Jul 2]
(MC, 6/29/02)
1964 Jul 18, Riots erupted in the
African American communities of NYC and Rochester, NY. The NYC race
riot began in Harlem and spread to Bedford-Stuyvesant in Brooklyn.
(SSFC, 6/9/02, p.F5)(MC, 7/18/02)
1964 Jul 24-27, A race riot took
place in Rochester, New York, and 4 people were killed.
(MC, 7/24/02)
1964 Jul 25, There was a race riot
in Rochester, NY.
(SC, 7/25/02)
1964 Aug 2, There was a race riot
in Jersey City, NJ.
(MC, 8/2/02)
1964 Aug 11, There was a race riot
in Paterson, NJ.
(MC, 8/11/02)
1964 Aug 12, There was a race riot
in Elizabeth, NJ.
(SC, 8/12/02)
1964 Aug 15, A race riot took
place in Dixmoor, a suburb of Chicago, Ill.
(MC, 8/15/02)
1964 Aug 28, Race riots took place
in Philadelphia.
(MC, 8/28/01)
1964 Dec 1, M.L. King spoke to J.
Edgar Hoover about his slander campaign.
(MC, 12/1/01)
1964 H. Rep Brown 1st signed up
with the Student Nonviolating Coordinating Committee and registering
voters.
(SSFC, 1/6/02, p.A13)
1965 Jan 2, Dr. Martin Luther King
Jr began a drive to register black voters.
(MC, 1/2/02)
1965 Feb 1, In Selma, Alabama,
Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. and 770 of his followers were arrested
on their civil rights march. They protested against voter
discrimination in Alabama.
(SFEC, 3/16/97, p.T1)(HN, 2/1/99)
1965 Feb 14, Malcolm X’s home was
firebombed. No injuries were reported.
(HN, 2/14/98)
1965 Feb 21, Former Black Muslim
leader El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, aka Malcolm X (born as Malcolm Little,
39), was shot to death in front of 400 people in New York by
assassins identified as Black Muslims. He was murdered at the Audubon
Ballroom in Manhattan. His wife, Betty Shabazz, was pregnant with twins
and sat in the audience along with his 4-year-old daughter Quibilah.
Three men, Norman 3X Butler (Abdul Aziz), Khalil Islam, and Thomas
Hagan, connected to the Nation of Islam were convicted for the
assassination. Aziz was paroled in 1985 and in 1998 was appointed by
Louis Farrakhan to head a Harlem mosque. In 1992 James H. Cone authored
a book about Malcom X and Martin Luther King.
(TMC, 1994, p.1965)(SFC, 6/24/97, p.A3)(AP,
2/21/98)(SFC, 3/26/98, p.A3)(HN, 2/21/99)(SFC, 9/8/99, p.A7)
1965 Feb 26, Jimmie Lee Jackson,
civil rights activist, died of injuries.
(SC, 2/26/02)
1965 Mar 7, A march by some 600
civil rights demonstrators was broken up in Selma, Ala., by state
troopers and posse under Sheriff Jim Clark (d.2007). The Black
community of Marion, Ala., marched to protest the earlier killing of a
demonstrator by a state trooper. John Lewis, later US Representative,
led the march and was hit in the head by a state trooper.
(AP, 3/7/98)(SFC, 3/8/99, p.A9)(SFC, 11/27/99,
p.C3)(Econ, 6/16/07, p.99)
1965 Mar 11, The Rev. James J.
Reeb (65), a white minister from Boston, died after whites beat him
during civil rights disturbances in Selma, Ala.
(AP, 3/11/98)(MC, 3/12/02)
1965 Mar 21, Martin Luther King
Jr. led more than 3,000 civil rights demonstrators on the 50-mile march
from Selma to Montgomery.
(SFEC, 3/16/97, p.T1)(AP, 3/21/97)
1965 Mar 25, Martin Luther King
Jr. led a group of 25,000 to the state capital in Montgomery Ala. to
protest the denial of voting rights to blacks. Civil Rights pressures
increased in the US and blacks and whites marched in Selma and
Montgomery.
(TMC, 1994, p.1965)(AP, 3/25/97)(HN, 3/24/98)
1965 Mar 25, Viola Liuzzo
(b.1925), a white civil rights worker from Detroit, was shot and killed
by the Ku Klux Klan on a road near Selma, Ala. The later trial of
Collie Leroy Jenkins, one of 3 men charged in the killing, ended in a
hung jury. Jenkins was also acquitted at a 2nd trial but was later
convicted along with Eugene Thomas of civil rights violations in
federal court and sentenced to 10 years in prison.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viola_Liuzzo)(SSFC,
7/20/08, p.B6)
1965 Apr 2, Rodney King, black
motorist brutally beaten by LA cops, was born in Sacramento, Calif.
(MC, 4/2/02)
1965 Apr 13, Lawrence Wallace
Bradford Jr. (16) was appointed by New York Republican Jacob Javits to
be the first black page of the US Senate.
(AP, 4/13/02)
1965 May 30, Vivian Malone (later
Vivian Malone Jones) became the first black graduate of the University
of Alabama with a degree in Business Management.
(NYT, 10/14/2005, p.C15)
1965 Aug 12, There was a race riot
in West Side of Chicago.
(SC, 8/12/02)
1965 Dec 1, South Africa
government said children of white fathers are white.
(MC, 12/1/01)
1965 Ron Karenga founded US, a
black power movement in Southern California shortly after the Watts
riots. In 2003 Scot Brown authored "Fighting for US: Maulana Karenga,
the US Organization and Black Cultural Nationalism."
(SSFC, 8/3/03, p.M6)
1965 Daniel Patrick Moynihan
(1927-2003), while employed under Pres. Kennedy at the Dept. of
Labor, authored a report that attributed problems among blacks to
the deterioration of the family structure. In this year 8% of children
were born to unmarried parents. By 2006 a third of all US children were
born to unmarried parents as well as nearly 70% of black children.
(SFC, 3/27/03, p.A15)(WSJ, 11/20/06, p.A1)
1966 Jan 10, In Mississippi Vernon
Dahmer, a revered civil rights leader, was killed in a firebombing. In
1998 Klansmen Sam Bowers (73), Deavours Nix (72) and Charles Noble (55)
were arrested for the murder. 8 men in 2 cars loaded with shotguns and
12 gallons of gasoline attacked Dahmer’s home. Billy Roy Pitts
participated and later testified how Bowers had called meetings and
presided over the planning of the bombing. Bowers was convicted in his
5th trial and sentenced to life in prison.
(SFC, 5/29/98, p.A5)(SFC, 8/17/98, p.A5)(SFC,
8/20/98, p.A12)(WSJ, 8/24/98, p.A1)
1966 Jan 13, Robert C. Weaver
became the first black Cabinet member as he was appointed Secretary of
Housing and Urban Development by President Johnson.
(AP, 1/13/98)
1966 Jan 18, Robert Clifton Weaver
(1907-1997), the 1st African-American to hold a post in the
presidential cabinet, was sworn in as head of the newly created
Department of Housing and Urban Development under Pres. Johnson.
(MC, 1/18/02)
1966 Mar 11, Three men were
convicted of the murder of Malcolm X.
(HN, 3/11/98)
1966 Apr 6, Emmett Ashford became
the first African-American major league umpire. The highly regarded
umpire was known for his dynamic and distinctive style of calling balls
and strikes.
(HN, 4/12/99)(HNQ,
4/15/00)(http://netscape.net/picassoaustin/homepage)
1966 May 13, Federal education
funding was denied to 12 school districts in the South because of
violations of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
(MC, 5/13/02)
1966 May 16, Stokely Carmichael
was named chairman of Student Nonviolent Coordinating.
(MC, 5/16/02)
1966 Jun 6, Stokely Carmichael
launched the "Black Power" movement.
(MC, 6/6/02)
1966 Jul 12, There were race riots
in Chicago.
(MC, 7/12/02)
1966 Jul 19, Gov. James Rhodes
declared a state of emergency in Cleveland due to a race riot.
(MC, 7/19/02)
1966 Aug 5, Martin Luther King Jr.
was stoned during a march in Chicago.
(MC, 8/5/02)
1966 Aug 7, There was a race riot
in Lansing, Michigan.
(MC, 8/7/02)
1966 Aug 27, There was a race riot
in Waukegan, Illinois.
(MC, 8/27/02)
1966 Sep 6, A race riot took place
in the Summerhill neighborhood of Atlanta, Ga., from Sep 6-11. Blacks
rioted after a suspected car thief is shot escaping a white cop and 138
people were arrested with 35 injured. Student Non-Violent Coordinating
Committee's (SNCC's) Stokely Carmichael is indicted for inciting a
riot, and Julian Bond resigns from SNCC.
(www.theprimeone.com/archives/000113.html)
1966 Oct 15, The Black Panthers
wrote their Ten Point Program at the Office of Economic Development
Corp. in Oakland, Ca. It called for adequate housing, jobs, education
and an end to police brutality. The Black Panther Party was founded by
Merritt College students Huey Newton and Bobby Seale. In 2006 Flores A.
Forbes authored “Will You Die With Me: My Life and the Black Panther
Party.”
(SFC,10/24/97, p.A15)(SFEC, 3/1/98, p.W31)(SSFC,
7/9/06, p.M1)
1966 Nov 8, Republican Edward
Brooke of Massachusetts was the first African-American elected to the
Senate by popular vote in 85 years.
(AP, 11/8/97)(HN, 11/6/98)
1966 Jerry Varnado and Jimmy
Garrett organized the first Black Student Union at San Francisco State
Univ.
(SFC, 2/1/10, p.A10)
1967 Jan 10, Edward W. Brooke,
R-Mass., the first black elected to the U.S. Senate by popular vote,
took his seat.
(AP, 1/10/98)
1967 Jan 12, The Louisville, Ky,
draft board refused an exemption for boxer Muhammad Ali.
(MC, 1/12/02)
1967 Feb 6, Muhammad Ali TKO’d
Ernie Terrell in 15 for the heavyweight boxing title.
(MC, 2/6/02)
1967 Feb 28, In Mississippi 19
were indicted in the slayings of three civil rights workers in 1964.
Samuel H. Bowers and 6 others were convicted on federal charges in
1970. Bowers was released in 1976.
(HN, 2/28/98)(SFC, 8/18/98, p.A5)
1967 Mar 6, Muhammad Ali was
ordered by selective service to be inducted.
(MC, 3/6/02)
1967 Apr 11, Harlem, NYC, voters
defied Congress and reelected Adam Clayton Powell Jr. (1908-1972). In
January, 1967, the House Democratic Caucus had stripped Powell of his
committee chairmanship following allegations that Powell had
misappropriated Committee funds for his personal use and other charges.
In June, 1969, the Supreme Court ruled that the House had acted
unconstitutionally when it excluded Powell, a duly elected member. He
returned to the House, but without his seniority.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Clayton_Powell_Jr.)
1967 May 12, H. Rap Brown (b.1943)
replaced Stokely Carmichael (1941-1968) as chairman of Student
Nonviolating Coordinating Committee and announced that the organization
will continue its commitment to black power.
(www.shmoop.com/civil-rights-black-power/timeline.html)
1967 Jun 2, Race riots took place
in the Roxbury section of Boston.
(http://ksgaccman.harvard.edu/hotc/DisplayPlace.asp?id=11607)
1967 Jun 11, There was a race riot
in Tampa Florida and the National Guard was mobilized. Martin Chambers
(19) was suspected of robbing a camera store. Chambers ran from police
near Nebraska and Harrison Streets and was shot in the back and died.
Several days of riots around Central Avenue followed.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tampa_Riots)
1967 Jun 27, There was a race riot
in Buffalo, NY, and 200 were arrested.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo_riot_of_1967)
1967 Jun 28, Fourteen people were
shot in race riots in Buffalo, New York.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo_riot_of_1967)
1967 Jul 12, Blacks in Newark
rioted. 26 were killed, 1500 injured and over 1000 arrested.
(MC, 7/12/02)
1967 Jul 17, Race riots took place
in Cairo, Illinois.
(MC, 7/17/02)
1967 Jul 19, Race riots took place
in Durham, NC.
(MC, 7/19/02)
1967 Jul 20, Race riots took place
in Memphis, Tenn.
(MC, 7/20/02)
1967 Jul 23-30, Racial riots in
the city of Detroit left 40 dead, 2,000 injured and 5,000 homeless in
the worst riot of the summer. The rioting, looting and burning was
quelled with the arrival of 4,700 paratroops dispatched by President
Lyndon Johnson. Nearly all of America's large cities were wracked by
racial violence during the 1965-'68 period. The event inspired Rev.
William Cunningham (d.1997 at 67) to found Focus: Hope, a volunteer
project that grew to become one of the largest programs in the country
dedicated to feeding and teaching job skills to the urban poor.
(SFC, 5/29/97, p.C4)(HNQ, 7/11/98)
1967 Jul 24, Race riots took place
in Cambridge, Maryland.
(MC, 7/24/02)
1967 Jul 24, Race riots in Detroit
forced the postponement of a Tigers-Orioles baseball game. [see Jul
23-30]
(MC, 7/24/02)
1967 Jul 27, In the wake of urban
rioting, President Johnson appointed the Kerner Commission to assess
the causes of the violence. The same day, black militant H. Rap Brown
said violence was "as American as cherry pie."
(AP, 7/27/97)
1967 Jul 30, There was a race riot
in Milwaukee and 4 people were killed.
(MC, 7/30/02)
1967 Aug 30, The U.S. Senate
confirmed the appointment of Thurgood Marshall as the first black
justice on the U.S. Supreme Court.
(AP, 8/30/97)
1967 Nov 7, Carl Stokes
(1927-1996) was elected the first black mayor of a major city --
Cleveland, Ohio. He served two terms as mayor from 1967 to 1971 and was
a leading advocate for increased federal aid to American cities. After
serving as mayor, Stokes became a television commentator and later a
judge in Cleveland.
(AP, 11/7/97)(HNQ, 1/9/03)
1968 Feb 8, At South Carolina
State 3 black students were killed in a confrontation with highway
patrolmen in Orangeburg, during a civil rights protest against a
whites-only bowling alley. Nearly 50 were injured in the Orangeburg
Massacre during confrontations with the National Guard. In 2001 Gov.
Jim Hodges voiced his regret over the massacre.
(SFEC, 2/22/98, BR p.8)(AP, 2/8/99)(SFC, 2/9/01,
p.A3)
1968 Feb 12, "Soul on Ice" by
Eldridge Cleaver (full name: Leroy Eldridge Cleaver), a militant
activist and Black Panther, was first published. Cleaver spent much of
his early life in and out of prison on charges ranging from drug
possession to assault. It was in prison that he began the essays that
would become Soul on Ice. Shortly after being paroled in 1966, Eldridge
Cleaver met Huey Newton and Bobby Seale, the founders of the Black
Panther party. Cleaver quickly became the party’s minister of
information. Faced with further prison time after a shootout with
police in April 1968, Cleaver jumped bail and fled the country, first
to Cuba, then to Algeria. He returned voluntarily in 1975 having broken
with the Panthers and disillusioned with communism. His change in
thinking is reflected in his 1978 book Soul on Fire. He died on May 1,
1998, in Pomona, California.
(AP, 2/12/98)(HNQ, 2/2/01)
1968 Mar 4, Martin Luther King Jr.
announced plans for Poor People's Campaign. In late March and early
April 1968, Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. devoted his organizing
talents to a drive to bring the nation's poor people to Washington,
D.C. for a series of massive nonviolent demonstrations. King's "Poor
People's Campaign" would attempt to unify African Americans, Latinos,
and lower-income whites in pressing the Johnson Administration and
Congress in an election year to enact a $30 billion-a-year domestic
"Marshall Plan" to alleviate poverty.
(SC, 3/4/02)(http://hnn.us/articles/49016.html)
1968 Mar 28, In Memphis a riot
erupted during a protest march in support of striking sanitation
workers led by Martin Luther King. One African-American marcher was
killed and King urged calm as National Guard troops are called to
Memphis to restore order. King subsequently departed Memphis, but vowed
to return on April 4 to attend another march.
(SFC, 12/1/97, p.A3)(http://tinyurl.com/atrl3z)
1968 Apr 3, Less than 24 hours
before he was assassinated in Memphis, Tenn., civil rights leader
Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his "mountaintop" speech to a rally of
striking sanitation workers, "It really doesn't matter with me now,
because I've been to the mountain top, and I don't mind."
(AP, 4/3/98)
1968 Apr 4, Civil rights leader
Martin Luther King, 39, was assassinated while standing on the balcony
of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tenn. James Earl Ray (d.1998)
confessed and pleaded guilty in Mar, 1969, but later tried to recant
and said he was a fall guy. In 1993 Lloyd Jowers (d.2000), a Memphis
businessman, said on ABC-TV that he had hired King's killer as a favor
to an underworld figure who was a friend. Jowers said he received
$100,000 from Memphis produce merchant Frank Liberto to arrange King’s
murder. In 1997 Ray identified an arms smuggler named "Raoul" as the
real killer. In 1998 a former FBI agent produced documents from Ray’s
car with the name Raul. In 1999 a civil trial jury in Memphis ruled
that the 1968 killing of Rev. Martin Luther King was a conspiracy. The
jury concluded that Lloyd Jowers, a former café owner, had
conspired with elements of the Memphis Police Dept., the federal
government and organized crime to kill King. In 2000 a Justice Dept.
report rejected allegations of conspiracy. In 2002 Rev. Ronald Denton
Wilson (61) said that his father, Henry Clay Wilson (d.1990), had shot
King. In 2003 Stewart Burns authored "To the Mountaintop: Martin Luther
King's Sacred Mission to Save America."
(SF E&C, 1/15/1995, A-15)(WUD, 1994,
p.1687)(SFC, 12/26/96, p.A3)(AP, 4/4/97)(SFC, 4/7/97, p.A10)(SFC,
3/25/98, p.A3)(SFC, 4/24/98, p.A1)(SFEC, 11/21/99, p.A12)(SFC,
11/23/99, p.A9)(SFC, 12/9/99, p.A1)(SFC, 12/10/99, p.A15)(SFC, 5/24/00,
p.C5)(SFC, 6/10/00, p.A3)(SFC, 4/4/02, p.A2)(SSFC, 1/11/04, p.M1)
1968 Apr 4, Bobby Kennedy spoke at
a black ghetto in Indianapolis just after hearing of the assassination
of Martin Luther King. His speech registered the enormity of the event
and began the work of healing. Riots over the next few days hit 76
American cities, but Indianapolis remained quiet.
(Econ, 4/22/06, p.79)
1968 Apr 6, Black Panther member
Bobby Hutton (17) was killed in a gun battle with police in West
Oakland, Ca., and Eldridge Cleaver was arrested.
(SFC,10/24/97, p.A15)(SFC, 4/25/98, p.A13)
1968 Apr 11, President Johnson
signed into law the Civil Rights Act of 1968, a week after the
assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. This included a Fair Housing
Act and the Indian Civil Rights Act, which limited sentences that
tribes could hand down on any charge to six months. In 1968 Congress
increased the maximum to one year. The Federal National Mortgage
Association (Fannie Mae - FNMA), established by the government in 1938,
became a private, shareholder-owned company as part of the Fair Housing
Act.
(http://tinyurl.com/2o3p2q)(AP, 4/11/98)(SFC,
2/20/98, p.A23)(http://tinyurl.com/ldx765)
1968 Apr 29, Dr. Ralph Abernathy
led The Poor People's Campaign in Washington D.C., less than a month
after the assassination of King. It concluded on June 23. The campaign
was for reforms in welfare, employment and housing policies. Abernathy
was the successor to Rev. Martin Luther King as head of the Southern
Christian Leadership conference.
(HNQ, 1/19/99)
1968 May 12, "March of Poor" under
Rev. Abernathy reached Washington, DC.
(MC, 5/12/02)
1968 Jun 17, The US Supreme Court
in Jones v. Mayer banned racial discrimination in the sale and rental
of housing.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jones_v._Mayer)
1968 Jul 27, A 3-day race riot
began in Gary, Indiana.
(www.project1968.com/july-28-august-3-1968.html)
1968 Jul 30, In Gary, Indiana,
policemen took aim at snipers after the third night of racial unrest.
64 people were taken into custody. Mayor Richard G. Hatcher, the first
Negro mayor in a city with a Negro majority, said that he now believes
that gangs realize they will not be allowed to use violence to get what
they want.
(www.project1968.com/july-28-august-3-1968.html)
1968 Aug 8, In Florida a riot
broke out in several neighborhoods of Miami, Florida, including one
community just 10 miles from the Republican Convention. 3 negroes were
killed by gunfire.
(www.project1968.com/august-4-10-1968.html)
1968 Sep 9, Arthur Ashe
(1943-1993) became the 1st black to win the US Open men’s tennis
singles championship.
(www.answers.com/topic/arthur-ashe)(http://tinyurl.com/d2xhty)
1968 Oct 16, American athletes
Tommie Smith and John Carlos sparked controversy at the Mexico City
Olympics by giving "black power" salutes during a victory ceremony
after they'd won gold and bronze medals in the 200-meter race.
(AP, 10/16/08)
1968 Oct 18, The US Olympic
Committee suspended two black athletes, Tommie Smith and John Carlos,
for giving a black power salute as a protest during a victory ceremony
in Mexico City. Bob Beamon soared 29 feet, 2 inches, to set a world
record in the long jump. In 1976 Dick Schaap authored “The Perfect
Jump.”
(AP, 10/18/98)(WSJ, 8/9/08, p.W8)
1968 Nov 5, Shirley Chisholm
(1924-2004) of Brooklyn, New York, became the first black woman elected
to serve in the US House of Representatives.
(HN, 11/5/98)(SFC, 1/3/05, p.A3)
1968 Nov 24, Eldridge Cleaver fled
the US with his wife rather face assault charges from 1958. He returned
to the US in 1975.
(www.pbs.org/hueypnewton/people/people_cleaver.html)
1968 Nov 6, At SF State on the one
year anniversary of the Gator incident, the Black Student Union issued
a list of 10 "nonnegotiable" demands and called for a one day strike.
The strike lasted 167 days.
(SFEC, 3/1/98,
p.W3)(http://userwww.sfsu.edu/~runamuck/PACEPAPER.htm)
1968 Dec 18, Carolyn Olsen was
murdered during a robbery that netted $18 on a Santa Monica tennis
court. Black Panther leader Geronimo Pratt was accused of the murder
though he maintained that he was in Oakland on the night the 27-year
old teacher was shot to death. He was arrested in 1970 and convicted in
1972 and sentenced to a life term in prison. Julius "Buffo" Butler, a
police informant who spied on the Black Panther Party, told police that
he believed Pratt killed Olsen. In 1997 a judge ruled to reverse
Pratt’s conviction based on the credibility of Butler. He was released
on $25,000 bail on 6/10/97. In 2000 Pratt was awarded $4.5 million to
be paid by Los Angeles and the FBI.
(SFC, 4/18/96, C-1)(SFC, 6/7/97, p.A5)(SFC, 6/11/97,
p.C2)(SFC, 7/15/00, p.A3)
1968 William Grier and Price Cobbs
authored "Black Rage," in which they argued that psychological
functioning is the same in all races, but that the experiences of Black
people make them different.
(SFEC, 7/20/97, BR p.3)
1968 The Association of Black
Psychologists was founded.
(WSJ, 7/8/96, p.C1)(Civilization, July-Aug, 1995, p.
36)
1968 Ruth Whitney (1928-1999),
editor of Glamour Magazine, put a black model on the cover for the
first time in the magazine's history.
(SFC, 6/8/99, p.A22)(http://tinyurl.com/ov9m59)
1969 Jan 2, The play "To be Young,
Gifted & Black," by Lorraine Hansberry (1930-1965) premiered in NYC.
(www.aetna.com/foundation/aahcalendar/1992gifted.html)
1969 Feb 13, In North Carolina the
Afro-American Society students of Duke Univ. led a black student
takeover of the Allen Building to spark University action on the
concerns of Black students. The takeover brought attention to issues
such as establishment of an Afro-American studies program, a black
cultural center, and increasing the number of black faculty and
students.
(http://library.duke.edu/digitalcollections/rbmscl/uabsa/inv/)
1969 Mar 10, James Earl Ray
pleaded guilty to the murder of Dr. Martin Luther King in Memphis,
Tenn., and was sentenced to 99 years in jail. Ray later repudiated that
plea.
(AP, 3/10/98)(HN, 3/10/98)
1969 Apr 14, In NYC the student
Afro-American Society seized Columbia College.
(http://beatl.barnard.columbia.edu/stand_columbia/Timeline1965-69.html)
1969 Apr 19, In Ithaca N.Y. some
80 armed, militant black students at Cornell Univ. took over Willard
Straight Hall. They demanded a black studies program and cut a deal
with frightened administrators for total amnesty. In 1999 Donald
Alexander Downs described the events in his book: "Cornell '69."
(WSJ, 5/20/99, p.A18)
1969 May 20, In Connecticut Warren
Kimbro (d.2009 at 74), a member of the Black Panthers, fatally shot
Alex Rackley (19), another member of the Black Panthers, who was
believed to be an FBI informant. The shooting was ordered by George
Sams, a local Black Panther leader. Prosecutors later alleged that
Bobby Seale had ordered the murder.
(AP, 2/11/09)
1969 Oct 29, The US Supreme Court
ordered immediate desegregation, superseding the previous "with all
deliberate speed" ruling.
(HN, 10/29/98)
1969 Nov 5, In Chicago Judge
Hoffman ordered that the trial of Bobby Seale be separated from 7
others in the Chicago 8 trial.
(SFEC, 11/7/99, p.A5)
1969 Nov 5, In Chicago Judge
Hoffman ordered that the trial of Bobby Seale be separated from 7
others in the Chicago 8 trial. Seale, the founder of the Black Panther
Party for Self-Defense and one of the Chicago Eight, was later
sentenced to four years in prison on sixteen counts of contempt of
court.
(www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/Chicago7/chronology.html)(SFEC,
11/7/99, p.A5)
1969 Dec 4, In Chicago police
stormed an apartment on the West Side and killed 2 Black Panthers, Fred
Hampton and Mark Clark. Panther defense minister Bobby Rush had left
the site just hours earlier.
(SFC, 12/15/99, p.AA4)
1969 Dec 8, Police made a surprise
attack on Black-Panthers in LA.
(MC, 12/8/01)
1969 Grace Halsell (1923-2000)
authored "Soul Sister: The Journal of a White Woman Who Turned Herself
Black and Went to Live and Work in Harlem and Mississippi."
(SFC, 8/18/00,
p.D8)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grace_Halsell)
1970 Jan 12, In Biafra (Nigeria)
the Ibos surrendered after nearly a million died of starvation.
(HNQ, 5/9/00)
1970 May 12, In Augusta, Georgia,
an overnight riot left 6 black men dead. Autopsies confirmed that the
six men killed were all shot in the back with police-issued shotguns.
(www.socyberty.com/History/Augusta-Georgia-Riot-of-1970.237549)
1970 Jul 29, Six days of race
rioting began in Hartford, Ct.
(www.fsmitha.com/time1970.htm)
1970 Essence Magazine, marketed to
African Americans, was founded.
(WSJ, 6/9/99, p.B10)
1970 Cheryl Brown, Miss Iowa,
became the first African-American finalist in the Miss America beauty
pageant.
(www.imdb.com/name/nm1772163/)
1971 Jan 5, Sonny Liston (b.1932),
World Champion boxer (1962-64), was found dead in his Las Vegas home.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonny_Liston)
1971 Feb 6, In Wilmington, NC,
Mike's Grocery, a white-owned business, was firebombed. When
firefighters arrived to put out the flames, they were fired upon by
snipers positioned on the roof of Gregory Congregational Church. The
National Guard was mobilized to quell rioting. The violence resulted in
two deaths. Reverend Benjamin Chavis, Jr. of Oxford, North Carolina,
and nine others, eight African American men and one white woman, were
arrested and tried and convicted for arson and conspiracy in connection
with the firebombing. They were sentenced to nearly 28 years in prison.
Chavis Muhammad (b.1948), a member of the Wilmington 10, was sentenced
in 1972 to 34 years in prison. He spent 4 years in prison before his
conviction was overturned on appeal.
(SFC, 2/25/97,
p.A10)(www.notablebiographies.com/Ch-Co/Chavis-Muhammad-Benjamin.html)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilmington_Ten)
1971 Feb 11, Whitney Young Jr.
(b.1921), National Urban League director, drowned in Nigeria.
(www.answers.com/topic/whitney-moore-jr-young)
1971 Apr 20, The US Supreme Court,
in Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education, upheld the use of
busing to achieve racial desegregation in schools. The ruling allowed
Charlotte, NC., and other cities nationwide to use mandatory busing and
student assignment based on race to attempt to further integrate
schools. The case arose in 1965 when a black parent, James E. Swann,
challenged the system that kept Charlotte's black students apart from
the white majority. In 2001 an appeals court ruled that the dual school
system was dismantled and busing could end. A failed appeal to the
Supreme Court ended the case in 2002.
(http://tinyurl.com/6lntd5)(SFEC, 7/13/97, p.D1)(AP,
4/20/07)(SFC, 4/16/02, p.A3)
1971 May 5, There was a race riot
in Brownsville section of Brooklyn, NYC.
(MC, 5/5/02)
1971 May 18, President Nixon
rejected the 60 demands of Congressional Black Caucus.
(www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=3013)
1971 May 25, Jo Etha Collier (18),
a black woman, was killed by 3 drunken white males in Drew, Miss.
(www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GSvcid=54001&GRid=26897581&)
1971 Aug 29, In SF 2 men burst
into the Ingleside Police Station and fired through a hole in a
bullet-proof glass window killing Sgt. John Young (45). A civilian
clerk was wounded. Black Panthers were suspected. 3 men were charged in
1975 but charges were dismissed in 1976. In 2005 a SF judge jailed 4
men for contempt after refusing to answer questions from a grand jury.
In 2007 police charged 9 former members of the Black Liberation Army
with waging a campaign of “chaos and terror” that left at least 3
officers dead from 1968-1973. 8 of the men were charged with murder in
the Ingleside slaying.
(SFC, 9/1/05, p.B1)(SFC, 10/8/05, p.B2)(SFC,
1/26/07, p.A1)
1971 Oct 16, H. Rap Brown (b.1943)
was captured following a shootout with police in NYC. He was charged
with inciting a riot and carrying a gun across state lines. Brown
converted to Islam in jail and became Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin.
(SSFC, 1/6/02,
p.A13)(http://americanascherrypie.tripod.com/id3.html)
1971 Dec 18, Reverend Jesse
Jackson announced in Chicago the founding of Operation PUSH (People
United to Save Humanity).
(AP, 12/18/99)
1971 Robin Winks authored “The
Blacks in Canada.”
(SFC, 2/12/10, p.A18)
1971 H. Rap Brown was captured
following a shootout with police in NYC. He was charged with inciting a
riot and carrying a gun across state lines. Brown converted to Islam in
jail and became Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin.
(SSFC, 1/6/02, p.A13)
1971 A 29-year litigation began
over a federal and state suit to de-segregate Mississippi's public
universities. In 2004 a federal appeals court upheld a settlement to
allocate $503 million over 17 years toward balanced integration.
Continued litigation was denied.
(SFC, 1/28/04, p.A3)
1971 Rev. Leon Sullivan, a noted
Philadelphia minister, became GM’s 1st black board member. In 1998
Sullivan authored “Moving Mountains.”
(SFC, 6/8/04, B7)
1972 Jan 25, Shirley Chisholm, the
first African American woman elected to U.S. Congress, announced her
candidacy for president as Democrat.
(HN, 1/25/01)
1972 Jan 27, Mahalia Jackson
(b.1911), Grammy Award winning gospel singer, died.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahalia_Jackson)
1972 Feb 23, Black activist Angela
Davis was released from jail where she was held for kidnapping ,
conspiracy and murder.
(HN, 2/23/99)
1972 Mar 1, Wilt Chamberlain
became the 1st NBA player to score 30,000 points.
(SC, 3/1/02)
1972 Mar 17, Nixon asked Congress
to halt busing in order to achieve desegregation.
(HN, 3/17/98)
1972 Apr 4, Adam Clayton Powell
Jr. (b.1908), American politician, died in Florida. He was elected to
the US House of Representatives from Harlem in 1945 and became chair of
the Education and Labor Committee in 1961. He was the first black
Congressman from New York.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Clayton_Powell_Jr.)
1972 Jul 25, US health officials
conceded that blacks were used as guinea pigs in the 40 year Tuskegee
Syphilis Study in Macon County, Ala. By this time 28 participants had
died of syphilis, 100 were dead of related complications, at least 40
wives had been infected and 19 children had contracted the disease at
birth [see 1932].
(www.npr.org/programs/morning/features/2002/jul/tuskegee/)(SSFC,
1/25/04, p.A27)
1972 Oct 12, On the US aircraft
carrier Kitty Hawk a series of incidents broke out wherein a group of
blacks, armed with chains, wrenches, bars, broomsticks and other
dangerous weapons, went marauding through sections of the ship
disobeying orders to cease, terrorizing the crew, and seeking out white
personnel for senseless beating with fists and with weapons which
resulted in extremely serious injury to three men and the medical
treatment of many more, including some blacks.
(www.history.navy.mil/library/special/racial_incidents.htm)
1972 Oct 24, Jackie Robinson, 1st
black baseball player (Brooklyn Dodgers), died at 53 of complications
from diabetes. In 1983 Prof. Jules Tygiel (1949-2007) authored
"Baseball’s Great Experiment: Jackie Robinson and His Legacy." In 1997
Arnold Rampersad published the biography "Jackie Robinson."
(WSJ, 10/17/97, p.A20)(SFEC, 4/2/00, BR p.1)(SFC,
7/3/08, p.B5)
1972 Alfred McKenzie (d.1998 at
80), a former Tuskegee Airman and current pressman for the Washington
DC Government Printing Office, filed suit contending that he and fellow
black employees had long been passed over for promotions that went to
whites. After many appeals the suit was won and in 1987 the office
agreed to pay $2.4 million in back wages to several hundred employees.
(SFC, 4/11/98,
p.A15)(www.arlingtoncemetery.net/mckenzie.htm)
1973 Feb 27, U.S. Supreme Court
ruled that a Virginia pool club could not bar residents because of
color.
(HN, 2/27/98)
1973 May 29, Tom Bradley was
elected the first black mayor of Los Angeles, defeating incumbent Sam
Yorty.
(AP, 5/29/97)
1973 Oct 16, Maynard Jackson
(1938-2003) was the elected 1st black mayor of Atlanta.
(www.blackpast.org/?q=aah/jackson-jr-maynard-1938-2003)
1973 Nov 6, Coleman Young
(1918-1997) was elected the first African American mayor of Detroit,
Mich. He served 5 consecutive terms and chose not to seek re-election
in 1993. During WW II he served with the Tuskegee Airmen and after the
war founded the National Negro Labor Council. One of his major
accomplishments was the integration of the Detroit police force.
(SFEC,11/30/97,
p.C10)(http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1355/is_23_98/ai_67185237)
1973 Richard and Christina Milner
authored “Black Players: The Secret World of Black Pimps.” The book was
the product of an anthropological study regarding both the lifestyles
and subculture of San Francisco Bay Area pimps and their prostitutes.
(www.amazon.com/Black-players-Secret-World-pimps/dp/0316574112)
1974 Jun 30, Alberta King
(b.1903), mother of Martin Luther King Jr., was assassinated in
Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Georgia by Marcus Chenault, a
twenty-one year old from Ohio who claimed that "all Christians are my
enemies."
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alberta_Williams_King)
1974 Sep 12, The start of
court-ordered busing to achieve racial integration in Boston's public
schools was marred by violence in South Boston.
(AP, 9/12/99)
1974 Nov 5, Walter Washington
(1915-2003) was elected mayor of Washington DC, the 1st black mayor
there in 104 years. He had been appointed mayor-commissioner in 1967.
(WSJ, 10/28/03, p.A1)(www.narpac.org/ITXDCHIS.HTM)
1975 Feb 25, Elijah Muhammad
(b.1897 as Elijah Poole), US leader of the Detroit-based Nation of
Islam and Black Muslims, died in Chicago.
(USAT, 2/13/97, p.6D)(SFC, 2/28/00,
p.A3)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elijah_Muhammad)
1975 Sep 2, Joseph W. Hatcher of
Tallahassee, Florida, became the state's first African-American supreme
court justice since Reconstruction.
(HN, 9/2/98)
1975 Nov 18, Black Panther leader
Eldridge Cleaver (1935-1998) returned to US to face assault charges
from 1958.
(www.pbs.org/hueypnewton/people/people_cleaver.html)
1976 Jan 23, Paul Robeson
(b.1898), black athlete, lawyer, singer, died in Philadelphia. Lloyd L.
Brown later wrote the biography "The Young Paul Robeson: On My Journey
Now." His granddaughter Susan Robeson in 1981 wrote "The Whole World in
His Hands: A Pictorial Biography of Paul Robeson."
(SFC, 3/26/98, p.A26)(WSJ, 4/9/98,
p.A21)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Robeson)
1976 Jun 16, White police gunned
down black schoolchildren and caused a nationwide riot that left 700
people dead. Students at Morris Isacson High School in Soweto had
marched to protest a new rule that called for Afrikaans as the medium
of instruction.
(SFC, 6/15/96, p.C12)
1976 The children’s fiction "Roll
of Thunder, Hear My Cry" by Mildred Taylor (b.1943) was published.
(SFEC, 2/27/00, BR
p.12)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mildred_Taylor)
1976 Britain adopted sweeping
anti-racial laws, but the laws did not extend to Northern Ireland.
(SFC, 6/30/96, A11)
1976 The British Commission for
Racial Equality was formed.
(Econ, 5/15/04, p.57)
1977 Apr 27, Bloody riots took
place in Soweto, South Africa.
(MC, 4/27/02)
1977 Aug 31, Ian Smith, espousing
racial segregation, won the Rhodesian general election with 80% of
overwhelmingly white electorate's vote.
(MC, 8/31/01)
1977 Sep 1, Ethel Waters (76),
actress (Beulah)/singer (Stormy Weather), died.
(SC, 9/1/02)
1977 Dec 4, Jean-Bedel Bokassa,
ruler of the Central African Empire [later Central African Republic],
crowned himself emperor in a ceremony believed to have cost more than
$100 million. Bokassa was deposed in 1979; he died in November 1996 at
age 75.
(AP, 12/4/97)
1977 Lawrence Levine (1933-2006),
professor of history at UC Berkeley, authored “Black Culture and Black
Consciousness: African American Folk Thought from Slavery to Freedom.”
(SFC, 10/28/06, p.B6)
1978 Jan 16, NASA named 35
candidates to fly on the space shuttle, including Sally K. Ride, who
became America's first woman in space, and Guion S. Bluford Jr., who
became America's first black astronaut in space. Six women, out of some
3,000 original applicants, graduated from NASA's rigorous training
program to become the 1st female astronauts in the space program.
(AP,
1/16/98)(www.astronautix.com/astrogrp/nas81978.htm)
1978 Feb 1, Harriet Tubman became
the 1st black woman honored on a US postage stamp.
(http://chi.gospelcom.net/DAILYF/2002/02/daily-02-01-2002.shtml)
1978 May 1,
Ernest Morial was inaugurated as the first black mayor of New Orleans.
(AP, 5/1/97)
1978 May 25, Most of SF's 18,000
black students, 28% of the public school enrollment, stayed away from
classes in honor of a one-day boycott called by Pastor Amos Brown.
(SFC, 5/23/03, p.E8)
1978 Jun 23, Joseph Freeman Jr.
became the 1st black priest in Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day
Saints (LDS).
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1990s_(LDS))
1978 Jun 28, The US Supreme Court
ordered the medical school at the University of California at Davis to
admit Allan Bakke, a white man who argued he had been a victim of
reverse racial discrimination. The US court’s Bakke decision allowed
universities to consider race in their decisions only if other factors
were equal. This was raised as an issue of reverse discrimination.
Justice Lewis Powell broke a 4-4 tie with the formulation that Davis’
program was unconstitutional, but that colleges and universities could
still use race as one of several factors to create a diverse student
body.
(WSJ, 7/18/96, p.A10)(AP, 6/28/97)(SFC, 6/27/98,
p.A16)
1978 Dec 3, William Grant Still
(b.1895), the first important black symphonic composer, died.
(WSJ, 12/9/98,
p.A20)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Grant_Still)
1978 Huey Newton was convicted on
weapons charges and launched into a 40 minute harangue calling SF
Superior Court Judge Joseph Koresh (1909-1996) "a renegade Jew."
(SFC, 6/21/96, p.E2)
1978 Stokely Carmichael
(1941-1998), American civil rights and black power advocate, changed
his name to Kwame Ture in honor of Kwame Nkrumah and Ahmed Sekou Toure,
2 African socialist leaders in Guinea.
(SFC, 11/16/98, p.A7)
1979 Jan 17, Gov. Brown
named former Congresswoman Yvonne Brathwaite Burke to the
California Board of Regents. She was the 1st black person ever
appointed to the board.
(SFC, 1/16/04, p.E5)
1979 Feb 18, The miniseries
"Roots: Next Generations" premiered on ABC TV.
(www.imdb.com/title/tt0078678/)
1979 May 16, Asa Philip Randolph
(b.1889), black labor leader and civil rights pioneer, died in NYC.
Randolph brought the word of trade unionism to millions of African
American households.
(www.aflcio.org/aboutus/history/history/randolph.cfm)
1979 Nov 3, Five radicals were
killed when gunfire erupted during an anti-Ku Klux Klan demonstration
in Greensboro, N.C., after a caravan of Klansmen and Nazis had driven
into the area. Named 'The Greensboro Massacre', the five marchers were
shot to death in broad daylight and another 8 were wounded.
(AP, 11/3/97)(MC, 11/3/01)
1979 Dec 17, In a case that
aggravated racial tensions, Arthur McDuffie, a black insurance
executive, was fatally beaten after a police chase in Miami. Four white
police officers were later acquitted of charges stemming from
McDuffie's death.
(AP, 12/17/99)
1980 Feb, Mohammed Ali (b.1942)
toured Africa as Pres. Carter's envoy.
(www.assatashakur.org/forum/showthread.php?t=3822)
1980 Mar 28, Jesse Owens (b.1913),
(Oly-gold-36), died.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Owens)
1980 Apr 16, Arthur Ashe
(1943-1993) retired from professional tennis following quadruple bypass
surgery. He contracted the HIV virus from a blood transfusion after a
second bypass operation in 1983.
(http://tinyurl.com/362hrn)
1980 May 17, Rioting that claimed
18 lives erupted in Miami's Liberty City neighborhood after an
all-white jury in Tampa acquitted four former Miami police officers of
fatally beating black insurance executive Arthur McDuffie.
(AP, 5/17/97)
1980 May 29, There was an
attempted assassination of Vernon Jordan Jr, National Urban League
president.
(SC, 5/29/02)
1980 Jun 16, Huey P. Newton
(1942-1989), co-founder of the Black Panther Party, received his
doctoral degree from UC Santa Cruz. His doctoral thesis was titled “War
Against the Panthers: A Study of Repression in America.”
(SFC, 6/10/05, p.F2)
1980 Oct 10, The Martin Luther
King, Jr. Historic Site, a 23 acre area in Atlanta, Ga., listed as a
National Historic Landmark on May 5, 1977, was made a National Historic
Site by the US Department of the Interior. The area where Dr. King was
entombed is located on Freedom Plaza and surrounded by the Freedom Hall
Complex of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social
Change, Inc.
(www.lib.lsu.edu/hum/mlk/srs218.html)
1980 Nov 17, WHHM Television in
Washington, D.C. became the first African American public-broadcasting
television station.
(HN, 11/17/98)
1980 Dec 1, The US Justice Dept
sued Yonkers, NY, citing racial discrimination.
(http://tinyurl.com/2m6tyl)
1981 Mar 4, A jury in Salt Lake
City convicted Joseph Paul Franklin, an avowed racist, of violating the
civil rights of two black men who were shot to death.
(AP, 3/4/01)
1981 Mar 13, Pres. Reagan granted
Atlanta $1.5 million to search for the murderer of some 20 black
children.
(http://tinyurl.com/3ytusv)
1981 Mar 20, Michael Donald
(b.1962), a black teenager in Mobile, Alabama, was abducted, tortured
and killed in what prosecutors charged was a Ku Klux Klan plot. Henry
Hays (d.1997) murdered Michael Donald in a random abduction. Donald was
beaten, cut, strangled and his body was strung up a tree. Hays was
convicted and sentenced to death. He was executed Jun 6, 1997. In 1987
A wrongful death suit filed by Donald’s mother, Beulah Mae Donald, gave
a $7 million verdict against the United Klans of America, led by Robert
Shelton (d.2003 at 73).
(SFC, 6/6/97,
p.A3)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Donald)(SFC, 1/21/02, p.A21)
1981 Jun 27, The African States
members of the Organization of African Unity, meeting in Liberia,
adopted a Charter on Human and People’s Rights. Article 5 specifically
prohibited slavery. It became effective as of October 21, 1986.
http://www1.umn.edu/humanrts/instree/z1afchar.htm)
1981 Aug 10, Coca-Cola Bottling Co
agreed to pump $34 million into black businesses.
(http://openweb.tvnews.vanderbilt.edu/1981-8/1981-08-10-CBS-13.html)
1981 Aug 26, Roger Nash Baldwin
(97), founder (ACLU), died.
(MC, 8/26/02)
1981 Sep 3, California Gov. Jerry
Brown signed a law making Martin Luther King’s birthday a state
holiday. The legislation was the result of 4 years of efforts by
students at Oakland Tech High School.
(SFC, 7/16/08, p.E1)(http://tinyurl.com/5lc58v)
1981 Sep 8, Civil rights activist
Roy Wilkins (80), former head of the NAACP, died in NYC.
(AP, 9/8/01)
1982 Feb 6, Civil rights workers
began a march from Carrolton to Montgomery, Alabama.
(HN, 2/6/99)
1982 Jun 30, Federal Equal Rights
Amendment failed with 3 states short of ratification.
(www.now.org/issues/economic/cea/history.html)
1982 Aug 17, A jury in South Bend,
Ind. acquitted self-avowed racist Joseph Paul Franklin, for the 1980
attempted assassination of Vernon Jordan Jr, National Urban League
president.
(http://tinyurl.com/2nzrco)
1982 Nov 20, South Africa backed
down on a plan to install black rule in neighboring Namibia.
(HN, 11/20/98)
1982 Dec 28, Nevell Johnson Jr., a
black man, was mortally wounded by a police officer in a Miami video
arcade, setting off 3 days of race-related disturbances that left
another man dead.
(AP, 12/28/97)
1983 Feb 26, Michael Jackson's
"Thriller" album went to #1 and stayed #1 for 37 weeks.
(SC, 2/26/02)
1983 Apr 29, Harold Washington was
sworn in as the first black mayor of Chicago.
(AP, 4/29/98)(HN, 4/29/98)
1983 May 24, The US Supreme Court
ruled, in Bob Jones University v. United States, that the government
can deny tax breaks to schools that racially discriminate against
students. This upheld a 1970 ruling.
(http://supreme.justia.com/us/461/574/)
1983 Aug 30, Lieutenant Colonel
Guion S. Bluford Jr. became the first black American astronaut to
travel in space, blasting off aboard the Challenger.
(AP, 8/30/97)(HN, 8/30/98)
1983 Sep 15, New York City Cops
beat to death Michael Stewart for graffiting the subway.
(http://shs.westport.k12.ct.us/jwb/Collab/CivRts/StewartRslt.htm)
1983 Oct 19, The US Senate
established the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. federal holiday as the 3rd
Monday in January each year. Dr. King was born on January 15, 1929.
(www.infoplease.com/spot/mlkhistory1.html)
1984 Feb 26, Reverend Jesse
Jackson acknowledged that he had called NYC: "Hymietown."
(SC, 2/26/02)
1984 Mar 15, The acquittal of a
Miami police officer on charges of negligently killing a ghetto youth
sparked a rampage by angry blacks in Miami; 550 people were arrested.
(http://tinyurl.com/39ow9d)
1984 Wallace Terry (d.2003 at 65),
journalist, authored "Bloods: An Oral History of the Vietnam War by
Black Veterans. It detailed the experiences of 20 black soldiers and
was made into a 1986 PBS documentary.
(SFC, 6/2/03, p.B4)
1985 Mar 31, In San Diego 2 white
police officers stopped a pickup truck driven by Sagon Penn (d.2002). A
scuffle ensued and Penn killed officer Thomas Riggs with the officer’s
gun. Penn was acquitted under allegations of police brutality and
racism.
(SFC, 7/5/02, p.A24)
1985 Nov 19, Stepin Fetchit (83),
born as Lincoln Perry, 1st black film star, died of pneumonia. His
films included “Miracle in Harlem” (1948). In 2005 Mel Watkins authored
“Stepin Fetchit: The Life and Times of Lincoln Perry.”
(www.nndb.com/people/913/000091640/)
1985 Nov 21, Yonkers, NY, was
found guilty of intentional discrimination in its housing and schools.
(http://tinyurl.com/2oegnj)
1985 Dr. William F. Gibson
(d.2002) was elected head of the NAACP. He had led the South Carolina
chapter for 18 years. His tenure ended in 1995 under accusations of
abusing his expense account.
(SFC, 5/4/02, p.A21)
1986 Jan 20, The United States
observed the first federal holiday in honor of slain civil rights
leader Martin Luther King Jr.
(AP, 1/20/98)
1986 Feb 4, The U.S. Post Office
issued a commemorative stamp featuring Sojourner Truth.
(HN, 2/4/99)
1986 Jul 2, The US Supreme Court
upheld affirmative action in 2 rulings.
(SC, 7/2/02)
1986 Naomi Sims (1948-2009)
authored “All About Health and Beauty for the Black Woman.” Her 1968
cover shot on the Ladies’ Home Journal was a breakthrough for black
fashion models.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naomi_Sims)(SFC,
8/7/09, p.D5)
1987 Jan 24, About 20,000 civil
rights demonstrators marched through predominantly white Forsyth
County, Ga., a week after a smaller march was disrupted by Ku Klux Klan
members and supporters.
(AP, 1/24/98)
1987 Feb 12, Surviving relatives
of a black man murdered by KKK members were awarded $7 M damages.
(MC, 2/12/02)
1987 Feb 25, US Supreme Court
upheld affirmative action with a 5-4 vote.
(MC, 2/25/02)
1987 Feb 26, NBA's Michael
Jordan's scored 58 points for a Chicago Bull record.
(SC, 2/26/02)
1987 Aug 24, Bayard Rustin
(b.1912), gay civil rights activist, died of cardiac arrest. In 2003 a
documentary of his life by Nancy Kates: "Brother Outsider: The Life of
Bayard Rustin," was aired on PBS TV. He was the chief architect of the
1963 march on Washington. In 2003 John D'Emilio authored "Lost Prophet:
The Life and Times of Bayard Rustin."
(SFC, 1/16/03, p.E1)(SSFC, 8/31/03, p.M3)
1987 Nov 25, Harold Washington,
the first black mayor of Chicago (1983-1987), died at age 65 after
suffering a heart attack in his City Hall office.
(AP, 11/25/97)
1987 Nov 30, Author James Baldwin
died in St. Paul de Vence, France, at age 63. His work included "Notes
of a Native Son," "Nobody Knows My Name," and "The Fire Next Time." In
1991 James Campbell published the biography: "Talking at the Gates: A
Life of James Baldwin."
(AP, 11/30/97)(SFC, 12/30/98, p.A2)
1987 Dec 8, Kurt Schmoke became
the first African-American mayor of Maryland when he was elected the
mayor of Baltimore. He was a Rhodes scholar and Harvard Law School
graduate. He served 3 terms and decided to run for the Senate.
(SFC, 12/4/98, p.A12)(HN, 12/8/98)
1987 First Friday, an African
American networking organization, began in New Jersey as a happy hour
for people in their 30s.
(SSFC, 8/18/02, p.E1)
1988 Jan 15, Jimmy "The Greek"
Snyder made racist remarks about black athletes. The CBS football
analyst was fired the next day.
(http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/almanac/video/1988/)
1988 Mar 12, Rev. Jesse Jackson
won the Democratic precinct caucuses in his native South Carolina.
(AP, 3/12/98)
1988 Apr 6, Black pole explorer M.
Henson was buried next to R. Peary in Arlington.
(MC, 4/6/02)
1988 May 5, The Rev. Eugene
Antonio Marino became the nation's first black Roman Catholic
archbishop during an installation Mass in the Atlanta Civic Center. He
stepped down in July 1990 because of a two-year affair with Columbus
resident Vicki Long.
(AP, 5/5/98)
1988 Jun 5, Clarence Pendleton
(57), chairman of the US Civil Rights Commission, died.
(AP, 6/5/98)
1988 Aug 27, Tens of thousands of
civil rights marchers gathered in Washington, D.C., on the eve of the
25th anniversary of Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech.
(AP, 8/27/98)
1988 Aug 31, In South Africa the
Khotso House was bombed. Police chief Johan van der Merwe was
instructed to blow up the Johannesburg headquarters of the South
African Council of Churches, called Khotso House, for harboring
anti-apartheid groups. The bombing injured 21 people. He said in 1996
that the instructions came from Law and Order Minister Adriaan Vlok,
who told him that the order came directly from Pres. P.W. Botha. In
1997 a document submitted by Vlok said the order to destroy the
headquarters came from Pres. Botha. Col. Eugene de Kock testified in
1998 that he was called in by a police general to blowup Khotso House.
Vlok testified in 1998 that Botha dictated the bombing. Vlok and van
der Merwe were given amnesty in 1999.
(SFC, 11/23/96, p.A9)(SFC, 6/21/97, p.A10)(SFC,
6/4/98, p.A12)(SFC, 7/22/98, p.A11)(SFC, 8/6/99, p.A14)
1988 Romare Bearden (b.1911),
North Carolina-born African American artist, died. He depicted black
culture and history and transferred his collages to prints using a
variety of techniques. In 2004 Jan Greenberg authored "Romare Bearden:
Collage of Memories."
(WSJ, 11/19/96, p.A20)(SFC, 3/24/04, p.E1)
1989 Feb 5, Kareem Abdul-Jabar
became the 1st NBA player to score 38,000 points.
(MC, 2/5/02)
1989 Feb 10, Ron Brown was elected
chairman of the Democratic National Committee, becoming the first black
to head a major U.S. political party.
(AP, 2/10/99)
1989 Apr 12, Sugar Ray Robinson
(b.1921), former middleweight boxing champion, died in Culver City,
Ca., after suffering from Alzheimer’s disease. In 2009 Wil Haygood
authored “Sweet Thunder: The Life and Times of Sugar Ray Robinson.”
(AP, 4/12/99)(Econ, 10/24/09, p.96)
1989 May 9, VP Quayle said in
United Negro College Fund speech: "What a waste it is to lose one's
mind" instead of "a mind is terrible thing to waste."
(www.realchange.org/quayle.htm)
1989 Jun 14, Congressman William
Gray, an African American, was elected Democratic Whip of the House of
Representatives.
(HN, 6/14/02)
1989 Aug 22, Huey P. Newton (47),
Black Panther co-founder, was shot to death in Oakland, Calif. Gunman
Tyrone Robinson was later sentenced to 32 years to life in prison.
(AP, 8/22/97)
1989 Aug 23, In a case that
inflamed racial tensions in New York City, Yusuf Hawkins, a black
teen-ager, was shot dead after he and his friends were confronted by
white youths in a Brooklyn neighborhood.
(AP, 8/23/99)
1990 Jan 12, Civil Rights activist
Rev. Al Sharpton was stabbed in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn.
(MC, 1/12/02)
1990 Feb 10, South African
President F.W. de Klerk announced that black activist Nelson Mandela
would be released the next day after 27 years in captivity.
(AP, 2/10/00)
1990 Mar 3, Carole Gist (20) of
Michigan was 1st black crowned 39th Miss USA.
(SC, 3/3/02)
1990 Apr 17, The Rev. Ralph D.
Abernathy, the civil rights activist and top aide to Rev. Martin Luther
King Jr., died in Atlanta at age 64.
(AP, 4/17/00)
1990 May 9, NY Newsday reporter
Jimmy Breslin was suspended for a racial slur.
(MC, 5/9/02)
1990 Aug 17, Phyllis Polander sued
Mike Tyson for sexual harassment.
(SC, 8/17/02)
1991 Jan 2, Sharon Pratt Dixon was
sworn in as mayor of Washington, D.C., becoming the first black woman
to head a city of Washington's size and prominence.
(AP, 1/2/98)
1991 Feb 2, In a dramatic
concession to South Africa’s black majority, President F.W. de Klerk
lifted a ban on the African National Congress and promised to free
Nelson Mandela.
(AP, 2/2/01)
1991 Mar 3, In Los Angeles police
arrested ex-convict Rodney King after an 8-mile chase. King resisted
arrest and the police used force to subdue him. A local resident
captured part of the arrest and beating on video tape. The incident led
to a police trial and acquittal that sparked a violent riot. In 1998
Lou Cannon published "Official Negligence: How Rodney King and the
Riots Changed Los Angeles and the LAPD" documenting the whole affair.
(WSJ, 2/5/98, p.A20)(SFEC, 2/8/98, BR p.1)(AP,
3/3/98)
1991 Mar 15, An indictment was
unsealed in Los Angeles, charging four police officers with beating
black motorist Rodney King.
(HN, 3/15/98)(AP, 3/15/01)
1991 Jul 20, Mike Tyson was
accused of raping a Miss Black America contestant.
(MC, 7/20/02)
1992 Jan 27, Boxer Mike Tyson went
on trial for rape. He was found guilty.
(MC, 1/27/02)
1992 Jan 29, Willie Dixon (76),
blues composer (Backdoor Man), died.
(MC, 1/29/02)
1992 Feb 7, Former heavyweight
boxing champion Mike Tyson testified at his rape trial in Indianapolis
that his accuser, a Miss Black America contestant, had consented to
having sex with him.
(AP, 2/7/02)
1992 Feb 9, Magic Johnson returned
to professional basketball by playing in the NBA All-Star game. Johnson
was named most valuable player as his side, the Western Conference,
defeated the Eastern Conference 153-to-113.
(AP, 2/9/02)
1992 Feb 10, Boxer Mike Tyson was
convicted in Indianapolis of raping Desiree Washington, a Miss Black
America contestant.
(AP, 2/10/97)
1992 Feb 10, Alex Haley, author of
"Roots" and co-writer of "The Autobiography of Malcolm X," died in
Seattle at age 70. Much of his work was donated to the Univ. of
Tennessee, Knoxville.
(SFC, 12/6/96, p.C15)(AP, 2/10/97)
1992 Mar 26, A judge in
Indianapolis sentenced former heavyweight boxing champion Mike Tyson to
six years in prison for raping a Miss Black America contestant. Tyson
ended up serving three years.
(AP, 3/26/02)
1992 Apr 29, Deadly rioting
erupted in Los Angeles after a jury in Simi Valley acquitted four
Los Angeles police officers of almost all state charges in the
videotaped beating of Rodney King. White truck driver Reginald Denny
was beaten by a mob in south Central LA angered by the acquittal of 4
police officers caught on video tape in the beating of black motorist
Rodney King. Three days of violence ensued with 55 people killed, 2,300
injured and an estimated $1 billion [$717 million] in property damages.
Rioters tore through the city following the not guilty verdicts on
state charges for Los Angeles Police Department Sergeant Stacey C. Koon
and officer Laurence M. Powell for beating Rodney King. 1093 buildings
were damaged or destroyed. Of these, 764 retail stores were owned by
Koreans. The US Congress later authorized $1 billion to revitalize
south central Los Angeles.
(TMC, 1994, p.1992)(SFC, 6/14/96, p. A4)(SFC,
1/1/97, p.A16)(SFC, 4/29/97, p.A8)(WSJ, 6/4/97, p.CA1)(AP,
4/29/98)(SFC, 2/5/00, p.A3)
1992 May 15, A judge in Los
Angeles ordered police officer Laurence Powell retried on a charge of
excessive force in the beating of Rodney King. The charge was
eventually dropped.
(AP, 5/15/97)
1992 Jul 12, In an emotional
farewell speech, Benjamin Hooks, outgoing executive director of the
NAACP, urged the group's convention in Nashville, Tenn., to show the
world that it remained vital.
(AP, 7/12/97)
1992 Autherine Lucy Foster
(b.1929), wife of Rev. Hugh Foster, finally got a degree from the Univ.
of Alabama, when she received a Master's in Education. She had been
suspended from the school in 1956 due to campus safety issues relating
to her race. Also in that graduating class was her daughter Grazia, who
received a Bachelor's Degree in Corporate Finance.
(NYT, 4/26/1992, p.43)
1993 Feb 6, Tennis Hall-of-Famer
and human rights advocate Arthur Ashe died of AIDS in New York at age
49. He was the first black man to win the Wimbledon tennis match.
(SFC, 7/4/96, p.A3)(AP, 2/6/97)
1993 Apr 9, The Rev. Benjamin
Chavis was chosen to head the NAACP, succeeding Benjamin Hooks.
(AP, 4/9/98)
1993 Apr 16, A jury reached guilty
verdict in the Federal case against cop who beat Rodney King, but the
verdict was not read until April 17th.
(MC, 4/16/02)
1993 Apr 17, A federal jury in Los
Angeles convicted two former police officers of violating the civil
rights of beaten motorist Rodney King; two other officers were
acquitted. [see Apr 16]
(AP, 4/17/98)
1993 Jul 4, Pilar Fort was crowned
25th Miss Black America.
(Maggio, 98)
1993 Jul 15, Authorities in Los
Angeles announced eight arrests in connection with an alleged plot by
white supremacists to ignite a race war by bombing a black church and
killing prominent black Americans. Christopher Fisher, leader of the
Fourth Reich Skinheads, was later sentenced to more than 8 years in
federal prison while defendant Carl Daniel Boese was sentenced to
nearly 5 years in prison; both had pleaded guilty to arson and
conspiracy charges.
(AP, 7/15/03)
1993 Toni Morrison (b.1931,
American novelist, won the Nobel Prize in Literature. Her novels are
known for their epic themes, vivid dialogue, and richly detailed black
characters. Among her best known novels are “The Bluest Eye,” “Song of
Solomon,” and “Beloved,” which won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in
1988.
(AP,
10/8/09)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toni_Morrison)
1994 Apr 16, Ralph Ellison
(b.1914), author of "Invisible Man" (1952), died in New York of
pancreatic cancer at age 80. His unfinished novel "Juneteenth" was
published in 1999. His books also included "Living With Music." In 2002
Lawrence Jackson authored "Ralph Ellison: Emergence of Genius."
(AP, 4/16/99)(WSJ, 6/18/99, p.W13)(WSJ, 6/14/02,
p.W11)
1994 Apr 19, A Los Angeles jury
awarded $3.8 million to beaten motorist Rodney King.
(AP, 4/19/99)
1994 Apr 27, South Africa began
its first democratic elections.
(SFC,10/24/97, p.D6)
1994 May 1, South Africa's first
all-race elections ended.
(SFC, 11/30/96, p.A12)
1994 May 29, Khallid Abdul
Muhammad, a former spokesman for the Nation of Islam, was shot and
wounded after delivering a speech at the University of California,
Riverside; a defrocked Nation of Islam minister, James Edward Bess, was
charged. Bess was later convicted of attempted murder and assault and
sentenced to life in prison.
(AP, 5/29/04)
1994 Jul 20, OJ Simpson offered a
$500,000 reward for evidence of ex-wife's killer.
(MC, 7/20/02)
1994 Aug 20, Benjamin Chavis
Junior was fired as head of the NAACP after a turbulent 16-month
tenure.
(AP, 8/20/99)
1994 Aug 30, Rosa Parks, who
helped touch off the civil rights movement in 1955 by refusing to give
up her bus seat to a white man in Montgomery, Ala., was robbed and
beaten in her Detroit apartment. Joseph Skipper later pleaded guilty to
assault and robbery and was sentenced to prison.
(AP, 8/30/99)
1995 Jan 8, The Inner City Church
in Knoxville, Tenn., burned down. Arson was suspected and
investigations by the FBI and ATF were later begun.
(SFC, 6/11/96, p.A16)
1995 Jan 12, The murder trial
against OJ Simpson, began in LA.
(MC, 1/12/02)
1995 Jan 12, Qubilah Shabazz, the
daughter of Malcolm X, was arrested in Minneapolis on charges that she
had tried to hire a hitman to kill Nation of Islam leader Louis
Farrakhan; the charges were later dropped.
(AP, 1/12/00)
1995 Jan 31, The Mt. Calvary
Baptist Church in Hardeman Co., Tenn., burned down. Arson was suspected
and investigations by the FBI and ATF were later begun.
(SFC, 6/11/96, p.A16)
1995 Feb 18, The National
Association for the Advancement of Colored People replaced veteran
chairman William Gibson with Myrlie Evers-Williams, the widow of slain
civil rights leader Medgar Evers, after the rank-and-file declared no
confidence in Gibson's leadership.
(AP, 2/18/00)
1995 Feb 19, A day after being
named the new chairwoman of the National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People, Myrlie Evers-Williams outlined her plans
for revitalizing the civil rights organization, saying she intended to
take the group back to its roots.
(AP, 2/19/00)
1995 Mar 16, Mississippi formally
abolished slavery and ratified 13th Amendment.
(MC, 3/16/02)
1995 May 1, Charges that Qubilah
Shabazz, the daughter of Malcolm X, had plotted to murder Nation of
Islam leader Louis Farrakhan were dropped as jury selection for her
trial was about to begin in Minneapolis.
(AP, 5/1/00)
1995 May 14, Myrlie Evers-Williams
was sworn in to head the NAACP, pledging to lead the civil rights group
away from its recent troubles and restore it as a political and social
force.
(AP, 5/14/00)
1995 Aug 29, At the O.J. Simpson
murder trial in Los Angeles, without the jury present, tape recordings
of police detective Mark Fuhrman were played in which Fuhrman could be
heard spouting racial invectives.
(AP, 8/29/00)
1995 Aug 31, At the O.J. Simpson
trial in Los Angeles, Judge Lance Ito ruled the defense could play only
two examples of police detective Mark Fuhrman’s racist comments from
taped conversations with a screenwriter.
(AP, 8/31/00)
1995 Oct 9, Nation of Islam leader
Louis Farrakhan and former NAACP exec. Benjamin Chavis propose to lead
a march of black men, "the million man march," on Washington DC on Oct.
16.
(WSJ, 10/10/95, p.A1)(SFC, 2/25/97, p.A10)
1995 Dec 9, Rep. Kweisi Mfume (the
Swahili name means conquering son of kings), D-Md., was chosen to head
the NAACP.
(WSJ, 12/11/95, p.A-1)(AP, 12/9/97)
1996 Jan 11, The Little Mt. Zion
Baptist Church in Green Co., Ala., burned down. Arson was suspected and
investigations by the FBI and ATF were later begun.
(SFC, 6/11/96, p.A16)
1996 Jan 11, The Mt. Zoar Baptist
Church in Green Co., Ala., burned down. Arson was suspected and
investigations by the FBI and ATF were later begun.
(SFC, 6/11/96, p.A16)
1996 Feb 1, The Cypress Grove
Baptist Church, St. Paul’s Free Baptist Church, and Thomas Chapel
Benevolent Society Church in East Baton Rouge Parish, La., burned down.
Arson was suspected and investigations by the FBI and ATF were later
begun.
(SFC, 6/11/96, p.A16)
1996 Feb 1, The Sweet Home Baptist
Church in Baker, La., burned down. Arson was suspected and
investigations by the FBI and ATF were later begun.
(SFC, 6/11/96, p.A16)
1996 Feb 20, Kweisi Mfume began
his job as President and CEO of the NAACP.
(SFEC, 1/5/97, Z1 p.3)
1996 Mar 5, The St. Paul AME
Church in Hatley, Miss., burned down. Arson was suspected and
investigations by the FBI and ATF were later begun.
(SFC, 6/11/96, p.A16)
1996 Apr 3, Carl Stokes died of
cancer AT 68. He was elected mayor of Cleveland in 1967, the first
black mayor of a major US city. He had been on medical leave from his
post since 1994 as ambassador to the Seychelles.
(WSJ, 4/4/96, A-1)(AP, 4/3/97)
1996 Aug 30, In Libya, Louis
Farrakhan said that he could not accept a $250,000 human rights award
until US courts give him permission.
(SFC, 8/31/96, p.A4)
1996 Sep 12, The first
African-American civil War memorial was dedicated in Washington DC.
(SFC, 9/11/96, p.C1)
1996 Nov 13, A grand jury in St.
Petersburg, Fla., declined to indict a white policeman, Jim Knight, who
had shot black motorist TyRon Lewis to death the previous month; the
decision prompted angry mobs to return to the streets.
(SFC, 11/14/96, p.A3)(AP, 11/13/97)
1996 Kennell Jackson (1941-2005),
Stanford Univ. history professor, authored “America Is Me: The Most
Asked and Least Understood Questions About Black American History.”
(SFC, 11/29/05, p.B7)
1997 Jan 28, Five former police
officers in South Africa admitted to killing anti-apartheid activist
Stephen Biko, who died in police custody in 1977. His death had been
officially listed as an accident.
(MC, 1/28/02)
1997 Jan 31, Three days of
deliberations in the O.J. Simpson civil trial in Santa Monica, Calif.,
were scrapped after the only black woman on the panel was replaced
because of misconduct. The jury started over.
(AP, 1/31/98)
1997 Feb 10, A civil jury in Santa
Monica heaped $25 million in punitive damages on O.J. Simpson for the
slayings of his ex-wife and her friend, on top of $8.5 million in
compensatory damages awarded earlier.
(USAT, 2/11/97, p.A1)(AP, 2/10/97)
1997 Feb 10, The city of
Cincinnati revealed plans for a new $80-million museum for its role in
the Underground Railroad during the Civil War. The museum and freedom
center were scheduled to open in 2002.
(USAT, 2/11/97, p.D1)
1997 Feb 23, Former NAACP leader
Benjamin Chavis announced that he had joined the Nation of Islam led by
ailing Louis Farrakhan.
(SFC, 2/25/97, p.A10)
1997 Feb 23, In Philadelphia a
group of white men attacked a black family in the Grays Ferry section.
Nine men were tried in 1998 and 6 were convicted on a variety of felony
accounts.
(SFC, 2/10/98, p.A3)
1997 Feb 27, A jury in
Fayetteville, N.C., convicted former Army paratrooper James N.
Burmeister of murdering a black couple so he could get a skinhead
tattoo. He was later sentenced to life in prison.
(AP, 2/27/98)
1997 Mar 9, In Los Angeles the
24-year-old black Gangsta rapper The Notorious B.I.G. (Christopher G.
Wallace or aka Biggie Smalls) was shot and killed in a drive-by
shooting. He had been accused of being involved in a 1994 robbery in
which Tupac Shakur was shot and robbed of $40,000.
(SFC, 3/10/97, p.A8) (AP, 3/9/98)
1997 Mar 21, In Chicago 3
white teenagers attacked and severely injured a 13-year-old black boy.
Lenard Clark (13) was left brain damaged. The suspects, Frank Caruso
(18), Victor Jasas (17), and Michael Kwidzinski (19) were released on
bonds of $150,000 with charges of attempted murder, aggravated battery
and a hate crime. Caruso was convicted in 1998 and was sentenced to 8
years in prison. The other 2 pleaded guilty to reduced charges and were
let off with probation and community service.
(SFC, 3/25/97, p.A7)(SFC, 10/20/98, p.A6)
1997 Apr 12, The new $38.4 million
Museum of African American History was scheduled to open in Detroit at
315 E. Warren Ave. with a 16,000-sq.-foot core exhibit. The building
was paid for by a city-backed bond issue but the collection was started
by Dr. Charles Wright.
(Sky, 4/97, p.28)(SFEC, 2/23/97, p.T7)(WSJ, 9/30/97,
p.A20)
1997 Apr 14, Some 500 black
demonstrators marched in the Grays Ferry section of Philadelphia in
response to a Feb 23 beating of Annette Williams, her son and nephew by
a mob of white men. In March two black men shot and killed the
16-year-old son of a white police officer in a drugstore robbery.
(SFC, 4/15/97, p.A3)
1997 Jun 1, Betty Shabazz (61),
the widow of Malcolm X, was severely burned in a fire set by her
grandson (12) in her Yonkers, N.Y., apartment. She died of the burn
wounds on Jun 23.
(SFC, 6/24/97, p.A3)(SFC, 6/26/97, p.A15)(AP, 6/1/98)
1997 Jul 17, Dr. Robert C. Weaver
(b.1907), the first African American to serve on a president’s cabinet,
died in NYC. He was the administrator of the federal Housing and Home
Finance Agency, the predecessor to HUD, under President John F.
Kennedy. He was named national chairman of the NAACP in 1960 and in
1962 he was awarded the NAACP Spingarn Medal. Weaver wrote more than
175 articles and four books on housing and urban issues. [see Jan
18,1966]
(http://search.eb.com/Blackhistory/article.do?nKeyValue=76375)
1997 Nov 19, In Denver Oumar Dia,
a black man, was gunned down at a bus stop, and a nurse, Jeannie
Vanvelkinburgh, who tried to help him, was shot in the back and left
paralyzed. One of 2 suspects was arrested and described himself as a
skinhead and said that he shot Dia because he was black.
(SFC, 11/29/97, p.A3)
1997 Nov 27, In Denver five
skinheads beat up a 26-year-old black woman who was shopping at a
7-Eleven. All 5 were captured and arraigned in court.
(SFC, 11/29/97, p.A3)
1998 Jan 19, This was the Martin
Luther King Jr. federal holiday. During a ceremony in Atlanta
commemorating the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, Vice President Gore
announced that the Clinton administration would propose increasing
spending on civil rights by $86 million.
(AP, 1/19/98)(AP, 1/19/99)
1998 Feb 21, Julian Bond was
elected chairman of the 64-member board of the NAACP.
(SFEC, 2/22/98, p.A5)
1998 Mar 17, In Mississippi after
a 21-year court fight the state unsealed over 124,000 pages of secret
files of the State Sovereignty Commission that revealed numerous
illegal methods to thwart the civil rights workers of the ‘50s, ‘60s
and ‘70s.
(SFC, 3/18/98, p.A1)
1998 Apr 23, Two New Jersey
troopers fired 11 shots into a van carrying African American and Latino
men from the Bronx. They admitted to racial profiling and pleaded
guilty to misdemeanor charges in 2002.
(SFC, 1/15/02, p.A3)
1998 Apr 23, James Earl Ray died
at a Nashville hospital at age 70. He was the ex-convict who confessed
to assassinating the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968 and then
insisted he was framed.
(AP, 4/23/99)
1998 May 1, Eldridge Cleaver,
ex-Black Panther who later renounced his past and became a Republican,
died at age 62 in Pomona, Ca. He wrote the book "Soul On Ice" in 1965
while in Folsom Prison. The book was published in 1968. He jumped bail
after a 1968 shooting and returned to the US in 1975.
(SFC, 5/2/98, p.A1,13)(AP, 5/1/99)
1998 Jul 13, A jury in
Poughkeepsie, N.Y., ruled that the Rev. Al Sharpton and two others had
defamed a former prosecutor by accusing him of raping Tawana Brawley.
Steven Pagones won a $345,000 judgment.
(AP,
7/13/08)(www.cnn.com/US/9807/13/brawley.verdict.02/)
1998 Aug 26, Attorney General
Janet Reno reopened the investigation of the assassination of civil
rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., focusing on two allegations of a
conspiracy beyond James Earl Ray. A Justice Department investigation
later rejected allegations that conspirators had aided or framed James
Earl Ray in King's assassination.
(AP, 8/26/08)
1998 Aug 31, In Gaithersburg, Md.,
Boxer Mike Tyson assaulted 2 motorist following a minor chain-reaction
collision. In 1999 he was convicted of assault and sentenced to one
year in jail.
(SFC, 2/6/99, p.A1)
1998 Sep 7, In Atlanta the 4-day
Million Youth Movement ended with a march of less than 10,000 black
youths.
(SFC, 9/8/98, p.A3)
1998 Nov 25, Flip Wilson (64), the
fist successful black host of a TV variety show, the Flip Wilson Show
from 1970-1974, died in Malibu, Calif.
(SFC, 11/26/98, p.B9)(AP, 11/25/99)
1998 Nov 30, Margaret Walker
Alexander, black author, died at age 83. Her work included the 1942
poem "For My People," and the 1966 novel "Jubilee."
(SFC, 12/1/98, p.B2)
1999 Jan 7, The new Encarta
Africana contained 3,000 scholarly articles on black culture and
history as part of a 2-CD ROM set by Microsoft. It included a timeline
that combines events in Africa and America.
(SFC, 1/7/99, p.A13)
1999 Jan 20, The Malcolm X postage
stamp, the 22nd in the Black heritage series, went on sale.
(SFC, 1/21/99, p.A3)
1999 Feb 4, In NYC plainclothes
police officers fired 41 shots at Amadou Daillo (22), a Bronx street
peddler and immigrant from Guinea, who was unarmed in front of his
Bronx home. Police were searching for a rapist and Daillo was killed
with 19 gunshot wounds. Officers Kenneth Boss, Sean Carroll, Edward
McMellon and Richard Murphy were later indicted for 2nd degree murder.
(SFC, 2/5/99, p.A3)(SFC, 2/6/99, p.A3)(SFC, 3/26/99,
p.A3)
1999 Feb 19, President Clinton
posthumously pardoned Henry O. Flipper, the first black graduate of
West Point, whose military career was tarnished by a racially motivated
discharge.
(AP, 2/19/00)
1999 Feb 23, A jury in Jasper,
Texas convicted white supremacist John William King of murder in the
gruesome dragging death of a black man, James Byrd Jr.; King was
sentenced to death two days later.
(SFC, 2/24/99, p.A1)(AP, 2/23/00)
1999 Feb 25, A jury in Jasper,
Texas, sentenced white supremacist John William King to death for
chaining James Byrd Jr., a black man, to a pickup truck and dragging
him to pieces in 1998.
(SFC, 2/26/99, p.A3)(AP, 2/25/00)
1999 Mar 31, A federal judge was
expected to approve a settlement by black United Parcel Service (UPS)
workers for over $8 million for racial discrimination.
(SFEC, 3/7/99, p.D2)
1999 Mar 31, Four New York City
police officers were charged with murder for killing Amadou Diallo, an
unarmed African immigrant, in a hail of bullets. The officers were
later acquitted.
(AP, 3/31/00)
1999 Jul 14, Race-based school
busing in Boston came to an end after 25 years.
(AP, 7/14/00)
1999 Sep 4, In NYC the 2nd Million
Youth March headed by Khalid Abdul Muhammad was attended by 1-2
thousand people and watched over by 1,400 police officers.
(SFEC, 9/5/99, p.A2)
1999 Nov 23, Defense Secretary
William Cohen called for a military-wide review of conduct after a
Pentagon study said up to 75 percent of blacks and other ethnic
minorities reported experiencing racially offensive behavior.
(AP, 11/23/00)
1999 David Duke published his book
"My Awakening," a plan for revolution to preserve the Aryan way of
life. The book asserted that blacks are inferior to whites and included
a supporting foreword by FSU Prof. Glayde Whitney (d.2002 at 62).
(SFEC, 3/7/99, p.A10)
2000 Feb 4, Singer Doris
Kenner-Jackson of the Shirelles died in Goldsboro, North Carolina, at
age 58.
(AP, 2/4/01)
2000 Feb 27, Minister Louis
Farrakhan of the Nation of Islam ended 2 decades of bitter rivalry and
embraced W. Deen Mohammad, son of the late Elijah Mohammad (d.1975),
onetime leader of the black Muslims.
(SFC, 2/28/00, p.A3)
2000 Mar 4, On the AIDS crises it
was reported that 1 in every 50 black men in the US was HIV positive.
It was also reported that 1 in 300 of all people in the US were HIV
positive.
(SFEC, 3/5/00, Z1 p.1)
2000 Mar 15, In Michigan 4 teens
beat to death and robbed Willie Jones (66) as he left the Michigan
Lanes Bowling Alley in Grand Rapids. The teens then stuffed Jones into
their car trunk and drove around town to show him off.
(SFC, 3/20/00, p.A11)
2000 Mar 16, In Georgia a gunman
shot and wounded 2 sheriff's deputies while being served a warrant in
Atlanta at the home of Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin, formerly known as H. Rap
Brown. The gunman was later identified as Brown. Deputy Ricky Kinchen
(35) died the next day. Al-Amin (56) was arrested in Alabama on Mar 20.
(SFC, 3/17/00, p.A5)(SFC, 3/18/00, p.A3)(SFC,
3/21/00, p.A3)
2000 May 17, Two former Ku Klux
Klansmen were arrested on murder charges in the 1963 church bombing in
Birmingham, Alabama, that killed four black girls. Thomas Blanton
Junior was convicted and sentenced to life in prison this past May
first. Bobby Frank Cherry was indicted last year, but his trial was
delayed after evaluations raised questions about his mental competency.
(AP, 5/17/01)
2000 Aug 2, In SF a jury awarded
17 bakery workers of Interstate Brands Corp. $120 million for racial
discrimination.
(SFC, 8/3/00, p.A1)
2000 Dec 3, Gwendolyn Brooks,
African-American poet, died at age 83. Brooks won a 1949 Pulitzer Prize
for her 2nd book of poetry, "Annie Allen." She was the poet laureate of
Illinois since 1968.
(SFC, 12/4/00, p.E3)
2001 Jan 15, President-elect Bush
marked the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday at an elementary school in
Houston, where he promised wary black Americans: "My job will be to
listen not only to the successful, but also to the suffering."
(AP, 1/15/02)
2001 Apr 7, In Cincinnati Timothy
Thomas (19), an unarmed black man wanted on 14 misdemeanor warrants,
was fatally shot by a white police officer. The shooting led to
city-wide riots. Officer Stephen Roach was later charged with negligent
homicide and obstructing official business.
(SFC, 4/11/01, p.A10)(SFC, 5/8/01, p.A3)(AP, 4/7/02)
2001 Apr 24, The Rev. Leon
Sullivan, a pioneering civil rights crusader credited with helping end
South Africa's system of apartheid, died in Scottsdale, Ariz., at age
78.
(AP, 4/24/02)
2001 May 1, Thomas Blanton Jr.
became the second ex-Ku Klux Klansman to be convicted in the 1963
bombing of a church in Birmingham, Ala., that claimed the lives of four
black girls.
(AP, 5/1/02)
2001 Aug, Alan Brian Bond, one of
the 1st African Americans to become established as a money manager, was
indicted for a 2nd time, this time on charges that he cherry picked
over $50 million in unprofitable trades to client accounts and
profitable ones to his own account. In 1999 he was indicted and charged
with taking $6.9 million in a kickback.
(SFC, 5/17/02, p.C1)
2001 Sep 9, The US pulled out of
the World Conference Against Racism objecting to hateful language in a
preliminary declaration.
(SFC, 12/30/01, p.D5)
2001 Dec 27, Thomas Berkley (86),
founder and publisher of the Post Newspaper Group, died in Oakland.
(SFC, 12/29/01, p.A26)
2001 Ama: A Story of the Atlantic
Slave Trade by Manu Herbstein paperback - 450 pages; published by
[e-reads]; ISBN: 1585869325 companion web-site:
www.ama.africatoday.com
2002 Feb 19, Virginia Esther
Hamilton, award winning black author, died in Dayton, Ohio, at age 65.
Her 35 children’s books "Zeely" (1967) and "M.C. Higgins, the Great"
(1973).
(SFC, 2/25/02, p.B6)
2002 Mar 9, Jamil Abdullah
al-Amin, aka H. Rap Brown (58), was convicted by an Atlanta jury for
the murder of a sheriff’s deputy on Mar 16, 2000. he was sentenced to
life in prison on Mar 13.
(SSFC, 3/10/02, p.A6)(SFC, 3/13/02, p.A4)
2002 Apr 1, Hugh Davis Graham
(d.2002 at 65) author, died. His work included "Collision Course"
(2002) a look at affirmative action and immigration and "The Civil
Rights Era: Origins and Development of National Policy: 1960-1972," a
work on the legislative history of civil rights.
(WSJ, 3/27/02, p.A16)(SFC, 4/1/02, p.B5)
2002 May 1, California’s Dept. of
Insurance released a list of former slaves and slaveholders. Records of
613 salves and 433 slaveholders were made public.
(SFC, 5/1/02, p.A1)(SFC, 5/2/02, p.A17)
2002 May 2, Dr. William F. Gibson
(69), former head of the NAACP, died.
(SFC, 5/4/02, p.A21)
2002 May 6, Otis Blackwell (70),
songwriter, died in Nashville. His 1950s songs included "Don’t Be
Cruel," "All Shook Up," "Return to Sender," and "Great Balls of Fire."
(SFC, 5/10/02, p.A31)
2002 May 22, Bobby Frank Cherry
(71), former Alabama Klansman, was convicted for the Sep 14, 1963,
murder of 4 Black girls at the 16th Street Baptist Church. The jury
sent him to prison for life.
(SFC, 5/23/02, p.A1)
2002 Jun 14, June Jordan (65),
black radical and UC Berkeley poet and professor, died of cancer. Her
work included 28 books of poems, political essays and children’s
fiction. She was one of the most published African American writers in
history.
(SFC, 9/7/02, p.A17)(SFC, 6/15/02, p.A19)
2002 Jul 4, General Benjamin
Oliver Davis, Jr. (b.1912), the first black general in the US Air Force
and commander of the World War II Tuskegee Airmen, died in Washington.
In 1991 he published his autobiography “Benjamin O. Davis, Jr.,
American: An Autobiography.”
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_O._Davis,_Jr.)(AP, 7/4/03)
2002 Oct 4, In Barbados
delegations from Russia, Cuba, South Africa, Colombia and France's
overseas territories abandoned an anti-racism conference that voted to
exclude whites saying they'll have no part in discrimination. The
walkout, on the fourth day of the six-day African and African
Descendants World Conference Against Racism, came after a day of
negotiations failed. Some 200 delegates had voted Wednesday for whites
and Asians to leave the deliberations, saying slavery was too painful a
subject to discuss in front of non-Africans.
(AP, 10/5/02)
2002 Dec 5, Trent Lott, Senate
Republican leader from Mississippi, made remarks that supported Sen.
Strom Thurmond’s 1948 segregationist platform. A political furor soon
erupted.
(SFC, 12/13/02, p.A4)
2002 Dec 18, Robert Johnson became
the 1st African American to own a major sports team. The NBA awarded
him rights to the expansion franchise in Charlotte.
(SFC, 12/19/02, p.A2)
2002 Philip Dray authored "At the
Hands of Persons Unknown," a chronicle of race-based lynchings from the
1830s to the 1960s.
(WSJ, 1/14/02, p.A16)
2002 Randall Kennedy authored
"Nigger: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word."
(SSFC, 2/3/02, p.M2)
2002 Darryl Pinckney authored "Out
There: Mavericks of Black Literature," a look at the work of J.S.
Rogers, Vincent O. Carter and Caryl Phillips.
(SSFC, 6/16/02, p.M2)
2003 Jan 21, The US Census Bureau
reported that Hispanics had passed Blacks as the biggest US minority
group.
(WSJ, 1/22/03, p.A1)
2003 Jan, Prof. John U. Ogbu
(d.2003) of UC Berkeley, Nigerian-born anthropologist, authored "Black
American Students in an Affluent Suburb: A Study of Academic
Engagement."
(SFC, 8/23/03, p.A21)
2003 Sep 28, Althea Gibson (76),
Wimbledon's 1st black tennis champion (1957), died in New Jersey.
(WSJ, 9/29/03, p.A1)
2003 Todd Boyd, Univ. S. Cal.
professor, authored "The New H.N.I.C. – The Death of Civil Rights and
the Reign of Hip Hop. HNIC stands for "head niggasa in charge."
(SSFC, 2/2/03, p.M6)
2003 David L. Chappell authored "A
Stone of Hope: Prophetic Religion and the Death of Jim Crow," in which
he reasoned that black religious faith sustained their efforts to
overcome segregation.
(WSJ, 1/14/04, p.D10)
2003 Chicago passed the Business,
Corporate and Slavery Era Insurance Ordnance that required companies
doing business with the city to disclose any ties to slavery.
(WSJ, 5/10/05, p.A1)
2003 Niger made slavery a crime
with a penalty of up to 30 years in jail, but continued to turn a blind
eye to the practice.
(Econ, 11/1/08, p.57)
2005 Jan 1, Shirley Chisholm (80),
advocate for minority rights, died. She became the first black woman
elected to Congress and later the first black person to seek a major
party's nomination for the US presidency.
(AP, 1/3/05)
2005 Jan 3, Victor Hill, the newly
elected Clayton County Sheriff, fired 27 mostly white officers from his
staff as the Georgia county opened the year with its 1st black-majority
government.
(SFC, 1/10/05, p.A6)
2005 Aug 8, John H. Johnson
(b.1919) founding publisher of Ebony (1945), Jet (1951), and Ebony Man
(1985), died in Chicago.
(HN, 11/1/98)(SFC, 8/8/05, p.B4)(AP, 8/8/06)
2005 Lisa E. Farrington authored
“Creating Their Own Image: The History of African-American Women
Artists.”
(SSFC, 2/27/05, p.B1)
2005 Adam Hochschild authored
“Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free an Empire’s
Slaves.”
(Econ, 2/5/05, p.76)
2006 Jun 10, James Cameron (92),
who survived an attempted lynching and went on to found America's Black
Holocaust Museum, died in Milwaukee.
(AP, 6/11/07)
2006 Dec 4, In Jena, La., six
black students (the Jena Six) beat a white schoolmate in an altercation
that stemmed from the hanging of nooses in August in a tree on school
grounds under which white students regularly gathered. The black
teenagers were initially charged with attempted murder, but later
dropped to aggravated second-degree battery in 4 cases. In September,
2007, charges against Mychal Bell were moved to juvenile court
following huge civil rights protests. It was later reported that 7
black students were involved in the Dec 4 beating. On Dec 3, 2007, Bell
pleaded guilty to a juvenile charge of 2nd degree battery in return for
an 18-month sentence. On June 26, 2009, 5 members of the Jena 6 pleaded
no contests to misdemeanor simple battery with no jail time.
(SFC, 9/21/07, p.A3)(SFC, 9/28/07, p.A3)(Econ,
9/29/07, p.33)(SFC, 12/4/07, p.A3)(SFC, 6/27/09, p.A5)
2006 Tavis Smiley authored
“Covenant With Black America,” a call for African Americans to start
addressing real problems.
(SFC, 2/17/07, p.A1)
2007 Jul 9, The NAACP at its 98th
annual meeting held a public burial for the N-word (nigger) racial slur
in Detroit. In 1944 the NAACP held a symbolic funeral in Detroit for
Jim Crow.
(SFC, 7/10/07, p.A3)
2007 Jul 18, Sekou Sundiata
(b.1948), black poet and activist born as Robert Franklin Feaster, died
of heart failure in Westchester, NY.
(SFC, 7/28/07, p.B5)
2008 Douglas A. Blackmon authored
“Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from
the Civil War to World War II.” In 2009 Blackmon, an editor at the Wall
Street Journal, won a Pulitzer Prize for the book.
(WSJ, 4/21/09, p.B6)
2008 Mary Lefkowitz authored
“History Lesson: A Race Odyssey,” an account of what she experienced
after questioning the veraity of Afrocentrism and the motives of its
advocates.
(WSJ, 4/15/08, p.D9)
2009 Jan 20, In Washington DC some
2 million people packed the National Mall to celebrate the inauguration
of Barack Obama as America's 44th and first black president. “The
Question we ask today is not whether government is too big or too
small, but whether it works.” Obama's new administration ordered all
federal agencies and departments to stop any pending regulations until
they can be reviewed by incoming staff, halting last-minute Bush orders.
(AP, 1/20/09)(Reuters, 1/20/09)(SFC, 1/21/09, p.A8)
2009 Jan 30, The Republican Party
chose former Maryland Lt. Gov. Michael Steele as the first black
national chairman in its history.
(AP, 1/31/09)
2009 Feb 2, Eric Holder won US
Senate confirmation as the nation's first African-American attorney
general, after supporters from both parties touted his dream resume and
easily overcame Republican concerns over his commitment to fight
terrorism and his unwillingness to back the right to keep and bear arms.
(AP, 2/2/09)
2009 Mar 25, John Hope Franklin
(b.1915), revered Duke Univ. historian and scholar of the African
American experience, died in North Carolina. His books included “From
Slavery to Freedom” (1947).
(SFC, 3/26/09, p.B5)
2009 Jul 23, E. Lynn Harris
(b.1955), pioneer of gay black fiction, died while promoting his latest
book in Los Angeles. Long before the secret world of closeted black gay
men came to light in America, Harris introduced a generation of black
women to the phenomenon known as the "down low." His debut "Invisible
Life" (1994) was a coming-of-age story that dealt with the then-taboo
topic.
(AP, 7/24/09)
2009 Jul 24, President Barack
Obama conceded his words, that a white police officer "acted stupidly"
when he arrested a black university scholar in his own home, were
ill-chosen. He invited both men to visit him at the White House, but
stopped short of publicly apologizing for his remark. Obama said he had
personally telephoned the two men, Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates
Jr. and Cambridge, Mass., police Sgt. James Crowley, in an effort to
end the rancorous back-and-forth over the issue. The case began on July
20, when word broke that Gates (58) had been arrested five days earlier
at the 2-story home he rents from Harvard.
(AP, 7/25/09)
2010 Jan 12, Kenn Allan Davis
(78), newspaper illustrator and mystery novel writer, died at his home
in Placer County, Ca. His 8 detective novels featured Carver Bascombe,
an African American private eye. The first in the series was titled
“The Dark Side” (1976), co-written with John Stanley.
(SFC, 1/19/10, p.C3)
2010 Mar 23, Senegal's national
assembly adopted a bill declaring slavery and the slave trade crimes
against humanity, moving closer to becoming the first African nation to
pass such legislation.
(AFP, 3/24/10)
2010 Ira Berlin authored “The
Making of African America: The Four Great Migrations.”
(Econ, 2/13/10, p.84)
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Subject = Black History