List Information: _________________ The Munirah (Moo-NEE-rah) Chronicle is an electronic almanac that presents the historical facts and events of interest to people of colour, specifically African Americans. The Munirah Chronicle is the Internet's most authoritative guide to black historical events, facts and information of specific interest to people seeking multicultural diversity. Munirah (moo-NEE-rah) is an Arabic word from Northern Africa meaning "one who enlightens." The primary goal of The Munirah Chronicle is to bring to light the many great and momentous events that have shaped who we are as a people, culture and nation. The Munirah Chronicle is researched and edited by Brother Mosi Hoj. For additional information send e-mail to: <Munirah-Request@listserv.icors.org> or double Click below: <Mailto:Munirah-Request@listserv.icors.org>
It is with a heavy heart that I must inform you that my "Today in Black History" emails will no longer be published by me. It has been a great experience, researching the facts and sending them out since June 1997. But all things eventually come to an end.
1824 - The Reverend William Levington, Deacon, establishes St. James' First African Protestant Episcopal Church in the "Upper Room" at Park Avenue and Marion Street. The St. James Episcopal Church, in Baltimore, Maryland, becomes the oldest African American Episcopal Church established south of the Mason-Dixon line.
1888 - Abolitionist Frederick Douglass receives one vote from the Kentucky delegation at the Republican convention in Chicago, effectively making him the first African American candidate nominated for U.S. president.
1868 - Congress readmits the state of Arkansas on the condition that it would never change its constitution to disenfranchise African Americans.
1909 - Katherine Dunham is born in Joliet, Illinois. She will become one of the revolutionary forces in modern dance through her introduction and use of African and Caribbean styles. Successful on the stage and in movies, including "Stormy Weather", in the late 1960's, she will form the Katherine Dunham Center for the Performing Arts and in 1983 will be awarded Kennedy
1821 - The African Methodist Episcopal Zion (AMEZ) Church is formally constituted in New York City at its first annual conference. Nineteen clergymen were present, representing six African American churches from New York City, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, New Haven, Connecticut and Newark, New Jersey. They will vote to separate from the white-controlled Methodist Episcopal Church, which had insisted on ultimate control of the church's leadership and property. To distinguish between the two African Methodist Episcopal organizations, as well as to honor their original congregation, in 1848 they will vote to add Zion
1858 - Charles Waddell Chestnutt is born in Cleveland, Ohio. He will at one time maintain four careers simultaneously - stenographer, lawyer, author, and lecturer. He will also serve three years as principal of the Fayetteville State Colored Normal School in North Carolina. His most famous literary works will be a biography of Frederick Douglass and the short story collection "The Conjure Woman". In 1928, he will receive the NAACP's Spingarn Medal for his literacy accomplishments. He will join the ancestors on November 15, 1932.
1809 - The first African Baptist Church in the U.S. became an organized body in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
1862 - Slavery is abolished in U.S. territories by Congress.
1864 - In a famous duel between the USS Kearsage and the CSS Alabama off Cherbourg, France, a brave African American sailor, Joachim Pease, displays "marked coolness" and will win a Congressional Medal of Honor. The CSS Alabama will be sunk.
1889 - William H. Richardson receives a patent for a baby carriage whose body can be raised from its frame.
1939 - Louis Clark "Lou" Brock is born in El Dorado, Arkansas. He will become a professional baseball player with the Chicago Cubs in 1961. Three years later, in 1964, he will be traded to the St. Louis Cardinals. Brock will have an immediate impact with the Cardinals entering the starting lineup. He will record 12 homeruns, 44 RBI, an amazing .348 batting average, and blister the baselines stealing 44 bases
1775 - Former slave Peter Salem shoots and kills British Commander Major John Pitcairn, becoming the hero of the Battle of Bunker Hill. Salem, along with Seasor, Pharoah, Salem Poor, Barzaillai Lew, and Cuff Whittmore, fights in the battles of Bunker Hill and Breed's Hill. Pitcairn was the major who ordered British soldiers to fire on the Minutemen at Lexington.
1822 - Denmark Vesey's slave rebellion in South Carolina is aborted when his plans are revealed to authorities by slave George Wilson. After 10 of the conspirators are arrested, one of them, Monday Gell, informs on the others. Although an estimated 9,000 are involved, only 67 are convicted of any offense. Denmark and over 30 others will be hanged.
1864 - Congress passes a bill equalizing pay, arms, equipment and medical services of African American troops.
1877 - Henry Ossian Flipper, born a slave in Thomasville, Georgia in 1856, is the first African American cadet to graduate from the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York. He was never spoken to by a white cadet during his four years at West Point. After graduating, he will be appointed a second lieutenant in the U.S. Army. Following his commission, he will be transferred to one of the all-Black regiments
1921 - Georgianna R. Simpson becomes the first African American woman to receive a Ph.D. when she is awarded the degree, in German, by the University of Chicago.
1926 - Donald Newcombe is born in Madison, New Jersey. He will become a professional baseball pitcher in Negro league and Major League Baseball and will play for the Newark Eagles (1944-45), Brooklyn/Los Angeles Dodgers (1949–51 and 1954–58), Cincinnati Reds (1958–60), and Cleveland Indians (1960). He will be the first pitcher to win the Rookie of the Year, Most Valuable Player, and Cy
1774 - Rhode Island prohibits the importation of slaves, the first state to do so.
1868 - Ex-slave Oscar T. Dunn is installed as Lieutenant Governor of Louisiana. It is the highest executive office held by an African American at that time.
1870 - Richard T. Greener becomes the first African American to graduate from Harvard University.
1826 - Sarah Parker Remond is born in Salem, Massachusetts. She will become a major abolitionist. She will also be an African American physician, lecturer and agent of the American Anti-Slavery Society. She will deliver speeches throughout the United States on the horrors of slavery. Because of her eloquence, she will be chosen to travel to England to gather support for the abolitionist cause in the United States and, after the American Civil War starts, for support of the Union Army and the Union blockade of the Confederacy. She is the
1799 - Richard Allen, the first African American bishop in the United States, is ordained a deacon of the Methodist Episcopal Church in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania by Bishop Francis Asbury.
1915 - Mifflin Wistar Gibbs, the first African American in the United States to be named a judge, joins the ancestors in Little Rock, Arkansas at the age of 87.
1854 - James Augustine Healy is ordained as a Catholic priest in ceremonies at Notre Dame cathedral in Paris, France at the age of 24. He will later become the first African American Roman Catholic bishop.
1895 - Hattie McDaniel is born in Wichita, Kansas. A vaudevillian, she will begin her acting career at age 37 in the film 'The Golden West.' She will go on to roles in over 70 films, including 'The Little Colonel', 'Show Boat', and most notably 'Gone With The Wind', which will earn her an Oscar
1877 - Meta Vaux Warwick (later Fuller) is born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She will become a sculptor who will train at the Pennsylvania Museum and School for Industrial Arts and travel to Paris to study with Auguste Rodin. Her sculptures will be exhibited at the salon in Paris as well as extensively in the U.S. for 60 years. Her most famous works will include "Ethiopia Awakening," "Mary Turner (A Silent Protest Against Mob Violence)," and "The Talking Skull." She will join the ancestors on March 18, 1968.
1868 - Robert Robinson Taylor is born in Wilmington, North Carolina. He will attend the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1888, where he will study architecture. He will become the first African American graduate of MIT in 1892 and the first African American accredited architect in the United States. After being sought after by Booker T. Washington, during and after his collegiate studies at MIT, he accepted a position at Tuskegee Institute. Booker T. Washington employed him to develop the industrial program at Tuskegee and to plan and direct the construction
1863 - Three African American regiments and small detachment of white troops repulse a division of Texans in a hand-to-hand battle at Milliken's Bend, Louisiana.
1917 - Gwendolyn Brooks is born in Topeka, Kansas. She will become the first African American to win the Pulitzer Prize (1950). She will win this award for "Annie Allen," which is about the coming of age of a young African American and her feelings of loneliness, loss, death and poverty. In 1963-1969 she will teach poetry and fiction workshops and also freshman English and 20th
1779 - Haitian explorer Jean Baptiste-Pointe Du Sable founds the first permanent settlement at the mouth of a river on the north bank, that will become Chicago, Illinois.
1831 - The second national Black convention meets in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. There are fifteen delegates from five states.
1783 - Oliver Cromwell, an African American soldier who served in the Revolutionary War, receives an honorable discharge signed by George Washington. Cromwell, who will claim to have been with Washington when he crossed the Delaware and in the battles of Yorktown, Princeton, and Monmouth, is cited by Washington as having earned "the Badge of Merit for six years' faithful service."
1832 - The Third National Black convention meets in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania with twenty-nine delegates from eight states. Henry Sipkins of New York is elected president.
1922 - Samuel Lee Gravely, Jr. is born in Richmond, Virginia. He will become the first African American Admiral in the U.S. Navy, He also will become the first African American to command a U.S. warship, the USS Falgout, and will also command the USS Taussig. He will join the ancestors on October 22, 2004, at Bethesda Naval Hospital after a short illness.
1833 - The fourth national Black convention meets in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania with sixty-two delegates from eight states. Abraham D. Shadd of Pennsylvania is elected president.
1854 - Two thousand United States troops escort celebrated fugitive slave, Anthony Burns through the streets of Boston.
1871 - Miles Vandehurst Lynk is born near Brownsville, Tennessee. A physician at 19, he founds the first African American medical journal, the "Medical and Surgical Observer," and will be one of the organizers of what will later become the National Medical Association. He will also found the
1835 - The Fifth National Negro Convention recommends that Blacks remove the word "African" from the titles of their organizations and discontinue referring to themselves as "colored."
1843 - Sojourner Truth leaves New York and begins her career as an anti-slavery activist.
1868 - The Texas constitutional convention convenes in Austin with eighty-one whites and nine African Americans in attendance.
1870 - The first civil rights Enforcement Act, which protects the voting and civil rights of African Americans, is passed by Congress. It provides stiff penalties for public officials and private citizens who deprive citizens of the suffrage and civil rights. The measure authorizes the use of the U.S. Army to protect these rights.
1822 - Denmark Vesey's conspiracy to free the slaves of Charleston, South Carolina, and surrounding areas is thwarted when a house slave betrays the plot to whites. Vesey's bold plan had attracted over 9,000 slaves and freemen of the area including Peter Poyas, a ship's carpenter, Gullah Jack, Blind Phillip, Ned Bennett and Mingo Harth. Later it will be considered one of the most complex and elaborate slave liberation plans ever undertaken.
1910 - Ralph Harold Metcalfe is born in Atlanta, Georgia. He will become a world record holder in the 100-yard and 200-yard dashes and win a bronze medal in the 1932 Olympic Games and gold and silver medals in the 1936 Games. He will also become a four-term congressman representing Illinois's 1st District. He will join the ancestors on October 10, 1978.
1863 - The first African American regiment from the North leaves Boston to fight in the Civil War.
1910 - Aaron Thibeaux "T-Bone" Walker is born in Linden, Texas. He will become a creator of the modern blues and a pioneer in the development of the electric guitar sound that will shape virtually all of popular music in the post-World War II period. Equally important, Walker will be the quintessential blues guitarist. He will influence virtually every major post-World War II guitarist, including B.B. King, Jimi Hendrix, Freddie King, Albert King,
1863 - Captain Andre' Callioux and his Native Guard Regiment, which had once fought for the Confederacy, charge Port Hudson, Louisiana. The Union Army Guard, intent on disproving white contentions that "Negroes" lacked the intelligence for combat, will make six different assaults on the stronghold.
1917 - One African American joins the ancestors and hundreds are left homeless in race riots in East St. Louis, Illinois.
1799 - Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin is born in Moscow, Russia. His maternal great grandfather, Abram Gannibal, will be brought over as a slave from Africa and will rise to become an aristocrat. He will publish his first poem in the journal, "The Messenger of Europe" in 1814, at the age of fifteen, and will be widely recognized by the literary establishment by the time of his graduation from the Tsarskoye Selo Lyceum. While under the strict surveillance of the Tsar's political police and unable to publish, He will write his most
1878 - Luther Robinson is born in Richmond, Virginia. He will later be known as tapdancing legend Bill "Bojangles" Robinson. He will be the best known and most highly paid African American entertainer in the first half of the twentieth century. His long career will mirror changes in American entertainment tastes and technology, starting in the age of minstrel shows, moving to vaudeville, Broadway, the recording industry, Hollywood radio, and television. According to dance critic Marshall Stearns, "Robinson's contribution to tap dance is exact and specific. He brought it up on
1854 - Anthony Burns, celebrated fugitive slave, is arrested by United States Deputy Marshals in Boston, Massachusetts.
1861 - Major General Benjamin F. Butler declare slaves "contraband of war."
1864 - Two regiments, the First and Tenth U.S. Colored Troops, repulse an attack by rebel General Fitzhugh Lee. Also participating in battle at Wilson's Wharf Landing, on the bank of the James River, were a small detachment of white Union troops and a battery of light artillery.
1844 - Charles Edmund Nash is born in Opelousas, Louisiana. In 1863, during the American Civil War, he will enlist as a private in the Eighty- second Regiment, United States Volunteers, and will be promoted to the rank of sergeant major. This regiment is listed in the U.S. Colored Troops in the Mobile Campaign Union order of battle. He will be severely wounded in 1863 near the end of the war, at the Battle of Fort Blakely in Alabama, where he will lose part of his leg. After the war, he
1848 - Slavery is abolished on the French island of Martinique. Abolition will create a shortage of labor in Martinique given many former slaves preferred not to work in the sugar cane plantations. To solve the problem, indentured servants will be brought from China and India.
1833 - Oberlin College is founded in Ohio "to train teachers and other Christian leaders for the boundless most desolate fields in the West." After almost going bankrupt in 1835, Oberlin will become one of the first colleges in the United States to admit African Americans. Arthur and Lewis Tappan, wealthy New York merchants and abolitionists, will insist that Oberlin admit students regardless of their color, as a condition of their financial support. As a result of this decision, by 1900, nearly half of all the African American college graduates in
1746 - Francois-Dominique Toussaint L'Ouverture is born into slavery in Haiti. He will lead the revolution in his country against French and English forces to free the slaves. Although he will nominally rule in the name of France, he will in actuality become political and military dictator of the country. His success in freeing the slaves in Haiti caused his name to become the biggest influence in the slave cabins of the Americas. His name will be whispered in Brazil, in the Caribbean, and the United States. He will join the
1881 - Blanche Kelso Bruce is appointed Register of the Treasury by President Garfield.
1925 - Malcolm Little, later known as Malcolm X and El Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, is born in Omaha, Nebraska. In prison, he is introduced to the Nation of Islam and begins studies that will lead him to become one of the most militant and electrifying Black leaders of the 1950s and 1960s. On many occasions, he would indicate that he was not for civil rights, but human rights. When asked about the Nation of Islam undermining the
1652 - Rhode Island enacts the first colonial law limiting slavery. This law, passed by the General Court of Election, regulates Black servitude and places Blacks on the same level as white bondservants. This means they were free after completing their term of service of ten years.
1875 - The first Kentucky Derby is won by African American jockey Oliver Lewis riding a horse named Aristides. Fourteen of the 15 jockeys in the race are African Americans. The winning purse for the race is $ 2,850. Lewis will win the one and a half mile "Run for the Roses" in a time of 2 minutes, 37-3/4 seconds.
1792 - Denmark abolishes the importation of slaves. This law will take effect in 1803 to forbid trading in slaves by Danish subjects and to end the importation of slaves into Danish dominions.
1857 - Juan Morel Campos is born in Ponce, Puerto Rico. He will become a musician and composer who will be one of the first to integrate Afro-Caribbean styles and folk rhythms into the classical European musical model. He will be considered the father of the "danza." He will join the ancestors on May 12, 1896.
1795 - John Morront, the first African American missionary to work with Indians, is ordained as a Methodist minister in London, England.
1802 - Jean Ignace joins the ancestors in Baimbridge, Guadeloupe in the revolt against the Napoleonic troops sent to the Caribbean island to reimpose slavery.
1867 - A riot occurs in Mobile, Alabama, after an African American mass meeting. One African American and one white are killed.
1885 - Erskine Henderson wins the Kentucky Derby riding Joe Cotton. The horse's trainer is another African American, Alex Perry.
1897 - Sidney Joseph Bechet is born in New Orleans, Louisiana. A member of both Duke Ellington's and Noble Sissle's orchestras, he will move to France and there will achieve the greatest success of his career. He will be perhaps the first notable jazz saxophonist. He will be the
1865 - Two white regiments and an African American regiment, the Sixty-second U.S. Colored Troops, fight in the last action of the civil war at White's Ranch, Texas.
1871 - Alcorn A&M College (now Alcorn A&M University) opens in Lorman, Mississippi.
1888 - Princess Isabel of Brazil signs the "Lei Aurea" (Golden Law) which abolishes slavery. Slavery is ended in part to appease the efforts of abolitionists, but mostly because it is less expensive for employers to hire wageworkers than to keep slaves. Plantation owners oppose the law because they are
1896 - Juan Morel Campos joins the ancestors in Ponce, Puerto Rico. He was a musician and composer who was one of the first to integrate Afro-Caribbean styles and folk rhythms into the classical European musical model. He was considered the father of the "danza."
1898 - Louisiana adopts a new constitution with a "grandfather clause" designed to eliminate African American voters.
1885 - Joseph Nathan Oliver is born in Aben, Louisiana near Donaldsville. He will become a professional musician after learning his craft playing with local street musicians in New Orleans. After playing in the band of Edward "Kid" Ory, he will be dubbed "King" Oliver. After being recruited to Chicago, Illinois to play in the band of Bill Johnson, King Oliver will assume leadership of the Creole Jazz Band. He will recruit some of best available jazz talent of the time including Louis Armstrong. The Creole Jazz Band will disband after
1652 - John Johnson, a free African American, is granted 550 acres in Northampton County, Virginia, for importing eleven persons to work as indentured servants.
1775 - Lemuel Haynes, Epheram Blackman, and Primas Black, in the first aggressive action of American forces against the British, help capture Fort Ticonderoga as members of Ethan Allen's Green Mountain Boys.
1750 - The South Carolina Gazette reports that Caesar, a South Carolina slave, has been granted his freedom and a life time annuity in exchange for his cures for poison and rattlesnake bite. Caesar and the famous James Derham of New Orleans are two of the earliest known African American medical practitioners.
1771 - Phillis Wheatley sails for England. Two years later, her book of poetry, "Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral," will be published in London.
1858 - John Brown holds an antislavery convention, which is attended by twelve whites and thirty-four African Americans, in Chatham, Canada.
1867 - African American demonstrators stage a ride-in to protest segregation on New Orleans streetcars. Similar demonstrations occur in Mobile, Alabama, and other cities.
1878 - J.R. Winters receives a patent for the fire escape ladder.
1884 - Henrietta Vinton Davis performs scenes from Shakespeare with Powhatan Beaty at Ford's Opera House in Washington, D.C., site of the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln. Vinton's career will span a total of 44 years and will include her involvement with Marcus Garvey's UNIA, including a vice-presidency of Garvey's Black Star Line.
1787 - Prince Hall forms African Lodge 459, the first African American Masonic Lodge in the United States.
1794 - Haiti, under Toussaint L'Ouverture, revolts against France.
1812 - Martin R. Delany is born free in Charlestown, Virginia. He is considered to be the grandfather of Black nationalism. He will also be one of the first three Blacks admitted to Harvard Medical School. Trained as an assistant and a physician, he will treat patients during the cholera epidemics of 1833 and 1854 in Pittsburgh, when many doctors and residents flee the
1857 - The Dred Scott decision, in the famous U.S. Supreme Court case, declares that no black--free or slave--could claim United States citizenship, therefore could not sue. It also stated that Congress could not prohibit slavery in United States territories. The ruling will arouse angry resentment in the North and will lead the nation a step closer to civil war. It also will influence the introduction and passage of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution after the Civil War (1861-1865). The amendment, adopted in 1868, will extend citizenship to former
1864 - Ulysses S. Grant crosses the Rapidan and begins his duel with Robert E. Lee. At the same time Ben Butler's Army of the James moves on Lee's forces. An African American division in Grant's army did not play a prominent role in the Wilderness Campaign, but Ben Butler gave his African American infantrymen and his eighteen hundred African American cavalrymen important assignments. African American troops of the Army of the James were the first Union Soldiers to take possession of James River ports (at Wilson's Wharf Landing, Fort Powhatan
1845 - Macon B. Allen becomes the first African American formally admitted to the bar in Massachusetts when he passes the examination in Worcester. The previous year, he was admitted to the bar in Maine, making him the first licensed African American attorney in the United States.
1844 - Elijah McCoy is born in Colchester, Ontario, Canada. He will become a master inventor and holder of over 50 patents. He will be the inventor of a device that allows machines to be lubricated while they are still in operation. Machinery buyers insisted on McCoy lubrication systems when buying new machines and will take nothing less than what becomes known as the "real McCoy." The inventor's automatic oiling devices will become so universal that no heavy-duty machinery will be considered adequate without it, and the expression becomes part of
1863 - The Confederate congress passes a resolution which brands African American troops and their officers criminals. The resolution, in effect, dooms captured African American soldiers to death or slavery.
1866 - White Democrats and police attack freedmen and their white allies in Memphis, Tennessee. Forty-six African Americans and two white liberals are killed. More than seventy are wounded. Ninety homes, twelve schools and four churches are burned.
1864 - A regiment captures a rebel battery after fighting rearguard action. Six infantry regiments check rebel troops at Jenkins' Ferry, Saline River, Arkansas. The troops are so enraged by atrocities committed at Poison Spring two weeks earlier, that the Second Kansas Colored Volunteers went into battle shouting, "Remember Poison Spring!"
1854 - Ashmun Institute, later Lincoln University, is founded in Oxford, Pennsylvania. It will be "the first institution founded anywhere in the world to provide a higher education in the arts and sciences for youth of African descent." (This applies to the modern era).
1899 - Edward "Duke" Kennedy Ellington is born in Washington, DC. He will form his first band in 1919, and move to New York City in 1922. His five-year tenure at the famed Cotton Club will garner him wide acclaim. Scoring both his first musical and making
1898 - Sir Grantley H. Adams is born in Colliston Government Hill, St. Michael Parish, Barbados. He will become an attorney and political leader and will found the Barbados Progressive League. The league will later become the Barbados Labour Party on March 31, 1938. The Governor-General, in 1954, will appoint him, the First Premier of Barbados, heading a full ministerial government. In recognition of his meritorious contribution to Barbados and the wider Caribbean region, Her Majesty, the Queen of England, will knight him in 1957. He will surrender his Premiership of
1883 - Hubert Henry Harrison, is born in St. Croix, Virgin Islands. He will become, by the 1920s, one of the nation's most prominent atheists. Harrison will recognize the connection between racism and religion, and point this out quite bluntly. The Bible was a slave master's book in Harrison's eyes, which not only sanctioned the keeping of slaves, but even gave advice on their handling. He will state that any African American person who accepts Christianity was either ignorant or crazy. He also will address Islam by stating that the slave
1798 - James Pierson Beckwourth is born in Frederick County, Virginia. He will become a legendary American Western mountain man, trapper, warrior, Indian chief, and trailblazer. He will maintain a lifelong friendship with the Crow Indian nation. He will work as an Army scout during the third Seminole War and will be a rider for the Pony Express. In 1850, he will discover a pass through the Sierra Nevada mountains that will enable settlers to more easily reach California. The Beckwourth Pass is still in use today by the Union Pacific
1905 - Doxey Alphonso Wilkerson is born in Excelsior Springs, Missouri. He will become an educator at Howard University in Washington, D.C. and Yeshiva University in New York City. In 1944, he will publish an essay in the anthology, "What The Negro Wants," which will illustrate comparisons between the Allied struggle in Europe during World War II and the civil rights struggle of African Americans in the United States. As a member of the American Communist Party, he will work as a civil rights activist. This affiliation will cause him to
1856 - Granville Tailer Woods is born in Columbus, Ohio. He will become an inventor of steam boilers, furnaces, incubators and auto air brakes and holder of over 50 patents. He will become the first American of African ancestry to be a mechanical and electrical engineer after the Civil War. Self-taught, he will concentrate most of his work on trains and streetcars. One of his notable inventions will be the Multiplex Telegraph, a device that sends messages between train stations and moving trains. His work will assure a safer and better
1526 - The first recorded slave revolt occurs in a settlement of some five hundred Spaniards and one hundred slaves, located on the Pedee River in what is now South Carolina.
1882 - Benjamin Griffith Brawley is born in Columbia, South Carolina. He will become a prolific author and educator, serving as a professor of English at Morehouse, Howard, and Shaw universities. He will also serve as the first Dean of Morehouse. His books, among them "A Short History of the American Negro", "The Negro in Literature and Art in the
1878 - The ship Azor leaves Charleston, South Carolina, on its first trip, carrying 209 African Americans bound for Liberia.
1892 - African American Longshoremen strike for higher wages in St. Louis, Missouri.
1900 - Dumarsais Estime' is born in Verrettes, Artibonite, Haiti. He will become president of Haiti in 1946 and will be regarded as a progressive leader and statesman. He will be the first Black head of state since the U.S. occupation of Haiti ended in 1934. He will join the ancestors in New York City on July 20,
1853 - Harriet Tubman starts as a conductor on the Underground Railroad.
1871 - Third Enforcement Act defines Klan conspiracy as a rebellion against the United States and empowers the president to suspend the writ of habeas corpus and declare martial law in rebellious areas.
1877 - Federal troops are withdrawn from public buildings in New Orleans, Louisiana. Democrats then take over the state government.
1775 - With the assistance of African American soldiers, Minutemen defeat the British at Concord Bridge in the initial battle of the Revolutionary War.
1837 - Cheyney University is founded as the first historically Black institution of higher learning in America. It is also the first college in the United States to receive official state certification as an institution of higher academic education for African Americans. Cheyney will begin its existence in Philadelphia as the Institute for Colored Youth. The Institute for Colored Youth successfully will provide a free classical education
1818 - Andrew Jackson defeats a force of Indians and African Americans at the Battle of Suwanee, ending the First Seminole War.
1861 - Nicholas Biddle becomes the first African American in uniform to be wounded in the Civil War.
1864 - The First Kansas Colored Volunteers break through Confederate lines at Poison Spring, Arkansas. The unit will sustain heavy losses when captured African American soldiers are murdered by Confederate troops as opposed to being taken as POWs, which is the standard treatment for captured whites.
1818 - For unknown reasons, Daniel Coker is expelled from the AME Church. Coker had been a key organizer in the church's early history and was elected its first bishop, a position he declined possibly because of his fair complexion.
1944 - The 99th Fighter Squadron flies its 400th mission and completes its 2,592nd sortie.
1862 - The DC Compensated Emancipation Act of 1862 ended slavery in Washington, DC, freed 3,100 individuals, reimbursed those who had legally owned them ($993,407) and offered the newly freed women and men money to emigrate. The District of Columbia will later declare this date an annual holiday known as "Emancipation Day." The District also will have the distinction of being the only part of the United States to have compensated slave owners for freeing enslaved persons they held.
1861 - President Lincoln calls for 75,000 troops to put down the rebellion. The Lincoln administration rejects African American volunteers. For almost two years straight, African Americans fight for the right, as one humorist puts it, "to be kilt".
1889 - Asa Philip Randolph is born in Crescent Way, Florida. He will become a labor leader and a tireless fighter for civil rights. He will organize and lead the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, the first predominantly African American labor union (organized in 1925). In the early Civil Rights Movement, he
1775 - The first United States' abolitionist society, the Pennsylvania Society for the Abolition of Slavery, is formed in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, by Quakers. Benjamin Franklin serves as its first president.
1868 - South Carolina voters approve a new constitution, 70,758 to 27,228, and elect state officers, including the first African American cabinet officer, Francis L. Cardozo, secretary of state. The new constitution requires integrated education and contains a strong bill of rights section: "Distinctions on account of race or color, in any case whatever, shall be prohibited, and all classes of
1723 - The governor of Massachusetts issues a proclamation on the "fires which have been designedly and industriously kindled by some villainous and desperate Negroes or other dissolute people as appears by the confession of some of them."
1873 - The Colfax Massacre occurs on Easter Sunday morning, in Grant Parish, Louisiana. More than sixty African Americans join the ancestors after being killed.
1787 - Richard Allen and Absalom Jones organize Philadelphia's Free African Society which W.E.B. Du Bois refers to, over a century later, "the first wavering step of a people toward a more organized social life."
1825 - Richard Harvey Cain is born in Greenbrier County, Virginia (now part of West Virginia). He will become an AME minister, an AME bishop, publisher, a member of the South Carolina Senate, member of the U.S. House of Representatives, and a founder of Paul Quinn College in Waco, Texas. He will join the ancestors on
1865 - President Lincoln recommends suffrage for African American veterans and African Americans who are "very intelligent."
1881 - Spelman College is founded with $100 and eleven former slaves determined to learn to read and write. It is opened as the Atlanta Baptist Female Seminary. The two female founders, Sophia B. Packard and Harriet E. Giles are appalled by the lack of educational opportunities for African American women at the time. They will return to Boston determined to get support to change that and earned what will prove to be the
1816 - Richard Allen is elected Bishop of the A.M.E. Church, one day after the church is organized at its first general convention.
1872 - The first National Black Convention meets in New Orleans, Louisiana. Frederick Douglass will be elected president.
1877 - Federal troops withdraw from Columbia, South Carolina. This action will allow the white South Carolina Democrats to take over the state government.
1816 - The African Methodist Episcopal Church is organized at a general convention in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
1865 - Nine African American regiments of Gen. John Hawkins's division help to smash the Confederate defenses at Fort Blakely, Alabama. Capture of the fort will lead to the fall of Mobile. The 68th U.S. Colored Troops will have the highest number of casualties in the engagement.
1920 - Carmen Mercedes McRae is born in the village of Harlem in New York City. She will study classical piano in her youth, even though singing was her first love. She will win an amateur contest at the Apollo Theater and begin her singing career. She will be influenced by Billie Holiday, who will become a lifelong friend and mentor. She will devote her albums and the majority of her nightclub acts to Lady Day's memory. Her association with jazz accordionist Matt Mathews will lead to her first solo recordings
1712 - A slave uprising in New York City results in the death of nine whites. This is one of the first major revolts of African slaves in the American colonies. After the militia arrives, the uprising will be suppressed. As a result of the action, twenty one slaves will be executed and six others will commit suicide.
1798 - James P. Beckwourth is born in Fredericksburg, Virginia. He will become a noted scout in the western United States and will discover a pass in the Sierra Nevada mountains between the Feather and Truckee rivers that will bear his name. He will join the ancestors on October 29, 1866.
1839 - Robert Smalls is born into slavery in Beaufort, South Carolina. He will become a Civil War hero by sailing an armed Confederate steamer out of Charleston Harbor and presenting it to the Union Navy. He will later become a three-term congressman from his state. He will join the ancestors on February 23, 1915.
1915 - McKinley Morganfield is born in Rolling Fork, Mississippi. He will be discovered in 1941 by two music archivists from the Library of Congress, traveling the back roads of Mississippi looking for the legendary Robert Johnson. They recorded two of Morganfield's songs and lit a fire in the ambitious young man. He will leave Mississippi for Chicago two years later to become a blues singer better known as "Muddy Waters." He will join the ancestors on April 30, 1983 in Chicago, Illinois.
1865 - The Fifth Massachusetts Colored Cavalry and units of the Twenty-fifth Corps are in the vanguard of Union troops entering Richmond. The Second Division of the Twenty-Fifth Corps help to chase Robert E. Lee's army from Petersburg to Appomattox Court House, April 3-10. The African American division and white Union soldiers are advancing on General Lee's trapped army with fixed bayonets when the Confederate troops surrender.
1855 - John Mercer Langston is elected clerk of Brownhelm, Ohio, township. He will be considered the first African American elected to public office.
1918 - Charles Wilbert White is born in Chicago, Illinois. An artist who will work with traditional materials (pen, ink, oil on canvas and lithography), White will transform the image of African Americans and earn praise from critics and artists alike. White will receive dozens of awards and his work will be collected by museums on three continents and major corporations. He will be known for his
1867 - African Americans vote in a municipal election in Tuscumbia, Alabama. Military officials set aside the election pending clarification on electoral procedures.
1868 - Hampton Institute for Negroes and Indians is founded in Hampton, Virginia, by General Samuel Chapman Armstrong.
1895 - Alberta Hunter is born in Memphis, Tennessee. She will run away from home at the age of twelve and go to Chicago, Illinois to become a Blues singer. She will work in a variety of clubs until the violence in the Chicago club scene prompts her to move
1850 - The Massachusetts Supreme Court rejects the argument of Charles Sumner in the Boston school integration suit and established the "separate but equal" precedent.
1853 - At concert, singer Elizabeth Taylor Greenfield's New York debut in Metropolitan Hall, African Americans are not allowed to attend. Angered and embarrassed at the exclusion of her race, Greenfield will perform in a separate concert at the Broadway Tabernacle for five African American congregations.
1869 - The 15th Amendment to the Constitution is ratified, which guarantees men, the right to vote regardless of "race, color or previous condition of servitude." Despite ratification of the amendment, it will be almost 100 years before African Americans become "universally" enfranchised. Editor's Note: The entire African American population of Washington DC (approximately 300,000+ of the 550,000+ people who live there) is still constitutionally denied any voting rights or self-government in the United States. This is a gaping exception to a so-called "universal" practice.
1918 - Pearl Mae Bailey is born in Newport News, Virginia. She will achieve tremendous success as a stage and film actress, recording artist, nightclub headliner, and television performer. Among her most notable movies will be "Porgy and Bess" and "Carmen Jones" and she will receive a Tony Award for her starring role in an all-African-American version of "Hello Dolly." Bailey will be widely honored, including being named special advisor to the U.S. Mission to the United Nations and receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom. She will join the ancestors on
1870 - Jonathan S. Wright becomes the first African American State Supreme Court Justice in South Carolina.
1925 - Sculptor Edward N. Wilson, Jr. is born in Baltimore, Maryland. He will study at the University of Iowa, receive sculpture awards from the Carnegie Foundation, Howard University and the State University of New York, and will have his work shown at "Two Centuries of Black American Art," and other exhibitions. Among his major works will be "Cybele." His stainless steel and bronze portrait of Ralph Ellison (1974-1975, Ralph Ellison Library, Oklahoma) commemorates
1867 - African American demonstrators in Charleston, South Carolina stage ride-ins on streetcars. On May 1, the Charleston City Railway Company will adopt a resolution guaranteeing the right of all persons to ride in streetcars.
1872 - Cleveland Luca, a musician, member of the famous musical Luca Family Quartet and composer of the Liberian National Anthem, joins the ancestors in Liberia.
1807 - The British Parliament abolishes the African slave trade. Although slavery was abolished within England in 1772, it was still allowed in the British colonies, as was the slave trade. The continued slave trade was not only accepted, but considered essential to the power and prosperity of the British Empire. English slave-merchants made fortunes carrying slaves from Africa to the British colonies in North America and the Caribbean, and many of England's industries, notably textiles and sugar refining, depended on raw materials produced by slave labor on colonial plantations. Still,
1837 - Canada gives its black citizens the right to vote.
1912 - Dorothy Irene Height is born in Richmond, Virginia. In 1965, she will inaugurate the Center for Racial Justice, which is still a major initiative of the National YWCA. She will serve as the 10th National President of the Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc. from 1946 to 1957, before becoming president of the National Council of Negro Women in 1958. Working closely with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Roy Wilkins, Whitney Young, A. Philip Randolph and others, She will
1784 - Tom Molineaux, who will become America's most celebrated early boxing success, is born into slavery in Virginia. He will emigrate to London after winning money to purchase his freedom in a fight. He will challenge champion Tom Cribb in a fight attended by 10,000 spectators in 1810, which he will apparently win but is ruled against, by a partisan referee. After a subsequent loss to Cribb in 1811, he will sink into alcoholism and will join the ancestors penniless in Galway, Ireland, in 1818 at the age of 34.
1492 - Alonzo Pierto, explorer of African descent, sets sail from Spain with Christopher Columbus.
1794 - The U.S. Congress bans United States' vessels from supplying slaves to other countries.
1873 - Slavery is abolished in Puerto Rico. The Spanish Crown finally ends slavery in one of its last Latin American colonies. Slave owners are compensated with 35 million pesetas per slave. Despite the pronouncement of abolition, slaves are still required to keep working for three more years as indentured servants.
1788 - Olaudah Equiano (aka Gustavus Vassa), a freed slave, petitions King George III and Queen Charlotte, to free enslaved Africans.
1856 - Henry Ossian Flipper is born a slave in Thomasville, Georgia. He will become the first African American cadet to graduate from the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York. He was never spoken to by a white cadet during his four years at West Point. After graduating, he will be appointed a second lieutenant in the U.S. Army. Following his commission, he will be transferred to
1852 - "Uncle Tom's Cabin," by white abolitionist Harriet Beecher Stowe, is published. The controversial novel will be credited by many, including Abraham Lincoln, with sparking the Civil War. Mr. Lincoln will later tell Mrs. Stowe, that she was "the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war".
1867 - Congressman Thaddeus Stevens calls up resolution providing for the enforcement of the Second Confiscation Act of July, 1862. The measure, which provides for the distribution of public and confiscated land to the freedmen, is defeated.
1870 - "O Guarani," the most celebrated opera by Afro-Brazilian composer Antonio Carlos Gomes, premiers at the Scala Theater in Milan, Italy. His enormous musical talent opened the doors of the Milan Conservatory where he studied under the guidance of the greatest opera directors of the time. Among other operas, he produces "Fosca," "Condor,"
1608 - Susenyos is formally crowned Emperor of Ethiopia in Waldebba.
1877 - U.S. President Rutherford B. Hayes appoints Frederick Douglass United States Marshal for Washington, D.C.
1895 - 200 African Americans leave Savannah, Georgia for Liberia.
1901 - William Henry Johnson is born in Florence, South Carolina. He will leave his home for New York and Europe, where he will develop a deliberate and controversial primitive painting style. Among his more famous works will be "Chain Gang," "Calvary," and "Descent from the Cross." He will join the ancestors on January
1806 - Norbert Rillieux is born a free man in New Orleans, Louisiana. Rillieux will become best known for his revolutionary improvements in sugar refining methods. Awarded his second patent for an evaporator, the invention will be widely used throughout Louisiana and the West Indies, dramatically increasing and modernizing sugar production. He will join the ancestors on October 8. 1894 in Paris, France.
1827 - With the assistance of James Varick, Richard Allen, Alexander Crummel, and others, Samuel E. Cornish and John B. Russwurm publish "Freedom's Journal" in New York City. Operating from space in Varick's Zion Church, "Freedom's Journal" is the first African American newspaper. Russwurm says of the establishment of the newspaper, "We wish to plead our own cause. Too long have others spoken for us."
1794 - Eli Whitney patents the cotton gin, making it possible to clean 50 pounds of cotton a day, compared to a pound a day before the invention. This will make cotton king and increase the demand for slave labor.
1821 - The African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church is officially founded in New York City. It operated for a few years before then.
1779 - Jean Baptiste Pointe du Sable, an explorer of African descent, from Santo Domingo (Haiti), builds the first permanent settlement at the mouth of the river, just east of the present Michigan Avenue Bridge on the north bank, of what is now the city of Chicago, Illinois.
1791 - Benjamin Banneker and Pierre Charles L'Enfant are commissioned to plan and develop Washington, D.C.
1868 - Great Britain gives Basutoland, the status of protectorate at the request of King Moshweshwe. The request of protection was to prevent attacks by the Cape Colony.
1877 - The British annex Walvis Bay, an important deep water port in South West Africa.
1861 - The Confederate Congress, meeting in Montgomery, Alabama, adopts a constitution which declares that the passage of any "law denying or impairing the right of property in Negro slaves is prohibited."
1870 - Moshweshwe, King of Basutoland (Lesotho) joins the ancestors. Moshweshwe was the founder of Lesotho in the 1820's. Lesotho was landlocked by the Cape Colony (now South Africa). He was able to develop a strong tribal organization from his mix of peoples. He appeased the Zulu and Ndebele, led cattle raids on surrounding people, defeated the British in
1841 - Sengbe Pieh, known as Joseph Cinque, and the surviving African slaves who revolted on the ship Amistad are ordered freed by the United States Supreme Court and return to Africa after successfully appealing their mutiny conviction on grounds that they were kidnapped by outlawed slave traders. Their defense attorney is John Quincy Adams, former President of the United States and a Massachusetts senator. Before reaching the Supreme Court, U.S. President Martin Van Buren appeals twice the decision of lower courts to free the slaves. View the original documents of
1825 - Alexander Thomas Augusta is born free in Norfolk, Virginia. He will graduate from Trinity Medical College in Toronto, Canada in 1856, serve his medical apprenticeship in Philadelphia, and join the Union Army in 1863, with the rank of major. In 1865 he becomes the first African American to head any hospital in the United States, when the Freedmen Bureau establishes Freedmen's Hospital at Howard University with Augusta in charge. In 1868, Howard University opens its own medical school, with Augusta as demonstrator of anatomy. He will be the first
1539 - The first person of African descent to traverse the southern portion of, what is now, the United States is Estevanico, or Esteban, explorer from Azamov, Morocco. He discovers Arizona and New Mexico. His journey lasted eight years. He was leading an advance scouting party when he joins the ancestors after being killed at Hawikuh Pueblo, New Mexico.
1479 - The Treaty of Alcacovas is signed. This will establish the territorial domains of Portugal and Castile (Spain) along a longitudinal line 370 leagues west of the Cape Verde Islands. Spain, thereby, recognizes Portugal's rights to explore the African coast. Portugal becomes the first European nation to exploit the West African slave trade.
1770 - Crispus Attucks joins the ancestors after becoming the first of five persons killed in the Boston Massacre. Historians have called him the first martyr of the American Revolution.
1897 - The American Negro Academy is founded by Alexander Crummel. The purpose of the organization is the promotion of literature, science, art, the fostering of higher education, and the defense of the Negro.
1837 - The second major African American newspaper, the "Weekly Advocate" changes its name to the "Colored American."
1869 - The forty-second Congress convenes (1871-73) with five African American congressmen: Joseph H. Rainey, Robert Carlos Delarge, and Robert Brown Elliott from South Carolina; Benjamin S. Turner, of Alabama; Josiah T. Walls of Florida. Walls is elected in an at-large election and is the first African American congressman to represent an entire state.
1820 - In an attempt to resolve the conflict between pro and anti-slavery forces, the Missouri Compromise becomes law. In the final law, Missouri joins the Union as a slave state while Maine joins as a free one. The measure prohibits slavery to the north of the southern boundary of Missouri.
1807 - "The importation of slaves into the United States or the territories thereof" after January 1, 1808 is banned by Congress. Although abolitionists will hail the ban, it will not significantly affect the U.S. supply of slaves. Illegal importation will continue through Florida and Texas. The law also has no provision to restrict the internal slave trade, and the reproduction rate of American slaves is high enough to allow an active trade. Therefore the domestic slave trade continues to prosper after 1808.
1739 - The British sign a peace treaty with the Black "Chimarrones" in Jamaica.
1780 - Pennsylvania becomes the first state to abolish slavery.
1841 - Blanche Kelso Bruce is born a slave in Prince Edward County, Virginia. During Reconstruction, he will move to Mississippi, where he will become a wealthy landowner of several thousand acres in the Mississippi Delta. He will be appointed to the positions of Tallahatchie County registrar of voters and tax assessor before winning an election for sheriff in Bolivar County. He later will be elected to
1863 - The first African American Civil War regiment, the South Carolina Volunteers, are mustered into the United States Army.
1865 - Congress abolishes slavery with the 13th Amendment to the Constitution. The vote in the House is 121 to 24.
1914 - Arnold Raymond Cream is born in Merchantville, New Jersey. He will become "Jersey Joe Walcott" and World Heavyweight Champion at the age of 37. After retiring from boxing, he will stay active in boxing as a referee and later will become chairman of the New Jersey Athletic Commission.
1797 - Boston Masons, led by Prince Hall, establish the first African American interstate organization, creating lodges in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and Providence, Rhode Island.
1797 - Isabella Baumfree is born a slave in Swartekill, Ulster County, New York. This is an approximation, since historians cannot agree on the actual date of her birth. She will escape from slavery with her infant daughter in 1826. After going to court to gain custody of her son, she will become the first Black woman to win such a case against a white man. She
1837 - Aleksandr Sereyevich Pushkin, a Russian of African ancestry who is considered the "Shakespeare of Russian Literature," joins the ancestors after being killed in a duel. Technically one-eighth African or an octoroon, Pushkin was by all accounts Negroid in his appearance. His verse novel "Eugene Onegin" and other works are considered classics of Russian literature and inspiration for later great Russian writers such as Gogol, Dostoyevski, and Tolstoy.
1858 - John Brown organizes the raid on the federal arsenal at Harper's Ferry, West Virginia. The raid was an attempt to obtain arms and ammunition to free African Americans from slavery by force.
1901 - James Richmond Barthe' is born in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi. Educated at the Art Institute of Chicago, he will begin to attain critical acclaim as a sculptor at 26. He will drop the use of his first name when producing his works of art and will be best known as Richmond Barthe. His first commissions
1869 - William Mercer Cook (later Will Marion Cook), who will become a noted composer and conductor, is born in Washington, DC. Beginning study of the violin at age 13, at 15 he will win a scholarship to study at the Oberlin Conservatory. Among other accomplishments, he will introduce syncopated ragtime to New York City theatergoers in his operetta "Clorinda." In 1890, he will become director of a chamber orchestra touring the East Coast. He will prepare Scenes from the Opera of Uncle Tom's Cabin for performance. The performance, which is
1863 - The War Department authorizes the governor of Massachusetts to enlist African American troops to fight in the Civil War. The 54th and 55th Volunteer Infantry are the result.
1897 - At the Battle at Bida, British troops defeat Nupe's army.
1893 - Bessie Coleman is born in Altanta, Texas, the tenth of thirteen children. She will grow up to become the first African American female pilot (June 15, 1921) and the first woman to obtain an international flying license (from the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale). She will join the ancestors
1851 - Sojourner Truth addresses the first African American Women's Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio.
1875 - Anti-Slavery Society forms in New York.
1890 - The National Afro-American League is founded at an organizing meeting in Chicago, Illinois. Joseph Price, the president of Livingston College, is elected the first president of what will come to be considered a pioneering African American protest organization.
1885 - Martin R. Delany joins the ancestors at the age of 72 in Wilberforce, Ohio. Delany served as a physician and was the first commissioned African American officer in the Union Army during the Civil War. He also was a leader in the fight to end racial job discrimination. Delany will encourage African Americans to seek their own identity and is considered by some historians to be the father of American Black nationalism. He is the author of "Search for a Place: Black Separatism and Africa," and "The Condition, Elevation,
1837 - Amanda Berry Smith is born into slavery in Long Green, Maryland. She will be widowed twice, after which she will attempt to minister to her people. Unable to preach in the AME Church, which did not ordain women ministers, Smith will become an independent missionary and travel throughout the United States and three continents. She will publish her autobiography, "Amanda Smith's Story - The Story of the Lord's Dealings with Mrs. Amanda Smith, The Colored Evangelist," in 1893. She will join the ancestors on February 24, 1915.
1801 - Haitian liberator, Toussaint L'Ouverture, enters Santiago to battle the French Armed Forces.
1824 - The Ashantis defeat British forces in the Gold Coast (Ghana).
1879 - Zulu warriors attack British Army camp in Isandhlwana, South Africa. This is the "Battle of Rorke's Drift": The British garrison of 150 holds off 3,000-4,000 Zulu warriors. Eleven Victoria Crosses and a number of other decorations will be awarded to the defenders.
1830 - The African American population in Portsmouth, Ohio is forcibly deported by order of city officials.
1913 - Fanny M. Jackson Coppin joins the ancestors in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She was a pioneering educator and missionary and the first African American woman to graduate from an American college (Oberlin, 1865). Coppin State College (now University) in Baltimore, Maryland will be named after her.
1788 - The First African Baptist Church is organized in Savannah, Georgia, with Andrew Bryan ordained as its pastor, after being derived from the first Black congregation founded in 1773. It is the first African American Baptist church in North America, as well as the first Baptist church, Black or white, in Savannah. Editor's Note: Its claim of "first" is contested by First Baptist Church of Petersburg, Virginia, whose congregation officially organized in 1774.
1871 - Alpha Lodge of New Jersey, Number 116, Free and Accepted Masons becomes the first Black Masonic lodge recognized by white Masonry in the United States.
1918 - John Harold Johnson is born in Arkansas City, Arkansas. He will become the founder and president of Johnson Publishing Company, Inc., the most prosperous African American publishing company in America. His company will publish the "Negro Digest"(his first), "Ebony," "Jet," "Black Star," "Black World" and "Ebony Jr." magazines. He will receive numerous awards, including the Horatio Alger Award, the NAACP Spingarn Medal
1856 - Dr. Daniel Nathan Hale Williams is born in Hollidaysburg, Pennsylvania. He will graduate from Chicago Medical College in 1883 and begin his practice on Chicago's South Side. After 8 years of frustration, not being able to use the facilities at the white hospitals in Chicago, he will found Provident Hospital in 1891 and open it to patients of all races. He will make his mark in medical history on July 10, 1893, when he becomes the first African American surgeon to perform a successful open heart surgery. He will
1759 - Paul Cuffee is born in Cuttyhunk, Massachusetts. He will become a successful ship owner, philanthropist, and a force in the movement for African Americans' repatriation to Africa. He was of Aquinnah Wampanoag and African Ashanti descent and helps to colonize Sierra Leone. He will build a lucrative shipping empire and establish the first racially integrated school in Westport, Massachusetts. He will join the ancestors on September 9, 1817.
1776 - The Continental Congress approves General George Washington's order on the enlistment of free African Americans.
1865 - General William T. Sherman issues his Field Order No. 15, setting aside "the islands from Charleston, south, the abandoned rice fields along the river for thirty miles back from the sea, and the country bordering the St. John's River, Florida," for exclusive settlement by African Americans. The order provides that "each family should have a plot of not more than forty (40) acres of tillable ground...in the possession of which land the
1865 - An African American division, under the command of Major General Charles Paine, participates in the Fort Fisher, North Carolina expedition, which will close the Confederacy's last major seaport.
1908 - Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority is founded at Howard University in Washington, DC. The culmination of efforts by Ethel Hedgeman (Lyle) and eight other undergraduates, it is the first Greek- letter organization for African American women.
dddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddd* Today in Black History - January 14 *
1868 - The South Carolina constitutional convention, the first official assembly in the western hemisphere with an African American majority, meets in the Charleston Clubhouse with seventy-six African American delegates and forty-eight white delegates. Two-thirds of the African American delegates are former slaves. A New York Herald reporter writes: "Here in Charleston is being enacted the most incredible, hopeful, and yet unbelievable experiment in all the history of mankind."
1872 - Yohannes IV is crowned Emperor of Ethiopia in Axum, the first imperial coronation in that city in over 200 years.
1879 - British troops invade Zululand from Natal, confident that they could crush the Zulu forces armed with spears and shields. However, the well-trained Zulu army repulses the initial attack, killing over 1300 British troops in the Battle of Isandlwana. But that success will exhaust the Zulu army, and before Cetshwayo could mount a counteroffensive into Natal, British troops from around the Empire will be rushed to southern Africa,
1870 - The first reconstruction legislature meets in Jackson, Mississippi. Thirty one of the 106 representatives and five of the 33 senators are African American.
1879 - Zulu war against British colonial rule in South Africa begins.
1892 - William D. McCoy, of Indiana, is appointed United States Minister to Liberia.
1663 - King Charles II of England affirms charter of Royal African Company.
1768 - James Varick is born in Orange County, New York. Racism in New York City will lead Varick, a licensed clergyman, and 30 other African Americans to leave the famous and predominantly white John Street Methodist Episcopal Church and establish the first African American church in New York City. He will later become the founder and first bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church. He will join the ancestors on July 22, 1827. His remains now
1866 - Fisk College is established in Nashville, Tennessee. Rust College is established in Holly Springs, Mississippi. Lincoln University is established in Jefferson City, Missouri.
1901 - Edward Mitchell Bannister joins the ancestors in Providence, Rhode Island. Challenged to become an artist after reading a newspaper article deriding African Americans' ability to produce art, he disproved that statement throughout a distinguished art career.
1811 - A slave rebellion begins 35 miles outside of New Orleans, Louisiana. U.S. troops will be called upon to put down the uprising of over 400 slaves, which will last three days.
1837 - Fanny M. Jackson is born a slave in Washington, DC. She will become the first African American woman college graduate in the United States when she graduates from Oberlin College in 1865. After graduation, she will become a teacher at the Institute for Colored Youths in Philadelphia. In 1869, she will become the first African American
1822 - A colony of free African Americans sent to Africa by the American Colonization Society, is established on the west coast of Africa. It is the beginning of the African American colonization of Liberia. This colony will become the independent nation of Liberia in 1847.
1773 - "Felix," a Boston slave, and others petition the Massachusetts legislature and Governor Hutchinson for their freedom. It is the first of a record eight similar petitions filed during the Revolutionary War.
1831 - The World Anti-Slavery Convention opens in London, England.
1832 - William Lloyd Garrison founds the New England Anti-Slavery Society at the African Meeting House in Boston, Massachusetts, where he issues the society's "Declaration of Sentiments" from the Meeting House pulpit.
1804 - Ohio begins the restriction of the rights and movements of free African Americans by passing the first of several "Black laws." It is a trend that will be followed by most Northern states.
1869 - Matilda Sissieretta Jones is born in Portsmouth, Virginia. She will become a gifted singer (soprano), who will rise to fame as a soloist and troupe leader during the later part of the nineteenth century. She will be nicknamed "Black Patti", after a newspaper review mentioned her as an African American equal to the acclaimed
1787 - Prince Hall, founder of the first African American Masonic lodge, and others petition the Massachusetts legislature for funds to return to Africa. The plan is the first recorded effort by African Americans to return to their homeland.
1832 - A major insurrection of slaves on Trinidad occurs.
1624 - William Tucker is born in Jamestown, Virginia. He is the first African American child, on record, born in the American colonies. He is the son of slaves Anthony and Isabella. He will be baptized in Jamestown and sold at Fort Monroe to an English sea captain named William Tucker. He is believed to be buried in his (the slaves) family cemetery in Hampton, Virginia.
***HAPPY HOLIDAYS FROM BRO. MOSI HOJ AND THE MUNIRAH CHRONICLE***
1760 - Jupiter Hammon, a New York slave who was probably the first African American poet, publishes "An Evening Thought:Salvation by Christ".
1776 - Oliver Cromwell and Prince Whipple are among soldiers who cross the Delaware River with George Washington to successfully attack the Hessians in Trenton, New Jersey, during the Revolutionary War.
1832 - The first hospital for African Americans is founded by whites and chartered in Savannah, Georgia.
1853 - Octavia Victoria Rogers Albert is born in Olgethorpe, Georgia. She will began conducting interviews with men and women who were once enslaved. These interviews will be the raw material for her collection of narratives, "The House of Bondage," or "Charlotte Brooks and Other Slaves." The stories of Charlotte Brooks and the others would eventually be compiled into a book after her transition. She will join the ancestors on August 19, 1889. "The
1815 - Henry Highland Garnet is born in New Market, Maryland. He will become a noted clergyman and abolitionist. He will also be the first African American to deliver a sermon before the House of Representatives. He will join the ancestors on February 13, 1882.
1867 - Sarah Breedlove is born in Delta, Louisiana. She will be better known as Madame C.J. Walker, the first female African American millionaire whose haircare, toiletry, and cosmetics products revolutionized the standard of beauty for African American women. Her philanthropy and generosity will make her
1873 - Abolitionist Charles Lenox Remond joins the ancestors. He was the first African American lecturer employed by the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society.
1883 - Arthur Wergs Mitchell is born near Lafayette, Alabama. He will become the first African American Democrat elected to Congress, representing Illinois for four terms. In 1937, after being forced from first-class train accommodations in Arkansas to ride in a shabby Jim Crow car, Mitchell will sue the railroad and eventually argue unsuccessfully before the Supreme Court that interstate trains be exempt from Arkansas' "separate but equal" laws.
1872 - Robert Scott Duncanson joins the ancestors in Detroit, Michigan. He suffers a severe mental breakdown and ends his life in the Michigan State Retreat. Duncanson avoided painting in an ethnic style, favoring still lifes and landscapes including "Mount Healthy," "Ohio," "Blue Hole," "Little Miami River," and "Falls of Minnehaha. The Detroit Tribune, on December 26, 1872, refers to Duncanson as "an artist of rare accomplishments".
1854 - Walter F. Craig is born in Princeton, New Jersey. He will obtain his music education in Cleveland, Ohio under Hermon Troste, Edward Mollenhauer and Carl Christian Muller. He will become an excellent violin soloist and accomplished conductor and composer. He will become the organizer of Craig's Celebrated Orchestra, and the first African American to be admitted to the New York Musician's Mutual Protective Union. The Cleveland Gazette will refer to him as "The Leading Colored Violinist in the East." He will live primarily in New York City and will
1798 - Portrait painter Joshua Johnston places an ad in the "Baltimore Intelligencer" describing himself as "a self- taught genius." Johnston, a freeman, will paint portraits of some of the most successful merchant families in Maryland and Virginia. Only three of his subjects will be African American, among them "Portrait of an Unknown Man" and "Reverend Daniel Coker."
1852 - George H. White is born in Rosindale, North Carolina. He will become a lawyer, state legislator, and in 1896, the only African American member of the United States House of Representatives, where he will be the first to introduce an anti-lynching bill. He will also found the town of Whitesboro, New Jersey, as a haven for African Americans escaping southern racism. He will join the ancestors on December 28, 1918.
1920 - South Africa receives League of Nations mandate over South West Africa.
1937 - Arthur Lanon "Art" Neville is born in New Orleans, Louisiana. He will become a singer and keyboardist. He will be a part of one of the notable musical families of New Orleans, the Neville Brothers. He is a founding member of The Meters and continues to play with the spinoff group The Funky Meters. He will play on recordings by many notable artists from New Orleans and elsewhere, including Labelle (on "Lady Marmalade"), Paul McCartney, Lee
1834 - George Lewis Ruffin is born in Richmond, Virginia. The son of free African Americans, he and his wife, Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin (1842–1924), will flee to England after the Dred Scott decision (1857), and return soon to Boston. While making his living as a barber, he will speak out on matters concerning African Americans. He will read the law in Boston and become the first Black to graduate from Harvard Law School (1869). While maintaining a thriving practice in Boston, he will serve in the Massachusetts legislature (1869–71) and
1644 - A Dutch land grant is issued to Lucas Santomee, son of Peter Santomee, one of the first 11 Africans brought to Manhattan. Among the land granted to Santomee and the original Africans is property in Brooklyn and Greenwich Village.
1706 - A slave named Onesimus arrives in the home of Cotton Mather. The slave's experience and explanation of African inoculation will result in Mather's encouragement of Dr. Zabdiel Boylston to inoculate for smallpox in 1721.
1829 - John Mercer Langston is born in Louisa County, Virginia. He will have a distinguished career as an attorney, educator, recruiter of soldiers for the all African American 5th Ohio, 54th and 55th Massachusetts regiments, dean of the law school and president of Howard University, diplomat, and U.S. congressman. He will join the ancestors on November 15, 1897 in Washington, DC.
1903 - Ella Baker is born in Norfolk, Virginia. A civil rights worker who will direct the New York branch of the NAACP, Baker will become executive director of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in the 1960's during student integration of lunch counters in the southern states. She also will play a key role in the formation of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and its voter registration drive in Mississippi. She will join the ancestors on December 13, 1986 in New York City.
1870 - Joseph Hayne Rainey is the first African American to serve in Congress representing South Carolina. He is sworn in to fill an unexpired term.
1872 - U.S. Attorney General George Williams sends a telegram to "Acting Governor Pinchback," saying that the African American politician "was recognized by the President as the lawful executive of Louisiana."
1872 - America's first African American governor takes office as Pinckney Benton Stewart Pinchback becomes acting governor of Louisiana.
1916 - John E. Bush, former slave and teacher, joins the ancestors. He had been appointed receiver of the United States Land Office in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1898.
1810 - Tom Cribb of Great Britain defeats African American Tom Molineaux in the first interracial boxing championship. The fight lasted 40 rounds at Copthall Common in England.
1846 - Norbert Rillieux invents the evaporating pan, which revolutionizes the sugar industry.
1854 - Edwin C. Berry is born in Oberlin, Ohio. He will become a hotel entrepreneur and erects a 22-room hotel, Hotel Berry, in Athens, Ohio. He will be known, at the time of his retirement in 1921, as the most successful African American small-city hotel operator in the United
1867 - The Georgia constitutional convention, consisting of 33 African American and 137 whites, opens in Atlanta, Georgia.
1872 - P. B. S. Pinchback is sworn in as governor of Louisiana after H.C. Warmoth is impeached "for high crimes and misdemeanors." He becomes the first African American governor of a state.
1850 - The first African American woman to graduate from college is Lucy Ann Stanton. She completes the two-year ladies' course and receives the Bachelor of Literature degree from Oberlin College in Ohio.
1863 - President Abraham Lincoln issues his Proclamation on Amnesty and Reconstruction for the restoration of the Confederate states into the Union. He offers them a full pardon and restoration of their rights if they are willing to take an oath of loyalty to the Union and accept the end of slavery.
1874 - White Democrats kill seventy-five Republicans in a massacre at Vicksburg, Mississippi.
1885 - The Forty-Ninth Congress (1885-87) is convened. Two African American congressmen, James E. O'Hara of North Carolina and Robert Smalls of South Carolina are in attendance.
1931 - Comer Cottrell is born in Mobile, Alabama. In 1970, he will become founder and president of Pro-line Corporation in Los Angeles, California, which he will start with $ 600 and a borrowed typewriter. He will move the headquarters to Dallas, Texas in 1980, becoming the largest African American-owned business
1806 - The African Meeting House is dedicated in Boston, Massachusetts and will become the oldest African American house of worship still standing in the United States. This house of worship will be constructed almost entirely by African American laborers and craftsmen, but funds will be contributed by the white community. Because of the leadership role its congregation takes in the early struggle for civil rights, the African Meeting House will become known as the Abolition Church and Black Faneuil Hall. Frederick Douglass and William Lloyd Garrison will be speakers there.
1784 - African American poet Phyllis Wheatley joins the ancestors in Boston at the age of 31. Born in Africa and brought to the American Colonies at the age of eight in 1761, Wheatley was quick to learn both English and Latin. Her first poem was published in 1770 and she continued to write poems and eulogies. A 1773 trip to England secured her success there, where she was introduced to English society. Her book, "Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral", was published late that year. Married for six years
1783 - George Washington's farewell address to his troops is held at Fraunces Tavern in New York City. The tavern is owned by Samuel "Black Sam" Fraunces, a wealthy West Indian of African and French descent who aided Revolutionary forces with food and money.
1806 - Thomas Paul is selected to become the first minister at the African Meeting House in Boston, Massachusetts. The Meeting House will have its official dedication two days later. He will serve as minister of the First African Baptist Church until 1829.
1841 - Abolitionist Charles Lenox Remond returns to the United States after a year and a half in Great Britain. He had been serving as a delegate to the world Anti- Slavery Convention in London. He brings with him an "Address from the People of Ireland" including 60,000 signatures urging Irish-Americans to "oppose slavery by peaceful means and to insist upon liberty for all regardless of color, creed, or country."
1859 - John Brown, abolitionist who planned the failed attack on the Federal Arsenal at Harpers Ferry, is hanged at Charles Town, West Virginia.
1866 - Harry T. Burleigh, singer and composer, is born in Erie, Pennsylvania. He will be educated at the National Conservatory of Music in New York City, where he will meet and form a lasting friendship with Anton Dvorak. He will eventually be awarded the NAACP's Spingarn Medal. Burleigh will be best known for his arrangements of the Negro spiritual "Deep River". He will join the ancestors
1641 - Massachusetts becomes the first colony to give statutory recognition to the institution of slavery.
1821 - Santo Domingo (Dominican Republic) proclaims independence from Spain.
1873 - The 43rd Congress (1873-75) convenes with seven African American congressmen: Richard H. Cain, Robert Brown Elliott, Joseph H. Rainey and Alonzo J. Ransier, South Carolina; James T. Rapier, Alabama; Josiah T. Walls, Florida; John R. Lynch, Mississippi.
1869 - John Roy Lynch is elected to the Mississippi House of Representatives.
1912 - Gordon Parks, Sr. is born in Fort Scott, Kansas. In the late 1930's, while working as a railroad porter, he will become interested in photography and launch his career as a photographer and photojournalist. From 1943 to 1945, he will be a correspondent for the Office of War Information, giving national exposure to his work. This will lead to him becoming a staff photographer for Life magazine in 1948. He will branch off into film and
1905 - The Chicago Defender, an African American newspaper, begins publication.
1907 - Thomas C. Fleming is born in Jacksonville, Florida. He will become the co-founder of the San Francisco Sun Reporter, an African American weekly newspaper. Mr. Fleming will be active, as a writer for the paper, from its inception in 1944 through the end of the century. He will chronicle his life as an African in America through his series, "Reflections on Black History," published in his 90's, while still active as a journalist with his beloved Sun Reporter.
1868 - John Sengstacke Abbott is born in Frederica, Georgia. The son of former slaves, he will attend Hampton Institute and prepare himself for the printing trade. He will also go on to law school, and will work as an attorney for a few years, but will change careers to become a journalist. He will found the Chicago Defender, a weekly newspaper on May 6, 1905. He will start the paper on $25, and in the beginning, operate it out of his kitchen. Under his direction, the Defender will become the
1942 - Johnny Allen Hendrix is born in Seattle, Washington. Hendrix's father, James "Al" Hendrix, later changes his son's name to James Marshall. James Marshall Hendrix will be best known as Jimi Hendrix, leader of the influential rock group, The Jimi Hendrix Experience. His music will influence such groups as "Earth, Wind, and Fire," "Living Colour," and "Sting." He will join the ancestors on September 18, 1970 after succumbing to asphyxiation from his own vomit. He will be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1992 and the
1866 - Rust College is founded in Holly Springs, Mississippi.
1872 - Macon B. Allen is elected judge of the Lower Court of Charleston, South Carolina. Allen, the first African American lawyer, becomes the second African American to hold a major judicial position and the first African American with a major judicial position on the municipal level.
1841 - Thirty-five survivors of the "Amistad" return home to Africa.
1922 - Marcus Garvey electrifies a crowd at Liberty Hall in New York City as he states the goals and principles of the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA): "We represent peace, harmony, love, human sympathy, human rights and human justice...we are marshaling the four hundred million Negroes of the world to fight for the emancipation of the race and for the redemption of the country of our fathers."
1868 - Scott Joplin, originator of ragtime music, is born in Northeast Texas. He will earn a living as a piano teacher. He will teach future ragtime composers Arthur Marshall, Scott Hayden, and Brun Campbell. He will began publishing music in 1895, and publication of his Maple Leaf Rag in 1899 will bring him fame. This piece had a profound influence on subsequent writers of ragtime. It will also bring the composer a steady income for life, though he did not reach this level of success again and frequently had financial
1867 - The Louisiana constitutional convention (forty-nine white delegates and forty-nine African American delegates) meets in Mechanics Institute in New Orleans, Louisiana.
1897 - J.L. Love receives a patent for the pencil sharpener.
1897 - Andrew J. Beard receives a patent for the "jerry coupler," still is use today to connect railroad cars.
1865 - The Mississippi legislature enacts "Black Codes" which restrict the rights and freedom of movement of the freedmen. The Black Codes enacted in Mississippi and other Southern states virtually re-enslave the freedmen. In some states, any white person could arrest any African American. In other states, minor officials could arrest African American "vagrants" and "refractory and rebellious Negroes" and force them to work on roads and levees without pay. "Servants" in South Carolina were required to work from sunrise to sunset, to be quiet and orderly and go to bed
1654 - Richard Johnson, a free African American, is granted 550 acres in Northampton County, Virginia.
1784 - James Armistead is cited by French General Lafayette for his valuable service to the American forces in the Revolutionary War. Armistead, who was born into slavery 24 years earlier, had worked as a double agent for the Americans while supposedly employed as a servant of British General Cornwallis.
1865 - African Americans hold a protest convention in Zion Church in Charleston, South Carolina and demand equal rights and repeal of the "Black Codes."
1878 - Charles Sidney Gilpin, is born in Richmond, Virginia. In the early 1920s, Gilpin will secure his place in American theater history by creating the title -- and only major -- role in Eugene O'Neill's' "The Emperor Jones." Gilpin's portrayal in the long one-act play becomes a box-office sensation in New York's Greenwich Village. The play and its principal actor will transfer to Broadway and
1867 - South Carolina citizens endorse a constitutional convention and select delegates. 66,418 African Americans and 2350 whites vote for the convention and 2278 whites vote against holding a convention. The total vote cast is 71,046. Not a single African American votes against the convention.
1921 - Roy Campanella is born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He will become one of the first African-American baseball players signed to major league ball after Jackie Robinson breaks the color line. He will become the first African American catcher in Major League history. Campanella will play
1797 - Abolitionist and orator, Sojourner Truth, is born a New York slave on the plantation of Johannes Hardenberghn in Swartekill, New York. Her given name is Isabella VanWagener (some references use the name Isabella Baumfree). She will walk away from her last owner one year prior to being freed by a New York law in 1827, which proclaimed that all slaves twenty-eight years of age and over were to be freed. Several years later, in response to what she describes as a command from God, she becomes an itinerant preacher
1842 - Fugitive slave George Latimer, is captured in Boston. His capture leads to the first of the fugitive slave cases which strain relationships between the North and South. Boston abolitionists will raise money to purchase Latimer from his slave owner.
1911 - Omega Psi Phi Fraternity is founded on the campus of Howard University.
1873 - William Christopher Handy is born in Florence, Alabama. He will be best known as a composer and blues musician and earn the nickname "Father of the Blues." Among his most noteworthy compositions will be "Memphis Blues," "St. Louis Blues," and "Beale Street Blues." He will also form a music publishing company with Harry Pace and become one of the most important influences in African American music. His 1941 autobiography, "Father of the Blues," will be a sourcebook and reference on this uniquely African American musical style. He will join
218BC- Hannibal, North African military genius, crosses the Alps with elephants and 26,000 men in an expedition to capture Rome.
1805 - Explorers Lewis and Clark reach the mouth of the Columbia River. Accompanying them on their expedition is a slave named York, who, while technically Clark's valet, distinguished himself as a scout, interpreter, and emissary to the Native Americans encountered on the expedition.
1900 - In Washington, DC, a small group meets to form the Washington Society of Colored Dentists. It is the first society of African American dentists in the United States.
1905 - John Henry Barbee is born in Henning, Tennessee. He will become a blues singer and guitarist. He will tour in the 1930s throughout the American South, singing and playing slide guitar. He will team up with Big Joe Williams and, later, with Sunnyland Slim in Memphis, Tennessee. Travelling down to Mississippi, he will meet Sonny Boy Williamson and play
1839 - The first anti-slavery political party (Liberty Party) is organized and convenes in Warsaw, New York. Samuel Ringgold Ward and Henry Highland Garnet are two of the earliest supporters of the new political party.
1905 - Frank Levingston is born in Cotton Valley, Louisiana. He will become an American supercentenarian. He will be the oldest living man in the United States and the oldest verified surviving American World War II veteran. He will enlist in the U.S. Army in 1942. He will serve as a private during the war in
1775 - General George Washington issues an order forbidding recruiting officers from enlisting African Americans.
1779 - Twenty slaves petition New Hampshire's legislature to abolish slavery. They argue that "the god of nature gave them life and freedom upon the terms of most perfect equality with other men; that freedom is an inherent right of the human species, not to be surrendered but by consent."
1831 - Nat Turner is executed for organizing and leading the armed slave insurrection in Jerusalem, Southampton County, Virginia. One of our greatest freedom fighters joins the ancestors.
1890 - D. McCree is granted a patent for the portable fire escape.
1895 - Bechuanaland becomes part of the Cape Colony in Africa.
1879 - Andrea Evangelina Rodríguez Perozo is born in San Rafael de el Yuma, La Altagracia, Dominican Republic. She will become the first female medical school graduate in the Dominican Republic. Her parents will join the ancestors when she is a child and her paternal grandmother will take charge of her. In addition to her medical work, she will also become an author and publish her first book "Granos de polen" in 1915, and subsequently publish some poems and articles in the magazine "Fémina." On her return from the French capital,
1731 - Benjamin Banneker is born free in Ellicott Mills (now Ellicott City), Maryland. He will become the builder of the first clock made in America. He also will become the key figure in the design of Washington, DC after Pierre L'Enfant quit and took his plans for DC with him. Banneker was able to save the project by reproducing the plans from memory, in two days, a complete layout of the streets, parks, and major buildings. From 1792 to 1802, Banneker will publish an annual Farmer's Almanac, for which he
1876 - Frank L. Gillespie is born in Osceola, Arkansas. He will become a businessman who will create the first African American-owned life insurance agency outside of the U.S. southern states. He will be an agent at Royal Life Insurance Company, a white-owned insurance agency, working in the "department for colored people" and notice his customers were offered "inferior products." He will meet with a group of prominent Black businessmen in Chicago and they will work together to create an insurance company catering towards Chicago's professional African American population. His company,
1775 - Lord Dunmore, the British governor of the colony of Virginia, issues a proclamation granting freedom to any slave who is willing to join the British army in its fight against the American revolutionaries. The offer applies only to slaves owned by "rebels." About 800 slaves will eventually accept the offer.
1746 - Absalom Jones, a major leader of the African American Pioneer period, is born into slavery in Sussex, Delaware. He will become a friend of Richard Allen and together they will found the Free African Society, which would serve as a protective society and social organization for free African Americans. After founding a black congregation in 1794, he will be the first African American ordained as a priest in the Episcopal Church of the United States, in 1804. He will join the ancestors on February 13, 1818. He will be
1828 - Theodore Sedgwick Wright becomes the first African American person to get a Theology Degree in the United States, when he graduates from Princeton Theological Seminary.
1867 - First Reconstruction constitutional convention opens in Montgomery, Alabama. It has eighteen African Americans and ninety whites in attendance.
1901 - Etta Moten (later Barnett) is born in Weimar, Texas. She will become an actress starring in "Porgy and Bess" and have a successful career on Broadway. On January 31, 1933, she will become the first black star to perform at the White
1872 - Pinckney Benton Stewart Pinchback is elected as a U.S. congressman from Louisiana.
1872 - Three African Americans are elected to major offices in Louisiana elections: C.C Antoine, lieutenant governor; P.G. Deslonde, secretary of state; W.B. Brown, superintendent of public education.
1879 - T. Elkins receives a patent on the refrigeration apparatus.
1868 - John W. Menard, of Louisiana, is elected as the African American representative to Congress. Menard defeats a white candidate, 5,107 to 2,833, in an election in Louisiana's Second Congressional District to fill an unexpired term in the Fortieth Congress.
1874 - James Theodore Holly, an African American who emigrated to Haiti in 1861, is elected bishop of Haiti.
1875 - Southern Democrats suppress the African American vote by fraud and violence and carry Mississippi elections. "The Mississippi Plan" staged riots, political assassinations, massacres and social and economic intimidation will be used later to overthrow Reconstruction governments in South Carolina and Louisiana.
1903 - Business and civic leader, Maggie Lena Walker, opens the St. Luke Penny Savings Bank in Richmond, Virginia, becoming the first female bank president in the United States.
1787 - The first free school for African Americans, the African Free School, opens in New York City.
1866 - The first Civil Rights Act is passed over the veto of President Andrew Johnson.
1898 - Beulah Belle Thomas is born in Plum Bayou, Jefferson County, Arkansas. She will become a singer-songwriter better known as Sippie Wallace. Her early career in tent shows will gain her the billing "The Texas Nightingale". Between 1923 and 1927, she will record over 40 songs for Okeh Records, many written by her or her brothers,
1893 - Football player, William Henry Lewis, is named as an All- American, playing for Harvard College. This is the second year in a row he is named to the All American Team. He is the first African American athlete to be named All American.
1896 - Ethel Waters is born in Chester, Pennsylvania. She will become a famous blues singer, the first woman to perform W.C. Handy's "St. Louis Blues," and an actress known for her roles in the movie "Cabin in the Sky" and such stageplays as "Member of
1831 - Nat Turner is remembered for his role in the slave revolt that took place in Southampton county, Virginia on August 21.
1916 - Leon Day is born in Alexandria, Virginia. He will become a professional baseball pitcher who will spend the majority of his career in the Negro leagues. Recognized as one of the most versatile athletes in the league during his prime, he will play every position, with the exception of catcher, and often will be the starting second baseman or center fielder when he is not on
1837 - Harriet Powers is born a slave in Clarke County, Georgia. She will become a folk artist and quilt maker. She will use traditional appliqué techniques to record local legends, Bible stories, and astronomical events on her quilts. Only two of her quilts will be known to have survived: Bible Quilt 1886 and Pictorial Quilt 1898. Her quilts are considered among the finest examples of nineteenth-century Southern quilting. Her work will be on display at the National Museum of American History in Washington, DC, and the Museum of Fine Arts
1862 - The First Kansas Colored Volunteers, while greatly outnumbered, repulse and drive off a rebel force at Island Mound, Missouri. This is the first engagement for African American troops in the Civil War.
1873 - Patrick Healy becomes president of Georgetown University, the oldest Catholic University in the United States and becomes the first African American president of a predominantly white university in the United States.
1891 - Charles H. Garvin is born in Jacksonville, Florida. During World War I, he will become the first black physician commissioned in the U.S. Army, serving in France as commanding officer in the 92nd Division. His interest in medicine will extend beyond his practice to research and writing, especially tracing the history of Africans and African Americans in medicine. He will amass an important collection of books on the black experience and will also complete a manuscript (unpublished as of 1994) and write several articles on the subject. His account
1868 - White terrorists kill several African Americans in St. Bernard Parish, near New Orleans, Louisiana.
1868 - B.F. Randolph, state senator and chairman of the state Republican party, is assassinated in broad daylight at Hodges Depot in Abbeville, South Carolina.
1911 - Mahalia Jackson is born in New Orleans, Louisiana. Known as the "Gospel Queen," Jackson will become instrumental in the popularization of gospel music and songs. Jackson's traditional gospel audiences transcended beyond African American churchgoers through her recordings, radio performances and concert tours in America and abroad. Her recordings
1806 - Benjamin Banneker joins the ancestors at the age of 74 in Ellicott Mills, Maryland. Banneker was a self- taught mathematician and builder (at age 21) of the first striking clock built in the United States. An amateur astronomer, Banneker's calculations for solar and lunar eclipses appeared in 29 editions of his almanacs, published from 1792 to 1797.
1892 - 25,000 African American workers strike in New Orleans, Louisiana. This is the first major job stoppage in U.S. labor history by African Americans.
1923 - The U.S. Department of Labor issues a report stating that approximately 500,000 African Americans had left the South in the preceding twelve months.
1775 - The Continental Congress approves resolution prohibiting the enlistment of African Americans in the Army.
1783 - Virginia emancipates slaves who fought for independence during the Revolutionary War.
1790 - A major slave revolt occurs in Haiti, which is later suppressed.
1847 - William Leidesdorff brings his ship Sitka from Sitka, Alaska, to San Francisco, California. Earlier in the year, the Danish West Indies Native had launched the first steamboat ever to sail in San Francisco Bay. The ventures were one of many activities for Leidesdorff, which will include an
1854 - James Alan Bland is born in Flushing, New York. He will write over 700 songs including "Oh, Dem Golden Slippers" and "Carry Me Back to Old Virginny." The latter song will be selected in 1940 as the state song of Virginia, the state's legislators little knowing the identity and race of its composer. Virginia will decide to change their state song in the late 1990s due to protests from civil rights activists who say that the song glorifies slavery and is inappropriate. He will join the ancestors on May
1832 - Maria W. Stewart, an African American women's rights and abolitionist speaker, says in her farewell address "...for it's not the color of the skin that makes the man or woman, but the principle formed in the soul."
1865 - Jamaican National Hero, George William Gordon, is unfairly arrested and charged for complicity in what is now called the Morant Bay Rebellion. George William Gordon was a free colored land owner. Born to a slave mother and a planter father, who was attorney to several sugar estates in Jamaica, he
1895 - Rex Ingram is born near Cairo, Illinois. He will graduate from the Northwestern University medical school in 1919 and will be the first African American male to receive a Phi Beta Kappa key from Northwestern University. He will go to Hollywood as a young man where he will be literally discovered on a street corner by the casting director for "Tarzan of the Apes" (1918), starring Elmo Lincoln. He will make his (uncredited) screen debut in that film and will have many other small roles, usually as a generic
1859 - Byrd Prillerman is born a slave in Shady Grove, Franklin County, Virginia. He will become an educator, reformer, religious worker, political figure, and lawyer. He will be best known as the co- founder of the West Virginia Colored Institute in 1891. The school will be changed to the West Virginia Collegiate Institute in 1915. The school, under Prillerman's leadership, will become the first state school for African Americans to reach the rank of an accredited college whose work is accepted by the universities of the North. The school will
1905 - Felix Houphouet-Boigny is born in the Ivory Coast when it was part of French colonial West Africa. In 1960, after the Ivory Coast (Cote' d'Ivoire) gains independence from France, he will become President, and hold that office until he joins the ancestors on December 7, 1993.
1711 - Jupiter Hammon is born a slave on Long Island, New York. He will become a poet and the first published Black writer in America, a poem appearing in print in 1760. He will be considered one of the founders of African American literature. He will be a slave his entire life, owned by several generations of the Lloyd family on Long Island. However, he will be allowed to attend school, and unlike many slaves, will be able to read and write. In 1786, He will give his "Address to
1849 - George Washington Williams is born in Bedford Springs, Pennsylvania. He will become the first major African American historian and founder of two African American newspapers, "The Commoner" in Washington, DC, and Cincinnati's "The Southern Review." He will become the first African American elected to the Ohio State Legislature, serving one term, from 1880 to 1881. In 1885, President Chester A. Arthur will appoint him "Minister Resident and Consul General" to Haiti, but he will never serve. In 1889, he will be granted an informal audience with King Léopold II
1877 - Jackson College in Jackson, Mississippi is established.
1883 - The U.S. Supreme Court declares that The Civil Rights Act of 1875 is unconstitutional. The Civil Rights Act of 1875 stated that "All persons within the jurisdiction of the United States shall be entitled to the full and equal enjoyment of the accommodations, advantages, facilities, and privileges of inns, public conveyances on land or water, theaters, and other places of public amusement; subject only to the conditions and limitations established by law and applicable alike to citizens of every race
1834 - Henry Blair of Glen Ross, Maryland, receives a patent for a corn planting machine.
1864 - The first African American daily newspaper, the New Orleans Tribune, is published in both French and English.
1889 - Clarence Muse is born in Baltimore, Maryland. He will become a pioneer film and stage actor. He will appear in the second talking movie ever made and go on to appear in a total of 219 films. His career will span over 60 years. He will receive an honorary doctor of humanities degree from
1831 - Jo Anderson, a slave, helps invent the grain harvester reaper.
1876 - Meharry Medical College, formally opens at Central Tennessee College.
1901 - Edith Spurlock (later Sampson) is born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She will graduate from the John Marshall Law School in Chicago in 1925 with a Bachelor of Laws degree. In 1927, she will become the first African American woman to receive a Masters of Laws degree from Loyola University. She will become a member of the Illinois bar in 1927, and be admitted to practice before the
1904 - William Montague Cobb is born in Washington, DC. He will become the only Black physical anthropologist with a Ph.D. before the Korean War, He will hold the only Black perspective on physical anthropology for many years. He will serve as the chairman of the Anthropology Section of the American Association for Advancement of Science and be the first African American President of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists. He will be not only a famous physical anthropologist because of his race, but also because of the great contributions he
1865 - Jamaican national hero, Paul Bogle, leads a successful protest march to the Morant Bay Courthouse. Poverty and injustice in Jamaican society and lack of public confidence in the central authority will urge Paul Bogle to lead the march. A violent confrontation with official forces will follow the march, resulting in the death of nearly 500 people. Many others will be flogged and punished before order is restored. Paul Bogle will be captured and hanged on October 24, 1865. His forceful demonstration will
1874 - South Carolina Republicans carry the election with a reduced victory margin. The Republican ticket is composed of four whites and four Blacks.
1899 - J.W. Butts, inventor, receives a patent for a luggage carrier.
1899 - I. R. Johnson patents his bicycle frame.
1901 - Frederick Douglass Patterson is born in Washington, DC. He will receive doctorate degrees from both Iowa State University and Cornell University. Dr. Patterson will serve as the president of Tuskegee Institute from 1935 to 1955. In 1943, he will organize a meeting of the
